Introduction

Lupercalia was an Ancient Roman festival happening every year on February 15^th. Interestingly, the name of the festival likely comes from ‘lupus’, which means wolf in Latin, and it may relate to the legend of Romulus and Remus, who were nursed and brought up by a wolf. As such, it makes sense that the festival is a fertility rite and is also associated with the god Faunus.

Lupercalia involved a sacrifice of goats and a dog, performed by the special priests, Luperci in front of laughing young men, followed by a sacrificial feast. The goat hide (this purification process was called februa) was cut off from the sacrificed animals and used to strike women with these. Lashings were welcome as they allegedly brought fertility and easy childbirth.  

‘All the literary evidence makes it clear that the Lupercalia ritual was an occasion for laughter and enjoyment: the words used are paidia, gelos, hilaritas, lusus, and lascivia. Naked young men, their bodies oiled or smeared with mud, ran about striking anyone who got in their way. The fertility ritual introduced in 276 made the fun more brutal, and no doubt more exciting for the onlookers: the young women were no longer to run away, but to offer themselves to a flagellation that was a metaphor for sexual union. It was a female divinity who demanded a carnal remedy, and a male interpreter of the divine will.’

What is the connection between Romulus and Remus and Lupercalia though? This has been hotly debated. As claimed by P.M.W Tennant ‘The basic hypothesis is that originally wolves played a central role in the ceremony, but that in the course of time the importance of that fact was almost totally obscured by the changed nature and interpretation of the rites.’

The Lupercalia were celebrated all the way up into the late Roman Empire but Christians didn’t appreciate its deviant and primitive elements and actively sought to suppress it and Pope Gelasius I subsequently banned the celebration in 494 AD.

Art: Romulus and Remus by Samuel Wild

Sam Wild is an artist specialising in painting and printmaking, creating representational narrative and symbolic artworks that people have described as ‘evocative’ and ‘mercurial’. Studying art for over 16 years, he attended Manchester School of Art studying Printmaking and later completed his Masters at the Cambridge School of Art in Illustration. He has exhibited in London and Manchester and is an experienced editorial illustrator, creating a long run of covers for The Mallard magazine. He was recently shown at The Exhibition show in Fitzrovia, London, and is now the art columnist at Decadent Serpent magazine.

Poetry: Lupercalia by Eva McFarlane

Bodies glisten in the looming sun,

Their eyes bright as they have their fun.

The crowd, they cheer

As women draw near,

Racing out readily

In search of promised fertility.

No more barren, soon lush and round,

They seek out virility,

And today, it is found.

Goat hide meets tender flesh,

The women rejoice,

For their wombs are blessed!

Sparks of blue coat the sky,

While boisterous men parade along by,

Their foreheads blurred red and dusty

As their whips strike women excitedly.

The men, they revel,

While the women delight,

For they will celebrate Lupercalia

All day and all night.

Eva McFarlane is a graduate of Edinburgh Napier University with a BA (Hons) degree in English, she is a current student in the MA Creative Writing programme. Originally from Edinburgh, she enjoys all writing with a Gothic twist, primarily within the dark fantasy and horror genres. An aspiring journalist, she has completed a two-month internship at Thesocialtalks and is eager to combine her love for literature and her journalistic skills. She is also a poet, with her first poem The Men they could have been published in summer 2024 in the Whitburn Gala Programme. Additionally, Eva has recently completed her first poetry manuscript and is eager to get published while she also works on her novel The Corpse Road.

SOURCES

Tennant, P.M.W. “THE LUPERCALIA AND THE ROMULUS AND REMUS LEGEND.” Acta Classica 31 (1988): 81–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591847.

Wiseman, T. P. “The God of the Lupercal.” The Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/301054.