Note 291 — Chapter VII · ToC

Frazer thinks that the Roman kingship was transmitted in the female line; the king being a man of another town or race, who had married the daughter of his predecessor and received the crown through her. This hypothesis explains the obscure features of the traditional history of the Latin kings; their miraculous birth, and the fact that many of the kings from their names appear to have been of plebeian and not patrician families. The legends of the birth of Servius Tullius which tradition imputes to a look, or that Cœculus the founder of Proneste was conceived by a spark that leaped into his mother's bosom, as well as the rape of the Sabines, may be mentioned as traces pointing to mother-descent (Golden Bough, Pt. I. The Magic Art, Vol. II. pp. 270, 289, 312).