Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods

Author(s): John Scheid
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration,
Resistance (1995), pp. 15-31
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311298
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 GRAECO RITU:
A TYPICALLY ROMAN WAY OF
HONORING THE GODS*

JOHN SCHEID

OR a long time, the importationof foreign cults to Rome has been

an exciting topic for many historians. They have evaluated the
arrivalof these cults in very differentways, but have all agreed on one
point: the new cults, currentlycalled Greek or orientalcults, were to be
taken as a bad thing for Roman culture.'What was consideredby Hegel
as a necessary reaction to the dull and empty religion of the Romans,
preparatoryto the subsequent,definitive phase of world history, was in
the eyes of Mommsen an evil, a poisonous cult (I quote William W.
Fowler) that could never be rooted out, a poison which entirely and def-
initely transformedthe religious life of the Romans. Georg Wissowa,
in his great manual of Roman religion,2undertookan almost desperate
attemptto sort out the autochtonousgods from the foreign. I say "des-
perate,"because the mixture was supposed to reach back as far as the
foundationof the Capitoline cult, and even fartherif one considers the
tradition about Hercules. Remember that this was the opinion of the
Roman historians themselves, though with another ideological back-
ground.
These ideas are out-of-date. The old theme of the decline and disap-
pearanceof Roman religion, radicallytransformedby orientalcontami-
nation, has nowadaysbeen abandoned. Nonetheless, the natureand the
status of the so-called foreign cults in Rome are still an outstanding

*I would like to thank Dr. Valerie Huet and Prof. ChristopherJones for their assis-
tance with the English version of this paper.
1 John Scheid,
"PolytheismImpossible, or the Empty Gods: Reasons behind a Void in
the History of Roman Religion,"History and Anthropology3 (1987) 303-325.
2
Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultusder Romer(Munich 1912 2).
16 John Scheid

question. In recent years the problem of the "oriental"cults, among

others those of the Magna Mater and Mithra, have undergone a new
evaluation.3But this is not so for the most general official cults ritu
Graeco, which are old and highly official. Despite the huge book of
Jean Gage,4whose subtitledeclares that it aims to set out the history of
the ritus Graecus, only a few sentences of JoachimMarquardtand Kurt
Latte5pay any attentionto the phenomenonitself, and we still lack an
exhaustive collection of the various ritualistic traditions of the ritus
Graecus. We do not even know what exactly a cult celebrated ritu
Graeco is, how these traditionswere integratedinto the religion of the
Romans, or what their status was. This lack of interestis not only due
to peremptoryjudgements about importedcults, but also to the general
view, determinedby the assumptions of modem western culture, that
the main element in a religion, and especially in these new cults, was
not ritual but belief and emotion.6My purpose in this paper will be to
define the nature of the so-called ritus Graecus and its relation to
Romanreligion as a whole.
Before going further,I shall make three preliminaryremarks. The
first is about the notion of the purityof a religion, the second about the
statusof foreign cults in archaicRome, and the thirdon the meaning of
ritus. These observations will allow me to formulate a hypothesis
about the status of foreign cults and accordingly the ritus Graecus in
Rome.
1. Georg Wissowa's classification of indigenous and foreign cults
gives the best illustrationof the obsessive search for the "true"religion
of the Romans, of the illusory project of studying their religion in the

3
E.g., Philippe Borgeaud, "Quelquesremarquessur la mythologie divine a Rome, a
propos de Denys d'Halicarnasse(Ant. Rom. 2. 18-20)," in Fritz Graf, Mythos in mythen-
loser Gesellschaft. Das Paradigma Roms (Stuttgart 1993 [Colloquium Rauricum 3])
175-187; Mary Beard, "The Roman and the Foreign: the Cult of the 'GreatMother' in
ImperialRome,"in Nicholas Thomas, CarolineHumphreyeds., Shamanism,History and
the State (Ann Arbor, 1994) 164-190, and RichardL. Gordon, "Reality,Evocation and
Boundaryin the Mysteries of Mithras,"JMS 3 (1980) 19-99.
4 Jean Gage, Apollon romain. Essai sur le culte d'Apollon et le developpementdu
"ritusgraecus" a Rome des origines a Auguste(Paris 1960 [BEFAR182]).
5 Joachim
Marquardt,Le culte chez les Romains (Paris 1889) 1.54; Kurt Latte,
RomischeReligionsgeschichte(Munich 1960) 242 ff.
6 E.g. William W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London
1911) 255 f.; Jean Bayet, Histoire politique et psychologique de la religion romaine
(Paris 1956) 138; Latte,Religionsgeschichte212.
 GraecoRitu 17

purest state possible. Now like any culture or language, a religion is

never and never can be pure, uncontaminated.It is always the result of
mixture, even at the earliest stages we are able to identify. So the sort-
ing out of Roman and non-Romanelements, or for later periods a con-
cept like syncretismas opposed to a "pure"religion, are nonsense.
2. Recent research on archaic Rome, for instance by Carmine
Ampolo,7has shown that from the sixth centuryB.C.down to the histor-
ical period, Rome was an open city. The legendary traditions, the
architecturalremains, as well as the nomenclaturerevealed by archaic
inscriptionsin Rome and SouthernEtruria,show that between the early
Italic cities there existed large nets of alliances and isopoliteia, which
resulted in the circulationof individualsand families of high rank who
were integratedwithout any problems in the different cities. Ampolo
has also noted that in Rome archaicreligious institutionslike the sodal-
itates, the luperci, or the salii never have an ethnic name, but always a
gentilician or topographical one (we may recall the sodales of
P. Valerius in the recently discovered inscription of Satricum8).
Ampolo also stresses that the god Volturnus,whose Etruscanorigin is
beyond any doubt, has been given a flamen like other typically Roman
gods. On the other hand, Ampolo underlines that Rome remained
nonetheless a Latin city whose official language was Latin, even when
the rulers were of Etruscanorigin. And we know that, from Romulus
to Canuleius down to the EmperorClaudius and Aelius Aristides, the
Romans always put forwardthis old traditionof the open city, integrat-
ing individuals,groups and, we may add, gods.9 So we should expect to
find a mixed religion in Rome from the archaicperiod on. Cults, gods,
and people were constantly integrated, and thus were considered as
Romanby a city which was not obsessed with ethnic purity.
3. If we consider the concept of Graecus ritus, we must know what
exactly these words mean. We shall returnto Graecus, but one remark
has to be made immediatelyabout ritus.?0To our way of thinking,a rit-

7 CarmineAmpolo, "I gruppietnici in Roma arcaica:posizione del problemae fonti,"

in Gli Etrusci e Roma (Rome 1982) 45-70; idem, "La nascita della citta," in Araldo
Momigliano, Aldo Schiavone eds., Storia di Roma 1 (Torino 1988), 153-180.
8 HendrikVersnel,Satricume Rome
(Rome 1990).
9 John North, "Conservatismand Change in Roman Religion,"PBSR 44 (1976) 1-12.
10More details in Jean-Louis
Durand,John Scheid, "'Rites' et 'religion.' Remarques
sur certains prejuges des historiens de la religion des Grecs et des Romains,"ASSR 85
(1994) 23-43.
18 JohnScheid

ual is a religious-or at least public--celebration. As a traditionalset

of gestures and behavior,it is currentlyopposed and subordinatedto the
interiorand spiritualapproachto the divine. I shall not go into details,
but this definitionof ritualand consequentlyof ritus is a constructionof
modem times whose origin reaches back, let us say, to the Reformation.
Anyway, this was not the precise meaning of ritus. This did not define
the content of a divine service, but only the general custom, the rule
followed in celebrating this service. Ritus is not equivalent to sacra,
caerimoniae, or religiones, but to mos, the way of doing something,the
Tpo0no;or the vogo;. You have the mos of birds, of horses, of human
beings or of Romans, Albans, Greeks, barbarians,and so on. In the
religious field, the differencedid not lie in the content of the celebration
itself, but in the way of celebratingthe ceremonies, whateverthey were.
The meaning of ritus is to be referredto the notion which the ancients
had of religion. There was not a true and a false religion. Nationalreli-
gion was not radically different from foreign religions. Even the reli-
gions of the barbarianswere not substantiallydifferent from the reli-
gions of civilised people. Everywherepeople made sacrifices, prayers,
and vows, celebrated sacred games, and built sanctuaries. The same
terminology was used for the description of all these celebrations,not
to mention the net of interpretationwhich connected the gods of the
oikoumene. But one thing made the differencebetween the religions of
the world: the governing rules, those small details, choices, and pos-
tures which gave each system its originality,on occasion its perversion.
Some individualsor people were qualified as superstitious,not because
they veneratedthe wrong gods or celebratedridiculousceremonies, but
because they performed their cult in the wrong way; this means for
example that they did it in an excessively fearful way, an attitudewhich
did not accord with the dignitas of a god or a citizen. The Celts of
Gaul were classed as barbarians,not because they adoredidols or cele-
bratedsacrifices, but because their rules did not restrainthem from sac-
rificing human victims: the ritus of these barbariansconsisted in offer-
ing human beings, not in the other proceedings of the sacrifice. In
short, the ritus was the special posture and prescriptionwhich gave all
public celebrationsa special, recognizabletonality-I would compareit
to the musical modes: you had the ritus of the Romans, the ritus of the
Greeks, the ritus of the barbarians,and so on. There was a category
called Graeca sacra, but it was limited to one particularpart of the
 GraecoRitu 19

