The story well shows the universal use of the tibia in all sacred rites; the tibicines were indispensable, and had to be got back from Tibur by fair means or foul. As Ovid says:
Cantabat fanis, cantabat tibia ludis,
Cantabat maestis tibia funeribus.
The instrument was probably indigenous in Italy, and the only indigenous one of which we know. ‘The word tibia,’ says Professor Nettleship[[654]], ‘is purely Italian, and has, so far as I can find, no parallel in the cognate languages.’ Müller, in his work on the Etruscans, does indeed assume that the Roman tibicines were of Etruscan origin, which would leave the Romans without any musical instrument of their own. The probability may rather be that it was the general instrument of old Italy, specially cultivated by the one Italian race endowed with anything like an artistic temperament.
xii Kal. Iun. (June 20). C.
SUMMAN[O] AD CIRC[UM] MAXIM[UM]. (VEN. ESQ. AMIT.)
To this note may be added that of Ovid[[655]]:
Reddita, quisquis is est, Summano templa feruntur,
Tum cum Romanis, Pyrrhe, timendus eras.
The date of the foundation of the temple of Summanus was probably between 278 and 275 B.C.[[656]]; the foundation was the result of the destruction by lightning, no doubt at night, of a figure of Jupiter on the Capitol[[657]]. Who was this Summanus? Ovid’s language, quisquis is est, shows that even in his time this god, like Semo Sancus, Soranus, and others, had been fairly shouldered out of the course by more important or pushing deities. In the fourth century A.D. S. Augustine[[658]], well read in the works of Varro and the Roman antiquarians, could write as follows: ‘Sicut enim apud ipsos legitur, Romani veteres nescio quem Summanum, cui nocturna fulmina tribuebant, coluerunt magis quam Iovem—sed postquam Iovi templum insigne ac sublime constructum est, propter aedis dignitatem sic ad eum multitudo confluxit, ut vix inveniatur, qui Summani nomen, quod audire iam non potest, se saltem legisse meminerit.’ In spite of the decay and disappearance of this god we may believe that the Christian Father has preserved the correct tradition as to his nature when he tells us that he was the wielder of the lightning of the night, or in other words a nocturnal Jupiter. We do in fact find a much earlier statement to the same effect traceable to Verrius Flaccus[[659]]. Varro also mentions him and classes him with Veiovis, and with the Sabine deities whom he believed to have been brought to Rome by Tatius[[660]]. There is, however, no need to suppose with Varro that he was Sabine, or with Müller that he was Etruscan[[661]]; the name is Latin and probably = Submanus, i. e. the god who sends the lightning before the dawn.