It is interesting to find the wheel symbol here again, as is noticed by
Gaidoz in his _Studies of Gallic Mythology_[662]. We can hardly doubt
that the Summanalia which Festus explains as ‘liba farinacea in modum
rotae ficta[663]‘, were cakes offered or eaten on this day: it is hard
to see what other connexion they could have had. Mr. Arthur Evans has
some interesting remarks[664] on what seem to be moulds for making
religious cakes of this kind, found at Tarentum; they are decorated, not
only with the wheel or cross, but with many curious symbols. ‘It is
characteristic,’ he writes, ‘in a whole class of religious cakes that
they are impressed with a wheel or cross, and in other cases divided
into segments as if to facilitate distribution. This symbolical division
seems to connect itself _with the worship of the ancestral fire_ rather
than with any solar cult. In a modified form they are still familiar to
us as “hot-cross buns.”’ Summanus, however, does not seem to have had
anything to do with the ancestral fire.
VIII KAL. QUINCT. (JUNE 24). C.
FORTI FORTUNAE TRANS TIBER[IM] AD MILLIAR[IUM] PRIM[UM] ET SEXT[UM].
(AMIT.)
FORTIS FORTUNAE. (VEN. PHILOC.)
SACRUM FORTIS FORTUNAE. (RUST.)
Ovid writes of this day as follows[665]:
Ite, deam laeti Fortem celebrate, Quirites!
In Tiberis ripa munera regis habet.
Pars pede, pars etiam celeri decurrite cymba,
Nec pudeat potos inde redire domum.
Ferte coronatae iuvenum convivia lintres:
Multaque per medias vina bibantur aquas.
Plebs colit hanc, quia, qui posuit, de plebe fuisse
Fertur, et ex humili sceptra tulisse loco.
Convenit et servis; serva quia Tullius ortus
Constituit dubiae templa propinqua deae.
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