that part of the Ludi Saeculares of Augustus
which was concerned with Greek chthonic deities in the Campus
Martius.[55]

Yet unquestionably there had been a time when many inanimate objects
were supposed to have a mystic or dangerous influence; this is
sufficiently proved by the long list of taboos to which the unfortunate
Flamen Dialis was even in historical times subject. He was forbidden to
touch a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, ivy, wheat, leavened bread; he
might not walk under a vine, and his hair and nails might not be cut
with an iron knife; and he might not have any knot or unbroken ring
about his person. Dr. Frazer has the merit of being the first to point
out the real meaning of this strange list of disabilities, and to
explain the mystic or miasmatic origin of some of them.[56] They need
not detain us now, as they are survivals only, and survivals of ideas
which must have been long extinct before Roman history can be said to
begin. Almost the only one among them of which we have other traces is
the taboo on iron, which must have been of comparatively late date, as
the use of iron in Italy seems only to have begun about the eighth
century B.C.[57] This is found also in the ritual of the Arval
Brotherhood, the ancient agricultural priesthood revived by Augustus,
and better known to us than any other owing to the discovery of its
_Acta_ in the site of the sacred grove between Rome and Ostia. These
Brethren had originally suffered from the taboo on iron; but in
characteristic fashion they had discovered that a piacular or
disinfecting sacrifice would sufficiently atone for its use whenever it
was necessary to take a pruning-hook within the limits of the grove.[58]
We may here also recall the fact that no iron might be used in the
building or repairing of the ancient _pons sublicius_, the oldest of all
the bridges of the Tiber.[59]

Every one who wishes to get an idea of the nature of taboo in primitive
Rome, and of the way in which it was got rid of, should study the
disabilities of the Flamen Dialis, and satisfy himself of their absence,
with the exception just mentioned, and possibly one or two more, in the
ritual of historical Rome. Nothing is more likely to convince him of the
way in which Roman civilisation contrived to leave these superstitions
as mere fossils, incapable any longer of doing mischief by cramping the
conscience and inducing constant anxiety. If he is disposed to ask why
such a large number