Note 638 — Chapter XIII · THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA

Numa was not the only Roman king who is said to have enjoyed the favours of a goddess. Romulus was married to Hersilia, who seems to have been a Sabine goddess. Ovid tells us how, when the dead Romulus had been raised to the rank of a god under the name of Quirinus, his widow Hersilia was deified as his consort. Thus, if Quirinus was a Sabine oak-god, his wife would be an oak-goddess, like Egeria. See Ovid, Metam. xiv. 829-851. Compare Livy, i. 11. 2; Plutarch, Numa, 14. On Hersilia as a goddess see A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 478, note 10; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 372. Again, of King Servius Tullius we read how the goddess Fortuna, smitten with love of him, used to enter his house nightly by a window. See Ovid, Fasti, vi. 569 sqq.; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 36; id., De fortuna Romanorum, 10. However, the origin and nature of Fortuna are too obscure to allow us to base any conclusions on this legend. For various more or less conjectural explanations of the goddess see W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 161-172.