Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:13:34.694Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Carmen Saecvlare of Horace and its Performance, June 3 b.c. 17

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. Warde Fowler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The great object of Augustus in celebrating Ludi saeculares in 17 b.c. was to encourage the belief in himself and the consequent active loyalty to himself, as the restorer of the pax deorum,—the good relation between the divine and human inhabitants of Rome. So far he had tried to attain this end by the ancient usual and proper means, i.e. by carrying out the various regulations of the ius diuinum, so many of which had long been neglected. But in that year he determined to undertake a special celebration, with the design of more effectually stamping the impression already made on the minds of the people; and it so happens that we have more detailed knowledge of this celebration than of any other Roman rite of any period. This is fortunate, for it stands on the margin between an old and a new régime, like the Aeneid of Virgil, who had died two years earlier: that great religious poem was just becoming known, and there is an allusion to it in the hymn of which I am going to speak. The Ludi were the outward or ritualistic expression of the idea immortalized by the poet, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government: old things are now to be put away, a new and glorious era is to open. Henceforward the Roman was to look ahead of him in hope and confidence, trusting in Augustus, the Aeneas of the actual State.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 1910 , pp. 145 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1910

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 146 note 1 Line 40 foll.

page 146 note 2 For the meaning of saeculum and saeculum condere, see Mommsen, Rom. Chronologie ed. 2 p. 172, and Wissowa, Abhandlungen zur Römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte pp. 200–202.

page 146 note 3 Zosimus ii. 5: the oracle is in ii. 6. They are printed in Wickham's Horace in the introduction to the Carm. Saec.

page 146 note 4 Ephemeris Epigraphica VIII. p. 255 foll., contains the text and Mommsen's commentary. Dessau, Inscript. Selectae ii. 1. 282, does not give the whole document.

page 146 note 5 So Zosimus, who adds that the hymn was sung both in Latin and Greek: but of this we have no confirmation.

page 146 note 6 Propertius ii. 31. 15. It also seems to be implied in Plin. N. H. xxxvi. 13.

page 147 note 1 Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte p. 206 and note. Mommsen in Ephemeris Epigraphica viii. p. 256.

page 147 note 2 Liv. 27. 37. ‘Septem et uiginti uirgines, longam indutae uestem, carmen in Iunonem Reginam canentes ibant: ilia tempestate forsitan laudabile rudibus ingeniis, nunc abhorrens et inconditum, si referatur …. A porta Iugario uico in forum uenere: in foro pompa constitit: et per manus reste data, uirgines sonum uocis pulsu pedum modulantes incesserunt.’ Diels, Sib. Blätter 91, puts this rope-dancing down as Greek, not Roman, and connects it with the ropes which occur in lists of articles paid for by the ìερoπoτoí in Delian inscriptions.

page 147 note 3 p. 91 note 1.

page 147 note 4 For the original magical meaning of the word, see Jevons in Anthropology and the Classics, p. 94 foll.

page 147 note 5 Augustus und seine Zeit, vol. I. Pt. ii. p. 630. Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of Rome, vol. V. p. 94 note, is right in objecting to this kind of interpretation.

page 147 note 6 Aenatores are mentioned in line 88 of the Acta: but these belong to another part of the Ludi. I imagine that the boys and girls were accompanied by tibicines.

page 148 note 1 Op. cit. vol. V. p. 90 foll.

page 148 note 2 e.g. in lines 13 foll., 29 foll., 45 foll, and 57 foll.

page 149 note 1 i.e. in 45–52.

page 149 note 2 See e.g. J. B. Carter, Religion of Numa, p. 166 foll., who has many interesting remarks on the Apollinism of Augustus.

page 149 note 3 In line 29 it is tempting to write Tellus with a capital T: but here Ceres seems to be per forming her part as deity. The two run very closely together throughout the early history of the Roman religion: see my Roman Festivals, p. 73 foll., Wissowa, Rel. und Kult. der Römer, p. 158 foll. Mr. Stuart Jones has drawn my attention to Petersen's very interesting suggestion of a connexion between this stanza and the slab from the Ara Pacis in the Uffizi at Florence; see Petersen, Ara Pacis Augustae p. 48 foll.: Mrs. Strong's Roman Sculpture, p. 42.

