 Written in elegiac couplets and drawing on conventions of Greek and Latin didactic poetry, the "Fasti" is structured as a series of eye-witness reports and interviews by the first-person "vates" ("poet-prophet" or "bard") with Roman deities, who explain the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs—often with multiple aetiologies.The poem is a significant, and in some cases unique, source of fact in studies of religion in ancient Rome; and the influential anthropologist and ritualist J.G.Frazer translated and annotated the work for the Loeb Classical Library series.