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OF THE HINDUS.
175
renovation of nature. Their mode of celebrating it seems to have had many things in common with the lisages of the Hindus, particularly in the interchange of sweetmeats; only substituting for the rice, cakes, and molasses of the Hindus, figs, dates, and honey. These articles they sent, at this season, to their friends and relations: they were intended, according to Janus, to be ominons of an agreeable year to follow.
Omen ait, causa est ut res sapor ille sequatur,
Et peragat coptum dulcis ut annus iter".
They also interchanged læta verba, good wishes and congratulations;-et damus alternas accipimusque preces **. The presents made at this season were called strena; and the word, as well as the practice, subsists in the Etrennes of new year's day in France. Strenam vocamus quæ datur die religioso ominis boni gratiâ. According to Festus, the practice is referred by Symmachus to an early period of Roman history, the reign of Tacitus; but it was no doubt much older. How far it prevailed among the Greeks does not fully appear. The Greeks had a festival in the month Poseideôn, or January, in which they worshipped Neptune, or the Sea, in like mamer as the Hindus worship the ocean; but no other particulars are recorded; and it is remarkable how little of the Greek calendar is of an astronomical origin. It is almost entirely legendary and mythological, arguing
* [Ovid. Fast. I, 187.]
** [1. 1. 176.]
