time of what has been called the "Religion of Numa." We cannot go
through all the festivals in detail, but it is extremely interesting to
notice that almost every one of them is connected with the life of the
farmer and represents the action of propitiation towards some god or
group of gods at every time in the Roman year which was at all critical
for agricultural interests.

It must not be forgotten also that this list is not absolutely complete,
because it represents merely the official state festivals, and not even
all of them but only those which fell upon the same day or days every
year, so that they could be engraved in the stone to form a perpetual
calendar. All state festivals, of which there were several, which were
appointed in each particular year according to the backward or forward
estate of the harvest, were omitted from the list, though they were
celebrated at some time in every year; and naturally the public
calendars contained no reference to the many private and semi-private
ceremonies of the year, with which the state had nothing official to do,
festivals of the family and the clan, and even local festivals of
various districts of the city.

In this list of peaceful deities of the farm there is one god whose
character has been very much misunderstood because of the company which
he keeps; this is the god Mars. It has become the fashion of late to
consider him as a god of vegetation, and a great many ingenious
arguments have been brought forward to show his agricultural character.
But the more primitive a community is, the more intense is its struggle
for existence, and the more rife its rivalries with its neighbours.
Alongside of the ploughshare there must always have been the sword or
its equivalent, and along with Flora and Ceres there must always have
been a god of strife and battle. That Mars was this god in early as well