The _arbutus_ does not seem to be mentioned in connexion with charms except in this passage; we might have expected the laurel. Bötticher, _Baumkultus_, 324.
The sucking-pig is sacrificed, as we gather from _prosecta_ below; i. e. to Carna: cp. the cakes of _lard_ eaten this day (169 foll.).
Cp. in the process of ghost-laying (above, p. 109) the prohibition to look at the beans scattered.
For the blackthorn (Germ. _Weissdorn_) see Bötticher, _Baumkultus_, 361. Varro, ap. Charisium, p. 117 ‘fax ex spinu alba praefertur, quod purgationis causa adhibetur.’
This is the passage that must have inspired O. Crusius in his paper on beans in _Rhein. Mus._ xxxix. 164 foll. ‘Beans,’ he says, ‘were the oldest Italian food, and like stone knives, &c., survived in ritual.’ We want, indeed, some more definite proof that they were really the oldest food; and anyhow their use had not died out like that of stone implements. They were a common article of food at Athens: Aristoph. _Knights_, 41; _Lysist._ 537 and 691. But it is not unlikely that their use in the cult of the dead may be a survival, upon which odd superstitions grafted themselves. For a parallel argument see Roscher, _Nektar und Ambrosia_, 36; Rhys, _Celtic Mythology_, 356.
No safe conclusion can be drawn from Tertullian’s inclusion (_ad Nat._ 2. 9) of the _fanum_ of Carna on the Caelian among those of _di adventicii_. O. Gilbert has lately tried to make much of this (ii. 42 foll.), and to find an Etruscan origin for Carna: but see Aust on the position of temples outside the _pomoerium_ (_de Aedibus sacris_, 47).
Aust, _de Aedibus sacris_, p. 8. The _Fasti Venusini_ are ‘omnium accuratissimi’; ib. p. 43. Aust goes so far as to doubt the true Roman character of this Mars, and believes him to be the Greek god Ares. See his note in _Lex._ 2391. The date of foundation is not certain, but was probably not earlier than the Gallic war, 388 B.C., if it is this to which Livy alludes in 6. 5. 8.
Liv. 10. 19. There was a tradition that Ap. Claudius, _Cos._ 495 B.C., had dedicated statues of his ancestors in a temple of Bellona (Pliny, _N. H._ 35. 12).
Willems, _Le Sénat de la République_, ii. 161.
This was originally suggested by Gellius (13. 23), ‘perhaps not without some reason,’ says Marquardt (75). This suggestion has grown almost into a certainty for the writer in the _Lexicon_, in a manner very characteristic of the present age of research. There would be some reason to think that Bellona (or Duellona) was an ancient goddess of central Italy, if we could be sure that the inscription on an ancient cup, in the museum at Florence, which may be read ‘Belolae poculum’ (_C. I. L._ i. 44), refers to this deity. See _Lex._ s. v. Belola.