Flora (mythology)

• Citations for source (s) of myth

Flora is in Roman mythology the goddess of flowering, in particular the cereal flowering.

In Ovid it is equated with the otherwise unoccupied Greek nymph Chloris, "And as she spoke, she breathed spring roses from her lips: I was Chloris, which I will (now) called Flora ." They followed in the spring by the personification of the West Wind Zephyr and made ​​her his wife.

It belongs to the circle of vegetation gods, of the gods of the earth and farming and is related to Ceres, Demeter and Tellus. Your worship can be detected at the Oscans and Sabellian tribes of the central Apennines. Flora was also the goddess of youth and cheerful enjoyment of life, and finally the pregnancy, whose symbol is the flower.

Her worship is to be introduced by the Sabinerkönig Titus Tatius in Rome; Numa Pompilius by others to have a Flemish Floralis used for them. On her feast, the Floralia, adorned the homes and they themselves with flowers, the women dressed contrary to the usual custom in bright colors, and song, dance and culinary delights filled the festival. After the First Punic War, also own games of Flora came up in a circus, which from April 28 to May 3 in which instead of wild beasts so-called small game, that is, rabbits, deer, etc., was killed ludi floral.

Flora had in Rome two temples, one on the Quirinal, the other near the Circus Maximus. The artist presented the flora of a Greek Spring Shore is similar, as flowering, flower-filled virgin. Among the sculptural representations of the so-called Farnese Flora is most famous, a larger than life marble statue, which is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The wax bust of Flora was widely regarded as one of the most famous sculptural works from the perimeters of Leonardo da Vinci, but has now been unequivocally revealed as a creation of the 19th century.

In allegorical representations of the four seasons Flora embodies the spring.