In all these cases the identification proceeded on a fancied resemblance in name or an actual similarity of function. There seems to be only one instance of identification based on similarity of cult, that of the Roman Matuta and the Greek Leucothea. According to Plutarch (_R. Q._ 16) maid-servants were excluded from the temples of both, except when _the Dames of Rome, bringing in thither one alone and no more with them, fall to cuffing and boxing her about the eares and cheeks_. Here the servant is the scapegoat, to whom are transferred the evils which may or might afflict the free women of the community, and the beating is done for purification. It is just conceivable that the Greek cult may have been borrowed by the Romans; but the use of a scapegoat and of beating in this way is so wide-spread over all the world, and so deeply seated in European folk-lore, that it is difficult to imagine it was unknown to the Romans. As a matter of fact, even in the _Roman Questions_, without going further, we have indications that both practices were known in Italy. In _R. Q._ 20 a myth is given, the earlier form of which is to be found in Macrobius (_S._ i. 12), who states that the Bona Dea was on a day scourged with myrtles. On the principle that customs often give rise to myths but cannot be originated by them, we may infer that the representative, or else the worshippers of the Bona Dea, were purified by scourging. Still less can it be doubted after Mannhardt's exhaustive investigation (_Myth. Forsch._, pp. 72 _ff._), that the Luperci, described in _R. Q._ 68, drove out the evil spirits of disease, sterility, &c., by the blows from their scourges. Again, the expulsion of evil tends in many places to become periodic; a day or season is devoted annually to the driving out of all devils and evil spirits, after which the community is expected to live sober and clean. The community, not unnaturally, indulges in a kind of carnival immediately before this season, and allows itself all sorts of license: slaves behave as though they were masters, men dress up in women's clothes, &c. This, presumably, is the explanation of the fact related by Plutarch (_R. Q._ 55), that _upon the Ides of Januarie, the minstrels at Rome who plaied upon the hautboies, were permitted to goe up and downe the city disguised in women's apparell_.[57]