Hail Terminus!
Hail Jupiter!
Hail Jupiter Terminus!
May we bring this year to a close
By remembering its lessons and gifts!
May we sanctify the boundaries of both time and place!
Salve Termine!
Salve Jupiter!
Salve Jupiter Termine!

* * * * *

The Terminalia are the concluding day of the sacral year. If and when there is intercalation, the insertion of a leap day, it occurs in the Roman calendar immediately after the 23rd of February and not after the 28th. The remaining days of February are epagomenae and do not belong to the circle of the year as a whole.

In what we learn from Ovid, this festival was also one in which the boundary-stone was recognised and renewed with a fire-altar and offerings of wine, honey-cakes and fruits of the earth. The boundary-stone of land and ager is also a tangible metaphor for the ‘termination’ of the year. Corresponding in part the movable lapis silex of Jupiter Feretrius, the fixed lapis Capitolinus in Jupiter’s temple on the Capitol Hill remaining beneath an opening to the sky, is an embodiment of the god. Like the lingam in India, the terminus or lapis ipsum Termini is an aniconic representation of the deity – in this case, of Jupiter. He is celebrated as the deity who marks the end of the year. His sacrificial victims for the Romans, or his vehicles for us today, are the lamb and suckling pig.