Ancient Roman Festivals: The Calendar and the Places

In the painted calendars that the Romans posted in the forums, the days marked as public feriae number more than a hundred, and with the cycles of games they come to cover a good part of the year. They weren't vacations. They were days on which no lawsuits or assemblies could be handled, because the city owed a deity a precise act, in a precise place. And this is what makes the Roman calendar interesting for anyone walking around Rome today: almost every festival had an address. The Lupercalia started from a cave at the foot of the Palatine, the Consualia from an altar buried under the track of the Circus Maximus, the Saturnalia in front of the temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum, and for eight days in June the Vestals opened the shrine of the temple of Vesta to the matrons. Many of those places are still there.

The lines that follow go through the Roman year month by month, each time indicating three things: what the ancient sources say, where the rite took place, what you can see of it today. With a warning. This subject is among the most polluted in popular history writing. Between the 1800s and the 1900s a chain of correspondences was built between ancient festivals and modern ones, from the Lupercalia to Saint Valentine's Day, from the Saturnalia to Christmas, from the Matronalia to March 8, which still circulates as an established fact and which in nearly all cases finds no support in the sources. Where the information is solid, we say so. Where it's a hypothesis debated among scholars, we flag it. Where it's a late invention, we write that. A dedicated chapter at the end lines up the most repeated correspondences.

How the Roman calendar worked

The Roman calendar had 355 days in the pre-Julian version and 365 after the reform of Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and it fixed festivals at dates counted relative to three monthly pivots, not with consecutive numbers. Without that mechanism half of the information about Roman festivals is incomprehensible.

Kalendae, Nonae, Idus and the letters of the days

The Kalendae were the first day of the month, and the word calendar comes from them. The Nonae fell on the 5th or the 7th, the Idus on the 13th or the 15th, depending on the month, and originally corresponded to the full moon. The days in between were counted backward from the next pivot: our March 14 was the pridie Idus Martias. The Romans also avoided even-numbered days for starting anything, and that is why the Lemuria fall on May 9, 11 and 13.

Next to each day the calendars give a letter: F for fastus, a day on which the praetor could administer justice, N for nefastus, C for comitialis, when assemblies could also be held. The abbreviation NP, whose interpretation is still debated and which is usually resolved as nefastus publicus, marks the great public festivals. There is also a graphic detail worth more than many ancient comments: some festivals are written in large letters, and scholars recognize in them the oldest layer of the calendar. Lupercalia, Quirinalia, Parilia, Vestalia, Consualia, Saturnalia, Lemuria, Fordicidia and Liberalia are all in large letters. The Ludi Apollinares or the Megalesia, which entered the calendar between the third and second centuries BC, are not.

The feriae stativae had a fixed date, the feriae conceptivae were movable and announced each year by a magistrate, like the Compitalia and the Feriae Latinae, and the feriae imperativae were proclaimed only once for a specific reason. Distinguishing them avoids the most common error of popular writing, which is to assign a fixed date to festivals that never had one.

Who tells us about the festivals, and how far to trust them

The main sources are four. Ovid's Fasti, written at the beginning of the first century AD, comment on the calendar day by day, but of the 12 books planned, six survive, from January to June: that is why we know much more about the spring festivals than about the autumn ones. Varro, in the De lingua Latina, is the learned source closest to the pontifical tradition, but fragmentary and full of etymologies that modern linguistics rejects. Plutarch, who writes in Greek, and Macrobius, who writes around 430 AD, preserve ancient material alongside late reconstructions.

The methodological consequence is best stated right away: when an ancient source describes a rite we're on solid ground, when it explains why that rite was performed we're almost always facing a later interpretation. The Romans of the first century BC no longer knew what half of what they did meant, and they admitted it: Ovid, on the Agonalia, proposes six different etymologies in a few dozen lines.

The painted calendars you can still see

The Fasti Antiates Maiores, found at Anzio and datable to the first half of the first century BC, are the only painted calendar to have come down to us in the version prior to the Julian reform, and they can be seen at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. The Fasti Praenestini, compiled by Verrius Flaccus for the forum of Praeneste in the Augustan age, are the calendar richest in explanatory notes that we possess, and the fragments are tied to the town of Palestrina, where you can visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale and the Santuario della Fortuna Primigenia on which the museum is built. It's best to check in advance which fragments are on display, because the displays change. For late antiquity the key document is the Chronograph of 354, which places the traditional festivals still being celebrated alongside the Christian observances. The original is lost and we know it from modern copies.

January: the Kalends, the strenae and the Compitalia

January 1 became the start of the consular year in 153 BC, when the consuls' entry into office was moved up from the Ides of March, and from then on the day took on the character of a great civic ceremony.

The procession to the Capitoline and the strenae

On the morning of January 1 the incoming consuls climbed in procession to the Capitoline along the Clivus Capitolinus and sacrificed white bulls to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, pronouncing the vows for the safety of the State. The route is still legible, and the materials of the Capitoline temple, including the great foundations in cappellaccio tuff, can be found in the halls of the Capitoline Museums.

