The name of the last month of the old Roman year is derived from the word _februum_, usually understood as an instrument of purification[1331]. This word, and its derivatives were, as we shall see, best known in connexion with the Lupercalia, the most prominent of the festivals of the month. Now the ritual of the Lupercalia seems to suggest that our word ‘purification’ does not cover all the ground occupied by the ‘religio’ of that festival; nor does it precisely suit some of the other rites of February. We are indeed here on difficult and dangerous ground. Certainly we must not assume that there was any general lustration of the whole people, or any period corresponding in religious intent to the Christian Lent, which in time only is descended from the Roman February. Assuredly there were no such ideas as penitence or forgiveness of sins involved in the ritual of the month. Let so much be said for the benefit of those who are only acquainted with Jewish or Christian history. What at least is certain is that at this time the character of the festivals changes. Since the middle of December we have had a series of joyful gatherings of an agricultural people in homestead, market-place, cross-roads; now we find them fulfilling their duties to their dead ancestors at the common necropolis, or engaged in a mysterious piacular rite under the walls of the oldest Rome. The Parentalia and the Lupercalia are the characteristic rites of February; we shall see later on whether any of the others can be brought into the same category. If pleasure is the object of the mid-winter festivals, the fulfilment of duties towards the gods and the _manes_ would seem to be that of the succeeding period. From an agricultural point of view February was a somewhat busy month; but in the time of Varro the work was chiefly the preparatory operations in the culture of olives, vines and fruit-trees[1332]. The one great operation in the oldest and simplest agricultural system was the spring sowing. Spring was understood to begin on Feb. 7 (Favonius)[1333], and it is precisely at this point that the rites change their character. We are in fact close upon the new year, when the powers of vegetation awake and put on strength; but the Romans approached it as it were with hesitation, preparing for it carefully by steady devotion to work and duty, the whole community endeavouring to place itself in a proper position toward the _numina_ of the land’s fertility, and the dead reposing in the land’s embrace. Before taking the rites one by one, it will perhaps be as well to say a word in general about the nature of Roman expiatory rites, in order to determine in what sense we are to understand those of February.