A poetic calendar of the Roman year, month by month — the festivals, the myths behind them, the astronomical signs, and the stories Romans told about why they did what they did. Ovid planned twelve books, one for each month. He finished six before Augustus exiled him to the Black Sea, and the poem stops at the end of June. What survives is the most entertaining guide to Roman religion ever written: gossipy, learned, irreverent, and alive with the voices of gods explaining their own holidays.
Start ReadingJanuary belongs to Janus, the two-faced god who sees past and future simultaneously. Ovid goes straight to the source and interviews him. Why two faces? What was Chaos like? Why are dates on the first of the month lucky for new projects? The god answers everything with surprising candour. Also: the Carmentalia, the Agonalia, and why Romans pay their respects to money on the first of the year.
February is the month of purification — and of Lupercalia, the festival where half-naked young men ran through Rome striking women with leather thongs to make them fertile. Ovid explains the ritual, the festival of Faunus, and the story of the boundary god Terminus, who refused to move even for Jupiter. The month ends with the leap year and the dead: the Parentalia and the Feralia, when the living feed the ghosts.
March opens the season of war — it is Mars's month, and Ovid gives the god of war his due while quietly preferring the literary festivals. Anna Perenna's celebration on the Ides involves public drunkenness and bawdy songs by the river. The Liberalia marks the coming-of-age of Roman boys. And the month's greatest story is the rape of the Sabine women, told as the origin of Roman marriage customs.
Venus's month. The goddess of love presides over April, and Ovid tells her story with the affection of a fellow professional. The Floralia closes the month with flowers, theatrical obscenity, and hunts for goats and hares. But the centrepiece is the Parilia on April 21st — the birthday of Rome — and the tale of Romulus, Remus, and the wolf, told as only Ovid can tell it: with tenderness, irony, and a shepherd's fire to jump over.
May is Maia's month — mother of Mercury, grandmother of Evander. The Lemuria falls here: three nights when the ghosts of the dead walk, and the head of the household walks barefoot through the house at midnight, spitting black beans over his shoulder to appease them. Ovid also covers the temple of Bona Dea, the festival from which all men were excluded, and tells the story with the careful curiosity of someone who knows he shouldn't be watching.
June belongs to Juno, though Ovid notes that other etymologies exist and diplomatically declines to choose. The Vestalia brings us inside the temple of Vesta and the world of the Vestal Virgins — their power, their ritual, their terrifying punishment for breaking their vows. The month also contains Ovid's account of the serving-women's festival, the Matralia, and ends with the story of the divine twins, Castor and Pollux. The poem stops here. Ovid never wrote July.