On the Kalends people exchanged strenae, gifts of good omen made of green branches, dates, figs and honey, later also coins. Here the continuity is documented: the Italian word strenna comes directly from the Latin strena. The further leap, which makes Strenia the ancestor of the Befana, has no basis. Befana is a popular corruption of Epifania, through forms like bifania, and it is a path internal to medieval Italian.

The Compitalia: the festival of the neighborhoods, with no fixed date

The Compitalia were a movable festival, announced each year by the praetor and celebrated in the days right after the Kalends, in the imperial age normally between January 3 and 5. Anyone who presents it as a fixed observance gets the category wrong. They were celebrated at the compita, the crossroads where the boundaries of several properties met, and the cult was that of the Lares Compitales.

The compital altars numbered in the hundreds and quite a few survive, almost always moved from their original context. Material of this kind can be seen at the Centrale Montemartini, where sculptures and reliefs from the urban excavations of the late 1800s ended up, and at the Crypta Balbi, the museum that best explains how a Roman city block is transformed over the centuries. On January 11 and 15 the Carmentalia were celebrated instead, for Carmenta, a prophetic deity tied to childbirth, at the Porta Carmentalis at the foot of the Capitoline toward the Forum Boarium. Nothing remains of the gate, but the area is the one between the Theater of Marcellus and the flank of the hill.

February: Lupercalia, Parentalia and Quirinalia

February was the month of purification and of the dead, and the name comes from the februa, the instruments of purifying. It was also the last month of the archaic year, which explains the concentration of closing rites.

Lupercalia, February 15

The Lupercalia were celebrated on February 15 and started from the Lupercal, the cave on the southwestern slopes of the Palatine where tradition placed the finding of the twins. It's one of the festivals in large letters, and one of those the Romans themselves found most baffling. The rite, described by Ovid and Plutarch, involved the sacrifice of goats and a dog in the cave, the touching of the foreheads of two young men with the bloody knife and the wiping with wool soaked in milk, after which the two had to laugh. The luperci then ran almost naked, girded with goatskins, striking anyone they met with strips of leather and in particular women, who let themselves be struck in the belief that this favored fertility and an easy birth.

The route of the run is debated. Scholars waver between a circuit around the Palatine, which would have traced the pomerium of the primitive city, and a route along Via Sacra toward the Roman Forum, and no ancient text settles the question. What is documented instead is that the festival lasted a long time: in 44 BC Mark Antony ran as a lupercus and offered Caesar the royal diadem, and at the end of the fifth century AD the Lupercalia were still being celebrated by citizens who called themselves Christians.

Where the Lupercal was, and what was found in 2007

The exact position of the Lupercal is not known. The sources place it on the southwestern slopes of the hill, toward the Velabrum, and Augustus claimed to have restored it, which proves it was a real sanctuary and not just a literary one. In January 2007 the discovery was announced, beneath the House of Augustus, of a cavity decorated with mosaics, pumice and shells and with a white eagle at the center of the vault, presented by the press as the Lupercal found again. The identification has been rejected by most scholars, among them Adriano La Regina and Fausto Zevi, who on topographical and stylistic grounds see in it a nymphaeum or an underground hall of the imperial age. The position prevailing today places the sanctuary lower down, toward Sant'Anastasia. Anyone who visits the hill and the Palatine Museum will therefore not see the Lupercal. They will see the slope where the sources placed it.

Parentalia and Feralia, February 13-21: the tombs outside the walls

From February 13 to 21 the Parentalia ran, nine days dedicated to the family dead, closed on the 21st by the public day of the Feralia. On the 22nd, with the Caristia, people dined among living relatives. They weren't gloomy days. Families went to the tombs with modest offerings, violets, grain, salt, bread soaked in wine, and ate a meal there, while the temples stayed closed and no weddings were celebrated. The place was not a temple but the necropolises along the consular roads, because the law forbade burials inside the pomerium.

The road where the phenomenon is still legible to the naked eye is Via Appia. The Appian Way Park preserves kilometers of tombs on both sides of the roadway, from the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella to the monuments of middle-rank families, and the route begins at Porta San Sebastiano. On the same axis, in a later period, the Catacombs of San Sebastiano would be dug. The banquet at the tomb, the refrigerium, remained practiced by Christians too, and it's one of the few cases in which continuity between pagan and Christian practice is documented by graffiti and not merely hypothesized. In the city, what remains are the burial ground of the Parco degli Scipioni and the most conspicuous tomb in Rome, the Pyramid of Cestius.

