FURRINA and FURRINALIA. – A goddess and a festival of Roman religion, respectively. The festival, which appears in the most ancient Roman calendar (July 25), and the special priest (flamen Furlinalis) attest to the archaic age of the cult. Outside Rome it is documented at Arpino; the form of the goddess’s name seems Etruscan. It appears that in historical times the cult had lost much of its original importance.
Furrina had a sacred grove on the Janiculum (now Villa Sciarra); in the imperial age this place of worship was taken over by Jupiter Heliopolitanus, but here, together with documents of the Oriental cult, the only epigraphic evidence of the cult of Furrina has come to light. The goddess’s name, however, appears here in the plural (Forniae) and she is regarded as a nymph (nymphae Phorines). A passage in Cicero establishes an identity between Furrina and Furia, and the comparison of two parallel passages in Plutarch and in Aurelius Victor, which refer to the same place, one recalling the τέμενος ἄκρος of the Furies and the other the lucus Forinae, seems to confirm this.