[436]. ‘The etymology will of course explain a word, but only if it happens to be right; the history of the word is a surer guide’ (Skeat). In this case we have not even the history.
[437]. See Schwegler, i 383. note; Marq. 183. Mommsen (Staatsrecht, iii. 123) reverts to the opinion that Argei is simply Ἀργεῖοι, and preserves a reminiscence of Greek captives. Nettleship, in his Notes in Latin Lexicography, p. 271, is inclined to connect the word with ‘arcere’, in the sense of confining prisoners. More fanciful developments in a paper by O. Keller, in Fleckeisen’s Jahrbuch, cxxxiii. 845 foll.
[438]. The puppets may have been made in March, and then hung in the sacella till May: so Jordan, Topogr. l. c. The writer in Myth. Lex. thinks that human victims were originally kept in these sacella, for whom the puppets were surrogates.
[439]. There is an interesting modern parallel in Mannhardt, A. W. F. 178.
[440]. Varro, L. L. 5. 83, and Jordan, Topogr. i. 398. The general opinion seems now to favour the view that there was an original connexion between the pontifices and the pons sublicius.
[441]. Varro, L. L. 5. 83; Dionys. 2. 73, 3. 45.
[442]. This was the suggestion of Mr. Frazer in a note in the Journal of Philology, vol. xiv. p. 156. The late Prof. Nettleship once expressed this view to me.
[443]. Paulus, p. 15 ‘per Virgines Vestales’; Ovid, Fasti, 5. 621.
[445]. Plut. Quaest. Rom. 86; Gell. 10. 15; Marq. 318. Her usual head-dress was the flammeum, or bride’s veil. No mention is made of the Flamen her husband; the prominence of women in all these rites is noticeable.