The God of the Lupercal

Abstract

On 15 February, two days after the Ides, there took place at Rome the mysterious ritual called Lupercalia, which began when the Luperci sacrificed a goat at the Lupercal. There was evidently a close conceptual and etymological connection between the name of the festival, the title of the celebrants, and the name of the sacred place: as our best-informed literary source on Roman religion, M. Terentius Varro, succinctly put it, ‘the Luperci [are so called] because at the Lupercalia they sacrifice at the Lupercal … the Lupercalia are so called because [that is when] the Luperci sacrifice at the Lupercal’.What is missing in that elegantly circular definition is the name of the divinity to whom the sacrifice was made. Even the sex of the goat is unclear — Ovid and Plutarch refer to a she-goat, other sources make it male — which might perhaps imply a similar ambiguity in the gender of the recipient. Varro does indeed refer to a goddess Luperca, whom he identifies with the she-wolf of the foundation legend; he explains the name as lupa pepercit, ‘the she-wolf spared them’ (referring to the infant twins), so I think we can take this as an elaboration on the myth, and not much help for the ritual.