This is not the place to investigate the difficult question of what the _curiae_ really were. So much at least is clear, that while, like the montes, pagi, and sacella (argea), they were divisions of the people and the land, they were more important than the others, in that they formed the basis of the earliest political and military organization[1349]. It need hardly be said that each curia had also itself a religious organization: their places of assembly, though not temples, were quasi-religious buildings[1350], used for sacred purposes, but furnished with hearth and eating-room like an ordinary house[1351]. We hear also of tables (mensae, τράπεσαι) ‘in quibus immolabatur Iunoni quae Curis appellata est[1352].’ There is no need to assume any etymological connexion between Cŭris and Cūria[1353]; but the cult of the goddess of the spear is interesting here, as seeming at once to illustrate the military importance of the curiae, the power of the paterfamilias[1354], and the necessity of continuing the family through the fertility of woman, an idea which we shall come upon again at the Lupercalia[1355]. Lastly, each curia had its own curio, or religious superintendent, and its own flamen, and at the head of all the curiae was the Curio Maximus; officers who coincide with the general character of the curiae in being (like the heads of families) not strictly priests, but capable of religious duties, for the performance of which they are said to have been instituted[1356]. The ritual of the Fornacalia has been evolved with difficulty, and without much certainty, from a few passages in Ovid, Dionysius, Varro, Festus, and Pliny[1357]. We seem to see—1. An offering in each private house in each curia: it consisted of _far_, i. e. meal of the oldest kind of Italian wheat, roasted in antique fashion in the oven which was to be found in the _pistrina_ of each house, and made into cakes by crushing in the manner still common in India and elsewhere[1358]. 2. A rite in which each curia took part as a whole. This is deduced from the fact that on the 17th (Quirinalia) any one who by forgetfulness or ignorance had omitted to perform his sacra on the day fixed by the curio for the meeting of his own curia, might do so then at a general assembly of all the thirty curiae[1359]. This was the reason why the Quirinalia was called ‘stultorum feriae.’ It has also been conjectured that the bounds of each curia were beaten on this day, on which its members thus met: for Pliny says ‘Numa et Fornacalia instituit farris torrendi ferias _et aeque religiosas terminis agrorum_[1360].’ 3. What happened on the Quirinalia Ovid shall tell us himself[1361]: