Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
Worship of Animals.= Of the worship of animals we have comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may perhaps detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the Lupercalia, where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal.
"You have taken away from the Luperci the revenues which Julius Caesar assigned to them." Does he dare to make mention of the Luperci? Does he not shudder at the recollection of that day on which, smelling of wine, reeking with perfumes, and naked, he dared to exhort the indignant Roman people to embrace slavery?
Yet this is but dubious, for it may come as well from the wolf that nursed Romulus; and we see the Luperci, the priests, begin their course from the place where they say Romulus was exposed.
Mannhardt, in his usual way, collects all the facts first, and then analyses the name Luperci. This does not make him a philological mythologist.
Here we have a summary of many of the important points which we have noticed in the rustic festivals: from the pre-Roman stratum comes the idea of communion with the sacrificed animal in the smearing of the blood and the wearing of the skin, and also the magic charm involved in the striking of the women to procure fertility: it is typical of the true feeling of Roman religion that we cannot with any certainty tell what deity was associated with the rite, though probably it was Faunus: the rustic character of the ceremony is indicated by the bowl of milk in which the wool was dipped and the sacrifice of goats: the idea of lustration is clearly marked in the course round the boundaries: the original Palatine settlement stands out in the limits of that course and the site of the Lupercal, and the later synoecismus is seen in the, presumably subsequent, addition of the second college of Luperci.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking