ARGEA, Aroma, or Arge, in antiquity, human figures made of rushes, thrown annually by the Vestals into the river Tiber, on the Ides of May. See VESTAL.
This ceremony we learn from Festus and Varro; the latter of whom, however, says they were cast by the priests: Unless, by Sacerdotibus, we suppose he meant priestesses. He adds that the number of figures was thirty—Plutarch, in his Roman Questions, enquires, Why were they called Argea? There are two reasons assigned: The first, that the barbarous nation who first inhabited these parts, cast all the Greeks they could meet with into the Tiber; for Argiaus was a common name for all Greeks: But Hercules persuaded them to quit so inhuman a practice, and to purge themselves of the crime, by instituting this solemnity—The second, that Evander, an Arcadian, and a sworn enemy of the Argives, to perpetuate that enmity to his posterity, ordered the figures of Argives to be thus cast into the river.
