LUSTRATION

(Lat. lustro, I purify.) In Roman Antiquities, a sacrifice by which the Romans purified their cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by any crime or impurity. There were various manners of performing this ceremony, according to the nature of the lustration. When Servius TuUius had numbered the Roman people, he purified them, as they were a embled in the Campus Martius, by causing a young pig, a sheep, and a bull, just sacrificed, to be paraded round them. Before the celebration of the Ludi Seculares, which took place only once in a century, the populace was purified by a little sulphur, bitumen, and perfume, fixed to a piece of fir called iced a, which was lighted, and which thus circulated the smoke around them. The arm i/ was purified by causing tlie soldiers to defile between the two quivering halves of a victim, while the priest offered up certain prayers. The lustration of a funeral pile was effected by making the spectators march round it before the fire was kindled. ( See Me moires de VAc. des Inscriptions, vol. xxxvi.) See Ambauvalia. [s. 701]