In the series Res Divinae, I will attempt to sketch out my approach for conceptualizing “Roman religion”. But since Religious Studies research of the last few decades has clearly shown that the term “religion” is anachronistic and distorting when applied to antiquity1, I will try to start not from modern categories but from ancient ones. The most general term I can think of that refers to largely the same things that we mean by “Roman religion” is res divinae, ‘divine things’, and so I have chosen to define this as the subject of study.
1 see especially Brent Nongbri, Before Religion. A History of a Modern Concept (2013), and Carlin A. Barton & Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion. How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities (2016).
I originally intended the second post in this series to be more of a systematic, terminological overview of Roman res divinae - but that, on consideration, turned out to require a lot more work than I could do in a brief timespan, and I did not want this series to be abandoned right after post one. So instead, I will give a different kind of overview, namely of all the content that might be called "religious" in one of the canonical Latin poets. The poet in question is Tibullus (ca. 55-19 BCE), a man of equestrian rank (above the commoners, below the senatorial order), who died in the same year as the great Vergil. One of my goals here is to substantiate something I said previously, namely "that superstition was" - and is - "often associated with foreigners, women, and the uneducated" and that "to reassert these kinds of delineations between norm and deviation without critical reflection [is] irresponsible."
The idyl of normative ritual
Now, Tibullus himself does not actually distinguish Roman religion from (non-Roman or sub-religious) superstition; that is a modern framework (although it takes up terminology from Cicero). But he certainly does make evaluative distinctions between different kinds of ritual and devotional practices. The category I will call "normative" has a few distinctive properties:
- entirely positive evaluation
- nostalgic overtones
- association with well-ordered* society and family
All this is encapsulated by elegy 1.10.15-32:
Yet save me, Lares [household gods] of my fathers! Ye too did rear me when I ran, a little child, before your feet. And feel it not a shame that ye are made of but an ancient tree-stock. Such were ye when ye dwelt in the home of my grandsire long ago. Then faith was better kept, when a wooden god stood poorly garbled in a narrow shrine. His favour was won when a man had offered a bunch of grapes as first fruits, or laid the spiky garland on the holy hair. And one who had gained his prayer would with his own hands bring the honey-cake, his little daughter following with the pure honeycomb in hers.
O Lares, turn the bronze javelins away from me [and as thankoffering for my safe return shall fail (…)] and a hog from the full sty, a farmer’s victim. With it will I follow in clean apparel, and bear the basket bound with myrtle, even as the myrtle binds my hair. Thus may I find favour in your eyes. Let another be stout in war and, Mars to aid him, lay the hostile chieftains low, that, while I drank, he may tell me of his feats in fighting and draw the camp in wine upon the table.
(Throughout this post, I will be citing Cornish et al.'s 1913 Loeb Classical Library translation)
As we can see, for Tibullus, good order means peace, and so we might say that the ideal norm of piety Tibullus builds up is idyllic - comparable to Vergil's bucolic Eclogues rather than the martial Aeneid. Tibullus 1.1.7-40 contextualizes the worship of the Lares in a rural setting:
When the time is ripe, let me plant the tender vines and the stout orchard trees with my own deft hands, a countryman indeed. Nor let hope disappoint me, but ever vouchsafe the heaped-up corn and rich new wine to fill my vat. For I bend in worship wherever flowery garlands lie on deserted tree-stock in the fields or old stone at a crossway, and of all my fruit that the fresh season ripens I set the first before the country’s guardian god. Ceres of the yellow hair, from my farm comes a spiky wreath to hang before thy temple doors. And to the fruit-laden gardens is given red Priapus as watch, to scare the birds with cruel billhook.
Ye too, my Lares, who watch over an estate, now poor though thriving once, receive your gifts. Then a slain heifer was peace-offering for uncounted beeves; a lamb is now the humble victim for my narrow plot of ground. A lamb shall fall for you, and round it the country youth shall shout: “Huzza! Send us good crops and wine!”
But ye, ye thieves and wolves, have mercy on my scanty flocks; from great herds must ye take your spoil. Here is all I have to make the yearly expiation for my herdsman, and to sprinkle over Pales the milk that makes her kind. Be with me, Gods: nor scorn gifts from a humble board and on clean earthenware. Earthen were the drinking-cups which the ancient yokel first made himself, modelling them from pliant clay.
