Abbreviations
Abbreviations of Latin authors and their works follow the conventions of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1982), ix–xx. Those of Greek authors and their works follow the conventions of Liddell, Scott, and Jones' A Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford, 1948), xvi–xxxviii.
The abbreviation of scholarly journals follows the conventions found in L'Année Philologique. Other abbreviations of modern collections and other works cited in the notes are listed here for your convenience:
BMC Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum. Ed. H. Mattingly. 6 vols. London, 1923–.
BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Ed. R. Hamilton, J. J. O'Donnell, C. MacKay, and R. Ferri. Bryn Mawr, 1990–.
CAH Cambridge Ancient History. 12 vols. Cambridge, 1923–39. 2nd ed. 1970–.
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. 2 vols. Berlin, 1863–.
Dittenberger Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. Ed. W. Dittenberger. 4 vols. Leipzig, 1915–24.
FGrH Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Ed. F. Jacoby. 3 vols. Berlin and Leiden, 1923–58.
FUR Forma Urbis Romae. Ed. R. A. Lanciani, L. Salomone, and E. Hoepli. Mediolani, 1893–1901.
ILLRP Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae. Ed. Attilio Degrassi. 2 vols. Florence, 1957–72.
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Ed. H. Dessau. 3 vols. Berlin, 1892–1916.
Inscr. Ital. Inscriptiones Italiae. Ed. Atillio Degrassi. Vol. 13. Rome, 1947.
LSJ A Greek–English Lexicon. Ed. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones. Oxford, 1948.
LTUR Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Ed. E. M. Steinby. 5 vols. Rome, 1993–2000.
MAR Mapping Augustan Rome. Ed. L. Haselberger, D. Romano, et al. Portsmouth, RI, 2002.
MRR Magistrates of the Roman Republic. By T. Robert S. Broughton. 3 vols. New York, 1951–60.
NTDAR A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. By J. S. Richardson. Baltimore, 1992.
OGIS Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae. Ed. W. Dittenberger. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1903–5.
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary. Ed. P. G. W. Glare. Oxford, 1968–82.
RIC The Roman Imperial Coinage. Ed. C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson. 10 vols. London, 1972.
RIC2 The Roman Imperial Coinage. Ed. J. Kent, P. Bruun, and H. Mattingly et al. Rev. ed. 10 vols. London, 1984–2003.
RRC Roman Republican Coinage. Ed. M. H. Crawford. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1974.
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Ed. A. Chaniotis, T. Corsten, et al. 45 vols. Amsterdam, 1923–.
Syd. The Coinage of the Roman Republic. Ed. E. A. Sydenham. London, 1952.
TDAR Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. By S. Platner and B. Ashby. London, 1929.
This monograph explores how some of the principal figures of the Late Republic behaved as religious performers in their departures from and returns to the city of Rome and how they constructed personal political theologies around those events. Its central claim is that the religious performances and narratives associated with certain departures and arrivals contributed to the evolution of the Republic in the period from the Social War to the death of Augustus. This span of time is often identified as the period in which the Republic ended. The present examination was inspired by the idea that such junctures of great constitutional change might instead be identified as the advent of a distinct Republic, hence the title, Ushering in a New Republic.1 New constitutions were not isolated from the performances and ideological statements that helped bring them into being.2 This monograph focuses on the latter elements more than on details of law and reform. After interpreting important arrivals and departures of certain major players of the Late Republic, the discussion concludes by proposing that the interaction between the Res Gestae, the Forum of Augustus, and Augustus' funeral instantiated a theology of the Principate that had a substantive impact on the beginning of Tiberius' reign.
The words religion and theology figure prominently in this discussion, so it is necessary to spend a moment at the outset to define how they will be used. For the purposes of the present discussion of late-republican Rome, religion is defined as those activities that relate to both individuals' and collectives' interactions with gods, whether through rituals or in claims of divine manifestations. Roman religion was a complex collection of phenomena that could be instrumental in organizing opinion and collective action, articulating identity, and distributing prestige and power.3 Although the present discussion centers on the activities of individuals of the elite and their impact on the Roman state, the model of Roman religion here adopted is Bendlin's market model.4 According to this model, Rome's religious environment was characterized by a plurality of choices that competed to attract the devotion, participation, and contributions (stipes) of the city's inhabitants. Some of these choices had the advantage of hoary tradition and elite support, but this did not prevent new gods, cults, and religious activities from developing and taking hold.
The great figures of the Late Republic who are the subject of this study were big players in this complex religious market, and they creatively crafted religious performances and narratives with the aim of competing with other Roman elites both in establishing and maintaining their own social and political preeminence and also in addressing the crises of their times. Such religious activities could form a personal political theology. Such a theology constituted an elite Roman's efforts at rationally arranging and deploying a particular constellation of religious claims and activities in response both to personal and collective needs of the time and also to the interests of historical legacy.5 Individual creativity in religious expression had a substantive impact on the shape of Roman society and politics. Potentially coherent and comprehensive, personal political theologies could significantly shape the ruling ideology or even effectively constitute such an ideology, at least in part.6 The personal political theology of Augustus, for example, represented a large part of the ruling ideology of the Julio-Claudian Principate.
A brief overview of the significance of religion both as an elite endeavor and as a means of governing and preserving the state is provided in this introduction, in order to proffer the existence of a perceived relationship between religious self-representation, rituals of departure and return, and the welfare of Rome. The balance of the introduction lays out the basic parameters of the discussion and elucidates the salience of the relationship between religious thought and performance for understanding how elite Romans negotiated cultural, social, and political change. This introduction also makes the case for the prominent place of the ceremonies of departure and arrival in articulating the relationship between the individual Roman magistrate and the city, as well as for the significance of these processes in reflecting on the constitutional makeup of Rome. The main chapters of this book then proceed to examine the significant instances of civic arrival and, to a lesser extent, departure and their representation in the careers of some of the pivotal figures of the Late Republic.
The Elite Roman as Religious Performer
At the end of his life, Rome's first emperor, Augustus, reportedly asked those around him to applaud if they felt he had played his part well.7 We do not know whether Augustus actually spoke these words, but they would have been entirely appropriate, since the life of the elite Roman male was a type of performance. One notes the effort that Cicero and Quintilian put into fashioning and teaching the art of performing through oratory. The right turn of phrase and the proper gesture were not viewed as ancillary but, instead, as vital to expressing the inner nobility of the speaker and thus persuading the listener.8 Competency in performance and uprightness in character went hand in hand. The most persuasive speaker was the vir bonus dicendi peritus, whose inner character could find optimal expression thanks to the instruction offered by such experts as Quintilian.
Religion was similar to oratory as an area of elite expression in ancient Rome, though the connection between performance and character therein has elicited less comment. A Roman man's mastery of relations with the gods was a mark of his suitability to obtain the highest honores (magistracies) in the state.9 In Roman religion, mastery of divine-human relations was demonstrated through religious expertise and virtue.10 Written religious law and historical anecdotes (exempla) were available to provide guidance to the elite man seeking such mastery. Ancient exempla even suggested that incompetence in dealing with divine matters, as in the case of the Alban king Romulus Silvius or Rome's own Tullus Hostilius, could prove deadly.11 According to legend, both of these kings botched their ritual interactions with the god Jupiter and were destroyed by lightning. Canny and competent interactions with the gods led some of Rome's greatest rulers and heroes, men like Numa and Camillus, to become masters of divine things through founding, embellishing, and preserving religious institutions that established and maintained peace with the gods (pax deorum) and, therefore, preserved Rome's imperium.12
Despite the fact that some Romans embraced the political philosophy of the Hellenistic period, they never separated the proper working of the urbs and its empire from the religious activities of the state and the favor of the gods who were believed to sustain it.13 Indeed, Romans turned to religion to bring about success in their endeavors, particularly when normal human agency and other tools were perceived to be at their limits.14 The logic at work in cults associated anciently with technologies seemingly driven by mysterious forces—technologies such as smelting or seafaring—was also applied to the city, an incredible technological feat in its own right. As Blakely has argued regarding the cultic aspects of metallurgy, “ritual and symbol bridge social need and practical action, and thus contribute to the survival of the technology; in the indigenous perspective, they are inseparable.”15 The welfare and success of something as complex as the ancient city was subject to countless forces and vicissitudes that human beings sought to master with the assistance of the gods. The ritual and ceremonial performances through which Romans attempted to do so contributed both to the city's survival and to its negotiation of the tensions between tradition and change.
Considered crucial to the welfare of the state, religious responsibilities were an indispensable part of the city's highest political offices.16 Even areas of endeavor usually considered entirely political in nature by modern students of Roman history were steeped in important religious responsibilities. Pina Polo has shown how Rome's highest magistracy, the consulship, involved vital religious duties in Rome's ritual and ceremonial cycle, in which official departures and arrivals featured prominently.17 In other words, the senatorial career was as religious in its nature as it was civic and martial; ceremonial departures and arrivals were a natural part of its rhythmic structure—and of the city's rhythmic structure too.
A magistrate's travels, including his departures and arrivals, involved consultations and manifestations of the divine will. Divine-human communication was, after all, one of the key areas of concern in Roman religion as practiced by its elite on behalf of the interests of the state (and the elite's own interests also). This took various forms, including prayer, divination, and epiphanic encounters. The discussion here will focus on that side of the communication process traditionally attributed to the agency of the gods. Romans were especially dedicated to the expert cultivation of religious technologies whereby they could accurately interpret messages from the gods and act on those messages with properly conducted rites. This divinatory system was intended to preserve the pax deorum and Rome's continued possession of the power to command (imperium).18 The complexity of the Roman system of rites and divination and the state's reliance on certain boards of experts therein (augurs, haruspices, quindecemviri), as well as the habit of carefully observing the conduct of rituals to prevent errors that might offend the gods, demonstrate a devotion to expert administration of technically elaborate religious processes.19
Epiphanies and wonders represent another form of Roman relations with the divine community.20 Unfortunately, ritual and ceremonial action have long dominated perceptions of Roman religion, to the near exclusion of consideration of experiential narratives such as divine epiphanies.21 Roman literature, however, abounds in stories of miraculous manifestations. A number of these miraculous experiences belong to the stories of the foundations of various Roman cults. These narratives of wonders may be viewed as belonging to the body of Rome's myths.22 Many of these myths took the form of exempla—anecdotes about ancient Romans that provided a lens through which Romans could reflect on issues of identity, character, values, and the institutions and constitution of Rome.23 Numerous exempla show heroic Romans demonstrating uprightness of character and mastery of divine things in their interaction with the community of the gods—gods who allow these heroes to prevail against enemies of Rome or to compete with their fellow Romans.
Consider the story of the miracle experienced by Quinta Claudia, a noblewoman despised on account of accusations of sexual immorality.24 In proof of her virtue, she alone was able to guide the ship bearing the goddess Cybele, with almost no effort, to the goddess' new seat at Rome. The story of Claudia adorned the history of the Claudian gens with prestige, but it also reminded Romans of the importance of successful dealings with the gods in matters concerning the welfare and success of the state as a whole. The Sibylline Books had tied victory in the war against Hannibal to the Great Mother. Negative exempla of wonders could convey a similar lesson. Tullus Hostilius botched the ritual to expiate a prodigy of stones raining on the Alban Mount, with the result that the god sent lightning to kill Hostilius and burn down his palace.25 Failure to expiate the bad omen of raining stones on the site of the recently conquered Alba Longa would mean a rupture in the pax deorum, perhaps endangering the city at a time when Rome was vulnerable to attacks from its neighbors.
One figure embodies more than any other the ideal of proper relations with the gods: Rome's second king, Numa Pompilius. His deftness in divine relations and his piety made him the perfect prototype for the Roman priest-magistrate.26 As a result, his creative use of religion informed the construction of the personal political theologies of a number of elite Romans.27 A person of exceeding piety in the private sphere, Numa was elected by the Senate and acclaimed by the people to serve as Rome's second king and then, upon his arrival at Rome, was inaugurated as such with the approval of Jupiter.28 As king, he single-handedly established and systematized many of the city's religious institutions, including colleges of priests, rites and festivals, religious law, and the calendar. He also interacted with the gods on a personal level in the interests of the state. Different versions of Numa's story depict him either sleeping with the nymph Egeria to procure instructions for Rome's rites or, in the rationalizing version, pretending he had received from the nymph ritual procedures that he himself had invented.29 He captured the gods Picus and Faunus to experience a manifestation of Jupiter and talk with the god.30 In the subsequent exchange, Numa was able to sidestep the god's apparent demand for human sacrifice through creative reinterpretation and thus secured from the god a pledge of empire (pignus imperii) in the form of the divinely crafted shield (ancile) that fell from heaven.31 This portrait of Numa, which has roots at least as deep as the Middle Republic and continued to develop through the Late Empire, illustrates well the ambiguity regarding the priority between technological mastery, shamanic ability, and even pious fraud in establishing the state's cultic apparatus for navigating relations with divine powers.32 The persistence of a portrait of Numa that combines both artifice and charisma suggests that the Romans held both qualities to be consistent with the behavior of a great statesman.
While it appears extraordinary, almost to the point of being sui generis, the myth of Numa's personal interaction with Jupiter bears on the way some Romans conceived of the interactions of their leaders with divine powers. The myth has its historical counterpart in the religious claims of Scipio Africanus. Indeed, that Numa's popularity was on the rise following the period when Scipio Africanus was at the peak of his career is probably not coincidental. During Scipio's bid for the aedileship, rumors spread of Scipio's private conversations with Jupiter in the Capitoline Temple.33 Later, during his siege on Carthago Nova, Scipio claimed that Neptune had appeared to him in his dreams to tell him how to cross the city's bay and attack the walls at a place where the defenses were weak.34 Polybius presented Scipio's dream as canny artifice, reminiscent of Numa's art, crafted to inspire confidence in his soldiers.35 These aspects of Scipio's biography show how interactions with the gods, even dubious ones, were deemed worthy material for constructing one's public image. Such interactions worked hand in hand with technical, cultic competence to establish a reputation for mastery of divine things, for the purposes of obtaining higher honors and furthering the interests of Rome. Livy, in fact, saw these dubious tales of divine activity as justified, if not demanded, in certain circumstances.36 A divine aura, even a dubious one, lent great institutions and achievements the appropriate auctoritas. The applicability of this principle to Augustus' religious profile could not be clearer.
As the example of Scipio Africanus suggests, the cultivation of a reputation for competence in dealing with the gods might serve to advance one's political ambitions. In the competitive arena of politics, any attribute that promised to benefit Rome might help one's prospects for success. Such a reputation might also be cultivated through the scrupulous observance of cults, the proper and reverent execution of religious responsibilities attached to magistracies, and membership in a major priestly college.37 In an effective captatio benevolentiae offered in his prosecution of Verres, Cicero made much of his eagerness to put on the games during his term as aedile.
Nunc sum designatus aedilis; habeo rationem quid a populo Romano acceperim; mihi ludos sanctissimos maxima cum cura et caerimonia Cereri Libero Liberaeque faciundos, mihi Floram matrem populo plebique Romanae ludorum celebritate placandam, mihi ludos antiquissimos qui primi Romani appellati sunt, cum dignitate maxima et religione Iovi Iunoni Minervaeque esse faciundos, mihi sacrarum aedium procurationem, mihi totam urbem tuendam esse commissam; ob earum rerum laborem et sollicitudinem fructus illos datos, antiquiorem in senatu sententiae dicendae locum, togam praetextam, sellam curulem, ius imaginis ad memoriam posteritatemque prodendae.38
[Now I am aedile designate; I take stock of what I have received from the Roman people: it is my duty to put on the most sacred games of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, with the greatest care and reverence; by me Mother Flora must be appeased for the Roman people and plebs through the celebration of games; by me those most ancient games of Jove, Juno, and Minerva, which were the first called “Roman,” must be celebrated with the greatest dignity and piety; my duty it is to watch over the sacred temples of the gods and guard the entire city; in return for my effort and pains in these duties, the following benefits have been given: a more honorable place for speaking my opinion in the Senate, the toga praetexta, a curule chair, and, for my legacy and my posterity, the right of exhibiting my image.]
