Rituals
The Suovetaurilia
Also Known As Suouetaurilia (Latin) · Lustratio (Latin)
Sacrificial Rituals
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Origin from 160 BCE
The suovetaurilia is the Roman lustral sacrifice of three animals, a pig, a sheep and a bull, whose Latin names give the rite its own. The three are led in procession around whatever is to be purified, a field, an army, a city or a people, and then killed and offered. The circuit is the operative part: what the procession encloses is what the rite cleanses, so the same form works at any scale simply by walking a longer boundary. Cato's farming manual preserves the private version, in which the animals are driven round the edge of the land and a prayer is addressed to Mars asking him to keep away disease, barrenness, ruin and foul weather, and to keep the farmer, his household and his herds in health. The same form served the state: the lustrum that closed the Roman census, and the purification of an army drawn up on the parade ground, which is the version Roman relief sculpture most often shows.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period160 BCE is the approximate date of Cato's De Agri Cultura, the farming manual its own text names as preserving the private version of the rite, and the earliest surviving record of it; the practice is likely older still. Place of Origin Historical OriginRoman tradition credits the sixth king, Servius Tullius, with instituting the lustrum, the periodic census closed by a suovetaurilia offered on behalf of the whole citizen body, placing the state form of the rite among the oldest institutions Rome claimed for itself, older than the written law that came centuries later with the Twelve Tables. 2 Practice
Who Performs It FrequencyAs the occasion requires 1 Use
OccasionThe farmer's lustration of the land, the purification of an army, and the lustrum that closed the Roman census 3Tradition: Roman Religion Form
Implements and MaterialsThe three victims, wine, and a boundary to be walked. The officiant sacrifices with his head covered by a fold of the toga. 1Tradition: Roman Religion What Is OfferedA pig, a sheep and a bull, male, led in procession round the boundary before being killed 3Tradition: Roman Religion Attributions
PurposeLustration. The circuit defines what is purified, so the same form serves a field, an army, a city or the whole Roman people. 1Tradition: Roman Religion Meaning
Literal MeaningA compound of the Latin words for pig, sheep and bull, naming the three victims 2Tradition: Roman Religion Text
Source TextCato, De Agri Cultura 141, preserves the prayer, addressed to Mars and asking him to drive off disease seen and unseen, dearth, desolation and bad weather, and to keep crops, herds and household in health 3Tradition: Roman Religion Learn More
Three Animals and a Circuit
The name is a compound of the Latin words for pig, sheep and bull, and it describes the offering exactly: one of each, male, driven together in procession. What the rite does is enclose. The three animals are led round the perimeter of whatever is to be purified, and only after the circuit are they killed and offered. Everything inside the line the procession has walked is covered; everything outside it is not. That is why the same form served a smallholding, a legion drawn up on a parade ground, a city and, in the census, the entire Roman people. The rite scales by walking further.
Cato preserves the farmer's version in his manual on agriculture, and it is the fullest early description of any Roman rite. The animals are led round the land; wine is offered; and a prayer is addressed to Mars in the imperative language Roman prayer used with the gods, asking him to keep away and drive off disease seen and unseen, dearth and desolation, storms and bad weather, and to keep the crops, the vines, the plantations, the shepherds and the flocks in good health. The prayer names alternatives and covers contingencies with the thoroughness of a legal instrument, and Cato adds instructions for what to do if the omens are unfavourable.
The word for the rite and the word for purification are the same root, and the public version gave the Latin language a unit of time: because the census closed with a lustration and the census came round every five years, a lustrum came to mean the five year interval itself.
From the Farm to the Census
The public form is best known from sculpture. Roman relief panels show the three animals in procession, sometimes with attendants and musicians, moving towards an altar where a magistrate stands with his head covered by a fold of his toga, which is the Roman manner of sacrificing and the visible difference from the Greek, who sacrificed bare-headed and garlanded. The scenes are common enough on public monuments that the suovetaurilia became a standard visual shorthand for the state performing its duties properly, which is a use of a rite rather than a description of one.
The army version purified the soldiers as a body before a campaign or at a fixed point in the year. The census version closed the enumeration of the citizens: having counted and registered the Roman people, the censor purified them, and the counting and the cleansing formed a single administrative and religious act. It is worth noticing what this implies about Roman thinking. Impurity here is not moral guilt and not contact with a corpse; it is whatever has accumulated on a collective over a period of time, and the remedy is applied to the collective as such, on a schedule, by an official.
The private and public forms are the same rite at different scales, and the sources do not treat the farmer's version as a folk imitation of the state's. If anything the reverse is implied, since the agricultural handbook records the older formula. What the rite really required was a boundary, three animals and somebody entitled to speak the words.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The entrails of the victims were inspected as part of the rite, not after it.
A fault in the lustration required the whole rite to be repeated and a piaculum offered for the error.
Belongs to Tradition
Conducted By
In its public forms the rite is performed by a magistrate or a priest of the Roman state.
Originated In
Sources
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