Hence the early Christians called the days of the week feriae.

Why did the Church adopt the word feriae?

Non-privileged feriae are the feriae of Lent and Advent, Quarter Tense or Ember days and Rogation Monday.

Non-privileged feriae are the feriae of Lent and Advent, Quarter Tense or Ember days and Rogation Monday.

They included the following incidents: the figure of the Mother of the Gods on the Palatine formerly facing the east turned around of its own accord to the west; that of Minerva held in honor near Mutina, where the most fighting was going on, sent forth after this a quantity of blood and milk; furthermore the consuls took their departure just before the Feriae Latinae; and there is no case where this happened that the forces fared well.

The chariot of Minerva while returning to the Capitol from a horse-race was dashed to pieces, and the statue of Jupiter at Albanum sent forth blood at the very time of the Feriae from its right shoulder and right hand.

During the Feriae the prefect of the city celebrated the festival of Latiaris, which neither belonged to him nor was ordinarily observed at that time, and the plebeian aediles offered to Ceres contests in armor in place of the horse-race.

In this same year there was no aedile owing to a lack of candidates, and the praetors and the tribunes performed the aediles' duties: also no praetor urbanus was appointed for the Feriae, but some of the regular praetors discharged his functions.

During the Feriae, prefects, boys and beardless youths, appointed by Caesar and sprung from knights but not from senators, directed ceremonies.

[Footnote 34: Iuppiter Latiaris was the protecting deity of Latium, and his festival is practically identical with the Feriae Latinae.

Calendis Jan. feriae sunt divae Angeronae, cui pontifices in sacello Volupiae sacra faciunt, quod angores et animi solicitudines propitiata propellat.

The Latin word for a holiday was feriae, a term which belongs to the language of religious law (ius divinum).

Cicero, drawing up in antique language his idea of the ius divinum, writes thus of feriae: "Feriis iurgia amovento, easque in familiis, operibus patratis, habento": which he afterwards explains as meaning that the citizen must abstain from litigation, and the slave be excused from labour.

" So too in the city it was simply impossible that all work should cease on feriae, of which there were more than a hundred in the year, including the Ides of every month and some of the Kalends and Nones.

So the old religious word feriae becomes gradually supplanted, in the sense of a public holiday of amusement, by the word ludi, and came at last to mean, as it still does in Germany, the holidays of schoolboys.[460] These ludi wi

ll form the chief subject of this chapter; but we must first mention one or two of the old feriae which seem always to have remained occasions of holiday-making, at any rate for the lower classes of the population.

Ergastula Esquiline hill Etruscans, the Evander Exedra Fabius, arch of Fabri ferrarii Fabulae Atellanae; palliatae; togatae Familiae urbanae Fate Fercula Feriae Festa Figuli Figulus, Nigidius Flaccus, Verrius Flamen Dialis; Quirinalis Flaminius Flammeum Florales, Ludi.

"Feriae" came in time to be limited to public festivals, while "festus dies" covered all holidays.]

However, the senators did not change their attire nor attend the festivals nor celebrate the feast of Jupiter on the Capitol nor go out to Albanum for the Feriae Latinae, held there for the second time by reason of something not rightly done.

No praefectus urbi was chosen for the Feriae, as had been the custom, but the praetors, at least according to some accounts, performed all his duties; others say they did this only in the next year.

A certain prefect, appointed during the Feriae, himself chose a successor on the last day, and the latter another: this had never happened before, nor did it happen again.

And they gave him the right to offer the so-called spolia opima at the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, as if he had slain some hostile general with his own hand, and to have lictors that always carried laurel, and after the Feriae Latinae to ride from Albanum to the city mounted on a charger.