2—
Defeat and the Pax Deorum

War and religion were inseparable at Rome. The connection was already firm early in the city's history when the annual cycle of festivals came to be laid down. The celebrations in the spring and fall that marked the opening and close of the campaigning season remained fixed points in the religious calendar long after that document had ceased to reflect the solar year and the rhythms of ancient warfare with any precision.^[1] At an equally distant date the fetial priests took charge of the diplomatic preliminaries to any conflict to ensure that Roman actions remained within the bounds of religio.^[2] Sacrifices, vows, and prayers at the commencement of each war sought to elicit the active cooperation of the gods, and taking the auspices before any important action in the field, especially offering battle, furnished assurance that their support remained firm. Further vows came on the eve of combat or in its midst. Victory brought forth offerings of thanks and the fulfillment of promises. For an especially splendid success, celebration of a triumph paid tribute to Jupiter Optimus Maximus for his help in battle.^[3] Temples built from the spoils gave permanent, physical expression to the central role of divine support in the ideology of Roman conquests.^[4]

[1] On the Equiria, the dance of the Salian priests, the Armilustrium, the "October Horse," and the various other festivals in March and October and their connection with warfare, see Wissowa, ReligionundKultusderRömer, 144-53; Degrassi, Inscr.Ital. 13.2: 366; Dumézil, ArchaicRomanReligion, 1:205-45; Latte, RömischeReligionsgeschichte, 114-16.

[2] On the fetial procedure, see Rich, DeclaringWar, 56-58; Harris, WarandImperialism, 166-71; Wiedemann, CQ 36 (1986): 474-90. It matters little that by the second century such concerns may have come to be honored more in the breach than in practice. The initial impulse as well as vestigial survivals clearly sprang from a sense of the importance of the gods in war.

[3] See, most conveniently, Le Bonniec, "Aspects religieux," 101-15; on the triumph generally, see Versnel, Triumphus.

[4] On temple construction as a result of victory, see Strong, BICS 15 (1968): 99-100; Stambaugh, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978): 583-84.

Conversely, the shock of defeat gave rise to the belief that the support of the gods had vanished, and obviously this conviction played a considerable part in limiting competition in its wake. Conceiving of defeat as fundamentally the outgrowth of a religious problem severely curtailed its potential to become an issue in future political rivalry. To be sure, the Romans never believed that human action was irrelevant to war, that they could simply stand aside and let the gods do their fighting for them. They were realists: in practical terms the men on the ground won or lost their battles. Therefore, strictly speaking, no religious explanation of a defeat could ever serve as a direct alternative to a human one. But in effect the admission of a divine component into the mechanics of its causation allowed something very much like that to happen. Although the support of the gods alone was never sufficient to achieve victory, it was nonetheless essential. If absent, failure was inescapable and indeed came to be seen as tantamount to proof of that absence. Thus, whereas the human and divine factors involved operated simultaneously and, as it were, on parallel levels of reality, the latter had the potential to diminish radically the significance of the former. The gods were superior and infinitely more powerful than men. As a result, whatever a general's mistakes had contributed to the outcome of a battle, these had been vastly overshadowed by the consequences of failing to secure divine support for the enterprise. Coupled with the widespread perception that the principal human cause of defeats was the inadequacy of the soldiers rather than that of their leaders (to be explored in chapter 3), tracing the causes of a defeat to some religious problem could absolve a commander of almost all responsibility for what had happened. If the gods' disposition toward the Republic had really been the decisive factor, then questions about competence or calls for vengeance against a victus became meaningless as rallying cries in future contests.

But there were problems in making this scheme work. The corporate power of the aristocracy within the state as well as the ascendency of the noble families that comprised its core rested heavily on control of the means by which the state maintained its paxdeorum. If the origins of battlefield disasters were to be found in the mechanics of cult back in Rome, then there was a real possibility that finger pointing and recrimination by persons both out-

side the religious establishment and within its ranks would fuel conflict, not moderate it. The resulting strife could affect defeated generals directly since almost all of them had held magistracies that entailed discharging a variety of religious duties connected with their wars. By contrast, a sufficiently dramatic loss could bring the entire system into doubt, for much of its validity in the last analysis rested on the success it was believed to have engendered for the Republic. The common danger such a crisis of confidence posed might have spawned efforts within the ruling class to sever military defeat from its religious roots at precisely those moments when victi were most in need of the protection the connection afforded. Thus for the pax deorum to have limited aristocratic competition effectively in the wake of defeat and shielded generals from its political backlash, a way of understanding its religious causes was needed that traced these back to some failure within the operation of cult but at the same time avoided the issue of accountability altogether and strengthened rather than diminished belief in the system as a whole.

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The Romans never assumed that a fundamental benevolence guided the gods' dealings with men.^[5] Their deities were austere, powerful forces—inscrutable, capricious, and frequently destructive but also capable of being controlled and utilized if one knew their secrets. The relationship was in a sense contractual: in return for worship the gods furnished their cooperation and support to the Roman people. Doutdes epitomizes the principle, and the paxdeorum describes the condition resulting when benefits were mutually and reciprocally conferred between the Romans and their heavenly protectors. The lines of communication that this crucial nexus implied constituted the bedrock of the city's prosperity and success, and maintaining the gods' participation in the agreement was the raison d'être of the city's public cult. One of the most distinctive characteristics of that cult was the enormous stress laid on the meticulous execution of all ritual acts. In Republican theology the mental or emotional state of the worshipers counted for noth-

[5] On what follows, see Jocelyn, JRH 4 (1966-67): 89-104, esp. 100-103.

ing; all that mattered was that the Romans fulfilled their obligations to the letter. They undertook no vow, offered no prayer, made no sacrifice without the greatest efforts to get the language and procedures exactly right. The smallest error or irregularity vitiated the whole event, necessitating its repetition until a flawless execution could be accomplished. Only precision on the part of the Romans could induce the gods to fulfill their part of the agreement, and so enormous care was taken to ensure that no mistakes occurred.^[6]

This feature of Roman worship suggests an obvious model for religious dysfunction and its effect in war:

Failures could be explained on the ground that the techniques had not been properly carried out, or they were simply forgotten. As a rule the mechanical performance of ritual would receive little attention. Neglect of some detail would scarcely be noticed, except retrospectively, in the case of a disaster following. Then any defect would be remembered and the importance of meticulous observation would be confirmed.^[7]

Defeat, in other words, would lead to a review of the cult activities preceding it until someone recollected an error in the recitation of a formula, a disruption in the ritual silence, a slight hesitation as a victim had approached the altar, or some other little vitium that no one had caught at the time. Although apparently trivial, its effect had been to invalidate the entire ceremony of which it had been a part. This rupture in the flow of benefits from one side brought about their corresponding cessation on the other. The state of pax ceased to exist. Thus Roman arms were on their own as they entered battle and perhaps even had to contend with the active opposition of the gods as well. Military failure in this conception becomes easily comprehensible as the result of a breakdown in relations with the heavenly powers.

Yet the lack of explanations along these lines in the sources is

[6] E.g. Cicero, Haru.Resp. 23; Plin. HN 13.10; Dio 12.51; cf. Tromp, DeRomanorumPiaculis, 59-62, 71-77; Jocelyn, JRH 4 (1966-67): 92; North, PBSR 44 (n.s. 30) (1976): 1-12 at 1-3; Scheid "Le délit religieux," 117-71; Wardman, ReligionandStatecraft, 1-21.

[7] Liebeschuetz, ContinuityandChange, 28, cf. 56. Liebeschuetz is here speaking specifically of auspication, but his hypothesis is in fact more appropriate for vows and sacrifices since whatever was reported to the auspicant by his assistant was held to constitute binding auspices: see below, pp. 64-65.

striking. Only once does an unnoticed, trivial error in ritual form appear as the cause of a major defeat. In 217, following the destruction of Flaminius' army at Lake Trasimene, the very first item the senate heard from the decemvirs after they had consulted the Sibylline books was their discovery that a vow to Mars undertaken on account of the war had not been correctly made.^[8] Even this case, though, does not conform to expectations as closely as it might at first appear. The need to appease Mars was only one of a number of propitiatory steps recommended by the decemvirs; Jupiter, Venus Erycina, Mens, and other gods all received attention.^[9] The flaw in the vow to Mars did not seem at the time sufficiently egregious to have brought on the catastrophe at Trasimene by itself.^[10] Tradition concurred, and a host of religious transgressions by the consul Flaminius in time came to be viewed as its real cause.^[11] There are no other cases on record in which the Romans responded to a defeat with a search for undetected errors in the mechanical performance of ritual. Precisely where one would expect intense hunts for unnoticed slips and their frequent discovery, this failed to occur.

The reason lies in the fact that although the model could explain why defeats happened, it was incapable of fulfilling the other tasks a central role in limiting competition demanded of it. This insufficiency existed because fundamentally the explanation hinged on somebody's blunder. As noted, the Romans went to great lengths to guarantee the meticulously correct execution of cult. Therefore,

[8] Livy 22.9.9.

[9] Livy 22.9.9-10.

[10] The origins of this error are problematic. Livy's language at 22.9.9 suggests that the vow to Mars had been made in 218 in connection with the Roman declaration of war against Carthage: quod eiusbellicausavotumMarti foret,idnonritefactum . . . ; but he makes no mention of it either in that context, at 21.17.4, or at 21.62.16, where, according to Klotz, RhM 85 (1936): 84, Livy placed the religious events properly belonging to the opening of 218 (cf. Zonar. 8.22). Generals departing for the front did not regularly undertake offerings to Mars, and this one was probably exceptional; note the sacrifice to whatever gods the consuls thought appropriate at the outset of the war with Philip in 200 (Livy 31.5.3-4). If so, then possibly the ritual formulas employed were incorrect or the sacrifices promised inadequate; cf. the uncertainties over the precise form a vow of games and a gift for Jupiter should take at the inception of the Second Macedonian War (Livy 31.9.6-8).

