As usual when we come to consider the analogous Roman festival the meaning of the rites practised is more baldly obvious. Plutarch[296] in his _Roman Questions_ asks, ‘Why did not the Romans marry in the month of May?’ and for once he hits upon the right answer: ‘May it be that in this month they perform the greatest of purificatory ceremonies?’ What these purificatory ceremonies, these καθαρμοί, were, he tells us explicitly: ‘for at the present day they throw images from the bridge into the river, but in old times they used to throw human beings.’ We must here separate sharply the fact stated by Plutarch, the actual ritual that took place in his own day, from his conjecture about the past. We _know_ images, puppets, were thrown from the bridge, we may conjecture, as Plutarch did, that they were the surrogates of human sacrifice, but we must carefully bear in mind that this is pure conjecture. The _fact_ Plutarch certifies in another of his _Questions_[297], and adds the name of the puppets. ‘What,’ he asks, ‘is the reason that in the month of May they throw images of human beings from the wooden bridge into the river, calling them Argeioi?’ Ovid[298] tells us a little more: ‘Then (i.e. on May 15th) the Vestal is wont to throw from the oaken bridge the images of men of old times, made of rushes.’ He adds that it was in obedience to an oracle: ‘Ye nations, throw two bodies in sacrifice to the Ancient One who bears the sickle, bodies to be received by the Tuscan streams.’ Ovid and Plutarch clearly both held that the _Argei_ of rushes were surrogates. It seems possible, on the other hand, that the myth of human sacrifice may have arisen from a merely dramatic apotropaic rite. The one certain thing is that the _Argei_[299] _were_ pharmakoi, were καθάρματα. That the time of the Argei, and indeed the whole month till the Ides of June, was unlucky is abundantly proved by the conduct of the Flaminica. Plutarch[300] goes on to say that the Flaminica is wont to be gloomy (σκυθρωπάζειν) and not to wash nor to adorn herself. Ovid[301] adds details of this mourning; he tells us that he consulted the Flaminica Dialis as to the marriage of his daughter, and learnt that till the Ides of June there was no luck for brides and their husbands, ‘for thus did the holy bride of the Dialis speak to me: “Until tranquil Tiber has borne to the sea in his tawny waters the cleansings from Ilian Vesta it is not lawful for me to comb my shorn locks with the boxwood, nor to pare my nails with iron, nor to touch my husband though he be priest of Jove.... Be not in haste. Better will thy daughter marry when Vesta of the Fire shines with a cleansed hearth.”’