*Ø* Blogmanac March 16 | Festival of boys passing to manhood, ancient Rome
Liberalia, ancient Rome
(From Liber, or Liber Pater, a name of Bacchus.) Bacchanalian feasts were banned in 186 BCE by the Roman Senate because of extreme licentiousness, except by special permission of the senate, and for only five initiates at a time. However, the Liberalia, another festival of Bacchus, was celebrated on March 16, as we know from Ovid, Fasti iii.713. Adorned with garlands of ivy, priests and old priestesses carried through the city wine, honey, cakes and sweets together with an altar in the middle of which was a small fire-pan in which sacrifices were sometimes burnt.
The Romans had a god Liber and goddess Libera, his counterpart. In his original Roman conception, Liber was probably a god who presided over male fertility and especially the act of ejaculation. After the formation of the Aventine triad, he absorbed the mythology of Dionysus. This was a festival of liberation from "the powerlessness of childhood" in which boys aged about 15 - 17 took off for the last time their purple-bordered purple togas (the toga praetexta) and donned the unbleached woollen toga virilis, or toga libera that represented their manhood. As long as a male wore the praetexta, he was impubes, and when he assumed the toga virilis, he was pubes.
The boys removed the phallic bullae charms – which had protected them in youth – from around their necks and offered them to the household gods. Their fathers took them to the Forum in Rome and presented them as adults and citizens. This was in the days when male rites of passage were encouraged.
An infans was incapable of doing any legal act. An impubes, who had passed the limits of infantia, could do any legal act with the auctoritas of his tutor; without such auctoritas he could only do those acts which were for his benefit. With the attainment of pubertas, a person obtained the full power of his property, and the tutela ceased: he could also dispose of his property by will; and he could contract marriage.
Originally the two deities Liber and Libera had something to do with germination and creation. Later they were merged with Bacchus. Women called Sacerdotes Liberi (priestesses of the two gods) on this day sat on the footpaths tending foculi, portable altars, and for a fee they sacrificed honey cakes (liba).
Stein (Stein, Diane, The Goddess Book of Days, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, 1989) calls this a "women's festival of Bacchus dedicated to the Maenads", but most sources emphasise that it was a male festivity.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Liberalia, ancient Rome
(From Liber, or Liber Pater, a name of Bacchus.) Bacchanalian feasts were banned in 186 BCE by the Roman Senate because of extreme licentiousness, except by special permission of the senate, and for only five initiates at a time. However, the Liberalia, another festival of Bacchus, was celebrated on March 16, as we know from Ovid, Fasti iii.713. Adorned with garlands of ivy, priests and old priestesses carried through the city wine, honey, cakes and sweets together with an altar in the middle of which was a small fire-pan in which sacrifices were sometimes burnt.
The Romans had a god Liber and goddess Libera, his counterpart. In his original Roman conception, Liber was probably a god who presided over male fertility and especially the act of ejaculation. After the formation of the Aventine triad, he absorbed the mythology of Dionysus. This was a festival of liberation from "the powerlessness of childhood" in which boys aged about 15 - 17 took off for the last time their purple-bordered purple togas (the toga praetexta) and donned the unbleached woollen toga virilis, or toga libera that represented their manhood. As long as a male wore the praetexta, he was impubes, and when he assumed the toga virilis, he was pubes.
The boys removed the phallic bullae charms – which had protected them in youth – from around their necks and offered them to the household gods. Their fathers took them to the Forum in Rome and presented them as adults and citizens. This was in the days when male rites of passage were encouraged.
An infans was incapable of doing any legal act. An impubes, who had passed the limits of infantia, could do any legal act with the auctoritas of his tutor; without such auctoritas he could only do those acts which were for his benefit. With the attainment of pubertas, a person obtained the full power of his property, and the tutela ceased: he could also dispose of his property by will; and he could contract marriage.
Originally the two deities Liber and Libera had something to do with germination and creation. Later they were merged with Bacchus. Women called Sacerdotes Liberi (priestesses of the two gods) on this day sat on the footpaths tending foculi, portable altars, and for a fee they sacrificed honey cakes (liba).
Stein (Stein, Diane, The Goddess Book of Days, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, 1989) calls this a "women's festival of Bacchus dedicated to the Maenads", but most sources emphasise that it was a male festivity.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 2:15 PM | Permalink
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home