Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult

312 Pages·2006·6.25 MB·English

by  Roger D. Woodard

Roger D. Woodard
Indo-European
Sacred Space
   
t r a d i t i o n s
INDO-EUROPEAN
SACRED SPACE
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GENERAL EDITOR
Gregory Nagy
Harvard University
EDITORIAL BOARD
Olga M. Davidson
Wellesley College
Bruce Lincoln
University of Chicago
Alexander Nehamas
Princeton University
A list of books in the series
appears at the end of this book.
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Indo-European
Sacred Space
VEDIC AND ROMAN CULT
ROGER D. WOODARD
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
URBANA AND CHICAGO
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© 2006 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
C 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodard, Roger D.
Indo-European sacred space : Vedic and Roman cult / Roger D. Woodard.
p. cm. -- (Traditions)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-252-02988-2 (isbn 13 cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-252-02988-7 (isbn 10 cloth : alk. paper)
1. Indo-Europeans--Religion. 2. Rome--Religion. 3. India--Religion.
4. Mythology, Roman. 5. Mythology, Indic. 6. Sacred space.
I. Title. II. Series: Traditions (Urbana, Ill.)
BL660.W66 2006
200’.89’09--dc22 2005017055
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To the memory of
James Wilson Poultney
Colleague, Mentor, Friend
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
. The Minor Capitoline Triad 
2. Terminus 59
3. Into the Teacup 96
4. The Fourth Fire 42
5. From the Inside Out 24
Postscript 269
Abbreviations 27
Bibliography 277
Index 285
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CHPARPETFEARC 1E
Indo-European Sacred Space is a work about two particular bounded
spaces—one small, one great—used in the practice of the ancestral Indo-
European religion. The focus of the study falls squarely upon the reflexes of
those spaces as they survived in two Indo-European descendent cultures,
one lying on the western margin of the area of Indo-European expansion
in antiquity, the other on the eastern. In the west, the small cultic ground
survives as the space of urban Rome, bounded by the pomerium; and the
large, as the vast arena which lies between the pomerium and the distal
boundary of the Ager Romanus. Comparable spaces, of common origin, are
found within the cult of Vedic India; and as on other occasions, the well-
attested Vedic structures and usages have much to reveal about Roman
cult.
Both in terms of scholarly history and theory, my starting point for this
investigation is Georges Dumézil’s model of Roman religion, developed
vis-à-vis the overarching threefold ideology of Proto-Indo-European
society. One of the objectives of the present work is thus to present a clear
and concise summary of Dumézil’s arguments for the survival of ancient
Indo-European ideology in early Roman religion; this is the principal, but
not exclusive, focus of chapter 1. A second and more important objective
is to jump forward from that Dumézilian platform and to offer a new
understanding of Roman and, more generally, primitive Indo-European
religious structures and phenomena; one that goes beyond and, in some
instances, differs appreciably from Dumézil’s own interpretations. The
work which is presented herein therefore marks a beginning—certainly
not a fait accompli.
Dumézil is not the only eminent twentieth-century scholar of the
classical and Indo-European disciplinae with whom this work is connected.
Another is my former Johns Hopkins colleague, James Wilson Poultney. It
is as a dedication to the memory of his life, his friendship, and his always
uncompromising standards of scholarly excellence that I offer this work,
and but hope it to be a suitable offering.
ix
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