The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Strange History of a Flamen Dialis W. W. Fowler The Classical Review / Volume 7 / Issue 05 / May 1893, pp 193 - 195 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00197501, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00197501 How to cite this article: W. W. Fowler (1893). The Strange History of a Flamen Dialis. The Classical Review, 7, pp 193-195 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00197501 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 25 Apr 2015 The Classical Review MAY 1893. THE STRANGE HISTORY OF A FLAMEN DIALIS. (NOTE ON Ltvv XXVII. 8.) THIS chapter of Livy has been frequently After briefly narrating the first election quoted in connexion with the Curio Maximus of a plebeian to the oflice of Curio Maximus, as well as with the Flamen Dialis : but both Livy goes on to tell us that at this same historians and antiquarians seem to have let time, at the beginning of 209 B.C., a young another matter of real interest escape their man, 0. Valerius Flaccus by name, was notice. This is a singular bit of family compelled by the Pontifex Maximus against history, which seems to me to deserve his will to be inaugurated as Flamen Dialis. attention as illustrating the Roman life The inauguratio was the final ceremony in and manners of the age as well as the the process of appointment, and it was here decay of a once important Roman priest- apparently that the unwilling youth made hood. some kind of struggle to escape. He had Livy here interrupts his narrative of the been previously ' captus a pontifice maximo,' war with Hannibal, before proceeding to the i.e. selected out of a certain number of events which led to the battle of the persons nominated (Tac. Ann. iv. 16), and Metaurus, to record one or two events of brought by a kind of mancipatio under the minor importance which might very well potestas of the Pontifex. The coercive power in the Augustan age have had a real interest of the head of the Roman religion,—a power for some of his readers, including, as we which at one time must have belonged to the may conjecture, Augustus himself. His Rex,—is now brought to bear on the reluctant information came no doubt, directly or one to compel him to be inaugurated. indirectly, from the books of the pontifices, One can understand that a young man and may be taken as representing the facts may have been unwilling to fill a priesthood accurately so far as the priesthoods are which brought him no political advantages, concerned. It may indeed have been and in fact placed him under many disabili- supplemented from the work of Valerius ties which in our eyes at least are highly Antias, as the family prominent in the story ludicrous; but it it not so easy to see why is that of the Valerii Flacci ; but Livy had by he should have been forced into it against this time learnt to distrust Antias, and the his will. Livy however supplies us with the singularity of the story itself and the fact explanation, and a most extraordinary one that it is not entirely to the credit of that it is ; so strange in fact that he says he eminent family lead me to think it in any would have preferred to suppress it,' ni ex case worthy of belief. And, as we shall see, mala fama in bonam vertisset' ; words in it is incidentally confirmed by subsequent which we may perhaps see a kind of apology events which cannot be called in question. to Augustus for mentioning a circumstance NO. LX. VOL. VII. 194 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. which would naturally give pain to that rigid possible that this priesthood had already moralist, now engaged in resuscitating this been used for the same purpose ; for Livy a as well as other ancient sacrificial priesthoods. few lines further on mentions the fact that This young man was selected by the Pontifex the ' indignitas' of recent flamines had on account of Ids loose life,—' ob adule- deprived them of the privilege of attending scentiam negligentem luxuriosamque.' meetings of the senate, which had formerly This is sufficiently puzzling ; but fortu- attached to the office. And here one natur- nately Livy adds a few words which seem to ally thinks of the story told by Velleius and me to let us into the whole secret, words of Suetonius, that Julius Caesar when very which no one seems to have caught the full young was destined by his friends to be meaning. At the end of the sentence we Flamen Dialis, which would chime in well are told the youth was ' L. Flacco fratri enough with a certain saying of Sulla's germano cognatisque aliis ob eadem vitia about him, if we were to explain it in the invisus.' In other words, he was the black same way in which Livy explains the fate of sheep of a great Roman family of the best Flaccus. On the other hand, it may be that type; for this brother was no less a person the rigid rules for the life of the Flamen had than the friend and discoverer of M. Porcius by that time become so much relaxed as to Cato, who afterwards had that still more destroy its monastic character. It was eminent man as his colleague in both con- certainly at that time possible to hold it sulship and censorship.1 It was a disgrace together with a magistracy.4 to such a family that at a time of great This strange story shows that there was public peril and anxiety any of its members no necessary connexion between religious should be indulging in idle and luxurious office at Rome and a good or decent life, at habits, even if there were nothing worse to the time of the Hannibalic war. But the be laid to his charge. Clearly he was not sequel, which is almost as strange, also fit for a public career, and must be prevented seems to show that the religio of the from embarking on it. His elder brother Romans might not be without its influence therefore and the rest of the family con- on life even at so late a date as this. Livy spired to shut him away in the monastic life goes on to say that this young reprobate, of the Flamen Dialis, where he could not when once his mind came to be occupied very well do any harm, and might conceiv- with the ' cura sacrorum et caerimoniarum,' ably come to some good. speedily became repentant. He put off his The extraordinary series of taboos which former evil ways, and took a leading place were placed upon the holder of this priest- for virtue among the youth of his day, being hood are familiar to scholars, and I need not highly approved of by the weightiest men detail them here: the more so as Mr. Frazer in the Senate,—and not only by those of has done full justice to them in Tlie Golden his own kin. Encouraged by the confidence Bough, while explaining their original placed in him, he even ventured to claim object and meaning.2 One restriction how- the old privilege of admission to the Senate. ever he has not mentioned, which is of im- Here however he met with a rebuff: the portance to us in trying to understand this presiding Praetor (the consuls being ap- strange case of Flaccus. The Flamen Dialis parently outside the city with their troops) was not allowed to leave his house for a single turned him out of the Curia. With a com- night during the year.3 He was so precious mon sense worthy of a Roman and a praetor, a personage, in early times at least, that he yet a little surprising in those days, he had to be most carefully guarded and looked argued ' non exoletis vetustate exemplis after; and when as time went on the real stare ius' ; words from which we may infer meaning of all his disabilities had vanished, that the priesthood had even then long begun the outwaid forms of them survived and to sink into insignificance. Flaccus at once made the post a very uncomfortable one to called on the Tribunes to support him, and hold. For further explanations I must here the Tribunate accurately represents the refer the curious to Mr. Frazer ; but I have popular feeling of what was due to so signal said enough to show why Flaccus was dis- an example of repentaJfej. Amid the posed to kick, and why his family were so applause of Senate and people they brought anxious to circumvent him. It is not im- him back to the Senate-house, and the 1 Praetor himself offered no further opposi- This is proved by Livy xxxi. 49 and 50 ; cf. tion. xxxiii. 42. - Golden Hough, vol. i. cli. 2, section 1. 3 We are able to trace the history of this Livy v. 52, 13. Even after Augustus' revival, 4 the restriction was almost as severe ; Tac. Ann. iii. Caesar's predecessor in the priesthood, Morula, 71. had been also consul; see Drmnann, iii. 130. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 195 man for a quarter of a century after the of his age may for a time have partially events recorded in this chapter.