Dis Manibus L. R. T. T. R. S. B. A. K. M. and to D.

CONTENTSPreface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi I. Historia et Ius 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Founding the City: Ennius and Romulus on the Site of Rome (2006) . . 3 Isto vilius, Immo carum: Anecdotes About King Romulus (2002) . . . . 20 The Founder of the Republic (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 A Constitution for the Republic? (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 In the Senate (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Ambassadors Go to Rome (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Cato Maior in Aetolia (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Pontiff and the Tribune: The Death of Tiberius Gracchus (2002). . . 88 A Missing Ponticus (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Q. Scipio Imperator (1996). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Wayward and Doomed (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Augustales and Sodales Augustales (2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Orbilius, Scaurus, and the Award of Corniculum (2006) . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Silver and Gold of Valor: the Award of Armillae and Torques (2001) . . 216 Legio V in Messana (2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Caelum arsit and obsidione liberare: Latin Idiom and the Exploits of the Eighth Augustan Legion at the Time of Commodus (2003) . . . . 242 How Did King Flavius Dades and Pitiaxes Publicius Agrippa Acquire Their Roman Names? (2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Punishing (1987). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Minima de Maximis 19.1 Elections (1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 19.2 Extraordinary Elections (1971) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 19.3 Exercitus (1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 19.4 Graecia capta (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 19.5 Deditio (1991). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 19.6 Emperors (1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 19.7 Incapaces and Capax (1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 19.8 Emperors and Italy (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 19.9 Domi nobiles (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 19.10 Names and Adoptions (1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 19.11 Ars boni et aequi (1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

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II. Historia et Philologia 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Composing the Annals (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 History, Letters, and Religion (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Transitus. Official Travel Under the Sign of Obelus (1999) . . . . . . . . 307 Effete Rome: Sallust, Cat. 54,5 (1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Banqueting (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Fatalis: A Missing Meretrix (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Imago hortorum: Pliny the Elder and the Gardens of the Urban Poor (2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 The Paintress Calypso and Other Painters in Pliny (2003) . . . . . . . . . 342 Finis Porcelli (1998). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Zum Wandel d/l: medulla / melila (1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 III. Historia et Epigraphia 30 31 32 33 34 35 Updating the CIL for Italy: part 2 (1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Updating the CIL for Italy: part 4 (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 Updating the CIL for Italy: part 5 (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 Gladiators (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 Games in Patavium (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 Minima Epigraphica 35.1 Magistri (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492 35.2.a.b The Stones of Concordia (1982, 1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492 35.3 Stamped Bricks (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 IV. Historia et Religio 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Religio et Cultus Deorum (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 A Calendar for Rome? (1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 Religio et Res Publica (1995). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 De Tito templum Veneris Paphiae visente sive de hostiis vovendis et deligendis (2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 Matrimonium (1995). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 The Good Goddess (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 Forging Volcanus (1997). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Iuppiter Dolichenus, Hercules, and Volcanus in Balaclava (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 Sic valeas: a Latin Injunction, the symphoniaci, and the Afterlife (2003) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544 Varia de religione 45.1 The Uses of Religion (1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554 45.2 Spes in fide (1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555 45.3 Varro de deis (2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558 45.4 Natalicia (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559

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45.5 Sectae et sectatores (1988) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560 45.6 Religious Associations (2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562 45.7 Ex Oriente tenebrae (1990) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564 45.8 Cyrenaica Iudaica (1982) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566 45.9 Aphrodisias Iudaica (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 V. Antiqua et Recentiora 46 47 48 49 50 About Rostovtzeff (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Tenney Frank (1999). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578 Lily Ross Taylor (1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 Agnes Kirsopp Michels and the Religio (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton (1995). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603

Addenda et Corrigenda Altera to Roman Questions I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641 I. Modern Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641 II. Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662 1. Auctores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662 2. Inscriptiones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685 3. Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695 4. Nummi, Gemmae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695 III. Ancient Persons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695 IV. General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706

PREFACEThis new collection of Roman Questions consists of fifty main entries comprising seventy-one separate papers. Most of them had appeared previously; they have all been reset (with the original pagination indicated on the margin), and provided with addenda and corrigenda (in curly brackets). Four papers are here printed for the first time, and are assigned 2006 as the date of the final redaction. Thus six pieces date from the seventies, eleven from the eighties, thirty-three from the nineties, and twenty-one from the first six years of this century. There are also Addenda and corrigenda altera to the previous volume (1995) of RQ. It is again honor and joy to see this volume published in the renowned series of Heidelberger Althistorische Beitrge und Epigraphische Studien. My thanks go the editors of the series, Professors Gza Alfldy, Angelos Chaniotis and Christian Witschel. There were obstacles and delays; but the encouragement and support of Gza Alfldy, amicus certus in re incerta, was instrumental in carrying this project to completion. Steiner Verlag is a splendid publishing house, and I am very thankful for their professional, friendly and effective help. I was fortunate again to cooperate with Ms. Diane Smith; she has set the volume with her customary grace, knowledge, and patience. The lovely Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina, the Department of Classics, with so many friends and former students, and the University library, with its dedicated and knowledgeable staff, provided an ideal place for pondering the never ending Roman past. Articles, notes and essays assembled in this volume are an attempt to uphold the unity of classics, of philology, history, and literature, of authors and inscriptions. They range from the foundation of Rome to the tribute to three departed teachers and friends who themselves have passed into the history of Rome. To them is the volume dedicated; and again to D. who lived this book with me. Chapel Hill, June 2007

I HISTORIA ET IUS

1 FOUNDING THE CITY Ennius and Romulus on the Site of Rome*The foundation day of the City. Romulus takes the auspices. In the poets soaring words he servat genus altivolantum, he looks out for the high flying tribe. It is dawn, and it is also the dawn of Latin literature. The rays of the sun break out of the nights darkness (Enn. Ann. 9194 V. = 8689 Sk.):1* This essay derives from the Agnes Michels Lecture delivered at Bryn Mawr College in April 1997. It was published under the title Founding the City in S. B. Faris and L. E. Lundeen (eds.), Ten Years of the Agnes Kirsopp Michels Lectures at Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr 2006) 88107. It is here presented in a slightly revised version. Abbreviations: AL = J. Linderski, The Augural Law, ANRW I.16.3 (1986) 21462312. Catalano, Contributi = P. Catalano, Contributi allo studio del diritto augurale I (Torino 1960). Catalano, Aspetti = P. Catalano, Aspetti spaziali del sistema giuridico-religioso romano, ANRW II.16.1 (1978) 440553. Jocelyn = H. D. Jocelyn, Urbs Augurio Augusto Condita: Ennius ap. Cic. Diu. I. 107 (= Ann. 7796 V2), PCPhS 197 [n.s. 17] (1971) 4474. Pease = A. S. Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Divinatione Libri Duo (Urbana 1920, 1923, repr. Darmstadt 1963). RQ = J. Linderski, Roman Questions (Stuttgart 1995). Skutsch (Sk.) = O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford 1985). Vaahtera = J. Vaahtera, Roman Augural Lore in Greek Historiography (= Historia Einzelschriften 156 [Stuttgart 2001]). Vahlen (V.) = J. Vahlen, Ennianae poesis reliquiae2 (Lipsiae 1903). Wiseman = T. P. Wiseman, Remus (Cambridge 1995). The fragment (7796 V. = 7291 Sk.) is preserved by Cicero, Div. 1.1078. For the sake of completeness and clarity, I give here the full text: atque ille Romuli auguratus pastoralis non urbanus fuit nec fictus ad opiniones inperitorum sed a certis acceptus et posteris traditus. itaque Romulus augur, ut apud Ennium est, cum fratre item augure curantes magna cum cura tum cupientes regni dant operam simul auspicio augurioque. In monte [in Murco Sk.] Remus auspicio se devovet [auspicio sedet Sk., cf. RQ 52730] atque secundam solus avem servat. At Romulus pulcer in alto quaerit Aventino, servat genus altivolantum. Certabant urbem Romam Remoramne vocarent. Omnibus cura viris uter esset induperator. Expectant [cf. Sk. in app.] veluti consul quom mittere signum volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras quam mox emittat pictos [cf. Sk. ad loc.] e faucibus currus: sic expectabat populus atque ore timebat rebus [cf. Sk. ad loc.] utri magni victoria sit data regni. Interea sol albus recessit in infera noctis.

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et simul ex alto longe pulcerrima praepes laeva volavit avis, simul aureus exoritur sol. Cedunt de caelo ter quattuor corpora sancta avium, praepetibus sese pulcrisque locis dant. and just then there flew from the height the luckiest messenger, a lofty bird on the left, and all golden there came out the sun. Thrice four hallowed shapes of birds moved down the sky, and betook themselves to places lofty and of good omen.

The commentators of Ennius valiantly struggled with this famous passage.2 It must be interpreted in the light of our knowledge of augural lore. Some points are clear. The verb servare is a well-known technical term: it describes an act of deliberate watching for signs as opposed to a casual observation.3 Romulus (and Remus too) observed the flight of birds. They were the high flying birds, altivolantes. This is a poetic epithet, not recorded in technical handbooks, but Ennius used it on purpose. It nicely matches the locution pulcerrima praepes. The word praepes is derived from peto in its original and lost meaning of flying, akin to Greek ptomai. The term was embraced by the poets, but in augural idiom it had a specific application.4 P. Nigidius Figulus, the senator, polyhistor and astrologer of the Ciceronian time is said to have predicted from the conjunction of stars the rise to power of the future emperor Augustus (Suet. Aug. 93.5); more importantly he also composed a treatise on augural signs.5 An excerpt was preserved by Aulus Gellius in the second century, in his Noctes Atticae (7.6.10), and Gellius adduced it to elucidate the verseExin candida se radiis dedit icta foras lux et simul ex alto longe pulcerrima praepes laeva volavit avis, simul aureus exoritur sol. Cedunt de caelo ter quattuor corpora sancta avium, praepetibus sese pulcrisque locis dant. Conspicit inde sibi data Romulus esse propritim [cf. Sk. ad loc.] auspicio regni stabilita scamna solumque. See esp. Pease ad Cic. Div. 1.1078; Jocelyn, passim; Skutsch, 22138. For the Ovidian account of the foundation (Fasti 4.80149), see the commentary by E. Fantham, Ovid, Fasti, Book IV (Cambridge 1998) 24151; also F. Sini, La fondazione di Roma tra teologia e diritto nei poeti dellepoca di Augusto (Virgilio e Ovidio), Comunicazione presentata nel XVII Seminario Internazionale di Studi Storici Da Roma alla Terza Roma: Initia urbis. Fondazioni di Roma Costantinopoli Mosca (Campidoglio, 2123 aprile 1997) [available online]. For the accounts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.86.14) and Plutarch (Rom. 9.5), see Vaahtera, 97104. Servius auctus, Aen. 6.198: servare enim et de caelo et de avibus verbo augurum dicitur. See TLL (1987) 76365, s.vv. praepes, praepeto; J. Linderski, Der Neue Pauly 10 (2001) 25657, s.v. praepes; Vaahtera, 3637. E. Tassi Scandone, Auspicium o augurium Romuli? Sul problema del rapporto tra auspicium ed imperium, in Iuris vincula. Studi in onore di Mario Talamanca VIII (Napoli 2001) 15196 at 167, n. 62, sees in this bird the avis sent to Remus. Certainly not. Nor is the word to be taken in this place in the collective sense (so Skutsch ad loc.). It was the first avis (of the twelve) to appear in the field of observation, the aerial templum. See A. Swoboda, P. Nigidii Figuli operum reliquiae (Vindobonae 1889) 363 (Quaestiones Nigidianae, still indispensable), 9192; A. Della Casa, Nigidio Figulo (Roma 1962), passim.

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3 4

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of Ennius. Discrepat dextra sinistrae, praepes inferae, the right is opposed to left, praepes to infera, wrote the learned Nigidius. To this Gellius appended his own commentary: he astutely observed that since birds that are the opposite of praepetes are called inferae, the low birds, praepetes must be birds which have a higher and loftier flight. Pulcher is a common adjective, but it was also an expression of religious speech. In that realm it occurs in two varieties, pontifical and augural. In the language of pontiffs it denoted a person or a thing that was perfect, in particular a perfect offering, fit for the gods. Festus in his abridgment of the treatise De Verborum Significatu of the early imperial scholar Verrius Flaccus (who in his turn had extensively used Varro) notes that pulcher bos is the animal (a cow, bull or ox) ad eximiam pinguitudinem perductus (274 L.), fattened to the extreme. Such an offering was called hostia opima (202 L.). The augurs used the adjective pulcher to describe a propitious sign or a person who received or was about to receive such a sign. In Ennius Romulus when he watches out for favorable birds is pulcher himself; and in Ovid (Fasti 6.375) Quirinus, a hypostasis of Romulus, is lituo pulcher, blessed through his augural staff. C. Licinius Macer, another contemporary of Cicero, described in his Annales (Peter, fr. 6) the auspices of Romulus as auspicia pulchra et luculenta, splendid and excellent, that is propitious and fortunate. Romulus was taking his auspices at dawn. Ennius here followed strictly the established practice.6 The person who intended to auspicate would spend the night outdoors, and sleep in a hut, tabernaculum; he would rise early in the morning, mane, in silence, so that no untoward noise would disturb the auspices. He took his seat on a solida sella, apparently constructed of one piece, often of stone, so that again no creaking noise would be heard, and while looking out for birds he sat motionless, never turning his head or body.7 With his eyes he was thus marking out his field of vision, templum in augural parlance, a term not employed here by Ennius but appearing in a similar context already in Naevius with respect to Anchises, who was in Roman tradition regarded as knowledgeable in every art of augury: Postquam avem aspexit in templo Anchisa ... / immolabat auream victimam pulcram, After Anchises had seen a bird in his field of vision, he proceeded to sacrifice a beautiful golden victim.8 A beautiful image to a Roman reader, for it combines auspicia and sacra: to a propitious bird, corresponds a pulchra victima, made even more perfect, aurea, by its gilded horns.

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8

On the procedure and terminology of auspicatio, see AL 2261, 217174, 219192, 2246, 225860, 227072, 227678, 228289. Servius, Aen. 6.197: ad captanda auguria [in Servius terminology = auspicia impetrativa; cf. n. 22] post preces inmobiles vel sedere vel stare [cf. Cic. Div. 1.31] consueverant. Disregarding all explicit testimonies, a recent student replaces the stationary auspicant with an auspicant who switched positions periodically (R. Taylor, Watching the Skies: Janus, Auspication, and the Shrine in the Roman Forum, MAAR 45 [2000] 140 at 2122). This is exactly the error committed by Plutarch (Numa 7.13; cf. AL 2297; Vaahtera 1078, and below, n. 34) deriving in both cases from a profound misconception of the ratio templi (cf. Catalano, Aspetti 46772). Naev. Bell. Pun. fr. 25 Strz. = 24 Warm.

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To Romulus twelve birds appeared, an unusual number, and an unusual kind: vultures (though Ennius does not specify this; cf. below, n. 56), but the occasion was also unusual; a number and kind not to be repeated until Octavian brazenly imitated the auspices of Romulus on the occasion of his annexation of the consulship in 43. The aves apparently dropped down from the high sky, de caelo, toward Romulus, and then they turned and flew away to the places Ennius describes as lofty and lucky, praepetibus sese pulchrisque locis dant. What these places were no commentator of Ennius has so far succeeded in discovering. The favorable and high flying bird, pulcherrima praepes, was qualified by Ennius as laeva. This is generally, and rightly, taken to mean a laeva, on the left or from the left or perhaps toward the left. But what is left? Is it an established and immutable left, be it south or east, north or west, anchored according to the cardinal points, or is it each time dependent upon the direction of the observer? The Ennian Romulus appears to have been looking eastward for at the very moment he spotted the lucky bird (one bird, for avis is here hardly to be taken with Skutsch as a collective noun) the sun rose. Should it then be north? Or perhaps the left side of the field of vision, and thus east (or north-east)? Or perhaps laevus is to be taken in a general sense of favorable? But if so, why should laevus (and sinister too) have this connotation? These are not trivial questions, at least not to those conversant with Roman gods. For here we stumble upon a curious but fundamental and surprisingly little noticed feature of Roman deities: they understood Latin, but did not speak it. Addresses and entreaties, prayers and vows, precationes and vota, hymns and songs, the formulas of dedication and consecration, and of auspication too, were composed in Latin, perhaps a little archaic, and not always fully comprehensible to the humans but crystal clear to the gods. But only a few minor or ill-defined deities are on record to have actually spoken Latin, and they did not have much to say. We hear of the voces Faunorum, the utterances of the Fauni, of a voice from the temple of Juno on the Arx, and above all of Aius Locutius, the Divine Voice par excellence, who had, however, spoken but once, warning the Romans, to no avail, that the Gauls were coming.9 No direct message, in Latin, or in any other language, from Jupiter or Mars or Minerva. In contrast the God of the Hebrews used the Hebrew tongue extensively, and later also Aramaic. The difference is fundamental. Ancient students of divination, above all the Stoics, known to us mostly through the intermediary of Cicero, distinguished between two kinds of divination: natural and artificial.10 We can follow their lead,Cic. Div. 1.101; 2.69, and Pease ad locc.; cf. J. Scheid, La parole des dieux. Loriginalit du dialogue des Romains avec leurs dieux, Opus 68 (19871989) 12536; A. Dubourdieu, Paroles des dieux, in F. Dupont (ed.), Paroles romaines (Nancy 1994) 4551; Divinits de la parole, divinits du silence dans la Rome antique, RHR 220 (2003) 25982. J.-L. Desnier, Aius Locutius et les voix de Rome, in P. Defosse (ed.), Hommages Carl Deroux 4 (= Collection Latomus 277 [Bruxelles 2003]) 33950, offers loose divagations; and D. Lau, Wie Sprach Gott: Es werde Licht? Antike Vorstellungen von der Gottessprache (Frankfurt am Main 2003) is disappointing: no discussion of communication with gods through signs and sacrifices. 10 Sources and discussion in AL 223039. 9

