[526]. The arbutus does not seem to be mentioned in connexion with charms except in this passage; we might have expected the laurel. Bötticher, Baumkultus, 324.
[527]. The sucking-pig is sacrificed, as we gather from prosecta below; i. e. to Carna: cp. the cakes of lard eaten this day (169 foll.).
[528]. Cp. in the process of ghost-laying (above, p. [109]) the prohibition to look at the beans scattered.
[529]. For the blackthorn (Germ. Weissdorn) see Bötticher, Baumkultus, 361. Varro, ap. Charisium, p. 117 ‘fax ex spinu alba praefertur, quod purgationis causa adhibetur.’
[530]. This is the passage that must have inspired O. Crusius in his paper on beans in Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 164 foll. ‘Beans,’ he says, ‘were the oldest Italian food, and like stone knives, &c., survived in ritual.’ We want, indeed, some more definite proof that they were really the oldest food; and anyhow their use had not died out like that of stone implements. They were a common article of food at Athens: Aristoph. Knights, 41; Lysist. 537 and 691. But it is not unlikely that their use in the cult of the dead may be a survival, upon which odd superstitions grafted themselves. For a parallel argument see Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, 36; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 356.
[531]. Sat. 1. 12. 32.
[532]. No safe conclusion can be drawn from Tertullian’s inclusion (ad Nat. 2. 9) of the fanum of Carna on the Caelian among those of di adventicii. O. Gilbert has lately tried to make much of this (ii. 42 foll.), and to find an Etruscan origin for Carna: but see Aust on the position of temples outside the pomoerium (de Aedibus sacris, 47).
[533]. Liv. 7. 23; Dionys. 6. 13.
[534]. See on March 1, above, p. [37].
[535]. Aust, de Aedibus sacris, p. 8. The Fasti Venusini are ‘omnium accuratissimi’; ib. p. 43. Aust goes so far as to doubt the true Roman character of this Mars, and believes him to be the Greek god Ares. See his note in Lex. 2391. The date of foundation is not certain, but was probably not earlier than the Gallic war, 388 B.C., if it is this to which Livy alludes in 6. 5. 8.