V. Sacrifice and Imperium

The emphasis on the social and political aspects of religious ritual that emerged in the preceding section will be recognizable to the student of Roman religion. Not only has the manipulation of religious practice for narrowly political ends been long studied, but on a much broader level the communal nature of so much of ancient religious practice has all but eroded the distinction between our categories of the civic and the religious.^[123] Nor were the Romans themselves oblivious to the “social” importance of religion as a means of building ties within a community. For Cicero, shared sacra constituted one of the ties that bind an individual to his natural patria.^[124]

Within Livy’s own text, the most explicit description of the use of religious ritual to maintain the social order of the Roman state occurs just a few pages before the events that we have been describing, in the account of Numa Pompilius’s religious reforms discussed in chapter 2: after peace has been obtained with all the neighboring peoples, “lest the spirits [of the Romans], which the fear of the enemy and military discipline had held in check, grow soft in peace, first of all—a thing most effective for an inexperienced and, in those ages, unsophisticated people—he thought that fear of the gods must be cast upon them.”^[125] The terms used here provide a link between the rituals staged under Numa’s successor and the social ills that Livy himself treats. The metus deorum appears as an equivalent to military discipline; both the Fetial sacrifice and the subsequent execution of the Alban dictator Mettius Fufetius, like the failed Samnite ritual of book 10, take place on the battlefield and enforce a sense of collective identity, which can be measured in adherence to military discipline.^[126] At the same time, the specific problems that Numa addresses, luxuria and the debilitating effects of otium, are emphatically not those of the “rude and inexperienced” Romans of regal times but the preoccupations of the first century B.C.E. The discussion of the social utility of religious ritual thus occurs in a context where not only is the distinction between past and present deliberately blurred, but, as we saw in chapter 2, the activities of the king and the historian come to resemble one another. Indeed, the king employs religious ritual to perform precisely the same social function that he shares with the historian, to combat the effects of luxuria. This suggests that the reconstruction of sacrificial spectacle can be taken as one of the most important means by which the historian’s text directly assumes a political, state-building function.

Beyond its reminiscences of Numa’s procedure, Livy’s adoption of the sacrificial paradigm for staging the unification of the Albans and the Romans also means that he is communicating in the same medium of religious ritual that Augustus himself, who also appears in the earlier passage as an imitator of Numa, used to accomplish the restoration of the state. But how far is it justifiable to think that a literary text could operate on its readers in a manner resembling the way an actual sacrifice affected its participants? Obviously, Livy cannot distribute the sacrificial meats among his audience. Nor will he, like Augustus on the Ara Pacis, make himself the center of his audience’s attention as the focal point of the sacrificial experience. But visual contact, which has emerged as both a powerful medium for linking the participant to the event and a means of negotiating the antithetical potentials of sacrifice, can be reproduced for the audience of a literary text. If this reproduction achieves less vividness than in the visual arts, not to speak of the unmediated experience of sacrifice itself, perhaps it possesses greater precision since the attentions of the writer’s audience can be more strictly controlled.^[127]

The overlap between the roles of king and historian suggested in Livy’s account of Numa reappears at one of the crucial moments in the process of incorporating the Albans, the execution of Mettius Fufetius. In spite of his pledge to abide by the outcome of the duel and place the Albans under the imperium of Rome, Mettius treacherously withdraws the Alban forces in the first battle in which he is asked for assistance and only rejoins the Romans when they are clearly victorious (1.27). Tullus punishes this betrayal by having the Alban leader tied to two chariots and torn apart (1.28). The scene in which this punishment takes place recapitulates many of the themes and tensions of the entire episode, from the initial deception of the Alban ambassadors to the deferred execution of Horatius, and offers an explicit, if complex, commentary on the educational functions of the historian and the civic leader.

The Albans’ denial of the reality of Rome’s imperium is bound up with their attitude to the role of the spectator; it was after all through the process of spectacle that this imperium was first established over them, and it will be through yet another spectacle that it is confirmed. As we have seen, throughout their dealings with the Romans, the Albans have been constantly at a disadvantage because of their assumption that the spectator is passive and detached from the event he watches, and a corollary belief that spectacle itself consists simply of empty display. These conceptions determined both the negligence with which they conducted their initial embassy to the Romans (1.23.5ff.) and the proposal that the dispute with the Romans be decided by a duel. The strategy the Albans employ in betraying the Romans again highlights this attitude to spectacle. By withdrawing to watch the battle rather than actually fighting, the Alban army becomes “a spectator of the competition” (spectator certaminis [1.28.1])—a position analogous to the one adopted at the battle of the Horatii and Curiatii—again out of the belief that as spectators, they will be free from danger.

