Equirria
The Equirria (also as Ecurria, from equicurria, "
Site
The Equirria took place in the
On the calendar
The Equirria were said to have been founded by
In the earliest form of the calendar, the year began with March, and thus the 27 February Equirria originally preceded
Significance
"The Equirria occurred between King's Flight and New Year, bridging the period of 'disorder': held immediately before the new moon, they prepared the way for the reestablishment of order with the new month and year."[10]
Originally, the Equirria may have featured races on horseback, like the archaic festivals of the Consualia[11] and Taurian Games, rather than chariot races.[12] The gods of the underworld (di inferi) were characteristically propitiated by horse racing in the Campus Martius with "old and obscure" festivals such as the Consualia, at sites including the Tarentum and the Trigarium.[13] Hendrik Wagenvoort speculated that the archaic Mars "had been imagined as the god of death and the underworld in the shape of a horse."[14]
William Warde Fowler understood the Equirria as "lustrations of the horse" for the army.[15] They occur during what most scholars see as a general "war festival" for Mars.[16] The end of the campaigning season was marked in October, with the ritual of the October Horse, which also involved chariot races, on the Ides, and the Armilustrium on 19 October. [17] The paucity of evidence on the Equirria, as with other archaic festivals, may indicate that they were preserved for the sake of religious tradition, but not attended by masses of people.[18]
References
- ^ John H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing (University of California Press, 1986), p. 560.
- ^ Ovid, Fasti 2.860; Jörg Rüpke, The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History, and the Fasti, translated by David M.B. Richardson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 75.
- ^ Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture, and Religion (Brill, 1956), p. 224.
- Robert E.A. Palmer, Studies of the Northern Campus Martius in Ancient Rome (American Philosophical Society, 1990), pp. 28–29, doubts that the Trigarium was ever anything but a practice field.
- Robert E.A. Palmer, The Archaic Community of the Romans (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 150; Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 560.
- ^ Geoffrey S. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 288, with additional sources.
- ^ Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," p. 225.
- ^ Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), p. 37. The views of Georg Wissowa on the festivals of Mars framing the military campaigning season are summarized by C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), p. 264, with bibliography.
- ^ Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," pp. 224–227; Frank Bernstein, "Complex Rituals: Games and Processions in Republican Rome", in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 223; C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), p. 6; Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001), p. 65; Lipka, Roman Gods, p. 39; William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 44ff. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), p. 99, notes that about the peculiar even-date placement of the Regifugium and March Equirria "we know so little that it is almost useless to speculate as to the reason for their exception from the rule." See also Bernstein, "Die römischen Ecurria / Equirria — kriegerische Feste?" Nikephoros 12 (1999) 149–169. See discussion throughout Rüpke, The Roman Calendar.
- ^ Rüpke, Roman Calendar, p. 76.
- ^ Tertullian, De spectaculis 5, says that Romulus had replaced the Consualia with the Equirria.
- ^ Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," p. 228.
- ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, pp. 544, 558; Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Manuel des Institutions Romaines (Hachette, 1886), p. 549; "Purificazione," in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (LIMC, 2004), p. 83. See also the Lusus Troiae.
- ^ Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," p. 228.
- ^ Fowler, Religious Experience, pp. 98, 217.
- ^ Hendrik Wagenvoort, "On the Magical Significance of the Tail," in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), p. 148; John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 51.
- ^ Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 249 et passim.
- ^ Jörg Rüpke, "Communicating with the Gods," in A Companion to the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 224.