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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2021
This paper, grounded in a critical reading of Alain Corbin’s recent History of Silence, proposes a twofold development. The first part is methodological, arguing for the necessity of studying the acoustic phenomena of the past in a way that is distinct from emotion and does not focus solely on conveying experience. The historiography of the notion of “soundscapes,” invented by musicologist Raymond Murray Schafer, is used to assess the contribution of “sound studies,” “sensory history,” and the anthropology of the senses. The heuristic capacities of this notion are emphasized, as is the need to locate it within a coherent topographical and chronological framework. The second section of the article develops a case study based on these methodological prescriptions, focusing on silence in the religious rites of ancient Rome. The acoustic frame of ritual perfection, silentium was also a category of Roman religious law and very far from the quest for interiority and spiritual life that Corbin considers a natural part of silence. An analysis of the nature and function of silence in two different rites, taking the auspices and sacrifice, confirms the need for a thorough and contextualized historical approach to acoustic phenomena: behind a unified terminology lie two radically different acoustic realities.
This article was translated from the French by Michael C. Behrent and edited by Robin Emlein and Chloe Morgan.
Unless otherwise indicated, references to Latin texts correspond to the editions in the series Collection des universités de France (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). References to English translations are provided as necessary; where no English edition is cited, translations are our own.
1 Alain Corbin, Histoire du silence. De la Renaissance à nos jours (Paris: Albin Michel, 2016); Corbin, A History of Silence from the Renaissance to the Present Day, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge/Medford: Polity Press, 2018).
2 Lucien Febvre, “La sensibilité et l’histoire,” Annales d’histoire sociale 3, no. 3/4 (1941): 5–20; Robert Mandrou, “Pour une histoire des sensibilités,” Annales ESC 14, no. 3 (1959): 581–88.
3 Alain Corbin, Historien du sensible. Entretiens avec Gilles Heuré (Paris: La Découverte, 2000). On the recognition by English-language historiography of the decisive impulse Corbin has given to the history of the senses, see Mark M. Smith, Sensory History (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 7ff.; Ari Y. Kelman, “Rethinking the Soundscape: A Critical Genealogy of a Key Term in Sound Studies,” Senses and Society 5, no. 2 (2010): 212–34, here pp. 226–28; David Howes and Constance Classen, Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (New York: Routledge, 2014). See, too, the reference to his works in Jonathan Sterne’s introduction to Une histoire de la modernité sonore, trans. Maxime Boidy (Paris: La Découverte, 2015), 9 and 24. Sterne’s book originally appeared without the introduction as The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). The systematic translation of Corbin’s books into English is significant and points to the importance of his reception on the other side of the Atlantic.
4 In Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750–1840 [1988], trans. Jocelyn Phelps (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), although touch is not the primary subject of investigation, the sensations of sun and sea on skin and of sand underfoot are addressed implicitly throughout the book. The same can be said of Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination [1986], trans. Miriam L. Kochan, Roy Porter, and Christopher Prendergast (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); and Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside [1990], trans. Martin Thom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
5 Corbin, “A History and Anthropology of the Senses,” in Time, Desire, and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses [1990], trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 181–95; Corbin, “Charting the Cultural History of the Senses,” in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. David Howes (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 128–39. For a defense of the systematic study of each of the senses, see Corbin, Historien du sensible.
6 Alain Corbin, “Prélude à une histoire de l’espace et du paysage sonores,” in Le jardin de l’esprit. Textes offerts à Bronisław Baczko, ed. Michel Porret and François Rosset (Geneva: Droz, 1995), 51–63, here p. 52. The same idea is repeated in almost identical terms in L’homme dans le paysage. Entretien avec Jean Lebrun (Paris: Textuel, 2001), 44: “There can be no study of sonic landscapes without considering silence, since the latter constitutes a backdrop which makes such appreciation possible.”
7 Corbin, A History of Silence, 9.
8 These are the real boundaries of the study, which result in practice from the sources it draws on. The late Renaissance is only addressed in passing in the chapter devoted to spiritual quests for silence. As for the modern world, it is completely absent from the book, save for two lines in the introduction.
9 David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 29–58. The conditional tense is required, for although Corbin is obviously familiar with Howes’s work, he does not specifically identify with the “sensual turn” in his book.
10 The temptation and even the claim to be a “flâneur historian” was already suggested by Gilles Heuré and was accepted by Corbin in Historien du sensible, 65.
