On the Ides of March, at the festival of Anna Perenna, a deity explained as representing "the ring of the year," whose cult is not recognised in the ancient religious calendar, the lower population came out of the city, and lay about all day in the Campus Martius, near the Tiber. Ovid, fortunately, took the trouble to describe the scene in the third book of his Fasti, as he had witnessed it himself. Some of them, he says, lay in the open, some constructed tents, and some made rude huts of stakes and branches, stretching their togas over them to make a shelter.
plebs venit ac virides passim disiecta per herbas potat, et accumbit cum pare quisque sua. sub Iove pars durat, pauci tentoria ponunt, sunt quibus e ramis frondea facta casa est, pars, ubi pro rigidis calamos statuere columnis, desuper extentas imposuere togas. quot sumant cyathos, ad numerumque bibunt.[993]
It appears also from Ovid's account that there was much drunkenness and obscene language; this was, in fact, a festa very different in character from those of the Numan calendar; and that there was a magical element in the cult of the deity seems proved by the mysterious allusion to "virgineus cruor" in connection with her grove not far from this scene of revelry, in Martial iv. 64. 17 (cp. Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 78, and Columella x. 558). Tibullus describes something of the same kind at a rustic festival,[994] though he does not make it clear what time of year he is speaking of; a few lines before he had mentioned the drinking and leaping over the fire at the Parilia, the shepherd's festival in April, though I cannot feel sure that the following lines are also meant to refer to it:—
tunc operata deo pubes discumbet in herba, arboris antiquae qua levis umbra cadit, aut e veste sua tendent umbracula sertis vincta, coronatus stabit et ipse calix.
Here it is too much to suppose that the umbracula were contrived to make up for the want of shade in a country so covered with woodland as Italy was then; and the words "sertis vincta" show that there was some special meaning in the practice. I think we may guess that in both instances the extemporised huts had some forgotten religious meaning. Yet another passage of Tibullus, which also describes a rural festival, alludes to a similar custom.[995] I have given reasons in the Classical Review for thinking that this was a summer festival, accompanied as it was, like many midsummer rites all over Europe, by bonfires and revelry, though the usual interpretation ascribes it to the winter.[996]
tunc nitidus plenis confisus rusticus agris ingeret ardenti grandia ligna foco, turbaque vernarum, saturi bona signa coloni, ludet et ex virgis exstruet ante casas.
The slaves can here hardly be playing at building houses of twigs, like the children in Horace's Satire,[997] unless we are to suppose that Tibullus is thinking of slave children only, which is indeed possible; but even if that were so, how are we to account for the popularity of this curious form of sport?
There was, however, at Rome a public summer festival, included in the calendar, in which we find this same custom. At the Neptunalia, on July 23, huts or booths were erected, made of the foliage of trees. "Umbrae vocantur Neptunalibus casae frondeae pro tabernaculis," says Festus[998] (following Verrius Flaccus), where the last word is one in regular use for military tents. This is the only thing that is told us about this festival, and we may assume that even this would not have come down to us if it had not been a survival rigidly adhered to, i.e. the construction of shelters from the foliage of trees, instead of using tents, which could easily have been procured in the city. As the festival was in the hot month of July, we might suppose that shelter from the sun was the real object here; but we do not hear of it at other summer festivals, and the parallel practices I shall now mention make the rationalising explanation very doubtful. It is unlucky that we know hardly anything about the older and un-Graecised Neptunus, and nothing about his festival except this one fact; the comparative method is here our only hope.
The Jewish feast of tabernacles will, of course, occur at once to every one; this was in the heat of the summer, and the booths were here, as at the Neptunalia, made of the branches of trees;[999] the explanation given to the Israelites was not that they were thus to shelter themselves from the heat, but to be reminded of their homeless wanderings in the wilderness, plainly an aetiological account, as in the case of the passover. There are distinct examples in Greece of the same practice, e.g. the σκιἁδεϛ at the Spartan Carneia,[1000] and tents (σκηναἱ) in several cases, as at the mysteries of Andania, where the peculiar regulations for the construction of the tents points to a ritualistic origin almost unmistakably.[1001] But perhaps the most striking parallel is to be found in the famous letter of Gregory the Great, preserved by Bede, about the British converts to Christianity, who were to be allowed to use their heathen temples as churches:
"Et quia boves solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere, debet iis etiam hac in re aliqua solemnitas immutari: ut die dedicationis, vel natalicii sanctorum martyrum quorum illic reliquiae ponuntur, tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias quae ex fanis commutatae sunt, de ramis arborum faciant, et religiosis conviviis sollemnitatem celebrent: nec diabolo iam animalia immolent, et ad laudem Dei in esu suo animalia occident," etc.[1002]