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Classical Antiquity. Vol. 26, Issue 2, pp. 277–304. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).

Copyright © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please

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DOI:10.1525/CA.2007.26.2.277.

The Specters of Roman Imperialism:

The Live Burials of Gauls

and Greeks at Rome

Scholarly discussions of the live burials of Gauls and Greeks in the Forum Boarium in the mid-

and late Republic (attested for the years 228, 216, and 114/113 ) replay the debate on Roman

imperialism; those supporting the theory of “defensive” imperialism connect religious fears with

military ones, while other scholars separate this ritual and the “enemy nations” involved in it

from the actual enemies of current warfare in order to corroborate a more aggressive sense

of Roman imperialism. After reviewing earlier interpretations and the problems of ancient

evidence for these Roman instances of “human sacrifice,” I propose a new reading based on

a ritual parallel, a slightly earlier Greek oracle related to purification from avenging spirits.

As burials of symbolic former enemies haunting Rome, the ritual suggests an insight into the

experience of constant warfare and close-contact killing by citizen-soldiers in an aggressively

imperialistic state. Especially with the disappearance of captive killings in the symbolic context

of aristocratic burials and the emergence of Hellenistic epic to address elite glory, the live burials

could have been critical in providing psychological closure to the once-soldiers back in Rome.

Remarkably, the ritual offered an outlet in the religious realm for sentiments unwelcome in

the Roman army: in the larger dynamic of the military and religious spheres, the strict world

of military discipline was complemented by a religious (and cultural) realm that was much

more open to external influence and innovation.

Autem nostra aetas vidit.

“Even our own age saw it.”1

The three instances of Roman “human sacrifice” before the Late Republic,

the live burials of Gauls and Greeks on the Forum Boarium in the third and second

I would like to give my thanks to William V. Harris, who encouraged my engagement with this

subject a number of years ago; to Jean-Jacques Aubert, Leanna Boychenko, Pat Larash, Ronaldo

Rauseo-Ricupero, Ann Vasaly and Greg Woolf, who provided helpful comments at various stages of

the work; and to the anonymous readers for the journal, as well as Thomas Habinek and the other

editors who reviewed this paper in advance of publication.

1. The quote is from Pliny, NH 28.12. All translations are mine except when marked otherwise.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007278

centuries , have long been associated with and discussed in the context of the

debate on the nature of Roman imperialism. Reported on three occasions, for the

years 228, 216, and 114/113 ,2 the rhetoric of the ritual descriptions suggests

fear of enemies and provides, inevitably, a central argument for those supporting

the theory of “defensive” imperialism.3 However, today the prevailing paradigm

is one of a more self-aware and aggressive Roman imperialism4 ; and thus any

Roman fear that might appear in the accounts of the live burials is now primarily

dissociated from contemporaneous military affairs. Instead, the alarm tends to get

classified as distinctly religious, associated with the upheavals of Vestal scandals,

which are mentioned in the evidence for two of those three occasions.5 In other

words, with regard to the live burials of Gauls and Greeks the debate on Roman

imperialism is replayed: those less willing to accept the possibility of intense

anxiety as a driving force of warfare tend to separate the political and military

situation from the religious elements in this case, while those whose arguments

benefit from evidence of pervasive fear consider this as an eminent example of the

common workings of Roman politics and religion under deep alarm.

The main goal of this paper is to offer a new hypothesis for the interpretation

of the human sacrifice of Gauls and Greeks in Rome. Reconsidering the ritual

in the larger perspective of the dynamic between the military and religious

spheres in mid-Republican Rome, I argue for an intrinsic connection but no

uniform analogy between warfare and religion, a connection that on my reading

nevertheless does not support the theory of defensive Roman imperialism. My

fairly unconventional proposal, to consider a slightly earlier Greek oracle aimed at

expelling avenging spirits as an important parallel in the explanation of this strange

ritual, is a hypothesis suggestive of the importance of historical perspective, of

cross-Mediterranean cultural interchange, and of how little we know about the

psychological effects of continuous warfare on the Roman mind in the mid-

Republican period.

I. THE VICTIMS

There is one area of slippage between warfare and religion in the interpretation

of this ritual, and in this sense the victims of the live burials have continued to

trouble modern discussions of Roman imperialism. Even the most aggressively

2. Cichorius 1922: 14–16. The ancient evidence for 228 is: Plut. Marc. 3.3–4; Orosius 4.13.1–

3; cf. Zonaras 8.19; Dio Cassius fr. 50; Tzetzes ad Lycophr. Alex. 602; for 216: Liv. 22.57.2–6;

and for 114/113: Plut. Mor. 284A-284C (= Quaest. Rom. 83).

3. The best formulation of the “defensive” argument in English, in particular with regard to the

live burials, is Eckstein 1982.

4. The classic elaboration of “aggressive” Roman imperialism is Harris 1985, with the live

burials discussed, briefly, on p. 198.

5. For a representative and well formulated example, the Vestal connection is emphasized in

Beard, North, and Price 1998: 80–81; cf. also their general rejection of fear as a motivation for

religious innovation at this time, 79–80.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 279

imperialistic interpretations of the ritual have not been able to offer a convincing

alternative to what is often taken for granted, namely that the Gauls and Greeks

were essentially scapegoats selected from among either actual or potential enemy

peoples.6 The most readily justifiable suggestion, proposed already by Georg

Wissowa in his grand handbook on Roman religion first published in 1902, is

to see the victims as actual enemies, as Kriegsopfer (war sacrifice).7 But as

it has been widely acknowledged since the momentous contribution of Conrad

Cichorius in 1922 (who also established the widely accepted chronology that I

rely on here), our evidence does not support current warfare with both of these

peoples in 228, 216, and 114/113 , the three years in which the ritual is attested

in our sources.8

While this chronology—and in turn the rebuttal of any untenable correlation

between the victims and the actual military foes of Rome in each of those select

years—forms the basis from which either side of the imperialism debate would

construct their arguments today, only some follow Cichorius’ own explanation

of the incidents. Setting the example for later readings of the “aggressive”

imperialism group, Cichorius suggested that we should locate the rationale of

the live burials in the religious concerns about the simultaneous cases of Vestal

impurity and their punishment. This point was strengthened by the apparent

similarity of the rituals: live burial in both the cases of the unchaste virgins and

of the foreign couples of Gauls and Greeks. In other words, the live burials had

nothing to do with warfare, but rather they helped the Romans atone for the

Vestal impurity. Unfortunately the evidence for parallel Vestal troubles is the

most dubious for the live burials in 228 , challenging the connection between

the Vestal impurities and the live burials at the most critical first occurrence

of the Gallic and Greek ritual.9 But even if Cichorius was right to connect the

three occurrences of the ritual and the concurrent Vestal crises, the question

of whether contemporaries viewed the choice of Gallic and Greek couples as

symbolically representative of enemy peoples remains valid. Further, we must

note that the Vestal parallel in itself fails to explain either the choice of these

particular peoples, or the ritually rather suggestive fact of the inclusion of both

men and women, which strengthens the view that there may have been a more

6. One could consider the thesis of Briquel 1976: 65–88 as an exception, as she sought an

explanation in a mythological story of Brundisium. Others following Bemont 1960: 139 saw the

victims as enemies of the Etruscans, who faced both Greeks and Gauls at the same time. Those

who support defensive imperialism inevitably identify the victims as enemies of Rome, e.g. Eckstein

1982, who holds onto part of the now untenable theory of current enemies by suggesting that the

Gauls and Greeks were future enemies; or more recently Ndiaye 2000: 119–28, 127.

7. Wissowa 1902: 54.

8. Cichorius 1922: 14–16. Rome was not at war with Celts or Greeks in 228; was in alliance

with the Greek city of Syracusae against the Carthaginians (who had some Celtic allies) in 216;

and lastly, suffered a loss against the Celtic Scordisci in 114/113.

9. Liv. Per. 20. The only alternative religious motivation ever identified was a portent, for

which see below.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007280

complex conceptual framework that shaped the ritual and its occurrences in mid-

Republican Rome.

In terms of the ancient perceptions of the victims, it seems noteworthy that

most ancient interpreters sought to elucidate the choice of the Gauls and Greeks

for the ritual by identifying them as representatives of enemy peoples. Thus in

Pliny the Elder’s reading, the victims were current enemies:

Boario vero in foro Graecum Graecamque defossos aut aliarum gentium

cum quibus tum res esset etiam nostra aetas vidit.

NH 28.12

Indeed even our own age saw the burial, on the Forum Boarium, of a

Greek man and woman and of other peoples with whom there was war

then.

Although this view is clearly mistaken in factual terms, as Rome was not at war

with both Gauls and Greeks in the three years under consideration here, it is

nevertheless significant in showing that at least among some Romans the main

association of these foreigners was with warfare. In what seems a separate line

of tradition, we have another, somewhat more promising ancient explanation by

Cassius Dio, and also picked up by Zonaras; this is our only ancient evidence to

give actual details about how these particular peoples had been picked (although

this is also, as we shall see, likely to be a later invention):

ΛογÐου δè ποτε τοØ ÃΡωµαÐοι âλθìντο καÈ �Ελληνα καÈ Γαλ�τατä �στυ καταλ ψεσθαι, Γαλ�ται δÔο καÈ �Ελληνε éτεροι êκ τε τοÜ�ρρενο καÈ τοÜ θ λεο γèνου ζÀντε âν τ ù �γορ�ø κατωρÔγησαν,

Ñν' οÕτω âπιτελà τä πεπρωµèνον γενèσθαι δοκ ù, καÐ τι κατèχειν τ¨πìλεω κατορωρυγµèνοι νοµÐζωνται.

Zonaras 8.19.9

Inasmuch as an oracle had once come to the Romans that Greeks and

Gauls should occupy the city, two Gauls and likewise two Greeks, male

and female, were buried alive in the Forum, in order that in this way

destiny might seem to have fulfilled itself, and these foreigners, thus

buried there, might be regarded as possessing a part of the city.

Uniquely among our ancient sources here Zonaras attributed the choice of Gauls

and Greeks to an oracle that had foretold the impending occupation of Rome

by these peoples. And even though I will later suggest potential problems with

the explanatory capacity of this prophesy, the argument Dio made actually comes

quite close to one current scholarly view that explains the live burials as a response

to a sense of threat from some imminent future disaster that the Romans would

have sought to avoid through the ritual.10 In this view, then, the Gauls and Greeks

10. Eckstein 1982, like most others, reads this passage together with a distinct fragment of

Dio Cassius (fr. 50 = exc. de sent. 128), which contains a Sibylline oracle stating that if lightning

strikes the Capitolium, by the temple of Apollo, one should beware of Gauls. Cf. Twyman 1997.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 281

are prospective adversaries, and it would be fear that licenses their ritual murder

as representatives of enemy peoples in the eyes of contemporary Romans.

These two possibilities, present (Pliny) or future (Dio) enemies, have been

the interpretations offered, if any at all, for the selection of Gauls and Greeks

in the ritual live burials by the majority of historians in the past and present.11 Yet,

ultimately the main problem with either of these explanations is that they would

upset not only what we know of Roman imperialism, but also of contemporary

religion. Sacrificing present or feared future enemies would imply that in fact

there was little distinction between how the sphere of politics and warfare on

the one hand and that of religion on the other hand functioned. Such a religious

conceptualization of warfare would stretch our current understanding of the nature

of mid-Republican religion: sacrificing foes from enemy nations would mean that

in addition to the actual combat on the battlefield, there would have been a more

abstract understanding of a parallel war, on a symbolic, religious level, between

Rome and its enemies.

In comparative, if somewhat more exaggerated, terms, the Mexica (Aztecs)

seem to provide a useful comparison for what is presupposed in these readings of

the ritual. While the descriptions of Mexica human sacrifice all derive from

sources external to the culture, so that a number of possible variations and

different layers of meanings associated with the ritual are probably obscured,

there is a relatively reliable consensus among scholars as to some basic aspects.

Remarkably, the Mexica practice of taking war captives for eventual sacrifice

(the religious aspect) was very well integrated with the military ethos of constant

warfare and the potential rise of common soldiers in social hierarchy (the socio-

political aspect). Thus, the human sacrifices among the Mexica were part of

festivals in the regular ritual calendar, most notably for my purposes in the

Feast of the Flaying of Men in the second month.12 Given the regularity of

such sacrifice, there was a constant need for victims (whether captured enemies

or slaves, or, on other occasions, even women and children) whose main quality

was simply that they were enemies, without any specific rules in terms of gender,

age, or social rank; instead, the ritual incorporated special ceremonies prior to the

sacrifice, which likened the victims to certain Mexica gods.13 Most strikingly for

But again, in Dio’s version we remain short on the explanation of why the Greeks had to be involved

as well. Further, Dio talks of a χρησµì while Zonaras (unusually for him) of a λìγιον, although the

distinction of the two as verse and prose, respectively, is not always maintained by ancient authors.

Nevertheless, the possibility of a simple insertion of Greeks to Dio’s reference, based on the ritual

including both Greeks and Gauls, cannot be excluded in Zonaras.

11. An interesting variation on this theme is Fraschetti 1981: 90–100, who suggested that the

ritual must have occurred prior to 228 (most likely in Varronian 349 . when Rome was at

war with both “Gauls and Greeks”); the first occurrence of the ritual, involving their enemies at

the time, set the choice of the victims for all later occurrences.

12. See Carrasco 1999: 142–47 for a description of the month’s festivities, and his ch. 5 in

general for the details of this festivity.

13. As Olivier 2002: 108 points out, given the nature of our descriptions, we tend to have more

evidence for ritual ceremonies than about their meaning.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007282

our comparison, the victims were sacrificed in a bloody manner, often with their

hearts torn out first; then they were skinned, and finally their bodies dismembered.

This bloody aspect was also shared by a variation of the sacrifice, known as the

gladiatorial sacrifice, in which under-armed captives fought fully armed captors.

In a further connection of the socio-political and religious spheres, the associated

feast of human flesh not only united the human community, but also nourished the

Mexica gods according to the widely acknowledged mythological interpretation

in which such alimentary support was necessary for the maintenance of the divine

order.14 Lastly, the whole ritual included a great deal of theatrical elements, which

re-enacted not only Mexica social hierarchy, but also, on a symbolic level, their

success on the battlefield.15 Even though the nature of their connection is debated,

the ritual of human sacrifice on the one hand and the practice and “ideology” of

warfare on the other hand clearly ran a parallel course within Mexica culture: the

successful completion of the ritual proved the Mexica spiritual superiority just

as much as their conquests did in military terms.16

The differences between the Mexica and the Roman practices are manifold.

Most visible is the marked divergence in the treatment of those sacrificed: the flesh

of the slaughtered Mexica victims was consumed, while in the case of the Romans’

Gauls and Greeks such direct violence seems to have been carefully avoided.17

It is significant that even though Romans may have ruined enemy temples and

sanctuaries as part of their conquests, and even killed captured enemies on a large

scale as late as the middle of the fourth century , most of what we know

about Roman religion in the period of the middle Republic implies that by this

time Romans did not see their military conflicts as paralleled by a divine conflict

between Roman and enemy gods; rather, they tended to go out of their way to

please and appease the gods of other peoples.18

Even if, admittedly, Roman religion did not form a theologically unified sys-

tem at this time, the third century (when the ritual first and in one further instance

is attested among the Romans) abounds with an innovative spirit characterized

primarily by the inclusion of new and foreign elements. While it is impossible

to prove the argumentum ex silentio that the ritual live burials had not occurred in

Rome prior to the first attested date of 228 , if their introduction did belong

14. See Carrasco 1999: 164–69 on this complicated issue and its even more complicated modern

reception.

15. See Carrasco 1999: 147–53 on the transformation of the city into a battlefield for the

ceremonies.

16. Note that Mexica warfare, at least for the elite, also had other motivations, such as to assure

tribute, and that the religious aspect should not be seen as of exclusive importance; see, on this whole

issue, Isaac 1983: 121–31.

17. I do not presume that either case could be explained by an exclusively ecological explanation.

For the history of the Mexica cannibalism debate see Lindenbaum 2004: 479–80.

18. Beard, North, and Price 1998: 73–87. A somewhat later similarly challenging development

was the philosophical attention that the Romans, at least since Cicero, gave to the problem of bellum

iustum (“just warfare”).

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 283

to the late third century, the ritual would fit into a decidedly creative phase of

Roman religion. And even if we are to consider this a possible re-introduction

of an older ritual, it is unlikely that the choice would be radically contradictory to

the majority of ongoing practices. While our evidence for most late third-century

Roman rituals is rather compromised, we encounter a variety of benevolent action

towards enemy gods, thus evocatio, promising actual care for the gods of enemies

and interest in their placation before their introduction to Rome, or exoratio,

placation without introduction into Rome, as in the case of the Carthaginian As-

tarte during the Second Punic War, all showing evident concern for appeasing

the gods of current and prospective enemies.19 The ritual murder of representative

individuals from such enemy peoples does not fit very easily into this picture.

In other words, if we are to accept that in this ritual the Gauls and Greeks who

were buried alive stood for dreaded current or prospective adversaries, the three

attested instances would not be consistent with the views we currently hold about

religion in mid-Republican Rome. I think this problem is significant enough to

suggest that we reconsider these current interpretations. I will proceed first by

reconstructing the history of the evaluations of human sacrifice in Republican

Rome in order to start developing an understanding of how our evidence might

misrepresent what the rituals might have meant at the time they were carried out.

