Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/217

 CHAP. VII. THE EKLIGIOX OF THE CITY". 211 even to the nurse of Romulus, and Evander's mother. In the s'lme way Athens had the festival of Cecrops, that of Erechtheus, that of Theseus; and it celebrated each of the heroes of the country, the guardian of Theseus, and Eurystheus, and Androgeus, and a mul- titude of others. There were also the rural festivals, those for plough- ing, seed-time, the time for flowering, and that for the vintage. In Greece, as in Italy, every act of the hus- bandman's life was accompanied with sacrifices, and men performed their work reciting sacred hymns. At Rome the priests fixed, every year, the day on which the vintage was to commence, and the day on which the new wine might be drunk. Everything was regu- lated by religion. A religious ordinance required the vines to be pruned ; for it told man that it would be- impious to offer a libation with the wine of an unpruned vine.' Every city had a festival for each of the divinities which it had adopted as a protector, and it often counted many of them. When the worship of a new divitiity was introduced into the city, it was necessary to find a. new day in the year to consecrate to him. AVhat char- acterized the religious festivals was the interdiction of labor, the obligation to be joyous, the songs, and the public games. The Athenian religion added, Take care to do each other no wrong on those days.* The calendar was nothing more than the order of the religious festivals. It was regulated, therefore, by the priests. At Rome it was long before the calendar was reduced to writing; the first day of the month, the ' Varro, VI. 16. Virgil, Georg., I. 340-350. Pliny, XVIII.- Festus, V. Vinalia, Plutarch, Rom. Quest., 40; Numa, 14. ' A law of Solon, cited by Demosthenes, in Timocrat.