ANNA PERENNA. - An ancient Roman divinity, concerning whose festival, which fell on the Ides of March, we are extensively informed by Ovid in the Fasti (V, 523–695), where he dwells upon the burlesque aspect that the festival had assumed among the common people of the Urbs.
The meaning of the festival and the character of the goddess are fairly clear, if account is taken only of the essential and primitive religious features. A. P. is a goddess of a naturalistic character, who presides over the fertility of the soil during the year, and is therefore synonymous with Annona (unless the latter is to be regarded as a mere personification of the grain supply). The festival fell at the beginning of the ancient Roman year: as in all calendars of agricultural peoples, the beginning of the year was related to the spring rebirth after the winter stagnation. It took place in a grove and was cheerful and partly licentious in character: two features constantly associated with rites intended to bring about the fertility of the soil. The adjective perenna is synonymous with perennis and denotes the perennial vitality of nature, despite its apparent winter death. Through an understandable psychological process, the urban plebs later asked the goddess to annare et perannare, that is, to prosper during the year and to survive until the following year; but it is not excluded that the goddess possessed this character as a divinity of annual return from the outset. All the other explanations, however, reported by Ovid are too evidently learned and late in nature to be taken into consideration.