1 Earliest Rome

5 Festivals and ceremonies
116
Ritual solemnity, formal processions, prayers, sacrifice. All these had an important
part to play in Roman religious festivals. But so also (just as in our own
culture) did less solemn activities: theatrical performances, racing, gift-giving,
eating and drinking. Roman festivals were, in fact, strikingly diverse. Some
were parr of the regular cycle of celebrations prescribed in the Roman calendar
(see chap. 3); others (although taking place on specific dates, at regular intervals)
were never included in that formal calendar of festivals; some were public
affairs, involving widespread popular participation; others took place privately,
with no official' ceremonial; some had an origin lost in the earliest history of
the city; others were 'invented' in much more recent, well-documented times.
There was no one type of Roman religious celebration.
This chapter concentrates on the festivals that took place in the city of Rome
itself: starting from major celebrations of the official religious calendar
(5.1-4), and the contradictory images of conservatism and innovation in those
celebrations (5-5), it moves on to the ceremonies of oriental' deities (5.6), to
the religious ceremonial of the games (5-7) and the triumph (5.8). These
specifically Roman celebrations were, however, just one small part of the religious
rituals of the Roman empire as a whole and they were not systematically
exported to (or imposed on) conquered provincial communities. Roman soldiers
and some Roman citizens resident in the provinces would probably have
observed the major religious festivals of the capital with some sacrifice or celebration
(note, for example, the religious observances of the Roman colonuir-
10.2; or of army units - 3.5). But generally a visitor to a provincial town in
Greece or Gaul would not have found the festivals of the city of Rome reproduced
on provincial territory; instead a varied range of local ritual customs
were practised even under Roman political control.
See further: for brief discussion of ali major traditional festivals, Warde
Fowler (1899); Scullard (1981)*; for full citation of ancient sources for each
regular festival, Dcgrassi (1963); for Roman celebrations outside Rome, Vol. 1,
320-39.
5.1 ThePariUa
The festival of the Parilia took place annually on 21 April (see 3-3). Ir was J
ritual concerned with the well-being of nocks and herds, and also, by the late