I- 
 
 HE LUPERCALIA 
 
 IRLF 
 
 LBERTA MILDRED FRANKLIN 
 
 :ed in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
 cne Degree of Doctor cf Philosophy, in the 
 
 acuity of Philosophy, Columbia University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1921 
 
EXCHANGE 
 
THE LUPERCALIA 
 
 By 
 
 ALBERTA MILDRED FRANKLIN 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the 
 
 Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1921 
 

THE LUPERCALIA 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS 
 
 I. New knowledge about the religion of the Mediterranean race 
 offers a new basis for a study of the Lupercalia. The characteristic 
 deity of the Mediterranean race was an earth-goddess, incarnate 
 in all natural objects, the giver of life and of death, and worshipped 
 by orgiastic rites. The characteristic deity of the Aryans was a 
 sky-god, who was honored by a calm, rationalistic ceremonial. 
 
 II. The ceremonial rites of the Lupercalia were complex and 
 seemingly incoherent. The Romans had vague ideas about the 
 presiding god, but regarded the purpose of the festival as (a) pro- 
 tection from evil, (b) productivity, and (c) purification. 
 
 III. The wolf-deity, ot the Greeks was Pelasgian; he represented 
 the devouring power of the underworld, and was worshipped by 
 rites of expiation. 
 
 IV. The wolf-deities of Italy, among them Lupercus, were also 
 dreaded chthonic powers, and had cults of the Mediterranean 
 type. The Lupercalia originated among the Ligurians, and at 
 first consisted of the sacrifice of a goat to Lupercus, a ceremonial 
 tasting of the entrails, an expiatory flight by the priests, and a 
 feast. It was an apotropaic ceremony designed to ward off evil. 
 
 V. The goat-god of the Greeks was a Pelasgian fertility god. 
 His fertilizing power was often appropriated by anthropomorphic 
 gods. 
 
 VI. In Italy the goat-god was also the giver of fertility, and 
 originated among the Ligurians. Juno was closely associated with 
 the goat, and some of her fertility rites were added by the Romans 
 to the Lupercalia: the Luperci girded themselves with goat-skins 
 and, as they ran about the Palatine, struck the women with goat- 
 skin thongs as a fertility charm. Henceforth the gift of fertility 
 was one of the important purposes of the Lupercalia. 
 
 VII. The dog-cults in Greece were Pelasgian, mainly of Thracian 
 origin; and had especial potency for purification. 
 
 VIII. The dog-cults of the Italians seem to have been borrowed 
 from the Greeks of Southern Italy and Sicily. The Sabines, who 
 adopted many Mediterranean customs, who were familiar with 
 
2 The Lupercalia 
 
 the purificatory power of the dog, and who exerted a powerful 
 influence over the religion of Rome, probably added the sacrifice 
 of a dog to the Lupercalia. Thus purification came to be an im- 
 portant element of the Lupercalia. 
 
 IX. The blood-ceremonial of the Lupercalia finds no parallel 
 in Roman cults, but is similar to certain rites of the Orphics which 
 sought to assure complete union with the deity. It is probable 
 that these Orphic elements were added to the Lupercalia during 
 the war with Hannibal, or the years immediately following, when 
 many orgiastic cults of the Greeks were brought into Rome. Thus 
 the Lupercalia was spiritualized by new rites of cleansing and by 
 the assurance of kinship with the deity. 
 
 X. In its development the Lupercalia reflected the development 
 of the Roman people. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Within the last few decades the work of the archaeologist and of 
 the anthropologist, revealing the civilization that existed thousands 
 of years ago, has brought about a revolution in the study of Ancient 
 History. Before this time scholars who dealt with the history, the 
 social life, and the religion of Greece and of Italy were concerned 
 preeminently with the Aryan peoples who invaded those peninsulas. 
 The earlier stock was largely disregarded, as being merely the 
 aborigines who had been effaced by the conquering Hellenes and 
 Italians. The falsity of this view has been abundantly demon- 
 strated by the discovery of the marvellous civilization of Crete and 
 of Mycenae. Surely a people so numerous, so powerful, and so 
 cultured are to be reckoned with, if one would understand the 
 later populace of those lands. The Neolithic inhabitants of Italy, 
 too, though far more primitive than those of the Aegean, were 
 possessed of a civilization too clearly marked to be ignored. 
 
 In religion more than in any other realm the influence of these 
 pre-Aryan peoples is of vital significance. The sanctity attaching 
 to religious beliefs and ritual makes them peculiarly resistant to 
 change. The deity of a certain locality is supreme in his limited 
 realm, and his cult must in many cases be received, either wholly 
 or in part, by the new-comers. Consequently the divine objects 
 of worship and the ritualistic acts of the pre- Aryans have been of 
 late years increasingly emphasized in investigations dealing with 
 the religion of Greece or of Italy. 1 
 
 This new method of approach arouses a hope that it may lead 
 to a solution of some of the puzzling practices of Roman ritual. 
 Perhaps the most interesting and the most perplexing of all the 
 Roman festivals is the Lupercalia, with its incoherent and fantastic 
 ceremonial, its prehistoric origin, and the varied accounts of it. 
 Consequently, though the Lupercalia has been a subject of specula- 
 tion since Varro's day, it is worth while, now that we have a new 
 point of departure, to try once more to solve the riddle. 
 
 Ethnologists are very generally agreed that the Palaeolithic Age 
 in Europe was terminated by the appearance of a new race, known 
 
4 The Lupercalia 
 
 as the Mediterranean or Eur-African. In physique the people of 
 this race were uniformly dolichocephalic, of medium height, and 
 of slight build. At the time of their appearance in Europe they 
 had attained a considerable degree of civilization, using implements 
 of polished stone, and showing a strong tendency to an agricultural, 
 non-nomadic life. They had developed definite and elaborate 
 funerary rites: the dead were buried, often in a carefully constructed 
 tomb, and were surrounded by the implements which they had 
 used when they were alive. This practice argues a belief in a 
 future life in which the dead continue to exist in the grave, keeping 
 the same needs and interests which they had on earth. This 
 Mediterranean stock gradually spread until it had occupied Meso- 
 potamia, the Mediterranean basin, Western Europe, the British 
 Isles and the lowland portions of Central Europe as far east as the 
 upper Danube. 2 It has been characterized as the most widely extend- 
 ed, the most populous, and the most primitive of European races. 3 
 
 For the present study our interest must be centered in the 
 branches of the Mediterranean race that settled in the Aegean 
 area and in Italy. To designate these, two ancient terms have been 
 restored to use. The branch that occupied the lands which later 
 formed Hellas are known by most ethnologists as Pelasgians, 
 the one occupying Italy as Ligurians. 4 Along the Mediterranean 
 the ease of communication united with the racial kinship of the 
 people to produce a highly developed and homogeneous civilization. 
 From the oldest culture centers of Egypt and Crete, civilization 
 radiated to the kindred, but less advanced, peoples of Asia Minor, 
 Greece, Thrace, the Danube area, 5 Italy, Sicily, and Spain. Thus 
 there developed in the peoples dwelling near the Mediterranean 
 a similarity of culture which is recognized by all authorities. 6 
 
 By the beginning of the Bronze Age another ethnic group, gener- 
 ally known as Aryans, Indo-Europeans, Alpines, or Eur-Asiatics, 
 had occupied the Alpine belt which extends through Europe and 
 Asia. They are generally believed to have had skulls of brachy- 
 cephalic form and larger frames than those of the Mediterraneans. 
 Their language was Indo-European. From very early times they 
 cremated their dead, usually burying with the ashes little or no 
 funeral furniture. 7 This practice is usually interpreted as indicating 
 a belief that the soul, upon death, was separated from the body 
 and departed to a remote realm, severed from all contact with the 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 living. 8 The Alpine people were far more inclined to a nomadic 
 pastoral life than were the Mediterraneans. 9 Very early, it seems, 
 bands of Aryans began straying into Greece, though, according 
 to most views, their influence did not become marked until the 
 latter part of the Bronze Age. Then during several centuries, 
 down to the beginning of the Iron Age, a series of Aryan tribes 
 overran Greece, Thrace, the Aegean Islands, and the coasts of 
 Asia Minor. 10 Italy, whose development was later than that of 
 Greece, had just entered upon the Bronze Age when a branch of 
 the Alpines migrated to the Po valley, and there established numer- 
 ous settlements which are known as terremare. Toward the end 
 of the Bronze Age bands of them moved southward, and one group 
 settled in Latium. At a later period the Umbro-Sabellians, who 
 had been long separated from them, 11 occupied the Apennines and 
 the neighboring' valleys. 12 
 
 From the fusion of the Mediterranean populace with the invading 
 Aryans arose the Greeks and the Italians of historical times. In 
 such a fusion the race that has, through many centuries of habita- 
 tion, become adjusted to a region is almost sure to show the greater 
 vitality and, in the end, to absorb the intruding race. 13 Thus, 
 in the case of the Greeks and the Italians, though the mixed peoples 
 adopted the Indo-European language, they soon reverted to the 
 physical type of the Mediterraneans. Even today the southern 
 Italians are the physical counterpart of the people who inhabited 
 Italy before the Aryan invasion. 14 In culture and in religion, as 
 well as in physical type, the Mediterraneans, who vastly out- 
 numbered the immigrants, must have had a very great influence 
 in the development of the united peoples. 
 
 For our earliest picture of the religion of the Mediterranean race, 
 we turn to the remains of Minoan Crete and of Mycenae. There we 
 see that the chief object of worship among the Pelasgians was a 
 goddess, who was evidently an earth-deity. Often associated with 
 her was a youthful male, who seems, at least in some instances, 
 to have been a sky-god. He always appears as a subordinate; 
 the goddess was the all-important divine being. She was embodied 
 in human form, and frequently had a lion, a dove, a snake, or some 
 other animal in attendance. Numerous representations of mon- 
 strous figures, part human, part animal, probably portray the 
 lesser numina of woods and waters. Fetish objects of especial 
 
6 The Lupercalia 
 
 sanctity were stones, pillars, trees, animals of many kinds, and 
 weapons, such as the shield or the double-headed axe. These cult- 
 objects typified sometimes the varied productive power of the 
 earth, sometimes man's means of defense against his enemies. In 
 primitive times they were probably regarded as incarnations of 
 the deity. Later, when the goddess was fully anthropomorphized, 
 they became her emblems or her attendant animals. The deity 
 was not worshipped in a temple, but upon a mountain, in a forest, 
 beside a spring, or, most frequently of all, in a cave. At her shrine 
 men offered sacrifices of animals or of fruits. Figures of men clad 
 in animal-skins, which frequently appear on gems or on seals, are 
 often taken as representing the worshippers, who are showing 
 honor to the deity by wearing the skin of her sacred animal. The 
 dead, too, were objects of worship, and elaborate ritual acts were 
 performed at their tombs. 15 
 
 This Pelasgian goddess is believed to have been closely similar in 
 character and functions to the Cretan Rhea, to the Phrygian 
 Cybele, to many forms of the Greek Artemis, and to various 
 other deities of the Aegean area. 16 Each of these later deities 
 typifies the life-giving power of the earth. Every living thing, 
 whether it be a plant, an animal, or a human being, derives its 
 existence from her. She likewise takes them back to herself at 
 the end of life. This goddess is no departmental deity, but has 
 power over every activity of man or of the universe. Each mani- 
 festation of nature is sacred to her or is her very embodiment. 
 Thus she may be adored as incarnate in the stone, the tree, the 
 lion, or the goat, her particular form in each locality being deter- 
 mined by the physical features of that place and the character of 
 the people inhabiting it. The sphere of action of the goddess is 
 intensely local, her power and manifestations in each region being 
 inseparably attached to some definite place. She is the goddess 
 of love, and is constantly associated with a lover or a son, as Attis, 
 Adonis, or Dionysus. 17 To him the bull is especially sacred. 
 This male god is not immortal, but shares the seasonal changes of 
 vegetation, dying in the fall and reviving to new life in the spring. 
 These occasions are celebrated by the worshippers with extravagant 
 orgies of mourning and of joy. In the death and the resurrection 
 of the deity the people find assurance of human immortality. Much 
 of the homage offered by this agricultural people to its earth-goddess 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 consists of fertility charms to arouse the dormant powers of pro- 
 ductivity or to secure rain for the crops. But often, for scribe in- 
 scrutable reason, the goddess withholds her blessings, and sends 
 barrenness, blight, and pestilence upon her people. To avert 
 these destructive forces and to set free all beneficent activities, 
 the devotees resort to strange orgiastic practices. Often they seek 
 to propitiate the dread goddess by the sacrifice of a human being. 18 
 Frequently the ill-will of the deity is attributed to some sin com- 
 mitted by man. Therefore rites of cleansing are of vital impor- 
 tance. Often man seeks guidance from oracles, through which 
 the earth-deity speaks to her people. The earth-goddess, who 
 nourishes the living, also receives the dead. They continue to 
 live on in the tomb, and are, if duly honored, the kindly protectors 
 of their descendants; but, if angered, they become merciless demons, 
 and must be "averted" by ceremonies of riddance. Often the more 
 distinguished dead develop into local heroes and are honored by 
 cult-acts similar to those performed to chthonic deities. This 
 worship of earth-goddess and of local divinities, while it is a religion 
 of fear, and is expressed in barbarous and magic rites, has in it the 
 lofty elements of dependence upon the deity, of the sense of im- 
 purity, and of the possibility of cleansing and of communion with 
 the god. 19 Sir Arthur Evans says of this chthonic religion that 
 it is characteristically non-Hellenic, having nothing to do with the 
 traditions of primitive Aryan religion. 20 
 
 An equally detailed picture of the religious beliefs of the pre- 
 historic Aryans is, unfortunately, impossible. When the Aryans 
 migrated from their primitive home they went to lands which, 
 in most cases, were already occupied. A racial modification of 
 the Aryans must, accordingly, have begun in the very earliest 
 times. 21 Concerning the original religion of the Aryans, who were 
 already a mixed race when they appeared upon the stage of history, 
 we can draw only general conclusions based upon philology and 
 upon the religious beliefs which were common to the oldest Aryan 
 peoples. Most authorities agree that the sky, with its varied mani- 
 festations, was the supreme object of worship among all primitive 
 peoples who spoke the Indo-European language. 22 The sky was 
 early embodied in a god who was called "the father," as "father 
 Zeus," or "Jupiter." There was, perhaps, the conception of the 
 earth as mother, the wife of the sky-god, but her importance was- 
 
8 The Lupercalia 
 
 slight compared to that of her spouse. There was, therefore, an 
 emphasis exactly opposite to that of the Mediterranean religion, 
 in which the earth-mother was supreme, and the sky-god her 
 subordinate. 23 
 
 For the oldest literary picture of the religion of the Hellenes we 
 turn to the Homeric Poems. These cannot be accepted as a por- 
 trayal of a purely Aryan religion, for Homer's Achaeans, who had 
 been in Greece for many years, perhaps for several centuries, had 
 adopted much of the civilization of the Pelasgians, and must also 
 have been influenced by Pelasgian cults. But, even so, they had 
 a slighter admixture of Pelasgian blood and ideas than had the 
 Greeks who appear in any of the later literature. Therefore it is 
 reasonable to attribute to Aryan influence the Achaean religious 
 beliefs and cults which are markedly different from those of the 
 Pelasgians, especially if such beliefs and cults are to be found among 
 other Aryan peoples when at about the same stage of development. 
 
 The religion which is portrayed in the Homeric Poems is pre- 
 eminently rational, with only an occasional suggestion of mysticism. 
 Instead of a chthonic deity and a host of vague and nameless 
 numina, the Achaeans worshipped anthropomorphic gods who 
 lived in palaces on Mount Olympus, and were organized into an 
 orderly commonwealth with Zeus, the god of the sky, at their 
 head. These deities were highly specialized, each one having some 
 definite province and function of his own. 24 They had none of 
 the mystery which attached to the Mediterranean gods, but were 
 strongly individual and human, having the might of gods, but all 
 the wicked passions of mortals. 25 Men treated them like human 
 beings, sometimes upbraiding them, or even making sport of them, 
 as is done in the story told by Demodocus about Ares and Aphro- 
 dite. 26 The Achaean gods were not, like the Pelasgian, limited in 
 their power to some special spot; they were the gods of the tribe 
 rather than of the place. In their ritual acts Homer's people did 
 not perform mysterious or orgiastic ceremonies, nor did they resort 
 to magic to secure the growth of crops or the increase of their herds; 
 instead, they prayed to the gods and offered sacrifice in decorous 
 fashion. 27 Those acts duly performed, man's whole duty to the 
 gods was done. He had in their presence no consciousness of sin 
 or of the need of cleansing. If he had committed a murder, he was 
 not required to atone to the gods, unless the injured man were, 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 like the priest Chryses, 28 especially dear to one of them, but he 
 paid a fine to the nearest kinsman of his victim. When he had 
 thus made reparation, he did not need to be purified, as in later 
 times, by the sprinkling of blood, nor did he fear the pursuit of 
 a vengeful ghost. The dread of demons and the worship of heroes 
 is, indeed, almost unknown in the Homeric Poems. When the body 
 of a man had been consumed upon the funeral pyre, his soul was be- 
 lieved to depart to Hades, where he lived a vague shadow existence, 
 remote from the activities of the living. Libations were offered as 
 a part of the burial ceremonies, but there was no cult attached to 
 the grave, as there was to the tombs of Pelasgian heroes. 29 
 
 In comparison with the Mediterranean religion, the religion of 
 the Homeric Poems was rationalistic instead of occult, a worship 
 of calmness instead of ecstasy, a homage paid to immortal, anthro- 
 pomorphic, specialized gods with a sky-god as their chief, instead 
 of to gods who were mortal, of shifting, often of theriomorphic, 
 form, among whom an earth-mother was the supreme deity. 
 
 In the religion of classic Greece these two strains seem to have 
 united. There are, on the one hand, the Olympian gods and the 
 state ritual substantially as they are portrayed in Homer. But 
 along with them are many cult-practices which are attested by 
 archaeology and by literature 30 that correspond to Pelasgian instead 
 of to Homeric religion. The rite of inhumation, which seemed 
 almost unknown in Homer, has again become common. The 
 Homeric indifference to chthonic deities and to mysticism has 
 disappeared, and the worship of gods of the earth and the per- 
 formance of magic rites of the most primitive kind is widespread. 
 The homage paid to the Brauronian Artemis, the sanctity attaching 
 to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the human sacrifice offered to 
 Zeus Lycaeus, all seem far removed from the sanity of the Olympian 
 religion. Not only in remote places like Arcadia did these relics of 
 savage belief persist, but they found a stronghold even in intellectual 
 Athens. Orphism, which took as its chief deity Dionysus, a god 
 having all the characteristics of a nature-spirit of the Mediter- 
 raneans, and which derived its ritual acts from the most primitive 
 practices of Crete, developed a theology that was the loftiest ex- 
 pression of Mediterranean creeds. This Orphic theology profoundly 
 influenced some of the greatest minds of Greece. 31 
 
 It seems an anomaly that a people which, in about the ninth 
 
io The Lupercalia 
 
 century before Christ, was almost free from occultism, witchcraft, 
 and hero worship, should afterward revert to the beliefs of a remote 
 past. The natural and the generally accepted explanation is found 
 in the dual origin of the Greeks, composed, as they were, of Pelas- 
 gians and of Aryans. 32 The assumption that the presence in Greek 
 religion of chthonic deities and of chthonic cults is due to the 
 Pelasgian strain of the populace seems almost inescapable in view 
 of the fact that these cults were most marked in the places that 
 had the smallest infusion of Aryan blood. These regions were 
 Crete, whose Pelasgian civilization was too deep-rooted to be effaced 
 by the invaders; 33 Arcadia, whose people were regarded as the most 
 typically Pelasgian of any Greek populace, and whose cults, the most 
 primitive in all Greece, show a close affinity to those of Minoan 
 Crete; 34 Attica, whose Pelasgian stock was less adulterated than 
 that of any other land of continental Greece except Arcadia; 35 
 Boeotia, which was influenced more deeply by Crete than by the 
 Aryans; 36 Lycia, which in prehistoric times seems to have been 
 closely connected with the Cretans, and which remained dominantly 
 Mediterranean in race and cults; 37 and the lonians of Asia Minor, 
 who had the largest infusion of Pelasgian blood of any Hellenic 
 stock. 38 In all these lands the religion was strongly chthonic. 39 
 From these facts Andrew Lang concludes that the Achaeans im- 
 ported a new, lofty, and brief-lived set of ideas and customs. 40 
 
 In the union of the two religions, compromises of every kind 
 were effected. Frequently the local god was absorbed by, or was 
 regarded as identical with, one of the Olympian deities. Under 
 this influence, the Pelasgian cult was often purged of its wild excesses 
 and its cruel rites. On the other hand, the Mediterranean god 
 frequently changed his name, but not his character, and continued 
 to receive the same primitive homage as before. Often the animal 
 in whom the earth-god was incarnated became attached to the 
 Aryan god. This god appears at times, therefore, in guise of the 
 animal, or attended by it. Often this animal is the most acceptable 
 sacrifice that can be offered to the god. In every possible manner 
 the new ideas are seen mingled with the old. 
 
 In the religion of the Romans it is vastly harder than in the 
 religion of the Greeks to disentangle Mediterranean beliefs from 
 Aryan creeds. There was no Italian Homer to portray the religious 
 ideas of the Latins or of the Umbrians. The dominant position of 
 
Introduction 1 1 
 
 Rome tended to smooth down the local differences in religious 
 practice which are often a valuable guide in Greek religion. Archae- 
 ology tells us, however, that before the invasion of the Aryans 
 every part of Italy was occupied by the Ligurians, whose civilization 
 was in the essentials markedly similar to that of the Pelasgians, 41 
 and had been, indeed, to some extent inspired by them. 42 Traders 
 and, perhaps, colonists from the lands of the Pelasgians caused the 
 Neolithic civilization of Southern Italy and of Sicily to become 
 more closely associated with Crete and the Aegean world than 
 with Northern Italy. 43 
 
 When the Ligurians were overrun by the Aryans, a mixture of 
 race and of culture similar to the mixture which we have observed 
 in Greece seems to have occurred in Italy. In many localities 
 of Italy are found inhumation-tombs and cremation-urns belonging 
 to the same period. 44 In this fusion the terramara folk could hardly 
 have failed to be profoundly influenced by the earlier inhabitants 
 of the land. Professor Pinza holds that the civilization of Latium 
 borrowed from the Stone Age its rites, its technical processes, its 
 habitations, its tomb architecture, and its artistic taste. 45 Professor 
 Modestov goes so far as to say that we might consider the population 
 as not Latin at all, except for a certain number of incineration- 
 graves. He regards it, therefore, as wholly natural that the Latins 
 and the Romans had in their religious beliefs been deeply influenced 
 by the Ligurians. 46 
 
 In the religion of historical Rome are found two strains that 
 are similar to those of Greek religion. There were, on the one 
 hand, the sky-god Jupiter and the other gods of the state cult, 
 who, until they fell under Greek influence, were little more than 
 highly specialized abstractions, their power and nature being defined 
 instantly by their names. The Indigitamenta of the Romans offer 
 one of the best examples of the Sondergotter of the Aryans. The 
 religious ceremonial of the Romans was orderly and unimaginative, 
 similar in its type to the Homeric cults. On the other hand, there 
 were chthonic deities, whose origin was lost in antiquity, and 
 whose ritual consisted largely of fertility charms and magic rites. 
 There were many cult-survivals that recall the characteristic 
 features of the Mediterranean religion. Veneration of springs, 
 trees, and sacred animals was widespread, and ceremonies to avert 
 evil and to secure purification were common. 47 
 
12 The Lupercalia 
 
 This dual strain in Roman religion seems most naturally inter- 
 preted by an analogy with the religion of Hellas. In Italy and in 
 Greece the basic stock was Mediterranean, the subdivisions that 
 settled in the two peninsulas being closely related. In both Greece 
 and Italy the Aryan invaders showed the same skeletal structure, 
 followed the same practice of cremation, spoke kindred dialects 
 of the Indo-European language, 48 and worshipped a sky-god called 
 by the same name. In each land archaeology proves that a fusion 
 of races took place. In Greece the honor given to earth-deities 
 seems almost inevitably traceable to the Pelasgians. Consequently 
 the parallel conclusion for Rome seems reasonable. 49 The Romans 
 themselves felt that chthonic gods were alien to them, for they 
 constantly remarked on the affinity of such deities to some earth- 
 god of the Greeks, or, in many cases, held them to be a Pelasgian 
 importation. 50 Furthermore, the localization of many of the chthonic 
 cults of Italy gives cause for connecting them with the ancient 
 inhabitants of the land. If a cult is strongly associated with some 
 prominent natural object, such as a mountain, a river, a cave, a 
 spring, or a tree, we have a strong reason for believing that it was 
 a product of the race that had been longest established in that 
 place. Later invaders find the spirits of these places exalted by a 
 homage that has been developing for centuries. Inevitably they 
 desire to secure the favor of these gods of their new abiding place, 
 and so they accept the established cult. Mr. Gomme says: "Let 
 us once clearly understand that the local fetishism to be found in 
 Aryan countries simply represents the undying faiths of the older 
 race". 51 
 
 In the present study of the Lupercalia, the attempt will be made 
 to learn the origin of its various cult-features by comparing them 
 with similar cults or beliefs among the Romans and the Greeks. 
 In this investigation the localization of a cult that is, the people 
 by whom it was first practised, and its association with some natural 
 feature of the country is a point to be kept constantly in mind. 
 Moreover, far more illumination is to be obtained from Greek reli- 
 gion than from Roman. The individuality of the Greek states offers 
 in many cases a reasonable degree of certainty for discrimination 
 between the cults of the Aryans and those of the Pelasgians. When, 
 therefore, we find a cult in Greece that is Pelasgian, and a similar 
 cult of Italy which has been from ancient times closely attached 
 
Introduction 1 3 
 
 to some prominent object of the landscape, and which was by the 
 Romans themselves assigned to a non-Roman populace, the logical 
 conclusion is that the Italian cult belonged to the religion of the 
 Ligurians. 
 
 In the study of a subject like the Lupercalia, one cannot hope 
 to arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion. The antiquity of 
 the festival and the scanty evidence concerning certain parts of 
 it preclude so ambitious a hope. We must, consequently, be con- 
 tent with the modest aim of establishing a reasonable theory. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER I 
 
 (The first time a book is cited, the title is given in full; 
 after that, an abbreviation is used.} 
 
 1. This point is stressed by Sir Arthur Evans, Minoan and Mycenaean Element 
 in Hellenic Life, in J.H.S. vol. xxxii, 1912, 277. See also Schrader, Die Indo- 
 germanen, 132, 153; id. Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, iv; Farnell, 
 in The Year's Work in Classical Studies, 1908, 71 ; Lang, The World of Homer, 2. 
 
 2. For the theories about the Mediterranean race, see Sergi, The Mediterranean 
 Race, 30-40, 247-65; Ripley, The Races of Europe, 461-70; Keane, The World's 
 Peoples, 307-12; id. Man, Past and Present, 446-54; Taylor, The Origin of the 
 Aryans, 54-69, 92-101; Myres, The Dawn of History, 39-43; Meyer, Geschichte 
 des Altertums, i. 2. 809-34; Hawes, Crete, The Forerunner of Greece, 22-5, 144-6; 
 Mackenzie, Myths of Crete and P re-Hellenic Europe, 57-8, 164; Peet, The Stone 
 and Bronze Ages in Italy, 1 1 1, 163-77; Modestov, Introduction a Vhistoire romaine, 
 110-13. 
 
 3. Ripley, 451; Keane, W. P., 312; Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 149. 
 
 4. These terms, as used by modern authorities, include all the pre-Aryans 
 (See Schrader, Aryan Religion, in Hastings, Ency. ReL, vol. i, 35; Hall, The 
 Oldest Civilization of Greece, 83-4). Thus Minyae, Leleges, Carians, Eteocretans, 
 and other less important groups are now all known as Pelasgians; while Siculi, 
 Ausonians, and others are grouped together as Ligurians. 
 
 5. Some authorities prefer to regard the civilization in the Danube area as an 
 independent northern development. See J. Hampel, Neuere Studien uber die 
 Kupferzeit, in Zeitschr. fur Eth., vol. xxviii, 1896, 57-91. 
 
 6. Sergi, 275; Ripley, 130; Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, 5; 
 Mosso, The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, 62. For the characteristics of 
 Mediterranean civilization, see Hall, Aegean Archaeology, 44-254; id. O. C. G., 
 83-104; id. N. E., 56-61 ; Hogarth, Authority and Archaeology, Sacred and Profane, 
 228-42; Mackenzie, Crete, 191-292; Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, 197-201; 
 Hawes, 27-45, et passim; Sergi, 266-315; Myres, D. H., 42; Beloch, Griechische 
 Geschichte, i. i. 71-3, 96-125; Meyer, i.2. 762-94; Keane, M. P. P. 462-8, 528-30; 
 Grant, 153-5; Worsaae, The Prehistory of the North, 19-23. 
 
