Happy Lupercalia (February 15)
From Wikipedia:
"Lupercalia was a pastoral festival of Ancient Rome observed annually on February 15 to purify the city, promoting health and fertility. Lupercalia was also known as dies Februatus, after the purification instruments called februa, the basis for the month named Februarius
The festival was originally known as Februa "Purifications" or "Purgings" after the februum which was used on the day. It was also known as Februatus and gave its name variously, as epithet to Juno Februalis, Februlis, or Februata in her role as patron deity of that month; to a supposed purification deity called Februus; and to February (mensis Februarius), the month during which the festival occurred. Ovid connects februare to an Etruscan word for "purging". Some sources[who?] connect the Latin word for fever (febris) with the same idea of purification or purging, due to the "sweating out" commonly associated with fevers.
The name Lupercalia was believed in antiquity to evince some connection with the Ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia, a wolf festival (Greek: ?ύ???, lýkos; Latin: lupus), and the worship of Lycaean Pan, assumed to be a Greek equivalent to Faunus"
At the Lupercal altar, a male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter's chief priest.An offering was also made of salted mealcakes, prepared by the Vestal Virgins. After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci approached the altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to laugh.
The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs (known as februa) from the flayed skin of the animal,] and ran with these, naked or near-naked, along the old Palatine boundary, in an anticlockwise direction around the hill. In Plutarch's description of the Lupercalia, written during the early Empire,
...many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupercalia
Sad for the poor dog and goats.
And I have to wonder why people would want to run around Rome naked in the middle of February.
