Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice [1, 1 ed.] 1937040798, 9781937040796

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STUDIES IN ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN RELIGIONS 1

Sandra Blakely (ed.)

Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice

LOCKWOOD PRESS

GODS, OBJECTS, AND RITUAL PRACTICE

Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religions

Sandra Blakely, Series Editor

Number One Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice

GODS, OBJECTS, AND RITUAL PRACTICE

Edited by

Sandra Blakely

LOCKWOOD PRESS 2017

Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice Copyright © 2017 by Lockwood Press All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Lockwood Press, PO Box 133289, Atlanta, GA 30333 USA. Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952620 ISBN: 978-1-937040-79-6 Cover design by Susanne Wilhelm. Cover image: Black-figured column krater fragment with scene of Achilles and Ajax; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Gift of Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer, 2004.33.2; photograph by Bruce M. White, 2005 © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Contents Abbreviations vii Contributors xvii 1

Introduction: Object, Image, and Text: Materiality and Ritual Practice in the Ancient Mediterranean Sandra Blakely 1 Section 1. From Image to Context: Iconography and Polysemnity

2 Divine Twins or Saintly Twins: The Dioscuri in an Early Christian Context Annewies van den Hoek 17 3

Altars, Astragaloi, Achilles: Picturing Divination on Athenian Vases Sheramy D. Bundrick 53

Incarnating the Aurea Aetas: Theomorphic Rhetoric and the Portraits of Nero Eric R. Varner 75 4

Section 2. Reading the Gods: Texts and Gifts 5 6

No More Than One Candle, Torch, or Wreath: Private Citizens and the Commemoration of L. Caesar at Pisa J. Bert Lott 119



The Cadence of the Language of Magic in Greek Curse Tablets and First Corinthians Jill E. Marshall 129

7

Sacred Objects, Material Value, and Invective in Cicero’s Verrines II 4 Isabel Köster 151 Section 3. Implements and Images

8

Local Production and Domestic Ritual Use of Small Rectangular Incense Altars: A Petrographic Provenience Analysis and Examination of Craftsmanship of the Tell Halif Incense Altars Seung Ho Bang, Oded Borowski, Kook Young Yoon, Yuval Goren 171 v

vi Contents

9 Judaean Pillar Figurines and the Making of Female Piety in Ancient Israelite Religion Erin Darby 193 10 Priestesses in Action: Ritual Instruments Employed by Roman Women Meghan J. DiLuzio 215 11 Rhetoric, Repetition, and Identity in the Frieze of Sacred Objects on the Temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus Susan Ludi Blevins 233 Section 4. Sites and Structures: Gods, Men, and Cultural Identities 12 Channeling Identity: The Fountain of Glauke in Corinth and Jacob’s Well in John 4 Eric Moore 261 13 “In This Holy Place”: Incubation at Hot Springs in Roman and Late Antique Palestine Megan S. Nutzman 281 14 Gods, Graves, and Extratextual Rituals in Archaic Colonial Sicily Lela M. Urquhart

305

Subject Index

329

Ancient Sources Index

337

Abbreviations AAE AAEA ABAW

Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Anejos de Archivo español de arqueología Abhandlungen der Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992. ‘Abod. Zar. ‘Abodah Zarah ABSA Annual of the British School at Athens Aen. Vergil Aeneid Agr. Cicero De Lege agraria AIRF Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae A.J. Josephus Antiquitates judaicae AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJP American Journal of Philology Alex. Lucian Alexander (Pseudomantis) AMD Ancient Magic and Divination AMuGS Antike Münzen und geschnittene Steine Ann. Annales Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte ANRW und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Part 2, Principat. Edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972–. Anatolian Studies AnSt Antiquités africaines AntAf Antike Kunst AntK Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates romanae Ant. rom. American Oriental Series AOS APAAA Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association Apocol. Seneca Apocolocyntosis ARA Annual Review of Anthropology Arch Archaeology ArchCl Archeologia classica ARG Archiv für Religionsgeschichte vii

viii

Abbreviations

Argon. Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica ARID Analecta Romana Instituti Danici ARP Accordia Research Papers ARS African Red Slip ware Att. Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum b. born; ben b. Babylonian Talmud tractate BA Biblical Archaeologist Balb. Cicero Pro Balbo BAPD Beazley Archive Pottery Database (www.beazley.ox.ac.uk) Bapt. Tertullian De baptismo BAR Biblical Archaeology Review BARIS British Archaeological Reports International Series BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BCAW Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World BCH Bulletin de correspondance héllenique BCHSup Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément Ber. Berakot BiAMA Bibliothèque d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne et Africaine Bibl. Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca historica; Apollodorus Bibliotheca BICSSup Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement B.J. Josephus Bellum judaicum BKP Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie BMCRE Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum. Harold Mattingly, ed. London: British Museum, 1923–. BMFA Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) BNP Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Edited by Hubert Cancik. 22 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2002–2011. BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries Brev. Vit. Seneca De brevitate vitae BSGA Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies c. Symm. Prudentius contra Symmachum CA Current Anthropology ca. circa Cal. Suetonius Gaius Caligula Cat. Cicero In Catalinam cat. catalog CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CD Cairo Genizah copy of the Damascus Document



Abbreviations ix

CÉFR Collection de l’École française de Rome CHANE Culture and History of the Ancient Near East CHSC Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (1863–) CJ Classical Journal ClAnt Classical Antiquity Claud. Suetonius Divus Claudius Clem. Seneca De clementia ClQ Classical Quarterly CM Cuneiform Monograph col(s). column(s) Cons. Hon Claudianus De consulatu Honorii Cor. Plutarch Marcius Coriolanus CP Classical Philology CRHPhR Cahiers de la Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses CSCAI Cambridge Studies in Classical Art and Iconography CSCT Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition CSHJ Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism CSSCA Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology CWA Cambridge World Archaeology DACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienneet de liturgie. Edited by Fernan Cabrol. 15 vols. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–1953. De or. Cicero De oratore Descr. Pausanius Graeciae descriptio diam. diameter Diatr. Epictetus Daitribai (Dissertationes) Dig. Digesta Div. Caec. Cicero Divinatio in Caecilium Div. quaest. LXXXIII Augustine De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers DT August Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae. Paris: Fontemoing, 1904. DWhG Deutsche Wasserhistorische Gesellschaft Ebib Etudes Bibliques ECC Eerdmans Critical Commentary Eccl. Rab. Rabbah Ecclesiastes Ecl. xuae Eins. Ecl. Einsiedlin Eclogues Enarrat. Ps. Augustine Enarrationes in Psalmos Ep. Epistulae Epod. Horace Epodi

x

EPRO

Abbreviations

Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain ‘Erub. ‘Erubin Fab. Plutarch Fabius Maximus; Hyginus Fabulae Fast. Ovid Fasti FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament fig(s). figure(s) flor. floruit frag. fragment FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Gen. Rab. Rabbah Genesis Geogr. Strabo Geographica Georg. Vergil Georgica GR Greece and Rome GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Har. resp. Cicero De haruspicum responso HAW Handbuch der altertumswissenschaft HdA Handbuch der Archäologie, Vorderasien Her. Philo De rerum divinaraum heres sit; Ovid Heroides Hesperia Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Hist. Herodotus Historiae Hist. Aug., Comm. Historia Augusta, Commodus Hist. Eccl. Sozomenus Historia Ecclesiastica Hor. C. Porphyry’s comments on Horace Carmina HR History of Religions HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology HTR Harvard Theological Review HTS Harvard Theological Studies HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual Hul. Hullin IAAR Israel Antiquities Authority Reports IEJ Israel Exploration Journal IG.3 Sup. Inscriptiones Graecae. Vol. 3: Supplement. Edited by Richard Wünsch. Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1903. IGRom Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes (1906–) IJAHS International Journal of African Historical Studies illus. illustration ILS H. Dessau. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin, 1892–1916.



Inst.

Abbreviations xi

Lactantius Divinarum institutionum libri VII; Quintilian Institutio oratoria Isaac Ambrose De Isaac vel anima Isoc. Dionysus of Halicarnasus De Isocrate IstMitt Istanbuler Mitteilungen Itin. Egeria Itinerarium Egeriae JAMT Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCH Journal of Cognitive Historiography JCM Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World JCPS Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series JdI Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies JFA Journal of Field Archaeology JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JMEMSt Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies JPF Judean pillar figurines JPICL Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JRAI Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute NS JRASup Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplement JRS Journal of Roman Studies JSJSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal of World Prehistory JWP Ketub. Ketubbot KölnJb Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte KTAH Key Themes in Ancient History Lahav Reports of the Lahav Research Project, Excavations at Tell Halif, Israel LAHR Late Antique History and Religion LAI Library of Ancient Israel LASBF Liber Annuus Studii Biblici Franciscani LCL Loeb Classical Library LCM Laboratory for Comparative Microarchaeology LCS Lang Classical Studies Leg. Cicero De legibus

xii

LIMC

Abbreviations

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. Zurich: Artemis, 1981–. Ling. Varro De lingua latina LRP Lahav Research Project LTUR Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Edited by Eva Margereta Steinby. 6 vols. Rome: Quasar, 1993–2000. m. Mishnah tractate MAAR Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome MAARSup Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome Supplement Marc. Tertullian Adversus Marcionem Maxim. Augustine Contra Maximinum Arianum MDAI(R) Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung Med. Medea MededRom Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome MedEnc Medieval Encounters MeditArch Mediterranean Archaeology MEFRA Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome: Antiquité Metam. Ovid Metamorphoses MGR Monumenta Graeca et Romana MHNH Revista Internacional de Investigación sobre Magia y Astrologia Antiguas Migr. Philo De migratione Abrahami Mil. Cicero Pro Milone Mor. Plutarch Moralia MS Mnemosyne Supplementum MSS manuscripts n(n). note(s) N. A. Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae NBACr Nuovo Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana NA28 Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28th ed. NAC Numismatica e antichità classiche Nat. Seneca Naturales questiones; Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia Nat. grat. Augustine De natura et gratia NEA Near Eastern Archaeology NEAEHL The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. 5 vols. Edited by Ephraim Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993–2008. NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary



Abbreviations xiii

NNM Numismatic Notes and Monographs no. number NovTSup Supplements to Novum Testamentum NTS New Testament Studies Num. Plutarch Numa Obj(s). Object(s) OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis OBOSA Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Series Archaeologica OCM Oxford Classical Monographs OCT Oxford Classical Texts Off. Cicero De officiis OJA Oxford Journal of Archaeology OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta OMRL Oudheidkundige Mededelingen uit het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden Onom. Eusebius Onomasticon Opuscula Opuscula: Annual of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome Ord. Augustine De ordine ORF H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta liberae rei pvblicae. 4th ed. Torino: Paravia, 1976. Orig. Isadorus Origenes OSCC Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture PAB Potsdamer altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge Pan. Epiphanius Panarion (Adversus haereses); Pliny Panegyricus P.Oxy. Grenfell, Bernard P., et al., eds. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1898–. PAPhS Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society PBSR Papers of the British School at Rome PDM Demotic texts in Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly PGM Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die Griechischen Zauberpapyri. Edited by Karl Preisendanz. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973–1974. pl(s). plate(s) PMAAR Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome POC Proche-Orient Chrétien P. Oxy. Oxyrhynchus Papyri

xiv

Abbreviations

Qidd. Qiddušin Quaest. rom. Plutarch Quaestiones romanae et graecae QuadMess Quaderni dell’Istituto di archeologia della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia, Universitä di Messina R. Rabbi RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Edited by Theodor Klauser et al. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–. RAr Revue archéologique RB Revue Biblique RdA Rivista di archeologia REL Revue des Études Latines Res gest. divi Aug. Res gestae dvi Augusti rev. reverse (of tablet) RGRW Religions in the Graeco-Roman World RhMus Rheinisches Museum RIC The Roman Imperial Coinage. Edited by Harold Mattingly et al. London: Spink, 1923–. RIC2 The Roman Imperial Coinage. Edited by Harold Mattingly et al. London: Spink, 2007– RPAA Atti della Pontificia Accademia romana di Archeologia: Rendiconti RPC Roman Provincial Coinage Project RRP Religion der römischen Provinzen RSQ Rhetoric Society Quarterly RSR Recherches de science religieuse RVV Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten Šabb. Šabbat SAM Studies in Ancient Medicine SANER Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records Sat. Macrobius Saturnalia; Juvenal Satirae Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series SBLMS ScAnt Scienze dell’Antichita: Storia, archeologia, antropologia Scripta Hierosolymitana ScrHier Šeb. Šebi‘it Studies in Greek and Roman Religion SGRR SHGR Studies in the History of Greece and Rome SMNIA Tel Aviv University Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology Monograph Series SMSR Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series SO Symbolae Osloenses



Abbreviations xv

Sol. Plutarch Solon Spect. Tertullian De spectaculis SSCA Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology str. stratum StOr Studia Orientalia SWBA Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series: Second series t. Tosefta tractate tab. table TAOP Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, Occasional Publications TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association TAPS Transactions of the American Philosophical Society TCS Texts from Cuneiform Sources TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976. ThesCRA Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum. Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 2004–. Tim. Plato Timaeus TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum/Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Tr. Ovid Tristia Trac. Ev. Jo. Augustine In Evangelium Johannis tractatus Trin. Augustine De trinitate TZ Theologische Zeitschrift UCOP University of Cambridge Oriental Publications Var. Hist. Aelian Varia Historia Verr. Cicero In Verrem Vit. Par. Plutarch Vitae Parallelae WA World Archaeology WGRWSup Writings on the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament y. Jerusalem Talmud tractate YCS Yale Classical Studies ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina- Vereins ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Contributors Sandra Blakely is associate professor of classics at Emory University, with research interests in Greek religion, historiography, digital approaches to antiquity, and the anthropology and ethnography of the ancient world. Her current research project, The Anthropology of an Island Cult, focuses on maritime ritual and the mystery cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace, using ArcGIS and network modeling to test the hypothesis of the cult’s effectiveness in creating safety for travelers at sea. Recent publications include “Maritime Risk and Ritual Responses: Sailing with the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean” in C. Buchet and P. de Souza, ed.s, Oceanides (Association Oceanides: Paris 2016), and “Beyond Braudel: Network Models and a Samothracian Seascape” in L. Mazurek and C. Concannon, ed.s, Across the Corrupting Sea (Routledge 2016). [email protected] Susan Ludi Blevins researches the relationship between material culture, religion, and memory in the Roman and Greek world; the intersection of visual culture with issues of identity, power and representation; the topography and built environment of sacred space; and cognition and visual culture. She has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Georgia Program in Cortona, and Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the excavation team at the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace. [email protected] Oded Borowski is professor of biblical archaeology and Hebrew at Emory University. He has conducted field work at Gezer, Dan, Ashkelon, and Beth Shemesh, and helped initiate the Lahav Research Project, an excavation and survey in Tel Halif and its environs. He has been co-director of Phase III and director of Phase IV of research at Tell Halif. His research has focused on ancient agriculture, daily life and foodways in Iron Age Israel, Hezekiah’s reforms, the Iron Age Cemetery at Tel Halif, and the study of Hebrew: his books include Lahav III: The Iron Age II Cemetery at Tell Halif (Site 72) (Eisenbrauns 2013), Daily Life in Biblical Times (Brill 2003), Every Living Thing: The Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (AltaMira Press 1997), and Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Eisenbrauns 1987). [email protected]

xvii

xviii Contributors

Seung Ho Bang has been a staff member of the Lahav Research Project, the Phase IV excavation at Tell Halif, Israel. He studies domestic cult objects, such as small limestone incense altars found in Tell Halif, and the relationship between domestic religious practices and household production at the end of the eighth-century BCE Tell Halif. [email protected] Kook-Young Yoon is a PhD candidate of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. He has conducted field work at different sites in Israel as a volunteer as well as a staff. He has been interested mainly in material culture, society, iconography and religion of the Iron Age and Persian period of Ancient Israel; his current research focuses on mechanism of manufacture and circulation of clay figurines of late Iron Age kingdom of Judah through combinative investigation of iconography, typology and petrography. [email protected] Yuval Goren is professor of archaeology, head of the Track in Archaeomaterials Science and Conservation (now a Marie Curie ITN member of the European Doctorate in Archaeological Materials Science framework and Director of the Laboratory for Microarchaeology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His scholarly specialization is provenance and technological studies of archaeological ceramics (including seal impressions and cuneiform tablets), and the application of micromorphological methods in archaeology. His regions of focus reach from West Asia and the Levant to the eastern Mediterranean. Yuval Goren ygoren@ bgu.ac.il Sheramy Bundrick is professor of Art History at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where she has taught since 2001. She has held fellowships from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation. Most recently, she was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome during the 2013-14 academic year. Her publications include Music and Image in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press 2005), and numerous articles and chapters on on iconography, ranging from Athenian eye cups to textile production, sacrifice and Dionysian themes. In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Bundrick is the author of Sunflowers: A Novel of Vincent Van Gogh (Avon/Harper Collins 2009). [email protected] Erin Darby is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Her research foci include Judean Pillar Figurines, coroplastic production, gender and sexuality, religious identities, Iron Age shrines in southern Israel and Jordan, and ongoing field work at the Late Roman Fort at ‘Ayn Gharandal, Jordan. Her publications include Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines: Gender and Empire in Judean Apotropaic Ritual (Mohr



Contributors xix

Siebeck 2014), and numerous articles focusing on questions of method, theory, and interpretation in the context of Biblical archaeology. She is currently at work as co-editor and author on several book projects, including her next monograph Method and Theory in the Archaeology of Israelite Religion and a co-edited volume with Izaak de Hulster, Iron Age Terracotta Figurines in the Southern Levant. [email protected] Meghan DiLuzio is assistant professor of Classics at Baylor University; her research interests include Roman cultural history, religion in ancient Rome, and gender in antiquity. She is the author of A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome (Princeton University Press 2016), a recipient of the 2017 Classical Association of the Middle West and South First Book Prize. Her scholarly papers and forthcoming articles embrace topics ranging from priestly garb to intertextuality in late Latin poetry. Currently she is writing about the festivals of the Roman Republic. [email protected] Annewies van den Hoek was a lecturer (now retired) in Jewish and Early Christian Greek at Harvard Divinity School, and currently an associate at the Harvard Semitic Museum. Among her works are Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity, co-authored with her husband John J. Herrmann (Brill 2013); Clément d’Alexandrie, Les Stromates. Stromate IV. Introduction, texte grec et notes par A. van den Hoek, traduction de C. Mondésert (étitions du Cerf 2001); Clement of Alexandria and his Use of Philo in the Stromateis: An Early Christian Reshaping of a Jewish Model (Brill 1988), and Light from the Age of Augustine. Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa (Tunisia) (Harvard 2002), co-authored with her husband John H. Herrmann. [email protected] Isabel Köster is assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, studying the history and literature of the Roman Republic and early Empire with a special interest in the intersection between religion and law. Her publications include “How to Kill a Roman Villain: The Deaths of Quintus Pleminius” (Classical Journal 109 (2014): 309-332) and “Feasting Centaurs and Destructive Consuls in Cicero’s In Pisonem” (Illinois Classical Studies 39 (2014): 63-79). Her current book project examines temple robbery in the Roman world from the third century BCE to the second century CE. Future projects include a study of Roman ideas about divine punishment. [email protected] Bert Lott is professor of Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College, and a historian of ancient Rome. In his research he emphasizes the political, social, and religious changes associated with the beginnings of the monarchical Roman Em-

xx Contributors

pire, as well as the development of the “epigraphic habit.” His publications include The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press 2004) and Death and Dynasty in Early Imperial Rome (Cambridge University Press 2012). [email protected] Jill E. Marshall completed her PhD in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her first book, Women Praying and Prophesying in Corinth: Gender and Inspired Speech in First Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), situates Paul’s arguments about prayer and prophecy within their ancient Mediterranean cultural context, using literary and archaeological evidence. Her research foci include gender, sexuality, prophecy, and magic in early Christianity, as well as the reception history of characters and locations in the New Testament. She has published articles in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and Sacred Matters Magazine. [email protected] Eric Moore completed his PhD in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University, with a dissertation titled ‘Claiming Places’, an exploration of Acts in light of Greek and Roman colonization motifs. His research bridges literary and material evidence and interactions between Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman cultures. His current foci include inscriptions and monuments at Aphrodisias, the social sciences in New Testament interpretation, and two projects related to Acts. The first of these examines appeals to Jewish patriarchs in the speeches of Acts as a function of history writing and in light of ancestor veneration in Greek and Roman antiquity. The second explores the replication of Christianity in Luke’s narrative alongside traditions of cult transfer in Greek and Roman sources. He also has plans for a work surveying the use of material culture in New Testament interpretation. [email protected] Megan Nutzman is assistant professor of history at Old Dominion University. Her work focuses on the intersection of Greco-Roman religions, Judaism, and Christianity, with a special emphasis on the land of Israel. Among her research interests are questions related to magic, material culture, and women in ancient religions. Her current project, tentatively entitled Contested Cures, identifies four categories of ritual healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine, based on the ways that people believed miraculous cures could be transmitted: holy men, sacred places, performative acts, and amulets. Ultimately, the book uses healing rituals as a lens to investigate the construction of religious identity among Jewish and Christian authors alongside contemporary evidence for the continued borrowing and adaptation of rituals among members of the same communities. [email protected]



Contributors xxi

Lela Urquhart completed her PhD at Stanford University, with a dissertation focused on Colonial Religion and Indigenous Society in the Archaic Western Mediterranean, c 750-400 BCE. Her research foci include postcolonialism, ritual practice, and historiography, with a special focus on archaic Sicily. Her scholarship builds on her fieldwork at Socio-Verdura and Monte Polizzo in Sicily, Tel Dor, Mochlos, and North Carolina. Recent publications include “Competing Traditions in the Historiography of Ancient Greek Colonization in Italy”, Journal of the History of Ideas 75.1 (2014): 23-44, (2014), and “English-Speaking Traditions and the Study of the Ancient Greeks Outside their Homelands,” in Franco De Angelis, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Greeks across the Ancient World (Oxford 2017). Her current project is titled Measuring the Impact of Colonization: Colonial Religion and Indigenous Society in Archaic Sicily and Sardinia. [email protected] Eric Varner is associate professor in the Departments of Art History and Classics at Emory University. His monograph (Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture) and exhibition catalogue (From Caligula to Constantine: Tryanny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture) explore the destruction and reconfiguration of the portraits of Rome’s “bad” emperors, including Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus. He has published articles on Roman portraits, damnatio memoriae, patronage, Roman replications of Greek sculpture, and Neronian art. He is currently completing a book examining art, literature and politics in the Neronian period entitled, Grotesque Aesthetics: Transgression and Transcendence in the Age of Nero. evarner@emory. edu

Chapter One Sandra Blakely

Object, Image, and Text: Materiality and Ritual Practice in the Ancient Mediterranean From Goods to Gods: The Material Turn and Ritual Studies

T

he “material turn” has been part of the landscape of the humanities since the 1980s, yielding a rich array of frameworks for approaching objects as agents, as socially constituted and constituting, as subjectively perceived and affectively experienced (Hicks and Beaudry 2010; Gell 1998). The roots of these interests run much deeper, however, than the late twentieth century (Taylor 2009; D. Miller 2005; Fogelin 2007). In the nineteenth century Locke and Tylor debated the boundaries between the material world and the human soul (Taylor 2009, 299). Hegel declared that engagement with the material world is a fundamental property of being human. Marx argued that the measure of a man is often the extent to which he transforms, commodifies, and accumulates the material world (Hegel 1807). In the mid-twentieth century, Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology outlined the role of the embodied and the experiential human interaction with the world, rather than the merely cognized (Merleau Ponty 1945). Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, affirming the role of society in concept formation and response to the material world, may be traced back to Herodotus’s declarations on the role of environment in the shaping of social character (Bourdieu 1977; Taylor 2009; Lloyd 1978). The depth of the topic is matched only by the breadth of its use across disciplines, from philosophy to economics, and that are focused on objects as diverse as fine art and inorganic waste (Meskell 2005; D. Miller 2005; Lange-Berndt 2015; Gregson and Crang 2010; Dant 2005). These disciplines and topics meet in a growing number of journals, scholarly handbooks, and collections of essays devoted to “materiality.”1 Among the many outcomes of these conversations are several points of relevance for contemporary scholars of ancient religion: these include My appreciation goes out to Professor Brian B. Schmidt, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for reading and offering comment on an earlier draft of this introduction. 1.  Introductions to materiality include Buchli 2002; D. Miller 1998, 2005; P. Miller 2014; Tilley et al. 2006; journals include the Journal of Material Culture (Sage) and Material Culture (Pioneer America Society).

1

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how religion is defined, the potential for its change over time, and religion’s association with icons (Droogan 2013, 149–73). At the simplest level, ritual practice can leave material traces—objects held in the hand, monuments viewed as a group, structures approached and entered into (Fogelin 2007). Attempts to distinguish ritual from nonritual objects have sought to establish a typology of ritual materials; essential characteristics include an intensity of focus, appeal to group memory, and density of symbolic elements.2 The raw materials of these objects, their physical location and arrangement, and the way in which structures determine group size and line of sight can be approached through the question of somatic, emotionally intensifying impact at individual, group, and social levels. The focus on nonlinguistic properties complements the determination to study religion as a social reality rather than a doctrinal debate (Boivin 2009). The social constitution of the material world replaces the apparent concreteness of objects with a model of fluid, interactive change over time (Gosden 1994, 37). The social life of things engages them in movement between individuals, social registers, and across the boundaries of group identity (Appadurai 1986; Morehard 2015). Barth’s work among the Baktaman demonstrated that even within a single society, different social registers experience objects differently; Keane has noted that the entrance of objects into new contexts gives rise to features unrelated to the intention of the previous owner (Insoll 2009; Keane 2008; Morehard and Butler 2010). Consistent with Bourdieu’s habitus, multiple social entanglements yield multiple meanings. These considerations yield a more flexible paradigm for determining an object’s relevance for religious practice. Objects may be ritualizing in one instance, but game pieces, artwork, or gifts to the dead in another. The life histories of objects, including the multiple cultural contexts in which they function, emerge as a critical component in the assessment of their ritual effectiveness. These contribute to creative, revolutionary models of ritual and religion as the meeting place for multiple voices (Keane 2008; Bradley 1998; Inomata 2006; Moore 1996; Fogelin 2007). Among the objects most readily identified with ritual functions are icons and sacred images. Conceptualized as part of the cultural vocabulary of the sacred, they have often been interpreted with the aid of ancient narratives, particularly in the text-rich cultures of the Mediterranean. This has challenged scholars to develop more nuanced models for explicating the relationship between the textual and the material in ritual contexts. Semiotic and structural approaches boomed in the decades after the 1970s, emerging from the Paris School. These approaches pressed the boundaries of Saussure’s linguistics as an avenue into the thought world of ancient cultures. The models they yield—in their static quality, and their inattention to cultural context—lie far from the ideals that would be 2.  For the difficulty of identifying ritual, see Bradley 2005; Rowan 2012; Barrett 2016; Renfrew 1985.



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pursued by scholars working in the material turn. They reflect the tendency of semiotically focused analyses to deemphasize material remains in favor of cognitive models, and focus on belief system as abstract constructions of the human mind (Tilley 1999; Boivin 2009; Barrett 2016; Renfrew and Zubrow 1994; McCorkle 2014; Lehmann 2005; Geertz 2014). More recently, however, Fogelin, Boivin, and others have revisited the question, noting that scholars since Geertz, Turner, Douglas and even Levi-Strauss have acknowledged the nonarbitrariness of signs and symbols. These are not completely independent from the materialized reality of the signifiers, but shaped by the natural properties of the symbolic material as well as arbitrary factors (Tilley 1999; Fogelin 2015). The grounding of signs in material experience replaces the need to choose between mind and material, and opens a pathway into a recoverability of the thought world of the subject cultures. This recoverability exists even despite the force of social context in determining material interaction (Gosden 1994, 37; Taylor 2009). Scholars of religion have not, on the whole, been as engaged in the discussions of materiality as may be expected (Insoll 2004; cf. Balke and Tsouparopoulou 2015, Pongratz-Leisten and Sonik 2015; Boschung and Bremmer 2015; Houlbrook and Armitage 2015; Mylonopoulos forthcoming). At a practical level, the uneven representation of material practice across world religions limits its appeal to those scholars with access to its evidence (Meyer et al. 2014). Many religions in fact critique materiality as part of the encouragement for the transcendent (Fogelin 2015, 1–10; Taylor 2009, 300). Tendencies within the academy exacerbate the situation. Philosophical and academic voices have a long tradition of preferring mind over material, visible already in Cicero’s disparagement of the work of the hands in comparison with the labor of the mind (Wood 1991, 98– 99). This extends to a specific disinclination to take up the question of the gods in a highly secular Western academy, particularly in the fields of anthropology and archaeology (Insoll 2004; Boivin 2009; Droogan 2013). In the mid-twentieth century, Hawkes’s “ladder of inference” emerged as a model for responsible archaeological investigation: rituals, in her schema, lie beyond firm recovery. This was paired with what Tilley characterizes as the destructive pessimism of twentieth-century archaeology that was convinced fragmentary remains had little more to reveal. Technology and economy were the sole, notable exceptions, yielding models of the social past characterized by technological and ecological determinism. The postprocessual, cognitive, symbolic focus of the 1980s moved beyond the approach to objects as adaptive technologies (Taylor 2009). These new archaeologists regarded religion and ritual as key human activities—and the doorway was reopened to an archaeology of cult (Chippindale and Taçon 1998; Tilley 1994; Scarre 2002; Whittle 1996). The constructivist perspective on those rituals has often dominated, informed by anthropological voices from EvansPritchard to Marshall Sahlins, who approached religion as one of the social codes

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projected onto the material world. The cognized social order, rather than the materiality of the world—shaped by the humans who were in turn shaped by it— remained dominant: these are the challenges against which a materials approach is offered. A growing number of publications attest to the productive potential for material approaches to religion; these bring together case studies from across the breadth of disciplines, cultural and chronological studies that characterize approaches to materiality.3 Synopsis of Chapters The chapters in this volume reflect the impact of these conversations, which are so widely diffused that they have become the necessary and implicit foundations for exploring the cultural functions material remains. The case studies gathered here situate the conversation about materiality in the ancient Mediterranean world, ranging temporally from Iron Age Israel into the Christian Imperial period. The questions of the definition of religious objects, the fluidity of socially constructed meanings, the centrality of iconographic analysis, the role for the cultural habitus which shapes the understanding and perception of objects, and the potential to erode the divide between emic and etic perspectives, all emerge across the disciplinary and regional divides represented herein. The chapters are grouped into four sections based on their primary form of evidence: iconography, text, ritual objects, and sites and structures. In Section 1, three chapters take up the investigation from an iconographic perspective. They share a focus on the cultural productivity of the polysemicity attendant upon material evidence. Annewies van den Hoek’s analysis of the Dioscuri builds on the principles of the social construction of materiality to demonstrate the polyvocality of the images of Castor and Pollux. Working back from their image on North African ceramics of the fourth and fifth century, she reconstructs their presence in the visual vocabularies of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Viewed as the points upon which multiple audiences converged, the twins emerge as responsive to the needs of both traditional and Christian religions. Sheramy Bundrick’s study of Athenian iconography moves our focus from emic to etic. Here the multiple readers are the generations of scholars whose preference for rational models of Greek antiquity and purely narrative interpretations of ritual scenes blinded them to the cleromantic activities depicted on Athenian vases. The same astragali which enabled games were also ritual implements. They would have been as recognizable by the users of the vases as the divine implements that Susan Blevins and Meghan Diluzio 3.  Journal of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief (Taylor & Francis); Meyer et al. 2014; Insoll 2009; Rowan 2012; Laneri 2015; Barrowclough and Malone 2007; Kyriakidis 2007; Whitley and Hays-Gilpin 2008; Renfrew and Morley 2009.



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explore in the context of Imperial Rome. A focus on the material technologies for communication with the gods also informs the analysis of incense altars, votive tapers, and incubation practices in other chapters. Seung Ho Bang et al. argue that the distinctive material elements of these altars reflect the potential for each house in Tell Halif to have its own, individualized radio to god. Bert Lott demonstrates that the materiality of votive tapers, simultaneously appropriate for the imperial ghosts and for personal patrons, collapsed those two categories for the citizens of Pisa. Megan Nutzman demonstrates that the careful management of the bridge between Greco-Roman and Judaic ritual categories enabled multiple communities to benefit from the ability to invoke divine healing at Hammat Gader. The polysemnic potential of both the genre of the portrait, and the material of stone, comes to the fore in Eric Varner’s study of Nero’s theomorphic portraits. The materiality of the stone and the cultural category of the portrait transformed the viewing of Nero’s statues into a hierophantic moment, without losing the political and aesthetic force of the experience. These three chapters suggest that material religion is characterized by a polysemnity that is both productive and problematic. The materiality of ritual objects may enable cultural convergence, scholarly obfuscation, or imperial messaging, and this is seen to function in two different rituals devoted to “seeing” the gods— hierophany and cleromancy. In Section 2, three chapters access the materiality of religion through primarily textual sources. The primacy of texts arises from different circumstances for each case study: the ephemeral nature of the objects themselves (Bert Lott), the coterminality between the production of a magical tablet and the ritual act (Jill Marshall), or because the ritualization of the object is a rhetorical achievement, carried out by Cicero in the context of legal debate (Isabel Köster). The dynamics of gift-giving run as a thread throughout all three chapters. Bert Lott’s analysis begins with a Pisan inscription detailing the annual offerings to be made as public commemoration for the ghost of Augustus’s son Lucius. These offerings may not consist of more than one candle, torch or wreath. These cheap and ephemeral materials, assuming a role in socially, legally, and poetically distinct exchanges, penetrate the boundaries of private family and public rites, and tie the town of Pisa to the imperial capital. The function of tapers and torches in Saturnalia, moreover, where they are gifts to would-be patrons, means that these gifts to the dead were also exchanges between client and patron. The inscription simultaneously textualizes and textualizes the candles and their light, and would itself, as an object in public space, locate the generator of these ritually forged relationships in real geo-political space. Jill Marshall shares this focus on the act of giving, exploring the term “anathema” in curse tablets and in the writings of Paul. Anathema, the act of dedication, appears in curse tablets from Megara and Knidos to describe the delivery of a victim to the powers of the invisible

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world. The tablets, in their material form, offer life histories and user experiences that embody the complex sociology of knowledge in Paul’s Corinth. The public display of tablets in Knidos moved anathema from the metaphoric to the physical sphere, a collapsing of symbol and action fundamental to magical practice. A palimpsest text from Megara, which simultaneously hides and reveals a divine message, makes visible the social functions of knowledge, access, distribution, and discretion. The creation of the text itself enables practitioners and purchasers to close the gap between language and artifact, physical manipulation and intellectual access. Isabel Köster explores how Cicero uses language to transform a piece of artwork into a ritual object in his invective against Verres. The sacrality of objects emerges as a social decision: it accrues to an object because of its physical location, aesthetic value, and the activities carried out around it. Verres’s failure to understand these principles is articulated in terms of his absence of affect: he is devoid of the complex emotional, aesthetic, and social response that marks those for whom these finely crafted works are ritual objects. These failures render him as foreign to Rome as he was to the Sicily he plundered. The question of the gift emerges in this as in the other two chapters of this section. Verres’s claim to have stolen a candelabra in order to dedicate it to Jupiter is false, as he did not understand that gifts to the gods demanded an audience. Section 3 focuses on individual objects which may be characterized as tools in ritual contexts—altars, figurines, and the implements of ritual practice. The first two chapters focus on Israelite objects with long histories of investigation as cultic paraphernalia. They share a reliance on petrographic analysis and a focus on the question of production, and yield fresh hypotheses for the social dynamics of production. Seung Ho Bang et al. position the incense altars from Tell Halif among the archaeologies of entanglement, foregrounding the complex life histories of these ritual implements (Der and Fernandini 2016). These histories encompass local geology, the travel itineraries of the raw materials, and the politic, ethnic, and professional groupings of those involved in procurement, production, transfer, and use. Distinctions in material and finish suggest the existence of multiple artisans with differing levels and styles of craftsmanship, belonging to different households. The inherent challenges of identifying ritual objects in domestic assemblages come to the fore in the movability of these objects, whose presence could turn any number of locations into ritual spaces. The analysis of the altars’ materiality, achieved through scientific as well as stylistic means, foregrounds the affective, the familial, and the local realities of ritual at Tell Halif, as well as the potential for ritual objects to serve as the carriers of contemporary narratives. Erin Darby focuses on Judean pillar figurines, traditionally interpreted as evidence for women’s rituals in domestic contexts. Petrographic, stylistic, and distribution analysis offer life histories of the figurines. These were made of local soils by specialist craftsmen, reflecting the styles from



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different regions, but were not themselves exchanged across political divides. These factors suggest a new hypothesis for the figurines as regional signatures, and for their workshops as loci for the negotiation of identity as well as ritual technologies. Meghan Diluzio and Susan Blevins pursue the investigation of ritual instruments through their depiction on Roman imperial architecture. Both seek to recover the combination of memory, affect, and cultural context that would have enabled contemporary readers of these images to identify the agents missing in the depiction of the implements. Both also build on La Follette’s proposal that ritual implements were not a generic set, but tailored to respond to their ritual context (La Follette 2011–2012). Blevins uses an analysis of Quintilian’s rhetoric to produce an elegant reading of the frieze of the temple of the deified Titus and Vespasian, while Diluzio integrates images of Vestals in ritual action with textual evidence from Roman authors. Blevins argues that the frieze of the temple of the divine Vespasian and Titus, which consists of an array of sacred objects, invokes the Flamines, a priesthood occupied only by the senatorial elite. The depiction of implements only, without individual portraits, affirms the collective agency of their office without singling out any individual priest for honors. That priesthood’s role in constituting Rome was strengthened by the rhythm of the images. Their repetition and variation mimic patterns in music and bodily movement that Quintilian recommended for sublime and pleasing thoughts, while their cyclicality would evoke the calendrical regularity of civic time that ensured the performance of remembrance and religious obligation. Meghan Diluzio uses iconographic evidence to counter the traditional arguments that the Vestals could not perform sacrifice, and that the flaminica Dialis was but a passive extension of her husband’s authority. The evidence consists of the ritual implements carried in the hands of women on the Ara Pacis, depicted on the entablature frieze of the temple of Vesta, and borne along in procession on sculptural reliefs of Roman temples and altars. The implements—translated from tools into metonymns for priestly action—transcend and dissolve the boundaries of gender that have played a disproportionate role in the scholarly reconstructions of the ritual lives of Roman women. Section 4 brings together three chapters focusing on the spatial and regional frameworks for material religion. Each of them foregrounds ritual spaces as loci for the meeting of cultures, reflecting the ethnic and geospatial reality of the polysemnity noted in the first section’s chapters. Eric Moore explores water sources as producers of civic identity in Corinth and in Samaria, two communities circumscribed by Rome. Water sources have a long-recognized role as locations for the meeting of human and divine. The narratives of these interactions, and the historical, geospatial, civic, and architectural locations of the fountain of Glauke in Corinth, and Jacob’s well in Samaria, link hierophantic tradition with

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civic identity. Historical shifts of ownership destabilize and refine the meaning of these narratives of interaction. Under Roman occupation, the ritual functions associated with Glauke’s fountain shifted away from the apotropaia offered to Medea, the barbarian, baby-killing princess. The foreign princess became a token of successfully conquered barbarian nations, and the ritual sensibility transferred from personal and familial protection to the divinely approved protection of imperial boundaries. At Jacob’s well, Jesus’s encounter with the Samarian woman provides a narrative of the moment of transfer of mediating power from Gerezim and Jerusalem, geospatially limited locations, to Jesus himself. This is a shift in the geospatial realities of cult from the pre-Jesus world to emergent Christianity, in which the object of celebration is emphatically transnational. The narratives enacted, ritualized, and remembered at local water sources are not only themselves capable of transformation, but emerge as tools for the scalar shift from local identities to imperial and universal reach. Megan Nutzman explores the cultural accommodations attendant upon the convergence of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian identities and practices at another sacred spring, Hammat Gader. This was the most popular of the eight thermal springs in Palestine, and archaeological finds of hundreds of lamps, some seventy inscriptions, and an inscription detailing honors to fourteen different gods reflect robust engagement with the powers of the place by Greek, Roman, and Jewish individuals in search of healing. The evidence for incubation as the rite of healing seems to have been obscured by biblical writers who suppressed the evidence of this engagement in non-Jewish, traditionally Greek and Roman practices. The convergence of identities did not result in a hybrid ritual experience. While the procedures of incubation seem to have been followed by all seeking a cure, separate facilities (synagogue, church, and temple) would facilitate the preparations of purification and votive offerings consistent with the visitor’s own faith traditions, and suggest the potential for each individual community to find the god or prophet of their choice in their healing dreams at the site—Asklepios for Greek and Roman, Elijah for Jews. Lela Urquhart presents the evidence for an increase in materialized religion, both moveable finds and ritual spaces, when Greek, Sicilian, and Phoenician cultures intersect in the context of archaic Sicily. Traditional analyses of the island’s cults suggested that religion was an aspect of culture that was especially slow to hellenize, and indeed that influenced the incoming Greeks, in contrast to the models of hellenization that uphold the political value of “civilizing” colonial enterprises. Urquhart uses material evidence to show the evidence for change in indigenous Sicilian religions, focusing on central western Sicily: physical correlates of ritual increased; ritual action shifted from graves to gods; and rituals changed from loosely to highly structured. The quantification of material correlates, a type of data distinctive to material studies, is critical in the argument. Extratextuality,



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as a framework for conceptualizing ritual as both text and discourse, provides a catalyst for opening up the implications of these data. Rituals as texts are part of the broader cultural discourses in which symbolic systems support and demand an act of interpretation. These interpretations move between fixed conventions and object-based interpretation carried out by both ancient participants and etic scholars. Each ritual, thus viewed, becomes one conversation conducted within the frame of the cultural language that enabled communication among gods, residents, and foreigners. Historical texts that reflect back on the context of these conversations emphasize ongoing cultural evolution, capable of both conflict and collaboration. Practice theorists underscore the engagement with both material devices and texts in the transformation of meaning, on the part of primary actors as well as scholarly interpreters. The arc drawn between historical texts, ancient context, and material evidence validates a model of cross-cultural engagement significantly worked out through the medium of material religion. Themes Four themes emerge across these sections that bind the chapters to each other and suggest specific ways in which ancient Mediterranean cultures contribute to the conversations about materiality and religion. These include the creation of the sacred, the significance of texts, the crossing of cultural boundaries, and the centrality of interpretation. The assembled chapters approach the creation of the sacred through a combination of rhetorical, material, and iconographic paths. Cicero uses his rhetorical skills to define a piece of artwork as a sacred object, effectively producing its status as divine. His achievement relies on the permeability of the line between sacred and secular that informs the theomorphic portraits of Nero. This generative rhetoric of the sacred resonates as well with archaeological debates engaged in Urquahrt’s discussion of Sicilian small finds, and Bundrick’s argument for depictions of astragali: When is an object a votive gift communicating with the divine, and when is it simply a personal possession? The production of more unambiguously ritual objects—incense altars and pillar figurines—expands this conversation to the sociology of ancient workshops, and their location of the sacred in daily topographies. The abundance of literary sources from the ancient Mediterranean cultures relevant for these papers have both propelled and held back the application of theoretical debates in the archaeologies of the region. The risks of preferring ancient authors over material finds, the elitism of the texts, and the complexities of both literary genres and material evidence are core characteristics of Mediterranean archaeologies. These chapters suggest that one outcome of a material focus is a productive dissolution of the gap between text and object, a dissolution in which the life-world of the object, the viewer, the user, and

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the interpreter emerge as primary foci of interpretation. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that textual witnesses to the uses of ritual implements, their appearance in processions, and the social strata familiar with them are a sine qua non in material analysis. Several of these chapters offer particularly nuanced approaches. Blevins dissolves the separation between the rhetorical principles which would shape both gesture and speech among educated Romans and the visual world of the temple friezes. Marshall refines the semantics of “anathema” in both magical and biblical texts in exploring the ability of curse tablets to simultaneously hide and reveal. And in Urquhart’s use of extratextuality, ritual itself becomes a text, one among numerous malleable building blocks in a culture’s symbolic system. Its historical usefulness emerges from the constant dialogue between fixity and objectification. Materials that facilitate human interaction with the divine are often, in these chapters, simultaneously the point of interaction among distinct political or ethnic identities. Material objects may pass through many hands and, particularly if they are fine works of art, multiple contexts. Ritual spaces tend to draw visitors from more than one cultural context, and ritual objects themselves may combine cultural signatures as part of their articulation of authority. The capacity of a single image to convey multiple meanings is foundational to the longevity of the Dioskouroi; the shift from a Greek to a Roman context transformed the narrative semantics and the ritual force of the fountain of Glauke in Corinth; the capacity for some visitors to find Asklepios, others Elijah enabled a diverse and long-lived community of pilgrims at Hammat Gader. These boundary crossings are not simply the accidental eventualities in the life world of objects and images. An active appeal to the ethnographic other is a source of authority in the language of the curse tablets, and the potential for ritual action to close the divide between Pisa and Rome, and private citizens and the imperial house, shapes the rituals for Lucius. A concretization of the gods or the avenues to them often, perhaps ironically or unexpectedly, leads to a fluidity of meaning and interpretation— one coterminous with the crossing of ethnic, religious, and political boundaries. This polysemnity lies at the heart of the fourth common point: the centrality of interpretation to ritual experience. These multiple readings of objects and spaces derive from an awareness of the cultural embeddedness of embodied, cognized, affectively, and aesthetically experienced ritual. This embeddedness argues against models of hybridity, in favor of a more dynamic model of the human experiences created through interaction around material goods. For Diluzio and Blevins, this is the shared cultural experience of watching processions and sharing sacrificial meals. For Köster it is Cicero’s scathing critique of Verres’s blindness to the ritual norms of the cultures he robbed as well as the Roman culture he sought to inhabit. That interpretive process is shared by both the ancient emic audiences, and the etic interpreters of the modern era. Bundrick



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identifies the role of scholarly prejudice in shaping centuries of interpretation of images. Darby’s approach to the Judean pillar figurines is a direct response to the nearly canonical assumption that these were the ritual implements of women; Urquhart’s extratextuality provides a framework in which precisely this process of interpretation is common ground for the ancient and the scholarly world. This casts down the gauntlet for scholars to acknowledge not simply their own culturally embedded biases, but also the potential for material evidence—held in the hand, seen with the eye, and interpreted most naturally from multiple perspectives—to advance our investigations of religion in the ancient world. Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun (ed.) 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Balke, Thomas E., and Christina Tsouparopoulou, eds. 2015. Materiality of Writing in Early Mesopotamia. Materiale Textkulturen 13. Berlin: de Gruyter. Barrett, Caitlín E. 2016. “Archaeology of Ancient Religions.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.48. Barrowclough, David, and Caroline Malone, eds. 2007. Cult in Context: Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow. Boivin, Nicole. 2009. “Grasping the Elusive and Unknowable: Material Culture in Ritual Practice.” Material Religion 5:266–287. Boschung, Dietrich, and Jan N. Bremmer, ed.s. 2015. The Materiality of Magic. Morphomata 20. Paderborn: Fink. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bradley, Richard. 1998. The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric Europe. London: Routledge. Buchli, Victor, ed. 2002. The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Chippindale, Christopher, and Paul Taçon. 1998. The Archaeology of Rock-Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dant, Tim. 2005 Materiality and Society. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Der, Lindsay, and Francesca Fernandini, eds. 2016. Archaeology of Entanglement. London: Routledge. Droogan, Julian. 2013. Religion, Material Culture, and Archaeology. Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Fogelin, Lars. 2007. “The Archaeology of Religious Ritual.” ARA 36:55–71. ———. 2015. An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geertz, Armin W. 2014. Origins of Religion, Culture and Cognition. New York: Routledge. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gosden, Christopher. 1994. Social Being and Time. Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. Gregson, Nicky, and Mike Crang. 2010. “Materiality and Waste: Inorganic Vitality in a Networked World.” Environment and Planning A 42:1026–1032.

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1807. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Würzburg: Goebhardt. Hicks, Dan, and Mary C. Beaudry. 2010. “Introduction: Material Culture Studies; A Reactionary View.” Pages 1–24 in The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Edited by Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Houlbrook, Ceri, and Natalie Armitage, eds.  2015.  The Materiality of Magic.  Oxford: Oxbow. Inomata, Takeshi. 2006. “Plazas, Performers, and Spectators: Political Theaters of the Classic Maya.” CA 42:805–42. Insoll, Tim. 2004. “Are Archaeologists Afraid of Gods? Some Thoughts on Archaeology and Religion.” Pages 1–6 in Belief in the Past: The Proceedings of the 2002 Manchester Conference on Archaeology and Religion. Edited by Tim Insoll. BARIS 1212. Oxford: Archaeopress. ———. 2009. “Materiality, Belief, Ritual: Archaeology and Material Religion, an Introduction.” Material Religion 5:260–64. Keane, Webb. 2008. “The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion.” Pages S110–S127 in The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge. Special issue of JRAI 14. Kyriakidis, Evangelos, ed. 2007. The Archaeology of Ritual. Cotsen Advanced Seminars 3. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California. La Follette, Laetitia. 2011–2012. “Parsing Piety: The Sacred Still Life in Roman Relief Sculpture.” MAAR 56/57:15–35. Laneri, Nicola, 2015. Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Lange-Berndt, Petra, ed., 2015. Materiality. Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery. Lehmann, David. 2005. “The Cognitive Approach to Understanding Religion.” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 131–132:199–213. Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R., ed. 1978. Hippocratic writings. Translated by John Chadwick and W. N. Mann. Harmondsworth: Pelican. McCorkle, William. 2014. “Cognitive Historiography: Religion as an Artifact of Culture and Cognition.” JCH 1.2. doi:10.1558/jch.v1i2.25883. Merleau Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard. Meskell, Lynn. 2005. Archaeologies of Materiality. Oxford: Blackwell. Meyer, Birgit, David Morgan, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Platt. 2014. “Material Religion’s First Decade.” Material Religion 10:105–11. Miller, Daniel, ed. 1998. Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———, ed. 2005. Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Miller, Peter N. 2014 Cultural Histories of the Material World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Moore, Jerry D. 1996. Architecture and Power in the Ancient Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morehard, Christopher T. 2015.“Archaeologies of the Past and in the Present 2014: Materialities of Human History.” American Anthropologist 117:329–44. Morehart, Christopher T., and Noah Butler. 2010. “Ritual Exchange and the Fourth Obligation: Ancient Maya Food Offering and the Flexible Materiality of Ritual.” JRAI 16:588–608.



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Mylonopoulos, Joannis, ed. Forthcoming. Materiality and Visibility of Rituals in the Ancient World. Berlin: de Gruyter Pongratz-Leisten, Beate, and Karen Sonik, eds. 2015.The Materiality of Divine Agency. SANER 8. Berlin: de Gruyter. Renfrew, Colin. 1985. The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi. Archaeology of Cult 18. Athens: British School of Archaeology at Athens. Renfrew, Colin, and Ezra Zubrow, eds. 1994. The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. New Directions in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Renfrew, Colin, and Iain Morley, eds. 2009. Becoming Human: Innovation In Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rowan, Yorke M., ed. 2012. Beyond Belief: The Archaeology of Religion and Ritual. APAAA 21. Malden, MA: Wiley. Scarre, Christopher. 2002. Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe: Perception and Society during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. London: Routledge. Taylor, Tim. 2009. “Materiality.” Pages 297–320 in Handbook of Archaeological Theories. Edited by R. Alexander Bentley, Herbert D.G. Maschner, and Christopher Chippindale. Lantham, MD: Altamira Press. Tilley, Christopher. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Explorations in Anthropology. Oxford: Berg. ———. 1999. Metaphor and Material Culture. Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. Tilley, Christopher, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuechler-Fogden, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, eds. 2006. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage. Whittle, Alastair W. R. 1996. Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New Worlds. CWA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitley, David, and Kelley Hays-Gilpin, eds. 2008. Belief in the Past: Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Wood, Neal. 1991. Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Section 1 From Image to Context: Iconography and Polysemnity

Chapter Two Annewies van den Hoek

Divine Twins or Saintly Twins: The Dioscuri in an Early Christian Context

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he divine twins Castor and Pollux have had a venerable and persistent cult tradition in the Greek and Roman world. Their images were durable enough to make their way into early Christianity. This article revolves around the appearance of the Dioscuri on fourth- and fifth-century ceramic wares from North Africa with a veiled Christian content. The mythic and iconographic background of the twins in earlier imperial art is traced and the iconological connotations of their imagery is explored. In spite of the long knowledge of the North African ceramics with images of the Dioscuri, they have never attained a comfortable position in histories of Christian art, but the integration of the twins into Christian iconographic contexts can be revalidated with a review of inscriptions that accompany them. It is also clear that some of their earlier connotations accompanied them into their new setting. The twins represent a notable instance of syncretism in early Christian times. The Myth Castor and Pollux were the mythological twin sons of Leda from two different fathers. In a biologically dubious way, the myth portrays the divine Zeus as the father of Pollux, and Tyndareus, the mortal king of Sparta, as the father of Castor. The Dioscuri were also the brothers of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra and the half-brothers of a group of other mythological figures. Although they had the same mother, their paternal descent meant that one of them was immortal, while the other was not. When Castor inevitably died Pollux, being loyal to his mortal brother, asked his divine father to let him share immortality with his brother. Thus this mythological tale received a cosmological twist, transforming the two A version of this paper was given at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston in November 2008, Art and Religions of Antiquity Section, Theme: The Iconography of the Border: Non-Christian, Non-Jewish Images from Antiquity; another version has been published in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 255–300. I am grateful to my husband John Herrmann for his help and advice on many of the details of this article. Thanks go to the anonymous reader for the very helpful comments and the bibliographical suggestions.

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Figure 1. Bronze plaque with inscription (CIL I2 2833); Lavinium, second half of the sixth century BCE; Museo Nazionale Romano alle Terme di Dioclezanio, Rome. Unless otherwise noted, the photographs are by the author.

Figure 2. Fragmentary ARS bowl with one of the Dioscuri, 340–430 CE; private collection.

figures into the constellation of the Gemini, one of the signs in the Zodiac. From early onward these two divine figures were enormously popular throughout antiquity both in the Greek and Roman worlds. They were probably introduced in Archaic times to the West through the Greek colonies in southern Italy. The earliest mention of the Twins is an archaic Latin inscription dating to the fifth or sixth century BCE (fig. 1).1 They continued to be popular in the West during classical times, as attested by a terracotta relief with one of the Dioscuri in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which reportedly came from a sanctuary near Taranto in southern Italy (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 01.798).2 The popularity of the two figures in the Latin-speaking world was not confined to the Italian peninsula but also migrated to the shores of North Africa. The twins continued to be venerated well into late antiquity, as reflected on ceramics of the early Christian era (fig. 2).

1.  The inscription (CIL I2 2833) reads from right to left Castorei Podlouqueique qurois (“To Castor and Pollux, the youths”). The inscription suggests that there was a direct transmission from the Greeks to the West; it shows both Latin and Greek word forms with qurois being a direct transliteration of the Greek κούροις; the inscribed bronze tablet was found in Lavinium; see Castagnoli, Cozza, and Fenelli 1975; Beard, North, and Price 1998, 21; Friggeri, 2001, 27. 2.  For an image, see http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/fragmentary-relief-of-kastor-and-hishorse-152558.



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The Dioscuri on North African Ceramics In 1862 a local newspaper in North Africa reported that a few years earlier someone by the name of Nicolet, a French army officer, had found an ancient terracotta plate on his property (L’Observateur di Blida, 1860). He had discovered other antiquities before, since his house was built on the ruins of ancient Tanaramusa (El Hadjeb) near modern Mouzaïa (Mouzaïaville) in Algeria. In great detail the article described the dimensions of the plate, the images of the two Dioscuri in the central field, the figures on the rim, and the appearance of an inscription. Unfortunately, that is all we have; a footnote to the article states that “in the absence of colonel Nicolet, his children broke the plate that was just described.” Fortunately for us, the description of the plate and its inscription made their way into the Revue africaine and into the eighth volume of the CIL, so that although the object was lost the information lives on.3 Other fragments with the same subject matter have surfaced since. In the 1960s the Dutch expert on African Red Slip (ARS) ware, Jan Willem Salomonson, published other examples (Salomonson 1962, 67‒72).4 Twenty years later the German scholar Jochen Garbsch, who was curator of the collection in Munich, published additional fragments. Garbsch also made a reconstruction of the lost Algerian object, in which the Dioscuri appear with their horses in the central field (fig. 3; Garbsch 1980, 161–97; Garbsch and Overbeck 1989, 178–79).5 The rectangular platter on which the scene appears is called a lanx. Such platters were commonly produced in ARS; characteristically they have a deep floor, a broad, flat rim, and a low foot. These ceramic wares, which are usually dated between 340 and 430 CE, were modest cousins of more prestigious objects made out of precious material, such as the silver lanx from Corbridge.6 The reconstruction of the lost Algerian ceramic lanx shows in the central field two rider gods flanking a vase (a cantharus), with an inscription that occupies the upper field and hovers over their heads.7 The symmetrical position of the Twin Gods is a well-known feature of their iconography, whether it occurs on 3.  L’Observateur di Blida 1862; CIL VIII, 9285; Monceaux 1908, 308, no. 321; Diehl 1925, 2:487, no. 2499; Salomonson 1962, 69‒72: Garbsch 1980, 183‒84, figs. 21‒22; Garbsch and Overbeck 1989, 178‒79; Armstrong 1991, 436‒37, fig. 51; 1993, 581, no. 9.2, with a list of ten fragments known at that time. 4.  Two fragments from the Benaki Museum (pl. 31, nos. 1 and 2); one from Berlin (pl. 21, no. 3); and one from Tiddis (pl. 21, no. 4); for a full listing of the fragments, see Armstrong 1991, 1993. 5.  Garbsch recognized that his reconstruction was hypothetical and might differ in detail from the lost platter; e.g., the nineteenth-century description did not mention the presence of crosses in the corners. 6. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?obj ectId=827588&partId=1&searchText=silver+lanx+from+Corbridge&page=1. 7.  For the identification of the vase as a cantharus and the terminology of such vessels for use with water (cantharus aquarius), see van den Hoek and Herrmann 2013, 31–36.

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Figure 3. Reconstruction of a lost ARS lanx from Tanaramusa; drawing in Garbsch 1980, 184, fig. 22.

sarcophagi, in relief sculpture, or in freestanding sculpture (fig. 4).8 There are, however, distinct differences between the late antique images of the Dioscuri on ARS and their earlier, more classical appearances. Traditionally they were almost always depicted naked with a cloak (chlamys) wrapped around their shoulders. They were often shown wearing a conical hat, the pilos, as in a marble head in the Museum of Constantine (Algeria) (cited in Chaisemartin 1987, 22, no. 11). This sculpture characteristically has a hole in the pilos for holding a star, another symbolic staple of the Dioscuri (figs. 5–6). Roman coins make the reconstruction evident. A relief from El Djem, Tunisia provides a North African example (fig. 7) (Moormann 2000, 118, pl. 62a,. no. 143, inv. 12.520). Various surviving ARS fragments provide support for Garbsch’s reconstruction of the Algerian plate (fig. 3). The newspaper article mentioned that the lost lanx had male figures on its border. Other fragmentary borders without the central part show similar male figures—supposedly apostles who are standing in a pose of acclamation (fig. 3).9 The corners of such fragments 8.  I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer, who notes that the date of the statuettes is disputed and supplies the following bibliography: Vermeule 1995; Vermeule 2003, 377–85; Hannestad 2012, 77–112. 9.  (1) For a palliatus gesturing to the right, see Armstrong 1993, nos. 8.239‒8.243; Herrmann and van den Hoek 2002, no. 44; (2) for a palliatus gesturing to the left, see Armstrong 1993, nos. 8.244‒246; Bejaoui 1997, 95‒96, nos. 43 and 43a; (3) for a youth holding a wreath, see Armstrong 1993, no. 8.247; Bejaoui 1997, 95‒96, nos. 43d‒43e; Herrmann and van den Hoek 2002, nos. 45, 46, and 47. Occasionally fragments with the imagery turn up on the art market; e.g., Gorny and Mosch 2007, lots 705‒16.



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Figure 4. Marble statuettes of the Dioscuri with horses, ca. 200–250 CE; on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, L. 2008.18.1–2.

Figure 5. Head of Castor or Pollux, marble from Thasos; Sila, second century CE; Cirta Museum, Constantine, Algeria, 3D Mb 10 (851B).

Figure 6. Silver denarius with heads of the Dioscuri, wearing pilei surmounted by stars; minted at Rome by Mn. Cordius Rufus, ca. 46 BCE; photo: The University of Virginia Art Museum, Digital Numismatic Collection.

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Figure 7. Fragmentary limestone votive relief with a Dioscurus, El Djem, second or third century CE; Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, 12.520.

show monogrammatic crosses and figures holding a wreath. We do not have the connection between the central field and the rim, so the reconstruction remains theoretical. A large fragment in the Benaki Museum in Athens, however, does show the central field with a connecting part of the rim, but this border is different (fig. 8); it has running lions, a cantharus, and a small aedicula on the side (Benaki Museum, inv. 12393a; a second fragment, inv. 12394a; Salomonson 1962, pl. 21, nos. 1 and 2), which we will return to later. The Dioscuri and inscription are paired elsewhere with yet a different rim on the corner of a lanx found in central Tunisia and deposited in the Carthage Museum (Bejaoui 1985, 173‒77,



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Figure 8. ARS lanx fragment with Dioscuri in the center, 340–430 CE; from Egypt; Benaki Museum, Athens, 12393a.

fig. 3). The fragment shows two charging lions and a venator, who braces himself for the attack. A belt around the lion’s waist marks him as a prized animal, so that the image depicts an amphitheater scene rather than a hunt in the wild (Herrmann and van den Hoek 2002, 84‒85, no. 98). A reconstructed lanx with a similar border of venationes but with a different center is housed in the Museum in Cairo (figs. 9–10; Egyptian Museum, inv. 86116). There are other unpublished lanx fragments of the inscribed central part and also fragments without the inscription.10 A North African lamp of a somewhat later date still has the same image of one of the Dioscuri in its tondo, which shows that the iconographic tradition continued over an extended period of time (figs. 11–14). Perhaps the sharpest image of one of the Dioscuri appears not on a lanx but on a fragmentary bowl (fig. 2).11 Had it been complete, the bowl would undoubtedly have shown another rider on the right side, but nothing seems to have stood between the two, nor is there any inscription above them. The surviving figure is dressed in a long-sleeved tunic, over which a mantle is loosely draped; a large fibula fastens the mantle on his right shoulder. His hat is not conical but floppy and bends forward, the so-called Phrygian cap. He wears trousers that display fine decoration, as does the lower part of his sleeves; this is probably meant to indicate embroidery; his tunic also shows some patterned decoration, which may be a belt. The whole outfit suggests an oriental costume and an oriental identity. There are other oriental-looking figures on ARS, in both a Christian and non-Christian contexts, such as an image of the Good Shepherd and images of the Three Hebrews, or representations of Orpheus, Paris, Mithras, and fishermen pulling up their nets (fig. 15).12 The motivation for this Eastern invasion is not 10.  The objects are from private collections in Italy, Germany, and the United States. 11.  This shows that images of the Dioscuri not only occur on lanxes but also on other ARS forms; Salomonson showed a different plate from Saguntum; Salomonson 1962, 68, pl. 21, no. 5. 12.  Early Christian sarcophagi show a whole range of figures in Eastern costumes, but particularly

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Figure 9 ARS lanx with Venationes in the Border and Amphitheater Scenes in the Center, 340–430 CE; Egyptian Museum, Cairo, 86116.

Figure 10. Fragmentary ARS lanx with venatio scene in the border and Dioscuri and inscription in the center; central Tunisia, 340–430 CE; Carthage Museum; Photo in Bejaoui 1985, 175, fig. 3.

clear, but it evidently is modeled on well-known types of figurative sculpture and mosaic representations of Paris, Attis, Ganymede, Orpheus, and the like. These Orientals also occur on small decorative objects, such as a bronze strap handle with Paris in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 16; Comstock and Vermeule 1971, no. 676). Since the Dioscuri almost always appear nude, it is unusual for them to wear anything more than a cloak. There are instances, however, in which they are clothed, particularly when they appear in the periphery of the empire. In Asia Minor (Pisidia), they can be seen wearing armor on coins and reliefs (Robert 1983, 553–78, esp. 577).13 In a marble relief with a dedicatory inscription to the Dioscuri and ascribed to Pisidia, the twin horsemen flank a female figure, possibly representations of the three Magi and the three Hebrews in and out of the fire. For the hats, see Seeberger 2002, 125, and plate 10, 1 and 2; plate 12, 1 and 2; similar lamps are in the Vatican collection and in the Timgad Museum. For the three Hebrews wearing hoods, see Herrmann and van den Hoek 2002, 40, no. 28. 13.  For coins of Pisidia with the Dioscuri in armor, which date from Nerva through Claudius Gothicus, 96–278 CE, see Aulock 1964, 5069 (Komana), 5166, and 5205 (Sagalassos); Museum of



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Figures 11–12. ARS lanx fragments with Dioscuri and inscription, 340–430 CE; private collection, Arlington, VA.

Figure 13. ARS lanx fragment with Dioscuri without inscription, 340‒430 CE; private collection.

Figure 14. African lamp with one of the Dioscuri, fifth century CE; private collection.

their sister Helen, while the eagle of Zeus appears in the pediment (fig. 17; Robert 1983, 575–77, fig. 5; Vermeule and Comstock 1988, no. 38). The Dioscuri of Pisidia, however, are not those of Sparta, famous in legend; in a Pisidian rock-cut relief, the armored twins are identified as the Dioscuri of Samothrace (Robert 1983, 574–75). The armored Dioscuri also turn up on bronze plaques flanking Fine Arts, Boston, 63.903: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/coin-of-sagalassus-with-bust-ofnerva-268097.

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Figure 15. ARS fragment of a bowl with fishermen pulling in their nets, 340–430 CE; private collection.

Figure 16. Bronze handle or attachment with a figure in eastern costume, 150–300 CE; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 64.83; gift of Mrs. Cornelius C. Vermeule Jr.; photo: Museum.

Jupiter Dolichenus or Juno Dolichena on the northeastern frontier.14 Others appear in Gaul or in the Levant, as on coins of Ashkelon in Palestine.15 The oriental costume of the African Dioscuri is even more surprising than armor would have been. It is alien to the Aegean, whether one thinks of the Spartan or the Samothracian Dioscuri. A few late parallels can be found; they appear in oriental outfits on an ivory plaque of the sixth century in Trieste possibly from Egypt (fig. 18; Zwirn 1977; the upper and lower panels may represent the astrological signs of the Gemini and Taurus), and on some early medieval textiles in Crefeld and Maastricht (Stauffer 1991; Salomonson 1962, 71 and n. 90). “Danubian riders,” who strongly resemble the Dioscuri, also wear Phrygian costume on magical gems and marble and lead reliefs. It is possible that the participation of the Dioscuri in the mythological voyage of the Argonauts far to the east might have justified their oriental appearance.16 14. Gury, 624, no. 142, from Pannonia Inferior, Budapest, Mus. Nat. 10.1951.107, second century (with cuirass flanking Jupiter Dolichenus); no. 143, from Germania Superior, after 175 CE, Wiesbaden, Mus. 6775 (with cuirass flanking Juno Dolichena). 15.  Gaul: ibid., 619, no. 58, from Paris, Musée de Cluny, inv. 18604, Pilier des Nautes (with cuirass and paludamentum). Palestine, under Faustina II and Julia Domna: Gemini 2010, lots 687–88. 16.  I owe this observation to John Herrmann; see also Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 5.366, http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Dioskouroi.html and http://www.theoi.com/Cult/DioskouroiCult. html. The Dioscuri of Samothrace, an island in the northeast Aegean could also have become associated with the world of Troy on the nearby Asiatic mainland and hence with Trojans, such as Paris, who were shown in oriental costume; a late mo-



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Figure 17. Marble votive relief with Dioscuri and Helen, ascribed to Pisidia, Asia Minor, second or third century CE; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1993.704; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius C. Vermeule III in the name of Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule.

The central field of the Benaki lanx has another unusual feature in the central field, a cantharus between the horses.17 As is well known, the cantharus plays an important symbolic role in the decoration and architecture of early Christian churches but not occur in the traditional iconography of the Dioscuri.18 saic at Ostia indicates that the Dioscuri became connected with the Mithras cult, which has many “Eastern” features; the connection can be seen in a mosaic in Ostia at the Mithraeum of Felicissimus (see below). 17.  The ovoids in the cantharus could be interpreted as leaves or perhaps (less likely) as handles of a lid. One can compare to other canthari, particularly, on African lamps, some of which have small birds (perhaps doves), others budding vegetation or fully grown flowering plants; yet others are depicted without any vegetation; see Ennabli 1976, nos. 400, 803–55; Garbsch and Overbeck 1989, 156–57, nos. 161–67. 18.  For the most extensive presentation of iconography and typology, see Augé and de Bellefonds 1983; De Puma 1983; Gury 1983; Hermary 1983; some representations have the Dioscuri with their horses standing with sacrificial animals on either side of an altar; see, e.g., a second-century marble relief in Christie’s 2012.

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Figure 18. Ivory panel with the Dioscuri and Europa, sixth century CE; Civici Musei, Trieste, 1335; photo: Fototeca dei Civici musei di storia ed arte, Trieste.

Iconographically the closest comparison comes from an unlikely source, a Sasanian plate of the fifth or sixth century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that has twin figures, winged horses, and a vase (fig. 19). The scene is



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Figure 19. Sasanian silver plate with twin figures, winged horses, and a vase, sixth or early seventh century CE; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1963.63.152.

unique in Sasanian art, and scholars have suggested a possible Western influence (Harper 1977). The water source between the two divine riders can, however, be explained from the special connection that the divinities had with the city of Rome. We will return to this important symbolic aspect of the scene later, but first a few more words should be said about the remaining images. On its rim the Benaki lanx has a running lion (a very common subject), the tail of another lion, a cantharus, and a little aedicula (fig. 8). The aedicula is a tomb in which a small figure is tightly wrapped in a shroud. The figure is Lazarus, and the image refers to his resurrection. Other objects give a fuller version of the pictorial story, as in the tondo of a lamp, where two female heads, Lazarus’s sisters Martha and Mary, flank the little mummy in its tomb (Herrmann and van den Hoek 2002, 48, no. 36), or even more fully on a magnificent bowl in the

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Figure 20. Tondo of African lamp with Lazarus and his sisters, second half of the Fifth Century; private collection.

Figure 21. ARS bowl (patena) with biblical subjects (detail), 320–360 CE; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2002.131; museum purchase with funds donated in memory of Emily Townsend Vermeule.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in which the tomb is flanked by one of the sisters and by Christ, who performs the miracle (figs. 20–21). If anyone were to doubt the Christian identity of the imagery on the lanx, the inscription takes care of that (fig. 3). It reads in capital letters: ORATIONIBVSSANTORVMPE / RDVCETDOMINVS, which translates as: “By the intercessions [prayers] of the Saints the Lord will lead.” The verb perducere means “to lead, bring, guide a person or thing to any place.”19 The problem here is that no direct object specifies “who” is being led, and no indication is given as to “where” (ad or in) the Lord will lead. The phrase “orationibus sanctorum” rings a biblical bell since it occurs in the book of Revelation (Rev 8:3‒4). The words are often used in early Christian literary texts of the period, whether in connection with the biblical text or independently.20 The second part of the inscription “perducet Dominus” can be amply paralleled with examples in the works of Augustine and his contemporaries, indicating that the Lord will lead the faithful “to eternal life,” “to eternal blessedness,” “to the contemplation of 19.  For additional meanings, see OLD VI s.v. 20. Tertullian, Bapt. 12; Ambrose, Isaac 5, 44 and Ep. 8, 54, 5; Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 5, 12; Augustine, Sermo 313E and Maxim. 1; Egeria, Itin. 3.



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God,” “to eternal rest and joy,” “to the chamber of the king where all treasures of wisdom are hidden.”21 The phrase may have some liturgical overtones, and it certainly evokes eternal life as the implied goal or end of the journey toward which the Lord leads.22 The question then arises whether or not the Dioscuri represent the saints mentioned in the inscription above their heads. It seems reasonable to presume that a connection exists between the inscription and the imagery. It should be noted that the Dioscuri continued their Christian associations on North African ceramic wares. They turn up on a lamp of the fifth century (fig. 14) and on a fragment of an ARS platter of the sixth century. The fragment shows one of the brothers, dressed in a long cloak, holding a spear, and standing beside a cross (Salomonson 1962, 71, pl. 22, 4). The other brother presumably stood on the missing side of the cross. In this sixth century ware, the figures are stamped rather than applied as reliefs.23 Other plates of the period show the twins still in a pagan context (Salomonson 1962, 71, pl. 22, 5). Wearing their unmistakable conical caps crowned by stars, they flank the god Bacchus. Few other examples of the Dioscuri can be found in an early Christian ambiance (Salomonson 1962, 71 n. 89).24 The most remarkable representation is on a beautifully preserved sarcophagus found in the Elysian Fields of Arles (Les Alyscamps); it portrays two scenes of a married couple—perhaps in different phases of their union (figs. 22a–c; Le Blant 1878, 38‒41, figs. 23‒24, 1‒2; for modern bibliography, see Gury 1983, 619–20, no. 83). The divine twins in customary nude fashion stand with their horses in the outer arches, just as in Roman sarcophagi of an earlier date. In funerary art they probably function 21. Augustine: Div. quaest. LXXXIII, quaestio 71: sed hoc officium, quod non est sempiternum, perducet sane ad beatitudinem sempiternam, in qua nulla erunt onera nostra, quae inuicem portare iubeamur; Trin. 1, 9‒10: quoniam cum perducet credentes ad contemplationem dei et patris, profecto perducet ad contemplationem suam qui dixit: et ostendam illi me ipsum.… dominus noster iesus christus, non se inde separato nec spiritu sancto, quoniam perducet credentes ad contemplationem dei ubi est finis omnium bonarum actionum et requies sempiterna et gaudium quod non auferetur a nobis; Enarrat. Ps., Ps. 103, sermo 1, 13: etenim illuc manus tua deducet me et perducet me dextera tua (see also Nat. grat. 32, 36); Ord. 1, 4: sic pater ille deus faciat! perducet enim ipse, si sequimur, quo nos ire iubet atque ubi ponere sedem, qui dat modo augurium nostris que inlabitur animis. Trac. Ev. Jo. 21, 15: amas, et non uides; amor ipse non te perducet ut uideas? Ibid., 53, 7: ipsa perducet ad cubiculum regis, in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi. Sermo 236 (PL 38, c. 1121): illuc perducet, ubi fiat quod scriptum est, beati qui habitant in domo tua, in saecula saeculorum laudabunt te; but see Jerome, Commentarii in prophetas minores (ed. Adriaen), In Naum, cap. 1, l.106: sed haec omnia consumet dominus iesus spiritu oris sui, et destruet illuminatione aduentus sui, et ad deserta perducet. 22.  A different verb is often used to denote attaining victory: ad victoriam pervenire; for additional passages, see Monceaux 1908, 308, no. 321; Salomonson 1962, 70 nn. 79‒81. 23.  Another stamp of this period may show the Dioscuri as saints, see Hayes 1972, 262–64, fig. 50, i, stamps 228–29. 24.  Salomonson also calls attention to a later ARS plate that depicts Bacchus in the center and two heads of the Dioscuri on each side (1962, 71, pl. 22, 5 and n. 92); in addition he lists two Byzantine textiles (1962, 71 n. 90). For an illustration of the latter, see Dalton 1911, 597, fig. 377.

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a

b

c

Figure 22 a–c. Marble sarcophagus with two couples flanked by the Dioscuri; Les Alyscamps, fourth century CE; Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence antiques, inv. FAN.92.00.2482. b: End panel with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. c: Drawing of both end panels: multiplication of the loaves and fishes and a seated figure, possibly the apostle Peter.

as emblems for the eternal process of death and immortality.25 Nothing would reveal the Christian identity of the sarcophagus, were it not for the end panels. One shows the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the other a seated figure, possibly the apostle Peter. To gain a better understanding of why the Dioscuri appear on early Christian sarcophagi and ARS plates, it is helpful to briefly review the Dioscuri in Roman traditions.26 The Dioscuri and Their Roman Identification The Romans identified with the Dioscuri in a rather specific way.27 They attributed a legendary battle and subsequent victory in the early fifth century BCE at Lake Regillus to the intervention of the Twins. During the battle the dictator Aulus Postumius asked for the assistance of the Dioscuri and vowed to 25.  Rather than being protectors of the souls, as Cumont had argued; see Toynbee 1945, 148‒52, esp. 151. 26.  The cult of the Dioscuri in North Africa was influenced by traditions from Rome but also had specific North African characteristics that were closely linked to the cult of Saturn. For the former, see, e.g., the monumental sarcophagus in Tipasa, Gury, 619, no. 82; for the latter, see LeGlay 1966; Wilson 2005, 403‒8. 27.  For many aspects of the Dioscuri touched on here, see the rich exhibition catalogue Nista 1994a.



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dedicate a temple to them (Poulsen 1991, 119‒46).28 The myth states that two young men appeared on white horses and fought alongside the Romans. The young men, who were interpreted as the Dioscuri, also appeared on the same day on the Roman Forum to announce the victory and water their horses. Roman tradition continued to commemorate the event and the assistance the Romans received. From the late fourth century BCE onward, a ritual parade of horsemen, called the transvectio equitum, was held at Rome in honor of the Dioscuri. The event took place with much pomp and circumstance to commemorate the legendary battle and to reenact the appearance of the Dioscuri on the Forum. Literary sources tell us that the Roman cavalry made a tour from the Temple of Mars outside the city to the Temple of Castor and Pollux on the Forum (Poulsen 1992b, 59‒60).29 At the place where the Dioscuri were said to have watered their horses there is a source of fresh water, called the spring of Juturna (fons or lacus Iuturnae; see E. Steinby 1989), Juturna being a Latin goddess or nymph of springs. Some Roman coins from the Republican period depict this event in their imagery (fig. 23).30 A shrine dedicated to Juturna was built and rebuilt over the spring, and a marble wellhead (puteal) covered with inscriptions was found there (fig. 24; Nash 1989; Claridge, Toms, and Cubberley 1998, 95‒97). The fountain and the temple were probably seen as a single sanctuary to Castor and Pollux, for it has been demonstrated that they were restored simultaneously at various times in their history. Excavators also unearthed a water basin in this area. The basin must have been the stimulus for the image of the cantharus between the horsemen on the ARS platters and bowls. Although the cantharus is a common subject in early Christian iconography, in the context of the Dioscuri on ARS, it clearly alludes to the fons Iuturnae. If this observation is correct, the iconography on the ARS lanx would indicate a strong connection with the city of Rome and its legendary past.31

Figure 23. Silver denarius of A. Postumius Albinus; Rome, 96 BCE; obverse: head of Apollo; reverse: Dioscuri watering horses at fountain of Juturna; photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Triton VI, lot number: 637, 14 January 2003.

28.  For a recent discussion of this article, see Champlin 2011, 73–99; Poulsen 1992a, 46‒53; 1994. 29.  This chapter also has an extensive bibliography on the literary and epigraphic sources. 30.  The imagery of the Dioscuri is most frequent on Roman republican coins: Bufalini Petrocchi 1994; for the various types, see Crawford 1983, 861–62. For the Dioscuri on Roman coins in general and on coins from Ostia in particular, see E. Taylor 2013. For the consultation of coins, in general, the website Coinarchives.com was used. 31.  This connection has been demonstrated in other instances as well, see van den Hoek 2006, 197‒246.

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Figure 24. Fountain and aedicula of Juturna, Forum Romanum; photo: Lessing Photo Archive.

In addition to helping the cavalry on the battlefield, the Romans also viewed the Dioscuri as helpers of travelers and sailors—a role that had long been established in the Greek world as well. The twins would be called on for favorable winds or to escape distress at sea. Thus the central elements in the religious understanding and worship of the Dioscuri were intervention and salvation. A great number of coins from the Roman Republican period bring out this special connection between Rome and its special protectors, the Dioscuri (figs. 25–26). With the emperor Augustus a new element came into play (La Rocca 1994). The emperor gave a renewed prominence to the twin gods as symbols



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Figure 25. Silver denarius. Rome, after 211 BCE; obverse: helmeted head of Roma; reverse: Dioscuri galloping to the right; photo: Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 46, lot number: 333, 2 April 2008.

Figure 26: Silver denarius of L. Memmius; Rome, 109–108 BCE; obverse: young male head; reverse: Dioscuri with their horses; photo: Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 70, lot number: 67, 16 May 2013.

of a victorious Rome by making them the patrons of equestrian youth. In this process he elevated his two grandsons (or adoptive sons), Gaius and Lucius, to the first ranks among the young aristocrats. As principes iuventutis and as heirs and successors of Augustus, they came to be modeled after the twin gods. At the annual transvectio equitum they rode on white horses (like the Dioscuri) at the front of the procession, dressed in glamorous outfits and equipped with silver shields and spears. The scheme allowed not only the young princes to stand side by side with divinity, but it equally reflected on their adoptive father. After the death of Lucius and Gaius, Tiberius and Drusus played similar roles, representing the divine twins, as did Germanicus and Drusus the Younger after them. This imperial imprint given to the cult of the Dioscuri or Castores (as they were also called) persisted throughout the first century (Poulsen 1991, 122‒34). Various coins were issued with the reverse depicting either full-fledged images of the Dioscuri or symbolic references, such as the two stars or the characteristic conical caps. The imagery continued on and off in the second and early third centuries, particularly if the imperial households produced real twins, as in the case of Commodus and his short-lived brother (figs. 27–28).32 In the third century the soldier emperors showed little affinity for the imagery (Poulsen 1992a, 52), but it resurfaced rather strongly in the early fourth century on coins of Maxentius and to a lesser extent on coins of Constantine.33 From the coinage it becomes clear how strong the symbolic connection was between the city of Rome and the 32.  The coins date to 178 and 185/186 CE. Commodus (b. 161; reign 180‒192) was the son of the reigning emperor Marcus Aurelius; he had an elder twin brother, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, who died in 165. In 166, Commodus was made Caesar together with his younger brother Marcus Annius Verus; the latter also died in 169, which left Commodus as Marcus Aurelius’s sole surviving son. For this coin and other examples of the type, see http://pro.coinarchives.com/. 33.  For coins of Maxentius, struck 308‒312 in Ostia and Rome; see E. Taylor, 2013.

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Figure 28. Medallion of Commodus; reverse: Jupiter between Dioscuri; Rome, 184–185 CE; Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 33, lot number: 513, 6 April 2006.

Figures. 29–33. (rows 1, 2, 3). Coins of Maxentius; Ostia mint, 307–312 CE; Dioscuri and horses (a, b, d); wolf and twins (c, d); Follis of Maxentius; Rome, 308–310 CE; reverse: Roma enthroned in temple, Dioscuri in pediment (e); photos: (a) Classical Numismatic Group, Electronic Auction 56, lot number: 164, 8 January 2003; (b) Dr. Busso Peus Nachfolger, Auction 380, lot number: 922, 3 November 2004; (c) Classical Numismatic Group, Mail Bid Sale 57, lot number: 1413, 4 April 2001; (d) Ex Fritz Rudolf Künker Münzenhandlung, Auction 104, lot 674, October 2005; (e) http://www.beastcoins.com/ RomanImperial/VI/Rome/Maxentius-RICVI-208-RBQ.jpg.



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Dioscuri. The point is made most strongly on the coinage of Maxentius, with its doubling of twins—the divine twins paired with the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus—and the legend Urbs Roma (figs. 29–33). In this way Maxentius tried to revive and propagate the imperial ideology of a victorious Rome, placing himself in the grand tradition of the emperor Augustus himself (Drijvers 2007, 20).34 Constantine continued the imagery of the she-wolf and the suckling twins but diluted an overt reference to Olympian religion by replacing the Dioscuri with two stars above the wolf (figs. 34–37).35 Various temples in Rome were dedicated to Castor and Pollux, the most famous being the one on the Forum Romanum, of which three columns are still standing; they stem from the reconstruction of the ancient temple at the time of Augustus and Tiberius.36 As discussed above, the fountain of Juturna stands in close proximity to it. Large statues of the Dioscuri were also erected there, elsewhere in Rome, and in other cities of the empire. According to literary sources, Constantine and his successors decorated the Hippodrome in Constantinople with a collection of antiquities; he also incorporated a temple of the Dioscuri, whose statues could still be seen in the porticoes of the hippodrome 170 years later.37 In Rome itself larger-than-life-size sculptures of the divine Twins were set up, some of which are still standing in prominent locations.38 A pair of colossal statues of the Twins dating from the second century was unearthed in 1560 in the old Ghetto of Rome and erected more or less immediately at the top of the stairs leading to the Capitoline Hill (Geppert 1996, 41‒46; Presicce 1994, 153‒91). Already some decades earlier the Farnese pope, Paul III, had asked Michelangelo to design a project for that area, but building did not begin until 1546 and progressed so slowly that Michelangelo only lived to oversee the beginning of the work. The piazza was completed in the seventeenth century, but the design remained largely intact. As shown in a sixteenth century print, Michelangelo and Pope Paul III may have had a different group of statues in mind for the plan. On an engraving by Étienne Dupérac, one can see another famous group at the top of the stairs, an arrangement that was never executed (fig. 38). The envisioned group was and remains to the present day situated on one of the other hills of Rome, the Quirinale (Nista 1994b, 193‒208; Geppert 1996, 64‒67, 34.  For a final publication of the Augustan temple, see Nilson et al. 2008. 35.  Julian is another emperor who may still stand in this tradition; bronze coins were minted from 360 to 363 CE that show a bull on the reverse with two stars above, possibly representing the Twins. 36.  The temple was dedicated in the names of Tiberius and Drusus; see Poulsen 1992b, 57; Sande 1994, 113‒18. 37.  Zosimos (ca. 501), New History 2.31: He [Constantine] decorated the hippodrome most beautifully, incorporating the temple of the Dioscuri in it; their statues are still to be seen standing in the porticoes of the hippodrome. He even placed somewhere in the hippodrome the tripod of the Delphic Apollo, which had on it the very image of Apollo.” (Bassett 1991, 87‒96). 38.  For the sculptural typology and iconography of the Dioscuri in Roman times, see Geppert 1996.

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Figure 34. Follis of Constantine I; Siscia Mint, 334–335 CE; helmeted bust of Roma; reverse: she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; above, two Stars; crown of victory; photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Electronic Auction 234, lot number: 519, 9 June 2010.

Figure 35. Follis of Constantine I; Siscia Mint, 334–335 CE; helmeted bust of Roma; reverse: she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; above, two stars; crown of victory; photo: Fritz Rudolf Künker Münzenhandlung, Auction 71, lot number 1466, 12 March 2002.

Figure 36. Follis of Constantine I; Trier Mint, 333–334 CE; helmeted bust of Roma; reverse: she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; above, two stars; crown of victory; photo: Fritz Rudolf Künker Münzenhandlung, Auction 67, lot number 1217, 9 October 2001.

Figure 37. Follis of Constantine I; Arles Mint, 332–333 CE; helmeted bust of Roma; reverse: she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; above, two stars; three limb branch; photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Electronic Auction 234, lot number: 517, 9 June 2010.

140‒42). These statues received the name the Horse Tamers, and accordingly their surrounding area was commonly known as Monte Cavallo. The group has probably been in that area since antiquity. In the sixteenth century the group was situated in a slightly different place not far from the present location, but on the curve of the road facing it (Gamrath 1987; Lorenz 1979, 43‒57). On the other side of the road and in close range the Baths of Constantine were constructed.39 Their remains were still visible in the sixteenth century, as can be seen in a print by Etienne du Pérac dated around 1575 (fig. 39). In some images the vestiges of 39.  This is in the area where, in modern times, the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi is located; the Borghese family built the palace over the ruins of the baths of Constantine, whose remains are now part of the basement of the Casino dell’Aurora.



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Figure 38. Design for the Capitoline Hill with the Horse Tamers of the Quirinale; Engraving by Étienne Dupérac, I vestigi dell’antichità di Roma (Rome, 1575); photo: Lessing Photo Archive.

a construction on which the sculptures of the Dioscuri stood are also visible.40 Other sculptures were found together with the horse tamers, such as statues of Constantine and one of his sons, plus two reclining river gods. All were moved to the Capitoline, except one of the statues of Constantine, which is now in the entry portico of the Lateran Church. It is commonly thought that the statues of Constantine and his sons might have come from the bath complex on the Quirinale, but the origin of the horse tamers remains uncertain. One hypothesis is that they came from the nearby temple of Serapis (R. Taylor 2004, 256), while others have connected them with a hypothetical nymphaeum (Lorenz 1979, 52). The sculptures themselves have been dated to the time of the Antonines, but there are no ancient sources that confirm this. A ninth-century pilgrim’s itinerary (Codex Einsiedlensis [Einsiedeln no. 326]) described them as “cavalli marmorei,” and in the Middle Ages they received a Christian make-over that identified them not as the Dioscuri but as prophets, while a female figure on a now-lost fountain in front of the group was known as Ecclesia.41 40.  For a new assessment of the colossal temple on the Quirinal Hill, including the large sculptures, see R. Taylor 2004, 223‒66. 41.  The medieval Mirabilia reported that these were “the names of two seers who had arrived in Rome under Tiberius, naked, to tell the ‘bare truth’ that the princes of the world were like horses which had not yet been mounted by a true king”; see Patz 2009.

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Figure 39. Engraving of the Baths of Constantine by Etienne du Pérac, I vestigi dell’antichità di Roma (Rome, 1575).

The close connection between Rome and the Dioscuri also appears in fourthcentury literary texts. In a panegyric of Constantine, the Latin rhetorician Nazarius sang the praises of Constantine’s victory over Maxentius in 312 at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (Rees 2002). The speech was delivered nine years later to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Constantine, and his fifth son’s admission to the rank of Caesar. The passage of Nazarius reads as follows: Men say that in one of Rome’s wars two young men on horseback appeared, worthy to be beheld for their beauty as much as for their strength, who were distinguished beyond the rest in the fighting. When they were sought out by order of the commander, and when they were not to be found, men believed that they were divine although they had zealously shared their labor, they spurned labor’s reward … [W]e who have now seen greater things believe in those deeds. Our leader’s greatness wins credence for the ancient accomplishments, but removes the miraculous element. A reckoning of the affairs must be measured by the number of supporters. Once two young men were seen, but now armies: the present instance is surely richer and no less dependable as truth. Faith stands firm, relying upon a twofold argument: this is how Constantine deserved to be helped, and this is how Rome ought to have been saved. (Nazarius, Panegyric IV 4 [March 321]; text Mynors 1964; trans. Nixon and Rodgers 1994). 42

42.  In a later panygeric of Claudius Claudianus, the emperor Honorius and his sons are still compared in poetic terms to Jupiter and the Disocuri (see below).



