The mundus - the sacred pit

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sun Oct 03, 2004 4:24 am

Salve Coruncani

The mundus was a vaulted subterranean shrine. It was opened on 24 Aug, 5 Oct, and 8 Nov. When opened it allowed passage of the Manes from the Underworld. The original location I don't think is known but is assumed to have been at the center of Rome. When Augustus refound the City he had built a similar subterranean structure on the Palatine, although he called it something else IIRC, and it was an essential feature of the ceremonies required in foundation rites. The location of the mundus in historical times was in or near the Forum. If that is the case then it may have been relocated with the Servian refounding of Rome, and Augustus would seem to have relocated it back to the Palatine where an original mundus was assumed to have been located. The original mundus was said to have been established by Romulus when he founded Rome.

Modern speculation on the mundus has generally tried to connect it with the subterranean sanctuary of Consus, which was in the Circus Maximus. Festus however called it the mundus Cereris. Offerings of the first fruits were placed in the mundus and thus the speculation has been that it represented the underground storage of grain. However the Romans and no other Italic tribe ever stored grain below ground.

There is some connection between the naming of the mundus and the Roman term for the Universe. However no one really knows what the connection could be. The fact that it was supposedly at the heart of Rome poses it as a kind of omphalos, and the fact that it was thought a gateway between the worlds below and above again poses it as the center of the Roman Universe.

In the most ancient period, human sacrifices were associated with foundation rites. The Augustan Restoration placed stone pillars beneath the old pomerium that encircled the Palatine, and these commemorated an earlier human sacrifice. Those pillars also connected the ancient practice to the sacrifice of Remus. Some years back Carandini did find four gravesites beneath the pomerium wall he discovered. These may have been sacrificed when the pomerium was expanded, the remains date to around 650. There was some connection between the pomerium and the mundus, the latter being at the center of the former. There is no mention of it that I am aware of, but the mundus may have once been thought as the tomb of Remus. Remus would be the first Roman among the Manes, and the sacrificial vistims at the pomerium were referred to as followers of Remus. The Augustan pillars were found at the site where Femus was said to have met his death. There was the contrast between Remus' descent to the Underworld and Romulus' ascention in to the Heavens, so that again you have a concept of the Universe above and below and a connection made between the Manes and the celestial Gods with the mundus acting as the gateway between.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Thu Oct 07, 2004 8:18 pm

Salve Coruncani

The lapis niger was located in the Comitium just north of the Forum and on the rise of the Capitoline Hill, just behind the Rostra. One legend said it marked a place set aside as the tomb of Romulus but that Faustulus was buried there instead. Faustulus was the shepherd who had rescued Romulus and Remus. Another legend said it was the tomb of the grandfather of Tullus Hostilius (in Festus and Dionysius Halicarnassus). A later confusion made it out as the tomb of Romulus. It was paved over in the time of Augustus IIRC, but was still visible when Dionysius visited Rome. The lapis niger actually referred to the black paving stone over the inscribed stone now known by that name. Beneath the lapis niger pavement was found a U-shaped altar as the type found at Lavinium, a monolithic column, cut off when the pavement was laid, and then the stone block inscribed with Archaic Latin. RECEI SAKROS KALATOSEM IOUXMENTA IOUESTED The inscription itself was cut off when the stone was shortened for the paving. Dionysius said it mentioned Hostilius by name, although it certainly does not now and probably not in his time either.

