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IN
THIS MOMENT
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LUDI
ROMANI
September 5-19, 2002
by F. Apulus Caesar, G. Cornelius Ahenobarbus,
G. Salix Astur, C. Curius Saturininus
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Report
1
"Magna Mater or Cybele's Temple
first recognition and news from the management"
21th April 2002 - by Marcus
Iulius Perusianus
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Before a short historical-archaeological introduction
and a resume of an article about the cult of the
Magna Mater in Rome, then I proceed following
the instructions of Propraetor Franciscus Apulus
Caesar. At the end of the document there are some
considerations about the presumed statue of the
Goddess and a bibliography of probable interest.
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Historical and archaeological information
The arrival in the Roman culture of Cybele's cult
is dated in 204 BC, when its simulacra (one black
stone of conical shape) come from the Asian city
of Pessinus. Behind the cult of Cybele (the Magna
Mater) there is the oriental goddess Shub-Niggurath.
Since its arrival in Rome until the accomplishing
of an appropriated temple, the black stone was
kept in the temple of the Victoria (the Aedes
Victoriae).
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Between
204 and 191 BC the sanctuary was built on the
Palatine hill in order to receive the image. The
new building had its own guideline (North East
- South West, which was up to some cultural reasons),
different from the previous ones; moreover a great
courtyard occupied a large space on the front
space and the western area of the temple, while
to the East eased a connection with the area of
the close temple of Victory. The current ruins
show that it was made with a Corinthian style
with a rectangular plant and a pronao just a little
smaller than the cell, prostylos and hexastylos;
inside the cell there were columns along the walls
(in the II century BC with italic-ionic capital)
and a plinth in masonry for the cult of the statue,
placed perhaps in the inside of a sacellum on
the bottom wall. The temple was raised on a big
concrete podium which, with the foundations laying
directly on the cliff of the Palatine, was 9 Mts.
high.
In 111 BC there was a first fire in the Temple
of the Magna Mater, caused by the aedile Quintus
Memmius. He took the black stone. The temple was
restored by Metello Numidico and the cult resumed
in an official and pacific version. With the reconstruction
of temple by concrete and the elevation of the
courtyard, the squared bathtub and the accessing
angled scales were obliterated. A new great rectangular
concrete basin (16,50 x 3 Mts.) was constructed
in the West area of the podium of the temple.
The structure, showing the need of great bathtubs
in the rituals of Cybele's cult ( we know that
the priests of Magna Mater washed the Cybele's
image in the sacred waters of the Almon river
in occasion of the festivity of the Goddess),
was inside of a wide rectangular area closed on
the West flank of the temple, because the courtyard
had to be classified to a specific function, probably
connected to the theatrical events of the Ludi
Megalenses, celebrates since 194 BC. In the 3
AD. there was a second fire of the Temple in mysterious
circumstances after that the traces of the cult
of Shub-Niggurath and the black stone were lost.
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The Cult of the Magna Mater in Rome
(an article of Michele Spada between fantasy
and reality)
The Second Punic War had put in crisis the republican
Rome and its religious structure too: in the attempt
of recovering the support of the Gods, that appeared
to be lost, it was introduced in 204 BC the cult
of the Magna Mater (Cybele), after the consultation
of the Sibylline Books.
The origins of the cult is lost in time: the area
of the Aegean Sea and especially the Cretan Isle,
organised by a matriarchal order during the prehistoric
age, adored a Mother Goddess dispenser of fecundity
that was adored in Greece as Cybele, on the banks
of Euphrates as Koubaba and near the Babylonians
as Damkina, which means "married with the earth
and the sky". In Pessinus, in northern Asia,
a simulacra of the divinity was worshipped: one
black stone of conical shape, probably a meteorite.
The embassy was sent to the king of Pergamus, in
which territory the sanctuary was, and obtained
the delivery of the simulacra, carried and loaded
on a ship to Rome. The construction of the Temple
of the Magna Mater, in the western side Palatine
hill ( and therefore in the Pomerium), began in
the same year and was finished only in the 191 BC. |
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But
behind the cult of the Magna Mater there was hidden
the other one of the terrible Shub-Niggurath. The
Coribants (or Curates), the clergymen of the goddess,
celebrated an unbridled spring ritual on the equinox,
accompanying with flagellation and the mutilations
given to the victims with shouts. Because of the
excesses of the ritual to which the participants
abandoned themselves, in Rome like in Greece, was
never practised in public. In the course of the
years the cult of the Magna Mater Cybele became
more bloody-thirsty than the one of Koubaba and
Damkina, massacring and torturing hundred of victims,
until in 111 BC Shub-Niggurath was evoked. A group
of citizens, among them aedil Quintus Memmius only
survived, saved the city from the destruction giving
to the flames the temple, that was burnt in the
fire with the blaspheme goddess. The cult was resumed
in its official and pacific version. Quintus Memmius
also took the simulacra of the Goddess. Quintus,
now an old man, entrusted the stone to the young
nephew Gaius, who became quaestor like its uncle
and finally praetor. From its travel in Bitinia
praetor Gaius Memmius made return with a Cybele'priest
that, once in Rome, was striven so that the temple
was resumed to its bloody-thirsty activity.
