PARENTALIA. The term Parentalia designates the period of nine days during which Roman families would visit the tombs of the dead to honor them. This novena, private in character, began on February 13 and ended with the public feast of the Feralia on February 21. This cycle of days received its most extended comment from the Roman poet Ovid. He interchangeably calls them the parentales dies (Fasti 2.548) or the ferales dies (Fasti 2.34). The word Feralia gave the ancients occasion to coin etymological puns. The word could stem either "from the action of bringing food" (a ferendis epulis) or "from the action of sacrificing animals" (a feriendis pecudibus; Paulus-Festus, ed. Lindsay, 1913, p. 75 L.). The scholar M. Terentius (Varro, De lingua Latina 6.13) preferred to compare the term Feralia to both inferi and ferre, adding, "because the ones having the right to parentare bring then some food to the tomb" ("quod ferunt tum...