14 The Lupercalia 
 
 7. Ripley, 470-5; Keane, W, P., 355-6; id. M. P. P., 501-6; Beddoe, The 
 Anthropological History of Europe, 15; Sergi, 237-46; 263-5; Taylor, 69-92; 
 Peet, 370; Mackenzie, Crete, 151; Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der 
 griechischen Sprache, 59~75- 
 
 8. Hogarth, Auth. and Arch., 247; Chadwick, The Heroic Age, 422, 425; 
 Schrader, Ar. ReL, in Hastings, Ency. ReL, ii, 30; Mackenzie, Crete, xlvii; Rohde, 
 Psyche, Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, i, 249. 
 
 9. Beloch, i. i. 80; Taylor, 89, 164-5; Mackenzie, Crete, 151, 233. 
 
 10. Hall, 0. C. G., 104; Hawes, 25-6; Burrows, 201-2; Keane, M. P. P., 
 532-4; Meyer, i. 2. 804-8, 815-34; Cotterill, Ancient Greece, 28, 34-6. 
 
 11. Modestov, 239-40. 
 
 12. Munro, Palaeolithic Man and the Terramara Settlements in Europe, 338-45, 
 413-29; Modestov, 103, 143-285; Peet, 331-71, 396-9; Piganiol, Essai sur les 
 origines de Rome, 15-22; Sergi, 176-9; Keane, M.P.P., 528-9. Dr. Beddoe (129) 
 says that the Aryan waves of immigration largely spent themselves in the north. 
 
 13. Ripley, 30-3; Taylor, 198-203; Mackenzie, Crete, 146-7. 
 
 14. Ripley, 269-72; Evans, /. H. S., vol. xxxii, 287. 
 
 15. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, in /. H. S., vol. xxi, 1901, 99-204; 
 Hogarth, Aegean Religion,m Hastings, Ency. ReL, i, 141-8; Dussaud, Les civilisa- 
 tions prehelleniques, 327-413; Hall, A. A., 145-77; id. O. C.G., 293-302; Tsountas 
 and Manatt, Mycenaean Age, 294-302; Graillot, Le Cult-e de Cybele, 1-45 Bur- 
 rows, 112-14, I2 7 Mackenzie, Crete, xliv-xlvii, 59-60, 159-62, 293-312; Hawes, 
 139-43; Reinach, Orpheus, 76-8; Meyer, i. 2. 789; Beloch, i. i. 110-13; Cot- 
 terill, 48-56; Kretschmer, 194-5. 
 
 16. Evans, Scripta Minoa, 291; Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii, 1-2, 
 291-2; Hall, N.E., 52; Dr. Mackenzie (Crete, 61-9, Myths of Babylonia and 
 Assyria, 101-4) notes that this Pelasgian goddess was also akin to the great earth- 
 deities of Babylonia, Egypt, Germany, and the British Isles. See also Graillot, 5. 
 
 17. Although Dionysus seems to have originated as an Aryan deity (Beloch, i. 
 I. 165, n. i), he is believed to have absorbed very early, under Pelasgian influence, 
 the characteristics of an earth-god (Hall, N. E., 476; Farnell, Natural and 
 Comparative Religion, 18; Beloch, i. i. 165; Dussaud, 392; Campbell, Religion in 
 Greek Literature, 269). 
 
 1 8. The existence of human sacrifice in Crete has not been proven by the 
 excavations (Hogarth, Aeg. ReL, in Hastings, Ency. ReL, i, 146), though it may be 
 echoed in the legend of the victims offered to the Minotaur (Harrison, Prolegomena 
 to the Study of Greek Religion, 482; Cotterill, 56; Piganiol, 99). In Arcadia, 
 Attica, and other territories in which the populace was dominantly Mediter- 
 ranean, both cult and legend give numerous proofs of the practice of human 
 sacrifice. Dr. Westermarck (The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 
 i, 443-54) notes that it is especially frequent in agricultural rites. See also 
 Mackenzie, Bab., 104; Farnell, iii, 93. 
 
 19. For a description of the chthonic cults of the Aegean peoples, see Evans, 
 J. H. S., vol. xxxii, 279-80; Meyer, i. 2. 705-33; Hall, 0. C. G., 293-302; Dus- 
 saud, 385-93; Graillot, 7-24; Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 15-53; 
 Rohde, i, 204-15; 249-50; Lippert, Allgemeine Geschichte des Priestertums, ii, 
 
Introduction 1 5 
 
 503; Tsountas and Manatt, 302-12; Mackenzie, Crete, 69-72, 153-8, 165-90; 
 id. Bab., 81-101; Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, 
 529,536-9,562-9,576-90; Cotterill, 44, 48-57; M y res, D. H., 186-7; Dieterich, 
 Mutter Erde, 10, 84, et passim; Farnell, iii, 1-28, 289-305; Harrison, 8-31, et 
 passim. 
 
 20. /. H. S., vol. xxxii, 280. 
 
 21. Schrader, Indoger., 132; id. Ar. ReL, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., ii, 36. 
 
 22. Schrader, Indoger., 141, 143; id. Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., ii, 15, 
 33; Meyer, i. 2. 867; Beloch, i. I. 152. 
 
 23. For a survey of the religion of the primitive Aryans, see Schrader, Indoger., 
 132-49; id. Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., ii, 30-8, et passim; Meyer, i. 2. 
 867-73, 9*5; Beloch, i. i. 150-65. It is usually held that the sky-god appeared 
 in this early period in the form of a tree or of an animal. But the proof of that 
 statement rests upon the forms of the sky-god seen in later times, after the Aryans 
 had, in their various new dwelling places, mingled with the older inhabitants. For 
 example, Schrader, to prove that Zeus was embodied in a tree or in an animal, 
 cites Zeus of Dodona and Zeus Lycaeus (Ar. ReL, in Hastings, Ency. ReL, ii. 45, 
 37-8). But Dodona was, according to all ancient traditions, Pelasgian (Horn. //., 
 16. 233; Herod, 2. 52), and is so accepted by modern scholars (Graillot, 7; Camp- 
 bell, 38; Cotterill, 58); and Zeus Lycaeus, as we shall see later (See pp. 21-4) was 
 a Pelasgic deity with whom Zeus had no kinship either in character or cult. 
 Meyer (i. 2. 915) says that there is scarcely a trace of Baumkultus, nor yet of a 
 cult of actual animals, among the Aryans. Dr. Beloch (i. i. 152) believes that 
 various animal epithets of Hellenic deities, such as BOWTTIS "Hp?7,or rXau/ooTrts 
 'A057W7, go back, at least in part, to the Mycenaean Age. It seems safer, therefore, 
 to make no attempt to visualize the deities worshipped by the ancient Aryans. 
 
 24. This tendency to departmental gods, or Sondergotter, as they are called 
 by Dr. Usener (Gotternamen, 75), is accepted as one of the most characteristic 
 features of Aryan religion (Schrader, Ar. ReL, in Hastings, Ency. ReL, ii, 32; 
 Usener, 122. 
 
 25. Dr. Farnell (N. C. R., 13) says: "Of the Hellenic religion no feature is so 
 salient as its anthropomorphism." He believes that the lack of mystic qualities 
 of the Hellenic gods was due to their anthropomorphic form, saying (N. C. R., 16) 
 that theriomorphism lends itself to mysticism because of the need of seeing some- 
 thing back of the crude animal form; whereas the Olympian deities could seem 
 nothing else than glorified human beings. 
 
 26. Horn., Odys., 8. 266-366. 
 
 27. The sacrifices offered to the gods were regularly domestic animals. The 
 only time that a human being was sacrificed was at the funeral of Patroclus 
 (Horn., //., 23. 23) and that was not an offering to the gods (Lang, Homer and his 
 -4^,95-6). 
 
 28. Horn., //., i. lo-u. 
 
 29. For the religion of the Achaeans, see Adam, The Religious Teachers of 
 Greece, 21-67; Campbell, 56-83; Lang, W. H., 132-4, 266-7; Leaf, Homer and 
 History, 11-23; Murray, 57~995 Rohde, i, 9-32, 43-8, 97, 126, 271 n.3; Chadwick, 
 415-26; Cotterill, 45-7; Lawson, 521-2, 529-30. 
 
1 6 The Lupercalia 
 
 30. These two strains are noted by Isocrates (Or., 5. 117). Occultism, hero 
 worship, fear of ghosts, magic, and rites of purification are mentioned very fre- 
 quently by Hesiod, the Cyclic Poets, Pindar, and the tragic writers, especially 
 Aeschylus (Lang, H. A., 20; id. W. H., 2, 150; Campbell, 108-9, r 73 278-80, 
 283-4). For the evidence of archaeology, see Harrison, 166-82, et passim. 
 
 31. For these two strains in Greek religion, see Reinach, Orpheus, 78-91; 
 Rohde, i, 200-2; Campbell, 127-36, 238-66; Tsountas and Manatt, 313-14; 
 Cotterill, 43; Lang, W. H., 117; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religions- 
 geschichte, 48-50, 58-61, 101-4, et passim; Farnell, i, 261-2, iv, 1-8, 112-13, et 
 passim; Harrison, 1-7, 363~453> 473-5". et passim. 
 
 32. Hogarth, Auth. and Arch., 243; Hall, A. A., 85; id. N. ., 520; Leaf, 
 261-83; Beloch, i. i. 92, 150; Evans, New Archaeological Lights on the Origin of 
 Civilization in Europe, in Smithsonian Institute Annual Report, 1917, 444; 
 Myres, D. H., 216. Mr. Lawson has traced in modern Greek religion many 
 survivals of Pelasgian religion (79-98, 43-44, et passim], and shows (5-52) that 
 these elements had a far more vital hold upon the people than had the Olympian 
 deities. The same survival of pre-Aryan elements has been noted in the religion 
 of India. Dr. Keane (Aborigines, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., i, 35) states that the 
 Aryan deities of that land are all of the sky, that they are on a kindly and familiar 
 footing with their worshippers, and have no gross or cruel forms of worship; 
 whereas the chthonic deities of the Aborigines must be appeased by blood. In 
 the union of the two races, it is stated, these latter gods largely replaced the 
 heaven-gods of the Aryans. 
 
 33. Hall, 0. C. G., 203. 
 
 34. Farnell, ii, 620, v, 9; Hall, N. E., 59; id. O. C. G., 82; Evans, /. H. S., 
 vol. xxxii, 283; Graillot, 7. 
 
 35. Hall, O. C. G., 203; Lang, W. H., 141; Meyer, i. 2. 769; Fick, Vor- 
 griechische Ortsnamen, 129; Grant, 160. 
 
 36. Hall, N. E., 59; Gruppe, 59-61 ; Fick, 99. 
 
 37. Hall, N. E., 60 n. i; id. O. C. G., 87-91; Kretschmer, 372-6; Fick, 125. 
 
 38. Hall, N. E., 67, 79; Lang, W. H., 143-9; Grant, 160. 
 
 39. Lang, W. H., 157-60; Evans, /. H. S., vol. xxxii, 277-87; Hall, 0. C. G., 
 203-8; Campbell, 37-42, 238-42; Beloch, i. i. 144-76; Meyer, i. 2. 724-34; 
 Burrows, 114-16; Cotterill, 31, 78-80. 
 
 40. W.H.,i 5 3. 
 
 41. Modestov, 252, 254, et passim. 
 
 42. Montelius, Die vorklassische Chronologie Italiens, 149-56; Keane, M.P.P., 
 530; d'Arbois, Les premiers habitants de I' Europe, i, 129; Mackenzie, Crete, 247-8. 
 
 43. Peet, 86, 143, 284; Myres, D. H., 221. 
 
 44. Myres, D. H., 233. 
 
 45. Pinza, Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma, 1900, 
 201. 
 
 46. Modestov, 254. See also Sergi, 179, 244; Taylor, 204; Reinach, Orpheus, 
 95; Myres, D. H., 231. 
 
 47. Dr. Piganiol (93-143) notes many such cult-practices among the Romans. 
 
 48. Kretschmer, 154. 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 49. Though Dr. Warde Fowler avoids discriminating between Mediterranean 
 and Aryan cults, he devotes two chapters of The Religious Experience of the Roman 
 People (24-67) to what he calls "survivals." In discussing them, he frequently 
 says of some quaint or magical act that it seenls un- Roman, or that it may have 
 been taken over from an earlier people. He makes this statement about the 
 Lupercalia (ibid. 34; Roman Festivals, 312). Dr. Lippert (ii, 545) assigns all the 
 cults of the mother-goddess to the pre-Romans, and those in honor of Divus 
 Pater to the Romans. Dr. Piganiol (93-143, el passim) makes a similar distinc- 
 tion, tracing all chthonic cults to Mediterranean inspiration. 
 
 50. See page 57. In the following citations, Roman cults are said to be similar 
 to Greek cults, or are derived from them: Saturn, Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 319; 
 Faliscan Juno, Dionys., i. 21. 2; Juno Sospita, Ovid, Fast., 2. 55; the rite of the 
 Argei, Fest., 334. 
 
 51. Ethnology in Folklore, 71. Professor Rhys, in his study of Celtic religion, 
 discriminates in this way between the greater divinities of the Aryan pantheon 
 and the numerous genii locorum of the pre- Aryan inhabitants (Celtic Heathendom, 
 54, 105). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE CEREMONIAL OF THE LUPERCALIA 
 
 At the outset of our study of the Lupercalia we need a clear 
 picture of the ceremonial acts. Though the Lupercalia was very 
 frequently mentioned by ancient writers, Plutarch alone gives all 
 the details of the ritual. His portrayal, therefore, will serve as a 
 general survey. 
 
 "The Lupercalia," says Plutarch, 1 "from the time of its celebration, 
 might seem to be a ceremony of purification, for it is performed in 
 the ill-omened days of the month of February, a period which any 
 one would interpret as devoted to expiation; furthermore the very 
 day of the Lupercalia was in olden times called The Purification. 
 But the name of this festival is the same as Lycaea in Greek, and 
 for this reason it seems to be a very ancient festival of the Arcadian 
 immigrants who followed Evander. But this is merely the general 
 explanation, for the name, may in. fact, have been derived from 
 the she-wolf [of the Romulus legend]. And, indeed, we believe 
 that the Luperci begin their race about the city at the spot where, 
 they tell us, Romulus was exposed. The ceremonial, however, 
 makes the origin of the rite hard to guess. For goats are slain, 
 then two boys of noble rank are led up to the victim, and a sword 
 which has been dipped into blood is pressed upon their foreheads, 
 after which the blood is immediately wiped off with a bit of wool 
 moistened in milk. The blood having been removed, the lads must 
 laugh. After this [the Luperci] cut the hides of the goats into 
 strips and, naked except for a girdle, they run about [the Palatine], 
 striking with the thongs everyone whom they meet. The young 
 women do not shun the blows, since they believe that they will 
 avail for the conception and the easy delivery of children. A peculiar 
 feature of the festival is that the Luperci also sacrifice a dog." 2 
 
 In this passage it is significant that Plutarch does not name the 
 god in whose honor the Lupercalia was celebrated. The Romans, 
 in fact, associated many deities with the Lupercalia: Lupercus, 
 Faunus, Inuus, Februus, and, more frequently than any Roman 
 god, Pan, or Pan Lycaeus. 3 They seem, furthermore, to have 
 connected the festival with Juno, since the .strips with which the 
 
The Ceremonial of the Lupercalia 19 
 
 Luperci smote the women were called amicula lunonis.* Thus 
 the Romans seem to have had no definite idea of the patron god 
 pf the Lupercalia. To decide, if possible, what god was originally 
 worshipped at the wolf's cave will be an important point in our 
 study. 
 
 Though they knew so little of the deity of the Lupercalia, the 
 Romans had definite ideas about its purpose. Very frequently 
 the blows dealt by the Luperci are mentioned as assuring to women 
 productivity. In later times this idea of propagation was extended 
 also to the crops. 5 In the minds of the ancients fertility was closely 
 related to purification, for it was by purification from evil powers 
 that the forces of life became active. 6 Consequently by the time 
 of Varro the Lupercalia was regarded as one of the most important 
 lustrations of the state. 7 The idea that the Lupercalia would keep 
 away misfortune of all sorts, such as pestilence, barrenness, famine, 
 war, drought, hail, and tempest, was stressed during later years. 
 Again and again Pope Gelasius chided the people for attributing 
 all these disasters to the cessation of the Lupercalia. 8 These inter- 
 pretations of the Greeks and the Romans are essentially consistent, 
 being merely different versions of the same idea, for the apotropaic 
 rite which serves to banish evil or to render it inactive results in 
 the freeing of all beneficent forces. 
 
 The Lupercalia was probably founded even before the Romans 
 settled on the Palatine, 9 and it continued until 495 A.D., when it 
 was abolished by the edict of Pope Gelasius. 10 This long existence 
 gives the natural explanation both of the incongruous ritual acts 
 which composed the ceremonial, and of the ignorance of the Romans 
 concerning the presiding deity. The Lupercalia should be studied, 
 not as the product of a particular period, but as a cult complex. 11 
 It was, in a measure, an epitome of the religious experience of the 
 Romans, and, like a vital organism, it developed now one side, 
 now another, according to the needs of a people that passed from 
 the state of simple shepherds to that of the masters of the world. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER II 
 
 1. Plut., Rom., 21. 31. 
 
 2. In addition to the above cult-features, there were offered at the Lupercalia 
 the mola salsa, or salt cakes, which were made by the Vestal Virgins from the first 
 
2O The Lupercalia 
 
 grain of the harvest. These cakes were also offered at the Vestalia and on the 
 Ides of September (Serv. ad Verg., Ed., 8. 82). This is obviously a ceremony 
 that is associated primarily with the ritual of the Vestal Virgins rather than with 
 the Lupercalia, and an adequate explanation of it would involve a survey of the 
 cult of Vesta. Hence it cannot be included in the present study. 
 
 Ovid (Fast., 2. 282) says that the Flamen Dialis officiated at the Lupercalia; 
 but Dr. Fowler (R. F., 313) points out the impossibility of his having performed 
 the sacrifice, since it was unlawful for him to touch either a goat or a dog. It is 
 impossible to explain the presence of the Flamen Dialis at the Lupercalia without 
 an examination of the history and the significance of that obscure minister. Hence 
 that too, like the offering of the mola salsa, lies outside the scope of the present 
 study. 
 
 3. For the discussion of these various deities, see pp. 36-8, 82 n. 55. 
 
 4. See p. 62. 
 
 5. Lyd., de Mens., 4. 25. 
 
 6. Rohde, i, 247; Samter, Die Familienfesten der Griechen und Romer, 12. 
 
 7. Var., L. L., 6. 34. 
 
 8. Gelas., adv. Androm., 13, 21, 24, et al. 
 g. See pp. 38-9. 
 
 10. Baronius, Annal. Eccles., viii, 60 fol. 
 
 11. This theory is advocated by Dr. Deubner, Lupercalia, in Archiv fur 
 Religionswissenschaft, vol. xiii, 1910, 481, et passim. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE WOLF-DEITY IN GREECE 
 
 In examining the separate details of the Lupercalia, the first 
 question that arises is, "What did the wolf have to do with the 
 festival?" An overwhelming number of scholars feel that the 
 names Lupercal, Lupercalia, and Luperci are all derived from 
 lupus. 1 Moreover, the cave of the Lupercal is too closely associated 
 with Rome's sacred wolf, the foster mother of Romulus and Remus, 
 for that name, at least, to be derived from anything but lupus. It 
 was at that cave that the Luperci offered sacrifice, and from there 
 they started on their course about the city. 2 Assuming, conse- 
 quently, that the wolf had some part in the Lupercalia, let 
 us consider the role that the wolf played in the religion of early 
 Greece. 
 
 We have evidence that the wolf was regarded as a sacred animal 
 among the Pelasgians. Numerous seals of Minoan Crete bear the 
 figure of a wolf, 3 though it had no such important part in Cretan 
 cults as had the snake and the bull. Yet a Mycenaean seal portrays 
 two wolves standing in heraldic fashion on each side of a pillar, 
 in a position similar to that of the lions over Mycenae's gate. 4 
 In view of the sanctity of the pillar in Mycenaean cults, and the 
 frequent representation of it with heraldic animals, 5 the wolves 
 that stand on each side of this pillar must be accepted as sacred. 
 
 Throughout the Peloponnesus the wolf-god Lycaeus was highly 
 venerated. The name Lycaeus is generally accepted as meaning 
 wolf* Sometimes Lycaeus is used alone, but more frequently it 
 becomes an epithet attached to the name of one of the more familiar 
 deities, as Zeus Lycaeus, Pan Lycaeus, or Apollo Lycaeus. In 
 Arcadia, above all other places, the cult of this god was deep-rooted 
 and wide-spread. There, on Mount Lycaeus, the Lycaea was held 
 in his honor every nine years. On this mountain was the city of 
 Lycosura, the oldest, says Pausanias, in all Greece. 7 Both the 
 city and the festival were said to have been founded by Lycaon, 
 the son of Pelasgus. 8 In this mythological fashion the Greeks 
 expressed their belief that the Lycaea was a religious ceremony 
 of the Pelasgians. As the Lycaea was by most ancient authorities 
 
22 The Lupercalia 
 
 regarded as the prototype of the Lupercalia, it must be carefully 
 examined. 
 
 The god in whose honor the Lycaea was celebrated was a dread 
 and mysterious creature. His shrine was sacrosanct, and all men 
 were forbidden to enter it. Anyone who disregarded this prohibition 
 would surely die, it was believed, within the year. Consequently 
 the precinct of Lycaeus was for animals a place of refuge, since no 
 hunter would pursue them within its limits. The uncanny nature 
 of the shrine is shown by the belief that within it all creatures 
 lost their shadows. 9 Close by the sanctuary there seems to have 
 been a pool and an oak tree, where, in times of drought, the priest 
 of Zeus Lycaeus was wont to take a branch of the oak tree, stir 
 the water with it, and thus secure the desired rain. 10 
 
 Lycaeus was for men a destructive power to be shunned; but 
 he was the protector of animals. He was also the sender of the 
 rain. Since no shadow was cast within his sanctuary, his realm 
 seems to have been beneath the earth, where the sun's rays might 
 not penetrate. 11 In all these elements we see the characteristic 
 features of the earth-god. 
 
 The Lycaea had the savage rites of many chthonic festivals. 
 Pausanias tells us that even in his day a child was sacrificed, his 
 blood sprinkled upon the altar, and his entrails tasted sacramentally 
 by the priest. Thereupon, say the legends, he who had tasted of 
 the entrails was transformed into a werwolf for the period of nine 
 years. 12 One account tells of a certain Demaenetus who, having 
 partaken of the sacrifice and been changed into a wolf, swam across 
 a pool (probably the one near the shrine of Lycaeus), and entered 
 upon his nine-year exile. At the end of that time he was restored 
 to human form and returned to Mount Lycaeus. 13 
 
 The sacrifice at the Lycaea was evidently of the expiatory type, 
 the child being offered to appease the savage wolf-god and to divert 
 his malignant power from the people. This is an especially common 
 type of human sacrifice, and of frequent occurrence in the cults of 
 chthonic deities. 14 In ceremonies of this sort, the whole or a part 
 of the victim is sometimes eaten, the idea being that, having been 
 offered to the god, it partakes of his divinity; and so the priest, 
 upon eating the victim, secures this magic power for himself. 15 
 Yet, because the sacrifice is, in a measure, identified with the god, 
 it becomes a sin to slay it and to eat of its flesh, even though those 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Greece 23 
 
 acts are necessary for the welfare of the people. Consequently 
 the slayer seeks by flight to escape the result of his sacrilege. 16 
 Often he must undergo some lustral experience. 
 
 These ideas appear in other Greek rites. Every ninth year, at 
 Delphi, occurred a ceremony known as the Stepteria, which was 
 supposed to commemorate Apollo's slaughter of the Python and 
 his consequent exile. A hut was built which represented the abode 
 of the Python. A boy, escorted by other boys, set fire to this hut; 
 then they all fled without looking back, and the leader pretended 
 to go into exile. Later they went to Tempe, were purified, and on 
 their way home partook of a feast. 17 Another curious rite, known 
 as the Bouphonia, was performed at Athens. At the sacrifice of an 
 ox, one man felled the ox with an axe and immediately fled. Another 
 man cut the throat of the ox with a knife and, it seems, also fled. 
 Later a formal trial was held to discover who was guilty of the 
 murder of the ox. Each of the participants in the sacrifice blamed 
 someone else, until, finally, the axe and the knife were pronounced 
 guilty and thrown into the sea. 18 Likewise, at Tenedos a newborn 
 calf, having been treated as a baby, was sacrificed; the man who 
 killed it was pelted with stones, and finally fled into the sea. 19 
 Though these rites differ in detail, they have the same basic idea 
 as the Lycaea: a holy victim has been slain, and the slayer flees 
 from the scene of his crime and undergoes some form of penalty. 
 
 In the Lycaea this idea has become mingled with another, as 
 so often happens in early rites. The worshipper by partaking of 
 the fare of the wolf Lycaeus is to some extent assimilated to the 
 nature of the god, 20 that is, he becomes "wolfish". In time this 
 idea passed naturally enough into the belief that he became a 
 werwolf. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the priests 
 honored their deity by disguising themselves as wolves. 21 This 
 would have been in accord with the numerous animal disguises 
 pictured on Cretan seals. 22 Such a practice would aid in the devel- 
 opment of the werwolf legend. 
 
 The deity of the Lycaea is usually given as Zeus Lycaeus, but 
 Varro and Isidorus name him "Lycaeus, the especial god of the 
 Arcadians." 23 This recognition of Lycaeus as the original deity 
 of the festival is certainly right. The ceremony is far removed 
 from the seemly homage paid to the Olympian Zeus. The Lycaean 
 Zeus is a composite of the Hellenic sky-god superimposed upon the 
 
24 The Lupercalia 
 
 wolf-shaped spirit of Mount Lycaeus. 24 Zeus, as usual, usurped the 
 place of honor, and the name of Lycaeus was reduced to a mere 
 appellative. But in all except the name Lycaeus remained un- 
 changed ; he was still the wolf-god, demanding his tribute of human 
 flesh. Of the struggle that ensued between the rival cults of Zeus 
 and of Lycaeus, legend gives us a clear picture: the sons of Lycaon, 
 desiring to propitiate Zeus, sacrificed to him a child and served 
 the entrails to his priest; but Zeus in wrath destroyed by lightning 
 Lycaon and all his sons except the youngest. 25 This myth expresses 
 the horror which the Hellenes had for a barbarous rite. They 
 strove to abolish it, but the lightnings of Zeus had only temporary 
 power. Ultimately the older cult prevailed, and Zeus accepted 
 the strange sacrifice offered to him. 
 
 Pan, another Arcadian god, also became associated with Lycaeus. 
 This seems to have been nothing more than the natural union of 
 two deities worshipped in the same locality, for Pan, too, had his 
 shrine and sacred grove on Mount Lycaeus. 26 By later writers, 
 especially among the Romans, Zeus Lycaeus was almost wholly 
 displaced by Pan Lycaeus. This was not strange. The wolf- 
 god was in time obscured, and his name became merely an adjec- 
 tive. Ancient scholars, when trying to explain that name, inter- 
 preted it as "he who keeps the wolves from the herds". 27 This 
 title was meaningless when applied to Zeus, but expressed a very 
 natural part of Pan's functions. Thus in time, though thoughtful 
 students like Varro, Pliny, or Pausanias knew that the Lycaea 
 was in honor of Lycaeus or Zeus Lycaeus, less critical ones attributed 
 it to Pan Lycaeus. In view of the fact that writers of the Empire 
 regarded Pan Lycaeus as the god of the Lupercalia, it is important 
 to understand him as merely the poetic equivalent of Zeus Lycaeus. 
 
 In other parts of Hellas, Lycaeus was absorbed by Apollo. The 
 Pelasgian city of Argos 28 venerated its shrine of Apollo Lycaeus 
 as the most ancient and most noteworthy of all, 29 and stamped its 
 coins with the image of Apollo Lycaeus. 30 There, we are told, a 
 wolf was sacrificed to Apollo "the wolf slayer". 31 Porphyrius 
 seems to indicate that at times a wolf was eaten sacramen tally ; 
 for he cites various animals sacred to different deities, among them, 
 the wolf to Apollo Lycaeus. Then he goes on : "And when persons 
 sacrifice and eat these animals, they give a foolish reason". 32 Very 
 rarely do we hear of a wild animal being sacrificed in Greece. 33 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Greece 25 
 
 It is often interpreted as a relic of totemism, the animal embodiment 
 of the god being sacrificed as the god's most acceptable victim, and 
 being eaten sacramentally by the worshippers. 34 
 
 In Athens traces of the wolf's sacred character remained in the 
 law that anyone who killed a wolf must erect at his own expense 
 a tomb in its honor. 35 There was also a cult of Apollo Lycaeus 
 and a priest devoted to his service. 36 His abode was the cave at 
 the foot of the Acropolis; and it continued in the historical period 
 to be sacred to Apollo. 37 In time the sacred wolf seems to have 
 been reduced to a local hero, Lycus, whose statue was of wolf- 
 form. 38 It is easy to trace in this material the development of 
 religious belief. First, the deity was pure wolf, Lycaeus; then, 
 grafted upon the Olympian god, he became Apollo Lycaeus; ulti- 
 mately legend explained the honor shown to the wolf by creating 
 a hero, Lycus. 
 
 At Delphi one of the months was named Lycaeus; 39 and close 
 by Apollo's altar stood a great bronze statue of a wolf, which was 
 said to have saved the temple treasures from a thief. 40 The wolf 
 was not a strange figure at an oracle; in other places, too, it was 
 believed to have oracular power. 41 
 
 In Asia Minor and on the Aegean islands we find survivals of 
 Apollo, the wolf-god. Lycia, whose name is believed to have been 
 derived from Lycaeus , 42 was the center of the worship, and there 
 Apollo kept his primitive wolf-form. 43 Later he was regarded as 
 the god who drove away the wolves, and his shrine in Lycia gained 
 great fame on this account. 44 In Tarsus coins similar to the My- 
 cenaean seal mentioned above 45 portrayed Apollo standing between 
 two wolves and hoWing their paws in his hands. 46 Latona, when 
 fleeing from Juno, was guided by wolves to Lycia, or to Delos, and, 
 to escape detection, she herself assumed the form ol a wolf. 47 In 
 Crete Apollo on various occasions disguised himself as a wolf. 48 
 There he employed wolves to protect and feed his infant son Miletus, 
 who had been exposed in the woods. 49 This story offers a close 
 parallel to the tale of the wolf-nurse of Romulus and Remus. 
 
 In the majority of cases Lycaeus, when absorbed by one of the 
 higher gods, became kindly and gracious. A legend of Temesa 
 in Southern Italy shows him in his true character. A drunken 
 sailor of Ulysses, the story runs, had ravished a maiden of Temesa, 
 and was in punishment stoned to death by the people. He became 
 
26 The Lupercalia 
 
 a vengeful ghost, preying upon the inhabitants of that place. They 
 appealed to the Pythian oracle, and were directed to appease the 
 creature by giving him every year the fairest maiden of Temesa for 
 his wife. But one year the maiden to be sacrificed had a lover 
 who fought with the ghost, and drove him into the sea. In an 
 old painting this ghost, named Lycas, is portrayed as black and 
 wearing a wolf-skin. 50 In this tale the wolf-god is frankly a creature 
 of the underworld, who devours men as his prey. 
 
 The same conception appears in a legend of Apollo Lycaeus 
 which is told by Phlegon. 51 A Roman commander at Naupactus 
 prophesied that he would be devoured by a red wolf, and bade 
 his followers offer the beast no resistance. The wolf came and 
 devoured the Roman, leaving only his head. When the people 
 approached to bury it, the head forbade them to touch it, saying 
 that Apollo through the wolf, his minister, had led the dead man 
 to the seats of the blessed. Thereupon the people erected a shrine 
 to Apollo Lycaeus. Though this tale is late, Dr. Reinach believes 
 that it reflects very ancient beliefs. The wolf, he says, typifies 
 death; he was a power that none might withstand, hence the 
 command of the Roman to his soldiers that they witness his death 
 in passive acquiescence. 52 It is in accord with this interpretation 
 that Hades appeared at times clad in a wolf-skin, 53 which indicates 
 that he was once thought of as wolf -shaped. 54 
 
 The cult of the wolf-god in Greece had its oldest centers in 
 regions whose Pelasgian stock mingled but slightly with the Aryans,, 
 that is, Arcadia and Lycia. In other places that held tenaciously 
 to their earth-cults, as Argos, Attica, and Delphi, the wolf-god 
 remained, though he was often modified or absorbed by an Olym- 
 pian god. Sometimes he was reduced to the wolf-formed spirit 
 that kept the wolves from the fold. But in more primitive times 
 the wolf, prowling in darkness and preying upon men and cattle, 
 was an embodiment of the destructive power of the earth. His 
 worship, therefore, arose largely from fear; and sacrifices were 
 offered to him in order to appease him, that he might not slay the 
 people. Thus he was a characteristic earth-god of the Pelasgians. 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Greece 27 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER III 
 
 1. See pp. 36-7, , 45 n. 63,64; 46 n. 69. 
 
 2. Var., L, L., 5. 85; Serv. ad Verg.. Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 3. Evans, Scr. Min., 209. 
 
 4. Farnell, iv, 116 n. 6. 
 
 5. Evans, 7. H. S., vol. xxi, 153-63. 
 
 6. Farnell, iv, 113; Wernicke, in Pauly-Wisscwa, ii, 59. 
 
 7. Paus., 8. 2. i; 8. 38. I. 
 
 8. Paus., 8. 2. i. 
 
 9. Paus., 8. 38. 6; Polyb., 16. 12. 7; Schol. ad Callim., Hym. in lov., 13. 
 
 10. Paus., 8. 38. 4; Aug., de Civ. Dei, 18. 17. 
 
 11. Immerwahr, Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens, 18; Pick, 132. 
 
 12. Paus., 8. 2. 3, 6; 8. 37. 8; Plat., de Rep., 565^; id. Minos, 315; Theophr. 
 ap. Porphyr., de Abst., 2. 27. 
 
 13. Plin., N. H., 8. 82; Aug., de Civ. Dei, 18. 17. 
 
 14. These statements are based upon the analysis of human sacrifice made by 
 Dr. Westermarck, i, 65-70, 437-72. 
 
 15. Westermarck, i, 63, ii, 562-4. 
 
 16. Farnell, iii, 93; Harrison, in n. i, 112-14. 
 
 17. Plut. de Defect. Orac., 14; Ael. Var. Hist., 3. i. See also Harrison, 113-14. 
 
 18. Porphyr. de Abst., 2. 29 fol.; Ael., Var. Hist., 8. 3. See also Smith, The 
 Religion of the Semites, 304-6; Harrison, in. 
 
 19. Ael., N. A., 12. 34. 
 
 20. Nilsson, Griechische Fesle, 10. 
 
 21. Frazer, The Golden Bough, iv, 83; Reinach, Cultes, ii, 211. 
 
 22. See p. 6. 
 
 23. Var. ap. Aug., de Civ. Dei, 18. 17; Isid. Orig., 8. 9. 5. 
 
 24. Klausen, Aeneas und die Penaten, ii, 1232. For a full survey of Zeus 
 Lycaeus, see A. B. Cook, Zeus, 63-99; Immerwahr, 1-24. 
 
 25. Apollod., Bibl., 3. 8. i. 
 
 26. For the character and history of Pan, see p. 49. 
 
 27. Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 28. Smith, Dictionary of Geography, i, 202. 
 
 29. Paus., 2. 19. 3; Schol. ad Soph., Elec., 6. 
 
 30. C. I. G., i. 1119. 2. 
 
 31. Schol. ad Soph., Elec., 6. 
 
 32. Porphyr., de Abst., 3. 17. 
 
 33. At Brauron a bear was sacrificed to Artemis (Schol. ad Aristoph., Lysist., 
 645). At Patrae in honor of Artemis Laphria wild animals of many kinds were 
 cast alive upon the altar fire (Paus., 7. 18. 12). 
 
 34.' This is the view of Dr. Frazer, (viii, 310-12) and of Dr. Farnell (i, 41). The 
 limited compass of the present study makes it necessary to omit any consideration 
 of the vexed question of totemism, inasmuch as it was possible for the wolf to 
 be worshipped as a god without its being a totem animal (Farnell, in Year's 
 Work in Classical Stiidies, 1908, 71). 
 
 35. Schol. ad Ap. Rhod., 2. 124. 
 
28 The Lupercalia 
 
 36. Ath. Mitth., 1901, 213; C. I. A., iii. i. 292. 
 
 37. Eur., Ion, i.o. 
 
 38. Paus., i. 19. 3; Aristoph., Vesp., 389. 
 
 39. Bull. Hell., v, 1 88 1, 429. 5, Inscr. 43. 
 
 40. Paus., 10. 14. 7; Plut., Perjcl., 21; Ael., H. A., 10. 26. 
 
 41. Farnell, iv, 117; Furtwangler, in Roscher, i, 443. 
 
 42. Farnell, iv, 112. 
 
 43. Bode, Scriptores rerum mythicarum, Cellis 1834, iii, 16, page 209. 
 
 44. Paul. ex. Fest., 119. 
 
 45. See p. 21. 
 
 46. Farnell, iv, 309. 
 
 47. Ael., H. A., 10. 26; Aristot., Hist. Anim., 6. 35; Ap. Rhod., 2. 124; Anton. 
 Liber., 35. 
 
 48. Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 4. 377. 
 
 49. Anton. Liber., 30. 
 
 50. Paus:, 6. 6. 7-11; Strab., 6. i. 5. 
 
 51. Mirab. ch. 3. 
 
 52. Reinach, Cultes, i, 296 n. 4. 
 
 53. In the tomb-paintings of Etruria, Hades wears a wolf-skin helmet (Cook, 
 Zeus, Fig. 72, 73). 
 
 54. Reinach, Cultes, i, 295. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE WOLF-DEITY IN ITALY 
 
 The wolf-cults of Italy present the appearance of a religious 
 survival from a remote time. Of an actual wolf-god, we find far 
 fewer manifestations than in Greece. Yet in the realm of magic, 
 augury, and popular superstition, the wolf was more conspicuous 
 and more highly venerated in Italy than was any other animal. 1 
 Since an outgrown religion regularly lingers, often through many 
 centuries, as a superstition or a magic 'practice, the widespread 
 belief in the uncanny power of wolves indicates that at some time 
 the wolf was important in Italian religion. The actual cults con- 
 nected with the wolf are those of the obscure deity Soranus, of 
 Mars, and of the little-known Lupercus or Luperca, who was named 
 by some ancient scholars as the deity of the Lupercalia. 2 In study- 
 ing these wolf-cults, we shall seek to learn whether they originated 
 among the Ligurians or the Aryans of Italy, and whether the 
 ceremonial acts were similar to those performed in Greece in honor 
 of the chthonic wolf, or akin to the rites of Olympian gods. That 
 will give us a basis to interpret the ritual of the Lupercalia. 
 
 Near Rome, in the country of the Faliscans, was a wolf-cult that 
 was associated with Soranus, the god of Mount Soracte. The 
 ritual combined the features of a fire-cult and a wolf-cult. Every 
 year the priests performed a rite in which they walked through 
 blazing coals, and yet were not burned. 3 Fire-cults were rare in 
 the religion of either the Greeks or the Romans. This particular 
 one seems the natural product of the location, for the land of the 
 Faliscans was volcanic, with numerous chasms whence issued 
 pestiferous fumes. 4 In this region, consequently, fire was the prime 
 manifestation of the earth-spirit. Hephaistus, too, the product 
 of like forces, was a chthonic god, embodying the subterranean 
 fire. 5 The wolf-element of the cult appears in the name of the 
 priests, Hirpi Sorani, hirpi being the Sabine name for wolves. It 
 appears also in the following legend: 6 At one time when the Hirpi 
 were sacrificing, wolves suddenly appeared and snatched from the 
 fire the entrails of the sacrifice. Shepherds pursued the wolves 
 to a cave, from which were emitted such deadly fumes that those 
 
3O The Lupercalia 
 
 standing near were killed. A pestilence followed because the 
 wolves had been molested. This could be allayed, the Hirpi learned 
 from an oracle, if they would imitate the wolves. This imitation 
 of the wolves Servius interpreted as rapto vivere. 6 But aetiological 
 myths like this one regularly try to explain the details of the cere- 
 mony. Thus the story indicates that the Hirpi, in imitation of 
 wolves, put on wolf-skins as a ceremonial garb, 7 devoured the 
 entrails of the victim, and then took to flight with the people in 
 pursuit. The rite shows, therefore, strong similarity to the Lycaea: 8 
 in each festival the priests, perhaps clad in wolf-skins, partook 
 ceremonially of the sacrificial victim, and then fled to escape pollu- 
 tion for their sacrilege; each band of priests underwent an expiatory 
 experience, in the one case through exile, in the other through 
 flight and through breathing the fumes from the cavern. 
 
 The spirit of Mount Soracte was, perhaps, wolf-shaped, and 
 manifested himself in volcanic fire and pestilential vapors. His 
 power expressed, not the beneficent, but the destructive, activity 
 of the earth : he was a death-god. 9 His name, meaning "the god 
 of Soracte," was derived from the mountain that he inhabited, 
 and was in later times felt to be nothing more than a vague descrip- 
 tion. Some ancient scholars, therefore, identified him with Apollo, 10 
 to whom also the wolf was sacred. Servius, understanding the 
 true nature of Soranus, said that he was also called Dis, since 
 Mount Soracte was consecrated to the Di Manes. 11 
 
 The Hirpi Sorani were a very small group of families living about 
 Mount Soracte. 12 Such veneration attached to their sacred function 
 that they were freed by decree of the senate from all military or 
 other service. 12 The view of some authorities, that the Hirpi were 
 Sabines, 13 seems to me most improbable. Mount Soracte was 
 located in the land of the Faliscans; and the cult was obviously 
 a product of the mountain, wolf-infested, and expressing the deadly 
 power of the underworld by volcanic fire and by noxious exhalations. 
 Such a cult surely could not have been imported. Nor is it reason- 
 able to suppose that the Sabines, some of whom settled among the 
 Faliscans, 14 developed the cult after their arrival. The worship 
 of Soranus has all the marks of hoar antiquity; it is intensely 
 local, and appears in no other region of Italy. Contrasted with 
 these reasons against supposing that Soranus was a Sabine god, 
 we have on the positive side only the fact that hirpus was the 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Italy 31 
 
 Sabine name for wolf. 15 No one states that Sabines were the wor- 
 shippers. 16 That a Sabine name should have become attached 
 to the priests of Soranus is wholly natural. Just as the Sabines 
 introduced many of their words into the Latin language, so the 
 Sabine settlers near Falerii may well have given their own name 
 to the priests of Soranus. 
 
 It is likewise improbable that the Hirpi Sorani were Faliscans. 
 The statement that they were a very few families living in the land 
 of the Faliscans 12 certainly indicates that they were a separate 
 group. Their meager numbers are strongly suggestive of an earlier 
 people, who, in the fastness of their mountain, kept their individu- 
 ality and their peculiar religion. Archaeology proves that the 
 neighborhood of Falerii was occupied during the Neolithic Age. 17 
 It also supports the assumption that these neolithic folk, or Ligu- 
 rians, continued in their old home after the coming of the Aryans, 
 for both cremation-urns and inhumation-graves have been found 
 about Falerii; and they seem to be contemporaneous. 18 Legends 
 of Falerii tell that it was occupied successively by Siculi, by Argives, 
 by Faliscans, who were closely related to the Romans, and by 
 Sabines. 19 Dionysius commented upon the traces of Pelasgian 
 origin that persisted in Falerii in his own day. 20 
 
 Therefore we may conclude that the god of Mount Soracte 
 was a chthonic deity of the Mediterranean people. He was similar 
 to Zeus Lycaeus, being embodied in a wolf, and being a merciless 
 god of destruction. 
 
 Another wolf-cult of Falerii is of more immediate interest in 
 our study of the Lupercalia, for the goddess, or priestess, of the 
 cult was named Valeria Luperca. We hear of it through only one 
 writer, though it continued until a late date. At one time, the 
 legend runs, 21 a fearful pestilence fell upon the Faliscans. An 
 oracle told them that the plague would be stayed if they should 
 sacrifice every year a maiden to Juno. Accordingly a girl named 
 Valeria Luperca was chosen as the victim. But when the sword 
 was drawn, an eagle, swooping down, seized it and thrust it into 
 a cow that was grazing near; then placed upon the altar a small 
 hammer. This was taken up by the maiden, who went to each 
 of the sick, touched him with it, and bade him be healed. 
 
 This story suggests the legend of Iphigenia, in its main situation 
 of a maiden who, when about to be sacrificed, was saved by the 
 
32 The Lupercalia 
 
 substitution of an animal victim. Iphigenia is usually interpreted 
 as a cult-title of Artemis, or as an early goddess who was later 
 identified with Artemis. 22 The story of her escape from death 
 seems a recollection of the time when human sacrifice was abolished 
 and an animal substituted. The same explanation is a natural 
 one for the story of Valeria Luperca. Just as Iphigenia was later 
 replaced by Artemis and reduced to a priestess, so Valeria Luperca 
 was subordinated to Juno. Nowhere else do we hear of a human 
 victim being offered to Juno; therefore we can hardly believe that 
 she was the original deity honored in this ceremony. The goddess 
 Luperca, however, whose name is most reasonably derived from 
 lupa, a wolf, 23 would, like the wolf-gods of Greece, very naturally 
 have been honored by a human sacrifice. The rite evidently ante- 
 dated the coming of the terramara folk, for the maiden was saved 
 by an eagle, the bird of the Romans. The legend indicates, there- 
 fore, a barbarous rite that was ended by the northern immigrants. 
 
 The importance of the hammer in the legend leads us, as does 
 the name of the priestess, to the Valerii, a gens who lived near 
 the Faliscans, for they adopted Acisculus as a cognomen, and 
 employed the emblem of the hammer on many of their coins. 24 
 This sacred hammer reminds us of the weapon-cult which was 
 prominent in the religion of Minoan Crete, 25 thus strengthening 
 the view that Valeria Luperca was a goddess of the Ligurians. 
 
 We may reconstruct the legend as follows. Luperca was a local 
 goddess of the Ligurians living near Falerii. The Valerian gens 
 took over her cult, but abolished the practice of human sacrifice. 
 Henceforth the goddess was known as Valeria Luperca. 26 In time 
 this local deity was absorbed by Juno; and only an obscure legend 
 and the sacred hammer which was the emblem of the Valerii showed 
 that she had ever existed. 
 
 That the wolf was known throughout Italy as the sacred animal 
 of Mars is a literary commonplace that needs no amplification here. 
 Since the name of Mars, which comes from the Indo-European 
 root mar-, meaning brightness appears in many of the Italic 
 dialects, and since the worship of Mars was important in all the 
 lands occupied by the Aryan invaders, 28 Mars is generally accepted 
 as the chief god whom the terramara folk brought with them into 
 Italy. 29 Yet there is much in the ancient cults and the character 
 of Mars that is like the Mediterranean nature-spirits rather than 
 
The Wolf-Deity in Italy 33 
 
 the Aryan gods. The importance of Mars in lustral and agrarian 
 rites, especially those of the spring, and his association with the 
 ancient Dea Dia, leads Roscher, who has made the most exhaustive 
 examination of the cults of Mars, 30 to conclude that Mars was 
 a god of spring and summer who was closely connected with the 
 crops, the cattle, health, and sickness. Dr. Fowler, who accepts 
 the conclusions of Roscher, says of the month that was named for 
 Mars: "Some great numen is at work, quickening vegetation, and 
 calling into life the powers of reproduction in man and the animals. 
 ... It was this Power, we can hardly doubt, that the Latins knew 
 by the name of Mars, the god whose cult is so prominent throughout 
 the critical period of the quickening processes." 31 Such a god corres- 
 ponds in all respects to the earth-god of the Mediterranean race. 
 
 As a result, we must believe that the Mars of historical times was 
 a composite deity, the Aryan god having absorbed much of the 
 nature and the ritual of the Mediterranean deities who were already 
 in possession of the land. This fusion is shown in the case of two 
 local deities of Liguria who are called respectively Cemenelus or 
 Mars Cemenelus, 32 and Mars Leucimalacus. 33 In like manner it 
 is reasonable to believe, though impossible to prove, that Mars 
 absorbed a wolf-deity of the Ligurians, and that the wolf was in 
 time reduced to his attendant animal. In association with Mars, 
 the wolf lost much of his savage character, and became a helpful 
 animal that guided colonists on their way, 34 and rescued Romulus 
 and Remus, the infant sons of Mars. 35 Just so, when associated 
 with Apollo, did Lycaeus grow gentle. 
 
 We come now to the main point of this investigation, the part 
 of the wolf in the Lupercalia. Was there in the neighborhood of 
 Rome before the arrival of the terramara invaders a Ligurian popu- 
 lace who might have been the authors of a wolf-cult? Archaeology, 
 unfortunately, gives us only meager help in this problem. The hills 
 of Rome have been densely populated for so long a time that it is 
 very difficult to find any remains that unquestionably date back 
 even to the regal period. 36 We do know, however, that the imme- 
 diate neighborhood was inhabited from remote times; for in the 
 gravels of the Tiber and the Anio have been found flints belonging 
 to the Palaeolithic Age. 37 Even as close to Rome as the Mulvian 
 Bridge was found a rich collection of very early stone implements, 
 together with bones of extinct animals. 38 But in the types of tombs 
 
34 The Lupercalia 
 
 found in Rome itself we have the clearest evidence. In the ancient 
 cemeteries on the Esquiline and in the Forum, inhumation was the 
 more common form of burial, and the skulls found in these graves 
 were dominantly dolichocephalic. 39 
 
 Many traditions tell that before the arrival of the Romans there 
 were persons living upon the site of Rome. 40 These settlers are 
 known as Ligurians, Siculi, or Pelasgians; Dionysius designates 
 them as autochthonous, and says. that not a few traces of them 
 continued there even in his time. 41 Testifying to the truth of these 
 traditions are various ancient shrines. On the lower slope of the 
 Cermalus there was, close by the Lupercal, the sacred fig-tree, 
 an emblem of Rumina, goddess of fecundity; 42 and, at the foot 
 of the hill in the Velabrum, the shrine, or tomb, of Acca Larentia, 
 which was the seat of an ancient grave-cult. 43 On the Aventine 
 were places sacred to Bona Dea, Faunus, Picus, and Evander; 
 and, at the foot of the hill, the shrines of Murcia, Heracles, and 
 Consus. 44 Cacus was localized both on the Aventine and on the 
 Palatine. 45 On the Capitoline were the grave of Tarpeia, 46 the 
 altar to Saturnus, 47 and, near the foot, the shrine to Carmenta. 48 
 All these deities and their cults were distinctly chthonic. The gods 
 presided over fertility, prophecy, or death, and all, according to 
 the legends, antedated the founding of Rome. 
 
 From this evidence of archaeology, of legend, and of cult, we 
 are justified in believing that when the Romans settled on the 
 Palatine they found the Ligurians already established in the 
 neighborhood, and that they adopted from these Ligurians many 
 of the cults that were inseparably attached to places later included 
 within the Roman city. 49 
 
 One of the prominent natural objects of the Palatine was the 
 Lupercal, a large cavern, with a spring issuing from it, with the 
 sacred Ficus Ruminalis close by, and with dense woods all about. 50 
 Since a site like that was, in the eyes of a primitive people, a par- 
 ticularly natural place for the abode of a deity, the probabilities 
 are all in favor of a cult having been established at the Lupercal 
 by the oldest settlers in the region. 51 Moreover, the veneration 
 shown to the Ficus Ruminalis is evidently, Dr. Evans believes, of 
 Mediterranean origin, since the fig-tree was devoutly worshipped 
 throughout the lands near the Mediterranean, but was almost un- 
 known in Central Europe. 52 
 
The Wolf-Deity in Italy 35 
 
 Associated with this cave was the well-known tale of the wolf 
 who was foster-mother to Romulus and Remus. It is significant 
 that in the oldest versions of that tale the wolf was the all-important 
 actor. Dionysius tells how the wolf cared for the babes, and then, 
 upon the arrival of the shepherds, retired to the Lupercal with 
 such deliberation and dignity that the shepherds believed her to 
 be under the guidance of some god. 53 In this version the human 
 beings had a secondary part in the preservation of the twins; 
 Faustulus was not present at the rescue, and his wife was nameless 
 and insignificant. Dionysius supports his tale with a long list of 
 authorities: Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, Cato, Calpurnius 
 Piso, and numerous others. This version, that the rescue was due 
 to a real wolf, constantly appears in history and in epic. 54 
 
 Since the wolf acted under Mars's direction for the rescue of 
 his sons, she belongs with the wolves of Apollo who cared for his 
 son. 55 The Roman story, like the Greek one, suggests an animal 
 god who was later replaced by a human one. We may believe, 
 then, that the wolf of the Lupercal, originally honored as a deity, 
 passed through the same development as did Lycaeus, and was 
 reduced to the sacred animal of Mars. But the wolf could not be 
 wholly banished from her ancient seat. Therefore, when story- 
 tellers portrayed the origin of Rome, they accounted for the homage 
 which the Romans gave to the wolf-deity by making her the foster- 
 mother of Rome's founder. 56 
 
 Later rationalists sought to remove the wolf from the story 
 through the explanation that lupa, which was the common designa- 
 tion of a meretrix, was a term that had been applied to the wife of 
 Faustulus. 57 To provide her with a name, they identified her with 
 Acca Larentia, an ancient goddess whose shrine was near the Lu- 
 percal. 58 This identification was not necessarily an arbitrary 
 assumption, based upon the proximity of two shrines. Acca 
 Larentia was, as has been shown by Professor Pais, a form of the 
 earth-deity, who was known to the Romans by a variety of names : 
 Tellus, Terra, Ops, Maia, Bona Dea, Fauna, Fatua, Dea Dia, 
 and Ceres. 59 Thus she was closely akin to the chthonic wolf. 
 Professor Pais even goes so far as to suggest that she was originally 
 honored as a real wolf. 60 
 
 Our next question is whether this wolf-deity, venerated through- 
 out Italy, enshrined in the Lupercal, and prominent in Rome's 
 
36 The Lupercalia 
 
 early legends, was the god in whose honor the Lupercalia was 
 celebrated. That festival was associated with various deities. 
 Can any one of them be interpreted as the wolf-god? In answer 
 to this question, one naturally thinks of Lupercus, who was occa- 
 sionally named as the god of the festival. 61 
 
 The exact meaning of the name Lupercus has been since the days 
 of Roman scholarship a matter of dispute. Servius suggests a 
 variety of interpretations. 62 The one most generally accepted 
 by modern authorities is that Lupercus came from lupus-}- arceo, 
 and so meant "he who keeps off the wolves;" 63 that is, the Luperci 
 were "the wolf-aver ters." To this idea the weighty objection has 
 been raised that a wolf-averting festival was strangely localized 
 at the lair of the beneficent wolf who rescued Rome's founder, 
 and that it offered, moreover, no explanation of the abiding hold 
 which the Lupercalia had upon the urban populace of Rome. 64 
 Another explanation offered by Servius, and supported by Ovid, 65 
 is that the Lupercal was named in honor of the wolf which rescued 
 Romulus and Remus. In agreement with this view is the statement 
 of Lactantius, that Lupa, the nurse of Romulus, was accorded 
 divine honors. 66 Varro, a more valuable authority, actually iden- 
 tified the wolf with the goddess Luperca. 67 "The savage wolf," 
 he says, "for her kindness to the babes, was named the goddess 
 Luperca." It is noteworthy that Varro uses the feminine form of 
 the name: that is added proof of its antiquity, for in many cases 
 the female deity was the primitive one, but was later displaced 
 by her male double. Varro's statement seems to controvert the 
 view which has been advanced, 68 that Lupercus was merely a late 
 abstraction manufactured from the festival. We seem justified, 
 therefore, in believing that there was a wolf-formed spirit of the 
 Lupercal, who was known as Lupa, Luperca, or Lupercus 
 
 As a matter of fact, the two explanations of the name Lupercus 
 which are offered by Servius seem to reflect two different stages in 
 the history of the god. These two stages appear very clearly in 
 the names of the wolf-god of Greece. In Arcadia he was called 
 Lycaeus, "the wolf-like;" in Argos, where he was identified with 
 Apollo, the compound name was Apollo Lycaeus. But the wolf- 
 god was later explained as "he who destroys the wolves," there- 
 fore Apollo's appellation became AVKOKTOVOS, "the wolf-slayer." 70 
 In like manner, the Delphian Apollo was called both Huflios 7I 
 
The Wolf-Deity in Italy 37 
 
 and Uv6oKrovos. 72 Dr. Graillot explains this by saying that 
 Apollo was first identified with the chthonic serpent, and later 
 regarded as its slayer. 73 Similarly, Artemis was called both 
 'EXa^cta 74 and 'EXa^jSoXos. 75 This is a development that con- 
 stantly appears in ancient religion, for when a primitive animal- 
 deity had faded into the mere epithet of an anthropomorphic god, 
 scholars, at a loss to account for the significance of the animal in 
 the cult, explained it, in case the animal was dangerous, by making 
 the god its special foe or, if the animal was useful, its protector. 
 As this explanation entirely disregarded the superstitious veneration 
 that regularly attached to the animal, modern scholars usually 
 rate it no more highly than most of the etymological attempts 
 of the ancients. 76 In like manner, the deity of the Lupercal was 
 probably known in the earliest times as Lupa or Lupus. Later, 
 when the animal-god had lost prestige, the usual explanation was 
 employed, that the god was a wolf-averter; and the name was altered 
 to Luperca or Lupercus. This explanation obviates all the difficulties 
 arising from the name : it is in harmony with the reverence shown to 
 the wolf-god and to his festival ; it adopts an etymology that seems 
 unassailable (lupus -\-arceo) ; and it is in accord with the development 
 seen in many other cults, in which the homage first given to the 
 animal-god was later given to the deity who destroyed that animal. 
 
 The name of the god was then extended to his priests, and they 
 were known as Luperci. Mediterranean worshippers often sought 
 in this way to identify themselves with their deity. 77 Thus the 
 devotees of Bacchus called themselves Bacchae, and those of 
 Sabazios or Sabos, Sabazioi or Saboi. 78 
 
 If we grant the existence of the wolf-deity Luperca, it seems 
 inevitable that the Lupercalia, which was celebrated at her cave, 
 was held in her honor. But the Romans also associated the festival 
 with Pan, Pan Lycaeus, Faunus, and Inuus. Justin gives us the 
 clue to this variety of names. He states that there was at the foot 
 of the Palatine a shrine to Lycaeus, whom the Greeks call Pan, 
 the Romans Lupercus. , 79 In other words, Lupercus was regarded 
 as merely the Roman double of Lycaeus. Naturally enough then, 
 Lupercus was also identified with Pan Lycaeus, who had largely 
 displaced Lycaeus in Arcadia. 80 Consequently the god of the 
 Lupercalia came to be spoken of most frequently as Pan Lycaeus, 
 or, the wolf-god being crowded out entirely, as simply Paw. 81 
 
38 The Lupercalia 
 
 Ovid, who alone names Faunus as the god of the festival, shows 
 clearly that he uses that name as the Roman equivalent of Pan. 
 He begins by calling the Lupercalia the festival of Faunus; then, 
 to explain its origin, says that because Pan was especially honored 
 by the ancient Arcadians, his woodland rites were established in 
 Rome by Evander. 82 Thus Ovid, following the convention of his 
 day, used the names Faunus and Pan interchangeably. But he 
 then went one step further and identified Faunus and Pan Lycaeus, 
 asking: "Who denies that the Luperci have their name from the 
 mountain of Arcadia? In Arcadia the Lycaean Faunus has a 
 temple." 83 This is an easy extension for a poet to make: Faunus, 
 being identical with Pan, is also identical with Pan Lycaeus, and, 
 consequently, with Lycaeus, the god whom Pan had displaced. 
 Thus Ovid really accepted the general view that Pan Lycaeus was 
 god of the Lupercalia; but he translated Pan Lycaeus into a still 
 more familiar name, Faunus. 84 
 
 The explanation of Inuus as the patron deity of the Lupercalia 
 is still easier to establish. Livy, the only one who associates Inuus 
 with that festival, says that the rite was celebrated in honor of 
 Pan Lycaeus, whom the Romans later called Inuus. 85 
 
 Probus sums up the whole thing by stating that certain persons 
 regard Pan, Inuus, and Faunus as the same. 86 When, therefore, the 
 Romans spoke of the deity of the Lupercalia as Lupercus,. Lycaean 
 Pan, Pan, Faunus, or Inuus, they were merely applying one or 
 another name to the same god, Lupercus, the Ligurian brother 
 of the Pelasgian Lycaeus. 
 
 The cult of Lupercus was wholly different from the usual religious 
 ceremonies of the Romans. It was in type Pelasgian, and Ovid 
 named it Pelasgian. 87 Because of the non-Roman character of 
 the ritual and the similarity of Lupercus to Lycaeus, the majority 
 of the legends about the Lupercalia said that it was founded by 
 the Arcadian exile Evander. 88 The ancients frequently derived 
 the Ligurian populace in various parts of Italy from the Pelasgians, 
 often naming Arcadia as the original home of these settlers, 89 
 since in historical times Arcadia was the most markedly Pelasgian 
 of any country of Greece. 90 The general belief of the oldest writers 
 that the Lupercalia existed before Rome was founded, 91 shows that 
 they recognized it as the cult of a pre-Roman people. Consequently 
 the germ of truth to be extracted from the legend of the Arcadian 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Italy 39 
 
 origin of the Lupercalia is that it was a festival established by the 
 Ligurians who lived about the site of Rome before the appearance 
 of the Aryans. It had so strong a hold upon the religious imagina- 
 tion, and was so inseparably connected with the Lupercal, that 
 it was taken over by the conquerors. The founders of the festival, 
 however, were so completely absorbed by the terramara folk that, 
 when ancient scholars began to speculate about this rite which had 
 all the ear-marks of a Mediterranean cult, they must go outside 
 the bounds of Italy to find its origin. 
 
 That the Lupercalia was a festival of the Ligurian face is borne 
 out by the legends of the priests who performed it, the Fabii and 
 the Quintilii. 92 The latter are, in all the accounts, associated with 
 Romulus, and so may be accepted as belonging to the Romans. 93 
 According to most legends, the Fabii sprang from a daughter of 
 Evander and Hercules. 94 On their mother's side, then, the Fabii 
 were Ligurians. Their father was a non-Roman hero, who arrived 
 at the Palatine before the Romans themselves. Hercules was 
 originally not a god, but a hero of the Pelasgians, born at Tiryns, 
 and strongly localized in Argolis and in Arcadia. 95 His title 
 'AXeiKaKos % expressed his power to protect man from evil of 
 every form. 97 This power of universal protection, which is so marked 
 in chthonic deities, is regarded by Dr. Gruppe as the oldest stratum 
 of the Hercules cult, and as the origin of the legends of his twelve 
 labors. 98 Later Hercules was appropriated by the Dorians and 
 included among their Olympian deities. 99 But the Hercules to 
 whom Evander dedicated the Ara Maxima, 100 and who became the 
 father of the Fabii, seems to have been the Pelasgian hero. He 
 was called Tirynthius heros, 101 and was attended by Argives. 102 
 Thus the Fabii were in their parentage pre-Roman and Pelasgian. 
 
 The ceremonial acts of the Lupercalia were so numerous and so 
 incoherent that it seems hardly credible that they represent the 
 original form of the festival. They offer, indeed, every appearance 
 of a cult-complex, in which there has been a gradual accretion of 
 ceremonies. In seeking to reconstruct the earliest stage of the 
 Lupercalia, we note that none of the accounts which make the 
 festival antedate the founding of Rome mention the cutting of 
 the goat-skins into thongs, nor the blows dealt by the Luperci 
 to the women. Ovid assigned this ritual act to a later period, and 
 we shall find reason to believe that he was right. 103 Likewise the 
 
4O The Lupercalia 
 
 sacrifice of the dog and the blood-ritual, which were mentioned 
 by Plutarch only, reasonably seem to have been a later develop- 
 ment. 104 
 
 Of the ceremonial which was ascribed to the pre-Romans, we 
 have a fairly coherent picture, though authorities vary slightly 
 about the details. At the entrance to the cave, where in later 
 times stood the statue of the she-wolf, 105 a sacrifice was offered. In 
 the earliest days this was presumably a female goat ; later, probably 
 when Luperca had been merged into Lupercus, a male goat seems 
 to have beefcf added. 106 After the sacrifice a ritualistic race was 
 performed by the Luperci, who in the earliest times were evi- 
 dently wholly naked. 107 Most writers place the sacrificial feast 
 after the return of the Luperci from their race, 108 but Ovid, in his 
 lengthy account, says that the Luperci had a slight repast exigua 
 dapes before the race, and a feast after it. 109 The natural inter- 
 pretation is that, immediately after the sacrifice, the Luperci 
 tasted ceremonially of the entrails, as the priest of Lycaeus did 
 after he had sacrificed. 110 Such a rite explains Ovid's words, exigua 
 dapes. Then, at the close of the race, came the feast upon the flesh 
 of the victim. 
 
 The descriptions of the Lupercalia assign a different role to the 
 Fabii and to the Quintilii. The two groups of priests evidently 
 did not run together, as the word discursus or an equivalent is 
 regularly used to describe their course. 111 Tubero says that the 
 band of Remus, (i. e. the Fabii, 112 ) ran first; and, when they were 
 opposite the Aventine, were attacked by shepherds of Numitor, 
 who threw at them stones, spears, and anything they could lay 
 hands on, and finally captured them; the followers of Romulus 
 did not share in these experiences. 113 They were also evidently 
 debarred from the sacrificial feast, for Ovid tells that in the race 
 they were outstripped by the Fabii, and, upon their arrival at the 
 feast, found the sacrifice entirely consumed, only the bones remain- 
 ing. 114 It is significant that on that occasion Romulus did not 
 show his usual self-assertion; he merely laughed and regretted 
 that his followers had been outdone by the Fabii. A similar tale 
 is told about the Potitii and the Pinarii, the priests of Hercules: 
 the former arrived first and ate the exta of the victim, but the 
 Pinarii reached there only in time to share in the rest of the feast. 
 For this reason the custom continued that the Pinarii should not 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Italy 41 
 
 eat of the entrails. 115 A similar distinction between the Quintilii 
 and the Fabii seems the natural basis of Ovid's story. We may, 
 then, believe that, when the Roman priests were admitted to the 
 Ligurian festival, they were debarred from the most significant 
 rites, the flight and the feast. Propertius seems to regard the 
 Fabii as the all-important members of the priesthood, for, in speak- 
 ing of the Luperci, he mentions the Fabii only. 116 
 
 The fact that the Luperci are invariably spoken of as running 
 on their course shows that their speed was an essential feature of 
 the ceremony. This seems to have been overlooked 'in previous 
 explanations of the festival. Furthermore, they were said to have 
 run naked in order to gain swiftness. 117 The nakedness may, in 
 itself, have been of ritualistic significance; 118 yet, certainly, when 
 the Luperci, immediately after the sacrifice and the tasting of 
 the entrails, cast aside their garments and ran forth at top speed, 
 we have every indication of a ritualistic flight. The legends give 
 no evidence that the original race was around the Palatine, as it 
 was in later times. 119 The tale of the pursuit of the cattle-thieves 
 suggests a course away from the village, rather than around 
 it. Plutarch describes this chase by the word c/cSpajueu', while 
 he uses TrtpiTpkxtw of the course run by the Luperci in his own 
 day. 120 Yet, the Luperci, in returning to the cave for the feast, 
 may well have encircled the hill instead of going back by the same 
 route. In that act, however, we do not see the ceremonial sig- 
 nificance which attached in later times to the encircling of the 
 Palatine, when the Luperci by their goat-skin thongs assured 
 productivity to the women of Rome. 
 
 A ritualistic flight, we have seen, was a frequent and significant 
 feature of expiatory rites. The details of the Lupercalia correspond 
 to the other ceremonies of that type which have already been 
 examined. 121 As they fled, the Luperci were pelted with missiles, 
 just as were the priests who sacrificed the calf at Tenedos. 122 The 
 Lupercalia culminated in a feast which is paralleled by the one 
 served to the boys in the Stepteria when they were returning from 
 their exile. 123 An expiatory sacrifice is the most frequent type in 
 the worship of a god who is embodied in a dangerous animal like 
 the wolf. 124 Therefore we may explain the Lupercalia in its earliest 
 form as follows. The Luperci endeavored to avert from the people 
 the deity's malignant power by offering it sacrifice. They sought 
 
42 The Lupercalia 
 
 to share the mysterious potency of the sacrificial animal by eating 
 of its entrails. Yet they felt that the act of slaying an animal 
 consecrated to the god was a sacrilege; therefore they fled, as from 
 a crime, and expiated their guilt by being stoned. Having been 
 thus purified, they returned to the Lupercal, and ate in sacramental 
 fashion the flesh of the sacrifice. The mystic significance of the 
 stoning and the sacramental nature of the meal is shown by the 
 refusal of the Fabii to share those rites with the Quintilii. 
 
 Such a ceremony was naturally regarded by ancient scholars 
 as a Roman double of the Lycaea. In each festival the sacrifice 
 was expiatory, being offered to appease a wolf-god. The priests 
 incurred guilt by slaying the victim, and fled. After a purificatory 
 experience they returned. In details the ritualistic acts of the 
 two festivals were different, but the underlying meaning was the 
 same. 
 
 This likeness between the festivals has caused some authorities 
 to go still further, and to hold that the original sacrifice at the 
 Lupercalia was a human being. 125 If that were so, it is very strange 
 that there are no legends, as about the Lycaea, reminiscent of a 
 loathsome rite. The story of human sacrifice that was connected 
 with the cult of Valeria Luperca makes more noticeable the fact 
 that, among the numerous legends of the Lupercalia, not one has 
 the least suggestion that a human being was once the victim. Yet 
 that is a thing that makes a deep impression, and is more liable 
 than any other ritual act to produce a tale. Also, the rites of the 
 Lupercalia fail to suggest an earlier slaughter of a man. If, for 
 example, a man's blood is sprinkled upon the altar, 126 the symbolism 
 is clear: the deity, being deprived of his accustomed sacrifice, 
 receives in substitution a few drops of blood. Also, if the sword 
 were placed at the throat of the young men, it would be emblematic 
 of their death. Such a rite was performed at Halae in memory 
 of an earlier human sacrifice, the priest going so far in his realism 
 as to draw blood from the man's throat. 127 But the placing of 
 the sword against the foreheads of the youths is certainly not a 
 natural pantomime of sacrificial slaughter. The ritual of the 
 Lupercalia involved also the wiping away of the blood by wool 
 dipped in milk. That act, which is difficult to explain on the theory 
 of human sacrifice, is, as we shall see, 128 an essential part of the 
 blood-ceremony as explained upon another basis. 
 
The Wolf-Deity in Italy 43 
 
 The parallelism between Lupercus and Lycaeus suggests another 
 possible victim that was appropriate for a wolf-god, that is, a wolf. 129 
 But, if wild animals were ever sacrificed in Italy, not a vestige of 
 such a rite has come down to us. Hence it is unsafe to assume that 
 at some remote time a wolf was the sacrificial victim of the Luper- 
 calia. 
 
 In the examination of the goat-cults of Greece, 130 we shall see 
 that a human or a wild animal victim was often replaced in later 
 times t?y a goat. It is possible that such a substitution took place 
 in the Lupercalia in very early days, though the lack of evidence 
 makes it safer to accept the goat as the original sacrifice. Dr. 
 Farnell shows that the theory of sacramental union with a deity 
 through sacrifice does not demand the belief that the deity was 
 incarnate in the sacrificial animal. 131 He notes that in the Thes- 
 mophoria pigs were cast into a chasm, and. devoured by snakes 
 that seem to have* been the embodiment of the earth-deity. In 
 the same way a goat may well have been sacrificed to the chthonic 
 wolf. Various instances of goat-sacrifice show that, even when 
 the goat had not the character of an animal -god, it was a sacrificial 
 victim that possessed a special sanctity. 132 
 
 When the ancients called the Lupercalia a Pelasgian rite, and 
 made Lupercus a double of Lycaeus, they were telling the truth. 
 Those gods were the Greek and the Roman expression respectively 
 of the same power. Both were evolved by huntsmen or by primitive 
 shepherds, who shaped their deity in the form in which super- 
 human might was most clearly manifested to them. As in Asia 
 Minor this power was incorporate in the lion, and in Crete in the 
 bull, so in Arcadia and in Italy the wolf, which was the animal 
 most numerous and most dreaded, was accepted as the embodiment 
 of the god. He was a pitiless creature, whose baleful power both 
 Pelasgians and Ligurians sought to avert by rites of expiation. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 
 
 1. Keller, Thiere des klassischen Alterthums, i, 159, 163; Preller, Romische 
 Mythologie, i, 116; Reinach, Orpheus, 97. 
 
 2. See p. 36. 
 
 3. Verg., Aen., n. 785; Plin., N. H., 7. 19. Strabo alone (5. 9. p. 226) ascribes 
 this rite to Feronia, who had her shrine at the foot of Mount Soracte. 
 
 4. Deecke, Die Falisker, 4, 53; Preller, i, 268. 
 
44 The Lupercalia 
 
 5. Farnell, v, 375-6, 388-90; Rhys, 638. 
 
 6. Serv. ad Verg., Aen., n. 785. 
 
 7. This is the suggestion of Dr. Jordan (Kritische Beitrage, 163). 
 
 8. Dr. Mannhardt (Wald- und Feldkulte, ii, 342) notes this similarity, though 
 he believes that the festivals celebrated the summer solstice. 
 
 9. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Romer, 238; Reinach, Cultes, i, 296; 
 Deecke, 92-4. 
 
 10. Verg., Aen., n. 785; Plin., 7. 19; Solin., 2. 26. 
 
 11. Ad Verg., Aen., n. 785. Hades, who was very similar to Dis (Cook, 
 Zeus, 99) at times wore a wolf-skin helmet. (See p. 28 n. 53.) 
 
 12. Plin., N. H., 7. 19; Solin., 2. 26. 
 
 13. Miiller, Die Etrusker, ii, 68; Deecke, 94-5; Keller, Thiere KL Alt., i, 172; 
 Mannhardt, W. F. K., 327. 
 
 14. Modestov, 229. 
 
 15. Paul, ex Fest., 106. 
 
 1 6. The Hirpi Sorani should not be confused with the Sabellian tribe, the 
 Hirpini, who journeyed to Southern Samnium under the guidance of a wolf 
 (Strab., 4. 12). 
 
 17. Modestov, 31. 
 
 1 8. Montelius, La civilisation primitive en Italie, ii, PL 307-331; Deecke, 34. 
 
 19. Dionys., i. 21; Strab., 5. 9. 
 
 20. Dionys., i. 21. See also E. H. Bunbury, in Smith, Diet. Geogr., i, 891. 
 
 21. Pseud. Plut. Parallel, 35. 
 
 22. Farnell, ii, 441 ; Stoll, in Roscher, ii, 304. 
 
 23. See pp. 36-7- 
 
 24. Babelon, Monnaies de la republique romaine, ii, 515-21. 
 
 25. See p. 6. 
 
 26. The double name Valeria Luperca cannot have been the ancient form, 
 therefore the adjective Valeria must be a later addition (Mommsen, Romische 
 Forschungen, i, 5). 
 
 27. Roscher, ii, 2437. 
 
 28. Roscher, ii, 2385-95. 
 
 29. Wissowa, R. K. t 141; Mommsen, The History of Rome, i, 175; Preller, i, 
 
 US, 333- 
 
 30. Lex. ii, art. Mars. See especially 2399-2415. 
 
 31. R. F., 34-5. In harmony with this view are Roscher, ii, 2429-34; Schweg- 
 ler, Romische Geschichte, i, 228-315; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, i, 268-9; 
 Preller, i, 332-46; Frazer, ix, 229-34; Piganiol, 115. 
 
 32. C. I. L., ii, 7871. 
 
 33. C. I. L., ii, 7862. For these two Ligurian deities, see also Conway, Ligurian 
 Religion, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., viii, 69. 
 
 34. Paul, ex Fest., 106. 
 
 35. Liv., i. 5. 
 
 36. Modestov, 24. 
 
 37. Peet, 32. See also Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age, 434. 
 
 38. Modestov, 2, 3. 
 
The Wolf-Deity in Italy 45 
 
 39. Modestov, 252-5. 
 
 40. Var., L. L., 5. 42, 53, 101; Verg., Aen., 8. 51-6, 97; Liv., I. 7. 8; Dionys., 
 i. 9, 22, 39, 40; 2. i; Fest., 321; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., i. 273; 3. 500; 7. 795; 8. 51; 
 ii. 317; Solin., i. 13; Macr., i. 7. 30; n. 48. 
 
 41. Dionys., 2. i. I, 2. 
 
 42. Var., R. R., 2. n. 5. 
 
 43. Lippert, ii, 549. 
 
 44. For a survey of the ancient cults of the Aventine and of the valley at its 
 foot, see Merlin, L'Aventin dans Vantiquite, 45-52. 
 
 45. Verg., Aen.) 8. 230; Ov., Fast., i. 551; 6. 82; Liv., i. 7. 
 
 46. Liv., i, ii ; Dionys., 2. 38, 40. 
 
 47. Macr., i. 8. 2. 
 
 48. Dionys., i. 32; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 337; Soiin., i. 13. 
 
 49. Modestov, 252; Gilbert, Geschichte und Topographic der Stadt Rom im 
 Altertum, i. 67. 
 
 50. Dionys., i. 32. 4, 5; i. 79. 8. 
 
 51. Smith, Semites, 151; Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion, 
 237. Gilbert (i, 53-7) notes the evidences of an ancient cult center on the Cer- 
 malus. Lippert (ii, 564) ascribes the cult at the Lupercal to the pre-Roman 
 inhabitants of the Palatine. 
 
 52. /. H. S., xxi, 129. 
 
 53. Dionys., i. 79. 
 
 54. Verg., Aen., 8. 630; Liv., i. 5; Plut., Rom., 2. 4; id. de Fort. Rom., 8. D, E; 
 id. Q. R., 21 ; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343; Just., 43. 2. 7; Arnob., adv. Gent., 4. 3. 
 
 55. Seep. 25. 
 
 56. Dr. Pais, in an elaborate study, advances the view that the wolf in Italy 
 was the animal incarnation of the earth-spirit (Ancient Legends of Roman History, 
 60-95). See also Reinach, Cultes, i, 295. 
 
 57. Liv., i. 4. 7. 
 
 58. Plut., Rom., 5. 4. 
 
 59. Anc. Leg., 46-95. This interpretation of Acca Larentia is supported by 
 many authorities: Preller, i, 398-400, ii, 26; Lippert, ii, 547; Fowler, R. F., 74. 
 
 60. Anc. Leg., 84. 
 
 61. Just., 43. I. 7. 
 
 62. Ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 63. This etymology is favored by Walde (447), by Marquardt (Romische 
 Staatsverwaltung, iii, 439 n. 4), by Deubner (Arch. f. Rel. vol. xiii, 484), and by 
 Lippert (ii, 564). The suggestion of linger (Die Lupercalien, in Rhein. Mus., vol. 
 xxxvi, 64) that Lupercus comes from lues and parco has won no acceptance (Mar- 
 quardt, iii, 438 n. 10; Gilbert, i, 145 n. 2; Preller, i, 380 n. 4). 
 
 64. For this reason Schwegler suggests the etymology lupus -f- hircus, wolf- 
 goats, saying (i, 361) that the two bands of the Luperci represent respectively the 
 animal daemons, the wolf and the goat. This etymology is accepted unreservedly 
 by Mannhardt (Mythologische Forschungen, 90), and tentatively by Hild 
 (Daremberg-Saglio, iii, 1399). 
 
 65. Fast., 2. 421. 
 
46 The Lupercalia 
 
 66. Lact., Inst., i. 20. i. 
 
 67. Ap. Arnob., 4. 3. 
 
 68. Fowler, R. F., 312. 
 
 69. Jordan (Krit. Beitr., 164-5) believes that Luperca was merely an expanded 
 form of lupa, being developed from it on the analogy of noierca, and thus meaning 
 nothing more than wolf. This view is supported by Otto (in Pauly Wissowa, vi, 
 2O 55) by Preller (i, 380 n. 4), by Gilbert (i, 145 n. 2), and by Mommsen (H. R., 
 i, 156). Walde, however (447), does not consider it probable, in view of the form 
 of the word. 
 
 70. Hesych., AVKOKTOVOS. 
 
 71. Horn. Hym. in Apol., 373. 
 
 72. Hym. orph. t M.4. 
 
 73. Cybele,!. 
 
 74. Strab., 8. 528. 
 
 75. Etymol. Mag., 'E\atpr)^o\icov. 
 
 76. Reinach, Cultes, i, 58; Aust, Die Religion der Rcmer, 4; Fowler, R. E., 163. 
 
 77. Dr. Cook (Zeus 441-4) cites a number of instances in which the worship- 
 pers took the name of an animal-god. 
 
 78. Eur., Bac., 83; Phot., Lex., s. v. 
 
 79. Just., 43. i. 7. 
 
 80. See p. 24. 
 
 81. Pan or Pan Lycaeus is named the god of the Lupercalia in the following 
 passages: Verg., Aen., 8. 344; Dionys., i. 32. 3; Plut., Q. R., 68; Serv. ad Verg., 
 Aen., 8. 343, 663; Charis., Gram. Lat., i, 550. 10; Anton., Gram. Lat., v, 500. 35. 
 
 82. Fast., 2. 267-79. 
 
 83. Fast., 2. 423. 
 
 84. The other reasons which have led persons to regard Faunus as the god of 
 the Lupercalia are considered on pp. 54-7. 
 
 85. Liv., i. 5. 2. 
 
 86. Ad Verg., Georg., i. 10. See also Serv. ad Verg., A en., 6. 775, and Cledon., 
 Gram. Lat., v, 35. 
 
 87. Fast., 2. 281. 
 
 88. Dionys., i. 80; Ov., Fast., 2. 279; Liv., I. 5. i, 2; Plut., Rom., 21; id. 
 Caes., 61; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. See also Nilsson, 444 n. 2. 
 
 89. Dionys., i. u, 13, 22; 2. i; Pherec. jr. 85; Strab., 6. 3. 8. 
 
 90. See p. 10. 
 
 91. Evander was regarded as the founder of the Lupercalia by Fabius Pictor, 
 Cincius Alimentus, Cato, and Calpurnius Piso (Dionys., i. 79). See also Liv., I. 
 5; Verg., Aen., 8. 344. Acilius Glabrio followed the common Roman fashion of 
 making Romulus the founder of Roman institutions: before Rome was estab- 
 lished, he says (ap. Plut., Rom. 21), Romulus, having had his cattle stolen, 
 sacrificed a goat and pursued the thieves; the Lupercalia commemorates that race. 
 Variants of this account tell that Romulus and Remus, after they had conquered 
 Amulius (Plut., Rom., 21), or after Numitor had given them permission to found a 
 new city (Val. Max., 2. 2. 9), ran in joy to the place where they had been reared. 
 All these accounts harmonize with those that ascribe the festival to Evander, in the 
 
The Wolf -Deity in Italy 47 
 
 vital point that the Lupercalia was established before the city of Rome was 
 founded. 
 
 92. Paul, ex Fest., 87. The Julian Luperci, who were not added until Caesar's 
 day (Dio Cass., 44. 6) need not concern us here. 
 
 93. Ov., Fast., 2. 378; Aurel. Viet., Or. Gent. Rom., 22. 
 
 94. Plut., Fab. Max., i; Sil. It., 2. 3; 6. 634; Paul, ex Fest., 87. 
 
 95. Friedlander, Herakles, 163, et passim. 
 
 96. Van, L. L., 6. 82. 
 
 97. Diirbach, in Daremberg-Saglio, iii, 80; Friedlander, 163-4. 
 
 98. Gruppe, 453-60. 
 
 99. Friedlander, 139. 
 
 100. Liv., i. 5. 
 
 101. Sil. Ital., 2. 3. 
 
 102. Var., L. L., 5. 45. 
 
 103. See pp. 61-3. 
 
 104. For the discussion of these elements, see chapters VIII, IX. 
 
 105. Var., L. L., 5. 85. 
 
 106. Ovid (Fast., 2. 361) names a capella as the victim. Plutarch (Rom., 21) 
 and Valerius Maximus (2. 2. 9) say that goats were slain. Servius alone (ad Verg., 
 Aen., 8. 343) names a male goat as the only victim. 
 
 107. Tubero alone speaks of them as wearing girdles cut from the skins of the 
 goats (Dionys., i. 80). These girdles seem to belong naturally with the goat-skin 
 thongs which the Luperci carried at a later time. All the legends explain the 
 nakedness of Romulus and Remus as due to their haste in running. It is unreason- 
 able to imagine them, when in such haste, stopping to cut girdles. Dr. Deubner 
 believes that the Luperci were in earliest times wholly naked, though he bases 
 his conclusion on different grounds (Arch. f. Rel., vol. xiii, 491-2). 
 
 108. Valerius Maximus alone (2. 2. 9) places the feast before the race. 
 
 109. Fast., 2. 361, 371. 
 no. See p. 22. 
 
 in. Ov., Fast., 2. 371; Val. Max., 2. 2.9; Prudent., contra Sym., 2. 862; Aurel. 
 Viet., Or. Gent. Rom., 22. 
 
 112. In the legends, the Fabii are regularly made the followers of Remus. 
 
 113. Dionys., i. 80. 
 
 114. Ov., Fast., 2. 373-8. 
 
 115. Liv., i. 7. 13. 
 
 1 1 6. Prop., 4. i. 26. 
 
 117. Plut., Rom., 21 ; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 118. Dr. Deubner cites instances of ceremonial nakedness (Arch. Rel., vol. 
 xiii, 491). 
 
 119. Var., L. L., 6. 34. 
 
 120. Plut., Rom., 21. 
 
 121. See p. 23. 
 
 122. See p. 23. 
 
 123. See p. 23. 
 
 124. Toutain, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv. 956. 
 
48 The Lupercalia 
 
 125. Schwegler, i, 363. Others are cited by Marquardt, iii, 443, notes 11-3. 
 
 126. Theophrastus (ap. Prophyr., de Abst., 2. 27) notes an instance of this sort. 
 
 127. Eur., Iph. Taur., 1458. 
 
 128. See pp. 84-7. 
 
 129. See p. 24. 
 
 130. See chap. V. 
 
 131. Farnell, iii, 90; id. Sacrificial Communion, in Hibbert Jour., vol. iii, 
 319-21. 
 
 132. See p. 51. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE SACRED GOAT IN GREECE 
 
 The veneration of a wild animal tends to be crowded into the 
 background as a people advances in civilization. When life becomes 
 more settled, and savage beasts are no longer a constant menace, 
 men are liable to embody their god in the form of one of the animals 
 upon whom their existence largely depends: the ram, the bull, or 
 the goat. In many cases this more kindly god absorbs, entirely or 
 in part, the savage deity. In other instances the two gods exist 
 side by side, but the cult of the savage god is modified by that of 
 the more civilized one. The god of the pastoral stage who made 
 his way most frequently into the cults of other deities was the 
 goat-god. As the goat can thrive on the most barren hillside, his 
 cult was widespread and important in Greece in very early times. 
 In the Lupercalia the blows which were dealt by goat-skin thongs 
 formed the most prominent feature of the ritual. To interpret this 
 importance of the goat in a wolf festival, we turn to the cults of 
 the goat in Greece. 
 
 In Crete the sacred goat was frequently portrayed by Minoan 
 artists as a fertility fetish. 1 In later times it took the form of the 
 goat Amaltheia, who expressed the general conception of the earth- 
 power, being a giver of fertility and a protector from evil. 2 Her 
 fertilizing potency came to be expressed in the cornucopia, which 
 was probably developed from the original goat's horn, and which 
 constantly appears in the possession of earth-deities, such as 
 Hades, Gaia, or the river-gods. 3 
 
 Pan was frankly a goat-god, not only in his half-human form, 4 
 but also in his instincts. As the goat was to the ancients the symbol 
 of lust, so Pan was the incarnation of lustful passion. 5 He was, 
 therefore, an embodiment of the creative and life-giving power of 
 nature. Pan's cult originated in Arcadia, where Mount Lycaeus 
 was sacred to him as well as to the wolf-god. 6 Thence his worship 
 spread throughout the Greek world, 7 developing with particular 
 strength among the Athenians. 8 Thus his character and the 
 people who venerated him mark Pan as a Pelasgian deity. 
 
 Another primitive nature-god, Dionysus, was at times associated 
 
5O The Lupercalia 
 
 with the goat. Such titles as 'Epi<ios, Me\d^at7ts, or 
 also the myths in which Dionysus was disguised as a goat, 10 indicate 
 that at times he was worshipped in goat-form. A legend of Potniae, 
 in Boeotia, tells that the people, having offended Dionysus, were 
 suffering from a frightful pestilence. In obedience to the Delphic 
 oracle, a boy was sacrificed to the angry god ; but not many years 
 afterward Dionysus himself substituted a goat for the boy. 11 A 
 goat was sometimes rent asunder in the wild orgy to Dionysus 
 known as the Omophagia, 12 in which the worshippers devoured the 
 raw flesh of a sacred animal and drank its blood, thus partaking 
 of its divinity. 13 
 
 Though Artemis was preeminently the goddess of the wild things, 
 she bore the title Afyii/euas, 14 and among the Spartans and the 
 Athenians received a goat as her usual victim. 15 At her famous 
 and ancient shrine at Brauron a curious rite was performed: 
 maidens, known as bears, and wearing saffron robes which perhaps 
 imitated a bear-skin, 16 danced a bear-dance in honor of the bear- 
 goddess Artemis, the ceremony ending with the sacrifice of a bear. 17 
 Yet in historical times a goat was usually sacrificed, 18 in substitution, 
 evidently, for the wild-animal victim. 19 Another legend indicates 
 that a human being was at one time sacrificed : the Athenians were 
 said to have suffered from a pestilence because they had injured a 
 bear, and a maiden was demanded in expiatory sacrifice ; whereupon 
 a man concealed his daughter, dressed a goat in her garments, and 
 sacrificed it in her stead. 20 
 
 The goat was important in the worship of Apollo, who was ven- 
 erated in many places as a pastoral god. 21 In Crete legend told 
 that a goat had suckled the twin sons of Apollo. A Cretan town, 
 accordingly, sent to Delphi a bronze group of the goat and the babes 
 as a votive offering. 22 At Delphi the Python, who was the first 
 possessor of the oracular shrine, and who was slain by Apollo, was 
 buried, we are told, by his son Ai. 23 That seems to indicate that 
 at Delphi the autochthonous serpent-cult was displaced by the 
 goat-cult, and that, in turn, by the anthropomorphic deity. Goats 
 were believed to have discovered the oracular cave at Delphi, 24 and 
 were the usual sacrificial victims there. The oracle frequently 
 enjoined upon its devotees the sacrifice of a goat. 25 
 
 The magic power of the goat-skin, of such importance in the 
 Lupercalia, was appropriated by some of the greater deities of 
 
The Sacred Goat ir\, Greece 51 
 
 Greece. Athena appears almost invariably wearing the goat-skin, 
 the aegis, across her breast. 26 Apollo, Juno, and Zeus were also 
 wearers of the aegis.'" By putting on the skin of the goat, the 
 anthropomorphic gods sought to transfer to themselves the power 
 of the animal -god. The magic potency which the goat was supposed 
 to possess is shown very clearly in a ceremony of Athens, in which 
 a priestess bore a goat-skin to the homes of newly-married women. 28 
 This is naturally interpreted as being designed to secure offspring. 2 * 
 It offers, accordingly, an illuminating parallel to the use of the 
 goat-skin in the Lupercalia. 
 
 As a sacrificial victim, the goat was used in various solemn 
 rites, particularly in those of the expiatory type. 30 Thus a goat was 
 sacrificed to Apollo Apotropaios at Marathon. 31 When the people 
 of Kleonae were threatened with pestilence, they sacrificed a goat 
 at sunrise, and sent a bronze goat as a votive offering to Delphi. 32 
 In the Laconian ceremony of the KoTrtSes, the goat was the only 
 animal that might be sacrificed, and the people ate its flesh in 
 sacramental fashion, together with a certain kind of bread. 33 These 
 instances of goat-sacrifice may well be parallel to that of the 
 Lupercalia. There is no evidence in these rites that the goat was 
 sacrificed as an animal-god ; yet it was a victim that was especially 
 potent to ward off evil. 
 
 In Greece the cult of the goat, which appeared in Minoan Crete, 
 was centralized in Arcadia, and warmly welcomed in Athens and 
 in Boeotia: that is, it was especially venerated among the Pelas- 
 gians. The goat was not an object of dread, as the wolf so often 
 was, but was loved as the bringer of blessings the life-giver. The 
 goat was on friendly terms with other deities, sharing with Lycaeus 
 his shrine, and being received at Delphi as the son of Python. As a 
 sacrificial victim the goat was especially important. Often it seems 
 to have been substituted for a wild animal or for a human being; 
 at other times it had a magic potency to ward off evil. Even 
 Olympian deities were influenced by the goat, for they were often 
 glad to wear his skin, and thus to appropriate his creative power. 
 
52 The Lupercalia 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER V 
 
 1. Evans, J. H. S., xxii, 182; Mackenzie, Crete, 188, 307; Pick, 147; Hogarth, 
 The Zakro Sealings, in J. H. S., vol. xxii, 1902, p. 34-7, Fig. 1 15-26 et al. 
 
 2. Callim., Hym. in lov., 48; Apollod., BibL, i. i. 7; Hygin., Astr. Poet., 
 2. 13; Wernecke, in Pauly-VVissowa, i, 1721. The nursing of Zeus by Amaltheia 
 is told only by Alexandrian writers, hence seems to have been a late development 
 (Farnell, i, 109). 
 
 3. Saglio, in Daremberg-Saglio, i, 220; Stoll, in Roscher, i, 263-5. 
 
 4. Wernicke, in Roscher, iii, 1407. 
 
 5. Aug., de Civ. Dei, 15. 23; The Satyrs, of the same form and character as 
 Pan, are to be recognized as merely the duplicates of Pan (E. Kiihnert, in Roscher, 
 iv, 516-31; G. Nicole, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 1090. 
 
 6. See p. 24. 
 
 7. Wernicke, in Roscher, iii, 1349-79. 
 
 8. Lucian, Bis. Accus., 10; id., Deor. Dial., 22. 2. 
 
 9. Paus., 2. 35. i; Hesych., 'Epi<j>ios', Schol. ad Aristoph., Acharn., 146. 
 
 10. Suid., MeXdi/cuYis Aiowaos;' Ov., Met., 5. 329; Apollod., BibL, 3. 4. .?. 
 
 11. Paus., 9. 8. 2. 
 
 12. Hesych., rpcryi^pot ; Eur., Bac., 139; Arnob., 5. 19. 
 
 13. Harrison, 482. 
 
 14. Paus., 3. 14. 2. 
 
 15. Ael., Var. Hist., 2. 25; Xen., Anab., 3. 2. 12, 13; id., Hellen., 4. 2. 20; 
 Plut., Lycurg., 22. 
 
 16. Farnell, ii, 437. 
 
 17. Aristoph., Lysistr., 645, and Schol. ad loc. 
 
 1 8. Hesych., Bpaupcoviois. 
 
 19. Farnell, ii, 437. 
 
 20. Suid., "EAtjSapos. 
 
 21. Farnell, iv, 123, 254. 
 
 22. Paus., 10. 16. 5. 
 
 23. Plut., Q. G., 12. 
 
 24. Diodor., 16. 26. i, 2. 
 
 25. Diels, Sibyllinische Blatter, 51; Farnell, iv, 254-5. 
 
 26. Diodor., 3. 70. 5; Farnell, i, 100. 
 
 27. Saglio, in Daremberg-Saglio, i, 101; Farnell, i, 100, iv, 255. 
 
 28. Suid., 01715. 
 
 29. Farnell, i, 100. 
 
 30. For a survey of the various cults in which the goat was a ceremonial 
 victim, see Farnell, iv, 255. 
 
 31. Farnell, iv, 255. 
 
 32. Paus., 10. ii. 5. 
 
 33. Athen., 138 f. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE SACRED GOAT IN ITALY 
 
 In Italy the deities affiliated with the goat are far less numerous 
 than in Greece. Outside the cult of the obscure Veiovis, of Faunus, 
 and of Juno Caprotina, the goat plays only an insignificant part. 
 Consequently the importance of the goat-skin as employed by the 
 Luperci is the more remarkable. As we review the goat-cults of 
 Italy, the question before us will be, "Did the cult of the goat in 
 Italy have a similar history and significance to that which it had in 
 Greece?" 
 
 The goat was sacrificed to Veiovis ritu humano, and the statue of 
 Veiovis had a goat standing by his side. 1 The expression ritu humano 
 is often taken to mean that an animal victim was substituted for a 
 human sacrifice. If this is true, the sacrifice to Veiovis passed 
 through the phases which we saw in the Greek cults. Very little 
 is known about Veiovis, but he is regarded as unquestionably an 
 underworld deity. 2 
 
 A god having a far more intimate relation to the goat, and also 
 much better known, was Faunus, an ancient deity of Latium, who 
 is Constantly mentioned with the aborigines of Italy. 3 The antiquity 
 and character of Faunus comes out most clearly in his double, 
 Fauna, the older deity, whom Faunus later displaced. She was 
 known by many descriptive epithets: Fenta Fatua, Tellus, Ops, 
 Maia, Bona Dea, or Dea Dia. 4 The kinship of this goddess to other 
 earth-mothers was recognized by Macrobius, who considered her 
 identical with Proserpina, Hecate, Semele, and Cybele. 5 She was, 
 therefore, one of the numerous forms of the chthonic deity of the 
 Mediterranean people. 
 
 Faunus was a god whose importance became shadowy as civili- 
 zation advanced. The numerous legends of Faunus, god of oracles, 6 
 and mysterious creature of the wilds, 7 show how important a place 
 he had in early days among the gods of Italy. But to the people 
 of later times he lost much of his mystic power, and was merely a 
 god of the herds. Out in the country districts sacrifice continued 
 to be offered to him ; 8 yet even there the almost total lack of votive 
 inscriptions to Faunus shows how little real hold he had upon the 
 
54 The Lupercalia 
 
 people by the time writing was in general use. 9 Ultimately he 
 came to be little more than a mythical king. Varro, in seeking to 
 explain him, reversed the order of development, .saying that Faunus 
 belonged to the class of gods who, originally mortals, were deified 
 after death. 10 This shows how vague he had become by Varro's 
 day. Cicero says that he does not know at all what Faunus is. 11 In 
 Rome Faunus won scant recognition ; it was not until 194 B. C. that 
 a temple was erected to him. Even then he was not admitted within 
 the Pomoerium, but was established on the Tiber Island. 12 The 
 temple once built, we hear nothing more of it. 13 Faunus owes most 
 of his fame to the Alexandrian poets, who identified him with Pan. 14 
 
 Faunus is the god whom many modern scholars believe to have 
 been the deity of the Lupercalia. 15 They explain his lack of a temple 
 within the Pomoerium by saying that the Lupercal was his shrine. 
 The statue erected there, showing the god naked and girded with a 
 goat-skin, 16 they regard as a representation of Faunus. But the 
 goat-skin girdle is not enough to show that Faunus was the deity 
 portrayed. The artist who carved the image set up at the Lupercal, 
 being obliged to represent a god who was but little known, met the 
 difficulty by making him like the priests who bore his name. Justin 
 makes this perfectly clear, for he states that the statue of Lupercus 
 at the foot of the Palatine represented the god in the garb which 
 the Luperci wore. 17 
 
 Another reason which is offered for regarding Faunus as the god 
 of the Lupercalia is that the temple of Faunus on the Tiber Island 
 was dedicated February 13, two days before the Lupercalia. 18 This 
 naturally seems to indicate a connection between the god and the 
 festival; and it may, indeed, easily be true that the priests chose to 
 associate this half-forgotten god, to whom they had just erected a 
 temple, with a festival that was as ancient as he was, and in which 
 the goat had a prominent part. Such syncretism is common enough 
 in Roman religion. But this late association does not prove that 
 Faunus was the original deity of the Lupercalia; and the common 
 people seem never to have regarded him as such. 19 
 
 In the country districts Faunus was not worshipped in February, 
 but on the Nones of December, and in his rites there appears nothing 
 that is akin to the Lupercalia. A kid, a ewe, or a lamb was offered to 
 him, then the shepherds danced in triple measure. 20 It was a cheery 
 rustic celebration, directed toward the protection and the fecundity 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 55 
 
 of the herds. 21 There was no suggestion of the lustral race and the 
 life-giving blows by which the Luperci assured fertility and puri- 
 fication to human beings. In the cult of Fauna the offering of milk 
 and the administering of blows 22 give a slight suggestion of the 
 features of the Lupercalia. But milk was frequently used as a 
 libation in early cults, and as an offering to Fauna it shows none of 
 the mysticism which dominates its use in the Lupercalia. The blows 
 were dealt by myrtle rods instead of by goat-skin thongs. It was, 
 moreover, the statue of Fauna, not the worshippers, that was 
 struck. The cult of neither Faunus nor Fauna, therefore, offers 
 any basis for connecting Faunus with the Lupercalia. 
 
 Is there in the attributes of Faunus anything which might link 
 him with that festival? 'Most frequently of all Faunus is spoken of 
 as the god of prophecy and of oracles. 23 But there is not a suggestion 
 of oracular inspiration in the Lupercalia. Very rarely Faunus is 
 given the power of purification, 24 but it seems to be too undeveloped 
 in him to account for the significance of the Lupercalia as a lustral 
 ceremony. 
 
 If Faunus was worshipped in the Lupercalia, it must have been 
 because he was the god of the flocks. 25 This is the basis upon which 
 many assume his connection with the ceremony, the race of the 
 Luperci around the Palatine being regarded as a measure of pro- 
 tection for the cattle that in early times were herded there. 26 This 
 view depends largely on the passage in which Servius says that 
 Lupercus may be so named because he keeps the wolves from 
 attacking the flocks. 27 As we have already seen, 28 this is merely an 
 attempt to explain in the regulation hackneyed way the origin of 
 the name Lupercus. A point deserving of more consideration is the 
 statement of Gaius Acilius, that Romulus, when his cattle were 
 stolen, invoked the aid of Faunus and ran forth naked in pursuit. 29 
 Possibly Acilius means to indicate by this that Faunus was the god 
 of the festival. Acilius lived at the time when the temple of Faunus 
 was built on the Tiber Island, and may have accepted the connection 
 between Faunus and the Lupercalia which, it seems, the priests 
 sought to establish. But if such was his view, it had little support; 
 we hear no earlier suggestion of the sort, nor was it accepted by 
 later writers. 30 But the words of Acilius do not necessarily point 
 to Faunus as the god of the Lupercalia. He does not go on to say, 
 as we might expect, that upon recovery of the cattle the Lupercalia 
 
56 The Lupercalia 
 
 was instituted in honor of Faunus. He says, instead, that, because 
 Romulus cast aside his garments to gain speed in running, the 
 Luperci are now naked when they race about the city. The point 
 of the story, therefore, is to explain the origin of the race and its 
 ritualistic nakedness. Faunus seems to be mentioned merely 
 because he was a natural god to invoke in seeking the lost cattle. 
 The Lupercalia certainly must have meant more to the people than 
 a festival for the protection of the flocks. Centuries after the urban 
 populace of Rome had lost all interest in the raising of cattle, the 
 Lupercalia continued. The impassioned denunciation of Pope 
 Gelasius shows how vital it was as late as 450 A. D. S1 
 
 As god of the herds and incarnate in the goat, Faunus, together 
 with his doubles Incubo and Inuus, 32 was the giver of fertility. 33 
 That is another reason frequently offered for associating him with 
 the Lupercalia. But there is no suggestion that Faunus gave to 
 the thongs carried by the Luperci their life-giving potency. That 
 was due, according to legend, to another deity of goat-form, 
 Juno. 34 
 
 Many scholars connect Faunus with the Lupercalia through the 
 medium of Evander, whom they regard as a Hellenized Faunus, 
 manufactured by ancient scholars to explain the existence in Rome 
 of a cult very like that of Lycaean Pan. 35 But Evander seems to be 
 something more than a scholarly fabrication. He is strongly localized 
 in Arcadia, appearing in Tegea, in Parrhasion, in Pheneos, near 
 Messenia, and, most frequently of all, in Pallanteum, where there 
 was in the temple of Demeter a statue of Evander. 36 Thus Evander 
 seems to have been a local deity. His cult in Arcadia is believed to 
 have antedated Roman times. 37 The constant association of 
 Evander with Pan, and the belief that Evander, like Pan, was the 
 son of Hermes, 38 indicates that he belonged to Pan's circle. 39 
 Evander may have been an obscure local god, later absorbed by 
 Pan, or his name may have been a cult- title which attained a vague 
 individuality. He was recognized by the Romans as a deity, for we 
 hear of sacrifices offered to him and a shrine in his honor on the 
 Aventine. 40 We must, therefore, account for Evander and his 
 connection with the Lupercalia on other grounds than as a mere 
 double of Faunus. 
 
 Evander seems to have been transplanted into Italy through the 
 activity of Alexandrian scholars. When they had identified Pan 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 57 
 
 with Faunus, they rationalized Evander into the exile who estab- 
 lished the cult of Pan, or, in other words, of Faunus, in Italy. In 
 this way only was he known to the earliest annalists. 41 There we 
 have the germ of the Evander legend. 42 Other details were soon 
 added: Evander and his Arcadians offered an easy explanation of 
 the Ligurians who had dwelt in the vicinity of Rome, 43 the chance 
 likeness of the names Palatium and Pallanteum giving support to 
 this idea. Consequently as early as Fabius Pictor we find the tale 
 of Evander's hamlet on the Palatine. 44 Ultimately Evander was 
 made to typify the whole stream of Greek civilization which, as 
 early as the regal period, influenced Rome so profoundly. He was 
 accordingly said to have been the one who had brought to the 
 Romans the alphabet and the arts of civilization. 43 Pliny was 
 content to say that the service was performed by the Pelasgians. 46 
 The mention of the alphabet draws our attention at once to Cumae, 
 whence in all probability the knowledge of writing was brought to 
 Rome. Furthermore, Evander was said to have imported the gods 
 whom the traders of Cumae and of southern Italy introduced into 
 Rome in early days, Heracles, Demeter, Hermes, Castor and 
 Pollux. 47 The tale that Evander was guided to Rome by Apollo 48 
 points again to Cumae, the seat of Apollo's worship, and the active 
 force in the Hellenizing of Roman religion. Evander is the poetic 
 figure typifying that activity. 49 
 
 Ancient scholars went still further and made Evander the founder 
 of certain Roman cults, those of Victory, Consus, and Carmenta. 
 The latter, ancient Roman goddess though she was, was made the 
 mother of Arcadian Evander. 50 Once recognized as the bringer of 
 ancient cults, Evander almost inevitably became the founder of the 
 Lupercalia, akin as it was to the Arcadian Lycaea. 51 But Evander 
 was said to have established the Lupercalia, not because he was a 
 double of Faunus, but because he wished to honor his native god 
 Pan Lycaeus. All the writers make this explicit. 52 
 
 We do not find, therefore, in the cult or the attributes of Faunus, 
 nor yet in his connection with Evander, a valid reason for accepting 
 him as the god of the Lupercalia. 
 
 The goat-Juno had a far more vital association with the Luper- 
 calia than had Faunus. She, like Faunus, was primarily the giver 
 of fertility. But she was honored by cults which offered a marked 
 correspondence to the Lupercalia, and she was even connected with 
 
58 The Lupercalia 
 
 that festival by legend and by title. 53 In the study of Juno, therefore, 
 we shall seek an explanation of the goat-element in the Lupercalia, 
 
 Very significant for our purpose is the cult of Juno Sospita, of 
 Lanuvium. That town, which was devoted to a religion of the most 
 ancient type, venerated Juno Sospita as the oldest of all its deities. 
 Her cult was, in fact, the most famous of all the Juno-cults in 
 Latium. 54 Juno Sospita was a warrior goddess, as was the earth- 
 mother of Crete. 55 The goat regularly furnished a part of Juno's 
 martial equipment; the head, with the horns still attached, formed 
 her helmet, and the skin fell down her back, or sometimes over her 
 breast like the aegis worn by Athena. 56 We may naturally believe 
 that the goat-skin endowed Juno with its magic power of protection 
 from harm. This Juno of Lanuvium was said by Cicero to be 
 distinctly different from the Roman Juno. 57 Her Ligurian origin is 
 indicated by her bearing the figure-eight shield, a form which is 
 characteristically Mediterranean. 58 
 
 It is for our purpose worthy of note that Juno Sospita was 
 originally embodied in, or at least associated with, the serpent, a 
 creature belonging to a still more ancient religious stratum than the 
 goat. Constantly the goddess is attended by a serpent, 59 which, in 
 a story told by Propertius, is all-important. The guardian of ancient 
 Lanuvium, he says, was a serpent. Once a year a maiden descended 
 trembling to the awesome cavern where the creature dwelt, and 
 bore to it an offering of cakes. If the maid were unchaste, she was 
 instantly devoured by the monster; but if she were pure, the 
 serpent accepted and ate the gift which she brought, an act which 
 was hailed by the farmers as the omen of a fruitful year. 60 This 
 chthonic serpent, having oracular power, merciless, yet giving 
 bountiful harvests, is a typical form of the Mediterranean earth- 
 deity, and must have been the oldest embodiment of Juno Sospita. 
 The scene described by Propertius is portrayed on a coin which 
 bears on the obverse the head of Juno wearing her goat-skin helmet, 61 
 thus showing the union of the two conceptions of the goddess. 
 
 The cult of Juno Sospita gives us a parallel of what may have 
 occurred in the evolution of the Lupercalia. In the one festival 
 the wolf, in the other the equally primitive serpent was worshipped ; 
 but as the goat-god gained influence among the shepherd folk of 
 Latium, both wolf and serpent were thrust into the background. 
 Juno Sospita arrogated to herself a share of the goat's power by 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 59 
 
 wearing its skin; in the Lupercalia the priests of the wolf-god 
 did the same, and also carried strips of the goat-skin, which con- 
 veyed to the people its magic potency. Thus in each case the goat- 
 cult seems to have been grafted upon a more ancient worship. 
 
 The veneration of Juno Sospita became important in Rome when, 
 at the close of the Latin War, Rome stipulated that she should 
 share on equal terms in the cult at Lanuvium. 62 A temple to Juno 
 Sospita was built in Rome in 194 B. C., the same year in which 
 temples were dedicated to two other goat-deities, Faunus and 
 Veiovis. 63 This interest in the primitive goat-gods is characteristic 
 of that period, for during the war with Hannibal and the years 
 immediately afterward the terror of the people caused them to 
 turn to many chthonic gods as a means of succor. 64 
 
 Rome itself was the site of another goat-cult, that of Juno Capro- 
 tina. In her ritual the element of blows was very prominent. As 
 the blows dealt by the Luperci were the most noted feature of the 
 Lupercalia, we shall, before beginning the study of Juno Caprotina, 
 examine the use of blows in other cults of Greece and of Rome. 
 
 In Greece the religious stratum to which that rite belongs is 
 shown by the fact that Arcadia affords the greatest number of 
 instances. 65 A detailed study of the use of blows has been made 
 by Dr. Mannhardt; 65 he cites numerous cases in which the blows, 
 being directed against a person or a statue which represents either 
 a deity or some power of fertility or of evil, are designed to drive 
 out evil or to rouse the latent power of a god by freeing him from 
 some nullifying influence. Though similar to the blows which 
 smote the statue of Fauna, 66 they are not typical of those delivered 
 in the Lupercalia, where it was the worshippers who were struck. 
 Other rites afford a closer parallel: at an Arcadian festival to 
 Dionysus the women celebrating it were smitten; 67 at another 
 Arcadian ceremony, in honor of Demeter, the worshippers struck 
 one another with twisted bark; 68 the mysteries of Eleusis included, 
 as a means of purification, a mock fight in which the celebrants 
 hurled stones at one another; 69 and the Spartans, in honor of 
 Artemis Orthia, practiced a rite in which youths often died under 
 the lash. 70 The deities of all these ceremonies were chthonic. In 
 every case, Professor Reinach believes, the blows served to purify 
 the worshipper and to act as a fertility-charm. 71 
 
 We are now ready to interpret the ritualistic significance of the 
 
60 The Lupercalia 
 
 blows in the festival of Juno Caprotina, which occurred on the 
 Nones of July. At the Caprae Palus, in the Campus Martius, 
 the women of Latium, together with the female slaves, exchanged 
 taunts and threw stones at one another in a sort of mock battle. 
 Then, under a wild fig-tree or goat-fig, the caprificus they feasted 
 and paid homage to Juno Caprotina, offering her the milky juice 
 of the tree. 72 Varro says that they cut branches from this tree, 73 
 a statement which it is tempting to associate with the sham battle, 
 as indicating that the women belabored one another with these 
 switches as a fertility charm. 74 We have no direct statement to 
 this effect; yet the prominence in the ceremony of the goat and 
 the caprificus, which was also an emblem of fertility, 75 give us good 
 reason to believe that the purpose of the rite was to increase pro- 
 ductivity. 
 
 Preliminary to this festival was the Poplifugia, which occurred 
 either on the same day or two days earlier. 76 Its distinctive feature 
 was a hasty and disorderly flight of the people away from the Caprae 
 Palus. 77 Legend told, in explanation of this rite, that, when 
 Romulus was holding a lustratio of the citizens, he disappeared 
 during a sudden storm, and the people fled in terror. 78 Following 
 the suggestion of this legend, Schwegler interpreted the Poplifugia 
 as a lustral rite. 79 This view has won considerable favor. 80 As 
 a lustral, or expiatory ceremony, the Poplifugia is wholly intelli- 
 gible. Dr. Fowler compares it with the Bouphonia, which we have 
 already examined, 81 and conjectures that the priest and the people 
 at Rome may have fled after some similar sacrifice, and for the 
 same reason. Such a rite, he notes, was especially appropriate 
 in July, at the beginning of the unhealthy season, when the people 
 were seeking to protect themselves from evil powers. 82 That 
 protection gained, they were ready to receive the gift of fertility 
 by the celebration of the Caprotine Nones. 
 
 If this interpretation is correct, the Poplifugia and Nonae Cap- 
 rotinae are similar to the Lupercalia both in meaning and in ritual 
 acts. 83 Each festival occurred at a time of year when the powers 
 of evil were abroad; each had a ritual flight and blows as a promi- 
 nent feature. At the Lupercalia was sacrificed a goat, which was 
 the sacred animal of Juno Caprotina. The rite of the Nonae 
 Caprotinae was celebrated under a caprificus; and hard by the 
 Lupercal was another ancient and venerated fig-tree, the Ficus 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 61 
 
 Ruminalis. Is it possible that any of the cult acts of the Lupercalia 
 were suggested by the ancient festival of Juno at the Caprae Palus? 
 
 According to the legends, the blows of the goat-skin did not 
 become a part of the Lupercalia until after the Romans had united 
 with the Sabines, when an addition was made to the ceremony 
 under the influence of Juno Lucina. She, like Juno Caprotina, 
 was a goddess of fecundity. 84 Her sacred grove on the Esquiline 
 was one of the oldest and most venerated shrines in the whole 
 city. 85 To this grove, Ovid says, Romulus and his people repaired 
 for help when their Sabine wives proved unfruitful. As they bent 
 in supplication before the shrine, there came from the depths 
 of the forest the strange words, "Let the sacred goat enter into 
 the Italian women." Thereupon an Etruscan augur slew a goat, 
 cut the hide into pieces, and bade the women submit to blows from 
 the strips. Thus their curse of barrenness was removed, and 
 thanks were given to Juno Lucina. 86 To have any point, this 
 story must be based upon cult-practices, or at least upon a recol- 
 lection of them, employed at the shrine of Juno Lucina. Evidently 
 she had availed herself, as did her sister of Lanuvium, of the life- 
 giving power of the goat-skin, and by blows from it assured to 
 her devotees the hope of children. 
 
 Ovid tells this story at the conclusion of his account of the 
 Lupercalia, in which, by a series of questions, he clearly suggests 
 the development of the festival. He begins, "Tell me, ye Muses, 
 what was the origin of this sacred rite?" and replies that it was 
 founded by Evander in honor of Pan. 87 Ovid then inquires what 
 caused the race: "Why do the Luperci run naked?" and tells in 
 answer the story of Romulus and Remus pursuing the lost cattle. 88 
 He then explains the names Lupercal and Lupercalia by telling 
 of the rescue of Rumulus and Remus by the wolf. 89 About the rite 
 of the blows, Ovid says to a young wife: "Oh bride, why are you 
 waiting? Not by potent herbs, nor by prayers, nor by magic 
 incantations shall you become a mother. Receive with patience 
 the blows of the fecund hide, and your husband's father shall become 
 a grand si re." 90 Thus Ovid introduces the fourth point in his 
 description of the Lupercalia the use and the power of the goat- 
 skin. He explains that point by telling the story given above of 
 Romulus's visit to the shrine of Juno Lucina. In this tale, Ovid 
 follows the same version as Livy and Servius, who also state that 
 
62 The Lupercalia 
 
 Romulus initiated the rite of blows in order to free the Sabine 
 women from barrenness. 91 
 
 As the narration of an actual fact, Ovid's tale is worthless; but 
 as an indication of kinship between the festivals of Juno and the 
 Lupercalia, and of a possible early transference of cult-practices, 
 it is illuminating. It is in accord with what we have seen in Greek 
 religion that the cult of the wolf-god should have been in time 
 partially overlaid by the ritual of the goat-god. Since the Luper- 
 calia and the ceremonials of Juno had, as we have seen, many points 
 of likeness, it would have been very natural for the Romans to 
 seek to make their goat-sacrifice more potent by adding to it the 
 practices of the near-by shrines of Juno. 
 
 If such was the development of the festival, the change did not 
 obliterate the original ceremonial, but brought into more direct 
 contact with the people the potency of the sacrificial goat: the 
 Luperci now wore girdles cut from the skin of the victim, and 
 carried in their hands strips of the same skin, with which they 
 smote the women. 92 Hence their race about the city no longer 
 seemed a lustral flight, but a means of carrying fertility to the 
 people. The old ceremonial was thus overlaid by the new ritual. 
 The ancient cult-acts continued, but their meaning was largely 
 changed. 93 
 
 The fundamental character of Juno would have made it very 
 natural for her to win a place in the Lupercalia, for she was in 
 essence and in origin closely -akin to Luperca. Juno was, Varro 
 tells us, 94 "the earth," hence she was merely another form of that 
 chthonic power which was also embodied in the wolf. But, whereas 
 the \volf early sank to a secondary role, Juno became highly honored 
 through the whole of central Italy, and, in her triumphant progress, 
 must have assimilated many deities like herself, but less powerful. 
 Such was the fate of Valeria Luperca. Juno's invasion of the Luper- 
 calia, therefore, is merely a characteristic incident of her career. 
 
 The month in which the Lupercalia was celebrated, February, 
 was sacred to the chthonic gods, 95 among others, to Juno. 96 Juno 
 was also associated with February, the month of purification, by 
 her title of Februata, "the Purifier". 97 The goat-skin thongs with 
 which the Luperci gave fertility to the people were also thought 
 of as a means of purification, and were called amicula Junonis. 9 * 
 That name, surely, gives the clearest possible evidence of Juno's 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 63 
 
 place in the Lupercalia. Yet many scholars are content to say 
 that the thongs were so named because the festival was of especial 
 concern to women, and that Juno was a goddess of women. Paulus 
 leaves room for no such vague connection as that. He says out- 
 right that the Lupercalia was the festival of Juno Februata. 98 
 
 When searching for a possible connection of Faunus with the 
 Lupercalia, we found nothing in the legends concerning that god, 
 in his cult, or in his character, which was significant enough to 
 allow us to associate with him the goat element of the Lupercalia. 
 In the case of Juno, on the contrary, legend attributed to her 
 command the blows with the goat-skin, and the thongs were called 
 "Juno's thongs". The Lupercalia was the most important puri- 
 ficatory rite among the Romans, and Juno, with the title Februata, 
 was a goddess of purification. The month in which the Lupercalia 
 occurred was sacred to Juno, and the Lupercalia itself was called 
 Juno's festival. Upon this evidence, we conclude that Juno won 
 for herself a place in the ritual of Lupercus, and grafted upon that 
 ancient rite a ceremony that was distinctively her own. 
 
 The goat-deities in Italy seem to have been a product of the 
 Ligurians, and played a r61e similar to that of the Pelasgian goat- 
 gods. In each country the ritual of the goat often found a place 
 in other cults, and imprinted its own peculiar stamp upon them. 
 Thus it influenced the Lupercalia, which, in its original form as a 
 rite to the wolf-deity, was apotropaic, being designed to ward off 
 the powers of evil, and emphasizing the negative power of the earth- 
 spirit. The goat-god, on the other hand, was especially the giver 
 of fertility; hence his cult stressed the positive side of the earth- 
 spirit. Therefore with the incorporation into the Lupercalia of 
 the goat's fructifying power, the festival had a twofold function: 
 to protect the people from evil, and to set free the forces of fertility. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 
 
 1. Ov., Fast., 3. 443; Cell., 5. 12. 12. 
 
 2. Wissowa, R. K., 238. 
 
 3. Dionys., I. 43; Suet., Vitell., I. i; Cell., 5.21. 7; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 
 
 314- 
 
 4. Dr. Pais (Anc. Leg., 63-80) has shown in detail the identity of these deities. 
 
 See also Fowler, R. -P., 74. 
 
 5. Macr., i. 12. 23, 24. 
 
64 The Lupercalm 
 
 6. Verg., Aen., 7. 81; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 7. 47, 81; Prob. ad Verg., Georg., 
 
 1. 10; Just., 43. i. 8; Isid., Orig., 8. II. 87. 
 
 7. Corp. Gloss., v, 198. 19, 20; Otto, in Pauly-Wissowa, vi, 2058. 
 
 8. Prob. ad Verg., Georg., i. 10. 
 
 9. Wissowa, R. K., 213; Fowler, R. F., 258. 
 ID. Ap. Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 275. 
 
 11. N. D., 3. 15. 
 
 12. Vitr., 3. 2. 3. 
 
 13. Fowler, R. F., 258. 
 
 14. Wernicke, in Roscher, iii, 1407. 
 
 15. Schwegler, i, 232 n. 27; Preller, i, 380; Mommsen, H. R., i, 208; Wissowa, 
 R. K., 210-12. Marquardt (iii, 439) identifies Lupercus with Faunus. Lupercus 
 is regarded as an epithet of Faunus by Otto (in Pauly-Wissowa, vi, 2056), 
 Roscher (i, 1455), and Hild (in Daremberg-Saglio, iii, 1399). Dr. Fowler, how- 
 ever, does not believe that Faunus was the deity of the Lupercalia (R. F., 313, 
 Roman Ideas of Deity, 94). 
 
 16. Just., 43. i. 7. 
 
 17. Just., 43. I. 7. Though Justin mentions Faunus in the sections immediately 
 before and immediately after the one cited, he speaks of him only as the king of 
 Italy who welcomed Evander. 
 
 18. Ov., Fast. ,2. 193. 
 
 19. In this explanation, I have closely followed Dr. Warde Fowler (R. F., 258). 
 
 20. Hor., Od., 3. 1 8, omnis. 
 
 21. Roscher, i, 1455. 
 
 22. Arnob., adv. Gent., 5. 18; Lact., de Fals. Relig., i. 22. i; Macr., i. 12. 25. 
 
 23. Vitr., 8. 3. 2; Verg., Aen., 7. 81; Ov., Fast., 4. 649-66; Plut., Num., 15; 
 Prob. ad Verg., Georg., i. 10; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 7. 81; Isid., Orig., 8. n. 87; 
 Corp. Gloss., v, 199. 15, 1 6. 
 
 24. Ov., Fast., 3. 291; Plut., Num., 15. 
 
 25. Porphyr. ad Hor., Od., 3. 18. 13. 
 
 26. See the authorities cited in note 15. 
 
 27. Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 28. See p. 37. 
 
 29. Ap. Plut., Rom., 21. 
 
 30. Ovid's use of the name Faunus as the equivalent of Pan Lycaeus has already 
 been considered (see p. 38). 
 
 31. Gelas., adv. Androm., in Corp. Script. Eccles. Lat., xxxv, 453-64. 
 
 32. Wissowa, R. K., 211. 
 
 33. Rutil. Nam., i. 234; Isid., Orig., 8. n. 103, 104; Hieron. ad Is., i. 13. 21. 
 
 34. See p. 61. 
 
 35. Marquardt, iii, 439; Preller, i, 387; Roscher, ii, 2822; Schwegler. i, 354. 
 
 36. Verg., Aen., 8. 51; Ov., Fast., i. 545; Liv., i. 5. i; Dionys., i. 60. 3; 
 
 2. 1.3; Paus., 8. 43. 2; 8. 44. 5; Plut., Philop., 18. 
 
 37. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, i, 191. 
 
 38. Dionys., 2. i. 3; Paus., 8. 43. 2; Tzetzes, ad Lycoph., 772. 
 
 39. Robert, in Pauly-Wissowa, vi, 839-40. 
 
The Sacred Goat in Italy 65 
 
 40. Dionys., I. 32. 2. 
 
 41. Serv. ad Verg., Georg., i. 10. 
 
 42. Lubkers, Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums, 348; Fowler, R, F. t 258 n. i. 
 
 43. De Sanctis, i, 192. 
 
 44. Dionys., i. 79. See also i. 31, 89. 
 
 45. Liv., i. 7. 8; Dionys., I. 33. 4; Tac., Ann., n. 14; Mar. Viet., G. L., 
 vi, 23. 14; vi, 194. 16. 
 
 46. N. H., 7. 193. 
 
 47. Liv., i. 7. 3; Verg., Aen., 8. 102; Dionys., i. 33; Fest., 269. 
 
 48. Verg., Aen., 8. 336. 
 
 49. Schwegler, i, 359; Preller, ii, 341. 
 
 50. Liv., i. 7. 8; Ov., Fast., i. 479-500; Dionys., i. 32, 33; Paul, ex Fest., 101. 
 
 51. See p. 46 n. 88. 
 
 52. Liv., i. 5; Verg., Aen., 8. 344; Dionys., i. 79. 
 
 53. Seep. 61. 
 
 54. Ihm, in Roscher, ii, 595; Wissowa, R. K., 188. 
 
 55. Graillot, 4. 
 
 56. Daremberg-Saglio, iii, Fig. 4185-88; Roscher, ii, Fig. on pp. 606-9. 
 
 57. N. D., i. 82. 
 
 58. Daremberg-Saglio, iii, Fig. 4186, 4188; Mackenzie, Crete, 159-60. 
 
 59. Daremberg-Saglio, iii, Fig. 4186, 4188; Roscher, ii, Fig. on pp. 608, 609. 
 
 60. Prop., 4. 8. 3-14. 
 
 61. Daremberg-Saglio, iii, Fig. 4187. 
 
 62. Liv., 8. 14. 
 
 63. Liv., 32. 30. 10; 34. 53. 3. 
 
 64. For a survey of this period, see p. 87-9. 
 
 65. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch., 113-40. 
 
 66. See p. 55. 
 
 67. Paus., 8. 23. i. 
 
 68. Hesych., MOPOTTOV. 
 
 69 Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch., 209. 
 
 70. Paus., 3. 16. 7. 
 
 71. Cultes, i, 180-3. This view is also expressed by Farnell, (v, 163), and by 
 Jevons (Hist. Rel., appendix to ch. 24). 
 
 72. Polem. Silv., C. I. L., i, 269; Van, L. L., 6. 18; Plut., Rom., 29; id. Cam., 
 33; Auson. ds Per., 9; Macr., i. n. 36, 40. 
 
 73. Van, L. L., 6. 18. 
 
 74. Fowler, R. F., 179; Frazer, ii, 317. 
 
 75. Schwegler, i, 234; Frazer, ii, 317. 
 
 76. Plut., Rom., 29; Gilbert, i, 291; Hild, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 579. 
 
 77. Van, L. L., 6. 18. 
 
 78. Liv., I. 16; Dionys., 2. 56; Plut., Rom., 29; id. Cam., 33. 
 
 79. R. G., i, 532-5. 
 
 80. It is accepted by Gilbert (i, 290), by Marquardt (iii, 325), and by Fowler 
 (R. F., 175-6). 
 
 81. See p. 23. 
 
66 The Lupercalia 
 
 82. R. F., 176. 
 
 83. The similarity of ritual acts between these two festivals and the Lupercalia 
 has been noted by Schwegler (i, 533), by Hild (in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 579), 
 and by Ihm (in Roscher, ii, 599). 
 
 84. Hild, in Daremberg-Saglio, iii, 685. 
 
 85. Van, L. L. t 5. 49; Preller, i, 273. 
 
 86. Ov., Fast., 2. 429-49. 
 
 87. Fast., 2. 269-79. 
 
 88. .Fa^., 2. 283-380. See also p. 46 n. 91. 
 
 89. Fast., 2. 381-422. 
 
 90. Fast., 2. 425. 
 
 91. Liv. ap. Gelas., adv. Androm., 12; Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8. 343. 
 
 92. Plutarch (Rom., 21) and Valerius Maximus (2. 2. 9) say that the Luperci 
 smote all whom they met. This may well have been the original practice; but, 
 since the rite had especial significance for women, they were often thought of as 
 the only celebrants. 
 
 93. It is quite possible that at this time the stoning of the Luperci (see pp. 
 40, 41) was discontinued. Since the race of the priests seems now directed wholly 
 toward the gift of fertility, the act of stoning no longer has any point. 
 
 94. L. L., 5. 65, 67. 
 
 95. Lyd., de Mens., 4. 25; Macr., i. 13. 7; Solin., i. 40. 
 
 96. Lyd., de Mens., 4. 25. Wissowa (R. K., 185) remarks on the significance 
 of the dedication days of Juno's temples, the one in the Forum Holitorium being 
 dedicated on the first of February, and the one to Juno Lucina on the first of 
 March. Wissowa considers it more than a coincidence that these two dedication 
 days fell on the two Kalends that were nearest to the Lupercalia. 
 
 97. Paul, ex Fest., 85; Mart. Cap., 2. 149. 
 
 98. Paul, ex Fest., 85. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE DOG AS A SACRED ANIMAL IN GREECE 
 
 One of the features of the Lupercalia which has aroused the 
 greatest amount of scholarly speculation is the use of a dog as 
 sacrificial victim. Such a sacrifice was very unusual, both in Italy 
 and in Greece. A survey of the places in which it was employed 
 and the interpretation which was given to it will assist us to under- 
 stand its significance in the Lupercalia. 
 
 Even in Pelasgian times the dog seems to have been venerated 
 as a sacred animal in certain parts of the Aegean world. Because 
 of the frequent occurrence of the figure of a dog on the hieroglyphic 
 seals of Crete, Sir Arthur Evans believes that the dog was sacred 
 to the Minoan goddess, 1 though it was one of the less important 
 of the many animals that were attached to her. At a later period 
 the dog made his way into the Cretan myths of Apollo. 2 Cydonia 
 was said to have been founded by a son of Apollo, Cydon, who, 
 when a babe, was suckled by a dog. 3 This legend was represented 
 upon the coins of Cydonia. 4 In Phaestos, too, the dog was asso- 
 ciated with Apollo, 5 and a dog appeared upon the coins of Phaestos. 6 
 Similarly, in Caria, Apollo was said to have assumed the form of 
 a dog when he begot Telmissus. 7 The dog appears also in the later 
 myths of Zeus, who was said to have been guarded in his infancy 
 by a golden dog as well as by a goat. 8 In another account, the 
 nurse of Zeus was named Cynosura. 9 
 
 In Hellenic times the deity who was most closely associated 
 with the dog was Hecate, 10 of Thrace. Though the Thracians of 
 historical times were probably Aryans, the early inhabitants of 
 the land were Pelasgians. 11 They worshipped the characteristic 
 earth-deity of the Pelasgians, and profoundly influenced the re- 
 ligion of the invaders. 12 Hecate was markedly chthonic, 13 and 
 belonged undoubtedly to an ancient religious stratum. 14 In art 
 and in literature Hecate is constantly represented as dog-shaped 
 or as accompanied by a dog. 15 Her approach was heralded by the 
 howling of a dog. 16 The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, 
 and was often eaten in solemn sacrament. 17 
 
 Plutarch uses two words which give the dominant characteristics 
 
68 The Lupercalia 
 
 of Hecate: x^ovLa and dTrorpoTrcua; 18 that is, she was a goddess 
 of the underworld and of purification. At the crossroads, which 
 were regularly sacred to gods of the lower regions, men sought 
 communication with Hecate. 18 She had the souls of the dead under 
 her especial charge, 19 and, as a natural result, was invoked by all 
 who worked in magic and witchcraft. 20 Hecate's lustral power 
 became operative chiefly through the sacrifice of a dog, which, 
 Plutarch says, nearly all the Greeks employed as a means of puri- 
 fication. 18 Thus, in honor of Hecate, slain puppies were carried 
 through a city, and were used to strike anyone who was in need 
 of cleansing. 21 Among the Boeotians and the Macedonians a dog 
 was cut asunder, and persons walked between the parts. 22 
 
 Hecate was constantly identified by the Greeks with Artemis, 23 
 and was frequently grouped with Demeter and with other primi- 
 tive powers of vegetation, such as Pan, Dionysus, Cybele, and 
 Priapus. As goddess of the underworld, she was naturally asso- 
 ciated with, or even identified with, Hades and Persephone. 24 The 
 goddesses of women, rcreruAXts, and EtXioma, were regarded as 
 very similar to Hecate, and received a dog in sacrifice. 25 As a 
 deity of purification, Hecate came to be honored in the Orphic 
 Hymns beyond all other gods. 26 Ultimately the cult of Hecate 
 spread throughout the Greek world. 27 Mysterious and alien goddess 
 that she was, Hecate appealed to the imagination as one who could 
 save men from every form of evil. 
 
 It was a natural sequence of the cult of Hecate, or, perhaps, an 
 independent development of the same idea, that the dog became 
 the animal in whose form the powers of the underworld especially 
 appeared. In ancient times the dead were thought by the Greeks 
 to visit the earth in the form of a serpent, but later they were 
 believed to assume the shape of a dog as well. 28 The daemon of 
 Pestilence too, according to a legend, once disguised himself as 
 an old beggar; but when the beggar had been stoned to death, 
 it was a Molossian hound that lay in his place. 29 The same idea 
 seems the basis of a celebration at Argos, in which on a certain 
 day in the hot season men killed all the dogs that they met. 30 The 
 fact that every dog that was seen was killed indicates that they 
 were not lustral offerings, but the personification of pestilence. 
 
 The dog was prominent in the cult of Aesculapius. Certain 
 legends tell that when a babe he was rescued and suckled by a 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Greece 69 
 
 dog. 31 Statues and coins show him accompanied by a dog. 32 At 
 the temples of Aesculapius, dogs were in attendance, and were 
 believed to heal the sick by licking them with their tongues. 33 In 
 Athens figurines of dogs were brought as votive offerings to the 
 Asklepeium, 34 and a dog was said to have protected the treasures 
 there from theft. 35 
 
 The worship of Aesculapius originated in Thessaly, which at a 
 very early date was overrun by bands from Thrace. 36 The oldest 
 sites of the cult were in the original seats of the Lapiths, the Phlegyae, 
 and the Minyae, 37 who were all pre-Aryans. 38 Aesculapius was an 
 earth-deity, as is shown by his oracular power, his healing art, and 
 the cult-practices at his shrines. 39 In his cult, the power of the dog 
 to ward off. evil became limited to freeing people from disease. 
 
 In a few sporadic instances, other deities had the dog as a sacred 
 animal. To the Thracian Ares dogs were sacrificed by the Carians 
 and the Spartans. 40 In both these places the cult was a Thracian 
 product. Caria was at one time overrun by Phrygians from Thrace, 
 and the cult of Hecate was deep-rooted there. 41 Sparta seems to 
 have gained the Ares cult from Boeotia, to which it was carried 
 from Thrace in pre-Hellenic times. 42 
 
 The Thracian cult of the dog spread even to Sicily. Its chief 
 center there was in the north-western corner of the island, which, 
 shortly after the fall of Troy, it seems, was colonized by the Ely- 
 mians, who claimed descent from either the Trojans or the Phrygians. 
 Dr. Freeman, after an acute analysis of the evidence about the 
 origin of this people and of the modern theories concerning them, 
 concludes that they probably came from Western Asia Minor, 
 and that they were non-Hellenic, but had evidently been in early 
 days closely connected with Hellas. 43 All this seems to class the 
 Elymians as one of the Pelasgian peoples of Asia Minor. 
 
 Legend explained the Elymian settlements in Sicily by the 
 story that when Troy, in the days of Laomedon, was harried by a 
 sea monster, a certain Trojan sought to save his daughters from 
 possible sacrifice to the monster by sending them to Sicily. When 
 they arrived there they established, in gratitude, a temple on Mount 
 Eryx to Aphrodite. This Aphrodite is called by Lycophron "the 
 Zerynthian Mother." 44 Tzetzes explains that she was the Aphrodite 
 of Thrace and Zerynthus, and that she had a sacred cave on Zeryn- 
 thus. 45 Inasmuch as this island was famous as a seat of Hecate's 
 
yo The Lupercalia 
 
 worship, Dr. Freeman believes that the Zerynthian Aphrodite 
 was merely another name for Hecate. 46 At any rate, the dog was 
 sacred to Aphrodite of Eryx, for a coin issued by that city shows 
 Aphrodite on one side and a hound on the other. 47 
 
 The veneration which the Elymians had for the dog appears 
 also in the legend that one of the exiled maidens, named Segesta, 
 won the love of the Sicilian river-god Crimisus, and that he visited 
 her in the form of a dog. By him she became the mother of Agestes, 
 who founded the cities of Segesta, Eryx, and Entella. 48 This 
 legend figured prominently on the coins of the Elymians. Of 
 twenty-five coins of Segesta which are listed in the Hunterian 
 collection, all except two represent the head of Segesta on one 
 side and a dog on the other. 49 Sometimes the dog accpmpanies a 
 youthful hunter. Both dog and hunter are interpreted as repre- 
 sentations of the river Crimisus. 49 Other symbols that often appear 
 on the coins are a wheel, a grain-plant, or a head of grain. The 
 latter two seem to indicate that in Sicily the dog's apotropaic 
 power was enlisted in the protection of the crops. 50 
 
 The cult of the dog early appeared in the eastern part of Sicily 
 as well as in the western. Coins of Syracuse, some of which were 
 issued before 500 B. C., represent a dog. 51 One of them bears on 
 one side the head of Apollo. This may easily be an echo of the 
 Cretan association of the dog with Apollo, 52 since Syracuse had 
 close connections with Crete, even in Minoan days- 53 At the foot 
 of Mount Etna was the shrine of Adranos, where one thousand 
 dogs were kept. They were the guardians of the temple, guiding 
 and protecting righteous pilgrims, but driving off or killing the 
 wicked. 54 Adranos is interpreted by Dr. Freeman as an ancient 
 fire-god of the Siculi, and a natural product of the volcanic moun- 
 tain. 55 There is nothing to indicate that Adranos was ever thought 
 of as dog-shaped, nor was a dog sacrificed to him. The dog had, 
 therefore, a less intimate place in his cult than in those of the 
 Elymian deities, and was probably an Aegean importation which 
 was grafted upon the cult of the Siculian god. By the days of 
 Timoleon, Adranos was worshipped through all Sicily; accord- 
 ingly, after the Mamertines overran North-Eastern Sicily, they fre- 
 quently represented on their coins the head of Adranos and a dog. 56 
 
 The cult of the dog was honored among the Pelasgians of Crete 
 and of Thrace, but had its chief development in the latter place. 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Greece 71 
 
 From there is spread in pre-Hellenic days through Thessaly and 
 Boeotia, and ultimately through the whole Greek peninsula. Asia 
 Minor, too, was subjected to repeated waves of Thracian migration, 
 so that there the cult of the dog came to be highly venerated. The 
 Elymians, who came from Asia Minor, carried with them to Sicily 
 the sacred dog, and established his worship in their new home. The 
 dog was accepted as a sacrificial victim, Plutarch tells us, 57 by none 
 of the Olympian gods. To the Greeks the dog always remained 
 an animal of uncanny power, which, when offered in sacrifice, 
 had especial potency to purify and to ward off every form of evil. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 
 
 1. Scr. Min., 208. 
 
 2. Whether this was due to the Minoan reverence of the dog as a sacred animal, 
 or to the later spread of Hecate's cult to Crete, is immaterial for our purpose. 
 
 3. Stephanus, av&wvia.; Schol. ad Horn., Odyss., 19. 176; Stoll, in Roscher, 
 ii, 1674. 
 
 4. Head, Historia Nummorum, 391-2. 
 
 5. Gruppe, 1446. 
 
 6. Head, 402. 
 
 7. Suidas, TeXAUfftrcis. 
 
 8. Anton. Lib., 36. 
 
 9. Eratosth., 2. 
 
 10. The association of the dog with Hecate may have been due, wholly or in 
 part, to the influence of Persia, where the dead were often left to be devoured 
 by dogs (Herod., I. 140), and were believed to be guided to the lower world by 
 dogs (Liebrecht, 23; Gruppe, 407 n. i). 
 
 11. Wace and Thompson, Prehistoric Thessaly, 253; d'Arbois, Les premiers 
 habitants de I' Europe, i, 90-7; Kretschmer, 173; Pick, 99; Farnell, ii, 507. 
 L. J. Myres (A History of the Pelasgian Theory, J. H. S., xxvii, 173) notes that in 
 the Homeric catalogue of the ships the dominant folk between the Hebrus and the 
 Hellespont were not Thracians, but Pelasgians. Herodotus (i. 57) speaks of a 
 village in Thrace that was occupied by Pelasgians who, in his day, still spoke the 
 Pelasgian language. 
 
 12. Tomaschek, Die alien Thraker, in Sitzungsb. d. philos. hist. Cl. d. kais. Akad. 
 J.Mwew5cA.,Bd.cxxviii,Wien,i893,H2, 113; Hall, ^..,576; Farnell, N.C.R., 29. 
 
 13. Hall, 0. C. G. 297; Heckenbach, in Pauly-Wissowa, vii, 2773. 
 
 14. Rohde, ii. 80. 
 
 15. Nonnus Dionysiacus, 3. 74; Eustath. ad Horn., Odyss., p. 1714. 41 ; Farnell, 
 ii, 508. 
 
 16. Theocr., 2. 35. 
 
 17. Plut., Q. R. 52, 68, in; Schol. ad Theocr., 2. 12; Porphyr.,<fe Abst., 3. 17; 
 Schol. d Aristoph., Pax, 276; Suidas, Zijpwdla ^,0.^06 P&.KTJ. 
 
72 The Lupercalia 
 
 18. Q. R., in. 
 
 19. Ely. Mag., 626. 44; Heckenbach, in Pauly-Wissowa, vii, 2778. 
 
 20. Heeate was the patron deity of the sorceress Medea (Ap. Rhod., 3. 841; 
 Eur., Med. 395. See also, Rohde, ii, 75-87; Gruppe, 1272 n. i. 
 
 21. Plut., Q. R., 68, in. 
 
 22. Plut., Q. R., in; Curt., 10. 9. 12. 
 
 23. Serv.ad Verg.,Aen., 4. 511; Gruppe, 1289; Heckenbach, in Pauly-Wissowa, 
 vii, 2770. 
 
 24. Gruppe, 1291 n. i; Heckenbach, in Pauly-Wissowa, vii, 2770-3 ; Farnell, 
 ii, 512. 
 
 25. Plut., Q. R., 52; Hesych. TtveTv\\ls. 
 
 26. Dieterich, De hymnis orphicis, 44. 
 
 27. Farnell, ii, 502-8. 
 
 28. Gruppe, 410, 803-4. The dog Cerberus seems to have been a late 
 development that arose from the peculiar use of the word dog in the sense of 
 servant. See Durbach, in Daremberg-Saglio, iii, 503; Immisch, in Roscher, ii, 
 
 1133- 
 
 29. Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana, 4. 10. 
 
 30. Ael., N. A., 12. 34. 
 
 31. Paus., 2. 64. 4; Paul, ex Fest., no; Lact., Div. Inst., i. 10. i. 
 
 32. Paus., 2. 27. 2; Head, 369. 
 
 33. Ath. Mitth., vol. xvii, 245. Deubner, De incubatione, 39. In Epidaurus 
 the dog was largely replaced by the sacred animals of that region, the serpent 
 and the goat (Paus., 2. 26. 4; 2. 27. 2). 
 
 34. Martha, Cat. Mus. Ath. No. 169-71. 
 
 35. Ael., N. H., 7. 13. 
 
 36. Wace and Thompson, 232. 
 
 37. Thraemer, in Pauly-Wissowa, ii, 1643. 
 
 38. Hall, N. E., 61. See p. 13 n. 4. 
 
 39. Gruppe, 1448; Thraemer, in Roscher, i, 626. Although Aesculapius 
 appears in Homer, he seems to be a hero rather than a deity, for Homer always 
 speaks of him as Ajufyxooj/ (Thraemer, in Roscher, i, 619). 
 
 40. Arnob. , 4. 25. 
 
 41. Farnell, ii, 506. 
 
 42. Farnell, v, 403. 
 
 43. History of Sicily, i, 195-220, 542-59. 
 
 44. Lycophr.,958. 
 
 45. Ad Lycophr., 449, 958. 
 
 46. Hist. Sic., i, 548. 
 
 47. Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, 181; 
 Evans, Scr. Min., 208. 
 
 48. Lycophr., 961; Serv. ad Verg., Aen. t i. 550; 5. 30. 
 
 49. Hunterian Collection, 212-16; Head, 165. 
 
 50. Coins of the Thracian Chersonese also represent a dog with a stalk of 
 barley behind him (British Museum. Catalogue of Greek coins. Thrace, 197). 
 
 51. Hunterian Collection, 235; Head, 180. 
 
 52. Seep. 67. 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Greece 73 
 
 53. Evans, Scr. Min., 95. 
 
 54. Ael., H. A., ii. 20; 11.3. 
 
 55. Hist.Sic., i, 183-8. 
 
 56. Head, 156. 
 
 57. Q.R., inC. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE DOG AS A SACRED ANIMAL IN ITALY 
 
 Among the Romans there was no clearly marked center of the 
 cult of the dog, as there was in Greece. Moreover, details about 
 the few dog-cults which are found in Italy are scanty. This makes 
 an elucidation of the sacrifice of a dog in the Lupercalia very difficult, 
 and we cannot hope to do more than offer a reasonable theory 
 about its origin and significance, based upon a survey of the other 
 dog-cults of Italy and of Greece. 
 
 The god Silvanus is constantly portrayed in art with a dog at 
 his side. 1 Yet the dog had no part in the cult of Silvanus: there is 
 no indication that Silvanus was ever thought to be of dog form; 
 a dog was not sacrificed to him, nor did it appear in any of the 
 legends about him. It seems probable, therefore, that the dog was 
 attached to Silvanus because of an art convention: just as a dog 
 was regularly represented with the huntress Diana, so Silvanus, 
 the guardian of the boundaries of the cultivated land, was naturally 
 accompanied by the watchful dog. 2 
 
 Dogs were able to see the Fauni. 3 This seems due to the wide- 
 spread belief in the uncanny power of the dog to discern either 
 ghosts or a deity who was invisible to men. 4 There is nothing in 
 the cult or the attributes of Faun us to indicate that the dog was 
 sacred to him. 
 
 Most clearly marked of the cults of the dog was the sacrifice of 
 a dog at the Robigalia. Robigus was the dreaded blight, or mildew, 
 which attacked the grain while it was forming in the ear and caused 
 it to turn black and wither. 5 Robigus was, therefore, a numen who 
 must be placated in order to avert evil from the crops. 6 The 
 Robigalia was established in early times 7 in order to ward off 
 this destructive blight. 8 The rite being apotropaic, the dog- 
 sacrifice had the same significance that it had among the Greeks. 
 We remember that on the coins of Sicily the dog often appeared 
 in conjunction with a sheaf or an ear of grain, 9 so that there, too, 
 it may have been thought to protect the grain from harm. The 
 officiating priest at the Robigalia was the Flamen Quirinalis, 10 
 a fact which suggests a Sabine origin. The legend that it was 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Italy 75 
 
 founded by Numa n indicates the same idea. 12 Another festival 
 which seems an echo of the Robigalia took place near a gate called 
 Catularia. There reddish puppies were sacrificed to protect the 
 crops. 13 Whether that sacrifice belonged to the Robigalia or to a 
 festival which was a Roman double of it, 14 is for our purpose im- 
 material. 
 
 Another dog-cult was associated with two ancient and little- 
 known deities, the Lares Praestites. Ovid says that he sought to 
 see their statues, but they had decayed with age. 15 He knew, how- 
 ever, that they were represented with a dog at their feet. 16 The 
 Lares Praestites are thought to be portrayed on a coin of the Gens 
 Caesia which shows two youths, each bearing a spear, and with a 
 dog seated between them. 17 Plutarch adds the further fact that 
 the Lares Praestites were clad in dog-skins. 18 The shrine of the 
 Lares Praestites is by most authorities believed to have been on 
 the Velia, on the same site as the Sacellum Larum which was erected 
 by Augustus. 19 If that is true, the dog-cult of the Lares probably 
 belonged to a later period than the ancient cults of the Cermalus, 
 for the structures on the Velia are associated with the time when 
 the Sabines made their way into Rome. 20 Plutarch puts the Lares 
 Praestites in a class by themselves, asking why it is, that, of the 
 Lares, those that are called by the individual name of Praestites 
 are accompanied by a dog and wear dog-skins. 21 This question, 
 together with the probable site of their shrine, suggests that the 
 Lares Praestites were the Sabine Lares, as against the Lares Com- 
 pitales, who were the protecting spirits of the Romans, and in 
 whose cult the dog does not appear. 22 The prime function of the 
 Lares is indicated by the prayer which the Arval Brothers, priests 
 of the chthonic Dea Dia, offered to them, begging them to protect 
 the people from all baleful forces. 23 Like Hecate, the Lares were 
 worshipped at the crossroads, 24 but they also appeared as protecting 
 deities in nearly all places. 23 The dog had, therefore, the same sig- 
 nificance when associated with the Lares that he had with Hecate, 
 for both were potent to protect from evil. 
 
 There are two other dog-cults of like character. The Um- 
 brians offered a dog to their goddess Hontia. 25 Buecheler notes 
 that the name Hontia is very similar to the name of the infernal 
 regions and to certain words meaning destruction. He believes, 
 accordingly, that the dog offered to Hontia was a purificatory 
 
76 The Lupercalia 
 
 sacrifice, designed to avert evil. 25 Another underworld goddess 
 was Genita Mana, who is often regarded as identical with Mania. 26 
 Her realm, as is indicated by her name, was both birth and death. 27 
 To her a dog was sacrificed, with the prayer that none of the house- 
 hold might that year join the dead. 28 This sacrifice Plutarch makes 
 parallel to the one offered by the Greeks to Hecate. 28 It was, 
 therefore, designed to ward off the baleful powers of the under- 
 world. 
 
 Outside the cults with which the dog was especially associated, 
 it often possessed for the Romans, as for the Greeks, a magic power. 
 Puppies were considered so pure a meat, says Pliny, that they 
 were used as expiatory sacrifices, and were served at the banquets 
 given in honor of the gods. 29 The power of the dog to avert evil 
 was utilized in a most practical way by the Roman farmers. Before 
 undertaking any one of a variety of important tasks concerning 
 the crops or the cattle, they took the precaution of sacrificing a 
 dog. Also, by a sacrifice of this convenient animal, they might 
 perform on festal days certain labors that would otherwise be 
 forbidden. 30 
 
 In all these cases of the dog as a sacred animal in Italy, we see 
 that the Romans regarded it in the same light as did the Greeks, 
 as a creature able to protect the people from evil, and especially 
 potent to dispel the powers which were inimical to birth and growth. 
 Therefore its use in the Lupercalia was wholly natural, that being 
 a festival which sought to ward off evil and to set free the life- 
 activities. 
 
 The instances of dog-sacrifice which have been found in Italy 
 occurred either in the immediate environs of Rome or in Umbria; 
 but a series of coins which bear the figure of a dog seems to indicate 
 that the dog was honored as a sacred animal throughout the southern 
 half of Italy. A coin of Metapontum shows, back of a head of 
 the city's mythical founder, a dog seated, with fore-paw raised. 31 
 The reverse pictures, as do many of the coins of Metapontum, 32 
 an ear of grain. We remember that an ear of grain frequently 
 occurred in conjunction with the dog on the coins of Segesta. 33 
 In the Apulian town of Larinum, a coin was issued representing 
 a dog walking, with one foot raised; the reverse bears a head of 
 Minerva. 34 A coin of Campania also shows a dog with fore-paw 
 raised. 35 A dog with the same peculiarity of posture appears on 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Italy 77 
 
 a coin which is thought to come from Alba Fucentis. This coin 
 portrays also an archaic wheel, 36 a symbol which was often used 
 on Sicilian coins in conjunction with the dog. 37 A similar type 
 comes from the town of Tuder, in southern Umbria. 38 Belonging 
 to Hatria, a town of Picenum, is a coin which portrays the head 
 of Silanus on one side, and a sleeping dog on the other. 39 A coin 
 that is thought to have come from Etruria shows the head of a 
 youth, who was, perhaps, Hercules, and a dog. 40 
 
 These coins, like the instances of dog-sacrifice in Italy, do not 
 present the cult of one dog-shaped deity, but suggest, rather, a 
 potent animal that was annexed by various gods. The dog-cults 
 of Italy give no indication that they were a native development. 
 There is no definite region from which they originated, nor is there 
 any one deity to whom the dog was markedly sacrosanct. No con- 
 trast could be greater than between the faint and scattered frag- 
 ments of the cult of the dog in Italy and the dominant figure of 
 Hecate in Thrace. 
 
 If the cult of the dog was imported into Italy, it must have been 
 at an early date, as it was associated with very ancient deities. 
 Foreign rites were first brought to Rome from the Greek cities of 
 Sicily and of Southern Italy. 41 We have seen that the dog-cult 
 was strongly centered in Sicily, and that it was honored by the 
 Mamertines when they occupied Messana. 42 Certain of the motives 
 on the coins of Italy which were used in connection with the dog, 
 as the sheaf of grain and the wheel, were also used in Sicily. The 
 cult of the dog was also wide-spread in the cities of Southern Italy. 
 The coins from both Southern and Central Italy which show the 
 dog with fore-paw raised, indicate, by this similarity of treatment, 
 that there had been an exchange of ideas between those localities. 
 The natural conclusion is that the worship of the dog, like so many 
 early cults, was carried to Central Italy by the Greek traders who, 
 as early as the time of the Tarquins, paid frequent visits to that 
 region. 43 
 
 If the cult of the dog among the Italians was a Greek importation, 
 the dog-sacrifice cannot have been an original part of the Luper- 
 calia, which antedated the arrival of the Greek cults. Though 
 Plutarch gives no hint of when the dog was first sacrificed in the 
 Lupercalia, the complete lack of legends about it seems to indicate 
 that it did not belong to the oldest stratum of the festival. In the 
 
7 8 The Lupercalia 
 
 Lupercalia, as well as in the Robigalia, the dog was sacrificed in 
 conjunction with another victim. That may well indicate an 
 extension of the original ceremony, for outworn cults were often 
 rejuvenated by the inclusion of new rites, or the sacrifice of a more 
 unusual victim. 44 In Greece the sacrifice of a dog was at times 
 severed from the worship of Hecate and used merely as a magic 
 rite of purification. 45 In Italy the dog-sacrifice was devoted to 
 purposes of magic. 46 Thus the sheep sacrificed at the Robigalia 
 and the goat at the Lupercalia may well have had "new magic" 
 given to them by the additional sacrifice of a dog. 
 
 We cannot be sure of the agency by which this new victim was 
 added to the Lupercalia. It may have been brought in from the 
 cities of Latium, just as was the cult of Heracles or of the Dioscuri. 
 The fact, however, that the chief priest of the Sabines offered the 
 dog to Robigus, and that the Sabines seem to have introduced the 
 Lares Praestites to Rome, suggests the possibility that they were 
 likewise responsible for the sacrifice of a dog at the Lupercalia. 
 The character of the Sabines and the part which they played in 
 the religion of the Romans gives added ground for this assumption. 
 
 The Sabines hold a place apart from other Italic tribes, for they 
 universally adopted the Mediterranean custom of burying, instead 
 of cremating, their dead. In the vast necropolis of Aufidena, not 
 a single incineration-grave has been found. 47 This departure from 
 the burial customs of their race proves that there had been some 
 vital alteration in the Sabines. Furthermore., even the skulls 
 found in these graves are dolicocephalic. 48 In religion the Sabines 
 show a strong tendency toward chthonic cults. 49 For example, 
 the Flamen Quirinalis performed the offering at the tomb of Acca 
 Larentia and officiated at the Consualia, at which the altar of 
 Census, which was buried in the earth during the rest of the year, 
 was uncovered. 50 The ancients considered the Sabines remarkable 
 for their devotion to religion, as is shown by the popular derivation 
 of Sabini from <rej3o/zai. 51 Also they ascribed to the Sabine kings, 
 Numa and Titus Tatius, the majority of the important cults of 
 Rome, thus expressing their belief that the Sabines had exercised 
 a very great influence upon the development of religion in the 
 Roman state. 52 Owing to this devout temperament, the Sabines 
 would have been particularly ready to adopt the cult of the dog, for 
 that, with its emphasis upon uncleanness and the need of purifica- 
 
The Dog as a Sacred A nimal in Italy 79 
 
 tion, appealed to the most pious, as was shown when the Orphics 
 made Hecate one of their chief gods. 53 
 
 February, the month in which the Lupercalia was celebrated, 
 was by legend connected with the Sabines. It was generally be- 
 lieved by the ancients that Numa, having divided the year into 
 twelve months, instead of ten as heretofore, added the months 
 of January and February. 54 The latter month derived its name 
 from the februa, the most solemn lustral media, 55 and was thus 
 marked as the month of cleansing. Ovid says that when the year 
 was only ten months in length, the Romans did not know the holy 
 februa Though this statement need not be taken as literally 
 true, it shows that Ovid believed that the Romans were indifferent 
 to the rite of purification, but that the Sabines valued it and were 
 chiefly responsible for February being devoted to lustral ceremonies. 
 Of all these cleansing rites, the Lupercalia had, by Varro's time, 
 come to be the most important. Varro even went so far as to sug- 
 gest that the whole month had derived its name from the Luper- 
 calia, which he called "the day of purification." 57 It is reasonable 
 to think of the Sabines as responsible, at least in part, for this 
 emphasis upon the lustral side of the Lupercalia, since that festival 
 could hardly have failed to be influenced by the dominant note 
 which the Sabines seem to have given to the whole month of Febru- 
 ary. It was, moreover, not a new meaning that was thus added 
 to the Lupercalia, but an intensifying and clarifying of its oldest 
 significance, that of protecting men from evil. For, as the Medi- 
 terranean people developed in religious thought, they came to 
 believe that the chief cause of evil was man's impurity, and hence 
 strove to avert evil by removing impurity. Consequently the 
 Lupercalia could best perform its ancient function if it freed the 
 people from uncleanness. 
 
 The ritual acts of the Lupercalia, like those of all ceremonies 
 of purgation, would tend to diminish in power. 58 We see this 
 exemplified repeatedly in Rome's history. It would, therefore, 
 have been fully in accord with the march of events that the Luper- 
 calia, at some time of need, should likewise have failed the people, 
 and that persons who were familiar with the efficacy of the sacrifice 
 of a dog, should then have added that rite to the festival. 
 
 The Lupercalia started out as a ceremony of riddance. But the 
 riddance of the infernal spirits is merely the savage man's way of 
 
8o The Lupercalia 
 
 putting it. Civilized man realizes that one must be rid of impuri- 
 ties that clog the life-power. Thus only could the gift of fertility, 
 which was also sought by the Lupercalia, be assured. Among 
 the Mediterranean people the most effective medium for this 
 purpose was the sacrifice of a dog. This was a rite that was highly 
 esteemed by the Sabines, who had adopted many beliefs of the 
 Mediterranean race. The activity of the Sabines in reorganizing 
 the religion of Rome and in developing the rites of purification, 
 makes it easy to believe that they may have sought to fortify the 
 Lupercalia, the oldest lustral ceremony of the city, by adding to 
 it the most effective purificatory sacrifice that could be offered 
 a dog. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 
 
 1. Peter, in Roscher, iv, 826; Hild, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 1344. 
 
 2. Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, i, 136, 140. 
 
 3. Plin., 8. 151. 
 
 4. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, 23; Gruppe, 803-4. 
 
 5. Serv. ad Verg., Georg., i. 151; Plin., N. H., 18. 154, 161. 
 
 6. Gell., 5. 12. 14. Fowler (R. F., 89) regards Robigus as an indigitation 
 of Mars. This is merely another view of the same idea, for Mars was implored 
 by Cato (R. R., 141) to spare the crops from harm; and the mildew was the most 
 dreaded form of injury. 
 
 7. The Robigalia is entered in the Fasti in large capitals, hence is one of the 
 oldest festivals. 
 
 8. Var., L. L., 6. 16; Paul, ex Fest., 267. Ovid (Fast., 4. 939) offers in explana- 
 tion of the dog-sacrifice the reason that it was to propitiate the dog-star, which 
 was destructive to the crops. Dr. Fowler (R. F., 90) has shown the falsity of this 
 explanation. See also Hild, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 875. 
 
 9. See p. 70. 
 
 10. Ov., Fast., 4. 910. 
 
 n. Plin., N. H., 18.285; Tertull., de Spect., 5. 
 
 12. The objection may be raised that the Robigalia is often believed to have 
 been held, not in the land of the Sabines, but on the Via Clodia, two miles beyond 
 the Tiber (Fowler, R. F., 89). This belief rests upon the identification of the Via 
 Clodia with the Via Claudia, upon which, the Fasti state (C. I. L. t i, p. 392), the 
 Robigalia was celebrated; but it is very hard to reconcile with Ovid's statement 
 (Fast., 4. 905) that he met the procession of the Robigalia when he was going from 
 Nomentum to Rome. If Mommsen's explanation (C. I. L., i, p. 392), that Ovid 
 was going to his gardens which lay near the Via Clodia, is to be accepted, one must 
 believe that Ovid described his route in a very ambiguous fashion. On the other 
 hand, if Ovid's words are taken at face value, they would mean that the Lucus 
 Robiginis was in the Sabine country between Rome and Nomentum. Since this 
 
The Dog as a Sacred Animal in Italy 81 
 
 territory had been held by the Claudian tribe from prehistoric times (Verg., Aen t . 
 7. 706^-12; Liv., 2. 16. 5; Suet., Tib., i; Pinza, Monumenti primitivi di Roma e del 
 Lazio antico, 221), it would have been very natural that a road passing through 
 it should be known as the Via Claudia. This explanation also obviates the 
 difficulty arising from the discrepancy of the names Via Claudia, mentioned 
 in the Fasti, and Via Clodia; for the latter name never appears in inscriptions 
 or itineraries in any other form. 
 
 13. Fest., 285; Paul, ex Fest., 45. 
 
 14. This is the view of Mommsen (C. I. L., i, 392) and of Fowler ( R. F., 90). 
 
 15. Fast., 5. 143. 
 
 16. Fast., 5. 137. 
 
 17. Babelon, i, 281; Jordan, De larum imaginibus, 329. 
 
 1 8. Q, R., 51. Some scholars believe that a dog was also sacrificed to the Lares 
 Praestites (Fowler, R. F., 101; Roscher, i, 1612). 
 
 19. Jordan, Lar. im., 326-9; Becker. De Romae veteris muris atque portis, 
 12; Wissowa, R. K., 171. 
 
 20. Both Numa and Ancus Martius are said to have dwelt on the Velia (Solin., 
 i. 21, 23). Numa was said to have built the Regia (Ov., Trist., 3. i. 30) and the 
 temple of Vesta (Dionys., 2. 65, 66). 
 
 21. Q. R., 51. 
 
 22. Fowler, R. F., 101. 
 
 23. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, 145. 
 
 24. Ov., Fast., 5. 140; Macr., I. 7. 35. 
 
 25. Buecheler, Umbrica, 128. 
 
 26. Muller, Etrusker, ii, 105 n. 78 b. 
 
 27. Roscher, i, 1612. 
 
 28. Plut., Q. R., 52; Plin., N. H., 29. 58, 
 
 29. N. H., 29. 58. 
 
 30. Colum., 2. 22. 
 
 31. Hunterian Collection, 91. 24. 
 
 32. Hunterian Collection, 91. 
 
 33. See p. 70. 
 
 34. Babelon, i, 29. 
 
 35. Hunterian Collection, 52. 33, PI. iv . 8. 
 
 36. Hunterian Collection , u. i. 
 37- See p. 70. 
 
 38. Head, 22; Hunterian Collection, 5. 
 
 39. Head, 23; Hunterian Collection, 7. 
 
 40. Hunterian Collection, 18. 
 
 41. Fowler, R. F., 197. 
 
 42. See p. 70. 
 
 43. Carter, The Religious Life of Ancient Rome, 39; Pais, Anc. It., 289; Fowler, 
 R. F., 12 1 ; Schwegler, i, 679. 
 
 44. Fowler, R. E., 287. 
 
 45. See p. 68. 
 
 46. See p. 76. 
 
 47. Modestov, 254. 
 
82 The Lupercalia 
 
 48. Modestov, 255. 
 
 49. Piganiol, 30, 132, et passim. 
 
 50. Tertull., de Spect., 8; Cell., 7. 7. 7. 
 
 51. Var. ap. Fest., 343; Schwegler, i, 244. 
 
 52. Wissowa, R. K., 430; Fowler, R. E., 108; Schwegler, i, 248; Marquardt, 
 iii,27-3i. 
 
 53. See page 68. 
 
 54. Van, L. L., 6. 34; Liv., i. 19. 6; Ov., Fas/., 3. 152; Plut., Num., 19; Solin., 
 I. 37; Cens., 20. 2, 4, 5; Macr., 7. 13. 2-5. The following scholars are inclined to 
 believe that the organization of the calendar was due to the Sabines: Huschke, 
 Das alte romische Jahr und seine Tage, 8, 26; Wissowa, R. K., 430; Marquardt, 
 iii, 284; Fowler, R. E., 108. The difficulties involved in the idea of a ten-month 
 year (Fowler, R. F., 2) cannot be considered here, but the names January and 
 February show by their formation that they were later than the names of the 
 other months (Schulze, Zur Geschichte lateinischen Eigennamen, 487). 
 
 55. Var. ap. Non., p. 114. 17; Censor., 22. 14; Ov.,Fast.,2. 19; Plut., Q., R., 
 19; id. Num., 19; Lyd., de Mens., 4. 25. From these februa was fashioned the god 
 Februus, an infernal deity, the double of Pluto (Serv. ad Verg., Georg., i. I. 43; 
 Isid., Orig., 5. 33. 4; Macr., i. 13. 3; Gelas. adv. Androm., 3). He was named by 
 Lydus (de Mens., 4. 25) the god of the Lupercalia. He was, however, evidently 
 a late abstraction, as his name does not occur before the fourth century. 
 
 56. Fast., 5-423- 
 
 57. L. L., 6. 34. 
 
 58. Diels, 83. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE BLOOD-CEREMONY OF THE LUPERCALIA 
 
 There remains to be considered the curious rite of the Lupercalia 
 in which a sword was dipped into the blood of the sacrifice and 
 pressed upon the foreheads of two young men. The blood was then 
 washed away with wool moistened in milk. After that the youths 
 must laugh. 1 This ceremony has provoked wide speculation because 
 it is utterly different from the usual cult-practices of the Romans. 
 To gain an understanding of the use and significance of these media, 
 we must turn to the ritualistic acts of Greece. 
 
 Of the use of blood in primitive religions we have countless 
 instances. The almost unvarying idea of uncivilized man is that 
 blood is not merely essential to life, but the very life itself. 2 Con- 
 sequently in sacrifices offered to earth-gods to stir their life-giving 
 power, the blood of the victim is often poured upon the ground. By 
 a transference of idea, since the sacrificial animal has within it the 
 essence of the deity, its blood is regarded as the supreme embodiment 
 of the god's mystic potency. 3 Man may partake of this divine power 
 by various means: he may drink the blood, or he may have it 
 applied to him externally, as was done in the Lupercalia. Thus he 
 comes into contact with the life-force and is purified. 4 For this 
 reason the blood of the sacrificial victim was used to cleanse men 
 from murder and from madness. 5 In ceremonies of lustration, 
 sprinkling with blood was the surest of all cleansing media. 6 It 
 seems to have been employed as one of the lustral ceremonies of the 
 Eleusinian Mysteries. 7 In the rite of the Taurobolium the wor- 
 shipper, in a pit beneath the sacrificial animal, won purity by 
 allowing the sacred blood to flow upon him until he was literally 
 covered. 8 This ceremony, which was probably of great antiquity 
 in Asia, 9 came to be practised in the Cybele-Attis cult as one of 
 its most important features. 10 In Italy the Taurobolium was 
 ardently observed during several centuries of the Empire. 11 The 
 Orphics, who specialized in lustral media, 12 received into their 
 religion the god Attis together with his bloody rite. 13 The 
 Orphics put themselves into contact with the divine power 
 in another ceremony, the Omophagia, in which they imbibed 
 
84 The Lupercalia 
 
 the sacrificial blood, along with the raw flesh, of the newly slain 
 animal. 14 
 
 In these instances of the use of blood in Greek ritual, it was either 
 an offering to the earth-mother, that she might recreate into new 
 life this life-force which was restored to her, or it was a means by 
 which man, coming into direct contact with the essence of deity, 
 might be freed from all the forces of evil. Freedom from evil was 
 likewise the purpose of the Lupercalia, hence the use of blood in 
 that festival may reasonably be regarded as parallel to that of the 
 Greek ceremonies. The rite of blood-sprinkling, belonging as it did 
 to the worship of chthonic deities, and appearing most markedly 
 in the cult of Attis and in the ritual of the Orphics, may be accepted 
 as characteristically Mediterranean. 
 
 In the chthonic cults of Italy, as in Greece, the blood of the 
 sacrifice was frequently poured upon the earth. Thus it was offered 
 to the Manes 15 and to Terminus. 16 In the quaint rite that occurred 
 on the Ides of October, a horse was slain, his tail was suspended in 
 the Regia and the blood allowed to drip upon the hearth. The blood 
 was preserved, it seems, by the Vestal Virgins, and later, mixed 
 with the ashes of unborn calves, was sprinkled upon the fires through 
 which the people leaped in the Parilia. 17 Here blood is used in a 
 mystic rite whose purpose is interpreted as the same as that of the 
 Lupercalia lustration and fertility. 18 But in the details of the 
 ritual the two festivals offer no likeness such as we discovered in 
 the Pelasgian ceremonies. 
 
 The sword by which the blood was placed upon the youths' heads 
 should probably be classed with other weapons, such as the double 
 axe and the figure-eight shield of Crete, which were holy objects in 
 Mediterranean ritual. 19 The significance of the sacrificial sword in 
 the Taurobolium is shown by its constant representation upon the 
 Taurobolic altars. 20 The regular association of the sickle with 
 Chronus suggests its sanctity in his cult. 21 In Italy the lance of 
 Juno Quiritis and of Quirinus, and the lance and the an cilia of Mars 
 were especially venerated. 22 
 
 The blood smeared upon the foreheads of the young men was 
 wiped off by a bit of wool dipped in milk. In the same way in Greek 
 rites the sacrificial blood which had been sprinkled upon a man was 
 removed by various cleansing media. "The blood was too holy to 
 be left in permanent, contact with a man who was presently to 
 
The Blood-Ceremony of the Lupercalia 85 
 
 return to common life." 23 The Orphics frequently smeared earth 
 upon the devotees as a means of cleansing, and removed it by a 
 ceremonial wiping off. 24 So important in ceremonies of purification 
 was this bedaubing with clay and its removal that the words 
 irepwaTrew and dTTo/zdrrctv became standing expressions for mys- 
 tic cleansing. 25 Of this ceremonial wiping off the Lupercalia 
 affords the only example in Roman cults. 
 