Founding the City

7

and extend this classification to the whole realm of religion. The great conceptual divide will thus lie between the artificial and natural creeds. The latter we would call today revealed. The Roman cult was not a revealed creed. It was assembled through trial and error. Natural divination (and natural or revealed religions) rely upon divine inspiration, upon instinctus divinus. The main ingredient is here emotion or furor; the Greeks called it enthusiasm, nyousiasmw. This kind of divination is proper to vaticinantes and also somniantes, to prophets and dreamers. They are the conduits for divine words. In divination proper these words may give a glimpse of the future, but through the mouth of a vates the Deity may give an extensive message concerning all facets of life and death. These messages may be committed to memory or to writing, and become sacred books. The Revealed Book occupies such a central position in all religions derived from the Judaean tradition that we tend to take its existence for granted, obvious and natural. Not at Rome. The king Numa was regarded in Roman tradition as a great religious founder, but when in 181 at the foot of the hill of Janiculum a stone casket was unearthed containing (allegedly) the books of Numa the senate decreed that they should be burned (Liv. 40.29). This was a standard procedure. During the Hannibalic war sacrificuli and vates, petty sacrificers and prophets, took hold of the minds of men and women. The senate decreed, and the urban praetor issued the edict, that any person who had books of prophecies or of prayers or of a ritual of sacrifice should surrender to the authorities all such books and writings (Liv. 25.1.12). When the Bacchanalian conspiracy shook the city, Livy (39.16.8) has the consul Spurius Postumius remind the populace that the forefathers had often entrusted the task to the magistrates of excluding from the city sacrificulos and vates, sacrificers and prophets, and of searching out and burning vaticinos libros, the books of prophecies. This official tenor is reflected in Ennius (in a fragment of his tragedy Telamo), and in Cicero (Div. 1.132) who quotes the poets ringing denunciation of creduluous prophets, shameless gut-gazers, clumsy, crazy or crooked, who do not know their own path yet point the way for another. There existed, of course, the Sibylline books.11 They were, however, not a Roman product. Acquired in the gray and hallowed past, by king Tarquin the Old, written in Greek hexameters, there were kept under lock and key in a stone chest in a cellar under the Capitoline temple. They were guarded by a board of priests in charge of foreign rites, the decemviri (later quindecimviri) sacris faciundis. The books were believed to contain the fata populi Romani. Nobody read them, and nobody was supposed to know their entire content. Only in times of particular danger or of particular need the senate would order the priests to approach the books, libros adire. The scrolls were opened at random, and the passage thus selected was deemed to refer to the situation at hand; there was advice hidden in it, and the illumination of the will of the gods. The books thus served simply as an instrument of divination; they were not repositories of moral precepts. The libri themselves were inspired and prophetic, but their interpreters were not. They tried to understand the

11

The most detailed account still A. Rzach in RE 2A (1923) 210517.

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selected passage in the light of the current situation and past experience, taking above all into account the results of previous consultations. On the Italian soil the closest we come to native and accepted revelation is the vaticination of Tages who sprang out from a furrow and dictated the teaching of the haruspicina, disciplinam haruspicinae dictavit.12 At Rome the haruspices were fully accepted, but they were deemed aliens. Although their services were in great demand they had never achieved the status of official priests, sacerdotes populi Romani. Their approval as diviners finds explanation in the following circumstance: although the core of their disciplina may have been revealed, the haruspices themselves were not prophets but experts. In Ciceros account they appear together with the augurs as the main representatives of artificial, that is scientific, divination. This branch of divination was an empirical science; it was based on two procedures characterized by Roman experts as observation and inference, observatio and coniectura.13 The term observatio denoted the process of long-lasting observation (observatio diuturna) of phenomena, be it the course and the significance of the stars, understood by the Chaldaeans, or the various signs from the gods. This procedure had resulted, already in the remote past, in the acquisition of positive knowledge, scientia , concerning certain categories of signs. This painstakingly assembled body of knowledge was committed to memory and to writing; this is the origin of the books of augurs, of pontiffs, and of a good portion of the haruspical books. How different is this avowed origin from that of the revealed scripts! If a recorded sign appeared, the augurs would know its meaning or in any case could find it in their books.14 These books were like dictionaries; but if you need to communicate on the spot, and do not remember words, it will be of little help to know that all the words are in the dictionary. The Roman observer had to interpret signs immediately, and he had either to accept them expressly or expressly reject as not pertaining to him.15 Hence the principal ingredient of a good augur was memoria. But there was also another requirement: ratio, reason.16 For there could come a sign that was entirely new or whose meaning was not well established. To interpret such a sign, a nova res, the augur or haruspex had to rely on all his knowledge and experience, apply the power of reasoning, and boldly draw inferences, coniecturae, from the situation at hand. The sign would be recorded, for future use, and also recorded were any eventus, any happenings that accompanied the signum or followed in its wake. The aim of this procedure

12 Sch. Bern. ad Lucanum 1.636; Cic. Div. 2.50, and Pease ad loc. The unrivaled study of the haruspices and of their craft remains C.O. Thulin, Die etruskische Disciplin (Gteborg 1905, 1906, 1909, repr. Darmstadt 1968). 13 AL 2231, 223334, 223738. 14 On the books of augurs, see AL 224156. 15 Plin. NH 28.17: in augurum certe disciplina constat neque diras neque ulla auspicia pertinere ad eos, qui quamque rem ingredientes observare ea negaverint; Servius, Aen. 5.530: nam nostri arbitrii est visa omnia vel inprobare, vel recipere. This rule referred, however, only to the signa oblativa (Servius, Aen. 12.259). 16 AL 223234, 2240.

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was to ascertain a causal and temporal link between the sign and the event. In a technical phrase this process was described as signa eventis notare (Cic. Div. 1.12). In due course, after many repeated observations, the precise meaning of the sign may finally be cracked, and the signum would then be moved from the category of unknown or uncertain novae res into the category of veteres res, the established signs. An attentive student will realize that we are here in the process of decipherment of a (divine) language. Our task is now to re-decipher what the Romans had deciphered. When Moses went onto the mountain of Sinai he received instructions written in Hebrew. When Romulus climbed onto the Palatine (or was it Aventine as Ennius has it?) Jupiter spoke to him in the language of signs. And yet Romulus (and the readers of Ennius) had not the slightest difficulty in understanding the message. From the gyrations of the birds (inde) Romulus sees (conspicit) instantaneously that through this sign (auspicio) is given to him a firm chair and a seat of kingdom (regni stabilita scamna solumque). In augural idiom the verb conspicere denoted not only the act of observation but also the act of comprehension.17 When we study a language, be it Hebrew or Jovian, we must consider not only vocabulary but also grammar and syntax. Words alone are not sufficient. Nor can signa be treated in isolation. They received their full significance within a peculiar system of grammar, a temporal and spatial grid, and the main concepts of this grammar were left and right.18 In Roman divine communications the basic lexical unit was a sign, signum. Signa represented words or rather notions; they were ideograms, quite like Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphs. When we glance at an Egyptian hieroglyphic text we cannot help but notice (very appropriately in the context of the birds of Romulus) the ubiquitous presence of the vulture sign. The frequent appearance of this sign is explained by its double function: as an ideogram it represented vulture, and in the more general sense any bird. But it also functioned as an alphabetic sign with the phonetic value of a glottal stop (corresponding to Hebrew aleph).19 The Egyptian scribes mastered and perfected their complicated script; so did the Roman augurs. The augurs (and pontiffs) classified the signa in various ways; the result was a maze of crisscrossing semantic lines. First the signa were classified according to their material quality, the manner in which they manifested themselves. Here the Roman augures publici distinguished five categories of signs: from the sky (ex caelo, that is from thunder and lightning), from the birds (ex avibus), from the tripudia (ex tripudiis, that is from the eating manner of the sacred chickens, the pulli), from the quadrupeds (ex17 Skutsch 23637; AL 2269, 228789. 18 AL 225860, 228086. The recent studies by B. Liou-Gille, Dexter et sinister et leurs quivalents, Glotta 69 (1991) 194201, and by P. Aretini, A destra e a sinistra. Lorientamento nel mondo classico (Pisa 1998) 7498, would fail the test of an augur. Their ignorance of the augural stones from Bantia (see below, nn. 5253) rendered their studies obsolete at the very moment of their publication. 19 Cf. A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford 1927) 27, 458.

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quadripedibus), and finally from unusual or frightful occurrences (ex diris).20 The particular importance that attached to the avian signs can be gleaned from the fact that although etymologically auspicium derives from avis spicium (avem spi(e)cere), the sighting or observation of birds, the term became synonymous with signum, and came to denote a whole variety of divinatory phenomena that had nothing to do with birds. These signs were arranged in, so to speak, a pecking order. It is well known that among the augurs there are many grades of auspices, observed a Vergilian commentator.21 Some were stronger, some were weaker, some were maiora, some were minora. They could annul and override each other. Again the commentary on Vergil: the lesser auguries (minora auguria) yield to greater (maiora), and have no force whatsoever even if they (appeared) first,22 and in another place: if, for instance, a barn-owl (parra) or woodpecker (picus) gave the auspicium, and subsequently an eagle gave a contrary sign, the eagles auspicium prevails.23 But it was signa ex caelo, lightning and thunder, that the augurs regarded as the greatest and strongest auspices, auspicia maxima.24 Next a sign could be sent by the Deity asked or unasked. This consideration produced two further fundamental divisions of signs, on the one hand the signs especially solicited or impetrated (impetrare), signa or auspicia impetrativa, and on the other the signa or auspicia oblativa which offered themselves spontaneously to a viewer.25 Further we have carefully to distinguish between action and status, and consequently between the signs that pertained to a concrete and well-defined undertaking, contemplated or being executed, and those signs that referred to the status of persons or things. The former are the auspicia; the latter the auguria; hopelessly confused in everyday Latin and by modern students, but religiously distinguished by the augurs, and by Ennius. Auguria were administered solely by the augurs, and the augurs appear to have used the auspices only in connection with the auguries.26 The auspices referred to action. And any action proceeded through two distinct augural phases: the stage of contemplation and the stage of execution. The impetrative auspices pertained to the stage of contemplation, ad agendi consilium (Cic. Leg. 2.32). Before any important task it was prudent to ask for divine permission.20 Festus ex Paulo 31617 L.: Quinque genera signorum observant augures publici: ex caelo, ex avibus, ex tripudis, ex quadripedibus, ex diris. 21 Servius auctus, Aen. 3.374: notum est esse apud augures auspiciorum gradus plures. 22 Servius, ad Ecl. 9.13: minora enim auguria maioribus cedunt nec ullarum sunt virium, licet priora sint. Cf. Servius auctus, Aen. 3.466. In Servius the term augurium often appears in the sense of auspicium, especially auspicium impetrativum; cf. Servius auctus, Aen. 3.89; Catalano, Contributi 8095. 23 Servius auctus, Aen. 3.374: ut puta, si parra vel picus auspicium dederit, et deinde contrarium aquila dederit, auspicium aquilae praevalet. 24 Servius auctus, Aen. 2.693; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.5.5; Cass. Dio 38.13.34. 25 AL 219596; 221216; 2239; RQ 61314. 26 Catalano, Contributi 3371; AL 221718, 229096; RQ 47677, 57273; 61314; OCD3 (1996) 22324, s.v. auspicium.

