The emperor Caligula (ruled 37 – 41 CE) is reported to have extended the festival to five days, lasting from December 17th until December 21rst. Nonetheless, most people continued celebrating after the holiday officially ended, leading later emperors to restore some of the days of celebration that Augustus had removed. ![]() ![]() The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE) tried to shorten Saturnalia to only three days of celebration, lasting from December 17th to December 19th. In truth, Saturnalia was originally a one-day festival that took place on December 17th, but the holiday was so popular and beloved that, by the first century BCE, it had been extended into a seven-day long festival, which began on December 17th and continued until December 23rd. This claim has been repeated a million times on the internet, but it is simply not true. One very popular misconception about Saturnalia is that it was celebrated on December 25th. This year, however, I’ve decided to write about it again, focusing on what we know about how the holiday was actually celebrated. I’ve written about Saturnalia before-usually in the context of debunking popular misconceptions about it being the source of modern American Christmas traditions. They believed that the reign of Saturnus had been a “Golden Age,” in which all human beings had lived together in harmony and simplicity, and that Saturnalia was a temporary restoration of Saturnus’s reign on earth that could only last until the end of the festival. The Romans believed that, in very ancient times, before Iupiter became the king of the deities, the cosmos had been ruled by Iupiter’s father Saturnus. With the witches at his heels, Decius plunges into the maelstrom of Rome at the height of Saturnalia, and barely escapes with his life.Īfghanistan, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Anguilla, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guernsey, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Republic of Cuba, Republic of the Congo, Reunion, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, San Marino, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U.S.Saturnalia is an ancient Roman holiday in honor of the god Saturnus that began on December 17th. Decius, convinced she is incent (of this murder, at any rate) looks further for the killer-a quest that leads him to a secret, banned cult of witchcraft being practiced by highborn Romans of both sexes. ![]() They need him to use his investigative talents to look into the poison death of a politically powerful relative and the suspicion that it is the man's wife who administered the dose. At the same time, the ted family of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger have reluctantly summoned the young playboy, banished to the island of Rhodes for his wild ways, to seek his help in solving a crime that touches them directly and dangerously. Every culture has its wild entertainment, but the Roman Saturnalia is looked upon as the granddaddy of them all.Roberts's vivid fictional account of the annual event takes place in first century Rome is a historically correct picture of excess, with the city's ordinary life shut down, all rules and most laws iperative, and even slaves permitted to celebrate without restraint.
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