[11] Coelius Antipater, frg. 20 P (=Cic. Div. 1.77), cf. Coelius frg. 19 P (Cic. Nat.D. 2.8); Livy 21.63.5-14, 22.1.5-7, 3. 7-14; Val. Max. 1.1.6; Plut. Fab. 3.1. See below, pp. 77-78, for further discussion.

if defeat were seen as the product of unnoticed mistakes in performance, it might follow that failure on the battlefield could have been avoided if only more care had been taken in carrying out the ceremonies properly. Instead, someone had allowed a small but crucial step to be either incorrectly performed or omitted altogether. This negligence, then, became the real reason failure had ensued, and it immediately raised the question of who was to blame and possibly suffer punishment for the tragic consequences of his inattention. Therein lay the germ of a political contest, for there were as many places where blame could be laid as cult procedures in which unnoticed errors could occur, and the aristocracy was not averse to discovering or devising little technical mistakes in the rituals at other times when some personal advantage might be gained from doing so.^[12]

A struggle over who was responsible for such vitia could jeopardize the victus directly. A considerable number of religious duties fell to army commanders, particularly those holding the office of consul at the time, as the bulk of defeated commanders in the period under study did.^[13] On the morning of his first day in office a new consul took the auspices, then led a procession to the Capitoline temple, where he offered sacrifice to Jupiter and announced his vows to the same deity.^[14] Consuls also celebrated the Latin Festival and sacrificed to Vesta and the penates at Lavinium.^[15] Each took

[12] Instaurationes (repetitions) of the ludi are among the best-attested examples: see the lists in De Sanctis, Storia, 4.2.1 : 335 n. 951; Taylor, TAPhA 68 (1937): 284-304, at 291; discussion in Tromp, DeRomanorumPiaculis, 70-71; Eisenhut, RE 14: 198-206. Note too the instauratio of the Great Games in 194 in connection with errors in the celebration of the versacrum in the preceding year (Livy 34.44.1-3). Not all instaurationes were necessarily the result of errors in procedure, although this seems to have been the most common reason (Taylor, 294-96; Tromp, DeRomanorumPiaculis, 66-69). On instaurationes in Cicero's day, see, e.g., Haru.Resp. 21. They were still a feature of the games during the reign of the Emperor Claudius: Dio 60.6.4-5. The discovery of vitia in auspication for legislation, elections, and the entry of magistrates into office was also frequent, e.g. Val. Max. 1.1.5; Plut. Marc. 5.4, 12.1; Livy 23.31.13-14; Cic. Nat.D. 2.10-11; Div. 1.33, 2.75; QFr. 6 (2.2).1; Val. Max. 1.1.3; Gran. Licin. 28.24-26 C.

[13] See in general Le Bonniec, "Aspects religieux," 106-10; R. Combès, Imperator, 387; Keaveney, AJAH 7 (1982): 162-64.

[14] Ov. Fast. 1.79-84; Pont. 4.4.23-35; Livy 21.63.7-8.

[15] On the Latin Festival, see Wissowa, Religionund KultusderRömer, 124-26; on Lavinium, see Varro Ling. 5.144; Asc. 21 C.; Val. Max. 1.6.7; Serv. Aen. 2.296; Macrob. Sat. 3.4.11; discussion in Weinstock, JRS 50 (1960): 112-14; Alföldi, EarlyRome, 246-71.

the auspices and sacrificed before the meetings of the senate, over which he presided.^[16] Auspication was again necessary when proclaiming a date for an army to assemble and when leaving the city for a province, along with more offerings and additional vows to Jupiter Capitolinus.^[17] On arrival in camp the army had to be purified.^[18] Sacrifice and auspication continued to be required during operations in the field, especially prior to joining battle.^[19] Vows in the midst of combat might also prove necessary.^[20] The religious duties of promagistrates and praetors assigned a military provincia were similar, although not as extensive. They had charge of no festivals but did have to take the auspices, offer sacrifice, and announce vows when they left the city.^[21] The requirements for lustration, sacrifices, and auspication while in the field were also probably similar.^[22] Perhaps, therefore, carelessness here had broken the paxdeorum and led to defeat.

But many more people were involved in securing the cooperation of the gods, and responsiblity tended especially to cluster around the apex of Rome's political hierarchy, shared out among the powerful and the well connected. The urban praetors had charge of the ludiApollinares, and the Roman games and the ludiMegalenses fell to the curule aediles. The plebeian aediles supervised the ludiCeriales and the Plebeian games. Praetors also undertook other sacrifices, especially in the absence of the consuls when the senate typically placed a praetor in charge of whatever extraordinary religious measures it deemed necessary in the course of the year.^[23] Annual tenure of these offices ensured that over time a substantial number of men took a turn supervising such events. Certain other rites, the need for which had been discovered on consultation of the Sibylline books, were discharged by the decem-

[16] Varro ap. Gell. NA 14.7.9; cf. Cic. Fam. 377 (10.12).3.

[17] On the proclamation, see Livy 45.12.10; on departure, see Cic. Phil. 3.11 5.24; Livy 21.63.9, 41.10.5-13, 41.27.3, 42.49.1.

[18] See Latte, RömischeReligionsgeschichte, 119.

[19] On sacrifice, see Livy 8.9.1, 9.14.4, 27.16.15, 27.26.13-14, 38.26.1. On auspication, see Livy 9.14.4, 10.40.5-11, 23.36.9-10, 27.16.15, 38.26.1, 41.18.14.

[20] E.g. Livy 40.52.4.

[21] Cic. 2 Verr. 5.34; Dio 39.39.6.

[22] On the auspices of promagistrates, see appendix 2.

[23] E.g. Livy 21.61.10, 25.12.12-14, 45.16.7-8; App. BCiv. 1.54; Val. Max. 9.7.4.

virs.^[24] In addition, the annual worship of the dozens of other gods and goddesses who occupied places within the Republican pantheon was parceled out to various groups: the duties of the pontifical college seem to have been extensive in this area.^[25] Older bodies, such as the Salii, the vestal virgins, and the flamines undertook more limited obligations. Some foreign deities, captured along with other booty from the enemy, were apparently given over to noble families to tend.^[26]

The participation of so many eminent Romans in the cult made a search for ritual error something of a loose cannon on the quarterdeck of the Republic and might furnish a victus under attack with an opportunity to lay the blame elsewhere. C. Hostilius Mancinus alleged that his campaign against Numantia had been vitiated from the start because the war had been renewed in violation of Rome's fides and hence without the support of the gods. The pontifical and augural colleges as well as the whole senate ought to have seen that a terrible religious error was being committed, particularly since warnings had been raised at the time Pompeius' agreement was rejected.^[27] Yet the temptation to raise similar charges would not have been limited to victi. In the highly volatile atmosphere following a serious defeat, accusations of mistakes or malfeasance in conducting the city's dealings with the gods could be powerful weapons in the hands of intensely competitive aristocrats well accustomed to the practice of destroying rivals through prosecution. In the anxious months following the Roman debacle at Arausio, M. Aemilius Scaurus, a priest as well as the princepssenatus, was accused of being responsible for the improper celebration of the rites to Vesta at Lavinium.^[28] He came within an ace

[24] E.g. CIL 1 p. 29; Livy 37.3.6; Dio frg. 74.

[25] Szemler, RE Suppl. 15:356-58.

[26] Arn. Adv.Pag. 3.38. See van Doren, Historia 3 (1954): 487-97.

[27] App. Iber. 83; Cic. Off. 3.109; Rep. 3.28. Full discussion and sources are in Rosenstein, CA 5 (1986): 239-50.

[28] In 104: Asc. 21 C. Scaurus' priesthood is much disputed. On the basis of Suet. Ner. 2.1, Geer, CP 24 (1929): 292-94, argued that Scaurus was a pontifex and that Asconius is wrong in calling him an augur. Badian, Arethusa1 (1968): 26-46 at 29-31, defends Asconius as the better source. See Marshall, HistoricalCommentary, 129-132, for a summation of the problem and other scholarship, as well as Keaveney, AJAH 7 (1982): 150-54, and Scheid, "Le délit religieux," 168-71. On Scaurus' career generally, see Bates, PAPhS 130 (1986): 251-88.

of condemnation. The goddess' role was central to the very existence of the Roman state.^[29] Only improprieties in observances so vital could account for a disaster of such magnitude—or so the prosecution might allege.^[30] A paradigm in which battlefield failures could be traced to undetected slips thus had the potential to bring about more conflict among the elite, not less.

But this kind of model implied a broader threat to the aristocracy as well. Its monopoly over religious authority was one of the critical props sustaining senatorial dominance in the Republic.^[31] Raising questions about whether correct ritual procedure had been followed automatically brought up the problem of who was to judge. Customarily all religious matters touching the res publica were the prerogative of the senate, which generally acted on the advice of the appropriate collegium. Presumably such matters would be resolved within the curia.^[32] However, this solution was not inevitable, only preferable from the patres ' point of view. Others might see things differently. Scaurus' accuser brought him to trial before the assembly, thereby asserting the right of the populusRomanus to pass judgment on whether sacrifices undertaken on its behalf had been rightly performed.^[33] Treating an issue like this one outside the confines of the senate was utterly without precedent at Rome; yet had contests over whose errors had been responsible for a defeat become a regular feature of political rivalry, it is difficult to see how this step could have been long avoided. Once the populace led by

[29] On the Lavinian cult, see Macrob. Sat. 3.4.11; Serv. Aen. 2.296. On Vesta and the Di Penates generally, see Wissowa, ReligionundKultusderRömer, 156-66.

[30] Scheid, "Le délit religieux," 125. No source explicitly connects Scaurus' prosecution with the defeat at Arausio, but the sequence of the two events cannot be mere coincidence. Note that the prosecutor, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, was playing up the question of who was to blame for the crisis in the north in another of his prosecutions in the same year: Asc. 80 C; see further above, chap. 1, pp. 47-48. His tribunate is dated to 104 by Asconius, 80-81 C, and 103 by Velleius Paterculus, 2.12.3. G. Niccolini I fasti, 191 argues for Asconius' date; Sumner, Orators, 97-100 defends Velleius' at length but is answered by Marshall, HistoricalCommentary, 277-78; see also Badian, MélangePiganiol, 913 n. 3. The anniversary of the Arausio defeat, October 6, later was considered a diesater: see Plut. Luc. 27.7, cf. Gran. Licin. 33.15-17 C.

[31] For a careful analysis of one aspect of the interplay of aristocratic power and control over religious affairs, see Linderski, PP 37 (1983): 12-38. On religion and politics generally, see most recently Wardman, ReligionandStatecraft, 1-62.

[32] E.g. Livy 22.9.9-10; Cic. Nat.D. 2.10-11; Div. 1.33; Val. Max. 1.1.3; Plut. Marc. 5.1-3.

[33] Asc. 21 C: diemei[Scauro]dixitapud populumetmultamirrogavit.

ambitious men had seized control of this traditional bulwark of the political status quo, the consequences were bound to diminish the collective power of the aristocracy.^[34]

Hence simply ascribing defeats to trouble in the pax deorum would not necessarily have protected victi or limited political rivalry. To accomplish these tasks, two additional refinements were necessary. First, there had to be methods of interacting with the gods that eliminated as far as possible the kinds of undetected slips in ritual out of which political controversy could grow. Second, a means was needed of discovering types of religious errors that would allow the Romans to trace disaster to a lapse in the city's accord with the deities but at the same time avoided the dangers that could arise from trading charges over who to blame for it.

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Precisely because the effects of minor ritual errors could be so deleterious, the religious establishment went to great lengths to prevent them in practice. Their cost, in both political and military terms, was simply too high; hence mechanisms intended to keep them from occurring pervaded the whole apparatus of Roman cult. Any ritual formula required for a ceremony was first recited by an assistant to the celebrant, who then repeated what had been spoken to him. A second assistant stood by listening to catch mistakes, while a third man was in charge of making certain that strict silence was preserved throughout. Finally, a flautist performed to obviate the possibility of extraneous sounds being heard by the celebrant and thereby vitiating the ceremony.^[35] They made their offerings to the gods in the same spirit of punctiliousness.^[36] For blood sacrifices, for example, technicians known as victimarii undertook the

[34] As it was, Scaurus' trial certainly gave rise to the lexDomitia requiring popular election of priests to the four great collegia. This law asserted an unprecedented public role in religion since it established that an election by part of the voters, rather than co-option, ought to determine who was most worthy to serve in this capacity and hence wield the considerable power that it entailed. See Rawson, Phoenix 28 (1974): 193-212 at 209, and Scheid, "Le délit religieux," 125 n. 26.

