By Water & Blood

Book 1, Chapter 16: Classification of Days and Festivals

"But because the order has led us to a recollection of days, a few things must also be said about this which the inquiry of our Horus contains. Numa distributed each month into days as he did the year into months, and called all days either festival or working or divided. Festival days are dedicated to the gods; working days are granted to humans for administering private and public business; divided days are common to gods and humans. In festival days there are sacrifices, banquets, games, holidays; in working days, court days, assembly days, adjournment days, fixed days, battle days. Divided days are divided in themselves, not into other kinds: for on those days in certain hours it is lawful, in certain it is not lawful, to pronounce law. For when the victim is being slain it is unholy to speak; between the cutting and the offering it is permitted to speak; again when it is being burned it is not permitted. Therefore a fuller discussion must be made of the division of festival and working days.

A sacred celebration exists either when sacrifices are offered to the gods, or when a day is celebrated with divine banquets, or when games are held in honor of the gods, or when holidays are observed. But of public holidays there are four kinds. For they are either fixed, or movable, or commanded, or market-days. And fixed holidays are common to the whole people on certain and established days and months and noted in the Fasti with fixed observances, among which especially are kept the Agonalia, Carmentalia, Lupercalia. Movable are those which every year are conceived by magistrates or by priests for days either certain or even uncertain, as are the Latin holidays, the Sowing holidays, the Paganalia, the Compitalia. Commanded are those which consuls or praetors proclaim according to the judgment of their power. Market-days are those of villagers and likewise of country people, on which they gather to provide for their own business or for merchandise. There are besides holidays proper to families, as of the Claudian or Aemilian or Julian or Cornelian family, and if any family observes proper holidays from the custom of domestic celebration. There are those of individuals, as the receptions of birthdays and of lightning-strikes, likewise of funerals and expiations. Among the ancients also whoever had named Salus, Semonia, Seia, Segetia, Tutilina observed holidays; likewise the flaminica, whenever she had heard thunder, was under holiday until she had propitiated the gods.

But the priests affirmed that holidays were polluted if any work was done when they had been proclaimed and conceived. Besides, it was not permitted for the king of sacred rites and the flamens to see work being done on holidays, and therefore they announced through a herald that nothing of the kind should be done, and one negligent of the precept was fined. Besides the fine, indeed, it was affirmed that he who had imprudently done something on such days ought to give a pig as expiation. Scaevola the pontiff asserted that a prudent offender could not expiate; but Umbro denies that he is polluted who had done work pertaining to the gods or for the sake of sacred rites, or had done something looking to an urgent utility of life. Scaevola finally, when consulted as to what it was permitted to do on holidays, answered: that which if omitted would do harm. Wherefore if an ox had fallen into a pit and the head of the household, employing workmen, had freed it, he was not seen to have polluted the holidays, nor he who by propping a broken beam of the roof had saved it from impending ruin. Whence also Maro, skilled in all disciplines, knowing that a sheep is washed either for the sake of cleansing the wool or of curing the scab, pronounced that then a sheep might be plunged through the holidays if this were done for the sake of a remedy: 'and to plunge the bleating flock in a healthful stream.' For by adding 'healthful' he showed that it was conceded only for the sake of averting disease, not also for profit for the sake of cleansing wool.

