The senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus ("senatorial decree concerning the Bacchanalia") is a notable Old Latin inscription [1] dating to 186 BC. [2] It was discovered in 1640 at Tiriolo, in Calabria, southern Italy. Published by the presiding praetor, it conveys the substance of a decree of the Roman Senate prohibiting the Bacchanalia throughout all Italy, except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate.
When members of the elite began to participate, information was put before the Senate by Publius Aebutius and his lover and neighbour Hispala Faecenia, who was also a well-known prostitute, as told in the Ab Urbe Condita Libri of Livy. The cult was held to be a threat to the security of the state, investigators were appointed, rewards were offered to informants, legal processes were put in place and the Senate began the official suppression of the cult throughout Italy. According to the Augustan historian Livy, the chief historical source, many committed suicide to avoid indictment. [3] The stated penalty for leadership was death. Livy stated that there were more executions than imprisonments. [4] After the conspiracy had been quelled the Bacchanalia survived in southern Italy.
The Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus can be seen as an example of realpolitik , a display of the Roman senate's authority to its Italian allies after the Second Punic War, and a reminder to any Roman politician, populist and would-be generalissimo that the Senate's collective authority trumped all personal ambition. [5] Nevertheless, the extent and ferocity of the official response to the Bacchanalia was probably unprecedented, and betrays some form of moral panic on the part of Roman authorities; Burkert finds "nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians". [6] [7]
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The surviving copy is inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria in Southern Italy (1640), now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The text as copied from the inscription is as follows. [8]
The following passage uses classical reflexes of the Old Latin lexical items: [8]
The spelling of the text of the Senatus consultum differs in many predictable ways from the spelling of Classical Latin. Some of these differences are merely orthographical; others reflect archaic pronunciations or other archaisms in the forms of words.
In Classical Latin, geminate (or long) consonants are consistently written with a sequence of two letters: e.g., cc, ll, ss for [kː], [lː], [sː]. These geminate consonants are not represented in the Senatus consultum:
Archaic gn- is found for n- at the beginning of the verb nosco
The prefix ad appears as AR before V and F:
The consonants bl appear as PL in POPLICOD publicō (15:10), recalling its origin from populus.
AI is usually used instead of Classical ae in:
EI became Classical ī in:
EI at the end of a word often corresponds to Classical short i or to no vowel at all. However, in many cases such as sibī, utī, archaizing Classical forms ending in ī are also found, especially in poetry.
OV normally became Classical ū in:
OI normally became Classical ū in:
OI exceptionally became Classical oe in:
The archaic ending -ce added to some forms of the pronoun hic is reduced to -c in Classical Latin in most cases:
The ending -d, found on some adverbs and ablative singulars of nouns and pronouns, is lost in Classical Latin:
The last two words AGRO TEVRANO (30:7-8) omit the final -d, despite containing the same ablative ending elsewhere written -OD; this fact suggests that at the time of writing, the final -d was no longer pronounced in ordinary speech.
In Classical Latin the prefixes ex- and dis- become ē- and dī- before voiced consonants. In the Senatus consultum, they are still written EX and DIS:
The archaic passive infinitive ending -ier (instead of Classical -ī) is used
The archaic third-declension genitive singular ending -us (instead of Classical -is) is used in NOMINVS (7.9) (instead of nōminis). The ending -us comes from the Indo-European genitive singular ending *-os, the o-grade variant of the genitive singular suffix for consonant-stem nouns (while Classical -is comes from the e-grade variant *-es of the same suffix). [10]
The inscription was translated by Nina E. Weston as follows. [11]
The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.
Praetor, also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected magistratus (magistrate), assigned to discharge various duties. The functions of the magistracy, the praetura (praetorship), are described by the adjective: the praetoria potestas, the praetorium imperium, and the praetorium ius, the legal precedents established by the praetores (praetors). Praetorium, as a substantive, denoted the location from which the praetor exercised his authority, either the headquarters of his castra, the courthouse (tribunal) of his judiciary, or the city hall of his provincial governorship.