II. CHANGING ATTITUDES TO HUMAN SACRIFICE

IN ANCIENT ROME

There is at least one obvious reason to doubt Pliny and Dio in their notion of

the victims as current or prospective enemies. Both authors—in fact, all surviving

sources regarding the live burials, with the exception of an indirect reference

in Polybius—date from the Augustan period or later and describe the burials

only retrospectively. This is typical in terms of the sources we have for many

other Roman religious rituals of the Republican period.20 However, in the case

of the live burials, these descriptions were separated from the events not only

by a chronological span, but also by a rather clear change in cultural attitudes.

Not completely unlike the circumstances that may have led to Livy’s, and others’,

later under-reporting of prophetic traditions from mid-Republican Rome,21 the

live burials seem characteristic of an earlier age in a way that shaped the reports

19. Our records for evocatio are highly problematic, although the ritual definitely survived into

the Empire (possibly in alternate forms), for which now see Gustafsson 2000: 46–62. For various

rituals discussed in scholarship similar to evocatio, see ibid., 71–77. For exoratio, cf. Servius, ad

Verg. Aen. 12.841: sed constat bello Punico secundo exoratam Iunonem, tertio vero bello a Scipione

sacris quibusdam etiam Romam esse translatam (“But it is certain that during the second Punic war

Iuno was ‘exorated,’ and indeed during the third Punic war she was even brought to Rome by Scipio

with certain religious proceedings”).

20. Beard, North, and Price 1998: 1–18.

21. North 2000: 107.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007284

of these later writers. We in fact know of a relatively significant boundary:

legislation that forbade the immolatio of humans in 97 .22 And although

immolatio, as it corresponded to bloody animal sacrifice, would not cover live

burials,23 this official disclaimer on the part of the Roman elite through legislation

unmistakably marked how Hellenized Romans had grown uncomfortable with

the involvement of human victims as part of a legitimate religious ritual by

the early first century . The end result was an interpretative framework

we know quite well, in which human sacrifice corresponded to the barbarian

other and featured largely, as the subject of mutual accusations, in later pagan-

Christian debates.24 All of our direct sources of the Gallic and Greek burials

belong to this interpretative framework, in which authors unavoidably aim at

dissociating themselves from the ritual—a situation not very different from how

early twentieth-century scholars tended to consider human sacrifice as a surpassed

stage of cultural evolution.25

In contrast to what most of these later sources claim, it is quite likely that

the live burials in the late third and possibly even in the second century were

not yet part of what was later to become “unacceptable” religion in Rome.

Livy’s disclaimer about the ritual events of 216 , minime Romano sacro

(“in a least Roman rite,” 22.57.6), (which, as we shall see, is not that relevant

for plentiful reasons), as well as Plutarch’s contrast of the live burials with

the otherwise “Hellenic” ritual practices in Rome (Marc. 3.6), may not reflect

the mid-Republican sense of the ritual, at the rather critical time when it was

either first instituted or specifically re-instituted, and when it was certainly and

repeatedly carried out.26 Given the change of cultural attitudes with regard

to the ritual killing of humans in the first century , Livy, Dionysius of

Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Dio as well as all later commentators may simply

not have had access to, or desire to explain, the ritual logic of the live burials.

Accordingly, their disclaimers that the live burials were un-Roman cannot be

taken as evidence of anything but the concerns of their own, later age; and such

statements by themselves need no explanation as representative of any actual facet

of the ritual.

On the contrary, given that almost all of these later sources recognize the role

that the recommendation from the Sibylline Books played in the implementation

22. Plin. NH 30.12: senatusconsultum factum est, ne homo immolaretur, palamque in tempus

illud sacra prodigiosa celebrata (“A senatusconsultum was passed banning the sacrifice of men, and

until that time those strange rites are known to have been celebrated”).

23. The sense of immolatio as bloody sacrifice (or at least bloody killing) prevailed until the

Christian authors of the second century . (cf. TLL s.v. immolo II.B). In Beard, North, and Price

1998: 81n.30, the authors imply that the legislation of 97 most likely focused on magicians, rather

than priests—and in fact that distinction may have been part of what was defined in the law.

24. As excellently analyzed by Rives 1995: 65–85.

25. As Bonnechere 1998 points out also with regard to some contemporary scholarship.

26. Needless to say, the same can be said of the comment of Orosius: consuetudinem priscae

superstitionis egressi (“they went beyond the custom of old superstition,” 4.13.3).

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 285

of the ritual, and the formal religious process that the consultation of the Books

implies, we can accept, with Augusto Fraschetti, that the live burials could in

fact function as a carefully legitimated action that fit well in the culture of mid-

republican Rome.27 Whatever foreignness may have been associated with the

Books, it did not correspond to any sort of illicitness, and the role of the Books

can be seen as not just a source of foreign “flavor” in Rome, but also as a way

of adding legitimacy to a new, imported ritual.28

Within the religious universe of mid-Republican Rome, the Sibylline Books

mark the trend towards openness and innovation; furthermore they provide an

ideal source of religious justification in what John North called the most eco-

nomical package, including the four most apparent sources of religious legit-

imization available at Rome: a portent, an ancient tradition, foreign wisdom,

and priestly authority.29 The participation of the decemviri sacris faciundis, as

well as the elder Pliny’s claim that the precatio the magister of the college used

in this ritual survived to his day, confirm that the ritual traveled through the

proper channels of legitimation in the Roman religious system.30 Further, the

repetition of the live burials after the first instance, on two additional occasions,

suggests not only that the ritual was seen as legitimate at least by some, but

also that it was seen as genuine to the contemporaneous perception of religious

issues, that is, in some way it successfully addressed the religious sense that

Romans of the time made of the crises on these occasions. Although the lat-

ter point is often taken for granted, in fact legitimacy and genuineness must

have been connected and could have mutually strengthened each other: given

that Sibylline prescriptions in general were accepted as a legitimate source of

religious action, their authority would have strengthened the genuineness of the

newly introduced ritual. Insofar as the Books were identified as the source, of

which this particular ritual was specifically chosen for the unique crisis the Ro-

mans were experiencing, even the more unusual elements of the ritual may have

been readily seen as the appropriate response. In turn, the successful perfor-

mance of such a new ritual, introduced with the backing of the Sibylline books,

could have projected an aura of legitimacy back to the books and the priests

themselves involved in the process. In sum, the fact of the consultation in it-

self challenges the ancient argument made by Livy, and implied by others, that

the live burials were an exception, contradictory to the religion of Rome at the

time. In the following, therefore, I engage with the surviving explanations that

allow for genuine concerns shaping the introduction and repetitions of this ritual

in Rome.

27. Fraschetti 1981: 55–56. The Sibylline references are for 228 in Plut. Marc. 3.4; for 216: Liv.

22.57.2; and for 114/113: Plut. Mor. 284B (= Quaest. Rom. 83).

28. Orlin 1997: 101–102 shows how, for example, even such a long-established Italian deity

as Flora (introduced in 241 .) could be accepted into Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books.

29. North 1976: 1–12, 9.

30. Plin. NH 28.12.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007286

III. EXPLAINING A GENUINE YET CRUDE RITUAL

As our evidence stands today, the only trace left of such genuineness, the

only specific hint for a connection between the ritual and any understanding of the

predicament on the part of the Romans is the oracle, mentioned by Cassius Dio,

that foretold the occupation of the city by Gauls and Greeks, even if it dates some

three hundred years after the last occurrence of the ritual. In pointing to the oracle

Dio went significantly beyond the generic claims found in other writers, which

offered only an abundance of threatening prodigia in Rome at the time; he offered

instead a rationale in how the ritual action responded to the sense the Romans

made of the crisis. And we can find one further reason to trust at least part of

Dio’s explanation: the use of the generic national names of Gauls and Greeks in

all of our sources is suggestive of oracular language—especially in the late third

century , by which time Romans clearly had a more sophisticated sense of

distinct units of identity among their neighbors (in fact it is through more specific

names that individual neighboring peoples appear in Roman military histories).31

On the one hand, as Augusto Fraschetti suggested, there could well have been

a real oracle, dating back to the fourth century , which may have foretold the

occupation of the city by Gauls and Greeks (when such danger may have been

more of a reality); this, then, could have been revived at the end of the third

century.32 On the other hand, any such attempt to date certain aspects of the ritual

prior to the third century faces the possible challenge that even if the ritual was

then reintroduced with a claim to tradition, it might have been transformed to

match other preferences in religious innovations characteristic of this later era.