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Every person could address a deity. If we reformulate this statement in the language of augurs we can say that every person had the auspices (auspicia habere is the technical term). But these auspices were latent. To be used they had to be activated. The activation occurred at the ceremony of auspication. At this ceremony the auspices were taken; the technical term was auspicia capere or captare. This was accomplished by servare, watching for the signs, and by conspicere, observing, comprehending, and accepting the message.27 Every person could auspicate but only with respect to his own affairs. This is an important limitation, and it introduces us to another fundamental division of auspices: the division into auspicia privata and auspicia publica. An often quoted example of private auspices is the auspices taken before the marriage ceremony, a custom that survived long into the empire. The auspicia publica were administered by the magistrates and the public priests, sacerdotes publici. They could consult the auspices only with respect to actions that lay within the sphere of competence of each particular office or priesthood.28 The impetrative auspices revealed the will of Jupiter, but only in a very limited sense. They did not reveal the future. Cicero states this explicitly (Div. 2.70): non enim sumus ii nos augures qui avium reliquorumve signorum observatione futura dicamus (for we are not those augurs [like the augurs of the Marsi to whom Cicero had previously alluded] who from the observation of birds and other signs predict the future). Thus the auspicia impetrativa pertained to the present or more exactly to the action the auspicant was contemplating to undertake. In an ideal situation the deity either permitted or prohibited it. Furthermore this permission or prohibition was valid for one day only; we frequently hear of the auspices concerning a particular day, auspicium eius diei.29 This temporal limitation was perhaps the most remarkable feature of impetrative auspices: Jupiter was apparently not interested in the substance of the proposed undertaking, but rather in the propriety of its being carried out on a given day. The auguries on the other hand had no temporal limitation. Through this ceremony a special enhanced status was imparted to places and persons; in the language of augurs they were inaugurated. An inaugurated locus becomes a templum, and inauguration was also necessary for higher priests and kings. The adjectives used about such people and places were augustus and sanctus, increased and holy. This status was doctrinally different from that of sacer, sacred (the latter was in the province of pontiffs). Not every aedes sacra was a templum and not every templum was an aedes sacra.30 This holiness lasted until it was removed by a reverse ceremony of exauguratio.31

27 28 29 30 31

Liv. 6.41.6 (habere); Servius auctus, Aen. 2.178 (captare); and above, nn. 3, 15. RQ 56074; AL 221718. See the sources in Catalano, Contributi 4245. The locus classicus is Varro in Gell. Noct. Att. 14.7.7. Catalano, Contributi 211334; Aspetti 47378; AL 221525; 224950 (sanctus), 229091 (augustus); J. Linderski, OCD3 1483, s.v. templum.

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The auguries were enacted by the means of auspices. As Ennius writes Romulus and Remus dant operam simul auspicio augurioque, a phrase spectacularly misunderstood by commentators.32 The auspicant pronounced a formula. This enunciation, nuncupatio verborum, was defined as legum dictio.33 It described the parameters, leges or condiciones, of the ceremony. At the auspicy pertaining to agere the celebrant asked for permission to act today: to fight a battle or hold an assembly. At the auspicy connected with augury the celebrant, always an augur, and hence Cicero (and perhaps also Ennius) duly specifies that the brothers were augurs, asked the deity for permission to inaugurate this place, declare this man a king or found this city, Roma or Remora, as Ennius puts it. The locus classicus is Livys description of the inauguration of Numa as king of Rome.34 In Livy it is not Numa himself who takes the auspices (as Romulus does in Ennius), but an (unnamed) augur who consults the gods concerning Numas regnum. First, looking from the arx, he strictly delimits his field of vision, his templum in the air, stretching over the urbs and the ager. M. Terentius Varro, always interested in archaic diction, has preserved for us in his treatise On Latin Language the actual formula the late republican augurs recited on the citadel when they delimited their field of view for their various observations.35 In that formula much remains, to us, obscure; but still Varro and Livy very fortunately elucidate each other. The most important point is this: using the markers in the terrain below him, placed most likely on the line of the pomerium, the auspicant exactly defined his fines, the right and the left border of his field of vision. But he also looked straight ahead as far as he could see, to the end of the horizon, and with this (imaginary) line he dissected his templum aerium in two parts, left and right, left toward the north, and right toward the south. Next he pronounced another formula, another precatio. Of this formula we have unfortunately only the version of Livy, but Livy preserved well its augural flavor. The augur asked Jupiter for signa certa, and then he described exactly (peregit verbis) the auspicia he wished to be sent. What specifically those auspices were to be, Livy, as is his exasperating custom, does not explain. But from the mention of urbs and ager in his description, and the trees as the markers of the fines in Varro, we can deduce, with full certainty, that the32 Skutsch 22324 may stand for all when he writes: one and the same act is meant. It was sufficient to consult Catalano (above, n. 31) or various studies of Valeton (see the list in AL 2311) to apprehend the augural incorrectness of that statement. Tassi Scandone (above, n. 4) esp. 19091, interprets the act described by Ennius solely as inauguration, and detects in the phrase dant operam simul auspicio augurioque a confusion between the auspicy of investiture and the act of inauguration. Unjustly: every act of inauguration included the taking of auspices. 33 Servius auctus, Aen. 3.89. 34 Liv. 1.18.610; see a detailed analysis in AL 225697. For Plutarchs account of Numas inauguration (Numa 7.13), see AL 229697, and the learned investigation by Vaahtera 10413. 35 Varro, Ling. Lat. 7.8. See the stupendous analysis by E. Norden, Aus altrmischen Priesterbchern (Lund 1939) 3106, 18186, a study inspired by intuition and informed by erudition. Cf. AL 226779; C. Pavone, A proposito della formula augurale (Varrone, De lingua Latina VII 8), BSL 23 (1993) 26581.

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Livian and Varronian augur watched out for birds and not for fulmina the observation of which certainly did not require any particular terrestrial markers. The auspicant thus asked, naturally, only for favorable signs. In Ennius Remus secundam avem servat, looks out for a favorable bird. This qualification of the bird is not redundant and illogical, as some earlier and current interpreters think, but springs out from the very essence of impetrative auspices: the auspicant expected the deity to accede to the request specified in the legum dictio and dispatch a propitious sign.36 Jupiters answer could come in three forms: yes, no, and, most unnerving, maybe, when he sent a sign of ambiguous meaning, a signum dubium, an avis incerta. Hence the request of signa certa, the signs the augural interpretation of which was not in doubt.37 To characterize the positive answer the augurs employed the hallowed word addico: aves addicunt (they also used the expressions admittere: aves admittunt, and auspicium ratum facere).38 Now in a different field of Roman public life, in civil law, the praetor could pronounce (fari) the three legal, and magical, words, do, dico, addico, only on dies fasti. How potent this formula was is best illustrated by the following circumstance (reported by Varro, Ling. Lat. 6.30; cf. 6.53): if the praetor inadvertently uttered these words on a dies nefastus he had to offer a sacrifice of expiation, a hostia piacularis. But if he uttered them prudens, on purpose, fully understanding what he was doing, he was (according to the opinion of the learned pontifex maximus Q. Mucius Scaevola) impius forever, and his impiety could not be washed away by any expiation. Thus it must have been also in the realm of augury a grave responsibility to say the word addico and to make the pronouncement aves addicunt. But in the pontifical law the strong and blanket condemnation of the erring praetor had a peculiar side to it: even if he uttered the three words, knowingly or unknowingly, on a dies nefastus, this error did not affect at all the legal validity of the act he performed. For instance, if he manumitted a slave (this presupposes the manumissio in the form of vindicatio, in iure, in the court) the slave was, as Varro puts it, vitio liber. He was free, and his freedom was not circumscribed in any way, but he achieved his new status in a faulty way. The praetor was guilty, but his act was valid. Furthermore the praetor was not subject to any human punishment but only to divine wrath. It was a firm tenet of Roman cult that the gods should fend for themselves, deorum iniuriae dis curae (Tac. Ann. 1.73.4). The same principle obtained also in the augural law. It was possible to make an honest mistake: ascribe to an ambiguous sign, dubie datum, a positive36 Skutsch 225 (following Vahlen) is to be commended for having recognized the augural relevance of the adjective. Cf. Servius auctus, Aen. 3.361: praepetes sunt, quae secundo auspicio ante eum volant, qui auspicatur. Wiseman 177, n. 33, continues objecting to secundam. 37 It is of some interest to observe that Cicero in his lost treatise on augury discussed the concept of avis incerta (Cic. in Charisius 122 Keil = 156 Barwick). Cf. incerta auspicia: Liv. 8.30.1; 8.32.4,7; dubia auspicia: Liv. 8.34.4. It could happen that aliquod signum dubie datum pro certo sit acceptum (Cic. Div. 1.124). 38 For the evidence, see AL 2208, 2285, 2293, 2295.

