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Catullus and the Di Parentes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

C. B. Pascal
C. B. Pascal
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Lying against the Alpine foothills, the land from which Catullus departed for Rome was the home of many and varied local cults. Inscriptions from the first three centuries of the Empire give laconic testimony to the names of comparatively unknown gods and goddesses or to strange divine epithets which may have been an inheritance of the original Raeti or their Celtic successors who held sway until the Roman conquest. The sphere of religious life revealed in fragmentary form in these monuments was a world removed from that illuminated by the pages of ancient belles lettres; the members of the Roman poetic coteries either exalted the official pantheon or culled less-familiar divine names from the Hellenistic tradition. The reader who expects that an author not native to the city of Rome may shed some light on the religious milieu of his place of origin is therefore fated to an early disappointment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 1959 , pp. 75 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1959

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References

1 Renard, M., “L'élément religieux dans les poésies de Catulle,” Latomus, 5 (1946), 351–357Google Scholar: Hermann, Léon, “Catulle et les cultes exotiques,” La nouvelle Clio, 6 (1954), 236–246.Google Scholar

Thanks are due Professors Harry Caplan, James Hutton, and Arthur Darby Nock, who read my manuscript and suggested valuable changes in its wording and documentation.

2 Penates variant of later mss.

3 R(eligion und) K(ultus der Römer)2, 232, n. 9: “Die veronesischen Weihungen diis parentibus augustis (C[orpus] I[nscriptionum] L[atinarum], V, 3283, bis 3290), mit denen Catull. 64,404 divos scelerare parentes zusammengestellt werden kann, scheinen einem lokalen Kulte anzugehören.” Add Dessau, I(nscriptiones) L(atinae) S(electae), 5541 (= CIL, V, 3290); N(otizie degli) S(cavi di Antichità), 1891, p. 16; Epigraphica, 4 (1942), 166.

4 Jordan, H., “Nachträgliches zu dem Briefe der Cornelia Gracchorum,” Hermes, 15 (1880), 530–536Google Scholar; M. Lenchantin de Gubernatis, Il Libro di Catullo Veronese (Turin, 1928), 187Google Scholar; Ellis, Robinson, A Commentary on Catullus 2 (Oxford, 1889), 344Google Scholar. Dessau, ILS, 7999, n. 1, recognizes that the Di Parentes of Verona are different from those of the funerary inscriptions. Theodor Mommsen, CIL, V, places these among the votive rather than the funerary inscriptions of Verona.

5 Nepos frg. 23, ed. Halm. Nipperdey, Carl, Opuscula (Berlin, 1877), 116 f.Google Scholar, gives other examples of the masculine gender used for a female divinity, to denote the divine entity, rather than the sex of the particular goddess. Festus 230M, 290Th (Lindsay [Leipzig, 1933], 260): si parentem puer verberit, ast olle plorassit paren<s>, puer divis parentum sacer esto, must rather be considered as an injunction against incurring the wrath of the family's gods, according to the contrast between di parentes and di parentum drawn by Wagenvoort, Hendrik, Studies in Roman Literature, Culture, and Religion (Leiden, 1956), 290–295.Google Scholar

6 CIL, VI, 9659 = ILS, 7519 = Bücheler C(armina) L(atina) E(pigraphica), 1583: Diis parentibus / suis hunc lapidem posuit / … Diis Manibus sacrum. / Homo, violare noli, si te / moriturum putas; CIL, X, 5495 = CLE, 376: …et dignos coleret manesque patresque; Wissowa, RK2, 239; ARW (= Archiv für Religionswissenschaft), 7 (1904), 44; Höfer, Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, III, 1579 f.

7 CIL, VI, 29109 = ILS, 8047; CIL, VI, 29852a = NS, 1876, p. 58, found in a burial area; ILS, 1078 = NS, 1890, p. 36: dis genitoribus.

8 Loc. cit. (n. 5 supra).

9 CIL, X, 4255 = ILS, 7999: … deis inferum parentum / sacrum. Ni violato / … Philargurus l(ibertus) et socius; CIL, VI, 29109: Dis parentium / et Genio Vituli / fecit mater f(ilio) pi(i)ssimo.

