Natural Calamites in the Latin Authors of Roman Age and the CLEMENS Project
by
Eutizio Vittori
APAT (Italian Agency for Environment Protection and Technical Services), via Vitaliano Brancati 48, 00144 Roma
Coauthors: Sabina Fulloni

Ancient Romans have always given great importance to the occurrence of extraordinary natural phenomena, taken as signs sent by deities, which had to be interpreted and properly answered. As represented in Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita, the novendiales (banquets and sacrifices lasting for nine days) were the most typical reaction to one, or more commonly, a set of god's "messages", in the form of natural calamities, or even mere oddities, with respect to our understanding. Livy is the first known author, defined as a historian, who tells to posterity how the ancient Romans combined natural calamities with rites, intentionally created for the purpose to appease the gods.

So, Livy lists a number of novendiales following the fall of stones-even blazing stones-from the sky in Rome or nearby, very likely late activity of the volcanic center of the Alban Hills (Ab Urbe Condita, book VII, 28; he reports that in 347 BC: "A portent followed close on the dedication similar to the old portent on the Alban Mount; a shower of stones fell and night seemed to stretch its curtain over the day. The citizens were filled with dread at this supernatural occurrence, and after the Sibylline Books had been consulted the senate decided upon the appointment of a Dictator to arrange the ceremonial observances for the appointed days." and in book XXII, 36, when in 215 BC "It was reported that showers of stones had fallen simultaneously on the Aventine in Rome and at Aricia").

Elsewhere, he cites earthquakes (Ab Urbe Condita, III, 10, V century BC; IV, 21, V century BC; VII, 6, 362 BC, referring to a terrae motus in the Forum Romanum at the Lacus Curtius, providing in that way also for important archaeological information regarding the structure of the archaic site. In book XXII, 5, during the second Punic war, Livy tells us that in 217 BC: "Chance massed them together, each man took his place in front or rear as his courage prompted him, and such was the ardour of the combatants, so intent were they on the battle, that not a single man on the field was aware of the earthquake which levelled large portions of many towns in Italy, altered the course of swift streams, brought the sea up into the rivers, and occasioned enormous landslips amongst the mountains."). He also talks about floods (Ab Urbe Condita, VII, 3, in 363 BC when: "However, the first introduction of plays, though intended as a means of religious expiation, did not relieve the mind from religious terrors nor the body from the inroads of disease. Owing to an inundation of the Tiber, the Circus was flooded in the middle of the Games, and this produced an unspeakable dread; it seemed as though the gods had turned their faces from men and despised all that was done to propitiate their wrath"; or in book V, 15, that tells about the extraordinary rise of the Alban lake in 398 BC during the war against Veii, that required, to placate the gods and save the city, following the recommendation of both an Etruscan soothsayer and even the Oracle of Delphi, the complex excavation of a drainage tunnel, which stills awaits to be fully understood.

Unfortunately, Livy's masterpiece is largely incomplete: we have only 35 of the original 142 books (1-10; 21-45, some sparse fragments, and a compendium dated at the III-IV century AD, called Perìochae). His report, spanning 7 centuries, is not first hand: his main source were the archaic authors, like Valerius Anziatis, Licinius Macrus, Claudius Quadrigarius and Fabius Pictor, whose plain but precise work is now almost completely lost, as most of the historical and literary Latin production up to the first century BC. For the narration of Rome's expansion in the oriental territories and the unitarian vision of the happenings in the Mediterranean basin, Livy's main source was the famous Greek historian Polibius.

Other authors have provided sometimes dramatic descriptions of calamities, e.g. Pliny the Younger in his account of the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius, and many others, like Lucretius Carus, Anneus Lucanus, dispersed in the huge amount of literary production of the late republican and imperial times.

In many modern technical reports it is possible to encounter citations of ancient texts related to natural calamities (e.g., seismic and flood catalogues). Nevertheless, up to now a compendium of excerpta comprehending the whole range of natural disruptions reported in Italy and in the Mediterranean basin in ancient times is not available. Hence, APAT has decided to collect these excerpta in a database named CLEMENS, acrostic for Corpus Latinorum Et Medievalium Naturae Scriptorum. The purpose is to make available through the web an analytical and easily searchable list of accounts by ancient writers of environmental phenomena. This may help to find new, or better evidence of natural phenomena, since dealing with ancient documents, surprises can always be expected. Having at hand a complete body of citations of environmental events by an author, and those by different authors of the same period, should serve to better understand the cultural background of the author and of his period and to better interpret the sense of the quoted environmental effects.

So, CLEMENS should become a tool aimed not only at fulfilling a scientific curiosity, but at completing and making more readily available the knowledge on out-of-the-ordinary ancient environmental events and the reactions of our ancestors.

Date received: July 26, 2005

Copyright © 2005 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caqy-67.