Cicero and Roman Religion

Eight Studies

Edited by Claudia Beltrão da Rosa and Federico Santangelo

Classics Potsdamer
Altertumswissenschaftliche
Franz Steiner Verlag Beiträge

72
Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge
Herausgegeben von
Pedro Barceló (Potsdam), Peter Riemer (Saarbrücken),
Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt) und John Scheid (Paris)

Band 72
 Cicero and Roman Religion
Eight Studies

Edited by
Claudia Beltrão da Rosa and Federico Santangelo

Franz Steiner Verlag

 Research towards this volume was enabled by a Newton Advanced Fellowship
granted by the British Academy.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek:

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über
<http://dnb.d-nb.de> abrufbar.

Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt.

Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes
ist unzulässig und strafbar.
© Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2020
Layout und Herstellung durch den Verlag
Druck: Druckerei Steinmeier GmbH & Co. KG, Deiningen
Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier.
Printed in Germany.
ISBN 978-3-515-12643-4 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-515-12644-1 (E-Book)
 Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Claudia Beltrão da Rosa (UNIRIO) / Federico Santangelo

(Newcastle University)
Introduction 9

Valentina Arena (University College London)

Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 23

Claudia Beltrão da Rosa (UNIRIO)

The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 45

Patricia Horvat (UNIRIO) / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

(Universidade Federal Fluminense)
The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta (Cicero, Verrines 2 4 72–82) 59

María Emilia Cairo (Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso Some Reflections
on Roman Identity 73

Maria Eichler (UNIRIO)

Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 87

Federico Santangelo (Newcastle University)

Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 105

Greg Woolf (Institute of Classical Studies, London)

Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 117
6 Contents

Katherine A East (Newcastle University)

Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 135

General Index 147

Index Locorum 151
 Acknowledgements

The papers collected in this volume stem from a conference that was held in Rio de
Janeiro in July 2017, within the framework of a Newton Advanced Fellowship funded
by the British Academy We are grateful to the Academy for its generous support of a
three-year research collaboration between Newcastle University and the Universidade
Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), which had as its main brief a study
of the place of statues of gods and goddesses in Cicero’s work, against the wider back-
drop of the problem of divine representation in the Roman world We should like to
thank the Escola da Magistratura do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EMERJ) for generous-
ly agreeing to host the conference, and Brendan Gogarty, Jorwan Gama, and Assunção
Medeiros for their invaluable support in the running of the event We are very grateful
to Lauren Emslie for her critical reading of the manuscript
This collaborative exploration of Cicero and Roman religion – encompassing both
the place of religious practice and discourse in Cicero’s work and the role of Cicero as
a source for our understanding of Roman religion – was the first of three international
events held under the auspices of the Fellowship Other edited books, stemming from
two more international conferences on statues in Roman religion and on divine imag-
es in the Roman world, will follow in due course We should like to thank the Edito-
rial Board of the Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge series at Steiner Verlag
for accepting this volume in the series and for offering valuable feedback both on the
framing of the project and its execution

Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

 Introduction
Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

We do not know exactly when the Latin word religio first came to designate ‘religious
observance, practice’; at any rate, its earliest known use to convey this specific meaning
is in Cicero 1 The first known occurrence of superstitio is also in Cicero 2 These facts
alone might contribute to attractive, if facile, arguments in favour of granting him a
prominent place in accounts of Roman religion in any age, not just the Republican
period There are, however, other weightier and more persuasive considerations Cice-
ro is central to most of what we know about the political, social, and intellectual de-
velopments of the first century BCE Even those who hold the quality of his writings
in low regard agree that he provides a wide body of important material, whether on
Realien or on problems of philosophical interpretation and approach He also reflects,
often in creative and tendentious ways, on the development of Roman religion, and
on a complex body of theological and ritual traditions The very nature and scope of
Cicero’s work makes it a unique testing ground: the number of different literary genres
that it encompasses also entails a whole range of approaches and problems, and dif-
ferent attitudes to the religious experience – the way in which a problem is explored
in the epistolary genre is markedly different from how it is considered in his speeches
or philosophical works The tension between the need to discuss each work in its own
literary and intellectual context, and the ambition to pursue and achieve a degree of
comparability, are two of the most attractive challenges that his oeuvre presents
There is a further overarching problem, which also presents its own distinctive set
of opportunities Precisely because Cicero’s work is integral to any historical approach
to the late Roman Republic, each generation produces its own constructions of, and
codifications on how best to read and interpret, this author The plural is as diachronic
as it is synchronic: there are competing interpretations of Cicero within any genera-
tion of readers The study of Ciceronian receptions is even more acutely central to the

1 Cic Inv. 2 66 See OLD 8

2 Cic Clu. 194 See OLD s. u.
10 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

exploration of his work than is the case for most classical authors 3 Postulating straight-
forward connections between scholarly developments and wider intellectual debates
is not always a productive operation, but it is surely significant that some of the most
distinctive and heavily subscribed areas of Ciceronian studies in the early twenty-first
century are his self-representation, his strategies of interaction with his peers, and his
use of irony The Cicero that emerges from the scholarship of the last thirty years or
so, especially in the English-speaking world, is more ironic, more committed to scepti-
cism, and more preoccupied with problems of status and self-representation than any
of the versions of Cicero that were constructed during previous generations of modern
scholarship
The prevailing early twenty-first century conceptualization of Cicero is heavily in-
vested in contextually understanding the religious practice and discourse of his own
time, and this book aims to contribute to the exploration of that theme The scholarly
trend that posited a profound and effective integration between religious and politi-
cal domains dates back to the 1960s, and more sensitive readings of what Cicero has
to offer have become especially prominent and influential over the last four decades
R J Goar’s 1972 book on Cicero and State religion was, to a large extent, redolent of the
long-standing assumption that regarded Cicero primarily as both political operator,
heavily invested in the running of public religion, and intellectual, engaged in serious
philosophical investigation, with very little time for spiritual engagement 4 It exempli-
fies the fissure between the two spheres that has long been taken for granted, and was
complemented by a wider interpretations of Roman religion as barely more than a
superstructure impinging on the political system New developments came first from
fresh attempts to provide innovative readings of the philosophical works The study of
François Guillaumont on Cicero as a philosopher and augur put forward new views
on how best to integrate the two areas of activity that had for too long been pursued in
isolation from one another 5
The De Diuinatione proved a very fruitful and equally controversial ground of in-
vestigation – not altogether unlike what had been the case in the early modern schol-
arly debates, which are explored in Katherine East’s contribution to this volume In
the mid-1980s, the path-breaking studies of Malcolm Schofield and Mary Beard made
a persuasive case that this work should be studied within its historical context and
understood against the backdrop of the wider intellectual developments in late Re-
publican Rome and the emergence of a new critical strand of thinking on religion

3 See the recent overviews in Steel 2013 (Part III); Altman 2015; Manuwald 2017 Early Imperial re-
ception: Keeline 2018; La Bua 2019 East 2017 provides a powerful exploration of the links between
Ciceronian receptions and editorial strategies in the Early British Enlightenment
4 Goar 1972 For a recent restatement of this approach cf Bragova 2017
5 Guillaumont 1984; cf also Guillaumont 2006
 Introduction 11

and civic tradition 6 Their reading has since been contested on a number of grounds:
others have argued for a fundamental overlap of the voices of Marcus (the character)
and Cicero (the authorial voice) against the view that the dialogues present opposing
views on major theological problems without conveying a clear preference Behind
this disagreement is not merely a different reading of the structure and argument of the
specific text, and of the scope and reach of Cicero’s academic scepticism,7 but funda-
mentally differing views on the interplay between philosophical reflection and politi-
cal participation in Cicero, and on the general aims of the intellectual project on which
he embarked However, even those who later took issue with Schofield and Beard’s
account of the argumentative structure of the dialogue and of the relative weight of
the voices of the two characters, have drawn major insights from their approach There
is now clear consensus that the De Diuinatione is a strongly experimental work, and
one in which the combination of Hellenic and Roman elements achieves original and
distinctive outcomes Moreover, Schofield and Beard made an invaluable contribution
by showing how much there is to be gained by pursuing the distinctions between the
voices of Quintus, Marcus, and ‘Cicero the narrator’, and illustrated the potential of
establishing new connections with the wider understanding of Cicero’s role in the Ro-
man intellectual life
Elizabeth Rawson’s eponymous book marks the beginning of a distinguished and
influential tradition of studies on the reframing of the intellectual practice and dis-
course in late Republican Rome, in which the diversifying and ordering of Roman
culture is discussed against the backdrop of imperial expansion and an emerging ra-
tionalizing approach 8 Ratio risks appearing as misleading in this debate, as it tends to
conceal the difference between the emergence of new criteria of evaluation and cat-
egorization – new rationes – which is a tendency of undeniable strength and impor-
tance, and the advent of a rationality that questions the foundations of traditional reli-
gion and introduces new modes of secularization This is an interpretation that should
be accepted with a considerable degree of caution because it is intrinsically vulnerable
to modernizing generalizations 9 While some aspects of the Roman intellectual dis-
course do suggest unremitting ambition, there is no Voltaire in sight – and it would be
misguided to seek one Yet new ways of ordering and defining the world and the hu-
man experience did emerge in late Republican Rome, and their significance has been
explored as part and parcel of wider revolutionary developments, which occur over the

6 Schofield 1986; Beard 1986

7 Timpanaro 1994; Wardle 2006, 8–28; Santangelo 2013, 10–36 Cambiano 2012, 233–238 proposes an
attractive accommodation between Cicero’s Academic scepticism and his enduring commitment
to the primacy of Roman values and practices On Cicero as a ‘Roman sceptic’ see Woolf 2015, with
the riposte of Lévy 2017 For a recent reading of Div as a non-prescriptive project see Wynne 2019,
182–278
8 Rawson 1985
9 On ratio and rationalization see Moatti 1997 (Engl transl 2015); Rüpke 2012
12 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

long term (periodizations vary, are permeable, and are intrinsically contested) 10 The
interplay between political and intellectual developments, however, is further com-
plicated by their following different paths and chronological coordinates Simply put,
the time scale of the ‘Roman revolution’ on the political plain and the time scale of the
‘Roman cultural revolution’ do not neatly coincide 11 The terminology itself, of course,
is disputed Some have spoken of religious change enabled by rationalization; the very
concept of the fall of the Roman Republic is a vulnerable one, as it is arguably under-
pinned by an implied notion of decline that is largely discredited in modern debates
on Roman Republican politics On the horizon, as Greg Woolf reminds us in his con-
tribution to this volume, there is the option of la balkanisation des cerveaux, of ‘brain
balkanization’: the possibility of simultaneously holding varying degrees of assent and
consent on different, and even contradictory, religious and philosophical options That
is very much a late twentieth century construction, and yet one that retains considera-
ble explanatory value, especially if one is presented with a body of work as vast, diverse,
and complex as that of Cicero
Karl Julius Beloch posited that Cicero is the first, and nearly the last, individual in an-
cient history on whose character we can reach an reasonably informed view 12 Although
this is more the articulation of an ongoing problem than a statement of determined
assertion, it remains valid and multiplies the scope for competing interpretations The
tension between the synchronic and diachronic levels is especially significant: with
Cicero, we are afforded the unique opportunity to follow the life, the successes and
failures of a prominent individual over nearly four decades, and for over twenty years
we have the vantage point – albeit a heavily redacted and directed one – of his corre-
spondence We can therefore follow much of the development and the shifts in his
intellectual trajectory and can achieve a level of detail that is otherwise unattainable
Valentina Arena’s chapter explores an important instance of this aspect: the notion of
commonwealth that is advanced in Book 2 of the De Legibus is distinctly different from
the one we encounter in the roughly contemporary De Re Publica.
Cicero plays a major role at a time of deep political change Varying degrees of con-
tinuity have been posited between late Republic and early Principate, yet there is little
doubt that the realities of power changed sharply and new centres of religious power
emerged in that new context The story of the transition from Republic to Empire is
also one in which religious knowledge is less evenly distributed, but by no means re-
dundant, throughout the elite; more importantly, during this period, the control over
the emergence of religious alternatives and over the access to distinctive ritual options
falls under the control of a monopolistic power This trajectory is especially clear in
two domains: the development of the triumph and of other forms of military distinc-

10 Cf Flower 2010
11 Cf Habinek/Schiesaro 1997 and Wallace-Hadrill 2008
12 Beloch 1912, 16 Cf Brunt 1986, 12
 Introduction 13

tions, and the increasingly tight policing of divinatory options and alternatives 13 In
both cases the monarch controls access to those ritual options and reframes their place
in the religious landscape of the city
Cicero proves an invaluable viewpoint in this connection too His religious trilogy is
as much a scene-setting project as it is a battleground It speaks to Hellenistic debates
and to their adaptability and adaptation to a Roman context; it engages with the prob-
lem of defining what is distinctive about the Roman historical experience; it deals with
problems that have long-standing relevance – the nature of the gods, the scope and
effectiveness of divination, the tension between fate and human agency – and acquires
a pressing, even sinister relevance in the mid-forties, when Caesar’s project redefines
the problem of divine status and the place of the individual within the fabric of Roman
religion 14 The reading of the trilogy is, in turn, framed around its own sets of challeng-
es: the tension between the reading of an individual work and its coherence with the
wider project, and the various strategies through which one should make sense of the
different dialogic formats that he employed in those three works
In this context, as in so many others, one faces the problem of establishing the ex-
tent and quality of Ciceronian exceptionalism What makes his project exceptional is
the connection with an intellectual production that ranges across a broad spectrum
of interests and problems, but is part of a wider stream of intellectual production on
religion that took shape in late Republican Rome, and whose boundaries are known
to us only in some respects: Varro’s great works on Human and Divine Antiquities, Ni-
gidius Figulus’ elusive production at the intersection between theology and astrology,
the even more poorly attested literature on augural matters, not to speak of Caesar’s De
Astris, which established new, and no doubt controversial, connections between calen-
drical knowledge and astrological lore 15 We should never lose sight of the fundamen-
tally tendentious nature of Cicero’s work: any appreciation of its historical importance
involves a close scrutiny of its situatedness and partiality The caveat also applies – all
the more aptly – to his work on religion
To quote a specific example, partly developing a provocative exercise attempted by
Peter Wiseman:16 if less of Cicero’s work survived, we would probably have a far less
strong emphasis on the place of the augural college in Republican Rome Valentina
Arena’s contribution focuses on the innovative laws set out in the second book of De
Legibus, giving particular prominence to the enhanced role that Cicero assigns to the
augurs Intervening in the political and intellectual debate of the 50s and responding to

13 General orientation: Lange-Vervaet 2014; Lange 2016 (triumph); Santangelo 2013, 235–266 (divi-
nation)
14 See Cole 2013 Linderski 1982 (= 1995, 458–484) remains a valuable reference point
15 Varro: Rüpke 2014; Smith 2018 Nigidius: Volk 2017 Caesar’s De astris: Plin Nat. 18 237, with Green
2014, 138–140 Cf North 2014 on the wider implications of his assessment of the religious customs
of Gauls and Germans in BG 6 11–28
16 Wiseman 2009, 107–129
14 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

the conceptualization of the relation between state and religion encapsulated in Clodi-
us’ law on obnuntiatio, Cicero proposes an idea of the commonwealth where a pivotal
role is played by the ideal of auctoritas This was, in the first instance, the auctoritas
of the augurs, which ultimately derived from Jupiter, and was then followed by the
auctoritas of the senators, a somehow secondary auctoritas, based on their consilium It
follows that the treatment of priesthoods in the second book of the De Legibus is much
more than the defence of the standing of the augurs’ craft and their practice, or the
writing in legalistic terms of traditional Roman religion In Book 2 Cicero states that
the working of the best political setup, which he outlines in Book 3 and differs from the
one presented in the De Re Publica, ought to be based on the fundamental premises of
the prominence of religious auctoritas It is only when the state is firmly placed within
the religious framework of the auctoritas of the augurs that the proper functioning and
flourishing of the state could be guaranteed As he states at the end of Book 2 (as it is
preserved to us), the most important step towards the creation of a polity is the estab-
lishment of religion;17 the same sentiment and aspiration will be voiced right at the
outset of the De Natura Deorum (1 1)
The extent and quality of the insights into religious matters that we glean from what
survives of Cicero’s production is apparent in other respects The problem of deifica-
tion, for instance, does not become a focus of interest in the age of Caesar, as one might
initially assume; on the contrary, it is a long-standing concern Spencer Cole’s recent
book has the merit of showing that Cicero’s preoccupation with Gottmenschentum is
already firmly codified in his speech on the command of Pompey (66 BCE) 18 Indeed,
Cicero’s engagement with problems of religion and theology is not confined to his
philosophical work; his speeches are just as strongly engaged with problems of divine
agency and religious action 19 It has been objected that the evidence of the treatises
on problems of ritual is inadequate 20 That contention is unpersuasive in several re-
spects, but does not apply, at any rate, to the evidence of the speeches, which are often
preoccupied with problems and controversies of religious practice Ingo Gildenhard’s
ground-breaking project formulated a broad research question and was exemplary in
demonstrating how consistently strong such interest is throughout Cicero’s produc-
tion: the Third Catilinarian emerges from his analysis as one of the most ambitious
and sophisticated moments of Cicero’s theological reflection 21 In her contribution to
this volume, Claudia Beltrão da Rosa turns to an often overlooked aspect of Cicero’s

17 Cic Leg. 2 69: id enim est profecto quod constituta religione rem publicam contineat maxime
18 Cole 2013, esp 34–48 on De lege Manilia (on which see also Federico Santangelo’s paper in this
volume)
19 The problem is expertly and effectively explored in the recent dissertation of N R Wagner (Wag-
ner 2019); see esp 9–13, 24–25, 334–335 for a thoughtful application of the concept of ‘lived reli-
gion’ to the understanding of Cicero’s speeches
20 Gradel 2002, 3–4
21 Gildenhard 2011, 246–290
 Introduction 15

major consular speech, in which a divine statue is animated not only by the speaker’s
powerful oratory, but by its ritual context too – that is, the securing of placatio deorum,
reportedly on the same day the speech was delivered
The study of the images of gods does not only bring into focus the images per se, but
also the practices that support their use, the discourses and intellectual debates they
stimulate, and the various responses they elicit Beltrão’s paper is especially interest-
ed in the ways in which Cicero places a divine statue on the scene, materializing the
presence of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Beltrão’s reading turns to the religious and, to
some extent, theological aspects relating to the divine statue In a speech delivered by
the consul, Cicero himself, to the Roman people, this emerges as an outstanding case
study of the construction of divine presence in late Republican Rome Jupiter’s new
statue (simulacrum), in its materiality and through its framing in the ritual context, is a
human offering to the gods, but becomes a present deity, a praesens deus Through the
words of the speaker it becomes Jupiter himself, and this bestows identity and agency
upon the divine statue As a medium to communicate with the gods, the statue is deep-
ly anchored into cultural patterns of figuration and religious beliefs Cicero’s speech, by
giving an active role to the statue of Jupiter in Roman political life, steers the audience’s
perception, prompting beliefs, emotions, and expectations towards the deity
The Catilinarians are a focal point of Cicero’s public career, and their impact and
influence are apparent in all his later works Yet they build upon nearly two decades of
rigorous training and creative reflection The Verrines are arguably the earliest moment
in Cicero’s production in which problems of ritual action and divine agency are dis-
cussed at significant length 22 The engagement with a provincial and peripheral context
opens up valuable opportunities for Cicero and enables him to explore the problem
through the tension between Romanness and foreignness One of the great strengths
of Cicero’s rhetorical project in the Verrines is to convey a sense of historical and emo-
tional urgency to the actions that he discusses Patricia Horvat and Alexandre Car-
neiro Lima turn to one of these instances, in which divine presence plays a powerful
and distinctive role Cicero’s dramatic narrative in De Signis 72–82 is the only known
literary source on the Segestan statue of the Greek goddess Artemis, whom the speech
consistently named Diana It is widely agreed that Cicero’s key aim here is to mobilize
his Roman audience – or indeed readership – by prompting feelings of indignation
towards the actions of Verres Starting from the analysis of the ways in which Cicero
inserts the cult statue in a broader picture (by referring to physical movements and re-
signification, highlighting its religious, artistic and political values), Horvat and Lima
move beyond the immediate political context, and focus instead on the Ciceronian
construction of a scenario that was capable of arousing strong emotional feelings in
his listeners and readers toward the goddess and her statue, re-enacting the supposed

22 See Cole 2013, 18–26 on their role in Cicero’s reflection on divine status
16 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

ontophanic experience of the Segestans for the sake of the Roman audience of the
speech
Cicero stresses the venerable character of the statue and the affective dimension
that had characterized the many movements of the sacred object during the conquests
and sacks of the city, prompting emotion and fervour towards it The references to
Scipio and Carthage, and the rhetorical re-creation of the general mourning that would
have affected the people of Segesta when Verres’ agents overturned the statue and of
the farewell procession that accompanied the departure of (the statue of) the goddess,
turn the simulacrum into the goddess herself Horvat and Lima discuss the usefulness
and applicability of the notion of ontophany to the understanding of the religious
monumentalization that Cicero’s speech operates, through the contrast between the
position of the statue and that of the spectator, which obliterates the notion of the
statue as a constructed object By developing insights drawn from psychoanalytical
theory, they discuss the emotional tension that produces a division of the mind that
identifies, assimilates, and appropriates object and goddess, eliciting emotional behav-
iours, as Cicero presents them The presentification of the deity in De Signis, which in
an ordinary ritual would be an epiphanic manifestation in which the human beings
maintain the ontological difference and distance from the manifested divinity, reaches
the intensity of a collective pathos and becomes a plural ontophany, that is, the com-
pleteness of the being through the lived experience of the symbolic by the group com-
munion In doing so, Cicero increases the emotional appeal of the statue and steers the
imagination of his Roman audience By resorting to seductive rhetorical mechanisms,
Cicero opens the way to an imaginative and creative engagement with the Roman
(symbolic) religious universe, and recalls the memory of a Roman communis opinio,
enabling an accommodation between the religious pathos and the emotional adjust-
ment of the group Cicero creates emotional responses from a distant event for his
Roman audience by constructing an ontophany of Diana at Segesta
Comparable concerns over the tensions between Roman and foreign religious prac-
tice are apparent in a speech from nearly fifteen years later, pronounced in altogether
different political circumstances: the De Haruspicum Responso. Cicero presents a read-
ing of the response of the Etruscan diviners on a series of prodigies that took place
near Rome in 56 BCE The haruspices indicated that human behaviour had caused the
divine anger and also issued four warnings about the near future From Cicero’s view-
point, Clodius is mainly responsible for the gods’ wrath and is the promoter of the dis-
cord among the optimates that the haruspices have announced As María Emilia Cairo
shows in her chapter, Cicero’s argument is in essence an attack on Clodius, in which
the account of his crimes and flaws contributes to his presentation as the reason why
Rome is threatened with such great dangers Cicero, while attacking his opponent,
configures a Roman identity based mainly on religious tenets With this purpose in
mind, Cairo analyses the responsum given by the haruspices, as well as the competing
interpretations of Clodius and Cicero Secondly, the status of the ciues deteriores, ‘the
 Introduction 17

worse citizens’ that the Etruscan priests mention in their warnings is explored, since
Cicero underlines a strong religious component in this concept and uses it to exclude
Clodius from the group of the boni ciues, ‘the good citizens’ The opposition between
optimates and deteriores must be considered by taking seriously the remarks on religio
and its connection to Roman identity put forward in section 19 of the speech
De Haruspicum Responso, then, has a strong theological dimension; there is no clear
dividing line between theological speculation and ongoing debates on piety Maria
Eichler reminds us of how much of Cicero’s reflection on religion is infused with his
thinking about law, notably on the proper framing of ius ciuile and ius sacrum 23 The
debate is not confined to the developing field of Roman jurisprudence, nor to the anti-
quarian constructions that are such a conspicuous part of the late Republican intellec-
tual discourse It also has a prominent and productive role in Lucretius’ poetic project
De Rerum Natura, in fact, is in close dialogue with Cicero’s reflection on this problem
in the mid-fifties From their pragmatic and political definitions of natural law, Cicero
and Lucretius articulate competing religious semantic fields that should guide Roman
authorities in the running and administration of the res publica and in the practice of
ius ciuile and ius sacrum Their focus also extends to questioning the place and function
of auspices in the late Republican power structures 24 Cicero and Lucretius – as well as
other major intellectual figures of the first century BCE – debated and partly contested
their uses, and the correct approaches to them The outcomes of their reflections were
of course deeply different In what Eichler terms a form of ‘deviant rhetoric’, Lucretius
goes on to question their very legitimacy and capacity of effectively contributing to the
welfare of the Roman commonwealth, while Cicero credits the auspicial and augural
system with a cardinal role in the establishment of the Roman polity Even Marcus, in
the second book of De Diuinatione (2 70, 75), has words of appreciation for a practice
that, in his view, has no divinatory remit, but a valuable diagnostic value: it is about
establishing the will of the gods in relation to an envisaged action and acting appro-
priately upon it
The political dimension of foresight and the extent of its connection with the divi-
natory practice are central problems in Federico Santangelo’s paper, which deals with
the problem of divine and human foresight in Cicero’s thought The semantic field of
foresight and prediction in Latin is chiefly conveyed by the verb prouidere, which could
roughly be translated as ‘to foresee’, or ‘to see ahead’, by the nouns that are derived
from it, prudentia and prouidentia, and the related adjective, prudens Needless to say,
the language of foresight in Latin is not exclusively conveyed by those terms and must
be charted across a broader range of usages As Luciano Traversa has shown in a recent
book, due consideration must be given to the interplay between prouidentia and teme-

23 For a full-scale discussion of the problem see Harries 2006

24 Cf Berthelet 2015 and Driediger-Murphy 2019 for two sharply differing treatments of the problem
18 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

ritas; the semantic field of caution, cautio, also proves significant and rich 25 A survey of
the instances in which Cicero discusses the remit and potential of foresight proves very
productive There are a number of references to the ability to foretell the future, but
there are, more to the point, several definitions of foresight in various moments of his
work The problem of divine foresight assumes special significance in this context and
is related to the debate on the distinction between divine and human status, recently
explored in Cole’s important monograph 26
The last two papers of the collection move the focus of the discussion beyond Cice-
ro, albeit in different directions: one by taking a look at a wider picture of late Re-
publican and early Imperial religious developments (Greg Woolf), and the other by
exploring an aspect of the early modern legacy of his work (K East) Towards the end
of his discussion, Woolf points out that the larger a body of information we have on
those who participated in the religious life of the period, the deeper the sense of its
complexity becomes Yet some generalizations are possible, and indeed desirable If
one takes a longue durée approach, as Woolf proposes, then Cicero becomes an invalu-
able standpoint over a complex transition process The age of conquest is matched by
an inclusion of foreign deities into a Roman cultic practice Acceptance of Greek gods
and Greek philosophical views on the gods is part of the story, but by no means the
end of it Then, roughly from the early second century BCE, begins a season in which
the importance of traditional practices is asserted and there appears to be a much more
inward-looking approach to matters religious: not sufficiently so to warrant the use of
the label of ‘fundamentalism’, but a phase in which notions of Roman exceptionalism
seem to gain momentum The first century CE witnesses a renewed openness to for-
eign cults, and imperial input plays a decisive role in that context: Woolf correlates that
phase with the end of wars of conquest and the consolidation of imperial boundaries
Cicero stands at the beginning of that transition: his work is a stark reminder of the
complexity and diversity of the scenario, and of the difficulty that is inherent to any
attempt to establish comprehensive models and apply comprehensive labels
The call is pertinent and timely: it also runs against the grain of much of the schol-
arly tradition, which has sought, and indeed felt the urge, to conclusively define Cicero
and, through him, a certain idea of the Roman Republic and of Roman culture East
proposes a rigorous exploration of an important aspect of the reception of Cicero’s
work in the early Enlightenment: a period in which impassionate debate on these
works is intertwined with philological and editorial practice in new and effective
forms The afterlife of Cicero’s thought tends to be sought in the use and interpretation
of his words in the studies of those later writers who engaged with his legacy, selecting
and employing different aspects of Cicero’s reflection to their own ends In so doing,

25 Traversa 2017
26 See also Englert 2017, esp 43–51 on Cicero’s plans to build a shrine (fanum) for his daughter Tullia
shortly after her death in February 45
 Introduction 19

an integral facet of the interpretation of the Ciceronian text is often overlooked: the
transmission of the text, and the scholarly interventions made by the editors, trans-
lators, and commentators who determined the form in which the text would be read
This is particularly true of two of Cicero’s theological dialogues, De Natura Deorum
and De Diuinatione, texts which were ripe for intervention for two main reasons: first,
their intrinsic complexity and controversy, and second, their potential importance
to later religious disputes These dialogues were regularly invoked in Enlightenment
England by both heterodox and orthodox writers seeking to appropriate Ciceronian
theology to justify their arguments in the debates on the relative merits of natural and
revealed religion They employed Cicero’s words as they debated questions of provi-
dence, cosmology, reason and religion, prophecies and miracles, the role of priests,
and much else This controversy illustrates how the debates among theologians and
philosophers reading Cicero’s dialogues were reflected in, perhaps even shaped by, the
transmission of those texts
By focussing on one particularly controversial aspect of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum,
East shows how different early modern editors of the work confronted an opportunity
to influence how the text was interpreted The passage of De Natura Deorum to be
discussed is the conclusion, 3 95, at which point Cicero – as himself – appears to side
with the Stoic case presented by Balbus While among Cicero’s early modern ortho-
dox readers this was seen as confirmation that Cicero was not only a theist, but en-
dorsed a providential god, Cicero’s heterodox readers rejected this view, arguing that
his personal view must be identified with the words of the Academic Sceptic Cotta
This is echoed in various editions of the work, in the form of interpretative comments
and annotations used to influence the way in which the passage was read This chap-
ter traces this phenomenon from the extensive commentary on the text by the Jesuit
Pierre Lescalopier, printed in Paris in 1660, to the English translation printed by Joseph
Hindmarsh in 1683 with its heavy orthodox emphasis, to the critical edition by John
Davies printed in Cambridge in 1718, and finally to the English translation printed by
Richard Francklin in 1741, which put forward a Freethinker’s reading of the dialogue
These editions employ a variety of tools to persuade the reader to a particular reaction
to the text, from invoking parallel passages, to arguing for certain interpretations of the
methodology employed by the Academic Sceptic Through a close analysis of their
different approaches, East does not just show that Ciceronian theology maintained a
position of influence in early Enlightenment England: she also demonstrates that the
scholars editing, interpreting, and translating that theology used the scholarly tools
available to them to encourage an understanding of Cicero’s religion that advanced
their own causes

***
20 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

As this overview shows, this volume seeks to do justice to the sheer range of availa-
ble interpretative opportunities that present themselves when reading Cicero – from
focusing upon a detailed study of Roman religion to a more comprehensive survey
of Roman intellectual history It draws attention to the rewards of overcoming famil-
iar divides and distinctions It straddles across different literary genres and modes of
writing It establishes or posits connections between Cicero and other authors It ad-
vocates the importance of developing the tension between ‘explaining Cicero from
Cicero’, placing him in his own historical and literary context, and studying him in the
longue durée, both in the history of the Roman world and through the modern engage-
ments with his work
The key ambition of this volume is to convey a sense of the wealth and potential of
the theme by identifying and pursuing some areas in which there is scope for original
work We have sought to put into dialogue different scholarly and academic traditions,
chiefly in Europe and Latin America, and to produce original work that may prompt
and steer further investigation This book sets out to be a partial interim report on a
theme that is likely to keep proving as fruitful and as contested as ever

Bibliography

Altman 2015: W H F Altman (ed ), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero, Leiden/Boston
2015
Beard 1986: M Beard, ‘Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse’, JRS 76 (1986),
33–46
Beloch 1912: K J Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, Strasbourg 19122
Berthelet 2015: Y Berthelet, Gouverner avec les dieux. Autorité, auspices et pouvoir sous la République
romaine et sous Auguste, Paris 2015
Bragova 2017: A Bragova, ‘Cicero on the Gods and Roman Religious Practices’, SAA 23 (2017),
303–313
Brunt 1986: P A Brunt, ‘Cicero’s officium in the Civil War’, JRS 76 (1986), 12–32
Cambiano 2012: G Cambiano, ‘Filosofia greca e identità romana in Cicerone e Seneca’, in M Ci-
troni (ed ), Letteratura e civitas. Transizioni dalla Repubblica all’Impero, Pisa-Rome 2012, 231–
243
Cole 2013: S Cole, Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome, Cambridge 2013
Driediger-Murphy 2019: L G Driediger-Murphy, Roman Republican Augury. Freedom and Control,
Oxford 2019
East 2017: K A East, The Radicalization of Cicero. John Toland and Strategic Editing in the Early
Enlightenment, London 2017
Englert 2017: W Englert, ‘Fanum and Philosophy: Cicero and the Death of Tullia’, Ciceroniana on
line 1 (2017), 41–66
Flower 2010: H I Flower, Roman Republics, Princeton 2010
Gildenhard 2011: I Gildenhard, Creative Eloquence. The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches,
Cambridge 2011
Goar 1972: R J Goar, Cicero and the State Religion, Amsterdam 1972
 Introduction 21

Gradel 2002: I Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, Oxford 2002
Green 2014: S J Green, Disclosure and Discretion in Roman Astrology. Manilius and His Augustan
Contemporaries, Oxford 2014
Guillaumont 1984: F Guillaumont, Philosophe et augure: recherches sur la théorie cicéronienne de la
divination, Brussels 1984
Guillaumont 2006: id , Le de diuinatione de Cicéron et les théories antiques de la divination, Brussels
2006
Habinek/Schiesaro 1997: T Habinek / A Schiesaro (eds ), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cam-
bridge 1997
Harries 2006: J Harries, Cicero and the Jurists From Citizens’ Law to the Lawful State, London 2006
Keeline 2018: T J Keeline, The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire The Rhetorical
Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend, Cambridge 2018
La Bua 2019: G La Bua, Cicero and Roman Education: The Reception of the Speeches and Ancient
Scholarship, Cambridge 2019
Lange 2016: C H Lange, Triumphs in the Age of Civil War: The Late Republic and the Adaptability
of Triumphal Tradition, London 2016
Lange/Vervaet 2014: C H Lange / F J Vervaet (eds ), The Roman Republican Triumph: Beyond
the Spectacle, Rome 2014
Lévy 2017: C Lévy, “Cicéron était-il un ‘Roman sceptic’?”, Ciceroniana on line 1 (2017), 9–24
Linderski 1982: J Linderski, ‘Cicero and Roman Divination’, PP 37 (1982), 12–38 (= 1995, 458–
484)
Linderski 1995: id , Roman Questions, Stuttgart 1995
Manuwald 2017: G Manuwald (ed ), The Afterlife of Cicero, Oxford/Malden 2017
Moatti 1997: C Moatti, La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République
(IIe–Ier siècle avant Jesus-Christ), Paris 1997
Moatti 2015: ead (transl J Lloyd), The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome, Cambridge
2015
North 2014: J A North, ‘Caesar on religio’, ARG 15 (2014), 187–200
Rawson 1985: E Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic, London 1985
Rüpke 2012: J Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome. Rationalization and Religious Change in Re-
publican Rome, Philadelphia 2012
Rüpke 2014: id , ‘Historicizing Religion: Varro’s Antiquitates and History of Religion in the Late
Roman Republic’, History of Religions 53 (2014), 246–268
Santangelo 2013: F Santangelo, Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic, Cam-
bridge 2013
Schofield 1986: M Schofield, ‘Cicero For and Against Divination’, JRS 76 (1986), 47–65
Smith 2018: C J Smith, ‘Varro and the Contours of Roman Antiquarianism’, Latomus 77 (2018),
1090–1118
Steel 2013: C Steel (ed ), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero, Cambridge 2013
Timpanaro 1994: S Timpanaro, ‘Alcuni fraintendimenti del de divinatione’, in Nuovi contributi di
filologia e storia della lingua latina. Bologna 1994, 241–264
Traversa 2017: L Traversa, Providentia e temeritas in Cicerone. Filosofia e prassi, Bari 2017
Volk 2017: K Volk, ‘Signs, Seers and Senators: Divinatory Expertise in Cicero and Nigidius Fi-
gulus’, in J König / G Woolf (eds ), Authority and Expertise in Ancient Scientific Culture, Cam-
bridge 2017, 329–347
Wagner, N R 2019: N R Wagner, Haec Templa: Religion in Cicero’s Orations, Diss Minneapolis
2019
22 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa / Federico Santangelo

Wallace-Hadrill 2008: A Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge 2008

Wardle 2006: D Wardle, Cicero: On Divination. Book 1, Oxford 2006
Wiseman 2009: T P Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People. Essays on Late-Republican Politics
and Literature, Oxford 2009
Woolf 2015: R Woolf, Cicero. The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic, London/New York 2015
Wynne 2019: J P F Wynne, Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion On the Nature of the Gods and
On Divination, Cambridge 2019
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth
in De Legibus*
Valentina Arena

1. Introduction

This paper shall investigate the nature of the laws on religion, leges religionis, which
Cicero presented in Book 2 of his De Legibus It shall focus, in particular, on the pro-
visions concerning the augures as one of Cicero’s key preoccupations and in relation
to which he offered some meaningful innovations The aims of this study are to shed
light upon the reasons why Cicero devotes such an extensive section of his work to this
priesthood and to clarify the function that the augures play in Cicero’s political and
philosophical project, as elaborated in De Legibus
The striking position of honour that Cicero assigns to the augures in Book 2, which
also returns in the discussion of the laws de magistratibus in Book 3, is usually inter-
preted as an immediate reflection of Cicero’s personal pride in joining the prestigious
priestly college in 53 BCE 1 The emphasis on augury, therefore, seems to allow Cicero
to achieve two aims: firstly, to affirm his own expertise in such a complex art, which is
in need of restoration from contemporary neglect and is affected by a decline in spe-
cialized knowledge; secondly, to situate himself within the socially competitive world
of the elite, creating an opportunity for self-assertion 2
Whilst I do not dispute the importance of the biographical dimension, to which
Cicero himself consistently alerts the reader (and to which Cicero the character draws
the attention of his interlocutors), I hope to be able to show that by emphasizing the

* I would like to thank Federico Santangelo, Claudia Beltrão da Rosa, and the other participants in
the conference for the most interesting and enjoyable days we spent discussing Cicero and Roman
religion
1 This opinion, fuelled by Cicero’s own self-justification, has been restated in the most recent treat-
ment of augury: Driediger-Murphy 2019, 3 On Cicero’s augurate, see Cic Leg. 2 31, with Rüpke
2005a, 1328, no 3290 For an interesting discussion see Linderski 1972 (= 1995, 231–250, 651–652)
2 On the need to defend the craft of the augures, see Santangelo 2013, 762; on the function of civil
theology in the competitive social dynamics of the elite, see MacRae 2016, 56–59
24 Valentina Arena

role of the augures in the commonwealth – that is, specifically, by stressing their maxi-
ma auctoritas with special regard to the working of the assemblies and the universal
obligation to obey the findings of the augures – Cicero, in the first instance, responds
to Clodius’ religious programme as enacted in the so-called lex Clodia de obnuntiatione
Cicero’s response, however, does not only deal with the regulations concerning the
auspicial practices of magistrates and augures, but also engages with, and counterposes
a radically different approach to, the political vision embodied by Clodius’ measure
Intervening in the contemporary intellectual and political debate on the relation
between augural law and the legislative process – which had come to prominence as
a result of the events of 59 BCE – Clodius and Cicero advocate two very different vi-
sions of politics Informed by Platonic-Stoic philosophical notions, Cicero offers a re-
vitalization and consolidation of the role of the augures in the commonwealth, which
conceptualizes the relation between religion and politics in an innovative manner Far
from being ‘both parochially Roman and substantially traditional’, Cicero’s project in
De Legibus illustrates how the creative force of philosophy could inform a solution to a
political problem of general interest and of partisan origin 3

2. The Augures in Cicero’s De Legibus

The religious laws of Book 2 seem to cover a rather heterogeneous set of provisions
The overall structure of the book can be outlined as follows: after some important
philosophical reflections and the so-called preamble of the law, Cicero selects some
elements of the Roman tradition to which he wishes to assign exemplary value, and
explains his choices in the subsequent commentary 4 This selection covers the manner
of approaching the gods (2 19); licit deities and their shrines (2 20); priests and other
religious officials (2 21), and miscellaneous provisions (2 22), ranging from the prohi-
bition of women’s nocturnal festivals to, for example, restrictions on offerings of alms
and the penalty for the theft of property under divine custody The commentary on
these laws varies considerably in length, as it might omit a law altogether (as in the case
of the law on the sacra priuata or that on the Di Manes) or analyse extensively another
(as the law about the deities to be worshipped) or even indulge in lengthy digression
(as in the case of the augures)
These laws, Cicero wishes to emphasize, are very much congruent with Roman tra-
dition He has his brother, Quintus, comment that the religious system proposed by
the character Cicero ‘is not very different from the laws of Numa and the customs
of our country’ (2 23: non multum discrepat ista constitutio religionum a legibus Numae

3 MacRae 2016, 46
4 Schmidt 1959, 54; Cancik 1995, 298–299; Dyck 2004, 241–242
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 25

nostrisque moribus, transl N Rudd) In response, Cicero explains that, since his laws
are meant to establish the mixed and balanced constitution that Scipio has described
in De Re Publica, if he seems to introduce some new provisions, previously unknown
in Rome, Quintus can rest assured that their foundation is rooted in the tradition of
the ancestors, the mos maiorum, ‘which at that time had the force of law’ 5 Considering
the fluid nature of the mos, which changed according to the contemporary context to
which it was attempting to appeal, Cicero’s legislative innovations (as some provisions
concerning the augures) derive their legitimacy from the antiquity of tradition 6
The laws listed by Cicero that are not in line with Roman practices, or on which he
places considerable emphasis, assume a heuristic value since they shed light on Cice-
ro’s actions and motives for their introduction to the religious code of law of his best
form of commonwealth These laws can be grouped into two broad categories: the first
includes provisions against improper kinds of music (2 22 2 and 38–39), against conse-
cration of arable land (2 22 11 and 45), provisions imposing limits on offerings of alms
(2 22 4 and 40) as well as on expenditure for funerals and tombs (2 22 16 and 62); the
second focuses mainly upon the administration of capital punishment against those
failing to comply with an augur’s findings (2 21 6) and the provisions concerning the
treatment of those found guilty of sacrilege (2 22 1, 4; 38; 41)
As scholars have observed, many of these innovative laws have some precedents in
the Graeco-Roman tradition – either in Plato, or in Greek legislation, or even in early
Roman practices that were later abandoned 7 Thus, for example, in support of the law
that forbids the consecration of land (Leg 2 45), Cicero translates a passage on dedi-
cations of offerings to the gods from Book 12 of Plato’s Laws (Laws 955e5–956b3); on
the issue of tombs (Leg 2 67–68), he closely paraphrases a passage appearing later in
the same work (Laws 958d3–959a1) Cicero also refers to a famous passage in Book 4
of Plato’s Laws, much quoted in later antiquity (Laws 4 716c–717a), when discussing
the prohibition of gifts to the gods by the impious and wicked (Leg 2 41) 8 His intro-
duction of the offering of alms found its inspiration in early, and now obsolete, Roman
practices, while his reference to the violation of sacred rites is very closely reminiscent
of Clodius’ infringement of the ritual of the Bona Dea and of his (in Cicero’s mind)
outrageous acquittal for it
Amongst these provisions, however, the innovation that stands out remarkably, and
that depends solely on the Roman context, is the law concerning the augures After
briefly touching upon the pontifices, the flamines and the Vestal Virgins, Cicero explains
that those who hold the knowledge of the methods and rites appropriate for private

5 Cic Leg. 2 23: qui tum ut lex ualebat

6 Cic Leg. 2 16 40 See Powell 2001, 33 and Arena 2015, 221
7 See e g Dyck 2004; Annas 2013; Schofield 2017
8 Schofield 2017, 59; Annas 2017, 170: on music see Cic Leg. 2 38–39, with general parallels in Plato’s
Republic as well as in the Laws, and a possible reference to Laws 700a7–701d3 at 2 29
26 Valentina Arena

and public sacrifices are the following three main groups of public priests: those pre-
siding over the ceremonies and sacred rites; those who interpret the obscure sayings
of diviners and prophets; and the interpreters of Jupiter the Best and the Greatest,
namely the augures 9
In Cicero’s opinion, of these three groups the augures – whom he devotes far greater
attention to than the other priesthoods – are the most prominent: ‘the greatest and
most prestigious power in the state (maximum et praestantissimum in re publica) is that
of the augurs, combined, as it is, with political authority (ius augurum cum auctoritate
coniunctum)’ (2 31) Listing their duties a few paragraphs above (2 21), he states that
the augures should take auspicia and preserve their disciplina ‘And the priests’, Cicero
continues, ‘shall pay attention to vineyards and patches of withies and the safety of the
people They shall give prior warning about omens to those who are engaged in mili-
tary or civil affairs, and those groups shall take heed of them (quique agent rem duelli
quique popularem auspicium praemonento ollique obtemperanto) They shall foresee the
anger of the gods and react appropriately They shall take measures to neutralise flashes
of lightning in fixed regions of the sky, and shall keep free and unobstructed the city
and fields and their places of observation Whatever an augur shall declare to be unjust,
unholy, pernicious, or ill-omened, shall be null and void And if anyone fails to obey,
that shall be a capital offence’ 10
Most pertinently to the present discussion, in this list of the legal prerogatives of the
augures, Cicero emphasizes the requirement of obedience in two ways: firstly, focusing
on the particular, he explicitly states that magistrates fulfilling their military and civ-
il duties should follow the augures’ findings;11 secondly, widening his perspective, he
declares that capital punishment should be meted out to anyone who does not follow
their responsa and/or decreta There can be little doubt, therefore, that for Cicero the is-
sue of obedience to the augures was of paramount importance These provisions are, in
fact, the two innovations that he introduces regarding the augures: the ability, in other
words, to take auspicia impetratiua, the findings of which the magistrates should follow

9 Cic Leg. 2 20 The most important studies of augural law remain Catalano 1960 and Linderski 1986
The most recent work on augury (Driediger-Murphy 2019) does not tackle the topic from this
perspective
10 Cic Leg. 2 21: quaeque augur iniusta nefasta, uitiosa dira defixerit, inrita infectaque sunto; quique non
paruerit, capital esto
11 Dyck 2004, 306–307: contrary to Roman practice, Cicero here provides the augures with the right
to take the auspicia impetratiua in place of the magistrates Another possible interpretation of this
provision, which would be in line with Cic Leg. 3 11, is that Cicero requires the magistrate who
takes the auspicia impetratiua to follow rigorously the augural responsum (thanks to John North for
discussion of this point) In either case Cicero strengthens the position of the augures in relation
to magistrates presiding over a popular assembly However, Linderski 1986, 2200–2201 maintains
that, in line with historical practice, here Cicero instead reiterates the augures’ right to announce
the auspicia oblatiua
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 27

(effectively putting the augures in control of the working of the popular assembly),
and the sanction of their prominence in the commonwealth by ensuring that nobody
would ever disregard their findings
As Cicero comments later, in a revealing digression of Book 2, the augures are en-
dowed with the power to adjourn popular assemblies (including those convened, he
specifies, by the highest magistrates, holders of imperium or potestas), the power to
declare null and void the decisions of these very assemblies, both comitia and concilia,
and the power to interrupt and halt any business whose proceedings has already begun
with the simple cry ‘alio die’ 12 To make his point even more incisive, Cicero further asks
the rhetorical questions: ‘What is more majestic than the right to decide that consuls
should resign their offices? What is more awesome than the power to grant or with-
hold the right to do political business with the people or plebs? Or than quashing laws
illegally approved?’ In short, ‘nothing done by any official at home or in the field can
receive the approval of any body without their permission’ 13
The theme, interestingly, returns in Book 3 of De Legibus, which focuses on magis-
tracies Having stated that ‘all magistrates shall have the right to take auspices and to
conduct trials’ (3 10: omnes magistratus auspicium iudiciumque habento), Cicero adds
the further law by which ‘presiding magistrates shall observe the auspices and obey
the official augur’ (3 11: qui agent, auspicia seruanto, auguri publico parent) It seems that
he almost creates a kind of hierarchy concerning auspicia, wherein, although all magis-
trates are entitled to take auspicia, in their capacity as officials presiding over a popular
assembly they have to submit to the augural expertise of these priests 14
It is clear from the commentary on these provisions that what Cicero has primarily
in mind when talking about auspicia in De Legibus, alongside auspicia of investiture
mentioned in regard to the dictator,15 is their role in relation to the working of popular
assemblies, rather than, for example, the auspicia that were taken before waging war,
crossing a river or even crossing the pomerium 16 As Cicero points out, the right to take
the auspices is intended ‘to allow the adjournment of numerous futile meetings by

12 Cic Leg. 2 31 On the alio die formula see also Cic Phil 2 82–83
13 Cic Leg. 2 31: quid magnificentius quam posse decernere, ut magistratu se abdicent consules? quid re-
ligiosius quam cum populo, cum plebe agendi ius aut dare aut non dare? quid, legem si non iure rogata
est tollere …? nihil domi, nihil militiae per magistratus gestum sine eorum auctoritate posse cuiquam
probari? See Schmidt 1969, 54–57 on the historical accuracy of the passage
14 See also Cic Leg. 2 31, with n 11 above; cf Dyck 2004, 343 on the issue of the singular augur as
opposed to the plural augures in relation to the college On this point, Linderski 1986, 2162–2168
is most illuminating See also Vervaet 2014, 332–333, 342, who highlights the importance of the
presence of the augures for the auspices of the magistrates
15 On the importance of the auspicia of investiture, see also Cic Leg. 3 9
16 See Vervaet 2014, 314–315 and 2015, 209–210 on the importance of proceeding auctoribus dis and
Driediger-Murphy 2019, 2–3 on the almost omnipresent need for augural consultation in nearly all
aspects of Roman public life
28 Valentina Arena

means of justifiable postponements Often the gods have used the auspices to check a
wrongful initiative on the part of the people’ 17
Later on in Book 3, after his famous discussion on the tribunate of the plebs, Cicero
returns to the point of the importance of the auspicia in relation to the assembly: “This
is followed by regulations which we also have in the laws and customs of our state:
‘They shall observe the auspices and obey the official augur’ It is the duty of a con-
scientious augur to bear in mind that he must be ready to assist on momentous public
occasions, that he has been assigned as an advisor and servant to Jupiter the Best and
the Greatest (just as officials have been assigned to him to observe the auspices at his
command), and that certain specific areas of the sky have been allotted to him so that
he may be able to give frequent assistance to the commonwealth from that quarter” 18
As Cicero has already remarked, in case of uncertainty or conflicting readings between
the magistrate, who presides over the assembly, and the augur, who takes the auspicia,
the highest authority lies in the augur’s judgement 19
To summarize, in Cicero’s discussion of the augures there are three striking features
that emerge as important for his project in De Legibus: first, it is clear that, in thinking
about the role of the augures in the life of the community, Cicero has specifically in
mind their function in relation to the working of the assemblies, in conducting both
their legislative and electoral tasks; second, of their legal prerogatives, Cicero is par-
ticularly keen to underline their ability to command obedience from the magistrates as
well as from any other member of the community; third, Cicero wishes to underline
the active role that the augures ought to play especially in case of an emergency for the
commonwealth, as in them rests the power to guarantee that its laws are in harmony
with the divine and thereby can preserve the stability and safety of the community, as
well as the virtuous and happy life of its members
The augures’ power derives from their special relationship with the supreme god,
Jupiter They are, Cicero states, the intermediaries (interpretes) of Jupiter, his messen-
gers (internuntii) – as he elsewhere calls them – who, through the auspicia, convey
divine rationality to the magistrate and the people gathered in assembly 20 Given their
special relationship with Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the augures have a duty to serve

17 Cic Leg. 3 27: auspicia, ut multos inutiles comitiatus probabiles inpedirent morae; saepe enim populi
impetum iniustum auspiciis di immortales represserunt Cf Cic Div. 2 43, 74
18 Cic Leg. 3 43: sunt deinde posita deinceps, quae habemus etiam in publicis institutis atque legibus: auspi-
cia seruanto, auguri parento. est autem boni auguris meminisse se maximis rei publicae temporibus praesto
esse debere, Iouique Optimo Maximo se consiliarium atque administrum datum, ut sibi eos, quos in auspi-
cio esse iusserit, caelique partes sibi definitas esse traditas, e quibus saepe opem rei publicae ferre possit
19 See n 13 above
20 On the augures as interpretes, see also Arnob Nat 4 35 On the augures as internuntii, see Cic Phil
13 12 On augury and Jupiter, see Cic Div. 2 72, 78; Cic Leg. 2 20; Livy 1 12 4–7 Linderski 1986, 2226
and n 312 offers further references See Valeton 1891, 409 on the connection between Jupiter as
the god of the arx and the auguraculum where the augurs performed their auguria This reading,
as discussed in section 3, presents more consistency between this digression on the augures and
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 29

the Republic and act in its defence at a moment of crisis, an obligation from which they
must not shy away
In Cicero’s account, therefore, the superiority of the augures rests in their special con-
nection with the notion of auctoritas 21 Their auctoritas was, so to speak, a full auctoritas,
as it derived from Jupiter, who, at the time of their inauguratio, had conferred his own
auctoritas upon them 22 The senators, likewise holders of auctoritas, were indeed bearers
of a sort of secondary, terrestrial, auctoritas, which derived from their consilium 23 Not
only was there an etymological connection between augures and auctoritas, given by
the verb augeo, which certainly did not escape the ancients,24 but the augures also en-
joyed a special connection with the ceremonies of the inauguratio, which distinguished
them from the other priests, since they alone (alongside the rex sacrorum and the three
flamines maiores) were inaugurated before a popular assembly presided by the pontifex
maximus 25 Most of all, however, the augures were the only priests who, as Berthelet
notes, had the power to confer actively, fully, and permanently, auctoritas through the
same ritual of inauguratio, be it of temples, people (kings or priests), or ceremonies 26
The magistrates need to increase and perfect their potestas with auctoritas by taking
the auspicia, which occur under the direct, or indirect, direction of the augures, as in-
termediaries of Jupiter, or in second place under the control of the Senate 27 ‘Indeed,
no act of any magistrate at home or in the field can have any validity for any person
without their authority’ 28
The issue at stake is not so much that augural auctoritas is about political power: in
this respect, the ongoing debate on the political role of augury as instrumentum regni,
or expression of genuine religious sentiment, is not really pertinent to Cicero’s project
design in De Legibus The issue at stake is rather that the powers of the magistrates,
their imperium or potestas, both at the time of their investiture as well as of their ex-
ercise by a magistrate, should always be constituted within the framework of the reli-
gious auctoritas of the augures.

the proemium legis than commentators have often allowed See also Linderski 1982, 31–32 (= 1995,
477–478) and Linderski 1986, 2226–2229
21 On the auctoritas of priestly colleges, see Santangelo 2013
22 Berthelet 2015, 213–219
23 An important point to bear in mind is that there was no ‘autorité religieuse entièrement distincte
de l’autorité civique’, because religious authority was shared between Senate, magistrates, priests
and popular assemblies: see Scheid 2012a, 110
24 De Vaan 2008
25 Linderski 1986, 2215–2222 and 2290–2296
26 See Berthelet 2015, 218
27 See Van Haeperen 2012 on the importance of the auspicia of investiture and the role of the augures
and the pullarii Cf also Vervaet 2015 and Van Haeperen 2015
28 Cic Leg. 2 31: nihil domi, nihil militiae per magistratus gestum sine eorum auctoritate posse cuiquam
probari Cf above, n 13
30 Valentina Arena

The fundamental function that the augures fulfilled in the running of the state, Cicero
argues, depended upon their special relation with the deities Their diuina ratio, which
also coincides with Natural Law, finds its earthly manifestation through the auspicia,
whose main purpose (and even utility) in relation to the state is to repress the impe-
tus of the people, their irrational passions, by virtue of which many decisions are made
which are unprofitable to the state The function of the auspicia, therefore, consists in
acting as a vehicle of divine rationality and curbing those irrational forces that, operat-
ing within the Republic, may bring about its destruction The laws of the best form of
commonwealth should ensure that the working of the state is structured in harmony
with divine will and sure to incur divine approval The language Cicero uses is reveal-
ing: public priests are required for the proper working of the state ‘as the people are in
continual need of the advice (consilium) and authority (auctoritas) of the optimates’ 29
I suspect there is something more here than Cicero’s often bumptious and personal
interest in advertising the college of priests which he had joined in 53 BCE – although,
of course, this is no doubt part of the picture, as his excusatio non petita reveals

3. Augures and diuina ratio

To comprehend fully Cicero’s innovation with regard to augury, it is important to con-

sider the aim of his wider project in De Legibus In Book 1, following a Stoic line of
argument, the character Cicero maintains that in this work he is uninterested in the
trivialities of civil law, understood as a set of rules and regulations that govern mutual
relations between citizens: these might be indispensable for practical purposes, but,
he claims, they do not contribute much to the furtherance of knowledge (1 14) His
main focus, Cicero states, will be the universal Law and Justice, whose essence must be
found in the nature of man and the laws that govern states (1 17) Following the view
of the sapientissimi docti (whose identity remains unspecified), Cicero maintains that
‘Law is the highest reason, inherent in nature, which enjoins what ought to be done
and forbids the opposite When that reason is fully formed and completed in the hu-
man mind, it, too, is Law So they think that Law, whose function is to enjoin right ac-
tion and to forbid wrong-doing, is wisdom’ 30 This supreme Law, which existed before
any written law or any state had been established, is the origin of Justice It is ‘a force of
nature; the intelligence and reason of a wise man, and the criterion of Justice and Injus-
tice’ (1 19: ea est enim naturae uis, ea mens ratioque prudentis, ea iuris atque iniuriae regu-

29 Cic Leg. 2 30: consilio et auctoritate optimatium semper populum indigere For an understanding of
optimates as publici sacerdotes, see Dyck 2004, 341
30 Cic Leg. 1 18–19: lex est ratio summa insita in natura, quae iubet ea, quae facienda sunt, prohibetque
contraria. eadem ratio cum est in hominis mente confirmata et confecta, lex est. itaque arbitrantur pru-
dentiam esse legem, cuius ea uis sit, ut recte facere iubeat, uetet delinquere
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 31

la) Emphasizing the fundamental notions the interlocutors should all share before the
conversation on the actual law-code can begin, Cicero states that all nature is governed
by the immortal gods Since men share reason (ratio) with the supreme god (supremus
deus), and since they share reason with the gods, they must be sharing right reason
(recta ratio) with them, and since right reason is Law, it follows that men, Cicero says,
share Law with the gods However, sharing Law means also to share Justice, and those
who share Justice are to be regarded as members of the same commonwealth, where
they must ‘obey the celestial system, the divine mind, and the outstandingly powerful
god’ (1 23: parent autem huic caelesti descriptioni mentique diuinae et praepotenti deo)
These normative notions of natural law of Book 1 are then followed in what sur-
vives of the work by the provisions on religious matters in Book 2 and the provisions
on magistrates and government matters in Book 3 The relationship between Book 1,
which deals with the universal law, and Book 2 and Book 3, which discuss laws of a spe-
cifically Roman character, has been frequently found, to say the least, to be confusing
and often described as a muddle 31
However, as Julia Annas has convincingly shown, Cicero’s project in De Legibus is
not incoherent Through the prism of Stoicism, Cicero applies some of Plato’s ideas to
the universal and develops his position about the connection between law and virtue 32
Elaborating on Plato’s ideas of the cosmic reason and law discussed in the Book 10 of
the Laws, Cicero endows his notions of law with a universal nature that is central to
Stoicism By understanding laws not as a set of rules and regulations about actions,
but as right reason in the mind of the wise person and therefore requiring of actions
that sustain virtue, Cicero regards the idealized past of early Rome as a system that
embodies Natural Law more successfully than other systems do; a system in which the
augures have traditionally played a pivotal role 33 It is therefore unsurprising, Cicero
contends, that the law-code of Book 2 and Book 3 very closely resembles the tradi-
tional Roman system,34 if the arguments put forward by Scipio in De Re Publica on the
nature of the political system of early Rome correspond to the truth 35

31 Powell 2001, 34; Dyck 2004, 114–115, 410–111; Zetzel 2017, xxv–xxvi This view was influentially put
forward by Reitzenstein 1893, who advocated the idea of a separate composition of Book 1 With a
different emphasis, this view was also supported by Schmidt 1959 and Büchner 1961 For a contrary
perspective, favouring an integrated reading of the three surviving books of De Legibus, see Dörrie
1973; Turpin 1986; Fontanella 2013, esp 115–132; Atkins 2013, 155–161; Annas 2013, 219–222; Annas
2017, 180–186; Schofield forthcoming
32 Annas 2017, 187 Contra Straumann 2016, 179–180, according to whom Cicero’s notion of natural law
depends more on Roman legal principles of contract and equity than on Stoicism
33 Annas 2017, 168–187
34 Cic Leg. 2 23 and 3 12: Quintus is made to observe this point
35 On auspicia, see Cic Rep 2 16: the Romans obey the auspicia magna cum salute rei publicae, tracing
the habit of taking them in omnibus publicis rebus back to Romulus himself See also Rep 2 17: the
auspicia and the Senate are defined as haec egregia duo firmamenta rei publicae Cf Cic Vat 23
32 Valentina Arena

Following Plato’s use of the preamble to introduce an element of persuasion in the

function of the law in order to minimize the need for compulsion or the threats of force
(Leg 2 14),36 Cicero presents his religious law-code of Book 2 for the well-regulated res
publica described by Scipio, embodying the Stoic idea of the universal community of
the rational 37 As the proemium of Book 2 specifies, the sapientissimi (whose identity
remains unspecified) stated that ‘Law is not a product of human thought, nor is it any
enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe by its
wisdom in command and prohibition’38 It is necessary, Cicero claims, that the Law,
which is diuina ratio, is congruent with the reason and mind (ratio mensque) of the
wise lawgiver and, in order to do so, the interpretes of Jupiter play a fundamental role
‘In their judgement, that original and final Law is the intelligence of God, who ordains
and forbids everything by reason Hence that Law which the gods have given to the
human race is rightly praised, for it represents the reason and intelligence of a wise man
directed to issuing commands and prohibitions’ 39
Divine mind cannot exist without reason, and divine reason cannot but establish
what is right and wrong (2 10: neque enim esse mens diuina sine ratione potest, nec ratio
diuina non hanc uim in rectis prauisque sanciendis habet), as ‘the authentic original law,
whose function is to command and forbid, is the right reason of supreme Jupiter’ (ibid.:
lex uera atque princeps apta ad iubendum et ad uetandum ratio est recta summi Iouis) 40
Adopting the Stoic notion of Natural Law, it follows that if the law is the mind of
god, which coincides with right reason in the mind of the lawgiver, then the true aim
of legislation is indeed the wellbeing of a political community and its members: ‘it is
agreed, of course, that laws were devised to ensure the safety of citizens, the security
of states, and the peaceful happy life of human beings; and that those who first passed

36 For an interesting discussion on Cicero’s use of the Platonic preamble, see Schofield 2017, 58 On
Cicero’s explicit link of his project in De Legibus with Plato’s work see Cic Leg. 2 14 (on writing a
book entitled Republic first and Laws second); Leg. 2 16 (on adopting a proemium to the laws); Leg.
2 17 (on similarities and differences of style and content); Leg. 2 69 (as literary model); Leg. 2 39
and 3 1 (admiration for Plato) On specific references to Laws see above, n 8 On the relation be-
tween Plato and Cicero see, most recently, Annas 2013 and 2017; Schofield 2017 and forthcoming
37 Cic Leg. 1 20; 2 23; cf 3 12 See Schofield forthcoming
38 Cic Leg 2 8: legem neque hominum ingeniis excogitatam, nec scitum aliquod esse populorum, sed aeter-
num quiddam, quod uniuersum mundum regeret imperandi prohibendique sapientia
39 Cic Leg. 2 8: ita principem legem illam et ultimam mentem esse dicebant omnia ratione aut cogentis aut
uetantis dei; ex quo illa lex, quam di humano generi dederunt, recte est laudata; est enim ratio mensque
sapientis ad iubendum et ad deterrendum idonea
40 Cf Cic Leg. 2 15: sit igitur hoc iam a principio persuasum ciuibus, dominos esse omnium rerum ac
moderatores deos, eaque quae gerantur eorum geri iudicio ac numine, eosdemque optime de genere homi-
num mereri, et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones,
intueri, piorumque et impiorum habere rationem (‘So the citizens should first of all be convinced of
this, that the gods are lords and masters of everything; that what is done is done by their decision
and authority; that they are, moreover, great benefactors of mankind and observe what kind of
person everyone is – his actions and misdemeanours, his attitude and devotion to religious du-
ties – and take note of the pious and the impious’)
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 33

such enactments showed their communities that they meant to frame and enact meas-
ures which, when accepted and adopted, would allow them to live happy and honour-
able lives; provisions composed and endorsed in this way would, of course, be given
the name of laws’ 41 The purpose of a law-code, Cicero comments here, developing a
point already announced in Book 1,42 is to protect the community and its members in
two main ways: first, by guaranteeing their safety and stability; second, by providing
them with a uita quieta et beata, that is with the possibility to conduct an honourable,
virtuous, and happy life 43
‘Law’, Cicero adds, ‘means drawing a distinction between just and unjust, formulat-
ed in accordance with that most ancient and most important of all things – nature; by
her, human laws are guided in punishing the wicked and defending and protecting the
good’ 44 To achieve this conformity, which is necessary to ensuring the enacted regula-
tions are proper laws and not equivalent to the rules that a band of robbers might pass
in their assembly (2 13), Cicero assigns an essential role to the augures
In Cicero’s interpretative framework, these priests are essential to the enactment
of the divine ratio in the terrestrial world As intermediaries between the gods and
humanity, their function is to ensure the participation of the gods in mortal activities
More importantly, however, they have a crucial role in guaranteeing that the laws are
congruent and in agreement with the divine, so that the universal community of the
rational is preserved
The magistrates endowed with administering terrestrial powers (either potestas, in
the case of minor offices, or imperium, in the case of consuls and praetors), as Cicero
specifies in Book 3, ought to obey them They are the proponents of legislative pro-
posals to the popular assemblies, on which rests the ultimate onus to transform these
proposals into laws
It seems that, rather than being a ‘muddle’, the three extant books of Cicero’s De
Legibus function coherently in relation to one another and develop the idea of Natural
Law in an organic manner In this conceptual system, the augures fulfil a special role
that transcends, as Cicero maintains, the general public function of the publici sacer-

41 Cic Leg. 2 11: constat profecto ad salutem ciuium ciuitatiumque incolumitatem uitamque hominum
quietam et beatam inuentas esse leges, eosque, qui primum eius modi scita sanxerint, populis ostendisse
ea se scripturos atque laturos, quibus illi adscitis susceptisque honeste beateque uiuerent; quaeque ita
conposita sanctaque essent, eas leges uidelicet nominarent
42 Cic Leg. 1 37: ‘my whole thesis aims to bring stability to states, steadiness to cities, and well-being
to communities’ (ad res publicas firmandas et ad stabiliendas urbes sanandosque populos omnis nostra
pergit oratio)
43 In this interpretative framework, with its emphasis on laws, virtue, and the happy life, Cicero’s De
Legibus can be considered, with Annas 2017, 187, a ‘thoughtful updating and rethinking of Plato’s
Laws’.
44 Cic Leg. 2 13: ergo est lex iustorum iniustorumque distinctio ad illam antiquissimam et rerum omnium
principem expressa naturam, ad quam leges hominum diriguntur, quae supplicio inprobos adficiunt,
defendunt ac tuentur bonos.
34 Valentina Arena

dotes Discussing their role in his commentary to the religious laws, Cicero prefaces
his observations by saying that their function does not concern only religious issue
(including private worship), but also pertains to the commonwealth for ‘the people’s
continual need of the advice (consilium) and authority (auctoritas) of the optimates
hold the State together’ (2 30: continet enim rem publicam consilio et auctoritate optima-
tium semper populum indigere) If it is true that in Cicero’s political design, the augures
ultimately played a central role in governing public life, it is also true that, conceptual-
izing their function according to these Platonic-Stoic principles, he assigns them the
essential role of enabling diuina ratio in the terrestrial political community 45
This explains the special emphasis Cicero places on the role of the augures, which
elevates them above the other public priests he discusses and additionally accounts for
Cicero’s underlining of their specific function in relation to the people’s electoral and
legislative assemblies By restraining the passions of the people and ensuring the deci-
sions of the assemblies were attuned to the diuina ratio of Jupiter, the augures ensured
that the laws that governed the political community would provide it with stability and
sustain the virtuous life of its citizens
Various instances can be observed where, as previously mentioned, Cicero stress-
es the importance of the obedience to the augures This seems a natural extension of
the argument above: to guarantee that the realization of this universal societas of men
and gods, it is of paramount importance that men do not disregard the findings of the
augures However, although this condition is certainly prerequisite to the role of these
priests as effective enablers of diuina ratio, it seems to move the discussion from the
conceptual, to a more pragmatic, realm This shift seems reminiscent of the historical
context of the time of Cicero’s writing, to which I shall now turn 46

4. Cicero, Clodius, and Civil Religion

In accounting for Cicero’s change, at least in emphasis, and, in some crucial areas, also
in practice of the religious structures of the best commonwealth, it is important to con-
sider the condition of political chaos and violence of the 50s BCE in Rome, the time
when Cicero was composing, or at least conceiving, De Legibus 47 From the so-called
‘First Triumvirate’ of 60 BCE and the subsequent consulship of Caesar and Bibulus,
or, following Suetonius (DJ 20 2), of Julius and Caesar, to 52 BCE, the assassination of

45 For augury as a means of exercising control over public life by the governing elite, see North 1990
and Fontanella 2013, 51–52
46 On the osmotic relation between Cicero’s theoretical and political concerns in De Legibus, see
Dyck 2004, 6
47 On the dates of composition of De Legibus, see Schmidt 1969; Grilli 1990; Dyck 2004, 5–7; Pittia
2008
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 35

Clodius and the sole consulship of Pompey, Rome was facing a situation of political
and institutional chaos No small part in the disruption of Republican political life
was played by the use and abuse of the practice of obnuntiatio and more generally, the
perceived state of decline in auspicial divination
The case that famously brought the issue of obnuntiatio to the fore occurred in
59 BCE Whilst attempting to pass his first agrarian law, Caesar was faced by senatorial
opposition and decided to enlist the support of the people to overcome it Bibulus
appeared in the Forum on the day of voting with the intent of obstructing it by the use
of obnuntiatio However, he was kept from reaching the platform and forcibly expelled
from the forum: his fasces were destroyed and he was covered in dirt As a result, Bi-
bulus locked himself up into his house, where he spent the rest of the year announcing
se de caelo seruasse each time an assembly was summoned However, as Suetonius and
Cassius Dio tell us, he did not announce the results of his spectio in person, but rather
sent his lictors to deliver his edicta 48
It was largely in reaction to this episode, as scholars have come to agree,49 that Clo-
dius passed the so-called lex Clodia de obnuntiatione 50 The law is notoriously obscure,
not least because knowledge of it is mainly gleaned from Cicero’s polemical and hy-
perbolic attacks, alongside the testimony of Asconius and Dio, who, as scholars now
seem to agree, do not add much detail to the picture presented by Cicero 51 Although
Cicero claims that Clodius’ law wholly abolished auspicia and the right de caelo seruasse
during assemblies (or at least legislative assemblies), this is contradicted by other evi-
dence provided by Cicero himself, which attests its continuing practice It seems cer-
tain, however, that it abrogated at least some provisions of the two laws, the lex Aelia
and the lex Fufia, in turn, ill-known legislative measures of the mid-second century
BCE, which regulated, amongst other things, the procedure of obnuntiatio during the
assemblies of the people, safeguarding the magistrates’ ritual privilege of announcing
unfavourable signs against the proceedings of the assembly 52 Although interpretations
of the exact content of Clodius’ law vary considerably, a sustained scholarly consensus
is now coalescing around the idea that this measure explicitly enshrined in law the re-

48 Suet DJ 20; Cass Dio 38 13 6

49 See Mitchell 1986 and, most recently, Ferrary 2012
50 On the validity of Bibulus’ sky-watching in 59 BCE, see Driediger-Murphy 2019, 145–147, 158–160,
with previous bibliography
51 See Cic Red. Sen 11; Sest 56; Har. Resp 58; Vat 18–21; Prov. Cons 45–46; Pis 9–10; Asc 8C ; Cass
Dio 38 13 6 See Mitchell 1986, 172 and Tatum 1999, 125 on the dependence of Asconius and Dio on
Cicero
52 Weinstock 1937; Bleicken 1955, 57–58; Sumner 1963; Astin 1964; Weinrib 1970; Burckhardt 1988,
181–185; Thommen 1989, 242–244; Fezzi 1995 and 1999, 267–274; Beard-North-Price 1998, 109–110;
Berthelet 2015, 262, 267–274; Berthelet 2016, 86–87
36 Valentina Arena

quirement for magistrates to announce in person the omens to the presiding official at
an established time and place prior to the assembly’s proceedings 53
This law seems pertinent to a debate about the ius obnuntiandi of the magistrates and
its regulations, on which there was no aristocratic consensus The obnuntiatio of the
magistrates was a means of obstruction that a magistrate holder of potestas or imperium
could exercise against another magistrate, who was also a holder of the same power 54
The discussion about the legitimacy of its particular practices, opened up by the events
of 59 BCE, was a clear sign of the contemporary crisis 55 If, on the one hand, Bibulus’
behaviour was unprecedented, as he continued to practice his spectio at home for the
whole year, and announced it via edicts (and supported further by three tribunes of
the plebs who acted similarly, retiring to their houses and sending notices that they
were watching the sky), on the other, Caesar’s disregard of the news that the heavens
were being observed could too be legitimately presented as oppositional to traditional
practice As both Linderski and Tatum have observed, albeit with different emphasis,
Clodius’ law was not in itself revolutionary; if anything, it was rather traditional in aim,
wishing to restore a piece of ‘sound augural doctrine’, while curbing the internecine
conflicts within the elite 56
Intervening in a debate over the relationship between augural law and legislative pro-
cedures, Clodius’ law, first born out of these contingent events (or even a partisan act, as
some scholars describe it), then progressed to acquire a more generalizing dimension
As Tatum underlines, no one could have been in favour of paralyzing ad infinitum the
political activity of the assemblies 57 In this context, Clodius’ measure was an attempt at
curbing, by law, the interferences that magistrates could arbitrarily inflict by their spectio
on the proposal of another politician, and thereby ultimately on the decision-making
process of the assembly This law, which, as Scheid and Berthelet have recently under-
lined, concerned the ius obnuntiandi of the magistrates, but not that of the augures (the
latter could interrupt the popular assemblies even when in progress and were concerned
with the auspicia oblatiua, while the magistrates, concerned with the auspicia impetratiua,
could only exercise their right of obnuntiatio at the very beginning of the assembly),58

53 For a doxographical review, see Mitchell 1986, 172; Tatum 1999, 130–131; Fezzi 1995, 311–319 and
1999, 267–270 For a particular emphasis on the issue of announcing the omens in praesentia, see
Guillaumont 1984, 76; Mitchell 1986, 175; Tatum 1999, 132; Berthelet 2015, 275; Driediger-Murphy
2019, 144 and n 59
54 Berthelet 2015, 201–219 and 2016, 90
55 Moatti 1997, 25–54 (= 2015, 10–44) on the interpretation of the concept of ‘crisis’
56 Linderski 1965 (= 1995, 71–90); Tatum 1999, 125–133 (quote in the text at 132) See also Berthelet
2015, 274 and 2016, 89–90
57 Mitchell 1986, 173
58 Cass Dio 38 13 6: ‘he [Clodius] introduced a measure that none of the magistrates should observe
the signs from heaven on the days when it was necessary for the people to vote on anything’ See
Scheid 2012b, esp 222 and Berthelet 2015, 259–271 It might well be possible that, since most augures
had been at some point in their careers also magistrates, Dio, whose imprecise grasp of Republican
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 37

regulated and attempted to frame the magistrates’ communication with the divine by
means of a comitial law
Set within the context of a genuine reform programme, the aim of which was the
proper working of the commonwealth, Clodius’ law could be read, in terms of princi-
ple, as imposing an earthly regulation on communicative relations between the gods
and the magistrates, who could no longer interfere arbitrarily with the working of poli-
tics through the use of obnuntiatio
While, therefore, motivations for the introduction of this law may lie in the attempt
to clarify an area of sacred law often subject to confusion and contestation, it seems
that the law’s implementation also advanced an expressly different conception of the
commonwealth, broadly defined as a state which assigned primacy to the rule of law, to
which all members of the community should be equally subjected and which, thereby,
deprived them of the ability to act arbitrarily 59
When set in its historical context, it is, therefore, possible to interpret Cicero’s em-
phasis on the augures in De Legibus not only, or not so much, through his often ostenta-
tious attitude towards his priestly college, nor as an ideological reflex of his senatorial
prejudice (obnuntiatio was often considered a tool of the governing elite to obstruct
those policies contrary to its wishes)60 and not even as just an attack against his enemy,
Clodius, but rather as an actual intervention in political and intellectual debates of the
time on how better to structure and govern the res publica and on the role assigned
within it to religion
In his account, Cicero re-establishes the primacy of the ius obnuntiandi of the augures
over the ius obnuntiandi and ius auspicandi of the magistrates Deriving their auctoritas
directly from Jupiter, these public priests, in Cicero’s vision of the commonwealth,
come to occupy their powerful position above the rule of law: the augures could, if
they wished, dismiss a legislative assembly without explanation – the simple cry ‘alio
die’ was sufficient to interrupt the proceedings Their superior auctoritas was above the
potestas or the imperium of the magistrates, who were always required to obey them,
and above the libertas of comitial laws, which did not regulate their behaviour 61
In Cicero’s view, these priests, holding a crucial position as intermediary commu-
nicators with the gods, were considered foundational for the building of a common-
wealth In De Legibus Cicero presented this traditional view of the augures’ role within

language and details is well known, has just generally referred to magistrates However, if, in addi-
tion to Dio’s testimony, we take into account the direct correlation between the events of 59 BCE
and the law of Clodius, it seems plausible to postulate that Clodius intervened on ius obnuntiandi
of the magistrates
59 For a similar interpretative framework about the censorship, Cicero’s other true innovation in the
law-code of De Legibus, see Arena 2016
60 See Rüpke 2005b, 227–230 for a very effective account of the political use of divination as a way for
the elite to ‘opt out’ of the table of the negotiations with the people
61 See Arena 2012, 258–276 on liberty and the rule of law
38 Valentina Arena

a philosophical conceptual framework, which allowed him to strengthen the vital im-
portance of their function, in response to Clodius’ policy: it was through the augures,
who enabled divine participation in the decision-making process, that the common-
wealth could be governed by the diuina ratio of the immortal gods, thereby establish-
ing the universal community of men and deities, always preserved from the unjust and
ruinous impulses of human passions
The kernel of the debate was the relationship between religion and politics Nei-
ther Cicero nor Clodius denied the interconnectivity of both realms 62 They rather ad-
vanced different conceptions of how this relationship should be articulated According
to Clodius, religion and priests should be subjected to the rule of law, that is, religious
power and the modalities concerning the communication with the gods should be
subordinate to the ordering and equalizing power of the political, which would curb
the arbitrary power of the individual to interfere However, regulating the ius obnunti-
ationis of the magistrates was not tantamount to undermining the value of the auspicia
impetratiua; if anything, it was designed to make communication with the gods more
effective and less open to manipulation In Cicero’s opinion, on the other hand, the
power of the college of the augures, based on the divine auctoritas of its members, was
not subject to any comitial law, passed by Clodius or anybody else for that matter Civil
religion, Cicero seems to affirm in De Legibus, was not to be subordinated to civil au-
thority 63
This issue of the mutual relations between civil and religious authorities, analysed
through the prism of augury, was at the centre of the contemporary debate on the
function of the auspices In De Legibus Cicero has Atticus enquire about the dispute
between Marcellus and Appius, whether auspicia were designed ad utilitatem rei pub-
licae or were rather a form of divination (2 32: quasi diuinari uideatur posse). Cicero, or
at least ‘Marcus’, argues in favour of the existence of divination, of which augury is a
branch, but ‘this art and skill of the augurs’, he acknowledges, ‘have now vanished as
the result of age and neglect’ 64 In the De Diuinatione too, he discusses the contempo-
rary state of disarray of augury, lamenting that, contrary to the ancestral past, the auspi-
cial assistant is no longer peritus, wild birds are no longer used in the ritual of the tripu-
dium and those responsible for watching the sky delegate their task to the pullarius 65

62 On the connection between the religious and political domains, see Scheid 1985 and 2013 (= 2016);
North 1989
63 On the relation between the two spheres, see Scheid 2012a, 110
64 Cic Leg. 2 33: haec disciplina et ars augurum euanuerit iam et uetustate et neglegentia On this issue,
see also Cic ND 2 9 and Div. 1 95 and 2 73–74 On the historical developments of divination, see
Scheid 2012a
65 Cic Div. 2 71–74 See also Div. 1 25 and 2 36 Cf Dion Hal Ant. Rom. 2 6 On Cicero’s position, see
Beard 1986 On the pullarii, see Foti 2011 and Van Haeperen 2012
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 39

As the contemporary debate about the relation between the societas of gods and
men, as well as the nature of their divine communication flourished,66 these issues con-
cerning religion were closely scrutinized and subject to sustained systematization 67
Politicians and intellectuals of the time began to order religious knowledge, focusing
their attention also on the procedures and regulations of augury In the first century
BCE, Lucius Julius Caesar composed a work entitled Augurales Libri, Appius Claudius
Pulcher one De Disciplina Augurali, and Valerius Messalla Rufus produced a De Aus-
piciis; while Varro re-organized priesthoods in his Antiquitates Rerum Diuinarum and
Trebatius Testa and Veranius composed works entitled, respectively, De Religionibus
and Quaestiones Pontificales Furthermore, Cicero himself seems to have composed a
treatise De Auspiciis 68
By responding to contemporary events, whenever issues of contention over the le-
gitimacy of particular procedures and practices arose, these politicians and engaged
intellectuals begun to systematize existing rules and regulations by selecting, ordering,
and, at times, even inventing them, and in the process established the principles at the
basis of the res publica itself 69

5. Conclusion

Far from simply listing the augures’ duties, mirroring current practice or framing tra-
ditional Roman religion in legalistic terms,70 Cicero’s discussion of the augures’ role
represents his intervention in an intellectual and political debate of his time By basing
his analysis on Platonic-Stoic reasoning, or, in Cicero’s words, drawing his iuris discipli-
na ex intima philosophia,71 he provides an answer to a political problem of wider interest
for the community, exposed by the partisan struggle with his personal enemy Clodius
As Dyck rightly states ‘some of the major innovations Cicero proposes can be seen
as a direct response to Clodius’ programme’ 72 However, in so doing, in his response to

66 Beard 2012 underlines how this debate took place not only in philosophical treatises, but also in
public speeches
67 This discussion was also mirrored in well-known stories of early Roman mytho-history: it is suffi-
cient to think about the opposition between the augur par excellence, Attus Navius, and the highest
of earthly powers, Tarquinius: Cic Div. 1 17; Livy 1 36; Dion Hal Ant. Rom. 3 70–71
68 On these authors of ‘civil theology’, see MacRae 2016 and 2017 On Cicero, see Harries 2006, 164–
166
69 See Moatti 1997, esp 99–155 (= 2015, esp 94–163) Liebeschuetz 1979, 24, 27 observes that this was
possible because the overarching ‘theoretical’ principles of state divination were ‘hopelessly vague’
See also Driediger-Murphy 2019, 38
70 Tucker 1976, 175 MacRae 2016, 28–52 emphasizes its function of social performance within the
context of a competitive elite
71 Cic Leg. 1 17
72 Dyck 2004, 17
40 Valentina Arena

lex Clodia de obnuntiatione, Cicero presents his objection not only to the regulations
that Clodius had imposed on the auspicial practices of the magistrates (if not, as it
seems more unlikely, of the augures too), but also advances a different conceptualiza-
tion of the commonwealth, based on a conceptual framework radically different from
that encapsulated by Clodius’ measure – or that Cicero could plausibly interpret as
such In response to Clodius’ law, which proposes a view of the commonwealth that
subjected the auspicial procedure of the magistrates to the rule of law, Cicero empha-
sizes the absolute primacy of the augures, to which both magistrates and laws should
be subordinate
Developing further his conception of the state, Cicero made religious auctoritas the
true underpinning of the commonwealth It was the auctoritas of the augures, which
Berthelet classifies as ‘full auctoritas’, conferred upon them from Jupiter at the time of
their inauguratio, that, alongside the auctoritas of the senators (a somehow ‘secondary
auctoritas’, based on their consilium), took centre stage in his conceptualization of the
best form of commonwealth Within this interpretative framework, in Cicero’s De Leg-
ibus the world of politics, as encapsulated by the potestas and imperium of the magis-
trates and the libertas of the comitial laws, should be moulded by the divine auctoritas
bestowed by Jupiter Additionally, the augures were crucially instrumental to the enact-
ment of those laws, whose existence and force were therefore derived from a divinely
ordered universe and originated from the divine mind of the supreme god 73
Participating in the contemporary debate on the relation between augural and com-
itial law (which, it should be noted, is not strictly the same as the relationship between
the augures and the magistrates who proposed legislative measures to the popular as-
sembly),74 Cicero puts forward a vision of politics that, informed by Platonic-Stoic
philosophy, was meant for the hic et nunc
It is only when the commonwealth is firmly situated within the religious framework
of the auctoritas of the augures that a stable functioning of the commonwealth can en-
sue and a virtuous and happy life for its members be guaranteed As Cicero says at the
end of Book 2, in the form in which it is preserved to us, the establishment of religion
is the first stage in the creation of a commonwealth 75

73 Cic Leg. 2 10; see supra and Schofield forthcoming

74 Scheid 1985, 27: ‘le magistrat est toujours un peu prêtre, et le prêtre un peu magistrat’ North 1986
also underlines that in Rome there was no division between religious and secular powers, despite
some important differences between the duties of magistrates and priests, and the expectations
placed upon them
75 Cic Leg. 2 69: sic igitur faciam, et dicam de magistratibus. id enim est profecto quod constituta religione
rem publicam contineat maxime (‘So that is what I shall do, and I shall speak about magistrates For,
once matters of religion have been settled, magistrates are surely the most important element in
the structure of the state’)
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 41

Bibliography

Annas 2013: J Annas, ‘Plato’s Laws and Cicero’s de Legibus’, in M Schofield (ed ), Aristotle, Plato
and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC: New Directions for Philosophy, Cambridge 2013,
206–224
Annas 2017: ead , Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond, Oxford 2017
Arena 2012: V Arena, Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic, Cambridge
2012
Arena 2015: ead , ‘Informal Norms, Values, and Social Control in the Roman Participatory Con-
text’, in D Hammer (ed ), A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic, Oxford/
Malden 2014, 217–238
Arena 2016: ead , ‘Popular Sovereignty in the Late Roman Republic: Cicero and the Notion of
Popular Will’, in R Bourke / Q Skinner (eds ), Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective,
Cambridge 2016, 73–95
Atkins 2013: J W Atkins, Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason, Cambridge 2013
Beard 1986: M Beard, ‘Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse’, JRS 76 (1986),
33–46
Beard 2012: ead , “Cicero’s ‘Response of the Haruspices’ and the Voice of the Gods”, JRS 102 (2012),
20–39
Berthelet 2015: Y Berthelet, Gouverner avec les dieux: autorité, auspices et pouvoir, sous la République
romaine et sous Auguste, Paris 2015
Berthelet 2016: id , ‘Violence, obstruction augurale et crise de la République romaine’, in L Gil-
haus et al. (eds ), Elite und Krise in antiken Gesellschaften = Élites et crises dans les sociétés antiques,
Stuttgart 2016, 83–95
Bleicken 1955: J Bleicken, Das Volkstribunat der römischen Republik, Munich 1955
Büchner 1961: K Büchner, “Sinn und Entstehung von ‘De legibus’”, in Atti del I Congresso interna-
zionale di studi ciceroniani, 2, Rome 1961, 81–90
Cancik 1995: H Cancik, ‘M Tullius Cicero als Kommentator’, in J Assmann / B Gladigow (eds ),
Text und Kommentar. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation IV, Munich 1995, 293–310
Catalano 1960: P Catalano, Contributi allo studio del diritto augurale I, Turin 1960
Dörrie 1973: H Dörrie, ‘Ciceros Entwurf zur einer Neuordnung des römischen Sakralwesens Zu
den geistigen Grundlagen von de legibus Buch II’, in Classica et Mediaevalia Francisco Blatt
septuagenario dedicata, Copenhagen 1973, 224–240
Driediger-Murphy 2019: L G Driediger-Murphy, Roman Republican Augury. Freedom and Control,
Oxford 2019
Dyck 2004: A R Dyck, A Commentary on Cicero, De Legibus, Ann Arbor 2004
Ferrary 2012: J -L Ferrary, ‘L’iter legis, de la rédaction de la rogatio à la publication de la lex rogata,
et la signification de la législation comitiale dans le système politique de la Rome républicaine’,
in id (ed ), Leges Publicae La legge nell’esperienza giuridica romana, Pavia 2012, 3–38
Fezzi 1995: L Fezzi, ‘Lex Clodia de iure et tempore legum rogandarum’, SCO 45 (1995), 297–328
Fezzi 1999: id , ‘La legislazione tribunizia di Publio Clodio Pulcro (58 a C ) e la ricerca del consen-
so a Roma’, SCO 47 (1999), 245–341
Fontanella 2013: F Fontanella, Politica e diritto naturale nel ‘De legibus’ di Cicerone, Rome 2013
Foti 2011: G Foti, ‘Funzioni e caratteri del «pullarius» in età repubblicana e imperiale’, Acme 64
(2011), 89–121
Grilli 1990: A Grilli, ‘Data e senso del De legibus di Cicerone’, PdP 45 (1990), 175–187
42 Valentina Arena

Harries 2006: J Harries, Cicero and the Jurists. From Citizens’ Law to the Lawful State, London
2006
Guillaumont 1984: F Guillaumont, Philosophe et augure. Recherches sur la théorie cicéronienne de la
divination, Brussels 1984
Liebeschuetz 1979: J H W G Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion, Oxford
1979
Linderski 1965: J Linderski, ‘Constitutional Aspects of the Consular Elections in 59 BC’, Histo-
ria 14 (1965), 423–442
Linderski 1972: id , ‘The Aedileship of Favonius, Curio the Younger and Cicero’s Election to the
Augurate’, HSCP 76 (1972), 181–200
Linderski 1982: id , ‘Cicero and Roman Divination’, PdP 37 (1982), 12–38
Linderski 1986: id , ‘The Augural Law’, in ANRW 2 16 3, Berlin/New York 1986, 2146–2312
Linderski 1995: id , Roman Questions. Selected Papers, Stuttgart 1995
MacRae 2016: D MacRae, Legible Religion. Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture, Cambridge,
Mass 2016
MacRae 2017: id , “‘The Laws of the Rites and of the Priests’: Varro and Late Republican Roman
Sacral Jurisprudence”, BICS 60 (2017), 34–48
Mitchell 1986: T N Mitchell, ‘The Leges Clodiae and Obnuntiatio’, CQ 36 (1986), 172–176
Moatti 1997: C Moatti, La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République
(IIe–Ier siècle avant Jesus-Christ), Paris 1997
Moatti 2015: ead (transl J Lloyd, with a foreword by M Schofield), The Birth of Critical Thinking
in Republican Rome, Cambridge 2015
North 1986: J A North, ‘Religion and Politics, from Republic to Principate’, JRS 76 (1986), 251–258
North 1989: id , ‘Religion in Republican Rome’, in Cambridge Ancient History 7 2, Cambridge
19942, 573–624
North 1990: id , ‘Diviners and Divination at Rome’, in M Beard / J North (eds ), Pagan Priests.
Religion and Power in the Ancient World, London 1990, 51–71
Pittia 2008: S Pittia, ‘La Dimension utopique du traité cicéronien De legibus’, in C Carsana /
M T Schettino (eds ), Utopia e utopie nel pensiero storico antico, Rome 2008, 27–48
Powell 2001: J G F Powell, ‘Were Cicero’s Laws the Laws of Cicero’s Republic?’, in id / J A North
(eds ), Cicero’s Republic, London 2001, 17–39
Reitzenstein 1893: R Reitzenstein, Drei Vermutungen zur Geschichte der romischen Litteratur I: Die
Abfassungszeit des ersten Buches Ciceros de legibus, Marburg 1893
Rüpke 2005a: J Rüpke, Fasti sacerdotum: Die Mitglieder der Priesterschaften und das sakrale Funk-
tionspersonal römischer, griechischer, orientalischer und jüdisch-christlicher Kulte in der Stadt Rom
von 300 v. Chr. bis 499 n. Chr., Stuttgart 2005
Rüpke 2005b: id , ‘Divination et décisions politiques dans la République romaine’, CCGG 16
(2005), 217–233
Rüpke 2012: id , Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change, Philadelphia 2012
Santangelo 2013: F Santangelo, ‘Priestly auctoritas in the Roman Republic’, CQ 63 (2013), 743–763
Scheid 1985: J Scheid, Religion et piété à Rome, Paris 1985
Scheid 2012a: id , ‘Le Rite des auspices à Rome: Quelle évolution? Réflexions sur la transfor-
mation de la divination publique des Romains entre le IIIe et le Ier siècle avant notre ère’, in
S Georgoudi / R Koch Piettre / F Schmidt, F (eds ) La Raison des signes: Présages, rites,
destin dans les sociétés de la Méditerranée ancienne, Leiden/Boston 2012, 109–128
Scheid 2012b: id , ‘Leggi e religione’, in J -L Ferrary (ed ), Leges Publicae La legge nell’esperienza
giuridica romana, Pavia 2012, 219–237
 Cicero, the Augures, and the Commonwealth in De Legibus 43

Scheid 2013: id , Les Dieux, l’état et l’individu: Réflexions sur la religion civique à Rome, Paris 2013
Scheid 2016: id (transl C Ando), The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Re-
ligion in Rome, Philadelphia 2016
Schmidt 1959: P L Schmidt, Interpretatorische und chronologische Grundfragen zu Ciceros Werk “De
legibus”, Diss Freiburg 1959
Schmidt 1969: id , Die Abfassungzeit der Ciceros Schrift über die Gesetze, Rome 1969
Schofield 2017: M Schofield, ‘Cicero’s Plato’, in T Engberg / Pedersen (ed ), From Stoicism to
Platonism. The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE, Cambridge 2017, 47–66
Schofield forthcoming: id , Cicero, forthcoming
Straumann 2016: B Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism. Roman Political Thought from the Fall
of the Republic to the Age of Revolution, Oxford 2016
Tatum 1999: W J Tatum, The Patrician Tribune. Publius Clodius Pulcher, Chapel Hill/London 1999
Tucker 1976: C W Tucker, ‘Cicero, Augur, De Iure Augurali’, CW 70 (1976), 171–177
Turpin 1986: J Turpin, ‘Cicéron, De legibus I–II et la religion romaine: une interpretation phi-
losophique à la veille du principat’, in ANRW 2 16 3, Berlin/New York 1986, 1877–1908
de Vaan 2008: M de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Leiden/
Boston 2008
Valeton 1891: I M J Valeton, ‘De inaugurationibus Romanis caerimoniarum et sacerdotum’, Mne-
mosyne 19 (1891), 405–460
Van Haeperen 2012: F Van Haeperen, ‘Auspices d’investiture, loi curiate et légitimité des magis-
trats romains’, CCGG 23 (2012), 71–111
Van Haeperen 2015: ead , ‘De la nécessité d’une loi curiate pour les magistrats sans imperium’,
CCGG 26 (2015), 225–230
Vervaet 2014: F J Vervaet, The High Command in the Roman Republic. The Principle of the sum-
mum imperium auspiciumque from 509 to 19 BCE, Stuttgart 2014
Vervaet 2015: id , ‘The lex curiata and the Patrician Auspices’, CCGG 26 (2015), 201–224
Weinrib 1970: E J Weinrib, ‘Obnuntiatio: Two Problems’, ZSS 87 (1970), 395–425
Weinstock 1937: S Weinstock, ‘Clodius and the lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 27 (1937), 215–222
Zetzel 2017: J E G Zetzel (transl ), Cicero. On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, Cambridge
20172
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s
Third Catilinarian
Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

