Lustratio was an ancient Greece and ancient Rome purification ritual.[Heitland p. 224] It included a procession and in some circumstances the sacrifice of a pig ( sus), a sheep ( ovis), and a bull ( taurus) ( suovetaurilia). The name is the source of English "lustration" (a purification).
Purpose
The
Lustratio was performed by a
Flamen or magistrate who led a procession with at least one
Animal sacrifice around the area intended to be purified. Following this, the animals would be sacrificed to the god Mars. The animals which were sacrificed were usually either a
pig,
Sheep, or a
bull. One reason for a
lustratio was to rid newborn children of any harmful spirits that may have been acquired at birth prior to the
dies lustricus. The ceremony took place at the age of nine days for baby boys and eight days for baby girls. In the ceremony, the procession traced a magical boundary around the child to be purified. At the end of the ceremony, if the child was male, he was presented with a small charm, usually of gold, called a
bulla and kept in a leather bag around the boy's neck. This
bulla would be worn until the boy became a man and exchanged the child's purple-lined toga
toga praetexta for the plain
toga virilis of an adult. The
lustratio ceremony culminated with the
Roman name of the child, the name being added to official Roman registers, and
Augury in order to discern the child’s future.
Lustratio ceremonies were also used to purify cities, objects or buildings, and on some occasions to purify an area where a crime had been committed.[Murray p. 719] Instructions on the lustratio performed for the Roman town of Iguvium illustrate that the ceremony consisted of a procession of priests and sacrificial victims around the town's citadel, stopping at the three gates to the citadel, where the sacrifices took place. The gates were considered as the weak points which required strengthening.[Evans p. 183]
Instances
One notable occasion was a
lustratio held to purify
Athens by
Epimenides, after the
Cylonian affair.
Another example of this ceremony involved was that of the army of
Macedon. It was performed by a dog being cut in half, and the army assembling between the location of the two halves, which were flung in opposite directions.
[Cic. de Divin. i.45; Barth, ad Stat. Theb. iv. p1073] According to Zosimus, the pagan historian of late antiquity, after Constantine the Great had his son
Crispus and his own wife Fausta killed, he approached priests of the old religion, and finding that they were unwilling to offer him
lustratio for these deeds, went over to the Christian religion after theirs offered him
absolution.
[Zosimus p. 151]
See also
Citations
Bibliography
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Evans, Arthur Anthropology and the Classics, 1967
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Goldsworthy, Adrian Caesar, 2006
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Heitland, William Emerton The Roman Republic, 1909
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Murray, John A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1875
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Zosimus, New History. London: Green and Chaplin (1814). Book 2.
External links
