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OVID, FASTI 3.330*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Llewelyn Morgan
Llewelyn Morgan*
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Extract

      eliciunt caelo te, Iuppiter; unde minores
      nunc quoque te celebrant Eliciumque uocant.
      constat Auentinae tremuisse cacumina siluae,
      terraque subsedit pondere pressa Iouis.   (Ov. Fasti 3.327–30)

They draw you down from the sky, Jupiter, and that is why more recent generations still worship you today, and call you Elicius. It is certain that the summit of the Aventine wood trembled, and the earth sank beneath the weight of Jupiter.

Dismayed by an unprecedented flurry of thunderbolts, the pious King Numa sets out to expiate the omen. His divine consort Egeria advises him to learn the ritus piandi (291) from Picus and Faunus, who will, however, only reveal the necessary information under compulsion. Numa makes plans to ambush the gods, taking up position in a cave within a grove ‘under the Aventine, black with the shade of the holm oak, at sight of which you would say, “A spirit is here”’ (lucus Auentino suberat niger ilicis umbra, | quo posses uiso dicere ‘numen inest’, 295–6). The description of this numinous location continues (297–9):
      in medio gramen, muscoque adoperta uirenti
      manabat saxo uena perennis aquae;
      inde fere soli Faunus Picusque bibebant.

In the middle was a meadow, and an unceasing stream of water, covered with green moss, flowed from the rock. From it Faunus and Picus, unaccompanied, were in the habit of drinking.

Once captured by the king, Faunus and Picus tell Numa that only Jupiter himself can be consulted about Jupiter's own domain (if we read tecta at 316; Jupiter's weapons, if we read tela, and there's little to choose between those readings), but that with their help Numa may be able to draw Jupiter down from the sky to answer his enquiry.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 855 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The author is grateful to Stephen Heyworth, Matthew Leigh, Andrew Sillett, and CQ's anonymous reader for their comments on an earlier draft.

References

1 Quotations from Fasti are based on the Teubner text of Alton, E.H., Wormell, D.E.W., and Courtney, E., P. Ovidi Nasonis Fastorum libri sex (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1997 4)Google Scholar. Translations are my own.

2 Alton, Wormell, and Courtney (n. 1) cite the arguments of Krüger, F., De Ovidi Fastis recensendis (Rostock and Schwerin, 1872), 24Google Scholar, in favour of retaining tecta.

3 Valerius Antias F8 in Cornell, T.J. et al. , The Fragments of the Roman Historians (Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar.

4 See HRR 2 1.239 and n. For a synthesis of the information regarding Jupiter Elicius see Andreussi, M., ‘Iuppiter Elicius, Ara’, LTUR 3.135Google Scholar. The perils of summoning Jupiter from heaven are illustrated by a traditional account of the death of Numa's successor, Tullus Hostilius (Liv. 1.31.8).

5 The breadth of Jupiter Elicius' functions are discussed by Andreussi (n. 4).

6 Merlin, A., L'Aventin dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1906), 110Google Scholar; Rubino, J., Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte Italiens (Leipzig, 1868), 212–13Google Scholar n. 298; Gilbert, O., Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum (Leipzig, 1883–90), 2.156–7Google Scholar n.

7 Haselberger, L. et al. , Mapping Augustan Rome, JRA Supplement 50 (Portsmouth, RI, 2002), 68–9Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Bona Dea (Sub Saxo)’.

8 Cf. Wiseman, T.P., Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge, 1995), 112–13Google Scholar.

9 For a detailed description of the shrine, as we know it, see Chioffi, L., ‘Bona Dea Subsaxana’, LTUR 1.200–1Google Scholar.

10 Meneghini, R. and Valenzani, R. S., Formae urbis Romae: nuovi frammenti di piante marmoree dallo scavo dei fori imperiali (Rome, 2006), 25Google Scholar.

11 Brouwer, H.H.J., Bona Dea: The Sources and Description of the Cult (Leiden, 1989)Google Scholar, esp. 324–7.

12 Richardson, L. Jr., A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, MD, 1992), 47Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Aventinus Mons’.

13 Ibid.

14 Skutsch, O., Studia Enniana (London, 1968), 63–71Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 65. Wiseman (n. 8), 112–13, provides some useful contemporary orientation: ‘The church of S. Balbina stands there now, on the height between the headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Baths of Caracalla.’

16 Haselberger et al. (n. 7).

17 Di Manzano, P. and Quinto, R., ‘Area di S. Balbina’, BCAR 89 (1984), 69–75Google Scholar.

18 See Meneghini and Valenzani (n. 10), 26 (Stefania Fogangolo).

19 Also the location favoured by Coarelli, F., Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA, 2007), 310Google Scholar.

20 Platner, S.B. and Ashby, T., A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1926), 65Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Aventinus Mons’.

21 Edwards, C., Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (Cambridge, 1996), 57Google Scholar.