Originally the black inscribed stone stood alone, approached from the north by three steps. The column and altar were later added, along with a retaining wall to form a fanum. In Cicero's day the fanum would have been visible from the Forum just above the Rostrum. Its association with Hostilius, as it certainly was in the Late Republic, would have been the place where Tullus Hostilius impiously called down Jupiter and was thus struck by lightning, and thus may have served as a reminder to those strutting about on the Rostrum to mind their oaths. Next to the inscribed stone there was originally a pool and cut basin for drawing water. This was filled in at the time the altar and column were erected, and the fill suggests this was done in the sixth century. The whole fanum complex was later filled in when it was paved over, apparently used as a favissa. It contained a layer of burnt offering, thought to be expiatory sacrifices at the time of the fill. Remains of sheep, goats and pigs were found. Over that were several vases, ritual implements, miniature jars and cups, pottery disks representing offerings of bread, knucklebones used in divination, eleven small bronze figures, male and female kouros and kore, and sixth century Italic-Etruscan pottery along with fragments of Ionian and black Attic wares, including the famed potery fragment of Hephaistos mounted on a donkey. At one time the fanum was thought to be the Volcanal based on the presense of this last piece. But the sixth century material was intermixed with much later material and the fill dates to the Imperial period.

The Lapis Niger and its fanum was not a subterranean vault, not during the Republic. There was another part of the Forum called the Dolium by Varro where it was forbidden to spit because it was known to conceal ancient burial sites. Early in the twentieth century Boni found such pozzi but I don't think anyone has ever placed where Varro's [Dolium{/i] was located exactly. No mundus has ever been found, and if it were I am not sure we would recognize it as we do not really know what it was. Augustus' Quadraga on the Palatine may have been a reconstruction of a site taken as the original mundus of Romulus, or at least close to where his was suppose to have been located. I think they did find the Quadraga, but I am not sure. I have never read anything that tried to locate where in the Forum was the Republican mundus but my guess would be at the other end from the Lapis Niger, somewhere around the Regia. Why? Well...

Festus and the mundus Cereris. In the Regia there was a sacullum of Ops. Once a year the pontifex maximus was brought down into it dressed and veiled as a Vestal Virgin. No men were allowed into it except on this occassion, and only because he was disguised as a woman. Just as in the rites of the Bona Dea, the Vestal Virgines performed the rite. The close association of Ops with Tellus, and then of Tellus with Ceres, probably is what lays behind the reference made by Festus. The other thing that would account for it is that the mundus was seen as the gateway to the Underworld and there was a rite performed 3-5 Oct. reenacting the loss and discovery of Proserpina by Ceres. On 5 Oct. the mundus was opened and that rite is somehow connected with the reemergence of Proserpina. But that of course is a later introduction, third century. It is possible that there were more than one such subterranean vaults identified as a mundus including one on the Aventine. And there was the subterraneansanctuary of Consus in the Circus Maximus, possibly also thought of as a mundus but I don't recall. But THE mundus, as something unique and related to the pomerium is not related to any specific deity, except Festus' rather late entry. The domain of Ceres as a Goddess of grain lies outside the City, outside the pomerium, so you are right, it seems odd that She would be associated with the center of the pomerium. But things change. The Forum would have been outside the original pomerium of Romulus. Several aspects of Juno are related to Ceres, and in Italic regions, that knew no Juno before the Romans, it is Ceres who is consort of Jupiter. Then, too, Juno is not the name of a Goddess. Every Goddess has a juno just as every woman, and just as every man has his genius. I think it is Statius who refers to Proserpina at one point as the Juno of Enna. So it is possible that at one time Ceres was remembered as the Juno Capitolina and thus had shrines inside the pomerium. There is a reference by Virgil suggesting that Ceres is the patroness of Latins and thus earlier of Rome, just as She was in other Italic cities, and just as She is known as Ferentia to have been the patroness of the Latin League. All that changed in later centuries, certainly by the fourth century any public reference to Juno as Ceres was lost, and as Livy said, "who can be certain of things so ancient."

And then Remus and the mundus. There are more than twenty versions of how Remus died, who killed him and why. Your guess is as good as anyone's whether there was once a connection. The fact that Romulus made the first mundus and that it was associated with the Underworld, possibly a burial site for his brother... maybe. Basically nobody knows much about the mundus, and that reflects the fact that by the Late Republic even the Romans had no idea about their most ancient religion, its shrines or its institutions, layered upon by centuries of accretions.

More questions than answers. More research needed than I can offer.

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