Thus, I think, the Sacæan and Mœsian cases do not explain the meaning of what is a religious rite in Mœsia: a secular custom (as I believe) in Babylon. Again, the differences make it hard to conjecture, with MM. Cumont and Parmentier, that the Mœsian rite was introduced by Oriental soldiers of Rome, accustomed to the Babylonian Sacæa. But to suppose a native Roman survival or recrudescence is also difficult, because Greek and Roman poets, historians, antiquaries, and essayists, all writing on the Saturnalia, know of no such survival. Again, if originally Italian mock-kings were sacrificed yearly in many places, did they die as proxies for real local Italian kings, who would otherwise have been sacrificed? This, as we have seen, is impossible: men would never have accepted the crown on such conditions. Or did they die, like the Mexican victims, as man-gods slain for a real god Saturn? But the Mexican victim was a captive: free men would hardly draw lots for death. There is no trace in Roman folk-custom of any mock slaying of the actual Roman Saturnalian kings of the brawls in each household. The Saturnalia were so remote in Lucian's day from cruelty, that Dickens might have written, as Christmas papers, Lucian's essays and letters on the subject. Universal kindness--the Scrooges feasting the Trotty Vecks of the period--universal giving of presents, and family games of forfeits and of chance (played for nuts) were the features of the Saturnalia. Wine flowed like water; but as to amorous licence at the Saturnalia, we only hear the complaint of the rich that the poor guests make too free with the ladies of the house. The connection of the Saturnalia with Saturn, recognised by the Romans as 'that old savage' the Greek Cronos, may, or may not, have been original. The Saturnalia were not 'saturnine.' Was the theory of a golden age under Saturn not a reflection from the festive period, 'the best day in the year,' says Catullus, which had become associated with the name of Saturn? Our evidence for sacrifice or hanging of a mock-king is so meagre and shadowy (in one case the dubious Dasius legend; in the other what Athenæus cites from Berosus, coupled with what Dio puts into the mouth of Diogenes, and with what Strabo tells about the Sacæa) that the ground will not bear the weight of Mr. Frazer's high-piled, eighteen-storied castle of hypotheses. I do not, even so, absolutely impugn the truth of the two tales of the deaths of mock-kings; the undesigned coincidence of testimony I am willing to take for presumption of truth, though of four ancient witnesses who speak of the Sacæa, only one, Dio, alludes to the crowning, robing, stripping, scourging, and hanging of the mock-king of the festival.[1] I. PERIODS OF LICENCE