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48-524: Ferālia / f ɪ ˈ r eɪ l i ə / was an ancient Roman public festival celebrating the Manes (Roman spirits of the dead, particularly the souls of deceased individuals) which fell on 21 February as recorded by Ovid in Book II of his Fasti . This day marked the end of Parentalia , a nine-day festival (13–21 February) honoring the dead ancestors. Roman citizens were instructed to bring offerings to

96-405: A lapis manalis would be placed in the foundations, representing a gate to the underworld . Due to similar names, the lapis manalis is often confused with the lapis manilis in commentaries even in antiquity: "The 'flowing stone' … must not be confused with the stone of the same name which, according to Festus , was the gateway to the underworld." Of this we have a characteristic example in

144-459: A place was called in Italy "height" ( capitolium , the mountain-top), or "stronghold" ( arx , from arcere ); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of one, as houses naturally gathered around the stronghold and were afterwards surrounded with the "ring" ( urbs , connected with urvus and curvus ). The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold of Latium, which offered to settlers

192-507: A secure position, would doubtless be first occupied by the newcomers. Here, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola between the Alban lake ( Lagiod di Castello ) and the Alban mount ( Monte Cavo ), extended the town of Alba Longa , which was regarded as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother city of Rome as well as of all the other Old Latin communities; here on the slopes lay

240-598: A single geo-political entity, Italia , dividing it into eleven regions. Latium – together with the present region of Campagna immediately to the southeast of Latium and the seat of Naples – became Region I. After the Gothic War (535–554) A.D. and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) conquest, this region regained its freedom, because the "Roman Duchy" became the property of the Eastern Emperor. However

288-715: A social space, or forum , was built by c.  620 BC . The influence of the Etruscans played an important role, and migrants came from Etruscan towns. Soon (according to tradition) it was followed by the rule of Etruscan kings, the Tarquins (traditionally, 616-509 BC). While Rome may have acquired considerable territory (some 350 sq. miles) in Latium, Roman kings never exercised absolute power over Latium. The Latin cities did, however, look to Rome for protection, for Rome had more manpower than any other city in Latium. This

336-454: A society led by influential clans ( gentes ). These clans were a sign of their tribal origin, which continued in Rome as the thirty curiae which organized Roman society. However, as a social unit the gens was replaced by the family which was headed by the paterfamilias - the oldest male who held supreme authority over the family. A fixed local center seemed necessary as the center of

384-520: A state god and the descent of the name Latini to the name of the Latin language are sufficient to identify the Latins as a tribe of Indo-European descent. Virgil , a major poet of the early Roman Empire , under Augustus , derived Latium from the word for "hidden" (English latent) because in a myth Saturn , ruler of the golden age in Latium, hid (latuisset) from Jupiter there. A major modern etymology

432-552: A time when Romans , in the midst of war, neglected Feralia, which prompted the spirits of the departed to rise from their graves in anger, howling and roaming the streets. After this event, tribute to the tombs were then made and the ghastly hauntings ceased. To indicate public mourning, marriages of any kind were prohibited on the Feralia, and Ovid urged mothers, brides, and widows to refrain from lighting their wedding torches. Magistrates stopped wearing their insignia and any worship of

480-400: Is practically certain that the original ritual was the purely imitative process of pouring water over the stone. Latium Latium ( / ˈ l eɪ ʃ i ə m / LAY -shee-əm , US also /- ʃ ə m / -⁠shəm ; Latin: [ˈɫati.ũː] ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of

528-513: Is somewhat larger still, though less than twice the size of Latium vetus et adiectum, including a large area of ancient Southern Etruria and Sabina. The ancient language of the Latins, the tribespeople who occupied Latium, was the immediate predecessor of the Old Latin language, ancestor of Latin and the Romance languages . Latium has played an important role in history owing to its status as

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576-447: Is spiting herself by shunning her own advantage, an entanglement with the highest god. Look out for us both. What will be a great pleasure for me will be in your sister's great interest. Block her as she flees at the bank of the river to keep her from jumping into its waters." One of the informed nymphs, Lara , would not hold her tongue and warned Juturna to flee. In addition, she approached Jupiter's wife Juno , saying, "Your husband loves

624-612: Is that Lazio comes from the Latin word "latus", meaning "wide", expressing the idea of "flat land" meaning the Roman Campagna . The region that would become Latium had been home to settled agricultural populations since the early Bronze Age and was known to the Ancient Greeks and even earlier to the Mycenaean Greeks . The name is most likely derived from the Latin word " latus ", meaning "wide", expressing

672-459: Is to say, good demons, confirming his opinion that the souls of men are demons." Latin spells of antiquity were often addressed to the Manes. Manes may be derived from "an archaic adjective manus— good —which was the opposite of immanis (monstrous)". Roman tombstones often included the letters D.M. , which stood for Dis Manibus , literally "to the Manes", or figuratively, "to the spirits of

720-606: The Circeian promontory . The right bank of the Tiber was occupied by the Etruscan city of Veii , and the other borders were occupied by Italic tribes. Subsequently, Rome defeated Veii and then its Italic neighbours, expanding its dominions over Southern Etruria and to the south, in a partly marshy and partly mountainous region. The latter saw the creation of numerous Roman and Latin colonies: small Roman colonies were created along

768-613: The Naiad Juturna." As a result, Jupiter rips out Lara's tongue in anger and summons Mercury to escort her to be a nymph in the Underworld . During this mission, Mercury becomes lustful of Lara and copulates with her, begetting twins. These twins become the Lares , the guardians of intersections who watch over the city of Rome . Similar observances in other cultures: Manes The theologian St. Augustine , writing about

816-814: The Roman Empire . Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil ( Old Latium ) on which resided the tribe of the Latins or Latians. It was located on the left bank (east and south) of the River Tiber , extending northward to the River Anio (a left-bank tributary of the Tiber) and southeastward to the Pomptina Palus ( Pontine Marshes , now the Pontine Fields) as far south as

864-588: The Dea Tacita festival, which was held on the same day as the Feralia. Ovid then tells a story to explain the origins of Dea Tacitia, starting with Jupiter 's untamed lust for the nymph Juturna . Juturna, aware of Jupiter's lust for her, hid within the Hazelwood forest and dove into her sisters' waters. Jupiter then gathered all the nymphs in Latium seeking their help in capturing Juturna, saying, "Your sister

912-526: The Lake of Ariccia. So, by virtue of her proximity to the sanctuary of Jupiter, the village of Alba Longa held a position of religious primacy among the Latin villages. Originally, thirty villages were entitled to participate in the league, known as the Alban colonies. Only a few of the individual names of these villages are recorded. The ritual of this league was the "Latin festival" ( feriae Latinae ), at which, on

960-536: The Latin peoples. By the mid-7th century BC, Rome had secured itself as a maritime power and secured its salt supply; the Via Salaria (lit. "salt road") was paved from Rome down to Ostia on the northern bank of the river Tiber - the closest salt-field in Western Italy. At the same time, archaeologists detect, there was an urban transformation of the area. Roman huts were being replaced by houses, and

1008-462: The Latins. Although Alba Longa enjoyed a position of religious primacy, the Alban presidency never held any significant political power over Latium, e.g. it was never the capital of a Latin state. It is probable that the extent of the Latin League's jurisdiction was somewhat unsettled and thus fluctuated; yet it remained for its existence not an accidental aggregate of various communities, but

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1056-528: The Middle Ages when its stone and location were reused for various monasteries and finally a hotel. During World War II , the Wehrmacht turned it into a radio station, which was captured after an infantry battle by American troops in 1944, and it currently is a controversial telecommunications station surrounded by antennae considered unsightly by the population within view. The selection of Jupiter as

1104-570: The Mount of Alba, upon a day annually appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was sacrificed by the assembled Latin stock to the "Latin god" ( Jupiter Latiaris ). Each community taking part in the ceremony had to contribute to the sacrificial feast. However; the sacred grove of Aricia, the Nemus Dianae , on the Lake of Aricia , was always among the most popular place of pilgrimage for

1152-473: The black beans in the old woman's ritual may be related to rites that lend themselves to another festival of the dead in the month of May, called Lemuria . During Lemuria the dead ancestor spirits, particularly the unburied, called lemures , emerge from their graves and visit the homes in which they had lived. It was then necessary to confront the unwelcome spirits and lure them out of one's house using specific actions and chants. According to Ovid , this includes

