Diana On The Aventine

Diana on the Aventine*
von

CLIFFORD ANDO
I offer the following essay as a commentary upon, and tribute to, the achievements of the members of the Schwerpunktprogramm ‹Römische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion› of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The
essay addresses the question, ‹If the Romans had had a Reichsreligion, what
would it have looked like?› My response is shaped bythree considerations.
First, like RÜPKE and BENDLIN in their studies of religion as communicative
systems, I take it as axiomatic that the history of religion under the empire
must be studied at least in part as an effect of empire – a truth of which
historians of religion in Christian antiquity already had an embryonic awareness, insofar as they understood the material diffusion of religionthrough
persons and books as facilitiated by the work of empire.1 Second, I draw back
from the current emphasis on the deep contextualization of evidence – not, that
is, from contextualization as such, but from where it leads to an excessive and
unhelpful particularism. If current theoretical resources do not permit the data
of, for example, religion in the Hauptstädte of the provinces to bestudied in
aggregate, my own inclination would be to attribute that fact to the limitations
of contemporary conceptualizations.2 This leads to the third consideration, my
sense that current taxonomic enterprises in the study of provincial religion do
not address what seems to me a real historical explanandum, namely, the reflections of Roman religious practice in language and ritual form inprovincial
art and cult – an important evidentiary and conceptual other, it seems to me, to
the ‹Zentralität-Diskurs› studied by HUBERT CANCIK.3 In light of these considerations, this essay suggests that the principal mechanism within Roman
culture for negotiating the new cultural, political and geographic realities of the
empire was law; and furthermore, that as a consequence of the Romanassimilation of the regulations of cult to law, the study of civil law doctrine under
the empire offers an underutilized window in mechanisms for religious inno* To the members of the Schwerpunktprogramm, and to Jörg Rüpke in particular, my
thanks for companionship, hospitality and inspiration.
1
BENDLIN 1997; RÜPKE 2001.
2
Cf. HAENSCH 2006, 127. 143.
3
CANCIK 2006. Ancient efforts to conceptualizethe centrality of Rome in various (religious) topographies of the empire are the topic also of ANDO 2008a, part 2.

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Clifford Ando

vation in the Principate and beyond. To the extent that I argue that Romans
found within their own culture resources for expanding the reach of Roman
cults, this essay also contributes to an on-going debate among historians of
Roman religion over theusefulness of polis-religion theory to the study of
Rome.4

1 Extra-civic cults in polis- and imperial religion
I take as my point of departure the law inscribed by the plebs Narbonensium
late in the reign of Augustus, on the altar it erected in the forum of Narbo to the
numen of the emperor (CIL XII 4333 = ILS 112). Such texts typically contain
one or more of three components: a notice of thecircumstances of their erection, a feriale setting forth the dates and constituent rites to be performed at the
altar, and regulations governing the care of the sacred properties associated
with the altar and its precinct.5 The lex at Narbo exhibits all three components.
I draw your attention to the final clause of its regulations, from the inscription
on the side, ll. 20–22: ceterae legeshuic arae titulisq(ue) eaedem sunto, quae
sunt arae Dianae in Aventino, ‹let the other regulations for this altar and its
texts be the same as those that are for the altar of Diana on the Aventine.› Nor
were the plebs at Narbo alone in so citing the leges. The Roman colony of
Martia Julia Salona in Dalmatia similarly cited them, on an altar to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus dedicated there in 137 C....