In A.D. 303, when the persecution under Diocletian began, one Dasius, a Christian soldier, in Lower Mœsia, is said to have been the victim whom the soldiers yearly chose for the mock-king of a _month_, not a week, the Saturn of the occasion. Why a month, if the ancient feast lasted but a day, and, later, but a week? After being a merry monarch for thirty days, he should have cut his own throat at the altar of Saturn (_Κρόνος_, in the Greek MSS.).[63] Dasius declined the crown and was knocked on the head, on November 20, by a soldier, apparently a christened man, named John. The Saturnalia at Rome lasted (at least under the Empire) from December 16 to December 23. Dasius must have been executed for his refusal, announced before his _month's_ reign (only a week is elsewhere known) should have begun--on November 23; if the regnal month ended on December 23. Thus the festive Saturnalian kings at Rome may be guessed to descend from a custom, at Rome unknown, but surviving among the soldiers, of killing a mock-king Saturnus. Dasius was no slave or criminal, but himself a soldier. The revels of a month, in place of a day or a week, must also, one presumes, be a survival, though a day was the early limit. The date of the MSS. about Dasius Mr. Frazer does not give, but he thinks that the longest MS. is 'probably based on official documents.' To the MSS. I shall return. The grotesque figure of Carnival, destroyed at the end of a modern Roman feast which does not fall in December, is also a survival of a slain mock-king 'who personated Saturn,' so Mr. Frazer suggests, though in ancient Rome even this carnival practice is to us unknown.[64] It will already have been observed that even if the Romans were, in some remote age, wont yearly to sacrifice a mock-king who represented a god, they did not do so at Easter, as in the case of Christ, did not do so in spring, and did not scourge the victim. Their rite, if it really corresponded to that of the soldiers who slew Dasius, began in November, and ended in December, lasting thirty days, or, _teste Macrobio_, originally lasting one day. If the slaying of Dasius really occurred, and was a survival of a custom once prevalent (as in ancient Anahuac), then the early Saturnalia lasted for a month, from November 23 to December 23; but Roman antiquaries knew nothing of this. The month date is remote indeed from Easter, so Mr. Frazer must try to show that originally the Saturnalia were a spring festival, like carnival.