MENSIS OCTOBER.
In the Italy of historical times, the one agricultural feature of this month was the vintage. The rustic calendars mark this with the single word vindemiae[[1024]]. The vintage might begin during the last few days of September, but October was its natural time, though it is now somewhat earlier: this point is clear both from Varro and Pliny[[1025]]. But the old calendars have preserved hardly a trace of this; and in fact the only feast which we can in any way connect with wine making (the Meditrinalia on the 11th) is obscure in name and its ritual unknown to us. We may infer that the practice of viticulture was a comparatively late introduction; and this is borne out by such facts as the absence of wine in the ritual of the Latin festival[[1026]], and the words of a lex regia (ascribed to Numa) which forbade wine to be sprinkled on a funeral pile[[1027]]. Pliny also expressed a decided opinion that viticulture was multo serior: and lately Hehn[[1028]] has traced it to the Italian Greeks on etymological grounds. It can hardly have become a common occupation in Latium before the seventh or possibly even the eighth century B.C.
Probably if Ovid had continued his Fasti to the end of the year we might have learnt much of interest about this month: as it is, we have only scraps of information about a very few primitive rites, only one of which can be said to be known to us in any detail; and the interpretation of that one is extremely doubtful.