I have drawn attention to the change in the character of the festivals at this season. But before we go on to the Parentalia and Lupercalia, which chiefly mark this change, we have to consider one festival which seems to belong rather to the class which we found in December and January. This was the Fornacalia, or feast of ovens; one which does not appear in the calendars, as it was a moveable feast (conceptivae); and one which was a sacrum publicum only in the sense of being pro curiis, as the Paganalia were pro pagis, the Septimontium pro montibus, and the Argean rite pro sacellis[[1346]]. Each curia conducted its own rites, under the supervision of its curio and (for the last day) of the Curio Maximus[[1347]]: the great priests of the State had no official part in it. In this it differs in some degree from the Fordicidia (April 15), the other feast of the curiae, which appears in three of our calendars, and in which the Pontifices and Vestals took some part[[1348]].
This is not the place to investigate the difficult question of what the curiae really were. So much at least is clear, that while, like the montes, pagi, and sacella (argea), they were divisions of the people and the land, they were more important than the others, in that they formed the basis of the earliest political and military organization[[1349]]. It need hardly be said that each curia had also itself a religious organization: their places of assembly, though not temples, were quasi-religious buildings[[1350]], used for sacred purposes, but furnished with hearth and eating-room like an ordinary house[[1351]]. We hear also of tables (mensae, τράπεσαι) ‘in quibus immolabatur Iunoni quae Curis appellata est[[1352]].’ There is no need to assume any etymological connexion between Cŭris and Cūria[[1353]]; but the cult of the goddess of the spear is interesting here, as seeming at once to illustrate the military importance of the curiae, the power of the paterfamilias[[1354]], and the necessity of continuing the family through the fertility of woman, an idea which we shall come upon again at the Lupercalia[[1355]]. Lastly, each curia had its own curio, or religious superintendent, and its own flamen, and at the head of all the curiae was the Curio Maximus; officers who coincide with the general character of the curiae in being (like the heads of families) not strictly priests, but capable of religious duties, for the performance of which they are said to have been instituted[[1356]].
The ritual of the Fornacalia has been evolved with difficulty, and without much certainty, from a few passages in Ovid, Dionysius, Varro, Festus, and Pliny[[1357]]. We seem to see—1. An offering in each private house in each curia: it consisted of far, i. e. meal of the oldest kind of Italian wheat, roasted in antique fashion in the oven which was to be found in the pistrina of each house, and made into cakes by crushing in the manner still common in India and elsewhere[[1358]]. 2. A rite in which each curia took part as a whole. This is deduced from the fact that on the 17th (Quirinalia) any one who by forgetfulness or ignorance had omitted to perform his sacra on the day fixed by the curio for the meeting of his own curia, might do so then at a general assembly of all the thirty curiae[[1359]]. This was the reason why the Quirinalia was called ‘stultorum feriae.’ It has also been conjectured that the bounds of each curia were beaten on this day, on which its members thus met: for Pliny says ‘Numa et Fornacalia instituit farris torrendi ferias et aeque religiosas terminis agrorum[[1360]].’ 3. What happened on the Quirinalia Ovid shall tell us himself[[1361]]:
Curio legitimis nunc Fornacalia verbis
Maximus indicit, nec stata sacra facit;
Inque foro, multa circum pendente tabella,
Signatur certa curia quaeque nota:
Stultaque pars populi, quae sit sua curia, nescit,
Sed facit extrema sacra relata die.
It should be noted that no certain connexion can be made out between Quirinus and curia, and I imagine it was only accident or convenience that made this day the last of the Fornacalia[[1362]]. Ovid’s words ‘nec stata sacra facit’ seem to me to imply that the Curio Maximus carefully abstained from using a formula of announcement likely to confuse the ‘stultorum feriae’ with the Quirinalia, which was always on the same day. But it may well have been the case that by usage the two coincided.