LECTISTERNIUM (from Lat. lectum sternere, "to spread a couch"), a rite of Greek origin, but common in Rome from 399 B.C. (see Livy, v., 136) onward. It consisted of a meal offered to gods and goddesses, represented by their busts or statues, perhaps originally by aniconic symbols (see Festus, p. 56, 12 Lindsay). These symbols were laid upon a couch (lectus) or pulvinar (from pulvinus, a cushion) in the attitude of reclining. In front of the couch, which was placed in the open street, a meal was set out on a table.
On the first occasion couches were prepared for three pairs of gods—Apollo and Latona, Hercules and Diana, Mercury and Neptune. The feast, which on that occasion lasted for eight (or seven) days, was also celebrated by private individuals; the citizens kept open house, quarrels were forgotten, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything done to banish sorrow. Similar honours were paid to other divinities in subsequent times, always after consultation of the Sibylline books and as a pro pitiatory ceremony. The gods being grouped in Greek fashion and
being frequently of Greek origin, it is plain that the rite is Greek, presumably Cumaean, since the Sibylline books came from Cumae ; but in this form it does not seem to be found in Greece. In addition, lectisternia were held annually, or oftener (for the greater part of the year in some shrines, Livy xxxvi., 2 3o, 8) at temples of gods originally Greek, as Ceres. This largely replaced the old Roman epulum or daps, in which a table was spread for the god, who was not visibly represented. A sort of compromise is the sellisternium, in which a goddess is provided with a chair (sella), not a couch, according to the Roman custom by which women did not recline but sat at meals (e.g. Valerius Max., ii. I, 2). In Christian times the word was used for a feast in memory of the dead (Sidonius Apollinaris Epistulae, iv. i5).