Note 625 — Chapter XIII · THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA

Ovid, Fasti, vi. 101-168; Macrobius, Sat. i. 12. 31-33; Tertullian, Ad nationes, ii. 9; Varro, quoted by Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina, p. 390, ed. L. Quicherat. There was a sacred beechen grove of Diana on a hill called Corne near Tusculum (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 242). But Corne has probably no connection with Carna. The grove of Helernus was crowded with worshippers on the first of February (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 67, where Helerni is a conjectural emendation for Averni or Asyli). Nothing else is known about Helernus, unless with Merkel (in his edition of Ovid’s Fasti, pp. cxlviii. sq.) we read Elerno for Eterno in Festus, p. 93, ed. C. O. Müller. In that case it would seem that black oxen were sacrificed to him. From the association of Carna with Janus it was inferred by Merkel (l.c.) that the grove of Helernus stood on or near the Janiculum, where there was a grove of oaks (see above, p. 186). But the language of Ovid (Fasti, ii. 67) points rather to the mouth of the Tiber.