The Fornacalia was an Ancient Roman religious festival celebrated in honor of the goddess Fornax , [1] a divine personification of the oven (fornax), and was related to the proper baking of bread.
The Fornacalia may have been established by Numa Pompillius. [2] [3] Ovid wrote that "the oven was made a goddess, Fornax: the farmers, pleased with her, prayed she’d regulate the grain’s heat." [4] It was held in early February on various dates in different curiae , [5] [6] [7] which in the period of the Roman monarchy and the Roman Republic were the thirty wards of the city of Rome. It was proclaimed every year by the curio maximus, [8] [9] [10] who was a priest who was the head of the curiae. He announced the different part which each curia (sing. of curiae) had to take in the celebration of the festival; "[n]ow the Curio Maximus, in a set form of words, declares the shifting date of the Fornacalia, the Feast of Ovens, and round the Forum hang many tablets, on which every ward displays its own sign." [11]
It is believed that every family in the curia brought far (spelt, a kind of grain), [12] to be toasted in the meeting hall and sacrificed to ensure that bread in the household ovens wouldn’t be burnt in the following year. The last day of this festival was the quirinalia , which was also jokingly nicknamed the 'feast of fools'. [13] [14] All the curiae met together on that day for a collective feast. Those who did not know to what curia they belonged were able to participate in its rites; "[f]oolish people don’t know which is their ward, so they hold the feast on the last possible day. [15] This tradition indicates that in later times membership of a curia (singular of curiae) had little significance to most Romans, so much so that some people did not know which curia they belonged to; the curiae included all citizens and that every Roman citizen was deemed to belong to a curia, even if he did not know which it was." [16]
The festival lasted approximately 13 days. The quirinalia started around the 17th of February and the fornacalia probably started on the nones or 5th of February. [17] The Fornacalia continued to be celebrated in the time of Lactantius. [18]
Jupiter, also known as Jove, is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religion and mythology. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as offering, or sacrifice.
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In Roman mythology and religion, Quirinus is an early god of the Roman state. In Augustan Rome, Quirinus was also an epithet of Janus, as Janus Quirinus.
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named for Janus (Ianuarius). According to ancient Roman farmers' almanacs, Juno was mistaken as the tutelary deity of the month of January, but Juno is the tutelary deity of the month of June.
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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 features of the Roman calendar. Feriae were either public (publicae) or private (privatae). State holidays were celebrated by the Roman people and received public funding. Games (ludi), such as the Ludi Apollinares, were not technically feriae, but the days on which they were celebrated were dies festi, holidays in the modern sense of days off work. Although feriae were paid for by the state, ludi were often funded by wealthy individuals. Feriae privatae were holidays celebrated in honor of private individuals or by families. This article deals only with public holidays, including rites celebrated by the state priests of Rome at temples, as well as celebrations by neighborhoods, families, and friends held simultaneously throughout Rome.
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The Floralia was a festival in ancient Roman religious practice in honor of the goddess Flora, held on 27 April during the Republican era, or 28 April in the Julian calendar. The festival included Ludi Florae, the "Games of Flora", which lasted for six days under the empire.
In Roman religion, Terminus was the god who protected boundary markers; his name was the Latin word for such a marker. Sacrifices were performed to sanctify each boundary stone, and landowners celebrated a festival called the "Terminalia" in Terminus' honor each year on February 23. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill was thought to have been built over a shrine to Terminus, and he was occasionally identified as an aspect of Jupiter under the name "Jupiter Terminalis".
Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counsellor of the state. She was equated to Hera, queen of the gods in Greek mythology and a goddess of love and marriage. A daughter of Saturn and Ops, she was the sister and wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars, Vulcan, Bellona, Lucina and Juventas. Like Hera, her sacred animal was the peacock. Her Etruscan counterpart was Uni, and she was said to also watch over the women of Rome. As the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire, Juno was called Regina ("Queen") and was a member of the Capitoline Triad, centered on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and also including Jupiter, and Minerva, goddess of wisdom.
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Tellus Mater or Terra Mater is the personification of the Earth. Although Tellus and Terra are hardly distinguishable during the Imperial era, Tellus was the name of the original earth goddess in the religious practices of the Republic or earlier. The scholar Varro (1st century BC) lists Tellus as one of the di selecti, the twenty principal gods of Rome, and one of the twelve agricultural deities. She is regularly associated with Ceres in rituals pertaining to the earth and agricultural fertility.
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The Fasti, sometimes translated as The Book of Days or On the Roman Calendar, is a six-book Latin poem written by the Roman poet Ovid and published in AD 8. Ovid is believed to have left the Fasti incomplete when he was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in 8 AD. Written in elegiac couplets and drawing on conventions of Greek and Latin didactic poetry, the Fasti is structured as a series of eye-witness reports and interviews by the first-person vates with Roman deities, who explain the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs—often with multiple aetiologies. The poem is a significant, and in some cases unique, source of fact in studies of religion in ancient Rome; and the influential anthropologist and ritualist J.G. Frazer translated and annotated the work for the Loeb Classical Library series. Each book covers one month, January through June, of the Roman calendar, and was written several years after Julius Caesar replaced the old system of Roman time-keeping with what would come to be known as the Julian calendar.
Vestalia was a Roman religious festival in honor of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and the burning continuation of the sacred fire of Rome. It was held from 7-15 June.
In ancient Roman religion, Fornax was the divine personification of the oven (fornāx), the patroness of bakers, and a goddess of baking. She ensured that the heat of ovens did not get hot enough to burn the corn or bread. People would pray to Fornax for help whilst baking. Her festival, the Fornacalia, was celebrated on February 17 among the thirty curiae, the most ancient divisions of the city made by Romulus from the original three tribes of Rome. The Fornacalia was the second of two festivals involving the curiae, the other being the Fordicidia on April 19. The goddess was probably conceived of to explain the festival, which was instituted for toasting the spelt used to bake sacrificial cakes. Her role was eventually merged with the goddess Vesta.
The curio maximus was an obscure priesthood in ancient Rome that had oversight of the curiae, groups of citizens loosely affiliated within what was originally a tribe. Each curia was led by a curio, who was admitted only after the age of 50 and held his office for life. The curiones were required to be in good health and without physical defect, and could not hold any other civil or military office; the pool of willing candidates was thus neither large nor eager. In the early Republic, the curio maximus was always a patrician, and officiated as the senior interrex. The earliest curio maximus identified as such is Servius Sulpicius, who held the office in 463. The first plebeian to hold the office was elected in 209 BC.
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In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held on the Ides of April, that pertained to farming and animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, the ancient Roman goddess of the Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres (Cerealia) on April 19.