In honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with ordinary wine, men and women alike sampled the vinum spurcum of the previous autumn's pressing.

As god of the weather on which the wine-harvest depended, Jupiter was offered a special libation of the previous year's sacred wine vintage, blessed by his high priest and poured into a ditch outside Venus' Capitoline temple, probably under the gaze of Rome's higher echelons.

[1] Common girls (vulgares puellae) and prostitutes (meretrices) gathered at Venus Erycina's Colline temple – probably on separate occasions, for propriety's sake – to offer the goddess myrtle, mint, and rushes concealed in rose-bunches.

[3] In Roman mythology, it marked the fulfillment of a vow by the ancient Latin allies of Rome's legendary ancestor Aeneas, who promised all wine of the next sacred vintage to Jupiter, in return for victory against the Etruscan tyrant Mezentius.

[4] In practice, however, the festival had strong popular and cult connections to Venus as patron goddess of ordinary, religiously "impure" wine (vinum spurcum).