Chapter XVIII: The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium (4)

On the fifth of July a ceremony called the Flight of the People was
performed at Rome. Some ancient writers thought that it commemorated
the dispersal of the people after the disappearance of Romulus. But
this is to confuse the dates; for, according to tradition, the death
of Romulus took place on the seventh, not the fifth of July, and
therefore after instead of before the Flight of the People. See Varro,
_De lingua Latina_, vi. 18; Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 2. 14; Dionysius
Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 56. 5; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 29; _id._,
_Camillus_, 33; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic_, pp. 174 _sqq._ Mr. Warde Fowler may be right in thinking
that some connexion perhaps existed between the ceremonies of the two
days, the fifth and the seventh; and I agree with his suggestion that
“the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some
religious rite performed at this time of year.” I note as a curious
coincidence, for it can hardly be more, that at Bodmin in Cornwall a
festival was held on the seventh of July, when a Lord of Misrule was
appointed, who tried people for imaginary crimes and sentenced them to
be ducked in a quagmire called Halgaver, which is explained to mean
“the goat’s moor.” See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular
Customs_, p. 339. The “goat’s moor” is an odd echo of the “goat’s
marsh” at which Romulus disappeared on the same day of the year (Livy,
i. 16. 1; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 29; _id._, _Camillus_, 33).

Footnote 1034:

Livy, i. 14. 1 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 52. 3;
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 23.

Footnote 1035:

Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iii. 35; Zonaras, _Annales_, vii. 6.
As to his reported death by lightning, see above, p. 181.

Footnote 1036:

Plutarch, _Numa_, 22. I have pruned the luxuriant periods in which
Plutarch dwells, with edifying unction, on the righteous visitation of
God which overtook that early agnostic Tullus Hostilius.

Footnote 1037:

Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, v. 5.

Footnote 1038:

Livy, i. 40; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iii. 73.

Footnote 1039:

Livy, i. 48; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iv. 38 _sq._; Solinus, i.
25. The reading _Virbium clivum_ (“the slope of Virbius”) occurs only
in the more recent manuscripts of Livy: the better-attested reading
both of Livy and Solinus is _Urbium_. But the obscure _Virbium_ would
easily and naturally be altered into _Urbium_, whereas the reverse
change is very improbable. See Mr. A. B. Cook, in _Classical Review_,
xvi. (1902) p. 380, note 3. In this passage Mr. Cook was the first to
call attention to the analogy between the murder of the slave-born
king, Servius Tullius, and the slaughter of the slave-king by his
successor at Nemi. As to the oak-woods of the Esquiline see above, p.
185.

Footnote 1040:

Nicolaus Damascenus, in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, x. 70. _Fragmenta
Historicorum Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iii. 457.

Footnote 1041:

H. Jordan, _Die Könige im alten Italien_ (Berlin, 1887), pp. 44 _sq._
In this his last work Jordan argues that the Umbrian practice,
combined with the rule of the Arician priesthood, throws light on the
existence and nature of the kingship among the ancient Latins. On this
subject I am happy to be at one with so learned and judicious a
scholar.

Footnote 1042:

R. E. Dennett, _At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind_ (London, 1906),
pp. 11 _sq._, 111, 131 _sq._, 135. The word translated “sacred ground”
(_xibila_, plural _bibila_) means properly “sacred grove.” Such
“sacred groves” are common in this part of Africa, but in the “sacred
grove” of the king of Loango the tree beside which the monarch takes
post to fight for the crown appears to stand solitary in a grassy
plain. See R. E. Dennett, _op. cit._ pp. 11 _sq._, 25, 96 _sqq._, 110
_sqq._ We have seen that the right of succession to the throne of
Loango descends in the female line (above, pp. 276 _sq._), which
furnishes another point of resemblance between Loango and Rome, if my
theory of the Roman kingship is correct.

Footnote 1043:

J. G. Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 530. My authority is the
Rev. John Roscoe, formerly of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda.

Footnote 1044:

_Memoirs of Samuel Pepys_, edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke, Second
Edition (London, 1828), i. 193 _sq._ (under April 23rd, 1661).