Hail to Jupiter as our lord of freedom and generosity!
Hail to Liber, god of maturity and intoxication!
Hail too to Mars and Quirinus, our divine protectors!
Hail to Agonus who brings us inspiration from the otherworld!
May we feast today!
And in so doing may we value liberty as the quickening agent for an abundant life!
Salve Iuppiter!
Salve Liber!
Salve Iuppiter Liber!
Salve Marte!
Salve Quirine!
Salve Agone!

* * * * *

The Liberalia are again sacred to Jupiter as well as to Liber or Jupiter Liber, the deity of creative force. In Roman religion, there is the occasional tendency for the epithet of a deity to emerge as a separate and independent figure. The Romans identified Liber with the Greek wine-lord Dionysus. Jupiter’s own association with the grape of inebriation we find on several occasions in the festival year, and the inference for this feriae is that in some respects we have yet another ‘wine’ festival as a time of joy and celebration. In a sense, this day becomes the final culmination of carnivalesque festivity. The role of Jupiter as fertility figure underscores this holiday. In contrast to his function as a celestial embodiment of light on the Ides, here we honour Jupiter as a lord of the earth.

We have already encountered the god Mars as a terrestrial deity, and on these feriae, he also appears to be celebrated through the holiday’s alternate designation as the Agonium Martiale. In a sense, the 17th of March in the Roman calendar is a double festival – both the Liberalia and the Agonium. The hypothetical figure conjectured or employed for the Agonia (the March Agonium Martiale, the May Agonium, the December Agonium and the January Agonium) appears to be variously known through the indigitations or invocational names of Mars, Quirinus, Vediovis, Sol Indiges and Janus. This is a complex – perhaps pontifical – entity who suggests, as does Janus, the primordial divine twins. Because both Salian colleges are active on this day – if not throughout the month from its start: the Salii Palatini and the Salii Quirinales or Salii Collini or Salii Agonenses, the March Agonium would appear to be sacred to both Mars and Quirinus. Quirinus himself as the duplicate or twin of Mars may have originally been the deity or ‘Mars’ of the Colline hill, the collis Agonalis – also known as the Quirinal hill. Since the December Agonium is also connected to the septimontium or ‘seven hills’ of Rome, the March Agonium may likewise be a celebration of the unity between different communities – between the Palatine and Colline or Roman and Sabine peoples.

But then the double festival of the 17th – to both Jupiter and Mars, if not to Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus – appears to be a calendrical statement or affirmation of the ultimate twinship between Jupiter and Mars. In both Roman and the wider Indo-European religious register, duality is often expressed through three, if not more, figures. The dual figure is himself a duality. As the bulk of Roman festivals occur in the period immediately following the original date of the full moon, i.e., that heady time when the gods feed on their ambrosian elixir, soma, the moon, the Liberalia-Agonium are the first major festival of the sacral year. In connection with the Liberalia, adolescent boys were given this day on the Capitol the toga virilis or toga libera symbolizing their entry into adulthood. Once again, the notion of freedom is celebrated, for, along with liberation from accumulated evils, pollutions or burdens, as well as the liberation from care in the form of intoxication, there is also the freedom from youthfulness, immaturity and folly for the freedom of maturity and adulthood.

On this day and perhaps the day before, masks (oscilla) and perhaps simulacra or rush-puppets (argei) were hung in shrines or special chapels. The mask is further suggestive of the skin-clad Mamurius and, according to myth, the veiled bride of Anna Perenna. Here again is an instance of ritual discarding, but the mask, of course, is the perennial feature of carnival, and the Mardi Gras-type celebrations are a further moment of honouring freedom and festive abandon. Special old women known as sacerdotes Liberi furnished meal-cakes (liba) on this day for the well-being of the celebrants. All in all, the Liberalia-Agonium Martiale are a major merry-making festival in the month of March and at the beginning of the new or sacral year.