LUPERCI AND LUPERCALIA. — Festival held on 15 February in the ancient Roman religion. The performance of its rites was entrusted to the luperci (proposed etymologies: 1. from lupus, as noverca from nova; 2. from lupus and hircus; 3. from lupus and arceo), grouped into two priestly sodalities: the luperci Fabiani and Quintiliani, or Quintiliani (to whom, under a short-lived reform, the luperci Iulii were added under Julius Caesar).
On the day of the festival the luperci gathered in the cave called Lupercal on the slope of the Palatine, where, according to legend, the she-wolf had found and suckled Romulus and Remus. Three moments may be distinguished in the ritual of the festival: 1. In the cave, the sacrifice of a she-goat (or a he-goat?) and a dog, apparently in the presence of the flamen Diale, priest of Jupiter, who nevertheless, on other occasions, was not supposed to see dogs and goats. 2) The foreheads of two young men, presumably luperci, were touched with the bloodstained knife used in the sacrifice. The trace of blood was then wiped away with a woolen cloth moistened with milk, whereupon the young men had to burst out laughing. 3) The luperci, completely naked except for an apron of goatskin, then began a race all around the Palatine. With a goatskin thong, called amiculum Iunonis, they struck anyone they encountered, or, according to other versions, only women, thereby ensuring their fertility. As gods of the festival, the ancient authors mention — in apparent disagreement — Faunus, Lupercus, and Inuus (although the last two are probably merely other names for the first), whereas according to an isolated but not negligible testimony the festival was said to have belonged to Juno. In favor of Faunus one may cite this god’s festival on 13 February, his specific cult among the gens Fabia, and his associations with the wolf; in favor of Juno, the amiculum Iunonis, the sacred character of the month of February (cf. Iuno Februata and the festivals of 1 February and 1 March), the goat as her sacred animal, and the legend that traces the ritual flogging of women to an oracle of Juno Lucina. The festival may have been dedicated to these two divinities simultaneously, which would find a correspondence in the twofold priestly association, the two sacrificial victims, the two young men in the ritual with the knife, and the two animals connected with the luperci, the wolf from which they take their name and the goat whose skin they wear.
The ancients explained the festival etiologically, as a commemoration of events in the life of Romulus and Remus. Modern scholars for the most part interpret it within the framework of a general theory, emphasizing or regarding as the only original features of the rite those that correspond most closely to it; thus some (Mannhardt) find in it rites of agrarian fertility, others (Deubner, Rose) magical rites, and still others (in part W. Fowler, Carcopino) totemic practices. The festival is evidently complex, just as complex is the polytheistic system of the archaic calendar that contains II. The circuit described by the luperci around the seat of the earliest Roman community, the complex of cult legends connected with the origins of Rome, the close parallelism of Latin and Sabine elements, etc., also highlight a “political” aspect of the festival.