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celebration of the games. This fact at once stamps Consns as one of 

 the subterranean (Chthonian) gods, the deities of the earth and all that 

 belongs to it, who receive into their bosom the bodies, and harbour the 

 spirits, of the departed, and who send forth new life in plant and animal. 

 That this conclusion is correct, appears from the fact, that Dis and 

 Proserpina, the king and queen of the infernal regions, had likewise a 

 subteiTaneous altar, twenty feet below the surface, in the Campus 

 Martins, where the Tarentinian games were celebrated. It follows, 

 moreover, from the custom of adorning, during the Consualia, horses 

 and mules with flowers, and of using mules for the races ; for mules, as 

 barren animals, were especially grateful to the gods below, whose natural 

 disposition was supposed to be to do mischief, and to prevent fertility 

 and plenty, and who were on this account pacified and appeased by 

 solemn games, festivals, and sacrifices. For the same reason, barren 

 cows were sacrificed at the Taurian games, a similar festival instituted 

 in honour of the subterranean gods. The relation of the horse to these 

 deities appears from the annual sacrifice of the October horse, the blood 

 of which, on the festival of the Palilia, was used to purify the fields, and 

 to protect them from the evil influence of the Lares and other spirits of 

 the lower regions, 



The name of the god Consus is neither to be derived from consilium, 

 nor from condere (to hide), but from con and the root su, which is 

 equivalent to generare, parere, according to Bopp, Pott, and Benfey. 

 He is, as a terrestrial deity, a god of fertility, wherefore statues of 

 Segetia and Messia, the deities of seed-time and harvest, were very 

 appropriately placed in the Circus Maximus, where the Consualia were 

 celebrated. Now, it is quite evident, why the festival of this god was 

 selected as the one with which the myth of the Rape should be 

 connected; the origin of marriage could not take place at a more 

 befitting season than during the festive games in honour of a god who 

 had it in his power to grant or withhold the blessing for which, more 

 especially, marriage seemed to the ancients to be instituted.* At the 

 same time the purely mythical character of the story must, beyond all 

 further doubt, be apparent, from its intimate connection with the 

 religious notions of the ancient Romans. 



It is highly satisfactory to the author to add, in a postscript to the 

 above paper, that since it was written, and read in the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society, a very able work was published in Germany, by 

 Dr. A. Schwegler, professor at the University of Tiibingen, being the 



• TO yvrjalutg iraiSoiroieioSraif cf. Becker Charikles II. p. 4.39. Hermann Grieck 

 Antiquit. III. § 30 



