________________
238
RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
which exhibit some, though not very striking points of coincidence with the Holí.
It is clear, however, that their origin and character were not very well understood by the Romans themselves. Thus of the Lupercalia, when young men ran naked through the city, and married women placed themselves in their way to be struck by them as they passed with leather thongs, under an idea that they were to become prolific thereby, little seems to have been known, except that the festival was of foreign origin and high antiquity, and that it was referable to the rustic sports of the shepherds and cowherds, the Gopas of Arcadia. Again, of the Festum Stultorum, the accounts are meagre and by no means satisfactory. The Matronalia Festa, on the Kalends of March, were more intelligible, and had for their object the increase of progeny, in harmony with the foliation of the trees, the budding of the grass, the pairing of birds, which were the effects of the season of Spring, and which are equally held in view in the celebration of the Holí, which is considered to be especially promotive of the multiplication of offspring, and preservative of the health and life of children. Another festival of the period, held on the fifteenth of March, is very imperfectly described, and still more imperfectly explained, the worship of the goddess Anna Perenna; a goddess identified with Themis, with Io, with Atlantis, with Luna, or with Anna, the sister of Dido*. This was
* [L. Preller, Römische Mythologie. Berlin: 1858, p. 304 ff.]
