Compitalia January 3

This festival is older than the establishment of Rome. It is said by some writers to have been instituted by Tarquinius Priscus in consequence of the miracle attending the birth of Servius Tullius, who was supposed to be the son of a Lar Familiaris, or guardian deity of the family.

Dionysius says that Servius Tullius founded the festival, which he describes as it was celebrated in his time. Dionysius relates that the sacrifices consisted of honey cakes (πέλανοι) presented by the inhabitants of each house; and that the persons who attended the festival as servants were not freemen, but slaves, because the Lares took pleasure in the service of slaves. He adds further that the Compitalia were celebrated a few days after the Saturnalia with great splendor, and that the slaves, on this occasion, had full liberty to do as they pleased.

During the celebration of the festival, each family placed the statue of the goddess of the underworld Mania at the door of their house. They also hung woolen figurines of men and women on their doors, accompanying them with humble requests that the Lares and Mania be content with these figures and spare the people of the house. The slaves offered balls or fleeces of wool instead of human figures.

Macrobius says that the celebration of the Compitalia was reestablished by the king Etruscan Tarquinius Superbus in response to an oracle that "they should sacrifice heads (capita) for heads." The oracle meant that to maintain the health and prosperity of each family, children should be sacrificed to Mania, identified in this case as the mother of the Lares. But Brutus, having overthrown the Tarquin line of kings, instead satisfied the oracle by exploiting a verbal loophole, substituting "heads" of garlic and poppies.

A rare fresco from a building near Pompeii, depicting Roman men in toga praetextae with dark red borders and probably participating in the Compitalia

The persons who presided over the festival were magistri vici ("quarter officers") and on this occasion were permitted to wear the toga praetexta. Public games were added to the festival during the Republican period, but they were suppressed by the command of the senate in 68 BCE. Calpurnius Piso was accused by Cicero of violating the decree by allowing the games to be celebrated during his consulship in 58. The festival itself continued to be observed, even though the games were abolished.

During the civil wars of the 40s, the festival fell into disuse, and was thus revived during Augustus' program of religious reform. As Augustus was now the pater patriae, the cult of the ancient Lares was discontinued, and the Lares of the emperor consequently became the Lares of the state. Augustus set up Lares or penates at places where two or more roads met and instituted an order of priests to attend their worship. These priests were chosen from among the libertini, people who had been legally freed from slavery, and were called Augustales.

The Compitalia belonged to the feriae conceptivae, that is, to the festivals which were celebrated on the days designated annually by the magistrates or priests. The exact day of the celebration of this festival seems to have varied, though it was always in winter, at least in the time of Varro, as Isaac Casaubon observed. Dionysius further relates that it was celebrated a few days after the Saturnalia, and Cicero that it fell on the Kalends of January; but in one of his letters to Atticus he speaks of it as occurring on the fourth before the Nones of January (January 2). The exact words with which the festival was announced are preserved by Macrobius and Aulus Gellius:

Die noni popolo romano quiritibus compitalia erunt.