obably was adored
originally as the goddess of spells and of song and only inferentially
as protectress of births.

Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival
of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber,
Vesta and the Penates (-Vestalia-, June 9); the festival of the
goddess of birth(2) (-Matralia-, June 11); the festival of the
blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (-Liberalia-,
March 17), the festival of departed spirits (-Feralia-, February
21), and the three days' ghost-celebration (-Lemuria- May 9,
11, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the
two--otherwise to us somewhat obscure--festivals of the king's
flight (-Regifugium-, February 24) and of the people's flight
(-Poplifugia-, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted
to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (-Agonia- or
-Septimontium-, December 11). A special day (-agonia-, January
9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning. The real
nature of some other days--that of Furrina (July 25), and that
of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a
feast of the Lares (December 23)--is no longer known.

This table is complete for the immoveable public festivals;
and--although by the side of these standing festal days there
certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional
festivals--this document, in what it says as well as in what it
omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise
almost wholly lost to us. The union of the Old Roman community and
the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of
festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars;
but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple
was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent; nor was
the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine; nor was any notion of
worship borrowed from the Greeks.

Mars and Jupiter

The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally
in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the
peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars,
the killing god,(3) preeminently regarded as the divine champion
of the burgesses, hurling the spear, protecting the flock,
and overthrowing the foe. Each community of course possessed its
own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all;
and accordi