There are indeed one or two passages which seem to prove that _skins_ were used by the Salii, and that these skins were _beaten_. Servius[115] says of Mamurius that they consecrated a day to him, on which ‘pellem virgis caedunt ad artis similitudinem,’ i. e. on which they imitate the smith’s art by beating a skin. So also Minucius Felix[116]: ‘alii (we should probably read _Salii_) incedunt pileati, scuta vetera[117] circumferunt, pelles caedunt.’ If we may judge by these passages of writers of the second century, there was something done by the Salii which involved the beating of skins; but if it was a skin-clad Mamurius who was beaten, why is he not mentioned, and why did they, as Servius says (and the context shows that he is speaking of him with all respect), set apart a day in his honour? Yet Lydus’ account is so interesting from the point of view of folk-lore, that Usener was led by it into very far-reaching conclusions. These have been so well condensed in English by Mr. Frazer that my labour will be lightened if I may borrow his account[118]: ‘Every year on March 14 a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius[119], that is, “the old Mars,” and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year[120] (which began on March 1), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war, but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and vines, his fruit-trees and his copses; it was to Mars that the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops, addressed their petitions almost exclusively.... Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the New Year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death[121],” if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation. It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic ceremony, the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation, but also as a scape-goat[122]. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why