[3] In his work De Lingua Latina,[4] Varro writes that the lake was inhabited by the lymphae commotiles or commotiae, nymphs whose presence is explained by the floating island found there.

They offered as a sacrifice to Apollo the tenth part of the prey and built a shrine to Dis and an altar to Saturn, naming the feast Saturnalia after him.

They continued for a long time to perform human sacrifices in order to offer heads to placate Dis and Saturn, until Hercules came to those lands and persuaded their descendants to replace the human heads with masks and to honour the altar of Saturn with lamps, since phota, "lights," may mean "lamps" as well as the "light" of men's lives.

Sometimes the Sabine migrations known as the ver sacrum started from this place: a famous instance is that of the seven thousand sacrales led by Comus (or Cominus) Castronius who founded Bovianum following the steps of an ox, thus giving rise to the Samnite nation.

The waters of a spring near the lake were extremely cold and supposed to be medicinal: they were considered good for the stomach and nerves, and were used in the Roman baths at Aquae Cutiliae which can be seen today.