Note 195 — MENSIS APRILIS.

We shall find some reason for believing that in the early Republican period new cults came in rather through plebeian than patrician agency (see below, on Cerealia). But in the period of the new nobilitas the lower classes seem rather to have held to their own cults, while the upper social stratum was more ready to accept new ones. See below, on April 4, for the conditions of such acceptance. The tendency is to be explained by the wide and increasing sphere of the foreign relations of the Senatorial government.