View source

{{LanguageBar|{{PAGENAME}}}}
{{Overquoting|page|passage}}
{{Cite-many}}

The ''Lupercalia'' was an annual Roman festival held on {{Feb 15}} to honour [[Faunus]], god of fertility and forests. Justin Martyr identified Faunus as [[Lupercus]], the one who wards off the wolf, but his identification is not supported by any earlier classical sources. The festival was celebrated near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine (one of the seven Roman hills), to expiate and purify new life in the Spring. This festival's origins are older than the founding of Rome.

http://antipemurtadan.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/lupercalia.jpg

"Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy." - Plutarch, Life of Caesar 61

"So we worship the god, and the priest performs
The rites the Pelasgians brought in the ancient way.
Why, you ask, do the Luperci run, and since it's their custom,
This running, why do they strip their bodies naked?
The god himself loves to run swiftly on the heights,
And he himself suddenly takes to flight.
The god himself is naked, and orders his servants naked,
Since anyway clothes were not suited to that course.
They say the Arcadians had their land before the birth
Of Jove, and their race is older than the moon.
They lived like beasts, lives spent to no purpose:
The common people were crude as yet, without arts.
They built houses from leafy branches, grass their crops,
Water, scooped in their palms, was nectar to them.
No bull panted yoked to the curved ploughshare,
No soil was under the command of the farmer.
Horses were not used, all carried their own burdens,
The sheep went about still clothed in their wool.
People lived in the open and went about nude,
Inured to heavy downpours from rain-filled winds.
To this day the naked priests recall the memory
Of old customs, and testify to those ancient ways...
A she-wolf, which had given birth to her whelps came, wondrous to
tell, to the abandoned twins [Romulus and Remus]
...She halted and fawned on the tender babes with her tail,
and licked into shape their two bodies with her tongue
...fearless, they sucked her dugs and were fed on a supply of milk
that was never meant for them. The she-wolf (lupa) gave her name to
the place, and the place gave their name to the Luperci. Great is the
reward the nurse has got for the milk she gave." - Ovid , Fasti II

"It is said that the festival of the Lupercalia, which is still
observed, was even in those days celebrated on the Palatine hill. This
hill was originally called Pallantium from a city of the same name in
Arcadia; the name was afterwards changed to Palatium. Evander, an
Arcadian, had held that territory many ages before, and had introduced
an annual festival from Arcadia in which young men ran about naked for
sport and wantonness, in honour of the Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans
afterwards called Inuus. The existence of this festival was widely
recognised, and it was while the two brothers were engaged in it that
the brigands, enraged at losing their plunder, ambushed them. Romulus
successfully defended himself, but Remus was taken prisoner and
brought before Amulius, his captors impudently accusing him of their
own crimes. The principal charge brought against them was that of
invading Numitor's lands with a body of young men whom they had got
together, and carrying off plunder as though in regular warfare. Remus
accordingly was handed over to Numitor for punishment." - Livy,
History of Rome 1.5

"But Aelius Tubero, a shrewd man and careful in collecting the
historical data, writes that Numitor's people, knowing beforehand that
the youths were going to celebrate in honour of Pan the Lupercalia,
the Arcadian festival as instituted by Evander, set an ambush for that
moment in the celebration when the youths living near the Palatine
were, after offering sacrifice, to proceed from the Lupercal and run
round the village naked, their loins girt with the skins of the
victims just sacrificed. This ceremony signified a sort of traditional
purification of the villagers, and is still performed even to this
day." - Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.80

"In support of this story, Varro relates others no less incredible
about that most famous sorceress Circe, who changed the companions of
Ulysses into beasts, and about the Arcadians, who, by lot, swam across
a certain pool, and were turned into wolves there, and lived in the
deserts of that region with wild beasts like themselves. But if they
never fed on human flesh for nine years, they were restored to the
human form on swimming back again through the same pool. Finally, he
expressly names one Demaenetus, who, on tasting a boy offered up in
sacrifice by the Arcadians to their god Lykaios according to their
custom, was changed into a wolf, and, being restored to his proper
form in the tenth year, trained himself as a pugilist, and was
victorious at the Olympic games. And the same historian thinks that
the epithet Lykaios was applied in Arcadia to Pan and Jupiter for no
other reason than this metamorphosis of men into wolves, because it
was thought it could not be wrought except by a divine power. For a
wolf is called in Greek lykòs, from which the name Lykaios appears to
be formed. He says also that the Roman Luperci were as it were sprung
of the seed of these mysteries." - Augustinius of Hippo, City of God 18.17

"After [Saturn], third in descent, they say that Faunus was king, in
whose time Evander came into Italy from Pallanteum, a city of Arcadia,
accompanied with a small band of his countrymen, to whom Faunus kindly
gave land, and the mountain which he afterwards called Palatium. At
the foot of this mountain he built a temple to the Lykaian god, whom
the Greeks call Pan, and the Romans Lupercus, the naked statue of the
deity being covered with a goat-skin, in which dress the priests now
run up and down during the Lupercalia at Rome." - Justin, Epitome 43.6ff

"There was added to these causes of offence his insult to the
tribunes. It was, namely, the festival of the Lupercalia, of which
many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also
some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the
noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city
naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy
thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and
like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing
that the pregnant will thus be helped to an easy delivery, and the
barren to pregnancy." - Plutarch, Life of Iulius Caesar 61.1-2

The religious ceremonies were directed by the Luperci, the "brothers
of the wolf", priests of Faunus, dressed only in a goatskin. During
Lupercalia, a dog and two male goats were sacrificed. Two patrician
youths were anointed with the blood, which was wiped off with wool
soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh. The
Luperci afterwards dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed
goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the Palatine Hill with
thongs cut from the skins in their hands. These were called Februa.
Girls would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips.
This was supposed to ensure fertility. The name of the month of
February is derived from the Latin februare, "to purify", meant as one
of the effects of fever, which has the same linguistic root.


"You did see that on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse." - William Shakespeare: Mark Antony
speaking of Caesar in "Julius Caesar" III.ii

Tradition states that on this day in 44 B.C., Marcus Antonius offered
Caesar a king's crown to rule over Rome, but Caesar refused, saying
"Only Iuppiter is king in Rome."


[[Category: Roman religion]]