Note 1014 — Chapter XVIII · THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM

On Saturn as the god of sowing and the derivation of his name from a root meaning “to sow,” from which comes satus “sowing,” see Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 64; Festus, s.v. “Opima spolia,” p. 186, ed. C. O. Müller; Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 2, 3. 13, 15; Wissowa, in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iv. 428. The derivation is confirmed by the form Saeturnus which occurs in an inscription (Saeturni pocolom, H. Dessau, Inscript. Latinae selectae, No. 2966). As to the Saturnalia see L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii. 15 sqq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, 2nd Ed., pp. 586 sqq.; Dezobry, Rome au siècle d’Auguste, iii. 143 sqq.; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, pp. 268 sqq. The festival was held from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December. I formerly argued that in the old days, when the Roman year began with March instead of with January, the Saturnalia may have been held from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of February, in which case the festival must have immediately preceded the Flight of the King, which fell on February the twenty-fourth. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 144 sqq.; Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 266. But this attempt to bring the ancient Saturnalia into immediate juxtaposition to the King’s Flight breaks down when we observe, as my friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler has pointed out to me, that the Saturnalia fell in December under the Republic, long before Caesar, in his reform of the calendar, had shifted the commencement of the year from March to January. See Livy, xxii. 1. 19 sq.