[950]. He compares this common meal with those of the πρυτανεῖα of Greek cities, and also with the φιδίτια at Sparta. But it is most unlikely that the practice of the curiae should have had any but a native origin.
[951]. See cap. 7 of Ambrosch’s Studien; and cp. cap. 1 on the Regia as the older centre.
[952]. I may relegate to a footnote the further conjecture that the original deity of the epulum was Vesta. We know that this Sept. 13 was one of the three days on which the Vestals prepared the mola salsa (Serv. Ecl. 8. 32). We cannot connect this mola salsa with the cult of Jupiter on this day, for the Vestals have no direct connexion with that cult at any period of the year; but it is possible that it was a survival from the time when the common meal took place in the Regia.
[953]. See Aust’s admirable and exhaustive article on Jupiter in Roscher’s Lexicon.
[954]. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites, 42 foll.) seems to trace the idea back to an actual physical fatherhood. Mr. Farnell, on the other hand (Cults of the Greek States, i. 49), believes that in the case of Zeus it expresses ‘rather a moral or spiritual idea than any real theological belief concerning physical or human origins.’ In Italy, I think, the suffix pater indicates a special connexion with a particular stock, and one rather of guardianship than of actual fatherhood. See above on Neptunalia.
[955]. See Jordan’s note on Preller, i. 56.
[956]. See my paper in Classical Review, vol. ix. 474 foll.
[957]. Wissowa, de Feriis, p. 6, in the true spirit of Italian worship, concludes that it was ‘non per iustum matrimonium, sed ex officiorum affinitate.’
[958]. Bücheler, Umbrica; Bréal, Les Tables Eugubines.
[959]. Tab. 1 B. (Bücheler, p. 2, takes it as a temple or sacellum of Juno).