Tag: Lupercal

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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:

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Ovid abandons the ‘Fasti’ Ovid June 30th

OVID 19TH CENTURY ENGRAVING BY j w cOK
OVID 19TH CENTURY ENGRAVING BY J W COOK

If you want to read Ovid’s almanac of the year, the ‘Fasti’, for yourself, this is the translation I am using.

Fasti is sadly unfinished because Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō was exiled by the Emperor Augustus. The last entry is for 30th June where Ovid writes: ‘put the last touches to my undertaking’. It suggests he knew he was finished, despite only being halfway through the year.

He was exiled to the Black Sea at Tomis where he died ten years later. It is not clear exactly why he was exiled. Ostensibly it was for the immorality of his book ‘The Art of Love’. But that was published almost a decade earlier. So, it seems a strange cause for exile.

Was he involved with a plot against Augustus that saw the Emperor’s own daughter exiled? Her lover was Lullus Antonius, son of Mark Antony. Unlike Julia’s other lovers, he was forced to commit suicide.

Sculpture of Julia the Elder, daughter of Augustus, divorced wife of Tiberius Public Domain . Musée Saint-Raymond in Béziers

But this also happened years before Ovid’s exile. Julia’s daughter, Julia the Yonger, was herself exiled closer to the time of Ovid’s exile. Her husband, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was executed for treason. So, might this be the context of his exile? No one knows. Ovid said the reason for his exile was a ‘poem and a mistake’. The nature of that mistake is not recorded but he said the crime was worse than murder and more harmful than poetry.

Here is one of my favourite Ovid quotations. Here he recommends how the aspiring male should dress for a night out on the town:

Don’t torture your hair, though, with curling-iron: don’t pumice
Your legs into smoothness. Leave that
To Mother Cybele’s votaries, ululating in chorus
With their Phrygian modes. Real men
Shouldn’t primp their good looks …

… Keep pleasantly clean, take exercise, work up an outdoor
Tan; make quite sure that your toga fits
And doesn’t show spots; don’t lace your shoes too tightly,
Or ignore any rusty buckles, or slop
Around in too large a fitting. Don’t let some incompetent barber
Ruin you looks: both hair and beard demand
Expert attention. Keep your nails pared, and dirt-free;
Don’t let those long hairs sprout
In your nostrils, make sure your breath is never offensive.

Avoid the rank male stench
That wrinkles noses. Beyond this is for wanton women –
Or any half-man who wants to attract men.

Ovid, The Art of Love i

The translation is from Green, Peter (Trans) ‘Ovid The Erotic Poems’ Penguin Classics, London 1982‘

Mother Cybele’s votaries were castrati, hence their high-pitched voices. The Cybele, the Mother Goddess, fell in love with Attys, who made her jealous. She made him mad, whereupon he castrated himself and bled to death. The Goddess had him resurrected body and soul. They enjoyed divine bliss ever after. A Cybelian castration device, dredged out of the Thames, can be seen in the Roman Gallery of the British Museum.

photo of Castration Device from the River Thames at London Bridge British Museum Photo kevin flude
British Museum Castration Device from the River Thames at London Bridge Photo: K Flude

The paragraph above is a quotation from In Their Own Words – A Literary Companion To The Origins Of London‘ D A Horizons, 2009.  by Kevin Flude

To buy the Kindle or Paperback version click here.