Note 673 — Chapter XIV · THE KING’S FIRE

G. Wilmanns, Exempla inscriptionum Latinarum, Nos. 311, 986, 1326, 1331; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae, Nos. 456, 3314, 4926, 4933, 4936, 4942, 4943. Modern writers, following Varro (De lingua Latina, vii. 44, “fictores dicti a fingendis libis”), explain these fictores as bakers of sacred cakes. See Ch. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 1084 sq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 249. They may be right, but it is to be observed that Varro does not expressly refer to the fictores of the Vestals and Pontiffs, and further, that in Latin fictor commonly means a potter, not a baker, for which the regular word is pistor.