pontifices maximi began not only to produce written minutes but also to publish excerpts of these on a whitewashed wooden board.12 Documentary procedures in the Senate probably provided the precedent for such written minutes, but this remains speculation in view of our lack of knowledge of both types of text in this period. Again, “publication” is a term used advisedly, as we know neither the intended nor the actual readers. In fact, it may have been the gesture of publication—of assuming literacy and of addressing a public of undefined size—that was decisive: acting in public, in the form of addressing the public, ensured institutional independence and significance.
These acts of publication must be evaluated in light of the contemporary use of writing: the central political usage was in the preservation of official resolutions on bronze copies and placed to allow general access. This had been the case in the codification of the Twelve Tables. To what extent the later canonical text accurately reflects traditions of the fifth century or is the result of a process of collection and commentary may remain here an open question.13 Over against this evidence for the currency of writing in public must be set the vastly greater evidence for viva voce communication. When a public audience was actually wanted, people were required to be present in high numbers. This is true of the “hundred man court,” which in historical times consisted of three people from each of the thirty-five Roman tribus,14 and also of the quorum of at least one hundred senators stipulated for the administrative processes outlined in the Senate’s resolution on the Bacchanalia.15
Public Assemblies
The comitia and contiones were both large public assemblies, even if participants formed only a minor percentage of the populace.16 Recent research in ancient history has made it clear that the complicated voting procedures of the comitia served to obscure the fact that the assembly did not play a significant role in legislative decision-making. (Elections were a separate issue.17) The magistrates leading the assembly put laws to the vote that already had the support of the Senate without further debate. The potential to reach a specific resolution was not being tested: the vote was a ritual that signaled basic consent. The main motive for participating in the assembly was probably the opportunity to play out one’s role as a part of the structured populus Romanus.18 The “arguments” supporting the law consisted of respect for the elected magistrate, the monitoring of the casting of votes by patrons, and the prior resolution of higher decision-making bodies.
In contrast, the contiones did have an advisory function and were dedicated to the presentation of candidates and the explanation of planned laws. The final decision was still open, and speakers were concerned to determine or produce specific preferences. The audience’s reaction to such alternatives was signaled orally. In addition, as Jean-Michel David has shown for the law courts, we must not neglect aspects of argumentation beyond the verbal.19 In court, demonstration of support by wearing mourning clothes, invocation of the status of one’s friends and the size of one’s clientele, the readiness with which social distance could be overcome through gestures of personal intimacy, self-abasement through a gesture of supplication:20 these were all decisive factors in a competition in which the coherence of the arguments was only one level of evaluation.21 Alas, even if such maneuvers were passed down as tips, they receive only minimal systematic treatment in textbooks on rhetoric. The rationalization of values—which type of behavior should be regarded as acceptable by all participating parties in court22—remained fragmentary, limited by the interest in individual victims.
Rituals
Political assemblies were neither the most frequent nor the most attractive occasions for convening large numbers of people in Rome. Holidays and large rituals provided such opportunities far more often. It is precisely in this connection that we can observe the most significant changes in the period under consideration here. This applies first to the frequency of holidays. Commencing with the final years of the fourth century, a rash of temple building continues down through the third. These building projects were the occasion for some intense conflicts between the Senate and their sponsors, most of whom had gained wealth as generals. These building projects are also associated with huge dedicatory festivities and permanently institutionalized holidays on the anniversaries of their foundation. Specific cults gained in value through connection to games (ludi), a process that began especially in the second half of the third century. As we have seen, traditionally the games consisted of races and athletic competitions. Dances were also an ancient element of games, which were probably professionalized under Etruscan influence and augmented by background scenes and slapstick dialogue. Games including dramatic plays on a Greek model (ludi scaenici) were, according to later Roman self-image, a resumption of these earlier forms.23 For the years 240 and 235 we have evidence of performances of plays by the first two dramatists whose names are known to us, namely the “half-Greek” Livius Andronicus, possibly from Tarentum, and Cn. Naevius, from Campania.24
Within a few decades, there was an explosion of opportunities for dramatic performance, of both tragedies and comedies. By the end of the third century eleven,25 and by the end of the second century around thirty, days for games had grown up out of the ritual framework of the ludi Romani.26 The two canonical genres were, after a few initial attempts in 173, augmented by the establishment of the mime at the annual ludi Florales, which then marginalized the other dramatic genres in the imperial period.27 The dramatic aspect increasingly overtook the circus-like aspect of the games.28
Nor was this the extent of large-scale ritual. Triumphal processions and ad hoc games on the occasion of military victories were also celebrated in most years, not to mention holidays without games, such as the Saturnalia, which increased to three and then finally to five days, as well as events for expressing supplication or gratitude, the supplicationes, when people took part in banquets in old Roman temples.
When changes in “public” communication can be detected, they are found in connection with these rituals. Sacrifices and feasts celebrated in families or with neighbors were at the center of traditional popular holidays, in contrast to the “weekly” holidays of the Nundines or Calends, Nones, and Ides, which were often celebrated in alternating locations or outside the city center. This also applies to the Neptunalia, a sort of Feast of the Tabernacle, the Parentalia celebrated at graves, the Matronalia and Poplifugia in the Field of Mars, and the drinking contest in the cult of Anna Perenna on the banks of the Tiber, and similarly to the Parilia, the purificatory fire in April, while the Saturnalia in December were more of a domestic holiday. It is not possible to determine the degree of popularity of the old horse races of the Equirria or the Consualia or the Equus October.29
The supplications initially followed this pattern.30 As supplicatory or thanksgiving holidays they were initially crisis rituals that were intended to mobilize the entire population to visit the temple and celebrate in the streets. Such a ritualized state of emergency was a regular feature of warfare in the early second century. It offered an occasion to strengthen solidarity with ever more distant theaters (and actors) of war. By the middle of the first century the emphasis of the same ritual had changed. We do not know to what degree the twenty- and fifty-day thanksgiving holidays that were declared on the occasion of Caesar’s victory in Gaul could be differentiated from everyday life. The resolution declaring the holiday was certainly more easily enacted than the actual holiday, for which no public funding at all was made available. In any case, everyday life was synchronized with significant military victories in this manner, and the person in whose name the gods were being thanked was a topic of conversation throughout the city. Thus, I presume, the period produced and extended focusing of communication on one subject, namely a person, instead of intensive face-to-face interaction between participants.
The other type of ritual that gained in importance from the middle Republic onward is characterized by just the opposite of the popular festivals reviewed so far, namely precise spatial centralization of symbolic action. The core elements of these rituals were processions (pompae) and the actual
