Compte-rendu Quand Faire c'Est Croire

8122019 Compte-rendu Quand Faire cEst Croire

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcompte-rendu-quand-faire-cest-croire 111

J SCHEID QUAND FAIRE CrsquoEST CROIRE LES RITES SACRIFICIELS DES ROMAINSParis Aubier 2005 Pp 348 isbn 2-70072298-1 euro2600

In the volume under review Scheid organizes several new papers and revises a numberpreviously published in order to present a detailed portrait of sacrificial practice at Romeas well as an analysis of its logic The result is an important book in a number of respectsIt provides a clear statement of Scheidrsquos methods in the study of ritual it gives a compel-ling account of public sacrifice and commensality and it extends the insights thus gleaned

to non-public rites at Rome particularly funerary banquets To students of Romanreligion in particular it offers the opportunity to consider a number of developments inScheidrsquos own work and in the field more generally since he made his initial sustainedcontributions to the study of ritual and Roman religion over a quarter century ago1

Besides an introduction and conclusion Quand faire crsquoest croire contains nine chaptersin four parts each part with its own introduction and eight appendices The parts concen-trate on Roman sacrifice sacrifice according to the so-called lsquoGreek ritersquo sacrifice inprivate contexts (both domestic and funerary) and commensality among human partici-pants and between humans and gods mdash in the latter case the question being how theyunderstood and performed the division of meat The appendices provide French transla-

tions mdash often enough with Latin original but never Greek mdash of the most significantevidence for various phenomena discussed in the text Notably for those without easyaccess to Scheidrsquos edition of the Arval acta this includes long selections from that text aswell as extended passages from the acta of the Secular Games (and from Zosimusrsquo reporton the same) the instructions on sacrifice provided by Cato mdash and these are comparedwith the Arval evidence in a chart as well as comparisons between the Parentationes andfunerary honours for Lucius and Gaius Caesar and evidence for the sacrificial banquet

orthopraxy and its attestation

Part 1 lsquoFacere Le sacrifice rite central de la religion romainersquo contains two chapters mdash one new one revised The new chapter lsquoSacrifices selon le rite romainrsquo offers a reasonedreconstruction of votive and regular sacrifices following above all the data recorded in theacts of the Arval Brethren As such it condenses arguments set forth in detail in Romuluset ses fregraveres (1990) Part 3 The reconstruction has two objects the actions themselvestaken in the course of a sacrifice together with what we might term their immanent mean-ing By immanent meaning I intend such understandings of the importance and effects of any given action in its place within the ritual as one would need to adapt that ritual to thecontingent circumstances of a particular performance or likewise such understandings as

JRS 99 (2009) pp 171ndash181 copy World Copyright ReservedExclusive Licence to Publish The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 2009

REVIEW ARTICLE

Evidence and Orthopraxy

clifford ando

1 Scheid himself offers invaluable insight regarding his intellectual formation and current endeavours in aninterview conducted with Philippe Matthey lsquoEntretiens avec John ScheidrsquoAsdiwal 2 (2007) 125 ndash 30



172 clifford ando

one might glean from observing multiple iterations of a ritual asking why and how someaspects changed and others did not2

Scheid himself terms such understandings of ritual lsquoleur sens implicitersquo over againstthose second-order self-consciously interpretive understandings that featured prominentlyin lsquola vie intellectuelle extra-religieusersquo (278 ndash 9) At stake in this distinction is an interpre-tive principle operating in some relation to a rule of evidence Given that the Romans

themselves describe the performance of rites as essential and that no such claims are evermade in antiquity for aetiological myth or theological speculation at Rome Scheid under-stands Roman religion to consist narrowly in the rites themselves As a consequence in hisview lsquoles sources preacutecisesrsquo from which one might legitimately reconstruct lsquole deacutetail de lapratiquersquo are documentary records of actions taken above all the acts of the Arval Breth-ren and those of the Saecular Games Scheidrsquos valuation of lsquole sens implicitersquo is thus anattempt to distinguish inferences and conclusions based on documentary sources fromthose that draw on literary sources placed (in his view) in a heuristic position vis-agrave-vis bothpractice and the rules that governed it

So described Scheidrsquos method would seem to encounter a number of difficulties not

sufficiently confronted in these pages The most significant arise very precisely from hissources A very great deal of what we think we know about practicalities of Roman ritualand their maintenance across time derives from Scheidrsquos work on these two bodies of actaeither on the acta themselves or on other less fulsome texts whether narrative or lexico-graphical read in light of the acta3 But we also derive from these texts not a little of ourconfidence that Roman religion was orthoprax For that reason Scheid owes us mdash we oweourselves mdash a fuller acknowledgement that these texts find their origin in a performancetradition (in the case of the Secular Games) and an institution (in the case of the ArvalBrethren) whose agents were committed to textualization and ritual conservatism in equalmeasure nor were those commitments unrelated That is to say an Arval magister rsquos claimlsquoWe depart in no way from earlier ordinancesrsquo (quoted by Scheid Quand faire 282) is nota piece of evidence autonomous from the ritual punctiliousness observable in the protocolsof the Brethren rather recorded on stone twice in the same words a quarter century apartin the acta themselves mdash on the latter occasion uttered immediately after a slave had readfrom or simply displayed the codices on which decisions of earlier Arvales were recorded(CFA 65 l14 from 109 ce 75 ll 11 ndash 14 from c 134 ce) mdash the claim amounts to aninterested commentary upon the multiple commitments that led to the taking up of textualization and other systems of memorialization and knowledge-production by

