AQUAELICIUM

AQUAELICIUM. – A Roman public sacromagical ceremony, since it was attended by the pontiffs and magistrates in expiatory attire, that is, without the toga praetexta and with the lictors proceeding with fasces reversed. It was a rite intended to bring about rain by virtue of the magical principle that like acts upon like (imitative magic) and consisted in lifting a stone that lay outside the Porta Capena near the temple of Mars and dragging it in procession to the Capitol, imploring rain from Jupiter under the title of Elicius, that is, giver of water, who had an altar on the nearby Aventine. It was followed by matrons barefoot and with loose hair (Petronius, Satyr., 44; Tertullian, Apol., 40; Festus, s.V. Manalem; Nonius, p. 547; Servius, Aen., 301). The imitative phenomenon of rain could have been produced by the dull noise, almost like thunder, that the dragged stone was supposed to make, or—though the sources are silent on this point, but similar ceremonies among primitive peoples (the islanders of Fiji) allow the inference—by the circumstance that the stone was wetted or sprinkled with water. The manifestly magical character of the rite is, from a religious standpoint, redeemed by the fact that it was framed within a penitential procession and that it was attended by the pontiffs, the official controllers of the cult.