taken, are the Dioscuri insinuating themselves where they had no particular right to be. At Tusculum the cult of the Dioscuri was in historical times well established,1 and with this city the story of the Regillus battle was closely connected. It is interesting to find that the twin-legends are constantly associated with water, just as the Dioscuri had special relation to shipping and its various perils. In some parts of the world twins can procure rain, and Sir J. G. Frazer tells us that in one part of Africa they are always buried near a lake. 2 One may be pardoned for remarking that the battle of the lake Regillus, the only one in Roman history which takes its name from a lake, is also the only one associated with the cult of the Twins. The story may, however, be a replica of the Greek legend of the appearance of the twins at the great battle of the river Sagra (again by water) between Lokri and Croton (Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 11 ff.). Lines 674 ff.: ceu duo nubigenae cum vertice montis ab alto This striking simile has been rather hardly treated by commentators, both ancient and modern. Even Dr. Henry seems to me to be quite at sea about it, though positive that everyone else has totally mis1 See Wissowa, "Religion und Kultus" (second edition), p. 268. 2 "Golden Bough" (third edition), vol. i., p. 268. understood it. He insisted that silva and virgulta are one and the same thing, and when confronted with the epithet ingens attached to silva he translated it "the mighty brushwood, the brushwood considered in respect of its extent." This seems to me to put him out of court, for the picture he suggests is of a mountain clothed with brushwood all the way down, and this was most certainly not what was in Virgil's mind. The real picture is surely one of alpine regions, and cannot be realized (visualized is now the favourite word) any more than Tennyson's idyll in the Princess (“Come down, O Maid ") by anyone who is not familiar with real mountain landscapes in time of storm and snow. The picture that rises in my mind is that of a mountain range, whose summits are hidden in cloud, below which the snow is visible between the cloud and the pine-forests; below the broad steep slopes of dark pines, the silva, are the belts of deciduous trees and underwood (virgulta)—the underwood in which I have so often watched the warmth-loving birds of the Alps, the Pied Flycatcher or Bonelli's Warbler. These four stages of the clothing of the mountain seem to me clearly expressed by the poet. First the Centaurs are nubigenae, their lair is up there in the clouds;1 there they were born, and thence they begin 1 Heyne saw this, and Conington quoting him with approval says that such an idea may have occurred to Virgil in the present connection. But most of the tribe simply tell us that the Centaurs were the offspring of Ixion and a cloud in the shape of Juno. Virgil is giving a new and pregnant meaning to the old epithet. their swift descent; the reader is left to imagine that lair for himself, and what they did there. Secondly, they cross and leave behind them the stretches of snow below below the cloud: "Homolen Othrymque nivalem linquentes cursu rapido." Thirdly, they force their way through the pinewoods, the ingens silva, but not by tearing up the trees or breaking them down, for the trees give way before them-dat euntibus ingens silva locum. Fourthly, once through the broad belts of pine, they come crashing down to the valley through the underwoods (magno cedunt virgulta fragore) that is, with noise which those in the valley can now hear plainly. This is the splendid picture in my mind as I read these lines, and there it will always be in spite of all commentators. That any of these should have set themselves to find fault with such lines seems to me the height of human imbecility; but they have done SO. This beautiful description is unhappily closed. Nothing can be greater than 'dat euntibus ingens silva locum.' It should not have been followed by magno cedunt virgulta fragore." "1 Line 678-" Praeneste and the Caeculus-legend": Praeneste, the famous city set upon a hill, or rather a hillside, had just been founded (so the poet imagines), and her founder Caeculus leads her contingent to the war. The lines 678-681 are interest 1 See references in Henry, p. 598 ff. Servius seems to have set the ball rolling; but as a critic of style Servius may be ignored. ing, as containing the earliest mention of the legend of Caeculus, about whom Servius has more to tell us, though hardly of more value-e.g., how after the foundation he exhibited games, to which the neighbouring cities were invited; how he proclaimed himself son of Vulcan the fire-god; and how sceptics were convinced by the sudden appearance of fire hovering about them. Virgil says nothing of the virgin-birth of Caeculus,1 of which Servius tells us— viz., that he was born of the virgin sister of the two brethren of Praeneste, and the fire-god in the form of a spark which leapt on her from the hearth. The same type of story was told of the birth of Servius Tullius, and even of the Roman twins, if we can accept the evidence of a mysterious writer, Promathion, quoted by Plutarch in his "Life of Romulus," chap. ii., but never once mentioned by any other author. These stories have been seized upon by the ingenious author of the "Golden Bough," and brought together to support a theory that "the old Latin kings were commonly supposed to be sons of the firegod by a mortal mother."2 Strange to say, in spite of all his vast collections of legend and ritual, Sir J. G. Frazer is quite unable to parallel these stories 1 "Volcano genitum pecora inter agrestia regem, Inventumque focis omnis quem credidit aetas." Pecora agrestia seems only to mean that there was no city on the lofty pastures of Praeneste when Caeculus was born. 2 "Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship," p. 218 ff. from any other part of the world. And even at Praeneste the tale could not have been of great force, for there was another, Servius tells us, according to which the son was called Caeculus because he had sore eyes from sitting too near the fire. Even this has been turned to account by a modern mythologist. M. S. Reinach, in his "Cultes Mythes et Religions (iii. 206), uses it to explain the attitude of what he believes to be a figure of Vesta on a stone altar at Mavilly (Côte-d'Or, France), holding her hands before her eyes. " These local legends, pressed eagerly into the service of theories, are apt to occupy too much room in mythological discussion. It seems probable that there was in this corner of Latium some story of the hearth-fire and its spirit, of which we cannot honestly say that we possess the real original form. It is by no means certain that it was applied, in the simple society of immigrant settlers from the terremare of the north, to deities or great personages such as kings and chiefs. But as in the case of other rude Italian tales, such as that of Mars and Anna Perenna, it might easily become attached in the telling, often repeated by the winter fireside with endless variation, to figures prominent in the popular fiction of the day. As I wrote in "Roman Festivals" (p. 53), these are only ancient stories of ordinary human beings, based on some rude custom of house or farm; and they survived simply because in course of time they became attached to the persons of the gods, as these slowly gained personality. Fire-stories seem to have been |