[35] Plin. HN 13.10; cf. also Livy 31.9.9, 36.2.3.

[36] Note, e.g., the text of the vow of a versacrum in Livy 22.10.2-6 with its numerous provisos; discussion in Eisenhut, RE 8A cols. 913-15. Cf. the uncertainties over the exact terms under which to vow a gift to Jupiter in 200: Livy 31.9.6-8.

crucial roles. They conducted the probatio to determine an animal's suitability, led the victim to the altar, and there struck it dead, for an acceptable animal not only had to be physically "right" but had to approach the place of sacrifice willingly and die properly once struck. An animal that bolted at any point, particularly after being hit, was regarded as a terrifying portent.^[37] The actions of the celebrant himself at this stage were restricted primarily to sprinkling the animal with molasalsa and touching it with a knife, which symbolically accomplished the offering. Keeping the actual slaughtering of large sacrificial animals out of unskilled hands not only avoided a bloody mess but ensured that the offering would be effective in pleasing the gods and thus sustaining the state of pax that resulted. Since everything depended on flawless execution of the rites, no chances could be taken: after the victim had been dispatched, the victimarii or haruspices recovered the exta and carefully inspected their condition. The viscera indicated whether or not the offering had been a litatio, that is, one acceptable to the gods.^[38] The discovery of irregularities meant repetition of the sacrifice until the gods indicated through the exta that they were satisfied.

In case all these precautions failed, two additional safeguards were in place. One was prophylactic: on the day before any sacrifice a special anticipatory offering, the hostia praecidanea, was made to offset any errors that might have escaped the assistants' vigilance.^[39] Second, not all errors were necessarily fatal. A central tenet in pontifical law was the proposition that only mistakes committed knowingly and intentionally, scienteretdolomalo, were inexpiable.^[40] Others could be atoned for.

However, a magistrate never presumed the support of the gods would attend whatever public business he was intent on. He sought a demonstration that the lines of communication were still open by means of the auspiciaimpetrativa.^[41] Favorable signs did not,

[37] E.g. Livy 21.63.13-14; note also Obseq. 47. On the behavior required of the victim at the sacrifice, see Tromp, DeRomanorum Piaculis, 60.

[38] In other cases haruspices examined the entrails as a means of divining the future. On the different meanings of the exta, see Schilling, "A propos des 'exta,'" 1371-78. That the haruspices were involved in both types of extispicine seems indicated by Livy 31.5.7.

[39] See Tromp, DeRomanorumPiaculis, 72-77.

[40] See below, n. 86.

[41] On the regulations governing augurs and the auspices, see the excellent study of Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2146-2312.

of course, guarantee success, only that the gods had given their permission for what was about to take place.^[42] Yet such approval was an essential element in the preservation of the paxdeorum. Here too the crucial job of observing the signs went to an assistant. The magistrate himself never based his understanding of the gods' will on what he had seen with his own eyes.^[43] Furthermore, the auspices were whatever he was told they were, not the signs actually observed. It made no difference if a celebrant later discovered that the man on whose report he depended had made a mistake or even lied about what he had seen.^[44] It was possible, in other words, to ensure favorable auspices even if none occurred.

The primary aim of such arrangements was to guarantee that the ceremonies passed off flawlessly. They may also have represented an attempt to protect an aristocratic celebrant from any harm mistakes could bring.^[45] But in effect they rendered the magistrate a passive participant in the rites, and actual responsibility devolved onto his assistants. Most seem to have been men of humble station and could, at least in theory, have served as scapegoats in the event calamity raised doubts about the integrity of the ceremonies.^[46] But not all were so modestly situated. The pontifex

[42] However, favorable auspices might be taken to imply that divine support, and hence success, would attend whatever the person had in mind, whereas unfavorable signs could be held to constitute a qualified glimpse into the future, in that if the gods withheld their permission, whatever was about to take place would likely turn out badly: see Linderski, PP 37 (1983): 30-31; idem, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2200-2202.

[43] Clear in Cicero's description of the auspicatiotripudii at Div. 2.71-72. This procedure was the one regularly employed prior to battle (Livy 100.4.4, 22.42.7-10; Cic. Div. 1.77) and, apparently, on departure from the city (Livy frg. 12). Note also the magistrate's reliance on assistants in watching for signs from the heavens: Cic. Div. 2.74; Dion. Hal. 2.6.2-3.

[44] Demonstrated by the well-known case of L. Papirius Cursor's auspication in 293: see Livy 10.40.4-14; cf. Linderski, PP 37 (1983): 32.

[45] Tradition recorded the story that the third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius, died as a consequence of errors in carrying out certain rituals. Having found in the commentaries of his predecessor Numa what he believed were the rites necessary to free his people from a plague, he bungled them and brought down Jupiter's wrath in the form of a thunderbolt: see Calpurnius Piso, frg. 13 P (= Plin. HN 28.14); Livy 1.31.5-8.

[46] However, no evidence indicates such scapegoating in fact occurred. Possibly the lowly status of assistants placed them beneath the notice of those who preserved historical accounts at Rome, so that censure and punishment simply go unrecorded in the sources. But it seems more likely that they made conscientious efforts to carry out their responsibilities properly and that the number of people involved at the various ceremonies and their awareness of the need for precision combined to cut down the incidence of undetected slipups to virtually nil. Furthermore, the effect of the hostia praecidanea may have been felt to have nullified the consequences of any inattention on their part: Tromp, De RomanorumPiaculis, 72-77. As will be discussed below, the kinds of religious mistakes the Romans tended to discover following defeats were such as to eliminate the need to find minor errors in the rites and someone to blame for them.

maximus not infrequently pronounced the required formulas for the consul to repeat when the latter undertook vows on behalf of the state.^[47] A member of the decemvirs on occasion fulfilled a similar role, apparently in connection with rites commanded by the Sibylline books.^[48] Individual augurs might be summoned to assist at auspication, particularly at legislative and electoral comitia, but a magistrate could go outside their ranks for someone to declare the auspices to him if he so choose.^[49] In a more general sense, however, all celebrants acted under the guidance of one of the three great colleges of priests, which between them controlled all authoritative sources for correct ritual and whose members tended to be drawn from among the most prominent gentes of the city.^[50] High status and serious political clout among his assistants could give a celebrant powerful allies to support an assertion that nothing had gone wrong in the ceremonies he had performed.

Thus the Republic's way of doing business with the gods was so constituted as to shield a victus from criticism when disaster raised suspicions of mismanagement. The same held true for other celebrants, and these procedures helped limit rivalry and deflect the issue of accountability. By itself, however, technique could not make these problems go away entirely. Notwithstanding the most elaborate precautions undertaken by the most eminent members of the state, lost battles still demanded a religious explanation. Given the enormous stress placed on the formal requirements of cult, this need meant that mistakes would have to be found some-

[47] E.g. Livy 4.27.1, 31.9.9, 36.2.3, 42.28.9; cf. Suet. Claud. 22. See Szemler, RE Suppl. 15 col. 358.

[48] E.g. Livy 41.21.11; Pliny HN 28.12 with Livy 22.57.6; Plut. Mor. 284B-C.

[49] Cic. Div. 2.71; Valeton, Mnemosyne 18 (1890): 209; contra, however, cf. Bashz. AQ HNA 7 (1895): 142-44. Hard evidence is regrettably scarce: Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2190-295.

[50] On the membership of the colleges of pontifices,augures, and decemviris.f., see the lists in Szemler, PriestsoftheRomanRepublic.

where. The real key to controlling political backlash, therefore, lay not in suppressing their discovery but in uncovering only the kinds of errors that were safe and sometimes even useful to the political establishment.

Time and again following defeats the Romans came to realize that some religious transgression was at the root of the problem, and these transgressions fall into two basic categories. The distinctive feature of the first is the fact that the violations were not recognized at the time and in most cases could not have been, thus making them and the defeats they caused all but inevitable. The earliest example appears in connection with the disaster at the River Allia in 390. Following the recovery of the city in the year after its sack by the Gauls, Livy reports that the senate became aware of a coincidence of dates between the defeat in the previous year and the disaster that overtook the Fabii at the Cremera almost a century earlier. It became clear that failure in both cases had resulted from entering battle on an unpropitious day, and for that reason the fathers set aside the day in question, July 18, as a diesreligiosus.^[51] Although the story may be suspect in some of its details, the incident itself is probably genuine.^[52] For our purposes the point to emphasize is that recognition that a violation of ritual law had occurred came only after the battle, in the light of its results. Proclaiming July 18 a diesreligiosus clearly represented an effort to ensure that the same mistake would not happen again.^[53] But patently no one had been aware of the dangerous quality of the day

[51] Livy, 6.1.11; cf. Cicero, Att. 171 (9.5).2; Varro, Ling. 6.32; FastiAntiatesMaiores a.d. XV Kal. Sextilis (=Inscr.Ital. 13.2: 15); CIL 9.4192; 11.1421, 25; Tac. Hist. 2.91; Plut. Cam. 19.1, cf. 19.8; DeVir.Ill. 23.7.

[52] The fact that July 18 was a diesreligiosus is beyond question, and the decision to make it one certainly required official sanction from the senate and pontifices. Such a step would have been taken only for some good reason, and the most plausible is that soon after the battle the defeat at the Allia was believed to be connected with the dangerous character of the day itself. There is no other obvious explanation for this step; the character of other diesreligiosi is outwardly quite different: see Degrassi, Inscr.Ital. 13.2: 361-62; Michels, CalendaroftheRoman Republic, 63-65. It was not the only version of the story, however: the question of why exactly the paxdeorum had disappeared before the Allia was a live issue in the mid-second century: see below, pp. 73-74.

[53] For the actions prohibited on the diesreligiosi, see Varro, quoted in Macrob. Sat. 1.16.18: Proptereanonmodoproeliumcommitti,verum etiamdilectumreimilitariscausahabereacmilitemproficisci, navemsolvere . . . religiosumest, and Degrassi, loc. cit., and Michels, loc. cit.

on July 18, 390, and that therefore entering battle on that date violated a fundamental religious principle. Nor could anyone have been: the other diesreligiosi are of quite a different kind.^[54] Thus comprehension could only come after the fact and, accordingly, too late.

