Still higher in dignity than the municipiaare the colonies. It is perhaps for this
reason (Scheid 1997, forthcoming b) that the Umbrian sanctuary of the sources of
Clitumne, which stand before the municipiumof Trevi, was given by Augustus to
the colony of Hispellum.
What became of the local cults which did not enjoy this attention? If they did not
simply disappear, they did not have more than a private status and could be found
on rural property. It is apparently the case of the temple of Ceres, “old and narrow,”
located on the property of Pliny the Younger, in the upper valley of the Tiber or
close to Como; it was restored by his own initiative, inter alia by replacing the
old wooden cult statue (Pliny, Epist. 9.39). Scheid proposes “to regard Ceres as the
guardian divinity of a pagus” (1997: 244). In fact, this private temple was further
attended, on the day of its annual feast (undoubtedly the anniversary day of the
dedication), by a great number of people, coming from the whole region.
This annual feast is on the Ides of September, that is, on the day of the epulum
Iouis(Scheid 1997: 244). The reference to the religious calendar of Rome was
chosen here, although it was a private and regional temple. Another probable
example of the overlapping of a local cult and a Roman feast is provided by a graffito
from the temple of Hercules Curinus, close to Sulmona, by the Paelignians. Some-
body comes to fulfill the vows and to consult the oracle “on the feast of August”
(Buonocore, in Mattiocco 1989). One should recall the feast of the Great Altar of
Hercules in Rome, on August 12, as another graffito reports on the practice of the
tithe, well attested by the Ara Maxima.
I subtitled this last section, dedicated to the Italian cults in Roman Italy, not
“rupture or continuity,” but “ruptures andcontinuities.” The two phenomena
unfold in different proportions according to the cultural areas examined and to the
perspective one adopts. The status of the temple of Hera Lacinia in south Italy,
described as “the most famous temple of this area,” didn’t hinder the plundering
of its marble tiles by the censor Q. Fulvius Flaccus in 173 bc. However, it is sig-
nificant that the injury is redressed: the only abuses of the power of the Roman
magistrates which the senate remedies between the Second Punic War and the Social
War relate precisely to sanctuaries of Magna Graecia, the temple of Persephone in
Locres, and the Lacinionclose to Crotona (de Cazanove 2005).
The conclusion of the episode could be used to substantiate contradictory ver-
dicts: the returned tiles remain gathered in a pile in the areaof the temple, because
a specialized craftsman, able to replace them on the roof, cannot be found: a sign
of chronic technological involution, that seems to indicate abandonment. And yet,
nearly three centuries later, the sanctuary is still active: one freedman dedicates an
altar to Hera Lacinia for the health of Marciana, the sister of Trajan (CIL10.106).
As stated by the senate in 173 bc, “the immortal gods are the same everywhere,”
iidem ubique di immortales(Livy 42.3.9).56 Olivier de CazanoveACTC04 25/04/2007 09:26 AM Page 56