Dea Dia

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DEA DIA

DEA DIA . The worship of the Roman goddess Dea Dia was in the hands of a priesthood of twelve, the fratres arvales (Arval brethren), and she possessed a shrine in a grove outside Rome at the fifth (or sixth, depending on the period) milestone on the Via Campana, in the modern suburb of La Magliana. The deity, her cult, and her priesthood supposedly date back to very early in Roman history, but they underwent a major renovation by Augustus (r. 27 bce–14 ce). From the previous period, we only know of the existence of the arvales and of a public sacrifice, mentioned by Varro (De lingua latina 5, 74). The site itself bears testimony of cultic occupation since at least the third century bce. But it is impossible to be sure whether these items belonged to Dea Dia or to Fors Fortuna, who possessed a temple on the same spot.

After Augustus's reform the priesthood consisted of twelve members chosen by cooptation from the most distinguished families. The reigning emperor was always a member. The reorganization was one element in Augustus's policy of directing enthusiasm for his person and policies into traditional religious channels. Under the empire the Arval brethren offered sacrifices not only to Dea Dia but to a wide variety of divinities to secure the health and prosperity of the emperor and his family. Along with sometimes lengthy descriptions of the rituals celebrated in the grove of Dea Dia, and of other sacrifices of the brotherhood in Rome, the records of the Arval brethren were inscribed on marble, and numerous fragments have been preserved. These records, extending from 21 bce to 241 ce, are a major source for traditional Roman religion in the imperial age. The cult and its priesthood are documented as late as 304 ce.

Dea Dia, who was the owner of the lucus fratrum arvalium and the main addressee of the cult celebrated by the Arval brethren, is only known by the proceedings of this brotherhood. Thus, there has been much speculation about her identity. During the nineteenth century, when scholars tended to assimilate gods, Wilhelm Henzen (1874, p. ix) saw her as a goddess similar to Ceres, if not Ceres herself. In the Römische Mythologie (1831) of Ludwig Preller and Heinrich Jordan, Dea Dia was supposed to embody certain aspects of the numen otherwise venerated under the names of Ceres, Tellus, and perhaps Ops or Acca Larentia (see also Fowler, 1911, p. 435; Wissowa, 1912, p. 195). One also finds assimilations to Diana, Hebe, and the Mother of the Gods. In short, Dea Dia was supposed to be an indigitation (the assimilation of minor deities to one major god or goddess) of Ceres or another goddess linked to agriculture.

In a similar vein, Ida Paladino has tried to present Dea Dia as a minor paredros of Fors Fortuna. Paladino thinks that, with the Lares, also present in the lucus of the Arvals, and Diana (whose name relies on the same etymon), Fors Fortuna shared a marginal position, as well as a link to Servius Tullius and the plebs. When Augustus reformed this cult, he preferred, according to Paladino, the less plebeian goddess Dea Dia. According to an isolated inscription from Amiternum (CIL I, 2d ed., 1846), Dea Dia herself could be of Sabine origin.

As Henri Le Bonniec (1958, p. 202) has shown, Dea Dia cannot possibly be taken as another form of Ceres because the ritual of the Arval brethren, which is the best known in ancient Rome, forbids this assimilation. Moreover, the Arval proceedings never mention Ceres (the hypothesis of Kurt Latte that her "real" name was secret and taboo is not convincing). And generally speaking, the trend of indigitation, as surmised by Greek and Roman antiquarians and grammarians, has been denied pertinence in religious history (Le Bonniec, 1958, p. 203). Accordingly Ileana Chirassi-Colombo and Robert Schilling have reconsidered the problem. Both start with the name of the goddess, from dius (luminous) and diuum (sky), and consider her as the goddess of the sky (Chirassi, 1968) or of the beneficial light necessary to agriculture (Schilling, 1969; Franz Altheim [1931] links her, unconvincingly, to the moon). Chirassi considers this Dia as an archaic paredros of Jupiter, or Dius, with whom she is supposed to have formed a couple representing the sky and the earth.

Referring to the cultic evidence, Schilling shows that the name Dea Dia is an emphatic doublet, meaning literally, "the celestial goddess." According to the Arval proceedings, Dea Dia performed her divine function between the periods of sowing and harvesting and was thus the good light of heaven that brought the crops from germination to maturation. This is evident in both the date and the ritual of her festival. Her feast was always held in May, about a month before the beginning of the harvest in central Italy. Its exact date was announced in January, on the 7th or the 11th. The ritual at her festival employed, among other offerings (a lamb, meatballs, sweet wine, and pastries), green ears from the current crop, together with dried ears of grain from the previous year's crop. The other gods and goddesses mentioned in her lucus are to be considered her assistants or her guests; the precise link to her neighbor Fors Fortuna is not known. The temple and the grove of Dea Dia could have been built at La Magliana only after Augustus's reform, which could have so monumentalized an aristocratic ritual.

Bibliography

The records of the Arval Brothers are available in Acta Fratrum Arvalium, edited by Wilhelm Henzen (Berlin, 1874, also CIL VI, 2023–2119; 32338–32398), and in Commentarii fratrum arvalium qui supersunt: Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 av.-304 ap. J.-C.), edited with a French translation by John Scheid (Rome, 1998). Some of the records can be found in translation in Frederick C. Grant's Ancient Roman Religion (New York, 1957), pp. 233–238, and in Roman Civilization, vol. 2, edited by Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold (New York, 1955), pp. 254–257.

A survey and study of the problems posed by the character and cult of Dea Dia is offered by John Scheid in Romulus et ses frères: Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (Rome, 1990). For details see Wilhelm Henzen, Acta fratrum Arvalium quae supersunt (Berlin, 1874); Ludwig Preller and Heinrich Jordan, Römische Mythologie, 3d ed. (Berlin, 1881), vol. 2, p. 26; William W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1911); Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2d ed. (Munich, 1912); Franz Altheim, Terra mater: Untersuchungen zur altitalischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1931); Henri Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome: Des origines à la fin de la République (Paris, 1958); Ileana Chirassi, "Dea Dia e Fratres Arvales," Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 39 (1968): 191–291; Robert Schilling, "Dea Dia dans la liturgie des frères Arv ales," in Hommages à Marcel Renard, edited by Jacqueline Bibauw (Brussels, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 675–679; and Ida Paladino, Fratres Arvales: Storia di un collegio sacerdotale romano (Rome, 1988).