Reproduction based on a rubbing of the inscription, which is intaglio engraved on bronze. The original is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
The senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus ("senatorial decree concerning the Bacchanalia") is an 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]
Text
This page is a candidate for copying over to Wikisource. If the page can be edited into an encyclopedic article, rather than merely a copy of the source text, please do so and remove this message. Otherwise, you can help by formatting it per the Wikisource guidelines in preparation for being imported to Wikisource by a Wikisource admin. Note that if this source text is not in English, it will have to be copied using the transwiki process.
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]
[Q] MARCIVS L F S POSTVMIVS L F COS SENATVM CONSOLVERVNT N OCTOB APVD AEDEM
DVELONAI SC ARF M CLAVDI M F L VALERI P F Q MINVCI C F DE BACANALIBVS QVEI FOIDERATEI
ESENT ITA EXDEICENDVM CENSVERE NEIQVIS EORVM BACANAL HABVISE VELET SEI QVES
ESENT QVEI SIBEI DEICERENT NECESVS ESE BACANAL HABERE EEIS VTEI AD PR VRBANVM
sententia ita fuit: «Sī quī essent, quī adversum ea fēcissent, quam suprā
scrīptum est, eīs rem capitālem faciendam cēnsuēre». Atque utī
hoc in tabulam ahēnam incīderētis, ita senātus aequum cēnsuit,
utīque eam fīgī iubeātis, ubī facillimē nōscī possit; atque
utī ea Bacchānālia, sī quae sunt, extrā quam sī quid ibī sacrī est,
(ita utī suprā scrīptum est)[9] in diēbus X, quibus vōbīs tabellae datae
erunt, faciātis utī dīmōta sint. In agrō Teurānō.
Orthography
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.
Geminate consonants
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:
C for cc in HOCE (26:1) hocce
C for cch in BACANALIBVS (2:17) Bacchānālibus, BACANAL (3:7, 4:7) Bacchānal, BACAS (7:1) Bacchās, BACANALIA (28:3) Bacchānālia. The h was probably not pronounced.
L for ll in DVELONAI (2:1) Bellōnae, VELET (3:9 et passim) vellet, VELENT (21:2) vellent, FACILVMED (27:6) facillimē, TABELAI (29:11) tabellae
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.
IBEI (20:5, 28:11) ibi, NISEI (8:2, 16:9, 21:3) nisi, SIBEI (4:3) sibi, VBEI ubi (5:6), VTEI ut (4:10 et passim), VTEIQVE (27:1) utque.
OV normally became Classical ū in:
CONIOVRA[SE] (13:6) coniūrāsse, NOVNDINVM (23:1) nūndinum, PLOVS (19:2, 20:7,10) plūs. Classical iubeātis and iussissent for IOVBEATIS (27:4) and IOVSISENT (9:9, 18:8) show the influence of the participle iussus, with regular short u in the stem.
VO occurs instead of Classical Latin ve in ARVORSVM (24:8) adversum and OINVORSEI (19:4) ūniversī.
OL occurs instead of Classical Latin ul in COSOLERETVR (6:12) cōnsulerētur, CONSOLVERVNT (1:11) cōnsuluērunt, TABOLAM (26:3) tabulam and OQVOLTOD (15:3) occultō.
OM occurs instead of Classical Latin um in QVOM (18:4) cum and AIQVOM (26:8) aequum.
O occurs instead of Classical Latin u in POPLICOD publicō
V occurs instead of Classical Latin i in FACILVMED (27:6) facillimē and CAPVTALEM capitālem. The spelling of CAPVTALEM recalls its origin from the noun caput. The ending -umus for -imus occurs frequently in archaic Classical Latin texts; the vowel represented interchangeably by u and i may have been a central vowel distinct in sound from both. Possibly OINVORSEI (19:4) ūniversī belongs here too, if one may read it as oinu(v)orsei.
Archaisms
The archaic ending -ce added to some forms of the pronoun hic is reduced to -c in Classical Latin in most cases:
HAICE (22:3) haec and HOCE (26:1) hoc
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:
EXDEICENDVM (3:3) ēdīcendum, EXDEICATIS ēdīcātis (22:7), and DISMOTA (30:4) dīmōta.
Archaic morpheme variants
The archaic passive infinitive ending -ier (instead of Classical -ī) is used
FIGIER (27:3) fīgī, GNOSCIER (27:7) noscī.
