The Regifugium ("Flight of the King") or Fugalia ("Festival of the Flight") was an annual religious

festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...

that took place in

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

every February 24 ().

History

Varro and Ovid traced the observance to the flight of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, in In his '' Fasti'', Ovid offers the longest surviving account of the observance:

Now I must tell of the flight of the King, six days from the end of the month. The last of the Tarquins possessed the Roman nation, an unjust man, but nevertheless strong in war.

Plutarch holds that the '' rex sacrorum'' played as a substitute for the former king of Rome in various religious rituals. The ''rex'' held no civic or military role, but nevertheless was bound to offer a public sacrifice in the Comitia on this date. The "flight of the king" was the swift exit the proxy king was required to make from that place of public business. It may be that the two versions are to be reconciled by taking the "flight" of the ''rex sacrorum'' as a reenactment of the expulsion of Tarquinius.William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D., "Regifugium" in ''A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' (London, 1875)

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Ancient Roman festivals February observances Abdication Roman Kingdom {{reli-festival-stub

History

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