James George Frazer and an anonymous author

“ The Provinces under the Empire.—Under the empire the provinces fared much better. The monarchy tended to obliterate the distinction between Romans and provincials by reducing both to a common level of subjection to the emperor, who meted out equal justice to all his subjects. The first centuries of the Christian era were probably for some of the countries included in the Roman Empire the happiest of their history ”

“ Torch in hand, her sorrowing mother sought her through the wide world, and finding her not she forbade the earth to put forth its increase. So all that year not a blade of corn grew on the earth, and men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not persuaded Pluto to let Proserpine go. But before he let her go Pluto made her eat the seed of a pomegranate, and thus she could not stay away from him for ever. ”

“ The reign of Cronus was supposed to have been the golden age, when men lived like gods, free from toil and grief and the weakness of old age (for death was like sleep) ; and the earth brought forth abundantly without cultivation. There are few traces of the worship of Cronus in Greece. Pausanias, in his description of Greece, mentions only one temple of Cronus; it stood at the foot of the Acropolis at Athens and was sacred to Cronus and Rhea jointly. The Athenians celebrated an annual festival in his honour on the 12th of Hecatombaeon. ”

“ By the beginning of the 3rd century, and perhaps earlier, appeals to the emperor in civil cases were handed over by him to be dealt with by the praefect. Except where special restrictions interfered, an appeal lay from the praefect to the emperor. Though not a military officer, the praefect commanded the city cohorts (cohortes urbanae) , which formed part of the garrison of Rome and ranked above the line regiments, though below the guards (see Praetorians) . The military power thus placed in the hands of the chief of the police was one of the most sorely-felt innovations of the empire. ”

“ The lengthened periods during which the governors, at least in the imperial provinces, held office, together with the oversight exercised by the emperor, alleviated materially the position of the provincials under the empire. In order to keep himself well informed of what was passing in the empire, Augustus established a post whereby official dispatches were forwarded by couriers and official persons were conveyed by coaches. The post, however, was only for the use of the government; no private person was allowed, unless by an exceptional concession, to avail himself of it. ”

“ Praefectus Classium.—Down to near the close of the republic a naval command was never held independently but only in Connexion with the command of an army, and, when the general appointed an officer to command the fleet in his room, this lieutenant was styled “praefect of the fleet” (praefectus classium) . When in 311 B.C. the people took the appointment of these lieutenants into their own hands the title was changed from “praefects” to duo viri navales, or “two naval men”; but under the empire the admirals went by their old name of prefects. ”

“ Augustus occasionally appointed a city praefect to represent him in his absence from Italy, although the praetors, or even one of the consuls, remained in the capital. In the absence of Tiberius from Rome during the last eleven years of his reign (A.D. 26–37) the city prefecture, hitherto an exceptional and temporary office, became a regular and permanent magistracy; in all subsequent reigns the praefect held office even during the presence of the emperor in Rome. He was always chosen by the emperor and usually from men who had held the consulship ”

“ At the close of the republic, however, we find even such a peaceful province as Asia administered by a proconsul. In the earlier period of the republic the senate either before or after the elections determined which provinces were to be governed by consuls and which by praetors, and after their election the consuls arranged between themselves by lot or otherwise which of the provinces nominated by the senate each should have, and similarly with the praetors. ”

“ According to Theopompus there was a Western people who actually called the spring Proserpine. As wife of Pluto, she sent spectres, ruled the ghosts, and carried into effect the curses of men. The lake of Avernus, as an entrance to the infernal regions, was sacred to her. From the head of a dying person Proserpine was supposed to cut a lock of hair which had been kept sacred and unshorn through life. ”

“ The prominence given to candles at the festival points to the custom of making a new fire at this time. The custom of solemnly kindling fires at the summer solstice (Eve of St John) has prevailed in most parts of Europe, notably in Germany, and there are traces (of which the yule-log is one) of the observance of a similar custom at the winter solstice. In ancient Mexico a new fire was kindled, amid great rejoicings, at the end of every period of fifty-two years. ”

