Liber Pater

This chapter examines Italian images of Dionysus with a view to exploring the dynamics of acculturation of a Greek figure. The aim is to show that images provide major evidence not only for studying art history, but also religious and cultural history; and that far from being representations of cultic ritual, or being mere adaptations of imported iconographic schemes, Roman and Italian images of Dionysus furnish a figurative and reflexive discourse on the very processes of appropriation and domestication. In the case of each representation, the chapter specifies the ways in which Greek forms acquire local inflections, and
identify the ways in which these respond and correspond to Roman or Italian rituals as well as to social and political realities. Where possible, the images are put in the context of Roman literary treatments of related phenomena. Two sets of images are subjected to scrutiny: a miscellaneous cluster from the archaic period, and a more homogeneous body of sacro-idyllic landscapes from the Augustan
era. The early images are particularly sensitive to cultural analysis. The Augustan images show landscape being marked as ritual space through Dionysian and other motifs; and the taming of nature which they evince coheres with the new Augustan view of Dionysus, which is a response to Mark Antony’s cultivation of an exuberant Dionysian persona. The main pieces of evidence on which this chapter draws are: a set of fragments of statuary believed to come from the sixthcentury
sanctuary of Sant’Omobono in the Forum Boarium; some descriptions of
the decorative programme of the late-fifth-century temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera; an image of Liber on an inscribed third-century Praenestine cista (CIL I2, 563. Berlin, Charlottenburg, inv. Misc. 6239); Liber on the fourth-century Cista Ficoroni; a Dionysian fresco from Lanuvium; and frescoes and stucco panels from the Villa della Farnesina, all dating to the early Augustan period.

This paper focuses on an anonymous micro cult that flourishes in the Illyricum area during the Roman Imperial period. Known under the appellative Dominus et Domina, this divine couple is epigraphically attested by twelve votive inscriptions found solely in the Danubian provinces i.e. in Dacia, Moesia, Pannonia and Dalmatia. Because the spatial layout of the cult has provided the premises for claiming the autochthony of these gods, some scholars raised the possibility that they hide Dacian or other indigenous Illyrian divinities, powerful and dominant great gods whose names were prohibited to be pronounced. Based on an inscription engraved on a fragment of a terracotta mould discovered at Cristești (Mureș County), the cult of Dominus and Domina could be linked with the highly contradictive clay paredros type statuettes that have been discovered in several archaeological sites from Dacia. Having strong analogies in Moesia Inferior, the spatial distribution of both these votive terracotta figurines and inscriptions creates a pattern that enables us to grasp to its full extent the importance of these gods within the regional pantheon of Illyricum

This collection of essays offers a rounded examination of the Roman and Italian manifestations of Dionysus. Nine essays address Bacchus at the crossroads of Greek and Roman, combining diverse sources that include art, epigraphy, historiography, poetry, and rhetorical and Christian discourse. The collection emphasizes local inflections in Italian responses to (and appropriations of) Bacchus, and the intersection of Bacchus and Roman politics and society.

Contents
Preface  V
List of illustrations  IX
List of contributors  XI

Fiachra Mac Góráin
Introduction. Dionysus in Rome: accommodation and resistance  1

Simon Perris and Fiachra Mac Góráin
The ancient reception of Euripides’ Bacchae from Athens to Byzantium  39

Stéphanie Wyler
Images of Dionysus in Rome: the archaic and Augustan periods  85

Daniele Miano
Liber, Fufluns and the others: rethinking Dionysus in Italy between the fifth and the third centuries BCE  111

Julietta Steinhauer
Dionysian associations and the Bacchanalian affair  133

Gesine Manuwald
Dionysus / Bacchus / Liber in Cicero  157

John F. Miller
Bacchus and the exiled Ovid (Tristia 5.3)  177

Alessandro Schiesaro
Alius furor. Statius’ Thebaid and the metamorphoses of Bacchus  193

Francesco Massa
The shadow of Bacchus: Liber and Dionysus in Christian Latin literature (2nd–4th centuries)  219

Index rerum et nominum  239
Index locorum  245
Index of inscriptions and visual artefacts  247

