Romulus

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 2.1 §8 the dregs of Romulus

  "Romuli faece": the sediment or dregs left by Romulus, i.e. the degenerate actual Rome of Cicero's day, contrasted with Plato's ideal Republic.

• Ad Atticum 12.45 §1 I would rather have him a temple-mate of Quirinus

  In 45 BC a statue of Caesar was set up in the temple of Quirinus (the deified Romulus), inscribed to him as a god "sharing the temple" (Greek synnaos). Cicero's barb is double-edged: Quirinus was the deified Romulus, who was also said to have been torn apart by the senators, so to wish Caesar a temple-mate of Quirinus rather than of Salus (Welfare) is to hint darkly at his end.

• Ad Atticum 13.28 §3 our own Quirinus's procession

  Quirinus is the deified Romulus. Caesar had been voted a statue carried in the procession of the gods and a place beside Quirinus, so Cicero calls him sardonically the 'messmate' (contubernalis) of Quirinus's procession --- a jab at his divine honours.

• On Divination §2.80 the staff of Romulus

  The lituus, the crook-topped augural staff said to be Romulus's own, reputed to have survived a great fire unburned. Cicero dismisses such tales as having no place in philosophy.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.28 "Romulus passes his days in heaven among the gods," as Ennius said

  Romulus, deified as the god Quirinus; Cicero quotes Ennius's Annales for the apotheosis of Rome's founder as evidence that great men were believed to ascend to heaven. He goes on to list Hercules, Liber, the Tyndaridae, and Ino-Matuta as deified mortals.