by Andrew B. Watt
From time to time, flashes of the ancient world of the Mediterranean help me illuminate the life I lead today. The three days of festivals at the end of February are among those flashes — not exactly the Eight Greats of solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days, but something in-between. Rome’s second king after Romulus, the semi-mythical Numa Pompilius, set up the sacred calendar of ancient Rome and decided which days should be the important festivals of the gods. In a no-nonsense, legalistic approach, he chose dates based on day-counts rather than complex formulae relying on the relative positions of the Sun and Moon, or elaborate astronomical calculations.
By these simplistic day-counts, the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third days of February were marked as the time for “end of year” celebrations, for a year that began on March 21. Why not hold those festivals on March 18-20? The weather might change, and an early spring would give farmers a chance to start their planting. Better to hold the formal observations of the end of the year when it was still cold and frosty nights might still delay the seeding of the ground!
Today, the twenty-first of February, was the Feralia. A day for honoring the dead, not with elaborate rites but with a washing of the family’s graves and a small offering, and perhaps a re-arrangement of images of the dead in the family shrine. The Roman poet Ovid, in Book II of his poetic exploration of the Roman sacred calendar Fasti, writes of the Feralia, “a tile wreathed ‘round with garlands is enough, a scattering of meal and a few grains of salt, bread soaked in wine, and loose violets, is enough.”
Tomorrow, the twenty-second of February, was the Charistia. This was a day for renewing ties with neighbors, walking the boundaries of your personal property lines as a home-owner; sharing food and drink with the humans whose territory touched yours. It was also a day for calling on more-distant friends through letters or even personal visits, and renewing bonds of friendship. Here, Ovid says, “It’s surely joyful to turn our faces to those alive, after so many are mourned, to see those of our clan who remain alive, and count the degrees of kinship.” Incense was often burned for the health of one’s living kin and friends, although Ovid warns the impious brother and the cruel mother-in-law to stay away — how ancient is that cliche that one’s mother-in-law is awful, anyway??
At the end of the day, at the meal, there was a toast to one’s own elected officials, beginning with the duoviri, the co-mayors of your city, and ending with the Emperor. We might begin with a similar toast for our own elected officials… including, perhaps, an equal recognition of a safe and successful re-election for our preferred officials — or their replacements!
The twenty-third of February – Friday this year –,was the Terminalia — a day for personally reinforcing the boundaries of your city or town on both the physical and spiritual level. Many Roman citizens belonged to the auxiliary militias, and would walk the town wall and confirm that stores of arrows and spears were still secure, while the city’s priests ceremonially re-cut the pomeranium, the sacred trench that separated the civitas, the human community, from the wilderness beyond the wall.
In rural areas, Ovid says, the men brought the firewood, and the women carried coals in a pot from the hearth fire; the neighbors brought a suckling pig. The boy throws grain five times in the air from a basket, and the girls bring out honeycomb and wine. The boundary stones are found and honored, and Terminus, the two-faced boundary lord, is commanded to move not an inch in the coming year. Then there’s a feast out there on the edge where our fence meets yours, and where both of our boundary markers touch the wild places.
I don’t know how other people might do this, but I’ve identified a route that will take me from my home on a long circuit through the centers of all of the towns that border mine, and then back past my community’s town hall. On foot, it would take me 18 hours (Google claims); I think I’ll probably drive this year since it’s uphill (both ways!), but it will take me past the doors of a number of friends’ homes.
There’s no obligation on anyone to honor these three festivals as February’s days grow longer and there’s a shift in the weather, of course. But there’s something simple, here, too, about counting heads among the living and the dead, re-thinking boundaries, and having a minor celebration or two. And I think these three days have something of that simplicity of expectation that can shape familial traditions and practices.
I’ve not quoted directly from this translation of Ovid, but Book II of Fasti. has been ably translated here by A.S. Klein. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidFastiBkTwo.php