Religio Romana

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Religio Romana

Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 21, 2003 4:27 am

Salvete collegae

Well, it seems I have not left yet. Our departure was delayed for two days, and our trip is now postponed until next month. I had intended to begin a new topic upon my return anyway, and as this will become an ongoing subject, I may as well begin it now.

What I intend to do is to go into various aspects of the Religio Romana in some depth. I have mentioned before, or think that I have, that there are only a few fragments that remain of the pontifical books, or commentaries on those books. Then there are the later works that we usually looked to as our sources. I will post from these so that we can all be working from the same sources, contrasting them against one another, and also adding in some of my own comments. All collegae are invited to make their own comments and ask any questions they may have. This topic line will also be open for anyone to bring up questions on the Religio Romana other than what I am covering, and we will try to address those as best we may.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 21, 2003 4:34 am

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De Legibus by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Following Plato?s example for The Republic and The Laws, Marcus Tullius Cicero set out to write two similar works for Rome. In his own De Legibus, Book II, Cicero poses a set of religious laws for his ideal state, based on his own perspective of developments at Rome in his time. His proposals should not be mistaken as descriptions of Roman religious institutions as they existed in his time. Rather they are Cicero?s proposals for making the Religio Romana a political instrument of the State, quite clearly stating his intent to use religion as a means of controlling the masses. Thus his proposals are a reflection of his own political objections and prejudices toward the Religio Romana as it was actually practiced.

Quintus: ?However, it seems to me that this religious system of yours does not differ a great deal from the laws of Numa and our own customs.?
Marcus: ?Do you not think, then, since Scipio in my former work on the Republic offered a convincing proof that our early State was the best in the world, that we must provide that ideal State with laws which are in harmony with its character??
Quintus: ?Certainly I think so.?
Marcus: ?Then you must expect such laws as will establish that best type of State. And if I chance to propose any provisions today which do not exist now and never have existed in our State, they will nevertheless be found for the most part among the customs of our ancestors, which used to have the binding force of law.? (De Legibus II.x, 23)

Cicero may have begun the De Legibus as early as 52 BCE. Some passages indicate that he was working on it still in 44, and the work was never published before his death in December 43 BCE. In part Cicero?s work seems to be a reaction to the great antiquary work by Terentius Varro on the Religio Romana. Initially Cicero was, as with everyone else who first read it, very impressed by how much material Varro had uncovered on the ancient priesthoods, holy sanctuaries, festivals, rites and the gods of the Religio Romana. Many of the early priesthoods and rites had fallen out of use. Varro?s work was dedicated to Julius Caesar as the Pontifex Maximus. Many of Caesar?s supporters proposed restoring the earlier rites and priesthoods, which Augustus Caesar eventually did, based much on Varro. But Cicero opposed the restoration, and in his outline for an ideal Religio Romana he sought to limit and restrict the religious institutions of Rome and make them more easily controllable.

Another consideration is what Cicero does not say. Cicero wrote the De Re Publica in 54-52. His De Legibus was intended as a sequel to this work, and therefore assumed to have been begun in 52 BCE. In Rome at the time that Cicero wrote, Isiacs were agitating to establish shrines and altars to their gods inside the pomerium. The Senate ordered these shrines demolished in 58 BCE after militant Isiacs had disrupted the solemn sacrifices performed by consul Gabinius on 1 January of that year. After the demolition, the Isiacs immediately replaced the shrines. The Senate again ordered their demolition in 53 BCE and once more in 50 BCE. At the same time militant Isiacs had continued to disrupt religious ceremonies, especially those dedicated to Magna Mater that the traditionalists in the Senate had adopted. Behind this agitation by the Isiacs was Cicero?s political enemy Clodius. It is therefore strange that when explaining his laws that prohibit the introduction of foreign gods and their culti deorum, and cites the example of the Senate ban of the Bacchae in 186 BCE, that he would not also cite more recent events, especially as they had involved Clodius. At one point he does refer to Clodius? disruption of the rites of the Bona Dea in December 62 (II.14.37), yet he does not mention the Ludi scaenici of the Magna Mater that Clodius disrupted and profaned in the spring of 56BCE. Clodius had died in January 52 and the conservative members of the Senate still opposed the Isiacs? establishing shrines inside the pomerium. Cicero was then involved in preparing a defense of Milo for the murder of Clodius, but Cicero was unable to deliver his speech due to threats made by Clodius? supporters, with the tacit support of Julius Caesar. In 44 when Cicero once again worked on the De Legibus, Caesar was assassinated and there began the struggle between Marc Antony and the Senate. It was then that Cicero gave his Philippics against Antony in September 44. Antony?s involvement with Cleopatra, and his support from Clodius? followers, along with the Senate?s campaign against the Isiacs, would seem to have given Cicero the opportunity and the political reasons to include his attacks against the introduction of foreign culti deorum the example of the disruptive Isiacs. But then in October 43 the Triumvirs Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian promised to build a temple for Serapis and Isis. This temple was not built until years later, and then only outside the pomerium in the Campus Martius, and the agitation of the Isiacs did not ebb as we hear of their expulsion again in 28 and 21 BCE. If Cicero began the De Legibus in 52 as some historians suggest, immediately following the death of his adversary Clodius, one would think Cicero would mention, or at least refer to the Isiac agitation, as it still continued and was still being vigorously opposed by the Senate. And if written later there would still have been every interest for Cicero to mention the Isiacs, since they were politically connected with Caesar and Mark Antony, and Cleopatra. If Cicero had made any references to the Isiacs when he originally wrote the De Legibus, these he removed in anticipation of publishing the work, quite conscious to the fact that his life would be threatened if he did not. As things turned out, Cicero was executed in Marc Antony?s proscription of 43, the De Legibus never published, and some think left incomplete.

Rather than a work on religion, the De Legibus is Cicero?s political testament. Only one of its intended five books was devoted to the Religio Romana; only three books have survived or were ever written. Even where Cicero did turn his attention towards the Religio Romana it was with a political intent. By no means should the De Legibus be regarded as a model of the Religio Romana, not as it existed in Cicero?s lifetime or ever before his time, and what occurred later in Augustus? Restoration was the opposite of what Cicero advocated for the Religio Romana in this work. Yet it does afford an outline of various aspects of the Religio Romana and the thoughts about those aspects by one of Rome?s leading politicians. It is therefore a convenient place to begin discussing the Religio Romana in greater depth, by breaking it down into Cicero's various propositions.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Jan 22, 2003 3:15 am

Salvete

VIII (19) AD DIVOS ADEUNTO CASTE, PIETATEM ADHIBENTO, OPES AMOVENTO. QUI SECUS FAXIT, DEUS IPSE VINDEX ERIT.

May they approach the gods and goddesses while pure and chaste, bringing piety, and leaving riches behind. Whosoever should do otherwise, will be avenged upon by the God Himself.


Cicero De Legibus II.x, 24-5: that is, purity of mind, for everything is included by that. This does not remove the requirement of bodily purity?for in the former case impurity is removed by the sprinkling of water or the passage of a certain number of days, but a mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any stream. ?uprightness is pleasing to the god, but great expenditure is to be avoided?nothing would be less pleasing to a god himself than that the pathway to his favour and to his worship should not be open to all alike.

The first law Cicero proposes sets out the general approach one should have towards the gods. In explaining this law (II.x.24-25) he makes clear that by "chaste" he means a "purity of mind, for everything is included by that." Ritual purity of the body is the first consideration when approaching the gods, and so we will first look at that, but it should be understood that ritual purification of the body is intended to place a worshipper into a proper frame of mind when approaching the gods.


While besieging the city of Veii, Camillus had invited the protective goddess of the enemy city to abandon the Etruscans and instead come to Rome. This goddess Vei (possibly an Etruscan Ceres) was installed in a new temple on the Aventine as Juno Regina. Livy tells how an image of her was removed from her temple in Veii.

T. Livius A.U.C. V.22.4-5: "For out of the all the army, youths were chosen and made to cleanse their bodies and to put on white vestments, and to them the duty was assigned of conveying Juno Regina to Rome. Reverently entering Her temple, at first they drew near with uplifted hands in the religious manner, because this image was one that by Etruscan custom could not be touched except by a priest from a certain family."


In order to prepare for performing a ritual one had to be cleansed. Ritual cleansing of the body, as Cicero mentions in his explanation, was made in a running stream. Servilius relates how the augurs would drink from their hands the waters taken up from a river as part of their ritual (Ad Aen. 9.24). Washing of the hands, made before covering the head for ritual, is also recorded in the Actum Fratrum Arvalum. There is then the exceptional case provided by Juvenal of a worshiper of Isis at Rome. Dipping beneath the frigid Tiber in winter, three times she submerges her head, just as three times Apuleius? Golden Ass dips his head in a river as part of a purification rite. Then naked and on her knees, she returns from the river, crawling across the Campus Martius, to the temple of Isis (Satires 6.522). Her example is alien to the Religio Romana, the practice of a foreign cultus deorum, which serves in its contrast to show the Roman moderate practice of a ritual cleansing of the hands alone.


Clean garments were another requirement, the material and colour being an important factor for some deities. White garments were specific for Ceres, where colourful garments would be appropriate for rites to Flora or Venus. In some cases the material used for ritual implements was another consideration; iron implements were banned from the rites of Ceres as one example, and many limitations were placed on the flamen Dialis in order that he would retain his ritual purity. Another practice was fasting and/or abstinence, often associated with Ceres (Ovid Amores 3.10), or the Vestal Virgins, but also with the regimen of the flamen Dialis at certain times of the year. We may later look at the various proscriptions placed on the flamen Dialis, intended to retain his ritual purity at all times, and see how these related in their specific restrictions to the cultus of Jupiter that he served. Flamines of other deities likely had their own proscriptions, as they had their own unique regimen of rites to perform, although we do hear much of the other flamines in this regard.


Cicero says that one must come to the gods with piety. For the Romans piety dealt mainly with fulfilling one?s obligations, especially those religious obligations to one?s deceased family members. Contractual arrangements between people were made by formula, accompanied by oaths before the gods, so that these too became religious obligations. There was also a religious element to social relations, such as between a patron and his clientelia. Stipulated in the Twelve Tablets VIII, a patron who is false to his client is adjudged sacer esto. The connection between piety and religious obligations brought on by contractual arrangements and oaths is brought out in Livy.


T. Livius A.U.C. I.21.1: Following the reforms of Numa, "not only had they something to consider with their minds, but their constant preoccupation with the gods, now that it seemed to them that concern for human affairs was felt by the heavenly powers, and this had so tinged the hearts of all with piety, that the nation was henceforth governed by its regard for promises and oaths, rather than by the dread of laws and penalties."


During a prescribed period of purification, therefore expiatory sacrifices and prayers would be offered to the Manes and Di inferi, in case one had overlooked fulfilling their obligations. Contractual arrangements might be reviewed to see that one is meeting any obligations he or she had undertaken, and an attempt to resolve any differences with others might be made.


Lastly, in Cicero?s first law there is a proscription against costly display. Already in the Twelve Tablets of the early Republic, there was a proscription against burying the dead with gold. In early inhumations and cremations one finds some articles of bronze, not iron, and funerary deposits are generally of a utilitarian nature and not a display of wealth. Often what pottery is found is in a miniature form, meant for ritual or as a votive to the dead. Some imported wares are found, which would have been expensive, but is relatively rare in early graves, and even less frequently found in the later period of the Early Republic. Beginning especially in the second century, empire meant that great wealth was coming into Rome. Rich display and costly games given in honor of the dead had become a problem. In the Late Republic and early in the Principate there was expressed by many writers of a desire to return to an earlier, simpler form of the Religio Romana that was identified with Pompilius Numa. Cicero will return to this theme, and to Numa, as will we when we look at his other proposals.



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Jan 22, 2003 5:27 pm

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SEPARATIM NEMO HABESSIT DEOS NEVE NOVOS NEVE ADVENAS NISI PUBLICE ADSCITOS; PRIVATIM COLUNTO, QUOS RITE A PATRIBUS CULTOS ACCEPERINT.

No one shall have gods to himself, either new gods or foreign gods, unless they are recognized to be in the public interest. In their private practices may they perform rites in honor of those gods whose worship and cultus they have received from their ancestors.

T. Livius A.U.C. IV.30.9: And not only were men?s bodies afflicted by the plague (in 427 BCE), but a horde of superstitions, mostly foreign, took possession of their minds, as those class of men who find their profit in superstitious-ridden souls introduced strange new sacrificial rites into their homes, pretending to be seers, until the public shame finally reached the leading citizens as well, as they beheld in every street and chapel outlandish and unfamiliar sacrifices being offered up to appease heaven?s anger. The plebeian aediles were then commissioned to see to it that none but Roman gods should be worshipped, nor in any but the ancestral way.

Any discussion of the Religio Romana, even in ancient times, seems to come back to a question of just what was the traditional form before the introduction of foreign elements. There is really no answer for that question because from the earliest of times, even before the founding of Rome, there were foreign influences in Italy. Even in the legendary history of Rome, when Romulus and Remus arrived on the Palatine they found an earlier people living there, the Ausones, and among these people was the Greek Evander and other foreigners. The gentes Pinarii and Potitii supposedly adopted their cultus geniale from Evander, which was later adopted into the cultus civile for the Ara Maxima Herculis, while the festival of the Lupercalia of the gentes Fabia and Qunctia likewise was said to have come from Evander. The original forms of the Religio Romana was a collection of these culti geniale, and we should be aware that from its very beginning Rome was composed of diverse ethnic groups having different religious traditions. Romulus is credited with bringing certain rites from Alba Longa. This was reinforced later when Rome took Alba Longa and brought some of their gentes to Rome. Gens Iulia was one of these, and we know from later records that part of their cultus geniale at Bovillae was devoted to Vediovis. In the time of Romulus there was a union between the Latins and the Sabines of Titus Tatius, and this Sabine element was then reinforced when Numa became king. Gens Claudia, a Sabine family that arrived still later, was noted for their cultus geniale being different from that commonly practiced in other gentes, and at times in conflict with the accepted cultus civile. We also hear of Romulus adopting rites from the Etruscans, and Ancus Macius, grandson of Numa, copied the rites of the Fetiales from the "antiqua gente Aequicolis" (Livy 1.32.1-5). So already in the regal period there was a mixture of traditions.

During the Republic the story of the Religio Romana, as told by Livy, is one of innovation, change, and evolution. Through the rite of the evocatio Camillus carries back from Veii to Rome the goddess who will become known as Juno Regina. By the same rite Aemilianus Scipio Africanus returns Tanit from Carthage as Juno Caeleste. During the First Punic War Punic Astarte, who had been adopted as Aphrodite in Sicily, comes to Rome as Venus Erycina. Other gods and goddesses first arrive as new peoples are added into Rome, or as they are first adopted by a particular gens. Gens Fonteia, for example, had adopted the Greek Dioscuri, which developed into a cultus among certain patrician gentes before the adoption into the cultus civile with the erection of the Temple of Castor in 484. Eponia is the only goddesses adopted from the Gauls into the official calendar. Flora, and many other deities, first enter Rome from Italic tribes. By the offices of the duoviri (later decemviri then quindecemviri) additions to the Roman pantheon arrive from Greece, such as Apollo and Aesculapius, and, too, Phyrgian Magna Mater. New rituals and festivals are first performed among the plebeians before their adoption into the official cultus civile. Livy says that the first lectisternium to be decreed by the Senate, on the advice of the duoviri, was made in the early fourth century during the siege of Veii, where as lectisternia were already being performed in the plebeian cultus of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, and was also used in other Latin cities like Praeneste. The inclusion of women in public rites, or even leading public rites, likewise first appears with the plebeian cultus of Ceres, at least by 217 if not sooner, and then becomes part of the cultus civile with Magna Mater shortly afterwards.

In the early Republic the Plebeians withdrew to the Mons Sacra and as one result of their First Secessio there was a temple built to Ceres, Liber, and Libera. Cicero tried to claim that this was the import of a foreign cultus, being Greek in origin, as a way to denigrate plebeian practices (Balb. 55). The oldest written evidence for any Roman deity however is that of Ceres, found on an urn from Falerii, dating to around 600 BCE. The name "Cerus manus" appears in the Carmen Salii, one of the most archaic pieces of written Latin. This is believed by some to be the name of a male consort of Ceres, comparing it with Umbrian inscriptions at Iguvium, while others see it as a title for Janus meaning "the Good Creator," after a comment by Festus. At any rate there was among the other Italic tribes a cultus of Ceres where She is the chief goddess and Her consort is Jupiter (Oscan tribes did not have the Etruscan Juno). By no means can the Italic Ceres be consider Greek in origin, and the Latin Ceres with Her cultus came from the same commonly held traditions of Italy. In Magna Graecia the cultus of Ceres and Proserpina differed from that of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, and there was the Locrian cultus of Phersephata that differed from both. These more likely originated from the local Italic traditions than from Greece. In 217 BCE there was a change to the cultus performed at the Aventine Temple of Ceres, an introduction brought from Cumae, Capua and Velia in Campania from where Sabellian women came to Rome as priestesses and performed their rites in a "Greek" manner. The Romans regarded the cities of Campania as a Greek, but the Sabellians had seized these cities centuries before and it would be more true to consider what was introduced to Rome from Campania as being Italic in origin.

Looking at what Livy says for the year 427, the introduction of "a horde of superstitions, mostly foreign," there is implied that some of the strange practices were in fact Roman. The source for these was likely the same culti geniale from which the cultus civile was adopted. We would also have to consider that at that time Rome had not expanded out of Latium, not even into Etruria as yet, and while there were certainly Greeks, Phoenicians, and Etruscans present at Rome, that these foreign superstitions referred to in the records Livy used as his sources could just as well have been from other Latin cities. The other foreign influences of that time would have been the Sabines and other Oscan tribes.

Around the same time that the cultus Cereri was altered there was also introduced to Rome the cultus of the Phrygian Magna Mater. The reason such a distant cultus may have been adopted was because of the legend of Aeneas and a Trojan origin of the Latins. Many such legends existed among the Italic tribes, mainly taking as their ancestors descending from the Greek heroes of Homer's Iliad rather than the Trojans. The Sabines claimed descent from the Spartans; Ovid referring to Titus Tatius as "Oebalian" in reference to this tradition (Fasti 1.260). Supposedly the introduction of foreign elements into the Religio Romana was controlled, as in the case of the Magna Mater, by a collegium of priests called the decimviri, and later expanded into the quindecimviri sacris faciundis who interpreted the Sibylline Oracles. These sacred writing were considered Greek, they were supposedly composed in Greek, and they were used to justify the introduction of some Greek culti deorum. But their traditional origin is that of the Sabellian Sibyl of Cumae. What Livy was really reporting was that evolution of the Religio Romana was generated from below, by adoption of new rites first by the Roman people, often foreigners in origin themselves, who then pressured the civil authorities into making these public rites. This certainly did not change as Rome continued to grow and more distantly foreign elements came to compose the city's populace. At times the political and religious leadership tried to curb the introduction of new culti deorum. Earlier I mentioned the struggle between the Isiacs and the Senate in 58-21 BCE. The Isiacs were not just Egyptian slaves brought to Rome as is sometimes posed. Isiacism was adopted by Italian and Roman merchants in the East much earlier, and had flourished in Campania where Rome's main port was located before Ostia was built in the imperial period. Like Christianity later, Isiacism was adopted by Romans from all strata of Roman society and Romans of diverse ethnic origin before it was finally adopted into the official Roman religious institutions by inclusion of its festivals in the Fasti.

The origin of the Religio Romana is found in a broader milieu of Arcahic Italy. References made by Latin authors in the Late Republic of foreign origins for some aspects of the Religio Romana should not be taken too literally. Numa is used as a key word to suggest old customs. "Etruscan" origin for some Roman institutions might better be understood as archaic traditions rather than that they were introduced from the Etruscan people. And "Greek" for the early and mid Republican eras refers to Magna Graecia of southern Italy that was actually more Italic than Greek, while at other times it does refer to a direct influence from mainland Greece. There is no way though to separate out what was originally Roman and what foreign even in the earliest institutions of the Religio Romana. Cicero's proscription against foreign influences, and Livy's projection back in time of earlier proscriptions, were more a reaction to events in their own time as new culti deorum from more distant lands were being introduced. While Roman authorities at times tried to check adoption of foreign culti deorum in Rome, there was never a way for them to claim any orthodoxy in Roman practice, or to enforce an exclusion of foreign elements from Roman practices. Illustrative of the lack of ability by Roman authorities to enforce orthodoxy is Ovid's description of the "festum geniale" of Anna Perenna on 15 March, as plebeians "streamed" out of the city to celebrate a festival that was not recognized or approved of by the Roman authorities, and they did so in open defiance of those authorities (Fasti 3.523 ff.).

Brief mention should be made on the assumptions made by modern historians on the earliest institutions of the Religio Romana, and these have been loosely based on what some Latin authors of the Late Republic assumed as well. Tradition held that Pompilius Numa established the flamines. Modern historians assume that the flamines represent an earlier priesthood that predates the founding of Rome. In the examples of the inscribed Fasti that have been preserved, only one dates to the Late Republic and the others mostly from the Augustan period. Some of the festivals are inscribed with large capital letters, and these are assumed to be the oldest festivals of the Roman religious calendar, attributed to Numa. Certain rites proscribe the use of wine as a libation. Some Roman authors, Pliny the Elder being one, argued that rites attributed to Romulus made libations of milk because viticulture had not yet arrived in his time, and Numa's proscription against sprinkling wine on graves was due to its being newly introduced in his time. Ovid attributes to Liber not only with the introduction of libations of wine, but the use of spices from the far East as incense, and of honey cakes, and sacrificial bulls as offerings (Fasti 3.727-736). From this modern historians have assumed that any rite specifying the use of milk as a libation must represent the earliest form of the Religio Romana. None of these assumptions should be taken without question.

With Cicero, Livy, Varro, the poets Horace, Vigil, and Tibullus, and even Ovid, there is expressed a desire for a return to an earlier, simpler form of the Religio Romana, and at times there is made mention of a corruption of the Religio Romana by the introduction of foreign elements. An idealized earlier form of the Religio Romana is associated with Numa, as he is credited with establishing the original institutions of the Religio Romana. While the traditionalist perspective cannot be historically supported, and there is no real way of discerning what can be truly attributed to Numa, this theme of Numa's purer Religio Romana is part of the tradition that has to be taken into consideration and respected by modern practitioners. But as for Cicero's proscription against individuals, or even sections of the Roman populace, from adopting new or foreign gods, the Religio Romana was never so static as to accept that.


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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Thu Jan 23, 2003 10:01 pm

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IN URBIBUS DELUBRA HABENTO; LUCOS IN AGRIS HABENTO ET LARUM SEDES.

May they have an assortment of temples, shrines, and sanctuaries in the cities, sanctified groves in the countryside, and shrines to the Lares in their homes.

Shrines and holy places are set off apart from a surrounding area:

Varro L. L. 6, 53: What solemn shrines are made, are those whose boundaries are set according to the celestial auspices, marked off as solemn places separate from city and fields.

Certain things are regarded as sacrum; that is, they are sacred by their very nature. "Sacrum is whatever is held by the gods (GRF Trebatius Testa 1; Macro. Sat. 3.3.2)." In English we might say that something is sacrum when it naturally comes under the providence of a specific god or goddess. The lightning bolt is sacrum as it is something possessed by Jupiter. Whatever place a lightning bolt would strike would become quasi sacrum, and a special type of shrine, called a puteal, was built to "bury" the lightning bolt. Wine may be regarded as something religious, because, by its nature, it is made by Liber. What is sacrum is of a nature of Liber that transforms the juice of grapes into wine, and remains under His providence as a means to act upon the earth. "Sacrima, as Aelius Stilo and Cloatius (Verus) said, is the must placed in the amphorae used as a sacrifice at Meditrinalia to benefit the vines, the wine itself that they produce, and the vessels that this is carried in, which things are then quasi sacra. It is what is made by Liber, as the wheat is earlier made by Ceres (GRF Stilo 69; Fest. p.318a.23)." The must is the crushed grape pulp that remains in the wine barrel after pressing. It is sacrima as it holds what is sacrum that is meant to ferment, and it has been activated by the providence of Liber. As Stilo also said that wheat is made by Ceres, bread, too, can be taken to be religious since it contains something that is sacrum, something of the nature of Ceres, along with other ingredients, and this sacrum has been activated under the providence of the gods. A place where such things are stored, such as the penus of a Roman house, takes on a religious significance of its own, although not holy in itself.

A place may be made religious or hallowed by the burial of the dead or by the deposit of certain things as in a favissa (Gaius Inst. Ius. 2 ff.). A place may also become holy by being touched by the gods. That is, a place that is especially imbued with a presence or a power that may be felt, that may be sensed as divine. This presence or power is called a numen. It is said to dwell in the place, yet a numen is not a being in itself but rather an echo or a trace of some god or goddess who has visited the place. An especially verdant grove, or spring, or copse of trees, or even a singularly old tree on a hilltop, that in some way is sensed to already be separated off from the surrounding area may be called a locus. One example was "an oak which the shepherds held sacred" atop the Capitolium (Livy 1.10.5). On the tree might be hung wreathes, animal skins, and other offerings. Libations might be poured at it roots on a makeshift altar. Such would have been the shrine that Horace dedicated to Diana on his estate. "(Diana), to you I dedicate this pine tree that now overhangs my villa, and each year the blood of a wild boar, who ponders an oblique thrust, I will gladly give to its roots as drink (Carmina Liber III.xxii.5-8). When such a place was found possessing a numen and then reported, it then became a matter for the augurs to determine by their discipline what boundaries for the locus were ordained by the gods. Guided by the gods, the augur would call out the boundaries of a templum, or that holy precinct that is to be set off. Varro says, "Temple precincts, it is said, are ordained by the augurs, who announce by word what boundaries are to be set. (L. L. 6, 53)." Such a precinct is effata, or a sanctified place. Its boundaries would be marked off to designate its templum.

Festus 157a: Minor sanctuaries were set off by tablets, or else enclosed by linen, with an ample opening, designated by certain words, and so it is that a templum is a locus that is solemnized or else enclosed with an opening and has its corners affixed to the earth.

Such a locus is recalled by Ovid near the mouth of the Tiber, dedicated to Alernus (Fasti 2.67-8; 6.105-6). Another was the spring of Carmenta, near the Porta Carmentalis from which the Vestales Virgines drew water. These and other sanctuaries had existed in use since before the founding of Rome, Ovid attributing them to the Ausones, or original inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. Ovid also recalls the early Latin shrine of Diana at Aricia.

In Aricia?s valley, circled by a shady wood, is a lake, hallowed by an ancient cult? The long hedgerows are covered with hanging threads; many placards give thanks to the goddess. (Fasti 263-8).

Inside the precinct of a locus, that is, within the holy boundaries of its templum, an altar might be dedicated; it too with its own templum marked off to separate it from the rest of the locus, and this walled off area would be a fanum. Other structures might be erected within a locus, with the approval of the gods and election of the Roman people, either through a comitia or by the Senate. If then consecrated by the pontifices, it would become sacrum. Such would be an aedes, or temple building as the sacred house of a god or goddess.

Servilius ad Aen. 1, 446: In ancient times the sacred houses (aedes sacras) were made as precincts (templa) that were first set off and made solemn (effaretur) by the augurs, then at length they were consecrated by the pontiffs, and finally sacred edifices were built on them.

This is an important distinction to be kept in mind between the various types of shrines and sanctuaries that once dotted the Roman countryside, made between what is religiosum, sanctum, or sacrum. Anyone may designate a place for religious use on their own land, for use in their own cultus geniale. Such would be a lararium as a shrine to the family Lares that is set up in one?s house. The Florides refers to family lands in the countryside being sanctified with "an altar wreathed with flowers, a grotto shaded with foliage, an oak hung with horns, a beech with animal skins, or a consecrated knoll surrounded by a fence (a puteal), a tree trunk in which a hatchet has carved a divine effigy, a patch of turf sprinkled with libations, a stone anointed with oil (1. 3-4)." In contrast, Apuleius complained about his wife?s brother-in-law as a person who did not erect any such shrines on his land, "never so much as a stone anointed with oil or a branch adorned with a garland anywhere on his estate (Apologia 56. 5-6)." Similar were those altars erected on the boundaries of estates, where neighbors would perform religious rites to Terminus (See Ovid Fasti 639-84), and in the city would be the religious shrines of neighborhoods called compita. While shrines used in private practices were religiosum, and could be regarded under certain circumstances as sanctum, they were not sacrum.

Gallus Aelius defined sacrum to be whatsoever is so according to custom and also what is lawfully consecrated by the State, whether a temple, an altar, an image or statue, a grove, property, or any other thing that has been dedicated and consecrated to the gods. What has besides been dedicated to the gods for use by others in their own private practices, these the Roman pontifices did not present as sacred. On the contrary, what are taken as sacred in private rites, these by pontifical law has the status of a funeral or a festival (i.e. religiosum), as is the place in which they are conducted. They are called sacred in so far as the manner in which the sacrifice is made, but the place or thing privately consecrated for use in such private sacrifices is hardly seen to be sacred (Festus p. 318b).

Going back to what Servilius said of the evolution of shrines at Rome, originally, in earliest Rome, shrines would have been part of the culti geniale, located in the great houses believed to have served gentes as common religious sanctuaries. These took on greater significance over time as the culti geniale and their shrines began to serve a wider portion of the community. One of the important culti geniale, but not necessarily the most important, would have been that of the king. It is assumed that certain priesthoods of the cultus civile, like the Vestales Virgines, represented the cultus geniale of the king. Then if we look at the development of the shrines beneath the Lapis Niger near the Comitium we can see that what Servilius stated is essentially true. At that location there was first erected the cippus alone, which was approached from the north by three steps. This cippus was made of Grotta Oscura tufa from Veii; tufa used in construction begin around 625 BCE. The inscription on the cippus, later truncated when it was built over, contains the words recei (to the king), kalatosem (herald), iouxmenta (oath), and iouested (just). The lines of the inscription were written vertically, with the direction alternating from bottom to top and then top to bottom, and thus when it was cut over we lost the beginning or end of each line. But the full inscription could be read down to the end of the Republic, and Dionysius Halicarnassus said it referred to Tullius Hostilius (673-642). One story said that the Lapis Niger marked the burial site of Romulus, another held that it was the tomb made for Romulus but used for Faustulus who had rescued Romulus and Remus, while a third story held it was the tomb of the grandfather of Hostilius. No tombs have been found beneath or near the cippus however. If the last tradition is correct, and Dionysius' account was correct (which can be doubtful) then the site may have originally been part of cultus Tulliae. The tufa at least indicates that the cippus was erected after Tullius Hostilius, and the legends indicate that the spot was associated with religious rites of a cultus geniale of some king's family rather than that it had originally been a public shrine. While the cippus stood alone in the sixth century there was next to it a pool and basin, discovered by Romanelli in 1955. The basin facilitated the drawing of water, whether for domestic or ritual use, the latter being assumed, and either way indicating a domestic cultus. The pool and basin were then over-filled in the sixth century to make way for the additional construction. This accords with some of the Greek pottery found at the site, the Attic black-figure cup with a scene of Hephaestus dating to 580-570 BCE. However in the fill that this shard was found is also found earlier material, and Greek marble not found at Rome until the second century, as well as material from the first century, all mixed together so that the fill does not really provide any dating for the shrine. The curbing that had originally been set up to block off the cippus was later cut into to place a u-shaped altar of the type found at Lavinium, and a monolithic column was set beside it to form a fanum. At that point it did become a public shrine and was sanctum. Much later, the cippus, column, and altar were all cut to the same level, the area filled in, then covered by the Lapis Niger to cover one end of the Republican Rostrum that faced the Comitium. In other words, the fanum that would be sanctum, was rededicated by a vote of the people of Rome for another structure that was sacrum. The same general line of developments occur on the Capitolium, from the rustic shepherd's shrine associated with the Oak of Gravius, later identified with Jupiter Feretius by Romulus, then the fana of various deities, that we are told were removed at the time the foundation to the original Capitolium was built.

That the shrines and temples of Rome originally began as private shrines of culti geniale is further indicated in the sequence of construction at Satricum and Ardea. Satricum first developed as a village around a pond that had cult associations. When later a temple was built next to the pond it was made directly over and in conformity with an earlier house on the site. Likewise at Ardea, the temple at Colle della Noce was built over preexisting huts. Over time the houses of the more important individuals of the community, and their shrines, took on greater significance so that they became sacrum "according to custom" long before they were converted into public shrines.



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Fri Jan 24, 2003 4:42 am

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RITUS FAMILIAE PATRUMQUE SERVANTO.

Let them preserve the rites of their families and their ancestors.



Cicero De Legibus II.xi, 27: preserving the religious rites which, we can almost say, were handed down to us by the gods themselves, since ancient times were closest to the gods.

One of the questions we know that the pontifices addressed in their commentaries on religious law concerned the inheritance of culti geniale. Cicero quotes from two authorities, pontifex maximus Scaevola and Coruncanius. When one received an inheritance of property they also received the obligation to preserve the gentile rites that had been performed on the estate. If an estate was parcelled out as an inheritance to more than one person, then there were certain laws regarding who would receive the obligation of the sacra. By accepting the inheritance, one would also accept the sacra as an obligation, even when that sacra was from a different cultus geniale than one's own. Cicero tried to argue that the sacra fell to the head of a family, contrary to Scaevola's view that the sacra went to whoever received the largest portion of an estate. And where there was no estate, if debts were owed to the deceased and had not yet been repaid it, then whoever owed the greatest amount inherited the obligation of the sacra. Cicero explains, "Our ancestors did not want a family's religion to die along with its head," and so there were a number of laws dealing with the inheritance of a sacra as well as the inheritance of property (pro Mureno 27). In just the opposite way, when one transferred from their own gens to that of another by means of an adoption or adrogation they were obliged to renounce their own cultus geniale (detestatio sacrorum) and accept that of the family into which they entered. A man without heirs would adopt someone so that his cultus geniale would be preserved. To set an example of how serious such matters were regarded, censor Cato confiscated the public horse of L. Veturius on the grounds that he had failed in his religious obligations to preserve a cultus geniale.



Each gens had their own traditional rites and festivals. Macrobius, in the fifth century CE, says that the gentes Aemilia, Claudia, Cornelia and Iulia were still conducting their own festivals in his day. Sometimes these geniale rites were important to the public, and rather than allow them to die out with a family, the State would adopt them into the cultus civile. Such is the case of the Lupercalia rites that had traditionally been held by the gentes Fabia and Quinctia. The gentes Pinaria and Potittia had once been responsible for the rites of the Hercules performed at the Ara Maxima Herculis. The Potitii performed the sacrifices, with the Pinarii, who descended from one of Numa's sons, assisting and serving the ritual meal afterwards (Servilius ad Aen. 8.269, Fest. p. 270.5-16; Dio Hal. 1.40). Then in 312 BCE the censor Appius Claudius paid the Potitii 50, 000 asses to cede their rites to the State (Fest. p. 270.10-11). The rites of the Tigillum Sororium, and the autumn blessing of returning soldiers by the flamen Portunalis had originally been genti Horatiae (Livy 1.26.13). The Ludi Terentini were traditionally given by the gens Valeria for Dis Pater to benefit the health of the Romans. Under Augustus these games were taken over by the State and redesignated the Ludi Saecularum. Rites dedicated to Vejovius were performed in the gentes Iulia, Caesia, Licinia, and Fonteia. The Iulia also had their own rites for Apollo and Venus, while the Fonteii had other rites for the Dioscuri. Rites for Juno Sospita were held by the gentes Papia, Procilia, Roscia and Thoria. Gens Petronia held rites for Feronia and Liber Pater, the Gelii for Mars, gens Nautia for Minerva, and the Renii for Juno Caprotina, while the gentes Aurelia, Mussidia and Aquilia held rites for Sol. Rites of the Bona Dea held in December were not associated with any particular gens. But the fact that these were held in house of a leading magistrate, conducted by his wife and attended by the Vestales Virgines, suggests that they too originated as part of a cultus geniale. Where rites were performed by specific gentes, yet made pro populo to benefit all Romans, they were regarded as part of the cultus civile by Varro, following Scaevola.



