1. Cicero, On Laws, 2.47 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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2. Dionysius of Halycarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 4.62.5 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 4.62.5. Since the expulsion of the kings, the commonwealth, taking upon itself the guarding of these oracles, entrusts the care of them to persons of the greatest distinction, who hold this office for life, being exempt from military service and from all civil employments, and it assigns public slaves to assist them, in whose absence the others are not permitted to inspect the oracles. In short, there is no possession of the Romans, sacred or profane, which they guard so carefully as they do the Sibylline oracles. They consult them, by order of the senate, when the state is in the grip of party strife or some great misfortune has happened to them in war, or some important prodigies and apparitions have been seen which are difficult of interpretation, as has often happened. These oracles till the time of the Marsian War, as it was called, were kept underground in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in a stone chest under the guard of ten men. |
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3. Livy, History, 40.29.3-40.29.14 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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4. Ovid, Fasti, 4.637-4.640 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)
| 4.637. But when the priests have torn the calves from their mother’s womb 4.638. And thrown the slashed entrails on the smoking hearth 4.639. The oldest Vestal burns the dead calves in the fire 4.640. So their ashes can purge the people on the day of Pales. |
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5. Vergil, Aeneis, 7.45-7.101, 12.777-12.783, 12.786 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 7.46. Hail, Erato! while olden kings and thrones 7.47. and all their sequent story I unfold! 7.48. How Latium 's honor stood, when alien ships 7.49. brought war to Italy, and from what cause 7.50. the primal conflict sprang, O goddess, breathe 7.51. upon thy bard in song. Dread wars I tell 7.52. array of battle, and high-hearted kings 7.53. thrust forth to perish, when Etruria's host 7.54. and all Hesperia gathered to the fray. 7.55. Events of grander march impel my song 7.56. and loftier task I try. Latinus, then 7.57. an aged king, held long-accepted sway 7.58. o'er tranquil vales and towns. He was the son 7.59. of Faunus, so the legend tells, who wed 7.60. the nymph Marica of Laurentian stem. 7.61. Picus was Faunus' father, whence the line 7.62. to Saturn's Ioins ascends. O heavenly sire 7.63. from thee the stem began! But Fate had given 7.64. to King Latinus' body no heirs male: 7.65. for taken in the dawning of his day 7.66. his only son had been; and now his home 7.67. and spacious palace one sole daughter kept 7.68. who was grown ripe to wed and of full age 7.69. to take a husband. Many suitors tried 7.70. from all Ausonia and Latium 's bounds; 7.71. but comeliest in all their princely throng 7.72. came Turnus, of a line of mighty sires. 7.73. Him the queen mother chiefly loved, and yearned 7.74. to call him soon her son. But omens dire 7.75. and menaces from Heaven withstood her will. 7.76. A laurel-tree grew in the royal close 7.77. of sacred leaf and venerated age 7.78. which, when he builded there his wall and tower 7.79. Father Latinus found, and hallowed it 7.80. to Phoebus' grace and power, wherefrom the name 7.81. Laurentian, which his realm and people bear. 7.82. Unto this tree-top, wonderful to tell 7.83. came hosts of bees, with audible acclaim 7.84. voyaging the stream of air, and seized a place 7.85. on the proud, pointing crest, where the swift swarm 7.86. with interlacement of close-clinging feet 7.87. wung from the leafy bough. “Behold, there comes,” 7.88. the prophet cried, “a husband from afar! 7.89. To the same region by the self-same path 7.90. behold an arm'd host taking lordly sway 7.91. upon our city's crown!” Soon after this 7.92. when, coming to the shrine with torches pure 7.93. Lavinia kindled at her father's side 7.94. the sacrifice, swift seemed the flame to burn 7.95. along her flowing hair—O sight of woe! 7.96. Over her broidered snood it sparkling flew 7.97. lighting her queenly tresses and her crown 7.98. of jewels rare: then, wrapt in flaming cloud 7.99. from hall to hall the fire-god's gift she flung. 7.100. This omen dread and wonder terrible 7.101. was rumored far: for prophet-voices told 12.777. Bring flames; avenge the broken oath with fire!” 12.778. Scarce had he said, when with consenting souls 12.779. they speed them to the walls in dense array 12.786. Aeneas, calling on the gods to hear |
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6. Pliny The Elder, Natural History, 13.84-13.87 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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7. Plutarch, Numa Pompilius, 12.1, 22.2-22.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 12.1. The Pontifices also explain and direct the ancestral rites of burial for those who desire it, and they were taught by Numa not to regard any such offices as a pollution, but to honour the gods below also with the customary rites, since they receive into their keeping the most sovereign part of us, and particularly the goddess called Libitina, who presides over the solemn services for the dead, whether she is Proserpina, or, as the most learned Romans maintain, Venus; thereby not inaptly connecting man’s birth and death with the power of one and the same goddess. 