NATALIS SALUTIS. (PHILOC.)
The date of the foundation of the temple of Salus was 302 B.C., during the Samnite wars[[792]]. The cult was probably not wholly new. The Augurium Salutis, which we know through its revival by Augustus, was an ancient religious performance at the beginning of each year, or at the accession of new consuls, which involved, first the ascertaining whether prayers would be acceptable to the gods, and secondly the offering of such prayers on an auspicious day[[793]]. Two very old inscriptions also suggest that the cult was well distributed in Italy at an early period[[794]]. Such impersonations of abstract ideas as Salus, Concordia, Pax, Spes, &c., do not belong to the oldest stage of religion, but were no doubt of pontifical origin, i. e. belonged to the later monarchy or early republic[[795]]. We need not suppose that they were due to the importation of Greek cults and ideas, though in some cases they became eventually overlaid with these. They were generated by the same process as the gods of the Indigitamenta[[796]]—being in fact an application to the life of the state of that peculiarly Roman type of religious thought which conceived a distinct numen as presiding over every act and suffering of the individual. This again, as I believe, in its product the Indigitamenta, was an artificial priestly exaggeration of a very primitive tendency to see a world of nameless spirits surrounding and influencing all human life.
The history of the temple is interesting[[797]]. Not long after its dedication its walls were painted by Gaius Fabius, consul in 269 B.C., whose descendants, among them the historian, bore the name of Pictor, in commemoration of a feat so singular for a Roman of that age[[798]]. It was struck by lightning no less than four times, and burnt down in the reign of Claudius. Livy[[799]] tells us that in 180 B.C., by order of the decemviri a supplicatio was held, in consequence of a severe pestilence, in honour of Apollo, Aesculapius, and Salus; which shows plainly that the goddess was already being transformed into the likeness of the Greek ῾Υγίεια, and associated rather with public health than with public wealth in the most general sense of the word.
vi Id. Sext. (Aug. 9). F. (allip.) NP. (amit. maff. etc.)
SOLI INDIGITI IN COLLE QUIRINALE. (AMIT. ALLIF.)
SOL[IS] INDIGITIS IN COLLE QUIRINALE SACRIFICIUM PUBLICUM. (VALL.)
There was an ancient worship of Sol on the Quirinal, which was believed to be of Sabine origin. A Solis pulvinar close to the temple of Quirinus is mentioned, and the Gens Aurelia was said to have had charge of the cult[[800]].
But the Sol of August 9 is called in the calendars Sol Indiges. What are we to understand by this word, which appears in the names Di Indigetes, Jupiter Indiges, or Indigetes simply? The Roman scholars themselves were not agreed on the point; the general opinion was that it meant ‘of or belonging to a certain place,’ i. e. fixed there by origin and protecting it[[801]]. This view has also been generally adopted, on etymological or other grounds, by modern writers, including Preller[[802]]. Recently a somewhat different explanation has been put forward in the Mythological Lexicon, suggested by Reifferscheid in his lectures at Breslau. According to this view, Indiges (from indu and root ag in agere) was a deity working in a particular act, business, place, &c., of men’s activity, and in no other; it is of pontifical origin, like its cognate indigitamenta, and is therefore not a survival from the oldest religious forms[[803]].
The second of these explanations does not seem to help us to understand what was meant by Sol Indiges; and its exponent in the Lexicon, in order to explain this, falls back on an ingenious suggestion made long ago by Preller. In dealing with Sol Indiges, Preller explained Indiges as = index, and conjectured that the name was not given to Sol until after the eclipse which foretold the death of Caesar, comparing the lines of Virgil (Georg. 1. 463 foll.):
Sol tibi signa dabit. Solem quis dicere falsum