Roman
Civilization
CMS 206 /History
206
The Ludi Matri deum Magnae
Idaeae or
Ludi Megalesiaci
- The Ludi Megalesiaci
[April
4 - 10, C], were
games
offered in honor of a foreign goddess the Romans deliberately
imported to Rome. In 204 BCE, in response to social strains caused
by fighting the 2nd
Punic War, the Romans introduced the
cult of the Great Mother Goddess (also called the Magna
Mater and Cybele).
The goddess' sacred black stone was brought from Phrygia
in Asia Minor and housed in a temple on the Palantine
hill untill a temple dedicated specifically to her was built. That
temple was finally constructed and dedicated to the Magna
Mater on April 10, 191 B.C.E.
- At the Ludi, plays were held in temporary
wooden theatres constructed before the Magna Mater's temple. At
least four plays by Terence
and one by Plautus
(the two great Roman comic playwrites some of whose work survives)
were performed at these Ludi. We have some evidence that the plots
of the plays sometimes treated themes in the mythology of the
Magna Mater. Gradually, however, the Ludi began to feature
mimes, which could have been of a bawdy or politically satiric
nature. The Ludi were organized by Roman aediles,
elected magistrates charged with the organization of various
festivals. Cicero, in one of his harangues against his enemy
Clodius, claimed that Clodius in the year 55 B.C.E. when he was
aedile, had encouraged an outbreak of mob violence during the
theatrical performances at the Ludi Megalesiaci.
- In addition to theatrical performances,
these Ludi came to include spectacles (horse races and
perhaps other athletic competitions) in the Circus
Maximus, in the valley between the
Palatine and Aventine hills, visible from the goddess' temple.
While lesser competitions were held on the 4th through the 9th,
the big day was the 10th when the chariot races were held. On that
day, according to Ovid's
description (Amores
3.2. 43 ff.) the Romans led a parade
of statues of the gods from the Capitol down through the Forum and
then through the markets to the Circus Maximus.
- In general, the Romans (at least, Romans of
elite status) viewed the worship of the Magna Mater with
some suspicion. The cult was foreign, ecstatic and to the Roman
mind, bizarre. The priests of the Magna Mater were called the
Galli. They were non-citizen eunuchs. The poet Catullus
offers us a good example (Poem
63) of the Roman mind trying to
comprehend the kind of religious belief that would lead a man to
castrate himself in order to serve the Magna Mater.
Lucretius
provides one of the best descriptions we have of the festival as
it was celebrated around the time of Julius Caesar
(De Rerum
Natura, 2.600 ff.).
- The Galli led a procession in honor of the
Magna Mater through the streets of Rome. They carried a
statue
of the goddess riding in a chariot drawn by lions in a litter.
Some priests played music, which sounded strange, sexy and scary
to the Romans, on musical instruments (tambourines, cymbles,
flutes and trumpets) from Asia Minor (think of middle aged
Americans response to rock and roll or rap) while others, armed
with knives, danced a rythmic, leaping dance that was supposed to
imitate armed conflict (think of many Americans' response to
television news coverage of Gay Pride parades). People watching
the procession threw flower petals and coins before the priests.
While most upright, uptight Romans shuddered at this kind of
excess, they not only allowed the procession and supported the
Ludi, they considered the state sponsored worship of the Magna
Mater pius and venerable and absolutely necessary to
Rome.
- When the Magna Mater was first introduced
to Rome, aristocratic families formed sodalites
[clubs] in honor of the Cybele. A practice rapidly
developed from these clubs in which patrician families held dinner
parties [mutitationes] for each other on the first
night of the Ludi. Over time these banquets became wildly
elaborate and ostentatious. The Senate, in 161 B.C.E., responded
by requiring patricians to swear that they would entertain
modestly (spending limitations, no foreign wine and no more than
120 pounds of silverware on display). Scholars believe that the
patrician sodalites formed both in an effort to support
worship of the Magna Mater, but also to control its
excstatic excesses.
- Interestingly enough, around the same time
that the Magna Mater was introduced to Rome, Ludi (called
the Cerialia)
were instituted for the goddess Ceres
(April 19, NP or N, first attested in 202 B.C.E.).
The festival lasted for 10 days and culminated with rites
celebrated on the 19th. Romans had dedicated a temple to Ceres on
the Aventine (near
the Circus Maximus) in 493 B.C.E.
and this site had always been associated with plebian interests
(particularly in the conflict
of orders between patricians and
plebians). Ceres was the goddess of grain and the Ludi and cult
ceremonies in her honor reflect the concerns of a predominantly
agrarian society. Her games began with a ceremony in which foxes,
who had lit torches tied to their tails, were let lose on the
fields of the Circus Maximus. Scholars have a tough time with the
symbolism of this rite, but some think it may have been a way of
warning other varmints to keep away from the corn. On the evening
of the 19th, leading plebeian families invited each other to
dinner parties.
- Romans strictly
contolled other activities of the cult
devoted to the Magna Mater. Individuals could belong to the
cult, whose rituals included the taurobolium, in which a
bull was castrated and slaughtered above a pit in which stood a
worshiper who was bathed in the animal's blood. The cult was
wildly popular throughout the Roman empire and especially popular
with women and rural peasants. No male Roman citizen during the
Republic could belong to the cult. Cultic worship of the Magna
Mater appears to have promised some sort of immortality to
initiants. Interestingly enough, Roman soldiers under the Empire,
who were not great devotees of the Magna Mater, were often
devoted to Mithras, whose cult
practices excluded women, but like
the Magna Mater's included bull sacrifice.
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