Sic haec est cultu versicolore decens?
Flora answers him doubtfully. Was this a practice of comparatively late date? See Friedländer, Sittengeschichte ii. 275.
[348]. Mommsen in C. I. L. vi. p. 455 (Tabula fer. Lat.). The day was March 15 from B.C. 222 to 153; in earlier times it had been frequently changed. See Mommsen. Chron. p. 80 foll.
[349]. On this office and its connexion with the feriae see Vigneaux, Essai sur l’histoire de la praefectura urbis, p. 37 foll.
[350]. Plin. H. N. 3. 69; Dionys. 4. 49. The difficult questions arising out of the numbers given by these authorities are discussed by Beloch, Italischer Bund, 178 foll., and Mommsen in Hermes, vol. xvii. 42 foll.
[351]. Aust, in Myth. Lex. s. v. Iuppiter, p. 689.
[352]. C. I. L. vi. 2021.
[353]. Condensed from the account given by Aust, l. c. See also Preller-Jordan, i. 210 foll. The chief authority is Dionys. 4. 49.
[354]. e. g. Liv. 32. 1, 37. 3, in which cases some one city had not received its portion. The result was an instauratio feriarum.
[355]. See below, p. [294] (Feriae Sementivae). The meaning of the oscilla was not really known to the later Romans, who freely indulged in conjectures about them. Macrob. 1. 7. 34; Serv. Georg. 2. 389; Paul. 121. My own belief is that, like the bullae of children, they were only one of the many means of averting evil influences.