The cult of Virtues in Archaic and Mid-Republican Rome

Anno Accademico 2012/2013

Tesi di perfezionamento in discipline Filologiche, Linguistiche

e Storiche Classiche

THE CULT OF VIRTUES IN ARCHAIC AND

MID-REPUBLICAN ROME

DANIELE MIANO

Relatori: Prof. Carmine Ampolo

Prof. Tim Cornell

2

3

List of contents

Virtues and personification ... 19

Fortuna ... 55 Ops ... 104 Victoria ... 132 Salus ... 169 Conclusions ... 199 Selected bibliography ... 206

4

List of tables

Block with dedication to Hercules and mention to Salus from Praeneste (CIL 12 62). ... 177 Block with dedication to Victoria from

Trasacco (CIL 12 388). ... 147 Brettian coin with Nika (SNG VI 238)

... 140 Bronze tablet with dedication to Fortuna from Praeneste (CIL I2 60) ... 67 Bronze tablet with dedication to

Victoria from Pietrabbondante ... 149 Cippus with dedication to Salus from

Pisaurum (CIL 12 373) ... 180 Litography of column bases with votive

inscription from Tusculum (CIL 12 48-49) ... 71

Litography of the pocolom of Salus (CIL 12 450). ... 181 Reproduction of a bronze tablet with

dedication to Fortuna from

Beneventum (CIL 12 397) ... 75 Reproduction of inscribed bronze

mirror from Praeneste (CIL 12 2498). ... 144 Reproduction of inscriptions on bronze

strigils ... 178 Reproduction of the polocom dedicated

to Fortuna (CIL 12 443) ... 77 Reproduction of the sors at the Museum of Fiesole (CIL 12 2841) ... 80

5

Abstract

Title: The Cult of Virtues in Archaic and Mid-Republican Rome

In my PhD thesis I study the origin and historical development at Rome of the cults of Virtues, namely divinities such as Fortuna, Ops, Salus, Victoria, Concordia, etc. Because of the close connection between these cults and the related concepts, I show that the study of these cults is an extremely important tool for investigating and understanding the process of identity-construction in Rome. An important part of my doctoral thesis is the study of modern scholarship. I carefully reviewed all the relevant scholarship starting from the 19th century, showing how the way the cults of virtues were explained and represented was heavily influenced by great Enlightenment myths and, in particular, by an evolutionist view of ancient religion. Even when evolutionism was seriously questioned by anthropologists, an evolutionist framework continued to be used for decades by specialists of Roman religion. If we look at Greek and Latin texts, we find out that the cult of virtues was explained as a purely religious phenomenon, whereas personifications existed as a rhetorical and literary technique, which consisted in creating fictional characters to move the audience of a performance. I argue that, without a specific reference to a cult, most literary evidence is useless to draw any reliable information about the cults of Virtues. In the analysis of ancient evidence I focus on three periods, choosing four case studies. The first is the archaic period (6th century BC): I demonstrate that Fortuna and Ops were not agrarian divinities and that their cult played an important role in establishing the political identity of the community. The second is 350–260 BC: I show that the introduction of the cults of Salus and Victoria was part of the process by which the emergent patrician-plebeian nobility attempted to legitimise its own rule. This pattern continues in the final period covered by this research, that of the Punic Wars, in which the cults of Salus and Victoria continue their development. The main conclusions of my thesis are as follows: 1) the cults of Virtues are a characteristic of Roman religion since the beginning of the historical evidence. Therefore, they cannot be used to formulate any evolutionistic or Hellenocentric argument on the history of Roman religion; 2) the (mostly epigraphic) Italian evidence shows that the cults were spread over a huge area already from the Mid-Republican period, both under Roman influence and independently. This suggests that processes of identity-construction built around the cults of Virtues occurred in other Italian cities and communities; 3) from 4th century BC Roman politicians founding

6

temples dedicated to Virtues tried to establish a personal connection with that virtue. These connections, and the ways they are contested by others, are usually implicit rather than explicit. I believe that this depends on the competitiveness of Roman politics; 3) the foundation of the temples of Salus and Victoria do not favour the creation of exemplary stories centred around the founders, and this happens only for characters related to the far past, e.g. Servius Tullius and Fortuna.

7

Acknowledgments

This doctoral thesis was written over the course of nearly four years, which I spent in different institutions over three different countries. My work was funded by the University of Manchester, the University of Rome ‗La Sapienza‘, the association ―Il Circolo‖ from London, the Collège de France, and above all the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa, which awarded me its generous ―Borsa di perfezionamento‖, outstanding support, and exciting opportunities of learning and research.

Writing a doctoral thesis has been a mostly solitary effort, and these years of study also included tough times. I could not have finished without the support of many others. First and foremost I should like to thank Carmine Ampolo and Tim Cornell for their supervision. Tim Cornell closely followed this work from the very beginning, provided sound guidance through very difficult academic matters, and personal encouragement when I needed it most. Carmine Ampolo followed my work in Pisa and beyond, and I could improve much of what is here thank to his immense knowledge of ancient history and his punctual and wise advices.

During my Mancunian years I was gifted to have further guidance from the members of my doctoral panel, Tim Parkin and Mary Beagon, and I could count on advices and help from other members of the department. John Briscoe, David Langslow, and Peter Liddel greatly helped me with my work. In Pisa I could work in one of the best environments possible, the Laboratorio di Scienze dell‘Antichità of the Scuola Normale Superiore, which became virtually a second home, and Alessandro Corretti, Donatella Erdas, Maria Gulletta, Anna Magnetto, Chiara Michelini, Maria Adelaide Vaggioli and the rest of the team are the nicest house mates one could imagine. In Paris, where I am writing down these final words, I was fortunate enough to speak about parts of my thesis with John Scheid, who hosted me at his chair at the Collège de France for my final doctoral year. I was able to discuss a draft version of some chapters with John North during some of my visits to London. My former teachers from the University of Rome ‗La Sapienza‘, Enrico Montanari, Claudia Santi, and John Thornton never ceased to follow my work and to support me.

On a more personal note, I should like to thank wholeheartedly all those who gifted me with their friendship and affection throughout these years (in Britain, Italy,

8

and France), and my family, who supported me unconditionally and with enthusiasm. I dedicate this work to the memory of my grandfathers, Antonio De Angelis and Giuseppe Miano. In different ways, they have been to me a source of inspiration and exempla virtutis to follow.

9

Introduction

―The semantic struggle for the definition of political or social position, defending or occupying these positions by deploying a given definition, is a struggle that belongs to all those times of crisis of which we have learned through written sources‖.

