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Updated: June 4, 2025
No doubt the private citizen would often attend in large numbers at the celebrations, especially at the more popular festivals, but from some, such as the Vestalia, he was actually excluded. On the other hand, though it did not demand presence, the state did at least theoretically demand the observance of the feast-day by private individuals.
In the month of June from the 7th to the 15th, with a climax on the 9th, the day of the Vestalia, the matrons who all the year round have tended their own hearths, come in solemn procession bare-footed to make their homely offerings at the state-hearth, and the virgins meanwhile offer the cakes that they have made.
Mars at his October festival must have his horse, Iuno Caprotina her goat, and Robigus his dog, while in the more rustic festivals such as the Parilia, the offering would be the simpler gift of millet-cakes and bowls of milk: in the case of the Bona Dea we have the curious provision that if wine were used in the ceremonial, it must, as she was in origin a pastoral deity, always be spoken of as 'milk. The persons who might be present in the various festivals were also rigidly determined: men were excluded from the Matronalia on March 1, from the Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of the Bona Dea: the notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal raised by a breach of this rule even at the period when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb.
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