The Polyhistor of Gaius Julius Solinus

[Header:] POLYHISTOR.

On the consecration of the city.

† & of majesty

† likewise

A shrine is worshiped [to] Angerona, to whom [the priest] sacrifices before the twelfth day before the Kalends of January; this goddess, the guardian of silence herself, has a statue with her mouth tied and sealed. Regarding the times of the city’s founding, questions of ambiguity have been raised, because certain things were founded there long before Romulus. For Hercules dedicated to his father, the inventor [of such things], the altar which he had vowed if he should recover his lost cattle, after Cacus had been punished. This Cacus lived in the place which has the name Salinae, where the Trigemina gate now is. He (as Caelius hands down), when he had been given into the custody of Tarchon the Tyrrhenian—to whom he had come as an envoy of King Marsyas—along with Megale the Phrygian, frustrated his chains and returned to where he had come from; and having occupied the kingdom around the Volturnus and Campania with greater forces, while he dared even to touch those things which had passed into the rights of the Arcadians, he was suppressed by the leadership of Hercules, who by chance was present at that time; and the Sabines received Megale, having been taught by him the discipline of augury. The same Hercules also established an altar to his own divinity, which is considered the greatest among the pontiffs, when he discovered that he was immortal, being the son of Nicostrate, the mother of Evander, who was called Carmentis on account of her gift of prophecy. He also taught the Potitii an enclosure, within which he instructed them in the rites of sacrifice after the slaughter of cattle. The shrine of Hercules is in the Forum Boarium, in which the proofs of the feast of his † joyous majesty remain. For by divine intervention, neither dogs nor flies have entered it. Indeed, when he was offering the entrails of the sacrifice, he is said to have invoked the god Myagrus. He is said to have left his club at the entrance, by the scent of which dogs would flee: this custom lasts even until now. His companions also founded a temple, which is said to be the treasury of Saturn, in honor of Saturn, whom they had known to be a cultivator of that region. † They also called the Capitoline Hill the Saturnian [Hill]. The gate of the fortress which they had built they called the Saturnian, which was later called the Pandana. But the lowest part of the Capitoline Hill was the dwelling of Carmenta, where the shrine of Carmentis now is, from whom the Carmental gate was given its name. As for the Palatine, no one would doubt that the Arcadians were its authors, by whom the town of Pallanteum was first founded, which the Aborigines inhabited for some time, but on account of the inconvenience of the nearby swamp, which the flowing Tiber had made, they set out for Reate and later abandoned it. There are those who would wish for the name of the hill to be [derived] from the bleating of sheep, with a letter changed, or from Pales, the pastoral goddess, or (as Silenus proves) from Palante, the daughter of the Hyperborean, whom Hercules was seen to have ravished there.

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problem. 60. Macrob. Satur. 3. cap. 9. Sempronius on the gods of Italy. h ¶ A shrine is worshiped.) In the temple of Volupia. i ¶ Angerona.) Angerona was believed to be a goddess because she, being propitiated, drives away anguishes and anxieties of the mind, or because she was believed to be invoked to cure the disease of quinsy: and her statue was fashioned with a finger placed to her lips, by which gesture silence was indicated. Now Cacus, of whom mention is made a little later, was a most wicked slave of Evander, who devastated the fields of his neighbors with fire, and for this reason he is imagined by the poets to have been the son of Vulcan, vomiting fire and smoke from his mouth. When his sister of the same name betrayed him, he earned a shrine in which sacrifice was offered to him by the Vestal Virgins. k ¶ With mouth sealed.) Macrobius assigns the cause of this sealing in the place cited above. See also the proverb in Erasmus: "Keep your book silent with a finger." But for what we read here, "of silence itself," ancient codices have "of this silence": so that it might be referred to the keeping silent of the city's name, as if this goddess was believed to preside over the concealing of that secret. l ¶ Trigemina gate.) You will be able to contemplate the site of this gate below in the description of the city, along with the mountains which the city's walls encircle. m ¶ In the Forum Boarium.) Some think that forum was so named from the cattle of Hercules: others [think it was] because cattle were accustomed to be sold in that place. Furthermore, Tacitus reports that there was a bronze statue of a bull in it, and that Romulus began the furrow of the city he was marking out from it. The Potitii and Pinarii are the names of famous families. n ¶ Myagrus.) Some ancient codices have, "the god of flies." As Pliny writes in book 10, chapter 28, the Cyrenaeans invoke him when a multitude of flies brings a pestilence: which die immediately when sacrifice is made to that god. He also writes that there is a temple of Hercules at Rome in the Forum Boarium, which neither flies nor dogs enter. Pliny calls the same [god] Achor in the place already cited, and in book 29, chapter 6, Myodes. o ¶ Capitoline Hill.) This hill was once called Saturnian, from the god Saturn: then the Capitol, because a human head was found there when the foundations of the temple of Jupiter were being dug. This hill was also previously called Tarpeius, from the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, who was killed there by the arms of the Sabines and buried. There is also the Saturnian gate there, which later began to be called Pandana, because it was always open. Dionysius the Sicilian also makes mention of the Carmental gate, which was near the Capitol. The Palatine, however, was said for Palantium, which was a city in Arcadia, from which the Arcadians, coming to Rome, gave this name to this place.