Poscamus ventos, atque haec me sacra quotannis
Urbe velit posita templis sibi ferre dicatis.
The true meaning of these lines is, as Henry quaintly puts it[[1377]], ‘Let us try if we cannot kill two birds with one stone, and not only pay my sire the honours due to him, but at the same time help ourselves forward on our journey by getting him to give us fair winds for our voyage.’
As we have seen, the dies parentales began on the 13th; from that day till the 21st all temples were closed, marriages were forbidden, and magistrates appeared without their insignia[[1378]]. On the 22nd was the family festival of the Caristia, or cara cognatio: the date of its origin is unknown, but Ovid[[1379]] writes of it as well established in his time, and it may be very much older. He describes it as a reunion of the living members of the family after they have paid their duties to the dead:
Scilicet a tumulis et qui periere, propinquis
Protinus ad vivos ora referre iuvat;
Postque tot amissos quicquid de sanguine restat,
Aspicere, et generis dinumerare gradus.
It was a kind of love-feast of the family, and gives a momentary glimpse of the gentler side of Roman family life. All quarrels were to be forgotten[[1380]] in a general harmony: no guilty or cruel member may be present[[1381]]. The centre of the worship was the Lares of the family, who were ‘incincti,’ and shared in the sacred meal[[1382]].
We might naturally expect that, especially in Italy—so tenacious of old ideas and superstitions—we should find some survival of primitive folk-lore, even in the midst of this highly organized civic cult of the dead. Ovid supplies us with a curious contrast to the ethical beauty of the Caristia, in describing the spells which an old woman works, apparently on the day of the Feralia[[1383]]. ‘An old hag sitting among the girls performs rites to Tacita: with three fingers she places three bits of incense at the entrance of a mouse-hole. Muttering a spell, she weaves woollen threads on a web of dark colour, and mumbles seven black beans in her mouth. Then she takes a fish, the maena, smears its head with pitch, sews its mouth up, drops wine upon it, and roasts it before the fire: the rest of the wine she drinks with the girls. Now, quoth she, we have bound the mouth of the enemy: