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Religion and Memory in Tacitus Annals Kelly E Shannon Henderson Full Chapter PDF
Religion and Memory in Tacitus Annals Kelly E Shannon Henderson Full Chapter PDF
Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the Oxford
Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best
theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy
examined by the Faculty Board of Classics.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
KELLY E. SHANNON-HENDERSON
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
3
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First Edition published in 2019
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Acknowledgments
There are many people without whom this volume could not have come into
being. It began life as a DPhil thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in
June 2012. I am very grateful to all the members of Corpus Christi College,
especially Stephen Harrison, for making my years there so productive and
enjoyable. I was able to undertake my graduate studies thanks to the generous
financial support of the Clarendon Fund and the Memoria Romana Project. It
is also to Karl Galinsky and fellow members of the Memoria Romana Project
that I owe this study’s theoretical underpinnings; I am grateful to the partici-
pants in the 2011 workshop in Rome for our lively discussions of cultural
memory theory.
I continued work on the project in 2012–13 at Universität Erfurt, supported
by a Hanseatic Scholarship for Britons from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung.
In Erfurt, I am immensely grateful to Kai Brodersen for his intellectual
and practical support, and to Richard Gordon, Jörg Rüpke, and the other
members of the ERC-Forschungsprojekt “Lived Ancient Religion” for invalu-
ably enriching my understanding of Roman religion. I am also grateful to
Christiane Reitz (Universität Rostock) and Matthias Perkams and Meinolf
Vielberg (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) for their assistance and hospi-
tality in Germany. The Department of Classics at the University of Virginia
also provided support for research during stays in Charlottesville, especially
during my time as a Lecturer there in 2013–14, and I am grateful to my alma
mater for always welcoming me back into its library. Special thanks are due to
John Miller and K. Sara Myers (as former and current department chairs),
Jane Crawford, and Jon Mikalson. I also thank Paul Halliday, J. E. Lendon, and
Elizabeth Meyer in the Corcoran Department of History for their help and
encouragement. Preparation of the final manuscript was made possible by a
Research Grants Committee Award from the University of Alabama in
2015–17, which allowed for travel to consult library resources in Oxford.
Many have helped this book achieve its present form; any errors, of course,
remain my own. Rhiannon Ash was an excellent doctoral supervisor who
shaped my thinking on the Annals, painstakingly critiqued my writing, and
supported me throughout my graduate studies. I am grateful to Miriam
Griffin, Christopher Pelling, Luke Pitcher, and Tim Rood for their comments
and suggestions at various stages, and to Katherine Clarke and David Levene,
examiners for the doctoral viva. Prof. Levene in particular provided numerous
suggestions for improving the thesis that proved invaluable as I revised it. Kirk
Summers provided helpful comments on several of my revised chapters.
I am also grateful to Salvador Bartera for frequent discussions of Tacitean
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
vi Acknowledgments
matters. Anthony Woodman has influenced this study at every stage. From his
formative teaching in Roman historiography during my undergraduate days at
the University of Virginia to ongoing email discussions of the finer points of
Tacitean textual criticism, my work has benefited immeasurably from his
guidance; I am especially grateful that he has read the entire manuscript and
enriched this study by his perspicacious comments. (Unfortunately, his com-
mentary on Annals 4 appeared too late to be considered here, as did Rhiannon
Ash’s commentary on Annals 15.)
I am also extremely grateful to Anna Clark, the OUP-appointed mentor for
this project, for her helpful suggestions and guidance as I brought this
manuscript to its final form. I would also like to thank Georgina Leighton
and Charlotte Loveridge at OUP, and the Press’s anonymous reviewer for his/
her comments and suggestions.
Many friends and family members have supported me during this long
process; I am particularly grateful to Brittany McLaughlin, Bettina Reitz-
Joosse, and Lauren Schwartzman. My parents Beth and Jim Shannon have
made the biggest difference: without their emotional and material support, this
volume would certainly not exist. I thank them for encouraging my interest in
Classics, and for so much more besides. Finally, I dedicate this book to Conor
Henderson, my soon-to-be husband, who has seen me through the final stages
of completion, and in general makes me happier than I thought was possible.
K. E. Shannon
April 2018
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
Contents
Abbreviations ix
viii Contents
4.4. Cultic Memory, Augustus’ Deification, and Tiberius’ Reputation 184
4.5. Aftermath of the Spanish Temple Refusal 192
4.6. Withdrawal, Disaster, and the Perversion of Ritual 202
4.7. Conclusions 209
5. Fate, Astrology, and the End of Life 211
5.1. Introduction 211
5.2. Commemorating Livia 211
5.3. Remembering Sejanus 217
5.4. Sibylline Books: An Attempt at Tradition 220
5.5. Tiberius the Astrologer 224
5.6. Interpreting the Phoenix 229
5.7. Commemorating Augustus, Predicting Caligula 231
5.8. Conclusions 235
6. Claudius and the Failure of Tradition 237
6.1. Introduction: What We Have Lost 237
6.2. Trials and Cultic Memory for a New Reign: Claudius
the Censor 240
6.3. Messalina and the Misuse of Ritual 252
6.4. Rise of Agrippina: Flattery and Impiety 256
6.5. Divine Anger and the Rise of Agrippina and Nero 266
6.6. Death, Astrology, and Deification 279
6.7. Conclusions 282
7. Nero: A Narrative in Prodigies 285
7.1. Introduction 285
7.2. Kin Murder and Divine Wrath I: Britannicus 286
7.3. Kin Murder and Divine Wrath II: Agrippina 292
7.4. When Will Nero Be Punished? The Problems of Prodigies 304
7.5. Octavia’s Death and Growing adulatio 308
7.6. The Horrible Year AD 64 315
7.7. Impiety and Misinterpretation in the Pisonian Conspiracy 326
7.8. Fortune’s Playthings 332
7.9. Wrath of the Gods 336
7.10. Conclusions 348
Conclusions 351
Bibliography 363
Index Locorum 391
General Index 404
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Abbreviations
Abbreviations to standard authors and texts are usually taken from the Oxford Classical
Dictionary (rev. 3rd edn.).
AC L’Antiquité classique
AION Annali dell’Istituto universitario orientale di Napoli
AJP American Journal of Philology
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
BAGRW Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
BJ Bonner Jahrbücher des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn und des
Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande
C&M Classica et Mediaevalia
CP Classical Philology
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (1863– )
CISA Contributi dell’Istituto di storia antica dell’Università del Sacro Cuore
CJ Classical Journal
Cl. Ant. Classical Antiquity
CQ Classical Quarterly
G&R Greece and Rome, NS (1954/5– )
IA Iranica antiqua
ILS H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (1892–1916)
IRT Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, by J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-
Perkins, enhanced electronic reissue by Gabriel Bodard and Charlotte
Roueché (2009), http://inslib.kcl.ac.uk/irt2009/
Inscr. Ital. Inscriptiones Italiae (1931/2– )
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly
MD Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary
REA Revue des études anciennes
REL Revue des études latines
RSC Rivista di studi classici
SCPP Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre
SEG Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum (1923– )
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x Abbreviations
TAPA Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
ThesCRA Thesaurus Cultuum et Rituum Antiquorum (2004–14)
TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1900– )
YClS Yale Classical Studies
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
Introduction
Religion, Memory, and Tacitus
Roman writers seem to have practically always had the fear that various
aspects of their culture were in decline.¹ M. Terentius Varro, author of the
multivolume Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum on Roman gods and cult,²
believed that Rome’s traditional relationship with its gods was in serious
trouble and in need of intervention, according to Augustine:
deos eosdem ita coluerit colendosque censuerit ut in eo ipso opere litterarum
suarum dicat se timere ne pereant, non incursu hostili, sed civium neglegentia, de
qua illos velut ruina liberari a se dicit et in memoria bonorum per eius modi libros
recondi atque servari utiliore cura quam Metellus de incendio sacra Vestalia et
Aeneas de Troiano excidio penates liberasse praedicatur.
(Augustine De civ. D 6.2 = Varro ARD fr. 2)
(He worshipped these same gods and thought they ought to be worshipped, to
such an extent that he says in this very work that he fears they might perish not
because of an enemy invasion, but due to the negligence of his fellow citizens; but
he says that the gods would be freed by him from this negligence as if from
destruction, and that through books of this sort they could be stored in the
memory of good men and preserved with a concern more useful than that with
which Metellus is said to have rescued Vesta’s sacred objects from fire and Aeneas
to have liberated the Penates from the destruction of Troy.³)
In Varro’s view, it was as necessary for these religious traditions to be
committed to writing as it was for the Trojan Penates or the Palladium to
be snatched from burning buildings.⁴ His emphasis on memory is striking:
memoria is conceived of almost as a physical place, a storehouse, where
2 Introduction
Roman religious traditions can be placed for safekeeping in a world made
dangerous not by war, but by an equally threatening negligentia. Varro’s sense
of the religious crisis he believes afflicts Rome is palpable, but it is not unique
to him. Elizabeth Rawson has noted that one factor motivating investigations
of Roman cult practice in late Republican “antiquarian” literature was a
“desire to record and understand (usually in order to preserve or revive)
traditions” that were thought to be in the process of being forgotten.⁵
This idea did not go away. In the Annals, written some 150 years after
Varro’s Antiquitates, Tacitus also discusses details of traditional religious
practice, typically from the point of view of alteration or decline. He reports
challenges to, or the loss of, traditional rules, rites, and buildings, focusing on
the interlocking roles of emperor, Senate, and people. Tacitus never explicitly
states why he includes this material, and indeed may not have seen it as a
defined category whose inclusion required justification. Yet certain passages
seem to indicate a desire to maintain memories of religious sites or rituals
when they are threatened. Whereas Varro deplored citizens’ negligence as the
cause of the threat, for Tacitus it seems rather the entire Imperial system that
puts Roman religion at risk.