Also, the further we go back in time, the less likely it is that Romans would

have had a geographic sense of terra Italia, which is sometimes presumed as a

cosmological basis for the selection of the Gauls and Greeks among others, for

example, by Fraschetti himself.33

Yet, the connection between the live burials and the oracular threat that the city

would be occupied faces some challenges. The connection has a strange parallel in

a passage of the second-century Pseudo-Lycophron, echoed by Cassius Dio’s

later contemporary, the historian Justin: it relates a version of the mythological

story about the Aetolian companions of Diomedes, who on their return from

Troy were buried alive by the locals in Brundisium, based on an oracle warning

that they would occupy their city forever.34 Further, Dio may have had another

31. Note in this regard the ingenious if debatable suggestion of Gage 1955: 249–51, that the

pairing of Gauls and Greeks may have come from the word gallograecus, the Latin translation of

Galatians (Greek Γαλ�τη).

32. Fraschetti 1981; although one may not wish to follow the more speculative aspects of his

argument, namely, that there had been previous occurrences of live burials in the fourth century

as well.

33. Such as Fraschetti 1981.

34. Tzetzes ad Lycophr. Alex. 1056; Justin 12.2; Briquel 1976.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 287

reason to connect the ritual of live burial with the threat of future occupation.

Zonaras, who preserved the Dio fragment with the oracular explanation for our

ritual, describes a similar instance, possibly (though not certainly) also taken from

Dio, of an oracle followed by a strange ritual sequence in Rome: during the wars

with Pyrrhus, around 280 , the Romans responded to an oracle foretelling

that the aerarium would be occupied by men of Praeneste by actually locking

up (and ultimately thereby burying alive) some leading men of that city in the

Roman treasury.35 There are obvious similarities among all these stories, most

clearly that an oracle with the threat of future occupation was followed by the

ritual live burial of foreigners. Yet, and this is my point, the similarities may also

be seen as suggestive of some mistaken antiquarian work rather than a direct link

between the live burials of Gauls and Greeks in our ritual and the live burials

mentioned in the parallel stories. Whether from Pseudo-Lycophron (or Justin)

or from his source for the 280s , Dio could have been familiar with a ritual

explanation of live burials other than those of the Vestals as indicative of oracular

threats of occupation. He then could have employed the same oracular suggestions

when encountering a similar religious outcome, and appropriately for the Roman

historical evidence, added the Gauls along with the Greeks to Pseudo-Lycophron.

What also, on a close reading, connects all three examples in Dio, Lycophron-

Justin, and Zonaras is that the live burials, without exception, are projected away

from the writer to the barbarian other: it is the locals in Brundisium and the Romans

of the past who might commit such an act. How much that distance should make us

doubt the rationale offered is difficult to say, yet its methodological implications

are quite important as practically all information about ancient human sacrifice

comes from sources detached either by time or perspective, or both, from the

ritual. The only exception would have been Polybius’ now lost description of the

burial of the Greek general, Philopoemen, in 182 , a contemporary eyewitness

testimony to the at least somewhat ritualized killing of enemy captives, written by

a person unquestionably allied with those allowing the killing. In the depiction of

Plutarch, who must have used Polybius, it was due to the immeasurable loss that

the capture and killing of Philopoemen meant to the Achaeans that they stoned the

Messenian captives to death around the tomb of their great general.36

This explanation, based on a past atrocity, is quite remarkable, especially

given the relative chronological proximity of the incident to the live burials in

Rome and at least a certain similarity in the status of the victims in each case.37

35. Zon. 8.3; Briquel 1986: 114–15; Champeaux 1982: 79–80. Briquel 1986: 116–18, 120 n.13

argues for the connection between the events of 280 and the later live burials of Gauls and Greeks in

Rome.

36. Philopoemen 21. Cf. Justin, Epitome 32.1, using the phrase poenasque interfecti Philopo-

emenis pependerunt (“they had payed the penalty for the killing of Philopoemen”).

37. I leave aside the rather romantic fact that Polybius supposedly carried the ashes of the great

Achaean general in this funeral ceremony, as well as the here irrelevant fact that Plutarch chose

to describe the funeral procession in triumphal terms.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007288

Plutarch may not have been completely at ease describing this atrocious incident,

but he showed little ambiguity as to its rationale: the Messenian captives paid the

price for having killed the general. Setting aside the question of whether Plutarch

is reliable on this matter, this is the kind of logic we miss in the depictions of

the live burials.

The methodological import of the absence of such “insider” descriptions

about human sacrifice has to do with recognizing that even if the rationale has

been lost, it does not follow that there was no justification behind the choice of this

particular form of ritual at the time of its application. The same must be the case

for our ritual. The premise of my argument here is that, as established, consulting

the Sibylline Books did not mean an ad hoc prescription of a primarily extraneous

religious ceremony, and, further, that the prescriptions of the book were not

completely random assignments but rather carefully selected responses to what

was seen as the essence of the crisis.38 In fact, its trustworthiness notwithstanding,

the greatest difficulty with Dio’s explanation is that it fails to justify why some

further essentials of the ritual were seen as appropriate. Independently from

whether there was in fact an oracle regarding the threat of occupation, why, above

all, a prescription of the live burials to include both men and women? Why

this piece of innovation if there was a well-established mythological example

that included only male potential enemies? In fact, it seems that the problem of

explanations relying on the Dio or the pseudo-Lycophron parallel is the mirror

image of the one faced by proponents of the “Vestal hypothesis.” If in the

first case we don’t know how to insert the women into the ritual, in the latter,

the parallel calls for an unexplained supplementation of men to the example of

Vestal virgins.

In fact, the problem of ritual alteration, the change from virgins to couples, is

what ultimately damns the Vestal case, because it problematizes a critical element

in what has already been a disputable comparison. There is the already mentioned

chronological difficulty, insofar as the Vestal parallel for the first occasion of our

ritual in 228 is the least secure, suggesting that there may not have been

a Vestal sacrifice at the most critical first occurrence of Gallic and Greek live

burials.39 But this should not cover up the fact that most elements of the ritual

parallel are also deeply problematic. Besides adding the men of the couples, a

different location was chosen for the live burials of Vestals and those of the Gauls

and Greeks. Further, there is evidence, if somewhat dubious, to suggest that live

burial may not have been seen as the method of punishing aberrant Vestals in

the mid-Republic as exclusively as it came to be in later writers. It might just

be the case that the Vestal Capparonia, who was found impure in 266 (in

the last incident known to us prior to the first relevant case from ca. 230 ),

38. In contrast to Eckstein 1982: 72–77.

39. Eckstein 1982, Appendix.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 289

was hanged rather than buried, at least it is so claimed in our significantly later

(but only) source Orosius (4.5.9).40

In fact, what is most instructive about the Vestal deaths, even if they cannot

sufficiently explain the live burials under discussion here, is the history of their

ancient interpretations. It elucidates how such religious explanations were subject

to reinterpretation as time passed and perspectives changed. Thus it is clear that at

least since the late Republic and its monde imaginaire, the Vestal burials were

not seen as distorted blood-sacrifices. In the detailed discussion of Dionysius

of Halicarnassus they appear as in essence distorted, yet legitimate, funerals.

Dionysius contrasted the fact that the women were still alive (zosai) to the funerary

aspects of the ritual: the bier on which they were carried out, the lamentations

of the relatives and, as he thought, the funeral attire in which the Vestals were

entombed (2.67). In fact, early Christian writers described the Vestal deaths in

various forms, if invariably illegitimate, including live burial and other forms of

capital punishment, e.g., hanging. In this case, Dionysius provides the “insider”

explanation, at least to the extent that Vestal burials were a continuing Roman

tradition. Whether or not we should trust him on how exactly earlier Vestals were

killed is hard to say, yet he is clearly attempting to depict the practice not only as

consistent in action (i.e., always live burials) but also consistent in religious logic

(both with regard to the causation as religious pollution and in the distorted burial

as a response to it). It is such consistency and rationale that we are missing for the

live burials in our ritual.

In the late Republic the live burials of the Gauls and Greeks were depicted

as a religious ceremony, yet one rather different from how Caesar depicts the

Gauls’ bloody human sacrifice41 or how, in even more detail, Germanic human

sacrifice, a supposed parallel for the ritual killing of enemy captives, was imagined

around this time by Strabo. In this latter account, a priestess cut the throats of

the prisoners of war, whose blood was captured and whose entrails were inspected

for divinatory purposes (7.2.3).42 As for the live burials of the Gauls and Greeks,

Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price have already pointed out how much

is absent, according to our first-century and later evidence, from what would

be necessary to make this ritual a regular sacrifice, in particular, all the bloody

elements of immolation and killing, as well as divination or the return of the exta

to the gods.43

40. Compare Orosius 4.2.8, on Sextilia in 275, whom both he and Livy (ep. 14) claim was

buried alive. Both Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, our earliest sources for most instances of

Vestal burials seem to evoke live burial as a rule: see Livy in 22.57.2 uti mos est (“as it is customary”)

and Dionysius in 3.67.2, after he established and discussed the rule in 2.67.

41. Caesar BG 6.16. Cf. later Lucan 1.445–46.

42. Green 2001: 66–68 emphasizes the element of fantasy in this and ensuing descriptions. For

later, similar ideas about the Britons, see Tac. Ann. 14.30.

43. Beard, North, and Price 1998: 80–82.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007290

One plausible explanation for this discrepancy in the depictions of the ritual

killing, as bloodless among Romans (at least in our ritual) and as bloody among

barbarians, is that the killing of Gauls and Greeks in the first century could

have been re-imagined in a way that paralleled the live burial of the Vestal

virgins, which would have allowed the Romans to distinguish, positively, their

own “bloodless” practice from that of the barbarians. This is not absolutely

impossible, given our growing understanding of just how much Roman tradition

allowed for such alterations of the past. Strabo’s version of bloody human sacrifice

among the Germans, just discussed, can be traced back to the late second century

, to Posidonius, at a time when such issues must have been at the fore of

Roman discussions given the increasing civic violence in Rome, which may have

significantly contributed to the ban on human immolatio in 97 .44 Although

the fact that guilty Vestals were buried alive was generally acknowledged in

late Republican and Augustan Rome, Livy and his later contemporaries sought

to distance themselves from even such “bloodless” killings of the Gauls and

Greeks, which suggests that the practice was more likely preserved correctly

in the tradition as a remnant from mid-Republican practice. I suggest that the

actual rationale of the rituals was therefore most likely connected to a religious or

cultural issue that underwent major historical change between the third and first

centuries . In the rest of this paper, I examine two concepts that underwent

such major change in this period and that I consider strong possible contenders for

an explanation for the ritual of the live burials.

IV. KILLING HUMANS IN A FUNERARY SETTING

The first possible reason for the later, “civilized” unease about the live burials

concerns the changing attitudes toward killing humans in a funerary setting.

There was a distinct thread in later tradition that suggested that the introduction of

gladiatoral games replaced the ritual murder of captives at the burial of great men

in Rome:45

Apud veteres etiam homines interficiebantur; sed mortuo Iunio Bruto,

cum multae gentes ad eius funus captivos misissent, nepos illius eos qui

missi erant inter se conposuit, et sic pugnaverunt: et quod muneri missi

erant, inde munus appellatum.

Servius, ad Verg. Aen. 3.67.

In older times even men were killed; but after the death of Iunius Brutus,

when many people had sent captives to his funeral, his grandson paired

44. The law is only known from Pliny NH 30.3.12. Cf. also the possible sacrifical aspects of

the killing of Tiberius Gracchus by the pontifex maximus, Scipio Nasica, in Appian BC 1.16.3.

45. Rupke 1990: 210–11. For a discussion see Grottanelli 1999: 44; cf. also Serv. ad Verg.

Aen. 10.519.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 291

those who were sent with each other and they thus fought: and what were

sent as a present then were called a presentation (i.e., a gladiatorial show).

Servius identifies as his source, and possibly even as the original author of the

word-play with munus (present or gift), Varro, who notably belongs to the same

first-century . milieu that we saw was so critical of the earlier practice of

immolatio. Yet, it appears relevant that this later Roman tradition dated the first

gladiatorial games in Rome to 264 , that is, prior to the introduction of the

ritual of the live burials of Gauls and Greeks. As a further remarkable detail,

another, slightly later Augustan author, Valerius Maximus, claimed that the new

gladiatorial games took place in the Forum Boarium, the location of the live burials

as well.46 If this was indeed the case or at least the accepted view in Augustan

Rome, it might just be this sense of a haunted location that Livy suggested in

stating that the site chosen for the live burials had already been, prior to our

instances, tainted with human blood iam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano

sacro, imbutum (“already beforehand tainted with human victims, in a least Roman

rite,” 22.57.6).47 Then Livy’s phrase minime Romano sacro would also be more

likely to refer, due to its syntactic position, to the Etruscan religious association of

the gladiatorial combat among the Romans rather than to the understanding of

the live burials as a foreign ritual. A special benefit of this interpretation would

be that it would also ease the difficulties with imbutum, which could mean more

specifically “soaked” with blood—which does not seem to match very well the

realities of a live burial.

The comparison with the gladiatorial games may nevertheless seem to sug-

gest that the ritual of the live burials could have also been an Etruscan import.

Although I find such Etruscan transfers notoriously hard to ascertain, the ev-

idence brought up to strengthen this view is worth scrutiny. Reasonably, the

most obvious appeal of the Etruscan theory is that unlike the Romans, the

Etruscans in their history did face an alliance of Gauls and Greeks, a circum-

stance that could have led more readily to the invention of our ritual among

them.48 There is further support in material evidence for the Etruscan interest

in killing humans in ritual settings. Dirk Steuernagel recently collected a total

of 305 Etruscan sarcophagi and funerary urns with depictions of human sacri-

fice dating from the fourth to first centuries .49 Almost all of them depict

bloody human sacrifice and can be, most likely, associated with particular Greek

myths, in a period by which Greek mythology had become a generally accepted

46. Val. Max. 2.4.7: nam gladiatorium munus primum Romae datum est in foro Boario Ap.

Claudio Q. Fulvio consulibus (“For the first gladiatorial game in Rome was given on the Forum

Boarium in the consulship of Ap. Claudius and Q. Fulvius”). For the date, see Liv. Per. 16.

47. Lovisi 1998: 734–35. Cf. already Fabre 1940: 422–23.

48. Already Muller 1828: II. 21–22 suggested an Etruscan origin to the ritual; followed by

Cichorius 1922: 19–20; Bloch 1940: 21–30.

49. Steuernagel 1998.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007292

koine in Italy, and the stories may in fact have been recognizable to at least

some viewers.50

Among the few depictions on these sarcophagi and urns that cannot easily be

classified, we find a unique piece, from early-third century Tuscania, which is of

special interest to any discussion of the ritual live burials. Given the exceptionality

of this sarcophagus, the decoration can only be tentatively interpreted. The most

secure is one side panel, which appears to depict the sacrifice of Iphigenia by

Calchas over an altar (a theme frequently appearing on other sarcophagi and urns

as well).51 One long side, traditionally read as a depiction of the suppliant Danaids

fleeing to an altar at Argos in order to avoid marriage, can now only be ascertained

as a scene of hikesia involving some women. To the extent that Iphigenia is our

only secure clue to interpreting the mythological imagery of this sarcophagus, the

theme of fleeing women may be associated with her, as an archetypal figure for

a larger number of mythical virgins sacrificed in association with military conflict

for the benefit of the state—a remarkable notion in the larger comparison with

our live burials.

Yet the most unique depiction on the sarcophagus is undoubtedly on the other

long face (Figure 1, p. 276), which shows a possibly barbarian man and a woman

who sit, naked, on each side of an altar in the center of the image, while above

the altar there is an embracing couple, also naked. Reinhard Herbig, who first

associated this depiction with the ritual of live burial, suggested that the couple

above the altar represents divine figures (possibly Mars and Venus or Roma),

while the rather hairy man and the woman to the sides are the Gallus and Galla of

the ritual, awaiting their live burial.52 The wood slats carried by another figure

on the left and the rocks on the right would then be used for completing the ritual.

Steuernagel challenged this interpretation, rather successfully, by arguing that

the stones of Herbig may actually be a shield and a helmet, and that other male

figures also boast rather abundant hairdos and beards.53 Most importantly for my

argument, Steuernagel identified an iconographic parallel to the scene in which

the supposed barbarian woman, the Galla, is touched by a chlamys-dressed man

to the left of the altar, in the depictions of Iphigenia just prior to her sacrifice. The

touch in these latter portrayals represents the cutting of the victim’s frontal lock

preceding the blood-sacrifice, so if this parallel is in fact correct, the depiction

on this sarcophagus would have to be a blood-sacrifice and could not be a ritual

match for the live burials, which do not include such a bloody element.

