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32-505: Georg Wissowa , in his manual of the Roman religion, identified the structure as a triad on the grounds of the existence in Rome of the three flamines maiores , who carry out service to these three gods. He remarked that this triadic structure looks to be predominant in many sacred formulae which go back to the most ancient period and noted its pivotal role in determining the ordo sacerdotum ,

64-565: A chair at the University of Marburg (as professor extraordinarius ) where he was awarded a full professorship in 1890. In 1895 he relocated to Halle as a successor to Heinrich Keil . After suffering two severe strokes in 1923, he was retired in 1924. Georg Wissowa is remembered today for re-edition of Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft , an encyclopedia of classical studies initially started by August Friedrich Pauly (1796–1845) in 1837. Around 1890, Wissowa began

96-592: A distinction is implied in a few Roman passages, such as when Julius Caesar scornfully calls his soldiers quirites ("citizens") rather than milites ("soldiers"), the word quirites had by this time been dissociated from the god Quirinus, and it is likely that Quirinus initially had an even more militaristic aspect than Mars, but that over time Mars, in part through synthesis with the Greek god Ares , became more warlike, while Quirinus became more domestic in connotation. Resolving these inconsistencies and complications

128-536: A king in Hispania ), were not considered to have won the spolia opima. During the early years of the imperial regime, in 27 BC, M Licinius Crassus (grandson of the triumvir ) after victories in Macedonia requested a triumph and right to dedicate spolia opima due to his slaying of an enemy chieftain in hand-to-hand combat. Dedication rights were denied by Augustus. Crassus' illustrious political lineage made him

160-515: A potential rival to Augustus. While Crassus' triumph was granted, it was required to be a joint triumph with Augustus who may have argued he deserved it due to his also holding imperium in Macedonia. Nero Claudius Drusus , a Roman general of the first century BC and member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, sought out Germanic chieftains to face in single combat during his campaigns. Sources suggest that he eventually may have been able to take

192-535: Is difficult, chiefly because of the ambiguous and obscure nature of Quirinus' cult and worship; while Mars and Jupiter remained the most popular of all Roman gods, Quirinus was a more archaic and opaque deity, diminishing in importance over time. Georg Wissowa Georg Otto August Wissowa (17 June 1859 – 11 May 1931) was a German classical philologist born in Neudorf, near Breslau . Wissowa studied classical philology under August Reifferscheid at

224-602: The Carmen Arvale and in Cato's prayer as the guardian, the armed protector of the fields and the harvest. He is definitely not a deity of agricultural plenty and fertility. It is also noteworthy that according to tradition Romulus established the double role and duties, civil and military, of the Roman citizen . In this way the relationship between Mars and Quirinus became a dialectic one, since Romans would regularly pass from

256-643: The Robigalia , the Quirinalia that Dumezil identifies with the last day of the Fornacalia , also named stultorum feriae because on that day the people who had forgot to roast their spelt on the day prescribed by the curio maximus for their own curia were given a last chance to make amends, and the Larentalia held in memory of Larunda . These religious duties show Quirinus was a civil god related to

288-589: The Second Punic War , when Marcus Claudius Marcellus (consul 222 BC) galloped forward beyond his battle line and speared the Celtic warrior Viridomarus , a king of the Gaesatae , before stripping him of his armour on the battlefield. The ceremony of the spolia opima was a ritual of state religion that was supposed to emulate the archaic ceremonies carried out by the founder Romulus. The victor affixed

320-668: The University of Breslau from 1876 to 1880, then furthered his studies in Munich under Heinrich Brunn , a leading authority on Roman antiquities. Having obtained his habilitation at the University of Breslau in 1882, he received a travel scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute and went to Italy for a year. After that he taught as Privatdozent in Breslau from 1883 to 1886, when he accepted

352-422: The raja and the class of the brahmin priests represented the first function (and enjoyed the highest dignity), the warrior class of the kshatriya represented the second function and the artisan and merchant class of the vaishya the third. Similarly in Rome, Jupiter was the supreme ruler of the heavens and god of thunder, represented on earth by the rex , king (later the rex sacrorum ) and his substitute,

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384-564: The Flamen Dialis, the legal aspect of sovereignty being incarnated also by Dius Fidius , Mars was the god of military prowess and a war deity, represented by his flamen Martialis; and Quirinus the enigmatic god of the Roman populus ("people") organised in the curiae as a civilian and productive force, represented by the Flamen Quirinalis. Apart from the analysis of the texts already collected by Wissowa, Dumézil stressed

416-400: The agricultural cycle and somehow to the worship of Roman ancestry. In Dumézil's view, the figure of Quirinus became blurred and started to be connected to the military sphere because of the early assimilation to him of the divinised Romulus, the warring founder and first king of Rome. A coincident facilitating factor of this interpretation was the circumstance that Romulus carried with himself

448-509: The armour, arms, and other effects that an ancient Roman general stripped from the body of an opposing commander slain in single combat . The spolia opima were regarded as the most honourable of the several types of war trophies a commander could obtain, including enemy military standards and the peaks of warships. For the majority of the city's existence, the Romans recognized only three instances when spolia opima were taken. The precedent

480-557: The deity representing braveness and military prowess (connected and related to a class of warriors) and lastly a deity representing the common human worldly values of wealth, fertility, and pleasure (connected and related to a class of economic producers). According to the hypothesis, such a tripartite structure must have been common to all Indo-European peoples on accounts of its widespread traces in religion and myths from India to Scandinavia, and from Rome to Ireland. However it had disappeared from most societies since prehistoric times, with

512-420: The deity together in a covered carriage and officiated with their right hand wrapped up to the fingers in a piece of white cloth. The association with the deity that founded divine order (Fides is associated with Iupiter in his function of guardian of the supreme juridical order) underlines the mutual interconnections among them and of the gods they represented with the supreme heavenly order, whose arcane character

544-482: The earliest religious thought of the Romans, a reflection of the common Indoeuropean heritage. This grouping has been interpreted as a symbolic representation of early Roman society , wherein Jupiter, standing in for the ritual and augural authority of the Flamen Dialis (high priest of Jupiter) and the chief priestly colleges, represents the priestly class, Mars, with his warrior and agricultural functions, represents

576-422: The hierarchy of dignity of Roman priests: Rex Sacrorum , Flamen Dialis , Flamen Martialis , Flamen Quirinalis and Pontifex Maximus in order of decreasing dignity and importance. He remarked that since such an order no longer reflected the real influence and relationships of power among priests in the later times, it should have reflected a hierarchy of the earliest phase of Roman religion. Wissowa identified

608-412: The hypothesis that this triadic structure was a relic of a common Proto-Indo-European religion , based on a trifunctional ideology modeled on the division of that archaic society. The highest deity would thus be a heavenly sovereign endowed with religious, magic and legal powers and prerogatives (connected and related to the king and to priestly sacral lore in human society), followed in order of dignity by

640-405: The importance of the tripartite plan of the regia , the cultic centre of Rome and official residence of the rex. As recorded by sources and confirmed by archeological data it was devised to lodge the three major deities Iupiter, Mars, and Ops , the deity of agricultural plenty, in three separate rooms. The cult of Fides involved the three Flamines Maiores : they were carried to the sacellum of

672-421: The new edition, an ambitious project that he anticipated would take ten years to finish. However, it wouldn't be until the 1970s that the last of its 83 volumes was published. He was the author of a significant work on ancient Roman religion , titled Religion und Kultus der Römer (1902), which appeared also in a second revised edition (1912), a book in which he explored the development of Roman religion, and in

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704-451: The notable exception of India. In Vedic religion , the sovereign function was incarnated by Dyaus Pita and later appeared split into its two aspects of uncanny and awe-inspiring almighty power incarnated by Varuna and of source and guardian of justice and compacts incarnated by Mitra . Indra incarnated the military function and the twins Ashvins (or Nasatya) the function of production, wealth, fertility and pleasure. In human society,