Cicero expressed such piety in court because he thought it would be effective. His speech also shows the connection Romans made between pious action and magisterial honors. According to Cicero's own formulation, honors carrying real political clout and lasting prestige were due him because he would piously execute the religious duties with which he had been entrusted.39 Moreover, his acquisition of the ius imaginis points to the development of his religio-political persona, which belonged in both the private and public spheres and was potentially subject to state injunction.40 When considering the religious significance of Cicero's ius imaginis, it is useful to recall the placement of Scipio Africanus' imago in the Capitoline Temple and to consider its role in either commemorating or inspiring stories of Scipio's intimacy with Jupiter Optimus Maximus.41 As Flower hypothesizes, the location of Africanus' mask allowed his family to incorporate the Capitoline in its funeral processions, creating a stunning effect when these processions descended the Capitoline through Africanus' arch.42
The behaviors of both Cicero and Scipio Africanus, though different, belonged to the practice of establishing personal political theologies to obtain political advantage, construct a distinctive personal legacy, and promote the interests of the state.43 Such personal theologies combined both private and civic expressions of religious identity and were assembled, magpie-like, from family history, ancient exempla, personal omens and epiphanies, ritual participation, priestly and magisterial ceremonial roles, and relationships to sacred sites and structures. An individual's unique combination of these and similar elements made his personal theology distinctive in a competitive field. Elements could be emphasized or elided as needed44—for example, Julius Caesar could easily emphasize his descent from Iulus of Troy, while Cicero, a new man from Arpinum, would rarely, if ever, mention his royal Italian ancestry.45 In all of this variety, however, the personal political theologies of the Late Republic consistently connected self-aggrandizement with the aggrandizement or welfare of the state—a standard Roman cultural theme.46
Due to modern views about skepticism, belief, and concepts of the self, the complexity and contradictions of the religious activities and expressions of elite Romans such as Scipio and Cicero have given rise to numerous questions and uncertainties. The Roman elites' personal political theologies, as conceived for the present discussion, were not static or even necessarily internally consistent. Such theologies were ever evolving. Furthermore, since Roman elites were comfortable with the notion of adopting personae suitable for a particular performative context or genre, one cannot expect complete consistency (or anything close to it) in all religious expressions and in every performative context or text. This untidy richness has been noted particularly in the tumultuous life and vast corpus of Cicero.47 Behaviors and statements of the Roman elite shift according to situation, despite the fact that qualities like constantia were certainly revered. Thus the present discussion is concerned not with such questions as what Sulla or Octavian “believed,” an issue Feeney has addressed elsewhere, but with how religious personae were constructed in performance and text to meet the challenges of the late-republican crisis.48 Because such theological personae evolved, this discussion is historical. At the same time, this discussion treats the specific events as shaped by a culturally determined narrative arc that the Romans themselves found “good to think with”—that of departure and arrival.49 These events belonged to the realm of Roman ceremony and public spectacle, through which Romans took part in the broader ongoing cultural discourse regarding Roman memory, identity, and the negotiation of power.
Theologies of Arrival, Salvation, and Restoration
The political theologies of the Late Republic spoke to the problems of the day: disorder in Italy, a crumbling Republic, and foreign threats to Rome's empire. A common theme of the theological arguments the major historical figures of the Late Republic crafted in text and performance was that of the leader as a divinely appointed savior of Rome. The ceremonial and theological elements that some of these leaders employed in crafting their autobiographical narratives prompted this monograph's investigation and inspired its organization. The memoir of Sulla and the Res Gestae of Augustus share the use of departure and arrival ceremonies as both programmatic devices and focal points for articulating the distinctive political theologies of each man.
Sulla arguably gave birth to monarchy at Rome when, independent of any external authority and as an exile and enemy of the state, he portrayed himself to be the embodiment of Republican legitimacy and took it on himself to march on Rome to restore order.50 In doing so, Sulla became a sovereign, or as Schmitt put it, “he who decides on the exception,” the exception being “any kind of severe economic or political disturbance that requires the application of extraordinary measures.”51 Sulla implicitly abdicated this monarchy when his position was legalized via the dictatorship.52 Still, from the time he was declared a hostis until his dictatorship, he held an unusual position that demanded an apologetic. He provided one in his autobiography, which offered an argument of divine legitimization for his actions, or a political theology. In doing so, he set a dangerous precedent. Subsequent appeals to the chaotic state of the Republic would be used by Cicero, Pompey, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus to justify the extreme measures they took on behalf of the state, all the while calling into question the very basis of the Republic and requiring creative religious rhetoric and performances to maintain the credibility of the idea of the Republic's continuity.
Sulla's theological self-presentation was highly influential on subsequent political theologies, through the prominent role it allotted to Sulla's departure and arrival and the connection of those events with a divinely mandated time frame. In the dedication of his autobiography to his friend Lucullus, Sulla described a remarkable prodigy of fire erupting at Laverna, which haruspices, speaking in a context abounding in signs of a change in saecula, had said heralded the appearance of a new ruler of the coming age, which Sulla then interpreted as a sign that he would save Rome.53 According to the Etruscan concept of saecula, each city or people was allotted a fixed number of saecula (periods identified, by prophecy, as equal to the lifetime of the longest living person of a generation), after which the city or people would end.54 The haruspices reported this omen near or during the time of Sulla's departure (profectio) for his command during the Social War. Thus, in his memoir, Sulla connected his departure for war to a contemporary divine narrative regarding the saecula. Thein has argued that Sulla's memoir ended with his triumph.55 If this is true, Sulla's memoir, though it encompassed the bulk of his life, began in the same manner as the opening of a Roman magistrate's campaign, in a profectio, and ended in a military ceremony of civic entry, the triumph.56
Since the traditional triumphal procession ended at the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, it is possible that Sulla's memoir ended in front of the charred remains of that edifice, which symbolized, in so many ways, the existence and security of the city.57 If so, Sulla may have used the destroyed temple to point to the transition from the last age (saeculum) to a new beginning, thereby connecting the fire that consumed the temple with the Lavernan prodigy.58 Divine signs and ceremonies potentially served as the bookends of Sulla's heavily theological account of his life. Blending Etruscan secular doctrine with the magistrate's departure and arrival appears to have been Sulla's own innovation.59 His theological argument combined the familiar patterns of Roman government with a larger cosmic framework at a time when Rome's imperial horizons had greatly expanded while its governmental structures remained fundamentally those of a classical city-state. As a result, whether intentionally or not, he expanded the possibilities of personal leadership at Rome to include the notion that one could be not only the savior of Rome but also the savior of the empire and the inaugurator of a new age. Sulla thus stands at the head of a list of men in the first century BCE—including Pompey, Cicero, Caesar, P. Lentulus Sura, and Augustus—who either would claim to be or would be considered by others as the “man of the saeculum,” a savior figure who was appointed by the gods and could bring an end to the great struggles of the age.60
Augustus built on Sulla's theological foundation. In his career retrospective, the Res Gestae, Augustus used his ceremonial arrivals at Rome to depict his evolution from dynast during civil war to princeps.61 Allusions, in two successive sections of the document, to Rome's two founding kings, Romulus and Numa, imbued the process with a certain sense of historical logic. At the outset of his work, Augustus recounted his arrival to free the city from the domination of a faction using Caesarian and Romulean allusions.62 As Augustus' account progresses, the character of his arrivals shifts from one of martial celebration to one of cultic foundation, and allusions to the figure of Numa come to the foreground.63 Not only did Augustus' use of ceremony and exempla in crafting his own personal career justify his actions through ancient precedents, but, more importantly, his narrative articulated the emergence of a new, revolutionary Augustan religious order, which was nevertheless built on a traditional foundation. Like Sulla's narrative, Augustus' account of the ceremonial performance of the Roman elite man in the Res Gestae becomes the means of re-establishing the state anew at the dawn of a new era.
The choice of Sulla and Augustus to use ceremonies of departure and arrival to express their unique political theologies was not arbitrary. Centuries of Hellenic cultural tradition regarding remarkable arrivals stood behind them, informing their choices both directly and indirectly.64 Numerous anecdotes dating as early as Homer attest to a widespread belief in the power of timely, epiphanic arrivals of individuals or groups at the city as a solution to stasis.65 Undoubtedly the most famous of these stories was the divinely aided return of Odysseus to Ithaca, which brought an end to the societal and political chaos reigning in the form of the suitors. Herodotus recounted the story of Peisistratus' arrival at Athens in the company of Athena in a time when the city was split into three competing factions.66 For a time, the arrival of Peisistratus in the company of the goddess seemed to resolve the issue, and Peisistratus was established as the tyrant of the city. Other stories in Greek literature portray the arrival of a priest or religiously charismatic individual as bringing an end to stasis.67 After Alexander the Great, the solution to local problems would be the arrival of the king (parousia, epidêmia), who would be looked to as the benefactor (euergetês) and savior (sotêr) of the polis and would receive divine honors in return.68 In the Hellenistic period, the epiphanic arrival also pertained to the construction of a great empire. Arrian's account of the arrival of Alexander the Great at Gordium, wherein Alexander demonstrates his destiny to rule over Asia by cutting the Gordian knot, shows how the old myths of arrival resolving civic stasis were reworked to lay claim to a divine sanction for empire.69 Midas had ridden a wagon to Gordium to become its king and thus fulfill an oracle to end stasis in the city; Alexander cut the knot on the same wagon and thereby signaled that he would rule Asia.
Romans had firsthand experience dealing with stasis in the Greek polis. Roman patrons had intervened in stasis in Greek poleis through the application of law and Roman authority.70 Some Romans were even greeted as the divinely appointed savior who would bring an end to the problems of the polis.71 The same concept of the positive effects of an epiphanic arrival would exert its influence on Latin historiography. In imagining Rome's early history, Romans inserted the figure of Numa, who combined technical adeptness with shamanic abilities, to constrain the rabble of Romulus—a group that threatened to fly apart into multiple factions.72 Numa's arrival resulted in the creation of a religious system that would hold Rome together on an enduring basis. This vision of Numa's role is especially apparent in Livy's account, in which disputes between rival parties followed the departure of Romulus as king: patrum interim animos certamen regni ac cupido versabat; necdum ad singulos, quia nemo magno opere eminebat in novo populo, pervenerat: factionibus inter ordines certabatur (“A desire for and dispute over kingship was agitating the minds of the senators. It had not yet arisen among individual citizens, because no one in this young citizenry stood out exceedingly; instead factions among the different orders of society were vying with each other”).73 The accession of Numa to the throne resolved these disputes. Plutarch would later marvel at the fact that there had been no factional strife during the reign of Numa.74
One of the practical causes of civil unrest in antiquity was the departure and lengthy absence of a large portion of the adult male populace for military campaigns. This problem was treated in the nostos tales of the Greek epic cycle, as in the story of Penelope's suitors disrupting the house of Odysseus during his absence.75 The chaos that ensued in the absence of the warrior required a type of refoundation of the community upon his return. Tales of domestic disorder during the campaigning season were also present in the Roman tradition. For example, Sextus Tarquin's early return from battle to rape Lucretia brought a premature end to the dynasty of the Tarquins.76
Rome's campaigning season shaped its culture of departure and arrival in distinctive ways.77 Consider the ritual cycle of the consulship. At the beginning of the consular year, the consuls were granted imperium by a lex curiata.78 The consuls were then inaugurated, took their vows on the Capitoline, and met with the Senate in the same temple. Humm has remarked on the symbolism of refoundation associated with the inauguration of the consuls as a kind of renewal of city, or inauguratio urbis, commenting that it is “as if the foundation of the city was symbolically renewed each time the imperium passed into other hands.”79 In the consuls' first meeting with the Senate, the great issues of the year were set out and discussed; appropriate provinciae were identified, and assignments were made by sortition. The consuls then had the duty of expiating the prodigies of the previous year, officiating at the Feriae Latinae, and perhaps also sacrificing at Lavinium before they left for their provinciae. As they prepared to leave for their provinciae, they would perhaps take new vows and the auspices,80 they would don the paludamentum, and their lictors would fix the axes on the fasces.81 Upon returning to the city, the magistrate would change back into the toga, dismiss his lictors, and thus end his command by crossing over the pomerium.82 If the magistrate sought a triumph, he would linger outside the pomerium until the Senate granted or refused him the honor.83 If the honor were granted, the triumphator could cross the pomerium with all of the accoutrements of a magistrate exercising imperium militiae. Only when he mounted the Capitoline at the end of the triumphal procession would he deliver up his triumphal garb to the god and thus end his command.
The religious significance of this cycle is apparent. Livy was attuned to the fact that the return completed a process that the departure initiated and that both were part of a religious cycle: consul proficiscens praetorve paludatis lictoribus in provinciam et ad bellum vota in Capitolio nuncupat: victor perpetrato bello eodem in Capitolium triumphans ad eosdem deos quibus vota nuncupavit, merita dona portans redit (“The consul or praetor departing for his province and war, and accompanied by lictors wearing the paludamentum, takes vows on the Capitoline; after he has finished the same war, the victor returns in a triumphal procession to the Capitoline and the same gods to whom he made his vows, bearing them the gifts they earned”).84 Even the magistrate who did not triumph would fulfill his vows at the Capitoline Temple.
The magisterial cycle, with its clear beginnings and endings, also readily lent itself to narrative and was thus easily relatable to other stories. Roman myths concerning the departure and arrival of great leaders show how Romans used such narratives to grapple theologically with issues regarding the nature of the city and the interaction between gods and humans in constructing the urbs, its power, and the power of individuals within it. One readily notes the miracle-laden stories of foundation and arrival among the stories of Rome's kings, beginning with Romulus.85 The arrival of one monarch marked the foundation of the city; the departure of another marked the beginning of the Republic.86 In the latter case, Romans related the myth of Tarquin's departure to the celebration of Regifugium on February 24, the day after Terminalia.87 Thus an archaic ritual in which the rex sacrorum fled after sacrificing in the Comitium was related to the mythical event of Tarquin's departure as well as to the constitutional shift from monarchy to the Republic. None of these relationships likely has a basis in historical events.88 The connection between the myth, the ritual, and the political transformation from monarchy to Republic constitutes a political theology in the form of an exemplum. As an exemplum, the story of the flight of Tarquin cultivated an emotional attachment to a Republic under consuls as a system superior to regnum. The commemoration of the event in the annual celebration of the Regifugium (as well as numerous other devices) inculcated an aversion toward reges.
The relationship between departure, entry, and Rome's political constitution is also explored in the exemplum of Genucius Cipus. This anecdote provides an excellent demonstration of the theological reasoning that might be established and transmitted through exempla, as Rüpke has elsewhere shown regarding the exemplum of Horatius.89 When the praetor Genucius Cipus departed for a campaign and went through the Porta Raudusculana while wearing the paludamentum, horns sprouted from his forehead.90 In Ovid's version, a haruspex interpreted this sign to indicate that Cipus would become king if he should reenter the city.91 Cipus instead chose self-exile to prevent the return of monarchy at Rome. In this way, he demonstrated supreme regard for the Republic. To commemorate his piety and patriotism in perpetuity, his bronze effigies was placed on the Porta Raudusculana. While the story of Cipus may have earlier origins (specifically, the promotion of the gens Genucia, a plebeian clan of Etruscan origins, in the fourth century BCE), the extant versions date to the Early Empire and demonstrate the story's applicability to interlocking issues regarding the role of magistrates, their presence and absence from the city, and the constitution of Rome.92
The Cipus story is particularly striking in the way it supports the current challenge to numerous modern assumptions regarding Roman institutions. First, a close examination of the story reveals the surprising fact that therein the pomerium does not appear as the boundary traditionally assumed to distinguish the city from its surroundings. In modern scholarship, the pomerium features prominently in any discussion of the departure and return of imperium-bearing magistrates and promagistrates. In the Cipus story, the important passageway between city and territory, ritually speaking, is the porta, not the pomerium.93 Recent discussion of the pomerium and imperium supports the idea that the pomerium does not represent the stable and clear marker that it was once assumed to be.94 Of course, given the name of the hero Cipus, which is so close to the word for boundary stone (cippus), some version of the Genucius Cipus story may have concerned the origins of the pomerium. In that hypothetical version, perhaps Cipus gave his name to the markers of the boundary he laid to prevent others from re-entering the city with a regal imperium militiae, as he might have done had the horns not warned him. In any case, the Cipus story suggests that the will of Fate, the intervention of gods, and human decisions and actions could all contribute to the definition and identity of the city in its monuments, landscape features, boundaries, and political constitution. Sulla's extension of the pomerium and Tacitus' claim that this was the traditional ritual action of those who extended Rome's imperium do not settle the question of its significance.95 The story of Cipus and that of Sulla's extension of the pomerium each represent different data points revealing the power of performances, as well as of narratives about those performances, in molding, reinterpreting, and constructing Roman space, power, and landscape.
Recent scholarship has also highlighted the degree to which individual commanders might improvise in a ceremonial context to construct their own religious statements. Among ceremonies of return, the most obvious example to cite is the triumph, a topic that has been extensively interrogated in the work of Beard. One of Beard's most important conclusions is that the modern portrait of the triumph as a static, rule-bound ceremony is problematic.96 While it would be equally problematic to claim—and Beard does not—that the triumph had no traditions or boundaries that made it distinctive from other victory celebrations, the history of the triumph provides plentiful evidence of individual expression in the spectacle, including its religious aspects. During his celebration of a triumph, Claudius Marcellus, departing from tradition, dedicated the only firmly historical spolia opima to Jupiter Feretrius. Marcellus' dedication of the spolia opima in the context of his triumph attests to the legitimizing power of religion in constructing an individualized ceremonial performance.97 When the Senate refused a triumph for Appius Claudius Pulcher (cos. 143 BCE), he celebrated one at his own expense. His daughter Claudia, a Vestal priestess, walked by his side up the Capitoline and thus prevented a tribune from obstructing his procession. The reader is perhaps to understand that the sanctitas of the Vestal trumped the tribune's sacrosanctitas.98 As in the case of Marcellus, Pulcher's strategic deployment of religious institutions (even a family member's priestly office) demonstrates the latitude one might exercise in religious expression in order to bolster one's image and navigate competition.
The choice of patron gods was no less important an element of theological choice than the details of the performance of ceremonies and rituals. Noteworthy is the relationship between the imperium-bearing magistrate and Jupiter, since this god was cast as the guarantor of Roman imperium in Roman myth.99 The consul-elect (or praetor-elect) received imperium with Jupiter's approval, and he would make his vows as commander and magistrate to Jupiter. He discussed the pressing issues of the day with the Senate in Jupiter's presence on the Capitoline, and he received his provincial command before the god. The consul was required to officiate at a banquet of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount before he could head out for his campaign. When the campaign was finished, he fulfilled his vows to Jupiter, and if he was both successful and politically fortunate, he might celebrate a triumphal procession that mounted the Capitoline Hill and there perform sacrifices to Jupiter costumed in the Jovian fashion (ornatus Iovis). Although the precise meaning of the phrase ornatus Iovis is unknown, it is clear that some relationship with Jupiter is denoted thereby.100 Even if the magistrate were not granted a Roman triumph, he might decide to triumph on the Alban Mount, before Jupiter Latiaris.101 Even after a triumph in monte Albano, the commander would fulfill his vows on the Capitoline, albeit not as a triumphator.
