Religion in Republican Rome. Jorg Rupke
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history. The high prestige of the college of augurs in the early Republic strongly suggests their institutionalization in some form during the regal period. An early institutionalization likewise renders probable the restriction of this role to patricians by the end of the monarchy. Certainly the right to the auspices seems to have been a kernel of patrician self-definition.52
The existence of an unknown number of religious specialists (not necessarily all male) caring for individual cults and probably cult places can be reasonably assumed. Their name, flamen, points to a much older institutional pattern. In contrast to the augurs or pontiffs, flamines tended to be appointed at a very young age, if third- and second-century evidence can be extrapolated. Groups of aristocratic youths, which is to say, members of an elite close to the king, might well have had the duty to care for some very important cults. The Vestal Virgins would fit such a pattern, as would the Salii and the poorly attested Salian virgins in the cults of Vesta and Mars.53 What is more, if the initiation to banqueting as offered by the Salian priests in the republican period was in fact given to an organized “public” group,54 this might well have been related to “the disappearance at the end of the sixth century of terracotta friezes depicting banqueting scenes” that, it has been suggested, reflects “the disappearance of the private banquet as well, as part of the realignment of social affairs consequent on the fall of the last king.”55
Associations caring for other cults probably sprang up and died. We have no idea of the origins of such groups as the Mercuriales, Arval Brethren, or Sodales Titii, all securely attested at the end of the Republic.56 It cannot be ruled out that the latter went back to the regal period, as was thought in Augustan times.57 Over a very long period, as it seems, some of these groups probably came to be regarded as “public priests” (sacerdotes publici) by the time of the late Republic. That said, before the Augustan revival, most of these were socially and politically without importance. It bears emphasis that the associations most prominent in the evidentiary record, namely the Salii and Vestales, existed outside the political realm proper by reasons of sex or age.
Much prestige was given to the pontiffs. There is considerable evidence for patterns of interaction between them and other priesthoods, indeed, of a limited supervisory role over them. This includes not only the appointing or punishing of flamines or Vestals by the supreme pontiff, but also ritual interaction with the Salii58 and with the Luperci.59 There were also many occasions where they acted together with flamines or Vestals.60 The pontiffs, represented by the pontifex maximus,61 presided over an ancient type of assembly of the curiae, the so-called comitia calata, which was charged with the continuation of families and their cults.62 In his important responsibility for regulation of the calendar, the rex sacrorum is paired with a “minor” pontiff on the Calends63 or with the pontiffs on the “Tubilustrium.”64 The pontiffs as a prominent public priesthood, hence, were the result of a conscious effort at religious centralization, presupposing the existence of both the comitia centuriata (in order to free the comitia (curiata) calata for their presidency) and a rex sacrorum, which might have been an office existing alongside the (political) king already during the late monarchy. The easiest hypothesis would be to attribute such a step to a major restructuring of society such as might be supposed to have occurred at the termination of the monarchy.65 If there had been people called “pontiffs” before, we need not suppose that their role had been comparable. It should be stressed that all the other colleges were modeled on the form of the pontifical college, without necessarily replicating the authority structures obtaining within it. In the case of the augural college, for example, its eldest member served as augur maximus but lacked specific authority; and any institutional role for the college was historically far less important than the power wielded by individual augurs.66
Calendars structure economic, political, and ritual activities. Here the Etruscan Tabula Capuana, a text of some 4,000 letters, dating to the beginning of the fifth century, offers comparative material.67 This fragmentary list of rituals, summarily described, corroborates the Roman antiquarian claim that the structuring of the months by the Ides was Etruscan; it shows a system of weeklike periods (though not necessarily of constant length) from full moon to full moon: iśveita—celuta—tiniana—a perta (institutionally corresponding to Latin Idus—Tubilustrium—Kalendae—Nonae). At Rome, these days concentrate routine cultic activities of the rex and regina sacrorum, the Flamen Dialis (priest of Iuppiter), the pontiffs, and Tubicines (trumpeters), engaging in rituals addressed to Iuppiter, Iuno, and the moon, and adapting this civic rhythm to the lunations, as is typical for a lunar calendar. It was only with the reforms of Appius Claudius Caecus and Gnaeus Flavius in the final years of the fourth century that—by codifying the calendar—months of fixed length were introduced. As a result, the months ceased to correspond to the lunar phases; the result was a pure solar calendar, the basis of today’s Julio-Gregorian calendar.68
Incipient Change
The early Republic was characterized by internal social and political conflicts. Later Roman tradition resolved the complexity of whatever knowledge and tradition it possessed into narratives structured around a dichotomy of patricians and plebeians. In this way, enormously complex historical changes, comprising processes of institutionalization and codification (e.g., the writing of the so-called Twelve Tables, c. 450), of growing social differentiation, and of the establishment of clan groups, gentes, as structures to ensure inheritance within long-lived social structures larger than families, to name but three, were understood as having been designed to distribute political and priestly positions more evenly, thus reducing strife and frustration.69 The specifics of the Roman narrative to one side, it is clear that by the second half of the fourth century, a unified elite had evolved that did not remove the distinction of patricians and plebeians but nonetheless gave equal access to offices to each group. The passing of the lex Ogulnia in 300 opened even the priestly colleges of the augurs and pontiffs to plebeians. More generally, under the pressure of an ideology of citizenship that was necessary for successful warfare and attributed powers of decision to public assemblies, an ethos had developed that oriented the drive for distinction toward “publicly” useful activities and thus enabled, or perhaps furthered, the drive within Roman culture toward external military success.70
Social developments would have affected public ritual, too. Hypothetically, an important change in the Roman ludi (games) could thus be explained. If aristocratic competition was restricted to publicly useful fields such as warfare, athletic competition as a means for achieving social distinction might have been scorned. To begin with, the organization of games was monopolized by patrician priests, who staged chariot races in March (Equirria), August (Consualia), or October (Equus October, “October Horse”), but the outcome of the games did not bring prestige to the winners. From this generalization, the “Roman” and the “Plebeian” Games, in September and November respectively, should probably be exempted, as also games organized by returning victors. Second, participation in athletic contests shifted from aristocratic youth to professional or local amusement, as indicated by the ludi Capitolini in October. Finally, the organization of the games—now multiplied and connected with different stages of a magistrate’s career— became a field of rivalry and distinction in itself. From this time on, games were concentrated at Rome, offering financial opportunities for foreign professionals and drawing spectators from its large hinterland,71 but restricting the field of elite competition to the splendors of organization. This process will be analyzed more closely in the next chapter.
The situation should not be regarded as stable, but—for a long time—as an ever shifting equilibrium. If prestigious display and consumption in the form of grave goods had been widely eliminated by the fifth century, gentilician power had been publicly stressed by the building of monumental houses from the same time onward. By the end of the fourth century, temple building by victorious generals turned into a highly competitive field, even if many of them opted for prestigious consumption in the form of victory games (ludi votivi).72 Such activities—and probably likewise the return of a victor into a city and his attempts at the display of statues of himself73—were subjected to public control by ritualization