Roman cult of Ceres,11so that it cannot be used for a larger set of

rules.
Now, what does this contribute to our investigation? First, we
should accept the fact that the so-called foreign cults were fully part of
Roman culture,and that, far from being an unnaturalgraft, they played
a partof their own. It could even be temptingto assume that all foreign
cults, those present in Rome since the archaic period and those trans-
ferred to Rome in the last four or three centuries B.C.,were typically
Roman institutions. As for the Graecus ritus, we should expect that it
was a specific rule, a particularway of celebrating ceremonies which
were otherwise the same as the other "Roman"services. That proceed-
ing was not a foreign body inside Roman religion, it was considered,
and as a matterof fact was, typically Roman.
Let me give two examples to clarify these conclusions. The cinctus
Gabinus was the typically Roman way of wearing the toga during a
religious ceremony,but its name referredto a foreign origin. You may
note that the custom is called after a city and not after an ethnic name:
Gabinus, not Latinus. In the second example, the foreign origin is not
even mentioned. When the temple of Diana, accordingto Varroa tem-
ple of the Latin league, was built on the Aventine, the king Tullus Hos-
tilius wrote the Tp6onoS, the ritus, of the celebrations. According to
Dionysius of Halicarnassus"he drew up laws relating to the mutual
rights of the cities and prescribedthe manner(zpo6no;)in which every-
thing else that concerned the festival and the general assembly should
be performed."12 Now the fact is that in later times the lex arae Dianae
in Aventino,that is part of the famous Tp6o7no attributedto king Tullus
by the antiquarians,was the classic point of reference for the organiza-
tion of a Roman cult, as is shown by the dedicationformulaof altarsin
Narbonne and Salona.13But for Dionysius the bronze pillar with the
famous inscription written in charactersthat were anciently used in
Greece was a proof thatthe Romans were not barbarians,but Greeks.
Let us now face directly the problem of the Graecus ritus. The first
fact is that the concept itself is not very old. The earliest mention
occurs in the second centuryB.C.,in a text of Cato.14The second is that
1Paul. Diac. De verb.signif 86 Lindsay (Teubner)s.v. Graecasacra.
12 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.26.4:
tokS v6osox; ouvvypaxe Tai;Sno6eani.ncpo;a&TikaS
KOl TaXX,aa X&C?pi XiV oprXiVKai taviTyupiv, OV tteXz Ooei?aTa Tpoiov, tae?v.
13ILS 112; 4907; Wissowa,
Religion 39; 473.
14Cato Orat.
frg. 77 Malcovati.
20 John Scheid

our evidence is rathersparse. I shall first go throughthe literaryevi-

dence, that is the concept of ritus Graecus and of Graeca sacra as used
by the Roman historiansand antiquarians.After doing that I shall look
into the actualremainsof the ritualsthemselves. I shall not go into the
difficult problem of Greek influence in archaicLatium,because I think
it is irrelevantto our problem.
Under the designation sacra ritu Graeco or Graeca sacra, the
Romans did not classify all the cults of "Greek" gods, but only a
restrictednumberof cults. According to them the ritus of the cults of
Hercules, Saturnus,or Apollo was Graecus, a certain sacrum of Ceres
was Graecum,but not, for instance, the sacra of Aesculapius, Magna
Mater,Bacchus, Hecate, Nemesis, and so on. Certainfestivals or sim-
ply certain modalities of Roman sacrifice were also qualified as Grae-
cus. So, accordingto Livy,15 the cults founded by Romulus were to be
celebratedAlbano ritu, in the Alban way, but the cult of Hercules was
to be done Graeco ritu, since it had been foundedby Evander. Cato the
censor asserted that the festival of Saturn, the Saturnalia, was cele-
bratedGraeco ritu. The cult of Apollo is known as the best illustration
of the Graecus ritus in Rome. Later some part of the cult of Ceres fell
into the same category. Certaintypes of sacrifice and ceremonies like
the lectisteria or the supplications are always called Greek. A
Sibylline oracle of 125 B.C. orderedthat a service be celebratedby chil-
dren'Axai'(oi;16 earlier Sibylline prescriptions,recordedby Livy, rec-
ommendedvarious processions and celebrationsGraeco ritu.17Finally
the epigraphicalreports of the Ludi saeculares specify that the sacri-
fices were done Graeco Achiuo ritu.18 And that is it. So one should be
careful before qualifying as Graecus ritus every service of a god origi-
nating from the Hellenic world and even every partof the cult of a god
or goddess falling into this category.
If we consider the literaryevidence, we notice two more facts. The
first is that the concept of Graecus ritus, or'EXXrlvtKov ceo;, refers to
an ethnos, and not, as in the ritus Albanus or the cinctus Gabinus, to a
city. That suggests an evolution, the ritus being now qualified as for-
eign, as referringto a foreign ethnos, not to a closely relatedif not inte-
15
Livy 1.7.3.
16HermannDiels, SibyllinischeBlitter (Berlin 1890) 55; 112, line 16.
17
E.g., Livy 25.12.10; 13.
18GiovanniBattista
Pighi, De ludis saecularibuspopuli Romani Quiritium... (Ams-
terdam1965 2) 155 ff. line IV, 6; 162, line Va, 49.
 GraecoRitu 21

grated city. The second fact is that the cults ritu Graeco belonged to
the same classification as the peregrina sacra. According to Festus,19
the peregrina sacra were cults settled in Rome after an evocatio during
a war, or out of religious scruples in time of peace (which is partly
wrong), as were the cults of Mater Magna from Phrygia (in 204 B.C.),
of Ceres from Greece (middle of the third century B.C., also called
Graeca sacra), and of Aesculapius from Epidauros (291 B.C.). In 191
B.C. the Graeca sacra of Ceres were completed by the ieiunium
Cereris.20 The peregrina sacra were celebrated eorum more, a quibus
sunt accepta, following the mos of the country from which they were
transferredto Rome. Though obviously part of the same cultural
movement, these cults were different from the sacra celebrated in
accordancewith a foreign ritus: they were merely called foreign cults,
both their content and their mos were exotic and their proper priests
were, or at least were fictionallyregardedas, foreigners.21
Anyway, sacra ritu Graeco, Graeca sacra, and peregrina sacra had
in common the fact that they were supposed to be in various ways dif-
ferent from the Roman cults or rules. A peculiaritywhich brings out a
far more surprisingfact. It was not only a way to gain new support,or
to claim membershipin the Greek world:it was an attemptto legitimate
the Roman traditionof the open city. We are not thereforereally sur-
prised to notice that what the Romans called Graecus ritus or Graeca
sacra was something weird and paradoxical,that is to say that it was an
artificialand partly an a posteriori construction. Let us look first at the
paradoxesof Rome's "Greekway."
If one looks harderat the facts, it appears that the category of the
sacra Graeco ritu is ratherselective. Thus the cult of Hercules is said
to fall under that ritus, but not so the sacra of the Castores. These
sacra might have been so classified, as is implied by the fact that
Demetrios Poliorcetes, according to Strabo,22cited the Roman cult of
the Castores as proof of their CoyyevEtI 7tnp6;To;s"ErXqva;. But the
Romans did otherwise. The cult of the Castores was not submittedto

19Festus De verb.
signif 268 Lindsay.
20Henri Le Bonniec, Le culte de Ceres a Rome des
origines a la fin de la Republique
(Paris 1958) 381450.
21For
Aesculapius, Wissowa, Religion 308; for Ceres, see Val. Max. 1.1.1; Cic. Balb.
24.55.
22Strabo5.232.
22 JohnScheid

the decemviri sacris faciundis, the Castoreswere never part of the lec-
tisteria, and their cult is never mentioned as falling under the ritus
Graecus. The twins were the patrons of the Roman equites, of the
Roman elite, and were supposed to have assisted them in winning
supremacyover old Latium. In returnfor that service they had been
given a temple on the Forumand a festival celebratedevery year by the
Roman equites. This difference does not lie in the fact that Hercules
appearedmore Greek than the Castores. Castor and Pollux are called
quroi on an archaicinscriptionin Lavinium.23On the other hand, Her-
cules came not from abroad but from Tibur,24like the Castores who
seem to have been transferredto Rome from Tusculum rather than
directly from Greek cities.25Like Diana, who is said by Roman anti-
quariansto be of Latin origin, both were Romancults alreadyin archaic
times. On the other hand, we can also ask why the Bona Dea, an
undoubtedly Greek goddess, is never mentioned among the cults
Graeco ritu or the Graeca sacra. And if we look at the statementthat
the peregrina sacra were celebrated in accordancewith their original
mos, we notice that the only known rule of the Veian cult of Juno
Regina, the prohibitionof any contactexcept with priests born in a spe-
cial family, was already violated on the first day of her transfer;26fur-
ther, we know nothing about a special way of celebratingthe cult of
this Juno. So the category of peregrina sacra and of sacra Graeco ritu
appearsto be as artificialas the ritus Graecus.
But the paradox is still deeper. The category itself was not only
selective, but also arbitrary,for a certainnumberof these cults were not
directly of Greek origin. The cult of the Roman Hercules is a good
example of this paradox. Jean Bayet and KurtLatte have alreadycalled
into question the Greeknessof his cult. The main cult at the Ara max-
ima was celebrated by the praetor urbanus, not by a special priest.
And, very surprisingly,it was forbiddento celebrate a lectisterium at
the Ara maxima.27Neither is the exclusion of women and slaves or the
rule to sacrifice aperto capite a definite proof of its Greek origin,

23ILLRP127la.
24Wissowa,Religion 272 f.
25Latte,Religion 174.
26
Livy 5.22.3 f.; Plut. Cam. 6.1 f. Juno had been evocata and so her cult is likely to
fall into the categoryof peregrinasacra.
27Serv. 8.176; Macrob.Sat. 3.6.16.
 GraecoRitu 23

