and his traditional sixth-century dates cohere roughly with the sixth-century finds at
S. Omobono. Much of this depends on somewhat speculative connections, and it is
not demonstrable and perhaps not plausible that the actions of a Greek tyrant were
precisely imitated by a Roman king, who added a touch of the Phoenician world.
The deduction one can make, though, is that in the Roman world, and indeed across
central Italy, patterns of behavior had developed by later in the sixth century that
are sophisticated and demand to be read intelligently, and with some knowledge of
a narrative mythical framework. There is no doubt that in the fourth century and
after, Roman religion developed, imported new deities, elaborated its ritual calen-
dar, and to some extent reinvented or maybe invented archaic rituals; but this was
not wholly new or unprecedented, and middle republican innovation is predicated
upon the groundwork laid in the archaic period.
Most of what has been discussed above relates to public cult. There is every reason
to suppose that private and domestic cult developed at least alongside the cults of
the state. One interesting area which is still to be fully explored is the relationship
between the state and the domestic Lares and Penates. Every domusor house had
its own such deities, and the Lares were often envisaged as twins. In their form as
the Lares Praestites they were guardians of Rome. The Penates, on the other hand,
were identified with sacred objects rescued from Troy by Aeneas, and in some accounts
located and worshiped at Lavinium. It is tempting to attribute great antiquity to
such stories and deities (see e.g. Carandini 1997), but it is worth emphasizing that
these stories can also be connected with much later story-telling, of Greek-
influenced tales of nymphs and fauns, and indeed the whole Trojan cycle. The diffi-
culties inherent in securing these particular stories do not remove the likely antiquity
of private domestic religion.
It is important briefly to acknowledge here that one difficulty in the study of archaic
Roman religion is that one may reasonably guess that Etruscan religion has a large
part to play in its development, since throughout the sixth century Rome shows
substantial Etruscan material in its archaeological record, and the literary sources
claim a period of Etruscan domination through the kings Tarquinius Priscus and
Superbus. The absence of substantial reliable source evidence for the Etruscans and
in particular their religion is a serious obstacle here. It may well be that Etruscan
influence can be overstated – recently, an attempt has been made to limit it to the
external trappings (dress, cultic implements, the odd word) but not the substance
of festivals, rites, or political institutions (Cornell 1995: 151–72). Undoubtedly Rome
shared with its neighbors a whole package of practices and customs, and that may
well include a degree of cultural eclecticism, which led all the people of central Italy,
and the elite most particularly, to pick and choose appropriate behaviors that under-
pinned their own ambitions. The most important role of the Etruscans, and the
Campanians to the south, may have been in mediating the tremendous impact of
Greek, Phoenician, and other eastern ways of thinking. The success of this may be
symbolized by a fragment of an Attic black figure cup, representing Hephaestus, found
in the cult site in the Forum which the Romans called the Volcanal, proving that
by the early sixth century at least the Romans had identified their own deity with a
Greek one (Cornell 1995: 163 for illustration).
38 Christopher Smith