quiénes fueron los romanos

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Who Were the Romans? Evidence from Religion

Author(s): H. J. RoseReviewed work(s):Source: Greece & Rome, Vol. 4, No. 12 (May, 1935), pp. 162-167Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/641740.

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WHO WERETHE ROMANS ? EVIDENCE FROMRELIGION'By H. J. ROSE

I I hadaskedten years ago thequestionI am asking o-day,I should have answered it with a good deal of confidence.I should have told you that we have irrefragableevidenceof a group of very ancient cults, those of the di indigetesornative Roman gods, in whom we might safely recognize thereflectionof purelyRomanthought, untouchedby the influenceof Etruria, of Greece, or even of the other Italian states.I should then have proceeded to describe briefly the generalcharacteristicsof these gods and deduce therefromthe mentaldevelopment and social status of their worshippers. I shouldprobably have added that one of the most ancient of Romaninstitutions, the templum, howed clear traces of being derivedfrom the customs of the terramarapeople, and therefore thatthat interesting branch of the Bronze culture had a good dealto do with the foundingof the EternalCity. Then I might havegone on to tell you of other elements known or supposed toexist in the earliest cults, as revealedby modern investigation.But alas for well-rounded theories and explanationswhichleave no blanks A few short years, a few very moderate-sizedcontributionsto knowledge by certainyoung scholarswho willnot let well enough alone, and the foundationsof that beautifuledifice, the Mommsen-Wissowa reconstruction of the earlyreligious history of Rome, are either crumblingor, at the best,in urgent need of shoring up. The indigeteshave retired intothe cloud-land of unsolved riddles; the holy templumhasbecome a misty affair,takingnow the shape of a wooden hut orenclosure,now that of a piece of land, and in neither avatarcanit be of much use as a starting-pointfor elaboratetheorisings.For the terremare,hey indeed remain,but the bridge that ledI The following article is the substance of a communication read to theBritish Association (Sect. H.) at York, on Sept. I, 1932. It was followed bycommunications from Professors P. S. Noble ('Linguistic Evidence') and J. L.Myers ('The Plebs').


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WHO WERE THE ROMANS? EVIDENCE FROM RELIGION 163from them to Rome is as batteredby sacrilegioushands as wasthe Pons Sublicius the day that Horatius Cocles defended it.The supposed indigeteswere arrived at as follows. In thefestival calendars,such as the famous Fasti Praenestiniand thenewly discovered Fasti Antiates, a number of days have theirnames inscribed in much largerletters than the rest. Such arethe Lupercalia in February, the Volcanalia in August, theDiualia or Angeronalia in December. Since these certainlywere not the most famous and brilliantof the holy-days in theRoman year, an acute conjectureof Mommsen suggested that

they were the oldest, and that the calendarswe know had thusembedded in them an older calendar, going back to the firstregularizingof Roman piety. With this suggestion no one hasany serious quarrel,for it is both likely in itself and consistentwith all the other evidence we have. What is doubted is thefurther idea that the gods of these feasts were those known asthe indigetes;for we, alas, have had to confess that all ourattemptsto explainthat word are so farat best highly doubtful,and it is alsonoteworthythat the nameis applied by some of thebest-informed among the ancients to deities who are not in-cluded in the big-letter list and apparentlydenied to some thatare. A further point to be doubted is whether these oldestdeities, be their collective name what it may, were really sopurely Roman as we supposed, seeing that they include theEtruscan-sounding Furrina, for instance, Saturnus with hisGreek cult and Greek-looking festival, Liber with his Greekassociations.Then, we used to point to that much-reproduced'plan of theterramaraof Castellazzoand say: Here we have a templum,ofrather irregular outline, it is true, but not bad for an earlyattempt. Observe its cardo, running almost due north andsouth, and note, in place of one decumanus, number of linesat right-angles to that cardo, whereof one nearly crosses theareain the middle. Further,note how the sacredpit lies withinthe heap of earth a little to one side of the centre; behold thearx with the mundusdug in it, exactly like the PalatineSo we used to say-I have said it, in effect, echoing more

I For instance, in T. E. Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, p. 333-


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164WHO WERE THE ROMANS? EVIDENCE FROM RELIGIONthan one predecessor,more than once-and I still think thatthere is a certain plausibility in it. For whatever critics maysay, there is a visible resemblance between the plan of theterramaraand the traditionalshape of the various parcels ofground used for farming, camping, and laying out a town,accordingto the doctrine of the gromatici. But visual resemb-lance and genetic connexion are two differentthings, and I donot think we have any right to say off-handthat the terramarawas an early example of the templumuntil we are a good dealsurer exactly what a templumwas. G. Patroni has acutelypointed out several noteworthy differences between the terra-mara and anything classical,' and although I do not think hisarguments by any means unanswerable, I allow them con-siderable weight.2 St. Weinstock3 has demolished the oldconception of the munduspretty thoroughly, and I have re-examinedhis argumentsand come to conclusionsdiffering ittlefrom his.4 This much is clear, that there is no evidence of amundusbelonging to the Palatinesettlement; at most, we maysuppose that the practice of digging some kind of pit as theritual centre of a community may date from terramara imes.Weinstock has also made it very probables hat templum id notoriginallyconnote a piece of land at all, nor yet a portionof theheavens, but was simply anothername for the auguraculum, rlittle hut or other shelter from which omens were observed.We cannot, therefore, either mark off a body of cults asspecificallyand exclusively Roman, nor yet state dogmaticallythat a certain sacral method of drawing a boundary betweennative and foreign, sacredand profane,friendlyand hostile wasa Roman rite of Bronze Age origins. What have we left to goupon?In the first place we have the gods and the calendar.6 Thefact that the gods are not all of certainlyRomanorigin does nothinder us from accepting them as worshipped by Romans,since there is abundant evidence that they were, in classical

