1 Earliest Rome

8. P R I E S T S A N D P R I E S T E S S E S
7. Sec 5.4. The comithtm was the assembly area outside the senate house in the Forum;
see 4.7.
8. For this festival, see 5.2. The Lupercal was a cave on the west of the Palatine hill at
Rome, supposed to have been the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the
wolf,
9. For Arval rituals in the imperial period, see 4.5 and 6.2.
10. Almost nothing is known of this priesthood or of its duties.
8. Ib The priest of Jupiter: 'flamen Dialis'
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights X.15.1-25
One of the earliest priesthoods at Rome was the priesthood of Jupiter - and
many of the taboos surrounding that office must go back to the earliest period
of the city's history. No other priests (except the Vestal Virgins - 8.4) seem to
have been subject to restrictions of this kind, which (as this passage illustrates)
were the subject of antiquarian curiosity at least by the late Republic. For the
selection of a flamen Dialis, see 8.2d; for a provincial priesthood partly modelled
on the flamen Dialis, see 10.4e.
See further; Vol. 1. 19, 28-29, 106-8, 130-2; Scheid (1986b); Vanggaard
(1988); Simon (1996).
Many ritual duties are imposed on the flamen Dialis, and likewise a variety of taboos -
about which we read in the books written On Public Priests and also in the first book of
Fabius Pictor.' From these sources, this is more or less what I remember: there is a rule
against the flamen Dialis riding a horse; likewise there is a rule against him seeing 'the
levy arrayed' outside the pomerium," that is the army equipped for battle. (It is for this
reason that the flamen Dialis was rarely made consul, since the consuls took charge of
wars.) Likewise it is never lawful for the Dialis to take an oath; nor is it lawful for him to
wear a ring, unless it is perforated and quite plain. It is not allowed to remove any flame
from the flaminia (that is from the house of the flamen Dialis) except for a ritual purpose;
if a man in chains enters his house, he must be freed and the chains taken up through the
impluvium' onto the roof and let down into the street outside. He has no knot in his
headdress, nor in his belt, nor any part of his clothing; if anyone who is being taken off
for flogging falls as a suppliant at his feet, it is deemed a sin tor him to be beaten on that
day. Only a tree man may cut the hair of the Dialis. It is the custom that the Dialis does
not touch or even name a she goat, raw flesh, ivy or beans. He docs not pass under an
arbour of vines. The feet of the bed in which he sleeps must be smeared with a thin layer
of clay; and he does not sleep away from that bed three nights in a row; nor Is it lawful
for anyone else to sleep in that bed. At the head of his bed there must be a box with a set
of sacrificial cakes. The nail parings of the Dialis and his hair trimmings are buried in
earth under a fruitful tree. For the Dialis every day is a day of religious ceremony. He is
not allowed to be in the open air without his apex. 4
That he should be allowed to do
without it indoors was, according to Masurius Sabinus.' a recent decision of the
196