Moreover, the symbolical people’s flight which figures in the festival customs of the Caprotinæ nones is suggestive of a similar rite in the Lupercalia--_i.e._, the running away (_discurrere_) of the luperci after the offering of the sacrifice. But the ancients say nothing definite concerning this symbolical flight of the people; they only explained it as due either to the sudden and fearful disappearance of Romulus, or to panic at the threatened attack of some neighbouring cities on Rome when she was exhausted and feeble from the Gallic reverse, or after a defeat at the hands of the Etruscans. A more exact interpretation is impossible. But if we are forced to assign the ceremony to the Caprotinan festival, it can only have been a ceremony of lustration. Probably, when the sin and impurity of the people had been symbolically laid upon a vicarious victim (like a sacrificial animal) the flight of the people symbolised their freedom and deliverance from sin. It had probably the same meaning as the flight of the rex sacrificulus from the Comitium. In the Greek religion we find the same ceremony of symbolical flight and there it is certainly a rite of lustration. We now arrive at the question of how tradition came to celebrate the disappearance of Romulus at this festival of the Poplifugia or the Caprotinæ nones. What connection had the name or person of Romulus with this feast? Unfortunately the darkness which envelops the earliest religion of the Romans excludes all light on the question. One can only say that the same reason which conduced to the association of Romulus with the Lupercalian festival lay at the root of his connection with the kindred ceremony in the festival of the Caprotina.[d] FOOTNOTES [4] [Cf. page 51, note.] [5] “Pagus,” old word for “canton.” [Illustration: ETRUSCAN JEWELRY (In the British Museum)] [Illustration: NUMA POMPILIUS CHOSEN KING (From a drawing by Mirys)] CHAPTER III. LEGENDARY HISTORY OF THE KINGS NUMA POMPILIUS Egeria! sweet creature of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast; whate’er thou art Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air, The nympholepsy of some fond despair; Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, Who found a more than common votary there Too much adoring; whatsoe’er thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. --BYRON. _Childe Harold._ [Sidenote: [_ca._ 716-673 B.C.]] When Romulus was taken from the earth, there was no one found to reign in his place. The senators would choose no king, but they divided themselves into tens; and every ten was to have the power of king for five days, one after the other. So a year passed away, and the people murmured, and said that there must be a king chosen.