RAC/TRAC Session 15: Ritual in War and Peace: Implements, Objects, Practices

Conference Sessions and Abstracts - Friday 12 April 2024

15. Ritual in War and Peace: Implements, Objects, Practices

Marsha McCoy

In his ground-breaking work, Peace and War in Rome. A Religious Construction of Warfare (1990; English 2019), Jörg Rüpke explored a little-studied area, the intersection of the Roman army with religion. He discussed the rituals of martial life, in Rome, on the march, in battle, in victory, and in death. He studied the objects and practices of war, the cult of the standards and other implements, that became themselves quasi-religious objects, even as they remained tools of war. In Rüpke’s view, earlier studies of war that focused on legal constructions of battle, separating sacred from profane, and secular from holy, miss a crucial, essential, and wide-ranging element of Roman warfare. While political and sociological theorists (e.g. Kerzer. 1988; Sperber. 1975) have studied more general aspects of these social phenomena, Rüpke’s granular focus on Roman military objects, rituals, practices, and beliefs provide an essential underpinning for work on religion and war in the Classical world.
This session seeks abstracts for papers that consider objects used in both religion and war, not only in Rome but also in the provincial cultures and societies that Rome interacted with, since the Roman Empire and its armies came to encompass not only the religion of the Romans but also those of other peoples. Archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and other evidence from material culture is welcomed, as well as literary and other sources.

Session schedule 

Abstracts 

 The Roman Calendar as a lieu de mémoire
John Serrati – University of Ottawa

The subjects of Roman religion and Roman warfare have, separately, continued to spark interest and to receive significant coverage in the secondary literature. Yet, considering that these phenomena were arguably the two most important aspects of Roman culture and society during the Republic, they have only rarely been treated together. In the middle Republic, warfare and religion were indelibly linked and pervaded every aspect of society. Warfare affected social and economic mobility, politics, conceptions of manhood and citizenship, and even space and spatiality; in all these aspects, religion equally played a role. Material links between warfare and religion can be seen in the Roman calendar along with such objects as the Plikaśna situla and an Etruscan fourth century engraved gem, both of which show Salii-like figures. (Cf. Colonna. 1991; MacIntosh Turfa, 2012; Rich. 2013; Schäfer, 1980; Schultz. 2006; Torelli. 1997.)  The calendar marked the annual rhythm of warfare in the mid-Republic, just as a series of rituals, including the Salian dances, took place at the opening and closing of the campaign season. Therefore, the calendar and the dances of the Salian priests served to steel the Romans for battle through both the triggering of memory, and the provision of a series of religious rituals which acted to psychologically prepare the legionaries for combat.

 Roman Sword Inscriptions: Religious Context and Dedicatory Objects
Connor Beattie

Ownership inscriptions on Roman military equipment (helmets, shield-bosses, greaves, fibulae, and swords) form a relatively small and seriously understudied group of non-monumental epigraphy. They were normally scratched onto the object’s surface or formed through small, hammered dots (punctim) – distinguishable, therefore, from manufacturer stamps pressed into the hot metal during the manufacturing process. In 1960, Ramsay MacMullen argued that these inscriptions were applied to make the retrieval of weapons from the stores easier and to prevent loss or theft, establishing a consensus which still holds today. MacMullen, and subsequent analysis, focused almost exclusively on military helmets, yet inscribed Roman gladii (the Roman infantry sword from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE) and spathae (originally a Roman cavalry sword and employed by the infantry from the 3rd century CE) seriously problematise this explanation: swords were almost always kept with their owners and not in the stores. I have collected together Roman sword inscriptions, and in this talk I will suggest an alternative reading, and therefore, a different explanation of their function. This will be based on showing the religious context for these inscriptions and the role of Roman swords as dedicatory objects.

 Built-in protection. Weapons as building deposits?
Monica Gui

As defining for the very identity of Roman soldiers, military equipment was imbued with complex meanings, beyond practicality and material value. Therefore, its manipulation outside the secular sphere can reveal spiritual beliefs. That arms and armour were not only used in warfare, but also in religious activities, is proven by the well-attested depositions in rivers, temples and shrines. Though the presence of military equipment in more mundane contexts in military installations usually indicates pragmatic explanations, its placement in unusual locations suggests the possibility of ritual activities occurring within the perimeter of military bases. Following these observations, the present paper analyses a few cases in which pieces of equipment were incorporated into various structural elements within Roman military installations. The close association with built structures or building sequences suggests deliberate behaviours with probable ritual significance. The chosen locations allow some inferences on the scope of these activities. The apparent variability probably denotes individual acts driven by personal beliefs, although in some cases collective involvement can be suspected. While such material records cannot unequivocally inform us on the actual circumstances and purposes of the depositions, they can help to (partially) reconstruct lost practices and broaden the range of known ritual behaviours manifested in the Roman military environment.

