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Robigalia

January 01, 1970

The Robigalia was a festival in ancient Roman religion held April 25, named for the god Robigus. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease. Games (ludi) in the form of "major and minor" races were held.[1] The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season,[2] but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it.[3]

Robigalia
DurationApril 25
TypeFestival

Description edit

The Robigalia was held at the boundary of the Ager Romanus.[4] Verrius Flaccus sites it in a grove (lucus) at the fifth milestone from Rome along the Via Claudia.[5] The celebration included games (ludi) and a sacrificial offering of the blood and entrails of an unweaned puppy (catulus).[6] Most animal sacrifice in the public religion of ancient Rome resulted in a communal meal and thus involved domestic animals whose flesh was a normal part of the Roman diet;[7] the dog occurs as a victim most often in magic and private rites for Hecate and other chthonic deities,[8] but was offered publicly at the Lupercalia[9] and two other sacrifices pertaining to grain crops.[10]

Origin edit

Like many other aspects of Roman law and religion, the institution of the Robigalia was attributed to the Sabine Numa Pompilius,[11] in the eleventh year of his reign as the second king of Rome.[12] The combined presence of Numa and the flamen Quirinalis, the high priest of Quirinus, the Sabine god of war who become identified with Mars,[13] may suggest a Sabine origin.[14]

The late Republican scholar Varro says that the Robigalia was named for the god Robigus,[15] who as the numen or personification of agricultural disease could also prevent it.[16] He was thus a potentially malignant deity to be propitiated, as Aulus Gellius notes.[17] But the gender of this deity is elusive.[18] The agricultural writer Columella gives the name in the feminine as Robigo, like the word used for a form of the disease of wheat rust,[19] which has a reddish or reddish-brown color. Both Robigus and robigo are also found as Rubig- which, following the etymology-by-association of antiquity,[20] was thought to be connected to the color red (ruber) as a form of homeopathic or sympathetic magic.[21] The color is thematic: the disease was red, the requisite puppies (or sometimes bitches) had a red coat,[22] the red of blood recalls the distinctively Roman incarnation of Mars as both a god of agriculture and bloodshed.[23]

William Warde Fowler, whose work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference,[24] entertained the idea that Robigus is an "indigitation" of Mars, that is, a name to be used in a prayer formulary to fix the local action of the invoked god.[25] In support of this idea, the priest who presided was the flamen Quirinalis, and the ludi were held for both Mars and Robigo.[26] The flamen recited a prayer that Ovid quotes at length in the Fasti, his six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays which provides the most extended, though problematic, description of the day.[27]

Other observances edit

Chariot races (ludi cursoribus) were held in honor of Mars and Robigo on this day.[28] The races had two classes, "major and minor," which may represent junior and senior divisions. In chariot racing, younger drivers seem to have gained experience with a two-horse chariot (biga) before graduating to a four-horse team (quadriga).[29]

Other horse and chariot races in honor of Mars occurred at the Equirria and before the sacrifice of the October Horse.

Calendar context edit

 
A section of the Fasti Praenestini, with the entry on the "Feast of Robigo" at bottom right ("ROB").

The Fasti Praenestini also record that on the same day the festival celebrated a particular class of sex workers: "pimped-out boys,"[30] following the previous day's recognition of meretrices, female prostitutes regarded as professionals of some standing.[31]

Other April festivals related to farming were the Cerealia, or festival of Ceres, lasting for several days in mid-month; the Fordicidia on April 15, when a pregnant cow was sacrificed; the Parilia on April 21 to ensure healthy flocks; and the Vinalia, a wine festival on April 23.[32] Varro considered these and the Robigalia, along with the Great Mother's Megalensia late in the month, the "original" Roman holidays in April.[33]

The Robigalia has been connected to the Christian feast of Rogation, which was concerned with purifying and blessing the parish and fields and which took the place of the Robigalia on April 25 of the Christian calendar.[34] The Church Father Tertullian mocks the goddess Robigo as "made up," a fiction.[35]

References edit

  1. ^ The ludi cursoribus are mentioned in the Fasti Praenestini; see Elaine Fantham, Ovid: Fasti Book IV (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 263.
  2. ^ Mary Beard, J.A. North and S.R.F. Price. Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, p. 45.
  3. ^ Rhiannon Evans, Utopia antiqua: Readings of the Golden Age and Decline at Rome (Routledge, 2008), pp. 185–188.
  4. ^ Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space, p. 234.
  5. ^ CIL 12 pp. 236, 316), as cited by Woodard.
  6. ^ Columella, De re rustica 10.337–343.
  7. ^ C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), pp. 275–276; general discussion of victims' edibility by Hendrik Wagenvoort, "Profanus, profanare," in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), pp. 25–38.
  8. ^ David Soren, "Hecate and the Infant Cemetery at Poggio Gramignano," in A Roman Villa and a Late Roman Infant Cemetery («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1999), pp. 619–621.
  9. ^ Plutarch, Roman Questions 68 September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine; Eli Edward Burriss, "The Place of the Dog in Superstition as Revealed in Latin Literature," Classical Philology 30 (1935), pp. 34–35.
  10. ^ Boyle and Woodard, Ovid: Fasti, p. 255.
  11. ^ William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), p. 108; Tertullian, De spectaculis 5.
  12. ^ Pliny, Natural History 18.285.
  13. ^ Boyle and Woodard, Ovid: Fasti, p. 254; Beard, Religions of Rome, p. 106, note 129; Woodward, Indo-European Sacred Space, p. 136.
  14. ^ Franklin, Lupercalia, p. 75. The name Quirinus was supposed to derive from the Sabine town of Cures. In his notes to Aeneid 1.292 and 6.859, Servius says that "when Mars rages uncontrolled (saevit), he is called Gradivus; when he is calm (tranquillus), he is called Quirinus." Therefore, since Quirinus is the "Mars" who presides over peace, his temple is within the city; the temple for the "Mars of war" is located outside the city limit. The name was also connected to Quirites, Roman civilians, and the civil comitia curiata, in contrast to military personnel and the comitia centuriata. Quirinus was assimilated with the deified Romulus, possibly as late as the Augustan period. See Robert Schilling, "Quirinus," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 145.
  15. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 6.16.
  16. ^ A.M. Franklin, The Lupercalia (New York, 1921), p. 74.
  17. ^ Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 5.12.14: In istis autem diis, quos placari oportet, uti mala a nobis vel a frugibus natis amoliantur, Auruncus quoque habetur et Robigus ("Auruncus and Robigus are also regarded as among those gods whom it is a duty to placate so that they deflect the malign influences away from us or the harvests"); Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 234.
  18. ^ In addition to Varro, Verrius Flaccus (CIL 1: 236, 316) and others hold that he is male; Ovid, Columella (see following), Augustine, and Tertullian regard the deity as female. A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard, Ovid: Fasti (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 254 online. September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ Vergil, Georgics 1.151. The 4th-century agricultural writer Palladius devotes a chapter contra nebulas et rubiginem, on preventing miasma and mildew (1.35 September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine).
  20. ^ Davide Del Bello, Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset (Catholic University of America Press, 2007), passim.
  21. ^ Burriss, "The Place of the Dog in Superstition, pp. 34–35.
  22. ^ Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 90–91.
  23. ^ This dual function of Mars, contradictory perhaps to the 21st-century mind, may not have seemed so to the Romans: "In early Rome agriculture and military activity were closely bound up, in the sense that the Roman farmer was also a soldier (and a voter as well)": Beard, Religions of Rome, pp. 47–48 online September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine and 53. See also Evans, Utopia antiqua, p. 188 online. September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 89.
  25. ^ Precise naming, in connection with concealing a deity's true name to monopolize his or her power, was a crucial part of prayer in antiquity, as evidenced not only in the traditional religions of Greece and Rome and syncretistic Hellenistic religion and mystery cult, but also in Judaism, ancient Egyptian religion, and later Christianity. See Matthias Klinghardt, “Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation: Their Use and Function in Ancient Religion,” Numen 46 (1999) 1–5; A.A. Barb, "Antaura. The Mermaid and the Devil's Grandmother: A Lecture," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966), p. 4; Karen Hartnup, On the Beliefs of the Greeks: Leo Allatios and Popular Orthodoxy (Brill, 2004), pp. 97–101 online September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine (in connection with compelling demons). Augustine of Hippo derided the proliferation of divinities as a turba minutorum deorum, "a mob of mini-gods" (De civitate Dei 4.9, dea Robigo among them at 4.21); see W.R. Johnson, "The Return of Tutunus," Arethusa (1992) 173–179. See also indigitamenta.
  26. ^ Tertullian, De spectaculis 5: Numa Pompilius Marti et Robigini fecit ("Numa Pompilius established [games] for Mars and Robigo").
  27. ^ Ovid, Fasti 4.905–942; Boyle and Woodard, Ovid: Fasti, pp. 254–255 et passim on the nature of this work.
  28. ^ Fasti Praenestini; Tertullian, De spectaculis 5; Fantham, Ovid: Fasti Book IV, p. 263.
  29. ^ Jean-Paul Thuillier, "Le cirrus et la barbe. Questions d'iconographie athlétique romaine," Mélanges de l'École française de Rome Antiquité 110.1 (1998), p. 377.
  30. ^ Pueri lenonii, boys managed by a leno, pimp.
  31. ^ Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2010), p. 32 online. September 21, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
  32. ^ Beard, Religions of Rome, p. 45.
  33. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 6.15–16; Fantham, Fasti, p. 29.
  34. ^ Daniel T. Reff, Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 100.
  35. ^ Tertullian, De spectaculis 5 (nam et robiginis deam finxerunt, "you see, they even make up a goddess of wheat disease"); Woodward, Indo-European Sacred Space, p. 136.

