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Finally, some few years probably before this we have the passage from Tibullus already mentioned, 'I alleged that I held the day of Saturn sacred.' That Tibullus is primarily alluding to the Sabbath seems to me, as I have said, almost certain. But does he in calling it 'Saturn's day' shew a knowledge of the planetary week? It seems to me the most natural conclusion that he does, but I do not think it is absolutely certain. The belief that the Sabbath was a Jewish form of reverencing the planet may have originated independently of the planetary week and indeed be anterior to it. That Saturn was an unlucky planet is a doctrine independent of the week and we may safely suppose that before the week came into use there were what we may call 'real' Saturn's days when the planet was actually in a position which the astrologers reckoned as unfavourable to enterprise. Then the Gentile world observing the Jewish abstention from work and misreading the day of rest and rejoicing as a day of superstitious dread of activity may have evolved the theory of its connexion with Saturn.
At any rate with Tibullus our knowledge of the planetary week comes to an end[1]. Nothing
- ↑ A passage in Horace (Sat. II, 3, 291) sometimes quoted as evidence of week-observance would be about the same date as Tibullus. I regard this interpretation of the line as very forced and unnatural, but as it has been accepted by respectable authorities, I have discussed it in Appendix, pp. 124 f.
attempted restoration is given in Corp. Lat. Inscript. I, p. 218, but I cannot pretend to understand it fully.
