[Footnote: see page 248*] It was a fitting festival for the month of
which the name was derived from that of the god of purification
(_februare_, to purify).
It was at the foot of a fig-tree that Romulus and Remus were fabled to
have been found by Faustulus, and that tree was always looked upon with
special veneration, though whenever the Roman walked through the woods
he felt that he was surrounded by the world of gods, and that such a
leafy shade was a proper place to consecrate as a temple. A temple was
not an edifice in those simple days, but merely a place separated and
set apart to religious uses by a solemn act of dedication. When the
augur moved his wand aloft and designated the portion of the heavens in
which he was to make his observations, he called the circumscribed area
of the ethereal blue a temple, and when the medi?val astrologer did the
same, he named the space a "house." On the Roman temple an altar was
set up, and there, perhaps beneath the spreading branches of a royal
oak, sacred to Jupiter, the king of the gods, or of an olive, sacred to
Minerva, the maiden goddess, impersonation of ideas, who shared with
him and his queen the highest place among the Capitoline deities,
prayers and praises and sacrifices were offered.
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