VOLTURNALIA. - Festival of August 27 in the archaic Roman calendar, sacred to the god Volturnus, who had his own particular priest (flamen Volturnalis).

Since in Campania Volturnus was the name of a river, since a Roman calendar too marks, for the festival, a sacrifice "Volturno flumini," and since in mythography the god appears as the father of Juturna, it was thought that his name could be explained from volvere. More recently there has been a tendency to connect the name with the Etruscan gentilician vel-thur-na, noting how the root vel (which at the same time is an Etruscan divine name appearing on the bronze liver of Piacenza) is also found in the bases of the divine names Volturna and Vortumnus, the principal god of the Etruscans.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: Th. Mommsen, in CIL, I, 327; W. Warde Fowler, Roman festivals, London 1899, p. 214; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2nd ed., Munich 1912, p. 224; id., in W. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon für klassische Mythologie, VI, col. 370; J. Heurgen, in Revue des études latines, 14 (1936), p. 105 ff.

Angelo Brelich

@incollection{ec12_volturnalia, author = {Brelich, Angelo}, title = {Volturnalia}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1623}, 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/volturnalia} }

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