R. Koselleck, Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York-Chichester 2004, p. 80.

With the expression ―semantic struggle‖ Reinhardt Koselleck was referring to attempts to reorganise the Prussian state at the beginning of the 19th century, in which the views of Karl August von Hardenberg and those of Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz clashed. Hardenberg was open to new ideas brought into Europe by the French Revolution, and he promptly adopted a new institutional vocabulary. For this reason he was criticised by Marwitz: ―By confusing the names, the concepts also fall into disorder, [...] and as a result the old Brandenburg Constitution is placed in mortal danger‖1

.

In one of the most dramatic moments of Late-Republican history the consul L. Opimius had his men kill C. Gracchus and his partisans in 121 BC, and afterwards built a temple of Concordia. Plutarch informs us that in the night an unknown hand wrote on the temple ἔξγνλ ἀπνλνίαο λαὸλ ὁκνλνίαο πνηεῖ, which could be rendered in Latin as opus discordiae aedem Concordiae fecit2. It is clear that amongst the supporters and sympathizers of C. Gracchus and the supporters of L. Opimius there was a semantic struggle going on, a struggle between different ways of conceiving Concordia in a political sense.

The semantic struggle on Concordia may be traced back to the fourth century BC, when M. Furius Camillus first dedicated a temple to the goddess in 367 BC3. The circumstances of the dedication as it is described in the sources were less cruel, but no less dramatic: after decades (if not centuries) of struggle, and after years of political stalling by the tribunes of the plebs, a compromise that was to shape the future history

1_{R. Koselleck, Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York-Chichester 2004 (=}

VergangeneZukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main 1979), pp. 76-80,

quotationat p. 79.

2

Plut.,Gracch. 38, 9, on the events see also App., Bell. Civ. 1, 26; below, ch. ―Virtues and personification‖.

3_{The main source on the vow is Plut., Cam. 42. See the discussion in D. Miano, Monimenta. Aspetti}

storico-culturali della memoria nella Roma medio-repubblicana, Roma 2011, pp. 173-199, with

10

of the Roman Republic was reached through the mediation of Camillus, and the plebeians gained access to the consulship. The Concordia of M. Furius Camillus was a kind of aristocratic Concordia, which implied the sharing of public offices between the patricians and the more prestigious plebeian families.

Decades after Camillus, in 304 BC, a controversial politician called Cn. Flavius, who was curule aedile at the time, tried to give his own, radically different interpretation of Concordia. He enforced several reforms that could be read in a plebiscitary sense, and he was probably a political ally of Ap. Claudius Caecus. Flavius had formerly worked for Ap. Claudius as a scribe and Livy seems to explain his election to the aedileship as a product of the favourable composition of the comitia brought about by the reform of the tribes and the lectio senatus of his former employer, which apparently favoured the lower classes4. We know that Cn. Flavius dedicated a small shrine (aedicula) to Concordia and the sources speaking about it give us radically different interpretations: for Pliny (NH 33, 19) Flavius erected the shrine si populo reconciliasset ordines, whereas Livy rather puts the accent on the envy that this caused amongst the nobles (9, 46, 6: summa inuidia nobilium). Accordingly Livy says that Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus and P. Decius Mus, who were elected censors in the same year, cancelled the reforms of Ap. Claudius, thus preventing the likes of Cn. Flavius from making a political career, and they did this concordiae causa (9, 46, 14).

What was happening at the time was clearly a semantic struggle, as Koselleck calls it, centred on the political interpretation of concordia. Whereas Cn. Flavius and Ap. Claudius were probably in favour of a more plebiscitarian and democratic interpretation of Concordia, perhaps influenced by the concept of ὁκόλνηα, Q. Fabius and P. Decius established again the aristocratic concordia of Camillus, related to the equal sharing of public offices between the patrician and the plebeian nobility5.

Starting from the triad word-concept-object, Koselleck argues that concepts ―possess a substantial claim to generality and always have many meanings—in historical science, occasionally in modalities other than words‖6

. There is a relationship between concepts and words: ―a word becomes a concept only when the entirety of meaning and experience within a socio-political context within which and for which a

4 _{Liv. 9, 46.D. Miano, Monimenta, cit., pp. 192-198 for a detailed discussion of the sources.} 5_{Ibidem, pp. 197-198.}

6

11

word is used can be condensed into one word‖7

. Concordia definitely has many similarities to a concept as formulated by Koselleck. The main difference between the concepts (Begriffe) of Koselleck and Concordia was that the latter was a goddess in Rome. Being a goddess she also had, like any other divinity, a temple, a festival, a cult statue, and priestly personnel; she was involved in prodigies and their expiations, sacrifices were performed in her honour, and individual votive gifts were offered to her: she had very concrete ―resources‖ or ―constituent concepts‖, as two recent monographs call them8.

Another very important difference between Concordia and the concepts of Koselleck is that for Rome in the fourth century BC we do not have contemporary written sources, which are essential for the methodology of Begriffsgeschichte9. We outlined above several layers of interpretations of the concept of Concordia in different socio-political circumstances, starting from the early fourth century BCto the late second century BC, but we are able to know about them only reading literary sources written from the Late-Republican/Augustan age onwards, which in turn represent another layer of interpretation.

These two differences, however, imply only that to study Concordia in the Roman Middle-Republic would be impossible using the methods of Begriffsgeschichte exclusively. As Concordia is a deity she is not precisely a concept, but she is a goddess whose aim is to bestow the associated concept. This is an important difference to keep in mind, and we will see in the rest of this work that it is a difference that the Romans were aware of. The lack of perfect identity between Concordia and a concept, however, will be an advantage for the subject of this study. As a big part of this work considers a historical period for which there is no contemporary literary evidence, it would be frankly impossible to study the concept of concordia in that period. The goddess Concordia, however, is connected to many elements which are extra-textual: on the one hand we have information on the foundation of temples, on vows by public officials and on prodigies and their expiation, which we know from non-contemporary literary evidence but which are likely to be based on official state records, on the other hand we

7_{Ibidem, p. 85.} 8

A.J. Clark, Divine Qualities. Cult and Community in Republican Rome, Oxford 2007, pp. 13-17; D. Lipka, Roman Gods. A conceptual approach, Leiden-Boston 2009, p. 8.

9_{R. Koselleck, Futures Past, cit., p. 75: ―a Begriffsgeschichte concerns itself (primarily)with texts and}

words, while a social history employs texts merely as means of deducing circumstances and movements that are not, in themselves, contained within the texts‖.

12

have bits of contemporary fragmentary evidence, like archaeological remains and epigraphic dedications. We are therefore allowed to study these extra-textual elements with historiographical methods, and to integrate them with the methodology of conceptual history when we happen to have contemporary evidence. Studying the cult of the goddess Concordia, therefore, puts us in an intermediate ground between conceptual history, history of religions, and social and cultural history, and in turn the results of this study can provide useful insights on a great range of historical questions.

