Cui tu lacte favos et miti dilue Baccho,
Terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges,
Omnis quam chorus et socii comitentur ovantes,
Et Cererem clamore vocent in tecta; neque ante
Falcem maturis quisquam supponat aristis,
Quam Cereri torta redimitus tempora quercu
Det motus inconpositos et carmina dicat[[496]].
It is not clear to what festival or festivals Virgil is alluding in the first few of these lines[[497]]; probably to certain rustic rites which did not exactly correspond to those in the city of Rome. But from line 343 onwards the reference is certainly to Ambarvalia of some kind, perhaps to the private lustratio of the farmer before harvest began, of which the Roman festival was a magnified copy. His description answers closely to the well-known directions of Cato[[498]]; and if it is Ceres who appears in Virgil’s lines, and not Mars, the deity most prominent in Cato’s account, this may be explained by the undoubted extension of the worship of Ceres, and the corresponding contraction of that of Mars, as the latter became more and more converted into a god of war[[499]].
The leading feature in the original rite was the procession of victims—bull, sheep, and pig—all round the fields, driven by a garlanded crowd, carrying olive branches and chanting. These victims represent all the farmer’s most valuable stock, thus devoted to the appeasing of the god. The time was that when the crops were ripening, and were in greatest peril from storms and diseases; before the harvest was begun, and before the Vestalia took place in the early part of June, which was, as we shall see, a festival preliminary to harvest. Three times the procession went round the land; at the end of the third round the victims were sacrificed, and a solemn prayer was offered in antique language, which ran, in Cato’s formula of the farmer’s lustration, as follows: ‘Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee to be willing and propitious to me, my household, and my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land. I pray thee keep, avert, and turn from us all disease, seen or unseen, all desolation, ruin, damage, and unseasonable influence; I pray thee give increase to the fruits, the corn, the vines, and the plantations, and bring them to a prosperous issue. Keep also in safety the shepherds and their flocks, and give good health and vigour to me, my house, and household. To this end it is, as I have said—namely, for the purification and making due lustration of my farm, my land cultivated and uncultivated—that I pray thee to bless this threefold sacrifice of sucklings. O Father Mars, to this same end I pray thee bless this threefold sacrifice of sucklings[[500]].’
Not only in this prayer, but in the ritual that follows, as also in other religious directions given in the preceding chapters, we may no doubt see examples of the oldest agricultural type of the genuine Italian worship. They are simple rustic specimens of the same type as the elaborate urban ritual of Iguvium, fortunately preserved to us[[501]]; and we may fairly assume that they stood in much the same relation to the Roman ritual of the Ambarvalia.