HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: The Romans held a festival every year on 15 February called “Lupercalia.” During ...

The Romans held a festival every year on 15 February called “Lupercalia.” During the festival, goats and dogs would be sacrificed by a priesthood of young men known as the Luperci—“brotherhood of the wolf”—who would then cut strips of of hide from the sacrificed animals.

These young men would then run naked in a circuit around the city’s walls and ritually strike people with the strips of hide. Women who sought to become pregnant would present their hands to be struck, because they believed this would help them with pregnancy and delivery.

It was, in other words, a fertility festival. Those strips of hide were known as februa, the origin of our word “February.” Lupercalia survives to modern times, shifted a day from the Roman festival calendar, as Valentine’s Day.