The ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, celebrated on February 15 with festivities beginning the evening before on February 14, was a sensuous event of idolatrous worship honoring Lupercus, the deified hero-hunter of wolves. This festival encouraged young people to indulge in licentious acts of sexual immorality. During Lupercalia, after the sacrifice of goats and a dog, priests known as Luperci, dressed only in goatskin girdles, split into two bands and ran a marked course around the city, striking women with strips of goatskin called februa, believed to remove infertility. The term februa relates to februare, meaning to purify, thus naming the day Februatus and the month Februarius. Lupercalia was also connected to the legendary she-wolf who suckled Remus and Romulus, the traditional founders of Rome, and in Roman slang, wolf referred to a sexually available woman, linking the day to Venus, the goddess of sexual love, and her son Cupid, central figures in this feast of lust. Roman mythology attributed to them the power to instill or cease sexual passion, often depicted with Cupid shooting arrows into the hearts of victims. Due to its immense popularity, Roman church leaders in the fifth century AD included Lupercalia in the church's liturgical calendar, renaming it Saint Valentine's Day in AD 496 under Pope Gelasius, shifting the observance to February 14 and attempting to infuse a more Christian element by focusing on saints instead of pagan deities, though the festival retained much of its original character.