Robigalia

The Robigalia was a festival in ancient Roman religion held April 25, named for the god Robigus. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease. Games (ludi) in the form of "major and minor" races were held. The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season, but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it.

The Robigalia was held at the boundary of the Ager Romanus.Verrius Flaccus sites it in a grove (lucus) at the fifth milestone from Rome along the Via Claudia. The celebration included games (ludi) and a sacrificial offering of the blood and entrails of an unweaned puppy (catulus). Most animal sacrifice in the public religion of ancient Rome resulted in a communal meal and thus involved domestic animals whose flesh was a normal part of the Roman diet; the dog occurs as a victim most often in magic and private rites for Hecate and other chthonic deities, but was offered publicly at the Lupercalia and two other sacrifices pertaining to grain crops.

Like many other aspects of Roman law and religion, the institution of the Robigalia was attributed to the Sabine Numa Pompilius, in the eleventh year of his reign as the second king of Rome. The combined presence of Numa and the flamen Quirinalis, the high priest of Quirinus, the Sabine god of war who become identified with Mars, may suggest a Sabine origin.

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