ARGEI (ahr-ga'-e), the name given by the ancient Romans to a number of rush puppets (24 or 27), resembling men tied hand and foot, which were taken down to the ancient bridge over the Tiber (pons sublicius) on May 14 by the pontifices and magis trates, with the wife of the Flamen Dialis in mourning guise, and there thrown into the Tiber by the Vestal virgins. There were also in various parts of the four Servian regions of the city a number of sacella Argeorum (chapels), round which a procession seems to have taken place on March 17, and where the puppets were probably kept until the second procession. The Romans had no historical explanation of these curious rites, and the theory of the common people that the puppets were substitutes for old men who used at one time to be sacrificed to the river, is not generally accepted.
W. Mannhardt, comparing numerous examples of similar customs among other European peoples, concluded that the rite was of extreme antiquity, of dramatic rather than sacrificial character, and that its object was possibly to procure rain; while Wissowa, who refuses to date it farther back than the latter half of the 3rd century B.C., sees in it the yearly representation of an original sacrifice of 27 captive Greeks (taking Argei as a Latin form of Gr. Argeioi) by drowning in the Tiber.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-See W. W. Fowler, Roman Festivals (1899) ; W. Bibliography.-See W. W. Fowler, Roman Festivals (1899) ; W. Mannhardt, Wald- and Feldkulte (19o4-o5) ; J. Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung (iii. 1885) ; G. Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1912) ; J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1922).