Dance Priests
The Romans believed that they reached perfection in everything relating to cult. They thought, that, because they were the masters of religion, world supremacy was something like a gift of the gods to them. They dismissed everything which was too exstatic and thought that sticking to some rules and rites would do. And so they had a lot of priests doing cultish stuff and to keep the pax deorum, the peace between them and the gods. They had two priestunits (you know, Romans always liked to organise things): the Collegia and the Sodalitates. The Sodalitates were older and quite obscure. Even in times of the Republic (this means quite early), people didn't really understand anymore, what those people were originally good for. For example the Luperci were part of the Sodalitates. I already talked about them in relation to Patrick Wolf's album entitled Lupercalia. But the best priests, at least to my taste, are the Salii, the dancing priests. They were priests of Mars, the god of war. And because Romans always fought, they had a lot to do. In March (month of Mars) war was started and in October the troops returned home or at least didn't fight, because nobody liked to fight during winter. So In March and October the Salii danced through the streets dressed in the old Roman fighting uniforms and red cloaks. The dance was called tripudium, which can be translated as 1,2,3-step (whatever that means) and they also sang a song. Cool, huh?