Priapus, whose name is Greek, and Pales, who has no Greek equivalent, appear alongside as part of this ideal scenario of simple, peaceful existence. It is not quite right, then, to say that this is an evocation of Rome before Greek influence - the poet Tibullus is not really able to evoke rusticity without the use of Greek models. This is even clearer in 2.1, a description of the Ambarvalia, a Roman festival for the purification of the fields, which I want to cite in its entirety:
All present hush. We purify the crops and lands in the fashion handed down from our ancestors of old. Come to us, Bacchus, with the sweet grape cluster hanging from thy horns, and, Ceres, wreathe thy temples with the corn-ears.
Upon this holy day let earth, let ploughman rest. Hang up the share and let the heavy labour cease. Loose from the yokes their straps; now by the well-filled manger must the oxen stand with garlands round their heads. Let all things be at the service of the god; let no spinner choose to set her hand to the task of wool. Ye too I bid stand far away—let none be nigh the altar to whom Love’s goddess gave her pleasures yesternight. The powers above ask purity. Clean be the raiment that ye come in, and clean the hands to take the waters from the spring. Mark how to the shining altar goes the holy lamb, and behind the white procession; the olive binds their hair.
Gods of our sires, we cleanse the farms, we cleanse the farming folk. Do ye outside our boundaries drive all evil things. Let not our sown fields mock the reaping with defaulting blade. Let not our slow lambs fear the swifter wolves. Then the sleek rustic, full of trust in his teeming fields, will heap huge logs upon his blazing hearth; and a young troop of home-born slaves, fair signs that show a lusty yeoman, will play about and build them huts of sticks before the fire. My prayers are heard. See in the favouring entrails how the liver-markings bear a message that the gods are gracious*.
(*animal sacrifice often entailed divination from the victim's entrails.)
Now from the old bin bring me out the smoked Falernians* and loose the bands of the Chian jar*. Let drinking be the order of the day. Now we keep holiday, and to be tipsy is no shame, nor to carry ill our unsteady feet. But let each one, as he drinks, cry, “Health to Messalla!” and in every utterance be the name of the absent heard.
(*types of wine.)
Messalla, now the talk of all for thy triumph over the race of Aquitaine, whose victories cover thy unshorn ancestors with glory, hither come and breathe upon me while with my song I pay thanksgiving to the powers that tend the fields.
I sing the country and the country’s gods. They were the guides when man first ceased to chase his hunger with the acorns from the oak. They taught him first to put the planks together and cover his humble dwelling with green leaves. They too, ’tis told, first trained bulls to be his slaves, and placed the wheel beneath the wain. Then savage habits passed away; then was the fruit-tree planted, and the thriving garden drank the water from the rills. Then the golden grapes gave up their juices to the trampling feet, and sober water was mixed with cheering wine.
From the country comes our harvest, when in heaven’s glowing heat the earth is yearly shorn of her shock of yellow hair. Through the country flits the bee in spring-time, heaping the hive with flowers in her zeal to fill the combs with the honey sweet.
Then first the countryman, sated with ploughing without cease, sang rustic words in time and tune; and, full of meat, first composed a song on the dry oatpipes to chaunt before the gods that his hands had dressed. And, Bacchus, it was a countryman that first dyed his skin with red vermilion and wound through the dance with unpractised art. It was he too that, offering from all his fold a gift to tell about, the he-goat, leader of the flock, gained increase for his scanty wealth.
In the country the lad first made a circlet from the flowers of spring and placed it on the ancient Lares’ head. Of the country too is the sheep that will ere long make trouble for gentle girls with the soft fleece it wears upon its glistening back. Thence comes the toil of women’s hands, the weighed wool and the distaff, and the spindle that twists its work ’twixt thumb and finger; and the weaving woman in unremitting service to Minerva sings while the loom clatters as the clay weights swing.
Desire too himself, they say, was born amid the flocks and the fields and the unbridled mares. There first he practised with prentice bow. Ah, me! what expert hands has he now! Nor are beasts his mark as heretofore. His joy is to pierce maids’ hearts and make the bold man bite the dust. He strips the young of their wealth; the old he forces to shameful speech at the threshold of an angry fair. He guides the girl who stealthily steps by prostrate watchers and comes alone to her lover in the night, high strung with fear, her feet feeling her path before her while her hand is advanced to find passage through the dark.
