nvictus of the _ara maxima_ in the Forum Boarium, who
continued for centuries to accept the tithes of the booty of generals
and the profits of successful merchants. Virgil in the eighth
_Aeneid_[473] makes Evander show his guest this altar and the
celebration of its festival, and tell him the tale of Cacus and the oxen
and the cave on the Aventine hard by; the poet, like every one else
until the last few years, believed the cult to be primeval and Roman.
But one of the many gains for the history of Roman religion which have
recently been secured--even since the publication of my _Roman
Festivals_--is the certainty that the Italian Hercules is really the
Greek Heracles acclimatised in the sister peninsula, and that the cult
of the _ara maxima_, though that altar was inside the sacred boundary of
the _pomoerium_, was not native in Rome.[474] It seems, however, almost
certain that it did not come direct from any part of Hellas, though its
position, close to the Tiber and its landing-place, might naturally lead
us to think so. It is almost impossible to believe that Heracles would
have been allowed inside the _pomoerium_, had he been introduced by
foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be
learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have
made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of
the _ara_ came from a Latin city,--from that Tibur which by tradition
was of Greek origin--"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"--and which, like its
neighbour Praeneste, was curiously receptive of foreign influence.[475]
It is believed that the Greek traders from Campania and Magna Graecia
made their way northwards through Latium, and thus eventually reached
Rome with the deity whom they seem to have always carried with them. He
was, in the words of Dr. Carter,[476] a deity of whom, by the contagion
of commerce, the Romans already felt a great need, a god of great power
from whom came success in the practical undertakings of life; and it was
quite natural that his shrine should be in the busy cattle-market of the
city, if we remember that the wealth of the early Romans, _pecunia_ as
they called it, mainly consisted in sheep and oxen. As Heracles in
various forms was to be met with all over the Mediterranean coasts, it
would indeed be strange if he were not found in the growing city
commanding the central water-way of Italy; and his appearance there may
be said to have put Rome