[205] "Routine is the only safeguard of a people under a perfect autocracy" (_Select Charters_, Introduction, p. 19).
[206] The annalists believed that the publication first took place in the year 304 B.C.: Livy ix. 46. Mommsen (_Chronologie_, p. 31) thought it possible that it had already been done by the Decemvirs in one of the two last of the XII. Tables, but again withdrawn. The object of keeping the Fasti secret was, of course, to control the times available for legal and political business.
[207] This paragraph is abridged from a passage in the author's paper in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 848.
[208] See _Anthropology and the Classics_ (Oxford, 1908), p. 44.
[210] Wissowa holds that it dates from the third century B.C.: Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "Argei." I endeavoured to refute this view in the _Classical Review_ for 1902, p. 115 foll., and Dr. Wissowa criticised my criticism in his _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 222. It is dealt with at length in _R.F._ p. 111 foll. See below, p. 321 foll.
[211] This is not exactly the view expressed in _R.F._ p. 315 foll., where I was inclined to adopt that of Mannhardt that the laughing symbolised the return to life after sacrificial death. I am now disposed to think of it as parallel with the ecstasy of the Pythoness and other inspired priests, or the shivering and convulsive movements which denote that a human being is "possessed" by a god or spirit. See Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 174. Mannhardt's view seems, however, to gain support from Pausanias' description of the ordeal he underwent himself at the cave of Trophonius, after which he could laugh again: Paus. ix. 39. See also Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 580. Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 501.
[212] _R.F._ p. 109; Ov. _Fasti_, v. 421 foll. Ovid's account is of a private rite in the house, as elsewhere he tells us of things done by private persons on festival days. We do not know whether there was any public ritual for these days. For further discussion of the contrast between the two festivals of the dead, see below, Lect. XVII. p. 393.
[213] _G.B._ iii. 138 foll. The attempt to connect the so-called Saturnalia of the army of the Danube in the third century A.D. with the early practice of Roman Saturnalia seems to me to fail entirely, even after reading Prof. Cumont's paper in the _Revue de philologie_, 1897, p. 133 foll. I should imagine that Cumont would now admit that the Saturn who was sacrificed on the Danube as described in the _Martyrdom of St. Dasius_ must have been of Oriental origin, and that the soldiers concerned were in no sense Roman or Italian. For the hellenisation of the Saturnalia, see Wissowa in Roscher's _Lexicon_, _s.v._ "Saturnus," p. 432. Wissowa, I may note, does not believe in the accuracy of the account of the "Martyrdom."