11 Schafer, a composer and musicologist, bequeathed to this discipline classificatory tools that are used to this day.
12 Raymond Murray Schafer, The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher (Toronto: Berandol Music, 1969). With this short book, Schafer sought to call music teachers’ attention to the need to open the content of their classes to the sounds of nature that are threatened by the modern world. The concept of the “soundscape” is further elaborated in The Tuning of the World (New York: Knopf, 1977). The fact that this book’s French translation—Le paysage sonore. Toute l’histoire de notre environnement sonore à travers les âges, trans. Sylvette Gleize (Paris: J.-C. Lattès, 1979)—uses Schafer’s key concept in its title, unlike the original, is indicative of its impact. This was matched by the later English re-edition, entitled The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester: Destiny Books, 1994). A revised version of the French translation, with a new preface from the author, was published in 2010: Schafer, Le paysage sonore. Le monde comme musique, trans. Sylvette Gleize (Marseille: Éditions Wildproject, 2010). The subtitle of the 2010 translation reintroduces the notion of the “tuning of the world” that was central to the original publication.
13 On the question of the reception of “soundscapes” and their use in the social sciences, see Alexandre Vincent, “Paysage sonore et sciences sociales : sonorités, sens, histoire,” in Le paysage sonore de l’Antiquité. Méthodologie, historiographie, perspectives, ed. Sibylle Emerit, Sylvain Perrot, and Alexandre Vincent (Cairo: Presses de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2015), 9–40.
14 Helmi Järviluoma and Gregg Wagstaff, “Soundscape Studies and Methods: An Introduction,” in Soundscape Studies and Methods, ed. Helmi Järviluoma and Gregg Wagstaff (Helsinki: Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology, 2002), 9–26, here p. 11.
15 Michele Hilmes, “Is There a Field Called Sound Culture Studies? And Does It Matter?” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 249–59.
16 Kelman, “Rethinking the Soundscape.”
17 Including via the notion of auditory culture: see Michael Bull and Les Back, “Introduction: Into Sound,” in The Auditory Culture Reader, ed. Michael Bull and Les Back (New York: Berg, 2003), 1–18.
18 In the preface to Schafer, Le paysage sonore. Le monde comme musique, 14, the author describes the origin of the concept as follows: “We needed a term to define our studies, and it was at this point that ‘soundscape’ entered the vocabulary. It comes from landscape. Landscape is nothing more, nothing less than everything that can be seen, so soundscape became everything that can be heard.”
19 Schafer, The Soundscape, 274–75. A glossary of “sonic ecology” accompanies the book and expands the concept’s definition: “Technically, [it is] any portion of the sonic environment regarded as a field for study. The term may refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an environment.”
20 Vincent, “Paysage sonore et sciences sociales”; Christophe Vendries, “Du bruit dans la cité. L’invention du ‘paysage sonore’ et l’Antiquité romaine,” in Emerit, Perrot, and Vincent, Le paysage sonore, 209–58, here pp. 209–14.
21 Olivier Balaÿ, L’espace sonore de la ville au xix e siècle (Paris: À la croisée, 2003).
22 Grégoire Chelkoff, “L’homme sonore en contexte urbain. Les trente premières années du laboratoire Cresson,” in Paysages sensoriels. Essai d’anthropologie de la construction et de la perception de l’environnement sonore, ed. Joël Candau and Marie-Barbara Le Gonidec (Paris: Cths, 2013), 177–98; Jean-Paul Thibaud, “Petite archéologie de la notion d’ambiance,” Communications 90 (2012): 155–74.
23 Christine Guillebaud, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Ambient Sound (London: Routledge, 2017). This book was produced by a research group named MILSON, whose name is derived from “Pour une anthropologie des MILieux SONores/For an anthropology of sound environments.”
24 Candau and Le Gonidec, Paysages sensoriels. The authors also accept “sonic ambiance,” “sonic milieu,” and “acoustic environment.”
25 Tim Ingold, “Against Soundscape,” in Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice, ed. Angus Carlyle (Paris: Double Entendre/Crisap, 2007), 10–13.
26 Jonathan Sterne, “Sonic Imaginations,” in The Sound Studies Reader, ed. Jonathan Sterne (London: Routledge, 2012), 1–17. The following book perfectly captures the baroque proliferation of “sound studies”: Hillel Schwartz, Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond (New York: Zone Books, 2011). For a recent assessment, see Bruce Johnson, “Sound Studies Today: Where Are We Going?” in A Cultural History of Sound, Memory and the Senses, ed. Joy Damousi and Paula Hamilton (New York: Routledge, 2017), 7–22.
