Classical Mythology

ROMAN MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA 637

on the distant grass, yet she still was sleeping soundly. He rejoiced; and lifting

her dress from her feet, he had happily begun to reach his longed-for goal. But

look! The donkey, Silenus' mount, began ill-timed braying. Up leaped the terri-

fied nymph and pushed Priapus away, arousing the whole wood as she fled.

But the god, all too ready with his obscene member, was an object of ridicule to

all by the light of the moon. The source of the noise paid the penalty with his

life, and this is the victim that is pleasing to the god of the Hellespont.

WATER GODS: PORTUNUS AND THE GODS OF
RIVERS AND SPRINGS
Water gods were important to the Italian farmer. Each river and spring had its
deity, who needed to be propitiated by offerings. Tiberinus, god of the river
Tiber, was propitiated each May when twenty-seven straw dummies, called
Argei, were thrown into the river from the Pons Sublicius, the wooden bridge of
the early city. This ceremony was attended by the pontifices (priests of the state
religion) and the Vestal Virgins, but even the Romans did not know its origin.
Propitiation of a potentially damaging god by means of dummies (substitutes
for human sacrifice) is as likely an explanation as any.
Neptunus, later identified with Poseidon, was originally a freshwater divinity
whose festival occurred in July, when the hot Italian summer was at its driest. Por-
tunus also was an old Italian god, originally the god of gates (portae), but later the
god of harbors (portus), whose temple was near the Aemilian Bridge in Rome. Vergil
makes him help Cloanthus to victory in the boat-race in the Aeneid (5. 241-243). He
was also identified with the Greek sea-god Palaemon, originally Melicertes (see
note 3, p. 304). Both of the Roman sea-gods, therefore, were originally freshwater
divinities, who acquired their attributes as sea-gods from Greek mythology.
Of the river-gods, the most important was Tiberinus, and bridging his river
was a significant religious matter. The Pons Sublicius (mentioned earlier) was
administered by the pontifices (whose title may originally have meant "bridge
builders"), and there were various religious taboos involved in its construction
and administration. Tiberinus himself plays an important role in Book 8 of the
Aeneid when he appears to Aeneas in a dream and tells him that he has arrived
at his final home. He shows him the sign of the sow and her thirty piglets, and
he calms his waters so that the boat of Aeneas can move smoothly upstream to
Pallanteum {Aeneid 8. 31-96).
Springs of running water were under the protection of the nymphs. In the
Forum at Rome was the spring of Juturna, who in Vergil appears as the sister
of Turnus and the victim of Jupiter's lust. She was worshiped in the Forum and
the Campus Martius, and the headquarters of the city's water administration
lay in her precinct. Her festival was the Juturnalia. After the battle of Lake
Regillus in 496 B.C. the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) watered their horses at her
spring in the Forum. Their temple was next to her precinct.
Outside the Porta Capena at Rome were a spring and a small park dedi-