Hence, the general popularity of the theme of bloody human sacrifice on Etr-

uscan sarcophagi as an important fact notwithstanding;54 whether this sarcophagus

50. Massa-Pairault 1999: 5.

51. Steuernagel 1998: 28–29.

52. Herbig 1952: 48–49, nr. 85.

53. Steuernagel 1998: 49–50.

54. For some precautionary remarks on the use of such iconographic evidence in the comparable

depictions on Attic vases see Durand and Lissarrague 1999: 83–85.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 293

may indeed be connected to our ritual in Rome is impossible to ascertain. It seems

noteworthy that the same tomb of the Vipinana, in which this sarcophagus was

found, also offers one of only two Etruscan sarcophagi with depictions of the-

atrical cothurni, possibly as evidence for the existence of pre-Roman Etruscan

theatre. Considering that most Etruscan sarcophagi depicting human sacrifice can

be connected to Greek mythology, the question is then whether our live burials

might also correspond to such a myth, transferred to the Etruscans in theatrical

performances, among other formats, which the Romans then would have acquired

from them in the third century . Of Greek myth, naturally Antigone comes

to mind, with its reference to at least one live burial, that of the heroine; however,

our Latin evidence shows the play imported only in the second century . In the

end, no Greek myth survives today that would even roughly correspond to the

ritual of the live burial of a man and a woman as we know it in Rome, which

ultimately challenges any hopes of interpreting our ritual as based on Greek

mythology.

Significantly more promising is Steuernagel’s alternative, namely that the

mostly mythologized depictions of human sacrifice on the some three hundred

sarcophagi may reflect a hypothetical Etruscan ritual similar to Roman devotio, in

which a commander offers up the enemy, along with himself, to the divinities

of the underworld in advance of armed clashes.55 By speculation Steuernagel

presumed that captured enemies, who were spared from death in the battle, would

then have to be killed in order to fulfill the promised offering to these divinities.

In short, on this view, there was a widespread practice of devotio hostium, or

enemy sacrifice, in the Italian peninsula of the fourth and third centuries ,

which would place the live burials of surviving Gauls and Greeks as an example

of such a killing, after the battle, although Steuernagel did not make such a claim

explicitly. The greatest appeal to me of the devotio hostium theory is that, for

the first time in modern scholarship, it would allow a view in which the Gauls and

Greeks would not stand for present or potential, future enemies, but, rather, for

past ones.

In fact, in trying to find ritual parallels for our live burials, John Scheid

has already called attention to certain parallel aspects of the devotio of Roman

military generals, at least as attested for the Decii; in particular the fact that if

the general failed to perish in the battle, a seven-foot human figurine had to be

buried in his place (Livy 8.10.12).56 Of what little we know of Roman devotio,

we can categorize it as consecratio proper, insofar as the victim is made sacer,

and left to the will of the gods, especially to that of the manes and Tellus-Earth,

the divine recipients of the sacrifice. As a notion, the burial of an effigy offered

to the manes replacing the death of the general is remarkable, even if there is

a marked difference between the devotio of individual generals, left to the will

55. Steuernagel 1998: 153–55.

56. Scheid 2000: 149.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007294

of the gods, and that of enemies on the whole, who, by virtue of their capture,

had already been sentenced to their fate by the gods.

In terms of historical evidence, nevertheless, there is very little that would

suggest that devotio hostium was ever a very widespread practice in Italy.57 This is

especially true for all the presumed Roman examples: the cases of Veii in 391 ,

Carthage and Corinth in 146 all seem to focus on destroying property, rather

than killing survivors. This is even true for the Gallic practice, as depicted by

Caesar.58 The Etruscans do stand out in this respect: in 540 the people of Caere

stoned to death Phokaians captured in the fight between an Etruscan-Carthaginian

alliance and the new Phokaian colony at Alalia.59

The last reported historical instance from the Republic, the supposed mutual

killing of captured enemies in the fight between Tarquinii and Rome, dates to

the 350s ; and in it the Romans responded to the bloody immolatio by the

Etruscans with the beating and decapitation of 358 select men from Tarquinii,

in a non-sacrificial manner, at least according to Livy’s later interpretation of

the events, however compromised the interpretation may be due to the historical

distance.60 Besides the ritual discrepancies between these instances and the Roman

live burials, it seems that the killing of such captives did not provide some sort

of ritual punishment for their role in warfare, but rather, as Jorg Rupke suggested,

it offered a ritualistic sense of annihilation, in which these captives were the

cheapest material for the offering.61 Any such sense of annihilation did not have

much to do with the future prospects of enemy nations in general, but instead,

as Meuli proposed, it probably annihilated what had already been taken from the

enemy, to mark that it belonged to the deceased.62 The bloody annihilations in

these instances of devotio hostium are rather different from the careful avoidance

of inflicting direct violence on the victims in the live burials.

The significance of devotio, to the extent it was ever common in mid-

Republican Italy, is in fact its disappearance at the time of the emergence of

gladiatorial games, supposedly replacing the murder of captives at burials, in

57. See already the critical remarks of Bonnechere 2000: 258.

58. BG 6.17.

59. Hdt. 1.167 describes the Caereans (referred to as Agylla) stoning to death the Phokaian

captives; but the site where they had been killed remained polluted and the Etruscans had to send to

Delphi to purify it. In effect the Caereans ended up having to establish games in the honor of the dead

Phocaeans; as to the nature of these celebrations, Herodotus uses the technical term, âναγισµοÐ, that

is the specific sacrifice offered to lesser gods and to the ghosts of the dead, in contrast to θυσÐαι.Cf. How and Wells 1936 ad loc.

60. Liv. 7.15.10: the Tarquinians “sacrificed” (immolarunt) 307 Roman captives in 358 ;

Liv. 7.19.2–3: in 354 the Romans revenged this by killing Tarquinians who had survived their

battle, and a select 358 of them were taken to Rome to be beaten and decapitated (securi percussi)

there. As for later instances, both property loss and bloody killing are the features of the Germanic

votum in 59 , in Tac. Ann. 13.57.2.

61. Rupke 1990: 210–11.

62. Meuli’s original idea was focused on the annihilation of items (and people) already owned

by the deceased. Meuli 1946: 202: “die Sitte, Besitztum aller Art zu zerstoren.”

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 295

the mid-third century. In other words, the traditional forms of killing captives

for ceremonial purposes were undergoing some changes in Rome when the

live burials of Gauls and Greeks most likely first occurred. Given that the live

burials were instituted or specifically re-instituted at this time and that their ritual

characteristics were clearly in contrast with the religious logic of devotio, it seems

more likely that the rationale and model for the newly instituted ritual came from

another area of ancient religion.

V. A GREEK ORACLE: PURIFICATION FROM AVENGING SPIRITS

In the final part of this paper I would like to suggest another possible religious

area that may explain the ritual of the live burials and whose interpretation also

underwent significant cultural change between the third and first centuries , a

change that may have led to its erasure from the historical record. Purification from

avenging spirits would make, admittedly, a rather unusual religious motivation

for the live burials. It is best attested in Greek-speaking contexts from the ancient

Mediterranean,63 which at first sight may be discouraging at least insofar as it

would be odd to suggest that a Greek text would prescribe the live burial of

Greeks, along with the Gauls. Yet, the use of the Sibylline Books as attested in

our Roman sources points towards the likelihood of Greek influence in shaping the

ritual. The Greek oracles in the Sibylline Books could have very well provided

the framework into which the ritual burial of the Gauls and Greeks could be

inscribed. The kind of Greek oracular language that could also have been found in

the Sibylline Books is paralleled by a text from the Greek-speaking Mediterranean:

it is a lex sacra from late fourth-century Cyrene, providing religious rules with

regard to purification. In the concluding section of this text we read:

Éκèσιο âπακτì; αÒ κα âπιπεµφθ¨ι âπÈ τ�ν / οÊκÐαν, αÊ µèγ κα Òσαι �φ'íτινì οÉ âπ¨νθε, æ-/νυµαcεØ αÎτäν προειπ°ν τρÈ �µèρα; αÊ δ[è]/ κατεθν�κηι êγγαιο £ �λλη πη �πολ¸λη[ι], / αÊ µèγ κα Òσαι τä îνυµα,

æνυµαστÈ προερεØ, αÊ /δà κα µ� Òσαι, “ �νθρωπε, αÒτε �ν�ρ αÒτε γυν�/âσσÐ,” κολοσä ποι σαντα êρσενα καÈ θ λεια[ν] /£ καλÐνο £ γαòνοÍποδεc�µενον παρτιθ�[è]- /µεν τä µèρο π�ντων; âπεÈ δè κα ποι¨σε τ�/ νοµιζìµενα, φèροντα â Õλαν �εργäν âρε-/[Ø]σαι τ� κολοσä καÈ τ�µèρη.

SEG 9, 72 = Rhodes-Osborne 97, lines 111–21

Hikesios epaktos. If he is sent against the house, if (the householder)

knows from whom he came, he shall make a proclamation and name him

for three days. And if he has died in the land or has perished somewhere

else, if he knows his name, he is to call out by name, but if he does not

know (he is to proclaim): “O person, whether you are a man or a woman.”

63. For an exploration of this Mediterranean context, see Faraone 1992: 81–85, and ch. 5

passim.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007296

He is to make figurines, a male and a female, either from wood or from

clay, and give them hospitality, offering them a portion of everything.

