invoked, ritual procedures were planned in order to make those powers propitious
and have them as allies. Care for the gods, the very meaning of religio, had therefore
to go through life, and one might thus understand why Cicero wrote that religion
was “necessary.” Religious behavior – pietasin Latin, eusebeiain Greek – belonged
to action and not to contemplation. Consequently religious acts took place wherever
the faithful were: in houses, boroughs, associations, cities, military camps, cemeter-
ies, in the country, on boats. “When pious travelers happen to pass by a sacred grove
or a cult place on their way, they are used to make a vow, or a fruit offering, or to
sit down for a while” (Apuleius, Florides1.1). All these topographical or institutional
places have not left the same number of remains; they vary with place and period.
Individuals had their own private protectors, a Geniusfor men and a Iunofor
women; they were favorable when honored rightly (Plautus, Captivi290; Tibullus
2.2.1–10). The passing of ages and stages in life was devoted to specific divine beings
as well. There were those who accompanied mothers and newborn children, and young
boys wore a bullaaround their neck to be used as an apotropaic amulet. Once they
had grown up to the age of iuuentas, by the time they could put on the toga uirilis,
they offered the bullato protecting, domestic deities, the Lares (Néraudau 1979:
147–52), before going to the Capitol for a sacrifice, and to the temple of Mars Ultor
from the time of Augustus onward (Dio 55.10.2). Once the bride had crossed over
her new home’s threshold without touching it (Plautus, Casina815–17; Catullus
61.166 – 8), specific deities attended to the wedding night, up to Pertunda, who cared
for penetration and who was therefore fiercely denounced by Augustine (Civ.
6.9.3). Domestic Lares and the Penates were referees and attendants for the whole
familiaat home (Tibullus 1.3.34; Juvenal 12.87f.; see Fröhlich 1991). The lady
mistress honored them in the various sequences of the month (Cato, Agr.143.2;
Orr 1978). During meal-times, offerings called for these deities’ benevolence: “once
the first service was over, people were used to keep silence until the food portion
that was reserved as an offering (libata) was taken to the altar and thrown into
the fire, and a child had said that gods are propitious (deos propitios)” (Servius, Aeneis
1.730). In both country and town, the Lares of the crossroads (compitales) repres-
ented a similar guardianship principle (Ov. Fast.2.616), providing stability and cohe-
sion. They were supplemented with a strategy of political control when closely linked
to the imperial order from the Augustan reform onward (Ov. Fast.5.129– 48; Fraschetti
1994: 272– 6; in Puteoli, Steuernagel 2004: 43f.). On a larger geographical scale,
neighbors might meet in regional cult places, which could belong to a private owner:
“Many affairs are dealt (multae res aguntur), vows are made and discharged” (Pliny,
Epist.9.39.2; Scheid 1997: 249f.).
A relationship with the supernatural world might only be undertaken once the
faithful had delineated its conditions, that is, once the divine beings had been
recognized as superior powers. The ritual construction had to settle them as pos-
sible partners. The faithful had to call the deity they invoked by the proper name:
ritual address was an invocation and identification of the power concerned as well.
If the person ignored the right theonym (the personal name), or the name the god
preferred, he could use a periphrasis approved as being welcome and advised by
pontiffs (Gellius 2.2): si deus, si dea(Alvar 1985). He might also use a formula that
was previously familiar to the Greeks (Aeschylus, Agamemnon160): siue quo alio nomine
Religious Actors in Daily Life 279