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[German version] Deity of Sabine origin whose name in Antiquity was translated as virtus or ἀνδρία/ andría, ‘manliness’, and fortitudo, ‘strength’, ‘bravery’ (Gell. NA 13,23,7; Lydus, Mens. 4,60). Nerio is derived from Indoeuropean * ner-, ‘man-’, which is preserved in many Italian dialects, but was replaced in Latin by uir-, except in the personal names Nerio and Nero [1. 438f.]. It is an attractive hypothesis that M. Claudius [I 11] Marcellus was thinking of the Sabine Nerio when dedicating anew the santuary of Honos outside the Porta Capena…

I. Religious studies [German version] A. General Sacrifice is one of the central concepts in describing ritual religion in ancient and modern cultures. In European Modernity, the term sacrifice (directly or indirectly influenced by Christian theology of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ to redeem mankind) also has an intimation towards individual self-giving ('sacrifice of self'). The range of nuances in the modern meaning stretches to include discourses that have lost their religious motif and hav…

[German version] Lat. 'announcer' of vaticinationes, 'prophecies', which occur by means of divine inspiration and are, according to Cicero, part of the 'natural' divination (Cic. Div. 1,4; 1,34 et passim; Divination VII: ill. of the communication pattern); occasionally, however, representatives of the 'artificial' divination (Haruspices; Augures) are also called vates (such as Liv. 2,42,10). The vates speaks in verse ( canere since Enn. Ann. 207; carmina: Sall. Hist. 1,77,3 et passim) and is thus part of a general ancient tradition of prophetically inspired text p…

[German version] (φυλακτήριον/ phylaktḗrion, literally 'means of protection') refers to a religious formula used to ask for protection (PGM VII 317f.) as well as to an amulet believed to offer safety, Latin amuletum (Char. 1,15; [1]). Since amulets were worn around the neck, head, arms and legs or attached to clothing, they were also called in Greek περιάμματα/ peri(h) ámmata or περίαπτα/ perí(h)apta (Plat. Resp. 426b; cf. Pind. Pyth. 3,52f.: peri(h)áptōn phármaka); in Latin, ligamenta or ligaturae (Aug. Serm. 4,36; cf. Cato Agr. 160: adligare), 'tied-on objects'. Here ancient …

[German version] As the social category of the human 'sense of shame', pudor is an element of Roman discourse on values from its earliest mention on (e.g. Plaut. Epid. 166). Yet only in the intensified moral discourses of the Augustan Period  - in imitation of the Greek a idṓs - does it come to the fore as an appellative and person. Amongst poets the mention of pudor can sometimes evoke Pudicitia (Serv. Auct. Aen. 4,27; Hor. Carm. saec. 57; [1. 89]). Admittedly, unlike the personification of female chastity, p udor was not formally worshipped. However, its combination with Copia, Fi…

[German version] V. is a goddess ( dea) of the city of Rome, recorded only in Val. Max. 2,1,6, whose small sanctuary ( sacellum) still stood on the Palatine at the time of Tiberius [II 1]: couples used to go there (but no longer in the time of Valerius Maximus) to resolve marriage difficulties by mutual exchange of their arguments. The name of the goddess was explained, entirely in the sense of a moralizing strategy by the author, with the etymology a placandis viris, 'from placating husbands'. With the aid of problematic 19th and 20th cent. religious and evolutionist categori…

[German version] A subterranean pit, presumably expanded into a chamber, associated in Rome and other Italic cities with religious cult. A possible architectonic parallel is the subterranean sanctuary of Dionysus in Volsinii (Bolsena) from the 3rd cent. BC [1 Fig. 1]. There is agreement neither on the etymology of the Latin word mundus [2], nor on the origins or the function of the religious mundus. It has been associated with a pre-deistic form of worship of the spirits of the dead, but also with primitive agrarian and fertility rituals (critica…

