The very curious rite which took place on this day is not mentioned in the calendars; it belonged to those which, like the Paganalia, were _publica_ indeed and _pro populo_, but represented the people as divided in certain groups rather than the State as a whole[427]. But its obvious antiquity, and the interesting questions which arise out of it, tempt me to treat it in detail, at the risk of becoming tedious. I have already mentioned[428] that there was a procession in March, as we infer from the _sacra Argeorum_ quoted by Varro, which went round the _sacella Argeorum_, or twenty-four chapels situated in the four Servian regions of the city[429]. What was done at these _sacella_ we do not know; the procession and its doings had become so obscure in Ovid’s time that he could dispose of it in two lines of his _Fasti_, and express a doubt as to whether it took place on one day or two[430]. Nor do we know what the _sacella_ really were. The best conjecture is that of Jordan, who has brought some evidence together to show that they were small chapels or sacred places where holy things were deposited until the time came round for them to be used in some religious ceremony[431]. But on May 15 there was another rite in which the word _Argei_ plays a prominent part; and here the details have in part at least survived. The _Argei_ in this case are not chapels, but a number of puppets or bundles of rushes, resembling (as Dionysius has recorded) men bound hand and foot, which were taken down to the _pons sublicius_ by the Pontifices and magistrates, and cast into the river by the Vestal Virgins[432]. The Flaminica Dialis, the priestess of Jupiter, was present at the ceremony in mourning. The number of the puppets was probably the same as that of the _sacella_ of the same name[433]. Explanations of these rites were invented by Roman scholars. The _sacella_ were the graves of Greeks who had come to Italy with Hercules; and the puppets represented the followers of Hercules who had died on their journey and were to return home as it were by proxy[434]. Apart from the theories of the learned, it was the fact that the common people at Rome believed the puppets to be substitutes for old men, who at one time used to be thrown into the Tiber as victims. _Sexagenarios de ponte_ was a well-known proverb which in Cicero’s time was explained by supposing that the bridges alluded to were those over which the voters passed in the Comitia[435]; but this view may at once be put aside. Those bridges were certainly a comparatively late invention, while the proverb was of remote antiquity.