Not all rites of the culti geniale were held pro populo, or were regarded part of the cultus civile. Sometimes the culti geniale differed from the cultus civile. We hear of the gens Junia performing their parentalia in December rather than in February as recorded in the Fasti. Normally one was obliged to abide by their particular cultus geniale rather than the cultus civile. At times, however, apparently the difference could lead to a conflict when a magistrate was performing a public rite in the manner of his own cultus geniale. There was recorded a dispute between the pontifex maximus Metellus and a Claudius over how a public rite to Saturnus was to be performed, whether capite aperto or not.. The text is somewhat garbled so that it is unclear what was the practice in the gens Claudia that conflicted with the public rite.



Little or nothing is known of most culti geniale, unless and until they were adopted into the public cultus civile. Of all of them, more is heard of the cultus Claudiae than any other, since it apparently differed in many ways and the Claudii were very adamant in preserving their own cultus geniale. Unique to the Claudii was the porcus propudialis, or "pig of shame," that was sacrificed in atonement for neglecting one's religious obligations. The Servilii made an annual sacrifice to a third of a copper coin, this as was said to grow or dwindle in prediction of the family's fortunes. Nothing is known of the details of the cultus Iuliae prior to Augustus' refounding of Rome by which he took on some aspects to himself of Romulus, deified Julius Caesar, and his devotions to Apollo and Venus may have been additions to his cultus geniale as well.



Previously I wrote that some of the shrines of Rome had originated as shrines of the culti geniale of leading families. The same was true of many of the early festivals and rites that became part of the cultus civile. There was always the potential for adopting other rites into the cultus civile; thus Cicero's proposed law to preserve the culti geniale. This also proved to be the means by which the Religio Romana evolved. As new gentes were added to Rome's populace, like the Claudii and Iulii, their culti geniale could become part of the cultus civile. This did not happen only with the leading families, the Roman nobiles, whether patrician or plebeian. Members of leading families from other Italian cities, doing business in Rome, would naturally bring their own culti geniale, and others in the lower echelons of Roman society would as well. The addition of Italic deities to the Roman pantheon occurred due to immigration to Rome, the first perhaps being those Sabine deities of the followers of Titus Tatius of whom Varro wrote. The continued influx of people to Rome, bringing along their culti deorum, meant that evolution of the Religio Romana often percolated up from the lower echelons of society. That process only increased in time as Rome developed a cosmopolitan empire. There were attempts to prohibit, impede, and control the introduction of foreign culti deorum, but more often than not popular support of new culti deorum meant their adoption into the official cultus civile.



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Jan 25, 2003 8:34 pm

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DIVOS ET EOS, QUI CAELESTES SEMPER HABIT, COLUNTO ET OLLUS, QUOS ENDO CAELO MERITA LOCAVERINT, HERCULEM, LIBERUM, AESCULAPIUM, CASTOREM, POLLUCEM, QUIRINUM, AST OLLA, PROPTER QUAE DATUR HOMINI ASCENSUS IN CAELUM, MENTEM, VIRTUTEM, PIETATEM, FIDEM, EARUMQUE LAUDUM DELUBRA SUNTO, NE UNCULA VITIORUM.

May they worship as gods both those who have always been regarded as dwelling in the heavens, and also those whose deeds have merited their admittance into the heavens ? Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirinus, and also those qualities through which men and women may themselves aspire to ascend into the heavens ? Intellect, Virtue, Piety, Faithfulness. In their praise may shrines be established, but none for the vices.

Pliny the Elder Hist. Nat. 2.14-16: To believe in either an infinite number of deities corresponding to the vices of men, as well as their virtues, like the goddesses of Chastity, Concord, Intelligence, Hope, Honour, Mercy, Faith, or like Democritus in only two, namely Punishment and Reward, plumbs an even greater depth of foolishness... Even the gods of the lower world, together with diseases and many kinds of plagues are listed in groups in our fearful anxiety to appease them. For this reason there is a Temple of Fever on the Palatine, dedicated by the State, one of Bereavement at the Temple of the Penates, and an altar of Bad Fortune on the Esquiline.

In De Natura Deorum II.61 Cicero has the Stoic Balbus say that the deification of Desire, Pleasure, and Sexual Joy are "vicious and unnatural forces, even if Velleius thinks otherwise, for these very vices rage too fiercely, and banish our natural instincts." Deification of Fever and Mala Fortuna he says was depraved (vitiosum). Then as the Platonist Cotta (Nat Deor. III.39-64), Cicero speaks of the "ignorance of the naive herd. Those simple souls" (with the) "beliefs of the ignorant" who deify practically anything. "Mind, Faith, Hope, Virtue, Honour, Victory, Safety, Concord, and other concepts of the same kind we must envision as in essence abstractions, not as gods; for they are either qualities that reside within us...or they are aims to which we aspire." They are "beneficial qualities," but not "divine powers." If Cicero could make such argument against deifying virtues and vices, and place those arguments in the mouth of Cotta who he identifies as a priest, then why would he propose such deities for his ideal religion?

"(This law) makes it clear that while the souls of men are immortal, those of good and brave men are divine. It is a good thing also that?in Rome temples have been dedicated by the State to all these qualities, the purpose being that those who possess them, and all good men do, should believe that the gods themselves are established within their own souls (DEOS IPSOS IN ANIMIS SUIS CONLOCATOS PUTENT)?And since the mind is encouraged by anticipation of good things, Calatinus was right in deifying Hope also (De Legibus II.xi, 27-8. See Tacitus Annales II.49 for the Temple of Hope dedicated by Aulus Atilius Calatinus)."

"Then too we have our Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus (Castor and Pollux), and Romulus, who together with many others the common folk believe have been admitted into the heavens as newly enrolled citizens (Nat. Deor. III.39)." This other category of gods Cicero ties closely to the virtues, in that those "men who conferred outstanding benefits were translated to the heavens through their fame and our gratitude," since they exemplified the very virtues Cicero allowed should be personified as gods (Nat. Deor II.61). Cicero's Dream of Scipio is the very doctrine that all men and women can seek and attain godhood through virtue. However, in that treatise it is not personal virtues that attains the stars so much as civic virtues. This view is echoed perhaps by Pliny the Elder, "A god is man helping man; this is the way to everlasting glory...The apotheosis of such men is the oldest method of rewarding them for their good deeds (Hist. Nat. 2.18)." As the cynical Cotta though, Cicero says, "There are many communities in which the memory of brave men has clearly been hallowed by endowing them with the status of immortal gods. The purpose of this was to promote valour, so that the best citizens would more willingly confront danger on behalf of the State (Nat. Deor. III.50)." We might better understand today what Cicero describes as not being godhood so much as it is merely fame. In both categories, personified virtues and deified men, these are gods created by men. As Cotta, Cicero carries this further still, putting forth the theory that even the celestial gods were once deified men, or that they were invented by men as personification of natural forces, and that there were multiple Jupiters, multiple Venuses, and so forth, so that it becomes an argumentum ad absurdum that questions the existence of any gods. But Cotta concludes his argument by saying, "My purpose has not been to deny their existence, but to make you realize how hard it is to understand it, and how problematical are the explanations offered (III.93)."

At the end of the dialogue of De Natura Deorum Cicero concludes by saying his own views agree with the Stoic Balbus more than with Cotta. Of the three protagonists in the dialogue, it is Balbus that Cicero most closely follows in the De Legibus. We turn now to the remaining category of gods that Cicero proposes, those "who have always been regarded as dwelling in the heavens." Varro, quoting from Pontifex Maximus Mucius Scaevola, divided the theology of the Religio Romana into three types (Augustine De Civitate Dei VI.5). First is the "mythical" form exemplified among poets like Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Cicero says of them, "These idiotic narratives induce idiotic beliefs; they are utterly unprofitable and frivolous (Nat. Deor. II.70)." Second was the "physical" or "natural" theology, "the subject of many books left to us by philosophers; there they discuss the identity of the gods, their location, their type and nature." Cicero's De Natura Deorum is just such a work, presenting the arguments of the Epicurians, Stoics, and Platonists. And there he asks whether the arguments and allegories offered by philosophers are any better than "the beliefs of the ignorant," when the philosophers "take such pleasure in rationalizing fables and in pursuing etymologies (III.40, 62)." Last among Varro was the "civil" theology, which is "that which citizens and especially priests in cities must know and put into practice. It tells us which gods are to be worshipped officially, and the rites and sacrifices appropriate to each."

For some, Cicero included, traditional forms of ritual, "guided by pontifical law and ancestral custom," was more important than the speculations of philosophers or the fables of poets. Yet they could not divorce the three "theologies" from one another. The intellectuals of Rome, and of Greece, pursuing an intellectual understanding of religion through allegorical stories, convoluted explanations, and formalistic ritual moved ever further away from the religious feeling that had been the basis of their respective traditions. In the end, what Cicero proposed for the Religio Romana would make valid Augustinus' criticism. "In the rituals of 'civil' theology, the role for the wisemen advocated by Seneca is to pretend to conformity in action while having no religious commitment. These are his words: the wiseman will observe all these customs as being fixed by law, not as being acceptable to the gods." Cicero's De Legibus, if you read the whole of it, is a political document, proposing to use religion as a means of controlling people for political ends. In the whole of Cicero's proposals on religion the objective is to divorce the people from direct contact with the gods, impose a political priesthood to pontificate on acceptable practices, and end religious conviction in private practices. Today we might say that he proposed to institutionalize the Religio Romana, controlling it from above rather than as the tradition had originally developed through evolution from below. There was no problem therefore later when another priesthood was imposed by an emperor, with a new philosophical explanation and a different tradition, to meet the political ends of the empire.

As the priest Cotta, Cicero wrote, "The religion of the Roman people in general has two separate aspects, its rituals and the auspices, to which a third element is added when, as a result of portents and prodigies, the interpreters of the Sibyl or the diviners offer prophetic advice (Nat. Deor. III.6)." Implicit in Cicero's division of the Religio Romana, and Varro's division of theology, and contrasting with the "officially" recognized rites of the state religion, there is a fourth form of the Religio Romana from which the others derive. I have already mentioned Ovid writing of such "plebeian" rites as the festum geniale on 15 March (Fasti 3.523 ff.). Virgil and Tibullus tell of the ambarvalia rites performed in the countryside, which was not part of the civic form of the Religio Romana. Among the philosophers is Seneca?s criticism of popular practices performed on the Capitolium (Augustine De Civ. Dei VI.10). In various records there is mentioned the practice of unofficial rites (Livy IV.30.9), and of the introduction of new rites into the civic religion that began first in popular practices (Livy V.13.5; Cicero Pro Balbo 55). Underneath the diversity, the tradition of the Religio Romana was essentially ecstatic rather than the staid, impersonal, and pompous form it took for Cicero. Numa was regarded as the founder of much of the cultus civile, and if we look at the stories told of Numa, he received some rites directly from the gods while in ecstasy or through incubation (Fasti 3.285-348; 4.641-673). Numa's counselor on religious matters was his wife Egeria, who was a nymph that he would meet in a sacred grove, we must presume, while in an ecstatic state (Ovid Fasti 3.275-6; Livy 1.21.3 ff). Groves of Faunus were used by others as well, where "the tribes of Italy and all the Oenotrian land in doubt seek answers...in wondrous wise, and divers voices hear...when suddenly a voice gave utterance from the forest depth (Virgil Aeneid VII.81-106)." Others, too, were recognized hearing the gods speak directly to them outside of rituals, whether individually as in the case of Aius Locatus or when Silvanius spoke to whole groups (Livy 2.7.2; 5.32.6-7 and 5.50.5). Certain individuals were recognized for their ecstatic gifts such as the Sibyl of Cumae, Marcius, and Attius Navius (Dio Hal. Rom Ant. IV.62; Cicero Div. 1.89; Livy 1.36.2-7). The rites of the Capitolium, where attendants to Jupiter "only mime the movements with their hands" and women attending Juno "move their fingers in the style of hairdressers," miming "at a distance away, not just from the statue but from the temple," for all the criticism made by Seneca, must be recognized as part of the cultus civile, and quite out of character from what Cicero poses (Augustinus Civ Deo. VI.10). Then, too, the criticism by Juvenal of women's rites, where through diverse means they evoked ecstatic states, must also be recognized as part of the cultus civile. Beneath such officially recognized expressions of worship were the popular cultus that included the rite of Tacita described by Ovid (Fasti 2.571-583), Cato's healing rite (De Agr. 160), and all the diverse practices mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Historia Naturales. Such superstiones as Cicero would call them were nonetheless the foundation on which the cultus civile rested.

Missing from the three types of gods Cicero proposes in this law of the De Legibus, are the gods of the culti geniale and of popular practices who were known as the Di inferi. Politicians creating abstract gods, poets inventing fables for the celestial gods, and philosophers forming convoluted explanations, really had little to do with the common practices of the Religio Romana. If you look at the rites of marriage, of child birth, of house blessing, of gentile augury as opposed to State augury, the gods who are invoked in each case is Pilumnus and Picumnus. If you look at Latin inscriptions in Italy, after Jupiter, the most common deities to whom dedications were made were Hercules and Fortuna. The images most commonly found in lararia, in addition to the Lares and Penates, are likewise Hercules and Fortuna (or the Tyche of the City in the eastern provinces if one looks at the examples from Antioch). To read Pliny the Elder commenting on how the Religio Romana manifested in his day one could get the impression that Fortuna was the most important deity. She was certainly one most commonly invoked as the Latin inscriptions show, yet little mentioned by poets or philosophers, and by few politicians.

Throughout the whole world, in all places and at all times, Fortuna alone is invoked, alone commended, alone accused and subjected to reproaches, deemed volatile and indeed, by most men, blind as well, wayward, capricious, fickle in Her favors and favouing the unworthy. To Her is debited all that is spent, and to Her is credited all that is received. She alone fills both pages in the ledgers of mortal's accounts (Pliny the Elder Hist. Nat. 2.22)

Cicero too comments, "Fortuna has the strongest claim to inclusion in this category of deities (Nat. Deor. III.61)." Appearing more frequently in Roman art than do the celestial gods, and mentioned in bucolic Roman poetry as the deities of rustic rituals, are the "demigods and fauns, nymphs, rustic numina, sylvans of the hills, satyrs; all these, unworthy of heavenly abodes," living on the earth in addition to the superior and lesser gods of the heavens (Ovid Metamorphoses 1.192-5, repeated at 6.392-5). These Cicero dismissed, "If nymphs are divine, then so are pans and satyrs, but pans and satyrs are not deities, so neither are nymphs. Yet temples have been vowed and dedicated to nymphs by the State, so it follows from this that the rest who have temples dedicated to them are not deities either (Nat. Deor. III.43)." There is quite a contrast here between Cicero's recognition of divinity in the souls of men (but then he did not for the souls of women), linked through virtues as divine qualities, to the celestial gods, and the theory of Chrysippus for the hierarchy of being in the universe. Cicero purports to support the argument of Balbus who he has voice Chrysippus' theory. Even there, though, he neglects the Di inferi as a link in the hierarchy of divine being between men and the celestial gods, instead saving them for Cotta to voice his argument of the Di inferi as the link that disproves the existence of the gods. In fact it was just such demigods who received the most attention in the popular form of the Religio Romana; they were the mediators between men and the celestial gods, just as Faunus and Egeria were between Numa and Jupiter.

Saturnus does not appear in any inscriptions in Rome, Juno is practically non-existant throughout Italy, and Mars, for all the importance one might expect of a god of war for a military empire, shrinks in size when compared to the number of dedications that were made to Silvanus. What is found instead, and to be expected in a mercantile empire such as Rome really represented, rather than Mars, Mercury is the most significant deity called upon throughout the empire. While an image of Minerva might be found in the private laraium of an emperor, there was no house, no matter how humble, no garden, no gateway, no roadside shrine that did not have its Priapus. From the examples offered by Pompeii, Roman houses were filled in every room with images of polyphallic Mercury and Priapus as charms to ward off evil spirits. There is a considerable discrepancy between the few scraps of texts that have survived and all the images, inscriptions, and other material evidence available to us, that show what was written by Cicero and in many of our other written sources does not reflect what was actually practiced in the Religio Romana or to whom worship was most often devoted. Further evidence of the void that existed between what was written and what was practiced may be what occurred after the imperial politicians adopted Christianity for their state religion. For all the laws issued to suppress the old culti deorum, and all the polemics offered by Christian priests, the people could not be persuaded to give up their traditional devotions for the next thousand years. Politicians could do as Cicero suggested, exchange one set of abstract gods for another, adopt or reject one set of saints and heroes for another, but they could not change the gods of Nature that people still directly experienced in their daily lives. Trying to redefine the Di inferi into demons and devils did not alter the fact that divinity still manifests itself in Nature. If anything else, the new 'theologies,' whether you want to speak of Cicero or the later Christians, tried to divorce men and women from Nature.

The traditional Religio Romana of the culti geniale and that instituted by Numa for the Roman people celebrated the direct relationship held between demigods, the Manes, and humans. Visiting the groves of Faunus for an incubation, consulting the auspices, drawing the sortes, or simply by paying attention to the signs of Nature around you, one was is direct communication with the gods without need of any priests. Music, dance, even the performance of work was made for the benefit of the gods, and in return men and women felt the beneficial presence of the gods in their lives. Men and women shared their meals and their bounty with the gods, spoke with the gods, walked with the gods, at every moment of their lives they were aware of the presence of the gods, the Lares, the ever present forces of Nature. Cicero's abstractions, and his religious form without religious commitment or conviction, imho is rather alien to the tradition of the Religio Romana. One can see in the prayers of Cato, recorded in the De Agricultura, where he speaks directly to the gods in order to directly receive their benefices for himself, his children and family, his house and household, his crops and farm animals. The same is true in the direct appeals made to the gods by the characters in the plays of Plautus. And then in the inscriptions found as dedications of altars, there is an immediacy, an interpersonal relationship between the gods and men and women, who ask for good health, for happy marriages, for children, for safe journeys and profitable enterprises, or else simply given in thanks for all they share in with the gods. Velleius was probably more correct to look upon Desire, Pleasure, and Sexual Joy as the virtues most commonly sought and that connected people directly with the gods, than were those civic virtues that Cicero would have us believe in. The tenor of the rites commonly practiced by the multitude was different from those of the cultus civile that Cicero addresses, and the very gods, demigods, sylvani, nymphs, Lares, Penates, and Manes to whom these rites were offered in a personal manner differ from the hollow abstractions alone that Cicero was willing to recognize in the pomp of the cultus civile.



