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A dim recollection of the original connexion of the loaves with human sacrifices may perhaps be traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however, is probably devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies to divert the attention of ghosts or demons from living people is not uncommon.
Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called by the Romans maniae, and it appears that this kind of loaf was especially made at Aricia. Now, Mania, the name of one of these loaves, was also the name of the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, to whom woollen effigies of men and women were dedicated at the festival of the Compitalia.
The Lares again find their counterpart in the Lares Praestites of the state, and their rustic festival, the Compitalia, has its urban reproduction, which, as it involved considerable license on the part of populace and slaves, was often in the later period of the Republic a cause of serious political disturbance.
With these examples before us we may surmise that the woollen effigies, which at the festival of the Compitalia might be seen hanging at the doors of all the houses in ancient Rome, were not substitutes for human victims who had formerly been sacrificed at this season, but rather vicarious offerings presented to the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, in the hope that on her rounds through the city she would accept or mistake the effigies for the inmates of the house and so spare the living for another year.
Many subjects are taken from the life of tradesmen; there appear the here also inevitable "Fuller," then the "Ropemaker," the "Dyer," the "Salt-man," the "Female Weavers," the "Rascal"; other pieces give sketches of character, as the "Forgetful," the "Braggart," the "Man of 100,000 sesterces"; or pictures of other lands, the "Etruscan Woman," the "Gauls," the "Cretan," "Alexandria"; or descriptions of popular festivals, as the "Compitalia," the "Saturnalia," "Anna Perenna," the "Hot Baths"; or parodies of mythology, as the "Voyage to the Underworld," the "Arvernian Lake."
The rations were fixed and only raised at the people's festivals of the Saturnalia and Compitalia; a sick slave was supposed to need less than his usual share perhaps an excellent hygienic maxim, but one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic grounds.
These verses Calliope herself dictated to me in that book, which contains much written in an "aristocratic" spirit, and I cannot, therefore, doubt that I shall always hold that "The best of omens is our country's cause." But let us reserve all this for our walks during the Compitalia . Remember the day before the Compitalia.
Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus. Afranius places him at the head of all the comic writers, declaring, in his Compitalia, Terentio non similem dices quempiam. Terence's equal cannot soon be found. On the other hand, Volcatius reckons him inferior not only to Naevius, Plautus, and Caecilius, but also to Licinius.
Many subjects are taken from the life of tradesmen; there appear the here also inevitable "Fuller," then the "Ropemaker," the "Dyer," the "Salt-man," the "Female Weavers," the "Rascal"; other pieces give sketches of character, as the "Forgetful," the "Braggart," the "Man of 100,000 sesterces"; or pictures of other lands, the "Etruscan Woman," the "Gauls," the "Cretan," "Alexandria"; or descriptions of popular festivals, as the "Compitalia," the "Saturnalia," "Anna Perenna," the "Hot Baths"; or parodies of mythology, as the "Voyage to the Underworld," the "Arvernian Lake."
The Lares seem to have been in origin the spirits of the family fields: they were worshipped, as Cicero tells us, 'on the farm in sight of the house, and they had their annual festival in the Compitalia, celebrated at the compita places where two or more properties marched.
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