2 The term and definition are my own for a formulation along the same lines by Scheid see eg184 lsquoRappelonsencore que dans une religion ritualiste les gestes et les comportements construisent des repreacutesentations et deseacutenonceacutes sur le systegraveme des choses et des ecirctres eacutenonceacutes qui agrave la maniegravere des actes performatifs pouvaient devenir

une reacutealiteacute dans la conscience de ceux qui ceacuteleacutebraient ces rites et de ceux qui y assistaient Et comme toujours dansla reconstruction des eacutenonceacutes formuleacutes par des gestes (de surcroicirct transmis par des sources indirectes) tous lesdeacutetails sont importantsrsquo (lsquoRecall again that in a ritualist religion gestures and deportment constituterepresentations and statements concerning the system of things and of being statements which in the same manneras performative acts could become a reality in the consciousness of those who were celebrating and those who wereattending the rites And as always when reconstructing statements made through gestures (and especially thosetransmitted by indirect sources) all details are importantrsquo)

3 By lsquoless fulsomersquo I intend both more narrowly lexicographical sources such as FestusPaulus Nonius MarcellusIsidore Donatus and Servius as well as leges arae Much light is shed on the religious terminology and ritualbackground of statal and private acts referred to simply in passing by Livy Terence and Seneca in particular



173evidence and orthopraxy

religious authorities statal and otherwise in the late Republic and beyond4 More on thisbelow

Another feature of Scheidrsquos method is necessarily implicated in his reliance on docu-mentary texts Scheid is a superb philologist and epigrapher and Quand faire bristles withreadings of difficult and often lacunose texts especially of Cato and Festus (see eg132 ndash 41 on Cato De agricultura 132) But his focus is nearly always on individual lexemes

some at least of these were no doubt terms of art in a discourse of ritual at Rome and yetthere are multiple ways we should wish to assess the stability of their meaning across timeand likewise stability of meaning along one or more axes in what was presumably anincreasingly rarified language might well be construed in multiple ways But the inter-pretive model espoused by Scheid which might seem particularly vulnerable to criticismon this level mdash resting as it does upon the gathering of lexical evidence often merephrases sentences or explanatory asides authored in widely discrepant contexts mdash largelyprecludes the mounting of any defence against such criticism rather stability of meaningis discovered or assumed because it would seem essential to an orthopraxy and texts readand often emended in light of those arguments are then taken to attest the orthopraxcharacter of Roman religion

Scheidrsquos arguments and assumptions in this arena puzzle not least because he is also asuperb historian and in particular because he allows on occasion that available data areinsufficient to sustain the extraction of geographic and chronological patterns of signifi-cance for example lsquola varieacuteteacute des rites funeacuteraires ne sera pas prise en compte non plusCeux-ci changeaient de famille en famille de neacutecropole en neacutecropole de citeacute en citeacute Il nesera pas drsquoavantage question de lrsquoeacutevolution de ces rites Car avec un documentation aussilacunaire et mal connue pareille reconstruction est pour lrsquoheure illusoirersquo (163 cf 183 lsquoilexistait un tregraves grand nombre de variantes dans lrsquoacte sacrificiel mais le principe fonda-mental et premier eacutetait celui que nous venons de donner Il reacutesidait dans la construction dela diffeacuterence et de la seacuteparation entre ecirctres diffeacuterents tout en soulignant leur associationdans le mondersquo)5 And yet the same data derived from lsquodes neacutecropoles romaines ou lesmuseacutees drsquoItaliersquo do in his view display an lsquoeacuteleacutement constantrsquo lsquojusqursquoau ve siegravecle avant notreegravere les tombes eacutetaient remplies de vaisselle de tablersquo (161) Quite apart from the statisticalproblem whether data too lacunose to submit to reasoned exploration of their variety cannevertheless be taken as significant when testifying unanimously Scheid here (and else-where) begs the question what permits extra-Roman evidence to be understood as Romanor invoked to shed light on some putative Roman religion It may well be that no norma-tive answer to this question is possible though I would not wish to exclude from con-sideration the problem that much of the evidence now available post-dates moments whenthe Romans made distinct ideologically-motivated claims to the Romanness of Italy and

4 On the function of (epigraphic) textualization in Roman religion see especially M Beard lsquoWriting and ritual astudy of diversity and expansion in the Arval Actarsquo PBSR 53 (1985) 114 ndash 62 and R Gordon lsquoFrom Republic toPrincipate priesthood religion and ideologyrsquo in M Beard and J North (eds) Pagan Priests Religion and Power inthe Ancient World (1990) 179 ndash 98 See also J Scheid lsquoRituel et eacutecriture agrave Romersquo in A-M Blondeau and K Schipper(eds) Essais sur le rituel II Bibliothegraveque de lrsquoEacutecole des Hautes Eacutetudes section des sciences religieuses 95 (1990)1 ndash 15 M Beard lsquoWriting and religion Ancient literacy and the function of the written word in Roman religionrsquo inLiteracy in the Ancient World JRA Supplement 3 (1991) 35 ndash 58 J Scheid lsquoLes archives de la pieacuteteacutersquo in S Demougin(ed) La meacutemoire perdue Agrave la recherche des archives oublieacutees publiques et priveacutees de la Rome antique CNRS mdash

Seacuterie Histoire Ancienne et Meacutedieacutevale 30 (1994) 173 ndash 85 J North lsquoThe books of the pontificesrsquo in C Moatti Lameacutemoire perdue Recherches sur lrsquoadministration romaine CEacuteFR 243 (1998) 45 ndash 63 J Ruumlpke lsquoActa aut agendarelations of script and performancersquo in A Barchiesi J Ruumlpke and S Stephens (eds) Rituals in Ink (2004) 23 ndash 43and C Ando The Matter of the Gods (2008) 72 ndash 5

5 lsquoThe variety of funerary rites cannot at present be taken into account either These change from family tofamily from necropolis to necropolis from city to city Nor is it a question of their evolution With such lacunoseand poorly-known documentation complete reconstruction is for now elusiversquo (163) lsquoThere was a great numberof variants in the sacrifical act but the fundamental and first principle was that we have to give It lay in theconstruction of difference and separation between different beings while stressing their association in the worldrsquo(183)



