Comparing Greek and Roman festivals

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Slaves were given a feast before their masters ate, as if they were the masters, and they were allowed to gamble with dice openly.

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Source A shows that the Lupercalia began with a sacrifice at the very place where Romulus was exposed, linking the rite to Rome's origins. Everything that follows grows out of the sacrifice: the two noble youths are marked with the blood from the knife and then wiped with milk, and the skins of the sacrificed goats are cut into the strips the Luperci use in their run. The unusual victims, goats and a dog, show the festival's distinctive religious character.

Source B shows a procession whose whole purpose is to bring a bull to Athena's altar. The fire already burns, the priestess stands ready and the statue of the goddess watches, so the sacrifice is the climax towards which everyone moves. The piper and the men carrying branches show that the approach to the sacrifice was solemn and carefully organised, and the bull, the most valuable victim, shows how much the community offered the goddess.

In both festivals sacrifice is the moment when the community makes contact with the god. The difference is that the Roman sacrifice leads into a wild, playful run through the city, while the Greek procession is calm and orderly.

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Source A shows that women were at the heart of the purpose of the Lupercalia. Ovid explains the rite as a cure for a time when wives rarely bore children: Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, declared through her grove, 'Let a sacred goat enter the mothers of Italy', and the young women offered their backs to be struck with strips of goat hide. The bride is told that the blows will make her a mother, so the festival existed to secure women's fertility, which was vital for Roman families and for the future of Rome. However, the women receive the blows rather than performing the rite, which is carried out by men.

Source B shows a girl playing an active and honoured role. As the kanephoros she leads the whole procession, carrying on her head the basket that held the sacrificial knife and barley, so the sacrifice could not take place without her. Her fine robe suggests that she came from a respected family and represented the purity of the community before the gods.

Both sources therefore show women as important to festivals, but in different ways: the Greek girl leads and serves the ritual, while the Roman women are the people the ritual is meant to help.

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Every one of these festivals was linked to a myth about a god or the city's past, and the rituals were often explained by those myths. But myths were not always at the heart of what the festival meant to the people who took part.

In Athens, the Great Panathenaia celebrated Athena's birthday, and its central gift, the new peplos for her olive-wood statue, was woven with scenes of the battle of the gods and giants, in which Athena fought. Plutarch says Theseus founded the festival when he united Attica, so it also recalled the city's own beginnings, and the Parthenon above the procession route showed Athena's birth on its east pediment and her contest with Poseidon on the west. The City Dionysia re-enacted a myth: the statue of Dionysos Eleuthereus was escorted into the city, recalling the god's arrival from Eleutherai, and the tragedies themselves dramatised myths such as those of Theseus, Oedipus and the Trojan War in the god's own theatre.

In Rome, the Lupercalia began at the Lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf was believed to have suckled Romulus and Remus, and the Ara Pacis and the coin of Sextus Pompeius Fostlus show how central that story was to Roman identity. Ovid gives several mythical explanations of the rites: the twins racing naked after cattle thieves, Faunus' dislike of clothes, and Juno's oracle, 'Let a sacred goat enter the mothers of Italy', which explained why women were struck with goat-hide strips. The Saturnalia recalled the reign of Saturn in Latium, a Golden Age before slavery, which explained why masters and slaves were treated as equals for a few days; Macrobius says the woollen bonds on Saturn's statue were loosened for the festival.

However, other purposes were just as important. Many rituals had practical aims: the Lupercalia purified the city and promoted fertility, the Saturnalia gave rest after the autumn sowing, and the Panathenaia provided meat, games and a display of Athenian power. The myths often seem to have been attached to rituals afterwards to explain them, which is why ancient writers offered competing versions: Plutarch and Ovid each give several possible origins for the Lupercalia. For most participants the sacrifice, the feast, the contests or the role reversal may have mattered more than the story behind them, and political uses, such as the display of tribute at the Dionysia or Antony's offer of a diadem at the Lupercalia, had nothing to do with myth.

In conclusion, I largely agree that myth lay at the heart of these festivals' meaning: each was understood as a celebration of a divine event or of the city's origins, and their rituals re-enacted or recalled those stories. But myth was not the whole of their heart. Their practical, social and political purposes were equally real, and in many cases the myths were explanations created for rituals whose original purpose had been forgotten.