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interpretation, admit it pro certo. Still worse an eager or unscrupulous observer could falsify the auspices (auspicia ementiri and auspicia ementita were the technical terms).39 Now the falsified auspices were valid, that is to say they were binding on the deity. Here we are in the presence of a peculiar phenomenon: the ritual formula was rather like a spell; if properly pronounced it was so potent that it could create, so to speak, a propitious bird ex nihilo, and bend the will of Jupiter himself. Livy gives a celebrated description of this augural tenet.40 Before a battle with the Samnites a zealous keeper of the sacred chickens, the pulli, reported to the consul L. Papirius the best possible omen, the tripudium solistimum: the chickens were eating greedily (whereas in fact they refused to eat). The consul was soon apprised of the falsification, but he insisted on the validity of the auspices: he had accepted the message of the pullarius as true, and hence it was for him, the Roman People and the army an excellent sign, auspicium egregium. And thus undaunted he drew up his army for battle, but also very astutely he took a religious precaution. To facilitate Jupiters revenge, he placed the keeper of the pulli in the front rank. And indeed still before the battle began an errant javelin pierced the mendacious pullarius. The consul (or rather the antiquarian author of Livys story) was very well versed in augural precepts. He formally accepted this event as a good omen: he proclaimed that the guilty person had paid his penalty, and that the gods were in the battle on the side of the Romans. The ritual ball was now in the court of Jupiter. He could show his continuing displeasure by sending a dire sign, an owl for instance; he could do nothing, thus perhaps tacitly endorsing the enunciation of the consul. But Jupiter was now fully satisfied: to show his support he dispatched a propitious oblative sign: in front of the consul (ante consulem) a raven, corvus, uttered a clear cry, clara voce occinuit. The consul again formally accepted this message and ordered the trumpets to sound. The Romans duly routed the enemy. Agnes Michels had once observed that the Roman gods were divine citizens of Rome.41 They were also divine jurisprudents of Rome: legalistic Beings that could appreciate fictions and dodges. The Romans created their gods in their own image. Papirius was able to outwit Jupiter because he knew the law: it was the pullarius, not the consul, who was guilty of deceit. But it was a dangerous game to play. Divine anger could descend not only on the head of the agent of deceit; his deed, if not expiated, could have irreparably polluted and constrained through a religious fault (religione constringere) the res publica itself.

39 On this concept, see AL 22002; 22067; RQ 61516; C. Schublin, Ementita Auspicia, Wiener Studien 99 (1986) 16581; J. Kany-Turpin, Fonction de la vrit dans un nonc augural: le paradoxe du menteur Ateius Capito, in M. Baratin and Claude Moussy (eds.), Conceptions latines du sens et de la signification (Paris 1999) 25566. 40 Liv. 10.40; for an augural interpretation, see RQ 61516, 62324, utilized by A. Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livys History (Berkeley 1998) 6163, and entirely attributed to him by M. Jaeger, CP 95 (2000 [2001]) 233, a confused summary. 41 For a discussion and appreciation of Agnes Michels as a student of the Romans and of their gods, see J. Linderski, Agnes Kirsopp Michels and the Religio, CJ 92.4 (1997) 32345 (reprinted in this volume, No. 49). Cf. also J. Scheid, Numa et Jupiter ou les dieux citoyens de Rome, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 30 (= 59.1 [1985]) 4153.

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There is a story, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, that Romulus falsified the auspices: he sent messengers to Remus reporting the sighting of the vultures, whereas at that point no birds had yet appeared. They duly appeared later, and so in this version Romulus through his pronouncement will have successfully compelled the hand of Jupiter.42 All is upright in Ennius: Romulus, like Numa in Livy, had received auspicia certa. Even more: he received the best possible auspices. The birds flew in an optimal way. Julius Hyginus, a learned antiquarian, who was appointed by Augustus director of the Palatine Library, discussed in one of his scripts the augural meaning of aves praepetes. We already know from Nigidius Figulus that they were the high flying birds; from Hyginus (in Gell. Noct. Att. 7.6.3) we learn that they either propitiously fly in front of the observer or alight in suitable places praepetes aves ab auguribus appellantur, quae aut opportune praevolant aut idoneas sedes capiunt.43 Otto Skutsch in his celebrated commentary regards the latter explanation of Hyginus as decisive, and writes that the settling of the birds foreshadows the settlement of Romulus and his followers (236). Quite wrong. In Ennius the twelve birds do not settle at all, we may say nullam sedem capiunt; they fly away toward the loca pulchra. Now, in the poem about his great compatriot Cicero (Div. 1.106) describes the omen Jupiter gave to Marius (whom Cicero pointedly calls divini numinis augur), presaging Marius return from exile and his renewed glory. Marius saw an eagle victoriously fighting against a serpent; the eagle dropped the mangled snake in undas, into the sea, and turned away from the west toward the shining east, obitu a solis nitidos convertit ad ortus, exactly like the birds of Romulus. And exactly like the birds of Romulus the eagle of Marius flew praepetibus pinnis, with auspicious wings on high, in a gliding course, lapsu, and this image corresponds to Ennius cedunt de caelo. And like Romulus Marius conspexit the bird and notavit; not only observed but accepted it as a signum faustum. In Livy, when the consul Papirius accepted his omen, Jupiter sent a corroboration in the shape of a raven; in Ciceros poem Jupiter strengthened (firmavit) the sign of the eagle by the peal of thunder in the left part of the sky (partibus caeli sinistris). The old question emerges again: what is the left part of the sky? Still this imitation of Ennius by a learned augur,44 with its description of the42 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.86; Plut. Rom. 9.5; (also Diod. 8.5; see Vaahtera 3437). But it is important to stress that this story appears only in Greek sources; as Vaahtera (99) convincingly argues the cheating Romulus is a Greek invention. 43 Cf. Festus 224 L.: praepetes aves quidam dici aiunt, quia secundum auspicium faciant praetervolantes. 44 We must not forget that Cicero was an augur! Unfortunately the book by F. Guillaumont, Philosophe et augure: recherches sur la thorie cicronienne de la divination (= Collection Latomus 184 [Bruxelles 1984]), is with respect to res augurales very deficient. Cf. RQ 48590. On the other hand the presentation of the rites of auspication by A. Carandini in A. Carandini and R. Cappelli (eds.), Roma, Romolo, Remo e la fondazione della citt (Milano 2000) 11934 (Auspici, auguri e le Rome quadrate) is well informed (although rather surprisingly he does not discuss or even mention the passage of Ennius).

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flight of the eagle, and the pronounced opposition between the west and the east, directs us toward a better understanding of the Romulean foundation of the city. So does also a passage from Livy (7.26.45) describing the famous duel between the young Marcus Valerius, the future Corvinus, and a mighty Gaul. On the helmet of Valerius a raven (corvus) alighted (consedit).45 Valerius, strictly according to the augural precepts, formally accepted the omen, and said a prayer. The raven is described as praepes; it came, like the birds of Romulus, from the sky (caelo missus). And it not only held steadfastly to its sedes, but also repeatedly attacked the Gaul aiming at his eyes. When the Gaul was cut down, the bird flew off toward the east and was lost to sight (ex conspectu elatus orientem petit). The direction of its flight again parallels exactly the volatus of the Romulean birds and of the eagle of Marius. When Jupiter wished to deter the auspicant he could disrupt the ceremony of auspication, auspicia dirimere. We know that for valid auspication there was a prerequisite of silentium. But the augurs interpreted silentium in a broad way, not just as mere silence, but rather as the absence of any fault or error, the absence of vitium, and to ascertain this a person versed in augural regulations was required, a peritus, a perfect augur. But any untoward sound, a strepitus, was a sure indication of a vitium, and the surest of all was the squeak of the shrew-mouse, occentus soricum.46 (It would have been a great story, though worthy of Lucilius rather than Ennius, if the foundation of the City had been prevented by the squeak of a mouse!). All this discouragement could have occurred even before the beginning of the formal observations (servare). For if a noise was heard the auspicant could not rise up in silence, silentio surgere (Festus 474 L.), and the ceremony of auspication had to be postponed to another day. But even when the auspicant took his seat, and established his field of vision, his templum in the air, unfavorable birds could have appeared to prevent him from undertaking any action. For any signa infausta that appeared in the auspicants pre-established field of vision were addressed specifically and personally to him, and could not be repudiated. And even when an impetrative favorable sign was observed and accepted, Jupiter could still change his mind, and countermand his signal. It was for this reason that the auspicants after they saw the desired signs would immediately jump up from their seat and their place of observation, the terrestrial templum. In this way they dismantled their field of vision.47 If any unfavorable bird showed up at this moment it was solely an oblative sign which had no defined addressee and consequently could be declared as not pertaining to the person who saw it. A good example of the ceremony of auspication that went terribly astray is the misadventure of Seianus, shortly before his fall from grace. In his capacity as consul he was taking auspices, but as Cassius Dio reports (58.5.7) not one bird of good omen appeared, but many ravens (krakew) flew around him and cawed, and

45 On this expression, cf. AL 2259. 46 Dirimere: AL 215152, 2170, 2173, 219798; silentium: Cic. Div. 2.7172, and Pease ad loc.; AL 217273; vitium: AL 216277; occentus: Plin. NH 8.223. 47 Servius, Aen. 2.699: (augures) visis auspiciis surgebant e templo. Cf. AL 2273.

