the delegation of the xviri to enna ca . 133...

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© 2013 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

THE DELEGATION OF THE XVIRI TO ENNA CA. 133 BC AND THE MURDER OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS1

JOHN NOËL DILLON

One of the stranger episodes in the history of the public religion of Republican Rome occurred sometime soon after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. Members of the college of xviri sacris faciundis, the same men responsible for consultation of the Sibylline Books and the expiation of serious prodigies, travelled overseas to the sanctuary of Demeter in the Sicilian city of Enna.2 The purpose of their journey was to appease the goddess by the performance of religious rituals. Why the Roman Senate dispatched the priests to Sicily and what they hoped to achieve by this religious mission are subjects of speculation and conjecture.

Our only independent account of the delegation of the xviri is the never-delivered Actio secunda of Cicero’s prosecution of the former governor of Sicily, C. Verres, in 70 BC. This forensic-literary context demands cautious reading. The tale of the Roman priests and the goddess forms the preface to an attack on Verres for removing a bronze statue of ‘Ceres’3 from her sanctuary. Cicero tells how the same sanctuary of Ceres had been the destination of an unusual delegation from Rome (Ver. 2.4.108):

Itaque apud patres nostros atroci ac difficili rei publicae tempore, cum Tiberio Graccho occiso magnorum periculorum metus ex ostentis portenderetur, P. Mucio L. Calpurnio consulibus aditum est ad libros Sibyllinos; ex quibus inventum est Cererem antiquissimam placari oportere. Tum ex amplissimo collegio decemvirali sacerdotes populi Romani, cum esset in urbe nostra Cereris pulcherrimum et magnificentissimum templum, tamen usque Hennam profecti sunt. Tanta enim erat auctoritas et vetustas illius religionis ut, cum illuc irent, non ad aedem Cereris sed ad ipsam Cererem proficisci viderentur.

And so in our fathers’ generation, at a terrible and difficult time for the Republic, in the consulship of P. Mucius and L. Calpurnius [133 BC], when after the slaying

1 I thank Peter Wiseman and the editors for their friendly advice and criticism. 2 That not all members of the college went to Sicily is evident from Cicero’s expression: ‘ex [...] decemvirali collegio’ (Ver. 2.4.108). 3 Like Cicero, I will use the Roman names throughout, except where the Greek identity of the goddess is important.

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of Tiberius Gracchus prodigies portended great dangers,4 the Sibylline Books were consulted; there it was discovered that the most ancient Ceres must be placated. Then, although there was a beautiful and magnificent temple of Ceres in our city, priests of the Roman people from the prestigious decemviral college instead set out all the way to Enna. So great was the authority and antiquity of that cult that when they went there, they seemed to set out not for the temple of Ceres but for Ceres herself.

The same priestly delegation in the time of Ti. Gracchus is discussed by two further ancient authors. Valerius Maximus, writing probably under Emperor Tiberius, cites the delegation of the xviri to Enna as a specimen of Roman piety; he places it at the time of ‘the Gracchan sedition’ (Gracchano tumultu) and represents the Roman Senate as ‘warned’ by the Sibylline Books.5 Lactantius, writing in the early fourth century AD, also notes the delegation of the xviri ‘in the time of the Gracchi’ (Gracchanis temporibus).6 Neither of these sources possesses any independent value. Both authors depend entirely on Cicero’s Verrine Orations and add nothing to the latter’s account. Valerius’ use of the Verrines, besides many other speeches by Cicero, as a source of exempla is well known.7 Lactantius mentions the delegation in a polemical discussion of Verres’ religious crimes, for which Cicero’s speeches furnish all his information.8

Two other sources are relevant. The only other source that appears to refer to the delegation of the xviri is a fragment of Diodorus Siculus’ universal history (D. S. 34/35.10.1). Diodorus describes the delegation as visiting, not the temple of Ceres in Enna, but altars of Zeus Aetnaeus throughout Sicily. Finally, Julius Obsequens’ Book of Prodigies (Obs. 27a) lists public prodigies reported by Livy for the year 133 BC, yet he makes no mention of the delegation to Sicily.9 How these sources should be reconciled to the evidence of Cicero will occupy us below. First it is necessary to examine Cicero himself.

4 Literally ‘the threat of great dangers was portended by signs’. On the meaning of ostenta, which Cicero uses as a synonym to portenta, see D. Engels, Das römische Vorzeichenwesen (753-27 v. Chr.): Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung (Stuttgart 2007) 269-71. 5 V. Max. 1.1.1: ‘Cuius [sc. Cereris] cum in urbe pulcherrimum templum haberent, Gracchano tumultu moniti Sibyllinis libris ut vetustissimam Cererem placarent, Ennam, quoniam sacra eius inde orta credebant, Xviros ad eam propitiandam miserunt.’ 6 Lactant. Div. inst. 2.4.29: ‘Denique Gracchanis temporibus, turbata republica et seditionibus et ostentis, cum repertum esset in carminibus Sibyllinis antiquissimam Cererem debere placari, legati sunt Ennam missi.’ 7 On Valerius Maximus as a historical source, see G. Maslakov, ‘Valerius Maximus and Roman historiography: a study of the exempla tradition’, ANRW II.32.1 (1984) 437-96, esp. 458-59 on his use of Cicero, with bibliography; cf. R. Helm, ‘Beiträge zur Quellenforschung bei Valerius Maximus’, RhM n.s. 89 (1940) 241-73, at 250-51 for an example from the Second Verrine (2.1.70 = V. Max. 9.10.2); and id., ‘Valerius Maximus, Seneca und die “Exempla Sammlung”’, Hermes 74 (1939) 130-54. 8 Lactant. Div. inst. 2.4.27-37. 9 The omission is somewhat surprising because Obsequens records two such delegations (to Cimolos and Gaul, see below) in other years.

