Saturnalia was one of the oldest and most
popular Roman festivals. It began on December 17th, but grew over time,
and by the Imperial Period, ended on December 23rd. On the first day of Saturnalia, everything
in Rome shut down, and people were expected to forgo their normal attire and instead wear
plain, simple tunics. This included Senators, and magistrates, and
candidates for office, men who normally wore specialized togas proudly displaying their
status. Similarly, everybody, from citizen to freedman
to slave was supposed to wear a special leather cap that was normally worn by freed slaves
to denote their status. They went to all of this trouble because during
this festival, the strict formality of the class system was temporarily thrown out the
window. The entire theme of Saturnalia was to upend
the social order, and to celebrate liberty. To begin the festivities, a large crowd gathered
at the Temple to Saturn, on the Capitoline Hill. Saturn was a god with a very complicated history
with a lot of different associations, including with the Capitoline Hill, with wealth, with
agriculture, and yes, with liberation. For most of the year, for a reason that is
lost to us, the statue of Saturn outside the temple had its feet covered with some distinctive
wool wrappings. These wrappings were removed by some priests,
which marked the official beginning of Saturnalia. By the way, we're told that this statue was
actually hollow, and filled with olive oil, which is kinda neat. With the festival officially underway, a priest
performed a sacrifice before the crowd. After this, members of the Roman Senate came
forward. Somewhere nearby, there was another statue
of Saturn, this one made of wood, carved specifically for this festival. Senators picked up this statue, and carried
it down to the forum. The crowd followed. After a time, they arrived at an outdoor banquet
area. The Senators placed the statue on a large
reclining sofa that had been set aside for it. Then, with Saturn lazily overseeing the whole
thing, there was a massive feast, and the wine began to flow. After the feast, there was usually some gladiatorial
games, where all of the different classes co-mingled and rubbed elbows. Like everything else, the games were supposed
to continue the theme of upending the social order. For example, they sometimes featured women
or dwarf gladiators. It was all meant to be funny, but it's worth
saying that some Romans found these blood-sports distasteful and stayed away whenever they
could. My boy Cicero, for instance, hated them. Now, on a normal day, the gladiatorial event
would have ended, the sun would have went down, and that would have been it. But on Saturnalia they were just getting started. Rome's streets were normally dark and dangerous
to navigate at night, but today it was lined with decorative candles and torches. People took full advantage of this, and many
party-goers stayed out all night. On Saturnalia, it was customary to loudly
greet friends, strangers, and passers by, with the call and response "Io, Saturnalia." This was ubiquitous, and some Saturnalian
Scrooges would say that they got pretty sick of hearing "Io, Saturnalia" from drunken idiots
outside when they were trying to read, or sleep. Speaking of drunken idiots, it was also customary,
after the sun went down, to host parties, continuing the festivities. Once inside, a person was selected randomly,
more or less, to be something called the Saturnalicius Princeps, which you can translate as the King
of Saturnalia. The theme of overturning the social order
continued, so this person tended to be a child or a slave. Custom demanded that any command given by
the King of Saturnalia had to be obeyed without question. But it was all one big joke, so the commands
tended to be things like "sing a song!" or "do a dance!" or "everybody drink!" The parties would continue with people drinking,
playing games, and gambling all night. There were normally some legal restrictions
on gambling, especially with dice, but these were all temporarily lifted for the duration
of the festival. Even slaves would get in on the gambling,
sometimes with their owners. If a group couldn't afford to bet actual money,
it was quite common to bet nuts, instead. People talked endlessly about how they were
looking forward to the Saturnalian nuts every year. Apparently it was a thing. I mentioned slaves, and we should pause here
for a minute. The whole theme of Saturnalia was liberty,
and slaves were an important part of that equation. Many social norms regarding slaves were disregarded
for the duration of the festival. For instance, perhaps the most famous factoid
about Saturnalia is this: slave owners would jokingly swap places with their slaves and
serve them dinner. But let's not get too carried away with this
role reversal. It seems that the more common practice was
for the slaves to eat with the owners on equal footing, and for the owners to get up and
serve the food themselves. In this way you can kind of think of Saturnalia
as an opportunity to give the slaves some time off, although that analogy is imperfect,
since they were still on the hook for preparing the food. But in keeping with the spirit of the holiday,
slaves were also allowed to speak disrespectfully to their owners without any fear of repercussion. But everybody knew that the whole thing was
in the spirit of fun, and I couldn't find any actual examples of slaves going full Festivus
and staging an Airing of Grievances. It seems more likely that owner and slave
temporarily dropped the formality and spoke to each other as equals. That all happened on the first day of Saturnalia,
but celebrations continued for a full week. The next day the parties, and gambling, and
drinking continued. On December 19th, the third day of the Saturnalia,
there was another little holiday called the feast of the Opalia. The purpose of this day was to honour Saturn's
wife, Ops, who was a goddess of the harvest. There had already been one festival devoted
to Ops at the end of the harvest season, and now, in December, there was a second one,
celebrating the bounty contained in the granaries. By the way, Ops is where we get the English
word opulence. On this day the cautious hording food for
the winter was abandoned, and there were huge feasts. The nature of Saturnalia meant that people
were already eating and drinking as much as they wanted, but but nobody seemed to mind
having the excuse to kick off another round of parties. Another important aspect of Saturnalia, was
the exchange of gifts. These were usually small items, like toys,
or books, or dining-ware, or exotic foods. The most popular gift of all was something
called a sigillaria, which was a small humanoid figurine made of wax or clay – basically
a doll. During the month of December, specialized
shops would pop up all over Rome, where you could have a sigillaria custom-made and personalized
as a gift. From what we can tell, the number of gifts
exchanged was staggering. Basically, during Saturnalia, everybody expected
to receive a gift from everybody they knew. And not just a gift, but also a short personalized
note, or a poem. Gifts were evaluated, and if somebody was
caught sending a cheaper gift than they did last year, it was a problem. God forbid somebody send a gift and get nothing
in return. As you can imagine, mistakes happened all
the time, and people took note. On top of this, people took the time during
the festival to go door-to-door visiting with neighbours and acquaintances. Small, generic gifts were expected to be given
to anybody who came knocking, which added an additional level of complexity to the whole
thing. Between all the gifts, the personalized notes,
the feasts, the partying, and gambling, so much stuff was involved with Saturnalia that
people would spend most of December just getting ready for it. Eventually Saturnalia ended, and life returned
to normal. But before I let you go, let me share with
you some short Epigrams written for Saturnalia by a guy named Martial in the late 1st century. Here's what Martial had to say:
Io Saturnalia! Everyone
I was so happy to see this on my youtube page this morning, one of the best channels out there.
Love these videos, Roman history is incredibly interesting.
Did they eat the sacrifice or did they throw it away?
Why did he leave out the part about the gay sex orgies?
"Hey owner, you suck! Haha, just joshin'"
Nice Star Trek IV reference.
Love Historia Civillis. Another great channel is RealLifeLore