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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Arts Arts Research & Publications 2021-06-14 Numa and Jupiter: Whose Smile Is It, Anyway? Driediger-Murphy, Lindsay G. Cambridge University Press, Classical Association Driediger-Murphy, L. (2021). Numa and Jupiter: Whose Smile Is It, Anyway? The Classical Quarterly, 71(1), 259-275. doi:10.1017/S0009838821000227 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113600 journal article https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 This version is the Accepted Manuscript (a.k.a. Post-print), accepted for publication in the journal. This version has been revised following peer review but was subject to further editorial input by Cambridge University Press. This version is made available to this institutional repository on acceptance of publication, in accordance with the copyright terms and conditions of Cambridge University Press. The Version of Record (a.k.a. publisher's version) is available as a view-only file through Cambridge Core Share at this address: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/numa-and-jupiter-whose-smile-is-it-anyway/920201DB4C14523C3264EC3487533D85/share/f9f5662ce7ad1712f44dd4d00adfc73c54ee3fc5 . Unless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca 1 NUMA AND JUPITER: WHOSE SMILE IS IT, ANYWAY? Roman tradition held that Numa and his people had once been terrified by frequent lightning bolts, signs of the wrath of Jupiter. Using a secret spell or ritual, the king called the god down to the Aventine Hill to ask how to expiate the portents. The god responded with what sounded like a demand for human sacrifice. The king, however, talked back. When Jupiter demanded a ‘head’ (caput, κεφαλή), Numa offered: ‘The head of an onion’ (caepa, capite caepicio, κρόµµυον). Jupiter rejoined, ‘Of a human being’; Numa supplied: ‘The hairs.’ Jupiter gave it one more try, clarifying ‘A life’ (anima); Numa responded: ‘Of a fish!’ Agreement was reached, and from then on Romans expiated lightning at the shrine of Jupiter Elicius with an onion, some human hairs, and a fish. This myth is probably early.1 It was known to the annalist L. Calpurnius Piso (writing probably in the last quarter of the second century B.C.),2 and a version of it is attributed to the Sullan annalist Valerius Antias, though this survives only in a quotation by the Christian polemicist Arnobius of Sicca.3 Livy alludes to the myth, though he does not provide a full telling of it.4 Complete versions survive in only three texts of markedly different dates and genres: 1 Wiseman posits a dramatic version predating our surviving references: T.P. Wiseman, ‘Tales Unworthy of the Gods’, in id., Roman Drama and Roman History (Exeter, 1998), 17–24, at 22; T.P. Wiseman, ‘Summoning Jupiter: Magic in the Roman Republic’, in id., Unwritten Rome (Exeter, 2008), 155–66, at 165–6. 2 Plin. HN 28.14 (L. Calpurnius Piso fr.13P=fr.15bCornell), with T.J. Cornell (ed.), The Fragments of the Roman Historians (Oxford, 2013), 3.200–1. 3 Arn. Adv. nat. 5.1 (Valerius Antias fr.6P=fr.8Cornell). 4 Livy 1.19.4; 20.7; 31.6–8. 2 Ovid’s Fasti (3.277–377, probably begun in the early years of our era and revised A.D. 14–17),5 Plutarch’s Life of Numa (15, written sometime after the death of Domitian in A.D. 96),6 and Arnobius’ Christian apologetic Against the Gentiles (5.1–4, composed between the 290’s and the early fourth century A.D.), which combines the aforementioned quotation from Antias with Arnobius’ comments in his own voice.7 Modern studies of this myth have proposed four main interpretations of it: 1) Jupiter is beaten or tricked by Numa; 2) Jupiter yields because he learns that there are limits to what a Roman god can ask from human beings; 3) Jupiter is testing Numa in the use of words to manage divine-human interactions; 5 For dating, see S.J. Green, Ovid, Fasti 1: A Commentary (Leiden and Boston, 2004), 15–23. The edition used here is that of E.H. Alton, D.E.W. Wormell, and E. Courtney (Teubner, 1997, 4th edition). Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 6 For dating, cf. C.P. Jones, ‘Towards a Chronology of Plutarch’s Works’, JRS 56 (1966), 61– 74; C. Pelling, Plutarch: Caesar (Oxford, 2011), 2; Wiseman 2008 (n. 1), 159. The edition used here is that of K. Ziegler (Teubner, 1973); the section divisions and translation are those of B. Perrin (Loeb Classical Library, 1914). 7 I accept a date of composition from c. A.D. 303: M.B. Simmons, Arnobius of Sicca: Religious Conflict and Competition in the Age of Diocletian (Oxford, 1995), 47–93; T.D. Barnes, ‘Monotheists All?’, Phoenix 55.1/2 (2001): 142–62, at 152–3. The edition used here is that of C. Marchesi (Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum Paravianum, Turin, 1953, 2nd edition). Unless otherwise noted the translation follows that of H. Bryce and H. Cambell (Ante-Nicene Christian Library vol. 19, 1895). 