Valentine’s Day probably originated from the ancient Roman Feast of Lupercalia. On the eve of that festival, the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a slip, and the girl whose name he chose became his sweetheart for the year.
Legend has it that the holiday became Valentine’s Day after Valentine, a Christian priest in 3rd-century Rome at the time that Christianity was a new religion. The Emperor Claudius II forbade Roman soldiers to marry, believing that married soldiers would prefer to stay home with their families rather than fight his wars.
Valentine defied the emperor’s decree and secretly married young couples. He was eventually arrested, imprisoned and put to death on Feb. 14, 269, the eve of Lupercalia and afterward made a saint. As Rome became more Christian, Lupercalia became St. Valentine’s Day, observed each Feb. 14.
Here’s a Valentine’s Day game about the couples who couple in classic stories. Whatever your opinion about love, literature swirls with it, and we often draw our images of love from the books we read, most deeply from the ancient books.
Why were Adam and Eve the happiest couple in history? It’s because she couldn’t tell him how many other men she could have married. And he couldn’t tell her how much he loved his mother’s cooking. Starting with Adam and Eve, the Bible has chronicled many a married couple. Match the biblical husbands on the left with their biblical wives or lovers on the right.
Abraham Bathsheba
Adam Delilah
Ahasuerus Esther
Boaz Eve
David Mary
Joseph Ruth
Moses Sarah
Samson Zipporah
Do you know about Oedipus? He married the girl just like the girl who married dear old dad. He married a woman old enough to be his mother — and she was! Now let’s enlist a list of classical couples. Match each mythological male with his wife or lover:
Aeneas Clytemnestra
Agamemnon Dido
Narcissus Echo
Odysseus Eurydice
Orpheus Hera
Oedipus Jocasta
Pyramus Penelope
Zeus Thisbe
Have you heard about the young couple in a Shakespeare play who went out to dinner? It ended up that Romee owed what Julie et. Now join together these husbands and wives and lovers who people the plays of William Shakespeare:
Antony Cleopatra
Ferdinand Cressida
Hamlet Desdemona
Oberon Juliet
Othello Katherina
Petruchio Miranda
Romeo Ophelia
Troilus Titania
ANSWERS
Bible: Abraham/Sarah, Adam/Eve Boaz/Ruth, Ahasuerus/Esther, David/Bathsheba, Joseph/Mary, Moses/Zipporah, Samson/Delilah. Mythology: Aeneas/Dido, Agamemnon/Clytemnestra, Narcissus/Echo, Odysseus/Penelope, Oedipus/Jocasta, Orpheus/Eurydice, Pyramus/Thisbe, Zeus/Hera. Shakespeare: Antony/Cleopatra, Ferdinand/Miranda, Hamlet/Ophelia, Oberon/Titania, Othello/Desdemona, Petruchio/Katherina, Romeo/Juliet, Troilus/Cressida
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