Channels of Communication:
Bloody Water in Roman Religion

Christopher McDonough

University of the South

What we are to make of the blood in Horace’s famous ode to the fons Bandusiae (Carm. 3.13)–nam gelidos inficiet  tibi / rubro sanguine rivos (6-7)–is a source of great debate among scholars.  While it is evident from the ode’s Du stil that it is a prayer informed by the do ut des principle of reciprocity (donaberis in line 3 is balanced by praebes in line 12), critical disagreement centers on the accompanying ritual act of sacrifice.  To wit:  “A.Y. Campbell asked not unreasonably, ‘Who wants to drink out of the fountain of Bandusia after that?’ for which he is rebuked, roundly, by David West … but there is something evidently, even nastily twentieth century about West’s formulation” (Charles Martindale, Horace Made New [Cambridge 1993] 25, cited in David West, Horaces, Odes III: Dulce Periculum [Oxford 2002] 123).  A comparandum to consider in connection with Horace’s ode is a denarius issued by L. Pomponius Milo in 97 BC depicting, on the reverse, Numa Pompilius with a lituus before a lighted altar at which he is about to sacrifice a goat held by a youth (see M. Crawford, Roman Republic Coinage [London-New York 1974], item 334/1).  Let it be noted that the coin has been overlooked in this discussion for good reason: the rite does not take place at a spring, the goat is mature (his frons is decidedly not turgida cornibus primis, but rather the horns are fully grown), and, most significantly for our purposes, the image is somewhat mundane.  Sacrifice in antiquity was, we must remember, an everyday event–Horace’s emphasis on the spectacular moment of bloodshed is meant to jolt us out of complacency in the presence of even so small a deity as that of this minor spring.  Here we do well to recall Walter Burkert’s remark, that in sacrifice, there is a “shock caused by the sight of flowing blood” (Homo Necans [Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1983] 21), an astonishment of sorts which heightens and solemnizes the ritual act.  But furthermore, we need to remember how often the appearance of blood at a river, lake, or spring was taken for a prodigy, according to Livy (22.1.10, 24.10.7, 27.11.3, and numerous other occasions).  The case to be made here, then, is that, just as a bloody spring might be interpreted as an omen oblativum sent by the gods to indicate a rupture in the pax deorum, so the blood promised by Horace to stain the fons Bandusiae should be seen as a making use, as it were, of the same channel of communication.