What is the real meaning of this phrase _macte esto_, which must surely have been in universal use at sacrifices, not only at private rites like those of Cato, since it came to be used in common speech of congratulation or felicitation, e.g. _macte virtute esto_?[382] Servius in commenting on Virgil has made it sufficiently clear. He explains it as _magis aucte_, and connects it with _magmentum_, increase-offering, _quasi magis augmentum_, and adds that when the victims had been slain and their exta placed on the altar, they were said to be _mactatae_. So, too, in another comment he seems to connect the word with the victim rather than with the deity. But he is quite clear as to the meaning of the word, as signifying an increase or addition of some kind; and though his etymology is wrong, we may be sure that he was right in this respect, for it is beyond doubt built on a base, _mac_ or _mag_, which produced _magnus_, _maius_, _maiestas_, and so on. "Macte nova virtute puer" means "Be thou increased, strengthened in _virtus_"; a fragment of Lucilius (quoted by Servius) brings this out well, "_Macte inquam virtute simulque his viribus esto_," and another from Ennius, "Livius inde redit magno _mactatus_ triumpho."[383] We might almost translate it in these passages by "glorified"; but it most certainly includes the meaning of "strengthened" or "increased in might." Now in the formulae of Cato we have seen that it is applied to the deity and not to the victim; this naturally did not occur to Servius, whose mind was occupied rather with Virgil and the literary use of the word than with the original use and meaning of the language of prayer. Undoubtedly he has made a mistake here, which Cato's piety has enabled us to detect. It was, in fact, the deity whose strength was to be increased by the offerings; so much at least seems to me to be beyond doubt. There is, indeed, no certain trace in the ritual, or in Roman literature, that the gods were supposed to consume the exta, or the cakes and wine offered them; that primitive notion must have been excluded from the _ius divinum_. But instead of it we find the more spiritual idea that by placing on the altar the organs of the life of the victim, with ancient forms of sacred cake and offerings of wine, the vitality of the deity, his power to help his worshippers, to make the corn grow and the cattle bring forth young, to aid the State against enemies, or what not, was really increased in this semi-mystic way. Let us remember that the Roman numina were powers constantly at work in their own sphere; they are the various manifestations of the one Power as conceived in immediate relation to man and his wants; they are sometimes addressed in prayer, as we have seen, by additional titles which suggest their strength and vitality: Virites Quirini, Nerio Martis, Moles Martis, Maia or Maiestas Volcani. What, then, could be more natural than that the Roman should call upon his divine