Nuncupatio Votorum
Three main questions concern the sacrifice scene on BR II:1. The points previously at issue[76] are the following: Is the sacrifice scene of BR I:1 part of the same triumphal ceremony as the procession on BR I:2, or is it a votive sacrifice separated in time from the triumphal procession? If so, where is the sacrifice to be understood as taking place, and with what official Roman ceremony should it be linked? And having settled these problems, how should one interpret the relationship between the two panels of this cup?
It is generally agreed that in fact the sacrifice scene is not supposed to be the sacrifice at the end of a triumphal procession, and this is easily proved. The triumphator did not change into armor at the end of the procession;[77] his lictors did not change from tunic and toga into tunic and paludamentum, nor did they discard their laurel branches and insert axes
into their rod bundles. These are the points at which the triumph and sacrifice panels vary, for in the sacrifice the celebrant is in armor, the lictors are in military costume and unlaureled, and one has an axe bound into his rods.
Why, then, do others call the two scenes episodes from one triumph ceremony? Confusion seems to have arisen for two reasons. One is a deliberate effort by the artist to connect his two scenes visually and thematically in some way, while the other is accidental: for many modern viewers of the photographs of the cup, the triumph scene seems to catch the eye first, and as the victim at the head of the triumph procession appears to move around the cup and the lictor at far left of the sacrifice looks over his shoulder, one is led to consider the sacrifice as the culmination of the triumph. Thematically, the two scenes are indeed connected: the sacrifice takes place in front of the Capitolium in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus, while the bull at the head of the triumph procession is going to be sacrificed to the same deity and in the same place, for the Capitolium was where every triumph ended up. The artist took pains to highlight this link, for at the far right of each scene is the same visual detail: the fastigium (head ornament) on the triumphal victim is identical to the Capitolium pediment, for it is triangular, has the same relief ornament of an eagle on a globe, and is garlanded in the same manner. Clearly, the artist tried to lead his patron's eye around the cup from left to right—but where is the starting point?
The sacrifice at Rome of a bull to Jupiter Capitolinus by an imperator in armor can only be a votive sacrifice performed at the outset of a campaign. This is the nuncupatio votorum, the announcement to Jupiter of vows to perform further sacrifices and give thanks to the god at the successful completion of the campaign in question; these preliminary vows themselves were sealed with a bull sacrifice. When generals returned to Rome they did indeed sacrifice on the Capitoline to Jupiter, but they did so in the toga they donned to reenter the city. This thesis about the nuncupatio votorum needs to be argued at some length; although some cursorily identify the BR sacrifice as I do,[78] others read the scene differently, as in the most recent literature in English on the BR cup.[79]
Two aspects of the sacrifice scene have proved problematic. One is the question of location. The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at right seems meant to localize the scene as well as to identify the recipient of the sacrifice; many assume, however, that magistrates with a military command (imperium ) had always to wear the toga instead of military costume (togatus instead of paludatus ) while they were inside the city pomerium, so that
this general cannot actually be sacrificing at the Capitolium.[80] A second problem was raised by Kleiner, who asserted that until ca. A.D. 200 representations of sacrifice in armor were avoided in Roman art; he knows no other pictorial or literary description until the Antonine period, excepting depictions of Aeneas and a single reference in the Aeneid .
As demonstrated above, it is not the case that sacrifices in armor were avoided, or rather, one should say the sacrifice paludatus, for this is the term used to designate appearance in military, as opposed to civilian, garb, and it means to wear tunic and paludamentum (military cloak) instead of tunic and toga. Whether or not a general puts on a cuirass under his splendid paludamentum purpurum is beside the point. We can see this in the canon of submissio scenes[81] where barbarians are judged by an imperator: reliefs and sarcophagi use a paludatus imperator with or without cuirass interchangeably. As Festus says, under the term paludati, "in libris auguralibus significat, ut ait Veranius, armati, ornati. Omnia enim militaria ornamenta paludamenta dici." Once we look for the sacrifice paludatus and not just for the sacrifice "in armor," it is easier to find comparanda for the BR depiction; the record gives no grounds for asserting that representations of the paludatus sacrifice were avoided in the Republic or early Empire.
If we accept that topographic references are put into Roman historical relief to be just that, signs precisely indicating the scene of action, then J. Pollini's solution might tempt: the sacrifice takes place outside the pomerium, but immediately outside it at the foot of the Capitoline hill. Kleiner thought that perhaps the sacrifice was meant to be taking place in the field in northern Europe, as a pendant to the "hostage" scene of BR I:2, this, however, would entail rejecting everything that we think we can infer from topographic references in Roman art as indicators of the scene of an action.[82]
The two problems are to be solved together by exploring the rite of nuncupatio votorum . What did that rite mean? It was part of the ancient and regular tradition that governed the actions of a high magistrate with imperium (a consul or a praetor) who was to set out from Rome to take up his provincial command and/or set out on campaign. For a consul, the regular sequence of actions was as follows.