174 clifford ando

offered nakedly imperialist as well as juridical claims to the reach of Roman religiousauthority6

There is of course the further related problem that Scheid often employs Roman inprecisely its juridical sense Roman religion is the religion of the populus the communityof citizens (see especially lsquoNuma et Jupiter ou les dieux citoyens de Romersquo Archives deSciences Sociales des Religions 59 (1985) 41 ndash 53 and Religion et pieacuteteacute agrave Rome (2nd edn2001) 47 ndash 76 see also lsquoLes activiteacutes religieuses des magistrats romainsrsquo in R Haensch and J Heinrichs (eds) Herrschen und Verwalten Der Alltag der roumlmischen Administration inder hohen Kaiserzeit (2007) 126 ndash 44 where the definitional problems surrounding lsquopublicrsquoand populus are explicitly confronted (128) and Scheidrsquos position defended by carefulreconstruction of the religious activities of holders of imperium) knock-on consequencesfor distinctions in his work between Roman and Italian public and private and so forthfollow upon this usage This is a problem not because it is imprecise or historically invalidRather it is so because on this issue as on ritualism a problem of definition operates apriori to preclude an overlap of inquiry between Scheid and his (liberal-democratic) Anglo-phone interlocutors in particular with their work on lsquoReligions of Romersquo and so forth

(unreflectively) viewing political identity as non-comprehensive they do not scruple todisarticulate religion from other forms of ethical ethnic political and cultural belongingas objects of analysis or components of identity Scheid by contrast educated and work-ing in France (but born in Luxembourg) is far readier to understand such constituents of identity as entailments of citizenship7 The two traditions would appear not to agree mdash nor even to agree to disagree mdash on the cogency of studying at one go all the contingently-agglomerated religious phenomena attested at Rome or of isolating those embracing evenmerely ideologically citizens alone One consequence in Scheidrsquos work is a relative unin-terest in the Romansrsquo own growing awareness that the porousness of the Roman citizenbody perforce destabilized the ontological status of Roman religion itself8 More on thistoo below

6 Among a large recent literature see O de Cazanove lsquoSome thoughts on the ldquoreligious Romanizationrdquo of Italybefore the Social Warrsquo in E Bispham and C Smith (eds) Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy(2000) 71 ndash 6 idem lsquoI destinatari dellrsquoiscrizione di Tiriolo e la questione del campo drsquoapplicazione delsenatoconsulto de bacchanalibusrsquo Athenaeum 88 (2000) 59 ndash 68 C Schultz and P B Harvey Jr (eds) Religion inRepublican Italy Yale Classical Studies 33 (2006) especially the essays by F Glinister (lsquoReconsidering ldquoreligiousRomanizationrdquorsquo) V Livi (lsquoReligious locales in the territory of Minturnae some aspects of Romanizationrsquo)P B Harvey Jr (lsquoReligion and memory at Pisaurumrsquo) and A Cooley (lsquoBeyond Rome and Latium Roman religionin the age of Augustusrsquo) and C Ando lsquoDiana on the Aventinersquo in H Cancik and J Ruumlpke (eds) Die Religion des

Imperium Romanum (2009) 99 ndash 1137 One might understand the problem thus the political identity of citizens of liberal-democratic states isestablished by their interpellation as rights-bearers In such systems fundamental binding aspects of communalculture such as religion and often even language are understood not simply as non-statal mdash the object of individualchoice while communities of individuals like-minded in respect to religion are constituted as private at law mdash butthose choices are often protected through precisely the statersquos guarantee of individual right Scholars whose self-understandings are formed by their constitution within such states are predisposed to understand individuals asmore completely atomized and to view a wider array of constituents of identity as objects of choice and negotiationCitizens of republics on the other hand are bound to each other and the state by networks of entitlementsobligations and cultural commitments communally understood and jurally defined as entailed by citizenship Thesemight be debated and revised in the public sphere but they are not subject to individual negotiation at the samelevel It is the co-existence in France of Republican citizenship and individual rights that gives French jurisprudence

on the law on persons its distinctive flavour8 There are two significant exceptions to this claim lsquoCultes mythes et politique au deacutebut de lrsquoEmpirersquo in F Graf

(ed) Mythos in mythenloser Gesellschaft Das Paradigma Roms (1993) 109 ndash 27 (translated by P Purchase inC Ando (ed) Roman Religion (2003)) and lsquoAspects religieux de la municipalisation Quelques reacuteflexionsgeacuteneacuteralesrsquo in M Dondin-Payre and M-T Raepsaet-Charlier (eds) Citeacutes Municipes Colonies Les processus demunicipalisation en Gaule et en Germanie sous le Haut Empire romain (1999) 381 ndash 423 The former is concernedwith Roman attempts to devise rituals by which to reify and articulate in gesture on-going anxieties about the(increasing) internal heterogeneity of the Roman community the latter studies the reception and practice of Romanreligion in communities of Roman citizens notionally autonomous at the level of public law mdash in what were inRoman terms the borderlands of Roman religion




To get some sense of the difference in analytic perspective instantiated in the nationaltraditions under discussion compare the textbooks of Mary Beard John North and SimonPrice (Religions of Rome (1998)) and James Rives (Religion in the Roman Empire (2007))with that of John Scheid (La religion des Romains (1998) translated by Janet Llloyd as AnIntroduction to Roman Religion (2003)) or for that matter that of Joumlrg Ruumlpke (DieReligion der Roumlmer eine Einfuumlhrung (2001) translated and edited by Richard Gordon as

