[322]. Festus, 285; Paul, 45. It was outside the Porta Catularia, of which, unluckily, nothing is known.
[323]. N. H. 18. 14 ‘Ita est in commentariis pontificum: Augurio canario agendo dies constituantur priusquam frumenta vaginis exeant et antequam in vaginas perveniant.’ For ‘et antequam’ we should perhaps read ‘nec antequam.’ The vagina is the sheath which protects the ear and from which it eventually protrudes; and it seems that in this stage, which in Italy would occur at the end of April or beginning of May, the corn is peculiarly liable to ‘rust.’ (So Virg. Georg. 1. 151 ‘Ut mala culmos Esset robigo’: i. e. the stalks including the vagina.) See Hugh Macmillan, op. cit. p. 121.
[324]. Myth. Forsch. 106. Mr. Frazer (G. B. ii. 59: cp. i. 306) takes the other view of this and similar sacrifices, but with some hesitation.
[325]. It must be confessed that the occurrence of red colour in victims cannot well be always explained in this way; e. g. the red heifer of the Israelites (Numbers xix), and the red oxen of the Egyptians (Plut. Isis and Osiris, 31). But in this rite, occurring so close to the Cerialia, where, as we have seen, foxes were turned out in the circus maximus, the colour of the puppies must have had some meaning in relation to the growing crops.
[326]. ‘Ludi cursoribus maioribus minoribusque.’ What these were is not known: Mommsen, C. I. L. 317.
[327]. Usener, Religionsgeschichte, i. 298 foll.
[328]. See Introduction, p. [15].
[329]. Plin. N. H. 18. 286; two years earlier, according to Velleius, 1. 14. This is, I think, the only case in which a deity taken in hand by the decemviri sacris faciundis cannot be traced to a Greek origin; but the characteristics of Flora are so like those of Venus that in the former, as in the latter, Aphrodite may be concealed. The games as eventually organized had points in common with the cult of Aphrodite at Hierapolis (Lucian, Dea Syr. 49; Farnell, Cults, ii. 643); and it is worth noting that their date (173 B.C.) is subsequent to the Syrian war. Up to that time the games were not regular or annual (Ovid, Fasti, 5. 295).
[330]. Tac. Ann. 2. 49; Aust, p. 17.
[331]. Plebis ad aediles: Ovid, ib. v. 287; Festus, 238, probably in error, calls the Publicii curule aediles.