At that time
husbands gave presents to their wives, lovers to their sweethearts, and
mistresses feasted their maids.
The _Lemuria_ was a family service that the father celebrated on
the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May, when the ghosts of the
departed were propitiated. It was thought that these spirits were wont
to return to the scenes of their earthly lives to injure those who were
still wrestling with the severe realities of time, and specially did
they come up during the darkness of night. Therefore it was that at
midnight the father rose and went forth with cabalistic signs,
skilfully adapted to keep the spectres at a distance. After thrice
washing his hands in pure spring water, he turned around and took
certain black beans into his mouth, and then threw them behind him for
the ghosts to pick up. The goodman then uttered other mystic
expressions without risking any looks towards the supposed sprites,
after which he washed his hands, and beat some brazen basins, and nine
times cried aloud: "Begone, ye spectres of the house!" Then could he
look around, for the ghosts were harmless.
Thus the Roman forefathers worshipped personal gods, but they did not,
in the early times, follow the example of the imaginative Greeks, and
represent them, as possessing passions like themselves, nor did they
erect them into families and write out their lines of descent, or
create a mythology filled with stories of their acts good and bad.
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