BOOK: Biondo Flavio, "Rome in Triumph" (Vol. 1)

Biondo Flavio: Rome in Triumph. Vol. 1: Books I–II. English translation by Frances Muecke; Latin text edited by Maria Agata Pincelli. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 74. Harvard University Press, 2016. 9780674055049. xxvii + 412 pp.

Biondo Flavio was a 15th-century historian/antiquarian. I remember reading a book of his in the I Tatti Renaissance Library years ago, Italy Illuminated — see my post from back then; I found that book quite boring and got some surprisingly hostile comments on my post for saying so. Thus I approached the present work, Rome Triumphant, with some trepidation, but ended up being pleasantly surprised: this book is *much* more interesting than Italy Illuminated was. It is a sort of overview of various aspects of ancient Roman civilization and society; Biondo himself in his introduction (p. 13) divides the subject into five parts: religion, administration of the state, military discipline, customs of daily life, and the triumph. The whole work consists of ten books, of which the present volume contains the first two, dealing with the ancient Roman religion, its beliefs and various practices and customs related to it. Thus I guess there will eventually be four more volumes, though I haven't found any explicit mentions of that, and as far as I know none have so far been published or even announced.

I couldn't help being impressed by the massive amount of work that must obviously have gone into this book, both Biondo's and that of his modern editors and translators. Biondo's approach relies heavily on quoting passages from the work of ancient Roman authors, or occasionally summarizing or paraphrasing them. Sometimes he adds his own comments or explanations, or draws parallels to customs of his own time, but mostly he lets the Romans speak for themselves, so that probably more than half of the text here consists of quotations of ancient authors. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course — finding all these passages scattered through the work of so many authors and arranging them thematically as he has done here is immensely valuable in itself. The translators tracked down the precise sources of his quotations and pointed out where his text differs from that of modern editions (due to his relying on faulty manuscripts), which much also have taken an enormous effort.

One type of comment that I didn't care much about, but which Biondo makes several times in this volume, is to denigrate the ancient Roman religious beliefs. Obviously, as a christian he thought that he was right and they had been wrong, but it still struck me as distasteful and ungracious — if you keep denigrating an enemy more than a thousand years after you defeated him, I think we can safely describe you as a sore winner. Besides, it shouldn't be a historian's business to pass judgment on the people he writes about, but I guess that this view wasn't yet widespread in Biondo's time.

From the point of view of a casual reader like me, the main charm of this volume was in the numerous odd (and sometimes downright bizarre) beliefs, practices and anecdotes that you can encounter in it. You could open the book at random, read two or three pages, and be almost sure to find something interesting. I also liked the fact that Biondo pays a lot of attention to minor deities and customs related to them, not just to the famous major ones like Jupiter.

At the beginning of book I, Biondo writes a little about beliefs of earlier civilizations, such as the Egyptians and the Greeks. The Egyptians believed that the god Apis was incarnated in a bull; when he died, their priests would go and find a new one. “This is the only time women are allowed to see him. As they go out to meet him they lift up their clothes and show him their genitals” (1.13) I remember there were a couple of quests involving this bull in Assassin's Creed: Origins, which I played a few months ago, but I don't remember the part about the genitals :))

Emperor Hadrian writes about the curious state of religious ferment in Egypt: “Those who worship Serapis are Christians and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are devotees of Serapis. There is no leader of a Jewish synagogue there, no Samaritan, [who is not] an astrologer, a soothsayer, a masseur.” (1.22)

Losing one's virginity seems to have been serious business in Rome: “She is not allowed to enter her husband's bedroom before nuts are scattered in the hall and the other parts of the house adjacent to the bedroom, and the crowd treads them under foot so that the cries of the virgin being taken cannot be heard for the din.” (1.31) He goes on to list no fewer than six deities that help in these matters.

As part of the rites of Father Liber, “male genitals were set up with honor on little carts [. . .] During the days of that month all used absolutely disgraceful language, until that phallus had been conveyed through the forum and come to rest in its proper place. A most honorable married woman had to place a crown publicly on this dishonorable member.” (1.34)

He mentions a number of instances of human sacrifice from the early days of Roman religion. “Festus writes: ‘The Italians had the custom of promising a “consecrated spring”. Induced by great dangers they vowed they would sacrifice all the living creatures born to them the next spring. But, since it seemed cruel to kill undeserving boys and girls, after they had raised them to adult age they would veil them and so drive them across their frontiers.’ ” (1.46)

On the hecatomb, a large-scale animal sacrifice: “A hundred altars made of turf are built in one place and at them a hundred swine and a hundred sheep are slaughtered. Now, if it is an imperial sacrifice, a hundred lions, a hundred eagles and a hundred each of other animals of this kind are slain.” (1.46) FWIW, the wikipedia says that “in practice, as few as 12 [cattle] could make a hecatomb”.

In the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, there was a permanent feast in honour of that god, “the result being that there was a household of mimes and parasites there rather than celebration of the god's rites” (1.51). Biondo mentions this again later in 2.12.

Mark Antony “rode naked through the city in a chariot to celebrate the Lupercalia in honor of Lycaean Pan escorted by married women and maidens who were completely naked. The chariot was drawn by girls who were equally naked.” (1.54) Wow! Some people sure know how to party :)) But see also the translators' note 347 on p. 356, which says that this was originally an anecdote about Elagabalus that later got unfairly attached to Mark Antony.

By contrast, some devotional practices were touchingly wholesome: “there were certain women who every day would go up close to the statues of Juno and Minerva (she had her shrine there) and pretend to arrange their hair, moving their fingers in the fashion of hairdressers, since there were others who then held up a mirror in front of the goddesses' eyes for them to look into” (1.57).

