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actually support, is quite compatible with the natural view that knowledge of the week spread gradually through the Empire till it reached the universality expressed in Dion's words. We can easily imagine various stages in this from our own experience. Fifty years ago, I suppose, the feast of Corpus Christi was known only to Roman Catholics. To-day a great many Anglo-Catholics observe it and consequently it is known to a wider circle, who, however, would for the most part be puzzled to say how and when in the year it is fixed. To take a stage above this, probably most Scottish Presbyterians know that there is such a day as Ascension Day, but I should be surprised if the majority could locate it, or even know that it always comes on a Thursday. If the circle which observes either of these days should through some wave of feeling widen greatly, if for instance schools had to be closed, because so many of the pupils were required to treat them as days of religious observance, the general public would soon come to know their incidence, as well as it now knows Christmas or Easter Monday. Some such process as this we may suppose to have gone on in the Empire in the first two centuries under the stress of an increasing volume of popular belief and feeling.
What the nature of this belief was we shall have to enquire later. Meanwhile we may note that the most remarkable fact about the evidence we have reviewed is its meagre and casual nature.
