FERIAE FONTI. (AMIT.)
All we know of this very ancient festival is contained in a few words of Varro[[1048]]: ‘Fontinalia a Fonte, quod is dies feriae eius; ab eo tum et in fontes coronas iaciunt et puteos coronant.’
The holiness of wells and springs is too familiar to need illustration here. The original object of the garlanding was probably to secure abundant water.
It is generally assumed that there was a god Fons or Fontus, to whom this day was sacred. There was a delubrum Fontis[[1049]]; an ara Fonti on the Janiculum[[1050]]; and a porta Fontinalis in the Campus Martius. Fons also appears with Flora, Mater Larum, Summanus, &c., in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales[[1051]]. The case seems to be one of those in which multiplicity passes into a quasi-unity: but Fons did not survive long in the latter stage.
Id. Oct. (Oct. 15). NP.
EQUUS AD NIXAS FIT. (PHILOC.)
No calendar but the late one of Philocalus mentions the undoubtedly primitive rite of horse-sacrifice which took place on this day. Wissowa has tried to explain this difficulty, which meets us elsewhere in the Calendar, e. g. on the Ides of May (Argei), June 1 (festival of Carna)[[1052]]. Where two festivals fell on the same day, both would not be found in calendars which were meant for the use, not of the pontifices themselves, but of the unlearned vulgar; for the latter would not be able to distinguish, or to get one clear name for the day, and confusion would result. Now all Kalends and Ides were sacred to Juno and Jupiter respectively; all other rites falling on these days would stand a chance of being omitted, unless indeed they were noticed in later annotations such as we find cut in smaller letters in the Fasti Praenestini and others.
Luckily the entry in Philocalus’ calendar is supplemented sufficiently from other sources. The earliest hint we get comes from the Greek historian Timaeus, and is preserved in a fragment of the twelfth book of Polybius[[1053]]. Timaeus after the Greek fashion connects the horse-sacrifice with the legend of Troy and the wooden horse: but he also tells us the important detail that on a certain day a war-horse was killed with a spear in the Campus Martius[[1054]]. The passage is no doubt characteristic of Timaeus, both in regard to the detail, and the mythology which Polybius despised. But though we do not know that Timaeus was ever at Rome, we may hope that he was correct in the one particular which we do not learn from other sources, viz. the slaughter of the horse with the sacred weapon of Mars.
Fuller information comes from Verrius Flaccus, as represented in the epitomes of Festus and Paulus Diaconus[[1055]]. On this day there was a two-horse chariot race in the Campus Martius; and the near horse of the winning pair was sacrificed to Mars—killed with a spear, if we may believe Timaeus. The place is indicated in Philocalus’ calendar as ‘ad nixas,’ i. e. the ciconiae nixae, which seem to have been three storks carved in stone with bills crossing each other[[1056]]: this however was non-existent under the Republic. The real scene of the sacrifice must have been an old ‘ara Martis,’ and that there was such an altar in the Campus we know for certain, though we cannot definitely fix its position[[1057]]. The tail of the horse was cut off and carried with speed to the Regia so that the warm blood might drip upon the focus or sacred hearth there. The head also was cut off and decked with cakes; and at one time there was a hard fight for its possession between the men of the two neighbouring quarters of the Via Sacra and the Subura. If the former carried off the prize, they fixed it on the wall of the Regia; if the latter, on the turris Mamilia[[1058]].
It is probable[[1059]], though not quite certain, that the congealed blood from the tail was used, together with the ashes of the unborn calves sacrificed on the Fordicidia, as ‘medicine’ to be distributed to the people at the Parilia on April 21.