27 On the “invention” of sonic transduction technology, see Sterne, The Audible Past, in which he seeks to relativize the revolutionary nature of this technological innovation by situating it within the long history of the nineteenth century.
28 Schafer, The Soundscape, 43.
29 The last part of the book, entitled “Toward Acoustic Design” (pp. 203–62) is a prolegomenon to this new discipline, which notably requires training specialists open to world music.
30 The Five Villages Soundscape program, launched by the World Soundscape Project in 1975, sought to record the sonic landscapes of five European villages in order to preserve them: Lesconil (France), Skruv (Sweden), Bietigheim-Bissingen (Germany), Cembra (Italy), and Dollar (Scotland).
31 On the relationship between acoustic preservation technology and death, and on the politics of saving vanishing sounds, see Sterne, “A Resonant Tomb,” chap. 6 of The Audible Past, 287–334.
32 For some initial thoughts on the relationship between the two authors, see the first part of Vendries, “Du bruit dans la cité,” 210–14.
33 Schafer’s name appears regularly in the books of interviews that Corbin published after Village Bells: see Historien du sensible, 60–61 (though it is surprising that he generously describes the composer as a “historian”) and 116; and L’homme dans le paysage, 29.
34 Anthony Pecqueux, “Le son des choses, les bruits de la ville,” Communications 90 (2012): 5–16, here p. 8. On this point, see Éric Palazzo’s historiographical analysis, “Les cinq sens au Moyen Âge. État de la question et perspectives de recherche,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 55, no. 220 (2012): 339–66.
35 Schafer, The Soundscape, 15–102. These chapters belong to the parts entitled “First Soundscapes” and “The Post-Industrial Soundscape.”
36 Corbin had, however, already been critical of the method adopted in his Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 [1978], trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). In Historien du sensible, he acknowledges having “made a mistake” in using literary sources, “taking them too literally and … considering that they implicitly had the status of proof ” (Corbin, Historien du sensible, 46).
37 Corbin, A History of Silence, 56, 93, 96, and 158.
38 Huysmans is frequently used in Corbin, A History of Silence, notably on p. 7, where he cites Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 61–62. On Teresa of Ávila, see Corbin, A History of Silence, 44.
39 Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, eds., Histoire des émotions (Paris: Le Seuil, 2016). The editors do not explicitly claim this method as their own.
40 Corbin, A History of Silence, 1.
41 Sterne, The Audible Past, 10–14.
42 Ibid., 11. “As part of a larger physical phenomenon of vibration, sound is a product of human senses and not a thing in the world apart from humans. Sound is a little piece of the vibrating world.”
43 See the comparison made by Howes in Sensual Relations, 160–72.
44 Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” trans. Gregor Benton, in Early Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 279–400, here p. 353. The vast bibliography on the history and anthropology of the senses renders any possibility of an overview illusory. Besides the various works by Howes cited above, see Constance Classen, ed., A Cultural History of the Senses (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), and especially the list of recent publications compiled by the journal The Senses and Society: http://www.sensorystudies.org/books-of-note. For the Francophone world, see Ulrike Krampl, Robert Beck, and Emmanuelle Retaillaud-Bajac, eds., Les cinq sens de la ville du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Tours: Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, 2013); Candau and Le Gonidec, Paysages sensoriels; Marie-Luce Gélard, “L’anthropologie sensorielle en France. Un champ en devenir ?” L’Homme 217, no. 1 (2016): 91–107.
45 The term is ubiquitous in Corbin, A History of Silence, though this analogy never receives a genuine explanation. It probably refers to the values attributed to silence and the various affects it elicits.
46 David Le Breton, Du silence (1997; repr. Paris: Métailié, 2015). The most convincing aspect of this book is its demonstration of how silence varies from civilization to civilization; the idea of an evolution across time is less present. Even so, it is surprising that A History of Silence makes no reference to Le Breton’s work, just as it leaves out any mention of Schafer.
47 Corbin, A History of Silence, 1.
48 This collective reflection formed part of the research program “Soundscapes and Urban Spaces in the Ancient Mediterranean,” a shared project organized by the École française de Rome, the École française d’Athènes, and the Institut français d’archéologie orientale since 2012.
49 Vincent, “Paysage sonore et sciences sociales,” 28.
50 Corbin, “Histoire et anthropologie,” 230. Corbin criticizes the part of Guy Thuillier’s study dedicated to sonic landscapes, which he considers too positivistic. See Thuillier, Pour une histoire du quotidien au xix e siècle en Nivernais (Paris: Ehess, 1977).