One of the most important Roman sculptures from the Netherlands.
In 1980 two matching shaft blocks of almost the same height, square in shape, from Norroy limestone, were recovered from the foundations of the medieval castle of the Valkhof (Nijmegen, province of Gelderland, Netherlands), above a late Roman V-shaped moat. Both were parts of a monumental pillar with reliefs of gods, the one with at least three registers and reliefs on all four sides. The four sides show the same structure: the stacked relief panels with mostly frontal deities are framed by narrow vertical ornamental strips. In the center of the front side a person in the imperial toga with a sacrificial dish in his right hand and a sacrificial knife in his left approaches the altar to offer. A smaller Victoria in a chiton is behind him, shouldering the palm of victory, and places a laurel wreath on his head. The shaft of the pulvinus altar bears the inscription: »Tib(e)r(ii) / C(ae)sar(is)«. The physiognomy of the Togatus corresponds to that of the Julio-Claudian imperial family, most closely to that of Tiberius. Above this, the feet and lower legs of a second togatus (Genius Augusti?) have survived. The represented gods in this register are Diana, Apollo, and Ceres. It is also possible to recognize two figures in small boots with laurel branches and staffs in the upper register as the Lares. Further is represented here Bacchus-Liber Pater with panther and Thyrsos. In the lower register are depicted the Muse Urania, a river god (Tiber, Rhenus [?] or even Oceanus?), the helmeted Mars (Minerva, Virtus, Roma?), and a bearded winged god with a Phrygian cap or pylos (Volcanus?). The pillar monument can be reconstructed to a total height of 5.40 meters with four relief registers of equal size staggered one on top of the other and a slightly protruding base. It is to be interpreted as a monument of honor on the occasion of a triumph, most likely the triumph of Germanicus in 16/17 AD and reminds us to the Nautae pillar in Paris.

La présente contribution présente une stèle inédite déposée près de l’entrée principale de la casbah qui domine la ville d’El Kef, l’antique Sicca Veneria, en Tunisie centrale occidentale. Il s’agit d’une stèle punique tardive, datable entre le ier s. av. J.-C. et la première moitié du suivant, caractérisée par une scène de banquet entre deux personnages assis, probablement divins ; son iconographie constitue un unicum dans l’Occident punique et punique tardif, tant par ses thèmes que par son exécution, et renvoie à des éléments et des concepts de lointaine origine proche-orientale

Il contributo è dedicato alla presentazione di una stele inedita deposta accanto all’ingresso principale della kasbah che domina la città di El Kef, antica Sicca Veneria, in Tunisia centro-occidentale. Si tratta di una stele tardo punica databile tra il I secolo a.C. e la prima metà del secolo successivo caratterizzata da una scena di banchetto tra due personaggi seduti, solo probabilmente divini; tale iconografia costituisce un unicum nell’Occidente punico e tardo punico tanto per la tematica quanto per la resa e rimanda a elementi e concezioni di antica origine vicino orientale.

Traça-se uma panorâmica do que se escreveu acerca do ex-voto dedicado Libero Patri et Liberae, datável do século I da nossa era e que foi identificado, na década de 50 do século passado, no ager Igaeditanorum (Lusitania). Dá-se particular relevo ao cursus honorum do dedicante, o eques Lucius Marcius Maternus, e chama-se a atenção para o facto de Liber Pater ser aqui apresentado na sua dupla face – a masculina e a feminina; ou seja, é apenas uma divindade e não duas.

We propose in this paper the need to review a variety of testimonies found in Italica and since half of the twentieth century they were identified as evidence certifying the presence of a Mithraic community in this city. We propose a new focus on them, taking on count changes in theoretical knowledge of Mithraism and the new data on the presence of this religion in Hispania. We will see that these evidences must be interpreted from different theoretical key to proposals at first.

La impronta simbólica de "Liber Pater" en los rituales y el consumo de vino en Hispania romana: el caso de Segobriga

María Carmen Santapau Pastor

Revista murciana de antropología, ISSN 1135-691X, Nº. 12, 2005 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Actas del I Congreso sobre Etnoarqueología del vino: Bullas, 4-6 noviembre de 2004 / coord. por Salvador Martínez Sánchez, Antonino González Blanco), págs. 119-132

This article aims to analyse and interpret three poets of Pseudo-Claudianus. The first one, „De Liberalibus", is about the festival of the Liberalia in which Pater Liber and Libera were worshiped. However we note that a poem is more about a god than the festival. The feast seen by the poet is similar to the Anthesteria in Greece. We can found
characteristic phrase „da reditum nobis: sic" which is also visible in second of poems „De Iunonalibus". Unfortunately, this poem is preserved only in fragments. We found out that Pseudo-Claudianus called Hera a wife and a sister of Zeus. The third one, „De Vinalibus", is differ in structure from the previous but refers to the Roman Vinalia that were similar to the Anthesteria. These three poems allow us to better understand pagan cults in Late Antiquity.