At the beginning of his term of office the consul dons his toga praetexta at home ("apud penates suos"), then pays his respects at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; then he sees and consults the Senate, then proclaims the Latin Festival and offers to Jupiter Latiaris at the Alban Mount. Auspicatus by this last sacrifice, he then goes again to the Capitol: "profectus in Capitolium ad vota nuncupanda paludatus inde cum lictoribus in
provinciam iret" ("He should proceed paludatus with his lictors to take up his command, having gone to the Capitol to proclaim his vota, " Livy 21.63.7ff.). For any commander setting out on campaign, the mos maiorum is to set out from the city "properly, vows proclaimed on the Capitol, with paludate lictors" ("secundum vota in Capitolio nuncupata, lictoribus paludatis," Livy 41.10.7). Praetors leave for their provinces in the same way: "They depart paludati with their vows announced" ("paludatique votis nuncupatis exeunt," Caes. BCiv.iv. 1.6). To omit this ritual was a serious matter that brought down the wrath of the Senate and could provoke near mutiny in an army (Livy 21.63.7ff. and 22.1.6, to 217 B.C.; 41.10.5–13, to 177 B.C.). To "abrogate" the ritual by sneaking back into the city improperly the night after, as Verres did, was matter for grave censure (Cic. Verr. 5.13.34); to molest, let alone curse, a general proceeding out of the city in this rite was a terrible affront and portent (i.e., Crassus' profectio in 55 B.C.: Plut. Crass. 16.3–6; Dio 34.39.6).
It was natural that this ceremony should be taken very seriously, for in the nuncupatio the imperator sacrificed "pro imperio suo communique re publica" (Cic. Verr. 5.13.34), seeking to put the ruler of the gods under an obligatio to grant success in the exercise of his imperium to himself and to the Roman state. Livy provides an exemplary text at 45.39.10ff., a speech in which Servilius moves to award a triumph to L. Aemilius Paullus in 167 B.C.: it is to the gods, not only to men, that a triumph is due, for your ancestors in every magna res started with the gods at the beginning and came back to them at the finis : "consul proficiscens praetorve paludatis lictoribus in provinciam et ad bellum vota in Capitolio nuncupat; victor perpetrato bello eodem in Capitolium triumphans ad eosdem deos, quibus vota nuncupavit, merita dona portans redit."
Whether or not this text is exemplary of habits of thought and behavior in 167 B.C., it is a clear and dogmatic explication of the theology of war and triumph as seen by a writer of the Augustan period who was read and respected by the educated elite of his own time and who was in close touch with the imperial household, not least as a trusted educator of its younger members (tutor to the young Claudius: Suet. Claud. 5.41). Indeed, this text of Livy's reads like a program for the cup BR II: as we shall see in the discussion of the triumph panel, it could stand as a literary outline for that particular scene as well.
As scholars have noted, the extant sources are unclear as to the exact moment when a general changed his toga for the paludamentum, his dress uniform.[83] We do know that on a general's return he changed his armor for a toga before he entered the city boundary, and refusal to do so was seen
as a terrible moral affront to the SPQR at least to the end of the Julio-Claudian period. (Cf. Suet. Vit. 11: the sense of this episode is that Vitellius is about to treat Rome as if it were a captured city by entering with his forces under arms.) Texts on the civil conflicts of the Republic are full of references to the distaste, even terror, evoked by the presence or threatened presence of soldiery in arms within the city.
However, this has nothing to do with the ceremony of the nuncupatio votorum . First of all, to explain the revulsion at an armed adventus: a general came back to Rome and put down his imperium before entering the city, putting on the toga to mark his resumption of civilian status; to stay armed was thus an affront to law as well as to decency. The nuncupatio, on the other hand, was performed by one who had just been granted imperium while in Rome and was about to go off and exercise it—the armed dress that was the token of imperium was appropriate in this case. Second, the paludati in this ceremonial included only the general and his lictors; note that such a party, within the Forum Romanum, is depicted on the Anaglypha Traiani records-burning panel and the Arch of Constantine oratio relief (figs. 38, 36) (announcement of benefits). There is no indication in any source that the army was in the city with the general; in fact there is every indication to the contrary. The way that the texts speak of this ceremony is that the imperator performs this rite in Rome as the necessary prelude to leaving the city to go out and join his legions mustered somewhere else, often quite far away (e.g., Brundisium, the staging point for Eastern commands). Moreover, the Crassus episode proves that the general left alone, i.e. without any troops inside or near the pomerium: Crassus was totally defenseless before the angry crowd that menaced him, and had to call on the popular Pompey to escort him personally in order to calm the mob, while the tribunes who tried to lay hands on him were restrained only by other tribunes who were pro-Crassus. No one would have menaced Crassus in this way had his soldiers been present or nearby; they cannot even have been near the pomerium, or the tribune Ateius Capito would never have dared to stage his curse ceremony right at the city gate through which Crassus was to pass. This is one of the very occasions when we are told that the imperator joined his legions only at Brundisium, their embarkation point for the East.