Biondo writes a good deal about various silly forms of divination employed by the Romans, e.g. from the flight of birds, and notes with satisfaction that many of them appear to have been skeptical of it: “When Nonnius said they could have the highest hope because seven eagles had been captured in Pompey's camp, he [Cicero] said, ‘Your advice would be good, if we were going to have to fight against magpies.’ And that consul was no fool who, when the chicken-keepers told him that the chickens were not giving good omens and refusing to eat, ordered them to be thrown into running water so that they might drink.” (1.60)

On a similar note, he quotes approvingly Cicero's opinion that “the gods' favor can be won by duty toward man and toward the gods and righteous prayers, not by impure superstition nor by victims slaughtered in order to accomplish a crime” (1.66).

“Pliny affirms that there was a Vestal prayer, which enabled her to fetch water in a sieve” (1.68). Maybe if you freeze it first? :)

Things you don't see in Gérôme: “They drank blood from the wounds of dying gladiators to keep epilepsy at bay. Nevertheless Pliny writes that this aroused horror when it was seen or done in the arena.” (1.69)

When besieging an enemy city, “Roman priests first of all ‘called forth’ the gods under whose protection this city or town was and promised this or those gods the same or a grander place at Rome or elsewhere. This is why the name of Rome's guardian god was unknown, so that he could not be ‘called forth’ by some enemy.” (1.69)

“Here was a temple of Male Fortune. To its priest parents brought young girls as soon as they began to be ready for a husband. He looked at them carefully from all sides, completely naked as they were, and pointed out their visible physical defects. When the girls thus advised had made an offering of incense to Fortune, they believed that they had ensured that that defect would forever be concealed from their eventual husband.” (1.72)

“Pliny adds that a kind of linen was invented which was incombustible” (2.27), and was used when cremating a corpse to prevent its ashes from being mixed with those of others. Biondo goes on to say that “it grows in deserts and in parts of India scorched by the sun”, but the translators' note 177 on p. 376 describes it as “a kind of asbestos cloth”.

Macrobius on the cremation of bodies: “ ‘if it ever happened that a number were to be burned at the same time, the officials who looked after funerals used to add one female for every ten male bodies.’ In this way they burned more quickly and easily.” (2.28) I wonder how this is supposed to have helped. I remember reading something similar years ago: the Nazis, late in the war, resorted to burning the bodies of Holocaust victims in large open-air pits, and they tried to use as little fuel as possible in the process as their war economy was on its last legs by then anyway; apparently they found that it helped if they combined fatter and thinner corpses suitably [link].

“Beans are employed when making offerings to the dead because the Pythagoreans said the souls of the dead were in them. Varro said that the flamen's wife did not eat beans because letters of ill omen are found on their flowers.” (2.41) It's very hard to resist seeing fart jokes in these descriptions :]

Biondo cites a longish and very interesting description of the ceremony of deification of a Roman emperor (2.42). Much of it is just like a fancier version of a regular funeral; eventually the emperor's corpse was placed into a hut packed with “dry firewood and heaps of spices” and set alight. “From the last and smallest story, as if from a gable, the eagle is set free at the same time as the fire is lit beneath, so that it makes for the upper air. The Romans believe that the eagle conveys the emperor's soul from earth to heaven, and that it will remain there forever with the other gods.”

There are also sections about games and shows involving gladiators, wild animals, horse racing, theatrical performances etc., all of which was at least peripherally connected to religion in ancient Roman times. “Caesar was the first to exhibit a giraffe at the circus games. It has a neck like that of a horse, feet and legs like those of an ox, a head like a camel's, and white spots setting off its tawny color.” (2.55) Biondo goes on to mention various other exotic animals used in circuses, including “100 Numidian bears” (2.55), which surprised me as I didn't know that there used to be bears in North Africa. Now I see that there's also a wikipedia page about them. One of the Gordian emperors sent massive numbers of animals to the amphitheatre, including “10 nanny goats with gilded horns, which he himself had had gilded” (2.61).

A nice pun from 2.61: “Commodus Antoninus, who has more aptly been called ‘unpleasant (incommodus) to all’ ”.

There are several sad and touching anecdotes about people who had to fight wild animals in the arena, as reported by Cassiodorus, a 6th-century author. “In the theatre or amphitheater there was displayed a man who was most unhappy in his greed, who was offering his life blood for sale. As was stipulated with those who had bought his debts he was armed with a single flexible pole. [. . .] relying on the support of the flexible pole, he leaped over a beast, which, as though overcome by a sense of shame, made no further attempt to attack its defeater. He hugged the walls of the theater and begged the people who were sad and sorry for his plight to have him taken out of the arena.” (2.62)

I found this book very enjoyable, it was a welcome change after my disappointment with Italy Illuminated, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the subsequent volumes, if/when they get published. As for the subject matter itself, it left me of two minds. On the one hand, when reading about the sheer bizareness and vigour of the ancient Romans' beliefs and practices, and comparing them with the drab blandness of modern-day religion, I couldn't help being reminded again and again of Swinburne's line: “What ailed us, O gods, to desert you?” But on the other hand, I cannot help being glad that we no longer throw people into arenas to face lions and bears nearly empty-handed, or to fight other gladiators to the death. I wonder if there's some way to combine the intensity of feeling such as the ancient Roman religion was able to provide, with the safety and humaneness to which we are accustomed today; but I fear these are opposite sides of the same coin, and you can't have both of them at the same time.