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]
Translation into English
The inscription was translated by Nina E. Weston as follows.[11]
"The ConsulsQuintus Marcius, the son of Lucius, and Spurius Postumius, the son of Lucius, consulted the senate on the Nones of October (7th), at the temple of the Bellona. Marcus Claudius, son of Marcus, Lucius Valerius, son of Publius, and Quintus Minucius, son of Gaius, were the committee for drawing up the report. Regarding the Bacchanalia, it was resolved to give the following directions to those who are in alliance with us: No one of them is to possess a place where the festivals of Bacchus are celebrated; if there are any who claim that it is necessary for them to have such a place, they are to come to Rome to the praetor urbanus, and the senate is to decide on those matters, when their claims have been heard, provided that not less than 100 senators are present when the affair is discussed. No man is to be a Bacchantian, neither a Roman citizen, nor one of the Latin name, nor any of our allies unless they come to the praetor urbanus, and he in accordance with the opinion of the senate expressed when not less than 100 senators are present at the discussion, shall have given leave. Carried. No man is to be a priest; no one, either man or woman, is to be an officer (to manage the temporal affairs of the organization); nor is anyone of them to have charge of a common treasury; no one shall appoint either man or woman to be master or to act as master; henceforth they shall not form conspiracies among themselves, stir up any disorder, make mutual promises or agreements, or interchange pledges; no one shall observe the sacred rites either in public or private or outside the city, unless he comes to the praetor urbanus, and he, in accordance with the opinion of the senate, expressed when no less than 100 senators are present at the discussion, shall have given leave. Carried. No one in a company of more than five persons altogether, men and women, shall observe the sacred rites, nor in that company shall there be present more than two men or three women, unless in accordance with the opinion of the praetor urbanus and the senate as written above. See that you declare it in the assembly (contio) for not less than three market days; that you may know the opinion of the senate this was their judgment: if there are any who have acted contrary to what was written above, they have decided that a proceeding for a capital offense should be instituted against them; the senate has justly decreed that you should inscribe this on a brazen tablet, and that you should order it to be placed where it can be easiest read; see to it that the revelries of Bacchus, if there be any, except in case there be concerned in the matter something sacred, as was written above, be disbanded within ten days after this letter shall be delivered to you. In the Teuranian field."
↑ Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, University of California Press, 1996, Ch. 2.
↑ Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Religions, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 52.
↑ During the Punic crisis, some foreign cults and oracles had been repressed by Rome, but on much smaller scale and not outside Rome itself. See Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, BRILL, 1990, pp.34-78: on precedents see p.41 ff.
1 2 Ernout, Alfred (1947). Recueil de Textes Latins Archaiques (in French and Latin). Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck. pp.58–68.
↑ Thatcher, Oliver J. (ed.). The Library of Original Sources. The ideas that have influenced civilization, in the original documents—translated. University Edition. Vol.III. pp.76–77.
Further reading
Wachter, Rudolf (1987). Altlateinische Inschriften. Sprachliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den Dokumenten bis etwa 150 v. Chr. Bern: Peter Lang, ISBN3-261-03722-9, pp. 289–298.
External links
"SC De Bacchanalibus". The Roman Law Library, Iustinianus Project, Grenoble II University. Retrieved 21 October 2009.
The Bacchanali 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.
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 and South Picene.
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. Piso is best known for being accused of poisoning and killing Germanicus, the heir of emperor Tiberius.
Lorem ipsum is a dummy or placeholder text commonly used in graphic design, publishing, and web development to fill empty spaces in a layout that does not yet have content.
In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas is a Latin phrase.
Claudia Livia was the only daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor and sister to Roman Emperor Claudius and general Germanicus, and thus paternal aunt of 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.
Roscelin of Compiègne, better known by his Latinized name Roscellinus Compendiensis or Rucelinus, was a French philosopher and theologian, often regarded as the founder of nominalism.
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.
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.
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.
The cult of Dionysus was strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni, and its characteristic symbols were the bull, the serpent, tigers/leopards, ivy, and wine. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus, as well as the phallic processions. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism. Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus. It is possible that water divination was an important aspect of worship within the cult.
The Roman Senate was the highest and constituting assembly of ancient Rome and its aristocracy. With different powers throughout its existence it lasted from the first days of the city of Rome as the Senate of the Roman Kingdom, to the Senate of the Roman Republic and Senate of the Roman Empire and eventually the Byzantine Senate of the Eastern Roman Empire, existing well into the post-classical era and Middle Ages.
In linguistics, speech or indirect discourse is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence Jill said she was coming is indirect discourse while Jill said "I'm coming" would be direct discourse. In fiction, the "utterance" might amount to an unvoiced thought that passes through a stream of consciousness, as reported by an omniscient narrator.
The gens Carvilia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome, which first distinguished itself during the Samnite Wars. The first member of this gens to achieve the consulship was Spurius Carvilius Maximus, in 293 BC.
A senatus consultum is a text emanating from the senate in Ancient Rome. It is used in the modern phrase senatus consultum ultimum.
The Tabula Bantina is a bronze tablet and one of the major sources for ancient Oscan, an extinct Indo-European language closely related to Latin. It was discovered in 1790 near Banzi, in the Italian region of Basilicata. It now may be found in the Naples Archaeological Museum.
The main Latin tenses can be divided into two groups: the present system, consisting of the present, future, and imperfect; and the perfect system, consisting of the perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect.
Conditional clauses in Latin are clauses which start with the conjunction sī 'if' or the equivalent. The 'if'-clause in a conditional sentence is known as the protasis, and the consequence is called the apodosis.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
