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And Law in Late Republican Rome: from To HELIOPOLIS CULTURE E CIVILTÀ ANNO XI ISSN 2281-3489 NUMERO 1 - 2013 Religio and Law in Late Republican Rome: from Ritus to Certa Lex di Osvaldo Sacchi 1. Dimension of religio in Republican Rome 1 Etymologically the earliest meaning of religio in Latin is «to have scruples about something» and not «to believe in something» 2. Cicero demonstrates this perfectly, but we also find evidence of this in Livy as well as in many other Republican sources 3. Another possible explanation of the etymological sense of religio comes from Lactantius , that was preceptor of Crispus , a son of the emperor Constantine. According to this scholar, religio was a supernatural bond of constriction: nomen religionis a vinculo pietatis esse deductum, quod hominem sibi Deus religaverit et pietate constrinxerit 4. This religious sentiment was, therefore, represented as Pietas which could link anyone to the divine or God: vinculo pietatis obstrincti et religati sumus 5. But is only a Christian adaptation of the ancient pietas that, as expression of ius naturae , consisted in to respect one’s own officium for the country, family and the ties of blood: Cic. de inv . 2, 22, 65-66: ac naturae quidem ius esse, quod nobis non opinio, sed quaedam innata vis adferat, ut religionem, pietatem, gratiam, vindicationem, observantiam, veritatem . (…); pietatem, quae erga patriam aut parentes aut alios sanguine coniunctos officium conservare moneat . Then it is probably preferable to follow Benveniste, whose theory ( religio = re + ligare ) is also supported by Festus. The glossator adopts a definition of the jurist Aelius Gallus (author of the work De significatione verborum quae ad ius civile pertinent written about 100 B.C. 6) for whom “religious” or “sacred” was defined as follows: Fest. sv. religiosus (L. 348, 22): religiosus esse Gallus Aelius ait quod homini 1 I wish to thank Girolamo Tessuto, professor of English and Legal English (Department of Law, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli) for providing the linguistic revision of this article that is an english version (with notes and small changes) of a lecture performed at the University of Tilburg on 11-12 december 2008 for a Seminar on Law and Religion in the Roman Republic . Italian version will be published in a collection in honor of Hans Ankum for Ius Antiquum-Drevnee Pravo , a journal of the Academy of Sciences of Russia. 2 Cfr. now M. Humm, I fondamenti della repubblica romana: istituzioni, diritto, religione , in G. Traina (ed.), Storia d’Europa e del mediterraneo. Il mondo antico. III. L’ecumene romana. V. La res publica e il Mediterraneo , Roma, 2008, p. 470 s. For roman religio see F. Altheim, La religion romaine antique , Paris, 1955, pp. 7-331; J. Bayet, Histoire politique et psycologique de la religion romaine , Paris, 1957, pp. 5-334; V. Cilento, Comprensione della religione antica. Suggestioni del Sacro e dell’Antico nella coscienza storica , Napoli, 1967, pp. 8-286; D. Sabbatucci, La religione di Roma antica , Milano, 1988, p. 206 ss.; J. Scheid, La religion des Romains , Paris, 1998; J. Rüpke, La religione dei Romani , Torino, 2004 = [ Die Religion der Römer , München, 2001] passim . On the relationship between “religion” and “law” cfr. A. Magdelain, Le ius archaïque , in Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome-Antiquité , 1986, 98, p. 268 ss.; A. Watson, The State, Law and Religion. Pagan Rome , Athens and London, 1992, pp. XV-136; P. Catalano, La religione romana “internamente”: il punto di vista giuridico , in SMSR. , L’Aquila-Roma, 1996, 62, p. 143 ss.; M. Humm, I fondamenti della repubblica romana , cit., pp. 467-519 with bibliography. Helpful approach in F. Vallocchia, Collegi sacerdotali ed assemblee popolari nella repubblica romana , Torino, 2008, p. 1 ss. 3 Cic. de nat. deor . 2.28.72: qui autem omnia quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent diligenter retractarent et tamquam relegerent, <i> sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo, <tamquam> elegantes ex eligendo, [tamquam] <ex> diligendo diligentes, ex intellegendo intellegentes; his enim in verbis omnibus inest vis legendi eadem quae in religioso ; de nat. deor . 2.4.10: rem illam in religionem populo venisse ; pro Balbo 24.55: sacra Cereris summa maiores nostri religione confici caerimoniaque voluerunt ; Liv. 9.29.10: quod demovendis statu suo sacris religionem facere posset ; 27.23.2: adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit deos. 4 M. Kobbert, De verborum “religio” atque “religiosus” usu apud Romanosi, Konisberg, 1910, pp. 1-61; Id., sv. Religio , in PW ., Stuttgart-Weimar, 1914, IA.1, coll. 565-80. 5 Lact. div. inst . 4.28.2. 6 G. Falcone, Ricerche sull’origine dell’interdetto ‘uti possidetis’ , in Annali del Seminario giuridico dell’Università di Palermo , Palermo, 1996, pp. 225-260. 