Likewise in the case of C. Hostilius Mancinus' fiasco at Numantia in 137: his explanation for the events that brought about his capitulation to the enemy turned on the assertion that his predecessor Q. Pompeius' agreement with the same foes had possessed the religious status of a treaty and thus engaged the fides of the Republic. Therefore, the rejection of that pact by the senate and its renewal of the war violated the obligation of the city in the eyes of the gods to respect pledges of its good faith. That requirement was of course well understood by everyone at Rome; what had not been realized until then was its applicability to an arrangement never formally ratified by the voters, such as the one made and later denied by Pompeius. But Mancinus' failure provided strong support for his point, and the bills the senate promulgated to hand him and Pompeius over to the Numantines demonstrate that he had convinced a majority of the patres of the soundness of his analysis. The sole justification for the legislation was the need to remove the religious impediments to a successful resumption of the war that the treaties each man had made represented.^[55]

The pivotal elements in these cases were not mechanical errors-crucial little mistakes that had somehow slipped by those who ought to have caught them had they only exercised greater vigilance; quite the reverse. The rituals involved in entering battle or marching off to war were all highly public. Everyone was aware of what was being done, but no one seems to have understood that the procedures involved in these particular instances were incorrect and so had provoked a break in the pax deorum. It might appear that we come close to having a minor technical flaw cause a defeat with the curious story of C. Terentius Varro, the commander at Cannae, who had angered Juno by placing a pretty young male

[54] See n. 52.

[55] App. Iber. 83; Cic. Off. 3.109; Rep. 3.28. Full discussion and sources are in Rosenstein, CA 5 (1986): 239-50.

actor into Jupiter's chariot when he was in charge of offering games to that deity, apparently during his aedileship.^[56] But the boy was there for all to see, and no one had deemed his presence improper at the time. He fulfilled a legitimate role in the celebration of the rites by carrying the exuviae. His beauty honored and pleased the god. The only source for this puzzling episode recounts that the act was only remembered many years later when it was expiated. Although it is not stated explicitly, the presumption must be that if this event is genuine, recognition of the error occurred only after, and in the light of, Cannae, when it was determined that Varro's action had been improper.^[57]

The pattern was similar when a failure to obey a sign caused the Romans to lose. Communications from the gods could take several distinct forms, but all required of their recipients either compliance with their dictates or at least some step to neutralize their effects. To act otherwise was courting disaster. But often such warnings went unheeded because they could not be understood as such until after a defeat in battle had revealed their significance. The best illustration occurred as the meaning of the vestals' unchastity unfolded after Cannae. At some point before the battle two of the vestal virgins were found to be in violation of their vows and pun-

[56] Val. Max. 1.1.16, cf. August. DeCiv.D. 2.12. Varro held both the plebeian and curule aedileships (Livy 22.26.3), therefore it is not certain whether his error was at the Plebeian or the Roman games. Both center on the cult of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The ludiPlebei however may not have existed when Varro served as plebeian aedile: Mommsen CIL 1 .335; Wissowa, Religion undKultusderRömer, 454.

[57] Expiation suggests a prodigy was involved; there were many associated with Cannae, according to Livy 22.57.2, cf. Poly. 3.112.8. Perhaps one of them led the decemvirs to uncover this particular error in the course of examining the Sibylline books. Note too the prominence of Juno in the prodigia in the early years of the war and the efforts to expiate them undertaken in response: Livy 21.62.4, 8; 22.1.17-18; see also Dumézil, ArchaicRomanReligion, 2: 463-70, on the cult of Juno at this time. The tale itself is highly suspect: it holds Juno's wrath, not Jupiter's, responsible for Cannae although he, not she, was the deity whom the festival addressed. In terms of Roman doctrine any ritual error ought to have frustrated its intended effect on Jupiter and thus ruptured the paxdeorum, not angered Juno. The absence of the incident in Livy's narrative also casts some doubt on its veracity, although he does not include all religious events in the wake of Cannae; note 22.67.2, 67.6. If there is some kernel of truth here, the story has been drastically reshaped to introduce the Ganymede parallel and anthropomorphize the deities involved far more than was common at Rome (although note that the lectisternium of 217 seems to indicate a significant degree of hellenization in the Romans' religious outlook by that date: Dumézil, ArchaicRomanReligion, 2: 476-78).

ished. The crime itself does not seem to have been viewed as imperiling the community's relations with the gods, although it was considered a grave offense. But after the catastrophe, when proof of the gods' anger against the Romans was clear for all to see, the unchastity was understood to have been a prodigium —a sign indicating a serious crisis in the paxdeorum.^[58] In all such cases immediate expiation was necessary to restore the favor of the gods.^[59] Yet the Romans had failed to carry out this vital step and, far worse, had gone on to commit the ultimate folly of risking everything on one great, decisive battle with Hannibal, which, not surprisingly, they had lost. In its aftermath the Romans began to understand that the disaster had come about as a result of their failure to placate the gods, but it is equally obvious that the pivotal error had been their failure to recognize the indications of divine anger until it was too late. That failure made the cataclysm that followed all but inescapable.

Tradition focused on similar blindness to the meaning of warning signs in accounting for a series of early Republican disasters. In 310 the dictator L. Papirius Cursor brought voting in the comitiacuriata to a halt when the curia Faucia won the privilege of giving its vote first: it had done so, he asserted, prior to the Allia, the Caudine Forks disaster, and the Cremera. Papirius recognized that the curia Faucia voting first constituted a tristeomen, and so, quite properly, he broke off the proceedings and began afresh on the

[58] Contra, however, see Cornell, "Some Observations on the Crimen Incesti, " 27-37. He argues that the vestal scandal of 114, in which three of the virgins were convicted of unchastity, did not constitute a prodigy but was itself a religious transgression that angered the gods and nullified the effect of the sacrifices they carried out. If so, then since the events of 114 clearly parallel those in 216, in both cases the unchastity itself would have appeared as the cause of the defeats that followed, rather than failure to expiate the prodigium it represented. However, Cornell's argument must dismiss not only the testimony of Livy concerning the meaning of the vestals' unchastity in 216—which obviously is relevant to 114—but also Plutarch's explicit statement that the terrible nature of the vestals' crime in 114 caused the senate to order consultation of the Sibylline books. This was the customary response to a prodigium and was done to discover some means of expiation: Varro, Rust. 1.1.3. Plutarch further reports that the books enjoined an extraordinary sacrifice to avert an impending disaster, which was the usual means of restoring relations with the gods following a prodigium demonstrating their anger: Mor. 284BC; Eckstein, AJAH 7 (1982): 71-73.

[59] Livy 22.57.2-4: duae Vestales eo anno . . .stupri compertae . . .altera . . . necata fuerit, altera sibimet ipsa mortem consciverat. . . . Hoc nefas cum inter tot, ut fit, clades in prodigium versum esset. On the meaning of prodigia and the necessary response, see Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 390-91.

following day.^[60] Omens were unlike prodigia in that they referred to action, not status; they revealed nothing about the condition of the pax deorum. They merely indicated that the proceedings about to take place did not enjoy the endorsement of the gods on that day, although on another day it might be forthcoming. Like the auspices, however, they could offer a qualified prediction of the future insofar as they foretold what would happen if their warning was disregarded.^[61] Manifestly, earlier failures to perceive the ominous quality of this same event were believed to have helped bring about the disasters Papirius enumerated; but without precedent to guide them, comprehending its meaning on these earlier occasions was virtually impossible. Two and a half centuries later some ascribed M. Licinius Crassus' disaster at Carrhae to his failure to perceive that he left Rome contraauspicia when he refused to heed the dirae announced by the tribune C. Ateius Capito in 55.^[62] At the time

[60] Livy 9.38.15-39.1 (=Licinius Macer frg. 17 P). Macer was the only one of Livy's sources to add the Cremera. Papirius' dictatorship in this year is regarded as spurious: Hartfield, Roman Dictatorship, 455-57. Whether the dictatorship is genuine or not, however, does not deprive the story of its importance for this discussion.

[61] On this critical distinction, as well as on the proper steps for dealing with unfavorable oblative signs, see Linderski PP 37 (1983): 30-31; idem, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2195-98. It was a well-established principle of religious law at Rome that the force of an omen could be avoided if a magistrate or an augur refused to accept it or denied he had observed it: Pliny HN 28.17, cf. Cato ORF 73. This does not mean, however, that failure to recognize an omen invalidated its meaning. Clearly in this instance the magistrates at the comitiacuriata that preceded the Allia and the Caudine Forks were thought to have observed the curiaFaucia vote first and not to have either denied the fact or announced that it was not an omen having to do with them. Otherwise, the proceedings would have been halted and renewed on another day, when another curia would have voted first. Livy could hardly have termed the curiaFaucia "abominanda" if tradition had not assigned it a crucial role in the disaster.

[62] Cic. Div. 1.29-30; Plut. Crass. 16.3-6; Dio 39.39.5-7; other sources in MRR 2:216. This enormously complex incident has been penetratingly analyzed by Valeton, Mnemosyne 18 (1890): 440-43. Unfavorable omens such as dirae announced either by a private person or another magistrate were not binding on a magistrate if he took no notice of them, as Crassus pointedly did not. Hence ignoring them ought not to have contributed to his defeat in any way. Moreover, the signs announced had been invented, so that they did not even represent the gods' true wishes. Yet Valeton argues that since even the invention of fictitious signs represents an act of impetrative auspication, what were announced to Crassus were not dirae but unfavorable auspices, and these ought to have been binding on Crassus since the auspices were not what was actually seen but whatever was announced to a magistrate: see above, pp. 64-65. Thus the proconsul unwittingly committed the fatal error of departing the city contra auspicia. See also Bayet, "Les malédictions," 31-45 (= Croyancesetritesdansla Romeantique 353-365); Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2200-2202.

Crassus' actions may have seemed proper and the episode merely undignified, but in the aftermath of the battle the case for a religious error became much stronger.^[63]

Locating the source of a break in the paxdeorum in transgressions due to ignorance rather than simple negligence made an important contribution to the task of protecting victi and suppressing competition after a defeat. Like explanations based purely on flaws in the execution of the rites, this type of rationalization also translated what had gone wrong into religious terms, shifting the principal locus of causality away from the battlefield and into the heavenly sphere. That shift could go a long way toward insulating the human decisions involved from criticism and protecting the general in charge. If the absence of the gods' support had prevented success, then nothing within the power of any man could have altered the result. This frame of reference trivialized human actions and rendered the question of a general's relative skill or wisdom in discharging the responsibilities of his office nugatory. Even if he had made mistakes, their contribution to the outcome of the battle can only have appeared minor compared to the effects of the gods' opposition. Such an outlook easily became a victus ' first line of defense against recrimination and the wrath of his fellow citizens. Moreover, it obviated the entire issue of punishment. When a breakdown in the paxdeorum was held to have denied Rome success, prosecution or a repulse at the polls was pointless. The electorate's and the senate's readiness to place a victus once again in charge of important military affairs also becomes readily comprehensible, for there was no good reason not to if the state of the city's relations with its gods, rather than incompetence, served to explain failure. Since presiding over an earlier defeat implied nothing about a man's strategic capabilities or the probable outcome of the war to be entrusted to his care, the purely political factors that

[63] On Crassus' undignified departure, see Cic. Att. 87(413). 1, mid-November, 55. Note the attempt by the censor Ap. Claudius Pulcher to stigmatize Ateius in 50 on the grounds that he had been responsible for the false auspices that caused Crassus' defeat; Cicero thought this attempt foolish but nevertheless believed a reasonable case might be made for laying the blame for Carrhae on Crassus' neglect of the omens (Div. 1.29). Cicero himself did not believe that signs from the gods had had anything to do with the defeat since for him they had no existence; here he merely presents Quintus' arguments. But these certainly represent the case Marcus would make were he to accept their validity.

normally influenced how such assignments were made operated with their usual results.

