ROMAN MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA 635
famous festival of the Lupercalia, which took place in February. The Arcadian
king Evander was said to have come to Rome and there to have founded the first
settlement upon the Palatine Hill. On the side of the hill is a cave, the Lupercal,
where the she-wolf (lupa) was later believed to have suckled Romulus and Re-
mus. Here Evander worshiped his Arcadian god Pan, who was the equivalent of
Faunus. Thus Faunus was connected with the Lupercalia, whose central ritual was
a sacrifice in the Lupercal, at which two young noblemen were smeared with the
victims' blood. They were called the Luperci, and after the sacrifice they ran nearly
naked around the boundary of the Palatine, striking the women they met with
leather straps. Barren women, it was believed, became fertile by this act.
Ovid relates a folktale explaining the nudity of the Luperci. Hercules and
the Lydian queen Omphale came once to a cave where they exchanged clothes
while supper was being prepared. After the meal they went to sleep, still each
in the other's clothes. Meanwhile, Faunus had determined to seduce Omphale.
He entered the cave and lay with the person dressed as a girl. His reception was
far from warm, and ever after he ordered his followers (i.e., the Luperci) to be
naked at his cult, to prevent the repetition of so painful a mistake.
GARDEN DIVINITIES: VENUS AND PRIAPUSVenus was an Italian fertility goddess whose original functions are not known.
She was worshiped in a number of places under titles that indicate that she had
as much to do with luck and the favor of the gods as with beauty and fertility,
and she was apparently particularly the protectress of gardens. A temple to her
was dedicated at Rome in 295 B.c. with the title Venus Obsequens (Venus who is
favorable) the same title as in Plautus' comedy Rudens, which takes place in front
of her temple by the seashore in Libya. During the fourth century, contact with
the Greek world led to identification of Venus with the Greek goddess of love,
Aphrodite.
In 217 B.c., after the Roman defeat at the battle of Lake Trasimene, the dic-
tator Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator consulted the Sibylline books, which
ordered him to dedicate a temple on the Capitoline Hill to Venus Erycina. Eryx,
at the western end of Sicily, was the site of a great temple to the Phoenician fer-
tility goddess Astarte, who later became identified with Aphrodite and then with
Venus. The dedication of the temple of Venus Erycina in 215 was significant in
the development of the worship of Venus at Rome. In that year a lectisternium
was also conducted, a festival at which the statues of the gods were laid out on
couches, two to a couch, and offered a banquet while supplication was made to
them. The ceremony had first been conducted at Rome in 399 for six gods. The
ceremony of 215 was the first in which the twelve great gods were so honored,
and Ennius' lines naming them (see p. 623) described this event. In the lectis-
ternium Venus was paired with Mars. Thus she gained in status, since Mars was
acknowledged as the ancestor of the Romans.