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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…