[German version] ('College of seven men'). Founded at Rome in 196 BC by resolution of the people, initially as a college of three men (Liv. 33,42,1), later (perhaps under L. Cornelius [I 90] Sulla) enlarged to seven, and finally, by Caesar, to ten members (Cass. Dio 43,51,9), the Roman urban priestly college known as the tresviri, later septemviri epulonum (e.g. InscrIt 13,2 p. 114 f.) or epulones ( epulo ; e.g. Liv. 33,42,1; Paul. Fest. 68 L.), took its name from its arrangement of the Iovis epulum , the sacrificial banquet ( ludorum epulare sacrificium: Cic. De or. 3,73) for Jupiter, …

[German version] I. Ancient Orient The religion of Mesopotamia is characterized by a system of tutelary deities for the numerous city settlements that has its origin in the Sumerian religion of the 4th millennium BC. There is evidence of the existence and worship of city deities from the 3rd to the 1st millennium. Individual city deities achieved supraregional importance in the course of history (e.g.  Assur [2];  Enlil;  Ištar,  Marduk;  Nabû).  Asia Minor IV.;  Pantheon;  Religion II. and III. Renger, Johannes (Berlin) [German version] II. Classical antiquity For Graeco-Roman …

[German version] (Πύθιοι/ Pýthioi). In the political organization of Sparta - according to tradition established by Lycurgus [4] - each of the two Spartan kings chose two ambassadors which were dispatched to obtain the oracles of Apollo Pythios in Delphi. In the Greek poleis, these ambassadors were usually called theoprópoi or theōroí; the name Pýthioi at Sparta thus reflects a special relationship between this polis and the Delphic oracle. The Pýthioi were allowed to dine in the skēnḕ dēmosía - at the expense of the dḗmos - as fellows in the kings' tent ( sýskēnoi) and at their table ( sýssit…

(Πάνθεος/ Pántheos, Πάνθειος/ Pántheios, Lat. Pantheus). In antiquity, P. ('all-god' or 'universal deity') referred (Auson. Epigrammata 32 Green; CGL V 318,38) to a deity which, within a differentiated polytheistic system, combined in itself the attributes, traits and identities of several or all gods (syncretism). [German version] I. Ancient concepts of a universal god In Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, gods were structured into a hierarchic pantheon [1. 107-113; 177-181] analogous to hierarchic human social structures (cf. ruler). This structure e…

[German version] [1] Legendary founder of Rome The legendary founder of Rome. Perhaps literally 'the Roman'. A possible correspondence between the Etruscan nomen gentile Rumelna (Volsinii, 6th cent. BC: ET Vs 1,35) and the alleged Roman nomen gentile Romilius - the name is securely attested only in an old tribus Romilia/-ulia (Paul Fest. 331 L.) - and between R. and an Etruscan praenomen * Rumele [1. 31 f.] proves nothing about the historicity of the figure of R. Also problematic is the attempt [2. 491-520; 3. 95-150] to connect the finds from the Roman Mon…

(Λύκος; Lýkos). Mythology and religion: L. [1-9], historical persons: L. [10-13], rivers: L. [14-19]. [German version] [1] Son of Poseidon and the Pleiad Celaeno Son of Poseidon and the Pleiad Celaeno [1] (Ps.-Eratosth. Katasterismoi 23), only Apollod. 3,111 mentions his translation to the Islands of the Blessed, possibly to differentiate him from L. [6], with whom he is connected by Hyg. Fab. 31, 76 and 157 in spite of the descent from Poseidon. Scherf, Johannes (Tübingen) [German version] [2] Son of Prometheus and Celaeno Son of Prometheus and Celaeno [1], on whose tomb in th…

[German version] Mentioned in the Republican libri sacerdotum as an addressee of prayers (Gell. NA 13,23,2). In the Augustean period, the MM received a supplicatio every 12 May (Feriale Cumanum, InscrIt 13,2, p. 279). This supplication is connected with the natalis templi of the sanctuary of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augustum and with the ludi for Mars on the same day (Mars I.C.). The compound moles belli, ‘the dangers’ or ‘privations of war’, inspired by the mṓlos Árēos (since Hom. Il. 2,401), is present in Roman poets and historians from the 2nd cent. BC (Acc. fr. 610 TRF…

[German version] (Τριτοπάτορες/ Tritopátores, also Τριτοπατρεῖς/ Tritopatreîs). The cultically worshipped ancestors - usually as a collective, but also individually (Τριτοπάτωρ/ Tritopátōr: IDélos 1,66) - of a particular social group. Cults of the T. of a pólis , of demes ( dêmos [2]), phratríai or génē (Family, IV. A. 3.) are recorded in Attica and on Attic-influenced Delos, in Selinus [4], Troezen and Cyrene. Several local inscriptional texts, primarily including a lex sacra from Selinus, give information about their cultic status. Philochorus (FGrH 328 F 182) in…

[German version] In literature also rex sacrificulus (e.g. Liv. 2,2,1), 'king of the sacrifice', or simply rex (e.g. Varro Ling. 6,12 f.). The great age of this Roman priesthood is evident from the requirement that the rex sacrorum belong to a patrician gens (Cic. Dom. 38; Liv. 6,41,9; exception: MRR 1,284 n. 8), be born of a marriage concluded by confarreatio , and he himself be married by that ritual (Gai. Inst. 1,112). The rex sacrorum was nominated by the pontifical college, and, after being elected, inaugurated into the comitia calata (Antistius Labeo fr. 22 Huschke in Gell. NA …

[German version] ( Saxsanus, also Saxsetanus). Epithet, primarily of Hercules. The name derives from Latin saxum, 'rock, stone'; Hercules S. was worshipped in the context of individual Italic or provincial Roman quarrying regions. The beginning of the worship of Hercules S. dates back to before the second half of the 1st century AD in central Italy (Tibur: CIL XIV 3543, the restoration of an older sanctuary in the Flavian period as a terminus ante quem), less likely in upper Italy (CIL V 5013). From Italy, the cult presumably came to Germany with some of the soldiers…

[German version] The patrii di (Greek θεοὶ πάτριοι/ theoì pátrioi or θεοὶ πατρῷοι/ theoì patrôioi, theoí pátrioi ) were not a fixed category of Roman religious law, but represented an indigenous attempt to classify religious plurality in terms of the traditionalistic scheme typical of ancient religion: that of in-group/out-group. The 'gods of the fathers' gained some of their legitimacy from the fact that the ancestors were already worshipping them in accordance with the traditional value system (Latin patrii mores ritusque; Greek pátrioi nómoi). Therefore, patrii di can refer t…

[German version] According to Varro, Antiquitates rerum divinarum fragments 95 and 273 Cardauns (in Aug. Civ. 7,2-3; cf. ibid. 4,11), a daughter of Jupiter; se was the Roman goddess of menstruation. M., recorded nowhere else, seems to be patterned on the Greek μήνη/ mḗnē, ‘Moon (personified as Mḗnē/ Sēlēnē ), or the linguistically and connotatively related Greek μήν/ mēn, Latin mēnsis, ‘(lunar) month’, and continues the customary association of menstruation with the monthly cycle and the influence of the moon. M.'s sphere of action overlaps those of othe…

[German version] A group of deities whose worship is reflected in the inscriptions of Marruvium (Vetter no. 225 = [1. 43-47 no. 36]: esos nouesede, 3rd cent. BC) and Pisaurum (CIL XI 6297 = ILLRP 20: deiu no[ u] esede, 3rd/2nd cents. BC). Calpurnius Piso (fr. 45 HRR = 35 Forsythe) claims the origin and cult of the Di Novensides lie in the Sabine town of Trebula Mutuesca. Together with the Di Indigetes (see below) and other divinities the Di Novensides (as divi Novensiles; the ending in -ilis is probably secondary) are invoked in the devotional formula of P. Decius [I 1] Mus in 34…

