Varro, _L. L._. 5. 57 and 64; Festus, 186; Macrob. 1. 10. 19. So Preller, ii. 20. The keen-sighted Ambrosch had, I think, a doubt about it (_Studien_, 149), and about the conjugal tie generally among Italian deities. See his note on p. 149.
Gell. 13. 23. Ops Toitesia (if the reading be right) of the Esquiline vase (Jordan in Preller, ii. 22) may be a combination of this kind (toitesia, conn. tutus?): cf. Ops opifera.
Wissowa himself goes so far as to say that male and female divinities were joined together ‘non per iustum matrimonium sed ex officiorum adfinitate,’ op. cit. vi.
Op. cit. vii.; Mommsen, _C. I. L._ 327 declines to follow him here.
_L. L._ 6. 20. The MSS. read Ope Consiva; so Mommsen in _C. I. L._ 327. Wissowa adopts the other form.
See on Vestalia above, p. 147, and Marq. 251.
Colum. 12 4. Cited in De Marchi, _Il Culto privato di Roma Antica_ (Milan, 1896), p. 56. See my paper in _Classical Review_ for Oct. 1896: vol. x. p. 317 foll.
In Preller, ii. 143. In the passage of Lucretius Volturnus is coupled with Auster: ‘Inde aliae tempestates ventique secuntur, Altitonam Volturnus et Auster fulmine pollens.’ Columella (11. 2. 65) says that some people use the name for the east wind (cp. Liv. 22. 43).
The Calendar of this month is almost a blank. Only the Kalends, Nones and Ides are marked in the large letters with which we have become familiar; no other festival is here associated with a special deity. But the greater part of the month is occupied with the ludi Romani (5th to 19th)[930], and the 13th (Ides), as we know from two Calendars, was not only, like all Ides, sacred to Jupiter, but was distinguished as the day of the famous ‘epulum Jovis,’ and also as the _dies natalis_ of the great Capitoline temple.
The explanation of the absence of great festivals in this month is comparatively simple. September was for the Italian farmer, and therefore for the primitive Roman agricultural community, a period of comparative rest from urgent labour and from religious duties; for no operations were then going on which called for the invocation of special deities to favour and protect. A glance at the rustic calendars will show this well enough[931]. The _messes_ which figure in July and August have come to an end, and the vintage does not appear until October. There is of course work to be done, as always, but it is the easy work of the garden and orchard. ‘Dolia picantur: poma legunt: arborum oblaqueatio.’ Varro, who divides the year for agricultural purposes into eight irregular periods, has little to say of the fifth of these, i. e. that which preceded the autumn equinox. ‘Quinto intervallo inter caniculam et aequinoctium autumnale oportet stramenta desecari, et acervos construi, aratro offringi, frondem caedi, prata irrigua iterum secari[932].’