Id. Mart. (March 15). NP.
FERIAE[[125]] ANNAE PERENNAE VIA FLAM[INIA] AD LAPIDEM PRIM[UM]. (VAT.)
ANNAE PER. (FARN.)
This is a survival of an old popular festival, as is clearly seen from Ovid’s account of it; but the absence of any mention of it in the rustic calendars or in those of Philocalus and Silvius leads us to suppose that it had died out in the early Empire. This may be accounted for by the fact that the people came to be more and more attracted by spectacles and games; and also by the ever-increasing cosmopolitanism of the city populace, which would be continually losing interest in old Roman customs which it could not understand.
On this day, Ovid tells us[[126]], the ‘plebs’ streamed out to the ‘festum geniale’ of Anna Perenna, and taking up a position in the Campus Martius, not far from the Tiber[[127]], and lying about on the grass in pairs of men and women, passed the day in revelry and drinking[[128]]. Some lay in the open; some pitched tents and some constructed rude huts of stakes and branches, stretching their togas over them for shelter. As they drank they prayed for as many years of life as they can swallow cups of wine; meanwhile singing snatches of song with much gesticulation and dancing. The result of these performances was naturally that they returned to the city in a state of intoxication. Ovid tells us that he had seen this spectacle himself[[129]].
Whether there was any sacrificial rite in immediate connexion with these revels we do not know. Macrobius indeed tells us[[130]] that sacrifice was offered in the month of March to Anna Perenna ‘ut annare perannareque commode liceat’[[131]]; and Lydus, that on the Ides there were εὐχαὶ δημόσιαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὑγιεινὸν γενέσθαι τὸν ἐνιαυτόν; but we do not know what was the relation between these and the scene described by Ovid.
Who was the Anna Perenna in whose honour these revels, sacrifices, and prayers took place, whatever their relation to each other? Ovid and Silius Italicus[[132]] tell legends about her which are hardly genuine Italian, and in which Anna Perenna is confused with the other Anna whom they knew, the sister of Dido. Hidden under such stories may sometimes be found traces of a belief or a cult of which we have no other knowledge; but in this poetical medley there seems to be only one feature that calls on us to pause. After her wanderings Anna disappears in the waters of the river Numicius:
Corniger hanc cupidis rapuisse Numicius undis
Creditur, et stagnis occuluisse suis.
Her companions traced her footsteps to the bank: she seemed to tell them
Placidi sum nympha Numici,
Amne perenne latens Anna Perenna vocor.
This tale led Klausen[[133]] into some very strange fancies about the goddess, whom he regarded as a water-nymph, thinking that all her other characteristics (e.g. the year) might be explained symbolically; the running water representing the flow of time, &c. But it is probable that she only came into connexion with the river Numicius because Aeneas was there already. If Aeneas, as Jupiter Indiges, was buried on its banks[[134]], what could be more natural than that another figure of the Dido legend should be brought there too? There does not indeed seem to be any reason for connecting the real Anna Perenna with water[[135]]. All genuine Roman tradition seems to represent her, as we shall see directly, as an old woman; and when she appears in another shape, she must have become mixed up with other ideas and stories. It may perhaps be just possible that on this day some kind of an image of her may have been thrown into the Tiber, as was the case with the straw puppets (Argei) on May 15, and that the ceremony dropped out of practice, but just survived in the Numicius legend[[136]]. But this is simply hypothesis.
The fact is that, whatever else Anna Perenna may have been, all that we can confidently say of her is that she represented in some way the circle or ring of the year. This is indicated not only by the name, which can hardly be anything but a feminine form of annus, but by the time at which her festival took place, the first full moon of the new year. The one legend preserved about her which is of undoubted Italian origin is thought to point in the same direction. Ovid, wishing to explain ‘cur cantent obscena puellae’ in that revel of the ‘plebs’ on the Tiber-bank, tells us[[137]] how Mars, once in love with Minerva[[138]], came to Anna and asked her aid. It was at length granted, and Mars had the nuptial couch prepared: thither a bride was led, but not the desired one; it was old Anna with her face veiled like a bride who was playing the passionate god such a trick as we may suppose not uncommon in the rude country life of old Latium.
There is no need to be startled at the rude handling of the gods in this story, which seems so unlike the stately and orderly ideas of Roman theology. It must be borne in mind that folk-tales like this need not originally have been applied to the gods at all. They are probably only ancient country stories of human beings, based on some rude marriage custom—stories such as delighted the lower farm folk and slaves on holiday evenings; and they have survived simply because they became in course of time attached to the persons of the gods, as the conception of divinities grew to be more anthropomorphic. Granted that Anna or Perenna[[139]] was the old woman of the past year, that Mars was the god of the first month, and that the story as applied to human beings was a favourite one, we can easily understand how it came to attach itself to the persons of the gods[[140]].
Yet another story is told by Ovid of an Anna[[141]], in writing of whom he does not add the name Perenna. The Plebs had seceded to the Mons Sacer, and were beginning to suffer from starvation, when an old woman from Bovillae, named Anna, came to the rescue with a daily supply of rustica liba. This myth seems to me to have grown out of the custom, to be described directly, of old women[[142]] selling liba on the 17th (Liberalia), the custom having been transferred to that day through an etymological confusion between liba and Liberalia. Usener, however, saw here a connexion between Anna and Annona[[143]]; and recently it has been suggested that a certain Egyptian Anna, who is said by Plutarch to have invented a mould for bread-baking, may have found her way to Rome through Greek channels[[144]].