[556]. Cp. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 28 (‘Why are boys made to go out of the house when they wish to swear by Hercules?‘) with Varro, ap. Nonium, s. v. rituis, and L. L. 5. 66.
[557]. See below on Sept. 13, p. [231]. The silex was taken out of the temple of Jupiter Feretrius (Paulus, 92).
[558]. Eustath. ad Od. 22. 335; Hermann, Gr. Ant. ii. 74. Cp. A. Lang, Myth, &c. ii. 54: ‘the sky hears us,’ said the Indian when taking an oath.
[559]. Dionys. 1. 40.
[560]. See the opinions of Hartung, Schwegler, and Preller, summed up by Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 51 foll.; and R. Peter in Lex. s. v. Hercules, 2255 foll.
[561]. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 233.
[562]. Bücheler, Umbrica, 7; Bréal, Tables Eugubines, 270.
[563]. Preller, ii. 273, and Jordan’s note. In M. Gaidoz’s Études de Mythologie Gauloise, i. 64, will be found figures of a hand holding a wheel, from Bar-le-Duc (the wrist thrust through one of the holes), which may possibly explain the urfita, and which he connects with the Celtic sun-god. In this connexion we may notice the large series of Umbrian and Etruscan coins with the six-rayed wheel-symbol (Mommsen, Münzwesen, 222 foll.), which, as Professor Gardner tells me, is more probably a sun-symbol than merely the chariot-wheel convenient for unskilful coiners.
[564]. 8. 20.
[565]. For the bird, Plin. N. H. 10. 20; Festus, 197 s. v. oscines, and 317 (sanqualis avis). Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de la Divination, iv. 200. For the gate cp. Paulus, 345, with Liv. 8. 20; Jordan, Topogr. ii. 264.