Lustration

(Lat. lust ratio ). Sacrifices or ceremonies by which the ancients purified their cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by any crime or impurity. There were several ways of performing lustration, viz., by fire, by sulphur, by water, and by air. The Roman people underwent a lustration in the Campus Martius, after the census, which was taken every five years ( lustrum ), had been completed. In the armies, some chosen soldiers, crowned with laurel, led the victims—a cow, a sheep, and a bull—thrice round the army ranged in battle-array in the field of Mars, to which deity the victims were subsequently sacrificed, after many imprecations had been invoked upon the enemies of the Romans. The Gothic kings abolished these ceremonies when they became masters of Rome.