As in his treatment of the original embassy that came to demand the restoration of stolen property, so too in preparing for the final spectacle of Mettius’s execution, the Roman king tricks the treacherous Albans with an outward show of friendship. He addresses them in a kindly way and summons them the next morning to a “lustral sacrifice” (1.28.1). When invited to the assembly by Tullus Hostilius, the Albans are eager to attend and take up the nearest positions because they are struck by the “novelty of hearing a Roman king address an assembly” (1.28.2). But their enthusiasm for “sight-seeing” enables the Roman legion to surround them physically, a gesture that reinforces the point that the Albans are not disconnected from the events they are watching but are as much subject to Tullus’s authority as the Roman troops.^[128] The physical incorporation of the Albans into the body of citizens is complemented by the sudden reversal of perspective experienced most completely by Mettius Fufetius himself, who thinks that he has come as a spectator but finds that his punishment is in fact the spectacle that the audience has assembled to watch.

The symbolic inclusion of the Albans within the Roman state serves as a visual sign of the real purpose of the ceremony the king has orchestrated, the final unification of Rome and Alba. “May it be good and blessed and fortunate for the Roman people and me and you, Albans; I intend to lead the whole Alban people to Rome, to give citizenship to the plebeians, to induct the nobles into the Senate, to make one city, one res publica; as once the Alban state was divided into two now let it recombine into one.”^[129] The sacral resonance of the first phrase, which recalls the language used in the Fetial ritual, reminds us of the performative quality of the king’s utterance and of the ceremony as a whole. Tullus’s language does not just describe his intention but accomplishes it even as the Romans and Albans are literally being brought together; just as in the Fetial ritual, his statement is a manifestation of his imperium.

The statement that simultaneously unmasks the king’s purpose and expresses his power occurs at just the moment when the true nature of the spectacle itself has been revealed by the actions of the armed centurions who have surrounded Mettius Fufetius. And the sight of his execution will be the central means by which the king effects the unification of his audience. Tullus had described the event that the Albans were to attend as a sacrificium lustrale.^[130] Not only does this expression establish the formal parallel between the execution and sacrifice; as Versnel has shown, the lustral sacrifice was, like all lustrationes, used precisely to establish a new unity among the group of participants.

The lustral sacrifice is but one of the ritual acts the execution recalls. The reason Tullus gives for killing Mettius is that he violated the foedus made with the Romans. The treaty ritual, as we recall, had invoked destruction on whoever failed to abide by it and thus predicts and determines the fate of the Alban. The language of the king duplicates the sacred expressions he used to empower the pater patratus, and other terms both in the king’s speech and the historian’s narrative allude to the earlier ceremony. When Tullus speaks of “trustworthiness and treaties” (fides ac foedera [1.28.9]), beyond the alliteration there is also a reference to one of the common etymologies of the word foedus, as a cognate to fides. Others thought that a foedus was so named because of the disgusting (foedus) ritual by which treaties were confirmed, and Livy makes that connection as well when he refers to the foeditas of Mettius’s end (1.28.11).^[131] In addition to the verbal echoes, the visual tableau Livy constructs by having the centurions encompass their victim recalls precisely the depictions of foedera on coins.

In the Fetial ritual, the violence of the sacrifice was an expression of the collective power of the state channeled through the king and his representatives. The unifying aspect of the spectacle derives from the alignment of the group of participants against the outsider or victim at whom this collective power is directed. Thus although the word imperium was not explicitly used in the Fetial ritual, the ceremony enacts the transmission of imperium, and it is precisely the imperium of the Roman king over the Albans that the ceremony of the execution is designed to establish. The link between imperium and sacrifice emerges again in Appian’s account of the reconciliation of Octavian and the mutineers at Perusia. The situation is strikingly similar to the one Livy describes; again, the two armies are brought together by watching a sacrifice. Octavian has kept his veterans apart, and after the sacrifice they draw near the rebels as though to punish them; suddenly, however, they embrace one another and the end result is that “it became impossible to distinguish between them.”^[132] Here the participation of the mutineers in the sacrifice over which Octavian presides is explicitly linked to their acceptance of his imperium. As they arrive, the troops proclaim Octavian imperator, and after the sacrifice he addresses them crowned with the laurel of victory.^[133]

