Reading notes.
R. M. Ogilvie, “Some Cults of Early Rome,” in Hommages à Marcel Renard, vol. II, Latomus, Bruxelles, 1969, pp. 566 – 572.

The Ancients did not introduce new cults without a purpose. How then is one to understand the temple of Castor in the Forum ?

Traditionally, it was vowed by the dictator A. Postumius Albus during the Battle of Lake Regillus in 496 B.C. and dedicated in the Forum in 484 B.C. (Livy, II, 42, 5 – the author assumes that sources can usually be trusted, though Livy’s sources cannot be examined.). One view (Momigliano) makes a case of the transvectio equitum’s being associated with that temple to deduce that in Roman society and military, where the cavalry was of minor importance, the temple was somehow to provide Roman knights with a focus for their loyalty ; i.e., dedicating a public temple in honour of the patron deities of the cavalry – Castor and Pollux – would woo the knights’ allegiance to the new Republic.

The author finds the foregoing line of reasoning much too weak. Instead, he looks at ancient authors’ accounts of Roman hegemony over Latium and sees that it fluctuated greatly. Polybius provides a glimpse of the Roman sphere of influence in 510 – 505 B.C. The towns he lists as favourable to Rome show that Rome controlled the coastal district and other parts of Latium. But ten years later, some of those towns, namely Antium, Ardea, Laurentum, Lanuvium and others, are among the hostile entities ranged against Rome at the Battle of Lake Regillus and who afterwards sign a peace treaty with Spurius Cassius.

The author concludes that in 496 B.C. Rome was faced with a desperately serious threat. Some former friends had joined her enemies. These enemies were linked by a common political cause ; it is likely that those links were strengthened by common religious customs – political federations are often reinforced by religious acts. The list of Rome’s enemies and the cults they held in common show that Diana was their strongest link, followed by the Dioscuri. Tusculum was a centre of their worship ; Ardea is known to have had a very old cult, and from the federal centre at Lavinium comes the oldest quroi inscription.

There are thus grounds for conjecture that the Latins fighting against Rome rallied under the patronage of the Dioscuri, especially at a time when Roman tactics depended on the use of infantry. No Roman would have been so careless as to ignore his enemies’ gods, nor omit any occasion of subverting them. A. Postumius Albus vowed a temple to the Dioscuri in 496, his hour of need. It would appear more than likely that he hoped thus to detach them to the Roman side. It would not have been the first time. The procedure is not an evocatio, which consisted of removing a tutelary deity from an enemy city, but an exoratio by which a deity’s allegiance could be alienated, and which was followed by the establishment of a temple or cult as a reward. There is an almost exact analogy with the competing cults of Diana on the Aventine and at Aricia.

It has been argued that the siting of the temple intra pomerium indicates that it is a very ancient Roman cult, earlier than the Battle of Lake Regillus. This may be true ; the Dioscuri, as Penates, were already familiar to Rome. What Postumius Albus did was to elevate the status of Castor and Pollux. Aventine Diana and Apollo afford other examples of deities who are promoted from small cults (altars, open-air shrines) to monumental temples in response to the growth in importance of their functions. Thus Castor and Pollux were given a proper home in Rome in reward for their decision not to save the federation which had no doubt invoked their divine assistance in its war against the Romans.