1200-539: The ceremony of the aquaelicium , designed to produce rain after a long drought. In classical times the ceremony consisted in a procession headed by the pontifices , which bore the sacred rain-stone from its resting-place by the Porta Capena to the Capitol , where offerings were made to the sky-deity, Iuppiter, but from the analogy of other primitive cults and the sacred title of the stone ( lapis manalis ), it

1248-526: The coast, were all more or less ancient centers of Latin colonization, not to speak of many other less famous and in some cases almost forgotten. All these villages were politically sovereign, and each of them was self-governing. The closeness of descent and their common language not only pervaded all of them, but manifested itself in an important religious and political institution—the Latin League. The Latins were tied together by religious associations, including worship of Venus, Jupiter Latiaris, and of Diana at

1296-475: The coast, while the inland areas were colonized by Latins and Romans without citizenship. The name Latium was thus also extended to this area south of Rome ( Latium adiectum ), up to the ancient Oscan city of Casinum , defined by Strabo as "the last city of the Latins". The modern descendant, the Italian Regione of Lazio , also called Latium in Latin , and occasionally in modern English ,

1344-461: The dead", an abbreviation that continued to appear even in Christian inscriptions. The Manes were offered blood sacrifices. The gladiatorial games , originally held at funerals, may have been instituted in the honor of the Manes. According to Cicero , the Manes could be called forth from the caves near Lake Avernus . When a new town was founded, a round hole would be dug and a stone called

1392-638: The ecclesiastical power. However, between 1353 and 1367, the papacy regained control of Latium and the rest of the Papal States . From the middle of the 16th century, the papacy politically unified Latium with the Papal States , so that these territories became provincial administrations of St. Peter's estate; governors in Viterbo , in Marittima and Campagna , and in Frosinone administered them for

1440-420: The foremost families were compelled to move to Rome: Alba Longa, the mother city, was dissolved into Rome, the daughter. According to Livy , Alba Longa was razed to the ground - spare the temples - by King Tullus of Rome. The Latin festival would still be held on the Alban mount, but by Roman magistrates. Having destroyed Alba Longa, Rome was in command of the Latin festival and thus held presidency over

1488-424: The gods was prohibited as it "should be hidden behind closed temple doors; no incense on the altar, no fire on the hearth." As concerns public rites nothing of them survives, however on this day as described by Ovid, an old drunken woman ( anus ebria ) sits in a circle with other girls performing rites in the name of the mute goddess Tacita who is identified with the nymph Lara or Larunda . The ritual consists of

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1536-511: The host of the capital city of Rome , at one time the cultural and political center of the Roman Empire . Consequently, Latium is home to celebrated works of art and architecture . The earliest known Latium was the country of the Latini , a tribe whose recognised center was a large, dormant volcano, Mons Albanus ("the Alban Mount", today's Colli Albani ), 20 kilometres (12 mi) to

1584-514: The idea of "flat land" (in contrast to the local Sabine high country). The Etruscans , from their home region of Etruria , exerted a strong cultural and political influence on Latium from about the 8th century BC onward. However, they were unable to assert political hegemony over the region, which was controlled by small, autonomous city-states in a manner roughly analogous to the state of affairs that prevailed in Ancient Greece . Indeed,

1632-487: The involvement of black beans to lure a spirit out of the home. "And after washing his (the householder) hands clean in spring water, he turns, and first he receives black beans and throws them away with face averted; but while he throws them, he says: 'These I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.' This he says nine times, without looking back: the shade is thought to gather the beans, and to follow unseen behind. Again he touches water, and clashes Temesan bronze, and asks

1680-549: The long wars against the barbarian Longobards weakened the region, which was seized by the Roman Bishop who already had several properties in those territories. The strengthening of the religious and ecclesiastical aristocracy led to continuous power struggles between lords and the Roman bishop until the middle of the 16th century. Innocent III tried to strengthen his own territorial power, wishing to assert his authority in

1728-429: The old hag's ritual during Feralia. Also, in the context of sacrifices, the black beans are similar to the black animals used in sacrifice to the 'chthonic deities'. It is implied through Ovid's choice of words, "hostiles linguas" and "inimicaque ora" , that the ritual is intended to curb gossip about a girl's reputation. Gossip of such a nature and its consequences are the subject for the cause, which Ovid offers, of

