On This Day In Roman History, March 9
A Roman commemorative festival known as a dies religiosus is celebrated on March 9, during the times of pre-republican and republican era Rome. The festival involved priests, known as Salii, which can be translated as the "leaping priests", and were youth selected from the patrician class. They dawned archaic Roman armor which consisted of a "tunic, breastplate, a short red cloak (paludamentum), a sword, and a spiked headdress called an apex". These priests took the famous shields known as Ancilia and paraded them through the streets of Rome in front of cheering crowds. The shields themselves were a type of ancient Roman shield known as an Ancile. The complete set of these shields, numbering 12 in total, were regarded as sacred and kept within the Temple of Mars. Legend said that the shield fell from the sky in a divine fashion at the feet of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. He ordered the other 11 copies to be made so that no would-be thief could steal the actual one, being unable to distinguish it from the other copies.
Did you know?
These shields belonged to a group of Roman artifacts known as "pignora imperii" which can be translated as "pledges of rule". These items were intended to act as a guarantee that would entitle Rome to its continued imperium. The later Roman Empire would look to preserve other culturally important items such as the Altar of Victory and treat it with comparable respect. The preservation of all the mentioned items came under threat during the Christian hegemony.
Pictured: Portrait of a flamen. This priest was comparable in style to the Salii. Marble, ca 250-260 CE. Found within the Louvre Museum: Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities. Denon wing, ground floor, room 27. Photo by Wikipedia user Jastrow, via Wikimedia Commons.
Maurus Servius Honoratus, a late fourth-century historian, lists the pignora imperii as follows:
1. The stone of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele)
2. The terracotta four-horse chariot brought from Veii, supposed to have been commissioned by the last king of Rome Tarqinius Superbus, which was displayed on the roof of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline
3. The ashes of Orestes, supposedly kept at the same temple
4. The scepter of Priam, brought to Rome by Aeneas
5. The veil of Ilione, daughter of Priam, another Trojan token attributed to Aeneas
6. The Palladium;
7. The ancilia or sacred shields given to Numa.
1. The stone of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele)
2. The terracotta four-horse chariot brought from Veii, supposed to have been commissioned by the last king of Rome Tarqinius Superbus, which was displayed on the roof of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline
3. The ashes of Orestes, supposedly kept at the same temple
4. The scepter of Priam, brought to Rome by Aeneas
5. The veil of Ilione, daughter of Priam, another Trojan token attributed to Aeneas
6. The Palladium;
7. The ancilia or sacred shields given to Numa.
Opinion
Welcome to my daily opinion! I would like to start off by saying the modern historian Alan Cameron classifies three of the mentioned items as fictional (the ashes, scepter, and veil) simply because they are not named in any other sources that we have found. The others are written of widely in Latin literature and found within many different time periods of Roman history. With that being said, I would like to try and more easily define the above term "religiosus". This term can be best described as belonging directly to the gods. It is sometimes confused with the Latin "sacer" which is something given to the gods. We can find that Romans believed a location struck by lightning immediately became somewhat taboo because it was now "religiosus by Jupiter himself". I will leave some further reading if you would really like to dive into the nitty-gritty of both terms and, as always, feel free to directly message me with any further questions.
Sources
Turcan, Robert. The Gods of ancient Rome: religion in everyday life from archaic to imperial times. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Fowler, W. Warde. The religious experience of the Roman people: from the earliest times to the age of Augustus. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2008.
Livius, Titus, Robert Maxwell. Ogilvie, and William C. Flamstead. Walters. Ab urbe condita. Oxonii: Clarendon, 2007.
Further Reading:
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