Parilia/Founding of Rome
Parilia, celebrated on April 21, is an ancient Roman festival honoring Pales, the goddess of shepherds and livestock, and coincides with the legendary founding of Rome in 753 B.C. This celebration involved lustral rites designed to purify flocks and herds, which included sprinkling animals with water, cleansing stalls, and offering gifts such as milk and cakes to Pales. The rituals also featured the symbolic burning of sulfur and laurel, and it culminated in both animals and herdsmen leaping over bonfires, a practice believed to ensure prosperity. The festival's connection to Rome’s founding is steeped in the mythology of Romulus and Remus, twin brothers raised by a she-wolf, with Romulus ultimately establishing the city at a strategic crossing on the Tiber River. The Parilia reflects a pastoral heritage, highlighting the significance of agriculture and animal husbandry in early Roman society. April 21 was officially recognized as the Natalis urbis Romae, or the city's birthday, celebrated with music, dancing, and communal festivities. The intertwined nature of Parilia and the founding of Rome illustrates the deep cultural significance these events held for the Romans, blending ritual, mythology, and community celebration.
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Parilia/Founding of Rome
Parilia / Founding of Rome
In the calendar of ancient Rome, April 21 marked a dual celebration: the feast of the Parilia and the founding of the city of Rome. Both were associated with Romulus, Rome's legendary founder.
The annual festival of flocks and herds, staged on April 21, was called the Parilia in honor of Pales, the pastoral deity and special protector of cattle. The lustral rite, which was celebrated in early spring to purify the animals, stalls, and herdsmen, consisted of several stages. After the sheep and shepherds had been sprinkled with water, the cattle stalls were cleansed with laurel-twig brooms and decorated with leaves and wreaths. Sulfur, laurel, and rosemary, together with olive wood, were then burned, their smoke wafting through the barns to purify the flocks and herds. Gifts of milk, meat, cakes, and millet were offered to Pales. The senior vestal virgin handed the celebrants the ashes of a calf that had been slain on April 15 at a feast called the Fordicidia, the feast of cows. A forda, a cow in calf, was sacrificed then, and attendants of the vestal virgins took the fetal calf and burned it. Its ashes were gathered by the vestals to be used at the Parilia. By then, the ashes had been mixed with the blood of the horse that had been sacrificed to Mars, the god of war, in the previous October. Finally, in a ceremony that anticipates the customs and superstitions associated with the later Midsummer's Eve bonfires, the sheep and cattle were forced to leap across bonfires of hay and straw. The herdsmen imitated them, as, facing east, they jumped three times over the flames to conclude the lustration and guarantee prosperity and propagation.
The Parilia, a pastoral rite reflecting a rural environment, undoubtedly originated long before the founding of the city of Rome which, according to tradition, occurred on April 21, 753 b.c. Rome is located on the Tevere River, called the Tiber in antiquity, in central Italy. Latin-speaking peoples first settled the region around 1000 b.c., giving it the name Latium. To the north were the Etruscans, who had an impressive civilization of their own, and to the south were cities and colonies established by the Greeks. Legend has it that Rome was founded by the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, who were abandoned as infants but rescued by a she-wolf who suckled and protected them. Roman mythology attempted to glorify the brothers as the sons of the war god Mars and the descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who supposedly settled the region with refugees from fallen Troy, but the basic story is much less romantic. As Romulus grew to manhood he came to be a leader among the shepherds who lived in the region and organized them into a settlement on the Palatine Hill, which overlooked the easiest crossing point over the Tiber. He built a defensive wall around the new city and killed Remus during a dispute. Romulus then became the first king of Rome, which he named after himself.
It is said that Romulus himself played a significant role in conducting the cleansing and renewal rituals of the Parilia. The rite was therefore accorded a conspicuously important place in the Roman state calendar: April 21 was set aside to commemorate not only Pales but also the founding of Rome. A public holiday known as the Natalis urbis Romae (birthday of the city of Rome) was marked by music, street dancing, and general revelry.