The Pageant at Rome in the Year 17 B. C.
ATLANTIC MONTHLY:
A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.
IN the early days of Rome, the northwest section of the Campus Martius, bordering on the Tiber, was conspicuous for traces of volcanic activity. There was a pool, called Tarentum, or Terentum, fed by hot sulphur springs, the hygienic efficiency of which is certified by the cure of Volesus Sabinus and his family, described by Valerius Maximus. Heavy vapors hung over these hot springs, and occasionally tongues of flame were seen issuing from the cracks of the earth. It is no wonder that the superstition of the early inhabitants of the seven hills should have been aroused by these phenomena. The locality became known by the name of the Fiery Field (Campus Ignifer), and its relationship with the infernal realms was soon an established fact in folk lore. In progress of time the superstition was transformed into an article of religion. An altar to the infernal gods was erected on the border of the pool; and the locality was selected for the celebration of the ludi sœculares. The origin and the history of these celebrations have been amply illustrated by Gesner,1 although his work is rather antiquated. Varro’s account of the games, quoted by Censorious, proves that, in republican times, they were held in honor of Dis and Proserpina, on an altar sunk twenty feet below the level of the ground, and lasted three nights, the victims being a black bull and a black cow. Tradition attributed this arrangement of time and ceremonial to Volesus himself, who, to show his gratitude for the miraculous recovery of his three children, offered sacrifices to Dis and Proserpina, spread lectisternia for the gods, and held festive games for three successive nights, one for each child restored to health. In republican times they were called ludi Tarentini, from the name of the awe-inspiring pool, and they were celebrated for the purpose of averting from the state the recurrence of some great calamity by which it had been afflicted. These calamities being contingencies which no man could foresee, it is evident that the celebration of the ludi Tarentini was in no way connected with certain cycles of time, such as the Sœculum. Although there is considerable discrepancy among writers as to the dates and number of celebrations in republican times, the following figures seem to come as near the truth as possible : —
First Tarentine games . . . . . . . . . 245
Second Tarentine games . . . . . . . 305
Third Tarentine games . . . . . . . . 505
Fourth Tarentine games . . . . . . . 608
Totally different are the calculations made by the College of the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis in the time of Augustus, according to which the games must have been held in the years 298, 408, 518, 628. The reason of these conflicting statements is evident. Not long after Augustus had assumed the supreme power, the Quindecimviri announced that it was the will of the gods that ludi sæculares should be performed; and, misrepresenting and distorting dates and events, tried to prove that the festival had been held regularly at intervals of one hundred and ten years, which was the exact length of a sæculum. The games of which the Quindecimviri made this assertion were the Tarentini, instituted, as shown above, for quite a different purpose. The suggestion of the Quindecimviri came at the right moment in the new order of things, and was too pleasing to Augustus and to the people to be despised. Setting aside all disputes about, chronology and tradition, the celebration was appointed for the summer of 737 A. u. c.; that is, 17 B. c.
What was the exact location of the sulphur springs of the Tarentum and of the altar of the infernal gods? I shall always consider the discovery of the altar of Dis and Proserpina as the most satisfactory I have made, especially because I made it, in a certain sense, when away from Rome on a long leave of absence. The discovery, of which I have given ample account in my book, L’Itinerario di Einsiedeln, page 108, took place in the winter of 1886-87, during my visit to America. At that time, the work of opening and draining the new Corso Vittorio Emmanuele had just reached a place which was considered terra Incognita by the topographers, and marked by a blank spot in the archæological maps of the city. I mean the district between the Vallicella (la Chiesa Nuova, the Palazzo Cesarini, etc.) and the banks of the Tiber, by S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini. The reports of the superintendents, published monthly in the Bullettino Archeologico, spoke vaguely of the discovery of five or six parallel walls built of blocks of peperino; of marble steps in the centre of this singular monument; of doors with marble posts and architraves, serving as communication for the spaces between the six parallel walls ; and finally, of a “ column with the surface carved in leafwork.”In my return to Rome in the spring of 1887, every trace of the monument had disappeared under the embankment of the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. I questioned workmen and foremen ; I consulted the notebooks of contractors; I visited every day the excavations still going on, on each side of the Corso, for building the Villa, Cavalletti, and Bassi palaces; and lastly. 1 examined the “ column with the surface carved in leaf-work,”which had been removed to the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol. This fragment of marble, the only one saved from the excavations, gave me the clue to the mystery. It was not a column ; it was the pulvinus, or volute, of a colossal marble attar, worthy of being compared in size and perfection of work with the altar of Peace discovered under the Palazzo Fiano, with the altar of the Antonines discovered under the Monte Citorio, and with other like structures of monumental size. There was no more hesitation in determining the nature of the discoveries made in the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele ; an altar had been found there, and this altar must have been the one sacred to Dis and Proserpina, as no other is mentioned in history as having a place in the northwest section of the Campus Martius.
The designs which illustrate my account of the find prove that the altar lose on a platform twelve feet square, approached on all sides by three or four marble steps : that platform and altar were inclosed by three lines of walls, at an interval of thirty-six feet from each other; and that on the east side of the square ran a euripus, or channel, eleven feet wide and four deep, lined with stone blocks, the incline of which (about 1:100) is towards the Tiber. This last find proves that when the rough altar of Volesus Sabinus was succeeded by the present noble construction the pool was drained, and its feeding-springs were led into the euripus, so that the patients seeking a cure for their ailments could bathe in or drink the miracle-working waters with greater ease.
No attention whatever was paid to the discovery at the time it took place. Instead of reaching the antique level, the excavation for the main sewer of the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele was stopped at the wrong place, within three feet of the pavement; and consequently, whatever fragments of the altar, of inscriptions, of works of art, were lying on the marble floor will lie there forever, as the building of palaces on each side of the Corso, and the construction of the Corso itself, with its costly sewers, sidewalks, etc., have made further research impossible, at least with our present means.
The discovery of the altar of Dis and Proserpina has been confirmed by another find. Zosimus locates it in the Campus Martius, near the field called Trigarium, in which wild horses were tamed and trained to run three abreast (trigœ). Where was the Trigarium then ? Preller places it near the Palazzo della Cancellaria, Canina near the Pantheon, others near the Monte Citorio ; all wrongly, as proved by the following discovery.
In August, 1887, the engineers of the Tiber brought to light a stone cippus, lying on the left bank of the river, near the church of S. Biagio della Pagnotta, within three hundred yards of the altar of Dis and Proserpina. The workmen, supposing it to be a worthless block of travertine, broke it into many pieces ; and when an inscription of the highest importance was finally discovered on the surface of the block facing the ground, some fragments were already missing. The inscription, which can be easily supplied in the lost portions, relates how, in the year 47 A. D., a committee of five eminent men, of which Paullus Fabius Persicus, ex-consul, was the chairman, had been directed by the Emperor Claudius to verify and mark with rippi the boundary line between public and private property on the left bank of the Tiber ; and how they had fulfilled their mission cippis positis a Trigario ad pontem Agrippœ (by raising terminal stones between the Trigarium and the bridge of Agrippa).2 It is evident, therefore, that the locality indicated as a terminus a quo was very near the place in which the cippus was found, and in close proximity to the altar of the infernal gods and the hot springs, as stated by Zosimus.
This beautiful series of discoveries, in which each so well fits into the others, has been completed by a later one, the importance of which far exceeds our most ardent hopes.
On the 20th of September, 1890, the anniversary day of the annexation of Rome to the kingdom, the workmen employed in the construction of the main sewer, on the left bank of the Tiber, between the Ponte S. Angelo and the church of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, found a mediæval wall, built from materials of every kind and description, collected at random from the neighboring ruins. Among them there were irregular blocks of marble, bearing fragments of one or more inscriptions which described the celebration of the ludi sæculares in imperial times. By the end of the day seventeen pieces had been recovered, seven of which belonged to a record of the games celebrated under Augustus in the year 17 B. c., the others to those celebrated under Septimius Severus and Caracalla in the year 204 A. D. Later researches led to the discovery of ninety-six more fragments, making a total of one hundred and thirteen, of which eight are of the time of Augustus, the rest of the time of Severus.
The fragments of the year 17 B. c. fit together so as to make a block three metres high, containing one hundred and sixty-eight lines of minute writing. The monument has the shape of a square pil lar inclosed by a projecting frame, with base and capital of the Tuscan order; it measured, when entire, four metres in height and one and twelve hundredths in width. The form of the letters is excellent, as becomes the golden Augustan age.
The text has been admirably edited by Professor Mommsen, at the request of the Italian government.3 The difficulty and extent of the task, and the time necessary for preparing the twelve plates, explain the reason why an inscription of such importance, discovered on September 20, 1890, was not made known to students until thirteen months later.
I believe that no epigraph, among the thirty thousand collected in Volume VI. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. makes a more profound impression on the mind, or appeals more to the feelings, than this official report of a state ceremony which took place 1908 years ago, and was attended by the most illustrious men of the age. We possessed, no doubt, ample information about the event. The oracle of the Sibyl referred to by Phlegon and Zosimus, the hymn of Horace, the legends and designs of the medals struck for the occasion, the account of Augustus himself on the Ancyran monument, the descriptions of Suetonius, of Dion Cassius, of Censorious, had made us acquainted with the leading particulars; but this official report, engraved by decree of the Senate, immediately after the close of the festivities, on a pillar raised upon the very spot where they took place, gives an altogether different impression : it enables us to take a personal share in the pageant, and permits us to follow with rapture Horace leading a chorus of fifty-four young men and girls of patrician birth, singing the carmen sœculare.
There is such a note of simplicity, common sense, order, and mutual respect in the official transactions between Augustus, the Senate, and the College of the Quindecimviri, which preceded, attended, and followed the celebration ; in the resolutions passed by the several bodies; in the proclamations addressed to the people ; in the material arrangement of the festivities, which a mass of one million or more spectators was expected to attend, that, a lesson in civic dignity could he learned from this report by modern governments and corporations.
There is no doubt that the celebration of the games had been proposed and discussed at least two years before by those who wished to impart a solemn religious sanction to the new order of things established by Augustus. The well-known verses of the Æneid VI. 792. 793,
contain a direct allusion to it, although Virgil died in 19 B. c. It is probable that a great deal of time was lost in trying to settle the difficulty about the secular cycle. Once admitted, in spite of historical evidence, that the ludi Tarentini had been instituted, not to avert unexpected calamities, but to solemnize the completion of a sæculum in the life of Rome, it became necessary to alter the duration of an “ age,” and make it: to consist of one hundred and ten years. Whether in a spirit of flattery or credulity, the high priests, the Senate, the Emperor, the poet laureate, the people, all agreed upon the new chronology, and the ludi were ordered for the year 737 A. U. C.; that is, 17 B. c.
The official report begins, or rather began (the first lines are missing), with the request presented by the Quindecimviri to the Senate to take their proposals into consideration ; followed by a decree of the Senate, inviting Augustus to assume the direction of the celebration and arrange its details. The intervention of the Senate was a necessity ; no money could be obtained for the purpose from the treasury without the sanction of that body. Hence, in the record of the games under Domitian, we read the formula ex Senatus consulto, the meaning of which is purely financial. In this case, the request was addressed to the house on the 17th of February by Marcus Agrippa, president of the Quindecimviri (magister conlegiit), standing before the seat of the consuls.4 What a scene to behold ! We can picture to the mind the two consuls, Gaius Furnius and Junius Silanus, clad in their state robes, listening to the speech of the great statesman, who was supported by twenty colleagues, all ex-consuls, and chosen among the noblest, the richest, the most gallant patricians of the age. There were present: Q. Ælius Tubero, who was the first to draw up a maritime code, the principles of which still hold good ; Lucius Arruntius, whose career is described on a pedestal discovered at Atina, which town he had drained and paved at his own expense : 5 C. Asinius Gallus, consul 746 A. U. C. ; M. Valerius Messalla Messallinus, to whom Tibullus addressed a congratulatory poem on his election to the Quindecimvirate in 735. The Senate agrees that the preparations for the festival, the building of temporary stages, hippodromes, tribunes, scaffoldings, should be carried out by contractors (redemptores), and that the treasury officials should provide the necessary funds.
Lines 1-23 contain a letter addressed by Augustus to the Quindecimviri, detailing the programme of the performance, the number and quality of persons who had to take an official part in it, the dates of days and hours, the number and quality of the victims. The programme was very likely drawn up by C. Ateius Capito, the eminent jurist and founder of a school of jurisprudence, who was considered at the same time the leading authority on religious ceremonials.
Two clauses are especially noteworthy in the imperial manifesto: First, that during the triduum of June 1-3 the court-houses should be closed, and judges should not sit on their benches. 舠Diligenter memineritis litibus per eos dies non esse præstandam audientiam ! ” Second, the invitation addressed to the ladies in mourning requests them to give up for this occasion that sign of grief. The date of the manifesto is lost, hut can be indirectly fixed at March 24.