There is a reason why I started with the example of Concordia: I studied the cult of Concordia at Rome in an earlier work dedicated to Roman Mid-Republican memorial practices and conceptions, which I started writing as my MA dissertation at the University of Rome ‗La Sapienza‘ in 2007, defended in 2008, and published as a monograph in 201110. I was struck by the insight that through Concordia one could have a better understanding of the dynamics of political culture at Rome in the fourth century BC. With regard to memorial practices, I concluded that a relationship between monumentality, exemplarity and virtues was apparent in the case of Concordia and M. Furius Camillus: in the literary tradition, especially in Livy, the conqueror of Veii is very strongly portrayed as an exemplum concordiae, meaning Concordia in the more aristocratic sense mentioned above, the sharing of power between the patrician and the plebeian nobility. This strong connection may of course have been elaborated afterwards, and the forties and the thirties of the fourth century BC, in which L. Furius Camillus (cos. 338) operated, are a plausible time in which this might have happened. A connection between the virtue of concordia and the memory of Cn. Flavius does not seem to occur, because Flavius is always taken to be an example of a homo novus, a character of low rank who rose to public prominence and who despised, and was despised by, the aristocracy. I thought at the time that this lack of a strong connection meant that Flavius was not successful in the semantic struggle on Concordia, and that his attempt to give a new interpretation to the political concept failed. The plebiscitary politics of Ap. Claudius and Cn. Flavius did not have a future in the fundamentally aristocratic later Middle-Republic, and for this reason Flavius was not remembered as an example of concord. That at least was my conclusion in my earlier study. Finally, I reflected on the practicality of divine virtues like Concordia: they were not conceived as abstract, absolute and metahistorical but, on the contrary, they continued to be important

10

13

and were vital to the society because they were very practical, and could be rediscussed, debated, and contested, and were always able to assume new meanings.

The subjects of this work are the likes of Concordia, i.e. divinities who are strictly associated with concepts, which will be studied in a range of time stretching from the archaic period to the Punic Wars (c.ca 600-146 BC). I shall call these divinities Virtues: the reasons for this choice are explained below (chapter ―Virtues and personification‖). In this introduction I shall outline the hypotheses that I have tried to verify, the methodology used, and the structure of the work.

My research has the following two broad goals: first, to examine the historical context of the introduction of cults of Virtues; second, to analyse the causes and consequences of the introduction of these cults. My hypothesis is that Roman political leaders used Virtues as a tool to legitimise their power in a system of self-representation. The deification of Virtues may in turn have helped to define the cultural values of the new nobility, eventually influencing the wider citizen body and the culture of Italy as a whole.

Self-representation in this context signifies the way politicians wanted to be seen and remembered by Roman society, and their claim that divine qualities belonged to them in particular and to the Romans in general. It will therefore be crucial to study a) the circumstances in which each vow is described in the literary tradition; b) how such circumstances may be helpful in establishing the personal motivations of the founders; c) if, and how, the vow affected the way the founder was remembered in the subsequent tradition; d) lastly, how this complex dynamic affected Roman society and culture in general.

Finally I shall take into account the way these religious cults and philosophical ideas fitted into and interacted with the wider culture of ancient Italy. This will require a comparative study of the historical genesis and function of cults of Virtues in the Italic and, partially, the Greek world. My objective will be to explore the cultural climate of archaic and Republican Italy, and to ask whether and to what extent it was open to the free circulation of ideas, myths and cults. In my view it would be misleading and oversimplifying to speak merely about Greek influences or, alternatively, of Romanisation. The cultural interaction of different peoples in Italy was not simply a matter of passive ―influences‖, but rather an active process of re-thinking and reshaping new ideas, and interpreting them according to defined but ever changing cultural and

14 historical identities.

Chronologically, the range of time covered by this study may be broadly divided in two periods. The first is the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BC), in which the cult of Fortuna seems to have been of great significance. Using mostly archaeological and epigraphic evidence it has been argued that the connection between King Servius Tullius and the goddess is probably ancient, and that the king may have elaborated a royal ideology based on his relation with the goddess. Moreover, in the regia there was a sacrarium dedicated to Mars and Ops. This may indicate that, already in the regal period, qualities and virtues were made objects of cult by individuals and institutions.

The second period goes from the fourth to the mid-second century BC. This goes from the introduction of the consulship as a patrician and plebeian office to the end of the Punic Wars. It is well known how crucial the decades on either side of 300 BC were for the Roman Republic. This was a period of fundamental change and renewal, affecting institutions, politics and religion. The patrician-plebeian nobility that emerged after the Licinio-Sextian Laws attempted to legitimise its own rule, often using religion. This process included the division of public priesthoods between patricians and plebeians, starting with the creation of the decemviri sacris faciundis in 367 BC and culminating in the lex Ogulnia of 300 BC, which granted the two orders an equal share of the colleges of pontiffs and augurs. The introduction of cults of Virtues seems to have been part of this process of legitimation. I refer in particular to Salus, Concordia and Victoria, whose temples were built respectively by C. Iunius Bubulcus Brutus, Cn. Flavius and L. Postumius Megellus. The temple of Salus is an old example of a sacred foundation by an individual, and it is not difficult to suppose that it gave Brutus a great deal of political prestige. The cult of Salus seems to have been conceptualised more prominently as the salvation of the state, and the fundamental role of Salus in Republican ideology is made evident by the sacrifices that the consuls would dedicate to the Capitoline Triad and to Salus when they came into office. Victoria, on the other hand, has a strong association with triumphal ideology, already from the time of Postumius' dedication. This pattern seems to continue during the Punic Wars, in which another large proportion of these cults was established. In between we have the gap caused by the loss of the second decade of Livy, in which for most cases there is only fragmentary evidence. In some cases there seems to have been a clear connection with the Roman political and cultural dynamics of the time. M. Porcius Cato seems to have been a prime example of that: he dedicated a temple to Victoria Virgo and a statue

15

commemorating his censorship was set up in the temple of Salus, describing him as the saviour of Roman politeia. Salus, in particular, seems to have been very frequently related to prodigies and expiations, especially in times of war, and this certainly reflect its specific conceptualisation.

I have chosen to organise the work according to case studies. The reason for this choice is that in order to consider and appreciate the appropriate value of all the available evidence and the huge amount of scholarship dedicated to every divinity, I felt it necessary to conduct very specific studies. I have chosen to study two divinities focusing on the archaic period (Fortuna and Ops) and two focusing on the Mid-Republican period (Victoria and Salus). The main reason leading me to these particular choices is the relative abundance of the evidence. For the archaic cults the choice was very limited: there might have been other cults of Virtues at Rome, e.g. those of Fides and Spes, but the evidence regarding Fortuna and Ops is far more abundant, although often problematic. For the mid-Republican period it was an important factor that the vows of temples of Victoria and Salus all fall in a period covered by the surviving text of Livy. The persistent importance of these cults throughout the whole period considered was also a factor in the choice.

