[1249]. When Varro writes (L. L. 6. 12) that the dies agonales are those in which the Rex sacrorum sacrifices a ram in the Regia, he may be including all the four days, and not only Jan. 9. I think this is likely; but we only know it of Jan. 9.
[1250]. Fasti, i. 333. Varro L. L. 6. 12 ‘Agonales (dies) per quos rex in regia arietem immolat.’
[1251]. Cp. lines 318 and 333.
[1252]. Henzen, 144. An ‘agna’ is the only other animal sacrifice we know of to Janus (Roscher, in Lex. 42).
[1253]. Roscher, in Lex. s. v. Ianus, 29 foll. (cp. for much interesting kindred matter, De-Marchi, Il Culto privato, p. 20 foll.). Roscher’s attempt to find an analogy between the Forum and the house is interesting, but unluckily the positions ‘ad Forum’ of the ‘Ianus geminus’ and the ‘aedes Vestae’ do not exactly answer to those of the door and hearth of a Roman house.
[1254]. Sat. i. 9. 2; Procopius, B. G. 1. 25, who says that ‘Janus belonged to the gods whom the Romans in their tongue called Penates,’ seems to be alluding to the same connexion of this god and the house.
[1255]. We owe this explanation of Janus chiefly to Roscher’s article, and Roscher himself owed it to the fact that his study of Janus for the article was a second and not a first attempt. In Hermes der Windgott (Leipzig, 1878) he had arrived at a very different and a far less rational conclusion. The influence of Mannhardt and the folk-lorists set him on the right track.
[1256]. Nigidius Figulus in Macrob. i. 9. 8.
[1257]. See Roscher, Lex. 44.
[1258]. Macrob. 1. 9. 9; Lydus, de Mensibus, 4. 6 (who quotes Lutatius).