because these existed also in other ancient Roman cults.28On the other
hand, the offering of the decuma, the wearing of the laurel wreath,the
particularroutine of the sacrifices, celebrated in the morning but con-
cluded in the evening, and even the legendary purchase of the priest-
hood by the Romanpeople, clearly refer to Greektraditions. But we do
not know if those traditionswere old. Were they remainsof the archaic
contacts with the Greeks, or merely an effect of the reform that took
place in 312 B.c.? We do not know. So in the first centuryB.C., the cult
of Hercules was something very ambiguous, which could be described
as correspondingto the Graecus ritus, but this fact did not restrainthe
antiquarianAelius Stilo, the teacherof Varro,from identifyingHercules
with the Sabine god Sancus or Dius Fidius.29My impression is that
Georg Wissowa and Jean Bayet were right in concluding that the actual
hellenization of the Ara maxima cult occurredduring the third century
B.C.30Other elements may go back to the archaic contacts between the
Italic cities and the Greeks, but they came to Rome as Italic customs
and were certainlyconsideredRomanbefore the thirdcenturyB.C.
This process of late hellenization is transparentand irrefutablein a
certain number of other cults. The case of Ceres is particularlyclear,
because her local origin is beyond any doubt. The peregrina sacra or
Graeca sacra Cereris were a late additionto her cult, an enrichmentof
it and not a transformation. Both parts of the Ceres cult were per-
formed in the same sanctuary,where the main festivals of the goddess,
the Cerialiaand the natalis of the Aventinetriadalso took place, though
the cultic prescriptionswere differentin each case. For instance, wine
was prohibitedin the new celebrationsbut traditionalin the old. Ceres,
who alreadyhad a male flamen of her own, received now also a public
priestess, who had to be a foreigner. The literary evidence31reports
that the candidateswere from Velia and Naples, neitherof which as yet
had Roman citizenship, as Valerius Maximus stresses, but we notice
that both were at this time cities with a foedus. In any case, the first
priestess was made a citizen by law, in order to be able, according to
Cicero, to pray to the gods scientia peregrina et externa, but mente
domestica et ciuili. Laterinscriptionsshow these priestesses as daugh-
28Latte,
Religionsgeschichte214, n. 4. Examples are Mars, Honos, Saturn.
29Varro
Ling. 5.66.
30Wissowa,
Religion 275; Jean Bayet, Les origines de I'Hercule romain (Paris 1926)
303 f.
31Val. Max. 1.1.1; Cic. Balb. 24.55.
24 JohnScheid

ters of Roman citizens.32 So again we discover the same paradox

behind the foreignness of the Graeca sacra Cereris. Finally, the case
of Ceres also gives a precise chronology of religious hellenization and
of its evolution. Between 293 and 219 B.C. (the second decade of
Livy), presumably around 217, Ceres started to be venerated more
Graeco.33The origins of the priestesses reveal that Graecus and Grae-
cia meant in those years Magna Graecia. The addition, some twenty
years or so later, of the ieiunium Cereris, was made in the same spirit,
but a furtherstep was takenwhen between 130 and 120 B.C.an embassy
was sent, on the recommendationof the libri Sibyllini, to the most
ancient Ceres at Henna in Sicily.34 So after one hundred years of
reform, the senate, though maintainingthe traditionalcult of the god-
dess, implicitly agreed with the statement that the Roman Ceres was
only a recent form of Demeter. At least the senate did not see any con-
tradiction in connecting the Roman Ceres with the original Sicilian
Ceres. This feature is also attestedby the cult of the Magna Mater, a
sacrum called peregrinum by Festus: besides her own rituals and
priests, the goddess was honoredduringher festival, the Megalensia,by
the oldest Roman families, and the sacrifices of the day were cele-
brated, according to Dionysius, by the praetores, presumablyby the
praetor urbanus,iaca T' o;)'Pou.aLo)vv6oio)S.35
Still more surprisingare the cases of certainLatin and Roman cults,
which were counted among the cults ritu Graeco, without having
received like Ceres any addition. Take the case of Saturn. In his case
the cultic prescriptionto sacrificeaperto capite36did not derive from a
Greektradition. Saturnwas of Latin origin. He was the god of dissolu-
tion, and the act of uncoveringthe head probablywas a ritual accorded
to his function and to other aspects of his cult, as was the untying of a
woollen threadthat all throughthe year bound the feet of his statue.37
One should also be cautious before using the statementof Cato about
Saturus and before ranging his entire cult with the Graecus ritus.

32ILLRP61; ILS 3343.

33See above, n. 21.
34Val. Max. 1.1.1; one notices that one of the three known priestesses, CasponiaP. f.
Maxima,is said to be Sicula (ILS 3343).
35Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 52.19.
36Festus De verb.signif 432 Lindsay.
37Hendrik Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion II. Transitionand
Reversal in Mythand Ritual (Leiden 1992) 136 ff.
 GraecoRitu 25

Cato only said that the Saturnaliawere performedGraeco ritu. But the
particularprescription to sacrifice aperto capite offered an excellent
pretext for the classification of the Saturnalia among the cults ritu
Graeco, presumablywhen the new festival was foundedin 217 B.C.
Let us now go throughprecise attestationsof the sacra Graeco ritu.
I shall limit myself to the best known examples, the libri Sibyllini and
the Ludi saeculares, which actually are the most representativerituals
of our category. The same conclusions can be reached-and have been
reached38-through the study of the lectisternia and of the supplica-
tions.
The Sibylline books were supposed to be of foreign origin, from
Cumae or according to the Roman embassy of 76 B.C.from Erythrae
(Asia)39-again the extension to the East duringthe first centuryB.C.is
significant. But there is some paradox. Until Augustus the books were
not preservedin Apollo's temple but in the basement of the temple of
Jupiter,the Roman master of signs and divination. And though often
recommending innovation and for example the invitation of Greek
gods, goddesses, or rituals, the consultationof the Sibylline oracle was
made by the Roman authoritiesand correspondedto the Roman tradi-
tion of divination. Despite a current opinion, far from being exclu-
sively limited to the Greek rituals, the libri and the decemviri sacris
faciundis very often, we may even say usually, recommendedRoman
rituals, especially expiatory rituals. Just one example. The famous
annualrenewal of the treatybetween Rome and Laviniumwas done ex
libris Sibyllinis.40And beside their oracularactivity, the decemviri are
to be seen as supervisorsof the applicationof the recommendationsof
the oracle ratherthan merely as specialists in the ritus Graecus. In any
case, the consultation of the books by the decemviri, even if done in
Greek, was an entirely Roman process. It was put under the authority
of a magistratecum imperio and of the senate. The oracle itself was
written by the priests, who developed the hints given by one or two
verses extractedfrom the rolls.41So, as in the procedureof the auspi-
cia, the last word belonged to the priests and to the ruling magistrate,a
38
Agnes K. Lake, "The supplicatio and Graecus Ritus,"in P. Casey, A. K. Lake eds.,
Quantulacumque(London 1937) 243-251.
39Fenestella frg. 18 Peter.
40 CILX, 797.
41 John Scheid, Jesper Svenbro, The
Craft of Zeus. Myths of Weaving and Fabric
(Cambridge,Mass. 1996) 148-150.
26 JohnScheid

