TheRobigalia was afestival inancient Roman religion held April 25, named for the godRobigus. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protectgrain fields from disease. Games (ludi) in the form of "major and minor" races were held.[1] The Robigalia was one of several agricultural festivals in April to celebrate and vitalize the growing season,[2] but the darker sacrificial elements of these occasions are also fraught with anxiety about crop failure and the dependence on divine favor to avert it.[3]
Like many other aspects ofRoman law and religion, the institution of the Robigalia was attributed to the SabineNuma Pompilius,[11] in the eleventh year of his reign as the secondking of Rome.[12] The combined presence of Numa and theflamen Quirinalis, the high priest ofQuirinus, theSabine god of war who become identified with Mars,[13] may suggest a Sabine origin.[14]
Thelate Republican scholarVarro says that the Robigalia was named for the godRobigus,[15] who as thenumen orpersonification of agricultural disease could also prevent it.[16] He was thus a potentially malignant deity to be propitiated, asAulus Gellius notes.[17] But the gender of this deity is elusive.[18] The agricultural writerColumella gives the name in the feminine asRobigo, like the word used for a form of the disease ofwheat rust,[19] which has a reddish or reddish-brown color. BothRobigus androbigo are also found asRubig- which, following theetymology-by-association of antiquity,[20] was thought to be connected to the color red (ruber) as a form ofhomeopathic orsympathetic magic.[21] The color is thematic: the disease was red, the requisite puppies (or sometimes bitches) had a red coat,[22] the red of blood recalls the distinctively Roman incarnation ofMars as both a god of agriculture and bloodshed.[23]
William Warde Fowler, whose work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference,[24] entertained the idea that Robigus is an "indigitation" of Mars, that is, a name to be used in a prayer formulary to fix the local action of the invoked god.[25] In support of this idea, the priest who presided was the flamen Quirinalis, and theludi were held for both Mars and Robigo.[26] The flamen recited a prayer thatOvid quotes at length in theFasti, his six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays which provides the most extended, though problematic, description of the day.[27]
Chariot races(ludi cursoribus) were held in honor of Mars and Robigo on this day.[28] The races had two classes, "major and minor," which may represent junior and senior divisions. In chariot racing, younger drivers seem to have gained experience with a two-horse chariot(biga) before graduating to a four-horse team(quadriga).[29]
Other horse and chariot races in honor of Mars occurred at theEquirria and before the sacrifice of theOctober Horse.
Other April festivals related to farming were theCerealia, or festival ofCeres, lasting for several days in mid-month; theFordicidia on April 15, when a pregnant cow was sacrificed; theParilia on April 21 to ensure healthy flocks; and theVinalia, a wine festival on April 23.[32] Varro considered these and the Robigalia, along with theGreat Mother'sMegalensia late in the month, the "original" Roman holidays in April.[33]
The Robigalia has been connected to theChristianfeast of Rogation, which was concerned with purifying and blessing the parish and fields and which took the place of the Robigalia on April 25 of the Christian calendar.[34] TheChurch FatherTertullian mocks the goddess Robigo as "made up," a fiction.[35]
^C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse,"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), pp. 275–276; general discussion of victims' edibility byHendrik Wagenvoort, "Profanus, profanare," inPietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), pp. 25–38.
^David Soren, "Hecate and the Infant Cemetery at Poggio Gramignano," inA Roman Villa and a Late Roman Infant Cemetery («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1999), pp. 619–621.
^Plutarch,Roman Questions68Archived September 21, 2023, at theWayback Machine; Eli Edward Burriss, "The Place of the Dog in Superstition as Revealed in Latin Literature,"Classical Philology 30 (1935), pp. 34–35.
^Boyle and Woodard,Ovid: Fasti, p. 254; Beard,Religions of Rome, p. 106, note 129; Woodward,Indo-European Sacred Space, p. 136.