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 28, 2003 12:58 am

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SACRA SOLLEMNIA OBEUNTO.

May they perform the solemn and established rites.


Ovid Fasti 3.279-80: Laws were made to cabin the power of the strong, and ancient rites were observed exactly.

Most commonly cited as evidence that the Religio Romana, at least in the cultus civile, insisted upon scrupulous adherence to ritual form is a passage by Pliny the Elder

In fact a sacrifice without prayer is thought to have no effect, or not to constitute a proper consultation with the gods. Besides, one kind of formula is used when seeking favourable omens, another in averting evil, another for praise. We see too that senior magistrates make their prayers using a precise form of words, according to fixed formulae. Someone dictates the formula from a written text to ensure that no word is omitted or spoken in the wrong order. Someone else is assigned as an overseer to check what is spoken, yet another man is given the task of ensuring silence, and a piper plays to prevent anything else being heard except the prayer. (Hist. Nat. 28.10-11)

What is not discussed is the context in which Pliny makes this statement. He says "a question of paramount importance (is raised) and one that admits of no definite answer: Do words and incantations have any power?" Scrupulously adhering to the text of a written formula he places beside "the belief that our Vestal Virgines can root out runaway slaves to the very spot where they hide by chanting a spell." An idea expressed here that is found as well in the Greek magical papyri where children, on account of their innocence and purity, are used in divining rites to discover a thief. It is here, too, that Pliny repeats the story in the Annales of Lucius Piso of how Tullus Hostilius attempted to perform a rite of calling down Jupiter, using the formula in Numa's books, "but was struck by lightning because he failed to follow the ritual to the letter." He refers to the provision in the Twelve Tablets against incantations to destroy crops, and to the evocatio described by Verrius, and "why the patron deity of Rome has been kept secret." He places the scrupulous adherence to formulae together with superstitious ways to avoid hexes that "makes us break egg shells or the shells of snails immediately after we have eaten them," and how Virgil would copy out love spells. "Cato published one formula for setting dislocated limbs and Marcus Varro another for gout." Julius Caesar, he says, would always recite an incantation three times for a safe journey whenever he seated himself in a carriage. "Why do we choose people with lucky names to lead the sacrificial victims on days of general purification?" He goes on to the use of amulets, citing the habit of Mucianus in keeping a live fly in a white linen sack around his neck to ward off disease. "To cut nails on market days at Rome in silence, beginning with the first finger, is a superstition shared by many," and one might also point to the religious prescriptions for the flamen Dialis that required he trim his hair and nails in special ways and bury the trimmings beneath only certain trees.

Certainly the Romans did perform the rites of the cultus civile according to certain formulae. There was, as we may note from a variety of sources, an insistence that these be adhered to most scrupulously. Tullus Hostilius served as a reminder of what could happen when one did not. The cippus bearing his name, still visible in the time of Dionysius Halicarnassus after 30 BCE, stood on the slope of the Capitoline above the Rostrum, acting as a visible reminder to pay due deference to Jupiter as the guardian of sincerity in oaths when addressing the assembly in the Comitium. It is interesting that where Ovid says "ancient rites were observed exactly" is at the beginning of his telling the story of Numa eliciting Jupiter by "the trick (that) is unlawful for man to know." Hostilius' story came to serve as a reminder for scrupulous performance of religious rites. That interpretation of his legend appears in the Augustan period when supposed ancient rites were being introduced to Rome. During the second century, from whence Pliny's source of the legend is derived, his tale could have had a different meaning. Pliny recognized, if modern readers have not, that scrupulous performance of rites was linked to the broader practices of superstition and magic. Insisting on scrupulously following the wording of archaic prayers amounted to turning them into incantations. That was even more the case when the words of the spell were so archaic, as in Cato's spell or the Carmen Salii, that they could no longer be understood.

Reading Cicero elsewhere, he makes a point in distinguishing superstition from religion. (Nat Deor. II.72). He says that the ancients referred to people who would spend their days praying and sacrificing in hope of being survived (superstes) by their children were called superstitious. While those who reviewed and studied the ancient texts by often rereading them (relegere), and then "scrupulously rehearsed" the rites, were known as religious. "So the word superstitious came to denote something deficient, and religious as something praiseworthy." Nigidius Figulus offered that the ever present implication of the word religiosum was that some behavior was held wicked and therefore prohibited. The examples he gave were a fondness for women and a fondness for wine when taken to an immoderate excess. "Whatever is too much and superstitious, religion placed itself under obligation to avoid, and these things were allotted as false and corrupt (GRF Nigidius 4)." Cicero is saying the same thing, that religious acts, when taken too far, become superstitions. Then Pliny, by including the practice among many other superstitions, is also saying that the insistence on scrupulously following ancient rites and reciting archaic formulae that nolonger have any meaning is really a superstitious act, the same as reciting an incantation of nonsense words.

The prayers found in the plays of Plautus are spontaneous rather than formulaic, emotive in their immediacy to a given situation. On the other hand there are the prayers recorded by Cato, used in rituals to preserve his estate, that are indeed formulaic. Unlike the healing spell that Cato recorded, the prayers of the De Agricultura are not mentioned by Pliny in the same category of superstitious practices. Pliny recognized Cato's prayers as being of a religious nature. Cato's prayers exhibit stylistic forms that can be found in archaic Roman poetry, the kind of Latin poetry that was recited before the adoption of Greek poetic styles. That is, there was a kind of formula in the manner that prayers were structured. The Latin term 'carmen' means incantation or prayer more than its later meaning of poem, and refers to this formulaic structure. The formula of Roman prayer is not the precise recitation of words, paying scrupulous attention to every detail in how the words are arranged and pronounced. Rather it is a more general manner of phrasing. We can see the same thing in modern English where a manner of speaking adopts a style we would recognize as that of the King James Bible. The phrasing is archaic, but still understandable, and the use of such phrasing is made with an intention to evoke an elevated sense of meaning. To an English speaker, phrasing in a King James manner of speaking has a different meaning than common language. We almost expect prayers to be made in that manner, and so we find translations of Latin prayers made into English often adopting the King James style. It simply sounds more natural in the context of prayer to those of an English-speaking culture. The style is not reserved for prayers alone however. You can find examples of the archaic manner of speaking in the orations of Cicero, used as an oratorical tool to capture the attention of his listeners. The same is found in the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, adopting a style of speech from the King James version of the Bible that, while not a direct and recognizable quote, evoked in his listeners an emotional response of solemnity. "Four score and seven years ago our forefathers set forth..." was no more a common manner of speaking in Lincoln's day than it is today, yet evokes a reverent response that would not otherwise be attained through common speech.

Analysis of Roman prayers, elucidating the formulae used for Roman rituals, can be found in "Archaic Latin Prose" by Edward Courtney, 1999. He goes through such things as the prayers of Cato, the evocatio of Aemilianus before Carthage, the healing incantation of Marcellus Empiricus, that illustrate the linguistic structures of religious formulae. [If anyone is interested we can go into more of what Courtney has to show.] If you look at the two prayers of Aemilianus, recorded by Macrobius (Satrunalia 3.9.6-11), there are noticeable formulae in its phrasing. The one prayer begins with a familiar formula, Si deus, si dea est. Precor venerorque veniamque a vobis peto relates to a formula in Cato De Agricultura 141.2 and to Decius' devotio recorded by Livy (AUC 8.9.7). And one can go further through both prayers to show the manner of phrasing they have to other examples of prayers and poems; a manner of phrasing that is not commonly found in Latin prose of another nature. But there are other aspects to Aemilianus' prayers that show they were made to the specific situation that they were addressed. The prayer to Veiovis for example has Aemilianus say, "all in this city of Carthage and its army, who, I feel, fled before me in terror only because you filled them with alarm and terror." That does not suggest Aemilianus was reciting verbatim from a preexisting prayer, one recited to him so that he would scrupulously follow the rite in every detail. In some ways his prayers are just as spontaneous as are those found in the plays of Plautus. It is the general manner of speaking, the way of properly addressing the gods, that is the formula found in the religious tradition of Rome. Pliny denotes such to be the case when he refers to there being different kinds of formulae for different purposes. But carrying it too far, insisting that an ancient rite must be spoken without omitting any words or altering their order as given in an ancient text, or without allowing a divergence from an ancient prayer to better suit a present situation, is superstition. Where we can find an example of a prayer, written in archaic Latin, but used in a rite of a much later date, is in the Actum Fratrum Arvalum. But this case, we should note, is from a sodalitas established as part of the Augustan Restoration, its rites being reconstructions made by antiquarians, devoted to an imperial cultus, and not part of the cultus civile of the Republican era. What this suggests is that the "scrupulous performance" of antiquary rites was an introduction of the Augustan Restoration.

The "solemn and established rites" to which Cicero refers are those addressed to the gods that were by custom and tradition seen as Roman. "These are the deities which we are to revere and worship;" Cicero said, "our worship of the gods is best and most chaste, most holy and totally devout, when we revere them with pure, sincere and untainted hearts and tongues (Nat. Deor. II.71)." This is what Cicero meant at the start of his religious laws, "Let them approach the gods chastely, let them show piety." Proper worship is made with prayers and rites conducted with heartfelt sincerity rather than by a superstitious conformity to strange, foreign, outmoded, or meaningless practice. Cicero's generation did expend considerable effort trying to recover and preserve ancient rites that had fallen out of use. Cicero for one opposed the view held among Caesar's circle that such ancient rites be reinstituted. After Cicero and Caesar, it is Caesar's circle that wins out and fundamentally changed the Religio Romana by the so called Augustan Restoration. Expressed by several Romans of Cicero's generation, and the following, was a nostalgic interest in a simpler religion symbolized by Numa. What they were looking for however was the essence of devotion rather than ancient forms, so that, as written by Varro, who perhaps more than anyone else was responsible for recovering ancient rites, "the worship of the gods would be more reverently performed."



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Thu Jan 30, 2003 11:08 am

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FERIIS IURGIA AMOVENTO EASQUE IN FAMULIS OPERIBUS PATRATIS HABENTO, IDQUE UT ITA CADAT IN ANNUIS ANFRACTIBUS DESCRIPTUM ESTO. CERTASQUE FRUGES CERTASQUE BACAS SACERDOTES PUBLICE LIBANTO; HOC CERTIS SACRIFICIIS AC DIEBUS; (20) ITEMQUE ALIOS AD DIES UBERTATEM LACTIS FETURAEQUE SERVANTO; IDQUE NE COMMITTI POSSIT, AD EAM REM, RATIONEM CURSUS ANNUOS SACERDOTES FINIUNTO; QUAEQUE QUOIQUE DIVO DECORAE GRATAEQUE SINT HOSTIAE PROVIDENTO.

On holidays they shall refrain from lawsuits. These they will celebrate with their household after their day?s tasks are completed. Let holidays be arranged so as to fall at regularly occurring breaks in the year. The priest shall offer the prescribed fruits of the earth and the product of olives to the gods on behalf of the public. This shall be done according to the prescribed rites and on the prescribed days.. Likewise for other days they shall reserve the plenteous offerings of milk, wine, and oil , and the produce of the flocks. The priests shall determine the mode and the annual regimen of such offerings, so that no violation of these customs may take place, and the priest will prescribe what offerings are proper and pleasing for each of the gods and goddesses.



Cicero De Legibus II.xii, 29: Whoever plans the official year ought to arrange that these festivals shall come at the completion of the various labors of the farm?no change should be made in the prescriptions of the pontiffs and haruspices as to the offerings appropriate for each of the gods, as to which should receive full-grown victims, which sucklings, which males, and which females.



Of no small concern to us today is the Roman calendar, whether from the perspective of a student of Roman history or as a practitioner of the Religio Romana. Today we face no greater difficulty than did the antiquarians of the Late Republic in trying to make sense of the multiple layers of festivals that were incorporated into the Roman year. Lucius Cincius, Junius and Fulvius Nobilior, Varro, Ovid, Censorius, and Macrobius all wrote on the Fasti. Of the 43 examples of inscribed Roman calendars only one, from Antium, dates to the Republican era, most of the rest from the Augustan period. There are also later examples in papyri of the official imperial calendars of the army. From the mid fourth century is a book by Filocalus that contains both a Christian calendars of martyrs and another calendar of the fasti together with festivals of different mystery religions. Then two modern studies of the fasti have been made by W. W. Fowler in 1899 and H. H. Scullard in 1981.

Several problems with the calendar existed in Cicero's day, only some of which were addressed by Julius Caesar's reform of the civil calendar. The civil calendar in use before Caesar was short by several days so that the months had slipped through the seasons, and adjustments had been sporadic. There was available an intercalary month to insert between February 22 and 23 in order to align the fasti to the seasons, that Cicero says had not been done by the ponitices for several years. Historical dates were confused even in Cicero's day; as one example, the traditional date for Cannae was 2 August when the battle was actually fought in what would today be late June. There was the civil calendar of the city of Rome, known as the fasti, that had fixed dates for various festivals. Then there were the seasonal festivals of the countryside without fixed dates. Originally the religious calendar was based on the lunar cycle, seen by each month having a kalends (New Moon), nones (First Quarter), and ides (Full Moon), but efforts to align the calendar into the seasonal cycle of the sun had made these obsolete. There were two different rustic calendars. Varro's De Rustica contains an agricultural cycle based on the farming of winter wheat, that seems to have been the ten month calendar to which Ovid refers. Cato's De Agricultura has a different cycle based on viticulture. Some of the religious festivals in the fasti were based on the much earlier ten month calendar that began in September. The beginning of the year in that calendar was 13 September, when tradition held that Marcus Horatius affixed a nail into the lintel of Minerva's sacellum (Livy 2.8.6-8). This ten month lunar calendar of winter wheat production did not include the three lunar months of summer when the season was too dry to grow crops. That does not coincide with Ovid's comment that the ten month calendar began in March. Then in addition there were other calendars among different Italic tribes, with certain months devoted to gods and goddesses shared by the Romans, but apparently not at the same time of year.

Tradition held that Romulus had established the ten month calendar and that Numa had then added in two more months and the intercalary month (Ovid Fasti 27-44). Ovid asserted that the period of mourning for ten months was based on Romulus' calendar and certain festivals attributed to Romulus we may assume, with caution, also were based in the original ten month lunar calendar.

Livius AUC I.19.6 ff: First of all he divided the year into twelve months according to the courses of the moon; but because the moon does not complete the thirty days in each month needed to fit with the cycle of the sun, so that six days are missing compared to a full year, he arranged for intercalary months to be inserted so that after twenty years, when the full cycle of all the years had been completed, the days would come to correspond to the same position of the sun from which they had started. He also fixed the days as lawful or unlawful for public business, thinking it would be useful to have some days on which no business could be brought before the people.

The inscribed fasti have certain festivals written in capital letters that are assumed to be the earliest festivals, their fixed dates attributed to Numa. There is really nothing in our late sources to support that these festivals predated Rome as some suggest, or that they even extended back to the Regal Period. Since the festival of the Magna Mater is not included among these it may be posed that the major fasti predated the latter part of the third century. But when they became fixed is more likely following the refounding of Rome after its sack by the Gauls when the tribunes with consular powers "consulted the Senate before everything else on questions of religious observance (Livy 6.1.9-12).

Adding to further confusions for practitioners of the Religio Romana today is that our own civil calendar is the Gregorian rather than the Julian calendar, the precession of the equinoxes has moved certain dates from where they were two-thousand years ago, and the seasons of our various locales do not coincide with that of ancient Rome anyway. As with Cicero's concern, we would have difficulty synchronizing the cycle of Roman festivals to the year that we now go by, and this would vary from one locale to the next. That problem did not bother the ancients; the examples we have show that the towns of Latium varied between one another in when they celebrated certain festivals. The only attempt to provide a standardized calendar throughout the empire was in those used for the army, focused on the imperial cultus of the divi (the deified emperors and their families) without concern for the rustic festivals. For our own purposes then the fasti would be an ongoing topic that we can address elsewhere.



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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Fri Jan 31, 2003 9:44 am

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DIVISQUE ALIIS ALII SACERDOTES, OMNIBUS PONTIFICES SINGULIS FLAMINES SUNTO. VIRGINESQUE VESTALES IN URBE CUSTODIUNTO IGNEM FOCI PUBLICI SEMPITERNUM.

The several gods and goddesses shall have their own priests and priestesses; the gods and goddesses altogether shall have the pontifices, and the individual gods and goddesses their flamines. The Vestal Virgins shall guard the eternal flame on the public hearth of the city.



In my previous post (VII) I did not touch on the second portion of Cicero law dealing with the role of pontifices in determining appropriate sacrifices.

De Legibus II.viii.19-20 The priest shall offer the prescribed fruits of the earth and the product of olives to the gods on behalf of the public. This shall be done according to the prescribed rites and on the prescribed days.. Likewise for other days they shall reserve the plenteous offerings of milk, wine, and oil , and the produce of the flocks. The priests shall determine the mode and the annual regimen of such offerings, so that no violation of these customs may take place, and the priest will prescribe what offerings are proper and pleasing for each of the gods and goddesses.

(II.xii, 29) no change should be made in the prescriptions of the pontiffs and haruspices as to the offerings appropriate for each of the gods, as to which should receive full-grown victims, which sucklings, which males, and which females.

To these we may also add Cicero's next law:

QUOQUE HAEC PRIVATIM ET PUBLICE MODO RITUQUE FIANT, DISCUNTO IGNARI A PUBLICIS SACERDOTIBUS. EORUM AUTEM GENERA SUNTO TRIA, UNUM, QUOD PRAESIT CAERIMONIIS ET SACRIS, ALTERUM, QUOD INTERPRETUR FATIDICORUM ET VATIUM ECFATA INCOGNITA, QUORUM SENATUS POPULUSQUE ASCIVERIT; INTERPRETES AUTEM IOVIS OPTUMI MAXUMI, PUBLICI AUGURES, (21) SIGNIS ET AUSPICIIS POSTERA VIDENTO, DISCIPLINAM TENETO; SACERDOTESQUE VINETA VIRGETAQUE ET SALUTEM POPULI AUGURANTO, QUIQUE AGENT REM DUELLI QUIQUE POPULAREM, AUSPICIUM PRAEMONENTO OLLIQUE OBTEMPERANTO, DIVORUMQUE IRAS PROVIDENTO IISQUE APPARENTO CAELIQUE FULGORA REGIONIBUS RATIS TEMPERANTO, URBEMQUE ET AGROS ET TEMPLA LIBERATA ET EFFATA HABENTO. QUAEQUE AUGUR INIUSTA NEFASTA, VITIOSA DIRA DEFIXERIT, INRITA INFECTAQUE SUNTO; QUIQUE NON PARUERIT, CAPITAL ESTO.

