CMS 206
Roman Civilization
Week 1 Class 2 Lecture
1. announcements/reminders
- Wednesday, 1/16 - inform Imber of your discussion group preferences
- Friday 1/18 - Book Report 1 from students whose last name begins with A-H
due. (Hard copy in my office door by 5:00 pm).
2. Religious festival Compitalia
- celebrated in early January
- feriae conceptivae Ð festivals whose celebration date was determined
on an annual basis by the magistrates; i.e., the exact date of the celebration
might change from year to year but it was always around the same general time
period [cf. Thanksgiving vs. Christmas]
- what did the Compitalia celebrate? Ð honored the Lares of the crossroads
- a "compitum" is a cross roads;
- "compitalia" is the adjective which means "of the cross roads
- a Lar was a tuteLary deity, but you usually find more than oneÐ
hence youÕll read about them in the plural, Lares. TuteLary means
responsible for protecting/guarding (cf. guardian angels).
- Think premodern, rural society: imagine a point where two roads cross,
making four fields. Each field had a Lar and the family who had
a house on the farm in that corner was responsible for worshipping their
fieldÕs Lar. Lares thus were associated closely with individual
households and over time were worshipped with that householdÕs Penates
Ð the deities who protected the familyÕs storeroom.
- Lares were usually represented by statues of young men in short
tunics holding a drinking horn (the equivalent of a bottle of wine) in
one hand and a cup in another. These statues were set around figures representing
the familyÕs Penates and Vesta (the goddess who protected
the family hearth) set in a small shrine located in every home. The day
began with a prayer and grain offering at the shrine.. You should be getting
the sense that every family had private religious celebrations.
- Sometimes these celebrations where echoed in public or state religious
festivals. The Compitalia is a good example. Probably at some very
early date, the families whose four fields met at the crossroads would
join together to worship the Lares. As Roman society developed
politically and socially, the state had an interest in ensuring that the
Lares of all the Roman crossroads were content (remember how many roads
the Romans built). You should note how this kind of practice imagines
the state as a parallel to the family Ð a phenomenon we will see embraced
and resisted at various points in Roman history and culture.
- How was the feast celebrated?
- The folks in charge of the festival were called the Magistri Vici
("The Neighborhood Officials"). Slaves rather than free men
were the attendents at the festival (they side because the Lares
particularly liked being attended to by slaves). The upside is the slaves
then were given a holiday for the rest of the day.
- According to Aulus
Gellius, a Roman author of the 2nd century CE, the festival began
with the magistrates invoking the words ""Dienoni populo Romano Quiritibus
Compitalia erunt quando concepta fuerint, nefas." Folks made and sacrificed
honey cakes at the festival.
- Romans believed that the festival was originated by the last Etruscan
kings of Rome. According to one author (Macrobius
- who wrote in the 5th century CE), the last king, Tarquinus
Superbus (Tarquin the Arrogant) sacrificed boys to the mother of the
Lares, who was named Mania ("Lady Death"). Once
the brave and sensible Romans drove the kings out, however, they substitued
sacrifices of garlic and poppies at the festival instead of boys. Note
- this is one of the few references [we'll talk about others] to human
sacrifice in Roman culture].
- In the late republic (1st century BCE) Roman politicians funded games
in conjunction with the celebration of the Compitalia. The Senate
thought this was shameless political pandering to the urban mob and outlawed
the practice. During the Civil Wars [arguably 133-27 BCE, but here the
period when Julius Caesar was taking power, 49-45 BCE] folks stopped celebrating
the Compitalia.
- Augustus
restored the festival after he became emperor, but with a twist. He substituted
worship of his personal Lares, which he declared to be the Lares
of the state, for the Lares C ompitalia and started a
special order of priests, Augustales, drawn from the ranks of
freedmen, to run the festival. Thus, once Augustus came to power, if you
wanted to celebrate the Compitalia, you had to recgonize Augustus'
control of the Roman state.
3. The site of Rome -
- Assignments
- Questions from Homework assignment?
- Italy - MWPC map of
Italy ; IAM
Map of Italy
- "The difference btween the Greek polis and the Latin civitas
corresponds to the difference between the mountains of Greece and the
hills of Latium." A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship
(2nd ed.), p. 5.
- how might the fact that Rome started as one of a number of villages
inhabited by Latins situated in a plain, explain its legal /social structure:
- they had to find a way to live in peace with neighbors in order
to develop socially/economically: -> Latin rights; e.g. ius commercii;
ius conubii
- inherently "racially diverse" population - people came
and settled; cf. story of the Rape of the Sabines (p. 157 MWPC); evidence
of "doubled" institutions; e.g. Salii Palatini and Salii
Collini -> guaranteed places for members of distinc ethnic groups
in institutions common to Larger groups. Till very late in its history,
Rome maintained inter-communal festivities and councils.
