The connexion of the Consus-cult with horses was so obvious as to give rise eventually to the identification of the god with Poseidon Hippios. It is certain that there were horse-races in the Circus maximus at one of the two Consualia, and as Dionysius[[888]] connects them with the day of the Rape of the Sabines, which Plutarch puts in August, we may be fairly sure that they took place at the August festival. Mules also raced—according to Festus[[889]], because they were said to be the most ancient beasts of burden. This looks like a harvest festival, and may carry us back to the most primitive agricultural society and explain the origin of the Circus maximus; for the only other horse-races known to us from the old calendar were those of Mars in the Campus Martius on Feb. 27 and March 13[[890]]. We may suppose that when the work of harvest was done, the farmers and labourers enjoyed themselves in this way and laid the foundation for a great Roman social institution[[891]].
Once more, it is not impossible that in the legendary connexion of the Rape of the Sabine women with the Consualia[[892]] we may see a reflection of the jollity and license which accompanies the completion of harvest among so many peoples. Romulus was said to have attracted the Sabines by the first celebration of the Consualia. Is it not possible that the meeting of neighbouring communities on a festive occasion of this kind may have been a favourable opportunity for capturing new wives[[893]]? The sexual license common on such occasions has been abundantly illustrated by Mr. Frazer in his Golden Bough[[894]].
Before leaving the Consualia we may just remark that Consus had no flamen of his own, in spite of his undoubted antiquity; doubtless because his altar was underground, and only opened once or perhaps twice a year. On August 21 his sacrifice was performed, says Tertullian[[895]], by the Flamen Quirinalis in the presence of the Vestals. This flamen seems to have had a special relation to the corn-crops, for it was he who also sacrificed a dog to Robigus on April 25[[896]], to avert the mildew from them; and thus we get one more confirmation from the cult of the view taken as to the agricultural origin of the Consualia.
x Kal. Sept. (Aug. 23). NP.
VOLCANALIA. (PINC. MAFF. VALL. ETC.)
VOLCANO IN CIRCO FLAMINIO. (VALL.)
VOLCANO. (PINC.)
(A mutilated fragment of the calendar of the Fratres Arvales gives QUIR[INO] IN COLLE, VOLK[ANO] IN COMIT[IO]. OPI OPIFERÆ IN ..., [NYMP]HIS(?) IN CAMPO).
Of the cult of this day, apart from the extracts from the calendars, we know nothing, except that the heads of Roman families threw into the fire certain small fish with scales, which were to be had from the Tiber fishermen at the ‘area Volcani’[[897]]. We cannot explain this; but it reminds us of the fish called maena, with magical properties, which the old woman offered to Tacita and the ghost-world at the Parentalia[[898]]. Fish-sacrifices were rare; and if in one rite fish are used to propitiate the inhabitants of the underworld, they seem not inappropriate in another of which the object is apparently to propitiate the fire-god, who in a volcanic country like that of Rome must surely be a chthonic deity.
The antiquity of the cult of Volcanus is shown by the fact that there was a Flamen Volcanalis[[899]], who on May 1 sacrificed to Maia, the equivalent, as we saw, of Bona Dea, Terra, &c. With Volcanus we may remember that Maia was coupled in the old prayer formula preserved by Gellius (13.23)—Maia Volcani. From these faint indications Preller[[900]] conjectured that the original notion of Volcanus was that of a favouring nature-spirit, perhaps of the warmth and fertilizing power of the earth. However this may be, in later times, under influences which can only be guessed at, he became a hostile fire-god, hard to keep under control. Of this aspect of him Wissowa has written concisely at the conclusion of his little treatise de Feriis. He suggests that the appearance of the nymphs[[901]] in the rites of this day indicates the use of water in conflagrations, and that Ops Opifera was perhaps invoked to protect her own storehouses. The name Volcanus became a poetical word for devouring fire as early as the time of Ennius, and is familiar to us in this sense in Virgil[[902]]. After the great fire at Rome in Nero’s time a new altar was erected to Volcanus by Domitian, at which (and at all Volcanalia) on this day a red calf and a boar were offered for sacrifice[[903]]. At Ostia the cult became celebrated; there was an ‘aedes’ and a ‘pontifex Volcani’ and a ‘praetor sacris Volcani faciundis.’ In August the storehouses at Ostia would be full of new grain arrived from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, and in that hot month would be especially in danger from fire; an elaborate cult of Volcanus the fire-god was therefore at this place particularly desirable.
The aedes Volcani in circo Flaminio was dedicated before 215 B.C.; the exact date is not known[[904]]. Its position was explained by Vitruvius[[905]] as having the object of keeping conflagrations away from the city. Mr. Jevons, in his Introduction to a translation of Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae[[906]], has argued from this position, outside the pomoerium, and from a doubtful etymology, that the cult of Volcanus was a foreign introduction; but the position of the temple is no argument, as has been well shown by Aust[[907]], and the chief area Volcani, or Volcanal, was in the Comitium, in the heart of the city[[908]].