Terminus (god)

Sacrifices were performed to sanctify each boundary stone, and landowners celebrated a festival called the "Terminalia" in Terminus' honor each year on February 23.

Modern scholars have variously seen it as the survival of an early animistic reverence for the power inherent in the boundary marker, or as the Roman development of proto-Indo-European belief in a god concerned with the division of property.

[3] On February 23 annually, a festival called the Terminalia was celebrated in Terminus' honor, involving practices which can be regarded as a reflection or "yearly renewal" of this foundational ritual.

Ovid refers to the sacrifice of a sheep on the day of the Terminalia at the sixth milestone from Rome along the Via Laurentina;[2] it is likely this was thought to have marked the boundary between the early Romans and their neighbors in Laurentum.

[2][14] According to the dominant scholarly view during the late 19th and much of the 20th century, Roman religion was originally animistic, directed towards spirits associated with specific objects or activities which were only later perceived as gods with independent personal existence.

[4] This view of Terminus retains some recent adherents,[5] but other scholars have argued from Indo-European parallels that the personalised gods of Roman religion must have preceded the city's foundation.