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🧜 Festival of Neptune 🔱
Neptunus was the ancient Italic god of water. Origionally, he was probably the god of freshwater. His festival was held during the hottest month of the year. A counterpart to Neptunus was Salacia, the goddess of leaping water, or spring water. Also, there was Venilia, the Roman goddess of coastal water.
During the Neptunalia, rituals were held under shady arbors covered in leaves. The offerings and prayers to Neptunus were for a continued supply of water during the hottest days of the year.
Since the Italian peninsula has a mediterranean climate, summer is not just the hottest, but also the driest time of the year. Mediterranean climates experience extended droughts durring the warm season, and it's possible that the effects of the drought were too obvious to ignore by July. It also may be that in ancient times, people feared that the drought would not end unless they prayed to Neptunus. In regions such as southern California, which has an extreme mediterranean climate, summer rain is extremely rare; San Diego rarely gets any rain from June to September. The Mediterranean itself, is actually less "mediterranean" in climate, but this pattern of warm or hot dry seasons existed in ancient Rome, much as it does today (erenow.net)
Bernstein, Frances, _Classical Living: Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome_. HarperCollins, 2000.
erenow.et, _Climate, Mediterranean_, Internet, retrieved 2021-07-21
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✍️ Last Updated: 2021-07-27