More promising at first sight is the tradition which connects him in Rome itself with the Capitoline hill. Varro tells us positively that this hill was originally called Mons Saturnius; and that there was once an _oppidum_ there called Saturnia, of which certain vestiges survived to his own time, including a ‘fanum Saturni in faucibus,’ i. e. apparently the ara Saturni of which Dionysius records that it was at the ‘root of the hill,’ by the road leading to the summit[1181], in fact on the same spot where stood later the temple of which eight columns are still standing. Close to this, it may be noted, was a sacellum of Dis Pater[1182], the Latinized form of Plutus; in the temple was the aerarium of later Rome[1183], and built into the rock behind, the chambers of records (tabularia). But it would be idle to found upon these facts or traditions any serious hypothesis as to the original nature of the Roman cult of Saturn; all attempts must fail in the bewildering fog of ancient fancy and ancient learning. Saturnus belongs, like Janus, with whom he was closely connected in legend[1184], to an age into whose religious ideas we cannot penetrate, and survived into Roman worship only through Greek resuscitation[1185], and in the feast of the Saturnalia. All we seem to see is that he is somehow connected with things that are put in the earth[1186]—seed, treasure, perhaps stores of produce; to which may just be added that the one spot in Rome at all times associated with him is close to the _market_, and that market-days (nundinae) were said to be sacred to him[1187]. The temple of Janus is also close by, and it is not impossible that both these ancient gods had some closer relation to the Forum and the business done there than we can at present understand with our limited knowledge. Neither of them, it may be noted, had a flamen attached to his cult; from which we may infer that they did not descend from the primitive household or the earliest form of community, but rather represented some place or process common to several communities, such as a forum and the business transacted there[1188]. It is precisely such gods who figure in tradition as kings, not of a single city, but of Latium.