Tacita (mythology)

(Dea) Tacita ( Latin "the silent one (goddess)"; also Dea Muta "the mute goddess") is an underworld deity of Roman religion and mythology . According to Ovid, it was a water nymph named Lara or originally Lala , a daughter of the river god Almo , who became the mother of the Laren as a result of being raped by Mercurius . In the latter capacity, she was sometimes identified with Larunda .

Plutarch

It is mentioned for the first time in the Vitae parallelae Plutarchs ( Numa VIII, 6) under the name Tacita, but still without reference to the underworld or the Laren . According to Plutarch, who reproduces the Latin name in Greek spelling and explains it as "the silent or speechless" ( Τακίταν ... οἷον σιωπηλὴν ἢ ἐνεάν ), she was next to Egeria one of the Camenes , the source deities with whom Numa Pompilius was worshiped as muses , the legendary king of early Roman times, pretended to be perverted and from whom he wanted to have received special oracle knowledge . Numa is said to have recommended the worship of Tacita to the Romans, which leads Plutarch to suspect that Numa wanted to honor the Pythagorean principle of silence.

ovid

The main source for Tacita is Ovid , who deals with it in the Fasti , his explanation of the Roman festival calendar, under the month of February (Book II), following his description of Parentalia (II, 533ff). It was a nine-day period of the family cult of the dead (February 13-21), during which the Romans placed offerings as food for the dead on the streets between the graves of their relatives along these streets, and during the weddings were not made and the gates of the temples were kept closed from the wandering spirits of the dead.

Following his description of this nine-day phase and its final day, the Feralia , Ovid seamlessly describes the sight of an old sorceress (II, 571 ff.), Who in the circle of young girls, performs a magical ritual for as a kind of gloomy climax and end point of this section the Tacita, also called dea muta by him , performs to banish "hostile tongues and hostile mouths". The old woman, presented as particularly chatty in ironic contrast to the silent deity, uses three fingers to place three pieces of incense under a doorstep in the corridor that a mouse has dug there, connecting threads that she has discussed with magic with dark-colored lead (after another reading of the manuscripts with a dark colored rhombus , a spindle or Zauberrad), turns in her mouth seven black beans back and forth sweeps the "zugenähnten" head ( obsutum ... caput ) of a small sea fish, a Maena , with Bad luck and roast it impaled on a brazen needle over fire, then sprinkle wine and drink the rest of the wine together with the girls, whereby she reserves the greater part for herself.

It is an incense, food and drink offering accompanied by magical acts, which, like a magic analogy, wants to silence evil tongues with the help of the goddess of silence and to offer her as a sacrifice, among other things, a mute fish or its head which was presumably specially sewn shut. Ovid leaves the reference to the actual festive rituals of the Parentalia open, so one cannot derive a cult of the Tacita that is firmly associated with the Parentalia or Feriales, but this nine-day period with its special presence of the spirits of the dead may have been particularly suitable for a ritual like the one described .

To answer the question of who this silent goddess actually is ( quae sit Dea muta II, 583), Ovid also adds a story of origin that he claims to have heard from venerable old men ( antiqui senes ). According to this, the mute goddess was a nymph by the name of Lara, originally called Lala (Greek λάλα "the talkative, talkative ") because of her vicious loquacity with the doubling of the syllable "La" , and was a daughter of the river god Alma, a tributary of the Tiber . When Jupiter chased the nymph Juturna and wanted to oblige all the nymphs of the Tiber region to help in the hunt for those who were constantly withdrawing from him, Lara betrayed his intentions to Juturna and also to Juno, Jupiter's wife, who is known for her jealousy, whereupon Lara is furious the treacherous tongue tore out and Mercurius ordered her to be taken to the underworld to the spirits of the dead as a world appropriate to the silent, where she was henceforth to atone as the nymph of the swamp of hell. On the way there, the favor of Mercury aroused her, who raped her regardless of her silent pleading for protection, whereupon she then gave birth to twins, the Lares , whom Ovid particularly emphasizes in their function as guardian spirits of the crossroads and the city of Rome ( qui compita servant / et vigilant nostra semper in urbe II, 616).