While the primary rituals and ceremonies of the consular cycle revolved around Jupiter, individual consuls and other bearers of imperium militiae could, of course, invoke, receive, and celebrate the help of other gods. Commanders often made vows to other deities before they departed for a campaign, or they might make a vow to a deity while on a campaign. If the god granted his petition during the campaign, the commander was bound by religious obligation to fulfill that vow upon his return. During the Middle Republic, the fulfillment of such vows sometimes led to the construction of votive temples, which increasingly crowded the city of Rome as reminders (monumenta) to the city's inhabitants of the successes and piety of particular commanders, as well as the beneficence of the gods.102 Interactions with the gods during warfare manifestly and permanently changed the religious landscape of Rome. The choice of deity contributed to the distinctiveness of the individual commander and his achievements. One commander might owe his victory to Salus, another to Minerva. Immediate or more general circumstances in the campaign might drive the decision to seek a particular god's assistance. In the Late Republic, the personal religious claims of the commander became more consequential, since his army, increasingly dependent on and thus loyal to him, sought and relied on signs of his divine favor.103 These claims sometimes involved a commander and a particular deity in a special, ongoing relationship that was not limited to a particular vow or campaign. Victorious arrival at the city was nevertheless a particularly appropriate time for commemorating the deity to whom the victor owed his success. In the late Hellenistic period, it was also a time for performing one's own divine identity.104
Structure of the Argument
As the preceding discussion has sought to show, the Romans had a rich repertoire of practices and narratives from which to draw in constructing their arrivals at Rome in such a way as to maximize the sense that an arrival would have the greatest positive impact on the city. In the last century of the Republic, when the continued existence of the city and the Republic was in doubt, the prolonged sense of crisis plaguing Rome presented an unusual opportunity to the great commanders to represent themselves as city saviors and refounders who, like the founders of the regal period, partnered with the gods in setting up the city on an enduring basis or even in transforming it into something markedly new. As already noted at the outset, the personal political theologies that these men constructed through performance and narrative are the subject of the present monograph. In particular, this discussion will look at significant arrivals in the careers of Sulla, Pompey, Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus. While it is true that the personal theologies of other political players (e.g., Sextus Pompey and Antony) played a crucial role in the events of that time period, a wealth of evidence attests to the efforts of the men discussed in this book to style themselves as divinely chosen refounders and saviors of the city through their arrivals at Rome. For these same men, there is also plentiful evidence of what they did to follow through on their promises to reform or refound Rome after that arrival and, thus, evidence of how their subsequent actions (and, in some cases, writings) continued to shape perceptions of their arrivals. Particularly in Augustus' career, one sees how a ruler might continue to revisit his earlier arrivals over the course of his career and reshape them to suit his purposes. As this monograph will seek to show, Augustus' theological representation of his arrivals in the Res Gestae played a substantive role in the creation of the Principate.
This monograph is divided into three parts. Part I covers the Sullan Republic. The first chapter looks at Sulla's self-representation as savior and refounder of the city in response to Marius and to the challenges of the decade of the eighties. Chapter 2 argues that Pompey and Crassus set out to reform the Sullan constitution, not only to address continuing problems in Rome, but also to accommodate Italians who had long waited to obtain the privileges Rome had promised in pursuit of an end to war in Italy. The prominence of Hercules in Pompey and Crassus' religious activities gave cultic expression to such aims. Chapter 3 examines Cicero's different methods for theologizing his exile and return to Rome both as a confirmation of a divine mandate for his acts as consul of 63 and also as a divine plan that he serve as censor to save the Republic from its (his) enemies.
Part II covers the period from the fall of the Sullan Republic to the end of the Sicilian War. Chapter 4 argues that Caesar's ovatio in late January 44 should be interpreted as a response to the challenge to Caesar that Cicero issued in his Pro Marcello. Cicero argued that Caesar's one purpose was to restore the Republic, but he also seemed to suggest that doing so would make Caesar's own position obsolete. Caesar answered this challenge by presenting, in the Feriae Latinae and his ovation, his own vision of a Republic with himself as master of ceremonies. Chapter 5 interprets Octavian's return from the Sicilian War in 36 as his attempt to frame the event as the triumph of Apollo over Neptune and the end of civil war between Pompeians and Caesarians. The religious honors Octavian received at the time, which emphasized the commemoration of his victorious return and asserted that he had replaced Sextus Pompey as champion of the plebs, laid the initial groundwork for the Principate.
Part III reinterprets Augustus' Res Gestae and its political theology through the lens of arrival practices. Chapter 6 looks at the form and placement of the inscription in comparison with a handful of other documents, including Pompey's inscription in front of the delubrum Minervae, Caesar's silver tablets, the bronze tablet of Capys, the lost books of Numa, and the fictional golden stele of Zeus Triphylius. Chapter 7 examines the inscription's use of the metaphor of arrival to provide a theological rationale for the Principate. While Octavian's early arrivals are depicted in language reminiscent of Romulus and Caesar, his arrivals after Actium conform to the model of Numa, Rome's peaceful king. Augustus' itinerum Numae in chapters 9 through 13 of the Res Gestae is the subject of chapter 8. Despite his emulation of others, Augustus staged, performed, and subsequently wrote about ceremonial arrivals that were both innovative and distinctive. As a new kind of ruler over a new Republic in Rome, Augustus necessarily arrived at the city in a different way and thus set precedents for the practices of subsequent emperors. The discussion in this monograph concludes with a brief look at the theology of the Forum of Augustus and how the Res Gestae read the Forum to construct Augustus as a unique deity whom, it is suggested, his successors were not intended to attempt to equal.
1. Flower 2010.
2. The present argument thus seeks to contribute to our understanding of how so-called symbolic capital translated into structural change. See Hölkeskamp 2010, 107–24.
3. For an accessible overview of Roman religion in the Republic, see Rüpke 2007, 3–38.
4. Bendlin 2000, 134.
5. For a literary example of the rational arrangement of religious ideas and divine personalities to create a certain effect, see the discussion of Hor. Carm. 1.30 in Rüpke 2007, 3–5. Rüpke (5) writes, “[T]he divinities are invoked in deliberate combinations, some of them, such as the pairing of Venus and Amor, familiar, others, such as Iuventas and Mercury, unusual, indeed unique. In such contexts, the speaker (or poet)…is evidently free to make his or her own decisions. He or she knows, or claims to know, how to match deities in particular ways for particular ends, and thus bring them to bear on this situation now.” Roman authors writing on religious subjects could thus be said to be theologizing, albeit not in the systematic mode traditionally associated with Christianity. See Beard 1987 for the idea that Rome's philosophical and scholarly literature on religious topics was a form of genuine religious expression.
6. This view of the intersection between theology and ruling ideology is informed by Sourvinou-Inwood's 2000 discussion of religion as polis ideology and Shaw's 1985 discussion of Stoicism as imperial ideology. Of polis religion, Sourvinou-Inwood (22) wrote, “The Greek polis articulated religion and was articulated by it; religion became the polis' central ideology, structuring, and giving meaning to, all the elements that made of the identity of the polis, its past, its physical landscape, the relationship between its constituent parts. Ritual reinforces group solidarity, and this process is of fundamental importance in establishing and perpetuating civic and cultural, as well as religious identities.” Writing of Stoicism under the empire, Shaw (52) observed, “Stoicism, much more than merely justifying or underpinning new social relations, was one of the signposts on the road to the exercise of novel forms of political power and the social relations inherent in them. To continue the metaphor, members of a ruling class do not require such obvious signposts during all their social existence,…[b]ut in moments of doubt,…Stoic philosophy was one consistent means of obtaining a sign.” The personal political theologies of the figures discussed in this book served ideological functions similar to those proposed for polis religion and philosophy by Sourvinou-Inwood and Shaw, respectively.
7. Suet. Aug. 99.1; D.C. 56.30.4; Swan 2004, 304; Breebaart 1987, 89–91; Kessissoglu 1988, 385–88.
8. Quint. Inst. 1. pr. 9: oratorem autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse nisi vir bonus non potest, ideoque non dicendi modo eximiam in eo facultatem, sed omnis animi virtutes exigimus. On the relationship between performance, training, and character, see Gunderson 2000, 7–8, 15, 59–86.