0. 1 RE L I G I O N AN D M EM O R Y
This emphasis on tradition and decline lends itself well to analysis through
theories about what scholars refer to as cultural memory or collective
memory:⁶ the idea that the way individuals remember the past is determined
by the social frameworks within which they live, and that a society’s past is not
an abstract or objective concept, but is always actively constructed by its
members in the present. From the beginning of cultural memory as a discip-
line, scholars have recognized religion’s role in cementing a society’s identity
and providing continuity with its past. Maurice Halbwachs, the father of
cultural memory studies, already used the concept of “religious memory” in
his Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925), to describe how a religious
community uses stories about its own past, and rituals that commemorate
it, in order to define itself as a community in the present.⁷ Halbwachs was
Introduction 3
speaking of early Christians who sought to use the memory of the life of
Christ, kept alive via repeated re-enactment in rituals such as the Eucharist
and by the liturgical calendar of the Christian year that followed the outlines of
Christ’s life (birth, death, resurrection), to set themselves apart from the
contemporary pagan society in which they lived.⁸ For other theorists of
cultural memory, a set of religious beliefs and practices that is shared by an
entire society (rather than simply a subgroup within a society, as was the case
with the early Christians) plays an important role in linking an entire civil-
ization to its past. Pierre Nora, in his essay introducing the classic three-
volume study of what he calls “sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire) in French
culture, identified the Church as a component of French cultural memory that
is fragmenting and slipping away in the modern era.⁹ On this interpretation, a
decline in church attendance means that the traditional Roman Catholic faith
no longer plays its role in defining cultural memory, in actively linking the
French people to their own past.
To be sure, we should be cautious in using Halbwachs’s and Nora’s visions
of how Christianity helps construct identity to help us understand Roman
religion, given the many fundamental differences between ancient paganism
and contemporary Roman Catholicism (or even ancient Christianity), and
between the ancient Roman Empire and a modern nation-state. Indeed, the
concept of “a religion” as an identity group distinct from other religions had
not yet developed by Tacitus’ time.¹⁰ But the concept of religious memory
can still be useful for understanding polytheistic ancient pagan societies.
Jan Assmann has applied it to ancient Egypt,¹¹ and recent studies have sought
to do the same for Greek and Roman religion.¹² It should come as no surprise
that a society as invested in (not to say obsessed with) tradition as ancient
Rome is particularly well suited to being analyzed from the perspective of
cultural memory, and its religious system is no exception.
The fact that Roman paganism places a high value on ritual is a commonplace
in studies of Roman religion, and this ritual conservatism could be considered
the linchpin of Roman religious memory. Many theorists have identified ritual
as a key component of collective or cultural memory, in that a community’s
regular repetition of the same ritual is a powerful way of commemorating an
4 Introduction
event or person from its past (often the very distant past) and perpetuating that
memory over decades or even centuries.¹³ The Christian communities discussed
by Halbwachs and Nora made extensive use of biblical texts, whose stories when
continually revisited in worship and study connected believers to their past. In
contrast, as Guy Stroumsa has recently argued, Roman religion had no revealed
scriptures, and there were relatively few who could have read such books even if
they had existed, since Rome was only a “semi-literate” society; instead, regu-
larly repeated rituals were essential in tying Romans to their cultic past.¹⁴ Many
of the major festivals of the Roman cultic calendar, the important priesthoods of
the state cult, and the rites they performed, were thought to have very ancient
origins. Many were ascribed to Numa; some festivals, such as the Lupercalia,
explicitly preserved memories of the time of Rome’s foundation (or even
earlier).¹⁵ By repeatedly observing these festivals and maintaining these priest-
hoods, participants in Roman ritual were in a very real way keeping alive the
memory of the city’s most ancient past, which played a fundamental part in
their collective identity. Whenever the spectators at their twice-yearly festivals
watched a Salian priest dancing in procession through Rome and heard him
reciting the Carmen Saliare, preserved in a Latin so ancient as to be unintelli-
gible at least by the first century ;¹⁶ or every year on 1 March when the Vestal
Virgins extinguished and rekindled the goddess’s sacred flame that had been
carefully tended from the time Numa inaugurated her worship,¹⁷ participants
were using ritual to enact and embody a connection with the city’s past, both the
distant Regal Period in which these rituals allegedly had their origin, and
the entire stretch of time since then, which (to borrow Hervieu-Léger’s image)
¹³ e.g. Connerton 1989, 45: “All rites are repetitive, and repetition automatically implies
continuity with the past”; A. Assmann 2008, 100, identifying religion as an area of active cultural
memory; J. Assmann 2011, 42: “Through regular repetition, festivals and rituals ensure the
communication and continuance of the knowledge that gives the group its identity.” See also
Nora 1992, 6–7 and passim; Rüpke 2012a, 139–40 on “ritual memory” (rituelle Erinnerung).
Rappaport 1999, 36–7 identifies “invariance (more or less)” as an essential feature of his
definition of religion, and also (32–3) notes that even “new” rituals are usually formed from
elements of previously existing rituals, and that attempts to introduce truly new rituals are rarely
successful.
¹⁴ Stroumsa 2016, 335–7. Cf. J. Assmann 2011, 42: “In illiterate societies there is no other way
[but ritual] to participate in the cultural memory;” see also 70–6, 123–4. For a recent discussion
of the interplay between text and religious practice in Rome, see MacRae 2016.
¹⁵ For the attribution of Rome’s festival calendar and major priesthoods to Numa, see Livy
1.19–20. For the Lupercalia, thought to have been celebrated by Romulus and Remus, see Livy 1.5;
Ovid Fast. 2.259–80, 381–421.
¹⁶ On the rituals for Mars performed by the Salii, see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.70.1–5; Gordon
1990, 188–9; Rüpke 1990, 24–5; Beard et al. 1998, i.43. For the unintelligibility of the Carmen
Saliare in Tacitus’ day, see Quint. Inst. 2.6.40; see recently MacRae 2016, 48–50 for written
commentaries on the hymn. See further §3.2, pp. 123–4.
¹⁷ See recently DiLuzio 2016, 200–1; for Numa as the founder of the worship of Vesta, see
Ovid Fast. 6.249ff.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
Introduction 5
we can conceptualize as an unbroken chain of pious Romans carefully preserv-
ing and repeating those rituals down the centuries.
All the examples I have just mentioned are drawn from the Roman state cult
and involve actors, locations, and offerings chosen, maintained, and financed
at state expense. The close entanglement of Rome’s ritual life with its politics,
wars, governmental institutions, and so forth is also a commonplace in the
study of ancient, and particularly Roman, religion,¹⁸ and raises the question of
how far it is possible to separate “religion” from other aspects of Roman
society. In a world where priesthoods were filled from the same pool of elite
families that provided candidates for the magistracies¹⁹ and where every sitting
of the Roman Senate or battle fought by the Roman army was accompanied by
sacrifice,²⁰ it is reasonable to ask whether religion was not so embedded in the
societal fabric that we cannot really think of it as a separable category of Roman
life at all.²¹ This has important implications for the present study of religion
and memory in Tacitus. Is “religious memory” any different from “cultural
memory” or “collective memory?” What makes a form of memory distinctively
“religious?” Or, put another way, does thinking about memory from a “reli-
gious” angle add anything to our understanding of Roman culture, and of
Tacitus, that we cannot get from merely thinking about “cultural memory?”
Where religious memory becomes a particular form of memory, and where
I believe it can particularly help us understand Tacitus’ Annals, is in consid-
ering what were the particular perceived consequences of the repeated per-
formance of ancestral rituals. For Roman rituals were not simply intended as
arenas for the upper classes to advertise their piety, success, or wealth, nor
were they merely traditions that brought the distant past to life (although they
performed those functions too); Roman cult practice was also a vehicle for
maintaining a relationship with the gods. While that relationship was, as
countless scholars of Roman religion have rightly pointed out, inextricably
bound up with other elements of society (government, magistrates, aristocratic
competition), the fact that it involves the gods makes it a peculiar element of
¹⁸ e.g. Liebeschuetz 1979, 1; Beard et al. 1998, 43; Rüpke 2007, 9–10. This fact has also not
been lost on non-classicists in cultural memory studies: cf. Halbwachs 1992, 100–1 n. 22 on
Athenian state religion: “Nothing separates the state from religion, the civil principle from the
religious principle.”
