Lupercalia

The Lupercalia was an ancient Roman purification and fertility festival held each year on 15 February.

By Mythographia Editorial Team Reviewed by Mythographia Editorial Team Updated 2026-09-29

In Practice

Priests called Luperci sacrificed goats and a dog, then ran a course through the city wearing only a girdle. They struck bystanders with strips cut from the goat hides. Ovid dates the rite to the third dawn after the Ides of February (Fasti 2.267-268). Roman writers linked it to a wolf, to the Arcadian god Pan and to the twins Romulus and Remus.

Plutarch, writing in Greek, reads it as a feast of purification. It fell on the unlucky days of February, a month whose name he connects with the Latin idea of purifying, and the day itself was once called Febrata (Life of Romulus 21). He also says the festival's name matches the Greek Lycaea, "feast of wolves". That is why he thinks it looks so ancient and derived from the Arcadians who followed Evander.

Livy says the festival was already held on the Palatine in the twins' youth, and that Evander, an Arcadian, brought an annual feast in which young men ran about naked in honour of the Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans later called Inuus (Ab Urbe Condita 1.5). Dionysius of Halicarnassus agrees in outline. His Arcadians build a first shrine to the Lycaean Pan at a place the Romans call the Lupercal, and the Romans still sacrifice there in February (Roman Antiquities 1.32). Plutarch equates the Luperci with the priests of Faunus, "the Roman Pan" in Perrin's translation (Life of Romulus 21).

The rite itself is best described by Plutarch. Goats are slaughtered, and two noble youths are brought forward. Some priests touch the youths' foreheads with the bloody knife, and others wipe the stain off with wool dipped in milk. The youths must laugh. Then the priests cut the hides into strips and run, girt only about the waist, striking whoever they meet. Young married women do not avoid the blows, believing they help conception and easy childbirth (Life of Romulus 21). Ovid gives the same purpose and an origin story with a sacred goat and a grove of Juno. It is set after the seizure of the Sabine women, when the wives bore few children (Fasti 2.425-452).

The ancient origin stories disagree. Ovid ties the nakedness to a comic tale in which Faunus tried to seduce Omphale and instead found Hercules (Fasti 2.303-358), and to a race by Romulus and Remus after cattle raiders (Fasti 2.359-380). Plutarch reports a poet, Butas, who says the race imitates the twins running after they beat Amulius, and the historian Caius Acilius, who says they ran naked to find lost flocks (Life of Romulus 21). Modern readers should keep these separate: they are competing explanations offered by Romans who no longer knew the answer.

The festival's most famous single day is 15 February 44 BCE, when Mark Antony ran with the Luperci and offered Julius Caesar a crown, which Caesar refused (Plutarch, Life of Caesar 61; Life of Antony 12). Shakespeare opens Julius Caesar on this feast. The romantic link to Valentine's Day is a later claim. The ancient evidence does not support it.

What is the connection between Lupercalia and Valentine's Day?

There is no documented ancient or medieval link. Lupercalia was 15 February (Ovid, Fasti 2.267-268). Pope Gelasius I, who led the Church from 492 to 496, did attack a revival of the rite in a pamphlet against the senator Andromachus (Collectio Avellana 100), but that pamphlet does not mention Valentine or 14 February. The first recorded tie between Saint Valentine's Day and romantic love is Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (1382). The claim that Gelasius replaced Lupercalia with Valentine's Day is a modern conjecture, and modern scholars reject it.

Ovid, Fasti 2.267-268

Does anyone still celebrate Lupercalia?

Not as an unbroken tradition. Pope Gelasius wrote against a revival of the rite by Roman aristocrats in the late fifth century (Collectio Avellana 100), and how long it lasted after that is unclear. Fritz Graf notes a tenth-century Byzantine handbook that still describes a festival of this name, though it looks little like the old rite. Some modern pagan and Roman reconstructionist groups now stage their own versions in February. These are revivals built from texts such as Plutarch and Ovid, not survivals.

Plutarch, Life of Romulus 21

Is February 14 a pagan holiday?

