Roman festivals

Festivals in ancient Rome were a very important part in Roman religious life during both the Republican and Imperial eras, and one of the primary feat of "holy days"; singular also feriae or dies ferialis) were either public (publicae) or private (privatae).

Feriae publicae were of three kinds: One of the most important sources for Roman holidays is Ovid's Fasti, an incomplete poem that describes and provides origins for festivals from January to June at the time of Augustus.

A deity's festival often marked the anniversary (dies natalis, "birthday") of the founding of a temple, or a rededication after a major renovation.

Each Kalends was sacred to Juno, and the Regina sacrorum ("Queen of the Rites," a public priestess) marked the day by presiding over a sacrifice to the goddess.

The list also includes other notable public religious events such as sacrifices and processions that were observed annually but are neither feriae nor dies natales.

It marked a turn of season, with February 5 the official first day of spring bringing the renewal of agricultural activities after winter.

Scullard places the Taurian Games on June 25–26,[14] but other scholars doubt these ludi had a fixed date or recurred on a regular basis.

Festivals were also held in ancient Rome in response to particular events, or for a particular purpose such as to propitiate or show gratitude toward the gods.

Livy goes on to say that the Romans instituted a public festival of nine days, at the instigation either of a 'heavenly voice' heard on the Mons Albanus, or of the haruspices.

Cicero said[26] that Numa Pompilius, the semi-legendary second king of Rome, established mercatus in conjunction with religious festivals to facilitate trade, since people had already gathered in great numbers.

In early times, these mercatus may have played a role in wholesale trade, but as commerce in Rome became more sophisticated, by the late Republic they seem to have become retail fairs specialized for the holiday market.

[28] By the outset of the nineteenth century and particularly in response to the carnage of the latter years of the French revolution, the term "Roman holiday" had taken on sinister aspects, implying an event that occasions enjoyment or profit at the expense, or derived from the suffering, of others, as in this passage about a dying gladiator from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: There were his young barbarians all at play,There was their Dacian mother—he their sire,Butchered to make a Roman holiday.