calendar, the lower population came out of the
city, and lay about all day in the Campus Martius, near the Tiber. Ovid,
fortunately, took the trouble to describe the scene in the third book of
his _Fasti_, as he had witnessed it himself. Some of them, he says, lay
in the open, _some constructed tents, and some made rude huts of stakes
and branches, stretching their togas over them to make a shelter_.

plebs venit ac virides passim disiecta per herbas
potat, et accumbit cum pare quisque sua.
sub Iove pars durat, pauci tentoria ponunt,
sunt quibus e ramis frondea facta casa est,
pars, ubi pro rigidis calamos statuere columnis,
desuper extentas imposuere togas.
sole tamen vinoque calent, annosque precantur,
quot sumant cyathos, ad numerumque bibunt.[993]

It appears also from Ovid's account that there was much drunkenness and
obscene language; this was, in fact, a _festa_ very different in
character from those of the Numan calendar; and that there was a magical
element in the cult of the deity seems proved by the mysterious allusion
to "virgineus cruor" in connection with her grove not far from this
scene of revelry, in Martial iv. 64. 17 (cp. Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 78,
and Columella x. 558). Tibullus describes something of the same kind at
a rustic festival,[994] though he does not make it clear what time of
year he is speaking of; a few lines before he had mentioned the drinking
and leaping over the fire at the Parilia, the shepherd's festival in
April, though I cannot feel sure that the following lines are also meant
to refer to it:--

tunc operata deo pubes discumbet in herba,
arboris antiquae qua levis umbra cadit,
aut e veste sua tendent umbracula sertis
vincta, coronatus stabit et ipse calix.

Here it is too much to suppose that the _umbracula_ were contrived
to make up for the want of shade in a country so covered
with woodland as Italy was then; and the words "_sertis vincta_"
show that there was some special meaning in the practice. I
think we may guess that in both instances the extemporised huts
had some forgotten religious meaning. Yet another passage of
Tibullus, which also describes a rural festival, alludes to a similar
custom.[995] I have given reasons in the _Classical Review_ for
thinking that this was a summer festival, accompanied as it was,
like many midsummer rites all over Europe, by bonfires and
revelry, though the usual interpretation ascribes it to the wi