Sacral Time in the Political Discourse of the Roman Republic

Abstract

The paper considers four binary oppositions, which together give a description of the archaic stratum of the Romans’ perception of time: mythological and historical time; sacral and profane; favorable and unfavorable; cyclical and linear. Having religious content, these pairs had a direct relation to political power and its functioning, which is the object of this study. Of particular importance was the division of time into favorable/unfavorable, which was directly related to the most important prerogative of magistrate power — the right to auspicia. It is noted that the political power had wide pow ers to influence the sacral time, subordinating it to the interests of society, because it had a special responsibility for the fulfillment of the duty to the gods. And in this possibility lies one of the remarkable paradoxes of Roman religious thinking, where sincere faith was combined with a significant share of rational pragmatism. Perhaps this behavior was related to the sense of a clear boundary between the world of the gods and the world of men, which was characteristic of the Roman worldview, from which followed a negative attitude to the violation of this boundary on both sides. The influence of the “Roman myth”, which presented Roman successes as the embodiment of the original plan of the gods, the realization of which, accordingly, presupposed close interaction between gods and humans, cannot be ruled out.