ridges of Phrygia, the haunts of the wild beasts of the forest. The name Attis was generic, as well as specific. A priest of the Mother at Pessinus mentioned by Polybius was named Attis, and letters from Eumenes II. and Attalus II. to the priest at Pessinus are addressed to Attis.2 Strabo says that the official title of the high priest at Pessinus was Attis. The name was traditional also at Rome, as an inscription proves C. Camerius Crescens Archigallus Matris Deum Magnae Idaeae et Attis Populi Romani - Attis of the Roman people. The subject of Catullus' poem, then, is not the Attis, but an Attis-a Greek Attis-a type of the priesthood. The impulse to write the poem was the result primarily of the author's personal knowledge of the cult, however intimate may be its relation to the Alexandrian school. The spontaneity and fire of the whole poem, the vividness with which the enthusiasm, the passion, and the despair of Attis are pictured, the feeling of horror at his act which thrills through the lines, are all too great to have come from the pen of a mere translator or imitator, or of any one who had not acquired familiarity with the cult of the Great Mother in its most developed condition. The strength of the poem is most easily explained on the supposition that Catullus received the impulse to write it during his year's residence in Asia Minor. Leaving the field of literature, an examination of the inscriptions, sculpture, and painting of the Republic yields the same result there is no allusion to Attis. But this is evidence which at best serves only to make it probable that the worship of Attis had not yet been introduced at Rome. Evidence of a more positive nature, however, is available. Dionysius, writing at some length on the character of the religion of the Romans, says: "And there is no festival of mourning among them on the occasion of which black garments are worn or there is lamentation of women 1 XXI. 37. 2 Münchener Sitzungsberichte 1860 P. 180 sqq. Cf. Mommsen Hist. of Rome, translated by W. P. Dickson, III. 276 n. 3 C.I.L. VI. 2183. Cf. Orelli 2353. for gods who have disappeared, as there is among the Greeks to commemorate the rape of Persephone and the passion of Dionysus and other things of like nature. Nor will any one see among them, even though now the times have become corrupt, either inspirations, or Corybantic frenzy, or collections of money in the service of the gods.1 And what most of all has been a source of surprise, at least to me, is that, although, so to speak, myriads of nationalities have come to the city and have great need to worship their ancestral gods according to the usage of their native land, the city as a public body has not fallen into extravagant ways over any worship from abroad, but even in cases where religions have been introduced in obedience to oracles, it itself provides for their worship after its own customs, doing away with all mythic nonsense, as in the case of the rites of the Idaean goddess. . . . Thus circumspectly does the State proceed in its dealings with the gods of foreign nationalities."2 Now rites of the very same nature as those which Dionysius, who resided at Rome from 30 to 8 B.C., asserts were not to be seen among the Romans in his time the festival of mourning, on the occasion of which black garments were worn, or there was lamentation of women for gods who had disappeared are known to have been prominent features in the commemoration and worship of Attis under the Empire. On the 22d of March, called arbor intrat, the bearing of the sacred pine into the temple commemorated the disappearance of Attis after his self-mutilation. The 24th of March, the dies sanguinis, was marked by ceremonies commemorating the grief of the Mother at the loss of Attis. Besides fasting, the special ceremony of the day was that of mourning, in which the Archigallus and priests, in frenzied dance and song, beating their breasts, their locks flying loose, finally rose to the height of enthusiasm and lacerated their arms with knives. The ceremonies 1 Cicero De Leg. II. 16, 40: Stipem sustulimus nisi eam, quam ad paucos dies propriam Idaeae Matris excepimus. Cf. 9, 22. 2 II.19. Fast. Phil. Mar. 22; Lydus De Mens. IV. 41. Fast. Phil. Mar. 24; Arnob. V. 7, 16; Apul. Metam. VII. 27. of both arbor intrat and dies sanguinis had for their motive the death and disappearance of Attis. That the cycle of festivals in honor of the Mother and Attis to which these two days belong, extending over the period March 15-March 27, did not exist under the Republic is absolutely certain, for the Fasti of Ovid give the date of the annual festival as April 4th-10th, and describe it as consisting of one day followed by the Megalesia.1 That special ceremonies like those of these two days were practised in Rome when Dionysius wrote does not seem possible, for they could not have remained unknown to him, and had they come to his notice he could not consistently have written the above passage. The evidence thus far presented has been to show that no worship of Attis existed under the Republic. Evidence that he was worshipped under the Empire is of course abundant. To complete the argument, the presentation of evidence to fix the time of the introduction of his worship is necessary. Ioannes Lydus, a writer of the sixth century, gives this. In his treatise Пepì Mnvwv, which exists only in a fragmentary condition, after describing the ceremony of March 22d, he adds: τὴν δὲ ἑορτὴν Κλαύδιος ὁ βασιλεὺς κατεστήσατο, — the Emperor Claudius established this festival.2 As has been stated, both the ceremony of this day, the bearing of the pine into the temple, and the mourning, fasting, and self-laceration of the dies sanguinis have their motive in the story of Attis. Lydus' note as to Claudius, therefore, can fairly be taken to refer to all the ceremonies of the cycle which had to do with Attis, which accords well with the fact that the first mention of these ceremonies is found in writers of the latter part of the first century A.D.,3 and that the last mention of the oneday festival followed by the Megalesia occurs in Ovid. The weight of evidence, as well as of probability, is thus seen to favor the assumption that the introduction of Attis at Rome as an object of worship did not take place until after the Republic. Augustine charges Varro with having turned away, in his writings, from a discussion of the myth of Attis because of his consciousness of the futility of attempting to give an acceptable interpretation of the myth ;1 but the more reasonable explanation of Varro's silence in a work like his Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum is that Attis had not become an object of interest at Rome. Lucretius did not write of him for the same reason he was not there to be written about. That some form of the legend of the Great Mother and Attis was current at Rome from the first is altogether probable, but that Attis was worshipped from the date of the introduction of the cult of the Great Mother, even (as M. Cumont suggests) in an unofficial way, is contradicted by the evidence on the question. 1 De Civ. Dei VII. 25. V.- The Cognomina of the Goddess "Fortuna." BY PROF. JESSE BENEDICT CARTER, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. = No more drastic illustration of the paucity of our knowledge of early Roman religion can well be found than the fact that the origin of the great goddess "Fortuna" is a riddle, unsolved as yet - for the hypothesis of Otto Gilbert (Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom, II. 390, 1.), Fortuna Nortia, can scarcely be called a solution. In the absence of direct sources, indirect ones have been sought after, and where historical investigations were balked, Philology and Anthropology have stepped in, but their results, etymological and folk-loristic hypotheses, are alike unprofitable. Etymology, as applied to Roman religion, is apt to leave one in the lurch just when its assistance is most sorely needed. Even such an otherwise admirable book as Hermann Usener's Götternamen contains many examples of this. And I am inclined to think that any one who gives careful heed to the so-called "enrichment" of our knowledge, which comes from etymology, will agree with the following formulation Given the knowledge of the nature of a god an attempt at an etymology is occasionally successful, but as a means of obtaining a knowledge of the god's nature its results are scarcely ever reliable. The anthropologists have accomplished decidedly more, but the results of comparative folklore are illustrative rather than demonstrative; they are, as a rule, interesting rather than profitable; and the danger of considering similarity of phenomena as sufficient ground for similarity of interpretation is very great. Among the subordinate methods which in a quiet way have been producing good results in the field of both Greek and Roman religion, may be mentioned the method of Appellations. To Georg Wentzel belongs the credit of having formulated this particular branch of investigation and |