1 B.C. 217
2 The ver sacrum was not actually celebrated until 195 B.C., and a flaw in the ceremonies necessitated a repetition in the following year (xxxiv. lxiv. 1-3).
3 The period appointed was March 1st to April 30th (ibid.).
4 Dies atri —called also nefasti and religiosi —were the days following the Calends, Nones and Ides, and the anniversaries of certain national disasters, like the defeat on the Allia. On such days no public business might be transacted.
5 B.C. 217
6 These were probably libral asses (of a pound each) and not the reduced asses of one uncia (ounce) each which Pliny says were coined this year (Q. Fabio Maximo dictatore) and were reckoned at sixteen to the denarius (Nat. Hist., xxXIII, xlv.). With this use of the number three editors cp. Aen. I, 265 ff., where Jupiter foretells that Aeneas shall reign three years, Ascanius thirty, and the Alban kings three hundred. H. Usener, Dreiheit (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 58 (1903) pp. 1ff., 161ff, 321ff.), discusses with a wealth of illustration, the significance in ancient folk-lore and religion of the number three.
7 The twelve great Olympian gods, arranged in pairs as with the Greeks, here make their appearance together for the first time in Roman history.
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