TUBILUSTRIUM. - 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 Prenestine calendar states: "Festival of Mars." This day is so called because in the Atrium Sutorium the lustration is performed of the trumpets (tubae) used in sacred ceremonies. According to Latazio, among the ruins of the Palatine burned by the Gauls there would have been found the staff (clavo) with which Romulus would have inaugurated the city (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 in 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 the forging of metals - is perhaps explicable by Ovid's own words (Fasti, V, 725-26): "Lustrantur purae, quae facit ille, tubae."

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: Th. Mommsen, in CIL, I (1893), p. 213; W. Warde Fowler, The roman festivals, London 1899, pp. 63, 123; W. Ehlers, s. v. in Pauly-Wissowa, VII A 1 (1930), coll. 755-759.

Cesare D'Onofrio

@incollection{ec12_tubilustrium, author = {D'Onofrio, Cesare}, title = {Tubilustrium}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {598}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/tubilustrium} }

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