“Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus ("senatorial decree concerning the Bacchanalia") is a notable Old Latin inscription^[1] dating to 186 BC.^[2] It was discovered in 1640 at Tiriolo, 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]

Text

The surviving copy is inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Calabria in Southern Italy (1640), now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The text as copied from the inscription is as follows.^[8]

Translation into classical Latin

The following passage uses classical reflexes of the Old Latin lexical items:^[8]

Orthography

The spelling of the text of the Senatus consultum differs in many predictable ways from the spelling of Classical Latin. Some of these differences are merely orthographical; others reflect archaic pronunciations or other archaisms in the forms of words.

Geminate consonants

In Classical Latin, geminate (or long) consonants are consistently written with a sequence of two letters: e.g., cc, ll, ss for [kː], [lː], [sː]. These geminate consonants are not represented in the Senatus consultum:

Diphthongs

EI at the end of a word often corresponds to Classical short i or to no vowel at all. However, in many cases such as sibī, utī, archaizing Classical forms ending in ī are also found, especially in poetry.

Short vowels

Archaisms

The archaic ending -ce added to some forms of the pronoun hic is reduced to -c in Classical Latin in most cases:

The ending -d, found on some adverbs and ablative singulars of nouns and pronouns, is lost in Classical Latin:

The last two words AGRO TEVRANO (30:7-8) omit the final -d, despite containing the same ablative ending elsewhere written -OD; this fact suggests that at the time of writing, the final -d was no longer pronounced in ordinary speech.

QVOM (18:4) appears for Classical cum, also known in the archaic Classical form quum.

In Classical Latin the prefixes ex- and dis- become ē- and dī- before voiced consonants. In the Senatus consultum, they are still written EX and DIS:

Other characteristics

The sequence ve appears as VO in ARVORSVM adversum (24:8) and in OINVORSEI (19:4) ūniversī.

The sequence ul appears as OL in COSOLERETVR (6:12) cōnsulerētur, CONSOLVERVNT (1:11) cōnsuluērunt, TABOLAM (26:3) tabulam and OQVOLTOD (15:3) occultō.

The consonants bl appear as PL in POPLICOD publicō (15:10), recalling its origin from populus.

The prefix ad appears as AR in ARVORSVM adversum (24:8), ARFVISE (21:1) adfuisse, and ARF[VERVNT] (2:3) adfuērunt.

Translation into English

Notes

1. ^CIL i² 2, 581.
2. ^{{cite book|author=Basilio Perri|title=THE SO CALLED SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHANALIBUS Detailed analysis of the language|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bA7hAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT3|date=17 February 2014|publisher=Basilio Perri|isbn=978-88-6885-713-4|pages=3–}}
3. ^{{cite book|author=Titus Livius|authorlink=Livy|title=History of Rome|chapter=39.17}} (The full account is from 39.8-39.18)
4. ^{{cite book|author=Titus Livius|authorlink=Livy|title= History of Rome|chapter=39.18}}
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.[https://books.google.com/books?id=dnOPjX6GOrgC&lpg=PA75]
8. ^¹{{cite book|first=Alfred|last=Ernout|title=Recueil de Textes Latins Archaiques|location=Paris|publisher=Librairie C. Klincksieck|year=1947|language=French, Latin|pages=58–68}}
9. ^Ernout omits the phrase in his traduction.
10. ^{{cite book|title=The Library of Original Sources. The ideas that have influenced civilization, in the original documents—translated. University Edition.|volume=Volume III|editor-first=Oliver J.|editor-last=Thatcher|year=|publisher=|pages=76–77}}