Suovetaurilia

File:Suovetaurile Louvre.jpg

There were two kinds:{{cite journal |last1=Linderski |first1=J. |title=suovetaurilia |journal=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics |date=7 March 2016 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6149 |isbn=978-0-19-938113-5 |url=https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-6149 |access-date=3 October 2022 |language=en}}

• {{lang|la|suovetaurilia lactentia}} ("suckling suovetaurilia") of a male pig, a lamb and a calf, for purifying private fields
• {{lang|la|suovetaurilia maiora}} ("greater suovtaurilia") of a boar, a ram and a bull, for public ceremonies.{{Cite book |last=Orlin |first=Eric |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mHD4CgAAQBAJ |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions |date=2015-11-19 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-62559-8 |language=en}}

The ritual for private fields is preserved in Cato the Elder's {{lang|la|De Agri Cultura}}, "On Agriculture". It was performed each May on the festival of {{lang|la|Ambarvalia}},{{Cite journal |last=Pascal |first=C. Bennett |date=1988 |title=Tibullus and the Ambarvalia |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/295078 |journal=The American Journal of Philology |volume=109 |issue=4 |pages=523–536 |doi=10.2307/295078 |jstor=295078 |issn=0002-9475}}{{Cite book |last=Gagarin |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lNV6-HsUppsC |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome |date=2009-12-31 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-517072-6 |pages=101 |language=en}}{{Cite book |author-first=Lora L. Holland |author-last=Goldthwaite |chapter=Ambarvalia |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444338386 |title=The Encyclopedia of Ancient History |date=2013-01-21 |page=1 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-4051-7935-5 |editor-last=Bagnall |editor-first=Roger S |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah17026.pub2 |s2cid=241398302 |editor-last2=Brodersen |editor-first2=Kai |editor-last3=Champion |editor-first3=Craige B |editor-last4=Erskine |editor-first4=Andrew |editor-last5=Huebner |editor-first5=Sabine R |editor-link5=Sabine R. Huebner }} a festival that involved "walking around the fields." Public {{lang|la|suovetaurilias}} were offered at certain state ceremonies, including agricultural festivals,{{Cite journal |last=Sexton |first=Jeremy |year=2017 |title="Brass" Instruments and Romanization: Tubae and Cornua on the Arch at Susa |url=https://www.historicbrass.org/edocman/hbj-2017/HBSJ_2017_JL01_003_Sexton.pdf |journal=Historic Brass Society Journal |volume=29 |pages=47–60 |doi=10.2153/0120170011003|doi-broken-date=9 January 2025 }} the conclusion of a census, and to atone for any accidental ritual errors. Traditionally, {{lang|la|suovetaurilias}} were performed at five year intervals: this period was called a {{lang|la|lustrum}},{{Cite book |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444338386 |title=The Encyclopedia of Ancient History |date=2013-01-21 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-4051-7935-5 |editor-last=Bagnall |editor-first=Roger S |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah17431 |editor-last2=Brodersen |editor-first2=Kai |editor-last3=Champion |editor-first3=Craige B |editor-last4=Erskine |editor-first4=Andrew |editor-last5=Huebner |editor-first5=Sabine R}} and the purification sought by a {{lang|la|suovetaurilia}} was called lustration.{{Cite book |last1=Galinsky |first1=Karl |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oW5dCwAAQBAJ |title=Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire |last2=Lapatin |first2=Kenneth |date=2016-01-01 |publisher=Getty Publications |isbn=978-1-60606-462-7 |pages=240 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last1=Hitch |first1=Sarah |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_RcuDwAAQBAJ |title=Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Greek World |last2=Rutherford |first2=Ian |date=2017-08-24 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-19103-6 |pages=130 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Poccetti |first=Paolo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pQOyDQAAQBAJ |title=Latinitatis rationes: Descriptive and Historical Accounts for the Latin Language |date=2016-12-05 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=978-3-11-043189-6 |pages=142–143 |language=en}}

If a temple were destroyed, the site of the temple must be purified by a {{lang|la|suovetaurilia}} before a new temple could be reconstructed on the site. When the Capitolium was burnt as a result of a struggle for imperial succession in the year 69, a {{lang|la|suovetaurilia}} was performed to reconsecrate the site. A public {{lang|la|suovetaurilia}} was also offered to bless the army before a major military campaign. On Trajan's column, the emperor Trajan is depicted as offering a {{lang|la|suovetaurilia}} to purify the Roman army. A suovetaurilia is shown on the right hand panel of The Bridgeness Slab. It was suggested that the sacrifice might have been made at the start of the building of the Antonine Wall.{{cite book|title=The Scottish antiquary, or, Northern notes & queries.|date=1890|publisher=T. and A. Constable|location=Edinburgh|pages=19–25|url=https://archive.org/stream/scottishantiquar1415edin#page/22/mode/2up|accessdate=28 October 2017}}

File:Romanwallinscotl00macduoft raw 0409.jpg showing a suovetaurilia.{{cite book|last1=Macdonald|first1=Sir George|title=The Roman wall in Scotland, by Sir George Macdonald|date=1934|publisher=The Clarendon press|location=Oxford|pages=362–365|edition=2d ed., rev., enl., and in great part rewritten|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3760345;view=2up;seq=508;size=150|accessdate=11 October 2017}}]]

The first step was to lead the three animals around the boundaries of the land to be blessed, pronouncing the following words:{{Cite book |last1=Gardner |first1=Jane F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=taL44o_w-i0C |title=The Roman Household: A Sourcebook |last2=Wiedemann |first2=Thomas |date=2013-01-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-95028-7 |pages=36 |language=en}}

:{{lang|la|Cum divis volentibus quodque bene eveniat, mando tibi, Mani, uti illace suovitaurilia fundum agrum terramque meam quota ex parte sive circumagi sive circumferenda censeas, uti cures lustrare.}}

:"That with the good help of the gods success may crown our work, I bid thee, Manius, to take care to purify my farm, my land, my ground with this suovetaurilia, in whatever part thou thinkest best for them to be driven or carried around."

