The fetiales and Roman international relations PDF

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Priests and State in the Roman World Edited by James H. Richardson and Federico Santangelo POTSDAMER ALTERTUMSWISSENSCHAFTLICHE BEITRÄGE (PAwB) Herausgegeben von Pedro Barceló (Potsdam), Peter Riemer (Saarbrücken), Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt) und John Scheid (Paris) –––– Band 33 Priests and State in the Rom...

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Priests and State in the Roman World Edited by James H. Richardson and Federico Santangelo

POTSDAMER ALTERTUMSWISSENSCHAFTLICHE BEITRÄGE (PAwB)

Herausgegeben von Pedro Barceló (Potsdam), Peter Riemer (Saarbrücken), Jörg Rüpke (Erfurt) und John Scheid (Paris) –––– Band 33

Priests and State in the Roman World Edited by James H. Richardson and Federico Santangelo

Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 2011

Bibliograische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliograie; detaillierte bibliograische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-515-09817-5 Jede Verwertung des Werkes außerhalb der Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Übersetzung, Nachdruck, Mikroverilmung oder vergleichbare Verfahren sowie für die Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. © 2011 Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart Druck: AZ Druck und Datentechnik GmbH, Kempten Printed in Germany

THE FETIALES AND ROMAN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS John Rich

The fetiales – known in English as fetials – were Roman priests with ritual responsibilities for certain aspects of the Romans’ relations with other nations, namely the preliminaries of war, the swearing of treaties, and the voluntary surrender of Roman offenders. The fetials’ activities were adduced both by ancient writers and by some modern scholars as evidence of the Romans’ justice in their international dealings. Clarification of what the fetials actually did is a necessary preliminary to assessing their significance, but this enterprise is complicated by the inadequacies of our evidence, which is mostly patchy, late and distorted by the ideology of the ‘just and righteous war’ (bellum iustum piumque). I dealt with some aspects of the fetials’ activity in a monograph published as long ago as 1976.1 Here I consider both these and other features of the topic in the light of the considerable volume of subsequent published research.2

1. THE FETIALES Ancient writers were agreed that the fetial priests and their rites were instituted by Rome’s early kings, but made contradictory claims about the details. Dionysius, followed by Plutarch, credits their establishment to the second king, Numa, the reputed author of most Roman religious institutions.3 According to Cicero (Rep. 2.31), Numa’s successor Tullus Hostilius ‘established the rule by which wars should be declared, and, having devised it most justly, gave it fetial religious sanction’. Livy, who does not report the institution of the fetials, represents them as concluding a treaty with Alba in the reign of Tullus (1.24.4-9); however, he and other sources ascribe the introduction of the fetial rite for the preliminaries of war

1 2

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Rich 1976, esp. 56-63, 105-107. Discussions of the fetials and related topics post-1976 include: Harris 1979, 164-175; Saulnier 1980; Wiedemann 1986; Broughton 1987; Mitchell 1990, 109-113; Rüpke 1990, 97124; Auliard 1992; Blaive 1993; Watson 1993; Ferrary 1995; Albanese 2000; Cimma 2000; Giovannini 2000a; Bederman 2001, 77-79, 194-197, 231-241; Zack 2001, 13-73; Calore 2005; Estienne 2005; Ando 2008; Santangelo 2008; Ager 2009, 17-25. Earlier treatments which remain of value include: Samter 1909; Wissowa 1912, 550-554; Hampl 1957; Latte 1960, 121-124; Ogilvie 1965, 110-112, 127-136; Dahlheim 1968, 171-180; Ziegler 1972, 7082, 90-107; Rawson 1973a, 166-168 (= Rawson 1991, 89-93). Ilari 1981 reviews the study of the ius fetiale up to the 19th century. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72; Plut. Num. 12.4-8.