¹⁹ In some cases, these priests performed functions that we moderns might identify as
“secular” rather than “religious:” see Scheid 1984 and Beard et al. 1998, i.25–6 on the roles of
the pontifices.
²⁰ See Rüpke 2007, 6–7. On rituals at Senate meetings, see Gell. NA 14.7.9. Suet. Aug. 35.3 and
Dio 54.30.1 both claim that Augustus instituted the practice of requiring each senator to make a
small sacrifice of incense on the altar of the god in whose temple the meeting was taking place.
A meeting of the Senate had to take place within a templum, a space inaugurated by an augur
(Gell. NA 14.7.7).
²¹ e.g. Clark 2007, 13–14; Rives 2013 (a review of Rüpke 2012b).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
6 Introduction
society that deserves special consideration. I have been influenced here by Jörg
Rüpke’s recent attempt to formulate a definition of “religion” as
the temporary and situational enlargement of the environment—judged as rele-
vant by one or several of the actors—beyond the unquestionably plausible social
environment inhabited by co-existing humans who are in communication (and
hence observable).²²
That is, while Roman religion is so bound up with other aspects of Roman
culture that it is not possible to speak of a strict sacred–secular dichotomy, in
actions involving what is not “unquestionably plausible” there is nevertheless
something sufficiently different from other actions that we can consider them
to fall into a special category. What Rüpke thinks of as “beyond the unques-
tionably plausible”, I will refer to as “the divine” or “the supernatural.”
For the Romans, as for other ancient societies, appropriately maintaining
this communication with an environment “beyond the unquestionably plaus-
ible” has important bearing on the success of their society: failing to observe
correct ritual practice as it had traditionally been maintaned could have serious
consequences for the future. Jan Assmann has demonstrated this principle
operating in the religion of Pharaonic Egypt, where hymns and cult acts
performed in honor of the sun god were thought necessary for ensuring that
the sun continued to rise and set, and therefore that human life would continue
to survive and prosper.²³ From a Roman perspective, the concept of the pax
deorum is important here: rituals had to be performed consistently in order to
put Rome on good terms with her gods and ensure the community’s survival;
any departure from established practice, it was thought, could have dire
consequences.²⁴ This is where “cultic” or “religious memory” adds something
beyond “cultural” or “collective memory:” it is connected to the longevity of the
community. Roman cultic memory ties Roman society not only strongly to its
past, when the rites originated and became traditional through repeated
performance, but also to its future, when repeated performance of the rites
will guarantee continuation of the divine favor that allows Rome to prosper
and succeed.
²² Rüpke 2015, 348; Rüpke also presented this definition at a lecture I attended in Aarhus,
Denmark, on 10 April 2013. Cf. Rüpke 2012b, 108–9: “Roman religion could be loosely defined
by the involvement of nonhuman actors, superhuman gods, who were supposed to form a
controlling organization above peer review,” as opposed to institutions (such as voting assem-
blies) that constituted “a public made up of those present.”
²³ J. Assmann 2006, 139–54, esp. 153–4: “Ritual as a form of thought is an officium memoriae,
a cultic memory service that daily sets a vast store of knowledge of the world in motion. Its
purpose is not just to interpret the world, but to take the meaning it has elicited and to feed it
back into the world to strengthen, foster, and rejuvenate it, through liturgical words of comfort
and enactment of the ritual.”
²⁴ For the pax deorum, see Linderski 2007; Bloch 1963, 82–3; MacBain 1982, 1–2; Ando 2008,
5–6; Santangelo 2011; for a slightly different view, Satterfield 2015.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2018, SPi
Introduction 7
An important part of Roman cultic memory, therefore, is the preservation of
the details of religious practice. Its emphasis on ritual is an element of Roman
pagan religious culture that scholars long considered excessively formalistic
and devoid of emotional meaning.²⁵ Making sure that festivals take place on
the right day or that sacrifices involve the correct victims slaughtered at the
altar of the correct god may seem reasonable, but other provisions of Roman
ritual may strike modern observers as bizarre. Is it really so important that the
flamen Dialis never set foot outside the city of Rome, or that his parents be
married by the increasingly outdated rite of confarreatio?²⁶ Does the birth of an
intersex baby truly merit drowning the child at sea to remove a threat to the
community?²⁷ Can the gods really demand that an entire set of games be
repeated merely because a paterfamilias scourged his slave in the circus before
the games had even begun?²⁸ The Roman answer to all these questions,
apparently, was yes. Keeping track of all these rules, requirements, and pro-
hibitions, or understanding the signs sent by the gods to inform humans that
they had somehow lapsed in upholding these, was a vast undertaking, for
which Rome’s priests, priestesses, and other religious specialists were respon-
sible. The guarding and handing down of this knowledge, perhaps with the
help of specialist texts focusing on cultic information,²⁹ was seen as vitally
important to the continuation of Roman religious traditions. This view of
Roman religion as knowledge (scientia) has been explicitly connected by
Rüpke with cultural memory: the preservation of ancient religious detail, so
that it can be acted upon repeatedly in the present and future, is an essential
component of Roman identity.³⁰
So, in Roman religion, a cultural memory that tethers Rome to its past
merges with a ritual sensibility that seeks to adhere strictly to rites as they have
traditionally been performed, in all their bewildering ritual detail, as a means
of ensuring the gods’ protection and divinely guaranteed success for the
community in the future.³¹ This notion of the necessity of the perpetual
repetition of ritual is exemplified in a poem of Horace. Among the images
²⁵ Feeney 1998, 3 notes the “powerful inertia” of this outdated scholarly view, which has
happily been challenged by more recent scholarship (e.g. Hunt 2016).
²⁶ Tacitus, Ann. 3.58 and 4.16.2–3, with §3.3, pp. 142–4, and §4.3, pp. 177–80 and references
there cited.
²⁷ See passages cited in Ch. 7 n. 134.
²⁸ Livy 2.36; on the interruption or vitiation of rites, see §2.6, pp. 115–16.
²⁹ See MacRae 2016, esp. ch. 2, for how such texts buttressed “the claim that this religious
system had a traditional connection with the earliest period of Roman history” (50).
³⁰ Rüpke 2016 (on Valerius Maximus), and compare J. Assmann 2008, 114–15 and 2011, 39
on the role of specialists, such as priests and African griots, in the transmission of cultural
knowledge. See also Ando 2008, 13–14 (lacking the memory dimension) and Gordon 1990, 198.
Cf. J. Assmann 2011, 165–70 on the similar mnemonic function of the strict nomos (list of ritual
prohibitions) associated with an Egyptian temple.
³¹ Cf. Satterfield 2015, 436: “Finding the pax [deum] through ritual helped to avert danger and
secure success” and “was an important element in Roman self-understanding.”
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8 Introduction
the poet uses to express his work’s immortality is that of the infinite repetition
of religious ritual:
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam: usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
(Hor. Carm. 3.30.6–9)
(I shall not entirely die, and a great part of myself
shall escape Libitina: and I shall continually grow,
fresh with later praise, as long as the pontiff
climbs the Capitol with the silent virgin.)
Horace’s vision of eternity is not tied simply to Rome itself, or even to the
physicality of the Capitoline Hill, but to the ritual that takes place there, which
he imagines will always endure; as Fraenkel says, “The future life of Rome
with its unalterable ceremonies is taken for granted, if not to the end of all
time, yet for so immense a period that no one needs to cast his thought
beyond it.”³² Horace does not specify a single occasion or festival, but rather,
is economically referring to any and all of the great number of rituals that will
be repeated on the Capitoline any number of times down the centuries.³³ Yet
alongside this indeterminacy, we are also given specific ritual detail: the Vestal
Virgin’s silence, which alludes to the formula favete linguis (literally, “be
favorable with your tongues!”—that is, avoid words of ill-omen by keeping
silent) familiar in cultic contexts. Horace is interested not only that the
pontifex and the Vestal climb the Capitoline, but also in how they climb the
Capitoline; for him, Rome’s eternity is embedded in such ritual details that
must be remembered and continually repeated.
Roman mortals, then, had to preserve and enact the memory of their rites so
that the gods would ensure that Rome would continue to exist. This is not to say
that there was no room for alterations or additions to Roman ritual practice;
despite the conservatism deeply embedded in this as in other aspects of Roman
culture, Romans could, and did, alter, add, or even abandon rituals. From the
perspective of cultural memory, this does not have to mean an abandonment
of identity, nor does it necessarily constitute an offense to the gods with the
potential to upset the cosmic order. At any time when it might be useful to do
so, Romans could, and did, privilege more recent precedent over the most
ancient examples when making decisions about religious practice.³⁴ Despite
³² Fraenkel 1957, 303. ³³ Nisbet and Rudd 2004, 373. Cf. West 2002, 263.
³⁴ Ando 2008, 15: “Romans could esteem the piety of their ancestors even as they recognized a
necessity to act on the basis of more recent evidence . . . .When a conflict arose, knowledge acquired
during the Hannibalic war, for example, necessarily trumped information of hoary antiquity.”
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Introduction 9
Roman cultic conservatism, there were situations in which “older” did not
absolutely mean “better.” This malleability is not out of keeping with the ways
scholars have described the role of change or innovation in cultural memory:
memory of the past is always constructed in the present.³⁵ Societies, just
like individuals, remember selectively; sometimes old practices can be de-
emphasized, and newer ones come to the fore, as the present situation demands.
Cultic memory, just like cultural memory in general, is malleable, multivalent,
and subject to a multitude of interpretations.³⁶
The changes to the ancient priesthood of the Arval Brethren (which had
existed from at least the third century )³⁷ are a good example of departure
from, or at least additions to, traditional cultic practice that appear to have been
unproblematic. While the priesthood was traditionally dedicated to the cult of
the obscure goddess Dea Dia, which took place in a grove outside Rome, it
underwent large changes with the advent of the principate: a shrine of the
Caesars was added to the sanctuary, and sacrifices for the safety of the emperor
were added to its cultic calendar, sacrifices which probably did not take place in
the grove, but rather on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and were directed not to
Dea Dia but to the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.³⁸ These
alterations to the Arvals’ cultic memory—not only physical changes to their
sanctuary and additions to their cultic calendar, but even a new location and
different recipients for these new sacrifices—probably represent an unprece-
dented change when compared with what the Brethren practiced during the
Republic (although a paucity of evidence for the earlier period makes it difficult
to be certain). But presumably these changes in the priests’ ritual practice were
not thought of as potentially jeopardizing the pax deorum, or they would not
have been made. If anything, these rites might have been thought of as
strengthening Rome’s relationship with the gods, by asking their favor and
assistance for the emperors who now played such an outsized role in the
community’s success. As we shall see, this idea will be particularly important
in interpreting Tacitus’ Annals, which chronicle the Julio-Claudian principate
and the changes it brings to Roman state and society, with concomitant changes
to Roman cult practice.
I hope to have given a clear account of what I mean by cultic or religious
memory (terms which I use interchangeably in what follows) when it comes
to the study of Roman religion in general, and its application to the works of
Tacitus in particular. Continued performance of ancient rituals and cult acts,
with particular attention (though not necessarily an overly rigid adherence)
³⁵ See e.g. Olick 2008, 159 (“Memory is a process and not a thing . . . something . . . we do, not
something . . . we have”); A. Assmann 2011, 19–20; J. Assmann 2011, 22–3, 27–8.
³⁶ See Halbwachs 1992, 86; Rüpke 2012a, 151: “Cultic memory is not objective” (Kultische
Erinnerung ist nicht objectiv).
³⁷ Beard et al. 1998, i.194.
³⁸ Beard et al. 1998, i.195–6. The classic study of the priesthood is Scheid 1990.
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10 Introduction
to the detailed rules and prohibitions of Roman ritual practice, is both a key
component of defining a Roman identity that is strongly linked with the
past and also a necessary precondition for Rome’s continued success and
survival in the future. Cultic memory is an integral part of Roman cultural
or collective memory, but at the same time has special qualities of its own that
make it a distinct, and distinctly important, feature of Roman culture. As
Anna Clark notes,
Public religion was not a separate sphere of Roman society: it might in fact
usefully be conceived of as the register, permeating public life, that determined
the tone of certain elements of the vocabularies of that public life, broadly
understood. It thereby granted those elements a peculiarly intense explanatory
force, a particular resonance in explaining and ordering the world.³⁹
As we shall see, part of my interest in analyzing cultic memory in the Annals is
in the moments when, and methods by which, cultic memory interacts with
other forms of commemoration that do not have an obvious ritual or divine
component. In Clark’s terms, when Tacitus invokes the religious register,
how does that shape the tone of his observations on the nature of the
principate? As I shall argue, Tacitus’ religious material, when interpreted
from the point of view of cultic memory, not only reinforces the observations
other scholars have made about Tacitus’ interpretation of the principate,
but frequently also goes beyond mere reinforcement to help us understand
previously unappreciated aspects of Tacitus’ literary project and societal
commentary in the Annals.
Scholars have already observed that Tacitus is an author with a deep concern
for memory. Typically, such studies have taken the form of examinations of
Tacitus’ views on remembering the past, and on direct or implicit comparisons
between the past and the present (especially the Republican past and the
Imperial present). Sometimes we see Tacitus’ characters responding to their
own memories of the past, as when observers of Augustus’ funeral are struck
by their own memories of, or the tales they have been told about, the death/
funeral of Caesar.⁴⁰ Elsewhere, Tacitus invites reflection on the power of
history-writing to serve as a memorial of past events and people, as in his
Introduction 11
account of the trial and death of the historian Cremutius Cordus.⁴¹ At still
other moments, Tacitus is interested in showing us how the emperors use their
subjects’ memories of the past to their own advantage, as with Otho’s attempts
to capitalize on Nero’s popularity,⁴² or even attempt to control those memor-
ies, as with the aforementioned case of Cremutius Cordus, or in Tiberius’
attempts to shape popular memories of Germanicus.⁴³
All of these examples, while powerful analyses of the place of memory in
Tacitus’ works, are more concerned with individual memories of the past
than with questions of cultural memory. The present study aims to demon-
strate a new way of thinking about memory in Tacitus, by considering what
an examination of cultic memory, with its particular emphases and concerns,
can do to refine our picture of memory in Tacitus’ works. Tacitus includes in
the Annals stories that involve the details of religious practice and priestly
behavior, prodigies and their expiation, and ruminations in his own voice and
that of his characters on the role of fate or providence in Roman affairs. The
presence of this material suggests that Tacitus considers Rome’s cultic mem-
ory and its potential consequences important enough to have a prominent
place in his account of the Julio-Claudians.
But the religious material in Tacitus’ works has typically not been con-
sidered to be very significant to his overall literary project. Ronald Syme’s
assessment of Tacitus’ inclusion of prodigies, for example, seems to have had
great influence on subsequent readers of Tacitus:
The recording of omens was a traditional feature in the annals of the Romans,
and the effect of premonitory signs on the minds and actions of men provided a
suitable commentary to great events. Idle fables were to be deprecated, but a
serious author had no right to omit a well-authenticated manifestation . . . Not
until the later books do the prodigia become a regular entry. It would be fanciful
to discover a skeptical historian’s relapse into antiquated credulities. The reason is
plain: a stock device in the old annalistic tradition which Tacitus needed all the
more because his subject now defied the fabric and canons of the ‘res publica.’⁴⁴
For Syme, it is more palatable to assume that Tacitus occasionally referred to
the gods, their cult, prodigies, fate, fortuna, etc. because they were part of the
traditional material of the Roman historian, than to think that he wished to
attach some larger meaning to them. Given Tacitus’ general outlook, perceived
by Syme and many before and after him to be dominated by skepticism, irony,
⁴¹ Ann. 4.34–5, with Cancik-Lindemaier and Cancik 1987; Moles 1998; Gowing 2005, 26–7;
Sailor 2008, ch. 5; Shannon 2012, 764–5.
⁴² Hist. 1 passim, with Gowing 2016, 53–4. ⁴³ Gowing 2016, 54–9, and see also §3.2.
⁴⁴ Syme 1958, 522–3. Cf. Ginsburg 1981, 4; Martin 1981, 218. On the fact that prodigies are
more common in the Claudian and Neronian books of the Annals than in the Tiberian hexad, see
further below, p. 13. See also Syme 1958, 397, on Tacitus’ inclusion of details such as the ficus
Ruminalis (13.28) or the altar of Hercules (15.41.1): “Such things had a place, like the report of
‘prodigia,’ in Roman annals, and an author’s belief or disbelief does not come into the question.”
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12 Introduction
and even sarcasm,⁴⁵ scholars have assumed that Tacitus’ references to cultic
matters were, if not mandated by the traditions of his genre, merely “an
opportunity for gloomy and sardonic comments,” or opportunities to criticize
the credulity of those who allow their thoughts and actions to be excessively
influenced by religious considerations.⁴⁶
More recently, Jason Davies and Miriam Griffin have sought to push back
against Syme’s view of Tacitean religious material,⁴⁷ and this study follows
very much in their footsteps. Religious material in Tacitus should be taken
seriously. I do not wish to discount the idea that an author can derive a strong
literary effect from deploying religious material that was traditionally included
in annalistic history. As we shall see, when Tacitus includes such material,
he is certainly trying to exploit the assumptions it raises in his readers, but
that need not mean that these references are merely pawns in the game of
generic expectations. Let us further consider Syme’s example of prodigies.