When you have performed the customary rites, carry the figurines and

the portions to an unworked wood and plant them down firmly.

Tr. Rhodes-Osborne, with slight modifications

The interpretation of this sacred law, not surprisingly, is highly debated, but

based on the ritual parallel of a fifth-century lex sacra from Selinus, we can be

relatively certain that the problem for which this text offers a religious solution

is purification from avenging spirits.64 The exact reference in the introductory

phrase, hikesios epaktos, is especially challenging to interpret, referring either

to a suppliant pursued by such spirits or to the avenging spirit itself;65 yet, neither

choice can change the fact that, in the Mediterranean context, this is as good

a ritual for eliminating avenging spirits as we get from the ancient world. The

oppositional nature of âπÈ in line 111, that my translation emphasizes with “against

the house,” in contrast to Rhodes-Osborne’s “to the house,” is strengthened by the

use of the same prefix in âπιπεµφθ¨ι, which primarily refers to sending something

onto someone as a punishment or to sending someone or something against

someone.66

The most obvious benefit of this parallel to the live burial of the Gaul and

Greek couples is the ritual combination of male and female figurines. While

it seems a small finding, the issue of why the Romans buried both a man

and a woman of each group has never been sufficiently explained. In the only

recent discussion about the problem of the couples, J. H. C. Williams suggested

that the killing of the couples may have been “a sort of ritual damnation or

nullification of the reproductive fertility of the Gauls,” a quality he sees as

strongly associated with the fearfully belligerent quality of this people.67 We

have already seen that captive killings may not have had such an association

of future annihilation relevant to the peoples from which the victims came. In

contrast, the interchangeability of humans and figurines is very well established

in Roman religious imagination and is frequently discussed in association with

the cult of the manes (a possibly important connection, as we shall see).68 The

very notion of including both genders in the Roman ritual in fact strengthens the

case for some sort of secretive associations in the live burials: such exhaustive

64. Jameson, Jordan, and Kotansky 1993: esp. 40–45 with commentary on Column B; Parker

1983: 332–51.

65. Suggested first by Stukey 1937. Rhodes-Osborne translate “Suppliants/Visitants sent by

spells.”

66. “Epi” in this sense (LSJ C4) is most likely to refer to movement towards and up onto

something. I thank Nino Luraghi for this suggestion.

67. Williams 2001: 174–75.

68. For the larger problem of ritual substitution see Capdeville 1971: 283–323 and most recently

Grottanelli 1999: 42–45.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 297

dichotomies are often characteristic of prayers used in magical rituals.69 Last but

not least, the benefits of an explanation from the lex sacra for the inclusion of

both genders, one of the most difficult aspects in the interpretation of our ritual, at

least to my mind, outweigh the difficulty of the difference between humans and

figurines.

We may add a less critical element, namely that the whole Greek lex sacra is a

pronunciation of Apollo, whose connection to the Sibyls and association with the

quindecemviri may date back to the time of the first attested live burials (although

could be a later invention as well).70 I am not trying to suggest here that a Delphic

consultation by the Romans would have led to the introduction of the live burials;

in fact, there is some evidence that may suggest that the repetition of the ritual

in 216 coincided with Fabius Pictor’s absence from Rome seeking religious

advice at Delphi. Rather, the Cyrene text provides evidence of an Apollo oracle

characteristic of Delphi at an earlier time; and, even more importantly, of an

Apollo oracle which prescribes a ritual not unlike the live burials in avoiding

bloody sacrifice. The role of Apollo as a possible source but certainly not the

addressee of the ritual is a parallel as well: whatever role Apollo himself may have

played in shaping the interpretation of the Roman prodigia, in the ritual prescribed

for Cyrene, as well as in Rome, he was markedly not the recipient of the victims.

In fact, the furthest any of our sources would go regarding a divine recipient,

Livy’s placatis satis, ut rebantur, deis (“with the gods sufficiently placated, as it

seemed,” 22.57.7) in his conclusion to the 216 incident, is completely generic,

and seems to refer to the general resolution of a larger religious crisis, inclusive of

the Vestal problems of the year.

It is unlikely that we could find any evidence for a direct connection between

this particular Cyrene oracle and the Sibylline Books in Rome in the middle

Republic. My point is, rather, that this bloodless ceremony involving the burial

of a male and a female figurine is, at least in certain respects, the closest ritual

parallel we have for the live burial of Gauls and Greeks in Rome. It may be,

therefore, desirable to observe the religious logic: the live burial of a male and

a female figurine resolves a crisis, in which unidentifiable spirits or ghosts pursue

someone. Significantly, this is a ritual that concerns an incident from one’s past,

possibly a past enemy, who, now as an avenging spirit or ghost, becomes a present

threat. Evidently, the Romans beat Gauls and Greeks on plentiful occasions in the

third century , but both groups continued to exist, which at least in theory

could fit the logic of the Cyrene ritual insofar as both could be seen as groups

from which such avenging spirits might emanate.

69. Ogden 2002: 164. Cf. also the reference to the genius urbis Romae as sive mas sive femina

(“either a male or a female”) in Serv. ad Verg. Aen. 2.351 and sive deus sive dea (“either a god

or a goddess”) in Macr. Sat. 3.9, in which case the ambivalence in gender identification has to do

with keeping the identity of the genius secret.

70. Parke 1988: 141–50, and Orlin 1997: 78, 98, may suggest otherwise. More positively,

Twyman 1997: 8–9.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007298

If there was in fact any sense of being haunted by avenging spirits, it would

explain what distinguished the later fate of the Vestal punishments and that of

our ritual, namely that, however disliked, the very ritual of live burial in the case

of the Vestals, unlike those of the Gauls and Greeks, actually continued, largely

unchanged, into the imperial era. This divergence supports the view that it must

have been some further, unique aspect of the live burials of the Gauls and Greeks

that has become unacceptable by the late Republic, a gap which the notion of

avenging spirits could easily fill. It could also explain not only the later Roman

discomfort with instituting such a ritual, but also the embarrassment of the closer

contemporary Polybius, the closest contemporary who seems to refer to the live

burials, and who may have been ready to locate this ritual in the category of

deisidaimonia:

Π�ντα δ' ªν τ� παρ' αÎτοØ λìγια π�σι τìτε δι� στìµατο, σηµεÐων δàκαÈ τερ�των π�ν µàν Éερìν, π�σα δ' ªν οÊκÐα πλ ρη, âc Áν, εÎχαÈ καÈθυσÐαι καÈ θεÀν ÉκετηρÐαι καÈ δε σει âπεØχον τ�ν πìλιν. δεινοÈ γ�ρâν ταØ περιστ�σεσι ÃΡωµαØοι καÈ θεοÌ âcιλ�σασθαι καÈ �νθρ¸πουκαÈ µηδàν �πρεπà µηδ' �γεννà âν τοØ τοιοÔτοι καιροØ �γεØσθαιτÀν περÈ ταÜτα συντελουµèνων.

Polyb. 3.112

All the oracles that had ever been delivered to them were in men’s mouths,

every temple and every house was full of signs and prodigies, so that vows,

sacrifices, supplicatory processions and litanies pervaded the town. For

in seasons of danger the Romans are much given to propitiating both gods

and men, and there is nothing at such times in rites of the kind that they

regard as unbecoming or beneath their dignity.

Last but not least, the Cyrene ritual parallel may also help explain the strange ten-

dency, at least among some imperial authors, to refer to some sort of continuation

of the ritual in their own time. Although Pliny’s reference when describing the

live burials, autem nostra aetas vidit (“even our own age has seen it”), is rather

unspecific, Plutarch is more suggestive in claiming that somehow a ritual asso-

ciated with the live burials was still carried out in Rome every November (Marc.