JOHN NOËL DILLON: THE DELEGATION OF THE XVIRI TO ENNA 91


Cicero’s account

Cicero describes the delegation of the xviri in the fourth book of the Actio secunda of the Verrines, the De signis. This book of the Verrines is dedicated to Verres’ theft of statues (signa) from cities throughout Sicily. Cicero decries the theft of an antique bronze statue from the sanctuary of Ceres of Enna as the climax of Verres’ crimes against sundry Sicilian cities outside the provincial capital (Ver. 2.4.105-115); he concludes the book by recounting Verres’ numerous thefts in Syracuse itself. The theft of Ceres from her sanctuary in Enna is represented, appropriately, as offending the entire island.10

It is well known that throughout the Verrines, but especially in the fourth book, Cicero represents Verres’ acquisition of statues as acts of sacrilege.11 Cicero elaborates charges of sacrilege despite the fact that such allegations concerning foreign temples were otiose in Rome. Sacrilege (sacrilegium) was a capital offence the consisted in the theft of sacred property from a Roman temple, but one could not be convicted of sacrilege in Rome for robbing the temples of other states.12 The Roman people accepted no responsibility for the maintenance or wellbeing of foreign deities: Roman law did not protect foreign sanctuaries as such. Since the relationship between Rome and the cities of its provincial subjects was conceived as one between autonomous city-states, a Roman governor like Verres could be tried in Rome only for the crime of repetundae, ‘provincial extortion’ or ‘misappropriation’.13

Legal niceties did not prevent Cicero from building a strong case of sacrilege against Verres. The virtue of such allegations lay in their power to rouse indignation and condemn Verres of provincial extortion a fortiori. Cicero does not, however, level merely generic accusations of sacrilege. He construes Verres’ acquisition or appropriation of statues and other objects as sacrilege according to Roman religious norms – as if Verres had stolen from the official gods of the Roman people and even from their temples in Rome. One of the ways in which Cicero creates this illusion is by citing historical precedent. Several exempla appear to give certain Sicilian cults a virtually official Roman pedigree: unexpected acts of generosity by the conqueror of Syracuse, Claudius Marcellus; the restoration of a statue of ‘Diana’ to the people of Segesta by Scipio Aemilianus;14 and, perhaps the strongest precedent of all, the delegation of the xviri to the sanctuary of Ceres in Enna, cast Verres as the unscrupulous violator of gods who had been recognized as Roman by the venerable maiores themselves.

10 It is a ‘facinus [...] quo provincia tota commota est’ (Cic. Ver. 2.4.105). 11 E.g. A. Vasaly, Representations: images of the world in Ciceronian oratory (Berkeley 1993) 127; M. M. Miles, Art as plunder: the ancient origins of debate about cultural property (Cambridge 2008) 163; M.-K. Lhommé, ‘Verrès l'impie: objets sacrés et profanes dans le De signis’, VL 179 (2008) 58-66, at 58-59, 61; T. D. Frazel, The rhetoric of Cicero’s In Verrem (Göttingen 2009) 71-78, esp. 77. 12 See briefly T. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig 1899), 760-63, 768-72. 13 On (pecuniae) repetundae, see M. H. Crawford, ed., Roman Statutes, 2 vols (London 1996), I, 40-42, 51-53, no. 1. Verres was not merely guilty of furtum in Sicily (so Lhommé, ‘Verrès l'impie’, [n. 11 above] 58): he was guilty of a public crime. On religious autonomy under Roman rule, see C. Frateantonio, Religiöse Autonomie der Stadt im Imperium Romanum: öffentliche Religionen im Kontext römischer Rechts- und Verwaltungspraxis (Tübingen 2003) passim. 14 Marcellus and Syracuse: Cic. Ver. 2.4.115, 2.4.120-23, 2.4.130-31, 2.4.151; Scipio Aemilianus and Diana: 2.4.73-83.

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Cicero introduces the sanctuary in Enna and its goddess by popular mythology. Suggesting that the Roman jury must surely know the story, Cicero states (Ver. 2.4.106):

Vetus est haec opinio, iudices, quae constat ex antiquissimis Graecorum litteris ac monumentis, insulam Siciliam totam esse Cereri et Liberae consecratam. Hoc cum ceterae gentes sic arbitrantur, tum ipsis Siculis ita persuasum est ut in animis eorum insitum atque innatum esse videatur.

This is an old tradition, men of the jury, stated in the most ancient Greek literature and records: that the entire island of Sicily is sacred to Ceres and Libera. If the rest of the peoples of the world think this, then the Sicilians themselves are so convinced of it that it seems rooted and fixed in their hearts.

The city Enna lies on a plateau in the middle of Sicily, near the very site where ‘Dis Pater’ burst forth from the underworld and abducted ‘Libera’. Tradition identified Lake Pergusa, four and a half miles from Enna itself, as the place where the Lord of the Underworld appeared.15 Such facts are something learned even by children – iam a pueris accepimus (Cic. Ver. 2.4.107) – excepting ignorant Verres. The delegation of the xviri reinforces the identification of Sicilian Demeter and Roman Ceres suggested by mythology and tradition. The Sibylline Books advised that the Romans should placate the most ancient Ceres (Cererem antiquissimam placari oportere), and although a venerable temple to Ceres stood in Rome, the priests set out instead for Enna. As Cicero puts it, they seemed to be setting out ‘not for the temple of Ceres, but for Ceres herself’.16

Verres, in crass contrast, removed Ceres from her very sanctuary. Cicero leads the reader to believe that Verres had taken the cult statue itself, the very one visited by the xviri in 133: ‘I will say this: that this very most ancient, holiest (religiosissimam) Ceres, the first of all cults that are celebrated by all peoples and races, was taken by C. Verres from her temples [sic] and seat’.17 He quickly qualifies this claim before one can accuse him of outright deception. Cicero explains that visitors to Enna would have seen a large marble cult statue (simulacrum)18 of fairly recent date in the sanctuary; the most ancient statue – antiquissimam, a word chosen to recall the words of the Sibylline oracle – was a small bronze of Ceres holding torches.19 Yet after distracting the reader with an excursus on the devotion of the people of Enna to their patron goddess, Cicero resumes describing the statue stolen by Verres as the simulacrum Cereris, the cult statue of Ceres, presumably

15 Cf. Ov. Met. 5.385-391. Lake Pergusa, the only natural lake on Sicily, was irreverently encircled by the ‘Autodromo di Pergusa’ in 1951. 16 Cic. Ver. 2.4.108: ‘non ad aedem Cereris sed ad ipsam Cererem proficisci viderentur.’ 17 Cic. Ver. 2.4.109: ‘Hoc dico, hanc ipsam Cererem antiquissimam, religiosissimam, principem omnium sacrorum quae apud omnis gentis nationesque fiunt, a C. Verre ex suis templis ac sedibus esse sublatam.’ 18 On the terminology of sacred statues, see S. Estienne, ‘Statues de dieux ‘isolées’ et lieux du culte: l’exemple de Rome’, CCG 8 (1997) 81-96, at 83-89 and P. C. N. Stewart, Statues in Roman society: representation and response (Oxford 2003) 19-28 and 184-95. 19 Cic. Ver. 2.4.109: ‘Ex aere fuit quoddam modica amplitudine ac singulari opere cum facibus perantiquum, omnium illorum quae sunt in eo fano multo antiquissimum; id sustulit.’ Perhaps it resembled the torch-bearing Demeter depicted on a litra from Enna (SNG 1322); on which see A. De Agostino, ‘Le Monete di Henna’, Bolletino storico Catanese 1-2 (1936-37) 73-86, at 73.



identical to the one visited by the Roman priests in 133 BC. Thus Cicero portrays the removal of a statue of Demeter from her sanctuary in Enna as a case of Roman sacrilege.