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to the fourth king, Ancus Marcius.4 There was disagreement too about the origins of the fetial practices. Cicero’s wording may imply that Tullus invented the procedure for declaring war himself. The later second century BC annalist Cn. Gellius held that the fetials had been introduced from Ardea.5 Servius ascribed the fetial rites to the Falisci.6 The tradition which credited the introduction of the ius fetiale to Ancus claimed that he had taken it from the Aequicoli (or Aequiculi), better known as the Aequi, among whom it had been instituted by their (otherwise unknown) king Ferter (or Fertor) Resius. This version is found not only in literary sources, but also on a small pillar from the Clivus Palatinus, one of four commemorating traditions about early Rome erected there in the early imperial period.7 All these tales are merely the speculations of annalists and antiquarians. Even the Aequicoli, despite the intriguing detail of Ferter Resius, may have owed their association with the fetials just to the etymological possibilities of their name, which could be interpreted as ‘cultivators of equity’. However, as scholars have long recognised, the fetials and some of their practices must have been of great antiquity and, like some other priesthoods such as the Salii, must have been shared with neighbouring communities. Although the evidence is unreliable or late, the other Latin communities probably had fetials in early times, and some of Rome’s other close neighbours may have done so as well.8 The institution will not, however, have extended as far as the Samnites: Livy’s report of Samnite fetials sent on an abortive peace mission in 322 occurs in a late annalistic fiction presenting the Caudine Forks disaster as divine punishment for Roman intransigence.9 A clear indication of the antiquity of some of their ritual practices is afforded by what we are told of the preliminary observances fetials were required to perform to enable them to act on behalf of the Roman people. They began by asking a magistrate (originally, the king) for permission to take sagmina, which were clumps of grass and attached earth, from the Arx, the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill. These grasses (uerbenae) were then kept by a fetial known as the uerbenarius, who created another fetial as pater patratus by touching his head and hair with the grass. Having been appointed in this way, the pater patratus then performed the required ceremony. Sources link this preparatory rite with both 4 5 6 7

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Livy 1.32; De uir. ill. 5.4; Serv. Aen. 10.14. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72.2 (= Cn. Gellius fr. 16, Peter, Chassignet). Serv. Aen. 7.695; cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.21.1. De uir. ill. 5.4; fragmentum de praenominibus 1 (see Briscoe 1998, 795); Inscr. It. 13.3.66 = ILLRP 447. Livy 1.32.5 and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72.2 report the attribution to the Aequicoli without mentioning Ferter Resius. Ampolo 1972 argues that Ferter Resius’ name may derive from an official title. On the Palatine cippi see Chioffi 1995; D’Alessio 2000. On the name Aequicoli/Aequiculi see Oakley 1997-2005, 4.177-178. Latins have fetials at Livy 1.24.4-9, 32.7, and the Latin town Lavinium had fetials in imperial times (below, at n. 28). Livy 8.39.14; Oakley 1997-2005, 2.757-760. The parallel narratives of App. Sam. 4.1 and Cass. Dio fr. 36.8, Zonar. 7.26.10 do not mention Samnite fetials.

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treaties and the preliminaries of war, and it was probably enacted before all the fetials’ ritual dealings with other nations. However it is to be interpreted, it evidently went back to very early times.10 Nothing can be learned from the word fetialis itself. Ancient scholars connected it with the related words fides and foedus.11 Modern etymologies remain conjectural.12 Little is known of the membership of the fetiales in Republican times. Dionysius (Ant. Rom. 2.72.1) states that they were chosen ‘from the best families’, and access must originally have been limited to the patricians; as with most other priesthoods, plebeians were probably admitted by the end of the fourth century. Livy names three fetials, but M. Valerius and Sp. Fusius who act as uerbenarius and pater patratus for Tullus Hostilius’ treaty with Alba are evident inventions, and, even if, as argued below, the reported surrender to the Samnites of those responsible for the Caudine Forks treaty is historical, Livy’s claim that the distinguished A. Cornelius Arvina (consul 342, 332) acted as fetial on that occasion is very questionable.13 We are better informed on the fetial college in the imperial period. Augustus must have reorganised it, as with other priesthoods, and thereafter at least 35 fetials are attested, mainly from senatorial career inscriptions. The known fetials include members of the imperial family and some distinguished senators, but the priesthood was evidently less distinguished than the four major priestly colleges, and J. Rüpke judges it an ‘entry-level post’.14 Notices in Livy’s later decades show the fetials interacting with the Senate in the late third and early second centuries BC in a manner comparable to the other priestly colleges. In 201 fetials were instructed to travel to Africa to solemnise the peace treaty with Carthage, and, in preparation for this overseas journey, the Senate decreed at their request that they should take their own grasses and flintstones with them for the rituals.15 In 200 the fetial college was consulted by the Senate on the appropriate procedure for announcing the declaration of war against king Philip, and a similar consultation was made in 191 before the war with Antiochus

