Lectisternium

"[1] The deities were represented by their busts or statues, or by portable figures of wood, with heads of bronze, wax or marble.

that the divine images were bundles of sacred herbs tied together in the form of a head, covered by a waxen mask so as to resemble a kind of bust, rather like the straw figures called Argei.

Livy says[2] that the ceremony took place "for the first time" in Rome in the year 399 BC, after a pestilence had caused the Sibylline Books to be consulted by the duumviri sacris faciundis, the two (later 10, and later 15) priestly officials who maintained the archive.

In 217 BC, after the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene, a lectisternium was held for three days to six pairs of gods, corresponding to the Twelve Olympians of ancient Greek religion: Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Diana, Vulcan, Vesta, Mercury, Ceres.

In 205 BC, alarmed by unfavorable prodigies, the Romans were ordered to fetch the Great Mother of the gods from Pessinus in Phrygia; in the following year the image was brought to Rome, and a lectisternium held.

Aulus Hirtius reports that Julius Caesar was greeted with "draped dining couches" following his victory in Gaul, in anticipation of a forthcoming triumph.

[5] Offerings of food were made to the gods in very early Roman times on such occasions as the ceremony of confarreatio, and the epulum Jovis (often conflated with the lectisternium).

"[clarification needed] It may be that as the lectisternia became an almost everyday occurrence in Rome, people forgot their foreign origin and the circumstances in which they were first introduced, and then the word pulvinar with its associations was transferred to times in which it had no existence.