10 Bizarre Facts About Lupercalia, The Original St Valentine’s Day
Long before we started giving cards to girls to let them know that we choo-choo-choose
them, the Romans were celebrating love in their own way.
Every February 15, they held Lupercalia—the original Valentine’s Day.The holiday has
gone through a few changes over the past few thousand years.
But don’t worry—if you’re hoping to celebrate a truly traditional Valentine’s
Day this year, Listverse has you covered.
We’ll let you know everything you need to do.
10 The Murdering Of The Cute Puppies On the original Valentine’s Day, the Romans
kicked off the festivities by dragging two goats and a puppy into a cave and letting
a group of cultish priests ritually slaughter them.
The instructions were specific about the puppy part.
It couldn’t be a mature dog—it had to be an adorable baby puppy.Even the Romans
didn’t really understand why they had to kill a puppy.
The best sources we have on the holiday were written centuries after it began.
By then, Lupercalia was just an old tradition and the Romans writing about it make it clear
that they didn’t understand any of it.Plutarch was pretty sure that they stole the puppy-killing
thing from the Greeks.
Based on how Plutarch described them, the Greeks were puppy-killing aficionados.
He said that the Greeks killed puppies in rituals so often that they had a word for
it: periskulakismoi (“purification by puppy”).
This word has also been translated in some real academic papers that people with PhDs
were paid to write as “pupprification.”But even that’s just a theory.
By the time Plutarch came around, nobody really knew why they were killing puppies—they
were just following tradition.
He had another theory, though.
Pure spite.
“Is it that the dogs bark at the Luperci [priests],” Plutarch theorized, “and annoy
them?”
9 The Feigning Of Laughter Of The Blood-Soaked Boys
After the puppies and the goats were killed, two young noble boys were brought into the
cave to do something that creeped the hell out of the Christians, who ended up banning
this festival.The priests would touch their knives to the heads of the boys, staining
the boys’ heads with blood.
Then the priests would dip wool in milk and rub it on the boys’ heads.
That was kind of strange, but what really made this unnerving was what came next: With
milk and blood streaking down their heads, the boys were required to feign laughter.Again,
the Romans had no idea why they were making creepy, blood-stained children laugh in a
dark cave.
The Romans believed that it was a purification ritual, but even that was just a theory.
It was just a tradition that they’d been following for as long as they could remember,
and they weren’t about to break it.After this, though, came the main event.
The priests would make leather thongs out of the goats, the boys would strip naked,
and the real games would begin.
8 The Streaking Of The Thong-Carrying Men “At this time, many of the noble youth and
of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked,” Plutarch tells us, “striking
those they meet with shaggy thongs.”These naked men would be covered in oil first.
The lower class wasn’t allowed to do this.
These were the highest-ranking and most dignified men in the city.
People like Mark Antony would strip naked, oil up, and run down the streets.Once they
were good and oily, they’d run around hitting people with shaggy thongs.
In particular, they’d target women, who would pretend to run from it.
But secretly, the women would try to get hit with the thongs.
If you got hit with a thong, the Romans believed, you would become more fertile.
So women would bare their backs and offer up their hands in the hopes that naked oily
men would whip them.Those thongs, by the way, were called februare—and they were named
before the month.
That’s right—the entire month of February is named after magical potency thongs.
7 The Eating Of The Entrails On A Stick Lupercalia also involved a feast.
Although when it came to food, it wasn’t exactly the best holiday.
Even Roman poetry calls the feast of Lupercalia “scanty”—and with good cause.
The priests would put the entrails of the sacrificed goats on willow spits, cook them
up, and feed them to a crowd of people.
Splitting two goats between all the citizens of Rome probably didn’t extend that far,
but that wasn’t all they got.
Some vestal virgins would also burn salt cakes, which seem to have been something like ancient
pancakes.
But that was the feast—a tiny bit of goat entrail on a stick and some burned cakes.None
of that might seem particularly appealing, which is probably why the Romans served one
more dish: copious amounts of alcohol.
For the rest of the day, the people of Rome would be drunk out
of
their minds.