[German version] The patera was a flat, round dish without a handle, decorated from time to time, with a bulge ( omphalós) in the middle (like the Greek phiálē : [1. 42-44]) that was used as a drinking vessel (Plaut. Amph. 260; Prop. 4,6,85) and as a sacrificial bowl in the Roman cultural area (Varro, Ling. 5,122; fig. see Sacrifice IV.): from the patera, the person offering up the sacrifice poured the libatio, the drink offering, especially the sacrifice of wine (libation and wine consumption: Verg. Aen. 1,728-740); it was also used to sprinkle the head of the sac…

[German version] [1] Name to describe the plurality of gods In modern scholarship on religious history, the term 'pantheon' is used in systematizing the plurality of ancient gods (Polytheism). In the following, it will be used accordingly to denote all the many deities worshipped in a particular geographical area and socio-historical context. Richter, Thomas (Frankfurt/Main) [German version] I. Mesopotamia Sumerian does not have its own expression for a collective of gods corresponding to the term 'pantheon'. The Sumerian term A-nun-na, 'seed of the prince' (i.e. of Enki, …

Old Roman nomen gentile, derived from the prename Marcus. Tradition knows of a patrician branch with the (mythical) king Ancus M. [I 3] and Cn. M. Coriolanus as its most important members. The younger members of the family (from the 3rd cent.) were plebeian without a link to the patrician Marcii being evident. Important families included the Rutili, later also the Censorini, Tremuli, Reges and Rallae. In the Late Republic the family claimed descent from the kings Ancus M. and Numa Pompilius (therefore the cognomen Rex, see M. [I 5]; RRC 346; 425; Suet. Iul. 6,1; [4. 154]) as wel…

[German version] Sagmina (pl.) were the herbs which were pulled out of the ground with their soil in Rome on the Arx on behalf of the fetiales (Plin. HN 22,5; 25,105; Fest. 424-426 L.). These herbs were used during the appointment ritual of the pater patratus (Liv. 1,24,4-6); the fetiales also took them along on their missions (Liv. 30,43,9). Bendlin, Andreas (Erfurt) Bibliography J. Rüpke, Domi militiae, 1990, 100-103.

I. In general and in classical antiquity [German version] 1. History of the term The adjective πολύθεος/ polýtheos refers in poetic Greek to that which pertains to many deities: the altar as the seat ( hédra) of many gods (Aesch. Suppl. 424) or the divine assembly attended by many gods (Lucian. Iuppiter Tragoedus 14). It is only in Jewish and Christian literature (Apologists) that this concept is used to justify the rule ( monarchía) of a single deity. Philo [12] of Alexandria coined the terms δόξα πολύθεος/ dóxa polýtheos (Phil. De decalogo 65) and πολυθεΐα/ polytheḯa (Phil. De mutatione…

[German version] The object and function were already obsolete in the 1st cent. BC, and therefore required explanation. Paul Fest. 115 l. knows of two explanations: (1) the manalis lapis (ML) was an entrance to the underworld through which the souls of the subterraneans, alias Di Manes, ‘streamed ( manāre) into the upper world; (2) the ML was a stone (or a water jug: Varro in Non. 547 with dubious rationalization) located at the temple of Mars outside the Porta Capena in Rome which the pontifices ( Pontifex) pulled into the city in times of drought (cf. Paul Fest. 2 l., associating ML with aquaeli…

[German version] I. General The status of the moon in ancient mythological speculation and cult worship reflected its central position in the calendar cycles, agricultural cycles and monthly cycles with respect to their various aspects. The moon (personified) could be the addressee of the cult; the cult also included the male and female deities embedded in the traditional panthea and associated with the moon as moon deities (MD) with regard to their particular aspect. Whilst e.g. Selene/Luna just li…

