f old feasts with new ones, the festival of Lupercus falls nearer to
the time of Ash Wednesday, for the Lupercalia were celebrated on the
fifteenth of February, whereas the Carnival of Saturn began on the
seventeenth of December.

Lupercus was but a little god, yet he was great among the shepherds in
Rome's pastoral beginnings, for he was the driver away of wolves, and on
his day the early settlers ran round and round their sheepfold on the
Palatine, all dressed in skins of fresh-slain goats, praising the Faun
god, and calling upon him to protect their flocks. And in truth, as the
winter, when wolves are hungry and daring, was over, his protection was
a foregone conclusion till the cold days came again. The grotto
dedicated to him was on the northwest slope of the Palatine, nearly
opposite the Church of Saint George in Velabro, across the Via di San
Teodoro; and all that remains of the great festival in which Mark Antony
and the rest ran like wild men through the streets of Rome, smiting men
and women with the purifying leathern thong, and offering at last that
crown which Caesar thrice refused, is merged and forgotten, with the
Saturnalia, in the ten days' feasting and rioting that change to the
ashes and sadness of Lent, as the darkest night follows the brightest
day. For the Romans always loved strong contrasts.

Carnival, in the wider sense, begins at Christmas and ends when Lent
begins; but to most people it means but the last ten days of the season,
when festivities crowd upon each other till pleasure fights for minutes
as for jewels; when tables are spread all night and lights are put out
at dawn; when society dances itself into distraction and poor men make
such feasting as they can; when no one works who can help it, and no
work done is worth having, because it is done for double price and half
its value; when affairs of love are hastened to solution or catastrophe,
and affairs of state are treated with the scorn they merit in the eyes
of youth, because the only sense is laughter, and the only wisdom,
folly. That is Carnival, personified by the people as a riotous old
red-cheeked, bottle-nosed hunchback, animated by the spirit of fun.

In a still closer sense, Carnival is the Carnival in the Corso, or was;
for it is dead beyond resuscitation, and such efforts as are made to
give it life again are but foolish incantations that call up sad ghosts
of joy, spiritless and witless. But within living memory, it was v