The Feasts of the Dead: Parentalia, Feralia, Carestia and Lemuria

Figure above:

Lararium, altar dedicated to the Lares, family divinities who represented the ancestors, from a house in Pompeii (I century A.D.).
[Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lares#mediaviewer/File:Lararium,_Pompeji.JPG]


Figure below:

Household altar dedicated to the Penates or Lares, divinities of the family, who protected the hearth, from a house in Ercolano (I century A.D.).
[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_altar,_Herculaneum_2005.jpg]


February was, for the Romans, the month devoted to the dead. At midday of the Ides (February 13) the Parentalia began, a set of ceremonies for the commemoration of the deceased relatives which lasted until the 21, a nine-day period which corresponded to the span of the funerary ritual. During these days, the temples were closed and the working activities interrupted. In the streets, garlands of flowers, violets, grains of wheat and spelt, bread softened with wine, were offered on a shard to the ancestors (di manes), the shades or spirits of the dead. The legend attributed the institution of the Parentalia to the “pious Aeneas”, who had began the practice of devotion towards the dead to commemorate his deceased father (Ovid, Fasti, II, 543-546). The celebration of the dead ended on 21 February with a public feast, the Feralia, whose name is associated with the adjective feralis, meaning what is related with death and the dead. The next day were held the Caristia, family banquet in honor of the deceased, reserved to the living members of the family (Schilling 2005c)..
Another festival in honor of the dead was held in May, and was called Lemuria. The name referred to the Lemures, ghosts of the individuals who died prematurely, who, in this period of the year, invaded the world of the living. At midnight, the family head got up and, after having washed his hands, gathered some black beans and threw them behind his shoulders, saying: “These I cast, with these beans I redeem me and mine”. Then, after having clashed bronze objects, he repeated nine times the formula: “Ghosts of my fathers, go forth!” (Manes exite paterni) (Ovid, Fasti, V, 429-443). According to Sabbatucci (1988, p.165), the Lemuria had not the same purpose of the Parentalia, though both had to do with the dead. The Parentes were the ancestors, while the Lemures were the ghosts of individuals who died before they were able to form a family and to generate offspring, thus having not been able to acquire the qualities they needed to become ancestors.