10 The main sources for the preparatory ritual for taking sagmina and appointing the pater patratus are Livy 1.24.4-6, 30.43.9; Plin. HN 22.5; Fest. 424-426L, citing Naevius, Bellum Punicum, fr. 31 Morel = 2 Strzelecki; Non. 848L, citing Varro, De uita populi Romani, fr. 76 Riposati = 387 Salvadore; Marcianus, Dig. 1.8.8.1; Serv. Aen. 12.120. Varro and Marcianus interpret the sagmina in terms of Greek practice; Servius erroneously makes the fetials wear grass crowns. On the interpretation of the ritual see Reid 1912, 47-49; Wiedemann 1986, 485; Rüpke 1990, 101-103, 115-116; Zack 2001, 54, 70-71. 11 Varro Ling. 5.86; Serv. Aen. 1.62; cf. Paul. Fest. 81L. 12 See Ogilvie 1965, 110; Rüpke 1990, 103; Sgarbi 1992. 13 Livy 1.24.6; 9.10.8-10, 11.9. 14 Rüpke 2008, 8. Rüpke 2008, 973-974, lists 35 fetials for the imperial period; Zollschan 2009 reports omissions. On membership of the college in this period see also Scheid 1978, 616, 626, 640; Saulnier 1980, 179-181, 194-199. 15 Livy 30.43.9 (doubted without good reason by Rawson 1973a, 167 = Rawson 1991, 91; Rüpke 1990, 113).

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and the Aetolians.16 These notices probably derive from the record of the Senate’s decrees, mediated by Valerius Antias. The extended report for 191 may contain some Valerian elaboration, but with that exception the notices are likely to be reliable.17 The procedure for declaring war envisaged on these two occasions did not use the fetials’ own ritual, a fact whose significance we shall explore below. Thus the fetials not only performed rituals, but were also consulted, like the major priestly colleges, on ritual issues within their field of expertise. Some writers credit them with a wider role, carrying out a judicial function and even playing a part in the determination of policy. However, such claims are always adduced as testimony to Roman justice in their international dealings and are therefore suspect. The case is presented in its most extreme form by Dionysius, whom Plutarch follows. Dionysius’ conception of the fetials is reflected in the Greek equivalent he uses for them, doubtless of his own devising: they were ἰ η ο ί α , ‘arbiters of peace’.18 The fetials, he tells us, were responsible for ensuring that the Romans did not begin an unjust war, and a war could not be begun without their authorisation; in addition, they had to enquire into complaints against individual Romans by States with which the Romans had a treaty and to hand them over if they found them guilty, to judge offences against ambassadors, to ensure that treaties were observed, and to invalidate breaches of oaths and treaties by commanders.19 These exalted claims serve Dionysius’ overall purpose of holding the Romans up to the Greeks for admiration, and are explicitly presented by him in these terms. To a considerable extent, his statements must represent his own reinterpretation of the fetials’ ritual activities. Something of the same idealising conception of the fetials’ role can, however, already be discerned in Cicero and Varro. Cicero includes a provision relating to the fetials in his draft laws in the De legibus; the text is unfortunately so corrupt that hardly anything can be established about it with confidence, but the presence of the word iudices suggests that he envisaged a judicial function for the fetials in his ideal republic; in his subsequent commentary on the draft law he states that they should be ‘public interpreters’ of the law of war.20 In the De lingua Latina (5.86) Varro states that the fetials were so called ‘because they were in charge of 16 Livy 31.8.3; 36.3.7-12. 17 See further below at n. 170-171. On Valerius Antias’ likely use of the record of senatus consulta and role in transmitting material from this and other archival sources to Livy see Rich 2005. These passages refute the suggestion of Saulnier (1980, 191-193) that the fetials were not constituted as a college until Augustus’ time. 18 Cf. Zack 2001, 19 n. 68. Dionysius was the source for both Appian and Plutarch in passages relating to the fetials: Appian adopts Dionysius’ equivalent (Sam. 4.5), but Plutarch permits himself a slight variation, calling them ἰ η οφ α (Numa 12.5) or ἰ η οπο οί (Mor. 279B). 19 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72.4-5, 9; Plut. Num. 12.5, 8; see further below, at n. 148. On Plutarch’s debt to Dionysius in the life of Numa see Scardigli 1979, 22-23. 20 Cic. Leg. 2.21, 34. On the first passage and its textual problems see Rawson 1973b, 346-347 (= Rawson 1991, 138); Ferrary 1995, 414-416; Dyck 2004, 309-310. As Ferrary observes, Cicero may have had in mind that in his ideal State the fetials might be a constraint on conduct such as Caesar’s in Gaul and Crassus’ against Parthia.

