This temple was vowed by the Consul Ap. Claudius in an Etruscan war[536] (296 B.C.): the date of dedication is unknown. In front of the temple was an area of which the truly Roman story is told[537], that being unable to declare war with Pyrrhus with the orthodox ritual of the _fetiales_, as he had no land in Italy into which they could throw the challenging spear[538], they caught a Pyrrhan soldier and made him buy this spot to suit their purpose. Here stood the ‘columella’ from which henceforward the spear was thrown[539].
The temple became well known as a suitable meeting-place for the Senate outside the _pomoerium_, when it was necessary to do business with generals and ambassadors who could not legally enter the city[540]. But of the goddess very little is known. There is no sufficient reason to identify her with that Nerio with whom we made acquaintance in March, as is done too confidently by the writer of the article in Roscher’s _Lexicon_[541].
This temple also was near the Circus Flaminius[542]. It was a foundation of Sulla’s, 82 B.C., and the cult was Greek, answering to that of Ἡρακλῆς ἀλεξίκακος[543].
The temple on the Quirinal of which this was the _dies natalis_ is said by Dionysius[545] to have been vowed by Tarquinius Superbus, and dedicated by Sp. Postumius in B.C. 466. But that there was a _fanum_ or _sacellum_ of this deity on or near the same site at a much earlier time is almost certain; such a _sacellum_ ‘ad portam Sanqualem’ is mentioned, also by Dionysius[546], as ἱερὸν Διὸς Πιστίου, and we know that in many cases the final _aedes_ or _templum_ was a development from an uncovered altar or sacred place.
Dius Fidius, as the adjectival character of his name shows, was a genuine old Italian religious conception, but one that in historical times was buried almost out of sight. Among gods and heroes there has been a struggle for existence, as among animals and plants; with some peoples a struggle between indigenous and exotic deities, in which the latter usually win the day, and displace or modify the native species[547]. What laws, if any, govern this struggle for existence it is not possible to discern clearly; the result is doubtless the survival of the fittest, if by the fittest we understand those which flourish best under the existing conditions of society and thought; but it would hardly seem to be the survival of those which are most beneficial to the worshipping race. Among the Romans the fashionable exotic deities of the later Republic and Empire had no such ethical influence on the character of the people as those older ones of the type of Dius Fidius, who in historical times was known to the ordinary Roman only through the medium of an old-fashioned oath.