Religion of the Romans (2007)) Beard North Price and Rives though concerned betimesto distinguish a specifically Roman religion from religions practised by non-Romanpeoples within the Empire nevertheless ultimately concede primacy to a normative analy-tic conception of religion on the one hand and to the fact of Empire on the other With-out specific defence mdash perhaps of the form lsquothese cultures and not others were ultimatelyembraced by the empire by virtue of sufficient similarity along some axes religionincluded so as to enable mutual recognitionrsquo mdash the rationale for studying all forms of religion practised within the Roman Empire would seem to rest upon one or the other orboth of two propositions that the Empire was eventually endowed with a cultural koinecircthat embraced specific tenets or presuppositions of religion or more problematically that

the Empire became important in the history of religion when it enabled the spread of Christianity But the latter essentially Providentialist claim made already in the secondcentury ce is in its strong form patently falsifiable the Empire was not the world nordid Christianity spread first (uniformly) within the Empire before spreading without Suchclaims for the religious-historical importance of the Roman Empire were made initially tojustify a form of domestic religious politics and later to mobilize certain practices at thelevel of imperial foreign policy Debunking them would seem an important task forscholarship on religion in Late Antiquity but it has not figured large in that field Ruumlpkeis alone among those employing lsquoRomanrsquo in a non-juridical sense in mounting a defencein material economic and demographic terms for the political-geographic boundaries hesets for his inquiry

That said even treating Republican (textual) evidence and without drawing any broadmethodological conclusions regarding the Romanness of Italian religious traditions beforethe Social War Scheid has elsewhere shed remarkable light on Roman religion andespecially Roman religious law by adducing the evidence of leges sacrae from altarsinitially constructed on peregrine soil (Scheid lsquoOral tradition and written tradition in theformation of sacred law in Romersquo in C Ando and J Ruumlpke (eds) Religion and Law inClassical and Christian Rome (2006) 14 ndash 33 see also lsquoLe deacutelit religieux dans la Rometardo-reacutepublicainersquo in Le deacutelit religieux dans la citeacute antique CEacuteFR 48 (1981) 117 ndash 69) Inany event our ability to write a history of Italian religion should be significantly enhancedby the on-going project lsquoFana templa delubra Corpus dei luoghi di culto dellrsquoItaliaanticarsquo on whose board Scheid serves (volume 1 for Regio I lsquoAlatri Anagni CapitulumHernicum Ferentino Verolirsquo edited by S Gatti and M Romana Picuti was published inRome by Quasar in 2008)

Of far greater moment the cogency of Scheidrsquos method and conclusions and indeed hisoverall portrait of Roman religion may soon be tested against evidence for the religiouslife of Roman colonies as never before with results that may recursively affect our under-standing of religion at Rome itself For in addition to the remarkable fragmentary lexsacra discovered at Carthage and published by Lilliane Ennabli in 1999 Sergio Garciacutea-Dilsde la Vega Salvador Ordoacutentildeez Agulla and Oliva Rodriacuteguez Gutieacuterrez have announced thediscovery of a cult building in the forum at Astigi constructed shortly after the colonyrsquosfoundation under Augustus that housed in some fashion inscribed protocols for religiousactions taken there9 Scheidrsquos lament regarding the limited survival of texts attesting lsquolaseacutequence des gestes sacrificielsrsquo may perhaps be assuaged

9 L Ennabli lsquoAgrave propos de Meacutegararsquo in S Lancel (ed) Numismatique langues eacutecritures et arts du livre speacutecificiteacutedes arts figureacutes Actes du VIIe colloque international sur lrsquohistoire et lrsquoarcheacuteologie de lrsquoAfrique du Nord (1996)193 ndash 210 S Garciacutea-Dils de la Vega S Ordoacutentildeez Agulla and O Rodriacuteguez Gutieacuterrez lsquoNuevo templo augusteo en laColonia Augusta Firma Astigi (EacutecijandashSevilla)rsquo Romula 6 (2007) 75 ndash 114 at 106 ndash 8



176 clifford ando

religion and religiosity

Needless to say a number of Anglophone scholars in particular even those who concurwith Scheid in viewing Roman religion as orthoprax part company with him in theirestimation of the place of interpretation in religiosity at Rome To state the matter asbaldly as possible these argue that far from having elaborated an understanding of Roman

religion on the basis of all the evidence (whatever that would mean) and then developinga rule of evidence on the basis of that understanding Scheid has brought to bear uponRoman material a dogmatic view of orthopraxic religion From this perspective Scheidrsquosrules of evidence effect an a priori exclusion from the history of religion of much of whatwas very precisely religious in the (intellectual) life of Romans10

Another way to think about the distinction drawn by Scheid between the religious andextra-religious and likewise about the conversation between him and his interlocutorswould be to frame the problem in cognitive epistemic or ontological terms At what pointin the passage from acts and the rules governing them to reflection on the meaning of actsdo we pass from the fundamental knowledge mdash the technological savoir-faire mdash necessary

to the continuance of praxis to individual metaphysical and existential speculation soremoved from praxis as to be a gloss upon it Is there such a point Scheid obviouslyanswers the latter question in the affirmative Indeed he has done so for many years com-mencing perhaps with an essay also carrying the title lsquoQuand faire crsquoest croirersquo writtenwith Marc Linder and published in 1993 (Archives de sciences sociales des religions 8147 ndash 62) and continuing with lsquoReligion romaine et spiritualiteacutersquo (ARG 5 (2003) 198 ndash 209) andlsquoLes sens des rites Lrsquoexemple romainrsquo (EntrHardt 53 (2006) 39 ndash 71)

