Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral annual festival,[2] observed in the city of Rome on February 15, to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia was also called "dies Februatus", purified (literally "februated day") after the instruments of purification called "februa", which give the month of February (Februarius) its name
Name
The festival was later known as Februa ("Purifications" or "Purgings") after the februum which was used on the day.[3] It was also known as Februatus and gave its name to Juno Februalis, Februlis, or Februata in her role as its patron deity; to a god called Februus, and to February (mensis Februarius), the month during which it occurred.[3] Ovid connects februare to an Etruscan word for "purging".[4] Some sources connect the Latin word for fever (febris) with the same idea of purification or purging, due to the sweating commonly seen in association with fevers.

The name Lupercalia was believed in antiquity to evince some connection with the Ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia, a wolf festival (Greek: λύκος, lýkos; Latin: lupus), and the worship of Lycaean Pan, assumed to be a Greek equivalent to Faunus, as instituted by Evander.[5] Justin describes a cult image of "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus," as nude, save for a goatskin girdle.[6] It stood in the Lupercal, the cave where tradition held that Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf (Lupa). The cave lay at the foot of the Palatine Hill, on which Romulus was thought to have founded Rome.[7]

Rites
Locations
The rites were confined to the Lupercal cave, the Palatine Hill, and the Forum, all of which were central locations in Rome's foundation myth[8] Near the cave stood a sanctuary of Rumina, goddess of breastfeeding; and the wild fig-tree (Ficus Ruminalis) to which Romulus and Remus were brought by the divine intervention of the river-god Tiberinus; some Roman sources name the wild fig tree caprificus, literally "goat fig". Like the cultivated fig, its fruit is pendulous, and the tree exudes a milky sap if cut, which makes it a good candidate for a cult of breastfeeding.[9]

Priesthoods
The Lupercalia had its own priesthood, the Luperci ("brothers of the wolf"), whose institution and rites were attributed either to the Arcadian culture-hero Evander, or to Romulus and Remus, erstwhile shepherds who had each established a group of followers. The Luperci were young men (iuvenes), usually between the ages of 20 and 40. They formed two religious collegia (associations) based on ancestry; the Quinctiliani (named after gens Quinctia) and the Fabiani (named after gens Fabia). Each college was headed by a magister. In 44 BC, a third college, the Juliani, was instituted in honor of Julius Caesar; its first magister was Mark Antony.[10] The college of Juliiani disbanded or lapsed during Caesar's civil wars, and was not re-established in the reforms of his successor, Augustus. In the Imperial era, membership of the two traditional collegia was opened to iuvenes of equestrian status.

Sacrifice
At the Lupercal altar, a male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter's chief priest.[11] An offering was also made of salted mealcakes, prepared by the Vestal Virgins.[12] After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci approached the altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and/or laugh.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs (known as februa) from the flayed skin of the victim,[2] and ran with these, naked or near-naked, along the old Palatine boundary, in an anticlockwise direction around the hill.[13] In Plutarch's description of the Lupercalia, written during the early Empire,

...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.[14]

The Luperci completed their circuit of the Palatine, then returned to the Lupercal cave.


The Lupercalian Festival in Rome (ca. 1578–1610), drawing by the circle of Adam Elsheimer, showing the Luperci dressed as dogs and goats, with Cupid and personifications of fertility
History
The Februa was ancient and possibly Sabine. After the month of February was added to the Roman calendar, Februa occurred on its fifteenth day (a.d. XV Kal. Mart.). Of its various rituals, the most important came to be those of the Lupercalia.[15] The Romans themselves attributed the instigation of the Lupercalia to Evander, a culture hero from Arcadia who was credited with bringing the Olympic pantheon, Greek laws and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Rome, 60 years before the Trojan War.

