As told by Ovid in his “Fasti” FAUNUS
(One of the Deities of the Festival.)
The youth Aclides was strolling with his mistress when Faunus spotted them from a high ridge. He saw the girl and exclaimed to the Gods, “Mountain deities, you are nothing to me compared to this fair creature!” As she walked, her scented hair streamed on her shoulders, her golden bosom gleamed. She reached Bacchus’ grove and Tomolus’ vineyard, where she entered a cave with a babbling brook at the door. While servants prepared a banquet, she dressed in Aclides’ clothes, and he dressed in hers. She gave him her dainty purple frocks, the stylish belt she’d just worn, but his belly exceeded the belt and he had to unclasped the frocks so his massive hands could be inserted. He shattered the bracelets uncrafted for his arms, and his huge feet split her tiny shoes open. She, in turn, took the heavy club and lion skin and the smaller shafts stowed in their quiver. They feasted like this, and went off to sleep like this in separate beds in preparation for Bacchus’ rites at dawn.
At midnight Faunus reached the dewy cave through the darkness. When he saw the attendees collapsed in sleep and wine, he hoped the masters were also asleep and drunk. He entered the cave, holding his hands out to feel about in front of him. He found the beds and would have been lucky the first time, but feeling the lion pelt spiked with hairs he panicked, checked his hand and recoiled in the terror of coming close to being caught. Then he fingered the soft clothing on the next bed, and climbed in with the occupant, thinking it the lustrous girl. He began lifting the dress and felt coarse legs bristled thickly with stubble. As Faunus tried the rest, Aclides woke with a start and a shout and they both tumbled out of the bed. The Lydian girl called her servants to bring lights. As the torches fell on the act, Faunus was getting up gingerly from the hard ground after his heavy crash. Aclides laughed and everyone else joined in, even the girl laughed at her sprawling would-be lover.
Since clothes fooled him, the God hates deceptive clothing and summons people naked to his rites.
ROMULUS AND REMUS
(The festival started at the Lupercal, the cave where the She-Wolf nursed Romulus and Remus.)
Perhaps you ask why that place is the ‘Lupercal’, or what causes the day’s allotted name. The Vestal Silvia gave birth to heavenly twins while her uncle possessed the throne. He ordered the infants removed and killed in the stream. Reluctant servants went to fulfill their orders, weeping as they went. They took the twins to a lone spot where the Tiber River was at that time in winter flood. After reaching the shore, one of the servants said, “O, how alike they are! How pretty, both of them! But he is the livelier of the two. If features prove lineage and image never lies, I suspect some god inhabits you both. Yet if a deity authored your existence, He would assist you in such a crisis. Your mother would help, if she didn’t herself need help, made mother and childless on the same day. Born together, to die together, go together beneath the waves.” He stopped and put them into a wooden cradle on the water. The water carried the infant twins toward a dark wood and the cradle washed up on a muddy bank. A whelped she-wolf came to the abandoned twins. Who’d believe the boys weren’t hurt by the beast? Far from hurting, she even helped. A she-wolf suckled those whom kindred hands were braced to kill. She stopped, caressing the babies’ cheeks with her tail and washing them with her tongue. You could tell they were sons of Mars, they suckled fearlessly, and fed on milk unmeant for them. The wolf named the place the Luperci; the nurse was well rewarded for her milk.
GODDESS LUCINA
(One of the Deities of the Festival. This explains why the priests run through the streets striking women with goat hide stripes.)
After Romulus conquered the Sabines, the Romans found the women to be infertile. Beneath the Esquiline hillside there was a grove, unaxed for years, named after great Juno. Upon arriving here, both brides and husbands alike fell on bended knee in supplication, when suddenly the forest jerked, treetops trembled, and the goddess spoke marvels through her grove: ‘The sacred goat must penetrate Italy’s mothers.’ Her voice said. Her dubious words numbed the terrified crowd. An auger there sacrificed a goat and the girls offered their backs as ordered by the goddess, to be cut by strips of its hide. When the tenth moon came, the husbands were fathers and the brides mothers, thanks to Lucina. She is named from lucus, ‘grove,’ or because she begins life’s lux, its light. She assists women in conceiving and childbirth.