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The divine intervention of the two young men from the legendary past thought to be the Dioscuri has now become the action of an army on a much grander scale. The ancient Roman legend of divine rescue, however, still resonated at the time of Constantine’s victory but was transformed into rescue by a celestial army. This kind of miracle may have inspired other such stories about the rescue of the city of Rome, as in a legend of Leo the Great, the fifth-century pope (Howarth 1994, 130‒36). When Attila the king of the Huns invaded Italy and advanced on central Italy, a calamity once again was thought to be at Rome’s doorstep. Pope Leo and part of the Roman senate went out to meet and beseech the king, “trusting in the help of God, who never fails the righteous in their trials” as a chronicler wrote. A later account of Leo’s Vita states that at the height of the meeting the pope was suddenly flanked by the two apostles Peter and Paul, one standing on the right, the other on the left side of the pontiff. In the Renaissance, Raphael immortalized the legendary scene in one of the papal rooms (Stanza d’Eliodoro). In the Vita the apostles are said to be standing; in the painting they are flying, in order to emphasize the celestial intervention, since legends tend to evolve in a rather fluid way. It is interesting to see that the Augustan ideology of paralleling the imperial successors with the divine Dioscuri and the emperor with the supreme divinity himself had a long afterlife; the image resurfaces as late as the fifth century. In elegant pentameters the court poet Claudianus can still make the comparison between the western emperor Honorius and his sons, who as “the Spartan twins, the sons of Leda, sit with highest Jove.” (Claudianus, Cons. Hon. 203‒11; Poulsen 1991, 135). From historical sources we also learn that the cult of the Dioscuri was still actively practiced during the fourth century in Rome and Ostia (Meiggs 1960, 388‒403; Poulsen 1992a, 53). When in 359 a storm kept the grain fleet from entering the harbor of Portus, great unrest ensued among the people, and the prefect of Rome was under pressure to solve the situation. Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that “while Tertullus was sacrificing in the temple of Castor and Pollux at Ostia, a calm smoothed the sea, the wind changed to a gentle southern breeze, and the ships entered the harbor under full sail and again crammed the storehouses with grain.” (Ammianus Marcellinus 19.10.4). At Ostia the divine Twins were obviously worshiped in their capacity as protectors of navigation. Each year on January 27 the Ludi Castorum were held at Ostia, led by the prefect of the city; these games presumably involved horse races (Meiggs 1960, 345). January 27 also happened to be the date on which Tiberius dedicated the Augustan Temple of Castor and Pollux on the Forum at Rome; the timing underscores the connection between the cults in Rome and Ostia (Poulsen 1992a, 53; also Weinstock 1937). The late interest in the divine twins emerges in one of the luxurious houses in Ostia, the House of the Dioscuri (III.IX.1). In the mosaic of the entrance

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the Dioscuri stand in a central panel, a figure at their feet, while a large vase (cantharus) appears in several of the surrounding panels. The Dioscuri have their traditional outfit; they wear boots, pilos hats, and a mantle around their shoulders, and they carry spears and sheathed swords. On the basis of the archaeology, the reconstruction and redecoration of the house are dated to the first quarter of the fifth century (Dunbabin 1999, 64–65; Heres 1982, 135–36; 477–85). For our purpose the vases that accompany the Dioscuri in this mosaic are intriguing in connection with the occurrence of the vase on the ARS lanx.43 In addition to flourishing in Rome and its surroundings, the veneration of the Dioscuri continued in the Roman provinces as well during the fourth century. Not only do the literary sources and the North African ceramics testify to this, but archaeological evidence comes from other regions as well. In 1950 a wellpreserved mosaic was uncovered in the center of Trier. The mosaic can be dated to the third quarter of the fourth century, a chronology that coincides with the earliest ARS lanxes. One compartment of the mosaic shows the egg of Castor, Pollux, and Helen, over which the eagle of Jupiter hovers. The inscribed names “Iobis,” “Castor,” “Pollux,” and “Helena” clarify the meaning of the images. Other compartments of the mosaic enclose figures suggesting a ritual banquet; men carry trays of food and hold tools, and girls dance. A compartment has three men who seem to perform a ritual with food. It is generally thought that the hall with the mosaic served cult purposes focused on the Dioscuri, but the details of this cult remain unclear and open to much speculation.44 A more recent discovery in Tunisia has brought to light another mosaic with the birth of Helen and the Dioscuri (Ben Lazreg forthcoming). The response of early Christian theologians to the cult of the Dioscuri was not very positive and at times openly hostile, but it also showed a sense of reality; these divinities were not only well known but also widely admired. Church officials realized that it was hard to root out popular beliefs and practices (Kraus 1957; Trout 2003, 533 n.46). Even popular language continued to be filled with suggestive implications; people would swear with the word “edepol,” which was an abbreviation of “per aedem Pollucis” (“by the temple of Pollux” Ps. Augustine, Regulae Aurelii Augustini 1.16 [Heinrich Keil, Grammatici Latini, 8 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1855–1880]); another frequent oath was “(m)ecastor” (“by Castor”). In a letter to Pope Damasus, Jerome openly shows his distaste for the use of such language.45 43.  A second mosaic in Ostia, in the Mithraeum of Felicissimus (V.IX.1) at the entrance of a narrow corridor, shows the two symbols of the Dioscuri (piloi with stars) with a crater underneath and an altar with fire. The upper part of the mosaic depicts symbols that are difficult to interpret; they are divided into seven panels, which may be related to initiation phases into the Mithraic rites or which could be interpreted as cosmological and astronomical symbols. 44.  For a summary and older biblography, see Dunbabin 1999, 82–85. 45. Jerome, Ep. 21 to Damasus: “Absit, ut de ore Christiano sonet, ‘Jupiter omnipotens; et me Her-



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There are many polemical texts from Christian writers against Greco-Roman cult practices, and some of them are directed against the Dioscuri (Trout 2003, 533 n. 46). Lactantius calls them “the most miserable of all mortals, to whom it was not permitted to die a single time.”46 Nor is Prudentius flattering when he calls them “the bastard sons of a fallen woman.”47 In spite of the opposition, followers of the divine Twins did not have to hide their allegiance as late as the end of the fifth century. In an address to the Roman senator Andromachus, Pope Gelasius can still express his annoyance at the cult: “surely why have your Castores whose cult you didn’t want to give up not at all provided you with any favorable seas…?”48 Augustine also reflects on their competition with the Christian community.49 In a sermon on the Gospel of John, he comments on evil spirits who seduce his Christian flock with amulets, magic spells, and other trickeries.50 He accuses these spirits of mixing the name of Christ into their enchantments—“venom mixed with honey to conceal its bitterness.” In the same passage, Augustine also recalls the words of a priest of Castor, who used to say: “even the ‘cone head’ himself is a Christian!”51 In Augustine’s opinion, the only remaining way for evil spirits to entice Christians toward blasphemy was to portray Castor as a Christian. The bishop of Hippo’s suggestion, however,

cule, et me Castor,’ et caetera magis portenta, quam numina.” For the expression Me Castor/me Castor iuvet and its history, see Wagenvoort 1980, 128. 46. Lactantius, Inst. 1, 10, 5: “Kastor et Pollux dum alienas sponsas rapiunt, esse gemini desierunt. nam dolore iniuriae concitatus Idas alterum gladio transuerberauit: et eosdem poetae alternis uiuere, alternis mori narrant, ut iam sint non deorum tantum, sed omnium mortalium miserrimi, quibus semel mori non licet.” Tertullian, Marc. 1, 1, 5: “Quis enim tam castrator carnis castor quam qui nuptias abstulit? quis tam comesor mus ponticus quam qui euangelia conrosit? ne tu, euxine, probabiliorem feram philosophis edidisti quam christianis.” 47. Prudentius, c. Symm. 1, 225–230: Illic alcides spoliatis gadibus hospes arcadiae fuluo aere riget; gemini quoque fratres corrupta de matre nothi, ledeia proles, nocturnique equites, celsae duo numina romae, inpendent retinente ueru magnique triumfi nuntia suffuso figunt uestigia plumbo. 48.  The address was written against the celebration of the Lupercalia. This proves that the festival survived until at least 494, when Gelasius addressed the issue. In his polemic against the public performance of (in his view) superstitious and licentious rites, he wrote “Castores vestri certe, a quorum cultu desistere noluistis, cur vobis opportuna maria minime praebuerunt…” 49.  His lifetime was contemporary with the production of the lanxes, on which the images of the Dioscuri appeared; they were more or less produced in his backyard, in what is now central Tunisia. 50. Augustine, Tract. Ev. Jo., VII.6: “Usque adeo, fratres mei, ut illi ipsi qui seducunt per ligatures [amulets], per praecantationes [magic spells], per machinamenta [trickeries] inimici, misceant praecantationibus suis nomen Christi: quia jam non possunt seducere Christianos, ut dent venenum, addunt mellis aliquid, ut per id quod dulce est, lateat quod amarum est, et bibatur ad perniciem. Usque adeo ut ego noverim aliquo tempore illius Pilleati sacerdotem solere dicere, Et ipse Pilleatus christianus est. Ut quid hoc, fratres, nisi quia aliter non possunt seduci Christiani?” (406/21). 51.  The word is pilleatus, i.e., wearing the pilleus; Le Blant 1892, 18–20; Benoit and Marrou 1948.

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that the Dioscuri were on their way out may have been wishful thinking.52 The address by Gelasius shows that some seventy years later their attraction was still present and the dispute was still going on. Divine Twins or Saintly Twins? Scholars have long debated the question whether the cult of the Dioscuri continued in disguised form in the Christian world.53 They may have remained as subtext for pairings of Christian saints.54 It has a certain plausibility to consider saints such as Cosmas and Damian, Sergius and Bacchus, Gervasius and Protasius, and even Peter and Paul, as transformations of the divine Twins. In the case of the imagery on the lanx, however, a reading of the Dioscuri as specific Christian saints falls short on several points. The symmetrical position of the riders and their horses identifies them clearly as Dioscuri (in spite of the unusual appearance of the vase between them).55 The cult of Saints Cosmas and Damian arose in Rome a century or so after the time of the African ceramics depicting the Dioscuri. The cult of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, which is rooted in the East, reached the West even later.56 And while Saints Gervasius and Protasius are Western and contemporary, their legends do not characterize them as riders, nor do the traditions of Saints Peter and Paul. This is not to say that in a different context the argument could not be made for Peter and Paul. There is certainly a connection between the Dioscuri and the fourth-century propagation of Peter and Paul as founders of the Roman church. A Damasian inscription goes so far as to call them the new stars, the nova sidera, and two stars appear on Christian gold glass and bronze amulets (figs. 40, 41).57 In Naples an early Christian church of Peter and Paul was built on top of a temple dedicated to the Dioscuri (Lenzo 2011). In spite of these tantalizing evocations of the Dioscuri, the imagery on the lanx does not reflect any of the twin saints that are known to us. Not usually mentioned in these dicussions are the shadowy Persian martyrs Abdon and Sennen, who are shown in oriental costume in a seventh century fresco in the 52.  For the cult of the Dioscuri in North Africa, see above. 53.  At the beginning of the twentieth century various studies appeared on twin saints in Christian legends. These comparative religious studies were met with severe criticism from scholars in other fields, such as hagiography and liturgy; Harris 1903; Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1903, 109, 126; for critical reviews, see Delehaye 1905, 427–32, and Dufourcq 1904, 403‒6. Further, see Grégoire 1905, critically reviewed by Delattre 1905, 505–7; Jaisle 1907; and the introduction of Deubner 1907; for a more recent study, see Brenk 2006. 54.  See also Poulsen 1993. 55.  As already argued by Salomonson against Kantorowicz 1961, 368–93; Salomonson 1962, 67. 56.  For the development of these cults in the East, see Krueger 2005. 57.  For the text of the Damasian inscription, see “The Saga of Peter and Paul,” in van den Hoek 2013, 312 n. 42; for a picture, see 314, fig. 4. Gold-glass image of Saint Agnes, with two stars beside her from the Cimitero di Panfilo (in situ), published in Ferrari and Morey 1959, 39, no. 221, pl. 24.



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Figure 40 (above). Gold-glass with Saint Agnes, two doves, and two stars, ca. 350–400 CE; Cimitero di Panfilo (in situ), Rome; photo: PCSA Archives.

Figure 41 (right). Bronze medallion of Christ crowning Peter and Paul, sixth or seventh century; Vatican Museums, Rome, 60537.

Roman catacomb of Pontianus.58 Again they lack any documented connection with horses or weaponry, but as “princelings” (subreguli) they might have an affinity with military affairs.59 In this context, it should be noted that the Christianization of classical heroes is not a phenomenon limited to the Dioscuri. The survival of Orpheus in Christian catacombs and Jewish synagogues also manifest this kind of assimilation of mythic figures. Bellerophon also appears in several Christian mosaic pavements of fourth-century Britain; in a mosaic pavement along with a bust of Christ in the villa at Hinton St. Mary and again in the house-church at Lullingstone (Meates 1979).60 Helios, a full-fledged god rather than a hero, is depicted driving his chariot in the vault of the Christian mausoleum of the Julii under St. Peter’s at Rome, and he also appears in synagogues in Palestine.61 Thus the Dioscuri fit a pattern of inculturation within Christianity as well as alongside 58.  The martyrs Abdon and Sennen were suggested to me by John Herrmann; see DACL 14:1, cols. 1415–18, fig. 10451. Their feast day at Rome (July 30) is recorded in the Martyrologium hieronymianum and the Chronograph of 354: see DACL 1:1, cols. 42–45. 59.  Their acts are recorded in the Passio Polychronii of the late fifth or early sixth century; see also Acta Sanctorum, Juli, 7, col. 130B. 60.  The assimilation of classical heroes is dealt with broadly in Hanfmann 1980, 75–99; on Hinton St. Mary, see Hanfmann 1980, 85, figs. 19–20. 61.  On the mausoleum and the cult of Sol Invictus, see Gentili 2012, 68–69, fig. 2.

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it. In spite of the objections of theologians, heroes of nonbiblical origin were absorbed into Christianity in popular religion of the fourth century and beyond. As for the images on the ARS lanx: they are in my view the Dioscuri and at the same time they are viewed as saints.62 Therefore, the answer to the initial question whether they represent “Divine Twins or Saintly Twins?” is that they represent both. The inscription refers to the Dioscuri as saints, by whose intercessions the faithful will be guided. Since the divine Twins were traditionally viewed as saviors and benevolent guardians, they continued to play this role, at least for a while—old customs tend to die hard. The latter part of the fourth century is unique in that respect, for traditional imagery continued to exist, but by the same token had to be adapted for a new reality and a new understanding. These rider gods are the Dioscuri—not Peter and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, or Abdon and Sennen—but they are also viewed as saviors in popular consciousness and venerable Roman tradition: the lanxes provide evidence that their saving powers gave them de facto saintliness, at least on a popular level. They continue to have a veiled presence as stars on coins during the reign of the first Christian emperors. Their role is accentuated even more strongly in literary sources, when poets paying tribute to the imperial court hark back to a foregone age. From the time of Constantine until the beginning of the fifth century, the emperors and their immediate successors could still be compared to Jupiter and his divinized twin sons and could still bask in the legacy of a glorious imperial past. Literary memory and popular beliefs kept the names and the imagery of the divine Twins alive, whether Christian theologians liked it or not. In times of need, people continued to sacrifice to the Dioscuri and, of course, games in their honor were still going on. The answer to whether they were Divine Twins or Saintly Twins may even lie in a down-to-earth consideration of a commercial operation that wanted to have it both ways. It is not inconceivable that the workshop that produced these platters aimed their wares at the broadest possible clientele. They may have wished to please a Christian buyer with the inscribed lanx and the biblical imagery on the rim, while lanxes without inscription, obviously produced in the same workshop, would have been perfectly acceptable to a traditional conservative Roman customer.

62.  On their traditional role as saviors and benevolent guardians, see the second- to third-century Greek rhetorician Aelian, Var. Hist. 1.30: “Let us be … like Dioskouroi to the poor wretches, ‘saviours and benevolent guardians,’ as those gods are commonly described.” (τὴν ἔλασιν ἐπιτείναντες καὶ συντονώτερον ἐπιδιώξαντες Διόσκοροι τοῖς δειλαίοις γενώμεθα, σωτῆρες ἐσθλοὶ κἀγαθοὶ παραστάται,’τοῦτο δὴ τὸ λεγόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν θεῶν τούτων; trans. Wilson 2005).



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Century; Catalogue of the Exhibition, November 19, 1977 through February 12, 1978. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris, J. Rendel. 1903. The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends. London: Cambridge University Press. Hayes, John. 1972. Late Roman Pottery. London: British School at Rome. Heres, Theodora Lenore. 1982. Paries: A Proposal for a Dating System ofLlate-antique Masonry Structures in Rome and Ostia. Amsterdam: Rodopi. http://www.ostia-antica. org/regio3/9/9-1.htm. Hermary, Antoine. 1983. “Dioskouroi.” LIMC 3.1:567–93. Herrmann, John J., Jr., and Annewies van den Hoek. 2002. Light from the Age of Augustine: Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa. Cambridge: Harvard Divinity School. Hoek, Annewies van den. 2006. “Peter, Paul and a Consul. Recent Discoveries in African Red Slip Ware.” ZAC 9:197‒246. ———. 2013. “The Saga of Peter and Paul.” Pages 301–26 in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise. Edited by Annewies van den Hoek and John J. Herrmann Jr. VCSup 122. Leiden: Brill. Hoek, Annewies van den, and John J. Herrmann Jr. 2013. Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise. VCSup 122. Leiden: Brill. Howarth, Patrick. 1994. Attila, King of the Huns: Man and Myth. London: Constable. Jaisle, Karl. 1907. “Die Dioskuren als Retter zur See bei Griechen und Römern und ihr Fortleben in christlichen Legenden.” PhD diss., University of Tübingen. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1961. “Gods in Uniform.” PAPhS 105:368‒93. Keil, Heinrich. 1855–1880. Grammatici Latini. 8 vols. Leipzig: Teubner. Kraus, Walther. 1957. “Dioskuren.” RAC 17:1122–38. Krueger, Derek. 2005. “Christian Piety and Practice in the Sixth Century.” Pages 291–315 in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Edited by Michael Maas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. La Rocca, Eugenio. 1994. “Memorie di Castore, principi come Dioscuri.” Pages 73–90 in Castores: L’immagine dei Dioscuri a Roma. Edited by Leila Nista. Rome: de Luca. Le Blant, Edmond. 1878. Études sur les sarcophages chrétiens antiques de la ville d’Arles. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. ———. 1892. “Simple conjecture au sujet d’un passage de Saint Augustin.” RAr 3rd series 20:18‒21. LeGlay, Marcel. 1966. Saturne Africain. Paris: de Boccard. Lenzo, Fulvio. 2011. Architettura e antichità a Napoli dal XV al XVIII secolo: Le colonne del Tempio dei Dioscuri e la Chiesa di San Paolo Maggiore. LermArte 6. Rome: Bretschneider. L’Observateur di Blida. 1862. “Chronique.” Revue africaine 6:463–64. Lorenz, Thuri. 1979. “Ein Nymphäum auf dem Quirinal.” MededRom 41:43‒57. Meates, Geoffrey Wells. 1979. The Roman Villa at Lullingstone, Kent. Vol. 1: The Site. Monograph Series of the Kent Archaeological Society 1. Maidstone: Kent Archaeological Society. Meiggs, Russell. 1960. Roman Ostia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://www.ostia-antica. org/regio1/3/3-2.htm. Monceaux, Paul. 1908. Enquête sur l’épigraphie chrétienne d’Afrique: Pt. 4. Martyrs et reliques. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Moormann, Eric. 2000. Ancient Sculpture in the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam. Allard Pierson Series 1. Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum. Mynors, R. A. B. 1964. XII Panegyrici Latini. OCT. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Vermeule, Cornelius C., III. 1995. “The Heavenly Twins: Castor and Pollux Marching Towards the Middle Ages.” Re/Collections 5. New York: Merrin Gallery. ———. 2003. “The Heavenly Twins: Castor and Pollux Marching Towards the Middle Ages.” Pages 377–85 in Art and Archaeology of Antiquity 4. London: Pindar. Vermeule, Cornelius, and Mary Comstock. 1988. Sculpture in Stone and Bronze: Additions to the Collections of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art 1971–1988. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. Weinstock, Stephan. 1937. “Römische Reiterparade.” SMSR 13:10–24. Wagenvoort, Hendrik. 1980. Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion. SGRR 1. Leiden: Brill. Wilson, Andrew. 2005. “Romanizing Baal: The Art of Saturn Worship in North Africa.” Pages 403–8 in Proceedings of the 8th International Colloquium on Problems of Roman Provincial Art (Zagreb, 2003) and (Zagreb, 2005). Edited by Mirjana Sanader and Domagoj Toncinic Zagreb: Golden Marketing—Tehnička Knjiga. Zwirn, Stephen. 1977. “Plaque with Dioscuri and Europa with Zeus as Bull.” Page 168, no. 146 in Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century; Catalogue of the Exhibition, November 19, 1977 through February 12, 1978. Edited by Kurt Weitzmann. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Chapter Three Sheramy D. Bundrick

Altars, Astragaloi, Achilles: Picturing Divination on Athenian Vases 1

O

n a group of Athenian vases from the mid–late fifth century BCE, scenes of sacrifice draw to a close: the fire is about to be extinguished, and an officiant or another participant near the altar grasps round objects in his hands. The officiant on a pseudo-Panathenaic amphora in Polygnotan style (fig. 1), dating ca. 420 BCE, wears a long, ungirt chiton embroidered or woven with a wreath, surely indicating him as a priest (Harvard 1960.371, BAPD 9020306, Neils 2004). Holding the round objects in one hand, with the other he extends a kantharos over a low altar, upon which the god’s portion (osphys) can be seen. A similar composition appears on a second pseudo-Panathenaic amphora from around the same time, attributed to the Kleophon Painter (Darmstadt A478, BAPD 215188, van Straten 1995, 225, cat. V173). An earlier amphora by the Niobid Painter also shows a bearded man with kantharos and round objects (fig. 2), although here the altar is of a more characteristic shape and lacks a visible osphys (Brooklyn 59.34, BAPD 206996, van Straten 1995, 249, cat. V303, Neils and Oakley 2003, 292–93, cat. 106). Some scholars have identified the round objects as the thulemata described in Attic comedy: barley meal mixed with the god’s portion (van Straten 1995, 141–44, Neils 2004, 62–63). The missing osphys on the Niobid Painter’s amphora, however, calls this otherwise plausible interpretation into question, for one would expect that detail for clarity. I suggest instead that the vases depict a practice mostly neglected in twentieth-century studies of Greek religion: Special thanks to Eric Orlin, Sandra Blakely, and the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions Program Committee for facilitating my participation in the Emory conference; Sandra Blakely and Billie Jean Collins as editors of this volume for their encouragement and assistance; and the anonymous peer reviewers for their feedback. Thank you to fellow speakers and audience members at the conference for their responses, especially Jasper Gaunt, who steered me to the Lowe Art Museum’s hydria, Peter Bing, and Bonna Wescoat. For assistance with photographs and permissions, thanks are due to Arcangela Carbone-Gross (Martin-von-Wagner Museum, Antikensammlung, Würzburg); Paola Desantis (Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Emilia Romagna); Jasper Gaunt and Laura Wingfield (Carlos Museum); Lucy Gedrites (Harvard Art Museums); Stefano Santocchini Gerg (Università di Bologna); Ruth Janson (Brooklyn Museum); Gerhard Gruitrooy and Liz Kurtulik Mercuri (Art Resource); and Alexandra Seese (Museum Folkwang Essen). Special thanks to Professor Elisabetta Govi for permission to use her drawing of the Marzabotto cup.

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Sheramy D. Bundrick Figure 1. Red-figured pseudo-Panathenaic amphora; Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of David M. Robinson, 1960.371; photograph courtesy Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

cleromantic divination, or divination by casting lots. The round objects would then be astragaloi for attaining omens after the sacrifice. Archaeological evidence supports this theory, as will be shown below. Moreover, reading these scenes as images of cleromancy prompts reconsideration of other scenes in which astragaloi, dice, or similar objects are pictured but which have typically been viewed as representations of gaming, namely the well-known scenes of Achilles and Ajax. Cleromantic divination has gained new attention in recent years as scholars have reevaluated what was previously dismissed as “magic”; Athenian vase painting may provide further attestation of this important ritual. Textual evidence for cleromancy in ancient Greece is spotty but does exist for the period of time closest to the vases. In Pindar’s Fourth Pythian Ode (4.189– 191), the seer Mopsos is said to prophesy for Jason and the crew of the Argo by means of birds and sacred lots, while Teiresias in Euripides’s Phoenician Women urges his daughter to guard his lots of divination (kleroi, 834–840). Although the



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55 Figure 2. Red-figured amphora attributed to the Niobid Painter; Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 59.34a–b; photograph courtesy the Brooklyn Museum.

word kleros can be used to reference other forms of sortition—as for instance the drawing of lots to elect officials in democratic Athens—the two mythical seers specify that these kleroi are divinatory. It is not clear, however, whether casting or drawing of the kleroi is intended. Earlier in the Iliad and Odyssey, kleroi are used for the drawing of lots from a helmet, in the former to choose a champion to fight Hector (7.170–205), in the latter to decide who will help Odysseus kill the Cyclops (9.331–333). Although undertaken by ordinary men and not seers, in each case the kleros leaps from the helmet as if divinely inspired to do so. In all of these examples, kleroi is a generic enough term that one does not know their form, whether astragaloi, dice (kuboi), or some other type of lot. However, the more specific kuboi is used in some fifth-century texts to reference fate and future-telling. In Euripides’s Rhesus, Dolon asks Hector for the horses of Achilles and proclaims, “It is right for me to work and risk my life in the dice game of fate for a prize that is worthy” (182–183 [Kovacs]) while Aethra speaking to Theseus in Euripides’s Suppliant Women states prophetically—and with seemingly stronger allusion to cleromancy—“I am confident, as I see the people of Kadmos prospering, that their future dice casts will be different. Heaven overturns all things” (328–331 [Kovacs]). Later sources provide more information and details for cleromantic divination in the Greek world. Pausanias describes a dice-oracle to Herakles near Boura in this way (7.25.10): When one descends from Bura toward the sea, there is the Buraikos river and a not large image of Herakles … he offers an oracle from a list and from astragaloi. Whoever intends to consult the divinity, prays in front of the image, and after the prayer, he takes up four astragaloi … and rolls them on the table.

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Sheramy D. Bundrick For any combination of the astragaloi, the inscription in the list gives an easily accessible explanation of the combination (trans. Graf 2005, 62).

Epigraphic evidence for Roman-era dice oracles is also known from Greek cities in Asia Minor (Graf 2005). The procedures seem to have been similar to those Pausanias describes, albeit with five astragaloi being used. The selectivity of textual material means that archaeological evidence is potentially more useful for understanding the scenes on vases: thousands of astragaloi have been discovered at shrines and sanctuaries throughout the Greek world, including from the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Although often explained as the remnants of sacrifice or as votive offerings—for example, by children as they came of age—David Reese, Alan Greaves, and others have forefronted their likely use in divinatory practices. Reese noted the discovery of astragaloi alongside liver and kidney models and incised bone scapulae at the sanctuary of Kition on Cyprus, suggesting that as a group, these objects represent divination tools (Reese 1985, 388–89). Many astragaloi found at Kition and elsewhere were modified, meaning that their sides were filed down or else the astragalos was drilled, then filled with metal; such alterations confirm that they were not sacrificial leftovers. As Greaves has demonstrated through experiments detailed in a 2012 article, modifications like filing or drilling “create a more even spread of results when the bone is thrown,” meaning the odds of the astragalos landing on each of its four sides is made more equitable (Greaves 2012, 186). Modified and unmodified astragaloi have been found in sixth- and fifthcentury contexts at such far-flung sites as the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Acrocorinth, the temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, the sanctuary of Apollo at Halieis, and the sanctuary of Artemis at Ephesos (Gilmour 1997, Reese 2000). Over twenty thousand astragaloi were found in the Korykeion Cave at Delphi, a shrine to Pan and the Nymphs, with about four thousand modified in some way (Amandry 1984). Just over thirty of the latter were inscribed with names, including Achilles, Ajax, Herakles, and Nike. The Korykeion astragaloi may have been votive offerings but also could have been used for cleromantic divination (Larson 1995, 347–48). Although mantic trance is primarily associated with Delphi, recent scholarship has highlighted the possibility that even the Pythia engaged in cleromancy; visitors to the site may have done the same (Maurizio 1995, 80, Greaves 2012, 190, cf. Robbins 1916). In some cases, modified and unmodified astragaloi were directly associated with altars. A group of astragaloi from sheep and goats, four of them modified, was discovered in the fill deposit of the Altar of Aphrodite Ourania in the Athenian Agora, first erected around 500 BCE but reconstructed in the third quarter of the fifth century (Foster 1984, Reese 1989). Reese suggests that they were “used in astragalomancy… which was probably performed in the area around the altar”



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(Reese 1989, 64). Greaves emphasizes astragaloi filled with lead in the remains of the Archaic altar in the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma, reported in the 1911 excavation accounts but unfortunately now lost (Greaves 2012, 193–94, citing Wiegand 1911, 41–43). He argues that cleromancy may have been the dominant form of divination at Archaic Didyma, whereas mantic trance prevailed during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A more informal type of cleromancy or diceoracle may have persisted at Didyma in the Roman period, however, given the multiple markings that resemble gaming boards on the stylobate of the later temple (Höckmann 1996). Returning to the sacrifice scenes, archaeological evidence for astragaloi in sanctuaries, and especially at altars, opens the possibility that these officiants with their round objects are preparing to cast lots. No surviving textual account mentions such a practice, but even the more lengthy descriptions of sacrifice are less than complete and may simply fail to mention it. If this interpretation is correct, then the vases privilege the communicative nature of sacrifice as much as commensality. Whenever the osphys is shown, the curling animal’s tail reflects the deity’s acceptance of sacrifice—itself a positive omen—while astragaloi, when included, would hint at further interaction between mortals and gods. Figure 3. Redfigured hydria attributed to the Washing Painter; British Museum 1865.103.26 (E205); Photograph © Trustees of the British Museum.

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Identifying the round objects in sacrifice scenes as astragaloi for divination prompts reconsideration of other images on Athenian vases that may reference cleromancy. A hydria attributed to the Washing Painter from Nola, for instance (fig. 3), could be read as two girls playing a game but could equally show them casting lots as a form of love magic (London E205, BAPD 214985, cf. Dasen 2016 for love magic). The figure of Eros overhead lends credence to this idea, while Viktoria Sabetai, in her dissertation on the Washing Painter, notes the unique inclusion of a long, low table as opposed to the girls playing knucklebones on the ground. Sabetai argues that not only this scene, but other scenes of girls with games by this painter reference future-telling more than childish pastimes (Sabetai 1993, 190). A contemporary, unattributed red-figured pyxis includes girls playing with astragaloi among other games; notable here is the finial of the lid, shaped itself like an astragalos. Perhaps it held astragaloi for an Athenian girl’s playtime and/or for divining dreams of the future (New York 06.1021.119a–b, BAPD 4193, Beaumont 2012, 131–32). Actual astragalos-shaped vases may have had similar functions and connotations; an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art features Eros playing a lyre as its red-figured decoration (New York 40.11.2, BAPD 213127). It is worth observing that astragaloi were found at the sanctuary of Eros and Aphrodite on the north slope of the Athenian Akropolis, albeit in a Hellenistic deposit (Broneer 1933, 335). Most important for the present discussion are the nearly 170 scenes of warriors seated or crouching at what is usually interpreted as a gaming board, exemplified by the famous black-figured amphora signed by Exekias (fig. 4, Vatican 344/16757, BAPD 310395, Mackay 2010, 327–51). Found at Vulci in the early nineteenth century and dating ca. 530 BCE, Exekias’s amphora features Achilles at left and Ajax at right, both identified by inscription, both leaning intently over an upright block with hands outstretched. Achilles wears his helmet perched upon his head, while Ajax’s own helmet rests atop his shield at right; each wears full armor and grasps a pair of spears as if on campaign but temporarily away from battle. Inscriptions at their mouths perhaps indicate conversation, with “four” written next to Achilles and “three” beside Ajax. While the amphora’s exact findspot is unknown, it certainly came from an Etruscan tomb. The scene type of “Achilleus und Aias zum Brettspiel” is found on a variety of vase shapes, nearly all dating from the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, produced by a range of painters and workshops with a corresponding range of quality (see, e.g., Biers 1989–1990; H. G. Buchholz 1987; Dasen 2015; Diehl 1962; Kenzler 2003–2004; Maggiani 2005; Mommsen 1980; Moore 1980; Romero Mariscal 2011). Indeed, surviving vases with this subject outnumber scenes of every other Trojan War episode save the judgment of Paris, including more tideturning events like the mission to Achilles, ransom of Hektor, and sack of Troy.



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Figure 4. Black-figured amphora by Exekias with scene of Achilles and Ajax; Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Musei Vaticani, 344/16757; photograph: Alinari/ Art Resource NY.

As the most handsome example and one of the earliest, Exekias’s amphora has understandably been the focus of attention, although no two scenes are identical. Some painters gave the soldiers names—always Achilles and Ajax—while most omitted inscriptions. Some depicted only the two heroes, while others included a tree in the background to vary the composition; a palm tree, for example, appears on a black-figured column krater fragment said to be from Orvieto (fig. 5, Carlos Museum 2004.33.2, BAPD 9017853, shape reidentified by curator Jasper Gaunt as a column krater rather than a hydria], Woodford 1982, cat. F12). Around 520 BCE, a decade or more after Exekias’s amphora was created, the goddess Athena became a frequent figure, always standing between the warriors. A black-figured

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Figure 5. Blackfigured column krater fragment with scene of Achilles and Ajax; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Gift of Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer, 2004.33.2; photograph by Bruce M. White, 2005 © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

amphora attributed to the Leagros Group typifies this latter scheme as Athena, easily identified by her helmet and aegis, raises her left hand and carries a spear in her right (fig. 6, Essen A176/K1049, BAPD 351214, Woodford 1982, cat. D1, Froning 1982, 137–42). As already noted, these are typically interpreted as gaming scenes, especially in recent decades. Certainly, a variety of games are known from ancient Greece; however, little is understood about their specifics due to the paucity of detailed sources (cf. Austin 1940 and Kurke 1999). Moreover, because of many inconsistencies in representation among the “Brettspielers,” it is unclear what games would be portrayed. Even taking into account the fact that painters might privilege composition over realism, variations exist among the alleged board and game pieces, gestures of the alleged players, and their poses. This in turn affects the interpretation of the scenes, for if these are games of chance using dice (kuboi) or astragaloi, they would evoke the fate of the two heroes and by extension, the fate of the viewer. If these are games of strategy, meaning board games like pessoi or another known from the sources called polis, this should imply the inherent superiority of Achilles over Ajax. In both cases, however, one faces iconographic problems, namely how to distinguish winner from loser. For example, in Greek imagery the winner of a contest typically faces right, but sometimes the figure on the viewer’s left is named by inscription as Ajax, as on a black-figured amphora by the Lysippides Painter (London B211/1851.8–6.15, BAPD 302224). Similarly, Athena should be looking toward the winner—just as she always looks to Odysseus in scenes of the contest for the arms of Achilles (Williams 1980, Spivey 1994, Hedreen 2001, 104–9), with Odysseus himself always facing right—but this too is inconsistent. Sometimes she looks to the viewer’s left, sometimes the right,



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Figure 6. Black-figured amphora attributed to the Leagros Group with scene of Achilles and Ajax; Museum Folkwang, A176/K1049; photograph © Museum Folkwang, Essen.

so that the winner would be unclear (cf. Woodford 1982, cats. D17, D23, D30, D37, D42bis, D44, D46 for looking to viewer’s right). Even inscriptions like the “four” and “three” on Exekias’s amphora (fig. 4), and a few other vases that appear to grant numerical superiority to Achilles (cf. Boston 95.15, BAPD 303417, Chase 1946), cannot be verified as indications of winning a game. An unpublished black-figured hydria attributed to the Leagros Group (Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami)—which has not been included in previous catalogues and discussions—contradicts the popular notion that if the scene shows a game, the winner has the higher number. Athena stands between the heroes as on the Leagros Group amphora in Essen (fig. 6), but on the

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Miami vase all three figures are labeled by inscription, Achilles at left and Ajax at right. Additional inscriptions reveal that Achilles has thrown a one (hen) and Ajax a three (tria). Not only is Achilles’ “score” lower than Ajax’s, but according to later texts, a one thrown on dice or an astragalos was known as a Chian throw and considered unlucky, indeed the worst of possible throws (cf. Schädler 1996 and Graf 2005, 59). Presuming that this identification existed earlier, it seems unlikely that a painter would show Achilles losing a game to Ajax at all, let alone so badly. Adding to the difficulty of interpreting these “gaming scenes” is the fact that, unlike most Trojan War scenes in Greek art, they lack a known literary reference, whether pre- or postdating the depictions. Some scholars have suggested that Exekias invented the subject, although as will be shown below, new evidence verifies that this was not the case. Others, namely Carl Robert in 1892, have supported the notion of a lost text or another story unknown today (Robert 1892, 57 n. 36, also cf. Robert 1923, 1126–27, Beazley 1986, 60). Using the many scenes that include Athena for inspiration, Robert suggested that Achilles and Ajax are on guard duty at Troy, but are so immersed in their game that their Trojan foes sneak up on them without warning. Athena therefore appears in order to stop the game and urge them into battle. Variations of this reading have been adopted in more recent scholarship even when abandoning the lost epic (e.g., Hedreen 2001, 96–104), including in the work of John Boardman, who proposed that the images act as a metaphor for Athenian troops caught off-guard by Peisistratos at Pallene (Boardman 1978, 18–24). Leaving aside the question of whether a vase painter would have encoded his scenes with such political propaganda, Boardman’s theory has the added complication of the “embarrassing and shameful” nature of the Pallene episode (Boardman’s own words, 1978, 24). Boardman explains this away by suggesting Exekias himself was antityrannical and aimed to “both comfort and give warning” (1978, 24), but this raises questions about the many other depictions, including at least one earlier than Exekias (see below). Even without a reference to Pallene, one still wonders why painters would represent the greatest of the Achaians in a careless, even shameful (aiskhros) moment (cf. Roisman 2005, 64–71, 105–13)—especially if the alleged folly had no effect on the war’s outcome—and why consumers would buy vases with that subject in such great numbers. Boardman proposes that “we are invited to smile at such weakness and condone it” (1978, 24), but there is no suggestion of humor and no indication that Achilles and Ajax are to be interpreted as anything other than ready for battle. Their armor and spears close at hand belie any idea of surprise, and their intensity belies any impression of leisure. Given the many inconsistencies surrounding the “gaming” interpretation, I propose returning to a reading from earlier in the nineteenth century that linked the scenes to cleromantic divination: Achilles and Ajax casting lots before battle



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to determine its outcome or to seek the answer to some other question. In 1851, Friedrich G. Welcker suggested that the heroes were consulting Athena’s oracle at Troy (Welcker 1851, 6), while Auguste Bouché-Leclerq supported a similar notion in his magisterial, multivolume Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité (1879–1882, 2:405): Il était naturel de la consulter, à la veille d’une bataille, sur les chances de vie ou de mort qu’allait apporter la terrible journée. L’idée fur certainement mise en pratique car un certain nombre de vases peints représentent des guerriers, un genou en terre, jetant des galets en forme de boules aux pieds d’Athéna armée qui étende le bras droit ou le bras gauche, suivant que le coup est favorable ou funeste.

When a black-figured amphora showing the scene was found in the Crocifisso del Tufo necropolis of Orvieto in the 1870s, Gustav Körte presented it as evidence for a divinatory interpretation (Körte 1877, 123–25): La presenza di Atene, rivolta con gesto vivace ed espressivo verso uno dei giocatori, dimostra che non si tratti più di un semplice divertimento, ma di una specie di divinazione mediante piccole pietre inventata da Minerva.

This latter example is unique in including Hermes together with Athena; he can be explained as a messenger of Zeus but perhaps even as psychopompos, an allusion to the deaths that await both Achilles and Ajax by the war’s end (Orvieto 2701/186, BAPD 302093, Woodford 1982, cat. C6, Wójcik 1989, 204–7). It is also worth noting Hermes’s association with cleromantic divination by dice, astragaloi, or other objects in the Greco-Roman world (cf. Apollodorus 3.10.2, Grottanelli 2001), as, for example, in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East (Bar-Oz 2001, Graf 2005). In texts, this association can be traced back at least as far as the fifth century BCE, when in Aristophanes’s Peace Trygaeus says to Hermes about his death, “if my number comes up. Being Hermes, I know you’ll do it by lots” (364–65 [Henderson]). Similarly, a later scholiast to Euripides’s lost play Aeolus mentions that it referenced the kleros Hermou, Hermes’s lottery (Eur. Frag. 24a=39N). A divinatory interpretation of the Achilles and Ajax scenes fell out of fashion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, replaced by theories such as Carl Robert’s, discussed above. The cleromantic reading was likely also the victim of an increased tendency to neglect magic and other allegedly superstitious practices as affronts to modern notions of Greek rationality (cf. Fowler 2000, Kindt 2012, 90–122). As Sarah Iles Johnston and others have observed, while interest in the Delphic oracle and similar mantic practices never waned, cleromancy and other divinatory practices fell off the scholarly radar for several decades (Johnston 2005, 1–10, Greaves 2012, 201–3). Greaves has claimed that previous scholars of Greek religion “misrepresented cleromancy as a simplistic device, one not afforded high status, which is contrary to the

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Figure 7. Black-figured Little Master band cup with scenes of Achilles and Ajax; Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Marzabotto 489; photograph courtesy Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Emilia Romagna.

Figure 8. Drawing of the Little Master band cup with scenes of Achilles and Ajax; Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Marzabotto 489; drawing courtesy Elisabetta Govi.



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ethnographic record and historical instances of its use in ancient Greece” (Greaves 2012, 201). He adds, “There is no reason to consider cleromancy an inherently lesser form of divination than mantic trance, which is, after all, just another randomizing device, but one in which the diviner’s body is the tool of choice” (Greaves 2012, 202). Two scholars should be noted who have advocated a cleromantic interpretation of the Achilles and Ajax scenes in more recent years, although contrary to pervading views and with little attention paid in wider scholarship (Thomas 1985, 88–107, Alvar Nuño 2006). Both rely on the literary and epigraphic evidence for astragalomanteia discussed at the outset of this paper, however, rather than also on the archaeological as here, which strengthens the argument still further. To bolster a resurrected theory of cleromantic divination for the Achilles and Ajax scenes, I introduce a black-figured Athenian band cup (figs. 7–8) discovered at a fountain sanctuary just outside the northern Etruscan city of Marzabotto (Marzabotto 489, Govi 1995, 69–72). Excavated in the late 1960s and fully published in 1995, it has not yet been considered within the larger corpus of Achilles and Ajax scenes. It comes from a confirmed sanctuary context in Etruria, where it served as a votive offering and/or was used in ritual. Most importantly, it is the earliest known cup depicting this scene—the best-preserved Little Master band cup—and with an approximate date of ca. 540–530 BCE, predates Exekias’s amphora from Vulci (fig. 4). The additional space given to the narrative on the Marzabotto cup shows that while Exekias may have brought his own style and iconographic details to the subject, he was not its inventor; rather, he abstracted his two figures from a larger story. One side of the cup is better preserved than the other, but enough fragments exist to suggest that the same scene appeared on each. Two soldiers, lacking inscriptions that confirm their identities, sit on stools flanking a table, their hands reaching toward the center in parallel movements that foreshadow Exekias’s interpretation. In contrast to the latter, however, they wear their helmets and have their faces covered. This, plus the chariots to either side—with charioteers holding the reins and horses prancing—conveys not only readiness for battle, but imminent departure. These soldiers are not distracted by a leisurely game, and their actions appear to be their last before leaving. This alone would support the idea of cleromantic divination, but the unusual form of the table would seem to confirm it. Instead of the plain, block-like table Exekias shows (fig. 4), this one more clearly references an altar, complete with volutes and egg-and-dart moulding. Two birds at left may be space-fillers or may themselves recall omens and divination, especially to the cup’s Etruscan viewer. The Marzabotto cup’s painter was not alone in representing details evocative of a sanctuary. A black-figured column krater from Orvieto pairs Athena with a Doric column (Orvieto 2666/46, BAPD 9024648, Woodford

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1982, cat. D15, Wójcik 1989, 234–36), while a bilingual amphora attributed to the Andokides Painter—also from Orvieto—includes an altar with volutes between the warriors, similar to that on the Marzabotto cup (Boston 01.8037, BAPD 200007, Woodford 1982, cat. B3). The altar between the warriors and in front of Athena on a red-figured cup attributed to Makron, meanwhile, only has a row of egg-and-dart molding and no volutes; like the Marzabotto example, this cup features an extensive narrative, with a trumpeter next to one of the soldiers indicating the call to arms and running warriors signaling the advent of battle (Florence 3929/New York 1973.171.5, BAPD 204696). Altars can assume many forms on Athenian vases (Ekroth 2001), so other alleged gaming boards in Achilles and Ajax scenes could be read as altars, even when plain and block-like as on Exekias’s amphora (fig. 4). On a black-figured hydria attributed to the Leagros Group, the altar of Zeus in the Ilioupersis on the body mirrors the block-like table between Achilles and Ajax on the shoulder, probably deliberately so; the gestures of the women flanking Neoptolemos and Priam likewise echo Athena’s emphatic gestures above (Würzburg 311, BAPD 302030, Woodford 1982, cat. C17). If the scene on the shoulder is read as cleromantic divination in progress, then this painter paired the seeking of signs with eventual outcome. Along with altars and other architectural elements, the inclusion of one or more trees in the scenes—mostly palms, although occasionally a deciduous specimen—could similarly designate a sanctuary setting. The central palm tree on the fragmentary black-figured column krater from Orvieto (fig. 5) is juxtaposed with what appears to be a summarily indicated volute altar; when trees appear elsewhere, they often are shown behind the alleged gaming board as here. Deciduous trees indicate outdoor sanctuaries on some fifth-century sacrifice scenes, while palm trees paired with altars are more frequent on Athenian vases. Hedreen has noted the juxtaposition of palm trees with altars in numerous scenes related to the Trojan cycle, as, for instance, some images of the murder of Priam (2001, 74–79) and others of the murder of Troilos (2001, 122–24)—the former taking place in a shrine of Zeus Herkeios, the latter in a sanctuary of Apollo. Hedreen avoids identifying the setting of the “gaming” scenes as a sanctuary, but perhaps the visual resemblance with other subjects through the repetition of trees and altars would have allowed ancient viewers to make the connection. Given the discovery of the Marzabotto cup at an extraurban fountain sanctuary, it is tempting to link the scenes identified here as divination as related to the Troilos story and the prophecy Achilles fulfilled in killing the boy. Firm evidence to support such a theory, however, is lacking. One can speculate whether the choice of painters to add Athena to any of these representations was intended to clarify still further that this is no game. On the amphora attributed to the Leagros Group noted earlier (fig. 6), the block/



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altar between the warriors features a prominent genitive-case inscription— “Athenaias,” or “of Athena” in the Attic dialect—although the remainder of the inscriptions in the field are nonsense. Since the goddess does not stand upon the block, the inscription cannot identify her as a statue and must instead reference the block itself, perhaps marking the space as her sanctuary. One can compare the genitive-case inscription “Herk[e]io” on the altar in the tondo of an Ilioupersis cup by Onesimos, giving the site of Priam’s death as an altar of Zeus Herkeios (Villa Giulia, ex Getty, BAPD 13363, Hedreen 2001, fig. 6c). “Athenaias” certainly implies actions both serious and sacred, while Athena’s strong gestures suggest the control of the gods over events; she appears with similar stance in later scenes of the Greeks casting votes for the arms of Achilles (Williams 1980, Spivey 1994, Hedreen 2001, 104–9). Her presence further lends a note of tragic irony, for Achilles will die despite her protection of the Greeks, and Ajax’s death will result from her later support of Odysseus. Potentially significant with regard to Athena is the single known vase with this scene from later in the fifth century, a red-figured column krater attributed to the Hephaistos Painter from Gela, dating ca. 430–420 BCE (Berlin VI 3199, BAPD 214735, Kossatz-Deissmann 1981, 101, cat. 420). Although clearly related to the earlier series, it differs on key details: Athena holds a small figure of Nike, while she, Achilles, and Ajax all appear upon a platform or plinth, the goddess standing and the warriors kneeling. These three figures have been identified as statues rather than narrative participants in a story, which would explain a fourth character at the left, a young man with traveling cloak and hat who does not stand upon the plinth, but who approaches and raises his hand in greeting and reverence. Based on the distinctive and almost Pheidian image of Athena, Karl Schefold and others have gone further to link this image with a lost statue group on the Athenian Akropolis (Schefold 1937, 31–33, Chase 1946, 49–50, Thompson 1976). Although speculative, their case is supported by the discovery of Late Archaic marble fragments in the Akropolis Perserschutt—debris from the Persian sack of 480 BCE—that appear to depict two kneeling male astragalos players and a figure of Athena (cf. Schrader 1909, 67–71, Thompson 1976, and Kossatz-Deissmann 1981, 100, cat. 417, with further references). These have been interpreted as the remains of a freestanding statue group from the last decade of the sixth century, while the Hephaistos Painter krater has been seen as evidence for a completely lost Periklean replacement of the original monument destroyed by the Persians (Schefold 1937, 31–33, Thompson 1976, 35). If a sixth- and possibly also a fifth-century sculpture of this subject did exist on the Akropolis in Athena’s sanctuary, again one must ask why an ordinary game— certainly one that would depict Achilles and Ajax in a negative light, surprised by the Trojans—would be considered suitable and important enough for such exposure and expense. A divinatory reading might yield a better explanation.

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Figure 9. Red-figured amphora attributed to the Kleophrades Painter; Martin-von-Wagner Museum, Würzburg, 507; photograph by E. Oehrlein, © Martin-von-Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg.

A more easily identified interest in divination in Athenian vase painting at the time of the Achilles and Ajax scenes can be found in the group of blackand red-figured vases depicting one of the best known rites, hieroskopia or the examination of the entrails of a sacrificed animal (Durand and Lissarrague 1979, Lissarrague 1990, 55–59, van Straten 1995, 238–43). These scenes had a restricted period of popularity from ca. 530 BCE until the time of the Persian Wars, although only about twenty-two examples survive today. All depict warriors taking part in divinatory actions, although at home before departure, not at the front. Contrary to typical practice in which a trained mantis would seek the signs, the warrior himself consults the liver, as on a red-figured amphora attributed to the Kleophrades Painter and found at Vulci (fig. 9, Würzburg 507, BAPD 201654, van Straten 1995, cat. V262). It is interesting to compare the upraised arms of the observers here to those of Athena in the Achilles and Ajax scenes (fig. 6). Nancy de Grummond has noted this gesture in Greek and Etruscan art, including on the Kleophrades Painter’s amphora, and has proposed it represents the reception of prophecy (2002, 68–70). Counting the Kleophrades Painter’s amphora, only four hieroskopia vases have a known provenience, all from Etruria. None have a documented findspot

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but presumably come from tombs, given their condition and collection histories. Another six are in Italian museums with Etruscan collections and presumably come from Etruscan sites, while none of the remaining twelve are in Greek museums. While recognizing the small sample, it is possible that hieroskopia scenes represent targeted marketing to an Etruscan clientele, not surprising given the importance of this ritual to Etruscan cult (cf. Osborne 2001, 283, Gebauer 2002, 351). Such vases would have obvious appeal for deposition in funerary assemblages, where the scenes attained great poignancy and it can be assumed the warriors will not return home. Vases with Achilles and Ajax scenes, meanwhile, had a wider distribution that includes Greek sites, even with about 50 percent lacking a known provenience (table 1). Some of the vases found in Greece come from graves, especially blackfigured lekythoi that comprise the latest in the series. At least six, for instance, have been excavated in the Athenian Kerameikos (BAPD 24563, BAPD 9022973, Woodford 1982, cat. D36, Woodford 1982, cats. E12–14), a few in children’s graves; this latter circumstance, along with the discovery of astragaloi themselves in some Kerameikos tombs, does remind us of the potential multivalence of these objects in referencing both leisure and divination, especially with regard to children (cf. Caré 2012). Several Achilles and Ajax vases with known findspots were discovered in Greek sanctuaries, including the Heraion on Delos (BAPD 30109), the sanctuary of Demeter at Selinus (BAPD 28906), and the Athenian Akropolis (BAPD 32402, 200650, 331970). With so many unprovenienced vessels featuring these scenes, remarks about the interaction among function, shape, and image must remain tentative. One can only say that interpreting the scenes as divinatory complements either a votive or funerary context, while vessels used Table 1. Achilles/Ajax vases with known or suspected proveniences (n = 84 of 170 total scenes, 49%) Etruria

South Italy/ Sicily

Greece (mainland)

Other

Amphora

26

5

1

1

Hydria

3

0

0

0

Krater

2

1

0

0

Kylix

4

2

4

2

Oinochoe/ Olpe

4

0

0

1

Lekythos

0

5

20

1

Other

1

0

1

0

TOTALS

40

13

26

5

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Table 2. Achilles/Ajax vases with provenience from a known Etruscan site (n = 31 of 40 vases with known or suspected Etruscan provenience) Vulci

Tarquinia

Chiusi

Orvieto

Bologna

Amphora

11

4

2

2

0

Hydria

2

0

0

1

0

Krater

0

0

0

2

0

Kylix

3

0

0

0

0

Oinochoe/ Olpe

2

0

0

0

1

Kyathos

1

0

0

0

0

TOTALS

19

4

2

5

1

at a symposion or banquet might have inspired conversation about fate, irony, even death. The largest proportion of vases with Achilles and Ajax scenes went to Etruria, including most of the earliest examples, the majority likely placed in tombs (table 2). Although little is known of Etruscan cleromancy, archaeological evidence supports the drawing and perhaps casting of lots as a form of divination (Champeaux 1990, Maggiani 1994, Bagnasco Gianni 2001, although note the caution of L. Buchholz 2013). The Etruscan Menerva (or Menrva) was an oracular deity, and the best evidence for cleromancy during the Archaic period comes from two of her sanctuaries: a shrine at Punta della Vipera (or Santa Marinella; Torelli 1966; Torelli and La Regina 1968) and the Portonaccio sanctuary at Veii (e.g., Colonna 1987, 423; Maggiani 2005, cat. 129), where one finds evidence of sortes. Perhaps an Etruscan viewer would have read Athena as oracular in Achilles and Ajax scenes. As for modified astragaloi in Italian sanctuaries that likely served a ritual function, fewer have been discovered compared to Greece: a group of thirty-one astragaloi that had been both modified and pierced were found in a deposit at the sanctuary of Pyrgi (Baglione 1989–1990, 660–62), and others were excavated at the Archaic temple of S. Omobono in Rome and in the shrine under the Lapis Niger in the Forum Romanum (De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti 2013, 376–77). Unfortunately, most of the Achilles and Ajax vases from Etruria lack provenience, so it is difficult to ascertain a pattern of deposition among grave assemblages or votive offerings. It is not difficult, however, to postulate eschatological meaning for this theme, as well as subjects paired with it on vases. For example, the scene of Achilles, Ajax, and Athena on one side of a blackfigured amphora from Tarquinia is juxtaposed with soldiers’ departures on the other—a hoplite and archer standing between two old men—the viewer sensing



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that none of the warriors on the vase will return (Tarquinia RC1627, BAPD 9009516, Woodford 1982, cat. F3). This is one of the few Achilles and Ajax vases to have a documented findspot in an Etruscan tomb (Notizie degli Scavi 1885, 510); its deposition alongside a second neck amphora with warrior themes and cup with warrior in the tondo may indicate that the grave belonged to a fallen soldier. As for the Exekias amphora itself (fig. 4), for an Etruscan viewer the Achilles and Ajax scene on the obverse may have carried a poignant foreboding of death, while the more uplifting scene of the Dioskouroi on the reverse would have provided a reassuring image, the twins being understood in Etruria as guides for safe passage into the afterworld. Recognizing scenes of divination on Athenian vases, aside from the obvious depictions of hieroskopia, presents a challenge. In this paper, I have explored the possibility that cleromantic divination is referenced in at least some vases, including a small group of sacrifice images and large group of scenes featuring Achilles and Ajax. Admittedly, one risks a circular argument in undertaking such an analysis, given the scarcity and selectivity of source material. It is also possible, especially with the warrior scenes, that not everyone would have seen divination so readily. Just as astragaloi themselves were multifunctional objects, used in leisure as well as ritual (cf. De Grossi Mazzorin and Minniti 2013), perhaps to some viewers the vases did show just a game, and perhaps the scenes were intended by their painters to be multivalent. Asking these questions, however, acknowledges that ritual practices discounted or dismissed by many modern scholars as superstitious or magical played an important role in Greek (and Etruscan) religion. Even the smallest of objects allowed mortals to speak with the gods. Bibliography Alvar Nuño, Antón. 2006. “‘ΑΝΕΡΡΙΦΘΩ ΚΥΒΟΣ: Áyax y Aquiles tiran los dados.” MHNH 6:15–32. Amandry, Pierre. 1984. “Os et coquilles.” Pages 347–80 in L’Antre corycien, II. BCHSup 9. Paris: de Boccard. Austin, R. G. 1940. “Greek Board Games.” Antiquity 14:257–71. Baglione, M. Paola. 1989–1990. “Considerazioni sui santuari di Pyrgi e di Veio-Portonaccio.” Anathema 3–4:651–67. Bagnasco Gianni, Giovanna. 2001. “Le sortes etrusche.” Pages 197–220 in Sorteggio pubblico e cleromanzia dall’antichità all’età moderna: Atti della tavola rotonda. Edited by Federica Cordano and Cristiano Grottanelli. Milan: ET. Bar-Oz, Guy. 2001. “An Inscribed Astragalus with a Dedication to Hermes.” NEA 64:215–17. Beaumont, Lesley A. 2012. Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History. London: Routledge. Beazley, John D. 1966. The Development of Attic Black Figure. Revised and edited by Dietrich van Bothmer and Mary Moore. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Biers, William R. 1989–1990. “Gaming Heroes: Achilles and Ajax on a Lekythos in Missouri.” Muse 23–24:48–61. Boardman, John. 1978. “Exekias.” AJA 82:11–25. Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste. 1879–1882. Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité. 4 vols. Paris: Leroux. Broneer, Oscar. 1933. “Excavations on the North Slope of the Acropolis, 1931–1932.” Hesperia 2:329–417. Buchholz, Hans-Günter. 1987. “Brettspielende Helden.” Pages 126–84 in Sport und Spiel. Edited by Siegfried Laser. Vol. 3 in Archaeologia Homerica: Die Denkmäler und das frühgriechische Epos. Edited by Friedrich Matz and Hans Günter Buchholz. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Buchholz, Laura. 2013. “Identifying the Oracular Sortes of Italy.” Pages 111–44 in Studies in Ancient Oracles and Divination. Edited by Mika Kajava. AIRF 40. Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae. Caré, Barbara. 2012. “L’astragalo in tomba nel mondo greco: Un indicatore infantile? Vecchi problemi e nuove osservazioni a proposito di un aspetto del costume funerario.” Pages 403–16 in L’enfant et la mort dans l’antiquité, III: Le matériel associé aux tombes d’enfants; Actes de la table ronde internationale organisée à la Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aix-en-Provence, 20–22 janvier 2011. Edited by Antoine Hermary and Céline Dubois. BiAMA 12. Aix-en-Provence: Centre Camille Jullian. Champeaux, Jacqueline. 1990. “Sors oraculi: Les oracles en Italie sous la République et l’Émpire.” MEFRA 102:271–302. Chase, George H. 1946. “Two Sixth Century Attic Vases.” BMFA 44/256:45–50. Colonna, Giovanni. 1987. “Noti preliminari sui culti del santuario di Portonaccio a Veio.” ScAnt 1:419–46. Dasen, Véronique. 2015. “Achille et Ajax: Quand l’agôn s’allie à l’alea.” Revue du MAUSS 46:81–98. ———. 2016. “Jeux de l’amour et du hasard en Grèce ancienne.” Kernos 29:73–100. De Grossi Mazzorin, Jacopo, and Claudia Minniti. 2013. “Ancient Use of the KnuckleBone for Rituals and Gaming Pieces.” Anthropozoologica 48:371–81. Diehl, Erika. 1962. “Eine attische Amphora mit brettspielenden Helden.” Berliner Museen 12:32–39. Durand, Jean-Louis, and François Lissarrague. 1979. “Les entrailles de la cité: Lectures de signes; Propositions sur la hiéroscopie.” Hephaistos 1:92–108. Ekroth, Gunnel. 2001. “Altars on Attic Vases: The Identification of Bomos and Eschara.” Pages 115–26 in Ceramics in Context: Proceedings of the Internordic Colloquium on Ancient Pottery, Stockholm 1997. Edited by Charlotte Scheffer. SSCA 12. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Foster, Giraud V. 1984. “The Bones from the Altar West of the Painted Stoa.” Hesperia 53:73–82. Fowler, Robert L. 2000. “Greek Magic, Greek Religion.” Pages 317–43 in Oxford Readings in Greek Religion. Edited by Richard Buxton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Froning, Heide. 1982. Katalog der grieschichen und italischen Vasen, Museum Folkwang Essen. Essen: Museum Folkwang Essen. Gebauer, Jörg. 2002. Pompe und Thysia: Attische Tieropferdarstellungen auf schwarz- und rotfigurigen Vasen. Eikon 7. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Gilmour, Garth H. 1997. “The Nature and Function of Astragalus Bones from Archaeological Contexts in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean.” OJA 16:167–75.



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Govi, Elisabetta. 1995. “Vasi attici a figure nere dal santuario per il culto delle acque di Marzabotto.” Ocnus 3:61–76. Graf, Fritz. 2005. “Rolling the Dice for an Answer.” Pages 51–98 in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Edited by Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck. RGRW 155. Leiden: Brill. Greaves, Alan M. 2012. “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma: A Critical Review.” Hesperia 81:177–206. Grottanelli, Cristiano. 2001. “La cléromancie ancienne et le dieu Hermès.” Pages 155–96 in Sorteggio pubblico e cleromanzia dall’antichità all’età moderna. Edited by Federica Cordano and Cristiano Grottanelli. Milan: ET. Grummond, Nancy T. de. 2002. “Mirrors, Marriage, and Mysteries.” Pages 63–85 in Pompeian Brothels, Pompeii’s Ancient History, Mirrors and Mysteries, Art and Nature at Oplontis, and the Herculaneum “Basilica.” Edited by Thomas A. J. McGinn. JRASup 47. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology. Hedreen, Guy M. 2001. Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Henderson, Jeffrey. 1998. Aristophanes: Clouds, Wasps, Peace. LCL 488. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Höckmann, Olaf. 1996. “Brettspiele im Didymaion.” IstMitt 46:251–62. Johnston, Sarah Iles. 2005. “Introduction: Divining Divination.” Pages 1–28 in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Edited by Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck. RGRW 155. Leiden: Brill. Kenzler, Ulf. 2003–2004. “Helden der Hopliten: Aias und Achill auf attischen Vasen der spätarchaischen Zeit.” Hephaistos 21–22:81–101. Kindt, Julia. 2012. Rethinking Greek Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Körte, Gustav. 1877. “Sulla necropoli di Orvieto.” Annali dell’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica 49:95–184. Kossatz-Deissmann, Anneliese. 1981. “Achilleus.” LIMC 1:37–200. Kovacs, David, ed. 1998. Euripides 3: Suppliant Women, Electra, Heracles. LCL 9. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———, ed. 2002. Euripides 6: Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus. LCL 455. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kurke, Leslie. 1999. “Ancient Greek Board Games and How to Play Them.” CP 94:247–67. Larson, Jennifer. 1995. “The Corycian Nymphs and the Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.” GRBS 36:341–57. Lissarrague, François. 1990. L’autre guerrier: Archers, peltastes, cavaliers dans l’imagerie attique. Images à l’appui 3. Rome: École française de Rome. Mackay, E. Anne. 2010. Tradition and Originality: A Study of Exekias. BARIS 2092. Oxford: Archaeopress. Maggiani, Adriano. 1994. “Mantica oracolare in Etruria: Litobolia e sortilegio.” RdA 18:68–78. ———. 2005. “La divinazione in Etruria.” ThesCRA 3:52–78. Maurizio, Lisa. 1995. “Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Role at Delphi.” JHS 115:69–86. Mommsen, Heide. 1980. “Achill und Aias pflichtvergessen?” Pages 139–52 in Tainia: Roland Hampe zum 70. Geburtstag am 2 Dezember 1978 dargebracht von Mitarbeitern, Schülern und Freunden. Edited by Herbert A. Cahn and Erika Simon. Mainz: von Zabern. Moore, Mary B. 1980. “Exekias and Telamonian Ajax.” AJA 84:417–34.

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Neils, Jenifer. 2004. “Yet Another Red-Figure Panathenaic Amphora.” MeditArch 17:61–64. Neils, Jenifer, and John H. Oakley, eds. 2003. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past. New Haven: Yale University Press. Osborne, Robin. 2001. “Why Did Athenian Pots Appeal to the Etruscans?” WA 33:277–95. Reese, David S. 1985. “The Kition Astragali.” Pages 382–91 in Excavations at Kition 5: The Pre-Phoenician Levels Plans and Sections. Edited by Vassos Karageorghis. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, Cyprus. ———. 1989. “Faunal Remains from the Altar of Aphrodite Ourania.” Hesperia 58:63–70. ———. 2000. “Worked Astragali.” Pages 398–401 in Kommos: An Excavation on the South Coast of Crete, Vol. 4; The Greek Sanctuary. Edited by Joseph W. Shaw and Maria C. Shaw. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Robbins, Frank Egleston. 1916. “The Lot Oracle at Delphi.” CP 11:278–92. Robert, Carl. 1892. Die Nekyia des Polygnot. Vol. 16 of Hallisches Winckelmannsprogram. Halle: Niemeyer. ———. 1923. Die griechische Heldensage. Vol. 2 of Griechische Mythologie. Edited by Ludwig Preller. Berlin: Weidmann. Roisman, Joseph. 2005. The Rhetoric of Manhood: Masculinity in the Attic Orators. Berkeley: University of California Press. Romero Mariscal, Lucía. 2011. “Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game: Revisited from the Literary Tradition.” ClQ 61:394–401. Sabetai, Viktoria. 1993. “The Washing Painter: A Contribution to Wedding and Genre Iconography in the Second Half of the Fifth Century B.C.” PhD diss., University of Cincinnati. Schädler, Ulrich. 1996. “Spielen mit Astragalen.” JdI 111:61–73. Schefold, Karl. 1937. “Statuen auf Vasenbildern.” JdI 52:30–75. Schrader, Hans. 1909. Archaische Marmorskulpturen im Akropolismuseum zu Athen. Vienna: Hölder. Spivey, Nigel. 1994. “Psephological Heroes.” Pages 39–51 in Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis. Edited by Robin Osborne and Simon Hornblower. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Straten, Folkert T. van. 1995. Hierà Kála: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece. RGRW 127. Leiden: Brill. Thomas, Katerina N. 1985. “Three Repeated Mythological Themes in Attic Black-Figure Vase Painting.” PhD diss., Brown University. Thompson, David L. 1976. “Exekias and the Brettspieler.” ArchCl 28:30–39. Torelli, Mario. 1966. “Terza campagna di scavi a Punta della Vipera e scoperta di una laminetta plumbea inscritta.” ArchCl 18:283–99. Torelli, Mario, and Adriano La Regina. 1968. “Due sortes pre-romane.” Archeologia classica 20:221–29. Welcker, Friedrich G. 1851. Alte Denkmaler, III: Griechische Vasengemälde. Göttingen: Dieterich. Wiegand, Theodor. 1911. Siebenter vorläufiger Bericht über die von den Königlichen Museen in Milet und Didyma unternommenen Ausgrabungen. Berlin: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Williams, Dyfri. 1980. “Ajax, Odysseus, and the Arms of Achilles.” AntK 23:137–45. Wójcik, Maria Rita. 1989. Museo Claudio Faina di Orvieto: Ceramica attica a figure nere. Perugia: Electa Editori Umbri Associati. Woodford, Susan. 1982. “Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game on an Olpe in Oxford.” JHS 102:173–85.

Chapter Four Eric R. Varner

Incarnating the Aurea Aetas: Theomorphic Rhetoric and the Portraits of Nero

I

n his fourth eclogue, Vergil for the first time in Latin literature evokes the idea of a return of Saturn’s golden age, and he links the return with the birth of a divinely sanctioned child (4.6 redeunt Saturnia regna) or, in Anchises prophecy, explicitly with Augustus himself (6.7923: Augustus Caesar divi genus aurea condet/saecula). Early in the principate of Nero, several authors including Seneca, Calpurnius Siculus, Lucan, Antiphilus, and the author of the Einsiedlin Eclogues revive and amplify the Vergilian formulation of divinity, golden age, and youthful ruler. These concepts are also insistently broadcast in Neronian visual arts through the widespread use of theomorphic representations of the emperor. Theomorphic imagery, in which mortal and divine are allusively aligned, was not unique to the imperial period (Pollini 2012, 70; M. Bergmann 2013, 341). In the late Republic, for example, a realistic portrait of a general from the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor at Tivoli is elided with a standing Jupiter body type (fig. 1; Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 106513, h. 1.94 m; Scarpatti in Gasparri and Paris 2013, 48–50, no. 8, with figs.). This portrait, created ca. 75 BCE, amalgamates the general with Jupiter, through the stance and draping of the paludamentum (general’s cloak) around the hips, echoing established standing Jupiter compositions and underscoring the anonymous general’s position as Jupiter’s mortal incarnation on the day of the triumph.1 In the early Imperial period, Augustus, too, continues to employ allusions to Jupiter, most notably in the Gemma Augustea, which invokes the seated compositional type of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus, but also more subtly in his statue from Prima Porta, where, like the Tivoli general, the draping of the paludamentum echoes the standing Jupiter statuary type.2

1.  For standing Jupiter compositions, see Maderna 1988, 18–24; Post 2004. 2.  Gemma Augustea, Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum 7, IX a 79; 19 x 20 cm; Megow 1987, 155–63, no. A 10, pls. 3, 4, 5.1–4, 6, 7; 6.2–3, 5–6; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 149–64, 432–34, fig. 610; Pollini 2012, 84, 87, 92, 94; Fullerton 2015, 218–21, fig. 3.1.1; Prima Porta Statue of Augustus. Rome, Musei Vaticani, Braccio Nuovo, inv. 2290, h. 2.06 m; Boschung 1993, 179–81, no. 171, pls. 1.5, 69, 70,

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Figure 1. “Tivoli General”; Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 106513; photo E. R. Varner.

A headless statue from Tivoli originally depicting Augustus appears to be the earliest depiction of an emperor enthroned as Jupiter, and the type becomes more widely used in dynastic group monuments during the principate of Tiberius.3 Under Caligula, enthroned statues continue to be produced and the standing Jupiter type is now also used for portraits of the emperor. Colossal portraits from Carsulae and Ocriculum subsequently reworked to Claudius 82.1, 148.1, 213; Pollini 2012, 174–5; Squire 2013; for the Polycleitan and Lysippan echoes in the pose and possibly drapery of the statue, see Pollini 2012, 186–90. 3.  Tivoli, Museo Archeologico; Maderna 1988, 173, JT14, pl. 8; Boschung 2002, 77, fig. 17, pl. 4.4; Hallett 2005, 167–68, 31, no. B81; Koortbojian 2013, 163–64, fig. VII.1; Josephus describes another enthroned statue of Augustus as Jupiter set up by Herod at Cesarea Maritima, B.J. 1.21.7; for the early appearance of the enthroned imperial portrait, see Rose 1997, 75; Hallett 2005, 166–68.



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Figure 2. Claudius as Jupiter; from Lanuvium, Rome, Musei Vaticani, Sala Rotonda, inv. 243; photo E. R. Varner.

originally belonged to seated statues depicting Caligula as Jupiter, as confirmed by surviving fragments of the Carsulae statue and eighteenth-century excavation reports for the Ocriculum head (Otricoli: Rome, Musei Vaticani, Sala Rotonda 551, inv. 242; Boschung 2002, 68, no. 19.4, pl. 53.1; Varner 2010, 46–47, fig. 39; Carsulae, Museo, h. 0.65 m; Maderna 1988, JT 7; Varner 2010, 47–48, fig. 40). A statue of Caligula reconfigured as Augustus from Aenona employs the standing Jupiter type (Zadar, Archaeological Museum, inv. 1, h. 2.3 m; Boschung 1993, 80, 193, cat. 207, pls. 140, 219.2; B. Bergmann 2010, 290 cat. 15). In addition to

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Figure 3. Headless JulioClaudian emperor (Caligula?) as Jupiter; Nemi, Museo; photo E. R. Varner.

the Carsulae and Ocriculum likenesses, Claudius also employs Jupiter imagery in portraits created ex novo, including standing statues from Lanuvium now in the Vatican and from the Metroon at Olympia (fig. 2; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Sala Rotonda, inv. 243, h. 2.54 m; Maderna 1988, 157–58, no. JS2, pl. 3.1; Olympia, Museum Λ 125, h. 2.1 m; Maderna 1988, 158–60, no. JS 3, pl. 2.2). A headless enthroned statue from Nemi also originally depicted one of the Julio-Claudian emperors, likely Caligula, as Jupiter (fig. 3; Ghini 2013). Thus, it should not be surprising that theomorphic representations of Claudius’s heir Nero which sought to merge him with Jupiter, as well as other deities, especially Apollo, were a prominent component of the Neronian visual program in portraiture. Nero’s earliest surviving portraits in all media produced under Claudius stress the young heir’s prospective military roles, as in Claudian coin portraits in which Nero features the paludamentum, or civic, religious, and intellectual roles—as for instance a type 1 togate statue from Anzio, formerly in the Borghese collection and now in the Louvre, which is a precocious presentation of the



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Figure 4. Nero (type 1) with radiate crown, later recarved; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Galleria Chiaramonti 22.15, inv. 1528; photo E. R. Varner.

young heir as an orator (MA 1210, h. 1.38 m; de Kersauson 1986, 210–11, no. 99, figs. [with earlier literature]; Born and Stemmer 1996, 70–71, figs. 18–19; M. Bergmann 1998, 147–48, pl. 27.1; Fabréga-Dubert 2009, 218, no. 434; Cadario 2011, 178, fig. 2a; Sandrelli, Fabréega-Dubert, and Martinez in Coliva, FabréegaDubert, Martinez, and Minozzi 2011, 384 cat. 64). To be sure, the scope of Claudian representations of Nero is unprecedented for an imperial heir; the portraits introduce innovative sculptural and numismatic imagery, but divine allusions are largely absent. A recarved type 1 portrait of Nero in the Galleria Chiarmonti of the Vatican (fig. 4) appears to be a rare instance of theomorphic imagery in Nero’s boyhood likenesses (Musei Vaticani, Galleria Chiaramonti 22.15, inv. 1528, h. 0.196 cm; Wrede 1981, 302, no. 284; Andreae, Stadler, and Anger 1995, no. 88, pls. 172–73; M. Bergmann 1998, 169–70). The centrally parted hairstyle, boyish facial features with full receding lower lip and large ears are clear remnants of Nero’s first portrait type. The head exhibits five holes, presumably for the addition of metal rays, making this head the earliest known marble likeness to associate Nero with the sun god. At some point, the portrait was modified, with the hair at the top and back of the head being cut back into long, curving, centrally parted strands that now more closely resemble female coiffures. The overall effect of the recut image is similar to childhood portraits of Nero’s first wife, Claudia Octavia, or later, Nero’s daughter, Claudia Augusta.4 4.  Claudia Octavia: Grosseto, Museo Archeologico d’Arte della Maremma; Rose 1997, 116–18, cat. 45, no. 14; Wood 1999, 284; Claudia Augusta: Baia, Museo dei Campi Flegrei, Castello Aragonese, inv. 222740, h. 1.12 m; Rose 1997, 82, cat. 4.2, figs. 62–3; Wood 1999, 283–86, figs. 69–71; Boschung 2002,

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Nero’s Claudian boyhood portraits are also reflected in two season reliefs in the Palazzo Rondinini in Rome depicting Autumn (Galleria, inv. 1807, 67 × 40 cm; Bruto in Candilio and Bertinetti 2011, 180, no. 177) and Winter (Galleria, inv. 1807, 67 × 40 cm; Bruto in Candilio and Bertinetti 2011, 173–74, no. 173). Both seasons appear as a young boys, with cloaks draped over their shoulders and fastened with a bulla. Autumn holds an apple in his outstretched right hand and grapes in his left, while Winter holds a bird in his outstretched left hand and a dead rabbit in his right. Both seasons have the centrally parted hair, prominent ears and full receding lower lip seen in Nero’s type 1 portraits produced under Claudius. The draping of the cloak and pose of the seasonal figures recalls compositional types associated with the sun god Sol (Papini 2002). Upon his accession, however, Nero’s representations begin to adopt a much wider range of theomorphic rhetorics; Seneca stresses the new ruler’s resemblance to the gods in the De clementia, one of the first major productions of the socalled “accession literature” of the early Neronian period (1.7.1–3). Although there have been attempts to date the works of Calpurnius Siculus later, internal evidence within the poems strongly suggests that he is indeed writing in the early years of Nero’s principate and Calpurnius, too, employs numerous theomorphic allusions for the young princeps (deus ipse, ipse deus, deus idem, enim deus, iuvenis deus, melior deus, formam deorum, mea numina, and praesenti numine).5 An important Neronian cameo in Cologne accesses the traditional elision of the emperor with Jupiter, but adds important new elements, including a standing figure of Nero’s mother, Agrippina Minor, who extends the laurel crown (corona triumphalis) over the emperor’s head (Dom, Dreikönigenschrein I B a 17, 8.0 × 6.4 cm; Megow 1987, 4, 96, 101–2, 109, 137, 143, 149, 213–14, no. A 98, pl. 35.1.2; Born and Stemmer 1996, 72, 100, fig. 51; M. Bergmann 1998, 151–53, pl. 30.1–2; B. Bergmann 2013, 335, 342, fig. 20.2). Nero is enthroned, following seated Jupiter compositions, as established by the fifth century BCE Olympian Zeus of Phideias and the first century BCE Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus of Apollonius.6 Nero wears a second corona triumphalis, reduplicating the triumphal insignia, 114–15, no. 40.2, pl. 90.2, 91.2 (private Neronian portrait); Schneider 2003, 67, fig. 5; Alexandridis 2004, 168–69, cat. 133, pl. 28.1; Valeri in Zevi and Miniero 2008, 161; Lo Monaco in La Rocca, Lo Monaco, and Parisi 2011, 323. 5.  Ecl. 1.46 (deus ipse); 1.73 (melior deus); 1.84 (ipse deus); 4.7(deus ipse), 4.30 (deus idem), 4.48 (ipse deus), 4.144 (es enim deus), 4.158 (deo), 4.165 (deus ipse); 7.6 (iuvenis deus); 7.75 (deo); 7.78 (formam deorum); 7.80 (mea numina); 4.84 (praesenti numine). It seems highly improbable that a poet writing later, especially in the third century as some have suggested, would be able to create such convincing Neronian fictions. In particular, the encomiastic ecphrasis in Eclogue 7, describing in great detail Nero’s spectacular wooden amphitheater dedicated in 57 and destroyed in the fire of 64, is very unlikely to have been conceived long after Nero’s principate; for Eclogue 7 confirming Calpurnius as Neronian, see also Mayer 2006, 456. For growing scholarly consensus coalescing around a Neronian date for Calpurnius, see Karakasis 2016, esp. 1–3. 6.  On the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus by Apollonios, see Wünsche et al. 1998. Dio 54.25.4, 59. 28.7; Josephus A.J. 19.1.2; Ovid Fast. 6.37, 652; Suetonius Cal. 52.2; Andren 1976–



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and a flaming star springs from his forehead. The eagle of Jupiter decorates his throne. Nero wears Jupiter’s aegis and holds a scepter in his right hand. In his left, the more common attribute of a thunderbolt is replaced by the aplustre or decorated ship’s rudder, which underscores his supreme dominion over land and sea. The cameo’s elision of the emperor with Jupiter has echoes in Seneca’s De clementia, where Nero is urged to be both optimus and maximus, like the Capitoline Jupiter (1.19.9 [hoc adfectare, hoc imitari decet, Maximum ita haberi ut Optimus simul habeare]; S. Braund 2009, 352). In his fourth eclogue, Calpurnius Siculus also explicitly likens Nero to Jupiter and presents the young emperor as “Jupiter himself (Iuppiter ipse)” (4.93, 4.192). The star that springs from Nero’s head accesses a richly layered symbolism. Stars had long-standing associations with the protectors of Rome, the Dioscuri, and as such were particularly appropriate for Nero given the mytho-historical origins of the Ahenobarbi, as it was the twins who turned the beard of Nero’s ancestor from black to red as proof of the victory of the Romans at Lake Regillus in 498 BCE.7 Additionally, stars had been placed on representations of Divus Iulius to commemorate the comet that appeared in the sky at the ludi circenses in July of 44 and was subsequently interpreted as a cosmological confirmation of his apotheosis (Pollini 2012, 412–54). Stars were also added to the portraits of Germanicus and Augustus on the Ravenna relief, where Augustus appears with a standing Jupiter type body.8 Germanicus’s star may also be linked to his Latin translation of Aratus’s astronomical poem, the Phaenomena, which was itself a meditation on the golden age (aurea aetas).9 The star in the Cologne cameo functions on another level to recall the comet that appeared in 54 CE, foretelling the impending death of Claudius and the accession of Nero. That comet appears in Calpurnius Siculus’s first eclogue in Faunus’s prophecy of a new golden age (1.77–79). For Seneca, as well, the comet is a natural phenomenon that confirms the Stoic order of the cosmos and is not a harbinger of disaster (Nat.). The siderial imagery of the Cologne cameo also finds a literary echo in Seneca’s De clementia, where the ideal princeps (i.e., Nero) is compared to a shining and beneficent star (clarum ac beneficum sidus, 1977: Apollonios = Chalcidius (5th century) on Plato, Tim. 338 C; Andren 1976–1977, 67, no. 10; Nodelman 1987, 80–82). “Sed nimirum fiet hoc manifestius in aliqua similitudine et comparatione consideratum. Ut enim in simulacro Capitolini Iovis est una species eboris, est item alia, quam Apollonius artifex hausit animo, ad quam directa mentis acie speciem eboris pliebat-harum autem duarum specierum altera erit antiquior altera-sic etiam species quae silvam exornaviet secundae dignitatis est, illa vero alia, iuxta quam secunda species absoluta est, principalis est species, ed qua sermo habetur ad praesens.” Waznick 1962, 330–31. 7.  For the imagery of the Dioscuri, see van den Hoek in this volume. 8.  Rose 1997, 75; Pollini 2012, 90, 126 n. 112, 150, 159–60 n. 93, 160 n. 96, 160 n. 103, 417–18, 446–47 n. 32, figs. III.18, IX. 8, IX.10. 9.  On Germanicus’s translation, see Possanza 2004; for Aratus’s poem as an important vehicle for concepts of the aurea aetas in the Roman period, see Wyler 2012, 4.

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1.3.3; Levick 1983, 215 n. 16; S. Braund 2009, 83–191). The historian Q. Curtius Rufus’s reference to the novum sidus appears to be a similar reference to Nero and the auspicious beginnings of his reign, and perhaps obliquely to the comet of 54 as well (10.9.3).10 The astral imagery in literature and art from the beginning of Nero’s reign and its wider cosmological implications clearly announce a new aurea aetas. A second gem, now in Nancy, also strongly equates Nero with Jupiter (Méditathèque de Nancy, inv. Camée 1; M. Bergmann 1998, 149, 220 pl. 29.1–2; Markiewicz in Aillagon 2008, 84). On this cameo, Nero is depicted with bare upper torso and the aegis of Jupiter as he is carried aloft on the back of an eagle. Nero holds an augur’s staff (lituus) in his right hand. The Jupiter iconography of aegis and eagle are here combined to create a kind of apotheosis of the emperor, very similar to a cameo of Claudius in Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles 265, h. 10.7 × 11.5 cm; Megow 1987, 199–200, no. A 80, pl. 27.1; Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 2003, 109–10, no. 120; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 168, fig. 638; Pollini 2012, 137–38, fig. III.9; Koortbojian 2013, 58–9, fig. III.4). While the date of the Claudian cameo is debated and it could have been created late in his principate, more likely it is Neronian and thus represents the new Divus Claudius. The Nero cameo, however, which employ’s the emperor’s third portrait type, must have been created sometime between 59 and 64 and stands out as one of Nero’s most emphatically theomorphic images. Sculpted representations from early in Nero’s principate also visually melded the new emperor with Jupiter. A type 2 likeness in the Museo Capitolino was excavated in the environs of Tusculum at the Vigna Lucidi and should be associated with one of two surviving Jupiter body types now in the Villa Borghese (fig. 5; Stanza degli Imperatori, 4, inv. 418, h. 0.32 m; Fittschen and Zanker 1985, 17–18, no. 17; pl. 17; Cadario in La Rocca, Lo Monaco, and Parisi 2011, 264). One of the statues follows the seated compositional type and would have been comparable to Nero’s presentation on the Cologne cameo (fig. 6; Portico, inv. 27; h. 0.95 m; Moreno and Viacava 2003, 98–99, no. 59). The other statue conforms to the standing Jupiter type and has been restored with a modern head of Tiberius (fig. 7; Salone, inv. 39, h. 1.78; Moreno and Viacava 2003, 115, no. 78). Whether standing or seated, the display of the Capitoline head on one of these bodies confirms the production of Nero’s portraits as Jupiter in freestanding statuary from the outset of his principate. Tusculum also had close ties to the Domitii Ahenobarbi, Nero’s paternal ancestors, and the display of representations of the new emperor there would have been particularly resonant (Arce, Dupré, and Saquete 1997; Cadario 2011, 264). The nineteenth century 10.  Quodque imperium sub uno stare potuisset, dum a pluribus sustinetur, ruit. Proinde iure meritoque populus Romanus salutem se principi suo debere profitetur, qui noctis, quam paene supremam habuimus, novum sidus inluxit.



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Figure 5. Nero; Rome, Museo Capitolino, Stanza degli Imperatori 4, inv. 418; photo E. R. Varner.

excavations also yielded a seated statue of Apollo (Galleria Borgese, Portico, inv. 2; h. 0.85 m; Moreno and Viacava 2003, 65, no. 10). Another portrait of Nero in Cagliari has been cut down from a full-length statue of the emperor as Jupiter (Museo Nazionale, inv. 35533, h. 0.42 m; Meyer 2000, 30, 46, figs. 47, 82–83; Varner 2004, 69; Cadario 2011, 178, fig. 2b) (fig. 8). The diagonal extension of the left shoulder indicates that he likely held a scepter in a seated compositional type very similar to both Augustus on the Gemma Augustea and Tiberius on the Grand Camée.11 Additional evidence for seated depictions of Nero as Jupiter may also be provided by a torso in the Palazzo 11. Gemma Augustea, see above; Grand Camée; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles, inv. 264, 31 x 26.5 cm; Megow 1987, 202–6, no. A 85, pls. 32.5–10, 33 (with earlier literature); Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 2003, 219–20, no. 275; Zwierlein-Diehl 2007, 160–66, fig. 633.

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Figure 6. Jupiter; Galleria Borghese, Portico inv. 27; photo E. R. Varner.

Spada in Rome which seems to be late Neronian or early Flavian in date and may be from the Theater of Pompey (Palazzo Spada, Cortile; Coarelli 1971–1972, 117–18, fig. 24; Maderna 1988, 179–80, no. JT 27; Hallett 2005, 319, no. B115). As Vespasian does not conspicuously employ Jupiter imagery and is not known to have used the seated Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus type, the association of the Palazzo Spada fragment with Nero seems more plausible. In an epigram by Leonidas from the Greek Anthology, Nero is also implicitly likened to Zeus/ Jupiter as Poppaea is addressed in the poem as the wife of Zeus (Ποππαία, Διὸς εῦνι, 9.355). By 67, Nero is equated with Zeus Eleutherios (Zeus the liberator) for his liberation of Achaea (Weinstock 1971, 142–45; Champlin 2003, 137). Coins minted in Diosheiron in Lydia depict facing busts of Nero and Jupiter with the legend ΖΕΥΣ ΝΕΡΩΝ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ, effectively fusing the two images through the



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Figure 7. Jupiter; Villa Borghese, Salone, inv. 39; photo E. R. Varner.

inscription, which elliptically presents the emperor as Zeus Caesar (RPC 430, no. 2559; Nock 1930, 18). Edward Champlin, and Jocelyn Toynbee have argued that Nero’s identification with Apollo does not start in earnest until 59, when he is acclaimed by his retinue of youthful followers, the Augustiani at the Juvenilia as “Beautiful Caesar! Our Apollo, our Augustus, another Pythian! (ὁ καλὸς Καῖσαρ ὁ Ἀπόλλων ὁ Αὔγουστος εἶς ὡς Πύθιος; Dio 61 (62) 20.5) (Toynbee 1942; Champlin 2003, 113; Volk 2006, 199 n. 38 also speculates that the solar imagery may be post 59). Champlin further insists that Lucan establishes Nero as the new Apollo in his proem of the De bello civile, probably not first publicly recited until 60, and certainly the majority of Nero’s visual representations linking him to Apollo and Sol/Helios, culminating spectacularly in the project for the Colossus for the

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Figure 8. Nero; Cagliari, Museo Nazionale, inv. 35533; photo E. R. Varner.