Lupercalia was celebrated in parts of Italy and Gaul; Luperci are attested by inscriptions at Velitrae, Praeneste, Nemausus (modern Nîmes) and elsewhere. The ancient cult of the Hirpi Sorani ("wolves of Soranus", from Sabine hirpus "wolf"), who practiced at Mt. Soracte, 45 km (28 mi) north of Rome, had elements in common with the Roman Lupercalia.[16]

Descriptions of the Lupercalia festival of 44 BC attest to its continuity; Julius Caesar used it as the backdrop for his staged public refusal of a golden crown (i.e. a diadem), offered to him by Mark Antony.[17][18] The Lupercal cave was restored or rebuilt by Augustus, and has been speculated as identical with a grotto discovered in 2007, 50 feet (15 m) below the remains of Augustus' residence; according to scholarly consensus, the grotto is a nymphaeum, not the Lupercal.[19] The Lupercalia festival is marked on a calendar of 354 alongside traditional and Christian festivals.[20] Despite the banning in 391 of all non-Christian cults and festivals, Lupercalia was celebrated by the nominally Christian populace on a regular basis, into the reign of the emperor Anastasius. Pope Gelasius I (494–96), claimed that only the "vile rabble" were involved in the festival,[21] and sought its forceful abolition; the senate protested that the Lupercalia was essential to Rome's safety and well-being. This prompted Gelasius' scornful suggestion that "If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery."[22]

There is no contemporary evidence to support the popular notions that Gelasius abolished the Lupercalia, or that he, or any other prelate, replaced it with the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[23] A literary association between Lupercalia and the romantic elements of Saint Valentine's Day dates back to Chaucer, and poetic traditions of courtly love.[24][25][26][24]

Legacy

Caesar Refuses the Diadem (1894), when it was offered by Mark Antony during the Lupercalia
Horace's Ode III, 18 alludes to the Lupercalia. The festival or its associated rituals gave its name to the Roman month of February (mensis Februarius) and thence to the modern month. The Roman god Februus personified both the month and purification, but seems to postdate both.

William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar begins during the Lupercalia. Mark Antony is instructed by Caesar to strike his wife Calpurnia, in the hope that she will be able to conceive.

10 Bizarre Facts About Lupercalia, The Original St Valentine’s Day


Long before we started giving cards to girls to let them know that we choo-choo-choose them, the Romans were celebrating love in their own way. Every February 15, they held Lupercalia—the original Valentine’s Day.The holiday has gone through a few changes over the past few thousand years. But don’t worry—if you’re hoping to celebrate a truly traditional Valentine’s Day this year, Listverse has you covered. We’ll let you know everything you need to do.

The Murdering Of The Cute Puppies10a-puppy-napping-531012837On the original Valentine’s Day, the Romans kicked off the festivities by dragging two goats and a puppy into a cave and letting a group of cultish priests ritually slaughter them. The instructions were specific about the puppy part. It couldn’t be a mature dog—it had to be an adorable baby puppy.Even the Romans didn’t really understand why they had to kill a puppy. The best sources we have on the holiday were written centuries after it began. By then, Lupercalia was just an old tradition and the Romans writing about it make it clear that they didn’t understand any of it.Plutarch was pretty sure that they stole the puppy-killing thing from the Greeks. Based on how Plutarch described them, the Greeks were puppy-killing aficionados. He said that the Greeks killed puppies in rituals so often that they had a word for it: periskulakismoi (“purification by puppy”). This word has also been translated in some real academic papers that people with PhDs were paid to write as “pupprification.”But even that’s just a theory. By the time Plutarch came around, nobody really knew why they were killing puppies—they were just following tradition. He had another theory, though. Pure spite. “Is it that the dogs bark at the Luperci [priests],” Plutarch theorized, “and annoy them?”

The Feigning Of Laughter Of The Blood-Soaked Boys9a-lupercalia-blood-ceremony
Photo credit: americas-most-haunted.com
After the puppies and the goats were killed, two young noble boys were brought into the cave to do something that creeped the hell out of the Christians, who ended up banning this festival.The priests would touch their knives to the heads of the boys, staining the boys’ heads with blood. Then the priests would dip wool in milk and rub it on the boys’ heads. That was kind of strange, but what really made this unnerving was what came next: With milk and blood streaking down their heads, the boys were required to feign laughter.Again, the Romans had no idea why they were making creepy, blood-stained children laugh in a dark cave. The Romans believed that it was a purification ritual, but even that was just a theory. It was just a tradition that they’d been following for as long as they could remember, and they weren’t about to break it.After this, though, came the main event. The priests would make leather thongs out of the goats, the boys would strip naked, and the real games would begin.


The Streaking Of The Thong-Carrying Men8-lupercalia-thong-whipping
Photo credit: guides.wikinut.com
“At this time, many of the noble youth and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked,” Plutarch tells us, “striking those they meet with shaggy thongs.”These naked men would be covered in oil first. The lower class wasn’t allowed to do this. These were the highest-ranking and most dignified men in the city. People like Mark Antony would strip naked, oil up, and run down the streets.Once they were good and oily, they’d run around hitting people with shaggy thongs. In particular, they’d target women, who would pretend to run from it. But secretly, the women would try to get hit with the thongs. If you got hit with a thong, the Romans believed, you would become more fertile. So women would bare their backs and offer up their hands in the hopes that naked oily men would whip them.Those thongs, by the way, were called februare—and they were named before the month. That’s right—the entire month of February is named after magical potency thongs.


The Eating Of The Entrails On A Stick7a-goat-486869012Lupercalia also involved a feast. Although when it came to food, it wasn’t exactly the best holiday. Even Roman poetry calls the feast of Lupercalia “scanty”—and with good cause. The priests would put the entrails of the sacrificed goats on willow spits, cook them up, and feed them to a crowd of people. Splitting two goats between all the citizens of Rome probably didn’t extend that far, but that wasn’t all they got. Some vestal virgins would also burn salt cakes, which seem to have been something like ancient pancakes. But that was the feast—a tiny bit of goat entrail on a stick and some burned cakes.None of that might seem particularly appealing, which is probably why the Romans served one more dish: copious amounts of alcohol. For the rest of the day, the people of Rome would be drunk out of their minds.


The Hooking Up Of The Swingers6-lupercalia-hookups
Photo credit: guff.com
In some parts of Rome, they would take the whole fertility ritual a bit further. Eligible young women hoping to get pregnant would write their names on clay tablets and place the tablets in a jar. Then the men would draw a name at random. Two completely random strangers would be hooked up and be together for the rest of the festival.Some of the details on this are a bit vague and inconsistent, but it seems like these two weren’t just going on a blind date. The man was there to make the woman’s dream of having a baby a reality. Exactly how long they stuck together seems to vary. Some say they just spent the festival together. But according to others, those two would be sexual partners for the next year.


The Airing Of Grievances5a-romans-singing
Photo credit: archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com
Lupercalia had its own songs, too. The lyrics have been lost to time, but we have enough of a description to get a pretty good picture of them. For one thing, we don’t have any records that mention the songs without using the words “licentious” or “obscene.”At least by the fifth century AD, people at the festival would break into filthy, vulgar songs that described every bad thing their neighbors had done. If you had an affair or got caught at a brothel, your neighbors would come out on Lupercalia and sing a song about your sexcapades for everyone to hear.The idea was to shame people into good behavior. But as far as the Pope was concerned, the songs tended to come across more as celebrations than criticisms. When they got the chance to talk about what their neighbors had been up to, the Romans apparently got a bit carried away.


The Celebration Of The Horny God4-hercules-kicks-faunus-out-of-bed
Photo credit: champollion08.blogspot.com
Like any good festival, Lupercalia had its classic stories. One was the classic Lupercalia story of Faunus, which Ovid called “an old tale full of laughter.”Faunus sees Hercules walking with his mistress and declares, “She will be my passion!” This, however, is Rome. So that doesn’t mean he is going to write her love notes and ask her on a date. Instead, he plans on waiting until she’s asleep, sneaking into her house, and going wild.Faunus sneaks into the girl’s home, unaware that she had covered up Hercules with her own clothes before she went to sleep. So Faunus just starts groping the mound that looks like her clothes. He feels something strange and recoils. As Ovid describes it, someone “will draw back his foot on seeing a snake”—which is more or less what Faunus realized he was grabbing.Hercules gets up, Faunus falls down, and everyone realizes that Faunus just tried to sexually assault Hercules’s mistress. But nobody gets the slightest bit upset. “Hercules laughed,” Ovid tells us, “as did all who saw him lying there, and the Lydian girl laughed, too.”According to Ovid, men ran naked on Lupercalia to honor Faunus’s failed attempt at sexual assault. “So the god hates clothes that trick the eye!” Ovid wrote, “and calls the naked to his rites.”


The Uncertainty Over Whom You Are Worshiping3-lupercus
Photo credit: romewiki.wikifoundry.com
The Romans would spend Lupercalia telling stories about Faunus, but he wasn’t actually the god of the holiday. The holiday was called Lupercalia. It was held in Lupercal Cave by Luperci priests. So obviously, it was dedicated to the god Lupercus. The thing is, nobody—including the Luperci priests—actually knew who Lupercus was.They had a whole cult dedicated to this god, but they didn’t know what he stood for. Lupercalia was an old farming religion. Nobody could remember when the holiday started, let alone why. They were just doing what their parents had done before them.Their only hint was a statue of a naked man in a goatskin girdle outside Lupercal Cave. The Romans also figured that he probably had something to do with farmers. But that was it—that was all they knew. Lupercus wore a girdle, and that was enough for people to dedicate their lives to being his priests.


The Crowning Of Julius Caesar2b-antony-crowning-caesar
Photo credit: goodreads.com
A major moment in the life of Julius Caesar happened during Lupercalia. When Mark Antony put a wreath on Caesar’s head and offered him the throne, it wasn’t just any day—it was Lupercalia. When you realize that, you realize it went down a bit differently from how you’ve always pictured it. History specifically states that Caesar was watching the festivities when it happened. But he wasn’t watching people eat; we’re specifically told that he was watching naked, oily, young men run down the streets when Mark Antony came over to offer Caesar the throne.Unlike Caesar, though, Mark Antony wasn’t just a spectator. He was participating. Plutarch describes him as “one of the runners in the sacred race,” which means that he didn’t walk over to Julius Caesar wearing a tunic. Antony walked over completely naked, holding a shaggy thong in one hand and a laurel wreath in the other.So, next time your local drama club puts on a production of Julius Caesar, you can make sure they get the costumes right.1 The Killing Of People Named Valentine1-skull-st-valentine
Photo credit: atlasobscura.com


The last Lupercalia was held at the end of the fifth century. By then, Christianity had taken over Rome, and Lupercalia was one of the few Roman holidays that was still being celebrated. Pope Gelasius ended it, though, declaring that it was a pagan ritual full of blood sacrifice that glorified sex. Most of this ritual had been stopped anyway. Although we don’t know all the details of how it was celebrated in the fifth century, we do know that the Pope challenged the Romans who complained to actually do that “running around naked” part—and none were willing to do it.The Romans weren’t too happy about losing a festival, though, so a new festival came into existence: St. Valentine’s Day. Well, technically, the Pope replaced Lupercalia with the slightly less popular “Feast of the Purification of The Blessed Virgin Mary,” but eventually, it became Valentine’s Day.The holiday got the name St. Valentine’s Day because people named Valentine had a strange habit of dying on February 14. Two separate Valentines had already died on that date, so they created St. Valentine’s Day—a day to remember a saint who got beheaded.Over the next 1,500 years, some things changed. Instead of putting their names in jars, women got cards. Instead of hitting women with girdles, men gave them flowers. But the holiday we celebrate today got its start here.