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber, also known as Liber Pater, was a god of viticulture and wine, male fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights attached to coming of age. His cult and functions were increasingly associated with Romanised forms of the Greek Dionysus/Bacchus, whose mythology he came to share.
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, was a Roman statesman during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. He served as consul in 7 BC, after which he was appointed governor of Hispania and consul of Africa. He belonged to one of Rome's most distinguished senatorial families, whose members included Calpurnia, third wife of Julius Caesar.
Claudia Livia was the only daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor and sister of the Roman Emperor Claudius and general Germanicus, and thus the paternal aunt of the emperor Caligula and maternal great-aunt of emperor Nero, as well as the niece and daughter-in-law of Tiberius. She was named after her grandmother, Augustus' wife Livia Drusilla, and commonly known by her family nickname Livilla. She was born after Germanicus and before Claudius.
The senatus consultum ultimum is the modern term given to resolutions of the Roman senate lending its moral support for magistrates to use the full extent of their powers and ignore the laws to safeguard the state.
Cicero's oration Pro Archia Poeta is the published literary form of his defense of Aulus Licinius Archias, a poet accused of not being a Roman citizen. The accusation is believed to have been a political move against Lucullus through Archias. The poet was originally Greek but had been living in Rome for an extended period of time. A letter from Cicero to Titus Pomponius Atticus in the year following the trial makes mention of Archias, but there is no conclusive evidence about the outcome of the trial. The oration was rediscovered in Liège by Petrarch in 1333.
Paculla Annia was a Campanian priestess of Bacchus. She is known only through the Roman historian Livy's account of the introduction, growth and spread of unofficial Bacchanalia festivals, which were ferociously suppressed in 186 BC under threat of extreme penalty.
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is derived from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. An initial is often several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts are known as "inhabited" initials. Certain important initials, such as the Beatus initial or "B" of Beatus vir... at the opening of Psalm 1 at the start of a vulgate Latin. These specific initials in an illuminated manuscript were also called initiums.
The gens Sempronia was one of the most ancient and noble houses of ancient Rome. Although the oldest branch of this gens was patrician, with Aulus Sempronius Atratinus obtaining the consulship in 497 BC, the thirteenth year of the Republic, but from the time of the Samnite Wars onward, most if not all of the Sempronii appearing in history were plebeians. Although the Sempronii were illustrious under the Republic, few of them attained any importance or notice in imperial times.
The gens Didia, or Deidia, as the name is spelled on coins, was a plebeian family at ancient Rome, which first appears in history during the final century of the Republic. According to Cicero, they were novi homines. Titus Didius obtained the consulship in 98 BC, a dignity shared by no other Didii until imperial times.
O tempora, o mores is a Latin phrase that translates literally as "Oh the times! Oh the customs!", first recorded to have been spoken by Cicero. A more natural, yet still quite literal, translation is "Oh what times! Oh what customs!"; a common idiomatic rendering in English is "Shame on this age and on its lost principles!", originated by the classicist Charles Duke Yonge. The original Latin phrase is often printed as O tempora! O mores!, with the addition of exclamation marks, which would not have been used in the Latin written in Cicero's day.
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The Senate of the Roman Empire was a political institution in the ancient Roman Empire. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Beginning with the first emperor, Augustus, the Emperor and the Senate were technically two co-equal branches of government. In practice, however, the actual authority of the imperial Senate was negligible, as the Emperor held the true power of the state. As such, membership in the senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority. During the reigns of the first Emperors, legislative, judicial, and electoral powers were all transferred from the "Roman assemblies" to the Senate. However, since the control that the Emperor held over the senate was absolute, the Senate acted as a vehicle through which the Emperor exercised his autocratic powers.
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Latin has six main tenses: three non-perfect tenses and three perfect tenses. In technical language, the first three tenses are known as the īnfectum tenses, while the three perfect tenses are known as perfectum. The two sets of tenses are made using different stems. For example, from the verb faciō 'I do' the three non-perfect tenses are faciō, faciam, faciēbam 'I do, I will do, I was doing', made with the stem faci-, and the three perfect tenses are fēcī, fēcerō, fēceram 'I did, I will have done, I had done', made with the stem fēc-.