‘For it is believed that the idea of the gods is possible to our eyes, not only to our
minds’ states Marcus, the main character of De Legibus 1 Some years later, in De Natura
Deorum, Cicero’s Cotta argues: ‘from our childhood, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune,
Vulcan and Apollo have been known to us with the face which painters and sculptors
have chosen to give them, and not only the face but also ornaments, age and dress’ 2
These statements are a good starting point for our discussion, as Cicero not only ac-
tively participated in the creation of a Latin vocabulary for divine images, but also
stimulated ways of seeing and understanding the gods
It is well known that the religious landscape of ancient Rome, with its temples,
images, rituals and myths, communicated an anthropomorphic visual theology The
links between the deity and the image are a long-standing issue in religious studies
This is not just a theme in modern scholarship, as the question of divine images has
long been a subject of intense debate since Antiquity Since at least the time of Xeno-
phanes, arguments both for and against such images have been deployed 3 If the divine
image is misleading according to some of his critics, its power of divine presentifica-
tion is undeniably effective not only in affecting the ways in which people know and
think about the gods, but also because the deity itself is created by these images and
by beliefs that are not innate, but are learned or created by the worshipper The divine
images were objects of permanent elaboration and adjustment in their institutional
or circumstantial frameworks, the understanding of which implies observation of the
ritual dynamics and their institutional spaces, as well as observation of their contexts
of elaboration Currently, there is a renewed interest in the study of the divine images,
discussing modes of figuration, presentation, consecration and presentification, as well

1 Leg. 2 26: est enim quaedam opinione species deorum in oculis, non solum in mentibus
2 DND 1 81: a paruis enim Iouem, Iunonem, Mineruam, Neptunum, Vulcanum, Apollinem, reliquos deos
ea facie nouimus, qua pictores fictoresque uoluerunt, neque solum facie, sed etiam ornatu, aetate, uestitu
3 See, e g , Steiner 2001; Squire 2016
46 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

as the legal status of these images 4 In this vein, the study of images of the gods largely
questions how the divine is constructed in different languages and by different agents,
by its visibility and presence in the human world and by its action, its competences
and its modes of legitimation 5 A prominent topic is the construction of the modes of
perceiving religious images based on learnt conditions and protocols which depend
on the prestige, appeal and authority conferred upon the images, in turn generating
patterns of behaviour, gestures and responses among those who share this perception
In this way, the study of the images of gods scrutinizes not only the images themselves,
but also the practices and discourses that support the use of images, as well as the re-
sponses to them in which emotional and intellectual data are united
Cicero took part in the construction of a theological and normative discourse in the
late Republic, and his work contributed to the conceptual delimitation and resignifica-
tion of Roman religious places, characters, practices and institutions, at a time of great
political and social change 6 This paper is especially concerned with the ways in which
Cicero places a divine statue on stage, materializing the presence of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus to the eyes and minds of the Roman people in the Third Catilinarian My
reading turns to the religious aspects and, to some extent, the theological aspects of
the divine statue As a speech delivered by the consul, Cicero himself, to the Roman
people, this is an outstanding case for the study of the construction of divine presence
in late Republican Rome Jupiter’s new statue, in its materiality and according to the
ritual context, is a human offering to the god, but it also becomes a praesens deus, Jupi-
ter himself, through the words of the orator, and this guarantees identity and action to
the divine statue As a medium for communicating with the gods, the statue is deeply
anchored to cultural patterns of figuration and religious beliefs Cicero’s speech, by
giving an active role to the statue of Jupiter in the Roman polity, steers the audience’s
perception, stimulating emotions and expectations towards the deity

1. The Site and Context of the Speech

Cicero delivered the Third Catilinarian in a contio from the Rostra, in front of the Com-
itium, in the northwest part of the Forum, the foremost political and religious site of
late Republican Rome This was the main stage of political communication and deci-
sion-making, the setting for the courts, religious rituals, funeral eulogies and other ma-

4 See esp Belayche/Brulé 2010; Mylonopoulos 2010; Estienne et al. 2014; Belayche/Pirenne-Del-
forge 2015
5 Steiner 2001; Platt 2011; Petridou 2015
6 For example, Feeney 1998; Moatti 1997 (Engl transl 2015); Rüpke 2012; North 2014 Currently
scholars are highlighting the innovations of Cicero and other authors in the construction of what
we call ‘Roman religion’, e g , Ando 2008; Gildenhard 2011; Santangelo 2013; MacRae 2016 Cf
Arena’s paper in this volume
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 47

jor aspects of Roman religious and political life 7 Roman gods and Roman history were
celebrated and made present in the statues and monuments, as well as in the rituals
and religious spectacles in the Roman Forum From this site, the Capitol was visible,
and so one must keep in mind the prominence of the temple of Jupiter For example,
victorious generals sacrificed in the Capitol at the end of their triumphs and the tem-
ple received the war spoils dedicated by them; it was there that consuls and praetors
sacrificed on their first day in office, that treaties were deposited and that consuls and
praetors, when they left the city with their legions, performed the proper rituals 8 The
Capitoline temple was also the starting point for the procession of the ludi Romani in
honour of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the setting of the epulum Iouis, to give just
two examples of its centrality in Roman public life
Turning to the speech, some preliminary remarks are in order When we read a
speech, we must keep in mind that we are dealing with a written text, not with the
actual delivered speech Many debates have occurred and still occur, on the methodo-
logical problem of whether or not Cicero’s speeches are reliable in telling us what may
have occurred in the contiones, in the courts or in the Senate meetings 9 For the purpos-
es of this paper, we can assume that these texts were widely read and commented on in
their own time and afterwards, thus broadening the scope of the speeches, as well as of
Cicero’s themes and images
The context of the Catilinarians is deeply debated and, although there are other
sources in this case, it is argued that Cicero created a ‘canonical version’ of the events
and the characters involved 10 Catiline’s conspiracy broke out in 63 BCE, but Cicero
suggests that the origins of this movement dated from 65 BCE, when Catiline, ac-
cording to Cicero, would have glimpsed in the consulship the solution to his enor-
mous debts On being defeated and linked to other noblemen who were, according to
Cicero, as ruined as himself, Catiline supposedly plotted the murder of senators and
magistrates, and was planning to set fire to the city itself and to seize power The con-
spiracy was denounced to the consul, who submitted the matter to the Senate Soon
after Cicero had delivered the First Catilinarian at a Senate meeting in the temple of
Iuppiter Stator, on November 8th, Catiline left Rome to join the troops led by Manlius
in Etruria On the following day, Cicero delivered the Second Catilinarian to the people
gathered in the Comitium

7 On the buildings and monuments of the Roman Forum see, e g , Coarelli 1985, 21–22; Purcell 1995;
Coarelli 1996
8 On the Capitol and the Capitoline temple, see De Angeli 1996; Tagliamonte 1996; Orlin 1997, 39–40;
Stamper 2005; Beard 2007; Sobocinski 2013 On uota publica: Ov Pont 4 4; on treaties: Polyb 3 26;
Suet Vesp 8; on auspicia and profectio: Livy 12 63 7–9; 45 39 12
9 There is evidence that these speeches were published three years after Cicero’s consulship, in
60 BCE, e g , Att 2 1 3, and it is quite possible that Cicero carefully improved them On this point
see Philipps 1984; Powell 2010
10 See e g Butler 2002, 85–102 See Tempest 2011, 90–100 for the general lines of the case
48 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

Perhaps in an attempt to increase the rebel forces, the Catilinarians who remained
in the city sought the support of the Allobroges However, the Gauls informed Q Fa-
bius Sanga, their patronus, and Fabius notified Cicero who requested that the Allo-
broges obtain written documents from the conspirators 11 The Gauls met with the
praetor Lentulus and other supporters of Catiline on December 2nd, who gave them
letters with seals (signa) and had appointed Volturcius to travel with them At dawn
on December 3rd, on the Milvian Bridge, however, they were approached by Cicero’s
supporters The letters were taken to the consul, and Cicero brought Lentulus and his
partners to the Senate, summoning them to the temple of Concordia There was then
an interrogation of the indicted ones and the informers Found guilty, those indicted
were arrested and placed in the custody of some of the senators The Senate decreed,
among other honours, a supplicatio to the gods, in thanksgiving to Cicero, who then
delivered the Third Catilinarian to the Roman people 12
The Catilinarians are outstanding examples of Ciceronian invective,13 but what inter-
ests us in this context is that the most powerful use of a divine statue throughout his
whole corpus occurs in the Third Catilinarian In this speech, whose primary purpose
was to inform the people about the events of the Senate meeting, Cicero emphasizes
the role of the gods, particularly Jupiter, in the salvation of the res publica, emphasizing
their agreement and their unity against the conspirators He powerfully declares the
presence of the gods in the Roman Forum 14 More importantly, in this speech Cice-
ro opens a way for us to understand how his contemporaries know the gods both in
words and through visual works
There is a consensus that the Catilinarians represent the focal point of Cicero’s pub-
lic career, and their impact is detected throughout his subsequent work However, for a
long time, only his oratorical mastery was emphasized and his appeals to the gods were
taken as a mere rhetorical device, albeit very well employed Nowadays, the speeches
are also observed with regard to their ritual and religious aspects, but these are not
usually the focus when analysing Cicero’s theological thinking 15 On this point, even if
it is certain that many of the appeals to the gods in Cicero’s speeches are purely conven-
tional, the interpretive proposal defending the affinity between Cicero as orator and
Cicero as philosopher, is quite coherent 16 Building upon shared beliefs on the image,

11 On these written documents, see esp Butler 2002, 96–100

12 See Steel/van der Blom 2013 on the dynamics of Republican contiones See Tan 2009 on contiones
in the age of Cicero
13 On Ciceronian invective, see esp Powell 2007, 2010; Seager 2007
14 Kennedy 1972, 180–182 See Millar 1998, 108–109 on the religious and political associations of the
Roman Forum as a key site in Roman public life On Ciceronian visual rhetoric, see Vasaly 1993
15 An outstanding exception is Gildenhard 2011
16 For example, Caec. 83, Rab. Perd. 30, Mur. 78, Sul 86, Sest. 86, 93, Rab Post. 15, Mil. 44, 85, Phil 4 9,
13 20 See Zetzel 2003; Powell 2007; Gildenhard 2011
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 49

the presence, and the role of the gods, his speeches create a theological dimension with
innovative aspects that are also apparent in his theoretical work

2. The God and the Consul

The most significant passage showing Cicero’s emphasis on the role of the gods in the
protection of Rome, occurs in the second part of the argumentatio, shortly after he
had declared how providential it was for Catiline to have left Rome, because it had
prevented bloodshed and fire within the city walls Cicero connects the presence of
the gods in the city, the new statue of Jupiter in the area Capitolina and the salvation
of Rome, within a religious context The sequence begins in Cat 3 18, with the theme
of the di praesentes Cicero attributes his success (et gesta et prouisa) in unravelling the
plans of the conspirators to the consilium diuinum As it seems impossible for human
reason to remove dangers of such importance, it is concluded that the gods are present
and can almost be seen (eos paene oculis uidere possimus) Cicero declares, then, that the
gods govern what happens in the urbs, and their presence is immediate and palpable 17
He then mentions a list of portents – meteors or comets that were seen from the west,
lightning and earthquakes – that is, significant prodigies suggesting a need for expia-
tion Moreover, the gods here had prophesied the events that were now apparent to
everyone (nunc fiunt canere di immortales uiderentur) 18
Cicero follows this by referring to portents that occurred two years earlier, in the
consulship of Cotta and Torquatus The required steps for achieving placatio deorum
following these had only ‘on that day’ been completed 19 These kinds of prodigies were
seen as physical alerts sent by the gods to the Romans: the damage to sacred objects
was a clear indication of future destruction However, it is important to keep in mind
that identifying a prodigy was a matter of interpretation The incidents here were ac-
cepted by the Senate as genuine signs sent by the gods, affecting the entire Roman
community, and led to interpretation by the haruspices as one of the channels of offi-
cial communication with the divine sphere 20 If the haruspices inferred a threat to the
city and to the Roman aristocracy from the destruction of these statues, the destruc-
tion of the bronze tablets of laws alongside the statue of Romulus would signify the

17 See also Rosc Am. 131.

18 See, e g , Gildenhard 2011, 289 on this Ciceronian innovation
19 Cat. 3 19–20 Specifically, it is the erection of the new statue of Jupiter that completes the action
20 In this case, the Senate’s appeal to the haruspices may have occurred because there were prodigies
involving lightning in the Capitol, and Cicero does not indicate if the haruspices’ interpretations
were based on the libri fulgurales According to Roman religious actions, there was an expected
temporal distance between divine signs and events, allowing the Romans the opportunity to re-es-
tablish proper relations with the gods, based on a highly elaborate and formalized set of ritual
practices See Timpanaro 1998, xl–xlii; Santangelo 2013, 23–32
50 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

destruction of Rome and its imperium 21 The haruspices were gathered ‘from all Etruria’
If the gods were appeased, they could change fate with their power (di immortales omni
ratione placati suo numine prope fata ipsa flexissent) The argument is that if fate can be
predicted, the gods, who rule and protect the city, can change the future 22
Members of the Roman elite had higher authority in divine communication, and
they were considered, therefore, to be the best informed on present and future issues
of public interest Magistrates sought a special relationship with the gods, especial-
ly in the prediction of future events, which assured them greater political authority
Prouidentia is, in fact, a key topic in the Catilinarians, making it clear that members of
the senatorial elite and acting magistrates, especially consuls, were the most appropri-
ate recipients of divine messages In case of disputes over the meaning of the messages,
the interpretation of the more prominent part by Cicero must have carried greater
credibility, given his special position as a consul and his authority in communicating
with the gods 23
Cicero’s vocabulary is especially relevant in this passage: the statues of the gods
are expelled (depulsae), while the statues of human beings of the past are overthrown
(deiectae) 24 Although deicio means ‘to overthrow something’ (in this case, the statues
of human beings), this verb is not used for the statues of the gods (simulacra deorum)
Instead, the verb is depello, ‘to expel’ (simulacra deorum depulsa sunt), which is usual-
ly used in reference to an animate being Therefore, there is not only a distinction in
the designation of statues – simulacra for the divine ones, statuae for those of human
beings – but the damages caused by the portents are referred to using distinct verbs,
indicating that the simulacra deorum are considered animate beings, whereas the stat-
ues of humans are not 25
After the actions recommended by the haruspices for placating the gods, of which
only the ten days of games are specified, the statue of Jupiter comes into play 26 The
dedication of a new simulacrum Iouis was recommended The statue’s angle of sight,

21 There is no reference to Remus in this speech These same portents are mentioned in Div 2 45, in
which just one statue of a human being has been overthrown, and Remus is mentioned with Romu-
lus in the sculptural group with the she-wolf The destruction of the city also appears in Div 47
22 See also Div 1 17–22, where Cicero reiterates that the haruspices assured the people and the Senate
that they would be able to see what was hidden if, by turning the statue to the sunrise, the sacred
image of Jupiter could see their meeting place Cf Gildenhard 2011, 292–98, on Urania’s verses See
also Moatti 1997 (= 2015, 39–44), who detects a kind of discourse that creates an ‘atmosphere of the
end of the world’
23 In the same way, Cicero makes us believe in what concerns Lentulus and his prophecy A key work
for the study of such divergent religious interpretations is De domo sua; see also Div 1 111, Brut 1 15 9,
Fam 2 8 1–2, 6 6 On the centrality of the theme of prouidentia in the Catilinarians, cf F Santange-
lo’s contribution in this volume
24 Dyck 2008, 194
25 On Latin vocabulary regarding divine and human statues, see Estienne 2000; Stewart 2004; Du-
bourdieu 2013
26 Cat. 3 20
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 51

now facing east (ad orientem), is given close attention The old statue ‘looked’ west,
that is toward the Janiculum (protecting Rome from its external enemies), but the new
one ‘looked’ at the Forum, thus suggesting that Rome needed to be protected from
internal enemies 27 The statue seems to be illuminating the secret plans of the conspira-
tors and therefore relates them to the predictions of the haruspices It should be noted
that this statue, the key point of the argument, is not the cult statue inside the temple’s
cella, but a larger one, outside and standing prominently in the area Capitolina, which
could easily be seen from the Forum 28 The orientation of the new statue was towards
the Curia Hostilia and the Forum, and Cicero then calls it a signum (illud signum quod
uidetis) If the statue could see the Forum and the Curia, the conspiracy would be ‘il-
luminated’ and revealed, and furthermore everyone could see the statue in the same
way that everyone saw their consul 29 By equating the sight of the statue with the sight
of the god, Cicero characterizes it as not just an image, but the visible manifestation of
the deity Thus, the audience can see Jupiter with their own eyes There is an animation
of the god in his statue, which ‘sees’, and this idea will be discussed by Cicero in later
texts 30
The ‘expulsion’ of the old statue of Jupiter in the area Capitolina is assumed to be
the most important of the prodigies that led the Senate to consult the haruspices in
the past, and to create the new statue, whose ‘vision’ is animated by the response of the
haruspices and by the speech of the consul The statue is responsible for the unveiling
of the conspiracy and is simultaneously the main evidence (signum) for the conspiracy
The statue is a signum in this passage; a term which in Cicero’s vocabulary is, of course,
not restricted to the statues of the gods 31
The vocabulary that Cicero moves on to here is related to the practices of Roman
divination In this passage, he mentions the statue of Jupiter three times The first time,
he calls it simulacrum and the next two times, signum Several nouns coexisted to des-
ignate a statue (effigies, imago, signum, simulacrum, statua) and all of them designate
objects made by human beings Broadly speaking, signum is the most frequent term
in Cicero’s vocabulary to designate the divine statue, especially in discursive contexts
in which the statue appears as a material object Simulacrum, like signum, is generally

27 Millar 1998 considers this statue an example of the elements that made Rome a ‘face-to-face soci-
ety’ See Vasaly 1993, 81–87 on Cicero’s rhetorical ability to create the perception of Jupiter over-
seeing and watching over the crowd gathered in the Forum The statue offered a metaphor for the
protective role of the gods vis-à-vis Rome; a role made visible by its monuments and the landscape
of the Forum
28 On Jupiter’s Capitol statues see, e g , Cic Div 1 20–21, 2 46–47; Plin HN 34 43; Cass Dio 37 9 2,
37 34 3–4 See Lapatin 2002, 123, 212
29 On the political meaning of this section, see Taylor 1949, 87
30 See e g Div 2 47
31 Cf e g Inv. 1 48
52 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

followed by the genitive of the deity, usually expressing the likeness of the image in
relation to the deity and the fact that the statue belongs to the god 32
When the dedication of a new simulacrum Iovis is recommended, the word simu-
lacrum points to its likeness to Jupiter and the fact that it belongs to him The second
mention, illud signum quod uidetis, points to the gaze of the human audience and in
the third mention, illud signum conlocandum consules illi locauerunt, Cicero refers to the
erection of the object-statue If the simulacra in 3 19 were ‘expelled’, suggesting the idea
of ‘animated statues’, Jupiter’s statue, as a signum, points to the materiality of the object
Thereafter, Rome is presented as a privileged place for the gods There is also a brief
reference to the classic theme of the insanity or madness (tam mente captus) caused by
the divine power in those who deny or confront them, and through this Cicero rein-
forces the enormity of the crimes planned by the conspirators, qualifying them as ne-
farious (nefariis ciuibus) 33 There is a reiteration of the haruspices’ response, and Cicero
declares the evident sign that Jupiter is present and intervenes on the day the statue is
erected; that is, the same day the conspirators were taken to the temple of Concord
Once again, Cicero cites the position of the statue, this time emphasizing that the hu-
man beings could see what happened secretly, stressing the role of Roman religious
institutions: the haruspices interpreted the signs because the Senate recognized them
as valid The Senate made its recommendations and the consul carried them out For
those who did not believe in the signs of the conspiracy, Rome’s future depended on
the consul’s special ability to see the future and on his initiative, but especially on di-
vine intervention 34
Cicero then invokes the threat of divine punishment that the criminals will receive,
introducing the use of Jupiter’s statue as the central element of the argument:
quibus ego si me restitisse dicam, nimium mihi sumam et non sim ferendus: ille, ille Iuppiter
restitit; ille Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille uos omnis salvos esse uoluit.
Cat. 3 22

… If I were to say that I foiled them, I should be taking too much credit for myself – an
intolerable presumption It was Jupiter, the mighty Jupiter, who foiled them; it was Jupiter
who secured the salvation of the Capitol, of these temples, of the whole city and of you
all 35

The repetition of the demonstrative pronoun ille increases the effect of the presence
of the god, progressively enumerating what (the statue of) Jupiter wanted to preserve,
i e , the Capitol, the temples, the whole city and the whole audience The immortal

32 Estienne 2000; Dubourdieu 2013

33 Cat. 3 21
34 See esp Morstein-Marx 2004, 252
35 Transl by C MacDonald, LCL
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 53

gods are called duces, maintaining the consul in action and allowing him to obtain evi-
dence of the conspiracy
The praetor Lentulus then stands out at the head of the ceterisque domesticis hostes
The word dementer qualifies them, for they gave compromising letters to the Allobro-
ges, ignotis et barbaris, only because the gods had driven them mad This is a tragic
theme that the audience could fully recognize 36 The letters delivered to the Allobroges,
something which is presented as sheer folly, indicate that the gods are depriving the
defendants of reason The decision of the Gauls, who could have benefited from the
success of the conspiracy, in favour of the Senate, reveals that the actions of Jupiter and
the immortal gods work for the benefit of the Romans and their consul This point is
directly related to Cat. 3 9, in which Cicero tells the audience that Lentulus had tried
to persuade the Allobroges that he would be the ‘third Cornelius’ (in a clear allusion
to L Cornelius Cinna and L Cornelius Sulla), ruling by divine design Lentulus had
also used the fact that this would have been foreseen ex fatis Sibyllinis haruspicumque
responsis, and that there would be signs that that was the fatal year (fatalem) for the res
publica, exactly 10 years after the acquittal of the Vestals from incestum and 20 years
after the fire on the Capitol, when Rome would be destroyed to support his claim
Cicero defines such signs as ‘false religion’ (3 11), so the praetor is, moreover, a religious
criminal who disturbs not only the human order, but also the divine one 37 One can
see here what Gildenhard has called a ‘theology of punishment’, and to some extent
Cicero endorses the traditional model of Roman religious action, as well as the model
of divine behaviour, because the success of a speech depends on its immersion in the
assumptions, beliefs and knowledge of the audience 38 When the gods were displeased
with the Romans, they sent them signs, allowing some time for the community to ad-
dress the problem and re-establish good relations with their deities, chiefly through
the Senate as the collective body responsible for the administration of divine affairs
However, the divine signs that Cicero mentions did not refer to mere divine dissatis-
faction with the conduct of the Roman people: they were warnings that pointed to the
danger of destruction of the city itself Strictly speaking, this implies a firmly shared
belief in the gods’ interest in the city and in divine intervention in human affairs
Governing Rome required taking care of relations with the gods and dealing with
Cicero’s speech obviously demands observation of the legitimizing effect of religion
on all decision-making and political actions It should be noted, however, that the idea
of a divinely governed world, with gods ruling even the human mind, is not confined
to Cicero’s forensic and political speeches Years later, for example, in De Legibus, he
recommends that the citizens should be persuaded that the gods rule the world and

36 See esp Gildenhard 2007

37 In the logic of argument, if the gods sent messages, and these messages concerned the present and
punctual context, the most appropriate person to receive it would be the consul, not the praetor
38 Gildenhard 2007, 2011
54 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

observe the acts and emotions of individuals – the gods see the minds and hearts of
human beings 39 The sovereignty of the gods is avowed as the foundation of both reli-
gion and political power, of course, but also they are the rulers of the city and arbiters
of its destiny In the Third Catilinarian, one can interpret Cicero’s references to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus as a rhetorical use of ‘popular’ beliefs in a contio However, that
would be a rather dysphoric way to deal with shared beliefs In the First Catilinarian,
speaking to the senators in the temple of Jupiter Stator, the cult statue is also central
to Cicero’s argument, but there he does not employ the designative vocabulary that
refers to a manufactured object, such as statua, signum or simulacrum The cult statue
is the god himself (ipsi Ioui Statori), and there is no distinction between the deity and
his image 40 It should also be noted that Cicero’s audience at that time was not the Ro-
man people gathered in the Forum but the senators, revealing shared meanings among
the different audiences of the speeches The strength of this argument depends on the
religious acquiescence of all those involved, in relation to beliefs and knowledge about
divine images
Cicero, by directing the eyes of his audience to the new statue and pointing to it as
ille Iuppiter, the very saviour of the city, conflated the god and the statue, emphasizing
the sanctity of the object over its materiality This is a powerful act of divine presentifi-
cation, in a speech replete with many pointers to the statue’s materiality and its charac-
ter as an artwork By mentioning the setting up of the statue, which recalls its character
as a material object, a product of human art and technique and a human gift to the god
himself, Cicero also stresses the emotional presentification of the god Cicero’s words
and the statue, visible before the eyes of his audience, act together to enhance the con-
nection between vision, belief and knowledge of the deity, where the idea of divinity
and the material aspects of religious experience coincide

3. Conclusion

Some years later, in De Oratore, Cicero declares that pictures are formed in our minds
of the things that have been conveyed to them by the senses, and the keenest of human
senses is the sense of sight He also states that ‘perceptions received by the ears or by
reflection can be best retained in the mind if they are also conveyed to our minds by
the mediation of the eyes’ 41 When referring to the statue of Jupiter in the Third Catili-
narian, Cicero applies the theory outlined in De Oratore, in order to blur the distinc-
tion between the statue and the deity

39 Leg. 2 15
40 Cat. 1 11
41 De Or. 2 357: facillime animo teneri posse ea, quae perciperentur auribus aut cogitatione, si etiam com-
mendatione oculorum animis traderentur
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 55

Modern scholarship has privileged Greek intellectual discussions about the god and
his image, separating out the statue and the deity, which is certainly much more suited
to modern rationalism than to ancient lived religious experiences In the same way,
modern scholarship still tends to focus on Cicero’s references to divine images only as
rhetorical devices, assuming that Cicero’s audience was looking not at Jupiter himself,
but at his statue, as two different ontological categories However, in the economy of
the Third Catilinarian, Jupiter Optimus Maximus is a living god, ille Iuppiter; it is Ju-
piter himself who stands in front of his temple in the area Capitolina Religious and
perceptual experiences are culturally related, and they are embedded in discourses that
often shape not only the way the divine is perceived and imagined by human beings,
but also how the divine is depicted in artworks 42
If it is correct to say that Roman cults do not seem to have been specifically directed
towards divine statues, nor to be dependent upon them, it is equally true that their
role is far from insignificant in religious terms, just as they were an integral part of the
agenda of political relations in the urbs It is true that the Catilinarians are political
speeches, addressing a specific political crisis, and in them we do not find – nor could
we find – a deep reflection on the relations between the deities and their statues The
themes of the gods pictured in the image of human beings and the nature of the divine
image, were to be debated by Cicero in his philosophical works This was a key point
of Roman theological reflection; one that is linked to the debate on the foundations of
pietas and of Roman religious institutions However, in the Third Catilinarian, Cicero
places before the eyes of his audience a statue that is the god himself, present in the city
and taking care of it Ille Iuppiter is the source and object of grateful pietas, by which
the divine protection of Rome is materialized; a powerful way of seeing and perceiving
Jupiter is conveyed by the authoritative figure of the Roman consul
Cicero was innovative in many respects, as he dealt both with shared assumptions
in Roman society and with original insights, but always with a watchful eye on the cur-
rent religious beliefs and practices of his time and place In the Third Catilinarian, the
statue is animated not only by the orator, but also by the ritual context of the placatio
deorum, through which Cicero corroborates his speech The deity certainly reinforces
the authority of the consul, but the most important point here is that the statue chang-
es from a simulacrum and a signum, that is, a human craftwork offered to the deity, to
become the god himself, praesens deus 43

42 See esp Rappaport 1999; Elsner 2007

43 On this point, see Belayche/Brulé 2010, 3–4: ‘L’adresse aux dieux constitute la formalization
rituelle d’un discours sur ces puissances en tant qu’entités supra-mondaines – une description
théologique minimale qui définit l’entité à laquelle est reconnue une légitimité dans un champ
déterminé – et de la façon dont les hommes se représentent leur présence et action dans le monde
Dans le contexte rituel, les épiclèses cisèlent les domaines et/ou modalités d’action des divinités
Simultanément, leur énoncé se développe dans une gestuelle qui double l’énonciation dans un
56 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

The divine statue is an effective tool in communicating with the gods, and it is
deeply anchored in the figurative patterns and religious beliefs of a particular time and
place Cicero’s speech, by giving an active role to Jupiter’s statue in Roman political
life, steered the audience’s perception and thus stimulated beliefs about divinity Ju-
piter, the mighty god of omens, auguries and divination, is not a distant god He is
visible and acts directly in the physical world, sending portentous signs, guiding the
consul and driving nefarious citizens mad Therefore, although this discourse is based
on shared assumptions about the gods and their modes of action, it also creates them

Bibliography

Ando 2008: C Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire, Berkeley 2008
Ando 2010: C Ando, ‘Praesentia numinis Part 1: The Visibility of Roman Gods’, Asdiwal 5 (2010),
45–73
Beard 2007: M Beard, The Roman Triumph, London 2007
Belayche/Brulé 2010: N Belayche / P Brulé, ‘Introduction: Nomination et représentation du di-
vin’, ARG 12 (2010), 3–5
Belayche/Pirenne-Delforge 2015: N Belayche / V Pirenne-Delforge (eds ), Fabriquer du divin
Constructions et ajustements de la représentation des dieux dans l’Antiquité, Liège 2015
Booth 2007: J Booth (ed ), Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and
Beyond, Swansea 2007
Butler 2002: S Butler, The Hand of Cicero, London 2002
Coarelli 1985: F Coarelli, Il Foro Romano II. Periodo repubblicano e augusteo, Rome 1985
Coarelli 1996: id , ‘Iuppiter Stator, aedes, fanum, templum’, in E M Steinby (ed ), Lexicon
Topographicum Urbis Romae, III, Rome 1996, 155–157
De Angeli 1996: S De Angeli, ‘Iuppiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus, aedes. Fasi tardo-repubbli-
cane e di età imperiale’, in E M Steinby (ed ), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, III, Rome
1996, 148–153
Dubourdieu 2013: A Dubourdieu, ‘Voir les dieux à Rome’, in P Borgeaud / D Fabiano (eds ),
Perception et construction du divin dans l’Antiquite, Geneva 2013, 19–34
Dyck 2008: A Dyck, Cicero. Catilinarians, Cambridge 2008
Elsner 2007: J Elsner, Roman Eyes. Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, Princeton 2007
Estienne 2000: S Estienne, Les Dieux dans la ville. Recherches sur les statues de dieux dans l’espace et
les rites publics de Rome, d’Auguste à Sévère Alexandre, Diss Paris 2000
Estienne et al 2014: S Estienne et al. (eds ), Figures de dieux: Construire le divine en images, Paris
2014
Feeney 1998: D Feeney, Literature and Religion in Rome. Cultures, Contexts and Beliefs, Cambridge
1998
Gildenhard 2007: I Gildenhard, ‘Greek Auxiliaries: Tragedy and Philosophy in Ciceronian Invec-
tive’, in Booth 2007, 149–182

autre code langagier, ou l’explicite dans une symbolique concrète (le type d’offrande, sa couleur,
son sexe, etc )’
 The God and the Consul in Cicero’s Third Catilinarian 57

Gildenhard 2011: id , Creative Eloquence. The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches, Oxford
2011
Kennedy 1972: G A Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in the Roman World, 300 BC–AD 300, Prince-
ton 1972
Lapatin 2002: K D S Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean, Oxford
2002
MacRae 2016: D MacRae, Legible Religion, Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture, Cambridge,
Mass 2016
Millar 1998: F Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic, Ann Arbor 1998
Moatti 1997: C Moatti, La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République,
Paris 1997
Moatti 2015: ead (transl J Lloyd), The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome, Cambridge
2015
Morstein-Marx 2004: R Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Re-
publican, Cambridge 2004
Mylonopoulos 2010: J Mylonopoulos (ed ), Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient
Greece and Rome, Leiden/Boston 2010
North 2014: J A North, “The Limits of the ‘Religious’ in the Late Roman Republic”, History of
Religions 53 (2014), 225–245
Orlin 1997: E Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic, Leiden-Boston 1997
Petridou 2015: G Petridou, Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture, Oxford 2015
Philipps 1986: J J Philipps, ‘Atticus and the Publications of Cicero’s Works’, CW 79 (1986), 227–
237
Platt 2011: V Platt, Facing the Gods Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature
and Religion, Cambridge 2011
Powell 2007: J G F Powell, ‘Invective and the Orator: Ciceronian Theory and Practice’, in Booth
2007, 1–23
Powell 2010: id , ‘Court Procedure and Rhetorical Strategy in Cicero’, in D H Berry / A Erskine
(eds ), Form and Function in Roman Oratory, Cambridge 2010, 21–36
Purcell 1995: N Purcell, ‘Forum Romanum’, in E M Steinby (ed ), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis
Romae, II, Rome 1995, 325–336
Rappaport 1999: R A Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge 1999
Rüpke 2012: J Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome Rationalization and Ritual Change, Philadelphia
2012
Santangelo 2013: F Santangelo, Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic, Cam-
bridge 2013
Seager 2007: R Seager, ‘Ciceronian Invectives: Themes and Variations’, in Booth 2007, 25–46
Sobocinski 2014: M G Sobocinski, ‘Visualizing Architecture Then and Now Mimesis and the
Capitoline Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus’, in R B Ulrich / C K Quenemoen (eds ), A
Companion to Roman Architecture, Malden/Oxford 2014, 446–462
Squire 2016: M Squire (ed ), Sight and the Ancient Senses, London, 2016
Stamper 2005: J W Stamper, The Architecture of Roman Temples. The Republic to the Middle Empire,
Cambridge 2005
Steiner 2001: D Steiner, Images in Mind Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and
Thought, Princeton 2001
Steel/van der Blom 2013: C Steel / H van der Blom (eds ), Community and Communication. Ora-
tory and Politics in Republican Rome, Oxford 2013
58 Claudia Beltrão da Rosa

Stewart 2004: P Stewart, Statues in Roman Society Representation and Response, Oxford 2004
Tagliamonte 1996: G Tagliamonte, ‘Iuppiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus, aedes, templum. Fino
all’a 83 a C ’, in E M Steinby (ed ), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, III, Rome 1996, 144–
148
Tan 2009: J Tan, ‘Contiones in the Age of Cicero’, CA 27 (2008), 163–201
Taylor 1949: L R Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar, London 1949
Tempest 2011: K Tempest, Cicero, London 2011
Timpanaro 1998: S Timpanaro, Cicerone. Della Divinazione, Milan 19984
Vasaly 1993: A Vasaly, Representations Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory, Berkeley/Los
Angeles/London 1993
Zetzel 2003: J E G Zetzel, ‘Plato with Pillows: Cicero on the Uses of Greek Culture’, in D Braund /
C Gill (eds ), Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman,
Exeter 2003, 19–38
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta
(Cicero, Verrines 2 4 72–82)*
Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

The identification of divine statues with the deities themselves and their understand-
ing as symbols or as artistic objects often coexist in the same human group The mo-
bility, exchanges and religious resignifications of divine statues in the ancient Medi-
terranean world are among some of the most pressing issues in the study of ancient
religions Moreover, the study of these statues allows us to think of them as evidence
for various modes of perception, as a form of religious thought and action, as well as a
means of analysing social practices grounded in the symbolic construction of reality
Divine images in general, as material artefacts, are made up by human beings and help
to give sense to human lives
Ancient manifestations of Artemis are well documented in the longue durée and over
a broad geographical area, which can be coherently analysed through Mediterranean
religious networks In Sicily, there are several reliable instances of the cult of Artemis
in various forms, in literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources Images of the god-
dess are often associated with pastoral and spring cults, in urban or natural contexts A
winged form of the goddess associated with Corinthian pictorial formulas was discov-
ered in Syracuse, which kept cultural and religious ties with its metropolis, Corinth,
and where the archaeological record of the worship of Artemis is more abundant Yet,
in different parts of the island, the goddess’ material presence is attested in more vari-
ous forms and with various meanings: the lady of the beasts, of navigators, shepherds,
boundaries and so on 1 It should be noted that this abundance of records is not re-
stricted to Greek cities, but is also present in indigenous and Punic cities, denoting
intense cultural and religious change The colonization and recolonization of Sicilian
sites, which disseminated the cult and presence of Artemis across the island, generated
different receptions and reconfigurations of the goddess

* Special thanks to Professor Claudia Beltrão for her comments and criticism, which enabled us to
refine our arguments on Roman religion and Ciceronian rhetoric
1 Fischer-Hansen 2009, 209–210
60 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

In Segesta, an Elymian city and the scene of Cicero’s narrative in De Signis, the ar-
chaeological record of the presence of Artemis is scarce; in fact, this work of Cicero is
the main source concerning a statue of Artemis in this city, whose shrines indicate the
Hellenization of figurative elements since the fifth century BCE 2 In his speech, Cicero
creates a dramatic image of the statue of the goddess to influence his Roman audience,
arousing their indignation by convincing them of Verres’ embezzlements during his Si-
cilian governorship Cicero presents the abduction of the divine statue to evoke a keen
sense of sadness in his Roman audience, reconstructing the religious experience of the
people of Segesta Inserted in a series of vignettes on the many artworks and religious
objects that had been stolen by Verres, Cicero tells the story of this particular statue,
based on testimonies and documents he collected at Segesta His narrative is designed
to promote an assessment among his audience In order to shed new light on this case,
we will read Cicero’s discussion of the Diana of Segesta under a psychoanalytical bias,
analysing some of the psychological mechanisms that support the identification of in-
dividuals with deities We will then deal with a section from the fourth part of the
second speech of the Orationes in Verrem, the De Signis, in which Cicero supplements
his invective against Verres’ thefts of the resources and productions – artworks and
valuable paraphernalia – of Sicilian cities with an account of appropriations or even
robberies of divine statues, in which he always refers to the statue of Artemis as Diana
In our reading, the way in which Cicero presents the process of identification of the
Segestans and promotes the identification of the Romans with the goddess makes the
relationship with Diana ontophanic, rather than epiphanic

1. A General Outline of the Speech

C Verres was governor of Sicily between 73 and 71 According to Cicero, he systemati-

cally expropriated and robbed cities and their inhabitants of their artworks and valua-
bles in a predatory fashion After his departure, representatives of Sicilian cities asked
Cicero to be their patron in seeking redress for their losses Cicero had been a quaestor
in Lilybaeum between 75 and 73, and had been able to create patronage ties on the is-
land Once appointed as the Sicilians’ advocate, he spent nearly four months gathering
evidence and witnesses to support his prosecution of Verres on behalf of the cities 3
The De Signis is the second of a series of speeches to a repetundae court, which dealt
with charges of embezzlement against magistrates; it was never delivered, because
Verres went into voluntary exile after the first speech The typical characteristics of

2 Fischer-Hansen 2009, 223–224; Michelini 2009

3 Cf Bornecque 1896, 8
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 61

this type of oration, which privilege political and legal issues over religious and artistic
ones, are maintained throughout 4
The statue of Diana in Segesta is the first of Cicero’s great examples of the robberies
of cult statues perpetrated by Verres in Sicily, but Cicero’s narrative inserts the statue
into a larger account of transfers and resignifications of these religious artworks in the
Mediterranean, simultaneously stressing their religious, artistic, moral, and political
value 5 One can perceive the materialization, in an object, of several meanings attribut-
ed to a divine statue in antiquity In the report, the most significant sections are 72–78;
we will concentrate especially on § 77 The gods exist due to human needs and act
in the world through human beliefs and practices inscribed in religious, psychologi-
cal, political, and social spheres In Cicero’s narrative, our attention turns, on the one
hand, to the effect of Artemis’ luciferous statue in Segesta on its viewers, which causes
the Segestan people to pompously celebrate its return and to honour their ‘liberator’,
P Cornelius Scipio; this in turn ignites Verres’ greed and feeds his desire to possess it,
which causes a commotion among the people who refuse to let him move it Finally,
there is a touching mourning procession of the people in its forced departure On the
other hand, we might ask why Cicero’s speech is capable of producing in the Imaginary
of his Roman audience, at a distance and before a statue they cannot see, a compassion
which is similar to that felt by the Segestans
The guiding lines of the narrative are the movements of the statue Cicero quotes
three occurrences The first takes place in 405–404, when the Carthaginians despoiled
the city and transferred the statue to Carthage In the second, the statue returns to
Segesta under Scipio (after he had plundered Carthage), and the third and worst is
the theft of Verres The movements of divine statues in cases of deportation, transfer
or restitution are well attested in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world, from
sources dealing with Troy and Greece, or the conquests of Alexander, the Carthagin-
ians, and the Romans 6 The statue is considered to have been inherited from the an-
cestors, an element of religious customs and a collective good which underlines the
cohesion and autonomy of the group to which it belongs The movement of Diana’s
statue reveals a triangular trajectory between Segesta, Carthage and Rome, with Cice-
ro’s narrative moving between the fifth and first centuries BCE
Segesta was a city founded by the Elymians, one of the early Sicilian peoples It
was an ally of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and fell under Carthaginian rule after
409 Segesta sided with Pyrrhus against Rome, but established an alliance with Rome

4 On the general lines of Verres’ case, see Gruen 1974, 29–42; Badian 2012
5 For a detailed historical and archaeological commentary on Diana of Segesta, see Lazzeretti 2016,
214–245
6 According to Pausanias, the theft of divine statues was ‘established in ancient times’ (8 46 2), and
was ‘an ancient and current practice between Greeks and barbarians’ (8 46 4), creating several epi-
sodes of movement and resignification of the statues
62 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

by the First Punic War Cicero’s account begins with the theme of the proximity and
alliance between Rome and Segesta, as a city without a covenant of submission, which
had immunity and freedom (ciuitas sine foedere immunis ac libera) This affinity was
based on their shared origin as having been founded, according to tradition, by Aeneas
Cicero then explores a kinship between Segesta and Rome in the figure of Aeneas, as
their common ancestor 7
The statue of Diana (Dianae simulacrum) was the first artwork the Segestans proud-
ly displayed in 75 BCE before the young quaestor Cicero, who associates it with summa
atque antiquissima religio He also notes the great technical expertise and perfection of
the work (tum singulari opere artificioque perfectum) However, Cicero gives no infor-
mation on the exact location of the statue (whether it was in the agora or in a temple),
nor on its sculptor Similarly, the speech does not allow us to identify with precision to
which cultic devices the statue was connected 8
The narrative then follows the transfer of the statue to Carthage, when Segesta
fought against the Carthaginians on its own initiative The precise date is unknown,
but it is likely that the move occurred before the First Punic War 9 The city was then
conquered, stripped of all valuable objects and destroyed (oppidum … ui captum atque
deletum est) In Carthage, however, the statue continued to be worshipped, something
justified by its beauty which, even for enemies, made it worthy of a religious cult (re-
ligionem quidem pristinam conseruabat. nam propter eximiam pulchritudinem etiam hos-
tibus digna quam sanctissime colerent uidebantur) 10 In fact, Cicero does not regard the
statue at Carthage as a piece of war booty, but as an ornamentum 11 This observation re-
inforces the venerable character of the statue, which is respected by all, even by Rome’s
worst enemies, the Carthaginians Thus, Cicero insists on Carthage’s devotion to the
statue and on the nobility of Roman commanders, especially Scipio, in contrast with
Verres who, besides being impious in relation to Rome’s allies, is also a stain on the
memory of Scipio and on Rome itself
Next, the narrative jumps to the end of the Second Punic War, with the victory of
the Romans over the Carthaginians and the return of artefacts and sacred objects to Si-
cilian cities by Scipio At this point, Cicero mixes an account of Greek and non-Greek
cities, ciuitates decumanae, united for the benefit of Rome against Carthage The figure
of Scipio represents the new Roman order – and the virtuous Roman commander con-
trasts with the impious figure of Verres Cicero then contrasts the great commanders
that conquered and plundered other cities for the greatness of Rome with the cupidity

7 Lazzeretti 2016, 214–218 On Sicily in the time of the Verrines and questions about the plundering
of artistic and religious works, see Miles 2008, esp 105–207
8 Bonnet/Grand-Clément 2013, 45
9 Perhaps the statue was taken to Carthage in retaliation because Segesta had allied itself with Pyrr-
hus against Carthage, but Cicero’s information is not detailed
10 Verr 2 4 72
11 Estienne 2010
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 63

of Verres, who wanted the statue for himself, that is, not in the name of Rome The
orator emphasizes the affective dimension that characterized the return of the statue to
Segesta, but an inscription on its base confers it a new meaning The inscription com-
memorating its return is also a symbol of Roman victory and the final entry of Segesta
into the Roman imperial orbit The climax of the section on Diana is as follows:
uidete quanta religio fuerit apud Segestanos. repertum esse, iudices, scitote neminem, neque
liberum neque seruum, neque ciuem neque peregrinum, qui illud signum auderet attingere; bar-
baros quosdam Lilybaeo scitote adductos esse operarios; ii denique illud ignari totius negoti
ac religionis mercede accepta sustulerunt. quod cum ex oppido exportabatur, quem conuentum
mulierum factum esse arbitramini, quem fletum maiorum natu? quorum non nulli etiam illum
diem memoria tenebant cum illa eadem Diana Segestam Carthagine reuecta uictoriam populi
Romani reditu suo nuntiasset. quam dissimilis hic dies illi tempori uidebatur! tum imperator
populi Romani, uir clarissimus, deos patrios reportabat Segestanis ex urbe hostium recuperatos:
nunc ex urbe sociorum praetor eiusdem populi turpissimus atque impurissimus eosdem illos
deos nefario scelere auferebat. quid hoc tota Sicilia est clarius, quam omnis Segestae matronas et
uirgines convenisse cum Diana exportaretur ex oppido, unxisse unguentis, complesse coronis et
floribus, ture, odoribus incensis usque ad agri finis prosecutas esse?
Verr. 2 4 77

Mark now the strength of religious feeling (religio) this evoked at Segesta Judges, let me
assure you that not one person could be found, neither free man nor slave, neither citizen
nor immigrant, who would venture to lay hands upon that statue (illud signum); some
foreign labourers were got in from Lilybaeum, who, knowing nothing of the affair or its re-
ligious bearings, for a certain sum of money ultimately removed it As it was being carried
out of the town, you can imagine the crowd of women that gathered, and the tears of the
older people, some of whom could still remember the great day when this same Diana (illa
eadem Diana) had been brought back from Carthage to Segesta, carrying with it the news
of the Roman victory What a difference they would feel between now and then! Then, the
illustrious commander of the Roman armies was bringing the gods of Segesta, recovered
from an enemy city, back to their own home: now, an evil and filthy Roman governor was
committing the awful sin of carrying off that same goddess from an allied and friendly city
No story is better known throughout Sicily than that of how, when Diana was being borne
out of the town, all the matrons and maidens of Segesta flocked to the spot, anointed her
with perfumes, covered her with garlands and flowers, and burning incense and spices
escorted her to the frontier of their land 12

Verres and his henchmen are impious, but the Segestans, through their devotion, ap-
proach Roman pietas Diana (illa eadem Diana) mobilizes everyone The beauty of the

12 Translation by L H G Greenwood, LCL, slightly modified

64 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

statue prompts veneration and fervour The quality of materials, its shiny golden brass,
its mise en scène, its base and its position are all sensory elements, catalytic devices that
produce strong emotions Verres’ own cupidity is also a kind of sensitivity and emo-
tional response 13 He is even more impious than the ‘barbarians’ of Lilybaeum, for they
were linked to Carthage, and the Carthaginians at least recognized the sacredness of
the signum Dianae which Verres does not
Contrasting with the joy and happiness at the return of Diana’s statue and her cult
under Scipio, her departure under Verres causes pain and despair, especially among
women and the elderly Moreover, Cicero argues that, at the time of the departure of
the goddess’ statue, a religious procession highlighted the role of women and girls
They are the vehicle of the succession and ensure the permanence of tradition It is a
procession that centres around the presence of the venerable divine statue, with oint-
ments, flowers and all the usual religious paraphernalia for Cicero’s audience, in which
the worshippers are close and benefit from the presence of the deity However, this is
not a joyful religious celebration for the people, but their farewell to their goddess 14
The sense of loss and mourning is presented through the cult gestures of caring for
the statue, carrying it in procession to the limits of the territory, and including some
elements that resemble funeral rites – such as the wreaths – that characterize these
ritual actions It should be noted that, at this point in his speech, Cicero refers to the
statue as the goddess herself 15 The cry of the elders for Diana’s departure is, in the voice
of the city, mourning for the dissipation of tradition

2. Creating Ontophany With Diana:

A Psychoanalytical Reading of Cicero’s Narrative

For the Segestans the statue was the presentification of the goddess, with which they
identified themselves by sight Their sight, nevertheless, was shaped by their discursive
cultural environment The beholder of the goddess sees and is seen by the deity that
becomes anthropomorphized before them, with characteristics and qualities The per-
ceived image of the deity offers specular resemblance, since she is an individualized
imaginary form and the ideal mode of being This image authorizes the existence of the
worshipper, since it is from the recognition of the deity that the individual traces the
contours, which, although not completely stable, have an axis of ontological reference
in the goddess 16

13 Lazzeretti 2016, 218

14 See e g Broder 2008
15 On this point, see Beltrão’s chapter in this volume
16 Ontological is understood here as a way of thinking and signifying the primary state of something
that becomes truth for the subject The subject becomes aware and understands himself as a sin-
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 65

Cicero recreates for his Roman audience the emotional context of Segesta, bringing
it to the present and making sense of it 17 Alluding to Verres, he suggests a desecra-
tion beyond the materiality of the robbery: in spite of the magnitude of the size of the
statue, he personifies Diana as young and youthful (uerum tamen inerat in illa magni-
tudine aetas atque habitus uirginalis), and insinuates the suggestion that Diana has been
raped 18 It was not difficult for his audience to infer Verres’ lust, since Cicero had im-
pressed her image onto the minds of the audience by referring to the infamous ban-
quets and debauchery that were a regular part of Verres’ government, since Cicero uses
the image of Diana as the embodiment of Africanus’ piety (Dianae simulacrum uirginis,
in ea domo conlocabit, in qua semper meretricum lenonumque flagitia uersantur?) 19 It may
also be inferred that for both those Segestans who fought for the statue’s permanence
and for Cicero’s audience, the abduction of the goddess would be an extension of an
unbridled exercise of power Cicero stresses Verres’ persistence in arresting the statue
and, in addition to material and symbolic possessions external to the subjects, Verres
attacks the physical safety and the personal, family and civic dignity of the Segestans,
represented by a respect for moral codes
These codes, internalized and symbolically represented through the rituals, myths,
discourses and images through which human groups are linguistically permeated, be-
come imaginary experiences, that is, intuitions of the world and life that are part of
the identity of the individuals in a culture Further, if these individuals exist as such
because they have been linguistically instituted, the language – whether visual or ver-
bal – permeates and is permeated by the symbolic order which also shapes the pulsion-
al and affective life of individuals The symbolic order, however evanescent it may be,
is the field of cultural and spatial cognitive familiarity, the stable cosmos and the locus
for understanding the world, which differentiates it from the chaos Thus, the perspec-
tive of its questioning is a Leitmotiv of anguish, that is, a fissure in the conception of
the constructed common reality, which becomes unattainable 20 The protective power
symbolized by the goddess’ statue loses the soundness that her magnificent size prom-
ised Moreover, since this could happen to Diana, to the Romans, the power of all the

gularity in a given situation or time, creating an ontological locus that places him in the world and
becoming an entity that is or becomes identical to himself Identification is not a logical operation,
but an intuitive one, operated by the feelings, which commands the semantic contents of worldly
experience that have become, so to speak, subconscious
17 On this point, see Croce 1938, 5: “Il bisogno pratico, che è nel fondo di ogni giudizio storico, con-
ferisce a ogni storia il carattere di ‘storia contemporanea’, perché, per remoti o remotissimi che
sembrino cronologicamente i fatti che vi entrano, essa è, in realtà, storia sempre riferita al bisogno
e alla situazione presente, nella quale quei fatti propagano le loro vibrazioni”
18 Verr 2 4 74
19 Verr. 2 4 83 See more instances of such accusations in the De Frumento: Verr 2 3 23, 65, 158, 160
20 Freud 1967, 132, 134; Lacan 1954, 23, 27, 29, 33
66 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

gods risks being undermined, either in Segesta or in Rome, and the stable order of the
world threatens to dissipate
In psychoanalytical terms, the individual identifies him/herself in reverse with
forms and traits that he/she sees and interprets in others, while also internalizing
the gaze of others, under the filter of his/her own interpretation These unconscious
‘choices’ are motivated by hidden affections in the search for an illusory completeness
The identities are therefore configured in a fragmentary and transitory way, accord-
ing to ideal assumptions which appear in the world of life as familiar or suitable to be
adopted in a reconfiguration of the self at a given time, even if unconsciously to the
individual Thus, the Segestans’ identification with Diana would take place through
their sight, and we suggest this happens because the goddess would have the features
that symbolically constitute the desirable reference model for each of them 21 In this
sense, Diana is a sign that represents the moral conscience, and, through public daily
information and ritual practice, its meaning becomes the ideal perspective of all citi-
zens Since the individual fulfilment of the ‘ideal of the self ’ is impossible, as well as
the satisfaction of an isolated personality, this ideal is resigned, forgotten by conscious-
ness, and externally situated by the individual who projects it onto someone else In
doing so, the individual attributes to the other the eidetic features that make possible
the illusory realization of himself by means of an identification with this other 22
If Diana is an epic figure who removes with her torch the uncertainties that the dark-
ness causes, the subject, by identifying himself with the goddess and assimilating her
image, perceives himself as having the same capacity, or the same potential of the deity,
in turn draws to himself the satisfying contours of his own image In order to maintain
his self-esteem and to protect his state of well-being, each subject has obliterated in
his/her consciousness the notion that the ideal features of the statue are projections of
an Imaginary, constructed by learning symbolic rules through words and images and
their associated social meanings Thus, the relation of the subjects with the goddess,
who ceased to be an image or statue, dissolves and turns into an Identification There
is no longer the contraposition of Otherness: each individual being and the collective
spirit become, in unison, the very being of Diana, which can be seen as an ontophany
We do not understand ontophany according to the meaning coined by M Eliade, that
is, as the full might of the divine being that intentionally invades the subject, but as an
unconscious internalized identification 23 By ‘ontophany’ we define the personification
of the deity by the individual who, in an ontological rupture, adopts the identity of the
goddess as their own, in a mystical experience preceded by a process of depersonaliza-
tion in the face of a real or even an unreal threat and of an imminent feeling of dissipa-

21 Lacan 1961, 46–48, 148, 169, 180

22 Freud 1967, 125–126, 128, 145
23 Eliade 1984, 112, 153
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 67

tion or annihilation Thus ontophany, as we understand it, is not a recurring disorder;

it is an emotional urgency, a cathartic moment of psychological redemption
If the identification with Diana of Segesta is operated in the psyche of the Segestans,
in the same way, it can be reproduced in the Romans’ psyche In this sense, Cicero’s
speech revives these ideal traits and, discussing the qualities and events related to an
object, reverberates them in the core of each individual in his audience The imagi-
nation of the Romans transfers to the Segestans their own wishes by what is exposed
through Cicero’s words In this way, they approach each other by mitigating the loneli-
ness found in each human being If the suffering of the Segestans can promote a feeling
of compassion in each Roman, then, strengthened by shared anxieties, a bond among
the audience is promoted, in turn becoming a form of brotherhood
Thus, this identification does not occur simply because of the action of the verbal
discourse, as one might conclude from an exclusively rhetorical analysis of the Cicero-
nian visual metaphors If this were the case, one could not produce such identification
in a foreigner, who does not share the same figurative context of the situation, which
is always specific to an imaginary referent, and who does not possess the same mne-
monic substratum produced by the experiences lived by Segestans and (re)created
by Cicero At stake are the common needs of daily life, sustained by the spiritual life
and the remittances of each member of the audience to the symbols that refer to their
unconscious desires of accommodation in a harmonious environment, as well as the
necessary safety for obtaining the means for survival and the fulfilment of desires 24
We can also point out that Cicero’s speech, by enumerating a great number of per-
versities committed by Verres, exerts on the audience a fascination with what the mor-
al conscience did not allow to emerge: it keeps in check what is considered repulsive,
but exists in those whose conscience does not repress it 25 The perception that Verres
gave into ignominious actions, which the listeners have had the energy to deny for
the benefit of the common life, leads the Romans, through the associative bond, to
a positive perception of themselves and to a greater identification with the attitudes
presented as dignified That is to say, Cicero persuades them to fight for the restoration
and maintenance of the social order that he articulates Acknowledging Verres’ actions
as evil would befit every Roman citizen As Cicero states in the De Oratore,
sed haec ars tota dicendi, siue artis imago quaedam et similitudo est, habet hanc uim, non ut
totum aliquid, cuius in ingeniis nostris pars nulla sit, pariat et procreet, uerum ut ea, quae sunt
orta iam in nobis et procreata, educet atque confirmet.
De Oratore 2 356

24 Freud 1969, 443–446; Freud 1967, 134

25 Freud 1949, 279–280
68 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

But it is true of the whole art of speaking (or perhaps it is only a shadow and semblance of
an art), that its function is not to produce or create from scratch what is nowhere present
in our own natural abilities, but to rear and develop what has already been born and cre-
ated within us 26

Hence, the oratorical mastery prescribed in the De Oratore, seeking persuasion through
discourse, would be ineffective if there were no aesthetic action to affect the scope of
intuition This comprised lived experiences which were decoded according to the sym-
bolic order, with internalized words and images 27 Therefore, it was not just because
of the good use of oratorical tools, with which Cicero was able to persuade his audi-
ence, but because he stimulates suspension by making clear the ambiguity of values
and their fragility The orator, like the artist, in successively representing pictures of the
disorder that had been caused by Verres in Sicily, announces to his Roman audience
the possible dissolution of the Roman order itself – its laws, its alliances, its empire,
that is, of the ordered world just as had transpired in Segesta
Cicero describes Diana’s statue above her pedestal as tall and imposing As a sculp-
ture, its sharp verticality increases the distance between it and the viewer, pointing to
the idealized otherness of the goddess, to her transcendental values and to the con-
solidation of her protective power for the community, and its sustenance and perma-
nence This distance between the statue and its beholder favours human imagination
and incites worship which, in turn, is an exercise of approximation and identification
between the human and the divine The notion that the statue is a manufactured object
is then obliterated and the emotional appeal is increased The desire for attachment
to the deity, an ideal figure of autonomy, and the subsequent access to her powers,
lead to an affective transference that derives from identification, which has become
not contingent, but necessary Cicero also describes the statue by limiting himself to
its frontality, which blurs its materiality The recognition of volumetric data would give
the statue a corporeity, which would denounce, by the texture of the material and by
the characteristic traces of the manufacture, its character of craftwork, revealing it as
a material object Presented as a figure in an upward frontal plane, the viewer’s or lis-
tener’s glance slides upward and toward an imaginary horizon, much higher than his
present state itself
With this dearth of detail in the statue’s description, Cicero makes room for the
specific imagination of his Roman audience, which tend to refer to the assumptions of
the Roman symbolic universe The imagination seeks to fill in the gaps left by missing
elements in order to complete the succinctly presented form, turning to the memory
of common sense formed by other images and their successive representations The

26 Translation by J M May and J Wisse

27 See the commentary ad loc. in Leeman/Pinkster/Wisse 1996, 72–73 On the topic of ‘vivid descrip-
tion’, see Innocenti 1994
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 69

more particular a mental image, the greater the tension between the figure and the
word that names it, which in turn is particular to whom enunciates it The subject of
perception tends to mitigate this tension with an adherence to the Symbolic The pur-
suit of relating pathos to the Symbolic is also a movement in the affective adjustment
to the group and to its institutionalized meanings This tension produces a Spaltung
corresponding to a division in consciousness, which jumps from uneasiness of the par-
ticularity to the ordinary and, in the gap caused by the leap, the path connecting the
sign to the real object, which precedes the linguistic process of symbolization, is erased
from memory 28 The whole emotional charge, thus, spreads in the sense of community,
intensifying group cohesion
The oscillation between prospects of death and life is typically and immediately
resolved by an impulse to escape from finitude by identification The identification
determines a supposed continuity of the self in the other and through the other, at-
tenuating the fear of annihilation In the same way, the means by which to make this ex-
pectation feasible often arises as a promise of the realization of the wishes and desires
by the other ‘self ’, represented by the iconic image of the deity, which appears as the
indestructible ‘other’ With regard to the structuring of subjects, this is a process that
produces incongruity as well as the conditions for an inevitable cleavage of conscious-
ness Eventually, this also leads to a division of the self and to the ceaseless attempt at
reunifying it in search of a synthesis This synthesis, as a logical result of the dialectical
equation, can only be an ideality which necessarily suppresses part of the experience
Overcoming the emotional tension in carrying out their common rites, individuals, by
identifying, assimilating and appropriating the symbolic presuppositions of the deity,
reaffirm the social order and its prescribed behaviour, in full accordance with the de-
signs of ethos

3. Conclusions

In the universe of Cicero’s narrative about the Segestans, as if the memory of their
misery by defeat were not enough, this memory is also associated with the dissolution
or weakening of their bond with their cult statue, their loss of autonomy and social
cohesion, and the conflict and anxiety that emerges in the face of the uncertainty of
a tyrannical government: all of these elements generate insecurity regarding the per-
spective of the future life and, therefore, a susceptibility to accept the other’s meanings
Through the statue, a brief history of independence, subjection and political changes
in the city, is presented The statue is also a symbol and a catalyst for historical change
Transported from one place to another, it becomes a further symbol of freedom and

28 Freud 1955, 57–62; D’Or 1985, 132

70 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

the loss of individual and group autonomy, as well as a driver of contacts and connec-
tions in the wider Mediterranean context 29 Even the fact that Cicero always refers to
the statue of Artemis by a Latin name is significant 30 Cicero ‘Romanizes’ the statue,
the goddess, and the religious actions and feelings of the Segestans: a strategy that is
surely aimed at mobilising his audience, but also at evoking religious adhesion based
on shared feelings
The Segestans could live without their statue To the Romans, this case might seem
irrelevant, but Cicero insists on its symbolic potential, reiterating its greatness by as-
sociating it with the reputation of P Cornelius Scipio If both the Roman model of
virtue and a victorious Carthage revered the statue, their attitudes acquire a value of
truth Therefore, someone like Verres, who appropriates a holy goddess as if she were a
venal object is no doubt a common enemy As Roman religious logic considered sacer
something that had been consecrated by the Romans on Roman soil,31 the statue of Ar-
temis in Segesta could not be deemed sacred to the Romans, but Cicero, by associating
Segesta and Rome by means of their common origins through Aeneas, turns Artemis
into Diana, a goddess very close to the Romans, and makes her as sacred as if she were
in the Roman Forum
The presentification of the goddess – which would be an epiphanic manifestation
in daily rituals, in which the agents keep the relationship of otherness with the deity
through sight – in the Segestan mourning procession reaches the emotional intensity
of a pathetic trance and becomes an ontophany, the completeness of the being by the
sacralization of the symbolic and the impetus for group communion Each and every
one of them concerns that Diana whom Verres seeks to capture and, with her, their
own perspective of tradition and succession, which is associated in the amalgam of
internalized values and feelings that constitute the identities on the path to dissolution
Each and every individual protects himself by self-immersion in the deity Thus, Cicero
stimulates in his Roman audience the feeling of uncertainty regarding the maintenance
of orderly life in the city, in the face of Verres’ subversion of an instituted ethos Cicero
points to the fragility of social cohesion, derived from a tyrannical government that
disrespects the Roman rules of orderly cooperation with provincials and allies In do-
ing so, the social body, composed of each citizen, immerses itself in the identification
with a governing figure of transcendental character, since it cannot possibly support a
political leader such as Verres The mental image of the statue stimulates identification
in this imaginary instance of power In this sense, Diana is the sign of a safe otherness

29 Van Haeperen 2016

30 Vasaly 1993, 104–110, 117–120
31 L’Hommé 2008
 The Ontophanies of Diana in Segesta 71

Bibliography

Badian 2012: E Badian, ‘Verres, Gaius’, in S Hornblower / A Spawforth / E Eidinow (eds ), The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford 20124, 1542
Bonnet/Grand-Clément 2013: C Bonnet / A Grand-Clément, ‘Quand les statues divines se
meuvent et (s’)émeuvent, entre Grecs et Barbares’, in P Borgeaud / D Fabiano (eds ), Percep-
tion et construction du divin dans l’Antiquité, Geneva 2013, 35–59
Bornecque 1896: H Bornecque, M. Tullii Ciceronis. De Signis, Paris 1896
Broder 2008: P -A Broder, ‘La manipulation des images dans les processions en Grèce ancienne’,
in S Estienne / D Jaillard / N Lubtchansky (eds ), Image et religion dans l’Antiquité gréco-ro-
maine, Naples 2008, 121–135
Croce 1939: B Croce, La storia come pensiero e come azione, Bari 1939
D’Or 1985: J D’Or, Introduction à la lecture de Lacan. L’Inconscient structuré comme un langage, Paris
1985
Eliade 1984: M Eliade, The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago/London 1984
Estienne 2010: S Estienne, ‘Simulacra deorum versus ornamenta aedium The Status of Divine
Images in the Temples of Rome’, in J Mylonopoulos (ed ), Divine Images and Human Imagina-
tions in Ancient Greek and Rome, Leiden/Boston 2010, 257–271
Fischer-Hansen 2009: T Fischer-Hansen, ‘Artemis in Sicily and South Italy A Picture of Diversity’,
in T Fischer-Hansen / B Poulsen (eds ), From Artemis to Diana. The Goddess of Man and Beast,
Copenhagen 2009, 207–260
Freud 1949: S Freud, ‘Das Unbewusste – Topik und Dynamik der Verdrängung (1915)’, in Werke
aus den Jahren 1913–1917. Gesammelte Werke 10, London 1949, 279–285
Freud 1955: id , ‘Die Ichspaltung im Abwehrvorgang (1940 [1938])’, in S Freud, Schriften aus dem
Nachlass, Gesammelte Werke 17, London 1955, 57–62
Freud 1967: id , ‘Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921)’, in S Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips,
Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Das Ich und das Es Gesammelte Werke 13, London 1967,
73–233
Freud 1969: id , ‘XXVI Vorlesung Die Libidotheorie und der Narzissmus (1916–17) [1969]’, in id ,
Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, Gesammelte Werke 11, Frankfurt 1969, 427–446
Grandazzi 2010: A Grandazzi, ‘Lavinium, Alba Longa, Roma: à quoi sert un paysage religieux?’,
RHR 4 (2010), 573–590
Gruen 1974: E S Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, Berkeley 1974
Innocenti 1994: B Innocenti, ‘Towards a Theory of Vivid Description as Practiced in Cicero’s
Verrine Orations’, Rhetorica 12 (1994), 355–381
Lacan 1954: J Lacan, ‘Leçon 11 (24 mars 1954) Écrits techniques – Deux narcissismes’ 53–54 AFI,
in J Lacan, Séminaire, 1, 1953–1954, Association freudienne internationale, 207–226
Lacan 1961: id , ‘Leçon 2 (22 novembre 1961) L’Identification’ 91–62 AFI, in J Lacan, Séminaire 9,
1961–1962, Association freudienne internationale, 23–33
Lazzaretti 2016: A Lazzaretti, M. Tullii Ciceronis, In C. Verrem actionis secundae Liber quartus (De
Signis). Commento storico e archeologico, Pisa 2016
Leeman/Pinkster/Wisse 1996: A D Leeman / H Pinkster / J Wisse, De oratore Libri III. 4. Band:
Buch II, 291–367; Buch III, 1–95, Heidelberg 1996
L’Hommé 2008: M -K L’Hommé, ‘Vèrres l’impie: objets sacrés et profanes dans le De signis’, Vita
Latina 179 (2008), 58–66
May-Wisse 2001: J M May / J Wisse, Cicero. On the Ideal Orator, Oxford/New York 2001
72 Patricia Horvat / Alexandre Carneiro C Lima

Michelini 2009: C Michelini, ‘Storia di statue di Sicilia: tra realtà e immagine’, in C Ampolo (ed ),
Immagine e immagini della Sicilia e di altre isole del Mediterraneo antico, Pisa 2009, 231–257
Miles 2008: M M Miles, Art as Plunder. The Ancient Origins of a Debate about Cultural Property,
Cambridge 2008
Van Haeperen 2016: F Van Haeperen, ‘Les dieux publiques outragés par Verrès’, in C Bonnet /
V Pirenne / Delforge / G Pironti (eds ), Dieux des Grecs, Dieux des Romains Panthéons en dia-
logue à travers l’histoire et l’historiographie, Brussels/Rome 2016, 199–210
Vasaly 1993: A Vasaly, Representations. Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory, Berkeley 1993
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso
Some Reflections on Roman Identity*
María Emilia Cairo

1. Introduction

In 56 BCE, a series of prodigies takes place in the vicinity of Rome Frightened by this
event, the Senate consults the haruspices with the purpose of establishing its mean-
ing 1 The diviners deliver a response (responsum) in which they single out the human
actions that caused the anger of the gods and give four warnings about the near future
Publius Clodius takes advantage of this occasion and, during a public gathering (a con-
tio), he states that the divine message refers to Cicero who, recently returned from
exile, had polluted a sacred place by rebuilding his house on the site where a temple to
Libertas formerly stood 2
The speech De haruspicum responso is Cicero’s answer to the views put forward by
Clodius The orator first discredits the account of his opponent, then presents his own
reading of the response, in which Clodius is blamed for the wrath of the gods and the

* I would like to express my gratitude to Claudia Beltrão da Rosa and Federico Santangelo for their
kind invitation to participate in the ‘Cicero and Roman Religion’ colloquium They were excellent
hosts in Rio de Janeiro and the colloquium was a highly stimulating opportunity to discuss our
ideas The questions and suggestions made by them, as well as by Valentina Arena and Greg Woolf,
have been extremely helpful in developing my research and rethinking some of the ideas in this
paper I also wish to thank Yésica Terceros Vargas for her revision of the English translation of this
paper and Federico Santangelo for his helpful comments on the final version
1 For a description of the haruspices, their methods of divination (the Etrusca disciplina) and the
function of their priesthood, in both private and public contexts, see MacBain 1982; Beard/North/
Price 1998, 19–20; Beltrão da Rosa 2003; Jannot 2005; Orlin 2010, 86–110; Corbeill 2012; Santangelo
2013, 84–114
2 For the historical context of the speech, see Wuilleumier/Tupet 1966, 7–16; Lenaghan 1969, 11–21;
Baños 1994, 203–209; Leach 2001, 341–342; Beltrão da Rosa 2003, 25–26; Beard 2012, 20–27; San-
tangelo 2013, 102–103 Corbeill 2018 attempts a reconstruction of Clodius’ speech at the contio from
the elements provided by Cicero I thank Professor Corbeill for sending me this contribution
74 María Emilia Cairo

author of the discord among the optimates that the haruspices have announced 3 In
essence, Cicero’s argument is an invective against Clodius, such that the description
of his vices and faults helps to present him as the reason why Rome is threatened with
such grave dangers
The aim of this paper is to examine how Cicero, while attacking his opponent, con-
figures a Roman identity framed mainly around religious aspects With this purpose in
mind, we will first analyse the responsum given by the haruspices, as well as the com-
peting interpretations put forward by Clodius and Cicero Secondly, the notion of ciues
deteriores, which the Etruscan priests mention in their response, will be considered,
since Cicero underlines the strong religious component of this concept and uses it to
exclude Clodius from the number of ‘good citizens’ (boni ciues) Finally, the opposi-
tion between optimates and deteriores will be explored by taking into account the claims
about religio and its connection with Roman identity, as it is set out in § 19 of the speech

2. Reading a Divine Text: Cicero’s Interpretation of the responsum

The response of the haruspices is organized into two main sections: firstly, the compi-
lation of the reasons behind the prodigies; secondly, the warnings and advice that the
gods give to the Romans 4
According to the responsum, the incidents that have caused the prodigies near Rome
are the following: the desecration of games (20–29),5 the destruction of consecrated
sites (30–33),6 the murder of ambassadors (34–35),7 the breaking of oaths (36),8 and
the violation of ancient and secret sacrifices (37–39) 9 In each case, Cicero first reads
the sentence aloud as formulated by the haruspices, then proceeds to make comments
about them 10 His immediate purpose is to dismiss the interpretation that Publius
Clodius had proposed a few days before at an assembly, claiming that the sentence
loca sacra et religiosa profana haberi (9) pointed to a sacrilege committed by Cicero As
Beard, North and Price have noted, the discussion is set against the backdrop of a clear

3 Corbeill 2012, 262, describes the responsum as ‘an open text, one that is susceptible to both logical
analysis and rhetorical elaboration’
4 For a detailed outline of the structure of the speech, see Wuilleumier/Tupet 1966, 29
5 Ludos minus diligenter factos pollutosque (21)
6 At 30 (sequitur de locis sacris, religiosis), Cicero repeats the sentence of the haruspices mentioned at
the beginning of the speech when addressing Clodius’ accusation
7 Oratores contra ius fasque interfectos (34)
8 Fidem iusque iurandum neglectum (36)
9 Sacrificia uetusta occultaque minus diligenter facta pollutaque (37)
10 Corbeill 2010, 144 underlines Cicero’s insistence on the material nature of the responsum, i e , its
nature as a text that is read and commented on while the speech is being delivered. In similar terms,
Santangelo 2013, 105: ‘the responses of the Etruscan priests are just not enough by themselves
They require an interpretative effort on the part of those who receive them’
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 75

consensus towards public religion Neither Cicero nor Clodius rejects or mocks the
responsum itself or the auctoritas of the haruspices Rather, they discuss the meaning
of the pronouncement without questioning the public religion system in which they
operate 11
These immediate circumstances of the speech belong to a protracted conflict be-
tween the orator and Clodius In December 62 BCE, during the ceremonies in honour
of Bona Dea at Caesar’s house, Clodius was caught when running away dressed in fem-
inine garments,12 after which he was prosecuted de incesto. Cicero, among others, testi-
fied against him, but Clodius was eventually acquitted, supposedly due to the fact that
he bribed the members of the jury 13 Some years later, in 58, Clodius promoted the
law that exiled Cicero as punishment for having executed the Catilinarians during his
consulship in 63 14 While Cicero was away, a temple to the goddess Libertas was built
on Clodius’ initiative on the land on the Palatine Hill that Cicero had owned before
his exile After his return, in August 57, the restitution of his properties was decreed by
the Senate with the consent of the pontifices Cicero therefore removed the temple and
rebuilt his house Despite the fact that, in the De Domo, Cicero had successfully argued
that he was not to blame for the destruction of the temple,15 since it had been erected
without the proper ritual procedures, Clodius takes advantage of the omens and the
answer from the haruspices in order to mount a new attack against his opponent 16

11 Cf Beard/North/Price 1998, 139–140: ‘there is no sign in any Roman political debate that any pub-
lic figure ever openly rejected the traditional framework for understanding the gods’ relations with
humankind Political argument consisted in large part of accusations that the other side had ne-
glected their proper duty to the gods, or had flouted divine law It was a competition (in our terms)
about how, and by whom, access to the gods was to be controlled – not about rival claims on the
importance or existence of the divine … As we have seen from Cicero’s defence in his speech On
the Response of the Haruspices, Clodius did not disregard or even ridicule Cicero’s religious rhet-
oric; he did not stand outside the system and laugh at its silly conventions He turned the tables,
and within the same religious framework as his opponent, he claimed the allegiance of the gods
for himself, and their enmity for Cicero’ See also Corbeill 2012, 264: ‘a speech like Cicero’s On the
Response of the Haruspices offers a look into one side of such a debate, including the type of analysis
to which a priestly response could be subjected’
12 Corbeill 1996, 159–169, examines the use of women’s clothing as one of the main rhetorical tools
with which to accuse an enemy of effeminacy Cicero employs this device not only here, but also
in the Catilinarians, in the Pro Sestio and in the Philippics, and specifically against Clodius in the De
Domo and the Pro Milone.
13 Cf Lenaghan 1969, 12, 61
14 Kelly 2006, 225–237, examines the legislation relating to Cicero’s exile
15 Allen 1944 includes an account of every detail regarding Cicero’s house: its location, the events
regarding the expropriation, the building of the temple to Libertas, and its recovery following the
exile
16 Cf Dom. 100–141 Lisdorf 2005, Lennon 2010 and Lee 2012 examine the ritual elements of the ded-
ication of the temple to Libertas.
76 María Emilia Cairo

Cicero begins his speech by mentioning this charge,17 before deploying, in 10 sec-
tions (8–17), a set of arguments and evidence designed to prove his innocence The
basis of his argument is that not only the Senate, but also the centuriate assembly and
the pontifical college had decreed that his house was exempt from sanctity 18 After this
first section, Cicero turns to present his own reading of the response, according to
which the agent of every impious action pointed out by the gods is Clodius himself It
rests on five key tenets:
a) Desecration of games (21–29) – The gods say Ludos minus diligenter factos pollu-
tosque, i e , that there has been some kind of negligence or corruption while some
ritual games were taking place In Cicero’s view, they refer to the Megalesia, per-
formed in honour of the Great Mother, Cybele, every year in April In the latest
celebration, Clodius burst into the theatre followed by a violent horde of slaves 19
In order to ensure that these are the games expressed by the gods, Cicero
points out, when describing Cybele, that accepimus agros et nemora cumquodam
strepitu fremituque peragrare (‘she walks abroad through our fields and woods to
the accompaniment of strange murmurs and rumblings’) 20 Here the clause stre-
pitu fremituque recalls the description of the omen that we find in 20: quod in agro
Latiniensi auditus est strepitus cum fremitu
b) Destruction of consecrated sites (30–33) – This is the section of the responsum
that Clodius has used against Cicero It is also the reason why, in § 30, the orator
rejects the accusation once more, before turning to his own reading 21 He claims
that the gods are actually speaking about Clodius’ house, which he has obtained
after murdering its former owner, Quintus Seius, an excellent citizen In that
house, there was a small shrine and an altar that Clodius tore down 22 In addition,
Cicero mentions the violation of sacred places committed by people closely rela-

17 Har. Resp. 9: responsum haruspicum hoc recens de fremitu in contione recitavit, in quo cum aliis multis
scriptum etiam illud est, id quod audistis, loca sacra et religiosa profana haberi: in ea causa esse dixit
domum meam a religiosissimo sacerdote, P. Clodio, consecratam.
18 For an explanation of the verdict on Cicero’s house, see § 11 and 12 in particular
19 Har. Resp. 22: uis enim innumerabilis incitata, ex omnibus uicis collecta, seruorum, ab hoc aedile religio-
so repente e fornicibus ostiisque omnibus in scaenam signo dato immisa, inrupit. Leach 2001, 344, un-
derlines the contrast that Cicero draws between Clodius and his illustrious ancestors (P Cornelius
Lentulus, Scipio Nasica, King Deiotarus, C Cornelius Lentulus) who did take care of these rituals:
‘Female-gendered religio preserves the state that the gods have created (19) Good males respect
and preserve this gendered value’ Clodius was then holding the aedileship
20 Har. Resp. 24 We quote, here and elsewhere in this paper, the English translation by N H Watts
(Cambridge, Mass 1955), with some minor changes when deemed necessary
21 Har. Resp 30: de mea domo dicere audes? committe uel consulibus uel senatui uel collegio pontificum
tuam. ac mea quidem his tribus omnibus iudiciis, ut dixi antea, liberata est.
22 Har. Resp. 30: at in eis aedibus quas tu, Q. Seio equite Romano, uiro optimo, per te apertissime interfecto,
tenes, sacellum dico fuisse [scil aras]
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 77

ted to Clodius, such as his brother Appius and his friends Lucius Calpurnius Piso
and Sextus Atilius Serranus 23
c) Murder of ambassadors (34–35) – Cicero begins his reflection on this item by
stating, de Alexandrinis esse uideo sermonem; quem ego non refuto (‘I see that it is
popularly referred to the legates of Alexandria; and I do not reject this view’) 24
He refers to an episode from the recent past well known to his audience, such that
they can easily relate to the response of the Etruscan priests In 57, Berenice, queen
of Egypt, had sent an embassy to Rome because her brother, Ptolemy Auletes,
wanted to be restored to the throne Dio, the leader of the Egyptian delegation,
was poisoned while staying at the house of L Lucceius, a supporter of Pompey 25
This event prompted consultation of the Sibylline Books: the quindecimuiri sacris
faciundis, with Clodius among them, decided to cancel the expedition that Pom-
pey was going to lead to restore Ptolemy as king This situation affects Cicero, not
only because of his friendship with Pompey, but also because Clodius had won
the support of some of the senators who would have been listening to Cicero’s
speech That explains why Cicero, while not denying that the haruspices are refer-
ring to the Alexandrian ambassadors, proposes that it also alludes to the murder
of the Greek ambassadors, Theodosius and Plator, which has supposedly been
committed by two of Clodius’ allies in order to implicate his rival more directly 26
d) Breaking of oaths (36) – Having conceded that the meaning of fidem iusque iuran-
dum neglectum is obscure and intentionally vague, Cicero suggests that it refers
to the multiple episodes of corruption in which Clodius had been involved He
points especially to the crime of bribery, through which Clodius managed to be
acquitted at the Bona Dea trial in 62 27
e) Violation of ancient and secret rites (37–39) – The adjectives uetusta and occulta
that occur in the responsum support Cicero’s suggestion that they allude to Clo-
dius’ involvement in the Bona Dea rituals, as mentioned above 28 The fact that the

23 Cf Har. Resp 31–32

24 Har. Resp. 34
25 For an account of the Egyptian question, see Baños Baños 1994, 242 n 64, and Lenaghan 1966, 20,
149–150
26 Har. Resp 34–35
27 For a full treatment of the Bona Dea cult, see Mastrocinque 2014
28 This episode is referred to more than once throughout the speech Cf Har. Resp. 4 (illum ambus-
tum religiosissimis ignibus cognoui muliebri ornatu ex incesto stupro atque ex domo pontificis maximi
emissum), 8 (hominemque eum qui puluinaribus Bonae deae stuprum intulerit), 37 (quod quidem sac-
rificium nemo ante P. Clodium omni memoria uiolauit … quod fit per uirgines Vestalis, fit pro populo
Romano, fit in ea domo quae est in imperio, fit incredibili caerimonia, fit ei deae cuius ne nomen quidem
uiros scire fas est) and 44 (P. Clodius a crocota, a mitra, a muliebribus soleis purpureisque fasceolis, a
strophio, a psalterio, a flagitio, a stupro est factus repente popularis).
78 María Emilia Cairo

Bona Dea cult was ancient and almost exclusively for women,29 and therefore oc-
cultum, allows for an interpretation that makes these events those that are referred
to in the last part of the responsum.

To sum up, throughout Cicero’s reading of the text produced by the haruspices (§ 20–
39), Clodius is presented, time after time, as being entirely responsible for each and
every one of the reasons given by the haruspices to explain the disturbing prodigies
that have taken place near Rome At the same time, the thorough examination of the
responsum carried out by Cicero contributes to his self-presentation as an expert in
religious matters, that is, as an authority on the interpretation of divine messages His
knowledge about the gods is a feature that confers him legitimacy before his audience 30

3. Deteriores cauete: A Classification of Citizens

After analysing the factors behind the prodigies, Cicero turns to discuss the warnings
given by the gods regarding the near future They call for an end to discord among the
optimates, advise against the rise of evil citizens, and encourage the continued mainte-
nance of the well-being of the Republic 31 Once again, Cicero understands that these
pieces of advice are aimed at reducing Clodius’ political influence, as he is to blame for
the disagreement among the members of the nobility
In the context of these warnings, and in relation to the call for concordia, the term
deteriores denotes those citizens who put social harmony at risk The first mention of
this term occurs in § 53:
habent Etrusci libri certa nomina quae in id genus ciuium cadere possint: deteriores, repulsos,
quod iam audietis, hos appellant quorum et mentes et res sunt perditae longeque a communi
salute diiunctae.

The Etruscan books employ certain definite terms, which are peculiarly applicable to this
kind of citizen As you will shortly hear, they apply the epithets ‘baser’ and ‘rejected’ to

29 Cf Mastrocinque 2014, 15–26 I say ‘almost exclusively for women’, rather than ‘exclusively for
women’, because, as Mastrocinque shows, a man could sometimes participate in these ceremo-
nies – for example, in the role of Hercules Musagetes. He bases this observation on Ov Ars Am
3 633–638, wondering whether Clodius’ involvement in this ritual was exactly on the terms that
Cicero describes, even licit in fact, at least in some respects
30 Cf Gildenhard 2011, 245: ‘precisely because the supernatural figured as an invaluable source of
legitimacy and authority, political confrontations over who could lay claim to it were a constant
feature of Roman politics’
31 The instructions are as follows: ne per optimatium discordiam dissensionemque patribus principibus-
que caedes periculaque creentur auxilioque diuini numinis deficiantur, qua re ad unius imperium pecu-
niae redeant exercitusque apulsus deminutioque accedat (40), ne occultis consiliis res publica laedatur
(55), ne deterioribus repulsisque honos augeatur (56) and ne rei publicae status commutetur (60)
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 79

those who are desperate, both in purpose and in purse, and are both alienated from the
cause of public welfare

Later on, in § 57, a more detailed and precise definition for this label is offered:
deteriores cauete; quorum quidem est magna natio, sed tamen eorum omnium hic dux est atque
princeps; etenim si unum hominem deterrimum poeta praestanti aliquis ingenio fictis con-
quisitisque uitiis deformatum uellet inducere, nullum profecto dedecus reperire posset quod in
hoc non inesset, multaque in eo penitus defixa atque haerentia praeteriret.

It is against ‘the baser’ that you must be on your guard; they are legion, but Clodius is
leader and prince of them all; and indeed, if some poet of surpassing genius were desirous
of presenting to us an individual defiled by all the vices that imagination and ingenuity
could suggest, I am sure that he could devise no infamy that was not to be found in Clo-
dius, and that many shameful deeds that are ineradicably embedded in his soul would be
overlooked

Clodius is described here as dux … atque princeps among the deteriores, i e , he is the
living example of every vice and sin that characterize that group; and, in this sense, he
surpasses everything imaginable Not even the most creative poet could configure a
character that base or that evil
Cicero also mentions the three spheres or groups that every human being joins as
soon as they are born – their parents, gods, and homeland These are also the three
spheres in which pietas is to be shown, if we understand the concept as the set of obli-
gations to one’s relatives, deities and fellow citizens
Cicero shows that Clodius has repeatedly breached the norms of the three fields
When adopted by P Fonteius in 59 BCE, he entered the plebeian order, abandoning
the gens Claudia to which he originally belonged 32 The Bona Dea scandal (alluded to
here by the words ‘their secret rites, which are forbidden not merely to the gaze, but
even to the hearing of males’), as well as the memory of the burning of the shrine of
the Nymphs, is proof of his criminal behaviour in the religious sphere 33 Finally, among
the offences that he claims Clodius perpetrated against the homeland, Cicero in-
cludes his own exile, the rivalry against Pompey and the Senate, the repeal of the leges
Aelia et Fufia, the abolition of censorship, the dishonest alliance with A Gabinius and

32 Lenaghan 1969, 188, explains that this is not exactly so Clodius did not abandon the name of his
gens because he joined the plebeian order by means of an adrogatio.
33 Har. Resp 57: deorum ignis, solia, mensas, abditos ac penetralis focos, occulta et maribus non inuisa
solum, sed etiam inaudita sacra inexpiabili scelere pervertit, idemque earum templum inflammauit dea-
rum quarum ope etiam aliis incendiis subvenitur About the Bona Dea rituals, cf Mastrocinque 2014,
30–31 and 70–81 Regarding the fire at the temple of the Nymphs and Clodius’ intention of destroy-
ing public registers, see Lenaghan 1969, 188
80 María Emilia Cairo

L Calpurnius Piso (the consuls of 58), and the destruction of memorials to victorious
generals, among many others 34
Hence, it is noticeable that the term deteriores is opposed to optimates in a wider
sense than populares.35 It is not a strictly political contrast – on the contrary, it involves
not only social status or political sympathies, but also respect for certain religious
norms that have a central role in the Roman polity 36

4. Religio as a Core Element of Roman Identity

The importance of religious norms is outlined earlier, at the end of § 19 § 18–19 have
received special attention:37 placed after the section in which Clodius’ accusations are
discussed and before the exhaustive examination of the response, they deal with gen-
eral issues such as the role of the maiores in the organization of religious practices, the
utility of Etruscan discipline, and the conviction that the gods exist 38 § 19 ends with a
statement on Roman identity:

34 Har. Resp. 58: qui primum eum ciuem ui, ferro, periculis urbe, omnibus patriae praesidiis depulit quem
uos patriae conseruatorem esse saepissime iudicaritis, deinde euerso senatus, ut ego semper dixi, comite,
duce, ut ille dicebat, senatum ipsum, principem salutis mentisque publicae, ui, caede incendiisque per-
vertit; sustulit duas leges, Aeliam et Fufiam, maxime rei publicae salutaris, censuram exstinxit, interces-
sionem remouit, auspicia deleuit, consules sceleris sui socios aerario, prouinciis, exercitu armauit, reges
qui erant uendidit, qui non erant appellauit, Cn. Pompeium ferro domum compulit, imperatorum monu-
menta euertit, inimicorum domus disturbauit, uestris monumentis suum nomen inscripsit. infinita sunt
scelera quae ab illo in patriam sunt edita. quid? quae in singulos ciuis quos necauit, socios quos diripuit,
imperatores quos prodidit, exercitus quos temptauit? As has often been observed (cf Greenidge 1893;
McDonald 1929; Weinstock 1937; Balsdon 1957; Mitchell 1986; Tatum 1990), Cicero’s allegation
that Clodius abolished the leges Aelia et Fufia is a rhetorical exaggeration The leges Clodiae passed
in 58 BCE only eliminated a part of those laws regarding obnuntiatio of the magistrates, albeit in the
context of a legislative assembly; nor did they abolish this ritual altogether
35 About the terms optimates and populares, as well as other commonly related categories (nobiles,
boni, homines noui), cf esp Ferrary 1997; Tatum 1999, 1–31; Hölkeskamp 2010, 1–11; Robb 2010,
15–33; van der Blom 2010, 35–60
36 In § 41, Cicero makes positive comments on the Gracchi, L Appuleius Saturninus, and P Sulpicius
Rufus: even when they are his opponents in the political field, they exhibit very important virtues,
such as dignitas, eloquentia, grauitas, ingenium, uis and iucunditas: cum his conflictari et pro salute
patriae cotidie dimicare erat omnino illis qui tum rem publicam gubernabant molestum; sed habebat ea
molestia quandam tamen dignitatem. Cf Leach 2001, 338
37 See especially Goar 1972; De Martino 1985; Pina Polo 2002, 58; Gildenhard 2011; Santangelo 2013,
103–104; Valvo 2014; Cairo 2017
38 The positive appreciation of the Etruscan discipline is based on its capacity to give warnings not
only in the present situation but also on earlier occasions: Cicero here remembers the prediction
about Italici belli funesta illa principia and, some years later, Sullani Cinnanique temporis extremum
paene discrimen It is significant that, at this point, Cicero places the haruspices and their discipline
at the same level as pontiffs, augurs and quindecimuiri, as if they belonged to the official religious
organization Even though the haruspices were certainly summoned by the Senate as specialists
in the presence of supernatural occurrences, they were always outside the official structure of the
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 81

quam uolumus licet, patres conscripti, ipsi nos amemus, tamen nec numero Hispanos nec robore
Gallos nec calliditate Poenos nec artibus Graecos nec denique hoc ipso huius gentis ac terrae
domestico nativoque sensu Italos ipsos ac Latinos, sed pietate ac religione atque hac una sapi-
entia, quod deorum numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus, omnis gentis nationesque
superauimus.

