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The Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through February 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. It was also to honor the god Pan.^[1]

The festival was celebrated near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine (one of the seven Roman hills), to expiate and purify new life in the Spring. The Lupercal cave, which had fallen into a state of decay, was rebuilt by Augustus; the celebration of the festival had been maintained, as we know from the famous occurrence of it in 44 BC.

The religious ceremonies were directed by the Luperci, the "brothers of the wolf (lupus)", a corporation of priests of Faunus, dressed only in a goatskin, whose institution is attributed either to the Arcadian Evander, or to Romulus and Remus. The Luperci were divided into two collegia, called Quinctiliani (or Quinctiales) and Fabiani, from the gens Quinctilia (or Quinctia) viz. gens Fabia; at the head of each of these colleges was a magister. In 44 BC. a third college, Luperci Julii, was instituted in honor of Julius Caesar, the first magister of which was Mark Anthony. In imperial times the members were usually of equestrian standing.

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog. Next two patrician young Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh; the smearing of the forehead with blood probably refers to human sacrifice originally practised at the festival.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. This tradition itself may survive (Christianised, and shifted to Spring) in certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

By the fifth century, when the public performance of pagan rites had been outlawed, a nominally Christian Roman populace still clung to the Lupercalia in the time of Gelasius (494-96). It had been literally degraded since the first century, when in 44 BC the consul Mark Antony did not scruple to run with the Luperci;^[2] now the upper classes left the festivities to the rabble,^[3] prompting Pope Gelasius I's taunt to the senators who would preserve it: "If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery."^[4] The remark was addressed to the senator Andromachus by Gelasius in an extended literary epistle that was virtually a thesis against Lupercalia. Gelasius finally abolished the Lupercalia after a long contest.

William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar begins during Lupercalia, with Caesar's rejection of the "kingly crown", as reported by Mark Antony, being used to turn the sympathies of the Roman people against the assassins (Act 3, Scene 2).

• Lupercus
• Roman festivals
• Roman mythology

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Pauly-Wissowa
• W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals (1899), p. 390 foil., and article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed. 1891).
• Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung, iii. (1885) p. 438'
• This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. Gelasius I
• Naomi Conn Liebler The Ritual Ground of Julius Caesar (1988)

• William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1875: Lupercalia.
• "The Lupercalia in the Fifth Century", William M. Green in CP:26.1 (January 1931), pp. 60‑69.
• Lupercalia lottery (the story is not true: apparently a recent legend)