Ah, wretched they upon whom our god bears hardly; and happy is he on whom Love in his graciousness breathes gently. Come to our festal cheer, holy lord. But, prithee, lay aside thy arrows, and far from us put away thy burning torch.
Do ye chaunt the god whom all adore, and loudly call him for your herd. Let each one call him for the herd aloud, but in a whisper for himself. Or aloud too for himself: for the merriment of the throng and the bent pipe’s Phrygian note will drown the prayer. So take your sport. Now Night is yoking her team; and on their mother’s car follow the golden Stars, a capering troupe, while behind comes Sleep the silent, enwrapped in dusky wings, and black Visions of the night with wavering steps.
This poem provides both the fullest picture of Tibullus' idyllic norm and connections to two other domains - one, that of the warlike Roman state (in the person of Messalla), the other, that of Love. While the former does not play a prominent role in elegy, the latter does, and its power over Tibullus explains why he concerns himself with any rituals outside of the ideals we have seen so far.
The anxiety of abnormal rituals
In elegy 1.5.9-36, we see how for the literary persona of the poet, bound by his love to Delia, the calm of rural life becomes nothing more than an idle fantasy, while he remains in the anxiety of an unstable urban setting:
It was I, they say, whose vows snatched thee from peril when thou layest exhausted in sickness’ gloomy hold. It was I that scattered all about thee the cleansing sulphur, the beldame first chaunting her magic spell. I appeased the cruel Dreams that had thrice to be propitiated with offering of holy meal, that they might work no harm. In woollen headdress and ungirdled tunic I made nine vows to Trivia in the stilly night. All have I paid; but another hath now my love. He is the fortunate one, and reaps the fruit of all my prayers. Yet I used to dream in my folly that, if thou wert spared, there would be a happy life for me. But a god said No.
“In the country,” I said, “I will live. My Delia shall be there, to keep watch upon the grain, while the threshing-floor winnows the harvest in the blazing sun; or she shall watch the grapes in the brimming troughs when the quick feet tread the gleaming must. She shall learn to count the flock; she shall teach the prattling serf-child to play on a loving mistress’ lap. To the god that tends the country she will know what gifts to offer—for vines a cluster, spiked ears for cornfield, drink offering for flock. All folk shall she direct, and all things be her care. I shall love to be but a cipher in the house. Hither shall come my own Messalla. From chosen trees shall Delia pull him down sweet fruit. In homage to his greatness she shall give him zealous tendance, and prepare and carry him the repast, herself his waiting-maid.”
Such were my dreams and prayers, now tost by East Wind and by South over all Armenia’s scented land.
The rituals performed by or for Tibullus here do not differ from normative rituals by their origin or even necessarily in terms of who performed them, but by their associations within Roman culture. They are abnormal or irregular, in other words, not because they fall outside normalcy but because they are not part of what Tibullus imagines as the norm. In contrast, they are:
- evaluated as ambivalent or negative
- strange, scary or uncomfortable rather than nostalgic
- associated with women's independence and social instability
Perfectly traditional, elite-associated rituals can also become loci of anxiety if they fall into these criteria, as with the worship of Bona Dea, the 'Good Goddess', which excluded male participants. In elegy 1.6.15-23, Tibullus is playing with the trope that women use the pretence of personal devotions to meet with lovers:
And thou, the unwary mate of a faithless wife, watching me with the rest that she may never sin, take care that she talk not much or oft with young men, or recline with loose robe and bosom bare; nor use nods to deceive thee, and see she take not wine on her fingers and trace signs on the table’s round. Have thy fears when she goes out often, or if she say that she would witness the rites of the Good Goddess which no male must go nigh. But trust her to my keeping; and I, I only, will attend her to that altar.
And on the other hand the male speaker's address to a less traditional deity, the Egyptian Isis, is masked as an irregularity, occasioned only by his lover's commitment to the goddess (Tibullus):
What help is there now for me in thy Isis, Delia? what help in the bronze that was clashed so often in thy hands? Or what avails it that in thy dutiful observance of her rites, as I remember well, thou didst bathe in clean water and sleep apart in a clean bed?
