The gate of the year

The Saturnalia

View of the Saturn temple in the Roman Forum, built in the early Republican era (VI century B.C.), the edifice has subsequently undergone various restorations and rebuilding in later periods.
The Roman festive cycle ended with the Saturnalia, inaugurated on December 17 with the solemn sacrifice of a sow offered to the god Saturn in his temple. Followed a series of private ceremonies which, overall, constituted the most cheerful and joyous of the entire year. It was customary to exchange little gifts (food, candles and dough statuettes), reciprocal invitations to lunch, and the gifts were accompanied by little cards containing affectionate sentences and wishes. The Saturnalia involved also the reversal of social roles and a licence and freedom in relationships which were inconceivable during the rest of the year. The slaves, who in this occasion participated in the banquets, were served by their masters, and the latter, on their turn, wore slave clothes. The feast was presided over by a saturnalicius princeps, elected by lot among the participants, who had the power to order them to assume unusual and joking behaviours (Versnel 1994). These aspects, which seem to anticipate several characteristics of the Carnivals and Feasts of the Fools of the Middle Ages, had the purpose of recreating the world of the origins, that on which Saturn ruled in the Golden Age, in which there were no social hierarchies and men could freely dispose of the spontaneous products of the earth. On the other hand, the period in which the feast was held, after sowing, was characterized by a temporary suspension of agricultural works, as to call back the Saturn’s reign. This fact could validate the etymological derivation of the name Saturn from satus “sowing” (Varro, Latin Language, V, 64).
Saturn was frequently represented with a scythe in his hand, symbol of the husbandman. It was believed, indeed, that the god had taught agriculture to mankind. The iconography can have been influenced, furthermore, by the assimilation of the god with the Greek Cronus, who had emasculated his father, the sky god Uranus, with a stone sickle. According to the Latin poet and playwright Lucius Accius (Annals, 2-7), the Saturnalia of the Romans were derived from the feasts celebrated in Greece in honour of Cronus, the Kronia. These festivals, too, marked in Athens the passage from the old to the new year, which took place in correspondence of the summer solstice, while the Saturnalia were associated with the winter solstice.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Seasonal Cycles

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The Saturnalia View of the Saturn temple in the Roman Forum, built in the early Republican era (VI century B.C.), the edifice has subsequently undergone various restorations and rebuilding in later periods. The Roman festive cycle ended with the Saturnalia, inaugurated on December 17 with the solemn sacrifice of a sow offered to the god Saturn in his temple. Followed a series of private ceremonies which, overall, constituted the most cheerful and joyous of the entire year. It was customary to exchange little gifts (food, candles and dough statuettes), reciprocal invitations to lunch, and the gifts were accompanied by little cards containing affectionate sentences and wishes. The Saturnalia involved also the reversal of social roles and a licence and freedom in relationships which were inconceivable during the rest of the year. The slaves, who in this occasion participated in the banquets, were served by their masters, and the latter, on their turn, wore slave clothes. The feast was presided over by a saturnalicius princeps, elected by lot among the participants, who had the power to order them to assume unusual and joking behaviours (Versnel 1994). These aspects, which seem to anticipate several characteristics of the Carnivals and Feasts of the Fools of the Middle Ages, had the purpose of recreating the world of the origins, that on which Saturn ruled in the Golden Age, in which there were no social hierarchies and men could freely dispose of the spontaneous products of the earth. On the other hand, the period in which the feast was held, after sowing, was characterized by a temporary suspension of agricultural works, as to call back the Saturn’s reign. This fact could validate the etymological derivation of the name Saturn from satus “sowing” (Varro, Latin Language, V, 64). Saturn was frequently represented with a scythe in his hand, symbol of the husbandman. It was believed, indeed, that the god had taught agriculture to mankind. The iconography can have been influenced, furthermore, by the assimilation of the god with the Greek Cronus, who had emasculated his father, the sky god Uranus, with a stone sickle. According to the Latin poet and playwright Lucius Accius (Annals, 2-7), the Saturnalia of the Romans were derived from the feasts celebrated in Greece in honour of Cronus, the Kronia. These festivals, too, marked in Athens the passage from the old to the new year, which took place in correspondence of the summer solstice, while the Saturnalia were associated with the winter solstice. [Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]