Chapter Twenty-Two Lecture One

1. Chapter Twenty-TwoLecture One Legends of Aeneas

2. Legends of Aeneas • Greek myths developed later by the Romans • They bring to them their own cultural heritage • Romans had no creation account or divine myths • Mostly Roman legend for national and social functions

3. Early Rome: Myth, Legend, History

4. Early Rome • Rome was one of many small towns • Earliest influences were Greek and Near Eastern by way of the Etruscans • Rome first ruled by Etruscan kings

5. Early Rome • Replaced in 500 by the “republic” • Patricians (senate) • Consuls (two-year terms of office) • Symbolism of the fasces • Plebeians not in the government at first • Gradually acquire a role • Legendary traditions justify the rule of the patricians

6. Early Rome • Rome expanded greatly under its republic • New duties of running an empire brought down the Republic and ended in the Roman Empire, with an emperor

7. Roman Religion

8. Roman Religion • Latini arrive in 1500 BC • Had different practices and attitudes from the Greeks whom we’ve studied

9. Numina and Sacrificium

10. Numina and Sacrificium • Religion of the Latini had deities that weren’t anthropomorphic • Theirs were the “nodders,” who inhabited certain functions of daily life • Robigus/o • Fungus on grain

11. Numina and Sacrificium • The Robigalia • Priest of the Quirinus (co + viri) • wine, incense, gut of a sheep, entrails of a dirty, red dog . . . • Sacrificium • do ut des • Carefully scripted rituals that had to be observed • Appius Claudius Pulcher’s chickens

12. Numina and Sacrificium • Potentially innumerable • First-Plower, Second-Plower, Maker-of-Ridges-between-Furrows, Implanter . . . • Some central to the state as a whole • Janus • Some numina become identified with Greek deities and assume their myths

13. Roman Deities Equated with Greek

14. Roman/Greek Deities Equated • Identification mostly poetic innovation • Made by poets • Pushed during the reign of the emperors for political reasons

15. Roman/Greek Deities Equated

16. Roman/Greek Deities Equated

17. Roman/Greek Deities Equated

18. Hercules and the Meat Market

19. Hercules and the Meat Market • Shows mixture of sources • The Forum Boarium • Hercules passed through Rome with the cattle of Geryon and freed Rome from the cattle-rustler Cacus • Numerous honorific statues and buildings erected to him there

20. Gods of the Family and State

21. Gods of the Family and State • Gods of the family weren’t absorbed by Greek deities • No Greek equivalent for them • Lar (plural Lares) • Etruscan for a ghost • Of the fertile field first => of many places • Worshipped in shrines at crossroads • Family members in the shrines

22. Gods of the Family and State • Penates • Protected a household’s things • Portable • The gens • Paterfamilias • A man’s genius • All of Rome a family • Vesta (Hestia) • Pietas

23. Gods of the Family and State • “No doubt it was the native Roman predisposition to regard abstractions as divine that enabled them to transfer pious devotion from the head of a family to an invisible entity of great power, the Roman state. Greek religious anthropomorphism, by contrast, stood in the way of granting obedience to a divine abstraction, and the Greeks never did evolve a nation state.”

24. End