Some of the leading characteristics of the Italian Jupiter will be considered further on[358]. But this festival may teach us that we are here in the presence of the oldest and finest religious conception of the Latin race, which yearly acknowledges its common kinship of blood and seals it by partaking in the common meal of a sacred victim, thus entering into communion with the god, the victim, and each other[359]. The offerings are characteristic rather of a pastoral than an agricultural age, and suggest an antiquity that is fully confirmed by the ancient utensils dug up on the Alban Mount[360]. As Helbig has pointed out, the absence of any mention of wine proves that the origin of the festival must be dated earlier than the introduction of the grape into Italy. The white victim may be a reminiscence of some primitive white breed of cattle. The common meal of the victim’s flesh is a survival from the age when cattle were sacred animals, and were never slain except on the solemn annual occasions when the clan renewed its kinship and its mutual obligations by a solemn sacrament[361].
As Rome absorbed Latium, so Jupiter Latiaris gave way before the great god of the Capitol, who is the symbol of the later victorious and imperial Rome; but the god of the Alban hill and his yearly festival continued to recall the early share of the Latins in the rise of their leading city, long after the population of their towns had been so terribly thinned that some of them could hardly find a surviving member to represent them at the festival and take their portion of the victim[362].
Varro, _L. L._ 6. 33; Censorinus, 2. 20. Verrius Flaccus in the heading to April in Fasti Praen.: ... ‘quia fruges flores animaliaque et maria et terrae aperiuntur.’ Mommsen, _Chron._ 222. Ovid quaintly forsakes the scholars to claim the month for Venus (Aphrodite), _Fasti_, 4. 61 foll. I do not know why Mr. Granger should call it the boar-month (from _aper_), in his _Worship of the Romans_, p. 294.
_Segetes runcuri_, Varro, _R. R._ I. 30. Columella’s instructions are of the same kind (II. 2).
February has thirteen, all but two between Kal. and Ides. The Nones and Ides are NP. April has thirteen between Nones and 22nd; or fourteen if we include the 19th, which is NP in Caer. The Ides are NP, Nones N.