Roman Festivals in April – Episode notes. – AncientBlogger
This episode had links with Sicily, so be sure to check out my miniseries on Ancient History (as well as the Foundation of Rome episode). There is also an article on coins from Sicily, the main Phoenician settlement there (Motya) and some evidence of whales in the Mediterranean found on Sicily.
On the subject of ancient goddesses from the east you might like a piece I did on an exhibition which featured many goddesses at the British Museum called Feminine Power. Finally, if you now have a hankering for more sheep content, howabout a piece on the fat-tailed sheep of Herodotus?
- Cybele (or Kybele).
- Eryx.
- Reading List
- Transcription
Cybele (or Kybele).
I’ll be doing an episode on her at some point, but here’s a good overview of her cult. In the episode I pronounced her with the hard ‘K’ spelling, you may also see her name spelt ‘Cybele’ and pronounced with an ‘S’ (e.g. Sib-i-lee).
Bronze statuette of Cybele in a chariot being drawn by lions. Late 2nd century AD.
Dr Carla Ionescu (who was on my podcast talking about Artemis) has done a video all about her.
Eryx.
This is modern day Erice and another place I would love to visit. The site of Astarte’s temple is thought to be under a later castle which was high up a mountain. The views look incredible. I referenced the concept of evocatio in relation to the cult of Venus Erycina being brought to Rome and you can read a bit I did about this as a practice which the Mesopotamians had a version of, quite literally stealing gods from a rival city.
Erice from above by Pannucci Stefano
The later castle which was likely the site of the temple to Astarte and later Venus. Lafedeontherocks from Wikipedia
Astarte herself is a fascinating deity with links to Ishtar and Aphrodite. There’s a good article all about her here.
A statuette of Asatarte (AD100-200) from Lebanon. She wears a feathered headress and is holding a piece of fruit and a garland (author’s own photo)
In case you were wondering where it was, see the below map with it marked by a red pin. It was deep in what would become Phoenician/Carthage territory.
Reading List
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities
Livy, History of Rome.
Marcobius, Saturnalia.
Ovid, Fasti.
Varro, Latin Language.
Beard, M. Cult of the great Mother in Rome.
Beard, M. A complex of times: no more sheep on Romulus’ birthday.
Bell, R. Power and Piety: Augustan imagery and the cult of the Magna Mater.
Bloch-Smith, E. Archaeological and inscriptional evidence for Phoenician Astarte.
Butrica, JL. Propertius on the Parilia.
Donahue JF. Towards a typology of Roman public feasting.
Eckstein, AM. The Foundation Day of Roman “Coloniae”.
Edwards, C. Magna Mater and the poet unmanned.
Farrell, J. Precincts of Venus: towards a prehistory of Ovidian genre.
McBeath, A & Gheorge AD. Meteor worship in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
Malig, M. Roman cult of Cybele.
O’Hara, J. The Significance of Vergil’s Acidalia Mater, and Venus Erycina in Catullus and Ovid.
Pomeroy, SB. Goddesses, whore, wives & slaves.
Reeves, J. Co-Opted Cults and the Classics: Highlighting the Magna Mater Cult in Rome.
Schilling, Roman festivals and their significance.
Strong, AK. Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World.
Warde Fowler, W. The Roman festivals of the period of the Republic.
Wiseman, TP. Unwritten Rome.
Wiseman, TP. The Kalends of April.
Transcription
O’Hara, J. The Significance of Vergil’s Acidalia Mater, and Venus Erycina in Catullus and Ovid
Pomeroy, SB. Goddesses, whore, wives & slaves.
A big birthday, sheep, Venus and a new goddess at Rome. It’s time to look at the month of April in ancient Rome on the Ancient History Hound podcast.
Hi and welcome, my name’s Neil and in this episode I am continuing my look at the Roman festival year with the month of April.. What I hope to do is get a sense of what Rome was like for people around the early Imperial period when it came to participating or observing festivals. These can tell us a lot about Rome itself and give insights into what people might get up to across all levels of society.
