Quae dea natali coepit habere suo.
As from the note in Praen. we learn that March 19 was also the dedication-day of Minerva on the Aventine, there must either be a confusion between the two, or both had the same foundation-day. About the day of Minerva Capta there is no doubt; for that of Minerva on the Aventine see Aust, de Aedibus, p. 42.
[168]. Preller, i. 342; Usener, Rh. Mus., xxx. 221; Roscher, Myth. Lex. s. v. Mars, 2410; Lyd. de Mens. 4. 42; Gell. 13. 23 (from Gellii Annales) is the locus classicus for Nerio.
[169]. Nerio gen. Nerienis (Gell. l. c., who compares Anio Anienis).
[170]. Ovid, Fasti, 3. 850: ‘forti sacrificare deae,’ though clearly meant to refer to Minerva, is thought to be a reminiscence of a characteristic of Nerio (‘the strong one’), attached to her supplanter.
[171]. Aul. Gell. l. c.
[172]. Usener, l. c., passim.
[173]. H. Jordan expressed a somewhat different view in his Symbolae ad hist. Ital. religionum alterae, p. 9. He thinks that ‘volgari opinione hominum feminini numinis cum masculo coniunctionem non potuisse non pro coniugali aestimari.’ But this would seem to imply that the opinio volgaris was a mistaken one: and if so, how should it have arisen but under Greek influence?
[174]. Mommsen, in a note on the Feriale Cumanum (Hermes, 17. 637), calls them weibliche Hilfsgöttinnen; and this is not far removed from the view I have expressed in the text. The other alternative, viz that we have in these names traces of an old Italian anthropomorphic age, with a mythology, is in my view inadmissible. I see in them survivals of a mode of thought about the supernatural which might easily lend itself to a foreign anthropomorphizing influence.
[175]. Ovid, Fasti, 3. 835 foll.