Despite this continuity three notable changes across this period are first thedefinitional framing of Roman religion in relation to concepts like foi croyance and morerecently spiritualiteacute second a shift from the exclusion of metaphysical speculation(lsquorenvoyeacute dans lrsquoespace priveacute le savoir des raisons ultimes des choses nrsquoest ni essential nicontraignant du point du vue religieuxrsquo Archives de sciences sociales des religions 81(1993) 4911) to the bracketing and containment of peculiarly ancient forms of religiousspeculation such as aetiological myth (ARG 5 (2003) 207 EntrHardt 53 (2006) 54 ndash 60speaking of lsquoexplications et justifications situeacutees agrave lrsquoexteacuterieur du ritersquo) and third thestriving after a model and language that might describe the diffusion of agency andresponsibility in rites as well as the location of authority in knowledge-construction andits transmission (see now especially ARG 5 (2003) 207 and Quand faire 275 ndash 9 describingRoman religion variously as lsquocollectiversquo and lsquoinstitutionnellersquo and in particular lsquola regraveglersquo of rites as lsquoune construction humaine appliqueacutee au mystegravere des relations avec les immortalsrsquolsquoa human construction applied to the mystery of relations with immortalsrsquo)

About these developments in Scheidrsquos work I offer two reflections only First they havebeen provoked by scholarship on Roman religion written simultaneously with his own andby readings performed by Scheid on further orthopraxic religions Where Roman religionis concerned the interlocutor most often identified by Scheid is not unexpectedly MaryBeard whose remarkable article on the Parilia gets due recognition in these pages I notein passing that Beard too articulates her agenda in terms of rules of evidence literary

10 To clarify I might gesture at three prominent and quite distinct reactions to interpretive models (like Scheidrsquos)

that understand religion as embedded and consequently assign (great) heuristic value to inferences from statal ritualin addition to Mary Beardrsquos essay on the Parilia consider J Northrsquos lsquoThe development of religious pluralismrsquo in J Lieu et al (eds) The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (1992) 174 ndash 93 and W J TatumrsquoslsquoRoman religion fragments and further questionsrsquo in S N Byrne and E P Cueva (eds) Veritatis AmicitiaequeCausa Essays in Honor of Anna Lydia Motto and John R Clark (1999) 273 ndash 91 Beard North and Tatum each inher or his own way foreground the interpretive affective and cognitive acts made by (or assumed to have been madeby) individuals whether as viewers of (state) ritual or practitioners of domestic cult more than that for on variedgrounds each understands those acts as essential components of a phenomenology of Roman religion11 lsquoRestricted to the private sphere knowledge of the ultimate reasons for things was neither essential to nor

restrictive of a religious outlookrsquo




sources should be understood in the first instance as products of the time when they werewritten and not naiumlvely mined for data regarding the time periods they purport to describelsquoall interpretations of a ritual offered at any given time are naturally valid testimonials to the range of interpretations of that ritual at that time and in aggregate to the vital placeof speculation in the stance of individual Romans toward their religionrsquo (The RomanTriumph (2007) offers a splendid introduction to Beardrsquos method and the fruits it can

bear) I note too that if less in his own work then in his work as an advisor Scheid hasbridged some of the gap between himself and Beard Francesca Prescendirsquos fine thesisDeacutecrire et comprendre le sacrifice Les reacuteflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion agravepartir de la litteacuterature antiquaire (2007) embraces in two parts both a normative recon-struction of Roman sacrificial rites (along with a Roman vocabulary for describing such)and an exploration of Roman literary accounts of the origin and meaning of a sacrificialritersquos constituent elements That said Prescendi organizes her review of the exegesesoffered in the ancient world following the order of appearance of any given gesture withinthe overall rite (18 ndash 19) This is not I would stress an unknowing stance it follows uponan assumption that the rite was historically stable and may mdash indeed should mdash at the

level of analysis be regarded as ontologically distinct within the historical contingencies of a cultural system from the interpretive and cognitive stances of the ritersquos participants andviewers

In other respects like others in the field Scheid has moved in recent years away fromattempts to distinguish Roman religion radically from Christianity mdash asserting eg thatlsquofaithrsquo and lsquobeliefrsquo were not constitutive categories in Roman religion but at the same timedescribing features of Roman religion as direct analogues to those things (lsquola croyanceromaine eacutetait avant tout un actersquo Linder and Scheid Archives de sciences sociales desreligions 81 (1993) 50) mdash and towards description in light of second-order categoriesderived through a more robustly comparatively enterprise (Scheid cites in particular workby Andreacute Vauchez Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlow cfScheid and Jasper Svenbro lsquoLe comparatisme point de deacutepart ou point drsquoarriveacuteersquo inF Boespflug and F Dunant (eds) Le comparatisme en histoire des religions (1997) 295 ndash 312)

My second reflection on these developments in Scheidrsquos work is the simple observationof at once an impasse and an agenda in scholarship For once articulated in terms of funda-mental definitions mdash what is Roman religion and what counts as evidence for it mdash theframeworks of Scheid and his interlocutors would not seem to permit much more thanparallel play That said provoked in part by disquiet at just this impasse a number of individuals mdash notably Andreas Bendlin Corinne Bonnet Joumlrg Ruumlpke and Greg Woolf aswell as John Scheid himself mdash are now working and betimes collaborating on researchinto the place of the individual in the religions of the Empire within a number of distinc -tive interpretive frameworks12 What is more this work is taking place alongside quitefascinating debate in Judaic and Christian studies on the rise in Christian and Hebrewliterature of the third to sixth centuries of very precisely an understanding of religion as adistinctive and disembedded component of identity (see Stuart Millerrsquos review articlelsquoRoman imperialism Jewish self-definition and Rabbinic societyrsquo Association for JewishStudies Review 312 (2007) 329 ndash 62 cf Brent Nongbri lsquoDislodging ldquoembeddedrdquo religiona brief note on a scholarly tropersquo Numen 55 (2008) 440 ndash 6 and Clifford Ando lsquoCitiesgods empirersquo forthcoming)