“ When Persephone was carried off by Pluto, a swineherd called Eubuleus was herding his swine at the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto had vanished with Persephone. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria it was customary, in memory of Eubuleus, to fling pigs into the "chasms of Demeter and Persephone.” (These ' chasms" may have been natural caverns or perhaps vaults. The scholiast speaks of them also as adyta and megara.'°) In these chasms or adyta there were supposed to be serpents, which guarded the adyta and consumed most of the flesh 'of the pigs that were thrown in. ”

“ There was, as we have seen, a tradition that human sacrifices were once offered to Saturn, and the Greeks and Romans gave the name of Cronus and Saturn to a cruel Phoenician Baal, to whom, e.g. children were sacrificed at Carthage. The Cronus to whom human sacrifices are said to have been offered in Rhodes was probably a Baal, for there are traces of Phoenician worship in Rhodes. ”

“ The women of each deme (township) elected two married women of their number to preside over them at the festival; and every married man in the township who possessed property to the value of three talents had to provide a feast for the women on behalf of his wife.” During the festival the women seem to have been lodged by twos in tents or huts, probably erected within the sacred precincts of the Thesmophorion. ”

“ But a praefect continued to be regularly appointed, even under the empire, during praefedus the enforced absence of all the higher magistrates Ui-bis at the Latin festival. The right and duty of appoint- Fefilmm ing a praefect belonged to the magistrate (king, dictator or consul) whose deputy he was, but it seems to have been withdrawn from the consuls by the Licinian law (367) , except that they still nominated prefects for the time of the festival. No formalities in the appointment and no legal qualifications on the part of the praefect were required. ”

“ There are other instances of incisions made in the body of a dying person to allow his soul to escape (cf. A. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 1860, ii. 342) . The custom probably dates from the times when death in battle was the usual death. In the legend of Nisus and Scylla there is a trace of the custom which was still observed in classical times in the sacrifice of animals. ”

“ On the other hand communities which surrendered without offering an obstinate resistance were usually allowed to retain their personal freedom and private property, and their chief town was left in the enjoyment of its territory and civil rights ”

“ The ceremony above described was called the arretophoria [the carrying of things which must not be spoken of] , and was supposed to exercise the same quickening and fertilizing influence on men as on fields. Further, along with the pigs, sacred cakes made of dough, in the sha of serpents and of phalli, were cast into the caverns, to symbolise the productivity of the earth and of man. ”

“ These towns'were called prefectures (praefecturae) . After the Social War (90-89 B.c.) , when. all Italy had received the Roman franchise, such prefectures ceased to exist in fact, though the name was sometimes retained. ”

“ It appears to have been a Greek custom to cut a lock of hair from a dead man's head, and hang it outside of the house door, in token that there was a corpse in the house. At least this seems a fair inference from Eurip. ”

“ Gibbon indeed fixed on the period from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus (96–180 A.D.) as the happiest age of the world., Augustus, in 27 B.C., divided the provinces into imperial and senatorial. ”

“ All classes exchanged gifts, the commonest being wax tapers and clay dolls. These dolls were especially given to children, and the makers of them held a regular fair at this time. Varro thought these dolls represented original sacrifices of human beings to the infernal god. ”

“ During the Thesmophoria (and for nine days previously, if Ovid, Met., x. 434, is right, and refers to the Thesmophoria) the women abstained from intercourse with their husbands, and to fortify themselves strewed their beds with Agnus caslus and other plants. The women of Miletus strewed their beds with pine branches, and put fir-cones in the sanctuaries of Demeter.11 Whether unmarried women were admitted to the festival seems doubtful; in Lucian's time it would appear that 1 [Or, mother of a fair daughter, i.e. Persephone] Schol. ”

“ Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) ; and especially the exhaustive articles by L. C. Purser in Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities (ed. 3, 1891) and by F. Lenormant (on Ceres) in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités. ”

“ THESMOPHORIA, an ancient Greek festival, celebrated by women only in honour of Demeter 9e¢r, u, o1;6pos. At Athens, Abdera, and perhaps Sparta, -it lasted three days. At Athens the festival took place on the rrth, 12th and 13th of the month Pyanepsion (24th, 2 5th and 26th October) , the first day being called Anodos (ascent) , or, according to others, Kathodos (descent) , the second Nesteia (fast) , and the third Kalligeneia (fair-born) .1 If to these days we add the Thesmophoria, which were celebrated on the 10th at Halimus, a township on the coast near Athens, the festival lasted four days. ”