x (Ante Caes. VIII) Kal. Ian. (Dec. 23). NP.
LAR[ENTALIA]. (MAFF. PRAEN.)
Here again Praen. has a valuable note, which, in this case, is fairly well preserved: FERIAE IOVI. ACCAE LARENTIAE. ... HANC ALII REMI ET ROM[ULI NUTRICEM ALII] MERETRICEM, HERCULIS SCORTUM [FUISSE DIC]UNT: PARENTARI EI PUBLICE, QUOD P[OPULUM] R[OMANUM] HE[REDEM FECE]RIT MAGNAE PECUNIAE, QUAM ACCEPE[RAT TESTAME]NTO TARUTILI AMATORIS SUI[[1215]].
As regards the feriae Iovi we are utterly in the dark. Macrobius explains it thus: ‘Iovique feriae consecratae, quod aestimaverunt antiqui animas a Iove dari et rursus post mortem eidem reddi,’ which is obviously a late invention. I can see no possible connexion of Jupiter with the Larentalia, and believe the conjunction to be accidental.
Mommsen writes: ‘De origine Larentalium ipsiusque Larentinae indole ac natura parum constat.’ He himself has investigated the myth of Acca Larentia in a memorable essay[[1216]], and we may take his opinion on the Larentalia as at present conclusive. It is to be noted, however, that the view he formerly held as to the impossibility of connecting Lārentia and Lāres[[1217]] is not re-asserted in the new edition of the Corpus (vol i); the connexion, he says, may be right, but does not help us to explain the ‘feriae Iovi’ or the parentatio (performance of funeral rites) at the grave of Larentina (or Larentia).
This parentatio seems to me the one thing known to us about the Larentalia which can possibly aid us. We are told by Varro that it took place in the Velabrum, ‘qua in Novam viam exitur, ut aiunt quidam, ad sepulcrum Accae[[1218]].’ The Flamen Quirinalis took part in it, and the Pontifices[[1219]]. Now the Parentalia took place in February. Is it possible that this is a survival from a time when it was in December—a survival, because it was at the tomb of a semi-deity, and was a public function[[1220]]? It is very curious that we have a record of a private parentatio wilfully transferred from February to December, and probably to this day. Cicero, in a mutilated passage from which Plutarch has apparently drawn one of his ‘Roman Questions,’ seems to have stated that Dec. Brutus (consul 138 B.C.) used to do his parentatio in December[[1221]]. Whether Cicero was here alluding to the Larentalia we do not know; but Plutarch notes the fact of the parentatio of Larentia in December, and is led thereby to write the quaestio next in order on the story of Larentia[[1222]]. Was the learned Brutus simply a pedant, changing his parentatio to a date which he believed to be the real original one, or had he some special reason for connecting his family with December and Larentia?
However we may answer this question, there is, perhaps, a bare possibility that the Larentalia was originally a feast of the dead of the old Rome on the Palatine, preserved in the calendar of the completed city only through the reputed survival of the tomb of Larentia in the Velabrum at the foot of the rock.