A Companion Roman Religion - Spiritual Minds

The Italic Religious Cultures:

Similarities and Differences

In Italic religious cultures we can observe exclusion of the other, but at the same

time a considerable similarity. The similarity between the exestoof the Roman lictor

and the ban of execration in Gubbio is one of the numerous rapprochements one

can identify between Roman religion and Italic religions. One can likewise point out

numerous similarities between the religions of the different Italic peoples. These

are in fact homologous religious cultures, but they do not coincide exactly. In order

to study them, it is necessary to pay as much attention to the contrasts as to the

similarities.

Let us go back to the problem of the religious identities and their representa-

tions. There was indeed, as we have suggested, a lack of a positive and coherent

image of the whole of Italy in the face of Rome. But, on the other hand, the

symbol of the Italics in revolt at the time of the Social War (91– 89 bc) is well

known: the bull crushes the Roman she-wolf on the coins of the insurgents with

the legend víteliú. There is a complex network of implicit references here (Briquel

1996): first the etymology, distorted but current, which made out of Italy “land

of the calves” (Italia/Ouphitouliôa < calf/vitlu Umbr.); then the reference to

the civilizing epic of Hercules, who brings back the oxen of Geryon through

the peninsula; finally the allusion to the legendary Samnite origins. On another

denariusof the Social War (Rutter 2001: 409) the bull appears reclining, next to a

standing warrior with spear. Lengthways on the lance runs the legend safinim

(Samnium). The scene must actually illustrate the foundation account of the

Samnite nation. The young Sabines were expelled from their community in execu-

tion of a vow. They emigrate under the guidance of a bull, which lies down to

indicate the place where they must settle. They gratefully sacrifice to Mars the

animal which guided them.

This type of migration is an essential element of the “sacred spring” (uer sacrum).

The sacred spring is presented by a little corpus of sources (de Cazanove 2000a) as

a mos, a typical Italic custom (Paul. Fest.519–20 L). This large-scale gift consists in

dedicating to the divinity, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, all the

living beings which will be born in the year: the animals will be sacrificed, the devoted

men expelled once they have reached adulthood. The uer sacrumis placed under

the patronage of the god Mars and almost exclusively concerns the ethnos safinim

and its ramifications. It aims to explain that the different native populations from

the center of the peninsula come from a single origin: the common Sabine trunk.

The Aboriginessettle down in the core of Sabine land, at Cutiliae. The sacrani(the

“dedicated ones”), coming from Reate, settle down on the Roman septimontium.

Some Sabines emigrate to Samnium, others to Picenum under the guidance of a

woodpecker, others still to the Hernician country, to the Paelignian country, to Hirpinia

led by a wolf; the Lucanians come from the Samnites and the Brutti from the Lucanians.

We won’t discuss here the degree to which these migratory movements are realistic

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