Roman Festivals in March – Episode notes.
- WORDSWORTH WORDSMITHY
- Jul 30
- 17 min read
I hope you enjoyed the March episode and hope you find the below content useful!
Here’s a link to the episode on Numa
I have also done a specific article going about the Salii where you can see an example of the shield shape which I discussed. I also mentioned the Lupercalia and this has its own podcast episode which you can listen to.
Table of Contents
Field of Mars (Campus Martius)
The map below gives you an idea of where the Field of Mars was and where the horse race(s) took place.
Roman war trumpets
The Roman military used several instruments and often what’s depicted is the cornu. The Tubilustrium was for the tuba, a smaller type of trumpet.
I’ve got videos to both below so you can see and hear them
This blog piece covers the different types and features Asterix which is always a good thing!
Reading List
Cato, On Farming.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities
Livy, History of Rome.
Marcobius, Saturnalia.
Ovid, Fasti.
Polybius, Histories (21.13.2 for the reference on Scipio Africanus)
Varro, Latin Language.
Cross, R. Bold as brass: ‘brass instruments’ in the Roman army
Hoerber, RG. The worship of Mars
Musial, D. Divinities of the Roman Liberalia
von den Osten, DE. The cult of the goddess’ Libertas’ in Rome and its reflection in Ovid’s poetry and Tibullan love elegy
Piranomonte, M. Religion and magic at Rome: the fountain of Anna Perenna
Ramsey, T. Ovid’s Anna Perenna and the coin of Gaius Annius
Rouselle, R. Liber-Dionysus in early Roman Drama
Rupke, J. On Roman Religion
Flamines, Salii and the priestesses of Vesta
The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine
Warde Fowler, W. The Roman festivals of the period of the Republic
Transcription
Hi and welcome, my name’s Neil and in this episode I am continuing my look at the Roman festival year with the month of March. As you might be aware this is part of a miniseries and so far there have been episodes on the previous months. These cultural events aren’t always fully described, Ovid, a poet, wrote a poem called the Fasti in the early 1st century AD which gives us some details but there are references elsewhere. I’ve mentioned him in the previous episodes, and I should apologise because there I have pronounced him Ovid rather than Ovid. In either case you will certainly hear from Ovid in this episode.
My aim is to try and get a sense of how these festivals manifested and perhaps more importantly what they meant to all levels of society. How did people engage with them exactly and what can they tell us about living in Rome in the early Imperial period?
You can find episode notes with a transcription, reading list and other info on my website ancientblogger.com along with all sorts of ancient history content. You can also find me as ancientblogger on Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky and with a channel on YouTube. It’s all ancient history in case you wondered.
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Ok, let’s get to it.
In the first episode of this miniseries, the January one, I spoke about how there was a bit of debate about the Roman calendar and how it all developed. March was mentioned in all of this because it was thought that it had once been the start of the year.
The argument for this was supported by several key events taking place. To start with this was the month which began the campaigning season, it was the month where the Vestal Virgins at Rome renewed the sacred fire of Vesta. It was also when consuls, the two most senior magistrates in Rome, took charge. It also made literal sense when you considered that the name of some months. Quintilis, which was later renamed July after Julius Caesar, translates as the fifth month. Sextilis, later named August, translates as the sixth month. You then have September October, November and December translating as the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month.
This numbering sequence doesn’t work if you start the year in January, but it does if you start in March.
All these factors, and others, have been argued as why March once started the Roman year. However, what’s also true is that March lost out to January at some point – by the time of the Julian Calendar, established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, January was the starting month of the year and probably had been for some time.
Though the consuls had began their office in March there had been a change, and they began their term of office in January. There’s a reference to this change linked to the year 153 BC. At this time there was a rebellion in Spain and a consul needed to lead out an army to face it. Waiting till March was not an option, so the Senate allowed the consuls to start take office in January.
This brings me back to a point I made in the January episode when I was discussing how the Roman calendar developed. In short we don’t have much information. We are therefore left to speculate relying on later sources which aren’t always wholly accurate or are themselves speculating.
But perhaps we are looking at all of this from a modern perspective. In which month the year began may not have been as important as we hold in the modern day. The real importance was that each month had its days allocated for legal and religious purposes, again, something I went into in the January episodes.
With that said it does seem that March was the general starting point for the Roman year and that this changed. And yet despite this March retained a sense of new beginnings, one festival I mention later harked back to this and the fact that March had once marked the beginning of the campaigning season was an overarching theme. March after all was named after Mars, a god primarily associated with war but also other things.
Mars was a central deity in Rome’s foundation myth. He had fathered Romulus and Remus and was associated with two animals which featured in their respective myths. The first you’ll get, it was of course the wolf, or rather in this instance a she-wolf which nourished the twins. The second is less well known some versions of the myth featuring the she-wolf also has the woodpecker bringing the boys scraps of food.
Mars wasn’t a god created in a vacuum. As you may know Rome grew alongside other Italic peoples who also had their war gods. For the Oscans and Samnites there was Mamer, for the Etruscans it was Laran. It’s likely that Rome alongside these cultures formed their respective war god from a similar template with shared characteristics.
And in fact two of these characteristics also had relevance with where March sat in the calendar. I’ve mentioned one as relating to the beginning of the campaigning season. Earlier in Rome’s history the general practice was to have any military campaign or offence when the weather was good. But like the woodpecker there was another element which might surprise you. Mars as a god of agriculture as spring was a crucial time for this.
It’s difficult to get over how important harvests and agriculture in general was in antiquity. It could make or break a people. In his work on Agriculture which dates to the mid-2nd century BC, Cato noted how Mars was important. Cato mentioned a prayer to Mars which prevented sickness and pestilence at the farm and that crops grew with cattle staying healthy. There was a specific offering Cato noted which was made in the context of the health of the cattle, again, to Mars. Finally there was the Carmen Arvale, a hymn sung by the Arval priests. This called on Mars to help ensure the fertility of the fields. The spring was an apt time for a deity associated with agriculture and perhaps this was an important aspect of Mars’ worship early on which gradually dissipated but wasn’t forgotten.
Towards the end of February’s episode I gave a bit of a teaser when I mentioned a procession with dancing and a prop, sort of. This relates to the Salii and these were priests who were said to have been established by Numa, Rome second King. We have two main sources for these, the first is Livy and he gave a nice summary in his History of Rome. And I quote:
“He likewise enrolled 12 Salian priests of Mars Gradivus and granted them the distinction of an embroidered tunic over which they wore a bronze breastplate. He bade them carry the shields from heaven called ancilia and to go through the city singing hymns and performing their ritual three step war dance”
Endquote.
The second source is Dionysius of Halicarnassus and it’s worth noting that both these sources date predominantly to the 1st century BC. The caveat here is that they were operating centuries after and the bigger caveat is that Rome’s early history is largely speculated. Rome didn’t have it first historian till the end of the 3rd century BC with Fabius Pictor. If you want to hear more about this don’t forget my miniseries on the regal period and foundation myth of Rome.
Dionysius fleshed things out a little more, he noted the priests were 12 young men from the Patrician class who had, and I quote “the most graceful appearance” end quote. As to their regalia this consisted of embroidered tunics which had wide girdles of bronze and over these robes striped with scarlet and bordered with purple. These were called trabeae. Headwear came in the form of high conical caps. Dionysius noted that the Greeks had these and that they were called kyrbasiai. Unlike Livy Dionysius was a Greek and his history which includes early, and pre-Roman history often carries reference to the Greeks. If there’s a way for Dionysius to find a link to anything Greek he will, though the links he finds here do seem plausible.
Being priests of Mars it wouldn’t surprise you to hear that they carried weapons. In the right hand it could be a spear, dagger or sword but all eyes were on what they carried in the left hand a shield, known as the ancilia. Though there were several of those, including some suspended on racks which were carried on the procession, there was one original which had apparently fallen from the heavens. Numa realised the value of the object and had copies made.
I have mentioned Numa in previous episodes, and he has his own episode in my Roman Kings miniseries, he’s credited with establishing much of Rome’s religious infrastructure. Whether this was true or not, he seems to have been the go-to character when a religious institution or practice required a retrospective founder. However, and I go into this in more detail in his episode, he comes across less as a wise old man and more a bit of a chancer who was always claiming divine intervention. There is even an implication that one of the reasons he created all the priesthoods was to channel the highly competitive, and violent, society of the time into this rather than fighting themselves and just about everyone else.
The Salii took their name from their dancing, skipping and leaping. All of which are mentioned by the sources. Exactly how they danced isn’t clear, the poet Horace implied that three steps were sometimes involved as did Livy. Dionysius adds that there was flute music which was part of the performance. Elsewhere it’s a case of them moving around clashing the shields with the weapons they held. And on those shields they are described as lozenges with the sides cut out. This sounds similar to a Boeotian shield which is shaped like a number 8 without the holes, or better still a cello or violin.
If you are wondering why this shape for a shield was ever a thing? Well, consider using a spear with a square or rectangular shield. Not so easy to move the spear around unless the sides of the shield have cutaways which facilitate spear thrusts much more easily.
Though we don’t have much information about the procession it seems that the Salii made their way to various points across the city during March where they would perform these dances. It wasn’t, well, it wasn’t a continual conga style situation. It’s argued that the dances would have been performed in public locations and private with the priests staying overnight and feasting in different residences on the way.
