The late-republic, long thought of as a period of decline and disuse in Roman religion, is now being reexamined as a time of great innovation and experimentation (Beard, North and Price 1998). As Rome moved into uncharted territory, Cicero and Varro were producing the first systematic analyses of Roman religion. Their works had a seminal role in validating, establishing or occluding the vast range practices that made up Roman religious life. In this paper, I shall discuss how Cicero uses the cultural authority of Ennius to give his contentious claims about apotheosis the respectable patina of tradition. In this way, Cicero helps set the stage for the deification of Caesar and Augustus and also consolidates Ennius’ symbolic role in ongoing debates about Roman identity.

Republican Roman statesmen such as Flamininus and Pompey were accorded divine honors in their lifetime in the Greek east. Julius Caesar was even making overtures to his own divine status on Italian soil (Weinstock, Divus Julius 1971). We can discern from the hesitations and ambiguities in prose, poetry and iconography that the question of ruler worship was a hotly contested issue at Rome in the late republic. Cicero uses the normative forces of his writings during this period to help set the parameters for the possibility of such ritual practices at Rome. To do this, he carefully tailors his renderings of republican custom to present posthumous apotheosis (as opposed to earthly divinity) as time-honored tradition. Enlisting Ennius in this project was doubly advantageous- he not only was the singer par excellence of the mos maiorum but he had also translated Euhemerus’ work on the apotheosis of primitive kings for a Roman audience.

In the surviving sections of his De Re Publica, a work best known for its Euhemerizing flourish the Somnium Scipionis, Cicero appeals to Ennian precedent twelve times. Cicero has the interlocutor Scipio establish Ennius’ Annales early in the first book as a sanctified source of republican archival information (Atque hac in re tanta inest ratio atque sollertia, ut ex hoc die, quem apud Ennium et in maximis annalibus consignatum videmus, superiores solis defectiones reputatae sint usque ad illam, quae Nonis Quinctilibus fuit regnante Romulo; quibus quidem Romulum tenebris etiamsi natura ad humanum exitum abripuit, virtus tamen in caelum dicitur sustulisse. 1.25). Here Cicero shows a revered republican hero, Scipio, citing Ennius as authoritative in his own time (dramatic date 129 BCE) and thus helps create the poet’s privileged cultural status. Later on in the first book of the De Re Publica, Scipio quotes Ennius in a passage that enlarges on the deification of Romulus (simul inter / sese sic memorant: "o Romule, Romule die, / qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt! / o pater, o genitor, o sanguen dis oriundum!"...non eros nec dominos appellabant eos, quibus iuste paruerunt, denique ne reges quidem, sed patriae custodes, sed patres, sed deos; 1.64). This Ennian precedent for apotheosis lends powerful support to the tendentiously approving account of Romulus’ deification that Scipio gives at the beginning of book 2. Since no Roman had been officially deified since Romulus, Cicero is invoking Ennius to present what would be novel and experimental in the late republic as natural and traditional. In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero even fashions Ennius as the conduit for early oral traditions about ruler cult ("Romulus in caelo cum dis agit aevom," ut famae adsentiens dixit Ennius" 1.28). Cicero’s widespread use of Ennius as the spokesperson for republican tradition is also significant in the process of constructing the "Ennius" that subsequent Roman writers will adapt and transform to suit their own purposes.

How Cicero shaped his accounts of Romulus’ deification had major implications during a time when Roman statesmen were flirting with notions of divine status. By using the constitutive force of his texts, Cicero helped give apotheosis the aura of archaic tradition. To give this aura an air of authenticity, he deploys the texts of Ennius. In this way, Cicero uses a hallowed voice of tradition to help sanction bold innovation.