Further reading edit

  • Alessandro Locchi, “Lucus Robiginis in Acqua Traversa”. Un antichissimo culto al V miglio della via Clodia, in Emergenze storico-archeologiche di un settore del suburbio di Roma: la Tenuta dell’Acqua Traversa. Atti della Giornata di Studio, Roma 7 giugno 2003, a cura di F. Vistoli, Roma 2005, pp. 151–170.
  • Fabrizio Vistoli, Nota di aggiornamento critico e bibliografico sui Robigalia, in La Parola del Passato, LXIV, 1 (CCCLXIV), 2009, pp. 35–46.

External links edit

  • Video of a modern festival of Robigalia in Piauí, Brazil

January 01, 1970
robigalia, festival, ancient, roman, religion, held, april, named, robigus, main, ritual, sacrifice, protect, grain, fields, from, disease, games, ludi, form, major, minor, races, were, held, several, agricultural, festivals, april, celebrate, vitalize, growin. The Robigalia was a festival in ancient Roman religion held April 25 named for the god Robigus Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease Games ludi in the form of major and minor races were held 1 The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season 2 but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it 3 RobigaliaDurationApril 25TypeFestival Contents 1 Description 2 Origin 3 Other observances 4 Calendar context 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksDescription editThe Robigalia was held at the boundary of the Ager Romanus 4 Verrius Flaccus sites it in a grove lucus at the fifth milestone from Rome along the Via Claudia 5 The celebration included games ludi and a sacrificial offering of the blood and entrails of an unweaned puppy catulus 6 Most animal sacrifice in the public religion of ancient Rome resulted in a communal meal and thus involved domestic animals whose flesh was a normal part of the Roman diet 7 the dog occurs as a victim most often in magic and private rites for Hecate and other chthonic deities 8 but was offered publicly at the Lupercalia 9 and two other sacrifices pertaining to grain crops 10 Origin editLike many other aspects of Roman law and religion the institution of the Robigalia was attributed to the Sabine Numa Pompilius 11 in the eleventh year of his reign as the second king of Rome 12 The combined presence of Numa and the flamen Quirinalis the high priest of Quirinus the Sabine god of war who become identified with Mars 13 may suggest a Sabine origin 14 The late Republican scholar Varro says that the Robigalia was named for the god Robigus 15 who as the numen or personification of agricultural disease could also prevent it 16 He was thus a potentially malignant deity to be propitiated as Aulus Gellius notes 17 But the gender of this deity is elusive 18 The agricultural writer Columella gives the name in the feminine as Robigo like the word used for a form of the disease of wheat rust 19 which has a reddish or reddish brown color Both Robigus and robigo are also found as Rubig which following the etymology by association of antiquity 20 was thought to be connected to the color red ruber as a form of homeopathic or sympathetic magic 21 The color is thematic the disease was red the requisite puppies or sometimes bitches had a red coat 22 the red of blood recalls the distinctively Roman incarnation of Mars as both a god of agriculture and bloodshed 23 William Warde Fowler whose work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference 24 entertained the idea that Robigus is an indigitation of Mars that is a name to be used in a prayer formulary to fix the local action of the invoked god 25 In support of this idea the priest who presided was the flamen Quirinalis and the ludi were held for both Mars and Robigo 26 The flamen recited a prayer that Ovid quotes at length in the Fasti his six book calendar poem on Roman holidays which provides the most extended though problematic description of the day 27 Other observances editChariot races ludi cursoribus were held in honor of Mars and Robigo on this day 28 The races had two classes major and minor which may represent junior and senior divisions In chariot racing younger drivers seem to have gained experience with a two horse chariot biga before graduating to a four horse team quadriga 29 Other horse and chariot races in honor of Mars occurred at the Equirria and before the sacrifice of the October Horse Calendar context edit nbsp A section of the Fasti Praenestini with the entry on the Feast of Robigo at bottom right ROB The Fasti Praenestini also record that on the same day the festival celebrated a particular class of sex workers pimped out boys 30 following the previous day s recognition of meretrices female prostitutes regarded as professionals of some standing 31 Other April festivals related to farming were the Cerealia or festival of Ceres lasting for several days in mid month the Fordicidia on April 15 when a pregnant cow was sacrificed the Parilia on April 21 to ensure healthy flocks and the Vinalia a wine festival on April 23 32 Varro considered these and the Robigalia along with the Great Mother s Megalensia late in the month the original Roman holidays in April 33 The Robigalia has been connected to the Christian feast of Rogation which was concerned with purifying and blessing the parish and fields and which took the place of the Robigalia on April 25 of the Christian calendar 34 The Church Father Tertullian mocks the goddess Robigo as made up a fiction 35 References edit The ludi cursoribus are mentioned in the Fasti Praenestini see Elaine Fantham Ovid Fasti Book IV Cambridge University Press 1998 p 263 Mary Beard J A North and S R F Price Religions of Rome A History Cambridge University Press 1998 vol 1 p 45 Rhiannon Evans Utopia antiqua Readings of the Golden Age and Decline at Rome Routledge 2008 pp 185 188 Woodard Indo European Sacred Space p 234 CIL 12 pp 236 316 as cited by Woodard Columella De re rustica 10 337 343 C Bennett Pascal October Horse Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 1981 pp 275 276 general discussion of victims edibility by Hendrik Wagenvoort Profanus profanare in Pietas Selected Studies in Roman Religion Brill 1980 pp 25 38 David Soren Hecate and the Infant Cemetery at Poggio Gramignano in A Roman Villa and a Late Roman Infant Cemetery L Erma di Bretschneider 1999 pp 619 621 Plutarch Roman Questions 68 Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine Eli Edward Burriss The Place of the Dog in Superstition as Revealed in Latin Literature Classical Philology 30 1935 pp 34 35 Boyle and Woodard Ovid Fasti p 255 William Warde Fowler The Religious Experience of the Roman People London 1922 p 108 Tertullian De spectaculis 5 Pliny Natural History 18 285 Boyle and Woodard Ovid Fasti p 254 Beard Religions of Rome p 106 note 129 Woodward Indo European Sacred Space p 136 Franklin Lupercalia p 75 The name Quirinus was supposed to derive from the Sabine town of Cures In his notes to Aeneid 1 292 and 6 859 Servius says that when Mars rages uncontrolled saevit he is called Gradivus when he is calm tranquillus he is called Quirinus Therefore since Quirinus is the Mars who presides over peace his temple is within the city the temple for the Mars of war is located outside the city limit The name was also connected to Quirites Roman civilians and the civil comitia curiata in contrast to military personnel and the comitia centuriata Quirinus was assimilated with the deified Romulus possibly as late as the Augustan period See Robert Schilling Quirinus Roman and European Mythologies University of Chicago Press 1992 from the French edition of 1981 p 145 Varro De lingua latina 6 16 A M Franklin The Lupercalia New York 1921 p 74 Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 5 12 14 In istis autem diis quos placari oportet uti mala a nobis vel a frugibus natis amoliantur Auruncus quoque habetur et Robigus Auruncus and Robigus are also regarded as among those gods whom it is a duty to placate so that they deflect the malign influences away from us or the harvests Woodard Indo European Sacred Space Vedic and Roman Cult University of