ng week, the _feriae denicales_ and the _novendiale
sacrum_, brought the religious mourning to a close. Not that the dead
were forgotten after the funeral: year by year, on the anniversaries of
death and burial, and on certain fixed occasions known by such
suggestive titles as 'the day of roses' and 'the day of violets,' the
family would revisit the tomb and make simple offerings of salt cake
(_mola salsa_), of bread soaked in wine, or garlands of flowers: there
is some trace, on such occasions, of prayer, but it would seem to be
rather the repetition of general religious formulae than a petition to
the dead for definite blessings.

Such are the principal features of the family ritual in relation to
their dead; but if we are to form any just notion of belief, we must
supplement them by reference to the ceremonies of the state, which
here, as elsewhere, are very clearly the household-cult 'writ large.'
In the Calendars we find two obvious celebrations in connection with
the dead, taking place at different seasons of the year, and consisting
of ceremonies markedly different in character. In the gloomy month of
February--associated with solemn lustrations--occurs the festival known
popularly (though not in the Calendars) as the Parentalia or dies
Parentales, that is, the days of sacrifice in connection with the dead
members of the family (_parentes_, _parentare_). It begins with the
note on February 13, _Virgo Vestalis parentat_, and continues till the
climax, _Feralia_, on February 21. During these days the magistrates
laid aside the insignia of their offices, the temples were shut,
marriages were forbidden, and every family carried out at the tombs of
its relatives ceremonies resembling those of the _sacra privata_. The
whole season closed on February 22 with the festival of the Caristia or
_cara cognatio_, a family reunion of the survivors in a kind of
'love-feast,' which centred in the worship of the Lar Familiaris. Here
we seem to have simply, as in the family rites, a peaceful and solemn
acknowledgment by the community as a whole of the still subsisting
relation of the living and the dead. On the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May
occurs the Lemuria, a ceremony of a strikingly different order. Once
again temples are shut and marriages forbidden, but the ritual is of a
very different nature. The _Lemures_ or _Larvae_--for there seems to be
little distinction between the two names--are regarded no longer as
members of the fami