PARENTALIA. - In ancient Roman religion this was the name given to a series of days beginning on 13 February and ending on the 21st of the same month. While the latter day is also marked in the archaic Calendar as a public feast (Peralia), documentation concerning the P. or dies parentales does not go back to very ancient times; this, however, does not exclude the antiquity, at least in private observance, of the festive cycle, since the archaic Calendar records only the culminating, strictly festive days of public festal cycles.
In the private sphere, the celebration consisted of funerary rites dedicated to the deceased, conceived as dei (di parentes: the ancestors as dei), almost as an annual renewal of burial rites. Yet it was an act of public worship that marked the beginning of the cycle: in the Calendar of Filocalo (4th cent. A.D.), 13 February bears the annotation «Virgo Vestalis parentat». This information has been related to another, older one, according to which the Vestal performed funerary rites at the tomb of Tarpeia. None of the days between the 13th and the 21st appears as a dies nefastus, that is, as a day whose sacred character does not permit profane activities; all, rather, are dies religiosi, entailing the closing of temples, the prohibition of marriages, and, for magistrates, the prohibition of wearing the insignia of their offices: this because of contact with the world of the dead, under whose sign the whole month of February, the last of the archaic Roman Calendar, unfolds.