But the distinct advantage this schema enjoyed was its ability to protect the rituals and personnel of the cult from criticism when defeat appeared to reveal that something had gone badly wrong in its operation. It explained the problem in a way that stifled calls for accountability, for who could be held responsible in such cases? No one had apprehended that an error was being committed until it was too late because the errors were generally impossible to spot until after disaster had indicated the crisis they had caused in the paxdeorum. Defeat thus became both their result and the essential catalyst for comprehending what had gone amiss. The hindsight on which these rationalizations were based finds clear parallels in the field of augural law.^[64]Observatio enabled the augurs as well as haruspices to comprehend the meaning of signs on the basis of a long line of previous observations that taken together comprised the foundation of divinatory scientia. This resembles what the senate did to understand the cause of the Allia: it drew on a store of knowledge about the circumstances of former defeats, enabling it to recognize that the loss to the Gauls had happened on the same date as the destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera. The principle is even more pronounced in an alternative version of the story appearing in Cassius Hemina's history in the mid-second century. According to him, the patres summoned L. Aquinius, a haruspex, to analyze the problem. Aquinius announced that the defeat had been caused by undertaking sacrifice on the day following the Ides, having deduced this from the fact that the same thing had happened before the battle at the Cremera and at many other times and places as well.^[65] Clearly, the story assumes a body of haruspical lore compiled by earlier practitioners on which Aquinius drew to

[64] On observatio and coniectura, see the excellent discussion of Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2230-41.

[65] Cassius Hemina frg. 20 P; Cn. Gellius, frg. 25 P (both= Macrob. Sat. 1.16.21-24): expraeceptopatrumLuciumAquiniumharuspiceminsenatum venireiussumreligionumrequirendarum gratiadixisseQuintumSulpicium tribunummilitumadAlliamadversusGallospugnaturumremdivinam dimicandigratiafecissepostridie idusQuintiles;itemapudCremerammultisquealiistemporibuset locispostsacrificiumdieposterocelebratummalecessisseconflictum. Therefore the days after the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides were each decreed to be a diesater, on which no battle should be fought, sacrifice made, or election held. Cf. Verrius Flaccus ap. Gell. NA 5.17.2; Livv 6.1.12; Plut. Cam. 19.8; Mor. 269F. On the diesatri, see below, n. 91.

establish a pattern of occurrences into which the events leading up to the battle could be fit.^[66] But in either version only a coincidence in the dates provided the essential clue, and obviously there could have been no coincidence prior to the second defeat.

Coniectura, by contrast, was used to establish the meaning of signs or portents that had never been seen before, or at least not in similar circumstances. Here, however, the parallel is not as close as with observatio, for the employment of coniectura required first of all the recognition that a sign had appeared, whereas in cases like the vestal scandal it was precisely the Romans' inability to perceive this vital fact that had led them into error and consequent disaster. Only from that result could the existence of a prodigium be deduced, placing the possibility of avoiding the error entirely out of reach. There had been earlier instances of vestals caught violating their vows, but none was associated with a military crisis.^[67] Yet once the disaster at Cannae led the Romans to expect a warning from the gods, the significance of the vestals' unchastity and the Romans' lack of appropriate response became suddenly and terribly clear.

These types of errors, therefore, were intrinsic to the structure of the cult itself. One might expect the pontifices and the augures to have known such things as which days were proper for sacrifice and battle or what constituted a prodigium, but Roman religion was not a revealed one for which some authoritative text had set down the rules once and for all. Religious knowledge at any given moment was inherently limited by prior experience, by what the ancestors had discovered about what the gods demanded in exchange for their cooperation with Rome. There could be no certainty that such information would remain definitive for the future; the terms of the bargain could change at any time. Situations might

[66] Although Aquilnius' role here may well be an invention of later writers (cf. MacBain, ProdigyandExpiation, 45), it nevertheless provides an important instance of how subsequent generations thought the process of analyzing the religious causes behind the catastrophe ought to have been carried out and furnishes exceptionally good testimony for the carryover of conceptual frameworks from one area of religious thinking to another.

[67] The closest parallel might seem to be the military crisis of c. 228, when human sacrifice was undertaken in the shadow of an impending Gallic invasion. A vestal had previously been condemned for unchastity, but this condemnation does not seem to have been connected with events leading up to the invasion. For sources and discussion, see Eckstein, AJAH7 (1982): 75-81.

arise that the maiores had never faced, or the deities could simply elect to alter the terms of the accord in keeping with their capricious and unfathomable natures. Augural scientia too was restricted by what had been seen before or could be conjectured on the basis of the current state of affairs.^[68] Any other posture would ultimately have been self-defeating to the credibility of a system founded on the premise that the correct application of ritual could secure the active support of the gods for the respublica. Sooner or later defeat was going to prove this view false. Thus the system had an inherent need for the tacit expectation that eventually the simple lack of knowledge would lead the city into error through failure to fulfill some previously unsuspected requirement or the inability to recognize a warning of trouble in the pax when it came.

In a sense, then, the realization that mistakes of this sort were to some extent inevitable also had to be built into the Roman religious outlook. It is reflected in the elaborate mechanisms for expiation when portents indicated that the Romans were no longer in a state of accord with the gods. Such procedures clearly represent an effort to limit the deleterious consequences of this inherent weakness within the structure of the cult. But this expectation is even more obvious in the surprising fact that no religious body or functionary was specifically charged with the all-important task of detecting warning signs.^[69] Individuals, particularly augurs, might announce them to magistrates conducting their duties or, in the case of prodigia, to the senate, and specific rules governed acceptance of these reports, but that is not the same thing as formal investment with responsibility. Those most concerned with such matters, the decemviri and haruspices, went into action only on instruction from the senate after a suspected prodigium had been reported to it. Where a celebrant did have a specific responsibility to ascertain the disposition of the gods, in auspication, favorable results indicated only the current status of relations with the gods and signified their approval to proceed. They did not guarantee a successful result. There was good reason for an absence of account-

[68] See above, pp. 73-74.

[69] Magistrates, of course, had to take the auspices, but these required impetrative, not oblative, signs. They indicated only whether or not the gods gave permission to proceed and, strictly speaking, implied nothing at all about the state of the paxdeorum (Linderski PP 37 [1983]: 30-31).

ability in this whole area. Because the cult both asserted that by means of signs it could scan the state of the pax deorum and yet had to cope with the problem of finding an explanation when defeat or other disaster demonstrated that this early-warning system had failed, no one could assume responsibility for a task that would eventually lead to his being blamed for not spotting the anticipated premonitions of some public tragedy. Thus, this state of affairs also necessitated the assumption that occasionally crucial communications from the gods would slip by unnoticed, with predictably dire results.

This sense of the inescapability of failure was not necessarily a bad thing for the religious establishment or the suppression of rivalry. Far from manifesting the bankruptcy of the system, disaster imagined to have originated in this fashion could strengthen the cult at the very moment when Rome's heavenly protectors might seem to have abandoned the city. It confirmed the fundamental premises of the religious system by demonstrating what would happen when signs were ignored or obligations to the gods were incorrectly fulfilled. A heightened sense of dependence on the priests and their rituals followed, for even though their ability to preserve the paxdeorum might not be perfect, nonetheless they represented the sole means the Republic had of understanding and furnishing what its restoration required. The senate possessed both the resources and will to foreclose any possible alternative means of access to the gods that might arise to challenge the legitimacy of the state cult in troubled times.^[70] Enhancing the stature of the cult and those who controlled it, coupled with the senate monopoly on religious authority, strengthened the political status quo precisely at those moments of crisis when the wisdom of the traditional leadership was most open to doubt. The patres set in motion the mechanisms that would identify and supplicate the appropriate deities, demonstrating that they were in control of the situation and that something was being done about it.^[71] Furthermore, the highly public nature of such steps as well as the regularity with which the senate took them must have accustomed the public to the notion that the cult represented only an imperfect

[70] E.g. in 213: Livy 25.1.6-12.

[71] E.g. Livy 21.62.6-11, 22.1.14-18, 10.1-10; cf. Poly. 3.88.7; Livy 22.57.2-7.

instrument for satisfying the gods. Lapses in the pax deorum were bound to happen, and the general awareness of that fact would have helped cushion the shock when failure on the field of battle drove it home once again, mollifying any public hostility against the religious establishment that ambitious men might exploit. Underpinning this expectation was the tendency to focus far more on the restoration of the paxdeorum than the apportioning of blame. That tendency was valuable for the obvious reason that the religious tensions disaster could engender would find their release here rather than in the persecution of those alleged to have borne responsibility for the errors, whether religious or military, that had caused it.^[72] Of course, had defeats occurred too frequently, their ability to enhance credence in the religious system would have been seriously eroded, and that in turn would have diminished the ability of the system to limit public outcry and suppress contention. But as long as the Romans won more battles than they lost, the cult could claim credit for restoring the paxdeorum and so bringing about victory. That success too strengthened the position of the ruling class. Certainly winning was always better than losing, but even defeat could have its occasional uses if properly managed.^[73]

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Undetectable mistakes were not the only type of ritual error the Romans saw as the cause of their defeats, however. Improprieties of another sort are amply represented in the sources, and these too worked to suppress rivalry over blame while at the same time enhancing the authority of the cult and those who controlled it. Here also mistakes and unheeded signs constitute the mainspring of events, but instead of being the result of imperfect religious knowledge, they stem from the willful violation of well-understood requirements. The portrait of C. Flaminius on his way to catastrophe

[72] Cf. Liebeschuetz, ContinuityandChange, 9-10.

[73] Compare this Roman attitude to the modern view of air travel, where occasional crashes do not shake our faith in the principles of flight. Disenchantment would only happen if an unacceptably high percentage of planes went down. Instead, accidents by their terrible consequences emphasize the need for safety and our dependence on the system that provides it through correct management of the airline industry. I owe both the point and the analogy to the acuity of Jerzy Linderski, in a private communication.

at Lake Trasimene in 217 exemplifies the paradigm perfectly. Expediency and cynicism allegedly led him to slip out of the city before the Ides of March and the official commencement of his magistracy, thereby shirking the religious duties incumbent on a new consul.^[74] He made no offerings or vows to Jupiter on the Capitoline, none to Jupiter on the Alban Mount at the Latin Festival, and ignored the rites to Vesta and the Penates at Lavinium altogether. Furthermore, he had failed to take the auspices on the morning of his entry into office or before he marched off to war. His imperium was defective; he could even be said not to possess the auspices. Once in the field, he refused to take cognizance of repeated omens warning of the gods' wrath or be bound by the announcement of unfavorable auspices.^[75] Disaster thus became the ineluctable consequence of his actions.^[76]

The sources present Flaminius' errors as flagrant and public, not undetected little slips in the rituals. Everyone knew the reasons for his defeat and where to lay the blame. From a systemwide perspective, accounting for defeats in this way served the interests of the religious establishment quite nicely by implicitly validating the performance of everybody else involved with the cult and at the same time underlining the crucial importance of the rites they performed. Moreover, recrimination no longer posed a threat since it was perfectly clear who the guilty party was. But of course for the victus, casting what had gone wrong in these terms could only have sealed his doom since far from repressing the issue of accountability, it actually invited retribution, not for the impiety itself—that was the gods' business—but for its consequences.^[77] Concern over this possibility figured prominently in the calculations of P. Lentulus Spinther, proconsul in Cilicia in 56 B.C. In a letter Cicero advised him in no uncertain terms of the likely results if he disregarded the Sibylline injunction not to restore Ptolemy to his

[74] On expediency and cynicism, see Livy 21.63.5; 22.3.7-14; Coelius frg. 20 P. On the duties of a new consul, see above, pp. 59-60. On the veracity of the event, see below, n. 122.

