A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities

by William Smith

FĒRĬAE, holidays, were, generally speaking, days or seasons during which free-born Romans suspended their political transactions and their law-suits, and during which slaves enjoyed a cessation from labour. All feriae were thus dies nefasti. The feriae included all days consecrated to any deity; consequently all days on which public festivals were celebrated were feriae or dies feriati. But some of them, such as the feria vindemialis, and the feriae aestivae, seem to have had no direct connection with the worship of the gods. The nundinae, however, during the time of the kings and the early period of the republic, were feriae only for the populus, and days of business for the plebeians, until, by the Hortensian law, they became fasti or days of business for both orders. All feriae publicae, i.e. those which were observed by the whole nation, were divided into feriae stativae, feriae conceptivae, and feriae imperativae. Feriae stativae or statae were those which were held regularly, and on certain days marked in the calendar. To these belonged some of the great festivals, such as the Agonalia, Carmentalia, Lupercalia, &c. Feriae conceptivae or conceptae were held every year, but not on certain or fixed days, the time being every year appointed by the magistrates or priests. Among these we may mention the feriae Latinae, feriae Sementivae, Paganalia, and Compitalia. Feriae imperativae were those which were held on certain emergencies at the command of the consuls, praetors, or of a dictator. The manner in which all public feriae were kept bears great analogy to the observance of our Sunday. The people visited the temples of the gods, and offered up their prayers and sacrifices. The most serious and solemn seem to have been the feriae imperativae, but all the others were generally attended with rejoicings and feasting. All kinds of business, especially law-suits, were suspended during the public feriae, as they were considered to pollute the sacred season. The most important of the holidays designated by the name of feriae, are the Feriae Latinae, or simply Latinae (the original name was Latiar), which were said to have been instituted by the last Tarquin in commemoration of the alliance between the Romans and Latins. This festival, however, was of much higher antiquity; it was a panegyris, or a festival, of the whole Latin nation, celebrated on the Alban mount; and all that the last Tarquin did was to convert the original Latin festival into a Roman one, and to make it the means of hallowing and cementing the alliance between the two nations. Before the union, the chief magistrate of the Latins had presided at the festival; but Tarquin now assumed this distinction, which subsequently, after the destruction of the Latin commonwealth, remained with the chief magistrates of Rome. The object of this panegyris on the Alban mount was the worship of Jupiter Latiaris, and, at least as long as the Latin republic existed, to deliberate and decide on matters of the confederacy, and to settle any disputes which might have arisen among its members. As the feriae Latinae belonged to the conceptivae, the time of their celebration greatly depended on the state of affairs at Rome, since the consuls were never allowed to take the field until they had held the Latinae. This festival was a great engine in the hands of the magistrates, who had to appoint the time of its celebration (concipere, edicere, or indicere Latinas); as it might often suit their purpose either to hold the festival at a particular time or to delay it, in order to prevent or delay such public proceedings as seemed injurious and pernicious, and to promote others to which they were favourably disposed. The festival lasted six days.

FESCENNINA, scil. carmina, one of the earliest kinds of Italian poetry, which consisted of rude and jocose verses, or rather dialogues of extempore verses, in which the merry country folks assailed and ridiculed one another. This amusement seems originally to have been peculiar to country people, but it was also introduced into the towns of Italy and at Rome, where we find it mentioned as one of those in which young people indulged at weddings.

FĒTĬĀLES or FĒCĬĀLES, a college of Roman priests, who acted as the guardians of the public faith. It was their province, when any dispute arose with a foreign state, to demand satisfaction, to determine the circumstances under which hostilities might be commenced, to perform the various religious rites attendant on the solemn declaration of war, and to preside at the formal ratification of peace. When an injury had been received from a foreign state, four fetiales were deputed to seek redress, who again elected one of their number to act as their representative. This individual was styled the pater patratus populi Romani. A fillet of white wool was bound round his head, together with a wreath of sacred herbs gathered within the inclosure of the Capitoline hill (Verbenae; Sagmina), whence he was sometimes named Verbenarius. Thus equipped, he proceeded to the confines of the offending tribe, where he halted, and addressed a prayer to Jupiter, calling the god to witness, with heavy imprecations, that his complaints were well founded and his demands reasonable. He then crossed the border, and the same form was repeated in nearly the same words to the first native of the soil whom he might chance to meet; again a third time to the sentinel or any citizen whom he encountered at the gate of the chief town; and a fourth time to the magistrates in the forum in presence of the people. If a satisfactory answer was not returned within thirty days, after publicly delivering a solemn denunciation of what might be expected to follow, he returned to Rome, and, accompanied by the rest of the fetiales, made a report of his mission to the senate. If the people, as well as the senate, decided for war, the pater patratus again set forth to the border of the hostile territory, and launched a spear tipped with iron, or charred at the extremity and smeared with blood (emblematic doubtless of fire and slaughter), across the boundary, pronouncing at the same time a solemn declaration of war. The demand for redress, and the proclamation of hostilities, were alike termed clarigatio. The whole system is said to have been borrowed from the Aequicolae or the Ardeates, and similar usages undoubtedly prevailed among the Latin states. The number of the fetiales cannot be ascertained with certainty, but they were probably twenty. They were originally selected from the most noble families, and their office lasted for life.