Tacitus made a deliberate authorial choice about which prodigies to include
and where to place them. The Roman historiographical tradition was strongly
influenced by the annales maximi, in which the pontifex maximus listed
important events of the year, especially prodigies recognized by the Senate.⁴⁸
Prodigies play a very important part of the narrative and thematic structuring
of the Ab Urbe Condita of Tacitus’ predecessor Livy.⁴⁹ Tacitus, while he hints
at that traditional structuring of the narrative year according to prodigy and
expiation, is far from following it slavishly.⁵⁰ At the other end of the spectrum
is Sallust, whose extant works are known for their paucity of religious material
and near total lack of prodigies.⁵¹ This shows that prodigies, while perhaps
⁴⁵ Syme 1958, ch. 30 (entitled “The sceptical historian”), esp. pp. 398 (“The prime quality of
Cornelius Tacitus is distrust”), 539 (“The irony of Tacitus pervades whole episodes . . . or is
compressed into a curt phrase”), and 542 (“The ironical manner of Tacitus derives its strength
from a keen and malicious insight, which he scarcely troubles to disguise”). Cf. e.g. Furneaux
1896, 36–7 on a “satiric tendency” in the Annals; Walker 1952, 53; Mellor 1993, 129–30;
O’Gorman 2000, 10–13; Owen and Gildenhard 2013, 27–8.
⁴⁶ Goodyear 1972, 25–6 n. 2; cf. Hutchinson 1993, 240–50. A partial exception is Walker
1952, ch. 12, who attributes to Tacitus cynicism or skepticism in various religious matters, but
nevertheless describes him as “a man of strongly religious temperament” (244) who “did not
reject entirely the idea of supernatural direction” (245); see also Furneaux 1896, 30.
⁴⁷ Davies 2004, ch. 4; Griffin 2009, 169–72.
⁴⁸ Rawson 1971; Ginsburg 1981, 4. Cornell 2013, ii.10–31 collects fragments of the annales
maximi (with commentary, Cornell 2013, iii.3–12). Historians perhaps stopped using them
directly as a source by the time of Cicero, and they may even have disappeared (Frier 1979,
274; Drews 1988; for a slightly more measured view, see Rich in Cornell 2013, i.156–8).
⁴⁹ The classic study is Levene 1993, of which see esp. p. 36: “We should . . . seek to explain
[prodigy lists] in terms of his narrative strategy.” See also Davies 2004, 28–58.
⁵⁰ The classic study is Ginsburg 1981, of which see esp. pp. 29–30 on prodigies.
⁵¹ On Sallust, see Syme 1964, 246–8; Scanlon 1980, 41–7; Levene 2006, 423 (on the lack of
prodigies); Rosenblitt 2011, 406. The picture of Sallust’s approach to religion, however, might
look very different if all of his works had survived. For an example of another historian who may
have felt as Sallust did, see Gell. NA 2.28.4–7 on M. Porcius Cato: “It is not pleasing to write
about whatever is on the tabula at the house of the pontifex maximus” (non lubet scribere quod in
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Introduction 13
“traditional” for historiography, were not considered an essential element of the
genre; if Tacitus had wanted to write a work of history that was entirely devoid
of religious material, he would have had good precedent. Comparing the Annals
with other works about the Julio-Claudians is also instructive. Tacitus’ contem-
porary Suetonius includes more prodigious or ominous occurrences in his
account of the Julio-Claudians than Tacitus does,⁵² demonstrating that the
tradition surrounding the Julio-Claudians contained a multiplicity of possible
omens to include.
Tacitus’ selection of such reports, therefore, begins to look more discerning
the more one examines it. Tacitus certainly inserts himself into a historio-
graphical tradition, but does not take the extreme of either Sallust or Livy, and
makes a very careful selection amongst the recorded Julio-Claudian prodigies
available to him. Furthermore, a consideration of where in the narrative these
prodigies occur also suggests deliberate authorial planning. There are many
more prodigies in the Claudian and Neronian books of the Annals than in the
Tiberian hexad.⁵³ While sweeping pronouncements should be avoided, given
that we do not know how, or indeed whether, Tacitus handled prodigies or
other religious material in the portions of the Annals that are now missing,⁵⁴ it
appears that communications from the gods were important to the historian’s
vision of the later principes in a way that they were not when he was thinking
about Tiberius. That is also suggestive; presumably if there had been nothing
more to Tacitus’ inclusion of prodigies than a desire to make his work look
appropriately traditional, the prodigies would have been more equally distrib-
uted than they are.
A detail of Tacitus’ biography also lends credence to the suggestion that
his interest in cultic matters was motivated by more than the conventions of
his genre: his concern with details about priestly responsibilities and cult
practice has been attributed to his position as a quindecimvir,⁵⁵ a priesthood
granted to him by Domitian and probably held for the remainder of Tacitus’
life.⁵⁶ The quindecimvirate was a prestigious office; it is an unusual honor
for Tacitus to have acquired at such a young age (prior to attaining the
tabula apud pontificem maximum est, an allusion to the prodigy records of the annales maximi)
(see Cornell 2013, iii.127–9).
⁵² Davies 2004, 160. For example, Tacitus includes in the Histories only two ostenta predicting
Vespasian’s success, while Suetonius reports eleven, although his biography of Vespasian is quite
short (Wardle 2012, 185–6). On ominous occurrences in Suetonius, see Wallace-Hadrill 1983,
191–3.
⁵³ See §4.2, pp. 169–70, §6.1, and §6.5. ⁵⁴ See §6.1.
⁵⁵ e.g. Syme 1958, 465 (on the digressions on Sarapis and Paphian Venus in the Histories) and
469–70 (on material on the Christians and the oracle of Apollo at Claros in the Annals).
⁵⁶ Rüpke 2008, 646.
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14 Introduction
consulship) and signalled the Imperial favor that was to be followed with
further magistracies.⁵⁷ In addition to the cultic functions of such posts, for the
recipients, they were markers of elite political status, just like praetorships or
consulships.⁵⁸ Syme acknowledges that Tacitus’ priesthood may have in-
formed his interest in things like oracles, but also seems to believe that it
was mainly important for the political advantage it conferred.⁵⁹ But when
Tacitus, in a rare moment of authorial commentary, discusses his own tenure
as quindecimvir, he highlights the active role it gave him in significant rituals:
Isdem consulibus ludi saeculares octingentesimo post Romam conditam, quarto
et sexagesimo, quam Augustus ediderat, spectati sunt. utriusque principis rationes
praetermitto, satis narratas libris, quibus res imperatoris Domitiani composui.
nam is quoque edidit ludos saecularis iisque intentius adfui sacerdotio quinde-
cimvirali praeditus ac tunc praetor; quod non iactantia refero sed quia collegio
quindecimvirum antiquitus ea cura et <ii> magistratus potissimum exequebantur
officia caerimoniarum. (11.11.1)
(Under the same consuls, the Secular Games were watched, in the 800th year
since Rome’s founding, and the 64th since the Games which Augustus had given.
I pass over the calculation systems of each princeps, which are sufficiently
narrated in the books in which I wrote about the affairs of the commander
Domitian. For he also put on Secular Games, and I was present at them with
particular keenness, endowed as I was with the quindecimviral priesthood, and
praetor at that time. This I mention not for the sake of boasting, but because this
had been a concern for the college of the quindecimvirs from of old, and those
magistrates in particular were carrying out the duties of the ceremonies.)
Self-reference of this sort is rare for Tacitus; use of the first-person singular
marks the passage as significant,⁶⁰ and we should not overlook the fact that it is
specifically in order to remark upon his own priesthood, and the authority it
grants him as an historian, that he deploys it here. As both quindecimvir and
praetor, Tacitus suggests that he was doubly qualified to assist Domitian.⁶¹
⁵⁷ Syme 1958, 66; Birley 2000, 234. It was probably listed on Tacitus’ tombstone as an
important component of his career (CIL 6.1574; see Birley 2000, 235–6).
⁵⁸ See Beard et al. 1998, i.27–30, 103–8; they assert that despite priests’ involvement in
political life, the religious nature of their office must be taken seriously. See also Várhelyi
2010, 57–69.
⁵⁹ Syme 1958, 65, 523.
⁶⁰ See Syme 1958, 534; Pelling 2009, 152. Woodman 2009, 38–9 argues persuasively that
Tacitus’ “reference” to himself and his own career in actuality “is the focus and climax of the
digression” about the Secular Games, not a case where Tacitus “grudgingly concede[s]” (Syme
1958, 534) details about his own life.
⁶¹ I accept the insertion of ii by Shaw-Smith 1997, which Malloch 2013, 187 rejects, instead
following Nipperdey, 1852, 9 n. 16; Furneaux 1907, 16; and Koestermann 1967, 49 in interpret-
ing the sentence as suggesting that “those quindecimuiri who held magistracies were selected by
preference (potissimum) for the performance of the duties of the religious ceremonies.” But there
is no evidence for this outside of Tacitus.
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Introduction 15
Praetors, too, were involved in maintaining the traditional form of the asso-
ciated rituals (caerimoniae),⁶² but the quindecimvirate is particularly mean-
ingful because of the long continuity (antiquitus) of that priesthood’s concern
for the games. To speak in anachronistic terms, cultic memory, as reflected in
continuity of religious practice, mattered to Tacitus. It is also significant that
Tacitus, momentarily leaving aside the political problems of Domitian’s no-
torious regime, can remark neutrally on his celebration of the Secular
Games.⁶³ He does not seem to criticize the games—neither the calculation of
the year when they should be held,⁶⁴ nor the rites themselves—even as
celebrated by this worst of emperors. Tacitus also reveals that in the Histories
(presumably in a portion of the text that has now been lost), he discussed how
each emperor calculated the date for the Secular Games. More than once, then,
Tacitus discussed the detailed expert knowledge necessary for this festival, and
it is likely that his own personal experience was also brought to bear on the
discussion in the Histories. Such details are not confined to the Secular Games
or even the reign of Claudius, as we shall see. Tacitus combines his role as
priest, charged with preserving Rome’s religious rites by continued perform-
ance during his own lifetime, and his role as historian, concerned with
reporting these rites in all their bewildering detail.⁶⁵ Although how the
emperors react to such religious details is certainly not insignificant, Tacitus
can also preserve them without authorial comment.
Both of Tacitus’ twin roles as priest and historian, then, would give him good
reason for including religious material in his works. Reports of prodigies and
observations on supernatural forces such as fate and fortune typically found a
place in the genre of historiography. Furthermore, Tacitus, as a member of the
quindecemviral college—the priesthood charged with interpreting prodigies
with the aid of the Sibylline books, as well as with assisting in the carrying out
of important rituals such as the Secular Games—might have had particular
knowledge of and interest in the interpretation of ominous occurrences and the
details of cult practice. But this need not mean that religious material in his
works has no deeper significance than generic convention or personal interest:
as I shall argue, it plays a crucial and thus far underappreciated thematic role in
Tacitus’ account of the Julio-Claudian principate. As Ailsa Hunt, building on
the work of Denis Feeney, has recently argued, the writing and reading
⁶² Caerimoniae designates religious observance but has a range of meanings, from “religious
taboos” (3.58.1) to “rites, ceremonies” (3.59.2); see Woodman and Martin 1996, 423, 425.
⁶³ Malloch 2013, 180–1. ⁶⁴ Syme 1958, 65. On the passage, see further §6.2.
⁶⁵ See Marincola 1997, 109–12 for examples of ancient historians who cite priesthoods that
they personally hold as granting them a special authority or access to privileged information.
MacRae 2016, 55–9 notes that some (though by no means all) of the specialist religious literature
of the late Republic was written by priests, suggesting that priesthood could grant a similar
authority in a more overtly “theological” genre.
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16 Introduction
of literature can be an important way for ancient authors and readers to engage
in religious thought:
We need to recognise that literature is itself a form of religion. Literature is what
I would call a ‘theological voice’ (and a powerful one at that) which, in tandem
with other voices, built up Roman religious discourse. Writing literature was one
way of articulating and engaging with theological questions; reading literature
was another. Thus . . . I approach those texts as a form of theological thinking in
action . . . Being ‘literary’ in no way weakens the value of these texts’ theological
insights.⁶⁶
If we are willing to read Tacitus in this way, his inclusion of religious material
becomes not just another vessel for political commentary upon the Julio-
Claudian line and the (generally negative) changes it has brought about in
Roman society, although it serves that purpose, too. It is also a way of thinking
about the gods and the nature of humans’ relationship with them. While
I would not wish to claim Tacitus as a “theologian,” there are points in his
work where what we might call theological work is being done, in that he is
inviting the reader to think about the place of the divine in human history.
Taking this material seriously, and analyzing it on its own terms, is crucial for
a fuller understanding of the Annals.
The Annals, of course, were not Tacitus’ first work, nor were they the first
place he grappled with these sorts of questions. Already in the Histories, Tacitus
includes many references to fate, fortune, omens, prophecies, and signs.⁶⁷
When Tacitus programmatically sets out the types of material he will consider
in the Histories’ proem, meditations on the divine and the question of its
involvement in human affairs are explicitly included:⁶⁸
praeter multiplicis rerum humanarum casus caelo terraque prodigia et fulminum
monitus et futurorum praesagia, laeta tristia, ambigua manifesta; nec enim
umquam atrocioribus populi Romani cladibus magisve iustis indiciis adprobatum
est non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem. (Hist. 1.3.2)
(Beyond these manifold disasters in human affairs, there were prodigies in heaven
and on earth, warnings given by thunderbolts, and presages of the future—happy
and sad, ambiguous and obvious; and never has it been proven by more terrible
⁶⁶ Hunt 2016, 20; see also Feeney 1998, esp. the introduction.
⁶⁷ e.g. Hist. 1.10.3, 1.18.1, 1.27.1, 1.62.3, 1.86, 2.1.1–2, 2.3–4, 2.11.1, 2.12.1, 2.47.1, 2.50.2, 2.78,
2.91.1, 3.56.1–2, 3.71–2, 4.53.1–2, 4.61, 4.81–4, 5.2–10. On religious material in the Histories,
see Henrichs 1968; Scott 1968; Morgan 1993, 1996, 2000; Haynes 2003, 117–20; Davies 2004,
ch. 4 passim; Feldherr 2009; Luke 2010; Hicks 2013; Shannon 2014.
⁶⁸ Woodman 1988, 160–7 is the classic treatment of the proem’s programmatic character,
which corresponds closely to Cicero’s precepts regarding the ideal contents of historical works in
De Oratore. For Hist. 1.2–4 as a “table of contents,” see Damon 2003, 82. See also Shannon 2014,
273–5.
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Introduction 17
disasters for the Roman people or by fuller⁶⁹ portents that the gods care not about
our peace of mind, but about vengeance.)
As often in Tacitus’ works, his language leaves the exact meaning of the
sentence unclear. The abstract noun ultio is modified by nostra, equivalent
to a genitive, but ultio can be used either with an objective genitive of the
person avenged (“the vengeance taken on us,” presumably by the gods), or
with a subjective genitive of the agent of vengeance (“the vengeance taken by
us”).⁷⁰ It is unclear whether Tacitus means that prodigies truly express divine
anger, or that they merely mark divine interest in human affairs without
indicating that the gods intend to become involved. The idea of prodigies as
divine vengeance for humans’ breaking of the pax deorum is left open as one
interpretation of Tacitus’ words. Yet the vengeance humans take on each other
is such a major feature of the Histories⁷¹ that it is equally possible that Tacitus
intends to use prodigies to highlight events and themes on a human level.
Admittedly, the notion that the Romans deserve these dire omens (iustis
indiciis) inclines the reader toward the first interpretation, but the other
reading also remains available.
Therefore, even when Tacitus does give a programmatic statement that
appears intended to guide the reader in the interpretation of signs from the
gods, in fact he does not offer much in the way of clarity. Things are even
murkier in the Annals, whose proem lacks a programmatic section of this
sort;⁷² there is nothing to guide the reader in interpreting signs or any other
kind of religious material. It is tempting to interpret passages such as Tacitus’
rumination on fate (Ann. 6.22)⁷³ as offering a similar kind of programmatic
guidance, but the placement of the passage and its ambiguous nature disqual-
ify it from serving such a function. So while religious material is clearly
important enough to Tacitus that he includes it when he need not have
done so, and even broadcasts his authoritative position as a member of one
of the most important priestly collegia in the Roman state cult, he gives us no
explicit guidance on exactly how religious material is important. More theo-
logical work, then, for the reader: as we progress through the narrative and
encounter such material, we must grapple with it unassisted and attempt to
interpret it in its context.
18 Introduction
⁷⁴ A. Assmann 2008, 100. See also J. Assmann 2011, 6–7; Rüpke 2012a, 140.
⁷⁵ Davies 2004, 185–7 emphasizes that priests do not perform their traditional role as “trusted
experts” nearly as often in Tacitus as in Livy; nevertheless, as I shall show, there is still evidence to
demonstrate that Tacitus is interested in priests’ traditional functions.
⁷⁶ For an example of the application of cultural memory theory to ruler cult, see Noreña 2015.
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Introduction 19
gods, pushing them, in Rüpke’s terms, “beyond the unquestionably plausible
social environment inhabited by co-existing humans who are in communica-
tion.” Emperor cult fits this definition, in that deceased former emperors are
not coexistent, observable, or in communication with those who offer them
acts of worship.⁷⁷
The question of whether the Romans “really” thought of their deified former
emperors as gods in some ontological sense has been a frequent problem in the
study of emperor cult, but for Tacitus, the question is largely irrelevant. There
is no evidence that he is aiming to make a statement about whether any former
emperor is or is not actually a divinity.⁷⁸ Rather, he focuses on how Augustus’
deification affects the relationship between emperor and subject; for one of
the themes of the Annals is the way that cultic commemoration of deceased
emperors appears to affect the way living ones are treated. From the very
beginning of the Annals, the worship of divus Augustus looms large, especially
as it relates to the way Tiberius himself is perceived and treated by his subjects.
