The definition given by Porphyrio is ‘Umbras vagantes hominum ante diem mortuorum atque ideo metuendas[414].’ Nonius has the following: ‘Lemures larvae nocturnae et terrificationes imaginum et bestiarum[415].’ From these passages it would seem that _lemures_ and _larvae_ mean much the same thing; on the other hand Appuleius[416] implies that _lemures_ is a general word for spirits after they have left the body, while those that haunt houses are especially called _larvae_. But on a question of this kind, the philosophical and uncritical Appuleius is not to be weighed as an authority against either Nonius or Porphyrio, who may quite possibly be here representing the learning of the Augustan age; and a perusal of the whole of his passage will show that he is simply trying to classify ghosts by the light of his own imagination. Judging from the hints of the two other scholars, we may perhaps conclude that _lemures_ and _larvae_ are to be distinguished as hostile ghosts from _manes_, the good people (as the word is generally explained), i. e. those duly buried in the city of the dead, and whom their living descendants have no need to fear so long as they pay them their due rites at the proper seasons as members of the family. And this conclusion is confirmed by the curious etymology of Ovid[417], reproduced by Porphyrio, deriving Lemuria from Remus. whose violent death was supposed to have been expiated by the institution of the festival. The difficulty is to see why, if the _lemures_ were unburied, evil, or hostile spirits, a special festival of three days should have been necessary to appease or quiet them; and I can only account for this by supposing that such spirits were especially numerous in an age of uncivilized life and constant war and violence, and that they formed a large part of the whole world of evil demons whose expulsion was periodically demanded. It may have been the case that at this particular time in May, when the days were _nefasti_ and marriages were ill-omened, these spirits became particularly restless and needed to be laid. Such an explanation as this of the Lemuria is on the whole preferable to that which would regard it as the original Roman festival of _all_ the dead; for there is now abundant evidence that even in the earliest ages of Italian life the practice of orderly burial in necropoleis was universal[418], and this is a practice that seems inconsistent with a general belief in the dead as hostile and haunting spirits.