A complete dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities explaining the obscure places in classic authors and ancient historians relating to the religion, mythology, history, geography and chronology of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their ... rites and customs, laws, polity, arts and engines of war : also an account of their navigations, arts and sciences and the inventors of them : with the lives and opinions of their philosophers / compiled originally in French ... by Monsieur Danet ; made English, with the addition of very useful mapps.

SANCTUS or SANCUS and SAN∣GUS, and SEMO-SANCTUS and FI∣DIUS.

Ovid informs us, that all these Names meant one Thing, and that this was a God pecu∣liar to the Sabines, which they communicated to the Romans:

Quaerebam Nonas Sancto, Fidio-ne referrem, An tibi, Semo Pater; tunc mihi Sanctus ait Cuicumque ex istis dederis, ego munus habebo; Numina ternafero, sic voluêre Cures: Hunc igitur veteres donarunt aede Sabini, Inque Quirinali constituere jugo.

St. Augustine L. 18. de Civ. Dei. C. 9. belie∣ved that he was the first King of the Sabines, who was communicated to the Romans, he ha∣ving been deified after his Death. Varro and Festus believed the Contrary, and that he was the same God as Hercules: These are Varro's Words: Putabant hunc esse Sanctum à Sabinâ lin∣guâ, & Herculem à Graecâ; and for Festus he says: Fit sacrificium Herculi aut Sanco, qui sci∣licet idem est Deus. This Contradiction may be removed in the same manner as that con∣cerning the Father of Picus, which some said was Stercetius: They often gave unto Kings the very Names of the Gods; and so Stercetius was called Saturn, and Sanchus Hercules, as Encas was also named Jupiter: Dionysius of Halicarnas∣sus shews how the Sabines were originally de∣scended from the Lacaedemonians: The Name also of Sabines came from the Greek 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, colere: Livy likewise mentions the God Sancus: In old Inscriptions these Words are to be met with, Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio Sacrum.