Acta Arvalia

In Ancient Rome the Acta Arvalia recorded protocols of the priestly brotherhood (sodalitas) of the Arvales fratres, who emerged from obscurity at the end of the Republican period as an elite group, to judge from the status of their known members in the Augustan period.^[1] Though their rituals were conducted outside the pomerium that demarcated the official confines of the city in earliest times, their acta were inscribed in marble tablets fastened to the walls of the Temple of Dea Dia, goddess of the grove, near the Roman Forum. The protocols, the earliest of which are testimony of the early Latin language, were mentioned by M. Terentius Varro, De lingua Latina v.85. "The transcription of the records of this priesthood onto stone provided possibly the biggest coherent complex of inscriptions of the Roman ancient world," Jörg Rüpke has observed.^[2] The documentation was restricted to the presence in routine rituals and special occasions (vota) of participating members, the name of the place where sacrifices occurred, and specific dates. The Acta Arvalia are an important source for ancient Roman prosopography^[3] and a useful one for the study of Roman religion and cultus. Actual liturgies are lacking: the first instance of a hymn text, the famous Carmen Arvale in incomprehensibly archaic Latin was not entrusted to publication in a stone inscription until the beginning of the third century CE, when few could have deciphered it.

Fragments of the inscriptions were first recovered by Prof Wilhelm Henzen, 1866-69.^[4] Further fragments subsequently came to light.

Notes

1. ^ Jörg Rüpke, in Alessandro Barchiesi, Jörg Rüpke and Susan A. Stephens, Rituals in Ink: A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome (Steiner Verlag) 2004:34-37
2. ^ Rüpke 2004:35.
3. ^ Though "the richness of details and the abundance of the epigraphical corpus remain unexplained" (Rüpke 2004:36).
4. ^ Wilhelm Henzen, ed. Acta Fratrum Arvalium quae supersunt (Berlin, 1874)

Further reading

• Wilhelm Henzen, ed. Acta Fratrum Arvalium quae supersunt (Berlin, 1874)
• Mary Beard ""Writing and ritual: a study of diversity and expansion in the Arval Acta" PBSR 53 (1985:114-62).
• Scheid, John. Les frères arvales: recrutement et origine sociale sous les Julio-Claudiens (Paris: Collection de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études) 1975.
• Scheid, John. Romulus et ses frères: Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (Rome) 1990.
• Scheid, John, ed., Comentarii Fraturm Arvalium Qui Supersunt (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome and Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, 1998) ISBN 2728305390 , modern critical edition.