Sacellum

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The sacellum ( Latin , plural: sacella ) is the diminutive of sacer (“belonging to a god”) or the noun sacrum (“place belonging to a god”). The ancient tradition gives different and sometimes contradicting definitions of the term.

Gaius Trebatius Testa , a 1st century BC lawyer. Chr. And author of a work De religionibus ("About religious matters"), described a sacellum as "a small place consecrated to a god with an altar." In his commentary on the Adelphoe of Terence , Aelius Donatus informs that Varro , a contemporary of Trebatius , defined a sacellum as a cella consecrated to a deity, i.e. as a roofed sacred place. In contrast, the lexicographer and grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus emphasized in the 2nd century that it was a place without a roof.

The term, which originated in the republican period , is rarely used in ancient tradition and lost its meaning in the Augustan period. It is replaced by lucus or locus sacer . The term says nothing about the size of a building connected to it, let alone a temple; it only describes the place. The diminutive may be connected with the incomplete furnishing and the associated properties of the place for cult activities. In its reduced form, such a place can only have consisted of an altar.

With Gellius the term sacellum also holds for a failed etymological explanation by Trebatius, who claimed it was a compound of the words sacer ("holy") and cella ("chamber", "cell"). Gellius corrects this. In this context Gellius gives the only correct derivation of the word.

literature

  • Jochen Derlien : Asylum. The religious and legal justification for fleeing to sacred places in Greco-Roman antiquity. Tectum, Marburg 2003, p. 165.
  • Åke Fridh : Sacellum, sacrarium, fanum, and related terms. In: Sven-Tage Teodorsson (Ed.): Greek and Latin Studies in Memory of Cajus Fabricius (= Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia. Volume 54). Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg 1990, pp. 173-87.
  • Jörg Rüpke : The religion of the Romans. CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 182.

Remarks

  1. ^ In Gellius , Noctes Atticae 7 (6), 12: sacellum est, inquit [Trebatius], locus parvus deo sacratus cum ara.
  2. ↑ Varro , Antiquitates rerum divinarum Fr. 62 ( Cardauns ) (= Gino Funaioli : Grammaticae Romanae fragmenta. Volume 1. Teubner, Leipzig 1907, p. 369 Fr. 453 ( digitized )): et sacellum, ut Varro ait, sacra cella est ("A sacellum is, as Varro says, a cella belonging to a god").
  3. ↑ Festus 422 l (= 318 ( M ): sacella dicunter loca diis sacrata sine tecto (" sacella are called the places consecrated to the gods without a roof.")
  4. ↑ Åke Fridh : Sacellum, sacrarium, fanum, and related terms. In: Sven-Tage Teodorsson (Ed.): Greek and Latin Studies in Memory of Cajus Fabricius (= Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia. Volume 54). Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg 1990, pp. 173-87; here: p. 176.
  5. ↑ Jörg Rüpke: The religion of the Romans. CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 182.
  6. ↑ Jörg Rüpke: The religion of the Romans. CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 182.
  7. ↑ Ovid , Fasti 1,275 f .: ara mihi posita est parvo coniuncta sacello / haec adolet flammis cum strue farra suis ("an altar has been set up for me [the god Janus], connected with a small sacellum / this (altar) brings as a burnt offering dar with its flames spelled with pastries ”); see Jochen Derlien: Asylum. The religious and legal justification for fleeing to sacred places in Greco-Roman antiquity. Tectum, Marburg 2003, p. 165.
  8. ↑ Gellius, Noctes Atticae 7 (6), 12: sed quis ignorat sacellum et simplex verbum esse et non ex sacro et cella copulatum, sed ex sacro deminutum (“but whoever denies that sacellum is both a simple word and not from sacrum and cella composed, but made smaller from sacrum ”.
  9. ^ Franco Cavazza: Gellius the Etymologist. In: Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Amiel Vardi (ed.): The Worlds of Aulus Gellius. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, pp. 65-104; here: p. 83 f.