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then all flew together and perched on the okhma. The augurs would characterize the birds of Seianus as aves vagae, wandering aimlessly, or perhaps circaneae, flying in circles.48 Not only was their flight all wrong but also the cry. It was heard all over the place, whereas Jupiter established that the raven functioned as a good omen only if it sang on the right, ab dextra caneret.49 The sign was unfavorable indeed, but soon it was to become outrightly dire: the ravens did not fly away toward the east, but settled (in augural idiom sedem ceperunt) on the okhma, certainly not a pulcher locus, but the jail to which Seianus was soon to be dragged.50 Our final task is to define the seat of Romulus, and of Jupiter, and plot the course of birds with respect to both of them. We happen to know exactly where the Roman gods lived. As Varro (in Festus 454 L.) explains, their abode, their sedes, was located in the north. They looked from their seats southward, and consequently had the east to their left, and the west to their right. And because the sun rises in the east, this part of the world is propitious, and thus the left auspices (sinistra auspicia) are regarded as better than the right (dextra). Right and left is here defined from the standpoint of the gods. We now begin to understand why the laeva avis comes from the east, and why the propitious birds return to that quarter. From various other sources (Dionysius of Halicarnassos, Pliny the Elder, and Servius) we can reconstruct the system in greater detail. The north was more honorable and stronger than the south, and the east was more favorable and had preeminence over the west. The abode of the gods stretched on the north side from west to east. It was not of an even height. It was the lowest in the west (i.e. northwest) and the highest in the east (i.e. north-east). It was in that part of the sky that Jupiter himself had his domicilium and where the summa felicitas dwelt. On the other hand the most calamitous regions, partes maximae dirae, were in the northwest. This system the augurs shared to a great degree with the haruspices; to this arrangement of the sky corresponds rather exactly the haruspical arrangement of the regions on sacrificial livers.51 This obscure and shadowy doctrine received a beam of light when some thirtyfive years ago in the Roman colony of Bantia in southern Italy nine stones came to light marking an augural templum (dated to the last century of the Republic). Only three cippi were found in situ, but the complete arrangement has been brilliantly reconstructed by Mario Torelli.52 The stones were placed in three rows forming a rectangle some nine meters long. They were on average some thirty to fifty centimeters high, and had a diameter of about thirty centimeters. They were48 The birds are naturally vagae (cf. Hor. Carm. 4.4.2), and thus in that state they are the opposite of the augural birds that fly with a purpose; circaneae: Paulus ex Festo 37 L. 49 Cic. Div. 1.12, 85. 50 Cass. Dio 58.5.7; on the meaning of okhma, see the judicious remarks by Vaahtera 114, n. 90. 51 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.5.24; Plin. NH 2.14243; Servius, Aen. 2.693. Cf. AL 228285. 52 M. Torelli, Un templum augurale det repubblicana a Bantia, Rend.Lincei 21 (1966) 293315, a fount of erudition and acumen, with some interpretations partially superseded, partially refined in a great article with an unassuming title: Contributi al supplemento del CIL IX, Rend.Lincei 24 (1969) 3948. For further comments, see AL 225860; 228485; RQ 49395.

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inscribed on top, and inclined toward the west, so that the inscriptions could be read only by the observer looking east. He sat on a large stone, found in situ. He thus used the inscribed cippi as the markers on the ground to project into the air his field of vision. We begin deciphering the stones with the northern row, found in situ. In the north-eastern corner we have the stone inscribed B(e)ne I(uvante) AV(e), and in the north-western corner the stone inscribed C(ontraria) A(ve) A(uspicium) P(estiferum). On the middle stone the inscription most probably referred to avis arcula. These stones remarkably corroborate the doctrine reconstructed from literary and antiquarian sources. The most propitious bird, positively assisting the auspicant in his projected undertaking, bene iuvans, is connected with the north-east, the region of summa felicitas. The north-west is indeed maxime dirum: if a bird appeared in this region it meant not merely the prohibition to proceed, it was not merely a contraria avis; it was a warning that a calamity impends, an auspicium pestiferum. In the middle, the north proper, we have a relatively neutral region: avis arcula, a bird that according to the augural definition vetabat aliquid fieri (Paulus ex Festo 15 L.), prevented the action, but was not threatening. The middle row corresponds to the mental line drawn by the Livian augur straight ahead up to the end of the horizon. It has three stones with the names of deities, Jupiter, Sol, and Flusa (an Oscan counterpart of Flora); their exact arrangement is a matter of dispute.53 For our purpose more interesting is the southern row. The stones (which were not found in situ) are so arranged as to correspond to the northern row, and to what we know of the augural doctrine. As expected, the birds in this quarter are less strong, both less helpful and less dire than those in the north. In the south-east we have SIN(ente) Av(e), a bird that allows us to proceed, but does not indicate divine assistance. In the south-west we find C(ontraria) A(ve): it positively prohibits the action, but does not utter threats. It is not pestifera like its counterpart in the northwest but merely EN(ubra), according to an antiquarian notice a sign restraining and hindering (Paulus ex Festo 67 L.). But for the readers of Ennius it is the middle stone in the southern row that offers a treat: it reads R(emore) AVE. The remores aves fortunately are also known from antiquarian sources: they are the delaying birds, compelling the auspicant to delay whatever he intended to do.54 In the story of Romulus and Remus that became canonical, and strangely overshadowed the account of Ennius, both brothers received the message: Remus first, Romulus next. This is peculiar for to an augurally minded reader the name Remus must mean the slow one.55 Remus saw six vultures, Romulus, later,53 Cf. the illuminating remarks by R. Beck, Cosmic Models: Some Uses of Hellenistic Science in Roman Religion, in T. D. Barnes (ed.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society = Apeiron 27.4 (1994) 101, 11012. 54 Festus 345 L.: Remores aves in auspicio dicuntur, quae acturum aliquid remorari conpellunt. 55 Very well underscored by Wiseman 7, 111, 171, n. 36. The phrase Remus auspicio se devovet, Wiseman (171, n. 34, following Jocelyn 6263) tentatively translates Remus by his auspicy vows himself to the gods below, thus taking auspicio as an instrumental ablative.

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twelve, and his augury prevailed again strictly according to the rule that a subsequent stronger sign annuls the earlier weaker message.56 Of this version not a trace in Ennius. In his poem the twelve birds of Romulus directed their flight toward loci praepetes and pulchri. We are now in a position to solve this riddle. They flew in the direction not just of east but precisely north-east, toward the sedes of Jupiter, the highest and best place in all the universe, a veritable locus praepes and pulcher, lofty and fortunate. The aves of Romulus were bene iuvantes; Jupiter not only gave his nod he actively supported Romulus. The regnum of Romulus was indeed firmly established. We can now admire not only the art of Ennius but also his augural prowess. But above all we look at the contest with genuine apprehension. Like the followers of Romulus and Remus we are well aware of how many things could have gone wrong, and how many insidious dangers lurked around the auspicants augural templum. But all ended well, no mouse squeaked, no avis pestifera appeared, and western civilization continued on its course from Rome to Bryn Mawr, and the present lecture.

This makes little sense, augurally or otherwise; Remus and his birds were slow, but he certainly was not asking the underworld for help. Wisemans study suffers from an almost total neglect of the augural perspective; he does not consider the Bantian stones. We can either try to understand our sources or write our own fable. 56 Liv. 1.7.1; Ovid, Fasti 4.817 (he specifies the birds solely as volucres); cf. above, nn. 2122. The vultures as birds of omen will be discussed at length in another paper. But we can already disclose their unexpected and overwhelming significance. A new epigram of Posidippus reveals their auspical specialty (Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia, ediderunt C. Austin et G. Bastianini [Milano 2002] 4849, epigram 27). For the birth of children, and we may surmise for the birth of cities too, the vulture was a most perfect augury, a veritable augustum augurium: tknvn er`[o]m`nvi genen ovnw ristow, fnh marturhn od yeo dxetai od sunedresai mgan etn, ll teleh fanetai, ovnn xrma teleitaton, fnh pad gagosa ka n ykoiw gorhtn duep ka yon n polmvi. Or, in Austins translation: The best bird of omen when you enquire about the birth of children, the vulture accepts neither a gods testimony nor a joint sitting with the great eagle, but manifests itself perfect in its kind: the most perfect of auguries, a vulture that brought a child will make him in council a sweet-speaking orator and a nimble fighter in war.

2 ISTO VILIUS, IMMO CARUM Anecdotes About King Romulus*Isto vilius. Lovers of words will love A. S. Gratwicks recent piece (2000) on this idiom. Yet this is only part of the puzzle. There exists a complement at the other end of the scale: Immo carum. A brief introduction. At the conclusion of Terences Adelphoe, in a comical reversal of roles, the stingy Demea goads the generous Micio into headlong spendthrift spending. Micio drags his feet, and when Demea suggests that in addition to freeing the crafty slave, Syrus, and his female companion, he should also provide them with a loan so that they may start a business, Micio responds, istoc vilius (line 981). This choice of words to express a petulant demurral has for centuries (or rather for millennia if we begin with the scholia) intrigued philologists, and Gratwick guides us expertly through all the meanders of the argument. He points out that surprisingly the commentators of Terence have generally neglected the testimony of Suetonius preserved by the late fourth-century grammarian Charisius. It is to this text that we ought now to direct our attention. We read under the lemma Isto vilius:1rex qui vocabat ad caenam,2 si sibi ea res exhibenda indiceretur quam exhibere non posset, respondit (respondebat),3 ut Tranquillus refert, isto vilius hominis erit caena.588

Gratwick (2000, 85) gives the following translation:A rex who regularly entertained, if a thing were stipulated (for him to provide) which he was unable to provide, would reply, as Suetonius reports, isto vilius hominis erit caena.* 1 American Journal of Philology 123 (2002) 587599 {with minor corrections and addenda}. Keil 1857, 200; Barwick 1925, 260 (the latter title Gratwick misleadingly quotes as Barwick/Khnert 1964, but the edition of 1964 is simply editio stereotypa correctior editionis prioris, with F. Khnert only providing Addenda and Corrigenda at the end of the volume, pp. 53941, none of which pertains to our passage); Roth 1858, 304; Reifferscheid 1860, 148-49 (fr. 112). caena (so often in manuscripts) = cena. Cf. TLL s.v. cena (col. 775, lines 5963). Gratwick (2000, 85, n. 17) felicitously points out that the reading of our only authority, the codex Neapolitanus, is the abbreviation R. This is clearly indicated in the apparatus of Keil; Barwick, surprisingly and misleadingly, in this and other places, takes no notice of the abbreviation. Keil, Roth and Barwick expand the abbreviation as respondit; Gratwick follows Reifferscheid and opts for respondebat (which is reflected in his translation). He argues that respondebat, indicating a habitual action, is the right reading for Charisius, but not necessarily for Suetonius. Thus according to this argument we have a paradoxical situation: The editors of Charisius adopted a form wrong for this author, and Reifferscheid adopted a form that may not be right for Suetonius.

2 3

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It has long been recognized, indeed, since the time of the Renaissance scholars, that the main textual problem resides in the word hominis, which (so it might appear) can hardly be forced into any sensible construction or meaning. Emendations were considered, and here Gratwicks proposal (2000, 88) nihilo minus deserves acknowledgement. Following in the footsteps of several earlier erudites, and in opposition to Bentley,4 he takes hominis (or whatever hides in it) as belonging to the quotation itself. We thus receive the text: Isto vilius, nihilo minus erit caena or (tortuously) by that (much) the more meanly, but (by) none the less will it be a feast. But who is the rex who uttered this quip? Certainly not any real king, says Gratwick (2000, 8891), but rather a man of influence, a boss, a padrone, as defined by OLD s.v. rex 8. At a dinner, an impudent guest makes an outrageous demand (e.g., in addition to food, he would also wish to have dancing girls; caviar and striptease, as Gratwick puts it). The host gives a witty response. The dictum has to be taken as a specific quotation of Terences Micio, but a quotation given a deliberate twist. The twist would reside in the addition of nihilo minus and a play on the causal 5 and comparative interpretation of istoc. The ill-mannered person will miss the subtlety (for a boor must ex definitione be also ill-educated), and will take this Micio-like petulant refusal for a conciliatory bon mot. The more cultivated bystanders will knowingly sneer at the illiterate boor and mentally applaud the refined host. In sum, a perfect donnish joke that would fare very well indeed at an Oxonian high table. The point of Suetonius anecdote ... was to illustrate the witty comitas of some specific famous eques or senator of the past. Gratwick concedes that this person must remain anonymous for us, but his preferred urbane padrone who entertained boorish guests is none other than Atticus. Rex Atticus? Why not Maecenas, who also loved to entertain, and claimed a royal lineage? In point of fact this is not at all a likely context of the anecdote.4 Earlier conjectures are listed by Keil (1857, 200, in app., and discussed by Gratwick 2000, 8687): isto vilius nobis coena erit (Casaubonus, i.e., Isaac Casaubon, 15501614; he proposed his emendation in 1595); isto vilius erit hodie coena (Palmerius, i.e., Janus Meller Palmier; oddly enough he published this emendation of Charisius in his Spicilegium Sallustianum [Francoforti 1580]); isto vilius domini erit coena (Scriverius, i.e., Peter Schryver, 15761660; his emendation dates from 1596); and finally Bentleius (i.e., Richard Bentley, 16621742; his emendation is from 1726): isto vilius; hoc est, erit coena, who thus takes the words following the semicolon as a gloss appended by Charisius or already by Suetonius. Reifferscheid prints a variation on this idea: isto vilius hoc est erit caena. In this text the words in quotation marks belong to the rex, and hoc est is the explanation of Suetonius and Charisius. In addition to these ideas Roth (1858, XCI) also lists haec mihi of Passeratius (i.e., Jean Passerat, 15341602). But it is rather distressing to find out that according to Roth and Reifferscheid the conjecture of Casaubonus had a slightly different form: hodie nobis coena erit. For biographical and bibliographical information, see Pkel 1882, under each name. Gratwick (2000, 83) rightly complains that this usage of isto(c), corresponding to qua re, hac re, eo, hoc, has been overlooked in standard Latin grammars (and also in OLD), but we observe that it is duly recorded in the Dictionary of Lewis and Short s.v. iste, II C, for that reason, therefore. Yet it is much more likely that istoc functions here as the ablative of comparison; see below, n. 24.

5

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The perusal of evidence for rex in the sense of patron seemingly strengthens Gratwicks conceit, for in several passages, the rex appears in a convivial context. But on closer scrutiny the rex reveals himself as overbearing, rude and tyrannical, a far cry from Gratwicks urbane host. He is, to use Eduard Fraenkels apt description, der Brotherr des Parasiten, (the breadmaster of parasites).6 Now, oddly enough, OLD (and Gratwick, and Fraenkel too)7 omitted the passage of Macrobius (Sat. 2.1.3) in which the rex appears as a civilized host, but this indication must be set in a wider context of Macrobius convivium and the subject of the conversation (2.1.110). The dinner was hosted by the refined and aristocratic Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (ca. 32084); he is addressed as rex mensae.8 This expression is not attested otherwise, but it immediately calls to mind the figure of the Greek symposiarch and the Roman magister cenae. These symposia and convivia were joyous meetings of equals; there was no place at the table for clients, sycophants and parasites. When at such gatherings the host or president is called rex, the term acquires the feeling of a congenial king, not of a capricious tyrant. In Macrobius the initial subject of the conversation was Vergil, and his mastery of the language. One of the interlocutors, Avienus, marveled at the skill with which Vergil had set out (at Aen. 1.723 and 1.216) well and shrewdly (bene ac sapienter),9 with the change of but a few words, the difference between a convivium tumul6 Fraenkel 1922, 19193. Similarly White 1978, 81 (with further examples); he describes the rex as the lordly figure who maintained a host of parasites and clients. The tyrannical rex occupies firmly the realm of comical and satirical tradition, see Damon 1997, esp. 15152, 17374, 18182, 26465. Cf. also Gowers (1993, 26): In Roman Republican society ... the domineering host (or rex) became a sinister reminder of monarchy. Perhaps so; certainly a reminder of social chasm, as well put by Howell (1980, 340): The use of the allocutions rex and dominus was one of the aspects of the relationship between rich men and their dependants which gave most satisfaction to the rich men and most annoyance to their dependants. See Plaut. Asin. 919; Capt. 92; Men. 902; Stich. 455; Ter. Phorm. 338 (and Donatus ad loc. with a distinction between rex parasiti and patronus liberti); Hor. Ep. 1.17.43 (and Porphyrio ad loc.); Mart. 1.112; 2.68; 3.7.5: regis superbi sportulae, the haughty patrons handouts; 12.48.1516 (cf. below, n. 8); Iuv. 1.136; 5.14 (and passim); 7.45 (cf. Courtney 1980, esp. 112, 230); Sen. Dial. 2.15.1: non accipiet (sc. sapiens) contumeliam ... si in convivio regis recumbere infra mensam vescique cum servis ignominiosa officia sortitis iubebitur? (but Seneca probably has in mind a real king). The passage duly figures in Reifferscheid 1860, 436; and in Lewis-Short, s.v. rex B.2. A Reader for this journal (Reader A) suggested that rex mensae was a technical term, and that this circumstance may account for the positive meaning of the rex. Hardly so; but I am thankful for this suggestion for it has led me to rethink and refine the problem. We read at Mart. 12.48.1516: Convivas alios cenarum quaere magister / quos capiant mensae regna superba tua. In these lines all technical expressions (magister, mensae regna) have a negative connotation. Thus, the clue does not reside in the term itself but rather in the composition of the convivium (see above in the text). To the testimony of Macrobius, we can add Hor. Carm. 1.4.18: regna vini, explained by Porphyrio as magisteria convivarum; Plut. Quaest. conv. 1.4 = 622 B: sumposou basilew; Prudent. Cath. 9.30: rex, i.e., of the convivium at which water was changed into wine; Sid. Apoll. Epist. 9.13.4: rex convivii. Cf. Marquardt 1886, 1.326, 33132; Mau 1900, 61112. For the later commentators and schoolmasters Vergil could do nothing wrong. Bene dixit was their favored exclamation. Cf. on that locution the learned study by Ussani 1946, 8891.

