Aventine Triad
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The Aventine Triad (also referred to as the plebeian Triad or the agricultural Triad) is a modern term for the joint
Origins
The Aventine relationship between Ceres, Liber and Libera was probably based first on their functions as agricultural and fertility deities of the plebs as a distinct social group. Liber had been companion to both Ceres and to Libera in separate and disparate fertility cults that were widespread throughout the Hellenised Italian peninsula, long before their official adoption by Rome – or rather, their partial assimilation, as Ceres' own cult appears to have been considered more tractable and obedient than Liber's. Their Aventine cults, reported in later Roman sources as distinctively Greek in character, may have been further reinforced and influenced by their
Foundation
The Aventine Triad was established soon after the overthrow of the
Patrician dominance was manifest in the
Development
The plebs continued to establish and administer their own laws (plebiscita) and held formal
Cults and priesthoods
Evidence is lacking for the earliest priesthoods of the Aventine Triad, whether in joint or individual cult to its deities. The plebeian
Temple
The Aventine Triad's temple was known by the name of its leading deity – thus, Roman sources describe it as the Temple of Ceres, though within it, each deity had a separate internal sanctuary (cella). The temple served as a cult centre for the patron deities of the plebs, a sacred depository for plebeian records and the headquarters for the plebeian aediles; the minutes or conclusions of senatorial decrees were also placed there, under the protection of Ceres as the guardian of laws on behalf of the Roman people.[17] While the original temple fabric and furnishings may have been funded in whole or part by its patrician sponsors, its cult images and perhaps its maintenance were supported partly through voluntary offerings and partly through the fines collected by the plebeian aediles from those who infringed plebeian civil and religious laws.[18] By the late Republic, it may have fallen into disrepair: Augustus undertook its restoration, which was completed by his successor Tiberius. Pliny the Elder's later description of its style and designers as "Greek" are taken as further evidence of continued plebeian cultural connections with Magna Graecia, officially funded well into the Imperial era. No trace remains of the temple building, and the historical and epigraphical record offers only sparse details to suggest its exact location.[19]
Notes and references
- ^ Cornell, T., The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995, p. 264: "We cannot be sure that these Greek features of the cult go back to the 490's BC, but the rest of the evidence makes it probable that they do; and the arguments that have been used to support a later date are extremely weak", contra Henri Le Bonniec, Le Culte du Ceres a Rome, Paris, 1958, p381 for the much later date of c.205 BC0, based on the Christian polemicist Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, 2.73: according to Cornell, Arnobius is a "highly unreliable" source for argument on the nature of the early Aventine cult.
- ^ The identification of the deified Ariadne with Libera occurs in Ovid Fasti III (cited in "Liber and Libera". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. April 20, 2018.) and also in Hyginus Fabulae CCXXIV.2.
- ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp.6 - 8, 44.
- ^ See also T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.133 and notes 20, 22.
- ^ Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 6.17, records a tradition that the Triad was established at the recommendation of the Sibylline Books.
- ^ T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.133.
- ^ T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 4-17, et passim.
- ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press, 1996, 6-8, 92, citing Henri Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome. Des origines à la fin de la République, Paris, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958, for the Aventine cult with its central female deity as "copy and antithesis" of the early, entirely male Capitoline Triad, focused on Jupiter as Rome's supreme deity. When Mars and Quirinus were later replaced by two goddesses, Jupiter remained the primary focus of Capitoline cult. While the Aventine temple and ludi may represent a patrician attempt to reconcile or at least molify the plebs, Le Bonniec asserts their role in the religious, political and moral plebeian opposition to patrician domination throughout contemporary and later Republican history.
- ^ Clifford Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (University of California Press, 2008), p. 118, citing Aulus Gellius 13.14.7.
- ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, "The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1990), pp. 185-186. The sacred status and functions of the plebeian tribunes are respected by Rome's entire divine community, but as protectress of plebeian rights, Ceres is entitled to the property of the homo sacer.
- Ab Urbe Condita, 30.39.8.
- ^ For a summary of the period, see Cornell, T., The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995, 258 - 271.
- ^ C.M.C. Green, "Varro's Three Theologies and their influence on the Fasti", in Geraldine Herbert-Brown, (ed)., Ovid's Fasti: historical readings at its bimillennium, Oxford University Press, 2002. pp. 78-80.[1]: citing Varro, Res Divina, Cardauns 208 as general commentary on the rationale for these groupings: sed potest... fieri ut eadem res et una sit, et in ea quaedam res sint plures - "but it can happen that a thing is unitary, while at the same time certain things in it are multiple."
- ^ Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 64 -5.
- ^ John Scheid, "Graeco Ritu: A Typically Roman Way of Honoring the Gods", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration, 1995, p. 23.
- ^ Cicero, In Verres, 2.4.108 et passim, cited by Olivier de Cazanove, in Rüpke, Jörg (Editor), A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p 56.
- ^ Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 64 -5. See also Cornell, T., The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995, p. 264.
- ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press, 1996, p. 90.[2]
- ^ Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 6-8, 86ff.