The Parentalia was a nine-day festival honoring the ancestors and propitiating the dead, while the Terminalia was a set of rituals pertaining to boundary stones that was probably also felt to reinforce the boundary of the year.
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The agricultural writer Columella says that meadows and grain fields are "purged" (purguntur), probably both in the practical sense of clearing away old debris and by means of ritual.
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Ianuarius and Februarius were supposed to have been added by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, originally at the end of the year.