16 C. Robert Phillips, III
acquaintance with those handbooks’ sources. To return and recapitulate, Labeo points
to substantial scholarly interest in Roman religion, an interest which his contem-
porary Censorinus may have shared through demonstrable use of Suetonius’ lost De
anno Romanorum(On the Year of the Romans), but they remain the sole exemplars
of such interest in his era, and this accords with the period’s general tendencies and
contrasts with earlier eras. In general, the patristic authors as they prosecute their
polemical agenda present occasional bits of information as mere snippets of indif-
ferent probative value hastily culled from larger works; Tertullian may constitute a
significant exception (see chapter 31 in this volume).
Despite the third-century issues, it is clear from works of the next two centuries
that interest in and resources for Roman religion had not perished. Unfortunately,
it becomes impossible to generalize. For example, the fifth-century polytheist
Martianus Capella shows some knowledge of Etruscan arcana, although the quality
of that knowledge remains debatable since he clearly used earlier scholars’ work with-
out attribution (Weinstock 1946). Certainly he relies heavily on some combination
of Nigidius Figulus and Varro; likewise, he probably had access to the late repub-
lic’s Latin translations of the Etruscan sacred books. Nevertheless we cannot know
if he knew his sources complete. Pars pro toto, consider the case of the aforemen-
tioned Lucius Cincius. His 31 fragments preserved in GRF(pp. 372– 81) come from
Arnobius (1 fragment), Charisius (1), Festus (22), Aulus Gellius (1), John Lydus
(2; three further quotations are absent from GRF), Macrobius (3), Servius (1). Perhaps
the most obvious inference becomes that there existed substantial knowledge of Cincius
in the second centuryad, but this inference totters when we recall that Festus (sec-
ond centuryad) epitomized Verrius Flaccus. Thus we should rather assert that Flaccus,
a contemporary of Cincius, had substantial, possibly total, access to his work and
that later authors did not but rather borrowed from Flaccus and Festus. Indirect
references slightly expand this; Gellius (16.4) quotes from him promiscuously, Livy
uncharacteristically praises him as a source (7.3.7), Varro used him (Macr. 1.12–13),
one late direct quotation may be expanded by a paraphrase (Servius, Georgica1.10).
But we cannot be doctrinaire; the grammarian Charisius could have quoted from a
now-lost anthology, but it is not impossible that he used his own antiquarian copy,
and possibly other grammarians did as well (Marius Victorinus GL 6.23.19 –20;
Consentius GL5.349.11). Writ large, how much Varro could, and did, Augustine
know? Again, the Carmen contra Paganosclearly has scholarly knowledge of Roman
polytheism, but from where (Phillips 1988)? Of course, “handbooks” constitute one
possibility. “Libraries” constitute a better one, since through the fourth centuryad
polytheists remained a significant group with means and motive and opportunity to
preserve antiquarian religious treatises – after all, pace Ammianus Marcellinus
(28.4.14, 14.6.18) not all senators hated learning like poison and kept their libraries
closed like tombs. Productions like Symmachus’ Third Relatioor much of Ausonius
betoken substantial research resources. And we should not overestimate Augustine’s
ken; he mined Varro but did not expand his researches, both for theology and, inter-
estingly, for music (De musica). Christianity had conceptually liquidated Greco-Roman
divinities to the status of demons or delusions, in part by citing nuggets of poly-
theist information.