To exemplify these preliminary assumptions, we shall now look at three sites that
were either founded in the age of Augustus or saw a significant transformation
during the period.Cult History at the Grove of Anna Perenna
Compared to the much more widely known sanctuary of Dea Dia, the extra-urban
grove of Anna Perenna, situated at the first milestone of the Via Flaminia, close to
the Tiber, is a highly informative case study in the history of archaeological finds as
well as in the history of religio-historical research. If the grove of the Dea Dia is
today one of the best-explored extra-urban cult areas (Scheid 1990), this success is
above all based on the detailed stone-carved records of the Arval Brethren, which
were instrumental in reconstructing the cult community’s tasks and composition, and
in identifying building structures that were excavated over a span of several centuries.
With the cult of Anna Perenna, however, scholarship has continued to speculate about
the “origin” of the deity and the provenance of her name. This one-sided interest
can be explained from the dim view we take of the most detailed record on the cult:
compared to the never-doubted authenticity of the inscribed Arval documents,
Ovid’s literary description of the origins of the cult and the goddess (Fast.
3.523–710) seemed less reliable; it has even been, in part, regarded as poetic fiction
(e.g. Bömer 1958: 179–92).
Ovid’s descriptions of her festival were more widely credited: at least the given
date of March 15, confirmed by an entry in the calendar (fasti Vaticani) and the
characteristics mentioned – an outdoor banquet held in tents and foliage huts, with
men and women toasting each other and asking for a long life – seems to point with
reasonable plausibility to an archaic ritual celebrating the old beginning of the year.
The rustic flavor of the festival was taken in support of that theory, and its theme
of fertility made it rather easy to link the cult to another similarly “popular” day of
celebration, the Liberalia on March 17. Ovid’s multiple etiological explanations, though,
for the name and origin of the goddess did not meet with approval. In particular,
the mythical connection of Anna Perenna with Dido’s sister Anna, and her apotheosis
in the Latin river of Numicus, seemed highly suspect: the competing imitation of
Virgil’s Aeneid, the popularity of the mythical motif of a heroine apotheosized by a
river deity, and last but not least the suspicion of an all too simple folk etymology
- deriving Anna Perenna from amnis perennis– gave rise to the assumption that
Ovid’s tale was nothing but playful scholarly invention.
This negative appraisal has only been reversed after a recent accidental find
(Piranomonte 2002). During the construction of a parking garage in the winter of
1999/2000, a well system was discovered, its masonry dating from late antiquity.
An altar and two marble bases from the second centuryad were built into its front
part. The inscriptions record dedications to the “sacred nymphs of Anna Perenna,”
clearly identifying the cult site. The four lead pipes which connected the well to a
cistern behind it point to a long period of use for this facility, before it was aban-
doned and filled up between the fifth and sixth centuriesad. The following objects
were found in the cistern:
212 Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser