LVDI MAGNI OR LVDI MEGALENSES?

Earlier readers of Dio took the clause κατά τϵ τῆς πανηγύρϵως τῆς μϵγάλης ηὔξατο to mean that Augustus made a vow during the Megalesian games, the state festival for the Magna Mater. For example, E. Cary in the Loeb edition translates it as ‘he made a vow with reference to the Megalesian games’.Footnote ³ However, in his recent commentary on Dio, P. Swan argues that the clause should mean instead ‘he vowed Ludi Magni’, a special kind of votive game.Footnote ⁴ Swan points out that in two other instances Dio calls the festival for the Magna Mater τὰ Μϵγαλήσια (37.8.1, 43.48.4) and that in addition to its more generic temporal or circumstantial meanings κατά + genitive could follow ϵὔχομαι to identify the thing vowed (see LSJ s.v. ϵὔχομαι II.3 and s.v. κατά A.II.5). However, Dio also regularly uses the structure ἡ πανήγυρις ἡ … to identify public festivals and ludi at Rome. Furthermore, it is not a case of one or the other: in the case of the Ludi Romani, he uses both formulations for the same festival.Footnote ⁵ There is no reason to suppose that he could not also refer to the festival of Magna Mater using both constructions. Thus, while Swan’s understanding of ἡ πανήγυρις ἡ μϵγάλη as ludi magni is certainly possible, the text is ambiguous.

There are, however, compelling contextual reasons to accept that the story took place in connection with a festival for the Magna Mater. The details Dio provides about the self-cutting prophet align generally with public attitudes towards the cult in Rome and, importantly, with specific public practices of Metroac cult attested during the reign of Augustus. The Magna Mater was imported to Rome from Asia in 204 b.c.e. to ensure victory over Hannibal and thereafter became an important state goddess tied to military victory, having a temple on the Palatine and a state festival.Footnote ⁶ However, the cult is also presented in the Augustan period as not fully assimilated into traditional Roman religion and society, with some of the practices that came with the goddess to Rome considered distasteful—especially the ecstatic, noisy and violent nature of the rites, which were believed to have come with the goddess from Asia.Footnote ⁷ Indeed, literary sources convey a strong prejudice against her traditional followers and rites, in both Dio’s and Augustus’ periods, despite the important role the goddess and her temple played in Augustan ideology.Footnote ⁸ Thus, Dio’s editorializing about the emperor’s private disbelief aligns with the hostile attitude taken by Roman writers towards particular Metroac followers and rituals. To be more specific, the prophet and her routine match specific distasteful elements of Metroac worship—notably, inspired self-mutilation. The self-castration of the galli, which happened in private, is the most well-known form of self-mutilation associated with the Magna Mater. However, cutting the arms with knives is also regularly noted as part of the ecstatic frenzy that devotees of Magna Mater performed in public to demonstrate their divine inspiration.Footnote ⁹ The practice was well known enough in the Augustan period that it could serve as a figure in poetry.Footnote ¹⁰ Metroac followers are also often depicted as offering up inspired prophecies, divinations and warnings of impending doom to onlookers during their public appearances.Footnote ¹¹ Finally, women participated publicly in the cult as leaders, functionaries and worshippers in the Augustan period.Footnote ¹²

Additionally, the particular history of the goddess’ rites at Rome in the reign of Augustus provides an attractive potential contemporary context for Dio’s story.Footnote ¹³ The precinct and the temple of Magna Mater stood on the Palatine next to Augustus’ house and his temple of Apollo. The cult personnel were evidently confined to this precinct, except for particular times when they interacted with the general population of Rome.Footnote ¹⁴ One such occasion was, of course, at the beginning of the Ludi Megalenses in honour of the goddess’ arrival in Rome and the dedication of her temple. The holiday began on 4 April with a procession during which the Metroac devotees, led by a priest and a priestess, carried a statue of the goddess through the city streets begging alms.Footnote ¹⁵ However, another possible setting for Dio’s story can be suggested. The temple on the Palatine burned in 3 c.e. Augustus quickly rebuilt it in his own name, and the new temple then became an important part of the overall presentation of the Augustan Palatine.Footnote ¹⁶ The rebuilding was evidently also an occasion for ritual innovation. A basin where the cult personnel washed the statue of the goddess in the precinct was removed during the renovation and a new ritual for the cleaning was established.Footnote ¹⁷ This involved parading the cult statue out of the precinct, through the city, and out of the Porta Capena to the Almo river, a tributary of the Tiber. This new lauatio is first noted by Ovid in the Fasti. Footnote ¹⁸ Later calendars suggest that this procession happened in late March.Footnote ¹⁹ Dio’s words τῆς πανηγύρϵως τῆς μϵγάλης may refer to one of the first instances of this new lauatio established in connection with Augustus’ rebuilding. In Dio, πανήγυρις is a general term for public celebrations, not just named ludi specifically. Associating the story with the new lauatio would also remove Swan’s objection that Dio does not call the occasion τὰ Μϵγαλήσια, since the reference would not be to the Megalesia at all.

This understanding also points to an explanation for why Augustus responded to the woman’s prophecy. Her actions disturbed one of the first, if not the first, instances of a new holiday he had established for the Magna Mater in connection with a major building project on the Palatine. The prophet had appeared during a long period of urban unrest owing, as Dio emphasizes, to famine and war. Times of crisis often inspired popular religious fervour that could result in official intervention, especially if it caused riots or other unrest in the city.Footnote ²⁰ Augustus himself worked especially hard to centralize and control the production of public prophecy and the interpretation of divine will—this was surely one reason for his general interest in the prophetic cult of Magna Mater.Footnote ²¹ Indeed, uncontrolled rival claims to divine favour and foreknowledge posed real threats to the position of the princeps in two ways, one concerning his religious authority and one concerning public order. Augustus’ actions in this case should be understood both as an instance of the emperor enforcing a monopolistic claim to special divine knowledge in the context of a favoured cult and as an instance of him ensuring public order at a time of popular unrest. Rather than force, emperors regularly relied on their individual auctoritas to quell urban unrest, using personal appeals that redirected the energy of the plebs into sanctioned and safer outlets.Footnote ²² Through his vow Augustus reclaimed the religious authority of the prophet for himself, redirected attention to the traditional and controllable act of a pubic vow, and defused a dangerous situation by publicly and personally seeking divine assistance to alleviate the famine.

In sum, the details of Dio’s story, his commentary and the overall context strongly suggest that it involved a priest or follower of Magna Mater acting during some festival of the goddess when the foreign clergy had an opportunity to disturb the gathered urban plebs at a festival closely associated with Augustus personally. To return briefly to Swan’s suggestion that Dio meant that Augustus vowed ludi magni, ludi magni are not a particularly good fit for the circumstances of Dio’s story. ludi magni, which we know primarily from Livy, were occasional games vowed to Jupiter.Footnote ²³ The Senate ordered them as part of the mobilization of the army, at first following military defeats but later as part of the orchestrated ceremonies initiating new wars of conquest. Livy presents them as debated and carefully designed in the Senate, with the pontifex maximus preparing and dictating the precise formula for the vow.Footnote ²⁴ They never appear as an extemporized response to an unwelcome prophecy or prodigy. Finally, Suetonius tells us that Augustus did in fact vow ludi magni a few years later in 9 c.e. after the Varrine disaster, adding that this ‘had earlier been done in the Cimbric and Social Wars’.Footnote ²⁵ This statement of Suetonius, who was looking back over a century to identify precedents for Augustus’ action in 9 c.e., would be strange if Augustus had, in fact, made a similar vow just two years earlier.

ALTARS OF CERES MATER AND OPS AUGUSTA

So far, this article has argued that the female prophet in Dio’s story was likely a Metroac follower and that the phrase κατά τϵ τῆς πανηγύρϵως τῆς Mϵγάλης identifies the occasion of the vow as some public holiday of Magna Mater. In this interpretation Dio does not identify either the target gods of the vow or what Augustus promised in return for their help. Dio also does not mention any later payment of the vow, at least in the portions of the text and the epitomes which survive. However, I propose that two other sources should be linked with this episode to suggest a more complete picture of events, to add further support to the association of the vow with a festival of Magna Mater, and to connect the vow Augustus made at a time of famine to a pair of goddesses especially concerned with the food supply, Ceres and Ops.

First, three marble calendar monuments record 10 August as a holiday because it was the anniversary of the establishment of a pair of altars to Ceres Mater and Ops Augusta.

We learn from these three entries that altars for Ceres Mater and Ops Augusta were established on the uicus iugarius on 10 August 7 c.e.—the same year as Dio’s story—as payment for a vow.Footnote ²⁷ The language in the calendar from Amiternum, which follows a formula for noting new holidays that was developed in the reign of Augustus, must derive from the language of the senatorial decree that created the holiday.Footnote ²⁸ This evidently emphasized the votive nature of these altars, a detail that, I believe, is unique among the texts for new holidays preserved on early imperial marble calendars. The recognition of the anniversary of the establishment (constituta est) as well as the dedication (dedicata est) of new public altars is attested in only three cases—namely, the altars of Pax Augusta, Fortuna Redux and the pair Ceres Mater and Ops Augusta, all from the Augustan period. This could be due to the fact that the holidays are known only from inscribed calendars, which mostly date to the early Imperial era, but more likely it suggests that placing such public emphasis on the establishment of the site for an altar was an Augustan innovation. What the establishment of the altar involved beyond the demarcation of a precinct (templum) by the augurs and the ritual naming of the gods to be worshipped there is unclear.Footnote ²⁹ There is no evidence that the altars were ever completed, which does not mean that they were not.

