[1080]. Golden Bough, ii. 65. Jevons, Introduction to Plut. Q. R. p. lxix. He quotes an example from Africa.
[1081]. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, Lect. ix. In this case, according to M., it was the life of the Corn-spirit—so of generation in general.
[1082]. Schwegler, R. G. i. 739; Ambrosch, Studien, 200 foll.
[1083]. Evidence for this in Liv. i 2; Serv. Aen. 9. 274.
[1084]. See e. g. Crooke’s Folklore of Northern India, vol. ii. pp. 176 and 321. Crooke looks on these fights (he should have said, the possession of the object which is the cause of the fight) as charms for rain or fertility. So in the plains of N.-W. India, ‘plenty is supposed to follow the side which is victorious.’
[1085]. Veram huius sacri rationem inter veteres ii viderunt quorum sententiam ita refert Festus ‘equum hostiae loco Marti bellico deo sacrari’ (de Feriis, p. x).
[1086]. See under [March 14] and [19].
[1087]. Wissowa thinks it was originally the 15th (Ides); but Mommsen dissents in his note on Oct. 15 (C. I. L. 332). It is the only feast-day in the calendar which is an even number. Perhaps it was changed because of the popularity of the revels, &c., on the Ides.
[1088]. Charisius, p. 81; Marq. 435.
[1089]. This point of the parallel was first noticed by Wissowa, who, as just noted, believes the day of Equirria to have been in each case the Ides.