Chapter TwentyTwo Lecture One Legends of Aeneas Legends

Chapter Twenty-Two Lecture One Legends of Aeneas

Legends of Aeneas • Greek myths developed later by the Romans • They bring to them their own cultural heritage • Romans had no creation account or divine myths • Mostly Roman legend for national and social functions

Early Rome: Myth, Legend, History

Early Rome • Rome was one of many small towns • Earliest influences were Greek and Near Eastern by way of the Etruscans • Rome first ruled by Etruscan kings

Early Rome • Replaced in 500 by the “republic” – Patricians (senate) – Consuls (two-year terms of office) – Symbolism of the fasces • Plebeians not in the government at first – Gradually acquire a role • Legendary traditions justify the rule of the patricians

Early Rome • Rome expanded greatly under its republic • New duties of running an empire brought down the Republic and ended in the Roman Empire, with an emperor

Roman Religion

Roman Religion • Latini arrive in 1500 BC • Had different practices and attitudes from the Greeks whom we’ve studied

Numina and Sacrificium

Numina and Sacrificium • Religion of the Latini had deities that weren’t anthropomorphic • Theirs were the “nodders, ” who inhabited certain functions of daily life • Robigus/o – Fungus on grain

Numina and Sacrificium • The Robigalia – Priest of the Quirinus (co + viri) – wine, incense, gut of a sheep, entrails of a dirty, red dog. . . • Sacrificium – do ut des – Carefully scripted rituals that had to be observed – Appius Claudius Pulcher’s chickens

Numina and Sacrificium • Potentially innumerable – First-Plower, Second-Plower, Maker-of-Ridges -between-Furrows, Implanter. . . • Some central to the state as a whole – Janus • Some numina become identified with Greek deities and assume their myths

Roman Deities Equated with Greek

Roman/Greek Deities Equated • Identification mostly poetic innovation • Made by poets • Pushed during the reign of the emperors for political reasons

Roman/Greek Deities Equated RO/GK Jupiter/Zeus Original Roman Function Sunny Sky/Rain Juno/Hera Family/Moon Diana/Artemis Spirit of the woods Ceres/Demeter Wheat Mercury/Hermes Not an original Roman numen Neptune/Poseidon Waters

Roman/Greek Deities Equated RO/GK Original Roman Function Vulcan/Hephaestus Volcanoes; destructive fires Mars/Ares Minerva/Athena Wolf; month of the beginning of the campaign season Handicrafts Liber/Dionysus “Freer”? ; wine Faunus/Pan Release from forest terror Venus/Aphrodite Fresh water; vegetable fertility

Roman/Greek Deities Equated RO/GK Hercules Asculepius Proserpina Dis Original Roman Function Heracles: Brought in as a foreign cult; no original Roman numen Asklepius: no original Roman numen Persephonê: no original Roman numen Hades: no original Roman numen

Hercules and the Meat Market

Hercules and the Meat Market • Shows mixture of sources • The Forum Boarium – Hercules passed through Rome with the cattle of Geryon and freed Rome from the cattlerustler Cacus – Numerous honorific statues and buildings erected to him there

Gods of the Family and State

Gods of the Family and State • Gods of the family weren’t absorbed by Greek deities – No Greek equivalent for them • Lar (plural Lares) – Etruscan for a ghost – Of the fertile field first => of many places – Worshipped in shrines at crossroads – Family members in the shrines

Gods of the Family and State • Penates – Protected a household’s things – Portable • The gens – Paterfamilias – A man’s genius • All of Rome a family – Vesta (Hestia) – Pietas

Gods of the Family and State • “No doubt it was the native Roman predisposition to regard abstractions as divine that enabled them to transfer pious devotion from the head of a family to an invisible entity of great power, the Roman state. Greek religious anthropomorphism, by contrast, stood in the way of granting obedience to a divine abstraction, and the Greeks never did evolve a nation state. ”

End