However good be our conceit of ourselves, conscript fathers, we have excelled neither the
Spaniards in population, nor the Gauls in vigour, nor the Carthaginians in versatility, nor
the Greeks in art, nor indeed the Italians and Latins themselves in the innate sensibility
that is characteristic of this land and its peoples; but in piety, in religious devotion, and in
that special wisdom which consists of the recognition of the truth that the world is swayed
and directed by divine disposal, we have excelled every people and every community

Among the many modern definitions of identity, the one put forward by Jan Assmann
in Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkul-
turen is especially useful for our purposes. He defines collective identity as the image
(Bild) through which the members of the community develop a shared sense of be-
longing 39 The concept of identity refers to the way in which individuals see themselves
as members of a group, based on how their behaviour is similar to that of others in the
group This is a dynamic process, subject to variation and change, as identity is always
socially constructed 40 Assmann’s insight is relevant for the study of Roman identity
in Cicero’s work, since Cicero conceives of the Romans as a group distinguished by
clearly defined features and characteristics In his view, only those who share these may
fairly be included among the ‘true’ Romans Assmann’s concept of collective identity
as an image with which the members of the group identify helpfully captures the way
in which Cicero participates in the debate about what it means to be Roman
When Cicero says that the Romans have surpassed every other polity in pietas, re-
ligio and knowledge about the government of the world by the gods, he refers to a

res publica and perceived as Etruscans Even Cicero, in other texts (Leg 2 20; DND 3 5), mentions
the three main colleges, leaving the haruspices aside However, he here confers on them the same
dignity in order to avoid jeopardizing the seriousness and appropriateness of the responsum; at the
same time, he does not underline their foreignness, but includes them in Roman religious struc-
tures Cf Lenaghan 1969, 107, and North 2000, 97
39 Assmann 1992, 132: ‘Unter einer kollektiven oder Wir-Identität verstehen wir das Bild, das eine
Gruppe von sich aufbaut und mit dem sich deren Mitglieder identifizieren Kollektive Identität ist
eine Frage der Identifikation seitens der beteiligten Individuen Es gibt sich nicht ‘an sich’, sondern
immer nur in dem Maße, wie sich bestimmte Individuen zu ihr bekennen Sie ist so stark oder so
schwach, wie sie im Bewußtsein der Gruppenmitglieder lebendig ist und deren Denken und Han-
deln zu motivieren vermag’ (= Assmann 2011, 113–114)
40 The bibliography on this problem is extensive, and is of course not confined to Ancient History
The essay collected in Rebillard/Rüpke 2015 provide a strong sense of the potential and ramifica-
tions of this area of investigation
82 María Emilia Cairo

collective picture of themselves with which the members of his audience can identify 41
This audience is, of course, limited: it does not involve Romans in general, but the sen-
ators before whom Cicero is delivering his speech and whom he wishes to persuade
It is in front of this political and intellectual elite that Cicero displays the image of the
Romans as a people favoured by the gods on account of their piety 42
The definition of Roman identity in § 19 should not be read as an isolated reflection
with no connection to the rest of the text, stated only for the purpose of attaining the au-
dience’s consent through the reassertion of traditional Roman values On the contrary,
it should be understood by taking into consideration the aim of the speech as a whole
Cicero states here that respect for religious norms and for the traditions of ancestors are
hallmarks of the Romans Later, when presenting his reading of the responsum in 20–39,
he underlines throughout that Clodius has shown outrageous behaviour with regard to
religio Violating ritual games, illicitly attending the Bona Dea rites, destroying shrines,
killing ambassadors and breaking oaths are all crimes against the gods 43
If one takes into account the definition in § 19, when reading Cicero’s interpretation
of the responsum, it becomes readily apparent that not only is Clodius excluded from
the optimates in order to be ascribed to the group of deteriores, but he is also relegated
to a non-Roman position, since he does not exhibit the qualities of pietas, religio and
sapientia about the gods, which are presented as the sine quibus non features of Roman
identity If he refuses to obey the norms of ancestors, if he violates the most sacred
rules, if he respects neither his fellow citizens nor the gods, and if he misunderstands
divine messages then he is not to be considered a proper Roman 44
In sum, Cicero’s configuration of Clodius as a marginal character can be appreciat-
ed Born to a distinguished gens, he has chosen to abandon this background in order
to find a place among the plebeians. Although he is a man, he has become famous for
participating in a feminine ritual, dressed up as a woman Even as a member of the
college of the quindecimuiri sacris faciundis, he frequently violates every religious norm
Despite his suspicious and shameful lifestyle, he dares to accuse a fine citizen such as
Cicero of being responsible for the gods’ wrath His behaviour separates him from the
ethical code of the mos maiorum, which characterizes the ciues boni, in turn, transform-

41 Beard/North/Price 1998, 138, describe this procedure as a typical feature of Ciceronian oratory: ‘In
speech after speech, Cicero enlists the support of his listeners (and later his readers) with appeals
to the gods and to the shared traditions of Roman religion and myth’
42 Cicero establishes a continuity with the traditional image of the Romans as specially related to
the gods, an image that goes back to the second century BCE In the letter sent to the Teans in 193
BCE by the praetor M Valerius Messala (Syll.3 601), the Romans are described as having received
special favour (εὐμένεια) from the gods because of πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς εὐσέβεια On this text, see Drie-
diger-Murphy 2014
43 Hence the irony in Har. Resp 8–9: de religionibus sacris et caerimoniis est contionatus, patres conscrip-
ti, Clodius! P., inquam, Clodius sacra et religiones neglegi, uiolari, pollui questus est! non mirum si hoc
uobis ridiculum uidetur … itaque nunc proxima contio eius exspectatur de pudicitia.
44 Cf Pina Polo 2002, 67
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 83

ing him into a non-human,45 non-rational being 46 The fact that Cicero describes him as
a ‘non-Roman’ is nothing but a corollary of his marginal and displaced identity

5. Conclusion

In this paper, I have examined, in the first place, how Cicero presents an interpretation
of the responsum of the haruspices through an invective against Clodius He points out
his vices and mentions the episodes in which Clodius displayed outrageous behaviour
as a means to argue that he is the man to whom the haruspices refer as being responsi-
ble for the wrath of the gods
Secondly, and turning from the explanation of the portents to providing advice
about the future, Clodius is again presented as the agent of discord among the opti-
mates: creating such an agent must be avoided in the future and the damage he has
brought about repaired In order to do so, Cicero places him among the citizens that
the Etruscan priests call deteriores – those who threaten social harmony, as opposed
to the group of the optimates, to which Cicero himself belongs 47 It has been observed
that, when talking about optimates and deteriores, Cicero does not refer to political
categories, but to a wider moral and religious spectrum
Finally, the end of § 19 and the definition of the quintessential features of Roman
identity have led to the conclusion that Clodius is configured throughout the speech as
a non-Roman, as a foreigner, because he threatens the basic principles of Roman iden-
tity This identity is defined as that embodied by the boni ciues, who look after social
concord, respect the mos maiorum and are scrupulous in their dealings with the gods
Clodius represents the opposite of pietas In no way does he respect the idea of re-
ligio – whether we understand that as possessing a meticulous attitude towards the
divine, or as the correct observance of religious practices – nor does he show sapientia
or knowledge about the gods The interpretation of the responsum made by Cicero
contradicts the one put forward by Clodius at the contio, thus rendering that inter-
pretation unsuitable or indeed incorrect, while demonstrating that Clodius was not
capable of appropriately understanding what the gods intend to communicate 48 As

45 Clodius is described in terms that associate him with animals and beasts in § 5: there, he is referred
to as pecudem ac beluam In § 52 Cicero mentions his indomitos atque ecfrenatos furores, as if he were
a horse out of control
46 Cf Seager 2014, 233–234
47 The fact that Cicero is enlisting himself among the optimates is reflected in the constant contrast
between ‘us’ and Clodius throughout the speech It is especially notable in the sentence that closes
the peroratio in 63, in which the first person of the plural is employed in three of the eight words of
the sentence: nostrae nobis sunt inter nos irae discordiaeque placandae
48 Cicero employs the adjective religiosus on two occasions (Har. Resp 5 and 11) to describe Clodius,
with a clear ironic intention First, when referring to the matter of his house, he states: esse dixit
84 María Emilia Cairo

Corbeill states, by suggesting his own reading of the responsum, Cicero not only dis-
credits what Clodius says about this text in particular, but also calls into question his
comprehension skills as a whole 49 This in turn casts doubts on Clodius’ effectiveness
as a member of the college of the XVuiri sacris faciundis, since its function precisely
involves the interpretation of the Sibylline Books

***

When considered as a mere occasional speech, composed in response to an immediate

concern – discrediting Clodius’ accusations regarding Cicero’s house – the speech De
haruspicum responso is underestimated From that perspective, § 18–19, in which Cice-
ro explains the close relation between religion and Roman identity, have been under-
stood as a rhetorical ornament employed by the orator to receive the support of his
audience Here, I have tried to show that, on the contrary, this speech constitutes a
highly interesting intervention at the heart of relevant political and religious debates
and in the context of his return to the public arena after being exiled This speech must
therefore be granted its place among the Ciceronian texts in which the question of
Roman identity and the relationship between men and gods are central matters of re-
flection and discussion

Bibliography

Allen 1944: W Allen, ‘Cicero’s House and Libertas’, TAPA 75 (1944), 1–9
Assmann 1992: J Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in
frühen Hochkulturen, Munich 1992
Assmann 2011: J Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization. Writing, Remembrance, and
Political Imagination, Cambridge 2011
Balsdon 1957: J P Balsdon, ‘Roman History, 58–56 B C : Three Ciceronian Problems’, JRS 47
(1957), 15–20
Baños Baños 1994: J M Baños Baños, M. Tulio Cicerón. Discursos IV, Madrid 1994
Beard/North/Price 1998: M Beard / J North / S Price, Religions of Rome. Volume I: A History,
Cambridge 1998

domum meam a religiosissimo sacerdote, P. Clodio, consecratam; later, when remembering the violent
invasion of slaves at the ludi, he says uis … innumerabilis incitata ex omnibus uicis conlecta seruorum
ab hoc aedile religioso The irony is apparent: in both contexts, Clodius’ behaviour is set in oppo-
sition to the religious norms On the contrary, Cicero’s ability to understand what is at stake is
asserted early on in the text (in § 4), when he states, regarding Clodius and the Bona Dea scandal,
tum, inquam, tum uidi ac multo ante prospexi quanta tempestas excitaretur, quanta impenderet procella
rei publicae Cf Gildenhard 2011, 331
49 Corbeill 2010, 149–150
 A Reading of Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responso 85

Beard 2012: M Beard, “Cicero’s ‘Response of the Haruspices’ and the Voice of the Gods”, JRS 102
(2012), 20–39
Beltrão da Rosa 2003: C Beltrão da Rosa, ‘De haruspicum responso: religião e política em Cícero’,
Mirabilia 3 (2003), 21–42
van der Blom 2010: H van der Blom, Cicero’s Role Models. The Political Strategies of a Newcomer,
Oxford 2010
Cairo 2017: M E Cairo, ‘Autoridad religiosa y autoridad política en De haruspicum responso de
Cicerón’, Maia 69 (2017), 486–500
Corbeill 1996: A Corbeill, Controlling Laughter. Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic, Prince-
ton 1996
Corbeill 2010: id , ‘The Function of a Divinely Inspired Text in Cicero’s De haruspicum responsis’, in
D H Berry / A Erskine (eds ), Form and Function in Roman Oratory, Cambridge 2010, 139–154
Corbeill 2012: A Corbeill, ‘Cicero and the Etruscan Haruspices’, PLLS 15 (2012), 243–266
Corbeill 2018: A Corbeill, ‘Clodius’ contio de haruspicum responsis’, in C Gray / A Balbo / R Mar-
shall / C Steel (eds ), Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions, Ox-
ford 2018, 171–190
DeMartino 1985: R M DeMartino, The Roman Nobility and the State Religion in the Late Republic,
New Brunswick 1985
Driediger-Murphy 2014: L G Driediger-Murphy, ‘M Valerius Messala to Teos (Syll 3 601) and the
Theology of Rome’s War with Antiochus III’, ZPE 189 (2014), 115–120
Ferrary 1997: J L Ferrary, ‘Optimates et populares Le problème du rôle de l’idéologie dans la poli-
tique’, in H Bruhns / J -M David / W Nippel (eds ), Die späte römische Republik. La fin de la
République romaine. Un débat franco-allemand d’histoire et d’historiographie, Rome 1997, 221–231
Gildenhard 2011: I Gildenhard, Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches,
Oxford 2011
Goar 1972: R J Goard, Cicero and the State Religion, Amsterdam 1972
Greenidge 1893: A H Greenidge, ‘The Repeal of the Lex Aelia Fufia’, CR 7 (1893), 158–161
Hölkeskamp 2010: K Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic. An Ancient Political Culture
and Modern Research, Princeton-Oxford 2010
Jannot 2005: J -R Jannot, Religion in Ancient Etruria, Madison 2005
Kelly 2006: G Kelly, A History of Exile in the Roman Republic, Cambridge 2006
Leach 2001: E W Leach, ‘Gendering Clodius’, CW 94 (2001), 335–359
Lee 2012: J Lee, Transgression in Roman Religion, Diss Yale 2012
Lenaghan 1969: J O Lenaghan, A Commentary on Cicero’s Oration De Haruspicum Responso, The
Hague/Paris 1969
Lennon 2010: J Lennon, ‘Pollution and Ritual Impurity in Cicero’s De domo sua’, CQ 60 (2010),
427–445
Lisdorf 2005: A Lisdorf, ‘The Conflict over Cicero’s House: An Analysis of the Ritual Element in
De domo sua’, Numen 52 (2005), 445–464
MacBain 1982: B MacBain, Prodigy and Expiation: A Study in Religion and Politics in Republican
Rome, Brussels 1982
Mastrocinque 2014: A Mastrocinque, Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women, Stuttgart 2014
McDonald 1929: W McDonald, ‘Clodius and the Lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 19 (1929), 164–179
Mitchell 1986: T N Mitchell, ‘The Leges Clodiae and obnuntiatio’, CQ 36 (1986), 172–176
North 2000: J North, ‘Prophet and Text in the Third Century B C ’, in E Bispham / C Smith
(eds ), Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy, Edinburgh 2000, 92–107
Orlin 2010: E Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome. Creating a Roman Empire, Oxford 2010
86 María Emilia Cairo

Pina Polo 2002: F Pina Polo, ‘Cicerón, elegido de los dioses: La reprobación religiosa del adver-
sario político como recurso retórico’, in F Marco Simón / F Pina Polo / J Remesal Rodríguez
(eds ), Religión y propaganda política en el mundo romano, Barcelona 2002, 57–69
Rebillard/Rüpke 2015: E Rebillard / J Rüpke (eds ), Group Identity and Religious Individuality in
Late Antiquity, Washington D C 2015
Robb 2010: M A Robb, Beyond Populares and Optimates: Political Language in the Late Republic,
Stuttgart 2010
Santangelo 2013: F Santangelo, Divination, Prediction, and the End of the Roman Republic, Cam-
bridge 2013
Seager 2014: R Seager, ‘The (Re/De)Construction of Clodius in Cicero’s Speeches’, CQ 64 (2014),
226–240
Tatum 1990: W J Tatum, ‘Cicero’s Opposition to the Lex Clodia de Collegiis’, CQ 40 (1990), 187–
194
Tatum 1999: J Tatum, The Patrician Tribune. Publius Clodius Pulcher, Chapel Hill/London 1999
Valvo 2014: A Valvo, ‘Il declino della Repubblica nel De haruspicum responsis’, in M Chiabà (ed ),
HOC QVOQVE LABORIS PRAEMIVM. Scritti in onore di Gino Bandelli, Trieste 2014, 509–518
Watts 1955: N H Watts, Cicero. The Speeches with an English Translation. Pro Archia Poeta, Post
Reditum in Senatu, Post Reditum ad Quirites, De domo sua, De haruspicum responsis, Pro Plancio,
London/Cambridge 1955
Weinstock 1937: S Weinstock, ‘Clodius and the Lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 27 (1937), 215–222
Wuilleumier/Tupet 1966: P Wuilleumier / A M Tupet, Cicéron. Discours. Tome XIII, 2. Sur la ré-
ponse des haruspices, Paris 1966
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action
in Lucretius and Cicero
Maria Eichler

This paper analyses the rhetoric and approaches that Cicero and Lucretius deploy to
promote models of political action and piety among the Roman priests and magistrates
of their time It suggests an investigative path that pursues the issue through the vo-
cabulary relating to the ideas of ‘natural law’ in Cicero’s De Legibus and in Lucretius’s
De Rerum Natura Its starting point is the familiar fact that, in ancient Rome, there was
a clear identification between political leadership and religious authority 1 Public law
derived from a number of sources, which included the acta, the libri or the commentarii
compiled by the pontifical and the augural colleges 2 Roman priests were tasked with
control over legal acts, such as those related to the calendar and the supervision of the
courts, which were accompanied by divinatory rites 3 They set up lawsuits and produced
declarations of war and peace Just as priests had legal prerogatives, the higher magis-
trates based their functions on their religious claim to hold the auspicia These were the
‘auspices of investiture’, whose regulation had been set by the lex curiata de imperio 4
Cicero and Lucretius resorted to the concepts and ideas of the philosophy of na-
ture in their epistemological discussions about theology, that is, their reflections on
the question of divine providence and the relations between the gods, the world and
humans 5 It is worth noting that, in antiquity, the philosophy of nature made no dis-

1 Beard 1990, 24, 34, 39–40; Moatti 2008, 14, 252; Beltrão 2014, 154
2 On this complex topic see Bouché-Leclercq 1871, 191–265; Szemler 1972, 25; Van Haeperen 2002;
Scheid 2006, 19–20; Rüpke 2009; Santangelo 2011; Rüpke 2012, 25–27
3 Begemann 2017, 109–110, 118–121 The convergence noted by Begemann between the definition of
religio in De Legibus as the socially regulating force within the res publica and Cicero’s statement
that the scope of action of divination is to uphold the social and political order is especially signif-
icant for the purposes of this paper
4 Scheid 1984, 243–81; Beard 1990, 20–21, 24; Gordon 1990, 17–47, 181; Rüpke 2011; Berthelet 2015,
119, 125
5 For insightful discussions of ancient theologies see, e g , Mansfeld 1999, esp 442–444 and Ando
2008
88 Maria Eichler

tinction between the attempt to understand the physical universe and the nature of the
gods 6 Interest in the topic grew considerably during the first century BCE, with the
deepening dialogue between Roman culture, the Hellenistic philosophical schools,
and ethical doctrines 7 By appropriating Hellenistic thought systems and contending
with other set ideas, a ‘superior’ or ‘more authentic’ Roman tradition was being ad-
vanced, leading to the development of distinctive discursive practices in Rome In this
context, intellectual controversies and alliances played an important role in the de-
velopment of conventional depictions of rival schools of thought Our understanding
of ancient philosophical ideas and doctrines, such as Stoic naturalism and Epicurean
physics, depends on a methodology that helps us to reconstruct them through his-
torical sources that record their polemical strategies and fixed patterns of refutations 8
New methods of criticism and judgement also developed, enabling a shift towards
the rationalization of legal and religious discursive practices Through a slow and grad-
ual process, Roman religious actions began to be recorded in writing, with the aim
of reporting and collecting information for the resolution of problems related to law
and ritual 9 In the first century, the philosophy of nature contributed to this process
with a theoretical rationalization It provided methods and concepts so that public
law became the object of ample debate and questioning 10 Driven by reflective force
and, in the case of Lucretius, disruptive potential, the discussion conducted by Ro-
man intellectuals sought to establish the basis of a ‘natural law’, which then instructed
magistrates and priests on the administration and enforcement of law 11 The greater
demand for the rationalization of religious and legal discourses also led to a question-
ing of some divinatory practices Cicero and Lucretius contested some of their uses
and the correct attitudes associated with them The Epicurean poet went further and
questioned their legitimacy and capacity to contribute effectively to the salus publica,
that is, to the institutional order and proper functioning of the res publica
This discussion will steer away from the misconception that Roman law attained
high levels of secularization in the late Republican period 12 One of the most common
criticisms directed at Epicureans, as well as Sceptics and Academics, is the construc-
tion of an ‘anti-religious’ character, while modern scholarship has often tended to
unproblematically accept this line of critique 13 However, this paper argues that the

6 Long 1977, 63; Sharrock 2013, 2

7 Rüpke 2007, 3; Moatti 2008, 15, 147–148, 250
8 Volk/Williams 2015, 1–2; Thaler/Weisser 2016, 1–15 On this process cf Arena’s contribution to this
volume
9 North 1990, 66; Moatti 2008, 14, 252; Beltrão 2013, 234, 237, 239, 245; MacRae 2016, 28–75
10 Rüpke 2012; Beltrão/Eichler 2014, 14
11 Moatti 2008, 14, 252
12 Gordon 1990, 190–191; Beltrão 2014, 50
13 See the survey in Eichler 2015, 101
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 89

practical and discursive rationalization process which developed never brought about
a rupture between law and religion

1. The Conception of ‘Natural Law’ in Cicero’s De Legibus:

Political Orientation and Pious Conduct

Let us begin with an historical and conceptual analysis of the vocabulary that struc-
tures and delimits the ideas of ‘natural law’ in Cicero and Lucretius It is interesting
to note how these two intellectuals forged competing normative terminologies while
embracing different schools of thought While Cicero frequently returned to Roman
ancestral tradition and to the Academic and Peripatetic philosophical doctrines, Lu-
cretius actively engaged with Epicureanism Roman intellectuals were constantly in
contact with different religious experiences and well aware that their philosophical
convictions could potentially prompt considerable dissent Ultimately, the pluralistic
and non-dogmatic religious environment of the late Republic allowed for, and even
encouraged, engagement with Hellenistic philosophical and ethical debates, in spite of
a widespread awareness that their principles could be at odds with long-standing and
still widely held beliefs 14
The most distinctively philosophical works of Cicero pertain to the period between
45 and 43 In those works, written in the last years of his life, he declared himself, more
explicitly and energetically, an adherent of the New Academy, a philosophical school
opposed to the epistemological dogmatism of Epicureans and Stoics However, oth-
er philosophical positions can be identified in some of his works written before the
mid-40s 15 In the De Legibus, a dialogue possibly composed between 55 and 51, Cicero
made concessions to a sort of ‘conciliatory effort’ between Stoicism and Platonism, in
the Academic-Stoic reading of Antiochus of Ascalon As such, the dialogue contains
a theological conception that is not entirely Stoic, but is based on Stoic elements Ac-
cordingly, as we will see, a conception of Roman religious law with Stoic features is put
forward, whereby the foundations of justice and other social virtues, including piety
itself, are underpinned by a divine natural law (Leg 1 43)
In the De Legibus, Cicero assesses ancestral morality through a conservative ap-
proach, instead of subjecting it to a searching critique as pursued in his more decidedly
philosophical works He sought notions that could work as a substantial counterpoint
to the impact of the social subversion and public disorder that prevailed in Rome dur-
ing the first century 16 As a result, a connection between morality and civic religion was
strongly established, in a way that makes the dialogue an example of the prominent

14 Timpanaro 1994, 7, 17, 20–22; Brunt 1997, 175; Feeney 1998, 14–16, 18–19
15 Englert 2010, 136
16 See Moatti 2008, 26; Hölkeskamp 2010; and Arena’s contribution to this volume
90 Maria Eichler

role of Roman literature in the process of inventing an ‘authorized’ tradition 17 The dia-
logue conveys the perspective that religio publica is a driving force of cohesion and
social control In fact, senators, magistrates and priests feared that, if Roman citizens
failed to respect the gods, as prescribed by tradition, they could also become less re-
spectful towards all other prescriptions of law and custom 18
Marcus (a character who does not necessarily coincide with Cicero himself) affirms
that the essence of law comes from the first bond that unites human beings to the gods
(Leg 1 23 3–4: prima homini cum deo rationis societas) This bond is expressed in the
form of a divine and universal reason, which emanates from the gods themselves, and
is owned by mankind for its participation in nature According to Marcus, mankind
was born to pursue Justice (Leg. 1 28 11–12: nos ad iustitiam esse natos), and it was nature
that endowed it with recta ratio, notably the knowledge of law itself:
quam ob rem lex uera atque princeps, apta ad iubendum et ad uetandum, ratio est recta summi
Iouis … ergo ut illa diuina mens summa lex est, item quom in homine est perfecta <ratio, sedet>
in mente sapientis.
Leg 2 10 15–18, 11 5–7

Therefore the authentic original law, whose function is to command and forbid, is the right
reason of Jupiter, Lord of all … Well then, as the divine mind is the highest law, so, when
reason is fully developed, that is law; and it is in the mind of the wise man 19

Marcus asserts that the foundations of law do not derive from convention, but from
nature (Leg 1 28 12: neque opinione, sed natura constitutum esse ius) This step of his ar-
gument displays a crucial divergence with Lucretius’ conception; in his view, law is,
above all, an instrumental good and results from the agreement and deliberation of a
human group 20 For Marcus, however, there exists a natural, divine and universal rea-
son, which precedes all written law (Leg 1 18 9–10, 2 9 12, 2 10 1–3) With regard to the
idea of natural law, we should note the requirement of rationalization that permeates
the dialogue Marcus expresses the desire to speak about the uniuersum ius and com-
mits himself to the search for a universally valid ethical orientation He defines the lex
as ratio summa, the divine reason, a factor intrinsic to nature (naturae uis) and an agent
of the cosmos (Leg 1 18 10, 1 19 9, 2 8 1–5) Marcus is convinced that Roman citizens,
guided by recta ratio, act with prudentia and can define what an object of order and
impediment is In this way, they choose the good and elaborate laws that will guarantee
the happiness, safety and peace of the ciues (Leg 1 17 5–18, 2 11 21–23).21

17 Habinek 1998, 45
18 Brunt 1997, 188
19 Translation by N Rudd
20 Cf Bourne 1977; Schiesaro 2010, 45–47
21 Pagnotta 2010, 4–6
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 91

The Ciceronian character assigns great importance to the observance of rituals and
the respect for worship (Leg 1 43 7–10) There was a ‘civic alliance’ between citizens
and divine beings, which required on the part of the former a series of duties and ‘im-
pediments’ 22 Throughout the second and first centuries, a civil theology was devised
in Rome 23 Through the renewal of confidence in rituals, Roman citizens reinforced
the bond that first united them with the gods and provided them with the natural,
divine and universal reason, which they regarded as the foundation of law and good
This consolidated their widely held normative conscience In order to strengthen this
conception of the civic norm, legal formulas were often based on ritual formulae:24
utilis esse autem has opiniones quis neget, quo intellegat quam multa firmentur iure iurando,
quantae saluti sint foederum religiones, quam multos diuini supplicii metus a scelere reuocarit,
quamque sancta sit societas ciuium inter ipsos, diis immortalibus interpositis tum iudicibus
<tum> testibus
Leg. 2 16 15–20

Who would deny that these ideas were useful, bearing in mind how many contracts are
strengthened by the swearing of oaths, how valuable religious scruples are for guarantee-
ing treaties, how many people are restrained from crime by the fear of divine retribution,
how sacred a thing of partnership of citizens is when the immortal gods are admitted to
that company as judges or witnesses?

Marcus here recalls the Roman appeal to fides when establishing contracts Fides pre-
sided over the original pact linking human beings to the gods and sealed agreements
inter homines In other words, the foedera governed private transactions among Ro-
man citizens and manifested the abstract fides between two parties As well as being a
key legal and political notion, the foedus is also present in the cosmological discourse
Lucretius takes advantage of the symbolic traffic between the foedera ciuilia and the
foedera naturae or mundi The poet (1 586, 2 254, 2 302, 3 781) refers to the term several
times in his account of Epicurean physical theology (cf fati foedera, foedera naturai,
animarum foedera pacta), which also underlies his conception of civic theology 25 In
Cicero’s religious interpretation of the legal framework that underpinned Roman civic
life, the breach of fides by a citizen could threaten the community as a whole, since the
achievement of the pax deorum was necessary to the preservation of social order and
the prosperity of the city In such terms, an impious conduct commanded the highest

22 Scheid 1985
23 Linder/Scheid 1993, 47–62; Beltrão 2008, 6
24 Schiavone 2005; Schiesaro 2007; Beltrão 2014, 50–54, 58, 61
25 Gladhill 2016, 1–4
92 Maria Eichler

religious penalty under the formula sacer esto 26 The execution of this sanction presup-
posed, in turn, an understanding of the mode of action of divine beings:
sit igitur hoc iam a principio persuasum ciuibus, dominos esse omnium rerum ac moderatores
deos, eaque quae gerantur eorum geri iudicio ac numine, eosdemque optime de genere hominum
mereri, et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat reli-
giones, intueri, piorumque et impiorum habere rationem
Leg 2 15 8–14

So the citizens should first of all be convinced of this, that the gods are lords and masters
of everything; that what is done is done by their decision and authority; that they are,
moreover, great benefactors of mankind and observe what kind of person everyone is – his
actions and misdemeanours, his attitude and devotion to religious duties – and take note
of the pious and impious

The Romans were permanently under the watchful eyes of the gods to which they
had to demonstrate reverential awe, constraint and religious diligence 27 The notori-
ous rigidity and strictness of Roman cult performance must be understood against
the backdrop of the ‘terrifying superiority of the gods’ 28 In the De legibus, Cicero
does not concern himself with portraying religious fear as being rooted in ignorance
Roman philosophers had considered the fear of the gods as deeply unbecoming for
a wise man To this extent, Cicero is no exception; in other philosophical works, he
condemns religious fear outright However, such fear played an important role in the
sphere of religious morality in the popular segments of Roman society In Cicero’s dia-
logue, there is a determination to underline the priests’ exclusive prerogative to know
and apply religious law as they deem fit and, furthermore, to pass it on properly to
Roman citizens in the context of correctly executed ritual actions 29
Marcus attaches great importance to the leges de religione (Leg 2 17 14) and, in book 2,
devotes a long section to the laws regulating private cults and public ceremonies Ac-
cordingly, he engages in a thorough investigation of the procedures and conduct of Ro-
man priests, which begins at the end of the second book and occupies the full extent of
the third one The attainment of proper and peaceful relations with the gods depended
on the correct management of public rites and the interpretation of divine signs by the
political and religious authorities Any disturbance in these relations could threaten
Rome with the risk of serious disasters and defeats:30

26 Beltrão 2014, 50–53, 58, 61

27 Brunt 1997, 188; Ando 2008, 22–23; Rüpke 2010
28 Ando 2008, 10–11, 14, 17
29 Santangelo 2013a, 744–745; Berthelet 2015, 18, 23, 27
30 Ando 2008, 10–4; Beltrão 2014, 53
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 93

descriptioque sacerdotum nullum iustae religionis genus prae<ter>mittit. nam sunt ad placan-
dos deos alii constituti, qui sacris praesint sollemnibus, ad interpretanda alii praedicta uatium,
neque multorum … maximum autem et praestantissimum in re publica ius est augurum cum
auctoritate coniunctum
Leg 2 30 6–9, 31 1–2

For some [priests] are appointed to appease the gods by taking charge of regular religious
rites; others to interpret the utterances of seers, though not of many … The greatest and
most prestigious power in the state is that of the augurs, combined, as it is, with political
authority

The augurs observed the divine signs of non-hostility, known as auspicia, certifying
the gods’ favourable position towards an intended public action 31 After all, the fulfil-
ment of all major governmental action had to be preceded by auspicious consultation:
‘What is more awesome than the power to grant or withhold the right to do political
business with the people or the plebs?’ (Leg 2 31 10–12) 32 In short, the authority of the
augurs was weighty, and Roman society expected them to be qualified to ‘pronounce
the law’ (iuris dictio): ‘Whatever an augur shall pronounce unjust, unholy, harmful,
or ill-omened shall be null and void And if anyone fails to obey, that shall be a capital
offence’ (Leg 2 21 7–9) 33 Throughout the troubled period of the civil wars of the first
century, there was an intensification of the use of divine signs as instruments of politi-
cal control Cicero and Lucretius, as well as other Roman intellectuals, contested some
of their uses and fostered philosophical and political discussions and reflections about
their competences and the sources of knowledge required for their exercise 34 In the
following section, we will see that Lucretius addressed the problem quite differently
from Cicero in the De legibus, who proved to be much more heavily concerned with
the safeguard of the political and religious authority of magistrates and priests

2. The De Rerum Natura and Its View of Natural Law

and Epicurean pietas

In the De rerum natura, Lucretius celebrates the exultant Epicurean promise of the
‘true’ liberation of the mind and praises Epicurus in epic-heroic style It is undeniable
that the scholarship on Roman sacred law has tended to rest very heavily on the works

31 Linderski 1986, 2146–2312; Santangelo 2013b, 4, 32

32 Quid religiosius quam cum populo, cum plebe agendi ius aut dare aut non dare? See North 1990, 49–71;
Rüpke 2005, 217–219; Santangelo 2013b, 4, 32
33 Quaeque augur iniusta nefasta uitiosa dira deixerit, inrita infectaque sunto; quique non paruerit, capital
esto. See Beltrão 2014, 55, 60–61
34 Santangelo 2013b, 3–8, 27
94 Maria Eichler

of Cicero and Varro, whereas research into the De rerum natura has mostly concentrat-
ed on its poetic value and repertoire of literary formulas 35 Its acceptance as an histori-
cal source, which throws light on legal, institutional, and religious aspects of the late
Roman Republic, is still quite limited
Lucretius exhorts his Roman readers and listeners to adopt a ‘truly’ pious attitude
by deploying a ‘deviant rhetoric’, which conveys his commitment to key ideas of Epi-
curean thought in the development of his physical and theological vision His concep-
tion of natural law and Epicurean pietas should be apparent from the disruptive scope
of his conceptual operations, through which he confronts Roman civic and religious
vocabulary and the essential principles of Epicurean physics, especially the clinamen,
that is, the deviation in the movement of atomic particles 36
The debates among Roman intellectuals, driven by the study of the philosophy of
nature, led to a deist controversy in the first century BCE The supporters of a Stoic
view inferred from the regularity of natural phenomena a divine causation or an inher-
ent purpose to the world In the second half of the 20th century, a number of influential
scholars concluded that Epicureanism was unable to offer an effective explanation for
regular occurrences in nature 37
They put forward the rather unsatisfactory view that, for the Epicureans, natural
phenomena did not obey the strict laws of necessity and causation, only contingent
or indeterminate movements In this way, they argued that Epicurus recognized the
presence of accidental events in his conception of the world and attributed random
natural occurrences to the clinamen However, Greek and Roman opponents of Epicu-
reanism often resorted to the clinamen in their polemics on ethical grounds, keeping
its employment to weaken or deny the consistency of the Greek master’s theory about
the regularity of natural events in the background
Anthony A Long has pointed out that restrictions on a supposedly Epicurean in-
determinacy are more limited than previously conceded 38 Long’s efforts helped to in-
crease the consensus among scholars about Epicurus’ acceptance of the natural law
principle that all observable phenomena in the world form a chain of events ruled by
continuous and strictly mechanical causation The only exception admitted by Epi-
curus was human behaviour, spontaneous actions of which require the interference
of the clinamen of atoms Indeed, his surviving writings do not contain a systematic
application of atomic deviation in the development of a central idea in the field of
philosophy of nature However, the clinamen has fundamental ethical implications
Epicurus (Ep. Men. 133–134) rejects destiny as the condition of ‘inexorable necessity’

35 Cf Schiesaro 1987, 30, 32, 36, 43, 55; Canfora 1993, 13; Gale 2007, 6
36 Cottier 1999; Gigandet 2003; Eshleman 2008; Schiesaro 2010, 55
37 See, e g , Solmsen 1951; Rist 1972
38 Long 1977, 63–69
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 95

(ἀπαραίτητος ἀνάγκη); at the same time, he rules out the interference of unstable forc-
es in the life of the wise man 39
Lucretius follows in the footsteps of the Greek sage by refusing to associate the clina-
men with random phenomena in the world He resorts to atomic deviation to justify,
from a theoretical point of view, the necessity of introducing the genitalis motus and the
magnarum rerum exordia into his conception of natural physics (2 219–224, 1059–1062):
the atoms stop moving in the same direction and, pushing against each other sponte sua,
form agglomerations We should also observe that Lucretius, in this matter, denies the
Stoic point of view: ‘For certainly neither did the first-beginnings place themselves by
design each in its own order with keen intelligence’ 40 However, our primary concern
is with the error of supposing that he would extend the spontaneous and purposeless
movement of atoms to the worlds already created Like the Greek philosopher, Lucre-
tius wanted to ensure that Epicurean philosophy respected the strict natural laws of ne-
cessity and causality: in his exposition of Epicurean cosmology, he emphasized terms
such as foedera, ordo certus, fines and leges The Roman poet recognized that the clinamen
is an exception to the normal movement of atoms (2 244), the slightest of deviations,
produced when they stray from the line of their trajectory at a distance nec plus quam
minimum Ever critical of Epicurean doctrine, Cicero, on the other hand, mocked this
principle (Fin 1 19 4: rem commenticiam, ‘a mendacious story’) 41
Besides the creation of worlds, Lucretius (2 216–293) assigned to the clinamen the
possibility of libera uoluntas in human actions Souls, which are composed of the finest
and most mobile atomic structures, and due to minimal deviation, succeed in break-
ing the fati foedera (2 254) and bring about actions that are not entirely determined
by pre-existing conditions in nature The poet uses Epicurean physics to theoretically
justify the occurrence of these spontaneous actions with regular experiences of the
world, without resorting to the causation operated by a divine soul or mind To un-
derstand how rigorous and well founded his reasoning is on this subject, we should
accept that actions qualified as contingent and unrelated to any purpose are neverthe-
less compatible with the natural laws of necessity The Roman poet asserts that such
actions result from antecedent conditions, as well as those experiences more readily
recognized as regular, and which respect the same continuous, strictly mechanical and
rational causations that Epicurean philosophers regard as the actual ‘rulers’ of nature
In the De Legibus, Marcus stated his disagreement with the Epicureans on two relat-
ed issues: the definition of natural reason, on which that of natural law depends, and
the basis of civic order in the Republic:

39 Long 1977, 63–69

40 Lucr 1 1021–22: nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum / ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente loca-
runt (translation by W H D Rouse)
41 Long 1977, 66, 71, 73–75
96 Maria Eichler

quid est enim uerius quam neminem esse oportere tam stulte adrogantem, ut in se rationem et
mentem putet inesse, in caelo mundoque non putet? aut, ut ea quae uix summa ingenii <uis
concipiat, nulla> ratione moueri putet?
Leg 2 16 2–6

What can be more certain than this, that no one should be so stupid and so arrogant as
to believe that reason and intelligence are present in him but not in the heavens and the
world? Or that those things which are barely understood by the highest intellectual rea-
soning are kept in motion without any intelligence at all?

etiam si uera dic<a>nt–nihil enim opus est hoc loco litibus, in hortulis suis iubeamus dicere,
atque etiam ab omni societate rei publicae, cuius partem nec norunt ullam neque umquam nosse
uoluerunt, paulisper facessant rogemus
Leg. 1 39 1–8

even if they [the Epicureans] are right (and there is no need to take issue with them here),
let us tell them to preach in their own little gardens, and let us ask them to keep away for
a little while from any participation in public life, an area of which they know nothing and
have never wished to know anything

The objection raised by Cicero is a rather frequent line of attack against the Epicureans
Human actions, supposedly unrelated to the laws that rule nature and the cosmos, on
which all other phenomena and occurrences in the world depend, would be entire-
ly accidental and random Such a misconception of Epicurean spontaneity and libera
uoluntas, whether intentional or not, conspired to disseminate, in the arena of pub-
lic communication, the complaint that adherents of the doctrine of the Greek master
sought to achieve only individual utility In this way, they would be indifferent to the
perspective of public utility 42 However, Lucretius recommends the key idea of the Epi-
curean thought system as a principle to guarantee legitimacy and critical consistency
in law; instead of recta ratio (Cic Leg 1 23 5, 1 33 11–12, 1 42 11), committed to a divinely
animated nature, he (1 54–57, 1 76–77, 1 148, 2 176, 2 1041–1045, 5 119) proposes the Epi-
curean ratio, i e the principle of the strictly mechanical causation of nature From this
point of view, we can only suppose how strange the idea of consecrating a sacred tem-
ple to Mens in Rome would be for him (Cic Leg 2 28 1) 43
The Roman poet creates, in the De rerum natura, a stream of symbolic valences be-
tween Epicurean cosmology and the conceptual field of Roman politics and religion,
succeeding in articulating necessity and pure contingency, natural reason and freedom
of action 44 The author starkly criticizes the model of piety prescribed by Roman tra-
dition He is chiefly concerned with the consequences of its ‘restrictive’ and ‘punitive’

42 Pagnotta 2010, 7–8

43 Clark 2007, 11, 30, 47, 58, 66–67
44 Cf Marković 2008; Brown 2009, 179–196
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 97

character, as presented in the De Legibus We should notice that religious discipline

consists of a field of knowledge, involving, at the same time, the diligence regarding
‘practical virtues’, which is consistent with a ‘formal’ disposition, whereby a ‘legal’ as-
sociation with divine beings is instituted 45 Under such conditions, pietas becomes em-
bedded in a broader legal-normative framework, which implicates Roman gods and
citizens in a sort of ‘distributive justice’ (Cic DND 1 116) In other words, pietas is jus-
tice with respect to the gods
Lucretius condemns what he perceives to be the subversion of the sense of pietas
(3 84: rumpere et in summa pietate euertere suadet) He assumes that the ‘civic pact’ with
the gods, in the way prescribed by Roman religion, does not lead to a controlled and
reflected process of engagement with the divine sphere There was a risk of citizens ex-
ceeding the limits of religious zeal and surrendering to an irrational fear of anger, with
the prescriptions of gods held as ‘irascible’ Therefore, religious terror was incompatible
with a prudent attitude and wise self-awareness 46 Unlike the character Marcus, the
Roman poet considers that the tormented state of mind instigated by expectations of
divine punishment, instead of cooperating in the interests of social order and stability,
drives Romans to declare wars and to commit all kinds of crimes, putting their lives
constantly at risk 47
Lucretius encourages Roman leaders to reframe their piety by rescuing the funda-
mental premise of rationality, which should be grounded, in his view, in the laws of
nature Under such conditions, he argues that religious fear must be fought through
the pursuit of scientific speculation Epicurean philosophy should provide an insight
into the mechanics of the functioning of nature, which are required to ward off the fear
of divine judgements: ‘If you hold fast to these convictions, nature is seen to be free at
once and rid of proud masters, herself doing all by herself of her own accord, without
the help of the gods’ (Lucr 2 1090–1092) 48 The author seeks to warn the elite of his
time against any deviation in the pietas and the sequent arrest of the fundamental claim
of the libertas. Due to the excessive and irrational fear of the gods, Roman citizens,
humbled by the arbitrary will of ‘proud masters’, are compared to slaves, deprived of
rights and constrained by obedience to a master 49
It is possible to identify, throughout the De rerum natura, a wide range of critiques
directed at traditional forms of prayer, oaths, and other Roman religious formulas
which entreat the mediation of the gods 50 Lucretius understands the divine beings’
mode of action quite differently from that characterized in the De Legibus. Just as the

45 Wirszubski 1950, 8
46 Sedley 2004, 35; Clay 2007, 41; Warren 2009, 234–248
47 Konstan 2007, 8
48 Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur / libera continuo, dominis privata superbis, / ipsa sua per se
sponte omnia dis agere expers See Sedley 2004, 35; Warren 2009, 234–248
49 Wirszubski 1950, 1, 3–4, 7; Arena 2012, 14
50 Beard 1991, 35–54; Hahn 2007, 248; Beltrão/Eichler 2014, 13, 16–17, 25
98 Maria Eichler

gods do not interfere with the workings of nature, they do not get involved in human
affairs: ‘for the very nature of divinity must necessarily enjoy immortal life in the deep-
est peace, far removed and separated from our affairs … needing us not at all, it is
neither propitiated with services nor touched by wrath’ (Lucr 1 44–49) 51 It is also
meaningful that Lucretius drew up the first philosophical prayer in Latin, addressed to
Venus, which reveals his willingness to reformulate the discursive practices associated
with religio publica.52 However, we should not conclude from this that he was inclined
to think that the gods were completely absent from human experience 53 Ultimately,
Epicureans acquire their own notion of tranquillity and pursue ataraxía (‘imperturb-
ability’, the condition to achieve eudaimonia, ‘happiness’) from the simulacra (‘subtle
and weakly perceptible images’) of the gods and from divine serenity 54 The author was
truly committed to persuading the Roman elite that the only appropriate and ‘true’
pietas, imperative for its social position and expected in the exercise of its political and
religious obligations, should be based on Epicurean ratio:55
quae nisi respuis ex animo longeque remittis
dis indigna putare alienaque pacis eorum …
nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis,
nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur
in mentes hominum diuinae nuntia formae,
suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace ualebis
Lucr 6 68–69, 75–78

Unless you spew all these errors out of your

mind, and put far from your thoughts unworthy of the
gods and alien to their peace …
You will not be able to approach their shrines with placid heart,
you will not have the strength to receive with tranquil
peace of spirit the images which are carried to men’s minds
from their holy bodies, declaring what the divine shapes are

51 … omnis enim per se divum natura necessest / immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur / semota ab
nostris rebus seiunctaque longe; / nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, / ipsa suis pollens opibus,
nihil indiga nostri, / nec bene promeritis capitur nec tangitur ira
52 Brunt 1997, 186; Feeney 1998, 44; Sedley 2004, 15–16; Clay 2007, 18–47; Beltrão/Eichler 2014, 16,
18–19, 25–26
53 Beltrão 2007, 19
54 In Epicurean physics and logic, the simulacra are emanations of objects, thin images that detach
themselves from them and hit our eyes See Milanese 1992, 95 n 11; Sedley 2004, 39–42; Konstan
2007, 31, 33–34, 36, 40; Sers 2012, 262–263 n 3–4
55 Clay 2007, 41
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 99

Lucretius was confident that Rome’s political and religious authorities, steered by
verses written, according to Cicero (Q. fr 2 9) himself, with ars and ingenium, would
commit themselves to ethical precepts derived from Epicurean physics The scientific
investigation into nature would lead Roman magistrates and priests to accept a ‘prac-
tical life orientation’ which could change their ways of thinking and feeling, allowing
them to correct false judgements and errors of reasoning In this way, they could apply
the reflection on the superior nature of deities to the exercise of their political-religious
functions 56
With regard to the current conception about the agency of divine beings, Lucretius
expends an enormous amount of argumentative uis against the way in which priests
and magistrates deal with the signs allegedly sent by the gods In the De Legibus, Mar-
cus stresses the part that fear and divine punishment play in discouraging impious
conduct In this matter, the uates performed a strategic function In fact, the first cen-
tury BCE saw the dissemination of an increasing number of detailed and frightening
predictions In turn, the growing influence of the ‘terrifying’ words of the seers did
not escape Lucretius’ attention (1 102–109: uatum terriloquis dictis), full of threats of
after-death punishment directed at those involved in impia facta The Ciceronian dia-
logue suggests the ‘exacerbation’ of a religious disposition in the public sphere, about
which the De rerum natura expresses, in the words of T P Wiseman, the ‘obverse’ or,
otherwise speaking, the vigorous reaction and the controversial reply 57 The Roman
poet contests the conservative approach of religion as presented in the De Legibus to
claim the exact opposite (1 80–86, 1 99–101, 3 60–61) He denounces the effects of re-
ligious terror as follows: the diviners’ words would encourage the citizens to declare
wars and commit crimes, thereby disrupting the salus publica of Rome 58 Instead of tac-
it and immediate compliance with Roman orthopraxy, Lucretius incites, mainly in the
passages dedicated to the meteorological phenomena, controversy and discussion:59
hoc est igniferi naturam fulminis ipsam
perspicere et qua ui faciat rem quamque uidere,
non Tyrrhena retro uoluentem carmina frustra
indicia occultae diuum perquirere mentis.
Lucr 6 379–382

This is to understand the true nature of the fiery thunderbolt, and to see by what power it
plays its part; not by unrolling the scrolls of Tyrrhenian charms, vainly to search for signs
of the hidden purpose of the god

56 Feeney 1998, 44; Sedley 2004, 15–16; Tsouna 2007, 217; Beltrão/Eichler 2014, 1, 24–25
57 Wiseman 1992, 53
58 Konstan 2007, 8
59 Linder/Scheid 1993, 54; Brunt 1997, 188; Sedley 2004, 35; Ando 2008, 10–14, 17; Taub 2009, 105–124
100 Maria Eichler

Like Cicero, Lucretius was actively involved in the theological debate and reflection on
the unsettling increase in the use of divine signs as instruments of political control 60
Building on his clear awareness of the complex set of regulations on divinatory rit-
uals and oracular consultations, he instructed Roman magistrates and priests to guide
themselves in line with Epicurean ratio in their decision-making processes, against the
unstable and uncertain backdrop of late Republican politics Even Cicero recognized
that, ‘in such great and complete upheaval and confusion one must be guided by the
circumstances (temporibus parere), not by standard procedures (quam moribus)’ 61 The
political crisis had precipitated the religious terror and the expectation for divine signs
of disapproval and hostility Epicurean ratio brought about the potential to remove the
Roman elite from the annihilative logic of the factions and from the irrational fear of
the gods, restoring the libertas with which one should act for the benefit of the res publi-
ca 62 Furthermore, Epicurean ratio may rather appropriately be defined, borrowing the
words of R Koselleck, as a ‘concept of expectation oriented to fulfil emerging needs
and demands’ 63 In the face of the challenge of running the complex and expanding
structure of the imperium Romanum, which encompassed an ethnically and religiously
diverse territory, Lucretius articulated a model of public action driven by Epicurean
ratio.64 For that purpose he committed himself to making full use of Epicurean ethical
praxis and philosophical therapy He thus put forward a exemplary model of prudentia
that could contend with divergent formulas of this political virtue par excellence, devel-
oped under Hellenistic thought systems circulating in Rome in the first century BCE
(e g the Ciceronian recta ratio) Prudentia originates from the verb prouideo, ‘seeing
before’ or ‘seeing ahead’, and can be understood as the ability to see something about
to happen from a clear understanding of the present 65
Throughout the De rerum natura, Lucretius seeks to ‘convert’ his readers and listen-
ers, and persuade them of the public utility of Epicureanism (1 402–409; cf 2 123–124)
In doing so, he assigns Epicurean phronesis a crucial role in advancing the skills re-
quired of a prudent Roman political and religious authority A number of Epicurean
exercises and precepts set out to increase awareness about present concrete situations
and the capability of planning future actions through the continuous exercise of reck-
oning long-term advantages and disadvantages in decision-making Among them, the
rational calculation of pleasures and pains and the instructions stated in the ‘theory

60 Beard 1986, 33–46; Schofield 1986, 47–65; North 1990, 49–71; Rüpke 2005, 217–219; Santangelo
2013b, 3–7
61 Phil 11 27 2–4: necesse est enim in tanta conuersione et perturbatione omnium rerum temporibus potius
parere quam moribus (transl D R Shackleton Bailey, LCL)
62 See esp Wirszubski 1950 and Arena 2012
63 Koselleck 2006, 101, 116, 305–306, 310
64 Habinek 1998, 35–36; Beard/Crawford 1999, 1–2, 11
65 See Santangelo 2013b, 57–61 and his contribution to this volume
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 101

of multiple explanations’ are notable examples 66 However, the Epicurean notion of

time is the main principle behind Lucretius’ statement of an effective model of pru-
dent action The study of Epicurean physics leads to a lucid and undisturbed view of
time The educated eye of the Epicurean disciple is equipped to overcome the fatal and
capricious quality of euenta and to see the regular and repetitive occurrence of tempus
certum (2 183)

Bibliography

Ando 2008: C Ando, The Matter of the Gods. Religion and the Roman Empire, Berkeley 2008
Arena 2012: V Arena, Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic, Cambridge
2012
Beard 1986: M Beard, ‘Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse’, JRS 76 (1986),
33–46
Beard 1990: ead , ‘Priesthood in the Roman Republic’, in M Beard / J North (eds ), Pagan Priests
Religion and Power in the Ancient World, London 1990, 17–48
Beard 1991: ead , Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion’, in
J H Humphrey (ed ), Literacy in the Roman World, Ann Arbor 1991, 35–58
Beard/Crawford 1999: M Beard / M Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic. Problems and Interpre-
tations, London 1999
Begemann 2017: E Begemann, ‘Ex Faucibus Fata – Fate and Destiny in the Ciceronian Oeuvre’,
Mythos 10 (2017), 107–124
Beltrão 2007: C Beltrão, ‘Lucretii poemata: A linguagem da política no De Rerum Natura’, Revista
Mirabilia 7 (2007), 9–21
Beltrão 2008: ead , ‘Considerações em torno de religio em suas manifestações literárias’, Cadernos
do CEIA 1 (2008), 77–88
Beltrão 2013: ead , ‘Religião, escrita e sistematização: reflexões em torno dos Annales Maximi’,
Revista Tempo 35 (2013), 229–248
Beltrão 2014: ead , ‘Prudentia e Prudens em Cícero: Religião, Jurisprudência e os Poderes do Ma-
gistrado’, R. EMERJ 64 (2014), 49–66
Beltrão/Eichler 2014: C Beltrão / M Eichler, ‘Lumina solis: Lucrécio e a prece à Vênus (De rerum
natura I, 1–43)’, Romanitas 4 (2014), 10–29
Berthelet 2015: Y Berthelet, Gouverner avec les dieux Autorité, auspices et pouvoir, sous la République
romaine et sous Auguste, Paris 2015
Bouché-Leclercq 1871: A Bouché-Leclercq, Les Pontifes de l’ancienne Rome, Paris 1871
Bourne 1977: F C Bourne, ‘Caesar the Epicurean’, CW 70 (1977), 417–432
Brown 2009: E Brown, ‘Politics and Society’, in J Warren (ed ), The Cambridge Companion to
Epicureanism, Cambridge 2009, 179–196
Brunt 1997: P A Brunt, ‘Philosophy and Religion in the Late Republic’, in M Griffin-J Barnes
(eds ), Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, 2 vols , Oxford 1997, 174–98
Canfora 1993: L Canfora, Vita di Lucrezio, Palermo 1993

