Roman Civilization

CMS 206 /History 206

• The Lemuria (May 9, 11, and 13; N) was both a private and public festival of the dead. Unlike the February feasts (Parentalia, Feralia and Carista) associated with the dead, which tended to the nostalgic and reflective, the Lemuria were scary. We really don't much about the public cult festival, but Ovid has a lot to say about what folks did at home.
• On the nights of the festival, lemures or ghosts of your dead ancestors, walked and visited (not with kind intent) their living relations. Ovid thought the festival may have started as a way of expiating Remus for what his brother Romulus did to him.
• On the nights of the Lemuria, the pater familias rose at midnight and walked barefoot and loose robed to a basin containing clean water. He folded his fingers around his thumb and washed his hand in the water. Then, he filled his mouth with black beans and walked through the house and spat the beans out, careful not to look around. When the beans were out he would say nine times, "with these beans I redeem me and mine." While he was speaking the lemures would come and collect the beans. He then washed his hand again, picked up bronze household instruments, and walked through the house clanging them. When he was done he repeated nine times, "Paternal ghosts, get out!"
• The clanging of the bronze instruments was apotropaic ("warding off"). The beans, scholars are not so sure about. Some think they reflect taboos associated with the dead, others that they are symbols of fertility.