Mania (goddess)
Mania is considered a goddess in Roman mythology .
There is no evidence of a cult and the few surviving inscriptions are controversial. According to Georg Wissowa , a goddess Mania is the construct of ancient scholars, including Marcus Terentius Varro , where she is one of several figures who have been equated with the Mater Larum . Sextus Pompeius Festus describes them as the mother or grandmother of the Larvae and the Manes .
According to Wissowa, it was rather a mythologizing interpretation of a custom at the Festival of the Compitalien , where it was customary to hang maniae , small dolls made of flour or wool for the Lares and Manes at the crossroads.
According to Macrobius , these dolls are said to have served as a substitute for human sacrifices made at the time of the last Roman king Tarquinius Superbus . Mainly boys were sacrificed. Lucius Junius Brutus , the first consul of the Roman Republic, ended this custom. The oracle of Delphi had demanded “head for head” as a sacrifice, so the consul ordered poppies and garlic bulbs to be sacrificed instead of children's heads . The dolls hung on the front door then served to ward off disaster .
Popanze and nightmares for children were also referred to as "maniae".
The name Mania is therefore not derived from the Greek mania ( Μανία "frenzy", "madness"; cf. mania ), but from the manes of the compitalia.
literature
- Francesca Prescendi: Mania 2. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , Sp. 814.
- Ernst Marbach: Mania 8. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIV, 1, Stuttgart 1928, Sp. 1110 f.
- Georg Wissowa: Mania . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2323 f. ( Digitized version ).