Masked revelry, the quaffing of large amounts of wine and the sound of flutes … this cavalcade would pass through the streets of Rome every 13th June, even crossing the forum itself. As we will show later on, a connection can be established between this celebration (the Quinquatrus minusculae) and the statue of Marsyas, the acolyte of Dionysus, which stood in the forum and was associated with freedom, wine and charivari. In turn, this connection will open the way for a new interpretation of the multiple meanings of the feast and the satyr in the highly charged political atmosphere of Late Republican Rome. The main aim of this study will be to show, in the third part of this article, how populares politicians tried to exploit the opportunities presented to them by religious festivities and ludi to draw more of the public into their contiones or to obtain a favourable verdict in a political trial.
1. THE QVINQVATRVS MINVSCVLAE
Today we have very little information about the Quinquatrus minusculae. They do not appear in any of the fasti that are still preserved, although we do know that they were held on the Ides of June, when a procession of tibicines, after eating in the temple of Jupiter, wove its way through the streets until reaching the temple of Minerva on the Aventine Hill.Footnote 2 However, a number of stories reported by Ovid, Plutarch, Livy and Valerius Maximus have survived that describe the origins of the festival. The longest of these is by Ovid (Fast. 6.649–710), which contains all of the elements of an entertaining folk tale. As the goddess Minerva tells the poet, the art of the tibia had fallen into disrepute in Rome, and an aedilis limited the number of flautists who could accompany a funerary procession to ten. The tibicines were exiled to Tibur, as a result of which flutes were no longer heard at sacrifices or funerals (Ov. Fast. 6.661–6):
Subsequently, a freedman prepared a trap to bring them back from Tibur to Rome. They were invited to a banquet in the countryside, where they were plied with drink; then an envoy rushed in, warning them that the freedman's patron was about to arrive (Ov. Fast. 6.669–76):
There is no explanation for the alarm, nor of why the banquet would infuriate the patron. The tibicines quickly boarded a carriage, believing that they were returning to Tivoli, but they were actually taken back to Rome. There, someone, in order to fool the Senate, ordered them to cover their faces with masks and their bodies with long robes, so that women could join the procession.Footnote 4 The plan worked—we can presume that the limit which had provoked their exile had been lifted—which is why on the Ides of June the flautists travelled through the city playing their instruments in the midst of great revelry and merriment, in the age-old manner (two words relevant for our discussion, which present textual problems which will be discussed, are italicized; we present the relevant apparatus criticus for these two words, as in the Teubner edition, for the convenience of the reader) (Ov. Fast. 6.683–90):
Minerva concludes the story by explaining that the Quinquatrus derives its name from her own festival of the same name held in March, and that she was responsible for inventing the flute (the tibia), although she then abandoned it, only for it to be found by a satyr who dared to challenge Apollo himself, paying a terrible price for his audacity.
There are flaws and inconsistencies in this tale that cannot be explained away simply by lacunae and other doubts about the manuscript.Footnote 5 All the same, I believe that more clarification can be gleaned from Ovid's tale by a careful reading of one important aspect, which has been misinterpreted. In general, it is thought that the flautists left the city voluntarily, having been angered by the limitations imposed on them that made it difficult for them to make a living in the same way as before, when dulcis erat mercede labor (Fast. 6.661). Ovid is not especially clear on this point (there may be a gap after line 662, as has been thought since S.V. Pighi),Footnote 6 although he does make it clear that they lost their Roman citizenship as a consequence of their exile. With some bitterness, suggesting that the verse was added after the poet's own exile, he writes: exilium quodam tempore Tibur erat (Fast. 6.666).Footnote 7 The flautists had not only abandoned Rome but also settled permanently in another city: Tibur. This meant that they had changed their citizenship: exilio mutant Vrbem (Fast. 6.665), an expression equivalent to the mutare solum or the mutare ciuitatem of Cicero (Parad. 31; Balb. 27). In the Pro Balbo, Cicero then indicates (Balb. 29) the three reasons why this change of citizenship could occur, with the first being exile: siue exsilio siue postliminio siue reiectione huius ciuitatis. On the basis that no Roman citizen could belong to two cities, acceptance by another city would mean the loss of Roman citizenship (Balb. 28). It is clear that the tibicines had no intention to return to Rome, so it is likely that they had taken permanent residence (if not citizenship) in Tibur. This would have meant the automatic loss of their previous Roman citizenship.Footnote 8 If they had still been citizens, the Senate or a magistrate could have simply forced them to return to Rome.
As we have seen, in Ovid's version, the tibicines could not return to Rome. There has been some controversy regarding whether an exile could recover their Roman citizenship after returning home, when an aquae et igni interdictio has not been declared against them (the so-called postliminium in pace). Crifò thinks it is likely that they could, but Maffi points out that there is no suggestion of this in our sources, while Kelly holds that the returning exile could attempt to regain his Roman citizenship by postliminium ‘after the legal issues of his trial had faded from memory’.Footnote 9 This is not the right place to discuss the technicalities of this issue, although I believe that Maffi's case for rejecting the postliminium in pace is solid. We could go even further if we consider that, by living in Tibur, the flute-players probably missed the Roman census. As incensi there was a real danger of them being seized and sold as slaves, which explains why they put on disguises when they returned, in order to fool the Senate (… ut posset specie numeroque senatum | fallere, Fast. 6.685–6): they were no longer citizens but exiles, nor could they remain in Rome, and so they covered their faces with masks so that no one could see that they had returned.
This discussion on the legal technicalities underlying Ovid's text aims to draw attention to a very important point: Ovid describes the return of the flute-players as a subversive act. In his version, there is no mention of the Senate's willingness to bring them back. They are fooling the Senate, and their masquerade achieves its purpose, as they are allowed to return to Rome. Ovid thus offers an aetiology of a carnivalesque feast, where the most exalted authorities and their commands are no longer respected, an occasion more in keeping with the irreverent figure of Marsyas than with the severe Minerva.
As we will see later on, other versions of this tale focus on the fact that the flautists did not want to return; only Ovid states that they could not return, as they were exiles. If we wish to find a hint of his personal experience here, we have to go beyond the addition of a single verse (Fast. 6.666), as the whole of the scene with the masks is constructed around the flautists’ need to be concealed and go unnoticed. However, there is no need to suppose that the whole of this part of Book 6 was written after Ovid had to abandon Rome for Tomi. It was well known that Tibur had been a traditional place of exile (Polyb. 6.14.8; Livy 43.2.10), and the poet had sufficient knowledge of the law to understand the implications of a change of citizenship, without having done so himself. He had a solid training in rhetoric (Sen. Contr. 2.2.8) and had held two posts in the vigintivirate as a triumvir (Ov. Tr. 4.10.34: it is unclear whether as a monetalis or a capitalis) and as decemuir stlitibus iudicandis (Fast. 4.384). As Ovid knew only too well, after his own bitter experience in Tomi, exilium was a very strong word in his times: quippe relegatus, non exul dicor (Tr. 2.137; cf. 5.11.21–2). As a relegatus and not an exile, he still was a Roman citizen (Tr. 5.11.9, 5.11.15):
Plutarch's version (Quaest. Rom. 55 = Mor. 277E–278B), despite generally coinciding with Ovid's, does have some significant differences. He situates the festival on the Ides of January, not in June, an obvious error, and also explains the grievance in a different way: the flautists lost the honours they had been granted by Numa Pompilius, owing to a decision of the ‘decemvirate with proconsular power’. The rest of the tale is similar, with the freedman appearing and preparing a deceptive banquet. But whereas for Ovid the point of the scheme was first to cheat the flautists by way of the banquet and then, with the dresses and the masks, to cheat the Senate, according to Plutarch, the intention was only to fool the flautists themselves, who did not want to return to Rome. They were only wearing women's clothes because they had not changed after the banquet was abruptly interrupted.
The third version of this popular tale is by Livy (9.30.5–10), with whom a fourth author—Valerius Maximus—coincides (2.5.4), albeit in a slightly shorter form. Livy situates the episode at a precise date, during the consulate of C. Iunius Bubulcus and Q. Aemilius Barbula (311 b.c.), a different date to that of Plutarch, whose reference to the ‘decemvirate with proconsular power’ refers in all likelihood to the decemvirate of 451–450 b.c. However, Plutarch probably confused Appius Claudius Caecus, the censor from 312 b.c., with the member of the decemvirate responsible for the Twelve Tables with the same name. If we leave this confusion apart, Plutarch's text coincides with the text of the anonymous De uiris illustribus in stating that Appius Claudius, when he held the post of censor, revoked the right of the tibicines to play their instruments and hold banquets in public.Footnote 10 Livy's tale follows the same lines: he says that around 311 b.c. a previous censor (whom we can presume to be Appius Claudius)Footnote 11 prohibited the flautists from holding their traditional banquet in the temple of Jupiter.Footnote 12 As they had been exiled and had become citizens of Tibur, the Roman Senate could not force them to return.Footnote 13 And so they had to turn to trickery, a point on which Livy coincides with Plutarch, although there are no freedmen in his version: instead, the people of Tibur themselves get the flautists drunk and trick them into returning to Rome, where they are once again granted the right to eat in the temple of Jupiter and are allowed to parade through the streets each year, accompanied by music and singing.
