Note 36 — CHAP. VI.
Reading edition
From the above sentiments delivered by Prudentius, we might be induced to think that only persons of low condition, in Rome, or even Slaves alone, used to run, in the festival of the Lupercalia; yet this does not seem to have been the case, and the lines of Prudentius appear to have contained more declamation than real truth.
The Luperci were in very early times formed into two bands, which were called by the names of the most distinguished families in Rome, Quintiliani and Fabiani; and to these was afterwards added a third band, called Juliani, from J. Cæsar’s name. Marc Antony, as every one knows, did not scruple to run as one of the Luperci, having once harangued the people in that condition: and if he was afterwards inveighed against, on that account, by several persons, and among others by Cicero, his personal enemy, it was owing to his being Consul, when he thus ran among the Luperci: a thing which, it was said, had never been done by any Consul before him.
The festival in question (which may surprise the Reader) continued to be celebrated so late as the year 496, long after the establishment of Christianity; and persons of noble families not only continued to run among the Luperci, but a great improvement was moreover made about those times in the ceremony; the Ladies, no longer contented with being slapt on the palms of their hands, as formerly, began to strip themselves naked, in order both to give a fuller scope to the Lupercus to display the vigour and agility of his arm, and enjoy, themselves, the entertainment of a more compleat flagellation. The whole ceremony being thus brought to that degree of perfection, was so well relished by all parties, that it continued to subsist (as has just now been observed) long after the other ceremonies of Paganism were abolished; and when Pope Gelasius at last put an end to it, he met with a strong opposition from all orders of Men, Senators as well as others. The general discontent became even so great, that the Pope, after he had carried his point, was obliged to write his own Apology, which Baronius has preserved: one of his arguments, among others, was drawn from the above practice of the Ladies, of stripping themselves naked in public in order to be lashed.—Apud illos, nobiles ipsi currebant, & matronæ nudato corpore vapulabant.