66 Bourne 1977, 422; Tsouna 2007, 216–217 Cf Hankinson 2013

102 Maria Eichler

Clark 2007: A J Clark, Divine Qualities. Cult and Community in Republican Rome, Oxford 2007
Clay 2007: D Clay, ‘The Sources of Lucretius’ Inspiration’, in M Gale (ed ), Lucretius, Oxford
2007, 18–47
Cottier 1999: J -F Cottier, ‘La Piété de Lucrèce’, in R Poignault (ed ), Présence de Lucrèce, Tours
1999, 37–50
Eichler 2015: M Eichler, ‘Um estudo sobre a recepção do epicurismo pela elite romana do século
I AEC: alguns problemas e revisão crítica’, Revista Cantareira 22 (2015), 95–104
Englert 2010: W Englert, ‘Philosophy of Cicero Early Philosophical Training and Writing’, in
M Gagarin (ed ), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, 7 vols , Oxford 2010,
136–143
Eshleman 2008: K Eshleman, ‘Affection and Affiliation: Social Networks and Conversion to Phi-
losophy’, CJ 103 (2008), 129–140
Feeney 1998: D Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs, Cambridge
1998
Gale 2007: M Gale, ‘Introduction’, in M Gale (ed ), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius,
Oxford 2007, 1–17
Gigandet 2003: A Gigandet, ‘Lucrèce: tradition poétique et combat éthique’, in A Monet (ed ),
Le Jardin romain: épicurisme et poésie à Rome: Mélanges offerts à Mayotte Bollack, Lille 2003,
171–182
Gladhill 2016: B Gladhill, Rethinking Roman Alliance: A Study in Poetics and Society, Cambridge
2016
Gordon 1990: R Gordon, ‘From Republic to Principate: Priesthood, Religion and Ideology’, in
M Beard / J North 1990, 179–98
Habinek 1998: T Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient
Rome, Princeton 1998
Hahn 2007: F H Hahn, ‘Performing the Sacred: Prayers and Hymns’ in J Rüpke (ed ), Companion
to Roman Religion, Oxford/Malden 2007, 235–248
Hankinson 2013: R J Hankinson, ‘Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Logic of Multiple Explanations’,
in D Lehoux / A D Morrison / A Sharrock (eds ), Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science, Oxford
2013, 69–98
Hölkeskamp 2010: K -J Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic, Princeton 2010
Konstan 2007: D Konstan, Lucrezio e la psicologia epicurea, Milan 2007
Koselleck 2006: R Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Cambridge 1985
Linder/Scheid 1993: M Linder / J Scheid, ‘Quand croire c’est faire Le problème de la croyance
dans la Rome ancienne’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 81 (1993), 47–62
Linderski 1986: J Linderski, ‘The Augural Law’, ANRW II 16 3 (1986), 2146–2312
Long 1977: A A Long, ‘Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism’, Phronesis 22 (1977), 63–88
MacRae 2016: D MacRae, Legible Religion. Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture, Cambridge,
Mass /London 2016
Mansfeld 1999: J Mansfeld, ‘Theology’, in K Algra / J Barnes / J Mansfeld / M Schofield (eds ),
The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge 1999, 452–478
Marković 2008: D Marković, The Rhetoric of Explanation in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, Leiden/
Boston 2008
Milanese 1992: G Milanese, Lucrezio. La natura delle cose, Milan 1992
Moatti 2008: C Moatti La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République
(IIe–Ier siècle avant J.-C.), Paris 1997
 Epicurean pietas and Political Action in Lucretius and Cicero 103

Moatti 2015: ead (transl J Lloyd), The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome, Cambridge
2015
North 1990: J North, ‘Diviners and Divination at Rome’, in M Beard / J North 1990, 49–71
Pagnotta 2010: F Pagnotta, ‘Il De legibus di Cicerone in chiave didattica: introduzione, sintesi,
note di approfondimento, bibliografia’, SIAC Mise en ligne 19 (2010), 1–24
Richardson/Santangelo 2011: J H Richardson / F Santangelo (eds ), Priests and State in the Ro-
man World, Stuttgart 2011
Rist 1972: J M Rist, Epicurus. An Introduction, Cambridge 1972
Rüpke 2005: J Rüpke, ‘Divination et décisions politiques dans la République romaine’, CCGG 16
(2005), 217–233
Rüpke 2007: id , ‘Roman Religion – Religions of Rome’, in J Rüpke (ed ), A Companion to Roman
Religion, Oxford/Malden 2007, 1–9
Rüpke 2009: id , Between Rationalism and Ritualism: On the origins of religious discourse in the
late Roman Republic, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (11) 2009, 123–144
Rüpke 2010: id , ‘Representation or Presence? Picturing the Divine in Ancient Rome’, ARG 12
(2010), 181–196
Rüpke 2011: id , ‘Different Colleges – Never Mind!?’, in J H Richardson / F Santangelo 2011, 25–38
Rüpke 2012: id , Religion in Republican Rome Rationalization and Ritual Change, Philadelphia 2012
Santangelo 2011: F Santangelo, ‘Pax Deorum and Pontiffs’, in J H Richardson / F Santangelo 2011,
161–186
Santangelo 2013a: id , ‘Priestly auctoritas in the Roman Republic’, CQ 63 (2013), 743–763
Santangelo 2013b: id , Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic, Cambridge 2013
Scheid 1984: J Scheid, ‘Le Prêtre et le magistrat Réflexions sur les sacerdoces et le droit public à la
fin de la République’, in C Nicolet (ed ), Des ordres à Rome, Paris 1984, 243–280
Scheid 1985: id , Religion et piété à Rome, Paris 1985
Scheid 2006: id , ‘Oral Tradition and Written Tradition in the Formation of Sacred Law in Rome’,
in C Ando-J Rüpke (eds ), Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome, Stuttgart 2006,
14–33
Schiavone 2005: A Schiavone Ius. L’invenzione del diritto in Occidente, Turin 2005
Schiesaro 1987: A Schiesaro, ‘Lucrezio, Cicerone, l’oratoria’, MD 19 (1987), 29–61
Schiesaro 2007: id , ‘Didaxis, Rhetoric and the Law in Lucretius’, in S Harrison / S J Heyworth
(eds ), Classical Constructions, Oxford 2007, 63–90
Schiesaro 2010: id , ‘Lucretius and Roman Politics and History’, in S Gillespie / P Hardie (eds ),
The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge 2010, 41–58
Schofield 1986: M Schofield, ‘Cicero for and against Divination’, JRS 76 (1986), 47–65
Sedley 2004: D Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge 2004
Sers 2012: O Sers (ed ), Lucrèce. De la Nature, Paris 2012
Sharrock 2013: A Sharrock, ‘Introduction’, in D Lehoux / A D Morrison / A Sharrock 2013, 1–24
Solmsen 1951: F Solmsen, ‘Epicurus and Cosmological Heresies’, AJP 72 (1951), 1–23
Szemler 1972: G J Szemler, ‘The Priests of the Roman Republic A Study of Interactions between
Priesthoods and Magistracies’, Latomus 127 (1972), 225
Taub 2009: L Taub, ‘Cosmology and Meteorology’, in J Warren (ed ), The Cambridge Companion
to Epicureanism, Cambridge 2009, 105–124
Thaler/Weisser 2016: N Thaler / S Weisser, Strategies of Polemics in Greek and Roman Philosophy,
Leiden/Boston 2016
Timpanaro 1994: S Timpanaro, ‘Introduzione’, in Della divinazione, Milan 1994, 7–104
104 Maria Eichler

Tsouna 2007: V Tsouna, ‘Philodemus on Emotions’, in R Sorabji / R W Sharples (eds ), Greek

and Roman Philosophy 100 BC – 200 AD, 2 vols , London 2007, 213–241
Van Haeperen 2002: F Van Haeperen, Le Collège pontifical (3ème s. a. C.-4ème s. p. C.): contribution
à l’étude de la religion publique romaine, Rome 2002
Volk/Williams 2015: K Volk / G D Williams, ‘Introduction’, in K Volk / G D Williams (eds ),
Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy, Oxford 2015, 1–12
Warren 2009: J Warren, ‘Removing Fear’, in id (ed ), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism,
Cambridge 2009, 234–248
Wirszubski 1950: C Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and
Early Principate, Cambridge 1950
Wiseman 1992: T P Wiseman, ‘Lucretius, Catiline and the Survival of Prophecy’, in id , Historio-
graphy and Imagination: Eight Essays on Roman Culture, Exeter 1992, 49–67
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight*
Federico Santangelo

It is by now fairly uncontroversial that Cicero has a central place in any attempt to write
the history of Roman religion in the late Republic No serious student of this period
embraces the view that he was a hypocrite or that he had a dissociated and inconsist-
ent position on religious matters – that he was a skeptic in private who made public
statements of allegiance to traditional religion that contradicted his actual views The
more recent prejudice, advocating that Cicero’s philosophical work be disregarded
by historians of Roman religion because it is uninformative on matters of ritual, has
also been overcome by a growing body of work over the last decade or so 1 There is a
great deal of information on the workings of public religion that may be drawn from
his treatises, and this is even more emphatically the case with some of his political
speeches While it is clear that Cicero’s assessment of religious problems reflects an
intellectually sophisticated perspective, it is also apparent that his views are those of a
very informed and involved witness of Roman religion His role in the process, defined
with a fair degree of approximation, of rationalization and change in late Republican
culture has been duly examined 2 It is clear that Cicero’s viewpoint on Roman religious
practice and change is a partial one: after Andreas Bendlin’s powerful case for the ‘mar-
ket model’, hardly any single vision of Roman religion can claim a central role – but a
whole range of options can each take their rightful place in a diverse field of competi-
tion and interaction 3
Some recent work has shed welcome light on Cicero’s reflection on the problem of
the division and tension between human and divine status: notably, Spencer Cole has

* I am grateful to members of the audience at the Rio conference for their reactions to the argument
presented in this paper and to Katherine East, Lauren Emslie, Adriano Scatolin, Luciano Traversa,
and the PAwB series editors for their valuable comments on previous drafts
1 See Wardle 2006, 1–27; Harries 2006, 149–169 (esp strong on augural matters); Begemann 2012;
Santangelo 2013, 10–68, 174–181; Cole 2013; Volk 2017, esp 334–342 See also Gildenhard 2011 on
religion in Cicero’s speeches For a crisp statement of the opposite view cf Gradel 2002, 3
2 A very selective list: Rawson 1985a; Moatti 1997 (revised English edition: Moatti 2015); Habinek/
Schiesaro 1997; Wallace-Hadrill 2008, esp 213–312; Rüpke 2012; MacRae 2016, 28–75; Wynne 2019
3 Bendlin 1998 and 2000
106 Federico Santangelo

devoted an important monograph to Cicero’s contribution to a major shift in Roman

political and intellectual life, which was enabled by the formation of a novel symbolic
vocabulary 4 A central role in the unfolding of this process is the speech that Cicero
gave in 66 BCE in favour of the bestowal of a command in the East upon Pompey,
whose talents and ability are described in highly creative and innovative terms The
leadership of Pompey is described as a quality combining both human and divine at-
tributes As Cole felicitously puts it, there is an ‘improvisational quality’ to the way in
which Cicero constructs his account of the talents of the commander 5 Cicero is busy
devising a new language, and he is duly experimenting with its potential, striking a
careful balance between innovation and continuity as well as between creative engage-
ment with the Hellenistic tradition of panegyric and attempts to present the merit of
Pompey in a way that is congenial to the celebration of military valour that permeates
Roman political discourse 6 The argument Cicero deploys is as sophisticated as it is
qualified: he expresses his appreciation of Pompey in highly distinctive shifting tones
Each aspect of his argument must be understood as part of a greater whole, and due
attention should be paid to the tone with which the acclaim of Pompey is bestowed
and qualified
The methodological point made by Cole is worth applying more broadly to Cicero’s
body of work and is especially pertinent to the exploration of the problem that we shall
discuss in this context: the role of divine and human foresight in Cicero’s thought The
semantic field of foresight and prediction in Latin is chiefly conveyed by the verb proui-
dere, which could roughly be translated as ‘to foresee’, ‘to see ahead’, by the nouns that
are derived from it, prudentia and prouidentia, and by the related adjective, prudens 7
Needless to say, the language of foresight in Latin is not exclusively conveyed by those
terms and must be charted across a broader range of usages However, applying the
technique of Wortstudien to De imperio Cn. Pompei can yield instructive results, and
may be a useful part of a wider project of Begriffsgeschichte
The verb prouidere occurs twice in the speech, and both instances are very political-
ly loaded The first, in section 20, invites the audience to take the conflict in the East
seriously, and to avoid the pitfall of overlooking what ought to receive very focused
attention: in quo maxime laborandum est, ne forte ea uobis quae diligentissime prouidenda
sunt, contemnenda esse uideantur (‘my chief task lies in persuading you not to underes-

4 Cole 2013
5 Cole 2013, 43; his whole discussion of De Lege Manilia (34–48) is important See also Gildenhard
2011, 257–272, whose discussion of the experimental nature of Cicero’s engagement with religion,
notably in his speeches, is essential reading
6 See also Gildenhard/Hodgson et al. 2014, 143–144 for the suggestion that Cicero is ‘playing with
fire while trying to avoid a conflagration: he nudges Pompey skywards without explicitly claiming
divinity for him’; cf Gildenhard 2011, 258–259
7 For a discussion of these terms, see Santangelo 2013, 56–68
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 107

timate those factors for which you need to make most careful provision’) 8 Prouidere
is here deployed in the sense of ‘attending to’ or ‘taking steps towards’, which is co-
terminous with the domain of predicting, but pertains first and foremost to political
practice The burden of taking effective action rests on the people; Cicero takes upon
himself the task of steering his audience accordingly The second occurrence arises at a
crucial stage of Cicero’s construction of Pompey’s excellence, and notably of his uirtus:
he enumerates all the uirtutes imperatoriae, and claims that Pompey exhibits each to a
greater extent than any other commander The sequence is arranged in an ascending
order, opened by labor in negotiis, ‘industry in public business’ and culminating with
consilium in prouidendo, which may (somewhat laboriously) be translated as ‘discern-
ment in foreseeing’ (29) 9 The reference to consilium introduces one of the speech’s
key themes, which is further developed in a number of instances Pompey’s consilium
has already been thematized as a force of unrivalled might earlier in the speech: Cice-
ro has spoken of the diuinum consilium and singularis uirtus that enabled him to over-
come the threat presented by Sertorius in Spain during the seventies, a war that may
be regarded as a prequel of sorts to the Mithridatic campaign, since the leader of the
Roman breakaway state in the Iberian peninsula had been in talks with the King of
Pontus, increasing the likelihood of a formidable alliance between the two enemies of
Rome The judgement that Pompey exercised on that occasion is crucially qualified by
an adjective that closely associates him with the gods, without quite equating him to
them Since consilium is related to the domain of foresight, in Pompey’s case we have
an indication of his affinity with the foresight and clairvoyance exhibited by the gods
Consilium is a quality which other individuals – Lucullus, Cn Cornelius Lentulus, and
Cicero himself – display (20, 68, 69) Only Pompey’s consilium, however, may be re-
garded as divine; only he can bring to a resolution a war that appears to have been
caused by a diuinum consilium of sorts, whose ultimate aim may be regarded as ending
the other wars in which Rome is implicated (42)
The divine ability of Pompey to attend to the matters of state opens two avenues
of discussion: it looks, so to speak, both forwards and backwards On the one hand,
this propensity to speak of the divine merits of a political figure becomes an increas-
ingly prominent and effective way of stressing his significance in a harshly competi-
tive context It foreshadows the scenario in which Caesar will assert his own divine
status, and in which the imperial cult will eventually emerge as a structural feature of
the political context, in Rome and across the empire On the other hand, it harkens
back to a tradition that is well established in Greek thought, and has in turn developed
strongly in Rome, notably through the work of Cicero: the problem of divine foresight

8 Transl H Grose Hodge, LCL, modified

9 Linderski 2013, 64 discusses this expression at some length and rightly takes issue with the LCL
translation, ‘wisdom in strategy’; his suggestion to translate consilium as ‘caution’ is less compel-
ling
108 Federico Santangelo

The theme had been discussed by both Plato and Aristotle The Timaeus, a work that
Cicero translated into Latin, speaks of a divine pronoia through which the world is
governed as a living and intelligent being (10) The well-known story of the swan song
in the Phaedon (84e–85d) is a reflection of the ability to recognize well in advance the
rewards of death: an insight that is conferred upon swans by Apollo, and that Plato
defines by resorting to the notions of divination (84e: τὴν μαντικήν) and prediction
(85b: μαντικοί τε εἰσι καὶ προειδότες τὰ ἐν Ἄιδου ἀγαθὰ).10 The parable is recounted in
sympathetic terms, closely mirroring the Greek text, in the Tusculanae, where Cicero
speaks in terms of diuinatio and prouidere (1 73–74) The problem is developed else-
where in the same book: a few paragraphs above (1 66), Cicero gives an extended quo-
tation from the Consolatio – a lost work he wrote shortly after the death of his daughter
Tullia – in which he puts forward a summary of the Aristotelian view of the problem
Souls do not have their origin on earth, and any form of mental capacity is of divine
origin – be it memory, thought, or reflection: the ability to recall the past, anticipate
the future, or grasp the present In this vision, human foresight is directly inspired by
divine foresight Moreover, in the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle reflects on the source of
human fortune and posits a link between success and divine favour by speaking of a
θεία εὐτυχία, a ‘divine fortune’ that befalls one when they choose to follow their natural
instinct 11
It would be hasty to conclude that Cicero uncritically accepts these philosophical
theories, or that he is contradicting himself within the framework of the same text
The references to the connections between divine providence and human foresight
are a strong indication of Cicero’s familiarity with a rich philosophical tradition, in
which these problems had been extensively discussed As ever, the context is of great
importance, and genre-specific considerations play a major role While a debate on
prediction is always of broad political significance, it is less directly preoccupied with
current political developments than is the case in a speech such as De Imperio. Cicero
had read and reflected widely on the problem of prediction In the second book of De
Natura Deorum, through the voice of Balbus, he expounds the Stoic theory of divine
providence, which regards the world as an entity driven by an intelligent design The
Stoic spokesperson cautions against the misconception of prouidentia as a single divine
entity (2 73) Even in this highly abstract mode of thinking, however, the explanatory
power of the political implications of the metaphor prove especially persuasive: when
one speaks of prouidentia, the word deorum is always implied, just as one always means
‘of the Areopagus’ when one says that the commonwealth of the Athenians is ruled

10 See the recent discussion of this passage, and the role of foreknowledge in the Phaedo, in Struck
2016, 50–52
11 Arist Eud. Eth. 8 21248b See Traversa 2017, 27–28, building on Lepore 1954, 236–240
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 109

by the ‘council’ (Atheniensium rem publicam consilio regi) 12 The analogy between the
council of the gods and the ancient, distinguished body that played a central role in
the government of Athens remains a productive one; it is worth noting in passing that
the words prouidentia and consilium are again juxtaposed, as they were in De Imperio,
although consilium is here used in a concrete meaning, to convey the notion of ‘assem-
bly’, rather than that of intelligence and wisdom
The importance of this dossier in Cicero has recently been revealed in a robust over-
view by Luciano Traversa, who has produced a valuable study of Cicero’s use of terms
that pertain to the semantic fields of foresight and risk 13 The two keywords around
which Traversa has framed his discussion are prouidentia and temeritas; he has also
rightly stressed the significance and richness of the semantic field of caution, cautio.14
Prouidentia, however, plays an arguably less central role in this debate than Traversa
posits: what is central to any discussion of the prediction of the future is the notion
of prouidere, from which a set of nominal and adjectival forms derive; the related verb
prospicere also plays a relevant role At any rate, Traversa’s discussion has the real mer-
it of showing that any further development of this debate can only come from close
textual engagement A survey of the instances in which Cicero discusses the remit and
potential of foresight can prove especially significant In his work there are a number of
references to the ability to foretell the future, and there are, more relevantly to our pur-
poses, some definitions of foresight that warrant close scrutiny Again, a fine balance
should be sought between the aim to chart the development of Cicero’s thought on
this problem and the ambition to seek consistency, or identify contradictions (which
are largely determined by differences in approach and tone, and are often context-de-
termined)
The earliest attempt to define foresight in Cicero’s work may be found in his rhetori-
cal treatise, De Inuentione, probably written between 91 and 88 BCE, and certainly dat-
ing from his youth At 2 159–169, Cicero confronts the problem of how to define what is
honourable (honestum), which he divides into two components, uirtus and utilitas; uir-
tus is in turn divided into four parts, the first of which is prudentia (2 160) The whole
discussion is built upon a dialectical mode: definitions are chiefly achieved through
careful attempts to divide up complex problems into relatively simpler ones, which,
in turn, may likely be subdivided into further units Prudentia is, in turn, composed
of memory, intelligence, and providence As we have seen above, a similar distinction
between mastery of the past, the present, and the future is attained in the passage of
the Consolatio evoked in the first Tusculana In De Inuentione, however, there is a strik-
ing terminological twist: prouidentia is defined as a component of prudentia Strictly

12 Rawson 1985b, 66 (= 1991, 467) notes that the word consilium ‘blurs the distinction between politi-
cal and judicial roles’; cf 465–467 on the presence of the Areopagus in Roman Republican culture
13 Traversa 2017 Cf also Traversa 2015
14 On the links between caution and foresight, see also Linderski 2013, 64–65
110 Federico Santangelo

speaking, the two terms are etymologically identical: they both derive from prouidere;
the word prudentia is a contraction of prouidentia There is, however, a more specific
distinction between the two concepts: while prouidentia is explicitly focused on the
knowledge of the future, prudentia is a form of knowledge that encompasses three lev-
els of time As has long been recognized, its remit can be closely associated with the
Greek philosophical concepts of phronesis or sophia: it is, in other words, a notion that
is better understood as ‘wisdom’ than as ‘foresight’, although it does encompass the
foreknowledge of the future A largely similar definition of prudentia is advanced in the
Partitiones Oratoriae, written in 54 BCE, where this quality is regarded as synonyms of
calliditas, ‘shrewdness’, and sapientia with a loftier name (grauissimo nomine): they all
derive from scientia (76) A distinction is drawn between the prudentia to be deployed
in domestic contexts, and that used in political settings: prudentia ciuilis
Cicero returned to the problem in later works, where his engagement with the issue
is arguably less derivative from Greek traditions, and the balance between prudentia
and prouidentia is codified, at any rate, in very different forms In the Hortensius, writ-
ten in 45 BCE, he touched upon the problem in a context that eludes us, given the
fragmentary nature of the work (F58 Ruch = 96 Grilli): prouidere is a prerogative of the
wise man, the sapiens, and wisdom is hence known as prudentia This fragment is pre-
served by the late antique grammarian Nonius Marcellus, who also quotes, in the same
context, a closely comparable passage from the sixth book of De Re Publica, written in
the mid-fifties The discussion is here shifted from the role of the sapiens to that of the
ruler, the rector The context is highly fragmentary, yet again, but there is a sufficiently
clear statement of the source of the prudentia that is to be expected of a ruler: totam
igitur expectas prudentiam huius rectoris, quae ipsum nomen hoc nacta est ex prouidendo
(ap. Nonius 42 3 Lindsay: ‘what you look for, then, is an account of the ruler’s pruden-
tia in its entirety, a quality which derives its name from foreseeing, prouidere’) In this
instance, there is no identification between sapientia and prudentia, but the political
implications of the concept are strongly stressed More importantly, the definition is
framed around rather different lines to those envisaged in De Inuentione: the etymo-
logical link with prouidere aligns prudentia with the engagement with the future, and
with the need to attend to it One can lay claim to prudentia in so far as they are able to
‘see ahead’, to use and display foresight 15
The problem is further explored elsewhere in De Re Publica – a work in which the
notion of ciuilis prudentia appears to be granted a pivotal role (2 45). In the first book
there is a concise definition of political foresight as the ability to see ahead (prospicere)
the changes and commotions that polities undergo and to keep them in check He who
manages to achieve it deserves to be saluted as ‘a great citizen and a nearly divine man’

15 Traversa 2017, 37–38 speculatively reads in Rep 6 1 an attempt to redefine the relationship between
prudentia and prouidentia
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 111

(magni cuiusdam ciuis et diuini paene uiri) 16 In the second book there is a discussion
of Romulus’ contribution to the development of augury which is inextricably linked
with the foundation of the city and his choice of a site for the new community In his
assessment of the decisions made by the founder of the city, Cicero resorts to the se-
mantic field of prouidere with striking consistency: the choice of a site for the founda-
tion must be most carefully weighed up (diligentissime prouidendum) by whoever takes
up the task of setting up the new community; Romulus showed great ability to think
ahead (excellenti prouidentia) in deciding not to install the new city on the coast, but
instead further inland, to ensure it would be better protected from external attacks A
few paragraphs below (2 12), Romulus is further praised for the foresight he showed in
ordering the rape of the Sabine women, which would eventually serve the longer-term
stability and expansion of the city The reference to Romulus’ prouidentia is strongly fo-
cused on a decision based on the ability to anticipate the future and to shape decisions
accordingly Rather than denoting the quality of foresight in general, the word captures
the act of seeing ahead in the moment
The same approach is mirrored in the only other reference to prouidentia in Cicero’s
surviving work, which occurs in a political speech In the Third Catilinarian he relates
to the people the recognition he has received from the Senate for his work against
the conspirators, and he records the thanks he received for freeing the city from the
greatest threat uirtute, consilio, prouidentia mea (3 14) Again, prouidentia is associated
with consilium, and it seems to capture the meaning of foresight in action, that is, of
the act of foreseeing a danger before others, rather than the abstract, general notion of
prudentia Another reading, however, may well be possible: in the context of a political
speech, especially one addressed to the people, the reference to prouidentia is margin-
ally more intelligible than prudentia, and makes the etymological roots of the term
more transparent
This is the only reference to the noun prouidentia in Cicero’s political writings How-
ever, the reflection on prouidere and its related terms is further developed in other later
works In the first book of De Legibus, Marcus offers a working definition of prudentia
that further develops the visual metaphor of prouidere (1 60): he describes the progress
of an increasingly accomplished intellect that has developed the ability to distinguish
what is good and what is bad, just as the eyes do; that ability (uirtus) is called pruden-
tia and its etymological connection with prouidere is stressed In this case, prudentia
is defined as a quality that might inform choices for the future, but is not primarily
preoccupied with the prediction of the future;17 the concept alludes to the potential
to make sharp, carefully considered choices when confronted with problems in the
here and now Far from being a virtue that is displayed in exceptional cases – when a

16 See Rep. 1 45, with Traversa 2017, 28–29, who posits a link with Aristotle’s θεία εὐτυχία
17 See Dyck 2004, 230
112 Federico Santangelo

crisis is unfolding, a city is founded or a conspiracy is plotted – it is a virtue that must

be deployed on a regular basis, if one is to make his way through life in an orderly and
thoughtful way
Other passages of the dialogue engage with the problem of prouidere: this is hardly
surprising in a dialogue that has as its central preoccupation the establishment of the
laws of an ideal Republic A passage in Book 2 draws attention to another important
area of overlap between foresight and religion: when the state duties of the priests are
set out, special emphasis is placed on the responsibility of foreseeing the wrath of the
gods (diuorumque iras prouidento, sisque apparento), so that appropriate ritual action
can be taken Even those who are in charge of public cults, therefore, must make good
use of their foresight: they must make reasonable predictions to determine what sort
of ritual action the res publica requires 18
Unsurprisingly, the problem assumes further resonance in the De Diuinatione. The
language that Cicero uses, however, hardly features prouidere and its related terms, es-
pecially in Book 1, where the case in favour of divination is articulated by Quintus
Cicero One instance is especially significant, because it brings focus to the logic of
prodigies, and to the implications of the process of reporting and expiation: in Quin-
tus’ assessment, prodigies do not reveal the causes of events, but are an announcement
of what will happen, nisi prouideris, unless appropriate action is taken Again, the ac-
tion of prouidere is to be carried out in response to specific signs: their correct reading
can avert the occurrence of potentially unwelcome events In other contexts, the verb
can be associated with the sphere of prediction (2 63, futura prouidet) The most val-
uable reference to this appears towards the end of the book, when Quintus draws a
distinction between diviners and those who make non-divinatory predictions, based
on a rational assessment of the evidence that only few are able to carry out (whether
political or economic: Solon or Thales) Those men can be regarded as prudentes, id est
prouidentes (1 111; cf 2 13) The proximity between the two terms and their etymologi-
cal connection with the verb are yet again stressed 19 A third level of meaning is drawn
out in the final part of the book: the gods are running the universe with their prouiden-
tia – a notion that is drawn directly from the Stoic concept of providence (pronoia)
The same notion was used in De Natura Deorum, where the problem is defined in ex-
plicit terms (2 58), and where Balbus claims that pronoia can be indifferently translated
as prudentia or prouidentia; the second book of the dialogue includes extensive refer-

18 Cic Leg. 2 21 Dyck 2004, 307–308, who sees here a reference to a ‘qualified prediction’ Cf also the
previous paragraph, 2 20: quaeque quoique diuo decorae grataeque sint hostiae, prouidento (‘let them
establish what sacrificial victims are seemly and pleasing to each deity’) On this problem cf Are-
na’s contribution in this volume
19 Altman 2016, 190–192 brings out the significance of this passage in the context of his reading of the
dialogue as a Platonic project (see 179–195 for a detailed discussion of dreams in Div.)
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 113

ences to the notion of a divine providence that rules the world 20 This line of argument
is explicitly taken up and further developed by Quintus, who sees a firm connection
between the case in favour of divination and a theological vision in which the world is
ruled by their intelligent design (1 117: esse deos, et eorum prouidentia mundum adminis-
trari, eosdemque consulere rebus humanis, nec solum uniuersis, uerum etiam singulis)
In the second book of the De Diuinatione, Marcus makes reference to the semantic
field of prouidere only on a few occasions Yet these are crucial to the development
of his argument; he is keenly interested in the divide between divination and predic-
tion, and in defining what may be properly regarded as fortuitous, and therefore as
the object of divination in the working definition upon which Quintus has based his
argument At 2 14 he defines as fortuitous the things that cannot be foreseen through
a craft or through wisdom (nec arte nec sapientia prouideri possunt). The connection
of prouidere with the sphere of divination, however, is not lost Marcus returns to it
when he discusses the divinatory power of augury, and argues that Romulus may have
mistakenly regarded augury as a craft that had predictive value (2 70: in prouidendis
rebus augurando scientiam), a point he explicitly takes issue with and also touches upon
later in the dialogue, when he discusses the divinatory power of dreams (2 124, 126)
Even prudentia can pertain both to the sphere of prediction and to that of divination
It is the quality that those who produce expert predictions have (2 13), but it is also a
quality that the diviner Tages displays: he has the judgement of an old man, in spite of
his youthful appearance (2 50) 21
Other layers of meaning of prouidere are further pursued in De Officiis, Cicero’s last
philosophical work Prudentia is restored to its practical definition, which makes it
synonymous with sapientia, and distances it from meanings related to the prediction
of the future In one instance, however, the notion of prudentia is given further depth
(2 33): Cicero observes that there are cases in which people tend to lend credence to
those who are regarded as having greater power of understanding than them (quos
plus intellegere quam nos arbitramur); those individuals are deemed able to look ahead
at the future (futura prospicere) and, when necessary, to take a decision and act as ap-
propriate That is the form of prudentia that deserves to be regarded as both useful and
true There is no reason to regard this definition of prudentia as more comprehensive
or satisfactory than the other definitions that one encounters in Cicero’s oeuvre Yet it
captures the stakes of prudentia very effectively indeed This definition identifies the
term’s central focus as the ability to properly deploy analytical skills in the direction of

20 See DND 2 73–75, 77, 87, 98, 162 (on the latter passage see Wynne 2008, 144 n 145: some manu-
scripts have deorum prouidentia, others prudentia) Cf also the references to prouidentia in Cotta’s
Academic riposte (3 17 and esp 78 and 92) On the connection between prouidentia and divine
ratio, see 2 97–98 and 3 92
21 See also Div. 2 130, where it has the meaning of ‘intelligence’ (ad haec mediocri opus est prudentia an
et ingenio praestanti et eruditione perfecta?) Cf Wynne 2019, 196: ‘ordinary prudence’
114 Federico Santangelo

informing decisions about future conduct; it involves looking at the future, shifting the
visual metaphor to a deeper level of engagement, and replacing the notion of ‘looking
at’ with that of ‘contemplating intently’, prospicere A number of passages in Cicero’s
philosophical work show the same use of this verb as a synonym for prouidere First
and foremost, however, this passage discusses the notion of prudentia as a social qual-
ity, which is subject to the scrutiny and endorsement of the other members of a col-
lective Prudentia is fully recognized as such when people regard it as ‘useful and true’
(utilem … ueramque); such an emphasis on its positive qualities and social benefits,
conversely, draws attention to the potential for abuse, and to forms of alleged expertise
that purport to amount to prudentia, but are neither sound nor beneficial 22 Prudentia is
a human virtue – one that requires social validation and has to prove its worth
This takes us back, by way of conclusion, to the problem of divine foresight As Cole
reminded us, Cicero resorts to the term diuinus, ‘divine’, to extol the qualities of some
key figures at various points of his career after the speech on the Manilian law 23 In
September 46 BCE, Caesar is praised for his divine (or nearly divine) uirtus (Marc. 1: in-
credibilem sapientiam ac paene diuinam and 26: tua diuina uirtus) and Octavian receives
a memorable acknowledgement of his extraordinary qualities at the beginning of the
Third Philippic, which was delivered on 20 December 44 BCE (Phil. 3 3: incredibili ac
diuina quadam mente atque uirtute) 24 In the latter case, this language is used to praise
Octavian’s decision to devote a considerable portion of his personal fortune to raising
a private army These references are, of course, complicated and problematized by the
establishment of an official cult of Caesar in 45 BCE; in attributing divine qualities to
Octavian, Cicero is also contributing to the debate on Caesar’s deification, and on the
significance that divine qualities can claim in the political discourse
Yet divine attributes do not necessarily take precedence over all other factors The
Third Philippic offers another valuable case in point: as Cicero is charting the forces that
will combat the bad citizens that have rallied around Antony (3 36: sunt impii ciues), he
acknowledges the role of the consuls – firm champions of Roman freedom, summa
prudentia, uirtute, concordia – and then identifies a role for himself, as the one who will
continue being vigilant and exerting foresight well into the future (nobis uigilantibus et
multum in posterum prouidentibus) There might be a young man in town with intellec-
tual power and courage in divine proportions, but there is also room for other attribu-
tes, which occupy a less controversial place in Roman political culture 25 The interplay
of prudentia and prouidere assumes a further level of meaning here: the consuls will

22 Scatolin 2018, 143–144 stresses the connection between prudentia and fides in this passage and pos-
its a connection with the attack on Antony in the First Philippic.
23 Cole 2013, 39–40
24 On paene diuina cf the discussion of Rep. 1 45 at n 12 On the concept of mens diuina cf V Arena’s
contribution in this volume
25 Clark 2007 is the ideal starting point for further exploration of ‘divine qualities’; Perfigli 2004 is
also invaluable for the identification of the theological underpinnings of the problem
 Cicero on Divine and Human Foresight 115

exercise their foresight in the fulfilment of their official duties, while Cicero will task
himself with making long-term predictions: an act of vigilance and a complex intel-
lectual exercise In the same breath, Cicero also makes a prediction on what will soon
happen: if the people support this strategy, Rome will soon be free (liberi breui tempo-
re) and the newly regained freedom will be rendered more pleasing by the memory of
the recently endured oppression Although the prediction, as we know, turned out to
be wildly off the mark, it nevertheless retains its elegance and intellectual coherence,
and is a fitting conclusion to our discussion Future, present and past, then, turn out to
be inextricably and creatively interlinked The whole late Republican debate on fore-
sight is constantly preoccupied with the interplay of these three levels, at a time of
unprecedented civic and social upheaval

Bibliography

Altman 2016: W H F Altman, The Revival of Platonism in Cicero’s Late Philosophy. Platonis aemu-
lus and the Invention of Cicero, Lanham/London 2016
Begemann 2012: E Begemann, Schicksal als Argument: Ciceros Rede vom ‘fatum’ in der späten Repu-
blik, Stuttgart 2012
Bendlin 1998: A Bendlin, Social Complexity and Religion at Rome in the Second and First Centuries
BCE, Diss Oxford 1998
Bendlin 2000: id , ‘Looking Beyond the Civic Compromise: Religious Pluralism in Late Repub-
lican Rome’, in E Bispham / C Smith (eds ), Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy.
Evidence and Experience, Edinburgh 2000, 115–135, 167–171
Clark 2007: A Clark, Divine Qualities. Cult and Community in Republican Rome, Oxford 2007
Cole 2013: S Cole, Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome, Cambridge 2013
Dyck 2004: A R Dyck, A Commentary on Cicero, De Legibus, Ann Arbor 2004
Gildenhard 2011: I Gildenhard, Creative Eloquence. The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches,
Oxford 2011
Gildenhard/Hodgson et al. 2014: I Gildenhard / L Hodgson, et al., Cicero, On Pompey’s Com-
mand (De Imperio), 27–49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation,
Cambridge 2014
Gradel 2002: I Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, Oxford 2002
Habinek/Schiesaro 1997: T Habinek / A Schiesaro (eds ), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cam-
bridge 1997
Harries 2006: J Harries, Cicero and the Jurists. From Citizen’s Law to the Lawful State, London 2006
Lepore 1954: E Lepore, Il princeps ciceroniano e gli ideali politici della tarda repubblica, Naples 1954
Linderski 2013: J Linderski, ‘Ink and Blood Ernst Badian, Rome, and the Art of History’, in
C G Thomas (ed ), The Legacy of Ernst Badian, Erie, PA 2013, 59–78
MacRae 2016: D MacRae, Legible Religion. Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture, Cambridge,
Mass 2016
Moatti 1997: C Moatti, La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la république
(IIe–Ier siècle avant Jésus-Christ), Paris 1997
116 Federico Santangelo

Moatti 2015: ead (transl J Lloyd), The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome, Cambridge
2015
Perfigli 2004: M Perfigli, Indigitamenta: divinità funzionali e funzionalità divina nella religione ro-
mana, Pisa 2004
Rawson 1985a: E D Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic, London 1985
Rawson 1985b: ead , ‘Cicero and the Areopagus’, Athenaeum 63 (1985), 44–66 (= Rawson 1991,
444–467)
Rawson 1991: ead , Roman Culture and Society. Collected Papers, Oxford 1991
Rüpke 2012: J Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change, Philadelphia
2012
Santangelo 2013: F Santangelo, Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic, Cam-
bridge 2013
Scatolin 2018: A Scatolin, ‘Cicero’s Praise of Caesar in the Pro Marcello: a Reassessment of a Rhe-
torical Statement’, in L Calboli Montefusco / M S Celentano (ed ), Papers on Rhetoric XIV,
Perugia 2018, 135–150.
Struck 2016: P T Struck, Divination and Human Nature. A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical
Antiquity, Princeton-Oxford 2016
Traversa 2015: L Traversa, “Prudentia e providentia in Cicerone Il ‘ritorno al futuro’ dal de inven-
tione al de officiis”, Historia (2015), 306–335
Traversa 2017: id , Providentia e temeritas in Cicerone. Filosofia e prassi, Bari 2017
Volk 2017: K Volk, ‘Signs, Seers and Senators: Divinatory Expertise in Cicero and Nigidius Fi-
gulus’, in J König / G Woolf (eds ), Authority and Expertise in Ancient Scientific Culture, Cam-
bridge 2017, 329–347
Wallace-Hadrill 2008: A Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge 2008
Wardle 2006: D Wardle, Cicero. On Divination Book 1, Oxford 2006
Wynne 2008: J P F Wynne, Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: De Natura Deorum and De Di-
vinatione, Diss Cornell 2008
Wynne 2019: id , Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination,
Cambridge 2019
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero*
Greg Woolf

1. The Closing of the Roman Religious Mind

From the early fourth century BCE, the community of the Romans made positive ef-
forts to increase the number of gods worshipped through the public cults of the city
This phenomenon has been much discussed, and it is possible simply to resume its
main features 1
One of the earliest attested cases is the euocatio of Juno Regina from Veii by Camil-
lus and the dedication in 396 of a temple to house her cult statue on the Aventine The
rationale was apparently to win the goddess’ support prior to the destruction of Veii
As overseas expansion took off in the third century BCE, additional gods were brought
from further and further afield Later testimony presented many events as planned re-
sponses to crises A plague in 293 prompted the importation of Asclepius: his temple
was finished in 289 and a cult statue fetched from Epidaurus Dis and Proserpina ar-
rived from Sicily in 249 Ludi were established in honour of Apollo Medicus in 212
Ceres with her Greek priestesses arrived in about 205 Best attested is the bringing of a
statue of Magna Mater Deorum (Cybele) from Pessinus in Anatolia in 204, along with
some of her eunuch priests; a temple to her was built on the Palatine and dedicated
in 191 Like Apollo, she received ludi. At the Megalensia, and perhaps in front of the
Palatine temple, dramas were performed 2 There may well have been other examples 3

* I am grateful to the organisers of the conference in Rio in July 2017 and to the audience on that
occasion This version has been improved in addition by the comments of the audiences of the
2017 Postgate Lecture at the University of Liverpool and of a Classical Association meeting hosted
in May 2018 by the University of Reading
1 Orlin 2010 offers a fundamental survey; see also Beard/North/Price 1998 Key contributions are
made by North 1976 and 1979; Beard 1994; Arena 2011
2 Goldberg 1998
3 There is a long debate over whether an euocatio of Juno Caelestis was performed before the sack of
Carthage in 146 BCE The best evidence is from Macrobius (Sat. 3 9), writing in the fourth century
CE, but many have doubted this or suspected confusion with the euocatio of Juno Regina from
Veii For a summary of the positions see Ando 2008, 184–186
118 Greg Woolf

Each act of incorporation was treated as a particular case, but an emerging routine
is evident, at least to us The proposal to import a new god typically responded to the
results of divination reported to the Senate At least in some cases formal debates then
took place The incorporation of a new deity meant that she or he was assigned a priest,
a temple, and a festival fixed in the public calendar, with some funding for ritual Most
new gods were placed under the supervision of one of the senior priestly colleges, the
quindecimuiri sacris faciundis It is possible of course that both late Republican writers
and modern historians of Roman religion have smoothed out the variations to create
a sense of normative practice Whether or not any Romans understood the phenome-
non as a whole, as we do, as an attempt to recruit the favour of some of the Mediterra-
nean’s most powerful deities, is uncertain The cumulative result was, however, that the
gods of the world became the gods of the city
These appropriations depended on a set of underlying assumptions which we might
as well term theological, even if many were implicitly held or even embodied in prac-
tice rather than explicitly formulated and subjected to philosophical critique 4 One
such assumption was that foreign gods were real, and another was that they were (in
principle and within certain limits) translatable and transferable There were emergent
conventions about how to fit them into local structures of authority and allocate them
places in existing religious schemas 5 Polytheism made it easier to add new gods, but
the public cults were far from a free for all 6 The existence of senatorial priestly colleges
provided an adaptable management structure The topography of the city and the ex-
istence of a festal calendar provided maps of the sacred into which new gods could be
inserted Representational conventions provided ways of ranking and relating gods:
images of the gods were not all the same size, sanctuaries were zoned with important
gods placed in different spaces to less important ones, processions offered an occasion-
al additional way of ordering the gods and so on 7
One final precondition was that the new god be recognisably new in some respects
What counted as new varied from period to period The various Italian Junones – Juno
Regina from Veii, Juno Sospita from Lanuvium, Juno Lucina across Latium and several
others – look very much the same to us, but the differences evidently mattered enough
in Republican Rome for shrines to be built to each It has been suggested that when
Anatolian Cybele was ‘domesticated’ in Rome to become Magna Mater Deorum some
exotic elements were deliberately retained in order to signal the accommodation of
the foreign within the public rites of a city that was already self-consciously a world
power 8 That thesis is clearly generalisable

4 MacRae 2016
5 For some of these conventions see Scheid 1995a and Ando 2008
6 Bendlin 1997
7 Nock 1930; Scheid 1995b and 2003a
8 Beard 1994
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 119

Cybele was, however, the last major addition to the roster of foreign gods given pub-
lic cult during the Republic 9 There is no scholarly consensus about why the additions
of new gods – most intense during the third century BCE – seem to have stopped in
the early second Roman expansion had not brought an end to crises The invasion of
the Cimbri and Teutones in 114 BCE is a case in point as is Mithridates’ capture of all
Roman territory east of the Adriatic in 88–87 BCE The history of the late Republic is
full of portents too, and divination continued Yet none of this resulted in the introduc-
tion of more gods Something had clearly changed
These cults formed, together with older ones, the public religion of the Roman
state, the sacra publica performed by the state’s designated representatives at public
expense on behalf of, and for the benefit of, the community of the Romans Families
and individuals also performed cult and foreign gods had always been worshipped pri-
vately in Rome, by Roman citizens as well as others None of this made up part of the
public cult, but a connection was felt between the public cults and cult paid privately
by members of the community The point at which gods ceased to be imported coin-
cided quite closely with an increasing regulation of private cult Best attested was the
Bacchanalian affair of 186, one of the best documented episodes in Roman religious
history 10 It seems that a moral panic spread following the ‘discovery’ of an apparently
well-established ritual tradition in which the god Bacchus was worshipped in ways,
times, and places that did not conform to the norms of Roman religion 11 It is impos-
sible now to be sure which elements seemed most threatening, and the identity of the
deity was probably not one of them since Bacchus was well known and celebrated in
Rome Unfamiliar rituals, a religious organisation not based on households, districts
or citizenships, and an air of secrecy recur in accusations against worshippers of the
Egyptian and Jewish gods and against Christians 12 It is also possible that religious pan-
ic was itself an expression of a sense of crisis, but in that case an explanation is needed
of why the proper response was no longer to import foreign gods and instead to expel
their worshippers There were also, of course, always crises that might be appealed to
by innovators and regulators alike

2. Religious Openness in the Imperial Period

What is less often noticed is that this pause in the acquisition of new gods was only
temporary New gods reappeared in the City in the early first century CE, and expul-

9 For fuller accounts see Beard/North/Price 1998, 73–166 and Orlin 2010
10 For the broader context see Rawson 1973 (= 1991, 80–101); North 1976 and 1979 On the Bacchana-
lia see Paillier 1988
11 See Rüpke 2016
12 See Garnsey 1984; North 1992; Versluys 2004
120 Greg Woolf

sions of astrologers, Jews and worshippers of Isis ended around the same time The
most famous new temple is the Isaeum Campestre, begun by Caligula in the Campus
Martius, and then rebuilt on a lavish scale by Domitian 13 Later examples include pub-
lic worship of Elagabal and Sol Invictus, whose worship included many non-Roman
elements 14 The fourth century CE calendar of Philocalus includes festival days for Isis
and Serapis alongside the ancient games to Ceres, the Dioscuri and so on and more
recent celebrations of imperial victories The regionary catalogue that appears with it
lists a temple of Isis, a temple of Isis and Serapis, and a temple of Jupiter Dolichenus
alongside those of traditional gods of Rome
These cults were not public in exactly the same way as under the Republic, since
they were not introduced by the Senate resorting to divination in response to a crisis
The basis of religious authority had changed fundamentally and religious innovation,
whether presented as restoration of traditions such as the Saecular Games, or as the
introduction of a new god such as Elagabal, was firmly in the hands of the emperors
who had concentrated both financial decision making and religious authority in their
own hands 15 Emperors rarely admitted crises and did not use divination The senato-
rial colleges and priesthoods persisted until the fifth century CE, and senators contin-
ued to monopolise the performance of public cult in the City of Rome 16 The Senate
continued to have some religious functions including the voting of consecrationes on
the death of an emperor or close relative, voting for supplicationes in recognition of
imperial victories, the selection of Vestales, and the sanctioning of extraordinary games
and temple building 17 Yet senatorial decision making now always consulted the views
of the emperor Emperors decided which of their predecessors and relatives would
become gods on their death, and which temples would be built or repaired They also
made decisions about major festivals such as triumphs and saecular games, and in the
third century CE attempted to harness the ritual action of the newly enfranchised
masses to their agenda 18 This authority was not a behind-the-scenes secret since em-
perors took the credit for their management of the cults of the city on their coinage
As in the Republican period, a shift in public religion was echoed in private cult A
proliferation of temples to new gods is known throughout the city, set up and patron-
ised by individuals and groups Many were small and privately funded, like the mith-
raea and the synagogues Some foreign deities were now worshipped at older shrines

13 Versluysv/Bülow/Clausen/Capriotti Vittozzi 2018

14 Beard/North/Price 1998 once again provides a clear account
15 Zanker 1988; Gordon 1990b; Orlin 2007
16 Much of what we know of all colleges is from the records of the Arvals, created in the first three
centuries CE: Scheid 1990 On senators’ religious lives see Várhelyi 2010
17 See Talbert 1984, 386–391, noting that all the evidence for debate is from the Julio-Claudian period
For consecratio as a ritual devised by emperors, in which senators played a leading role, see Price
1987
18 Rives 1999
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 121

as happened on the Janiculum, where Syrian gods came to be worshipped in the Lucus
Furrinae This could be seen as a return to the gods of the world being the same as the
gods of the city The Christian apologist Minucius Felix, writing sometime in the sec-
ond century CE, wrote that while every nation had its own ancestral deity the Romans
worshipped all gods:
inde adeo per uniuersa imperia, prouincias oppida uidemus singulos sacrorum ritus gentiles
habere et deos colere municipes, ut Eleusinios Cererem, Phrygas Matrem, Epidaurios Aesculapi-
um, Chaldaeos Belum, Astarten Syros, Dianam Tauros, Gallos Mercurium, uniuersa Romanos.
Minucius Felix, Octavius 6

So we see that through all the empires and provinces and cities each people has their own
rites and all townsmen worship their own gods: the Eleusinians Ceres, the Phrygians the
Mother, the Epidaurians Asclepius, the Chaldeans Belus, the Taurians Diana, the Syrians
Astarte, the Gauls Mercury and the Romans all of them [the emphasis is mine]

Minucius Felix provides the most explicit description of this strand of Roman religious
imperialism He goes on to describe how, as their power and authority was extended
across the whole world, the Romans fortified their own city with religious rites and
sought out the gods of those they had conquered and worshipped them as well, going
on to seek the gods of strangers and make them their own It is polemic, and may draw
on Republican texts as much as contemporary thought, but it clearly rang true with
Roman Christians since the theme of the heterogeneity of the gods of the polytheists
is a staple in Latin apologetic writing 19 Through the third and fourth centuries the
range of deities worshipped by the elite continued to expand Mysteries of all kinds
attracted some senatorial initiates 20
All this highlights even more sharply how unusual the situation was during the late
Republic and the early first century CE For a period of just a few generations Romans
seem publicly and privately to have become hostile to other peoples’ gods: they tem-
porarily ceased seeking them out to afforce the public cults, and no longer made them
welcome in the city This was also the period in which Rome expanded most rapidly
and aggressively Soon after expansion ceased the city opened its doors again to alien
gods Might there be some connection between the two processes?