Not in the Roman sources cited here. The pagan festival usually blamed, the Lupercalia, fell on 15 February, the third dawn after the Ides (Ovid, Fasti 2.267-268). Plutarch says February as a whole was the month of purification and the Lupercalia fell on its unlucky days (Life of Romulus 21). Saint Valentine's Day on 14 February is a Christian commemoration. No ancient text connects the two. The popular claim of a pagan origin for 14 February comes from modern books, not from Roman writers.

Ovid, Fasti 2.267-268

What was the Feast of Lupercal in Julius Caesar?

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, two tribunes find citizens celebrating Caesar's triumph on the feast of Lupercal (Act 1, scene 1). In scene 2 Caesar tells Antony, who will run in the race, to touch his wife Calphurnia, because the barren, touched in this holy chase, shake off their sterile curse. Casca then reports that Antony offered Caesar a crown three times and Caesar put it by three times. Plutarch's Caesar (61) tells the same story: Antony, as consul, runs in the race and offers a diadem.

Where Accounts Differ

which god the Lupercalia honoured
why the Luperci ran naked
Caesar and the crown in Plutarch's two accounts
whether Lupercalia became Valentine's Day

Who the god was: Livy calls the Arcadian god the Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans afterwards called Inuus (Ab Urbe Condita 1.5), and Dionysius has the Arcadians dedicate the Lupercal to the Lycaean Pan (Roman Antiquities 1.32). Plutarch says the Luperci are priests of Faunus, the Roman Pan (Life of Romulus 21). Ovid speaks of the rites of horned Faunus, and of Arcadian Pan brought by Evander (Fasti 2.267-302). Graf notes that other ancient sources tie the rite to Juno Sospita or to an Etruscan Februus, so the divinity is contested.
Why they run: Ovid gives a comic reason (Faunus mocked by Hercules and Omphale, Fasti 2.303-358) and a race after raiders (2.359-380). Plutarch reports Butas and Caius Acilius with different stories (Life of Romulus 21). Dionysius, following Aelius Tubero, has the youths run naked, girt in the skins of the victims, as a purification, when the twins' herdsmen enemies ambushed them (Roman Antiquities 1.80). Livy places the ambush of Remus during the festival (Ab Urbe Condita 1.5).
The sacrifice: Plutarch names goats and a dog (Life of Romulus 21). Ovid mentions only a goat, killed by an Etruscan augur on the advice of a voice in Juno's grove, and gives its hide as the whip that ended the wives' childlessness (Fasti 2.425-452).
The crown of 44 BCE: Plutarch's two accounts differ. In the Life of Caesar (61) Caesar sits on a golden throne in triumphal dress while Antony runs into the forum and offers the diadem twice, and tribunes later remove diadems from his statues. In the Life of Antony (12) Antony is lifted onto the rostra and places it on Caesar's head, and Caesar bares his throat and invites anyone to strike him.
Valentine's Day: No cited source connects the two. Pearse traces the modern claim to a misreading of Cardinal Baronius, who suggested that Gelasius had turned the Lupercalia into Candlemas, not Valentine's Day. Graf, however, cannot find that idea in Baronius at all, and says it was not the Church's replacement of the festival. The two writers agree that the claim is unsupported. The pamphlet's date and the extent of its success are also uncertain.
Augustus and the runners: Suetonius, cited through Graf, says Augustus forbade beardless youths to run (Augustus 31.4). This was not checked against the Latin text directly.
Plutarch's Lives of Caesar (61) and Antony (12) are cited in prose only because the site's citation registry does not yet hold them. Verification: Plutarch (Romulus 21) is machine-checked. Livy 1.5, Plutarch Caesar 61 and Antony 12 were read on Perseus (Scaife). Ovid's Fasti line ranges were checked against the Latin text on Perseus. Dionysius 1.32 and 1.80 were read in Greek. Gelasius's letter was not read in full; it is described from Graf and Pearse.

Where This Appears

Referenced By

Term Vestal Virgins

Sources

Primary sources

Plutarch, Life of Romulus 21
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.5
Ovid, Fasti 2.267-268
Ovid, Fasti 2.303-358
Ovid, Fasti 2.359-380
Ovid, Fasti 2.381-424
Ovid, Fasti 2.425-452
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.32
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.80