Domus Aurea, are created later in the principate. Nevertheless, Nero is referred to as Νέως Ἡλίως at Sagalassos already under Claudius, and the reworked Chiaramonti head seems to have originally been an early type 1 portrait of Nero as Sol/Helios with radiate crown.12 An onyx cameo in Paris combines a type 2 profile portrait of Nero with a radiate crown, and stands as another early example of his use of divine solar attributes during the initial years of the principate (Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles 256; Babelon 1897, 118, no. 256, pl. 26; M. Bergmann 1998, 170; Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 2003, 114, no. 127).13 In addition, at least two portraits of Nero’s second type, in use between his accession in 54 and the introduction of a new type to mark his quinquennalia in 59, appear to have originally been displayed in Apolline contexts and suggest early connections between the new emperor and the god. It is also surely not coincidental that the news of Claudius’s death was delayed by several hours so that the new princeps Nero could appear before his subjects for the first time 12.  IGRom 3.345; Νέωι Ἡλίωι Νέρωνι Τιβερίωι Κλαυδίωι Καίσαρι [Τι.Κ]λ. Δαρεῖος καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτου [ἀ]νέθηκαν. 13.  Not considered ancient by Megow and thus omitted from his 1987 catalogue of imperial portrait cameos.



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Figure 9. Nero; Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 616; photo E. R. Varner.

on the monumental staircase of the Domus Tiberiana at precisely noon on 13 October 54 CE, an event that was eventually spectacularly commemorated every year through the carefully calculated solar alignment of the Octagon Room at the Domus Aurea.14 A veiled portrait of Nero as Pontifex Maximus was discovered at the Temple of Apollo Palatinus, which is likely to have been its original location (Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme [ex Museo Palatino], inv. 616, h. 0.43m; Gianetti in Gasparri and Paris 2013, 107, no. 58) (fig. 9). The head is worked for insertion into a separately carved togate body and must have been removed from its statue as a result of the memory sanctions enacted against Nero after his suicide. Within the temple of Apollo precinct, the image of Nero would have accompanied numerous other Julio-Claudian images, including a bronze portrait of Augustus in the guise of Apollo recorded to have been in the adjacent library, as well as portraits of Drusus and Germanicus.15 Nero’s 14.  For Claudius’s death just before dawn, Suetonius Claud. 44; on the delayed timing, Tacitus Ann. 12.68–69; see also Leach 2008, 276 and Slater 2009/2010, 260. For the solar alignment of the Octagon Room and the annual solar highlighting of the room with the water cascade at noon on 13 October, see Hannah and Magli 2011, 499–501. 15.  Augustus as Apollo (Pseudo-Acro on Horace Ep. 1.3.17: habitu et statu Apollonis); Servius on Verg. Ecl. 4.10: cum Apollonis cunctis insignibus); Champlin 2003, 142; Pollini 2012, 70–71. Germanicus and Drusus Minor supra capita columnarum of the baldacchino over the statue of Apollo Palatinus, Tabula Hebana, ca. 19–20 CE; Oliver and Palmer 1954, 227; Ehrenberg and Jones 1955, 94a, 1.1–5.

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Figure 10. Sol/Helios; Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 54745; photo E. R. Varner.

appearance at the temple as Pontifex Maximus would also have reinforced the official aspects of the god’s cult and the temple as the new repository of the Sibylline Books. A type 2 portrait reworked to represent Vespasian was discovered at the Temple of Apollo at Bulla Regia, where the cult of Augustan Apollo also seems to be associated with the imperial cult and the Dii Augusti.16 Many reworked portraits of condemned emperors retain their original display context, so it is likely that the initial portrait of Nero formed part of the temple’s decoration and the young emperor’s image would be linked with Apollo and as well as his deified predecessors, Augustus and Claudius. A relief with a radiate depiction of Sol/Helios also incorporates the iconography of Nero’s second portrait type into the depiction of the deity 16.  Tunis, Musée du Bardo, inv. C 1025, h. 0.46 m; Varner 2004, 54, fig. 54; for the temple of Apollo and the emperor cult at Bulla Regia see CIL 8.25510 (Apollini Aug.) CIL 8.2511 (Deo/ patrio/ Apollini/ Aug./ sac.; CIL 25512 (Apo[llini] Genio Col. Bul[lens. Regior.] et Diis A[ug sacrum; CIL 8.25513 (deo patrio Ap/ollini et diis A[ug sacrum); Fishwick 1987, 451 n. 34; 1989, 114.



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(Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 54745; Wrede 1981, 302 n. 32; Neverov 1986, 191; M. Bergmann 1998, 167–69, pl. 33.4; Tomei and Rea 2011, 237, no. 28) (fig. 10). The distinctive coiffure quotes the centrally parted hairstyles of Nero’s first and second portrait types, and also incorporates an upper section of locks that are a distinctive feature of the emperor’s type 2 coiffure. The physiognomy including full receding lower lip and large ears of the image are also reminiscent of Nero’s type 2 portraits. Stars, like that of the Cologne cameo, appear in the background of the relief with the same cosmic implications for the aurea aetas. While the relief is probably not intended as a portrait of Nero as Sol/Helios, it certainly reflects an early use of solar associations for Nero. The relief creates a recognizably Neronian version of the god, a Neroized Sol/Helios. As such, it recalls Martial’s description of statues of Hercules and Jupiter that borrowed facial features from Domitian.17 A lost relief from the imperial series at the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias also apparently paired Nero and Helios. An inscription naming Nero and Helios follows the same format as an inscription from another Neronian panel depicting Nero and the personification of Armenia, suggesting that the missing relief had a similar two-figure composition and paired a portrait of the emperor with a depiction of the god.18 Given the similar formats, it seems probable that the Nero-Helios relief is contemporary with the Nero-Armenia panel, which uses the emperor’s second portrait type and can thus be dated to ca. 54–59. Significantly, the Nero-Helios relief is the only one to pair an emperor with a god in the sequence of imperial panels from the Sebasteion and it visually proclaims the young emperor’s status as the comes (companion) of the god (Rose 1997, 167; Smith 2013, 141–43, C-Base 10, fi. 88, pls. 61–62). Another relief from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, depicting two nude boys, presents a more anomalous portrait (Smith 1987, no. 9; Rose 1997, 166, pl. 206; Smith 2013, 158–60, C-19, fig. 100, pls. 54. Smith 1987, no. 9; Rose 1997, 166, pl. 206; Smith 2013, 158–60, C 19, 100 pls. 74–75). The sequential position of this relief indicates that it should be dated to early in Nero’s principate. The boy at the right of the relief is depicted with a version of Nero’s centrally parted coiffure suggesting that the boy at left may be Britannicus. The parting of Nero’s hair has been shifted slightly to the left. Nero wears a chlamys pinned over his 17. 9.101.1: simili venerandus in Hercule Caesar (“Caesar, revered in a statue/portrait with his (Domitian’s) features”; trans. Henriksén 2012, 397); 9.101.24: Tarpeio deus hic commodet ora patri (“This god lends his face to the Tarpeian father [Jupiter]”); see also 9.64.1–5, and 9.65.1–4 for the elision of Domitan and Hercules; Henriksén 2012, 271, 275. 18.  [ΝΕΡΩΝ] ΚΛΑΥΔΙΟΣ ΗΛΙΟΣ ΔΡΟΥΣΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ ΓΕΡΜΑΝΙΚΟΣ Smith 2013, 181, C-Base 8, figs. 124, pl. 95; for Nero Armenia, see Smith 2013, 140–3, C 8, C-base 10, fig. 88, pls. 58–59.

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right shoulder. As in the Rondanini season reliefs, the chlamys, together with the contraposto pose and curve of the left hip, recall statuary types associated with Sol. In the Aphrodisias relief Nero holds a globe, another attribute used in depictions of Sol, in his extended left hand and an aplustre or decorated ship’s steering rudder in his right and, as in the Cologne cameo, it evokes Roman dominance over land and sea. Its appearance at Aphrodisias may suggest that the attribute was particularly promoted in the early years of Nero’s principate. The pairing of Nero and Britannicus also alludes to the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, whose imagery had been used for earlier imperial brotherly pairs, Tiberius and Drusus, and Gaius and Lucius.19 Nero’s affinities with the sun are also prevalent in literature from the early years of Nero’s principate. Seneca employs a solar comparison in his description of Nero in the De clementia, likely written sometime late in 55 or early in 56, where the emperor is explicitly likened to the sun: “It happens that you can be hidden no more than the sun. There is a great light facing you and the eyes of all are rotated towards it. You think you are going out? You are rising.” (1.8.4).20 Seneca’s treatise in part draws on the established literary genre of kingship theory which also incorporates solar tropes (Frears 1976; S. Braund 2009, 251). Seneca’s solar metaphor recalls an earlier comparison of Nero to the sun that occurs in Antiphilus’s poem in praise of a successful speech Nero had delivered to the Roman Senate on behalf of the island of Rhodes in 53 that restored rights to the Rhodians that had been suspended by Claudius: I, Rhodes, once the Sun’s island, am now Caesar’s, and I boast of equal light from both. Just as my fire was dying a new radiance illuminated me. O Sun, surpassing your light, Nero shone forth. How shall I say to whom I owe more? The one revealed me from the sea, the other rescued me just as I was sinking.21

Antiphilus’s epigram was included in the final omega section of the Garland of Philip. Since the poem must postdate Nero’s speech on behalf of the 19. Champlin 2011; Smith (2013, 160) has noted that the harmonic depiction of Nero and Britannicus likely reflects an “official” version of Nero’s relationship with his step-brother and the latter’s accidental death, rather than the later hostile traditions which accuse Nero directly of murdering Britannicus. 20.  Tibi non magis quam soli latere contingit. multa contra te lux est, omnium in istam conversi oculi sunt; prodire te putas? oreris. 21.  Anthologia Palatina 9.178 (trans. Cameron 1993, 56) Antiphilus: ΄Ως πάρος Άελίου, νῦν Καίσαρος ἁ Ρόδος εἰμὶ νᾶσος, ἴσον δ᾽ αὐχῶ φέγγος ἀπ᾽ ἀμφοτέρων. ἤδη σβεννυμέναν με νέα κατεφώτισεν ἀκτίς Ἅλιε, καὶ παρὰ σὸν φέγγος ἔλαμψε Νέρων. πῶς εἴπω, τίνι μᾶλλον ὀφείλομαι; ὃς μὲν ἔδειζεν ἐξ ἁλός, ὃς δ᾽ ἤδη ῥύσατο δυομέναν.



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island, Philip’s compilation of the Garland cannot be any earlier than very late in Claudius’s reign or early in Nero’s (Cameron 1980, 43–62; Cameron 1993, 56–65; Höschele 2017, 2–3). The Garland’s proem underscores the newness of its epigrams in the collection, as opposed to the considerably older poems assembled in its predecessor, the Stephanos of Meleager (Anthologia Palatina 4.2; Höschele 2017, 2–3). Philip’s insistence on the newness of the poems he has chosen fits very well within the artistic climate celebrating the new emperor, Nero, at the outset of his principate. Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, likely composed for the Saturnalia of 54 shortly after Nero’s accession, provides the most insistent early linkage of the new emperor and Apollo.22 Apollo describes Nero as similar to himself in “looks, grace, song and voice (ille mihi similis vultu similisque decore/nec cantu ne voce minor) and Nero is like Lucifer and Hesperus, the evening and morning stars, and the blazing sun; furthermore, his face shines with brilliance (Apocol. 4.2032). Apollo also describes Nero’s long flowing hair which was a prominent new feature of the emperor’s type 2 portraits (adfuso cervix formosa capillo) that deliberately recalled the god’s own long coiffures. Literary elisions of Nero and Apollo are not confined to Seneca. Calpurnius Siculus compares Nero’s face to both Apollo and Mars (Martis vultus et Apollinis; Ecl. 7. 84.). Calpurnius also presents Nero as companionate with Apollo (comitatus Apolline Caesar) in Ecl. 4, where he implicitly compares him to Palatine Apollo, echoing the pairing of Nero and Helios in the Aphrodisias panel (4.87, 159).23 For the contemporary anonymous author of the Einsiedlin Eclogues Nero is “your own Apollo (vester Apollo and tuus Apollo).”24 Although the sincerity of its flattery has often been questioned, the proem to Lucan’s De bello civile is rife with theomorphic and celestial allusions for Nero. The proem does not appear to have been publicly recited any earlier than the Neronia of 60, but could have been composed before that and thus be more closely connected chronologically with other authors’ evocations of Nero with Apollo and the sun (1.48).25 In the proem, Lucan posits Nero’s apotheosis in the guise of either Jupiter or Apollo (1.47–48; 22.  Although Champlin has proposed a slightly later date for the composition of parts of the Apocolocyntosis, an earlier date for the entire work seems preferable (2003); see Levick (1983) 215; Nauta 1987; Cole 2006, 183; Slater 2009/2010, 257–58. 23.  For Champlin, Calpurnius’s formulation of Nero as comitatus Apolline indicates much later, post-Neronian date for the author, as he sees the presentation of an emperor as comes of a god as a third century phenomenon (1978, 96); nevertheless, Calpurnius’s comitatus Apolline is not comes Apollinis (as it would be in later comparable examples). In addition. Herc. Com. on coins may be an abbreviation for Herculis Comes (or a deliberately ambiguous reference to Hercules Commodianus as well) already in the late 2nd century, see Hekster 2002, 117–29. 24. 1.37: vester Apollo; 2.38: tuus iam regnat Apollo. 25.  Seu te flammigeros Phoebi conscendere currus; on the Augustan implications of the passage, see Thompson 1964; for Nero’s comparison with Apollo and Helios in contemporary literature, see Hemsoll 1990, 29.

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Henderson 2013, 175). Again Nero is refulgent and Lucan likens him to a star (obliquo sidere 1.55). Whether satirical or not, Lucan’s proem clearly relies on the theomorphic rhetorics already in play early in Nero’s principate. M. Dewar (1994, 202) has argued that the proem must be read within the extravagant and overblown conventions of panegyric. Certainly, by the time of Nero, the identification of the ruler with the gods was an established topos, which would be even more elaborately realized in the visual arts later in his principate.26 All of these theomorphic alignments in the visual arts and the celebratory, inaugurative “accession literature” that included the De clementia, the Apocolocyntosis, Calpurnius’s Eclogues, the Einsiedlin Eclogues, and perhaps Lucan’s proem are unparalleled; together they invest the person of the god-like emperor with an unprecedented amount of youthful promise and announce the return of the golden age.27 The Apocolocyntosis stages Nero’s accession as the beginning of the most happy era (initio saeculi felicissimi); the Fates themselves spin out the new golden age (aurea saecula); Apollo foretells that the new emperor will be the guarantor a joyful era (felicia saecula).28 The Apocolocyntosis was apparently written for Nero’s first Saturnalia as emperor in 54, its recitation then would have had even more powerful connections to the renewal of Saturn’s golden age during the annual festivities.29 Nero is also positioned as the guarantor of worldwide prosperity and happiness in a papyrus that appears to be a draft of a public proclamation celebrating Nero’s accession (P.Oxy. 7.1021). The papyrus invests the new emperor with the hope and expectation of the world, and positions Nero as the favorable genius of the world and the source of all good things (Horn 1922, 494–95).30 The new Neronian golden age will also rival and surpass the previous aurea aetas of Augustus (Slater 2009/2010, 277–78). Indeed, all of the Neronian accession writers in Apolline and golden age references very consciously evoke their Augustan counterparts, especially Vergil’s fourth Eclogue, book 9 of the Aeneid, and Horace’s Carmen Saecularis (see, e.g., Henderson 2013, 173–76 and M. Bergmann 2013, 342). Calpurnius Siculus also explicitly invokes the new golden age—“a golden age will be reborn with secure peace” (aurea secura cum pace renascitur aetas)—as well as the aurea saecula and the beata saecula, while the author of the Einsiedlin Eclogues formulates an aurea regna.31 For Seneca peace is a central theme of the 26.  For the long history of rulers’ identification with the sun, see Frears 1976, 495. 27. On the “accession literature” see Wiseman 1982, 67; on the protreptic nature of the De clementia, see S. Braund 2009, 11–16, and 23. 28.  Apocol. 1.2; Apocol. 4.9, aurea formoso descendunt saecula filo; Apocol. 4.23–4, felicia … saecula praestabit; on the golden age imagery, see Slater 2009/2010, 257–79. 29.  Cole has suggested that Apocol. 4.1.30 (talis Caesar adest) may indicate that Nero himself was present in audience for recitation of the work at the Saturnalia of 54 (2006, 183); for the Saturnalia and the recreation of the golden age, see Champlin 2003, 150. 30.  The papyrus is dated 35 days after the death of Claudius. 31.  Ecl. 1.42; aurea saecula, Ecl. 4.6–7; beata saecula, Ecl. 1.44–45; aurea regna, Eins. Ecl. 2.22.



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new era that will flourish together with iustitia, pudicitia, securitas and dignitas.32 Peace and the absence of war are paramount concerns in the second Einsiedlin Eclogue that may reflect the initial Neronian interventions in Armenia and the subsequent cessation of hostilities early in 55, which was celebrated with an ovation and portrait statue in the Temple of Mars Ultor. Calpurnius further defines the new Neronian peace as perpetual (perpetuam … pacem) but he also articulates it as a distinctly Roman phenomenon by calling it pacem togatam.33 Seneca adduces additional virtues for the new felix ac purum saeculum of piety, integrity, modesty and faith.34 The statue and ovation were voted in 55, after direct military conflict with the Parthians was avoided and they evacuated Armenia. Nero’s portrait was designated for the Temple of Mars Ultor and was equal in size to the cult image (effigiemque eius pari magnitudine ac Martis Ultoris eodem in templo censuere, Tacitus Ann. 13.8). Although we cannot know if Nero’s colossal statue employed the kind of theomorphic rhetoric of some of his other early images, its placement in the temple effectively made it the spectacular culmination of Augustus’s sculptural program which embodied a monumental history of Rome that prominently featured Nero’s ancestors, the Julii, the Kings of Alba Longa, the Summi Viri, Aeneas, and Romulus. Within the temple, Nero is grouped with images of the divine ancestors of the Roman people, Mars and Venus, as well as with his own divine ancestor, Divus Iulius. Nero, then is presented as a kind of co-divinity (suntheos, sunnaos) with his divine ancestors.35 Eugenio La Rocca (1995, 79–80) underscored the Forum of Augustus’s importance as a site closely linked to the emperor cult, and Nero’s statue would have been an important component of sacrifices made to his genius and to Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus that were enacted by the Arval Brothers on 23 June 59 CE (Smallwood 1967, 22, no. 22). The extraordinary statue and its display context may also inform visual allusions in Calpurnius Siculus’s Eclogues. As mentioned earlier, the seventh eclogue compares Nero’s countenance to that of Mars (Martis vultus, Ecl. 7.84). Although G. B. Townend (1980, 173, n. 41) finds Calpurnius’s reference to Mars “without parallel” and ascribes it to renewal of military conflict with the Parthians and the new campaigns led by Gn. Domitius Corbulo in 58, it is just as likely that Calpurnius’s language reflects the earlier pairing of images of Nero

32.  Clem. 1.19.8: sub quo iustitia, pax, pudicitia securitas, dignitas florent; S. Braund 2009, 351; for securitas see also Clem. 1.1.8: securitas alta, affluens, ius supra omnem iniuriam positum. 33.  Ecl.4.9: pacemque togatam; 4.85: perpetuamque … pacem. 34.  Clem. 2.1.4: pietatem integritatemque cum fide ac modestia resurgere … felici ac puro saeculo; S. Braund 2009, 386–87. 35. For suntheo, sunnaos, see Nock 1930; for the meaning of the sculptural and poetic program in the Forum, see Geiger 2008.

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and Mars within the temple, a date more commensurate with the accessional allegory in the rest of the poem. Calpurnius couples his comparison of Nero to Mars with that of Nero to Apollo (again vultus … Apollonis) and the Augustan cult image of Mars Ultor was noteworthy for its use of Apolline symbols (Romeo in La Rocca, Lo Monaco, and Parisi 2011, 184). In Ecl. 1, Calpurnius also employs highly unusual visual allusions which strongly suggests his working knowledge of the artistic program of the Forum of Augustus. In describing Bellona, the goddess of war, as a bound captive, Calpurnius draws on Vergil’s description of Furor enchained from book 1 of the Aeneid. Both passages employ nearly identical imagery and language. Calpurnius renders Bellona as dabit impia victas post tergum Bellona manus spoliataque telis in sua vesanos torquebit viscera morsus (“And unholy/impious Bellona with her conquered hands behind her back and deprived of weapons will turn her furious teeth upon her own entrails,” Ecl. 1.46–48) and Vergil depicts Furor as Furor impius intus/ saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus aenis/post tergum nodis fremet horridus ore cruento) (“Impious/unholy Furor inside sitting on savage arms and bound behind his back with a hundred knots of bronze will scream horribly with bloody mouth,” Aen. 1.294–296).36 Both Bellona and Furor are described as impious, conquered, and with their hands bound behind their backs, and both authors employ a vivid and bloody description of biting mouths. Significantly, both passages also echo the well-known painting by Apelles, representing Alexander in triumph and War with hands bound behind its back, which Augustus displayed in his Forum, likely in the aula which also held his colossus.37 Servius certainly recognized the Vergilian correspondences with the painting which was apparently still visible when Servius was writing his commentary on Vergil in the fourth century (aut sicut quidam FUROR IMPIUS INTUS non in aede Iani, sed in alia in foro Augusti introeuntibus ad sinsistrum, fuit bellum pictum et furor sedens super arma devinctus eo habitu quo poeta dixit, ad Aen. 294). By the reign of Nero, the painting, together with its pendant of Alexander (with Victory, Castor and Pollux), had only recently been altered by Claudius, who replaced the portrait features of Alexander in the paintings

36.  Other echoes of the Aeneid in Ecl. 7 include the aurea … aetas at l. 42 which compares with Aen. 6.792–793, aurea … saecula which will be established by Augustus; Iulis at l. 45 recalls Jupiter’s speech to Venus (Aen.1.288); romanae … molis at l. 84, evokes tantae molis erat Romanam condere of Aen.1.33; see Davis 1987, 40–43 and Karakasis 2016, 25–27 for additional Vergilian intertexts and echoes. 37. Pliny Nat. 35.27: super omnes divus Augustus in for suo celeberrima in parte posuit tabulas duas, quae Belli faciem pictam havent et triumphum, item Castores et Victoriam; Nat. 35.93: mirantur eius (Apelles) … Romae Castorem et Pollucem cum Victoria et Alexandro Magno, item Belli imaginem restrictis ad terga manibus, Alexandro in curru triumphante; for a discussion of Pliny’s use of Belli facies and Belli imago, see Daut (1984). On the display of the paintings in aula of the colossus see Ripari 1995, 66 and La Rocca 1995, 86–87.



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with those of Augustus (Pliny Nat. 35.94).38 The statue, with its rich display context within the Forum of Augustus that included Apelles’s paintings, and the Calpurnian eclogues create an evocative invocation of the new emperor and the aurea aetas. Nero’s association with Mars is furthered in an unusual fragmentary sardonyx cameo in Berlin that features a type 4 portrait with helmet (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung, inv. 30219.710, 2.22 × 2.02 × 0.49 cm; Megow 1987, 96, 98, 215, no. A 100, pl. 35.4; Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 2003, 117, n. 3; Platz-Horster 2012, 79, no. 56, pl. 11). The Berlin cameo is the earliest surviving image of an emperor wearing a helmet, and follows Hellenistic precedents including a cameo in Paris variously identified as Alexander the Great, Seulukos I Nicator, or Alexander Balas (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, 227, 7.7 × 8 cm; Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 1995, 50–52, no. 33; Gentili 2013, 252, no. 18). The next emperor to use the attribute is Hadrian, in a statue from Ceprano, followed by Marcus Aurelius as Mars with Faustina Minor as Venus in a double portrait statue; the helmet would not appear again in imperial representations until Trajan Decius.39 The general shape of the helmet and visor with volutes in the Berlin cameo closely resembles that of the statue of Trajan Decius in the Centrale Montemartini, although without the crest. The Berlin cameo amplifies the Mars imagery that had been invoked by Calpurnius Siculus. The innovative martial imagery of the gem suggests that it may also reflect the military expeditions to Ethiopia and the Caucasus that were being planned late in Nero’s principate (D. Braund 2013, 96–98). The theomorphic rhetorics employed by Neronian artists and authors at the outset of Nero’s principate all seek to instantiate the aurea aetas through words and images. Their conceptualization of the new Neronian golden age, especially in terms of Apolline and solar imagery, would find its most spectacular expression in the Colossus project for the Domus Aurea. Although authors both ancient and modern have construed the Colossus as a monumental expression of Nero’s overweening megalomania that sought to inappropriately memorialize the emperor as the sun god, the original aims of the project were in fact far more 38.  Quas utrasque tabulas divus Augustus in fori sui celeberrimis partibus dicaverat simplicitate moderata; divus Claudius pluris existimavit utrisque escisa Alexandri facie divi Augusti imagines addere. 39.  Hadrian: Rome, Museo Capitolino, Salone 13, inv. 634, h. 2.115 m; Fittschen and Zanker 1985, 48–49, no. 48, pl. 53; Hallett 2005, 245–46, fig. 141; Hallett raises the possibility that this statue is not strictly a theomorphic portrait, but rather a Mars Augustus (or Hadrianianus). Marcus Aurelius: Rome, Museo Capitolino, Salone 34, inv. 652; Fittschen and Zanker 1985, 69–70, no. 64, pl. 74–75; Trajan Decius: Rome, Centrale Montemartini 3.85, inv. 778, h. 2.18 m; Fittschen, Zanker and Cain 2010, 153–54, no. 151, pl. 190, beil. 30 c–d; Danti in La Rocca, Lo Monaco, and Parisi 2015, 362–63, no. 1.51. Avagliana (2011) has recently suggested that the Ares Borghese type, used in the Ceprano Hadrian and the Marcus-Faustina group may actually represent Jason originally, but acquiring associations with Mars by the Roman period.

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calibrated and situated within an already rich tradition of Neronian and earlier theomorphic imagery.40 Commissioned from the renowned sculptor of colossi, Zenodorus, the ca. 120-foot tall statue was intended as the centerpiece of the vestibule that allowed access to Nero’s new residence from the Via Sacra in the Roman Forum. Not completed at the time of Nero’s suicide on 9 June 68, the Colossus was ultimately dedicated by Vespasian in 75. Based on a Flavian intaglio in Berlin and coins minted by Gordian III in the third century, the basic appearance and attributes of the statue can be reconstructed (M. Bergmann 1994}; M. Bergmann 1998, 190, fig. 3). The statue depicted the god standing with right hand resting on a ship’s rudder and left arm leaning on a pedestal. As in traditional representations of Sol-Helios, the head is radiate. The ship’s rudder, however, is a striking new innovation in solar imagery and it replaces the whip used to guide the chariot of the sun, which is the standard attribute for the right hand. The rudder is borrowed from the iconography of the goddess Fortuna who, in standing representations, also rests her right hand on it. The incorporation of the rudder enriches the solar imagery with notions of the divine fortune of the city and makes the statue syncretic. The globe on which the ship’s rudder sits is also a traditional attribute of images of Sol-Helios, although it is normally held in the extended left hand. Together, the rudder and globe also symbolize Roman dominance of land and sea. The appearance of the rudder also recalls Nero’s earlier deployment of the aplustre in the Cologne cameo and on the Aphrodisian relief. A nexus of monuments apparently related to the Colossus suggest the range of theomorphic solar imagery possible in the later years of Nero’s principate. A 120-foot tall painting, whose commensurate scale should indicate a close connection to the Colossus and its imagery, was visible in the Horti Maiani (Pliny Nat. 35.51).41 Pliny does not record the iconographic details of the painting, but implies that Nero commissioned it as nothing less than a colossal portrait of himself (colosseum se) without actually using any of the words typically associated with portraits, such as imago or effigies. Pliny’s use of the adjective colloseus also connects the painting with the Colossus. Earlier in Book 34 in his accounting of colossi, which ends with the Colossus of Nero, Pliny had carefully defined the word as especially associated with large-scale statuary (Nat. 34.39).42 Indeed, Pliny’s use of colosseus to describe the painting is the only instance in the entire Historia Naturalis where the words colossus or colosseus/colossaeus are not associated with statuary. 40.  For recent reassessments of the Colossus and its theomorphic implications under Nero, see Bergmann 1994; 1998, 190–93; 2013; Smith 2000. 41.  Nero princeps iusserat colosseum se pingi cxx pedum linteo. incognitum ad hoc tempus. Ea pictura, cum peracta esset in Maianis hortis, accensa fulmine cum optima hortorum parte conflagravit. 42.  Moles quippe excogitatas videmus statuarum quas colossaeas vocant turribus pares (“We see a vast number of statues which are called colossal in as much as they seem like towers”).



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Figure 11. Nero; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 348; photo E. R. Varner.

The Colossus’s solar imagery also connects it to the gold embroidered purple awning that was specially made for the Theater of Pompey for the celebrations surrounding the coronation of Tiridates in 66. Cassius Dio, indicates that the awning featured a central depiction of Nero driving a chariot surrounded by golden stars, effectively theomorphosizing Nero with Apollo-Helios.43 The awning’s solar rhetoric is also reflected in the relief decoration of a headless 43.  62 (63); 6.2: τά γε μὴν παραπετάσματα τὰ διὰ τοῦ ἀέρος διαταθέντα, ὅπως τὸν ἥλιον ἀπερύκοι, ἁλουργὰ ἦν, καὶ ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν ἅρμα ἐλαύνων ὁ Νέρων ἐνέστικτο, πέριζ δὲ ἀστέρες χρυσοῦ ἐπέλαπον.

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cuirassed statue from the series of Julio-Claudian portraits decorating the Roman Theater at Caere (fig. 11).44 In the upper section of the cuirass, a radiate ApolloHelios drives the four-horsed solar chariot over stylized waves. The god’s full and rounded facial features, and the elaborate coiffure of parallel curls, closely resemble Nero’s later portraits. The statue was originally completed with a separately carved portrait head of Nero’s last type, making an implicit equation of god and emperor. The cuirass also features a highly unusual mythological scene of kneeling Arimaspi offering bowls to winged griffins just below the Neronian Apollo-Helios. Ancient authors identify the Arimaspi as one-eyed people from Scythia legendary for their conflicts with the griffins (Herodotus Hist. 3.116, 4.13, 27; Gergel 1994, 196). The cuirass depicts the Arimaspi kneeling in front of the griffins, creatures sacred to Apollo. The kneeling posture suggests subservience, proskineisis, and perhaps also clemency; in addition, they recall Tiridates’s double public obeisance to Nero at the Forum Romanum and the Theater of Pompey during the coronation ceremonies. Dio’s account of the ceremonies includes Tiridates kneeling before Nero as a god and hailing the emperor as “my god” (τὸν ἐμὸν θεόν, 62.[63] 5.2). The combination of Neronian Apollo-Helios, Arimaspi, and griffins also appears on an almost identical cuirass discovered at Susa (now in Turin and restored with a private third century likeness) that also boldly celebrates Nero’s themorphic linkages to the sun god (Turin, Museo di Antichità, without inv. no., h. 1.95 m; Stemmer 1978, 96, pl. 64.1–2; Rose 1997, 85, and n. 17). The emperor and sun god are again visually melded in an altar dedicated to the Sun and the Moon by Eumolpus, a slave in charge of furnishings at the Domus Aurea, together with his daughter, Claudia Pallas (Florence, Museo Archeologico, inv. 86025; CIL 6.3719; M. Bergmann 1998, 194–201, pl. 38.1–4; Hallett 2005, 242–3; Cadario 2011, 183, fig. 8; Tomei and Rea 2011, 237, no. 27) (fig. 12). The bust length depiction of the radiate sun god borrows its fuller rounded facial features and hairstyle from Nero’s fourth portrait type and recalls the appearance of the sun god on the Caere and Turin cuirasses. A second altar with a bust of Sol, dedicated by Tiberius Claudius Flelix, Claudia Helpis, and their son Tiberius Claudius Alypus to Sol Sanctissimus, has clear echoes with the Eumolpus altar and the cuirasses (Musei Capitolini, Galleria Lapidaria, inv. 2412, h. 085m; CIL 6.710; Chausson 1995, 675–77; M. Bergmann 1998, 197, pl. 39.1) (fig. 13). The facial features and coiffure of the deity again reflect developments in Nero’s later portraits. Saturn is represented on the left side of the altar, also

44. Musei Vaticani, Museo Gregoriano Profano, inv. 348, h. 2.13 m/2.3 (with current head); Stemmer 1978, 96–97, no. VIIa 2; Fuchs in Fuchs, PLiverani, Santoro 1989, 68–70, no. 5, with figs. (with previous literature); Gergel 1994, 196–97; Rose 1997, 83–86, cat. 5, pl. 64 (identified as Germanicus); Cadario 2011, 177.



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in bust form, and he adds an additional element of golden age rhetoric to the imagery (Chausson 1995, 677). The Eumolpus altar clearly states that it is a dedication to the Sun and the Moon (Soli et Lunae donum). It does not, however, mention the emperor, and so its imagery should not be read as a strictly theomorphic portrait of the emperor as the sun god. Instead it fuses imperial and divine identities and accesses a recognizably Neronian instantiation of Apollo-Sol-Helios. In addition, the altar provides direct, contemporary visual evidence for the iconographical program of the Colossus project itself, as well as the related imagery of the colossal painted “portrait” in the Horti Maiani, and strongly suggests that the Colossus was not an unequivocal portrait of the emperor as the sun god created in a grotesquely inappropriate scale as later authors claimed, but rather a carefully nuanced representation of the divinity inflected in a recognizably Neronian manner. As F. Albertson (2001, 97–99) has noted, Pliny is the first author to leave the impression that Nero intended the Colossus as a theomorphic portrait of himself

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Figure 13. Altar dedicated to Sol Sanctissimus by Ti. Claudius Felix, Claudia Helpis and Ti. Claudius Alypus; Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv.; photo E. R. Varner.

and he says that the Colossus was “designed as a representation of that emperor (Nero).”(Nat. 34.45).45 Pliny’s language is telling in that he does not employ the terms more closely associated with portraits, effigies or imago, but rather simulacrum, which is usually used for statues of divinities. Simulacrum implies the semblance of the statue with the emperor and leaves the decided impression, like his description of the painting from the Horti Maiani, that Nero intended it as a portrait. 45.  Destinatum illius principis simulacro.



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Nero and Apollo are also fused on an amethyst intaglio in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which depicts the god standing with a tripod at his left and a lyre at his right (Cabinet des Medailles, 5.6 × 3.5 cm; Vollenweider and Avisseau-Broustet 2003, 114–15, no. 128) (fig. 14). In addition, the contraposto pose, curved hip and cloak are related to the statuary type of Sol. As with the Eumolpus and Sol Sanctissimus altars or the Caere and Turin cuirasses, the god’s facial features and coiffure have been infused with elements from Nero’s final portrait type. The diffusion of this blended imagery is further attested on the Jupiter Column at Mainz, where Sol-Helios Figure 14. Apollo, amethyst intaglio; Paris, Biblois represented in the four-horsed theque Nationale; photo Wikimedia, Marie Lan chariot with the broader Neronian Nguyen. facial features and coiffure of parallel locks framing the face (Bauchhenss 1984, 8, pl. 27). The column dates to ca. 59–66, so firmly within the arc of time of Nero’s last two portrait types (Bauchhenss 1984, 32–33). Triclinium A from the complex at Murecine outside Pompeii also features a Nero-like Apollo as the focal point of its central wall (Pompeii, Ufficio Scavi, inv. 85182, 2.5 × 500 m; Mastroroberto 2007; Mattusch 2009, 246–47, no. 111). The configuration of the face, with fuller facial features and distinctive full, receding lower lip, again recalls the emperor’s last two portrait types. Although the function of the Murecine complex has not been fully explicated, its multiple dining rooms would suggest a commercial establishment or seat of an important collegium. Its furnishings included an elaborate silver service with two canthari, likely created to commemorate the treaty of Brindisium between Octavian and M. Antonius. Although the Apollo from Triclinium A has been interpreted as a portrait of Nero, it is rather a Neronian incarnation of the emperor’s patron deity, like the Colossus or the Helius figure on the Jupiter Column at Mainz (Mastroroberto 2007; Mattusch 2009, 246–47). The Murecine complex included two other triclinia, one also with red background (B) and one with black (C). The rooms had been redecorated after the earthquake of 62, but were used

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Figure 15. Nero and Apollo, as, minted in Rome, ca. 64–66; London, British Museum, 192.0612.5; photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

as storerooms at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. Collectively, the sumptuous and luxurious wall schemes in all three of the Murecine triclinia, which also included representations of the Dioscuri and Victory, formulate visually the new Neronian golden age (Mastroroberto 2007). A series of coins minted between 64 and 66 merge the identities of Nero and the sun god through text and image; these coins feature Nero on the obverse and Apollo Citharoedus on the reverse (fig. 15) (BMCRE 130, nos. 75–77, pl. 22; M. Bergmann 1998, 185–89; Pollini 2012, 153, fig. III.21). Apollo is depicted wearing the long belted chiton and mantle of the musician.46 Although Suetonius links these coins with portrait statues of Nero dressed in the traditional costume of the citharode, the coins cannot actually depict the statues themselves, which were not erected until after Nero’s return from Greece in 67 (Nero 25.2).47 Instead the coins aggregate Nero’s profile portrait on the obverse and a representation of the god on the reverse, which could not help but to recall Nero’s own public performances with the lyre where he wore an identical costume. Apollo’s fuller facial features, discernible on many of the reverses also recall Nero’s final portrait type. The inscriptions on the coins’ reverses additionally interweave the identities of emperor and god by encircling Apollo Nero’s imperial titulature PONTIF MAX TR POTEST (or POT) IMP P P (Pontifex Maximus, Tribunician Power, Imperator, Pater Patriae). The melded 46.  For the related Roman statuary type, see Roccos 2002. 47.  Item statuas suas citharoedico habitu qua nota etiam nummum percussit (“and his statues dressed as a citharoedus which NOTA he also struck as a coin”); Suetonius associates these citharode statues with the sacred crowns Nero had won in Greece, and which like them, were placed in the cubicula of the Domus Aurea around the couches (in cubiculis circum lectos posuit). Although these statues are often interpreted as public statues, this is clearly not what Suetonius had in mind.



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imagery on the coins which combined Nero’s type 4 profile portrait, citharoedic Apollo, and imperial titulature were so effective, that they may have encouraged Suetonius’s mistaken impression that they were actual numismatic depictions of the later portrait statues. Apollo Citharoedus appears in several provincial coins minted late in Nero’s reign, including a bronze issue from Patras with Nero (type 4) on the obverse where the emperor is identified on the obverse as IMP NERO CAES, while Apollo on the reverse is (APOL)LO AVG, underscoring the imperial, Neronian incarnation of the god, but also creating a disingenuous and ambiguous inscriptional identity if the names and titles are read together as IMP NERO CAES APOLLO AUGUSTUS (RPC 261, no. 1275; M. Bergmann 1998, 204). Coins from Thessalonike also feature type 4 portraits of Nero, either with laurel crown or radiate combined with representations of Apollo Citharoedus on the reverse (RPC 302, no. 1599; M. Bergmann 1998, 207–8). Nero is the first living emperor of Rome to appear with the radiate crown on coins and in sculpture. As noted earlier, the recut boyhood portrait in the Galleria Chiaramonti and a cameo in Paris with a type 2 portrait may be some of the earliest appearances of the radiate crown in Nero’s portraiture and it had been used sporadically on some early provincial coins. The radiate crown first appears in imperial portraiture for representations of Augustus produced after his death in order to signal his newly deified status and include the Grand Camée de France, cameos in Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museen, 9, inv. IX a 95, 9 × 6.6 cm; Megow 1987, 255, no. B 15, pl. 9.1–3; M. Bergmann 1998, 108–9, 22.1), Cologne (Römisch-Germanisches Museum; Zwierlein-Diehl 1980; M. Bergmann 1998, 112–13, 116, pl. 22.2), Würzburg, and St. Petersburg (Ermitage, 104, inv. Nr. Ž 149, diam. 8.3 cm; Megow 1987, 167–68, no. A 22, pl. 10.13; M. Bergmann 1998, 108–9, pl. 22.3), an altar from Praeneste (Palestrina, Museo Archeologico Nazionale; Boschung 1993, 138, no. 63, pl. 67.1–3, 221.3; M. Bergmann 1998, 105, 112, pl. 21.2, 24.5–6; Agnoli 2002, 243–49 no. 3.9; Pollini 2012, 150), the Ravenna Relief (Boschung 1993, 174, no. 158, pl. 160.3–4, 216.2, 222.1; M. Bergmann 1998, 330; Pollini 2012, 150, fig. 3.18), a portrait head in Venice (Venice, Museo Archeologico, inv. 200, h. 0.41 cm; Boschung 1993, 109, no. 5, pl. 6; M. Bergmann 1998, 111, pl. 24.2), and a coin reverse likely depicting a statue of Divus Augustus dedicated in 22/23 at the Theater of Marcellus (BMCRE 1, 30, no. 74; RIC 1, 106, no. 20; Hertel 2013, 127–28, pl. 142.1–2; Koortbojian 2013, 211, fig. VIII.18). Thus, by Nero’s principate, radiate imagery was well known in Rome and its expropriation for the first time by the living ruler would have been especially noteworthy. For Nero, the radiate crown provided immediate visual synthesis with his divine ancestor, Augustus, and with the radiate sun god, both associations of primary significance for Nero from the outset of his reign. As with the physiognomy and coiffures of Nero’s last two types, the radiate crown

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Figure 16. Nero, denarius minted in Rome, ca. 64–65; London British Museum, 1843, 1028.249; photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

also reflected images of the Hellenistic dynasts, especially the Ptolemies, several of whom had appeared radiate on coins or seals (M. Bergmann 1998, 58–61). Nero’s type 4 profile portraits with radiate crown first appear on Roman dupondii, which could also feature bareheaded and laureate profiles (MacDowall 1979, 171–73, nos. 181–94, 197–200, 203–6). By 65 CE the dupondii exclusively feature radiate portraits (MacDowall 1979, 173–75, nos. 210–41). Beginning in 64, asses could also employ radiate profile portraits (MacDowall 1979, 177, nos. 259–61, 178, nos. 270–76). The radiate crown continues to appear on provincial issues, including coins from Rhodes (RPC 457, no. 2772), Corinth (RPC 255–56, 1204–6), Buthrotum (RPC 278–79, nos. 1402–9, 1413–17), Thessalonike (RPC 302–3, nos. 1599–1600), Phoenice (RPC 279, nos. 1418–19), Maronea (RPC 316, nos. 1732–33), Nicomedia (RPC 351, no. 2084), Patras (RPC 260–61, nos. 1257– 63, 1265, 1267–68, 1271, 1274, 1276–81), Nicea (RPC 348–49, nos. 2060–61), Cassandrea (RPC 292, no. 1517), Prusa (RPC 344, no. 2018), Tripolis (RPC 647, no. 4522), and extensively at Alexandria (RPC 708–10, nos. 5274–5325). Two reverse types may reflect radiate portrait statues of Nero. Aurei and denarii from 64–66 represent a standing togate figure wearing a radiate crown and holding a victory in his right hand and a palm branch in his left (MacDowall 1979, 159, no. 22, 162, no. 54) (fig. 16). The flat ground line on which the figure stands may suggest that it represents a work of sculpture. The legend NERO GERMANICUS surrounds the togate figure and expand the name and titles, NERO CAESAR that surround Nero’s type 4 portrait on the obverse, encouraging the identification of the reverse image as a second representation of the emperor. John Pollini has suggested that the togate figure may be derived from a freestanding statue created to celebrate the diplomatic victories in Armenia in



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Figure 17. Nero and Poppaea, denarius, minted in Rome, ca. 64–65; London, British Museum, R.9902; photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

63 (Pollini 2012, 151). The reverse label, AVGVSTVS GERMANICUS, also revives the memory of Nero’s maternal grandfather, Germanicus, and invites comparison of his military successes in the East with the current military and diplomatic achievements of his imperial descendent.48 A second reverse type, also used on aurei and denarii from 64–66, features a togate radiate figure together with a veiled female figure with cornucopiae (MacDowall 1979, 159, no. 23, 162, no. 55) (fig. 17). The two figures stand on an individual ground line and hold paterae in their outstretched right hands; the male figure also has a spear or scepter in his left. The two figures are labeled on either side AVGVSTVS and AVGVSTA, which may suggest that it reflects a statuary group created for Nero and Poppaea. The female figure’s pose and attributes further associate her with the goddess Concordia. These coins, and the putative statuary group they may be modeled on, would celebrate the concordia of the imperial union which guarantees the harmony of the empire at large through their theomorphic aspects. Further evidence for the sculptural production of radiate images of Nero is provided by a portrait in Worcester, which has been updated from a type 3 to a type 4 portrait, whose cuttings suggest a radiate crown added in metal as part of the reworking, and a type 4 relief portrait of Nero later recarved as Augustus that also exhibits holes for added metal rays (Luni, Antiquario, inv. CM 1033, h. 0.43 m; Frova 1973, 536–37 n. 1, pl. 127.1–3; Boschung 1993, 161, no. 124, pl. 145; M. Bergmann 1998, 111–12, pl. 24.4). The recut relief portrait was discovered together with a much more fragmentary relief head, probably of Claudius, with corona civica that suggests 48.  For Nero’s military, diplomatic and geopolitcal agendas, see D. Braund 2013.

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the possibility of a larger dynastic relief that would also confirm the continuing relevance of Divus Claudius in the later Neronian period (Luni, Antiquario, inv CM 1470; h.; Frova 1973, 539, n. 4, pl. 127-4; Hölscher 1994, 98–99). In addition Nero wears a radiate crown on an amethyst intaglio in a private collection and it also features the fourth portrait type and lightly incised beard (Spier 2010, 54, no. 30). In the provinces one early coin also endowed Nero’s portrait with the sun god’s radiate crown. Cidrama issued a bronze featuring Nero with the paludamentum and radiate crown and his centrally parted coiffure from the first two portrait types (RPC 473, no. 2880, pl. 124). The legend omits Nero’s full name and titles and only reads ΝΕΡΩΝ, which makes precise dating difficult. The coin has been dated to Claudius’s principate, but a date in the first five years of Nero’s reign is equally possible (M. Bergmann 1998, 164–66, pl. 33.3; 2013, 344). Alexandria also issued coins under the Praefect Ti. Julius Balbillus with the young Nero seated and with radiate crown (Geissen 1974, 46–57, no. 121–37; M. Bergmann 1998, 157–64, pl. 32.1–3; M. Bergmann 2000 157–64; Noeske 2004; M. Bergmann 2013 344–45, fig. 20.9). A solar disk is also featured above Nero’s portrait on a Cretan coin from Knossos that is complemented by a second issue depicting Nero again with solar disk and a facing bust of Octavia with a lunar crescent dating to the early years of the principate (RPC 239, nos. 1005–6, pl. 56; M. Bergmann 1998 150–51, pl. 29.5; 2013, 344). A heroic nude torso with a type 4 portrait head and chlamys draped around the shoulder whose whereabouts are no longer known was apparently part of a more straightforwardly theomorphic image of Nero which appears to borrow its body type from depictions of Sol.49 The draping of the chlamys over the upper torso pinned on the right shoulder, soft, rounded handling of the musculature and pronounced thrust of the hip are again characteristic of a group of sculptures including a statue in the Palazzo Barberini associated with Sol (Papini 2002). In the Barberini image, the god holds the whip for driving the chariot of the sun in his right hand.50 The more abbreviated form of the chlamys in the fragmentary portrait statue also recalls the likeness of Nero holding the aplustre and globe from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. Suetonius suggests that by the end of the reign, the combined theomorphic rhetorics employed for Nero that linked him to Apollo and Sol had worked and that the emperor was esteemed as equal to Apollo in music and Sol in driving a chariot (Nero 53).51 The Colossus, and related deployment of solar imagery from later in Nero’s reign, continued to visually promulgate the new golden age. By 64, the 49.  On the art market in 1960; Born and Stemmer 1996, fig. 34. 50.  The Barberini statue, and a related version formerly in the Westmacott collection, reverse the contraposto of the Nero fragment and the Richelieu statue. 51.  Quia Apollinem in cantu, Solem aurigando aequiperare existimaretur; see also M. Bergmann 2013, 354.



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107 Figure 18. Commodus/Sol; Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 56128; photo E. R. Varner.

conventions were well established and may have helped to lend credulity to the supposed discovery of Dido’s golden treasure by Caesellius Bassus as recorded by Tacitus (Ann 16.1–2). Laudationes composed for the second Neronia exploited the incident for its golden rhetoric, one of them proclaiming “Non enim solitas tantum fruges nec confusum metallis aurum gigni, sed nova ubertate provenire terram et obvias opes deferre deos (“For not only were the usual crops brought forth and gold fused with other metals, but the earth prospered with new abundance and the gods rendered easy riches,” Tacitus Ann. 16.2). Neronian artists and writers revealed the rich possibilities of theomorphic rhetorics as they experimented with a sliding scale of amalgamated imperial and divine identities in which the emperor could borrow and exchange elements with deities like Jupiter, Apollo, Sol/Helios, and Mars. While previous emperors had explored divine elements in their representations, imagery that fused imperial and divine iconographies reached an artistic apogee under Nero. Suetonius suggests that Nero held contempt for religion, except for the cult of Dea Syria; a pair of lost statues from Rome may have associated the emperor with both Dea

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Figure 19. Commodus as Hercules; Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori, inv. 1120; photo E. R.Varner.

Syria and Jupiter (Nero 56).52 Despite Suetonius’s claims, Nero clearly did not hesitate to exploit the potential of sacred imagery. Subsequent emperors would 52.  Religionem usque quaque cotemptor, praeter unius Dea Syriae; statue of Dea Syria, CIL 6.116; Drijvers 1986, 157, no. 31; Stenhouse 2002, 52, no. 4; Orlandi 2008, 48. Statue of Jupiter, CIL 6.117; Orlandi 2008, 20. The two statues are recorded by Ligorio to have been in the gardens of Cardinal Ridolfo Pio da Carpi on the Quirinal by the mid-sixteenth century; the pair of statues follow identical formats with the deities enthroned on a high base and are dedicated by Decimius Veturius Antigonus, Decimius Vetrius Philo, and Decimius Veturius Albanus to Dea Syria and Jupiter for the well being of the emperor. Ligorio further records that the Dea Syria was taken by Marco Giulo (M. Iulio)



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create carefully blended images. Domitian, for instance, continued to employ Jupiter imagery and was represented in statuary with the standing Jupiter type, including a statue recarved to Nerva and now in Copenhagen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 1454, h. 2.0 m; Johansen 1995, 84–87, no. 30). As already noted, Martial describes cult statues of Jupiter and Hercules that borrowed their likenesses from the emperor. The emperor’s dining room in the imperial palace on the Palatine was also known as the banquet hall of Jupiter (Coenatio Iovis). In addition, Domitian explored innovative theomorphic iconographies that blurred the traditional boundaries of gender by merging the emperor’s facial features with the body and attributes of his patron divinity Minerva.53 Commodus would also actively explore theomorphic imagery in innovative ways that merged his likeness with Jupiter, Sol, and perhaps most famously with Hercules. Coin obverses that show Jupiter Iuvenis and Sol present the deities with coiffures, beards and facial features clearly borrowed from Commodus’s portraits (Iupiter Iuvenis: BMCRE 4, nos. 253–54, 264, 623–24; M. Bergmann 1998, 265, fig. 51.5–6; Hekster 2002, 102, fig. 4; Sol: Gnecchi 1912, 52, nos. 3–4, pl. 78.3–4; M. Bergmann 1998, 247–48, pl. 46.2–3; O. Hekster 2002, 100–101, fig. 3). Other obverses show the double-headed Janus, with the proper left head bearing Commodus’s likeness (Janus: BMCRE 4, 181; Gnecchi 1912, no. 131; M. Bergmann 1998, 265, fig. 51.4; Hekster 2002, 99–100). In sculpture Commodus also is represented as Sol in a portrait in the Palazzo Massimo, which presents the emperor beardless, like the sun god, and with regularly spaced holes in the coiffure above the forehead for the attachment of the radiate crown (fig. 18); both coins and sculpture also represented Commodus as Hercules, or Hercules Commodianus, including the famous bust in the Palazzo dei Conservatori (fig. 19).54 Additionally, Commodus is alleged to have modified the Neronian Mattei from the Tiber Island. The emperor’s names have been erased in both inscriptions, except for “Germanicus Augustus”; the dedication to Dea Syria would seem to favor Nero as the emperor who has been erased, rather than Domitian, who also used the title Germanicus; see Stenhouse 2002, 52. In addition, the formula of the dedication for the health of the emperor on the Jupiter statue (I O M VOTO SVSCEPT PRO SALVTE) recalls the inscription of the Jupiter Column at Mainz (I O M PRO SALVTE CIL 13.11806a) also dedicated to the well-being of Nero. The two statues may also be connected with other objects from the Syrian sanctuary in Trastevere, which additionally seems to have yielded the altar of Sanctissimus Sol, Chausson 1995, 676 n. 29. 53. Sardonyx cameo, bust of Domitianic Minerva, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles 22, inv. 71.A.23443, 9.9 x 7.0 cm; Megow 1987, 223–24, no. A 113, pl. 37.4; Agate cameo, standing Domitianic Minerva, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles, 26, h. 12 x 5.5 cm; Megow 1987, 222–23, no. A 111, pl. 37.5; agate cameo, bust of Domitianic Minerva, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles, 128, 13.4 × 8.1 cm; Megow 1987, 221–22, no. A. 100, pl. 37.1; Vollenweider and Avviseau-Broustet 2003, no. 132; Marsden 2011, 172, pl. 31; Sena Chiesa 2011, 230, pl. 8; colossal marble head in Budapest of Domitianic Miverva, Museum, inv. 347106; on all three cameos and the head, see Varner 2008 187–88, figs. 2–3. 54.  Commodus-Sol, Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 56128, h. 038 m; M. Bergmann 1998, 248–52, pls. 47.1–3, 48.1–3; Hekster 2002, 116–17; Gasparri and Paris 2013, 206–7, no. 144; Commodus-Hercules, Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori, inv. 1120; h. 1.33 m;

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Colossus itself, by changing its depiction of Sol into a representation of Hercules with Commodus’s own facial features (Hist. Aug., Comm.; M. Bergmann 1998, 199; Hekster 2002, 122–25). Later in the third and early fourth centuries, Nero’s exploitation of solar iconography would be revisited with the cult of Sol Invictus and even find strong reverberations in the visual program on the arch of Constantine (Marlowe 2006). The theomorphic experiments of Domitian and Commodus, as well as other emperors, reveal the enduring appeal of imagery that sought to merge the ruler with the sacred, but they never achieved the ambitious range of visual ideologies and strategies explored by Nero as he sought to artistically instantiate a new aurea aetas for Rome. Bibliography Agnoli, Nadia. 2002. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Palestrina: Le sculture. Xenia Antiqua 10. Rome: Bretschneider. Aillagon, Jean-Jacques. 2008. Roma e I Barbari: La Nascita di un Nuovo Mondo. Milan: Skira. Alexandridis, Annetta. 2004. Die Frauen der römischen Kaiserhauses: Eine Untersuchung ihrer bildlichen Darstellung von Livia bis Iulia Domna. Mainz: von Zabern. Andreae, B., Martin Stadler, and Klaus Anger, eds. 1995. Bildkatalog der Skulpturen des Vatikanischen Museums I: Museo Chiaramonti 1–3. Berlin: de Gruyter. Andrén, A. 1976–1977. “In Quest of Vulca.” Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia. Rendiconti 49:63–83. Arce, J., S. Dupré and J.C. Saquete. 1997. “Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus en Tusculum: A proposito de una nueva inscripcíon de época republicana.” Chiron 27:287–96. Avagliana, Alessandra. 2-11. “L’Ares tipo Borghese: Una rilettura,” Archaeologia Classica 62:41–76. Babelon, Ernest. 1897. Catalogue des Camées Antiques et Modernes de la Bibliothèque Nationale. Paris: Leroux. Bauchhenss, Gerhard. 1984. Die grosse Iuppitersäule aus Mainz. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums; Bonn: In Kommission bei R. Habelt. Bergmann, Birgit. 2010. Der Kranz des Kaisers: Genese und Bedeutung einer römischer Insignie. Image and Context 6. Berlin: de Gruyter. Bergmann, Marianne. 1994. Der Koloss Neros: Die Domus Aurea und der Mentalitätswandel im Rom der frühen Kaiserzeit. Trier Winckelmanns Program 13. Mainz: von Zabern. ———. 1998. Die Strahlen der Herrscher: Theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik in Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Mainz: von Zabern. ———. 2000. “Pronoia Neou Sebastou.” Pages 657–63 in XII Internationaler Numismatischer Kongress Berlin 1997. Edited by Bernd Kluge and Bernhard Weisser. 2 vols. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. ———. 2013. “Portraits of an Emperor—Nero, the Sun and Roman Otium.” Pages 332–62 in A Companion to the Neronian Age. Edited Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Fittschen and Zanker 1985, 85–90, no. 78, pls. 91–94; Hekster 2002, 117; Mascolo in La Rocca, Lo Monaco, and Parisi 2015, 328–29, no. 1.3.1–3; Hercules coins: Hekster 2002, 103–11.



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Squire, M. J. 2013. “Embodied Ambiguities on the Prima Porta Augustus.” Art History 36:242–79. Stemmer, Klaus. 1978. Untersuchungen zur Typologie, Chronologie und Ikonographie der Panzerstatuen. Antike Forschung 4. Berlin: Mann. Stenhouse, William. 2002. Ancient Inscriptions: The Paper Museum of Cassiano Dal Pozzo Series A-Antiquities and Architecture, Part Seven. London: Royal Collection. Thompson, Lynette. 1964. “Lucan’s Apotheosis of Nero.” CP 59:146–53. Tomei, Marie Antonietta, and Rosella Rea, eds. 2011. Nerone. Milan: Electa. Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. 1942. “Nero Artifex: The Apocolocyntosis Reconsidered.” ClQ 36:83–93. Varner, Eric R. 2004. Mutilation and Transformation. Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture. MGR 10. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2008. “Transcending Gender: Assimilation, Identity, and Roman Imperial Portraits.” Pages 185–205 in Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation. Edited by Sinclair Bell and Inge L. Hansen. MAARSup 7. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. ———. 2010. “Reconfiguring Roman Portraits: Theories and Practices.” MAAR 55:45–56. Volk, Katharina. 2006. “Cosmic Disruption in Seneca’s Thyestes: Two Ways of Looking at an Eclipse.” Pages 183–200 in Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics. Edited by Katherina Volk and Gareth D. Williams. CSCT 28. Leiden: Brill. Vollenweider, Marie-Louise, and Mathilda Avisseau-Broustet. 1995. Camées et Intailles. Tome I. Les portraits grecs du cabinet des médailles. Paris: Biblioteque Nationale de France. ———. 2003. Camées et Intailles: Tome II; Les portraits romains du Cabinet des médailles catalogue raisonné. Paris: Biblioteque Nationale de France. Waznick, J.H. ed. 1962. Plato Latinus 4: Timaeus a Calcidio Translatus Commenarioque Instructus. London: Warburg Institute: Leiden Brill. Weinstock, Stefan. 1971. Divus Iulius. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wiseman, T. P. 1982. “Calpurnius Siculus and the Claudian Civil War.” JRS 72:57–67. Wood, Susan. 1999. Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 B.C.–A.D. 68. MS 194. Leiden: Brill. Wrede, Henning. 1981. Consecratio in Forman Deorum: Vergöttliche Privatpersonen in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Mainz: von Zabern. Wünsche, Raimund, Vinzenz Brinkmann, Berthold Helmut Kaeser, Paolo Liverani, Markus Ewel, and Ilse von Zur Mühlen. 1998. Il Torso Belvedere da Aiace a Rodin. Vatican City: Musei Vaticani. Wyler, Stéphanie. 2012. “Dionysiaca aurea: the Development of Dionysian Images from Augustus to Nero.” Neronia Electronica 2:3–19. Zevi, Fausto, and Paola Miniero, eds. 2008. Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei: Castello di Baia. Naples: Electa. Zwierlein-Diehl, Erika. 2007. Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Section 2 Reading the Gods: Texts and Gifts

Chapter Five J. Bert Lott

No More Than One Candle, Torch, or Wreath: Private Citizens and the Commemoration of L. Caesar at Pisa

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n 2 CE, Lucius Caesar, the younger of Augustus’s two adopted sons, died en route to his first command Spain.1 His body was carried back to Rome by the military tribunes of his legions and by the leading men of the cities through which the cortege traveled. After the funeral, he was interred in the Mausoleum of Augustus on the campus Martius. The senate decreed a set of lasting commemorative honors in memory of the dead prince, including annual offerings (inferiae) to Lucius’s manes on the anniversary of his death.2 A copy of the decree itself was displayed at the entrance to the Mausoleum. No copy survives for us (although later references to it that confirm some of its contents).3 However, in response to the Roman decree, the town council at Pisa passed a decree of its own that also established annual inferiae for Lucius’s manes there. An epigraphic copy of this municipal decree does survive.4 It provides the best description of what, as John Scheid (1993) and others have demonstrated, was a new kind of public commemoration for members of the domus Augusta that began with Lucius. In this article I examine more closely one particular aspect of the inferiae at Pisa, which has been overlooked but which is key to understanding the new memorial ceremony in relation to the new imperial status and the developing relationship between the emperor and his subjects: the ability of private citizens to offer gifts as part of the annual public ceremony. I begin with a brief discussion of the Pisan decree before turning to the new imperial inferiae. I then examine 1.  For Lucius’s life and death, see Hurlet 1997, 113–25 with earlier bibliography; For Lucius’s death, see Tacitus Ann. 1.3.3; Velleius Paterculus 2.102.3; Dio Cassius 55.10.9; Inscriptiones Italiae 13.2.208. 2.  On the funeral rites and other honors for Lucius at Rome, see Dio Cassius 55.12.1; Inscriptiones Italiae 13.1.181–182; Lott 2012, 11, 340; von Hesberg and Panciera 1994, 98–108. 3.  The existence of this decree and the inferiae at Rome are established by reference to them in the decree passed later after the death of Germanicus and preserved on the Tabula Siarensis (B.1.5; see discussion in Lott 2012, 185). 4.  The decree orders that a stone copy of itself be displayed on a stele beside the altar set at the site chosen for the inferiae and this stone display copy survives mostly intact. The main editions of the text are CIL XI 1420, ILS 139, Marotta D’Agata 1980; Lott 2012, 57–65; see also Rowe 2002, 102–23.

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the significance of participation privatim, first by commenting on the rites at Pisa in relationship to Ovid’s description of inferiae in the Fasti; second by considering the limits placed on the extravagance of the private offerings; and finally by examining one of the particular objects chosen for the private inferiae. The Pisan Decree Some background on the decree itself is necessary; the inscription found at Pisa contains almost the entire text of the municipal decree, with a few lines missing in the middle where the stone is broken horizontally (thirty-seven lines survive). The decree, following the normal pattern, begins with a heading (1–5) and the relatio (5–8), which states that the duumvir C. Canius Saturninus introduced to the council the topic of augmenting the honores for Lucius Caesar, “augur, consul designate, leader of the youth, patron of our colony.” Next, the body states the justification and motivation for the decree, beginning, Since the Senate of the Roman People, among the very many and very great other honors for Lucius Caesar augur, consul designate, the son of Caesar Augustus, father of the fatherland, chief pontiff, holding tribunician power for the twenty-fifth time, in accordance with the consensus of every class zealously. (9–12)

Unfortunately, a lacuna of around nine lines means that the precise language of the end of the motivation and the beginning of the actions approved at Pisa are lost. Following the lacuna, the decree picks up with the decisions of the council, mid-sentence. The decree directs (1) that the town purchase land for a public altar and precinct (ll. 13–16); (2) that inferiae be held annually at the altar (ll. 16–26); (3) that the altar and precinct be maintained at public expense and that a copy of this decree be displayed at the site (ll. 27–31); (4) that the rites should conform to any future instructions from Rome (ll. 31–33); and (5) that the princeps be informed of the town’s actions (ll. 33–37). The second directive, which is the focus of this paper, reads: Annually at this altar on 20 August the magistrates or whoever has executive power should, veiled in black togas if they are legally and piously able to wear such clothing on that day, offer inferiae at public expense to Lucius’s shades (inferias mittere); namely, a black bull and a black ram, adorned with dark ribbons, should be slaughtered for his divine shades; and these victims should be completely burnt at that place; and over them should be poured one jar each of milk, honey, and oil; and then finally the opportunity should be provided to anyone else who wishes to privately offer inferiae to his shades (privatim manibus inferias mittere), so long as no one offers more than one candle, torch, or wreath ([nive quis] amplius uno cereo unave face cornave mittat) and so long as the men who offered the animal sacrifice light the fire, dressed in the Gabine fashion, and watch over it.



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utique aput | eam aram quod annis a(nte) d(iem) x[iii k(alendas) Sept(embres) p]ublice Manibus eius per magi|stratus eosue, qui ibi iure dicendo pr[ae]runt v, togis pullis amictos, (vac. c. 6) | quibus eorum ius fasque erit eo die [eiu]s | uestis habendae, inferiae mit|tantur bosque et ouis atri infulis caerulis infulati Diis Manibus ei | mactentur eaeque hostiae eo loco adoleantur superque eas (vac. c. 6) | singulae urnae lactis v mellis olei fundantur ac tum demum facta | c[eteris] potestatem, siqui priuatim uelint Manibus eius inferias mitter[e] |[niue quis] amplius uno cereo unaue face coronaue mittat, dum ii qui im|[molauer]int cincti Cabino ritu struem lignorum succendant adque | [exi] nde {h}abeant; (for text, Lott 2012, 57–67)

In short, the decree directs public officials to offer inferiae, in the form of animal sacrifices and libations to Lucius’s manes, annually on 20 August, the anniversary of his death. As part of the ceremony, there is to be an opportunity for private citizens as well to offer small inferiae, a candle, torch, or wreath. These inferiae would have been offered for the first time on 20 August 3 CE. Public inferiae for Lucius Private inferiae were traditionally memorial gifts or offerings given by surviving family members and dependents to the manes of their family’s deceased. They are closely associated with tombs—Catullus 101 famously describes the poet’s visit to the tomb of his brother to offer inferiae. Bringing inferiae was normally appropriate on the birthday of the deceased and during the period of public memorial days set aside in the state calendar on February 13–21, the dies parentales or Parentalia (on the Parentalia, see Dolansky 2011b with background and bibliography). The use of inferiae as a mode of lasting public commemoration for imperial “princes” in the early empire is attested for the first time for Lucius. It came to be a standard honor during the Julio-Claudian principate for male members of the domus Augusta who died in good standing. The inferiae for Lucius at Rome were performed at the Mausoleum where he was buried, but the rites at Pisa were, obviously, not held at Lucius’s tomb. The Pisans acquired a piece of property at public expense to be the site where they brought inferiae for Lucius’s manes (ll. 13–16). It was another innovation that the public inferiae for Lucius at Rome and Pisa were held on the anniversary of his death, not on his birthday or during the dies parentales. In an important article in 1993, Scheid compared the Pisan rites with Virgil’s description of the public memorial sacrifices and rites that Aeneas organized for his father Anchises in Aen. 5.55–103. Scheid (193–200) outlines the close parallels between the two and suggests convincingly that Vergil and the decree both reflect a developing new central model for public commemoration of deceased members of the imperial dynasty that adapted the traditionally private rites of inferiae and parentatio. Augusto Fraschetti (1984) points out that the

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whole affair also drew heavily from Greek hero cult. Scheid (198–200) notes that since the new ritual was based on established Roman ways of commemorating the dead, not worshiping gods, it made an important point about the public status of members of the new dynasty, the domus Augusta. As a member of the domus, Lucius was important to the public welfare and thus, upon his death, deserving of special public commemoration. However, the commemorative rituals in the Aeneid and at Pisa did not move Anchises or Lucius from the status of being dead into that of being divine. When the senate created the new memorial rites, it established that Lucius be commemorated not worshiped. This was a key distinction at a time when the roles of deification and emperor worship in the creation of the new order were still being formulated. The rites at Pisa reflect a hierarchy of members of the imperial dynasty, living and dead, that placed Lucius in a privileged position, but one that was nevertheless subordinate to that of Julius Caesar (Divus Iulius) and Augustus himself. There was already a temple for Augustus, an Augusteum at Pisa, in 2 CE. Since the apotheosis of Roman emperors came to be intricately connected with their funerals, the promulgation of a senate decree that identified inferiae as the proper forum of commemoration may have served to forestall communities from establishing overtly divine rites for Lucius. Private Citizens and the inferiae for Lucius Scheid focuses his attention on the animal sacrifices and libations that public officials at Pisa offered to Lucius’s manes. He argues that animal sacrifices were what separated family or private inferiae from public inferiae, performed by the state. He emphasizes the infernal nature of the ritual: officiates wore black, the animals were black with black fillets, and they were completely burned rather than shared with the participants. The recipient had moved into the underworld to join the Di Manes. This emphasis is understandable but it minimizes the final aspect of the inferiae at Pisa. The decree directs that, after the civic leaders offered public inferiae, private citizens be given the opportunity to offer something as well, so long as no one gave more than a single taper, torch, or wreath. Other scholars have also generally overlooked or minimized this aspect of the rites (e.g., J. Linderski [2007, 183] emphasizes the elite nature of the participants in the rites without mentioning the privatim participation of others whose social status is not clear). However, it was unusual for private spectators to participate in the public rites of the state, which were performed on behalf of everyone by magistrates and official priests. As Beard, North, and Price point out, during public rites and festivals “the only obligation which was generally supposed to fall on the individual citizen was simply to abstain from work…. On no interpretation does the extent of the citizen’s necessary involvement in public ritual go any further”



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(1998, 1.48). Of course, ritual attendants of various ranks and importance helped in public rites, but the privatim participants at Pisa were not functionaries in a public sacrifice, they were private actors. Given the oddity of private action in a public ritual, it is important to consider briefly who was responsible for its inclusion in the rites at Pisa. Did the senate decree contain instructions that private citizens should be able to offer inferiae or did the Pisans include it in their municipal decree without prompting? The answer is not entirely clear, but probably the private participation was at least modeled on those at Rome. As Clifford Ando (2000, 173) points out, the Roman senate regularly served as a model to other corporate governing bodies concerning the appropriate language, actions, and responses to significant imperial events. The Pisan decree directly acknowledges its debt to a Roman model and requires that any subsequent instructions from the senate also be followed (ll. 31–33). On the other hand, the Pisans passed and displayed their own decree rather than simply erecting a copy of the Roman decree, which is what happened in later cases concerning the commemoration of Germanicus (the Tabula Siarensis and Tabula Hebana). There are specific parts of the decree that must have been drafted at Pisa; for example in the relatio, they added the fact that Lucius had been patron of Pisa to the official nomenclature that they received for him from Rome. The details of how to acquire the site for the inferiae at Pisa were also produced locally. Still, it is hard to imagine that the Pisans would have added a significant aspect to the rites without guidance from Rome. Some further support for a Roman origin can be found in Ovid. We are fortunate that our fullest description of the inferiae that happened on regular memorial days and Parentalia comes from a work written soon after Lucius’s death by an author well versed in Augustan happenings: Book 2 of Ovid’s calendar poem, the Fasti. The Fasti was first published around 8 CE and Ovid was undoubtedly familiar with the commemorative rites established for Lucius and again for Lucius’s brother Gaius, who died in 4 CE. Ovid does not explicitly mention Gaius or Lucius in his treatment of the dies parentales, but he places his discussion of them in his poetic calendar on the anniversary of Gaius’s death, 21 February, which was also the final day of the traditional dies parentales. The fact that Ovid ascribes the origins of the dies parentales to Aeneas’s commemoration of Anchises makes the conclusion that he was addressing the new imperial rites unavoidable. About 21 February, Ovid writes: Respect is shown at graves. Appease paternal spirits and bring small gifts to erected pyres. Spirits seek little things; devotion is welcomer than wealth; deep Styx does not hold greedy gods. A tile wrapped in arranged flowers, sprinkled grain, a little salt, bread dipped in wine and loose violets are enough. Let a potsherd left in view of the road hold them. I do not forbid greater gifts, but a shade is easily appeased with these. Add prayers and personal words at the erected altars. (Fasti 2.533–542)

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There may be an echo of the official language of the lost Roman decree for commemorating Lucius in Ovid’s “erected pyres” (exstructas pyras), which in the Pisan decree involved constructing a piled up pyre (strues) at an altar, although there is disagreement over Ovid’s text here. After the quoted passage, Ovid ascribes the origin of the dies parentales at Rome to Aeneas’s commemoration of Anchises (ll. 543–546). He then tells the story of a calamity that befell Rome when the Romans failed to correctly offer inferiae during the dies parentales (ll. 547–557). Matthew Robinson (2011, 342–43) points out in his recent commentary on Fasti Book 2 that Ovid’s emphasis on simplicity can be contrasted with the extravagant public rites that Aeneas puts on for Anchises in the Aeneid and with the expensive public commemorations at Rome for Lucius and his brother Gaius. That is, Ovid contrasts the traditional small private offering of inferiae to family dead during the dies parentales with the new opulent public inferiae on specific anniversaries for imperial princes. However, consideration of the small offerings privatim to the manes of Lucius suggests a different understanding. Ovid allows for both greater and lesser offerings, even if he says simple ones were enough. In this way, his inferiae parallel rather than contrast with the dual nature of the new imperial inferiae at Pisa. Ovid reassures that simple gifts were appropriate for an imperial prince, even when greater ones were being offered. Candle, Torch, or Wreath Returning to the text at Pisa, at the same time as it allows private citizens to participate in the inferiae, the decree also establishes clear limits to that participation. Indeed the emphasis of the decree is arguably on the limitation: each citizen was restricted to bringing only a single item of low value. Scheid (1993, 195) makes two very brief observations without elaboration about the value of the private inferiae compared with the public sacrifices: First, he suggests that their low value might be understood in the context of sumptuary limits, legal limits on the extravagance of private spending especially in the context of banquets, funerals, and the like. Reference to sumptuary laws, however, does not seem particularly relevant here, since such laws normally dealt with curbing outlandish luxury among the highest classes and its deleterious effects on Roman discipline and morals, or with preserving the value of the estate for the deceased’s heirs. It is hard to imagine that any sacrifice to the manes in commemoration of the emperor’s son could be judged too luxurious. There was certainly no attempt to control the expense of the public portion of the rites, which required expensive animals. Second, Scheid suggests that the limits placed on the objects donated by individuals were meant to prevent the individual participants from overshadowing the state nature of the sacrifice. Recent work on Roman sacrifice



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has emphasized its role in creating, validating, and illuminating the hierarchies of both human and divine society (see, e.g., Prescendi 2007, Rupke 2001, 137–53). However, emphasizing simply the low value of the private inferiae overlooks an important detail: If the point had been only to constrain the value of the citizens’ contributions, this could have been accomplished by assigning a maximum value to them. The Pisan decree, however, did not explicitly regulate the amount someone could spend, but rather limited everyone to offering only one of three specific acceptable possibilities, a single taper, a torch, or a wreath. It is true that these were all relatively inexpensive and since each individual could only bring one, the maximum amount any privatus could spend was relatively small. However the language suggests that the objects were themselves as much the point as their cost. What was the purpose of allowing these three objects? What was the purpose of the objects offered as inferiae generally? The usual understanding of inferiae is that they were gifts of things the dead would enjoy or find useful, and thus encourage the dead to do or not do something in return for having received them. That is, inferiae were given as part of a cycle of material reciprocity, do ut des, which is familiar from Roman religion as a key part of the relationship between humans and gods. However, as has been discussed, the ceremony at Pisa marked Lucius as not divine, not a divus who could receive and be swayed by sacrifice. It is therefore unlikely that the private inferiae would have undercut this with the understanding that they were given in the hopes of encouraging Lucius to act from beyond the grave, as if he were divine. Nicola Denzey Lewis (2013) argues convincingly that the traditional understanding of inferiae as gifts given to the dead in order to elicit some action from beyond the grave should, in fact, be rejected. Inferiae were normally not specific, useful items for the dead but rather commemorative objects such as flowers or food or items that were particular reminders of the deceased. Bringing them served as part of the social practice of celebrating a holiday, remembering the deceased, and reinforcing relationships among the living. She suggests we should thus view the act of gift-giving to the dead/manes as providing an opportunity and a language for negotiating social status and relationships and creating symbolic and social capital among the living. “A gift to the dead could redefine or reinscribe social relations among the living” (2013, 124). This approach seems appropriate in the case of inferiae functioning as imperial memorials and particularly so in the case of the private inferiae at Pisa. There is no reason to suspect that candles, torches, or wreathes would have been especially useful or welcome to Lucius’s manes, year after year. They were rather symbols of mourning and commemoration that reflected the relationship between the living and the dead and between the people of Pisa and the domus Augusta.

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What then of the three gifts specifically allowed as private inferiae at Pisa? Ovid lists flowers, salt, grain, bread, and wine as appropriate gifts to the dead; that is, flowers and food. The only overlap between Ovid’s list and the private inferiae at Pisa is flowers. Dark blooms, especially roses and violets are, of course, well attested in Roman culture as gifts for the dead at any time and especially on particular memorial days. If they did not choose flowers, the privati at Pisa could choose offer a taper (cereus, a wax candle or torch used for lighting) or a torch (fax). Tapers and torches are not listed in Ovid or elsewhere as inferiae, but were appropriate to a funerary context. Torchbearers accompanied the funeral cortege when the body was taken from the home to the pyre at the place of burial. For Seneca the use of tapers and torches in this way was so iconic that he used the phrase “with torch and taper” to indicate a funeral procession (Brev. Vit. 20.10, Nat 1.1.5). The practice had already been expanded in the case of Lucius. Candles accompanied his body not just at his funeral proper but also during the trip back to Rome from where he died. The candles and torches may suggest that this procession was reenacted annually at Pisa. The bringing of tapers in particular could have carried particular social meaning. During midwinter the holiday of Saturnalia was a festival that defined and stressed the social order, often through the temporary reversal or partial flattening of normal status hierarchies, but also through organized gift exchanges (On Saturnalia in general, see Dolansky 2011a with further reading). Like Parentalia, Saturnalia was partially a public festival, with state sacrifices by public priests to Saturn, and partially a private holiday that could stretch for seven days. As part of the family festivities, the holiday gifts were exchanged among friends and family. Like Ovid’s inferiae, these were normally small gifts but could be more valuable. Candles, in particular, were given to patrons (or would-be patrons), as Varro (Ling. 5.10) states “on Saturnalia candles are given to superiors” (Saturnalibus cerei superioribus mittantur). According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.7.32–33), the requirement that candles be given by clients to patrons was a matter for public regulation though the actions of a tribune. Candles could be used to publicly signal a patron-client relation at other times as well. In 85 BCE, a popularis praetor M. Marius Gratidianus, took credit for the restoration of the value of the recently devalued denarius. This made him so popular with the Roman plebs (presumably because their savings were restored to their former value) that they set up statues of him in the various neighborhoods of the city to which they brought flowers and candles (The story appears in Cicero Off. 3.80, Pliny Nat. 33.132; 34.271 on Gratidianus; see Heinrichs 2008 with bibliography in n. 2). There may have been, as Ittai Gradel (2002, 51) has pointed out, semidivine overtones to these honors, a fact which has made Gratidianus a prime example for those seeking precedents in the republic for the development of the imperial cult. However, the honors for Gratidianus



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are just as easily understood not as worship but as acceptance and recognition of Gratidianus as benefactor and patron. The people came together to publicly give him, or his statues, the gifts that privately dependents normally gave to their superiors. Most importantly, there is a clear status distinction and dependency between the praetor Gratidianus and the residents of the city’s vici who privatim brought candles and flowers to his statues. A gift of candles could suggest, then, a particular kind of status relationship between the giver and receiver. They were, in public and private settings, an appropriate gift from a social inferior to a social superior, from a dependent to a benefactor. By including them on the list of potential inferiae, the Pisans were, while commemorating one member of the new imperial domus, claiming and defining their relationship with the dynasty as one of clientage and dependency rather than one of political subservience. Presumably a privatus who attended the rites could also choose to give nothing at all. The language is worded such that there should be an opportunity— not that there was a requirement. In practice, the privati who participated in the ceremony may not have had much choice in whether or not to offer a gift. The rites were a demonstration of loyalty. As mentioned above, Ovid’s account of the dies parentales end with the warning that when individual Romans neglected to properly celebrate the dies parentales, the whole state suffered disaster. So many died that the city was choked with the smoke of funeral pyres and the ghosts of the neglected dead haunted the streets (Fasti 2.546–556). If citizens opted out of participation in the inferiae they risked public calamity. Conclusion Gifts and gift-giving serve to distill and communicate complex relationships and relative social status. In the case of funerary gifts, this includes status relations among the dead, among the living, and between the living and the dead. The social status of the various participants at Pisa is reinforced by their roles in the ceremony and the inferiae they bring. There was still no clear agreement yet in 2 CE on just what the position of the emperor and his family was exactly vis-à-vis the various communities of the empire. In particular the ritual status of the imperial family across Roman society was still being worked out when Lucius died. One of the key ideological underpinnings of the principate was its reliance on consensus among all classes as an extraconstitutional justification for the dominance of Augustus and his family, that is, a shared acceptance of a relationship between the domus Augusta and the people of the empire. The creation of inferiae for Lucius’s manes provided a moment to reinforce annually a particular understanding of this relationship, one that depended on a Roman model but contained local elements.

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Bibliography Ando, Clifford. 2000. Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. Classics and Contemporary Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Beard, Mary, John A. North, and S. R. F. Price. 1998. Religions of Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dolansky, Fanny. 2011a. “Celebrating the Saturnalia.” Pages 488–503 in A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Edited by Beryl Rawson. BCAW. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2011b. “Honouring the Family Dead on the Parentalia: Ceremony, Spectacle, and Memory.” Phoenix 65:125–57. Fraschetti, Augusto. 1984. “Morte dei “principi” ed “eroi” della famiglia di Augusto.” Annali; Sezione Di Archeologia e Storia Antica 6:151–89. Gradel, Ittai. 2002. Emperor Worship and Roman Religion. OCM. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Heinrichs, Johannes. 2008. “Währungstechnische Regelungen im Amtsjahr des Prätors M. Marius Gratidianus (85/4 v. Chr.).” ZPE 166:261–67. Hesberg, Henner von, and Silvio Panciera. 1994. Das Mausoleum des Augustus: Der Bau und seine Inschriften. ABAW 108. Munich: Beck. Hurlet, Frédéric. 1997. Les collègues du prince sous Auguste et Tibère: De la légalité républicaine à la légitimité dynastique. Collection de l’École française de Rome 227. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome. Lewis, Nicola Denzey. 2013. “Roses and Violets for the Ancestors: Gifts to the Dead and Ancient Roman Forms of Social Exchange.” Pages 122–36 in The Gift in Antiquity. Edited by Michael L. Satlow. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Linderski, J. 2007. “Augustales and Sodales Augustales.” Pages 179–83 in Roman Questions II: Selected Papers. Stuttgart: Steiner. Lott, John Bert. 2012. Death and Dynasty in Early Imperial Rome: Key Sources, with Text, Translation, and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marotta D’Agata, Alida Rosina. 1980. Decreta Pisana (CIL, XI, 1420–21): Edizione critica, traduzione e commento. Testimonia 5. Pisa: Marlin. Prescendi, Francesca. 2007. Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice: les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire. PAB 19. Stuttgart: Steiner. Robinson, Matthew. 2011. Ovid Fasti Book 2. OCM. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowe, Greg. 2002. Princes and Political Cultures: The New Tiberian Senatorial Decrees. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rüpke, Jörg. 2007. Religion of the Romans. Trans. by Richard L. Gordon. Cambridge: Polity. Scheid, John. 1993. “Die Parentalien für die verstorbenen Caesaren als modell für den römischen Totenkult.” Klio 75:188–201.

Chapter Six Jill E. Marshall

The Cadence of the Language of Magic in Greek Curse Tablets and First Corinthians

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n his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses the term ἀνάθεμα, “curse,” twice. He begins his discussion of prophesying and praying in tongues:1 Περὶ δὲ τῶν πνευματικῶν, ἀδελφοί, οὐ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν. Οἴδατε ὅτι ὅτε ἔθνη ἦτε πρὸς τὰ εἴδωλα τὰ ἄφωνα ὡς ἂν ἤγεσθε ἀπαγόμενοι. διὸ γνωρίζω ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐδεὶς ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ λαλῶν λέγει· Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς, καὶ οὐδεὶς δύναται εἰπεῖν· Κύριος Ἰησοῦς, εἰ μὴ ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ. Concerning spiritual things, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were gentiles you were enticed and carried away again and again by speechless idols. Therefore, I want you to know that no one who is speaking in the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is a curse,” and no one is able to say, “Jesus is Lord,” unless he is in the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12:1–3)2

The second ἀνάθεμα occurs in the final greeting of the letter: Ὁ ἀσπασμὸς τῇ ἐμῇ χειρὶ Παύλου. εἴ τις οὐ φιλεῖ τὸν κύριον, ἤτω ἀνάθεμα. μαράνα θά. ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ μεθ’ ὑμῶν. ἡ ἀγάπη μου μετὰ πάντων ὑμῶν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. The greeting is in my, Paul’s, own hand. If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be cursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you in Christ Jesus. (1 Cor 16:21–24)3

I express my gratitude to several individuals who gave me helpful feedback and critique: Sandra Blakely, Eric Moore, my anonymous reviewers, and the conference attendees. I also thank Jaime Curbera and Ronald Stroud for discussing curse tablets with me and sharing their recent work. Any errors remain my own. 1.  Paul does, however, introduce praying and prophesying earlier. In 11:2–16, he provides suggestions for men and women’s attire when “when praying or prophesying”; an argument on a different topic, the Lord’s Supper, in 11:17–34 distances the first discussion of praying and prophesying from the one that begins in 12:1. 2.  Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s. 3.  Paul also pronounces a curse in his letter to the Galatians (1:8–9), but here I focus only on 1 Corinthians; see Betz 1979, 53, for ἀνάθεμα in Galatians.

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This term is a crux interpretum in scholarship on 1 Cor 12:3 and 16:22. The syntax, especially in 12:3, is difficult, and it is unclear whether and why the Corinthians would have said such a phrase. One argument about this odd phrase contextualizes it by analyzing the language of lead curse tablets found in Corinth. Based on analysis of tablets from Corinth, many from the Sanctuary of Demeter, Bruce Winter suggests that Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς means “Jesus, grant a curse,” and the Corinthian Christians asked their new Lord to curse their opponents, much like they once asked their old gods. This argument, however, places too much weight on a flawed syntactical parallel between 1 Cor 12:3 and statements in the curse tablets.4 In this essay, I similarly use the material evidence of curse tablets, in Corinth and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region, to contextualize Paul’s use of the term ἀνάθεμα. Through comparing the speech-act of cursing in Paul’s letter with that of cursing in the lead tablets, I reframe the question: rather than ask about the philological background for Paul’s obscure ἀνάθεμα statements and whether the Corinthians said something like this, I discuss how the term functioned in religious strategies for speaking to and for God. To accomplish this, I first examine a selection of curse tablets: one from Megara, which includes the term ἀνάθεμα, a few from Knidos, which provide additional examples of rituals that publicly anathematize individuals, and several from Corinth, which locate similar practices in the area to which Paul wrote. I then turn to Paul’s language in 1 Cor 12:3 and 16:22, within its literary context in a letter that at length addresses inspired speaking practices. I argue that both sets of texts—1 Corinthians and curse tablets—address the tension between hidden and common knowledge in ritual communication with the gods. For magical tablets, this tension—created by mysterious speech and writing, secret and public aspects of the ritual, and blending of multiple traditions—influences the perceived efficacy. In his suggestions to the Corinthians, Paul prefers intelligible to obscure speech, and the human audience is just as important as the divine, if not more so. At the same time, he invokes his own ability to speak in tongues, or tap into mysterious and foreign languages and knowledge, and pronounce curses to bolster his authority.

4.  Winter 2001, 164–83. Winter draws a syntactical parallel with a curse tablet that lacks a verb. He suggests that the person performing the curse would speak the full curse, including the verb, during the ritual. The problem with his argument is that it hinges on syntax that is not parallel. This curse text, as well as other tablets that do not include verbs, names the target rather than the god who grants the curse—here, “Maxima Pontia, for destruction” (Stroud 2013, nos. 130 and 131). Other curse tablets throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, especially from earlier periods, have the same pattern: The name of the target is inscribed, and the verb is absent and presumably spoken during the ritual; see Faraone 1991.



