meaning of the epithet to suit their new studies, and
began to attribute to their legendary kings powers which properly
belonged to Etruscan or Oriental magicians. The second century B.C.,
when Piso wrote his _Annals_, is exactly the period when we should
naturally expect such studies to come into fashion, and with such
perversions of "history" as their consequence.[98]

I go on to note one or two more examples of real magic in the State
religion; but they are hard to find. Pliny tells that even in his day
people believed that a runaway slave who had not escaped out of the city
might be arrested by a spell uttered by the Vestal virgins.[99] I take
this to mean that any one who had lost his slave might get the Vestals
to use the spell as a means of keeping the runaway within the city. The
word for spell is here _precatio_, _i.e._ a prayer, not _carmen_, which
is the usual word for a spell; and Pliny evidently thinks of it as
addressed to some god. But no doubt it was originally at least a genuine
spell, of the same kind as others used in private life, which we shall
notice directly; and it implies a belief in some magical power inherent
in the Vestals, of whom we are told that if they accidentally met a
criminal being led to punishment they might secure his release.[100] As
the spell in this case seems to be telepathic, _i.e._ an exercise of
will-power projected from a distance, it may perhaps be paralleled with
certain mystical powers exercised by women, especially when their
husbands are at war, among some savage peoples;[101] but we have no
information about it beyond the passage in Pliny, and further guessing
would be useless.

This last is a case of genuine magic, but it is outside the ritual of
the State, though exercised by a State priesthood. Within that ritual
there is one other very curious case of what must be classed as a
magical process, and one that has accidentally become famous. At the
Lupercalia on February 15, the two young men called Luperci, or, more
strictly, belonging respectively as leaders to the two collegia of
Luperci, girt themselves with the skins of the slaughtered victims,
which were goats, and then ran round the base of the Palatine hill,
striking at all the women who came near them or offered themselves to
their blows, with strips of skin cut from the hides of these same
victims. The object was to produce fertility; on this point our
authorities are explicit.[102] Thus this particular fe