Fanny
DOLANSKY Religious Life on the Villa Rustica: Cultivating and Controlling the
Rural Familia
This paper will examine the
evidence of Cato and Columella
for what they may reveal about the religious practices of
the rural familia and
the complex relationship that existed therein between
ritual and juridical status.
My analysis will delineate the hierarchies of power that were
based on gender and juridical status, and negotiated
within the sphere of domestic religion. Although Roman society considered
the religious practices of the family (sacra familiae)
of immense importance (Cic.
Leg. 2.47), they have largely gone untreated in
standard works on the Roman family and religion. When they have been studied, the
urban, upper-class household (domus)
rather than the slave familia of the rural estate (villa rustica) has been the focus. The agricultural manuals, however,
of Cato and Columella,
prescriptive works directed primarily at absentee
estate-owners (patresfamilias),
offer substantial insights into rural religious practices
and how the slave familia should function as a religious
community.
From Cato's De Agricultura, the fullest extant
treatment of rural domestic rites, it is clear that the
maintenance of religious life on the villa rustica
was of considerable import to estate-owners.
Cato's recommendations (De Ag. 5.3-4, 83, 141.1) that
the paterfamilias delegate responsibility to the vilicus
(slave overseer) for the day-to-day management of
religious affairs is highly significant given the vilicus' servile status and freeborn
concerns regarding slaves' involvement in ritual (Brehaut
1933, xxi, xliv-xlv). The paterfamilias invests the
vilicus and, to a lesser extent, his wife,
with a surprising degree of power as they become his
agents for communication with the gods (De Ag.
5.3-4, 83, 141.1, 143). Allowing
subordinates to perform religious acts in his stead was a
sizable but necessary concession by the
paterfamilias. Yet
in Cato's estimation, because of the perceived
vulnerability of slaves to superstitio (illicit or excessive forms of
worship), it was also potentially problematic.
Thus while the vilicus and vilica may have derived status and
power from their religious roles, as slaves they were
subject to the constraints of social and gender
hierarchies as other members of the familia
were. Indeed their
strict adherence to sanctioned practices was crucial
because they held positions of authority within
the familia.
Improper or excessive rites,
whether cultivated internally or introduced from outside,
could compromise the paterfamilias' ability to
maintain control of the familia
as a socially and religiously integrated unit.
Columella expressed similar
anxieties to Cato about servile status and ritual, but
articulated more directly his rationale for limiting the vilicus'
religious roles (Rust. 1.8.6, 11.1.22).
The vilicus could not succumb
to superstitio because
he was instrumental in keeping disruptive religious
influences beyond the villa's boundaries; his
failure could jeopardize the entire religious community.
The agronomists' discussions
raise questions about religion as a means of empowerment
but also a mechanism for social control. By
examining Cato's and Columella's works with greater sensitivity to
questions of status and gender than in previous studies,
concerns about the power structure in the familia
emerge, and issues regarding the performance of domestic
religious ritual appear no less relevant on remote, rural
estates than in urban households in Rome and beyond.
Select Bibliography:
E. Brehaut, Cato the Censor On
Farming (New York, 1933); J. Kolendo,
'La religion des esclaves dans le De Agricultura de Caton,'
in J. Annequin and M. Garrido-Hory
(eds.) Religion et anthropologie
de l'esclavage et des formes
de dependence, 267-74 (Paris, 1994); R.
Martin, 'Agriculture et religion: le tÈmoignage
des Agronomes latins,' in
D. Porte and J.-P. NÈraudau
(eds.) Hommages
Henri le Bonniec, 294-305 (Brussels, 1988); D. G. Orr, 'Roman Domestic
Religion: The Evidence of the Household Shrines,'
ANRW (1978) 2.16.2: 1557-91.