- inherently socially diverse population - Roman foundation legend
is that they were founded by shepards (the dregs of the ancient world),
brigands and kidnappers. [Compare this to the Greeks, whose cities
were always founded by the sons of gods.] Note, unlike other ancient
societies, Romans routinely freed a significant proportion of their
slaves and incorporated those slaves and their progeny into their
citizen population. [Which is not to say they weren't horrible snobs
about servile origins, but if you were a freedman's son, legally your
were as good as a senators - you just didn't get invited to the same
dinner parties usually. Horace
has a lot to say about this in a poem addressed to his mentor, Maecenas
(who was the right hand man of Augustus). Satire
1.6]
- Rome early on adopted the idea of incorporation of different populations
(as opposed to wiping out); -> Roman unification of Italy; Orbis
Terrarum - see
MWPC road map of Italy
- note method of Roman expansion in Italy (MWPC, p. 173):
- defeat the neighboring town;
- take a portion of its land;
- instead of taxing require military support;
- gradually extend benefits of Roman citizenship to conquered
town -
- in 75-150 years you have Romans
- "A river can unite as well as separate" - The
Tiber [see also MWPC, p. 170]
- Latins extended west of the Tiber to settle lower Tiber basin early
- Rome controlled important Tiber crossing - if you crossed the Tiber
in Rome, you had access to the ocean [i.e., to salt]
- North/South trade and salt routes on Italian peninsula followed
Tiber; Rome conroled the Via SaLaria (Salt Road) on the left
bank of the Tiber -> access to traders/markets helped Rome develop
economically
- note the importance that Cicero [RCiv, v.1., sec. 3, p. 55-56 (=Cic.,
Rep. II.v-vi)] places on Rome's access to the sea via the Tiber
- import/export - i.e.trade
- Etruria
(map) [see
also, MWPC, p. 167] - to the north of Latium; when Rome first emerging
as important town in Latium, Etruria was far more developed socially,
economically, politically. Indeed, 7th and 6th centuries BCE often referred
to as the period of "Etruscan domination" in Roman history.
Remember Tarquin the Arrogant, the last king of Rome? Would you be surprised
to learn that Tarquinii was an important Etruscan city?
- One effect of "Etruscan domination" was to unify Latin
peoples. Evidence suggests the towns of Latium enjoyed a greater degree
of federal unity after Etruscan kings than before.
- Greece - Rome had "porous" culture - open to new ideas from
different peoples (unlike, e.g., Greeks) because they believed there had
always been diferent peoples and ideas in Rome. And they were right. There
were Greeks in Rome before there were Romans in Rome. As a consequence,
Greek culture had profound influence on the development of Roman culture
(which is often why we say "Greco-Roman"). It's not unlike the
way American culture has been influenced by European cultural traditions
because of immigration history in US
- Roman values
- socially and politically conservative - cf. ideas in "nova"
and "mos maiorum"
- hierarchical and proud of it
- patricians and plebians - Conflict of Orders (MWPC,
p. 170) transformed Rome from an aristocracy of birth to an aristocracy
of wealth and office.
- - patron-client networks (amicitia - unequal power, mutual
obligation: officia and beneficia)
- deeply pious - religion pervaded every aspect of private and public
(a distinction the Romans would have thought of as stupid) life
- virtus - originally "bravery in battle" [Horatius at
the bridge] eventually comes to mean something more general like our "virtue";
pudicitia - a sense of modesty in deportment, for women also included
sexual chastity - ideal of una vira (nb. - this was an ideal, not
a social practice)
- keep your word, fulfill your obligations - fides, pietas
- patriarchal - in theory at least the power of the pater was absolute
(ius necandi); marriage practice (usus vs. manus) and demography
meant that middle aged women often had a great deal of economic and social
power (but not direct political power); quite different than Greece
- consensual - in practice all patres made decisions by taking
the advice of their consilium (friends, in-laws, even wives?)
- competitive (agonistic) - cursus honorum
- auctoritas - the tendency of people to take your advice, follow
your lead because
- 1) you come from an old family that everyone in the community knows
- 2) you have conducted yourself with fides and pietas.
- 3) by the end of the republic it didn't hurt to be fabulously wealthy
- Roman Images
- Further Reading
Course Home
Page / Syllabus
/ Imber's
Home Page