Now aid me, goddess, now—that thou canst heal saith a crowd of painted panels in thy temples—that my Delia may pay the nightly vigils of her vow, sitting all swathed in linen before thy holy door, and twice in the day be bound to chaunt thy praise with loosened tresses for all to mark amid the Pharian throng. And be it mine many times to stand before the shrine of my sires’ Penates* and offer incense, as the months come round, to the old Lar of my home.(*a different kind of household gods.)
Once the moment of crisis is over, in other words, Tibullus will go back to "normal" gods - which we may believe if we can imagine a life without problems. Equally contrived, on the other hand, is the idea that his lover (Nemesis, not Delia, in this case) will make him give up his house and the synonymous household gods, and make him drink venena (poisons/harmful spells; elegy 2.4.53-60):
Yea, if she bid me sell the home of my forefathers, then, gods of the household, ye must stoop to be labelled at her world. All Circe’s, all Medea’s potions, all the herbs that the land of Thessaly bears, even the hippomanes which drips from the yearning mare when Venus breathes passion into unbridled herds, yea, a thousand herbs beside may my Nemesis mingle in the draught, and, so she look kindly on me, I will drink.
The nature of venena, at least as a poet like Tibullus imagined it, is summed up quite well in the following passage, 1.8.17-22:
Has some hag (anus, 'old woman') bewitched (devovit) thee with her spells (carminibus, 'songs'), or with blanching herbs, in the silent night hours? Incantation draws the crops from the neighbour’s field; incantation checks the course of the angry snake; incantation seeks to draw the moon down from her car, and would do it but for the blows on the echoing bronze.
Elegy 1.2.41-64 gives a fuller profile of the saga ("witch"):
And yet none [who tell him about our affair] will thy spouse believe, as the honest witch has promised me from her magic rites. I have seen her drawing stars from the sky. Her spells turn the course of the hurrying stream. Her chaunting cleaves the ground, lures the spirit from its tomb, and down from the warm pyre summons the bony frame. Now with magic shrillings she keeps the troops of the grave before her; now she sprinkles them with milk and commands them to retreat. At will she chases the clouds from the frowning heavens; at will she musters the snow in the summer skies. Only she, men say, holds the secret of Medea’s deadly herbs, only she has tamed the wild hounds of Hecate.
She framed me a charm to enable thee to deceive: chaunt it thrice and spit thrice when the spell is done. Then will he never trust any one in aught that is said about us, nay, not even his own eyes if he see us on the pillowed bed. Yet from others thou must keep away; since all else will he perceive; only to me will he be blind.
What? Am I to trust her? Surely it was she, none other, said that by spells or herbs she could unbind my love. She cleansed me with the torch rite, and in the clear night a dusky victim fell to the gods of sorcery. But my prayer was not that my love might pass entirely, but that it might be shared.
To go over some of the other anxiety-laden practices more quickly, in one instance Delia demands that Tibullus consult "every god" before going on a journey, including a (private?) ritual where thrice from a "boy's hands did she lift a sacred lot (sortes), and from the three did the boy make answer to her that all was sure" (1.3.9-12); on the same occasion, Tibullus uses birds and (overheard?) words of evil omen as well as the "sacred day of Saturn" (i.e. the Sabbath) as pretexts for delay. When he has an affair with another woman and cannot get an erection, she takes it that Delia knows unholy arts (nefanda) and he has been bewitched (devotum) by her. Finally, in 1.5.51-56, things associated with the figure of the saga are listed in the form of a wish for her punishment:
May ghosts (animae, 'souls') flit round her always, bemoaning their fate, and the fierce vampire bird (strix) shrill from her roof; and she herself, frantic from hunger’s goad, hunt for weeds upon the graves and for bones which the wild wolves have left, and with middle bare run and shriek through the town, and a savage troop of dogs from the crossways chase her from behind.Clearly, much of this is a projection of literary tropes onto the reality of female ritual experts, but it is hard to say where the fantastic ends (it is not as if the Italian sagae had never heard of Medea!).
