LUPERCI and LUPERCALIA. – Festival of 15 February in ancient Roman religion. The performance of its rites was entrusted to the *luperci* (etymologies proposed: 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 *Quintiales* (to which, for a brief reform under Julius Caesar, were added the *luperci Iulii*).
On the day of the festival the *luperci* gathered in the cave called the Lupercal on the slope of the Palatine, where, according to legend, the she-wolf had found and suckled Romulus and Remus. In the ritual of the festival three moments can be distinguished: 1. The sacrifice, in the cave, of a goat (or a he-goat?) and a dog, in the presence, it seems, of the *flamen Dialis*, priest of Jupiter, who, however, on other occasions was not permitted to see dogs and goats. 2) Two young men, presumably *luperci*, had their foreheads touched with the bloodied knife used in the sacrifice. The trace of blood was then wiped away with a woolen cloth dipped in milk, after which the young men had to laugh. 3) The *luperci*, completely naked except for a goatskin apron, then ran around the Palatine. With a goatskin thong, called the *amiculum Junonis*, they struck anyone they met, or, according to other versions, only the women, thereby ensuring their fertility. As the god of the festival, ancient authors mention—seemingly in disagreement—Faunus, Lupercus, and Inuus (but the last two are probably only other names for the first), while according to an isolated but not negligible testimony the festival would have been of Juno. For Faunus one may adduce the festival of this god on 13 February, his specific cult within the *gens Fabia*, his associations with the wolf; for Juno the *amiculum Junonis*, the sacred character of the month of February (cf. *Ino Februata* and the festivals of 1 February and 1 March), the goat as her sacred animal, and the legend that traces the rite of striking women back to an oracle of Juno Lucina. The festival may have been dedicated to these two deities simultaneously, which would correspond to the double priestly sodality, the double sacrificial victim, the two young men in the knife rite, and the two animals connected with the *luperci*, the wolf whose name they bear 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 mostly interpret it within the framework of a general theory, emphasizing or considering as the only original traits of the rite those that best correspond to it; some (Mannhardt) will see in it agrarian fertility rites, others (Deubner, Rose) magical rites of purification, others (partly W. Fowler, Carcopino) instead totemic acts. The festival is evidently complex, as complex is the polytheistic system of the archaic calendar that contains II. The circuit described by the *luperci* around the seat of the most ancient Roman community, the complex of cultural legends connected with the origins of Rome, the close parallelism of Latin and Sabine elements, etc., also underscore a “political” aspect of the festival.