"[454]
It would be easy to multiply examples of such merry-making from the
poets of the Augustan age, nearly all of whom were born and bred in
the country, and shared Virgil's tenderness for a life of honest work
and play among the Italian hills and valleys. But in this chapter we
are to deal with the holidays and enjoyments of the great city, and
the rural festivals are only mentioned here because almost all the
characteristics of the urban holiday-making are to be found in germ
there. The Roman calendar of festivals has its origin in the regularly
recurring rites of the earliest Latin husbandman. As the city grew,
these old agricultural festivities lost of course much of their native
simplicity and naivete; some of them survived merely as religious or
priestly performances, some became degraded into licentious enjoyment;
but the music and dancing, the gay dresses, the racing, the mumming
or acting, are all to be found in the city, developed in one form or
another, from the earliest to the latest periods of Roman history.
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