Political interpretations

Scholarly interpretations of the delegation of the xviri to Enna are generally political in nature and dwell on the significance of the mission in the eyes of two audiences, the Sicilians and the Roman plebs, and in connection to two events, the First Sicilian Slave War and the murder of Ti. Gracchus. The less obvious and less popular interpretation that privileges the Sicilians over Roman politics, as argued by Le Bonniec, holds that the Romans sought to atone for the hypothetical desecration of Ceres’ sanctuary during the slave war. The leader of the slaves, Eunus, is supposed to have violated Ceres by introducing the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis, whom he is known to have worshipped.20 The Romans will have acknowledged that the desecration of the sanctuary had occurred on their watch, so to speak. By purifying the sanctuary and appeasing Ceres, they will have atoned for their failure in the slave war and simultaneously, and more importantly, have flattered the Sicilians by the ostentatious cultivation of one of their most renowned cults. This interpretation is adopted by MacBain, with whose overarching interpretation of expiation as political acts of (earthly) communication it squares exactly. MacBain sees Roman expiation at Enna not only as atonement offered to a goddess considered identical to Roman Ceres but also as a gesture toward the Sicilian landowners who had suffered at the hands of the slaves.21

Against this Sicilian interpretation, however, there is no evidence that the Romans purified Ceres’ sanctuary;22 there is not even the suggestion that it had been polluted. Cicero claims the opposite, for what it is worth: that the slaves held the sanctuary in the highest respect, a claim that the coins issued by Eunus bearing the veiled head of the goddess and an ear of wheat tend to confirm.23 Ritual purification in Enna, regardless, can hardly have been the task of priests from Rome: the Romans distinguished their duties from those of others according to a principle of religious autonomy. If purification was required, it should have been performed by the people of Enna more patrio. Whether the people of Sicily, or even those who survived in Enna, were flattered by the attention of the Roman priests is unknowable. If the xviri proceeded at the sanctuary of Ceres as they did at the sanctuaries of Zeus Aetnaeus, they would have sacrificed in secrecy and have barred most Sicilians from entering until they departed.24 Such actions communicate indifference

20 H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome des origines à la fin de la République (Paris 1958) 367-68. Most recently on Eunus, see P. Morton, ‘Eunus: the cowardly king’, CQ 63 (2013) 237-52. 21 B. MacBain, Prodigy and expiation: a study in religion and politics in republican Rome, Collection Latomus 177 (Brussels 1982) 38 with n. 84. 22 Nor, pace Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 367, do Cicero’s words ‘Cererem antiquissimam placari’ imply that the goddess was offended because she had been ‘dethroned’ by Syrian Atargatis. 23 For Cicero, see n. 78 below. For Eunus’ coins, see E. S. Robinson, ‘Antiochus king of the slaves’, NC 20 (1920) 175-76. 24 D. S. 34/35.10.1: περιφράγματα ποιήσαντες ἀβάτους ἀπεδείκνυον τοὺς τόπους πλὴν τοῖς ἔχουσι καθ’ ἕκαστον πολίτευμα πατρίους θύειν θυσίας.

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to the reaction of the Sicilians, if anything. If the First Sicilian Slave War led the Romans to Enna, it is unlikely to have been for the sake of their Sicilian subjects.

Most attempts to explain why the Roman xviri travelled to Enna, rather than appease Ceres in her famous Roman temple, revolve around Roman politics, because Cicero (and so also Valerius Maximus and Lactantius) conspicuously connects the mission to the death of Ti. Gracchus. The arguments derived from this association hinge on the facts that Ceres was the patron goddess of the Roman plebs,25 and that the persons of the tribunes of the plebs were sacrosanct, partly under her protection: Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy record that the property of offenders against the tribunes’ sacrosanctity was forfeit to Ceres.26 On a widespread view, the delegation of the xviri to Enna was a conciliatory gesture toward the Roman plebs in the aftermath of Gracchus’ murder, a muted acknowledgement of wrongdoing by means of the religious associations of the tribune of the plebs. Having manufactured the Sibylline oracle reported by Cicero, the Senate will have chosen the venerable sanctuary of Ceres in Sicily to lend solemnity to the gesture.27 Others who subscribe to this interpretation see the choice of Enna as an attempt to avoid confrontation with the angry plebs at Ceres’ Aventine temple.28 Alternatively, the Senate chose to dispatch the propitiatory delegation in order to counter appeals to Ceres in hypothetical Gracchan propaganda.29 Le Bonniec sought to reconcile these interpretations by arguing that the Senate compromised, appeasing the plebs yet also subtly diverting their attention to a less dangerous, less politically charged cult of Ceres than that on the Aventine – this in addition to winning the Sicilians’ favour.30 This is the view adopted most recently by Engels, who allows both possibilities: that the Senate sought to atone for the hypothetical desecration of the sanctuary and for the murder of Ti. Gracchus in Rome.31 The Senate will have played a twofold game of political posturing, for the Sicilians on the one hand and for the plebs on the other.

Spaeth, in an article dedicated specifically to the delegation of the xviri and the death of Ti. Gracchus, begins on political premises but argues on the contrary that the Senate ostentatiously sent the xviri to Enna as part of a political campaign to justify the murder of

25 See in general, Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 342-78; B. S. Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres (Austin 1996), 81-102. 26 D. H. 6.89.3; Livy 3.55.7-8. Livy specifies twice that the person of the offender himself was sacer to Jupiter, while both state that he might be killed with impunity. See R. M. Ogilvie, A commentary on Livy, books 1-5 (Oxford 1965) 500-03. 27 Literature in Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 368 (summarizing the interpretation of J. Carcopino); Spaeth, Ceres (n. 25 above) 204-05 n. 84; id., ‘The goddess Ceres and the death of Tiberius Gracchus’, Historia 39 (1990) 182-95, at 183-84 n.5; this interpretation is discussed critically by MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 38-39 n.84. 28 This view is taken in the influential works of A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford 1967) 227 and D. Stockton, The Gracchi (Oxford 1979) 87-88. These authors do not explore the contradiction between what they consider a gesture of goodwill by the Senate and its pre-emptory rejection by the intended addressee, the plebs. 29 The view of J. Bayet summarized by Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 368-69. 30 Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 369. 31 Engels, Vorzeichenwesen (n. 4 above) no. 222. MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 39 n. 84 also allows for a Gracchan message in the expiation, although he clearly regards it as secondary or incidental.



