Saturn, an ancient Italian divinity, who presided over agriculture. His name, from the same root as satum (sero, 'I sow'), indicates what was probably one of the earliest personifications in the Italian religion Saturn being the god who blessed the labours of the sower. His identification with the Greek Kronos by the later Grecising mythmongers was a peculiarly infelicitous blunder, the two having absolutely nothing in common except their antiquity. The Greek Demeter (Ceres) approaches far more closely to the Italian conception of the character of Saturn. The process of amalgamation in the case of Kronos and Saturn is visible enough. First, there is the Greek myth. Kronos, son of Uranos ('Heaven') and Gæa ('Earth'), is there the youngest of the Titans. He married Rhea, by whom he had several children, all of whom he devoured at birth except the last, Zeus (Jupiter), whom his mother saved by a stratagem. The motive of Kronos was his hope of frustrating a prophecy which declared that his children would one day deprive him of his sovereignty, as he himself had done in the case of his father Uranos; but fate is stronger even than the gods, and when Zeus had grown up he began a ten years' war against Kronos and the Titans, which ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter, who were hurled down to Tartarus, and there imprisoned. So ran the common myth. But other myths added that after his banishment from heaven Kronos fled to Italy, where he was received hospitably by Janus, who shared his sovereignty with him. At this point the Greek myth coalesced with the Italian. Saturn, the old homely deity of the Latin husbandmen, was transformed into a divine king, who ruled the happy aborigines of the Italian peninsula with paternal mildness and beneficence, taught them agriculture and the usages of a simple and innocent civilisation. Hence the whole land received from him the name of Saturnia, or 'land of plenty,' and his reign was that 'golden age' of which later poets sang as the ideal of earthly happiness. At the foot of the Capitoline, where the fugitive god had formed his first settlement, there stood in historical times a temple dedicated to his worship. Ancient artists represented him as an old man, with long, straight hair, the back of his head covered, his feet swathed in woollen ribbons, a pruning-knife or sickle-shaped harp in his hand. Other attributes are of later invention. For the planet Saturn, see PLANETS.
The SATURNALIA was most probably an ancient Italian rural festival of the old Italian husbandmen, commemorative of the ingathering of the harvest, and therefore of immemorial antiquity. Its characteristic cessation from toil and its self-abandoning mirth were expressive of the labouring man's delight that the work of the year was over, and not of an artificial enthusiasm for a 'golden age' that never had been. During the festival the distinctions of rank disappeared or were reversed. Slaves were permitted to wear the pileus, usually the mark of freedom, and sat down to banquets in their master's clothes, while the latter waited on them at table. Crowds of people filled the streets, and roamed about the city in a peculiar dress, shouting 'Io Saturnalia!' sacrifices were offered with uncovered head; friends sent presents to each other; all business was suspended; the law-courts were closed; schoolboys got a holiday; and no war could be begun. During the Republic the Saturnalia proper occupied only one day—the 19th of December (xiv. Kal. Jan.). The reformation of the calendar by Julius Cæsar caused the festival to fall on the 17th (xvi. Kal. Jan.), a change which produced much confusion, in consequence of which the Emperor Augustus ordained that the Saturnalia should embrace the whole three days 17th, 18th, and 19th of December. Subsequently the number was extended to five, and even seven; but even in the times before the Empire it would appear that the amusements often lasted for several days. But while the whole week was regarded in a general sense as devoted to the Saturnalia, three distinct festivals were really celebrated—the Saturnalia proper; the Opalia, in honour of Ops, the wife of Saturn, and the goddess of field-labour (from opus, 'a work'); and the Sigillaria, in which sigilla, or little earthenware figures, were exposed for sale, and purchased as children's toys. The modern Italian carnival would seem to be only the old pagan Saturnalia baptised into Christianity.