Novensiles

Religion in
ancient Rome
Marcus Aurelius sacrificing
Marcus Aurelius (head covered)
sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Practices and beliefs
Priesthoods
Deities
Related topics

In ancient Roman religion, the dii (also di) Novensiles or Novensides are collective deities of obscure significance found in inscriptions, prayer formulary, and both ancient and early-Christian literary texts.

In antiquity, the initial element of the word novensiles was thought to derive from either "new" (novus) or "nine" (novem).[1] The form novensides has been explained as "new settlers," from novus and insidere, "to settle".[2] The enduringly influential 19th-century scholar Georg Wissowa thought that the novensiles or novensides were deities the Romans regarded as imported, that is, not indigenous like the di Indigetes.[3]

Although Wissowa treated the categories of indigetes and novensiles as a fundamental way to classify Roman gods, the distinction is hard to maintain; many scholars reject it.[4] Arnaldo Momigliano pointed out that no ancient text poses novensiles and indigetes as a dichotomy, and that the etymology of novensides is far from settled.[5] In his treatise on orthography, the 4th-century philosopher Marius Victorinus regarded the spellings novensiles and novensides as a simple phonetic alteration of l and d, characteristic of the Sabine language.[6] Some ancient sources say the novensiles are nine in number, leading to both ancient and modern identifications with other divine collectives numbering nine, such as the nine Etruscan deities empowered to wield thunder[7] or with the Muses.[8] The name is thus sometimes spelled Novemsiles or Novemsides.

It may be that only the cults of deities considered indigenous were first established within the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium), with "new" gods on the Aventine Hill or in the Campus Martius, but it is uncertain whether the terms indigetes and novensiles correspond to this topography.[9] William Warde Fowler observed[10] that at any rate a distinction between "indigenous" and "imported" begins to vanish during the Hannibalic War, when immigrant[11] deities are regularly invoked for the protection of the state.

  1. ^ Robert Schilling, "The Roman Religion," in Historia Religionum: Religions of the Past (Brill, 1969), vol. 1, p. 450; and "Roman Gods" in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1981, 1992), p. 71.
  2. ^ Matthew Dillon and Lynda Garland, Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar (Routledge, 2005), p. 114.
  3. ^ De dis Romanorum indigetibus et novensidibus disputatio (1892), full text (in Latin) online.
  4. ^ Franz Altheim, A History of Roman Religion, as translated by Harold Mattingly (London, 1938), pp. 110–112: "I pass deliberately over several other objections that may be raised against Wissowa's interpretation, because they would demand a long excursus".
  5. ^ Arnaldo Momigliano, "From Bachofen to Cumont," in A.D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship (University of California Press, 1994), p. 319.
  6. ^ Marius Victorinus, the section De orthographia from Ars grammatica liber primus de orthographia et de metrica ratione, in the Teubner edition of Heinrich Keil, (Leipzig, 1874), p. 26 online.
  7. ^ Manilius, as noted by Arnobius, Adversus gentes 38–39; mentioned also, though not labeled as novensiles, by Pliny, Natural History 2.52.
  8. ^ Granius Flaccus and Aelius Stilo, as cited by Arnobius, Adversus gentes 38.
  9. ^ Schilling, Historia Religionum, p. 450, and "Roman Gods," p. 70.
  10. ^ Fowler, Religious Experience, pp. 157 and 319.
  11. ^ J.S. Wacher, The Roman World (Routledge, 1987, 2002), p. 751.