FĪBŬLA (περόνη, πόρπη), a brooch or buckle, consisting of a pin (acus), and of a curved portion furnished with a hook (κλείς).

Fibulae, brooches or buckles. (British Museum.)

FICTĬLE (κεράμος, κεράμιον, ὄστρακον, ὀστράκινον), earthenware, a vessel or other article made of baked clay. The instruments used in pottery (ars figulina) were the following:—1. The wheel (τροχός, orbis, rota, rota figularis). 2. Pieces of wood or bone, which the potter (κεραμεύς, figulus) held in his right hand, and applied occasionally to the surface of the clay during its revolution. 3. Moulds (formae, τύποι), used either to decorate with figures in relief vessels which had been thrown on the wheel, or to produce foliage, animals, or any other appearances, on Antefixa, on cornices of terra cotta, and imitative or ornamental pottery of all other kinds, in which the wheel was not adapted to give the first shape. 4. Gravers or scalpels, used by skilful modellers in giving to figures of all kinds a more perfect finish and a higher relief than could be produced by the use of moulds. The earth used for making pottery (κεράμικη γῆ), was commonly red, and often of so lively a colour as to resemble coral. Other pottery is brown or cream-coloured, and sometimes white. Some of the ancient earthenware is throughout its substance black, an effect produced by mixing the earth with comminuted asphaltum (gagates), or with some other bituminous or oleaginous substance. It appears also that asphaltum, with pitch and tar, both mineral and vegetable, was used to cover the surface like a varnish. The best pottery was manufactured at Athens, in the island of Samos, and in Etruria. A quarter of Athens was called Cerameicus, because it was inhabited by potters. Vessels, before being sent for the last time to the furnace, were sometimes immersed in that finely prepared mud, now technically called “slip,” by which the surface is both smoothed and glazed, and at the same time receives a fresh colour. Ruddle, or red ochre (μίλτος, rubrica), was principally employed for this purpose. To produce a further variety in the paintings upon vases the artists employed a few brightly coloured earths and metallic ores. [[Pictura].]

FĬDEICOMMISSUM may be defined to be a testamentary disposition, by which a person who gives a thing to another imposes on him the obligation of transferring it to a third person. The obligation was not created by words of legal binding force (civilia verba), but by words of request (precativè), such as fideicommitto, peto, volo dari, and the like; which were the operative words (verba utilia).

FĪDŪCĬA. If a man transferred his property to another, on condition that it should be restored to him, this contract was called Fiducia, and the person to whom the property was so transferred was said fiduciam accipere. The trustee was bound to discharge his trust by restoring the thing: if he did not, he was liable to an actio fiduciae or fiduciaria, which was an actio bonae fidei. If the trustee was condemned in the action, the consequence was infamia.

FISCUS, the imperial treasury. Under the republic the public treasury was called Aerarium. [[Aerarium].] On the establishment of the imperial power, there was a division of the provinces between the senate, as the representative of the old republic, and the Caesar or emperor; and there was consequently a division of the most important branches of public income and expenditure. The property of the senate retained the name of Aerarium, and that of the Caesar, as such, received the name of Fiscus. The private property of the Caesar (res privata principis, ratio Caesaris) was quite distinct from that of the fiscus. The word fiscus signified a wicker-basket, or pannier, in which the Romans were accustomed to keep and carry about large sums of money; and hence fiscus came to signify any person’s treasure or money chest. The importance of the imperial fiscus soon led to the practice of appropriating the name to that property which the Caesar claimed as Caesar, and the word fiscus, without any adjunct, was used in this sense. Ultimately the word came to signify generally the property of the state, the Caesar having concentrated in himself all the sovereign power, and thus the word fiscus finally had the same signification as aerarium in the republican period. Various officers, as Procuratores, Advocati, Patroni, and Praefecti, were employed in the administration of the fiscus.