9. The close relationship between magistracy and priesthood has been dubbed the “civic compromise.” See Gordon 1990, 194–97. According to this model, the elite exploit the slippage between priestly and political roles in order to achieve “ideological domination.” The present discussion adopts the central observations of this position, viewing the elite's use of religion not as completely determinative of Rome's religious system but, rather, as a way of exercising great influence and persuasion in the “religious market” of Rome. See Bendlin 2000.
10. Such a relationship between oratory and religion is unsurprising, since rhetoric was thought to have sprung from magical enchantments. See DeRomilly 1975, 11–20. A similar display of prowess in divine affairs is mixed with wisdom in the performances of the Seven Sages. See Martin 1998, 115–28. Cicero placed great emphasis on the importance of virtue in carrying out religious acts, in Leg. 2.15, 19–22. See also Dyck 2004, 283; Wiseman 1994; Tatum 1993. The expertise of sacerdotes is an important part of this formula for proper religious observance. Cf. Cic. Leg. 2.20–21.
11. Both Silvius and Hostilius were killed by lightning for offending Jupiter in the way they conducted his rites. On the death of Silvius, see Liv. 1.3; D.H. 1.71.3; D.S. 7.5.10; Zonaras 7.1D; Ogilvie 1965, 45; Smith 1895, 203–10. On the death of Hostilius, see Liv. 1.31; D.H. 3.35.2; Plin. Nat. 2.140, 28.14; Zonaras 7.6; Ogilvie 1965, 124–25.
12. On the centrality of preserving the pax deorum in Roman religion, see Wissowa 1912, 390–94; Latte 1960, 40–41; Bayet 1969, 58–60. This would remain true throughout the course of the empire, even when the god in question was the Christian one. On the pax Dei, see Tabbernee 2007, 309 n. 6.
13. Cic. Catil. 2.13.19; Dom. 56.143; Sest. 23.53; N.D. 2.3.8; Sal. Jug. 14.19; Hor. Carm. 6.1–6; Liv. 5.51.9–10; Prop. 3.21–22. Polybius (6.56) views religiosity as one area in which Roman political society is superior to all others. Posidonius expresses a similar view. Cf. Ath. 6.274; D.S. 36.13.3.
14. Malinowski 1948, 8–15. Malinowski writes about magic as a tool employed alongside technical expertise in so-called primitive societies to address problems that cannot be controlled by technical expertise alone. He distinguishes between magic and religion in a manner that no longer has general scholarly support. Some Roman religious activities could perform a function similar to the one Malinowski attributes to magic.
15. Blakely 2006, 69–71.
16. Holders and former holders of high office populated the Roman Senate. Beard (1990, 30–34) has argued that the Senate, in fact, “mediated” between the citizens and gods in Roman religion. Brennan (BMCR 02.02.01) and Thomas (2005, 130–31) argue against this view. Nevertheless, the priests of the state religion were drawn exclusively from the senatorial order. The state cult belonged to that “political center” where, in the words of Geertz (1983, 124), “there is both a governing elite and a set of symbolic forms expressing the fact that it is the truth governing.” There, he continues, “[the elite] justify their existence and order their actions in terms of a collection of stories, ceremonies, insignia, formalities, and appurtenances that they have either inherited or, in more revolutionary situations, invented.” Rome's crisis-filled first century BCE saw an explosion in the creative adaptation and deployment of these things.
17. Pina Polo 2011a, 21–57.
18. Brent 1999, 17–54.
19. On ritual error as a cause of rupture in the pax deorum and, thus, military defeat for Rome, see Rosenstein 1990, 54–91.
20. Platt 2011, 1–24; Feeney 1999, 104–7; Versnel 1987; Lane Fox 1986, 102–67.
21. Smith (1990, 34 n. 58; 1992, 96–103) explains how the characterization of classical pagan religion as empty ritual results from Protestant bias against the Catholic Mass. See also Phillips 2011, 18.
22. Traditionally, Rome has been thought to lack myth because Greek mythology has been taken as normative. See Bremmer and Horsfall 1987, 1–11. Recently, views have begun to shift, thanks to increasing acknowledgment of the mythological function of Roman historical narrative. See Wiseman 2008, 10–12. As Wiseman (11) explains, “The Romans were not a people without myths. They too had stories to tell about their gods, their forefathers and the achievements of their city. They were indeed profoundly influenced by Greek ideas, but not just in the artificial, antiquarian sense that Wissowa had in mind.” See also Feeney 1999, 27–28.
23. Rüpke (1992, 71–72) discusses the use of religion in exempla that establish and transmit a “hierarchy of norms.” Using the story of the duel of the Horatii and the subsequent murder of Horatius' sister, Rüpke notes that “the people acquit the son by referring to his bravery (virtus), not law.” According to the reasoning implicit in the exemplum, ritual purification substitutes for punishment or acquittal in resolving the conflicts presented by the murder, because such purification is in the interest of the community at large and reflects the priority it gives to virtus demonstrated on its behalf. Rüpke sees the period of the Gracchi and Sulla as two chronological settings in which this particular exemplum would have been most salient in dealing with extraordinary extrajudicial murders of citizens. See also Mueller 2002, 1–21, on religious exempla. On the role of miracles in Ovid's exemplum of Philemon and Baucis, see Fabre-Serris 2009. For the power of exemplarity in constructing Roman identity and rooting that identity in the city's landscape, see Roller 2004.
24. Ov. Fast. 4.300–28; Liv. 29.10.4–11.8, 14.5–14. On Claudia and Cybele, see Scheid 2001; Borgeaud 2004, 59–71.
25. Liv. 1.31.
26. Liv. 1.18–21; D.H. 2.58–76; Plu. Num. Levene (1993, 134) argues that it is only in Livy that Numa's piety is a central feature of his character.
27. Among them, naturally, were those Romans who claimed descent from Numa, such as the Aemilii, Calpurnii Pisones, Marcii, and Pomponii. See Farney 2007, 22–25, 79, 112–14.
28. According to Livy (1.18.1), Numa was chosen because of his inclita iustitia religioque. On the election of Numa, see D.H. 2.57–58; Liv. 1.17–18; Ov. Met. 15.1–4, 479–81; Plu. Num. 2–6. For Numa's inauguration, cf. Liv. 1.18. For discussion of the inauguration, see Linderski 1986, 2256–96.
29. Liv. 1.19; D.H. 2.60.5–61.1; Ov. Met. 15.482–84; Plu. Num. 4, 13, 15.
30. Ov. Fast. 3.297–322; Plu. Num. 15.3–4. See Ov. Fast. 4.649–70 for Numa's sacrifice to Faunus and the god's subsequent epiphany in a wood sacred to Pan. Pasco-Pranger (2002, 304–8) proposes Varro as the source of Ovid and Plutarch's accounts of Numa's encounters with Picus and Faunus and with Jupiter.
31. Ov. Fast. 3.323–80; Plu. Num. 15.5–6.
32. On Numa as pious fraud, see Lee-Stecum 2010, 257–62; Breebaart 1987, 91–92. Of the three types of theology (poetic, philosophical, and civic) of which Q. Mucius Scaevola (cos. 95) wrote, the civic, in his view, was sometimes false but was expedient for ordinary people to believe: expedire igitur existimat falli in religione civitates (August. C.D. 4.27). Penwill (2004) argues that Livy highlights Numa's religious deception in order to address the issue of Augustus' manipulations. On the term shaman in modern scholarship, see Hutton 2007.
33. Liv. 26.19.3–9; Gel. 6.1; De vir. ill. 49. On Scipio's claims to special divine communications, see Walbank 1985.
34. Liv. 26.45.6–9.
35. Plb. 10.11.7–8. Livy, too, was cognizant of the ruses and saw in them Scipio's similarity to Numa. See Feldherr 1998, 66–76.
36. Liv. pr. 6–9. See Feeney 2006, 14–16. Feeney notes that Livy consigns these myths to the realm of the poetic. Livy cites them without personal endorsement, so that he can establish the auctoritas of Rome while avoiding compromising his own auctoritas as an historian. In doing so, he employs the traditional historiographical trope of dividing myth from history according to chronology. At the same time, his language at pr. 7 raises questions: datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat (“an allowance is made for antiquity in order to make the human origins of the city more august by mixing them with the divine”). The bolded allusion to Augustus leaves open the possibility that the determinant of where such allowances are acceptable is not chronology but, rather, the nature of the acts and actors involved. The polyvalence of the word antiquitas allows for this play. It refers not only to ancient times, which are constantly being re-presented in Rome through various narratives and performances, but also to the conditions that prevailed and the character of the people who inhabited that past. In other words, antiquitas always had the potential of being contemporary, particularly in the Augustan restoration.
