Forte revertebar festis Vestalibus illa Qua nova Romano nunc via iuncta foro est. Huc pede matronam vidi descendere nudo: Obstipui tacitus sustinuique gradum. The object of this was perhaps to pray for a blessing on the household. On plain and old-fashioned ware offerings of food were carried into the temple: the Vestals themselves offered the sacred cakes made of the first ears of corn plucked, as we saw, in the early days of May[608]; bakers and millers kept holiday, all mills were garlanded, and donkeys decorated with wreaths and cakes[609]. Ecce coronatis panis dependet asellis Et velant scabras florida serta molas. On June 15 the temple (aedes, not templum) was swept and the refuse taken away and either thrown into the Tiber or deposited in some particular spot[610]. Then the _dies nefasti_ came to an end; and the 15th itself became _fastus_ as soon as the last act of cleansing had been duly performed: ‘Quando stercus delatum fas.’ In this account of the ritual of these days, two features claim special attention: (1) the duties of the Vestals in connexion with the provision of food; (2) the fact that the days were _religiosi_, as is illustrated by the prohibition of marriage and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis. That these two features were in some way connected seems proved by the cessation of the mourning when the penus Vestae was once more closed. 1. It needs but little investigation to discover that, though the germ of the cult was doubtless the perpetual fire in the king’s house, the cult itself was by no means confined to attendance on the fire; and this was so probably from the very first. The king’s daughters fetched the water from the spring, both for sacred and domestic purposes; and this duty was kept up throughout Roman history, for water was never ‘laid on’ to the house of the Vestals, but carried from a sacred fountain[611]. They also crushed the corn with pestle and mortar, and prepared the cakes for the use of the family—duties which survived in all their pristine simplicity in the preparation of the _mola salsa_ in the early days of May[612]; and they swept the house, as the Vestals afterwards continued to cleanse the penus Vestae, on June 15. The penus, or store-closet of the house, was under their charge; on the state of its contents the family depended for its comfort and prosperity, and from the very outset it must have had a kind of sacred character[613]. The close connexion of Vesta and her ministrants with the simple materials and processes of the house and the farm is thus quite plain; and we may trace it in every rite in which they took any part. The Fordicidia and the Parilia in April were directly concerned with the flocks and herds of the community; in May the festival of the Bona Dea and the mysterious ceremony of the Argei point to the season of peril during the ripening of the crops.