it is a state festival, our information is
solely of rites in individual households.

[8] Their mention in sepulchral inscriptions dates from the time of the
Empire, when a new conception of their nature had sprung up.

CHAPTER VI

WORSHIP OF THE FIELDS

The life of the early Roman in the fields, his activities, his hopes
and fears, are reflected in the long list of agricultural festivals
which constitute the greater part of the celebrations in the Calendar,
and follow closely the seasons and occupations of the agricultural
year. We are, of course, in the Calendar dealing, to speak strictly,
with the worship of the state, and not with the semi-private festivals
of groups of farmers, but in many instances, such as the Robigalia, the
state seems only to have taken over the cult of the farmers, preserving
carefully the site on which the celebration took place; in others, such
as the Terminalia and the Parilia, it seems to have established, as it
were, a state-counterpart of a rite performed independently at many
rustic centres: in both cases we are justified in inferring the
practice of the early Roman agriculturalist. We shall see that in most
cases these festivals are associated--though often loosely
enough--with the worship of a particular divinity. Sometimes,
however,--as in the case of the Lupercalia--it is very difficult to
discover who this divinity was; in other festivals, such as the
Robigalia, it looks as if the eponymous deity was a comparatively late
development. We may, therefore, suppose, on the analogy of what we have
already seen to be the general lines of development in Roman religion,
that the festivals in origin centred round a purpose rather than a
personality, and were addressed 'to all spirits whom it might concern';
and that later, when the _deus_ notion was on the increase, they either
attached themselves to some god whose personality was already distinct,
as the Vinalia were attached to Iuppiter, or 'developed' a deity of
their own. Among these deities, strictly functional as a rule and
existing only in connection with their special festival, we shall
notice the frequent recurrence of a divinity pair, not, of course,
mythologically related as husband and wife, but representing, perhaps,
the male and female aspects of the same process of development.

The festivals divide themselves naturally into three groups: those of
Spring, expressive of the hopes and fears for the growing crops and