Those who are ignorant of the mode and rites suitable to these public and private sacrifices shall seek instruction from the public priests. Of them there shall be three kinds: one to have charge of ceremonies and sacred rites, another to interpret those obscure sayings of prophecy which shall be recognized by the Senate and the people, and the interpreters of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, namely the public augurs that shall take the auspices and the signs of portent according to their discipline, and they shall preserve their disciplinary art. And the priests shall observe the auspisces in regard to the vineyards and orchards and as to the public safety; they shall inform the fetial priests who conduct the rites of war and diplomacy, with regard to the auspices, and they shall be obeyed. The priests shall foresee the wrath of the gods and yield to it. They shall observe flashes of lightning in the fixed regions of the sky, and shall keep free and unobstructed the city and fields and their stations of observation. Whatever an augur shall declare to be unjust, unholy, pernicious, or cursed, shall be null and void. And whosoever does not yield obedience to the pronouncements of the augurs, may their actions be considered a capital crime.

(II.xii, 30) private worship may not be satisfactorily performed without the assistance of those in charge of the public rites, for the people?s constant need for advice and authority of the optimes helps to hold the State together.



The subject of the various Roman priesthoods is too large to address in this brief survey of Cicero's proposed religious laws. There is available among the collegium's contributions a survey of the priesthoods.

http://societasviaromana.org/Collegium_ ... thoods.htm



A couple points on Cicero. It is odd that he gives to the haruspices a role that was held by the state augurs. He certainly knew the difference, and we will return to them later. The role he gives to the pontifices having authority over private sacrifices does not seem to have been the case during the Republic, unless perhaps he means private sacrifices at public sanctuaries. That the "offerings appropriate for each god" should remain fixed and unchangeable is perhaps a tenet of a tradition, but it was never the case in fact in the Religio Romana. While the pontifical books did address such matters, and seem to have been primarily concerned with what were appropriate offerings, we also know that changes were made in the tradition. Tradition held that Numa had banned all blood sacrifices. Liber is credited with introducing offerings of foreign incenses and spices, as well as wine. In the Late Republic and Principate there was concern over the excessive richness of sacrifices being made. Cicero even comments on how this did not please the gods. The Romans were aware, or believed, that human sacrifices had once been made, and that puppets were then substituted in their place. The pontifical books allowed that in place of live sacrificial victims dolls of terracotta or pastry could be substituted. This seems to have been in use very early in the tradition as funerary and votive deposits of the seventh century include terracotta representations of loaves of bread, and other articles in miniature, as well as figurines cut from sheet bronze that may have substituted for human sacrifices. The tradition of the Religio Romana was one that was constantly evolving. In Livy we read of the introduction of new rites like the lectisternia (5.13.4), and new sacrifices like the ver sacrum (33.54.1-3), or the addition of new deities like Magna Mater (29.14.5-14). The pontifices, augures, and quindecimviri advised the Senate on what or how innovation might be introduced into the tradition, often being the instrument of innovation themselves, but never was the tradition of the Religio Romana fixed.

Cicero proposed to fix the tradition, and posed the pontifices as authorities by which to enforce this, which is out of character of the tradition. And which priests actually held authority over what matters does not seem to be in agreement to what Cicero writes here. The pontifices held authority over public rites made within the pomerium and immediate vicinity of Rome, and over funerary laws. The quindecimviri seem to have exercised more authority than did the pontifices outside of the traditional Roman lands, but their authority extended only over certain parts of central and southern Italy. It is to the quindecimviri that religious question at other Italian cities are addressed, and it is these same priests who exercised authority over foreign culti deorum within the traditional Roman lands. The aediles, originally temple officials, are seen in some instances acting to rid the city of proscribed practices and establishing temples (Livy 4.30.9; 33.42.10-11). They held authority over the various sanctuaries of the city. The praetores as well are seen acting in a manner to enforce religious laws, although they act on behalf of the Senate at the advice of the priests. There was no central religious authority in the Religio Romana, unless one consider the Senate for that role, and by no means did any public priests have authority over the culti geniale.



In his explanation Cicero shows once more that he is motivated by political consideration, not by religious tradition, since he says that his proposal is to give religious authority to the optimes. Political change in Rome's history had generally occurred through religious offices, or at the very least with religious considerations.. One can view the tribunes plebis as a religious office, protected by the lex sacra, set up in opposition to the Senate. The aediles certainly began as religious officers, and the epulones, which Cicero does not even mention, was a priesthood established by the Comitia Plebis in 196 BCE (Livy 33.42.1-2). Ultimate religious authority, like political authority in Rome, really rested with the people assembled in comitia. The thrust of Cicero's proposals in both De Re Publica and De Legibus is to centralize authority into the Senate well beyond what they actually held. He also makes clear that his sole concern of concentrating religious authority among the optimes is to have political control over the masses. The exercise of religious authority was primarily made by the Senate; that is, one could refer a religious dispute to the Senate whose advice could overrule any priesthood. But when a disagreement on religious concerns arose between the Senate's advice and a decision of one of the comitia, the comitia's decision prevailed. It was through the comitia, against the opposition of the pontifices and Senate, that the collegia of pontifices and augures were opened to plebeians in 300 BCE. When, about a hundred years later, tribunes vetoed the election of Quinctius Flaminius, the dispute was taken to the Senate to give their advise. The Senate responded that "it seemed proper that the right should reside in the people to elect anyone they chose," and that principle held in every other question as well (Livy 21.7.2). Roughly another hundred years passed before the offices of pontifex maximus, the other pontifices, and the augures, came to be elected in comitia so that the traditional cooption of priests was ended. According to tradition, the relationship between the Senate and the comitia was established at the time of the election of Numa as king. The ultimate authority was held by the comitia, which elected to defer to the advice of the Senate (Livy 1.16.8-11). In most cases religious disputes were presented to the Senate, which then acted as arbitrator. The Senate may be seen then as an administrative authority over the priests and the religious tradition of Rome. But the Senate could never overrule a decision of the comitia, so that ultimate authority, both political and religious, was held by the comitia. Cicero's proposals then to place the State under the "advice and authority of the optimes" exercising their will through the Senate was counter to the political and religious tradition of the Res Publica Libera.



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magic?

Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Fri Jan 31, 2003 10:07 pm

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What about magic? Several Roman authors do verify the excistence and use of magic within the Roman Empire and within the Religio Romano even though it wasn't a real part of it. Seneca, Turcan, Horace and other authors give a sort of vivid description of magical ceremonies and rites (some even necromantic) with the purpose not only to terrify their reader and viewer (of their play) but also to rid the same person of their fears.
Doesn't Cicero write about magic in his books?
Even so, the every day Roman had mixed feelings concerning magic. One that it was forbidden to practice magic to do harm (as it was easy to use against your enemies), also shows their fear towards supernatural powers they can't control and protect themselves from it. Another that so long the magic wasn't malevolent and brought great success to the practictioner. So in a way you can say that so long it wasn't harmfull towards anyone, it was okay but if one was harmed by it, it was illegal and immoral. How did they draw the line between malevolent magic and benign magic?
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Feb 01, 2003 12:11 pm

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The line between religion and magic is very fine. What we in the modern world would view as magic is not the same distinction as might have been made by the ancients. Reading Pliny the Elder, he often digresses to attack the use of magic, especially the type of the Persians and Egyptians, and recognizes some form of magic in Roman practices, yet also relates and promotes practices that would be considered today as natural magic. Roman law, as far back as the Twelve Tablets, distinguished between magical practices that were intended to harm from those that healed or protected. With Horace, Lucan, and Seneca there were characters in their plays such as Medea who were posed as using evil magic. In part these were meant to titillate their audience, as Shakespeare might introduce witches in MacBeth, and at the same time to denounce the use of evil magic, or the use of magic for evil purposes.

In the common, everyday practice of the Religio Romana there was much that we would consider magical practices. Mostly there was the use of charms to protect against the evil eye, or to heal, and the use of love charms. Varro and Cato give healing spells. Virgil and other poets recorded love charms. Ovid gives one rite to dispel rumors, or maybe we would say the evil eye. Marriage ceremonies included diverse charms and amulets to protect the bride from the evil eye, and then the bride performed charms to protect her husband's house from evil magic. One duty of wives was to offer protective magic, as women were generally seen to possess magical powers. There was a number of magical practices associated with children, whether the childbirth ceremony, the charm placed on ifants of a necklace of peony seeds (associated with Faunus), or branches of protective trees hung over the window of a child's bedroom, or herbs placed under the pillow or suspended over the child to instill good dreams. Such charms I do not think the Romans would consider as magic, certainly they did distinguish such practices from those of the Magi. They feared people who could control the weather, yet the manner in which the Romans would ask the gods for rain involved sympathetic magic, rolling a large stone from the Campus Martius to the Capitolium that produced a thunderous noise to invoke Jupiter's thunder.

In the cultus civile you will find less magical practices than in the common practice, although it was there as with the rite I refer to above. Some argue that magical practices were not part of the Religio Romana and that use of natural magic by Romans was alien, or the adoption of foreign practices. I think they are fooling themselves to hold such beliefs, attempting to project modern ideas back onto the Romans. Cicero was aware of the use of magical practices in law courts. Defixiones were common, maybe even a regular part of any legal proceedings, and since it was known to be used, there were practices used to protect against it. Cicero was not above protecting himself from harmful magic. Was that part of the Religio Romana, or the cultus civile? Or was it foreign? I would include it in the Religio Romana, not part of the cultus civile though, and yes the Romans, over time, adopted some foreign forms into their defixiones, but the practice itself was not foreign.

Necromancy, which is calling on the spirits of the dead for purposes of fortelling the future, discovering treasure, doing harm to others, or for any other purpose, even beneficial requests, was viewed as evil in every sense, as it distrubed the dead. Necromancy under Roman law, religious law, and common practice, was considered sacrilege. There was distinguished a difference between calling on the spirit of the deceased at their gravesite, from calling on Hecate or any other god associated with the dead. That attitude is also seen in other things, such as weather magic. You could call on the gods, but could not disturb the dead or 'compel' natural forces to do your bidding. Much of the time there was also distinctions made in the purpose of magic, such as with the Roman attitude towards astrology. Astrology was foreign, horoscopes for individuals was generally forbidden, especially when cast for emperors or on others, but there were other forms of astrology that we do not think of today that was favored by the Romans. The same applied with other foreign forms of magic, if beneficial, healing, protective, then it was generally accepted, although maybe thought as superstitious practices.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sun Feb 02, 2003 9:59 pm

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The Fetiales
IX. FOEDERUM PACIS BELLI INDOTIARUM ORATORUM FETIALES IUDICES NONTII SUNTO; BELLA DISCEPTANTO

The fetial priests shall be judges and messengers for treaties, peace and war, truces and embassies; they shall make the decisions in regard to war.

King Ancus Marcius, a grandson of Numa by his mother, copied the rites of the Fetiales from the ancient tribe of the Aequicoli (Livy 1.32.3-5; Virgil says Numa borrowed the rite from the same people, Aen. 7.747 ff). Originally they were probably members of the king's council, acting as his heralds. Membership in the king's council was not fixed before it developed into the Senate. One idea on the origin of the patricians is that these were the families traditionally brought into the king's council or Senate. Early in the Republic the collegium of fetiales, twenty priests, were patricians only, although that seems to have changed later. Their duty was to make peace treaties, seek redress when provisions of treaties were broken, or else to advise the king on when to make war. Livy's description of their rites show that they represented the king to neighboring tribes.

1.24.3-9: This is the earliest treaty recorded, and as all treaties, however different the conditions they contain, are concluded with the same forms, I will describe the forms with which this one was concluded as handed down by tradition. The Fetialis put the formal question to Tullus: `Do you, King, order me to make a treaty with the Pater Patratus of the Alban nation?' On the king replying in the affirmative, the Fetialis said: `I demand of thee, King, some tufts of grass' The king replied: `Take those that are pure.' The Fetialis brought pure grass from the Arx. Then he asked the king: `Do you constitute me the nuntio of the People of Rome, the Quirites, sanctioning also my vessels and comrades?' To which the king replied: `So far as may be without hurt to myself and the People of Rome, the Quirites, I do.' The Fetialis was M. Valerius. He made Spurius Furius the Pater Patratus by touching his head and hair with the grass. Then the Pater Patratus, who is constituted for the purpose of giving the treaty the religious sanction of an oath, did so by a long formula in verse, which it is not worth while to quote. After reciting the conditions he said: `Hear, 0 Jupiter, hear! thou Pater Patratus of the people of Alba! Hear ye, too, people of Alba! As these conditions have been publicly rehearsed from first to last, from these tablets, in perfect good faith, and inasmuch as they have here and now been most clearly understood, so these conditions the People of Rome will not be the first to go back from. If they shall, in their national council, with false and malicious intent be the first to go back, then do thou, Jupiter, on that day, so smite the People of Rome, even as I here and now shall smite this swine, and smite them so much the more heavily, as thou art greater in power and might.' With these words he struck the swine with a flint. In similar wise the Albans recited their oath and formularies through their own dictator and their priests.

The pater patratus was thus the fetialis chosen as the spokesman for the king to another court, just as in a court of law the defendant's spokesman was called a pater. The fetialis who gathered grass from atop the Arx, or citadel on the Capitoline Hill, was the verbenarius. This was also the location of the Auguraculum, or established station from which the auspices were taken for the State. The duties of the verbenarius may have included taking auspices to see if the gods approved of the selection of the pater patratus. At any rate, that is what the pure tufts of grass would seem to indicate.
Recording the treaties that the Romans made with the Carthaginian, Polybius said that the Romans called upon a Jupiter Lithos, using a Greek word for "stone." Jupiter was called here as a witness along with Mars and Quirinus. This may refer to the fact that the slaughter of a pig to seal the treaty was made using a flint knife, and the phrase of "striking a treaty" (foedus ferire) comes from a sacrifice that was likely made to the Manes of both cities, called as witnesses and as the guarantors of the treaty. But Polybius related this Jupiter Lithos to another aspect of the rite. A fetialis would pick up a pebble to declare his personal good faith in making the treaty by saying:

If I keep my promise, may heaven be kind to me, but if I think or act otherwise, while all other men shall be safeguarded in their own country, with their own laws, their possessions, their culti deorum and their tombs, may I be cast out and fall like this stone (Polybius 3.25.6-9)

Since a treaty was made by solemn oaths, witnessed before the gods, any violation of its provisions would be a violation of sacred law. A procedure was then conducted to seek reparations, and if not given, then war was declared.

1.32.6-14
When the legate arrives at the frontier of those from whom restitution is demanded, he covers his head with a fillet (of wool) and says, "Hear thou, O Jupiter, hear ye, boundaries of - naming whatever nation they belong to - let divine law hear! I am the official herald of the Roman people; I come lawfully and piously commissioned, let there be trust in my words." Then he sets forth his demands, after which he takes Jupiter to witness, "If I unjustly and impiously demand that these men and these goods be surrendered to me, then never let me be a full citizen of my fatherland." He cites these words when he crosses the boundary line, again to the first person he encounters, again when proceeding through the town gate, and again when he enters the market place, with only slight modification to the form and wording of the oath. If his demands are not met, at the end of 33 days - for such is the customary number - he declares war as follows, "Hear thou, O Jupiter, and thou, Janus Quirinus, and all ye heavenly gods, and ye terrestrial gods, and ye infernal gods, hear! I call you to witness that this people - naming whatever people it is - is unjust and does not render just reparation. But regarding these matters we will consult the elders in our fatherland, how we may acquire our due." Then the legate returns to Rome for a consultation. Without delay the king would consult the senators with words approximating these, "Having regard to those goods, disputes and causes of which the pater patratus of the Roman people gave due notice to the pater patratus of the Ancient Latins, and to the men of the Ancient Latins, the Prisci Latini, having regard to those things which they have neither rendered, nor fulfilled, nor discharged, speak." Turning then to the man he would first ask of his opinion, to say, "What do you think?" Then he would reply, "I hold that these things ought to be sought by a war of justice and sacred duty. So I agree and with my vote approve." The others were then, in order of rank, asked the question; and when the majority of those present voted for the same opinion, war had been agreed upon. The usual procedure was for the fetialis to carry to the border of the other nation a spear of iron or else of fire hardened cornel wood, and in the presence of not fewer than three adult males, to say, "Forasmuch as the tribes of the Prisci Latini and men of the Prisci Latini have committed act and offence against the Roman people, and forasmuch as the Roman people have ordained that war be declared on the Prisci Latini, and the Senate of the Roman people has affirmed, agreed, and with their votes approved that there be war with the Prisci Latini, I, therefore, and the Roman people, declare and make war on the tribes of the Prisci Latini and the men of the Prisci Latini." Having said this, he would hurl his spear across the border. This is the manner in which at that time redress was demanded of the Latins and war was declared, and it has been accepted by subsequent generations.

In one particular incident, an Aquian general refused to listen to the Roman fetialis, instead telling him to give his message from the Roman Senate "to the oak." This the fetialis did.

III.25.8: "Let both this oak and whatever gods there are here, may they hear that the treaty has been broken by you, and let them attend now to our complaint and presently support our arms, when we shall avenge the simultaneous violation of the rights of gods and men."

In a later period, when Rome had expanded and its enemies were no longer among the Italic tribes, the rite of the fetiales was changed somewhat.

Servius Ad Aen. 9.52: When thirty three days had elapsed after they had demanded redress, the fetiales used to hurl a spear against an enemy. But later, in the time of Pyrrhus (270 BCE), the Romans were going to wage war against an overseas enemy and could not find any place for the fetiales to perform this ritual of declaring war. So they arranged for one of Pyrrhus' soldiers to be captured, and they made him purchase some land in the area of the Circus Flaminius in order to fulfill the proper procedures for declaring war on, as it were, enemy land. Later a column was consecrated on that land, in front of the temple of Bellona.

