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Chapter 23
Lecture One of Two
Legends of Aeneas
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Legends of Aeneas
• Greek myths developed later by the Romans
• They bring to them their own cultural heritage
• Romans had no creation account or divine
myths
• Mostly Roman legend for national and social
functions
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EARLY ROME: MYTH, LEGEND,
HISTORY
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Early Rome
• Rome was one of many small towns
• Earliest influences were Greek and Near
Eastern by way of the Etruscans
• Rome first ruled by Etruscan kings
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Early Rome
• Replaced in 500 by the “republic”
– Patricians (senate)
– Consuls (two-year terms of office)
– Symbolism of the fasces
• Plebeians not in the government at first
– Gradually acquire a role
• Legendary traditions justify the rule of the
patricians
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Early Rome
• Rome expanded greatly under its republic
• New duties of running an empire brought
down the Republic and ended in the Roman
Empire, with an emperor
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ROMAN RELIGION
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Roman Religion
• Latini arrive in 1500 BC
• Had different practices and attitudes from the
Greeks whom we’ve studied
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Numina and Sacrificium
ROMAN RELIGION
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Numina and Sacrificium
• Religion of the Latini had deities that weren’t
anthropomorphic
• Theirs were the “nodders,” who inhabited
certain functions of daily life
• Robigus/o
– Fungus on grain
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Fig. 23.1 A River numen
Musei Capitolini, Rome; author’s photo
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Numina and Sacrificium
• The Robigalia
– Priest of the Quirinus (co + viri)
– wine, incense, gut of a sheep, entrails of a dirty,
red dog . . .
• Sacrificium
– do ut des
– Carefully scripted rituals that had to be observed
– Appius Claudius Pulcher’s chickens
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Numina and Sacrificium
• Potentially innumerable
– First-Plower, Second-Plower, Maker-of-Ridgesbetween-Furrows, Implanter . . .
• Some central to the state as a whole
– Janus
• Some numina become identified with Greek
deities and assume their myths
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Fig. 23.2
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Photograph
© 2007 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Two-faced Janus
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Roman Deities Equated with Greek
ROMAN RELIGION
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Roman/Greek Deities Equated
• Identification mostly poetic innovation
• Made by poets
• Pushed during the reign of the emperors for
political reasons
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Fig. 23.3
Hellenized Roman Gods
University of Wisconsin–Madison Photo Archive
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Roman/Greek Deities Equated
RO/GK
Jupiter/Zeus
Original Roman Function
Sunny Sky/Rain
Juno/Hera
Family/Moon
Diana/Artemis
Spirit of the woods
Ceres/Demeter
Wheat
Mercury/Hermes
Not an original Roman numen
Neptune/Poseidon Waters
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Roman/Greek Deities Equated
RO/GK
Original Roman Function
Vulcan/Hephaestus Volcanoes; destructive fires
Mars/Ares
Minerva/Athena
Wolf; month of the beginning
of the campaign season
Handicrafts
Liber/Dionysus
“Freer”?; wine
Faunus/Pan
Release from forest terror
Venus/Aphrodite
Fresh water; vegetable fertility
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Roman/Greek Deities Equated
RO/GK
Hercules
Asculepius
Proserpina
Dis
Original Roman Function
Heracles: Brought in as a
foreign cult; no original
Roman numen
Asklepius: no original Roman
numen
Persephonê: no original
Roman numen
Hades: no original Roman
numen
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Fig. 23.4
Temple of Portunus, numen of the
Tiber Rriver crossing
Photo Canali Photobank, Milan
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Gods and Men in the Roman Meat Market
OBSERVATIONS
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The Roman Meat Market
• Shows mixture of sources
• The Forum Boarium
– Hercules passed through Rome with the cattle of
Geryon and freed Rome from the cattle-rustler
Cacus
– Numerous honorific statues and buildings erected
to him there
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Gods of the Family and State
ROMAN RELIGION
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Gods of the Family and State
• Gods of the family weren’t absorbed by Greek
deities
– No Greek equivalent for them
• Lar (plural Lares)
– Etruscan for a ghost
– Of the fertile field first => of many places
– Worshipped in shrines at crossroads
– Family members in the shrines
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Fig. 23.5
Roman Lares
House of the Vettii, Pompeii; author’s photo
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Fig. 23.6
Temple of Vesta
Photo John Heseltine; © Dorling Kindersley
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Gods of the Family and State
• Penates
– Protected a household’s things
– Portable
• The gens
– Paterfamilias
– A man’s genius
• All of Rome a family
– Vesta (Hestia)
– Pietas
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Gods of the Family and State
• “No doubt it was the native Roman
predisposition to regard abstractions as divine
that enabled them to transfer pious devotion
from the head of a family to an invisible entity
of great power, the Roman state. Greek
religious anthropomorphism, by contrast,
stood in the way of granting obedience to a
divine abstraction, and the Greeks never did
evolve a nation state.”
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End
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