As Jan Assmann puts it, “rulership needs a pedigree” (Herrschaft braucht
Herkunft):⁷⁹ alignment of himself with his predecessor is an important part
of Tiberius’ legitimation of his own rule. But when that “pedigree” includes a
god (and one who lived not during the quasi-mythical era of Rome’s founda-
tion, but within the current ruler’s own lifetime), the line between divine
predecessor and living emperor becomes blurred, and worship of Tiberius’
deified predecessor sets a precedent for quasi-worshipful attitudes to the living
princeps. There is also the further question of the cultic commemoration of
relatives of the emperor. Should these be seen as intermediate steps (Zwischen-
stufen) along the road to the “full” divinity possessed by the emperor,⁸⁰ as an
allowable outgrowth of the worship of divus Augustus, or a worrying develop-
ment that memorializes humans using means appropriate only for the gods?
In the Annals, emperor cult is practiced in many forms by many types of
people. The cultic commemoration of emperors encompasses a wide variety of
practices and actors, from the voting of divine honors to Augustus by the
Senate in the early days of Tiberius’ reign (Ann. 1.11.1), to Tiberius’ own
performance of a sacrifice before a statue of Augustus (4.52.2), to the appar-
ently spontaneous offer by communities in Asia and Spain (4.15.3, 4.37.1) to
⁷⁷ Gradel 2002, 5 defines religion as “between humans and what they perceive as ‘another
world’,” which he finds problematic for explaining emperor cult; Rüpke’s definition eliminates
some of these difficulties.
⁷⁸ Clauss 1999, 23; cf. Gradel 2002, 5. On Tacitus, see Davies 2004, 177. Some passages of
Tacitus could conceivably be interpreted as criticizing emperor cult tout court, but only if taken
out of their narrative context (e.g. Hist. 4.61.3, on the Germans’ worship of Veleda, with Davies
2004, 178). Likewise, the criticisms of Augustus’ deification at Ann. 1.10.6 are spoken by his
critics, not the historian himself; see §1.2.
⁷⁹ J. Assmann 1992, 71. ⁸⁰ See Clauss 1999, 37.
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20 Introduction
build temples whose dedicatees include the living emperor Tiberius.⁸¹ These
instances of cult include both “top-down” state-sponsored worship, for which
the Senate gave approval and the state provided funds and personnel, and acts
of worship firmly outside the realm of state cult that represent a “bottom-up,”
spontaneous action by individuals or communities throughout the empire.⁸²
Finally, there is the category of what I call attempts to understand the divine
and its workings. Here, the relationship to cultic memory (rather than reli-
gious thought in general) is less obvious. Partly, as I shall show, references to
this type of material gain meaning through their position in Tacitus’ narrative:
when juxtaposed with observations on ritual details or emperor cult, attempts
to understand the divine affect how we read Tacitus’ observations on the
nexus of memory and ritual, and vice versa. In particular, Tacitus’ characters’
attempts to understand the divine sometimes bring them into conflict with
traditional notions of how humans are supposed to interact with their gods, or
show their fundamental misunderstanding of those notions; the best example
of this will be Germanicus (Chapter 2).
Crucially important is Tacitus’ use of the language of fate ( fatum) and
fortune ( fortuna) or chance ( fors), which represents an attempt to make
sense of the vast timescale on which the divine operates. Discerning Tacitus’
views on this is a problem that has particularly troubled scholars.⁸³ Sometimes,
he seems to favor overarching fatum as an explanation, at other times, the
chance workings of fors/fortuna. The two views are found juxtaposed through-
out his work, which may, as Kroymann observes, be part of the point: “They
stand in juxtaposition and opposition as tensions, and they must remain
standing as tensions”, rather than being dismissed as a change of the author’s
views.⁸⁴
Although fate is mentioned with roughly the same frequency in the extant
portions of the Annals and Histories,⁸⁵ fate in the Annals seems less coherent.
In the Histories, eight out of the sixteen references to fatum indicate Vepasian’s
destiny to ascend to the throne, or the destiny of his opponents to be defeated.⁸⁶
By contrast, there are only a few indications in the Annals that fate may be
Introduction 21
involved in determining who will rule.⁸⁷ Sometimes that task involves fortuna,
as when Claudius emerges as “the princeps-to-be that Fortune was keeping in
hiding,” and Tacitus marks his unexpected elevation as an example of “the
mockeries of mortal affairs” (Ann. 3.18.4 ludibria rerum mortalium).⁸⁸ Even
here, however, it is not clear whether fortuna represents an element of chance,
randomness, or divine capriciousness in the way events unfold, as it occasion-
ally does in the Histories.⁸⁹ Fortuna, it must be remembered, is also a goddess in
the Roman pantheon, associated with prophecy and possessing a popular
oracular shrine at Praeneste; as such, it frequently may also have overtones
of providence rather than chance.⁹⁰ So each time fortuna appears in Tacitus’
narrative, we must ask ourselves whether it appears to signify a force that is
more providential or more random.
As with Tacitus’ approach to prodigies, despite the lack of clarity and
inconsistency in his usage of the concepts of fatum and fortuna, it is still
nevertheless possible for the reader to see fatum and fortuna in action as real
and efficacious forces. Yet in the Annals we are given no universally applicable
dictum as to how this might actually work. The closest we get is Annals 6.22, in
which Tacitus muses on the place of fatum and fortuna in historical causation:
“When I hear such things as these, my judgment is uncertain whether it is by
fate and immutable necessity, or by chance, that mortals’ affairs unfold” (Ann.
6.22.1 sed mihi haec ac talia audienti in incerto iudicium est, fatone res
mortalium et necessitate immutabili an forte volvantur). While it might be
tempting to read Annals 6.22 as a manifesto on Tacitus’ views on fate, the
overwhelming impression of the passage is one of uncertainty rather than of
clarification; Ronald Martin is surely right to state that “it is more prudent to
accept what [Tacitus] says at the beginning of the chapter,” i.e. his expression
of his own uncertainty on the question.⁹¹ It is also important to take account of
the context: Tacitus is not talking here about fatum in general, but about
astrology in particular. There is also a third possible viewpoint to which Tacitus
gives voice here, supposedly that of “the man-in-the-street” (6.22.3), according
⁸⁷ e.g. 1.3.3 (fate perhaps had something to do with Gaius Caesar’s death, a factor that made
Tiberius’ ascendency possible), 6.46.3 (Tiberius’ refusal to name heirs, which allowed Caligula to
take over, is equivalent to leaving the decision to fate; see §5.5, pp. 233–5), 16.5.3 (Vespasian’s
maius fatum keeps him safe under Nero; see §7.9, p. 334).
⁸⁸ See further §3.2, pp. 137–40.
⁸⁹ Cf. Otho’s relationship to fortuna, Hist. 2.12.1 and 47.1, with Ash 2007a, 110, 204.
⁹⁰ For the worship of fortuna, see Champeaux 1982; Davies 2004, 118; Clark 2007, 194–6,
233–43; Matthews 2011, ch. 1 (esp. pp. 21–8 on Fortuna at Praeneste). For fortuna as providence
or divine justice in literature, see Matthews 2011, 136–41.
⁹¹ Martin 2001, 149. Cf. Sinclair 1995, 55–6. Woodman 2016, 170–1 has recently emphasized
the aesthetic and rhetorical dimensions of the passage, noting that the question of whether the
world is governed by providence was sometimes debated in rhetorical schools (e.g. Quint. Inst.
3.5.6).
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22 Introduction
to Martin,⁹² which seems to suggest that fate is an important component of
how things happen in history, at least insofar as it pertains to astrology.
Indeed, Tacitus seems to come down in favor of astrological determinism;⁹³
and astrology, along with similar “occult” practices such as magic and necro-
mancy, is often a vehicle for Tacitus to invite his reader to consider the
workings of the divine. The Annals contain several references to astrology
and the taking of horoscopes, sometimes by (alleged) pretenders to the throne
who are supposedly consulting astrologers in an attempt to ascertain their
chances, or a relative’s chances, of deposing the current emperor and ruling in
his place.⁹⁴ But astrologers are also consulted by the emperors themselves, or
by members of the Imperial house. Tacitus sometimes maligns practitioners of
astrology, or criticizes those who interpret its predictions too hastily. Never-
theless, astrological predictions in the Annals mostly end up coming true.⁹⁵
Even if Tacitus does not wish us to view everything that happens to Rome
under the Julio-Claudians as the ineluctable will of the stars, with these
references he does invite the reader to consider the relationship between the
principate and the divine.
Given the disparate nature of the types of material I will consider, it would have
been possible to analyze each type of material one by one—in other words, to
structure my analysis thematically. This is indeed the approach taken by Jason
Davies in his recent examination of religion in Tacitus.⁹⁶ What I have opted for
instead is a chronological analysis: I proceed one by one through each book of
the Annals taking religious material as it comes and consider what effect it
would have on a reader progressing sequentially through the narrative. Apart
from occasional deviations where I believe it helpful for the reader to be
presented with a passage “out of order,”⁹⁷ I largely follow the order in which
Tacitus arranged the episodes I consider.
This approach is warranted for several reasons. The physical form of
ancient book rolls meant that it was easier to read them straight through
than to jump around to different portions of the work, given that rolling
and unrolling the papyrus roll would have been more difficult than flipping
backward and forward in a codex; therefore, a sequential reading of each book
is the way of interacting with the text Tacitus may have had in mind for his
Introduction 23
putative reader when composing the Annals.⁹⁸ Tacitus could, and did, use this
expectation of sequential reading to achieve important literary effects. As
Levene has convincingly demonstrated in his analysis (also structured sequen-
tially) of religious material in Livy,⁹⁹ part of what is important about the
religious material in a historical work is where in his narrative the historian
chooses to situate it, and the effect it has on the reader proceeding sequentially
through textual time. My sequential-reading analysis of the Annals highlights
important juxtapositions of religious material and religious language, shows
how Tacitus depicts important religious ideas and trends developing over
time, and allows for speculation about the effect of unexpected developments
on the reader. This is particularly important for the Annals given the wide
variety of types of religious material Tacitus includes: part of what is signifi-
cant is the juxtaposition and interrelation of these different concerns.
The other advantage to a sequential-reading approach is that it allows one
to assess whether and, if so, how, Tacitus is trying to show or suggest that the
way the Julio-Claudian emperors approached cultic questions changed over
time. One of the disadvantages of Davies’s study, structured thematically
rather than chronologically, is that it creates a picture of religion in Tacitus
that is monolithic and does not allow for the shades of difference between
principes and developments across the entire narrative of the Annals (and
indeed between the Annals and the Histories, which have a religious character
very different from that of the Annals, as Davies’s synthesizing treatment
sometimes obscures). I have chosen to structure my analysis according to
the reigns of different emperors, in order to highlight the differences in
Tacitus’ portrayals of each princeps: each reign has its own approach to cultic
memory, and the continuities and developments that link these approaches
offer crucial insights into Tacitus’ conception of the progression of the history
of the principate.
Much of my analysis concerns the Tiberian hexad (Chapters 1–5), with
Claudius (Chapter 6) and Nero (Chapter 7) receiving treatment in one chapter
each. The reason for this imbalance is that the first hexad lays out many of
the important themes and questions for a religious analysis of the Annals. In
the Claudian and Neronian books, Tacitus revisits these themes and questions
⁹⁸ On the physical form of the ancient book and its effect upon reading habits, see Van Sickle
1980, esp. pp. 5–6; Small 1997, 11–19; Cavallo 1999, 84–5 (for the notion that ease of cross-
referencing is an advantage of the codex format over the book roll; for a different view see
Johnson 2009, 267). Starr 1981 notes that Tacitus’ practice with “cross-references,” like that of
other authors, is to refer mainly (though not exclusively) to passages that are close by, and to
provide “short summaries for the reader’s convenience;” this also suggests that sequential
reading, rather than skipping around, is what Tacitus envisioned. The Annals, however, would
have comprised many papyrus rolls, and there is of course no guarantee that ancient readers
would read all the rolls, or that they would read them in order.
⁹⁹ Levene 1993.
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24 Introduction
to show how they have developed, but it is in the Tiberian books that they
are gradually established. Their development therefore needs extraordinarily
careful analysis and more detailed examination. It is also the case that in the
Tiberian hexad there seems to be the greatest degree of change over time:
Tacitus’ books 1–6 chronicle the gradual development or solidification of
many things about the principate, including its approach to cultic memory,
and then the way Tiberius’ increasingly withdrawn and secretive approach to
ruling pushes those trends even further. I analyze Tiberius’ first grapplings with
religious questions in Annals 1–2 in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 deals with the same
books, but from a different perspective: that of Germanicus, a religious actor in
his own right, whose approach to cultic memory is just as flawed as Tiberius’
despite his apparent status as a potential redeemer of the Julio-Claudians.
Chapter 3 covers Annals 3, in which questions of memory and commemor-
ation come to the fore with renewed vigor after Germanicus’ death, and in
which the Senate has to come to terms with how it will perform its traditionally
central role in the settling of cultic questions in a society where the emperor
increasingly makes all the important decisions. Annals 4, the subject of
Chapter 4, continues to offer some of the same questions, but also represents
a turning point, as the gods’ wrath becomes increasingly manifest. Toward the
end of Tiberius’ life, chronicled in Annals 5–6 (Chapter 5), another shift
occurs: questions about the role of fate invite the reader to think about
Rome’s larger trajectory. Tacitus’ accounts of the principates of Claudius and
Nero show how two of Tiberius’ successors deal with the religious system they
have inherited: the mistakes they make are increasingly clear-cut, in compari-
son with the shifting, murky religious world of the Tiberian principate, but it
is also apparent that Claudius’ and Nero’s mistakes are a logical extension of
the problems Tiberius raised. Claudius (Chapter 6) represents a laudable
attempt to renew interest in Rome’s cultic memory, but the deeply flawed
nature not only of Claudius’ own reign, but also of the principate in general,
means that this is only marginally successful and does not make much differ-
ence to Rome’s apparent collision-course with the gods’ anger. Under Nero
(Chapter 7), the full extent of the gods’ wrath, and of the brokenness of Rome’s
system of cultic memory, finally becomes clear. This progressive analysis of
the religious material in the Annals offers a new way of understanding the
work: as a narrative of a system of government (the principate) that becomes
increasingly irreligious as its first dynasty progresses, but whose problems
are due not only to the actions of its individual members, but also to the
inherent flaws the system itself has introduced into the way Rome interacts
with her gods.
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² For Tiber floods viewed as prodigies, see Pliny NH 3.55; Krauss 1930, 61–2; Goodyear 1981,
171; Aldrete 2007, 219–21. For Tacitus’ allusions to Livy in this passage, see Shannon 2018.
³ Ginsburg 1981, 33–4; Levene 1993, 35–6. Tacitus follows Livy’s “year-end” strategy by
placing nearly all his reports of prodigies at or near the ends of narrative years. For 1.76–81 as
a cluster of annalistic material, see Wille 1983, 376–7.
⁴ Oakley 2005b, 341.
⁵ Compare Tacitus’ explicit assertion that Tiber floods of 69 were prodigious (cf. Hist.
1.86.2); see Damon 2003, 273–4, 278–9; Shannon 2018.
⁶ See further §1.5, p. 39. On the delatores, see Powell 2010.
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⁷ Potter 1994, 149–51; Oakley 1998, 251; Davies 2004, 73–8; Santangelo 2013, 128–9. For an
example of a prodigy rejected by the Senate, see Livy 43.13.6, with Levene 1993, 115–16; Briscoe
2012, 431.
⁸ I doubt Levick’s 1976, 105 suggestion that “Gallus’ proposal was sarcastic.” Tacitus’
deprecatory comment on Tiberius as divina . . . obtegens would be odd if the suggestion that
the floods were prodigious were supposed to be patently ridiculous.
⁹ Rüpke 2008, 547–8. Asinius’ priesthood is also attested outside Tacitus (ILS 5050 l. 150).
¹⁰ Goodyear 1981, 171; see also Furneaux 1896, 280; Maggi 1946, 165–6; Koestermann
1963, 247.
¹¹ Cf. Davies 2004, 190–1, who also notes that there may be a personal element to the conflict
between Tiberius and Gallus (cf. 1.12–13).
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¹² For this meaning of religiones, see OLD s.v. religio 8b; Grodzynski 1974, 46; Kahlos
2007, 391.
¹³ The Tiber is a divine guarantor of Roman success at Virg. Aen. 8.36–65. See also Benario 1978.
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But where does this problem start? Were the Roman people already losing sight
of religious tradition and falling into problematic practices before Tiberius
became princeps, or is he personally responsible for the decay of Roman
religious memory? Tacitus, true to fashion, does not answer this question
directly; nevertheless, it is clear from the way he tells the story of early Julio-
Claudian history that the problem does not simply begin with Tiberius. Strictly
speaking, the Annals themselves do not begin with Tiberius, but rather, with
“a few things about Augustus, and his final stages” (Ann. 1.1.3 pauca de
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¹⁹ On Tacitus’ decision to begin the Annals with Augustus’ death and Tiberius’ succession,
see Syme 1958, 368–74; O’Gorman 1995, esp. pp. 101–14. For the centrality of dynastic concerns,
see Kraus 2009, 102–3; Klaassen 2014, 158–9.
²⁰ Taylor 1931, 232; Price 1984, 88; Beard et al. 1998, i.208. ²¹ Gradel 2002, 276–9.
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²² See §0.3, p. 18. For temples as physical repositories of cultic (and cultural) memory in the
Annals, see §7.6, p. 320, and Shannon 2012, 751–4, 759–60.
²³ e.g. Koestermann 1963, 103; Goodyear 1972, 166.
²⁴ See Hänlein-Schäfer 1985, 166–8 for literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence for the
temple.
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