he
19th, like the corresponding August festivals, seem to be concerned with
the housed grain harvested in the previous August; I am disposed to
think that in all three we should see not only the natural rejoicing
after the labours of the autumn, but the opening of the granaries and,
perhaps, the first eating of the grain. For on the Saturnalia there was
a sacrifice at Saturnus' altar, followed by a feast, which was
afterwards Graecised, but doubtless originally represented the primitive
feasting of the farm, in which the whole familia took part. This brings
us practically to the end of the agricultural year as represented in the
calendar; for spring sowing was exceptional, the joyful feasts of pagus
and compitum are not to be found in our document, and the month of
February is specially occupied with the care and cult of the dead
(_Manes_).

At this point I wish to notice one or two results of the adoption of a
religious calendar such as I have been describing, which are more to the
purpose of these lectures than some of the details I have had to point
out. First, let us remember that agricultural operations necessarily
vary in date according to the season, and that most of the rural
festivals of ancient Italy were not fixed to a particular day, but were
_feriae conceptivae_, settled perhaps according to the decision of some
meeting of heads of families or officers of a pagus. That this was so we
may conjecture from the fact that those which survived into historical
times, _e.g._ Compitalia and Paganalia, and were celebrated in the city,
though not as _sacra pro populo_,[204] were of varying date. But all the
festivals of the calendar were necessarily fixed, and the days on which
they were held were made over to the gods. Now by being thus fixed they
would soon begin to get out of relation to agricultural life; just as,
if the harvest festivals of our churches were fixed to one day
throughout the country, the meaning of the religious service would
sooner or later begin to lose something of its force. And how much the
more would this be so if the calendar itself, from ignorance or
mismanagement, began to get out of relation with the true season, as in
course of time was frequently the case? When once under such
circumstances the meaning of a religious rite is lost, where is its
psychological efficacy? In the life of the old Latin farmer, as we saw,
his religion was a reality, an organic growth, coincident at every point