12 HELIOPOLIS CULTURE E CIVILTÀ ANNO XI ISSN 2281-3489 NUMERO 1 - 2013 facere non liceat, ut si id faciat contra deorum voluntatem videatur facere 7. In this context we can understand the religio as a «sense of obligation felt by the members of a given community» 8. This was, in my opinion, the etymological sense of the term religio as understood by the Romans of the Archaic and Republican periods 9. While it is clearly not possible to discuss such a vast topic here, it is at least possible to offer a precise explanation of the reason why the notion of religio in its ancient sense (i.e., pre-Epicurean and pre-Christian Rome) does not appear to be related to the belief in any form of transcendence 10 . We could say that religio was a set of rules to respect and not an eschatological response. A confirmation of this could be in Aristotle who says in the Metaphysica L 1074b, 1-13 that only the stars and the planets were originally considered to be gods 11 . Originally the divinities were associated, then, with real (rather than abstracts) things. When we speak about the Roman calendar we are referring similarly to something almost certainly built on the astronomic knowledge of the Etruscans 12 . Such origins, preserved also in Rome like fossils from a remote past, are present in the names of the days of the week and were later obfuscated by the continuous recitation of myths 13 . This evidence may be read alongside another precious testimony of Herodotus who learned at Dodona that the Pelasgians worshipped un- named gods whom they simply called thĕōi because «they arranged everything and presided over all matters» 14 . Ancient “un-named” gods (celestial bodies) therefore represented, the entire universe which was regulated by the laws and which permitted everything to occur in a regulated manner. It is possible to add to this another famous excerpt from Aristotle’s Politics where the philosopher utilizes nŏmŏs to describe the law as: «that which sets the order of things» 15 . There is no reason to believe that in ancient Rome the situation was different. In conclusion, it seems probable that the best explanation for the meaning of religio in Archaic and Repubblican Rome was a sense of obligation that linked the members of the community. This is the solution most suited to describing the functioning of that social, legal and religious system, understood in its widest sense 16 . 7 We may also read the Festus’ gloss [sv. Praeciamitatores (L. 292, 3): Praeciamitatores dicuntur, qui flaminibus Diali, Quirinali, Martiali, antecedent <es> exclamant feriis publicis, ut homines abstineant se opere, quia his opus facientem videre religiosum est »; sv. Religiosum (L. 366, 19): Religiosum ac sacrum est, ut templa omnia, atque aedes, quae etiam sacratae dicuntur ] as well as the epitome of Paul: Paul.- Fest. (L. 293, 1): quia his opus facientem videre inreligiosum erat . See the definition of the problem in É. Benveniste, Il vocabolario delle istituzioni indoeuropee. 1. Economia, parentela, società. 2. Potere, diritto, religione , Mariantonia Liborio (ed.), Torino, repr. 2001, 2, p. 485 ss. 8 In this way É. Benveniste, Il vocabolario delle istituzioni indoeuropee , 2, cit., p. 489. 9 Wide account on “religio” (with bibliography) and about the meaning of the latin word religio in J. Rüpke, Religio and religiones in Roman thinking , in Les Études Classiques , 2007, 75, pp. 67-78. See also M. Humm, I fondamenti della repubblica romana: istituzioni, diritto, religione , in G. Traina (ed.), Storia d’Europa e del mediterraneo , cit., p. 470 ss. 10 In this sense now cfr. J. Rüpke, La religione dei Romani , cit. (see note 10), p. 73. 11 Arist. met . L 1074b,1-13. In this way cfr. F.M. Cornford, Dalla religione alla filosofia. Uno studio sulle origini della speculazione occidentale , Giuliana Scalera McClintock (ed.), Lecce, 2002, p. 78 and passim =[ From religion to philosophy , London, 1912] p. 78 s. 12 L. Magini, Astronomia etrusco-romana , Roma, 2003, p. 13 ss. Cfr. D. Sabbatucci, La religione di Roma antica. Dal calendario festivo all’ordine cosmico , Milano, 1988, p. 3. For arcaic calendar and Roman law and about the pontiff role, see also A.K. Michels, The calendar of the Roman Republic , Princeton, 1967; J. Rüpke, Kalender und Öffentlichkeit. Die Geschichte der Repräsentation und relogiösen Qualifikation von Zeit in Rom , Berlin-New York, 1995, M. Humm, Spazio e tempo civici: riforma delle tribù e riforma del calendario a Roma alla fine del IV secolo a.C. , in C. Bruun (ed.), Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 23, The Roman Middle Republic . Politics, Religion and Historiography , c. 400-133 BC., Romae, 2000, pp. 91-120. 13 Cfr. P. Veyne, I Greci hanno creduto ai loro miti ?, Bologna, 1984, pp. 7-208. 14 Erod. 2.52. 15 Arist. Pol. 1287a, 18. 16 Liv. 5.40.8: optimum ducunt condita in doliolis sacello proximo aedibus flaminis Quirinalis, ubi nunc despui religio est, defodere ; Suet. Aug . 6.1, 5: huc introire nisi necessario et caste religio est, concepta opinione ueteri, quasi temere adeuntibus horror quidam et metus obiciatur, sed et mox confirmata ; Plin.
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