1 May

fourth and last day of the Floralia in honour of Flora

all-female festival in honour of Bona Dea

In Roman mythology, Bona Dea (literally "the good goddess") was the goddess of fertility, healing, virginity, and women. She was the daughter of the god Faunus and was often referred to as Fauna.

Bona Dea was the perpetually virginal goddess, associated with virginity and fertility in women. She was also associated with healing, with the sick being tended to in her temple garden with medicinal herbs. She was regarded with great reverence by lower-class citizens, slaves and women; who went to her seeking aid in sickness or for fertility.

Bona Dea was invoked for healing and for freedom from slavery; many of her worshippers were freed slaves and plebeians, and many were women seeking aid in sickness or for fertility.

She was worshipped in a temple on the Aventine Hill, but her secret rites were performed in the home of a prominent Roman magistrate. The rites were held on December 4, and only included women. Even paintings or drawings of men or male animals were forbidden, along with the words "wine" and "myrtle" because she had once been beaten by Faunus with a myrtle stick after she got drunk. The rites were conducted annually by the wife of the senior magistrate present in Rome and were assisted by the Vestal Virgins. Very little is known about the ceremony, but the worship seems to have been agricultural in origin. The most famous event to do with this festival was its desecration by Publius Clodius in 62 BC by secretly attending the ceremony at the house of the pontifex maximus, Julius Caesar. During the ensuing trial, Clodius' alibi was destroyed by Cicero, which caused the animosity that would define their relationship from then on.

Bona Dea is usually depicted sitting on a throne, holding a cornucopia. The snake is her attribute, a symbol of healing, and consecrated snakes were kept in her temple at Rome, indicating her phallic nature. Her image frequently occurred on ancient Roman coins.


9 May

Feast of the Lemures

In Roman religion, the Lemuralia or Lemuria was a feast during which the ancient Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes. The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae were propitiated with offerings of beans. On those days, the Vestals would prepare sacred mola salsa (salt cake) from the first ears of wheat of the season.

In the Julian calendar the three days of the feast were 9, 11, and 13 May. The myth of origin of this ancient festival, according to Ovid, who derives Lemuria from a supposed Remuria was that it had been instituted by Romulus to appease the spirit of Remus (Ovid, Fasti, V.421ff; Porphyrius ). Ovid notes that at this festival it was the custom to appease or expel the evil spirits by walking barefoot and throwing black beans over the shoulder at night. It was the head of the household who was responsible for getting up at midnight and walking around the house with bare feet throwing out black beans and repeating the incantation, "With these beans I redeem me and mine" nine times. The household would then clash bronze pots while repeating, "Ghosts of my fathers and ancestors, be gone!" nine times.

Because of this annual exorcism of the noxious spirits of the dead, the whole month of May was rendered unlucky for marriages, whence the proverb Mense Maio malae nubent ("They wed ill who wed in May"), and thus the rush of June weddings— "because the weather is so nice"— in our own day.

13 May - Feast of the Lemures

15 May

Mercuralia in honor of Mercury held


Mercuralia is a Roman celebration known also as the "Festival of Mercury". Mercury was thought to be the god of merchants and commerce. On May 15 merchants would sprinkle their heads, their ships and merchandise, and their businesses with water taken from the well at Porta Capena.


18 May

Festival of Faunus in Ancient Rome

In Roman mythology, Pan's counterpart Faunus was one of the oldest Roman deities, the di indigetes, who was a good spirit of the forest, plains, and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He was a legendary king of the Latins whose shade was consulted as a god of prophecy, under the name of Fatuus, with oracles in the sacred groves of Tibur, around the well Albunea, and on the Aventine Hill in ancient Rome itself (Peck 1898). The responses were said to have been given in Saturnian verse (Varro, L. L. vii. 36). Faunus revealed the future in dreams and voices that were communicated to those who came to sleep in his precincts, lying on the fleeces of sacrificed lambs. W. Warde Fowler suggested that Faunus is identical with Favonius, one of the Roman wind gods (compare the Anemoi).