And so we have several versions of a folk tale with numerous intermingled and conflicting details.Footnote 14 Plutarch and Ovid (but not Livy or Valerius Maximus) put a freedman at the heart of the deception that led to the flautists returning to Rome. Livy and Valerius Maximus attribute their annoyance to the fact that they were prohibited from holding a solemn banquet in the temple of Jupiter, while Ovid states that this was essentially due to the limitation affecting the number of flautists who could attend funeral ceremonies. Plutarch is less precise, as he only refers to a number of privileges granted to them by Numa Pompilius, which were then revoked. According to Livy, a censor took this measure, while Ovid states that it was an aedile and Plutarch attributes it to the ‘decemvirates with proconsular power’, although it is likely that this is due to a mistake on his part.
Despite having gone unnoticed by modern authors, the presence of a freedman as the protagonist of part of the story warrants closer attention. Ovid insists on this point, first indicating that he was a man of certain dignity, who had already been a freedman for many years (Fast. 6.669–70), and noting that he had been manumitted by the ritual of the uindicta (Fast. 6.676), which may imply that this was considered a more honourable form of manumission than testamento. Footnote 15 There may well even be a third reference to him, hidden in verse 685, where the edition of E.H. Alton, D.E.W. Wormell and E. Courtney says Plautius, according to Pighi's conjecture, in reference to the colleague of Appius Claudius who held the post of censor, C. Plautius Venox:Footnote 16 Plautius, ut posset specie numeroque senatum | fallere, personis imperat ora tegi … . However, this is not supported by the manuscripts, where we can only see Claudius or callidus. The first option is tempting but should be rejected, because, if Claudius had been responsible for the flautists’ departure, then Ovid could not present him as their defender. We are left with callidus, which has been defended by A. Fusi: in his opinion, callidus would have referred to the freedman who had offered the banquet, and who now, with great cunning, ordered them to cover their faces with masks.Footnote 17 This would mean that the freedman would have had to accompany them on the journey from Tibur to Rome.
I believe there are two different justifications for the presence of the anonymous freedman.Footnote 18 The first is connected with the fact that the tibicines were often freedmen, as we know from inscriptions,Footnote 19 so it would be easy to understand, from the poet's point of view, that it was someone ‘like them’—someone of their same condition and whom they could trust—who had lured them into the trap. The second reason is more important and more complex. Livy, the anonymous author of De uiris illustribus and, in all likelihood, Plutarch (if we consider that the reference to the decemvirate is a mistake) associated the episode with the turbulent period during which Appius Claudius was censor, in 312 b.c. Ovid is less precise on this point, although it is tempting to think that the aedilis he refers to in Fast. 6.663 is the famous Cn. Flavius, independently from the reading of verse 685 (Claudius or otherwise callidus).Footnote 20 Although the information we have available is clearly insufficient, one of the measures he took as censor, and which caused scandal amongst the aristocracy, was to allow the children (or grandchildren) of libertini to hold posts in the Senate.Footnote 21 The story about the origin of the Quinquatrus, by attributing an important role to a freedman, also served to justify this controversial step taken by the censor, which favoured a group who had shown their usefulness for the ciuitas by succeeding in making the tibicines return to Rome. Ovid's freedman has all of the features of a ‘cultural hero’ who performs a great service to his community, with cunning (callidus), all the while being driven by nothing more than altruism, which differentiates him from the ‘trickster’, who seeks his own profit.Footnote 22 He should be included in the same list of freedmen such as Vindicius, who discovered the conspiracy hatched by a group of young aristocrats who sought the return of Tarquinius and the monarchy to Rome, or Fecenia Hispala, who alerted the authorities to what was happening during the Bacchanalia.Footnote 23 Tibicines were absolutely essential for several aspects of Roman religion. Ovid highlights three: ludi, altars and funerals.Footnote 24 We know the crucial role they played in Roman comedy (ludi scaenici), as no instrument other than the tibia was ever used to accompany theatrical performances in the times of Plautus and Terence.Footnote 25 Even though the story may seem unimportant, and Livy explicitly states that he only tells it because of its religious implications, this anonymous freedman contrived to provide a very important service to Rome.Footnote 26