19 E g Firmicus Maternus’ On the Error of Profane Religions and Augustine’s City of God
20 Matthews 1973
122 Greg Woolf

3. Roman Religion and Imperial Expansion

The chronological correlation is striking, but establishing a link demands more inter-
pretative work There are good a priori reasons to pursue such a link Roman ideas of
the gods were naturally linked to ideas about conquest, given the centrality of war in
Roman public life: fetial law, the concept of bellum iustum, auguries held before com-
bat, battlefield vows of manubiae, the construction of trophies, and the ritual of the
triumph all exemplify the interpenetration of Roman public ritual and militarism 21
Many new gods had arrived following military victories or in anticipation of defeats
Manubial temples commemorated the active engagement of the gods on the side of
Rome Yet even if we accept the conventional view that changes in religious practice
responded, homeostatically, to changed hegemonic conditions, how are we to explain
the shift first away from, and then back to foreign gods?
A strong case has been made for an emerging belief among the Roman élite of some
form of divine mandate for conquest 22 This began in the middle Republic with a sense
of the Roman people as especially favoured by the gods on account of their exceptional
piety, and evolved into a series of more and more grandiose and cosmic conceptions
of their role The most explicit surviving version is that contained in the Aeneid, but
perhaps if we had more examples of earlier Latin epic things would look different
Statements on the exceptional piety of the Romans can in fact be found from the early
second century BCE in the letter of the Senate to the demos of Teos in 190 (Syll 3 601)
and in Polybius’ account of Roman piety (at 6 56) which presumably channelled his
host’s self-image 23 Cicero offers another version of this in his speech On the Response
of the Haruspices delivered to the Roman Senate in 56.24
quam uolumus licet, patres conscripti, ipsi nos amemus, tamen nec numero Hispanos nec robore
Gallos nec calliditate Poenos nec artibus Graecos nec denique hoc ipso huius gentis ac terrae
domestico natiuoque sensu Italos ipsos ac Latinos, sed pietate ac religione atque hac una sapi-
entia, quod deorum numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus, omnis gentis nationesque
superauimus
Cic Har. Resp. 19

However good be our conceit of ourselves, conscript fathers, we have excelled neither the
Spaniards in population, nor the Gauls in vigour, nor the Carthaginians in versatility, nor
the Greeks in art, nor indeed the Italians and Latins themselves in the innate sensibility
that is characteristic of this land and its peoples; but in piety, in religious devotion, and in

21 Harris 1979 and 1984 On triumphs see Beard 2007 On temples see Ziolkowski 1992 and Orlin
1996 On the Augustan continuation see Gros 1976
22 Brunt 1990; Gordon 1990a and 2008; Orlin 2007
23 North 1993
24 For a close reading of this passage cf M -E Cairo’s contribution in this volume
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 123

that special wisdom which consists of the recognition of the truth that the world is swayed
and directed by divine disposal, we have excelled every people and every community

The context of the speech and his rhetorical agenda at the time naturally make such a
declaration appropriate But the argument is presented as a re-statement of an evident
truth, one the senators seem to have been expected to recognise Together with the
Teos letter this does suggest ideas of this kind had been circulating in Rome for some
time
Many of the snapshots of cosmic and universalising aspirations probably reflect
ideas long in circulation 25 The idea of Romans as rulers of the oikoumene from the
second century BCE is made explicit by Polybius The adoption by two Scipiones of
the continental agnomina Africanus and Asiaticus perhaps shows similar aspirations
Most telling is the growing fascination with the figure of Alexander the Great during
the last century BCE: Pompey and Antony were as interested in him as were Caesar,
Livy, and Augustus 26 Who knows what imperial illusions circulated in the age of Ful-
vius Nobilior and Ennius?
Romans might, of course, have continued to import new gods as their power over
the Mediterranean expanded But it looks more as if a sense of Roman exceptionalism
was accompanied by a sense of the exceptional status of traditional Roman gods, rela-
tive that is to the gods of others There are few explicit formulations of this view, but
a famous one is the description of the battle of Actium at the climax of book 8 of the
Aeneid at which the Egyptian gods are portrayed fighting on Cleopatra’s side against
the traditional gods who back Octavian 27 It is a rare departure from epic convention in
which a single universal pantheon is portrayed, and squabbles within it serve to direct
the action and lend gravity to the sufferings of mortals 28
It is also a rare intrusion of alien gods into Roman public discourse in this period (if
we consider the Aeneid public discourse) Augustan expenditure on the public cults of
the city of Rome was focused entirely on traditional deities, on ancient places of cult
and on that subset of religious practices which were believed to date back to the regal
period Highlights of his building programme were the temple of Apollo on the Pala-
tine, the temple of Venus in the Forum Iulium, various building projects on the Pala-
tine and the temple of Mars Ultor Quirinus, Vesta, Mercury, the Dioscuri, and Con-
cordia were not neglected either The only new god honoured was Divus Iulius, the
least foreign of innovations The contrast with later imperial building is clear Funded

25 See Brunt 1978 on Caesar; Purcell 1990 on pre-Augustan elements in the picture of Roman ideolo-
gy summoned up in Nicolet 1988 On Augustan period universalism see also Hardie 1985; Ferrary
1998 looks back through last century BCE material to reconstruct second-century ideologies
26 Spencer 2002
27 Virg Aen 8 698–700: omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis / contra Neptunum et Venerem
contraque Mineruam / tela tenent
28 Feeney 1991 and also J Griffin 1980
124 Greg Woolf

by the most sustained period of foreign conquests in Roman history, the Augustan
‘restoration’ accentuated the more traditional and the less universal components of the
sacra publica But in this, Augustus was following, not setting, trends His successors
relaxed this emphasis and by the Flavian period at the latest Roman public religion was
reopened to the diverse ritual traditions of the Mediterranean world
It is not easy to relate this narrative of a closing and reopening of the Roman reli-
gious mind to current characterisations of Roman cultural change These characterisa-
tions typically combine in different ways an account of Rome’s changing relationship
with Greek culture, with an account of the expansion of Roman or Italian forms The
lifetime of Cicero is sometimes seen as the beginning of a period of intellectual eman-
cipation, in which traditional wisdom was replaced by wider, more rational intellec-
tual discourse, most deriving from the Greek world 29 It is also common to stress the
emergence of universalising ideas and values 30 These characterisations tend to present
narratives of unidirectional change, and sometimes appropriate from political history
a two phase periodisation such as ‘From Republic to Empire’ 31 The shifts in Roman at-
titudes to foreign cults cannot, however, easily be presented as a unilineal progression,
nor as falling into two phases It is a useful reminder of the limitations of schematic
accounts of cultural change
One interpretational model that initially seemed appealing was the notion of fun-
damentalism, understood as a religious response to the pressures of modernisation
through a renewed, if selective, assertion of tradition Fundamentalism has been inten-
sively researched, both as an aspect of nineteenth century CE and later Protestantism,
and also as a wider cross-cultural and global phenomenon, also evident for example
within Islam and Hinduism 32 Typically these movements involve the emergence of
new structures of authority, rhetorics opposing modernity, and appeals to traditional
forms and ethics which today often include new readings of sacred texts The resem-
blances with the Roman case are real Varro’s studies, in particular, have been some-
times seen as a response to changes of various kinds, such as the challenges posed
to Roman élite identity, by Italian enfranchisement, or the greater presence of Greek
intellectuals in Rome, and a greater awareness of alternative sources of scientific au-
thority His work is commonly presented as a project of recuperation, classification,
and curation of specifically Roman knowledge, and thus as a reassertion of traditional
values badged as mos maiorum If so – and the lack of most of his work makes all de-

29 Rawson 1985 and, with a different emphasis, Moatti 1997 (= Moatti 2015) For some doubts about
the underlying opposition of primitive Rome to sophisticated Greece see Feeney 1998; Purcell
2003
30 For example, with different nuances and employing different material, in Dench 2005; Inglebert/
Gros/Sauron 2005; Wallace-Hadrill 2008
31 For comments on how a political analysis has undergone a cultural term see Giovannini 2000 and
Wallace-Hadrill 2005
32 E g Martin/Appleby 1994
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 125

tailed reconstructions perilous – then fundamentalism might be an appropriate label

But the term also carries with it a great deal of anachronistic baggage – including the
notion of modernisation itself – and the costs of adopting the vocabulary now seem
higher than the potential rewards 33 It also perhaps offers a better way of understanding
the closing of the Roman mind than its reopening Modern studies are for obvious and
sad reasons much better at explaining how fundamentalism arises, than how societies
turn their backs on it
Instead it seems better simply to indicate this unexplored dynamic in the history
of Roman religion and to characterise it as a move from one kind of universalising
process (through the incorporation of new gods) to another (through the assertion
of the exceptional value of traditional practices) and then back again to a more in-
clusive vision of the divine That first change, for which evidence begins to amass in
the early second century BCE, is plausibly connected with a new sense of imperial
destiny The second change (the reversion to a more pluralistic notion of the divine)
seems to correlate with the obscure process by which the emperors renounced world
conquest despite the mass of ideological production promoting it The definitive end
of expansion was never announced, but even before the end of Augustus’ principate
enthusiasm for major wars of conquest had diminished Already before the middle of
the first century CE the emperors were digging in, and around the same time foreign
gods reappeared in Rome, both among the sacra publica and in private cult

4. Competing Strands of Theological Thought of the Age of Cicero

It is a well-known problem of analysis cast at a high level of generalisation that its

results tend to the schematic It is fortunate, then, that so much of our evidence for
Roman theological speculation comes from precisely this unusual period of Roman
religious history This material provides us with the means of breaking down the idea
of a monolithic Roman Imaginary since it definitely does not speak with a single voice
These diverse views about religion also provide part of the explanation for the re-
versibility of Roman attitudes to foreign gods A range of views were always current,
and what shifted was the balance, not a uniform perspective Texts like De haruspicum
responso and Livy’s narrative of the Bacchanalian dispute make it clear that consensus
was established in debate, and that the Senate and the senatorial colleges debated each
case on its particular merits rather than by applying general rules Shifting attitudes
towards alien gods emerged from these debates, as well as presumably from less formal
discussions It is no coincidence that so much was written about religious matters in

33 I am influenced by the interesting arguments contained in Barceló 2010; Barceló/Ferrer/Rodríguez

2003; and esp Scheid 2003b
126 Greg Woolf

this period: the last two centuries BCE saw a steady increase in the range of subjects
treated in Latin prose, a process that continued an earlier ‘translation movement’ de-
voted to drama and epic, and has often been linked to various moments of imperial
expansion 34 Therefore, it is not surprising that religious traditions became subject of
these literatures – it is present in Fabius Pictor’s historical work as well as in Cato’s
Origines – nor that pamphlets and books appeared alongside senatorial speeches and
private conversations as media in which ritual and the gods were discussed
Some of the voices we hear do reproduce a line very similar to the consensus em-
bodied in the sacra publica of the day That is true of the passage of De haruspicum
responso already cited Others cohere more or less closely with these views Caesar’s
account at the start of book six of The Gallic War of the religious activities of the Gauls,
begins by mobilising traditions of ethnographic discourse (Greek in origin) in order
to put distance between Gallic religious practices and Roman norms (presented as
normative) For his account of the Druids, he gathers together material plundered
from earlier ethnographic texts Posidonios is a likely source but there may have been
others, oral as well as written 35 Caesar’s account covers their role as arbiters, as wise
natural philosophers of the kind Greeks and Romans so often located at the edge of
the inhabited world, their belief in the transmigration of souls, and also their participa-
tion in human sacrifices So far a sharp separation between Roman and Gallic religion
is sustained When he moves on to the identity of the gods, however, things become
more complex
deum maxime Mercurium colunt. huius sunt plurima simulacra: hunc omnium inuentorem ar-
tium ferunt, hunc uiarum atque itinerum ducem, hunc ad quaestus pecuniae mercaturasque
habere uim maximam arbitrantur. post hunc Apollinem et Martem et Iouem et Mineruam. de
his eandem fere, quam reliquae gentes, habent opinionem: Apollinem morbos depellere, Mi-
neruam operum atque artificiorum initia tradere, Iouem imperium caelestium tenere, Martem
bella regere
Caes BG 6 16 1–2

Of the gods, the one they worship most of all is Mercury They have many images of him,
and regard him as the inventor of all arts, they consider him the guide of their journeys and
travels, and believe him to have great influence over the acquisition of gain and mercan-
tile transactions Next to him they worship Apollo, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Minerva;
respecting these deities they have for the most part the same belief as other nations: that
Apollo averts diseases, that Minerva imparts the invention of manufactures, that Jupiter
possesses the sovereignty of the heavenly powers; that Mars presides over wars To him,

34 Ferrary 1988; Wallace-Hadrill 1988 Translation moment: Feeney 2016 Links (of various kinds)
between Latin literary culture and imperialism: Gruen 1990 and 1992; Habinek 1998; Feeney 2016
35 For further discussion see Nash 1976; Krebs 2006; Woolf 2011
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 127

when they have determined to engage in battle, they commonly vow those things which
they shall take in war

Not only are the gods referred to by the Latin names of their (supposed) Roman ana-
logues, but their spheres of activity are mostly familiar These foreign gods turn out not
to be so foreign after all, even if there is no one like the Druids in Roman society and
if these familiar gods are worshipped in terrifyingly unfamiliar ways The passage con-
tinues with accounts of battlefield trophies, the terrifying sanctions that await those
who plunder them, and the teaching of the Druids that the Gauls are all descended
from Dis Pater
An even wider selection of ideas about foreign gods is provided by Cicero’s philo-
sophical writing Philosophy is by definition a universalising discourse – a project in
making claims that do not depend on local frames of reference or authorities – so it
lends itself to the marginalisation of local understandings But it did not follow that
this mode of universalisation would necessarily cohere with the universalist claims of
Rome in the age of its greatest expansion A certain amount of Cicero’s work often
does seem to be devoted to trying to close the gap between traditional custom and a
philosophical agenda: De officiis contains many passages of this kind But the dialogue
form was also exploited by Cicero to present a range of voices and views on a given
topic,36 and this included a range of views about foreign gods Most of the speakers in
these dialogues treat the actual religions of other peoples with casual disdain On the
surface, De Natura Deorum is preoccupied with staging a conventional confrontation
between philosophical schools but in Roman dress, philosophia togata, as it has appro-
priately been named 37 Religious traditions other than those of Greeks and Romans are
rarely mentioned But their rare appearances are revealing In book one Velleius’ confi-
dent demolition of earlier ideas of the gods concentrates its fire on the Presocratics and
the Stoics Only in his last words does he broaden the scope
exposui fere non philosophorum iudicia, sed delirantium somnia. nec enim multo absurdiora
sunt ea, quae poetarum uocibus fusa ipsa suauitate nocuerunt, qui et ira inflammatos et libidine
furentis induxerunt deos feceruntque, ut eorum bella, proelia, pugnas, uulnera uideremus, odia,
praeterea discidia, discordias, ortus, interitus, querellas, lamentationes, effusas in omni intem-
perantia libidines, adulteria, uincula, cum humano genere concubitus mortalisque ex inmortali
procreatos. cum poetarum autem errore coniungere licet portenta magorum Aegyptiorumque in
eodem genere dementiam, tum etiam uulgi opiniones, quae in maxima inconstantia, ueritatis
ignoratione uersantur
Cic DND 1 42–43

36 Beard 1986
37 Barnes / M Griffin 1997; M Griffin / Barnes 1989
128 Greg Woolf

What I have presented to you are not so much the verdicts of philosophers as the dreams
of madmen Not much more absurd are the outpourings of the poets, which are the more
harmful because of the charm with which they are expressed The poets have represented
the gods as inflamed by anger and possessed by lust, and they have shown us their wars
and battles and fighting and wounds, their rivalries, hatreds and quarrels, their births and
deaths, their complaints and griefs, adulterous gods, gods in chains, their sexual relations
with mortals and the birth of mortal children to immortal beings Alongside the mistakes
made by the poets we might classify the portents of the Magi and the Egyptians, crazy in
their own way, and also the views of the masses which are most confused of all owing to
their ignorance of the truth

Babylonian and Egyptian ideas about the gods are rendered as so worthless that they
fall somewhere between the fictions of poets and the superstitions of the masses in
terms of reliability That denigration of foreign gods might well cohere with ethnocen-
tric claims about the superiority of traditional religion at Rome
But it might be more complicated The line of criticism is in fact an old one, one
that can be traced back to Xenophanes at least When Cotta answers Velleius later in
book one another Xenophanic trope is wheeled out Romans do imagine Jupiter, Juno,
Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, and Apollo in a particular way, to be sure, but ‘neither the
Egyptians, nor the Syrians nor any other barbarians’ do the same 38 Cotta goes on to
expand on the Pindaric theme that nomos is king, that Juno appears in one form to
Argives, another to the people of Lanuvium, yet another to Romans, that Capitoline
Jupiter and Jupiter Ammon are not the same and so on So far Cicero is deftly appro-
priating from a range of Greek material to supply arguments for both of his two Ro-
man protagonists Velleius and Cotta put the material to different uses Where Velleius
sweeps aside poetic versions of the gods to create better versions of the gods, in the
hands of Cotta – characterised as a critic rather than a theorist – they become ammuni-
tion for attacking Epicurus’ anthropomorphic theology The exceptionalism of Roman
religion – just another set of local anthropomorphic fictions perhaps – is completely
side-lined in this discussion Foreign gods do not feature in book two of De Natura
Deorum, in which Balbus presents a Stoic view of the divine, but they return in Cotta’s
attack on his position in book three He begins by ridiculing a whole series of supposed
Stoic positions including literal belief in epiphanies, trust in divination, and the idea of
a fiery soul for the world
nec uero uolgi atque imperitorum inscitiam despicere possum, cum ea considero, quae dicuntur a
Stoicis. sunt enim illa imperitorum: piscem Syri venerantur, omne fere genus bestiarum Aegyptii
consecraverunt; iam vero in Graecia multos habent ex hominibus deos, Alabandum Alabandis,
Tenedi Tenen, Leucotheam, quae fuit Ino, et eius Palaemonem filium cuncta Graecia – Her-

38 Cic DND 1 81
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 129

culem, Aesculapium, Tyndaridas, Romulum nostrum aliosque compluris, quos quasi nouos et
adscripticios ciues in caelum receptos putant
Cic DND 3 39

For to be honest I cannot bring myself to despise the ignorance of common and uneducat-
ed people, when I consider these things that are said by the Stoics For uneducated people
believe things like this: the Syrians worship a fish, Egyptians treat almost every kind of ani-
mal as sacred, even in Greece they believe many gods were once mortal humans, Alaban-
dus is worshipped at Alabanda, Tennes at Tenedos, Leucothea who was once Ino and her
son Palaemon throughout Greece, Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus; while
our compatriots believe that Romulus and many others have been received into heaven,
like new citizens inscribed on the rolls

Cotta presses on to catalogue the diversity and multiplicity of gods, the multiple Her-
cules and Jupiters, all those minor gods, heroes, personifications, and in his attack,
traditional Roman gods are just as likely to appear as figures from Greek or Egyptian
mythology
De Diuinatione makes similar use of exotic foreign cults, unsurprisingly since it pre-
sents itself as a sort of appendix to De Natura Deorum Divination is given a barbaric
genealogy in the opening paragraphs, being conventionally attributed to Assyrians,
Chaldeans, and Egyptians But with the enumeration of Greek oracles and reference
to the auguries of Romulus and the predictions of the haruspices it becomes clear that
the point is not that it is unwholesomely foreign so much as universally believed in
Quintus, making the case for divination, musters many examples from both Greek
and Roman history and a small number of references to magi and others occur among
them At one point the ubiquity of divination is actually made an argument for its
efficacy:
eaque diuinationum ratio ne in barbaris quidem gentibus neglecta est, siquidem et in Gallia
Druidae sunt, e quibus ipse Diuitiacum Haeduum hospitem tuum laudatoremque cognoui, qui
et naturae rationem, quam fisiologian Graeci appellant, notam esse sibi profitebatur, et partim
auguriis, partim coniectura, quae essent futura dicebat, et in Persis augurantur et diuinant magi,
qui congregantur in fano commentando causa atque inter se conloquendi, quod etiam idem uos
quondam facere Nonis solebatis
Cic Div 1 90

That same practice (ratio) of divination is not neglected even by barbarian peoples In-
deed in Gaul there are the Druids, one of whom I have met myself, your guest and admir-
er Divitiacus the Aeduan He claimed to be expert in that branch of knowledge that the
Greeks call physiologia, and he used to predict the future, sometimes by auguries, some-
times through speculation And among the Persians the magi take auguries and practice
divination: they gather together in a temple for consultation and to debate with each other
just like you augurs used to do on the Nones
130 Greg Woolf

Quintus continues a catalogue of different traditions, elaborating a thesis that the na-
ture of the environment in which each people lived shapes the kind of divination they
indulged in Marcus’ response in book two of De Diuinatione has much in common
with Cotta’s in De Natura Deorum At one point, Marcus deploys Chaldean astrology
as a means of exoticising and so discrediting astrological predictions 39
What these passages convey – and it would be easy to extend the range of com-
paranda to include Lucretius and Varro and perhaps others – is that even in this age
of Roman exceptionalism, when public rhetoric proclaimed an ideology in which Ro-
man gods and Roman rites and especially the piety of the Roman people explained the
apparent theodicy of good fortune, a divinely sanctioned hegemony over the world,
many other views of foreign gods circulated among the Roman elite The more we
know about the participants, the greater our sense of complexity Cicero the initiate
at Eleusis seems difficult to reconcile with Cicero the augur, Caesar the pontifex with
Caesar the Epicurean Evidently any cognitive dissonance was not experienced as un-
bearable 40 Perhaps the sheer diversity of theologies current in this period provided the
basis for new more open attitudes to foreign gods in the early Principate when dreams
of world domination, by Rome and the Gods of Rome, had begun to fade

Bibliography

Ando 2008: C Ando, The Matter of the Gods. Religion and the Roman Empire, Berkeley/Los Ange-
les/Oxford 2008
Arena 2011: V Arena, ‘Tolerance, Intolerance, and Religious Liberty at Rome An Investigation in
the History of Ideas’, in C Gabrielli / G A Cecconi (eds ), Politiche religiose nel mundo antico
e tardantico. Poteri e indirizzi, forme del controllo, idee e prassi di tolleranza, Bari 2011, 147–164
Barceló 2010: P Barceló (ed ), Religiöser Fundamentalismus in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Stuttgart
2010
Barceló/Ferrer/Rodríguez 2003: P Barceló / J J Ferrer / I Rodríguez (eds ), Fundamentalismo
político y religioso: de la Antigüedad a la Edad Moderna, Castello de la Plana 2003
Barnes/Griffin 1997: J Barnes / M Griffin (eds ), Philosophia Togata II. Plato and Aristotle in Rome,
Oxford 1997
Beard 1986: M Beard, ‘Cicero and Divination: the Formation of a Latin Discourse’, JRS 76 (1986),
33–46
Beard 1994: id , “The Roman and the Foreign The Cult of the ‘Great Mother’ in Imperial Rome”, in
N Thomas / C Humphrey (eds ), Shamanism, History and the State, Ann Arbor 1994, 164–190
Beard 2007: id , The Roman Triumph Cambridge, Mass 2007
Beard/North 1990: M Beard / J North (eds ), Pagan Priests, London 1990
Beard/North/Price 1998: M Beard / J North / S Price, Religions of Rome. Volume 1, A History,
Cambridge 1998

39 Cic Div. 2 85
40 Cf Veyne 1983 and Feeney 1998, 14–21 on this problem
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 131

Brunt 1978: P A Brunt, ‘Laus Imperii’ in P Garnsey / C R Whittaker (eds ), Imperialism in the
Ancient World, Cambridge 1978, 159–191 (= Brunt 1990a, 288–323)
Brunt 1990a: id , Roman Imperial Themes, Oxford 1990
Brunt 1990b: id , ‘Roman Imperial Illusions’, in Brunt 1990a, 433–480
Dench 2005: E Dench, Romulus’ Asylum. Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of
Hadrian, Oxford 2005
Feeney 1991: D Feeney, The Gods in Epic. Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition, Oxford 1991
Feeney 1998: id , Literature and Religion at Rome. Culture, Contexts and Beliefs, Cambridge
Feeney 2016: id , Beyond Greek. The Beginnings of Latin Literature, Cambridge, Mass 2016
Ferrary 1988: J -L Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme: aspects idéologiques de la conquête romaine
du monde hellénistique, de la Seconde Guerre de Macédoine à la Guerre contre Mithridate, Rome
1988
Garnsey 1984: P Garnsey, ‘Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity’, in W J Shiels (ed ), Perse-
cution and Toleration, Oxford 1984, 1–27
Giovannini 2000: A Giovannini (ed ), La Révolution romaine après Ronald Syme. Bilans et perspec-
tives, Geneva 2000
Goldberg 1998: S Goldberg, ‘Plautus on the Palatine’, JRS 88 (1998), 1–22
Gordon 1990a: R Gordon, ‘Religion in the Roman Empire The Civic Compromise and its Li-
mits’, in Beard/North 1990, 233–255
Gordon 1990b: id , ‘The Veil of Power Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors’, in Beard-North 1990,
199–232
Gordon 2008: id , ‘Superstitio, Superstition and Religious Repression in the Late Roman Republic
and Principate (100 BCE–300 CE)’, in S A Smith / A Knight (eds ), The Religion of Fools?
Superstition Past and Present, Oxford/New York 2008, 72–94
Griffin 1980: J Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, Oxford 1980
Griffin/Barnes 1989: M Griffin / J Barnes (eds ), Philosophia Togata I. Essays on Philosophy and
Roman Society, Oxford 1989
Gros 1976: P Gros, Aurea Templa. Recherches sur l’architecture religieuse de Rome à l’époque d’Au-
guste, Rome 1976
Gruen 1990: E S Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy, Berkeley 1990
Gruen 1992: id , Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome, London 1992
Habinek 1998: T Habinek (ed ), The Politics of Latin Literature. Writing, Identity and Empire in An-
cient Rome, Cambridge 1998
Hardie 1985: P Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid. Cosmos and Imperium Oxford 1985
Harris 1979: W V Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 B. C., Oxford 1979
Harris 1984: id (ed ), The Imperialism of Mid-Republican Rome, Rome 1984
Inglebert/Gros/Sauron 2005: H Inglebert / P Gros / G Sauron, Histoire de la civilisation romaine,
Paris 2005
Krebs 2006: C B Krebs, “‘Imaginary Geography’ in Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum”, AJP 127 (2006),
111–136
MacRae 2016: D MacRae, Legible Religion. Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture, Cambridge,
Mass 2016
Martin/Appleby 1994: M E Martin / R S Appleby (eds ), Accounting for Fundamentalisms: the
Dynamic Character of Movements, Chicago 1994
Matthews 1973: J F Matthews, ‘Symmachus and the Oriental Cults’, JRS 63 (1973), 175–195
Moatti 1997: C Moatti, La Raison de Rome: naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (IIe–
Ier siècle avant Jésus-Christ), Paris 1997
132 Greg Woolf

Nash 1976: D Nash, ‘Reconstructing Poseidonius’ Celtic Ethnography: Some Considerations’,

Britannia 7 (1976), 111–126
Nicolet 1988: C Nicolet, L’Inventaire du monde. Géographie et politique aux origines de l’Empire
romain, Paris 1988
Nock 1930: A D Nock, ‘Sunnaos Theos’, HSCP 41 (1930), 1–62
North 1976: J North, ‘Conservatism and Change in Roman Religion’, PBSR 44 (1976), 1–12
North 1979: id , ‘Religious Toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPS 25 (1979), 85–103
North 1992: id , ‘The Development of Religious Pluralism’ in J Lieu / J North / T Rajak (eds ),
The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, London 1992, 174–193
North 1993: id , ‘Roman Reactions to Empire’, SCI 12 (1993), 127–138
Orlin 1996: E Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic, Leiden/New York/Co-
logne 1996
Orlin 2007: id , ‘Augustan Religion and the Reshaping of Roman Memory’, Arethusa 40 (2007),
73–92
Orlin 2010: id , Foreign Cults in Rome. Creating a Roman Empire, Oxford/New York 2010
Paillier 1988: J -M Paillier, Bacchanalia. La répression de 186 av. J.-C. à Rome et en Italie, Rome 1988
Price 1987: S Price, ‘From Noble Funerals to Divine Cult: the Consecration of Roman Emperors’,
in D Cannadine / S Price (eds ), Rituals of Royalty. Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Soci-
eties, Cambridge 1987, 56–105
Purcell 1990: N Purcell, ‘Maps, Lists, Money, Order and Power’, JRS 80 (1990), 178–182
Purcell 2003: id , ‘Becoming Historical The Roman Case’, in D Braund / C Gill (eds ), Myth,
History and Culture in Republican Rome. Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman, Exeter 2003, 12–40
Rawson 1973: E Rawson, ‘Scipio, Laelius, Furius and the Ancestral religion’, JRS 63 (1973), 161–174
Rawson 1985: ead , Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic, London 1985
Rawson 1991: ead , Roman Culture and Society, Oxford 1991
Rives 1999: J B Rives, ‘The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire’, JRS 89 (1999), 135–154
Rüpke 2016: id , Religious Deviance in the Roman World. Superstition or Individuality? Cambridge
2016
Scheid 1990: J Scheid, Romulus et ses frères: le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la
Rome des empereurs, Rome 1990
Scheid 1995a: id , ‘Graeco ritu A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods’, HSCP 97 (1995),
15–21
Scheid 1995b: id , ‘Les espaces cultuels et leur interpretation’, Klio 77 (1995), 424–432
Scheid 2003a: id (transl P Purchase), ‘Hierarchy and Structure in Roman Polytheism Roman
Methods of Conceiving Action’, in C Ando (ed ), Roman Religion, Edinburgh 2003, 164–189
Scheid 2003b: id , ‘Le fondamentalisme dans la religion romaine (Ve s av – IIIe s apr J -C ):
quelques reflections sur un concepte inapproprié’, in Barceló/Ferrer/Rodríguez 2003, 13–22
Spencer 2002: D Spencer, The Roman Alexander. Reading a Cultural Myth, Exeter 2002
Talbert 1984: R J A Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome, Princeton N J 1984
Várhelyi 2010: Z Várhelyi, The Religion of Senators in the Roman Empire. Power and the Beyond
Cambridge 2010
Versluys 2004: M J Versluys, ‘Isis Capitolina and the Egyptian Cults in Late Republican Rome’, in
L Bricault (ed ), Isis en Occident, Leiden/Boston 2004, 421–448
Versluys/Bülow Clausen/Capriotti Vittozzi (2018): M J Versluys / C Bülow Clausen / G Ca-
priotti Vittozzi (eds ), The Iseum Campense from the Roman Empire to the Modern Age. Temple,
Monument, lieu de mémoire, Rome 2018
 Foreign Gods in the Age of Cicero 133

Veyne 1983: P Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? Essai sur l’imagination constituante, Paris
1983
Wallace-Hadrill 1988: A Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Greek Knowledge, Roman Power’, CP 83 (1988), 224–
233
Wallace-Hadrill 2005: id , ‘Mutatas formas: the Augustan transformation of Roman Knowledge’,
in K Galinsky (ed ), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, New York 2005, 55–84
Wallace-Hadrill 2008: id , Rome’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge 2008
Woolf 2011: G Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians. Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West, Malden,
Mass /Oxford 2011
Zanker 1988: P Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Ann Arbor 1988
Ziolkowski 1992: A Ziolkowski, The Temples of Mid-Republican Rome and Their Historical and
Topographical Context, Rome 1992
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment
Katherine A East

1. Introduction

The afterlife of Cicero’s thought tends to be sought in the use and interpretation of his
words in the works of those later writers who deployed his legacy to their own ends
The way in which Cicero’s words and reputation are cited, presented, integrated into
argumentation, selected, characterised, and interpreted provides an endless source of
inquiry into the means by which his ideas were received and reinterpreted There is
a further dimension to this process of engaging with the Ciceronian text, however,
which is too often overlooked, with the relationship between the reader of Cicero and
Cicero’s words being treated as a direct dialogue In fact, there is a fundamentally im-
portant interpretative stage between the ancient author and his reader: the transmis-
sion of the text 1 This process of transmission encompasses the intervention in the text
made by editor, translator, commentator, even printer, and its significance is too often
omitted in studies on the fate of the classical tradition
Cicero’s theological dialogues provide a particularly pertinent example of the im-
portance of the process of transmission for two primary reasons: first, the complex-
ity and controversy of the texts themselves, and second, their potential importance to
later religious disputes This was particularly true in Enlightenment England, at which
point Cicero’s De Natura Deorum and De Diuinatione were invoked in debates centred
on the respective arguments for natural and revealed religion, which involved ques-
tions of providence, cosmology, the appropriate application of reason to questions of
religion, the possibility of prophecies and miracles, the role and necessity of priests,
the relationship between Church and State, and much else 2 These debates defined the
Enlightenment in England, a period from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth cen-
turies during which the intrusion of reason into all aspects of public and intellectual

1 A point brilliantly articulated by Craig Kallendorf in the foreword to Hunt/Smith/Stok 2017, 1–4
2 See East 2017, 195–224, on John Toland’s use of these texts; Tarantino 2014, on the example of An-
thony Collins; and Gawlick 1963 for a more general discussion
136 Katherine A East

life, particularly in the religious sphere 3 Located in Cicero’s works were arguments
which could be recruited to serve those arguing on both sides of these debates; the
ability to claim an authoritative reading of these works, and to locate Cicero’s ‘true’
voice within them, became a central feature of the reception of Ciceronian religion in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England
Here the discussion will use this controversy to illustrate how the debates among
the theologians and philosophers reading and using Cicero’s dialogues were reflected
in, perhaps even shaped by, the transmission of those texts Selectivity is a necessity
here, so one facet of these particular Ciceronian texts will be examined, namely the
concluding paragraph of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum This point in the text was inevi-
tably a focus of debate among his readers, and rarely passed over without comment
among the scholars tasked with editing or translating the text

2. The Debate Around DND 3.95

The conclusion of De Natura Deorum became the focus of a dispute between the radi-
cal Freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729) and the orthodox classical scholar Rich-
ard Bentley (1662–1742), first when Collins published his Discourse of Free-Thinking,
in 1713, and then when Bentley published his Remarks in response to that work, later
in the same year This exchange centred around Collins’ explanation of the Freethink-
ing philosophy, defined as ‘The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the
Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the Evidence for or
against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence’ 4
The controversy emanated from Collins’ use of this principle as a tool to diminish the
authority of the clergy, claiming that the clergy had deliberately confused matters of
religion, creating conflicts that could otherwise have been resolved if men were able to
assess religious assertions directly and using their own reason At the end of his Dis-
course, Collins produced a catalogue, or a doxography, of Freethinkers from across his-
tory, situating Cicero firmly within that tradition During his account of Cicero’s Free-
thinking ways, Collins refers to De Natura Deorum as manifesting such a methodology,
and as a clear example of Cicero’s opposition to the theological views of Stoics and
Epicureans:
Whereas Cicero himself is so far from approving what he makes the Stoick and Epicurean
speak, that he does in his Discourse of the Nature of the Gods endeavour to confute all their
Arguments under the Person of an Academick (of which Sect he every where professes

3 The debate regarding whether a specific ‘English’ Enlightenment can be discerned is extensive; see
Porter 2001
4 Collins 1713, 5 On freethinking see Hudson 2009 and Lucci 2017
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 137

himself) and in his Discourse of Divination baffles all the Stoical Arguments for Supersti-
tion, openly under his own name
Collins 1713, 138

Here Collins is referring to the structure of De Natura Deorum, and the confusion its
structure incited Written as a dialogue, its three books represented the views of the
three major philosophical schools on the divine, with Velleius acting as the spokesper-
son for Epicureanism in book one, Balbus for Stoicism in book two, and Cotta for Aca-
demic Scepticism in book three Collins argued that any attempt to associate Cicero
with the views of the Stoic or Epicurean characters in his books displays a fundamental
misunderstanding of the man, who had adhered to the Academic school of philosophy
throughout his life His personal views, Collins claimed, must therefore be identified
with the position articulated by the Academic Sceptic in any of his works: ‘So that
Cicero is as unfairly dealt with, whenever he is cited against Free-Thinking, as the Priests
themselves would be, did any one cite as their Sentiments what they make Deists, Scep-
ticks, and Socinians say, in the Dialogues they compose against those Sects’ 5
The difficulty for Collins’ reading of De Natura Deorum, and the challenge raised
by Richard Bentley in his Remarks, lies in the concluding sentence of the work At
this point in the dialogue, Cicero reappears under his own name, having participated
in the discussion primarily as the audience for Velleius, Balbus, and Cotta’s exchange
of views ‘Cicero’ concludes with the following: ‘here the conversation ended, and we
parted, Velleius thinking Cotta’s discourse to be the truer, while I felt that of Balbus
approximated more nearly to a semblance of the truth’ 6 Surely this amounts to Cice-
ro’s explicit support for the Stoic position on the nature of the gods? Bentley certainly
takes it to be so:
When Cicero says above, that the Stoical Doctrine of Providence seem’d to him more prob-
able: if we take it aright, it carries the same importance as when a Stoic says it’s certain and
demonstrable For, as I remark’d before, the Law, the Badge, the Characteristic of his Sect
allow’d him to affirm no stronger than that: he durst not have spoken more peremtorily
about a Proposition of Euclid, or what he saw with his own Eyes His Probable had the same
influence on his Belief, the same force on his Life and Conduct; as the Others Certain had
on Theirs
Bentley 1713, 80–81

For Bentley, De Natura Deorum is nothing more than an exercise in the Academic
methodology, whereby the different stances on an issue are aired, and it is determined

5 Collins 1713, 138–139

6 DND 3 95: haec cum essent dicta, ita discessimus ut Velleio Cottae disputatio uerior, mihi Balbi ad ueri-
tatis similitudinem uideretur esse propensior
138 Katherine A East

which of the positions is most probable, namely the position of the Stoics Directing
this point to Collins, Bentley asks:
And what now becomes of our Writer’s True method and Rule? Whatsoever is spoken un-
der the Person of an Academic, is that to be taken for Cicero’s Sentiment? Why, Cicero de-
clares here, that he sided with the Stoic against the Academic: and whom are we to believe,
Himself or our silly Writer?
Bentley 1713, 80

The concern here for both men is where the different readings of De Natura Deorum
situate Cicero regarding the question of the possibility of divine providence If Bentley
is correct, then Cicero – by siding with the Stoic view of the gods – is allowing the
possibility of divine providence, as manifested in traditional Roman religious practice
The providential role of the divine is argued fervently by Balbus in book two of De
Natura Deorum:
dico igitur prouidentia deorum mundum et omnes mundi partes et initio constitutas esse et omni
tempore administrari. eamque disputationem tris in partes nostri fere dividunt, quarum prima
pars est, quae ducitur ab ea ratione, quae docet esse deos; quo concesso confitendum est eorum
consilio mundum administrari. secunda est autem quae docet omnes res subiectas esse naturae
sentienti ab eaque omnia pulcherrume geri; quo constituto sequitur ab animantibus principiis
eam esse generatam. tertius est locus, qui ducitur ex admiratione rerum caelestium atque terres-
trium

I am claiming, then, that the universe and all its parts were initially ordered, and are peren-
nially controlled by the providence of the gods Those of our school usually divide this the-
sis into three parts Of these the first is an extension of the argument which demonstrates
that gods exist; if this is granted, the admission must follow that the universe is ordered by
their discernment The second teaches that everything in creation is controlled by sentient
nature, which disposes everything most beautifully; once this is established, it follows that
nature has sprung from elements that are alive The third is the argument inspired by won-
der at the things of heaven and earth
Cic DND 2 75 (transl H Rackham, LCL)

Balbus continues to argue that while nature might order the universe, nature is subject
to divine providence, which has the power to intervene at any moment This was em-
phatically denied by Cotta, as the Academics rejected the notion that nature was sub-
ject to any other power 7 At DND 3 28 Cotta states that he ‘liked that part of your dis-
course in which you spoke of the concord and harmony of nature … but I disapproved
of your claim that this could have come to pass only through the cohesion achieved by

7 DND 2 73
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 139

the unique divine breath That coherence and permanence is achieved by the forces
not of the gods, but of nature’ In determining whether Cicero’s own sympathies lie
with Balbus or Cotta, the Enlightenment writers were consequently competing to sit-
uate Cicero’s ambiguous position on providence within their own conflict regarding
revelation and natural religion, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, reason and faith

3. The Transmission of DND 3.95

This passage was of the utmost significance to how Ciceronian theology could be in-
tegrated into the Enlightenment debates, making it a useful case study for a survey
of how editing effected this text One challenge in approaching this issue is forging a
clear link between the various available editions and the reader, but due to the invalu-
able work of Giovanni Tarantino on Anthony Collins’ library it becomes possible to
get a sense of which versions of De Natura Deorum were available for Collins and his
contemporaries to consult 8 Among the various works of Cicero which Collins owned
were: an edition of Cicero’s complete works edited by Jacobus Gronovius and printed
in Leiden in 1692; a French translation of all of Cicero’s works by Pierre du Ryer, print-
ed in Paris in 1670; a commentary on De Natura Deorum written by Pierre Lescalopier,
printed in Paris in 1660; an anonymous English translation of De Natura Deorum pro-
duced by the printer Joseph Hindmarsh in 1683; and the edition of De Natura Deorum
produced by John Davies in Cambridge in 1718 There are also a handful of editions
from the sixteenth century, but given the limitations of space it is preferable to focus on
those editions closer in date to Collins himself, and thus closer to those issues which
would impact on his interaction with the Ciceronian text
In terms of how this particular passage is represented in scholarship, the emphasis
here is on interpretation rather than textual scholarship, as the relevant passage is large-
ly textually sound There is some variation in the manuscripts as to whether discessimus
(‘we arose’) should actually read discissimus (in fact an ungrammatical form), and over
the form of the names Cottae and Balbi in this sentence, but these are not sufficiently
controversial readings as to change how the excerpt is understood 9 The omission of
any annotation by either Janus Gruterus in 1618 or Jacobus Gronovius in 1692 further
confirms this point; these two Dutch antiquarian scholars produced editions of the
complete works of Cicero which focussed on textual commentaries and emphasised
the manuscript evidence used to emendate the text 10 Any notable problem in the text
here would appear in the comprehensive annotations of these two men It is then in

8 Tarantino 2007
9 Pease 1955, 1227–1228
10 East 2017, 89–120; Hunt 1998, 248–250; Timpanaro 2003, 3–13 (cf 2005, 45–57)
140 Katherine A East

the commentaries and translations that efforts to influence the reader’s engagement
with the text must be sought

Cicero’s Three Books Touching the Nature of the Gods (1683)

The first English translation of De Natura Deorum was an anonymous version printed
by Joseph Hindmarsh in 1683 Entitled Cicero’s Three Books Touching the Nature of the
Gods Done into English; with notes, and illustrations, this was a single duodecimo vol-
ume, of just under four hundred pages, of which only a single edition was produced
The translation has a clear emphasis on the guidance and interpretation offered by
the translator rather than on the text itself On the frontispiece the eye is immediately
drawn to the promise of notes and illustrations and a statement of intent with regard
to what the edition will convey: ‘Setting forth, (from all Antiquity,) what perceptions,
Man, by the Only Light of Reason, may entertein, concerning a Deity!’ These percep-
tions are amply set forth, as the translator chooses to preface the translation itself with
a discussion of one hundred and forty pages, in which the content of the text is delib-
erated over down to the minutest detail The opening sections of this extensive preface
provide the expected contextual details – content, occasion, discussion of the author,
organisation of the book – which are then followed by extensive passages traversing
the text, following a method outlined by the translator as follows: ‘Let me say as to this
Preface, that the Aim of it is, by the Contents, (here,) to furnish the Connexion of the
Discourse; by the Alterations, to reduce the Translation as near as possible to the Ex-
pression of the Original; and, by the Explanations, Illustrations &c to deliver as True,
and Clear as might be, the Sense, and Meaning of it’ 11 The reader is therefore encour-
aged to study the Translator’s interpretations of the text separately from the translation
itself The extent of this treatment in the preface does not prevent the Translator from
annotating the actual text with brief descriptions of the action in the text to guide the
reader, short explanations and stylistic comments
The outcome of this elaborate preface is a reading of De Natura Deorum which em-
phasises the strengths of the Stoic theology over that of the other two Schools When
summarising the three books, the second – that in which Balbus puts forward the
Stoic case – is praised for its ‘Dignity, Gravity, Elegance; the Manifold, even Infinite
Learning of it; and the Religious, almost Christian Theology of the Stoiques, can no
Words be Equal’ 12 This Stoic theology is further elevated by the condemnation of its
rivals, with the Epicurean stance dismissed as an attempt to overthrow religion and
all society, and the Academic approach castigated vigorously When it comes to the

