Pre-Roman Italy, Before and Under the Romans 45foreigners of particular holy places is epigraphically documented. However, the
best testimony that we have on a multi-ethnic sanctuary in Italy comes from a lit-
erary source. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (3.32.1), the sacred grove
of Feronia in the territory of Capena was the site of the most famous fair in
Italy. During the feast days, one made deals both with the gods (vows taken and
fulfilled, sacrifices) and with other merchants. Dionysius adds that the place of
cult was jointly venerated by Latins and Sabines. He doesn’t mention either the
Etruscans or the Faliscans, but these were surely present: Livy (26.12) writes for
his part “of the Capenates and of the other neighboring people... who had filled
the sanctuary with gold and silver.” Its treasures were plundered by the troops of
Hannibal in 211 bc. Feronia, goddess of wild nature and also of the transformation
of the uncultivated into cultivated – she had a role to play in the emancipation of
the slaves – was mainly venerated in the Sabine and Sabellic area, but she was also
introduced in Rome, and even in the conciliabulumof Pisaurum, a later colony of
Roman citizens.
In addition to the sanctuaries with multi-ethnic worshipers, like that of lucus Feroniae,
there are also places of cult managed together by two towns of the same ethnic
group, like that of Hercules in Campania, about which an exceptional epigraphic
document, the cippus abellanusfrom the second century bc, informs us that it was
the common property of Abella and Nola (Franchi De Bellis 1988); or the sacred
grove of Juno Sospita in Lanuvium, whose administration the Romans demanded
to share with the Lavinates after the Latin war (Livy 8.14). But all these shared
places of cult seem to have remained an exception. Each community (city, people,
or ethnic league) had a religion of its own, which concerned in principle only its
members, while non-members of the community could be excluded. In Rome,
in certain sacrifices, the lictor shouted: “out of here (exesto) the foreigner (hostis),
the chained prisoner, the woman, the young girl! It was forbidden for any such
individuals to be present” (Paul. Fest. 72 L). At Gubbio, in Umbria, before a
ceremony taking place at the boundary stones, one solemnly banished “the people
of Tadinum, the tribe of Tadinum, the nations of Etruria and of the river Na(ha)r,
the iapuzkum nomen” (Rix 2002: 48). A little earlier in the ritual, the execration
prayers against the same people are addressed first collectively to three divinities,
Cerfius Martius, Prestota Cerfia of Cerfus Martius, Tursa Cerfia of Cerfus Martius,
then to each of the two goddesses in the transparent names Praestota, “the-one-
who-protects,” and Tursa, “the-one-who-terrifies.” The ban concerns with one
exception the adjacent populations of Umbria: the Etruscans in the west, beyond
Tiber, the Sabines in the east, on the other side of Na(ha)r (these rivers would
still be the limits of the Augustan region VI: Umbria). The iapuzkum nomenis
probably located on the Adriatic coast, that is, in the direction of Picenum. The
exception is Tadinum (today Gualdo Tadino). This is an Umbrian city, like
Iguvium–Gubbio. But precisely this Umbrian city is treated in the prayers of execra-
tion in a different way than the other peoples. One excludes the tuta tarinate, the
trifu tarinate, the “community” and the “tribe” of Tadinum, while speaking about
turskum numem, the “Etruscan nation.”ACTC04 25/04/2007 09:26 AM Page 45