Quirinalia and Terminalia, February 17 and 23

The Quirinalia fell on February 17 in honor of Quirinus, the deity who with Jupiter and Mars formed the archaic triad and whom tradition identified with the deified Romulus, and they took place at his temple on the Quirinal. Of the temple, rebuilt by Augustus in 16 BC with a facade that Cassius Dio says had 76 columns, nothing visible remains. It stood in the area now occupied by the gardens of the Quirinal Palace and the neighboring blocks, and the location is reconstructed on topographical grounds. Anyone who climbs the hill finds the square with the Dioscuri and the Quirinal obelisk.

On February 23 the Terminalia honored Terminus, god of boundaries. Property owners crowned and anointed the boundary stone between two estates, while the public rite was held at the sixth mile of Via Laurentina.

March: the archaic New Year, Anna Perenna and the Liberalia

March was the first month of the archaic Roman year, and that is why September, October, November and December carry names that mean seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth month: a fossil inconsistency never corrected, and the simplest proof of the antiquity of the system.

The Kalends of March and the Matronalia

On March 1 the feriae of Juno Lucina were celebrated, which the sources also call Matronalia because married women under Roman law took part. The temple of Juno Lucina stood on the Cispius, one of the heights of the Esquiline, in a sacred grove, and nothing of it remains in view. The matrons brought flowers there, and at home they received gifts from their husbands and served their slaves at table, in a reversal of roles that the Saturnalia repeated in December with male slaves. On the same day the rex sacrorum renewed the fire on the altar of Vesta: it was the archaic New Year, and it shows.

The connection between the Matronalia and International Women's Day on March 8, which returns every year in the newspapers, has no historical basis. International Women's Day comes out of the socialist movement between 1909 and 1917, the date was consolidated after the demonstration of the women workers of Petrograd, and in none of the documents that accompany its establishment does a reference to the Roman festival appear.

Anna Perenna, March 15: the picnic on the Tiber and the fountain found again

On March 15, on the Ides, the Roman people celebrated Anna Perenna with a day outdoors in a sacred grove that Ovid places at the first mile of Via Flaminia, on the bank of the Tiber. People lay down on the grass, some put up huts of branches, others stretched a toga between poles, there was drinking and singing, and everyone wished to live as many years as the cups they managed to drink. On who Anna Perenna was, the ancients already disagreed. Ovid offers in succession the sister of Dido who landed in Latium, an old woman of Bovillae who handed out cakes to the plebs, and other identifications besides, without choosing one. It's the usual sign of a cult much older than the literature that tells of it.

In 1999, during work on an underground parking garage in Piazza Euclide, in the Parioli district, a fountain complex with a basin and cistern was discovered, identified with certainty thanks to an inscription dedicating the place to the sacred nymphs of Anna Perenna. The deposit contained hundreds of oil lamps, coins, lead containers and an exceptional number of defixiones, the curse tablets, as well as anthropomorphic figurines sealed in cases. It is one of the most important finds of Roman ritual magic ever made. The Fountain of Anna Perenna is today incorporated into the structure of the garage, and part of the magical assemblage is on display at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. It must be said clearly that the identification of the sanctuary is certain, while its coincidence with the grove described by Ovid at the first mile of the Flaminia remains debated, because Piazza Euclide lies noticeably farther north. It may be the same complex, indicated approximately by the poet, or a second place of worship of the same deity. The ancient route can be traced from Piazza del Popolo and the Porta del Popolo toward the Milvian Bridge.

Equirria, Salii and Liberalia

On February 27 and March 14 the Equirria were held, horse races for Mars in the Campus Martius, in the area that today corresponds roughly to the quadrant between Piazza Navona, Largo di Torre Argentina and the Tiber.

The Liberalia fell on March 17 in honor of Liber Pater, an Italic deity of fertility and wine later assimilated to Dionysus, and they too are a festival in large letters. Ovid describes the old priestesses sitting in the streets with cakes of spelt and honey, the liba, from which, according to his etymology, the name of the festival would come. The reference sanctuary was the temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera, dedicated in 493 BC on the slopes of the Aventine toward the Circus Maximus. It was the temple of the plebs and the seat of the archive of the plebiscites, and nothing of it remains in view. Anyone who climbs the Aventine finds instead the early Christian basilica of Santa Sabina.

Tied to the Liberalia was a lay ceremony of great social weight: boys set aside the toga praetexta bordered in purple and the bulla, the amulet of childhood, and put on for the first time the all-white toga of manhood. The father then accompanied them in procession to the Forum and the Capitoline, where the name was written in the lists of citizens. It wasn't mandatory to do it on that day, but most families did, and March 17 was therefore the day on which Rome saw its new generation parade along Via Sacra.

April: Megalesia, Fordicidia, Parilia and Floralia

April is the busiest month of the Roman calendar, with four cycles of games and six major festivals in 30 days, and the thread that ties them together is the fertility of the land and of livestock.

Megalesia, April 4-10: the Magna Mater on the Palatine

The Ludi Megalenses were celebrated from April 4 to 10 for Cybele, the Magna Mater, whose black stone was brought to Rome in 204 BC and whose temple was dedicated on the Palatine in 191. It's the only case in which the temple of a major festival is still clearly visible: the podium in opus caementicium can be recognized on the southwestern side of the hill, just above the area of the Iron Age huts. The games included theatrical performances, and several comedies of Terence were staged precisely at the Megalesia, as the headings of the plays themselves attest.

Cerialia and Fordicidia: the foxes and the pregnant cows

From April 12 to 19 the Cerialia were celebrated, the festival of Ceres, with games in the Circus Maximus and a rite that Ovid describes without managing to explain it: foxes with lit torches tied to their tails were released onto the track. On April 15, within the same cycle, the Fordicidia fell, dedicated to Tellus, the earth. Fordae boves, pregnant cows, were sacrificed, one on the Capitoline and one in each of the 30 curiae, and the chief Vestal burned the fetuses and kept the ashes. Those ashes were not scattered. Six days later they were used for the suffimen of the Parilia. It's the clearest example of how the Roman calendar was not a list of separate festivals but a network, in which a rite in April depended materially on another one and on the sacrifice of the horse the previous October.

Parilia, April 21: the shepherds' festival that became Rome's birthday

The Parilia were celebrated on April 21 for Pales, deity of shepherds and flocks, and they were a purification festival with straw fires, fumigations, offerings of milk and millet and jumping through the flames. The historically decisive point, made explicit by Plutarch in the Life of Romulus, is that the festival is older than its attachment to the founding of the city. It wasn't established to commemorate the birth of Rome. It was the birth of Rome that was placed on the day on which the festival was already held. The date of 753 BC is a scholarly calculation of the late Republic, and ancient authors proposed dates that vary by more than 80 years among them. The story, with the alternative chronologies, the Palatine excavations and the way the anniversary is celebrated today, is reconstructed at length on the page dedicated to the Natale di Roma.

Robigalia and Floralia, end of April

On April 25 the Robigalia served to ward off rust from the grain. The flamen Quirinalis went out of the city along Via Claudia to the fifth mile and sacrificed a dog and a sheep to Robigus. Many scholars note that the Christian procession of the Litania Maior falls on the same day and follows in part the same route. The coincidence is real and the replacement is probable, but it remains a reconstruction and not a fact stated by a text.

The Ludi Florales began on April 28 and lasted until May 3, made annual in 173 BC. The temple of Flora stood near the Circus Maximus, at the foot of the Aventine, and has disappeared. The festival had a character that ancient authors describe as openly licentious: hares and roe deer were released in the circus, lupines were scattered over the crowd, people dressed in bright colors against common custom, and the performances were entrusted to mimes who, at the request of the public, undressed on stage.

May: the Lemuria, the Argei and the ghosts of the house

May was considered an unfavorable month for weddings, and Ovid explains the belief precisely with the Lemuria: marrying in the month of the restless dead brought bad luck.

Lemuria, May 9, 11 and 13: the domestic rite of the beans

The Lemuria were celebrated on the odd-numbered days of May 9, 11 and 13, and they are the only major festival of the Roman calendar that has no public place. The rite took place inside the house, at night, and it was performed by the father of the family. Ovid describes it precisely: the man gets up at midnight, walks barefoot, makes with his fingers the gesture against shades, washes his hands, takes black beans into his mouth and throws them behind him without turning around, repeating nine times a formula with which he redeems himself and his family, then strikes bronze against bronze and commands the paternal Manes nine times to leave. The Lemures are not the benevolent ancestors of the Parentalia. They are the dead who have not found peace.

The etymology that Ovid proposes, from Remuria in honor of the slain Remus, is poetic and modern linguistics does not accept it. Just as debated is the oft-repeated thesis that links the Lemuria to the Christian commemoration of the dead by way of the dedication of the Pantheon to Santa Maria ad Martyres by Pope Boniface IV, which tradition places on May 13, the last day of the Lemuria. From that dedication came a festival of all the martyrs later moved to November 1, but that the move has anything to do with the Lemuria is an unproven modern reconstruction, and the link with Halloween runs, if anywhere, through the Celtic calendar and Carolingian choices.

Argei and Mercuralia

On May 14 the Vestals and the pontiffs threw into the Tiber from the Pons Sublicius 24 or 27 rush effigies called Argei, in the presence of the magistrates and of the wife of the flamen Dialis dressed in mourning. The rite is described by Ovid, Varro and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and none of them can explain it. The interpretation that sees in it the replacement of ancient human sacrifices is a hypothesis that contemporary scholars tend to consider unprovable, and alternative readings speak of river purification or of a rite tied to the 27 shrines of the Argei distributed in the regions of the Servian city. The ancient Pons Sublicius no longer exists and its position is debated. It stood between the Tiber Island and the Aventine, not far from the Ponte Rotto, and the modern bridge that bears its name is a work of the 1900s in a different spot.

On May 15 Mercury was celebrated, whose temple on the Aventine was dedicated in 495 BC. Merchants sprinkled themselves with water drawn from the spring of Mercury near the Porta Capena and asked the god to forgive the perjuries committed in business.

June: the Vestals, the open temple and the Matralia

June concentrates two festivals that have a precise address in the archaeological heart of Rome, and it's the month in which you can stand exactly where the protagonists of the rite stood.

Matralia, June 11: Mater Matuta in the Foro Boario

On June 11 the matrons celebrated the Matralia for Mater Matuta in her temple in the Forum Boarium, in the sacred area of Sant'Omobono, where excavations have identified one of the oldest sequences of temples in Rome, with phases going back to the sixth century BC. The rite had two peculiarities: only women married just once could take part, and the participants brought into the temple a slave woman who was then driven out with blows of a rod, while each prayed not for her own children but for her sisters' children. The area of Sant'Omobono can be seen from the outside along Via del Teatro di Marcello and is opened only on specific occasions: it's best to ask the Sovrintendenza Capitolina before counting on it. All around you walk among the Arch of Janus, the Republican temples and the Mouth of Truth in front of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

Vestalia, June 7-15: the eight days when the penus stood open

The Vestalia were celebrated from June 7 to 15, and in those days the penus Vestae, the inner shrine of the temple of Vesta, normally inaccessible, stayed open to Roman matrons, who entered barefoot. It's the only time of year when this happened, and the central day was June 9. On the 15th the calendar carries the abbreviation Q.St.D.F., quando stercus delatum fas, the day on which the cleaning of the temple was completed and the sacred refuse was carried away along a set route and thrown into the Tiber. From that moment the days became fasti again.

The temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals are in the Roman Forum, on the southern side of the square. Of the round temple a stretch of podium and a section of columns rebuilt in the 1930s remain, recognizable because the modern reintegration is deliberately distinguishable from the ancient. Of the Atrium Vestae you walk the whole perimeter, with the elongated courtyard of the basins, the statues of the chief Vestals lined up along the sides and the inscribed bases that preserve their names. Next to it are the temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, carved out of imperial rooms at the foot of the Palatine.

On June 24 Fors Fortuna was celebrated, a festival explicitly of slaves and the lowly, which Ovid describes as the merriest of the year. The Romans reached the two sanctuaries on the right bank of the Tiber, at the first and sixth mile of Via Campana, many going by boat, and came back in the evening drunk. The sanctuaries are not preserved. The bank is the one toward the Janiculum and Trastevere, in the direction of Portuense.

July and August: Ludi Apollinares, Consualia and Diana

In the second half of the year the documentation suddenly thins out, because of Ovid's Fasti only the six books from January to June survive. From July on we depend on the epigraphic calendars, on Varro, on Festus and on Macrobius.

Ludi Apollinares, July 6-13

The Ludi Apollinares were established in 212 BC, in the thick of the Hannibalic war, on the strength of a prophetic response, made annual a few years later and fixed on the Ides of July, with a cycle that in the imperial calendar occupies the days from the 6th to the 13th. The reference temple was not the Palatine temple of Apollo, dedicated by Augustus in 28 BC and therefore later than the festival by almost two centuries, but the temple of Apollo Medicus in the Campus Martius, rebuilt in the Augustan age by Gaius Sosius and today recognizable in the three raised columns next to the Theater of Marcellus. It's a clarification worth making, because the attribution to the Palatine temple recurs often and is chronologically impossible.

Consualia and Volcanalia: the buried altar of the Circus Maximus

The Consualia were celebrated twice a year, on August 21 and December 15, for Consus, deity of stored grain, and their place is the most singular in the whole calendar: an underground altar, the ara sub terra, located in the valley of the Circus Maximus near one of the turning posts of the track and dug up only on the days of the festival. On those days horse and mule races were run, and the working animals were garlanded and left to rest. The tradition reported by Livy placed the rape of the Sabine women at the Consualia, telling that Romulus invited the neighbors to the festival and took advantage of it. It's a mythical tale, not a chronicle, but it shows that the Romans considered the festival very ancient and capable of drawing people from outside. The altar is not visible and its position has not been identified with certainty in excavations. The Murcia valley, instead, can be walked freely.

On August 23 the Volcanalia honored Vulcan at the Volcanal, the very ancient sacred area at the foot of the Capitoline at the western end of the Roman Forum, near the Lapis Niger. Live fish taken from the Tiber were thrown into the fire, offered, according to Varro, in place of human lives.

Diana's August 13 and the question of Ferragosto

August 13 was Diana's day, celebrated on the Aventine in her temple and above all in the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis near Lake Nemi, where the sources describe processions of women with torches. The Nemorensis sanctuary has been extensively excavated and the area is near Lake Nemi, in the territory of Nemi, one of the most famous places of worship in ancient Latium also for the figure of the rex nemorensis, the priest who obtained the office by killing his predecessor. The Feriae Augusti, from which the name Ferragosto comes, are instead an institution of the Augustan age that fell on the first of August, not the 15th. The shift of the great mid-August festival depends on the Christian solemnity of the Assumption, fixed on that day much later. The continuity of the name is real and documented, that of the date is not.

September and November: the Ludi Romani, the Ludi Plebei and the banquet of Jupiter

The two great cycles of games in the autumn were the longest of the calendar and had the same structure: a solemn procession, a banquet offered to the Capitoline triad, days of theater and days of races.

Ludi Romani, September 4-19

The Ludi Romani, also called Ludi Magni, were the oldest games of Rome, dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and in the imperial calendar they occupied the days from September 4 to 19. They opened with the pompa circensis, the procession that set out from the Capitoline, crossed the Roman Forum along Via Sacra, passed through the Foro Boario and came out into the Circus Maximus carrying the images of the gods on litters and carts. The detailed description by Dionysius of Halicarnassus is our main source on that procession, and the route can be retraced today entirely on foot. On September 13, on the Ides, the Epulum Iovis fell, the banquet in which the statues of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were placed on dining couches in the Capitoline temple and served as guests while the senate feasted. It was also the anniversary of the dedication of the temple, whose foundations in cappellaccio blocks can be seen inside the Capitoline Museums.

Ludi Plebei, November 4-17

The Ludi Plebei, attested from 216 BC, occupied the days from November 4 to 17 and repeated the pattern of the Ludi Romani, with a second Epulum Iovis on the 13th, on the Ides. The sources tie them to the Circus Flaminius, the entertainment area opened in 221 BC in the southern Campus Martius, but the point is debated and not all scholars believe the games were really held there. Nothing of the Circus Flaminius remains standing. It lay between the Theater of Marcellus and the ghetto, and structures of the same area fall within the route of the four temples of Largo di Torre Argentina, today visitable on a walkway at the ancient level.

October: the Equus October and the close of the military season

The most archaic and most debated rite of the entire Roman calendar falls on October 15 and is called Equus October, the October horse. The correct form of the name puts the adjective after the noun, and it is not a festival called Ottobre Equus.

What happened on October 15

In the Campus Martius, near the altar of Mars, a chariot race was run. The right-hand horse of the winning pair was sacrificed to Mars with a javelin thrust. The head was cut off, adorned with loaves of bread, and so was the tail, which was carried at a run to the Regia in the Roman Forum so that the blood would still drip on the sacred hearth. For possession of the head the inhabitants of the Subura and those of Via Sacra clashed, and depending on who won it was hung on the Turris Mamilia or on the wall of the Regia. The blood of the tail was collected and kept by the Vestals for six months, until the Parilia of April 21, when it went into the suffimen together with the ashes of the Fordicidia.

The sources for this rite are Festus, Plutarch and Polybius, and they agree on the gestures. On the meaning nobody agrees. The agrarian reading, which sees in the horse the spirit of the grain, the military one, which ties it to the close of the war season, and the one that reads in it a remnant of human sacrifice are all modern reconstructions, and no ancient source states them. The place of the sacrifice is not identified precisely. The Regia, by contrast, can be recognized in the Forum as a foundation base, next to the temple of Vesta.

Meditrinalia, Fontinalia, Armilustrium

On October 13 the Fontinalia honored springs and wells, which were garlanded. The festival has no single place and applies to every spring of the city, from the sources tapped by the aqueducts such as the Acqua Vergine to the household wells. On October 19 the Armilustrium closed the military season with the purification of arms on the Aventine, in exact symmetry with the March rites that had opened it. The Salii went out one last time with the ancilia, which were then put back in the shrine of Mars at the Regia until the following year.

December: the Saturnalia and the month of reversals

The Saturnalia began on December 17 in front of the temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum and were the most popular festival of the Roman calendar, so much so that Catullus calls it the best of days and Seneca complains that by now the whole month has become a holiday.

How many days the Saturnalia really lasted

The length is the point on which popular writing is most imprecise, because the answer changes with the era. The official festival marked in the calendars was a single day, December 17. The private celebration soon expanded, and the sources record a series of interventions: Augustus fixed the official length at three days, Caligula brought it to five, Martial speaks of five days, Macrobius knows of seven. The following days had names of their own, with the Opalia in honor of Ops on December 19 and the Sigillaria, the day of the exchange of terracotta and wax figurines, which the sources place between the 19th and the 23rd. Saying that the Saturnalia lasted from December 17 to 23 is therefore correct for the late phase and for private use, not for the official calendar of the Republican age. The exact formula is that the festival always begins on the 17th and extends for a number of days that varied over time.

The temple of Saturn and the reversal of roles

The public rite took place in front of the temple of Saturn, at the western end of the Roman Forum at the foot of the Capitoline. The eight columns of the pronaos, with the architrave bearing the inscription of the restoration after a fire, are one of the most recognizable profiles of the Forum and belong to a late antique rebuilding of a building whose first dedication tradition places at the beginning of the Republic. On the statue of the god, whose feet were bound with woolen bands for the rest of the year, the bonds were loosened for the duration of the festival. The sacrifice was performed Graeco ritu, with the head uncovered contrary to Roman custom, and was followed by a lectisternium and a public banquet to the cry of io Saturnalia.

In homes the roles were reversed: masters served their slaves at table, who could speak freely, people took off the toga, wore the pilleus of freedmen, gambled, which was forbidden the rest of the year, and drew lots for a Saturnalicius princeps who gave absurd orders. The meaning the ancients attributed to the festival was a temporary return to the golden age of Saturn, when neither property nor servitude existed.

Consualia, Divalia and Larentalia

On December 15 the Consualia returned with their underground altar in the valley of the Circus Maximus. On the 23rd the Larentalia, a festival in large letters and therefore extremely archaic, honored Acca Larentia with a funeral rite in the Velabrum, the depression between the Palatine, the Capitoline and the Tiber where today you find the Arch of Janus and the church of San Giovanni Decollato.

Ancient festivals and modern festivals: what holds up and what doesn't

None of the great correspondences between Roman festivals and modern ones that circulate in popular writing is attested by an ancient source that declares the replacement. All of them, without exception, are reconstructions elaborated between the 1800s and the 1900s, some plausible and debated among scholars, others simply false.

Lupercalia and Saint Valentine

The chain that makes Saint Valentine's Day arise from the Lupercalia rests on a claim repeated everywhere, namely that Pope Gelasius I abolished the Lupercalia at the end of the fifth century, replacing them with the saint's feast. In the text in which Gelasius polemicizes against the Lupercalia, the Adversus Andromachum, no Valentine appears and no alternative festival is established. The pope argues against a rite that Roman Christians continued to practice, and that's all. The link between February 14 and romantic love appears in literature much later, with Chaucer at the end of the 1300s, and the joining of the two festivals is the work of modern scholars.

Saturnalia and Christmas

The formula by which Christmas would be the continuation of the Saturnalia contains an elementary calendar error: the Saturnalia begin on December 17 and never coincided with the 25th. The pagan festival of December 25 attested in late antique Rome is the dies natalis Solis Invicti, which appears in the Chronograph of 354 in the same document that records the Nativity on that date. From here start two hypotheses that scholars have debated for over a century: the replacement one, according to which the Church chose December 25 to replace the solar festival, and the calculation one, according to which the date derives from counting nine months from March 25, attributed both to the Passion and to the conception. Neither is proven. As for customs, the exchange of gifts and the reversal of roles have evident parallels in later European winter customs, but a parallel is not a descent.

Matronalia and March 8, Lemuria and Halloween, Saturnalia and Carnival

The derivation of International Women's Day from the Matronalia is unfounded, for reasons of contemporary history already seen. The link between the Lemuria and Halloween is even more fragile: the commemoration of the saints moves to November 1 in the Carolingian age, and anyone looking for a pagan antecedent looks, if anywhere, to the Celtic calendar. The descent of Carnival from the Saturnalia or the Lupercalia is another 1800s hypothesis, dear to the comparativist school, which finds no documentary confirmation. Carnival forms in the medieval liturgical calendar in relation to Lent, and the reversal of roles is a ritual pattern so widespread that it cannot serve as proof of kinship between festivals a thousand years apart.

What does hold up

Three continuities are documented and must be distinguished from the rest. The first is linguistic: strenna comes from strena, and the word has crossed 2,000 years without interruption. The second is the refrigerium, the meal at the tomb, which passes from the practice of the Parentalia to the Christian one and is documented by graffiti and by funerary tables in the catacombs. The third is the survival of the Kalends and of consular dating in medieval chronology, which is continuity of system and not of festival. Everything else, in the present state of the documentation, is hypothesis or invention.

A walking itinerary through the places of the festivals

Most of the places of the Roman festivals are concentrated in a little more than a square kilometer between the Capitoline, the Forum, the Palatine, the Foro Boario and the Circus Maximus, and can be covered in half a day with just the ticket for the central archaeological area.

The route, stop by stop

You start from the Capitoline, the arrival point of the January Kalends processions and the departure point of the pompa circensis, with the Capitoline Museums and the foundations of the temple of Jupiter. You go down into the Roman Forum, where within 200 meters you touch the temple of Saturn of the Saturnalia, the Volcanal, the Comitium of the Regifugium, the Regia of the Equus October and the Agonalia, the temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals, with next to them the temple of Antoninus and Faustina and Santa Maria Antiqua. Then you climb the Palatine, on the slope where the sources place the Lupercal and where you see the podium of the temple of the Magna Mater of the Megalesia, finishing at the Palatine Museum. Finally you go down into the valley of the Circus Maximus, stage of the Consualia, the Cerialia, the Floralia and the races of the great games, and you finish in the Forum Boarium with the area of Sant'Omobono of the Matralia and the Arch of Janus.

The stops outside the center

Anyone with an extra day can add the Fountain of Anna Perenna in the Parioli and the magical materials of Palazzo Massimo alle Terme with the Fasti Antiates, Via Appia of the Parentalia between Porta San Sebastiano and the Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, the sanctuary of Diana at Lake Nemi and, for the Fasti Praenestini, the Museo Archeologico di Palestrina. To see the religious calendar of a complete Roman city, with temples, theater and sacred areas still legible in their relation to one another, the most instructive visit remains that of Ostia Antica.

Frequently asked questions about the festivals of ancient Rome

How many festivals were there in the calendar of ancient Rome?

In the Roman calendar of the Republican age the days marked as public feriae exceeded a hundred, and with the cycles of games the share of days taken away from public business grew further. They weren't days off in the modern sense, though. They were days on which it was forbidden to handle lawsuits and assemblies because the city owed a deity a precise ritual act, in a precise place.

When were the Lupercalia celebrated and where was the Lupercal?

The Lupercalia were celebrated on February 15 and started from the Lupercal, the cave on the southwestern slopes of the Palatine where tradition placed the finding of Romulus and Remus. The exact position of the cave is not known. The cavity discovered in 2007 beneath the House of Augustus and announced as the Lupercal has been rejected by most scholars, who see in it a nymphaeum of the imperial age.

Is it true that Saint Valentine's Day comes from the Lupercalia?

No. The derivation of Saint Valentine from the Lupercalia is not supported by any ancient source and is a modern scholarly construction. The text in which Pope Gelasius I polemicizes against the Lupercalia at the end of the fifth century does not name Valentine and does not establish replacement festivals, and the association of February 14 with love appears in literature only at the end of the 1300s, with Chaucer.

How long did the Saturnalia last and where were they celebrated?

The Saturnalia began on December 17 in front of the temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum, whose eight columns are still standing at the foot of the Capitoline. The length changed over time: the official festival was one day only, Augustus fixed it at three days, Caligula brought it to five, Martial knows of five and Macrobius seven, with the Sigillaria placed between December 19 and 23.

Are the Saturnalia the origin of Christmas?

The Saturnalia fell on December 17 and never coincided with the 25th, so the direct equation between Saturnalia and Christmas is wrong. The pagan festival of December 25 in Rome was the dies natalis Solis Invicti, and on the relationship between that date and the Nativity scholars have debated for over a century two alternative hypotheses, that of replacement and that of the calculation of nine months from March 25. Neither is proven.

Can you visit the House of the Vestals where the Vestalia were celebrated?

The Vestalia were celebrated from June 7 to 15 in the temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum, and in those days the inner shrine stayed exceptionally open to the matrons. The round temple, partly rebuilt in the 1930s, and the House of the Vestals with the courtyard of the basins and the statues of the chief Vestals can be visited today with the ticket for the archaeological area of the Roman Forum, Palatine and Colosseum.

What was the Equus October and why is it still debated?

The Equus October was the sacrifice to Mars, on October 15 in the Campus Martius, of the right-hand horse of the chariot that won a race, with the tail carried at a run to the Regia so that the blood would drip on the hearth. The gestures are described consistently by Festus, Plutarch and Polybius. The meaning is not: the agrarian, military and sacrificial readings are all modern reconstructions that no ancient source states.

What can you see today of the places of the Roman festivals?

Of the places of the Roman festivals, what remains visible is the temple of Saturn, the Regia, the temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals in the Roman Forum, the podium of the temple of the Magna Mater on the Palatine, the valley of the Circus Maximus and the sacred area of Sant'Omobono in the Foro Boario. What has disappeared is the temple of Quirinus on the Quirinal, that of Flora, that of Ceres on the Aventine and the underground altar of Consus.

Where can you see the original Roman calendars?

The Fasti Antiates Maiores, the only painted calendar prior to the Julian reform to have come down to us, are kept at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, seat of the Museo Nazionale Romano near Termini. The fragments of the Fasti Praenestini, compiled by Verrius Flaccus, are tied to Palestrina and its Museo Archeologico Nazionale. It's best to check with the museums which pieces are actually on display, because the displays change.

One last piece of advice for anyone organizing the visit

The best way to use this calendar is not to look for a festival to see, because none of these observances is celebrated anymore. It's to use it as a key for reading monuments that otherwise are looked at as mute ruins. Knowing that in front of the eight columns of Saturn, for one week a year, the woolen bonds were loosened from the statue and slaves sat down at table, or that in the valley of the Circus Maximus an altar was dug up twice a year, changes the way you cross the Forum. It's better to choose a few places and read them well, rather than chase them all.

Anyone putting together a broader Roman itinerary, linking the central archaeological area with the out-of-town stops like the Appia Antica, Palestrina or Lake Nemi, will find planning and group management tools on Tour Leader Pro, while for a broader picture on transport, seasons and destinations in Lazio and the rest of Italy, Italy Planner is a good resource.