Myth Monday - Liber's Festival

Ovid tells us in his Fasti that on the third day after the Ides of March, Romans celebrated the Liberalia.

To review:

• fasti refers to the festival days or, basically, the Roman calendar [see Roman calendar terminology]
• the "third day after" in Roman counting is the second day after using contemporary calculations
• the "Ides" = the 15th of months with 31 days in them -- like March, and
• the Ides of March was the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Liberalia is the name of an ancient Roman holiday. It is also called the Ludi Liberales because the Romans had games and theatrical performances on that day to honor the god Liber. While Liber is generally synonymous with Bacchus and the Greek wine god Dionysus, Liber was also a rustic, indigenous, fertility god who was worshiped as part of a plebeian triad of gods -- along with Ceres and Libera. Liber was also an agricultural god and the date of his festival marked the start of the year's farming season, just as today, St. Patrick's Day is used by some gardeners as the day to start planting cool-weather plants.

Fantham says that by the time of the playwright Terence (first half of the second century B.C.), the public games were no longer celebrated at the Liberalia, probably as a result of the 186 condemnation of the Bacchanalia (senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus) described in Livy (Ab Urbe Condita 39.8-19.3). The Liberalia was the traditional annual date for young men to put on the vestis libera (toga virilis) 'toga of manhood,' marking them as free, adult citizens.

References:

• Translation of Ovid Fasti March 17
• "The Pompeii Calendar Medallions"
  Charlotte R. Long
  American Journal of Archaeology, 1992.
• "Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia "
  P. G. Walsh
  Greece & Rome, 1996.
• "The Kouretes and Zeus Kouros: A Study in Pre-Historic Sociology"
  Jane E. Harrison
  The Annual of the British School at Athens, 1908/1909
• "Liberty and the People in Republican Rome"
  Elaine Fantham
  Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2005.

* There is already much material on this site on the topic of mythology (especially, Gods and Goddesses and The Stories of the Ancient Greeks). In Myth Mondays I attempt to bring up an element of mythology that is either timely or less well known.