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the public faith (fides) between peoples; for by them it was brought about that a just war should be undertaken, and that at its conclusion the faith of the peace should be established by a treaty (foedus); some of them were sent before a war was undertaken to seek restitution (qui res repeterent), and through them even now a treaty is made’. Citations by Nonius Marcellus show that Varro wrote about the fetials in two of the four books of the De uita populi Romani, in which he discussed Roman institutions and customs in successive chronological periods. He dealt with their activities in respect of treaties and the preliminaries of war in the second book which dealt with the early Republic, but mentioned their responsibility for offenders against ambassadors in the third book, which dealt with the Punic War period. Nonius’ main citation (850L) may be translated as follows: Varro in De uita populi Romani book 2: ‘Thus they undertook wars both late and with great care, because they thought that they should wage no war unless it was righteous; before they declared war on those by whom they knew that injuries had been committed, they used to send four fetial ambassadors to seek restitution, whom they called orators.’ The same in book 3: ‘If any State’s ambassadors were violated, they decided that those who had done this, however noble, should be handed over, and that about these matters twenty fetials should enquire, judge, decide and determine.’21

Varro’s statement that fetials at one time acted as a tribunal for offences against ambassadors may be correct, although, as we shall see, there is no clear corroborating evidence. The passage is usually taken as showing that the college numbered twenty by the mid-Republic, but it seems doubtful that it could have been so much larger than the other priestly colleges.22 The term ius fetiale, or cognate forms, is used in a number of passages in our sources. This ‘fetial law’ has appeared comparable to the bodies of law associated with the augurs and pontiffs (ius augurale, ius pontificium), and scholars have often interpreted it as having a wide scope. Thus P. Catalano, in the fullest modern discussion, defines the ius fetiale as ‘a complex of typically Roman (or rather, Italian) juridico-religious norms valid in relation to foreign powers’.23 However, the term is usually applied by our sources just to ritual preliminaries of war, and so the translation ‘law’ may mislead.24 In what follows, the term is translated as ‘fetial rule’ when used in this way. 21 For the De uita populi Romani see Riposati 1939 ; Ax 2000 ; Salvadore 2004. The fragments cited in this passage are 75, 93 Riposati = 386, 419 Salvadore. Another fragment from book 2 deals with the fetials’ use of grasses (n. 10, above). 22 In the third and second centuries the augurs and the pontiffs numbered nine, and the Xuiri sacris faciundis just one more. 23 Catalano 1965, 3-48 (quotation from pp. 5-6). The ius fetiale is stressed in the recent discussions of Ando 2008 and Santangelo 2008. 24 Ius fetiale, iura fetialia or similar expressions are used of the ritual preliminaries of war at Cic. Rep. 2.31, Off. 1.36; Livy 1.32.5, 38.46.11-12; Arn. 2.67; Serv. Aen. 10.14; and the three sources on Ferter Resius cited at n. 7. Cicero’s assertion at Off. 3.108 that ‘all the fetial ius’ operates in respect of ‘legitimate enemies’ (as opposed to brigands and pirates) probably means just that the required war preliminaries must be performed. It is unclear what is meant

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The fetials’ main responsibility was the enactment of their rituals, and these will be discussed in the following sections. A good deal of information survives on these rituals from ancient historical and antiquarian sources, but, as we shall see, much of this is problematic, particularly in relation to the preliminaries of wars. Livy inserts antiquarian accounts of fetial procedure for solemnising treaties and declaring war in his narratives of the reigns of Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius (1.24.4-9, 32.5-14), and these include what purport to be archaic formulae used by the fetials. Doubts have been raised about linguistic aspects of these formulae, and some scholars have argued that they are merely archaising reconstructions. This may be too sceptical in relation to treaties, for which (as we shall see) fetial ritual remained in use, though even here some literary adaptation is likely. For the war preliminaries, the formulae can command no confidence.25 Like other priestly colleges, the fetials had their records (commentarii), known to us from Festus, who cites their use of the word nuntius (‘messenger’).26 These commentarii will have documented ritual procedures and provided a record of ceremonies performed, and some of what we are told about the fetials’ rituals, including Livy’s formulae, may derive ultimately from this source. However, derivation from the commentarii would not necessarily guarantee authenticity: the archive may not have gone back before the later Republic, and may have included some antiquarian reconstructions, as with the commentarii of the Augustan XVuiri sacris faciundis, whose account of past Secular Games rewrote history in accordance with the 110-year interval between games required to justify the celebration in 17 BC.27 Under the emperors, the fetials still carried out some ritual functions. As we shall see, Octavian, Claudius and Marcus Aurelius all performed fetial rituals in person. Livy (8.11.15) reports that the treaty with Lavinium was renewed annually; his statement implies that this happened from 340, but it may perhaps have been a later antiquarian revival. That the ceremony was still performed in the early principate is shown by an inscription of Claudian date from Pompeii recording that one Sp. Turranius had acted as pater patratus for Lavinium.28 The fetials may also now have extended their remit beyond international ritual, undertaking ceremonies, like the Arvals, in hon...