"Manius" in this passage may be an obscure minor deity, related to the Manes, or may be the equivalent of English John Doe.

Before the sacrifice is performed, an extended prayer to Mars must be made. It is written in an archaic metrical and incantatory form; even in Old Latin, the prayer contains many rhetorical figures such as alliteration and liberal use of merisms and antithesis. It illustrates the metrical and poetic format of polytheistic prayers. Calvert Watkins versifies the text as follows:{{cite book |last1=Watkins |first1=Calvert |title=How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics |date=1995 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780198024712|pages=199–200}}

{{Verse translation |lang=la

|

:Mars pater, te precor quaesoque

::uti sies volens propitious

:mihi domo familiaeque nostrae,

::quoius re ergo

:agrum terram fundumque meum

:suovitaurilia circumagi iussi;

::uti tu

:morbos visos invisosque,

:viduertatem vastitudinemque,

:calamitates intemperiasque

:prohibessis defendas averruncesque;

::utique tu

:fruges, frumenta, vineta virgultaque

:grandire beneque evenire siris,

:pastores pecuaque salva servassis

:duisque bonam salutem valetudinemque

:mihi domo familiaeque nostrae;

::harumce rerum ergo,

:fundi terrae agrique mei

:lustrandi lustrique faciendi ergo,

::sicuti dixi,

:macte hisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus inmolandis esto;

:Mars pater, eiusdem rei ergo

:macte hisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus esto

|Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee

that thou be gracious and merciful

to me, my house, and my household;

to which intent

I have bidden this suovetaurilia to be led around

my land, my ground, my farm;

That thou

keep away, ward off, and remove

sickness, seen and unseen,

barrenness and destruction,

ruin and unseasonable influence;

And that thou permit

my harvests, my grain, my vineyards, and my plantations,

to flourish and to come to good issue

preserve in health my shepherds and my flocks,

and give good health and strength

to me, my house, and my household.

To this intent,

to the intent of purifying

my farm, my land, my ground, and of making an expiation,

as I have said,

deign to accept the offering of these suckling victims;

Father Mars, to the same intent

deign to accept the offering of this suckling suovetaurilia."

}}

Cakes of bread were sacrificed along with the three animals. At the moment the sacrifices were made, the landowner was to say:{{Cite book |last1=Whitehouse |first1=Harvey |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kVwnAAAAQBAJ |title=Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History, and Cognition |last2=Martin |first2=Luther H. |date=2004-09-15 |publisher=Rowman Altamira |isbn=978-0-7591-1535-4 |pages=70–71 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Turcan |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EdvWAQAAQBAJ&dq=Suovetaurilia&pg=PA41 |title=The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times |date=2013-10-28 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-05850-9 |pages=41 |language=en}}

:{{lang|la|Eiusque rei ergo macte suovitaurilibus inmolandis esto.}}

:"To this intent deign to accept the offering of these victims."

If favourable omens as a response to the sacrifice were not forthcoming, the landowner was instructed to redo the sacrifice and offer a further prayer:

:{{lang|la|Mars pater, siquid tibi in illisce suovitaurilibus lactentibus neque satisfactum est, te hisce suovitaurilibus piaculo.}}

:"Father Mars, if aught hath not pleased thee in the offering of those sucklings, I make atonement with these victims."

If only one or two of the omens expected after the three sacrifices failed to appear, the landowner was instructed to offer an additional swine, saying:

:{{lang|la|Mars pater, quod tibi illoc porco neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo.}}

:"Father Mars, inasmuch as thou wast not pleased by the offering of that pig, I make atonement with this pig."

The nature of the expected omens is not given by Cato. The omens, however, were likely determined by the art of haruspicy, the examination of the entrails, and especially the livers, of sacrificed animals for divinatory signs.

File:010 Conrad Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, Tafel X.jpg|220x220px]]

Some religious rites similar to the Roman suovetaurilia were practiced by a few other Indo-European peoples, from Iberia to India. The Cabeço das Fráguas inscript (found in Portugal) describes a threefold sacrifice practiced by the Lusitanians, devoting a sheep, a pig and a bull to what may have been local gods.{{cite journal|author=Blanca María Prósper|year=1999|title=The inscription of Cabeço das Fraguas revisited. Lusitanian and Alteuropäisch populations in the west of the Iberian Peninsula|doi=10.1111/1467-968X.00047|journal=Transactions of the Philological Society|pages=151–184|volume=97|issue=2}} In the Indian Sautramani, a ram, a bull and a goat were sacrificed to Indra Sutraman; in Iran ten thousand sheep, a thousand cattle and a hundred stallions were dedicated to Ardvi Sura Anahita. Similar to the above rituals is the Greek {{transliteration|grc|trittoíai}}, the oldest known being described in the Odyssey and dedicated to Poseidon. The philosopher and historian Plutarch related in the Lives Of The Noble Greeks And Romans a story from the life of Pyrrhus about the sacrifice of a ram, a pig and a bull. The Umbrian Iguvine Tables also describe a sacrificial ritual related to the aforementioned rites.

• Glossary of Roman religion

{{reflist}}

• Watkins, Calvert. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford, 2001) {{ISBN|0-19-514413-9}}

• [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/I*.html Cato the Elder: On Agriculture] (from Lacus Curtius)

Category:Roman animal sacrifice

Category:Mars (mythology)

Category:Cattle in religion

Category:Pigs

Category:Sheep