The or was one of the most sacred and traditional rites of Roman religion: the sacrifice of a pig (), a sheep () and a bull () to the deity Mars to bless and purify land ().
There were two kinds:
The ritual for private fields is preserved in Cato the Elder's , "On Agriculture". It was performed each May on the festival of , a festival that involved "walking around the fields." Public were offered at certain state ceremonies, including agricultural festivals, the conclusion of a census, and to atone for any accidental ritual errors. Traditionally, were performed at five year intervals: this period was called a , and the purification sought by a was called lustration.
If a temple were destroyed, the site of the temple must be purified by a before a new temple could be reconstructed on the site. When the Capitolium was burnt as a result of a struggle for imperial succession in the year 69, a was performed to reconsecrate the site. A public was also offered to bless the army before a major military campaign. On Trajan's Column, the emperor Trajan is depicted as offering a to purify the Roman army. A suovetaurilia is shown on the right hand panel of The Bridgeness Slab. It was suggested that the sacrifice might have been made at the start of the building of the Antonine Wall.
The first step was to lead the three animals around the boundaries of the land to be blessed, pronouncing the following words:
"Manius" in this passage has been interpreted as a slave, land manager, soothsayer, or perhaps generic name, possibly equivalent to English John Doe. Alternatively, the classicist Roger Woodard proposes that this "Manius" may have functioned as the masculine equivalent of the chthonic goddess Mania. According to Woodard, this god Manius may be identical with the Manius described by the 1st-century BCE Roman author Varro, who writes thatâÂÂaccording to another author named ProciliusâÂÂa crack opened in the earth at the Lacus Curtius, and then the haruspices reported that a god named Manius demanded that the bravest Roman citizen must plunge into the hole. If the interpretation of "Manius" as a god is accepted, then it is perhaps unusual for Cato to issue direct commands to the divinity, saying "I bid you, Manius" (""). It may perhaps parallel Hittite traditions, wherein another chthonic deityâÂÂthe Sun goddess of the EarthâÂÂcan also be addressed without much adoration or respect. The presence of underworld themes in the suovetaurilia would connect with the Old Indic rite, another tripartite sacrifice in which libations are offered to the ', spirits of the deceased, to ensure their purification.
Cato instructs that, prior to the sacrifice, the suppliant must perform a libation to Janus and Jupiter also must utter an extended prayer to Mars. The prayer is written in an archaic metrical and incantatory form; even in Old Latin, the prayer contains many rhetorical figures such as alliteration and liberal use of merisms and antithesis. It illustrates the metrical and poetic format of polytheistic prayers. Calvert Watkins versifies the text as follows:
Archaeological excavations at Satricum have revealed evidence of the sacrifice of a sheep or goat, a pig, and a cow dating to between the 5th-3rd centuries BCE. These three species were discovered in 16 out of the 47 small assemblages at the site, which dated between the early 5th-century to , and in four of the five large assemblages, which dated between . However, the archaeologists Jelle Bouma and Wietske Prummel argue that the number of remains found in each deposit correlates to the number of identified species and thus propose that the majority of deposits once contained bones from all three animal and their absence from the archaeological record is perhaps attributable to "poor preservation and incomplete sampling." In contrast, the archaeologist Marijke Gnade argues that such an explanation is "misleading," as the ratio between the sacrificed animals is consistent throughout Satricum. Ultimately, Gnade concludes that the evidence from this site "cannot be said to support the identification of these offerings as suovetaurilia."
Given the tripartite nature of the suovetaurilia, the ritual has been interpreted as a reflection of the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil. Collectively, the three animals perhaps correspond to each of the three supposed functions of Indo-European society. According to ÃÂmile Benveniste, the pigâÂÂwhich was sacred to CeresâÂÂrepresents the fertility of the soil; the sheep and the ram were associated with warriors; and the bullâÂÂwhich was sacred to JupiterâÂÂwas otherwise sacrificed in the most important Roman religious rituals, and is therefore connected to the priesthood. However, in other interpretations, it is the bull that was associated with warriors in Indo-European cultures, and it was sacrificed to Mars in the suovetaurilia. According to Jaan Puhvel, the role of the god Mars within the suovetaurilia singularly encompassed all manner of social ill. Mars was invoked to counter three type of misfortuneâÂÂdiseases, blights, and devastationâÂÂand he was compelled to enforce his protection through words (""), combat (""), and agricultural measures ("").
Cakes of bread were sacrificed along with the three animals. At the moment the sacrifices were made, the landowner was to say:
If favourable omens as a response to the sacrifice were not forthcoming, the landowner was instructed to redo the sacrifice and offer a further prayer:
If only one or two of the omens expected after the three sacrifices failed to appear, the landowner was instructed to offer an additional swine, saying:
The nature of the expected omens is not given by Cato. The omens, however, were likely determined by the art of haruspicy, the examination of the entrails, and especially the livers, of sacrificed animals for divinatory signs.
Some religious rites similar to the Roman suovetaurilia were practiced by a few other Indo-European peoples, from Iberia to India. The Cabeço das Fráguas inscript (found in Portugal) describes a threefold sacrifice practiced by the Lusitanians, devoting a sheep, a pig and a bull to what may have been local gods. In the Indian ritual, a ram, a bull and a goat were sacrificed to Saraswati, Indra, and the Asvins respectively. The name of the derives from the title ("good-protector"), an epithet applied to the war god Indra, which parallels the prominence of the war god Mars in the Roman rite. In Iran ten thousand sheep, a thousand cattle and a hundred stallions were dedicated to Ardvi Sura Anahita. Similar to the above rituals is the Greek , the oldest known being described in the Odyssey and dedicated to Poseidon. The philosopher and historian Plutarch related in the Lives Of The Noble Greeks And Romans a story from the life of Pyrrhus about the sacrifice of a ram, a pig and a bull. The Umbrian Iguvine Tables also describe a sacrificial ritual related to the aforementioned rites.