Note 530 — MENSIS IUNIUS.

This is the passage that must have inspired O. Crusius in his paper on beans in Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 164 foll. ‘Beans,’ he says, ‘were the oldest Italian food, and like stone knives, &c., survived in ritual.’ We want, indeed, some more definite proof that they were really the oldest food; and anyhow their use had not died out like that of stone implements. They were a common article of food at Athens: Aristoph. Knights, 41; Lysist. 537 and 691. But it is not unlikely that their use in the cult of the dead may be a survival, upon which odd superstitions grafted themselves. For a parallel argument see Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, 36; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 356.