But May 23 is also marked in two calendars as feriae Volcano; and Ovid has noticed this in a single couplet:[[484]]
Proxima Volcani lux est: Tubilustria dicunt;
Lustrantur purae, quas facit ille, tubae.
The difficult question of the original character of Volcanus must be postponed until we come to his festival in August. We only need here to ask whether Ovid was right in regarding Volcanus as the smith who made the trumpets. This has been strenuously denied by Wissowa[[485]], who goes so far as to believe that the deity originally invoked on this day was not Volcanus but Mars—since the corresponding day in March was a festival of that deity—and that Volcanus was at an early period thrust into his place under the influence of Greek notions of Hephaestus as a smith who made armour and also trumpets. Wissowa has, however, to throw over the two calendars quoted above (Ven. Amit.) in order to support his argument—and so far we are hardly entitled to go.
It is safer to take Volcanus as an ancient Roman deity whose cult was closely connected with that of Maia, or the Bona Dea, and was prominent in this month as well as in August. The Flamen Volcanalis sacrificed to the Bona Dea on May 1; and Maia was addressed in invocations as Maia Volcani[[486]]. The coincidence of this festival of his with the Tubilustrium I take to have been accidental; but it led naturally, as the Romans became acquainted with Greek mythology, to the erroneous view represented by Ovid that Volcanus was himself a smith[[487]].
viii Kal. Iun. (May 25). C.
FORTUNAE P[UBLICAE] P[OPULI] R[OMANI] Q[UIRITIUM] IN COLLE QUIRIN[ALI]. (CAER.)
FORTUNÆ PUBLICÆ P[OPULI] R[OMANI] IN COLL[E]. (ESQ.)
FORTUNÆ PRIM[IGENIAE] IN COL[LE]. (VEN.)
This was the dedication-day of one of three temples of Fortuna on the Quirinal; the place was known as ‘tres Fortunae[[488]].’ The goddess in this case was Fortuna Primigenia, imported from Praeneste—of whom something will be said later on[[489]]. The temple was vowed after the Second Punic War in B.C. 204, and dedicated ten years later[[490]]. Our consideration of Fortuna may be postponed till the festival of Fors Fortuna, an older Roman form of the cult, on June 24.