The Field of the Magna Mater
The Field of the Magna Mater, the Great Mother Cybele, was partly excavated by the Viscontis in the years 1867-1869 and by Guido Calza in 1938-1940. It is a large triangular area set against the city wall, called campus in an inscription. At the west end is the temple of Cybele, at the east end is a cluster of buildings: a shrine of Attis, a temple of Bellona, and the guild house of the Hastiferi, the "Lance-bearers". The Viscontis also unearthed the Mithraeum of the Animals.
The Field of the Magna Mater, not long after the 1938-1940 excavations, seen from the west.
To the left of the cypresses is the House of the Gorgons.
Photo: Van Haeperen 2019, fig. 30.
The south-east part of the Field of the Magna Mater, not long after the 1938-1940 excavations, seen from the north.
Photo: Van Haeperen 2019, fig. 35.The cult has a few characteristics that are difficult to comprehend for people living in the 21st century, to the extent that attempts have been made to explain them away. One of these features is the Fossa Sanguinis, the "Trench of the Blood". It is a rectangular pit that was installed inside the Porta Laurentina. It was covered with a metal grate. On top of the grate bulls were sacrificed, whose blood poured through it, thus "baptising" a person underneath. Through the sacrifice the baptised person received new life, and because it took place inside the gate, it happened precisely on the spot where the worlds of the dead and the living were connected. The procedure was described by Prudentius, a Christian author, perhaps not entirely trustworthy:
"The high priest, you know, goes down into a trench dug deep in the ground to be made holy, wearing a strange headband, his temples bound with its fillets for the solemnity, and his hair clasped with a golden crown, while his silken robe is held up with the Gabine girdle. Above him they lay planks to make a stage, leaving the timber-structure open, with spaces between; and then they cut and bore through the floor, perforating the wood in many places with a sharp-pointed tool so that it has a great number of little openings. Hither is led a great bull with a grim, shaggy brow, wreathed with garlands of flowers about his shoulders and encircling his horns, while the victim's brow glitters with gold, the sheen of the plates tinging his rough hair. When the beast for sacrifice has been stationed here, they cut his breast open with a consecrated hunting-spear and the great wound disgorges a stream of hot blood, pouring on the plank-bridge below a steaming river which spreads billowing out. Then through the many ways afforded by the thousand chinks it passes in a shower, dripping a foul rain, and the priest in the pit below catches it, holding his filthy head to meet every drop and getting his robe and his whole body covered with corruption. Laying his head back he even puts his cheeks in the way, placing his ears under it, exposing lips and nostrils, bathing his very eyes in the stream, not even keeping his mouth from it but wetting his tongue, until the whole of him drinks in the dark gore. After the blood is all spent and the officiating priests have drawn the stiff carcase away from the planking, the pontiff comes forth from his place, a grisly sight, and displays his wet head, his matted beard, his dank fillets and soaking garments. Defiled as he is with such pollution, all unclean with the foul blood of the victim just slain, they all stand apart and give him salutation and do him reverence because the paltry blood of a dead ox has washed him while he was ensconced in a loathsome hole in the ground" (Peristephanon 1011-1050, translation H.J. Thomson).
The Fossa Sanguinis. Photo: Daniel González Acuña.The field was accessed through a room between shops on the east side. Originally it had a pediment, supported by brick piers. Holes in the threshold show that it could be closed off. The floor of this vestibule consists of a ramp covered with opus spicatum, sloping downwards towards the field. Presumably the ramp facilitated the arrival and departure of wagons as part of processions mentioned by, for example, Herodianus: "Every year, on a set day at the beginning of spring, the Romans celebrate a festival in honor of the mother of the gods. All the valuable trappings of each deity, the imperial treasures, and marvelous objects of all kinds, both natural and man-made, are carried in procession before this goddess. Free license for every kind of revelry is granted, and each man assumes the disguise of his choice. No office is so important or so sacrosanct that permission is refused anyone to put on its distinctive uniform and join in the revelry, concealing his true identity; consequently, it is not easy to distinguish the true from the false" (Herodianus I,X,5, translation E.C. Echols). During the processions self-flagellation and self-injury occurred.
The entrance of the field, seen from the road, from the east. Photo: Daniel González Acuña.A wealth of inscriptions and statues was found on and around the field. The Viscontis expressed their surprise about the perfect state of preservation of some of the pieces. The marble objects had not been taken to lime kilns, a bronze statuette of Venus had not been melted down. Some of the objects were lying on the pavement of the porticus along the city wall. Most surprising was the discovery by the Viscontis of many dedications that had been walled in in a large niche in the substructure of the temple of Cybele. Carlo Ludovico wrote: "I will therefore move on instead to present the singular discovery that was made in the space of one of the three small arches of the substructure, which we said open at the foot of the rear wall of the temple, and which consequently looked into the interior of the schola. The compartment of one of these (letter h) was obstructed with earth and debris, encapsulated for quite some work: after the removal, with some effort, of which, various objects of sculpture appeared massed in the innermost part. But what made this discovery very noteworthy was the discovery of seven small marble bases, all, except one, very complete" (Visconti 1868, 390). The objects had clearly been hidden in late antiquity, out of fear that they would be destroyed, by Christians, or perhaps by barbarian invaders.
The temple of Cybele, before restorations, on a photo from 1941, seen from the south-east.
Photo: Van Haeperen 2019, fig. 33.
Plans and drawings of the temple of Cybele and the Mithraeum of the Animals from 1868.
Image: Monumenti dell'Instituto VIII (1868), Tav. LX.In Rome the cult of Cybele enjoyed popularity amongst the senatorial class until the end of the fourth century. Inscriptions from her temple on the Vatican Hill, the Phrygianum, are as late as 390 AD. An anonymous text from the fourth or fifth century, condemning a pgan revival, says: "We have seen eminent senators following the chariot of Cybele which the hired band dragged at the Megalensian festival, carrying through the city a lopped-off tree trunk, and suddenly proclaiming that castrated Attis is the Sun" (Carmen contra paganos 10-11, translation Brian Croke and Jill Harries).
The cult was attacked by Christian authors such as Arnobius, Firmicus Maternus, Prudentius and Augustinus. She is called the mother of the demons and a whore, her priests effeminate eunuchs. One quote from Augustinus: "I myself, when I was a young man, used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious enertainments and spectacles; I saw the priests raving in religious excitement, and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honour of gods and goddesses, of the virgin Caelestis, and Berecynthia, the mother of all the gods. And on the holy day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy for the ear - I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man - nay, so impure, that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience" (De Civitate Dei II, 4; translation M. Dods; cf. Vermaseren 1977, 181).
If the place of bears was near an amphitheatre to the east of the House of the Gorgons, then the fanum aureum, the golden sanctuary next to which it was situated, must have been the Field of the Magna Mater. One inscription from the fourth century is the last evidence of her cult from Ostia. It is on a statue that was re-used by a Volusianus, who was tauroboliatus, baptised through the bull sacrifice: VOLUSIANUS V(ir) C(larissimus) EX PRAEFE(c)TIS TAUROBOLIATUS D(onum) D(edit). He was either the Urban Prefect of Rome of 335 AD, or, more likely, Caeionius Rufius Volusianus Lampadius, Urban Prefect in 365 AD. The nearness of the sanctuary to the place of execution, combined with support for the cult of the Magna Mater amongst the upper class in the fourth century, would explain the reference in the description of the martyrdom.
The statue that was re-used by Volusianus.
Photo: Boin 2013, fig. 6.The bronze statuette of Venus.
Photo: Boin 2013, fig. 4.