736-462: The overarching societal classes of "priest" (Jupiter), "warrior" (Mars) and "farmer" or "civilian" (Quirinus). Though both Mars and Quirinus each had militaristic and agricultural aspects, leading later scholars to frequently equate the two despite their clear distinction in ancient Roman writings, Dumézil argued that Mars represented the Roman gentry in their service as soldiers, while Quirinus represented them in their civilian activities. Although such

768-557: The power of the king and young nobles to bring prosperity and victory through sympathetic magic with rituals like the October Horse and the Lupercalia , and Quirinus, with his source as the deified form of Rome's founder Romulus and his derivation from co-viri ("men together") representing the combined military and economic strength of the Roman people. According to his trifunctional hypothesis , this division symbolizes

800-563: The presence of such a triad also in the Umbrian ritual of Iguvium where only Iove, Marte and Vofionus are granted the epithet of Grabovius and the fact that in Rome the three flamines maiores are all involved in a peculiar way in the cult of goddess Fides . However Wissowa did not pursue further the analysis of the meaning and function of the structure (which he called Göttersystem ) he had identified. Georges Dumézil in various works, particularly in his Archaic Roman Religion advanced

832-562: The process, provided a comprehensive description of its deities and religious practices. Wissowa also published a revision of Ludwig Friedländer 's moral history of Rome called Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms , worked on Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher 's encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology , Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie " and edited the second edition of Joachim Marquardt 's " Römische Staatsverwaltung , vol. III. (1885). Spolia opima The spolia opima ( Latin for 'rich spoils') were

864-547: The quality of twin and Quirinus had a correspondence in the theology of the divine twins such the Indian Ashvins and the Scandinavian Vani. The resulting interpretation was the mixed personality of the god as civil and military, warring and peaceful. A detailed discussion of the sources is devoted by Dumézil to showing that they do not support the theory of an agrarian Mars. Mars would be invoked both in

896-584: The respective deity, i. e. an ox to Jupiter, solitaurilia to Mars and a male lamb to Quirinus. Furthermore, Dumézil analysed the cultural functions of the Flamen Quirinalis to better understand the characters of this deity. One important element was his officiating on the feriae of the Consualia aestiva ( of the Summer), which associated Quirinus to the cult of Consus and indirectly of Ops (Ops Consivia). Other feriae on which this flamen officiated were

928-541: The stripped armor to the trunk of an oak tree, carried it himself in a procession to the Capitoline , and dedicated it at the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius . To dedicate the spoils to Jupiter Feretrius, one needed be the commander of a Roman army. Thus, Titus Manlius Torquatus , Valerius Corvus and Scipio Aemilianus , though they all slew enemy leaders in single combat (the first two against Gauls and Aemilianus against

960-466: The warring condition to the civil one and vice versa. In the yearly cycle this passage is marked by the rites of the Salii , they themselves divided into two groups, one devoted to the cult of Mars (Salii Palatini, created by Numa) and the other of Quirinus (Salii Collini, created by Tullus Hostilius). In Dumézil's view, the archaic triad was not strictly speaking a triad, but rather a structure underlying

992-461: Was represented symbolically in the hidden character of the forms of the cult. The spolia opima were dedicated by the person who had killed the king or chief of the enemy in battle. They were dedicated to Jupiter in case the Roman was a king or his equivalent (consul, dictator or tribunus militum consulari potestate), to Mars in case he was an officer and to Quirinus in case he was common soldier. The sacrificial animals too were in each case that of

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1024-631: Was imagined in Rome's mythical history, which tells that in 752 BC Romulus defeated and stripped Acron, king of the Caeninenses , following the Rape of the Sabine Women . In the second instance, Aulus Cornelius Cossus obtained the spolia opima from Lars Tolumnius , king of the Veientes , during Rome's semi-legendary fifth century BC. The third and most historically grounded occurred before

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