SATURN[O] AD FO[RUM]. (AMIT.)
FERIAE SERVORUM. (SILV.)
This was the original day of the Saturnalia[[1172]], and, in a strictly religious sense, it was the only day. The festival, in the sense of a popular holiday, was extended by common usage to as much as seven days[[1173]]: Augustus limited it to three in respect of legal business, and the three were later increased to five[[1174]].
Probably no Roman festival is so well known to the general reader as this, which has left its traces and found its parallels in great numbers of mediaeval and modern customs[[1175]], occurring about the time of the winter solstice. Unfortunately, it is here once more a matter of difficulty to determine what features in the festival were really of old Latin origin, in spite of information as to detail, which is unusually full; for both Saturnus himself and his cult came to be very heavily overlaid with Greek ideas and practice.
That Saturnus was an old agricultural god admits, however, of no doubt; the old form of the word was probably Săĕturnus, which is found on an inscription on an ancient vase[[1176]], and this leads us to connect him with serere and satio; and popular tradition attributed to him the discovery of agricultural processes[[1177]]. But the Roman of the historical age knew very little about him, and cared only for his Graecized festival; like Faunus, he is the object of no votive inscriptions in Rome and its neighbourhood[[1178]]; and this conclusively proves that he was never what may be called popular as a deity. As the first king of Latium there were plenty of legends about him, or as the first civilizer of his people, the representative of a Golden Age[[1179]]; but no one has as yet thoroughly investigated these[[1180]], with a view to distinguish any Italian precipitate in the mixture of elements of which they certainly consist. We are still without the invaluable aid of the contributors to Roscher’s Lexicon.
More promising at first sight is the tradition which connects him in Rome itself with the Capitoline hill. Varro tells us positively that this hill was originally called Mons Saturnius; and that there was once an oppidum there called Saturnia, of which certain vestiges survived to his own time, including a ‘fanum Saturni in faucibus,’ i. e. apparently the ara Saturni of which Dionysius records that it was at the ‘root of the hill,’ by the road leading to the summit[[1181]], in fact on the same spot where stood later the temple of which eight columns are still standing. Close to this, it may be noted, was a sacellum of Dis Pater[[1182]], the Latinized form of Plutus; in the temple was the aerarium of later Rome[[1183]], and built into the rock behind, the chambers of records (tabularia). But it would be idle to found upon these facts or traditions any serious hypothesis as to the original nature of the Roman cult of Saturn; all attempts must fail in the bewildering fog of ancient fancy and ancient learning. Saturnus belongs, like Janus, with whom he was closely connected in legend[[1184]], to an age into whose religious ideas we cannot penetrate, and survived into Roman worship only through Greek resuscitation[[1185]], and in the feast of the Saturnalia. All we seem to see is that he is somehow connected with things that are put in the earth[[1186]]—seed, treasure, perhaps stores of produce; to which may just be added that the one spot in Rome at all times associated with him is close to the market, and that market-days (nundinae) were said to be sacred to him[[1187]]. The temple of Janus is also close by, and it is not impossible that both these ancient gods had some closer relation to the Forum and the business done there than we can at present understand with our limited knowledge. Neither of them, it may be noted, had a flamen attached to his cult; from which we may infer that they did not descend from the primitive household or the earliest form of community, but rather represented some place or process common to several communities, such as a forum and the business transacted there[[1188]]. It is precisely such gods who figure in tradition as kings, not of a single city, but of Latium.
But to turn to the festival; if the god was obscure and uninteresting, this was not the case with his feast. It seems steadily to have gained in popularity down to the time of the empire, and still maintained it when Macrobius wrote the dialogue supposed to have taken place on the three days of the Saturnalia, and called by that name. Seneca tells us that in his day all Rome seemed to go mad on this holiday[[1189]]. Probably its vogue was largely due merely to the accident of fashion, partly perhaps to misty ideas about the Golden Age and the reign of Saturn[[1190]]; but it seems to be almost a general human instinct to rest and enjoy oneself about the time of the winter solstice, and to show one’s good-will towards all one’s neighbours[[1191]]. In Latium, as elsewhere, this was the time when the autumn sowing had come to an end, and when all farm-labourers could enjoy a rest[[1192]]. Macrobius alludes also to the completion of all in-gathering by this date: ‘Itaque omni iam fetu agrorum coacto ab hominibus hos deos (Saturnus and Ops) coli quasi vitae cultioris auctores[[1193]].’ The close concurrence of Consualia, Opalia, and Saturnalia at this time seems to show that some final inspection of the harvest work of the autumn may in reality have been coincident with, or have immediately preceded, the rejoicings of the winter solstice.
There are several well-attested features of the Saturnalia as it was in historical times[[1194]]. On Dec. 17 there was a public sacrifice at the temple (formerly the ara) of Saturn by the Forum[[1195]], followed by a public feast, in breaking up from which the feasters shouted ‘Io Saturnalia’[[1196]]. During the sacrifice Senators and Equites wore the toga, but laid it aside for the convivium, which reminds us of the ritual of the Fratres Arvales, except that the toga was in the latter case the praetexta[[1197]]. These proceedings of the first and original day of the festival might seem pretty clearly to descend from the religion of the farm, yet the convivium is said by Livy to have been introduced as late as 217 B.C.[[1198]].
On the 18th and 19th, which were general holidays, the day began with an early bath[[1199]]; then followed the family sacrifice of a sucking pig, to which Horace alludes in familiar lines:
Cras genium mero