[75] Coelius Antipater frg. 20 P (= Cic. Div. 1.77), cf. Coelius frg. 19 P (=Cic. Nat.D. 2.8); Livy 21.63.5-14, 22.1.5-7, 3.7-14; Val. Max. 1.1.6; Plut. Fab. 3.1.

[76] Note esp. the verdict of Q. Fabius Maximus in Livy 22.9.7: Q. FabiusMaximusdictator . . . vocato senatu,abdisorsuscum edocuissetpatresplusneglegentia caerimoniarumauspiciorumquequam temeritateatqueinscitiapeccatum aC.Flaminio.

[77] Scheid, "Le délit religieux," 142-43.

throne with an army: although no one would criticize a success, the religious prohibition would prove dangerous in the event of a failure.^[78] That was precisely what happened to P. Claudius Pulcher, consul in 249. After departing for his province in defiance of the auspices, he lost most of his fleet to the Carthaginians at Drepana.^[79] The consul escaped this fiasco only to face a capital trial for treason back in Rome.^[80]

Yet except for Pulcher, all victi accused in the sources of similar negligence were long past the point of caring, having perished in their defeats. Flaminius died at Trasimene. Crassus, who might have been blamed for neglecting the announcement of adverse omens when he departed from Rome, was treacherously slain in the aftermath of Carrhae.^[81] A report circulated that the consul P. Rutilius Lupus perished in 90 along with much of his army because he ignored warnings conveyed through the livers of his victims.^[82]

[78] Cic. Fam. 18 (1.7).5: siremistamexsententiagesseris,foreut absensamultis,cumredieris abomnibuscollaudere;offensionem essepericulosampropterinterpositam auctoritatemreligionemquevideo. Even that prognosis proved overly sanguine: A. Gabinius eventually effected the king's return and sustained no losses, but devastating floods followed at Rome, which many saw as punishment for violating the Sibyl's pronouncement and which helped fan the flames of public resentment (Dio 31.64.1-4). On his prosecutions, eventual condemnation, and the political stakes involved, see Gruen, LastGeneration, 322-28; Seager, Pompey, 136-38.

[79] Cic. Div. 1.29; 2.20, 71; Nat.D. 2.7; Livy frg. 12 (=Serv. Aen. 6.198), cf. Per. 19, 22.42.9; Val. Max. 1.4.3; Suet. Tib. 2.2; Flor. 1.18.29; Schol. Bob. 90 St. The truth of the incident is variously appraised: see below, n. 122. 80. Poly. 1.52.2-3; Cic. Div. 1.29; Nat.D. 2.7; Val. Max. 8.1. abs. 4; Schol.Bob.

[90] St. For an analysis of the legal issues, see Bauman, Crimen Maiestatis, 27-29; Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2176-77 nn. 110-111. Public antagonism was not appeased by a fine nor even by Claudius' death soon thereafter. His sister was prosecuted and fined for a flippant and insensitive remark, made while caught in the crush of people leaving a festival, to the effect that she wished her brother were still alive to lose another fleet and so ease congestion in the city (Livy Per. 19; Val. Max. 8.1. damn. 4; Suet. Tib. 2.3; Gell. NA 10.6.2). Discussion is in Suolahti, Arctos (1977): 133-51.

[81] Cic. Div. 1.29: M.Crassoquidaccideritvidemusdirarumobnuntiationeneglecta. On the death of Crassus, see Marshall, Crassus, 160-61.

[82] Obseq. 55. Cf. the reported fate of L. Genucius Aventinensis, the first plebeian consul to conduct a war under his own auspices: in 362 the Hernici ambushed and routed his army and killed the consul himself. According to Livy, the patricians complained that entrusting him with the command had violated religious law (Livy 7.6.7-12, esp. 10, cf. 6.41.4-12). Likewise with other generals: according to one tradition, the consuls of 208, M. Claudius Marcellus and T. Quinctius Crispinus, paid no attention to the concern of a haruspex over anomalies in the exta prior to embarking on a reconnaissance mission. The consequences were fatal, as the two rode into an ambush laid by Hannibal (Livy 27.26.13-27.11; Val. Max. 1.6.9; Plut., Marc. 29.4-9). Marcellus was killed in the attack, and Crispinus died of his wounds sometime later (Livy 27.33.6). On the various traditions regarding the death of Marcellus, see Caltabiano, CISA 3 (1975): 65-81. A similar story was told of Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, proconsul in 212, who, when sacrificing in anticipation of breaking camp, watched the livers of his victims be eaten by a pair of giant snakes. The haruspices announced that this omen portended hidden dangers, but Gracchus was apparently undeterred. He was later betrayed by a Lucanian guest-friend and killed (Livy 25.16.1-24; Val. Max. 1.6.8). Livy, however, knew several different versions of how Gracchus met his end (25.16.24-17.7). Note a similar story concerning this man's homonymous nephew (Cic. Div. 1.36).

Obviously accounts such as these placed the blame for a defeat on someone who, conveniently, was no longer able to defend himself—a useful ploy in moderating the potential repercussions at Rome. But more was involved. The auspices and other signs did not technically reveal the future; they simply advised a magistrate of the status of the gods' disposition with regard to what was about to take place.^[83] Paying no attention to them when they appeared was thus a species of religious transgression, like open contempt for sacrifices or other rituals, for it violated a firm tenet of the paxdeorum that all public business could proceed only with the express approval of the gods. However, it was an equally firm tenet within Roman theology that the gods would deal with religious malefactors themselves.^[84] The deaths of generals who acted in defiance of the auspices or other signs or who, like Flaminius, neglected ceremonies altogether therefore were both the result and a confirmation of this principle. Even the one apparent exception to the rule, Pulcher's sailing contraauspicia, conforms in that the gods intervened at his trial to prevent the Romans from condemning the accused to death: that was their prerogative.^[85] The lives of generals

[83] See above, n. 42.

[84] Cic. Leg. 2.19; Tac. Ann. 1.73; Cornell, "Some Observations on the CrimenIncesti, " 29-30. Note esp. the verdict of the consul L. Papirius Cursor, whose pullarius was caught falsifying the auspices: quiauspicioadestsiquidfalsinuntiat,in semetipsumreligionemrecipit (Livy 10.40.11). However, the Romans were not averse to making the deities' task a little easier: the consul placed the offending chicken-keeper in front of the legions as the battle began. He was killed by an enemy spear, and his death was taken by the consul as a sign that the gods were present (Livy 10.40.13). Vestal virgins were not specifically put to death, only entombed, so that it could be said that the gods decided their fate.

[85] As the voting commenced, thunder was heard; a vitium supervened. Prosecution went forward at a new trial, but on different charges, and the defendant sustained a heavy fine instead (Val. Max. 8.1. abs. 4; Schol.Bob. 90 St.; for other sources, see above, n. 80).

who deliberately angered the gods were forfeit to the deities.^[86] Within a system that allowed the causes of a defeat to be traced back to a willful violation of religious law, such a belief was vital to the protection surviving victi enjoyed because it implied that their dealings with the gods had been entirely sound—otherwise they would have died. Such an endorsement was absolutely essential precisely because of the Romans' willingness to play fast and loose with regulations governing the paxdeorum.

Chicken-keepers in Cicero's day customarily starved the birds to make them eat greedily and so deliver favorable auspices.^[87] Conversely, the augur optimus M. Claudius Marcellus regularly traveled in a closed litter when he wished not to be impeded by contrary signs, for auspices had no validity if the magistrate concerned announced that he would not see them.^[88] When the Romans vowed a versacrum to Jupiter in 216, they could order Jupiter to overlook any irregularities when its terms were fulfilled ten years later.^[89] Such practices involved no irreverence toward the gods because those versed in religious law saw nothing inconsistent in honoring their power while at the same time trying to control it to the advantage of the Republic in any way they could. They understood that both sides were bound by the rites governing the paxdeorum and made every attempt to exploit that fact.^[90] Thus it comes as no surprise that the men commanding Roman armies also made similar efforts to get around the rules when these came into conflict with what they believed the respublica required. In 69 B.C., as a Roman army was about to join battle with an Armenian force, it was pointed out to its general, L. Licinius Lucullus, that the day was ater and hence unfit for warfare since the defeat at Arausio had occurred on the same date. He responded by announcing that

[86] Cicero, Phil. 2.83. Knowingly committing a religious transgression rendered a person impius, and the act itself was inexpiable: Q. Mucius Scaevola, quoted in Varro, Ling. 6.30, and Macrob. Sat. 1.16.10-11, in regard to a praetor who deliberately held court on an improper day, but there is no reason why the principle should not have extended to other types of willful violations.

[87] Cic. Div. 2.73.

[88] Cic. Div. 2.77; Plin. HN 28.17.

[89] Livy 22.10.2-6; cf. above, n. 36.

[90] Jocelyn, JRH 4 (1966-67): 102-3; North, PBSR 44 (n.s. 30) (1976): 5-8; Linderski, PP 37 (1982): 32.

he would make it henceforth a lucky day for the Romans, as indeed he did: the Romans went on to win the battle.^[91] Lucullus' readiness to engage Tigranes on October 6 may indicate that the date had not been officially removed from among the proeliares, or perhaps it shows his own religious skepticism; but these are not the only possible explanations. Consider Scipio Africanus' advice to his brother Lucius, who commanded the Roman forces in 190, to attack Antiochus at Magnesia on a diesreligiosus when it became clear that bad weather would hamper the enemy's resistance.^[92] The ensuing victory proved him right—and Africanus was anything but a skeptic, much less unaware of the character of the day.^[93] Failure was not inevitable if commanders ignored the dictates of cult; victory might prove that the gods had been tractable in the interests of the res publica.^[94] Even Flaminius could vouch for that fact: during his first consulship he had refused to accept official word from Rome that his election had been religiously flawed when his army was on the verge of battle, and he had gone on to win.^[95]

[91] Plut. Luc. 27.7-8, although Plutarch may be confusing dies atri with diesnefasti here: cf. Cam. 19.7. For the date, cf. Gran. Licin. 33.15-17 C. On this and the following incident, see also Holladay and Goodman, CQ 36 (1986): 160-62. Like all other public business, Roman warmaking was subject to temporal constraints. Most days in the calendar were proeliares, that is, suitable for commencing a battle, but custom and experience had demonstrated that some were not: the diesatri following the Kalends, Nones, and Ides of each month, and the diesreligiosi. On dies proeliares, see Macrob. Sat. 1.16.16; for diesatri and religiosi, see Michels, Calendar, 63-66. Generals who went into action on such days could find themselves bereft of the gods' support: cf. Livy 6.1.12 in reference to the cause of the defeat at the Allia—quod postridieIdusQuintilisnon litassetSulpiciustribunusmilitum nequeinventapacedeum, although he rejects this particular version of events. For authors who accepted it, see above, n. 65.