22.2. They did not burn his body, because, as it is said, he forbade it; but they made two stone coffins and buried them under the Janiculum. One of these held his body, and the other the sacred books which he had written out with his own hand, as the Greek lawgivers their tablets. But since, while he was still living, he had taught the priests the written contents of the books, and had inculcated in their hearts the scope and meaning of them all, he commanded that they should be buried with his body, convinced that such mysteries ought not to be entrusted to the care of lifeless documents. 22.3. This is the reason, we are told, why the Pythagoreans also do not entrust their precepts to writing, but implant the memory and practice of them in living disciples worthy to receive them. And when their treatment of the abstruse and mysterious processes of geometry had been divulged to a certain unworthy person, they said the gods threatened to punish such lawlessness and impiety with some signal and wide-spread calamity. 22.4. Therefore we may well be indulgent with those who are eager to prove, on the basis of so many resemblances between them, that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras. Antias, however, writes that it was twelve pontifical books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, which were placed in the coffin. And about four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, heavy rains fell, and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins. 22.4. Therefore we may well be indulgent with those who are eager to prove, on the basis of so many resemblances between them, that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras. Antias, however, writes that it was twelve pontifical books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, which were placed in the coffin. And about four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls, heavy rains fell, and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins. 22.5. When their lids had fallen off, one coffin was seen to be entirely empty, without any trace whatever of the body, but in the other the writings were found. These Petilius, who was then praetor, is said to have read, and then brought to the senate, declaring that, in his opinion, it was not lawful or proper that the writings should be published abroad. The books were therefore carried to the comitium and burned. |
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8. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds And Sayings, 1.1.12 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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9. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 1.22.3, 1.22.5-1.22.6 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
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10. Augustine, The City of God, 7.34 (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
| 7.34. But, on the other hand, we find, as the same most learned man has related, that the causes of the sacred rites which were given from the books of Numa Pompilius could by no means be tolerated, and were considered unworthy, not only to become known to the religious by being read, but even to lie written in the darkness in which they had been concealed. For now let me say what I promised in the third book of this work to say in its proper place. For, as we read in the same Varro's book on the worship of the gods, A certain one Terentius had a field at the Janiculum, and once, when his ploughman was passing the plough near to the tomb of Numa Pompilius, he turned up from the ground the books of Numa, in which were written the causes of the sacred institutions; which books he carried to the pr tor, who, having read the beginnings of them, referred to the senate what seemed to be a matter of so much importance. And when the chief senators had read certain of the causes why this or that rite was instituted, the senate assented to the dead Numa, and the conscript fathers, as though concerned for the interests of religion, ordered the pr tor to burn the books. Let each one believe what he thinks; nay, let every champion of such impiety say whatever mad contention may suggest. For my part, let it suffice to suggest that the causes of those sacred things which were written down by King Numa Pompilius, the institutor of the Roman rites, ought never to have become known to people or senate, or even to the priests themselves; and also that Numa him self attained to these secrets of demons by an illicit curiosity, in order that he might write them down, so as to be able, by reading, to be reminded of them. However, though he was king, and had no cause to be afraid of any one, he neither dared to teach them to any one, nor to destroy them by obliteration, or any other form of destruction. Therefore, because he was unwilling that any one should know them, lest men should be taught infamous things, and because he was afraid to violate them, lest he should enrage the demons against himself, he buried them in what he thought a safe place, believing that a plough could not approach his sepulchre. But the senate, fearing to condemn the religious solemnities of their ancestors, and therefore compelled to assent to Numa, were nevertheless so convinced that those books were pernicious, that they did not order them to be buried again, knowing that human curiosity would thereby be excited to seek with far greater eagerness after the matter already divulged, but ordered the scandalous relics to be destroyed with fire; because, as they thought it was now a necessity to perform those sacred rites, they judged that the error arising from ignorance of their causes was more tolerable than the disturbance which the knowledge of them would occasion the state. |
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