Parentalia begin (Feb 13–21)
Nine days for honouring dead family members, beginning on the Ides of February and ending with the public Feralia.
Background
February was the Roman month of purification and remembrance. The Parentalia, "days of the parents", began at noon on the Ides of February and lasted nine days. A Vestal Virgin opened them with rites for the dead per the calendar inscriptions as reported by modern scholars.
During these days families visited the tombs of their relatives along the roads outside the city, bringing simple offerings. Ovid lists them: a wreath, a sprinkling of grain, a little salt, bread soaked in wine, and loose violets per Ovid. Temples were closed, altar fires were not lit, and marriages were avoided per Ovid. The festival ended with the public Feralia on 21 February.
Tombs lined every road into Rome, from great monuments of the rich to the modest niches of burial clubs, where enslaved people and freedmen pooled small payments to secure a decent burial and remembrance. Not everyone had one: the poorest were dumped in mass pits outside the Esquiline gate. The Parentalia shows how strongly Romans felt that the dead needed care from the living.