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Curses and Petitions for Justice from Megara, Knidos, and Corinth Inscriptions on lead tablets are common artifacts from the Mediterranean world, and they date from the classical Greek period to the Christian era. These tablets range from simple requests to the gods to harm someone (e.g., “Maxima Pontia, for destruction,” Stroud 2013, nos. 130, 131) to more complex texts that call on multiple gods, use magical words (voces magicae), and include figures or drawings. Curse tablets often addressed issues in the agonistic social world of the ancient Mediterranean: love, athletic contests, and court cases were some of the most prevalent reasons that individuals wrote curse texts (Faraone 1991). Petitioners also invoked gods to right injustices, and the tablets that I analyze here are such “prayers for justice.”5 Of the many curse tablets extant, I have selected these from Megara, Knidos, and Corinth because together they illuminate strategies for mysterious speech and writing, secret and public aspects of cursing, and blending multiple cultural traditions. The Megara tablet uses the language of ἀνάθεμα that occurs in 1 Corinthians, and it displays hybridity of “Hekatean” and “Hebraic” sources of authority, a cultural intersection similar to that at play in 1 Corinthians, in which Paul balances “Greek” and “Jewish” expectations of his messages (1 Cor 1:22– 24). The Corinth tablets locate magical language and practice in the city to which Paul writes and, with the Knidos tablets, provide additional examples of targets being “handed over” to become ἀνάθεμα. A lead tablet from Megara, dated to the first or second century CE (fig. 1), includes the terms ἀνάθεμα, “something dedicated or cursed,” and ἀναθεματίζω, “to curse,” and invocations of “Hekatean” and “Hebrew” elements.6 The lead tablet is inscribed on both sides and does not appear to have been rolled or pierced but may have been folded where a horizontal break occurs in the center. The inscription begins with three lines of voces magicae, untranslatable words that have Greek elements.7 An etched line extends horizontally across the top of the tablet and separates the voces magicae from the intelligible Greek part of the curse, which begins with the verb καταγράφομεν, “we inscribe” (l. 4). This verb is common in curse tablets and calls attention to the written nature of the object and the action of scratching the prayer onto the metal.8 Purchase documents 5.  “Prayers for justice” are one subset of curse tablets; for definitions of this category, see Versnel 1991, 60–106; Gager 1992, 175–80; Versnel 2009, 314. 6.  Berlin inv. misc. 7462; published by Wünsch 1903, xiii–xiv; Αudollent 1904, DT 41. The Greek transcription and drawing is by Curbera, 2015; the English translation is in Gager 1992, 183–84. LSJ s.v. ἀνάθεμα; the noun derives from ἀνατίθημι. On this tablet and its connection to early Christian vocabulary, see Deissmann 1908 [1927], 95; see brief references to the tablet in Conzelmann 1975, 204; Fee 1987, 580; Fitzmyer 2008, 459. In reference to Gal 1:8–9, see Betz 1979, 53. 7.  See discussion of these terms and their Greek elements in Gager 1992, 183 n. 12; see also the discussion of different types of voces magicae in Brashear 1995, 3429–38. 8.  LSJ s.v. καταγράφω. For “scratching,” “lacerating,” or “inscribing,” see Herodotus, Hist. 3.108;

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Side A ΖΩΑΦΕΡ τὸν θαλασσόσημον ΣΕΚΤΑ ΝΤΗΑΠΑΦΟΝΟΧΑΙ παιδικὸν Πανα[ίτι]ον ἐγναμμένον ΚΕΧΑΙΑΝΜ [… κα]ταγράφομεν τοὺς ἐκ ΕΞΑΙΟΝ.. … ΕΙτους αὐτὰ καὶ ἀναθεματίζ[ομ]εν αὐτοὺς· Ἀλθαία Κόρη ὀρεο[β][αζ]άγρα Ἑκάτη ἀκρουβόρη Σελή[νη .]ΙΘΙΒΙ … ΜΗ· τούτους ἀναθεμα[τί]ζομεν· σῶμα, πνεῦμα ψ[υ]χὴν [δι]άνοιαν φρόνησιν αἴσθησιν ζοὴν [καρδ]ίαν λόγοις Ἑκατικίοις ὁρκίσμ[α][σί] τε ἁβραικοῖς - - - - - - - - - - - - … σους Γῆ Ἑκάτη Τ. . .\ ους [κ]ελευόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν ὀνομ[ά]των ἁβραικῶν τε ὁρκισμάτων· τρίχας κεφαλὴν ἐνκέφαλον πρ[όσ][ω]πον ἀκοὰς ὀφρ[ῦς] μυκτῆρας ΟΙ - - - - - - - - προν σιαγόνας ὀδόντα[ς] - - - - - - ψυχὴν στοναχεῖν ὑγεία[ν] - - - - - - τὸν αἷμα σάρκας κατακάει[ν] [στον]αχεῖ ὅ πάσχοι καὶ Frag. 1 (lost) a ΚΑΞΖΩ b - - -ME - -TONOΠ - - -Α

Side B ἐπιορκίζω … καὶ τὴν [τ]ριώνυ[μο]ν σε[λήνην …] καὶ α … ΣΑΙ νύκτιον μέσον ὅταν τὸν π[… σ]τρέφῃς καὶ τὰ θειάων περιπ… ν οὐρανοδρόμε καρτερόχ[ειρ] θεωρητέ κυανόπεπλε κα.… .ΟΠΕΤ … κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ [θά]λα(σ)σαν ἡ εἰνο[δία?] ΕΝΩΝΠ ἀναθεματί(ζ)ομεν τούτο[υς] τοὺς κατὰ Ι… … του Α … ΚΗΚΟV … ΦΑΝΙ . [κα][τα]γρά[φο]μεν [εἰς] κολάσε[ις …] καὶ [ποι]νὴν καὶ … ΜΕΤ … ΕΣ παρὰ … περὶ τῶν Π… … ΕΧΑ τὸ σῶμα· ἀνάθεμα.

zôapher ton thallassosêmon sek ntêapaphonochai the beloved child Panaitios inscribed (here?) echaipen … We curse those epaipên … them and we anathematize them. Althaia, Kore, oreobazagra Hekate Moon who devours its tail … ithibi … we anathematize them—body, spirit, soul, mind, thought, feeling, life, heart—with Hekatean words and Hebrew oaths … Earth Hekate … commanded by the holy names and oaths of the Hebrews—hair, head, brain, face, ears, eyebrows, nostrils … jaws, teeth … so that their soul may sigh, their health may … their blood (and) flesh may burn and (let) him/her sigh with what he/she suffers …

I invoke … also Moon, the triple-named, who (circulates?) in the middle of the night whenever the … walk about, who courses the heavens with a strong hand, the visible one with the dark-blue mantle … on land and sea, Einodia (?) … we anathematize (?) them … and enroll them for punishments, pain, and retribution … the body. Anathema.

Figure 1. The curse tablet from Megara; Berlin National Museum, misc. 7462; drawing courtesy of Jaime Curbera, Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin.

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use this verb when one person has conveyed or transferred property or slaves by deed to a buyer (Plutarch, Vit. par. 2.482C; P.Oxy. 1703; 472.19; 306). A similar transaction takes place in this request; the petitioner is placing the victim into the hands of the gods s/he invokes, primarily Hekate. S/he does not state why s/ he does so. The second verb in the tablet is ἀναθεματίζομεν (l. 5), “we dedicate to evil or curse,” a verb used also in lines 8 and 29.9 At the end of the curse, the noun ΑΝΑΘΕΜΑ is set apart as if it were a title. The concept of ἀνάθεμα and dedicating a person to god is central to the logic of this tablet. After inscribing and cursing the targets, the petitioner addresses Hekate with Greek epithets and names in unknown or mysterious languages: Ἀλθαία Κόρη ὀρεο[βαζ]αγρα Ἑκάτη ἀκρουροβόρη Σελή[νη].10 The petitioner repeats, “we anathematize them,” and adds a list of personal targets: “body, spirit, soul, mind, thought, feeling, life, heart.” Lists of body parts often occur in binding spells and proceed from head to toe. This list, however, is abstract and targets the “spiritual” rather than “physical” parts of the person. The ἀνάθεμα gains its power through λόγοις Ἑκατικίοις ὁρκίσμασί τε ἁβραικοῖς, “Hekatean words and Hebrew oaths” (ll. 11–12). The text has introduced Hekate as the divine power petitioned, and at this point it connects words related to her with Hebrew traditions. What are these “Hebrew oaths,” and how do they relate to “Hekatean words”? Immediately after the reference to Hekatean and Hebrew at the center of the obverse, the goddess’s name ΓΗ ἙΚΑΤΗ is set apart from the petition in an inscribed oval. There are two additional ellipses on either side of Γῆ Ἑκάτη, but lacunae exist in both, leaving only the last three letters in each one, ΟΥΣ. These fragments could be additional epithets for Hekate, but it seems more likely that they are “Hebrew words” that enhance the “Hekatean words” invoked in the inscription.11 After the ellipses, Aelian, Var. hist. 10.3; Plutarch, Sol. 25. The term occurs in the PGM IV. 2093; IV. 3189; IV. 3258; XIa. 2; XII. 382–86. In these spells, inscribing occurs on varied media—papyri, reeds, skulls, bat wings, clay bricks; see discussion of this tablet’s text in Wünsch 1912, 4–7; Gager 1992, 183–84. 9.  The term ἀναθεματίζω occurs twice on Side A and possibly once on Side B. Wünsch 1903, xiv, proposes ἀναθεματίζομεν for a fragmentary word on line 8–9 of Side B; Gager 1992, 184, follows this reconstruction; Αudollent 1904, DT 41, suggests ενωνπα[ρατίτ]ομεν. 10.  Oreobazagra and Akrouroborê occur in magical formulae in the PGM. Oreobazagra is part of the maskelli-maskello formula: PGM VII. 302; IX. 10; XXXVI. 342–46; PDM XV. 2. The formula includes four terms that may be old Greek epithets for gods, and oreobazagra may be an ancient epithet of Hekate or Selene. The Yessimmigadon/Akrouroborê formula occurs in PGM II. 32; IV. 2771ff; V. 424ff; VII. 680ff; 895ff; XIII. 923ff; XIXa. 12; PDM VII. 25–26; see PDM, 336, 339. Akrouroborê, one “who devours its tail,” is a common epithet for the moon and elicits the image of the ouroboros, the snake that eats its tail, common in amulets and protective recipes. PGM VII. 579–90 and CVI. 1–10 provide recipes for amulets with the ouroboros image. The latter recipe names Hebrew archangels in a similar fashion as a gem from Bohak 2011, 188. 11.  Wünsch 1912, 4–7, suggests that this place on the tablet is where the “Hebrew” words should be. He supplies [ΙΗΣ] so that Ἰησοῦς, a “Hebrew name,” occurs in the cartouches on either side of Γῆ Ἑκάτη; Curbera 2015 has made out a sigma before the omicron in the first cartouche, which gives Wünsch’s conjecture some credence.



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the inscription refers to Hebrew elements again: κελευόμενοι ὑπὸ τὼν ἱερῶν ὀνομάτων ἁβραικῶν τε ὁρκισμάτων, “commanded by the holy names and oaths of the Hebrews” (ll. 14–15). The ellipses around ΓΗ ἙΚΑΤΗ and its counterparts on either side resemble the practice of drawing frames around names of angels in the Sepher ha-Razim and clay incantation bowls from Palestine (See Gager 1992, 182–83, 106–7; Naveh and Shaked 1985, 86, 216). The curse is adopting this graphic sign from Palestinian magic and treating Hekate’s name like the names of angels in Hebrew traditions. The reverse side begins with the verb ἐπιορκίζω, “I swear an oath,” or “I exorcise.” The verb connects this side of the tablet with the “oaths [ὁρκισμάτων] of the Hebrews” from the obverse. Roy Kotansky argues that concepts of demon possession and exorcism are characteristic of Semitic magic and foreign to classical Greek thought, which instead engaged in binding spells and called upon gods and demons from the underworld (Kotansky 1995, 246–65). In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, however, magical texts blend Greek binding spells with Semitic exorcisms and amuletic protection against indwelling demons. This tablet is an example of this blending (Kotansky 1995, 273–75). Rather than calling on Iao, Adonai, or Michael—common names for Hebrew exorcistic purposes—this tablet substitutes Hekate and retains elements of traditional Greek defixiones—registering the target for punishments and listing targeted body parts. The curse finishes with additional epithets that implore Hekate as someone whose character and mythology makes her appropriate for cursing. She is “triple-named,” evoking the triple-headed image of Hekate, and she goes about in the middle of the night, which makes her ideal for nocturnal activities (ll. 22–24).12 The text ends with additional uses of the verbs ἀναθεματίζω and καταγράφω (ll. 32–29), and finally the word ΑΝΑΘΕΜΑ set apart from the rest of the curse (Gager 184 ,1992 n. 22).13 While ἀνάθεμα in typical Greek usage indicates an offering or dedication to a god, in Septuagint Greek it translates the Hebrew ‫( ֵח ֶרם‬hērem) and signifies something set apart for destruction (Lev 27:28; Deut 7:26; 13:17; Josh 6:17–18; 7:11–13; Zech 14:11; Philo, Migr. 98; Her. 200). The reuse of these verbs highlights the symmetry of the curse: On the obverse, after voces magicae and a horizontal line, it begins with καταγράφομεν, followed by ἀναθεματίζομεν and a list of divine names. On the reverse is a list of divine names, followed by ἀναθεματίζομεν and καταγράφομεν. At the center of the structure are the names in ellipses, on either side of which are references to “Hebrew oaths.” 12.  For the triple-headed image of Hekate, see PGM IV. 2006–125; a similar combination of Hekate, use of the “Hebrew tongue” (τῆς ἑβραικῆς [φ]ωνῆς), and the verb ἐπιορκίζω occurs in PGM III. 1–164, the “ritual of the cat,” which claims numerous binding and cursing functions. 13.  Titles from the spell recipes in PGM are often inscribed on curse tablets; see Graf 1997, 151– 52, on how magical professionals used the recipes.

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Table 1. Symmetrical Structure of the Megara Tablet 1. voces magicae (ll. 1–3) 2. καταγράφομεν (l. 4) 3. ἀναθεματίζομεν (ll. 5–6) 4. Divine names (ll. 6–8) 5. ἀναθεματίζομεν (ll. 8–9) 6. List of body parts (ll. 9–11) 7. λόγοις Ἑκατικίοις ὁρκίσμασί τε ἁβραικοῖς (ll. 11–12) 8. Names (Hekatean and Hebrew?) in ellipses (l. 13) 7. τῶν ἱερῶν ὀνομάτων ἁβραικῶν τε ὁρκισμάτων (ll. 14–15) 6. List of body parts and suffering (ll. 16–21) 5. ἐπιορκίζω (rev. l. 22) 4. Divine names (ll. 22–29) 3. ἀναθεματίζομεν (ll. 29–30) 2. καταγράφομεν (ll. 31–32) 1. ΑΝΕΘΕΜΑ (l. 38) The language and graphic organization of the tablet highlight two characteristics of magic in the ancient Mediterranean world: obscurity and hybridity. Obscurity occurs in the opening voces magicae and in the named and unnamed gods. The petitioner signals that s/he knows how to address the gods—here, with Hebrew and Hekatean words. Hybridity occurs in the melding of multiple traditions. The petitioner seems familiar with Hekatean traditions, since s/he knows her epithets and images. The Hebrew elements likely surface in the framed names at the center of the tablet. In Greek and Latin literature, the Jews, especially Moses and Solomon, have a reputation for magic.14 Magical papyri and tablets invoke the Jewish Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, and the archangels, alongside Greek and Egyptian names.15 The Sepher ha-Razim, incantation bowls, and amulets demonstrate Jewish practices of harnessing divine powers from the Second Temple period to late antiquity, in Palestine and the diaspora (see Bohak 2011). In this text, the blending of “Hebrew” with “Hekatean” is not haphazard: The coexistence is formulaic and structured to achieve a wide-ranging call to powerful gods. The Megara tablet provides little information about its ritual setting because its find spot and context are unknown. By contrast, the curse tablets found in the Sanctuary of Demeter in Knidos, in Asia Minor, provide more information about 14.  Pliny the Elder, Nat. 30.2; Juvenal, Sat. 6.546; Lucian, Alex. 32.13. In PGM V. 108–18, Moses is a messenger of the Egyptian god Osoronnophis and has special knowledge of God’s name; see Gager 1972. 15.  E.g., the spells in PGM III. 1–164 and 187–262 invoke Hebrew names of Iao, Adonai, and Michael; PGM IV. 127–64 call on the God of Abraham and Isaac; Moses appears in III. 445 and Solomon in IV. 850–929.



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their location and ritual. These tablets provide important parallels to those found in the Sanctuary of Demeter in Corinth, which I will discuss, and demonstrate the public nature of curse practices. Charles T. Newton found fourteen lead tablets dating to the first century BCE near statue bases in the temple (Newton 1863, 2:719–45. Nos. 81–95 [= DT 1–13]). These formulaic prayers for justice invoke Demeter as the primary agent of justice, as well as Kore, Pluto, and other “gods with Demeter.”16 The prayers lack voces magicae and graphic and linguistic obscurity. They name the petitioners, who are in all cases women, but rarely name the target, either because he or she is unknown or because the target’s recognition of his or her wrong and action to rectify it is critical for the ritual process. The targets have wronged the petitioners in some way; one target has accused the petitioner of poisoning or cursing her husband, and she wants to clear her name (Newton 1863, no. 85 [DT 4]). In another inscription, someone has taken clothing from the petitioner, and she wants him or her to return it to the sanctuary (Newton 1863, no. 82 [DT 2]). As in the Megara tablet, the petitioner transfers the target and case of injustice to the goddess. The Knidos tablets use the verbs ἀνιερόω and ἀνατίθημι, “make an offering” or “dedicate,” which emphasize the ritual act of dedication to the goddess. As in the Megara tablet, the targets are ἀνάθεμα, handed over to the goddess for judgment, and the curses ask that the goddess cause the target pain.17 This affliction leads to a ritual in which the target goes to Demeter, the divine arbiter of justice, to confess. Many of the tablets include a clause that protects the petitioner in cases where she might encounter the target: “Let it be permissible for me to go to the same bath, under the same roof, or to the same table.”18 This clause suggests that the target is unknown, the community is small, and she will encounter the cursed person. The divine power is a contagion; once someone has requested the goddess obtain justice and inflict harm, retributive power has been released and has the potential to affect those near the target. The ritual tablet, then, serves as a curse and an apotropaic device; it seeks justice and protects. The Knidos tablets were found folded, broken, and pierced with nails. Newton interpreted the holes in the top center of many of the tablets to indicate that they were displayed in the temple.19 Most curse tablets, including prayers for justice, were found in graves or wells, hidden from view. The display of the 16.  Newton 1863, no. 81 (DT 1); for discussion of the formulaic pattern and categorization as “prayer for justice,” see Versnel 1991, 72–73. 17.  The Knidos tablets share vocabulary with the Megara tablet: κόλασις, τιμωρία, and βάσανος; see Versnel 1991, 73, on the meaning of “burning” in these tablets. 18.  DT 1; trans. Gager 1992, 89; see Newton 1863, 723; Versnel 1991, 73. Tablets that include a protection clause: Newton 1863, nos. 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92; often the clause occurs at the beginning of the reverse side. 19.  Newton 1863, 724; other scholars, including Wünsch and Versnel, have followed this hypothesis. Wünsch, 1903, xii.b; Versnel 1991, 80; contra Audollent 1904, cxvi, 5, who thought they were buried or hidden like other defixiones. Similar cases exist in which prayers for justice were displayed

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Knidos tablets highlights the tension between secrecy and common knowledge in curse procedures. They ritualize public knowledge of acts that were normally secret—both the curse ritual and the wrongdoing that caused it. Through display of the tablets, women who petitioned Demeter simultaneously sent a message to the goddess and to the community, and this dual audience gave the ritual power. In Knidos, Demeter was a goddess suitable for petitions for justice. Also in Corinth, women from the first to fourth centuries CE inscribed tablets and deposited them in the Sanctuary of Demeter. Excavators found eighteen tablets, many of which were rolled up and pierced with nails. Ten of them were found near altar bases in a dining room from the Greek era of the Sanctuary, the only part of the abandoned lower terrace rebuilt by the Romans.20 Other tablets were found in a nearby room on the lower terrace and on the upper terrace near the central and easternmost temples, thought to be dedicated to Kore and the Fates.21 The earliest of the tablets dates to the mid-first century CE, about a quarter of a century prior to Roman rebuilding (Stroud 2013, nos. 130 and 131). Several tablets resemble prayers for justice, like those at Knidos. One appears to be a love spell and another a curse for a court case. Many of the tablets are fragmentary and difficult to decipher.22 In addition to the ten tablets in the “Building of the Tablets,” excavators found used terracotta lamps and incense burners (θυμιατήριον). These objects, combined with the small space and lack of windows, suggest a dimly lit atmosphere in which only a few people could gather. Also in this room, excavators noted bits of lead from other disintegrated tablets (Stroud 2013, 147). These lead remnants and the possibility of other decomposed materials (wax, paper, etc.) often used in magical procedures demonstrate the significance of the lead tablets that are extant. The Sanctuary of Demeter saw a significant amount of ritual activity, possibly nocturnal, involving inscribed incantations. A rolled up tablet (no. 133) found near the south wall of the central temple on the upper terrace exhibits similarities with the petitions for justice at Knidos (Stroud 2013, 125–26; Corinth inv. MF-1973-38). The text of this tablet begins: Κυρία Δήμητρα δίκια. The term δίκαια may be either an epithet for the goddess, “Lady Demeter, the Just,” or a neuter plural connected to the request that follows the vocative naming of the goddess. Either way, Demeter is in temples: a tablet from Amorgos and a curse from the Temple of Oserapis in the Serapeum in Memphis show evidence of display on the temple walls; see Versnel 1991, 68–69, 74, 81. 20.  Bookidis and Stroud 1997, 277–82 and 432–36; Stroud 2013, 138–39, notes that there were probably ruined walls still standing at this site, which attracted reuse and later restoration. 21.  On the dedications of the upper terrace temples to Demeter, Kore, and the Fates, see Bookidis and Stroud 1997, 436–47; for the theory that the temples were dedicated to Roman gods Ceres, Liber, and Libera, see Spaeth 2006. 22.  For a discussion of the state of the tablets and the texts and translations, see Stroud 2013, 104–15; on categorizing the tablets as judicial prayers, see Versnel 2009, 314.



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Figure 2. The double curse tablet no. 125/126 (Corinth inv. MF-1969-294 and MF-1969-295), as found; Source: Stroud 2013, 104; photo courtesy of American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations.

associated with obtaining justice.23 This tablet is the only one recovered from the Sanctuary that calls on Demeter. Beyond the initial address, the text is cryptic. The second line may include the name Ἀνάγκη, “Necessity,” which occurs in other tablets from the Sanctuary (Stroud 2013, 127; see tablets 122, 125/126). The verb [ἀν]έθηκαν, “they dedicated,” occurs in line 5. We have seen the language of ἀνατίθημι in the Megara and Knidos tablets. The petitioner here has likewise dedicated a target to Demeter, or made him or her ἀνάθεμα. A better-preserved text is the double tablet, nos. 125/126 (fig. 2), against a woman named Karpime Babbia.24 No. 125 παραθίτομα[ι] καὶ καταθί[το]μα[ι] Καρπίμην Βαβίαν στεφανηπλόκον Μοίραις Πραξιδίκαις ὅπως ἐγδεικ[ήσ]ωσι τὰς ὕβρ{ι}εις, Ἑρμῇ Χθονίῳ, Γῇ, Γῆς παισίν, [ὅ]πως κατεργάσωναι καὶ διεργάσωνται ψ[υ]χὴν αὐτῆς καὶ καρδίαν καὶ νοῦ αὐτῆς [καὶ] φρένες 23.  Stroud 2013, 127: “At the same time, in Knidos, Amorgos, and now on Acrocorinth, she [Demeter] was clearly considered as a goddess who could be appealed to in ‘prayers for justice.’” 24.  Text and trans.: Stroud 2013, 104–15, nos.125/126; Corinth inv. MF-1969-294 and MF-1969295.

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Jill E. Marshall Καρπίμης Βαβίας σεφανη[π]λόκου. ὁρκίζω σε καὶ ἐναρῶμαί σε καὶ ἐνεύχομαί σοι, Ἑρμῆ Χθόνιε, τὰ μεγάλα No. 126 ὀ[νύ]ματα τῆς Ἀνάνκης ΝΕΒΕΖΑΠ ΑΔΑΙΕΙΣΕΝ[.]ΓΕΙΒΕΒΗΩΗΕΡΑ κάρπισαί με, τὸ μέγα ὄν[υ]μα τὸ ἐπάνανκον, ὃ οὐκ εὐχερῶς ὀνυμάζεται, ἂν μὴ ἐπὶ μεγάλαις ἀνανκαίαι, ΕΥΦΕΡ, μέγα ὄνυμα, κπισαί με καὶ κατέργασαι Καρπίμην Βαβίαν στεφ[α]νηπλόκον ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς μέχρι ἰχνέων ἰ ἐπιμήνον κατεργας[ί]αν. I entrust and consign Karpime Babbia, weaver of garlands, to the Fates who exact justice, so that they may punish her acts of insolence, to Hermes of the Underworld, to Earth, to the children of Earth, so that they may overcome and completely destroy her soul and heart and her mind and the wits of Karpime Babbia, weaver of garlands. I adjure you and I implore you and I pray to you, Hermes of the Underworld, that the mighty names of Ananke, Nebezapadaieisen [.] Geibebeohera, make me fertile; that the mighty name, the one carrying compulsion, which is not named recklessly unless in dire necessity, Eupher, mighty name, make me fertile and destroy Karpime Babbia, weaver of garlands, from her head to her footprints with monthly destruction.

These two lead tablets were rolled up together and pierced with nails. This tablet shares with the Knidos tablets a desire for justice and displays another concern central to Demeter cults: female fertility. The petitioner “consigns and entrusts” (παραθίτομαι καὶ καταθίτομαι) a woman named Karpime Babbia to the “Fates who exact justice [Μοίραις Πραξιδίκαις].”25 The unnamed female petitioner wants the Fates to expose Karpime Babbia’s “acts of insolence” (τὰς ὕβριεις). The misspellings and letter transpositions in these lines may indicate that the author has limited literacy. She asks “Hermes of the Underworld, Gê, and the children of Gê,” to attend to the woman’s destruction. As in the Megara tablet, the petitioner lists the parts of her target that she wants destroyed—“her soul and heart and her mind and wits.” The pathos of the situation emerges in the rhythmic and supplicatory language of the curse: “I adjure you and I implore you and I pray to you, Hermes of the Underworld.” She calls on the “great names” to make her fertile (κάρπισαί με): first, Ἀνάγκε, Necessity, who is often invoked in the magical papyri and who, according to Pausanias, had a sanctuary dedicated to her and Βία (“Force”) on

25.  Tablet no. 124 also targets Karpime Babbia; discussions of the tablet and its translation are in Versnel 2009, 313–15; Nasrallah 2012, 128–32.



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the slope of Acrocorinth near the Sanctuary of Demeter (Descr. II.4).26 Second, she invokes two voces magicae.27 The petitioner repeats the call to “the mighty name, the one carrying compulsion, which is not named recklessly unless in dire necessity [ἀνανκαίς],” and asks a third time for fertility. Karpime Babbia’s injustice may relate to the petitioner’s lack of fertility. Perhaps she insulted the barren woman or flaunted her own ability to have children. The woman’s recourse is this tablet and ritual, especially asking the gods to give Karpime “monthly destruction.” The repeated requests for fertility, supplicatory language, and call to Necessity indicate a powerless position. The petition, accompanied by precise rituals and spoken words in a dark room, gives the woman power. Finally, one curse tablet from the first century CE in the Building of the Tablets is a love charm. The petitioner “binds” (καταδεσμεύω) Secunda Postumia—“her mind, her wits, her hands, her sinews, her knees, her entire body” (Stroud 2013, 86–87, no. 118). On the reverse is an “intentional and puzzling palimpsest” in which a different hand wrote two texts: first, an unintelligible text, and then, another text inscribed in both horizontal and vertical lines on top of the first text (Stroud 2013, 91–92). The jumble of letters may include voces magicae or a message intended to be read in a different direction, or it could be completely unintelligible. Either way, the obscurity and mystery created by writing in layers is intentional and viewed by the author as communicating a message (or messages) to an otherworldly recipient. This limited selection of curse tablets shows their formulaic yet fluid nature. The metal and the act of targeting a person for judgment remains the same, but the ritual and language varies. The logic of magic requires petitioners to address the gods so that they will attend to their requests. Knowledge of foreign and unknown names and mysterious languages translates into power to achieve supernatural and social results. The value of foreign and mysterious knowledge leads to processes of blending traditions and languages—Greek, Hebrew, and Egyptian. What other people know about the ritual act, moreover, influences the perceived efficacy of the curse. The process at Knidos ritualizes public knowledge in order to accomplish justice. The palimpsest text from Corinth hides and reveals a divine message. Both the locutionary and inscribed parts of the ritual lead to communication with the god. The performative statements “I inscribe” or “I curse” or “I dedicate” happen in the moment of speaking and have permanent expression in writing. Students of 1 Corinthians may hear much that resonates in this discussion of the use of obscure language, esoteric and common knowledge, and speaking and writing in these tablets. The same issues arise in

26.  The love spell in PGM VII.302 invokes “Bitter Necessity,” followed by the Maskelli formula (see n. 10, above ); see PGM IV. 526, 605. 27.  For possible known voces magicae in this text, see Stroud 2013, 111; and Nasrallah 2012, 130.

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Paul’s arguments about praying in tongues and prophesying. I will now turn to Paul and begin with his use of the term ἀνάθεμα. Anathema and Inspired Speech in 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 16:22 As I indicated above, the term ἀνάθεμα is a crux interpretum in scholarship on 1 Cor 12:3 and 16:22. It is difficult to determine accurate translations and contexts for these verses. In the first case, the absence of a verb in the phrase Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς means that it could be subjunctive, “Let Jesus be cursed,” or indicative, “Jesus is a curse/cursed,” parallel to “Jesus is Lord.”28 The variants in the manuscript tradition reflect this difficulty.29 The perennial question in New Testament scholarship is: Did the Corinthians actually say this, and if so, why? Some scholars argue that Paul invented the phrase for the sake of his argument and that no one in Corinth was actually saying it.30 Other scholars have proposed that Corinthian Christians were forced to curse Jesus, either because of Jewish opponents and persecution in the synagogues or the threat or reality of Roman persecution.31 Another line of thinking suggests that Corinthians willingly said Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς for religious reasons. Walter Schmithals argues that the phrase came from docetic Christians, influenced by Hellenistic-Jewish Gnosticism, who cursed the embodied “Jesus” and revered the spiritual “Lord Christ” (Schmithals 1971, 127). Yet another suggestion is that Corinthians engaged in rituals and speech similar to those of the female prophets Sibyl, Cassandra, or the priestess of Delphi: they cursed Jesus in an ecstatic state and did not know what they were saying.32 Finally, I mentioned above Winter’s hypothesis that the Corinthians were asking Jesus to grant a curse, similar to magical practices of curse tablets (Winter 2001, 164–83). First Corinthians 16:22 poses similar syntactical problems. The ἀνάθεμα is combined with the transliterated Aramaic phrase μαράνα θά, which may be imperative, “Our Lord, come!” or perfect or future indicative, “Our Lord has come” or “Our Lord will come.”33 Since this is one of the few times in Paul’s 28.  See discussion of the possibilities for translation in Thiselton 2000, 918. 29.  The MSS witness three variations in the case endings of the phrase Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς: (1) in the preferred reading of NA28, “Jesus” is nominative: ‫ א‬A B C 6. 33. 81. 1175C. 1241S. 1739. 1881 pc t; Did. (2) A. Iησουν, “Curse Jesus”: 𝔓46 D G Ψ 𝔐 ar vgmss; Ambst. (3) A. Ιησου, “The curse of Jesus”: F 629 pc lat; Spec. 30.  De Broglie 1951–1952, 253–66; Conzelmann 1975, 206; Fee 1987, 581; Hays 1996, 208–9. Bassler 1982, 415–18, cautions against historical arguments at the expense of understanding Paul’s rhetoric and the connection of this verse to v. 2 and the arguments that follow. 31.  For Jewish persecution: Derrett 1975, 544–54. For Roman persecution: Cullmann 1948, 22–23. 32.  Allo 1934, 278–80; Barrett 1971, 280; this interpretation has a flawed view of Greek female prophetic traditions. 33.  These options are reflected in the textual variants, even though the spacing of the letters in the MSS is difficult to discern and make little difference in determining the Aramaic original. There are three possibilities: (1) μαραν αθα, in B2 D2 G*vid K L Ψ 323. 365. 1505. al vgcl sy.; (2) μαραναθα, in F Gc



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letters in which he uses Aramaic, scholars have examined the role of the phrase in the Palestinian origins of Christianity and how it may reflect the earliest beliefs in the return of Christ and the celebration of the communal meal or Eucharist.34 My analysis touches on these issues, but my interests revolve more around how these statements express ideas about ritual communication, language, and knowledge in similar and distinct ways from curse tablets. Since Paul shares vocabulary with the tablets at these points, does the language and ritual of cursing illuminate how Paul and the Corinthians understand the term ἀνάθεμα and the broader conversation about inspired speech? Adolf Deissmann suggests that Paul uses “the technical phraseology and the cadence of the language of magic” at points throughout his letter (Deissmann 1908 [1927], 301). Characteristic of magical language are Paul’s reference to “the marks of Jesus” on his body (Gal 6:17), instructions for excising a harmful person from the community (1 Cor 5:4–5), and the term ἀνάθεμα (Rom 9:3; 1 Cor 12:3; 16:22; Gal 1:8–9). Deissmann draws the philological parallel between the Megara tablet and Paul’s language of cursing. References to the Megara tablet persist in interpretation of Paul’s ἀνάθεμα, but they rarely move beyond the observation of similar vocabulary (Conzelmann 1975, 204; Fee 1987, 580; Fitzmyer 2008, 459; Winter 2001, 164–83). What does it mean for Paul’s argument and the religious practices in Corinth to say that Paul uses “the cadence of the language of magic”? I address this question first with reference to 1 Cor 16:22. This verse combines a curse with an Aramaic invocation. This passage has Jewish roots: ἀνάθεμα suggests the Jewish conception of separation for destruction (‫ח ֶרם‬,ֵ hērem), the curse is paired with a blessing, and Paul transliterates the Aramaic phrase, “Our Lord, come.” The use of Aramaic in the urban Greek context of Corinth may provide Paul’s statement with mystical power just as the Hebrew elements combined with Hekatean words provide power to the Megara tablet. The scholarly focus on the Aramaic syntax and Palestinian origins of the phrase neglects how a Greek-speaking Corinthian would hear ἤτω ἀνάθεμα μαράνα θά.35 In the first century, Aramaic was not often spoken outside of Palestine. Even in the substantial diaspora Jewish community in Alexandria, Greek was the language of everyday life, economic transactions, scholarship, and perhaps even the synagogue (Davies and Finkelstein 1989, 110–14). If a Jewish community existed in Corinth when Paul arrived, as Acts 18 suggests, they would have primarily spoken Greek.36 The combination of the 0121. 0243. 1739. 1881. 𝔐; (3) μαρανα θα (preferred by NA28), possibly in 𝔓46 ‫ א‬Α Β* C D* P 33. See Kuhn 1967; Moule 1960; Conzelmann 1975, 300. 34.  Didache 10.6 has a parallel use of the term; Bousset 1921 [1970], 129; Bornkamm 1969, 169– 78. 35.  On the bilingualism of Corinth during the Roman period and its influence on Paul’s letters to Corinth, see Concannon 2014, 64–73. 36.  In Corinth, the inscription found at the Lechaion road near the Propylaia has the Greek letters [ΣΥΝΑ]ΓΩΓΗ ΕΒΡ[ΑΙΩΝ] and is thought to be a door lintel from a synagogue; however, it dates to the third or fourth century, much later than Paul; Corinth inv. I-123; Meritt 1931, no. 111.

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curse and the Aramaic phrase results in a rhythmic and alliterative, even magical, sound: ἤτω ἀνάθεμα μαράνα θά. To a Corinthian, μαράνα θά is foreign-sounding and exotic, even if she has learned its meaning. She knows it is an invocation of the Lord Christ—“Our Lord, come!”—in an Eastern language of which she has privileged knowledge. In meaning and in its mysterious sound, the phrase evokes divine power. As part of a letter, the phrase also conjures power in its inscribed nature, much as the power of curse tablets arises from the confluence of writing, speaking, and ritual. Before the curse, μαράνα θά, and blessing, Paul states: “This greeting is in my, Paul’s, own hand” (16:21). Paul dictated his letters to a secretary, and at this point, he adds his signature, which calls attention to the process of writing and to himself as the author.37 Paul’s presence comes to Corinth when the Corinthians read the letter aloud in the assembly. Paul regularly closes his letters with a blessing (Gal 6:18; Col 4:18; 2 Thess 3:17; Phlm 25) but this letter is the only one in which a curse accompanies the blessing. Including the curse and μαράνα θά in the final greeting emphasizes Paul’s own power to invoke God, an ability at the heart of the issues addressed in 1 Cor 11–14. This ability in turn supports Paul’s claim to authority as apostle to the Corinthians. In 1 Cor 14, Paul states his own capacity for obscure, spiritual speaking: “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” (14:18). He bolsters his authority in the Corinthian community by asserting that his writing provides instructions from the Lord: “Anyone who claims to be a prophet or a spiritual person, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord” (14:37). This statement is what Ernst Käsemann calls a “sentence of holy law,” a structured and rhythmic statement that gives Paul’s judgment the weight of divine law.38 The statement uses terms—“prophet or spiritual person”—that the Corinthians seem to value and claim (Wire 1990, 14). First Corinthians 14:37, then, presents an appeal to authority that the Corinthians cannot risk rejecting. They cannot refuse Paul’s instructions if they consider themselves spiritual or prophetic or if they want to live by God’s law. A similar social effect occurs in the Knidos Sanctuary of Demeter; the thief or person in the wrong cannot ignore the inscribed petition. The community sees it and knows the weight of the curse within what they accept as Demeter’s law. Paul presents himself as an inspired person who communicates with God through revelation and with the Corinthians through prophecy and commandment, in person and via letter. This dual-pronged communication with God and humans is central to Paul’s discussion of prophecy and speaking 37.  Sosthenes may be his secretary for 1 Corinthians (1:1); on ancient secretaries and Pauline letter writing, see Richards 1991. 38.  Käsemann 1969, 74–76; other such sentences that Käsemann identifies have similar grammatical structure and themes of judgment or cursing: 1 Cor 3:17; Gal 1:9 (N.B. the term ἀνάθεμα); Rev 22:18–19 (N.B. in v. 20, ἔρχου κύριε Ἰησοῦ, the Greek equivalent of μαράνα θά).



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in tongues, which brings us to the other use of ἀνάθεμα in 1 Cor 12:1–3. In 1 Cor 12–14, Paul emphasizes the human element of communication and responds to what he sees as a Corinthian emphasis on and misunderstanding of the divine element. He orients his argument in terms of his audience’s prior religious experiences as ἔθνη, “gentiles”: “You know how when you were gentiles you were led off and carried away again and again to voiceless idols” (12:2; cf. Gal 4:8; 1 Thess 1:9). The passive voice of the verbs reflects a passive, perhaps ecstatic, experience.39 The “voiceless idols” do not initiate the action. Instead, they are the object to which the Corinthians were carried (πρὸς τὰ εἴδωλα τὰ ἄφωνα). Not only are the idols passive, but they also lack the ability to speak, a common trope in Jewish polemic against idolatry.40 Paul provides one point of continuity between the Corinthians’ previous religious experiences with “voiceless idols” and their current experiences of spiritual speaking in the assembly: in both cases, the content of an utterance indicates its authenticity and its provenance. With the conjunction διό that connects vv. 2 and 3, Paul places “speaking in the Spirit of God” and the two potential statements—Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς and Κύριος Ἰησοῦς—within the context of the situation described in v. 2. Based on their background, Paul expects his audience to know about judging utterances. In Greek and Roman practices, visual or aural evidence of possession or inspiration by a god or spirit—trancelike behavior or erratic speech—did not always accompany or verify communication from a god. People who received oracles and prophecy evaluated and interpreted them to determine their authenticity and the proper response.41 For Paul, the difference between the two utterances, Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς and Κύριος Ἰησοῦς, is the presence of the Holy Spirit, who enables (δύναμαι, 12:3) true speech. The content of the statement indicates its divine origin: Κύριος Ἰησοῦς is a true claim from the Holy Spirit. The statements in v. 3, therefore, provide examples of how speech is connected to its divine source. If someone says, “Jesus is a curse,” the hearer knows that the Spirit of God has not inspired that person, even if she or he claims the Spirit. This knowledge is not based on the speaker’s behavior but on whether the statement is congruent with what the hearer knows. The distinction between Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς and Κύριος Ἰησοῦς is also that the latter statement is intelligible in the community, unlike the former. Because of their initiation into a community that has received the Holy Spirit 39.  The vocabulary in this verse hints at ecstatic or trance states, but it is not clear whether Paul directly refers to such religious experiences; see Conzelmann 1975, 205; Paige 1991, 57–59. 40.  See Deut 28:36; Hab 2:18; Jer 10:3–5; Isa 44:9–20; Ps 115:5; Wis 13:17–19; Bar 6:8; 3 Macc 4:16; Sibylline Oracles 3:31; 5:84; 7:14; Acts 17:29. 41.  For various processes of evaluation and interpretation of prophecy and oracles, see Strabo, Geogr. 9.2.4; Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. 16.26.2–3 and 27.1; Epictetus, Diatr. 2.20.27; Plutarch, Mor. 438A–C.

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(1 Cor 12:13), the Corinthians possess knowledge of the name “Jesus,” which requires they invoke the name in a way that reflects their knowledge. In 1 Cor 12:1–3, Paul moves his audience from ignorance (οὐ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν) to recalling knowledge of their former religious lives (οἴδατε) to the gap in their understanding that he addresses (διὸ γνωρίζω ὑμῖν). Paul establishes a “oncebut-now” pattern; once the Corinthians were ἔθνη, “gentiles,” and carried away to “voiceless idols.” But now they know the name “Jesus,” and they should use this “great name” properly. Similarly, in his discussion of food offered to idols, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they know “no idol in the world exists” and “there is no God but one” (8:4). In the idol meat situation and practices of inspired speaking, the Corinthians encounter the complexity of reconciling new knowledge with former practices and the reality of the world around them. The curse tablets from the Sanctuary of Demeter in Corinth, as well as tablets found in other locations in Corinth and Kenchreai, locate ritual practices of harnessing divine power with written and spoken language in Corinth during Paul’s time. If the term ἀνάθεμα existed, for the Corinthians, in curse tablet rituals, they may have imported conceptions of language and communication with gods from those experiences into how they understood Paul’s discourse. In fact, Paul requests that they place his instructions in the context of their former experiences (12:2). Curse tablets use language to communicate with and persuade the gods. They petition gods that seem appropriate for the request. They call the gods by foreign and mysterious names, and knowledge of these names allows a petitioner to tap into divine power. The magical practitioner gains power by knowing how to harness language in its spoken and written, performative and permanent forms. The Corinthians cannot say Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς because they know the statement is based on a particular view of how divine names and powers work that is dissonant with what they know about the name “Jesus.” For Paul, this name has no part in cursing, even if the person using it in this way claims divine inspiration. This does not mean that Paul instructs against pronouncing curses, since, as we have seen, he himself does it in the closing greeting of the letter. He does not, however, curse by using the name Jesus. The issue of claims to inspiration continues throughout the discussion about interpreting prayer in tongues and prophecy in 1 Cor 12–14. A claim to inspiration must be tested and evaluated by the community (14:27–31). Paul argues that the intelligible language of prophecy is preferable to the unintelligible language of speaking in tongues. This does not mean that he eschews such modes of speaking. Rather, he recommends translation, interpretation, and evaluation during meetings for the benefit, or “building up” (οἰκοδομή, 14:26), of the community. He claims his own ability to speak in obscure ways (14:18) and pronounce blessings and curses (16:21–24). In the curse tablets, obscure language is valuable for two reasons: First, the gods understand even if the speaker



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and other hearers do not, and second, secrecy and unintelligibility provide the statement with power and the speaker with authority. The same principles of communication may be at play in Corinthian “speaking in tongues.” Some Corinthians may value secrecy and mystery in their communication with God. By contrast, Paul focuses on human hearers. Language does not communicate unless the audience can determine the content of the utterance and test its divine source. To illustrate this point, Paul provides an analogy: people who speak in tongues are like musical instruments, “lifeless things that give sound” (τὰ ἄψυχα φωνὴν διδόντα, 14:7). This phrase recalls the “voiceless idols” (τὰ εἴδωλα τὰ ἄφωνα) of 12:2 and aligns this way of speaking with the uninspired statement, Ἀνάθεμα Ἰησοῦς. Conclusion The term ἀνάθεμα initiated my discussion of these two bodies of evidence that display ancient religious speech, curse tablets and 1 Corinthians. Beyond this linguistic cue, 1 Corinthians and curse tablets share a concern with performing rituals that send messages simultaneously to gods and humans. Paul writes at length about ritual and spoken modes of communication with God—prayer and prophecy in the assembly. He represents a religious movement from the eastern Mediterranean that gained popularity in urban areas of Greece and Asia Minor and that struggled with how to fit into its social and cultural environments, as is evident in the practical issues in 1 Corinthians. What has emerged in my analysis of the use of the term ἀνάθεμα in both sets of sources is the role of privileged knowledge of certain languages or ritual practices that allow the magical practitioner or petitioner, speaker in tongues or prophet, or the apostle and letter-writing Paul to communicate their ability to speak to the divine. Through obscure languages, powerful names drawn from multiple cultural sources, and manipulating public knowledge, a person who claims to speak to and for God broadcasts his or her intent. In these cases, the “cadence of the language” is often as powerful as the content of the message. Bibliography Allo, E.-Bernard. 1934. Première Épître aux Corinthiens. EBib. Paris: LeCoffre. Αudollent, Auguste. 1904. Defixionum Tabellae. Paris: Fontemoing. Barrett, C. K. 1971. A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. BNTC. London: Black. Bassler, Jouette M. 1982. “1 Cor 12:3: Curse and Confession in Context.” JBL 101:415–18. Betz, Hans Dieter. 1979. Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress. Bohak, Gideon. 2011. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bookidis, Nancy and Ronald S. Stroud. 1997. The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: Topography and Architecture. Corinth 18/3. Princeton: American School for Classical Studies at Athens. Bornkamm, Günther. 1969. “The Anathema in the Early Christian Lord’s Supper Liturgy.” Pages 169–79 in Early Christian Experience. Translated by Paul L. Hammer. New York: Harper & Row. Bousset, Wilhelm. 1921 [ET 1970]. Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus. Translated by John E. Steely. Nashville: Abingdon. Brashear, W. M. 1995. “The Greek Magical Papyri: An Introduction and Survey with an Annotated Bibliography.” ANRW 18.5:3380–3684. Broglie, Guy de. 1951–1952. “Le texte fondamental de Saint Paul contre la foi naturelle (1 Cor. xii.3).” RSR 39:253–66. Concannon, Cavan W. 2014. “When You Were Gentiles”: Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence. Synkrisis. New Haven: Yale University Press Conzelmann, Hans. 1975. 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Translated by James W. Leitch. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress. Cullmann, Oscar. 1948. Les premières confessions de foi chrétiennes. 2nd ed. CRHPhR. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Curbera, Jaime. 2015. Inscriptiones Graecae: Vol. 2/3 Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores Ps. 4 Dedicationes et tituli sacri Fasc. 1 Dedicationes publicae. 3rd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter. Davies, W. D. and Louis Finkelstein, eds. 1989. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 2: The Hellenistic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deissmann, Adolf. 1908 [ET 1927]. Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World. Translated by Lionel R. M. Strachan. New York: Doran. Derrett, J. Duncan M. 1975. “Cursing Jesus (1 Cor. xii.3): The Jews as Religious ‘Persecutors.’” NTS 21:544–54. Faraone, Christopher A. 1991. “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells.” Pages 3–32 in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion. Edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink. New York: Oxford University Press. Fee, Gordan. 1987. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 2008. First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. AB 32. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gager, John G. 1972. Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism. SBLMS 16. Nashville: Abingdon. ———. 1992. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press. Graf, Fritz. 1997. Magic in the Ancient World. Revealing Antiquity 10. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hays, Richard. 1996. First Corinthians. Interpretation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Käsemann, Ernst. 1969. “Sentences of Holy Law in the New Testament.” Pages 66–81 in New Testament Questions of Today. Translated by W. J. Montague. Philadelphia: Fortress. Kotansky, Roy. 1995. “Greek Exorcistic Amulets.” Pages 243–78 in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power. Edited by Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki. RGRW 129. Leiden: Brill. Kuhn, K. G. 1967. μαραναθά. TDNT 4:466–72.



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Meritt, Benjamin D. 1931. Greek Inscriptions, 1896–1927. Corinth 8/1. Cambridge, MA: American School for Classical Studies at Athens. Moule, C. F. D. 1960. “A Reconsideration of the Context of Maranatha.” NTS 6:307–10. Nasrallah, Laura S. 2012. “Grief in Corinth: The Roman City and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence.” Pages 109–39 in Contested Spaces: Houses and Temples in Roman Antiquity and the New Testament. Edited by D. Balch and A. Weissenrieder. WUNT 1/285. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Naveh, Joseph, and Shaul Shaked, eds. 1985. Amulets and Magical Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Leiden: Brill. Newton, Charles Thomas. 1863. A History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Branchidae. 2 vols. London: Day & Son. Paige, Terrence. 1991. “1 Cor 12:2: A Pagan Pompe?” JSNT 44:57–65. Richards, E. Randolph. 1991. The Secretary in the Letters of Paul. WUNT 2/42. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Schmithals, Walter. 1971. Gnosticism in Corinth: An Investigation of the Letters to the Corinthians. Translated by John E. Steely. Nashville: Abingdon. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. 2006. “Cultic Discontinuity in Roman Corinth: The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Washington, DC, 18 November 2006. Stroud, Ronald S. 2013. The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: The Inscriptions. Corinth 18/6. Princeton: American School for Classical Studies at Athens. ———. 2014. “Religion and Magic in Roman Corinth.” Pages 185–202 in Corinth in Contrast: Studies in Inequality. Edited by Steven Friesen, Sarah James and Daniel Schowalter. NovTSup 155. Leiden: Brill. Thiselton, Anthony. 2000. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Versnel, Henk S. 1991. “Beyond Cursing: The Appeal to Justice in Judicial Prayers.” Pages 60–106 in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion. Edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. “Prayers for Justice, East and West: New Finds and Publications since 1990.” Pages 275–356 in Magical Practice in the Latin West: Papers from the International Conference held at the University of Zaragoza, 30 Sept.–1st Oct. 2005. Edited by F. Marco Simón and R. L. Gordon. RGRW 168. Leiden: Brill. Winter, Bruce. 2001. After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Wire, Antoinette Clark. 1990. The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric. Minneapolis: Fortress. Wünsch, Richard. 1903. Inscriptiones Graecae. Vol. 3: Supplement. Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. ———. 1912. Antike Fluchtafeln. Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen und Übungen 20. Bonn: Marcus & Weber.

Chapter Seven Isabel Köster

Sacred Objects, Material Value, and Invective in Cicero’s Verrines II 4

I

n 70 BCE Cicero took on the prosecution of Gaius Verres, who had been the governor of the Roman province of Sicily from 73 to 71. This was the orator’s first big case. The defendant was officially charged with extortion, but the speeches against him cast a far wider net.1 The scale of Cicero’s prosecution can best be seen at the very end of the Verrines, when the orator does not address the jury, but makes a short prayer in which he asks for his prosecution to be successful.2 Jupiter, Juno, Hercules, and almost all the other gods invoked here have one thing in common: Verres has plundered their temples. One by one Cicero reminds the gods of how the defendant has wronged them.3 After a formidable catalog of crimes, the peroration ensures that Verres will be remembered as a cruel and greedy enemy of both humans and gods. The prayer may seem like an overly dramatic ending to an extortion trial, but offers an appropriate conclusion for a set of speeches in which Cicero tries to portray his opponent as the worst of the worst and a stranger to all conventions of civilized life.4 Scholars have noted the important role that thefts of works of art play in the invective.5 In particular, Margaret Miles (2008) has explored I thank the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft and Melissa Haynes for generously sharing forthcoming work. 1.  For the political circumstances of the trial, see, e.g., Miles 2008, 119–37, and Vasaly 2009. 2. Cicero Verr. II 5.188–189. The entire second actio of the Verrines is a legal fiction: after the first two speeches concerning the case were delivered (the Div. Caec. and the first actio), Verres realized that a conviction was inevitable and fled into exile. The second actio was therefore only circulated in written form (see, e.g., Butler 2002, 71–84, and Miles 2008, 137–43). Like Cicero’s text itself, this paper maintains the fiction that all speeches were delivered in court and treats them as trying to further persuade the jury of Verres’s guilt. 3.  In his discussion of the peroration von Albrecht (2003, 206–17) points to omissions in the list. Since all gods in the list have had their temples plundered, it is unsurprising that Mars, who has not, is missing from the list; local deities such as Chrysas whose sanctuaries Verres has plundered are not invoked again and are therefore missing from the list. Cicero’s prayer addresses itself mostly to major deities to whom Verres has done harm, and, as von Albrecht shows (209), especially to those who are also important in the city of Rome. The connection between the final invocation and the earlier temple robberies is also noticed by Lhommé 2008, 66. 4.  See, e.g., Koster 1980, 113–15, May 1988, 31–47, and Frazel 2009 passim. 5.  See esp. Miles 2008 and Frazel 2009.

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how the orator uses the non-Roman origins of these objects to portray Verres as a particularly immoderate Roman art collector and thereby prompts a wider cultural debate about the efficacy of acquiring and owning artifacts produced by foreign civilizations. This paper, too, focuses on the origins of the objects that Verres is accused of stealing. I use observations about the cultural implications of art thefts in the Verrines to explore how the text treats works of art that also have a religious significance. Through an examination of three episodes from Verr. II 4, I show that—with at times dubious logic—Cicero fashions works of art into ritual objects.6 Joannis Mylonopoulos (2010, 6–11) outlines three features that signify that an image is the recipient of religious ritual: it is placed in a prominent position within a sanctuary, it is the focus of religious activity, and its appearance is unusually striking. If we apply these criteria to the Verrines, we see that Cicero uses them to highlight objects that any Greek or Roman should easily be able to recognize as sacred. That Verres is consistently unable to do so and treats these same objects as mere commodities is a powerful way of portraying him as an outsider to the norms of civilized society. The artifacts discussed in this paper, I argue, can all be seen in three ways: as religious objects implicated in daily rituals, as impressive and important works of art, and, finally, as things of high material value. The orator and those who condemn Verres’s actions are aware of the visual appeal of the objects, but foreground their religious nature. The accused, however, claims to be interested in art, but is actually focused on material value. Where others see ritual objects, he sees beautiful and expensive piles of gems, precious metals, and marble. By not understanding that there is more to ritual objects than their materiality, Verres throughout the Verrines perverts their function. The sacrarium of Heius Verrines II 4 is sometimes known as “On Statues” (De Signis) because of the formidable catalog of art that it contains. 7 It opens with a theft from the household of Gaius Heius in Messana (Verr. II 4.4–28). Heius’s house is not a temple, but the orator leaves no doubt that its statuary has religious significance.8 Verres can only appreciate the objects that pique his interest as expensive and 6.  Lhommé 2008 explores some of the ways in which Cicero accomplishes this. 7.  As Vasaly points out, Cicero’s technique to give an exact geographical location for each crime and a brief description of the object concerned further contributes to the impression that Verr. II 4 is a catalog (1993, 125); on the geographical distribution of the crimes, which cover almost every corner of Sicily, see Pape 1975, 206–7, and Lazzeretti 2006, 52–56. 8.  The considerably later pronouncements of jurists cast doubt on whether objects from a private household had a legally recognized sacred status. So, e.g., Marcian tells us: “Moreover, sacred things are those which have been consecrated by the public and not by private individuals. Therefore if anyone privately decides to declare something sacred, it is not sacred, but profane” (Dig. 1.8.6). Even if



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beautiful works of art, but others primarily view them as sacred artifacts. This dichotomy is already woven into the orator’s setting of the scene (Verr. II 4.4): Erat apud Heium sacrarium magna cum dignitate in aedibus a maioribus traditum perantiquum, in quo signa pulcherrima quattuor summo artificio, summa nobilitate, quae non modo istum hominem ingeniosum et intellegentem, verum etiam quemvis nostrum, quos iste idiotas appellat, delectare possent, unum Cupidinis marmoreum Praxiteli; nimirum didici etiam, dum in istum inquiro, artificum nomina. Idem, opinor, artifex eiusdem modi Cupidinem fecit illum qui est Thespiis, propter quem Thespiae visuntur; nam alia visendi causa nulla est. Atque ille L. Mummius, cum Thespiadas, quae ad aedem Felicitatis sunt, ceteraque profana ex illo oppido signa tolleret, hunc marmoreum Cupidinem, quod erat consecratus, non attigit. There was in the house of Heius a sacrarium of great renown passed down from his ancestors and very old. In it there were four very beautiful statues of the highest workmanship and greatest distinction, which could delight not only such a refined and intelligent man as Verres, but even one of us, whom he calls commoners. One of these marble statues was a Cupid of Praxiteles—I learned the names of the artists, of course, while I was making inquiries about Verres. The same artist, I think, made a Cupid of the same kind, which is in Thespiae. It is why people visit Thespiae, since there is no other reason to see the town. And the famous Lucius Mummius, although he removed the “Women of Thespiae” (which are at the temple of Felicitas), and other unconsecrated statues from that town, did not lay hands on this marble Cupid, since it was consecrated.9

The part of Heius’s house where the Cupid is housed is identified as a sacrarium. This is only the second occurrence of the word in extant Latin literature, but Cicero offers no further explanation as to the nature of the space.10 The closeness of the word sacrarium to the adjective sacer, sacred, conveys its most important property: it is sacred.11 Next the sacrarium is identified as a place passed down by the objects from Heius’s household were not legally sacred, however, Cicero makes it clear that they are morally so. 9.  All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. 10.  The first occurrence is in a fragment of Cato (ORF frag. 74), which is too short to allow for any conclusions as to what kind of space the orator had in mind. Details later in Cicero’s narrative make it clear that Heius’s sacrarium is far larger and more elaborate than a regular Greek or Roman household shrine (on these see most recently Bowes 2015, esp. 210–16). Frazel 2009 comments on the word choice for Heius’s household shrine: “Cicero … was proffering a kind of analogy when he described Heius’s structure as a sacrarium. He could not plausibly call it a fanum … so he aims to give the impression that it was rather numinous by choosing the label sacrarium” (95). For the debate about the exact nature of the space and its possible appearance, see Baldo 2004, 221–23, and Zimmer 1989, 496–507. As Lazzeretti 2006, 79–80, points out, since sacrarium has the basic definition of “place for storing sacred things,” the term itself does not prove that the objects within it are consecrated and used for worship. Cicero’s narrative elides such concerns. 11.  For Zimmer the setting gives this theft a significance that is unparalleled in other thefts from private individuals. This, he argues, is why the Heius narrative is placed first in Verr. II 4: it empha-

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Heius’s ancestors. The age of the space, which Cicero stresses with the pleonastic phrase a maioribus traditum perantiquum (“passed down from his ancestors and very old”), shows that it has been used for worship for a long time. The sacrarium is primarily important as an ancient place of religious reverence. Cicero then switches to looking at the situation from Verres’s point of view. For him this is a place where beautiful sculptures are kept, including one by Praxiteles. Cicero presents it as rather odd that Verres would concentrate on the artistic qualities of the objects. In fact, the orator himself states that he only learned the name of the artist in the course of his investigations. This statement is indicative of the orator’s general approach to art in the Verrines: at various points in the speeches he claims to be ignorant about art and attributes his scant descriptions to a lack of knowledge.12 The fact that he, like most well-to-do Romans, collected works of art is set aside, and instead he claims to know only one thing about the objects: their religious value. Verres, by contrast, is entirely ignorant about the sacred dimension of the works of art that he takes.13 For him the Cupid is only a marble sculpture by Praxiteles. Cicero does not give us a precise description of the object. The audience can imagine what Heius’s Cupid looks like by picturing the statue from Thespiae. Beyond the reference to the Cupid’s material and the suggestion that it looks like a famous work of art, the orator chooses to offer his audience no further help and discusses the sculpture’s beauty only in vague terms. The lack of extended ekphrases here and elsewhere in the Verrines helps guide the audience’s interpretation of Verres’s crimes; as Thomas Frazel has argued, Cicero’s descriptions of works of art in the speech are in “a sparse format style similar to that used for the delict of furtum [theft].” (Frazel 2005, 369, cf. Frazel 2009, 73–78). The orator’s treatment of the works of art in the speech therefore emphasizes that the former governor is on trial for more than just extortion. Furthermore, as Beth Innocenti (1994) has shown, Cicero’s decision to limit himself to only short descriptions of objects allows him to put a greater emphasis on discussing Verres’s actions. The orator draws in and shocks his audience with tales of the former governor’s depravities. What is therefore important about the treasures in Verr. II 4 is how Verres views them and, especially, how he interacts with them. The speech has plenty of descriptions, just not of the works of art.14 sizes once more that moral and religious concerns never played a role in the defendant’s acquisitions (Zimmer 1989, esp. 496). 12.  For Cicero’s pretention that he does not know anything about art, especially in Verr. II 4, see Leen 1991, 231–32, who notes that claiming ignorance is a topos in Cicero’s work. In this case it is a useful topos because it allows the orator to highlight that the artistic significance of the objects that he is discussing is secondary. 13.  E.g., Cicero mocks Verres for apparently not knowing that Delos is a major sanctuary of Apollo and that one cannot just remove works of art from it without consequence (Verr. II 1.47–48). 14.  The “vivid descriptions” of Innocenti 1994 would have been considered ekphrases in their own right by the ancient audience. For ancient ekphrasis as “the use of language to try to make an



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The lack of artistic ekphrases in the Verrines, however, not only serves to categorize the defendant’s crimes and to free up space for an extended discussion of the his behavior. It also shows that although they are the works of famous artists and extraordinarily beautiful, they are only secondarily objects of art.15 They are certainly beautiful enough to be appropriate expressions of religious devotion.16 Their physical appearance, however, matters far less than their religious function. Moreover, the rhetorical choice helps Cicero portray Verres as someone who only pretends to be interested in art: what he actually cares about are beauty and precious materials, the only aspects of the works of art in the speech that receive extended comment. The basic and imprecise descriptions of Heius’s Cupid and other objects in Verr. II 4 illustrate that neither the prosecution nor the defendant are primarily invested in treating these objects as works of art. The reference to Praxiteles and his statue in Thespiae therefore does not primarily certify the high artistic quality of Heius’s statue. As Marie-Karine Lhommé (2008, esp. 59–60) has argued, it is also a dubious attempt to give the Cupid sacred credentials that go beyond its placement in a sacrarium. Her argument rests on a close analysis of Cicero’s mention of Lucius Mummius’s sack of Thespiae. The conqueror, the orator emphasizes, did not lay hands on Praxiteles’s statue because he knew that it was consecrated. The Roman general therefore becomes a model of how Romans should behave toward a Cupid by Praxiteles: they should recognize its sacred status and leave it alone.17 It also implicitly means that the object that Heius has declared sacred by placing it in his sacrarium has its sacredness confirmed by a Roman general’s treatment of such an item. Through their common artistic heritage, Cicero suggests, the two statues also share a sacred status that Verres should have recognized.18 audience imagine a scene” and not just a description of a work of art, see Webb 2009 (quotation from Webb 2009, 3). 15.  In this case, therefore, the lack of an ekphrasis has an educational function; for the educational role of ekphrases, see Elsner 2007, 68: “Ekphrasis itself, insofar as it provides a pedagogic model for the gaze, may be seen as both its enabler (in helping the viewers it is training to see) and its occluder (in the veil of words with which it screens and obscures the purported visual object).” 16.  Verity Platt emphasizes the role that the beauty and high level of craftsmanship of the image of a god were seen to play in facilitating encounters between humans and divine powers (e.g., 2011, 4–5). Cicero’s effusive use of adjectives to describe works of art in Verr. II 4 therefore further serves to authenticate their sacred function: they are so stunning that seeing them gives viewers a sense of what it might be like to encounter a god. 17.  It is a trope in the Verrines that Verres is worse than any conqueror. So, e.g., in Verr. II 2.4, Cicero positively contrasts Marcellus’s conduct during the sack of Syracuse in 212 BCE with Verres’s rampage through the city. Clara Berrendonner (2007) detects in Verres’s behavior similarities to that of a conqueror getting ready for a triumph; this argument fits well with Cicero’s general argument that Verres had no sense of what it meant to be a peacetime governor. 18. In Verr. II 4.7 Cicero recounts that Roman governors of Sicily would visit Heius’s sacrarium to admire the statues. They, too, are aware that these are works of art to look at, but not appropriate for their own use; C. Claudius, who borrows the statue briefly and then returns it, should have been a particularly instructive example for Verres.

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We cannot say with confidence whether the orator’s effort to elevate Heius’s Cupid to the religious status of the famous statue from Thespiae was convincing to the speech’s ancient audience.19 Cicero, however, has plenty of other evidence that he is dealing with a sacred artifact (Verr. II 4.5): Verum ut ad illud sacrarium redeam, signum erat hoc quod dico Cupidinis e marmore, ex altera parte Hercules egregie factus ex aere. Is dicebatur esse Myronis, ut opinor, et certe. Item ante hos deos erant arulae, quae cuivis religionem sacrari significare possent. But to return to that sacrarium, there was the marble statue of Cupid, which I am talking about. Elsewhere there was a Hercules marvelously fashioned out of bronze. It is said to be by Myron, I think, and it is certainly so. There are also little altars in front of these gods, which can attest the sacredness of the sacrarium to anyone.

The sacred nature of the space again moves into the foreground when Cicero gives us more details about what the sacrarium looks like.20 This is a place of active worship, as also emphasized by Cicero’s quick shift from initially calling the objects that Verres takes statues (signa) to calling them gods (dei).21 The former governor does not just take sculptures, he takes gods. There is only one object that he leaves behind in the sacrarium: an old wooden statue of Bona Fortuna. As the orator explains: “That man [Verres] did not want to have her in his house.”22 He is not interested in anything that does not have a high material value. The detail of the disregard for the statue of Bona Fortuna therefore brings into focus that sacredness is not a quality that the former governor can appreciate: he is not looking for gods to worship, but for items of décor. Cicero does not deny that the statues removed by Verres are remarkable objects of art and therefore also have a nonreligious value. He tells us that people came to visit Heius’s house to see them: “When any of us Romans came to Messana, they were accustomed to see these [statues]. They were available for viewing by everyone every day; the house was as much decorated for its master as for the community.”23 What is implicit, however, is that the objects are also to 19.  Antonio Corso shows convincingly that the Cupid and the other statues in the sacrarium are likely locally produced copies of famous works (Corso 2012); this makes Cicero’s efforts to equate Heius’s sculpture with the Eros of Thespiae even more strained. 20.  As Ann Vasaly puts it, the episode “establishes Heius’s spiritual communion with the Roman senators who sat on the jury and who would have understood implicitly the familial piety that motivated Heius” (Vasaly 1993, 114); all pious people, whether on Sicily or in Rome, can recognize forms of religious expression and treat them with respect. Only Verres is incapable of this. 21.  The relationship between gods and their statues in the Roman world is a complex issue (see, e.g., Rüpke 2010, with further bibliography); Cicero’s easy transition from statues to gods is nothing unusual. 22.  Eam iste habere domi suae noluit (Verr. II 4.7). 23.  Messanam ut quisque nostrum venerat, haec visere solebat; omnibus haec ad visendum patebant cotidie; domus erat non domino magis ornamento quam civitati (Verr. II 4.5).



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be treated with religious reverence. Guests experience something that is akin to a tour of a sanctuary. By discussing the visitors to Heius’s sacrarium, Cicero conjures up a scene similar to Herodas Mime 4. Here two women named Phile and Cynno visit a sanctuary of Asclepius. Although they have come to deliver a sacrifice to the god, this activity is not the focus of the mime. Instead, Cynno acts as Phile’s guide to the precious works of art kept in the sanctuary. The site therefore simultaneously acts as a sacred space and a museum of sorts.24 The same is true for Heius’s sacrarium. There is nothing wrong, per se, with also appreciating religious objects for their material beauty. The orator then turns his attention to Verres’s claim that he bought the objects from Heius and makes a lengthy argument that these are not items that anyone would be likely to sell (Verr. II 4.8–16). Religious scruples dictate that these objects should not be treated as commodities.25 Moreover, should Heius have for some reason decided to abandon his religious concern, the price that Verres claims to have paid for the objects is laughable given their artistic quality (Verr. II 4.14).26 The former governor therefore is not only unable to detect the religious significance of objects, he is also not a knowledgeable and ethical art collector. Therefore the Heius narrative provides an effective opening for the Verr. II 4 in two ways: first, it shows Verres dismantling a place of religious expression in his quest for beautiful things to possess. Second, it highlights that the former governor has a unique value system: he can appreciate neither the religious reverence that Heius feels for the statue nor does he know what price to pay for a work of art. Both those who worship statues and those who trade in them can be outraged by Verres’s conduct. Verres’s goal, so Cicero frequently tells us, is acquisition. The later display of the works of art that he gathers is not his concern.27 When the former governor acquires them, therefore, the statues become mere stuff. Moreover, whereas in the sacrarium the Cupid and the other works of art could easily be admired by 24.  So Platt: “Both … women move between moments of ritual absorption (in which they respond emotionally to the content of the scenes they view and the charged atmosphere of the sanctuary and festival) and a more detached connoisseurship (in which they identify artists’ hands and comment upon style, medium, and workmanship)” (2010, 206). 25.  See especially Verr. II 4.11 where Cicero states that even if he were in financial trouble, Heius would not sell objects “which had been with his family and in the sacrarium of his ancestors for so many years” (quae tot annos in familia sacrarioque maiorum fuissent). For the philosophical tensions inherent in selling sculptures of the gods on the art market, see Haynes forthcoming. 26.  The fact that he could pay so little money for them is for Cicero evidence that Verres did not so much buy the statues from Heius as he extorted them “with force, terror, authority, and power” (vi, metu, imperio, fascibus [Verr. II 4.14]). 27. In Verr. II 1.50–51 Cicero gives his audience a brief glimpse of what Verres’s house looks like: it is stuffed with piles of works of art. Such a chaotic display fits well with the thesis proposed in Robert 2007: Cicero’s Verres is an incompetent collector whose focus is purely on accumulation and not on the appropriate use and display of the works of art; on Verres’s house see also Stewart 2003, 139–40.

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visitors, they are now hidden in the dark recesses of Verres’s house. The former governor cannot recognize a sacred space, disrespects objects whose sacredness has been confirmed by other Romans, does not know what an art collector should pay for artifacts, and has no regard for the conventions of displaying works of art. Cicero’s Verres is in every way a cultural and religious outsider. The Candelabrum of the Sons of Antiochus Heius’s Cupid acquires its religious status due to its placement in a sacrarium, ancestral tradition, and its similarity to a famous statue at Thespiae. Not all objects in Verr. II 4 have such a heavily determined sacred pedigree. The candelabrum that Verres steals from the sons of Antiochus is one example of an artifact of dubious status. It is not taken from an established place of worship, but is merely an object that is designated for future dedication. Nevertheless, for Cicero it is yet another example of an outrageous theft from the gods. It is so important that it marks a transition in Verr. II 4 from describing Verres taking things from private households to his attacks on actual temples.28 The incident, which brought considerable diplomatic embarrassment to Rome, is thereby an escalation of the former governor’s activities. The story starts when the future Antiochus XIII stops off in Sicily on his return from a diplomatic mission to Rome. The prince arrives in Syracuse with many splendid objects and aims to impress the governor with his riches (Verr. II 4.62): Vocat ad cenam deinde ipse praetorem; exponit suas copias omnis, multum argentum, non pauca etiam pocula ex auro, quae, ut mos est regius et maxime in Syria, gemmis erant distincta clarissimis. [The prince] subsequently invited the praetor to dinner. He displayed all of his riches—much silver, also not a few golden goblets—which, as is the custom of kings, especially in Syria, had been decorated with the most splendid gems.

The prince’s ostentatious display of wealth is something we should expect from a man of his rank and origin. It is also what makes him one of Verres’s targets. The guest, furthermore, comes to realize that he has not seen everything (Verr. II 4.64): Candelabrum e gemmis clarissimis opere mirabili perfectum reges ii, quos dico, Romam cum attulissent, ut in Capitolio ponerent, quod nondum perfectum templum offenderant, neque ponere potuerunt neque vulgo ostendere ac proferre voluerunt, ut et magnificentius videretur cum suo tempore in cella Iovis 28.  For the importance of this episode as a transition point in Verr. II 4, see Vasaly 1993, 116–17, and Baldo 2004, 41–42.



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Optimi Maximi poneretur, et clarius cum pulchritudo eius recens ad oculos hominum atque integra perveniret: statuerunt id secum in Syriam reportare ut, cum audissent simulacrum Iovis Optimi Maximi dedicatum, legatos mitterent qui cum ceteris rebus illud quoque eximium ac pulcherrimum donum in Capitolium adferrent. Pervenit res ad istius aures nescio quo modo; nam rex id celatum voluerat, non quo quicquam metueret aut suspicaretur, sed ut ne multi illud ante praeciperent oculis quam populus Romanus. The kings about whom I am talking had brought to Rome a candelabrum fashioned with remarkable craft out of the most gleaming gems to dedicate in the Capitolium. Because they found that the temple was not yet finished, they were neither able to dedicate it nor did they want the common people to find out about it. They wanted it to seem more magnificent when it was dedicated in the shrine of Jupiter Optimus Maximus at the right time and to seem more gleaming because its beauty would appear whole and fresh to human eyes. They decided to take it back to Syria with them so that, when they heard that the cult image of Jupiter Optimus Maximus had been consecrated, they would send legates, who, along with other things, would take the extraordinary and most beautiful gift to the Capitolium. The matter somehow came to that man’s [Verres’s] ears: for the king had wanted to keep it [the candelabrum] under wraps not because he was afraid of anything or had any suspicions, but so that not many people would lay eyes on it before the Roman people.

The start of the description is pitched at Verres’s level of appreciation. It shows that he sees a beautiful accumulation of precious materials. The candelabrum is described as consisting of the “most gleaming gems” and is an object of “remarkable craft.” The superlatives make it clear that this is a prime target for Verres. The status of this object is further elevated by a slip in word choice: the sons of Antiochus, though technically princes, are described as “these kings” (reges ii).29 This is a gift from kings fit for the king of the gods. With the statement that the candelabrum was to be dedicated to Jupiter, Cicero cuts to the religious side of the narrative. The rambling discussion aims to obscure the central problem with the candelabrum: it is less than clear whether the object was actually sacred. A gift for the gods becomes divine property upon dedication, but intended dedications have no special status from a strictly legal point of view.30 Cicero, however, makes intent substitute for religious ritual and tries to convince his audience that Verres is guilty of temple robbery because the object will one day be dedicated.31 This is a stretch, and the orator has to come 29.  See also Frazel 2009, 87 n. 27. 30.  Lhommé 2008, 62, declares the entire line of argument to be specious; Justinian’s Institutes 2.1.8 is representative of legal definitions of divine property: “Those things are sacred, which have been consecrated to God with the proper rituals and by the priests, such as sacred buildings and gifts.” 31. In Verr. II 4.67 Cicero describes how once the object has been stolen, the prince decides to dedicate the missing candelabrum to Jupiter. Verres is therefore explicitly put in the possession of sacred property without his knowledge.

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up with an elaborate explanation for why the object even ended up on Sicily. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not been fully restored yet, so the votive offering could not be dedicated. It also could not stay in Rome since its donors wanted to only put it on display in a finished temple. The princes therefore return with it until they can delegate someone to bring it back to Rome when the time is right.32 The effect of this elaborate explanation is that it is repeatedly impressed upon the audience that the item simply did not stay in Rome because of bad timing and not because there was any doubt about its intended use. The object is a gift for Jupiter that will dazzle the people of Rome. Therefore, as the end of the passage in particular emphasizes, it is not meant for the enjoyment of anyone else. Even when the prince wants to impress Verres, he does not show him the candelabrum or make any mention of it. Yet, news of its existence “somehow came to Verres’s ears,” as Cicero puts it. The candelabrum is therefore marked out as a special object. It is not something to impress guests with; it is sacred and intended for the eyes of a specific audience. Verres begs and pleads to see the magnificent object, and the prince eventually agrees to send the candelabrum to the governor’s house for inspection. It seems implausible that he would part with such precious cargo even for a brief while when he did not even want to show it to him at dinner in their own house, but Cicero does not discuss such concerns. Instead the narrative of the theft gives him an opportunity to once more stress the beauty of the object and emphasize that it belongs in a temple (Verr. II 4.65): Antiochus … nihil de istius improbitate suspicatus est; imperat suis ut id in praetorium involutum quam occultissime deferrent. Quo posteaquam attulerunt involucrisque reiectis constituerunt, clamare iste coepit dignam rem esse regno Syriae, dignam regio munere, dignam Capitolio. Etenim erat eo splendore … ea varietate operum … ea magnitudine ut intellegi posset non ad hominum apparatum sed ad amplissimi templi ornatum esse factum. Cum satis iam perspexisse videretur, tollere incipiunt ut referrent. Iste ait se velle illud etiam atque etiam considerare; nequaquam se esse satiatum; iubet illos discedere et candelabrum relinquere. Sic illi tum inanes ad Antiochum revertuntur. Antiochus had no suspicions about that man’s [Verres’s] ill-intentions. He ordered his men to bring it to the governor’s residence covered up as well as possible. After they had brought it to him and had set it up with the wrappings cast aside, Verres began to shout out that it was an object worthy of the kingdom of Syria, worthy of a royal gift, worthy of the Capitolium. For it was the case that from its splendor, its intricacy and its size one could understand that it had not been made for human use, but for the decoration of a very impressive temple. When it seemed that Verres had seen the object long enough, Antiochus’s men set about to take it back. That man said that 32.  It is perhaps odd that legates are to complete the final act of dedication; it seems as if the delay in the princes’ original plans made the final occasion of dedication less significant and no longer deserving the personal attendance of the princes.



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we wished to study it over and over again and that he in no way had had enough. He ordered them to go away and leave the candelabrum. So they returned to Antiochus empty-handed.

Again we are told that the object should stay hidden from sight. Even Verres’s act of looking at it for an extended period of time is inappropriate. He is not a visitor to Jupiter’s temple in Rome, hence the object is not meant for his enjoyment. When the object is unwrapped, we are told twice that it belongs in a temple: once by Verres’s initial reaction and then by the narrator. Here another detail is added: not only is the object stunningly beautiful, it is also very large. By keeping it in his house, Verres places it in an inappropriate setting.33 In the case of the candelabrum, Cicero provides us a comparatively rich amount of information about the artifact, but still does not leave us with a clear picture of what it looks like. The orator’s main concern is with the religious status of the object. He therefore repeatedly emphasizes that the candelabrum was meant for dedication and highlights the prince’s efforts to restrict people from viewing it. For Verres the enormous size and the gleaming gems would have been the most important features. The episode therefore again showcases how alien the former governor’s approach to objects is. It also makes the case that Verres even stole from Jupiter himself, a god who normally does not become a target in the speech. Furthermore, he deprives the citizens of Rome of something that was meant for their eyes. Although the theft was committed on Sicily, it has a far wider reach. Cicero’s rhetorical treatment of the candelabrum has made it sacred before it has actually been dedicated. The repeated emphasis on Jupiter, the Capitoline, and the intended Roman audience for the object support this rhetorical sanctification: Verres has entirely overstepped his bounds. The Hercules of Agrigentum After the theft of the candelabrum, Verres is no longer content with stealing from households. He now targets major sanctuaries and takes objects that have been consecrated to the gods. Although not every theft in the second part of Verr. II 4 is set at a temple, the candelabrum is the last object in the speech that is explicitly identified as sacred even though that label is legally dubious. From here on Verres’s activities tend to meet even the strictest definition of temple robbery.34 A particularly detailed and dramatic narrative in the second part of Verr. II 4 is the attempted removal of a statue of Hercules from Agrigentum (Verr. II 33. In Verr. II 4.71, Cicero further addresses how inappropriate a place Verres’s house is for this object: it will illuminate his debaucheries. 34.  A temple robbery is the unauthorized removal of a sacred object from a sacred space. As we have already seen (n. 8, above), objects in private households do not meet the standards for sacredness established in surviving legal writing, so cannot technically be subject to temple robbery.

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4.94–95). The episode once more exemplifies how differently worshipers and Verres treat objects. The orator starts by setting the scene (Verr. II 4.94): Herculis templum est apud Agrigentinos non longe a foro, sane sanctum apud illos et religiosum. Ibi est ex aere simulacrum ipsius Herculis, quo non facile dixerim quicquam me vidisse pulchrius—tametsi non tam multum in istis rebus intellego quam multa vidi—usque eo, iudices, ut rictum eius ac mentum paulo sit attritius, quod in precibus et gratulationibus non solum id venerari verum etiam osculari solent. There is a temple of Hercules at Agrigentum not far from the forum, especially sacred and revered among the town’s inhabitants. In that place there is a bronze image of Hercules himself, I cannot readily say whether I have seen anything more beautiful—though my understanding of these matters does not reflect the number of beautiful things that I have seen—but it is so beautiful, members of the jury, that its mouth and chin are a little rubbed off, because in their prayers and acts of thanksgiving the inhabitants of Agrigentum are not just accustomed to worship the statue, but also kiss it.

The Hercules of Agrigentum is simultaneously a typical and an unusual target for Verres. On the one hand, it is an exceptionally beautiful object made out of precious metal. It therefore has a high artistic and material value and is the sort of object that Verres has been attracted to time and again in the speech. On the other hand, as the end of the passage reveals, this statue does not have the pristine beauty of Heius’s Cupid or the candelabrum. Its use as a religious object has left behind marks.35 Unlike in the case of Heius’s Cupid, the artist plays no role; the general description of the object suffices to establish both its importance to the pious inhabitants of Agrigentum and to Verres. The introduction also emphasizes that touching the object will play a major role in the narrative. In the case of the people of Agrigentum, physical interaction with the Hercules is a sign of reverence even though it damages the object. In the case of Verres’s men, touching the object is an act of aggression that risks the destruction of the statue. So the orator continues his narrative (Verr. II 4.94): Ad hoc templum, cum esset iste Agrigenti, duce Timarchide repente nocte intempesta servorum armatorum fit concursus atque impetus. Clamor a vigilibus fanique custodibus tollitur; qui primo cum obsistere ac defendere conarentur; male mulcati clavis ac fustibus repelluntur. Postea convulsis repagulis ecfractisque valvis demoliri signum ac vectibus labefactare conantur. At this temple, when that man [Verres] was in Agrigentum, there was a sudden coming together and an attack by armed slaves in the middle of the night under the leadership of Timarchides. A shout was raised by the guards and watchmen of the temple. First, when they tried to resist and 35.  For the kissing of the statue, see Baldo 2004, 452–53, and, more generally, Graf 2001, 230–31.



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defend the building, they were driven back badly beaten by clubs and fists. Afterward, when the bars had been wrenched off and the doors broken, they [Timarchides’ men] tried to pull down the statue and loosen it with crowbars.

The beginning of the passage already marks this as one of Verres’s most shameful attacks: it takes place in the middle of the night and with the help of armed slaves—a notorious source of instability in Rome whose use was regularly attributed to thugs of the worst kind.36 It is clear that Verres will go to any length to obtain the statue and that careful planning has gone into the attack. This impression continues when the orator describes how the slaves mistreat the guards and, finally, how they approach the statue itself. Here Cicero’s choice of vocabulary, “pull down” (demoliri) and “loosen with crowbars” (vectibus labefactare) leaves no doubt that the act is more one of destruction than simply attempted removal.37 The men seem so keen on acquiring the object that they combine an attempt at temple robbery with an attempt at destroying the statue of a god.38 The orator’s care in describing this shocking manifestation of Verres’s acquisitiveness makes it easy to overlook an important aspect of the narrative: the former governor is not present at the site. All that is explicitly said about his location in the Agrigentum narrative is that he is in town. His physical proximity and the fact that his henchman Timarchides is the leader of the band of slaves, however, are enough evidence for Cicero to tie Verres to the attack itself. Every temple robbery that happens near Verres is automatically his doing.39 While there is never any firm evidence that he even authorized the heist, the near destruction of a valuable and religiously significant bronze statue fits Cicero’s portrait of the defendant perfectly. The reaction of the inhabitants of Agrigentum to the break-in also supports the orator’s image of Verres. He is now widely regarded as a reviled plunderer. To continue (Verr. II 4.94–95): 36.  The Roman law codes make it clear that crimes committed at night are to be treated as especially serious; see, e.g., Ulpian at Dig. 48.13.7 on temple robberies committed at night. 37.  TLL s.v. demolior lists only two examples of the word meaning “to remove,” but cites several examples for it meaning “to destroy.” Stewart discusses the incident at Agrigentum as part of his investigation of the destruction of statues in the Roman world (Stewart 2003, 267–78; the Hercules episode is discussed on 274). 38.  In Roman literature the ignorant destruction of works of art is one way in which people could be marked as non-Roman; they lack the artistic appreciation that is especially found in the Roman elite. The scene therefore becomes another way of marking Verres as both a religious and a cultural outsider; for the wider stereotype of artistic ignorance, see Rutledge 2012, 103–5. 39.  The episode thereby parallels events at Lampsacus earlier in the speeches (Verr. II 1.62–85). Here Verres is held responsible for a series of events that lead to the death of a Roman official. In her reading of the episode, however, Catherine Steel shows that grounds for assigning the blame for the riot at Lampsacus to Verres are tenuous at best; the former governor is blamed for the events because they fit his general pattern of behavior (Steel 2004).

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Isabel Köster Interea ex clamore fama tota urbe percrebruit expugnari deos patrios, non hostium adventu necopinato neque repentino praedonum impetu, sed ex domo atque ex cohorte praetoria manum fugitivorum instructam armatamque venisse. Nemo Agrigenti neque aetate tam adfecta neque viribus tam infirmis fuit qui non illa nocte eo nuntio excitatus surrexerit, telumque quod cuique fors offerebat arripuerit. Itaque brevi tempore ad fanum ex urbe tota concurritur. Horam amplius iam in demoliendo signo permulti homines moliebantur; illud interea nulla lababat ex parte, cum alii vectibus subiectis conarentur commovere, alii deligatum omnibus membris rapere ad se funibus. Ac repente Agrigentini concurrunt; fit magna lapidatio; dant sese in fugam istius praeclari imperatoris nocturni milites. In the meanwhile, thanks to the uproar, there was a report in the whole town that the ancestral gods were under siege, and that the attack had not come from the unexpected arrival of an enemy or from a sudden assault of plunderers, but from a band of fugitives drawn up and armed by the household and cohort of the governor. No one in Agrigentum was so advanced in age or weak that he did not get out of bed that night stirred up by the news and did not grab the weapon that chance afforded him. So the whole city came together at the temple in a short time. For more than an hour very many men were working on pulling down the statue; it, in the meanwhile, was not coming loose anywhere though some were trying to move it with crowbars placed underneath it and others were trying to pull it toward them with ropes tied around all its limbs. And suddenly the citizens of Agrigentum rushed together; there was a great shower of stones, the nighttime soldiers of that distinguished general took flight.

The attack is now not just against Hercules, but also against all of the gods that the inhabitants are accustomed to worship. Next, Verres’s men are described as being worse than plunderers or foreign enemies. The passage goes on to detail the activities of Timarchides’s band and repeats language found earlier, especially the use of the verb demolior, “pull down.”40 Once again the audience is reminded that the attackers are willing to destroy the statue with their actions. The men try for over an hour to remove the statue from its pedestal, but are unsuccessful because everyone else is working against them. The Hercules does not move, and although Cicero does not specifically attribute this to divine intervention, the idea is there implicitly: it is a trope in Greek and Roman literature that the statues of the gods can express their displeasure at human behavior through a variety of physical actions (see, e.g., Bremmer 2013). The famous story of the arrival of the goddess Cybele in Rome is one example that illustrates the perceived connection between a divine power’s willingness to relocate and the relative ease or difficulty of moving the deity’s statue (see, e.g., Livy 29.14 or Ovid Fast. 4.179–372). The force that Verres’s men use in their attempt to remove the bronze therefore both illustrates their disrespect for the 40.  Here the effect is heightened by the polyptoton in in demoliendo signo … moliebantur.



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treasure and the god’s desire to remain in the temple (see also Stewart 2003, 274). This implied divine intervention further authenticates the sacredness of the Hercules of Agrigentum. The god is doing his part to thwart Verres’s efforts. The citizens of Agrigentum, in turn, come together to resist the attack and drive off the governor’s men. Even though gods and mortals in the Verrines are mostly seen as the helpless victims of Verres’s assaults, the Agrigentum narrative marks a rare moment of victory.41 Although Verres is not himself present at the temple of Hercules, the scene has all the characteristics of his usual interactions with sacred objects: he targets artifacts of artistic significance made out of valuable material and has no regard for their religious importance. The Hercules scene also shows an aspect of Verres’s acquisitiveness that we have not seen in the case of the Cupid or the candelabrum: he is willing to risk the destruction of the object while acquiring it. This detail shows that for Cicero the former governor is purely motivated by greed: for him the Hercules is neither a religious object nor even a work of art; it is a pile of precious material that he must possess. Conclusion While it is not Verres’s last attack on sacred property, the foiled robbery at Agrigentum highlights what these episodes contribute to the overall invective goals of the Verrines. Extortion is a rather minor offense compared to everything else that the former governor has allegedly done. How he treats sacred property, in particular, shows that he does not know how to behave in civilized society. He sees only the material value of objects and is unable to grasp their religious, or even artistic, significance. Verres cannot claim to be an art collector; he amasses things and then hides them away instead of displaying them. Cicero therefore presents the former governor as a figure who transgresses all social and religious norms. To create this portrait of the defendant, the Verrines give us an insight into the rhetorical sanctification of objects. Far from all artifacts that Verres steals in the course of the speeches can properly be considered ritual objects. The candelabrum taken from the sons of Antiochus, for example, is merely intended as a votive offering at some unspecified time in the future. Yet the orator’s emphasis on the physical context of objects, how people other than Verres behave toward them, and their extraordinary appearance gives even such problematic artifacts a sacred air, however dubious and unconvincing individual cases may be. 41.  Two more foiled robberies offer some parallels to events at Agrigentum: the nighttime attack on Apollo’s temple on Delos (Verr. II 1.63–67), which ends when Verres’s ships suffer shipwreck and the stolen goods are washed back on shore, and the attempt to remove a statue of the local river god Chrysas from Assorus, which is thwarted by the townspeople banding together and fighting off the thugs (Verr. II 4.96). Normally, however, no force can successfully resist Verres.

