HOLIDAYS

The Roman calendar included a large number of public holidays, called feriae, that increased in number as time went on. (See Appendix II for more on the calendar.) On some of these days, there would have been private rituals of worship, but more common were religious rites performed by state officials at mass ceremonies, often accompanied by public entertainments held as a part of the religious observances.

One popular Roman holiday was the Saturnalia. Originally an agricultural festival held during the winter solstice, it was meant particularly to honor the god Saturn, who was associated with grain and the growing of wheat. The Saturnalia initially was held just after the last wheat crop of the year was sown. Eventually the Romans settled on December 17 as the date to celebrate the Saturnalia, but as the festival grew in popularity, they kept adding days until, by the high empire, the Saturnalia was a full, weeklong holiday beginning on the 17th. The official component of the Saturnalia was on December 17, when the senators performed a mass animal sacrifice at the temple of Saturn, and afterward there was a huge banquet to which everyone was invited. The rest of the week was taken up with nonstop parties and feasts. All shops, law courts, and schools were closed. Normal moral restraints were loosened and everyone was expected to engage in all forms of revelry and fun. This was the only time of year when people were legally allowed to gamble in public. Bands of revelers ran through the streets drinking and shouting 'To Saturnalia.''

Some of the customs of this festival involved inversions in status. Thus, for one day of the week, slaves were treated as equals, and often at the banquet that day, masters would wait on their slaves and serve them their food. During the festival, everyone wore liberty caps, symbolizing either that for the moment everyone was equal or that everyone was expected to behave with freedom and abandon. Each family would select a princeps, or "leader," of the Saturnalia, who presided over the parties. Often this was someone normally of low status, such as a child. Another custom of the Saturnalia was exchanging gifts. People gave dolls made out of clay to children and wax candles to their friends. Not all Romans approved of such merrymaking, however. The senator Pliny the Younger supposedly had a special soundproofed room constructed at his villa, and while everyone else in his household was having a good time and partying, Pliny would retreat to his room for the week and work.

Another popular holiday, which fell on the 15th of February, seems to have been a festival somehow associated with the story of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome who were raised by a wolf. The name of this festival was the Lupercalia. Since the Latin word for wolf is lupus, this is one of the reasons it was thought to be associated with the legend of Rome's founding. On the 15th of February, priests gathered at a cave believed to be the lair of the wolf who had raised Romulus and Remus. There, the priests sacrificed several goats and a dog. Two young men of aristocratic families then came forward and had their foreheads smeared with the bloodstained knife. Other priests wiped away the blood using wool that had been soaked in milk. Next, the skins of the goats were sliced up into long leather strips, and everyone indulged in a rowdy feast. After the feast came the highlight of the celebration; Young men stripped naked, took the goatskin strips in their hands, and ran through the streets of the city, whipping bystanders. Women in particular would line the streets to watch the naked men and to invite the runners to beat them. It was believed that a woman who was whipped by one of the Lupercalia runners would become more fertile.

One of the more serious festivals, held on the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May, was called the Lemuria. This was a ceremony intended to appease spirits of the dead who were walking the earth, often because they had died an untimely death. These wandering ghosts were called lemures. Rather than being a big public ceremony, this was a private one performed by each family. Each head of a family had to get up at midnight. His feet had to be bare, and he could not have any knots anywhere on his clothing. He first made an apotropaic gesture with his thumb held between his closed fingers. Then he washed his hands and walked through the entire house, spitting out black beans. As he did so, he repeated nine times the phrase, "With these beans I redeem me and mine." He washed his hands again and clanged together bronze vessels, repeating nine times, "Ghosts be gone." Throughout this entire ceremony, he was forbidden to look behind him because presumably the ghosts were following him and picking up the beans. After the ninth repetition of "Ghosts be gone," he finally looked behind him, and this ended the ceremony.