pment; in other words, its witness to the religious experience of
the Romans proves that they had successfully adjusted the forms and
seasons of their worship to the processes of government at home and of
military service in the field. But the most conspicuous feature in it is
the testimony it bears to the agricultural habits of the people--to the
fact that agriculture and not trade, of which there is hardly a trace,
was the economic basis of their life. At the time when it was drawn up,
the Romans must have been able to subsist upon the _ager Romanus_,
though, as we shall see later on, it was probably not long before they
began commercial relations with other peoples; for their food, which was
almost entirely vegetarian, and their clothing, which was entirely of
wool and leather,[199] they depended on their crops, flocks, and herds;
and the perils to which these were liable remain for the State, as for
the farming household, the main subject of the propitiation of the gods,
the main object of their endeavours to keep themselves in right relation
with the Power manifest in the universe.

We can trace the series of agricultural operations in the calendar
without much difficulty all through the year. The Roman year, we must
remember, began with March, and March, as we have seen, had under the
military necessities of the State become peculiarly appropriated to the
religious preparation of the burgher host for warlike activity. But the
festivals of April, when crops were growing, cattle bringing forth young
or seeking summer pasture, all have direct reference to the work of
agriculture.[200] At the Fordicidia, on the 15th, pregnant cows were
sacrificed to the Earth-goddess, and their unborn calves burnt,
apparently with the object of procuring the fertility of the corn; and
the Cerealia on the 19th, to judge by the name, must have had an object
of the same kind, though the supersession of Ceres by the Greek Demeter
had obscured this in historical times. The Parilia on the 19th, recently
illuminated by Dr. Frazer,[201] was a lustration of the cattle and sheep
before they left their winter pasture to encounter the dangers of wilder
hill or woodland, and may be compared with the lustratio of the host
before a campaign. On the 23rd the Vinalia tells its own tale, and shows
that the cultivation of the vine was already a part of the agricultural
work. On the 25th the spirit of the red mildew, Robigus, was the object
of propitiatio