 I'm going to start with a view of the Roman form, because part of the activities of the Luperchia Festival take place in the form itself, particularly along via sacra. And this is what we're going to be considering today. February 15th is the Luperchia Festival. We'll start with the protagonists and the context of the festival. We'll talk about it in the context of the Roman sources. That's not really the art that's going to give us an insight into the actual details of the worship at the Luperchia, but rather it's the ancient sources. So we'll be sure to talk about them. Then unwrap the ritual itself, the locations in which the rituals are taking place, some fun imagery to take a look at from antiquity. Then the famous case, the most famous case of all I'd say from antiquity is the moment in which Julius Caesar is involved and he uses it as a staging moment to push his special status in Rome as a, let's say, would-be king in 44 BC. Remember the Ides of March or around the corner? He's going to be dead on the 15th of March. This is then just before then by one month. And finally, how does this ritual that is so popular with Romans end? We'll talk about how the final nail and the coffin is hammered in, but not as, well, you think it would, with the Christianity coming in, with Constantine it would have gone out of use, but it actually has a much longer tradition. We go all the way to Pope Galatius. So let's take a look at the Luperchia. First of all, the basic concept is that it's also taking place the time of a festival called februa. And we think about fever, febris, febrile, with this term, februa, which is a ritual of purification. And we get this name applied into the whole month of February and associated with a particular deity, Juno febralis. And we even have this term for the date as a febrata. And that's the same day in which the Luperchia is taking place. So why is there this fixation with the idea of purification? Well, we already took a look at the entire month of February, just recently in another live seminar. And a whole bunch of the activity of the month is focused around a nine day period, the parentalia in which this Luperchia febrata is encompassed. And we need to take a look at and consider the earlier calendar system of the ancient Romans, which is the original calendar was a 10 month system, a lunar calendar. And the first month of the year wasn't January, according to the Romans, it was March. So the last month, the month where you're kind of tying it all together, ending and looking forward to something new was not December as it is today. And as it was the case with the later reforms in the Roman calendar, it was the month of February. So that period of purification is very, it just makes sense for the Romans in their own calendar system. The Luperchia, of course, is gonna have lots of associations going all the way back to the time of Romulus being tied in even before Romulus to the Greeks that are supposedly settling in there, according to a lot of Roman traditions, Evander, the Arcadian, and the Lysia is a worshiping festival focused toward not Faunus, as is gonna be the case for the Romans, but Pan, the Greek equivalent. And in that process then, we're gonna be talking about Romulus himself and how he's the one, according to other traditions, that sets up this ritual that's gonna focus around the point in the city where he is first with his brother, suckled by the she-wolf. And it's gonna be maintained by Roman families, two distinct Roman families, which is the case of a lot of other ancient Roman rituals in the Roman calendar. And it's something that ultimately through the participation of these noble families, these wealthy families, these old families, their participation is gonna then be the performance that leads to the well-being of the entire community of Rome. Okay, so who are the protagonists? We have the Pairantalia again from the 13th to the 21st of February, in which this is taking place. The she-wolf Romulus Remus here depicted on the famous altar from Ostia, now Museo Nazionale Romano. You see there at the bottom, the she-wolf suckling the twins and Pan oftentimes in these kind of reliefs is present or Faunus, this deity that we've also talked about being venerated in the month of February on his first temple in the Tiber Island. And Evander is a figure that looms large in the ancient sources. So he is also gonna be tied in to this ritual. So you have some ideas projecting back the Lupercalia even before the existence of Romulus and Remus and giving it a nice tie to Greek ideas, Faunus, then associated with the Greek pan, Greek pan introduced by Evander. Evander, who at other times in the live seminars we've talked about is the one that meets Hercules when he's on his own laborers and passes through what will become the foreign boring. Now you're gonna have as the main protagonist in this ritual, two groups of men, originally from two families, the Fabiani and the Quintiani and each one is going to be affiliated with Romulus and Remus. And part of it is involved in the competition. These groups represent the original competition, the buying in a competition between the two brothers. And as we know in the end, in other contests, it's Romulus that's gonna be Remus and found the city of Rome. But there's a part of ritual competition in the Lupercalia as well. And there are big concepts. We're remembering the dead because that's a lot of what you're having in the month of February. We're having this idea of purification. A lot of the idea is remembering the dead and going through ways of purifying the community and then the city and then the individual. And then we have some questions about fertility because that's gonna come up as well. And ultimately this idea that's always percolating kind of a common misnomer that, you know, Valentine's Day is gonna take over Lupercalia. There's some sort of association going on there in popular theory and we'll see that doesn't actually prove to be the case. Okay, so the sources are Cicero right in the time of the famous moment when Mark Antony is trying to crown Julius Caesar in the forum at Dionysus Telecarnassus and Ovid are gonna be Augustine authors. Plutarch's obviously gonna be a bit later at the end of the first century AD and into the second century AD. And he has a great account in the life of Romulus, one of my favorites. And then we can go into later sources including Cetonius, like Caesar. We're just gonna also talk about that moment of time in which Julius Caesar is trying to be crowned symbolically. So the ritual. The ritual involves the Vestal Virgins, the Flamendialis and these Sedali Tatis, these groups of selected individuals from society. And the Vestals will make a sacrifice of Flamendialis is there as well, overseeing a lot of the rituals. But what happens is you're sacrificing a goat, you're sacrificing a dog. And when the sacrifices ended, you're going to wipe the bloody knife on the forehead of these Sedali Tatis members, two groups of 12. And afterwards the knife is wiped off with milk and wool as well for the off the forehead. The blood is coming off the forehead. But the response and getting your face wiped with blood is to respond with laughter. So there's some sort of ritual, there's some sort of function. We don't know if the laughter is warding off bad luck or evil eye or whatnot. But after this ritual, it's taking place at the Lupercal and we'll see what that is on the Palatine Hill. The exact location is still unknown and undiscovered. But then you're going to have a race, you're going to have running up and down on the via Sacra actually naked. And you're going to be whipping a lot of the crowd that gathers with the whips that are constructed out of strips of skin from the sacrificial goat. So there's all kinds of things that are going on in different locations. And a lot of the questions that is interpretation is this happening to be shepherding because the Enromance and Remus are shepherds and then they're suckled by the she-wolf. But then here's that dog, the dog is sacrificed. Why is the dog sacrificed? Because the dog is the enemy of the wolf. We're here in some way satisfying or remembering the she-wolf that suckled the twins. So we have a lot of different ideas coming on here of this competition between the brothers. And that's just this letticism, but also just various sources are telling us they're running down the via Sacra, they're running around the Palatine Hills, another kind of interpretation from other ancient authors. So is it also a kind of protective boundary that's being created by that running? A lot of different questions are being asked in the scholarship. And of course, we do want to think always about this original idea of purification at the end of the year. And you are doing something for the benefit of the community, a whipping it can be seen also as purification, not just as fertility, which is it seems to be a later introduction, a later idea that's introduced in terms of the interpretation of these men going around flacking their little whips. And then some women stand out to get hit and in the hopes of becoming pregnant to that kind of theme is introduced and also into the sources. There's a lot of different interpretation what's going on here. We are looking at a couple of images. We're looking at the Vestal Virgins. We're looking at the Flamen Dialis with this little hat and of course the capitalized she-wolf with Renaissance twins added beneath. Okay, what locations are we talking about? Well, the loop recall itself in the Ficus Ruminalis, this fig tree that grows up spontaneously by the cave where the she-wolf was suckling the twins is somewhere at the base of the Palatine Hill near where we have the Circus Maximus underneath the house of Augustus. We're gonna have the running on the Via Sacra in the Forum and then another fixed point it seems is another Ficus, another fig tree that grows up. This one's in the Forum by the Arostra. So this seems to be, according to some scholarship the end run on the Via Sacra, you're coming in from the Palatine Hill and the Vicus Tuscus from one Ficus Ruminalis at the loop recall, you're coming into the Forum and the end result is at the Via Sacra base at the Arostra with the Ficus Nivea, another fig tree. And of course that's where the roster is and that's where ultimately in the age of Julius Caesar that's where he'll be seated to be crowned. Here's a scene from the Arpacas, here's that same image from the altar from Ostiantica which is now in Museo Nazionale Romano. So we wanna think about these important locations, why don't you take a look at them now. So here's the Palatine