On such occasions a child would be taken by his parent to see the show, though he would not be allowed a seat (_non sedens propter aetatem_),[662] and at festivals such as those of St. Just he would enjoy a game of ball or dice.[663] A calendar of about the middle of the fourth century would, Jullian[664] supposes, taking the evidence of Ausonius’s poem ‘de Feriis’, the calendar of Philocalus, and the Christian writers, show about eighty-nine holidays, of which he considers six doubtful. In the meantime Christian festivals were increasingly claiming recognition. Already in 321 we find Constantine prohibiting the exercise of certain trades on Sunday,[665] and in 389 the Biblical conception of Sunday is definitely recognized[666] (_solis die quem dominicum rite dixere maiores_) and a general cessation of business is enjoined. In the same year the pagan festivals were cut down; only the summer and autumn festivals (described, even in the law, with the usual literary diffuseness of the time), the New Year holidays, and the foundation-days of Rome and Constantinople were to remain.[667] On the other hand, shows on Sunday were forbidden, ‘so that the sacred rites enjoined by the Christian law should not be disturbed by any gathering of shows’[668] (A.D. 392), and at Easter the business of the forum and of the law courts[669] was suspended. In theory, therefore, there was a decrease in pagan and an increase in Christian holidays. In practice, however, pagan festivals long persisted,[670] and it is significant of the tenacity of paganism that the Lupercalia was celebrated in the fifth century. Very often the church kept the old festivals, merely changing their meaning.[671] There can be no doubt that the pagan festivals were observed as school holidays: the references in Horace and his contemporaries and the Roman conception of _festus_, _fastus_, _feriae_, as indicating solemnity and reverence,[672] point to this conclusion. Such was evidently the case in the fourth-century Italian schools, for Augustine waits to resign his professorship until the holidays of the ‘Vindemia’.[673] Of the Christian festivals it is harder to judge, especially after the revival of paganism under Julian at the beginning of our period. But it is probable that while the earlier laws (e.g. those of Constantine) had no widespread effect on the schools, the increasing emphasis laid on Christian festivals, passing through the fourth and fifth centuries into the Germanic period of Gaul, must have meant the recognition of Sundays and such festivals as Easter in the school curriculum. Besides the public festivals there was the long vacation, lasting from the end of July till the beginning of October.[674] At Antioch, similarly, classes were taken only in the winter and in the spring,[675] the vacation lasting from midsummer till the beginning of winter. When the vacation came, the Antioch rhetors used to go in for public speeches and imperial panegyrics.[676]