^Franklin,Lupercalia, p. 75. The name Quirinus was supposed toderive from the Sabine town ofCures. In his notes toAeneid 1.292 and 6.859,Servius says that "when Mars rages uncontrolled(saevit), he is called Gradivus; when he is calm(tranquillus), he is called Quirinus." Therefore, since Quirinus is the "Mars" who presides over peace, his temple is within the city; the temple for the "Mars of war" is located outside the city limit. The name was also connected toQuirites, Roman civilians, and the civilcomitia curiata, in contrast to military personnel and thecomitia centuriata. Quirinus was assimilated with the deifiedRomulus, possibly as late as theAugustan period. See Robert Schilling, "Quirinus,"Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 145.
^A.M. Franklin,The Lupercalia (New York, 1921), p. 74.
^Aulus Gellius,Attic Nights 5.12.14:In istis autem diis, quos placari oportet, uti mala a nobis vel a frugibus natis amoliantur, Auruncus quoque habetur et Robigus ("Auruncus and Robigus are also regarded as among those gods whom it is a duty to placate so that they deflect the malign influences away from us or the harvests"); Woodard,Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 234.
^In addition to Varro,Verrius Flaccus (CIL 1: 236, 316) and others hold that he is male;Ovid, Columella (see following),Augustine, andTertullian regard the deity as female. A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard,Ovid: Fasti (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 254online.Archived September 21, 2023, at theWayback Machine
^This dual function of Mars, contradictory perhaps to the 21st-century mind, may not have seemed so to the Romans: "In early Rome agriculture and military activity were closely bound up, in the sense that the Roman farmer was also a soldier (and a voter as well)": Beard,Religions of Rome, pp. 47–48onlineArchived September 21, 2023, at theWayback Machine and 53. See also Evans,Utopia antiqua, p. 188online.Archived September 21, 2023, at theWayback Machine
^William Warde Fowler,The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 89.
^Precise naming, in connection with concealing a deity's true name to monopolize his or her power, was a crucial part of prayer in antiquity, as evidenced not only in the traditional religions of Greece and Rome andsyncretisticHellenistic religion andmystery cult, but also inJudaism,ancient Egyptian religion, and laterChristianity. See Matthias Klinghardt, “Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation: Their Use and Function in Ancient Religion,” Numen 46 (1999) 1–5; A.A. Barb, "Antaura. The Mermaid and the Devil's Grandmother: A Lecture,"Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966), p. 4; Karen Hartnup,On the Beliefs of the Greeks:Leo Allatios and Popular Orthodoxy (Brill, 2004), pp. 97–101onlineArchived September 21, 2023, at theWayback Machine (in connection with compelling demons).Augustine of Hippo derided the proliferation of divinities as aturba minutorum deorum, "a mob of mini-gods" (De civitate Dei 4.9,dea Robigo among them at 4.21); see W.R. Johnson, "The Return ofTutunus,"Arethusa (1992) 173–179. See alsoindigitamenta.
^Tertullian,De spectaculis 5:Numa Pompilius Marti et Robigini fecit ("Numa Pompilius established [games] for Mars and Robigo").
^Ovid,Fasti 4.905–942; Boyle and Woodard,Ovid: Fasti, pp. 254–255et passim on the nature of this work.
^Jean-Paul Thuillier, "Le cirrus et la barbe. Questions d'iconographie athlétique romaine,"Mélanges de l'École française de Rome Antiquité 110.1 (1998), p. 377.
^Varro,De lingua latina 6.15–16; Fantham,Fasti, p. 29.
^Daniel T. Reff,Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 100.
^Tertullian,De spectaculis 5 (nam et robiginis deam finxerunt, "you see, they even make up a goddess ofwheat disease"); Woodward,Indo-European Sacred Space, p. 136.
Alessandro Locchi,“Lucus Robiginis in Acqua Traversa”. Un antichissimo culto al V miglio della via Clodia, inEmergenze storico-archeologiche di un settore del suburbio di Roma: la Tenuta dell’Acqua Traversa. Atti della Giornata di Studio, Roma 7 giugno 2003, a cura di F. Vistoli, Roma 2005, pp. 151–170.
Fabrizio Vistoli,Nota di aggiornamento critico e bibliografico sui Robigalia, inLa Parola del Passato, LXIV, 1 (CCCLXIV), 2009, pp. 35–46.