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What for others is sacred art is merely stuff for the former governor. What others place in a sacrarium and show off to guests, Verres hides deep within his walls. What others keep hidden for future dedication, Verres unwraps and misappropriates. What others touch only to show their reverence, Verres orders to have brutally torn from its foundations. As a result the former governor becomes the inverse of a regular inhabitant of the ancient world. He seeks to acquire or destroy what others worship. His conviction therefore becomes a statement that the jury knows how to treat religious objects properly and will go after those who do not. Cicero’s Verrines are therefore a testament to the invective power of emphasizing the ritual life of works of art. Bibliography Albrecht, Michael von. 2003. Cicero’s Style: A Synopsis. MS 245. Leiden: Brill. Baldo, Gianluigi. 2004. M. Tulli Ciceronis In C. Verrem actionis secundae liber quartus (De signis). Biblioteca nazionale, Serie dei classici greci e latini, Testi con commento filologico 11. Florence: Le Monnier. Berrendonner, Clara. 2007. “Verrès, les cités, les statues, et l’argent.” Pages 205–27 in La Sicile de Cicéron: Lectures des Verrines. Edited by Julien Dubouloz and Sylvie Pittia. Collection “ISTA” 1030. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. Butler, Shane. 2002. The Hand of Cicero. London: Routledge. Bowes, Kimberly. 2015. “At Home.” Pages 209–19 in A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World. Edited by Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke. BCAW. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Bremmer, Jan M. 2013. “The Agency of Greek and Roman Statues,” Opuscula 6:7–21. Corso, A. 2012. “Heius di Messana e le statue del suo sacello.” NAC 41:91–96. Elsner, Jaś. 2007. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text. Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press. Frazel, Thomas. 2005. “Furtum and the Description of Stolen Objects in Cicero In Verrem 2.4.” AJP 126:363–76. ———. 2009. The Rhetoric of Cicero’s “In Verrem.” Hypomnemata 179. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Graf, F. 2010. “Der Eigensinn der Götterbilder in antiken religiösen Diskursen.” Pages 227–43 in Homo Pictor. Edited by Gottfried Boehm. Colloquia Raurica 7. Munich: Saur. Haynes, Melissa. Forthcoming. “How to Make a God: Sculptors and Material Divinity in Antiquity.” In Encountering the Divine: Between Gods and Men in the Ancient World. Edited by V. Platt, G. Petridou, and S. Turner. Aldershot: Ashgate. Innocenti, Beth. 1994. “Towards a Theory of Vivid Description as Practiced in Cicero’s Verrine Orations.” Rhetorica 12:355–81. Koster, Severin. 1980. Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur. BKG 99. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain. Lazzeretti, Alessandra. 2006. M. Tulli Ciceronis, In C. Verrem actionis secundae liber quartus (De signis): Commento storico e archeologico. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Leen, Anne. 1991. “Cicero and the Rhetoric of Art.” AJP 112:229–45. Lhommé, Marie-Karine. 2008. “Verrès l’impie: objets sacrés et profanes dans le De Signis.” Vita Latina 179:58–66.



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May, James M. 1988. Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Miles, Margaret M. 2008. Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mylonopoulos, Joannis. 2010. “Introduction: Divine Images versus Cult Images; An Endless Story about Theories, Methods, and Terminologies.” Pages 1–19 in Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome. Edited by Joannis Mylonopoulos. RGRW 170. Leiden: Brill. Pape, Margrit. 1975. “Griechische Kunstwerke aus Kriegsbeute und ihre öffentliche Aufstellung in Rom: Von der Eroberung von Syrakus bis in augusteische Zeit.” PhD diss., Hamburg. Platt, Verity. 2010. “Art History in the Temple.” Arethusa 43:197–213. ———. 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robert, Renaud. 2007. “Ambiguïté du collectionnisme de Verrès.” Pages 15–34 in La Sicile de Cicéron. Lectures des Verrines. Edited by Julien Dubouloz and Sylvie Pittia. Collection “ISTA” 1030. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. Rüpke, Jörg. 2010. “Representation or Presence? Picturing the Divine in Ancient Rome.” ARG 12:181–96. Rutledge, Steven H. 2012. Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steel, Catherine E. W. 2004. “Being Economical with the Truth: What Really Happened at Lampsacus?” Pages 233–51 in Cicero the Advocate. Edited by Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stewart, Peter. 2003. Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response. Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vasaly, Ann. 1993. Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2009. “Cicero, Domestic Politics, and the First Action of the Verrines.” ClAnt 28:101–37. Webb, Ruth. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham: Ashgate. Zimmer, Gerhard. 1989. “Das Sacrarium des C. Heius: Kunstraub und Kunstgeschmack in der späten Republik.” Gymnasium 96:493–520.

Section 3 Implements and Images

Chapter Eight Seung Ho Bang, Oded Borowski, Kook Young Yoon, and Yuval Goren

Local Production and Domestic Ritual Use of Small Rectangular Incense Altars: A Petrographic Provenience Analysis and Examination of Craftsmanship of the Tell Halif Incense Altars Small rectangular incense altars found in the southern Levant have been considered as a diagnostic cult object (Albertz and Schmitt 2012, 70–71). Nevertheless, they are not de facto cult objects since their exact purpose and ritual setting have not been specified (Fowler 1985; Haran 1993). Some researchers, therefore, do not identify this type of object as an incense altar but an incense burner or smoking box (Millard 1984, 172–73; Zwickel 1990; Weippert 1988, 715–18; Rowan 2014, 938–40). The lack of clear understanding of this incense altar type is not limited to its exact nature and function. The origin of the altars, provenience of their raw materials, and their production are still subject for study. For example, while many researchers have insisted on local production of the southern Levantine incense altars, no scientific confirmation has been available (Cymbalista 1997, 17; Hassell 2002, 165; Stern 1982, 186). Of particular interest is the petrographic provenience analysis because by observing the mineral, fossil, and diagenetic compositions of the material (James and Jones 2015, 288) this approach provides a critical way to provenience study of carbonate-rocks, of which many Levantine small incense altars are made. Unfortunately, no petrographic analysis of this type of small rectangular altars has been reported. Tell Halif, located in the northeastern Negev on the border between the hill country and the Shephelah (fig. 1), yielded two small four-legged rectangular limestone incense altars and possibly two additional fragments of similar objects (fig. 2). Although the specimens were recovered from the same stratigraphic phase in relatively close spatial proximity, their raw materials, detailed profiles, and level of craftsmanship appear to be different from each other. These differences among the Tell Halif incense altars and fragments provide an opportunity to have a better understanding of the nature of the small southern Levantine limestone incense altar phenomenon, such as how it was produced and in what 171

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Figure 1. Location of Tell Halif.

Figure 2. Two incense altars and two fragments (from left, Objs. 3139, 3076, 3191, and 3619); photo by Seung Ho Bang and Oded Borowski; The Lahav Research Project (LRP).

contexts it was used. We will address these questions through petrographic analysis and close examination of the crafting techniques of shaping the four incense altars.1 Contexts of the Rectangular Limestone Incense Altars The small rectangular incense altars are found throughout Mesopotamia, Arabia, Turkey, Cyprus, and the Levant (Hassell 2002, 157–92; 2005, 133–62; O’Dwyer Shea 1983, 81–83, 97–100; Stern 1982, 182–95; Strommenger 1967, 31, pl. 46, 7 a/b; Weippert 1988, 715–16; Woolley and Mallowan 1976, 60, 186 n. 1, pl. 97i U.6812; Ziegler 1942, 224–40; Zwickel 1990, 62). As for the type of the Levantine incense altars with various geometric decorations, the question of its origin remains unsolved, since the earlier specimens from Mesopotamia and South Ara1.  This study does not include petrographic analysis of Obj. 3619 because it was identified as a possible incense altar fragment after the petrographic analysis had been completed.



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bia are considered to be remarkably similar (Nielsen 1986, 29). In the Levant, these incense altars are mostly found in the southern region (Aharoni 1973, pl. 29.3, 4; Cymbalista 1997, 145; Petrie 1928, 18–19; Zwickel 1990, 88). These southern Levantine altars are different from those from Mesopotamia and South Arabia; many southern Levantine altars have both geometric and faunal decoration motifs. Nevertheless, procuring of raw materials for these incense altars is poorly understood. The study of raw materials has not been reported except for the ones from Lachish. According to Tufnell, the Lachish incense altars are made of soft local huwar limestone (Tufnell 1953, 383). But, we are not sure that the claims are based on any scientific analysis. Likewise, incense altar production study has also not advanced. Previously, Stern argued for the possibility of Phoenician manufacturing of the small Levantine incense altars based on the discoveries of similar incense altars in a Phoenician temple at Markmish and a workshop at Shiqmona as well as the specialized Phoenician craftsmanship (Stern 1982, 194). Unlike the procuring of raw materials and production of incense altars, we have a fairly better understanding of the distribution of the southern Levantine incense altars. Zwickel’s study reveals that these small altars were found mostly in domestic contexts from as early as the eighth century BCE to the Persian and the Hellenistic period (Zwickel 1990, 88). Their domestic context is in sharp contrast with those of the earlier three-legged incense burners found mostly in graves and probably used in funerary rituals in Transjordan (40). His statistic data, however, indicate that they were mostly popular during and following the postexilic period (88). The Tell Halif incense altars accord well with this general distribution except that they are somewhat early in date among the reported small incense altar cluster. The four specimens from Tell Halif under the present discussion were found in the same stratigraphic phase, Stratum VIB, which is distinguished by its massive destruction attributed to Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah at the end of the eighth century BCE (table 1). The recovered ceramic assemblage and the identified functions of the architectural remains, a typical so-called four-room house layout, where the altars were found, attest to the domestic nature of the contexts of the incense altars. An important point for dating these objects is that one altar (Obj. 3191) was recovered from the actual occupational accumulation while the other specimens were recovered from loci in the same stratum (table 2). Descriptions of the Specimens Object 3076 is a corner fragment of a rectangular incense altar recovered from Locus I5004, a destruction debris layer (Stratum VIB in Area I5) on top of a cobbled floor (Loci I5006, I5013, and I5014). The stratigraphic context of this locus is similar to Locus E7004, the one that yielded Obj. 3139. This locus might have come down from the inner room on the second floor of the building. The

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Table 1. Tell Halif upper stratigraphy Stratum

Period

Date

IV

Hellenistic

300–100 BCE

V

Persian

500–300 BCE

Gap

Late Iron II/Babylonian

650–500 BCE

VIA

Iron II

700–650 BCE Destruction

VIB

Iron II

800–700 BCE

VIC

Iron II

850–800 BCE

VID

Iron II

900–850 BCE

VII

Iron I

1200–900 BCE

Table 2. Tell Halif incense altars’ locus and stratum Incense Altar

Area

Locus

Stratum

Obj. 3076

I5

I5004

VIB

Obj. 3139

E7

E7004

VIB

Obj. 3191

H6

H6010.P

VIB

Obj. 3619

C7

C7017

VIB

fragment’s dimensions are approximately 7.1 cm × 5 cm with a height of 5.1 cm. Like the other intact limestone incense altar (Obj. 3191), it also has a traceable depressed basin. Since the surface of the basin has chiseling marks similar to the finished incense altar (fig. 3), we presume that the fragment went through the same process that produced the other altar. Although the fragment indicates some degree of similarity to the finished one that has incised drawings (Obj. 3191), it has some different profiles. This altar had a shallow depressed basin. Its total size might have been a little smaller (fig. 4) than that of Obj. 3191. Morphologically similar ones to this profile, with and without legs, can be found in the Tell Jemmeh collection (Hassell 2005, figs. 8, 22). This fragment could be either a broken part of a completed incense altar or a fragment discarded during production. Because carving out a depressed basin on top of the altar is relatively easier than that of carving out legs, the smoothly finished surface of the basin may imply that the altar was completed or might have been nearing completion.

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Figure 3. Obj. 3076 showing chiseling marks; photo by Seung Ho Bang and Oded Borowski; LRP.

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Figure 4. An artist’s reconstruction of Obj. 3076; illustration by Seung Ho Bang; LRP.

E7004 Obj. 3139

Figure 5. Tell Halif Weaving Workshop in Field V; Areas E7 and E6 top plan; drawing by Dylan Karges; LRP.

Object 3139 is another small four-legged rectangular limestone incense altar found in Locus E7004, a destruction layer in a domestic textile workshop (Areas E6 and E7, see fig. 5). The altar’s dimensions are approximately 7.9 cm × 8.3 cm with an average height of 6.5 cm. Compared to Obj. 3191, the state of craftsmanship of this incense altar is crude. Judging from the attempt to form a depressed basin, the crude state could be due to the altar’s unfinished state. Long incised lines parallel to the rim on the upper part of three sides (fig. 6) are another indication that this incense altar might have been in the middle of its production. These three lines are relatively parallel to each other though one end of these lines is a bit off the track. These three lines are not intended for decoration purposes. The complete incense altar, Obj. 3191, does not have thick and deep incised lines for decoration. Rather, the incision marks probably indicate where the artisan intended to shave off the top. In fact, this incense altar is approximately 3 mm

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Figure 6. Incisions on three sides of the incense altar, Obj. 3139; photo by Seung Ho Bang and Oded Borowski; LRP.

higher than the other finished altar (Obj. 3191). Furthermore, since the altar was missing one of its four legs, the breakage might have been the cause for the incompletion. In other words, its production was abandoned when the artisan broke the leg. Object 3191 is an intact small four-legged rectangular limestone incense altar with incised drawings. The altar’s dimensions are approximately 8.7 cm × 8.7 cm with a height of 6.2 cm. It was recovered from an occupational accumulation (Locus H6010.P) in Area H6 (fig. 7). The ceramic assemblage of lmlk-type jars from the extension of the room into the adjacent Area (H7) suggests that the space was used for domestic storage. This incense altar has a large soot mark in the middle of a square depressed basin on top. The altar has decorations depicting a frame of geometric designs with human and animal figures inside (fig. 8; for a more detailed discussion on the iconographies of Obj. 3191, see Bang and Borowski 2017). Noticing the quality of the carving and incised drawing, it appears that the altar was made with experienced craftsmanship and presents what looks to be an ideally finished incense altar. Decorations similar to the ones on this altar are found on incense altars from Tell Jemmeh (Hassell 2005, tab. 2 cat. no. 20, 22; fig. 11, 20; Keel and Uehlinger 1998, 382, illus. 371; Petrie 1928, 18–19; pl. xl, 1–6; Zwickel 1990, 78, 99) and Tell el-Far‘ah (South) (Keel and Uehlinger 1998, 382, illus. 373) though they are attributed to a later time period. Comparing these incense altars with the one from Tell Halif, we see relatively homogeneous stylistic features; though, it is not conclusive whether they were crafted by the same social group (for a discussion on the technological tradition for production and the social group responsible for it, see Roux and Rosen 2010, 13). Object 3619 is a stone fragment (6.7 cm × 5.9 cm with an average height of 4.7 cm) from a possible incense altar that was found in Locus C7017, a mud brick detritus layer, which is above Locus C7018, a destruction layer. The locus contains materials that might indicate the existence of a ceiling or a second floor. The fragment could be one of the four corners of a rectangular incense altar.



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Figure 7. Area H6 final top plan; drawing by Dylan Karges; LRP.

Although it is not clear, this fragment has a trace of carved depression on top. In general, the shape and the material (stone) are very different from those of the other altars. The current state of this fragment may suggest that either the fragment was discarded during the early stage of its production or underwent severe abrasion after it was completed. In sum, Field V in Tell Halif yielded two identifiable fragments, one unfinished altar, and one finished and actually used rectangular incense altar from domestic contexts of the destruction layer (Stratum VIB). Despite their relatively close spatial proximity, their appearance, quality of craftsmanship, and phase in the production process are different from each other. Petrographic Analysis Method of Analysis Three rectangular limestone incense altars from Tell Halif have been examined for a provenience study of their raw material through petrographic analysis.

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Figure 8. Incised drawings on Obj. 3191; photos by Seung Ho Bang and Oded Borowski; Lahav Research Project.

Three samples were taken from the bottom part of each altar and analyzed in the Laboratory for Comparative Microarchaeology (LCM) at Tel Aviv University (the samples’ number in the following study indicate the specimens from which the samples were taken). For petrographic analysis, the samples were glued to micro-slides (76 mm × 26 mm × 1 mm) by thin epoxy resin. Thin sections from the samples were prepared by polishing the glued samples to a thickness of 30 microns (0.03 mm) with Buehler PetroThin® Thin Sectioning system and examined with polarizing petrographic microscope (Motic BA 300 Pol.) at magnification of 40X, 100X, or 400X in plain and cross polarized light. Result The microscopic examination of the two thin sections of Samples no. 3076 and no. 3139 reveals that they are made of chalk. Foraminifers, a frequently found type of calcareous marine microfossils, are observed in both samples. Sample no. 3076, however, has a larger quantity of foraminifers than that of no. 3191. In no. 3191, a certain amount of small quartz grains are also observed. Their brownish calcareous Microcrystalline matrix attests that these stones are typical of the local Eocene chalk of the Adulam Formation (figs. 9–10). Chalk outcrops of the Adulam Formation often with chert layers can be found at Tell Halif and its immediate surroundings (Sneh and Avni 2008a). If



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Figure 9. No. 3191; plain polarization, X 40; photo by Kook Young Yoon and Yuval Goren; reprinted by permission of the LCM.

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Figure 10. No. 3076; plain polarization, X 40; photo by Kook Young Yoon and Yuval Goren; reprinted by permission of the LCM.

we broaden the boundary to a ten-kilometer radius from the site, many different rocks outcrop, such as sedimentary rocks (Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quaternary periods), Eocene and Senonian chalks (mostly to the north and south of the site), and Cretaceous limestone and dolomite (to the east of it) can be found (Sneh et al. 1997c; Sneh and Avni 2008a, 2008b). Besides, small quantities of Miocene limestone and Pliocene Sandstone are also found within this boundary. The Adulam Formation, from which the incense altars of Objs. 3076 and 3191 were probably made, is distributed mostly in the Shephelah and the northwestern part of the Negev, and the formation is also intermittently found in northern Israel (fig. 11; Sneh et al. 1997a, 1997b, 1997c). Given the wide extent of the distribution of this formation, it is difficult to specify an area for a possible provenience of the raw material. Nevertheless, unless evidenced otherwise, it might be tentatively inferred that the provenience of raw materials for Samples no. 3076 and no. 3191 is from the close vicinity of Tell Halif. Sample no. 3139 is also made of chalk. But the stone is harder than the other samples and contains a high amount of well-preserved radiolarian (fig. 12a). In Israel, these siliceous microfossils occur only in a few localities: in nanno-ooze of the Middle Eocene Maresha Formation of the Shephelah (fig. 12b–d) or in scanty locations in northern Israel (Sneh et al. 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Goren 2007, 210). Radiolaria are distinct from other calcareous microfossils like foraminifers by their isotropism in microscopic observation. Their shape in thin section is normally characterized by a spherical or bell-shaped contour, a radially symmetrical structure of the skeleton, and a saw-toothed peripheral zone of the shell. The degree of radiolarian fossils’ preservation is controlled by different factors, such as accumulation rate, the degree of silica undersaturation of pore waters, and the intensity of bioturbation (Flügel 2004, 487). Both the Maresha Formation

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Figure 11. Geological map of Judea and northern Negev showing the location of the Adulam Formation in gray color (ea) and the Maresha Formation in light gray color (emr); from the top, BethGuvrin (circle), Tell Halif (triangle), and Beersheba (square); after Sneh et al. 1988; reprinted by permission of the Geological Survey of Israel.

and Adulam Formation belong to the same superordinate lithostratigraphic unit of the Zor’a Formation of Eocene Series characterized by chalk and limestone accompanied by chert layers in between. In the Adulam Formation, however, radiolaria are rare or diagenetically altered (Buchbinder, Minran, and Gvirtzman 1988, 268–69; Goren 2007, 210). Radiolaria in the thin section of Sample no. 3139 is not the same as it is shown in the Adulam Formation or in the vicinity of Beersheba. This formation outcrops intermittently in the Shephelah, from Zor’a near Beth Shemesh in the north to the south and southwest of Beersheba in the south (Sneh et al. 1997b;



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Figure 12. a. No. 3139 with Radiolarian; plain polarization, X 400; photo by Kook Young Yoon and Yuval Goren; reprinted by permission of the LCM.

Figure 12. b, c, d. Scanning electron microscopic photos of Radiolaria from the Maresha Formation of a Seleucid stele found in Maresha; photos courtesy of Yuval Goren, the LCM.

1997c). Under the influence of varied ecological and sedimentary environments (Flügel 2004, 487), radiolaria in the vicinity of Beersheba do not occur at such a high extent as they do in the vicinity of Maresha–Beth-Guvrin (Goren 2007, 210). Therefore, taking into account only the petrographic point of view, the raw material of Sample no. 3139 is more likely to have derived from the Maresha Formation in the Shephelah. Its closest outcrop is found in approximately twelve kilometers to the north of Tell Halif (fig. 11). This interpretation gains more support since the closest southern outcrop of this formation is approximately twenty-two kilometers to the southwest of Tell Halif, almost two times farther from the outcrop in the Shephelah.2 Local Production of Small Incense Altars Transportation of Raw Material The maker of Obj. 3139 most likely used limestone from the vicinity of Maresha, a relatively distant source, rather than locally available ones. Since Obj. 2.  Micropaleontologically, there may be still another possibility concerning the quantity and state of preservation of the radiolarian in the three samples. Moreover, a precise verification of the range of the Maresha Formation in general requires further development of relevant researches in the future. We are grateful to Chaim Benjamini for raising this possibility.

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3139 is an unfinished altar, it is hard to imagine that the altar was purchased or imported from a distant location. Rather, it is logical to assume that raw stone was imported from the distant source. In the Levant, transporting exotic raw materials from distant sources began as early as the Neolithic period and established regular local and long distance exchange throughout times (Moore 1982, 14–15). Traditionally, obsidian was considered an exemplary exotic raw material that has been transported from a distance (Bar-Yosef 1980, 130; Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989, 470, 482, 488–89; Healey 2007, 171, 176; Wright and Gordus 1969, 82–84; Yellin, Levy, and Rowan 1996, 366–67). Exotic raw materials, however, included bitumen (Gilead 1991, 142; Kuijt and Goring-Morris 2002, 380), basalt (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989, 489; Cline 2003, 360), flint (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989, 480, 489), gypsum (Kingery, Vandiver, and Prickett 1988, 238, 241), turquoise, copper, ivory tusk (Cline 2003, 360), and colored limestone (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989, 489; Moore 1982, 7) as well. Ivory procurement and crafting during the first millennium may demonstrate that transportation of these exotic raw materials was continued in the Levant (Feldman 2014, 26–27). Among the exotic raw materials, basalt, due to its limited distribution in northern Israel, such as around the Sea of Galilee and in the Golan Heights (Singer 2007, 186), presents prolonged raw material procurement from distant sources, its transportation, and local manufacturing (Rutter 2003, 129–31; Squitieri 2015, 209–12) for both daily and ritual contexts (Squitieri 2015, 209–12). Owing to abundance of limestone throughout the southern Levant, the evidence of using imported limestone is hard to find. Nevertheless, here we have a possible case that the ancient Israelites used imported limestone. Tell Dover yielded a vessel made of imported limestone from an Iron Age II context (Wolff 2007, 306–8). The raw material is brecciated limestone procured from the Nile Valley. This limestone has reddish color with grayish-white veins. If the raw material came from Egypt, these colors would have made the limestone attractive and worthy of import from there. The raw material for Obj. 3139 came from a relatively distant location. Since limestone is available around Tell Halif and two incense altars were made of local material, there must have been a specific reason for using imported limestone. In fact, the limestone of Obj. 3139 has a darker color and harder texture compared to the local limestone of Objs. 3076 and 3191. Just as brecciated limestone from the Nile Valley, we may presume that because of its color and texture, the limestone of Obj. 3139 might have been considered exotic or at least made it worthy enough to be imported. The raw limestone for the altar could have arrived at Tell Halif as a result of commercial activities. If there were interactions between the distant source in the vicinity of Maresha and Tell Halif, it is not surprising that the limestone came through an established trade network.



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Local Production of Incense Altars The petrographic analysis and the examination of the finished state of the Tell Halif incense altars provide new perspectives on identifying the group of people responsible for the production of these incense altars. Although it is hard to determine the exact conditions and production stages of Objs. 3139 (and possibly Obj. 3619) before it was buried, the unfinished state of the altar strongly suggests that it was discarded in the middle of its production process for some reason, such as the breakage of one leg. Another piece of evidence for local production of incense altars can be seen in the different finished state and levels of craftsmanship as well. For example, Objs. 3076 and 3191 have resemblances, such as a similar rectangular profile, formation of a depressed square basin, and possible four legs. Similar comparisons can be made between the two unfinished altars. These technological and morphological attributes imply that the limestone incense altars were crafted based on a somewhat standardized convention and manufacturing process. The two different sources of raw materials for the incense altars and the presence of the finished and unfinished incense altars during the same time period in close proximity to each other at the site may indicate that Tell Halif was the locus of production of the incense altars with shared conventional techniques and styles. Particularly, Obj. 3191 demonstrates that a local artisan at Tell Halif had the ability of producing a top quality limestone incense altar similar to other southern Levantine incense altars (e.g. Tell Jemmeh incense altar [catalog no. 22], see Bang and Borowski 2017). It is possible to assume that the artisan responsible for the production of Obj. 3191 was at another site, such as Tell Jemmeh or Beersheba, where larger collections of small incense altars were discovered, and the completed altar was brought to Tell Halif. This supposition, however, is less convincing since the altar was made of local material. If we attribute the production of Obj. 3191 to an artisan from another location, he must have been an itinerant artisan specializing in making incense altars. The artisan probably came to Tell Halif and crafted Obj. 3191 using local material. The date of the incense altar, however, may undermine this possibility as well. Including Obj. 3191, the Tell Halif altars, which were found in a late eighth-century BCE context, are the earliest ones among the southern Levantine incense altar collection. In terms of their stratigraphic context, they might be precursors of similar incense altars found in southern Levantine sites. In other words, Tell Halif might have been among the few earliest sites that adopted the idea of making this kind of incense altars and transmitted it to other nearby sites along the trade network. Craftsmanship of the Tell Halif Incense Altars The presence of different finished states, different levels of craftsmanship, and different proveniences of the incense altars with their close proximity to each other

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in Field V at Tell Halif suggest two possible interpretations of local incense altar production. Since the four incense altars exhibit different levels of craftsmanship, we may assume that more than one artisan produced them. We have finished fine quality of Objs. 3076 and 3191 and unfinished poor state of Obj. 3139 (and possibly Obj. 3619 as well). These two groups also represent different choices of raw materials for crafting incense altars. The first group chose locally available soft limestone while the second group selected dark and hard imported stone. In other words, the presence of different phases of altar production and quality of finishing in multiple altars found at the same site suggest the existence of multiple artisans with different levels and styles of craftsmanship at Tell Halif. The distribution of the four altars in Field V also supports the presence of multiple artisans. Similarly to Fields III and IV, architectural remains reveal that Field V consists of several pillared buildings abutting the city wall (fig. 13). These conjoined architectural remains lead one to consider the possibility of multiple households. Therefore, the four altars would have belonged to different persons or different households. The observations made above of similarities and differences can be explained by the existence of apprenticeship (for a general discussion on a tribal and family setting of industrial training, see Roux and Rosen 2010, 12–13, 16; Swift 1919, 21–23, 60–61). If this was the case, a master with a high level of skill and much more experience might have been responsible for Obj. 3191, and an apprentice with a lower level of skill and less experience might have been responsible for Objs. 3139 and 3619. Location of Incense Altar Production at Tell Halif The different finished state of the Tell Halif incense altars may also reveal the location of the incense altar workshop in Field V at Tell Halif. While both Objs. 3076 and 3191 were completed and the latter was actually used in a domestic context, the loci yielding them do not exhibit clear evidence for their production, such as prepared raw materials, discarded or chipped parts, and tools. Since making incense altars might not have required a dedicated work place, special tools, and storage of raw materials, it would be natural to find no such evidence. Nevertheless, considering the high artistic skill exhibited in Obj. 3191, the artisan must have had much practice and prior experience before he crafted the finished one with decorations (Obj. 3191). The artisan might not have crafted such high quality incense altar by chance. In fact, while the completed incense altar does not necessarily point out where it was made, the incomplete one most likely points out where it was produced. Although we do not have clear direct evidence for altar production, Area E7 exhibits conceivable evidence of incense altar production. The area yielded an unfinished altar (Obj. 3139), and roughly 10 m to the north, in Area C7, we

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Figure 13. Plan of architectural features in Field V; drawing by Dylan Karges; LRP.

have another incomplete or discarded fragment (Obj. 3619). Therefore, the most probable place where an artisan was active would have been somewhere in between Areas C7 and E7. Despite lack of other direct supporting evidence, such as tools, it is, however, quite plausible that part of the textile workshop in Area E7, where a domestic production activity took place, would also have been a place where incense altars were crafted. There could have been synergy if two different production activities shared resources, such as tools, space, and labor. For example, if there was a connection between the textile workshop and incense altar production so that the artisan could have taken advantage of the textile trade, then the artisan could easily get raw material for incense altars from other locations through a pre-existing textile trade network. The same network could have served the transmission of ideas on incense altar production. In other words, the textile workshop could have been a point of access to certain circulating technological practice and stylistic features of small incense altars. The presence of the imported limestone, of which Obj. 3139 was made, substantiates this point. Incense Altars in Rituals Since all four Tell Halif incense altars were found in domestic contexts, they most likely were made for domestic use.3 The incense altar has no known utilitarian function except producing aroma, whether it is for making pleasant odor or expelling insects. Even signs of burning are not found in every incense altar. Therefore, we should expand our scope and try to relate the incense altars’ non3.  For more discussion on the context and the use of the incense altar, see Bang 2015, 420–29.

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utilitarian function with other non-utilitarian objects found together in the areas and the functions of the areas. First, Obj. 3139 was found in a part of a domestic textile workshop (Areas E6 and E7). These areas yielded a total of six cult objects from the same stratigraphic phase. In particular, Locus E7004, where the altar was found, yielded four cult objects, such as a Judean horse and rider figurine fragment, a kernos oil lamp fragment, a zoomorphic vessel fragment, and a possible standing stone (massēbā). An intended function of Obj. 3139, if it were completed and used in the area, could have been closely related to the primary function of the textile workshop, in which it was discovered, and the adjacent kitchen (in Area D7) next to the workshop. The internal stratigraphy of the locus that yielded the incense altar suggests two possibilities of its function. If the locus belongs to the ground level, the incense altar could have been an integral part of the weaving and/or food preparation processes. The altar might have been used along with other cult objects in ritual related to textile production or food preparation activities. Recent studies reveal a high rate of occurrences of cult objects in association with work places in the Iron Age (Bang 2015, 152–257; Albertz and Schmitt 2012, 175). Since Locus E7004 is found approximately 40 cm above the occupation accumulation in Area E7, it might not have been part of the ground floor but that the incense altar and other cult objects came from the second floor directly above the textile workshop. Although it is not sure whether the locus was covered space in the second floor, it could have served as space for dwelling, sleeping (Albertz and Schmitt 2012, 28; Holladay 1992, 316), and other personal activities. A probable ritual in this context would be personal piety rather than communal or nuclear family based rituals. We have a similar case in Area I5, where the incense altar fragment (Obj. 3076) was found in Locus I5004. As we discussed early, this locus consists of collapsed materials, which covered the floor to a height of approximately 20 cm. This altar was most likely to be used in the second floor. Using incense altars in a second floor gains support by the case of Tall Jawa, where many cuboid altars found in the second floor contexts (Daviau 2014, 120). Considering an easy movement through the kitchen, textile workshop, and the second floor, the intended user of the incense altar (Obj. 3139, if it was completed) could be identified with the one who was crafting the altar, the one who occupied the room in the second floor, the weaver in the textile workshop in the first floor, and/or the cook who prepared food for the household in the kitchen (Area D7) next to the textile workshop. This interconnection among the domestic spaces suggests that a female household member would have planned to use the incense altar together with the other four cult objects. Object 3191 was found in a domestic storeroom. Having no apparent utilitarian function in relation to storage activities, we may also assume that this incense altar would have had nonutilitarian functions. The storeroom might have pro-



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vided a unique place for nonutilitarian activities, such as a small communal gathering accompanied with a small-scale feast. An Ugaritic marzihu (KTU 3.9) offers an example of a domestic storeroom used for a religious drinking feast for nonhousehold members (Segert 1984, 141; Dawson 2009, 28; Bordreuil and Pardee 2009, 261, text 40). Not only a small communal religious gathering, but also private or small family-based religious activities could be performed in the place. The storeroom in Area H6 would have provided a remote and isolated space, an ideal place for performing personal and/or small group piety. The contemporary shrine room found in Field IV at Tell Halif demonstrates this possibility. The room yielded an assemblage of cult objects, such as a fenestrated stand, a pillar figurine head, and two finely dressed standing stones (maṣsẹ̄ bôt) (Hardin 2010, 133–43), that most likely were used in performing domestic rituals. Conclusions In conclusion, the petrographic examination and observations on craftsmanship of the altars provide important aspects of the small Levantine incense altars during the late eighth century BCE. The petrographic analysis indicates the existence of two different sources of raw material. The presence of the imported limestone is possibly direct evidence for trade activity resulting in the transportation of raw material. The geographical location of Tell Halif, the source location of the imported raw material, and similar incense altars from other neighboring sites but from a somewhat later period, may point to the fact that the small incense altar phenomenon could have circulated through the broader southern Levantine trade network. The same network could have been responsible for transportation of the raw material for Obj. 3139 from the Maresha environs to Tell Halif. Importing raw material to Tell Halif supports production of incense altars at the site. The presence of the unfinished altars and/or the possibly discarded fragments substantiate very strongly this possibility. The local artisans at Tell Halif most likely produced the decorated incense altar with the locally available material and the unfinished one with the imported material. If the altars were locally produced, the existence of various levels of skill may suggest that multiple artisans or multiple workshops were responsible for local production of the incense altars. It seems that artisans with different levels of skill would have been familiar with general conventions and manufacturing processes of incense altars of the time. Since the Tell Halif incense altars are from the destruction layer attributed to Sennacherib’s invasion at the end of the eighth century BCE, they could be, therefore, precursors of other similar incense altars found in neighboring sites. We may consider that Tell Halif might have been one of the earliest sites to produce and use small rectangular incense altars. To produce an incense altar fol-

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lowing the convention, an entry-level artisan might have practiced individually or was trained by a master artisan. The points made above, along with the site’s identification as a Judahite town, strongly suggest that Judahites at Tell Halif were responsible for manufacturing the incense altars found at the site. The local production of incense altars at Tell Halif is most likely related to domestic use. The proveniences of the incense altars and fragments in Field V may suggest their roles in personal or small group piety and/or ritual related to domestic production activities. That is to say, some cultic paraphernalia were produced at the site by the inhabitants in order to use them in various domestic cults. All in all, despite the presence of minor variations, a specific and established conventional design of incense altars as well as manufacturing techniques strongly suggest that the incense altars were popular for domestic use. Since no other incense altars from other sites have gone through provenience analysis, we cannot discuss the places of origin of the raw materials for those incense altars or their production places. This petrographic analysis and the examination of the craftsmanship of the altars suggest that other altars should be subjected to the same analysis to determine their place of origin and production. The results would provide a better picture of the incense altar phenomenon in the southern Levant. Bibliography Aharoni, Yohanan. 1973. Beer-Sheba I: Excavations at Tel Beer-Sheba, 1969–1971 Seasons. SMNIA 2. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Institute of Archaeology. Albertz, Rainer, and Rüdiger Schmitt. 2012. Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Bang, Seung Ho. 2015. “Ritual Threads: Cultic Evidence Related to Household Textile Production at Iron Age Tell Halif.” PhD diss. Baylor University. Bang, Seung Ho, and Oded Borowski. 2017. “Local Production of a Small Rectangular Limestone Incense Altar at Tell Halif, Israel: Iconographic Considerations.” BASOR 377: 49–67. Bar-Yosef, Ofer. 1980. “Prehistory of the Levant.” ARA 9:101–33. Bar-Yosef, Ofer, and Anna Belfer-Cohen. 1989. “The Origins of Sedentism and Farming Communities in the Levant.” JWP 3:447–98. Bordreuil, Pierre, and Dennis Pardee. 2009. A Manual of Ugaritic. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Buchbinder, B., C. Benjamini, Y. Minran, and G. Gvirtzman. 1988. “Mass Transport in Eocene Pelagic Chalk on the Northwestern Edge of the Arabian Platform, Shefela Area, Israel.” Sedimentology 35:257–74. Cline, Eric. H. 2003. “Trade and Exchange in the Levant.” Pages 360–66 in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader. Edited by Suzanne Richard. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Cymbalista, G. 1997. “Cubic Shaped Altars in Israel: From the End of the Iron Age Till the Hellenistic Period.” MA thesis, Tel Aviv University. (Hebrew.) Daviau, P. M. M. 2014. “Anomalies in the Archaeological Record: Evidence for Domestic and Industrial Cults in Central Jordan.” Pages 103–28 in Family and Household



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Religion: Toward a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies. Edited by Rainer Albertz, Beth Alpert Nakhai, and Rüdiger Schmitt. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Dawson, Tess. 2009. Whisper of Stone: Natib Qadish: Modern Canaanite Religion. Winchester, UK; Washington, USA: O Books. Feldman, Marian H. 2014. Communities of Style: Portable Luxury Arts, Identity, and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. Flügel, Erik. 2004. Microfacies of Carbonate Rocks: Analysis, Interpretation and Application. Berlin: Springer. Fowler, Mervyn D. 1985. “Excavated Incense Burners: A Case for Identifying a Site as Sacred?” PEQ 117:25–29. Gilead, Isaac. 1991. “The Upper Paleolithic Period in the Levant.” JWP 5:105–54. Goren, Yuval. 2007. “Scientific Examination of a Seleucid Limestone Stele.” ZPE 159:206– 16. Haran, Menahem. 1993. “‘Incense Altars’—Are They?” Pages 237–47 in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, June–July 1990. Edited by Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Hardin, James Walker. 2010. Lahav II: Households and the Use of Domestic Space at Iron II Tell Halif: An Archaeology of Destruction. Lahav 2. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Hassell, Jonathan. 2002. “Cuboid Incense-Burning Altars from South Arabia in the Collection of the American Foundation for the Study of Man: Some Unpublished Aspects.” AAE 13:157–92. ———. 2005. “A Re-Examination of the Cuboid Incense-Burning Altars from Flinders Petrie’s Palestinian Excavations at Tell Jemmeh.” Levant 37:133–62. Healey, Elizabeth. 2007. “Obsidian as an Indicator of Inter-Regional Contacts and Exchange: Three Case-Studies from the Halaf Period.” AnSt 57:171–89. Holladay, John Jr. 1992. “The Israelite House.” Pages 308–19 in vol. 3 of ABD. Edited by David N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday. James, Noel P., and Brian Jones. 2015. Origin of Carbonate Sedimentary Rocks. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley. Keel, Othmar, and Christoph Uehlinger. 1998. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress. Kingery, W. David, Pamela B. Vandiver, and Martha Prickett. 1988. “The Beginnings of Pyrotechnology, Part II: Production and Use of Lime and Gypsum Plaster in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Near East.” JFA 15:219–44. Kuijt, Ian, and Nigel Goring-Morris. 2002. “Foraging, Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis.” JWP 16:361–440. Millard, Alan R. 1984. “The Small Cuboid Incense-Burners: A Note on Their Age.” Levant 16:172–73. Moore, Andrew M. T. 1982. “A Four-Stage Sequence for the Levantine Neolithic, ca. 8500– 3750 B.C.” BASOR 246:1–34. Nielsen, Kjeld. 1986. Incense in Ancient Israel. VTSup 38. Leiden: Brill. O’Dwyer Shea, Michael. 1983. “The Small Cuboid Incense-Burner of the Ancient Near East.” Levant 15:76–109. Petrie, W. M. Flinders. 1928. Gerar. London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Rowan, Yorke M. 2014. “Stone Artifact Assemblage from Tell Jemmeh.” Pages 917–69 in

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The Smithsonian Institution Excavation at Tell Jemmeh, Israel, 1970–1990. Edited by David Ben-Shlomo and Gus W. Van Beek. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Roux, Valentine, and Steven A. Rosen. 2010. “An Introduction to Technological Studies in the Archaeology of the Proto-Historic and Early Historic Periods in the Southern Levant.” Pages 11–24 in Techniques and People: Anthropological Perspectives on Technology in the Archaeology of the Proto-Historic and Early Historic Periods in the Southern Levant. Edited by Steven A. Rosen and Valentine Roux. Mémoires et travaux : archéologie et sciences de l’antiquité et du moyen âge, 9. Jérusalem: Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem. Rutter, Graham P. 2003. “Basaltic-Rock Procurement Systems in the Southern Levant: Case Studies from the Chalcolithic-Early Bronze I and the Late Bronze-Iron Ages.” PhD diss., The University of Durham. Segert, Stanislav. 1984. A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language. Berkeley: University of California Press. Singer, Arieh. 2007. The Soils of Israel. New York: Springer. Sneh, Amihai, and Avni, Yoav. 2008a. Geological Map of Israel 1: 50, 000, Mishmar Hanegev: Sheet 14–II. Jerusalem: Geological Survey of Israel. Sneh, Amihai, and Avni, Yoav. 2008b. Geological Map of Israel 1:50, 000, Eshtemoa: Sheet 15-I. Jerusalem: Geological Survey of Israel. Sneh, Amihai, Y. Bartov, T. Weissbrod, and M. Rosensaft. 1997a. Geological Map of Israel 1:200,000: Sheet 1. Jerusalem: Geological Survey of Israel. ———. 1997b. Geological Map of Israel 1:200,000: Sheet 2. Jerusalem: Geological Survey of Israel. ———. 1997c. Geological Map of Israel 1:200,000: Sheet 3. Jerusalem: Geological Survey of Israel. Squitieri, Andrea. 2015, “Basalt Vessels Distribution in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age.” Pages 209–15 in Broadening Horizons 4: Conference of Young Researchers Working in the Ancient Near East, Egypt and Central Asia, University of Torino, October 2011. Edited by Giorgio Affanni et al. BAR International Series 2698. Oxford: Archaeopress. Stern, Ephraim. 1982. Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period, 538–332 B.C. Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris & Phillips; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Strommenger-Nagel, Eva. 1967. Gefässe aus Uruk von der neubabylonischen Zeit bis zu den Sasaniden: Mit einem Beitrag über die Inschriften von Rudolf Macuch. Berlin: Mann. Swift, Fletcher Harper. 1919. Education in Ancient Israel, from Earliest Times to 70. Chicago: Open Court. Tufnell, Olga. 1953. Lachish III (Tell Ed Duweir): The Iron Age, Text. Wellcome-Marston Archaeological Research Expedition to the Near East 3. London: Oxford University Press. Weippert, Helga. 1988. Palästina in vorhellenistischer Zeit. HdA 2/1. Munich: Beck. Wolff, Samuel. 2007. “Stone Pedestaled Bowls from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant.” Pages 305–12 in “Up to the Gates of Ekron”: Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gitin. Edited by S. White Crawford et al. Jerusalem: Albright Institute and The Israel Exploration Society. Woolley, C. Leonard, and M. E. L. Mallowan. 1976. The Old Babylonian Period. Ur Excavations 7. London: British Museum Publications.



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Wright, G. A., and A. A. Gordus. 1969. “Source Areas for Obsidian Recovered at Munhata, Beisamoun, Hazorea and El-Khiam.” IEJ 19:79–88. Yellin, Joseph, Thomas E. Levy, and Yorke M. Rowan. 1996. “New Evidence on Prehistoric Trade Routes: The Obsidian Evidence from Gilat, Israel.” JFA 23:361–68. Ziegler, Liselotte. 1942. “Tonkästchen aus Uruk, Babylon und Assur.” ZA 47:224–40. Zwickel, Wolfgang. 1990. Räucherkult und Räuchregeräte: Exegetische und Archäologische Studien zum Räucheropfer im Alten Testament. OBO 97. Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Chapter Nine Erin Darby

Judean Pillar Figurines and the Making of Female Piety in Ancient Israelite Religion

J

udean pillar figurines (JPFs) remain one of the most common ritual objects from the eighth through sixth centuries BCE in Judah, the polity governing southern Israel. Given that fact, these small terracotta females holding their breasts have been the recipients of a great deal of scholarly attention over the past century. Moreover, because many authors choose to interpret the figurines in light of the biblical text, the figurines have figured prominently in discussions about Israelite religion, monotheism, iconoclastic reform, and women’s practice. Despite their predominance in both the ancient world and in modern scholarship, these objects and their function are still only poorly understood. While part of the problem could be the absence of inscriptions on the objects or clear textual correlates, even greater barriers to understanding are modern methodological approaches to figurines, particularly regarding the connections made between the figurines and female practitioners, female deities, or female religion. In large part, such interpretations are based on a series of methodological assumptions made about the role of women in ancient Israelite religion, the significance of certain iconographic features, like hands holding the breasts, and to what extent archaeological context can be used to undergird such interpretations. A further methodological problem is the relative infrequency with which interpreters address the figurines as the end products of local industries. In contrast with the issues that garner a large amount of interpretive energy, questions related to figurine production are underexplored. Yet, the answers to these questions are more accessible to modern interpreters than are answers about figurines and the goddess Asherah, for example. In fact, studying figurine style and manufacture can provide information that sheds light on complex problems like the organization of figurine production. In an attempt to address many of the methodological difficulties and to model a more productive approach to JPFs as ritual objects, this essay first summarizes some of the most problematic methodological assumptions brought to bear on the figurines’ interpretation. After demonstrating the ways in which these 193

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Figure 1. Detail drawing of a pillar body with arms supporting the breasts; courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Figure 2. Photograph of a molded head; courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

positions are a priori beliefs rather than evidence-driven conclusions, this essay uses archaeological context and the results of petrographic testing to challenge previous inter­pretations and form a more nuanced interpretive Figure 3. Photograph of a pinched head; courtesy approach. In this pro­ cess many of of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University the most dearly held interpretations of Jerusalem. may be found wanting, such as the often-stated association between the figurines and ancient females. At the same time, however, this essay will demonstrate that modern researchers can use JPFs to address a number of research concerns, particularly the polyvalence of ancient ritual culture.



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Introduction to Judean Pillar Figurines Judean pillar figurines are clay female statuettes found within the boundary of southern Israel in the eighth through sixth centuries (figs. 1–3). They generally consist of a separately molded headdress and face, joined to the body by a clay tab that is smoothed over by hand. The bodies most commonly contain arms holding or supporting the breasts placed atop a solid pillar base. Another version of the figurines has a hand-pinched head made in tandem with the body. A small number of figurines hold a disc or a child, and minor variations in production technique also occur, such as wheel-formed or hollow pillar bases. Judean pillar figurines were also whitewashed and painted, though these elements are badly preserved on most fragments. Despite the difficulty understanding JPFs, they are one of the most prevalent iconographic “religious” images found within the boundaries of Judah, the polity governing southern Israel in the Iron IIB–IIC. They come from almost every site in the country, with over five hundred from Jerusalem alone. Even more interesting, this image is never discussed anywhere in the Hebrew Bible (Lewis 2005, 87; Darby 2014, 259–97). Previous Interpretations and Methodological Presuppositions The prevailing scholarly interpretations can be divided into four major subheadings. First, figurines are frequently interpreted as goddesses, most commonly as consorts of the Hebrew Bible’s deity, “Yahweh” (Pilz 1924, 161; Pritchard 1943, 85; McCowan 1947, 245; Tufnell 1953, 66, 374; Albright 1974, 96–98; Engle 1979, 52; Ahlström 1984, 22; Holladay 1987, 278; Kletter 1996, 77; Dever 2005, 194). Second, figurines are understood as “popular religion,” variously defined as objects used only by “popular” levels of society and/or objects borrowed from neighboring cultures that encroach upon “orthodox” monotheistic Yahwism (McCowan 1947, 245; Tufnell 1953, 181; Pritchard 1961, 120; Kenyon 1967, 141; Holland 1975, 48, 174, 187; Engle 1979, 52; Holladay 1987, 274–80; Nadelman 1989, 123; Franken and Steiner 1990, 123, 128; Kletter 1996, 54; Zevit 2001, 272; Daviau 2001, 203; Yezerski and Geva 2003, 67; Dever 2005, 55). Third, figurines are characterized as “cheaply made” and reflect the socio-economic status of the people making and using them (McCowan 1947, 248; Bloch-Smith 1992, 78; Kletter 1996, 49–50, 61; Hadley 2000, 197; van der Toorn 2002, 56, 58, 62). Finally, the figurines are categorized under “private” and/or “family” practice, primarily used in the home by women for women’s concerns (for extensive secondary literature, see Kletter 1996, 10–24, 62, 74–75 and Darby 2014, 55–59). Throughout the various scholars represented in these four interpretive approaches one finds a single consistent methodological presupposition, namely

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that the population making and using the figurines and figurine function can be divined from observations based on figurine design. More specifically, the breasts of the figurines are treated as the main adjudicators for figurine user and function. In its most extreme form, one hears statements like the figurines, “emphasized the breasts, so much so that the eye is inevitably drawn there (there being nothing else to see)” (Dever 2005, 187). While the sentiment is startling, the assumed centrality of the figurines’ breasts lies at the base of most interpretations, including those that view the figurines as goddesses, especially the dea nutrix, interpretations of the figurines as objects incommensurate with orthodox Yahwism, and perspectives that see the figurines as inducers of fertility, lactation, or infant health. Moreover, archaeological data are often treated as proof for these assumptions, despite the fact that their primary basis is in iconological rather than archaeological interpretation. For example, because figurines are found primarily in domestic units their archaeological context is frequently cited as evidence that figurines were used by females or for “female” concerns, like eroticism, procreation, and lactation (e.g., McCowan 1947, 245; Holladay 1987, 275–80; Daviau 2001, 203–4; Meyers 2007, 123–26). Of course, the general domestic context can only be used to support such assertions if one concludes that men did not live in Israelite houses, that men were unconcerned with the needs of their families, or that the only thing going on in Israelite houses was sex. Furthermore, although JPFs are found in almost every site in every region of Judah and over a range of ca. two hundred years, scholars rarely recognize regional or site diversity (e.g., Kletter 1996). Rather, the context of figurines at one site is used to interpret the entire corpus, despite clear evidence for regionally and locally specific figurine distribution and iconographic preferences (Darby 2014, 237–58). In other words, most scholars assume that the relatively standard design of the figurines must mean their functions were standard and homogenous as well. In sum, archaeological context is used to undergird interpretations of figurine iconography, but, in actuality, the data are often misinterpreted and claims made upon them are aggrandized. In part, these problems cannot be avoided because of the model of religion applied to ancient Israelite women. So long as interpreters expect to find evidence of a personal female tradition that focuses on the moods and motivations of private women and places women’s religion in a separate sphere from “public” or “state” religion (e.g., Holladay 1987, 269; Bird 1987, 401–2, 406, 409–10; Miller 2000, 38–40; Dever 2005, 5–6; cf. Olyan 2008, 113–16; Stavrakopoulou 2010, 42–43), iconological and archaeological studies cannot help but disappoint. Despite a shift in postprocessual or “symbolic” archaeology that attempts to understand “people” not “pots” (e.g., Trigger 2007; Croucher and Wynne-Jones

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2006; Hodder 1985), archaeology in the southern Levant rarely provides the type of data that would be needed to substantiate one such theory over another. Instead, in the attempt to describe ancient Israelite female piety, interpreters actually use the relatively homogenous iconography of the figurines to re-create a single homogenous way all Israelite women must have thought about and/ or used JPFs, despite their varied regional and local contexts. Moreover, the longstanding assumption, popularized by Protestant Reformers, that female piety must be intricately tied to procreation and child-rearing (e.g., Porterfield 1991) may have influenced interpreters to propose either that procreation and childrearing were the primary aspects of ancient female piety or that these concerns were largely absent in the beliefs and practices of other family members. Ultimately, the interpretation of female religion as “interior” and “family-driven” may have obscured the ways in which religious rituals of the household would have interacted with local, regional, national, and Levantine practices. Evaluating Traditional Interpretations Ancient Near Eastern Texts While it is true that the Hebrew Bible does not mention clay female figurines, other texts from the ancient Near East can be brought to bear on the interpretation of ancient “female” religion. Descriptions of figurine rituals from the Late Bronze through the Iron II are not uncommon in Egyptian, Hittite, and Mesopotamian literature (Darby 2014, 61–97). Few of these rituals involve clay females, with the exception of those that destroy a clay image of a sorceress (e.g., Abusch 2002, 122–23). Figurines, including clay figurines, appear with some frequency in Egyptian magico-medical literature (Waraksa 2009, 124–65), and are relatively common in Iron II Neo-Assyrian rituals ranging from anti-witchcraft spells (Abusch 2002) to magico-medical literature (Scurlock 2006), sympathetic rituals to ward off evil (Maul 1994), and apotropaic practices to guard the home (Wiggermann 1992). They also occasionally appear in love rituals (Biggs 1967). One very interesting omission is the infrequency of clay figurines in rituals related to gestation, birth, and infant health. Moreover, when clay figurines are involved, they either represent a sorceress, who is assumed to be threatening the expectant mother (Scurlock 2002, 215–23), as in the Mesopotamian corpus, or they are representation of Bes or animals (Borghouts 1971, 12–13; Leitz 1999, 67–71), as in the Egyptian corpus. In fact, the relatively numerous rituals describing complications in pregnancy, delivery, and lactation far prefer other remedies, such as amulets, knots, herbs, and incantations (Scurlock 1991, 137– 85; Robins 1993, 78–88; Stol 2000, 35–37). Furthermore, the ritual texts do not seem to imply that the rituals were relegated to female participants. In other words, no ritual instructions seem to

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exclude the participation of males. Rather, difficulties with birth, miscarriage, still birth, and deformities seem to have been the concerns of the entire family. These were not only problems in and of themselves, but they also portended future evil that had to be averted, and the head of household would probably have been involved in any such rituals, as would a ritual officiant (Leichty 1970, 3). In the case of Neo-Assyrian and Egyptian literature, the presence of these problems in the spell literature of the learned male elite suggests that ritual specialists who were employed by the temple could have played an important role in these rituals (Cryer 1994, 205; Pinch 1994, 52–56; Ritner 1995, 52–53; Scurlock 1999, 69–80; 2006, 3, 23–24, 43; Geller 2004, 23–25; 2010, 48–52, 125, 162–63; Jean 2006, 5–53). The Near Eastern ritual texts have a number of important implications. First, there appears to be little textual evidence that conception, gestation, birth, or infant health were concerns of women alone. Rather they were the business of the entire family unit. Second, the very fact that Egyptian and Mesopotamian spell literatures describes complications in these processes indicates that these rituals were not wholly relegated to the private purview of the household. Rather, male magico-medical professionals who read, produced, and archived these texts knew a great deal about these problems and were called upon to officiate rituals related to these difficulties. Third, figurines, of whatever iconographic type, were not the most common objects listed in these types of rituals, thus questioning the likelihood that figurines were regularly used for these purposes. Finally, when figurines are mentioned in these types of rituals, they are not “female,” challenging the assumption that figurines depicting female images were more likely to be used by actual females or for ritual interventions in events that disproportionately affected females, like gestation and birth. In sum, the ancient Near Eastern textual accounts of conception, gestation, birth, and infant mortality rituals challenge modern assumptions that assign these particular elements to “female” concerns and that create a separate sphere of female religion within the household complex that is somehow unrelated to the “public” aspects of ancient Near Eastern religion. This is not to say that females did not have rituals they performed, a topic that is largely beyond the reach of modern scholarship. Nor does this literature prove that JPFs were not used by females. More significantly, the ancient Near Eastern ritual texts question why modern scholars have assumed that these aspects of life were the main concerns of women alone or why scholars have argued that these aspects were separated from any ritual intervention from outside the immediate members of the household. The texts also point to the presence of far more common treatments for these ailments that have remained underexamined, primarily because knots, herbs, and poultices would leave no trace in the archaeological record. That being the case, the texts broaden the mental landscape of interpreters trying to



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understand these aspects of ancient female lives and hint at the complexity that must have characterized the ritualization of such aspects. Iconography Another important facet of the “female piety” argument is the assumption that “female” iconographic depictions uniquely relate to actual females or to concerns assumed to be female. Several depictions of naked females in ancient Near Eastern art of the Late Bronze through Iron II can be used to test whether the “naked female image” is always associated with ancient women or their fertility. In fact, the image crops up in some curious places. For example, naked females of varying types have been discovered on metal equestrian frontlets (Burkert 1992, 16, 18, fig. 2, 20; Winter 2010, 340, 374, fig. 2), and comparable ivory frontlets and blinkers were discovered at Nimrud in ancient Assyria (Orchard 1967, 29, no. 144, pl. 31; Gubel 2005, 126, fig. 14, 129, fig. 17, 130). Frontal naked females, including some holding their breasts, also appear on cylinder seals from a number of periods where the en face position (in contrast with other images in the seals) may indicate a protective or apotropaic function (Aurerbach 1994, 208; Bahrani 2001, 88; 2002, 56–57; Pruß 2010, 127). Though relatively uncommon in the southern Levant, two unprovenienced scaraboid seals with Ammonite inscriptions were published by Nahman Avigad. Both show the frontal naked female holding her breasts; but in both cases, the accompanying inscription proves the seal was owned by a male (Avigad 1977, 63–66; Hübner 1993, 142–43). A unique but comparable seal from the Israelite corpus shows a fully naked female with hands down at her sides and four wings; here, too, the inscription shows the seal was owned by a male (Sass 1993, 233, fig. 142, 236). The naked female standing en face also occurs on small model shrines and cult stands in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Many of these objects were associated with shrines where, presumably, both males and females would visit (Rowe 1940, 54–55, pls. 17:1–2, 35:2, 56a:3, 57a:1; Keel 1998, 41; Zevit 2001, 331–32, fig. 4.14, 329; Beck 2002, 185, figs. 1–3a, 209, fig. 10; Tadmor 2006, 322; Maeir and Dayagi-Mendels 2007, 111–23, figs. 1–2; Schroer 2007, 430–38; Kletter 2010a, 186–88; 2010b, 40, 42–43). Female images are also occasionally found as parts of temple architecture, for example, a defaced female between two date palms carved in stone blocks from Tell al-Rimah (Howard-Carter 1983, 64–72) or the Hathor columns from Egypt and the Levant (Rothenberg 1972, 130, 151, fig. 78; Schroer 2007, 442–43). Large female images occur in other public space as well, such as the Carchemish orthostat from the Herald’s Wall, which may have comprised part of the inner defenses of the fortress (Winter 2010, 375 fig. 3), and the large female basalt statue guarding the entrance to the ninth century palace at Halaf (Oppenheim 1931, 121). Some consider the Caryatids a later manifestation of the same Near Eastern practice (Mylonas Shear 1999, 65–85).

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It is doubtful that the female images from Carchemish or Halaf were used solely by women to invoke fertility. The same could be said for females on equestrian objects and on seals owned by males. In sum, female tropes, including the naked female, appear in many different materials, sizes, and settings, problematizing any simple interpretation of the image. Rather than the de facto position—that the naked female must be associated with women or concerns assumed to be central to women—the ancient data present a more complicated picture, wherein the image might be used by a range of genders and levels of society. To be even more specific, this range of female images has direct bearing on interpretations of small-scale naked female figurines. No one would be so simple as to claim that the naked female on the Herald’s wall and the standing female at Halaf were used by women to induce fertility or lactation. The scale and setting of the images preclude this interpretation; however, this same assumption is typically applied to small female figurines, in large part because the figurines have breasts. As contemporaneous Near Eastern iconographic depictions of the naked female make clear, the presumed connection between “female” iconography and actual ancient females remains unsound. Thus, to undergird any hypothesized connection between naked female figurines and women’s practice, further data must be taken into consideration, particularly the archaeological context of the figurines. .

Jerusalem Archaeology The archaeological data also problematize many of the traditional interpretations. Turning to Jerusalem, where over five hundred JPF fragments have been found, the city lies in the center and along the eastern border of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel. Domestic buildings and public buildings have been found on the southeastern hill, as well as on the southwestern hill and a few other areas throughout the modern city. The following analysis will focus on the buildings on the southeastern hill. The southeastern hill, or the “City of David,” is the largest neighborhood uncovered in the ancient city. It was excavated by Kathleen Kenyon from 1961– 1967, Yigal Shiloh from 1978–1985, and most recently by Eilat Mazar. Because of the horizontal exposure and modern excavation and publication techniques, the southeastern hill remains the primary source for interpreting figurine deposition in Jerusalem. The relevant sections of Shiloh’s excavations were divided into several areas (Areas D1, D2, E, and G), representing at least two neighborhoods that span from the eighth century BCE (Stratum 12) though the destruction of Jerusalem (Stratum 10). These neighborhoods produced both public and domestic buildings, and the neighborhoods appear to vary in socio-economic status. Shiloh’s excavations of these areas have produced the largest group of



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JPFs to date (De Groot and Bernick-Greenberg 2012; Ariel and De Groot 2000; Gilbert-Peretz 1996; Shiloh 1984). Again, an emphasis on Jerusalem is warranted by the large number of figurines coming from the city in general (ca. 50 percent of the entire corpus) and coming from the Kenyon and Shiloh excavations in particular (Darby 2014, 98–103, 143–46). The archaeological data from Shiloh’s excavations of Jerusalem’s southeastern hill do not strongly support a close association between the figurines and ancient females. First, the figurines are not solely associated with spaces some interpreters connect with women’s work in the domestic unit (e.g., Meyers 2013, 128–35), such as food preparation areas (Darby 2014, 180). Part of the problem is identifying room function in structures that have been abandoned (Schiffer 1987), as is the case in the majority of Iron Age domestic contexts, including those in the City of David. Another significant impediment is the portability of objects that might indicate women’s activity areas, suggesting that tasks could be performed in any of the rooms in the domestic unit, collectively in a neighborhood house, or outside of the domestic spaces entirely. The fundamental ambiguity of most of the data must be taken seriously before archaeological inferences are drawn, especially when engendering household spaces or artifacts (Gero 2007). What structures in the City of David indicate (Darby 2014, 452–53) is that JPFs on the southeastern hill of Jerusalem are found throughout domestic units in lanes, floors, cisterns, pits, and, in Area G, even in toilets, indicating random disposal throughout neighborhoods with little meaningful correlation to particular activity areas (table 1). Second, figurines are not found in any strong correlation with objects that some modern interpreters have connected with ancient female work, such as ground stones or loom weights (e.g., Meyers 2013, 128–35). For example, figurines on floors from Area E on the southeastern hill occur more frequently with inscribed handles than with either ground stones or loom weights, and the most meaningful correlation between artifacts and JPFs is with zoomorphic fragments (fig. 4). Again, most of these objects, even those on floors, seem to have been recovered in disposal contexts, weakening any conclusions that might be based upon their archaeological context. What the archaeological data from the southeastern hill suggest is that, at least in Jerusalem where the majority of figurines have been found, no strong archaeological evidence supports the assumption that the figurines were used solely by women. In fact, the only way to make the Jerusalem data undergird the association between JPFs and women is to assume that all objects in domestic units were associated primarily with females. Even if such a problematic assumption were valid, figurine fragments have been found in construction fills and external neighborhood areas, activities and spaces that are certainly not limited to females. Moreover, the presence of JPFs in public spaces, like the

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Table 1. Locus types with pillar figurines in east, west, south, and north in strata 12–10 in Shiloh’s excavations Structure or Area

Locus Type

Stratum 12 E West fills:

Fill 1627 Fill 1303 Fill 1381

Ashlar House:

Foundation trench 2157

Str. 10 fills south of Ashlar House:

Fill 1394 Tabun 675 (in cave southwest of Ashlar House) Floor 1367 (at the mouth of the cave)

Terrace House:

Plaster Floor 631 Floor 619B Pit 663B Fill 698 Fill 661 Floor 699

Fill for Drainage Channel 618 Building 1380:

Floor 665=Floor 1380 Floor 1324 Floor 1310A Fill 617

Alley 1324:

Floor 621A Surface/floor 615 Fill 601 Fill 1312

House of the Monoliths:

White Lime Floor 1492 White Lime Floor 1489 Pit Fill 565

Misc. E South Loci:

Fill 544 Fill 572

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Structure or Area

Locus Type

Pavement Building:

Corridor Fill 1604

203

Paved Floor 2035 Beaten Floor 2009 Plaster and Beaten Earth Floor 2079 Fill 2028 North Building 1927:

Beaten Earth Floor 1927 Tabun 1951 (on floor 1927) “Limey” Floor 1935 Conflagration Layer 1923

Pit Fill or Floor 1901 (possibly related to Building 1927) Stratum 10 surfaces and walls unrelated to structures: Misc. E North Loci:

Stone Floor 1355 Surface 1606A Fill 1297 Fill 1650 Fill 1955 Floor 1910 Floor? 1902 Fill 1562

figurines found on the streets outside of Jerusalem city walls (Steiner 1990, 51– 57; Avigad and Geva 2000, 63; Darby 2014, 121–28, 228), makes it impossible to rule out the likelihood that males came into contact with and/or used the objects as well. Thus, the archaeological contexts from the southeastern hill do not rule out the possibility that women used JPFs, but the data do not serve as strong evidence for a unique connection between JPFs and females. Production

New Directions

In review, the major interpretive models highlight the “household” context of figurine rituals, either by discussing figurines in domestic contexts or by associating the breasts of the figurines with females and activities in the home. Few studies focus on the production processes that generated JPFs and the fact that figurines were probably produced by a local ceramic industry. The very fact that figurines were fired in kilns and had a relatively standardized design shows

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CCH SC/S G/F UF/O HR IP/I FB LW BR Fills

B/G

Floors

Pot GS/S MT MS IH B/I W C/B Zoo 0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Figure 4. Percentages of Loci Containing Both JPF Fragments and Other Objects in Area E South, West, and North in Strata 12–10 Key to figure 4: Zo: zoomorphic figurines, C/B: couch/bed fragments, W: weights, B/I: bone/ivory, IH: inscribed handles, MS: mollusks, F: faience, MT: metal, GS: ground stones, Pt: pottery (S: some, m: minimal, M: much), B/G: beads/gems, LW: loom weights, BR: botanical remains, FB: fish bones, IP/I: inscribed pottery/inscriptions, HR: human remains, UF/O: unidentified fragments/ other fragments, GL: glass, S/SC: imported stamp handles/scarabs and seals, CCH: concentric circle handles

that they were not made on an ad hoc basis by women or by families for their own personal use, as has sometimes been claimed (McCowan 1947, 248; Keel and Uehlinger 1998, 325; Bloch-Smith 1992, 78; Hadley 2000, 197; Schmitt 2012, 93). In contrast, figurines were probably created by potters or ceramics specialists who had access to the necessary equipment, and they were subsequently



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procured for domestic use. Unfortunately, interpreters have largely ignored the implications of large-scale manufacture when reconstructing the role of JPFs in Israelite religion (with the exception of Kletter 1996, 81 and Byrne 2004, 37–51). In particular, petrographic testing can provide valuable information about provenience and production processes, as a recent petrographic study performed by this author and David ben Shlomo makes clear. The study includes 120 items with 66 fragments from Shiloh’s City of David excavations, 45 from Eilat Mazar’s City of David excavations, and 9 from Nurit Feig’s Mevesseret excavations, a site nearby Jerusalem. All figurine types are represented including pinched heads, molded heads, various body fragments, base fragments, and zoomorphic fragments. Consideration is given to the samples’ loci and area distributions throughout the City of David with the intent of comparing areas of excavation. The study only includes figurines from datable loci, and samples cover the stratigraphic sequence established for Shiloh’s excavations. Finally, a small control group of pottery from all three sites is included to compare with the figurine finds (Darby 2014, 183–212; Ben-Shlomo and Darby 2014). According to the findings, the majority of the figurines are made of local rendzina soils (67–68 figurine samples) from the vicinity of the City of David, the Kidron Valley, the western slope of Mount Zion, or other places in the area of Jerusalem to the east. The study found that terra rossa (Group 3), also the most common material used for pottery vessels sampled, is second in frequency (21 figurine samples). It probably comes from soils of the Judean hills in the vicinity of Jerusalem, primarily from the west side. Eight more of the figurines are made of dolomitic moza marl clay from the Judean hills (Group 2). Finally, only 5 figurine fragments seem to come from outside the region of Jerusalem or the central hills, and these are limited to figurines made of loess-type clay originating in the coastal plains of the Shephelah (Group 5). The provenience data can be used to address the local nature of figurine production, the distribution of figurines in surrounding areas, and figurine trade across Judah at large. First, the data further confirm that figurines were locally produced within each major city center. In past studies, this interpretation was based on petrography at Tel ‘Ira, where figurines made of local Negev loess soil were found alongside pithoi made from moza clay (Kletter 1999a, 384; 1999b, 354–55; Finkelstein and Beith-Arieh 1999, 87). More recently, the petrographic study of the figurines from Moza, a site close to Jerusalem, includes 18 figurines primarily consisting of Moza ware (50 percent), with only 5 fragments of terra rossa (28 percent), 2 of moza marl clay mixed with terra rossa clay, and 2 unidentified and probably imported fragments. Though, the study has a few drawbacks, including its small sample size (only 18 out of 60 fragments were tested), it is worth noting that more moza marl figurines (9) occur in this small sample than in the entire corpus of figurines tested from the City of David and

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80% 70% 60% 50% 40%

Shiloh

30%

Shiloh and Mazar

20% 10% 0% Gp 1

Gp 2

Gp 3

Gp 4

Unid

Figure 5. Percentages of petrographic groups in Shiloh’s City of David excavations and in Shiloh’s and Mazar’s City of David excavations combined.

Mevesseret combined (8 of 104 fragments), suggesting that local clays do figure in local figurine production (Peterson-Solimany and Kletter 2009, 116). Second, examination of the 60 figurine samples from Shiloh’s City of David excavations support the notion of a Jerusalem production center (fig. 5), with 73 percent (44) from Jerusalem rendzina clays, 5 percent (3) from moza marl clays, 15 percent (9) from terra rossa clays, and 7 percent (4) from loess clays. Even when the figurines from Eilat Mazar’s recent excavations of the same area are included to create a larger sample, the relative percentages remain consistent. Given the proximity of the Kidron Valley as a source of rendzina clay to the City of David, the “locality” of production cannot be doubted. Third, Raz Kletter has already claimed that Judean style figurines were not exchanged in any significant quantity with neighboring peoples (Kletter 1996, 43–46; 1999c, 28–32). The petrographic information adds to this fact that figurines were apparently not even exchanged from one part of Judah to the other. The three highest percentages in Jerusalem, rendzina clays, terra rossa clays, and moza marl clays, are from the immediate vicinity of the city and the nearby hills with almost no figurines from other regions of Judah, such as the Shephelah, Coastal Plain, or Negev. In the very least, it seems figurines were not regularly imported into Jerusalem from other parts of Judah; and the evidence from sites like Tel ‘Ira suggests Jerusalem did not export figurines outside the Judean hills. This should be contrasted with pottery vessels, which were regularly distributed from Jerusalem (De Groot and Bernick-Greenberg 2012, 100).

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90% 80% 70% 60% 50%

Pinched

40%

Molded

30% 20% 10% 0% Jerusalem Hill Country

Negev

Shephelah

Figure 6. Pinched and molded heads by region in Judah.

Change and Regionality Despite this evidence for local preferences in figurine production, figurine studies typically interpret all objects with a similar appearance as if they meant the same thing or functioned in the same way, regardless of the length of time the objects were used or the variety of regions that adopted the basic iconographic form. This bias may be a side effect of iconological approaches that disregard archaeological context either at the site or regional level, or it may be the result of approaches to women’s religion that commonly assume family religion remained the same over long stretches of time and space. When explicitly stated, one often hears that ancient Mediterranean or Near Eastern religions, especially family religions, were conservative by nature or even change-adverse (e.g., van der Toorn 1996, 4–6). It is also possible that little variety is found because few are looking for it or looking in the right places to find it. To take JPFs as an example, petrographic data of the production industry in Jerusalem, in comparison with similar studies at other sites, suggests the presence of regional variation. Figurines were not traded from one region of Judah to another, and they were probably only rarely traded from one settlement to another. The clays used are highly local, suggesting longstanding local traditions. Moreover, the iconographic preference for pinched versus molded heads in Jerusalem and the surrounding hills is exactly opposite that in other regions of Judah, also arguing for a regionally specific set of ritual expectations, rather than a simplistic national ritual homogeneity (fig. 6).

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These results are not unexpected. Even Phoenician figurines were not traded throughout the Mediterranean, though there are iconographic similarities connecting locations along known trade routes (Gubel 1991, 132–36; Markoe 2000, 158–59). The fact that figurines were not traded, as such, is also attested by Neo-Assyrian imperial trade practices, which focused on the movement of elite goods like semiprecious stone, fine wood, metal, and linens (Van de Mieroop 1987; Elat 1991, 23–29; Moorey 1994). This means that while iconographic styles did spread, there were also very strong local traditions that must have affected any adaption of new style, and these might be visible in clay preference, small iconographic adaptation, or ritual implementation. In point of fact, the spread of figurine styles from one region to another belies a complex and dynamic process of interchange in local adoptions of religio-visual cultures and ritual technologies. At the same time, each location partook in a larger regional character that certainly produced an identifiable style group demarcating JPFs from other female figurines of the surrounding polities in the coterminous periods (cf. Kletter 1996; Daviau 2001; Karagoerghis 1991; Waraksa 2009; Pruß 2010; Press 2012). All of this betrays something of the complicated, flexible, and multilayered nature of ancient religious interactions. Judean pillar figurines, the iconic object of “household” religion, clearly interacted with many levels of society, including the individual houses and neighborhoods where they were used, stored, or discarded, the city’s ceramic markets where they were procured, the city’s workshops where they were made, the region’s artisan cultures that influenced regional patterns in iconographic variation, and the polity that provided infrastructure for figurine production and national identity. While we cannot use the figurines to surmise what ancient women or men thought about them, we can conclude that the figurines are not evidence for a discrete and separate household sphere, but one which interacted in complex ways with all levels of religious experience. Bibliography Abusch, Tzvi. 2002. Mesopotamian Witchcraft: Toward a History and Understanding of Babylonian Witchcraft Beliefs and Literature. AMD 5. Leiden: Brill. Ahlström, Gösta Werner. 1984. “An Archaeological Picture of Iron Age Religions in Ancient Palestine.” StOr 55:115–46. Albright, William Foxwell. 1974. The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible. Cambridge: American Schools of Oriental Research. Ariel, Donald T., and Alon De Groot. 2000. “The Iron Age Extramural Occupation at the City of David and Additional Observations on the Siloam Tunnel.” Pages 155–69 in Excavations at the City of David, 1978–1985: Directed by Yigal Shiloh. Vol. 5: Extramural Area. Edited by Donald T. Ariel. Qedem 40. Jerusalem: Hebrew University. Aurerbach, Elise. 1994. “Terra Cotta Plaques from the Diyala and Their Archaeological and Cultural Contexts.” PhD diss., University of Chicago.



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Chapter Ten Meghan J. DiLuzio

Priestesses in Action: Ritual Instruments Employed by Roman Women

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istorians have long analyzed how the Roman elite utilized images of ritual instruments to represent their status within the community.1 A coin bearing the simpulum, a ladle used for dipping wine at sacrifices, advertised the moneyer’s pontificate and laid claim to the political capital associated with his office, while the lituus, or augur’s crook, symbolized the augurate and the prestige of the man who held that priesthood. As a consequence, modern scholars tend to describe these implements almost entirely as emblems of the priestly elite, rather than as physical objects with an important function in ritual practice.2 The politicized context in which this religious imagery appeared has also created the impression that certain objects were associated exclusively with a handful of Roman men. In reality, however, women employed many of the same implements used by male priests, as well as others unique to their religious roles within the community. The present study aims to return these ritual objects to the hands of the priestesses who used them. It imagines Roman women as ritual actors asserting their civic identity through the performance of public rituals, including even animal sacrifice.3 The evidence it presents further undermines a number of long-standing misconceptions about Roman religion, particularly the belief that women were prohibited from sacrificing and the related supposition that

I would like to thank the audience at Emory and the readers for the press for their comments and suggestions. All translations are my own. This contribution was originally scheduled to appear before DiLuzio 2016, which covers some of the same material in greater detail. 1.  Moneyers first began to replace standard public designs with individual ones advertising their family histories near the end of the second century BCE. For an overview of this shift in practice, see Alföldi 1956; Sutherland 1974, 61–62; Burnett 1987, 22; Meadows and Williams 2001; Woytek 2012, 326–28. These individual designs often included ritual objects, which could refer to the personal tenure of a priestly office or commemorate the service of an ancestor (see, e.g., Siebert 1999, 320–29). 2.  For a discussion of the persuasive function of priestly symbols on Roman coins, see especially Alföldi 1956; Mattingly 1967, 58–68; Morawiecki 1996. Alternatively, they have been described as emblems of a generalized “pietas” (Siebert 1999, 274), and thereby further alienated from a specific performance context. For a critique of these approaches, see Stewart 1997, 2001; La Follette 2011–2012. 3.  As Eva Stehle (1997, 8) has written of female choral performers in ancient Greece, “by insisting on putting the performer at the center, we gain an imaginative shift,” one that allows for a discussion of women’s agency (and its limitations) in the ritual sphere.

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the Vestal Virgins were the only women at Rome permitted to serve the gods in an official capacity.4 Religious ritual, and the implements associated with it, allowed Roman priestesses to maintain the pax deorum (peace of the gods) and the welfare of the city. Ritual Instruments Used by the Vestal Virgins The six Vestal Virgins were the most visible and active priestesses in ancient Rome. Their primary responsibility was to care for the flame on the hearth of Vesta, which burned eternally as a guarantee of the continued well-being of Rome and the Roman people. But the Vestals performed a far more extensive ritual program than is often assumed.5 In addition to tending the hearth and guarding the pignora imperii, the “pledges of empire” that resided within the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals prepared mola salsa, the salted grain used to consecrate victims at public sacrifices. They also participated in at least ten annual public festivals, including rites related to the fertility of the fields and flocks, the preservation of the food supply, and the purification of the city. As they carried out their religious obligations, the Vestals wielded a wide variety of sacred objects. They appear as a group, ritual implements in hand, on the altar frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae in a procession that may depict the anniversarium sacrificium, the annual sacrifice commemorating the safe return of Augustus from Spain and Gaul in 13 BCE (fig. 1).6 The scene is comprised of nine figures, including two lictors and a third togate figure processing directly behind the first lictor. The six Vestals are arranged according to age, with the youngest on the far right and the virgo maxima, the senior Vestal, on the left (Moretti 1948, 280–81). All six wear a long tunic with a mantle. Although their heads are damaged, they appear to have worn the suffibulum, a short white veil with a purple border that the Vestals wore when they sacrificed (cum sacrificant, Festus 474L).7 The youngest four Vestals carry ritual implements, including a spherical incense jar, a simpulum, and two rectangular objects that may represent tablets prescribing the ritual (Ryberg 1955, 41–42). The distribution of objects clearly 4. For the view that Roman women suffered from “sacrificial incapacity,” see especially de Cazonove 1987; Scheid 1992; 1993, 57. The consensus has shifted in recent years thanks to the work of Celia Schultz (2006, 131–37), Rebecca Flemming (2007), Emily Hemelrijk (2009), and James Rives (2013). This paper aims to continue the conversation about women’s sacrificial capacity while also addressing other types of ritual activities. 5.  For the ritual activities of the Vestals, see Saquete 2000, 41–59; Mekacher 2006, 53–79; Wildfang 2006, 6–36. 6.  For the altar relief, see especially Moretti 1948, 76–79, 182–86, 279–82; Ryberg 1949, 89–90; 1955, 41–48; Simon 1967, 14–15; Torelli 1982, 36; Conlin 1997, 101, figs. 237–39, 246–47; Thompson 2005, 42–52. 7.  For the Vestal costume, see especially Dragendorff 1896; Beard 1980, 15–16; La Follette 1994, 57–60; Mekacher 2006, 44–49; Wildfang 2006, 12–16; Olson 2008, 27; La Follette 2011; Gallia 2014.



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Figure 1. Detail of the procession of Vestal Virgins from the Altar Frieze on the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome; late first century BCE Museo dell’Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome; photo by author.

demonstrates that all of the Vestals, not just the eldest set, are participating actively in the sacrifice, a fact that complicates the picture we have received from the ancient literary sources. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, a Vestal’s thirty-year commitment to the order was divided into three distinct phases, each defined by a different relationship to the sacred rites (Dionysius of Halicarnssus Ant. rom. 2.67.2; Plutarch Num. 10.1). In her first ten years as a Vestal, these Greek authors tell us, a priestess learned her ritual duties. In the second ten she performed the sacred rites, and in her final decade of service she taught those rituals to new initiates. The evidence of the Ara Pacis suggests that Dionysius and Plutarch are mistaken in their belief that Vestals devoted only their middle decade of service to the performance of ritual activities. It appears that at the anniversarium sacrificium, the youngest Vestals performed the tasks normally carried out by camilli or camillae, freeborn children with both parents living who served as ritual assistants at many public rites.8 While they may have had only a minor role, their participation was nonetheless vital to the success of the ritual as a whole and undoubtedly had a profound impact on the fledgling priestesses. As they processed to the altar carrying their ritual implements, the Vestals took part in an elaborately choreographed public spectacle. Once the sacrifice began, each priestess had a role to play at a different moment in the ceremony. Even though their assignments would have changed over time, their 8.  For the role of children in civic cult, see especially Mantle 2002.

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Figure 2. Surviving Sections of the Frieze of the Temple of Vesta in Rome; Late Second Century CE; Photo by Sergey Sosnovskiy

attendance and active participation in the rite remained a constant. The relief on the Ara Pacis allows us to imagine the Vestals in action, and not just at the sacrum anniversarium, but also at a whole range of public sacrifices. The Vestals also appear as ritual actors, albeit indirectly, on the entablature frieze of the Temple of Vesta (figs. 2–3).9 This sacred still life belongs to the restoration carried out by the Severan empress Julia Domna in the late second century CE. The extant fragments include a number of familiar implements, including portions of two bucrania (bull skulls), a secespita (sacrificial knife), a dolabra (axe), an urceus (one-handled jug), and what appears to be an acerra (incense box).10 It is tempting to assume that the assemblage is generic and reveals nothing in particular about the activities of the Vestals. Laetitia La Follette (2011– 2012, 16, 23–24), however, has argued convincingly that the implements on the frieze (and others like it) were specifically tailored to their ritual context. In fact, at least two of the objects represented have a special connection to the worship of Vesta. In place of the standard patera (libation bowl), which appears frequently on Roman sculpted reliefs, a one-handed culigna is depicted suspended above 9.  The extant sections of the frieze were discovered in the nineteenth century and published as a contiguous scene in two drawings (Lanciani 1883, 476, pl. 20d; Jordan 1886, 18, pl. VII) and a photograph (Vaglieri 1903, 66, fig. 30). Scholars later determined that the segments did not join, and so they were separated and their order reversed (La Follette 2011–2012, 23). 10.  For the identification of an acerra in the lower right corner of the left-hand fragment (righthand fragment in fig. 2), see La Follette 2011–2012, 23 n. 33. For a discussion of the remaining objects, see most recently Siebert 1999, 51–55, 78, 158, 236; La Follette 2011–2012, 23–24.



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the sacrificial knife as if about to pour out its contents (Siebert 1999, 286; La Follette 2011–2012, 23).11 The culigna was closely associated with the Vestals (Porphyry ad Hor. C. 1.31.10), who would have used it to pour liquid sacrifices, presumably of wine, perhaps on a regular basis, either alone or together with a bloody sacrifice. On the same fragment, the large vase sitting on a square base has been identified as the futtile, which the Vestals used to draw running water from a spring outside the Porta Capena (La Follette 2011–2012, 23).12 The futtile was no ordinary water jar: the author of the Servius Auctus commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid (11.339) explains that it was designed to spill its contents when set down because it was considered a piaculum (matter for expiation) if water used in the rites of Vesta came into contact with the ground.13 In the domestic sphere, the task of fetching and carrying water traditionally fell to the women of the family, who were charged with providing for the physical needs of the household on a day-to-day basis. The ritual work of collecting water for the Temple of Vesta, which housed the communal hearth and penus (storeroom), benefited the entire Roman community.14 It seems very likely that the Vestals performed this task themselves. The mythical Vestals Rhea Silvia and Tarpeia both come to grief while fetching water, which suggests that the Romans imagined that the priestesses carried their own water jars from the spring to the temple (Propertius 4.4.16; Ovid Fast. 3.11–12). The Vestals may have used the water they carried to purify the temple’s penus and the objects within it, a task that Ovid and Plutarch claim they performed 11.  See also Siebert 1999, 54, where the object is discussed under its alternate name (culullus). For the “animated” posture of ritual implements represented in the sculptural decoration of Roman temples, see La Follette 2011–2012, 19, 23–24, passim. 12.  Siebert is more hesitant to identify the jug as the futtile, describing it instead as a hydria sitting on a square base (1999, 55); even so, she emphasizes that the jug is not in contact with the ground, which suggests that it could contain water suitable for use in the rites of Vesta (see further below). For the relationship between the Vestals and the futtile, see Plutarch Num. 13.2; Servius Auctus ad Aen. 11.339. 13.  Servius Auctus ad Aen. 11.339: nam futtile vas quoddam est lato ore, fundo angusto, quo utebantur in sacris Vestae, quia aqua ad sacra Vestae hausta in terra non ponitur, quod si fiat, piaculum est: unde excogitatum vas est, quod stare non posset, sed positum statim effunderetur (“The futtile is a certain vessel with a wide mouth and a narrow base, which they use in the rites of Vesta, since water drawn for the rites of Vesta is not placed on the ground, because if this is done, it is a matter for expiation [piaculum]. For this reason, a vessel was devised that could not stand up but would immediately spill when set down”). The Servius Auctus commentary on the poems of Vergil is understood to be the work of an anonymous compiler of the seventh century CE, who expanded his copy of Servius (flor. late fourth to early fifth century CE) with additional material from the Servian source commentary, perhaps the commentary of Aelius Donatus (b. ca. 310 CE), not included by Servius himself; for the relationship between the longer and the shorter forms, see Goold 1970, 102–22. The commentary, particularly in its longer form, is an important source for Roman religion (Lloyd 1961; Kaster 1980, 256–58). 14.  For a discussion of this task as “ritual work,” see especially Staples 1998, 149–50; Martini 1997, 499–500; Wildfang 2006, 10–11; Takács 2008, 30.

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Figure 3. Surviving sections of the frieze of the temple of Vesta in Rome; drawing after Jordan 1886, pl. VII.

on a daily basis (Ovid Fast. 3.11–12; Plutarch Num. 13.2).15 They presumably employed the futtile to collect water for the production of mola salsa as well, a mixture of ground far (spelt) and salt that was used at every public sacrifice in the city of Rome (Festus 97L; Scheid 1990, 335–36). The Servius Auctus commentator provides the fullest description of the ritual implements involved in the preparation of this substance: Virgines Vestales tres maximae ex nonis Maiis ad pridie idus Maias alternis diebus spicas adoreas in corbibus messuariis ponunt easque spicas ipsae virgines torrent, pinsunt, molunt atque ita molitum condunt (ad Ecl. 8.82). The three senior Vestal Virgins from the day after the Nones of May to the day before the Ides of May, on alternate days, place heads of grain in harvest baskets, and these heads the virgins themselves toast, pound, and grind, and then store what has been ground in this way.

This passage stresses that the Vestals (ipsae virgines), rather than their ritual assistants, performed the various tasks necessary to prepare mola salsa. They gathered the grain using a corbis (basket) and then processed what they had harvested. Far is a husked wheat, which means that the grains cannot be detached from the husk by threshing, but must instead be roasted and then pounded with a mortar and pestle (Pliny Nat. 18.61, 97). The process was labor intensive but absolutely critical for both practical and ritual reasons: according to Pliny the Elder, the Romans believed that only roasted far could be offered to the gods (Pliny Nat. 18.8). Once the three eldest Vestals had roasted and ground the far, they mixed it with “baked salt and hard salt” (sale cocto et sale duro, Servius ad Ecl. 8.82), almost certainly the muries described by Festus in a passage based on Veranius, a well-known authority on the pontifical law:16 15.  For water as a purificatory substance, see Edlund-Berry 2006. 16.  The text of Festus (later second century CE) is an epitome of the De verborum significatu (On the Meaning of Words) of Verrius Flaccus (ca. 55 BCE–ca. 20 CE), a Latin lexicon in forty books,



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muries est, quemadmodum Veranius docet, ea quae fit ex sali sordido, in pila pisato, et in ollam fictilem coniecto, ibique operto gypsatoque et in furno percocto; cui virgines Vestales serra ferrea secto, et in seriam coniecto, quae est intus in aede Vestae in penu exteriore, aquam iugem, vel quamlibet, praeterquam quae per fistulas venit, addunt, atque ea demum in sacrificiis utuntur (152L). Muries is, as Veranius teaches, that which is made from unrefined salt when it has been crushed in a mortar, put into an earthen jar, and there covered with gypsum and cooked thoroughly in an oven; to this, after it has been cut with an iron saw and put into an earthen vessel, which is within the Temple of Vesta in the outer penus (storeroom), the Vestal Virgins add continually flowing water, however much (is needed), except that which comes through pipes, and finally they use it in sacrifices.

This passage contains a wealth of detail about the ritual objects employed by the Vestals. When they had ground the salt with a mortar and pestle, they baked it in a gypsum-covered clay pot, cut it with an iron serra (saw) and stored it in a vessel known as the seria. At the appropriate moment, they added continually flowing water, presumably collected in a futtile, to create a brine that was added to the ground far in order to produce mola salsa. While no mortar and pestle appear on the extant fragments of the relief on the Temple of Vesta, it is tempting to imagine that they might once have appeared alongside the sacrificial knife. The production of mola salsa was one of the most important ritual obligations assigned to the Vestals. After pouring a preliminary libation, the official in charge at a Roman sacrifice would have sprinkled the victim with mola salsa, poured wine on its forehead, and run the knife along its back (Servius ad Aen. 12.173). This series of gestures simultaneously purified the animal and made it sacer (sacred), transferring it to the possession of the deity to whom it was being offered. In fact, the Latin expression immolatio, which came to signify the sacrificial act as a whole, originally described this preliminary step (Siebert 2005, 744–45). Such terminological slippage suggests that the Romans regarded the act of dedication, which would have been impossible without the mola salsa produced by the Vestal Virgins, as the essence of sacrifice. Through the ritual work of producing mola salsa, they helped to underpin the entire sacrificial system. Male priests may have presided over the majority of Rome’s public sacrifices, but the Vestals prepared the mola salsa that made these offerings possible. The sacred still life on the Temple of Vesta, however, reminds us that the Vestals not only provided mola salsa for rituals presided over by other priests, but also presided over animal sacrifices themselves in their capacity as public which included numerous quotations from early Latin authors and a wealth of antiquarian material. Festus survives only in one badly mutilated manuscript. The epitome of Paul the Deacon (ca. 720–799 CE), a condensed version of Festus, survives in its entirety. For Verrius, Festus, and Paul, see especially the essays in Glinister and Woods 2007.

