[416]. de Genio Socratis, 15. The passage is interesting, but historically worthless, as is that of Martianus Capella, 2. 162.
[417]. Fasti, 5. 451 foll.; Porph. l. c. Remus, as one dead before his time, would not lie quiet: ‘Umbra cruenta Remi visa est adsistere lecto,’ &c.
[418]. See e. g. Von Duhn’s paper on Italian excavations, translated in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1897.
[419]. ‘Habent vincula nulla pedes’ (Fasti, 5. 432). In performing sacred rites a man must be free; e. g. the Flamen Dialis might not wear a ring, or anything binding, and a fettered prisoner had to be loosed in his house (Plut. Q. R. 111). Cp. Numa in his interview with Faunus (Ov. Fasti, 4. 658), ‘Nec digitis annulus ullus inest.’ Serv. Aen. 4. 518; Hor. Sat. 1. 8. 24.
[420]. Manes must be here used, either loosely by the poet, or euphemistically by the house-father.
[421]. It is curious to find them used for the very same purpose of ghost-ridding as far away as Japan (Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 176). For their antiquity as food, Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, 459; Schrader, Sprachvergleichung, 362.
[422]. A. Lang, Myth, &c., ii. 265; Jevons, Roman Questions, Introd. p. lxxxvi; O. Crusius, Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 164 foll.; and especially Lobeck, Aglaoph. 251 foll. For superstitions of a similar kind attached to the mandrake and other plants see Sir T. Browne’s Vulgar Errors, bk. ii. ch. 6; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, p. 356 (the berries of the rowan).
[423]. There was a notion that beans sown in a manure-heap produced men. Cp. Plin. H. N. 18. 118 ‘quoniam mortuorum animae sint in ea.’
[424]. Gell. 10. 15. 2 (from Fabius Pictor).
[425]. Serv. Ecl. 8. 82; Marq. 343 note. Mannhardt, A. W. F. 269, attempts an explanation of the difficulty arising here from the fact that in historical times the calendar was some weeks in advance of the seasons, but without much success.