A Companion Roman Religion - Spiritual Minds

The Great Public Rituals: Possibility and

Limits of Comparison

In order to clear up Roman realities, or some other Italic ritual documents, one

often calls upon the famous Iguvine Tables, already quoted. As we will see, these

comparisons, useful in detail, can be carried on only up to a certain point. One gen-

erally regards the bronze Tables of Gubbio as the most complete document on an

Italic religion (anItalic religion, it is necessary to stress here once again, and not

the Italic religions in general). The seven bronze tables found at Iguvium (Gubbio,

Umbria) in the fifteenth century, all written in Umbrian, are noted in an alphabet

derived from the Etruscan for the oldest, in a Latin alphabet for the most recent

ones. They are to be dated between the end of the third century bc and the

Social War (Sisani 2001: 237– 45). They have been made the object of innumer-

able attempts at exegesis (among others Devoto 1940, 1977; Poultney 1959;

Prosdoscimi 1989). They are in fact ritual protocols, of a high degree of accuracy,

relating to the public ceremonies carried out on behalf of the city (ocre fisia) and of

the community (tuta ikuvina). On tables I and VI is described the complex rite (per-

sklo) (Prosdoscimi 1985) which takes place around the three gates of the city, after

the preliminary consulting of auspicia. Two groups of three victims are sacrificed at

each gate: at the Trebulan gate, three oxen to Jupiter Grabovius and three pregnant

sows to Trebus Jovius (in front of and behind the gate respectively); at the

Tesenacan gate, three oxen to Mars Grabovius and three suckling pigs to Fisus Sacus;

at the Veian gate, three oxen to Vofionus Grabovius, three ewe-lambs to Tefer Jovius.

The “Graboviustriad” was many times compared with the “archaic” or “pre-

Capitoline” triad of Rome (Dumézil 1974: 161–2). In Rome, Jupiter, Mars, and

Quirinus are invoked together on certain solemn occasions and are represented by

three priests, the flamen Dialis, the flamen Martialis, theflamen Quirinalis. For

Dumézil, these two structures are exactly parallel and are to be explained as ori-

ginating from an inherited model, which he calls “trifunctionality” (sovereign and

priestly function, warrior function, productive and social function). The sovereign

god (Jupiter) and the god of war (Mars) are the same in Gubbio and in Rome,

but apparently the last term of the equation is not so. In fact – and on this point

Dumézil has enjoyed general agreement – Quirinus and Vofionus can be regarded

as equivalents (Benveniste 1969). According to the generally accepted etymologies,

Quirinus comes from *co-uiri-no, “(the god) of the community of the viri(men),”

and Vofionus from *leudhyo-no, “(the god) of the people.”

The relationship between the two triadic arrangements Jupiter–Mars–Quirinus and

Jupiter Grabovius–Mars Grabovius–Vofionus Grabovius is beyond doubt, regardless

of whether one interprets the overlap as fossilized common heritage or, on the con-

trary, opportunistic update of the potential of the neighboring religions. I favor the

view that the reference to the three Grabovius gods is in Gubbio only one part of

a complex ritual and should not therefore be arbitrarily isolated even when doing

so serves to underline theoretical parallelism with the Roman situation. There is

parallelism, certainly, but it relates to only one segment of the ceremony. There are

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