Upon the receipt of this document the College of the Quindecimviri meets, and, acting on the instructions therein contained, decides that one or more copies shall be exhibited in public (albo propositœ), so that the regulations for the ceremonies may be made known not only to those members of the college who had been prevented from attending the meeting, but to the general public. The same day the college decides the particulars concerning two ceremonies, called respectively distributio suffimentorum and acceptio frugum. In the first, the Quindecimviri were wont to distribute among the Roman citizens torches, sulphur, and bitumen, by means of which they were to purify themselves. I believe that these materials were used chiefly in illuminating the city, and especially the neighborhood of the Tarentum. where scenic plays were performed at night on a temporary stage. The second relates to the distribution of wheat, barley, and beans, which were to be offered to the Fates or to the actors in the dramatic representations. These distributions were to be made to enormous masses of people; and although Roman crowds were, as a rule, models of behavior, it was necessary to make arrangements by which as little time as possible should be consumed. Four places of distribution are established, therefore, instead of one, and three mornings are appointed, the 26th, 27th, and 28th of May. May 29, 30, and 31 are named as days for the frugulm acceptio. Each centre of distribution is placed under the supervision of four members of the college, a total of sixteen delegates. The places indicated in the programme are: (a) the platform in front of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol; (b) the area in front of the temple of Jupiter Tonans, near the gates of the Capitol;: (c) the portico of the Danaids, in front of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine: (d) the temple of Diana on the Aventine. The third distributing station, which in the report of the year 17 B. C. is described as in Palatio ante œdem Apollinis in porticu eius, in the report of 204 A. D. is called ad Romam Quadratam. The importance of this term will be duly appreciated by students of Roman topography. It is an established fact that the Roma Quadrata had. strictly speaking, nothing to do with the city itself and with its primitive shape.6
The Roma Quadrata was an altar, made of roughly squared stones, erected on the site where the instruments used by the founders of the city in tracing the furrow (sulcus primigenius) had been buried. Considering the absolute ignorance of ancient writers on this subject, and the almost absurd definitions they give of the Roma Quadrata, we had come to the conclusion that the altar had been removed, or dismantled, or buried by Augustus when he built the temple of Apollo and the portico of the Danaids. The report of 204 A. D. shows that our opinion was wrong, and that the old altar, the most venerable monument of Roman history, had survived the vicissitudes of time, and the transformation of the Palatine from the cradle of the city into the palace of the Cæsars.
The next day, March 25, the Quindecimviri meet again, but the resolutions passed are not known, because lines 37—45, which contain the minutes of the meeting, are in such a fragmentary state as to convey no meaning. The place of meeting is indicated by the words pro œde, “ before the temple,”very likely of Apollo, in which the Sibylline books were kept. The connection between the Qnindecimviri and these books is too well known to be dwelt upon here : but I mention it because of the light it throws on a discovery of great importance, which, although made two centuries ago, is not yet known to students.
The written oracles supposed to concern the Roman commonwealth were originally kept in a stone coffer, and deposited in one of the crypts of the Capitol. The privilege of consulting those oracular books on all occasions of state was given to two priests, called duumviri sacrorum. They could not open the stone coffer, however, without a decree of the Senate. In 388 A. U. C. eight priests were added to the first two. and later on the number was increased to fifteen : from whence they were called decemviri or quindecimviri. Julius Cæsar added a sixteenth, and Augustus was permitted by the Senate to enlarge the number without restriction. The title of Quindecimviri was retained even when the number amounted to forty and sixty. The number of those present at the celebration of the year 17 was twenty-fine.
The old Sibylline books were destroyed in the fire which wasted the Capitol in 671 A. U. C. During the dictatorship of Sulla deputies were sent to Asia Minor to collect whatever verses tradition attributed to the Sibylla Erythræa, which were almost a thousand in number. Augustus gathered from the same region, from the islands of the Ægean Sea, and from Africa more than two thousand volumes of Greek and Latin verses which passed under the names of the Sibyls. They were carefully examined one by one : those apocryphal were given up to the prœtor urbanus and burnt in public ; those considered genuine were deposited in two gilt cases in a recess of the temple of Apollo, immediately under the pedestal of the statue. The safe-keeping of the precious books was entrusted again to the Quindecimviri. The last account we find of them belongs to the year 363 A. D. In the night between the 18th and 19th of March the temple of Apollo was destroyed by fire. The only objects which the firemen, led by Apronianus, prefect of the city, could rescue from the wreck were the Sibylline books. Their final destruction is attributed to Honoring and Stilicho.