51 Eleanor Betts, ed., Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture (London: Routledge, 2017); Jerry Toner, ed., A Cultural History of the Senses, vol. 1, In Antiquity (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). The most important multi-author work is the collection coordinated by Mark Bradley, The Senses in Antiquity (London/Durham: Routledge/Acumen): Shane Butler and Alex Purves, eds., Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses (2014); Mark Bradley, ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses (2014); Michael Squire, ed., Sight and the Ancient Senses (2015). [Since the French version of the present article, the following volumes have been published: Kelli C. Rudolph, ed., Taste and the Ancient Senses (2017); Alex Purves, ed., Touch and the Ancient Senses (2017); Shane Butler and Sarah Nooter, eds., Sound and the Ancient Senses (2018)].
52 See the contributions included in the second part of Emerit, Perrot, and Vincent, Le paysage sonore, 155–256, especially, for Roman history, Vendries, “Du bruit dans la cité.”
53 While the following list makes no claim to be exhaustive, see Concepción Bermejo Jiménez, “El silencio en Tibulo,” in Simposio Tibuliano. Commemoración del bimilenario de la muerte de Tibulo (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1985), 217–25; Marie Ledentu, “Horace et la vertu du silence, des Satires aux Odes romaines. Questionnements éthiques et esthétiques sur les enjeux de la libertas et de l’amicitia dans l’entourage d’Octavien/Auguste,” Latomus. Revue d’études latines 73, no. 2 (2014): 399–414; Roberta Strocchio, I significati del silenzio nell’opera di Tacito (Turin: Accademia delle scienze, 1992); Valentina Chinnici, “La dialettica fra suono e silenzio in Calpurnio Siculo,” in Fer propius tua lumina. Giochi intertestuali nella poesia di Calpurnio Siculo, ed. Luciano Landolfi and Roberto Oddo (Bologna: Pàtron, 2009), 129–42; Géraldine Puccini-Delbey, “La vertu de silence dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée,” in Présence du roman grec et latin, ed. Rémy Poignault (Clermont-Ferrand: Centre de recherches A. Piganiol-Présence de l’Antiquité, 2011), 225–36; Yoneko Nurtantio, Le silence dans l’Énéide (Brussels: Éditions modulaires européennes, 2014); Jacques Heurgon, “Le silence tragique de Didon (Énéide VI, 450–76),” in Mélanges de philosophie, de littérature et d’histoire ancienne offerts à Pierre Boyancé (Rome: École française de Rome, 1974), 395–400; Otto Seel, Quintilian oder die Kunst des Redens und Schweigens (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1977); Thomas Köves-Zulauf, “Reden und Schweigen im taciteischen Dialogus de oratoribus,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 135 (1992): 316–41; Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, “Reden und Schweigen in Caesars Bellum Gallicum,” in Acting with Words: Communication, Rhetorical Performance and Performative Acts in Latin Literature, ed. Therese Fuhrer and Damien Nelis (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010), 9–30; Robert J. Baker, “Sallustian Silence,” Latomus. Revue d’études latines 41, no. 4 (1982): 801–2; Gernot Krapinger, “Schweigen in den Viten Plutarchs,” in The Language of Silence, ed. Siegfried Jäkel and Asko Timonen (Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 2001), 1:105–12; Benjamin E. Stevens, Silence in Catullus (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2013); Elżbieta Wesołowska, “Silence in Seneca’s Tragedies,” Acta antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 33 (1990–1992): 77–81; Ernest Dutoit, “Silences, dans l’œuvre de Tite Live,” in Mélanges de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes, offerts à J. Marouzau par ses collègues et élèves étrangers (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1948), 141–51; Yelena Baraz, “Sound and Silence in Calpurnius Siculus,” American Journal of Philology 136 (2015): 91–120; Pasqualina Vozza, “Un silenzio eloquente (quid tacitus…? Calp. Ecl. 4, 1–4),” Bollettino di studi latini 24, no. 1 (1994): 71–92; Ewa Skwara, “What Does Silence Say? Functions of Silence in Plautus’ Comedies,” Eos. Commentarii Societatis Philologae Polonorum 87, no. 2 (2000): 279–86.
54 Alexandre Vincent, “Les silences de Sénèque,” Pallas. Revue d’études antiques 98 (2015): 131–43. Ray Laurence, “The Sounds of the City: From Noise to Silence in Ancient Rome,” in Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture, ed. Eleanor Betts (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 39–53.