37. Of the usual advantage of religious observance, Yakobson (1999, 198) writes: “The prestige of the nobles was enhanced by the ceremonies and rituals of the state religion.” See also Jocelyn 1966. Jocelyn (93) points out the tendency for promising scions of the great families to enter priesthoods early in life as a first stage in their march to political prominence. The appearance of major priesthoods in elogia inscriptions stands as strong evidence of the importance of priesthoods for family prestige. See ILS 886 = CIL X.6087. The elogium of L. Munatius Plancus (cos. 42 BCE) mentions his membership in the VIIviri epulonum. The position of pontifex maximus was among those honors considered greatest. The elogium of P. Cornelius Scapula (ILLRP 1274a) lists this as the man's sole honor, doubtless for effect. See Flower 2000a, 181; Sempronius Asellio fr. 8 P: Is Crassus a Sempronio Asellione et plerisque aliis historiae Romanae scriptoribus traditur habuisse quinque rerum bonarum maxima et praecipua: quod esset ditissimus, quod nobolissimus, quod eloquentissimus, quod iuris consultissimus, quod pontifex maximus.
38. Cic. Ver. 2.5.36. For discussion, see Taylor 1939 and Spaeth 1996, 89.
39. On the significance of Cicero's antiquiorem in senatu sententiae dicendae locum as aedile designate, see Ryan 1998, 249–50.
40. On the significance of the ius imaginis in this passage, see Flower 2000a, 53–59. Flower argues that this is a custom and not a legal right as such. The issues surrounding ancestral imagines are complex and cannot be thoroughly explored here. There were imagines that would be displayed in the funeral and the atrium of a Roman house, but there were also imagines that served as objects of familial cult, such as the wooden busts of the Casa del Menandro. Cf. ibid., 42–46.
41. V. Max. 8.15.1–2; App. Hisp. 89; Flower 2000a, 48–52. Valerius goes so far as to suggest that the Capitoline Temple was a kind of atrium for the living Africanus.
42. Flower 2000a, 48–49.
43. Every appeal to divine legitimization of power contributed to the evolution of political theologies at Rome. Feeney (as quoted in Lowrie 2005, 43) has said regarding cultural systems, “Every intervention reconfigures the matrix.”
44. One is reminded of the instructions from Menander Rhetor (378.31–379.2) to orators speaking at the arrival of a governor. Menander explains how an array of accomplishments, heroic ancestry, or favorable comparisons with others could be emphasized or ignored according to the strengths and weaknesses of the person addressed.
45. On Caesar's public recital of his illustrious ancestry at his aunt Julia's funeral, see Suet. Jul. 6.1. The funeral was, of course, the proper public context for such references. See Flower 2000a. Plutarch (Cic. 1.2) mentions that some traced Cicero's ancestry to the Volscian king Tullus Attius. Cicero evidently did not do so.
46. Batstone 2011, 554–55.
47. The richness of the Ciceronian concept of the persona is useful for coming to terms with the apparent contradictions in our evidence regarding the religiosity of leading Romans of the first century. Among the leaders displaying these contradictions are Caesar, who places little divine activity in his commentaries but was given and accepted divine honors, and Cicero, who gave voice to apparent religious skepticism in his writings but built a temple for his deceased daughter. Bartsch (2006, 220) argues that one must “understan[d persona] in terms of propriety and impropriety, or in terms of Roman civic performativity” (emphasis added). Burchell (1998, 107–8) writes, “Cicero's image of this second persona is not that of the interior personality of modern psychological common-sense, an integrated selfhood from which one becomes dissociated by traumatic forces bearing from the outside. Rather it is of a finished artifact which has to be deliberately fashioned out of the uneven raw material of our impulses…and capacities (Off. 1.111).”
48. Since there is no ancient discussion of such a persona, the term theological persona has been coined for the purposes of the present discussion. Arguably, the non-unitary concept of the ancient self, when taken in conjunction with the formal philosophical discourse on personae, makes the construct of a theological persona both justifiable and useful for discussing the personal political theologies of the Late Republic. Mauss (1985, 15–16) proposes a history of the concept of the persona that includes cultic identities (Hirpi Sorani etc.) and the use of masks, leading him to coin the term religious personae. On religious belief, see Feeney 1999, 12–46.
49. This phrase is borrowed from the discussion of totems. See Levi-Strauss 1963, 89; Hamnet 2000, 54–55.
50. For the declaration of Sulla as hostis, see App. BC 1.73, 77, 81. On Sulla's pose of Republican legitimacy, see Keaveny 2005b, 98–99. On the notion of Sulla's theology, see Fears 1981c, 790–96. Fears (796) explains, “[I]t is no exaggeration to state that in ideological terms charismatic monarchy at Rome became a reality under Sulla. The well-being of the state, its political order, and the seminal virtue of victory were seen to be concentrated in the figure of the dictator.” Of course, Sulla would only become dictator after he took the city for the second time, upon his return from the East. The signs and wonders that Sulla used to supply credence to his theological vision reached back to the time of the Social War.
51. Schmitt 1985, 5, with translator's explication of the term exception in n. 1. See also Lowrie 2005, 44–46.
52. In Schmitt's theory regarding sovereignty and law, law replaced the miracle as the basis for sovereignty. See Schmitt 1985, 36. In Sulla's case, an account of miracles was provided to defend against the conclusion that his constitution was divorced from the recognized foundations of the legitimate Roman Republic. The alternative was to accept the possibility that the Republic had ended.
53. Plu. Sull. 6.6–7. Valgiglio (1960, 29) compares this prodigy to Sulla's oracle and dream about Aphrodite. Cf. App. BC 1.97.
54. On secular doctrine in the first century BCE, see Weinstock 1971, 191–97; Du Quesnay 1999, 296–97. On the length of a saeculum, Censorinus (DN 17.1) writes, saeculum autem est spatium vitae humanae longissimum, partu et morte definitum. See also ibid. 17.5: initia sic poni saeculorum; quo die urbes atque civitates constituerentur: de his, qui eo die nati essent, eum, qui diutissime vixisset, die mortis suae primi saeculi modulum finire. eoque die, qui essent reliqui in civitate, de his rursum eius mortem, qui longissimam aetatem egisset, finem esse saeculi secundi. Sic deinceps tempus reliquorum terminari.
55. Thein 2009, 100–101.
56. As Pittenger (2008, 283) notes regarding the profectio and triumph, “Triumphal ritual perfectly mirrored the profectio imperatoris,…because the power of an imperator emanated from the center, precisely so that he could take it out across the sacred boundary to the periphery, use it well in his provincia on behalf of the whole SPQR, and then return to the point of origin on the day of his triumph to lay down his arms, proudly and patriotically vouchsafing the glorious benefits of his res gestae, both material and symbolic, for the community that had sent him out as its champion in the first place.” For profectio as a literary device, see Feldherr 1998, 77–78.
57. Flower 2008, 84; Mastrocinque 2005, 141. See map 1 in the present book for the location of the Capitoline Temple.
58. See Flower 2008, 80–83, for the idea that the destruction of the temple represented the end of an age or the possible fall of Rome.
59. For the significance of the saeculum in connection with the Social War, the First Mithradatic War, and the civil war between Marius and Sulla, see Mastrocinque 2005.
60. Du Quesnay (1999, 297) uses the categorization “man of the saeculum” and offers this list, excepting, oddly, Sulla. Du Quesnay identifies this concept as a Roman innovation to the traditional idea regarding the end of the saeculum, transmitted by Censorinus (see n. 54 in the present chapter), that the death of the oldest individual of a generation marked the end of this period. The association of the saeculum with a particular leader may be correlated with the increasing popularity of astrology, dreams, and personal omens, such as we encounter in Sulla. Barton (1996, 149–51) provides a useful, brief description of the shift from state prodigies to omens concerning individual leaders. Although the Roman saeculum became a fixed number of years, this did not end the fascination with identifying its end with a particular man's death. In 49 BCE, M. Perperna (cos. 92) was identified as the last man of his generation (D.C. 41.14.5).
61. RG 4, 11–12.
62. RG 1.1: annos deviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in liberatem vindicavi.
63. See chapter 8.
64. Dufraigne (1994, 30–32) draws attention to the experience of Roman commanders abroad, beginning with Scipio Africanus, in being treated like divine beings and Hellenistic monarchs. In his Pro lege Manilia, Cicero draws on this tradition in describing Pompey descending from heaven like a deity.
65. On stasis in the classical polis, see Gehrke 1985. A study of examples closer to Rome in Magna Graecia and South Italy can be found in Berger 1992. For a recent discussion of images of stasis in Greek literature, see Fisher 2000.
66. Hdt. 1.59.3–60.5. See Sinos 1993; Lavelle 1991.
67. Herodotus (7.153) also recounted the story of Telines, who obtained a priesthood of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse by returning exiles to the city. He accomplished this feat through the use of sacred objects of the goddess, which, according to a scholiast to Pindar Pythian 2.27, were brought to Sicily from Triopium. On this episode, see Munn 2006, 91–92. In other stories, the gods brought a new ruler to the city to end stasis or bring about synoecism. See Pausanias' account (7.19.1–10) of how the arrival of Eurypylus at Patras effected synoecism and Arrian's account (An. 2.3.1–6) of how Midas' arrival at Gordium ended stasis.
