Lupercalia was an annual ritual practised in Rome possibly from before The Eternal City’s founding all the way until the 4th century CE when it was banned by Christian authorities.
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral annual festival, observed in the city of Rome, each year, on February 15, to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia subsumed Februa, an earlier-origin spring cleansing ritual held on the same date, which gives the month of February (Februarius) its name.
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The rites were confined to the Lupercal cave, the Palatine Hill, and the Forum, all of which were central locations in Rome’s foundation myth. Near the cave stood a sanctuary of Rumina, goddess of breastfeeding; and the wild fig-tree (Ficus Ruminalis) to which Romulus and Remus were brought by the divine intervention of the river-god Tiberinus; some Roman sources name the wild fig tree caprificus, literally “goat fig”. Like the cultivated fig, its fruit is pendulous, and the tree exudes a milky sap if cut, which makes it a good candidate for a cult of breastfeeding.
A male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter’s chief priest: and an offering of salt mealcakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins. After the sacrifice at the Lupercal, two Luperci approached its altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and/or laugh.
The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut and carried thongs (known as februa) of the newly flayed goatskin, and ran naked (only in loincloths) along the old Palatine boundary, in an anticlockwise direction around the hill. In Plutarch’s description of the Lupercalia, written during the early Empire,
…many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.
The Luperci completed their circuit of the Palatine, then returned to the Lupercal cave. Descriptions of the Lupercalia festival of 44 BC attest to its continuity as Caesar used it to stage a ceremony in which Mark Antony presented him a royal crown, which he then refused.