The four chapters dedicated to case studies are organised according to a similar structure. After a short introduction, in which the main problems and challenges to be addressed in the individual chapters are summarised, there is a first section containing a review of modern scholarship on the divinity in question, starting from the 19th century. I am aware that this is quite unusual, especially in an English doctoral thesis, and that it needs some justification. My supervisors and I are deeply convinced that in order to understand a problem one should thoroughly study the history of the problem. Studying modern scholarship on Virtues from the inception of German Altertumswissenschaft to the present time has allowed me to contextualise the way in which scholarship approached Virtues and the related evidence, to consider the limits and to appreciate the strengths of single pieces of scholarship, and to look at the ancient evidence with a greater awareness. In the two essays on archaic Virtues, the chapters on Ops and Fortuna, the section on modern scholarship is preceded by a short section on the etymology of the Latin words. I decided to introduce this section because very often modern historians have attempted to interpret ancient divinities on the basis of etymological arguments. I strongly contest this approach, and I have introduced the

16

discussion of the etymology of names of divinities to show that no historical argument can be inferred using them.

After the discussion of modern scholarship I discuss the evidence coming from Italian cities other than Rome during the republican period. This is necessary in order to put the cults of Virtues in Rome in a broad context, and to understand the cultural dynamics of the time. The aim has also been to allow me in turn to analyse the influence of Rome on the religions of Italy, and, vice-versa, possible Italian influences on Rome, and the question of Greek influence. This would also provide a basis for addressing the question of cultural change in Mid-Republican Italy, and to see if the models of Romanisation and Hellenisation can be used to describe the actual situation with regard to the cults of Virtues. Were the Virtues associated in any way with the representation of a Roman identity in Italy, or were they – regardless of their origin – re-interpreted and appropriated by local communities? In these sections I have considered material up to the first century BC, in the knowledge that for most Italian cities we possess only fragmentary evidence and that later information may relate to existing cults. A section on Italian cults is absent in the chapter on Ops, for the simple reason that there is not enough evidence for a cult of Ops in Republican Italy to discuss the question satisfactorily.

The final and most extensive section of each chapter consists of a discussion of the evidence regarding the city of Rome. Here the evidence becomes more abundant and allows a more systematic exposition. The two chapters dedicated to archaic Virtues are organised typologically, because this seemed to me more appropriate given the extremely fragmentary and problematic status of the evidence. Consequently the chapter on Fortuna is divided into paragraphs in which the evidence for individual cults of Fortuna is discussed, and the chapter on Ops into sections related to the different festivals of Ops in the old Roman feriale. The essays on Mid-Republican Virtues are structured in a different way: the evidence becomes more coherent and solid over time, and allows a chronological exposition of the material. In the section on the Middle Republic it is possible to analyse the circumstances of each vow, and if and how the vow of a temple to a divine Virtue influenced the future historiographical representation of the vower. This section is divided into two different parts, one considering the evidence down to 291 BC, when Livy's first decade ends, the other dealing with the evidence from 218 to 146 BC.

17

The general structure of the work is divided as follows. The first part, consisting of one chapter, is a detailed study of the history of modern scholarship on divine Virtues, and analyses the ancient evidence, especially from the late Republic, describing this kind of cult. The second part of the work is dedicated to the archaic cults of Fortuna and Ops. The third and final part deals with the mid-Republican cults of Victoria and Salus.

18

Virtues and personification

"Abstraktion und Personifikation sind das Wesen der römischen wie der hellenischen Götterlehre; auch der hellenische Gott ruht auf einer Naturerscheinung oder einem Begriff (...). Aber wenn die Abstraktion, die jeder Religion zu Grunde liegt, anderswo zu weiten und immer weiteren Konzeptionen sich zu erheben, tief und immer tiefer in das Wesen der Dinge einzudringen versucht, so verhalten sich die römischen Glaubensbilder auf einer unglaublich niedrigen Stufe des Anschauens und des Begreifens. Wenn dem Griechen jedes bedeutsame Motiv sich rasch zur Gestaltengruppe, zum Sagen- und Ideenkreis erweitert, so bleibt dem Römer der Grundgedank

20

Roman religion led to a misunderstanding of the way Romans used to conceive these divinities.

My hypothesis is that ―personification‖ as we mean it today, was in the ancient world a mere rhetorical technique, without any religious implications. This is the reason why when modern scholars have tried to apply this conception in a broader sense, out of its technical rhetorical or literary context, they have often reached unsatisfactory conclusions.

To investigate this hypothesis I shall start with a literature review of modern scholarship concerning ―personifications‖. Doing that, I shall use the original terminology of each reviewed author, without making it uniform. This may sometimes look bewildering, but it will be useful to give a more faithful account of their theories and contributions.

After that, I shall verify if the statements of modern scholars can be used to understand the ancient sources. In particular, I shall confront the theoretical definition of ―abstract‖ divinities, with the technique of personification-prosopopoeia in Roman rhetoric, as described by ancient sources.

I

The concept of personification was used in their works by German scholars such as Heyne2 and Müller3. The focus of these works is mythography. Heyne may be considered the father of modern mythography, even if he follows an older tradition of studies, going back to Gianbattista Vico and, further, to humanism4. According to him, the myths derive from personifications of natural phenomena, or the interpretation of historical events, occurring during in the infantia generis humani, a primitive stage

2 C. G. Heyne, "Sermonis mythici sive symbolici interpretatio ad causas et rationes ductasque inde regulas revocata", Comm. Soc. Reg. Scient. Gott 16 (1808), pp. 285-323, especially p. 291: ―[...] de euentis naturae et hominum, adeoque de rebus physicis, historicis, ethicis, seu visa et audita, seu cogitata et opinata, animis conceperant, per nominum autem vocumque penuriam, sermonisque egestatem, et infantiam, verbis propriis et idoneis enuntiare haud possent, per rerum iam tum notarum similitudines declarare allaborarunt: ita res inanimatae et mente tantum conceptae animis hominum offerebant se tanquam vita, sensu, motu, actione, loquela, praeditae essent, et in personas mutatae‖ (italic mine). 3 K. O. Müller, Prolegomeni ad una mitologia scientifica, Napoli 1991, pp. 275-276; passim (=

Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, Göttingen 1825), in the original German, the

author uses the term Personificirung.

4 The importance of Heyne in the mythographical studies was underlined by a number of studies. See C. Hartlich, W Sachs (eds), Der Ursprung des Mythosbegriffs in der modernen Bibelwissenschaft, Tübingen 1952; more recently F. Graf "Il mito tra menzogna e urwahrheit", in M. Rossi Cittadini (eds.),

Presenza classiche nelle letterature occidentali. Il mito dall'età antica all'età moderna e contemporanea,

Perugia 1995, pp. 43-56; R. Buxton, From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek

21

where mankind did not possess a language. However it is notable that neither Heyne, nor Müller, used the expression ―personification‖: the first, writing in Latin, speaks about res inanimatae in personas mutatae, whereas the latter uses the expression Personen, or Personificirung. For these early scholars, ―personification‖ refers to every ancient god.

In his Deutsche Mythologie (1835), Jacob Grimm used extensively the category of personification applied to Teutonic mythology. In the second edition of this work, he decided to dedicate a chapter to the Personificationen5. As far as I could find, he was the first to apply this term to the study of religions and mythology. It may be possible to argue that Grimm forged the new expression, taking Comte's definition out of its originally philosophical context, and extending its meaning, partially, to Heyne's original concept of res inanimatae in personas mutatae. Grimm connects personification with the making of a πξόζσπνλ: this means, with the practice of

πξνζσπνπνηία6

. According do Grimm, the practice of personification is supposed to begin in fables and poetry, and eventually became a feature of mythology and religion7. There is a major difference in meaning between the Personificirung of early mythographers and Grimm's Personification: whereas the original concept was a more universal category, implying that in general every god is a personification of a natural phenomenon, the latter has a more precise, technical meaning: Personificationen were the divinities bearing the names of the related concepts.

Nowadays, Grimm's argument about the origin of personifications as a class of deities appears quite weak. It does not look probable, indeed, that a god or a goddess may appear first in literature and then in religion, and not the other way around. This is especially true for the Roman case, where a literary culture was developed quite late; later than the introduction of many of the cults classified as personifications. However, as Whitman and Reinhardt have argued in their works concerning personification and allegory8, Grimm was undoubtedly right in an important aspect of his treatment: the ancient practice which better corresponds to the modern concept of personification, is the πξνζσπνπνηία, or, in Latin transcription, prosopopoeia. However, I shall come back

5 Deutsche Mythologie, I, Göttingen 18442, pp. 834-851. He uses Personification in contrast to the later German spelling Personifikation.

6 Ibidem, p. 835.

7 Ivi.

8 K. Reinhardt, "Personifikation und Allegorie", Vermächtnis der Antike: gessamelte Esseys zur

Philosophie und Geschichtsschreibung, Göttingen 1960, pp. 7-9; J. Whitman, Allegory: the Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique, Oxford 1987, pp. 269-272.

22 later to this point.

After Mommsen's aforementioned work, the term became well-established in modern scholarship about Roman history. One may note, at this point, that Mommsen used the term Personifikation as a general feature of early religions: therefore with the early, pre-Grimm meaning.

L. Preller dealt extensively with personifications, in his Römische Mythologie (Berlin 18652), in the specific sense first used by Grimm. In this work, the German scholar presents a category of gods interested in destiny and life (Schicksal und Leben). According to Preller, all these divinities need a higher degree of Reflexion und Abstraktion, in order to be conceived by the human mind9. He divides this category in other sub-categories: Fortuna (pp. 552-565), genii (pp. 565-572), indigitamenta (572-595) and, finally, other gods and personifications of practical life (Andre Götter und Personifikationen des praktischen Lebens, pp. 595-630). This subcategory was divided in five semantic areas: commerce and exchange (Handel und Wandel, pp. 595-600), gods of health (Heilgötter, pp. 600-609), gods of victory, war and peace (Sieges-, Kriegs- und Friedensgötter, pp. 609-616), gods of freedom, luck and blessings (Freiheits-, Glücks und Segengötter, pp. 616-623) and, finally, virtutes (pp. 623-632). Virtues are here defined by their moral value, and Preller suggests that may have been, originally, qualifying attributes of a different god, developing at some point an independent cult. Thus Fides, Concordia, Spes and Mens, may derive from the cults of Jupiter, Venus, Juno or Fortuna10. Preller seems to use both the meanings of personification: the general meaning (Mommsen) and the technical meaning (Grimm).

The same can be said for J. Marquardt's third volume of Römische Staatsverwaltung (1878, 18852), completely dedicated to Roman religion. Abstraction is indicaded at the beginning of the book as a basic feature of all Roman religion: every god would be, more or less, an abstraction of natural forces11. Shortly thereafter, the author mentions "a crowd of abstractions, whose real cult as personal beings is for us hardly understandable"12 and then lists Concordia, Fides, Honos, etc. He agrees with Preller's theory concerning the origin of the class as former epithets of other gods, at

9 L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, Berlin 1858, p. 551. 10 Ibidem, pp. 595-630, esp. pp. 622-623.

11 J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, III, Leipzig 18852 ,p. 6. I have used here the second edition, edited by G. Wissowa and translated in French as Le culte chez les romains, 2 voll., Paris 1889-1890.

12 Ibidem, p. 22: "eine Menge von Abstractionen [...], deren reale Verehrung als persönliche Wesen

23

least for some of them13. It is also notable that Marquardt mentions them in the section concerning indigitamenta: the main difference is that indigitamenta's names do not always correpond exactly to their function14.

R. Engelhard's work, De personificationibus quae in poesi atque arte Romanorum inveniuntur (Göttingen 1881), was the first monographic work entirely dedicated to the personifications in the Roman world15.

I should mention at this point a book outside of typically Roman studies, as it was extremely influential in the studies concerning the Roman conception of divinity. I am speaking about Usener's Götternamen (Bonn 1896). In this ambitious work, the German philologist wanted to construct a theory of religion, working mainly on the names of gods. Wort und Begriff: words and the related concepts were for Usener strictly associated. For this reason, he aimed to show the spiritual evolution of mankind working on the divine names16. He widely used the concept of personification in this book. For Usener, the first men were living an extremely dangerous existence, full of critical moments. To help them overcome the difficulties, they were supposed to associate every moment with a specific god: for Usener, this is the basic form of divinity, the Augenblicksgötter or, in English, momentary gods17. From a process of abstraction of the single momentary gods, come the Sondergötter. They are functional gods, defined by their power on a specific process, limited in time and space: the typical example of that, for Usener, are the indigitamenta18. The next step of this process, was the creation of a personal god out of a Sondergott19, and, subsequently, a tendency to monotheism20.

The aim of Usener was to describe some kind of natural evolution of human spirituality, from the very beginning of human consciousness, with the birth of language, up to monotheism. This evolution happens because of an increasing capacity of abstraction, developing amongst mankind. Usener's ideas, as I shall show in the next pages, had a huge impact on the studies of Roman religion. I cannot treat the details of the problems embodied in this theory, because it would take me too far away from the

13 Ibidem, pp. 22-24.

14 Ibidem, p. 22.

15 Unfortunately, I was unable to consult this work. Wissowa considered it ungenügend, unsatisfactory; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (München 1902), p. 280.