55 For Corbin, this is so obvious that it needs no commentary: “I will pass quickly over the connection between silence and the liturgy, it is so self-evident.” A History of Silence, 16.
56 Vincent Debiais, Le Silence dans l’art (Paris: Éditions du cerf, 2019).
57 The relationship between Roman religion and silence have not, as yet, been studied, though it is worth noting the publication of a seminar on the history of religion: Santiago Montero and María Cruz Cardete, eds., Religión y silencio. El silencio en las religiones antiguas (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007). Marcos Rodriguez Plaza’s introductory bibliographical presentation (Roman antiquity is addressed on pp. 16–18) is an eloquent testament to the work that remains to be done. See also Michel Humm, “Silences et bruits autour de la prise d’auspices,” in Les sons du pouvoir dans les mondes anciens, ed. Maria Teresa Schettino and Sylvie Pittia (Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2012), 275–95.
58 Though we should not rule out using later commentaries, like those of the scholiast Servius on the Aeneid, when they provide relevant insight. Similarly, material can be found in the work of Festus, a later author who revisited the work of the Augustan Marcus Verrius Flaccus.
59 The groundwork was laid by Arduino Maiuri, “La polisemia del silenzio nel mondo latino tra politica, diritto e religione,” in Silenzio e parola nella patristica (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2012), 465–86.
60 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 13.10.12: “silentium non aliqua res est, sed uti sonus non est, silentium dicitur.”
61 Pliny the Younger, Letters 1.6.2.
62 Horace, Epistles 2.2.77–80: “Scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus et fugit urbem rite cliens Bacchi somno gaudentis et umbra, tu me inter strepitus nocturnos atque diurnos uis canere et contracta sequi uestigia uatum?”; Horace, Satires and Epistles, trans. John Davie (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 102.
63 Martial, Epigrams 12.57.3–4; Juvenal, Satires 3.234–35. Most of these references are to be found in satirical sources. While these are by nature prone to exaggeration, their basis is nonetheless credible. See how they are used by Antonio Gonzales, “Discours contre le bruit, discours contre l’autre dans une mégalopole antique : le cas de Rome,” in Hommes, cultures et paysages de l’Antiquité à la période moderne. Mélanges offerts à Jean Peyras, ed. Isabelle Pimouguet-Pédarros, Monique Clavel-Lévêque, and Fatima Ouachour (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012), 243–58, and Laurence, “The Sounds of the City.”
64 Martial, Epigrams 12.57.5–6, complains of the nocturnal noises of the baker, but especially of activities relating to metalworking (see also 9.69 on the making of a bronze statute) and money trading. Seneca, Letters to Lucullus 56.4, mentions a locksmith and a manufacturer testing musical instruments.
65 Martial, Epigrams 4.64.21–22.
66 Juvenal, Satires 3.236–38.
67 Horace, Satires 15.11–13.
68 For an analysis of this famous document, the most frequently cited source on urban noises, see Vincent, “Les silences de Sénèque.” The most famous depiction of a city through the sounds of its inhabitants is probably Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Tableau de Paris. A fine medieval example, the Concile d’Apostoile or Grand riote (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 837 and fr. 19152), was recently studied by Jean-Marie Fritz, “Paysage sonore et littérature médiévale : fécondité et fragilité d’une rencontre,” in Les paysages sonores. Du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, ed. Laurent Hablot and Laurent Vissière (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015), 299–301.
69 For the Greek world, see Silvia Montiglio, Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
70 Henri Bardon, “Le silence, moyen d’expression,” Revue des études latines 21/22 (1943–1944): 112–20.
71 Tacitus, Histories 1.40.1; Tacitus, The Histories, trans. C. H. Moore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962–1963), 2:69.
72 Servius, In Verg. 5.71 (Teubner: Leipzig, 1881): “nam in sacris taciturnitas necessaria est.”
73 At the end of Aeneas’s speech establishing the funeral games for his father Anchises.
74 Ovid, Ibis 98–99: “Quisquis ades sacris, ore fauete, meis; quisquis ades sacris, lugubria dicite uerba.” The similar construction of both verses is striking.
75 Francesca Prescendi, Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice. Les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007), 72–73.
76 Seneca, Of a Happy Life 26.7.8: “Hoc uerbum non, ut plerique existimant, a fauore trahitur, sed imperat silentium ut rite peragi possit sacrum nulla uoce mala obstrepente”; Seneca, “Of a Happy Life,” in Minor Dialogs Together with the Dialog “On Clemency,” trans. Aubrey Stewart (London: George Bell and Sons, 1912), 204–39, here p. 237.