Gracchus.32 Spaeth rightly notes that, far from compromising, the Senate remained intransigent after the murder of Gracchus, praising it in decrees and persecuting Gracchus’ followers by inquisition.33 It is the extent of this intransigence that is debatable. Spaeth views the mission to Enna as an attempt to prove that Gracchus was iure caesus as a consequence of a consecratio capitis pronounced over him. Ceres will have been offended because Gracchus’ person and property were not consecrated to her either for violating tribunician sacrosanctity (by deposing his colleague, Octavius) or, as his enemies alleged, because he aspired to tyranny.34 Adapting the reasoning of earlier scholars, Spaeth explains that, ‘The cult of the goddess at Henna was selected because its great antiquity and authority added symbolic weight to this action, and because this cult did not have the potentially inflammatory political associations of the cult of Ceres at Rome’.35

Spaeth concedes that it would indeed have been absurd to insist on the charge that Gracchus had violated tribunician sacrosanctity after his own spectacular murder.36 The conjecture in reserve, however, that the purpose of the delegation to Enna was to atone for Gracchus’ attempted regnum, is unfounded. The pontifex maximus Scipio Nasica might have performed a consecratio capitis on Gracchus.37 Even if one regards it as valid, however, Gracchus’ person would have been sacer to Jupiter, not Ceres.38 We hear nothing, however, of the consecratio of Gracchus’ property. There is no explicit evidence that the property of those who aspired to regnum was forfeit to Ceres. That it would have been is not implausible. Even so, it would not be open to interpretation which Ceres should receive the consecratio bonorum or be offended by its omission: it was Roman Ceres who dwelt in the temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome, and it was this cult that was traditionally dear to the Roman plebs. Livy explicitly writes (3.55.7) that the property of offenders in such cases was sold ad aedem Cereris, Liberi Liberaeque, which can be none other than the temple on the Aventine.

What such speculation over the fate of Gracchus’ person and possessions overlooks, though, is the fundamental fact that even if Scipio Nasica pronounced a consecratio capitis over Tiberius Gracchus, even as pontifex maximus, he did so illegally, as a privatus; a consul could pronounce a consecratio capitis, but the consul had refused to

32 Spaeth, ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) 182-95; reprised in id., Ceres (n. 25 above) 73-79. Spaeth ignores the Sicilians. 33 Spaeth, ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) 184-84; id., Ceres (n. 25 above) 205 n. 84. 34 Spaeth, Ceres (n. 25 above) 77-78; ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) 193-94; the Senate will have downplayed the violation of tribunician sacrosanctity in light of Gracchus’ own death, alleging instead his aspirations of regnum as the offence. 35 Spaeth, Ceres (n. 25 above) 74; id., ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) 194-95. 36 Spaeth, Ceres (n. 25 above) 77; id., ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) 193. 37 J. Linderski, ‘The pontiff and the tribune: the death of Tiberius Gracchus’, in Roman Questions II (Stuttgart 2007) 88–114, but see contra T. P. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman people (Oxford 2009) 185-87. 38 Linderski, ‘The pontiff’ (n. 37 above) 114 n. 109. Spaeth wishes to make Ceres the recipient of the consecratio capitis for regnum prescribed in an (anachronistic) law of 509 BC, attributed to Valerius Poplicola (Livy 2.8.2; Plu. Publ. 12.1), but Jupiter is the obvious choice. Such a law perhaps stood in the Twelve Tables (Ogilvie, Commentary [n. 26 above] 252). For sacer esto in the Twelve Tables, see the ‘Commentary’ in Crawford, Roman Statutes (n. 13 above) II, 690. See also n. 26 above.

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act.39 It is highly implausible that Nasica could have followed up the controversial slaying of the tribune with the illegal consecration of his property, something no source records. The religious argument for the killing proved so inferior to those against it that Nasica himself had to be sent off to Asia (despite his religious office) the following year.40 Neither Roman nor Ennan Ceres can have been offended by the failure of the Roman people to transfer Gracchus’ belongings to her, as Spaeth conjectures. Nasica’s supposed consecratio was void from the start.

Finally, it is legitimate to ask of such political interpretations how the performance of rituals in an overseas sanctuary for a foreign goddess far from the eyes of the intended audience, the Roman plebs, could have either appeased or exasperated them (or both!), whichever one prefers. One should remember what Cicero says of the Roman people, that their ears were dull, but their eyes sharp and keen.41 Would report of ceremonies in faraway Enna have made any impression whatsoever on the men and women who saw their champion bludgeoned to death and cast into the Tiber before their very eyes? Sacrifice in Sicily

Strictly political interpretations of religious acts owe much to the old paradigm that Roman religion was nothing more than a tool used by the Senate to control the mob.42 Such interpretations ignore the religious implications of a sacrificial delegation to a sanctuary that stood not only outside of Rome and Roman territory but outside Italy itself.43 The Ceres who protected the Roman plebs was to be found on the Aventine Hill of Rome, not in Sicilian Enna, and there is nothing other than Cicero’s suggestive oratory over sixty years after the fact that could cause them to be confused. Within the context of the Verrines, Cicero is at pains to represent Demeter in Enna not only as identical to the Ceres worshipped in Rome, but even as a superior manifestation of the Roman goddess.44 If she is somehow troubled by the death of Gracchus in Rome, if prestigious public priests worship her persona in Enna as more authentic than that in Rome, then the goddess

