When servants merry make, and feast, and play,This has allusion to a festival celebrated at Rome by the servants, in remembrance of a great piece of service their predecessors had done the Romans, soon after the invasion of the Gauls; the time of celebrating it was in July. It was done in honour of Juno Caprotina according to Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, book i. chap. 2. The free maidens and servants, says the same author, sacrificed on that day to Juno, under a wild fig-tree, called in Latin Caprilicus, in memory of that complaisant virtue which inspired the servant maids to expose themselves to the lust and revenge of the enemy for the preservation of the public honour. For after the Gauls had taken the city, and were driven out again, when things were restored to their former order, the neighbouring nations believing the Romans were very much weakened by the late invasion, siege, and sack, took hold of that opportunity to invade them, choosing Posthumius Livius of Fidenes for their chief, and demanded of the senate, that if they would preserve their city and authority, they should send them their wives and daughters. The senators taking the matter into consideration, could not tell what answer to return. They knew their own weakness and the strength of their enemies; and in this uncertainty a servant-maid called Tutelar, or Philotis. offered to go with some other maids of the same condition to the enemy. This proposal was generally liked, and accordingly the maids were dressed like the wives of the senators, and the daughters of free citizens, and went weeping to put themselves into the hands of the invaders. Livius ordered them to be dispersed into several quarters; and, as they had agreed among themselves, they tempted their new husbands to drink, pretending that day ought to be celebrated as a festival; and when they were almost dead drunk they gave the Romans a signal from the top of a fig-tree to fall on. The latter were encamped not far off; and at this signal they assautled and easily mastered the enemy's camp. putting most of them to the sword. The senate, to reward this important service, ordered that the servants should be made free, that they should have portions paid to them out of the public treasury, and allowed them to wear the ornaments they had taken. The day on which this happy expedition was executed, was called the Caprotine nones, from the wild fig-tree Caprificus, from whence the signa was given to the Romans to sally out and gain so glorious a victory; in remembrance of which action the servants sacrificed every year under this or some other fig-tree. Plutarch relates the same story in the life of Camillus.
