Lustratio

thumb|227x227px|Romans sacrificing a pig, a sheep, and a bull during a suovetaurilia Lustratio was an ancient Greek and ancient Roman purification ritual. It included a procession and in some circumstances the sacrifice of a pig (sus), a ram (ovis), and a bull (taurus) (suovetaurilia). The name is the source of English "lustration" (a purification).

==Purpose== The Lustratio was performed by a priest or magistrate who led a procession with at least one sacrificial animal around the area intended to be purified. Following this, the animals would be sacrificed to the god Mars. The animals which were sacrificed were usually either a pig, ram, or a bull. One reason for a lustratio was to rid newborn children of any harmful spirits that may have been acquired at birth prior to the dies lustricus. The ceremony took place at the age of nine days for baby boys and eight days for baby girls. In the ceremony, the procession traced a magical boundary around the child to be purified. At the end of the ceremony, if the child was male, he was presented with a small charm, usually of gold, called a bulla and kept in a leather bag around the boy's neck. This bulla would be worn until the boy became a man and exchanged the child's purple-lined toga toga praetexta for the plain toga virilis of an adult. The lustratio ceremony culminated with the naming of the child, the name being added to official Roman registers, and the observation of a flight of birds in order to discern the child’s future.