The pomp of public rituals
I said above that Tibullus' idyllic norm contrasts with two other spheres - one of Love (the darker side of which we have dealt with), the other of the state. The later figures rarely, but there is one elegy (2.5) that rises to this register, and which is worth once more quoting in full. This time, the focus is not Messalla, but his son, Messalinus, who is being installed as a priest (a kind of government official!):
Be gracious, Phoebus (Apollo); a new priest sets foot within thy temple. Hither I bid thee come with lyre and song. Now I prithee, let thy fingers sweep the singing strings; now tune my song to strains of praise. And while they heap the altar, come to thy rites thyself, thy brows encircled with triumphal bay. Come bright and beautiful; now don thy treasured raiment; now duly comb thy flowing locks. Be as men tell thou wast when, Saturn driven from his throne, thou sangest a paean* for victorious Jove.
(*originally, a hymn to Apollo, but later simply a synonym for 'hymn'.)
Thou seest from afar the things to come. The augur* whose soul is given up to thee knows well what means the note of the bird that foresees what is to be. ’Tis thou dost guide the lots; through thee divines the reader of the inward parts, whensoever a god has set his marks on the glistening entrails.
(*a diviner from birds, but generally from the movement, not the songs of birds.)
With thee her guide, the Sibyl who sings Fate’s hidden will in six-foot measure hath never played the Romans false. Phoebus, grant leave to Messalinus to touch the seeress’ holy scroll*, and teach him thyself the meaning of her strains.
(*I.e. to become one of the quindecimviri, a group of men of extremely high status who would consult the prophecies of the Cumaean Sibyl when the Senate deemed this necessary.)
’Twas she that gave responses to Aeneas after the hour when, as story tells, he bore away in his arms his sire and household gods, never dreaming that a Rome would be, when from the deep he turned his eyes in sorrow on Ilion* and its gods ablaze.
(*The city of Troy; Aeneas, a Trojan, came to Italy and, in part due to the Sibyl's guidance, became the progenitor of the Roman people. This story is the subject of the Aeneid of Tibullus' contemporary Vergil.)
(Not yet had Romulus traced the walls of the Eternal City wherein was no abiding for his brother Remus. But still* on a grassy Palatine browsed the kine, and lowly cabins stood upon the heights of Jove. There, drenched with milk, was Pan beneath the holmoak’s shade, and Pales shaped from wood by rustic knife; and on the tree, in quittance of the roving shepherd’s vow, the prattling pipe hung sacred to the woodland god (silvestri deo)—the pipe with its ever-dwindling rows of reeds, whose wax joins stalks each lesser than the last. But where now spreads the quarter of Velabrum, a small skiff stirred the waters as it plied across the shallows. There oft a lass who would please some rich keeper of a herd was ferried on holidays to her swain, and with her came back the gifts of a thriving farm, cheese and the white lamb of a snowy ewe.)
(*Here Tibullus' ideal past seems to be identified with the Latins who were thought to have later mixed with the incoming Trojans; in other words, it is quite independent of the history of the state.)
“Aeneas never-resting, brother of Cupid* ever on the wing, whose exiled barks carry the holy things of Troy**, now doth Jove allot to thee the fields of Laurentum, now doth a hospitable land invite thy wandering gods. There shall divinity be thine when Numicius’ ever-worshipped waters pass thee to heaven, a god of the native-born***.(*Because both were sons of Venus.
**In particular, the Penates, the household or, in this case, the city gods.
***Aeneas was deified as Jupiter Indiges, 'indigenous Jove', after being cleansed of his mortal parts by the river Numicius. The story is not told in the Aeneid, but was later adapted in Ovid's Metamorphoses.)
See, o’er the weary ships is Victory hovering. At last the haughty goddess comes to the men of Troy. Lo, I see the fire blaze from the Rutule camp. Now, savage Turnus*, I foretell thy fall. Before my eyes is Laurentum’s fortress and Lavinium’s wall, and Long Alba, which Ascanius** leads his host to found.(*Aeneas' war against the Latin Turnus is the subject of the second half of the Aeneid, after the wanderings of the first half have come to an end.
