Lupercalia

The Lupercalia was held every year on 15 February. The Romans connected the month's name with februa, things used for cleansing, and the goatskin thongs of the runners were called by that name. Ovid devotes a long passage of his Fasti to the festival, and Plutarch discusses it in his lives of Romulus and Julius Caesar.

The rite began at the Lupercal with the sacrifice of goats and a dog. Plutarch reports that two young men of good family were touched on the forehead with the bloody knife, the blood was wiped away with wool dipped in milk, and the young men had to laugh. Then the Luperci, nearly naked but for goatskins, ran their course, striking those they met. The festival was famous enough to stage one of the best-known scenes of the late Republic: at the Lupercalia of 44 BC, Mark Antony, running as a Lupercus, offered Julius Caesar a diadem, which Caesar refused. The rite lasted into the Christian era, and late in the fifth century Pope Gelasius I wrote against its celebration in Rome.