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NUMA AND JUPITER: WHOSE SMILE IS IT, ANYWAY?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2021
Abstract
This article examines the Roman tradition that Numa once negotiated with Jupiter about human sacrifice. Complete versions of the myth survive in Ovid, Plutarch and Arnobius (citing Valerius Antias). Previous studies of this tradition have proposed four main interpretations of it, which have done important service in modern reconstructions of the character of Roman religion. These scholarly treatments raise several questions. First, are they actually supported by, or the most convincing way of reading, the surviving ancient sources? If so, have they been correctly attributed? Why might a specific ancient author present the myth of Numa and Jupiter in a manner which suggests one interpretation rather than another? What ideological and theological work does the story do for Ovid, for Plutarch and for Arnobius? Finally, can this myth, in whatever version, support the weight of the implications put on it for the character of Roman religion? This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this myth in its surviving versions, not just by analysing the evidence for each of the modern interpretations, but also by considering why ancient authors tell the myth of Numa and Jupiter the way they do. It is argued that their choices illustrate best not one meaning of the myth nor one Roman way of piety but the richness and diversity of religious reflection in antiquity.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by a Naomi Lacey Memorial Fellowship at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities. A stay at the Fondation Hardt pour l’étude de l'antiquité classique provided precious library resources. For suggestions and assistance, my thanks go out to the participants at the conference ‘Numa Numa: The Life and Afterlife of the Second King of Rome’ (Ann Arbor, MI, 2017), where an earlier version of this paper was presented; to my SSHRC Research Assistants, Ms Kathrine Bertram (Durham University) and Ms Krystal Marlier; to Dr Lucia Nixon (University of Oxford); to Prof. Noreen Humble (University of Calgary); and to the anonymous readers and editor of CQ.
References
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22 Cf. Mora (n. 10), 113–15.
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24 Arnobius introduces the fragment with: in secundo Antiatis libro … talis perscripta est fabula. An ancient reader would not necessarily have taken this as the prelude to an unedited quotation. Arnobius’ preferred verb for introducing quotation is inquit. He frequently uses scribo for ‘pagan’ content which he is summarizing rather than quoting. Since he uses perscribo only here, it is difficult to tell whether he means it in the sense of ‘to write out in full’, ‘to describe in detail’ or simply ‘to record’ (see OLD s.v. perscribo).
25 My thanks to the anonymous reader for CQ for their help on this point.
26 Dumézil (n. 8), 53–4; Borghini (n. 16), 45–6.
27 Scheid (n. 16), 48–50; id., ‘La mise à mort de la victime sacrificielle: à propos de quelques interprétations antiques du sacrifice romain’, in A. Müller-Karpe et al. (edd.), Studien zur Archäologie der Kelten, Römer und Germanen in Mittel- und Westeuropa: Alfred Haffner zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet (Rahden, 1998), 519–29, at 528; Prescendi (n. 10), 195–8, 201–2; Scheid (n. 11), 115–16.
28 E.g. Livy 22.57.6; Strabo 4.4.5; Plut. Marc. 3.3–4; Plin. HN 30.4.13; discussion in Schultz, C.E., ‘The Romans and ritual murder’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78 (2010), 516–41CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
29 Plut. Mor. 283F–284C. I follow Schultz's reconstruction (n. 28) of Roman distinctions between human sacrifice and other forms of ritual death.
30 Traces of such a view may linger in the fact, acknowledged by Prescendi (n. 10), 195, that our sources do not present the settlement between king and god as doing away with human sacrifice altogether but only as pertaining to this particular case.
31 Arnobius also tries to claim that the very existence of remedies for lightning constitutes an undermining of divine will, on the grounds that any expiation would render what the god had decided ‘vain and empty’ (<ut> quod fieri statui inane fiat et uacuum et sacrorum <ui> uanescat, 5.2). Arnobius’ willingness to distort and disregard the logic of ‘pagan’ rituals is patent here.
