Hello everyone, it's the Ancients on History Hit. Got a special bonus episode today, and

it's all about Satinalia, that ancient Roman festival to the god Satin filled with

revelry and celebrations that occurred at this time of year, described as the best of

days by that raunchy Roman poet, Katilus. And in this podcast, it's one from the History

Hit archive. Dan Snow is joined by Kevin Butcher to talk all things Satinalia.

Quickly, a word from me, just to say a quick thank you. It's been amazing the past six months

to see the rise of the ancients from our first few episodes in July to now. It's almost

beyond words. And just thank you so much to everyone who's been listening to the podcasts.

We've got so much planned in the new year. We've already recorded so many episodes that

I cannot wait to share with you from the Schong new empire to ancient Greek music to the

rise of Marius to what else we got to the ninth legion, the Mopoli, Opians, Halleutica.

We got so much planned, so much lined up, I cannot wait for 2021 on the ancients. There's

a lot in store. Don't go anywhere. That's enough of me rambling on. Here is Dan Snow and

Kevin Butcher talking about Satinalia.

Now, at this time of year, people start worrying about gifts for their relatives and they start

comparing Christmas to Satinalia. So what on earth is Satinalia?

Well, you could say that Satinalia is sort of the Roman version of Christmas, but there

are some differences. So originally it was a single day, a 17th of December, when people

would basically have a festival in honor of the god Satin. This involved partying and drinking

and probably getting a bit drunk, tipsy, feasting, that kind of thing overindulging a bit. So it

does have some similarities to Christmas. The Romans liked this festival a great deal. So in fact,

they liked it so much that over the centuries it got expanded one day to seven days. So it

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