7 8

9

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tuosum and sobrium, a riotous and a sober meal. Our own banquet, Avienus continued, combines the restraint (pudicitia) of the heroic age and the sophistication (elegantia) of our own age; it surpasses Agathons banquet in Plato, for our host (rex mensae), Praetextatus, is not at all inferior to Socrates in character (in moribus) and certainly more influential in public affairs (in re publica). Yet in Plato, in spite of their high brows (supercilio), one of the guests wished to call for admission of a psaltria so that the girl, her natural charms artificially embellished, might beguile the philosophers with sweet tunes and sinuous dance (ut puella ex industria supra naturam mollior canora dulcedine et saltationis lubrico exerceret inlecebris philosophantes). But we do not spice up the festivities with even a small bit of pleasure (nullo admixtu voluptatis). Praetextatus was firm and curt: No dancing girls: ludicras voluptates nec suis Penatibus adsuetas nec ante coetum tam serium producendas. The day was saved by Symmachus who urged the guests to invent a lively amusement yet without wantonness (excogitemus alacritatem lascivia carentem), and proposed to discuss the jests of famous men of old. Convivia and ioci was an established theme; another theme was that of moderation in food and comportment and finding at the banquet the highest enjoyment in pleasures of mind and not of body.10 A similar note of moderation and jocular banter was struck by another Roman author and another Roman rex more than five hundred years previously. There exists a text that throws a new and unsuspected light on the person of the rex in Charisius. For more than four hundred years this text had eluded all the learned interpreters of Terence and Suetonius, from Palmerius and the great Casaubonus to Gratwick, but my computer, a sage machine, produced it in less than four minutes. It resides in Gellius Noctes Atticae (11.14), a work one would expect the erudites of the past had known by heart. At the head of the chapter stands a preamble: Sobria et pulcherrima Romuli regis responsio circa vini usum (The temperate and most excellent reply of King Romulus as to [his] use of wine); a story follows:Simplicissima suavitate et rei et orationis L. Piso Frugi usus est in primo annali, cum de Romuli regis vita atque victu scriberet. Ea verba, quae scripsit, haec sunt: Eundem Romulum dicunt ad cenam vocatum ibi non multum bibisse, quia postridie negotium haberet. Ei dicunt: Romule, si istuc omnes homines faciant, vinum vilius sit. His respondit: immo vero carum, si, quantum quisque volet, bibat; nam ego bibi quantum volui. 11

10 Convivial moderation was also the subject of Varros Menippean Satire Nescis quid vesper serus vehat; cf. Gratwick 2000, 89, n. 26; and esp. the commentary by Cbe 1990, 142947. The most important extant ancient discussions of decorous banquets are Cic. Sen. 4446 (cf. Powell 1988, 19395); Plut. Quaest. conv. 1.4 = 62022 (cf. Teodorsson 1989, 1.91107). Cf. Friedlnder 1922, 1.26366; 2.28586, and below, n. 23. 11 I quote from the classic Teubner edition by C. Hosius (1903); the Oxford edition of P. K. Marshall (1990) has the identical text (though unlike Hosius it does not employ throughout the letter v). Pisos fragment is fr. 8 Peter (1914, 121), fr. 13 Forsythe (1994, 451), and fr. 10 BeckWalter (2001, 29394). The translation draws (with some alterations) on the translations of Forsythe and J. C. Rolfe in his Loeb edition of Gellius (1927). Forsythe (1994, 45152) maintains that the anecdote is to be connected with the widespread belief that Romulus forbade by law Roman women to drink wine and made it legal for husbands to divorce or execute their

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L. Piso Frugi has employed a delightful simplicity of content and diction in the first book of his Annals, when he wrote about the life and habits of King Romulus. His words, as he wrote them, are as follows: They say that the same Romulus, when he was invited to dinner, did not drink much because he had business on the following day. They [i.e., his dinner companions] tell him: if all men did this, Romulus, wine would be cheaper. He replied: No indeed! It would be dear if everyone drank as much as he wished; for I drank as much as I wished.

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We have before us not just Gellius but a fragment from the Annals of L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, a statesman (tr. pl. 149, cos. 133, cens. 120) and a historian of renown. In this fragment two words spring into the readers eye: istuc and vilius. In the whole electronically searcheable corpus of Latin literature, a form of iste (istuc, istoc, isto, istis) and vilius are juxtaposed in only four passages: in Gellius-Piso, Charisius-Suetonius, Terence, and Martial. In Terence we encounter an idiomatic expression with which Gratwick started his quest, in Martial we have a simple comparative construction;12 only Gellius and Charisius share between them a story, and not just a story, but a story concerning a king, and his convivial witticisms. It should be evident that we are dealing with two halves of the same anecdote. The unnamed rex in the fragment of Suetonius will thus be King Romulus, and the story must ultimately derive from the same source as the story in Gellius, from Piso. We should not be blinded by Suetonius Life of Terence and sheepishly assume that in our fragment we have in the phrase isto vilius a specific quotation of the poet. For it so happens that Suetonius was also familiar with the Annals of Piso: he quotes Piso as an authority for the establishment of Tarpeian and Capitoline games by Romulus. The preservation of the fragment we owe to Tertullian, De Spectaculis 5: dehinc idem Romulus Iovi Feretrio ludos instituit in Tarpeio, quos Tarpeios dictos et Capitolinos Piso tradit. And further: Qui quos quem per ordinem et quibus idolis ludos instituerint, positum est apud Suetonium Tranquillum vel a quibus Tranquillus accepit. We thus have a fragment of Piso (fr. 7 Peter, fr. 14 Forsythe, fr. 9 Beck-Walter) embedded in a fragment of Suetonius (Roth [1858] 27879; Reifferscheid [1860] 334, fr. 185). Peter takes no notice of this double embedding, and he never mentions Suetonius as an excerptor of Piso; Forsythe, on the other hand, realized very well that the whole long disquisition of Tertullian (and not only his remark about the Capitoline games) derives from Suetonius and ultimately from Piso. The convivial anecdote presented Romulus as a deipnosophistes, and recounted his witty retorts, in turn, as a host and a guest. The verbal and rhetorical affinities between the two fragments, Gellius-Piso and Charisius-Suetonius, are resounding: Romulum ... ad cenam vocatum and rex, qui vocabat ad caenam; 13 ei dicunt and sibi ... indiceretur; respondit and respondit; vinum vilius sit and isto vilius ... erit. But beyond and above those verbal echos, a common rhetorical ethoswives for doing so. There is nothing in Pisos text to sustain or even to suggest this interpretation. See below, n. 23. 12 Mart. 14.1.7: Sunt apinae tricaeque et si quid vilius istis, referring to worthless gifts. 13 For such reciprocal invitations, with the same choice of words, cf Cic. Verr. 2.4.62: deinde ipsum regem ad cenam vocavit, and further rex ... vocat ad cenam deinde ipse praetorem.

Isto vilius, Immo carum

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spans the fragments: At a dinner, when other guests are drinking heavily, Romulus shows moderation; when reproached (for dampening the spirit of the party), he gives a witty and polite response. In the other fragment, when the rex himself entertains, he does so in a moderate fashion; when a guest remonstrates, the rex gives a witty and polite response. But there is even more. Each reply consists of two parts: a short and pointed quip (immo vero carum; isto vilius) followed by a rather diffuse divagation that tempers the sharpness of the response. Romulus and the rex share a fondness for the same choice of words and they share a predilection for the same rhetorical figures. They are the same literary person. This correspondence is all the more remarkable as the two fragments reached us through diverse routes. Gellius was interested in style, and he presents a verbatim (so he claims) quotation of Piso. Charisius was interested solely in a point of grammar and not at all in the literary environment of his quotation, and moreover, he did not get his lines directly from Suetonius but rather through the intermediary of the third-century grammarian Iulius Romanus.14 Along its tortuous journey, the passage suffered abbreviation and perhaps mutilation, but it still retained its distinct lexical and rhetorical flavor, and this flavor, as the comparison with Gellius shows ad nasum, is the flavor of Piso. In point of fact we have before us the nucleus of Piso extracted from the Suetonian wrappings but with the label of Suetonius still attached. It is thus the same textual situation as in Tertullian: Piso embedded in Suetonius and Suetonius encased in still another author who is our final authority. Gellius apparently had Piso in his hands; Tertullian, while referring to Piso, did not hide that he got his information from Suetonius; in Charisius it is the name of Piso that was lost in transit but not his style. There was to Piso a certain art: a touch of humor, and a method of exposition consisting in the repetition of key words and phrases. Repetition features prominently, and to good effect, in both parts of the Romulus anecdote; and we detect it also in another fragment (Gell. 7.9; fr. 27 Peter; fr. 37 Forsythe, fr. 30 BeckWalter), where Piso recounts, sympathetically, two stories from the life of Cn. Flavius, the famous curule aedile of 304. Flavius rose to this originally patrician office although he was born the son of a freed slave, and earned his living as a scribe. The aristocrats opposed and heckled him. Piso wished to show Flavius mettle and his dignified comportment in the face of rude opposition. The device he employed was repetition. He repeated the name of Flavius three times, each time in its full form, Cn. Flavius Anni filius, the third time with a poignant addition: Cn. Flavius Anni filius, aedilis. In this composition Flavius and his office were

14 On the sources of Charisius, see Barwick (1922, passim, esp. 317, 6366). In the preface to his edition of Charisius Barwick (1925, XXI) points out that Charisius always indicates the passages he took from Romanus, and that he nihil fere de suo addidit. He duly appends the Romanus tag (190 K. = 246 B.) to his long disquisition de adverbio (24689 B.). Charisius does not identify the rex. Is it his normal procedure? (a very pertinent question posed by Reader A.). A perusal of Charisius bulky work shows that he eschews prosopographical identifications. This leaves the field open for modern surmises. {For Iulius Romanus, the sources of Charisius, and a critique of Barwick, see now Schenkenve