Thus, on the banks of the Tiber, on the fifteenth of March, the
festival of Anna Perenna was observed, who also had a sacred
grove. In the open air, under arbours or tents, people surren-
dered themselves to unrestricted mirth and smnptuous feasting,
accompanied with obscene songs and jokes, and sacrifices were
offered her to obtain a successful year ;^ but of her antecedents
so little was knovm, that she was actually converted into a sister
of the Carthaginian Dido. The fable of Leucothea had been
laid in Rome upon Mater Matuta, a Latin goddess of the dawn
of day and of voyaging, to whom the Matralia, or mothering feast,
was celebrated by the Roman women ; female slaves were for-
bidden entrance into her temple, only one was introduced in allu-
sion to the legend of Ino, scourged, and thrust out again. The
correction of maid-servants- seems to have been put under her
superintendence.^ Of the Stata Mater, whose image was in the
Forum, and to whom fire was lighted at night imder the open
heaven, no one in Ovid's time seems to have had any accurate
knowledge.' The case was no better with the goddess Vacima,
of great repute among the Sabines, and of whom Ovid only men-
tions that on her festival people either stood or sat before the
Vacunalian hearth.^ The goddess Lavema, on the contrary, who
had both altar and grove in Rome, was well known to thieves

1 Oy. Fast iii. 623 sq., 604 sq. ; Macrob. Sat i. 12.
* Plut Quffist Rom. 17, CamiL 5; Ov. Fast. vL 460 sq.
• Hor. Ep. ii. 2, 186 ; Colum. xiii. p. 57.
« Fast vi 305.
