In the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that “During My week the serious is barred no business allowed. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters’ clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Instead of the toga, less formal dinner clothes ( synthesis) were permitted, as was the pileus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that symbolized the freedom of the season. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. To quote the online Encyclopedia Romana:ĭuring the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Best of all, Rome’s famously rigid discipline was set aside during Saturnalia. People decorated their houses and themselves with greenery and garlands. There was a special seasonal market, the sigillaria. Great feasts were held and small presents were exchanged–particularly earthenware figurines called sigillaria and candles (which were a sort of symbol of the holiday and represented the return of light after the short dark days of the solstice). Schools and offices were closed so that special sacrifices could be made. The cult statue of Saturn was freed from the shackles with which he was bound during the rest of the year and filled with olive oil (for the figure was hollow). Saturnalia was therefore a time to return to the imagined happiness of the past. Jupiter’s age was one of iron when all men struggled greedily against one another–an age of wars, lawyers, oppression, and struggle. Saturn’s time had been one of gold–an age when people were naked, free, and kind. Although the Romans recognized that Saturn was a deposed ruler, a murderer, and a cannibal, Saturn was worshiped in Rome as an agricultural deity whose reign had been a golden age of abundance and innocence. The Roman god Saturn was based on the Greek deity Cronus. Jan.) and it initiated the multiple day festival of Saturnalia-the biggest holiday of the Roman Year. Today is the Feast of Saturn! In Ancient Rome this holiday was officially celebrated on December 17 (XVI Kal.
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