Time in Roman Religion

One Thousand Years of Religious History

Gary Forsythe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136314414
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient History

Religion is a major subfield of ancient history and classical studies, and Roman religion in particular is usually studied today by experts in two rather distinct halves: the religion of the Roman Republic, covering the fifth through first centuries B.C.; and the religious diversity of the Roman Empire, spanning the first four centuries of our era. In Time in Roman Religion, author Gary Forsythe examines both the religious history of the Republic and the religious history of the Empire. These six studies are unified by the important role played by various concepts of time in Roman religious thought and practice. Previous modern studies of early Roman religion in Republican times have discussed how the placement of religious ceremonies in the calendar was determined by their relevance to agricultural or military patterns of early Roman life, but modern scholars have failed to recognize that many aspects of Roman religious thought and behavior in later times were also preconditioned or even substantially influenced by concepts of time basic to earlier Roman religious history.

This book is not a comprehensive survey of all major aspects of Roman religious history spanning one thousand years. Rather, it is a collection of six studies that are bound together by a single analytical theme: namely, time. Yet, in the process of delving into these six different topics the study surveys a large portion of Roman religious history in a representative fashion, from earliest times to the end of the ancient world and the triumph of Christianity.

1 Preliminary Examination of the Roman Calendar

GENESIS OF THE ROMAN CALENDAR

One of our single most important sources of information on Roman religion and its temporal associations is the Roman calendar; and thanks to the survival of numerous epigraphic versions, it has received much modern scholarly attention.¹ This calendar, however, was the one revised by Julius Caesar (hence, its name “the Julian calendar”), consisting of 365 days with an additional intercalary day inserted every four years. It was established as Rome’s new calendar as of January 1, 45 B.C. and continued to be the calendar of the Roman Empire and on through the Middle Ages until revised slightly by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

Julius Caesar’s reformed calendar replaced a lunisolar one of 355 days with an intercalary month of 22 or 23 days inserted every two years or so; and this lunisolar calendar, which modern scholars usually termed the pre-Julian calendar, had been the Roman state’s method of marking the passage of time during the previous four hundred years or so of the Republic. Nevertheless, ancient testimonia and the structure of the calendar itself suggest that the pre-Julian system was the third stage in an evolutionary process of early Roman time reckoning. During the last two centuries B.C. Roman antiquarians were of the opinion that Romulus, as part of his role as Rome’s first king and city founder, had established a calendar, but one of only ten months; and that his successor, Numa Pompilius, to whom the later ancient tradition ascribed virtually all of Rome’s religious institutions, reformed Romulus’ scheme by adding two months.² Romulus began the year with March with the arrival of spring and had it end with December and the onset of winter. Numa completed the yearly cycle by organizing the dormant time of winter into the months of January and February. Strange as Romulus’ calendar may seem, in his world-wide survey of pre-literate peoples and their way of reckoning time Martin Nilsson encountered several similar cases in which a people did not bother assigning names to a season of the year characterized by prolonged heat and aridity or cold; and this notion received additional support and corroboration from Frazer’s comparative examples.³

According to Macrobius (Sat. I. 12.3) and Censorinus (20.3), Romulus’ ten-month calendar numbered exactly 304 days, and the two ancient writers further specify which of the months had 30, and which had 31 days. This overly precise scheme is certainly unhistorical and is simply the product of later antiquarian reconstruction. Alternatively, rather than viewing Romulus’ calendar as having consisted of ten months of roughly 30 days each to correspond to the lunar cycle, A. K. Michels (1949 330) as offered a different explanation, according to which the ten periods would not have been lunar cycles but periods of varying length and marked by different natural or astronomical phenomena that extended over the entire circuit of the year. A natural calendar of this sort would have been perfectly adequate for the early Roman farmer, and we possess an example of such a calendar in Hesiod’s Works and Days (11.383–617). Similarly, in his own treatise on agriculture, Varro (De Re Rust. I.27–36) describes a farmer’s natural calendar consisting of eight periods. Thus, there are two plausible ways in which we can account for the Roman antiquarian tradition of an initial ten-month (or ten-period) calendar. Furthermore, as suggested by Hesiod and Varro, it could have been used by the early iron-age inhabitants of the site of Rome, scattered among several different hilltop villages, before they had coalesced into an organized community.

The second phase of the Roman calendar is revealed by the three dividing days of the months (kalends, nones, and ides) preserved in both the pre-Julian and Julian calendars: for these days, as the later Romans well understood, had originally marked the appearance of the new moon, the moon’s first quarter, and the full moon in a calendar that was based upon the lunar cycle.⁴ Indeed, three ancient passages inform us as to how the early Roman lunar calendar operated.⁵ A minor pontiff had the duty of observing the night sky for the appearance of a new lunar cycle; and on the day following its observance, the Romans were summoned (kalatus, whence kalendae, marking the first day of the month) to the curia calabra on the Capitoline, where they were told on what day they were to reconvene in order to hear the rex sacrorum announcing the religious festivals, the days available for legal business, and other public activities for that month. The day of this second meeting occurred at the time of the moon’s first quarter and was termed the nones, coming nine days (counting inclusively) before the ides, which corresponded to the full moon. Exactly when this lunar calendar came into use among the Romans is uncertain, but since it involved a more sophisticated utilization of astronomical knowledge and also hints at the existence of a self-conscious community with organized public activities, we may plausibly conjecture that the lunar calendar would have been in existence no later than the second half of the seventh century B.C.: for archaeological findings from the Forum suggest that the site of Rome was being organized into an embryonic city-state by the last quarter of that century.⁶ Roman adoption of a lunar calendar can be seen as part of the larger pattern of state formation, which, as the result of Phoenician and Greek influence, began to transform central Tyrrhenian Italy during the seventh century B.C. (see Drews 1981).

