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Modern Description: "Nor am I unaware that the following origin is attributed to the Saturnalia: when the Pelasgi were driven from their homes, as Varro records, and set out for different land, most of them converged on Dodona and, uncertain where to settle, received a response along these lines ""Go in pursuit of the Sicels’ Saturnian land and the Aborigines’ Cotule, where an island floats: when you have joined with them, offer a tithe to Phoebus and heads to Hades, and send a man [phóta] to the father."" They accepted the response and, having landed in Latium after much wandering, they came unexpectedly upon an island that had risen up in Lake Cutilia.
29. With very thick turf—the ground being either silt or compacted marshland—and an adornment of brush and trees, like a forest growing wild, it wandered about in the ever-tossing waves, making credible the story of Delos, which has lofty mountains and wide open fields but nonetheless used to travel through the seas. 30. Having come upon this marvel, then, they understood that this was their foretold settlement: they wiped out the Sicels who were dwelling there, seized the land, followed the oracle by dedicating a tenth of the booty to Apollo, and set up a shrine to Dis and an altar to Saturn, whose holiday they called the Saturnalia. 31. And though they long believed that they were appeasing Dis with human heads and Saturn with men as victims, because of the oracles words, "". . . and heads to Hades, and send a man [phota] to the father,"" they say that Hercules, returning through Italy with Geryon's cattle, persuaded their descendants to replace those ill-omened sacrifices with favorable ones, offering to Dis not human heads but masks with skillfully fashioned human faces and honoring Saturn's altar not by slaughtering a man but by kindling lights—for phota means not only ‘man’ but also 'lights’: hence the custom of exchanging candles during the Saturnalia. (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.7, tr. Robert Kaster)
Wikipedia entry at Altar_of_Saturn.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altar_of_Saturn
Wikidata ID: Q25053611
Trismegistos Geo: 2058"

Info: ToposText editors

(JBK)

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