Note 1033 — Chapter XVIII · THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM (continued 2)

On the fifth of July a ceremony called the Flight of the People was performed at Rome. Some ancient writers thought that it commemorated the dispersal of the people after the disappearance of Romulus. But this is to confuse the dates; for, according to tradition, the death of Romulus took place on the seventh, not the fifth of July, and therefore after instead of before the Flight of the People. See Varro, De lingua Latina, vi. 18; Macrobius, Sat. iii. 2. 14; Dionysius Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 56. 5; Plutarch, Romulus, 29; id., Camillus, 33; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 174 sqq. Mr. Warde Fowler may be right in thinking that some connexion perhaps existed between the ceremonies of the two days, the fifth and the seventh; and I agree with his suggestion that “the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some religious rite performed at this time of year.” I note as a curious coincidence, for it can hardly be more, that at Bodmin in Cornwall a festival was held on the seventh of July, when a Lord of Misrule was appointed, who tried people for imaginary crimes and sentenced them to be ducked in a quagmire called Halgaver, which is explained to mean “the goat’s moor.” See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 339. The “goat’s moor” is an odd echo of the “goat’s marsh” at which Romulus disappeared on the same day of the year (Livy, i. 16. 1; Plutarch, Romulus, 29; id., Camillus, 33).