There is no doubt that the recess in which they had been safely kept for four centuries was rediscovered in the seventeenth century. Pietro Sante Bartoli describes it in his Recollections of Roman Discoveries in the following words: —
“ In the garden of Duke Mattei on the Palatine [which contains the ruins of Apollo’s temple], in the course of the excavations made under the pontificate of Alexander VII. [1655-67], several fluted columns of giallo antico were found [the columns of the portico of the Danaids, described by Propertius], some statues in fragments [the statues of the Danaids], and, above all, a recess, the walls of which were lined with silver plates. There were marks on these plates of still more precious ornaments, as if they had been studded with gems, The excavators, ignorant of the value of these remains, broke the silver plates in pieces, and sold the fragments to a man named Palombo, a servant of Cardinal Nini.”
To come back, however, to the report of the ludi. May 23 the Senate meets in the Septa Julia, the portico just built by Agrippa between the Via Flaminia and his baths, the remains of which are still visible under the Palazzo Doria and the church of S. Maria in Via Lata. Two resolutions are passed by the house in connection with the games. To the first resolution Horace alludes in verses 17-20 of his hymn : —
Lenis, Ilithyia. tuore matres,
Sive tu Lueina probas vocari
Seu Genitalis.” 7
Among the penalties imposed on men and women who, in spite of the law against celibacy,8 had remained single between the ages of twenty and fifty years, there was the prohibition of attending public festivities and state ceremonies. The Senate, considering the extraordinary case of the ludi sæculares, which none amongst the living had seen or would see again, takes away the prohibition.
The second resolution provides for the erection of two commemorative pillars, one of bronze, the other of marble, upon which the official report of the celebration should be engraved. Of these two pillars, the one cast in bronze is, most likely, lost forever; the marble pillar is the very one recovered on the bank of the Tiber September 20, 1890, the inscription on which we are trying to make clear.
In a final sitting held by the Quindecimviri May 25 the programme is specified in its last details. It is divided into six parts, as follows : —
First night, between May 31 and June 1, to be sacred to the Fates, Moîpai; first day to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Second night to the Ilithyiæ, daughters of Hera; second day to Juno Regina. Third night to Mother Earth ; third day to Apollo and Diana.
The celebration, in the strict sense of the word, began at the second hour of the night of May 31. Sacrifices were offered to the Fates, on altars erected between the Tarentum and the banks of the Tiber, where S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini now stands, and other ceremonies were performed on a wooden stage illuminated by lights and fires. This temporary theatre was unprovided with seats ; the report calls it “ a stage without a theatre” (scœ;na, quoi theatrum adiectum non fuit, nullis positis sedilibus).
In the next, day’s performances, and those of June 2 and 3, which look place on the Capitol and on the Palatine, by the temples of Jupiter and Juno, and of Apollo and Diana, the following order was observed in the official pageant: first came Augustus as Emperor and as Pontifex Maximus, the consuls, the Senate, the Quindecimviri and other colleges of priests ; then followed the Vestal Virgins,9 and a group of one hundred and ten matrons, as many as there were years in the sæculum, selected from among the most exemplary matres familiarum above twenty-five years of age. Twenty - seven boys and twenty-seven girls of patrician descent, with both parents living (patrimi et matrimi), were enrolled on June 3 to sing the hymn composed expressly by Horace: CARMEN COMPOSUIT Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS. So the report says in line 149. The first, stanzas of the beautiful canticle were sung when the procession was on its way from Apollo’s temple to the Capitol, the middle ones before Jupiter’s temple, the last on the way back to the Palatine. This is, at least, the interpretation given by Mommsen to lines 147-149 of the report, which, taken literally, would signify that the whole hymn was sung twice, once on the Palatine, again on the Capitol. This seems hardly possible. In the first place, the canticle is addressed to 舠 Phœbus silvarumque potens Diana,” and it would have sounded out of place if sung entire before Jupiter’s altar ; in the second place, it is too long (seventy-six verses) to have admitted of a repetition the same day. The accompaniments were played by the orchestra and the trumpeters of the official choir (tibicines et fidicines qui sacris publicis prœsto sunt,10).
