LATINE FERIE. – An ancient festival celebrated on Mons Albanus (present-day Monte Cavo) in honor of Jupiter Latiaris. The surviving evidence concerning it naturally dates from the period when Rome had already become a great power; yet it reveals that the origins of the cult go back to the time when Rome was merely one of the many Latin communities in Latium. The festival was indeed celebrated by these communities, headed in historical times by Rome, but perhaps in more remote antiquity by Alba Longa. The festival was
essentially the celebration of the unity of the Latin race: the god bears the epithet Latiaris, the festival is called the feriae Latinae, the sacrifice the Latiar; mythologically the god is conceived as Latinus – the legendary king of the Latins who was deified; the ceremony includes a kind of communion: the flesh of the sacrificial bull is distributed among the participants (the right to claim the meat); and during the days of the festival a sacred truce prevails among the Latin peoples.
In the Roman festal calendar the celebration did not have a fixed date, but was proclaimed each year in spring. It lasted four days. The sacrifice had to be attended by the consuls or, in their absence, by a dictator specially appointed for the purpose, while supreme authority in Rome passed to a praefectus feriarum Latinarum causa. Any formal error in the celebration was sufficient to invalidate it and necessitate its repetition. Several elements of the rite are not well known. Wine was excluded from the sacrifice, and the libation was performed with milk. Slaves also took part in the festival. Peculiar was the rite performed with a swing, later interpreted at least as a search, even through the air, for the vanished King Latinus.
It should be noted that the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, whose remains have been brought to light by excavations, was a stone structure contemporary with the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Significant connections were established between the two cults: during the feriae Latinae games were held on the Capitol. The sacrificial victim in both cults was a white bull. Those to whom the right of a triumph on the Capitol was denied could organize a similar celebration on Monte Albano.