Note 174 — MENSIS MARTIUS.
Reading edition
Mommsen, in a note on the Feriale Cumanum (Hermes, 17. 637), calls them weibliche Hilfsgöttinnen; and this is not far removed from the view I have expressed in the text. The other alternative, viz that we have in these names traces of an old Italian anthropomorphic age, with a mythology, is in my view inadmissible. I see in them survivals of a mode of thought about the supernatural which might easily lend itself to a foreign anthropomorphizing influence.