16 H. Usener, Götternamen. Versuch einer Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbildung, Bonn 1896, p. 3.

17 Ibidem, p. 280.

18 Ibidem, pp. 75-76.

19 Ibidem, pp. 334-337.

24

aim of my work. However, I would like to underline how the main criticism of Usener's theories regarded the evolutionary scheme of his exposition. It seems that, for Usener, Augenblicksgott, Sondergott, personal god and, finally, monotheism, are all necessary phases of a regulated process of evolution: thus, every personal god is supposed to come from a functional god, every functional god from an abstraction of momentary gods. This rigid scheme does not seem to respect what we know about the history of ancient religions, where the forms of divinity classified by Usener seem to peacefully coexist, not necessarily outshining each other, and, most importantly, there is no possibility of proving the derivation of each divinity, from the supposedly previous stage of the process21.

Wissowa dedicated to the personifications a few, but highly influential, pages of his Religion und Kultus der Römer (München 1902)22. In this work, Wissowa was the first to name divinities as Concordia or Salus, using the famous expression Personifikationen abstrakter Begriffe, which became dominant in subsequent scholarship. Moreover, he revived Preller's hypothesis about the origin of personifications: for Wissowa most of personifications were originally attributes of a different god23. Wissowa underlined the strict relationship between personifications with political and philosophical concepts: by doing so, he somehow underestimates the value of this group of divinities as a cultic and religious phenomenon24.

At the end of his chapter about personifications, Wissowa voiced the desideratum of a thorough treatment of this class of divinities25. Following his wish, in the first decade of the 20th century, four studies concerning personifications were published. F. Gnecchi's article ―Le personificazioni allegoriche sulle monete

21 An early criticism was already in Wissowa: for this scholar, the indigitamenta are related to a relatively late cultic practice, and have nothing to do with a primitive phase of religion (as we will see, for Wissowa it is quite the opposite, the functional gods come from a particular aspect of a personal god), G. Wissowa, "Echte und Falsche 'Sondergötter' in der römischen Religion", in Gesammelte Abhandlungen

zur römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte (München 1904), pp. 304-326; For further criticism and

reflections on Usener see: G. Dumézil, La Religion Romaine Archaïque, Paris 1974, pp. 36-62; M. M. Sassi, "Dalla scienza delle religioni di Usener ad Aby Warburg", in A. Momigliano (ed.), Aspetti di

Hermann Usener, filologo della religione, Pisa 1983; G. Piccaluga, "L'attualità dei 'Sondergötter'?", in A.

Momigliano (ed.), Aspetti di Hermann Usener, cit., pp. 147-159; M. Perfigli, Indigitamenta: divinità

funzionali e funzionalità divina nella religione romana, Pisa 2004, pp. 197-207; J. Scheid, J. Svenbro,

―Les Götternamen de Hermann Usener: une grande théogonie‖, in N. Belayche, P. Brulé, G. Freyburger, Y. Lehmann, L. Pernot, F. Prost (eds.), Nommer les Dieux. Théonymes, épithètes, épiclèses dans

l’Antiquité, Rennes/Turnhout 2005, pp. 93-102.

22 G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, cit., pp. 271-280. 23 Ibidem, p. 271.

24 Ibidem, p. 272.

25 imperiali‖26

, is a mere catalogue of numismatic material, after a few generic statements, underlining, quite erroneously, how ―[l]a Personificazione delle Deità astratte è una innovazione tutta romana, che ebbe poi qualche rara imitazione in alcune delle serie monetarie medioevali‖27

.

After Gnecchi's effort, comes Deubner's article ―Personifikationen abstrakter Begriffe‖28

. Methodologically, Deubner seems to be quite influenced by Usener's conception of momentary gods: he defined the personifications as ―active forces‖, deified by mankind in a primitive stage29. The German scholar, however, gave a very useful catalogue of the ancient evidence about personifications, both in Greek and Roman religion. He proposed a typological classification of the evidence, dividing the ancient sources into 1) cultic; 2) mythical; 3) poetic; 4) artistic. This is followed by a useful survey of divinities, divided into Greek and Roman personifications, including a list of the major literary, numismatic and iconographic evidence concerning each deity.

Much more valuable is Axtell's doctoral dissertation, The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman Literature and Inscriptions (Chicago 1907), the first piece of scholarship in English language on the subject. The influence of Wissowa on this work is quite clear, and is indeed recognized by the author himself in the preface30. Axtell's effort is, first of all, extremely useful as a collection of ancient sources. Moreover, the author exposed for the first time a problem to be dealt with, studying personifications: the fluid boundaries of this category of divinities. In his words:

― (…) it is impossible to set a sharp limit between personification and deification, so closely related are the two provinces. To personify is to give personality to an object or power; to deify is to ascribe superhuman attributes. Given the principle that certain qualities are actually deities, every quality is a potential god, and the circle is limited only by the number of abstractions which the mind is capable of making.‖31

Thus, in a way, the state cults were just the peak of a potentially infinite number of abstractions. For this reason, he presented the ancient evidence about personifications dividing them into: 1) state cults; 2) abstracts popularly but not officially worshipped; 3)

26 RIN 18 (1905) , pp. 349-388.

27 Ibidem, p. 349.

28 L. Deubner, "Personifikationen abstrakter Begriffe", in W. H. Roscher (ed..), Ausführliches

Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie III/2, Leipzig 1902/1909, pp. 2058-2169.

29 Ibidem, pp. 2058-2061.

30 H. L. Axtell, The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman Literature and Inscriptions, Chicago 1907, p. 3. ―It is to a study of Professor G. Wissowa's Religion und Kultus der Römer that the inception of this opusculum is due, as also its guidance in many respects."

26

occasional and individual dedications; 4) doubtful examples. However, for Axtell, this division was just for the sake of a comfortable presentation of the ancient sources: he does not seem to properly emphasize the implications of the establishment of a public cult and its consequences on Roman society. Notably, he is the first to designate this class of divinities as ―qualities‖, a definition lately used in Clark's recent work32

. In his dissertation, Axtell criticized Wissowa's theory about the origin of personifications as hypostasis of a major god: the ancient evidence is not clear about that, even for what concerns the most popular examples, like Fides from Jupiter33. Therefore, he preferred to find the origin of this class of divinities in a basic capacity of human thought to conceive abstractions34. The possession of this ability by the Romans, he underlined, is often denied, making them much more primitive than they really were35. The main defect of Axtell's work is the lack of emphasis put on the cultic and religious aspect of the divinities: he seemed to regard them as colourless projections of the human mind. It is extremely significant, under this point of view, the comparison the scholar makes between the personifications and Plato's ideas36, or his remarks on abstractions as ―practically mere qualities or states restricted to this, that, and the other, a nondescript and shadowy crowd that cannot be classified with the anthropomorphic gods nor the materialistic spirits of the indigitamenta."37

Lastly, at the end of the same decade, was published another doctoral dissertation about personifications, W. Köhler's Personifikationen abstrakter Begriffe auf römischen Münzen (Königsberg 1910). This work is indeed not very ambitious: the author takes for granted the definition of the religious phenomenon given by Wissowa, and basically gives a collection of numismatic evidence, focusing on the imperial period.