In the 55 BC, the spring equinox was blotted again
of numerous sacrifices. Gaius Memmius was present
with its friend T. Lucretius Caro. The already fragile
psyche of the poet was devastated by the apparition
of an evoked Dark Puppy in the name of Shub-Niggurath.
Lucretius died in the same year, as the Chronicle
of St.Girolamus witnesses, as a crazy: but its mind
was not destroyed, like it is commonly believed,
by love filters, but by the terrifying vision. In
the 3 BC the temple, destroyed in mysterious circumstances,
was reconstructed by Augustus. The cult of Shub-Niggurath
and the black stone was lost. In V century after
Christ an anonymous biographer wrote the true vicissitude
of poet Lucretius, but its work was not a success
and soon forgotten. Some fragments, collected in
the codes of the Lucretius' life are the only survivors
and guarded in the Vatican Library. |
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Information on the dimensions and structure of the
temple
Situated behind the area of the Romulean huts, a
podium can be seen (64 x 118 feet = 33,40 x 19,35
Mts.), belonging to the Magna Mater' s temple. This
(32 x 64 Mts. with one relationship between cell
and wings of 2:1) had a squared cell lying on a
high covered base with lava stone blocks. It probably
had six columns on the side of the entrance and
a wide staircase before the pronao (the relationship
between cell, pronao and front body is 4:2:1); such
a reconstruction has been confirmed by a relief
of the first imperial age that reproduces one procession
in the front of the temple. On the forehead of the
pronao a terrace, supported by parallels walls on
turf made blocks, datable to III century BC and
still; in next ages the structure was reused probably
in order to use as several shops placed on a covered
inner way that crossed the area. Recent diggings
have characterised, to the east of the temple, the
foundations and the rests of the podium of another
temple identified like the one of the Victory (where
the Magna Mater was conserved previously), constructed
in 294 BC by consul Lucius Postumius Megellus and
to which Marcus Porcius Cato in the 193 BC added
a place dedicated to the Victoria Virgo. |
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The state of the ruins
The rests of Cybele's temple rise in the south-western
corner of the Palatin, in proximity of the archaic
huts and the Scalae Caci. Nowadays only the podium
is visible in a squared work ( 204 BC) with a staircase
in the centre of the frontal side, on which a small
wood of holm-oaks has grown. Let me say that just
this presence of the little wood made me believe
that the base of the temple could be another (the
next one which is instead the Auguratorium), as
you can see by the centre of my photo just down.
Thanks to some picture found on Internet was possible
for me to visualise what it's said about the rests
of the temple. In particular, the rest of masonry
are in opus reticulata and built after the fire
of 111, and that the columns in lava stone lying
beside podium are of Augustean age. These are the
only visible things. The proof that it is effectively
that temple is uniquely identified, apart from the
position adjacent to the House of Augustus, thanks
to writings with dedication to the M(ater) D(eum)
M(agna) I(daea). The diggings are supposed to have
recovered several votive terracotta of the first
age of the temple, so that interesting aspects of
the cult have been cleared, like the importance
of the spring celebration during the equinox. Moreover
an half legend says that in some cases hidden somewhere
would be located the famous black stone, recovered
during the diggings. |
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Magna Mater temple's surroundings
At the end of the IV century BC, in correspondence
of the military and political expansion of Rome
through the South of Italy, a new way of considering
all those monument s and connected memories according
to a Trojan key or , better, Hellenistic begun.
In this age the foundation of the temple of Victory
was allocated, expressly dedicated in the 294 BC
to that cult. That was certainly diffused after
the victorious campaigns of war of Alexander the
Great, but that it is also to see in relation to
Mars and with the Romulean legend through Rhea Silvia.
All the area appears therefore organised in function
of myths of foundation of Rome:
a)
the Squared Rome, which some sources place between
the Apollinis area to the temple of Apollo (see
14), and the supercilium scalarum Caci ( see 19);
b) the Casa Romuli (house of Romolus),
or tugurium Faustuli (see 16) identified with
one rectangular structure in a square work discovered
during Vaglieri's diggings of 1907, placed immediately
to the West of the Scalae Caci;
c) the Lupercal ( the cave of the she-wolf),
sub Monte Palatino, probably at the base of the
Scalae Caci;
d) the temple of Magna Mater, protector
of Rome ( see 20).