 From the sanctity which the skin of a sacrificial animal possessed, 
 it is natural that wool should have been of significant and constant 
 use in the religion of both Greeks and Romans. The binding of the 
 priest's forehead with woolen fillets before he sacrificed was a 
 symbol that he was possessed by the deity. 26 Naturally, therefore, 
 wool was potent for purification. Ovid, in his list of the materials 
 that have cleansing power, mentions wool first of all. 27 Wool was 
 included among the offerings of first fruits and natural products 
 which were placed in the kernos and carried as holy objects in the 
 Mysteries of Eleusis. 28 
 
 Milk, used in the Lupercalia to moisten the wool, was employed 
 among both Greeks and Romans in the earliest times as a libation 
 to chthonic deities. But of its mystic use in the Lupercalia, native 
 Roman religion affords us no other instance. That meaning can 
 be found only in the religion of the Orphics. The use of milk in the 
 Orphic mysteries is indicated by certain gold tablets which are very 
 important sources of knowledge of the Orphic cults. These tablets 
 were placed close by the dead person and contained directions for 
 his conduct in the lower world : formulas that he was to repeat, or 
 statements of ritual that he had performed. They constituted for 
 the dead man his card of admission to the realm of the blest. 29 
 The close similarity of phrasing in the tablets indicates that they 
 echo some important ritualistic poem of the Orphics. 30 Two tablets 
 contain the words, "Thou shalt be god instead of mortal. A kid, 
 I have fallen into milk". 31 These words, like the other formulas, 
 must describe some symbolic act which the initiate has performed. 
 The promise, "Thou shalt be god instead'of mortal" suggests that 
 the following words, "A kid, I have fallen into milk," express in 
 mystic fashion the Orphic's attainment of the highest bliss. The 
 meaning of a kid in this formula has been explained by Dr. Dieterich, 
 who notes that 'Ept^ios was a title of Dionysus which was used by 
 the Dorians of the Peloponnesus and of Southern Italy, being espe- 
 
86 The Lupercalia 
 
 cially favored at Metapontum, near which these tablets were found. 32 
 Thus in this region Dionysus was known as "The Kid," just as he 
 was called "The Bull" in Crete. Consequently, when the Orphic 
 calls himself a kid he seems to identify himself with the Kid- 
 Dionysus. 33 But "The Kid" is an infant god, and so must be nour- 
 ished upon milk. 34 By the use of milk, therefore, the initiates 
 further symbolized their union with the god. 35 The expression, "I 
 have fallen," has been taken to indicate an actual bath in milk, 36 or 
 a vigorous substitute for the words, "I have found," the worshipper's 
 complete union with the deity being probably symbolized by his 
 drinking milk or being sprinkled with milk. 37 In either case, the 
 words, "A kid, I have fallen into milk" seem to indicate that the 
 initiate has been mystically reborn and transformed into a god. 37 
 The same idea appears in the cult of Cybele. In the sacred drama, 
 after Attis has died and has been restored to life, the worshippers 
 end their mourning fast by partaking of milk. In doing so they 
 seem to be in divine communion with the youthful god, who has 
 just entered life anew. 38 
 
 The laughter of the youths, which formed the final act of the 
 blood-ceremony, finds no parallel in Roman cult, and very little in 
 Greek. It has been explained (a) as the indication by the lads of 
 their readiness to be sacrificed, 39 (b) as the sign that, after their 
 ritualistic slaughter, they were restored to life, 40 and (c) as the 
 symbol of their entrance upon a new life of purity. 41 If we are 
 correct in our belief that a human being was not the original victim 
 at the Lupercalia, neither of the first two explanations of the laugh 
 can be accepted. On the other hand, the third view, that it was 
 the expression of joy over being 'cleansed and so restored to new 
 life, is in complete harmony with the symbolism of the purifying 
 blood and the milk. If so, it corresponds to the joyous words 
 uttered by the Orphic after he had been purified by the smearing 
 on and the wiping off of mud, "Bad have I fled, better have I 
 found. 42 " The cult of Attis, in which the blood and the milk had a 
 part so similar to their use in the Lupercalia, offers another parallel. 
 After the communicants had ended their mourning for Attis and 
 had received milk as the sign of their admission to a new life, they 
 celebrated the festival called 'IXapeia. 43 The uncontrolled expression 
 of joy which characterized that festival may be likened to the 
 laughter that concluded the Lupercalia. 
 
The Blood-Ceremony of the Lupercalia 87 
 
 As we sum up the significance of this strange part of the Luper- 
 calia, we see that, almost without exception, the elements belong 
 characteristically to Pelasgian religion. Sprinkling with blood as a 
 means of purification or of communion with the deity, a ceremonial 
 wiping off as a sign that old things are done away, and a sprinkling 
 with milk symbolizing a new life of purity and of kinship with 
 divinity, were, to many Greeks, ritual acts that called forth profound 
 reverence. Of such rites the cults indigenous to Italy give us not a 
 single instance except the Lupercalia. That suggests the possibility 
 that this bit of ritual was borrowed, as were so many elements of 
 the Roman religion, from the Greeks. 44 
 
 If such was the case, the Orphics probably introduced these 
 ceremonies; for only in their rites and in those of Attis, whom they 
 took as their own god, were these acts significant. Was there any 
 medium by which the influence of the Orphics could have become so 
 pronounced in Rome as to account for a graft of their ritual upon 
 this ancient Roman festival? 
 
 The Cumaean Sibyl immediately comes to the mind of one who 
 seeks to explain the presence of a foreign cult in Rome. From very 
 early days she had accustomed the Romans to receive Greek deities 
 or to add Greek ceremonials to the native rites. 45 Under her guidance 
 one chthonic god after another, Demeter, Dionysus, Proserpina, 
 Hermes, Poseidon, Dis, and Aesculapius, came to Rome. The 
 ancient Roman cult of Saturn was Hellenized by the addition of 
 a lectisternium and other features of Greek ritual. The ceremonials 
 directed by the Sibyl were of a mystic or a spectacular type, ap- 
 pealing to the same emotions of awe or of religious enthusiasm as 
 the ritual acts of the Orphics. The influence of the Sibyl was most 
 marked during the war with Hannibal, 46 when the people seemed no 
 longer able to secur ehelp from their native gods, and so appealed 
 repeatedly to the Sibyl. After Trasimene, a spectacular lectisier 
 nium was held : six pairs of gods, Greek and Roman being taken* 
 without distinction, were placed on couches to receive offerings. 
 Dr. Warde Fowler declares that this event marks the turning-point 
 in Roman religion: "the dividing line between di indigetes and 
 di novensiles now vanishes forever." 47 From now on, Greek ritual was 
 employed alike for Greek and for Roman deities. After the disaster 
 of Cannae many foreign rites were introduced. The people even 
 resorted to a religiou* act utterly abhorrent to Romans: 48 two 
 
88 The Lupercalia 
 
 Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive in the Forum Boarium. 
 Finally the Romans brought to their city, with all pomp, the statue 
 of the Magna Mater of Pessinus. During the same year Dionysus 
 was received in Rome. These last arrivals were not accorded the 
 treatment given to other foreign gods : they were not kept outside 
 the Pomoerium, but were given temples on the Palatine, just above 
 the ancient cult-center on the Cermalus, hence close by the Lupercal. 
 Owing to this proximity, these two powerful deities had an excellent 
 opportunity to influence the cult of Lupercus. The Phrygian 
 Cybele, though she was not usually included among the variant 
 names of the Orphic deity, was the same in essence and was honored 
 by the same mystic and orgiastic rites; while the worship of Diony- 
 sus might be called the kernel of Orphic religion. 49 
 
 For the direct influence of Orphism upon Rome, we must turn 
 to the cities of Southern Italy, with which Rome, even under the 
 Etruscans, had active trade relations. 50 In the wake of the traders 
 various Greek gods, as, for example, Heracles and the Dioscuri, 
 made their way into Rome. 51 Damia, the earth-goddess of Taren- 
 tum, was identified with Bona Dea, and imposed certain features 
 of her ritual upon the native cult. 52 The foisting of Greek rites 
 upon so ancient a goddess as Bona Dea is especially significant. 
 In these Greek cities of Southern Italy, Orphism was honored 
 more than in any other region. The teachings of Orpheus were 
 accepted as the basic principles of the school of Pythagoras, which 
 was established at Velia, and which was influential throughout 
 the neighboring cities. 53 Some of the Orphic tablets mentioned 
 above were unearthed at Sybaris. 54 At Tarentum both the ritual 
 of Pythagoras and the mysteries of Dionysus were especially 
 cultivated. 55 With these particular cities, Velia, Tarentum, and 
 Sybaris, Rome had especially active communication from the 
 earliest times. 56 During the Samnite Wars the Romans came to 
 know the Pythagoreans in their own home. Appius Claudius 
 Caecus is said to have embraced their faith, 57 and even the hard- 
 headed elder Cato was interested in listening to their theories. 58 
 The vogue which this philosophy gained in Rome is evidenced by 
 the persistent tradition that Numa was a Pythagorean. 59 
 
 By 181 B. C. Pythagoreanism was strong enough in Rome to 
 attempt a daring fraud. On Mount Janiculum was dug up a coffin 
 bearing an inscription which declared that it contained the body 
 
The Blood-Ceremony of the Lupercalia 89 
 
 of Numa. Within it were found, not a skeleton, but books on 
 Pythagorean philosophy which purported to be the writings of 
 Numa. 60 The purpose must have been to win state support for 
 mysticism under the prestige of Numa's name. The hope that 
 such an attempt could succeed argues a rather wide-spread accep- 
 tance in Rome of Pythagorean philosophy. But the ruse was 
 doomed to failure: the Senate immediately denounced these 
 Orphic books as a fraud, and ordered that they be burned in the 
 Comitium. 60 A companion picture to this occurrence is furnished 
 by an outbreak five years earlier, when a large part of the populace 
 turned with the utmost abandon to the orgies of Dionysus. Meet- 
 ings were held at night, and the wild frenzy which prevailed in 
 Thrace or on Mount Cithaeron was rampant in Rome. In this 
 case, too, the Senate took firm measures. This strange religion 
 was denounced as a coniumtio, and the celebrants punished as 
 conspirators against the state. Yet the Senate provided a safety 
 valve for their religious fervor. Under carefully stipulated con- 
 ditions, those who felt that they could not conscientiously give 
 up the new religion, were allowed to continue it. 61 These two events 
 coming so close together show very clearly the following which 
 the religious ecstasy and the mystic ritual acts of the Orphics had 
 won in Rome. So threatening were the proportions of this new 
 cult that the Senate did not dare follow its usual practice of re- 
 ligious tolerance; and yet infection so intense and so widespread 
 must not be deprived of an outlet, lest the evil break forth still 
 more \iolently. A judicious state control was, therefore, the 
 solution. 62 
 
 This survey of the influence of the Cumaean Sibyl and of Orphism 
 upon Rome shows that a transfer of Orphic rites to an ancient 
 Roman ceremony like the Lupercalia was inherently possible. 
 For centuries the Romans were bringing in one after another of 
 the primitive chthonic deities of Greece, were identifying various 
 Italian gods with Greek gods, and altering the established national 
 ritual to suit Greek practices. At any time during this period the 
 partial Hellenizing of the Lupercalia would have been in harmony 
 with the spirit of the times. Such a change could have' occurred 
 most easily, however, during the Hannibal ic war or the two decades 
 immediately following, when the people, having received into their 
 city Cybele and Dionysus, were deeply stirred by the orgies of 
 
9O The Lupercalia 
 
 Dionysus and by the beliefs of the Pythagoreans. During that 
 period the insertion of certain Orphic rites into the Lupercalia 
 would have been only one event of numberless such. Moreover, 
 the Lupercalia, with its emphasis upon purification, would have been 
 an especially natural ceremony to receive an Orphic graft; for 
 purification was above all else the quest of the Orphics, and they 
 were expert in the media by which to attain it. 
 
 Assuming that the blood-rite of the Lupercalia may have been 
 of Orphic origin, we observe that no one ceremony was taken over 
 bodily by the Romans, but that this part of the Lupercalia must 
 have been, rather, a psychological product. The people's state 
 of mind during the war with Hannibal is clearly indicated by the 
 numerous portents which were announced. Early in the war came 
 an omen suggesting that Mars, the later incarnation of the old 
 wolf-deity, had forsaken his people: a wolf came and snatched 
 a guard's sword from its sheath and carried it off. 63 A little later 
 the statues of the wolf which were in Rome sweated. 64 Such omens 
 as these may easily have caused the people to consider with concern 
 the ceremony at the wolf's cave, and to wonder if that, like so many 
 others, had lost its power to protect them. Frequently in the first 
 alarm of Hannibal's arrival in Italy, blood appeared among the 
 omens. Two shields exuded drops of blood; the springs at Caere 
 and the fount of Hercules were stained with blood; at Arretium 
 the reapers found themselves harvesting bloody heads of grain; 
 and after the battle of Cannae blood flowed in the river beside 
 Amiternum. 65 These omens of blood are a wholly natural phenom- 
 enon during the carnage of war; but it would be equally natural 
 that rites which employed blood as a means of purification should 
 appeal to the people. In magic and in religious rites akin to magic, 
 the homeopathic principle that like cures like is always potent. 
 
 Assuming that the insertion of the blood-rite into the Lupercalia 
 could most easily have occurred during the emotional turmoil 
 caused by the Hannibalic war, we may perhaps define the probable 
 date still more closely. The first few years of the war offer the least 
 probability. Livy tells explicitly the alarming prodigies that oc- 
 curred at that time, and the strange expedients adopted to annul 
 them. Had the ceremony of the Lupercalia been altered then, we 
 should certainly expect it to be mentioned along with the other 
 innovations. But as the war goes on, Livy gives much less detail. 
 
The Blood- Ceremony of the Lupercalia 91 
 
 Probably his artistic sense rebelled at painting the same picture 
 too often. After the battle of Cannae, he contents himself with 
 saying that various prodigies occurred, and that certain unusual 
 ceremonies were performed. 66 Three years later, when there was 
 another outburst of omens, he passes on with the mere statement, 
 "Due measures were taken by decree of the pontiffs." 67 As the 
 war dragged on, "Such religious fervor," Livy says, "assailed the 
 state, and in large part of foreign origin at that, that it seemed as 
 if either men or gods must have completely changed." Not only 
 within private houses was the Roman ritual broken down, but 
 even in the Forum and in the Capitol were disorderly throngs of 
 women who, neither in their prayers nor in their sacrifices, followed 
 the ritual of their ancestors. 68 Following this, came the command 
 of the Senate that no foreign rites be performed at any national 
 shrine. 69 This order, on the one hand, shows, that alien ritual acts 
 had invaded the established state ceremonials of the Romans; 
 but, on the other hand, makes it improbable that the blood-rite of 
 the Lupercalia, if added to the ceremony at this time, would have 
 continued. Therefore the years following this occurrence offer a 
 more reasonable time for such a change. The Dionysia of 186 
 B. C. and the discovery of the Pythagorean Books in 181 certainly 
 cannot have been isolated outbreaks. Had Livy chosen to give 
 us in detail the changes in religious ritual which occurred during 
 the latter part of the period of the foreign wars, he might have 
 resolved for us many a knotty problem. As it is, we have to admit 
 that after the first two years of the war with Hannibal there oc- 
 curred many alterations in religious belief and form of which we 
 know nothing. Among these innovations which Livy passes over 
 in silence, might easily have been an addition of Orphic rites to 
 the Lupercalia. 
 
 It is interesting that Plutarch, the only author to mention the 
 blood-ritual, connects its origin with a war. But, just as the temple 
 of Jupiter Stator, which was actually built in 294 B. C., was re- 
 ferred to Romulus, so this part of the Lupercalia was said to be a 
 memorial of the struggle of Romulus with Amulius, "the blood 
 symbolizing the bloodshed and terror of that time." 70 
 
 A scrap of evidence suggests that the blood-ceremony was not 
 a part of the original rites of the Lupercalia. Plutarch, when speak- 
 ing of those upon whom the blood-rite was performed, always 
 
92 The Lupercalia 
 
 uses the word boys, peipaKia. This seems an impossible term to 
 apply to the Luperci. Mark Antony was consul when he acted 
 as a Lupercus. 71 The /*eip<ma, therefore, must have been other 
 than the priests of Lupercus. Presumably they were admitted 
 into the ceremony for the express purpose of this blood-ritual. 
 But this would give a clear indication that the blood-rite was not 
 an original part of the festival. If it had been, the Luperci would 
 have been the natural persons for the central figures, not two 
 striplings. Livy says that the missionaries of Dionysus in Rome 
 sought especially to win the young to their mysteries, and that 
 many youths of high rank became enthusiastic devotees. 72 The 
 same wave of emotion may have introduced the boys and their 
 mystic rites into the Lupercalia. 
 
 If such was the case, the events that immediately followed explain 
 why Plutarch is the only one who mentioned this strange part of 
 the festival. The prompt measures taken to combat the Dionysia 
 and the relentless destruction of the Pythagorean books, show that 
 the Roman authorities were resolved to rescue their state religion 
 from these emotional beliefs that were threatening to engulf it. 
 The same purpose is manifest in the treatment of the cult of Cybele : 
 native Romans were forbidden to join her priesthood, and the 
 priests were restricted, except on certain days of the year, to their 
 own precincts. 73 It was not until the time of Claudius that the 
 Magna Mater was restored to full honor. 74 In view of this state 
 policy, we can well understand that Orphic rites, if introduced into 
 the Lupercalia, would soon have been thrust into the background. 
 In accord with this policy of supression, priests and the compilers 
 of the Fasti would naturally have avoided making any record of 
 the addition of these foreign rites to the Lupercalia. Thus the 
 silence upon that subject of all writers except Plutarch would be 
 reasonably accounted for. Almost certainly Ovid knew nothing 
 of this ceremony. It was the Greek poet Butas, who would natur- 
 ally have been interested in this rite of his own people, who seems 
 to have been Plutarch's authority. Plutarch is, likewise, the only 
 one to comment upon the sacrifice of the dog, a rite more charac- 
 teristically Greek than Roman. 
 
 The trifling evidence which we have to apply to this problem is, 
 at least, not against the theory that the blood-rite may have been 
 introduced into the Lupercalia during the second Punic War or 
 
The Blood-Ceremony of the Lupercalia 93 
 
 the years immediately following. This theory is wholly in accord 
 with reason. We have, as it were, two sides of an equation, and 
 it is tempting to place between them the sign of equality: on the 
 one side, there is in the Lupercalia an incongruous bit of cere- 
 monial which has no unity with the other cult-acts of the festival, 
 and which finds no parallel in the ritualistic practices of the Romans, 
 but which is markedly like many Greek rites, especially those of 
 the Orphics; on the other hand, there is the reception in Rome 
 of a stream of Greek deities and cults, the process being intensified 
 by the strain of a great war, when the people repeatedly sought 
 help from just such mystic rites as this of the Lupercalia. The old' 
 ceremonial, devised to rid man of all that would obstruct the activity 
 of deific power, would then have been spiritualized by the Orphic's 
 assurance of perfect cleansing and of communion, even of kinship, 
 with divinity. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER IX 
 
 1. Plut., Rom., 21. 
 
 2. Tylor, ii, 381. 
 
 3. Gruppe, 891. 
 
 4. Stengel, Die Griechischen Kultusaltertumer, 139-42. 
 
 5. Aesch., Eum., 283; Apoll. Rhod., 4. 477-9, 704. 
 
 6. Stengel, Opferbrditche der Griechen, 30; Diels, Sibyttinische Blatter, 73. 
 
 7. Farnell, iii, 168. 
 
 8. Prudent., Peristeph., 10. 1011-50. 
 
 9. Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 180. 
 
 10. Decharme, in Daremberg-Saglio, i, 1686. 
 
 11. Esperandieu, in Daremberg-Saglio, v, 50. 
 
 12. Stengel, Kultusalt., 150. 
 
 13. Farnell, iii, 302. 
 
 14. Harrison, 481-9; Monceaux, in Daremberg-Saglio, iv, 253. 
 
 15. Verg., Aen., 3. 63-7. 
 
 16. Ov., Fast., 2. 655. 
 
 17. Fest., 178; Ov., Fast., 4. 731-4; Prop., 4. i. 18. 
 
 1 8. Fowler, R. F., 247. 
 
 19. Mackenzie, Crete, 310-2. See also above, page 6. 
 
 20. Esperandieu, in Daremberg-Saglio, v, 48, 49. 
 
 21. Lippert, ii, 498. 
 
 22. Preller, i, 339. 
 
 23. Smith, Semites, 351; see also Schoemann, Griechische Altertumer, ii, 13. 
 
 24. Nonnus Dionys., 27. 228; Poll., Onomast., 8. 65; 7. 188; Harpocrat., 
 
 25. Demosth., de Cor., 259; Ammonius, 7repiAidai; Lucian, Necy., 7. 
 
94 The Lupercalia 
 
 26. Lippert, ii, 537; Diels, 122. 
 
 27. Fast., 2. 19-28. 
 
 28. Athen., n. 56. p. 478 d; Harrison, 159-60. 
 
 29. Kaibel, C. I. G. I. S., 481 a, b, c. For the discussion of these tablets, see 
 Dieterich, Hym. orph., 30-7; id., Nekyia, 84-95; Harrison, 573-99. 
 
 30. Reinach, Une formule orphique, in Rev. Arch., vol. xxxix, 204. 
 
 31. Kaibel, C. /. G. I. S., 642, 481 a. See also Harrison, 584, 586. 
 
 32. Hym. orph., 36. See also Hesych., 'Ept^tos. 
 
 33. Reinach, Rev. Arch., vol. xxxix, 207; id. Cultes, ii. 128; Cook, Zeus, 674-5. 
 
 34. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, 171. Milk was one of the gifts which 
 streamed from the earth for the worshippers of Dionysus (Eur. Bacch., 142, 708, 
 et al.}. 
 
 35% Reinach, Cultes, ii, 128. 
 
 36. Cook, Zeus, 675-7. 
 
 37. Reinach, Cultes, ii, 129-32; id. Rev. Arch., vol. xxxix, 206; Harrison, 594-7. 
 
 38. Farnell, iii., 301. This corresponds to the usage of the early Christians, by 
 which milk was offered to the new communicants as the sign of new birth (Usener, 
 Milch und Honig, Rhein. Mus., vol. Ivii, 183). 
 
 39. Lippert, ii, 564. 
 
 40. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch^, 98. 
 
 41. Deubner, Arch. Rel., vol. xiii, 502. 
 
 42. Demos., de Cor. 313. 
 
 43. Farnell, iii, 301. 
 
 44. Dr. Deubner (Arch. Rel., vol. xiii, 506-8) believes that the blood-ritual 
 was borrowed from the Greeks, and that it signified purification and new birth. 
 He holds, however, that it, and also the dog-sacrifice, was added to the Lupercalia 
 under the influence of Augustus. In view of Augustus's rationalistic temperament 
 and of his desire to restore the ancient cults of Rome, it is hard to accept this view. 
 
 45. For the earlier influence exerted by the Cumaean Sibyl upon the religion 
 of Rome, see Wissowa, R. K., 50-2; Fowler, R.E., 255-66; Carter, Rel. Rome, 
 40-5- 
 
 46. For a survey of the changes effected in Roman religion during this period, 
 see Fowler, R. E., 314-31; Wissowa, R. K., 58-64; Carter, Religion of Numa, 
 104-15. 
 
 47. R. .,319. 
 
 48. Liv., 22. 57. 6. 
 
 49. Harrison, 455. 
 
 50. See p. 81 n. 43. 
 
 51. Wissowa, R. K., 268-73. 
 
 52. Fowler, R. F., 105. 
 
 53. Cic., Tusc., i. 38; Liv., I. 18. 2. 
 
 54. Seep. 85. 
 
 55. Dieterich, Hym. orph., 39. 
 
 56. Schwegler, i, 683; Pais, A nc. It., 303-44. 
 
 57. Cic., Tusc., 4. 2. 4. 
 
 58. Cic., Cat. M., 78. 
 
 59. Liv., i. 18. 2. 
 
The Blood-Ceremony of the Lupercalia 95 
 
 60. Liv., 40. 29; Plin., N. H., 13. 84-6. 
 
 61. Liv., 39. 8-16. 
 
 62. Fowler, R. E., 344-9. 
 
 63. Liv., 21. 62. 4. 
 
 64. Liv., 22. I. 12. 
 
 65. Liv., 22. i. 9, 10; 22. 36. 7; 24. 44. 8. 
 
 66. Liv., 22. 57. 2, 6. 
 
 67. Liv., 24. 44. 9. 
 
 68. Liv., 25. i. 6-8. 
 
 69. Liv., 25. i. 
 
 70. Plut., ^ow., 21. 
 
 71. Suet., Jul. t 79. 
 
 72. See note 61. See also Fowler, 7?. E., 347. 
 
 73. Dionys., 2. 79. 
 
 74. Cumont, jT/re Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 55. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 RESUME 
 
 More than a thousand years before the Christian era, we may 
 imagine the hills upon the Tiber occupied by scattered clans of 
 Ligurians. From their remote ancestors they had inherited a 
 religion that was mainly of fear, and that sought to propitiate the 
 invisible forces that seemed lurking to do harm. To the people of 
 Italy the wolf was a constant object of terror, and so it had very 
 early come to typify this destructive power. Accordingly the 
 tribes dwelling near the Palatine came to the Lupercal and tried 
 to propitiate the wolf-deity that dwelt there. They offered a goat 
 from their herds, then fled with all speed from the scene of the 
 slaughter of a sacred animal. Afterward, having expiated their 
 guilt, they returned to the cave, to partake in sacramental fashion 
 of the victim. In this, its earliest stage, the Lupercalia was an 
 apotropaic rite whose purpose was protection against evil. 
 
 When the terramara folk settled upon the Palatine, they found 
 the cult at the wolf-cave too long established and too deeply ven- 
 erated to be eradicated or disregarded. Therefore they incorpor- 
 ated it into their religion, and had their own priests share in the 
 ritual. Yet the part assigned to the new-comers was shadowy; 
 the Ligurian priests performed all the significant rites. In time 
 the practical Romans observed that the goat-sacrifice which they 
 offered at the Lupercal lacked the vigor possessed by it in the neigh- 
 boring cults of Juno Caprotina and Juno Lucina, in which blows 
 from the victim's hide assured to the worshippers the entrance of 
 the god's life-giving power. So they proceeded to reinforce the 
 rite of Lupercus with these cult-acts of Juno. Thus the Lupercalia 
 had a new purpose added to the old one: it now served to assure 
 the people of fertility. 
 
 After the cult of the dog had appeared in Italy, a dog-sacrifice 
 was regarded as an especially potent means of purification. It was, 
 accordingly, adopted by the Sabines, an intensely devout people, 
 who regarded man's impurity as the root of all disaster. It is not 
 hard to believe that, when the Sabines took under their care some 
 of the oldest chthonic cults of Rome, and devoted the month of 
 
Resume 97 
 
 February wholly to cleansing rites, they sought to add potency to 
 the Lupercalia, which occurred in the middle of this lustra! period, 
 by including in its rites the sacrifice of a dog. According to the 
 interpretation of the Sabines, the Lupercalia could best perform 
 its old purpose of protection and fertility by assuring the people 
 of purification. 
 
 As directed by the Roman priesthood, Rome's religion tended to 
 become stereotyped and formalistic. At a time of peril it could 
 offer little of support or of comfort. Consequently the dark days 
 of the war with Hannibal witnessed the reception in Rome of an 
 unbroken succession of chthonic gods and of their orgiastic rites. 
 The outworn festivals of the native gods, who no longer helped the 
 people, were revivified by the addition of Greek ceremonies. Such 
 a time affords a natural setting for the introduction into the Luper- 
 calia of acts which resemble nothing except the rites of the Orphics. 
 These Orphic ceremonies possessed a power of lustration so strong 
 that they assured to the celebrant an entrance into a new state, 
 where he was one with the gods. Therefore if the effete ceremonial 
 of the Lupercalia was reinforced by the Orphic sprinkling with blood 
 for perfect cleansing, and the mystic use of milk in token of new 
 life, it was a logical culmination of a festival that sought to protect 
 the people from harm by making them pure. 
 
 In the development of the Lupercalia, the old was not replaced 
 by the new so much as reinterpreted by it. Protection against 
 evil involved, on its positive side, the assurance of productivity. 
 For that, cleanness of the worshipper was essential, hence the cere- 
 mony became dominantly lustral. According to later theology, 
 when man was fully cleansed, he became akin to the gods. Having 
 thus been reinforced by successive new ideas, this oldest of Rome's 
 festivals was the last to succumb to Christianity. Even when Pope 
 Gelasius abrogated it, he softened his act by establishing on the 
 same day a festival celebrating the purification of the Virgin. 1 
 Thus transformed, the Lupercalia, in its essential meaning, con- 
 tinued to live on. 
 
 i. Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastics, 8. 60 fol. 
 
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 - W 
 
VITA 
 
 Alberta Mildred Franklin was born December 10, 1880, at 
 Farmingdale, New Jersey. She was graduated from Wellesley 
 College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1904. During her 
 course she was made a Durant Scholar. She received the degree of 
 Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1909. In 1904-5 she 
 was teacher of Latin and Greek in the High School of Atlantic 
 Highlands, New Jersey; in 1905-6, teacher of Latin and Ancient 
 History in the Girls' Classical School, Pasadena, California; in 
 19068, teacher of Latin and English in the Collegiate School, 
 Passaic, New Jersey; in 1909-15, teacher of Latin and Ancient 
 History in the Barnard School for Girls, New York City; in 1915- 
 19, Professor of Latin and Greek at Lake Erie College, Painesville, 
 Ohio; in 1919-21, Associate Professor of Latin and Greek in Wilson 
 College, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. During the years 1907-14 
 she was studying at Columbia University under the direction of 
 Professors Frank Frost Abbott, George Willis Botsford, John 
 Raymond Crawford, James Chidester Egbert, Henry Rushton 
 Fairclough, Roscoe Guernsey, Charles Knapp, Nelson Glenn 
 McCrea, Harry Thurston Peck, Edward Delavan Perry, LaRue 
 Van Hook, and James Rignall Wheeler. In 1921 she was 
 appointed Professor of Classics in Wilson College, Chambersburg, 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
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