w little, and what we do know is almost entirely
due to the love of the Augustan poets for the country and its life and
customs; "Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes," wrote Virgil,
contrasting himself with the philosopher poet whom he revered. Varro, in
his list of Roman festivals,[165] just mentions a festival called
Sementivae, associated with the sowing of the seed, and celebrated by
all pagi, if we interpret him rightly; but Ovid has given us a charming
picture of what must be this same rite, and places it clearly in winter,
after the autumn sowing[166]:--

state coronati plenum ad praesaepe iuvenci:
cum tepido vestrum vere redibit opus.
rusticus emeritum palo suspendit aratrum:
omne reformidat frigida volnus humus.
vilice, da requiem terrae, semente peracta:
da requiem terram qui coluere viris.
pagus agat festum: pagum lustrate, coloni,
et date paganis annua liba focis.
placentur frugum matres Tellusque Ceresque,
farre suo gravidae visceribusque suis.

Ovid may here be writing of his own home at Sulmo, and what took place
there in the Augustan age; but we may read his description into the
life of old Latium, for rustic life is tenacious of old custom,
especially where the economic conditions remain always the same. We may
do the same with another beautiful picture left us by Tibullus, also a
poet of the country, which I have recently examined at length in the
_Classical Review_.[167] The festival he describes has often been
identified with Ovid's, but I am rather disposed to see in it a
lustratio of the _ager paganus_ in the spring, of the same kind as the
famous one in Virgil's first _Georgic_, to be mentioned directly; for
Tibullus, after describing the scene, which he introduces with the words
"fruges lustramus et agros," puts into perfect verse a prayer for the
welfare of the crops and flocks, and looks forward to a time when (if
the prayer succeeds) the land shall be full of corn, and the peasant
shall heap wood upon a bonfire--perhaps one of the midsummer fires that
still survive in the Abruzzi. Virgil's lines are no less
picturesque;[168] and though he does not mention the pagus, he is
clearly thinking of a lustratio in which more than one familia takes
part--

cuncta tibi Cererem pubes agrestis adoret.

This is a spring festival "extremae sub casum hiemis, iam vere sereno";
and I shall return to it when we come to deal with the processional
lustratio of the fa