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priestesses. When complete, the frieze was punctuated at regular intervals by the skulls of dead bulls, whose knotted infulae (woolen headbands) clearly marked their status as sacrificial victims.17 A characteristic feature of Roman religious iconography, this motif provides the key to understanding the significance of the other objects in the sacred still life. Jaś Elsner (1991, 58) has described the bucrania on the Ara Pacis as a “momento mori,” a reminder of the animals that had been slaughtered at the altar in order to guarantee the abundance represented by the garlands that hang between them. On the Temple of Vesta, the bucrania recalled the ritual of sacrifice even more vividly through the inclusion of the urceus and culigna, which held the initial libation of wine, the acerra, which contained the incense, and the dolabra and secespita, with which the victims were eventually slaughtered. As Elsner (1991) and La Follette (2011–2012) have emphasized, scenes like this one brought the performance of sacrifice to life and invited the viewer to participate in the ritual by engaging his or her knowledge of the processes involved.18 A Roman viewer may have envisioned the Vestals and their attendants wielding the ritual instruments depicted on the frieze. The Servius Auctus commentator confirms that the Vestals were permitted to use the secespita, the sacrificial knife that rests on the ground line of the frieze below the culigna:19 secespita autem est culter oblongus, ferreus, manubrio eburneo, rotundo, solido, vincto ad capulum argento auroque, fixo clavis aeneis, quo flamines, flaminicae, virgines pontificesque ad sacrificia utuntur eaque iam sacra est (ad Aen. 4.262). The secespita is an oblong knife made of iron with a rounded ivory handle fastened to the hilt with silver and gold and fixed with bronze nails. The flamines, flaminicae, Vestals, and pontifices use it for sacrifices, and it is itself a sacred thing.

This knife is an important symbol of their sacrificial role and status within the priestly hierarchy. As we have seen, the official presiding at a sacrifice ran the knife along the back of the victim (Servius ad Aen. 12.173) before the victimarius (ritual slaughterer) did the actual killing and butchering.20 The hard work of sacrifice invariably fell to servi publici (public slaves), whose service is represented on the frieze by the dolabra, the ax used to stun the victim.21 The 17.  For the infula, see Festus 100L: infulae sunt filamenta lanea, quibus sacerdotes et hostiae templaque velantur (“infulae are woolen threads with which priests, sacrificial victims, and temples are veiled”); see also Lucretius 1.87–88; Vergil Georg. 3.487, Aen. 2.430, 10.538; Servius ad Aen. 10.538; Isidorus Orig. 19.30.4; Prudentius c. Symm. 2.1085, 1094. 18.  As Elsner (1991, 52) has written, “Roman viewers did not simply see images of sacrifice that had once happened. They saw a cultural process in which they themselves became involved.” 19.  See also Festus 472L; Siebert 1999, 75–79. 20.  For a description of a “typical” Roman sacrifice, see Wissowa 1912, 409–32. 21.  For the role of support personnel, see further below.



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man or woman who held the ritual knife, however, was the official in charge and the most important human figure present at the rite. We know of a handful of rituals at which the Vestals may have used the secespita. They sacrificed a pig on behalf of the Roman people (pro populo) at the nocturnal rites of Bona Dea (Cicero Har. resp. 12, 37, Att. 1.13.3).22 According to Tertullian, they also sacrificed alongside the flamen Quirinalis at the altar of Consus in the Circus Maximus (Tertullian Spect. 5.7). In addition to these traditional republican rites, the Vestals acquired new responsibilities during the early principate, including a sacrifice at the altar of Fortuna Redux on August 12 in honor of the safe return of Augustus from the East in 19 BCE and at the Ara Pacis on the anniversary of his return from Spain and Gaul in 13 BCE (Res gest. divi Aug. 11–12). Shortly after he was acclaimed emperor in 41 CE, Claudius ordered the priestesses to offer yearly sacrifices to Diva Livia, the wife of Augustus and grandmother of the new princeps (Cassius Dio 60.5.2). In sum, this literary evidence is in keeping with the testimony of the temple frieze. The Vestals were authorized to offer sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people. The sacred still life on the Temple of Vesta captures a fascinating dynamic at work in the Vestal order. As women, the Vestals were culturally predicted to perform the ritual work of collecting water, tending the hearth, and roasting grain. These activities reinscribed a traditional ideology of gender.23 At the same time, however, their activities transcended the ordinary world of the Roman matron and her daughters. Through the provision of mola salsa, the Vestals facilitated every public sacrifice that was performed in the city of Rome. Their ritual work at the public hearth and in the public penus kept the city safe and allowed the Roman family to fulfill its obligations to the gods. Their ritual program, moreover, included liquid and blood sacrifices. Like their male colleagues, the Vestals wielded the urceus and the secespita in an official capacity and on behalf of the Roman people (pro populo). Ritual Implements Used by the Flaminica Dialis The ritual implements associated with the flaminica Dialis, the wife of the flamen Dialis, likewise attest to her official status within the priestly hierarchy and to the variety of her religious activities. In fact, the ancient evidence is at odds with 22. Cicero Har. resp. 37: quod quidem sacrificium … fit per virgines Vestalis, fit pro populo Romano fit in ea domo quae est in imperio, fit incredibili caerimonia, fit ei deae cuius ne nomen quidem viros scire fas est (“That sacrifice … is performed by the Vestal Virgins, it is performed on behalf of the Roman people in the house of a magistrate with imperium, it is performed with incredible ceremony, it is performed for a goddess whose name it is not lawful for men to even know”). 23.  As Barbara Goff (2004, 60) has observed, “the work that women accomplish in the ritual sphere is part of the work of producing women.” For the idea that certain duties performed by the Vestals paralleled the domestic obligations of women in the Roman household, see also Guizzi 1968, 109; Saquete 2000, 40–43; Schultz 2006, 127.

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her treatment in much modern scholarship, which tends to gloss over her role in civic cult.24 The flaminica Dialis occupied a legitimate and official position within the religious hierarchy. She was the wife (uxor) of a priest and a priestess (sacerdos) in her own right, a dual role that is aptly captured by a gloss in Paul the Deacon’s epitome of Festus: flammeo vestimento flaminica utebatur, id est Dialis uxor et Iovis sacerdos, cui telum fulminis eodem erat colore (82L). The flammeum was a garment used by the flaminica, the wife of the [flamen] Dialis and the sacerdos of Jove, whose thunderbolt was the same color.

The flaminica’s role was so vital, in fact, that her husband the flamen was obligated to resign his position if she died (Gellius N.A. 10.15.23; Plutarch Quaest. rom. 50 = Mor. 276d–e). Unlike many religious offices at Rome, the flaminate of Jupiter was a joint priesthood requiring the service of a married couple (Schultz 2006, 79–81). In a passage probing the reasons behind the requirement that a flamen step aside when he lost his wife, Plutarch confirms that the flaminica was entrusted with ritual obligations: Διὰ τί ὁ ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διὸς ἀποθανούσης αὐτῷ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀπετίθετο τὴν ἀρχήν; … πότερον ὅτι τοῦ μὴ λαβόντος ὁ λαβὼν εἶτ’ ἀποβαλὼν γυναῖκα γαμετὴν ἀτυχέστερος; ὁ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γεγαμηκότος οἶκος τέλειος, ὁ δὲ τοῦ γήμαντος εἶτ’ ἀποβαλόντος οὐκ ἀτελὴς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πεπηρωμένος· ἢ συνιερᾶται μὲν ἡ γυνὴ τῷ ἀνδρί (ὡς καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἱερῶν οὐκ ἔστι δρᾶσαι μὴ γαμετῆς συμπαρούσης) (Quaest. rom. 50 = Mor. 276d–e). Why did the priest of Zeus [i.e., the flamen Dialis] resign his office when his wife died? … Is it because a man who has taken a wife and then lost his spouse is more unfortunate than one who has not married? For the household of a married man is complete, but that of a man who, having taken a wife, then loses her is not only incomplete, but also incapacitated? Or is it because the wife participates in her husband’s sacred ministry, since there are many sacred rites (hiera) that he cannot perform without the assistance of his wife?

The flaminica Dialis served alongside her husband, assisting him with his ritual duties and performing others independently of him in her capacity as the priestess of Jupiter. Unfortunately, however, Plutarch does not elaborate upon the nature of the flaminica’s religious obligations. It is only through a consideration of the priestly implements associated with her office that we may begin to imagine her ritual role. 24.  See, e.g., Wissowa 1912, 503–8, esp. 506; Latte 1960, 402–4; Dumézil 1970, 576, 580; Scheid 1992, 384, 401–3. For a more positive approach, see Boels 1973; Vanggaard 1988, 30–32; Boëls-Janssen 1989, 1991; Van Haeperen 2002, 81, 364, 367, 377; Böhm 2003, 82–83; Schultz 2006, 79–81; Flemming 2007; Takács 2008, 114; Holland 2012.



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Once again, the ancient evidence reveals a diversity of activities. According to a gloss from the Servius Auctus commentary on Vergil’s Aeneid, the flaminica Dialis wore a special wreath known as the arculum whenever she participated in sacrificial rituals: arculum vero est virga ex malo Punica incurvata quae fit quasi corona et ima summaque se inter alligatur vinculo laneo albo, quam in sacrificiis certis regina in capite habebat; flaminica autem Dialis omni sacrificatione uti debebat (4.137). The arculum is a pomegranate twig which has been bent to form a wreath and bound together at the ends with a white woolen tie. The regina [i.e., the regina sacrorum] used to wear it on her head when performing certain sacrifices, but the flaminica Dialis was required to use it for every sacrifice.

Nicole Boels (1973, 83–86) has emphasized the symbolism of the pomegranate twig, an emblem of fertility in the ancient world, and its relevance to the flaminica’s status as an ideal wife and mother. According to Festus, however, the wreath also served a practical function: arculum appellabant circulum quem capiti imponebant ad sustinenda commodius vasa quae ad sacra publica capite portabant (15L). They gave the name arculum to that circle that they placed on their head in order to support more conveniently the vessels that they carried on their heads to the public sacrifices.

This passage suggests that the arculum functioned like the cushion that basket-bearers wore to support their burdens when they marched in religious processions.25 Although we are not told what the flaminica carried, she may have brought offerings of fruit and grain to the sacrificial rituals over which her husband the flamen presided, just as the matron of the house was charged with providing the gifts offered during rites in the domestic sphere (Ovid Fast. 2.645– 654). The flaminica’s ritual work of carrying was supportive, though not without importance. In addition to assisting the flamen, the flaminica Dialis performed a number of rites independently of her husband. The Servius Auctus commentator (ad Aen. 4.262) reveals that she was permitted to use the secespita, the sacrificial knife depicted on the entablature frieze of the Temple of Vesta. Possession of the secespita suggests that the flaminica presided over sacrifices in her capacity as the priestess of Jove. We are even informed of two occasions on which the flaminica may have employed her instrument of sacrifice. According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.16.8), she was required to perform an expiatory sacrifice whenever she heard 25.  For examples of ritual scenes in which women carry objects on their heads, see Ryberg 1955, 7, 9.

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thunder.26 The same author notes that she sacrificed a ram to Jupiter in the regia on the nundinae (market days) as well (Sat. 1.16.30). The location and occasion for this ritual leave little doubt that it was a public sacrifice made on behalf of the Roman people. The regia, or “royal house,” was actually a fanum, a sacred, inaugurated space (Festus 346–8L). It stood in the Forum and was the site of some of the most ancient rituals in the city. In this ancient building with its varied cultic associations, the flaminica Dialis offered a sacrifice to Jupiter every eight days. The rite guaranteed the flaminica an important role within the community, even though no more than a handful of priests could have witnessed the sacrifice proper.27 The priestly instruments wielded by the flaminica Dialis demonstrate that she was a religious official in her own right with an important role in public cult. Like the Vestals, she performed some ritual work that mirrored the tasks of women in the domestic sphere. The flaminica assisted her husband the flamen with his obligations, thereby reinforcing the traditional gender hierarchy. But her ritual program involved independent activities as well. Roman priestesses, including those who did not belong to the Vestal order, performed almost every type of ritual attested for male priests, including blood sacrifice, and were called upon to do so on behalf of the community in a public capacity. Ritual Instruments Used by Female Priestly Attendants Thus far our focus has been on ritual objects wielded by Roman priestesses. No priestly official, however, ever worked in isolation. Animal sacrifice in particular required a large cast of support personnel, many of whom were liberti (freedmen) or servi publici (public slaves) (Horster 2007, 332–34). While their low social status tends to render them less visible in the written sources, ritual assistants appear frequently in sculpted reliefs on Roman temples and altars (Ryberg 1955; Fless 1995). Representations of lavish ritual processions in particular include an impressive range of victimarii (ritual slaughterers), musicians, and ritual assistants carrying jugs filled with wine, boxes of incense, and baskets containing fruit or sacrificial cakes. Although most ritual assistants were men, women also served in this capacity. In fact, the only popa known by name was a freedwoman, Critonia Philema, whose funerary inscription describes her as “popa de insula” (“ritual

26. Macrobius Sat. 1.16.8: flaminica quotiens tonitrua audisset, feriata erat donec placasset deos (“Whenever the flaminica heard thunder she observed a period of religious retirement until she had appeased the gods”). 27.  Rüpke (2011, 33), e.g., stresses that the sacrifice was “not public,” since the regia was accessible only to a small number of religious officials. Even so, the flaminica did sacrifice in a public space on behalf of the Roman people.



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slaughterer of the island,” CIL 6.9824).28 As Emily Hemelrijk (2009, 263) has noted, the existence of a female victimarius is “highly surprising.” In Roman art, popae are typically muscular young men wearing a limus (apron) and carrying a dolabra or malleus (mallet) with which they will fell the sacrificial victim. Nonetheless, female popae must have existed. We can be certain, for instance, that the victimarii who slaughtered and butchered the pig at the December rites of Bona Dea were women, since no men were allowed to be present during the sacrifice (Cicero Har. Resp. 37; Juvenal 2.86–7; Macrobius Sat. 1.12.20, 23; Brouwer 1989, 349–50, 69). Other women-only rituals such as the sacrum anniversarium Cereris and the annual festival of Fortuna Muliebris undoubtedly supported female ritual assistants as well.29 The epitaph of Critonia Philema testifies to the presence of female popae in the city of Rome, even if her exact responsibilities remain a mystery. Ritual implements used by support personnel appear in the literary sources as well. Festus describes a group of otherwise unknown religious specialists known as simpulatrices: Simpulum vas parvulum non dissimile cyatho, quo vinum in sacrificiis libabatur; unde et mulieres rebus divinis deditae simpulatrices (455L). A simpulum is a small vessel, not dissimilar to a cyathus, from which wine used to be poured out as an offering in sacrifices; from which, also, women devoted to divine matters are called simpulatrices.

As the simpulum was a ladle used to dip wine and pour libations at sacrificial rites, it is natural to assume that a simpulatrix used the simpulum to handle wine on regular ritual occasions.30 This is confirmed by an anonymous scholiast on Juvenal, who describes the simpuvium (an alternative for simpulum) as a vessel “suited for sacrifice, from which the pontifices used to offer libations,” and explains that from the simpuvium, “the woman who offers the cup is called the 28.  The interpretation of this epitaph is problematic, particularly regarding the significance of the phrase “de insula,” which could mean “of the island,” or “of the apartment block.” Rüpke (2008, 649, no. 1419) assumes that Critonia Philema assisted at blood sacrifices as a ritual slaughterer. Perhaps, as Rodolfo Lanciani (cited in Besnier 1902, 75) suggested, she plied her trade on the Tiber Island (insula). It is also possible that she sold sacrificial victims from a stall in an apartment block (insula) (as suggested by Hemelrijk 2009, 263–64). Lin Foxhall (2013, 139), on the other hand, suggests that Critonia Philema may have run a butcher shop. In literary texts, however, the word popa always refers to ritual slaughterers (see, e.g., Cicero Mil. 24.65; Propertius 4.3.62; Suetonius Calig. 32.3; Servius ad Aen. 12.120). Whichever interpretation we settle upon, the title “popa” suggests that Critonia Philema was involved in animal sacrifice in one way or another, even if she did not physically wield a mallet. 29.  For the sacrum anniversarium Cereris, see Cicero Balb. 55, Leg. 2.21; Livy 22.56.4; Valerius Maximus 1.1.15; Plutarch Fab. 18.1–2; Festus 86L; Spaeth 1996, 107–13. For the cult of Fortuna Muliebris, see Livy 2.40.1–13; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom. 8.39.1–56.4; Plutarch Cor. 33.1–37.3; Schultz 2006, 37–44. 30.  Schultz 2006, 133; Flemming 2007, 96. For the simpulum (sometimes called the simpuvium), see Siebert 1999, 47–51, 236–39.

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simpuviatrix” (illa dicitur simpuviatrix quae porrigit poculum ipsud, 6.343).31 That a group of women “devoted to divine matters” and bearing the name of a sacrificial vessel could assist the male pontifices highlights the extent to which women were involved in public sacrifice at Rome. Conclusion Roman religion did not impose a rigid division of ritual authority along gender lines. It allowed women to serve as priestesses and ritual assistants in public rituals performed on behalf of the community. As they carried out their ritual obligations, these women wielded a wide variety of ritual instruments, including objects that enabled them to perform tasks resembling domestic work and those necessary for pouring libations and offering blood sacrifices. In fact, priestesses and female ritual assistants performed nearly every type of ritual and employed nearly every type of ritual implement attested for their male counterparts. This is not to say that ritual practice subverted the gender hierarchy, which tended to subordinate women to men and restricted their access to the political and military realms. Women were not, for instance, involved in taking the auspices, an overtly political task, and are never associated in the ancient sources with the lituus, the ritual wand of an augur. Instead, the ancient evidence suggests that the dominant ideology of gender could accommodate a robust role for women in civic cult. Bibliography Alföldi, Andrew. 1956. “The Main Aspects of Political Propaganda on the Coinage of the Roman Republic.” Pages 63–95 in Essays in Roman Coinage Presented to Harold Mattingly. Edited by Robert Andrew Glendinning Carson and Carol Humphrey Vivian Sutherland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beard, Mary. 1980. “The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins.” JRS 70:12–27. Besnier, Maurice. 1902. L’ile Tibérine dans l’antiquité. Paris: Fontemoing. Boels, Nicole. 1973. “Le statut religieux de la flaminica Dialis.” REL 51:77–100. Boëls-Janssen, Nicole. 1989. “La prêtresse aux trois voiles.” REL 67:117–33. ———. 1991. “Flaminica cincta: à propos de la couronne rituelle de l’épouse de flamine de Jupiter.” REL 69:32–50. Böhm, Stephanie. 2003. “Gottesdienst im antiken Rom: Reine Männersache?” Pages 79– 103 in Geschlechterdifferenz, Ritual und Religion. Edited by Elmar Klinger, Stephanie Böhm, and Thomas Franz. Würzburg: Echter. Brouwer, Hendrik H. J. 1989. Bona Dea: The Sources and a Description of the Cult. EPRO 110. Leiden: Brill. Burnett, Andrew. 1987. Coinage in the Roman World. London: Seaby. Cameron, Alan. 2010. “The Date of the Scholia Vetustiora on Juvenal.” ClQ 60:569–76. 31.  The commentary dates to the fifth century CE, though the present tense verbs in the second half of the note clearly indicate an earlier source (Cameron 2010, 576).



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Cazonove, Oliver de. 1987. “Exesto: L’incapiacité sacrificielle des femmes á Rome (à propos de Plutarque Quaest. Rom. 85).” Phoenix 41:159–73. Conlin, Diane Atnally. 1997. The Artists of the Ara Pacis: The Process of Hellenization in Roman Relief Sculpture. SHGR. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. DiLuzio, Meghan J. 2016. A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dragendorff, Hans. 1896. “Die Amtstracht der Vestalinnen.” RhMus 51:281–302. Dumézil, Georges. 1970. Archaic Roman Religion. Translated by Philip Krapp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edlund-Berry, Ingrid. 2006. “Hot, Cold, or Smelly: The Power of Sacred Water in Roman Religion, 400–100 B.C.” Pages 162–80 in Religion in Republican Italy. Edited by Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey Jr. YCS33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elsner, John. 1991. “Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae.” JRS 81:50–61. Flemming, Rebecca. 2007. “Festus and the Role of Women in Roman Religion.” Pages 87–108 in Verrius, Festus & Paul: Lexicography, Scholarship and Society. Edited by Fay Glinister and Clare Woods with John A. North and Michael H. Crawford. BICSSup 93. London: University of London Institute of Classical Studies. Fless, Friederike. 1995. Opferdiener und Kultmusiker auf stadtrömischen historischen Reliefs: Untersuchungen zur Ikonographie, Funktion und Benennung. Mainz: von Zabern. Foxhall, Lin. 2013. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. KTAH. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gallia, Andrew B. 2014. “The Vestal Habit.” CP 109:222–40. Glinster, Fay and Clare Woods, eds, with John A. North and Michael H. Crawford. 2007. Verrius, Festus, & Paul: Lexicography, Scholarship and Society. BICSSup 93. London: University of London Institute of Classical Studies. Goff, Barbara. 2004. Citizen Bacchae: Women’s Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. JPICL. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goold, G.P. 1970. “Servius and the Helen Episode.” HSCP 74:101–68. Guizzi, Francesco. 1968. Aspetti giuridici del sacerdozio romano: Il sacerdozio di Vesta. Pubblicazioni della Facoltà giuridica dell’Università di Napoli 62. Naples: Eugenio Jovene. Hemelrijk, Emily A. 2009. “Women and Sacrifice in the Roman Empire.” Pages 253–67 in Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire. Edited by Olivier Hekster, Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, and Christian Witschel. Impact of Empire. Leiden: Brill. Holland, Lora L. 2012. “Women and Roman Religion.” Pages 204–14 in A Companion to Women in the Ancient Mediterranean. Edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon. BCAW. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Horster, Marietta. 2007. “Living on Religion: Professionals and Personnel.” Pages 331–41 in A Companion to Roman Religion. Edited by Jörg Rüpke. BCAW. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Jordan, Henri. 1886. Der Tempel der Vesta und das Haus der Vestalinnen. Berlin: Weidmann. Kaster, Robert A. 1980. “Macrobius and Servius: Verecundia and the Grammarian’s Function.” HSCP 84:219–62. La Follette, Laetitia. 1994. “The Costume of the Roman Bride.” Pages 54–64 in The World

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of Roman Costume. Edited by Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2011. “Se parer en Vestale: Un travail de funambule?” Pages 155–70 in Parures et artifices: le corps exposé dans l’Antiquité. Edited by Lydie Bodiou, Florence Gherchanoc, Valérie Huet, and Véronique Mehl. Collection Histoire, textes, sociétés. Paris: L’Harmattan. ———. 2011–2012. “Parsing Piety: The Sacred Still Life in Roman Relief Sculpture.” MAAR 56/57:15–35. Lanciani, Rodolfo. 1883. “Particolari architettonici del tempio di Vesta.” Notizie degli Scavi, 471–80. Latte, Kurt. 1960. Römische Religionsgeschichte. HAW 4. Munich: Beck. Lloyd, Robert B. 1961. “Republican Authors in Servius and the Scholia Danielis.” HSCP 65:291–341. Mantle, I. C. 2002. “The Roles of Children in Roman Religion.” GR 49:85–106. Martini, Maria Cristina. 1997. “Carattere e struttura del sacerdozio delle Vestali: Un approccio storico religioso; Seconda parte.” Latomus 56:477–503. Mattingly, Harold. 1967. Roman Coins from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire. 2nd ed. London: Methuen. Meadows, Andrew and Jonathan Williams. 2001. “Moneta and the Monuments: Coinage and Politics in Republican Rome.” JRS 91:27–49. Mekacher, Nina. 2006. Die vestalischen Jungfrauen in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Palilia 15. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Morawiecki, Leslaw. 1996. “Pontificalia atque Auguralia Insignia and the Political Propaganda in the Coinage of the Roman Republic.” Notae Numismaticae 1:37–57. Moretti, Giuseppe. 1948. Ara Pacis Augustae. Rome: La Libreria dello Stato. Olson, Kelly. 2008. Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-presentation and Society. New York: Routledge. Rives, James. 2013. “Women and Animal Sacrifice in Public Life.” Pages 129–46 in Women and the Roman City in the Latin West. Edited by Emily Hemelrijk and Greg Woolf. MS. Leiden: Brill. Rüpke, Jörg. 2008. Fasti Sacerdotum: A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish and Christian Religious Officials in the City of Rome, 300 BC to AD 499. Translated by David Richardson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History and the Fasti. Translated by David Richardson. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Ryberg, Inez Scott. 1949. “The Procession of the Ara Pacis.” MAAR 19:77–101. ———. 1955. “Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art.” MAAR 22:1–227. Saquete, José Carlos. 2000. Las vírgenes vestales: Un sacerdocio femenino de la religión pública romana. AAEA 21. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Scheid, John. 1990. Romulus et ses frères. Rome: École Française de Rome. ———. 1992. “The Religious Roles of Roman Women.” Pages 377–408 in From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints. Vol. 1 of A History of Women in the West. Edited by Pauline Schmitt Pantel. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Belknap. ———. 1993. “The Priest.” Pages 55–84 in The Romans. Edited by Andrea Giardina. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schultz, Celia E. 2006. Women’s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic. SHGR. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.



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Siebert, Anne Viola. 1999. Instrumenta Sacra: Untersuchungen zu römischen Opfer-, Kultund Priestergeräten. RVV 44. Berlin: de Gruyter. ———. 2005. “Immolation.” BNP 6:744–46. Simon, Erika. 1967. Ara Pacis Augustae. Monumenta artis antiquae 1. Tübingen: Wasmuth. Spaeth, Barbette S. 1996. The Roman Goddess Ceres. Austin: University of Texas Press. Staples, Ariadne. 1998. From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion. New York: Routledge. Stehle, Eva. 1997. Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in its Setting. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stewart, Roberta. 1997. “The Jug and Lituus on Roman Republican Coinage: Ritual Symbols and Political Power.” Phoenix 51:170–89. ———. 2001. Review of Instrumenta Sacra: Untersuchungen zu römischen Opfer-, Kult- und Priestergeräten, by Anne Viola Siebert. AJA 105:376–78. Sutherland, C. H. V. 1974. Roman Coins. World of Numismatics. New York: Putnam. Takács, Sarolta A. 2008. Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion. Austin: University of Texas Press. Thompson, Joanne Elizabeth. 2005. “Images of Vesta and the Vestal Virgins in Roman State Religion and Imperial Policy of the First and Second Centuries A.D.” PhD diss., Yale University. Torelli, Mario. 1982. Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs. Jerome Lectures 14. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Vaglieri, Dante. 1903. Gli scavi recenti nel Foro Romano. Rome: Loescher. Vanggaard, Jens H. 1988. The Flamen: A Study in the History and Sociology of Roman Religion. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Van Haeperen, Françoise. 2002. Le collège pontifical (3ème s.a. C.–4ème s.p. C.): Contribution à l’étude de la religion publique romaine. Etudes de Philologie, d’Archéologie et d’Histoire Anciennes 39. Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome. Wildfang, Robin Lorsch. 2006. Rome’s Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome’s Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire. New York: Routledge. Wissowa, Georg. 1912. Religion und Kultus der Römer. 2nd ed. Munich: Beck. Woytek, Bernhard E. 2012. “The Denarius Coinage of the Roman Republic.” Pages 315–34 in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage. Edited by William E. Metcalf. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter Eleven Susan Ludi Blevins

Rhetoric, Repetition, and Identity in the Frieze of Sacred Objects on the Temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus

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lthough the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus housed cult images and served as the site of recurring cult ritual in favor of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, for many modern viewers the Arch of Titus with its haunting relief of the deified emperor ascending to the celestial heavens on the back of an eagle has become a more potent symbol of Flavian imperial deification. Yet the temple at the northwest corner of the Roman Forum on the steep ascent up the Clivus Capitolinus to the sacred Capitolium, and flanked by the Porticus Deorum Consentium and the temple of Concordia, remained a center of cult veneration for at least two and half centuries after its dedication.1 Three in situ Corinthian columns of white Italian marble supporting a section of the original architrave give a tantalizing glimpse of the original grandeur of the temple as restored by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in the early third century (fig. 1). Analysis of the architectural ornament in the architrave, however, which includes features characteristic of Flavian architecture, such as the small circular elements between the dentils called spectacles and attributed to the architect Rabirius, affirms that the architectural sculpture was a product of the Flavian era.2

I would like to thank Sandra Blakely, Eric Orlin, and the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions Program Committee for facilitating my participation at the conference “Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice in Ancient Mediterranean Religion” on March 22–24, 2013 at Emory University, and for their efforts in organizing this volume; I would also like to thank the reviewers whose insightful comments and suggestions improved the article considerably. This research, and the larger project of which it is a part, would not have been possible without the support of Emory University, the Kress Foundation, and the Max-Planck Society, and Karl Galinsky in connection with the Memoria Romana project. All errors and omissions are, of course, entirely my own. 1.  For example, the Codex Calendar of 354 includes annual rites in favor of Divus Titus and Divus Vespasian in the long list of divi still venerated in Rome in the fourth century, suggesting continued veneration at the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus. According to Michele Salzman, of the ninety-eight days of ludi and circenses dedicated to the imperial cult (broadly construed by Salzman as including cult in favor of dead and living emperors), twenty-nine days commemorate earlier emperors or events associated with them (1990, 131–40). the natalis of N. Vespasiani occurred on November 17 and of N. Divi Titi on December 30. 2.  The similarity of Corinthian capitals under Domitian in different monuments has led De Angeli

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Figure 1. Remains of temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus on the northeast edge of the Roman Forum with the façade of the temple of Saturn to the southwest, and the remains of the Porticus Deorum Consentium slightly further up the Clivus Capitolinus; photo by author.

The temple’s exterior entablature is noteworthy for its deeply carved, complex, decorative quality. Most striking is the meticulously detailed frieze to conjecture a specialized urban workshop emphasizing expert production of architectural elements (1992, 150–51). On architectural ornament of the temple, see De Angeli 1992, 149–57; on the complexity of Flavian architectural ornamentation as compared to the more austere forms under Trajan, see Packer 2001, 187; on innovations in architectural ornament under the Flavians, see Pensabene and Caprioli 2009.



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Figure 2. In situ section of the frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus; photo by author.

extending the length of each lateral side of the temple. Each section of the frieze, confined to the width of one block of the architrave, was articulated by bucrania festooned in a decorative fillet known as an infula. Based on the in situ section in the Roman Forum and the surviving reconstructed section of the frieze now in the Tabularium, there are at least two possible sequences, if not more, of the same seven objects between the bucrania (De Angeli 1992, 94–107; in situ section, fig. 2; Tabularium section, fig. 3). On the in situ section the sequence of objects is, moving from left to right after the first bucranium: an urceus, a sacred vessel in the shape of a jug; a culter, the knife used to slit the victim’s throat and slaughter the animal; an aspergillum for sprinkling liquids; along the ground line a securis, the small hatchet used to strike the death blow; above the securis a patera for libations; a malleus, a long and straight mallet with a circular head for stunning the animal in anticipation of the sacrifice; a galerus apicatus, the pointed leather cap of a flamen surmounted by an apex; and a concluding bucranium.3 Exploring the frieze in terms of its visual rhetorical strategies reveals 3.  The sequence of the heavily restored Tabularium section of the frieze is bucranium, galerus, aspergillum, jug, culter, patera, malleus, securis, and bucranium; according to De Angeli parts of the Tabularium section that are original are only the left section of the bucranium, the right half of the

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Figure 3. Section of the frieze in the Tabularium; photo by author.

a more sophisticated approach on the part of the Roman patrons and viewers to so-called generic religious ornament than has previously been acknowledged. I argue that the frieze underscores the religious nature of the temple dedicated to the eternal gods of the Roman state pantheon and suppresses Flavian dynastic connotations. In addition, in a deft appeal to the senatorial elite and the people of Rome, the frieze and temple inscription together highlighted the elevated status of state priesthoods and the communal religious authority of the Senate, and involved all Romans in the deification and posthumous veneration of Rome’s rulers. Existing interpretations of the instrumenta sacra depicted in the frieze, such as that by Stefano De Angeli, find the earliest precedents in republican and early imperial relief and coin representations of the simpulum, lituus, tripod, and patera. De Angeli argues that the instrumenta sacra are symbols of the four major priestly colleges: the pontifical college of which the flamines of Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and in the Imperial period, the deified emperors, were a part; the augural college responsible for reading the signs of the gods; the quindecemviri sacris faciundis that oversaw the Sibylline Books; and the septemviri epulonum galerus, and fragments of the aspergillum, tipped jug, and head of Jupiter Ammon in the center of the patera (1992, 105–7).



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Figure 4. Denarius of Vespasian, 71 CE, obverse showing the laureate head of Vespasian and reverse with simpulum, aspergillum, jug, and lituus; British Museum, London, inv. no. 1841,0726.1095; © The Trustees of the British Museum.

in charge of public feasts (De Angeli 1992, 140–41).4 On coins of Augustus the motif of these four instruments commemorates membership by the emperor in the four priestly colleges and indicates the emperor’s profound religiosity and pietas to the state gods.5 These motifs reappear on coins of Nero minted while he was Caesar under Claudius, and representations of clusters of sacred implements indicating membership in the four priestly colleges continue under the Flavian emperors (fig. 4).6 Anne Siebert highlights assemblages of ritual implements as a particularly Roman device and emphasizes their role in the development of a repertoire of imperial self-representation (1999, 147–201). While Siebert recognizes groupings of ritual instruments as more than symbolic decoration, along the same lines as De Angeli, she too concludes that their primary function was to assert the social status of the priesthood while conveying the message of piety on the part of some individual or group toward the gods, the res publica, or family (1999, 157–75). De Angeli suggests that in addition to promoting the priestly role and pietas of the living emperor, the frieze on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus may allude to sacrificial acts and to the high religious dignity of the four priestly colleges (1992, 142). With the telltale lituus, tripod, and simpulum 4.  Famously, unidentifiable members of each of the major priesthoods participate in the processions depicted on the Ara Pacis reliefs; on the state priests of Rome under the Julio-Claudians, see Hoffman Lewis 1955. 5. Augustus, RIC2 1, no. 410; BMCRE 1, no. 119: obv. AUGUSTUS CAESAR, bare head; rev. C ANTISTIUS REGINUS, simpulum and lituus above tripod and patera. Nero as Caesar, RIC2 1, no. 77 (Claudius), BMCRE 1, no. 87: obv. NERO CLAUD CAES DRUSUS GERM PRINC IUVENT with draped bust of Nero; rev. SACERD COOPT IN OMN CONL SUPRA NUM EX SC, simpulum on tripod and lituus on patera. 6.  See, e.g., Vespasian RIC 2, no. 43, Obv: IMP CAES VESP AUG PM. Rev: AUGUR TRI POT accompanied by an image of a simpulum, aspergillum, jug, and lituus.

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conspicuously absent from the ensemble adorning the temple, however, the frieze excludes any overt references to the augurs, the quindecemviri sacris faciundis, and the septemviri epulonum. Most recently, Laetitia La Follette advances our understanding of sculpted sacred assemblages by comparing them to the painted still lifes from Campania and exploring the animated qualities of the sculptural reliefs. For La Follette context is paramount. She persuasively concludes that the reliefs of sacred implements in the Imperial period, such as that on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, did not follow a generic program but were tailored to their context through the inclusion of implements used in the cult in question (La Follette 2011–2012, 15–29). Rather than conveying messages about priestly status, La Follette focuses on cult ritual to argue that visual images including groupings of sacred implements functioned to re-present or reenact cultic actions.7 Building on La Follette’s conclusions about the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, which foreground her analysis of the lituus on private grave monuments, I further explore the implications of this approach in a public setting: a Roman state temple dedicated to the deified emperors.8 Moreover, by exploring the visual rhetorical strategies employed in the frieze and their potential effect on viewers, I highlight the significance of individual experience for generating meaning in visual culture. In addition, in line with recent trends, I contribute to a richer and more dynamic understanding of so-called symbolic ornament by acknowledging the cultic and monumental specificity of these complex images. Visual Rhetoric Although Titus initiated construction, his short reign left to Domitian the job of completing and dedicating the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus to his deified brother and father.9 Although no coin issue boasts completion of the temple, ample evidence confirms that the temple was just one facet of the Flavian penchant for commemorating their deified family members. Among many examples, coin issues explicitly connect Aeternitas with Divus Vespasian, and declare the sacred status of Divus Titus along with the appointment of his daughter Julia Titi as a priestess of his cult.10 Experimenting with architectural 7.  With her emphasis on the ritual importance of sacred implements, La Follette concludes that the lituus in the context of grave markers symbolized the inauguration and consecration of new space for the deceased, and served as a liminal marker between the living and the dead (2011–2012, 29–35). 8.  The term “public” is used here in accord with the juridical distinction espoused by John Scheid between “public” acts performed by the will of the people and for its good, and “private” acts performed for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals (2016, 40–41). 9. The terminus ante quem of August for the temple is provided by a dated inscription of the Arval Brethren from 87 CE referring to the temple of Divus Vespasian (De Angeli 1992, 137). 10.  See, e.g., Titus, RIC 2, no. 380 as combining the legend AETERNIT(as) AUG S-C and a stand-



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forms not seen under the Julio-Claudians, Domitian’s commemoration of the Flavian divi also included the Arch of Titus, the temple of the Gens Flavia on the Quirinal, and the Porticus Divorum in the Campus Martius. As a continuation of an established architectural and cultic tradition that began with the temples of Divus Iulius, Divus Augustus, and Divus Claudius, the Flavian temple was an opportunity first for Titus, and then later Domitian, to emphasize imperial succession to a divine dynastic predecessor and monumentally pronounce their pietas toward their deified father. The role of the temple as an anchor to the Flavian building campaign that grew out of a desire to rival the strong JulioClaudian presence in and around the Roman Forum has also been amply demonstrated (see Torelli 1987; Favro 1996; Davies 2000). Within this larger religio-political context, I focus here on the sculptural frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, arguing that it functioned as much more than a symbol of, or general allusion to, notions of filial piety and priestly status. Rather, carefully designed formal and iconographic aspects of the frieze employed well-known rhetorical strategies combined with visual cues within the relief to please and engage the viewer and evoke the cyclical repetition of ritual inherent in Roman state religion. Far from a vague reference to Roman piety and religion, the galerus invoked the flamines, members of the pontifical college, and drew on viewers’ memories of bloody sacrifice conducted at the temple to emphasize the sacred nature of the cult and vividly remind viewers that the temple housed eternal gods of the Roman state pantheon. Rhetorical training in the ancient world may be characterized as the training in the use of language as an artful way to persuade an audience of the speaker’s point of view (Pollini 2012, 4). Although the political and cultural role of rhetoric changed along with most other aspects of life from the republican to the Imperial period, rhetorical training and performance remained a significant cultural force in the first century CE. With a major role in education in the early Imperial period, the rules and strategies of rhetoric presented a system through which people ordered, created, and understood cultural constructions (Tapia 2009, 103–4).11 For instance, among other categories of rhetoric, in the Institutio Oratoria Quintilian attests that epideictic speech, for the purpose of display and praise of the gods, heroes, and other great men, was a regular feature of Roman public life by the late first century (Inst. 3.7; see also Innes 2011, 70–71). Further underscoring the influence in Rome of traditional rhetorical training and the prominence of rhetoric in the Flavian era, Domitian founded a major festival, the Capitolia (see Hardie 2003), advertising imperial favor for ing Aeternitas on the obverse, with DIVUS AUGUSTUS VESPASIANIUS on the reverse. Domitian, RIC 2, no. 216: obverse with portrait and legend DIVUS TITUS AUGUSTUS, and reverse with draped bust of Julia Titi and legend IULIA AUGUSTA DIVI TITI F. 11.  On the education of the orator, see Quintilian Inst. 3–4.

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musical and gymnastics competitions and acknowledging the importance of orators and poets. Investigation of visual rhetoric analyzes areas of coincidence between the verbal and the visual arts to understand how visual imagery addresses the viewer with the goal of influencing the viewer’s understanding and response (Leach 1988, 17–19). Acknowledging that one-to-one comparisons may oversimplify the complex and nuanced function of symbolic images, scholars have nonetheless persuasively sought correspondences in visual culture to rhetorical theories of public speech, particularly in images servicing religious and ideological agendas (see, e.g., Leach 1988; Meyers 2005; Lamp 2009; Pollini 2012). Most recently, John Pollini describes visual rhetoric in terms of, “a certain eloquence in the visual presentation, communication, and commemoration of the ideals, virtues and political programs of the leaders of the Roman state” (2012, 4). Ancient viewers with rhetorical training, he conjectures, understood the Ara Pacis in terms of a coherent dynastic narrative arising out of the juxtaposition of members of the imperial family, allegorical and mythological figures, and acanthus scroll ornament (Pollini 2012, 204–70). Application of rhetorical concepts as tools of analysis for representations of inanimate objects, on the other hand, has been limited. Might rhetorical concepts also shed light on the function, meaning, and complexity of representations of object assemblages such as instrumenta sacra? I suggest that in the frieze of sacred objects on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, rhetorical theories about pleasing and engaging the viewer through clarity and ornament, as well as the repetition of words or phrases to enhance meaning, suggest the visual mechanisms by which the frieze guides the viewer’s understanding of the building it adorns. Clarity and Ornament Rhetorical theorists, including Cicero and Quintilian, advised that successful rhetorical expression depends on the four virtues of diction, of which two, clarity and ornament, are most relevant in the present analysis.12 Clarity, in reference to the production of a vivid and detailed picture in the mind of those in the audience, aids in comprehensibility and assists in cognition of the topic conveyed to the audience (Lausberg 1998, 140). The goal of a vivid description of a person or a scene (ἐνάργεια), therefore, is to produce a clear and detailed picture in the mind of the audience (Kirchner 2007, 183). Surprisingly, the condensing of thoughts, or brevity, contributes to the clarity desired in speech by providing only as much information as is necessary for comprehension and by protecting against tedium

12.  See, e.g., Cicero De or. 1.144.3.37; Quint. Inst. 1.5.1; 8.1.1; for a detailed discussion of the four virtues of diction, see Kirchner 2007.



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in the audience.13 With a psychological function aimed at giving pleasure to the listener, another virtue of diction, effective ornament, engages the listener’s attention making him easier to persuade (Kirchner 2007, 183, on Theophrastus (reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus Isoc. 3.1).14 While there are many types of ornament, Cicero notes with respect to rhetorical speech that the audience finds an intellectual pleasure in solving riddles and in playing an active role in the speech (Verr. 2.5.97). At first glance the rhetorical strategies of clarity (through brevity) and ornament may seem at odds. Metonymic speech and imagery, however, adeptly addresses both concerns by providing the minimal amount of information to the viewer while engaging him in an intellectual exercise. Roderich Kirchner lists stylistic devices concerning word choice that were believed by rhetoricians to engage the viewer intellectually, among which were metonymy and synecdoche (2007, 184–85). A close reading of the frieze suggests that each element functions metonymically, referring to a human or animal actor in the sacrificial ritual either by one of its attributes or a part that represents the whole. Metonymic (μετωνυμία) comparison replaces the proper word by a word that bears a mental or factual relationship to it through cause, effect, sphere, or symbol (Lausberg 1998, 256–60).15 Metonymic expression dominates the frieze in implements such as the malleus, securis, and culter, each succinctly representing an individual ritual action and actor. In addition, as an essential element of priestly garb, the apex represents the flamines as well as the constellation of ritual and social functions associated with them. Sometimes considered a subset of metonymy, synecdoche (συνεκδοχή) is the replacement of the proper word with a word that bears a quantitative relationship to it, most commonly a whole for the part or a part for the whole.16 Synecdoche is seen most clearly in the bucranium, the skull that is part of the sacrificial animal. Thus, metonymy and synecdoche as visual ornament not only demand intellectual engagement that requires viewers to complete the suggested associations, it also balances brevity and particularity as discussed further below to convey a vivid image of ritual sacrifice. Moreover, because metonymic representation focuses on certain aspects of things, further interrogating why particular objects were chosen for the frieze reveals how the images guide interpretation. Key to understanding the frieze is the cap of a flamen, which signifies the context for the other actions or participants in the sacrificial rite by firmly anchoring the frieze within the realm of sacrifices 13.  On brevity, see Lausberg 1998, 141–148. 14.  See also Quint. Inst. 2.10.10–11; 3.4.6; 3.5.2. 15.  See also Temmerman 2010, 29; as one of many possible types of metonymy enumerated by Lausberg, the most appropriate in the context of the frieze is the person/object relationship in which the person as functionary stands in a real relationship to the object (1998, 257). 16.  See Lausberg 1998, 260–262; Kirchner 2007, 185; e.g., Cicero asserts that “the roofs will burn” instead of “the buildings will burn” (Kirchner 2007, 185, citing Cat. 1.29).

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Figure 5. Detail of the frieze from the in situ section showing the galerus and patera; photo by author.

to the cults of the deified emperors (fig. 5). Together the elements of the frieze combine to recall and anticipate the recurring rites specifically performed by the flamines, priests in sought-after positions of high social esteem who wore the galerus.17 Made of leather, fastened under the chin and embellished with an apex or pointed top, the galerus was necessary to effective ritual performance by a flamen. An olive branch called a birga formed the spike, which was secured to the cap with a woolen band or fillet known as the filium or apiculum made from the fleece of a sacrificial victim.18 So sacred was the galerus and so strongly associated with its wearer, that in the second century Aulus Gellius observed that although in the past a flamen might not take off the cap indoors, by his time it was considered essential only when a flamen left his home (10.15). Valerius Maximus recounts that if the cap fell off the priest while he was at the altar, he was removed from the priesthood (1.1.4). Though the apex does not survive on the frieze, the filium that rises up from the crown of the cap remains visible assuring the presence in antiquity of the apex and the interpretation of this cap as that of a flamen.

17.  On the high status of the flamines, see Vanggaard 1988. 18.  On the headgear of a flamen, see Vanggaard 1988, 40–45; on variations in artistic depictions of the apex, see Esdaile 1911.



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Figure 6. Aureus of Domitian, 88–96 CE; obverse showing Domitia and reverse showing the deified infant son of Domitian seated on a globe and surrounded by seven stars; British Museum, London, inv. no. R. 10760; © The Trustees of the British Museum

Priests who wore the galerus apicatus were members of the pontifical college and included the flamen Dialis of Jupiter, the flamen Martialis of Mars, and the flamen Quirinalis of Quirinus. Significantly, in the Imperial period flamines were also appointed for each divus including, by the reign of Domitian, for Divus Iulius, Divus Augustus, Divus Claudius, Divus Vespasian, and Divus Titus.19 Though the precise organization of priesthoods established under the Flavians and dedicated to the Flavian divi is unclear because of the variety of terms in ancient written sources and inscriptions, Pliny, who was a priest of Divus Titus, mentions incense, altars, pulvinaria and a flamen voted for Divus Titus.20 Contextualizing the other elements of the frieze, the galerus indicates that the frieze should be understood in the context of rites performed by a flamen. An intricate lightning bolt below a foliate detail interspersed with seven stars adorns the front of the in situ galerus and iconographically reinforces an association in particular with the flamen Dialis and the flamen divorum (fig. 5). Though astral connotations of the divi were well established, iconography of the seven stars may have been a development of the Flavian era. A coin issued between 88 and 96 commemorating the deification of Domitian’s infant son depicts the baby boy on a globe surrounded by seven stars (fig. 6).21 The embellished galerus may be a calculated ambiguity, calling to mind animal 19.  The first flamen of Divus Iulius was Mark Antony appointed in 44 BCE, followed by Sex. Appuleius under Augustus. In 53 it is also known that D. Iunius Silanus Torquatus held the honor. After the death of Augustus the first flamen Augustalis was Germanicus, Tiberius’s adopted son, then Drusus, then Germanicus’s son Nero. After the deification of Claudius in 54 the flamen of Augustus and Claudius may have been combined in the flamen Augustalis Claudialis (Hoffman Lewis 1955, 20). 20.  See, e.g., CIL 5.5667: fl[amen] divi T[iti] Augusti (“priest of the deified Titus Augustus”). 21.  Aureus of Domitian, RIC 2, no. 152, 88–96 CE.: obv. DOMITIA AVGVSTA IMP DOMIT; rev: DIVVS CAESAR IMP DOMITIANI F, with Domitian’s infant son, seated on a globe surrounded by seven stars.

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sacrifice by a flamen at any of the temples of the gods for which the flamines were responsible, however, more likely the seven stars suggest that the galerus should be associated more specifically with sacrifices at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the temples of the divi. Furthermore, with the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus strategically placed along the steep approach to the Capitoline, the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus rose up behind the temple of Divus Vespasian advertising the Flavian reconstruction of the Capitoline and impressing on viewers the close connection between the divi and Jupiter. The Flavians, however, were not the first to associate their divi with Jupiter Optimus Maximus and may have been following a precedent established by the JulioClaudians. A purposeful link between Divus Augustus and Jupiter is similarly attested in parallel sacrifices on successive days at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the temple of Divus Augustus in the middle of the first century. Ritual, Repetition, and Memory Repetition and vivid detail in the frieze further highlight the connection between the temple and the recurring animal sacrifice conducted at its altar. Priests used the aspergillum to sprinkle lustral water, the patera to pour libations before the sacrifice or over the sacrificial meat cooking on the altar after the sacrifice, and the urceus to pour wine into the patera and to hold wine for the feast to follow. Significantly, although often referred to as priestly implements, several of the objects depicted in the frieze are integral to the sacrifice but are not used by the priest. Attendants of the sacrificial victims, or victimarii, performed a variety of roles in sacrificial rites. A cultrarius carried the culter on a large tray called a lanx or in his hands. Another attendant, the popa, employed the malleus to strike and stun sacrificial victims. Yet another attendant might carry the securis. The presence of the culter, malleus, and securis recalls not only sacrifice and libations by the flamen generally, but in particular the sacrifice of large victims. In addition to implements held in the hands, typical signifiers of the victimarii such as their bare chests, loin-cloth type garment called a limnus, and proximity to the sacrificial animal clearly distinguished the victimarii from priests within representations of sacrifice on Roman state sponsored historical reliefs.22 Roman sacrificial practice in satisfaction of the requirements of the pax deorum, or peace with the gods, observed a connection between deity and victim, the hostia propria. Sacrifices to male divi were male bovines, typically a bos mas, a castrated male ox. That the frieze evokes large animal sacrifice conducted on behalf of the 22.  Emphasizing the unique capacity of sacrificial images in the Roman Imperial period to convey the power of imperium, Alessandro Celani underscores the visual and conceptual distance between the partially nude and contorted victimarius who performs the final and bloody act of killing the victim, and the priest or magistrate standing erect and attentive nearby, absolved of the base responsibility of delivering the final blow (2016, 11–17).



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Figure 7. Julio-Claudian relief fragment; Rome, Villa Medici; sacrifice in front of the temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus; photo, DAI-Rome, neg. D-DAI-ROM-77.1739, photographer Christoph Rossa.

state in satisfaction of the pax deorum makes explicit the importance of the cult of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus in the hierarchy of religious practices. The elongated proportions of the bucrania fill the height of the frieze, also echoing the sacrificial animal led to slaughter. In the relief believed to be from the Ara Pietatis in which the temple of Mars Ultor provides a dramatic sacrificial backdrop, attendants lead a struggling and bowing sacrificial steer (JulioClaudian relief fragment, temple of Mars Ultor pediment and sacrifice relief, 41–54 CE, Rome, Villa Medici) (fig. 7). Added detail in the frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, such as the fillets adorning the bucrania that similarly decorated the sacrificial victim on festal days, suggests a sacred processional event. As in other visual representations of rites that depict priests in sacrificial processions and the attendants in moments preceding the kill, the frieze may have brought to mind the noisy, chaotic, tension-filled moment before the culminating sacrifice (Grunow 2002, 76). A scene on one of the Boscoreale cups of Augustus and Tiberius depicts just such a moment: poised in front of a garlanded temple a sacrifice, either concluding the triumphal procession of Tiberius or preceding his departure on military campaign, dramatically depicts the popa in front of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus drawing back

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Figure 8. Skyphos, cup of Boscoreale; triumph of Tiberius and scene of preparation of a sacrifice. Louvre Museum, Paris, inv. no. BJ2367; © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY, photographer Hervé Lewandowski.

his instrument to deliver the stunning blow while two attendants struggle to maintain control of the bowing sacrificial ox (fig. 8).23 Within each individual frieze sequence (from bucrania to bucrania), as well as the overall repetition and variation of the sequences within the frieze, the use of additional rhetorical strategies is discernible. For instance, another aspect of rhetorical ornament was the deliberate arrangement of the words in a speech to repeat or accumulate for the purpose of connecting the form of the sentence to its meaning (Kirchner 2007, 186–190).24 The rhythmic pattern of each frieze sequence mimics patterns in music and in the movement of the body that Quintilian attests are used to express sublime and pleasing thoughts (Inst. 1.20.22). As in linguistic arrangement, such visual techniques produce a structurally pleasing balance of parts despite the ebb and flow of action that echoes the drama of sacrifice itself.25 Within each sequence of objects the bucrania create strong vertical elements filling the height of the frieze yet also 23. Tiberius’s Nuncupatio Votorum at the Capitolium, the victim group and the Capitolium, Louvre Museum, Paris, inv. no. BJ2367. Before the Augustan period the entire head of the animal was usually depicted; Paul Zanker suggests that the new representations of the ox skull in the Roman Imperial period were intended to intensify the religious effect of bucrania with increasingly dramatic representations (1988, 114). 24.  On rhetorical repetition, see Lausberg 1998, 274–98. 25. Pollini envisions a rhetorically influenced, yet much more complex narratively motivated



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occupying more horizontal space than any other object, thereby pointing to the death of the animal as the climactic moment. Spaces between the exclamatory representations of the bucrania are constituted by multiple smaller objects (the galerus and instrumenta sacra) in an array of shapes, sizes, and angles implying the staccato series of events and their corresponding actions that build up to the culminating sacrifice. The rhetorical combination of repeating words at the beginning and end of successive sentences, with a visual correspondence in the repeating bucranium at the beginning and end of successive sections of the frieze, was known as symploce, and conveyed discreet, yet repeating and similar instances of a concept. While the arrangement of individual sequences of objects evoked the movement through space inherent in every religious procession culminating in sacrifice, repeating sequences embodied the cyclical repetition of ritual inherent in Roman state religion.26 While the connection between rhetoric and repetition in speech has usually been discussed in terms of ornament and its benefits in aiding memory, when translated into the spatial environment of the frieze repetition takes on an additional significance. The repeating sequence of objects on the frieze echo in stone the obligatory recurring ritual sacrifices in favor of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus recorded in the Roman calendar. It was at temple ritual, renewed annually, that “the conceptual systems of temple, image, and sacrifice had their living embodiment” (Price 1984, 39). During the Imperial period there were, generally speaking, two systems of calendars that operated either based on a linear or a cyclical conception of time. The Fasti Triumphales recorded chronologically linear triumphs granted down to the reign of Augustus, and the Fasti Consulares listed the consuls for each year since the founding of Rome. In contrast, the Fasti Magistrales, Annales, or Historici provided a calendar of events for a twelve-month year, further divided by the eight-day Roman week, and reflecting annual, recurring public religious sacrifices and festivals to the state gods as well as days of celebration associated with the emperor and the imperial family.27 For example, each year on the anniversary of the dedication of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, inhabitants of Rome participated in games and the flamen of the divi conducted sacrifices to celebrate the dies natalis of the temple. Implicit in the configuration of visual components in the acanthus frieze and figural reliefs of the Ara Pacis (2012, 234–37). 26.  On repetition and orality in early Greek culture, in particular on the role of sound and rhythmic patterns along with repetition in oral cultures to assure recollection for both the performer and audience of complex recitations, see, e.g., Tapia 2009. 27.  On the structure of the Roman calendar, see Salzman 1990; Rüpke 2011; while Rüpke has persuasively argued against the existence of an official edition of the calendar maintained in Rome by the princeps, the pontifices, or a dedicated calendar authority, he has also emphasized the remarkable consistency of calendar entries as they survive in fragments from diverse geographic locations (2011, 21–22).

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dies natalis was a historical date and year embedded in linear time and on which priests dedicated the temple for the first time, however, the significance of the notation in the Fasti lies in the requirement for recurring, yearly performance of the ceremony. The annual celebration of the dies natalis not only emphasized the importance of place in Roman religion by inextricably linking the satisfaction of cult requirements for each god to a cult structure, but also subsumed Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus within the eternal timeless world of Roman religious practice. Implicit in the calendar anniversary of the dies natalis are all of the instances before the present when sacrifices occurred, as well as after the present when sacrifices will necessarily happen again, in order to properly worship the gods and satisfy the pax deorum, or peace with the gods (Ricoeur 2004, 155). As repetition is inherent in the formal structure of the frieze, so to it is inherent in the structure of ritual associated with the temple. Significantly, the Roman calendar does not record the year that the dies natalis first occurred, only the day of the year, again emphasizing ritual repetition over the first, or any single, performance of sacrifice. Moreover, the calendar was much more than a storage device recording religious knowledge; it provided a guide to ongoing religious veneration and a structure around which the rituals of the divi and of the Roman state as a whole ensured the performance of remembrance and religious obligations (Williams 2003, 227–31). Time at Rome was a culturally embedded system that relied upon a linear history of military victories, temple dedications and sacrifices, birthdays, adoptions, and senatorial decrees alongside the annual calendar of cyclical time (Laurence and Smith 1995–1996, 133). The calendar inscribed, literally and metaphorically, the eternal, timeless divi into a cyclical time that already included the other state gods. Through the horizontal linear format of the frieze along each lateral side of the temple, punctuated by sequences of objects that repeated in their entirety, the form of the frieze reflected the historical (linear) and cyclical (repeating) nature of Roman religion. Variation in object detail between the two possible frieze sequences parallels the variation in word order that rhetoricians advocated to provide novelty in repetition (Quintilian Inst. 2.13.8–10). Repetition of the same meaning in speech with a different word form that stands in equivalence with the original is known as synonymous repetition and is intended to intensify the expression (Lausberg 1998, 292). In this case, the frieze incorporates highly particularized object details that differ between the sequences (rather than the schematization of objects frequently evident in other groupings of sacred implements such as those on funerary altars of the Roman Imperial period) to further suggest individual ritual events. For example, the bucrania adorning the in situ architrave section vary in the configuration of the infula and the number of sections hanging from the skull’s horns. The jug in each sequence bears relief decoration in two registers.



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On the Tabularium example bestiaries with a lance confronts a lion and a leopard in the top register, and the lower register contains an antithetical rhinoceros and a bull. In the in situ example a row of satyrs adorns the upper register, while a winged horse alights in the bottom register. Similarly, varied in decorative and symbolic detail, the paterae with heads of Zeus Ammon (in situ) and Medusa with surrounding leaf patterns (restored fragment in the Tabularium), may be modeled on actual or typical examples in metal (De Angeli 1992, 147). Other decorative embellishments such as the lion’s head protome of the culter, suggest fine craftsmanship of the objects represented, and thus their intention for an elite patron rather than mass production. In other words, even though it is impossible to know whether the representations in the frieze were of real objects used in connection with cult ritual at the temple, the high quality and sophistication of the objects represented suggests their production specifically for ceremonial and ritual use. Also contributing to a performative understanding of the frieze is the dynamism of the objects, a characteristic first noted and described by La Follette. Elements of the composition imply movement and action. Seeming to tilt slightly, the bucrania are not perfectly symmetrical. Sections of fillet hanging down on either side of the skulls differ in length and the loops of the fillet hanging from the horns fall at different angles, appearing to sway as though responding to forward motion. The jugs are not static but tipped to the side, as though someone was in the act of using them and the liquid on the verge of spilling from the spouts. Also arranged obliquely to the ground line, the culter with lion’s head protome on the handle implies an unseen hand about to wield it on the sacrificial victim. Finally, the wavy tail of the aspergillum seems to quiver with movement as though being shaken. Only the securis rests on the ground line, however even it remains physically and visually connected to the malleus, which is placed behind it to create overlapping space that confirms for the viewer that these objects exist in three dimensions. In light of the location of the frieze on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus and the implements represented, it is safe to conclude that for most viewers the frieze prompted the recall of large animal sacrifice to Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus that occurred in front of the temple bearing the frieze. The ritual recalled could be either a specific temporal experience (as in one sequence of the frieze) or a typical sacrifice in front of the temple, an amalgamation of all prior experiences (combining all of the frieze sequences). With yearly ritual at the very least on the dies natalis of the temple, an inhabitant of Rome could potentially witness dozens of such sacrifices during her lifetime. Significantly, vivid recall of ritual prompted by the visual rhetorical strategies of clarity, ornament, and repetition, as discussed above would have reinforced the meanings of the performance and, to use Roy Rappaport’s phrase, all of the

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“necessary entailments” of performance, including the gathering of the Roman people to participate in and witness the formal, solemn configuration of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus as eternal celestial gods of the Roman state pantheon (1999). In terms of the social contract, the public and explicit annual acceptance of the cult through socially binding recurring sacrifice rendered dissenters publicly impotent and ascribed legitimacy to the terms of the cult. In addition, the repetition of object sequences on the frieze implied potentially limitless ritual repetition reenacting the timeless Roman religious order by recalling past sacrifices that reminded viewers of present and future cultic obligations. As Romans were acutely aware, such obligations were essential not only to the continued viability of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, but also to the unbroken continuity of ritual performance on which the pax deorum depended. The emphasis in the frieze then, is not on a particular sacrifice or even an ideal event, but rather on the status of the building as a location for sacred ritual conducted by priests of the pontifical college for the benefit of the Roman people. Objects versus Figural Representation It has been suggested here that the frieze emphasized the eternal, divine nature of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus by employing in the visual realm rhetorical strategies of clarity, ornament, and repetition to please and engage the viewer and then highlight the temple as the site of recurring, annual bloody sacrifice in honor of the gods. Repeating metonymic representation of animal sacrifice by a flamen evoked recurring ritual that subsumed Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus within the past, present, and future of Roman religious time. Could such an effect have been achieved through a more typical figural representation of ritual such as the procession of Augustus, his family, and priestly entourage in the long reliefs of the Ara Pacis, the Suovetaurilia sacrifice now in the Louvre, or even the fragmentary relief of a flamen in front of the temple of Quirinus that is now associated with the temple of the Gens Flavia?28 In the Suovetaurilia scene, for example, a veiled priest stands in front of an altar with a popa wielding an ax and accompanied by attendants carrying incense and sacrificial implements. Three victimarii urge on the pig, ram, and bull adorned with ceremonial vestments including the dorsuale, frontalia, and infula.29 Despite its imperial Roman context, the frieze on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus avoids a significant convention of representation that had become commonplace in scenes of sacrifice as early as Augustus: the emperor as the prime sacrificer hierarchically positioned, both spatially and functionally, 28.  Relief Head of a Flamen, Museo Nazionale Romano, max. h. 0.40 m, max. w. 0.31 m, max. d. 0.17 m, inv. no. 310251. 29.  Fragment of the Relief of a Double Suovetaurilia Sacrifice, Louvre, first or second quarter of the first century CE, h. 1.80 m, l. 2.30 m, MA 1096-inv. MR 852.



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in the center of sacrificial representations with other attendants and priestly participants standing anonymously behind or flanking the emperor.30 While still emphasizing the importance of the temple as a site of ritual, metonymic representation in the frieze obviated the need to show Domitian conducting the animal sacrifice. Representation of Domitian, or any other mortal member of the Flavian family would have anchored the frieze in specific historical time, altering the timeless emphasis the frieze achieved through form (repetition) and content (metonymic representation balancing brevity and specificity). The architrave inscription further reinforced the timelessness suggested by the frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus. Originally copied in the seventh century, the inscription at the time of dedication has been restored by De Angeli: DIVO VESPASIANO AUGUSTO SPQR (to the divine Vespasian Augustus from the Senate and people of Rome) (1992, 18–19).31 Perhaps most significant in this inscription is what is missing. The carefully considered inscription does not name a specific dedicator beyond the timeless SPQR or contain any dating formula in the form of a reference to a date, a historical person, or a historical event—yet dating mechanisms in dedicatory inscriptions function to locate the origination of the monument in time.32 Mark Pobjoy sees the desire “to fix an individual’s place within history, society, and the cosmos” as background to the “epigraphic impulse” (2000, 77). In accordance with Pobjoy’s observation, republican temple inscriptions usually included the name of the patron, who sought to gain recognition and prestige through his status as benefactor, a trend that continues into the Imperial period, as attested by Pliny. In contrast to the brief inscription on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, Pliny recounts that in the first century Senators complained that the inscriptions on arches and temples were too long for their architraves.33 By failing to enumerate a patronage link with members of the Flavian dynasty, the inscription on the temple avoids any association in the future with a ritualhistorical moment in time, or with a period of which certain historical actors were a part. This configuration encouraged the perception for later viewers that the temple had always been there and likewise that the god had always existed (Ricoeur 2004, 153).

30.  On the emphasis in large-scale depictions of religious scenes in the Imperial period with a focus on the sacrifice and the emperor, see Gordon 1990, 209–19. 31.  The inscription is known from the Codex Einsiedlensis, 326 fol. 72b, see Ferroni 1993, 185–88, fig. 129. Between 200 and 205 Septimius Severus and Caracalla restored the temple adding another line to the inscription: IMPP CAESS SEVERUS ET ANTONINUS PII FELIC AUGG RESTITUER (the Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla restored it) (CIL 6.938). 32.  On the care taken in determining the content of inscriptions in stone, see, e.g., Hope 2000. 33. Pliny Pan. 54. 3: (et quasi prolatis imperii finibus nunc ingentes arcus excessurosque templorum fastigium titulos).

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Imperial State Religion as a Collective Project Visual rhetorical strategies of the frieze that emphasized the religious nature of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus over its dynastic function also implicated the Senate and people of Rome in the imperial religious project of which the temple was one facet. La Follette cautions against personifying ritual objects in sacred assemblages and interpreting them solely in light of the political significance of the actors, advocating instead for interpretations that underscore their ritual significance (2011–2012, 27). Metonymic imagery in sacred assemblages, however, is so powerful because it is multivalent, drawing on multiple associations including ritual use and the identities of the actors. While objects in the frieze such as the culter, malleus, and securis represent actions performed by people with specific roles in sacrificial ritual, there are no class distinctions or implications for the cursus honorum inherent in these roles. In contrast, the apex is intimately connected to the status and identity of the flamines, the only individuals permitted to wear the cap.34 The exclusive entitlement of the flamines to perform rituals in the context of Roman state cult marked their status in a divinely sanctified social order (Várhelyi 2010, 2). Significantly, members of the pontifical college, the pontifex maximus and the flamines, could only be appointed from the senatorial ranks. Closely associated to the flamen divorum in function and status, though not part of the pontifical college, were the imperial sodalitates, the associations charged with veneration of the deified emperors. A staggering twenty-one members, including four members from the imperial family, were appointed to the Sodales Augustales in 14 CE (Dio 56.46.1; Tac. Ann 1.54).35 After the death and deification of Claudius the Sodales Augustales transformed into the Sodales Augustales Claudiales. Subsequently, Domitianic literary sources and inscriptions attest to the establishment of the Sodales Flaviales and Seviri Flaviales, charged with the veneration of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus.36 Recognition of the importance of the imperial sodalitates is found in an episode from the Capitolia festival established by Domitian, who enjoyed the festivities from his vantage point between the flamen Dialis and members of the Sodales Flaviales Titiales (Hardie 2003, 130). Senatorial competition for appointment as a member in one of the four major priestly colleges, as well as in the sodalitates, was intense in the Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods because, Zsuzsanna Várhelyi suggests, priesthoods remained one of the exclusive privileges of senatorial rank (2010, 34.  A special garment called a laena that draped over both shoulders and curved across the front of the body also distinguished the flamines from other ceremonial participants (Scott-Ryberg 1955, 44). 35.  On the imperial sodalitates under the Julio-Claudians, see Hoffman Lewis 1955, 110–20. 36.  For a fragment of a fasti of the sodales Flaviales Titialies, see CIL 6.1989; see also Scott 1975, 45–48.



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57). In addition, unlike political appointments that were temporary, the lifelong term of many priesthoods lent dignity to the positions. A priesthood or membership in sodalitates might also entitle a senator to participate in religiously and symbolically charged festivals such as games in Rome given by the Senate as vota for Julia’s health in 22, in which priests of the four major colleges and the Sodales Augustales had prominent roles. While the ritual evoked by the frieze in the minds of viewers was likely a bloody sacrifice by a flamen Maiores or flamen divorum, for Senators the apex may also have represented their collective religious authority and status. In a masterful analysis of senatorial religion under the empire, Várhelyi argues for a communal aspect to senatorial membership in priestly colleges. With one component of Senatorial identity associated with its traditional claim to religious expertise, in the Imperial period priestly office was an integral part of what it meant to be a senator in Rome (2010, 56–90). Though individuals held priesthoods, the Senate was represented as unified in its claim to religious authority. Visual imagery in particular, Várhelyi observes, characterized priestly roles as communal rather than individual (2010, 56–90). In large-scale representations of religious scenes with a focus on sacrifice the emperor is the “prime sacrificer” (Gordon 1990, 209–10). Consigned to a group of togate men in the background, priests are presented as a symbolic collectivity of anonymous actors. Communal, Várhelyi cautions, does not mean devoid of agency; rather senatorial identity derived from membership and religious authority inherent in the group, such as the power to grant deification. Though the emperor usually instigated the deification of a deceased predecessor, official deification was a senatorial process that required deliberation and resulted in a decree of the Senate attesting to corporate religious authority (Várhelyi 2010, 53–54). Metonymic representation of a flamen through the galerus renders the individual priest anonymous while granting ritual agency to all flamines, and perhaps implicitly to all priests of the four major colleges as well as the sodalitates affiliated with the cults of the divi. Denying individual priestly identity in the frieze, the representation of the galerus has divested the frieze of specificity avoiding individual honor.37 In terms of epideictic speech, the galerus may be considered a collective biographical snapshot of one role, either actual or aspirational, of the senatorial elite that was crucial to its collective identity. The frieze’s prominent placement on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus accentuates a fundamental function of the flamines and suggests that the role of the Senate in deification and veneration of deified emperors was more complex than simply serving as an alternative source for legitimacy of 37.  Pliny, who acknowledges Quintilian as a teacher, describes the deeply rhetorical potential of portraits to make visible one who is absent and glorify them (Nat. 35.6).

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the cults. Benefiting priesthood holders, and by extension the senatorial class, when juxtaposed with the temple inscription the frieze not only highlighted the collective agency of the Senate in implementing and sustaining the cults of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, but also contributed valuable symbolic capital to the Roman senatorial elite by concretizing their role in the timeless world of Roman state cult practice. Despite social measures that enhanced the difference between ruler and ruled, such as the Lex Iulia Theatralis that explicitly structured the hierarchy of viewership in the theater, close association of priests with the emperor simultaneously raised their social standing while unequivocally relegating them to a subordinate role of veneration.38 If Várhelyi is correct in identifying an imperial agenda aimed at appeasing senators who wanted more religious authority, such an agenda supports the view that the Flavians are explicitly recognizing priestly status and authority by visual emphasis on the community of priests, not on the emperor as a prime sacrificer or on any other individual man (2010, 77–79). At a minimum, monumental acknowledgement of priestly roles would have appealed to the senatorial elite, of whom many were invested in the success of the imperial religious program because they identified it with the traditional religious associations of their own power (Várhelyi 2010, 47). In short, the sacred context of the frieze set members of the pontifical college in a special relationship with the gods, though certainly not as close to the gods as the emperor. The frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, however, targeted viewers beyond the senatorial elite. As suggested above, viewers likely associated the objects in the frieze with ritual participants that they might have witnessed conducting sacrifice in front of the temple on one of the yearly sacrifices. Relying on the memorial process of viewers, the metonymic imagery of the frieze drew on personal experience to bring the sacrificial ritual to life in the viewer’s imagination, complete with movement, sound, and action. In this sense the viewer is an active participant complicit in mentally reenacting the bloody sacrifice. As the viewer surveys the successive objects, she reanimates the ritual in a process of mental recreation that sets the events free from their spatial framework, perhaps by rearranging them in a mental tableau independent of their fixed visual configuration (Leach 1988, 310). Admittedly, explicit recognition of the rhetorical concepts of ornament, clarity, and repetition applied to the frieze may have been available primarily only to the educated viewer, but visual cues that underscored the animation of the objects and drew on past experiences were accessible to a general audience.39 38.  On the Lex Julia Theatralis and its implementation in the Flavian amphitheater, see Rawson 1987. 39.  See, e.g., Pollini 2012, acknowledging that accessibility of meaning depends in part on the education and prior knowledge of the viewer.



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Further implicating the viewer, the architrave inscription located patronage of the temple firmly in the public realm outside of the imperial family. It served as an enduring record attesting to the role of the Senate and Roman people in the instigation, concretization, and monumentalization of the new cults. Thus, pietas towards Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus was not only in the domain of the new gods’ successor, Domitian, but was also a quality to be demonstrated by the Senate and people, an ideal echoed in the frieze reenacting public sacrifice. For Roman and non-Roman viewers the inscription ostensibly expressed the communal will of a collectivity, the Senate and people of Rome. As a closing note, in discussing potential viewer responses to the frieze on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus it is necessary to consider, at least briefly, the practical issue of visibility. Were viewers able see the frieze and discern not only the objects of the frieze, but also the intricate details that artists carved with such skill and attention? At a height of 1.022 m, the frieze was 15.074 m above the ground level of the pronaos (including the 0.703 m tall column base, 11.80 m tall column shaft, 1.667 m tall Corinthian capital, and 0.904 m tall architrave). Add to the 15.074 m an additional 4.2 m tall podium at the lowest level of the Clivus Capitolinus on the north side of the temple, and less on the south side to account for the upward sloping ground line of the Clivus Capitolinus that viewers used to approach the temple from the Roman Forum.40 It is also important to keep in mind that the frieze adorned the two long, lateral sides of the temple and that an inscription adorned the frieze on the façade. Because of the width of the pronaos of the temple of Concordia, much narrower than the width of its cella, a majority of the frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian, including at least several sequences, was visible to a viewer approaching the temple from the northeast up the Clivus Capitolinus. It was from the southwest side of the temple, however, that Romans likely had an excellent view of the frieze. There, from high up on the Clivus Capitolinus or from the paved courtyard of the Porticus Deorum Consentium, newly constructed by the Flavians after being displaced for the construction of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, viewers likely had an unobstructed view of the frieze of sacred implements.41 Conclusion The unmistakable connection between the Divi Vespasian and Titus and bloody sacrifice made in the frieze emphasized the necessity of ritual maintenance to the pax deorum and well-being of the Roman Empire. Indeed, recurring 40.  For a reconstruction of the elevation of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, see De Angeli 1992, 125–28. 41.  On the Portico of the Dei Consentes, see Nieddu 1993.

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ritual provided the ephemeral framework of action around which Roman life revolved. In the frieze from the temple, artists used hard stone to invoke the active characteristics of sacrifice such as the passage of time, movement in space, and ritual action. By representing one object associated with each act or actor integral to the sacrifice, the configuration of elements constituting the frieze of the temple functioned to concretize these ephemeral moments, spurring recall of yearly sacrifice and the meanings entailed by religious performance. Rather than interpreting this frieze solely in light of the status and virtues of the emperor standing in front of the temple, this interpretation highlights the function of the frieze in foregrounding the divinity of the gods within the temple as well implicating the roles of the Senate and people of Rome in the maintenance of the Roman imperial religious project. Bibliography Celani, Alessandro. 2016. Victima: Discorso e forma dell’uccidere. Perugia: Aguaplano. Davies, Penelope J. E. 2000. Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Angeli, Stefano. 1992. Templum Divi Vespasiani, Lavori e Studi di Archeologia. Lavori e Studi di Archeologia 18. Rome: De Luca. Esdaile, Katharine A. 1911. “The Apex or Tutulus in Roman Art.” JRS 1:212–26. Favro, Diane G. 1996. The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferroni, Angela Maria. 1993. “Concordia, Aedes.” LTUR 1:316–20. Gordon, Richard. 1990. “The Veil of Power: Emperors, Benefactors, and Sacrificers.” Pages 199–232 in Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World. Edited by Mary Beard and John A. North. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Grunow, Melanie Dara. 2002. “Architectural Images in Roman State Reliefs, Coins, and Medallions: Imperial Ritual, Ideology, and the Topography of Rome.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. Hardie, Alex. 2003. “Poetry and Politics at the Games of Domitian.” Pages 125–47 in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text. Edited by Anthony J. Boyle and William J. Dominik. Leiden: Brill. Hoffman Lewis, Martha W. 1955. The Official Priests of Rome Under the Julio-Claudians: A Study of the Nobility from 44 B.C. to 68 A.D. PMAAR 16. Rome: American Academy in Rome. Hope, Valerie. 2000. “Fighting for Identity: The Funerary Commemoration of Italian Gladiators.” Pages 93–113 in The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy. Edited by Alison Cooley. BICSSup 73. London: Institute of Classical Studies. Innes, D.C. 2011. “The Panegyricus and Rhetorical Theory.” Pages 67–84 in Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World. Edited by Paul Roche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirchner, Roderich. 2007. “Elocutio: Latin Prose Style.” Pages 181–94 in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric. Edited by William Dominik and Jon Hall. BCAW. Malden, MA: Blackwell.



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La Follette, Laetitia. 2011–2012. “Parsing Piety: The Sacred Still Life in Roman Relief Sculpture.” MAAR 56–57:15–35. Lamp, Kathleen. 2009. “The Ara Pacis Augustae: Visual Rhetoric in Augustus’ Principate.” RSQ 39:1–24. Laurence, Ray, and Christopher Smith. 1995–1996. “Ritual, Time and Power in Ancient Rome.” ARP 6:133–152. Lausberg, Heinrich. 1998. Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study. Edited by David E. Orton and R. Dean Anderson. Translated by M.T. Bliss and A. Jansen. Leiden: Brill. Leach, Eleanor W. 1988. The Rhetoric of Space: Literary and Artistic Representations of Landscape in Republic and Augustan Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Meyers, Gretchen E. 2005. “Vitruvius and the Origins of Roman Spatial Rhetoric.” MAAR 50:67–86. Nieddu, G. 1993. “Dei Consentes, Aedes.” LTUR 2:9–10. Packer, James E. 2001. The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments in Brief. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pensabene, Patrizio, and Francesca Caprioli. 2009. “La decorazione architettonica d’età flavia.” Pages 110–15 in Divus Vespasianus: Il bimillenario dei Flavi. Edited by Filippo Coarelli. Milan: Electa. Pobjoy, Mark. 2000. “Building Inscriptions in Republic Italy: Euergetism, Responsibility, and Civic Virtue.” Pages 77–92 in The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy. Edited by Alison Cooley. BICSSup 73. London: Institute of Classical Studies. Pollini, John. 2012. Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome. OSCC 48. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Price, Simon. 1984. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. CSSCA 110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rawson, Elizabeth. 1987. “Discrima Ordinum: The Lex Julia Theatralis.” PBSR 55:83–114. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rüpke, Jörg. 2011. The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History and the Fasti. Translated by David M. B. Richardson. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Translation of Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: Die Geschichte der Repräsentation und religiösen Qualifikation von Zeit in Rom. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. Salzman, Michele Renee. 1990. On Roman Time: The Codex-calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity. Transformation of the Classical Heritage 17. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scheid, John. 2016. The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome. Translated by Clifford Ando. Empire and After. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Scott, Kenneth. 1975. The Imperial Cult Under the Flavians. Ancient Religion and Mythology. New York: Arno. Scott-Ryberg, Inez. 1955. Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art. MAAR 22. Rome: American Academy in Rome. Siebert, Anne Viola. 1999. Instrumenta Sacra: Untersuchungen zu römischen Opfer-, Kultund Priestergeräten. RVV 44. Berlin: de Gruyter. Tapia, John Edward. 2009. Rhetoric and Centers of Power in the Greco-Roman World: From Homer to the Fall of Rome. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

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Temmerman, Koen de. 2010. “Ancient Rhetoric as a Hermeneutical Tool for the Analysis of Characterization in Narrative Literature.” Rhetorica 28:23–51. Torelli, Mario. 1987. “Culto Imperiale e Spazi Urbani in Età Flavia: Dai Rilievi Hartwig all’Arco di Tito.” Pages 563–82 in L’Urbs: Espace Urbain et Histoire. Ier Siècle av. J.C.–IIIe Siècle apl J.C. Actes du Colloque International, Rome, 8–12 mai 1985. CÉFR 98. Rome: École française de Rome. Vanggaard, Jens H. 1988. The Flamen: A Study in the History and Sociology of Roman Religion. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Várhelyi, Zsuzsanna. 2010. The Religions of Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and the Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Howard, ed. 2003. Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies. New York: Kluwer Academic. Zanker, Paul. 1988. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Jerome Lectures 16. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Section 4 Sites and Structures: Gods, Men, and Cultural Identities

Chapter Twelve Eric Moore

Channeling Identity: The Fountain of Glauke in Corinth and Jacob’s Well in John 4

W

hat did a water source contribute to a community’s identity in Mediterranean antiquity? Many have observed the perennial importance of fresh water in the ancient landscape (Cole 2004, 10–11, 33–35, 194; Dillon 1997, 113–27).1 Alongside their more pedestrian functions, freshwater sites such as springs frequently provided a point of contact between human and divine, manifested in ritual activity such as at the spring in the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron (Cole 2004, 192–94), the spring in the Caruso Cave (Larson 2001, 251–57), and the Sacred Spring in Corinth (Hill 1964; Steiner 1992; Sanders 2010). Yet, the symbolic potency of freshwater and its related sources was not restricted to ritual activities, particularly in the Roman period. For example, Brenda Longfellow has demonstrated how fountain complexes could showcase the prestige and influence of their Roman elite sponsors (Longfellow 2011). By the same token Betsey Robinson has illustrated how fountains in Corinth, evolving through Greek and Roman periods, contributed to that city’s character and renown (Robinson 2001, 2005, 2011).2 This paper considers the capacity of water sources for channeling identity in two different communities within the Roman Empire. The water sources compared are the Fountain of Glauke in Corinth and the treatment of Jacob’s Well in Samaria in John 4.3 Focusing on the exploitation of traditions and spatial context, I assess each one’s contribution to the identity of its respective

I wish to thank Sandy Blakely and Billie Jean Collins for inviting me to contribute to this volume. Appreciation is also due to the anonymous reviewers who offered many incisive suggestions; needless to say, persisting errors are my own. 1.  Wisdom traditions in the Bible exploit the symbolism of water/springs; see Prov 4:21; 5:15, 18; 6:11; 8:24, 28; 9:18; 10:11; 13:14; 14:27; 16:22; 18:4; 25:26; Sir 24:21. 2.  Corinth was famed for being “well-watered” (Simonides 720–723; Plut., Mor. 870e; Pausanias, Descr. 2.3.5); while water sources like the Peirene and Glauke fountains, the Sacred Spring, and the Fountain of Lamps (Wiseman 1970; Jordan 1994) contributed to this renown, so did the city’s countless other springs, wells, cisterns, and aqueducts (Landon 2003). 3.  I am indebted to Robinson’s work on Glauke (2005). Pausanias is our earliest source naming the fountain as the place where the Corinthian princess “threw herself … [to be cured from] the drugs of Medea” (Descr. 2.3.6 [Jones, LCL]); other, earlier accounts such as those of Euripides (Med.) and Apollodorus (Bibl.) locate the princesses’ death at the palace.

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community. I argue that the messages communicated by the water sources entail alternative responses to Roman-ordered environments. Let us first say something about the contexts of the communities for whom the Fountain of Glauke and Jacob’s Well in John 4 possessed meaning. Corinth was founded as Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis in 44 BCE, nearly one hundred years after the Roman general Mummius destroyed the former Greek city as part of a campaign against the Achaean League.4 Public inscriptions, buildings, and monuments testified to the colony’s Roman orientation.5 At the same time, in laying out the colony planners appropriated preexisting structures from the city’s past, such as the temple of Apollo, Peirene Fountain, and the Fountain of Glauke (Bookidis 2005).6 In so doing they displayed a sensibility to Greek cultural achievements, lending weight to a possible connection between the colonists and the Greek East (Millis 2010).7 Our concern, however, is for how the singular Fountain of Glauke contributed to the identity of what was after all a Roman colony. John’s community, though difficult to locate with precision, also found its reality circumscribed by Rome (Cassidy 1992, 3–16).8 Probably these Jesus followers lived in a city such as Ephesus, where evidence of imperial influence over civic religion and politics was in abundance (Rogers 1991; Friesen 1993; Scherrer 1995; Carter 2008, 58–64).9 Against the backdrop of Roman hegemony, John presents readers with a challenge: embrace the implications of following Jesus as lord.10 The narrative setting of Judea, due to its recent history of Roman rule, was a propos for John’s contesting portrait of Jesus. Judea became a client 4.  Mummius subdued Corinth in 146 BCE; see Pausanias, Descr. 2.1.2; 7.15–16; Strabo 8.4.8; 8.6.23; Valleius Paterculus 1.13.1; Cicero, Agr. 2.87. The total destruction implied in many of these accounts is exaggerated (Gebhard and Dickie 2003); physical evidence comprising pottery, road ruts, buildings constructed from reused blocks, and above all inscriptions suggests the presence of residents “engaged in trade and commerce” (277). 5.  See below for a discussion of Roman structures on the forum; on Corinth’s Latin inscriptions, see West (1931) and relevant portions of Kent (1966); Gebhard and Dickie (2003, 270–77) discuss a few critical Latin inscriptions relevant to the period between Corinth’s destruction and refounding as a Roman colony in 44 BCE. 6.  Romano (2003) argues that Rome intended to send settlers to the vanquished city well before the colony’s actual founding; he cites the lex agrarian of 111 BCE and probable evidence of limitatio prior to 44 BCE. 7.  Millis argues to this effect based on the use of Latin in formal contexts (e.g., public inscriptions) and Greek in informal ones (e.g., graffiti, pottery marks). 8.  Palestinian traditions are evident in the gospel (see Keener 2003, 171–232); however, the final form of John was designed for Jesus followers living outside Judea. See von Wahlde’s (2009) ambitious attempt to sort out various traditions according to social setting. 9. Interpreters have often favored an Ephesian provenance based on patristic references (see Haenchen 1984, 6–18) as well as thematic similarities between John and Revelation. See the cautious assessments to this effect by Witherington 1995; Keener 2003; still more cautious, van Tilborg (1996) and Carter (2008) merely consider how John’s gospel might have been read in Ephesus. 10.  Carter (2008, 68–82) convincingly argues that the John envisaged accommodation, not persecution, as the chief threat facing Jesus followers in this environment.



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kingdom of Rome following Pompey’s siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE (Josephus, B.J. 1.138–58). The client king at the time of Jesus’s birth was Herod, who expressed his allegiance to Rome through building programs that produced, inter alia, imperial cult temples in Sebaste (Samaria) and Caesarea Maritima (Josephus, B.J. 1.403, 414; Hänlein-Schäfer 1985, 26–32; 201–3). Later in 6 CE the region came under the direct rule of Rome as the province of Judea. Samaria, the setting of John 4, also was incorporated into the province, adding to its reputation as a colonized territory (cf. 2 Kgs 17:24).11 Despite encountering resistance to its rule, Rome solidified its hold over Judea with the quashing of the Jewish revolt of 66–73 CE—sealed with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. In light of this history, the setting of John’s narrative, like that of his community, presupposes the presence of Rome.12 How does the evangelist’s treatment of Jacob’s Well construe the identity of Jesus followers in such a context? The Fountain of Glauke Before considering its intersection with mythological traditions and its spatial context, we must first take stock of Glauke’s appearance (see fig. 1). Cut from an oolitic limestone dune which also yielded raw material for the archaic Temple of Apollo, roughly eighty meters to the northeast (Hayward 2003), the fountain featured a tripartite basin supplied by initially four reservoirs. A series of steps at the north led to a rock-cut covered porch providing access to a parapet, over which water from the basins below was drawn. A simple Doric façade, now mostly missing, greeted the fountain’s thirsty visitors. Since Glauke lacked a natural water source of its own, it drew its resource from elsewhere; the discovery of pipes running downhill from the south suggest a source for its water, at least during its Roman period (Elderkin 1910; Hill 1964; Landon 2003; Robinson 2005). The fountain’s date of origin—whether during the Greek or Roman period of Corinth—is debated.13 Incontrovertible, however, is that the Roman colony’s 11.  See below the remarks on John 4:17–18. Purportedly, Assyria settled the region with peoples from other nations after exiling many of its inhabitants. Samaria gained semiautonomy for itself in the Persian period, rehabilitating Shechem and Mount Gerizim (Magen 2008). In the Hellenistic Period John Hyracanus destroyed both Shechem and the Mount Gerizim complex (Josephus, A.J. 13.254–57; B.J. 1.62–3; Magen 2008; Campbell 1993, 1354), bringing to a head a history of dispute between Judea and Samaria (Ezra 4:1–16; Neh 2:19–20; 4:1–23; 6:1–19; Magin, Misgav, and Tsfania 2004, 10–12). Prejudices between the peoples continued to flourish in Roman times (see Josephus’s perspective on the “Sidonians” at Shechem (A.J. 12.257–64; cf. 2 Maccabees 6:2). 12.  Rome’s presence is evident in the gospel’s depiction of characters; not only are the characters “reflective of Rome’s hierarchical structure” (Carter 2008, 67), but those opposed to Jesus, such as the Jewish authorities, come across as “imperial agents” (Thatcher 2009, 52). 13.  Williams and Zervos (1984, 97–101) argue for an early Roman dating; Robinson (2005, 129– 30) presses instead for a dating in the Greek period on the basis of the fountain’s distinctive chisel work, pre-Roman mortar inside the reservoirs, and the orientation of Glauke along its axes. Pfaff

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Figure 1. Fountain of Glauke; image reproduced from  Hill 1964, Corinth 1.6, fig. 144, courtesy of American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations.

planners envisioned a place for the fountain in Corinth’s civic space. Tiles laid in front of the fountain aided access to the Sikyon Road (Hill 1964; Robinson 2005), and not far to the east—rounding Temple C—one entered the city’s forum. Because we treat these issues of spatial context below, it is not necessary to linger on them here. We simply observe the significance of Roman Corinth’s incorporation of a fountain such as Glauke, hewed out of indigenous limestone.14 Beyond satisfying archaizing sensibilities, Glauke’s cavernous appearance contributed to the fountain possessing a numinous quality frequently associated with features of the natural landscape such as grottoes (Robinson 2005). A charged atmosphere of this sort meant that the fountain, even without a history of cultic activity, resembled the type of place where divine-human encounters might occur.15 Consequently, as Robinson argues, the fountain would have had (2003) suggests that the fountain’s (terracotta) pipeline—most resembling those used in the Hellenistic and Roman periods—reflects “later alteration” to an already existing structure (134). 14.  Constant Roman quarrying of the native dune reduced Glauke’s size—originally “at least 1.5–2 meters above its present level” (Hayward 2003, 25); Hill [Elderkin] (1964) puts the overall dimensions of the resultant cube-like fountain at 15 x 14 m. 15.  See Cole (2004) for the gods’ association with the natural landscape and for the concept of border spaces. Regarding intentionality in the creation of numinous spaces, examples abound. Designers in Hellenistic Rhodes incorporated artificial grottoes into their acropolis (Rice 1995), and Augustus embroidered the all-important Palatine Hill in Rome with springs and grottoes (Longfellow 2011, 20); note also the Hadrianic Larissa Nymphaeum in Argos (Longfellow 2011, 113–19). Especially relevant is the local Peirene Fountain at the northeastern end of the Corinthian forum, which exhibited a numinous atmosphere of its own owing to the structure’s overall cave-like appearance and that of its individual water basins (Robinson 2005, 117–18). In contrast to Glauke, renovations made to Peirene were quite extensive over its Greek and Roman histories and included the addition of a two-story



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a legitimizing effect on the colony and its nearby civic spaces (Robinson 2005, 139). Thus, even though planners’ adoption of Glauke offered support of Roman cultural values, as argued below, it did so while tapping into a broader symbolism accruing from the fountain’s (apparent) antiquity, connection to the land, and numinous aura. Appropriating Traditions Roman Corinth was also able to capitalize on the mythological traditions evoked by the fountain’s name, particularly those with a local reference point. Princess Glauke was the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. Through the nature of her death, however, she was tragically linked with the infamous Medea. Medea traditions manifest a variation and complexity throughout the art and literature of the Greek and Roman periods, and a full treatment is beyond the scope of this paper (see Clauss and Johnston 1997; Dyck 1989).16 Relevant for our purpose is Medea’s arrival at Corinth in the company of Jason. The hero’s betrothal to the land’s princess enraged his companion, who proceeded to engineer the wouldbe bride’s death (Euripides, Med. 1159–1199; Apollodorus, Bibl. 1.9.28; Seneca, Med. 740–843). Early popularizes of the story such as Euripides neglected to name the princess, leaving it to later writers such as Apollodorus (Bibl. 1.9.28) and Pausanias (Descr. 2.3.6) to identify the victim as Glauke (Robinson 2005, 133).17 The christening of the fountain “Glauke” dovetailed with this emerging identification of Medea’s victim. But why memorialize Medea’s quest for revenge, and particularly the gruesome end it spelled for Glauke, Creon the king, and even Medea’s own children? Several benefits derived from the fountain’s allusion to the Medea and Glauke episode. At the most basic level, it allowed the population of the Roman colony to showcase its knowledge of the widespread mythical story. The Roman context of this expression is made more intelligible by the growing popularity of Medea’s Corinthian exploits in art and literature of the Roman period.18 By naming and embracing the fountain the planners at Corinth capitalized on this screen wall; ground-level parapet with arcade; Doric half-columns; and a wall enclosing the space before the fountain. In the second century parts of the Peirene fountain complex were redecorated in marble (Hill 1964; Robinson 2005; Robinson 2011). 16.  Among the most well-known treatments of Medea are Euripides’s Med., Apollonius Rhodius’s Argon., and Seneca’s Med. Graf (1997) parses out the episodic nature of the Medea cycle, seen across the works of Hesiod, Apollonius Rhodius, Dionysius Scytobrachion, Euripides, Herodotus, Pindar, and the like: (1) The Colchian story; (2) The Iolcan story; (3) The Corinthian story; (4) The Athenian story; (5) The Median story. 17.  Other writers identify the princess as Creusa; see, e.g., Ovid, Her. 12; Seneca, Med.; Propertius 2.16.20; Hyginus, Fab. 25. 18.  See Robinson (2005, 135–38), who highlights not only literary works like Seneca’s tragedy, but also artistic depictions on second century sarcophagi and in Timomachos’s famed painting.

