ANNA PERENNA. - An ancient Roman divinity, about whose festival—held on the Ides of March—we are amply informed by Ovid’s *Fasti* (V, 523–695), which dwells on the burlesque character the celebration had acquired among the common folk of Rome.
The meaning of the festival and the nature of the goddess are sufficiently clear when one considers only the essential and primitive religious characteristics. A. P. is a goddess of a naturistic character, presiding over the fertility of the soil throughout the year, thus being synonymous with Annona (unless one wishes to regard the latter as merely a personification of the year). The festival fell at the beginning of the ancient Roman year: as with all calendars of agricultural peoples, the start of the year was linked to the spring rebirth following the winter pause. It took place in a grove and had a joyful and partly licentious character—two traits constantly associated with rites aimed at promoting the fertility of the soil. The adjective *perenna* is synonymous with *perennis* and indicates the perennial vitality of nature despite the apparent death of winter. Through a pardonable psychological process, the urban plebs later asked the goddess to *annare et perannare*, that is, to prosper during the year and survive until the next; yet it is not excluded that this character of a goddess of the year may have belonged to her from the very beginning. All other explanations, however, which Ovid reports, are of too obviously erudite and late a nature to be taken into consideration.