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Roman Festivals and Holidays
The religious year at Rome: the festivals, their dates and the gods they honoured.
Quiz yourself on these in RomeDrill →| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Lupercalia | The rite began at the Lupercal, where the she-wolf was said to have suckled the twins; the deity honoured is uncertain (Faunus, or 'Inuus'). The thongs were called februa, whence February. At the Lupercalia of 44 BC Mark Antony offered Caesar a diadem. It survived until Pope Gelasius I suppressed it in the 490s. |
| Saturnalia | Held in honour of Saturn, beginning on 17 December with a sacrifice and banquet at his temple in the Forum; by the late Republic it lasted seven days (to 23 December). The toga was set aside for the synthesis and the freedman's cap (pilleus), a mock king presided, and the greeting was 'Io Saturnalia!'. Its last day was the Sigillaria. |
| Agonalia | The Agonalia (Agonium) honoured a different deity on each date; that of 9 January belonged to Janus. Ancient etymologies derived it from the sacrificer's question 'agone?' ('shall I strike?'). |
| Ambarvalia | The name combines ambire and arva, 'to go round the fields'. Privately, each farmer lustrated his land (Cato, De Agricultura 141, addressing Mars; Virgil, Georgics 1 and Tibullus 2.1, Ceres); as a movable feast it has no fixed calendar entry, and 29 May is the conventional date. Its relation to the Arval Brethren's May festival of Dea Dia is debated. |
| Argei | The Argei were both the 27 (or 24) shrines visited on 16–17 March and the rush puppets cast from the bridge on 14 or 15 May, with the flaminica Dialis in mourning. Ancient writers guessed at a substitute for human sacrifice; the true meaning was already lost. |
| Armilustrium | The Armilustrium honoured Mars and mirrored the March rites that opened the season of war; the Salii danced with the ancilia for the last time in the year before returning them to the Regia. The place of the rite on the Aventine bore the same name. |
| Caristia | The Caristia or Cara Cognatio ('dear kindred') turned from the dead to the living: only kin were invited, and disputes were to be reconciled. It remained popular enough to appear in the calendar of AD 354. |
| Carmentalia | The Carmentalia honoured Carmenta at her shrine by the Porta Carmentalis, served by her own flamen. The odd double date was explained by a story that matrons, denied the use of carriages, refused to bear children until the Senate relented. |
| Cerealia | The Cerealia honoured Ceres, with Liber and Libera, and was the great plebeian festival; plebeians exchanged dinners as patricians did at the Megalesia. The main day was 19 April; worshippers wore white. |
| Compitalia | The Compitalia honoured the Lares Compitales at the compita, the shrines where streets or properties met, and was organised by neighbourhood officials (vicomagistri), often freedmen and slaves. Its associations (collegia) were politically turbulent in the late Republic; Augustus refounded the cult in 7 BC around the Lares Augusti. |
| Consualia | The Consualia honoured Consus, god of the stored harvest, whose underground altar in the Circus was uncovered for the day; the Flamen Quirinalis and the Vestals officiated in August. The August date follows the harvest, the December one the autumn sowing. |
| Equirria | The Equirria (Ecurria) framed the start of March, Mars' month. If the Campus Martius was flooded by the Tiber the races moved to the Campus Martialis on the Caelian. |
| Feralia | The Feralia ended the Parentalia. Ovid (Fasti 2) describes simple offerings — garlands, grain, salt, bread soaked in wine, violets — and an old woman's magic rite to Tacita, the silent goddess. |
| Feriae | Feriae publicae were of three kinds: stativae (fixed dates, e.g. Lupercalia), conceptivae (movable, date announced annually, e.g. Compitalia, Feriae Latinae) and imperativae (proclaimed ad hoc by magistrates). The root survives in 'fair' and German 'Ferien'. |
| Feriae Latinae | Dedicated to Jupiter Latiaris, it preserved the religious union of the old Latin League under Roman presidency. All magistrates attended, leaving a praefectus urbi in charge of Rome, and new consuls could not depart for their provinces until they had held it. |
| Festival of Anna Perenna | Anna Perenna personified the circling year (annus); Ovid (Fasti 3) offers rival stories, including that she was Dido's sister. Held on 15 March, the first full moon of the old year. Her fountain, with curse tablets, was found in Rome (Piazza Euclide) in 1999. |
| Floralia | The Ludi Florales were founded with Flora's temple in 238 BC on the advice of the Sibylline Books and made annual in 173 BC after crop failures. Prostitutes claimed the festival as their own; Cato the Younger famously left the theatre so as not to inhibit the crowd. |
| Fontinalia | The Fontinalia honoured Fons (Fontus), god of springs, who had a shrine near the Porta Fontinalis and whom legend made a son of Janus and Juturna. |
| Fordicidia | From forda, 'cow in calf'. The ashes of the calves were kept by the Vestals and, mixed with the blood of the October Horse, used to purify the people at the Parilia six days later. The goddess honoured was Tellus. |
| Hilaria | The Hilaria crowned the March cycle of Cybele and Attis: 15 March 'the reed enters', 22 March 'the tree enters', 24 March Dies Sanguinis, 25 March Hilaria, 27 March the washing (Lavatio) of the goddess's image in the Almo. |
| Lemuria | The Lemuria placated the lemures or larvae. Ovid thought it older than the Parentalia and linked it to Remus' ghost. Hence the proverb that it was bad to marry in May. The dedication of the Pantheon as a church on 13 May (AD 609) has been linked to its date. |
| Liberalia | The Liberalia honoured Liber Pater and Libera. Priestesses offered liba (honey cakes) on portable hearths for purchasers; in some Italian towns a phallus was carried in procession. It was the usual day for assuming the toga virilis. |
| Ludi Apollinares | Held in honour of Apollo, first vowed in 212 BC and made annual on 13 July in 208 BC after a plague; they later expanded backwards to 6 July. In 44 BC Brutus, as urban praetor, paid for them in absentia hoping to win back popular favour. |
| Ludi Plebeii | The Plebeian Games, second only to the Ludi Romani, included stage plays (Plautus' Stichus was performed there in 200 BC) and circus races, with the Epulum Iovis on 13 November. |
| Ludi Romani | Also called the Ludi Magni and ascribed to Tarquinius Priscus, they became annual in 366 BC under the curule aediles and by the late Republic ran 5–19 September (from 4 September after Caesar's death). The Epulum Iovis fell on the Ides (13 September); Livius Andronicus staged the first Latin play here in 240 BC. |
| Ludi Saeculares | The Secular Games marked a saeculum of 100 or 110 years, with three nights and days of sacrifices at the Tarentum in the Campus Martius, on the Capitoline and the Palatine. Republican games (249, 146 BC) honoured Dis and Proserpina; Augustus' (17 BC, with Horace's Carmen Saeculare) were followed by Claudius (AD 47), Domitian (88), Septimius Severus (204) and Philip (248). |
| Matralia | The Matralia honoured Mater Matuta. Participating matrons (univirae) offered cakes baked in earthenware (testuacia), embraced their nieces and nephews rather than their own children, and beat and expelled a single slave woman admitted for the purpose. |
| Matronalia | The Matronalia marked the dedication day of the temple of Juno Lucina on the Esquiline (375 BC) and, in legend, the peace made by the Sabine women. It was a female counterpart to the Saturnalia in its inversion of household roles. |
| Meditrinalia | Varro gives the formula: 'novum vetus vinum bibo, novo veteri morbo medeor'. The name was connected with mederi, 'to heal'; a goddess Meditrina is a later invention, and the day belonged to Jupiter. |
| Megalesia | The Ludi Megalenses (from Greek Megale Meter) commemorated Cybele's arrival in 204 BC and were run by the curule aediles. Patrician families held mutual dinner parties (mutitationes); the last day had circus races. |
| Natalis Invicti | The Dies Natalis Solis Invicti is attested in the Chronography of 354 (Calendar of Philocalus), the same document that first records Christ's nativity on 25 December. It is often linked to Aurelian's solar cult of 274; whether Christmas was placed to rival it, or the reverse, is debated. |
| Navigium Isidis | The 'Vessel of Isis' (Greek Ploiaphesia) honoured Isis Pelagia, mistress of the sea. Its carnival-like procession with masks has been suggested as one ancestor of later carnival traditions. It was still celebrated in the late 4th century. |