12 Several of the above are collaborating in a DFG-funded Kolleg-Forschergruppe lsquoReligioumlse Individualisierung inhistorischer Perspektiversquo housed from 2009 ndash 2012 at Max-Weber Kolleg Universitaumlt Erfurt Scheid is treating thetopic in his lectures of 2008 ndash 2009 at the Collegravege lsquoLa religion la citeacute lrsquoindividu La pieacuteteacute chez les Romainsrsquo Bendlinrsquosarguments must for the moment be accessed in lsquoLooking beyond the civic compromise religious pluralism in laterepublican Romersquo in E Bispham and C Smith (eds) Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy (2000)115 ndash 35 lsquoSuumlndersquo Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe 5 (2001) 123 ndash 34 and lsquoGemeinschaftOumlffentlichkeit und Identitaumlt Forschungsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zu den Mustern sozialer Ordnung in Romrsquo inU Egelhaaf-Gaiser and A Schaumlfer (eds) Religioumlse Vereine in der roumlmischen Antike Untersuchungen zuOrganisation Ritual und Raumordnung (2002) 9 ndash 40



178 clifford ando

The definition offered above of a ritualrsquos immanent meaning is intended both to antici-pate Scheidrsquos second chapter and to gesture toward further problems of historical methodFor Scheid turns in his second chapter away from the recuperation of an ideal sacrifice tothe study of innovation within a single ritual that of Dea Dia across a century and a quar-ter based on particularly detailed accounts in the acts of the Arval Brethren from 120 218and 240 ce Here Scheid argues at once for two things (a) the existence of an underlying

set of (Dumeacutezilian) rules governing the organization of ritual action and (b) the continu-ing vitality and intelligibility of those rules as attested by the internal coherence of theirmanipulation across time (Those suspicious of Scheidrsquos language to the effect that thelsquosens implicitersquo of Roman rites lay in their reification of lsquoune sorte drsquoeacutenonceacute fondamentalqui concernait le systegraveme des choses qui rappelait le statut respectif des mortels et desimmortelsrsquo lsquoa sort-of fundamental statement concerning the system of things that calls tomind the respective status of mortals and immortalsrsquo (278) would do well to read thischapter for the lsquosystemrsquo he unpacks is stunning both for its simplicity and for the eleganceof its actualization in ritual practice13)

toward private religion

The chapters of Part 1 together crystallize a number of difficulties of method withinScheidrsquos practice and common to much work in the history of religion how when andwhether to universalize interpretations based on those rare documentary texts that recordactions in extenso and how to justify the use of other sources occasionally widely separ-ated from those documents in space and time to flesh them out As I have stressed thesedifficulties seem to me particularly acute when one seeks to demonstrate consistency of practice on the one hand and the intelligibility of innovation on the other

Scheid is of course himself aware of these difficulties He resolves them insofar as hedoes through demonstration For in Parts 2 3 and 4 he turns first to a second ritual whoseperformances were recorded in acta namely the Secular Games next to the logic of private rituals both those described by Cato the Elder and those attested in Roman funer-ary practice and finally to public banqueting In all three cases Scheid has occasion torevisit earlier work In the case of the Secular Games one question at issue is the meaningand scope of the term(s) for the lsquoGreek ritersquo (cf HSCP 97 (1995) 15 ndash 31) regarding sacrificeand banqueting the issue is the publicness of sacrificial banquets and by analogy thenecessity of sacrificial ritual in acts of slaughter for consumption (see especially lsquoLa sparti-zione a Romarsquo (lsquoLes Romains au partagersquo) Studi storici 25 (1984) 945 ndash 56 and lsquoSacrificeet banquet agrave Rome Quelques problegravemesrsquo MEacuteFRA 97 (1985) 193 ndash 206) On the latter issueScheid mounts a spirited defence of his long-standing positions first that commensalityhowever attenuated was perhaps the principal mechanism by which rituals conducted bymagistrates before audiences of limited scope were made to embrace the wider communitysecond that slaughter of animals for consumption had to take the form of a sacrifice (seeespecially 252 discussing the use of katathuein at Appian BC 3198 is it metonymic forbutchering or did the Antonian forces actually ritually slaughter all cattle before saltingthe meat) and third that through the complex transmission and reduplication of bothmaterial goods and ritual forms private dining enacted and so inscribed in the domestic

13 An English translation by Philip Purchase of the first published version of this chapter may be found under thetitle lsquoHierarchy and structure in Roman polytheism Roman methods of conceiving actionrsquo in C Ando (ed)RomanReligion (2003) 164 ndash 89




sphere the pre-eminently social-theoretical postulates of Roman public cult As Scheidconcludes lsquomanger eacutetait agrave Rome une activiteacute eacuteminemment religieusersquo14

Where private religion is concerned Scheid discovers in Cato a sequence of gestures andverbal formulae homologous with those performed in public banquets of gods withmortals (see eg his conclusions at 141) He introduces this section with a statement of method confronting the difficulty that Catorsquos evidence is far earlier than that for public

banquets lsquoil ne doit pas non plus y avoir drsquoambiguiumlteacute sur la relation historique entre lespriegraveres de Caton et celles des arvales ou des quindeacutecemvirs de lrsquoEmpire les rites publics delrsquoEmpire ne ldquodescendentrdquo aucunement des rites catoniens Ils participent de la mecircmeculture religieuse et prouvent preacuteciseacutement qursquoentre rites publics et rites priveacutesdomestiques mdash du moins dans une grande famille mdash il nrsquoy avait pas de grande diffeacuterencersquo(129 ndash 30)15 As a provisional conclusion and hermeneutic principle at once extrapolatedfrom a body of evidence and redeployed upon it the statement is true enough mdash so longas Scheid concentrates upon rituals conducted by heads of household in aristocraticfamilies But the difficulties with this proposition are several I focus on three None Istress are fatal but each deserves far fuller articulation and consideration than it receives