I wish these lines might, fall under the eyes of my illustrious friend Alma Tadema, and give him an inspiration for one of his masterpieces. The scene of magnificence and beauty which the Roman citizens beheld on the morning of June 3, 17 B. c., can be felt, and seen as in a dream, but baffles description. Imagine the group of fifty-four young patricians, clad in snow-white tunics, crowned with flowers, and waving branches of laurel, led by Horace down the Vicus Apollinis, the street which led from the Summa Sacra Via to the middle of the Palatine, and the Sacra Via, to sing the praises of the immortal gods,
“ Quibus septem placuere collas !”
In these three days and nights Augustus gave evidence of a truly remarkable strength of mind and body, never missing a ceremony, and performing himself the sacrifice of the victims. Nine lambs and nine goats were slain the first night, in honor of the Fates ; a bull the following morning, in honor of Jupiter. The second night he offered twenty-seven cakes to the Ilithyiæ. These cakes, as well as those offered to Apollo and Diana at the close of the triduum, were of three kinds. The first, called libum, was composed of flour and grated cheese ; the recipe is given by Cato (De Re Rustica, 75). The second, called popanus, was an old Greek concoction, not unlike Cato’s cake. The recipe of the third, called ϕθοîς, is given by Athenæus, a mixture of grated cheese, honey, and aniseed sifted through a copper sieve and rolled together. On the morning of the second day a cow was sacrificed to Juno, and the next night a pregnant sow to Mother Earth. Agrippa shows less power of endurance than his friend and master, Augustus ; he appears only in the daytime, helping the Emperor in addressing supplications to the gods and immolating the victims.
I cannot close this article in a better way than by quoting the text of these supplications, truly admirable in their simplicity : —
“ O Fates [or Jupiter, Juno, etc.], as it is written in those books [meaning the Sibyllines], I have duly offered to you a sacrifice. ... I entreat you to increase the power and majesty of the Roman people, both at home and abroad ; to protect forever the Latin name ; to give to the Roman people immunity from evils, victory, health. Be merciful and benevolent to the Roman people and their legions, to the College of the Quindecimviri, to myself, to my house and family.”
Rodolfo Lanciani.
- De Annis Ludisque Sæcularibus Veterum Romanorum, 1717. ↩
- Remains of this bridge have been discovered in the bed of the river 160 metres above the modern Ponte Sisto. ↩
- I Commentarii dei Ludi Secolari Augustei e Severiani scoperti in Roma sulla sponda del Tevere, con una Illustrazione di Teodoro Mommsen. Roma; Tipografia Salvincci. 1891. ↩
- The report of the year 204 A. D. describes how the “ xv viri sacris faciundis ante suggestum amplissimorum consulum constiterunt.” ↩
- See Corpus Iuscriptionum Latinarum, vol. x. 5055. ↩
- This much-debated question has been resumed lately by Professor Pigorini in a memoir, yet unpublished, read at the sitting of the German Institute December 17, 1890, and by Profeasor Otto Richter in his pamphlet Die Alteste Wohnstätte des Römisechen Volkes, Berlin, 1891. I believe the last word has not yet been said ↩
- “O Goddess, whether you choose the title of Lucina or Genitalis, multiply our offspring, and prosper the decrees of the Senate in relation to the joining of women in wedlock, and the matrimonial law.” ↩
- In the year 736 Augustus revived the old Roman constitution which forbade citizens to live unmarried. In his lex de maritandis ordinibus rewards are offered to those willing to obey it, and punishment, or tines imposed for celibacy. In 762 he made another law on the same subject. The first is known by the name lex Julia, the second as Papia Poppœa. ↩
- In the report of 204 A. D., two Vestals, Numisia Maximilla and Terentia Flavola, are distinctly mentioned as standing near the Empress Julia Domna. Their statues and eulogies were discovered in 1883, in the Atrium estæ. The date inscribed on Numisia’s pedestal is the year 201. She presided over the sisterhood at. least fourteen years, and was succeeded by Terentia Flavola in 215. ↩
- The columbaria of these tibicines and fidicines were discovered in 1873, under my supervision, near the church of S. Eusebio on the Esquiline. ↩