32 According to Arnobius, the expiations at issue were necessitated by the god's ‘wrath and passions’ (iras eius atque animos, 5.2), speaking with him could only be done ‘dangerously’ (periculosius, 5.2), and in the end he was still ‘vexed’ (doleas, 5.4). In Ovid and Plutarch, by contrast, Jupiter is said to be pleased by the results of the exchange: he smiles or laughs (risit) in Ovid, and goes away ‘gracious’ (ἵλεως) in Plutarch.
33 See especially Adv. nat. 4.24–5, 7.3–9, 7.15, 7.35–6; Le Bonniec (n. 20), 73–80.
34 Salat (n. 16), 36–7; Borghini (n. 16), 46.
35 15.1: μύθοις ἐοικότας τὴν ἀτοπίαν λόγους; 15.6: ταῦτα … τὰ μυθώδη καὶ γελοῖα.
36 Stoffel, E., ‘La divination dans les Vies romaines de Plutarque: le point de vue d'un philosophe’, CCG 16 (2005), 305–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 308–9, accepted by Prescendi (n. 10), 191 n. 683.
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41 Mor. 83E, 443C–D; Publicola 6.5. On Plutarch's doctrine of ἀπάθεια, and its differences from that of other Platonists, see Becchi (n. 39), 331–3; also Dillon (n. 40), 193–8, 229; de Romilly (n. 37), 299; D. Babut, ‘Du scepticisme au dépassement de la raison: philosophie et foi religieuse chez Plutarque’, in id., Parerga: Choix d'articles de D. Babut (Lyon and Paris, 1994), 549–81.
42 Mor. 416C–F, transl. Dillon (n. 40), 217.
43 Num. 3.3–5.
44 Num. 15.6; cf. Ov. Fast. 3.327–8; Livy 1.20.7; Varro, Ling. 6.94 with Wiseman (n. 1 [2008]), 155.
45 Dumézil (n. 8), 53–4.
46 Salat (n. 16), 36–7; Pasco-Pranger (n. 10), 303; ead., Founding the Year: Ovid's Fasti and the Poetics of the Roman Calendar (Leiden and Boston, 2006), 97; Prescendi (n. 10), 198; Green (n. 17), 50 n. 42.
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49 See above, page 7.
50 ‘Remedies and arts’ may denote the expiations agreed upon by Numa and Jupiter (as in Arnobius’ remarks preceding the sentence at hand) or the rituals used by Numa to elicit Jupiter from heaven (to which Arnobius alludes in the sentence immediately following). Similarly, ‘intentions’ or ‘significations’ may refer to lightning as a signifier of divine wrath, to Jupiter's intention of demanding human sacrifice, or to his reluctance to be pulled down from heaven. The lack of clarity is probably deliberate, a product of Arnobius’ scatter-gun style of argument: see above, Section 1.
51 This could also hint at the polemicist's awareness of a ‘yielding Jupiter’ interpretation.
52 Adv. nat. 5.3: expiabis, inquit, capite fulguritia. inperfecta adhuc uox est neque plena proloquii circumscriptaque sententia.
53 Adv. nat. 5.3: quod cum nondum specialiter statuisset, essetque adhuc pendens et nondum sententia terminata. I differ here from Bryce and Campbell (n. 7), who, taking sententia as ‘decision’, think that it was Jupiter's mind, not his utterance, which was not yet made up.
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55 On the likelihood of Arnobius’ tampering with Antias’ text, see above, Section 1.
56 Scheid (n. 16); Prescendi (n. 10), 197; Šterbenc Erker (n. 16), 350; Scheid (n. 11), 115.
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61 On the reading regna, as opposed to the more commonly accepted tecta or tela, see Heyworth (n. 5), 146.
62 Bömer (n. 59), 167; Heyworth (n. 5), 144.
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66 Scheid (n. 16), 49–50.
67 Scheid (n. 16), 45, 48–9.
68 J. Scheid, ‘Les émotions dans la religion romaine’, in F. Prescendi and Y. Volokhine (edd.), Dans le laboratoire de l'historien des religions: Mélanges offerts à Philippe Borgeaud (Geneva, 2011), 406–15, at 409–11, 413–14. Similarly in 2015: Scheid (n. 11), 114–16.
69 Ahl (n. 16), 301–2; Dubourdieu (n. 12 [1995]), 48.
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