In ancient Roman religion, the
Furrinalia (or
Furinalia) was an annual
Roman festivals held on 25 July to celebrate the rites
(sacra) of the goddess
Furrina.
Varro notes that the festival was a public holiday
(feriae publicae dies). Both the festival and the goddess had become obscure
[Varro, De lingua latina 5.84.] even to the Romans of the
Roman Republic; Varro (mid-1st century BC) notes that few people in his day even know her name.
[ Nunc vix nomen notum paucis: Varro, De lingua latina 6.19.] One of the fifteen
flamen (high priests of official cult) was assigned to her, indicating her archaic stature,
[Varro, De lingua latina 6.19: cuius deae honos apud antiquos, nam ei sacra instituta annua et flamen attributus.] and she had a
sacred grove (lucus) on the
Janiculum, which may have been the location of the festival.
[Ken Dowden, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2000), p. 239.] Furrina was associated with water, and the Furrinalia follows the
Lucaria (Festival of the Grove) on 19 and 21 July and the
Neptunalia on 23 July, a grouping that may reflect a concern for summer drought.
[Robert Schilling, "Neptune," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 138. This was the earlier view of Georg Wissowa.]
External links
-
Lucus Furrinae entry in Platner's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome
