They Had Their Festi And
Profesti, Their Feriae Stativae, And Conceptivae, Their Fixed And
Moveable Feasts; Their Esuriales, Or Fasting Days, And Their
Precidaneae, Or Vigils.
The agonales were celebrated in January;
the carmentales, in January and February; the lupercales and
matronales, in March; the megalesia in April; the floralia, in
May; and the matralia in June.
They had their saturnalia,
robigalia, venalia, vertumnalia, fornacalia, palilia, and
laralia, their latinae, their paganales, their sementinae, their
compitales, and their imperativae; such as the novemdalia,
instituted by the senate, on account of a supposed shower of
stones. Besides, every private family had a number of feriae,
kept either by way of rejoicing for some benefit, or mourning for
some calamity. Every time it thundered, the day was kept holy.
Every ninth day was a holiday, thence called nundinae quasi
novendinae. There was the dies denominalis, which was the fourth
of the kalends; nones and ides of every month, over and above the
anniversary of every great defeat which the republic had
sustained, particularly the dies alliensis, or fifteenth of the
kalends of December, on which the Romans were totally defeated by
the Gauls and Veientes; as Lucan says - et damnata diu Romanis
allia fastis, and Allia in Rome's Calendar condemn'd. The vast
variety of their deities, said to amount to thirty thousand, with
their respective rites of adoration, could not fail to introduce
such a number of ceremonies, shews, sacrifices, lustrations, and
public processions, as must have employed the people almost
constantly from one end of the year to the other.
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