Ritual solemnity, formal processions, prayers, sacrifice. All these had an important part to play in Roman religious festivals. But so also (just as in our own culture) did less solemn activities: theatrical performances, racing, gift-giving, eating and drinking. Roman festivals were, in fact, strikingly diverse. Some were part of the regular cycle of celebrations prescribed in the Roman calendar (see chap. 3); others (although taking place on specific dates, at regular intervals) were never included in that formal calendar of festivals; some were public affairs, involving widespread popular participation; others took place privately, with no ‘official’ ceremonial; some had an origin lost in the earliest history of the city; others were ‘invented’ in much more recent, well-documented times. There was no one type of Roman religious celebration.

This chapter concentrates on the festivals that took place in the city of Rome itself: starting from major celebrations of the official religious calendar (5.1-4), and the contradictory images of conservatism and innovation in those celebrations (5.5), it moves on to the ceremonies of'oriental’ deities (5.6), to the religious ceremonial of the games (5.7) and the triumph (5.8). These specifically Roman celebrations were, however, just one small part of the religious rituals of the Roman empire as a whole and they were not systematically exported to (or imposed on) conquered provincial communities. Roman soldiers and some Roman citizens resident in the provinces would probably have observed the major religious festivals of the capital with some sacrifice or celebration (note, for example, the religious observances of the Roman coloniae - 10.2; or of army units - 3.5). But generally a visitor to a provincial town in Greece or Gaul would not have found the festivals of the city of Rome reproduced on provincial territory; instead a varied range of local ritual customs were practised even under Roman political control.

See further: for brief discussion of all major traditional festivals, Warde Fowler (1899); Scullard (1981)*; for full citation of ancient sources for each regular festival, Degrassi (1963); for Roman celebrations outside Rome, Vol. 1, 320-39.