Valentine’s Day in History
Many of the Roman holidays were recast as Christian. For example, December 25th, Christmas was the feast day of the Roman sun god Sol. Like Labor Day, such holidays gradually evolve, and people initially forget what they were all about. Thus, the Romans were celebrating Sol, but really it had become just a holiday, so they renamed it Christmas.
Pope Gelasius I (492-496) replaced the Roman celebration of Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day appears to have been merely a substitute for a cruder Roman Lupercalia holiday at the time called Lupercalia, promoting health and fertility, which would, at times, perhaps become more sexual. There were no gifts or chocolates being handed out. As for the heart, that seems to have evolved from a seed of a plant used for birth control.
The main product of Cyrene and the city of Barce at this time was the silphium plant. This was the main source of prosperity were agriculture and animal husbandry. Horses could graze in the less fertile areas, where the silphium plant grew wild. Silphium juice’s value for pregnancy prevention brought great wealth to this region. The historian Pliny tells us that it was a veritable cure-all; it is said to have had hundreds of medicinal and cosmetic uses. It was used to treat everything from chills to fevers. Hippocrates tells us that it could be used as a poultice or to soothe the stomach. Cooks also used the plant in their recipes.
However, this plant was used as a type of birth control. Indeed, medical evidence from classical antiquity informs us that it was the drug of choice for contraception. The Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus suggested taking a dose of silphium “the size of a chick-pea” once a month, both to prevent conception and “destroy any already existing.” The ancient abortion pills.
It is also believed that the seed of this plant is where we get the image of love and the heart.
It was so widely used that it is now extinct.
The last surviving plant was said to have been given to Emperor Nero.
