The 5th July marks the celebration of the Poplifugia,an ancient and obscure Roman festival.
The exact significance of the festival is lost, but its name may contain clues to its original context, as either a commemoration of key events in early Roman history — or as a rite of purification.
What was the Poplifugia?
Warde Fowler mentions that the Romans marked the Poplifugia in capitals on the ancient Roman calendar — indicating it was an important event for the archaic Romans. But by the time of the late Republic, the ceremony had become so obscure that even the Romans themselves — who still observed the festival — had mislaid its original meaning.
The exact details of the rites of the Poplifugia are lost, but they seem to have involved someone being chased out of Regia or “Kings House” — the residence in the forum once used by the Roman kings and later, the Pontifex Maximus.
This element of chase appears significant, especially when considered in conjunction with a reference by Varro in his On the Latin Language (VI. 18):
“The day seems to have been called Poplifugia. Because on it the people fled into sudden uproar.”
The inclusion of the word popli — “people” and fugerit—”fled” within the name of the festival does, on the face of it, make this suggestion plausible.
But what was this event from which the people fled?
“The People’s Flight”
According to Varro, this flight refers to events after the burning of Rome by the Gauls. The inhabitants of Ficuleae and Fidenae seized the opportunity to attack the vulnerable Romans and so — when faced with this new threat — the people of Roman fled. Two days later, however, the Romans reversed the situation and fought back, celebrating their victory on the 7thJuly.
This victory festival became known as the Nonae Caprotinae or feast of Juno Caprotinae, and the Roman people retained the context of this festival despite the passage of time. However, the events surrounding the flight commemorated by the Poplifugia on the 5th became confused.
Firstly, there is the detail of who attacked Rome. Macrobius in his Saturnalia (III.2) contradicts Varro by claiming the attackers were Tuscan, whereas Plutarch in his Life of Camillus simply names them as “Latins.”
And while it is understandable that the Romans wished to commemorate the salvation of their city, why would they want to celebrate Rome’s loss and their retreat?
Perhaps this is why other authors offer a different explanation for the festival.
The Death of Romulus
Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives” instalment dealing with Camillus and Romulus, suggests that the flight in question has nothing to do with fleeing from foes — but the death of Romulus.
“The day on which he vanished is called People’s Flight,” says Plutarch, who describes how Rome’s first King disappeared in the Capra Marshes outside Rome and how the flight in question is of the people out of Rome to make a sacrifice at that same spot.
However, there is one crucial problem between this link between the death of Romulus and the Poplifugia — the same problem that exists with the theory that the festival marked the flight of the Romans after the attack of Rome. That problem is the date. For the death of Romulus is recorded as 7thJuly — the same date as the Nonae Caprotinae — not the 5th July, the date of the Poplifugia.
The fact that Romans celebrated the Popligugia on a day unconnected with either of the events mooted as its inspiration does suggest that the festival’s original context is lost.
Or does it?
An Ancient Lustration?
Perhaps not. For although it is clear that by the late Republic, the exact context of the Poplifugia was lost, we can hazard a guess as to what it was about.
Macrobius offers a clue. His Saturnalia refers to the sacrifice of a bull and the reading of its entrails at the Poplifugia. This sacrifice sounds very much like a lustration — a ceremony of purification designed to avert evil. A lustration involved a circumambulation or circular procession of music, dancing and chants, headed by priests and the instruments of purification — torches and animals.
The procession would circle the area in question three times before making the sacrifice. Then, the priests examined entrails of the animal, and the procession ended.
Early July in the Mediterranean was a hot, dry season when cattle fodder would have been scarce and disease a risk. So, to hold a lustration at this time would have made sense as a precaution against the evil of an epidemic.
A Conundrum Solved?
Warde Fowler believes purification was the purpose behind the Poplifugia — especially as the festival had parallels in other Mediterranean cultures. In Greece, priests similarly sacrificed cattle at the Athenian Bouphonm. At Iguvium in Umbria, the citizens chased away four heifers before pursuing and killing them, as a way of protecting their city from evil influences.
This chasing of the heifers accounts for the “flight” element of the Poplifugia — a flight not of the people of Rome from an advancing enemy but instead that of a ritual scapegoat, who carried away the ills of the city.
It is as likely an explanation as any for this obscure Roman festival.
Sources
Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Macrobius, Saturnalia
The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion (2003) Ed Simon Price and Emily Kearns. Oxford University Press: Oxford
Plutarch, Romulus (29.2) and Camillus (33) “Roman Lives”
Varro, On the Latin Language
W Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals at the Period of the Republic, Macmillan and co, 1899.