These things concerning festival days and those that arise from them, which are also called forbidden days; now we shall speak of working days and those that proceed from them, that is court days, assembly days, adjournment days, fixed days, battle days. Court days are those on which it is permitted for the praetor to speak the three solemn words, 'I give, I say, I adjudge'; their contraries are forbidden days. Assembly days are those on which it is permitted to deal with the people; and on court days indeed one may proceed by law, but not with the people; on assembly days one may do both; adjournment days are those on which it is permitted to set bail; fixed days are those instituted for the sake of a trial with a foreigner, as Plautus in the Curculio: if a fixed appointed day with a stranger (hostis) has intervened. 'Stranger' now by ancient custom signifies 'foreigner.' Battle days I would not separate from just days, since just days are the continuous thirty days in which, when an army has been commanded, a banner of red color has been placed on the citadel; but battle days are all those on which it is lawful to demand restitution or to challenge an enemy. For when the Latiar, that is the solemnity of the Latin holidays, is conceived, likewise on the days of the Saturnalia, and also when the mundus is open, it is unholy to begin battle—because neither at the time of the Latin holidays, in which once publicly a truce between the Roman people and the Latins was confirmed, was it fitting that war be begun, nor on the festival of Saturn, who is believed to have ruled without any warlike tumult, nor when the mundus is open, which sacred rite is dedicated to Father Dis and Proserpina, and they thought it better to go to battle with the jaws of Pluto closed. Whence also Varro writes thus: 'When the mundus is open, the door as it were of the gloomy and underworld gods is open. Therefore not only to join battle, but even to hold a levy for military cause and for a soldier to set out, to loose a ship, to take a wife for the sake of seeking children, is a matter of religion.'

The ancients also avoided for summoning men even days that were marked by adverse events; they avoided holidays also, as Varro writes in the books of the augurs in these words: 'It is not proper to summon men on holidays: if he has summoned, let there be an expiation.' Yet it must be known that the Romans then had license of choosing a day for fighting if they themselves were bringing war. But when they were receiving it, no day stood in the way to prevent them from defending either their own safety or public dignity. For what place is there for observation when the faculty of choosing does not remain?

But the days following the Kalends, Nones, or Ides our ancestors thought to be avoided for all things, which they also condemned as black by an unlucky appellation. Yet some have called the same common, as if for the emendation of the name. Gellius in the fifteenth book of his Annals and Cassius Hemina in the second book of his Histories relate their cause. In the three hundred and sixty-third year from the founding of the city it was treated in the senate by the military tribunes Vergilius, Mallius, Aemilius, Postumius and their colleagues, what it was on account of which so often within a few years the state had been badly afflicted; and by precept of the fathers Aquinius the haruspex, ordered to come into the senate for the sake of inquiring into religions, said that Quintus Sulpicius the military tribune, about to fight at the Allia against the Gauls, had made a divine offering for the sake of fighting on the day after the Ides of Quintilis; likewise at the Cremera, and at many other times and places after a sacrifice celebrated on the following day the conflict had turned out badly. Then the fathers ordered that report be made to the college of pontiffs concerning these religions, and the pontiffs established that all the days after the Kalends, Nones, Ides were to be held as black days, so that these days should be neither battle days nor pure nor assembly days. But also Fabius Maximus Servilianus the pontiff in his twelfth book denies that it is proper to make parental offerings on a black day, because then also it is necessary to preface with Janus and Jupiter, whom it is not proper to name on a black day. Many also avoid the fourth day before the Kalends or Nones or Ides as an ill-omened day. Whether any religion of this observance has been handed down is accustomed to be asked, but we have found nothing written about this matter except that Quintus Claudius in the fifth book of his Annals relates that that most vast disaster of the battle of Cannae was done on the fourth day before the Nones of Sextilis.

Varro notes that for military matters indeed it makes no difference whether a day is a court day or a forbidden day, but that this looks only to private actions. But that I called the market-days holidays can be disputed, because Titius writing on holidays did not reckon the days of the market-days among holidays but called them only solemn; and because Julius Modestus affirms that when Messala the augur consulted the pontiffs whether the days of the Roman market-days and of the Nones were held by holidays, they answered that the market-days did not seem to them to be holidays; and because Trebatius in the first book of his Religions says that on market-days a magistrate can manumit and adjudge trials. But on the contrary Julius Caesar in the sixteenth book of his Auspices denies that an assembly can be called on market-days, that is that one can deal with the people, and therefore that assemblies of the Romans cannot be held on market-days. Cornelius Labeo also in the first book of his Fasti pronounces that market-days are holidays. But the cause of this variation the diligent reader will find in Granius Licinianus in his second book. For he says that market-days are holidays of Jupiter, since the flaminica on all market-days is accustomed to sacrifice a ram to Jupiter in the Regia; but by the Hortensian law it was effected that they be court days, so that country people, who came into the city for the sake of marketing, might settle lawsuits. For on a forbidden day it was not permitted for the praetor to speak. Therefore those who call them holidays are vindicated from falsehood by the patronage of antiquity; those who think otherwise bring forth what is true by the estimate of the age which followed the law.

Some assign the origin of these to Romulus, whom they relate, when the kingdom had been shared with Titus Tatius and sacrifices and sodalities instituted, also added market-days, as Tuditanus affirms. But Cassius says that Servius Tullius made the market-days, that they might gather into the city from the fields to arrange urban and rustic affairs. Geminus says that the day of the market-days began to be celebrated after the kings had already been driven out, because many of the plebs, recalling the memory of Servius Tullius, made parental offerings to him on market-days. With which matter Varro also agrees. Rutilius writes that the Romans instituted market-days so that for eight days indeed country people might do work in the fields, but on the ninth day, the countryside having been interrupted, they might come to Rome for market and for receiving laws, and that decrees and resolutions might be referred to a more frequent people, which proposed on a day of three market-periods were easily known by individuals and by all. Whence also the custom was drawn that laws be promulgated on a day of three market-periods. For this reason also it was the practice for candidates to come into the Comitium on market-days and to stand on a hill whence they could be seen by all in person. But all these things began to be held more negligently and afterward were abolished, after they began to be present in crowds even on the days between market-days on account of the multitude of the plebs.

There is also Nundina a goddess of the Romans, named from the ninth day of those being born, which is called the day of purification. But the day of purification is that on which infants are purified and receive a name; but for males it is the ninth, for females the eighth.

Fully, as I judge, with the constitution of the year and months digested, our Horus also has what he consulted about concerning the names and observance of days. And I should indeed like to know whether there is anything at which the shrewd Nile-born and inhabitant of a people powerful in numbers may mock from this order of the Roman dispensation, or whether he agrees that the Etruscan Tiber too has drawn something from its own disciplines."

Eustathius added: "Not only our Horus, a serious and accomplished man, but neither could anyone else, as I judge, be of so futile a judgment as not to approve the order of the Roman year so filed to the nail, as they say; to which the tenacious memory and lucid speech of the narrator has added greater gratitude. Nor is it wonderful if this arrangement has escaped the bite of censure, to which the authority of the final correction was fetched from Egypt. For Julius Caesar, as he drew the motions of the stars, concerning which he left not unlearned books, from Egyptian disciplines, so also borrowed this from the same institution: that he extended the time of finishing the year according to the course of the sun. But the ancient inhabitants of Latium, because it was not then permitted to learn anything from Egypt, to which no passage lay open for them, followed the custom of Greece in numbering the days of the months, so that the reckoning, resolved by a number yielding backward from increase into diminution, might end. For thus we say the tenth day, then the ninth and afterward the eighth, as the Athenians have been accustomed to say the tenth and ninth of the waning. Homer also when he says 'of the month waning, and of that rising,' what else does he say except that that is waning whose reckoning gradually failing ends in the name of the one to follow, and that rising which precedes the number about to succeed the former as it goes into defect? Which also your Mantuan Homer, understanding that that is said to stand to which approach is made, says 'his own day stands for each,' calling the last day standing, as it were that to which through all one goes. The same poet, noble alike in learning and modesty, knowing that the ancient Romans arranged the seasons of the year according to the course of the moon and those following according to the sun, preserving reverence for the opinion of either age, says: 'You also who lead the year gliding in the sky, Liber and kindly Ceres,' designating by this invocation both the moon and the sun as leaders of the year."