 “Signis receptis”: Imagining peace and war in Augustan religious politics and local provincial coinage
Viktor Humennyi – Lviv University

The paper focuses on the military ensigns of the Roman army returned to Augustus by the Parthians in 20 BCE and the religious and ideological contexts in which they were used. Despite a large amount of attention given to the topic of the Signa recepta and the cult of Mars Ultor in the past scholarship (cf. C. Simpson, J. Rich, P. Zanker, C. Rose, H. Kryśkiewicz), several main questions still provide a field for discussion. One of them is the coins minted in the Roman provinces that included the images of the military signa that were located in the temple. The question of what temple the coins actually depicted along with the connections between the cult of Mars Ultor and the ideas of vengeance, war, and the diplomatic aspects of peace require special attention. The author questions the ideological and religious contexts of the messages that the coins provided to the local population using the frame concept in which background knowledge is important for the understanding of the images which, at the same time, offered several possible interpretations to the viewer.

 Imagining Peace with Rome: The rituals and representations of peace treaties on the Roman frontier
Richard Teverson – Fordham University 

How did peace with Rome appear to the non-Roman? This paper applies Rüpke’s methodologies from Peace and War in Rome to the imagery of making peace with Rome. It argues that non-Roman attempts to represent Roman peace-making rituals reveal the central role of learning new religious activities in securing a lasting treaty with Rome. Such imagery is vanishingly rare. I consider three examples: the mythological reliefs at the temple of Lagina in Straonikeia; the reliefs on the arch of Cottius at Susa, and the treaty coins of Herod Agrippa I and Herod of Chalcis, and read them in conjunction with examples of monumental diplomatic inspirations from the West (the Seanoc Tabula Alcantarensis) and the East (the Astypalaia alliance inscriptions). Each of these images offers an ancient artist’s insider interpretation of the appearance and performance of these (to them) foreign religious rites, designed to display the future---as envisaged by their treaty-makers---as stable and beneficial. I end by following Rüpke again in suggesting ways we might see evidence for individual hopes and beliefs in these scenes of communal action.

 Venus Victrix: Goddess of War
Aneirin Pendragon – University of St Andrews 

The goddess Venus is often explored in her roles as the goddess of beauty, love, sex, and fertility, but one of her aspects that receives lesser attention is Venus Victrix, the armored goddess of victory. This paper aims to explore how this facet of the goddess Venus was honoured in relation to war and how her worship may reflect the victories obtained by those who marched into battle. Gathering any existing evidence relating to Venus Victrix, this paper will outline her role in preparing for war, e.g., what individuals dedicated to her to ensure victory in battle, and then what was carried out once that victory was realised. There will also be a discussion of the possible origins of Venus Victrix, specifically Aphrodite Areia 'Aphrodite the Warlike' of Greece and Ishtar, which may inform what religious activities were carried out in Rome but may have yet to have surviving evidence. When academic research explores war in Rome, Venus is often not part of the exploration, and I hope this paper can bring her the attention that she deserves in this particular domain.

 ‘Woe to the Vanquished’. Ritual thresholds and moral responses to returning veterans in the Roman Republic
Arjen van Lil

Roman Republican society was inherently geared towards military success. Triumphs, military decorations, donatives and land grants: for the returning victorious veteran, society offered anchored cultural practices. However, thousands of veterans returned from wars less fortunate. Cultural narratives of defeat stress Rome’s reluctance in receiving and reintegrating defeated survivors, and sources remain ambiguous about their whereabouts. This raises a question of sociopsychological and cultural nature: How did Roman society receive those veterans, unfit for Rome’s narrative of military success? Several passages and practices offer insights into this enigmatic aspect of Roman society. Plutarch (Mor. 4.20.5) recounts the custom of receiving veterans presumed dead through the roofs of houses; Appian (BC 2.120) reports of civil war veterans no longer returning home due to ‘unjustifiable wars’; and various sources describe the ritual of defeated soldiers passing under the spear-formed yoke. Roman veteran reintegration has largely been addressed in terms of land settlement and victory rituals. However, psychiatric and anthropological insights stress the universal social and moral challenges that both veteran and community face, notably in the context of defeat. By addressing the moral dimensions and ritual thresholds pertaining to returning veterans, this paper seeks to illuminate vital, understudied aspects of Roman military culture.

 Taming the Mórrígan? Exploring a potential North Pennine conflict landscape
Alistair McCluskey – Newcastle University

Within Irish Celtic mythology, The Mórrígan is portrayed as a shapeshifting deity of battle and sovereign territory often associated with caves, such as Oweynagat near the royal site at Rathcroghan. The potential for such cultural connections across the Irish Sea is rarely considered when examining cave deposits in Roman Iron Age Britain, where frequently they are described with more secular functions in mind such as domestic habitation or workshop sites. This paper will explore the wider contexts of the small-finds assemblages from the North Pennine caves around Malham and Ingleborough. Here, the regional distribution patterns of distinctive forms of bone spoon, together with other nearby Iron Age ritual deposits and Roman military sites, may suggest the area to have been a region of spiritual/religious significance specifically targeted by the Roman Army during its advance north in the Flavian period. As such, it may represent an attempt to break a cultural link between the Iron Age communities in North Britain with their potential allies across the Irish Sea.

Back to RAC/TRAC Conference 2024 Timetable