his maternal grandfather. No patrician, says Festus (p. 173 M, 180 Th.) ever bore the praenomen Numerius until that Fabius who survived the slaughter of his clan at the Cremera wedded the daughter of a rich Beneventan, or Maleventan as they were called in those days, and accepted the condition that the first-born son should be called Numerius after his mother's father. The Fabii and their heroic death at the Cremera were suspected of being unhistorical even by the ancients; marriage between a Roman and a Beneventan at that early date, before the town changed its original Greek name,[1] is highly unlikely; and granted the historicity of the incident, a praenomen is not a family name and so proves little, and naming after the maternal grandfather involves recognition of a relationship which under mother-right would not exist.
The above are all the reasonable arguments which I have been able to find. In that amiable, but pre-scientific treatise, Bachofen's Mutterrecht, there is nothing regarding Rome which deserves either quotation or refutation; and in Italy we cannot, whatever we may do in Greece, weave sociological fantasies from the relationships of the gods, for the excellent reason that Italian numina have no families. If any better arguments remain, I shall await their production with interest; but frankly, I have small expectation of anything of the sort.
H. J. Rose.
- ↑ (
Greek characters), acc. (Greek characters), i.e. Appleby; changed ominis causa by the Romans because it sounded like "ill-come" or "ill-wind" to them.