3 4) Numa’s negotiation with Jupiter exemplifies a calm and unemotional kind of piety, which Romans saw as the ideal form of religiosity. Some scholars derive these interpretations from the particular versions of Antias, Arnobius, Ovid, or Plutarch, whilst others see one or more of these readings as applying to the myth in general. These interpretations have done important service in modern reconstructions of the character of Roman religion. In older work, Interpretations 1 (a ‘beaten Jupiter’) and 2 (a ‘yielding Jupiter’) were taken to epitomize a characteristically Roman style of legalistic bargaining with the gods (‘marchandage’), contributing to a long scholarly tradition of regarding Roman interactions with the divine as controlled and contractual.8 More recently, John Scheid and scholars following in his footsteps have used Interpretations 2 (a ‘yielding Jupiter’) and 4 (a ‘fearless Numa’) as evidence that Romans conceptualized divine-human interrelating as limited by a shared set of constraints, with gods expected to behave like citizens and humans expected to suppress their emotions through appropriate ritual practice.9 These scholarly treatments of the Aventine dialogue myth raise several questions. Firstly, are the four currently-prevalent interpretations actually supported by, or the most convincing way of reading, our surviving sources? If so, have they been correctly attributed? Why might a 8 E.g. J. Heurgon, Trois études sur le <<Ver sacrum>> (Brussels, 1957), 50–1; J. Bayet, Histoire politique et psychologique de la religion romaine (Paris, 1957), 141; G. Dumézil, La religion romaine archaïque (Paris, 1966), 53–4; G. Capdeville, ‘Substitution de victimes dans les sacrifices d’animaux à Rome’, MEFRA 83.2 (1971), 283–323, at 291; J. Poucet, Les origines de Rome: Tradition et histoire (Brussels, 1985), 197; R. Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times (trans. A. Nevill) (Edinburgh, 2000), 4. 9 Refs. below in sections 2, 3, and 4. 4 specific ancient author present the myth of Numa and Jupiter in a manner which suggests one interpretation rather than another? What ideological and theological work does the story do for Ovid, for Plutarch, for Arnobius? Finally, can this myth, in whatever version, support the weight of the implications we have put on it for the character of Roman religion? Although valuable work has been done on some of these questions, they have seldom been considered holistically. Greater attention is needed, above all, to how the versions in our sources have been shaped by their authors’ goals, generic conventions, style, and religious beliefs. Steps in this direction have been taken for Ovid, but the results are often overlooked in studies of the Aventine dialogue specifically, whilst Plutarch and Arnobius remain underserved. Arnobius’ account, for example, is still often treated as a straightforward quotation from Valerius Antias, sometimes without any mention of Arnobius himself.10 In this paper, I endeavour to improve the accuracy of our understanding of this myth in its surviving versions, not just by analyzing the evidence for each of the four main interpretations, but also by considering why our ancient authors tell the myth of Numa and Jupiter the way they do. I will suggest that the ‘beaten 10 E.g. W. Krause, Die Stellung der frühchristlichen Autoren zur heidnischen Literatur (Vienna, 1958), 177; R. Schilling, Ovide: Les Fastes (Paris, 1992), 146; F. Mora, Arnobio e i culti di mistero: Annalisi storico-religiosa del V libro dell’Adversus Nationes (Rome, 1994), 68, 112– 13; M. Pasco-Pranger, ‘A Varronian vatic Numa? Ovid’s Fasti and Plutarch’s Life of Numa’, in D.S. Levene and D.P. Nelis (edd.), Clio and the Poets: Augustan Poetry and the Traditions of Ancient Historiography (Leiden, 2002), 291–312, at 297; F. Prescendi, Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice (Stuttgart, 2007), 195; D. Preseka, ‘Legendary Figures in Ovid’s Fasti’, AAntHung 48.1–2 (2008), 221–36, at 235; Wiseman 2008 (n. 1). Cornell et al. (n. 2), by contrast, exercise due caution, printing the purported quotation as a ‘reported or paraphrased version’ (see their typographical conventions). 5 Jupiter’ interpretation reveals new features of interest in Arnobius’ account, that the ‘yielding Jupiter’ sheds previously-unnoticed light on Plutarch’s philosophical commitments, that the ‘tested Numa’ of Ovid conceptualizes Jupiter as teacher and king rather than colleague, and that there are alternatives to the ‘fearless Numa’ proposed by Scheid.
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