typically Roman feature, and it is quite normal that the recommenda-

tion of the books concerned mostly very Roman rituals, as H. Diels
already showed. So the consultationof the Sibylline books has to be
taken as a Roman way of divination,which was progressivelyused to
stress the Greek backgroundof the Roman city, and to produce a cer-
tain numberof moderateinnovations. I do not believe in the Apollinian
or Sibylline mystique which is supposed to have inspired them and
according to some scholars, mainly Jean Gage, to have transformed
Roman religion. It produceda mixed ritual,which was largely Roman
but could be and later was presentedas Greek. The rituals of the Ludi
saeculares show this clearly.
The great ritual of the Ludi saeculares, preserved by two long
inscriptions of 17 B.C.and 204 A.D.,includes all the most significant
elements attributedto the Graecus ritus. Beside the Graeco ritu sacri-
fices, the celebration of the festival was recommendedby a Sibylline
oracle. It included scenic games, a procession of twenty-seven boys
and girls who startedfrom the Palatine temple of Apollo and sang a
hymn accompanied by flute- and lyre-music; the matrons celebrated
supplicationsand sellisternia for Juno and Diana, which consisted of
sacrifices of young sows followed by a feast with dances. Finally the
gods and goddesses honored were mainly Greek: the Moirae, the
Ilithyai, Apollo, Diana, maybe Latona,Dis Pater,and Proserpina,men-
tioned by the literary evidence.42Most of the rituals themselves are
alreadyknown from the Roman historiansof the Republic as typical of
the recommendations of the Sibylline books; the Ludi saeculares
employ all of them. But things are less clear than that. One first
notices that the Ludi scaenici, that is, the traditionalludi (sollemnes) of
the festival, were actually Latin ludi. Ludi Graeci were given, with
otherLatin ludi, circenses and performances,as an honoraryadditionto
the ludi sollemnes.43On the otherhand, it is highly interestingto exam-
ine the sacrifices precisely, because the rituals reveal and constructthe
same ambiguity as that elaboratedby the Roman antiquarians.Let us
take two examples.
A certain number of sacrifices of the Ludi saeculares, supposed to
be partof the Graecus ritus, actuallyconsisted of sacrificesvery similar
to those rituRomano,with the only exception that the officiatingpriests
42 All the evidence is in
Pighi, De ludis saecularibus(above n. 18).
43Jean Beaujeu, "Jeuxlatins et jeux grecs (B propos de Cic., Fam. VII, 1 et Att., XVI,
5)," in Melanges H. Le Bonniec (Brussels 1988) 10-18.
 GraecoRitu 27

performedthem aperto capite and wearing a laurel wreath. The first

example is a sacrifice to Juno. "OnJune 2, the priests wearingthe toga
praetexta and wreaths went from the Palatine to the Capitol. There
Septimius Severus and the priests rem divinamfecerunt at the altar of
Juno. Then they took off the wreaths and the praetextae, had their
hands washed by the public slaves; Septimius took in his right hand a
well-sharpened knife, holding it slantwise, in his left a patera with
wine, and performed, Graeco Achiuo ritu (according to the Greek
Achean mode), the immolatio of the victim."44The res divina done at
the beginning is to be identified with the praefatio, the initial offering
of incense and wine on a focus.45 Now the praefatio is a typically
Roman ritual. The only Greek element of the ceremony is that the
priests are wreathed. The actual sacrifice, the immolatio,which is sup-
posed to be done Graeco Achiuo ritu, is executed without the wreath
and the praetexta, in the tunica fimbriata, as we know from other
descriptions. But the ritualof the immolatiois none the less the Roman
ritualof immolation,not the Greek one.
One might object that the reason for the ambiguity of the former
sacrifice was the Roman identity of the goddess honored. But this
impression would be wrong, since the ritual is strictly the same for the
Greek goddesses. There is a reasonableprobabilitythat the sacrifice to
the Moirae was done, according to Va, line 51, in the same way as the
sacrifice to TerraMater recordedin Va, lines 47-51, which means that
it began with a praefatio ture et uino, was celebratedpraetextatusand
coronatus,and was followed by a Roman immolatio.
The second example, even more interesting,concerns the sacrifices
to Jupiteron July 1. Unfortunatelythe text of the record is very muti-
lated, but what is left is enough to allow a reconstructionof the ritual.46
44Ludi saeculares of 204, Pighi, De ludis saecularibus 155 f.: IV, lines 4 ff.: praetextis
sumptis et coronis [accitis, de Palatio in Capitolium venerunt. --- Ibi Severus Aug.,
praeeun]te AntoninoAug.filio [suo, cumpr. pr. --- ceterislque remdivinamfece[ru]nt ad
[aram lunonis. Dein --- posita corona et p]raetexta, adsistentibus[[Geta Caes.]] etpr. pr.
et ceteris v[v. cc., purificatusper publicos XVvirummanus --- retinensmanibus]/[dextera
--- et la]eva cultrumop[liq. c]otorium et pateram cum vino, retinenteprta}ecatione[[m
Geta Caes.]], immol[avit I]unoni reginae vaccam alb. Graeco Achivo rit[u hac preca-
tione] etc. The immolatio is the consecrationof the victim, see John Scheid, Romuluset
ses freres. Le college des freres arvales, Modele du culte public dans la Rome des
empereurs(Rome 1990 [BEFAR275]) 333-336.
45For the praefatio see Scheid (above, n. 44) 326-333.
46 Pighi, De ludis saecularibus 154 (III, lines 69-91): 69 in ara lignea [temporali ---
Severus] / 70 Aug. sumpta t[unica fimbriata ------- pre-]/ 71 catione ita (... )/76 et in
28 JohnScheid

