Ribald or taunting songs or dialogues sung especially at weddings, festivals or processions. The fescennini are doubtless related to the Greek epithalamion and Hymenaios. In Aristophanes’ Peace (1329–57), an elaborate hymenaios exhibits an antiphonal structure and a considerable amount of innuendo and erotic word play. The term, which came to be applied to scurrilous verse in general, is derived either from the name of the town Fescennium in Etruria or from the phallus (fascinum) carried in processions to ward off evil. Horace (Epistles, ii.1.139–50) described these as having grown from the rustic taunts improvised in alternating verse by the farmers, their families and slaves at harvest celebrations; he thought these were the origin of later Roman drama (cf Livy, vii.2.7; Virgil, Georgics, ii.385ff). Examples of the type of verse may be found in Gaius Valerius Catullus (61.126–55) and Horace (Satires, i.5.51–70). St John Chrysostom specifically and sharply criticized the music, dancing, singing and torchlight processions still associated in his day with weddings.
G. Wissowa: ‘Fescennini versus’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vi (Stuttgart, 1909), 2222–3
J. Quasten: Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christlichen Frühzeit (Münster, 1930, 2/1973; Eng. trans. 1983), 180–85
G. Mauro: ‘Relazioni tra fescennini e atellane secondo Livio e nel loro svolgimento storico’, Giornale italiano di filologia, xiii (1960), 143–9
J.-P. Cèbe: ‘La “satura” dramatique et le divertissement “fescennin”’, Revue belge de philologie, xxxix (1961), 26–34
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 131ff
J.-P. Morel: ‘La “juventus” et les origines du théâtre romain’, Revue des études latines, xlvii (1969), 208–52
G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 71–2
J. McKinnon, trans.: Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987), 84–6
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN