Since the Etruscan origin of Servius Tullius has been placed beyond a doubt by the discovery of the famous tomb at Vulci, with the paintings of Cales Vibenna released from his bonds by Mastarna[[700]], which has thus confirmed the Etruscan tradition of the identity of Mastarna and Servius preserved by the emperor Claudius in his famous speech[[701]], it would seem that we may consider it as highly probable that if Servius did really institute the cult of Fortuna at Rome, that cult came with him from Etruria. This by no means compels us to look on Fortuna as an Etruscan deity only; but it seems to be a fact that there was an Etruscan goddess who was recognized by the Romans as the equivalent of their Fortuna[[702]]. This was Nortia, a great deity at Volsinii, as is fully proved by the remains found there[[703]]; and we may note that the city was near to and in close alliance with Vulci, where the tomb was found containing the paintings just alluded to. Seianus, a native of Volsinii[[704]], was supposed to be under the protection of this deity, and, as we have already seen, to possess an ancient statue of her.
In her temple a nail was driven every year as in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus[[705]], and hence some have concluded that she was a goddess of time. It cannot, however, be regarded as certain whether this nail-driving was originally symbolical only, or at all, of time; it may quite as well remind us of the famous Fortuna of Antium and the ‘clavos trabales’ of Horace’s Ode[[706]]. However this may be, it is a fair guess, though it must be made with hesitation, that the Fortuna of Servius was the equivalent of this Nortia, to whom the Roman plebs gave a name with which they were in some way already familiar. Mastarna continued to worship his native deity after he was settled in Rome; and the plebs continued to revere her, not because of his luck, which was indeed imperfect, but simply because she was his protectress[[707]]. If we try to get beyond this we lose our footing; and even this is only conjecture, though based upon evidence which is not entirely without weight.
MENSIS QUINCTILIS.
The festivals of this month are so exceedingly obscure that it seems hopeless to try to connect them in any definite way with the operations either of nature or of man. We know that this was the time when the sun’s heat became oppressive and dangerous; statistics show at the present day that the rate of mortality rises at Rome to its greatest height in July and August, as indeed is the case in southern latitudes generally. We know also that harvest of various kinds was going on in this month: ‘Quarto intervallo inter solstitium et caniculam plerique messem faciunt,’ writes Varro (R. R. 1. 32). We should have expected that the unhealthy season and the harvest would have left their mark on the calendar; but in the scantiness of our information we can find very few traces of their influence. We here lose the company of Ovid, who might, in spite of his inevitable ignorance, have incidentally thrown some ray of light upon the darkness; but it is clear that even Varro and Verrius knew hardly anything of the almost obsolete festivals of this month. The Poplifugia, the Lucaria, the Neptunalia, and the Furrinalia, had all at one time been great festivals, for they are marked in large capitals in the ancient calendars; but they had no more meaning for the Roman of Varro’s time than the lesser saints’-days of our calendar have for the ordinary Englishman of to-day. The ludi Apollinares, of much later date, which always maintained their interest, did not fall upon the days of any of these festivals, or obliterate them in the minds of the people; they must have decayed from pure inanition—want of practical correlation with the life and interests of a great city.
iii Non. Quinct. (July 5). NP.
POPLIF[UGIA]. (MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)
FERIAE IOVI. (AMIT.)
The note ‘feriae Iovi’ in the calendar of Amiternum is confirmed in a curious way, by a statement of Dio Cassius[[708]], who says that in B.C. 42 the Senate passed a decree that Caesar’s birthday should be celebrated on this day[[709]], and that any one who refused to take part in the celebration should be ‘sacer Iovi et Divo Iulio.’ But we know far too little of the rites of this day to enable us to make even a guess at the meaning of its connexion with Jupiter. It is just worth noting that two days later we find a festival of Juno, the Nonae Caprotinae; the two days may have had some connexion with each other, being separated by an interval of one day, as is the case with the three days of the Lemuria, the two days of the Lucaria in this month, and in other instances[[710]]; and their rites were explained by two parts of the same aetiological story—viz. that the Romans fled before the Fidenates on the 5th, and in turn defeated them on the 7th[[711]]. But we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of such a connexion, if such there was. Nor can we explain the singular fact that this is the only festival in the whole year, marked in large capitals in the calendars, which falls before the Nones[[712]].
There is hardly a word in the whole calendar the meaning of which is so entirely unknown to us as this word Poplifugia. Of the parallel one, the Regifugium in February, something can be made out, as we shall see[[713]]; and it is not unlikely that the ritualistic meaning concealed in both may be much the same. But all attempts to find a definite explanation for Poplifugia have so far been fruitless, with the single exception perhaps of that of Schwegler[[714]], who himself made the serious blunder of confounding this day with the Nonae Caprotinae. It is true that the two days and their rites were confused even in antiquity, but only by late writers[[715]]; the calendars, on the other hand, are perfectly plain and so is Varro[[716]], who proceeds from the one to the other in a way that can leave no doubt that he understood them as distinct.
The simple fact is that the meaning of the word Poplifugia had wholly vanished when the calendar began to be studied. Ingenuity and fancy, as usual, took the place of knowledge, and two legends were the result—the one connecting the word with the flight of the Romans from an army of their neighbours of Fidenae, after the retirement of the Gauls from the city[[717]]; the other interpreting it as a memorial of the flight of the people after the disappearance of Romulus in the darkness of an eclipse or sudden tempest[[718]]. The first of these legends may be dismissed at once; the large capitals in which the name Poplifugia appears in the fragments of the three calendars which preserve it, are sufficient evidence that it must have been far older than the Gallic invasion[[719]]. The second legend might suggest that the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some religious rite performed at this time of year; and it was indeed traditionally connected with the Nones of this month[[720]]. But that day is unluckily not the day of the Poplifugia, which it is hardly possible to connect with the disappearance of Romulus. There may, however, have been a connexion between the rites of the two days, as has been pointed out above; and this being so, it is worth while to notice a suggestion made by Schwegler, in spite of the fact that he confused the two days together. He saw that the disappearance of Romulus was said to have occurred while he was holding a lustratio of the citizens[[721]], and concluded that the Poplifugia may have been an ancient rite of lustration—an idea which other writers have been content to follow without always giving him the credit of it[[722]].