Saturnalia 2018 full#

The purpose of this day was to honour Saturn's wife, Ops, who was a goddess of the harvest. On December 19th, the third day of the Saturnalia, there was another little holiday called the feast of the Opalia.

The next day the parties, and gambling, and drinking continued.

Saturnalia 2018 full#

That all happened on the first day of Saturnalia, but celebrations continued for a full week.

The more common practice was for the slaves to eat with the owners on equal footing, and for the owners to get up and serve the food themselves. Many social norms regarding slaves were disregarded for the duration of the festival. People talked endlessly about how they were looking forward to the Saturnalian nuts every year. If a group couldn't afford to bet actual money, it was quite common to bet nuts, instead. Even slaves would get in on the gambling, sometimes with their owners. There were normally some legal restrictions on gambling, especially with dice, but these were all temporarily lifted for the duration of the festival. The parties would continue with people drinking, playing games, and gambling all night. Custom demanded that any command given by the King of Saturnalia had to be obeyed without question.īut it was all one big joke, so the commands tended to be things like 'sing a song!' or 'do a dance!' or 'everybody drink!'. The theme of overturning the social order continued, so this person tended to be a child or a slave. Once inside, a person was selected randomly, more or less, to be something called the Saturnalicius Princeps, which you can translate as the King of Saturnalia. It was also customary, after the sun went down, to host parties, continuing the festivities. On Saturnalia, it was customary to loudly greet friends, strangers, and passers by, with the call and response 'Io, Saturnalia'.

People took full advantage of this, and many party-goers stayed out all night. Rome's streets were normally dark and dangerous to navigate at night, but today it was lined with decorative candles and torches. Like everything else, the games were supposed to continue the theme of upending the social order.įor example, they sometimes featured women or dwarf gladiators. Then, with Saturn lazily overseeing the whole thing, there was a massive feast, and the wine began to flow.Īfter the feast, there was usually some gladiatorial games, where all of the different classes co-mingled and rubbed elbows. The Senators placed the statue on a large reclining sofa that had been set aside for it. The crowd followed.Īfter a time, they arrived at an outdoor banquet area. Senators picked up this statue, and carried it down to the forum. Somewhere nearby, there was another statue of Saturn, this one made of wood, carved specifically for this festival. With the festival officially underway, a priest performed a sacrifice before the crowd.Īfter this, members of the Roman Senate came forward. To begin the festivities, a large crowd gathered at the Temple to Saturn, on the Capitoline Hill. They went to all of this trouble because during this festival, the strict formality of the class system was temporarily thrown out the window. Similarly, everybody, from citizen to freedman to slave was supposed to wear a special leather cap, pileus, that was normally worn by freed slaves to denote their status. This included Senators, and magistrates, and candidates for office, men who normally wore specialized togas proudly displaying their status. On the first day of Saturnalia, everything in Rome shut down, and people were expected to forgo their normal attire and instead wear plain, simple tunics.