roseam Matuta per oras Aetheris auroram differt et lumina pandit.
We should, however, be glad to be more certain that Matuta was originally a substantive meaning dawn or morning. Verrius Flaccus[636] seems to have believed that the words _mane_, _maturus_, _matuta_, _manes_, and _mānus_, all had the meaning of ‘good’ contained in them; so that Mater Matuta might after all be only another form of the Bona Dea, who is also specially a woman’s deity. But this cult was not preserved, like that of Vesta, by being taken up into the essential life of the State, and we are no longer able to discern its meaning with any approach to certainty.
It is noticeable that this day was, according to Ovid[637], the dedication of a temple of Fortuna, also _in foro boario_: but no immediate connexion can be discovered between this deity and Mater Matuta. This temple was remarkable as containing a wooden statue, veiled in drapery, which was popularly believed to represent Servius Tullius[638], of whose connexion with Fortuna we shall have more to say further on. No one, however, really knew what the statue was; Varro and Pliny[639] write of one of Fortuna herself which was heavily draped, and may have been the one in this temple. Pliny says that the statue of Fortuna was covered with the _togae praetextae_ of Servius Tullius, which lasted intact down to the death of Seianus; and it is singular that Seianus himself is said to have possessed a statue of Fortuna which dated from the time of Servius[640], and which turned its face away from him just before his fall. Seianus was of Etruscan descent, we may remember; Servius Tullius, or Mastarna, was certainly Etruscan; and among Etruscan deities we find certain shrouded gods[641]. These facts seem to suggest that the statue (or statues, if we cannot refer all the passages above quoted to one statue) came from Etruria, and was on that account a mystery both to the learned and the ignorant at Rome. To us it must also remain unexplained[642].
To these notes in the calendars we may add a few lines from Ovid:
Idibus Invicto sunt data templa Iovi. Et iam Quinquatrus iubeor narrare minores: Nunc ades o coeptis, flava Minerva, meis. Cur vagus incedit tota tibicen in urbe? Quid sibi personae, quid stola longa volunt?