Tag: february

Posted on

Terminalia God of the Boundary February 23rd

Hans Holbein the Younger Design for a Stained Glass Window with Terminus. Pen and ink and brush, grey wash, watercolour, over preliminary chalk drawing, 31.5 × 25 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel.
‘Terminus is often pictured as a bust on a boundary stone, His festival is ‘Terminalia’

Today is ‘Terminalia, the Roman day for setting land boundaries. The festival of Terminus was a pastoral outdoor festival marking the boundaries of towns and villages. It resembles the Beating of the Bounds tradition that we have in Britain. This is in recorded, in the UK, from anglo-saxon times, and still continues in some parishes. I will talk about this on Ascension Day in May.

Terminus was an old ancient God who was the God of the boundary, the border, the edge, the liminal God. Ovid says King Tarquinus swept away the old Gods on the Capital Hill and Jupiter became the Great God. All the old temples were taken down except for that of Terminus. Instead, Jupiter’s Temple was built around Terminus’ temple. They put a hole in the roof because Terminus had to be worshipped in the open air.

Terminus’s motto was “concedo nulli” which means “I yield to no one”. This was adopted by Erasmus as his personal motto in 1509.

Terminalia and the Roman Year

The Terminalia was celebrated on the last day of the old Roman year. February was the last month of the year. The rulers of Rome added an intercalary month called Mercedonius in an attempt to keep the Solar year in tune with the seasons. And when the intercalary month was added, the last five days of February were given to the month Mercedonius. The resulting ‘leap year‘ was either 377 or 378 days long. So, in those years, the 23rd of February was the Terminus of the year.

The intercalary months were added at the direction of the Pontiffs, supposedly every two or three years. But the Pontiffs were often swayed by political advantage and delayed the decision. By the time of Julius Caesar, the seasons were wildly out of sync with the calendar year. The Dictator, responded by instituting ‘the Year of Confusion’. This was over 400 days long. It brought in the Julian Calendar which realigned the calendar back in line with the seasons. It resolved the problem by a leap day every four years. This was based on the almost correct calculation of a solar year being 365.25 days. It was another 1500 years before that inaccuracy was corrected. By which time the year was another 11 days out of kilter, and the Julian Year was replaced by the Gregorian Year,

For more on Leap Years and the Roman Year look at my post here.

Ovid & Terminalia

Here is what Ovid, in ‘Fasti’ says about Terminalis


When night has passed, let the god be celebrated
With customary honour, who separates the fields with his
sign.
Terminus, whether a stone or a stump buried in the earth,
You have been a god since ancient times.
You are crowned from either side by two landowners,
Who bring two garlands and two cakes in offering.
An altar’s made: here the farmer’s wife herself
Brings coals from the warm hearth on a broken pot.
The old man cuts wood and piles the logs with skill,
And works at setting branches in the solid earth.
Then he nurses the first flames with dry bark,
While a boy stands by and holds the wide basket.
When he’s thrown grain three times into the fire
The little daughter offers the sliced honeycombs.
Others carry wine: part of each is offered to the flames:
The crowd, dressed in white, watch silently.
Terminus, at the boundary, is sprinkled with lamb’s blood,
And doesn’t grumble when a sucking pig is granted him.
Neighbours gather sincerely, and hold a feast,
And sing your praises, sacred Terminus:
You set bounds to peoples, cities, great kingdoms:
Without you every field would be disputed.
You curry no favour: you aren’t bribed with gold,
Guarding the land entrusted to you in good faith.
If you’d once marked the bounds of Thyrean lands,
Three hundred men would not have died,
Nor Othryadesí name be seen on the pile of weapons.
O how he made his fatherland bleed!
What happened when the new Capitol was built?
The whole throng of gods yielded to Jupiter and made
room:
But as the ancients tell, Terminus remained in the shrine
Where he was found, and shares the temple with great
Jupiter.
Even now there’s a small hole in the temple roof,
So he can see nothing above him but stars.
Since then, Terminus, you’ve not been free to wander:
Stay there, in the place where you’ve been put,
And yield not an inch to your neighbour’s prayers,
Lest you seem to set men above Jupiter:
And whether they beat you with rakes, or ploughshares,
Call out: This is your field, and that is his!
There’s a track that takes people to the Laurentine fields,
The kingdom once sought by Aeneas, the Trojan leader:
The sixth milestone from the City, there, bears witness
To the sacrifice of a sheep’s entrails to you, Terminus.
The lands of other races have fixed boundaries:
The extent of the City of Rome and the world is one

Book II: February 23: The Terminalia

Translated by A. S. Kline copyright 2004

See the following posts for the Roman Year:

Romulus’s 10 month year here
Roman Months here
More on the Ides of March here
Leap Years and the Roman Year

Today, is Sexagesima Sunday. The second Sunday before Ash Wednesday.  It comes from the Latin for sixtieth and is very approximately 60 days before Easter.  It is the time when we should be reflecting on our sins and lifestyle before we enter Lent.

Posted on

Lupercalia, Parentalia and Februarius February 15th

Romulus and remus suckling from a wolf
Romulus and Remus suckling from a wolf

Lupercalia was a Roman feast of purification. It was dedicated to the she-wolf who saved Romulus and Remus, the traditional founders of the City of Rome. The centre of the festivities in Rome was a cave called the Lupercal. This was, supposedly, where the wolf suckled the twin brothers until they were rescued by Faustulus, a shepherd.

The Lupercalia was also called dies Februatus. The word seems to be derived from proto-italic word februum for purification by making an offering. The purification instruments were called februa. This is the basis for the Roman month named Februarius and our February.

The deity of the month was Neptune.

Parentalia

We are also in the middle of the Parentalia, which began on the 13th February and lasted nine days. It honoured parents and family ancestors. People would visit the family tombs found along the roadsides outside of the City. Here they would honour the ancestors by making offerings.

Goddesses of the Family Heath

There would be a family banquet and offerings made to the Lares – the household deities.  Romans had a household altar for their worship. The Greek Goddess Hestia was the Goddess of the Hearth – the centre of any household, and Vestal was the Roman equivalent. Dickens borrowed the concept of the Household Gods in his Christmas book ‘the Chimes’.

According to Wikipedia the Codex-Calendar of 354, shows that 13 February had become the holiday Virgo Vestalis parentat. This was a public holiday which by then appears to have replaced the older Parentalia.

For more on Roman Burials and the Festivals of the dead look at my post here:

On This Day

The Day that Christ overcame the devil is a day off work

In the Laws of King Alfred the Great, February 15th, the day Christ overcame the devil, was a day off for freemen.  I think this is the day Jesus overcame temptation in the Desert – normally the first day in Lent. Lent of course varies with the date of Easter, but the law code says the 15th is the day off.  I delve more into Days off in the Anglo Saxon Calender on August 15th.

15 February 1748 Jeremy Bentham was born. He was a utiltarian philosopher, who believed ethics consisted on contributing to the great good of humanity. He also founded University College, London – London’s first univeristy. Founded in 1826. Have a look at this page to discover more. My part in his story is that the mother of my children was a textile conservator and one of her first projects was to sort Jeremy Bentham out. He did not believea person survived death and in order to encourage free thought, he ordered that his body should be publically disected. His skeleton was then dressed in a suit, stuffed with straw, adorned with a case of his head, put in a chair. Placed in a cupboard, only to be brought out to chair committees running the College. He’d got a bit dusty over the years, and a little frayed at the edges. So he was made spick and span.

!5 February 1915 British Troops retake trenches near St Eloi – for more on this read my post here:

Posted on

February – ‘the enemy to pleasure and the time of patience’

February Title page from Kalendar of Shepherds.
February Title page from Kalendar of Shepherds.

The 15th Century French llustration, above, shows February as a time to cut firewood, dress warmly and stay by the fire. Food on the table is a nutritious pie and the fish are there to remind us it is the month of Pisces. In the other roundel is the other February star sign the Water Carrier, Aquarius.

Star signs of February

pisces from the zodiac from kalendar of shepherds
Pisces From the zodiac from kalendar of shepherds

The poem above is a reference to Candlemas’s celebration of the presentation of the child Jesus at the Temple. The paragraph below gives a summary of February. It ends with the idea that runs through the Kalendar. There are twelve apostles, twelve days of Christmas, twelve months in the year. So, there are twelve blocks of six years in a person’s allotted 72 years of life. So February is linked to the second block of 6 years in a human life, ages 6 to 12. In January, the Kalendar suggests the essential uselessness of 0-6 year old children. While here, for February, it allows that from 6-12 years old children are beginning to ‘serve and learn’.

Below, is the text for February. This gives a rural view of life in winter. It ends with the line that February:

‘is the poor man’s pick-purse, the miser’s cut-throat, the enemy to pleasure and the time of patience.’

February in the Kalendar of Shepherds

About the Kalendar of Shepherds.

The Kalendar was printed in 1493 in Paris and provided ‘Devices for the 12 Months.’ The version I’m using is a modern (1908) reconstruction of it. It uses wood cuts from the original 15th Century version and adds various texts from 16th and 17th Century sources. (Couplets by Tusser ‘Five Hundred Parts of Good Husbandrie 1599. Text descriptions of the month from Nicholas Breton’s ‘Fantasticks of 1626. This provides an interesting view of what was going on in the countryside every month.

The original can be found here: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f4824s6t

For more on the Kalendar look at my post here.

Hesiod and February

Hesiod, in his Works and Daya describes February as a merciless cold, windy time.

Avoid the month Lenaeon, (February) wretched days, all of them fit to skin an ox, and the frosts which are cruel when Boreas blows over the earth.
He blows across horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea and stirs it up, while earth and the forest howl.
On many a high-leafed oak and thick pine he falls and brings them to the bounteous earth in mountain glens: then all the immense wood roars and the beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hide is covered with fur; for with his bitter blast he blows even through them, although they are shaggy-breasted.
He goes even through an ox’s hide; it does not stop him. Also he blows through the goat’s fine hair.
But through the fleeces of sheep, because their wool is abundant, the keen wind Boreas pierces not at all; but it makes the old man curved as a wheel.
And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house,
on a winter’s day when the Boneless One (an Octopus or a cuttle?) gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men,3 and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes.
Then the horned and unhorned denizens of the wood,] with teeth chattering pitifully, flee through the copses and glades, and all, as they seek shelter, have this one care, to gain thick coverts or some hollow rock.
Then, like the Three-legged One (an old man with a stick) whose back is broken and whose head looks down upon the ground, like him, I say, they wander to escape the white snow.

Text available here. and for more on Hesiod see my post here.

First Published February 4th 2024, revised 2025