quinius, _i.e._ under an Etruscan dynasty; nor does Diana
appear in it, the goddess who was brought from Latium and settled on the
Aventine before the end of the kingly period. We have, then, a
_terminus ex quo_ for the date of the calendar in the inclusion in the
city of the Quirinal hill, and a _terminus ad quem_ in the foundation of
the Diana temple on the Aventine.[188] We cannot date these events
precisely; but it is sufficient for our purpose if it be taken as proved
that the Fasti belong to the fully developed city, and yet were drawn up
before that conquest by the Etruscans which we may regard as a
certainty, and which is marked by the foundations of Etruscan masonry
which served to support the great Capitoline temple. And this is also
borne out by the undoubted fact that the calendar itself shows no trace
of Etruscan influence. But I must now go on to explain exactly what this
calendar is.

The _Fasti anni Romani_ exist chiefly on stone as inscriptions, and date
from the Early Empire, between 31 B.C. and A.D. 51. They give us, in
fact, the calendar as revised by Caesar; but no one now doubts that
Mommsen was right in detecting in these inscriptions the skeleton of the
original calendar which the Romans ascribed to Numa.[189] This is
distinguished from later additions by the large capital letters in which
it is written or inscribed in all the fragments we possess; it gives us
the days of the month with their religious characteristics as affecting
state business, the names of the religious festivals which concern the
whole state, and the Kalends, Nones, and Ides in each month. Excluding
these last, we have the names, in a shortened form, of forty-five
festivals; and these festivals, thus placed by an absolutely certain
record in their right place in each month and in the year, must be the
foundation of all scientific study of the religious practice of the
Roman state, taken together with certain additions in smaller capitals,
and with such information about them as we can obtain from literary
sources.[190]

The smaller capitals give us such entries as _feriae Iovi_, _feriae
Saturno_, _i.e._ the name of a deity to whom a festival was sacred, the
foundation days of temples, generally with the name of the deity in the
dative and the position of the temple in the city, and certain _ludi_
and memorial days, which belong to a much later age than the original
festivals. But the names of those which are inscribed in lar