GODS AND MYTHS

At some central Apennine sanctuaries, such as Monte Acuto in Umbria, thousands of small bronze statuettes of deities and worshippers have been found in votive deposits. But despite its quantity, this kind of material tells us relatively little about the gods of the Italic peoples; most of our knowledge comes from Roman literature, and from epigraphic texts.

The evidence suggests that female deities were particularly popular among the Italic peoples. Some are also well known at Rome, like Ceres and Minerva (attested in an inscription from Punta della Campanella in Campania, which refers to meddiks menereviius “meddices of Minerva”, ca. 300 BCE: Barnabei 2007: 23). Others are less familiar to us, some no more than names, like Vesuna in the Iguvine Tables, who seems to be associated with prophecy, to judge from her appearance on Etruscan mirrors. Sometimes epithets give a hint about their competences and contexts, for example Cupra is often honoured as “Mater” (Mother), while at the Umbrian sanctuary of Plestia near Colfiorito, in use at least from the end of the fifth century BCE down to the imperial period, dedications to her also bear the word “pletinas”, clearly a toponym. Her cult is also attested in Picenum, at modern Cupramontana and Cupra Marittima.

Some deities seem to have been particular favourites in certain regions of Italy; others, such as Mefitis, were “pan-italic” deities. This goddess (also worshipped at Rome) was particularly important in the south-west of Italy. She seems to have been a deity of chthonic and oracular character, associated with sulphurous exhalations: among the Hirpini she was worshipped at the sulphur pools of the Lacus Ampsanctus, regarded as the gateway to the underworld (Virgil Aeneid 7.563-71, with Servius’s commentary). She was also the chief deity of the upland sanctuary of Rossano di Vaglio in Lucania, where she was worshipped as a goddess of fertility, and had regal associations. Her significance here is shown by dedications made to her by public officials. As with Ceres at Agnone, the sanctuary at Rossano played host to a range of male and female gods, complementary to the principal deity of the shrine (Isayev 2007: 38).

Another widely popular goddess was Angitia, worshipped by the Paeligni (Vetter 1953: 140) and especially among the Marsi in her shrine, the Lucus Angitiae, on the shore of the Fucine lake (Virgil Aeneid 7.759; CIL IX 3074; Vetter 1953: 228a). Remains found here include a bronze inscription recording a gift of booty (Vetter 1953: 228a = ILLRP 7). She was associated with snakes, and was thought to be able to cure snakebites through the use of incantations and healing herbs. Her reputation in matters of sorcery led to her being associated with Circe and Medea (Servius Ad Aeneidem [On the Aeneid] 7.750).

Also widespread in central Italy was the cult of Feronia, a deity of wild nature with fertility and underworld associations (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 3.32.1 compares her to Persephone). Feronia was connected with freed slaves (Livy 22.1.18), and we know of a manumission rite practised at her shrine at Volscian Anxur in southern Latium (Servius On the Aeneid 8.564; cf. 7.799). According to Varro (On the Latin Language 5.74), the Romans adopted Feronia from the Sabines, although she and other gods were probably associated with Sabinum because that was the homeland of King Numa Pompilius, con-sidered responsible for the organization of the Roman state cult. Feronia’s major shrine, the Lucus Feroniae, lay near the borders separating Capenate and Sabine territory (on which see below).

Among the male deities of the Italic peoples, judging by dedicatory inscriptions and iconographical representations, Mars, Hercules and Jupiter stand out. Jupiter is attested throughout the Italian peninsula. As Jupiter Liber he is known among the Vestini, Sabini and Frentani, as well as in Campania and Rome, while he was worshipped at Iguvium under the name Jupiter Sancius. He was a guarantor of pacts, and a sovereign deity, sometimes characterized as rex, “king”, or similar epithets (e.g. rector). Rex and its female counterpart regina are common titles for some Italic deities.

Italic Mars possessed both martial and agricultural aspects, as at Rome, and was associated with the foundation of cities and peoples in the ver sacrum (see below). In the Iguvine Tables, Mars forms a triad with Jupiter and Vofonius, all three sharing the title “Grabovius”; sacrifices were made to them outside the three gates. (Deities in triads are also well known from Rome, Etruria and Greece; deities in conjugal pairs, also attested, may imply mythological developments of character and event.)

A vast quantity of material survives to document the popularity of the cult of Hercules among Italic peoples like the Paeligni (Prosdocimi 1989: 529; Van Wonterghem 1992; G. Bradley 2005a). At Corfinio, for example, where the sacred area was monumentalized around the third century BCE, over a hundred bronzes of Hercules were carefully deposited, along with inscribed cippi, altars and terracotta statues (Buonocore 1995), in what was probably a meeting place for local shepherds and farmers. Hercules had agricultural associations, hence perhaps his occasional identification or confusion with Mars (so Varro, according to Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.12.6; an Etruscan mirror shows him as Mars’s father). At Agnone, as Hercules Cerealis, he forms part of the pantheon headed by Ceres, and is perhaps present as protector of the harvest. He also seems to have been associated with commerce, and with the transhumance of animals in the Apennines, and it has been suggested that cults of Hercules, as protector of livestock, are often to be found near sources of water used as resting places for animals. But Hercules was also widely associated with the ideology of the victorious warrior, and worshipped under the surname Victor, as in his sanctuary near the municipium of Superaequum (Vetter 1953: 217).

Hercules was a god of Greek origin, yet he permeated Italic culture early on, during the archaic period. Servius (On the Aeneid 13.538) says that the cult of Hercules was very ancient among the Sabines, and he was worshipped as Hercules Sanctus at Reate (CIL I² 632).

Hercules is just one example of the Greek influence at work in pre-Roman Italy. Other specifically Greek deities, such as Apollo or the Dioscuri (the sons of Zeus), were also worshipped quite early on: there appears to be a dedication to Castor at Pietrabbondante by a meddix tuticus in the third-second century BCE (La Regina et al. 1976), and as vase paintings and other iconographical sources show, there was strong interest in Greek myth, although it is unclear how far that myth developed its own trajectory in the Italic world. Whether Greek influence on Italic religion extended to forms of ritual is uncertain, although it is clear that ritual, properly carried out, was of extreme importance to the Italic peoples (as was also true of Rome).