The latter is perhaps the more probable conjecture; for the little that we know of the cult elsewhere points to a possible origin of the games which has not, so far as I know, been noticed. They took place, be it remembered, in the Circus Flaminius, which was in the Campus Martius; where also was this cult of Feronia. Now the most famous shrine of Feronia in Italy, that of Trebula Mutusca, was the centre of a great fair or market held on the feast-days of the goddess[[1103]], and on the whole her attributes seem to be those of a deity of fertility and plenty[[1104]]. Is it impossible that she had also some share in a fair in the Campus Martius long before the establishment of the ludi?
The connexion of Feronia with the plebs seems suggested not only by her position in the calendar, but by the devotion of libertini[[1105]]. In the year 217 B.C. the Roman freedwomen collected a sum of money as a gift to Feronia[[1106]]; though this offering need not be taken as destined for the Roman goddess, but rather for her of Soracte, to whom first-fruits and other gifts were frequently offered. The temple of Feronia at Terracina was specially devoted to the manumission of slaves, of which the process, as described by Servius, presents at least one feature of special interest[[1107]]. Manumissions would take place on public occasions, such as markets, when the necessary authorities and witnesses were to be easily found, and the temple of the market-goddess was at hand; and this may be the original point of relation between this cult and the Roman plebs, which was beyond doubt by the third century B.C. largely composed of descendants of manumitted slaves.
The conjunction of Feronia on this day with Fortuna Primigenia (in colle) is curious, as both were goddesses of Praeneste, where Feronia in legend was the mother of Erulus, a daemon with threefold body and soul, who had to be killed three times by Evander[[1108]]. The date of the introduction of this cult of Fortuna at Rome is 204 B.C.[[1109]]
MENSIS DECEMBER
In the middle of winter, until well on in January, the Roman husbandman had comparatively little to do. Varro[[1110]] writes of sowing lilies, crocuses, &c., and of cleaning out ditches and pruning vines, and such light operations of the farm. Columella[[1111]] tells us that the autumn sowing should be ended by the beginning of December, though some sow beans in this month; and in this he agrees with the rustic calendars which mention, besides this operation, only the manuring of vineyards and the gathering of olives.
It is not unnatural, then, that we should find in this ‘slack time’[[1112]] several festivals which are at once antique and obscure, and almost all of which seem to carry us back to husbandry and the primitive ideas of a country life. On the night of the 3rd or thereabouts was the women’s sacrifice to the Bona Dea; on the 5th the rustic Faunalia in some parts of Italy, though probably not in Rome; on the 15th the winter Consualia; on the 17th the Saturnalia; and on the 19th the Opalia; and so on to the Compitalia and Paganalia. All this is in curious contrast with the absence of festivals in the busy month of November.
Women’s Sacrifice to the Bona Dea.
This fell, in the year 63 B.C., on the night between Dec. 3 and 4, if we may trust Plutarch and Dio[[1113]]; but the date does not seem to have been a fixed one[[1114]]. The rite does not appear in the calendars, and, though attended by the Vestals, did not take place in the temple of the goddess, but in the house of a consul or praetor, ‘in ea domo quae est in imperio[[1115]].’ It seems to have been in some sense a State sacrifice, i. e. it was ‘pro populo Romano’ (according to Cicero); but it was not ‘publico sumptu’[[1116]], and it was never woven into the calendar by the pontifices, or it could hardly have occurred between the Kalends and the Nones. Its very nature would exclude the interference of the pontifical college, and there would be no need to give public notice of it.
The character of the goddess and her rites have already been discussed under May 1. All that need be said of the December sacrifice is that it was clearly a survival from the time when the wife of the chief of the community—himself its priest—together with her daughters (represented in later times by the Vestals), and the other matrons, made sacrifice of a young pig or pigs[[1117]] to the deity of fertility, from all share in which men were rigorously excluded. It must have been originally a perfectly decorous rite, and so have continued to the famous sacrilege of Clodius; it was only under the empire that it became the scene of such orgies as Juvenal describes in his second and sixth satires[[1118]].