3.4).71 Here the ritual associated with the mundus might provide a connection,

which took place in Rome, besides the 24th of August and the 5th of October,

on the 8th of November. Notably, it included the placing of offerings in a pit,

from which the spirits of the underworld would rise upon the removal of the pit’s

cover; and the symbolic closing of the pit represented the return of the Manes

71. Plut. Marc. 3.7: <âφ'> οÙ êτι καÈ νÜν âν τÀú ΝοεµβρÐωú µηνÈ δρÀσιν [�Ελλησι καÈ Γαλ�ται]

�πορρ του καÈ �θε�του ÉερουργÐα (“And because of those [prophecies] they perform unspeakable

and secret rites still, even now, in the month of November”). âφ' add. Ziegler ‖ �Ελλησι καÈ Γαλ�ταιdel. Stegmann.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 299

to Hades.72 The three festival days associated with the opening of the mundus

were also considered dies religiosi, unsuitable for military undertakings, naval

trips, or weddings.73 That the fasti list these days as dies comitiales suggests that

celebrations including the mundus patet may have been introduced subsequently

to the emergence of the dies comitiales category in the Roman calendar, at the

latest in the early third century , and therefore chronologically not that far

from our ritual.74 If Plutarch indeed had the mundus patet festivities in mind

in connection with the live burials, the ghostly associations of this ceremony

and thereby of the live burials in Rome could then explain at least some of the

ambivalence about the ritual in the late Republic.75

This in fact may have been Plutarch’s interpretation, as shown by his other

reference to the live burials in the Moralia, where he alludes to some strange and

foreign daimones as the divine recipients of the ritual.76 Of course, Plutarch’s later

reading proves little, but the evidence from Varro that states that the closing of the

mundus is a prerequisite for military action confirms that already in the Augustan

period there was a definite connection between the mundus ritual, securing the

peace with the dead, and the undertaking of any new war.77 There is further, if again

late, evidence that describes nenia, the funeral song, as not simply celebratory,

but also apotropaic—capable of “calming infernal wrath,” that is, keeping the

spirits of the dead at bay.78 These varied items suggest the possibility that the

notion of “sealing off” past enemies while Rome was getting ready for a new war

72. For the offerings, see Ovid Fasti 4.821–23, Plut. Romulus 11. Cf. Macrobius Sat. 1.16.18:

Unde et Varro ita scribit: Mundus cum patet, deorum tristium atque inferum quasi ianua patet

(“Therefore Varro also thus writes: ‘when the mundus is open, it is as if the gate to the grim and

underworldly gods was open’”).

73. Festus 348.22–30L: dies autem religiosi, quibus, nisi quod necesse est, nefas habetur facere:

quales sunt sex et triginta atri qui appellantur, et Alliensis, atque i, quibus mundus patet (“Further

religiosi are the days, on which it is considered nefas to do anything unless it is necessary: such

are the thirty-six days which are called atri, and dies Alliensis, and those days on which the mundus is

open”). Cf. Rupke 1995: 563–66.

74. Magdelain 1976: 106–108.

75. For these magical connections see most recently Ndiaye 2000: 127. Although clearly not

a friendly witness, Orosius referred to the ritual of live burials as an obligamentum magicum (“a

magical obligation,” 4.13.3.228).

76. Quaest. Rom. 84 (Mor. 284C): εÍρεθ¨ναι δè φασι χρησµοÌ ταÜτ� τε προδηλοÜντα ± âπÈκακÀú γενησìµενα καÈ προστ�ττοντα �λλοκìτοι τισÈ δαеοσι καÈ cèνοι �ποτροπ¨ éνεκα τοÜâπιìντο προèσθαι δÔο µàν �Ελληνα, δÔο δà Γαλ�τα ζÀντα αÎτìθι κατορυγèντα (“They say

that oracles have been found foretelling that these events would bring harm, and ordering that in

order to avert the coming disaster they should offer up, to certain strange and alien spirits, two Greeks

and two Gauls buried alive in that place”).

77. Cf. Macr. Sat. 1.16.18: Unde et Varro ita scribit: mundus cum patet . . . : propterea non

modo proelium committi, verum etiam dilectum rei militaris causa habere, ac militem proficisci,

navem solvere, uxorem liberum quaerendorum causa ducere, religiosum est (“Therefore Varro also

thus writes: ‘when the mundus is open . . . : therefore it is religiously forbidden not only to join battle,

but also to recruit soldiers for the purpose of fighting and to march to war, to set sail, to marry a

wife for the purpose of having children’”). Cf. Dognini 2001: 109–12.

78. Habinek 2005: 244 with reference to Mart. Capella, Phil. 9.925.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007300

is not only consistent with what we know of mid-Republican religion, but also

may have survived in an altered form into the Empire.

If purification from avenging spirits was the goal of the live burials of Gauls

and Greeks in Rome, as it now seems possible, it furthers my general hypothesis

that the Gauls and Greeks buried were not potential future, but past enemies.

Such a thesis opens up the possibility of a variety of explanations, related to the

experience of warfare and violent conflict in mid-Republican Rome. Significantly,

we know almost nothing of the psychological consequences of constant warfare

on the Roman citizen-soldier, and it is difficult to discern if there was any cultural

idiom to address any such concerns, as we have today in the notion of post-

traumatic stress disorder. Jonathan Shay’s work comparing the experience of

Vietnam veterans with the story of Achilles in the epic language of the Iliad

launched a new phase in such discussions about the ancient world, especially in

terms of both the similarities between past and present experience of warfare, and

about the differences between past respect and present disrespect for the enemy.79

Looking for a similar Roman cultural idiom that may have been able to address

the experience of warfare, the emerging genre of contemporary epic poetry is

the strongest contender for incorporating such issues—even if Ennius’ arrival to

Rome at the very end of the third century makes direct Hellenistic epic influence

on Rome subsequent to our ritual. More troublesome is the fact that the social

context of the emerging early epic genre can be relatively safely located in the

Roman elite of the middle Republic, leaving little space for addressing issues

related to the rank and file (although of course we don’t know if local pre-literary

and oral traditions addressed those issues either).80

That elite tastes regarding these matters were changing in the third century

is a given: from funerary killings to gladiatorial games, from the oral lore of

earlier times to the written epic of Ennius celebrating elite achievement. But we

are left with more questions than answers about the common Roman soldiers’

experience and understanding of killing in war, and the cultural sociology of

fear in this period. Jorg Rupke considers that the almost complete absence of

references to the experience of killing by individual rank and file soldiers was

a factor of the reality of most of the killing—namely that within the capacities

of ancient weaponry many fighters survived the initial contact, and completing

the battle could include, potentially to quite a significant extent, the killing of the

unarmed, the wounded, and those fleeing on the scene.81 Here we must distinguish

between elite competition, placing a premium on large-scale bloodshed in battle,

even a requirement of at least five thousand killed for a triumph on the one hand,

and the horribly brutal experience of the soldiers doing the killing on the other

79. Shay 1994: Ch. 6. on the modern cultural habit of dehumanizing the enemy, which he

believes originates in biblical religion, making “my” enemy also god’s enemy.

80. Habinek 1998: 62; Rossi and Breed 2006.

81. Rupke 1990: 248.

: The Specters of Roman Imperialism 301

hand.82 Within this dichotomy, the live burials could turn out to be of little use

for theories on how Roman fear of future enemies led to defensive imperialism,

but could provide some unique insight into the experience of constant warfare

by the citizen-soldiers in an imperialistic state.

In locating the rationale of the live burials in the experience of Roman soldiers,

my goal is not to free the elite from the responsibility of instituting what they would

soon come to see as inhuman rituals. Rather, the live burials seem to be a ritual

compromise bringing Rome together, at a time when changing elite tastes may

have stopped offering such unifying opportunities. For the soldiers, once back in

Rome, the killing of captives in a symbolic context, such as an aristocratic burial,

may have had significance that left a gap once that private custom disappeared; and

the change to epic from whatever oral lore there had been beforehand may have

also transformed warfare narratives in Rome (so critical for survivors of traumatic

experiences).83 And while the emerging gladiatorial games may have engaged

some of these aspects of Roman culture, their quality as entertainment may not

have provided the same possibility of psychological closure to the once-soldiers.

In the beautifully symbolic language of the Odyssey, evoked by Jonathan Shay,

the way home for past soldiers goes through Hades,84 and the unacknowledged

experience could have led to alienation, and then, in turn, to shame and anger in a

way that ultimately aroused violence, sending the Gallic and Greek victims, so

to speak, to Hades.85

An outbreak of anxiety among soldiers during a war would have probably

been treated differently, as a disciplinary matter; but back in Rome, the response

to the emotions associated with warfare was more likely sought in religious terms.

This is, ultimately, a point for further consideration: my reading suggests that the

religious and military spheres did not function in a synchronized way in mid-

Republican Rome. In what may have been a critical element in mid-Republican

state- (or empire-) formation, and in particular in its success, the strict world of

military discipline was complemented by a religious (and cultural) realm that was

much more open to external influence and innovation. In the short run, the realm

of religion could serve as an outlet for sentiments unwelcome in the Roman army;

but in the long run, religion and culture would shape the Roman state and how

it fought and ruled its empire.

Boston University

varhelyi@bu.edu

82. Val. Max. 2.8.1. for the triumph requirement; on the experience of close killing, see

Grossman 1995: 99–106.

83. See Laub 1991: 77–78 for the importance of “telling.” I thank Charles Griswold for this

reference.

84. Shay 2002: 76.

85. Cf. Scheff and Retzinger 1991: 65–69 for a useful way to conceptualize these emotional

response cycles in a cross-cultural context.

Volume 26/No. 2 /October 2007302

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