It does not seem probable that in the Republican period the cult of Apollo had any special influence, either religious or ethical, for the Roman people generally. It was a priestly experiment—a new physician was called in at perilous times, according to the fashion of the Roman oligarchy, either to give advice by his oracles, or to receive honours for his benefits as ἀλεξίκακος. It is in the age of Augustus that the cult begins to be important; the family of the Caesars was said to have had an ancient connexion with it[762], and after the victory at Actium, where a temple of Apollo stood on the promontory, Augustus not only enlarged and adorned this one, but built another on the Palatine, near his own house, to Apollo Palatinus. But for the ‘Apollinism’ of Augustus, and for the important part played by the god in the _ludi saeculares_ of B.C. 17, I must refer the reader to other works[763]. XIV KAL. SEXT. (JULY 19). NP. LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.) XII KAL. SEXT. (JULY 21). NP. LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.) Here, as in the next two festivals we have to consider, we are but ‘dipping buckets into empty wells.’ The ritual, and therefore the original meaning of this festival, is wholly lost to us, as indeed it was to the Romans of Varro’s time. Varro, in his list of festivals, does not even mention this one; but it is possible that some words have here dropped out of his text[764]. The only light we have comes at second-hand from Verrius Flaccus[765]. ‘Lucaria festa in luco colebant Romani, qui permagnus inter viam Salariam et Tiberim fuit, pro eo, quod victi a Gallis fugientes[766] e praelio ibi se occultaverint.’ This passage reminds us of the story explanatory of the Poplifugia, and might suggest, as in that case, an expiatory sacrifice and flight of the people from a scapegoat destined to carry away disease. But here we know of no _vestigia fugae_ in the cult, such as Varro tells us were apparent at the Poplifugia. The only possible guess we can make must rest on the name itself, taken together with what Festus tells us of the great wood once existing between the Via Salaria and the Tiber, in which the festival was held—a wood which no doubt occupied the Pincian hill, and the region afterwards laid out in gardens by Lucullus, Pompeius, and Sallust the historian. Lucaria is formed from _lucar_ as Lemuria from _lemur_; and _lucar_, though in later times it meant ‘the sum disbursed from the _aerarium_ for the games[767],’ drawn probably from the receipts of the sacred groves, may also at one time itself have meant a grove. An inscription from the Latin colony of Luceria shows us _lucar_ in this sense[768]: IN · HOCE · LUCARID · STIRCUS · NE · IS · FUNDATID, &c.