Xiv Kal. Sext. (July 19). Np
LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.)
Xii Kal. Sext. (July 21). Np
Lucar[ia]. (Maff. Amit.)
Here, as in the next two festivals we have to consider, we are but ‘dipping buckets into empty wells.’ The ritual, and therefore the original meaning of this festival, is wholly lost to us, as indeed it was to the Romans of Varro’s time. Varro, in his list of festivals, does not even mention this one; but it is possible that some words have here dropped out of his text764. The only light we have comes at second-hand from Verrius Flaccus765. ‘Lucaria festa in luco colebant Romani, qui permagnus inter viam Salariam et Tiberim fuit, pro eo, quod victi a Gallis fugientes766 e praelio ibi se occultaverint.’ This passage reminds us of the story explanatory of the Poplifugia, and might suggest, as in that case, an expiatory sacrifice and flight of the people from a scapegoat destined to carry away disease. But here we know of no vestigia fugae in the cult, such as Varro tells us were apparent at the Poplifugia.
The only possible guess we can make must rest on the name itself, taken together with what Festus tells us of the great wood once existing between the Via Salaria and the Tiber, in which the festival was held—a wood which no doubt occupied the Pincian hill, and the region afterwards laid out in gardens by Lucullus, Pompeius, and Sallust the historian. Lucaria is formed from lucar as Lemuria from lemur; and lucar, though in later times it meant ‘the sum disbursed from the aerarium for the games767,’ drawn probably from the receipts of the sacred groves, may also at one time itself have meant a grove. An inscription from the Latin colony of Luceria shows us lucar in this sense768:
IN · HOCE · LUCARID · STIRCUS · NE · IS · FUNDATID, &c.
Now there can be no doubt about the great importance of woods, or rather of clearings in them, in the ancient Italian religion. ‘Nemus and lucus,’ says Preller769, ‘like so many other words, remind us of the old Italian life of woodland and clearing. Nemus is a pasturage, lucus a “light” or clearing770, in the forest, where men settled and immediately began to look to the interests of the spirits of the woodland, and especially of Silvanus, who is at once the god of the wild life of the woodland and of the settler in the forest—the backwoodsman.’ The woods left standing as civilization and agriculture advanced continued to be the abodes of numina, not only of the great Jupiter, who, as we shall see, was worshipped in groves all over Italy771, and of Diana, who at Aricia bore the title of Nemorensis, but of innumerable spirits of the old worship, Fauni, Silvani, and other manifestations of the idea most definitely conceived in the great god Mars772. But men could not of course know for certain what spirits dwelt in a wood, whose anger might be roused by intrusion or tree-felling; and old Cato, among his many prescriptions, material and religious, gives one in the form of an invocation to such unknown deities if an intrusion had to be made. It is worth quoting, and runs as follows773: ‘Lucum conlucare Romano more sic oportet. Porco piaculo facito. Sic verba concipito: Si Deus, si Dea es, quoium illud sacrum est, uti tibi ius siet porco piaculo facere, illiusce sacri coercendi ergo. Harumce rerum ergo, sive ego, sive quis iussu meo fecerit, uti id recte factum siet. Eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo immolando bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi, domo familiaeque meae, liberisque meis. Harumce rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto.’
Applying these facts to the problem of the Lucaria, though necessarily with hesitation, and remembering the position of the wood and the date of the festival, we may perhaps arrive at the following conclusion; that this was a propitiatory worship offered to the deities inhabiting the woods which bordered on the cultivated Roman ager. The time when the corn was being gathered in, and the men and women were in the fields, would be by no means unsuitable for such propitiation. It need not have been addressed to any special deity, any more than that of Cato, or as I believe, the ritual of the Lupercalia774; it belonged to the most primitive of Roman rites, and partly for that reason, partly also from the absorption of land by large private owners775, it fell into desuetude. The grove of the Fratres Arvales and the decay of their cult (also addressed to a nameless deity) offers an analogy on the other side of Rome, towards Ostia.
Such a hypothesis seems not unreasonable, though it is based rather on general than particular evidence. It is at any rate better than the wild guessing of one German inquirer, who is always at home when there is no information. Huschke776 believes that the words Lucaria and Luceres (the ancient Roman tribe-name) are both derived from lucus because the Lucaria take place in July, which is the auspication-month of the Luceres. And there are two days of this festival, because the Luceres owed protection both to the Romani and Quirites (Rhamnes and Tities) and therefore worshipped both Janus and Quirinus.