478 Jörg Rüpke
mythical narratives of sexual relationships among gods (fr. 19 Cardauns). Romans would
share such a feeling with the Lavinians and their public cult of male genitals:
He says that in crossroads of Italy some Bacchic cults are celebrated...in which male genitals
are venerated in his honour....DuringthefestivalsofBacchus, this genital member was put
into a car, then carried along with much honour, first on crossroads in the countryside, and
later even into the city. In the town of Lavinium a whole month used to be dedicated to
Bacchus. Throughout the month everyone would use the most shocking words until this
member was driven through the central market place and put to rest in its proper place. The
most dignified female head of a family had to publicly crown this undignified member. In
this way evidently the god Bacchus had to be appeased so that the seeds would sprout, and
in this way were the fields protected from evil spells. (fr. 262 Cardauns=Aug.civ. 7.21)Varro does not use the histories of religions in order to mark boundaries. He seems to
be interested in the bridging capital of a shared history rather than in the binding capital.
Modifying Yarrow’s “focalized universality” (Yarrow 2010), I have proposed calling this
a focused universalism (Rüpke 2012c).
Bridging holds true on different levels. Within a universalistic framework, religious
traditions of different peoples offer a heritage that might be shared. Fr. 31 Cardauns
names heroes from Africa and Boeotia. As already shown by the contemporary institu-
tion ofinterpretatio, the same god could be venerated under different names. Varro does
not only list enforcing evidence. Even the negative trait of Roman religious practice to
entertain images of the divine is shared by many polities (fr. 18 Cardauns=Aug.civ.
4.31). Roman precepts for ritual action as well as Greek precepts for ritual abstinence
were resources for the solution of human problems (fr. 49–50 Cardauns=Non. p. 197
Mercier). Varro, born 116BCE, had witnessed the start of the Italian civil war as a military
tribune and was much aware of the problem of the unification of Italy, in the same way
as he was aware of internal cleavages in Roman society. Varro’s program of three types of
theology does not aim at deepening dividing lines, but at holding divergent developments
together. Poetry and its invention of embarrassing stories about the gods serve the theatre
and entertainment and still offer something to civic cult (fr. 11, quoted in the preced-
ing text). Philosophy, producing physical interpretations of religion, should be confined
to smaller circles, but offers something to civic theology too (ibid.). Both are univer-
sal phenomena and hence shared reservoirs for the many local civic variants of religion
(see fr. 9).
If Varro employed history of religion in order to deal with ethnic and social diversity,
he took part of a larger current in Roman historiography. This current attempted to cre-
ate a history narrative, which integrated family histories from members of the elite who
descended from all over Italy. Annalistic history, narrating Roman history year by year
with ever-changing protagonists, as well as the listing of temple anniversaries in the calen-
dar, anniversaries, which went back to individual military victories without ever naming
the agents, both offered the possibility of leveling out differences in individual or gentili-
cian contributions, to write a history without hierarchy. Cato the Elder even attempted a
history without naming individuals. Varro wrote historical accounts of religion within
an ever-wider framework. His intended readers were Romans reading Latin, and his
focus was on Rome, but his interest was in religion as a universal phenomenon, enabling