I must leave to anthropologists the further investigation of the ideas underlying the ritual we have been examining; it is something to have been able to co-ordinate it with rites which are so well attested as those of the Creek Indians, and which admit without difficulty of a reasonable interpretation[621].
MAT[RALIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.) MATR[I] MATUT[AE]. (VEN.) MATRALIA. (PHILOC.)
The temple of which this day was apparently the _dies natalis_ dated from the Veientine War, 396 B.C., and was the result of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus[622]. An earlier temple was attributed to Servius Tullius; but it is extremely improbable that anything more than a _sacellum_ or altar existed at such an early date[623]. The cult of Mater Matuta was widely extended in Italy, and clearly of genuine and ancient Italian origin; she can be separated with certainty from the Greek goddess Leucothea with whom Ovid mixes her up, and from whom she derived a connexion with harbours which did not originally belong to her[624]. The evidence for the wide spread of her cult consists of (1) two extremely old inscriptions from Pisaurum in Umbria, of which Mommsen observes, ‘lingua meram vetustatem spirat’[625]; (2) certain inscriptions and passages of Livy which prove that her worship existed among the Volsci, in Campania, and at Praeneste[626]. At Satricum she was apparently the chief deity of the place and probably also at Pyrgi, the port of Caere in Etruria[627]. The cult seems to have had some marked peculiarities, of which one or two fragments have come down to us. Only the wife of a first marriage could deck the image of the goddess[628]; no female slaves were allowed in the temple except one, who was also driven out of it with a box on the ear, apparently as a yearly recurring memorial of the rule[629]; the sacred cakes offered were cooked in old-fashioned earthenware[630]; and, lastly, the women are said to have prayed to this goddess for their nephews and nieces in the first place, and for their own children only in the second[631]. All that can be deduced from these fragments is that the Mater Matuta was an ancient deity of matrons, and perhaps of the same type as other deities of women such as Carmenta, Fortuna, and Bona Dea[632]. The best modern authorities explain her as a goddess of the dawn’s light and of child-birth, and see a parallel in Juno Lucina[633]; and Mommsen has pointed out that the dawn was thought to be the lucky time for birth, and that the Roman names Lucius and Manius have their origin in this belief[634]. Lucretius shows us that in his day Mater Matuta was certainly associated with the dawn[635]: