In ancient Roman religion, the Lucaria was a

festival A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival ...

of the grove (Latin '' lucus'') held 19 and 21 July. The original meaning of the ritual was obscure by the time of

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...

(mid-1st century BC), who omits it in his list of festivals. The deity for whom it was celebrated is unknown; if a ritual for grove-clearing recorded by Cato pertains to this festival, the

invocation An invocation (from the Latin verb ''invocare'' "to call on, invoke, to give") may take the form of: *Supplication, prayer or spell. *A form of possession. *Command or conjuration. * Self-identification with certain spirits. These forms ...

was deliberately anonymous ''( Si deus, si dea)''. The dates of the Lucaria are recorded in the '' Fasti Amiterni'', a calendar dating from the reign of

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...

found at

Amiternum Amiternum was an ancient Sabine city, then Roman city and later bishopric and Latin Catholic titular see in the central Abruzzo region of modern Italy, located from L'Aquila. Amiternum was the birthplace of the historian Sallust (86 BC). Histo ...

(now S. Vittorino) in

Sabine The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines di ...

territory. The Augustan grammarian

Verrius Flaccus Marcus Verrius Flaccus (c. 55 BCAD 20) was a Roman grammarian and teacher who flourished under Augustus and Tiberius. Life He was a freedman, and his manumitter has been identified with Verrius Flaccus, an authority on pontifical law; but for c ...

connected the Lucaria to the disastrous defeat of the Romans by the

Gauls The Gauls ( la, Galli; grc, Γαλάται, ''Galátai'') were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (''Gallia''). They s ...

at the

Battle of the Allia The Battle of the Allia was a battle fought between the Senones – a Gallic tribe led by Brennus, who had invaded Northern Italy – and the Roman Republic. The battle was fought at the confluence of the Tiber and Allia rivers, 11 Roman ...

, which was fought on 18 July. The festival, he says, was celebrated in the large grove between the

Via Salaria The Via Salaria was an ancient Roman road in Italy. It eventually ran from Rome (from Porta Salaria of the Aurelian Walls) to ''Castrum Truentinum'' ( Porto d'Ascoli) on the Adriatic coast, a distance of 242 km. The road also passed throug ...

and the

Tiber river The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Ri ...

, where the Romans who survived the battle had hidden. The Via Salaria crossed the battlefield about 10 miles north of Rome. The ''lucus'' thus would have been located on the

Pincian Hill The Pincian Hill (; it, Pincio ; la, Mons Pincius) is a hill in the northeast quadrant of the historical centre of Rome. The hill lies to the north of the Quirinal, overlooking the Campus Martius. It was outside the original boundaries of th ...

, which was later cultivated as gardens and leisure parks by

Lucullus Lucius Licinius Lucullus (; 118–57/56 BC) was a Roman general and statesman, closely connected with Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In culmination of over 20 years of almost continuous military and government service, he conquered the eastern kingd ...

, Pompeius,

Sallust Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust (; 86 – ), was a Roman historian and politician from an Italian plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became during the 50s BC a partisan ...

and others. This explanatory story has been compared to that of the

Poplifugia The Poplifugia or Populifugia (Latin: ''the people's flight''), was a festival of ancient Rome celebrated on July 5, according to Varro, in commemoration of the flight of the Romans, when the inhabitants of Ficuleae and Fidenae appeared in arms ag ...

, which also involved the Gallic sack of Rome. The story may be more aetiological than historical. The Lucaria suggests that grove veneration was a practice which the early Romans had in common with the Gauls. Like other "fixed holidays" ('' dies nefasti publici'') on the

Roman calendar The Roman calendar was the calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic. The term often includes the Julian calendar established by the reforms of the dictator Julius Caesar and emperor Augustus in the late 1stcenturyBC and sometim ...

, the Lucaria took place on days of uneven number, with an intervening day that was "non-festive". A mention by Macrobius seems to imply that the festival began at night and continued the following day.

Georg Wissowa Georg Otto August Wissowa (17 June 1859 – 11 May 1931) was a German classical philologist born in Neudorf, near Breslau. Education and career Wissowa studied classical philology under August Reifferscheid at the University of Bresla ...

thought that it may have been connected to the

Neptunalia The Neptunalia was an obscure archaic two-day festival in honor of Neptune as god of waters, celebrated at Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map ...

on 23 July, when leafy huts, called umbrae, were built as shelters to protect against the hot summer sun and bulls were sacrificed. Neptune embodied fresh as well as salt water among the Romans, and the collocation of festivals in July, including also the

Furrinalia In ancient Roman religion, the Furrinalia (or Furinalia) was an annual festival held on 25 July to celebrate the rites ''( sacra)'' of the goddess Furrina. Varro notes that the festival was a public holiday ''( feriae publicae dies)''. Both the fes ...

on 25 May express concerns for drought. Robert Schilling, "Neptune," ''Roman and European Mythologies'' (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 138.

References

{{Roman religion (festival) Ancient Roman festivals July observances

See also

References