Illinois Press 2006 p 234 In addition to Varro Verrius Flaccus CIL 1 236 316 and others hold that he is male Ovid Columella see following Augustine and Tertullian regard the deity as female A J Boyle and R D Woodard Ovid Fasti Penguin Books 2000 p 254 online Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine Vergil Georgics 1 151 The 4th century agricultural writer Palladius devotes a chapter contra nebulas et rubiginem on preventing miasma and mildew 1 35 Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine Davide Del Bello Forgotten Paths Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset Catholic University of America Press 2007 passim Burriss The Place of the Dog in Superstition pp 34 35 Fowler Roman Festivals pp 90 91 This dual function of Mars contradictory perhaps to the 21st century mind may not have seemed so to the Romans In early Rome agriculture and military activity were closely bound up in the sense that the Roman farmer was also a soldier and a voter as well Beard Religions of Rome pp 47 48 online Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine and 53 See also Evans Utopia antiqua p 188 online Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine William Warde Fowler The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic London 1908 p 89 Precise naming in connection with concealing a deity s true name to monopolize his or her power was a crucial part of prayer in antiquity as evidenced not only in the traditional religions of Greece and Rome and syncretistic Hellenistic religion and mystery cult but also in Judaism ancient Egyptian religion and later Christianity See Matthias Klinghardt Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation Their Use and Function in Ancient Religion Numen 46 1999 1 5 A A Barb Antaura The Mermaid and the Devil s Grandmother A Lecture Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 1966 p 4 Karen Hartnup On the Beliefs of the Greeks Leo Allatios and Popular Orthodoxy Brill 2004 pp 97 101 online Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine in connection with compelling demons Augustine of Hippo derided the proliferation of divinities as a turba minutorum deorum a mob of mini gods De civitate Dei 4 9 dea Robigo among them at 4 21 see W R Johnson The Return of Tutunus Arethusa 1992 173 179 See also indigitamenta Tertullian De spectaculis 5 Numa Pompilius Marti et Robigini fecit Numa Pompilius established games for Mars and Robigo Ovid Fasti 4 905 942 Boyle and Woodard Ovid Fasti pp 254 255 et passim on the nature of this work Fasti Praenestini Tertullian De spectaculis 5 Fantham Ovid Fasti Book IV p 263 Jean Paul Thuillier Le cirrus et la barbe Questions d iconographie athletique romaine Melanges de l Ecole francaise de Rome Antiquite 110 1 1998 p 377 Pueri lenonii boys managed by a leno pimp Craig A Williams Roman Homosexuality Oxford University Press 1999 2010 p 32 online Archived September 21 2023 at the Wayback Machine Beard Religions of Rome p 45 Varro De lingua latina 6 15 16 Fantham Fasti p 29 Daniel T Reff Plagues Priests and Demons Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New Cambridge University Press 2005 p 100 Tertullian De spectaculis 5 nam et robiginis deam finxerunt you see they even make up a goddess of wheat disease Woodward Indo European Sacred Space p 136 Further reading editAlessandro Locchi Lucus Robiginis in Acqua Traversa Un antichissimo culto al V miglio della via Clodia in Emergenze storico archeologiche di un settore del suburbio di Roma la Tenuta dell Acqua Traversa Atti della Giornata di Studio Roma 7 giugno 2003 a cura di F Vistoli Roma 2005 pp 151 170 Fabrizio Vistoli Nota di aggiornamento critico e bibliografico sui Robigalia in La Parola del Passato LXIV 1 CCCLXIV 2009 pp 35 46 External links editVideo of a modern festival of Robigalia in Piaui Brazil Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Robigalia amp oldid 1181183965, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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