Today, Lupercalia is probably most famous for what happened on February 15, 44 BCE. That day a “ naked, perfumed, drunk ” Mark Antony was one of the runners while Julius Caesar watched the ...

It often ended in marriages. Lupercalia is mentioned in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” when Mark Antony is told by Caesar to whip his wife, in the hope that she will become fertile.

It is written that, at the festival of Lupercalia, the consul Mark Antony offered Julius Caesar a laurel-wreathed diadem. The gesture was met with slow, scattered applause. But when Caesar brushed ...