Latin Feriae

LATIN FERIAE. - An ancient festival celebrated on the Mons Albanus (present-day Monte Cavo) in honor of Jupiter Latiaris. The testimonies concerning it derive naturally from the era in which Rome was already a great power: but they allow us to glimpse that the origins of the cult go back to the times when Rome was nothing but one of the numerous Latin communities of Latium. The festival was celebrated, precisely, by these communities, headed, in historical times, by Rome, but in more ancient times perhaps by Alba Longa. The festival is essentially the celebration of the unity of the Latin stock: indeed, the god bears the epithet Latiaris, the festival is called feriae latinae, the sacrifice Latiar; the god is mythologically conceived as Latinus - the legendary king of the Latins - divinized; the ceremony contains a kind of communion: the flesh of the sacrificed bull is distributed to the participants (the right of carnem petere); during the days of the festival a sacred truce prevails among the Latin peoples.

In the Roman festive order the celebration did not have a fixed date, but was proclaimed from year to year in the spring. It lasted four days. The sacrifice had to be attended by the consuls or, in their absence, by a dictator specially appointed, while the supreme powers at Rome passed to a praefectus feriarum latinarum causa. Any error of form whatsoever in the celebration was enough to invalidate it and to determine its repetition. Several elements of the rite are known. Wine was excluded from the sacrifice and the libation was made with milk. Slaves also took part in the festival. Singular is the rite performed with the swing and interpreted, at least later, as a search, even in the air, for the vanished king Latinus.

It should be mentioned that the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, whose remains have been brought to light by the excavations, as a stone construction is contemporary with the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Significant connections have been created between the two cults: during the feriae latinae ludi took place on the Capitoline. The sacrificial victim was in both cults the white bull. Those who were denied the right of a triumph on the Capitoline could organize an analogous celebration on the Alban Mount.

Angelo Brelich