[92] Frontin. Str. 4.7.30. On the prohibition of warfare on such a day, see above, n. 53.

[93] Africanus was certainly a man who observed the dictates of the city's cult. In that very year he spent the month of March on the western side of the Hellespont while the rest of the army crossed into Asia because as a Salian priest he was constrained if absent from the city to remain in one place while the sacred shields moved in Rome. As a result the legions remained in camp instead of marching against the enemy. Poly. 21.13.10-14; Livy 37.33.6-7; cf. Holladay and Goodman, CQ 36 (1986): 163-64.

[94] Possibly Scipio chose to interpret the advantageous weather as an auspicious sign and hoped by announcing it to his brother the consul to constrain the gods to act in accordance with it, the religious character of the day notwithstanding. Lucullus' response may have been both apotropaic and at the same time intended to constitute a favorable omen. Undoubtedly the auspices for both had been favorable. On the conditional nature of such violations of the religious rules, see Scheid, "Le délit religieux," 148-49 n. 115.

[95] Plut. Marc. 4.2-3; Zonar. 9.20, cf. Livy 21.63.7, 12.

Thus commanders at times faced a conflict between the need for scrupulous obedience to the demands of cult and an awareness that subordinating these to what they believed were the military imperatives facing them might be legitimate. Roman religious sensibilities encompassed both positions, and this fact can put Flaminius' behavior during his second consulship in a different light. He may have failed to make the proper sacrifices before he left the city, but that does not mean he refused to do so at all. Livy depicts him offering sacrifice on his entry into office.^[96] He also purified his army and took the auspices before setting out in pursuit of Hannibal, although he ignored their results.^[97] Clearly he is presented as a man prepared to uphold the city's end of the paxdeorum, but only on his own terms and in keeping with the needs of the Republic as he saw them.^[98] If he had won, the victory would have demonstrated that once again the gods had been willing to overlook irregularities, and all would have been forgiven.^[99] But he lost, and perhaps fortunately for himself, died at Lake Trasimene, thereby obviating the possibility that he would face retribution for the consequences of his neglect and removing the issue from the political arena at Rome.

But suppose a victus who broke the rules survived: might that not leave him vulnerable to the charge of being responsible for a

[96] Livy 21.63.13: Paucospostdiesmagistratuminiit,immolantiquecivitulus. Whether the offering was made to Jupiter or some other deity is unclear.

[97] Coelius Antipater, frg. 20 P (= Cic. Div. 1.77).

[98] Flaminius' position before the defeat may actually have been more defensible than is generally thought. After he left the city preceding the first day of his term of office, the senators asserted, according to Livy, that a consul took the auspices with him from Rome and did not possess them if he assumed his office elsewhere: 22.1.6-7. Flaminius' disaster subsequently became a demonstration of the truth of that proposition, but at the time the matter may have been far more cloudy. Who was to say that such an innovation was illicit before the events at Trasimene decided the issue? On the difficult problem of how exactly a magistrate received the auspices, see most recently Keaveney, AJAH 7 (1982): 161-62. Although Flaminius ignored the inauspicious feeding of the chickens, saying that it only indicated the condition of the birds' bellies, the augurs themselves were somewhat ambivalent about the meaning of such ceremonies. Some held that although they could constitute warnings, they implied no fixed prediction of what was to come: Linderski, PP 37 (1982): 31. As far as the dire omens were concerned, magistrates were entitled to ignore their announcement by anyone except augurs: Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2195-96.

[99] Note Cicero's remark to Lentulus Spinther in regard to the likely consequences of violating the Sibylline prohibition against restoring Ptolemy with an army, quoted above, n. 78.

disaster brought about by religious malfeasance? The issue was not merely hypothetical. Pulcher lived to face the consequences of his actions, and so did C. Terentius Varro, who commanded the Romans at Cannae. He had chosen to fight Hannibal on a diesater.^[100] But while Pulcher underwent trial and conviction, Varro escaped that fate, although the diesatri were common knowledge, and everyone was aware of when the battle had been fought.^[101] The disaster in 216 ought to have been traceable at least in part to this error, for that was how the Romans in one version of events had explained the Allia.^[102] Yet Varro's choice of a day for battle was apparently never an issue either at the time or thereafter. No source censures him for this oversight—not even Claudius Quadrigarius, who alone takes note of the date. Furthermore, it was well established that knowingly undertaking public action on a forbidden day was an inexpiable act that rendered a magistrate impious.^[103] Yet not only is there no mention of this error in the sources, but after the battle the senate passed its famous public decree of thanks on Varro's behalf for "not having despaired of the state" and entrusted him with important responsibilities for the remainder of the war.^[104]

Thus survival, though important, was not the key to protecting victi who had consciously violated the terms of the paxdeorum in the course of fighting their wars. In this regard Varro was as guilty as Pulcher, who, even if he did manage to escape capital charges, was heavily mulcted.^[105] The crucial difference between their transgressions lay not so much in the issue of volition as in the kind of violation committed. Both men had broken rules, but Pulcher

[100] Varro ordered his troops into battle on August 2, the day following the Kalends, which was ater and hence unsuitable for combat. The date is preserved only in Claudius Quadrigarius, frg. 53 P (=Gell. NA 5.17.5 and Macrob. Sat 1.16.26): a.d. quartumantenonasSextiles. On the diespostriduanus, see above, n. 91. On his responsibility for the decision to offer battle on that day, see Poly. 3.110.1-4; Livy 22.45.5-6.

[101] Note Livy 22.10.6 in 217 B.C.

[102] See the account of Cassius Hemina above, n. 65. Although Hemina's floruit is the mid-second century, the story is undoubtedly much older. On the prohibition against offering battle on a dies ater, see above, n. 65.

[103] See above, n. 86.

[104] See Appendix 1.1, no. 85. Significantly, tradition later made his rashness, not his impiety, the chief cause of the disaster. See Will, Historia 32 (1983): 173-82.

[105] For sources, see above, n. 80.

had violated the auspices. All accounts agree on this point.^[106] Varro had deliberately elected to ignore one of the restrictions attached to a diesater, but he had probably sought confirmation of this decision through auspication. We are not told that he had in so many words, but the sources preserve no indication that Varro had acted contraauspicia at Cannae, a point unlikely to have dropped out of the tradition. Admittedly, this argument is merely exsilentio; however, a curious story in Livy lends credibility to the surmise. Livy relates that Varro nearly rushed into an ambush set by Hannibal shortly before Cannae, from which he was saved only by the refusal of the chickens to eat when his colleague took the auspices. Varro therefore stayed his attack.^[107] Obviously Livy means to illustrate Varro's rashness, but on a more subtle level the story demonstrates that Varro was no Flaminius or Pulcher.^[108] Unlike them, he heeded the auspices when the gods withheld permission to act. It is difficult to imagine how such a tale could have arisen if there was the slightest belief that Cannae had happened because he had entered battle without the express approval of the gods.^[109] Hence we may be relatively certain that on the morning of battle Varro ordered the chickens fed and learned that they had eaten auspiciously. In and of itself the appetite of the birds promised nothing since favorable auspices did not guarantee success.^[110] But they did absolve Varro of all responsibility for the religious consequences of his decision. As far as he knew at the time, the action he was about to undertake accorded with the wishes of the gods even though it would occur on a diesater. Pulcher could make no such claim, and that fact exposed him to the public desire for vengeance.

Auspication thus represented a crucial advertisement of a general's respect for the paxdeorum, shielding him from popular outcry in the event of defeat. But his immunity from criticism in itself would only have led to a search elsewhere for a place to lay the

[106] See above, n. 79.

[107] Livy 22.42.7-9, cf. 41.1-42.12; App. Hann. 18.

[108] Note esp. Livy 22.42.9: QuodquamquamVarroagereestpassus,FlaminitamenrecenscasusClaudiqueconsulisprimo Punicobellomemoratanavalis cladesreligionemanimoincussit.

[109] One can in fact imagine that the tale was originally invented by Varro's supporters precisely to remove all traces of doubt on the point.

[110] See above, n. 42.

blame had previously undetectable signs and errors not been available to suppress the hunt. In 216 they came into action smoothly with the sudden discovery that the unchastity of the vestals represented not just a crime but a prodigium as well, which, having gone unexpiated, led the Romans into catastrophe on the battlefield. Conveniently these women were already dead, so involving their transgression in the genesis of the disaster injured no aristocratic interest any further than it had been already in their punishment itself. But even this transgression was not the cause of the disaster; instead, the Romans' failure to recognize it as a warning from the gods of serious trouble in the paxdeorum had led the city to the brink of ruin. Possibly it was fated for the Romans to suffer the disaster at Cannae.^[111] Or perhaps some previous unwitting mistake had led the gods to break off their pax with the Romans, so that they refused to furnish their support on that day.^[112] The important point, however, is that whatever the cause, both it and the detection of the vestals' crime antedated the battle and hence Varro's decision to fight on a diesater. The heavenly genesis of the catastrophe had already taken place. For failing to realize it no one was at fault—unless perhaps the senate as a whole, which had responsibility for acknowledging events reported to it as prodigia and ordering their expiation. No member of that body, therefore, was likely to make an issue out of a shortcoming for which they all bore some measure of the collective responsibility. Joint complicity dampened the potential for political conflict latent in tracing the origins of defeat to the gods.

Thus both ways of conceptualizing how religious errors had occurred could be effective in protecting victi from the political consequences of their defeats because each drove home the same points: the paxdeorum could not be taken for granted; the results of its breakdown were always catastrophic; and the sole means of remedying this situation or avoiding it altogether rested in obeying the dictates of the state cult. It was highly advantageous to the religious establishment and the senatorial class generally to insist on drawing these lessons from a disaster, for they emphatically

[111] This is clearly the meaning of the first Marcian prophecy discovered some years later: Livy 25.12.5-6.

[112] This is perhaps the implication of the discovery of Varro's alleged error in conducting the ludi while he was aedile: see above, pp. 68-69.

underscored the need to respect the authority of those who controlled the traditional means of access to the gods. Yet such explanations left little room for the efforts of particular aristocrats to pin the blame on the general himself for what had gone wrong in the city's relations with the heavenly powers. As long as the victus had discharged his obligations to the gods or at least heard favorable auspices reported before the battle, he bore no blame if the results showed that the gods had turned against Rome. The religious causes would have to be sought elsewhere. Their discovery and the steps that senate ordered to correct them introduced an explanation into the public arena that became a real factor in subsequent political debate. Whatever transpired thereafter had to fit plausibly within its parameters or else implicitly deny the authority of the senate and the religious hierarchy. Hence powerful interests were ranged against those who would dispute such findings, and they constrained aristocratic rivalry to operate according to their terms.^[113]

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Yet the contribution of these methods of explaining defeats to the continuing political success of victi also ought to be a product of the frequency with which they came into play when battles were lost, and here the evidence appears to give reason for pause. Most defeats—in fact the majority—provide no indication that religious errors of any sort were perceived as the principal cause at the time, and thus it is conceivable that such a view of events was the exception rather than the rule at Rome. However, this position is almost certainly incorrect: the lack of evidence for the general scope of the phenomenon is more likely due to the limitations of the sources, which are hardly full for even the gravest military disasters. Yet even here religious causation features prominently.^[114]

[113] For example, if political rivalries were being played out in the decision to promulgate bills to turn Pompeius and Mancinus (along with the latter's officers) over to the Numantines, the entire shape of that struggle was dictated by the willingness of the senate to accept Mancinus' contention that a violation of Roman fides lay at the heart of his failures in Spain. See Rosenstein, CA 5 (1986): 244-52.

[114] On Drepana, note also the ludisaeculares and the introduction of the cult of Dis, Ceres, and Proserpina in 249 as a response to the reverses in Sicily during the first Punic war (Cichorius, RömischeStudien, 1-2, 47-48; Taylor, AJPh 55 [1934]: 101-20, at 114); on the crisis in the north late in the second century, note, too, the human sacrifice of 113 (Plut. Mor. 284A-C). See discussion in Eckstein, AJAH 7 (1982): 71-73; Cornell, "Some Observations on the Crimen Incesti, " 27-37; on offerings to Ceres and Proserpina in 104, see Obseq. 43; on the religious climate at the time, see Rawson, Phoenix 28 (1974): 193-212.

Moreover, two minor losses for which details happen to be preserved strongly suggest that in other cases where the consequences were less than dire and little evidence survives beyond a bare notice of the event itself, the senate responded similarly.

The defeats sustained by Ap. Claudius Pulcher in 143 and Q. Fulvius Nobilior in 153 were prosaic affairs. The Republic did not totter; no crisis loomed. Yet here too a search for causes turned up expected kinds of religious errors—failure to perform rites long forgotten or observe restrictions not recognized before. After the Alpine Salassi had repelled Pulcher, the senate ordered the decemvirs to consult the Sibylline books, and they reported an oracle indicating the need for special sacrifices whenever the Romans made war on the Gauls. The senate therefore sent two of the priests north to Claudius to undertake the requisite offerings.^[115] Ten years before, Q. Fulvius Nobilior apparently asserted that a religious error had also been responsible for his failures. While commanding in Spain, he had gone into battle on the Volcanalia, and thereafter nothing had gone right. The date of that festival was believed subsequently to be unpropitious for warfare.^[116]

Possibly these cases are exceptional. Some defeats may have been more prone to being thought the result of religious problems than others; some victi may have more readily ascribed their losses to the anger of the gods. But if these suppositions held true in some cases, then it is difficult to conceive of a reason why the same thinking would not apply for all. Rather, such an analysis seems to have arisen spontaneously among the patres themselves, not been imposed on them. Belief in the gods was widespread at Rome during the middle and late Republic among the political elite de-

[115] Obseq. 21; Dio frg. 74. Claudius' subsequent campaign was successful. Whether the defeat itself was regarded as a prodigium or some event in conjunction with it is uncertain, but the belief of the senate that trouble in the paxdeorum had vitiated Claudius' campaign emerges clearly.

[116] App. Iber. 45; cf. Sall. Hist. 3.50 Maur.

spite individual skeptics. But even these will have kept up appearances for the sake of securing the ascendency of their class.^[117] The gods and their kindness toward Rome formed a central element in the Republican ideology of military success.^[118] These were the terms in which the senators spoke officially to one another and to the citizens.^[119] Tracing the causes of all defeats and every other public misfortune to the same source was merely consonant with that position. In 176 the consul Petilius was killed while leading his men against the Ligurians. The Romans won the fight anyway, but after the battle the senate held an inquiry and determined that errors in auspication and ritual procedure had been responsible for the consul's demise.^[120] Petilius naturally played no role in leading the senate to this conclusion, nor did it stem from a need to restore public confidence in the effectiveness of the cult after it had been shaken by a defeat since none had occurred. Clearly resort to a search for a religious error in this case was a result of the almost instinctive tendency of the senate to see any public misfortune in religious terms. Thus even for mundane military failures—notwithstanding the silence of our sources—it seems reasonable to

[117] Linderski, PP 37 (1983): 16-18; Brunt, FalloftheRomanRepublic, 58-60, 302-3; Jocelyn, Bul.J.RylandsLib. 65 (1982): 158-62.

[118] E.g. SIG 601, lines 13ff.; cf. 611 lines 24f.; Cic. Har.Resp. 19; Nat. D. 2.8, 3.5; Sall. Cat. 12.3; Hist. 1.77.3; 3.47.1 Maur.; Livy 5.51.4-52.17; 44.1.11; Hor. Carm. 3.6.5. See also Lind, TAPhA 103 (1972): 250-52; Liebeschuetz, ContinuityandChange, 1.

[119] Note the settings in which Livy presents such sentiments-official communications of magistrates to the patres (5.20.2-3; 8.13.11; 35.6.9; cf. 45.23.1, foreign ambassadors addressing the senate); public declarations between officers and their men (7.13.5; 7.34.6; 24.38.1-2; 26.41.5, 14; 44.1.11). Although all such incidents are not genuine, as a group they certainly represent the weaving of genuine Republican practice into his narrative (cf. Sall. Hist. 1.77.3; 3.47.1 Maur.). That these really were the conventions of public discourse in such circumstances seems clear from BGall. 5.52, where Caesar, not normally one to involve the gods in his exploits, addresses his men following a setback.

[120] Livy 41.18.7-14: the defeat was a case of willful neglect since the senate learned from his pullarius afterward that Petilius had knowingly ignored a vitium in the auspices before the battle. It was also determined that he erred when carrying out a sortitio with his colleague to arrange from which direction each of them was to lead his troops in their joint attack. Linderski, ANRW 2.16.3 (1986): 2174-75, has plausibly suggested that this was the vitium that Petilius had chosen to ignore. Unfortunately, textual corruption makes its precise nature uncertain, although the general sense is clear. Note also, however, an unrecognized sign: while haranguing his troops before battle, he announced that today he would capture Letum, both the name of the hill he was about to attack and an expression meaning "to die" (Livy 41.18.5; Val. Max. 1.5.9).

assume that their origins were traced back to trouble in the paxdeorum.

Some evidence is of course pure fantasy—the giant snakes presaging the disastrous German invasions, for example, or the voice that cried "Stay, Mancinus!" as the ill-fated consul was embarking for Spain, or the thunder and lightning that accompanied Crassus' crossing of the Euphrates.^[121] The veracity of others is uncertain, as in the case of P. Claudius Pulcher's alleged failure to heed the auspices in 249 or C. Flaminius' similar neglect of religion in 217.^[122] But the importance of all such tales lies in the fact that the initiative to invent them sprang from precisely the same impulse that led the senate to command extraordinary efforts to regain the favor of the gods after a defeat. Both were products of an outlook that saw in military failure merely the symptom of a vastly more dangerous break in the ties that bound the Republic to its divine protectors.

Belief in the reality of the paxdeorum and the conviction that victory was its consequence were too deeply ingrained at Rome, and too crucial as props for the collective authority of its leadership, not to have imbued lost battles with a profound religious significance in the minds of Romans of all ranks. This shift in the focus of public concern from what had occurred on the field of battle to the state of the city's relations with its gods thus represents one of the crucial steps in protecting victi against the censure and retribution of an outraged public in the wake of defeat. When the deities were involved, punishing the mortal in command could seem beside the point. Whatever a general's errors, the effects of his actions paled in comparison with the awful consequences of a breakdown in the paxdeorum. Such a breakdown rendered the efforts of rivals to use a commander's shortcomings against him in subsequent competition petty and irrelevant in the eyes of the pub-

[121] On snakes, see Gran. Licin. 33.21 C; Obseq. 42. On Mancinus, see Livy Per. 55; Obseq. 24; Val. Max. 1.6.7; DeVir. Ill. 59.1; Oros. 5.4.9. On Crassus, see Obseq. 64; Plut. Crass. 19.1-6; Florus 1.36.3; Dio 40.17.1-19.3. See also above, n. 82.

[122] The story of Pulcher's defiance of the auspices is rejected by Walbank Comm., 1:113-14, and more recently by Wiseman, Cleo 'sCosmetics, 90-92; it is accepted as genuine by Münzer RE 3 col. 2858; Bauman, Crimen Maiestatis, 27-29; and Cornell, JRS 72 (1982): 206. The story of Flaminius' impiety recorded by Livy is also usually rejected (e.g. Scullard, RomanPolitics, 44 and n. 3) in view of Livy's confusion regarding the place where Flaminius began his campaign (21.63.1-2, 13-1). Cf. Poly. 3.77.1-2, who is followed by most scholars (discussion in Walbank, Comm., 1:410-11).

lic, ensuring that no aristocrat would risk its opprobrium by mounting such an attack.

Thus Roman religion was not, as in the past it has often been assumed to be, merely a passive instrument in the hands of ambitious public men who perverted its tenets in the pursuit of narrow partisan aims. On the contrary, in defeat it constrained those in the political arena to observe the limits it imposed on their conduct. Even skeptics found themselves compelled to accept an interpretation of events based on religious doctrine and the necessity of abiding by its logic both because most of the public and their peers believed in the cult and because their own overriding political interests required the perpetuation of that belief. Provided only that the generals themselves observed its provisions, or at the very least sought confirmation for their decisions in the auspices, they could not be held accountable for the disposition of the gods.

Yet influence did not flow in one direction only. The needs of the competitive system also left their mark on the specific ways in which troubles in the paxdeorum were believed to arise. It always remained possible in theory to detect the origins of a disaster in small imperfections of ritual or downright incompetence among the priests. But their potential repercussions within a highly contentious elite that shared out responsibility for the cult among its most powerful, and powerfully connected, members made such discoveries too dangerous for all concerned. The need to suppress disruptive forms of rivalry brought other explanations to the fore—undetectable errors for which no one could justifiably be blamed or improprieties willfully committed and then punished by the gods themselves. Not only were the implications of these patterns of religious failure far more benign in terms of the tensions latent within the political arena, but they could even prove beneficial to the corporate interests of the elite in maintaining its authority in the state. On this basis a consensus could arise on the religious causes of defeat that no individual member could contest with any hope of success. For to do so would mean confronting not simply the victus himself but the priesthood and the bulk of his peers in the senate as well, all of whom had a strong interest in upholding an interpretation of events highly conducive to their own collective well-being.