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Myth, cult and reality in Ovid's Fasti1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

John Scheid
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Extract

The relation of Ovid's Fasti to Roman religion has been discussed many times, but has never been dealt with properly. Despite a radical re-evaluation, in recent years, of Ovid's literary sophistication, scholars of Roman religion still tend to offer a negative judgment on Ovid's value. Criticisms have been varied. Ovid's unseriousness – frivolous tales in a context so solemn–has been considered exasperating. He has been accused (for example by Fr. Altheim) of lacking any religious sense whatsoever and of destroying respect for religion. Others, like Wissowa, have judged him to possess neither wide scholarship nor even the capacity of bringing his analyses to any proper conclusion. And it is not just authorities of the past who talk in these terms of moral outrage. Even today many historians of religion ignore or even reject the Fasti as any kind of reliable ‘source’. His causae are, they say, incomplete and incoherent; and he is further criticized for being unable to make a final decision between all the explanations he offers. In the camp of the Ovidiomastiges, shocked by the poet's amateurishness, one also finds those interested in Rome's mythology: evidence earlier than the Fasti being missing in most of the cases, the mythologists deeply resent Ovid's elusive art which frustrates their expectations. I will not here reconsider all the criticism nor will I offer a final defence or condemnation of the author of the Fasti, I will simply claim that there is no case to answer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 38 , 1993 , pp. 118 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

NOTES

2. Altheim, Fr., Römische Religionsgeschichte II (1953) 255–8Google Scholar; d'Elia, S., Ovidio (1959)Google Scholar; Latte, K., Römische Religionsgeschichte (1960) 6–7Google Scholar; Porte, D., L'Étiologie religieuse dans les Fastes d'Ovide (1985)Google Scholar.

3. Wissowa, G., Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte (1904; 1975) 135Google Scholar; a similar judgment in Wilkinson, L. P., Ovid Recalled (1955) 265–6Google Scholar.

4. For example Ovid has only one entry in the index of Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., Continuity and change in Roman religion (1979)Google Scholar and two in Wardman, A., Religion and statecraft among the Romans (1982)Google Scholar; for a more positive approach, in the context of religious history, see Schilling, R., ‘Ovide poète des Fastes’ (1966) in Schilling, , Rites, cultes, dieux de Rome (1979) 1–10Google Scholar; Schilling, , ‘Ovide interprète de la religion romaine’, in Schilling, (1979) 11–22Google Scholar and now Ovide. Les Fastes. I–III, Collection des Universités de France (1992) xix–liGoogle Scholar; Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus and the Fasti’, in Whitby, M., Hardie, P., and Whitby, M. (ed.), Homo viator: classical essays for John Bramble (1987) 221–30Google Scholar; Beard, M., ‘Rituel, texte, temps: les Parilia remains’, in Blondeau, A. M. and Schipper, K. (eds.), Essais sur le rituel. I (1988) 15–29Google Scholar; Dennis, B., ‘Causation and the authority of the poet in Ovid's Fasti’, CQ 38 (1989) 164–85Google Scholar.

5. I take this expression from N. Loraux, who used it about Thucydides (‘Thucydide n'est pas un collègue’, Quaderni di Storia (1980) 55–81Google Scholar).

6. The best commentary and edition of the epigraphical fasti remains Mommsen, 's in CIL I 2, pp. 203–339Google Scholar. Complements, photographs and drawings in Degrassi, A., Inscriptiones Italiae. XIII. Fasti et elogia. II. Fasti anni Numani et Iuliani (1963)Google Scholar.

7. Macr. Sat. 1.16.2; see also Varr. LL 6.12; 27 and 31.

8. Macr. Sat. 1.15.12: Ideo autem minor pontifex numerum dierum qui ad nonas superesset calando prodebat, quod post nouam lunam oporlebat nonarum die populares qui in agris essent confluere in urbem, accepturos causas feriarum a rege sacrorum sciturosque quid esset eo mense faciendum.

9. Varr. LL 6.27–8 uses the present tense calantur: primi dies mensium nominati kalendae, quod his diebus calantur eius mensis nonae a pontificibus, quintanae an septimanae sint futurae.

10. Scheid, J., Romulus et ses frères. Le collège des frères arvales, un modèle pour l'étude du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (1990) 452–64Google Scholar.

11. Michels, A. K., The calendar of the Roman Republic (1967) 21Google Scholar.

12. Degrassi (1963) 111. One can also quote chapter 64 of the Lex coloniae Iuliae Genetiuae (ILS 6087) which informs us that the duumviri were supposed to arrange every year with the decurions the nature and the number of the religious festivals of the colonia.

13. Plin. NH 28.10–11.

14. Beard, M., ‘Ritual and writing. A study of diversity and expansion in the Arval Acta’, PBSR 53 (1985) 114–62Google Scholar; Scheid (1990) 53–72.

15. The mark ‘F’ means fastus, i.e. a day on which ‘citizens could initiate suits in civil law in the court of the praetor urbanus’ (Michels (1967) 29)Google Scholar. The days marked ‘N’ (for nefastus) were the opposite of the dies fasti, they were reserved to the gods; ‘NP’ (no ancient definition preserved) was probably a mark for a public festival (Degrassi (1963) 334; Michels (1967) 30).

16. Degrassi (1963) 66; 91.

17. Ov. Fasti 1.1–2.

18. Degrassi (1963) 55–9; 106–40.

19. Rohde, G., Die Kultsatzungen der römischen Pontifices (1936)Google Scholar; Sini, F., Documenti sacerdotali di Roma antica. I. Libri e commentari (1983)Google Scholar.

20. Detienne, M., L'Invention de la mythologie (1981) 131–3Google Scholar; M. Beard (1988) 15–29.

21. Beard (1988) 27.

22. Mommsen, , CIL I 2, p. 318Google Scholar; Wissowa, , Religion und Kultus der Römer ed. 2 (1912) 146 n. 8Google Scholar; Latte (1960) 303 n. 7; Degrassi (1963) 456–7 and 490.

23. Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso. Die Fasten (1958) II 323Google Scholar.

24. Ov. Fasti 5.551–2. See Gros, P., Aurea templa. Recherches sur l'architecture religieuse de Rome à l'époque d'Auguste (1976) 33 n. 123Google Scholar; 42–3; Cassola, F., ‘I templi di Marte Ultore e i ludi Martiales’, Studi Fulvio Grosso (1981) 99–118Google Scholar; Riedle, R., Mars Ultor in Ovids Fasten (Heuremata 10) (1989) 74 n. 288Google Scholar; 78.

25. For example in Fasti III.784; IV.360, 409; V.774, according to Bömer's collation.

26. Degrassi (1963) 490.

27. One may agree with the latest conjecture of R. Riedle (1989) 81 that the day of 12 May was the day of the senatorial decision to build the Mars Ultor temple, following Dio 54.8.3.

28. Suet. Aug. 29.2; Suet. Cal. 44.2; Dio 55.10.

29. RGDA 29; Plin. NH 34.48; 34.141; 35.1–30.27; 35.93; Pausan. 8.46.4; Servius auct. ad Aen. 1.294. Zanker, P., Forum Augustum. Das Bildprogramm (1968)Google Scholar; Zanker, , Augustus und die Macht der Bilder (1987) 160–1Google Scholar; Gros (1976) passim; Ganzert, J. and Kockel, V., ‘Augustusforum und Mars-Ultor-Tempel’, in Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988) 149–99Google Scholar.

30. Vell. 2.100.2; Dio 55.10.6–8.

31. Digna Giganteis … uicta suo (555–6).

32. From specta (567) until 578.

33. Servius auct. ad Aen. 1.294.

34. So political life could modify and enrich the programme with ‘meaning’. Speculation and conjucture are possible about the interpretation of the decoration programme by the illiterate: it had almost certainly a relation to the emperor and his family, but may have included different versions of the foundation myth, ‘popular’ exempla about the famous men of the Republic and – why not? – aitia related to the daily life of the people of the Suburra, supported by some detail of an image displayed.