Hill, there's an arrow indicating somewhere in that corner where there was the loop recall still to be discovered. Some people thought they discovered in 2007 but it's probably just an underground nephem but it is basically just below the house of Augustus and the temple of Magna Mater basically by sent Anastasia Church. Now we have the Rostra here labeled, that's a reconstruction but it is the basically Imperial Rostra of Julius Caesar and Augustus and we have the Ficus Nivea that was somewhere in the center of the Forum Piazza here it is depicted on the Anaglitha Triani which is now located inside the Coria. Next to the right there's a famous statue of Marcius also in the center of the Forum Piazza area. So that fig tree was there, it was a fixed point, it was a fixed tree and when it died they replanted it and up would come another one so it really was tied to the longevity and the success of Rome. If it died it was a bad omen when you planted another one and so forth but these fig trees tied into this concept of the fecundity of the she-wolf Aca Laurentia and this idea of fertility so that's always there overhanging the lupacalia, a location and lupacal structure. I just take a little walk down the Via Sacra and think about naked Mark Antony running down here in 44 BC and countless other lupercci that are running around and then flicking their whips and hitting various spectators were literally on the Via Sacra or heading down towards the Forum Piazza. Obviously the structure to the right here, there's the vestibule leading into the form of a piece of Aspecian, these are much later structures. There's the temple of Faustina and Antonius Pius. So not there in the time of Julius Caesar right to the left, on the left side there there was the Domus Publica. That's where Julius Caesar lived as the Pontifex Maximus until the day he died. But it's just, I think, fun to just imagine for a moment that reality, all that history that took place on the Via Sacra. Obviously this is modern pavement, there's some more original pavement further down, just to think there's so much history that took place on that street, the Via Sacra. Okay, Julius Caesar and the lupacalia in 44 BC, he's adding a third group, a third companionship called the lupacalia uniani. Mark Antony of the consulate time is one of them, basically running around butt naked and comes down and then ultimately tries to crown Julius Caesar before the crowd in the Forum, the crowd booze each time he tries to crown Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar refuses, the crowd cheers more and more and more. So basically it's staying on the part of the people of Rome, we don't want a king. Julius Caesar, no, don't take that diet. And it, but it seems to have been a publicity stunt to see, well, how far can we push this? Maybe everyone will cheer when he's crowned. He was just an initiator in the spectacle who's not running around butt naked, but here's a fun little image of that kind of moment with the teeming masses behind. How about some images of lupacalia? Here's one, a monument of Claudius liberalis which is now in the Vatican museums and you can see this particular, I think equestrian order gentleman. One of the great moments of his political career is being a lupacarius, there he is. He's got a little loincloth and he's got his whip in his hand. This is drawn by the way by my little 12 year old. If you need any artistic renderings of famous monuments or whatnot, be sure to let me know and I'll pass on her information. This one here is actually a terracotta of how to relief plaque that was found near the house of Livia on the Palatine Hill at the end of the 19th century. And what you see here again is something very rare. These guys are naked, one, two, three, four guys and some of them have their whips in hand. So this is the kind of stunning evidence that comes from ancient Rome that corresponds with the ancient sources in the description of these people and you think about the primitive culture and you think about that kind of perpetuation of that. If Romulus and Remus are running around naked, competing as they did in the Greek world as they did the ancient gods, well, so too can we be part of that primordial of Rome even at the time of the Vander if you follow other traditions and participate for the wellbeing of the community. How does it all end? Well, it's still mentioned, the lupacalia in the calendar of 354 which has Christian and pagan non-politistic traditions are recorded in that calendar already in the middle of the fourth century AD. Even though all rituals were banned at the end of the fourth century, we still have it going down until it's shut down by Pope Galatius I at the end of the fifth century AD. Absolutely incredible that this was something that was so felt and of course has to do with the wellbeing of the community. This is one that held on for quite a long time. And let's just remember and underline the fact that there really is no tie between the lupacalia and then Valentine's Day, this saint that's martyred in the third century AD. In fact, there are other ones with the same name that comes to take its place on the 14th of February. Lupacalia, February 15th, a very striking, unique, interesting and engaging festival. We still have a lot to discover about this incredible Roman ritual.