Aquaelicium

AQUAELICIUM. - A Roman sacro-magical ceremony, public, since the pontiffs and magistrates took part in it in expiatory attire, that is, without the praetexta toga and with the lictors proceeding with reversed fasces. It was a rite directed at bringing 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 toward the Capitoline, imploring rain from Jupiter under the title of Elicius, that is, giver of water, who had an altar on the nearby Aventine. The matrons followed it barefoot and with loose hair (Petronius, Satyr., 44; Tertullian, Apol., 40; Festus, s. v. Menaeum; Nonius, p. 547; Servius, Am., 301). The imitative phenomenon of rain could have been produced by the dull noise, almost of thunder, that the dragged stone must have made, or — the sources are silent on this point, but similar ceremonies among primitive peoples (the islanders of Fiji) authorize the inference — by the circumstance that the stone was wet or sprinkled with water. The evidently magical character of the rite is, from the religious point of view, redeemed by the fact that it was framed within a procession of penance and that the pontiffs, the official controllers of the cult, took part in it.

Nicola Turchi