The grip of Wissowa's authority over this subject eventually declined, and, in a journal article, ―The Roman 'Virtues'‖38

, Mattingly proposed a new definition for this class of divinities. Analysing the meaning of ―personification‖, he noted that ―[w]hen we talk of 'personifications,' we feel ourselves at once in the realm of poetic or artistic imagery and fancy; the ancient Roman, when he spoke of similar figures, felt himself in

32 A. Clark, Divine Qualities, Cult and Community in Republican Rome, Oxford 2007. 33 H. L. Axtell, The Deification of Abstract Ideas, cit., pp. 65-66.

34 Ibidem, p. 67.

35 Ibidem, p. 66-67.

36 Ibidem, p. 68.

37 Ibidem, p. 97.

38 H. Mattingly, "The Roman 'Virtues'", The Harvard Theological Review 30/2 (1937), pp. 103-117.

27

the realm of religious fact."39 Considering the positions of early scholarship, this statement seems particularly remarkable: Mattingly was the first to draw a line between the personifications, as literary and artistic figures, and the divinities, pertaining to the domain of religious thought. He called this class of deities "Virtues", basing this definition on a passage of Cicero40. The ancient author, Mattingly says, seems to distinguish between virtutes and res expetendae, but this distinction appears to be very intellectual and somehow artificial: "[w]hy should Concordia be the one, Spes the other?"41

Mattingly saw the Virtues as the typical example of Usener's functional gods: "divine powers, not fully realized as in human form or even as personal at all, but as acts - even momentary acts - of divine will. Such must have been the deities of that early period of Roman religion - if indeed it ever existed in its purity - in which the gods were worshipped without images and did not marry and were not given in marriage. Now, if we ask, where in Roman cult we can find such numina, the answer is ready to hand- in the 'Virtues.'"42 For the scholar, however, this kind of Sondergötter /numina does not necessarily belong to a strictly primitive stage, as such divinities are "a normal mode of Roman religious thought, which appears in varying forms and with varying degrees of emphasis at different times in Roman history."43 Mattingly gives a religious dimension to the Virtues, but does not develop any reflection about the importance of the cultic aspect: his Virtues are distant and abstract: important more for reasons of political and religious propaganda than as expression public piety.

The analysis of the Virtues as forms of propaganda seems to flourish in later scholarship. This was already embodied in Mattingly's article, underlying as Virtues were often associated with charismatic individuals, and later with the Emperors44, but was further elaborated in another article published in the same year, Charlesworth's

―The Virtues of a Roman Emperor‖45

. For Charlesworth, the Emperor had to show his subjects that he was fit to rule, and ruled them for their own good: to achieve that goal,

39 Ibidem, p. 103.

40 De leg. 2, 11, 28.

41 H. Mattingly, "The Roman 'Virtues'", cit., p. 104. Wissowa shared a similar view; G. Wissowa,

Religion und Kultus..., cit., p. 271-272. Even earlier, Preller was describing some Personifikationen as virtutes, after Cicero, but without any real discussion. L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, cit., p. 65; p. 623.

42 H. Mattingly, "The Roman 'Virtues'", cit., pp. 106-107. On the scarce probability of an aniconic phase of Roman religion: T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome. Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to

the Punic War, London 1995, pp. 160-163.

43 H. Mattingly, "The Roman 'Virtues'", cit., p. 108. 44 Ibidem, pp. 111-112.

45 M. P. Charlesworth, "The Virtues of a Roman Emperor: Propaganda and the Creation of Belief",

28

the Virtues were the proper tool; virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas and providentia, all strictly associated with Augustus46. Thus, they were for Charlesworth just tools of political propaganda, having little religious importance, if not connected with the cult of the Emperor.

Many other studies were published with the focus on the connection between the Emperor and the Virtues, like Gagé's article on Victoria Augusta47, Nock's, Grant's and Downey's contributions48. These articles give a contribution to the study of imperial ideology, but are not of great importance for what concerns the definition of Virtues as a class of divinities. Nock's article suggests an important point: ―Greek and Latin had no distinction of capital and small letters as between ράξηο and Υάξηο, cupido and Cupido‖49. Therefore, he assumes that ―[d]eities could be more abstract than we incline to think (so not only Venus, but also Mars as an expression of the military might of Rome), and personifications could be more concrete, notably so at Rome.‖50

A similar vagueness of definition can be found in Webster's article, ―Personification as a Mode of Greek Thought‖51

. Webster tries to make personification a universal category of Greek thought. He defines personification as ―something not a human being is described as if it had a quality or qualities normally associated with human being‖52

. Therefore, he makes a personification out of every Greek god, including Aphrodite, Hera or Ares. In this extreme vagueness, the ―personifications of abstracts‖ are a sub-category of the general definition of personification. They depend, we learn, from a ―momentary deification in the result of some strong emotion‖ (see, again, the Augenblicksgötter), but they also sometimes arise from literature53. It is worth to quote Webster's article, as it takes, quite uncritically, the vagueness of the concept of ―personification‖ to the extreme: everything becomes a personification, and the ―personification‖ itself evolves in some kind of metahistorical category of human thought, as it was for early German mythographers.

The general books about Roman religion do not seem to be of much help, for a theoretical definition of Virtues. Altheim's, Latte's and Dumézil's works deal with them,

46 Ibidem, p. 108.

47 J. Gagé, "Un thème de l'art impérial romain: la Victoire d'Auguste", Mélanges d'archéologie et

d'histoire 49.1 (1932), pp. 61-92.

48 A. D. Nock, "The Emperor's Divine Comes", JRS 37 (1947), pp. 102-116; M. Grant, Roman

Imperial Money, London 1954, pp. 148-175.

49 A. D. Nock, "The Emperor's Divine Comes", cit., p. 113. 50 Ivi.

51 T. B. L. Webster, ―Personification as a Mode of Greek Thought‖, JWI 17 1-2 (1954), pp. 10-21. 52 Ibidem, p. 10.

29

but they simply discuss the theories of their predecessors with little originality. Altheim argued that personifications seem to be the typical example of numen, again in the sense of functional god, as theorized by Usener54. He underlined that this class of divinities seems to be very ancient and does not appear, in many cases, to arise under Greek influence. Moreover, the new foundations dedicated to this kind of cults seems to be following important political or military happenings55.