Unfortunately,
like I've already said, was not possible for us
to examine that area closer (all fenced and under
restoration) and was not allowed to check better
the general situation.
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Staff and agency manager of the restoration
area of the temple
I guess that one of the responsible and more
authoritative persons in this argument may be
Prof. Patrizio Pensabene of the University of
Rome "La Sapienza". Faculty of Letters
and Philosophy) with its twenty two years of
studies and diggings in the south-west area
of the Palatin hill.
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He
has also participated to the preparation of one
relation in the 2001 on behalf of UNESCO (GIAVARINI,
C. PENSABENE, P. SANTARELLI, M.L.TOMEI, M.A: "South-West
substructions of the Palatine hill in Rome"
on http://www.unesco.org/archi2000/pdf/giavarini4.pdf)
where the plans for the conservation of the area
are exposed.
The
south-west area of the Palatine hill, and particularly
the Sanctuary of the Magna Mater, is object since
1977 of systematic surveying directed by the same
P. Pensabene with the collaboration of numerous
graduated and students of the Department of Archaeological
and Anthropological Historical Sciences of the
University of the Studies of Rome "La Sapienza".
The sign (see photo) standing on the entrance
of all the extension shows that the manager is
the archaeological Soprintendenza of Rome (addressed
in P.zza S.Maria in Nova 53, CAP 00186, home page:
http://www.archeorm.arti.beniculturali.it/sar2000/default.htm,
email: info@archeorm.arti.beniculturali.it)
and it seems that all it is circumscribed to simple
jobs of removal of asbestos materials (long 210
days? And then since when?). Probably it's the
same plan of conservation of all the area. We
might begin writing to that email address.
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The Goddess Cybele statue
Quare
magna deum mater materque ferarum
et nostri genetrix haec dicta est corporis una.
Hanc veteres Graium docti cecinere poetae
sedibus in curru biiugos agitare leones,
aeris in spatio magnam pendere docentes
tellurem neque posse in terra sistere terram.
quo
nunc insigni per magnas praedita terras
horrifice fertur divinae Matris imago.
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Therefore
only her was called the Great Mother of the Gods
and mother of the fairs and genetrix of our body.
Of her the dots poets of Greece sang a time when
on a chariot she led two lions yoked, meaning
so that the huge earth is suspended in the spaces
of the air and that the earth cannot rest on the
earth
(Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, vv. 598-604)
adorned
of this standard, the effigy of the divine Mother
is transported for immense lands provoking dithers
of terror.
(Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, vv. 608-610)
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The great Mother. Later the Roman called it Cybele,
and told that he loved the young Atys in the forests
of Frigia (today called Turkey). When he did not
resist to the Songaride nymph, Cybele made him drive
crazy; Atys hurt himself badly and at the end thrown
from one cliff. At that point Cybele saved him seizing
his hair: they were transformed in foliage, its
body in a log, and its feet touched the earth like
roots: the pine was born. The black stone, symbol
of Cybele, was taken to Rome in 204 BC (at the time
of the Republic) and put in the temple of Victory
on the Palatine hill. Until the III-IV century AD
the festivities of Cybele and Atys were carried
out to Rome in March, in the days around to the
spring equinox. Of the Goddess remains only an headless
statue, now in the Antiquarium Palatino. At first,
on indication ( which was wrong) of the caretakers
of the museums the following statue was indicated
to us(that one of Secundus Quirinus and Aurelia
Pulchra's doubts which they wrote to you it was
about a man). |
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this photo shows the one that should be the real
Cybele, but that, at this point, we have not noticed
inside the Antiquarium (but we were four people!!!). |
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Useful literacy sources
PENSABENE P., " Auguratorium " e tempio
della Magna Mater .
PENSABENE P., "Scavi nell'area del tempio della
Vittoria e del santuario della Magna Mater sul Palatino",
Archeologia Laziale IX, Roma 1989, p.54 ss
About
the cult of Magna Mater :
Apollonius Rhodius, Arg 1,1098
Strabo 10,3,12 e 12,5,3
Aristophanes, ORN v. 875
Lucretius 2,598
Ovidius, Met 10,686
Plinius H.N. 18,16
H.Graillot, Le Culte de la Grande Mere, Paris
1912
I.J. Carcopino, La Reforme Romaine, 1947
E.Laroche, Koubaba, 1970
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