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wider trend in their local context, appropriating the Greek traditions as part of their own cultural heritage.19 But might there be yet another, ideological benefit gained from recalling Glauke’s death at Medea’s hands? I contend that the secondary allusion to Medea in the fountain’s naming represents a negative commentary on the type of figure she embodied in the Roman imagination. True, the fountain’s naming capitalized on a single, local episode in the Medea cycle. But the very nature of that episode—death by poisonous dress—would have activated other aspects of Medea’s negative persona. Roman literature was replete with such portrayals of Medea. These include allusions to the figure’s poisonous arts (Horace, Epod. 3, 5. Ovid, Metam. 7.179–293; Seneca, Med. 670–840) and (barbaric) Black Sea provenance (Horace, Epod. 5.20; Martial 10.35.5; Ovid, Metam. 7.296, 348). For example, writing of Medea’s contemplated killing of her children, Ovid describes her as a “barbarian” with “crime in her eyes” (Tr. 526 [Wheeler, LCL]). Apuleius tags her as a witch who “obtained of King Creon but one day’s respite before her departure” and then “did burn in the flames of the bride’s garland all his house, him and his daughter [Glauke/Creusa]” (Metam. 1.10 [Gaselee, LCL]). In these two passages Medea’s offenses in Corinth are intertwined with her distant origins and her sorceress’s craft, respectively. So, too, the Fountain of Glauke was likely to have reminded Corinthian colonists of Medea the foreign witch. But the fountain’s allusion to Medea is not left dangling. It raises her specter only to domesticate it within the new context of Roman Corinth. Such framing was far from an isolated phenomenon in Roman-era architecture and city planning. For example, the sculptured reliefs spanning Aphrodisias’s Sebasteion projected images of the imperial family paired with, among other subjects, female personifications of foreign territories. The emperor Claudius subdues Britannia in one, while Nero brings Armenia to her knees in yet another (Smith 1987; 1988; Bradley 2004, 313). From a later period, Trajan’s column in Rome with its friezes conveyed a similar ideology—mastery over foreign peoples—through its depiction of conquered Dacians (Zanker 2012, 79, 84–86). While Corinth’s Fountain of Glauke lacked the narrative reliefs, and thus specificity, characterizing these other architectural landmarks, it nevertheless communicated a similar sentiment about the proper ordering of the imperial world. Part of its embedded message concerned Rome’s mastery of barbarian peoples, with the princess’s murderer, Medea, serving as proxy for the negative other—“uncivilized” peoples and territories such as Colchis. Of course, the fountain’s ability to appropriate mythological traditions in the ways suggested depended on its spatial context. 19.  This proposition is inherently plausible if many of the colonists were freedmen with a previous connection to the Greek East (Millis 2010).



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(Re)Configuring Spatial Context Proximity to the ancient and contemporary civic milieu enabled the Roman Fountain of Glauke to translocate symbols from the one context to the other, redefining their significance. The preeminent spatial context in the new colony was of course the Roman forum. By adopting the rock-cut fountain, colony planners in effect related it to this civic center. For, though the Fountain of Glauke was situated outside the forum to the west, two man-made features linked it to this religious, political, and commercial sphere. First, the well-traveled Sikyon Road, leading into the forum, ran by the front of the fountain.20 Second, Temple C’s relationship to the water source reinforced the latter’s connection to the forum. Though this first century temple lacks a definitive identification, it enjoyed a prominent place on the western side of the forum. Roman planners, in positioning the temple’s western temenos wall up against the east face of the fountain, and aligning its perimeter wall with the fountain on the north (Hill 1964; Robinson 2005), solidified Glauke’s own place in relation to the forum. An effect of the connection outlined here is that the forum acted as an interpretive framework for the aforementioned symbols evoked by Glauke. Above all, Glauke’s association with the nearby forum set it within a readily identifiable Roman context. Besides featuring places of commerce, the forum teemed with Roman political and religious symbols, such as the Julian Basilica with its statues of imperial family members at the eastern end of the forum, as well as the temples of Fortuna, Clarion Apollo, and Venus (Spaeth 2011). Signs of the imperial cult further contributed to this Roman orientation. The conspicuously situated altar base inscribed by the Augustales attests to such veneration of the emperor (Walbank 1996; Laird 2010). And Temple E—south of Temple C—likely served as the center for the imperial cult (Bookidis 2005).21 Finally, Corinth’s hosting of imperial games demonstrated the city’s pride in its connections with Rome (Spawforth 1994; Walbank 1996).22 Taken as a whole, these emblems of Roman cultural values populating the forum would have influenced the perception of a nearby structure such as the Fountain of Glauke. But in order to fully appreciate how Glauke might have been experienced in this broader Roman space, it is first helpful to recall an older spatial context, redolent of ritual concerns. Pausanias observes that near the Roman Odeum, northwest of Glauke, there stood a μνῆμα (monument) for Medea’s children 20.  See introductory remarks above. Longfellow (2011) observes that the Fountain of Glauke resembled the Fountain of Orpheus in Rome (date uncertain), which also lay alongside a busy road; both fountains would have invited “passersby to pause [and reflect] as they make the transition from one … Roman region to the next” (23). 21.  For an alternative proposal that the archaic temple of Apollo doubled as a site for the imperial cult, see Walbank (1996). 22.  The Roman colony of Corinth also ran the reconstituted Isthmian Games; see Gebhard 2005.

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Figure 2. Early first century forum, Corinth; image reproduced courtesy of C. K. Williams.

Mermerus and Pheres; he then rehearses a version of the myth indicting the Corinthians rather than Medea for killing the bearers of poisonous gifts.23 Owing to the illegality of the murders, Pausanias continues, “the young babies of the Corinthians were destroyed … until … at the command of the oracle, yearly sacrifices were established in their honor and a Δεῖμα [Terror] was set up” (Descr. 2.3.7 [Jones, LCL]).24 The μνῆμα and Δεῖμα, though inspiring debate as to their precise identity and location (Pache 2004, 42–43), parallel the existence of a cult for dead children in the vicinity of Greek Corinth.25 Distinguishing the connecting threads between this local cult and the Medea myth is a notoriously complex enterprise. Sarah Iles Johnston argues that “the story of Corinthian Medea began 23.  Cf. the scholium at line 264 of Euripides’s Med. 24.  Pache (2004) notes how in “ancient Greek accounts of violent death, the angry spirits of the deceased often wreak havoc on their killers” (22); she interprets the Corinthian ritual as a reenactment of the killing of children, whereby the children symbolically atone for the city (45). 25.  As to the location, Scranton (1941), prefers a sanctuary in Corinth, while Johnston (1997) focuses attention on the cult of Hera Akraia at Perachora. Johnston (1997) also argues that Greek Corinth had two separate rituals related to children, conflated in later accounts such as Pausanias’s; she likewise suggests that the Corinthian tradition conflates two Medea figures: the Medea of Argonaut fame and a locally worshiped Medea/Hera divinity. At nearby Isthmia the mystery cult of Palaemon-Melikertes honored the perished and deified son of Ino (Gebhard 2005); see further Broneer’s (1971, 1973, 1977) excavation reports. For a fuller treatment of child heroes and their cult in Greek contexts, see Pache (2004).



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as a mythic reflex of the local cult of Hera, meant to demonstrate the effects of Hera’s neglect [to protect children during childbirth] or hatred,” and only later developed into the familiar version holding Medea responsible for her children’s murder (Johnston 1997, 15). At the very least the argument illuminates the overlapping concerns in the Medea of myth and the Corinthian cult involving dead children, shedding light on a Mediterranean-wide preoccupation with infant mortality and belief in reproductive demons. Seen thus, Pausanias’s δεῖμα was an apotropaic object representing the very “evil it was intended to ward off” (Johnston 1997, 56). In the end, absence of corroborating evidence encourages skepticism about Pausanias’s μνῆμα and δεῖμα. Nevertheless, by tapping into ancient concerns about reproduction and infancy—and a local ritual instantiation—Pausanias’s report enriches our understanding of the ideological impact of Glauke within its Roman spatial context. While the Fountain of Glauke recalled these concerns, the Roman presence headlined by the forum signaled discontinuity with the former means of circumscribing civic identity. Pausanias’s remark is suggestive: “after Corinth was laid waste by the Romans and the old Corinthians were wiped out, the new settlers broke the custom of offering those sacrifices to the sons of Medea, nor do their children cut their hair for them or wear black clothes” (Descr. 2.3.8 [Jones, LCL]). The more complex reality undergirding Pausanias’s report—Roman colonists put an end to Greek Corinth’s ritual practices—is that the new Roman spatial context reframed the concerns formerly articulated in cult. Roman hegemony communicated in the aforementioned monuments and temples to emperors and gods was sufficient substitution for the ancient appeasement rituals, just as it was capable of taming the barbarian “other” represented by Medea. Put simply, the Fountain of Glauke’s spatial context subordinated past traditions and practices to a Roman symbolic world. Jacob’s Well (John 4:4–42) Visited by Christian pilgrims at least since the mid-fourth century CE, the water source known as Jacob’s Well is located in a ravine between Mount Ebal and Gerizim, on the outskirts of modern-day Nablus—only a short distance from Tel Balata, the probable site of ancient Shechem.26 According to biblical tradition Jacob, after parting ways with his brother, Esau, came to Shechem and bought the land around his camp, consecrating it to his god (Gen 33:18–20). The patriarch’s name would have had a legitimizing effect for those living in the surrounding environs, an effect which is transferred to the well in John 4. The shaft identified today as Jacob’s Well measures just over two meters wide and reaches a depth of 26.  See n. 47, below, for a history of pilgrimage to the site. John locates the water source outside Sychar, perhaps modern-day ‘Askar (4:5).

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Figure 3. Jacob's Well; image from www.BibleLandPictures .com / Alamy Stock Photo

around thirty meters, the upper portion being lined with masonry and the lower cut into rock (see fig. 3). A puteal protects the mouth of the well, where it resides within a partially restored church on grounds owned by the Greek Orthodox Church (Stefanovic 1992; cf. Bull 1975). The well’s water, accumulating from rain and underground sources, would have been visible testimony to God’s favor, which John 4 exploits to good effect.27 Jesus’s interaction with the Samaritan woman transpires relatively early in his ministry, when he stops for a respite at Jacob’s Well in Samaria, en route from Judea to Galilee (4:3). This stopover sets the stage for the ensuing dialogue, during which Jesus describes his gift of life to the woman and identifies himself as messiah (4:7–26), disclosures he characterizes separately to his disciples as belonging to the work for which his father commissioned him (4:34–38). Jesus’s 27.  Those slaking their thirst—or reading the narrative!—would have recalled biblical traditions celebrating God’s provision of water; e.g., during the wilderness wandering (see Exod 15:23; Num 20:2–13//Exod 17:1–6; Num 21:17).



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identity then becomes known to the villagers of nearby Sychar, first through the Samaritan woman’s testimony and then their own subsequent exposure to Jesus (4:27–30; 39–42). Throughout the account the well remains a critical reference point, beginning with the comparison between its water (4:10) and the superior “living water” offered by Jesus (4:10).28 The question is what message does it convey to John’s community? Appropriating Traditions The force John’s presentation of Jesus would have had for his community hinges to a significant degree on the well’s patriarchal heritage. Jesus’s offer of “living water” (4.10), after first meeting with incredulity (“Sir you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” [4:11]), elicits a comparison to Jacob: “Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock” (4:12).29 Traditions about the wider setting of the well help elucidate this comparison. According to Genesis, “Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem [Tell Balatah] … [and] bought … the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent … [where] he erected an altar” (33:18–20; cf. 48:22). While there is no mention of a well in the passage, wells figure prominently elsewhere in the patriarchal narratives, symbolizing divine favor in addition to provision.30 These wider traditions bestow a biblical coherence on the Samaritan woman’s association of the well with Jacob. Thus, John’s readers would have perceived that the well provided Samaritans with a tangible link to the patriarch (Jacob “gave us the well” [4:12]), and with it divine legitimation. But John’s account depicts the superiority of Jesus to the Jacob traditions. This is typical of the Fourth Gospel, which often compares its protagonist favorably to luminaries such as Moses and Abraham.31 Notably, the narrative in John 4 does not take direct issue with the well’s patriarchal heritage but rather 28.  On the symbolism of water in John more generally, see Jones 1997. 29.  Unless otherwise noted, biblical translations are from the English Standard Version. 30.  Neyrey (1979, 421–24) postulates a traveling well tradition associated with Jacob and the patriarchs (cf. 1 Cor. 10:4); he proposes that the casting of the well as a “gift” in these traditions should inform interpretation of Jesus and the Samaritan woman’s comments (4.10, 12). Isaac (Gen 24:10–67), Jacob (Gen 29:1–30), and Moses (Exod 2:15–22) all met their future wives at wells. Successful resolution to conflicts over wells between Abraham and Isaac, respectively, and an identically named king Abimelech (see Gen 21:25–34; 26:15; 26:17–22; 26:23–25) led to Beersheba’s signifying the surety of God’s pledge to his people. 31.  See 1:17; 1:45; 4:44; 5:39; 5:45–46; 7:19; 8:56–59; 13:38–41; cf. Neyrey 2009: “The thrust of the … [comparisons] suggests not only that Jesus replaces, Jacob, Abraham, and Moses vis-à-vis God’s revelation, but that an absolute claim is made on his behalf: he is greater than all of these in that he supplants them with new revelation” (107). Carter (2008, 93–118) argues that Jesus’s superior antiquity (John 1:1–3; cf. 17:24) invigorates a critique of those using figures such as Abraham and Moses as a way of justifying accommodation to Hellenistic and Roman culture.

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relies on its potency to press home the eminence of Jesus, demonstrated through the superiority of his gift. In contrast to the water one receives through lowering a bucket into the well (φρέαρ), Jesus’s offering becomes its own “spring of water” (πηγὴ ὕδατος) in the recipient, welling up (ἁλλομένου) to eternal life (vv. 13–14). Insofar as it can be internalized and continually accessed, Jesus’s gift of living water outstrips the value of water drawn from Jacob’s well.32 By extension, Jesus offers legitimation even more potent than that provided by the patriarch Jacob (4:12). The political dimensions of Jesus’s gift, along with their implications for John’s community, come to light with the narrative’s allusion to further traditions. These concern Samaria’s history as a colonized territory and emerge via Jesus’s diagnosis of the Samaritan woman’s condition: “you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (4:18). The reference to five husbands along with a contemporary extramarital dalliance functions as an allegory for Samaria’s submission to various peoples under Assyria (2 Kgs 17:24; Josephus, A.J. 9.288) and the present experience of Roman hegemony (Koester 1990, 675).33 The special knowledge required to render this assessment of the woman’s/Samaria’s condition earns Jesus recognition as a prophet (4:19).34 But just as critical, the narrative offers an implied contrast between the rule of colonizing powers and Jesus, whose gift promises a more fulfilling life. Thus, though the countercultural nature of Jesus’s promise reaches new heights in the subsequent portions of John 4 (see below), it is already implicated here in the comparisons offered. Jesus ought to be the sole source of legitimation and life for the evangelist’s community. What John envisages such loyalty to entail for these Jesus followers, living in the shadow of Rome, emerges when Jesus takes up the spatial dimensions of worship. (Re)Configuring Spatial Context Jacob’s Well was ideally suited to foreground questions of community identity, located as it was just east of ancient Shechem, along land routes linking Samaria to Jerusalem.35 Yet in John 4 the spatial context of most interest to John is a 32.  Though qualified by ignorance (O’Day 1983), the Samaritan woman’s plea registers the same conclusion: “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water” (4:15). The villagers’ acclaim in 4:42 confirms the political implications of Jesus’s gift of life (see below). 33.  Jesus’s privileged knowledge is integral to John’s characterization of his protagonist (1:47–48; 2:24–25; 17:25–26); more generally, knowledge is a ubiquitous theme in the gospel (1:18; 7:26–27, 41; 8:14–19; 14:4, 7, 9, 15, 17; 17:3, 25–26). 34.  A full analysis of the interesting comparison between the Fountain of Glauke and John 4 along the lines of gender is beyond the scope of this paper; in both cases depiction of the female figure(s)— Glauke/Medea and the Samaritan woman—is used to authenticate a particular ordering of civic experience and ideology. 35.  Judean accounts naturally tended to downplay the permanent significance of Shechem (Hjelm



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Figure 4. Mount Gerizim, view of the sacred precinct; image reproduced from NEAEHL Supplementary Vol. 5, courtesy of Israel Exploration Society.

cultic one. The Samaritan woman introduces this subject when, after acclaiming Jesus as prophet, she remarks, “our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (4:20). With these words John places a mental map before his readers and introduces the ramifications of Jesus for space-centered worship.36 John offers misplaced preoccupation with Mount Gerizim as a foil for the worship he desires of his community. First, a word about the temple signaled by the Samaritan woman. Combined evidence of pottery, coins, burnt animal bones, and radioactive dating indicates that the Mount Gerizim temple originated in the mid-fifth century BCE, and was joined by the building of a neighboring city in the fourth century (see fig. 4), after Alexander’s destruction of Samaria (Magen 2008, 1742; Magin, Misgav, and Tsfania 2004, 9). The six-chambered gates and open courtyards inside the precinct wall resemble Ezekiel’s visions of the Jerusalem temple (Ezek 42; 46:22–24), seeming to corroborate Josephus’s assertion that the 2000, 146–49). Josephus asserts that Shechem was a place of refuge for anyone “accused by those of Jerusalem of having eaten things common or of having broken the Sabbath, or of any other crime of the like nature.” Such an individual “fled away to the Shechemites, and said that he was accused unjustly” (A.J. 11.8.7 [Thackeray, LCL]). Ambivalence about Shechem is further reflected in disagreement over whether the patriarchs’ bones were buried in Shechem (cf. Acts 7:16) or Hebron (Testament of Joseph 2.6); see Hjelm 2004, 197–99. 36.  Note the pointed “this mountain.”

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Gerizim temple was built in imitation of its southern counterpart (A.J. 13.256; Magin, Misgav, and Tsfania 2004, 9). Rebuilding and expansion began at city and temple, respectively, during Antiochus III’s reign but this time followed a Greek architectural course. John Hyracanus destroyed the temple during Hasmonean rule, so that by Jesus’s day it lay in ruins.37 However, Mount Gerizim continued to be the fulcrum for Samaritan political and religious identity, as evidenced by the attempt to locate Moses’s vessels there, which the Roman prefect Pilate’s prevented by force of arms (Josephus, A.J. 18.85–89). The clash, together with the subsequent Samaritan clamor against Pilate, underscored the tensions generated by Roman rule over the region and its sacred site. It is probable that the Samaritan woman’s comments (4:20) would have recalled for John’s readers much of the foregoing troubled history of Mount Gerizim, along with relevant political fault lines. Yet far from a rallying cry, the woman’s reverence for Mount Gerizim embodied the antithesis of John’s approach to the sacred. John aims not to endorse a particular sacred space but rather to delocalize cult. Responding to the Samaritan woman’s assertion, Jesus forecasts that “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (4:21). Thus, he does not prioritize the Jerusalem temple over Mount Gerizim, as might be expected of the Judean, but altogether revises conventional notions of territoriality and the sacred. As Neyrey puts it, Jesus “declassifies the entire system represented by a temple and so logically abolishes control of ‘this mountain’ and ‘Jerusalem’” (Neyrey 2009, 70 [emphasis original]). This move is consistent with Jesus’s perspective in the Fourth Gospel that the world and its representative systems have become estranged from God (Koester 1990, 668–69). For Mount Gerizim John’s readers were meant to understand other such places of estrangement in their own environment.38 As Jesus followers, living in the hour inaugurated by their lord (4:23a), they are to resist identifying with these spaces (cf. 4:20; Carter 2008, 82).39 Rather, they ought to cultivate a different mode of worship altogether, “in spirit and truth,” as a prerequisite to becoming “true worshipers” (4:23).40 This is the only compelling response to a world under the thumb of Rome.

37.  The mountain was repurposed for a temple of Zeus during Hadrian’s reign, completed during the Severan dynasty; it was not until the time of the Crusades that Samaritans were able to reinitiate official cult sacrifices atop Mount Gerizim (Magen 2008). 38.  Including fountains and wells! 39.  This implicit exhortation is undergird by John’s depiction of Jesus elsewhere in the Gospel—a character who, along with his kingdom, does not belong to this world (8:23; 18:36); the same reality obtains for those true followers of Jesus (17:9–21). 40.  See Brown (1966, 180) on the dualism inherent to the contrast between worship at either temple or mountain on the one hand, and worship in spirit and truth on the other. Jesus’s assertion that the Father seeks those who will worship in the latter manner (4:23b) reveals the urgency of the shift from John’s perspective.



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The narrative thus entails a significant shift for the relation of John’s community to its civic environment, but what validates the spatial reconfiguration depicted in the passage? According to John, Jesus’s identity authorizes the perspective taken on sacred spaces. Jesus’s knowledge once again plays a significant role in facilitating the disclosures about himself, with there being two relevant dimensions to such knowledge. In the first place, Jesus can claim a privileged understanding based on his descent. Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Judeans” (4:22a). Alluding again to Samaria’s colonized history (v. 18), Jesus’s words here trade on the common association of ignorance with idolatry (Koester 1990, 673). The evangelist thus presents delocalized worship as a desirable alternative to uninformed worship such as the Samaritans’, leveraging Jesus’s Judean heritage to do so. The claim that Jesus’s superior knowledge was based on his descent would have resonated with John’s community, in part because it was wedded to the further principle that “salvation is from the Judeans” (4:22b). It is in his role as the bringer of salvation that Jesus’s greater claim to knowledge rests, as well as his ultimate authority to delocalize worship. Jesus’s awareness of Samaria’s troubled political history certified him as prophet (4:17– 19), but his cognizance and ushering in of future (4:23) realities presupposes an even more eminent stature. As before (vv. 9, 11–12, 20) the Samaritan woman’s words precipitate Jesus’s self-disclosure: “When … [the Messiah] comes,” she remarks, “he will tell us all things” (4:25). Jesus has only to announce, “I who speak to you am he” (4:26), and he adopts the prerogatives aired by his interlocutor.41 Through this process the narrative makes clear that Jesus’s status as messiah entitles him to reorder sacred realities. Jesus’s messianic identity has at least two implications for John’s community. The first relates to the fruit of Jesus’s mission, amounting to nothing less than “eternal life” (4:36). In the narrative, the presentation of this benefit, as the goal of Jesus’s labor among the Samaritans, recalls the comparison of Jesus’s water to that of the well earlier in the passage (4:9, 14). If there the implication was that Jesus’s eternal life surpassed the water’s beneficial offering, here it is that such life renders spatialbased worship outmoded. By dispensing salvation, Jesus in effect transfers to himself the role of mediation formerly associated with such places as Mount Gerizim and the Jerusalem temple.42 41.  Jesus hinted at this status earlier: “salvation is from the Judeans” (4:22b). While the Samaritan woman’s “can this be the Christ?” (4:29) implies slight hesitancy over the Judean’s claims, Jesus’s aside to his disciples confirms his lofty appointment: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (4:34). 42.  In the following chapter, Jesus similarly transfers mediatorial-like powers to himself by healing an invalid near the healing waters of the pool of Bethsaida (5:1–17).

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But there is a second implication of Jesus’s identity for John’s community, pertaining to the scope of his benefits and authority. This time it is the villagers, in response to the Samaritan woman, who precipitate the disclosure. Hearing about and encountering Jesus, they declare, “we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world”! (4:42).43 John’s use of this title, unique here in his Gospel, suggests the extension of Jesus’s messianic role beyond the narrative confines of Judea.44 In doing so the title claims for Jesus pretensions previously associated with Hellenistic and Roman rulers (Carter 2008, 188–191).45 John’s message for his community of Jesus followers is unmistakable: express allegiance to Jesus, for he alone gives the gift of life.46 Conclusion How do the Fountain of Glauke and Jacob’s Well in John 4 compare in their contribution to community identity? Both intersect with powerful traditions and spatial contexts; yet we have observed that the water sources capitalized on these allusions in different ways and for different types of communities. Our two interpreters—Roman planners of Corinth, and John’s Gospel— exploited traditions for their own purposes. Appropriating the archaic looking fountain as “Glauke,” Roman Corinth claimed stewardship in a localized and visual manner over a Greek cultural tradition. But in doing so the colony planners also projected a Roman-ordered view of the world, signaling containment of the unruly Medea figure within the nearby Roman spaces, most notably the forum. By the same token the narrative in John 4 displays a knowledge of biblical traditions pertaining to Jacob’s Well and Samaritan history while advancing the evangelist’s own aims. Jesus is greater than his counterpart, Jacob, by virtue of the superiority of his life-giving water. In turn, this superior life sets him apart from Samaria’s colonizers who have brought no such fulfillment. For John’s community, Jesus’s superiority to referenced traditions requires looking to him for legitimation, rather than patriarchal traditions or this world’s rulers. Such a commitment entails a markedly different response to the wider civic context than that implied by Roman Corinth’s appropriation of Glauke. 43.  This acclamation represents the culmination of the passage’s presentation of Jesus, which began with the Samaritan woman’s identification of him as a Judean in 4:9 (see Cassidy 1992, 34). 44.  At the same time, Jesus’s saving benefits are highlighted throughout the gospel (3:17; 5:34; 12:47). Elsewhere Jesus is described as the “true light” (1:9); “the king of Israel” (1:49); “the Christ” (11:27); the “Holy One of God” (6:69); the “Son of God” (1:49; 11:27; 20:31). 45.  Curiously the title was not widely associated with first century emperors (van Tilborg 1996, 47–48). However, precedence for its use among Hellenistic rulers as well as Roman emperors such as Julius Caesar and Augustus would have given the expression an imperial valence. On the further imperial associations of Thomas’s confession of Jesus as “my lord and my God” (ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου; 20:28) see van Tilborg (1996, 38–47) and Carter (2008, 195–97). 46.  As Carter (2008) puts it, for John this constitutes a choice of Jesus’s “life-giving wholeness, justice, abundance, and sovereignty” over “Rome’s severely tarnished ‘golden age’” (227).



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Indeed, the colony’s stewardship of Glauke and John’s treatment of Jacob’s Well differ strikingly in the spatial reconfiguration enjoined by each. With the Roman planners’ embrace of Glauke within the local setting of Corinth, the fountain came to serve as a landmark leading to the forum, where symbols of Roman civic values proliferated. In this way the wider spatial context, providing an interpretive framework for the fountain, encouraged full identification with the colony’s Roman status. By contrast, John 4 propounds a delocalized form of community self-understanding. In place of the mediation of familiar cultic sites, John’s delocalized form of worship (“in spirit and in truth”) substitutes Jesus in his role as messiah—savior of the world (4:42).47 Bibliography Apuleius. 1915. The Golden Ass: Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius. Translated by William Adlington. Revised by Stephen Gaselee. LCL 44. London: Heinemann. Bookidis, Nancy. 2005. “Religion in Corinth: 146 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.” Pages 141–64 in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth. Edited by Daniel N. Schowalter and Steven J. Friesen. HTS 53. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bradley, Keith. 2004. “On Captives under the Principate.” Phoenix 58:298–318. Broneer, Oscar. 1971. Isthmia I: The Temple of Poseidon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1973. Isthmia II: Topography and Architecture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1977. Isthmia III: Terracotta Lamps. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brown, Raymond. 1966. The Gospel According to John. 2 vols. AB 29–29A. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bull, Robert J. 1975. “An Archaeological Context for Understanding John 4:20.” BA 38:54– 59. Campbell, E. F. 1993. “Shechem.” NEAEHL 4:1345–54. Carter, Warren. 2008. John and Empire: Initial Explorations. New York: T&T Clark. Cassidy, Richard J. 1992. John’s Gospel in New Perspective: Christology and the Realities of Roman Power. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Clauss, James J., and Sarah Iles Johnston, eds. 1997. Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cole, Susan G. 2004. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience. Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dillon, Matthew P. J. 1997. “The Ecology of the Greek Sanctuary.” ZPE 118:113–27. 47.  Neyrey 2009: “Jesus presents his own body as the new temple, the new sacred space” (80); see John 2:18–22. Later Christian fascination with Jacob’s Well provides an ironic postscript to Jesus’s delocalization. The Pilgrim of Bordeaux (Itinerarium Burdigalense, 588) mentions the well in the fourth century as does Eusebius (Onom.154), who describes how “a church has been built” around the well. Around 670 CE the pilgrim Arculf (II.19) wrote of a surviving crypt of cruciform shape that lay above the well. The church around the well was destroyed by Samaritans sometime after 529 CE. From the time it was rebuilt by Crusaders in the twelfth century numerous pilgrims visited the well; in 1903 the Greek Orthodox Church purchased the land surrounding the well (Bull 1967).

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Dyck, Andrew R. 1989. “On the Way from Colchis to Corinth: Medea in Book 4 of the ‘Argonautica.’” Hermes 117:455–70. Elderkin, George W. 1910. “The Fountain of Glauce at Corinth.” AJA 14:19–50. Friesen, Steven J. 1993. Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family. RGRW 116. Leiden: Brill. Gebhard, Elizabeth R. 2005. “Rites for Melikertes–Palaimon in the Early Roman Corinthia.” Pages 165–203 in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth. Edited by Daniel N. Schowalter and Steven J. Friesen. HTS 53. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gebhard, Elizabeth H., and Matthew W. Dickie. 2003. “The View from the Isthmus, ca. 200 to 44 B.C.” Pages 261–78 in Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996. Corinth 20. Edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Graf, Fritz. 1997. “Medea, the Enchantress from Afar: Remarks on a Well-Known Myth.” Pages 21–43 in Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Edited by James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haenchen, Ernst. 1984. A Commentary on the Gospel of John. 2 vols. Hermeneia. Translated by Robert W. Funk. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Hänlein-Schäfer, Heidi. 1985. Veneratio Augusti: Eine Studie zu den Tempeln des ersten römischen Kaisers. Rome: Bretschneider. Hayward, Chris L. 2003. “Geology of Corinth: The Study of a Basic Resource.” Pages 15–42 in Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996. Corinth 20. Edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Hill, Bert Hodge. 1964. The Springs: Peirene, Sacred Spring, Glauke. Corinth 1/6. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Hjelm, Ingrid. 2000. The Samaritan and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis. JSOTSup 303. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. ———. 2004. Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition. JSOTSup 404. London: T&T Clark. Johnston, Sarah Illes. 1997. “Corinthian Medea and the Cult of Hera Akraia.” Pages 44– 70 in Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art. Edited by James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jones, Larry Paul. 1997. The Symbol of Water in the Gospel of John. JSOTSup 145. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Jordan, David. 1994. “Inscribed Lamps from a Cult at Corinth in Late Antiquity.” HTR 87:223–29. Keener, Craig S. 2003. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. 2 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Kent, John Harvey. 1966. Corinth VIII: The Inscriptions; Part 3. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Koester, Craig. 1990. “The Savior of the World (John 4:42).” JBL 109:665–680. Landon, Mark. 2003. “Beyond Peirene: Toward a Broader View of Corinthian Water Supply.” Pages 43–74 in Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996. Corinth 20. Edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Laird, Margaret L. 2010. “The Emperor in a Roman Town: The Base of the Augustales in the Forum at Corinth.” Pages 64–113 in Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society. Edited by Steven J. Friesen, Daniel N. Schowalter, and James C. Walters. NovTSup 134. Leiden: Brill.



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Larson, Jennifer. 2001. Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Longfellow, Brenda. 2011. Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning, and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Magen, Y. 2008. “Gerizim, Mount.” NEAEHL 5:1742–48. Magin, Y., Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania. 2004. Mount Gerizim Excavations. Vol. 1: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions. Judea and Samaria Publications 2. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority. Millis, Benjamin W. 2010. “The Social and Ethnic Origins of the Colonists in Early Roman Corinth.” Pages 10–33 in Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society. Edited by Steven J. Friesen, Daniel N. Schowalter, and James C. Walters. NovTSup 134. Leiden: Brill. Neyrey, Jerome H. 1979. “Jacob Traditions and the Interpretation of John 4:10–26.” CBQ 41:419–37. ———. 2009. The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. O’Day, Gail R. 1983. “Irony and the Johannine Theology of Revelation: An Investigation of John 4.” PhD diss., Emory University. Ovid. 1924. Tristia and Ex Ponto. Translated by Arthur Leslie Wheeler. LCL 151. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pache, Corinne Ondine. 2004. Baby and Child Heroes in Ancient Greece. Traditions. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Pausanias. 1918. Descriptions of Greece. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. 4 vols. LCL 93, 188, 272, 297. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pfaff, Christopher A. 2003. “Archaic Corinthian Architecture, ca. 600 to 480 B.C.” Pages 95–140 in Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996. Corinth 20. Edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Rice, E. E. 1995. “Grottoes on the Acropolis of Hellenistic Rhodes.” ABSA 90:383–404. Robinson, Betsey. 2001. “Fountains and the Culture of Water at Roman Corinth.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. ———. 2005. “Fountains and the Formation of Cultural Identity at Roman Corinth.” Pages 111–40 in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth. Edited by Daniel N. Schowalter and Steven J. Friesen. HTS 53. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2011. Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millenia. Ancient Art and Architecture in Context 2. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Rogers, Guy. 1991. The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City. London: Routledge. Romano, David Gilman. 2003. “City Planning, Centuriation, and Land Division in Roman Corinth: Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis and Colonia Iulia Flavia Augusta Corinthiensis.” Pages 279–301 in Corinth, the Centenary: 1896–1996. Corinth 20. Edited by Charles K. Williams II and Nancy Bookidis. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Sanders, Guy R. 2010. “The Sacred Spring: Landscape and Traditions.” Pages 356–80 in Corinth in Context: Comparative Studies on Religion and Society. Edited by Steven J. Friesen, Daniel N. Schowalter, and James C. Walters. NovTSup 134. Leiden: Brill. Scherrer, Peter. 1995. “The City of Ephesus: From the Roman Period to Late Antiquity.” Pages 1–26 in Ephesos Metropolis of Asia: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Its Ar-

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chaeology, Religion, and Culture. Edited by Helmut Koester. HTS 41. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International. Scranton, R. L. 1941. “Temple C and the Sanctuary of Hera Akraia.” Pages 131–65 in Architecture. Corinth 1/2. Edited by Richard Stillwell, Robert L. Scranton, and Sarah Elizabeth Freeman. Cambridge: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Smith, R. R. R. 1987. “The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias.” JRS 77:88– 138. ———. 1988. “Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias.” JRS 78:50–77. Spaeth, Barbette Stanley. 2011. “Imperial Cult in Roman Corinth: Response to Karl Galinsky’s ‘The Cult of the Roman Emperor: Uniter or Divider.’” Pages 61–81 in Rome and Religion: A Cross Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult. Edited by Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan L. Reed. WGRWSup 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Spawforth, Anthony. 1994. “Corinth, Argos, and the Imperial Cult: Pseudo-Julian, Letters 198.” Hesperia 63:211–232. Stefanovic, Zdravko. 1992. “Jacob’s Well.” ABD 3:608–9. Steiner, Ann. 1992. “Pottery and Cult in Corinth: Oil and Water at the Sacred Spring.” Hesperia 61:385–408. Thatcher, Tom. 2009. Greater than Caesar: Christology and Empire in the Fourth Gospel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Tilborg, Sjef van. 1996. Reading John in Ephesus. NovTSup 83. Leiden: Brill. Von Wahlde, Urban C. 2010. The Gospel and Letters of John. 3 vols. ECC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Walbank, Mary E. 1996. “Evidence for the Imperial Cult in Julio-Claudian Corinth.” Pages 201–14 in Subject and Ruler: The Cult of the Ruling Power in Classical Antiquity. Edited by Alastair Small. JRASup 17. Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology. West, Allen Brown. 1931. Corinth VIII: Latin Inscriptions. Corinth 8/2. Cambridge: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Williams, Charles K., II, and Orestes H. Zervos. 1984. “Corinth, 1983: The Route to Sikyon.” Hesperia 53:83–122. Wiseman, James. 1970. “The Fountain of the Lamps.” Arch 23:130–37. Witherington, Ben, III. 1995. John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Zanker, Paul. 2012. Roman Art. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Chapter Thirteen Megan S. Nutzman

“In This Holy Place”: Incubation at Hot Springs in Roman and Late Antique Palestine

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ites of ritual healing are known throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, particularly those related to the cult of Asklepios. Famous Asklepieia at places such as Epidauros, Pergamon, and Kos existed alongside smaller sanctuaries and a network of local heroes who were also known for their ability to work miracles. Amid the considerable scholarly attention devoted to these therapeutic sanctuaries, an interesting lacuna has emerged: the apparent dearth of such sites in Greco-Roman Palestine. This paper attempts to bridge that gap by examining the form that local healing cults took at the region’s thermal-mineral springs. More importantly, I will argue that these sites were not strictly pagan, but that they were also frequented by Jews and Christians.1 While it was not uncommon for sacred sites to be appropriated as power dynamics in an area shifted, and while this would eventually happen at the thermal-mineral springs, this paper suggests that multiple religious traditions coexisted at the baths before their ultimate Christianization. Despite this peculiarity, the form of ritual practiced at the baths was similar to that experienced in sanctuaries of Asklepios and other local healers across the Mediterranean. In other words, visitors took part in a type of ritual incubation wherein they would await the divine healer’s appearance in a dream or vision. The idea of Jewish incubation for the purpose of healing deserves special consideration, as examples are not as widely known as they are in both pagan and Christian healing rites. In the end, I will suggest that what differentiated supplicants seeking miraculous cures was not the form of their ritual, but rather the identity of their divine healer. Palestine lies along a geological rift that stretches from eastern Africa to southern Asia Minor. The movement of the tectonic plates produced numerous hot springs in the region, of which eight are known from ancient literary testimonies: Emmaus-Nicopolis, Hammei Ba’arah, Hammat Gader, Hammei Livias, Hammat Pella, Hammat Tiberias, Kallirhoe, and the Waters of Asia. All 1.  Considerable scholarly work has been done on the “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians and the degree to which the borders between these communities were fluid during the time period covered in this article. Ritual healing offers a useful lens through which to examine questions related to individual and collective identity, a topic that I will pursue in the future.

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Figure 1. Map of area around Hammat Gader; Hirschfeld 1997, 1, fig. 1; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

but the last of these sites have been identified with a fair degree of confidence, and several have been at least partially excavated.2 Beyond these physical remains, most of what we know about the thermal-mineral baths comes from a variety of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian authors.3 These literary sources indicate that visitors to the hot springs suffered from a wide variety of maladies, and that some of the thermae were particularly known to cure specific diseases. As we will see, ancient visitors understood the hot springs to be sacred, which suggests 2.  See discussion in Dvorjetski 2007 for each of these sites: Kallirhoe 167–80, Emmaus-Nicopolis 208–23, Hammat Pella162–67, Hammei Livias 197–202, Hammei Ba’arah 180–97, and Waters of Asia 202–8. Hammat Gader and Hammat Tiberias will be discussed in greater detail below. 3. Examples include Sozomenus, Hist. Eccl. 1280 and Eccl. Rab. 7,11 for Emmaus-Nicopolis; Josephus, B.J. 7.1086–189 and Eusebius Onom. 44 for Hammei-Ba’arah; Pliny Nat. 5.74 and y. Šeb. 6,1 for Hammat Pella; Gen. Rab. 33, 4 and Solinus 35.4 for Kallirhoe; Egeria Itin. 10 and Peter the Iberian 82–85 for Hammei Livias.



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that they viewed any healing that they experienced at these sites to be the result of divine intervention rather than due to the mineral properties of the water. Scholars have long recognized the sanctity that was ascribed to these sites, but the way that visitors encountered the baths as sacred spaces is poorly understood. Hammat Gader was arguably the most popular of the hot springs in the land of Israel, as well as the only one to be excavated and published systematically. The thermae were located within the territory of the Decapolis city Gadara, which was situated roughly four and a half kilometers away on a steep ridge (see figure 1). Excavations in the vicinity of the bath complex have revealed a synagogue and a church, a theater, and a residential area (Hirschfeld 1987, 107– 16). A colonnaded street ran from the Yarmuk River to the theater, where it intersected with a wider colonnaded street that went toward the bath complex. The bath was quite large, covering more than 4600 m2 (Hirschfeld 1997, 10). Along the southern side of the complex was a series of hot pools that culminated in the spring itself in the southeast corner. On the northern side of the complex was a cold-water pool with a number of fountains and niches along its perimeter (see figures 2 and 3). The final site report for Hammat Gader identifies fragments of between sixty and seventy Greek inscriptions, most of which were professionally carved into the pavement of the bath complex (Di Segni 1997). These inscriptions unequivocally assert the sacred nature of the hot spring. Their language is quite repetitive, frequently including some variation of “In this holy place be remembered…” (ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ τόπῳ μνησθῇ), a phrase otherwise typically associated with temples, synagogues, or churches.4 All of the inscriptions appear to postdate the fifth century reconstruction of the site following an earthquake. In 363 CE, a major earthquake struck Palestine, causing extensive damage that stretched from the Galilee to Petra. A letter attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem names Hammat Gader among the sites damaged by the earthquake (Brock 1977, 276). An inscription from the thermae’s Hall of Piers (Area C) commemorates the 455 CE completion of repairs and renovations, which included the new floors into which the Greek inscriptions were set. While there are no surviving inscriptions that date before this renovation, votive inscriptions were certainly not a new phenomenon in the fifth century, and there is nothing to preclude earlier dedications that were damaged or removed during the repairs. Stories about cures experienced at the hot springs should be read in light of these inscriptions from Hammat Gader, particularly their repeated references to the baths as a “holy place” (ἅγιος τόπος).5 A second category of finds from Hammat Gader also attests to the bath’s sacred character. One hundred forty-eight complete oil lamps were found at the 4.  For references to synagogues as “holy places,” see Levine 2000, 238. 5.  For references to healing at the hot springs of Palestine in pagan, Jewish, and Christian literature, see Dvorjetski 2007, 226–41.

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Figure 2. General plan of Hammat Gader bath complex; Hirschfeld 1997, 12, fig. 11; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

site, along with fragments from roughly two hundred additional lamps. Most of the intact lamps were located in one of two concentrations: sixty were found in locus 211 under a renovated floor in Area B, and another deposit was found in locus 441, an isolated alcove in Area D (Uzzielli 1997, 319). The deposition of these lamps all took place prior to the fifth century reconstruction of the site. While these lamps offer a somewhat less explicit testimony than that preserved



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Figure 3. Remains of Hammat Gader at the conclusion of the 1982 excavations, looking south; Hirschfeld 1997, 11, fig. 10; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

by the later inscriptions, their deliberate placement reflects a traditional desire to keep votive offerings in the sacred space. Many of these lamps do not contain the soot marks that would have been present if they had been lit even once (figure 4). This suggested to the excavators that the lamps were deposited as votive offerings, likely related to healing, rather than casually left behind after their use as functional lights (Uzzielli 1997, 319). Identity of Visitors to the Hot Springs These two categories of votive offerings offer a starting point for identifying visitors to the thermae. Some of the votive lamps contain crosses and were likely dedicated by Christian visitors. The rest lack distinguishing iconographic motifs or inscriptions that would indicate the religious identity of their dedicators. In general, they conform to lamp typologies known from Palestine and Transjordan, mostly their northern regions (Uzzielli 1997). The votive inscriptions also offer conclusive proof for the presence of Christians among the dedicators, through the inclusion of crosses or distinctly Christian language.6 However, the Christian 6.  Crosses appear on Di Segni’s nos. 2, 11, 13, 20–23, 27, 30–31, 35, 37, 40, 44, 49, 52–54, 58, 63. Christ is invoked on nos. 26 and 71.

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Figure 4. Group of lamps found in Area B at Hammat Gader; Uzzielli 1997, 321, fig. 1; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

identity of these inscriptions is unsurprising, given their postrenovation date, and other visitors may have chosen not to draw attention to their non-Christian status. Jewish names do appear on a couple of inscriptions, but in two of these cases, other names suggest that the family had recently become Christian, perhaps to maintain their administrative positions (Di Segni 1997, nos. 2 and 21).7 Leah Di Segni argued that a third inscription does present a covert message of Jewishness, on the basis of the individual’s name and the multiplicity of available meanings for the ΧΜΓ acronym (no. 32). A final inscription that could be Jewish is Di Segni’s no. 38, on the basis of Semitic names and the use of a slightly different formula to introduce the inscription. To gain a more complete picture of the bath’s patrons, we must look beyond these votive offerings. There is no doubt that the initial construction of Hammat 7.  Individuals with military, administrative, and honorific titles should be identified as Christians, given the political climate of the fifth century. Onomastics reveal several names that appear to be Greek transliterations from Armenian, Egyptian, Germanic, and Semitic languages, but family origins alone cannot prove an individual’s religious identity; see Di Segni nos. 6, 8, 10–11, and 36. A relatively unattested name that could be Jewish also appears on no. 35.



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Gader, completed in the second century CE, was a pagan endeavor and that it was frequented by pagans from the beginning.8 Two possibilities have been raised as to the identity of those responsible for the monumentalization of the site. While the original excavators did not uncover any clear indication of the exact circumstances surrounding its construction, they concluded that it was built by the local, Semitic population of Gadara (Hirschfeld and Solar 1984, 39). Estée Dvorjetski offers the alternative proposal that Roman soldiers, rather than local inhabitants, were responsible for the construction. The Roman army patronized local healing cults throughout the Mediterranean in large numbers, due in part to the harsh realities of life on a military campaign, and Dvorjetski (2007, 106) argues that the army allocated “considerable military resources” to the development of therapeutic facilities. The probability of the army’s involvement at Hammat Gader, she contends, is augmented by numismatic and epigraphic evidence that places Legio X Fretensis in the area.9 Furthermore, a story in the medieval rabbinic compilation Midrash ha-Gadol (Deut 26:19), which describes Emperor Hadrian meeting a girl covered in sores as he made his way from Hammat Gader to Gadara, is offered by Dvorjetski as additional evidence for an official Roman presence at the site. In response to Dvorjetski, the excavators of Hammat Gader concurred that army was stationed in the region of Gadara and that there could have been Roman influence on the bath alongside the efforts of the local population, but they questioned her conclusion that the army’s presence alone proves that it was responsible for the bath’s construction, since no evidence of this was discovered in the course of the excavations (Hirschfeld 1997, 478). Despite this disagreement regarding the role of the Roman army, the plan of the bath complex followed standard Greco-Roman models, and its pagan character should not be doubted. While Hammat Gader’s use by pagan and Christian populations is widely acknowledged, Jewish patronage of the hot springs must still be addressed. Material evidence for a Jewish presence at the hot springs can be found in the impressive synagogues built in the immediate vicinity of Hammat Gader and Hammat Tiberias, the latter of which was located on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, roughly eighteen kilometers northwest of Hammat Gader. Unlike 8.  In the final site report, Hirschfeld concludes that the initial construction of Hammat Gader took place in the middle of the second century (1997, 478). 9.  An inscription from Gadara records the legion’s dedication to Hadrian on the occasion of his visit to Syria-Palestine in 130 CE. Furthermore, coins in honor of the emperor’s visit were issued by cities where the Tenth Legion was known to be quartered, and it seems that Gadara’s issuance of the same type of coin confirms an army presence in the city. Coins from Gadara also appear with countermarks of the Tenth Legion, offering further evidence that some of the soldiers were camped in the area. See discussion in Dvorjetski 2007, 367–69. In addition to this evidence for the Tenth Legion, a recently discovered Latin inscription from the site confirms a Roman military presence at the end of the second century CE, in the form of a vexillatio of the Sixth Legion. See discussion in Eck 2014, 212–14. I return to this inscription in greater detail below.

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Hammat Gader, where substantial architectural elements of the bath complex have been uncovered, little remains of the Hammat Tiberias baths. However, at both sites, evidence for Jewish patronage of the hot springs should be seen in the construction of nearby synagogues. The key point is that these synagogues were found in the immediate vicinity of the hot springs, rather than in the larger towns of Gadara or Tiberias, which had their own synagogues; in fact, Tiberias was said to have thirteen synagogues (b. Ber. 8a).10 Gadara and Tiberias were located at some distance from their respective baths, two and a half kilometers away in the case of Tiberias, and four and a half kilometers away in the case of Gadara, making it impractical for their Jewish inhabitants to attend the synagogues near the hot springs on a routine basis. While small settlements did spring up around both bath complexes, it seems unlikely that the impressive synagogues at Hammat Gader and Hammat Tiberias were built for their use alone. Instead, it is probable that these synagogues were built to accommodate Jewish visitors to the thermae. Inscriptions from these synagogues substantiate the presence of Jews among the visitors to the hot springs. The synagogue at Hammat Gader underwent major renovations in the fifth century to repair damage caused by the same earthquake that affected the bath complex, and its inscriptions consequently postdate this restoration. Four Aramaic inscriptions are extant in the synagogue’s mosaic pavement, each of which begins with the phrase, “And be remembered for good….” (‫( )ודכיר לטב‬Sukenik 1935, 39–55). The names found in these inscriptions indicate that the synagogue attracted patrons not merely from Hammat Gader or Gadara, but from around the Galilee and the Golan.11 In addition, the inclusion of Roman and Greek names, female donors, and civic titles highlight the distinctiveness of this synagogue when compared to others in the region (Dvorjetski 2007, 310–11).12 The diverse nature of these dedications can best be understood as the product of nonlocal visitors to the bath complex, who commemorated their quest for healing by making a dedication at the nearby synagogue. 10.  Tiberias and Hammatha (Hammat Tiberias) started out as two separate towns, but the Tosefta indicates that by the time of its composition, the two had merged to form one town (t. ‘Erub. 5.2). 11.  Benefactors are identified from Sussita, Sepphoris, Kefar Aqavia, Capernaum, and Arbel. 12.  Based on the unique character of these inscriptions, Dvorjetski (2007, 311) argued that some of the synagogue’s benefactors may not have been Jewish, but rather gentile patrons of the thermae who thought their financial contributions to the synagogue would facilitate a cure at Hammat Gader. There is no doubt that people of many cultural and religious traditions visited the thermae, but neither onomastics nor other details included in the inscriptions offer conclusive proof that gentiles patronized the synagogue while visiting the baths. Female patrons, Greek and Roman names, and Jewish participation in civic offices are well attested in other Jewish communities, even if they are relatively uncommon in the immediate vicinity of Hammat Gader; e.g., inscriptions from Acmonia and Sardis demonstrate that the Jewish community participated in civic life and held official positions, while inscriptions from Apamea indicate that Jewish women were quite visible in their community. See discussion in Trebilco 1991, 37–126.



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The relationship between synagogue and bath complex is more visible at Hammat Tiberias. Some of the inscriptions from this synagogue are similar to those found in the bath complex at Hammat Gader. For example, the inscription from the west aisle reads, “May he be remembered for good and for blessing (μνησθῇ εἰς ἀγαθὸν καὶ εἰς εὐλογίαν). Profotouros the elder built this stoa of the holy place (τοῦ ἁγίου τόπου). A blessing on him. Amen. Shalom (‫”)שלום‬ (Dothan 1983, 60–62).13 As in the inscriptions from the bath at Hammat Gader, this example includes both the formulaic use of μνησθῇ and the reference to the site as a holy place (ἅγιος τόπος). The idea that benefactions to the synagogue were related to ritual healing at the hot spring seems more explicit in other examples from Hammat Tiberias. Eight inscriptions were found at the north end of the synagogue’s center aisle; in six of them, the patron’s gift was connected to the fulfillment of a vow or prayer. For example, Maximos commemorated his visit with these words, “Maximos made [this dedication] because he vowed [it] (Μάξιμος εὐχόμενος ἐποίησεν). May he live [long]” (Dothan 1983, 55–56). Of the eight inscriptions from the north end of the center aisle, only the two longer ones do not contain this reference to a vow, εὐχόμενος, likely due to the space constraints. Given the location of this synagogue, it is likely that the vows in question were associated with the experience of miraculous cures at the thermae. Votive dedications were common at healing shrines and seem to be the best explanation for the inscriptions from both the synagogues and the bath complex. They testify to the sanctity of the site, and, I would argue, to the ritual nature of the cures that were sought in the hot spring. Rabbinic Attitudes towards the Hot Springs These synagogues and their accompanying inscriptions attest to the presence of Jews in the immediate vicinity of the baths and to their thanksgiving for cures experienced there. However, rabbinic attitudes toward the hot springs were far from straightforward and must be addressed in order to substantiate the claim the Jewish visitors came in search of ritual healing. One of the key figures in this discussion is Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, who was considered one of the most important teachers of the Tannaitic era and who is credited with the compilation of the Mishnah. Rabbi Judah’s association with the hot springs surfaces on several occasions in rabbinic literature, not only through narratives that place him at the baths, but also through halakic pronouncements attributed to him; R. Judah was said to have visited Hammat Gader multiple times, accompanied on different occasions by R. Yitzhak b. Abdimi (b. Šabb. 40b), R. Hanina (y. Šabb. 4.6, 18.1), and R. Yonathan (y. Qidd. 3.14). The frequency of these Talmudic references suggests that later authors had no trouble envisioning R. Judah at 13.  This translation is a slightly modified version of the one given in Dothan 1983, 61.

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Hammat Gader not merely once but repeatedly, and in the company of other prominent rabbis. One of the more controversial judgments ascribed to R. Judah allowed the residents of Gadara to visit the thermae at Hammat Gader on the Sabbath, but did not permit the people who lived at the settlement surrounding the bath complex itself to go up to the town of Gadara (t. ‘Erub. 4.16; cf. y. ‘Erub. 5.7; b. ‘Erub. 61a). At issue in this ruling was the distance one was allowed to travel on the Sabbath; the Torah indicates that one was to remain in “his place” (Exod 16:29), which the sages of the Mishnah defined as two thousand cubits from one’s town (m. ‘Erub. 4.3; 5.7). Later rabbis offered several possible interpretations, including the relative shapes and sizes of the two towns and the behavior of their inhabitants, for the decision attributed to R. Judah and the way that it interpreted Sabbath travel restrictions (b. ‘Erub. 61a).14 In the end, these Amoraic sages could not reach a conclusion that accounted for the peculiarities of the ruling. I suggest that these later attempts to explain the ruling preserved under R. Judah’s name did not take into account the sacred nature of Hammat Gader. If the activities that took place at the hot spring were considered to be ritual in nature, then it is plausible that the inhabitants of Gadara would have been permitted to exceed the normal travel restrictions on the Sabbath to participate in them. In contrast, no such ritual activity would have necessitated travel from Hammat Gader to Gadara. The objections of later sages to the ruling were not strictly about bathing at Hammat Gader on the Sabbath, but rather about traveling to get there. This presupposes that bathing at the hot springs on the Sabbath was sanctioned in the first place. The Bavli reveals that earlier rabbis had once tried to rescind permission for Jews to use the thermal-mineral baths on the Sabbath, since it had been taken as license to bathe in artificially heated water as well, a clear violation of the Sabbath (b. Šabb. 39b–40a). However, the prohibition could not be maintained and the rabbis relented (b. Šabb. 40a). Thus despite the multicultural and often promiscuous atmosphere that pervaded the thermae, visits were allowed, even on the Sabbath.15 A later decision attributed to R. Nahman b. Isaac took up the issue of bathing on the Sabbath in natural bodies of water and determined that quick immersion was permitted, but that the bather was not allowed to linger in the water (b. Šabb. 109a–b). The former was allowed because it was done to produce a state of ritual purity, while the latter was likely understood to be a form of leisure. Hot springs were not normally used for purification, which means that these two notable exceptions to the restrictions that governed bathing on the Sabbath—purification and visiting the 14.  The rabbis named in this discussion are mostly, if not entirely, Babylonian amoraim. 15.  One example of this promiscuous nature is the frequency of children with mixed parentage, since Jews, both men and women, mingled freely with people of other religious traditions at the hot baths. Such children posed a halakic problem, most importantly regarding whom they could marry. See discussion in Dvorjetski 2007, 307–8.



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thermae—must be linked in some other way.16 The best explanation can perhaps be found in their shared ritual nature. In addition to bathing, most medical remedies were strictly limited on the Sabbath. Only in a life-threatening situation could this principle be contravened. To save a life, one could administer any necessary treatment, even if doing so would ordinarily violate Sabbath restrictions (t. Šabb. 9.22, 15.11–17). However, rabbinic opinions were rarely unanimous, and this ruling was no different, as some sages professed unease with medical care in even these most critical cases. In fact, several centuries earlier, the Damascus Document preserved a particularly strict interpretation of the Sabbath rule, authorizing only life-saving measures that could be performed using implements that were ordinarily carried on the Sabbath (CD 11:16–17).17 The treatment of non-life-threatening conditions, on the other hand, was unmistakably restricted; broken bones could not be set and cold water could not be applied to reduce swelling (m. Šabb. 22:6). Numerous examples confirm that for noncritical ailments, the issue was not simply one of avoiding work that was banned on the Sabbath. The prohibition against medical remedies applied equally to activities that belonged to the thirty-nine categories of forbidden work (m. Šabb. 7:2), as to those that did not, such as the ingestion or topical application of herbs (m. Šabb. 14.3–4, 22.6; t. Šabb. 12.8–13).18 In general, if the sole purpose of an action was to treat a minor illness or to alleviate pain, it was not permitted on the Sabbath. The attention that rabbinic literature gives to a wide variety of medical remedies in formulating this principle suggests that proper observance of the day of rest was of greater importance than relief from minor maladies. In light of these sweeping prohibitions against medical treatments on the Sabbath, the rabbis’ permission to visit the hot springs is exceptional. Common complaints such as digestive problems and skin conditions attributed in literary sources to visitors at the hot springs were not life-threatening. As a result, one would expect the rabbis to have forbidden their treatment on the Sabbath. Since both medical treatments and leisurely bathing were curtailed and could not be the purported justification for visiting the hot springs, one plausible explanation remains. On a day set aside for rest and ritual activities, Jewish visitors to the hot springs must have come in search of a miraculous cure, one that was assigned completely to God with no human agent who was subject to Sabbath 16.  Debate over using the hot springs for ritual purification can be found in b. Šabb. 109a–b and b. Hul. 106a. While certain rabbis did permit ritual immersion in the hot springs, this does not seem to be a factor in the b. Šabb. 40a decision to allow visits on the Sabbath. It also would not explain why R. Judah permitted the residents of Gadara to exceed the normal Sabbath distance to visit Hammat Gader, since there must have been other sources of water suitable for purification closer Gadara. 17.  See discussion in Doering 2008, 230–31. 18.  Healing by methods that did not include work prohibited on the Sabbath has been widely discussed in the context of Jesus, whom the New Testament portrays as healing by simple word or touch. For a recent study of this issue and review of previous scholarship see Doering 2008.

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restrictions. A parallel for this type of divine healing on the Sabbath can be found in permission to whisper over snakes, scorpions, and body parts (t. Šabb. 7.23; y. Šabb. 14.3), and to wear certain amulets on the Sabbath (m. Šabb. 6.2; t. Šabb. 4.9; b. Šabb. 61b–62a). Like visits to the hot springs, apotropaic whispering and the use of amulets relied solely on the divine intervention of God, and therefore they were not prohibited on the Sabbath. Incubation at Hammat Gader It is apparent that pagans, Jews, and Christians all visited the hot springs of Roman and late antique Palestine to receive divine healing. What remains to be seen is the form that their ritual activity took. Only one straightforward account of the rituals at these hot springs exists. A detailed entry on Hammat Gader by Antoninus, a Holy Land pilgrim from Placentia, describes the late sixth century ritual that took place there: In that part of the Jordan, at a distance of three miles from the city there are hot waters, which are called the springs of Elijah (termas Heliae), where lepers are healed. The lepers receive benefits from the xenodochium at public expense. In the evening hour, the springs overflow. Before the furnace (clibanum), there is a great pool of water, and when it is filled, the doors are closed, and the lepers are sent in through the backdoor with candles (luminaria) and incense and they sit in that pool the whole night. When they are asleep, the one who is in need of healing sees some vision, and when he relates what he saw, he abstains from the springs for seven days during which the leper is cleansed. (Itinerarium 7.14–22)19

Several details in this passage find support in the archaeological record. Yitzhar Hirschfeld and Giora Solar (1981, 211) proposed that Antoninus’s leper ritual took place in Area B of the bath complex (see figure 2), which was close to the source of the hot spring and contained the only pool that had doors and could be completely closed off, as the passage describes.20 Antoninus also calls attention to the fact that the ceremony was performed at night, and that supplicants enter the pool carrying luminaria. This detail may explain the preference for lamps as suitable votive offerings to commemorate miraculous cures, and in fact one concentration of votive lamps was discovered under the floor in Area B. While Antoninus’s account is admittedly late, the pool in Area B was part of the initial building phase at the hot springs, allowing for the possibility of ritual incubation in this space for several centuries before Antoninus’s visit (Hirschfeld and Solar 1981, 208–9). Furthermore, the earliest lamp fragments found in Area B date to the second century, when the complex was first built (Uzzielli 1997, 320). 19.  English translation is from Sowers 2008, 50–51. 20.  Nichole Belayche (2001, 272) does not agree with the excavators on this point, proposing rather that the incubation ritual took place in Area A, the Oval Hall (figure 2).



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The architectural history and votive lamps from Hammat Gader suggest that incubation might have been practiced at the site as early as the second century CE. The ritual described by Antoninus is similar to other accounts of incubation throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, save the fact that the incubation chamber was a pool rather than a portico or other space that accommodated sleeping supplicants. The practice of incubation by pagan visitors is not difficult to imagine, given the prevalence of incubation rites in Greek religion.21 Likewise, incubation was present in the ancient Near East long before the arrival of Greek cults, although there continues to be debate over which dream narratives reflect a fully developed incubation ritual.22 The three criteria of incubation articulated by Kimberly Patton (2004, 202–27)—intentionality, locality, and epiphany—offer a useful way to make this distinction. Applying Patton’s standard to the Hebrew Bible reveals that while it contains many stories in which divine revelations or epiphanies take the form of a dream, many of them are missing one of the three constituent elements (Harrisson 2014).23 In some of these cases, Patton argues (2004, 218–19) that the biblical authors deliberately suppressed elements of incubation, such as in Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen 28). Turning to Jewish literature from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, knowledge of contemporary incubation rituals is easier to detect (Flannery-Dailey 2004, 153–164; Gnuse 1993). However, Patton observes that the “theology of incubation highly localizes the god,” which likely hindered the initial adoption of this ritual technique among Jews and Christians, to whom it seemed uncomfortably close to polytheistic practices (2004, 216). The question of incubation is intimately connected to that of sacred sites, as it is the place, not a temple official or charismatic healer, that is understood to facilitate cures (Csepregi 2015, 49–50). Sacred places have taken a variety of forms from antiquity to the present, but J. Z. Smith argues that what makes something sacred—in this case a site—is the presence of ritual activity (1987, 105).24 Despite early opposition to the concept of sacred sites, Christian authorities eventually recognized and accommodated their popular veneration, including places that were previously the focus of pagan cult (Csepregi 2015, 51,

21. Among the many treatments of incubation in Greece and Rome, Deubner’s examination (1900) remains a standard text, and the compilation of testimonies by Edelstein and Edelstein 1998 (particularly T. 414–442) is an indispensible resource. 22.  Oppenheim’s classification of dreams (1956) is the starting point for many scholars working on incubation in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. For recent contributions to this ongoing debate, see Flannery-Dailey 2004, Harrisson 2014, and Patton 2004. 23.  Lindblom argues that some of the psalms were intended for use in incubation rituals (1961, 103–6). The use of a prescribed text such as a psalm as preparation for a dream epiphany would meet Patton’s first requirement for intentionality. 24.  For a discussion of Smith’s definition as it relates to the development of holy sites in fourth century Palestine, see Markus 1994, 264–66.

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53–55).25 I would suggest that Antoninus of Placentia’s description of lepers at Hammat Gader represents a true incubation ritual, meeting all three of Patton’s criteria. Furthermore, as Smith argues, ritual reifies sanctity, and thus it was through the practice of an incubation ritual that hot springs could be recognized as sacred sites, confirming the testimony of the “holy place” (ἅγιος τόπος) inscriptions. While it is clear that Jewish authors of the Hellenistic and Roman periods were familiar with the practice of incubation, it is more difficult to pinpoint when some Jews began using incubation themselves as a means to experience miraculous cures. It certainly seems to have taken hold by the time that John Chrysostom, in a well-known passage from Against the Jews, criticized the Christians of Antioch for participating in incubation rites at the synagogue in nearby Daphne (1.6.2–3). Incubation also probably informs an exchange between R. Akiba and Zunin in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 55a, which attempts to delegitimize foreign healing cults and their apparent efficacy. This passage describes a wayward Jew who experienced a cure after visiting an “idolatrous shrine” (‫ ;)לבית עבודת כוכבים‬R. Akiba does not deny the reality of the miracle, but rather questions the apparent post hoc ergo propter hoc assumption of his interlocutor. Unwilling to concede that the pagan deity of the shrine was responsible for this cure, R. Akiba concludes that the length of the illness was predetermined and that its termination was unrelated to the healing shrine. In other words, he was healed in spite of, not because of, the time spent inside the sanctuary. Although incubation is not explicitly described, it is still the image that this story invokes, as it was the only ritual model for seeking cures in therapeutic sanctuaries26. The authors of this passage must have recognized the appeal of popular healing cults to Jews who faced the same medical complaints as their pagan and Christian neighbors. An interesting contrast to this episode in the Bavli can be found in the medieval Midrash on the Ten Commandments, which portrays a crippled Jew visiting a heathen therapeutic shrine. There are two key differences between these two stories. First, in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 55a the idol of the shrine is considered completely lifeless, while in the later Midrash, the demon is real and uses an idol to mislead the worshipers. Second, the two stories end in a completely opposite manner. While the Jew in the first story walks away healed, the other one is addressed by a demon, “You should know that by tomorrow your time had come to be healed, but because you have done this, you will never find a cure” (Rosenberg 1990, 97).27 This reversal highlights the accommodation that earlier 25.  For a discussion of the gradual recognition of sacred sites, see Markus 1994 and Safrai 1998. 26.  This account in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 55a is immediately followed by another one related to incubation, although the second story is about the need for rain rather than healing. In this case, the god is said to appear to his priests in a dream with instructions on what they must do to satisfy him so that he will send rain. 27.  See discussion in Urbach 1975, 25–26.



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rabbis were willing to make to spaces in which pagan statues were displayed. By the time that the medieval Midrash was compiled, it was possible to circumvent these displays of idolatry. However, complete avoidance of such images in late antiquity would have severely restricted the Jews’ ability to participate in the daily life of the Greco-Roman cities they inhabited. A similar attitude is displayed in a well-known account from the Mishnah, set in the first century CE. As the story goes, when Rabban Gamaliel was visiting the bath of Aphrodite in Akko, he was asked how he could bathe in a complex that contained a statue of the goddess.28 Rabban Gamaliel answered, “I did not come into her domain; she has come into mine” (m. ‘Abod. Zar. 3:4). Although the stories about Rabban Gamaliel and R. Akiba offer different reasons for ignoring the presence of pagan statues, they justify the Jewish use of sites with such images and even acknowledge that miracles could be worked in places tainted by them.29 Jewish visitors to the hot springs would have been surrounded by pagan visual cues, much as R. Akiba was in the bath of Aphrodite, but if these images could be overlooked, nothing prevented the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine from visiting the hot springs alongside their gentile neighbors. Together, these stories reflect Seth Schwartz’s contention that the mechanism allowing Jews to participate in the daily life of Greco-Roman cities was “a spectacular act of misprision, of misinterpretation, whereby the rabbis defined pagan religiosity as consisting exclusively of cultic activity, but in so doing declared the noncultic, but still religious aspects of urban culture acceptable” (1998, 207; cf. 2001, 164). If what we know from other therapeutic sanctuaries also holds true for the hot springs, we would expect that preliminary requirements such as offerings or purifications took place outside the incubation chamber or, in this case, the bath complex. At Hammat Gader, the nearby synagogue, church, and perhaps an earlier temple (Sukenik 1935, 30) would have accommodated these functions for their respective constituents.30 Supplicants at healing sanctuaries and hot springs alike may have encountered priests and other visitors while performing these rites, but the actual encounter with the healing god was a private religious experience. His epiphany in a dream offered direct and personal contact between the supplicant and the divine. Separation of preparatory rites from the incubation itself could have enabled pagans, Jews, and Christians to simultaneously await their epiphanies in the baths, as the offerings, purifications, or prayers particular to their religious community would have been offered in different places. 28.  Although the bath of Aphrodite was not a thermal-mineral bath, Rabban Gamaliel’s attitude in this passage is instructive for the accommodations that he is willing to make. 29.  A contrasting position on statues in public places can be found in a story about R. Yohanan, who was said to have given instructions that all the statues in the pubic baths of Tiberias were to be destroyed (y. ‘Abod. Zar. 4:4). 30.  Similarly, at Hammat Tiberias, a temple was one of the possibilities proposed for a Roman-era building discovered in the course of excavations; see Dothan 1983, 10–18.

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While this shared use of sacred sites might be unusual, it would not be a unique occurrence, as demonstrated by examples ranging from the Oak of Mamre in the fourth century CE, to medieval and modern shrines of the prophet Elijah, St. George, and Al-Khadir.31 The ability for multiple religious traditions to coexist at the hot springs should perhaps be understood in light Schwartz’s contention that the religious behavior of Jews living in Greco-Roman cities may have been largely indistinguishable from their pagan neighbors (1998, 207). In the end, I would suggest that the primary difference between pagan, Jewish, and Christian experiences of incubation in the bath complex was the identity of the divine healer whom visitors expected to see. Divine Healers at the Hot Springs In the absence of dedications that explicitly name the divine healers credited with miracles, we can only speculate about their identity. Among Greek and Roman visitors, it is likely that Asklepios, the healing god par excellence, was the focus of visitors’ hopes for a miracle. The most persuasive evidence in Palestine for the link between Asklepios and the hot springs can be found in coins issued by the city of Tiberias that depict Hygeia, the daughter of Asklepios and the goddess of health, sitting on a rock from which a stream emerges, holding a serpent in her right hand, and feeding it from a phiale in her left hand (Meshorer 1985, 34 no. 78; Rosenberger 1977, 64 no. 6–7).32 The stream depicted on these coins is meant to represent Hammat Tiberias, and the snake invoked Asklepios, to whom the animal was sacred. Hygeia’s link to Asklepios was made more explicit in a variation of this type produced in the third century that depicted Hygeia, still with serpent and phiale, standing opposite her father Asklepios (Meshorer 1985, 35 no. 86; Rosenberger 1977, 67 no. 19).33 Elsewhere in Palestine, the cult of Asklepios Leontouchos is known from Ashkelon (Finkielsztejn 1986; Mastrocinque 2012, 104–10), and a cult of Serapis-Asklepios seems to have existed in the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina.34 Circumstantial evidence from 31.  For discussion of the Oak of Mamre, see Taylor 1993, 86–95 and Belayche 2001, 97–99. For Elijah, St. George, and Al-Khadir, see Meri 1999 and Ziv 1987. 32.  For a similar coin minted later under Commodus, see Rosenberger 1977, 16. For a discussion of city coins issued in Roman Palestine, including those issued by Tiberias, and their implications for understanding the local Jewish population, see Schwartz 2001, 136–42. 33.  Asklepios and Hygeia also appear on coins from Neapolis (McCasland 1939, 225; Rosenberger 1977, nos. 6, 74, 98, 102). Among the coins from Gadara are some that depict the Three Graces and Herakles, both of which may have been associated with the bath complex in its early days; see discussion in Dvorjetski 2007, 355–59. While Herakles was sometimes seen as a patron of hot springs, there is no evidence that either he or the Three Graces were said to have appeared in incubation dreams. For the patronage of hot springs by Herakles and Asklepios, see Croon 1967. 34.  This sanctuary was built at the site of a large mikveh, which was described in John 5 as the site where Jesus healed a paralytic. Excavations conducted on the grounds of the monastery of St. Anne in Jerusalem revealed several items that can be identified as votive offerings to Serapis-Asklepios;



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the region of Hammat Gader can be found in an inscription set up by a man named Asklepios (Di Segni 1997, no. 5), whose name could reflect the god’s popularity in the region, and in the discovery in Umm Qays (ancient Gadara) of carved gemstones depicting Asklepios and Serapis (Henig, Whiting, and Wilkins 1987, 377–78). For the identity of the healer envisioned by Jewish and Christian visitors, I return to the pilgrimage diary written by Antoninus of Placentia. He describes Hammat Gader as a place with “hot waters, which are called the springs of Elijah (thermae Heliae), where lepers are healed” (Itinerarium 7.14). This tells us two things: first, that in the sixth century the baths were named for the prophet Elijah, and second, that healing at this time was primarily restricted to lepers.35 The association between lepers and Elijah was likely based on the story of Na‘aman, who in the Hebrew Bible was healed from this disease after immersing seven times in the Jordan River (2 Kgs 5:1–14). While it was not actually the prophet Elijah who performed this miracle, but rather his student Elisha, it would seem that in the region surrounding Hammat Gader, Elisha’s deed was assimilated to the reputation of the far more popular Elijah (Hirschfeld 1997, 5).36 Indeed, already in the fourth century, pilgrims such as Egeria were being shown the cave of Elijah on the east side of the Jordan River in the region of Gilead, not far from the hot springs (Itin. 16.1, 3). Elijah was already associated with Hammat Gader in the century before Antoninus wrote his account. When Empress Eudokia visited the site in the middle of the fifth century, she composed a poetic inscription that was set into the pavement of the Hall of Fountains (Area D; see figures 2 and 5). Her inscription lists sixteen parts of the bath complex, one of which she calls, “pure Elijah” ( Ἠλίας ἁγνός):

Gibson 2011; von Wahlde 2009; Dauphin 2005. For a discussion of the assimilation of Serapis to Asklepios in Palestine and elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world, see Pearcy 1988, 377–78. Sanctuaries of Askelpios have also been proposed for Shuni, located just outside Caesarea (Belayche 2001, 197), and Dor (Dauphin 1999). 35.  The “leprosy” mentioned by Antoninus and in 2 Kgs 5 was likely not the disease known today as “leprosy” or “Hansen’s disease,” but rather a generic term used to refer to a number of skin ailments; see discussion in Hulse 1975, 88–100. The treatment of skin diseases had a long history at Hammat Gader. The earliest story linking the two is the one discussed above concerning Hadrian’s encounter with a girl whose skin was covered in sores; if this story reflects a historical event, it may have taken place when Hadrian visited the region on his trip through Palestine. Some ancient sources suggest that Hadrian suffered from a skin condition, for which bathing at Hammat Gader was said to be efficacious (De Vita Hadriani 26; Epiphanius On Measures and Weights 14). 36.  Shimon Gibson argues that confusion arose between Elijah and Elisha among the followers of John the Baptist, and that this caused the two figures to be merged in later tradition, such as seen at Hammat Gader. For John the Baptist as the disciple and forerunner of Elijah redivivus, see Gibson 2004, 142–44.

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Figure 5. Fifth century inscription dedicated by Eudokia at Hammat Gader; Di Segni 1997, 231, fig. 45; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

+ Of the Empress Eudokia + [Column 1] In my life many and infinite wonders have I seen But who, however many his mouths, could proclaim, O noble Clibanus By your strength, having been born a worthless mortal? But rather It is just that you be called a new fiery ocean. Paean and life source, provider of sweet streams. From you is born the infinite swell, here, once there another. On this side boiling, but there in turn cold and tepid. You pour fourth your beauty into four tetrads of springs. [Column 2] An Indian woman and a matron; Repentinus; pure Elijah; Good Antoninus; dewy Galatia and Hygieia herself; the large warm (baths) and the small warm (baths); The Pearl; the old Clibanus; an Indian woman and also another Matron; the strong (woman) and the nun, and the (spring) of the Patriarch. For those in pain your mighty strength (is ever constant). But (I will sing) of god, famous for wisdom … For the benefit of men and … Eudokia’s inscription confirms that Elijah was connected with the hot spring by the fifth century CE, but I would suggest that it also allows for the possibility of a much earlier association. Efforts have been made to identify the “four tetrads of springs” listed in the inscription’s second column to a set of sixteen fountains or pools in the archaeological remains. While this has not been possible, Di



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Segni (1997, 230) is nevertheless likely correct that the names corresponded in some way to “individual parts of the baths or elements of the water system” that Eudokia saw as she toured the site. Among the eponymous names are two that date to the second century CE. The oldest identifiable name in the inscription is in line 11, Ἀντωνῖνος εὖς (“good Antoninus”), a shortened form of Ἀντωνίνος εὐσεβής, the name by which the emperor Antoninus Pius was known in the East. As the successor of Hadrian, whom rabbinic tradition placed at Hammat Gader, Antoninus Pius may have also visited the site and contributed to its beautification.37 Another early patron, Repentius, is found in line 10. A newly discovered Latin inscription from the site identifies Sex. Cornelius Repentinus as the leg(ato) Aug(usti) pr(o) pr(aetore), under whose command a vexillatio of Legio VI Ferratae completed a building project (Eck 2014, 212–14). The name Repentius is otherwise not attested in this region (Green and Tsafrir 1982, 87–88), making it highly probable that the unspecified Repentius mentioned in Eudokia’s inscription was this same governor. According to Eck (2014, 213), enough is known about the career of Cornelius Repentius that this inscription must be dated between 189 and 192 CE. Antoninus Pius and Repentius, therefore, were likely associated with the thermae from its early years. Sandwiched between these two names is Elijah. If sections of the bath complex in the immediate vicinity of the one named for Elijah date to the second century, then it is possible that the association between Elijah and the hot springs is of similar antiquity. In light of this link between Elijah and Hammat Gader, I return to R. Judah ha-Nasi, who was credited with the controversial ruling about travel between Gadara and the hot spring on the Sabbath. Among the many medical complaints that rabbinic texts attribute to R. Judah was a prolonged toothache described in the Yerushalmi: Rabbi lived in Sepphoris for seventeen years and of that time he spent thirteen suffering from a toothache … Elijah came to him in the guise of Rabbi Hiyya the Elder…. [Elijah] put his finger on the tooth and healed it. The next day Rabbi Hiyya the Elder came to him and said, “How does my lord do? As to your teeth, how are they doing?” He said to him, “From that moment at which you put your finger on it, it has been healed.” (y. Ketub. 12:3)

The appearance of the prophet Elijah in this passage marks a significant departure from accounts of him in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic texts. In biblical stories, Elijah was known for his prophecies and for his ability to bend the laws of nature. For example, Elijah orchestrated a three-year drought and later caused it to rain (1 Kgs 17–18), and he brought about the spontaneous combustion of a waterladen altar (1 Kgs 18:36–40). While Elijah did perform a healing miracle in the 37.  Eck argues that Commodus, not Antoninus Pius, was the emperor for whom part of the bath complex was named. Since both emperors had the name Antoninus, he suggests that Eudokia was simply confused when she composed this text (2014, 214).

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raising of the widow’s son (1 Kgs 17:17–23), such cures were not commonly ascribed to him in the Hebrew Bible. Talmudic accounts of Elijah likewise credit him with miracles, but Kristen Lindbeck (2010, 95–135) demonstrated that most of these miracles do not relate to illnesses or physical ailments. Rather, these episodes revolve around a disguised Elijah rescuing a Jewish protagonist from a dangerous predicament. In fact, the episode in which Elijah heals R. Judah’s toothache comprises one of only two stories in the Talmud when the prophet healed someone.38 The absence of miraculous cures credited to Elijah in both biblical and rabbinic literature becomes more prominent in light of his association with Hammat Gader. I propose that the story of R. Judah’s thirteen-year toothache and his vision of Elijah as the agent of his cure are not informed by the stories of Elijah found in the Hebrew Bible or elsewhere in the Talmud, where the prophet rarely performed miraculous cures. Rather, by the time that the Jerusalem Talmud with its story of R. Judah’s toothache was completed in the fifth century, a long-standing link between Elijah and Hammat Gader may well have conditioned rabbinic authors to see the prophet as a source of healing, a connection that manifested itself in the story about the rabbi’s toothache. Furthermore, R. Judah’s relief from a legendary toothache and incubation at Hammat Gader share a similarity beyond the figure of Elijah; in both situations, healing was administered through a dream or vision. I would suggest that this form of epiphany underscores that influence of ritual incubation at Hammat Gader on this rabbinic story. In conclusion, two tentative hypotheses can be offered. First, on the basis of Eudokia’s inscription, Elijah’s name may have been associated with the bath complex as early as the second century. It was not named exclusively after him at this point, but as a local wonder-worker, his name was given to part of the baths, alongside the names of important benefactors and figures from Greek myth, such as Hygeia and the nymph Galatea. The area named for Elijah might have even been a portion of the complex where Jewish visitors congregated. Second, Elijah may have been seen by both Jews and Christians as the agent of healing in their incubation dreams. This is possible on the basis of his name’s appearance at the site alone, but it finds more support in the story of R. Judah’s dream, in which Elijah is clearly portrayed as a healer. The coexistence of Asklepios and Elijah as divine healers for their respective populations is perhaps understandable, as Elijah’s miracles and fiery chariot to heaven (2 Kgs 2) parallel Asklepios’s wondrous cures and divine ascent in Greek myth. 38.  The other rabbinic story in which Elijah heals someone has a comedic element, and may have been intended as a lesson to readers. Elijah appeared to Rav Shimi bar Ashi, who had swallowed a snake. To get rid of the snake, Elijah instructed him to eat a gourd with salt and to commence running; over the course of three miles, the snake was expelled (b. Šabb. 109b). However, there is a nearly identical story in which Rav Shimi is not the patient, but rather the miracle-worker, and it is unclear which version is older. See discussion in Lindbeck 2010, 107.



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Conclusion This paper has attempted to explain how ritual healing was experienced at the hot springs of Roman and late antique Palestine. Before concluding, a possible objection should be raised. Literary accounts make clear that the hot springs were not exclusively sites of ritual healing; while some visitors sought divine cures, others came to the baths simply for leisure. The juxtaposition of leisure and ritual healing is not unknown at other therapeutic sanctuaries. For example, the impressive theater and stadium facilities at Epidauros hosted performances and competitions during religious festivals, and the Asklepieion of Pergamon famously became a center of intellectual life. Similarly, the thermae were multivalent sites, attracting both leisure and ritual healing visitors.39 It is tempting to see in Antoninus of Placentia’s description a way to relieve the tension between the ritual and leisurely uses of the bath complex. It might be inferred from his account that the hot spring was open to everyone during the day, while those expressly seeking healing came at night, when a setting more conducive for incubation prevailed. While this does not preclude the possibility that visitors to the baths during the day might have also experienced divine epiphanies to which they attributed miraculous cures, it nevertheless offers a plausible explanation for how the hot springs were able to accommodate the different reasons that people had for visiting them. Patronized by pagans, Jews, and Christians, Hammat Gader was a site that experienced remarkable continuity across several centuries. Thermal-mineral springs figured prominently in the ritual landscape of Palestine, where they addressed the universal concerns of sickness and injury. Votive dedications in the form of inscriptions and lamps offer a starting point from which to consider the sanctity of Hammat Gader. The construction of a synagogue near the bath confirms that Jews visited the site alongside pagans and Christians, and rabbinic authors acknowledged the ritual role of the hot springs by permitting travel to them on the Sabbath. I argue that the rituals at the thermae took the form of incubation, as was common in Greco-Roman healing cults. Finally, a case can be made for seeing Elijah and Asklepios as the divine healers that visitors expected to appear in incubation dreams. Bibliography Belayche, Nicole. 2001. Iudaea-Palaestina: The Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century). RRP 1.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Brock, S. P. 1977. “A Letter Attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem on the Rebuilding of the Temple.” BSOAS 40:267–86. 39.  A story in Epiphanius Pan. 30.7–8 tells of one visitor who purportedly visited Hammat Gader for healing, but once there lost sight of his original purpose through the allure of the hot spring’s other attractions.

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Croon, J. H. 1967. “Hot Springs and Healing Gods.” Mnemosyne 20:225–46. Csepregi, Ildikó. 2015. “Christian Transformation of Pagan Cult Places: The Case of Aegae, Cilicia.” Pages 49–57 in Continuity and Destruction in the Greek East: The Transformation of Monumental Space from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity. Edited by Sujatha Chandrasekaran and Anna Kouremenos. BARIS 2765. Oxford: Archaeopress. Dauphin, Claudine. 1999. “From Apollo and Asclepius to Christ: Pilgrimage and Healing at the Temple and Episcopal Basilica of Dor.” LASBF 49:397–430. ———. 2005. “Bethesda Project at St. Anne’s in the Old City of Jerusalem.” POC 55:263–69. Deubner, Ludwig A. 1900. De Incubatione Capita Quattuor. Leipzig: Teubner. Di Segni, Leah. 1997. “The Greek Inscriptions of Hammat Gader.” Pages 185–266 in The Roman Baths of Hammat Gader: Final Report. Edited by Yizhar Hirschfeld. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Doering, Lutz. 2008. “Much Ado about Nothing? Jesus’ Sabbath Healings and Their Halakhic Implications Revisited.” Pages 217–41 in Judaistik und neutestamentliche Wissenschaft. Edited by Lutz Doering, Hans-Gunther Waubke, and Florian Wilk. FRLANT 226. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Dothan, Moshe. 1983. Hammath Tiberias. Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains. Ancient Synagogue Studies. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Dvorjetski, Estée. 2007. Leisure, Pleasure and Healing: Spa Culture and Medicine in Ancient Eastern Mediterranean. JSJSup 116. Leiden: Brill. Eck, Werner. 2014. “The Armed Forces and the Infrastructure of Cities during the Roman Imperial Period—The Example of Judaea/Syria Palaestina.” Pages 207–214 in Cura Aquarum in Israel II: Water in Antiquity; Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean Region Israel; 14–20 October 2012. Edited by Christoph Ohlig and Yehuda Peleg. DWhG. Clausthal-Zellerfeld: Papierflieger. Edelstein, Emma J., and Ludwig Edelstein 1998. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Finkielsztejn, Gérald. 1986. “Asklepios Leontoukhos et le myth de la coupe de Césarée Maritime.” RB 93:419–28. Flannery-Dailey, Frances. 2004. Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras. JSJSup 90. Leiden: Brill. Gibson, Shimon. 2004. The Cave of John the Baptist: The First Archaeological Evidence of the Truth of the Gospel Story. London: Century. ———. 2011. “The Excavations at the Bethesda Pool in Jerusalem: Preliminary Report on a Project of Stratigraphic and Structural Analysis (1999–2009).” Pages 17–44 in La Piscine Probatique de Jésus à Saladin: Le projet Béthesda. Edited by F. Bouwen. Jerusalem: Sainte-Anne, Proche-Orient Chrétien. Gnuse, Robert. 1993. “The Temple Experience of Jaddus in the Antiquities of Josephus: A Report of Jewish Dream Incubation.” JQR 83:349–68. Green, Judith, and Yoram Tsafrir. 1982. “Greek Inscriptions from Hammat Gader: A Poem by the Empress Eudocia and Two Building Inscriptions.” IEJ 32:77–96. Harrisson, Juliette. 2014. “The Development of the Practice of Incubation in the Ancient World.” Pages 284–90 in Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Edited by Demetrios Michaelides. Oxford: Oxbow. Henig, Martin, Mary Whiting, and Robert Wilkins. 1987. Engraved Gems from Gadara in Jordan: The Sa’d Collection of Intaglios and Cameos. Monographs 6. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology.