As we have seen, Ovid concludes his tale by explaining that Minerva invented the tibia (Fast. 6.697–8). Other versions attribute it to Hyagnis, the father of Marsyas (Apul. Flor. 3).Footnote 27 Indeed, the relationship between Minerva and the flute or tibia is quite weak, and both Wissowa and Bömer have questioned the link between the Quinquatrus of June and the festival of the goddess in March.Footnote 28 A festival in which masked drunken flautists gallivant through the streets of Rome brings to mind the satyr to whom Ovid refers at the end of his tale, the old Marsyas who amazed the nymphs with the sounds he made with his tibia; even the idea of dressing as women is closer to Dionysus and his acolyte. The festival was undoubtedly dedicated to Minerva, although the old satyr probably played a relevant role in the proceedings. Only Ovid mentions Marsyas, although one of the Saturae Menippeae of Varro, entitled Quinquatrus, briefly refers to Liber Pater and the garlanded Bromia (fr. 443 Astbury). Here the context is the satire of bad doctors, and although Varro is probably referring to the Quinquatrus of March, there is nothing in the few remaining fragments to confirm this.Footnote 29
Lastly, a bust uncovered in the Villa dei Papiri at Ercolano has been identified as Tespis, the talented aulētēs at the court of Ptolomy I Sotēr. The inscription (now lost) with his (fragmented) name included an enigmatic ‘Q’ which has been interpreted as referring to the Quinquatrus minusculae. Footnote 30 This is very unlikely, and would not add much to our knowledge of the feast, while leaving unexplained why a Roman festival was mentioned in Herculaneum.
2. MARSYAS
We know that a statue of Marsyas stood in the forum in Rome, possibly in the western part of the Comitium, showing the satyr with one arm raised, a wineskin on his back and with broken shackles on his ankles. No trace of the statue remains, although there is a damaged image in the anaglypha Traiani and another on a coin issued by L. Marcius Censorinus.Footnote 31 On this coin we can see what may be a statue of Minerva behind the statue of Marsyas;Footnote 32 if this is so, it would mean that both of them appeared together in the forum, in the same way, according to our hypothesis, that both of them were involved in the Quinquatrus minusculae, but this interpretation is far from certain, and it could be Victoria, instead of Minerva.Footnote 33 The coin also highlights another obvious relationship, between Apollo (shown on the front) and Marsyas (on the back), expressed in the association known since the end of the second century b.c. (seen on the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus) that was also usual in the time of Cicero between the tibia—the instrument of Marsyas—and the lyre—the instrument of Apollo—in the same ceremony.Footnote 34
We have another controversial piece of evidence regarding this statue in the forum: an image of it possibly appears on a coin of Censorinus from a date that must have been prior to the return of Sulla in 82 b.c. Although it is likely that there was an intentional play on words with the name of the monetalis (Marcius–Marsyas), it has also been suggested that the image of Marsyas on the coin was intended to be Marianist and was therefore popularis,Footnote 35 since L. Marcius Censorinus was probably the brother of the well-known follower of C. Marius, C. Marcius Censorinus, beheaded on Sulla's orders after the battle of Porta Collina in November of 82 b.c.Footnote 36 The connection is tenuous, as we do not know if this Censorinus (as opposed to his brother) was also on Marius’ side. In turn, I consider that the fact that Apollo is shown on the front of the coin is a direct reference to the mythical tale of the confrontation between the satyr and the god, and that therefore Marsyas is shown not paranomastically but in his own right. In particular, I think that the coin attempted to materialize the support of the populares towards the integration of the new citizens in the tribes at a time when the consequences of the bellum Marsicum were still apparent. As early as the middle of the second century b.c., the analyst Cn. Gellius noted that Marsyas was the mythical ancestor of the Marsi.Footnote 37 The Marsyas who was the symbol of libertas–ciuitas would have also defended the full integration of the Marsi as Roman citizens at a time when there were well-grounded fears that Sulla would repeal at least some of the citizenship grants when he returned from the East.Footnote 38
