The stone was deposited in the temple of Victory on the Palatine on April 4[208]. The day was made a festival; though no Roman festival occurs between the Kalends and Nones of any month, the rule apparently did not hold good in the case of a foreign worship[209]. Great care was taken to keep up the foreign character of the cult. The name of the festival was a Greek one (Megalesia), as Cicero remarked[210]; all Romans were forbidden by a senatus consultum to take any part in the service of the goddess[211]. The temple dedicated thirteen years later on April 10[212] seems to have been frequented by the nobilitas only, and the custom of giving dinner-parties on April 4, which is well attested, was confined to the upper classes[213], while the plebs waited for its festivities till the ensuing Cerealia. The later and more extravagant developments of the cult did not come in until the Empire[214]. The story told by Livy of the introduction of the goddess is an interesting episode in Roman history. It illustrates the far-reaching policy of the Senate in enlisting Eastern kings, religions, and oracles in the service of the state at a critical time, and also the curious readiness of the Roman people to believe in the efficacy of cults utterly foreign to their own religious practices. At the same time it shows how careful the government was then, as always, to keep such cults under strict supervision. But the long stress of the Hannibalic War had its natural effect on the Italian peoples; and less than twenty years later the introduction of the Bacchic orgies forced the senate to strain every nerve to counteract a serious danger to the national religion and morality. XVII KAL. MAI. (APRIL 15). NP. FORD[ICIDIA][215]. (CAER. MAFF. VAT. PRAEN.) This is beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in the Roman religion. It consisted in the slaughter of pregnant cows (_hordae_ or _fordae_), one in the Capitol and one in each of the thirty _curiae_[216]; i. e. one for the state and the rest for each of its ancient divisions. This was the first festival of the _curiae_; the other, the _Fornacalia_, will be treated of under February 17. The cows were offered, as all authorities agree, to Tellus[217], who, as we shall see, may be an indigitation of the same earth power represented by Ceres, Bona Dea, Dea Dia, and other female deities. The unborn calves were torn by attendants of the virgo vestalis maxima from the womb of the mother and burnt[218], and their ashes were kept by the Vestals for use at the Parilia a few days later[219]. This was the first ceremony in the year in which the Vestals took an active part, and it was the first of a series of acts all of which are connected with the fruits of the earth, their growth, ripening and harvesting. The object of burning the unborn calves seems to have been to procure the fertility of the corn now growing in the womb of mother earth, to whom the sacrifice was offered[220].