10 CIL, V, 3287, 3289; NS, 1891, p. 16.

11 CIL, V, 3283: Dis Parenti/bus pro / salute C. C. / Ummidi C. V. / […]. Pro-salute offerings were made both before and after the granting of a favor. CIL, V, 788 is clearly a thanks offering. J. Toutain in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, V, 973, cites CIL, V, 6873, 6875, pro itu et reditu, at the top of the Pennine pass, as vows paid in anticipation of the safe completion of the journey, although the v.s.l.m. concluding these inscriptions implies that getting back to this half-way point is all that the dedicants had bargained for. Nock, A. D., American Journal of Archaeology, 62 (1958), 339 f., cites Jewish and Christian uses of pro salute and hypèr soterías where future benefit or salvation is anticipated by the dedicant.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 CIL, VI, 10248 = ILS, 8366; CIL, VI, 10239.

13 Ovid, Fasti, 2.33 f., 2.533–566, 5.421–492, 5.443: Manes exite paterni; Frazer, J. G., The Fasti of Ovid (London, 1929), II, 431–438Google Scholar, IV, 36–40; RK2, 232–240. Ferri, Silvio, “Osservazioni archeologico-antiquarie al carmen in Lemures,” Studi in onore di Ugo Enrico Paoli (Florence, 1956), 289–292Google Scholar, ingeniously changes the word order to Manes paterni exite, to form what he considers to be the iambic-dimeter-catalectic original of an authentic ritual formula quoted by Ovid. His exposition, however, involves a confusion of the Lemuria and the Parentalia. Rose, H. J., University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 12, no. 6 (1941), 89–94Google Scholar, points out that it was not the di parentes who were expelled during the Lemuria, but the homeless and dangerous lemures; that therefore in the formula used by Ovid the word paterni, at least, was an error either of the poet or his source.

14 Two exceptions to this generalization are in epitaphs cited by Nock, Arthur Darby, “Deification and Julian,” Journal of Roman Studies, 47 (1957), 121, nn. 44, 45. These, however, are without the votive formula to imply a quid pro quo.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 CIL, V, 3290 = ILS, 5441: Diis / Parentibus / Augustis / porticum dedit / L. Iunius M. f. Pauper. Jordan, H., Hermes, 15 (1880), 531, takes these to be the household gods of the Augusti.Google Scholar

16 Local deities of Cisalpine Gaul bearing the title Augustus: CIL, V, 748, 749, 753, to Apollo Belenus Augustus; 818–833, 8244, 8245, Ettore Pais, CIL Supplementa Italica (Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, 4th s., 5 [1888]), 168, to Silvanus Augustus, at Aquileia, where the cult had unique features; CIL, V, 3220, to Deus Augustus; 8217, Inscriptiones Italiae, X, fasc. 1, no. 662, to Melesocus Augustus, known only in Istria.

17 Nock, Arthur Darby, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 45 (1925), 92 f., 48 (1928), 41 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 CIL, V, 3262; Wissowa, Georg, ARW, 19 (1918), 45, n. 4.Google Scholar

19 Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, R(eal-)E(ncyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft), s. v.

20 Keune, Roscher's Lexikon, VI, 350–354; Haverfield, F., Archaeologia Aeliana, 3rd s., 15 (1918), 22–43.Google Scholar

21 Kroll, Wilhelm, Catull 2 (Leipzig, 1929)Google Scholar, ad locum; Delatte, L., “Uterque Neptunus,” L'Antiquité Classique, 4 (1935), 45–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Earlier editors, notably Baehrens, hold that this is a reference to Neptune as god of the Eastern and Western seas.