Aiding me in all of this is Ovid. He was a famous, or infamous poet whose work Fasti discussed each month and the festivals. In many ways he’s an invaluable source but he’s also very prone to speculation. In fairness to him Fasti is a poem to entertain, so, as I mentioned, perhaps it’s not fair to criticise him too much for that. Oh, I said infamous because he was exiled from Rome by the emperor Augustus in AD 8 to Tomis, modern day Constanta in Romania. Exactly what he did isn’t known.
Whilst on the subject of Ovid I should also clarify something I said about him in the January episode. I said back then that he likely wrote the Fasti whilst in exile, it’s more likely that he wrote it prior to his exile. This is probably why it’s unfinished and only covers the first 6 months of the year.
Before I begin the customary, where you can find me bit. There will be episode notes with a transcription, reading list and other info on my website ancientblogger.com along with all sorts of ancient history content. You can also find me as ancientblogger on Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky and with a channel on YouTube. It’s all ancient history in case you wondered.
This podcast has its own subreddit called Ancient History Hound on. So if you are on Reddit why not check it out.
Finally – reviews and ratings, if you have the option on the platform you use for podcasts give it a go and this even includes individual episode comments on Spotify. Keep them coming as it’s great to hear from you and gives me the chance to respond.
Ok, let’s get to it.
In previous episodes I have started by talking about the name of the month and in the case of April two possibilities are given by Ovid. This might seem odd, how did Ovid not know? Well, here we meet a theme which isn’t uncommon if you’ve listened to some of the previous episodes on the months and in fact other episodes about Rome in this podcast – particularly the Roman Kings miniseries.
The short of it is that Rome was unclear about the origins of many things. This was due in part to the late development of history in Rome. You think about the ancient Greek historians of the 5th century BC such as Thucydides. Well, Rome’s first historian dated to the end of the 3rd century BC – around the time of Hannibal and the second Punic war. Though Rome had records, it had a lot of gaps which led to the later writers often speculating about a particular thing.
Ovid’s two origins for the naming of April are as different as can be. The first is that the month was named after Venus, or rather Aphrodite.
The second origin story seems a bit more plausible. April was named after the Latin verb apertum which means ‘to open’ or ‘made free’. Ovid wrote that Spring opens everything, meaning that flowers blossom and that sort of thing. In the 5th century AD Macrobius picked up on this argument and agreed with this. He even cited an earlier writer called Cingius who thought anyone who believed the April-named-after- Venus idea was ignorant. Varro, a 1st century BC source also sided with the name of the month coming from that Roman word rather than the link to Aphrodite.
What’s intriguing about Macrobius’ reference to Cingius is that there were presumably some people who felt quite strongly about this, and I wonder whether this was something the average Roman felt any passion for. It might have been a more scholarly debate although I am picturing a situation akin to a Curb Your Enthusiasm skit in which a particular person at a social gathering in ancient Rome comes across another person with the opposite opinion and things escalate.
The first festival of April was on the first day of April. The first day of any Roman month was known as the kalends. Now you might be thinking of the word calendar, and yes there is a link though perhaps not in the way which you imagine. In the episode on January I mentioned that we get the word calendar from the Latin calendarium. But the definition wasn’t directly related to the modern concept of ‘calendar’. Calendarium translated as accounting book or register of debts and that’s because it was on the kalends that loans and interest were due for payment.
The festival on the kalends of April was the Veneralia. This was observed by women and involved two goddesses each manifesting in a particular way. The deities of Greece and Rome often oversaw broad categories and sometimes an epithet would indicate which area of their worship was being invoked or related to. For example Jupiter had the epithet Feretrius which was linked to his overseeing of oaths.
Our first goddess was Venus with the epithet Verticordia, which translates as something like Venus the changer of hearts. Here Venus was directing women to stay chaste and keep their virtue. The second goddess was Fortuna Virilis. Fortuna was the goddess of luck or fortune, and Fortuna Virilis was ‘virile’ or manly fortune. She was about a woman being more attractive to men and being more successful, if you get what I mean.
Before I get into why we have this opposition at the same festival I will give a summary of what the rituals for both involved, though this comes with the caveat that we don’t have much. What we do know though is that they both involved bathing, and Ovid gives us an overview of this.
In the case of Venus it involved her statue having any jewellery and garlands on it removed before it was washed and the jewellery put back on and it adorned with a new garland of flowers. The woman, or women then bathed wearing a crown of myrtle which was sacred to her. Incense was burned to Fortuna and a drink of poppy seeds crushed in honeyed milk was taken. This drink was in reference to that which Venus took on her wedding night.
Ovid mentions that women from all levels of society were included. An inscription from Praeneste dated to the first century AD reads, and I quote:
“The women make offerings to Fortuna Virilis; the lower-class women even in the baths”.
End quote
It’s unclear how the festival functioned and there was likely a great deal of variation. It’s plausible that a wealthy woman, sometimes referred to as a matron, might celebrate Venus at home as she likely had bathing facilities. Much of the majority at Rome wouldn’t have had this option and here we meet a plethora of questions about how it all worked.
I’ll start with those who had to use the public baths, or even private ones. Did they celebrate the ritual to Venus? If so did they take their own small images of Venus or was one used symbolically for all of them. Presumably if they did they would then incorporate the rites for Fortuna as per the inscription.
What about the rich matron? Was this done alone or with others of her class, you might imagine a nice statue of Venus being used with beautiful and expensive decorations. But then what. Did she celebrate Fortuna Virilis as well? I don’t think it likely, but might she join with the poorer women at the public baths? I say this because you could perceive the two rites linked to different classes. Venus Verticordia to the rich or better off women of Rome and Fortuna Virilis to the lower classes. There are certainly other variations and these too are left for speculation.
If all of that’s a bit of a head swim, then what about the contrasting nature of the goddesses? Why have one instructing you to keep virtuous and the other making you luckier with men? Though we can speculate there are some clues to follow, and it starts with when the cult of Venus Verticordia came to be. The year given was 215 BC and here we are deep into the Second Punic War. The Carthaginian general Hannibal had invaded Italy and inflicted three heavy defeats upon Rome, the most brutal being at Cannae in 216 BC.
An outcome of these defeats was that it skewed the demographic at Rome. Families had been stripped of their men, and this is important because it was men who regulated the behaviour of women in a family group. A fear at Rome may have been that their women risked acting out of control. Curiously in 213 BC Livy reported a number of matrons being exiled for bad behaviour. The cult of Venus Verticordia may have been a way for the state to regulate women’s behaviour at Rome given the imbalance of men. What about Fortuna Virilis? An argument here is that this was an older cult which the cult of Venus Verticordia looked to place guard rails on following its introduction. Perhaps Fortuna Virilis was seen as a bit problematic given the situation at the time, hence Venus Verticordia helping, shall we say balance things out.
The mixed messaging of either cult could be considered as pushing for the same outcome. Fortuna Virilis would ensure women were found attractive and Venus Verticordia that this manifested according to the moral standards of the day. In short within wedlock. In short married women behaved themselves and those who weren’t married behaved themselves. Of course this is speculation, and it could have been that you worshipped either Venus Verticordia or Fortuna Virilis depending on whether you were married or hoping to meet someone. Or perhaps both if you were married and wanted to make sure that your husband’s eyes didn’t wander too much.
The next festival didn’t have two goddesses involved – just the one. But not a traditionally Roman goddess, she was invited into the Roman pantheon and made quite an entrance doing so.
The 4th of April witnessed the start of the Megalasia, this took place over several days and honoured Kybele. In the course of researching this festival I realised there’s probably an episode I can do on her at some point. She’s incredibly fascinating so keep an eye out for that.
Kybele wasn’t Roman, she was a deity from what is now modern-day Turkey and had been a popular deity with the ancient Greeks. Her introduction to Rome is explained by Livy who described both the how and when. It all began in 205 BC when the Sybilline books were consulted, these were a collection of oracles which advised what to do in certain situations.
The reason for consulting the books was due to a shower of stones being seen but also the threat of Hannibal who was still in Italy at the time. An oracle in the books stated that if ever a foreign foe should invade the land of Italy he could be driven out and defeated if the Idaean Mother was brought from Pessinus. The Idaean Mother, as you may have guessed, was another name for Kybele and Pessinus was where a main cult of hers was based. Rome duly sent ambassadors to King Attalus at Pergamum who helped secure the goddess and she was brought to Ostia where she was met by eager crowds.
Exactly what form Kybele took isn’t clear, perhaps a statue or a sacred stone, one idea relating to the latter is that this was a meteorite. Whatever form it took the goddess was taken to the Temple of Victory in Rome where she was kept until 191 BC when she was moved to a temple to the Great Mother, so her own temple.
The Megalasia was formed of two main components, the opening procession and the following games. The procession was formidable, here’s Ovid’s description of it and I quote:
“Eunuchs will march and thump their hollow drums, and cymbals
clashed on cymbals will give out their tinkling notes: seated on the
unmanly necks of her attendants, the goddess herself will be carried with
howls through the city centre’s streets”
end quote
There are a few points to note here, and I will star with the eunuchs. These were sometimes referred to as galli, or priests and they were brought from overseas. Whether the priests were all eunuchs is debated and probably best left to that episode where I will focus on her. What wasn’t debated though was the noise it made – other sources describe the loudness of it all and the galli playing instruments and dancing whilst wearing extravagant clothes. It must have been quite something to have watched and heard.
The second component involved sacrifices, private celebrations and games. Noble families would host others. In fact it’s argued that this festival was more closely linked with the richer and more prestigious classes at Rome. Indeed a law was brough in 161 BC to control expenditure spent on hosting. The games were formed of chariot races in the Circus Maximus as well as plays put on near her temple.
Kybele was the first foreign deity brought formally into the Roman pantheon and as you might expect this had tensions to it. On one had she needed to be respected as per her rites, but there was also an unease about letting things get too, well foreign. Kybele’s direct worship was restricted to the galli, no Roman citizen was permitted to walk in the procession, and the sacrifices and games were done the Roman way, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus observed. This aimed to ensure that Rome could accommodate the goddess and her foreign elements whilst keeping things as Roman as possible.
In the imperial period things changed with Augustus rebuilding her temple and recruiting priests from his freedmen. Claudius went one step further by creating an office of head-priest which was for Roman citizens only. Kybele was therefore an important deity and one which the Romans were able to integrate whilst still retaining much of her identity and worship.
Before I go to the next festival I want to go back to why she was invited to Rome in the first place because there are a couple of questions about this.
As mentioned she was needed to help rid Rome of Hannibal. A fair enough reason but this seems at odds with when the request was made. In 205 BC Hannibal was no longer a real threat to Rome. The successes at Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae were over a decade old. By this point Hannibal was cornered in southern Italy very much on the defensive, in fact he soon departed Italy to help defend Carthage against Rome. You can hear me talk about all of this on a mini-series about Hannibal.
As such the supposed threat of Hannibal didn’t align with the risk he posed. It’s plausible that the later writers such as Livy were retrospectively assigning the request to this time and perhaps over emphasising the link to Hannibal. Livy himself refers to an omen, a shower of stones, as being partly the reason the Sybilline books were consulted. Perhaps it was a better origin story to have Kybele brought to Rome due to Hannibal rather than due to other reasons or simply that the other reasons were forgotten. There do seem to have been other foreign elements introduced to Rome around this time – one of which I’ll get to later. So perhaps there was something else going on.
On the 21st of April Rome celebrated the Parilia, this was named after Pales a deity associated with shepherds and yet the Parilia also became the festival which celebrated Rome’s foundation. It’s a good example of how Rome might retrospectively link an older ritual to its foundation myth. But before I get to how they did this I’ll summarise the Parilia in its basic context as a festival for a rustic deity, mainly because it sounds like fun.
The focus of the ritual was the sheepfold, where the sheep and presumably other cattle might be kept. At dawn water was sprinkled on the floor, the fold swept and decorated with branches and a garland hung on the gate. Then small bonfires were lit, these consisted of straw, olive branches and laurel. Sulphur might be added. Over these the shepherds jumped and even the sheep got in on the act – don’t worry, they didn’t have to jump and instead were led between the fires. I can assure you no sheep were harmed in the making of this podcast and likely the festival as it would have been very counterproductive to what they were trying to achieve. After this the focus was on Pales, offerings of millet cake and milk were made, and a prayer was said 4 times to the deity whilst facing the east.
Though this was a rustic festival it was also celebrated in the city, presumably a slightly different version. Ovid doesn’t mention sweeping any sheep folds, but he did write about jumping over a fire.
How then, did this festival link with the foundation of Rome? The initial association is through Pales as a deity of shepherds. Both Romulus and Remus were shepherds and in some version of the myth the person who found them whilst they were being nursed by the she wolf was Faustulus, also a shepherd. A more direct association was made by some writers such as Plutarch, Varro and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. These sources have the foundation of Rome occurring when the Parilia was being celebrated. Ovid can be added to this list, his description of the founding of Rome has the Parilia as either about to start or would be shortly.
When Ovid described the foundation of Rome and the fateful event involving Remus he did so by tweaking it slightly. This wasn’t unusual and if you listened to the episode I did on the Foundation of Rome you might recall me briefly discussing the variations. Ovid described how Romulus ploughed a furrow to mark the boundary of the city and where the walls would be. He then hands over the job of the walls to Celer and instructs him to kill anyone who dares to cross the walls whilst they are being built. Remus soon appears and does exactly that, he mocks them and jumps over low walls which were still being built. Celer fells him with a shovel and when Romulus finds out he is distraught. On one hand you might feel for Romulus who was naïve at best, the more cynical voice in me senses that Celer was being set up. Romulus knew his brother so must have expected him to act this way. It’s not as if there was a sign which read – do not jump over the walls or mock them.
An aside I like to make when the story of Remus’ death pops up is that it can feel an overreaction. But the boundary of Rome and its walls were considered sacred, this wasn’t just laughing at bad DIY, this was actually something very serious. The myth might also be hiding a reference to an assault on Romulus’ newly built defences by Remus. So there’s that to consider as well.
Getting back to the Parilia. The idea of a festival predating Romulus and Remus isn’t unique
other festivals I have mentioned in previous episodes such as the Lupercalia, Feralia and Carmentalia had mythologies which predated the twins as well.
I began with a festival involving Venus and another deity and it feels somewhat balanced to finish in the same way. On the 23rd of April there was the Vinalia, a festival involving tasting the previous year’s wine. Though this was largely in obeyance to Jupiter Venus was involved as well.
When Ovid describes the festival he was quite direct with how it linked to Venus, and I quote:
“You prostitutes, celebrate the divine power of Venus:
Venus suits those who earn by your profession.
Offer incense and pray for beauty and men’s favour,
Pray to be charming, and blessed with witty words,
Give the Mistress myrtle, and the mint she loves,
And sheaves of rushes, wound in clustered roses.
End quote
Ovid also mentioned where the prostitutes were gathering, a temple of Venus Erycina at the Colline Gate. This temple was the second built in Rome, the first was built in 215 BC on the Capitoline by the famous dictator Fabius Maximus. In 181 BC the second was built and its location outside the Colline gate is worthy of comment. The city of Rome had a pomerium, a sacred boundary and the second temple was built outside of this. It’s plausible that this reflected the status of those who might gather near it. Though the translation I read out used the word ‘prostitute’ the actual Latin word was volgares which may simply mean, and apologies for how this sounds, ‘common women’. Why then was this temple found outside Rome’s sacred boundary and what did it have to do with the earlier temple built?
The rationale for the building of the first temple to Venus Erycina is one we have heard before. It was ordered after the Sybilline books were consulted. But why? Well, it, again, links to Hannibal, sort of. In 217 BC Rome had elected a consul called Flaminius and he was itching to get to grips with Hannibal following the Roman defeat at Trebia. A newly elected consul was expected to observe a number of rites before taking office and leading an army. Flaminius didn’t want to wait so he slipped out of Rome and met up with an army. He then met Hannibal on the northern shore of Lake Trasimene and was soundly beaten; Flaminius himself fell in the fighting.
If you have listened to a few of the episodes you’d know by now that the Romans placed a great emphasis in keeping relations with the gods in a good place. The actions of Flaminius caused panic at Rome and after consulting the Sybilline books a list of actions resulted to rebalance the relationship. One of these was to build a temple to Venus Erycina.
The reason for it being a temple to Venus Erycina isn’t given by Livy. However, a very interesting argument is made as to one possible reason, and this involves the Erycina part of Venus Erycina which related to a cult of Venus at Eryx which was on the island of Sicily. To explain how this fits in I need to go way back to before Rome was founded.
Around 800 BC the Phoenicians settled on Western Sicily at a place called Motya. In case you are interested I covered this is in the first episode of my miniseries on ancient Sicily. As expected they brought with them their gods and one was Astarte who had her own temple built there. Near to Motya was a local settlement called Eryx which became influenced by this cult and had a famous temple to Astarte built. You may have heard of Astarte; she was a goddess who the Greeks linked with Aphrodite. In a world of polytheistic religions it wasn’t unusual for a culture to associate and identify foreign deities with their own, particularly when elements of that deity were mirrored by one in their religion. When the Greeks arrived on Sicily it’s plausible that they may have worshipped at Eryx to Aphrodite.
After the first Punic War which ended in 241 BC Eryx was under Roman control. It was a short hop from Aphrodite to Venus and so the cult there was now that of Venus Erycina. There was still a sense of the other about her worship, for example the sacrifice of pigs was forbidden as a legacy of her Phoenician origins. There was also another more sensational element – temple or sacred prostitution. I should begin by saying that there is a wide debate about what that meant and whether this was happening by the time of Rome’s conquest, but this association held and might have been behind that reference to prostitutes made by Ovid.
This then was Venus as she was worshipped at Eryx and with those associations. And why was that important? Well, one argument posits that this was an act of evocatio. This was a Roman ritual which involved persuading a deity associated with an enemy to switch sides. This might manifest as building that deity a temple in your city and supplying them with a cult which was exactly what Rome did. Rome must have perceived Venus Erycina as still being much of a Phoenician deity, or with Phoenician roots. And of course Hannibal was Phoenician, he was from Carthage but this was or had been a Phoenician colony so there was that association as well.
With all of that said and done it was Jupiter who was the god worshipped here. There would most likely have been a feast where the new wine was tasted and offered to him. Sounds very much like my sort of a thing. The link with Venus may have been through the founding of her temple in 215 BC to coincide with the existing festival.
In 181 BC there was the second temple built which Ovid links the common women to. Perhaps the respectable women worshipped Venus Erycina at the temple built in 215 BC – the one within Rome’s boundary and the less respectable women at the second temple built outside the city’s pomerium. It’s also possible this temple was built as a response to what is referred to as the Bacchanalia Controversy which saw the Roman Senate severely restrict festivals to Bacchus in 186 BC. Perhaps, like the cult of Venus Verticordia, the temple built in 181 BC was a way to control the celebrations of the poorer classes, including sex workers.
Ovid furnishes us with a mythological and tenuous link with Venus. The story involves the war between Aeneas and Turnus and who the two pledge the first fruits of the vine to. Turnus uses it to recruit Mezentius, a mighty Etruscan warrior. Aeneas pledges the first fruits to Jupiter and ultimately wins. The message here is more about Aeneas being pious and offering a deity the first wine, rather than a human.
Now the link with Venus is through Aeneas being her son. I suppose it does track against the order of deities, Jupiter first with Venus following but I don’t find it that convincing.
What this festival and the others do is highlight is the elastic nature of Rome’s religious festivals which might be used to deal with what were considered important social issues. Rome was contending with the issues of the day, and the festivals were used to knit these into its past and make sense of what Rome thought it was. But more importantly there were sheep folds being nicely decorated, perhaps this could be the next big social media thing. In fact you have sheep and fancy giving them or their home a bit of glam let me know and send me pics.
And on that point I have come to the end of the episode. If you want to say hi or leave a comment or review, please do. Until next time, keep safe and stay well.