The cult of Iuppiter Latiaris was the most ancient known cult of the god: it was practised since very remote times near the top of the Mons Albanus on which the god was venerated as the high protector of the Latin League under the hegemony of Alba Longa.
After the destruction of Alba by king Tullus Hostilius the cult was
forsaken. The god manifested his discontent through the prodigy of a
rain of stones: the commission sent by the Roman senate to inquire was
also greeted by a rain of stones and heard a loud voice from the grove
on the summit of the mount requesting the Albans perform the religious
service to the god according to the rites of their country. In
consequence of this event the Romans instituted a festival of nine days (nundinae).
Nonetheless a plague ensued: in the end Tullus Hostilius himself was
affected and lastly killed by the god with a lightning bolt.[58] The festival was reestablished on its primitive site by the last Roman king Tarquin the Proud under the leadership of Rome.
The feriae Latinae, or Latiar as they were known originally,[59] were the common festival (panegyris) of the so-called Priscan Latins[60] and of the Albans.[61]
Their restoration aimed at grounding Roman hegemony in this ancestral
religious tradition of the Latins. The original cult was reinstated
unchanged as is testified by some archaic features of the ritual: the
exclusion of wine from the sacrifice[62]
the offers of milk and cheese and the ritual use of rocking among the
games. Rocking is one of the most ancient rites mimicking ascent to
Heaven and is very widespread. At the Latiar the rocking took
place on a tree and the winner was of course the one who had swung the
highest. This rite was said to have been instituted by the Albans to
commemorate the disappearance of king Latinus, in the battle against Mezentius king of Caere:
the rite symbolised a search for him both on earth and in heaven. The
rocking as well as the customary drinking of milk was also considered to
commemorate and ritually reinstate infancy.[63]
The Romans in the last form of the rite brought the sacrificial ox from
Rome and every participant was bestowed a portion of the meat, rite
known as carnem petere.[64] Other games were held in every participant borough. In Rome a race of chariots (quadrigae) was held starting from the Capitol: the winner drank a liquor made with absynth.[65] This competition has been compared to the Vedic rite of the vajapeya: in it seventeen chariots run a phoney race which must be won by the king in order to allow him to drink a cup of madhu, i. e. soma.[66] The feasting lasted for at least four days, possibly six according to Niebuhr, one day for each of the six Latin and Alban decuriae.[67]
According to different records 47 or 53 boroughs took part in the
festival (the listed names too differ in Pliny NH III 69 and Dionysius
of Halicarnassus AR V 61). The Latiar became an important feature of Roman political life as they were feriae conceptivae,
i. e. their date varied each year: the consuls and the highest
magistrates were required to attend shortly after the beginning of the
administration, originally on the Ides of March: the Feriae usually took
place in early April. They could not start campaigning before its end
and if any part of the games had been neglected or performed unritually
the Latiar had to be wholly repeated. The inscriptions from the imperial age record the festival back to the time of the decemvirs.[68]
Wissowa remarks the inner linkage of the temple of the Mons Albanus
with that of the Capitol apparent in the common association with the
rite of the triumph:[69] since 231 BC some triumphing commanders had triumphed there first with the same legal features as in Rome.[70]
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