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remains, and the application of the title Optimus Maximus to
Jupiter Stator in Livy's first passage U is still further proof of
the careless and purely literary character of Livy's account.
There is as good reason, therefore, to reject the Stator temple
as the scene of the sacra I dulia as that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus;
for the Stator cult was still later, and for this reason, and
also because of its military character, was no more the cult of the
primitive sky-god than was that of Optimus Maximus, nor could
it have been in the hands of so ancient a religious personage as
the Flamen DiaIis.43
IV.
Now there was another religious edifice on the Sacra Via,
against which the objections above mentioned do not hold good.
The Regia u goes back to the hoary beginnings of a community
about the Forum valley on the adjacent hills, and was, as
the name implies, first the house of the king. 4s Tradition
describes it as the abode of Numa, or at least the place where
he discharged his priestly functions" s Later on it became the
central point of the activities of the college of pontifices and the
official headquarters of the Pontifex Maximus, upon whom most
of the religious functions of the king devolved after the fall of
.. I, 12: "Haec precatus, velut si sensisset auditas preces, 'hinc', inquit,
'Romani, Iuppiter optimus maximus resistere atque iterare pugnam iubet."
., The article on Jupiter in Daremberg et Saglio (p. 711) states that
the quindecemviri .sacris faciundis had charge of the cult of Jupiter
Stator: "Le culte de Jupiter Stator etait ceh\bre sous la surveillance des
Quindecemvirs". The value of the statement is unhappily weakened by
the absence of any reference to substantiate it. If it be so, however, it
furnishes weighty additional testimony against the Stator temple as the
scene of the sacra Jdulia,o for these priests were of later origin than the
other Roman sacerdotal colleges (see Wiss., p. 534), had charge of the
Sibylline Books (Wiss., p. 536), and probably a superintendence over
foreign rites whose importation these oracles had directed, and did not
include any flamen among their number (Wiss., pp. 542-3) .
..Jordan 1,2, pp. 302-4; Wiss., p. 502.
.. Festus, p. 279: "Regia domus ubi rex habitat." Cf. Wiss., p. 502, and
Jordan I, 2, pp. 423-9.
.. Solin. I, 21; Plut. Numa XIV; Tac. Ann. XV, 41.