The rite of declaring war had the fetialis throwing a spear onto the enemy's land. The spear took hold of the land in manner similar to Romulus hurling a spear from the Aventine onto the Palatine, where it took root (Plutarch Romulus 20.6-8). An iron spear was sometimes used, understandably as this related to Mars and the hasta Martis that was kept at the king's residence in the Regia. Other Latin cities had their own hastae Martis as well. The cornel, or red dogwood, was one of the felices arbores attributed with magical powers (Macr. Sat. 3.20.2), its reddish tinge in the white wood perhaps indicating the bloodshed that was about to begin, or, as Robert Trucan poses, that it made the "horrors of war rebound on the enemy." In the devotio rite where one offers himself in sacrifice by first standing on a spear, there may be a relation to the cornel spear of the fetiales, since the same gods are called upon in both ceremonies -Jupiter, Mars, (Janus) Quirinus, Bellona, and the Lares of the city.

In the same way that a fetialis was chosen and a rite performed to declare war, there was also a formula used by which to surrender. In the example given by Livy the Sabines of Collatia surrendered to Tarquinius Priscus.

Livy I.38.2: The king asked of him, "Are you the delegate and spokesman sent from the people of Conlatino, in order that you will surrender Conlatino and its people?" "Yes, we are." "Are the people of Conlatino under your authority?" "It is so." "Do you then surrender Conlatino, and its people, its city, lands, waters, its boundaries, temples, utensils, all that is divinely or humanly held, over to the authority of myself, and the Roman people?" "We do." "Thereupon, I accept your surrender."

From about the time of the Second Punic War there was little mention of the fetiales and they may have fallen out of use. The collegium of fetiales was restored by Augustus, and we hear of the rite of throwing the warspear onto enemy territory in the time of Marcus Aurelius. They continued in use until the middle of the fourth century or our era.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Feb 05, 2003 6:40 pm

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Haruspices and puteales

PRODIGIA PORTENTA AD ETRUSCOS ARUSPICES, SI SENATUS IUSSIT, DEFERUNTO, ETRURIAQUE PRINCIPIS DISCIPLINAM DOCETO. QUIBUS DIVIS CREVERINT, PROCURANTO, IDEMQUE FULGORA ATQUE OBSTITA PIANTO.

Prodigies and portents shall be referred to the Etruscan haruspices, if the Senate so decree; Etruria shall instruct her leading men in this art. They shall make expiatory offerings to whatever gods they decide upon, and shall perform expiations for flashes of lightning and for whatever shall be struck by lightning.

Cicero was certainly apt to use the pronouncements of augurs and haruspices to his political advantage. Such was the case in 56 BCE in his "On the Response of the Haruspices" when he tried to blame ill-omens on Clodius for defiling the rites of the Bona Dea and Magna Mater. Clodius was using the same pronouncements of the haruspices to denounce Cicero for violating the sacred laws prohibiting the execution of Roman citizens without trial, and his attempt to rebuild his house on land dedicated to Libertas. In his letters, however, and in his works De Divinatione (44) and De Natura Deorum (45-4), Cicero was highly skeptical, even contemptuous of haruspices. Cicero quotes Cato as once having said, "How can two haruspices, upon meeting, not laugh at one another? (De Div 2.51)." For Cicero haruspices need only fulfill a role of political expediency.

The Etruscan discipline was respected as an ancient art, yet still regarded as foreign. Cicero relates the story of Tiberius Sempronius, father of the Gracchi, responding to haruspices, as saying, "I, an augur, having taken the auspices myself? Do you barbarian Etruscans claim the right to judge the auspices of the Roman people? Are you able to interpret the conduct of our assembly?" Sempronius threw the haruspices out of the Senate, but later reported to the Senate that they had been right and that he had erred in his taking the auspices. This, said Cicero, confirmed the authenticity of the Etruscan discipline (Nat Deor. II.10-12). In the State religion Etruscan haruspices were called to Rome to advise the Senate on prodigies and portents, and to examine the entrails of sacrificial victims. At times they would advise the Senate on what rites were necessary by their own tradition to appease the anger of the gods. Since the haruspices were foreign, their advice could always be ignored, in a way that the Roman augers could not. It was not until the time of the emperor Claudius, 47 CE, that an attempt was made to form the haruspices into a collegium in order to preserve their discipline, as Cicero advised in his De Legibus, and thus confer on them an official role within the Religio Romana that they had long held traditionally. The Etruscan discipline was so respected that even the Christian popes consulted them as late as 408 CE.



Appius Claudius, an augur himself, wrote a comparison of Etruscan augury to the Roman discipline of augury by the signs of birds in order to show that they were different. Cicero relied on Appius Claudius for his own Book I of the De Divinatione to distinguish foreign forms of divination. Cicero retells the story of Tages, a semi-divine infant, genius of Jupiter, appearing to a ploughman on a cloud that arose from a furrow in a Tarquinii field, who then spoke with the voice of a wise old man and taught the Etruscans their discipline (De Div. II.33.51). The words of Tages were recorded in the Libri Tagetici on the gods, Libri Aruspicini on examining entrails, Libri Fulgurales on interpreting lightning flashes, Libri Rituales on rites dealing with portents, omens, founding cities, temples and altars, building fortifications, and the division and allotment of land, all rituals held in common with the Romans (Cicero De Div. I.72; Livy 5.14.4, in libris fatalibus). There was then, too, the Libri Acheruntici on the afterlife and the rites needed to be performed for the dead to ensure their good fortune after death (Serv. Ad Aen. 8.398; Arnob. Adv. Nat. 262), and Tarquinius Priscus was said to have written two books on Ostentarium Tuscum (Macr. 3.7.2; 20.3).

Most of what is preserved about the Etruscan haruspices concerns their uneven relationship with the Roman State religion. Rather than go over all that material I will consider the role of the haruspices in the Roman private practices. Wealthy Romans hired haruspices brought from Etruria to examine the entrails of sacrificial victims. This was typically done for sacrifices made in conjunction with marriage ceremonies. Plautus has the case of a pimp giving sacrifice to Venus as the patron deity of his profession, and rejecting the haruspices' pronouncements when the entrails show Venus' disfavor (Poenulus Act II.449). "That haruspex is a fine one, not worth three cents...Ought I to entrust anything divine or human to that fellow?" The Etruscan discipline was specifically identified with the exta and the examination of these entrails of sacrificial victims. The laws contained in the pontifical books on what sacrificial victims were appropriate to each deity, under which circumstances, also seems traceable to the Etruscan discipline. Roman tradition held that Numa had forbade blood sacrifices when he first established the Religio Romana. The very use of blood sacrifices might then be seen as a foreign introduction, brought by the Tarquinii. Shortly after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus the Ius Papiria was said to reestablish the religious laws of Numa. Nonetheless blood sacrifices were used in both public and private rites, and seem to have been governed by Etruscan practice.

Another area that was governed specifically by haruspices concerned places and things struck by lightning. A special shrine, called a puteal, was built at the site, with a low, circular wall of stone setting it off from the surrounding land. An individual could not establish such shrines on his own, even on his own land, since they had to be sanctified, and there was a proscription against this. "Let no one consecrate a field," as Cicero has, and to which we will later turn. Roman augures were generally called in to sanctify a locus to a specific deity, but this special type of locus, where a lightning bolt had struck, was specifically under the care of Etruscan haruspices.

Ovid had Numa bargain with Jupiter over what offerings should be given when lightning struck. These were a leek, the greens of a leek, and a small fish, either a sardel or spat (Fasti 3.285-326). Plutarch had that they were an onion, human hair, and a maena, another small fish (Numa 15.4-5). In Ovid's story Jupiter initially asked for a human sacrifice, but Numa tricks Him into accepting otherwise, and Jupiter agrees. (Again a prohibition in the Numa tradition against blood sacrifices.) In the case where a person had been struck by lightning an additional propitiary sacrifice was made. This was the sacrifice of a bidens, generally regarded as a two-year old sheep (Pliny Hist. Nat. 2.145; Festus p.27; Nonius p.53, 26). Elsewhere cited from the De Extis is the opinion of Nigidius Figulus that the "bidentes are not only sheep, but all two-year old sacrificial victims" or herd animals (Gelius 16.6.12, Macr. 6.9.5, Non. p.53.20). Haruspices, rather than augures, were called in because a person being struck by lightning was considered to be an ill omen. In one case where a young girl struck by lightning while riding through the Forum, the bolt denuding her in public but allowing her to survive, this omen was posed to show ill fortune to Rome due to unchaste Vestales. Two Vestales Virgines were subsequently selected to be sacrificed, executed for being unchaste. The haruspices were also called for their advice in such instances because the Etruscans were considered to have a more detailed tradition regarding lightning bolts. "Etruscan writers consider that nine gods employ eleven lightning bolts, because Jupiter has three kinds. The Romans have retained only two of these gods; they attribute daytime lightning bolts to Jupiter and ones at night to Summanus (Pliny H. N. 2.138)." Pliny refers here to the cultus civile where Jupiter and Summanus (and Minerva as well) hurled lightning bolts, while the nine gods of Etruscan tradition pertained to deities recognized in the culti geniale. It was important to know exactly which god had struck the victim, in order to appease the god with proper offerings. Sheep may have been designated in the cultus civile for Jupiter, but Nigidius indicates that other animals were used in the culti geniale for different deities, just as he had written on the differences between public and private auspices in his De Augure Priviti. Lastly, the advise of the haruspices rather than the augures were sought out in these instances because the required offering would involve a blood sacrifice, and would also require that the entrails be examined to see if the sacrifice had been accepted. Thus, where Roman augurs were called upon to sanctify all other kinds of shrines, Etruscan haruspices were relied upon for the rites to sanctify a puteal.

Everything that was struck by the lightning, including the dirt, had to be buried. Lucan tells that a rectangular hole was dug into the site and the scorched soil was then placed for burial into a four-sided wooden box, without a bottom (I.606). Any animal or object that was struck was buried along with the soil. A person struck by lightning could not be cremated, but was instead buried in the puteal as well (Pliny H. N. 2.145). Offering were made each year at the puteal on the anniversary of when the bolt had struck, just as on the anniversary of a temple dedication or of a person's death. As with other sanctified shrines and places of ill omen, it was forbidden to spit anywhere around a puteal. The puteales were maintained under the culti geniale rather than the cultus civile. One example in Rome proper was the Puteal Scribonianum near the Arcus Fabianus. Descriptions of the shrine, and depictions shown on coins, show the Puteal Scribonarianum having a column inside the circular wall, decorated with laurel wreathes, pincers, and lyres (Horace Satires II.6.35; Epist. I.19.8; Cicero Pro Sestio 18). The annual rites performed here were made by gens members of those who had first erected the shrine.

The haruspices and their Etruscan discipline, while foreign to the Religio Romana, were nonetheless traditionally intertwined with it at various levels. Cicero tried to recognize the haruspices in his ideal religion, and Claudius sought to recognize them as an official priesthood, because of this traditional relationship they had to the Religio Romana. Yet under the Republic the haruspices were always considered foreign and barbaric, alien to the Numa tradition of the Religio Romana.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Fri Feb 07, 2003 9:50 pm

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Nocturnal women's rites

NOCTURNA MULIERUM SACRIFICIA NE SUNTO PRAETER OLLA, QUAE PRO POPULO RITE FIENT; NEVE QUEM INITIANTO NISI, UT ADSOLET, CERERI GRAECO SACRO.

No sacrifices shall be performed by women at night except those offered for the people in proper form; nor shall anyone be initiated except into the Greek rites of Ceres, according to custom.


(II.xiv, 36) An exception is made for the rites of the Bona Dea, and for initiation into the Eleusian mysteries, "for by their means we have been brought out of our barbarous and savage mode of life and educated and refined to a state of civilization; and as the rites are called "initiations," so in very truth we have learned from them the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with a better hope." In contrast, at xiv, 37, he sites the example of the Bacchae whose nocturnal rites were banned by the Senate in 186 BCE (Livy 39.8-20, CIL I.196).


"When religion is the care of the State in an oligarchial society, it is evident that sacerdotal preferment will be conferred, not upon the pious and learned, but for social distinction or for political success. (Ronald Syme, "The Roman Revolution," 1939)." The other side to preferment is exclusion. Here Cicero proposes a restriction on the religious activities of women. One does not restrict what does not occur, or potentially could occur, so we must assume his proposal was made as a reaction to real events.

In the official cultus civile, represented in the Fasti, there was very little that involved women in the public religious life of Rome. There was only the one priesthood of the Vestales Virgines who appeared at some public rites, such as the procession of the argei, and they held their own rites at Vestalia in June. Increasingly though, from the third century down to Cicero?s time, the role of women had become prominent in certain religious activities. After 204 BCE patrician matrons began to appear in public rites for the Magna Mater. Plebeian women had already begun to appear in public processions held for Ceres by 217 BCE. Earlier still, Livy said that the first official lectisternium was held in 399, where women were certainly present if not participants. But earlier than that lectisternia had been held in plebeian devotions to Ceres where women likely did participate in the procession. By the Principate matrons were playing a prominent role in such public and official rites as the Saeculares.

Cicero makes an exception in his proposal to allow for the nocturnal rites of the Bona Dea. These were held by the leading matrons of the city, with the Vestales Virgines present, usually in the house of a consul, otherwise that of a praetor (Cicero De Haruspicis responsa 17.39: fit per Virgines Vestales, fit pro poulo Romano, fit in ea domo quae est in imperio). The most famous incident involving these rites was when they were performed in the house of Julius Caesar, 3 December 62, conducted by Caesar?s mother, interrupted by Clodius Pulcher who was supposedly having an affair with Caesar?s wife Pompeia (Plutarch Cicero 19; Dio. Cassius 37.35). Caesar was praetor at that time, thus cum imperio, yet it may have been held in his house due more to the fact that he was also pontifex maximus at the time and could control where the Vestales Virgines would hold the rite. This was a nocturnal rite by women, from which men were excluded. The discovery of Clodius amounted to sacrilege, for which he was later tried and acquitted. It was not an "official" public rite of the cultus civile, not a publica sacra but one held in secret and pro populo Romano to benefit the Roman people (Festus 245 has publica sacra as quae publico sumptu pro populo fiunt). Descriptions of what occurred when Clodius was discovered indicate that the rite involved the display of symbola as occurred at initiations into mysteries. Other rites were held on 1 May at the Aventine temple of the Bona Dea. The sacredotus of this temple was a woman (Festus p. 68M where she is call Damiatrix), since men were prohibited to enter (Macr. 1.12.26). Aelius Gallus defined religiosum as things that were not permitted for men to do, using entry by men into the temple of the Bona Dea as his example (GRF Aelius 18: in aedem Bonae deae virum introire). Ovid, however, claimed that a few select men, "Her own chosen adherents," were permitted into the temple of the Bona Dea and this is consistent with some inscriptions found in her precinct (Ars Amat. 3.637-8). The temple housed sacred snakes and medicinal herbs that were freely distributed to treat "women?s problems." There is little doubt that the temple of the Bona Dea was the main dispenser of abortive herbs, the use of which was generally frowned upon in public yet widely used. The symbola of the Bona Dea?s rite almost assuredly included a phallic, associated with Faunus as the Bona Dea was associated with Fauna. Juvenal recalls that "all images of the other sex must be veiled" during Her rites, and the first thing done when Clodius was discovered was to veil the symbola. Since the rite was made pro populo it likely involved female fertility of the whole community, not just the women present, which is where the phallic would come in. A rite performed on a bride the day after her wedding, meant to assure her fertility to bear sons, involved seating her on the ithyphallic image of Mutunus Tutunus (Augustine Civ. Deo. 7.24). Elsewhere there are images associated with the ritual breaking of the hymen on an ithyphallic image, again as a means to ensure female fertility.

Another aspect of this cultus seems to have involved a ritual beating. Rods of myrtle were prohibited at the rites of the Bona Dea. A myth grew up that Faunus had beaten Fauna with myrtle after she had refused his incestuous advances. Wine was also prohibited to be named in her rites, instead it was referred to as milk and carried in a honey jar, so as not to offend the goddess, because her beating supposedly occurred after Faunus had become drunk on wine, had offered Fauna wine and she refused, leading to her beating. The assumption made is that since wine was used in the rite, but called something else, then myrtle rods were also brought in under a different name and used to reenact the beating of Fauna. We should take note that myrtle was associated with Venus, as was wine at times. The Bona Dea and Her relationship with men are contrasted to that of Venus. Yet the two goddesses were linked, as in Juvenal?s Satire VI. We may also look at images such as occur at Pompeii in the House of the Mysteries where there appears to be a ritual whipping of a young girl before Bacchus. Other images of Bacchanalia show whipping and the use of ithyphallic images together. We do not need to suppose, however, that a woman was actually whipped at the rites of the Bona Dea, or that a slave girl was brought in for that purpose, as has been proposed. It is just as possible that Clodius, dressed as a woman, was rightfully there as a participant in the rite, one of those select men chosen by the goddess, in order to receive the beating. The secretive nature of the rite would have prohibited him to testify to that effect at his trial, yet would have been known, and might explain his acquittal on a charge of sacrilege just as easily as Cicero?s claim that it was due to bribery. But none of those scenarios are necessarily true either. Whipping a phallic symbola with nettles is also found in other rites, made to procure fertility for women, and could just as easily been used.

Juvenal, Satire VI, later indicates the nature of the rites of the Bona Dea.

Notorious, too, are the ritual mysteries of the Bona Dea, when flute music stirs the loins, and frenzied women, devotees of Priapus, sweep along in procession, howling, tossing their hair, wine flown, horn crazy, burning with desire to get themselves laid. Hark at the way they whinny in mounting lust, see that copious flow, the pure and vintage wine of passion, that splashes their thighs.

