 section about the Colosseum and the Gladiators.
As already mentioned in the section about the priestly orders the feast of the Lupercalia was a feast of purification. The festivity was linked to the god of shepherds and woodlands Faun or Pan and focused on the image of the Wolf.
Although the name is reminiscent of the She wolf which had bred Romulus and Remus the very myth of Romulus tells us of the Lupercalia being celebrated by the Arcadians: a pastoral population which had come to Italy from Greece. The feast was regularly celebrated for some 1300 years of ancient Rome right through to the sixth century.
The ceremony began in the Lupercal cave on (in?) the Palatine hill where a goat and a dog would be sacrificed. The goat was intended as a symbol of the god because he had goat’s feet, whilst the dog was sacrificed because it is the shepherd’s usual companion and guards the sheep against wolves.
The blood stained knives would then be wiped over the foreheads of two children of noble family and subsequently the same blood would be wiped off with locks of wool dipped in milk. It seems that it was important that the boys should laugh when their foreheads were wiped clean.
The boys would then clothe themselves in the goat’s skin and run down the streets, in the manner of the god Faun/Pan, lashing out at the bystanders with whips, called “februa“, made of the same sacrificed hide they wore. Plutarch tells us that to be hit or touched was actually a good thing and was meant to assist women in conceiving or delivering children.
The name of the month February is derived from this feast.