TUBILUSTRIUM. – A Roman festival that appears twice in the “Numan” calendar, the first celebrated on 23 March (the last day of the Quinquatries), the second on 23 May.
With regard to the first, the note in the Praenestine calendar states: “Festival of Mars.” This day is so called because in the Atrium Sutōrium the trumpets (tubae) used in sacred ceremonies are lustrated. According to Latazius, among the ruins of the Palatine burned by the Gauls, the staff (clavus) with which Romulus is said to 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, 85), in which the Salii and the tubicines sacrorum populi Romani took part (Festus, 482; Varro, op. cit., V, 117), and 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—is perhaps explained by Ovid’s own words (Fasti, V, 725–26): “The pure trumpets that he makes are lustrated.”