in this volume First it is Cato himself in a long chapter of normative injunctions phrasedin imperatives or exhortative subjunctives who urges lsquoscito dominum pro tota familia remdivinam facerersquo lsquolet it be known that the master performs rites for the entire familiarsquo (Deagri cultura 143 cf Varro Ant Div fr 85 Cardauns (ad Nonius Marcellus Book 11 svconmunitus 510M = 810L) lsquoetenim ut deos colere debet conmunitus civitas sic singulaefamiliae debemusrsquo) That is to say the evidence studied by Scheid is delivered to him by anaristocrat one in a series of such who saw religion as but one among many arenas inwhich the structures of authority and gestures reifying the same within the householdshould be homologous with those operative at the level of the state indeed should exist ina fractal relationship with them Curiously Scheid himself has argued that certain formsof domesticfamilial and magisterio-sacerdotal power were understood in Romanantiquity as kindred in extent and expression notably in the authority to put persons inpower (and animals) to death but he derives from that earlier conclusion no hermeneuticof suspicion that the representations otherwise offered by patrespatresfamilias might beinterested (lsquoLrsquoanimal mis agrave mort Une interpreacutetation romaine du sacrificersquo Eacutetudes rurales147 ndash 148 (1998) 15 ndash 26)

Second it may be particularly common in religious studies to articulate analytic claimsin respect to diachronous evidence over against some postulated synchronous culture mdash and who knows such claims may prove valid there more regularly than elsewhere mdash butthey should always arouse suspicion16 In this case it turns out that the Romans themselvesbegan to offer normative statements differentiating private from public cult at thatmoment when they began to worry that private cult was an avenue by which the stability

14 Scheid has provided a further statement of his position in this matter in lsquoLe statut de la viande agrave Romersquo Foodamp History 5 (2007) 19 ndash 28 Alas he does not there respond to the detailed scrutiny his arguments receive in the samevolume from Nicole Belayche lsquoReligion et consommation de la viande dans le monde romain des reacutealiteacutees voileacuteesrsquoFood amp History 5 (2007) 29 ndash 43 Belayche focuses on several problems the lack of evidence for ritual slaughter inthe private sphere which is part and parcel she argues of the silence of extant evidence regarding banal ritualgestures of all kinds the existence of meat derived from the hunt (and so not ritually slaughtered) in butcher shopsand the religious status of meals at which meat ritually rendered profane was then consumed See also Valeacuterie Huetrsquos

essay in that issue lsquoLe sacrifice disparu les reliefs de boucheriersquo Food amp History 5 (2007) 197 ndash 223 which pointsout that images of butchering in commercial contexts focus on pigs and the carving of them not on their ritualslaughter but argues that the iconography of butchery developed to advertise the skill of the butcher not his piety15 lsquoThere need be no ambiguity about the historical relationship between Catorsquos prayers and those of the Arvales

or quindecemviri of the Empire the public rites of the Empire did not ldquodescendrdquo from Catorsquos They participate inthe same religious culture and demonstrate precisely that there was no great difference between public rites on theone hand and private or domestic rites at least those of a great family on the otherrsquo16 This is a difficulty of method in respect to evidence that I have attempted to describe more fully in a review of

E Meyer Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice (2004) Classical Journal100 (2005) 413 ndash 17



180 clifford ando

of public cult was being undermined17 Consider the second law offered by Cicero in thedraft constitution contained in De Legibus which urges as follows (219) lsquoSeparatim nemohabessit deos neve novos neve advenus nisi publice adscitos Privatim colunto quos rite apatribus ltcultos acceperintgtrsquo lsquoLet no one have gods separately either new or foreignunless they have been recognized publicly Let them worship in private those whoseworship they have duly received from their ancestorsrsquo Latent in these clauses are potential

ruptures at several levels First Cicero does not explain the difference between lsquohaving agod separately (separatim)rsquo and lsquohaving a god privately (privatim)rsquo but it is clear that herecognized the potential for individual (as opposed to private) action to affect state cult Itis precisely that possibility that he seeks to foreclose At the same time the public recog-nition of a deity might seem to hold out the possibility of obligating or affectingindividuals in their private practices and so raises the question how the commitment of individual citizens to civic cult was conceived What is more the city of Rome regularlyacquired new citizens and resident aliens to say nothing of slaves and immigrants of everylegal status tended to travel with their gods (for Roman anxieties about just this problemin subsequent generations see Tacitus Ann 2854 and 14443) What happened when thatwhich was duly handed down was foreign or new

A third difficulty with Scheidrsquos reliance upon Cato in discovering private and publicsacrifice to participate in a singular and homogeneous lsquoculture religieusersquo is this for allthat Scheid takes on board contemporary anxieties with the models of civic religiondominant in the study of classical religion over the last quarter century (a projectundertaken in far greater detail in the lectures at the Collegravege than in this volume and forwhat itrsquos worth I share many of his misgivings that these criticisms often miss the mark)his own model has little room for rites practised outside the normatively-sanctioned spacesof the state or household mdash those which occurred in Catorsquos language iniussu domini autdominae (without the command of the master or mistress) mdash and so Scheid provides nomechanism to account for their far more remarkable homologies with state cult In hisrecent study of Pompeian households with double lararia for example John Bodel arguesthat the reduplication of cult mdash once in an architectural niche with penates once in apainted niche without mdash lsquosuggests a functional division between the ideologicallycomforting mdash and legally pragmatic mdash concept of the unified household and the moresocially plausible reality of multiple ldquohouseholdsrdquo within the housersquo (lsquoCicerorsquos MinervaPenates and the Mother of the Lares an outline of Roman domestic religionrsquo in J Bodeland S M Olyan (eds) Household and Family Religion in Antiquity (2008) 248 ndash 75 at265) Having stressed at this moment the separateness of these cult sites Bodel goes on tourge the high probability that the master of the household was involved in the devolutionof familial cult within the familia Correct this may be but what is wanted is a model thatreaches beyond the aristocratic household in at least two directions to its satellites as itwere among the recently freed and beyond to those existing not in legal or bloodrelation but one of cultural and social observation and mimesis What such a modelproperly elaborated in relation to evidence would show is that the material verbal andgestural cultures of cult were yet another arena in which practices developed and sustainedby the eacutelite to distinguish itself were learned adapted and manipulated in less rarified lessexpensive forms by precisely those for whom they were performed but who were imaginedwithin eacutelite circles and depicted in eacutelite representations not as learners or practitioners in

their own right but merely as audience The technologies of cult thus made their owncontribution to the lsquocognitive homogeneityrsquo that Nicholas Purcell has identified asfundamental to the lsquoastonishing solidity and longevity of Roman imperial societyrsquo(lsquoLiterate games Roman urban society and the game of alearsquo Past amp Present 147 (1995)3 ndash 37 see also Gordon op cit (n 4) and Ruumlpke Religion of the Romans passim butespecially 12 ndash 13 254 ndash 7)