The general pattern of cultural borrowing by Italian peoples from the more civilized Phoenicians and Greeks is best illustrated by the history of the alphabet. During the first half of the eighth century B.C., the Greeks had adapted the writing system of the Phoenicians and had created the world’s first true alphabetic script. By 700 B.C., the Etruscans in turn were borrowing and further modifying the Greek alphabet to form their own distinctive Etruscan script, and the practice of writing was quickly adopted by other native peoples of Italy.⁷ The idea of a lunar calendar could have been another cultural attribute introduced into central Tyrrhenian Italy by Greeks and Phoenicians. Furthermore, evidence for interaction between Etruscans and Romans on calendrical matters may exist in their names for the eighth month of the year. If Hoenigswald (1941 204–205) is correct in his analysis of the Etruscan names for the months preserved in a Medieval gloss, Chosfer, listed as corresponding to October, derives from the Etruscan word for ‘eight’ and is therefore exactly analogous to Roman October. As richly documented by Nilsson, months and seasons of pre-literate peoples, among whom there is little, if any, specialized calendrical knowledge or expertise, take their names from commonly known natural phenomena, such as the migration of birds, the breeding season of certain animals, or the observed rising or setting of wellknown constellations. Later, however, when astronomical learning advances and becomes the expert knowledge of a few specialists within a society, the experts are the ones responsible for devising a more accurate calendar; and one hallmark of their handiwork is to dispense with the popular designations of the months and seasons and to replace them with names derived from numbers.⁸ Thus, six of the Roman month-names (Quinctilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December) may hearken back to the earliest phase of calendrical reform in Rome.

Exactly when the pre-Julian calendar replaced the lunar one is unknown, but in attempting to date this innovation modern scholarly speculation has ranged from the sixth century (generally taken to be the Etruscan phase of Rome’s later regal period) to the late fourth century and coinciding with the curule aedileship of Cn. Flavius in 304 B.C.⁹ The only bit of solid evidence on this matter is a statement in Cicero’s De Re Publica (I.25), which informs us that the Annales Maximi recorded a solar eclipse as having occurred on the nones of June (June 5) approximately 350 years after Rome’s foundation. There was in fact a solar eclipse visible from Rome on June 21 of 400 B.C., but as regards the nature of the early Roman calendar, what is really significant about this datum is that the Annales Maximi recorded the eclipse as having been seen on the nones of June. Since a solar eclipse takes place when the moon is positioned between the sun and Earth and thus just before the beginning of a new lunar cycle, a lunar calendar should have recorded this eclipse as having occurred just before the kalends of June. Consequently, dating the event to the nones indicates that the Romans of c.400 B.C. were using the pre-Julian calendar that was divorced from the lunar cycle.

GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE PRE-JULIAN CALENDAR

The organization of the pre-Julian calendar clearly shows that it was the product of experts who were guided throughout by certain basic principles. The Roman calendrical year originally began with March, as Ovid (Fasti III.135–366) makes abundantly clear, and as is also shown by the sequence of months Quinctilis–December that take their names from the numbers 5–10. January and February were initially the eleventh and twelfth months of the year. Macrobius (Sat. I.13.5) and Censorinus (20.4) inform us that the framers of the calendar regarded odd numbers as more auspicious than even ones, probably because the latter seemed inherently unstable since they are all divisible by two and can therefore be cut in half as it were.¹⁰ Consequently, all the months except February were assigned an odd number of days, roughly corresponding to the lunar cycle of twenty-nine and a half days: January, April, June, August (Sextilis), September, November, and December were given 29 days, whereas March, May, July (Quinctilis), and October were composed of 31 days. Thus, the pre-Julian calendar comprised 355 days, itself being an odd number. February’s even number of days and terminal position in the calendar were designed to express the month’s overall character as a somber period devoted to the worship of the dead. In addition, the three dividing days of each month were also assigned to odd-numbered days: the kalends was, of course, on Day 1; the ides fell on Day 13 of the shorter months and on Day 15 of the longer ones; and the nones, which preceded the ides by nine days (counting inclusively as the Romans always did), occurred either on Day 5 or 7. In the epigraphic calendars, these days were always displayed in large letters and abbreviated as KAL, NON, and EID.

