Abstract
Since the most ancient of times, eclipses—solar eclipses in particular—have been viewed as harbingers of misfortune. It was for this reason that in Babylonian times enormous efforts were made to predict eclipses and avert their most ill-starred effects on the King, who was the earthly representative of the god who is represented in the sky by the Sun. The existence of a Mesopotamian ritual for warding off the evil consequences of eclipses (documented particularly under the reigns of Asarhaddon from 680 to 669 BCE, and Assurbanipal from 668 to 627 BCE) and the legendary tale, traditionally dated to 509 BCE, of the Kings being chased out of Rome reveal a similar conceptual approach by two civilizations which, as history would have it, never came into contact.
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- 1.
See Bottéro 1991, pp. 145–165; this documentation and translated sources are his.
- 2.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 63.
- 3.
The Regifugium is narrated by Ovid in Fasti, 2.685-852. Quoted here are lines 711-2: […]nefas visu, mediis altaribus anguis / exit et extinctis ignibus exta rapit.
- 4.
Cicero, de divinatione, 1.44, citing Accio’s Brutus: exim prostratum terra, graviter saucium, / resupinum in caelo contueri maxumum ac / mirificum facinus: dextrorsum orbem flammeum / radiatum solis liquier cursu novo.
- 5.
Ovid, Fasti, 2.717-8, 713-4, 786: Brutus erat stulti sapiens imitator, ut esset / tutus ab insidiis, dire Superbe, tuis; […] ‘Matri / qui dederit princeps oscula victor erit.’; […] condere iam voltus sole parante suos.
The Latin stultus specifically indicates a “fool or imbecile”; then again, the very name Brutus means “dumb (like an animal)”.
- 6.
Varro, de lingua latina, 6.13; see n. 7.1.
- 7.
9 June is the date of the 12th total solar eclipse, on the 1,565th day of the Saros cycle; 27 February is the date of the third, on the 354th day (see Table 15.1). Therefore, a total of 1,211 (= 1,565 – 354) days elapse between these two eclipses, or if you prefer, 41 lunations. It transpires that one of the two intervals of time after which an eclipse is almost always repeated is 41 lunations (the other is 47 lunations).
- 8.
Ovid, Fasti, 6.263-4 and 713-4: hic locus exiguus, qui sustinet Atria Vestae, / tunc erat intonsi regia magna Numae; […] haec est illa dies, qua tu purgamina Vestae, / Thybri, per Etruscas in mare mittis aquas.
- 9.
Varro, de lingua latina, 6.32: Dies qui vocatur ‘Quando Stercus Delatum Fas’, ab eo appellatus, quod eo die ex aede Vestae stercus everritur et per Capitolinum Clivum in locum defertur certum.
- 10.
Fiorina 1985, pp. 72–74.
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Magini, L. (2015). Roman and Mesopotamian Eclipses: The Feast Days of the Regifugium and Vestalia . In: Stars, Myths and Rituals in Etruscan Rome. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07266-1_16
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