The execution of Mettius Fufetius also draws attention to the connection between the ritual performance of sacrifice and the presentation of a historical exemplum. In addition to pointing out the connections with the Fetial ritual and the general characterization of the execution as a sacrificium lustrale, Tullus emphasizes the educational function of his actions and expresses his consciousness of their historical significance by expanding the audience for his instruction from those immediately present to the entire “human race,” implicitly including any possible future violators. His punishment of Mettius is a “noteworthy demonstration” (insigne documentum [1.28.6]). Indeed, in its crudest form, the very manner in which the Alban is killed “illustrates” his crime: the division of his body manifests the earlier division of his spirit between the Romans and their enemies. In a larger sense his dismemberment emblematizes the division of loyalties experienced by all the Albans, who, as their king is dragged in diversum iter, are made “one” with the Romans. Later, Tullus says that he would apply his teaching to Mettius himself if his nature (ingenium) were not “incurable” (insanabile [1.28.9]). Both the references to documenta and the use of the metaphor of health replicate exactly the language in which Livy speaks of his own history in the preface. There, his text is made a source of documenta and as such is described as “healthful” (salubre). Not only do these echoes draw together the activities of king and historian, they also make clear the interdependence between sacrificial performance and historical instruction. The two aspects of Mettius’s death are made inseparable; his punishment (supplicium) is the means by which Mettius “teaches.”^[134]

In all of the sacrificial spectacles we have examined, the socially beneficial aspects of the experience—here epitomized by the king’s interpretation of the execution as a moment of unification whose historical significance will be as a constant warning against betrayal—have been balanced by an opposing potential for social disintegration. As incipient Romans, the Albans must view Mettius as a foreign enemy and take part in his killing. So, too, in quelling a later mutiny, Scipio Africanus will require the mutineers to find the sight of their former commanders’ deaths a “joyous sight” (laetum spectaculum [28.29.8]).^[135] But like the victim’s at the Fetial sacrifice, Mettius’s death serves as a warning of what might happen to any other potential traitor. In particular, it is as a representative of the Alban people that Mettius is punished; he is made to bear the responsibility for their crime. Thus the construction of the spectacle equally demands the audience’s identification with the victim. The emotion that enforces the Albans’ obedience is nothing other than the “fear” (metus) that results from such an identification. It was “fear of the gods” (metus deorum) that Numa had foreseen as the constraining power of religio, yet here, as in the response of the Samnites at Aquilonia, fear is directed against more immediate representatives of the state. Moreover, this emotion has a truly unifying effect in the sense that it is “common” to all and obliterates any individual variations in perspective or response.^[136]

The double vision required of the Albans is made particularly acute because an execution dispenses with the prescriptions that an actual sacrifice employs to control violence and to diffuse its most threatening aspects. In the Fetial sacrifice, the audience was asked to identify only with the death of a pig, which, however dramatic, has far less immediacy than the death of another human being, much less one’s former imperator. The relation between sacrifice and execution here precisely reverses the resolution achieved in the trial of Horatius.^[137] There, the establishment of a sacrificial ritual arose as an alternative to the death of a Horatius and as a means of controlling tensions that had led to murder. Here, the sacrifice of the pig is reenacted with a human victim. And just as the violence is no longer directed against an animal substitute, so too the role of surrogates in performing the killing is equally diminished. In the Fetial sacrifice, the victim was killed by a pater patratus appointed by the king, and the trial of Horatius was similarly conducted by surrogates, appointed precisely to protect the king from direct responsibility for the death of a man with whom the crowd sympathized. In the case of Mettius Fufetius, although Tullus does not drive the chariots himself, his role as the one who precipitates the execution is more immediately apparent.^[138]

In Livy’s account of the execution, these irreconcilable tensions ultimately produce a divergence between the king and the historian as presenters of spectacle. Just at the moment when the chariots have been set into motion,^[139] Livy ceases simply narrating the execution and intervenes in his own voice. “All turned their eyes away from such a terrible spectacle. That was the first and last punishment among the Romans of a model [exemplum] too little mindful of human laws; in other cases, the Romans can glory in the fact that no other race has decreed milder penalties” (1.28.11). The very statement that the onlookers turn their eyes away, as it breaks the contact between the spectator and the punishment, also releases Livy’s own audience from the necessity of “seeing” the culmination of the execution. At this point, Livy himself reverts to the language of the preface, and by doing so emerges as a rival to the king in offering educational spectacles. Not only does he use the term exemplum, but he shows an awareness of the entire scope of Roman history as well, by setting the execution within the much wider context of all other punishments. Like every other “sacrificial” event that forms a part of this episode, the execution generates two antithetical responses. In the case of Horatius’s trial, these responses were articulated as two alternative visual perspectives, one of which focused on Horatius’s decora, the other on that which was foedum or atrox.^[140] Livy’s interruption of the spectacle of the execution introduces a comparable antithesis here. The historian takes control of the perspective of his audience, redirecting its gaze from the foeditas of Mettius’s death to a “glorious”^[141] vision of Rome’s past, one where the conflict between the demands of national identity and of “human laws” disappears.