page 149 note 4 Abhandlungen p. 206 note 1, quoting Vahlen, whose paper I have not been able to see. Wissowa seems to take the whole down to line 36 as standing together and Apolline (p. 207 note). But to me lines 13 to 32 are plainly in honour of the deities of the Tarentum, though Eileithyia is introduced first instead of second, perhaps in order to run her into a dim kind of identification with Diana Lucina, or Juno Lucina, or both, This would suit the last and Apolline day of the festival: and we must note that the Tarentine deities are not now Dis and Proserpina, i.e. sinister deities of the underworld, but helpful ones (Wiss. 208).

page 150 note 1 For Horace's use of the word chorus, see Odes iv. 7. 6: i. 4. 5. Cp. Propertius ii. 2. 28.

page 150 note 2 Hülsen-Jordan, Rom. Topographic I. iii. p. 72.

page 150 note 3 Tristia iii. 59 foll. (The words ‘tenore pari’ seem to me now distinctly to favour the new view as to the site of the temple, if we take them to mean ‘going straight on,’ equivalent to uno tenore, as Mr. A. C. Clark suggests to me. As Ovid's book is supposed to enter the Palatine by the temple of Jup. Stator from the Sacra Via, and to arrive first at the domus of Augustus, it would have to turn sharp to the left to reach the Apollo temple, if it were on Hiilsen's site, but would go straight on if it were beyond the domus near the western corner of the Palatine.

page 151 note 1 Since this paper was written Mr. Stuart Jones has assured me that the view towards the Tarentum would be interfered with by the Capitoline hill and the temple of Jupiter. On the other hand, this would not be the case if we accept the other site for the Apollo temple.

page 151 note 2 Propertius iii. 28 foll.

page 152 note 1 This lex Julia had come into effect the year before that of the Ludi, viz. 18 B.C.

page 152 note 2 Abhandlungen p. 207 note.

page 153 note 1 Rel. und Kult. p. 103.

page 153 note 2 Wissowa, R. K. p. 277.

page 153 note 3 Wissowa, R. K. p. 135 foll. It used to be supposed that there was a temple to these deities on the Capitol (see e.g. Burn, Rome and the Campagna p. 193), the work of Marius. The site of Marius’ temple is however uncertain, though this passage of the Carmen might be used to support the old hypothesis. The best-known temple was near the Porta Capena: and it is probably of this temple that Dio Cassius writes (liv. 18) that Augustus in this year 17 B.C. fixed the date of its festival on May 29; which is almost the same thing as saying that he rebuilt it.

page 153 note 4 Dio Cass. li. 20: Suet. Aug. 31. We know hardly anything about this antique ceremony: but the language of Dio in xxxvii. 24 I shows that the word salutis (Wissowa, R. K. 453) is not the deity Salus, but the health of the people: cp. Cic. de Legibus ii. 21: ‘augures … salutem populi auguranto.’ The medical character of Apollo is apparent in line 63–64.

page 153 note 5 See Wickham's commentary.

page 154 note 1 In his Ruins and Excavations of ancient Rome, fig. 72.

page 154 note 2 Plin. N. H. xxvii. 45.

page 154 note 3 Servius, ad Aen. ii. 319. The statue of Apollo here was a remarkable one, thirty cubits high, brought from Apollonia by M. Lucullus, as Pliny tells us N. H. iv. 92 and xxxiv. 30.

page 155 note 1 The same holds good in the case of Ludi, which were in origin only a form of cult. The ludi Romani e.g. were in the cult of Jupiter, and originally took place on the dedication day of the Capitoline temple, the ides of September, The Megalesia were celebrated before the temple of Magna Mater, ‘in ipso Magnae Matris conspectu’ (Cic. Harusp. Resp. 24).