The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. W. Warde Fowler

must conjecturally be placed still further back. Perhaps no festival, Greek or Roman, carries us over such a vast period of time as this; its features betray its origin in the pastoral age, and it continued in almost uninterrupted grandeur till the end of the third century A.D., or even later^[352].

      The ritual as known to us was as follows^[353]. When the magistrates or (their deputies) of all the Latin cities taking part had assembled at the temple, the Roman consul offered a libation of milk, while the deputies from the other cities brought sheep, cheeses, or other such offerings. But the characteristic rite was the slaughter of a pure white heifer that had never felt the yoke. This sacrifice was the duty of the consul, who acted on behalf of the whole number of cities. When it was concluded, the flesh of the victim was divided amongst all the deputies and consumed by them. To be left out of this common meal, or sacrament, would be equivalent to being excluded from communion with the god and the Latin league, and the desire to obtain the allotted flesh is more than once alluded to^[354]. A general festivity followed the sacrifice, while oscilla, or little puppets, were hung from the branches of trees as at the Paganalia^[355]. As usual in Italy, the least oversight in the ceremony or evil omen made it necessary to begin it all over again; and this occasionally happened^[356]. Lastly, during the festival there was a truce between all the cities, and it would seem that the alliance between Rome and the Latins was yearly renewed on the day of the Feriae^[357].

      Some of the leading characteristics of the Italian Jupiter will be considered further on^[358]. But this festival may teach us that we are here in the presence of the oldest and finest religious conception of the Latin race, which yearly acknowledges its common kinship of blood and seals it by partaking in the common meal of a sacred victim, thus entering into communion with the god, the victim, and each other^[359]. The offerings are characteristic rather of a pastoral than an agricultural age, and suggest an antiquity that is fully confirmed by the ancient utensils dug up on the Alban Mount^[360]. As Helbig has pointed out, the absence of any mention of wine proves that the origin of the festival must be dated earlier than the introduction of the grape into Italy. The white victim may be a reminiscence of some primitive white breed of cattle. The common meal of the victim’s flesh is a survival from the age when cattle were sacred animals, and were never slain except on the solemn annual occasions when the clan renewed its kinship and its mutual obligations by a solemn sacrament^[361].

      As Rome absorbed Latium, so Jupiter Latiaris gave way before the great god of the Capitol, who is the symbol of the later victorious and imperial Rome; but the god of the Alban hill and his yearly festival continued to recall the early share of the Latins in the rise of their leading city, long after the population of their towns had been so terribly thinned that some of them could hardly find a surviving member to represent them at the festival and take their portion of the victim^[362].