(b) In a supplication, the entire population went to the open temples and made
sacrifices wearing wreaths in their hair and carrying laurel-twigs in their hands.
The aim was the restoration and redefinition of the borders between gods
and humans, namely boundaries between groups of Roman society. At the
lectisterniumof 217 bc, celebrated after the defeat at lake Trasimene, the
statues of the 12 Olympian gods were ritually served food for three days
(Livy 22.10.9). Such a sacral dinner community symbolized both the close
connection and the difference between the gods and the Romans.By transgressing the boundaries between senators and the rest of the Roman cit-
izens, by celebrating rituals together, prodigies and their expiation were a means of
defining Roman identity. Only a few and rare rituals do not fit into this system, such
as a ritual fast in honor of Ceres, recorded only for 191bc(Livy 36.37.4).
The same type of prodigy would not always be expiated with the same rituals.
The only exception is a rain of stones, regularly expiated by a novendiale sacrum,
feriaefor nine days, during which work and lawsuits had to cease. Plagues were
expiated by games (ludi) from 364. When lightning struck in the city of Rome, the
bolt was buried and the place enclosed. For all other prodigies, the Romans used a
variety of rituals which can be classified as elements of regular cults performed out-
side the regular order, such as processions, supplications, vota, and sacrifice. Even
if the same type of prodigy recurs over centuries, the priests seem to have been
consulted by the senate every time. Sometimes, it seems, one ritual could suffice to
expiate several prodigies. In 93bc, if Iulius Obsequens is to be believed, 13 prodigies
were expiated by lustrations (Obsequens 52).
For the senators, prodigies and the highly performative expiation rituals were a
means of communication. First, the senate, endowed with secular and religious com-
petence, functioned as an interface between humans and the gods. Senators inter-
preted the signs and took care of their expiation. Second, expiating prodigies was
a means of coping with disaster and of strengthening identity and cohesion within
the Roman res publica. Prodigies did not foretell future disasters or the end of Rome.
On the contrary, the Romans were always able – such is the overall image we get
from reading the sources – to successfully expiate the signs. Therefore, the report-
ing of prodigies did not lead to fear or panic. Only the Romans had to deal with
such terrible signs, but the gods communicated them only to the Romans, thus legit-
imizing Rome’s domination. If we accept that the whitened board (tabula dealbata)
of the pontiffs contained a constantly updated list of the prodigies of the current
year and if we accept that the list was accessible to everybody – our sources are highly
ambiguous about this – its result would not have been fear or panic; it would have
communicated that everything would be handled by the consuls in due course.
It is therefore plausible that the number of prodigies and the extent of expiation
rituals increased during times of crisis. This can be demonstrated in Livy’s treatment
of the Second Punic War. Although we always must take into account his literary
strategies (Davies 2004: 12–52), it is worth examining the prodigies and expiation
rituals of 207bc, a year about which Livy’s notes are particularly detailed. At the
beginning of the year, a rainfall of stones had been expiated by a novendiale sacrum.
296 Veit Rosenberger