Feronia was the goddess of wildernesses and wild woods, whose festival the Romans celebrated on the 13th of November. Feronia, however, was not a native Roman Goddess. Instead, she originated amongst the Sabine people- and her preferred home was far away from people and cities.

So how was it that the Romans lured Feronia to Rome and persuaded to accept a city home in a temple on the Campus Martius? And what benefit was there to the Romans in adopting a foreign, rural goddess who was notorious for guarding her privacy?

 

In Honour of Feronia

Sometime during the early third century BC, a temple to Feronia was established on the Campus Martius, an open tract of land just outside the city of Rome. The Romans officially dedicated Feronia’s temple on the 13th November, at the same time instigating a festival in the goddess’s honor, the Feroniae, which was held every year on the day of the temple’s dedication.

The particulars of the Feroniae are lost. But Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives us a flavor of them when he describes other festivities dedicated to Feronia:

“Many of them [the people] performing vows and offering sacrifice to the goddess and many with the purpose of trafficking during the festive gathering as merchants, artisans and husbandmen; and here were held fairs more celebrated than in any other places in Italy.” 

However, the celebrations described by Dionysius honoring Feronia did not occur in Rome. Instead, they were customs from Feronia’s original homeland.

 

The Nature of Feronia

 

Feronia was Roman “Novensile”–a new god, originally from Sabine territory. Her name, as described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, had a gentle, almost domestic floral overtone: “[S]ome of those who translate the name into Greek call her Anthophoros or ‘Flower Bearer,’ others Philostephanos or ‘Lover of Garlands.” Dionysius explained.

However,  Feronia was no gentle flower goddess. For her name derives from the Latin “ferus” for wild and uncultivated. This name was entirely appropriate for Feronia was a principled goddess of the wild places.

Although her shrines were spread across central Italy, Feronia’s principal place of worship was at Capena, near Mt. Soracte, in the territory of the city of Feronia (now modern Lazio in central Italy). This shrine– as with all the others dedicated to the goddess– was a considerable distance from any inhabited place. This was because Feronia particularly favored woods.

People only encroached upon the goddess’s privacy at times of festival. Then, they were at liberty to set up fairs while others petitioned the goddess for healing. The poet Horace in his Satire 1.5.24 describes how it was customary for pilgrims to bathe their hands and faces in her sacred springs. However, other activities of Feronia’s cult were of an ecstatic nature.

“The city of Feronia is at the foot of Mount Soracte, with the same name as a certain native goddess, a goddess greatly honored by the surrounding peoples,” notes Strabo in his Geography. “ Her sacred precinct is in the place; and it has remarkable ceremonies, for those who are possessed by this goddess walk with bare feet through a great heap of embers and ashes without suffering, and a multitude of people come together at the same time, for the sake not only of attending the festal assembly, which is held here every year but also of seeing the aforesaid sight.”

These festive gatherings of healing and transcendence also acquired a different significance. For the formal manumission of slaves, became a central part of Feronia’s cult celebrations, therefore earning Feronia a special place in the affections of freedmen.

 

The Rural Goddess Moves to Rome

 

The Romans built Feronia’s temple in Rome in a lucus or grove on the Campus Martius. But why did such a country-loving, antisocial goddess consent to a city dwelling? It seems that the promise of worship tempted her.

A Curtius Dentatus dedicated the temple to Feronia after his victory over the Sabines. The timing of the dedication is significant for it indicates the Romans used envocatio to lure Feronia to Rome. Envocatio was a custom whereby foreign deities were induced to abandon their original people with the promise of worship and honor. In effect, the Romans made the goddess of the wilds a better offer than her original worshippers.

But what use was a goddess of the wild woods to the city of Rome? A clue comes from Pliny the Elder, who, when describing the turbulent times of the civil wars of 49-44 BC, refers to how: “people stopped building towers between Tarracina and the temple of Feronia because none escaped destruction by lightning.”

This passage implies that when the apparatus of war impinged too closely upon the goddess’s territory, she destroyed it. In attempting to protect her privacy, Feronia also defended the city that sheltered her.

Livy highlights Feronia’s role as a protector of Rome in his History of Rome. He describes how in 217 BC, faced with the prospect of attack by Hannibal, the Romans offered sacrifices to the Capitoline triad and the various incarnations of Juno throughout the city. But the city’s freedwomen were also called upon to provide sacrifices to Feronia at her temple.

Old habits died hard for Feronia. The freedwomen, tied to her cult through the nature of their emancipation, were dear to the goddess’s heart and so gained her attention. However, the most crucial element was Feronia’s territorial nature. For they laid Rome’s salvation from Hannibal’s army firmly at Feronia’s door.

Sources

 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities,  

Strabo, Geography

Horace, Satires

Pliny the Elder, Natural History

Livy, History of Rome

Matthew Dillon and Linda Garland, Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar

Simon Price and Emily Kearns, The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion