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LIBITINA , an old See also:Roman goddess of funerals. She had a See also:sanctuary in a sacred See also:grove (perhaps on the Esquiline), where, bye an. See also:ordinance of Servius Tullius, a piece of See also:money (lucar Libitinae) was deposited whenever a See also:death took See also:place. Here the undertakers (libitinarii), who carried out all funeral arrangements by See also:contract, had their offices, and everything necessary was kept for See also:sale or hire; here all deaths were registered for statistical purposes. The word Libitina then came to be used for the business: of an undertaker, funeral requisites, and (in the poets) for death itself. By later antiquarians Libitina was sometimes identified with Persephone, but more commonly (partly or completely) with See also:Venus Lubentia or Lubentina, an See also:Italian goddess of gardens. The similarity of name and the fact that Venus Lubentia had a sanctuary in the grove of Libitina favoured this See also:idea. Further, See also:Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 23) mentions a small statue at See also:Delphi of See also:Aphrodite Epitymbia (A.. of tombs Venus .Libitina) to which the See also:spirits of the dead were summoned, The inconsistency of selling funeral requisites in the See also:temple of Libitina, seeing that she is identified with Venus, is explained by him as indicating that one and the same goddess presides over See also:birth and death; or the association of such things with the goddess of love and See also:pleasure is intended to show. that death is not a calamity, but rather a consummation to be desired. Libitina may, however, have been originally an See also:earth goddess, connected with luxuriant nature and the enjoyments of See also:life (cf. lub-et, See also:lib-ido) ; then, all such deities being connected with the underworld, she also became the goddess of death, and that See also:side of her See also:character predominated in the later conceptions;
See Plutarch, See also:Mime, 12; See also:Dion. Halic. iv. 15; See also:Festus xvi., s.v:
RusticaVinalia"; See also:Juvenal xii. 121, with See also:Mayor's See also:note; G. Wissowa in See also:Roscher's See also:Lexicon der Mythologie, s.v.
End of Article: LIBITINA
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