68. Strootman 2007, 289–305.
69. Arrian (An. 2.3.1–8) places the arrivals of Midas and Alexander back to back. The arrival of Midas ended stasis at Gordium, while the arrival of Alexander and his severing of the Gordian knot was interpreted as predicting his rule over Asia.
70. Covino 2013.
71. Plu. Ant. 24.3–4. Antony would be hailed as a beneficent New Dionysus and then, later, regretted as a malignant one.
72. Of course, religion was not the sole means of preventing stasis. In covering secessions of the plebs, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (7.66) credited Roman oratory in preventing the kind of harm that occurred in Greek revolutions. On this point, see Pelling 2009, 255.
73. Liv. 1.17.1.
74. Plu. Num. 20.5.
75. Nagy 2008, 79–80.
76. Liv. 1.57–59.
77. On the profectio, Livy (42.49.1) writes, consul votis in Capitolio nuncupatis, paludatus ab urbe profectus est. See Sumi 2005, 35–41. On the religious aspects of the profectio, see Rüpke 1990, 125–43, 242–43. On the adventus, see Benoist 2005, 27–35; Dufraigne 1994, 35–39; Halfmann 1986, 113; Weinstock 1971, 289–90. On the imperial adventus, see Benoist 2005, 36–101; Lehnen 1997; Dufraigne 1994, 41–92; Halfmann 1986, 111–56; MacCormack 1981; Koeppel 1969.
78. On the ceremony and cult associated with the consul's assumption of office and departure for the provinces, see Pina Polo 2011a, 17–35.
79. Humm 2012, 77; Magedelain 1968, 67–69; 1977, 16–22.
80. See Fest. 276 L on the auspices associated with the profectio. In this case, interestingly, this was a praetor taking auspices before departure to assume leadership of the Latin League. As Orlin (1997, 39–40) notes, the vows associated with the profectio are to be distinguished from the vows taken upon entering office. Cf. Liv. 21.63.7–9.
81. Rüpke 1990, 125–43, 242–43; Humm 2012, 79–80.
82. On the cessation of the command (imperium militiae) upon crossing the pomerium, cf. Cic. Ver. 2.5.34.
83. Beard 2007, 202–5. The triumph has been the subject of numerous studies. Noteworthy recent contributions are Pittenger 2008, 127–43, 275–98; Beard 2007; Versnel 1970.
84. Liv. 45.39.11.
85. Liv. 1.4–7; D.H. 1.77–88; Plu. Rom. 3–12.
86. Liv. 1.57–60; D.H. 4.64–85.
87. Ov. Fast. 2.685–856; Plu. Q.R. 63; Fest. 347 L: Regifugium sacrum dicebant, quo die rex Tarquinius fugerit a Roma.
88. Fowler 1899, 327–30; Scullard 1981, 81–82. Forsythe (2012, 17–18) considers it an end-of-year rite. If the suggestion of Merrill (1924, 37–38) regarding the origin of the five-day interregnum in the period between Regifugium and March 1 is correct, perhaps the rite instead marked the end of the supreme magistrate's term of office. Forsythe (18) finds merit in Merrill's view. Clearly, however, many Romans accepted the myth and associated it with the February 24 rite. Lipka (2009, 33 n. 96) notes, “Whatever its actual origin, I cannot imagine that it ever meant anything else to a Roman, despite the fact that modern scholars, perhaps in order to save the purely ‘religious’ character of the feriale, have tried to discard this ‘political’ interpretation.”
89. As Rüpke (1992) argues, including religion in exempla could serve to establish a hierarchy of norms when normal legal or constitutional criteria did not suffice. Such creative use of religion in exempla to reason through difficult issues of norms, power, and the organization of the state are the essence of what is meant by theology in the present discussion. As in the Cipus story, the Horatius tale Rüpke discusses involves the reditus of an important Roman who had been recently been in the field of imperium militiae.
90. V. Max. 5.6.3; Ov. Met. 15.565–621; Plin. Nat. 11.123.45. The present discussion is concerned mostly with Valerius' version, which is an exemplum of pietas erga patriam. See Galinsky 1967, 183; Guillaumin 2008, 168.
91. Ov. Met. 15.581–85. The salutation of the haruspex (“Rex”, ait, “o! salve! Tibi enim, tibi, Cipe…namque urbe receptus rex eris et sceptro tutus potiere perenni.”) purposely recalls the royal acclamations addressed to Caesar as he returned to Rome in ovation from the Alban Mount in January 44.
92. Wiseman 1995, 109–10.
93. Guillaumin 2008, 169: “La porte est alors emblématique du passage de l'état de guerrier à celiu de civis et inversement.”
94. Beard 2007, 202–5; Pina Polo 2011a, 4–5. Recently, two scholars in particular, Giovanni and Drogula, have challenged Mommsen's formulation of two kinds of imperium—militiae and domi—and the significance of the pomerium as the dividing line between them. According to Giovanni (1983), the distinction between domi and militiae involved the nature of the task, not the location of the person exercising it. Drogula (2007) argues that the magistrates exercised potestas within the pomerium and exercised imperium outside it. The only time the pomerium served as a crucial boundary for the traveling magistrate was when he was petitioning for a triumph. Reentry before the granting of a triumph voided the opportunity to celebrate one, most likely because of the ceremony's significance as a reentry ritual. Pittenger (2008, 283) notes that the defining moment of the ritual was always, particularly according to the formulaic language of Livy, the moment of entry: “triumphans urbem inire or invehi, or triumphans in urbem regredi or redire.” See also Versnel 1970, 384–88; Phillips 1974a and 1974b; Richardson 1975, 59–60; Plattus 1983; Beard 2007, 204–5.
95. Cato (Orig. 1.18a) reported the ritual for laying down a pomerium in the founding of a city. It is not clear, however, that Roman tradition credited Romulus with establishing Rome's pomerium, as Cornell (1995, 203) points out. Instead, Servius Tullius was thought to have established Rome's pomerium, and Sulla extended it. One reason Sulla did so was perhaps to imitate Servius Tullius. Keaveny 2005b, 159; Santangelo 2007b, 221. The idea that the right to extend the pomerium fell to those who expanded Rome's imperium is attested only in Tacitus. Hinard (2008, 69–70) argues the appealing and probably correct position that the scholarly emperor Claudius is responsible for this fiction. Hinard proposes that Sulla extended the pomerium in connection with the extension of Roman citizenship to Transpadane Italy. To this proposal, one could add that Sulla may also have sought to stress his role as a refounder by carrying out a ritual action normally undertaken during the founding of a colony.
96. Beard 2007, 187–218.
97. Plu. Marc. 8; Flower 2000b, 35–41.
98. Cic. Cael. 14; Suet. Tib. 2.
99. On Jupiter and the Roman state, see Stewart 2013, 30–32; Fears 1981, 3–55.
100. Liv. 10.7.10: Iovis optimi maximi ornatu decoratus. Versnel (1970, 56–93) proposed to resolve the dispute over whether the triumphator in his costume was supposed to represent the rex or Jupiter by arguing that he was both. See also Pittenger 2008, 277 n. 8. Beard (2007, 219–38) found the evidence for the triumphator's Jovian pose unpersuasive. Rüpke (2012, 62–75) has proposed that the triumphator's red-painted face is meant to assimilate him to his honorific statue. The present argument does not adopt or propose any particular origins for the costume but instead assumes its visual polysemy, which allowed people, from antiquity to the present, to interpret the vestis triumphalis as Jovian in appearance.
101. On the Alban triumph, see Brennan 1996.
102. On votive temples, see Weigel 1998, 119–42; Orlin 1997; Ziolkowski 1992. Orlin demonstrates the involvement of the Senate in votive temples, thus tempering Ziolkowski's (235) view that, “a temple could be founded without the state's participation,” but the role of individual initiative was still significant.
103. Late-republican commanders not only cultivated evidence of their felicitas but also employed new sources of divine knowledge. Marius took the exotically costumed Syrian prophetess Martha on campaign (cf. Plu. Mar. 17.1–3), and Sertorius kept an oracular doe (cf. Plu. Sert. 11). Upon learning of a victory, Sertorius would garland the doe and produce it as a sign of a victory as yet unannounced by a human messenger.
104. The earliest noteworthy Roman example is perhaps Marius, who took up drinking from the cantharus of Dionysus during his return to Rome. Cf. V. Max. 3.6.6; Plin. Nat. 3.11. Perhaps the most dramatic early Hellenistic example is the hymn to Demetrius, wherein he is called a theos epiphanês. The hymn was sung at the welcoming reception of Demetrius Poliorcetes at Athens in 290 BCE. See Ath. 7.253c–e. In the first century BCE, Mithradates Eupator was welcomed as a savior god. Cf. D.S. 37.26.