Juvenal carries on further, describing the dance of the women as a lewd contest between respectable matrons and demimondes in the same way as are described the rites of Flora in the circus. Then aroused by the rite, at its conclusion, the women call in men, "It?s time! Call in the men!" His plaint is, "Would that our ancient ritual, at least in its public aspect, was uncontaminated by such malpractice." Juvenal?s complaint is that women rites, whether for the Bona Dea or others, remain private. That is the thrust of Cicero?s law as well. Yet from what else Juvenal says it is clear that there were a variety of nocturnal women rites, to various goddesses, and that appears as well with Ovid in the Ars amatoria where he advises men to linger outside temple precincts while such rites were being conducted. There is also reference to such rites in Petronius? Satyricon. Generally nocturnal women?s rites were portrayed as foreign, and as a great evil, with the example of the Bacchae always held as a reminder. In 186 BCE the Senate banned the rites of the Bacchae. Accusations of debauchery, child endangering, swindling of inheritances, and even murder were leveled at the cultus. The salient features that met with disapproval though were that they were conducted in the open, outdoors at night, and were led by women.


The presence of women in religious affairs, and their holding religious offices, differed in other parts of Italy from those in Rome. At Corfinium is a dedicatory inscription for a Cerfum sacracirix semunu, or "priestess of Ceres and the gods of sowing," much as at Rome the flamen Cerealis invoked the indigitamenta Cererri. The sacred grove of Diana at Aricia, whose Latin rites were far older than Rome itself, these were conducted by a high priestess. The Rex Nemorensis was a runaway male slave who served only to guard the shrine, but women, for women primarily conducted the cultus Dianae of this most sacred shrine. The most important culti deorum throughout central and southern Italy revolved around Ceres. There were also other versions of the Bona Dea, such as Damia at Tarentum and Angitina of the Marruccini and Peligni, who were linked to Ceres as a daughter. She was called Angitia Cerealis at Sulmo and Corfinium. Among the Oscan tribes it was Ceres, rather than Juno, who was the consort of Jupiter, the Marruccini called Her the "Ceres, the Pious Queen of Jupiter," Regina Pia Cerria Iovia. In Sabellian Campania Ceres had several aspects that were adopted to Juno at Rome, and even a few like Ceres Ultrix that were not. It was from the Sabellian tradition that certain rites of Ceres were introduced to Rome around 217 BCE that saw the import of a female priesthood to the Aventine Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera. Cicero tried to denigrate these rites, and these priestesses as being Greek in his Pro Balbo. That should be placed in the context of other comments about plebeian rites, and the plebeian culti deorum as something distinctly separate and alien to the Religio Romana. The cultus Cererri had served as a political focal point for the plebeians in Rome?s early history. The "Conflict of the Orders" as it is known, pitting plebeians against patrician privileges, had long since passed by Cicero?s day. His "Harmony of the Orders" was well nigh meaningless in his time, so far as it referred to patricians and plebeians.. In the year 55, when elections of magistrates were being continually postponed by one side or the other, requiring a different rex interregium be appointed every five days, who was required to be a patrician, the Romans nearly ran out of qualified candidates. That is, there were less than sixty men, in a city of over a million people, who could be called patrician. And lest we forget, all of the leaders of the optimates were plebeians, while some populares leaders like Caesar and Clodius were patrician. At times, when it suited his purposes, Cicero included among his optimates and boni men of all ranks, down to freedmen. But as far as the Orders were concerned, and Cicero's "Harmony of the Orders" it was no more than political drivel. There was a political element in any consideration of reforming the Religio Romana, as both optimates and populares used and abused religious conventions for their own political purposes. There was a difference between the two camps in how such a reform should be made. Around Caesar gathered men like Granius Flaccus, who more than anyone promoted a Numan reform for a reintroduction of ancient forms of worship. There was also Nigidius Figulus, whom Cicero denounced as a sorcerer, Veranius, Clodius Tuscus and Aulus Caecina, all of whom looked not only at the most ancient remains of the Religio Romana, but looked elsewhere throughout Italy for the origins of the Roman tradition. Just as Sallust advised Caesar to expand citizenship to all Italians, noting the common heritage they had with Rome, religious reformers in Caesar?s camp advised to expand Rome?s religious institutions and revive ancient culti deorum, not only in Rome itself but throughout Italy. Varro, an optimates who sided with Pompeius Magnus against Caesar, later wrote the Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum dedicated to pontifex maximus Caesar that detailed many of the ancient rites and institutions that had fallen out of use at Rome. He also wrote other books regarding other parts of Italy. When Caesar?s camp finally won and had the ability to finally reform the Religio Romana, Augustus? Restoration relied on the works of such men to introduce both ancient and new religious forms. Cicero?s De Legibus must be seen in contrast to this, as it is a proposal for reform that would curtail back all that was regarded a part of the Religio Romana to only those parts that could be controlled through specific priesthoods.


We then must consider the other exception Cicero makes, allowing for initiations into the Eleusian mysteries. There was a later attempt during the imperial period to establish at Rome an Eleusian type of initiation into mysteries of Ceres. The festival days on which these initiations were to take place were included into official imperial Fasti. In Cicero?s time, such had not yet occurred. Cicero scoffed at the plebeian rites of Ceres for being Greek, said in Greek, conducted in the Greek manner, yet he proposed incorporating the Greek Eleusian mysteries for his ideal religion. What was the difference? The plebeian cultus Cererri was Sabellian rather than Greek. It was conducted by women, as Cicero confirms. The Eleusian mysteries were conducted by men. To Cicero?s mind, the plebeian rites were not controllable by the State?s priesthood, where as the Eleusian mysteries were. Ovid gives us a glimpse of plebeian rites not being under priestly control of the state with his description of the plebeian festum geniale of Anna Perenna on the Ides of March, where the plebeians stream out of the city virtually in defiance of the priests and politicians. His description of the festivities is like that Juvenal held for the rites of the Bona Dea. "A woman changed to Sibyl by her cups (of wine), there they sing whatever song they learn in the theaters and wave lithe hands in time to the lyrics. They drop the wine bowl and join in the primitive jig, and the chic girl skips and tosses her hair about." Prominent in this particular festival was does the level of drinking and public promiscuity; two elements that undermined the politicians? ability to maintain control over the rites. The same was true of the Bacchanalia rites, and we see in imperial letters, exchanges between Pliny the Younger and Trajan, that the concern is, since they cannot control the rites, not to permit them when they interfere with farm work. In the end, with this particular law of Cicero it comes back once more that his design for an ideal religion is not made out of any sense of religious piety, or as any description of the Religio Romana as it was practiced in his day, or as a restoration to what it have once been, but made solely with an intent to place political control over all religious activity. In the end, too, that was accomplished by Augustus? Restoration, which also centralized both political and religious authority into the person of the emperor. Cicero?s proposals were oligarchial, trying to maintain control of the religious institutions among a certain class of individuals, one he called optimates in his De Legibus. In this he looked back to the provisions made by Sulla. As he wrote, the Sullan system had already been destroyed when in 63 Titus Labienus restored the election of pontifices and augures to the tribes, Caesar was pontifex maximus, and Pompeius Magnus the leader of the collegium Augurium. The removal of Pompeius only concentrated control of the cultus civile further in the Caesarian camp, and there was no going back to control by Sullan optimates as Cicero envisioned.




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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Feb 11, 2003 12:48 am

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(22) SACRUM COMMISSUM, QUOD NEQUE EXPIARI POTERIT, IMPIE COMMISSUM ESTO; QUOD EXPIARI POTERIT, PUBLICI SACERDOTES EXPIANTO.

Sacrilege which cannot be expiated shall be held to be impiously committed; that which can be expiated shall be atoned for by the public priests.

II.xiv, 37: unintentional offences are carefully to be expiated by the official priest and the offender relieved from fear; but effrontery in introducing [disgraceful lust into the midst of religious rites] he must condemn and adjudge impious.


"You inevitably discover that all turns out well when we follow the gods in obedience, and ill when we spurn them (Livy 50.5-6)." From a very early age a Roman participated in their cultus geniale, learning what the rites by which the gods were given their due. Cato offers in his De Agricultura a number of rites, made annually, that were used on an estate. They include the annual lustratio as a blessing of the estate, calling on Mars to ward off dangers to the fields and orchards. Another made to Mars Silvanus to protect the cattle. A thanksgiving to Jupiter Dapalis for providing the family with food and drink throughout the year, and another thanksgiving at harvest to Ceres, along with other gods, for the produce of the estate. To these would be added the blessing of the property markers at Terminalia, "with traditional rites" mentioned by Ovid (Fasti 639-78). Also on an estate would likely be little shrines that had been set up for some special reason, just as Horace made to Venus for a tree that shaded his house, or perhaps a shrine for where the land had once been struck by lightning, and at such shrines annual offerings would also be made. In the city as well, there were shrines one would pass daily, annual rites performed at the neighborhood shrines, thanksgiving to the patron gods of one's profession, and so forth. There were in addition obligations to the Lares and Manes, to the gods of one's community, and the festivals, almost monthly, that one might participate in. Special events, such as the birth of a child or travel, would also involve giving the gods their due. It was fairly clear what obligations a person had in honoring the gods.

Another concern was when one would inadvertently and unintentionally anger the gods. Petronius' Satyricon revolves around that very idea, with Encolpius pursued throughout the work by the wrath of Priapus for some unknown offence, and then continuing to accidently offend Priapus further, as when he and his companions accidently stumble upon and profane a women's rite to Priapus. Obstitum, according to L. Cincius, was anything against which the gods and goddesses stood opposed. Thus one should always seek to avoid whatever is viewed as nefas; that is, religiously unlawful (Festus p. 193a, 4). Other terms for what was forbidden was obscum, what was called in the leges sacratae as obscatae, and these, according to Cloatius, signified the sacrum, or whatever was held by gods and therefore inviolable. Taking anything from a shrine that had been dedicated to the gods was obviously a violation of religious laws. Certain acts were prohibited. Aelius Gallus mentioned that it was against the will of the gods for a man to enter the temple of the Bona Dea, to carry laws to the people under adverse auspices, or to perform work on prohibited days, those marked as nefas. In the latter case, exceptions were made, according to Scaevola, that any work prohibited on holidays could be performed when not to do so would cause damage (Macrobius 1.16.11). Spitting on the ground was considered an offense against the gods when done at certain places. For example, one part of the Forum where it was known that pre-Roman graves were located, and in temple precincts. Sometimes a person would not know they had violated any religious laws until it was revealed in a vivid dream where a god would speak to him directly, or else through omens and auspices.

"Among our ancestors, no affair was undertaken, either in public or in private, before taking the auspices (Val. Max. 2.1.1). Auspices were taken to see whether the gods approved of an intended action, such as a marriage proposal, a business venture, or a career move. Sometimes though the gods would not reply to the question asked, but instead indicate that nothing could be done until one had atoned for some obstitum. Cloatius and Aelius Stilo indicated that what is obstitum is signified by a violent strike from the sky (Festus p.193a, 4). So even if auspices were not being taken, a sudden violent strike of lightning would indicate that some act, made against the will of the gods, required a piaculum be made. For example, an inscription from Spoletium says whenever a person would "violate, profane, or carry off what has been dedicated (to the gods) in this locus," a piaculum, or sin offering, had to be made to Jove Bovus, whose locus it was, and any fines imposed by the shrine's curatores would have to be paid, and again "after a year he will make (restitution) on that date, without fraud, in accordance with the rule (of the Aventine temple) of Diana (ILS 4911)."

When a person had committed some obstitum he would go to a temple to consult with the priests over what offense he may have committed, to what god or goddess he may have offended, and then what piaculum might be required. The individual worshipper did not perform the actual sacrificial act in most cases. He would offer wine and incense at an altar, and dedicate a sacrifice, but special priests would perform the actual slaughter of the sacrificial victim in order to ensure it was done properly. That is what Cicero means above when he says "unintentional offences are carefully to be expiated by the official priest and the offender relieved from fear." What the worshiper did was pay for the sacrifice made on his behalf. There was an instance where some enterprising fellow made a large donation to a temple in order to receive the concession on the temple's sacrifices. We are fortunate in this, since he then had his price list inscribed so that today we can see what kind of sacrifices were available and their relative value.

ILS 4916 Roma
In order to offer:
For the blood (perhaps of a bull) _ denarius
and for the hide _ denarius
If the victim be entirely burnt 25 denarius
For the blood and hide of a lamb 1/2 denarius
If the lamb is entirely burnt 2 denarius
For a cock entirely burnt 1 denarius
For blood alone 13 asses
For a wreath 4 asses
For warm water for a person 2 asses

Blood sacrifices were generally required for a piaculum, and the Libri pontifici stipulated which particular animals were specified for certain gods. As one example, a goat was specified as a sacrifice to Liber. But the same books also allowed that effigies be substituted. These might be made of bread dough or else of terracotta. This was a very ancient practice, as we find in favisse at Rome, from strata of the seventh century and earlier, examples of terracotta loaves of bread given in offerings. Tradition held that Numa had forbade the use of blood sacrifice. In one story, Numa asks Jupiter what piaculum is required after an obstitum has been indicated by a lightning bolt striking inside the city. Jupiter demands a head be sacrificed, but Numa gets Him to agree that a leek be substituted instead. When Jupiter insists it be the head of a man, Numa substitutes the hair of a man, and Jupiter agrees. And when Jupiter then demands a life, Numa agrees to offer that of a fish (Ovid Fasti 3.337-48). There were other examples of where substitutes were made for traditional offerings, so that individuals like Varro and Seneca, whose religious beliefs proscribed blood sacrifices, could still meet the requirements of the leges sacratae and remain within the tradition of the Religio Romana.

A modern substitute to consider may be a charitable contribution to http://www.heifer.org This organization provides livestock to needy villages in various parts of the world. You can contribute in whole or in part towards the purchase of a farm animal, as an offering to the gods, while providing good care for the animal and benefiting the farmers who will receive them. Liber, the patron god of bee keepers, might appreciate your contributing a hive of honeybees ($30 US), or a goat ($120) to someone who could use them. It is a way for us to remain within our own tradition of the Religio Romana, abide by the Numa tradition proscribing blood sacrifices, and do so in a modern manner of charitable contributions to benefit others.

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Postby Tarquinius Dionysius on Tue Feb 11, 2003 2:08 pm

That's quite impressive, but you do realise your posts are too gigantic to read all at once? :wink:

Woudn't it be more interesting to turn it into an essay and post it on Collegium religionis? (just a thought)
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Feb 15, 2003 11:25 pm

Salvete
LOEDIS PUBLICIS QUOD SINE CURRICULO ET SINE CERTATIONE CORPORUM FIAT, POPULAREM LAETITIAM IN CANTU ET FIDIBUS ET TIBIIS MODERANTO EAMQUE CUM DIVUM HONORE IUNGUNTO.

At the public games which are held without chariot races or athletic contests, the public pleasure shall be provided for with moderation by song to the music of harp and flute, and this shall be combined with honor to the gods.


II.xv, 38-9 For I agree with Plato (Rep. IV, 424 D) that nothing gains an influence so easily over youthful and impressionable minds as the various notes of song, the greatness of whose power both for good and evil can hardly be set in words, for it arouses the languid, and calms the excited, now it restrains our desires, now it gives them free rein. Many Greek states?when their songs became less manly, their characters turned to effeminacy at the same time, perhaps because they were corrupted by the sweetness and debilitating seductiveness of the new music, as some believe, or perhaps when other vices had first caused a relaxation of the strictness of their lives, and their ears and their hearts had already undergone a change, room was offered for this change in their music as well?.audiences which used to be deeply affected by the sternness of the music of Livius and Naevius, now leap up and twist their necks and turn their eyes in time with our modern tunes. Ancient Greece used to punish such offences severely, perceiving long before the event that corruption gradually creeps into the hearts of citizens, and, by infecting them with evil desires and evil ideas, works swift and total destruction of States.

"New music" preying on impressionable minds, people leaping and twisting, "infecting them with evil desires and evil ideas," and, oh yes, it will be the ruin of civilization as we know it. I guess every generation has heard this refrain before. Elvis, Sinatra, and Mozart, too, had their detractors in their day. When today someone preaches against the evils of Rock-n-Roll he is regarded to be on the fringe of public opinion. In Cicero's case the situation was much the same, for by the time he was writing the De Legibus Cicero was pretty much of a laughing stock. Scorned by members of the Optimates factio, derided by supporters of Caesar, Clodius, and Marc Antony, by Juvenal's time, a hundred years later, Cicero was just another stock character of the fabulae atellanae. How much credence then should we give to Cicero's perspective on the Religio Romana?

In Cicero's reply to a responsa of the Haruspices, he accused Clodius of carelessly performing the rites of Magna Mater to the point of having defiled them. Clodius, as aedilis, was responsible for presenting the celebrations. What Cicero objected to was Clodius' inclusion of the "new music" and its associated interpretive dance. Interpretive dance was commonly used in some celebrations, but apparently had not been used in the celebrations of the Magna Mater before Clodius introduced it. Was it really a defilement? Apparently it was not regarded as such by most people. There was a running fight between Cicero and Clodius, each accusing the other of having violated sacred law. In fact Cicero's oration on the responsa was made in reply to charges Clodius had made against Cicero. In other orations Cicero repeats a charge against Clodius for defiling the rites of the Bona Dea, and so we may adduce that that charge carried some weight with popular opinion in spite of Clodius' acquittal on the charge. Cicero does not repeat the charge elsewhere on Clodius' defilement of the rites of the Magna Mater, however, so we may assume that popular opinion accepted Clodius' introduction of the "new music" and interpretive dance.

Livy was to offer a sketch on the development of scenic entertainments used in Roman festivals that can be compared with one given by Horace (Epistles II.1.139 ff).. Originally, Livy says, dances were performed accompanied by flute in the Etruscan fashion. Vergil, describing a rustic rite, has "all the choir, a joyful company, attend it, with shouts they bid Ceres come (Georgics I. 347-8)." Elsewhere Vergil describes processions made in dance accompanied by flutes. These rustic rites, it is generally agreed, retained the older form of Roman rites whether out of tradition or because such regions were less susceptible to foreign influences as in the city itself. Then Livy goes on to say that from southern Italy was introduced improvisations in rude verse, the young Romans, called historiones, would exchange vulgar jests with crude gestures for emphasis, that were also the fescinnines of wedding ceremonies. Next in Livy's scheme, between the performances of historiones, medleys with flute and dance came into fashion. These then developed into Roman comedies with clearly outlined plots to tie together the songs and dances. The Greeks had earlier begun holding competitions of plays to entertain the gods. Livius Andronicus (b. 272), Naevius (b, 274), and then Plautus (254-184 BCE) would represent the period, beginning around 240 BCE, when plays began to be offered at Roman festivals as well. The final stage that Livy gives introduced the exodium, or an after-play comedy sketch that was also called the atellana. Some of the stock characters of the fabulae atellanae were Maccus the fool, Pappus the easily deceived old man, Manducus the drunkard, and Bucco the fatchaps, and no doubt Cicero became the model of one of these comic characters during the early Principate.

Companies of performers moved about the cities of Campania and Latium, hired by the curatores of temples for their local festivals, to offer dance, mimes, and comic sketches. Christian commentaries in a later period give us an idea of what Roman celebrations evolved into. They tell of performers in the roles of gods, "your deities dance, supplying themes and stories to the wicked," with "movement of hand and head," the glances of Venus that "leap with her eyes alone (Tert., Apol. 15.4)." Ammianus describes the mimae as dancers "borne about in flying gyrations while expressing numberless likenesses invented in theatrical fables (14.6.20)." Tertullian names a number of the favorite fables staged at performances such as Anubis the Adulterer, Diana Flogged, and Three Hungry Herculeses (Ad Nat. 15). Some of these themes came from foreign culti deorum but would no less be performed for Roman festivals as well. The tilting of the head, stretching neck, rolling eyes, expressions with the eyebrows, hands and fingers, were very much like the temple dances of India or Bali. The performers, arriving from southern Italy as they did, initially mimed stories based on Greek myth and also the local southern myths of Campania. In time they built up their repertoire of expressive devices in part from Eastern traditions, but we also see similar expressive devices in the much earlier Etruscan paintings, and thus we should not think that the mimae were an entirely foreign introduction. It should be noted that what Cicero is saying in De Legibus reflects that such "oriental" modes of expressive dance that he associated with the "new music" were already part of Roman festivals before his day, in what is called the plebeian rites, and that in his time they were being extended into rites of the cultus civile where previously these had been conducted in a more traditional manner. Further we know from our sources that it was not only the performers dancing in this manner, "people of the best lineage and foremost in every city dance, not in the least embarrassed but proud of it (Lucian De Salt. 14.149)." That was certainly true in the East, but had not occurred at Rome until probably in Cicero's day. The change that had occurred with the introduction of the Magna Mater was the public participation of patrician matrons. Leading plebeian men and women probably engaged in dance in the plebeian processions as early as the second century. What had changed by Cicero's day was that the leading men of the city were plebeian and had naturally carried their form of rites into what had once been patrician rites. Oddly, it seems that it was patricians, such as Clodius, who were doing the innovations to the objection of such plebeians as Cicero. From Aricia, a relief that shows dancers, and a crowd of spectators gesturing towards them, is generally attributed to the Isiac cultus because there are Egyptian motifs in the scene's borders. However that is not likely to have been the case. Elsewhere we find Egyptian artistic motifs in private house, once mistaken as decorated rooms of Isiac chapels, but now realized to have been no more than a decorative fashion. The dance depicted at Aricia cannot be assumed to be Isiac at all, since none of the performers are depicted in Egyptian costume as one might expect. We might better understand the scene as one of a performance commonly made for any Roman festival, regardless of the particular deity for whom it was performed.

In 173 the Ludi Florales became an annual event. They began with theatrical performances and ended with circus games. Part of the entertainment was a release of hares and goats into the crowds, while vetches, beans and lupines were also scattered among the attendees. Mimae would engage in fescinnines, taunting one another with lewd jests and movements, going on to undress as part of their act. The spectators would join in these exchanges, offering their own course insults at the mimae, and in time the city's prostitutes, among the spectators themselves, would contribute to the spectacle by disrobing in the stands and throwing their own insults and gyrations at the mimae. It is from these games, we are told by Valerius Maximus (2.10.8), that Cato Minor would withdraw himself rather than see the performances. While Clodius' introduction of "oriental" fashion might be dismissed in some way as not part of the Religio Romana, since the Magna Mater is also "oriental" in origin, mimae appearing at the festival of an Italic goddess like Flora shows that such "oriental" influences were adopted into the Religio Romana itself before the time of Cicero and Cato Minor. According to Livy's scheme, the celebrations of Floralia would seem to be like those made prior to the mid third century.

Another indication is found with Seneca's criticism of the Capitolium cultus (Aug Civ Dei 6.10). Seneca calls "folly" and "deluded madness" practices that included the bathing, anointing, dressing, and hair-styling of the cult images, especially when done in mime away from the statutes or even outside of the temples where they were housed. In other words he is describing the kind of interpretive dance performed by the mimae. Since he speaks specifically of the Capitolium there can be no doubt of its adoption into the Religio Romana. Seneca is a later source, however, describing what had become normal practice after the Augustan Restoration. When then might we consider this innovation to have taken place? The examples of Cicero and Cato would suggest it was relatively late. Seneca, although a late source himself, provides details of the cultus of his time, but also it refers to something we know was done in a much earlier period. We are told by Pliny the Elder, citing Verrius who was himself quoting earlier sources, that the Capitolium statue of Jupiter was covered with cinnabar for festivals. That is, the statue was bathed, anointed, and dressed with cinnabar prior to its appearance at a festival, in a way similar to what Seneca describes. Pliny also mentions that Camillus was painted with cinnabar following the same fashion, since in a triumph he represented Jupiter, and that one Callias, an Athenian, had only first discovered cinnabar in 405 BCE (Hist. Nat. 33.111-4). That places the practice of attending statues by at least the mid fourth century.

Innovation and change was a common part of the tradition of the Religio Romana. Some change must have occurred in the time of Camillus since it was then that Rome was sacked by the Gauls and had to rebuild its religious institutions. Another period of great change comes slightly later, in the latter part of the third century with the introduction of Venus Eryx (217), new rites for Ceres from southern Italy (217), the Ludi Apollinares celebrated with theater and circus games (212-208), and then the introduction of Magna Mater (204), . Part of the cultus for both Magna Mater and Venus were annual bathing of their cult images. It is in this period that we see women taking an active role in celebrations by participating in processions. Gladiatorial contests first appeared in Rome in 264 for private celebrations and would have become part of public celebrations in the same period at the end of the century. Another indication of changes was the disappearance of one set of ludi and the introduction of a new ludi. The Ludi Taurei, celebrated in the older style with horse races, is last recorded to have taken place in 186 BCE, the same year that the Senate expelled the Bacchae. The Ludi Florales became an annual event in 173 BCE. Following Livy's scheme, the fescinnines, introduced prior to Plautus' day, would have been originally part of the Ludi Florales, although the mimae, as professional actors performing those fescinnines, could have come later.

Related, too, to the changes of the late third and early second centuries is the beginning of written records for the Religio Romana. The Annales Maximi went back no further than the late second century. These recorded annual events, presumably religious events, written on boards and set up by the Pontifex Maximus. Beginning around 200 BCE were the records of Annalists like Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus quoted by later sources. Shortly afterward began commentaries on religious and civil law, such as were written by Mucius Scavola and Sex. Aelius Catus, and it is in this same era of the mid second century that Cato Maior was writing. Already by then, in this earliest written material on the Religio Romana, Roman authors were reflecting on their own traditions and institutions through a comparison with Greek thought. In the generations that followed, criticisms by Cicero and Varro, as well as the still later Seneca, are entirely based in Greek philosophy. Nigidius Figulus and Gavius Bassus were introducing ideas from Greek philosophy, while A. Caecina, Veranius, and Granius Flaccus were comparing Roman traditions with those of Italic tribes and Etruscans. Reflected in the diverse opinions of such writers, whether in support or opposed to change, is expressed a desire for a return to an earlier form of the Religio Romana, commonly attributed to the era of Numa, yet looking back no further than the mid third century and based mostly on written records from the beginning of the second century. Cicero's own complaint looked back no further than to "the sternness of the music of Livius and Naevius." Cicero's "new music" and expressive forms of dance we may gather from Cicero's other comments on the plebeian rites of Ceres being Greek (Pro Balbo) may have first been introduced to Rome as early as 217 BCE. We may point to Granius Flaccus, with his commentary on the Ius Papiria, as perhaps the originator of the stories of Numa establishing the Religio Romana in its original form, but his sources were the Annales Maximi. Thus all speculation on the early Religio Romana, whether made by ancient commentators or modern historians, reflect the mid third century at best or are fallacious projections further back in time of that period's tradition.


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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:00 pm

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EX PATRIIS RITIBUS OPTUMA COLUNTO.

Of the ancestral rites the best shall be preserved.

SACRA PRIVATA PERPETUA MANENTO.

The sacred rites of families shall remain forever.

II.xvi, 40 For when the Athenians consulted Apollo on this point, as to what religious rites they should by preference retain, the oracle answered: "Those which were among the customs of your ancestors." And when they came a second time and, saying that their ancestors? customs had undergone many changes, asked which customs they should follow by preference out of the many, the answer was, "The best."

I have placed together here two of Cicero's laws having to do with preserving culti geniale. When Cicero addressed the pontifices concerning the return of his house, one of his arguments was that Clodius' actions as a tribus plebis were illegal since, Cicero argued, Clodius' adoption into a plebeian family was illegal and morally wrong. The adoption procedure had required Clodius to forswear the cultus geniale of his patrician birth before swearing to uphold that of his plebeian family, and to do so required passage of a law in the curiate chaired by the pontifex maximus, who happened to be Julius Caesar, with Pompey acting as augur. Since Caesar's colleague Bibulus, Cato Minor's son-in-law, was "watching the skys," Cicero claimed the action was illegal. He also attacked the adoption on the grounds that preservation of the patrician culti geniale was essential to the Religio Romana and that Clodius was morally wrong in having given up his own. Well, Cicero did get his house back, but no one paid much attention to his arguments on Clodius' adoption, or his arguments on the legality of Clodius' or Caesar's legislation due to Bibulus sequestering himself.

When we begin to conjecture an origin of the Religio Romana it is towards the culti geniale of the pre-Roman period that we look for its founding institutions. Generally it is thought that much of the early cultus civile resulted from the family rites of the kings. Other rites adopted into the cultus civile are specifically mentioned to have originated in the cultus geniale of one gens or another. Plutarch, when discussing the life of Numa, addressed the matter that all the records of Roman families had been lost in the Gallic sack of Rome and that fictitious legends had then been adopted by certain leading gentes to enhance their prestige. He indicates that the culti geniale as practiced in later times did not extend back into pre-Roman times but were inventions made in the fourth century. There was some question, too, as to who were included in the gentes and were held responsible for maintaining their traditions. From the book on civil law by pontifex maximus Mucius Scaevola, cited by Cicero, it was considered not to be enough to bear the same name in order to be considered part of a gens. Any slave who took the family name upon his manumission was not included, nor were his freeborn descendents. Also anyone who had lost their political or property rights were no longer considered part of the gens. Then, too, if someone died without descendents, there was the question of who was responsible for maintaining the cultus geniale, generally regarded as a responsibility that came along with a person's property, and whenever a person had no property, then the responsibility fell on whoever owed the deceased money. So the responsibility might fall onto a freeborn descendent of a slave anyway. In De Comitus Lucius Cincius further claimed that patricians were solely those who were once known as ingenui or freeborn, and thus implied that all plebeian culti geniale were not to be considered part of the cultus civile (Festus p. 241a, 21). Varro's discussion of Scaevola's three theologies, cited by Augustinus of Hippo (Civ. Dei VI.5), likewise included in the cultus civile certain culti geniale which might be considered among the original maiorum and could be interpreted to pertain only to patrician traditions. There was a particular problem with this assertion in Cicero's time, since the number of patrician gentes had declined; fifty are known by name from the early Republic, of which only fourteen remained by the end of the Republic, and their legitimate members were few in number. Obviously by the Late Republic confusion over legitimate descent within a gens, and which particular culti geniale were to be considered, had been greatly obscured.

We turn now to examine the basic assumption that the culti geniale originated in pre-Roman times. For that we can consider some of the archaeological evidence used to support this assumption.

Gabii: Osteria dell?Osa

Between what were once Lake Regillus and Lake Gabino, ancient Gabii held the isthmus where passed the road from Rome to Praeneste. Occupation of the area extends back to the ninth century BCE, with six settlement areas known on the isthmus and an arc of other settlements along the ridge above the crater that held Lake Gabino. At either end of this arc of hamlets are two cemeteries. Sixty tombs, all dating to the Latian Period IIA (900-830 BCE), have been found at the Castiglione cemetery. At Oseria dell?Osa 600 tombs were discovered between 1971 and 1986, these dating from Latian IIA to Latian IV. Among the oldest tombs are two groups in the northwest portion of Osteria dell?Osa. These ninth century Villanovan groups exhibit a pattern in the way individuals were placed that suggests that each group represented a family. At the center are the remains of cremated males, around which are inhumation graves. Nearest to the cremated males were adult women, then young males, and the outer edge had graves of females ages 12-20. Certain features are exclusive to each group in the kind and type of material found. In the one group, portions of meat left in bowls as food offerings consisted of three or four caprovine ribs. In the other group only one grave contains a portion of a deer femur in an urn. The northern group had in four graves quadrangular razors and socketed spearhead in two graves. The southern group had one grave with a lunate form razor, and another grave with tweezers, and six graves held spearheads cast in one piece. The pottery in both groups are alike, yet the southern group?s are less precise, many are not decorated, and those that are decorated were done with incisions, while the northern group?s pottery is more accurate in its manufacture, the majority are decorated, frequently with plastic motifs that are absent from the southern group. A hut urn appears in only one grave from the northern group, but in all the graves of the southern group. The type of liquid container that is a two-handled vase set on a high stand or calefattoio is found in two northern graves and five southern graves. While both groups contained the arco serpeggiante type of fibulae characteristic of the period, those of the northern group had disc feet, while the southern group had the Sicilian type with symmetrical feet. The manner in which the pozzi were filled in over the dolia differed as well. The southern group had two or more small white pebbles in the fill, then a majority of the graves had a ring of pebbles arranged into the upper layer of the fill, and the mouths of the dolia were covered by an impasto lid. The northern group however usually used a slab of yellowish travertine placed just above the rim of the dolia. While similar in many ways that show both groups belonging to the same culture and contemporary in Latian Period IIA, they differed enough to suggest that each group followed a different funerary ritual.


Elsewhere in Osteria dell?Osa are two Latian Period IIB burials, dating to around 770 BCE, that were placed together. First a male was laid in an open fossa trench. Later his body and funeral goods were rearranged in order to admit the burial of the cremated remains of a woman. It is a little unusual to find the cremated remains of a woman during this period in Latium. Female cremations are entirely absent from some sites, while the proportion of female cremations is unusually high at Rome. The most unique feature of her gravesite, however, and most extraordinary, is that she was buried with a globular-bodied vase on which is the earliest known example anywhere of what are considered Greek letters. The graffito spelling out "Eulin" predates any example of Greek writing in mainland Greece or Magna Graecia by at least a generation. The significance of her cremation and the presence of writing can only be conjectured, but obviously she was someone of unique importance.


About 50 meters away from the two groups mentioned above is another cluster of sixty graves, dating to the Latian Period III (770-730/20). These are all inhumations with the exception of one cremation at the center, and this of a woman paired in the grave of a man. Unusual with her, too, is that part of her funeral goods included a bronze knife. Cremated males are found with miniature or full sized weapons, razors, and knives, while inhumed males and females lack such objects. It has been suggested that the cremated woman may have been a priestess due to her burial with a knife. Her placement at the center with a man suggests that they may have been the founding ancestors of the cluster. This cluster of graves differs from the earlier sites in that they do not form into any orderly pattern but instead are massed together and often intrude on one another. Placement is not made according to age, sex, or apparent authority, nor were the funerary gifts offered according to such distinctions. Yet it is clear that the cluster did represent a distinct group, placed within a restricted area.



Along with evidence from gravesites there is given consideration of the developments of housing throughout Latium. I won't go into the particulars here, but what is indicated is that certain houses developed into religious centers serving a small rural community, or perhaps a family, as well as served as the residence of the wealthy. At Satricum one particular site on the acropolis showed the development from a large oval house with associated cooking sheds becoming, through stages, into the main temple of the city. The problem of such evidence is that it has been interpreted based on much later texts. While the stages of development of the Satricum temple are quite clearly laid out, it may be only coincidental that there had previously been a house on the site. The differences found in funerary goods during the Latian Period IIA may indeed show that different groups within a certain community performed different funerary rites. That does not prove that the groups involved were defined by ancestry however or that they should be regarded as an origin of later gentes. Further, what the evidence clearly shows is that whatever rites were practiced in Period IIA were not continued into Period III, about the time of the founding of Rome. Further still, we do not know what originally distinguished patricians from plebeians, or their culti geniale, but it was not based in cultural, ethnic, or linguistic differences, or by wealth. While much speculation has been given to this problem, all records indicate the distinction came after the founding of Rome and not before. We may also point to two facts, the first given in Canuleis' speech pointing out that the kings of Rome were not patricians (Livy IV.3.1-5.6) and that among the earliest consuls, beginning with Junius Brutus, there were plebeians, so that the distinction may not have developed until after the founding of the Republic. In the particular case of Clodius, he belonged to the patrician gens Claudia that was Sabine and arrived after the Republic had already been established.



If the cultus civile was indeed based on the culti geniale of the kings, then these would not only have to be considered plebeian in origin, but also foreign, beginning with Numa. There is therefore no evidence to support the assumption that the Religio Romana as it was known in the Late Republic extended back to culti geniale of the pre-Roman period, or in fact any earlier than the fourth century. Attribution of certain rites and institutions originating with Romulus or Numa actually seem to originate in the latter part of the Republican era as well. In spite of what Roman texts projected back in time, or what Cicero tried to assert, the "tradition" of the Religio Romana never really went back more than a couple generations and was continuously changing from one generation to the next.



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Outdoor Spirituality

Postby Anonymous on Tue Apr 29, 2003 9:42 pm

To what extent can Religio be practiced outdoors? Are there ways of tying the worship of the Gods to the local landscape of one's region? I have always felt stronger when I am bonded spiirtually to the ground beneath my feet and the air above me. In teh past few years I have become disconnected, and am wondering if anyone has advice on how to do this within a ROman context.
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