The ludi Romani came in course of time, as has been said above, to extend from the 5th to the 19th; they spread out in fact on each side of the Ides[[936]], the day on which took place the ‘epulum Jovis’ in the Capitoline temple. As this day was also the dies natalis of the same temple, and that on which the nail was driven into the wall of the cella Jovis[[937]], we have a very close connexion between the ludi and the cult of Jupiter. The link is to be found in the fact that in the ludi votivi, which were developed into ludi Romani, the vows were made and paid to the supreme god of the State[[938]]. We have from a later time the formula of such a vow preserved by Livy[[939]]. ‘Si duellum quod cum rege Antiocho sumi populus iussit id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit, tum tibi, Iuppiter, populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet, donaque ad omnia pulvinaria dabuntur de pecunia, quantam senatus decreverit: quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti donaque data recte sunto.’
The epulum Jovis, thus occurring in the middle of the ludi, is believed by some writers to have originally belonged to the Ides of November and to the ludi plebeii, as it does not happen to be alluded to by Livy in connexion with the ludi Romani, and our first notice of it in September is in the Augustan calendars[[940]]. But it is surely earlier than B.C. 230, the received date of the ludi plebeii, and of the circus Flaminius in which they took place. We may agree with the latest investigator of the Jupiter-cult that the origin of the epulum is to be looked for in a form of thanksgiving to Jupiter for the preservation of the state from the perils of the war season, and that no better day could be found for it than the foundation-day of the Capitoline temple[[941]]. This epulum was one of the most singular and striking scenes in Roman public life. It began with a sacrifice; the victim is not mentioned, but was no doubt a heifer, and probably a white one[[942]]. Then took place the epulum proper[[943]], which the three deities of the Capitol seem to have shared in visible form with the magistrates and senate. The images of the gods were decked out as for a feast, and the face of Jupiter painted red with minium, like that of the triumphator. Jupiter had a couch, and Juno and Minerva each a sella, and the meal went on in their presence[[944]].
Now an investigator of the Roman religious system is here confronted with a difficult problem. Was this simply a Greek practice like that of the lectisternium, and one which began with the Etruscan dynasty and the foundation of the Capitoline temple with its triad of deities? Or is it possible that in the cult of the Roman Jupiter there was of old a common feast of some kind, shared by gods and worshippers, on which this gorgeous ritual was eventually grafted?
Marquardt has gone so far as to separate the epulum Jovis altogether from the lectisternia, and apparently also from the inundation of Greek influence[[945]]. It answers rather, he says, to such domestic rites as the offering to Jupiter Dapalis described thus by Cato in the De Re Rustica[[946]]: ‘Dapem hoc modo fieri oportet. Iovi dapali culignam vini quantum vis polluceto. Eo die feriae bubus et bubulcis, et qui dapem facient. Cum pollucere oportebit, sic facies. Iupiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet, in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi, eius rei ergo macte hac illace dape pollucenda esto. Manus interluito. Postea vinum sumito. Iupiter dapalis, macte istace dape pollucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto. Vestae, si voles, dato[[947]]. Daps Iovi assaria pecuina, urna vini lovis caste.’
I confess that I do not see wherein lies the point of the comparison of this passage with the ceremony of the epulum; and Marquardt himself does not attempt to elaborate it. There is no mention here of a visible presence of Jupiter in the form of an image, which is the one striking feature of the epulum. Marquardt, as it seems to me, might better have adduced some example from old Italian usage of the belief that the gods were spiritually present at a common religious meal—a belief on which might easily be engrafted the practice of presenting them there in actual iconic form. Ovid, for example, writes thus of the cult of the Sabine Vacuna[[948]]:
Ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
Mos erat, et mensae credere adesse deos.
Nunc quoque cum fiunt antiquae sacra Vacunae,
Ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos.
Or again in the sacra of the curiae, if Dionysius reports them rightly[[949]], we find a clear case of a common meal in which the gods took part. He tells us that he saw tables in the ‘sacred houses’ of the curiae spread for the gods with simple food in very primitive earthenware dishes. He does not mention the presence of any images of the gods, but it is probable from his interesting description that each curia partook with its gods of a common meal of a religious character, and one not likely to have come under Greek influence[[950]].