77 Paul the Deacon, Ex Festo 78 L.: “Fauere enim bona fari, at ueteres poetae pro silere usi sunt fauere.” Though the term does not appear directly, the fauete linguis is also recalled in another lemma by Paul the Deacon, Ex Festo 249 L.: “Parcito linguam in sacrificiis dicebatur, id est coerceto, contineto, taceto.”
78 Servius, In Verg. 5.71: “‘fauete linguis, fauete uocibus,’ hoc est bona omina habete aut tacete.” The expression “fauete uocibus” is a hapax legomenon, which seems to serve no other purpose than that of explicating fauete linguis by broadening the metonymy.
79 Cicero, On Divination 44.102: “Quae maiores nostri quia ualere censebant, idcirco omnibus rebus agendis ‘quod bonum, faustum, felix fortunatumque esset’ praefabantur, rebusque diuinis, quae publice fierent, ut ‘fauerent linguis,’ imperabatur inque feriis imperandis, ut ‘litigibus et iurgiis se abstinerent’”; Cicero, “De Divinatione,” in De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. William Armistead Falconer (London/New York: William Heinemann/J. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923), 222–540, here p. 333.
80 Plutarch, Life of Numa 14.4–5: ὡς γάρ φασι τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς οὐκ ἐᾶν ἐκ παρόδου προσκυνεῖν καὶ προσεύχεσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς, ἀλλ᾽ οἴκοθεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοῦτο γνώμῃ παρεσκευασμένους βαδίζειν, οὕτως ᾤετο Νομᾶς χρῆναι τοὺς πολίτας μήτε ἀκούειν τι τῶν θείων μήτε ὁρᾶν ἐν παρέργῳ καὶ ἀμελῶς, ἀλλὰ σχολὴν ἄγοντας ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλωὶ καὶ προσέχοντας τὴν διάνοιαν ὡς πράξει μεγίστῃ τῇ περὶ τὴν εὐσέβειαν, ψόφων τε καὶ πατάγων καὶ στεναγμῶν, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις καὶ βαναύσοις πόνοις ἕπεται, καθαρὰς τὰς ὁδοὺς ταῖς ἱερουργίαις παρέχοντας, ὧν ἴχνος τι μέχρι [356] νῦν διασώζοντες, ὅταν ἄρχων πρὸς ὄρνισιν ἢ θυσίαις διατρίβῃ, βοῶσιν ‘Ὃκ ἄγε:’ σημαίνει δὲ ἡ φωνὴ ‘τοῦτο πρᾶσσε,’ συνεπιστρέφουσα καὶ κατακοσμοῦσα τοὺς προστυγχάνοντας; “Numa Pompilius,” in Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men, trans. John Dryden (New York: John B. Alden, 1887), 1:98–120, here pp. 112–13.
81 Prescendi, Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice, particularly 75–76.
82 The taking of auspices was a particularly important moment in Roman collective (i.e., religious and political) life and is the subject of an extensive literature. See, most recently, Yann Berthelet, Gouverner avec les dieux. Autorité, auspices et pouvoir, sous la République romaine et sous Auguste (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015). On the particular question of augural silence, see Humm, “Silences et bruits,” and Santiago Montero, “Del silencio augural al silencio ante el prodigio,” in Montero and Cardete, Religión y silencio, 165–74.
83 John Scheid, “La parole des dieux. L’originalité du dialogue des Romains avec leurs dieux,” Opus 6–8 (1987–1989): 125–36.
84 On the chronology and the reasons for this evolution, see Berthelet, Gouverner avec les dieux, 220–35. Until a fullblown study of the pullarii has been written, see Giuseppina Foti, “Funzioni e caratteri del ‘Pullarius’ in età repubblicana e imperiale,” Acme 64, no. 2 (2011): 89–121.
85 Humm, “Silences et bruits,” especially p. 288 on the sources that situate the taking of the auspices at night.
86 The tripudium soniuium was evidently explained in the treatise of augural law by Appius Pulcher (mentioned in Festus, 382 L.: “Soni>uium tripu<dium […] Appius> Pulcher, quod […]”). The precise identification of what to listen out for was subject to discussion. According to Servius, In Verg. 3.90, it was the sound produced by the fall of a rock or a tree, while Pliny the Elder, Natural History 15.24, mentions the sound of nuts hitting the ground.
