Some scholars trace Valentine’s Day back to ancient Greece and the mythical green meadows of Arcadia in the Peloponnese. Credit: Public Domain

A modern big business holiday, Valentine’s Day for many means jewelry, flowers, heart-shaped chocolate and candy, and lots of TLC. But it wasn’t always like that. Though no one has pinpointed the exact origins of the holiday, several historians and scholars place it in ancient Rome and the pagan feast of Lupercalia, a pastoral festival promoting health and fertility. A few, however, trace it further back to ancient Greece and the mythical green meadows of Arcadia in the Peloponnese, where the festival of Arcadian Lykaia took place every year.

Arcadian Lykaia was an archaic festival with a secret ritual involving sacrifices and a primitive rite of passage. It was held at night on the slopes of Mount Lykaion (Wolf Mountain), the tallest peak in Arcadia, which was characterised as an idyllic land of nymphs, nyads and dryads. It was there that, according to Greek mythology, Pan, the god of the wild and companion of the nymphs, lived and frolicked with them, while wooing them with his magical pipe.

Pan, often associated with sex, is connected to fertility and the season of spring—when the Arcadian Lykaia festival also took place and where he was worshipped as Lycean Pan. Being a rustic god, he was not worshipped in temples or other structures but in natural settings, usually caves or grottoes. Justin, a Latin writer and historian who lived under the Roman Empire, describes a “cult image of “the Lycean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus,” as nude, save for a goatskin girdle.

Evander (Euandros in Greek), a folk hero from Arcadia, Greece and son of the god Hermes, according to Roman mythology, brought the pantheon, laws and alphabet of Greece to ancient Italy.

It is said that he had led ancient Greek colonists from Pallantion in Arcadia to Rome, to the banks of Tiber and built the city of Palantium, from which the Palatine Hill in Rome is said to have derived its name. Evander also introduced the festival of Lupercalia, a pagan festival blending romance, fertility, prosperity and some quirky traditions, which many scholars suggest was the seed that would blossom into what is today known as Valentine’s Day.

Circle of Adam Elsheimer drawing, The Lupercalian Festival in Rome (ca. 1578-1610). Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

The dark, ancient origins of modern Valentine’s Day

The feast of Lupercalia, which may have originated in Arcadia’s festival, was celebrated by the Romans from February 13-15. The rites were confined to the Palatine Hill, the Lupercal cave and the Forum, all of which were locations central to Rome’s foundation myth. The name of the festival most likely derives from lupus, the Latin word for wolf, though both the etymology and its significance remain obscure. The wold appellation may have to do with the fact that an animal predator plays a key role in male rites of passage.

The men sacrificed dogs and male goats as a sign of virility. They then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics “were drunk. They were naked,” Noel Lenski, a religious studies professor at Yale University told NPR in 2011. Young women would line up for the men to hit them, Lenski said. They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal feast included a matchmaking lottery in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be coupled up for the duration of the festival or longer, if the match was right.

Lupercalia continued for centuries, even after the ascension of Christianity in Rome. Pope Gelasius I (492–496) abolished it in the fifth century and declared February 14th the Feast of Saint Valentine. The festival became more of a theatrical representation of what it once was. According to Lenski, “It was a little more of a drunken revel, but the Christians put clothes back on it. That didn’t stop it from being a day of fertility and love.”

As the years went on, the celebration grew sweeter. In Medieval Europe, people also reportedly believed birds chose their mates on February 14th. Outstanding English poet and author Geoffrey Chaucer, in his book “Parliament of Fowls,” imagined the goddess Nature paired off all the birds on “Seint Valentynes” day. Later, Shakespeare also romanticized the day in his work and Valentine’s Day gained popularity not only in Britain but across Europe. Handmade paper cards celebrating love appeared in the Middle Ages.

Eventually, the tradition made its way to the New World, and in 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Missouri, began mass-producing valentines, changing the way the month of February looks forever.