nter.[996]

tunc nitidus plenis confisus rusticus agris
ingeret ardenti grandia ligna foco,
turbaque vernarum, saturi bona signa coloni,
ludet et ex virgis exstruet ante casas.

The slaves can here hardly be playing at building houses of
twigs, like the children in Horace's _Satire_,[997] unless we are to
suppose that Tibullus is thinking of slave children only, which
is indeed possible; but even if that were so, how are we to
account for the popularity of this curious form of sport?

There was, however, at Rome a public summer festival,
included in the calendar, in which we find this same custom.
At the Neptunalia, on July 23, huts or booths were erected,
made of the foliage of trees. "Umbrae vocantur Neptunalibus
_casae frondeae pro tabernaculis_," says Festus[998] (following Verrius
Flaccus), where the last word is one in regular use for military
tents. This is the only thing that is told us about this festival,
and we may assume that even this would not have come down
to us if it had not been a survival rigidly adhered to, _i.e._ the
construction of shelters from the foliage of trees, instead of
using tents, which could easily have been procured in the city.
As the festival was in the hot month of July, we might suppose
that shelter from the sun was the real object here; but we do
not hear of it at other summer festivals, and the parallel practices
I shall now mention make the rationalising explanation very
doubtful. It is unlucky that we know hardly anything about
the older and un-Graecised Neptunus, and nothing about his
festival except this one fact; the comparative method is here
our only hope.

The Jewish feast of tabernacles will, of course, occur at once to every
one; this was in the heat of the summer, and the booths were here, as at
the Neptunalia, made of the branches of trees;[999] the explanation
given to the Israelites was not that they were thus to shelter
themselves from the heat, but to be reminded of their homeless
wanderings in the wilderness, plainly an aetiological account, as in the
case of the passover. There are distinct examples in Greece of the same
practice, _e.g._ the [Greek: skiades] at the Spartan Carneia,[1000] and
tents ([Greek: skenai]) in several cases, as at the mysteries of
Andania, where the peculiar regulations for the construction of the
tents points to a ritualistic origin almost unmistakably.[1001] But
perhaps the most striking parallel is to be found in the