Parentalia

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PARENTALIA

PARENTALIA . The term Parentalia designates the period of nine days during which Roman families would visit the tombs of the dead to honor them. This novena, private in character, began on February 13 and ended with the public feast of the Feralia on February 21. This cycle of days received its most extended comment from the Roman poet Ovid. He interchangeably calls them the parentales dies (Fasti 2.548) or the ferales dies (Fasti 2.34). The word Feralia gave the ancients occasion to coin etymological puns. The word could stem either "from the action of bringing food" (a ferendis epulis) or "from the action of sacrificing animals" (a feriendis pecudibus ; Paulus-Festus, ed. Lindsay, 1913, p. 75 L.). The scholar M. Terentius (Varro, De lingua Latina 6.13) preferred to compare the term Feralia to both inferi and ferre, adding, "because the ones having the right to parentare bring then some food to the tomb" ("quod ferunt tum epulas ad sepulcrum quibus ius ibi parentare").

Parentare, "to celebrate the Parentalia," consisted in honoring the di parentes, or dead, with offerings. Ovid (Fasti 2.537–539) was glad to list such offerings: garlands, grains of wheat, salt, bread softened with wine, a few violets. These modest offerings were appropriate for the manes, the shades or spirits of the dead.

One may note the variations in vocabulary used by the various authors to refer to the dead: inferi (Varro, De lingua Latina 6.13); dis manibus (Festus, op. cit., p. 75 L.); manes (Ovid, Fasti 2.534). Manes or di manes is very likely explained as a euphemism: "the inferi are called di manes, that is, "good ones" with whom one should be reconciled out of fear of death" (Festus, op. cit., p. 132 L.). Use of the term corresponds to a later usage (first century bce) that substituted for the ancient expression di parentes or di parentum, as had appeared already (specifically, in the form divis parentum ; Festus, op. cit., p. 260 L.) in a "royal" law. A deceased person was regarded as having joined the collectivity of the di parentes (in the funerary inscriptions, it is written in the dative or the genitive along with the collective term). The formulation of Cornelia's letter to her son Gaius Sempronius Gracchus gives evidence of the link between the verb parentare and the corresponding noun: "Ubi mortua ero, parentabis mihi et invocabis deum parentem" ("When I am dead, you will honor me at the Parentalia and call on the parental shade"). By this pietas —the expression is Ovid's (Fasti 2.535)—toward the dead, the Parentalia were differentiated from the Lemuria of May 9, 11, and 13, which consisted of rites in which evil spirits were expelled (ibid., 5.429–444). On February 22, the day after the Feralia, which commemorated a family's dead, there followed the Caristia or Cara Cognatio, which united the living members of the family in a banquet (ibid., 2.677).

Bibliography

Bömer, Franz. Ahnenkult und Ahnenglaube im alten Rom. Bonn, 1943.

Dumézil, Georges. Archaic Roman Religion. 2 vols. Translated by Philip Krapp. Chicago, 1970.

Schilling, Robert. Rites, cults, dieux de Rome. Paris, 1979. See pages 11–15 for a discussion of Feralia and Lemuria.

Wagenvoort, Hendrik. Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion. Leiden, 1956. Pages 290–297 treat the parentatio in honor of Romulus.

Wissowa, Georg. Religion und Kultus der Römer. 2d ed. Munich, 1912. See pages 232–235.

New Sources

Gessel, Wilhelm. "Reform von Märtyrenkult und Totengedächtnis. Die Bemühungen des Presbyters Augustinus gegen die laetitia und parentalia vom J. 395." In Reformatio Ecclesiae. Beiträge zu kirchlichen Reformbemühungen von der alten Kirche bis zur Neuzeit. Festgabe Erwin Iserloh, edited by Remigius Bäumer, pp. 61–73. Paderborn, 1980.

Lejeune, Michel. "Capoue: iovilas de terre cuite et iovilas de tufi." Latomus 49 (1990): 785–791.

Littlewood, R. J. "Ovid among the Family Dead." Latomus 60 (2001): 916–935.

Radke, Gerhardt. "Anmerkungen zu den ersten fünf Feriae Publicae der römischen Fasten." In Religio graeco-romana. Festschrift für Walter Pötscher, ed. by Joachim Dalfen, Gerhard Petersmann and Franz Ferdinand Schwarz, pp. 177–193. Horn, 1993.