emed with reminiscences of this event, which Livy regarded as first
in the long series of the exploits of his countrymen. The place where
Hercules pastured his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium;
near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of the monster's
triple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sight-seers were shown
the cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine. Every tenth day
the earlier generations of Romans celebrated the victory with solemn
sacrifices at the Ara Maxima; and on days of triumph the fortunate
general deposited there a tithe of his booty, to be distributed among
the citizens.

In this famous myth, however, the god Hercules did not originally
figure. The Latin Hercules was an essentially peaceful and domestic
deity, watching over households and enclosures, and nearly akin to
Terminus and the Penates. He does not appear to have been a solar
divinity at all. But the purely accidental resemblance of his name to
that of the Greek deity Herakles, [110] and the manifest identity of the
Cacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led
to the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend,
who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus. Now
Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky,"
a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The
same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the
alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts. The
corrupted title Cacus was supposed to be identical with the Greek word
kakos, meaning "evil" and the corruption was suggested by the epithet of
Herakles, Alexikakos, or "the averter of ill." Originally, however,
the name was Caecius, "he who blinds or darkens," and it corresponds
literally to the name of the Greek demon Kaikias, whom an old proverb,
preserved by Aulus Gellius, describes as a stealer of the clouds. [111]

Thus the significance of the myth becomes apparent. The three-headed
Cacus is seen to be a near kinsman of Geryon's three-headed dog Orthros,
and of the three-headed Kerberos, the hell-hound who guards the dark
regions below the horizon. He is the original werewolf or Rakshasa, the
fiend of the storm who steals the bright cattle of Helios, and hides
them in the black cavernous rock, from which they are afterwards rescued
by the schamir or lightning-stone of the solar hero. The physical
char