The dance and function of it has been discussed, it’s probable that by the time of the 1st century BC the original reason had been forgotten or layered upon by others. A case in point being the Lupercalia which may have had an original function which became ancillary. Dionysius linked the practice to that of the Curetes, who were figures in Greek mythology. These had helped hide the infant Zeus from his father by making lots of noise, including clashing weapons on shields, to drown out baby Zeus’ cries. Dionysius might be onto something here after all there was the Pyrrhic dance which was quite famous in which men danced in armour so perhaps there was this link to the Greeks.
The ritualised dancing and the fact that this was a procession links into a type of religious activity I spoke about during the episode on February. You might remember the lustratio, a type of ritual which involved a procession. The theme was that this, along with other aspects, purified an area and invoked good relations with the gods. It’s plausible that the Salii were performing a type of lustration, purifying the city as well as the ancilla, or shields.
Perhaps there was also an appeal to fertility going on as well. Earlier I mentioned the Arval Brothers and their appeal to Mars. This manifested as both a hymn, known as the Carmen Arvale, but also a dance. Perhaps the dance had some other function relating to fertility here as when it was done for agriculture.
A final point about the Salii and their procession involves the famous Scipio Africanus. He was one of the Salii priests and was leading a Roman army in 190 BC. There was a restriction placed on the Salii during the time of the procession, and this manifested in him not being able to cross the Hellespont into Asia Minor. His army could, but he was left on the other side of the straits and had to wait.
The next festival was a horse race called the Equirria. On the 14th of March this would have taken place on the Campus Martius or Field of Mars. This piece of land had previously existed outside of the city, but in 7 BC part of it was incorporated as a result of Augustus reorganised the city into 14 regions. Once a marshy ground it had been drained and developed. It was here that Pompey built his theatre, and where Julius Caesar was assassinated when the Senate had a meeting there.
This area was still liable for flooding and in such an instance the race, or races, were moved to the Caelian Hill. We don’t have much detail about the race, but it’s argued that it was to give the cavalry Mars’ blessing. It’s also suggested that it was another type of lustratio. If so then Mars was certainly establishing a theme. The Lupercalia, linked to Mars, was a lustratio, I’ve just spoken about the Salii, and it was on the Field of Mars that a lustratio for the Roman people was conducted as part of a census which took place every 5 years. There’s another lustratio later which you will be hearing about, and there’s a clue in how I phrased that.
So far we’ve had dancing priests and a horse race. Well up next was just a good old time getting drunk and camping out.
On the 15th of March was the Anna Perenna, the Roman festival which sounds most like someone you went to school with. This took place outside of Rome and near the first milestone on the via Flaminia, a road which went north and over the Apennine Mountains. This was an outdoor event and seems to have been primarily for the plebian class who constructed makeshift structures from branches.
Ovid didn’t hold back in his judgement of the general behaviour which took place. This is probably because it involved the plebs, and the likes of Ovid weren’t about to attend it. To start with there was drinking, lots of it. Ovid wrote that this was part of the festival, that people would pray for as many years of life left as they took cups of wine. Needless to say people went overboard, and Ovid took the opportunity to point the judgemental finger. Here you’d find a man who would drain as many goblets as Nestor had years.
Worse still – women were at it as well. In line with the comment about drinking as many cups as you’d have years, well, here a women who had drunk so many she’ll reach the age of the Sibyl. There was singing dancing, particularly rude or course songs learned in the theatre and young girls acting with abandon. Not quite the end days of Rome but for some close. Ovid saves his most critical comment for those returning from the festival and I quote
“Homecoming they stagger, a sight for vulgar eyes”. I suspect many of us have also seen similar sights today, most likely if you are up early. Perhaps a few of us, myself included have also formed that vulgar sight. Oh, the joys of youth.
This all sounds good, or awful, depending on your perspective of day drinking but why and who exactly was Anna Perenna? Well, it was unclear, and Ovid suggests some options. One is that she was the sister of Dido, the Carthaginian Queen. After Dido’s death Anna became an exile and travelled to Italy only to tragically drown in the Numicius River and became a nymph with her surname coming from ‘the ever-flowing river’. The poet also identifies her with an old woman from Bovillae who helped the plebs in 494 BC. There are other associations given to Anna Perenna but one which seems the most likely is that she was associated with fertility and the renewal of the year.
This harks back to the idea of March being the beginning of the year, the 15th would normally be the first new moon of what was once the new year. This all seems to fit with this concept and there may also be a clue in the name. The name Perenna could have translated as something like ‘per annum’ or yearly. But not just in Latin but within the wider Oscan languages which were spoken by the Italic peoples in Italy.
From this we might consider Anna Perenna as a deity who wasn’t specifically Roman but instead an older deity associated with fertility and the new year which other Italian peoples worshipped which made its way to Rome.
To support this a fountain dedicated to Anna Perenna was found in Rome. This included a cistern which held numerous objects, from votive images through to curse tablets dating to the later Roman empire. The earliest date for the fountain has been given as the 4th century BC.
What we may have here is a deity whose worship and relevance was moulded over successive centuries. Once a deity of the new year she became fixed to a myth involving Aeneas and to the plebs through an event in the early 5th century BC. I suspect were you to wander amongst the tipsy plebs and ask who Anna Perenna was – you would come away with several versions and the Romans had no issue with this. Before I move on one argument I read about the festival made some interesting points in that it was quite a subversive one. The fact that the plebs got up to what they wanted, that it took place outside of Rome does seem quite contrarian. This opposition to what was considered normal extended to the building of ad-hoc shelters, these being in opposition to the permanent and more formal buildings in Rome.
This theme of uncertainty about a festival continued in the Liberalia, celebrated on the 17th of March. In the 1st century BC Varro wrote about this in his work of the Latin Language in which he discussed the etymology of things. Varro stated that the festival got its name because, and I quote:
“Because on that day old women wearing ivy wreaths on their heads sit in all parts of the town, as priestesses of Liber, with cakes and a brazier on which they offer up the cakes on behalf of any purchaser”
Liber was a deity associated with agriculture; Cato mentioned him in his work On Agriculture along with Ceres as it was by their favour that food and drink come from the farm. The latter, drink, was particularly associated with Liber as he helped oversee the pressing of the grapes and this led to his association with Dionysus or Bacchus. What seems to have occurred here is something known as interpretatio – which is defined as the practice of interpreting or understanding myths and deities of one culture through the lens of another’s mythology.
The exact way that Bacchus was equated with Liber is debated, the earliest surviving reference as him as a god of wine dates to 90 BC. It’s argued that this was a gradual process with Liber increasingly gaining this aspect. Ovid certainly thought so as his description of the elements of the Liberalia are studded with links to the god of wine. The old women selling cakes? Well, they have ivy wreaths and ivy was a famous association of the wine god. The fact that they were women linked in to his ability to rouse women into his worship. Even their age was linked to wine as Ovid noted how elder women were more addicted to it. I can’t much comment on that part save that my nan was very fond of a drop of sherry, gin or several barley wines.
Aside from the connections to Bacchus, Ovid also points to the name of Liber as freedom and this element is also important to note. Cicero considered Liberty as warranting a god due to its importance and power and there were buildings devoted to the cult of Libertas, such as the temple of Jupiter Libertas on the Aventine. This building, according to Livy, was founded in 246 BC and became associated with the plebs.
A more personal manifestation was a type of toga, the toga liberas, which was worn on this day by youths marking their transition to manhood. This was a plain white woollen toga, also known as the toga virilis. This rite of passage was usually taken by Roman boys between the ages of 14 and 17 and the Liberalia was a popular day for it.
Ovid doesn’t seem entirely convinced as to the origins of the Liberalia, but perhaps it’s unfair to judge him on this. His work was a poem to entertain and not a set history on festivals. Once again though we have this sense of a festival with several meanings and ways which it can in interacted with. Rich noble boys might celebrate manhood, perhaps the poorer bought a cake though the idea of buying a cake purely to have it burnt as an offering doesn’t seem all that tempting.
The final festival was another lustratio, but this time not for horses, though it was linked to the military. The Tubilustrium took place on the 23rd of March and was a simple affair which involved trumpets. These weren’t normal trumpets, but ones used in ceremonies, though we might expect that the extension here was to ones used by armies.
The trumpets, or tuba, were described by Varro as a straight cylindrical object with a flared end. In the miliary sphere these were used along with other instruments as a signalling tool both on the battlefield and back at camp. This took place as the artium sutorium of Hall of the Shoemaker and this itself was probably a name derived from it existing in an area where there were a large number of shoemakers.
I started the episode with a purification ritual, a lustrum or lustratio, and so I end with one and aside from this theme there is another which I think is worth considering. Romans seemed quite happy with festivals where the origin story was, shall we say, varied. In some of the previous festivals, for example the Lupercalia in February, there is a sense that Rome adapted an existing ritual and gave it more modern associations. In March we have Anna Perenna which was possibly similar – I wonder what that original ritual had been. Perhaps a communal feast for the first full moon of the year. As Rome grew and developed it had specific associations made to it, such as the old woman who helped the Plebs in 494 BC. There’s also the Liberalia, where newer associations were layered upon it.
Much like an archaeological site and its layers, some of these festivals have older elements and insights found the deeper you dig. When you find them it can invite more questions than it answers. It reminds us that ancient Rome was a place and time in flux; it wasn’t a monolithic block of time labelled old. Things were changed and tweaked.
As ever thanks for listening and the nice feedback, be it an email or review. Until next time keep safe and stay well.