The nuncupatio votorum, then, took place without any of the threatening aspects of an imperatorial adventus turned into a march into Rome. We are also told that a primary aspect of the proper profectio nuncupatis votis was that the general's lictors (and the general himself) had to be paludati . It is absurd to think that the little contingent trotted from the Capitolium to
the city gate and then stopped, pulled off their togas, and put on cloaks while the lictors took their rods apart to tie them back up again with axes inside, all this in the middle of the crowd drawn up to watch them go.[84]
To recapitulate, the proper way for a consul or a praetor with proconsular imperium to leave Rome to take up an army command was to sacrifice on the Capitolium in the nuncupatio votorum and march straight out of the city paludatus, accompanied by lictors who were also paludati . I think there can be no question that the party were dressed in military costume at the nuncupatio itself. The BR cup panel must be a nuncupatio votorum because that is the only ceremony that could possibly account for the depiction of a group consisting of an armed imperator and lictores paludati, but no soldiers, sacrificing at the Capitolium. The cup in turn becomes our first pictorial document from the Republic and early Empire for this particular ceremony. The seeming lacuna in the pictorial record, which bothered Kleiner, is not in itself proof of any historical facts, especially given the relative paucity of surviving Roman historical narrative; with all our precise knowledge about the conduct of the censorial registration of military classes at the lustrum, we have only two surviving pictorial records,[85] the Paris census panel (fig. 27) and a Praenestine cist lid![86]
It is very difficult to know in fact what subjects were or were not avoided in Republican historical relief or painting since so little is left.[87] For the early Empire the situation is similar: the monuments that we have do not show any profectio or adventus of an emperor commanding an army. In the first century many emperors left the work of command to other generals whom it would be difficult to imagine them having celebrated in state relief—Caligula for Cassius Chaerea? Nero for Corbulo? Domitian for Agricola? Emperors who did take the field as imperator, like Caligula at the Rhine, Claudius in Britain, or Domitian in Dacia, have left behind nothing but a few debated fragments of the monuments that once celebrated their campaigns. The only generals who got any triumphal monuments in Rome after Augustus were those who belonged to the nucleus of the imperial family: Drusus, Tiberius, Gaius, and Lucius under Angustus; Germanicus and Drusus the Younger under Tiberius; Titus and Domitian under Vespasian, and so on. And of these monuments, again, even when we have other evidence for them, almost nothing exists, certainly not their sculptural decoration. It is no accident that, as Kleiner observed solely as an iconographic fact, the sacrifice "in armor" (paludatus ) becomes a more common subject under the later, soldier emperors.
In any case there are pictorial records for the nuncupatio besides the Augustan BR version. On the Cività Castellana base (figs. 28–30) a Re-
publican general (or Romulus or Aeneas) performs some nuncupatio ceremony; the Temple of Mars Ultor relief (fig. 9a) seems a Julio-Claudian depiction. The Louvre extispicium relief once ornamented the Forum of Trajan: the emperor lacks in the surviving fragments, but a paludatus lictor stands by as the bull's entrails are examined after the slaying, and Victory arrives to mark the "future" success read in the omens as a group of togati (including Hadrian?) gesture before the doors of the Capitolium.[88] Also, two sacrifice scenes on the Column of Trajan show the imperator paludatus sacrificing by cities to mark individual stages of his Dacian campaign, making vota before attempting a particular military thrust.[89] The rite turns up again[90] on Tetrarchic monumental relief on the Arch of Galerius at Thessalonika, where prior to Galerius' Parthian campaign the cuirassed Galerius and Diocletian in a paludamentum sacrifice before Jupiter;[91] in this later age of multiple imperial capitals, the facade behind probably represents Antioch.[92] Finally, the private "generals'" sarcophagi discussed above deliberately echo the themes of monumental imperial art (fig. 93); here an imperator paludatus, sometimes with a spear, as on the BR cup, performs the nuncupatio votorum before the Capitolium as the victim is slain, in the BR slaying composition. The surviving pictorial evidence on the nuncupatio votorum thus ranges from the very beginning of the Empire through its last phase, with examples from both the monumental and private spheres. The relief depictions, finally, provide a context for certain isolated freestanding commemorative portraits. The so-called Mars of Todi, a votive portrait of ca. 400 B.C. of the Italian general Ahal Trutitis performing a libation barefoot, seems to be the earliest visual commemoration of the nuncupatio;[93] perhaps even the Primaporta Augustus (fig. 64) announces the omens at the end of a nuncupatio, solemnly inaugurating all present and future campaigns under his perpetual auspices .