Chapter 3

      Changes in Religious Festivals

      As sketched in the previous chapter, the mixture of Roman festivals changed from the fifth and fourth to the second and first centuries, a “long” third century being the turning point. How is this change related to the religious and political development of the Republic? I contended that the ritual changes are related to the changing role of the Senate and the nobility and to the changing notion of “public” in the term res publica. As most of our sources stem from the last century of the Republic—the exceptions being imperial, not earlier—reconstruction of historical change in the Republic is a notoriously difficult problem. And yet the attempt has to be made, helped by historico-critical approaches toward the texts, nontextual evidence, and models informed by results of comparative research. In order to keep these difficulties in the forefront of our perspective, my analysis will not follow a chronological narrative but will proceed by focusing on different traits of the festivals. Following the overview of developments provided in the previous chapter, I will argue that many of the observable changes can be interpreted as a systematization of religion, in practices of religious communication in particular. The actual character of the changes suggests that we may speak about a rationalization of religion as a public affair.

      A Multitude of Occasions

      Political interpretations of festivals (such as I will myself soon offer) are often inadequate, because they concentrate on the content and meaning of a single event. So particularist an approach will not suffice for the cultic reality of the Roman Republic. I start by taking a closer look at the Fasti Antiates maiores, the only extant republican calendar.¹ On the Idus Sextiles (the calendar antedates the Augustan period and hence the month Augustus), several entries in smaller letters are to be found that refer to the dies natales of the temples of Diana, Vortumnus, Fortuna Equestris, Hercules Victor, and Castor and Pollux, and to a sacrifice to the Camenae. These anniversaries of dedications would have been celebrated by opening the temples and performing sacrifices. These deities were not obscure, but were frequently well-known. We would expect that each of these events would attract onlookers, pious venerators as well as mere spectators—that is to say, active participants in the ritual as well as curious children or passersby only momentarily halting their step. Given the length of time necessary for sacrifices and the preparation of meat from a sacrifice, it must be assumed that the rituals would start roughly at the same time—there is no evidence of any detailed temporal coordination. As the locations involved included the Aventine, the Porta Capena, and the Forum, people who wished to take a significant part in the ritual must have had to make a selection. Such a choice was necessary on many days.

      The public character of these events was not a given. It resulted, in its realization and its degree, from a variety of factors. Many temples were built on the initiative of victorious generals, even if built with public money and by senatorial consent.² In their choice of a day for the dedication, dedicators struggled for a maximum of public awareness, and the Ides—free from various burdensome duties and everyday routines (like school)³—would offer a splendid opportunity to stage a number of additional attractive rituals. We do not know how large an audience would be gathered for the anniversaries. Individually initiated temple dedications and their annual recurrence were not the only events in competition for an audience. Concurrence of rituals was sharp on the Ides of March, for example. As on every Ides, the Flamen Dialis (and some other nonspecified priests)⁴ would sacrifice a castrated ram to Iuppiter. The day was Feriae Martis according to later calendars, which implies a sacrifice to Mars somewhere. The popular rite of the Mamuralia, the Salian priests’ beating of a fur, was dated to March 15 by Ioannes Lydus in the sixth century, but to March 14 by the mid-fourth-century Fasti Filocali; any resolution of this conflict in our data must remain hypothetical.⁵ Many people, however, decided to spend the day not in the center of the city, but on the banks of the Tiber. Ovid describes the day as popular for outings and the drinking of wine in honor of Anna Perenna, whose cult place has now been located in the north of the city.⁶

      Concurrence was even sharper on the Ides of October. Whereas the ludi Capitolini attracted Romans to the Capitoline summit,⁷ the rites of the Equus October took place on the Field of Mars, after the staging of a horse race, a sacrifice, and an ensuing race to the Forum (passing the foot of the Capitoline); the ritual contest between the inhabitants of the Subura and the via Sacra would find an end in the Regia in the center of the Forum Romanum.⁸ Whereas the Capitoline Games were organized by a college, the sacrifice of the October Horse seems to have been performed by the Flamen Martialis. The complex topographic and calendrical structure of Roman religion necessitated a large number of priesthoods and agents that were coordinated rather than subordinated. There was no central administration of these activities. Lists of ritual dates, ferialia, for every group or priesthood would regulate such complex activities. The fasti did not serve as an instrument of any detailed centralized regulation.⁹

      Despite the heavy ritual demand on the Ides (and Nones and Calends), around 30 percent of the triumphs of both the third and the second centuries were staged on these days, too, concentrating on the first and last months of the year. Here, clearly, individual strategies to maximize the impression made on the public led to the choice of the date—despite the existence of concurrent events. It has to be added that exactly the same dates, Calends and Ides in particular, were used to celebrate birthdays.¹⁰ Thus another substantial portion of the urban population had—and must have used—alternative contexts for merrymaking.

      Monopoly by Procession

      To judge by the size of the temple of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus, Rome must have already been a large city by the beginning of the Republic in the late sixth century: “la grande Roma dei Tarquini.”¹¹ A city of about thirty thousand inhabitants (to give a rough idea of its size),¹² Rome was large enough to house several festivals at public temples and hundreds of private parties at the same time. Conditions would have improved (or, from another perspective, worsened) with the growth of the city’s population to several hundred thousand by the time of the Punic Wars, and perhaps half a million by the end of the first century. How could a ritual gain the attention of a significant portion of this population? The answer was the same at Rome as in ancient Mesopotamia and archaic Athens: processions.¹³

      Processions were a staple of Roman ritual life. In the first half of the second century, Cato describes the ritual of the lustratio agri, where sacrificial animals were led around the property.¹⁴ One would imagine that the lustratio urbis comprised a similar procession, copying the annual amburbium as a crisis rite to cope with prodigia. Yet the evidence to corroborate Paulus Diaconus’s etymological definition, amburbiales hostiae dicebantur, quae circum terminos urbis Romae ducebantur—“the victims that were led around the boundary markers of the city of Rome were called ‘amburbiales’ ” (5.3–4 L)—is feeble. The fantastic economy of ancient references to the rite does not exclude anything: references to the lustratio do not exceed the phrase urbe lustrata or urbem lustrat.¹⁵ The route is difficult to reconstruct: for the amburbium Strabo gives a precise location, six miles out of Rome; the luci of Robigo and Dea Dia were about five miles away from Rome; according to Ovid, the Terminalia were celebrated at the sixth milestone on the via Laurentia.¹⁶ A processional route on this periphery would have a length of at least thirty kilometers. This is unimaginable for a one-day procession with animals to be led around and intermittent rituals. A circumambulation of Rome of the so-called Servian wall, including the Capitoline, Porta Collina, Porta Caelemontana, and Raudusculana (that