As we have seen, the first ‘moving’ of the ancilia was on the 1st. This is the second mentioned in the calendars; the third, according to Lydus (4. 42), was on the 23rd (Tubilustrium, q.v.). As the Salii seem to have danced with the shields all through the month up to the 24th[[101]], it has been supposed that these were the three principal days of ‘moving’; and Mr. Marindin suggests that they correspond to the three most important mansiones Saliorum, of which two were probably the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine and the Sacrarium Martis in the Regia[[102]].
PRID. ID. MART. (MARCH 14). NP.
EQUIRR[IA]. (MAFF. VAT. ESQ.)
FERIAE MARTI. (VAT.)
SACRUM MAMURIO. (RUSTIC CALENDARS[[103]].)
MAMURALIA. (PHILOC.)
These notes involve several difficulties. To begin with, this day is an even number, and there is no other instance in the calendar of a festival occurring on such a day. Wissowa[[104]], usually a very cautious inquirer, here boldly cuts the knot by conjecturing that the Mars festival of this day had originally been on the next, i.e. the Ides, but was put back one day to enable the people to frequent both the horse-races (Equirria) and the festival of Anna Perenna[[105]]. The latter, he might have added, was obviously extremely popular with the lower classes, as we shall see from Ovid’s description; and though the scene of it was close to that of the Equirria, or certainly not far away, it is not impossible that it may have diverted attention from the nobler and more manly amusement. Wissowa strengthens his argument by pointing out an apparent parallel between the festival dates of March and October. Here, as elsewhere, in the calendar, we find an interval of three days between two festivals, viz. between March 19 (Quinquatrus) and March 23 (Tubilustrium), and between Oct. 15 (‘October horse’) and Oct. 19 (Armilustrium). Now, as we shall see, the rites of March 19 and Oct. 19 seem to correspond to each other[[106]]; and if there were a chariot-race on March 15, it would also answer to the race on the day of the ‘October horse,’ Oct. 15, with a three days’ interval as in October. The argument is not a very strong one, but there is a good deal to be said for it.
A much more serious difficulty lies in the discrepancy between the three older calendars in which we have notes for this day and the almanacs of the later Empire, viz. that of Philocalus (A.D. 354) and the rustic calendars. The former tell us of a Mars-festival, with a horse-race; the latter know nothing of these, but note a festival of Mamurius, a name which, as we saw, occurred in the Saliare Carmen apparently as a variant of Mars, and came to be affixed to the legendary smith who made the eleven copies of the ancile. How are we to account for the change of Mars into Mamurius, and of feriae Marti into Mamuralia? And are we to suppose that the later calendars here indicate a late growth of legend, based on the name Mamurius as occurring in the Carmen Saliare, or that they have preserved the shadow of an earlier and popular side of the March rites, which the State-calendars left out of account?
Apparently Mommsen holds the former opinion[[107]]. In his note on this day he says that it is easy to understand how the second Equirria came to be known to the vulgus as Mamuralia (i.e. so distinguished from the first Equirria on Feb. 27), seeing that Mamurius who made the ancilia belongs wholly to the cult of Mars, and that this day was one of those on which the Salii and the ancilia were familiar sights in the streets of Rome. In other words, the Salian songs gave rise to the legend of Mamurius, and this in its turn gave a new name to the second Equirria or feriae Marti. And this I believe to be the most rational explanation of our difficulty, seeing that we have no mention of a feast of Mamurius earlier than the calendar of Philocalus in the fourth century A.D., which cannot be regarded as in any sense representing learning or research[[108]].
But of recent years much has been written in favour of the other view, that the late calendars have here preserved for us a trace of very ancient Roman belief and ritual[[109]]. This view rests almost entirely on a statement of a still later writer, Laurentius Lydus of Apamea, who wrote a work, de Mensibus, in the first half of the sixth century A.D., preserved in part in the form of two summaries or collections of extracts. Lydus was no doubt a man of learning, as is shown by his other work, de Magistratibus; but he does not give us his authority for particular statements, and his second- or third-hand knowledge must always be cautiously used.
Lydus tells us that on the Ides of March (a mistake, it is supposed[[110]], for the 14th—which, however, he should not have made), a man clothed in skins was led out and driven with long peeled wands (out of the city, as we may guess from what follows) and shouted at as ‘Mamurius.’ Hence the saying, when any one is beaten, that they are ‘playing Mamurius with him.’ For the legend runs that Mamurius the smith was beaten out of the city because misfortune fell on the Romans when they substituted the new shields (made by Mamurius) for those that had fallen from heaven[[111]].
This is clearly a late form of the Mamurius-myth: in all the earlier accounts[[112]] only one ancile is said to have fallen from heaven. Lydus seems rather to be thinking of twelve original ones[[113]], and twelve copies—perhaps of the Palatine and Colline ancilia respectively. If the form of the myth, then, is of late growth, suspicion may well be aroused as to the antiquity of the rite it was meant to explain, for with the older type of myth the rite does not seem to suit. And this suspicion is strengthened by the fact that in the whole of Latin literature there is no certain allusion to a rite so striking and peculiar, and only one that can possibly, even by forcible treatment, be taken as such. In Propertius v (iv.) 2. 61, we have the following lines, put into the mouth of the god Vertumnus:
At tibi, Mamuri, formae caelator aenae,