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Hirschfeld, Yizhar. 1987. “The History and Town-Plan of Ancient Hammat-Gader.” ZDPV 103:101–16. ———, ed. 1997. The Roman Baths of Hammat Gader: Final Report. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Hirschfeld, Yizhar, and Giora Solar. 1981. “The Roman Thermae at Hammat-Gader: Preliminary Report of Three Seasons of Excavations.” IEJ 31:197–219. ———. 1984. “Sumptuous Roman Baths Uncovered Near Sea of Galilee.” BAR 10/6:22–40. Huse, E.V. 1975. “The Nature of Biblical ‘Leprosy’ and the Use of Alternative Medical Terms in Modern Translations of the Bible.” PEQ 107:87–105. Levine, Lee I. 2000. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lindbeck, Kristen H. 2010. Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology. New York: Columbia University Press. Lindblom, Johannes. 1961. “Theophanies in Holy Places in Hebrew Religion.” HUCA 32:91–106. Markus, R. A. 1994. “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places.” JECS 2:257–71. Mastrocinque, Attilio. 2012. Kronos, Shiva, and Asklepios: Studies in Magical Gems and Religions of the Roman Empire. TAPS 101/5. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. McCasland, S. Vernon. 1939. “The Asklepios Cult in Palestine.” JBL 58:221–27. Meshorer, Ya‘akov. 1985. City-Coins of Eretz-Israel and the Decapolis in the Roman Period. Jerusalem: Israel Museum. Meri, Josef W. 1999. “Re-Appropriating Sacred Space: Medieval Jews and Muslims Seeking Elijah and Al-Khadir.” MedEnc 5:237–64. Oppenheim, A. Leo. 1956. The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, with a Translation of an Assyrian Dream-Book. TAPS 46/3. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Patton, Kimberly. 2004. “‘A Great and Strange Correction’: Intentionality, Locality, and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation.” HR 43:194–223. Pearcy, Lee T. 1988. “Theme, Dream, and Narrative: Reading the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides.” TAPA 118:377–91. Rosenberg, Joel. 1990. “Midrash on the Ten Commandments.” Pages 91–120 in Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature. Edited by David Stern and Mark Mirsky. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Rosenberger, Mayer. 1977. City Coins of Palestine. Vol. 3: Hippos-Sussita, Neapolis, Nicopolis, Nysa-Scytopolis, Caesarea-Panias, Pelusium, Raphia, Sebaste, Sepphoris-Diocaesarea, Tiberias. Jerusalem: Rosenberger. Safrai, Ze’ev. 1998. “The Institutionalization of the Cult of Saints in Christian Society.” Pages 193–214 in Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity. Edited by Alberdina Houtman, Marcel Poorthuis, and Joshua Schwartz. JCPS 1. Leiden: Brill. Schwartz, Seth. 1998. “Rabban Gamaliel in Aphrodite’s Bath.” Pages 203–17 in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture. Edited by Peter Schäfer. TSAJ 71. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2001. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. JCM. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith, J. Z. 1987. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. CSHJ. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Sowers, Brian Patrick. 2008. “Eudocia : The Making of a Homeric Christian.” PhD diss., University of Cincinatti. Sukenik, Eleazar Lipa. 1935. The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Hammath-by-Gadara): An Account of the Excavations conducted on behalf of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Mass. aylor, Joan E. 1993. Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins. Oxford: Clarendon. Trebilco, Paul R. 1991. Jewish Communities in Asia Minor. SNTSMS 69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Urbach, Efraim Elimelech. 1975. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University. Uzzielli, Tania Coen. 1997. “The Oil Lamps.” Pages 319–346 in The Roman Baths of Hammat Gader: Final Report. Edited by Yizhar Hirschfeld. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Wahlde, Urban C. von. 2009. “The Pool(s) of Bethesda and the Healing in John 5: A Reappraisal of Research and of the Johannine Text.” RB 116:111–36. Ziv, Yehuda. 1987. “The Green Ones: A Legendary Hero Embraces Three Traditions.” Eretz 2:37–44.

Chapter Fourteen Lela M. Urquhart

Graves, Gods, and Extratextual Ritual in Archaic Colonial Sicily

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ot far into the first volume of Edward Freeman’s A History of Sicily, published between 1891 and 1894, there is a section entitled “Sikel sites,” which refers to the sites of an ancient indigenous population recorded by Thucydides. A few paragraphs in, it becomes apparent that the focus of the section is not on “sites” at all, but rather is on ancient indigenous Sicilian religion. The section poses a series of questions about the extent to which native religious belief and worship changed after the beginning of Greek colonization. Yet the responses to those questions are surprisingly ambivalent, given that Freeman was very much the Hellenist, one who compared the history of Sicily to that of America, a land that never possessed “strictly a native greatness” and that “became great by colonization from other lands” (1891–1894, 1:6). Freeman asserts, for example, that while the Sikel may have “adopted, if not the religion, yet the mythology of the Greek,” it was also the Greek who “learned to worship the gods of the Sikel, to adopt them into his own mythology, and to turn the legends of Greece into new shapes which better fitted [the] new homes on Sicilian soil” (Freeman 1891, 1:134). Later on, the ethnic or cultural origins of certain gods such as Demeter and Kore are interpreted as equally indiscernible: “One can hardly say,” he states, “whether it was the Greek that led captive the Sikel or the Sikel that led captive the Greek, when the gods of Sikel worship were so thoroughly sunk in those of Greece” (1:170). Perhaps most interesting of all are Freeman’s conclusions about the endurance of various native religious traditions: some, like the worship of Hybla “run a course” (1:162) of their own, independent of Greek influence. Others were syncretized with Greek deities and Greek belief, “fusing together … the religious life of the Greek and the Sikel” (1:154). Still others, like the Palici, were readily adopted by the Greeks, but remained for time immemorial a vanguard of native worship. Situated against the backdrop of historiography on ancient Greek colonization, it is evident that Freeman, a British historian and politician who also wrote a history of England, was not the only scholar of his time uncertain of how to represent religion and religious development in ancient colonial Sicily. Adolf Holm, a German ancient historian appointed as chair of the University of Palermo in 305

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the 1870s, stated outright that he believed the Sikels worshiped Demeter prior to the Greeks, and that this explained why the goddess had been so widely revered across the island (1870–1898, 1:77–78). Later, the Italian scholar Biagio Pace, though heavily influenced by fascism, advocated a view of Sicilian religion in which early similarities between colonial and native religious systems had led to “an almost complete fusion” (1935–1946, 1:ix) of the two. The list could go on, but these three examples illustrate the point adequately: in studies of ancient colonial Sicily, religion was repeatedly represented as an aspect of native culture that did not, or was at least slow to, “hellenize.” Indeed, more often than not, religion has been construed as the space where natives exerted substantial influence on Greek colonial culture. Such views diverge from what has commonly been understood as the “traditional” model of ancient colonization used in eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century scholarship; that is, of “hellenization” as an acculturative process that took place after colonization and that stipulated the adoption of Greek culture by non-Greeks—including, among other things, the Greek language, food and drinking customs, visual and/or material culture, and religion (e.g., Boardman 1999; Morel 1984). Hellenization first appeared in studies of Greek history in the early 1800s and, as has been widely noted in recent years, was discursively shaped by the experiences of European colonialism (De Angelis 1998; Dietler 2005, 56; Nenci 1983; van Dommelen 1998). As such, the variant treatment of religion in typical hellenization narratives—as an aspect of culture that was more resistant to change, that remained a bastion of indigenous tradition in the face of Greek culture, and that fostered the active roles of indigenous groups in the creation of Greek colonial culture—appears to find more in common with some of the points made by postcolonialist scholarship of the last thirty years than one might expect (cf. Albanese Procelli 2006; Antonaccio 2003, 60–61; Hodos 2006). The rationale for emphasizing the “resistant” aspects of ancient indigenous religion, however, has been very different for those two bodies of scholarship. Earlier scholars approached the material from the perspective of understanding religion as something that was intrinsically conservative, slow to change and culturally exclusive, following in many respects contemporary perceptions of “primitive religion” as well as the overtures of devout antiquarians trying to align pagan antiquity with the ideological principles of Hellenist Europe. Contemporary scholars influenced by postcolonialism clearly have had a different agenda when attempting to uncover native agency or the melding of local and Greek traditions from the archaeological residue of religious spaces in areas of ancient colonialism. Even so, in insisting on the continuity of indigenous religion, both older and newer interpretations have participated in the same oversight: that is, they overlook the dramatic transformations in religious practice and expression that



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Figure 1. Central-west Sicily, with relevant Iron Age and Archaic-period sites identified. 1. Monte Dessueri 2. Monte Bubbonia 3. Sabucina 4. Caltanissetta 5. Palma di Montechiaro 6. Mussomeli 7. Caltafaraci 8. Valle Oscura-Balate Marianopoli 9. Polizzello 10. Sant’Angelo Muxaro 11. Scirinda 12. Caltabellotta 13. Montagnoli di Menfi 14. Santa Margherita di Belice 15. Entella 16. Colle Madore 17. Corleone 18. Montagnola di Marineo 19. Monte Iato 20. Poggioreale 21. Monte Polizzo 22. Mokarta 23. Segesta 24. Eryx 25. Vassallaggi 26. Casteltermini-Monte Roveto 27. Monte Maranfusa

took place among indigenous populations subsequent to the arrival of Greeks and Phoenicians. The goal of this essay is thus twofold. First, it aims to show that indigenous religion in Sicily really did change, and in significant ways, in the years after colonization. It will focus on a case-study area of central-western Sicily to make this point, marshaling the evidence from roughly forty different settlements situated between the Gela river in central Sicily and the western coast (see fig. 1). It then explores the significance of these changes by examining them under the lens of extratextuality, a concept that draws on the wider theories of thinking about ritual as text and, from there, text as discourse. Ritual, according to Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos, “is characterized by dense and multilayered extratextuality that reaches out of each specific performative occasion to an all-encompassing semantic traditionality or to communally recognized modes of signification” (2005, 19–20). Moreover, if ritual can be understood as text and text as discourse, then ritual must also be seen as being situated within a nexus

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of interaction with other social and cultural discourses. This step in theoretical logic is particularly important if we consider what it implies for thinking about religion and ritual in contexts of large-scale demographic, sociopolitical, and cultural change like that of colonization-era Sicily. If one goal is thus to understand how indigenous religion and rituals changed after the arrival of Greeks and Phoenicians, then the other is to identify what discourses the rituals were speaking to beyond the text of religious ritual itself, and connect such interdiscursivity to the region’s sociopolitical developments during the Archaic period. Methodological Considerations for Measuring Ritual and Religion in Ancient Sicily What was the ritual landscape of indigenous central-west Sicily and how did it change after Greeks and Phoenicians settled on the coasts? Written accounts of indigenous Sicilian religion are basically nonexistent; most of the evidence available for interpreting it consequently comes from the archaeological record. As is often the case when it comes to both archaeology and religion, interpretations of such evidence demand two basic assumptions. The first regards how to approach “religion.” This is not the place for entering into the technical minefield surrounding the question of whether and how religion can be defined. The most expedient thing to be said is that when the evidence is silent, there are few alternatives except to clarify terms and lay out one’s own interpretive expectations. Drawing on the work of scholars in sociological and anthropological studies of religion, I have therefore proceeded along the definitional premise that at the heart of most religious systems, past and present, is the idea that a group recognizes a type of superhuman force(s) to exist and tries to interact with it or them through various ritual practices. The second assumption is that even with a nominal definition like the one above, religion still must be recognized on the ground, and therefore must be defined more empirically. The empirical definition that I have used in this work can be described as an archaeological framework of religious correlates, and is a method that has been used by a number of other scholars following an early model set out by Colin Renfrew in The Archaeology of Cult (1985) for the study of Bronze Age Phylakopi. Renfrew proposed that religion, defined as “culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings,” could be interpreted through a “framework of inference” that included “general if not necessarily universal” correlates for ritual practice, all of which should provide “(1) evidence for expressive actions (of prayer, sacrifice, offering, etc.) and (2) some indications that a transcendent being is involved” (Renfrew 1985, 18, 20). The method has met fair criticism since it was first put forward: it operates, for one, on the assumption that the material remains of religious ritual will differ in some way from the material of noncult activity (Blake 2005, 102). It also relies heavily



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on processual methods that favor the use of existing but rather isolated data to postulate predictions about other archaeological contexts (cf. Rutkowski 1986, ch. 1; Vermeule 1988). The criteria themselves can also be somewhat fluid and redundant. Despite such drawbacks, a classificatory approach still seems to be one of the most effective means of studying ancient religious change, particularly for evidence that is at least partly prehistoric. The use of deductive reasoning—another criticism of the model—also allows for “religion” to be a possibility wherever clusters of correlates appear; the more correlates present, the greater likelihood that a religious space is at play. This quality of the method in turn facilitates the comparison of religious developments across both time and space, as well as behavioral contexts—notably those associated with the funerary sphere—that otherwise might be overlooked. In other work (Urquhart forthcoming) I elucidate the broader theological implications and rationale for these correlates, but for present purposes, I have simply listed the correlates here, with the notation that the more correlates attested for any one given context, the more likely the space in question featured religious activity. In addition, I set a minimum standard that four correlates must be attested in a single context for it to register as “religious” in the first place and thus merit inclusion in the wider analysis. As such, the material correlates used in this study are that the context: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Is located in a place with prominent natural associations. Is located in an area set apart from other types of settlement space. Features the use of specialized or distinctive architecture. Makes a conspicuous public display of wealth or status, often with materials of high intrinsic or symbolic value. 5. Makes use of iconic or aniconic representations of the supernatural being/ power, which may allude to prayer or communication with the supernatural power. 6. Uses devices or elements of ritual to induce/heighten religious experience. 7. Has attention-focusing devices, such as altars, hearths, etc. present. 8. Used specialized facilities (pools, basins, hearths, benches) or equipment. 9. Has evidence of sacrificial practice. 10. Features the special deposition and/or treatment of particular items as votive dedications. 11. Has evidence for the offering, consumption of pouring away of food and drink. 12. Is rich in symbolism, particularly related to deities. 13. Has facilities that reflect a concern with cleanliness and pollution.

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The Evidence: Indigenous Religious Activity in Central-West Sicily before 650 BCE Using this methodology, it can be shown that the number of indigenous sites with signs of concentrated ritual activity rose significantly after 650 BCE, the date of the first Greek colonies in central-west Sicily. During the Iron Age (900–650 BCE), there are twenty-six areas in twenty-one different settlements across the case-study region that present evidence corresponding to the framework of material correlates of religious activity. As demonstrated in figure 2 below, these correlates appear in both funerary and nonfunerary sectors. Attention-focusing features were the most frequent correlate, manifested via human alterations of the natural landscape, most notably rock-cut tombs that make a strong visual impression and draw the eye toward particular areas. Specialized furnishings and equipment also characterized multiple areas; benches were used in certain tombs at Monte Dessueri, Polizzello, and Sant’Angelo Muxaro for laying out assemblages, while low ledges along large huts at Sabucina and Scirinda were used for seating and elevated support (Mollo Mezzena 1993, 141). Regarding mobile equipment, the choice of items was also repetitive, constituted most often by pitchers, pedestal plates, fibulae, and knives; of the sixty-four objects that can be dated securely to the Iron Age at Monte Bubbonia, for example, exactly half are pouring vessels (Pancucci and Naro 1992). Jugs make up almost

Figure 2. Frequency of material correlates of religion, documented among indigenous sites in Sicily prior to 650 BCE. Attestations of individual correlates are further distinguished between whether they were found in funerary or nonfunerary contexts.



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40 percent of the assemblages at Monte Dessueri (Orsi 1912; Panvini 1993–1994). Jugs and pedestals accompanied most burials at Sant’Angelo Muxaro, while a “notable uniformity” was noted among the tomb finds of Santa Margherita Belice (Leighton 1999, 257–58; Marconi 1931, 400–401). Most of this equipment probably functioned as tools in other ritual acts, such as the offering or consumption of food and drink or votive dedication, so it seems feasible to suppose that contexts with them may have hosted other rituals as well. Notably, many of these items have also been associated with the consumption of alcohol—via wine or other fermented beverages—a well-known means of enhancing or inducing an emotional state. Other material correlates are less well attested. Sacrifice, for example, was practiced to some degree in Iron Age Sicily, but overall it was not common and it’s unclear whether “sacrifice” in some domestic settings was anything more than household cooking. The remains of burnt animal bones inside the narrow passageways of tomb chambers as occurred at Mokarta and Entella seem more convincing examples of sacrifice, but the number of sites that have these is very low. Conspicuous displays of wealth were also limited and made almost exclusively in the funerary sphere; additionally, the level of wealth that is on display is far less luxurious than contemporary “heroic” burials in central Greece. One of the wealthiest burials in Sicily, for example, the mass-inhumation (holding between twenty-six to thirty people) “Tomb of the Prince” at Sant’Angelo Muxaro averaged only two vessels and one ornament per individual, including two gold rings. The presence of gold hints at luxury, but very little wealth was actually on display for each person buried. To base interpretations solely on the quantification of correlates would misrepresent the overall picture of ritual activity in Iron Age Sicily, though. Indeed, as figure 2 shows, correlate presence is far more frequent around graves than nonmortuary areas. This skewing is partly explained by methodological discrepancies, such as the general shortage of Iron Age data for the central-west part of the island, or the fact that burials are excavated more often than other parts of sites overall, or the inherent difficulty that comes from distinguishing “ritualistic” space from those of normal domestic activity. But it is also explained by a genuine pattern of ritual preference, in which the funerary sphere functioned as the main outlet for actions that attempted to engage the supernatural realm: of the twenty-four places that have evidence corresponding to the correlates, nineteen are in cemeteries. Within those cemeteries, however, the correlates are dispersed over a wide area. Consequently, though necropoleis operated as centrifugal areas of ritual for Sicilian settlements, it was only rarely that the correlates clustered together in a way that demonstrates well-organized ritual activity. Two tombs (tombs 5 and 25) at Polizzello, for example, saw repeated visitation and ritual practice between

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the eighth and early sixth centuries BCE (De Miro 1988, 35; Fiorentini 1999, 188). Both areas were given a slightly different style of architecture from other tombs in the cemetery and had built enclosures nearby that perhaps were used as gathering spaces. Archaeologists found built altars with signs of intense burning, plus large quantities of ash and burnt and unburnt animal bones, pointing to repeated acts of animal sacrifice outside the tombs. A depositional area outside the tombs also produced piles of vessels, and a number of votive deposits were found dug into the ground. The evidence certainly looks like ritualized activity—animal sacrifice, offerings, and ritual feasting, all in larger and differentiated structural features—but not to the exclusion of other burials in the same necropolis also displaying signs of the correlates, if in less quantity. For nonfunerary areas, particular structures appear anomalous based on their larger size, finds, or the fact that they were later replaced with finer, “religious” structures. But in nearly every case, none of the structures are especially “polythetic” (meaning correlate-rich) nor do they appear exclusively used for ritual activity. The major exception to this overall pattern, however, is once again Polizzello. By the start of the seventh century, the residents of Polizzello had built a large (14.7 m diameter) round building (Sacello E) in megalithic construction at the top of the acropolis, where they left metal items in small votive pits as well as lots of drinking wares (Stanco, Battatio, and Gallo 2011, 14–16; Palermo, Tanasi, and Pappalardo 2009). Thus, while some degree of material religious expression existed at a fair number of Iron Age sites in central-western Sicily, religious activity was loosely structured and only rarely centralized enough to have made a lasting impression in the archaeological record in a single context, and when it was, it tended to be around graves, with the major exception of Polizzello. The Evidence Indigenous Religious Activity in Central-West Sicily After 650 BCE Signs of religious activity among indigenous sites increase starting around 650 BCE, roughly contemporary with the first generations of settlement of Phoenicians and Greeks in central and western Sicily. Figure 3 presents the basic features of the development of these religious spaces, with each bar representing the total number of sacred spaces in use and the distribution of types (open-air, round building, or rectangular building) acknowledged by shading. The numbers inside each bar refer to the amount of new sacred areas for each time period (as opposed to the total in operation) and the solid line running between bars represents the number of settlements with evidence corresponding to the material correlates; multiple sacred areas or structures could and did exist at individual sites, which explains why no one-to-one correlation exists between the number of sacred areas in operation and number of settlements.



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Between 650 and 600 BCE, ten indigenous sites reserved spaces in their settlements for worship; importantly, none of these spaces were burial grounds. Open-air cult was typically practiced, and was characterized primarily by sacrifice, drinking and eating, and occasionally by votive dedication. At least five of these sites (Polizzello, Sabucina, Caltanissetta, Palma di Montechiaro, and Montagnoli) also included built structures, a pattern that would become more prominent in the sixth century. Unlike houses of the time, which were usually rectangular or elliptical, seventh-century buildings with evidence of other religious material correlates tended to be round. As such, they resembled, and probably deliberately evoked memories of, Bronze Age domestic architecture (cf. De Miro 1980–81, 561) and have received the label “hut-shrines” as a result. Other sites, however, built rectangular one- or two-room shrines stylistically similar to buildings at Greek sites like Gela, Himera, and Selinous. Only two clear examples of such structures exist in central-west Sicily in the last two quarters of the seventh century. However, after 600 BCE, rectangular and round buildings were both widely present across the region, and sometimes, as was the case at Polizzello, Sabucina, Caltanissetta, Colle Madore, Monte Polizzo, Caltabellotta, Montagnoli di Menfi, and Monte Roveto, communities built both round and rectangular sacred structures. By 550 BCE, the construction of rectangular buildings began to outpace that of round structures, and by 525 BCE, no one was building new hut-shrines; in fact, many that had been built earlier in the sixth and seventh centuries were being abandoned. Recent scholarship has frequently discussed the architecture of these religious spaces, but less attention has been paid to other elements of religious practice associated with them. This is one of the ways in which the organization of evidence according to a set of religious material correlates—the same set used to examine

Figure 3. Development of indigenous religious spaces in central-west Sicily, 650–400 BCE.

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the “precolonial” evidence—can be productive. Over the course of the Archaic and early Classical periods, for instance, seventy new cult spaces appeared at different sites across central-western Sicily. Ranking the correlate categories at an aggregate level produces a tiered profile of religious worship among indigenous communities after colonization. At the top, documented at just less than 75 percent of the spaces, was the use of specialized architecture and the strong natural associations of places where sacred areas developed, along with their tendency to be set apart or physically marked off from other areas. Below this level was the evidence for specific religious practices. Ritual deposition or treatment of items (votives) characterized 69 percent of the sacred areas; offerings of food and drink and the public display of wealth or status characterized 63 percent, and there was evidence for the heightening or inducing of emotions at 54 percent, mostly through the presence of wine vessels. Attention-focusing devices filled out that level at 53 percent. Less than half of the sites had evidence corresponding to the other correlates—just slightly so for sacrifice (49 percent) and specialized equipment/furnishings (43 percent), but notably fewer in regards to symbolism, iconography, or concerns with pollution and cleanliness. A few sites illuminate these patterns more clearly. At Iron Age Sabucina, for example, ritual activity may have taken place at Hypogeum 1/83, a tomb-like structure going back to the Bronze Age and featuring a mixed assemblage of material both domestic and cultic in nature (Mollo Mezzena 1993; Guzzone 2006, 39–43), as well as at two other buildings (Building D and Hut 9) which appeared mostly residential, but had material corresponding to between one and three other religious correlates. Around 650 BCE, Sabucina overhauled its religious landscape. A sector just outside of one of the city gates was designated for ritual purposes, with activity centering on two hut-shrines (A and B), one of which featured a rectangular porch with Doric columns and was later decorated with architectural terracottas (De Miro 1980–1981, 561–66). Worshipers left items inside both structures, including a model of a hut-shrine that dated to the early sixth century and bronze belts decorated with anthropogenic images (Guzzone 2006, 73; Albanese Procelli 2003, 53–57). By the mid-sixth century, the people of Sabucina added a rectangular structure and two rock-cut buildings to that space, while also designating two new sacred areas, one inside and one outside the city walls. These new areas also featured a mixture of older and newer architectural styles, with the rectangular building receiving Geloan-style antefixes and the rock-cut structures echoing long-established building techniques at Sabucina. A different example might be cited at Monte Saraceno. There is little evidence for Iron Age occupation of the site, but by the mid-seventh century, the group living there designated the acropolis for open-air cult (Calderone 1980–1981, 604). Within one generation, they then cut a huge terrace in the same spot in order to build a monumental temenos wall enclosing three rectangular buildings. The



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largest of these buildings measured 20 by 40 meters, meaning that its square area was not only nearly ten times the size of the largest contemporary hut-shrine but was also larger than the main temples at the Greek sites of Gela and Himera. All the buildings were also decorated with terracotta antefixes probably made by a Geloan craftsman (Adamesteanu 1956, 128). The city would continue building new structures up to about 500 BCE before suffering a decline in the second quarter of the fifth century. Further west, variant patterns of development characterized different sites. At Colle Madore, south of Himera, for example, open-air cult marked by lots of drinking and animal eating in the seventh century BCE preceded the erection of an initial (probably wooden) round shrine on the acropolis, which was then replaced with a more permanent round hut-shrine around 550 BCE and used especially for cow, ovi-caprid, and deer sacrifice (Vassallo 1999, 60–61). Around the same time, however, the residents of Colle Madore also put up a narrow rectangular structure on the terrace just below the acropolis, marking its construction with a foundation deposit containing heirloom pottery, and using it (based on the material) both for leaving and manufacturing votives (Vassallo 1999, 67–71). All these areas, however, declined just before 500 BCE, when the site was abandoned (Vassallo 1999, 73–74). Meanwhile, at Segesta, ritual activity flourished into the Hellenistic period. Little Iron Age material has emerged for “Elymian” Segesta, but the Grotta Vanella area may have been used for ritual activity as early as the seventh century based on pottery found there (De la Genière 1997, 1033–34). By the sixth century, the center of ritual activity must have shifted to the Contrada Mango area, which around 550 BCE received a massive Doric-style temple (Tusa 1957, 86; 1961, 35). The publications for this area are confusing, but the boundary and foundation walls make clear that it would have rivaled certain sanctuaries at Greek sites. Investment in glorifying the gods continued during the fifth century at Segesta, with the construction of the iconic Doric temple on the western hill (Mertens 1984). These few examples flesh out the outline of postcolonization indigenous religion in Sicily provided by the percentages described above. Neither numbers nor narratives, however, explain the significance of such changes; quantification is ultimately a method of condensing information, while narratives bring the material of individual sites closer. Concepts like extratextuality may be useful, then, in the sense that they help fill the gap between the two. Ritual, Text, Discourse The Components of Extratextuality The concept of extratextuality and its application to ritual and religion depends on other, well-established theoretical premises: first, that rituals act as texts, and

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second, that texts serve as points of reference in broader cultural discourses. These premises have catalyzed conversations in social scientific and humanistic fields since the 1960s and 1970s, particularly with the emergence of ritual studies, as discussed by Catherine Bell (1992, 13–15). Furthermore, they are built on the notion of understanding culture as a communicative symbolic system in which ritual acts operate as malleable semantic building blocks, as initially described by Clifford Geertz (1973) and more recently discussed and debated by Timothy Insoll (2004) in relation to the archaeological sphere. To think of rituals as texts is to also analogize the ability for rituals to be “read” so that their meaningfulness becomes more apparent (Marcus and Fisher 1986, 61; Ricoeur 1971, 541–46). According to Ricoeur, embedded in what constitutes a “text” is the notion that meaning becomes fixed through the text’s inscription. When the text is more metaphorical, or if “(ritual) action” is substituted for “text,” then action also becomes “fixed.” Yet in the process of obtaining this very fixedness, the text (or, the ritual as text) also becomes objectified; and from that position, it is made permeable to interpretation (and thus alternative meanings or “meaningfulness” in a general sense). Most theorists have imagined the primary reader of ritual texts as the outside observer—the scholar, the anthropologist, the linguist. Ritual texts, though, can also be read and interpreted by the people experiencing them firsthand; this is part of what practice theorists insist upon in exposing the interplay between the formal devices of texts and rituals and then the engagement of various actors with such devices in order to create, transform, and manipulate meaning (cf. Bell 1992, 81). As Edward Said (1983, 33–35, 45) pointed out, texts are cultural entities that exert action in the world; rather than being disembodied objects, they are practical sets of action that reverberate with the social realities of power and authority. Correlatively, then, just as a text gains significance via its relationship to other cultural symbols and forms of authority, the meaningfulness of a ritual derives from the way in which it relates to, as well as contrasts with, those same things. Texts also form the substructures of discourses, with discourse defined not as the scholarly theoretical dialogue within a discipline about a particular topic, but as the established conventions and collective knowledge to which new texts respond (and which in turn are subsequently generated by them). In both cases, discourses are ongoing things that develop reciprocally with on-the-ground situations and cultural expectations. Like texts, discourses are established through “fixation”; as Ricoeur notes (1971, 532), discourse refers to the substance of what has been said, rather than the act or event in which it occurred. By “fixing” that information, discourse becomes, in the process, detached from its original context and interpreted by others who try to “make sense” of it by relating it to ongoing situations; discourse, from this perspective, is always about something.



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Discourse also always addresses an audience, but because of the path in which it developed, it “escapes the limits of being face to face” (Ricoeur 1971, 535) and instead is addressed to the abstracted audience writ large. If rituals are understood and interpretable as texts, then like texts, they also contribute to the development of a discourse. Actions, as opposed to words, become moored when particular ones unfold in a social dimension that, for various reasons, refers to a broader situation outside of the action itself. Certain conventions or information earn credibility and, as a result, gain ground because they resonate with genuine concerns, threats, fears or pleasures, thereby validating their authority. Such actions subsequently form a particular typology, while simultaneously becoming recognizable by nonactors outside of the specific actperformance. As such, actions also become open works, accessible to interpretation but also to reperformances and revisions, all of which are mediated through different (and ever-new) actors. Actions become meaningful because of their inherently dialectical evolution, and certain meaningful actions start to emerge as dominant in that they engage an apparatus of strategies that allow them to be differentiated from conventional practices (Bell 1992, 90). As those meaningful actions are repeated, ritual becomes consolidated while also being refitted as the broader cultural and social context changes. All ritual thus speaks to and within an existing cultural discourse, one that is situational and permeable to the modalities of the “audience” that participates and observes it. Building on the description by Yatromanolakis and Roilos (2005) noted earlier, however, extratextual rituals, speak both to the existing discourse, but also beyond that discourse and its specific set of actions to other strands of dialogue active within a particular community. Moreover, if intertextuality refers to how texts (or actions seen as texts) can play with and generate a sort of internal dialogue that is disconnected from the outside, extratextuality implies the ability of texts and actions to speak directly to the outside world and to alternative discourses distinctly not part of the status quo. Cultural Discourses in Archaic Sicily There is no way of knowing what the actual cultural discourse was for centralwestern Sicily at the time of ancient colonization. The literary sources, however, hint that it was an evolving one that responded to the rapidly changing and multidimensional sociopolitical situation of the region from the sixth century BCE on. Textual accounts mention multiple incidents of conflict—most without clear signs of closure—among rotating constellations of Greek, Phoenician, and indigenous communities. Diodorus (V.9.1–5) refers, for example, to an attempt by Greeks to found settlements in western Sicily in close proximity to both the Phoenician city of Motya and to the large indigenous city of Segesta (along with other local communities) led by Pentathlos around 580 BCE; Herodotus

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(Hist. V.46) also notes the later (ca. 510) endeavor by the Spartan Doreius to settle somewhere near Segesta. Both attempts incurred outbreaks of fighting and ended in significant casualties for the would-be Greek settlers and, as Irad Malkin (2011, 123) has argued, signaled the beginning of a regional division in Sicily in which conflict was common. Similar bouts of conflict seem to have afflicted the Himerans and their indigenous neighbors in northwestern Sicily, as alluded to by the phrasing of a dedicatory inscription found at Samos (cf. Musti 1992, 31–35). At the same time, the archaeological record makes apparent that at least some Greek cities—most notably Selinous, the recurrent rival to Segesta in the textual record, but also Himera and then especially Akragas after ca. 550 BCE— had deep and lasting social and economic relationships with the indigenous hinterland. Greek imports and pottery manufactured at the Greek colonies appear in earnest at indigenous sites in central-western Sicily from 625 BCE on. Although a fully synthetic study of imports found at indigenous settlements is not yet possible (cf. Spatafora 2003, 95–96), their presence in indigenous assemblages has been widely noted and examined alongside studies of colonial-manufactured wares and locally produced pottery. At Monte Maranfusa, for example, Early Corinthian pots appear at the site in the late seventh century but in modest numbers, reflecting an assemblage profile remarkably similar to what has been demonstrated for Selinous (cf. Dehl-von Kaenel 1995). By the mid-sixth century BCE, production of the favored local grey ware halted, being supplanted by an increase in Attic imports, Selinountine wares, and locally produced pots painted with geometric decoration. Similar patterns have been noted for ceramics at Poggioreale (Falsone and Leonard 1980–1981, 948–52; Spanò Giammellaro 1993, 159–61), Entella (Guglielmino 1994, 934–35; De Cesare 1997), Segesta (De la Genière 1997), Monte Iato (Isler 1999, 143–56) Monte Polizzo (Morris and Tusa 2004, 60, 63), Colle Madore (Tardo 1999), and Montagnoli di Menfi (Castellana 2000, 269–70).1 Regardless of political or territorial disputes at play, colonial and indigenous groups were also engaged in a highly dynamic and mutually receptive network of cultural and socioeconomic exchange. The historical accounts also allude to internal conflict within settlements, Greek and indigenous alike. At Himera, debate over how close the ties should be to the Phoenicians and Carthage contributed to the expulsion of the political faction associated with the city’s tyrant in the late 480s and the subsequent battle of Himera (cf. Miles 2010, 121–23). Similar discussions likely went on at Selinous 1.  At these and a number of other central-western sites—e.g., Monte Saraceno, Polizzello, Sabucina, Casteltermini, Caltabellotta, and Montagnola di Marineo—two other compelling aspects of the data stand out beyond the fact that they document the presence of Greek imports. First, the majority of imported and colonial-produced wares found at indigenous settlements belong to a functionally specific vessel category, that of wine-drinking; second, though they appear in funerary and domestic contexts at some sites (e.g., Monte Iato and to a lesser degree Monte Maranfusa), they are far more commonly discovered in the sacred sectors of indigenous sites.



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given the rapid turnover of tyrants between ca. 580/70 and 480 BCE (De Angelis 2003, 156–61). Written sources for non-Greek sites in Sicily are both limited and late, but an isolated number of odd comments made by Greek authors allude to the heterogeneity of local communities, even as late as the fifth century BCE. Thucydides (VI.1–3) famously divided the indigenous Sicilians into three historically ethnic categories at the beginning of his sixth book, the Sikels, Sikans, and Elymians, distinctions that are not necessarily incorrect but all the same lack precise corresponding demarcations in the archaeological record (as has been widely discussed and dissected in the scholarship, but is especially well summarized by Robert Leighton (1999, 229–235), Carla Antonaccio (2001), Rosa Maria Albanese Procelli (2003, 18–22), and Franco De Angelis (2003, 103–4)). This notation of Sicily’s historical ethnic diversity, however, foreshadows the later lack of consensus among the Sicilians over who they would support militarily, which Thucydides suggests was one of the (many) miscalculations made by Athens in launching the Sicilian expedition. The exact rationale behind the dissent is not fully explained, but the implication is that independent assessments of which relationship (with Syracuse or Athens) would be most beneficial tipped the balance toward one side or another on a community-to-community basis. Internal disagreements also marked the earlier coalition of indigenous communities led by Ducetius between 460 and 440 BCE, as described by Diodorus (XI.91–92). In the defeat of Ducetius at the site of Motyan, for example, certain factions are said to have remained with Ducetius, while others abandoned him and still more “actively plotted against him.” Diodorus also implies difficulties in Ducetius’s later attempts to unite the native settlements of northern Sicily. Do the disagreements at the pan-Sicilian level translate into disagreements within individual communities? It is impossible to say with exactitude, but an answer in the affirmative is not too far-fetched based on the textual and archaeological evidence. Literary allusions to “kings” at Sicilian settlements, such as Κωκαλος at the city of Kamikos, thought to be the central Sicilian site of Sant’Angelo Muxaro, suggest that at the time of early Greek settlement, the sociopolitical structure of local groups, as perceived by the Greeks, was along the lines of a chiefdom. The archaeology, however, does not indicate strong degrees of social differentiation for the Iron Age; within most communities, a markedly “elite” social or political group is not apparent, though in a few (notably Pantalica in the eastern part of the island), differences are more evident. Signs of social differentiation, however, increase from the beginning of the Archaic period on; burials at Sabucina, Monte Saraceno, Vassallaggi, and other sites include higher numbers of imported material (cf. Panvini 2006), insinuating a shift toward greater forms of social display, while greater levels of investment toward public works such as walls, cisterns, sacred spaces and roads simultaneously point to an increase in wealth at the collective level. This material seems to suggest that while

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the process and exact character of social change in each settlement may not be clear so many years later, it very likely did occur. In addition, if what the literary record says about the Sicilian population as a whole is any indication, these changes were not very smooth; instead they more likely spurred both theoretical debates and deep fractures within various communities, with some groups attempting to preserve or even revert to more traditional—or what were thought to be more traditional—social, political, and cultural structures, with others pushing for new alternatives. Extratextuality and the Transitions in Indigenous Sicilian Ritual Let’s return to both the numbers and to extratextuality. The quantification of material correlates allows us to identify certain widespread changes from the Iron Age through the Classical period across the case-study region as a whole. But a simple comparison of precolonization sites with evidence corresponding to the ritual material correlates to postcolonization sites is not enough. Indeed, it would result in basically a plateau when averaged across the Iron Age-Archaic period transition, with the number of settlements presenting “religious” evidence changing only slightly from twenty-one sites prior to 650 to ten in 600 to twenty in the early sixth century. If, however, the basis of comparison is instead the average of the correlates present in individual contexts, the differences are stark. Prior to 650, sites had an average of 4.5 correlates present, while after 600, the average was 9 or higher. In addition, the evidence was increasingly attested in discrete areas not associated with the funerary sphere. Indeed, as the seventh century BCE closed, what had distinguished earlier Iron Age graves as ritually significant increasingly disappeared; by the late sixth century BCE, the number of indigenous burials receiving “special” ritual attention beyond the deposition of the bodies and a funerary vessel assemblage is virtually zero. These differentials indicate three major overarching trends in the development of indigenous Sicilian religion in the period corresponding to colonization. First, its physical manifestation became more visible in the post-650 BCE period, increasingly being expressed through practices and forms of expression that were not only durable in the archaeological sense, but also increasingly perceptible as distinct from quotidian household items. This might thus be translated as increased material (and economic) investment in religious activity, but also as an increase in the symbolic leverage associated with religious activity within indigenous communities. Second, the retreat from the necropolis was compensated for through a heightened attraction to nonmortuary, nondomestic spaces that were specially designated for ritual activity; in short, graves steadily became less important, while new nonfunerary areas increased in ritual significance. Third, the retreat also heralded a broader shift from loosely to highly structured ritual, in the



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sense that as necropoleis were left behind, so too were aspects of Iron Age religious practice such as its diffuseness, its lack of ritual consistency, and its ambiguity. From this perspective, indigenous sites in central-west Sicily experienced dramatic transformations in the scope and incarnation of their ritual activity and “religion” during the Archaic period, coincident with the foundation and subsequent growth of the “colonial” settlements. A quite broad shift had occurred, one where the primary orientation of indigenous ritual activity went from graves to gods—or, to be more precise, invisible beings not relegated to graves and associated with supernatural forces. In some ways, however, the fundamental ideas of what was appropriate for ritual stayed the same: in the Iron Age and in later periods, the commonest correlates are the recurrent use of a set-apart space with natural associations, usually further demarcated through the use of attentionfocusing devices and specialized architecture. These basic precepts for structuring a ritual space did not change that much, even if their mode (and place) of expression did. The choice to practice ritual in areas where the natural world was enhanced (even if, as in urban sanctuaries, modestly so) continued a tradition that would have nearly always been recognizable, while the idea of organized ritual activity occurring in an area that was “separate” riffed on the older separation of burials (and burial ritual) from the rest of the settlement. The most common ritual practices identifiable in the post-650 sacred areas also had Iron Age precedents. The deposition and special treatment of particular items—the most commonly attested ritual practice among Archaic and Classical period indigenous sites—was steeped in the Iron Age tradition of leaving goods alongside the dead, as was the consumption and/or offerings of food and drink, particularly those with alcohol. Yet while the sweep away from graves may have generally been toward ritually rich, discrete sanctuaries, drawing on earlier semantic traditions and the cultural discourses those traditions had contributed to along the way, it took very different routes in getting there, all of which also took on distinct material characteristics that a strictly quantitative analysis of material correlates would fail to capture. Investigating these developments from the standpoint of extratextuality exposes these different routes more clearly. Several of the high-frequency correlates have, for example, sharply distinct manifestations. As discussed earlier, this divergence has most often been noted in regard to religious architecture, via the round hut-shrines and rectangular oikos-style shrines, with round buildings reflecting ties to native architectural traditions and rectangular buildings indicating evidence of “hellenization.” But is also evident for other correlates. Ritual deposition or special treatment of items, for example, was widespread among indigenous sites (though it can be difficult to confidently call the practice “votive dedication” in some cases). Even so, the objects themselves vary significantly, ranging from pots and mass-produced terracotta statuettes (as documented

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at, for instance, Monte Saraceno and Palma di Montechiaro) to very elaborate bronzes. The best documented case for the dedication of bronzes comes from sixth-century Polizzello, where the floors of buildings A, B, and D were pockmarked with deposits of ash that held bronze and a few silver ornaments. Bronze items also made up a significant portion of finds places like Colle Madore, Montagnola di Marineo, and at least one of the sanctuaries at Segesta (Di Noto 1997). The metal hoard found on the “sacred slope” at Colle Madore dated to 550–525 BCE and included anthropomorphic bronze sheet warrior belts, other bronze sheeting fragments, three bronze fibulae, three bronze rings, three bronze bowls, and a number of small iron objects (Vassallo 1999, 86–88). Similarly, at the sixthcentury site of Montagnola di Marineo, the excavators discovered a deposit of three bronze helmets, two shin-greaves, part of a shield perhaps, and some type of iron object (Spatafora 2006). While never at the level that is associated with Archaic and Classical Greek temples, these types of finds suggest that the deposition of bronzes, particularly those related to warfare, was an important ritual activity in certain indigenous contexts, and was perhaps a privileged means of ritual practice, embodying a discourse limited to some part of the population. Interestingly, after 525 BCE, ritual treatment of bronze items decreases significantly, and in general items of unambiguously votive character become less archaeologically prominent. At the same time, public displays of wealth—largely through investment in monumental building in central settlement locations—increased. Similarly, multiple iterations of food and drink consumption become apparent in the Archaic period and later indicate different forms of ritual interaction. In some cases, such as with tombs 5 and 25 at Polizzello, continued visitation to and feasting around those particular graves continued into the early sixth century BCE, even while the acropolis was clearly becoming the main stage for ritual activity. In other cases, such as at Montagnoli di Menfi, Caltabellotta, Casteltermini-Monte Roveto, Monte Raffe, and Sabucina, the continuity of older patterns of ritual food and drink consumption/offering is more apparent in the ceramic assemblages found in newly built sanctuaries. Classic styles such as the pedestal cup and plate continued to be used by at least part of those communities, suggesting that there was an effort to preserve traditional ritual customs surrounding comestibles. This evidence, however, has to also be seen against the exceptional shift toward two very specific ritual practices involving food and drink, that is, sacrifice and wine-drinking. In the pre-650 period, sacrifice is only evident in five ritual contexts in central-western Sicily; by 500 BCE, it is attested in over thirty, exponentially increasing over the course of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. Moreover, though sacrifice resonates with a discourse of food offering, it is a more complicated text than simply the offering and/or consumption of meat, particularly considering that it was a rather new ritual phenomenon among indigenous communities. The mounting evidence for animal sacrifice is paralleled



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by an increase in materials related to wine consumption. Libations and purifications using wine were also likely practiced, but if the presence of specific vessel forms such as kotyliskoi, Ionic B1 and B2 cups, kylikes, and skyphoi are any indication, the ritualized consumption of alcohol was an incredibly important part of indigenous religious activity: in the twenty-one sites that reported on ceramic types found around the sacred areas during excavation, 89.9 percent of the vessel forms were wine wares. Conclusion If the archaeological correlates of ritual activity can be read as indications of cultural discourses at play among indigenous communities in ancient Sicily, then the material record of their religious development reveals a situation that was multilingual and dialogical. It is argued here that the changes in indigenous Sicilian religion can be read as the material manifestations of competing sociopolitical and cultural discourses that emerged in the wake of colonization. On the one hand, there was a more established ritual discourse that had long been articulated around graves, one that privileged things like the designation of certain spaces within a community, often with natural associations, for interaction with the supernatural sphere, the consumption of alcohol and food in those spaces, and the less tangible association of the supernatural with “the past,” as symbolized by dead relatives. On the other hand was a counterdiscourse, one that was activated by exposure to new forms of cultural expression and widening socioeconomic opportunities and a rejection of, or at least challenge to, longer-term social structures in the indigenous world, and that drew on forms of ritual expression and religious organization encountered while interacting with Greeks and Phoenicians in order to articulate and differentiate itself. In the dynamic context of postcolonization Sicily, communities tended to embrace one discourse or another, but in many situations, both could be present and credible within a single site. Settlements that built both round and rectangular structures, and that designated different expressions of the same ritual—for example, bronze dedication versus more modest forms of dedication—to each of those different structures seem to substantiate this point. Through the strategic use of old and new semantic traditions, then indigenous Sicilians used religion to speak to a variety of concerns in a period of rapid social change. Bibliography Adamesteanu, Dinu. 1956. “Monte Saraceno ed il problema della penetrazione rodio-cretese nella Sicilia meridionale.” ArchCl 8:121–46. Albanese Procelli, Rosa Maria. 2003. Sicani, Siculi, Elimi: forme di identità, modi di contatto e processi di trasformazione. Biblioteca di archeologia 33. Milan: Longanesi. ———. 2006. “Pratiche religiose in Sicilia tra protostoria e arcaismo.” Pages 43–70 in Ethne

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Subject Index

Abdon, 44, 45 n. 58, 46 Abimelech, 271 n. 30 Abraham, 136 n. 15, 271, 271, nn. 30–31 accession literature, 80–81, 86, 91–92, 94 Achaean League, 262 Achilles, 53–56, 58–71 Acmonia, 288 n. 12 Acrocorinth, 56, 139 n. 23, 141 Adonai, 135–36 Aelius Donatus, 219 n. 13 Aeneas, 93, 121, 123–24 Aenona, 77 Aethra, 55 Agnes, Saint, 44 n. 57, 45 Agrigentum, 161–65 Agrippina Minor, 80 Ahenobarbi, 81–82 Ajax, 54, 56, 58–71 Akiba, Rabbi, 294–95 Akko, 295 Alba Longa, 93 Alexander the Great, 94–95, 273 Alexander Balas, 95 Alexandria, 104, 106, 143 Ammianus Marcellinus, 41 Amorgos, 137–38 n. 19, 138 n. 23 Ananke, 140 Anchises, 75, 121–24 Andokides Painter, 66 Andromachus, 43 Antiochus, 160–61, 165 sons, 158–59, 165 Antiochus III, 274 Antiochus XIII, 158 Antiphilus, 75, 90 Antoninus, 292–94, 297–98, 301 Antoninus Pius, 299, 299 n. 37

Apamea, 288 n. 12 Apelles, 94–95 Apollo, 33, 37 n. 37, 56–57, 66, 78–79, 83, 85–88, 91–92, 94–95, 97–99, 101–3, 106– 7, 165 n. 41, 262–63, 267 temple of, 87–88 Apollonius, 80–81, 265 n. 16 apotheosis, 81–82, 91, 122 Aphrodisias, 89, 90–91, 106, 266, Aphrodite/Venus, 56, 58, 295, 93, 94–95, 267 Ara Pacis, 7, 216–18, 222–23, 237 n. 4, 240, 246–47 n. 25, 250 Arabia, 172 Aratus, 81, 81 n. 9 Arbel, 288 n. 11 Arch of Titus, 239 Argonauts, 26, 54 Argos, 264 n. 155 Arimaspi, 98 Armenia, 89, 93, 104, 266 Artemis, 56, 261 Asclepius, 157, 165 n. 41 Ashkelon, 26, 296 Ashera, 193 Assorus, 165 n. 41 Assyria, 199, 263 n. 11, 272 astragaloi, 53–58, 60, 62–63, 64, 67, 69–71 Athena, 59–63, 65–68, 70 Athenian Akropolis, 58, 67, 69 Athens, 55 Attila, 41 Attis, 24 Augustine, 30, 31 n. 21, 43, 43, n. 50 Augustus, 5, 34–35, 37, 41, 75, 75 n. 2, 76–77, 81, 83, 85, 87–88, 91 n. 25, 92–95, 103, 105, 109, 119–20, 122–23, 127, 216,

329

330

Indexes

Augustus, continued 223, 237, 239, 243–45, 247, 250, 264 n. 15, 276 n. 45 temple(s) of, 37 n. 34, 41, 88 n. 16, 246 n. 23 Aulus Postumius Albinus, 32–33 Bacchus, 31, 31 n. 24, 44 Battle of Milvian Bridge, 40 Beersheba, 180–81, 271 n. 30 Bellerophon, 45 Bellona, 94 Bes, 197 Beth Shemesh, 180 Bologna, 70 Bona Dea, 223, 227 Bona Fortuna, 156 Boura, 55 Brauron, 261 Britannicus, 89–90 Brittania, 266 Building of the Tablets, 138 Buraikos River, 55 Buthrotum, 104 Caere, 98, 101 Cagliari, 83, 86 calendar(s), 121, 123, 247–48 Caligula, 76–78 Calpurnius Siculus, 75, 80, 80 n. 5, 81, 91– 95 Capernaum, 288 n. 11 Capitoline Hill, 37, 39, 161, 244 Caracalla, 233, 251 n. 31 Carchemish, 199, 200 Caesarea Maritima, 76 n. 3, 263 Carsulae, 76–78 Caruso Cave, 261 Cassandra, 142 Cassandrea, 104 Cassius Dio, 97, 119 nn. 1–2, 223 Castor and Pollux. See Dioscuri Cato, 153 n. 10 Catullus 101, 121 Caucasus, 95

Ceres, 138 n. 21 Chiusi, 70 Christ, 30–31, 43, 45, 129, 142–44, 275 n. 41, 276 n. 44, 285 n. 6 Chrysas, 151 n. 3, 165 n. 41 Circus Maximus, 223 Clarion, 267 Claudia Augusta, 79, 79 n. 4 Claudia Helpis, 98, 100 Claudia Octavia, 79, 79 n. 4 Claudia Pallas, 98–99 Claudius, 76–82, 86, 87–88, 90–91, 92 n. 30, 94, 95 n. 38, 105–6, 155, 223, 237, 239, 243, 243 n. 19, 252, 266 Claudius Claudianus, 40 n. 42, 41, Claudius Gothicus, 24 n. 13 cleromantic divination. See cleromancy cleromancy, 5, 54–58, 62–63, 65–66, 70–71 Clytemnestra, 17 Colossus, 85, 94–97, 99–101, 106, 110 Commodus, 35–36, 107–10, 296 n. 32, 299 n. 37 Concordia, 105 temple of, 233, 255 Constantine, 20, 35, 37–41, 46, 110 Baths of Constantine, 38, 38 n. 39 Consus, 223 Colchis, 266 Corinth, 6–7, 10, 104, 131, 137–39, 141–44, 146, 261–69, 276–77 Cosmas, 44, 46 Creon, 265–66 Critonia Philema, 226–27 Cruesa, 265 n. 17 Cupid, 153–58, 162, 165 curse(s), 129–32, 134, 135, 137–38, 140–46 curse tablets 5–6, 10, 129–31, 133, 135–37, 139, 141–44, 146–47 Cybele, 164 Cyclops, 55 Cynno, 157 Cyprus, 56, 172 Cyril of Jerusalem, 283 Damian, 44, 46



Subject Index

Damasus, Pope, 42, 42 n. 45 Daphne, 294 Dea Syria, 107–9 Decapolis, 283 Delphi, 56, 142 Delphic Apollo, 37 n. 37 Delphic oracle, 63 Delos, 69, 154 n. 13, 165 n. 41 Demeter, 56, 69, 138–40, 305–6 sanctuary, 130, 136, 137–38, 141, 144, 146 Dido, 107 Didyma, 57 Dio, 80 n. 6, 85, 98, 252 Dioscuri, 4, 17–46, 71, 81, 81 n. 7, 90, 94, 102 temple(s) of, 33, 37, 41 house of the Dioscuri, 41 Diosheiron, 84 Diva Livia, 223 divination, 53, 54, 56, 58, 63, 66–70. See also cleromancy hieroskopia, 68–69, 71 Divus Iulius. See Julius Caesar Domitian, 89, 89 n. 17, 109–10, 233 n. 2, 238–39, 243, 243 n. 21, 251–52, 255 Doreius, 318 Drusus, 35, 37 n. 36, 87, 90, 237 n. 5, 243 n. 19 Drusus the Younger, 35 Ducetius, 319 Ebal, Mount, 269 Egypt, ancient, 23, 26, 182, 199, 286 n. 7 Einsiedlin Eclogues, 75, 91–93 ekphrasis, 154–55 Elijah, 8, 10, 296–301 springs, 292, 297 Emmaus-Nicopolis, 281, 282 nn. 2–3 Ephesos, 56, 262, 262 n. 9 Epidauros, 281, 301 Eros, 58, 156 n. 19 Ethiopia, 95 Etruria, 65, 68–71 Eucharist. See Lord’s Supper

331

Eudokia, 297–300 Eumolpus, 98–99, 101 Euripides, 54–55, 63, 261 n. 3, 265, 265 n. 16 Europa, 28 Exekias, 58–59, 61–62, 65–66, 71 extratextuality, 8, 10, 11, 307, 315, 317, 320, 321 flamen Dialis, 224, 243, 252 flaminica Dialis, 7, 223–36 Fortuna, 96, 156, 223, 227 n. 29 festival of Fortuna Muliebris, 227 temple of, 267 Faustina Minor, 95, 95 n. 39 Flavians, 233–34 n. 2, 237, 238–39, 243–44, 251, 254–55 temple of the Gens Flavia, 239 fons Iuturnae. See Juturna Furor, 94 Gadara, 283, 287–88, 290, 291 n. 16, 296 n. 33, 297, 299 Gaius, 35, 90, 123–24 Gaius Heius, 152 Gaius Verres, 151 Galilee, 270, 283 Sea of, 182, 287, 288 Gamaliel, Rabban, 295, 295 n. 28 Ganymede, 24 Garland of Philip, 90–91 Gaul, 26, 26 n. 15, 216, 223 Gela, 67, 313, 315 Gela River, 307 Gelasius, Pope, 43–44 Gemini, 18, 26 Gerizim, Mount, 263 n. 11, 269, 273–75 Germanicus, 35, 81, 81 n. 9, 87, 98 n. 44, 104–5, 109, 109 n. 52, 119 n. 3, 123, 243 n. 19 Gervasius, 44 Glauke, 265–67, 269, 272, 276–77 Glauke, Fountain of, 7–8, 10, 261–67, 269, 272 n. 34, 276–77 Golan Heights, 182, 288

332

Indexes

golden age, 75, 81–82, 89, 92, 95, 99, 102, incubation, 5, 8, 281, 293–96, 300–301 inferiae, 119–27 106, 110, 276 n. 46 Ino, 168 n. 25 Hadrian, 95, 95 n. 39, 264 n. 15, 274 n. 37, Isaac, 136 n. 15, 271 n. 30 Israel, 4,179, 180, 182, 193, 195, 200, 273, 287, 297 n. 35, 299 276 n. 44, 282–86, 298 Halaf, 199–200 Isthmia, 56, 267 n. 22, 268 n. 25 Halieis, 56 Isthmian games, 267 n. 22 Hammat Gader, 5, 8, 10, 281–301 Hammat Pella, 281, nn. 2–3 Jacob, 269, 271–72, 276, 293 Hammat Tiberias, 281–82, 287–89, 296 Jacob’s Well, 7–8, 261–631, 269–72, 276-77 Hammei Ba’arah, 281, 282 nn. 2–3 Jason, 54, 95 n. 39, 265 Hammei Livias, 281, nn. 2–3 Jerome, 31 n. 21, 42, 42 n. 45 Hebron, 273 Jerusalem, 8, 195, 200–201, 203, 205–207, Hector, 55, 58 263, 272–75, 283, 296 n. 34 healing, 5, 8, 275 n. 42, 281, 283, 285, 287– John Hyracanus, 263, 274 89, 291 n. 18, 292–97, 299–301 John the Baptist, 297 n. 36 Hekate, 131–32, 134–36, 143 Jordan River, 292, 297 Helen of Troy, 17, 25, 27, 42 Helios/Sol, 45, 85–86, 88–91, 96–99, 101, Josephus, 76 n. 3, 80 n. 6, 263, 263 n. 11, 272–74, 282 n. 3 106–7 Jove, 41, 224, 225 Hephaistos Painter, 67 Judah, 173, 193, 195–96, 200, 205–7 Hera, 268 n. 25, 269 Judah ha-Nasi, Rabbi, 289, 299 Heraion (Delos), 69 Herakles/Hercules, 55–56, 75, 89, 89 n. 17, Judea, 180, 262–63, 270, 276 296 n. 33, 91 n. 23, 108–10, 151, 161, 163 Judean pillar figurines, 6, 11, 193–208 Julia Augusta. See Diva Livia N. 37, 164–65 Julia Domna, 26, 218 sanctuary, 75, 162, 165 Julia Titi, 238–39, 253 Hermes, 63, 140 Julian, 37 n. 35, 267 Herod, 76 n. 3, 263 Julius Caesar, 122, 276 n. 45 Herodas, 157 Herodotus, 1, 98, 131–32 n. 8, 265 n. 16, Divus Iulius, 81, 93, 122, 239, 243, 243 n. 19 Juno, 26, 26, n. 14, 151 317–18 Jupiter, 6, 26, 26 n. 14, 36, 40 n. 42, 42, 46, Hesiod, 265 n. 16 75–78, 80–85, 89, 89 n. 17, 91, 94 n. 36, Hesperus, 91 101, 107–9, 151, 159–61, 224, 226, 235– hieroskopia. See divination 36 n. 3, 236, 243–45 hippodrome (Constantinople), 37 Juturna, 33 Honorius, 40 n. 42, 41 Juturna, spring of, 33–34, 37 Horse Tamers, 38–39 Hygeia, 296, 296 n. 33, 300 Kadmos, 55 Kallirhoe, 281, 282, nn. 2–3 Iao, 135–36 identity, 2, 7–8, 10, 23, 30, 32, 65, 99, 102–3, Kamikos, 319 107, 183, 208, 215, 233, 252–53, 261–63, Kefar aqavia, 288 n. 11 268–69, 271–72, 274–76, 281, 285–87, Kerameikos, 69 Kidron Valley, 205–206 296–97



Subject Index

kingship theory, 90 Kition, 56 Kleophon Painter, 53 Kleophrades Painter, 68 kleroi, 54–55, 63 Knidos, 5–6, 130–31, 136–41, 144 Kore, 56, 132, 137–38, 305 Korykeion Cave, 56 Lachish, 173 Lactantius, 43, 43, n. 46 Lampsacus, 163 n. 39 Lazarus, 29–30 Leagros Group, 60–61, 66 Leda, 17, 41 Leo the Great, 41 Leonidas, 84 Liber, 137–38 n. 19 Libera, 137–38 n. 19 Ligorio, 108 n. 52 Lord, the, 30–31, 129–30, 142–44, 262, 274, 276 n. 45 Lord, my, 299 Lord’s Supper, 129 Eucharist, 143 Lucifer, 91 Lucius, 5, 10, 25, 35, 90, 119–27 Lucius Mummius, 153, 155 Lucan, 75, 85, 91–92 Ludi Castorum, 41 Luna/Moon, 98–99, 132 Lydia, 84 Lysippides Painter, 60

333

Maresha, 179–82, 187 Mark Antony, 243 n. 19 Mars, 91, 94–95, 107, 151 n. 3, 236, 243 temple of, 33, 93, 245 Martha, sister of Lazarus, 29 Mary, sister of Lazarus, 29 Marzabotto, 65–66 materiality, 1–6, 9, 152 Maxentius, 35–37, 40 Maximos, 289 Medea, 8, 261 n. 3, 265–69, 272 n. 34, 276 Medusa, 249 Megara, 5–6, 130–31, 133, 136–37, 139–40, 143 Memmius, L., 35 memory, 7, 46, 87, 105, 119, 244, 247 group memory, 2 Memphis, 137–38 n. 19 Mermerus, 268 Messana, 152, 156 Mevesseret, 205–6 Michael, 135, 136 n. 15 Midrash ha-Gadol, 287 Minerva, 63, 70, 109, 109 n. 53 Mithras, 23, 27 n. 16 mithraic rites, 42 n. 43 Moronea, 104 Moses, 136, 136 n. 14, 271, 274 Moza, 205

Nahman b. Isaac, Rabbi, 290 Nazarius, 40 Negev, 171, 179–80, 205–7 Nemi, 78 M. Marius Gratidianus, 126–27 Neoptolemos, 66 Macrobius, 126, 225–27 Nero, 5, 9, 75, 78–110, 237, 237 n. 5, 243, magic, 5–6, 10, 26, 43, 54, 58, 63, 71, 130– n. 19, 266 31, 134 n. 10, 135–38, 140–44, 146–47, Neronia, 91, 107 197–98 Nicea, 104 Makron, 66 Nicodemia, 104 Marcellus, 155 n. 17 Nike/Victory, 56, 67, 94, 102 Theater, 103 Nile Valley, 182 Marco Giulo, 108 n. 52 Niobid Painter, 53–55 Marcus Antonius, 101 Nola, 30 n. 20, 58 Marcus Aurelius, 35 n. 32, 95, 95 n. 39

334

Indexes

Pilate, 274 pillar figurines. See Judean pillar figurines Pindar, 54, 265 n. 16 Pisa, 5, 10, 119–27 Pisidia, 24, 24 n. 13, 25, 27 Pliny the Elder, 94–96, 99–100, 126, 146 n. 14, 220, 243, 251, 253 n. 37, 282 n. 3 Pliny the Younger, 251, 251 n. 33 Pluto, 137 Pompeii, 101 Pompey, 84, 263 Theatre of, 97–98 Pontianus, 45 Poppaea, 84, 105 Portus, 41 Palestine, 8, 26, 26 n. 15, 45, 135–36, 143, Poseidon, 56 281, 283, 285, 292, 293 n. 24, 295–96, 297 Praeneste, 103 n. 34, 301 Praxiteles, 153–55 Pallene, 62 Priam, 66–67 Pan, 56 Prima Porta, 75, 75 n. 2 Parentalia, 121, 123, 126 Protasius, 44 Paris, 23–24, 26, n. 16, 45, 58 prophecy, 54–55, 66, 68, 75, 81, 129, 142, Parthians, 93 144–47, 299 Patras, 103–104 prophet, 8, 39, 142, 144, 147, 272–73, 275, Paul, Apostle, 5–6, 41, 44–46, 129–31, 296–97, 299–300 142–47 Prudentius, 43, 43 n. 46, 222 n. 17 Paul the Deacon, 221, 224 Prusa, 104 Pausanias, 55–56, 140, 261 n. 2, 262 n. 4, Pseudo-Acro, 87 n. 15 265, 267–69 Ptolemies, 104 Peisistratos, 62 Pyrgi, 70 Pentathlos, 317 Pythia, 54, 56, 85 Pergamon, 301 Ocriculum, 76–78 Octavian, 101 Odysseus, 55, 60, 67 offerings. See inferiae Olympia, 37, 78, 80 Onesimos, 67 Orpheus, 23–24, 45, 267 n. 20 Orvieto, 59, 63, 65, 66, 70 Oserapis, 137–38 n. 19 Osoronnophis, 136 n. 14 Ostia, 27 n. 16, 33 n. 30, 35 n. 33, 36, 41, 42 n. 43, 225, 265 n. 17, 266 Ovid, 80 n. 6, 120, 123–24, 126–27, 164, 219–20

Persians, 67 Quintus Curtius Rufus, 82 Persian martyrs, 44 Quirinal Hill, 37, 39, 108 n. 52, 239 Persian period, 173–74, 263 n. 11 Persian Wars, 68 Rabirius, 233 Peter, Apostle, 32, 41, 44–46 petrographic analysis, 6, 171–72, 177–78, Raphael, 41 Regillus, Lake, 32, 81 181, 183, 187–88, 194, 205–207 religion(s) Pheres, 268 ancient, 1, 3, 4, 8, 37, 46, 53, 71, 107, 125, Phideias, 80 193, 195–98, 205, 207–208, 215, 219 Phile, 157 n. 13, 228, 233, 239, 247–48, 253, 262, Phoenice, 104 293, 305–7, 315, 320–21, 323 Phoenicians, 307–308, 318 physiognomy, 89, 103 study of, 1–3, 53, 63, 196, 305–6



Subject Index

material approaches, 4–5, 7, 8–9, 306, 310 Remus, 37–38 Rhea Siliva, 219 Rhodes, 90, 104, 264 n. 15 ritual, 2–10, 33, 42, 54, 65, 69–71, 122–23, 127, 130, 135 n. 12, 136–38, 141–44, 146–47, 152, 157 n. 24, 159, 159 n. 30, 166, 173, 185–88, 194, 197–99, 203, 207– 8, 215–27, 242, 244, 247–55, 261, 268 nn. 24–25, 269, 281, 281 n. 1, 289, 290–94, 300, 301, 305, 307, 310–12, 314–16 ritual experience, 10, 157 n. 24, 222, 249, 254–55, 301, 309, 320–23 ritual object(s)/implement(s), 2, 4, 6–7, 9–11, 70–71, 137, 141, 146, 152, 159 n. 30, 165–66, 186, 188, 193–94, 197–98, 203, 208, 215–18, 219, n. 11, 220–28, 242, 247, 249–50, 252, 254, 311, 314, 321–23 ritual space, 6–8, 10, 136–37, 171, 182, 203, 218, 223, 225–26, 247–55, 261, 267, 269, 281, 289, 290–94, 301, 308–12, 314–15, 320–23 images, 2, 127, 152, 166, 215, 225, 252–55 social dimensions, 2, 6, 123, 130, 138, 143–44, 147, 197–99, 215, 219, 222– 28, 250, 252–55, 292–93, 301, 308, 317, 323 Roma, 35–38 Romulus, 37–38, 93 Samaria, 7–8, 261, 263, 270, 272–73, 275– 76 Samothrace, 25–26, 26 n. 16 Sardis, 288 n. 12 Saturn, 98, 126, 234 cult of, 32 n. 26 golden age of. See golden age Saturnalia, 5, 91, 92 n. 29, 126 Scythia, 98 Sebasteion, 89, 106, 266 Selinus, 69 Semiotics, 2–3 Seneca, 75, 80–81, 90–94, 126, 265–66 Sennacherib, 173, 187

335

Sennen, 44, 45 n. 58, 46 Sepher ha-Razim, 135–36 Sepphoris, 288 n. 11, 299 Septimius Severus, 233, 251 n. 31 Serapis, 296–97 temple of, 39 Sergius, 44 Servius, 87 n. 15, 94 Servius Auctus, 219–22, 225, 227 n. 19 Seulukos I Nicator, 95 Sex. Cornelius Repentinus, 298–99 Sextus Appuleius, 243 Shechem, 263 n. 11, 269, 271–73 Shephelah, 171, 179, 180, 181, 205–7 Sibyl, 142 Sibylline Books, 88, 236 Sibylline Oracles, 145 n. 40 Sicily, 6, 8, 69, 151, 152 n. 7, 155 n. 18, 156 n. 20, 158, 160, 161, 305–8, 310–15, 317– 19, 321–23 Sol Invictus, 45 n. 61, 110 Solomon, 136 Spain, 119, 216, 223 Sparta, 17, 25–26, 56 Stephanos of Meleager, 91 Stoicism, 81 structuralism, 2–3 Suetonius, 80 n. 6, 87 n. 14, 102–3, 106, 107–8, 227 n. 28 Susa, 98 Sussita, 288 n. 11 Syracuse, 155 n. 171, 158, 319 Syria, 108–9 n. 52, 158, 159, 160 Syria-Palestine, 287 n. 9 Tabula Hebana, 87 n. 15, 123 Tabula Siarensis, 119 n. 3, 123 Tall Jawa, 186 Tarpeia, 219 Tarquinia, 70–71 Taurus, 26 Teiresias, 54 Tell al-Rimah, 199 Tel Halif, 5–6, 171–85, 187–88 Tell Jemmeh, 174, 176, 183

336

Indexes

Tertullian, 30 n. 20, 43 n. 46, 223 Tertullus, 41 theomorphic imagery, 75–110 theomorphic rhetoric, 75, 80–81 Theseus, 55 Thespiae, 153–58 Thessalonike, 103–4 Thomas (disciple of Jesus), 276 n. 45 Thucydides, 305, 318 Tiber Island, 108–9 n. 52, 227 n. 28 Tiberius, 35, 37, 37 n. 36, 39 n. 41, 41, 76, 82–83, 90, 243, n. 19, 245, 246, 246 n. 23 Tiberius Claudius Alypus, 98, 100 Tiberius Claudius Felix, 98, 100 Timarchides, 162–64 Tipasa, 32 n. 26 Tiridates, 97–98 Titus, 7, 233–35, 237–40, 243–45, 247–55 Tivoli, 75–76 Tivoli General, 75–76 tongues, speaking/praying in, 129–30, 142, 144–47 Trajan, 233–34 n. 2, 266 Trajan Decius, 95, 95 n. 39 transvectio equitum, 33, 35 Trier, 38, 42 Trieste, 26, 28 Tripolis, 104 Troilos, 66 Trojans, 26 n. 16, 62, 66–67 Trojan War, 58, 62, 66 Troy, 17, 26 n. 16, 58, 62–63 Trygaeus, 63 Tunisia, 20, 22, 24, 42, 43 n. 49 Turkey, 172 Turin, 98, 101 Tusculum, 82 Varro, 126 Veii, 70 Venus, 93– 95, 267 Vergil, 75, 92, 94, 94 n. 36, 121, 219, 222 n. 17, 225 Verres, 6, 10, 151–66 Verrines, 151–63, 165–66

Vespasian, 7, 84, 88, 96, 233–35, 237–40, 243–45, 247–55 Vesta, 216, 218, 219, 219 n. 12 temple of, 7, 216, 218–23, 225 Vestal Virgins, 7, 216–23, 226 Vesuvius, 102 Vulci, 58, 65, 68, 70 Washing Painter, 57–58 Waters of Asia, 281, 282 n. 2 Yahwism, 195–96 Zeus, 17, 25, 63, 66–67, 80, 84–85, 224, 249, 274 n. 37. See also Jupiter Zion, Mount, 205 Zor’a, 180

Ancient Sources Index

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Genesis 21:25–34 271 n. 30 24:10–68 271 n. 30 271 n. 30 26:15 271 n. 30 26:17–22 26:23–25 271 n. 30 29:1–30 271 n. 30 33:18–20 269, 271 48:22 271 Exodus 2:15–22 271 n. 30 15:23 270 n. 27 16:29 290 270 n. 27 17:1–6 Leviticus 27:28 135 Numbers 20:2–13 270 n. 27 270 n. 27 21:17 Deuteronomy 7:26 135 13:17 135 26:19 287 28:6 145 Joshua 6:17–18 135 7:11–13 135 1 Kings 17–18 299 18:36–40 299 2 Kings 2 300 17:24 263, 272

5 297 n. 35 5:1–14 297 17:17–23 300 Ezra 4:1–16 263 n. 11 Nehemiah 2:19–20 263 n. 11 263 n. 11 4:1–23 6:1–19 263 n. 11 Psalms 115:5 145 n. 40 Proverbs 261 n. 1 4:21 5:15 261 n. 1 5:18 261 n. 1 6:11 261 n. 1 8:24 261 n. 1 261 n. 1 8:28 9:18 261 n. 1 261 n. 1 10:11 13:14 261 n. 1 14:27 261 n. 1 16:22 261 n. 1 18:4 261 n. 1 25:26 261 n. 1 Isaiah 145 n. 40 44:9–20 Jeremiah 10:3–5 145 n. 40 Ezekiel 42 273 46:22–24 273 Habakkuk 2:18 145 n. 40 Zecharia 14:11 135

337

338

Indexes

Septuagint

Quis rerum divinaraum heres sit 200

Baruch 6:8 2 Maccabees 6:2 3 Maccabees 4:16

145 n. 40

New Testament

263 n. 11

John 271 n. 31 1:1–3 1:9 276 n. 44 1:17 271 n. 31 272 n. 33 1:18 1:45 271 n. 31 1:47–48 272 n. 33 1:49 276 n. 44 2:24–25 272 n. 33 276 n. 44 3:17 4 261, 263, 269–72, 272 n. 33, 276–77 4:4 270 4:4–42 269 4:7–26 270 275, 276 n. 43 4:9 271, 271 n. 30 4:10 4:11–12 275 4:11 271 4:12 271–72 4:13–14 272 4:24 275 4:15 272 n. 32 4:17–18 263 n. 11 4:17–19 275 4:18 272, 275 4:19 271–72 4:20 273–75 4:21 274 4:22 275, 275 n. 41 4:23 274–275 4:25 275 4:25 275 4:27–30 271 4:29 275 n. 41 4:34–38 270 4:34 275 n. 41 4:36 275 4:39–42 271 4:42 272 n. 32, 276–77 4:44 271 n. 31

145 n. 40

Pseudepigrapha Sibylline Oracles 3:31 5:84 7:14 Testament of Joseph 2.6

145 n. 40 145 n. 40 145 n. 40 273–74, n. 35

Dead Sea Scrolls Damascus Document 11:16–17

291

Ancient Jewish Writers Josephus Antiquitates judaicae 9.288 11.8.7 12.257–64 13.254–57 13.256 18:85–89 19.1.2 Bellum judaicum 1.62–3 1.21.7 1.138–58 1.403 1.414 7.1086–189 Philo De migratione Abrahami 98

135

272 273–74, n. 35 263 n. 11 263 n. 11 273–74 274 80 n. 6 263 n. 11 76 n. 3 263 263 263 282 n. 3

135



Ancient Sources Index

5 296 n. 34 5;1–17 275 n. 42 5:34 276 n. 44 5:39 271 n. 31 5:45–46 271 n. 31 6:69 276 n. 44 7:19 271 n. 31 7:26–27 272 n. 33 7:41 272 n. 33 272 n. 33 8:14–19 8:23 274 n. 39 8:56–59 271 n. 31 11:27 276 n. 44 12:47 276 n. 44 271 n. 31 13:38–41 272 n. 33 14:4 14:7 272 n. 33 14:9 272 n. 33 14:15 272 n. 33 272 n. 33 14:17 17:3 272 n. 33 17:19–21 274 n. 29 17:24 271 n. 31 17:25–26 272 n. 33, 272 n. 33 274 n. 29 18:36 20:28 276 n. 45 20:31 276 n. 44 Acts 273–74, n. 35 7:16 17:29 145 n. 40 18 143 Romans 9:3 143 1 Corinthians 1:1 144 n. 37 1:22–24 131 3:17 144 n. 38 8:4 146 10:4 271 n. 30 11–14 144 11:2–16 129 n. 1 11:17–34 129 n. 1 12–14 145–46 12:1–3 129, 145–46 12:1 129 n. 1

339

12:2 145–47 12:3 130, 142–43, 145 12:13 146 14 144 14:7 147 14:18 144, 146 14:26 146 14:27–31 146 14:37 144 16:1–24 146 16:21–24 129 16:21 144 16:22 130, 142–43 Galatians 1:8–9 129 n. 1, 130 n. 6, 143 1:9 144 n. 38 4:8 145 6:17 143 6:18 144 Colossians 4:18 144 Philemon 25 144 1 Thessalonians 1:9 145 2 Thessalonians 3:17 144 Revelation 8:3–4 30 22:18–19 144 n. 38 22:20 144 n. 38  

Rabbinic Works

b. ‘Abodah Zarah 55a 294, 294 n. 26 b. Berakot 8a 288 b. ‘Erubin 61a 290 b. Hullin 106a 291 n. 16 b. Šabbat 40a 291 n. 16 40b 289

340

Indexes

b. Šabbat, continued 39b–40a 290 61b–62a 292 109a–b 290, 291 n. 16 109b 300 n. 38 y. ‘Abodah Zarah 4.4 295 n. 29 y. ‘Erubin 5.7 290 y. Ketubbot 12:3 299 y. Šabbat 4.6 289 4.16 290 14.3 292 18.1 289 y. Šebi‘it
 1 282 n. 3 6, 1 282 n. 3 m. ‘Abodah Zarah 3.4 295 m. ‘Erubin 4.3 290 5.7 290 m. Šabbat 6.2 292 7:2 291 14:3–4 291 22.6 291 Midrash ha-Gadol 287 Rabbah Ecclesiastes 282 n. 3 7, 11 Rabbah Genesis 33, 4 282 n. 3 t. ‘Erubin 5.2 288 n. 10 t. Šabbat 4.9 292 7.23 292 9.22 291 12.8–13 291 15.11–17 291

Early Christian Writings Acta Sanctorum Juli, 8, col. 130B

45 n. 59

Aelian, Varia Historia 1.30

46 n. 62

Ambrose De Isaac vel anima 5 44 Epistulae 8 54 5

30 n. 20 30 n. 20 30 n. 20 30 n. 20 30 n. 20

Antoninus, Itinerarium 7.14–22 292 Augustine Contra Maximinum Arianum 1 30 n. 20 De diuersis quaestionibus LXXIII 71 31 n. 21 De natura et gratia 32, 36 31 n. 21 De ordine 1, 4 31 n. 21 De trinitate 1, 9–10 31 n. 21 In Evangelium Johannis tractatus 21, 15 31 n. 21 53, 7 31 n. 21 VII.6 43 n. 50 Enarrationes in Psalmos 31 n. 21 Ps. 103, 1, 13 Sermones 236 31 n. 21 313E 3, 30 n. 20 Chronograph of 354 Didache 10.6

45 n. 58, 233 n. 1

143 n. 34



Ancient Sources Index

Egeria, Itinerarium Egeriae 3 10

30 n. 20 282 n. 3

Eusebius, Onomasticon 44

282 n. 3

Jerome Commentariorum in Nahum liber 31 n. 21 1, 1.106 Epistulae 42–43 n. 45 21 John Chrysostom, Against the Jews 1.6.2–3 294 Lactantius, Divinarum institutionum libri VII 1, 10, 5 43 n. 46 Martyrologium hieronymianum 45, n. 58 Nazarius, Panegyric IV 4

40

Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 1, 1, 5 De baptism 12 De spectaculis 5.7 Codex Einsiedlensis 36

341

43 n. 46 30 n. 20 223 39

Greco-Roman Literature Aelian, Varia historia 10.3 Ammianus Marcellinus 19.10.4

133–34 n. 8

41

Antiphilus, Anthologia Palatina 9.178 90, 90 n. 21 Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.9.28

261 n. 3 265

Apolonius, Argonautica

265 n. 16

Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 5 12

30 n. 20 30 n. 20

Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.10

Passio Polychronii

45 n. 59

Peter the Iberian 82–85

Aratus, Phaenomena 81

282 n. 3

Prudentius, contra Symmachum 1, 225–30 47 Pseudo-Augustine, Regulae Aurelii Augustini 1.16

43 n.

42

Sozomenus, Historia Ecclesiastica 1280 282 n. 3

Aristophanes, Peace 364–65

266

63

Calpurnius Siculus, Eclogues 1.46 80 n 5 1.46–48 94 1.73 80 n 5 1.84 80 n 5 4.7 80 n 5 4.30 80 n 5 4.48 80 n 5 4.84 80 n 5 4.93 81

342

Indexes

Calpurnius Siculus, Eclogues, continued 4.144 80 n 5 4.158 80 n 5 4.165 80 n 5 4.192 81 7 80 n 5 7.6 80 n 5 7.75 80 n 5 7.78 80 n 5 80 n 5 7.80 7.84 93 Cassius, Dio, Roman History 80 n. 5 54.25.4 55.12.1 119 nn. 1–2 56.46.1 252 59.28.7 80 n. 5 60.5.2 223 85 61 (62) 20.5 62 (63).6.2 97 n. 43 Cato, Oratorum Romanorum fragmenta liberae rei publicae 74 153 n. 10 Catullus 101

121

Cicero In Catalinam 1.29 241 n. 16 De haruspicum responso 23 223 36 223 37 223 n. 22, 227 De Lege agrarian 2.87 262 n. 4 De officiis 3.80 126 De oratore 1.144.3.37 240 n. 12 Divination in Caecilium 151 n. 2 Epistulae ad Atticum 1.13.3 223

In Verrem 154 n. 13 II 1.47–48 II 1.50–51 157 n. 27 II 1.63–67 165 n. 41 II 2.4 155 n. 17 II 4 152–55, 158, 158 n. 28, 161 152 II 4.4–28 II 4.4 153 II 4.5 156, 156 n. 22 155 n. 18, 156 n. 22 II 4.7 II 4.8–16 157 II 4.11 157 n. 25 II 4.14 157 n. 26 II 4.62 158 163 n. 39 II 4.62–85 II 4.64 158 II 4.65 160 II 4.67 159 n. 31 161 n. 33 II 4.71 161–62, 163 II 4.94–95 II 4.94 162 II 4.96 165 n. 41 II 5.188–89 151 n. 2 II 5.97 241 De legibus 2.21 227 n. 29 Pro Mione 24.65 227 n. 28 Pro Balbo 55 227 n. 29 Claudianus, De consulatu Honorii 203–11

41

Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 5.9.1–5 317 11.91–92 319 16.26.2–3 145 n. 40 27.1 145 n. 40 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates romanae 2.67.2 217 8.39.1–56.4 227 n. 29



Ancient Sources Index

Isocrate 3.1 241 Einsiedlin Eclogues 1.37 91 1.42 92 n. 31 1.44–55 92 n. 31 92 n. 31 2.22 4.6–7 92 n. 31 4.9 93 n. 33 Epictetus, Diatribai (Dissertationes) 2.20.27 145 n. 40 Ephiphanius, On Measures and Weights 14 297 n. 35 Euripides Fragment 24a=39N Medea 1159–99 Phoenician Women 834–40 Rhesus 182–83 Suppliant Women 328–31

63 261 n. 3, 265 n. 16 265 54 55 55

Festus, Epitome of De verborum significatu 220–21 15L 225 86L 227 n. 29 100L 222 n. 17 346–8L 226 455L 227 222 n. 19 472 L Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.1.4 242 10.15.23 224 10.15 242 Herodas, Mime 4

157

343

Herodotus, Historiae 131 n. 8 3.108 5.46 317–18 Homer Iliad 7.170–205 Odyssey 9.331–33

55 55

Horace Carmen Saecularis 92 Epodi 3 266 5 266 5.20 266 Epistula 1.3.17 87 n. 15 Hyginus, Fabulae 25

265 n. 17

Inscriptiones Italiae 13.1.181–82 13.2.208

119, n. 2 119 n. 1

Isadorus, Origenes 19.30.4

222 n. 17

Justinian, Institutes 2.1.8

159 n. 30

Juvenal, Satirae 2.86–87 27 6.546 136 n. 14 Livy, History of Rome 227 n. 29 2.40.1–13 22.56.4 227 n. 29 29.14 164 Lucan, De bello civile 85 1.48 91 1.55 92

344

Indexes

Lucian, Alexander (Pseudomantis) 32.13 136 n. 14

2.1.2 262 n. 4 2.3.5 161 n. 2 2.3.6 161 n. 3, 265 2.3.7 268 2.3.8 269 7.15–16 262 n. 4

Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.32–33 126 1.12.20 227 1.12.23 227 225, 225 n. 26 1.16.8 1.16.30 226

Pindar, Fourth Pythian Ode 4.189–91

Marcian, Digesta 1.8.6

Plato, Timaeus 338 C

152 n. 8

Marshal, Epigrams 89 n. 17 9.64.1–5 9.65.1–4 89 n. 17 9.101.1 89 n. 17 9.101.24 89 n. 17 10.35.5 266

54

81 n. 6

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 282 n. 3 5.74 18.8 220 18.61 220 18.97 220 30.2 136 n. 14 33.132 126 34.39 96, 96 n. 42 34.45 100 34.271 126 35.6 253 n. 37 35.27 94 n. 37 35.51 96, 96 n. 41 94 n. 37 35.93 35.94 95

Ovid Fasti 2.533–42 123 2.546–556 127 2.645–654 225 3.11–12 219–20 4.179–372 164 80 n. 6 6.37 6.652 80 n. 6 Pliny the Younger, Panegyricus Heroides 251 n. 33 12 265 n. 17 54.3 Metamorphoses 7.179–293 266 Plutarch 7.296 266 Marcius Coriolanus 227 n. 29 7.348 266 33.1–37.3 Moralia Tristia 224 526 266 276d–e 438A–C 145 n. 41 50 Paul the Deacon, Epitome 224 of Festus 220–21, n. 16 261 n. 2 82L 224 870e Fabius Maximus 18.1–2 227 n. 29 Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.25.10 55 Numa 219 n. 13, 220 II.4 141 13.2



Ancient Sources Index

Quaestiones romanae et graecae 50 224 Solon 25 133–34 n. 8 Vitae Parallelae 2.482C 134 Propertius 2.16.20 265 n. 17 4.3.62 227 n. 28 4.4.16 219 Prudentius, contra Symmachum 2.1085 222 n. 17 2.1094 222 n. 17 Quintilian, Institutio 240 n. 12 1.5.1 1.20.22 246 2.10.10–11 241 n. 14 2.13.8–10 248 3–4 239 n. 11 3.4.6 241 n. 14 241 n. 14 3.5.2 3.7 239 8.1.1 240 n. 12 Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historarium Alexandri Magni Macedonis 82, 82 n. 10 10.9.3 Seneca Apocolocyntosis 92 n. 28 1.2 4.1.30 92 n. 29 4.2032 91 4.9 92 n. 28 4.23–4 92 n. 28 De Brevitate Vitae 20.10 126 De clementia 92 1.1.8 93 n. 32 1.3.3 81–82 1.7.1–3 80

345

1.19.8 93 n. 32 1.19.9 81 1.8.4 90 2.1.4 93 n. 34 Medea 265 nn. 16–17 670–840 266 740–843 265 Naturales questiones 81 1.1.5 126 Servius Auctus ad Aeneid 4.137 225 4.262 222, 225 11.339 219, 219 nn. 12–13 12.120 227 n. 28 12.173 22 222 n. 17 20.538 ad Eclogues 8.82 220 Siculus, Eclogues 4 91 7.84 91 Simonides 720–723

261 n. 2

Solinus 35.4

282 n. 3

Strabo, Geographica 8.4.8 8.6.23 9.2.4 Suetonius Gaius Caligula 52.2 32.2 Divus Claudius 44 Nero 25.2 56

262 n. 4 262 n. 4 145 n. 40

80 n. 6 227 n. 28 87 n. 14 102, 102 n. 47 107–8

346

Indexes

Tacitus, Annales 1.3.3 1.54 12.68–69 16.1–2 16.2

1, 19 n. 1 252 87 n. 14 107 107

Thucydides 6.1–3 Ulpian, Digesta 43.13.7

319

163 n. 36

Varro, De lingua latina 5.10

126

Valerius Maximus 1.1.15

227 n. 29

Velleius Paterculus 1.102.3 1.13.1

119 n. 1 262 n. 4

Vergil Aeneid 1.294–96 94 2.430 222 n. 17 5.55–103 121 6.7923 75 9 92 10.538 222 n. 17 Eclogae 4.6 75 87 n. 15 4.10 Georgica 222 n. 17 3.487

Inscriptions & Papyri Beazley Archive Pottery Database 13363 67 214735 67 Corpus Inscritionum Latinarum 25512

88 n. 16

I2 2833 18, 18 n. 1 5.5667 243 n. 20 6.116 108 n. 52 6.117 108 n. 52 6.170 98 6.938 251 n. 31 6.1989 252 n. 36 6.3719 98 6.9824 227 8.9285 19 n. 3 8.2511 88 n. 16 88 n. 16 8.25510 88 n. 16 8.25513 11.1420 119 n. 4 13.11806 109 n. 52 Defixionum Tabellae 137 1–13 137 1 137 nn. 16, 18 4 137 41 131 n. 6, 134 n. 9 Inscriptiones Graecae 133 Inscriptiones Italiae 13.2.181–182 13.2.208

119 n. 2 119 n. 1

Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 139

119 n. 4

PDM 336 339 VII. 25–26 XV. 2 CVI

134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 10

PGM II. 32 III. 1–164 III. 187–262 III. 445 IV. 127–64 IV. 277

134 n. 10 136 n. 12 136 n. 15 136 n. 15 136 n. 15 134 n. 10

Ancient Sources Index

IV. 526 IV. 605 IV. 850–929 IV. 2006–125 IV. 2093 IV. 3189 IV. 3258 V. 101–18 V. 424 VII. 302 VII. 579–90 VII. 680 VII. 895 XIa. 2 XII. 382–86 XIII. 923 XIXa 12 XXXVI. 342–46

141 n. 26 141 n. 26 136 n. 15 135 n. 12 134 n. 8 134 n. 8 134 n. 8 136 n. 14 134 n. 10 134 n. 10, 141 n. 26 134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 8 134 n. 8 134 n. 10 134 n. 10 134 n. 10

Roman Provincial Coinage Project 261 no. 1275 103 430 no. 2559 84–85 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 7.1021 92 1703 134 472.19 134 306 134

Scholia on Juvenal, Satirae 6.343 227–28

347