**Aeneas' son; Alba Longa is Rome's mother city.)
Now thee too, Ilia*, priestess whom Mars is to find fair, I see departed from the Vestal hearth. I see thy secret bridal, thy snood cast upon the ground, and, left upon the banks, the arms of the eager god. Now, while ye may, bulls, crop the grass of the Seven Hills. Ere long this will be a great city’s site. Thy nation, Rome, is fated to rule the earth wherever Ceres looks from heaven upon the fields she tends, both where the gates of dawn are opened and where in tossing waters the Ocean river bathes the Sun-god’s panting team. Then shall old Troy be a marvel to herself, and own that in this far journey ye did well for her. ’Tis truth I sing; so may I ever eat the holy bay unharmed and everlasting maidenhood be mine.”
(*Ilia, mother of Romulus and Remus by Mars, although as a Vestal, she is meant to remain a virgin.)
So sang the seeress, and called thee to her, Phoebus, and tossed before her face her streaming hair.
All that Amalthea, all that Herophile of Marpessos foretold, all the warnings of Grecian Phoeto and of all the sacred lots that the Sibyl of Tibur* carried through the stream of Anio and in dry bosom bore them home—these told that a comet should appear, the evil sign of war, and how that thick on earth should fall the stony shower. And they say that trumpets and the clash of arms were heard in heaven, and sacred groves rang with the coming rout. From the images of the gods poured the warm tears; and kine found tongue and spake of the coming doom. Yea, from the very Sun ebbed the light, and the clouded year saw him yoke dim horses to his car**.
(*All of these women are Sibyls, a kind of "genre" of oracular diviner.
**A list of typical evil omens, here in reference, it seems, to the Roman civil wars before the rule of Augustus.)
So was it once; but thou, Apollo, kind at last, whelm monstrous things beneath the savage deep. Let the bay crackle loud as it kindles in the holy flames, an omen telling that the season shall be blest and fruitful. When the bay has given propitious sign, rejoice, ye farmers: Ceres will fill with ears your straining barns. And smeared with must the countryman will stamp above the grapes till the great tanks and butts can hold no more. And drenched in wine the shepherd will chaunt the feast of Pales, the shepherd’s holiday. Ye wolves, be ye then far from the fold. Full of drink, he will fire the light straw heaps in the appointed way, and leap across the sacred flames. Then shall his dame bear offspring, and the child take hold of his father’s ears to snatch the kiss; nor shall the grandsire find it irksome to watch by his little grandson’s side, nor, for all his years, to lisp in prattle with the child.
Then in the god’s service the folk shall recline upon the grass where fall the flickering shadows of some ancient tree, or of their garments spread out canopies and tie them up with garlands, wreaths also round the goblets where they stand. Then each for himself will pile high the feast and festal board, cut sods the table and cut sods the couch. Here the tipsy lad will heap curses on his lass, such as ere long he will hope and pray may turn to naught. Aye, he who is now so savage with his dear will weep when he is sober, and swear that his wits had gone astray.
Phoebus, by thy good leave, let bows and arrows perish, so Love may rove unarmed upon the earth. ’Tis an honest craft; but since Cupid took to carrying arrows, how many, ah me, has that honest craft made smart! And me beyond the rest. For a year now, afflicted from his stroke and siding with my malady (for the pain itself is pleasure), I sing unceasingly of Nemesis, apart from whom no verse of mine can find its words or proper feet.
But do thou, damsel (for guardian gods watch over poets [divum servat tutela poetas]), be warned in time, and spare thy sacred bard, that I may tell of Messalinus when before his chariot he shall bear the conquered towns, the prize of war, wearing the bay wreath, while his soldiery, with wild bay round their brows, loudly chaunt the cry of triumph. Then let my dear Messalla afford the throng the sight of a father’s love, and clap his hands as his son’s car passes by. Phoebus, grant this; and so be thy locks for aye unshorn, and thy sister ever a maiden pure.
If we wanted to give a checklist of properties for this category - that of priests who are state officials and generals, of prophecies that touch on the state, on rulers, and on war - , it might look something like this:
- entirely positive evaluation within this context, but somewhat incongruous with other values
- triumphal, patriotic tone
- association with powerful and victorius rulers
But it is clear enough that, for Tibullus, all this is worthwhile primarily because it serves to reinstate his ideal. (Although we might imagine that, had he lived longer, he may have shifted his tone, as did Vergil.) And it is noteworthy that he locates the origin of the ideal not, e.g., with Rome's second king, the peaceful Numa who was said to have established the regulations of worship, but in a countryside that seems to exist almost outside of time.