[German version] Goddess probably of Italian (Sabin.: [4. 166, 186]) origin. In 167 BC, after the victory over Perseus of Macedonia, L. Aemilius [I-32] Paullus burnt the weapons of the enemies for her and other deities (Liv. 45,33,1f.: L. mater; 8,1,6, L. mater as the addressee of a weapon-burning in 341 BC is presumably an annalistic fiction). The choice of the goddess may be explained by the derivation of her name from Latin luere: the weapon-burning after a successfully concluded battle marks the phase of demilitarization as a rite de passage; it symbolizes not only the ‘destructi…

[German version] A. Concept In the 1960s, criticism of the work-immanent interpretation of literary texts as closed systems was voiced in the aesthetics of reception of H. R. Jauss and in intertextuality as shaped by the semiotician Julia Kristeva. Kristeva was influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the literary text as an open system: no text originates in a socio-historical vacuum; even at the very moment of its production it represents a dialogue with other literary and non-literary texts and…

[German version] I. Term Ritual refers to an elaborate sequence of individual rites which, following an established ritual syntax, are logically connected within a certain functional context. Rituals are not limited to religious contexts but exist in other cultural contexts, political as well as social. The significance of rituals for those who participate in them can be reduced neither to an integrative function (legitimation ritual) nor to a temporary disabling of the regular structure - the two e…

I. Introduction [German version] A. Definition of the concept 'Religion', the substantive for describing the religious, denotes a system of common practices, individual ideas about faith, codified norms and examples of theological exegesis whose validity is derived chiefly from an authoritative principle or being. For the academic study of religion, conversely, the word is a purely heuristic category in which those practices, ideas, norms and theological constructs are examined historically; however, the…

(Νίκανδρος; Níkandros). [German version] [1] Spartan king, c. 715 BC Spartan king, Eurypontid, the father of Theopompus (Hdt. 8,131). N. led the raid of Spartans and Asinaeans into Argolis, in retaliation for which the Argives destroyed Asine [1] ( c. 715 BC). The settlement was refounded a few years later on the Messenian Gulf (Asine [2]; Paus. 2,36,4f.; 3,7,4; 4,14,3f.). Meier, Mischa (Bielefeld) Bibliography M. Meier, Aristokraten und Damoden, 1998, 74f., 93, 96. [German version] [2] Strategos in the Aetolian League, 190/189, 184/3 and 177/6 BC Son of Bittus of Trichonium (Syll.3 5…

[German version] According to Calpurnius Piso fr. 42 Peter = 10 Forsythe the wife of Volcanus, no other references. Assumed Oscian origin [1] contributes little to clarification. It is possible that Piso, against a contemporary identification of Maia as the wife of Volcanus and eponym of the month of May (conceivable with Gell. NA 13,23; Cincius fr. 8 GRF in Macrob. Sat. 1,12,18; Ov. Fast. 5,81-106), derives the name of the month from a goddess M., with M. for her part probably coming from Latin maiestas (Ov. Fast. 5,11-53 mentions the latter as a possible eponym of the name of …

[German version] Epithet of Juno. According to tradition, her Roman temple on the Arx (Capitolium) was vowed by L. Furius ([I 11], probably not [I 12]) Camillus in 345 BC (Liv. 7,28,4) and dedicated on 1 June 344 (Liv. 7,28,5f.; Ov. Fast. 6,183f.; Fasti Venusini, InscrIt 13,2, p. 58). The traditional story that the shrine was erected at the site of the house of M. Manlius [I 8] Capitolinus (e.g. Liv. 6,20,13; 7,28,5; Ov. Fast. 6,185f.) is based on its erroneous localization on the Arx. The source …

[German version] 'SR' take their name from an ancient Israelite ritual sequence described in Lv 16,5-10 and 20-22, in which every year at Yom Kippur a ram was sacrificed to Yahweh and a second, on to which all the guilt of the people of Israel had been transferred, was driven into the wilderness "to take away divine anger"( ăzāzēl: [1. 159-162]). Post-Exile and, later, Jewish Rabbinic tradition explain Azazel as a demon or fallen angel, whereas early Christian theology interprets the ram as an allegory for Christ, who by his death is supposed to hav…

