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Handout #12 |
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Traditional religion |
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Tacitus (c.55- c. 120 A.D.), writer and Roman politician, wrote the history of his time from Augustus to Domitian in the Histories and the Annals. This text conjures up many features of Roman religion: the Capitol, the temple of the three guardian deities of Rome: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva; the celebrants: the praetor, the vestal virgins, the pontiff, the haruspices who examined the liver of the victims; the discovery of favorable features and niggling ritual. The consecration of the rebuilt Capitol in 70 A.D. On the twenty-first of June (70 A.D.), under a cloudless sky, the area that was dedicated to the temple was surrounded by fillets and garlands; soldiers, who auspicious names, entered the enclosure carrying boughs of good omen; then the vestals, accompanied by boys and girls whose fathers and mothers were living, sprinkled the area with water drawn from fountains and streams. Next, Helvidius Priscus, the praetor, guided by the pontifex Plautius Aelianus, purified the area with the sacrifice of the souvetaurilia (a boar, a ram and a bull) and placed the vitals of the victims on an altar of turf; and then, after he had prayed to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and to the gods who protect the empire to prosper this undertaking and by their divine assistance to raise again their home which man's piety had begun, he touched the fillets with which foundation stone was wound and the ropes entwined; at the same time the rest of the magistrates, the priests, senators, knights and a great part of the people, putting forth their strength together in one enthusiastic and joyful effort, dragged the huge stone to its place. a shower of gold and silver and of virgin ores, never smelted in any furnace, but in their natural state, was thrown everywhere against the foundations: the haruspices had warned against the profanation of the work by the use of stone or gold intended for any other purpose. The temple was given greater height than the old: this was the only change that religious scruples allowed, and the only feature that was that wanting in the magnificence of the old structure. Tacitus, Histories IV 53. |
