Indeed, Roman legend and political practice together suggest that the residence
of the Penates in Lavinium was both odd and well known. For on the one hand,
magistrates had to go to them to sacrifice. That is, newly elected magistrates form-
ally left Rome and journeyed to Lavinium, there to sacrifice to the Penates, in order
to complete their installation in their Roman magistracy. And not surprisingly, the
very considerable lore that grew up around the Penates devotes considerable energy
to explaining precisely that fact. It concentrates above all on what is described as
their choice to dwell there. In the version related by Valerius Maximus, upon his
arrival in Italy, Aeneas founded the city of Lavinium and there installed his house-
hold gods. When his son Ascanius subsequently founded Alba, he moved his ances-
tral gods to the new city. The very next day, the gods were discovered back in their
former sacrarium. “Since it was considered possible that this had been the work of
human hands,” the gods were moved again. “They made their will apparent by remov-
ing themselves a second time” (Val. Max. 1.8.7).
The stories that circulated around the dei Penates– the need to explain their loca-
tion – gestures toward a problem central to the concerns of this chapter. Simply
stated, it is this. In Roman religion, not all gods moved; nor was it always possible
to perform cult wheresoever one willed – to say nothing of performing a ritual in
two places simultaneously. To observe this is to strike asunder the very expectation
that has traditionally motivated the study of our topic. This is not to say that Roman
religion writ large did not spread – specific forms of rituals, governing principles,
bodies of law, indeed, specific gods moved as their practitioners and worshipers did.
What the invocation of the Penates demands is rather some consideration of the
constraints internal to Roman religion upon its export.
To illustrate the scope and nature of Roman investment in geographic fixity, for
lack of a better term, we might turn to two bodies of evidence. The first concerns
gods like the Penates, who consent or refuse to move, as well as the rituals by which
their removal was effected; the second concerns those bodies of religious law that
regulated borders and the status of land.
Perhaps the best evidence for gods who move – or move Roman-style – is the
literature that developed around accounts of evocatio, “summoning forth,” a ritual
in which a Roman commander invites the tutelary deity of a city to abandon its charge
and accept equivalent or greater worship at Rome (Le Gall 1976; Blomart 1997;
Gustaffson 2000; Ando forthcoming b: ch. 6). Only two lengthy accounts of the
rite survive from antiquity: that of Livy, writing in the 20s bceabout the sack of
Veii in the first decade of the fourth century (5.21.1–5, 22.3–7); and that of Macrobius,
writing in the late 420s ceabout the sack of Carthage 560 years earlier (Saturnalia
3.9). To these we can add perhaps another three cases for which Romans under
the republic provide specific testimony. By the early principate, however, Roman
historians and theorists of empire commonly made much more general claims, to
the effect that all the gods of the empire had once been summoned, and now were
resident at Rome. To that argument I shall return. Livy provides, however, our only
narrative of the rite, and he insists not simply that the goddess explicitly assented
to the move, but that she expressed her assent through her statue and, indeed, that
the transfer of her cult statue from Veii to Rome amounted to the removal of the
goddess herself (Livy 5.22.3–7).
Exporting Roman Religion 441