1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/October

OCTOBER, the eighth month of the old Roman year, which began in March. In the Julian calendar, while retaining its old name, it became the tenth month, and had thirty-one days assigned to it. The meditrinalia, when a libation of new wine was made in honour of Meditrina, were celebrated on the 11th, the faunalia on the 13th, and the equiria, when the equus October was sacrificed to Mars in the Campus Martius, on the 15th. Several attempts were made to rename the month in honour of the emperors. Thus it was in succession temporarily known as Germanicus, Antoninus, Tacitus and Herculeus, the latter a surname of Commodus. The senate’s attempt to christen it Faustinus in honour of Faustina, wife of Antoninus, was equally unsuccessful. The principal ecclesiastical feasts in October are those of St Luke on the 18th and of St Simon and St Jude on the 28th. By the Slavs it is called “yellow month,” from the fading of the leaf; to the Anglo-Saxons it was known as Winterfylleth, because at this full moon (fylleth) winter was supposed to begin.