Note 772 — MENSIS QUINCTILIS.
Reading edition
On the whole subject of the religious ideas arising from the first cultivation of land in a wild district I know nothing more instructive than Robertson Smith’s remarks in Religion of the Semites, Lecture iii.; I have often thought that they throw some light on the origin of Mars and kindred numina. The most ancient settlements in central Italy are now found to be on the tops of hills, probably once forest-clad (see Von Duhn’s paper on recent excavations, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1896, p. 125). For a curious survival of the feeling about woods and hill-tops in Bengal, see Crooke, Religion, &c., in India, ii. 87.