FURRINA and FURRINALIA. - Goddess and festival, respectively, of Roman religion. The festival, which appears in the most ancient Roman calendar (25 July), and the special priest (Ramen Furrinalis) attest to the extreme antiquity of the cult. Outside Rome it is documented at Arpino; the form of the goddess’s name appears to be Etruscan. It seems that in historical times the cult lost much of its original importance.
Furrina had a sacred grove on the Janiculum (present-day villa Sciarra); in the imperial age this place of worship was taken over by Jupiter Heliopolitanus; but here, together with the documents of the Oriental cult, the only epigraphic documents of the cult of Furrina have come to light. The name of the goddess, however, appears here in the plural (Forinac) and she is regarded as a nymph (nymphes Pharines). A passage of Cicero establishes an identity between Furrina and the Fury; and the comparison between two parallel passages in Plutarch and Aurelius Victor which, referring to the same place, recall respectively the Lepòv 2000 of the Erinyes and the lucus Forinac, seems to support this view.