Note 164 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 2)

Wissowa, R.K. p. 148; the details as to the altar occur in Gromatici vet. i. 302. It was on this occasion that maniae and pilae were hung on the house and compitum ("pro foribus," Macr. i. 7. 35); see above, p. 61. For the religio Larium, Cic. de Legg., ii. 19 and 27. That the Compitalia was an old Latin festival is undoubted; but as we are uncertain about the exact nature of the earliest form of landholding, we cannot be sure about the nature of the compita in remote antiquity. The passage from the Gromatici (Dolabella), quoted above, refers to the fines templares of possessiones, i.e. the boundaries marked by these chapels in estates of later times. See Rudorff in vol. ii. p. 263; Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Compitum."