11 Anonymous 1683, cxl

12 Anonymous 1683, iii
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 141

conclusion of book three, the Translator’s evident sympathy for the Stoic cause is made
clear in his treatment of Cicero’s apparent declaration of sympathy located there The
Translator experiences no doubts regarding the conclusion, asserting that ‘He was of
a Sect that profess’d to have nought at all Certain, as to Divine Matters especially; so
that ’twere difficult absolutely to Affirm any thing concerning him: And yet so Strong
is Truth; that it was able to Force even Him (we may see) to Pronounce (against his
Fellow-Academique,) in favour of the Stoique Lucilius’ 13 The ambiguous conclusion
is ambiguous no more, but evidence that Stoic theism could claim the endorsement
of Cicero himself In the actual translation, the Translator construes the relevant text
as ‘This having Pass’d, we gave our Opinions Velleius lookt upon Cotta’s Dispute to
be Truer than Balbus’s; but, to me, Balbus’s Argument seem’d of a Nearer Resemblance
to Truth’ 14 To the translation of probabile as nearer resemblance, the Translator adds a
note explaining this in terms of Academic practice: ‘Spoken after the manner of the Aca-
demiques; (of which Sect Tully was;) who held that our Greatest Certainties were only
more Probable Appearances of Truth, not Truths de facto’ 15 The Cicero found in this
particular translation is sympathetic to the presence of divine providence, and readily
persuaded by the Stoic to this point The Translator uses every tool made available to
him to enforce this understanding of the text, an understanding which fortuitously
endorses his own support for the Stoic argument presented

John Davies’ Edition of 1718

In the early eighteenth century, the Cambridge scholar John Davies decided to take
up the task begun by the German classical scholar Johannes Georgius Graevius (1632–
1703) in the late seventeenth-century, namely the production of a series of variorum
editions of Cicero’s works Davies committed to the production of fresh editions of
Cicero’s philosophical works, editions which constituted the first efforts in a century
to correct the Ciceronian text with manuscript evidence To this end, in 1718 Davies
produced a new edition of De Natura Deorum, printed in Cambridge, and integrating
the notes of Paulus Manutius, Dionysius Lambinus, Fulvius Ursinus, Joachim Camer-
arius, and his Cambridge colleague John Walker, in an octavo edition which would be
reprinted several times across the eighteenth century 16
Davies was an orthodox, Anglican clergyman, who in producing an edition which
would dominate the landscape for much of the eighteenth-century pursued a scholarly
standard never likely to reach the polemical heights seen with Hindmarsh’s contribu-

13 Anonymous 1683, cxxxvi

14 Anonymous 1683, 252
15 Ibid.
16 New editions were produced in 1723, 1733, and 1744; reprints continued into the nineteenth century
142 Katherine A East

tion in 1683, but that did not prevent him from offering the reader some guidance on
how to interpret the conclusion of book three When commenting on this passage,
rather than explicitly dwelling on Academic methodology as a justification or endorse-
ment of Cicero’s declaration of support for the Stoic, Davies directs the reader to the
first book of De Diuinatione, and a comment by Quintus which seems to confirm that
Cicero was genuine in his stance Davies writes, ‘at De Diuinatione I 9 his brother Quin-
tus says: for in the second book Lucilius [Balbus, the Stoic] has made an adequate defence
of religion and his argument, as you yourself state at the end of the third book, seemed to
you nearer the truth’ 17 This note maintains the scholarly, philological methodology em-
ployed by Davies throughout, presenting its reading in terms of citations and parallel
readings rather than overt opinion, and taking care to include a reference to Augus-
tine’s contrasting account of Cicero’s motives at this moment in the text Yet still, the
consequence for the reader is a sense that Cicero’s endorsement of Stoic theism, and
hence divine providence, genuinely reflects his theological position
It is also interesting to note here that Richard Bentley, whose response to Antho-
ny Collins’ Discourse of Free-Thinking was discussed above, was a close associate of
John Davies, and was his colleague in Cambridge Bentley was, in fact, the dedicatee
of Davies’ edition of De Natura Deorum, having lent Davies a manuscript to aid his
fresh recension of the text This, combined with Davies’ personal views as an Anglican
clergyman (although, like Bentley, with Latitudinarian sympathies), must surely have
influenced how Davies approached such controversial elements of the text Some col-
laboration does appear to have taken place, as Davies’ citation from De Diuinatione, used
as evidence for his reading of the passage, had been used by Bentley in his response to
Collins’ work in order to rebut Collins’ interpretation of De Natura Deorum: ‘And Cice-
ro himself, who was then auditor at the Dispute, though of the same Sect with Cotta,
declares his own Opinion, That the Stoic’s Discourse for Providence seem’d to him more
probable, than Cotta’s against it; which he repeats again in De Diuinatione I, 5’ 18 Even a
seemingly innocuous note, directing the reader to another passage of Cicero’s work,
could therefore help reinforce a particular reading of Cicero’s theological sympathies

Of the Nature of the Gods (1741)

A final, intriguing example is not among Collins’ collection, as it was published over
a decade after his death It remains relevant, however, due to the nature of the Cicero
presented therein and the speculation that Collins was actually involved in its produc-

17 Davies 1718, 323: apud nostrum de Divin. lib. I. cap. 5. ait Quintus frater: Satis enim defensa religio est
in secundo libro à Lucilio: cujus disputatio tibi ipsi, ut in extremo tertio scribis, ad veritatem est visa
propensior
18 Bentley 1713, 80, referring to Div 1 9
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 143

tion The work in question is an anonymous English translation, printed by Richard

Francklin in 1741, with the title M. Tullius Cicero Of the Nature of the Gods; in Three
Books. With critical, philosophical, and explanatory notes. To which is added, An Enquiry
into the Astronomy and Anatomy of the Antients Again this is a single volume, this time
in octavo and running to just under three hundred pages; this translation achieved
more commercial success than its predecessor, with a reprint in 1758 and a second
edition in 1775, which was then reprinted in 1829 The translator for this work again
remains anonymous On the frontispiece of the second edition in 1775, he was named
as Thomas Francklin, a man well situated to act as the translator of the piece, as it ema-
nated from the press of his father, Richard Francklin However, another candidate for
the translator has been put forward more recently by David Berman: Anthony Collins
himself 19 Collins did claim several times that he would soon be producing translations
of De Natura Deorum and De Diuinatione, to be published by none other than Richard
Francklin, as was announced at the end of Collins’ An Historical and Critical Essay on
the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England, also printed by Richard Francklin in
1724: ‘Speedily will be published, Cicero’s Treatises of the Nature of the Gods and of Divi-
nation Translated into english, with annotations In two volumes’ 20 The accuracy of the
identification of the Translator with Collins has been successfully queried by Giovanni
Tarantino, ensuring that the individual behind this effort remains anonymous 21 Ber-
man’s association of the work with Collins does, however, indicate one crucial char-
acteristic of this rendering of the text: its commentary demonstrates clear sympathies
with the Freethinking philosophy which defined Collins
From the outset the Francklin translation of 1741 efforts are made to create a sense
of scholarly integrity On the frontispiece, attention is drawn to two features of the
translation, both of which serve to suggest the erudition of the Translator: first, the
inclusion of ‘critical, philosophical, and explanatory’ notes, an interpretative addition
clearly directed at the more learned reader by this phrasing; and second, an appended
essay discussing the astronomy and anatomy of the ancients The scene is set for a
learned work The translation is preceded only by a two-page preface; brief though it
may be, this preface successfully delineates the necessary points, namely the justifica-
tion for choosing the text, the method applied to the translation, and the principles
guiding the commentary Regarding the merits of the text itself, and hence the value of
a translation, the Translator notes that it provides a detailed representation of ancient
theology, mythology, and astronomy On the matter of the methodology applied to the
production of the translation, the Translator claims to have ‘consulted all the various
Readings, and chose those, which seem’d most rational to me I have endeavour’d, in
my Translation, to preserve Tully’s Manner of writing, not departing from it even in

19 Berman 1980
20 Collins 1724, 279
21 Tarantino 2014
144 Katherine A East

that Particular, which has been imputed to him by some as a Fault, the Prolixity of his
Periods’ 22 Concerning the goal of those critical notes advertised on the frontispiece,
the Translator describes their purpose as ‘to guard the Mind against Superstition, and
to prepare it for a fair Enquiry into Truth without any partial Attachment to Principles
founded only on Education and Custom’ As noted above, this goal reveals the funda-
mentally Freethinking impetus guiding the notes to this text: all assertions must be
tested against the evidence of reason and nature, and not be allowed to claim authority
on the basis of tradition or anecdotal evidence
This is confirmed by the explanatory comments provided by the Translator The
following note accompanies DND 2 9, a passage in which Balbus laments the decline
in religious observance among the Romans, who no longer employ auspices appro-
priately or with sufficient respect Reacting to the anecdote of the augur Attus Navius
invoking the Lares to help him find a missing pig, the Translator uses the opportunity
to challenge the acceptance of such stories as truth simply because they have been
recorded as such:
Hence we see what little Credit ought to be paid to Facts said to be done out of the ordi-
nary Course of Nature These Miracles are well attested They were recorded in the Annals
of a great People, believed by many learned and otherwise sagacious Persons, and received
as religious Truths by the Populace; but the Testimonies of antient Records, the Credulity
of some learned Men, and the implicit Faith of the Vulgar, can never prove That to have
been, which is impossible in the Nature of Things ever to be
Anonymous 1741, 85, commenting on DND 2 9

Following the principles of Freethought, the Translator rejects testimonies – no mat-

ter how numerous or authoritative – when the events in question clearly contravene
reason and nature
The Translator’s interpretation of the conclusion of De Natura Deorum presents an
interesting modification of the tradition regarding this passage, reflective of the Trans-
lator’s particular approach to the text The comment attached to Cicero’s conclusion
is noncommittal, acknowledging its manifestation primarily of the Academic meth-
odology: ‘Cicero, who was an Academic, gives his Opinion, according to the Manner
of the Academics; who look’d upon Probability, and a Resemblance of Truth, as the
utmost they could arrive at’ 23 For this Translator, identifying Cicero with either Balbus
or Cotta is not the aim, as both of their positions are flawed: Balbus due to the Stoic’s
adherence to the possibility of providence and revelation, and Cotta due to the doubts
expressed by that character regarding the infallibility of reason, a central principle of
the Freethinking Translator Consequently, when confronting this most controversial

22 Anonymous 1741, Av
23 Anonymous 1741, 268
 Editing Ciceronian Religion in the Enlightenment 145

of statements, the Translator instead takes the opportunity to remind the reader that,
according to Cicero’s own Academic principles, seeking to associate Cicero’s voice
strongly with either position is a flawed exercise Rather than using DND 3 95 as evi-
dence for a particular reading of the text, this Translator diminishes its significance,
so that the reader can focus on the aim expressed in the preface: that is, applying their
own reason to the evidence presented during the dialogues, and assessing the validity
of the examples therein for themselves

4. Conclusion

This adaptation of De Natura Deorum and De Diuinatione into works suitable to early
Enlightenment arguments concerning natural and revealed religion was not a process
that began and ended with the reader Those scholars who took upon themselves the
tasks of editing, interpreting, and translating the text played a pivotal role in shaping
how these works could be understood Their weaponry may have been different – in-
ternal references, translation of terms, representation of Academic methodology, and
so on – but these scholars were as invested in conveying a particular interpretation of
the text as men like Collins and Bentley This was clearly also a dialogic process, as edi-
tors echoed or challenged the interpretations presented in the theological discourses
In a phase of the history of scholarship in which the scientific methods codified by
Lachmann were only in their earliest infancy, the authority wielded by erudition and
editorial practices could be manipulated to facilitate a particular understanding of the
text, a process in evidence in how the passage of De Natura Deorum discussed above
was disputed It is for this reason that the transmission of classical texts must be grant-
ed greater emphasis in studies of the intellectual afterlife of the ancients

Bibliography

Anonymous 1683: Cicero’s three books touching the nature of the gods: done into English; with notes,
and illustrations. Setting forth, (from all antiquity,) what perceptions, man, by the only light of rea-
son, may entertein, concerning a deity!, London 1683
Anonymous 1741: M T Cicero, Of the Nature of the Gods; in three books. With critical philosophi-
cal, and explanatory notes. To which is added, An enquiry into the astronomy and anatomy of the
Antients, London 1741
Bentley 1713: R Bentley, Remarks upon a late Discourse of a late Discourse of Free-Thinking: in a letter
to F. H. D. D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, Part the Second, London 1713
Berman 1980: D Berman, ‘Hume and Collins on Miracles’, Hume Studies 6 (1980), 150–154
Collins 1713: A Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking, occasion’d by the Rise and Growth of a Sect
call’d Free-Thinkers, London 1713
146 Katherine A East

Collins 1724: A Collins, An Historical and Critical Essay, On the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church
of England, London 1724
Davies 1718: Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum libri tres, cum notis integris Paullii Manucii,
Petri Victorii, Joachimi Camerarii, Dionys. Lambini, et Fulv. Ursini. Recensuit, suisque animadver-
sionibus illustravit ac emaculavit Joannes Davisius, L. L. D., Cambridge 1718
East 2017: K A East, The Radicalization of Cicero: John Toland and Strategic Editing in the Early
Enlightenment, New York 2017
Gawlick 1963: G Gawlick, ‘Cicero and the Enlightenment’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth
Century 25 (1963), 657–682
Hudson 2009: W Hudson, Enlightenment and Modernity. The English Deists and Reform, London
2009
Hunt 1998: T J Hunt, A Textual History of Cicero’s Academici Libri, Leiden 1998
Hunt/Smith/Stok 2017: J M Hunt / R A Smith / F Stok, Classics from Papyrus to the Internet. An
Introduction to Transmission and Reception, Austin 2017
Lucci 2017: D Lucci, ‘Deism, Freethinking and Toleration in Enlightenment England’, History of
European Ideas 43 (2017), 345–358
Pease 1955: A S Pease (ed ), M. Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum Libri III, Cambridge MA 1955
Porter 2001: R Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: the Untold Story of the British Enlighten-
ment, New York 2001
Tarantino 2007: G Tarantino, Lo scrittoio di Anthony Collins (1676–1729): i libri e i tempi di un libero
pensatore, Milan 2007
Tarantino 2014: id , ‘Collins’s Cicero, Freethinker’, in J Wigelsworth / W Hudson / D Lucci (eds),
Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650–1800, Farnham 2014,
81–100
Timpanaro 2003: S Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, Turin 20034
Timpanaro 2005: id (transl G W Most), The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, Chicago 2005
 General Index

A augury 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 34, Capitol 47, 49 n 20, 51 n 28,
Academic philosophy 11, 19, 38–39, 111, 113 52, 53
88, 89, 136–142, 145 Augustine 121 n 19, 142 Carthage 61–64, 70, 81,
acta 87 Augustus 122 n 21, 123–125 117 n 3, 122
Actium, battle of 123 Aurelius Cotta, C Catiline 47–49
Adriatic Sea 119 (cos. 75 BC) 19, 45, caution 18, 109
Aeneas 62, 70 113 n 20, 128–130, 137–139, Ceres 117, 120–121
Alabanda 128–129 141, 142, 144 Chaldeans 121, 129, 130
Alabandus 128–129 Aurelius Cotta, L Cimbri 119
Alexander the Great 61, 123 (cos. 65 BC) 49 Claudius Pulcher, Ap 38, 39
Alexandria 77 auspicia 17, 24, 26–31, 35, 39, Claudius Marcellus, C 38
Allobroges 48, 53 40, 47 n 8, 80, 87, 93 Cleopatra 123
Annas, J 31 auspicia impetratiua 26–27, clinamen 94–95
Antiochus of Ascalon 89 36, 38 Clodius Pulcher, P 14,
Antonius, M → see Antony, auspicia oblatiua 26 n 11, 36 16–17, 24, 25, 34–40,
Mark Aventine 117 73–80, 82–84
Antony, Mark 114, 123 Cole, S 14, 18, 105–106, 114
Apollo 45, 108, 117, 126, 128 B Collins, A 135 n 2, 136–139,
Apollo Medicus 117 Bacchus 119 142–143, 145
Apollo Palatinus 123 Beard, M 10–11, 70 Comitium 46, 47
area Capitolina 49, 51, 55 bellum iustum 122 commentarii 87
Aristotle 108, 111 n 16 Beloch, K J 12 Concordia 48, 123
Artemis 15, 59–61, 70 Bendlin, A 105 concordia 78, 114
Asclepius 117, 121 Bentley, R 136–138, 142, 145 consecratio 120
Assmann, J 81 Berenice IV of Egypt 77 contio 46–48, 54, 73, 76 n 17,
Assyrians 129 Berman, D 143 82 n 43, 83
astrology 13, 120, 130 Berthelet, Y 29, 32, 36 Corbeill, A 83–84
Athens 61, 109 Bona Dea 25, 75, 77–79, 82, Corinth 59
Atilius Serranus, Sex 77 84 n 48 Cornelius Lentulus, Cn 107
Atticus 38 Cornelius Lentulus
Attus Navius 39 n 67, 144 C Sura, P 48
auctoritas 14, 24, 26, 29–30, Caligula 120 Cornelius Scipio
34, 37–38, 40, 75, 93 Calpurnius Bibulus, M Aemilianus, P 25, 31, 32
auguraculum 28 n 20 34–36 Cornelius Scipio Africanus,
augurs, augurate 13–14, 23, Calpurnius Piso, L 77, 80 P 16, 61, 62, 64, 70, 123
26–31, 33–40, 80 n 38, Camerarius, J 141 Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus,
93, 129 Campus Martius 120 P 123
148 General Index

Cornelius Scipio Fonteius, P 79 J

Nasica, P 76 n 19 Forum, Roman 35, 46, 47, Janiculum 51, 121
Curia Hostilia 51 48, 51, 54, 70, 121 Julius Caesar, C 13, 14,
Forum Iulium 123 34–36, 75, 107, 114, 123,
D Francklin, R 19, 143 126, 130
Davies, J 139, 141–142 Francklin, T 143 Julius Caesar, L 39
deism 94, 137 Fulvius Nobilior, M 123 Juno 45, 118, 128
Diana 15, 16, 59–70, 121 fundamentalism, Juno Caelestis 117 n 3
Di Manes 24 religious 18, 124, 125 Juno Lucina 118
Dio 77 Furius Camillus, M 117 Juno Regina 117, 118
Dioscuri 120–123 Juno Sospita 118
Dis 117, 127 G Jupiter 45, 90, 126, 128, 129
diuinatio 108 Gabinius, A 79 Jupiter Ammon 128
divination 13, 35, 37 n 60, Goar, R J 10 Jupiter Dolichenus 120
38, 39 n 69, 51, 56, 73 n 2, Gildenhard, I 14, 53 Jupiter Optimus
87 n 3, 100, 108, 112, 113, Graevius, J G 141 Maximus 15, 26, 28–29,
118–120, 128–130, 137 Greece 61, 124 n 29, 129 32, 34, 37, 40, 45–56, 128
Divitiacus 129 Gronovius, J 139 Jupiter Stator 54
Domitian 120 Gruterus, J 139
Druids 126–127, 129 Guillaumont, F 10 K
Koselleck, R 100
E H
Egyptians 77, 119, 127–129 haruspices 16, 17, 49–53, L
Elagabal 120 73–78, 80–81 n 38, 122, Lambinus, D 141
Eleusis 121, 130 125, 126, 129 Lanuvium 118, 128
Eliade, M 66 Hercules 129 Lares 144
Elymians 60, 61 Hercules Musagetes 78 leges Aelia et Fufia 35, 79–80
Enlightenment 10 n 3, 18, 19, Hindmarsh, J 19, 139, 140, Lescalopier, P 139
135, 139, 145 141–142 Leucothea 128–129
Ennius, Q 123 Hinduism 124 libertas/Libertas 37, 40, 73,
Epicureanism 88, 89, 91, 75, 97, 100
94–98, 100–101, 137 I libri fulgurales 49 n 20,
Epicurus 93–94, 128 imperium 27, 29, 33, 36, 37, 78–79
Epidaurus 117, 121 40, 50, 78 n 31, 126 Licinius Lucullus, L 107
epulum Iouis 47 inauguratio 29, 40 Lilybaeum 60
Etruria 47, 50 incestum 53, 75 Linderski, J 36
Etruscans 16, 17, 74, 77, Ino 128–129 Livy 123, 125
81 n 38, 83 Isaeum Campestre 120 Long, A A 94
Euclid 137 Isis 120 Lucceius, L 77
Islam 124 Lucilius Balbus, Q 19, 108,
F ius ciuile 17 112, 128, 137–142, 144
Fabius Pictor, Q 126 ius obnuntiandi 36–38 Lucretius Carus, T 17,
Fabius Sanga, Q 48 ius sacrum 17 87–91, 93–101, 130
fides 91, 114 n 22 Lucus Furrinae 121
Firmicus Maternus 121 n 19 ludi Megalenses → see
flamines 25, 29 Megalensia
foedus 91 ludi Romani 47, 84 n 48
 General Index 149

M Peripatetic philosophy 89, religio 9, 23, 24, 32 n 40, 62,

magi 127–129 108 63, 74, 76 n 19, 80–83, 91,
Magna Mater 117–118 Pessinus 117 92–93, 98, 122, 142 n 17
Manlius, C 47 Philocalus 120 repetundae 60
Manlius Torquatus, L pietas 55, 63–64, 79, 81–83, rex sacrorum 29
(cos. 65 BC) 49 93–96 Romulus 31 n 35, 49–50, 111,
manubiae 122 Plato 25, 31, 32, 33 n 43, 108 113, 129
Manutius, P 141 Platonism 24, 32 n 36, 34, Rostra 46
Marcus (character of De 39, 40, 89, 112 n 19 Ryer, P du 139
Diuinatione) 11, 17, 113, Plator 77
130 pomerium 27 S
Marcus (character of De Pompey the Great 14, 35, 77, sacra priuata 24
Legibus) 45, 90–92, 97, 79, 106, 107, 123 sacra publica 119, 124, 125,
99, 111 Pomponius Atticus, T → see 126
Mars 126–127 Atticus Scepticism 11, 19, 88, 137
Mars Ultor 123 pontiffs 25, 29, 75, 76, Scheid, J 36
Megalensia 117 80 n 38, 87 Schofield, M 10–11
Mercury 121, 123, 126 Porcius Cato, M Segesta 15–16, 60–70
Messalla Rufus, V 39 (cos. 195 BC) 126 Seius, Q 76
Milvian Bridge 48 Posidonios 126 Senate, Roman 29, 47, 48,
Minerva 45, 126, 128 potestas 27, 29, 33, 36, 37, 40 49, 50 n 22, 51–53, 73, 75,
Minucius Felix, M 121 Price, S 74 76, 111, 118, 120, 122, 125
Mithridatic Wars 107, 119 Proserpina 117 Serapis 120
mos maiorum 25, 82–83, 124 Protestantism 124 Sergius Catilina, L → see
prouidentia 17, 50, 106, Catiline
N 108–113, 138 Sertorius, Q 107
Natural Law 17, 30–33, prudentia 17, 30 n 30, 90, Sibylline Books 53, 77, 84
87–90, 93–95 100, 106, 109–114 Sicily 59–63, 68, 117
Neptune 45, 128 Ptolemy XII Auletes 77 Sol Invictus 120
Nigidius Figulus, P 13 pullarii 29 n 27, 38 Solon 112
Nonius Marcellus 110 Pyrrhus 61–62 Spain 107
North, J 74 Stoicism 19, 24, 30, 31, 32, 34,
Numa Pompilius 24–25 Q 39, 40, 88, 89, 94, 95, 108,
Nymphs, temple of 79 quindecemuiri s. f. 77, 112, 127, 128–129, 136, 137,
80 n 38, 82, 118 138, 140, 141, 142, 144
O Quintus (character of De superstitio 9
obnuntiatio 14, 24, 35–38, 40, Diuinatione) 11, 112, 113, supplicatio 48, 120
80 n 34 129–130, 142 Syracuse 59
Octavian 114, 123 Quintus (character of De
optimates 16–17, 30, 34, 74, Legibus) 24–25, 31 n 34 T
78, 80, 82, 83 Quirinus 123 Tarantino, G 139, 143
Tatum, W J 36
P R Teos 122–123
Palaemon 128–129 ratio 11, 30–34, 38, 50, 90, 96, Tenedos 128–129
Palatine 75, 117, 123 98, 100, 113 n 20, 129, 138 Tennes 128–129
pax deorum 91 rationes 11 Teutones 119
Rawson, E 11 Thales 112
150 General Index

Theodosius 77 V Voltaire 11
Traversa, L 17–18, 109 Velleius, C 127–128, 137, 141 Volturcius, T 48
treaties 47, 62, 91, 95 Veranius 39 Vulcan 45, 128
Trebatius Testa, C 39 Varro, M Terentius 13, 39,
Troy 61 94, 124, 130 W
Tullia 18 n 26, 108 Veii 117, 118 Walker, J 141
Tyndareus 129 Venus 98, 123 Wiseman, T P 13, 99
Verres, C 15, 16, 60–65,
U 67–68, 70 X
uota publica 47 n 8 Vesta 123 Xenophanes 45, 128
Ursinus, F 141 Vestal Virgins 53, 77 n 28,
120
 Index Locorum

Literary Sources De Diuinatione De Finibus

15 142 1 19 4 95
Aristotle 19 142 n 18
Ethica ad Eudemum 1 17 39 n 67 De Haruspicum Responso
8 21248b 108 1 17–22 50 4 77, 84 n 48
1 20–21 51 5 83 n 45 and 48
Arnobius 1 25 38 8–17 76
Aduersus Nationes 1 90 129 8–9 82 n 43
4 35 28 1 95 38 9 76
1 111 50 n 23, 112 11 76
Asconius, ed Clark 1 117 113 12 76
p8 35 2 13 112, 113 18–19 80, 84
2 14 113 19 80–84, 122–123
Caesar 2 33 113 20–29 74
De Bello Gallico 2 36 38 21 74
6 11–28 13 n 15 2 43 28 21–29 76
6 16 1–2 126 2 45 50 n 21 22 76
2 46–47 51 24 76
Cassius Dio 2 47 51 30–33 74, 76
37 9 2 51 2 50 113 30 76
37 34 3–4 51 2 63 112 31–32 77
38 13 6 35, 36 2 70 17, 113 34 77
2 71–74 38 34–35 74, 77
Cicero 2 72 28 n 20 36 74
Ad Atticum 2 73–74 38 37–39 74, 77–78
213 47 n 9 2 74 28 37 74, 77 n 28
2 75 17 40 78 n 31
Ad Familiares 2 78 28 n 20 41 80 n 36
2 8 1–2 50 n 23 2 85 130 44 77 n 28
66 50 n 23 2 124 113 52 83 n 45
2 126 113 53 78
Ad Quintum fratrem 2 130 113 55 78 n 31
29 99 56 78 n 31
De Domo 57 79
Brutus 100–141 75 58 35, 80
1 15 9 50 n 23 60 78 n 31
63 79 n 47
152 Index Locorum

De Inuentione 2 16 32 n 36 De Natura Deorum

1 48 51 2 16 2–6 95–96 11 14
2 66 9 2 16 15–20 91 1 42–43 127–128
2 159–169 109 2 16 40 25 1 81 45, 128
2 160 109 2 17 32 n 36 1 116 97
2 17 14 92 29 38 n 64, 144
De Lege Manilia 2 19 24 2 73 108, 138
20 107 2 20 24, 26, 28 n 20, 2 73–75 113
29 107 81 n 38, 2 75 138
42 107 112 n 18 2 77 113
68 107 2 21 24, 26, 112 2 87 113
69 107 2 21 7–9 93 2 97–98 113
2 21 6 25 2 98 113
De Legibus 2 22 24 2 162 113
1 14 30 2 22 1 25 35 81 n 38
1 17 30, 39 2 22 2 25 3 17 113 n 20
1 17 5–18 90 2 22 4 25 3 28 138–139
1 18–19 90 2 22 11 25 3 39 128–129
1 18 9–10 90 2 22 16 25 3 78 113 n 20
1 18 10 90 2 23 25, 32 3 92 113
1 19 30–31 2 26 45 3 95 19, 136–145
1 19 9 90 2 28 1 96
1 20 32 2 29 25 n 8 De Oratore
1 23 31 2 30 30, 34 2 356 67–68
1 23 3–4 90 2 30 6–9 92–93 2 357 54
1 23 5 96 2 31 23 n 1, 26, 27,
1 28 11–12 90 29 De Prouinciis Consularibus
1 28 12 90 2 31 1–2 92–93 45–46 35
1 33 11–12 96 2 31 10–12 93
1 37 33 2 32 38 De Republica
1 39 1–8 96 2 33 38, 113 1 45 111, 114
1 42 11 96 2 38 25 25 111
1 43 89 2 38–39 25 2 12 111
1 43 7–10 91 2 39 32 n 36 2 16 31
28 32 2 40 25 2 17 31 n 35
2 8 1–5 90 2 41 25 2 45 110
2 9 12 90 2 45 25
2 10 32, 40 2 62 25 Diuinatio in Caecilium
2 10 1–3 90 2 67–68 25 83 48
2 10 15–18 90 2 69 14, 32 n 36, 40
2 11 33 31 32 n 36 Hortensius
2 11 5–7 90 39 27 F 58 Ruch = 96 Grilli
2 11 21–23 90 3 10 27 110
2 13 33 3 11 26 n 11
2 14 32 3 12 32 n 37 In Catilinam
2 15 32, 54 3 27 28 1 11 54
2 15 8–14 92 3 43 28 39 53
 Index Locorum 153

3 11 53 Pro Milone Lucretius

3 14 111 44 48 1 44–49 98
3 18 49 85 48 1 54–57 96
3 19–20 49 1 76–77 96
3 19 52 Pro Murena 1 80–86 99
3 20 50 78 48 1 99–101 99
3 21 52 1 102–109 99
3 22 52–53 Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo 1 148 96
30 48 1 402–409 100
In Pisonem 1 586 91
9–10 35 Pro Rabirio Postumo 1 1012–1022 95
15 48 2 123–124 100
In Vatinium 2 176 96
18–21 35 Pro Roscio Amerino 2 183 101
23 31 n 35 131 49 2 216–293 95
2 219–224 95
In Verrem Pro Sestio 2 244 95
2 3 23 65 56 35 2 254 91
2 3 65 65 n 19 86 35 2 302 91
2 3 158 65 n 19 93 35 2 1041–1045 96
2 3 160 65 n 19 2 1059–1062 95
2 4 72–82 15, 59–70 Pro Sulla 2 1090–1092 97
2 4 72 62 86 86 3 60–61 99
2 4 74 65 3 781 91
2 4 77 63–64 Timaeus 5 119 96
2 4 83 65 10 108 6 68–69 98
6 75–78 98
Partitiones Oratoriae Tusculanae 6 379–382 99
76 110 1 66 108
1 73–74 108 Macrobius
Philippicae Saturnalia
2 82–83 27 n 12 Dionysius of 39 117 n 3
33 114 Halicarnassus
3 36 114 Antiquitates Romanae Minucius Felix
49 48 26 38 n 65 Octavius
11 27 2–4 100 3 70–71 39 n 67 6 121
13 12 28 n 20
13 20 48 Epicurus Nonius, ed Lindsay
Epistula ad Menoeceum 42 3 110
Post Reditum ad Senatum 133–134 94–95
11 35 Ovid
Livy Ars Amatoria
Pro Cluentio 1 12 4–7 28 n 20 3 633–638 78 n 29
194 9 1 36 39 n 67
12 63 7–9 47 n 8 Epistulae ex Ponto
Pro Marcello 45 39 12 47 n 8 44 47 n 8
1 114
154 Index Locorum

Pausanias Polybius Inscriptions

8 46 2 61 n 6 3 26 47 n 8
8 46 4 61 n 6 6 56 122 Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum3
Plato Suetonius 601 82 n 42, 122
Laws Divus Julius
700a7–701d3 25 n 8 20 35
716c–717a 25 20 2 34
955e5–956b3 25
958d3–959a1 25 Divus Vespasianus
8 47 n 8
Phaedon
84e–85d 108 Virgil
Aeneid
Pliny the Elder 8 698–700 123
Naturalis Historia
18 237 13 n 15
34 43 51
 p o t s da m e r a lt e rt u m s w i s s e n s c h a f t l i c h e b e i t r äg e

Herausgegeben von Pedro Barceló, Peter Riemer, Jörg Rüpke und John Scheid.

Franz Steiner Verlag ISSN 1437–6032

1. Christoph Batsch / Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser / ISBN 978-3-515-08195-5

Ruth Stepper (Hg.) 8. Patricia Just
Zwischen Krise und Alltag / Imperator et Episcopus
Conflit et normalité Zum Verhältnis von Staatsgewalt
Antike Religionen im Mittelmeerraum / und christlicher Kirche zwischen dem
Religions anciennes dans l’espace 1. Konzil von Nicaea (325) und dem
méditerranéen 1. Konzil von Konstantinopel (381)
1999. 287 S. mit 18 Abb., kt. 2003. 251 S., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-07513-8 ISBN 978-3-515-08247-1
2. Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser 9. Ruth Stepper
Kulträume im römischen Alltag Augustus et sacerdos
Das Isisbuch des Apuleius und der Ort von Untersuchungen zum römischen Kaiser
Religion im kaiserzeitlichen Rom als Priester
2000. 668 S., 20 Taf., geb. 2003. 275 S., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-07766-8 ISBN 978-3-515-08445-1
3. Christiane Kunst / Ulrike Riemer (Hg.) 10. Alessandro Barchiesi / Jörg Rüpke /
Grenzen der Macht Susan Stephens (Hg.)
Zur Rolle der römischen Kaiserfrauen Rituals in Ink
2000. X, 174 S., kt. A Conference on Religion and Literary
ISBN 978-3-515-07819-1 Production in Ancient Rome held
4. Jörg Rüpke (Hg.) at Stanford University in February 2002
Von Göttern und Menschen 2004. VIII, 182 S., kt.
erzählen ISBN 978-3-515-08526-7
Formkonstanzen und Funktionswandel 11. Dirk Steuernagel
vormoderner Epik Kult und Alltag in römischen
2001. 200 S., kt. Hafenstädten
ISBN 978-3-515-07851-1 Soziale Prozesse in archäologischer
5. Silke Knippschild Perspektive
„Drum bietet zum Bunde die 2004. 312 S. mit 6 Abb., 26 Plänen
Hände“ und 12 Taf., kt.
Rechtssymbolische Akte in zwischen- ISBN 978-3-515-08364-5
staatlichen Beziehungen im orientalischen 12. Jörg Rüpke
und griechisch-römischen Altertum Fasti sacerdotum
2002. 223 S. mit 23 Abb., geb. Die Mitglieder der Priesterschaften und
ISBN 978-3-515-08079-8 das sakrale Funktionspersonal römischer,
6. Christoph Auffarth / Jörg Rüpke (Hg.) griechischer, orientalischer und jüdisch-
∆Epitomhv th`~ oijkoumevnh~ christlicher Kulte in der Stadt Rom
Studien zur römischen Religion in Antike von 300 v. Chr. bis 499 n. Chr.
und Neuzeit. Für Hubert Cancik Teil 1: Jahres- und Kollegienlisten
und Hildegard Cancik-Lindemaier Teil 2: Biographien
2002. 284 S. mit 11 Abb., kt. Teil 3: Beiträge zur Quellenkunde
ISBN 978-3-515-08210-5 und Organisationsgeschichte /
7. Ulrike Riemer / Peter Riemer (Hg.) Bibliographie / Register
Xenophobie – Philoxenie 2005. 3 Bde. mit insg. 1860 S.
Vom Umgang mit Fremden in der Antike und CD-ROM, geb.
2005. XI, 276 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07456-8
13. erscheint nicht ISBN 978-3-515-09027-8
14. Dorothee Elm von der Osten / Jörg Rüpke / 23. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler
Katharina Waldner (Hg.) Konversion zur Philosophie
Texte als Medium und Reflexion in der Spätantike
von Religion im römischen Reich Kaiser Julian und Synesios von Kyrene
2006. 260 S., kt. 2008. 309 S., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-08641-7 ISBN 978-3-515-09092-6
15. Clifford Ando / Jörg Rüpke (Hg.) 24. Günther Schörner / Darja Šterbenc Erker
Religion and Law in Classical (Hg.)
and Christian Rome Medien religiöser Kommunikation
2006. 176 S., kt. im Imperium Romanum
ISBN 978-3-515-08854-1 2008. 148 S. mit 15 Abb., kt.
16. Corinne Bonnet / Jörg Rüpke / ISBN 978-3-515-09188-6
Paolo Scarpi (Hg.) 25. Helmut Krasser / Dennis Pausch /
Religions orientales – culti misterici Ivana Petrovic (Hg.)
Neue Perspektiven – nouvelles Triplici invectus triumpho
perspectives – prospettive nuove Der römische Triumph in augusteischer
2006. 269 S. mit 26 Abb., kt. Zeit
ISBN 978-3-515-08871-8 2008. 327 S. mit 25 Abb., kt.
17. Andreas Bendlin / Jörg Rüpke (Hg.) ISBN 978-3-515-09249-4
Römische Religion im historischen 26. Attilio Mastrocinque
Wandel Des Mystères de Mithra aux
Diskursentwicklung von Plautus bis Ovid Mystères de Jésus
2009. 199 S., kt. 2008. 128 S. und 7 Taf. mit 15 Abb., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-08828-2 ISBN 978-3-515-09250-0
18. Virgilio Masciadri 27. Jörg Rüpke / John Scheid (Hg.)
Eine Insel im Meer der Geschichten Bestattungsrituale und Totenkult
Untersuchungen zu Mythen aus Lemnos in der römischen Kaiserzeit / Rites
2007. 412 S. mit 6 Abb., kt. funéraires et culte des morts aux
ISBN 978-3-515-08818-3 temps impériales
19. Francesca Prescendi 2010. 298 S. mit 64 Abb., kt.
Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice ISBN 978-3-515-09190-9
Les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre 28. Christoph Auffarth (Hg.)
religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire Religion auf dem Lande
2007. 284 S., kt. Entstehung und Veränderung von Sakral-
ISBN 978-3-515-08888-6 landschaften unter römischer Herrschaft
20. Dorothee Elm von der Osten 2009. 271 S. mit 65 Abb., kt.
Liebe als Wahnsinn ISBN 978-3-515-09347-7
Die Konzeption der Göttin Venus 29. Pedro Barceló (Hg.)
in den Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus Religiöser Fundamentalismus
2007. 204 S., kt. in der römischen Kaiserzeit
ISBN 978-3-515-08958-6 2010. 250 S. mit 26 Abb., kt.
21. Frederick E. Brenk ISBN 978-3-515-09444-3
With Unperfumed Voice 30. Christa Frateantonio /
Studies in Plutarch, in Greek Literature, Helmut Krasser (Hg.)
Religion and Philosophy, and in the New Religion und Bildung
Testament Background Medien und Funktionen religiösen Wissens
2007. 543 S. mit 39 Abb., kt. in der Kaiserzeit
ISBN 978-3-515-08929-6 2010. 239 S. mit 8 Abb., kt.
22. David Engels ISBN 978-3-515-09690-4
Das römische Vorzeichenwesen 31. Philippe Bornet
(753–27 v. Chr.) Rites et pratiques de l’hospitalité
Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, Mondes juifs et indiens anciens
historische Entwicklung 2010. 301 S., kt.
2007. 877 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-09689-8
32. Giorgio Ferri Provinz Makedonien
Tutela urbis 2012. 278 S. und 44 Taf. mit 58 Abb.,
Il significato e la concezione della divinità 5 Ktn. und 3 Plänen, kt.
tutelare cittadina nella religione romana ISBN 978-3-515-09448-1
2010. 266 S., kt. 41. Ioanna Patera
ISBN 978-3-515-09785-7 Offrir en Grèce ancienne
33. James H. Richardson / Gestes et contextes
Federico Santangelo (Hg.) 2012. 292 S. mit 22 Abb., kt.
Priests and State ISBN 978-3-515-10188-2
in the Roman World 42. Vera Sauer
2011. 643 S. mit 24 Abb., kt. Religiöses in der politischen
ISBN 978-3-515-09817-5 Argumentation der späten
34. Peter Eich römischen Republik
Gottesbild und Wahrnehmung Ciceros Erste Catilinarische Rede –
Studien zu Ambivalenzen früher eine Fallstudie
griechischer Götterdarstellungen 2012. 299 S., kt.
(ca. 800 v.Chr. – ca. 400 v.Chr.) ISBN 978-3-515-10302-2
2011. 532 S., kt. 43. Darja Šterbenc-Erker
ISBN 978-3-515-09855-7 Die religiösen Rollen römischer
35. Mihály Loránd Dészpa Frauen in „griechischen“ Ritualen
Peripherie-Denken 2013. 310 S., kt.
Transformation und Adaption ISBN 978-3-515-10450-0
des Gottes Silvanus in den Donauprovinzen 44. Peter Eich / Eike Faber (Hg.)
(1.–4. Jahrhundert n. Chr.) Religiöser Alltag in der Spätantike
2012. X, 312 S. und 13 Taf. mit 35 Abb., kt. 2013. 293 S. mit 24 Abb., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-09945-5 ISBN 978-3-515-10442-5
36. Attilio Mastrocinque / 45. Nicola Cusumano / Valentino Gasparini /
Concetta Giuffrè Scibona (Hg.) Attilio Mastrocinque / Jörg Rüpke (Hg.)
Demeter, Isis, Vesta, and Cybele Memory and Religious Experience
Studies in Greek and Roman Religion in the Greco-Roman World
in Honour of Giulia Sfameni Gasparro 2013. 223 S. mit 24 Abb., kt.
2012. 248 S. mit 48 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10425-8
ISBN 978-3-515-10075-5 46. Veit Rosenberger (Hg.)
37. Elisabeth Begemann Divination in the Ancient World
Schicksal als Argument Religious Options and the Individual
Ciceros Rede vom „fatum“ 2013. 177 S. mit 11 Abb., kt.
in der späten Republik ISBN 978-3-515-10629-0
2012. 397 S., kt. 47. Francesco Massa
ISBN 978-3-515-10109-7 Tra la vigna e la croce
38. Christiane Nasse Dioniso nei discorsi letterari e figurativi
Erdichtete Rituale cristiani (II–IV secolo)
Die Eingeweideschau in der lateinischen 2014. 325 S. mit 23 Abb., kt.
Epik und Tragödie ISBN 978-3-515-10631-3
2012. 408 S., kt. 48. Marco Ladewig
ISBN 978-3-515-10133-2 Rom – Die antike Seerepublik
39. Michaela Stark Untersuchungen zur Thalassokratie der res
Göttliche Kinder publica populi romani von den Anfängen
Ikonographische Untersuchung zu den bis zur Begründung des Principat
Darstellungskonzeptionen von Gott 2014. 373 S. mit 17 Abb., kt.
und Kind bzw. Gott und Mensch in der ISBN 978-3-515-10730-3
griechischen Kunst 49. Attilio Mastrocinque
2012. 360 S. und 32 Taf. mit 55 Abb. Bona Dea and the Cults
ISBN 978-3-515-10139-4 of Roman Women
40. Charalampos Tsochos 2014. 209 S. mit 16 Abb., kt.
Die Religion in der römischen ISBN 978-3-515-10752-5
50. Julietta Steinhauer-Hogg 2017. 314 S., kt.
Religious Associations in the ISBN 978-3-515-11700-5
Post-Classical Polis 59. Timo Klär
2014. 189 S. mit 18 Abb., kt. Die Vasconen und das
ISBN 978-3-515-10646-7 Römische Reich
51. Eike Faber Der Romanisierungsprozess im Norden
Von Ulfila bis Rekkared der Iberischen Halbinsel
Die Goten und ihr Christentum 2017. 290 S. mit 7 Abb., kt.
2014. 300 S. mit 5 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11739-5
ISBN 978-3-515-10926-0 60. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer (Hg.)
52. Juan Manuel Cortés Copete / Elena Muñiz Kulträume
Grijalvo / Fernando Lozano Gómez (Hg.) Studien zum Verhältnis von Kult und
Ruling the Greek World Raum in alten Kulturen
Approaches to the Roman Empire 2017. 307 S. mit 68 Abb., kt.
in the East ISBN 978-3-515-11769-2
2015. 192 S., kt. 61. Christopher Degelmann
ISBN 978-3-515-11135-5 Squalor
53. Mirella Romero Recio (Hg.) Symbolisches Trauern in der Politischen
La caída del Imperio Romano Kommunikation der Römischen Republik
Cuestiones historiográficas und Frühen Kaiserzeit
2016. 220 S. mit 9 Abb., kt. 2018. 364 S. mit 6 Abb., kt.
ISBN 978-3-515-10963-5 ISBN 978-3-515-11784-5
54. Clifford Ando (Hg.) 62. Lara Dubosson-Sbriglione
Citizenship and Empire in Europe Le culte de la Mère des dieux
200–1900 dans l’Empire romain
The Antonine Constitution after 1800 years 2018. 551 S. mit 52 Abb., kt.
2016. 261 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11990-0
ISBN 978-3-515-11187-4 63. Daniel Albrecht / Katharina Waldner (Hg.)
55. Valentino Gasparini (Hg.) „Zu Tisch bei den Heiligen …“
Vestigia Askese, Nahrung und Individualisierung im
Miscellanea di studi storico-religiosi spätantiken Mönchstum
in onore di Filippo Coarelli nel suo 2019. 122 S. mit 1 Abb., kt.
80° anniversario ISBN 978-3-515-12087-6
2016. 786 S. mit 136 Abb., geb. 64. Katharina Degen
ISBN 978-3-515-10747-1 Der Gemeinsinn der Märtyrer
56. James J. Clauss / Martine Cuypers / Die Darstellung gemeinwohlorientierten
Ahuvia Kahane (Hg.) Handelns in den frühchristlichen
The Gods of Greek Hexameter Martyriumsberichten
Poetry 2018. 347 S., kt.
From the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity ISBN 978-3-515-12153-8
and Beyond 65. Roberto Alciati (Hg.)
2016. XIV, 458 S., kt. Norm and Exercise
ISBN 978-3-515-11523-0 Christian asceticism between late antiquity
57. Katharina Waldner / Richard Gordon / and early middle ages
Wolfgang Spickermann (Hg.) 2018. 202 S. mit 3 Abb., kt.
Burial Rituals, Ideas of Afterlife, ISBN 978-3-515-12154-5
and the Individual in the Hellenistic 66. Isolde Kurzmann-Penz
World and the Roman Empire Zur literarischen Fiktion
2016. 264 S. mit 25 Abb., kt. von Kindheit
ISBN 978-3-515-11546-9 Überlegungen zu den apokryphen Kind-
58. Jessica Schrader heitsevangelien Jesu im Rahmen
Gespräche mit Göttern der antiken Biographie
Die poetologische Funktion kommuni- 2018. 232 S., kt.
kativer Kultbilder bei Horaz, Tibull und ISBN 978-3-515-12152-1
Properz
67. Tanja Susanne Scheer (Hg.) 2020. 282 S., kt.
Natur – Mythos – Religion im anti- ISBN 978-3-515-12419-5
ken Griechenland / Nature – Myth 70. Adam Ziółkowski
– Religion in Ancient Greece From Roma quadrata to la grande
2019. 297 S. mit 13 Abb., kt. Roma dei Tarquini
ISBN 978-3-515-12208-5 A Study of the Literary Tradition on Rome’s
68. Javier Andreu Pintado / Aitor Blanco-Pérez Territorial Growth under the Kings
(Hg.) 2020. 352 S. mit 17 Abb., kt.
Signs of weakness and crisis in the ISBN 978-3-515-12451-5
Western cities of the Roman Empire 71. Eike Faber / Timo Klär (Hg.)
(c. II–III AD) Zwischen Hunger und Überfluss
2019. 232 S. mit 42 Abb., kt. Antike Diskurse über die Ernährung
ISBN 978-3-515-12406-5 2020. 358 S. mit 15 Abb., kt.
69. Marianne Wifstrand Schiebe ISBN 978-3-515-12628-1
Das anthropomorphe Gottesbild
Berechtigung und Ursprung aus der Sicht
antiker Denker
This book gathers eight papers devoted The volume focuses on the relationship
to specific aspects of Cicero’s engage- between law, religion, and religious
ment with Roman religion, and seeks authority in Cicero; the interplay
to make a wider contribution to the between divine images, ritual contexts,
understanding of Cicero’s work as and the conceptualization of the
historical evidence. By engaging with divine; Cicero’s construction of a
religion as a fundamental factor of Greek deity for a Roman audience; the
social cohesion and political stability, role of religious elements in the
both in his theoretical works and his shaping of a Roman political identity;
speeches, Cicero shaped a wide-rang- the tension between ‘natural law’ and
ing and ambitious discourse around Roman pietas; the problem of divine
themes and images that were firmly and human foresight; the relationship
located in first-century BCE Rome. His between theoretical views of the gods
contribution also proved very influen- and late Republican public cult; and
tial in the centuries to come. the reception, use, and readaptation of
Ciceronian theology in the English
Enlightenment.

ISBN 978-3-515-12643-4
www.steiner-verlag.de

9 783515 126434 Franz Steiner Verlag