3. Myrtle was not allowed in this temple; hence the myth that Faunus beat his daughter with a myrtle rod[391]. But could the exclusion of myrtle by itself have suggested the beating? Dr. Mannhardt answers in the negative, and conjectures that there must have been some kind of beating in the cult itself, which gave rise to the story[392]. Dr. Mannhardt never made a conjecture without a large collection of facts on which to base it; and here he depends upon a number of instances from Greece and Northern Europe, in which man or woman, or some object such as the image of a deity, is whipped with rods, nettles, strips of leather, &c., in order, as it would seem, to produce fertility and drive away hostile influences. We shall see the same peculiarity occurring at the Lupercalia in February[393], where its object and meaning are almost beyond doubt. Many of these practices occur, it is worth noting, on May-day. If the Bona Dea was a representative in any sense of the fertility of women, as well as of the fructifying powers of the earth—and the two ideas seem naturally to have run together in the primitive mind—we may provisionally accept Dr. Mannhardt’s ingenious suggestion. If it be objected that as myrtle was excluded from the cult it could not have been used therein for the purpose of whipping, the answer is simply that as being invested with some mysterious power it was tabooed from ordinary use, but, like certain kinds of victims, was introduced on special and momentous occasions. 4. The temple was a kind of _herbarium_ in which herbs were kept with healing properties[394]. A group of interesting inscriptions shows that the Bona Dea did not confine her healing powers to cases of women, but cured the ailments of both sexes[395]. This attribute of the goddess is borne out by the presence of snakes in her temple, the usual symbol of the medicinal art, and at the same time appropriate to the Bona Dea as an Earth-goddess[396]. It is possible that this feature is a Greek importation; but on the whole I see no reason why the female ministrants of the temple should not have exercised such healing powers, or have sold or given herbs at request, even at a very early period. No doubt Greek medicinal learning became associated with it, but that the knowledge of simples was indigenous in Italy we have abundant proof[397]; and that it should have been connected with no cult of a deity until Aesculapius was introduced from Greece, is most improbable.