The Meditrinalia 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 ...

in the traditional

Roman religion Religion in ancient Rome consisted of varying imperial and provincial religious practices, which were followed both by the people of Rome as well as those who were brought under its rule. The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, ...

, celebrated on October 11 in honor of the new

vintage Vintage, in winemaking, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product—wine (see Harvest (wine)). A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certa ...

, which was offered as

libation A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid, or grains such as rice, as an offering to a deity or spirit, or in memory of the dead. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in cultures today. Various substanc ...

s to the gods for the first time each year. Though now obscure, the festival may have been so called from ''medendo'',

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "healing", because the Romans then began to drink new

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

, which they mixed with old and considered to have healing properties. Little information about the Meditrinalia survived from early Roman religion, although the tradition itself did. It was known to be somehow connected to

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

and to have been an important ceremony in early agricultural

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, but beyond that, only speculation exists. A goddess, Meditrina, seems to have been a late Roman invention to account for the origin of the festival. The earliest account associating the Meditrinalia with such a goddess was of the 2nd century grammarian

Sextus Pompeius Festus Sextus Pompeius Festus, usually known simply as Festus, was a Roman grammarian who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo (Narbonne) in Gaul. Work He made a 20-volume epitome of Verrius Flaccus's voluminous and encyclop ...

, on the basis of which Meditrina is asserted by modern sources to be the Roman goddess of health, longevity and wine, with an etymological meaning of "healer" suggested by some.

References

* Scullard, H.H. (1981). ''Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic'' (p. 142). London: Thames and Hudson. .

External links

LacusCurtius site:
Meditrinalia

Libation for the Meditrinalia
ReferenceWorks site:
Meditrinalia Ancient Roman festivals October observances {{reli-festival-stub