One of these occurred on the Ides of March, and must have been going on at the moment when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.  It was the festival of Anna Perenna, a mysterious old deity of “the ring of the year.”  The lower class of the population, Ovid tells us,[461] streamed out to the “festum geniale” of Anna, and spent the whole day in the Campus Martius, lying about in pairs of men and women, indulging in drinking and all kinds of revelry.  Some lay in the open; some constructed tents, or rude huts of boughs, stretching their togas over them for shelter.  As they drank they prayed for as many years of life as they could swallow cups of wine.  The usual characteristics of the Italian festa were to be found there:  they sang anything they had picked up in the theatre, with much gesticulation ("et iactant faciles ad sua verba manus"), and they danced, the women letting down their long hair.  The result of these performances was naturally that they returned home in a state of intoxication, which roused the mirth of the bystanders.  Ovid adds that he had himself met them so returning, and had seen an old woman pulling along an old man, both of them intoxicated.  There may have been other popular “jollifications” of this kind, for example at the Neptunalia on July 23, where we find the same curious custom of making temporary huts or shelters;[462] but this is the only one of which we have any account by an eye-witness.  Of the famous Lupercalia in February, and some other festivals which neither died out altogether nor were converted into ludi, we only know the ritual, and cannot tell whether they were still used as popular holidays.

One famous festival of the old religious calendar did, however, always remain a favourite holiday, viz. the Saturnalia on December 17, which was by common usage extended to seven days in all.[463] It was probably the survival of a mid-winter festivity in the life of the farm, at a time when all the farm work of the autumn was over, and when both bond and free might indulge themselves in unlimited enjoyment.  Such ancient customs die hard, or, as was the case with the Saturnalia, never die at all; for the same features are still to be found in the Christmas rejoicings of the Italian peasant.  Every one knows something of the character of this holiday, and especially of the entertainment of slaves by their masters,[464] which has many parallels in Greek custom, and has been recently supposed to have been borrowed from the Greeks.  Various games were played, and among them that of “King,” at which we have seen the young Cato playing with his boy companions.[465] Seneca tells us that in his day all Rome seemed to go mad on this holiday.