1776-589: The old woman placing three bits of incense, with three of her fingers, beneath a threshold where a mouse is unknowingly buried. She then rolls seven black beans in her mouth, and smears the head of a fish with pitch, impaling it with a bronze needle, and roasting it in a fire. After she formally declaims the purpose of her actions, as customary in Greco-Roman magic ritual, saying, "I have gagged spiteful tongues and muzzled unfriendly mouths" ( Hostiles linguas inimicaque uinximus ora ), she departs intoxicated. The use of

1824-613: The papacy. After the short-lived Roman Republic (18th century) , the region's annexation to France by Napoleon Bonaparte in February 1798, Latium became again part of the Papal States in October, 1799. On 20 September 1870, the capture of Rome , during the reign of Pope Pius IX , and France's defeat at Sedan , completed Italian unification , and Latium was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy . Latium, often referred to by

1872-479: The positive expression of the relationship of the Latin stock. The Latin League may not have at all times included all Latin communities, but it never granted the privilege of membership to any that were not Latin. Very early in its existence, Rome acquired the presidency of the league, and Alba Longa appeared as a rival for which it was destroyed in the mid-7th century BC; the league, as it was, had been dissolved and

1920-709: The provincial administrations of Tuscia, Campagna and Marittima through the Church's representatives, in order to reduce the power of the Colonna family . Other popes tried to do the same. During the period when the papacy resided in Avignon, France (1309–1377), the feudal lords' power increased due to the absence of the Pope from Rome. Small communes, and Rome above all, opposed the lords' increasing power, and with Cola di Rienzo , they tried to present themselves as antagonists of

1968-402: The region cannot have been one of the villages, but must have been a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the district, where members of the clans met for purposes of administration and amusement, and where they obtained a safer shelter for themselves in case of war: in ordinary circumstances such a place was not at all or but scantily inhabited. Such

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2016-447: The region's cultural and geographic proximity to the cities of Magna Graecia had a strong impact upon its early history. By the 10th century BC, archaeology records a slow development in agriculture from the entire area of Latium with the establishment of numerous villages. The Latins cultivated grains (spelt and barley), grapes ( Vitis vinifera ), olives, apples, and fig trees. The various Latini populi (lit. "Latin peoples") lived in

2064-412: The shade to go out of his house. When he has said nine times, 'Ghosts of my fathers, go forth!' he looks back, and thinks that he has duly performed the sacred rites." Perhaps the black beans carried with them connotations of warding away or dispelling bad things in general, whether it be unwelcome spirits haunting a household as seen during Lemuria, or preventing undesired gossip towards an individual as in

2112-546: The southeast of Rome, 64 kilometres (40 mi) in circumference. In its center is a crater lake, Lacus Albanus ( Lago Albano ), oval in shape, a few km long and wide. At the top of the second-highest peak ( Monte Cavo ) was a temple to Jupiter Latiaris, where the Latini held state functions before their subjection to Rome, and the Romans subsequently held religious and state ceremonies. The last pagan temple to be built stood until

2160-526: The subject a few centuries after most of the Latin pagan references to such spirits, differentiated Manes from other types of Roman spirits: Apuleius "says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and that men become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvae if they are bad, and Manes if it is uncertain whether they deserve well or ill... He also states that the blessed are called in Greek εὐδαίμονες [ eudaimones ], because they are good souls, that

2208-454: The tombs of their dead ancestors which consisted of at least "an arrangement of wreaths, a sprinkling of grain and a bit of salt, bread soaked in wine and violets scattered about." Additional offerings were permitted, however the dead were appeased with just the aforementioned. These simple offerings to the dead were perhaps introduced to Latium by Aeneas , who poured wine and scattered violet flowers on his father Anchises ' tomb. Ovid tells of

2256-420: The very ancient Latin districts of Lanuvium, Aricia, and Tusculum. Here too are found some primitive works of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization. The district-strongholds there later gave rise to the considerable towns of Tibur and Praeneste . Labici too, Gabii , Nomentum in the plain between the Alban and Sabine hills and the Tiber, Rome on the Tiber, Laurentum and Lavinium on

2304-400: Was due, in part, to Rome's generous policy of asylum: Roman kindness was unique in its readiness to grant citizenship to outsiders, citizenship was even granted to former slaves. The children of freedmen provided an important source for Roman armies, and given Rome a definite edge in manpower over other cities of the time. The emperor Augustus officially united all of present-day Italy into

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