LIB[ERALIA]. (MAFF. FARN. RUST.) LIB. AG[ONIA]. LIBERO LIB. (CAER.) AG[ONIA]. (VAT.) LIBERO IN CA[PITOLIO]. (FARN.)
This is one of the four days marked AG. or AGON. in the Fasti (Jan. 9, May 21, Dec. 11)[145]. It is curious that on this day two of the old calendars should mark the Liberalia only, and one the Agonia only, and one both. The day was generally known as Liberalia[146]; the other name seems to have been known to the priests only, and more especially to the Salii Collini or Agonenses[147], who must have had charge of the sacrifice. Wissowa seems to be right in thinking (_de Feriis_ xii) that the conjunction of Liberalia and Agonia is purely accidental, and that the day took its common name from the former simply because, as the latter occurred four times in the year, confusion would be likely to arise.
Liber is beyond doubt an old Italian deity, whose true nature, like that of so many others, came to be overgrown with Greek ideas and rites. There is no sign of any connexion between this festival and the cult of Dionysus; hence we infer that there was an old Latin Liber before the arrival of the Greek god in Italy. What this god was, however, can hardly be inferred from his cult, of which we only know a single feature, recorded by Ovid[148]. He tells us that old women, _sacerdotes Liberi_, sat crowned with ivy all about the streets on this day with cakes of oil and honey (_liba_), and a small portable altar (_foculus_), on which to sacrifice for the benefit of the buyer of these cakes. This tells us nothing substantial, and we have to fall back on the name—always an uncertain method. The best authorities seem now agreed in regarding the word Liber (whatever be its etymology) as having something of the same meaning as _genius_, forming an adjective _liberalis_ as _genius_ forms _genialis_, and meaning a creative, productive spirit, full of blessing, and so generous, free, &c.[149] If this were so it would not be unnatural that the characteristics and rites of Dionysus should find here a stem on which to engraft themselves, or that Liber should become the object of obscene ceremonies which need not be detailed here, and also the god of the Italian vine-growers.