In Praise of Polytheism by Maurizio Bettini

Author:Maurizio Bettini
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520342248
Publisher: University of California Press

This very same Varro testifies that he wrote first concerning human things, but afterwards concerning divine things, because the states (civitates) existed first, and afterward these things were instituted by them. [. . .] The following is the reason Varro gives when he confesses that he had written first concerning human things, and afterwards of divine things, because these divine things were instituted by men:—‘As the painter is before the painted tablet, the mason before the edifice, so states (civitates) are before those things which are instituted by states.’12

Augustine did not agree with Varro, and it is not hard to imagine why: “But the true religion,” he objected, “was not instituted by any earthly state (civitas). . . . It, however, is inspired and taught by the true God.” In the eyes of someone who belonged to a culture that saw God as the creator of the universe, religion could be nothing less than an absolute prerequisite, and thus the contrary idea that it was men who instituted divine things could be no less than incomprehensible. But, with all due respect to Augustine, Romans had exactly this kind of world view: first come the civitates, then come the res divinae, which are institutions created by the civitates, just like a painting or an edifice is the product of its maker.13

This cultural habit—god as a function or consequence of the City—helps explain expressions at first glance surprising from a modern perspective (or to a Christian apologist). Take March 14 as an example, the day on which the sacra of Minerva were celebrated. On this day, according to Ovid, it was forbidden to fight and spill blood, because it was Minerva’s birthday14 Did Ovid mean that on March 14 Romans celebrated the birth of Athena from Zeus’ head? Naturally, the answer is neither mythological nor theogonical.15 The day of Minerva’s birth simply corresponded with the day when the temple dedicated to her worship was officially consecrated, the dies natalis templi. For worshippers any given god “was born” on the day of the public ceremony consecrating the temple and authorizing the god’s entrance into the City. Obviously the Christians would later make fun of this aspect of the Roman religion: “It is the birthday (natalis) of Tellus,” Arnobius would exclaim, “for the gods are born, and have festal days on which it has been settled that they began to breathe.”16 But this is merely a way to reduce a cultural metaphor to a dull literal meaning, whereas the dies natalis of a god really had a rich ideological content: in Rome, a god “was born” alongside the consecration of his or her temple precisely because a god’s “beginning” went hand in hand with its process of public incorporation.

This quite strange (at least for contemporary eyes) conception of the divine is confirmed yet again by Cicero in his dialogue On the Nature of the Gods. In this dialogue we meet Cotta, pontifex maximus and skeptic philosopher. In response to the arguments laid forth by the Stoic Balbus, Cotta says:

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