87 One finds an interesting parallel in the well-known Iguvine Tablets regarding the necessity of silence when taking the auspices in the Umbrian city of Iguvium. Tablet VI explains: “When on the seat sits he who will observe the crying [birds], as long as no noise occurs, a third party should not interfere until he who has gone to observe the crying [birds] has returned. If one makes noise or [if] someone else interferes, [the ritual] will be invalid.” This translation is based on that of Jean-Claude Lacam, which is found along with his insightful analysis in “L’univers sonore dans les Tables Eugubines,” Res Antiquae 12 (2015): 103–16.
88 Cicero, Letters to his Friends 6.6.7; Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero with His Treatises on Friendship and Old Age, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), 169: “Therefore, since, after the manner of augurs and astrologers, I too, as a state augur, have by my previous predictions established the credit of my prophetic power and knowledge of divination in your eyes, my prediction will justly claim to be believed. Well, then, the prophecy I now give you does not rest on the flight of a bird nor the note of a bird of good omen on the left—according to the system of our augural college—nor from the normal and audible pattering of the corn of the sacred chickens. I have other signs to note; and if they are not more infallible than those, yet after all they are less obscure or misleading.” It is preferable to follow Cicero on the nature of this sonic irruption of divine expression than Servius, who maintains that it consisted of the sound produced by the fall of a rock or a tree, which would have been much more audible even without surrounding silence. See Servius, In Verg. 3.90.
89 The city’s various auguracula were situated high up, for both religious and practical reasons, to ensure better observation of birds in flight. See Filippo Coarelli’s map, which is reproduced in Humm, “Silences et bruits,” 279.
90 Festus, 474 L.: “hoc enim est <proprie sil>entium, omnis uitii in auspiciis uacuitas.”
91 Georges Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion [1966], trans. Philip Krapp (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 1:619. Dumézil is addressing auspices taken by the paterfamilias in a private context, which in no way changes the value of his analysis.
92 Cicero, On Divination 2.71–72: “‘Q. Fabi, te mihi in auspicio esse uolo.’ Respondet: ‘Audiui.’ Hic apud maiores adhibebatur peritus, nunc quilubet. Peritum autem esse necesse est eum qui, silentium quid sit, intellegat; id enim silentium dicimus in auspiciis, quod omni uitio caret. Hoc intellegere perfecti auguris est; illi autem qui in auspicium adhibetur, cum ita imperauit is, qui auspicatur: ‘Dicito, silentium esse uidebitur,’ nec suspicit nec circumspicit: statim respondet silentium esse uideri. Tum ille: ‘Dicito, si pascentur’—‘Pascuntur’”; Cicero, “De Divinatione,” 451 and 453 [translation modified].
93 Prescendi, Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice, 74ff., and Montero, “Del silencio augural.”
94 Paul the Deacon, Ex Festo 56 L.
95 Festus 382 and 386 L.
96 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.62.223: “Nam soricum occentu dirimi auspicia Annales refertos habemus.” That hearing mice was considered a bad omen is confirmed by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 1.1.5.3: “occentusque soricis auditus Fabio Maximo dictaturam, C. Flaminio magisterium equitum deponendi causam praebuit.” The evident relationship between these animals and the subterranean world makes their association with negative omens understandable.
97 Cato, On the Orator frag. 73 (Malcovati) = 60 (Cugusi).
98 Plutarch, Roman Questions 73.
99 Columella, On Agriculture 4.29.5 and 12.25.4.
100 Françoise Van Haeperen assumes this must be the pullarii. See “Auspices d’investiture, loi curiate et légitimité des magistrats romains,” Cahiers du Centre Gustave-Glotz 23 (2012): 71–111, here pp. 76–77. See also Foti, “Funzioni e caratteri.”
101 The relief comes from the region of Varese (ancient Angera), but the original is preserved at the Civico Museo Archeologico di Milano, no. inv. A6774. It was most recently catalogued in Floriana Cantarelli, Catalogo del lapidario dei musei civici di Varese (Varese: Musei Civici di Villa Mirabello, 1996), no. 17 and appendix 2, pp. 172–76, which proposes a date in the second quarter of the first century CE. I would like to thank Anna Provenzali, curator of the Archaeological Museum of Milan, for having diligently provided all the information at her disposal concerning this relief, in addition to the photograph reproduced here. For a general discussion of representations of Roman sacrifices, see the work of Valérie Huet, particularly “La mise à mort sacrificielle sur les reliefs romains : une image banalisée et rituelle de la violence ?” in La violence dans les mondes grecs et romains, ed. Jean-Marie Bertrand (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005), 91–119.