Second, near the beginning of Book 2 of Ovid’s Tristia, a long plea for mercy written on his way into exile in 9 c.e., Ovid explains why he believes that a poem might gain him pardon from Augustus. As precedents for his poetic plea Ovid cites two occasions when Augustus himself commissioned carmina to address the gods (Tr. 2.23–8):

Ovid’s second example refers to the singing of Horace’s carmen to Apollo at the secular games in 17 b.c.e.Footnote ³¹ The hymn to Ops should also refer to a public occasion well known enough to serve as a recognizable example to Ovid’s audience. Given the tenses of iussit (perfect) and iusserat (pluperfect), it must have occurred later than the secular games. Indeed, the impact of the passage is enhanced if the hymn to Ops had been performed recently when Ovid wrote Tristia Book 2 in 9 c.e. As Thomas Wiedemann has suggested, the setting for this hymn to Ops was surely the establishment of the altars recorded in the marble calendars.Footnote ³²

Augustus’ vow in Dio should, I argue, also be associated with the altars and the hymn to Ops. The coincidence of the year 7 c.e. is suggestive. Even more so is the unusual emphasis on the votive character of the altars in the language of the calendar from Amiternum. The epithet that Ovid gives to Ops, turrigera, provides a direct connection. The turreted crown was an important part of the iconography of Magna Mater, interpreted as signifying her role as the earth and as the founder and protector of cities (see LIMC VIII s.v. ‘Kybele’). It was so closely associated with her in Rome during the reign of Augustus that the goddess was represented on the pediment of Augustus’ rebuilt Palatine temple simply by an image of her turreted crown on a throne.Footnote ³³ The rare word turrigera first appears in Virgil, referencing in one case the defences of the city of Antemna and in the other the crown of Magna Mater (Verg. Aen. 7.61, 10.253). Propertius uses it again for the crown of Magna Mater (3.17.35). Ovid himself uses it and the related turrifer three times in the Fasti, referencing the Magna Mater in each case.Footnote ³⁴ Ovid’s use of the epithet for Ops in Book 2 of the Tristia is thus the only example of the word, which appears to have been an Augustan coinage, as an epithet for a god other than the Magna Mater. Ovid’s use in Tristia Book 2 reflects not just an association between Ops and the Magna Mater generally—Ops could be closely identified with the Magna Mater because both of them were identified with the Greek Rhea, a syncretism already established in the Augustan periodFootnote ³⁵ —but a specific association between the Ops of Augustus’ hymn and Augustus’ new ceremony and temple, where the crown appeared as the primary representation of Magna Mater.

Thus, in Tristia Book 2 Ovid refers to a hymn that Augustus commissioned two years earlier as evidence that gods (including by implication Augustus himself) could be successfully implored through verse. Ovid also included the epithet turrigera for Ops to point to the original context that had inspired the vow. Ovid’s use of the precedent here must rely on the fact that Ops and Ceres had, in fact, lessened the famine that occasioned the vow. On the other hand, Ovid’s recollection of the original context could remind his audience of the anxiety of that moment, the content of prophecies which had presumably predicted doom, and especially the fact that serious famine had returned repeatedly in the intervening years between the singing of the hymn and the writing of Tristia Book 2. Since famine in the capital continued to recur throughout the period 6–9 c.e., even after Augustus made his vow, this last detail could imply an expectation on Ovid’s part that his own entreaty would, in fact, also not be effective. If the altars were never completed, this would have been an especially biting innuendo.

Ovid returns to the worship of Magna Mater as precedent for his own actions again in the first poem of his Epistulae ex Ponto, written three years later in 12 c.e. There he argues that his work should find an audience in Rome because it contains the ‘sacred names of the Julian race’ just as followers of Isis or the Magna Mater are welcome when they appear bearing their divine instruments: ‘Is anyone so shameless that he would drive away from his doorstep someone shaking the jangling sistrum of Pharos in their hand? When the flute-player pipes on his curved horn before the Mother of the Gods, who refuses to offer him a few small coins’ (Pont. 1.1.37–40). Noisiness was one of the aspects of Eastern cults that is regularly cited as distasteful. The point is partly that Ovid’s presence through his works in Rome could be distasteful to proper Romans just as the foreign and strange priests of Isis shaking rattles and of Magna Mater playing pipes might be unwelcome. However, just as no one dares rebuff these priests doing holy work, so, Ovid says, should his works bearing holy names be accepted. The choice of Magna Mater reminded readers that Augustus had himself interacted with a prophet of Magna Mater a few years before and had chosen to respond rather than reject her. Ovid emphasizes the connection by describing his own activity a few lines later with a doublet reminiscent of religious prophecy, uaticinor et moneo (50). Dio says that Augustus did not personally accept that the prophet was divinely inspired in 7 c.e., so perhaps Ovid’s passage also is a reminder that Augustus had, in fact, been ‘so brazen’ as to reject a follower of Magna Mater at his door.