The beginningis not preserved. One probablyhas to conjecturea prae-

fatio. After that the priests do three immolations. Of the first only
partsof the prayerare preserved. The editors thinkit was an immolatio
Romano ritu. The remains of the immolation-prayerof the second ox
show that it was done more Etrusco, because it mentions a haruspica-
tio. But it is impossible to reconstructthe ritual itself. Finally the
immolation of the third victim can really be called Greek, because a
lock is cut from the forehead of the ox and purificationwith water is
mentioned. Septimius also offers wreaths, and in the following prayer
he does not use the word exta, but the Greekword splanchna.
According to these documents,to sacrifice Graeco Achiuo ritu dur-
ing a festival Graeco ritu, means that you make sacrifices which are
mainly very Roman, but sometimes include the ritualof the Greekpro-
thusia, the use of Greek words, and maybe the Greek procedure of
dividing the victim. The only permanentGreek mark of these rituals
are the uncovered heads of the priests, the occasional wearing of the
laurel wreath and of a fringed tunica. In short, the main celebration
according to the Graecus ritus is a strange mixture of Roman rituals
and of some Greek gestures, words, and attitudes,as always were the
ritualsordainedby the Sibylline oracles duringthe Republic. This fact
bears out and completes the meaning of the expression Graeco ritu. A
religious ceremony Graeco ritu was a service or festival, which was not
imported as a whole. It was a Roman ceremony which was slightly
modified or completed in some part. These rituals or ceremonies were
not very different from traditionalRoman rituals, and above all they
were no less groundedin ritual. Thereis no evidence of a differentreli-
gious feeling in these services. So the sacra Graeco ritu were at least
as composite as the old sacra Romano ritu. And according to all the
evidence, from Cicero down to Cassius Dio, they were part of the
patrius mos, of the Romani ritus, as opposed to the nouus aut externus
ritus.47

secundo [---- quindece]mvir.pura [------ preca]/ 77 tus est: Iup[ptiero. m., uti --- tibi in
il]lis libris scrip[tum est ----]i libi[------]/ 78 mihi, domui,f[amiliae ----, utique semper
Lati]nus obtemper[assit ---] mox har[usp]icatione in [------ bourn]/ 79 pulchr[o]rum
[immolandorum.Deinde ---- cult]ro pilum de fron[te] host[iae] secauit [et ac]cita
corona praeeunte Antonino A[ug. -------]/ 80 [--- cor]onis dandis esto, fito volens
propi[t]ius p. R. Q. (...)/ 83 [---] bour pulchrorumimmola[ndorum---] tu coronis
[------]/84 [---]o splanchna redder[--- i]ta pre[catus est ------ /85 [--- splan]chna etc.
47Cic. Leg. 2.19 ff.; Dio 52.36.1 ff. The patrius mos, the Romani ritus obviously
include all the ceremoniesand rites of the public cult.
 GraecoRitu 29