102 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, V, 5472: “I(oui) O(ptimo) M(aximo) | P(ublius) Qurtius P(ubli) f(ilius) Victor | P(ublius) Q(urtius) P(ubli) f(ilius) Primus | VIuir iun(ior)”: “To Jupiter, the very great, very good, [from] Publius Qurtius Victor, son of Publius, Publius Qurtius Primus, son of Publius, seuir iunior.”
103 On the cult’s priests and their representation in Roman art, see Inez Scott Ryberg’s still useful Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1955); and more recently Friederike Fless, Opferdiener und Kultmusiker auf stadt-römischen historischen Reliefs. Untersuchungen zur Ikonographie, Funktion und Benennung (Mainz: Zabern Verlag, 1995).
104 The call for silence was not uttered directly by the sacrificer but by a praeco. See Festus 78 L.: “Nam praecones clamantes populum sacrificiis fauere iubebant.”
105 See, for example, in Ryberg’s Rites of the State Religion, the images on the relief of Clodius Gothicus (pl. 67, fig. 116e), the sacrificial relief from Reggio di Calabria (pl. 67, fig. 116d), or the altar of Manlius (pl. 25, fig. 39a). Another example can be found in one of the sacrifice scenes on the Aurelian column, discussed in John Scheid and Valérie Huet, eds., Autour de la colonne Aurélienne. Geste et image sur la colonne de Marc Aurèle à Rome (Turhout: Brepols, 2000), 341, fig. 48, pp. 227–42.
106 On the functions of the praecones and the social consequences of lending one’s voice to a magistrate, see Jean-Michel David, “Le prix de la voix : remarques sur la clause d’exclusion des praecones de la table d’Héraclée,” in Laurea Internationalis. Festschrift für Jochen Bleicken zum 75. Geburstag, ed. Theodora Hantos (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2003), 81–106; David, “La baguette et la voix,” in Schettino and Pittia, Les sons du pouvoir, 313–27; David, Au service de l’honneur. Les appariteurs des magistrats romains (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019), 45–57 and 207–22.
107 Concentrating several stages in a synchronous representation is a common and well-known phenomenon in ancient images.
108 John Scheid, “Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995): 15–31.
109 Plutarch, Roman Questions 10; Plutarch, “Roman Questions,” in Moralia, trans. Frank Lloyd Babbitt (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1936), 4:23 and 25.
110 On the veil as a necessary condition of orthopractic success, see Valérie Huet, “Le voile du sacrifiant à Rome sur les reliefs romains : une norme ?” in Vêtements antiques. S’habiller, se déshabiller dans les mondes anciens, ed. Florence Gherchanoc and Valérie Huet (Arles: Errance, 2012), 47–62.
111 Alexandre Vincent, Jouer pour la cité. Une histoire sociale et politique des musiciens professionnels de l’Occident romain (Rome: École française de Rome, 2016), 141–71.
112 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 28.11: “ne quod uerborum praetereatur aut praeposterum dicatur, de scripto praeire aliquem rursusque alium custodem dari qui adtendat, alium uero praeponi qui fauere linguis iubeat, tibicinem canere ne quid aliiud exaudiatur utraque memoria insigni, quotiens ipsae dirae obstrepentes nocuerint quotiensue precatio errauit; sic repente extis adimi capita uel corda aut geminari uictima stante”; The Natural History of Pliny, trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856), 5:279.
113 The idea that tibiae, which tended to be reserved for public ceremonies, might have been made out of ivory derives from a passage from Virgil, Georgics 2.193: “cum pinguis ebur Tyrrhenus ad aras lancibus.” It should be noted, however, that this passage is devoted to Dionysian worship. This material is also cited in Propertius, Elegies 4.6. In contrast, Pliny the Elder, in Natural History 16.66, refers to tibiae in his time that were played during ceremonies and made out of boxwood: “Nunc sacerdotae Tuscorum e buxo, ludicrae uero et loto ossibusque asininis et argento fiunt.” Archaeological remains indicate that a variety of materials could be used.
114 Ovid, Fasti 3.260–392. For a bibliography relating to this abundantly commented passage, see Prescendi, Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice, 189–98.
115 Annie Dubourdieu, “Divinités de la parole, divinités du silence dans la Rome antique,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 220, no. 3 (2003): 259–82, here pp. 260ff.
116 Corrado Bologna, “Il linguaggio del silenzio. L’alterità linguistica nelle religioni del mondo classico,” Studi storico-religiosi 2, no. 2 (1978): 305–42, here p. 317.
117 Scheid, “La parole des dieux.”
This is a translation of: Une histoire de silences