Editing Liber (section)

==Festivals, cults and priesthoods==
Liber was closely, often interchangeably identified with Bacchus, Dionysus and their mythology but was not entirely subsumed by them; in the late Republican era, Cicero could insist on the "non-identity of Liber and Dionysus" and describe Liber and Libera as children of Ceres.<ref>Barbette Stanley Spaeth, ''The Roman goddess Ceres'', University of Texas Press, 1996, pp.[https://books.google.com/books?id=5g3YDlPvbeMC&q=lavinium&pg=PA142 8], [https://books.google.com/books?id=5g3YDlPvbeMC&q=Liber%20Cicero&pg=PA44 44.]</ref><ref>T.P. Wiseman, ''Remus: a Roman myth'', Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.133 and note 20.</ref><ref>Cicero, ''De Natura Deorum'', 2.62. See also St Augustine, ''De Civitatis Dei'', 4.11.</ref> Liber, like his Aventine companions, carried elements of his older cults into official Roman religion. He protected various aspects of agriculture and fertility, including the vine and the "soft seed" of its grapes, wine and wine vessels, and male fertility and virility.<ref>Libera protected female fertility.</ref> As his divine power was incarnate in the vine, grape and wine, he was offered the first, sacred [[pressing (wine)|pressing]] of the grape-[[harvest (wine)|harvest]], known as ''sacrima''.<ref>Spaeth find a parallel in the offer of first harvest grains to Ceres. See Barbette Stanley Spaeth, ''The Roman goddess Ceres'', University of Texas Press, 1996, pp.41, 43. [https://books.google.com/books?id=5g3YDlPvbeMC&q=lavinium&pg=PA41]</ref>

The wine produced under Liber's patronage was his gift to humankind, and therefore fit for [[Profanum|profane]] (non-religious) use: it could be mixed with old wine for the purposes of fermentation, and otherwise adulterated and diluted according to taste and circumstance. For religious purposes, it was ritually "impure" (''vinum spurcum''). Roman religious law required that the libations offered to the gods in their official cults should be ''vinum inferum'', a strong wine of pure vintage, also known as ''temetum''<!-- We need an article on Roman viniculture, its terminology and wine-etiquette -->. It was made from the best of the crop, selected and pressed under the patronage of Rome's sovereign deity [[Jupiter (mythology)#Viniculture and wine|Jupiter]] and ritually purified by his ''[[Flamen Dialis|flamen]]'' (senior priest).  Liber's role in viniculture and wine-making was thus both complementary and subservient to Jupiter's.<ref>Olivier de Cazanove, "Jupiter, Liber et le vin latin", ''Revue de l'histoire des religions'', 1988, Vol. 205, Issue 205-3, pp. 245-265 [http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhr_0035-1423_1988_num_205_3_1888]</ref>

Liber also personified male procreative power, which was ejaculated as the "soft seed" of human and animal semen. His temples held the [[Fascinus|image of a phallus]]; in Lavinium, this was the principal focus for his month-long festival, when according to St. Augustine, the "dishonourable member" was placed "on a little trolley" and taken in procession around the local [[Lares#Compitalia|crossroad shrines]], then to the local forum for its crowning by an honourable matron. The rites ensured the growth of seeds and repelled any malicious enchantment (''fascinatus'') from fields.<ref>St Augustine, (trans. R. W. Dyson) ''The City of God against the pagans'', 7.21., in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, 1998, pp. 292-3. St Augustine (AD 354 – 430) uses Varro (116 – 27 BC) as source.[https://books.google.com/books?id=ReU2M8cLtGcC&q=Liber&pg=PA292]</ref>

Liber's festivals are timed to the springtime awakening and renewal of fertility in the agricultural cycle. In Rome, his annual [[Liberalia]] public festival was held on March 17. A portable shrine was carried through Rome's neighbourhoods (''[[Vicus|vici]]''); Liber's aged, ivy-crowned priestesses ([[Sacerdos Liberi]]) offered honey cakes for sale, and offered sacrifice on behalf of those who bought them &ndash; the discovery of honey was credited to Liber-Bacchus. Embedded within Liberalia, more or less at a ritualistic level, were the various freedoms and rights attached to Roman ideas of virility as a divine and natural force.<ref name="google1996"/> Young men celebrated their coming of age; they cut off and dedicated their first beards to their household [[Lares]] and if citizens, wore their first ''[[toga]] virilis'', the "manly" toga &ndash; which [[Ovid]], perhaps by way of poetic etymology, calls a ''toga libera'' (Liber's toga or "toga of freedom"). These new citizens registered their citizenship at the forum and were then free to vote, to leave their father's ''domus'' (household), choose a marriage partner and, thanks to Liber's endowment of virility, father their own children. Ovid also emphasises the less formal freedoms and rights of Liberalia. From his later place of exile, where he was sent for an unnamed offense against Augustus having to do with free speech, Ovid lamented the lost companionship of his fellow poets, who apparently saw the Liberalia as an opportunity for uninhibited talking.<ref>See John F. Miller, "Ovid's Liberalia", in Geraldine Herbert-Brown,(ed)., ''Ovid's Fasti: historical readings at its bimillennium'', Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 199-224. Briefer scholarly treatment of the Festival is offered in William Warde Fowler, ''The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic'', Gorgias Press, 2004 (reprint of Macmillan and Co., London, 1908), pp.54 - 56.[https://books.google.com/books?id=_2w01mQEOBAC&dq=Warde%20Fowler%20Ovid%20Liberalia&pg=PA54]</ref>