Lectisternium

The lectisternium was an ancient Roman propitiatory ceremony, consisting of a meal offered to gods and goddesses. The word derives from lectum sternere, "to spread (or "drape") a couch." The deities were represented by their busts or statues, or by portable figures of wood, with heads of bronze, wax or marble, and covered with drapery. It has also been suggested that the divine images were bundles of sacred herbs tied together in the form of a head, covered by a waxen mask so as to resemble a kind of bust, rather like the straw figures called Argei. These figures were laid upon a couch (lectus), the left arm resting on a cushion (pulvinus, whence the couch itself was often called pulvinar) in the attitude of reclining. The couch was set out in the open street, and a meal placed before it on a table.

Livy says that the ceremony took place "for the first time" in Rome in the year 399 BC, after a pestilence had caused the Sibylline Books to be consulted by the duumviri sacris faciundis, the two (later 15) priestly officials who maintained the archive. Three couches were prepared for three pairs of gods — Apollo and Latona, Hercules and Diana, Mercury and Neptune. The feast lasted for eight (or seven) days, and was also celebrated by private individuals. The citizens kept open house, quarrels were forgotten, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything done to banish sorrow.

Similar honors were paid to other divinities in subsequent times: Fortuna, Saturnus, Juno Regina of the Aventine, the three Capitoline deities (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva). In 217 BC, after the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene, a lectisternium was held for three days to six pairs of gods, corresponding to the Twelve Olympians of ancient Greek religion: Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Diana, Vulcan, Vesta, Mercury, Ceres.

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