What at least is certain is that at this time the character of the festivals changes. Since the middle of December we have had a series of joyful gatherings of an agricultural people in homestead, market-place, cross-roads; now we find them fulfilling their duties to their dead ancestors at the common necropolis, or engaged in a mysterious piacular rite under the walls of the oldest Rome. The Parentalia and the Lupercalia are the characteristic rites of February; we shall see later on whether any of the others can be brought into the same category. If pleasure is the object of the mid-winter festivals, the fulfilment of duties towards the gods and the manes would seem to be that of the succeeding period.
From an agricultural point of view February was a somewhat busy month; but in the time of Varro the work was chiefly the preparatory operations in the culture of olives, vines and fruit-trees[[1332]]. The one great operation in the oldest and simplest agricultural system was the spring sowing. Spring was understood to begin on Feb. 7 (Favonius)[[1333]], and it is precisely at this point that the rites change their character. We are in fact close upon the new year, when the powers of vegetation awake and put on strength; but the Romans approached it as it were with hesitation, preparing for it carefully by steady devotion to work and duty, the whole community endeavouring to place itself in a proper position toward the numina of the land’s fertility, and the dead reposing in the land’s embrace.
Before taking the rites one by one, it will perhaps be as well to say a word in general about the nature of Roman expiatory rites, in order to determine in what sense we are to understand those of February.
The first point to notice is that these rites were applicable only to involuntary acts of commission or omission—an offence against the gods (nefas) if wittingly committed, was inexpiable. In this case the offender was impius, i. e. had wilfully failed in his duty; and him no rites could absolve[[1334]]. But by ordinary offences against the gods we are not to understand sin, in the Christian sense of the word; they were rather mistakes in ritual, or involuntary omissions—in fact any real or supposed or possible errors in any of a man’s relations to the numina around him. He might always be putting himself in the wrong in regard to these relations, and he must as sedulously endeavour to right himself. In the life of the ‘privatus’ these trespasses in sacred law would chiefly be in matters of marriages and funerals and the regular sacrifices of the household; in the life of the magistrate they would be mistakes or omissions in his duties on behalf of the State[[1335]]. Whether in private or public life, they must be duly expiated. It is needless to point out how powerful a factor this belief must have been in the growth of a conscience and of the sense of duty; or how stringent a ‘religio’ was that which, assuming that a man could hardly commit an offence except unwittingly, made the possible exceptional case fatal to his position as a member of a community which depended for its wholesome existence on the good will of the gods.
Remembering that among the divine beings to whom it was most essential for each family to fulfil its duties, were the di manes, or dead ancestors and members of the family, we see at once that February with its Parentalia was an important month in the matter of expiatory rites. Ovid, though suggesting a fancy derivation for the name of the month, expresses this idea clearly enough:
Aut quia placatis sunt tempora pura sepulcris
Tum cum ferales praeteriere dies[[1336]].
But the other etymology given by the poet is, as we have seen, the right one, and may bring us to another class of piacula, of which we find an example this month in the Lupercalia.
Mensis ab his dictus, secta quia pelle Luperci
Omne solum lustrant, idque piamen habent[[1337]].