Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus

Reproduction based on a rubbing of the inscription, which is intaglio engraved on bronze. The original is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

The senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus ("senatorial decree concerning the Bacchanalia") is an Old Latin inscription[1] dating to 186 BC.[2] It was discovered in 1640 at Tiriolo, in Calabria, southern Italy. Published by the presiding praetor, it conveys the substance of a decree of the Roman Senate prohibiting the Bacchanalia throughout all Italy, except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate.

When members of the elite began to participate, information was put before the Senate by Publius Aebutius and his lover and neighbour Hispala Faecenia, who was also a well-known prostitute, as told in the Ab Urbe Condita Libri of Livy. The cult was held to be a threat to the security of the state, investigators were appointed, rewards were offered to informants, legal processes were put in place and the Senate began the official suppression of the cult throughout Italy. According to the Augustan historian Livy, the chief historical source, many committed suicide to avoid indictment.[3] The stated penalty for leadership was death. Livy stated that there were more executions than imprisonments.[4] After the conspiracy had been quelled the Bacchanalia survived in southern Italy.

The Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus can be seen as an example of realpolitik, a display of the Roman senate's authority to its Italian allies after the Second Punic War, and a reminder to any Roman politician, populist and would-be generalissimo that the Senate's collective authority trumped all personal ambition.[5] Nevertheless, the extent and ferocity of the official response to the Bacchanalia was probably unprecedented, and betrays some form of moral panic on the part of Roman authorities; Burkert finds "nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians".[6][7]

  1. ^ CIL i2 2, 581.
  2. ^ Basilio Perri (17 February 2014). THE SO CALLED SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHANALIBUS Detailed analysis of the language. Basilio Perri. pp. 3–. ISBN 978-88-6885-713-4.
  3. ^ Titus Livius. "39.17". History of Rome. (The full account is from 39.8-39.18)
  4. ^ Titus Livius. "39.18". History of Rome.
  5. ^ Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, University of California Press, 1996, Ch. 2.
  6. ^ Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Religions, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 52.
  7. ^ During the Punic crisis, some foreign cults and oracles had been repressed by Rome, but on much smaller scale and not outside Rome itself. See Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, BRILL, 1990, pp.34-78: on precedents see p.41 ff.[1]