17 This problem is treated at length in the introduction to C Ando and J Ruumlpke Religion and Law to which essaythese remarks are indebted




Extended consideration of Scheidrsquos method in the study of private religion thus returnsus to the problems of rarification and textualization and of the ontological stability of Roman religion in the face of demographic change articulated above These might inclosing be reframed by asking whence the normative power of Roman state cult asreconstructed by Scheid derives To put the matter thus is to accept its historical influenceon non-state practice but likewise to foreground certain problems of performance and

representation in the ancient world and of selecting and evaluating evidence andmodelling culture in the modern that with fuller articulation might make for richerdialogue between Scheid and his readers Engagement with Quand faire crsquoest croire wouldbe a fine place to begin

University of Chicagocliffordandouchicagoedu



172 clifford ando

one might glean from observing multiple iterations of a ritual asking why and how someaspects changed and others did not2

Scheid himself terms such understandings of ritual lsquoleur sens implicitersquo over againstthose second-order self-consciously interpretive understandings that featured prominentlyin lsquola vie intellectuelle extra-religieusersquo (278 ndash 9) At stake in this distinction is an interpre-tive principle operating in some relation to a rule of evidence Given that the Romans

themselves describe the performance of rites as essential and that no such claims are evermade in antiquity for aetiological myth or theological speculation at Rome Scheid under-stands Roman religion to consist narrowly in the rites themselves As a consequence in hisview lsquoles sources preacutecisesrsquo from which one might legitimately reconstruct lsquole deacutetail de lapratiquersquo are documentary records of actions taken above all the acts of the Arval Breth-ren and those of the Saecular Games Scheidrsquos valuation of lsquole sens implicitersquo is thus anattempt to distinguish inferences and conclusions based on documentary sources fromthose that draw on literary sources placed (in his view) in a heuristic position vis-agrave-vis bothpractice and the rules that governed it

So described Scheidrsquos method would seem to encounter a number of difficulties not

sufficiently confronted in these pages The most significant arise very precisely from hissources A very great deal of what we think we know about practicalities of Roman ritualand their maintenance across time derives from Scheidrsquos work on these two bodies of actaeither on the acta themselves or on other less fulsome texts whether narrative or lexico-graphical read in light of the acta3 But we also derive from these texts not a little of ourconfidence that Roman religion was orthoprax For that reason Scheid owes us mdash we oweourselves mdash a fuller acknowledgement that these texts find their origin in a performancetradition (in the case of the Secular Games) and an institution (in the case of the ArvalBrethren) whose agents were committed to textualization and ritual conservatism in equalmeasure nor were those commitments unrelated That is to say an Arval magister rsquos claimlsquoWe depart in no way from earlier ordinancesrsquo (quoted by Scheid Quand faire 282) is nota piece of evidence autonomous from the ritual punctiliousness observable in the protocolsof the Brethren rather recorded on stone twice in the same words a quarter century apartin the acta themselves mdash on the latter occasion uttered immediately after a slave had readfrom or simply displayed the codices on which decisions of earlier Arvales were recorded(CFA 65 l14 from 109 ce 75 ll 11 ndash 14 from c 134 ce) mdash the claim amounts to aninterested commentary upon the multiple commitments that led to the taking up of textualization and other systems of memorialization and knowledge-production by

2 The term and definition are my own for a formulation along the same lines by Scheid see eg184 lsquoRappelonsencore que dans une religion ritualiste les gestes et les comportements construisent des repreacutesentations et deseacutenonceacutes sur le systegraveme des choses et des ecirctres eacutenonceacutes qui agrave la maniegravere des actes performatifs pouvaient devenir

une reacutealiteacute dans la conscience de ceux qui ceacuteleacutebraient ces rites et de ceux qui y assistaient Et comme toujours dansla reconstruction des eacutenonceacutes formuleacutes par des gestes (de surcroicirct transmis par des sources indirectes) tous lesdeacutetails sont importantsrsquo (lsquoRecall again that in a ritualist religion gestures and deportment constituterepresentations and statements concerning the system of things and of being statements which in the same manneras performative acts could become a reality in the consciousness of those who were celebrating and those who wereattending the rites And as always when reconstructing statements made through gestures (and especially thosetransmitted by indirect sources) all details are importantrsquo)

3 By lsquoless fulsomersquo I intend both more narrowly lexicographical sources such as FestusPaulus Nonius MarcellusIsidore Donatus and Servius as well as leges arae Much light is shed on the religious terminology and ritualbackground of statal and private acts referred to simply in passing by Livy Terence and Seneca in particular













174 clifford ando



















176 clifford ando






















178 clifford ando





















180 clifford ando
























174 clifford ando



















176 clifford ando






















178 clifford ando





















180 clifford ando























176 clifford ando






















178 clifford ando





















180 clifford ando























178 clifford ando





















180 clifford ando


























180 clifford ando












Compte-rendu Quand Faire c'Est Croire

Documents

Transcript of Compte-rendu Quand Faire c'Est Croire