[German version] is the original form of the name of the Roman god (CIL I2 453; Vetter No. 200B 6b; Volchanus: CIL I2 1218; Volganus: CIL I2 364; Volkanus: CIL IX 6349), the form Vulcanus is more recent. Attempts to trace this name back through the Etruscan Velch(ans) [1. 289-409] to a Cretan ελχάνος ( Welchános, or Zeus Velchanos) [1. 155-287] and thus to identify its origin in the eastern Mediterranean region are based primarily on linguistic similarities; the conclusion that Volcanus was therefore originally a god of vegetation is hypothetical …

[German version] A. Ancient East Attested since the 2nd half of the 4th millennium, board games were used as a pastime but also for divination purposes ( Divination; in conjunction with models of the liver [3]). The playing boards of 5 × 4 squares were made from wood (carved or with coloured inlays), stone (painted or with inlays) or baked clay; the playing pieces and dice, from ivory or bone; no information is available on the way the games were played. There is probably no connection with the Egypt…

[German version] (Σεπτήριον/ Septḗrion), not Stepterion (Στεπτήριον/ Steptḗrion), was the name of a nine-yearly sequence of festivals and rituals, in the course of which a boy would set fire to a wooden construction beneath the temple of Apollo in Delphi, would then himself be led in a procession into the Thessalian Tempe valley to be ritually purified there of his 'offence' with accompanying sacrifices in the river Peneius. A central constituent was the plucking at the sanctuary to Apollo there of a l…

[German version] (Νόμιοι Θεοί; Nómioi Theoí). As an adjunct to νομεύς/ nomeús, ‘shepherd’, νόμιος/ nómios is a poetic apostrophe or actual cult invocation for the identification of groups of gods (anon. NT in Rome: IG XIV 1013) and individual gods in their function as pastoral deities. The following are addressed as Νόμιος/ Nómios: Hermes (Aristoph. Thesm. 977f.); Pan (Hom. H. 19,5; Paus. 8,38,11: cult of Lycosura in Arcadia); the Nymphs (Orph. H. 51,11f.); Aristaeus [1] in Cyrene (Pind. Pyth. 9,65); Dionysus (Anth. Pal. 9,524); Zeus (Stob. 53,13…

[German version] [1] River in southern Italy River in southern Italy (approximately 185 km in length) with a catchment area of approximately 5,677 km2. It rises on the south-eastern slopes of Monte Metuccia (near Aesernia) from a large karst spring, absorbs tributaries from the Monti del Matese and ultimately the Calor (modern Calore) to the west of mons Taburnus, before breaking to the north of the Tifata mons through to the Mare Tyrrhenum, where its alluvial deposits have created the plain of Campania (Str. 5,4,4;…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In the Ancient Orient the deification of  rulers always occurred in the context of the legitimization and exercise of  rulership. Deified rulers and proper gods were always differentiated on principle. Renger, Johannes (Berlin) [German version] A. Mesopotamia References to the deification of living rulers are geographically restricted to Babylonia and temporally to the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC: a) individual rulers claimed divine descent for themselves as a means of legitimizing their rule…

I. Terminology [German version] A. Personification in Rhetoric and Poetry The early modern term personificatio expresses the Hellenistic, rhetorical concept of προσωποποιία/ prosōpopoiía , which refers to the representation of fictive persons, concrete (inanimate) items or abstract concepts as speakers and actors (Latin, conformatio: Rhet. Her. 4,66; personarum ficta inductio: Cic. De or. 3,205; prosopopoeia: Quint. Inst. 9,29-37). As a fictional personalisation, primarily of concepts, prosōpopoiía was considered by Greek literary theory to be an element of a…