Talk:Aventine Triad

I've only used a couple of sources, and made passing reference to a third. Please expand. Haploidavey (talk) 18:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

ritus Graecus
The last edit (you'll know what I mean, Davey): is that according to "Greek rite" (ritus graecus) instead of Roman? One difference between being that Greek rite is NOT capite velato? Actually I see that I never posted an entry on Greek rite on the Glossary page. Meant to; started one. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, thassit! Haploidavey (talk) 08:10, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice work there, Cyn. Or rather, here. On the templum issue (in your hidden note); yes, this is quite some question. And by whose augury? I keep searching (helped by my wee penates) but have found no scholarly work on the topic. Not even speculation. Haploidavey (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Though I see now that you didn't in fact say what I thought you did. D'you mean we might use templum and a straight link to the Glossary? Fine by me. Still, what d'you reckon on the vexed question of whose augury (pleb or patrician) could have lawfully done such a deed? Haploidavey (talk) 19:10, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually you understood better than I did what I was getting at. My basic question was whether we were talking about both the templum with a link (and I hadn't even thought of your outstanding question about whose augury! does TPW address it at all? would love to know the answer) and a temple building (in which case it would be good to designate aedes or whatnot). Or whether the templum came first, and the building only later. Let me repeat what I said on your talk page: the article has a good narrative feel to it. If the plebeian rites are "Greek" (scare quotes intended), this is terribly interesting, isn't it? Cynwolfe (talk) 21:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, utterly fascinating. The augury question has nagged away at me ever since I read the relevant section in Marsyas. It's like a shadow-Rome, or a counter-Rome; or from a different standpoint, the threatening mirror-image of what may have been a very fragile "true Roman" identity among the powerful. It's somehow deeply implicated in the "Greek rites" business; yet the Aventine Triad survives. Sort of a tamed foreign cult; "our" foreign cult, if you like, which to a heftily outnumbered patrician must have seemed a damn sight preferable to an outright doorstep revolution. TP has quite a bit on Horace, Plautus, Satyr-plays and the, um, "Greek morality" (and those are very definite scare quotes) that feminises young men and allows women to go all sexy and uppity; and all this way before the Bacchanal affair. And thanks for the compliment; makes it even more fun to do. I'll keep you and the article posted. Haploidavey (talk) 22:24, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * After all that... Arnobius talks about the introduction of definitively Greek rites in connection with officially imported joint cult, plus priestesses, to Ceres and Proserpina, just before the cult of Magna Mater was brought to Rome: so before 202. This in Beard et al (Religion in ancient Rome, pp.70-71). So until then, one might presume capite velato at the Aventine. Or not, as the case may be: the Aventine cult and temple are still described as Greek-fashioned. What a business it is. Haploidavey (talk) 00:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

possibly of interest
Barbette Stanley Spaeth, "The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus," Historia 39, No. 2 (1990), pp. 182-195, may be of incidental or specialized relevance to this article. I don't recall reading it, though at some point I obtained it. Just happened upon it while searching ritus Graecus. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Available through JSTOR. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Aha... very nice work. I'll take a look. By the way, do you want a copy? And did I mention that I'm getting her entire "The Roman Goddess Ceres" shebang? Five bucks plus half as much again for postage, would you believe it? It should arrive any year now, its pages abused with the marks of a thousand dinners and biroed marginalia. Haploidavey (talk) 14:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a copy of the article from the good ol' days of my JSTOR access. Hadn't made the connection with the book, which I once saved to my Google Library and forgot about. The article then must've just been a preliminary. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:16, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
 * A very welcome preliminary. Some is of use here, some in Ceres and Liber article revisions, ongoing on user-pages. Thank you. I just checked out the estimated delivery time for Spaeth's Big Book. Sheesh, I guess they're sending it via osmosis. Haploidavey (talk) 22:36, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Proserpina and Libera
This is a subject I've never taken time to pursue. There's an interesting book The Locrian maidens: love and death in Greek Italy that I dipped into for Quintus Minucius Rufus. The incident in Bruttium came to mind because again a cultus is connected with political dissidence, and one of the sources pointed to it as a precedent for the suppression of the Bacchanalia. But as I said, I'm ignorant of the scholarship on how Proserpina is identified with Libera, and also the relation of Persephone/Proserpina, which seems somewhat different in terms of interpretatio graeca than Demeter/Ceres or others. This relates to my ongoing but delayed package of articles having to do with the October Horse; related sacrifices, ludi, and festivals; and cult or holy sites in the Campus Martius, particularly the Altar of Dis and Proserpina. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

This is an interesting topic. As I wrote on the comment to di indigetes the cults of the valley of the Circus seem to be very ancient and originally Latin: Consus, Ops and their two mutually connected festivals at two different times of the year, August and December. Both the underground altar of Consus and in part the regia had images of some archaic entities named Semonia Seia Segetia and Tutilina. M. Humm thinks the interpretatio Graeca came to Rome through Greek influence in the late IV century and later with the contacts with pythagoreans of Tarentum. I think there must be an original Latin cult that connected agricoltural deities with a mysteric interpretation. Consus is interpreted by Dumezil as the god of the collected grains but i think his name having given the adjective consivius (Ianus Consivius, Ops c.) must mean sower/generator and should be related to an archaic idea of life cycle symbolised in the yearly agricoltural one. This was the idea of Fowler and many old folklorists as Frazer and Mannhardt.Aldrasto11 (talk) 01:07, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Flamen
The flamen of Ceres was named Cerialis, not Cerealis. The cults of many deities and the names of their flamines are certainly more ancient than the establishment of the republic. Cf. Varro's comment on the Furrinalis.Aldrasto11 (talk) 00:51, 26 August 2010 (UTC)