Lustratio

Lustratio was an ancient Greek and ancient Roman purification ritual.^[1]^[2] It included a procession and in some circumstances the sacrifice of a pig (sus), a ram (ovis), and a bull (taurus) (suovetaurilia).^[3] The name is the source of English "lustration" (a purification).

Purpose

The Lustratio was performed by a

naming of the child, the name being added to official Roman registers, and the observation of a flight of birds in order to discern the child’s future.^{[citation needed}

]

Lustratio ceremonies were also used to purify cities, objects or buildings, and on some occasions to purify an area where a crime had been committed.

Iguvium illustrate that the ceremony consisted of a procession of priests and sacrificial victims around the town's citadel, stopping at the three gates to the citadel, where the sacrifices took place. The gates were considered as the weak points which required strengthening.^[9]

Instances

One notable occasion was a lustratio held to purify

Macedon. It was performed by a dog being cut in half, and the army assembling between the location of the two halves, which were flung in opposite directions.^[10] According to Zosimus, the pagan historian of late antiquity, after Constantine the Great had his son Crispus and his own wife Fausta killed, he approached priests of the old religion, and finding that they were unwilling to offer him lustratio for these deeds, went over to the Christian religion after theirs offered him absolution.^[11]

References

Citations

^ Heitland p. 224
^ Leo 2019, p. 229.
^ Burriss 1927, p. 28.
^ Wardle 2006, p. 354.
^ Beck et al. 2011, p. 118.
^ Mathisen 2001, p. 171.
^ Baudy, Gerhard (Constance) (2006-10-01), "Lustratio", Brill’s New Pauly, Brill, retrieved 2023-01-08
^ ^a ^b Murray p. 719
^ Evans p. 183
^ Cic. de Divin. i.45; Barth, ad Stat. Theb. iv. p1073
^ Zosimus p. 151