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Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

John Elsner
John Elsner
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge, and Courtauld Institute of Art
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Extract

On 30 January 9 B.C., two thousand years ago this year, the Senate dedicated the Ara Pacis Augustae. This paper celebrates that anniversary by putting forward a new interpretation of the altar's significance. Rather than focusing on a discussion of iconography or the identification of individuals portrayed on the altar, I shall explore the sacrificial implications of what was, after all, an important site for sacrificial cult in Rome. We may note that the earliest Roman accounts of the Ara Pacis both emphasize sacrificial rite. In the Res Gestae, Augustus comments (12.2):

Cum ex Hispania Galliaque, rebus in iis provincis prospere gestis, Romam redi, Ti. Nerone P. Quintilio consulibus, aram Pacis Augustae senatus pro reditu meo consacrandam censuit ad campum Martium, in qua magistratus et sacerdotes virginesque Vestales anniversarium sacrificium facere iussit.

On my return from Spain and Gaul, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius [13 B.C.], after successful operations in these provinces, the Senate voted in honour of my return the consecration of an altar to Pax Augusta in the Campus Martius, and on this altar it ordered the magistrates and priests and Vestal virgins to make annual sacrifice.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 81 , November 1991 , pp. 50 - 61
Copyright
Copyright ©John Elsner 1991. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 On the dates and historical circumstances, see Settis, S., ‘Die Ara Pacis’, in Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988), 401Google Scholar and Simon, E., Ara Pacis Augustae (1967), 8Google Scholar. The relevant texts are RG 12.2; Ovid, Fasti 1.709 ff.; CIL VI, 2028b; VI, 32347a; X, 8375.

2 On Roman sacrificial procedure, see Wissowa, G., Religion und Kultus der Römer (1912), 409–32Google Scholar and Latte, K., Römische Religionsgeschichte (1970), 379–93Google Scholar. On aspects of the sociological and anthropological significance of Roman sacrifice, see Gordon, R. L., ‘The Veil of Power: Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors’ and ‘Religion in the Roman Empire: The Civic Compromise and its Limits’, both in Beard, M. and North, J. (eds), Pagan Priests (1990), 201–55Google Scholar; Scheid, J., ‘La Spartizione a Roma’, Studi Storici 4 (1984), 945–56Google Scholar; idem, ‘Sacrifice et banquet à Rome: quelques problèmes’, MEFRA 97 (1985), 193–206. General works on the significance of sacrifice in Graeco-Roman antiquity are: Girard, R., Violence and the Sacred (1979)Google Scholar, Burkert, W., Homo Necans (1983)Google Scholar, Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P., La Cuisine du sacrifice en pays Grecs (1979)Google Scholar, Rudhardt, J. and Reverdin, O. (eds), Le Sacrifice dans l'antiquité Entretiens Fondation Hardt 27 (1981)Google Scholar, Hamerton-Kelly, R. G. (ed.), Violent Origins (1987)Google Scholar.

3 Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1988)Google Scholar.

4 Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 209; see also Zanker's article ‘Bilderzwang: Augustan Political Symbolism in the Private Sphere’, in Huskinson, J., Beard, M. and Reynolds, J. (eds), Image and Mystery in the Roman World (1988), 1–22Google Scholar.

5 At the heart of this approach is the straightforward sociological pyramid of Roman culture drawn by Alföldy, G., The Social History of Rome (1985), 146Google Scholar, with the emperor at the top and the plebs at the bottom. This model, accepted by Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 152 (cf. also 129), may be acceptable as a crude picture of social hierarchies but has little relevance to the way people viewed, thought about, or ironized such hierarchies.

6 See J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer (forthcoming).

7 See Buchner, E., Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus (1982), 10Google Scholar (also idem, ‘Horologium Solarium Augusti’, Kaiser Augustus und die verlorene Republik (1988), 240–5). On the topography of this part of the Campus Martius, see E. Rodriguez-Almeida, ‘Il Campo Marzio Settentrionale. Solarium e Pomerium’, Atti 51–2 (1978–1980), 195–212 and Rakob, F., ‘Die Urbanisierung des nördlichen Marsfeldes: neue Forschungen im Areal des Horologium Augusti’, in Urbs: espace urbain et histoire Coll. de l'école Francaise 98 (1987), 687–712Google Scholar.

8 Buchner, op. cit. (n. 7), 37 and Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 144.

9 Buchner, op. cit. (n. 7), 36 and the diagram at 27. For a brief discussion of the symbolic effects of this relationship of monuments, see E. Simon, Augustus (1986), 26–9; on Augustus' propagandist use of the theme of time, see Wallace-Hadriil, A., ‘Time for Augustus’, in Whitby, M., Hardie, P. and Whitby, M. (eds), Homo Viator: Classical Studies for John Bramble (1987), 221–30Google Scholar.

10 On this whole ‘Baukomplex’, see Simon, op. cit. (n. 9), 26–46.

11 While doubt was once raised whether the monument I discuss should be correctly identfied with the Ara Pacis (see Weinstock, S., ‘Pax and the “Ara Pacis”’, JRS 50 (1960), 44–58Google Scholar), there is no doubt about its sacrificial nature, its Augustan date or its topographic location in relation to other highly significant Augustan monuments in the Campus Martius.

12 The principal discussions in English of the Ara Pacis are Torelli, M., Typology and Structure of Roman Historical Reliefs (1982), 27–62Google Scholar, and Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 120–5, 158–61, 172–6, 179–83, 203–6. Two major overviews are Simon, op. cit. (n. 1), and Settis, op. cit. (n. 1). The fundamental publication of the excavation is Moretti, G., Ara Pacis Augustae (1948)Google Scholar. A comprehensive bibliography (to 1986) of what has now become a huge literature is provided by Koeppel, G., ‘Die historischen Reliefs der römischen Kaiserzeit v: Ara Pacis Augustae, Teil I’, Banner Jahrbucher 187 (1987), 101–57Google Scholar, esp. 152–7.

