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Friday
2003 Feb 28 is Julian 2452699
a prime number
5763 adar-I 26
1995 yakatit 21 1719 amshir 21 1423 dhu
al-hijjah 26
1924 phalguna 09 1381 esfand 09 211 ventôse
10 159 ayyam-i-ha 03
China-Republic - 92 - 01 - 28 // 78 - 20 / gui~wei Sheep - 01 -
28
12 baktun / 19 katun / 10 tun /
0 winal / 16 k'in // 08
- kib // 09 -
k'ayab / g7
Julian 2003 Feb 15 LUPERCALIA
— PARENTALIA III — ANTE DIEM XV CALENDAS MARTIS MMDCCLVI A.V.C
Explanation
of various calendars
The Lupercalia were a time of
purification and religious celebration. As with the rest of the month of February,
the object of much of the ceremony was the remembrance and honor of deceased
ancestors, as well as the celebration of fertility and the coming Spring.
Luper relates to lupus, or the wolf which popular myth held had reared Romulus
and Remus
The rites of this day included the sacrifice
of a goat or a dog at the cave-grotto known as the Lupercal. With the sacrificial
blood wiped across their foreheads, the youth partaking in this ceremony would
then run the circumference of the Palatine hill, perhaps about 5K, tracing
the traditional route of the city boundary traced by Romulus the day he founded
Rome. In the process, girls who approached the runners would be brushed or
splattered with the februa, thongs of sacrificial goatskin, presumably bloody,
symbolically blessing them with fertility. Red is the color of the day as
it is with Valentine's Day, the day invented to replace the Lupercalia. Fertility
and sexuality were likewise replaced with the puritanical pipedream of sexless
Love.
This was the day on which, in 44 BC, Mark Antony
offered Julius Caesar the crown of Rome, which he refused.
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