Tempora iure colunt Latiae fecunda parentes
Quarum militiam votaque partus habet.
Here we have the fertility of man, beast, and crop, all brought together: the poet is writing of March 1. The Romans reckoned spring from Favonius (Feb. 7) to about May 10 (Varro, R. R. 1. 38); March 1 would therefore usually be a day on which its first effects would be obvious to every one.
[62]. Sat. 1. 12. 6; Ovid, Fasti, 3. 135 foll.
[63]. Ovid only mentions one ‘curia’: in Macrobius the word is in the plural. Ovid must, I think, refer to the curia Saliorum on the Palatine (Marq. 431), as this was the day on which the Salii began their rites. Macrobius may be including the curia of the Quirinal Salii (Preller, i. 357).
[64]. See below, on the Vestalia in June, p. [147].
[65]. Julius Obsequens, 19.
[66]. Roscher, Myth. Lex. s. v. Mars, 2427. Roscher regards the use of laurel in the Mars-cult as parallel with that in the Apollo-cult and not derived from it. The point is not however certain. The laurel was used as an ἀποτρόπαιον at the Robigalia, which seems closely connected with the Mars-cult (Plin. N. H. 18, 161); here it could hardly have been taken over from the worship of Apollo.
[67]. Mommsen, C. I. L. 254.
[68]. Fasti, 5. 253. There is a good parallel in Celtic mythology: the wife of Llew the Sun-hero was born of flowers (Rhys, Celt. Myth. 384). The myth is found in many parts of the world (Lang, ii. 22, and note).