Similarly, the epigraphic calendars record a series of 48 religious festivals also written in large letters and abbreviated by the first three letters of the festival’s name; and all but four of these ceremonies were assigned to odd numbered days of the month.¹¹ Three of these four festivals assigned to even-numbered days form a distinctive group whose placement in the month can be explained. These are the Regifugium of February 24 and the two days (March 24 and May 24) marked as “quando rex comitiavit = when the king has officiated in the Comitium.” Not only do all these three festivals center around the actions of the rex sacrorum in the Comitium, but they fall on the 24th of the month. Since both March and May were composed of 31 days, the 24th came nine days (counted inclusively) before the kalends of the next month, just as the nones always preceded the ides by nine days. Moreover, since the nones in the pre-Julian calendar represented the moon’s first quarter in the earlier lunar calendar, we may be certain that March 24 and May 24 were regarded by the organizers of the pre-Julian calendar as corresponding to the moon’s last quarter. Once this association was made, the calendar makers applied the same principle to February by assigning the Regifugium to the 24th of that month. The 24th day’s association with the moon is further validated by the notation “Lunae in Graecostasi” found in the Fasti Pinciani (Degrassi 1963 48) for the 24th of August. These three words, found in only one of the epigraphic calendars, constitute our sole evidence for the existence of a chapel or small shrine to the moon on or near the Graecostasis, a speaker’s platform located at the foot of the Capitoline near the Comitium (see Richardson 1992 182–183). Associating the moon’s last quarter with an even numbered day also fits with what we know about Roman superstitions concerning the waxing and waning moon, according to which actions or things needing increase or growth were believed to benefit from the waxing moon, whereas a waning moon was thought to favor activities or things verging upon completion or termination (Taverner 1918). Hence, the nones always fell on an odd numbered day (the 5th or 7th), whereas the even numbered 24th represented the waning moon at the time of the last quarter.

On the other hand, the Equirria of March 14 is quite anomalous, and thus far, no really satisfactory explanation as to its placement on the 14th has been offered by modern scholarship.¹² It is obviously paired with the other Equirria of February 27, the latter representing the ending of the old year and the one on March 14 embodying the arrival of the new year; but the calendar makers could have just as easily assigned the second Equirria to an odd numbered day, such as March 9, 11, or 13. Why they chose the 14th instead, remains a mystery.¹³ The only observation offered by this writer is that the two Equirria, which symbolized the conjunction of the old and new years, were separated from one another by exactly two nundinae, a binum numdinum.

This brings us to another important organizational element of the pre-Julian calendar, the so-called nundinal letters. Just as many peoples today have their work, leisure, and various activities organized in accordance with a seven-day week, so the Romans of the Republic and early Empire had their lives structured around an eight-day week; and this eight-day cycle, termed nundinae, is represented in the surviving epigraphic calendars by a continuously running series of letters, A–H.¹⁴ Within each particular locale of the Roman world one specific day of the nundinal cycle was designated the market day, on which all normal daily labor was forbidden to enable farmers and townsfolk to congregate for buying and selling and other sorts of interchange.¹⁵ Each month of the Roman year was so structured that the nones, ides, and the last day of the month shared the same nundinal letter (Michels 1967 88). Thus, the nones and ides were always separated by a nundinal cycle, and the period between the nones and the last day of a month always formed a span of time that the Romans termed a trinum nundinum.

HELLENIZATION OF EARLY ROMAN CULTS

A careful examination of temple dedications and other religious activities provide us with important evidence for early Greek influence upon the thinking and religious behavior of Roman priests. These data clearly indicate that Hellenization began very early, even before the close of the regal period, and was quite pervasive throughout the early Republic.

The later Romans believed that one of their oldest cults was that of Hercules at the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium, and that it had not only preceded Rome’s foundation, but had been established by Hercules himself.¹⁶ There were several peculiarities about this cult that have attracted the attention of modern scholars as to its origin. For example, when sacrifice was made to Hercules at this altar, the person did so in the Greek fashion with the head uncovered as opposed to the normal Roman custom of having the head veiled (Macrob. Sat. III.6.17). The practice of successful merchants and generals of offering tithes of their profits and booty at this altar prompted Bayet (1926) to seek a Phoenician origin of the cult; and this hypothesis has been pursued further by other scholars. The ancient sources state that down to the censorship of Ap. Claudius Caecus in 312 B.C., the cult was administered by members of two Roman families: the Pinarii and Potitii. Although the gens Pinaria was attested in the consular fasti of the fifth century B.C., there is no evidence at all for a gens Potitia. Van Berchem (1959–1960) therefore suggested that the Potitii were not members of a Roman family, but were temple slaves, whose existence is well attested in the ancient Near East; and he further proposed that the name Potitii derives from the Latin verb potior (to take possession of) and thus must have meant “those possessed (i.e., by Hercules).”

For the purpose of this study, the one element in the cult that is most interesting and significant is the fact that its rites were observed every year on August 12. Given the cult’s antiquity and early Roman priests...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgement and Dedication
• Preface
• 1. Preliminary Examination of the Roman Calendar
• 2. The After Days and Other Curiosities
• 3. The Rites of the Argei
• 4. Origin and History of the Ludi Saeculares1
• 5. Magna Mater and the Taurobolium1
• 6. The Non-Christian Origin of Christmas1
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index