SATURNA'LIA, an ancient Italian festival, instituted, according to the common belief of the ancients, in memory of the happy reign of Saturn (q.v.). Discarding all mythical explanations of the institution of the Saturnalia as simply incredible, and not worth the trouble of refutation, we may rationally conjecture that the Saturnalia was a rural festi val of the old Italian husbandmen, commemorative of the ingathering of the harvest, and therefore of immemorial antiquity. It is not, we conceive, to he doubted for a moment that the untrammeled jollities of the Saturnalia were familiar to the farmers of Latium before their homely national god, who blessed the laborsof seed-time with 211)1111(1mA fruit, had been decorated with incongruous Hellenic honors, and transformed into a skyey Titan. Later ages may have introduced novel elements into the Saturnalia befit ting the hybrid myth of king Saturn, but originally no thoughtful investigator can doubt that the cessation from toil, and the wild self-abandoning mirth that marked the feast., were expressive of the laboring man's delight that the work of the year was over, and not an artificial enthusiasm for a "golden age" that never had been. The great feature of the Saturnalia, its we know the festival in historical times, was the temporary dissolution of the ordinary conditions of ancient society. The distinctions of rank dis appeared or were reversed. Slaves were permitted to wear the plleue, or badge of free dom. and sat down to banquets in their master's clothes, while the latter waned on them
at table. Crowds of people tilled the streets, and roamed about the city in a peculiar dress, shouting Jo ,Fatarnatia; sacrifices were offered with uncovered head; friends scut presents to cacti other; all business was suspended; the law courts were closed; school boys got a holiday; and no war could be begun. During the republic the Saturnalia proper occupied wily one day—Dec. 10 (xvi. Kai Jan.). The reformation of the calen dar uy Juiius Caesar caused the festival to fail on the 17th (xvi. Ka. Jan.), a change which produced much confusion, iu consequence of which the emperor Augustus ordained that tne Saturnalia should embrace the whole three days, Dec. 17, 18, and 19. Subsequently the naniber was extended to five, and even seven, though even in the times before the empire, it would appear that the amusements often lasted for several days. But while the whole week was regarded in a genera! sense as devoted to the Steurnalia„three distinct festivals were really Celebrated—the Saturnalia proper; the °India,' in honor of Ups, the wile of Saturn, and the goddess of field-labor (from opus, a work; and the Sigillaria, in which sigilla, or little earthenware figures, were exposed for sale, and purchased as children's toys. The modern Italian carnival (q.v.) would seem to be only the old pagan Saturnalia baptized into Christianity.