430 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"<« S. VII. May 28. '59. 



Notariu publicum iu nunierum Procuralorum geueraliu 

 ejusd. Curiae, dat. xxviii. Octob. 15C4. Reg. Parker. 250." 

 " Henry Bedell Clerk Parson of St. Pancrase London. 

 1566. ib. p. 260." 



The next note is on fol. S 2 i, after " The Con- 

 tents " of the second part. 



" See the Memoirs of Mr. James Wadsworth (son of 

 tbis James) a Jesuit that recanted, &c., giving an Ac- 

 count of his Father's Apostasy and his own Conversion of 

 (sic) Poperj' much owing to y Letters he found in his 

 Father's Study from Dr. Hall and Mr. Bedle. 4to. Lond. 

 1670. penes me W.K." 



At the end (p. 487.) Kennett, with business- 

 like exactness, has noted the dates of his two 

 perusals of the book : — 



" Lect. Mar. 22. 1706-7, 

 Apr. 3. 1712." 



On the fly-leaf at the end : — 



" Of the good endeavours of Bp. Bedell to convert the 

 Native Irish by learning their Language, and translating 

 the Scriptures into it, &c., there is a good (and in some 

 points a fuller) Account given by Mr. Richardson in his 

 Short History of the Attempts to Convert the Irish. 8^o. 

 1712. p. 20." 



The passage is long, and the book common, and 

 therefore I need not transcribe it. 



I should add that the title-page bears Kennett's 

 signature and most appropriate motto : — 



« Wh. Kennett. 

 Verba animi proferre, et vitam impendere vero." 



I Lave met with the following materials for 

 BedelVs Life since I last wrote : a letter to Sir 

 llobert Cotton in The Court and Times of Charles 

 I., vol. i. p. 301. seg.; verses to Bedell from 

 Bishop Hall (Works, ed. Peter Hall, xii. 329.); 

 letter to him, from the same (ibid. vi. 143) ; on 

 Bedell and Alablaster, see Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 

 10,055. 



J. E. B. Mayor. 



St. John's College, Cambridge. 



AKNIVERSARV CEREMONIES OF THE PRESERVATION 

 OF THE ROMAN CAPITOL. 



It was shown in former volumes of this series 

 (2"^ S. i. 473. 495.; ii. 134.) that the received 

 Roman tradition represented the Capitol as having 

 been preserved, from the nocturnal assault of the 

 Gauls, by the screams of geese, while the dogs 

 failed to give the alarm ; and that the memory of 

 this event was kept alive by various observances. 

 These were, 1. That the censors gave out the 

 tender for the food of the public geese before 

 any other tender ; 2. that, on the anniversary of 

 the attack on the Capitol, a goose was carried 

 round in a richly ornamented litter, and a slaughter 

 of dogs took place. It was further shown that the 

 vigilance of the goose, and its sensitiveness to 

 sounds, is in accordance with the natural his- 

 tory of the bird. 



Schvvegler, in the third volume of his Roman 

 History, published since his death, adverts to 

 these customs, and, following the indications of 

 Schwenck, in his work on Boman Mythology, con- 

 jectures that the religious ceremonies in question 

 originated in other causes, and that they gave rise 

 to the traditionary story, instead of having grown 

 out of it. ' ■ 



"To slaughter dogs, and to offer them as sacrifices, 

 was customary in other festivals and rites of the Roman 

 religion; and that the goose was from an earh' period, 

 and prior to the preservation of the Capitol, a bird sacred 

 to Juno, is implied in this story itself." {Rom. Gesch. iii. 

 259.) 



It is certain that the explanatory stories ad- 

 duced by the Romans to account for the origins 

 of their festivals and other religious observances — 

 of which the Fasti of Ovid and the Qucestiones 

 JRomancE of Plutarch present a copious collection — 

 are for the most part fictitious, and have no claim 

 to be regarded as resting on a historical founda- 

 tion. The doctrine, therefore, which Dionysius 

 lays down (^Ant. Rom. vii. 70.), that the accounts 

 of the Roman historians respecting the early pe- 

 riod admit of corroboration by the religious cere- 

 monies which existed in his own time, must be 

 received with large qualifications : nevertheless, 

 it must not be assumed that the rule as to the 

 fabulous character of these explanatory stories is 

 universal, and admits of no exceptions. 



The capture of Rome by the Gauls is unques- 

 tionably an historical event, and, without refer- 

 ence to the native tradition, is attested by Hera- 

 clides Ponticus, Aristotle, and Theopompus, who 

 were nearly contemporary writers. The incident 

 of the watchfulness of the geese, while the dogs 

 slumbered, is in itself probable, and consistent 

 with the natural history of the two animals. The 

 story of the preservation of the Capitol by the 

 cries of the goose is as old as Ennius (Propert. iii. 

 3. 12), who was born in 239 b.c, about a century 

 and a half after the event, and is alluded to by 

 Lucretius. The crucifixion of dogs upon an 

 elder-tree, between the temples of Juventas and 

 Summanus, and the carrying round of live geese, 

 upon a litter ornamented with purple and gold, 

 are represented to us not as religious acts, but as 

 memorial observances on the anniversary of the 

 preservation of the Capitol. Moreover, they do 

 not stand alone ; but they must be taken in con- 

 nexion with the priority given by the censors to 

 the contract for the food of the geese (see Plut. 

 Q. R. 98. _) ; and with the dies Alliensis, the annual 

 commemoration of the disastrous defeat which 

 opened the gates of Rome to the Gauls. This 

 dies nefastus was strictly observed by the Romans 

 as a day of humiliation and abstinence from work. 

 There is nothing improbable in the continued ob- 

 servance of the custom of annually impaling the 

 dog and carrying round the goose, from the year 