In his Storia dei Romani IV 2 (Firenze 1953), De Sanctis dedicates a few pages to the ―divinità astratte‖. He accepts Wissowa's theory on the origin of abstractions as hypostasis of a god and associates them with the indigitamenta. On the other side, he made a good point about the concept of ―abstraction‖ of these divinities: whereas they may appear ―abstract‖ from our point of view, they were, indeed, extremely concrete for the Romans56.

Latte gave a new definition, describing the Virtues as Wertbegriffen, ―valuable concepts‖57

but he seems to follow the early scholarly tradition. His Wertbegriffen were

indeed ―Augenblicksschöpfungen, die im Kult keine Spuren hinterließen‖58

. They also ―mischen sich griechische und römische Elemente in höherem Maße‖59

. The main difference is that in Greece these divinities seem to come from literature, while in Rome they come from the specialization of an epiclesis of a god (see Wissowa).

Dumézil hypothesizes that the origin of this class of divinities may depend at the very beginning from the linguistic features of many Indo-European languages, having a rich quantity of feminine abstract compounds: to this first phase would belong Ops, Fides and Ceres, while the other abstractions personifiées were to be introduced as State cults for political reasons, from the fourth century BC60.

Lind's article, ―Roman Religion and Ethical Thought: Abstraction and Personification"61, provides an in-depth analysis of the sources. With his attention focusing merely on the literary sources, especially Cicero, the author described the

54 F. Altheim, A History of Roman Religion, London 1938, pp. 296 (= Römische

Religionsgeschichte, Berlin 1931).

55 Ibidem, pp. 295-296.

56 G. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, IV, 2, 1, Firenze 1953, pp. 285-287. 57 K. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte, München 1960, p. 233. 58 Ibidem, p. 234.

59 Ivi.

60 G. Dumézil, La Religion Romaine Archaïque, cit., pp. 399-401. We already said about D. Important criticism of functional gods: Ibidem, pp. 36-62. About the numina theory, see also Weinstock, who observed that the word numen, originally "motion", started to be used with a religious meaning from the first century BC,and is not a primitive feature of the Roman religion; S. Weinstock, untitled review of Rose, JRS 39 (1949), pp. 166–7.

61 L. R. Lind, ―Roman Religion and Ethical Thought: Abstraction and Personification", CJ 69-2 (1974), pp. 108-119.

30

"abstractions" as a purely intellectual phenomenon. He argued that, "[w]hen they sacrificed to Honos or Virtus and gazed upon the statues which artists had made to represent them, the Romans, well aware of the skepticism toward the abstracts [...], were engaging less in a religious worship than in philosophic and moral contemplation, in a meditation upon their relationship to the realm of practical virtue. In short, they were engaging in abstract thought."62 This statement sharply contrasts with what is known about the vows of temple foundations dedicated to Virtues in the Middle-Republic, most of which were made in dramatic moments of crucial battles. As it is made especially clear by other contributions, Lind was a convinced primitivist, and this stance certainly influenced his view of Roman religion63.

It is valuable here to mention two contributions on the study of the origins of the term ―personification‖, published by Reinhardt and Whitman64

. Both works confront the concept of personification as appears in modern studies, with the Greek and Latin rhetorical technique of prosopopoeia. Whitman sums it up quite well:

―In short, it is necessary to distinguish two meanings of the term 'personification'. One refers to the practice of giving an actual personality to an abstraction. This practice has its origins in animism and ancient religion, and is called 'personification' by modern theorists of religion and anthropology. […] The other meaning of 'personification' […] is the historical sense of

prosopopoeia. This refers to the practice of giving a consciously fictional personality to an

abstraction, 'impersonating' it.‖65

Whitman, here, expresses clearly the double meaning of the term 'personification'. On one hand, a rhetorical and literary technique well attested and described in ancient sources, on the other hand a practice of ancient religion, categorized and described by ―modern theorists of religion and anthropology.‖

Metaphysical abstraction, lurking in a more or less explicit fashion in all the literature to this moment, is finally banned from the subject, by R. Fears' extremely important article in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt66, a real turning point in scholarship. Fears convincingly exposed the weakness of using expressions such as ―personification‖, ―abstraction‖ et similia, to describe the religious phenomenon in the Roman world. ―Personification‖, he argued, is too broad: ―[i]t is quite properly

62 Ibidem, p. 118.

63 _{L.R. Lind, "Primitivity and Roman Ideas : the Survivals", Latomus 35/2 (1976), pp. 245-268.}

64 K. Reinhardt, "Personifikation und Allegorie", cit., pp. 7-9; J. Whitman, Allegory, cit., pp. 269-272.

65 J. Whitman, Allegory, cit., p. 271.

66 J. R. Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology", ANRW II, 17.2 (1981), 827– 948.

31

employed to describe a variety of disparate formulations: examples include the personification of such human conditions as Sleep and Death and of such abstractions as Rumor and Envy, which were never object of a cult in Rome, and of such natural features as Danuvius and Tiberinus Pater and of such geopolitical expressions as Dacia or Roma, all of which were worshipped in public or private cult.‖67

For what regards the second term of Wissowa's classic definition, ―'[a]bstraction' is the antithesis of the Roman conception of divinity; for the Roman, in cult matters, the divine is by definition concrete, and each godhead is an object exercising will and bound by by temporal, spatial, and functional specifics.‖68

Both ―personification‖ and ―deification of abstract ideas‖, he concluded, are modern scholarly invention without a real justification in the ancient sources. Ancient texts seem to be interested in quite the opposite of abstraction: they characterize divinities such as Concordia, Victoria, Fides, etc, as bestowing concrete benefits, utilitates in Cicero's formulation (Nat. deo. 2, 62)69. Fears then chose the definition ―Virtues‖, with the meaning ―the power of operative influence inherent in a supernatural being.‖70

Fears understood how Cicero's treatment is essentially a statement of philosophical nature, but this should not distort our understanding of the Virtues, by underestimating the cultic importance of their worship71. As objects of cults, he underlined, the Virtues were not different from the other gods of the Roman state, as Jupiter, Juno and Apollo: they had ―the essential trapping of cult: templa, altars, feast days, and sacrifices‖. The cults of both types of gods, were introduced in Rome in similar ways, as religious innovations often vowed in battles, or sanctioned by the Libri Sibyllini72. Fears notes that the great majority of the cults of Virtues are vowed during battles: this clearly suggests that ―we are dealing not with colorless allegorical figures and abstractions but rather with objects of profound and sincere religious piety, numina invoked by men in critical moments in sincere expectation of divine salvation.‖73.

For Fears, the better way to describe the Virtues is to see them as functional gods. In this, he is admittedly influenced, again, by Usener's theories. In the archaic period, the functional divinities were, for Fears, related to basically agrarian 67 Ibidem, pp. 830-831. 68 Ibidem, pp. 831-832. 69 Ibidem, p. 832. 70 Ivi. 71 Ibidem, p. 833. 72 Ibidem, p. 834. 73 Ibidem, p. 835.