n, at the time when the ear was beginning to be formed in
the corn, and was particularly liable to attack from this pest.

The religious precautions thus taken in April were not renewed in May;
but at the end of that month of ripening the whole of the _ager Romanus_
was lustrated by the Fratres Arvales. This important rite, for some
reason which we cannot be sure of, was a movable feast, left to the
discretion of the brethren, and therefore does not appear in the
calendar. In June the sacred character of the new crops, now approaching
their harvest, becomes apparent; the _penus Vestae_, the symbolic
receptacle of the grain-store of the State, after remaining open from
the 7th to the 15th, was closed on that day for the rest of the year,
after being carefully cleansed: the refuse was religiously deposited in
a particular spot. Thus all was made ready for the reception of the new
grain, which, as is now well known, has a sacred character among
primitive peoples, and must be stored and eaten with precaution.[202]
This was the chief religious work of June; in July, the month when the
harvest was actually going on, the festivals are too obscure to delay
us; they seem to have some reference to water, rain, storms, but it is
not clear to me whether the object was to avert stormy weather during
the cutting of the crops, or, on the other hand, to avert a drought in
the hottest time of the year. The true harvest festivals begin in
August; the Consualia on 21st and Opiconsiva on 25th both seem to
suggest the operation of storing up (_condere_) the grain, and between
them we find the Volcanalia, of which the object was perhaps to
propitiate the fire-spirit at a time when the heat of the sun might be
dangerous to the freshly-gathered crops.

After the crops were once harvested, ploughing and sowing chiefly
occupied the farming community until December; and as these operations
were not accompanied by the same perils which beset the agriculturist in
spring and summer, they have left no trace in the calendar. Special
religious action was not necessary on their behalf. It is not till the
autumn sowing was over, and the workers could rest from their labours,
that we find another set of festivals, of which the centre-point is the
Saturnalia on the 17th, Saturnus being the deity, I think, both of the
operation of sowing and of the sown seed, now reposing in the bosom of
mother earth.[203] A second Consualia on the 15th, and the Opalia on t