Lupercalia festival was celebrated on February 15. Typically, the rituals started with two priests, or luperci, hiding in the Lupercal cave, where Romulus and Remus were raised. The priests were descendants of Romulus and Remus and selected from ancient patrician families. The luperci symbolized and represented Romulus and Remus. Meanwhile, the Roman people dressed up and gathered at the Palatine Hill to perform religious rituals and honor the Roman god Romulus, along with celebrating by eating at private feasts and drinking wine. During the festival, the priests sacrificed several goats and one dog, where the goat was a symbol of fertility and the dog represented the she-wolf accordingly to Roman mythology. After the sacrifice, the luperci were rubbed by the bloody knife on their foreheads, then they were washed off by a cloth soaked in goat milk. This ritual was an act of forgiveness on the violence instigated by the founders of Rome. At the end of the festival, the luperci took off their clothes, then slapped the Roman crowd with leather strips made out of the dead goats skins, which symbolized good luck, extra fertility and childbirth pain easement.