But a couple of gifts that were given were white candles named cerei and clay faces named sigillariae. Saturnalia was more about a change in attitudes than presents. Were gift-giving and decorations part of Saturnalia?
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The festivities fell on the winter solstice, and helped to make up for the monotony of the lull between the end of the harvest and the beginning of the spring. The writer Columella notes in his book about agriculture ( De Re Rustica, published in the early first century AD) that the Saturnalia came at the end of the agrarian year.
Did romans bet on chariot races plus#
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But the emperor Augustus (who ruled from 27 BC–AD 14) shortened it to a three-day holiday, as it was causing chaos in terms of the working day. The three were merged, and became a seven-day jolly running from 17–23 December. The Brumalia coincided with the solstice, on 21 or 22 December. And the third was a feast day celebrating the shortest day, called the bruma by the Romans.
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People would feast in their homes, but the historian Livy notes that by 217 BC there would also be a huge public feast at the oldest temple in Rome, the Temple of Saturn. People would also wear a cap of freedom – the pilleum – which was usually worn by slaves who had been awarded their freedom, to symbolise that they were ‘free’ during the Saturnalia.