Neutral rituals
While I have quoted very extensively from Tibullus up to here, this will be not be necessary in this last section, because it will be, I hope, the least obscure to modern readers. By 'neutral rituals', I am refering to the kind of commonsensical poetic discourse about gods and ritual that is neither particularly Roman, nor specific to idyllic, abnormal, or stately contexts. In Tibullus, it is used especially in the context of love, and represents the more light-hearted (albeit not necessarily purely positive) side of it.
The perfect encapsulation of this register comes not from Tibullus himself, but from an anonymous poem in the Appendix to Tibullus (<Tibullus> 3.7.130-134):
Jupiter himself rode in airy chariot through the void unto thy side, and left Olympus, neighbour of the sky. He gave himself with ear attentive to thy prayers, and granted all, bowing the head that never lies; and when fire touched the altar, its glad flare rose on high above the piled-up incense.
All of the ideas here are commonsensical, ancient readers and modern readers understand them easily: the king of the gods leaves his throne to attend a sacrifice - hymns typically invoke the gods to come to the worshippers, after all - and fulfils the requests of the sacrificer. What else is the purpose of sacrifice? The simple gesture of his nod, a sign of irrevocable divine approval, was known from Homer, and generally considered a sublime representation of Zeus/Jupiter's majesty.
And yet, all kinds of other, conflicting commonsensical ideas immediately arise: does Jupiter really deign to come to an ordinary sacrifice in person? Does he literally use a flying chariot? Does he have a head like a human, and is it necessary for him to show his approval by a nod, even though he probably remains invisible? A philosopher or historian cannot claim something so concrete without expressing some kind of hesitation or skepticism; but in poetry, this kind of representation can be unfolded without restrictions.
There is something playful about this, yes, but the joke does not lie in falseness or counterfactuality per se. When Tibullus says: "’twas at Love’s bidding. And who may fight against a god?" (1.60.30), he is not leading the traditional idea that Love is a god ad absurdum, or merely pretending to believe it. He is bringing two ideas that are perfectly ordinary and unobjectionable - that Love is a god, and that one cannot defeat the gods - together in an incongruent argument. But this slight incongruence, this spirit of subtle irony (rather than the outright nonsense of comedy) is the lifeblood of Latin elegy. Within this context, it is exactly appropriate to say things like this, or to claim - with exuberant thanks to Jupiter - that oaths of lovers are "null and void" (1.4.21-26), or to warn that gods avenge scorned lovers (1.8.69-72). Outside of that context, these assertions would not necessarily be false; but they would risk pointlessness or meaninglessness.
Conclusion
I have left some things out of this overview - passages on the Roman goddess Bellona, the Egyptian Osiris, and the personal genius ("guardian spirit") - because I want to use Tibullus' representations of them in future posts. Nevertheless, I think that Tibullus is one fairly representative example of how a landscape of practices and ideas is parsed into ostensibly Roman and non-Roman, acceptable and dubious, not on the basis of who actually uses them, but by reference to supposed origins, perceived normalcy, or who the "typical" practitioner is.
It is my personal sense that the saga*, the "witch" as modern translators have it, comes out especially badly, not just in Tibullus but in Latin poetry generally. Being associated with moments of crises rather than regular festivals, and not being an official of the state like the temple priests, she is represented as the origin of, rather than the helper in, calamities, and all kinds of male fears and fantasies of violence are projected onto her. This also means that "magical" practices which may have been practiced by all genders or even predominantly by men are pushed away onto this other. And much of what the sagae are supposed to have done is derived directly from Greek literature, rather than Roman life. On the other hand, these women no doubt knew something of Greek mythology, too: they were not self-contained in stable authenticity any more than Tibullus' imaginary pious farmers. On balance, then, we ought neither to take Tibullus as an unbiassed reporter of facts, nor to somehow subtract his distortions to get at the "pure" reality; rather, we have to take his imagination as part of the deal, and learn how both real acts and imagination were societally bounded.
(*For slightly more detail on the saga, see my excerpts from the lexicon of Festus.)
(*For slightly more detail on the saga, see my excerpts from the lexicon of Festus.)
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