Suovetaurilia
The suovetaurilia or suovitaurilia was one of the most sacred and traditional rites of Roman religion: the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep and a bull to the deity Mars to bless and purify land.
Ritual
There were two kinds:- suovetaurilia lactentia of a male pig, a lamb and a calf, for purifying private fields
- suovetaurilia maiora of a boar, a ram and a bull, for public ceremonies.
If a temple were destroyed, the site of the temple must be purified by a suovetaurilia before a new temple could be reconstructed on the site. When the Capitolium was burnt as a result of a struggle for imperial succession in the year 69, a suovetaurilia was performed to reconsecrate the site. A public suovetaurilia was also offered to bless the army before a major military campaign. On Trajan's column, the emperor Trajan is depicted as offering a suovetaurilia to purify the Roman army. A suovetaurilia is shown on the right hand panel of The Bridgeness Slab. It was suggested that the sacrifice might have been made at the start of the building of the Antonine Wall.
Performance of the ''suovetaurilia lactentia''
Circumambulation
The first step was to lead the three animals around the boundaries of the land to be blessed, pronouncing the following words:"Manius" in this passage has been interpreted as a slave, land manager, soothsayer, or perhaps generic name, possibly equivalent to English John Doe. Alternatively, the classicist Roger Woodard proposes that this "Manius" may have functioned as the masculine equivalent of the chthonic goddess Mania. According to Woodard, this god Manius may be identical with the Manius described by the 1st-century BCE Roman author Varro, who writes that—according to another author named Procilius—a crack opened in the earth at the Lacus Curtius, and then the haruspices reported that a god named Manius demanded that the bravest Roman citizen must plunge into the hole. If the interpretation of "Manius" as a god is accepted, then it is perhaps unusual for Cato to issue direct commands to the divinity, saying "I bid you, Manius". It may perhaps parallel Hittite traditions, wherein another chthonic deity—the Sun goddess of the Earth—can also be addressed without much adoration or respect. The presence of underworld themes in the suovetaurilia would connect with the Old Indic Sautramani rite, another tripartite sacrifice in which libations are offered to the Pitri, spirits of the deceased, to ensure their purification.
Sacrificial prayer
Cato instructs that, prior to the sacrifice, the suppliant must perform a libation to Janus and Jupiter also must utter an extended prayer to Mars. The prayer is written in an archaic metrical and incantatory form; even in Old Latin, the prayer contains many rhetorical figures such as alliteration and liberal use of merisms and antithesis. It illustrates the metrical and poetic format of polytheistic prayers. Calvert Watkins versifies the text as follows:Sacrifice
Archaeological excavations at Satricum have revealed evidence of the sacrifice of a sheep or goat, a pig, and a cow dating to between the 5th-3rd centuries BCE. These three species were discovered in 16 out of the 47 small assemblages at the site, which dated between the early 5th-century to, and in four of the five large assemblages, which dated between. However, the archaeologists Jelle Bouma and Wietske Prummel argue that the number of remains found in each deposit correlates to the number of identified species and thus propose that the majority of deposits once contained bones from all three animal and their absence from the archaeological record is perhaps attributable to "poor preservation and incomplete sampling." In contrast, the archaeologist Marijke Gnade argues that such an explanation is "misleading," as the ratio between the sacrificed animals is consistent throughout Satricum. Ultimately, Gnade concludes that the evidence from this site "cannot be said to support the identification of these offerings as suovetaurilia."Given the tripartite nature of the suovetaurilia, the ritual has been interpreted as a reflection of the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil. Collectively, the three animals perhaps correspond to each of the three supposed functions of Indo-European society. According to Émile Benveniste, the pig—which was sacred to Ceres—represents the fertility of the soil; the sheep and the ram were associated with warriors; and the bull—which was sacred to Jupiter—was otherwise sacrificed in the most important Roman religious rituals, and is therefore connected to the priesthood. However, in other interpretations, it is the bull that was associated with warriors in Indo-European cultures, and it was sacrificed to Mars in the suovetaurilia. According to Jaan Puhvel, the role of the god Mars within the suovetaurilia singularly encompassed all manner of social ill. Mars was invoked to counter three type of misfortune—diseases, blights, and devastation—and he was compelled to enforce his protection through words, combat, and agricultural measures.
Cakes of bread were sacrificed along with the three animals. At the moment the sacrifices were made, the landowner was to say:
Omens
If favourable omens as a response to the sacrifice were not forthcoming, the landowner was instructed to redo the sacrifice and offer a further prayer:If only one or two of the omens expected after the three sacrifices failed to appear, the landowner was instructed to offer an additional swine, saying:
The nature of the expected omens is not given by Cato. The omens, however, were likely determined by the art of haruspicy, the examination of the entrails, and especially the livers, of sacrificed animals for divinatory signs.