Examinationof the ritualrecords thus reveals the same image as the

statements of Roman historians or antiquarians. The religious cate-
gories of the cults Graeco ritu or the peregrina sacra show that Rome
never stopped being an open city, integrating individuals as well as
gods and cults. But anotherfact also emerges. The literary evidence
makes clear that the whole movement was intended not only to intro-
duce new gods into Rome, but also to show that old Roman gods actu-
ally were of foreign origin, not from a foreign city, but from a foreign
ethnos. This fact implies that the phenomenonwas late and relatedto a
particularself-consciousness, opposing the Romans and their allies, as
an ethnos, to the Hellenic partof Italy and to the world seen as a whole.
It is grounded in an historical interpretationof Roman politics and
imperialism in the Mediterranean. And it was Greek, not because of
the Roman fascinationwith Greece, but because the (civilised) foreign-
ers as a whole were "the Greeks,"like the "Roumi"in Arabic culture.
We have seen that the work of importationand of reinterpretationof
cults was selective. It made its choices between gods and goddesses
likely to communicatewith the Greek world, mainly Apollo, Hercules,
Aesculapius, Ceres, Saturn, and Magna Mater, thus stressing a very
useful kinship. This research which affected cult and myth probably
startedwith the introductionof a new ritus in celebratingthe sacrifice.
At the beginning it was interestedin Magna Graecia, let us say from
the fourthto the thirdcenturyB.C.,and extended duringthe second and
first centuryB.C.to largerpartsof the EasternMediterranean,and even,
in the case of the Ludi saeculares, to the Achaeans. The reference
ceased to be creative after the first centuryB.C. This aspect of the ques-
tion is well known and I will not go furtherinto it. In conclusion, I will
mention anotheraspect of the problemwhich is less well known.
The diplomaticand imperialisticbackgroundof the utilizationof the
Greek mode were not the only agent of this evolution. I am convinced
that there was also an internal, strictly Roman cause. I think that the
spectacularimportationof foreign cults and the discovery of a foreign
ritus in old Roman cults were the result of an internal evolution that
started in the third century B.C. With the extension of Roman power
past the limits of central Italy, the elite discovered its own institutional
originality, its "generosity"as opposed to Greek "avarice,"to use the
words of Philippe Gauthier,48in grantingcitizenship to foreigners and
48
Philippe Gauthier,"'Generosite'romaine et avaricegrecque: sur l'octroi du droit de
cite," Melanges WilliamSeston (Paris 1974) 207-215; id., "La citoyennet6en Grace et a
30 JohnScheid

in maintainingstrongbonds with the Roman colonies. The Punic wars

had shown the efficiency of this system. Now from the third century
on, the Roman elite discovered Greek philosophy and certainly the
debates on the right troXtrefa.There is no reason to doubt that they
knew aboutthe Aristoteliandefinitionsof the tc6k;q. Duringthe second
century B.C., the intensificationof relations with the Greek elite and
their debates were progressively translatedinto facts, the facts we are
talking about. So I would conclude from this that the invention of the
Graecus ritus and of all related facts was also the result of the discov-
ery of this Roman originality. What startedduringthe fourth and third
century as the traditionalintegrationof gods and customs from cities
falling beneath Roman rule, became in the first decades of the second
century the strange category of the Graecus ritus, the peregrina or
Graeca sacra. I do not know if the debate between Mettius Fufetius,
the general of the Albans, and king Tullus Hostilius in Dionysius'
Antiquities49goes back to a tradition of the second century, but it
reveals exactly the same problem. In his claim for hegemony, Fufetius
refers to the Greek character of Alba (0Ovoq'EXXiviKo6v)and its
refusal to integrateall those who are not Greek or Latin. The Romans
instead are supposedto have corruptedthe purityof their citizenshipby
grantingit to Tyrrhenians,Sabines, and a bunch of outlaws and barbar-
ians (riv apKptPEiav TODnxap' aiToi; iroXkt'l?6atL:o; 8?tp0ipKxaTe).
King Tullus on the other side objects that the Romans granted privi-
leges not to the well-born but to the man of merit, and so the city had
grownto its presentstrength.
In any case, Dionysius stresses precisely the Roman originality,the
ancient tradition of the open city. The presence of foreign elements
inside the Roman culture or people was necessary, it was the sign of
merit and strength. The process started during the Punic wars and
reachedits full developmentafterthe Social wars and the integrationof
the Italic cities. The religious categoryof the Graecus ritus was a side-
effect of this evolution and debate. It was used to stress the presence of
foreignersand of the world inside Roman cultureand the city of Rome,
in order to legitimate Roman imperialismand the Roman civic model.

Rome: participationet integration,"Ktema 6 (1981) 167-179. For the relation with the
Greek world and its philosophy, see the masterly synthesis of Jean-LouisFerrary,Phil-
hellenisme et imperialisme. Aspects ideologiques de la conquete romaine du monde
helldnistique(Rome 1988 [BEFAR271]).
49Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3.10 ff.
 GraecoRitu 31

At the end of the Republic, its conceptual strengthwas blunted, maybe

because now a more widely known sign of Rome's double origin and
mixed naturewas needed. At this time, there was, accordingto Claude
Nicolet, no externalforeignerleft, there were only foreigners inside the
Empire. The symbol of Roman ambiguity was found in the Trojan
myth. Apart from the annual rituals in Lavinium, affirming on one
hand by treaty that Romans and Laurentes were different, but on the
other that Lavinium contained the sacra principia of the Romans and
the Latins, it was not really used by the Romans until Augustus, but
from this period on it became primordial.50The old category of the
Graecus ritus remained. Now limited to a certainnumberof rules con-
cerning a small number of ceremonies performed in Rome, it was
mainly an argumentin the speculationsof antiquarians.

PARIS

50John Scheid, "Cultes,

mythes et politique au d6but de 1'Empire"in Fritz Graf ed.,
Mythos in mythenloserGesellschaft. Das ParadigmaRoms (Stuttgart1993 [Colloquium
Rauricum3]) 109-130.