The Collaborative International Dictionary
Terminalia \Ter`mi*na"li*a\, n. pl. [L.] (Rom. Antiq.) A festival celebrated annually by the Romans on February 23 in honor of Terminus, the god of boundaries.
Wikipedia
Terminalia is a genus of large trees of the flowering plant family Combretaceae, comprising around 100 species distributed in tropical regions of the world. This genus gets it name from Latin terminus, referring to the fact that the leaves appear at the very tips of the shoots.
Terminalia is a Roman festival to the god of boundaries Terminus.
Terminalia may also refer to:
- Terminalia (plant), a tree genus
- the terminal regions (the acron in the anterior and the telson in the posterior) in insects; see for instance regional specification in Drosophila melanogaster
- Polyscias terminalia, a plant species in the genus Polyscias
Terminalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Terminus, who presided over boundaries. His statue was merely a stone or post stuck in the ground to distinguish between properties. His worship is said to have been instituted by Numa who ordered that every one should mark the boundaries of his landed property by stones to be consecrated to Jupiter Terminalis, and at which every year sacrifices were to be offered at the festival of the Terminalia. On the festival the two owners of adjacent property crowned the statue with garlands and raised a crude altar, on which they offered up some corn, honeycombs, and wine, and sacrificed a lamb or a suckling pig. They concluded with singing the praises of the god. The public festival in honour of this god was celebrated at the sixth milestone on the road towards Laurentum doubtless because this was originally the extent of the Roman territory in that direction.
The festival of the Terminalia was celebrated VII. Kal. Mart., or the 23d of February on the day before the Regifugium. The Terminalia was celebrated on the last day of the old Roman year, whence some derive its name. We know that February was the last month of the Roman year, and that when the intercalary month Mercedonius was added, the last five days of February were added to the intercalary month, making the 23d of February the last day of the year. When Cicero in a letter to Atticus says, Accepi tuas litteras a. d. V. Terminalia (i.e. Feb. 19), he uses this strange mode of defining a date, because being then in Cilicia he did not know whether any intercalation had been inserted that year.
The central Terminus of Rome (to which all roads led) was the god's ancient shrine on the Capitoline Hill. The temple of Jupiter, king of the gods, had to be built around it (with a hole in the ceiling as Terminus demanded open-air sacrifices) by the city's last king, Tarquinius Superbus, who had closed down other shrines on the site to make room for this prestigious project. But the augurs had read into the flight patterns of birds that the god Terminus refused to be moved, which was taken as a sign of stability for the city.
Usage examples of "terminalia".
The last-named substance is the fruit of the Terminalia, a product of China and the East Indies, best known as Myrabolams and must have been utilized solely for the tannin they contain, which Loewe estimates to be identical with ellago-tannic acid, later discovered in the divi-divi, a fruit grown in South America, and bablah which is also a fruit of a species of Acacia, well known also for its gum.
The twenty-third of February, which coincided with the Roman festival of the Terminalia, ^149 was appointed (whether from accident or design) to set bounds to the progress of Christianity.