39 Linderski, ‘The pontiff’ (n. 37 above) 101 with nn.51-52; Ogilvie, Commentary (n. 26 above) 343. 40 References in T. R. S. Broughton, The magistrates of the Roman republic, 2 vols (New York 1951-52) I (1951) 499. On the prohibition of the pontifex maximus from leaving Italy, broken first by Nasica, see below n. 43. 41 Cic. Planc. 66: ‘Nam postea quam sensi populi Romani auris hebetiores, oculos autem esse acris atque acutos, destiti quid de me audituri essent homines cogitare; feci ut postea cotidie praesentem me viderent, habitavi in oculis, pressi forum.’ How expiation ceremonies performed in Rome could have communicated political messages to sundry peoples elsewhere in Italy is the great unanswered question in MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above), whose central thesis of expiation as communication has otherwise found wide acceptance among scholars of Roman religion. 42 Starting with Plb. 6.56.6-15. 43 Italy had been recognized as a territory within Roman religion long before the tota Italia of Octavian, as illustrated by the prohibition of the pontifex maximus to leave Italy; see P. Catalano, ‘Aspetti spaziali del sistema giuridico-religioso romano’, ANRW II.16.1 (1978) 440-553, at 525-47, esp. 528-29. 44 Cic. Ver. 2.4.114-15 claims Ceres of Enna was not a religio externa or aliena, which is precisely what she was; Cicero moreover suggests that the rites of Ceres at Enna were the same sacra graeca that ‘maiores nostri ab exteris nationibus adscita atque arcessita coluerunt’; on which, see J. Scheid, ‘Graeco ritu: a typically Roman way of honoring the gods’, HSPh 97 (1995) 15-31. Further on religio externa, see below.



violated by Verres was not merely the mistress of Sicily: she is a goddess who commands the veneration of all right-thinking Romans. Whether that was how she was perceived in 133 BC is another question.

Most take for granted the connection between Gracchus’ murder and the delegation of the xviri, but Cicero does not in fact impose it on the reader. In the key passage, Cicero only specifies that Gracchus’ death preceded the report of prodigies: Ti. Graccho occiso – ‘after the slaying of Tiberius Gracchus’ in the year 133 BC (Ver. 2.4.108). Cicero is deliberately vague. The ablative absolute construction in question may perhaps be interpreted more naturally as temporal, giving the sense ‘after’, rather than causal ‘because’, but Cicero has created a context for the prodigies that suggests a causal relationship. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus was one of the defining crises of the Roman Republic; how could prodigies reported after it not be connected?45 Without explicitly saying so, Cicero leads the reader to conclude that the advice of the Sibyl and with it the delegation to Sicily must be related to Gracchus’ death.

It would be mistaken to believe that Cicero has associated the mission to Enna with Gracchus innocently. Despite the tendency to privilege the testimony of Cicero,46 Cicero hardly deserves such trust. For one, it can be proven that Cicero has not said everything either about the prodigies that were reported in Rome or about what was done about them in Sicily. Thanks to the efforts of late antique compilers, we are relatively well informed about prodigies and omens in the Late Roman Republic. Julius Obsequens lists year by year most of the supernatural phenomena that had been recorded in now lost books of Livy. For 133 BC (Obs. 27a), he reports rivers of milk, a giant sinkhole, a rain of earth, a wolf attack, the sighting of an owl and another unknown bird in Rome, the voice of a baby heard within the closed temple of Juno Regina, shields (probably hung in the temple) splattered with fresh blood, the birth of a four-footed girl, and the birth and disposal (by drowning) of an androgynous child. According to him, a chorus of twenty-seven maidens purified Rome. All the prodigies mentioned occurred in Rome or at least in peninsular Italy. He makes no mention of the delegation of xviri to Enna in this or any other year, but more importantly neither does Cicero mention the purification of the City (lustratio) by twenty-seven maidens, the disposal of the hermaphrodite, or any other public ritual that must have been performed in Rome. Cicero reports only what is convenient to his case, that the Sibylline Books had commanded that ‘the most ancient Ceres be placated’ and that the xviri satisfied this need by traveling to Enna. That cannot have been all the Sibyl said. The remedia prescribed by the Sibylline Books normally consisted of a variety of rituals performed in Rome to restore the favour of the gods.47 In fact, the Sibylline oracle that mentioned the ‘most ancient Ceres’ very probably responded to the hermaphrodite birth of 133 BC, just as an extant Sibylline oracle from 125 BC preserved by Phlegon of

45 MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 39 n. 84 points in the right direction when he observes, ‘For Cicero, of course, anything that happened in the year 133 BC must somehow be brought into relation with the death of Gracchus’. 46 E.g. Spaeth, ‘Ceres and Gracchus’ (n. 27 above) and Ceres (n. 25 above) does not cite Diodorus Siculus. 47 MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 82-112 indexes prodigies and, where known, their expiations; see also S. W. Rasmussen, Public portents in republican Rome (Rome 2003) 53-116; and further J. North, ‘Diviners and divination at Rome’, in Pagan priests, ed. M. Beard and J. North (Ithaca 1990), 51-71, at 54-55. See Phlegon in the following note.

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Tralles concerns a hermaphrodite.48 It thus fits a pattern from the late second to the early first century BC, whereby the birth of a hermaphrodite was expiated by rituals to Ceres and Persephone.49 Why the Roman interpreters of the oracle ultimately chose to seek the ‘most ancient Ceres’ in Sicily is a question that will be answered below.

Cicero saw no advantage in reporting the rest of the remedies that the Sibyl recommended on the occasion; he therefore ignores them.50 We know from other evidence, moreover, that Ceres was not the only deity visited by the delegation. Diodorus Siculus, who also mentioned the mission, recorded unusual sacrifices at altars to Zeus Aetnaeus (i.e. Zeus of Mt. Etna), it would seem, all over Sicily. The surviving excerpt (D.S. 34/35.10.1) reads:51

ὅτι ἡ σύγκλητος δεισιδαιμονοῦσα ἐξαπέστειλεν εἰς Σικελίαν κατὰ Σιβυλλιακὸν λόγιον. οἱ δὲ ἐπελθόντες καθ’ ὅλην τὴν Σικελίαν τοὺς τῷ Αἰτναίῳ ∆ιὶ καθιδρυμένους βωμούς, θυσιάσαντες καὶ περιφράγματα ποιήσαντες ἀβάτους ἀπεδείκνυον τοὺς τόπους πλὴν τοῖς ἔχουσι καθ’ ἕκαστον πολίτευμα πατρίους θύειν θυσίας.

That the Senate superstitiously sent a delegation to Sicily according to the Sibylline oracle. Those sent travelled to altars established to Zeus Aetnaeus throughout all Sicily, sacrificed and erected barriers, declaring the sites off limits except to those in each community who had to perform ancestral sacrifices.