Athenaeum (Pavia), viii (1930/viii), pp. 425-51.2 Ibid. ix (I93I/ix), pp. 3-14. 3Rm. Mitt. xlv, pp. I1-23.4 SMSR, vii (i93I/ix), pp. 3-15. s Rim. Mitt. xlvii (1932), pp. 95-2I1.6 Latest discussion (brief but good) in F. Altheim, Rimische Religions-geschichte, i, pp. 26 sqq. (Berlin; W. de Gruyter & Co., 193I).


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WHO WERE THE ROMANS? EVIDENCE FROM RELIGION I65times. Moreover,the calendaras we have it seems to date fromthe days of the Etruscan dynasty, say about the beginning, orat latest the middle, of the sixth century B.C.;and all appear-ances go to show that the big-letterfestivals,so to call them, arean earlier calendaryet, incorporated n the newer one. Thesefestivals, then, and presumablythe gods worshipped at them,were alreadyestablished(how long we cannotsay, but probablyfor some time) when the Tarquins were lords of Rome.Therefore we arejustifiedin seeing in them, not indeed a monu-ment of the absolutely primitive days of Roman cult, but oneof very early times, long antecedent to the Rome even of theearly Republic.If now we analyse the list of deities and festivals, settingaside for the time being all questions of provenance,we mayask for what these early Romans prayed to their gods, or, asseems sometimes to have been the case, worked magical riteswithout reference to any definitegod. We know enough of thefunctions of the deities and the magical practices to give apretty definite answer. The Romans of that day worshippedluppiter, god of the sky or rather of the weather; like hisbrotherZeus he tended to become a god of verywide functions,a celestial Supreme Being,I though it is hard to say how farthis process had gone when Rome was new. They worshippedMars, who although a war-god certainly had other functionsas well as far back as we can trace him; perhaps it is best tosay that he was in origin simplyone of the 'highgods'of apeoplecompelled willy-nilly to be warlike; also Quirinus, who seemslikewise to have-combined warlike and agriculturalfunctions,and whose name may mean 'god of the assembled burghers'.Apart from these comparatively ofty deities, they had severalgroups of gods with more limited and definable functions:Tellus-Ceres, Consus,Opshiscult-partner,Liber(and Libera?),Robigus, Saturnus, all agricultural: perhaps the somewhatdoubtful Mater Matuta should be added to this list. Pales andit may be Faunus were connected with the flocks and herds;Fons or Fontus, Neptunus, and Volturnus had to do withwater, Volcanus and Vesta with fire; lanus and Portunus

I Essere celeste: see R. Pettazzoni, Dio, vol. i (Rome, 1922), passim.


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WHO WERE THE ROMANS? EVIDENCE FROM RELIGION 167A little more we may guess at. These barbarianswere notso low but that they hadthe use of the metals. They did indeeduse a stone for certain very old oath-rituals, taken under theprotection of Iuppiter;' but it may be asked if the stones inquestion, probablyneolithic celts, were not used because theywere supposed to be thunderbolts; and for many purposes(cuttingtheveryholy hairof Iuppiter'sown priest,forinstance)2the materialused was bronze. In one case, indeed, the cuttingup by the Vestal Virginsof the cakes of salt which they neededin preparingmolasalsa for sacrifices,we are assured that theyused an ironsaw.3 The culture, then, was of a prettydevelopedIron Age as far back as we can get, though there glimmerthrough traces of a Bronze stage behind it.As to their government, they had a king (rex, ruler),who hadcertain sacrificial functions, otherwise they would not haveretained a shadow-kingin Republicandays; we may guess thatthe Flamen Dialis is the ghost of an older kingyet; so againwemay perceive the complexity of even this earliest communitywhich we know anything about.We conclude, then, that at the earliest recoverablestage theRomans were a mixed people, metal-using barbarians,under-standing simple agriculture and owning domestic animals,knowing enough to markoff their land and build some sort ofa little town where their king could rule them and they couldbeat off an attackingenemy. They had but little tradeand littlehigher culture, if they had either at all; but that some foreigninfluences filtered through is clear when we examine theirearliest cults and find some things common to them and otherItalian peoples, some things which look Greek, and a few,though this is an extremely thorny question, which suggesttheinfluence,highly.probablein itself, of the mighty Etruria.4

I See Rose, Primitive Culturein Italy, pp. 45-6, and references there.2 Serv. on Aen. i. 448; other priests observed the same rule, Macrob. Sat.v. 19. 13 (Sabines), Lydus, de mens., p. 16, 5 Wuensch (Romans).3 Varro apud Non., p. 223, 20 M.4 Besides the few examples given above, the readeris referredto the ingeniousand learned, though highly controversial, works of Altheim, GriechischeGotterim alten Rom (T6pelmann, Giessen, 1930), Terra Mater (same pub., 1931), andalso the essays of E. Tabeling, Mater Larum, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurta/M., 1932, and of C. Koch, Gestirnverehrungim alten Italien (same, 1933)-

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