The Temple of Saturn, Rome

Saturnalia was one of the most important Roman festivals.

Heavy on feasting, fun and gifts, it was originally celebrated in the early days of Ancient Rome for one day only around 17 December.However, it became so popular that it expanded into a week or even longer, despite Augustus’ efforts to reduce it to three days, and Caligula’s, to five.

Like today’s Christmas, this holy day (feriae publicae) had a serious origin. For the Romans, it was to honour the god of sowing, Saturn. And if nothing else, Romans were a superstitious lot. Like many ancient cultures, religious ceremonies and observances held an important place in their lives. Actually, a sense of religion and, dare I say, superstition ran through everything they did. No journey, no contract and no property transfer was complete without an offering and some prayers.

But also like modern Christmas, the 17 December was a festival day (dies festus). After sacrifice at the temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in 217 BC. Afterwards, according to the poet Macrobius, the celebrants shouted ‘Io, Saturnalia‘ at a riotous feast in the temple.

Pottery and bronze figurines 3rd century BC and 1st century AD – sigillaria? (British Museum)

Modern mid-winter habits today echo Roman ones – increased, often extravagant shopping, conspicuous and over-indulgent eating and drinking, visiting friends and receiving visits from not-particular-friends who are only after a drink.

A few days later, reckoned to be 23 December in our modern calendar, small gifts were exchanged  particularly wax candles (cerei), and earthenware figurines (sigillaria).

On the first day, everybody dressed in bright clothes, masters served meals to their slaves who were permitted the unaccustomed freedoms of leisure and gambling. A member of the familia (household) was appointed saturnalicius princeps, roughly equivalent to the Lord of Misrule. Of course, it often got completely out of hand…

Terracotta sheep, Greek, 4th century BC. (British Museum) Would make a lovely sigillarium!

The poet Catullus describes Saturnalia as ‘the best of days’ while Seneca complains that the ‘whole mob has let itself go in pleasures’. Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated. Sound familiar?

Macrobius described a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome which classicists date to between 383 and 430 AD – quite late in the Roman Empire. So Saturnalia was alive and well to some extent under Christian emperors, but no longer as an official religious holiday.

But alongside ran the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the ‘unconquerable sun’), a festival celebrating the renewal of light and the coming of the new year and which took place on 25 December. Perhaps this resonates with the winter solstice when days have reached their shortest and hours of daylight start lengthening again. By the middle of the fourth century AD,  the dominant Christian religion had integrated the Dies Natalis into their celebration of Christmas.

Saturnalia (1783) by Antoine Callet

Ever since the end of the Roman Empire, but especially when Roman texts were rediscovered and all things Roman became fashionable again from the Renaissance onwards, people have speculated about what Saturnalia really looked like.

Just how wild was it? Speculation has run riot for many decades of the modern period.

This painting by Callet is one of the less explicit images (no naked chests or buttocks), but the party-goers are obviously having a good time. It seems more in line with what it could have been like than the bacchanalian depictions by some painters then and  film-makers now.

Or were the paintings and stories just a reflection of the artists’ vivid imaginations of the  in their own time?

Io Saturnalia!

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No surprise probably, but Saturnalia is a key public holiday in Roma Nova today. it contains as much misrule, feasting, family upsets and surprises as the ancient versions  (or indeed modern Christmas!)

Read the full text of a short story ‘Saturnalia Surprise‘ in this eight story collection and discover how the Mitelae, especially Carina, were surprised one year…

When Carina and Conrad’s son, Gillius, nearly blows himself just before the Saturnalia winter holiday, he’s sent to Sextilius Gavro, Conrad’s ‘mad inventor’ cousin. Carina is dubious, having met Gavro in New York nearly twenty years before (INCEPTIO), but she has no idea how she will be surprised at Saturnalia as a result.

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Updated 2024:Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers –  INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO,  AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO  and RETALIO,  and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories.  Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA,  Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

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