T. P. Wiseman

Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome

When the quaestor C. lulius Caesar began his aunts funerary laudatio with these words in 69 B.c. , he was not claiming any unique glory appropriate only to ‘imperial Caesar’, but indulging a form of family pride shared by many aristocrats in the late Republic.

Satyrs in Rome? The Background to Horace's Ars Poetica

At the central point of Horaces epistle to the Pisones (ll. 220–50 out of 476) is a lengthy passage on the history and composition of satyr-plays. At the central point within that passage (ll. 234–5), with emphatic use of the vocative and the first-person pronoun, Horace presents himself and his addressees as actively involved in writing satyr-plays: non ego inornata et dominantia nomina solum verbaque, Pisones, satyrorum scriptor amabo.

Historiography and Imagination: Eight Essays on Roman Culture

Introduction 1. The Origins of Roman Historiography 2. Roman Legend and Oral Tradition 3. Monuments and the Roman Annalists 4. Lucretius, Catiline and the Survival of Prophecy 5. Satyrs in Rome? 6. The Necessary Lesson 7. Who Was Crassicius Pansa? 8. Conspicui postes tectaque digna deo Abbreviations Notes Index Illustrations Figure i. Acroterion from Forum Bovarium temple Figure ii. The Ficoroni Cista, 15 Figure iii. Roman didrachm showing Victoria Figure iv. Antefix from temple of Castor Figure v. Bronze mirror from Bolsena Figure vi. Antefix from Satricum temple Figure vii. The Palatine and its neighbourhood Figure viii. The Augustan complex on the Palatine

The God of the Lupercal

On 15 February, two days after the Ides, there took place at Rome the mysterious ritual called Lupercalia, which began when the Luperci sacrificed a goat at the Lupercal. There was evidently a close conceptual and etymological connection between the name of the festival, the title of the celebrants, and the name of the sacred place: as our best-informed literary source on Roman religion, M. Terentius Varro, succinctly put it, ‘the Luperci [are so called] because at the Lupercalia they sacrifice at the Lupercal … the Lupercalia are so called because [that is when] the Luperci sacrifice at the Lupercal’. What is missing in that elegantly circular definition is the name of the divinity to whom the sacrifice was made. Even the sex of the goat is unclear — Ovid and Plutarch refer to a she-goat, other sources make it male — which might perhaps imply a similar ambiguity in the gender of the recipient. Varro does indeed refer to a goddess Luperca, whom he identifies with the she-wolf of the foundation legend; he explains the name as lupa pepercit , ‘the she-wolf spared them’ (referring to the infant twins), so I think we can take this as an elaboration on the myth, and not much help for the ritual.

The Temple of Victory on the Palatine

The evidence for the site of the temple of Victory on the Palatine at Rome is re-examined: (1) a passage in Dionysius of Halicarnassus which implies that the temple was topographically related to the Lupercal, (2) two inscriptions recorded in the eighteenth century, which were found near the western corner of the Palatine, (3) the Porta Roman(ul)a, which according to Festus was infimo clivo Victoriae , and (4) the Palatine hut, which was evidently next to the temple of Iuppiter Victor in the precinct of Victory. By applying these indications to the archaeological remains, the two hitherto unidentified podia near the Magna Mater temple may be identified as those of the temples of Victory and Iuppiter Victor.

The Palatine, from Evander to Elagabalus

It is nearly forty years since Filippo Coarellis brilliant Guida archeologica di Roma (FC 1974) announced the arrival of a new era in Roman topographical studies. A series of seminal monographs soon followed, on the Roman Forum (FC 1983, 1985), the Forum Boarium (FC 1988), and the Campus Martius (FC 1997). A volume on the Palatine was advertised as forthcoming, but unforeseen circumstances put that project on hold.