Zeus Aetnaeus may have had a sanctuary somewhere near the crater of the volcano; he is depicted on the unique Aetna tetradrachm (mid-fifth century BC) in a somewhat Dionysiac aspect, suggesting vineyards on the slopes of ancient Etna.52 The altars ‘throughout all Sicily’ suggest systematic worship at several sites at least in eastern Sicily, if not in ‘all’ parts of the island. Why exactly the xviri restricted access to the altars of Zeus Aetnaeus is unclear; what is clear, though, is that Ceres at Enna was not the only deity visited by the Roman priests.

The religious exclusivity of Roman religion

Political interpretations of the delegation of the xviri to Enna almost universally fail to appreciate how extraordinary it is that a delegation of Roman public priests should expiate

48 Phleg. Mir. 10 = FGrH II B no. 257. 49 See MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 127-35 (Appendix E). The last hermaphrodite expiation is recorded for 92 BC. MacBain (134-35) in fact argues that the oracle preserved by Phlegon was intended for 133. Cf. also Le Bonniec, Cérès (n. 20 above) 452-54. 50 Cicero similarly omits prodigies that do not interest him in De haruspicum responso; see M. Beard, ‘Cicero’s “Response of the haruspices” and the voice of the gods’, JRS 102 (2012) 20-39, at 23. 51 That Diodorus Siculus and Cicero are referring to the same delegation of xviri is accepted by most scholars; T. C. Brennan, ‘The Roman commanders of the first Sicilian slave war’, RFIC 121(1993) 153-84, at 160-62 disputes the connection; he places a separate delegation of xviri to Mt. Etna in 135, for which peaceful conditions must have prevailed on Sicily, in order to date the outbreak of the First Sicilian Slave War firmly to 135. Orosius’ evidence is by no means certain, though, and although there were indeed ‘plenty’ (162) of Sibylline responses, there were extremely few that sent the xviri abroad. 52 He sits on a panther skin and rests his arm on a wine stock; for the Aetna tetradrachm, see F. De Callataÿ and H. Gitler, The coin of coins: a world premier (Jerusalem 2004).



abroad prodigies reported in Rome – particularly the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, if one views it as a prodigium.53 Expiation of publicly recognized prodigies at places outside Rome is not unknown, but it is extremely rare.54

Three other cases besides the trip to Enna are known. In 217 BC, after the outbreak of the Second Punic War, expiatory rituals included sacrifice by the xviri personally in the forum of the Latin colony of Ardea.55 We are not told why: Ardea is not among the places named by Livy where prodigies occurred that year. The other two cases are closer both in date and in character to the delegation to Enna. The motives behind the latter of the two are regrettably unknown. In 108 BC, the Sibylline Books prescribed sacrifice on the Aegean island of Cimolos, presumably under the direction of the xviri, with the aid of thirty boys and thirty girls whose parents both were alive.56 There is no way of knowing whether the sacrifice was related to the two prodigies listed by Obsequens immediately beforehand – the sighting of ominous birds in Rome and a case of cannibalism – but no obvious connection springs to mind.57 Closer to the Aegean, the proconsul M. Minucius Rufus (cos. 110) had been campaigning in Macedonia and Thrace, defeating the Thracians in battle in 108 BC, but again there is no obvious connection to Cimolos.58

The other ‘international’ sacrifice, just ten years before the delegation to Enna, is better understood. Eager for a triumph, Ap. Claudius Pulcher (cos. 143) allegedly made an unprovoked attack on the Gallic tribe of the Salassi in Northern Italy: he lost five thousand men.59 Defeat at the hands of the Gauls seemed portentous; the Sibylline Books were consulted. The xviri reported they had found in the Books that ‘whenever the Romans should make war on the Gauls, they must sacrifice in their territory’.60 ‘Two of the ten priests’, i.e. from the decemviral college, were sent to Claudius, who then defeated and subjugated the Salassi.61 The Salassi dwelt in Gallia Cisalpina, along the Dora Baltea, a tributary of the Po, near important passes through the western Alps.62 It was here that

53 As suggested e.g. by Appian’s description of it as a μύσος (BC pr. 2, 1.2.17), pointed out to me by Peter Wiseman. Appian uses the word on many other occasions of civic bloodshed and treachery (e.g. 1.4.33, 1.13.114, 4.6.48, 4.12.95, 5.8.70-71), so his usage is not proof that Gracchus’ murder was officially recognized as a prodigium by the Senate. 54 MacBain, Prodigy and expiation (n. 21 above) 36 with n. 76. 55 Livy 22.1.19. It is possible that they participated in rituals at other sites, such as the lectisternium in Caere or the supplicatio of Fortuna on Mt. Algidus the year before (Livy 21.62.8-9), but Livy does not mention their presence. Their appearance at Ardea thus appears to be exceptional. 56 Obs. 40: ‘Ex Sibyllinis in insula Cimolia sacrificatum per triginta ingenuos patrimos et matrimos totidemque virgines.’ 57 Obs. 40: ‘Avis incendiaria et bubo in urbe visae. In latomiis homo ab homine adesus.’ On the mysterious avis incendiaria, see S. Ferri, ‘Ciconiae nixae’, RPAA 27 (1952–54) 29–32 and H. Leitner, Zoologische Terminologie beim Älteren Plinius (Hildesheim 1972), 147. Pliny, Nat. 10.36 records that the city was purified in response (‘sicut L. Cassio C. Mario cos., quo anno et bubone viso lustratam [urbem] esse’). 58 Livy, Per. 65; cf. Broughton, Magistrates (n. 40 above) I, 549. 59 Men lost: Oros. 5.4.7; unprovoked attack: D. C. frg. 74 (assigned to Book 22). 60 Obs. 21: ‘Cum a Salassis illata clades esset Romanis, decemviri pronuntiaverunt se invenisse in Sibyllinis, quotiens bellum Gallis illaturi essent, sacrificari in eorum finibus oportere.’ 61 Dispatch of the two xviri: D. C. frg. 74; victory: Oros. 5.4.7; Livy, Per. 53, only mentioning the subjugation of the Salassi. 62 H. Graßl, ‘Salassi’, Der Neue Pauly 10 (2001) 1245-46.

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the xviri must have sacrificed to the gods of the Salassi, whether by name (which cannot be ruled out) or by a generic invocation, such as that employed at Isaura Vetus around 75 BC.63 The xviri clearly posited a direct relationship between the foreign territory and the deities on whose support the success of the Roman magistrate depended. These cannot have been the gods of the city and people of Rome: one had to leave Rome, its temples, and its territory behind and travel to Gallia Cisalpina, even outside of Italia, to perform the requisite sacrifices.

The Romans generally saw a close relationship between a territory and the people of that territory, not least their own. This association encompassed the gods of a particular people and territory as well.64 An episode from the end of the First Punic War illustrates this Roman view very vividly, because the foreign territory concerned was so near Rome itself. In 241 BC, one of the consuls decided to consult the lots of Fortuna Primigenia at her famous sanctuary in Praeneste. Valerius Maximus (1.3.2) preserves the following story:65

Lutatius Cerco, qui primum Punicum bellum confecit, a senatu prohibitus est sortes Fortunae Praenestinae adire: auspiciis enim patriis, non alienigenis rem publicam administrari iudicabant oportere.

Lutatius Cerco, who concluded the First Punic War, was forbidden by the Senate to consult the lots of Fortuna at Praeneste: they ruled that the state should be administered under ancestral, not foreign, auspices.

The Roman Senate was very careful to distinguish between the religious obligations of the Roman people, the city of Rome, and those of other peoples and cities. When the Senate compels Lutatius Cerco to conduct state business under ‘ancestral’ auspices, it means the religious sanction conferred by the gods recognized in Rome. In the same way, if some ritual error was discovered and the consul’s auspices (i.e. the gods’ approval) had to be renewed, he had to return at least to Roman territory to renew them.66 The corollary to this sharp distinction between the official gods of the Roman people and those of others was the exclusivity of the gods that representatives of the Roman people might under normal circumstances consult, honour, and invoke for aid. Non-Roman sanctuaries and gods were thought of as external or outside the jurisdiction of Roman public religion. They are described best as sacra externa.67 Such gods belonged to other peoples, and

63 AE 1977, 816: ‘sive deus sive dea sit’; see J. Rüpke, Domi militiae: die religiöse Konstruktion des Krieges in Rom (Stuttgart 1990) 163-64. 64 Cf. Frateantonio, Religiöse Autonomie (n. 13 above) 54-57. 65 I discuss here only the first, shorter excerpt by the epitomator Paris; another, longer but garbled version is excerpted by Nepotianus; see J. N. Dillon, ‘Trojan religion: foreign sanctuaries and the limits of Roman religious exclusivity’, in The impact of Rome on cult places and religion in Italy: new approaches to change and continuity. Proceedings of the workshop at the Royal Netherlands Institute at Rome, Rome, May 21, 2010, ed. T. Stek and G.-J. Burgers (forthcoming) on these texts. 66 On the renewal of the auspices within the ager Romanus, see P. Catalano, Contributi allo studio del diritto augurale, I (Turin 1960) 81, 182, 270 n. 89; id., ‘Aspetti spaziali’ (n. 43 above) 530; cf. Rüpke, Domi militiae (n. 63 above), 45-46. For corresponding contrast between domi and solum externum, see Livy 22.1.4-8. 67 On sacra externa as a category of cult, see further Dillon, ‘Trojan religion’ (n. 65 above). Examples of this usage of externus include, e.g., Livy 4.30.9 (externa religio), 25.1.12 (nouo aut externo ritu), 39.16.8 (sacra



urs’.70

indeed in the year 241 BC, Praeneste remained an autonomous city-state, the territory, citizens, and gods of which were not Roman.68 This principle of exclusivity, allowing for some ancient and famous exceptions,69 remained essentially stable even at the end of the Republic. Thus, when in 59 BC Cicero emphasizes the gulf that separates Judaism – to him, specifically the religion of Jerusalem – from the religion of the Roman people, he says to his opponent: ‘Every civitas has its own religion, Laelius; we have o

If the public religion and cults of Rome were valid ‘only within Rome’s frontiers’,71 the Romans might consider the religious systems of other peoples as valid within theirs.72 Such a conception of alien and potentially enemy deities is fundamental to the much-discussed but seldom-practiced ritual of evocatio.73 It would be natural if, under special circumstances, a similar approach was taken toward winning the divine support or acquiescence of non-Roman deities in cities or even larger territories – for instance of the Salassi or even the island of Sicily.

The situation of Sicily

The close association the Romans maintained between communities or territories and the gods responsible for them reminds us to seek a religious reason in Sicily for Roman rituals performed in Sicily. It comes as no surprise that the Senate had very good reason to appease both the goddess Ceres in her Sicilian abode and Zeus of Mount Etna: Sicily had been the scene of a devastating slave war (136/35-132 BC). The slave war led to the defeat of Roman armies and threatened Rome’s supply of Sicily’s chief product, and Ceres’ special province, grain, the importance of which would be underlined by the passage of C. Gracchus’ lex frumentaria ten years later.74 As if to announce the uprising, Mt. Etna had erupted in 135 BC, a portent per se.75

externa), 39.16.9 (non patrio sed externo ritu – very similar to V. Max. 1.3.2 (Paris) quoted above); Tac. Ann. 14.44.3 (externa sacra aut nulla). The other epitomator of V. Max. 1.3.2 (Nepotianus) has the Senate forbid extraria responsa. See also solum externum in the preceding footnote. 68 A temple to Fortuna Primigenia in Rome was built in 194 BC (Livy 34.53.5); Praeneste did not receive Roman citizenship until after the Social War (App. BC 1.65). 69 The Romans had shared some cults with their neighbours since the most ancient times (e.g. the feriae Latinae); on the other hand, over the course of the second century BC, Roman magistrates began to perform religious acts at prominent sanctuaries in the Greek East (e.g. Delphi, Olympia). I argue in Dillon, ‘Trojan religion’ (n. 65 above) that they did so after rationalizing Greece, and in particular Troy, as a Roman homeland. 70 Cic. Flac. 69: ‘Sua cuique civitati religio, Laeli, est, nostra nobis.’ 71 O. de Cazanove, ‘Some thoughts on the “religious Romanisation” of Italy before the Social War’, in Religion in archaic and republican Rome and Italy: evidence and experience, ed. E. Bispham and C. Smith (Edinburgh 2000) 71–76, at 71. 72 On the connection between peoples and territories, see Catalano, ‘Aspetti spaziali’ (n. 43 above) 511-12; in general, Frateantonio, Religiöse Autonomie (n. 13 above) passim. 73 See briefly H. Versnel, ‘Evocatio’, Der Neue Pauly 4 (1998) 329 with bibliography. 74 For the connection between Roman greed for grain and Sicilian Ceres, P. Green, ‘The first Sicilian slave war’, P&P 20 (1961) 10-29, at 22; on Gracchus’ lex frumentaria, see P. Garnsey and D. Rathbone, ‘The background to the grain law of Gaius Gracchus’, JRS 75 (1985) 20-25. 75 Obs. 26; cf. Engels, Vorzeichenwesen (n. 4 above) no. 219.

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ter the war.79

The conclusion of the First Sicilian Slave War has important implications for the interpretation of the delegation of the xviri to Enna. The war was at last brought to an end by the consul of 132 BC, P. Rupilius,76 in the year after Gracchus’ murder. Rupilius, together with the infamous Popilius Laenas, his colleague, had overseen the persecution and condemnation of Gracchus’ followers before setting out for Sicily; once on the island, he first reduced the city Tauromenium at the foot of Mt. Etna and then proceeded inland, where he captured Enna, the slaves’ stronghold, after a prolonged siege.77 Despite Cicero’s suggestive association of the delegation of the xviri with the year of Gracchus’ murder, the delegation must have come a year later. Indeed, Cicero knew full well that Enna had been in the hands of the rebellious slaves. He gravely observes that the slave leaders had made Enna their capital, yet unlike Verres, although they were ‘slaves, fugitives, barbarians, enemies’, they did not lay a hand on Ceres’ sanctuary.78 If by 132 BC the rebel slaves were sufficiently contained in their strongholds, it is just possible that the xviri sacrificed to Zeus Aetnaeus on the slopes of Etna to facilitate the capture of Tauromenium, in much the same way that their sacrifice in the territory of the Salassi had (one supposes) brought about the subsequent Roman victory. Although the Senate may have decreed it already in 133 BC, the sacrifice of the xviri at the temple of Ceres in Enna cannot have taken place until after the conclusion of the war in 132 BC, and probably both sacrifices occurred af

The deities who received sacrifices from the xviri mirror the progress of Rupilius’ conquests, from the foot of Mt. Etna to the plateau of Enna. These sacrifices should be viewed as expressions of Roman desire to reconcile the major gods of the areas held by the slaves and perhaps the island as a whole; in fact, a sacrificial mission to cult sites across Sicily presupposes the Roman province, which united Sicily under a single administration for the first time. The Romans not only pacified the countryside and defeated the slaves, but also took measures to appease the angry deities of Sicily who had so visibly withdrawn their favour.80

76 For Rupilius, see J. R. W. Prag, ‘Roman magistrates in Sicily, 227-49 BC’, in La Sicile de Cicéron: lectures des Verrines, ed. J. Dubouloz and S. Pittia (Paris 2007) 287-310, at 299. 77 Sources in Broughton, Magistrates (n. 40 above) I, 497-98; cf. Green, ‘First Sicilian slave war’ (n. 74 above) 18; Brennan, ‘The Roman commanders’ (n. 51 above) 158. 78 Cic. Ver. 2.4.112; cf. Frazel, Rhetoric (n. 11 above) 85-86 on this paradox. 79 Brennan, ‘The Roman commanders’ (n. 51 above) 169-71 notices and attempts to explain this discrepancy by having the praetor Perperna capture the sanctuary in 133 and Rupilius the town proper in 132, so that the xviri could approach the sanctuary even before Enna had been captured. Having stood on the site, however, I think such a mission would have been extremely reckless, even if Perperna had taken the sanctuary—the Rocca di Cerere is much nearer the citadel than the ground far below. Perperna’s supposed victory apud Hennam (Flor. 2.7) could have been anywhere. The abundance of Roman sling bullets found at the Rocca di Cerere (Brennan 171 with 154 n. 1; cf. ILLRP 1088) doubtless attests to the fact that the slaves were thoroughly entrenched there. Although Brennan (167-68) discusses the meaning of apud Hennam in some detail, he fails to notice that Florus has obviously confused Perperna with the ultimate conqueror Rupilius, so that all activities apud Hennam should belong to the latter. The claim (167) that Florus is not referring to a siege (Brennan omits the crucial word obsessos) is wishful thinking. 80 It is conceivable, but not demonstrable, that the sacrifices were even part of the reorganization of the island undertaken by Rupilius and a delegation of ten senators after the war.



Conclusion

There is thus no real connection between the delegation of Roman priests to Enna and the death of Tiberius Gracchus beyond the coincidence of date and Cicero’s bald assertion. The delegation of Roman priests to Sicily springs from the importance of territory and divine jurisdiction in Roman religious thought. In 133 or 132 BC, the Senate exceptionally acknowledged that Ceres of Enna, along with Zeus Aetnaeus, was relevant to the Roman people – if in Sicily. Perhaps they too considered Enna the ‘acropolis of the entire island’, as Eunus supposedly told his fellow rebels.81 If any religious action was taken for Tiberius Gracchus, it would have been taken in Rome, in the city presided over by the gods of the Roman people. A delegation of Roman priests to an overseas sanctuary because of portents in Rome or because of a Roman tribune of the plebs does not make Roman religious sense. A hermaphrodite birth in 133 BC may have led to the oracle that mentioned the ‘most ancient Ceres’, but the Romans’ reasons for seeking her in Sicily sprang from more specific, territorial religious needs. A delegation of priests to reconcile the gods of Sicily to its Roman rulers, when Rome’s oldest and, at the time, economically most important overseas province had been devastated by a slave war, seems appropriate to Roman concern for its grain supply and to the peculiar status of the first permanent Roman province outside of Italy. This interpretation resembles the interpretation pioneered by Le Bonniec and adopted by MacBain, but with an important difference: the Romans are not sacrificing at Enna to communicate respect and solidarity to the Sicilians, ostentatiously engaging with Sicilian Greek religion, but rather to communicate directly with Sicilian gods in pious self-interest, on their own imperialistic terms. This interpretation thus allows for some genuine religious feeling in an episode that is too often interpreted in terms of Realpolitik or as a kind of religious show-business in the struggle between oligarchic conservatives and popular reformers in the Late Roman Republic. The Roman Senate did not send some of their most eminent public priests to Sicily as part of an elaborate game of charades. Palo Alto, California

81 D. S. 34/35.2.24b: ὑπὸ γὰρ τῆς πεπρωμένης αὐτοῖς κεκυρῶσθαι πατρίδα τὴν Ἔνναν, οὖσαν ἀκρόπολιν ὅλης τῆς νήσου.

the delegation of the xviri to enna ca . 133...

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