22 Toutain, J., Les cultes païens dans l'Empire romain (Paris, 1907–1920), I, 372–380; St. Weinstock RE, XVI, 2533–2535; RK2, 228.Google Scholar

23 L. Delatte, loc. cit. (n. 21 supra); CIL, V, 4285, to Neptune and Vires, at Brescia (cf. 5648, to Lymfae and Vires, near Milan); 5258, to Neptune and Di Aquatiles, pro … incolumit(ate), Como (cf. III, 1562, to di et numina aquarum from dedicants incolumes reversi, in Dacia); other dedications to Neptune in the Transpadana: V, 4874, 7457, 6565, 7850.

24 Guthrie, W. K. C., The Greeks and their Gods (London, 1950), 95 f.; E. G. Meyer, Roscher's Lexikon, III, 2818–2820; Ernst Wüst, RE, XXII, 491 f. Among the ancient references are Schol. Pindar, P. 4.246 and Servius, Georg., 1.12, on Poseidon Petraios; Apollodorus, 1.4.8, Poseidon drying up a spring; Pausanias, 3.21.5, a lake of Poseidon in Aegeae; Pausanias, 2.20.5, 2.15.5, Poseidon's control of the river Cephissus.Google Scholar

25 For attempts to identify Colonia, cf. Kroll on C., 17.1.

26 Th. Birt, ”Pontifex und Sexagenarii de Ponte,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 2nd s., 75 (1926), 115–126. His conclusions and readings are incorporated in the edition of M. Lenchantin de Gubernatis.Google Scholar

27 C., 17.1: loedere ( = ludere) Schuster, Friedrich laedere Birt op. cit. ledere mss.

28 C., 17.5 f.: sali subsili V (= GO) sali subsali later mss. Salisubsilis Sta., Baehrens, Friedrich ‘sali subsili’ Birt op. cit. The grammatical objection to Birt's retention of the mss. reading (Rubenbauer, Hans, Bursian's Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 212 [1927], 199) is answered by Lenchantin, who gives two Petronian examples of this substantive use of the imperative (Petr., Sat., 44.3, 57.11).Google Scholar

29 Servius, Aen. 2.166: … pontifices a ponte sublicio … sicut carmina Saliorum loquuntur. This is interpreted as confirmation of a Salian bridge dance by Frazer, Fasti, IV, 94; Birt, op. cit. This interpretation is opposed by Wissowa, RK2, 558, n. 1; Baehrens on C., 17; Geiger, RE, 2nd s., I, 1893 f.

30 RK2, 558, n. 1; Baehrens.

31 Phrase used by Wheeler, Arthur Leslie, Catullus and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry (Berkeley, Calif., 1934), 26, to describe C., 17.Google Scholar

32 C., 7.5 f

33 C., 10.26 f. The mistresses of the Roman elegists are commonly represented as devotees of Isis, a favorite of the Roman women, and for whom they observed ten-day periods of ritual abstinence; cf. Tibullus, 1.3.23–26; Propertius, 2.33.1–22, 4.5.34. Alföldi, András, A Festival of Isis in Rome under the Christian Emperors of the IVth Century (Dissertationes Pannonicae, ser. II, fasc. 7 [1937]), 42–46, describes the rôle of the Egyptian cults as the superstition of orientals and the lower classes in the late Republic and early Empire until the ultimate ascendancy of these cults to the forefront of the conservative reaction to Christianity.Google Scholar

34 C., 29.8.

35 C., 36.11 ff.; C., 34.

36 CIL, XIV, 3535 = CLE, 879.

37 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 172–201, Lucretius, 3.70 ff., Sallust, Catiline, 10–13. The similarities with the unwilling sin of Jocasta, the seduction of a daughter-in-law at Verona (C., 67.37 ff.), or the rumor that Catiline did away with his own son in order to please a prospective bride (Sall., Cat. 15) do not correspond exactly with the details of this passage. It is also unlikely that Catullus’ personal lampoon of the incest of a certain Gellius (C., 88–90) is taken up here.

38 C., 101.7; Robinson Ellis ad locum; cf. Aen., 6.223.

39 C., 64.400.

40 Cf. C., 67.24: conscelerare domum, and the metonymy of the house with the household gods in 9.3: domum ad tuos penates, and 31.9: larem ad nostrum.

41 C., 62.63.