The fact is that, whatever else Anna Perenna may have been, all that we can confidently say of her is that she represented in some way the circle or ring of the year. This is indicated not only by the name, which can hardly be anything but a feminine form of _annus_, but by the time at which her festival took place, the first full moon of the new year. The one legend preserved about her which is of undoubted Italian origin is thought to point in the same direction. Ovid, wishing to explain ‘cur cantent obscena puellae’ in that revel of the ‘plebs’ on the Tiber-bank, tells us[137] how Mars, once in love with Minerva[138], came to Anna and asked her aid. It was at length granted, and Mars had the nuptial couch prepared: thither a bride was led, but not the desired one; it was old Anna with her face veiled like a bride who was playing the passionate god such a trick as we may suppose not uncommon in the rude country life of old Latium. There is no need to be startled at the rude handling of the gods in this story, which seems so unlike the stately and orderly ideas of Roman theology. It must be borne in mind that folk-tales like this need not originally have been applied to the gods at all. They are probably only ancient country stories of human beings, based on some rude marriage custom—stories such as delighted the lower farm folk and slaves on holiday evenings; and they have survived simply because they became in course of time attached to the persons of the gods, as the conception of divinities grew to be more anthropomorphic. Granted that Anna or Perenna[139] was the old woman of the _past_ year, that Mars was the god of the first month, and that the story as applied to human beings was a favourite one, we can easily understand how it came to attach itself to the persons of the gods[140]. Yet another story is told by Ovid of an Anna[141], in writing of whom he does not add the name Perenna. The Plebs had seceded to the Mons Sacer, and were beginning to suffer from starvation, when an old woman from Bovillae, named Anna, came to the rescue with a daily supply of _rustica liba_. This myth seems to me to have grown out of the custom, to be described directly, of old women[142] selling _liba_ on the 17th (Liberalia), the custom having been transferred to that day through an etymological confusion between _liba_ and _Liberalia_. Usener, however, saw here a connexion between Anna and Annona[143]; and recently it has been suggested that a certain Egyptian Anna, who is said by Plutarch to have invented a mould for bread-baking, may have found her way to Rome through Greek channels[144]. XVI KAL. APR. (MARCH 17). NP. LIB[ERALIA]. (MAFF. FARN. RUST.) LIB. AG[ONIA]. LIBERO LIB. (CAER.) AG[ONIA]. (VAT.) LIBERO IN CA[PITOLIO]. (FARN.)