[1007]. See above, pp. [69], [84], [90] sq. These customs were observed at Whitsuntide, not on May Day. But the Whitsuntide king and queen are obviously equivalent to the King and Queen of May. Hence I allow myself to use the latter and more familiar titles so as to include the former.
[1008]. Ovid, Fasti, ii. 685 sqq.; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 63; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 323 sq.; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 327 sqq.
[1009]. Another proposed explanation of the regifugium is that the king fled because at the sacrifice he had incurred the guilt of slaying a sacred animal. See W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 328 sqq. The best-known example of such a ritual flight is that of the men who slew the ox at the Athenian festival of the Bouphonia. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, ii. 294. Amongst the Pawnees the four men who assisted at the sacrifice of a girl to Ti-ra’-wa used to run away very fast after the deed was done and wash themselves in the river. See G. B. Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales (New York, 1889), pp. 365 sq. Among the ancient Egyptians the man whose duty it was to slit open a corpse for the purpose of embalming it fled as soon as he had done his part, pursued by all the persons present, who pelted him with stones and cursed him, “turning as it were the pollution on him; for they suppose that any one who violates or wounds or does any harm to the person of a fellow-tribesman is hateful” (Diodorus Siculus, i. 91. 4). Similarly in the western islands of Torres Straits the man whose duty it was to decapitate a corpse for the purpose of preserving the skull was shot at with arrows by the relatives of the deceased as an expiation for the injury he had done to the corpse of their kinsman. See Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 249, 251. This explanation of the regifugium certainly deserves to be considered. But on this as on so many other points of ancient ritual we can hardly hope ever to attain to certainty.
[1010]. F. Cumont, “Les Actes de S. Dasius,” Analecta Bollandiana, xvi. (1897) pp. 5-16. See further Messrs. Parmentier and Cumont, “Le Roi des Saturnales,” Revue de Philologie, xxi. (1897) pp. 143-153; The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 138 sqq. The tomb of St. Dasius, a Christian soldier who was put to death at Durostorum in 303 A.D. after refusing to play the part of Saturn at the festival, has since been discovered at Ancona. A Greek inscription on the tomb records that the martyr’s remains were brought thither from Durostorum. See F. Cumont, “Le Tombeau de S. Dasius de Durostorum,” Analecta Bollandiana, xxvii. (1908) pp. 369-372. Professor A. Erhard of Strasburg, who has been engaged for years in preparing an edition of the Acta Martyrum for the Berlin Corpus of Greek Fathers, informed me in conversation at Cambridge in the summer of 1910 that he ranks the Acts of St. Dasius among the authentic documents of their class. The plain unvarnished narrative bears indeed the stamp of truth on its face.
[1011]. Tacitus, Annals, xiii. 15; Arrian, Epicteti dissert. i. 25. 8; Lucian, Saturnalia, 4.
[1012]. As to these temporary kings see The Golden Bough, Second Edition, ii. 24 sqq.
[1013]. Varro, Rerum rusticarum, iii. 1. 5; Virgil, Aen. viii. 324; Tibullus, i. 3. 35; Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 19. Compare Wissowa, in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iv. 433 sq.
[1014]. On Saturn as the god of sowing and the derivation of his name from a root meaning “to sow,” from which comes satus “sowing,” see Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 64; Festus, s.v. “Opima spolia,” p. 186, ed. C. O. Müller; Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 2, 3. 13, 15; Wissowa, in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iv. 428. The derivation is confirmed by the form Saeturnus which occurs in an inscription (Saeturni pocolom, H. Dessau, Inscript. Latinae selectae, No. 2966). As to the Saturnalia see L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii. 15 sqq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, 2nd Ed., pp. 586 sqq.; Dezobry, Rome au siècle d’Auguste, iii. 143 sqq.; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 268 sqq. The festival was held from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December. I formerly argued that in the old days, when the Roman year began with March instead of with January, the Saturnalia may have been held from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of February, in which case the festival must have immediately preceded the Flight of the King, which fell on February the twenty-fourth. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 144 sqq.; Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 266. But this attempt to bring the ancient Saturnalia into immediate juxtaposition to the King’s Flight breaks down when we observe, as my friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler has pointed out to me, that the Saturnalia fell in December under the Republic, long before Caesar, in his reform of the calendar, had shifted the commencement of the year from March to January. See Livy, xxii. 1. 19 sq.
[1015]. Roman farmers sowed wheat, spelt, and barley in December, flax up to the seventh of that month, and beans up to the eleventh (the festival of Septimontium). See Palladius, De re rustica, xiii. 1. In the lowlands of Sicily at the present day November and December are the months of sowing, but in the highlands August and September. See G. Pitrè, Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano, iii. (Palermo, 1889) pp. 132 sqq. Hence we may suppose that in the Roman Campagna of old the last sowing of autumn was over before the middle of December, when the Saturnalia began.
[1016]. This temporary liberty accorded to slaves was one of the most remarkable features of the Saturnalia and kindred festivals in antiquity. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 139 sqq.