There are other statues that are similar to the statue of Marsyas in Rome, found in other Italian cities such as Paestum. This is the best preserved, and is barely one metre high; it would have originally had one of its arms raised, and perhaps also a wineskin on its back, although we cannot be sure of this.Footnote 39 We also know of an arm from a statue in Alba Fucens, a mutilated figure of dubious origin from Velia, and a pedestal found in Bovianum, amongst other fragments.Footnote 40
There are several elements of this iconographic element, normally known as ‘Marsyas in the forum’, that are not easy to explain. Jocelyn Penny Small considers the gesture of the raised hand as something typically prophetic (Serv. on Aen. 3.359: Marsyas taught the Italics the art of soothsaying), specifically associated with the ceremony of exauguratio.Footnote 41 In fact, there are no clear parallels, and it is more likely that the gesture is connected with the link between Marsyas and libertas. According to Servius (on Aen. 4.58), the statue of Marsyas stood in the ciuitates liberae and the raised hand meant that the city in question did not lack anything and was ‘complete’. In itself, Servius’ statement associating Marsyas with the ciuitates liberae is incorrect, although it has given rise to a wide range of interpretations, which consider that the statue of the satyr expressed the legal status of the city, as something typical of the colonies, or otherwise of the cities outside of Italy with ius Italicum. Footnote 42 Coarelli has proposed a slightly different and highly suggestive explanation: he considers that the shackles on Marsyas’ feet are a reference to the abolition of slavery for debts, the nexum, which occurred at the end of the fourth century b.c., just before the time when he believes that the statue was erected.Footnote 43 Basso has criticized Coarelli's interpretation, as we cannot date the statues—even the best-preserved example in Paestum—and it is not clear that the objects on the statue's feet are shackles: the satyr is wearing shoes and is not barefoot as would be expected of a slave, and there are no signs of the chain that would be attached to them, even if it were broken. Basso uses a text by Isidore of Seville that associates Marsyas with the Marsi, leading him to suggest that the statue is associated with the so-called ‘Social War’ as a sign of the civil liberty achieved by the Italic cities.Footnote 44 In turn, Mastrocinque notes that the shackles are not connected with chains because Marsyas symbolized freedom instead of slavery, and the statue from Paestum reflects the city's freedom as a result of having been transformed from a praefectura (which depended on Rome) into a municipium. Footnote 45 Recently, in a highly evocative article, V. Arena rejected the link between Marsyas and libertas, considering it to be a ‘scholarly myth’: in its effort to unveil the meaning of Virgil's text, the Servian commentary interprets Liber incorrectly, associating it with the idea of libertas from a Neoplatonic perspective, identifying it with the Sun, as being self-sufficient: the Sun is the One, which is free because it does not lack anything.Footnote 46 Arena is surely right in reading the commentators of Virgil from their Neoplatonic context; this would explain the mysterious reference made by Servius Danielis (4.58), according to which the god, by raising his arm, indicates that the city is complete and does not lack anything. However, the fact that Servius gives the idea of libertas a meaning that is closer to that of his own time does not imply, in my opinion, that he was wrong in associating Marsyas with libertas. In other words, what Servius understood by libertas probably meant something different to what it had meant several centuries before, when the statue was first made and put in place in the Roman forum.
The gesture of the raised arm may indicate that Marsyas is well aware of his own hybris towards Apollo: it expresses fear for the dreadful punishment the god is about to inflict upon him.Footnote 47 Interestingly, D. Miano has interpreted the gesture as a reference to the prouocatio ad populum as seen on the coin of P. Porcius Laeca, with a raised arm and the legend PROVOCO.Footnote 48 This means that, notwithstanding the meaning the statue may have had when it was first erected (the abolishing of the nexum, as suggested by Coarelli), it could easily be interpreted in a popularis way. We must be prepared to admit that the statue could be interpreted in different ways throughout history, from the initial connection with the Struggle of the Orders through the popularis version of libertas and the link with imperial benefactions in the second century a.d., as portrayed in the anaglypha Traiani, to the Neoplatonic interpretation in Late Antiquity.Footnote 49 As Santangelo has recently and quite correctly noted: ‘the story of the statue of Marsyas is one of constant renewal, of meanings that were lost, retrieved, or invented from scratch, both in Rome and far away from Rome.’Footnote 50
In our case, the line that we are following associates Marsyas with libertas, wine and Dionysus. We know that at least around the second century b.c. the statue of Marsyas in Rome had a wreath of flowers on its head (Plin. HN 21.8) and not a pilleus, a symbol of freedom, as some authors have believed, based on the coin of Censorinus,Footnote 51 and similar to that worn by diners at a banquet. The statue also sometimes appears associated with night-time scenes of wine and sex (Sen. Ben. 6.32.1 and Plin. HN 21.6), which inevitably leads us to consider once again the deceptive banquet of the tibicines and the Quinquatrus minusculae. As regards the question of wine, Marsyas was in tutela Liberi patris (Serv. on Aen. 3.20). Charax of Pergamon insists on this point: according to him, it was the followers of Silenus that Dionysus left in Italy who taught its inhabitants to cultivate vines, and for this reason they erected statues in their cities of an old man similar in appearance to Silenus, carrying wine in wineskins.Footnote 52 Indeed, the Marsyas in the forum had a wineskin on his back, as can be seen on the coin of Censorinus and in the anaglypha Traiani. Although this piece of information has gone unnoticed, the satyr with a wineskin over his shoulder and a garland of flowers on his head had already appeared in the Praenestine cistae between the fifth and the fourth centuries b.c., one of which is accompanied by the inscription Silenos.Footnote 53 At the start of the first century b.c., L. Pomponius wrote a work entitled Marsyas, although unfortunately we do not know anything about its contents.Footnote 54 It may well have been a satirical drama, probably interspersed with mime and comedy, whose existence in Rome has been defended by P. Wiseman.Footnote 55
Could we suggest an iconography, which could be called Marsyas cum utriculo, inspired by the satirical dramas, the cistae, mimes and the Atellanae? We find him once again in the time of Nero, against the backdrop of a revealing scene that took place during the famous banquet of the freedman Trimalchio. The guests are presented with a tray with a figure of Marsyas in each of its four corners, each with a wineskin to dispense garum (Petron. Sat. 36.3). The next dish is an aper pilleatus, accompanied by a young man decked out in grapes and ivy, who says he is Bromius, Lyaeus and Euhius, and whose name is Dionysus (41.4–8). Trimalchio frees him—as a result of which he can boast to have a Liber Pater—and Dionysus covers his head with the pilleus carried by the boar. Here we will not analyse this complex series of references to slavery, liberty and manumission,Footnote 56 instead simply noting that the Marsyas cum utriculo forms part of this allegory of freedom, owing to his condition as an acolyte of Liber Pater. It is likely that this is an association that goes back a long time. While Liber was originally a god of wine and of the power of plant life, from the third century onwards he began to be identified with Zeus Eleutherios and therefore to be considered as the god of freedom.Footnote 57 This freedom, as indicated by Servius (on Aen. 4.58), is that of the community, of civic freedom, which in Rome in the first century b.c. is defined, ‘conceptually, as a status of non-slavery’.Footnote 58
3. CARNIVAL AND POLITICS
The festival of the Quinquatrus minusculae, on the Ides of June, even if the tibicines were undoubtedly the protagonists, was offered in benefit of the entire population.Footnote 59 The flautists visited different neighbourhoods of the city (tibicines tum feriati uagantur per Vrbem [Varro, Lat. 6.17]), drawing attention to themselves through their music and attire (masks and women's clothing). From Valerius Maximus (2.5.4) we know that they travelled through the forum, surprising those that were there going about their daily business, as they headed towards the temple of Minerva on the Aventine Hill. Livy (9.30.10) says that the festival lasted three days, which means that there were other ceremonies apart from the procession and the ritual feast in the Capitol. This fits in well with what Censorinus says (De die nat. 12.2) about the fact that the tibicines were allowed to organize public ludi, possibly quite similar to the ludi Compitales. There are also similarities in terms of the undoubtedly carnivalesque nature of both festivals. In the Compitalia the slaves were granted certain liberties, being considered as freedmen for one day (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.14 and Gell. NA 16.9.1–5). The people in charge of organizing these ludi (the magistri uici), who were often freedmen like the tibicines, were granted extraordinary authority on the day of the festival, as they wore the toga praetexta typically worn by magistrates, and were accompanied by lictors.Footnote 60 During the Compitalia, apart from processions and sacrifices, there were performances by mimes who lampooned political issues of the time. We know that on at least two occasions the Compitalia were used by populares politicians to promote their legal initiatives: in 67 b.c. by C. Manilius and in 58 b.c. by P. Clodius.Footnote 61 As regards the Quinquatrus minusculae, in addition to the masks and the female attire, there were also the festive songs (uerba iocosa) which, according to Ovid, characterized the festival (Fast. 6.692). Laughter, as indicated by M. Bakhtin, is one of the decisive elements of carnivals, which not only provide entertainment but also offer an alternative view of the world.Footnote 62
Cicero refers to a popular festival (the Quinquatrus of March) coinciding with the tumultuous contiones of the populares politicians in a letter written around 25 June 50 b.c. from Cilicia (Fam. 2.12 = 95 SB): sollicitus equidem eram de rebus urbanis. ita tumultuosae contiones, ita molestae Quinquatrus adferebantur. These tumultuosae contiones are generally interpreted as referring to violent speeches by the mercurial Curio.Footnote 63 He was furious because he had not obtained the intercalary month he needed—it should have been added at the end of February, after the Terminalia—in order to implement his ambitious program of new legislation.Footnote 64 His program from that moment onwards was overtly popularis, comprising a lex uiaria (similar to the rogatio Rulla agraria) and a lex alimentaria (Cael. ap. Cic. Fam. 8.6.5 [88 SB, February 50]).
We can imagine that the scene in the Quinquatrus of June must have been quite similar; joyous processions of drunken freedmen singing the praises of Minerva and Marsyas to the sound of tibia through the streets of Rome, coinciding with the furious contiones of the populares politicians stirring up the rabble. What better occasion could there be than a festival for questioning the arbitrary authority of those in power? Inevitably, this opposition to unjust and arbitrary rule allowed the hidden transcripts of the oppressed to leak through the barrier of conventions and respect that kept them unexpressed.Footnote 65 The statue of Marsyas surely reminded the street-goers of the connections between this merrymaking and plebeian libertas.
In the same sentence, Cicero connects contiones to a public feast, apparently saying that the Quinquatrus were molestae precisely because of the tumultuosae contiones. In recent years, much research has been carried out on the subject of contiones, but, to my knowledge, no one has explored the connection between them and the official festivities.Footnote 66 We know that they could be held on any day of the year, except in the case of the contiones linked to comitia, as these were restricted to dies comitiales. Footnote 67 What Cicero's sentence may suggest is that certain politicians singled out public feasts as being especially suitable for violent discourses (tumultuosae contiones). It is true that sometimes they simply could not choose the moment, as the urgency of a recent event forced them to speak to the people without any delay. A clear example is the contio of 18 January 52 b.c. over the dead body of Publius Clodius, who had been murdered the day before on the Appian Way (Asc. Mil. p. 49 C). Obviously enough, in this case, the tribunes of the plebs could not wait for the nearest feriae publicae to hold the contio. Even so, when they were free to choose the moment, it seems that the populares seized the opportunity to take advantage of a public festival, when it was easier for crowds to gather around speakers, and perhaps show more interest in what they had to say. The evidence is scarce, for we rarely know the exact day when a contio was held,Footnote 68 but from amongst these few cases there are two coincidences. The first was on 25 July 59 b.c., when a plebeian tribune invited Pompey to speak in front of a contio so that he could complain about the edicts Bibulus had published, furiously attacking him. 25 July was the feast of Furrinalia, particularly significant for the populares, as C. Gracchus had been killed precisely in the vicinity of the goddess's sacred grove on the Janiculum.Footnote 69 It is unlikely to have been coincidence that the temple erected to Concordia in the forum by L. Opimius, who had been responsible for the death of C. Gracchus, was dedicated on 22 July.Footnote 70 By the end of the Republic, Furrina was nothing more than a name, even though the goddess had her own flamen, but a statue of Caius Gracchus was placed in her sacred grove, in memory of his tragic death.Footnote 71 In other words, the people who attended the contio probably knew nothing about the goddess, except that a public holiday was reserved for her cult, and that C. Gracchus had been killed in her sanctuary. Our second case in point is the contio in which Mark Antony furiously attacked Pompey on 21 December 50 b.c., revising the whole life of the adulescentulus carnifex. Footnote 72 This was the day of the Diualia, and the prospect of a civil war was looming large on the horizon. We only have a few references to the Diualia, which are of no particular significance to our present interests, but by the end of the Republic it had probably been subsumed by the festivities of the Saturnalia, with its carnival overtones.Footnote 73 We can see a parallel with the ceremony of the triumph, as 30 per cent of the triumphs (during the third and second centuries b.c.) were staged precisely on the Ides, Nones or Calends, as has been pointed out by Rüpke, who concludes: ‘here, clearly, individual strategies for optimizing the public turnout led to the choice of the day’.Footnote 74
Hölkeskamp, among others, has tried to reconstruct ‘a contional discourse of consensus and concord’.Footnote 75 In his view, contiones were designed to reaffirm the dominance of the aristocracy, and the obeisance of the commoners. This is hard to believe. As J. Tan has rightly pointed out: ‘the contio could indeed generate consensus between speaker and audience, but in doing so, it could also spark conflict elsewhere’.Footnote 76 There are so many cases of tumultuosae contiones that led to violence breaking out in the streets of Rome that it is not worth reviewing them, although there is one in particular that is of some interest to us: the well-orchestrated riot that erupted during the first session of the iudicium populi following the accusation de ui that Clodius (as soon as he was elected aedilis) had brought against Milo.Footnote 77 On 7 February, Pompey spoke for the defence, and thanks to the letter Cicero wrote to his brother, we know what happened when he stood up to deliver his speech in front of the crowd. Pompey's clique chanted obscene verses about the (presumed) incest of Clodius and his sister Clodia. From the other side, scathing jibes were aimed at Pompey's (presumed) effeminacy and homosexuality. Clodius had instructed his followers to shout Pompey's name when he asked them who was responsible for starving the plebs of Rome to death. After an hour, Clodian gangs started to spit on their opponents. Pushing and fighting followed, until Clodius himself was expelled from the rostra. Footnote 78 Two days later, the Senate declared this turmoil was contra rem publicam, while Clodius was preparing his people for the next session of the trial, to be held on 17 February, the day of the Quirinalia. As Nippel has rightly pointed out, some of the devices Clodius had deployed in his attack pertained to the tradition of the charivari.Footnote 79
Our last case in point is the trial against Caelius and, more specifically, the concluding session with Cicero's speech for the defence and the verdict of acquittal. All of this probably took place on 4 April. On the same day, the ludi scaenici which were part of the Megalesia were performed in front of the temple of Cybele on the Palatine.Footnote 80 Clodius, as aedilis curulis, was responsible for their organization. We do not know precisely what happened next, as we only have the biased account Cicero includes in his De haruspicum responso: on Clodius’ orders, gangs of ‘slaves’ who had turned up from all parts of the city invaded the scaena. Footnote 81 In all likelihood, those whom Cicero despised as slaves were different types of common people, with different personal status. What we are not told is why Clodius resorted to this violence and what were the objectives he had in mind by disturbing the ludi he himself had organized. We have no evidence whatsoever on this point, a gap modern authors have attempted to fill.Footnote 82 My view is that his intention was to influence the verdict on Caelius’ case, where Cicero spoke for the defence and Clodia (Clodius’ sister) was also involved, thereby making it a case of utmost relevance for him. This time the tactic did not pay off (Caelius was acquitted), although it did set a precedent: on 8 April 52 b.c., the penultimate day of Milo's trial, another tribune of the plebs, Munatius Plancus, invited the plebs to close all the shops and to gather in the forum the next day, when the verdict was to be proclaimed.Footnote 83 At the moment of casting their votes, the judges had to feel the pressure and know exactly what the people of Rome expected of them.
In theory, public feasts (feriae) were holidays;Footnote 84 if there were theatrical performances (ludi) or some other type of entertainment, people could be expected to pay more attention to the politicians on the rostra. Footnote 85 During the Liberalia (a feast with great civic meaning), country people would come to Rome to attend the ludi (rusticus ad ludos populus ueniebat in urbem, Ov. Fast. 3.783). It was perfectly popularis logic to hold the most violent contiones during public festivities, such as Diualia, Compitalia and Furrinalia; especially so, when ludi were performed and a carnival-like procession wound its way through the streets of Rome, as in the Quinquatrus minusculae.