13 For instance the altar of the gens Augusta set up by P. Perelius Hedujus in Carthage, see Poinssot, L., L'Autel de la gens Augusta à Carthage (1929)Google Scholar.

14 The latest example of this, with a large bibliography, is C. B. Rose, ‘“Princes” and Barbarians on the Ara Pacis’, AJA 94 (1990), 453–67.

15 On the politicizing of sacrifice in the Roman Empire, see Gordon, op. cit. (n. 2), 201–31.

16 See the excellent diagrams in J. B. Ward-Perkins and A. Claridge, Pompeii A.D. 79 (1976), 58–61. On the separation of sacrificial altar and temple proper ‘for reasons of convenience’ see Bowerman, H. C., Roman Sacrificial Altars (1913), 5Google Scholar; Pauly-Wissowa ‘Altar’ II, 1649; J. E. Stambaugh, ‘The Functions of Roman Temples’, ANRW II, 16.1, 554–608, esp. 571–2. The implication of ‘the altar in front of the temple’ in I Clement (of Rome), Ad Corinthos 41 (c. A.D. 96) is that the same structural arrangement is true (or was thought true by Christians in Rome) of the Temple in Jerusalem before its destruction in A.D. 70.

17 Warde Fowler, W., The Religious Experience of the Roman People (1911), 180–1Google Scholar.

18 See Stambaugh, op. cit. (n. 16), 557 and 568.

19 Ryberg, I. Scott, Rites of the State Religion in Rome, MAAR 22 (1955), 190–1Google Scholar.

20 Simon, op. cit, (n. 1), 14–16.

21 ibid., 23–4.

22 e.g. ibid., 24.

23 The Aeneas relief ‘is surely intended to prefigure the main sacrifice which is represented on the two outer faces of the monument’, Gordon, op. cit. (n. 2), 209.

24 On the ‘“arrested” movement’ of these reliefs — ‘more an icon than a narrative scene’, see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 205–6.

25 Simon, op. cit. (n. 1), 15 f.

26 Holliday, P. J., ‘Time, History and Ritual on the Ara Pacis Augustae’, Art Bulletin 72 (1990), 542–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote 554.

27 Because this portion of the altar is lost, I ignore the debate about its possible iconography, on which see H. Kähler, ‘Die Ara Pacis und die augusteische Friedensee’, JDAI 69 (1954), 67–100 and Simon, op. cit. (n. 9), 31–3.

28 For a discussion of some of the complexities of this scene, and some of the identifications given it, see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 172–6.

29 This is the conclusion scholars draw from a fragmentary inscription probably of Caligula's time: CIL VI, 32347a. See e.g. H. le Bonniec, Ovide: Les Fastes I (1965), ad Fasti 1.720, p. 110. Ovid's own text on the sacrifice to Pax ‘perfusa [or percussa with Frazer] victima fronte’ does not specify the victim, and it may be that other animals than cows were slaughtered at the Ara Pacis. If we follow the iconographical hints in the imagery, such victims could certainly have included sheep and perhaps pigs. See also Wissowa, op. cit. (n. 2), 334–5. The third-century A.D. Feriale Duranum corroborates this assumption by recording male cattle (bulls or oxen) a being offered to male deities, and cows as the offering for goddesses such as Salus or Pax; see Fink, R. O., Roman Military Records on Papyrus (1971), inscription no. 117, pp. 422–9Google Scholar.

30 cf. Burkert, op. cit. (n. 2), 2–3 on the Ara Pacis.

31 On this part of the frieze and more generally on the widespread imagery of ‘bucrania’ (cattle skulls) — but without any sense of a deconstructive or ambivalent meaning — see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 115–17.

32 Habinek, T. N., ‘Sacrifice, Society and Vergil's Ox-Born Bees’, in Griffith, M. and Mastronarde, D. J. (eds), Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (1990), 209–23, quote p. 215Google Scholar.

33 Habinek, op. cit. (n. 32), 213–15, quote p. 215. His argument has been contested by R. Thomas, ‘The “Sacrifice” at the End of the Georgics, Aristaeus and Virgilian Closure’, CP (1991, forthcoming) — although Thomas accepts the ambivalence of sacrifice in Roman ideology which Habinek implies. I am grateful to Don Fowler for referring me to both these papers.

34 For the image of sacrificial blood and its transference to new life in a different context, see Horace, Odes III. 13 with R. Hexter, ‘O Fons Bandusiae: Blood and Water in Horace, Odes III, 13’, in Whitby et al., op. cit. (n. 9), 131–9. On such patterns of life and death in Horace (but without special reference to sacrifice), see N. Rudd, ‘Patterns in Horatian Lyric’, AJPh 81 (1960), 373–92.

35 On the symbolism of vine scrolls in the Ara Pacis and Augustan art in general, see Zanker, op. cit. (n. 3), 179–83.

36 See Rose, op. cit. (n. 14), 454: figures on the ‘Ara Pacis are so idealized that identification based on physiognomy alone is extremely difficult…’.

37 See the comments of Wallace-Hadrill, A. in his review of Zanker's book, ‘Rome's Cultural Revolution’, JRS 79 (1989), 157–64Google Scholar, especially 162–3.

38 ibid., 163.

39 Gordon, op. cit. (n. 2), esp. 202–19, quote 207.