With this narration of her birth of the protective Laren, Ovid also points in advance motivically to the subsequent treatment of Caristia (II, 617 ff.), The family holiday following the Feralia on February 22nd, on which the Romans abandoned the world of the dead Turn to the living relatives, meet for feasts and there reconciliation between quarreling family members, but also make sacrifices to the Lares (II, 631 ff.).

The story of Ovid about the origin of the Tacita was considered in research since Georg Wissowa initially as an invention of Ovid, a "story" that Ovid arbitrarily identified from the silence of the goddess and the unquestionable reference to the underworld due to the described magic and with an invented name Lara / Lala and set pieces of Greek mythology have lined in order to endow the ancient Roman or Italian deity with a name and relationship and to offer an aitiology for their silence.

In later research this was partly put into perspective, since a close relationship between Mercurius and the Lares, albeit not a paternity relationship, can also be proven in other ways and the mother of the Lares, known under different names, although not otherwise as Lara, in a special other way Relationship to the underworld was seen. However, apart from intertextual references to the well-known stories by Philomele , Echo and Juthurna, who is known to Virgil with her later fate, no source has been identified for Ovid's concrete narrative of the development of the silent goddess .

Lactantius

The Christian poet Lactantius ( Divinae institutiones I, xx, 35) does not know her as Tacita, but as dea Muta and lists her among the particularly ridiculous figures of the pagan world of gods, as a deity who could not even speak and still speak of theirs human worshipers would be considered a higher being. He reports that she is equated with the mother of the Lares ( hanc esse dicunt ex qua sint Lares nati ) and the latter is also called Lara or Larumda ( et ipsam Laram nominant uel Larumdam nominant ). The equation with the Laren mother and the name Lara has been assessed as an indication of the influence of Ovid, while for Larumda ( Larunda ) and her birth of the Laren other traditions, also proven by Ausonius, are in the background.

literature

Wolfgang Fauth, Roman religion in the mirror of the 'Fasti' of Ovid , in: Hildegard Temporini / Wolfgang Haase (eds.), Rise and Fall of the Roman World , Volume II.16.1, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1978, p. 104 -186, pp. 142ff.
Virgilio Masciadri, The Birth of the Lares. Myth and poetic invention in Ovids Fasti , in: Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 11 (2009), pp. 179–207
Ernst Tabeling, Mater Larum. On the essence of the Laren religion (= Frankfurt studies on the religion and culture of antiquity, 1), Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1932, reprinted by Arno Press, New York 1975

Individual evidence

↑ Georg Wissowa, Römische Sagen , in: Philologische Abhandlungen. Martin Hertz offered on the seventieth birthday of former students , Wilhelm Hertz , Berlin 1888, pp. 156–168, pp. 165f .; see also ders., Art. Dea muta , in: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Ed.), Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Sp. 974–975; ders., Art. Lara , ibid, Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1886, Col. 1866
↑ Masciadri, The Birth of the Lares (2009), pp. 191ff.
^ Gerhard Radke, Acca Larentia and the fratres Arvales. A piece of early Roman-Sabine history , in: Hildegard Temporini / Wolfgang Haase (eds.), Rise and Decline of the Roman World , Volume I.2, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1972, pp. 421–441, pp. 433f.

[1] Georg Wissowa, Römische Sagen , in: Philologische Abhandlungen. Martin Hertz offered on the seventieth birthday of former students , Wilhelm Hertz , Berlin 1888, pp. 156–168, pp. 165f .; see also ders., Art. Dea muta , in: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Ed.), Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Sp. 974–975; ders., Art. Lara , ibid, Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1886, Col. 1866

[2] Masciadri, The Birth of the Lares (2009), pp. 191ff.

[3] Gerhard Radke, Acca Larentia and the fratres Arvales. A piece of early Roman-Sabine history , in: Hildegard Temporini / Wolfgang Haase (eds.), Rise and Decline of the Roman World , Volume I.2, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1972, pp. 421–441, pp. 433f.