[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." [214] Nothing, that is, in the regular ritual of the Roman State--except in so far as the killing of a criminal who was _sacer_ to a god can be so regarded; and the only instance of any kind that can be quoted is that of the two pairs of Gaulish and Greek men and women who in the stress of the second Punic war and afterwards were buried alive, as it was said, in the Forum Boarium. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 355 and notes. I shall return to this in Lecture XIV. [215] The earliest mention of the slaying of a victim (_bestiarius_) to Jupiter is in Minucius Felix, _Octav._ 22 and 30, _i.e._ towards the end of the second century A.D. or even later. Cp. Tertull. _Apol._ 9, Lactantius i. 21. I do not go so far as to say with Wissowa (p. 109, note 3) that this story is "ganz gewiss apokryph," but I take it as simply a case of degeneracy under the influence of the amphitheatre and of Orientalism. [216] For Numa see Schwegler, _Rom. Gesch._ i. 551 foll. [217] See Dr. Frazer's most recent account of this subject, in his _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, chaps, iii.-v. Prof. Ridgeway's idea that the Flamen Dialis was really a Numan institution is of course simply impossible, and the arguments he founds on it fall to the ground. Ovid, probably reflecting Varro, speaks of the Flamen Dialis as belonging to the Pelasgian religion, which at least means that he was aware of the extreme antiquity of the office; _Fasti_, ii. 281. Dr. Doellinger (_The Gentile and the Jew_, vol. ii. p. 72) with his usual insight was inclined to see in this Flamen the "ruins of an older system of ceremonial ordinances."