FLORA. – Ancient Italic and Roman goddess; according to Varro, of Sabine origin: indeed, her cult independent of the Roman one is documented at Agnone; at Furfo the calendar has a month Flusare (Floralia). At Rome her cult was undoubtedly ancient. F. mater had her own flamen (fl. Floralis).
Her oldest sanctuary was on the Quirinal. In 241 BC, following the suggestion of the Sibylline Books, a temple was built for her near the Circus Maximus, inaugurated with games that, from 173 BC onwards, assumed an annual character and were held between the last days of April and the first of May. The Floralia games, which perhaps replaced an original movable feast, were known for their licentious character: the prostitutes who staged a mock battle there would strip at the audience’s request. In the games, moreover, there were also games with beans and rabbits, and the public was pelted with legumes. These traits of the feast, and the ancient importance of the cult, show that the goddess’s character was not limited to a connection with blooming grain, as ancient exegetes claimed. Flora, in fact, must have had broader relations with the sphere of fertility and with those deities with which her cult connects her: her temple was immediately adjacent to that of the traditional Ceres-Liber-Libera; her festive cult links the month of April, dedicated to the feasts of earthly fertility, with May’s Lemuria. The myths, whose late documentation does not exclude more ancient roots, also shed some light on the goddess. It is a flower of hers that makes Juno pregnant with Mars. In another myth Flora appears as a prostitute who leaves her wealth to the State, thus earning a public cult: a myth parallel to that of Acca Larentia. These mythical relations with Rome and her origins give particular prominence to the tradition according to which the sacred name of Rome would have been Flora.