| Neptunalia | The Neptunalia honoured Neptune in his original role as god of fresh water. The leaf huts were called umbrae. Games (ludi Neptunalici) are attested later. It stands in the calendar between the two Lucaria and the Furrinalia, all connected with woods and water. |
| Nonae Caprotinae | The 'Nones of the Wild Fig' (caprificus) honoured Juno Caprotina. The aetiology told how slave girls, sent to the besieging Latins dressed as Roman matrons, signalled from a fig tree for the Romans to attack. It followed the obscure Poplifugia of 5 July. |
| October Horse | The Equus October (15 October) is the only Roman horse sacrifice. The head, garlanded with loaves, was nailed up on the Regia or the Turris Mamilia according to which district won; the tail was rushed to the Regia to drip blood on the hearth, and the Vestals kept the blood for the Parilia. |
| Opalia | The Opalia honoured Ops; her other festival, the Opiconsivia (25 August), likewise follows a festival of Consus by four days, linking the pair as guardians of the stored harvest. |
| Parentalia | The Parentalia (dies parentales) began at the sixth hour on 13 February with a rite by a Vestal and was largely private, honouring each family's Di Manes. It closed with the public Feralia on 21 February, followed on the 22nd by the Caristia. |
| Parilia | The Parilia (or Palilia) honoured Pales, deity of shepherds and flocks. Purifying materials supplied by the Vestals included the ashes from the Fordicidia and the blood of the October Horse. As Rome's birthday (Natalis Urbis) it gained circus games, and was renamed Romaia under Hadrian. |
| Quinquatrus | The name originally meant the fifth day after the Ides, 19 March, dedication day of Minerva's Aventine temple; it was later stretched to five days with gladiatorial shows on the last four. The 'Lesser Quinquatrus' on 13 June was the pipers' festival. Nero had Agrippina murdered during the Quinquatrus of AD 59. |
| Regifugium | The ancient explanation is probably a later rationalisation; the rite may have involved the ritual withdrawal of the rex sacrorum from the Comitium at the year's end. A similar calendar note (Q.R.C.F.) marks 24 March and 24 May. |
| Rites of the Bona Dea | The December sacrifice pro populo was held in the house of a magistrate with imperium, with wine (called 'milk'), music and a sow. The scandal of 62 BC, in the house of Caesar as pontifex maximus and praetor, led him to divorce Pompeia ('Caesar's wife must be above suspicion') and began Clodius' feud with Cicero. |
| Robigalia | The Robigalia appeased Robigus (or Robigo), the spirit of wheat rust. The Flamen Quirinalis performed the sacrifice in a sacred grove; Ovid describes meeting the white-robed procession (Fasti 4). The Christian Major Litany (St Mark's Day, 25 April) took over its date. |
| Terminalia | The Terminalia honoured Terminus, god of boundaries. A public sacrifice was held at the sixth milestone of the Via Laurentina, once the edge of Roman territory. Diocletian's Great Persecution was launched on this day in AD 303. |
| Tubilustrium | The tubae were lustrated in the Atrium Sutorium with the sacrifice of a lamb; the Salii danced on the same day. 23 March fell on the last day of the Quinquatrus, so the rite was associated with both Mars and Minerva. |
| Veneralia | The Veneralia honoured Venus Verticordia (whose cult was founded in 114 BC after a Vestal scandal) together with Fortuna Virilis. April as a whole was held sacred to Venus. |
| Vestalia | The Vestalia honoured Vesta. The penus Vestae, normally closed to all but the Vestals, stood open from 7 June; on 15 June the shrine was swept and the refuse carried to the Tiber (calendar note Q.St.D.F.), after which public business could resume. |
| Vinalia | The Vinalia Priora (Urbana) of 23 April opened the new wine; the Vinalia Rustica of 19 August sought protection for the ripening grapes. Both days also became linked with Venus (her temples by the Colline Gate and Circus Maximus), but the flamen Dialis officiated and the offering was Jupiter's. |
| Vulcanalia | The Vulcanalia honoured Vulcan, god of destructive fire. People hung clothes out in the sun and began work by candlelight. After the fire of AD 64 Domitian set up altars where a red calf and a boar were offered on this day. |
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