Lucaria

In ancient Roman religion, the Lucaria was a festival of the grove (Latin lucus) held 19 and 21 July. The original meaning of the ritual was obscure by the time of Varro (mid-1st century BC), who omits it in his list of festivals. The deity for whom it was celebrated is unknown; if a ritual for grove-clearing recorded by Cato pertains to this festival, the invocation was deliberately anonymous (Si deus, si dea). The dates of the Lucaria are recorded in the Fasti Amiterni, a calendar dating from the reign of Tiberius found at Amiternum (now S. Vittorino) in Sabine territory.

The Augustan grammarian Verrius Flaccus connected the Lucaria to the disastrous defeat of the Romans by the Gauls at the Battle of the Allia, which was fought on 18 July. The festival, he says, was celebrated in the large grove between the Via Salaria and the Tiber river, where the Romans who survived the battle had hidden. The Via Salaria crossed the battlefield about 10 miles north of Rome. The lucus thus would have been located on the Pincian Hill, which was later cultivated as gardens and leisure parks by Lucullus, Pompeius, Sallust and others. This explanatory story has been compared to that of the Poplifugia, which also involved the Gallic sack of Rome. The story may be more aetiological than historical. The Lucaria suggests that grove veneration was a practice which the early Romans had in common with the Gauls.