s veteres
retulerunt, eosque a pontificibus maximis, a quibus
fiebant, annales maximos appellarunt." The explanation
of the name is no doubt wrong; but all the rest of this
passage can be relied on; cp. Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52; Dion. Hal. i. 73, 74; Gell. ii. 28. 6; Cic. _Legg._
i. 2. 6. For the idea of the almanac, see Cichorius in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "annales maximi."

[580] _Proponebat tabulam domi_, Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52. This must refer to the official residence of the
Pont. Max.; see above, p. 271.

[581] These attempted solutions of an insoluble problem
may be found in brief in Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._
i. 37. Perhaps the boldest is that of Cantorelli, that
the annales were constructed not out of the tabula but
out of the commentarii; but this is in conflict with the
passage in the scholiast on Virgil. To me the difficulty
does not seem overwhelming; events occurring "domi
militiaeque, terra marique," may have filled
considerable space, and yet have been meagre in the eyes
of the rhetoricians of the last century B.C.

[582] Schanz, _op. cit._ p. 35.

[583] The great authority of the Pont. Max. is well
shown in the story of Tremellius the praetor, who in the
middle of the second century B.C. was fined (by a
tribune?) "quod cum M. Aemilio pontifice maximo
iniuriose contenderat, sacrorumque quam magistratuum ius
potentius fuit." Livy, _Epit._ 47.

[584] _De aedibus sacris populi Romani_, p. 10 foll.

[585] Aust, _op. cit._ p. 14 foll. See also _R.F._ p.
340 foll.

[586] For Vacuna, Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 44 and 128. She
was later, but probably without good reason, identified
with Victoria. The conjecture that she was a hearth
deity rests on the lines of Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 305,
which I have before referred to in another context:

ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos.
nunc quoque cum fiunt antiquae sacra Vacunae,
ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos.

[587] Aust, p. 14. For Vertumnus the _locus classicus_
is Propert. v. 2. It is not certain that the connection
with gardens was primitive.

[588] _R.F._ p. 341.

[589] _R.F._ p. 341.

[590] See Axtell, _The Deification of Abstract Ideas in
Roman Literature and Inscriptions_ (Chicago,