Th e Bacchanalia were festivals to honor the god Bacchus,
called Dionysius in Greek. Th e Bacchanalia began around
200 b.c.e. as secret women-only festivals, but men quickly
joined in. Because Bacchus was the god of wine, the festival
included a great deal of wine drinking and could also involve
wild sex and other unrestrained behavior.
Th e ludi Romani, or Roman games, were the games held
every year to celebrate the festival of Jupiter Optimus Maxi-
mus on September 13. By the time of the Roman Republic
(509–27 b.c.e.) the games went on for 10 days and included
chariot races, boxing, wrestling, and many plays. Most of the
events occurred in Rome’s Circus Maximus, a giant arena.
Th e Lupercalia, held on February 15, honored the god
Faunus and seems to have been named aft er a wolf god.
Young men sacrifi ced a dog or goat at the Lupercal, a temple
on the Palatine Hill, and skinned it. Th ey then stripped na-
ked, wrapped themselves in pieces of the fresh skin, and ran
through the streets of the neighborhood hitting onlookers
with strips of the skin. Th is treatment was said to enhance
fertility, so women who wanted children made sure they were
in the path of the runners.
Quirinalia happened two days aft er the Lupercalia, on
February 17. Th is festival honored the Sabine god Quirinus,
the patron god of Rome’s Quirinal Hill and one of the gods
associated with the founding of the city by Romulus. Quiri-
nus was believed to watch over the government and citizenry
of Rome, and the citizens were sometimes referred to collec-
tively as quirites.
Th e Saturnalia, a feast honoring the god Saturn, or Satur-
nus, every December 17, was a major public festival. Modern
scholars are not sure what exactly Saturn represented to the
Roman people. Some suggest that he was responsible for the
sowing of wheat and that the festival celebrated the success-
ful completion of the autumn sowing. Romans celebrated the
Saturnalia by performing a sacrifi ce at the temple of Saturn
and then spending several days feasting. During the republic
the Saturnalia lasted seven days. Th e emperor Augustus re-
duced it to three days, but most people continued to celebrate
it for the full week. In addition to eating and drinking, people
visited friends and relatives and gave one another gift s. Th e
most notable aspect of the Saturnalia was the inversion of the
social order. Slaves were given the day off , and their masters
waited on them at meals for a change.
Several festivals celebrated the military and warfare. Fes-
tivals for the god Mars in March included sacrifi ces and horse
races. Another festival in honor of Mars occurred on October
- At this festival the army selected its best warhorses and
ran them in pairs in chariot races on the Campus Martius,
Rome’s drilling ground. Th e right-hand horse of the winning
team was killed with a spear on an altar dedicated to Mars.
Th e priests then cut off its head, genitals, and tail. Th e genitals
and tail were rushed to the Forum, where the horse’s blood
was dripped onto the altar of the Regia, one of the oldest
buildings in the Forum. Meanwhile, at the altar at the Cam-
pus Martius, the priests conducted various ceremonies over
the horse’s head, including covering it with cakes. When they
were done, they tossed the head to the crowd of onlookers.
Th ese onlookers came from two separate neighborhoods, the
Subura and the Via Sacra, and they fought to take possession
of the head for their own neighborhoods. Whichever team
won took the head home and nailed it in a prominent place.
Romans celebrated numerous other major and minor
festivals throughout the year. Th e Agonalia, celebrated in
January and in other months, honored the god Janus. Th e
Matronalia on March 1 honored Juno and was a day for fami-
lies to give gift s to their wives and mothers. March 19 was
the Quinquatria, a festival sacred to Minerva. Th e goddess
Venus had a feast day on April 1. Mercury had his on May 15.
In addition to formal festivals, many days were considered
bad luck and people avoided conducting important business
on them.THE AMERICAS
BY PENNY MORRILL
Archaeological records provide knowledge and understand-
ing of the earliest high cultures in the Americas. Large-scale
ceremonial centers, such as La Venta, the Olmec site in Vera-
cruz (ca. 900–ca. 400 b.c.e.); Chavín de Huántar, the Chavín
site on the northwestern coast of Peru (ca. 900–ca. 200 b.c.e.);
and those constructed by the Adena (ca. 1000 b.c.e.–ca. 200
c.e.) and Hopewell (ca. 200 b.c.e.–ca. 400 c.e.) groups in the
Ohio River Valley, were settings for festival activities. Th ese
centers consisted of pyramids, platforms, altars, and open
plazas, indicating societies that were hieratic, led by chief-
tains or shaman-lords. Th e festivals followed the agricultural
cycle, a characterization that would have been true for early
ceremonial sites throughout the Americas. Th us, religion,
politics, and economics would have revolved around the cer-
emonial complex.
Many of the peoples of the Americas believed in a mul-
tileveled universe with an axis mundi (center of the world).
For the Olmec this center was represented as a tree, a moun-
tain-pyramid, or a dragon. For the Chavín in Peru the sacred
center was marked by the sculpted Lanzón fi gure, a statue of
the central god. Th e Hopewell culture adopted the circle and
the cross of four directions in their architecture and artwork.
Across the Americas the shaman was able to move through
multiple cosmic realms by transforming himself through
bloodletting or the use of hallucinogens or accompanied by
an animal alter-ego. Masks worn by the shaman-leaders had
symbolic features that provided new identities. In Mesoamer-
ica a shaman could call up ancestral spirits, assume the iden-
tity of an animal, or act out myth, and the audience would
have understood his masquerade as transformation.
Ritual, festival, trade, and the ball game brought dis-
persed people from the surrounding villages and farmlands
to the centers. Th e farmers of the Americas looked to their
shaman-leaders for critical advice on plant husbandry—when
and how to plant, what seeds to store, and methods of hybrid-470 festivals: The Americas