CHAPTER SIX

PRODIGIUM AND MORALITY

The Incomprehensible In Roman society, the limits of human understanding were very much a community affair. As we have already seen, however, the Greeks were conscious of divine intervention more on the personal than on the communal level, so that a link with morals is easier to establish. In a strictly regulated state like that of , however, though morality and a sense of guilt were undoubtedly present, morality was above all a phenomenon experienced publicly as a threat to the existence of the community, and therefore a matter of state. This distinction between personal and collective morality was not fundamental. Nonetheless, as we have seen, Oedipus be• came the king of Thebes, inheriting the kingship of the man who was his father (although he did not know this) and whom he killed, with strange and terrible results which drew the community's atten• tion to past events. There was a difference between the way in which the Greeks experienced the incomprehensible personally and the way in which the Romans explained and disposed of it collec• tively, but this difference was barely felt in practice, a matter of degree rather than principle. Terrifying events that were also inexplicable were recorded in the literature of . We have a traditional Liber Pro• digiorum, compiled by Julius Obsequens, who recorded a large num• ber of incomprehensible events thought to have taken place between 190 and rr B.C. Historians had no hesitation in recording such un• comprehended phenomena. , and all included them. They continued to be regarded as important until the writing of Roman history came to an end. They were placed on record sometimes in fairly complete form, at other times selectively, with mention only of the most striking aspects, but always as events important for the community. The etymology of the word prodigium is itself revealing. It is probably derived from the verb agere and explained as 'emerging from the hidden into the public sphere' .1

1 The data concerning the prodigium are assembled in a very convenient 94 PRODIGIUM AND MORALITY

Was there a sense of guilt when a prodigium occurred? Was guilt involved when Siamese twins were born or when domestic animals gave birth to a sheep with five legs or other monstrous young? We today should not feel that guilt had anything to do with it, but the situation at that time was very different. A piaculum or expiation was thought necessary. This was a sacri• fice in which the individual or the community attempted to restore harmony to the relationship between the divine and human worlds disturbed by a terrible prodigium. In other words, the original pax deorum, the situation of peace between gods and men, was broken and must be mended. There is, in my view, a parallel here with the Roman under• standing of cosmic harmony. It would be futile, on the other hand, to try to establish whether this conviction regarding harmony and disturbance was inherited from the Etruscans or whether it was originally Roman. Generally speaking, the real understanding of a phenomenon is not much advanced by trying to trace it back to a particular source and this is also true here. What is important for our purpose is that many scholars feel the idea of guilt to be present, but are excused in modern terms from worrying too much about it. It is claimed that the sense of guilt regarding the prodigium was secondary and that it was of primary importance to carry out a certain rite. This was a political action which put the community back on the right track but had nothing to do with personal guilt. I find this very doubtful. There is a popular story that has been handed down to us by Phlegon which points in an entirely different direction. 2 According to this Polycrites, an Aetolian who was a benefactor of his city, died and after his death his wife, who was from Locris, gave birth to a hermaphrodite. Her relatives took it to the market place and engaged in discussion with a number of ex• perts, including miracle-workers. Some of them explained the mon- form in RE XXIII 2 (1959), pp. 2283-2295, by P. Handel. See also E. Riess, RE 1, 1 ('Aberglaube'), 18, 1 () and 18, 1 ('Ostentum'). Handel also refers to early works. Two of these are clearly indispensable to anyone wishing to go more deeply into this question. The first is L. Wi.ilker, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung des Prodigienwesens bei den Romern, Leipzig (1903). The second is F. Luterbacher, Der Prodigienglaube und Prodigienstil der Romer, Burgdorf (1904, reprinted). A useful modern work is R. Bloch, Les prodiges dans l' A ntiquite classique, Paris (1963), in which both Greece and Rome are dealt with. 2 This story can be found in Jacoby's fragments; see Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist., 257, 36. The commentary is on pp. 345-346 and in the text pp. 1171 f.