312 b.c.e., when the state took it over (Mueller 2002 gives details). Virgil carefully
highlights the name Potitius in his description of the ritual (269, 281).
- Gransden 1976, 14 – 20.
- On wormholes, space-time tunnels connecting two disparate regions of space-
time, see Gott 2001, 118 – 24; I happily acknowledge my borrowing of the metaphor
from a Princeton seminar paper by Rob Sobak on the layering of time in Pindar. The
analogy with Virgil’s collapsing of timescales is not exact, because, crucially, in Virgil’s
universe the calendrical time traveler is always in the same place.This wormhole effect
is fundamental to Ovid ’s technique in the Fasti,as A. Barchiesi (1997) has shown. - The year “1177” is plucked out of the air, as being seven years after the Eratos-
thenic date for the fall of Troy. - As Philip Hardie points out to me, referring to Wills 1996, 147 n. 54, for the
uniqueness of this “line-final repetition” in Virgil. - R. F. Thomas 2004 for Aeneas terminating the Saturnian Age; above, p. 83,
for Aeneas as the last demigod. - For the Arcadian acorn diet and their birth before the moon, see Ap. Rhod.
Argon.4.264 – 65, with Livrea 1973, ad loc. The conventional location for the beginning
of the calendar at Rome is in the reign of Numa: note how Serv. Auct., in referring to
the reign of Romulus, can say adhuc fasti non erant(Aen.8.564). - My thanks to a Princeton undergraduate, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, for permis-
sion to quote these words from his essay, “Virgil’s Hercules and the Foundation of the
Ara Maxima.” As Philip Hardie points out to me per litteras,the other candidate for a
day marked in Evander’s calendar is the Carmentalia: Carmentis certainly has an altar
(337 – 38), and she may well have a day also. - Clarke 1999a, esp. 17 – 21.
- Edwards 1996, 46: “Places in the city are, in religious terms, parallel to days
in the calendar. The place and time prescribed for a particular rite are an essential part
of that ceremony’s meaning and power.” On “loca sancta,” see MacCormack 1990;
Horden and Purcell 2000, chap. X. - Stephen Hinds suggests to me a very attractive double play on lucushere: lucus
suggests locus(Hinds 1987, 38 with n. 44), while by the antonymical etymology oflucus
a non lucendo,the grove of Hercules provides both a lucusand a lux( = dies). The same
effects will be felt later in the book, when Virgil says that the Pelasgians set up a cult of
Silvanus at Caere, inaugurating lucumque diemque(601). - The phrase ante urbem in lucorefers back to the identical phrasing in the same
sedesin 3.302, where it refers by contrast to the futile and backward-looking sacrifices
of Andromache: Binder 1971, 43 n. 13. - Zerubavel 2003, 46 (original emphasis); cf. Gell 1992, 28, on the “illusion of
time-travel engendered by the contemplation of ancient objects.” - Above, p. 134.
notes to pages 162 – 163. 283