TUBILSTRIUM. - A Roman festival that appears twice in the "Numan" calendar, the first celebrated on March 23 (the last day of the Quinquatria), the second on May 23.
Regarding the first, the note in the Praenestine calendar reports: "Festival of Mars." This day is so called because in the Atrium Sutrium the trumpets (lubea) used in sacred ceremonies are purified. According to Lutatius, among the ruins of the Palatine burned by the Gauls, the club (clava) with which Romulus would have inaugurated the city was found (cf. Varro, De lingua lat., VI, 14). The T., therefore, was a religious ceremony of a military character (cf. Lydus, De mens., IV, 42; Ovid, Fasti, III, 850), in which the Salii and the tubicines sacrorum populi Romani participated (Festus, 482; Varro, op. cit., V, 117), during which the trumpets used in religious rites and in war were purified by the sacrifice of a sheep (Festus, 480).
The fact that the T. celebrated in May was instead sacred to Vulcan—the protector of metalworking—may perhaps be explained by Ovid's own words (Fasti, V, 725-26): "It is purified by the pure trumpets which he makes."