Quirinus

Summary

Quirinus is one of Rome's oldest gods, the third in the ancient group that joins him with Jupiter and Mars. Livy tells how King Numa gave Jupiter a permanent priest with a special dress and the royal chair, then added two more priests, one for Mars and one for Quirinus. When the Romans declared war, their envoy called out: hear, Jupiter, and you, Janus Quirinus, and all the gods. When the consul Decius vowed himself to death for his army, his prayer began: Janus, Jupiter, Father Mars, Quirinus. Plutarch says that Numa's books set out three grades of the great spoils: the first for Jupiter, the second for Mars, the third for Quirinus.

His story is the story of Romulus after his death. Ovid tells how Mars, seeing his son's walls and wars, said to Jupiter: Rome is strong now and no longer needs my son, so give the son back to his father; you promised me that you would raise one of the two to the sky. Jupiter nodded and both poles shook. Romulus was judging the people at the Goat's Marsh when the sun vanished, clouds rose, rain fell in torrents, then thunder rolled and the sky split with flame; the people fled, and the king rose to the stars on his father's horses. The senators were accused of murder, until Proculus Julius, coming from Alba by night, saw Romulus standing in the middle of the road, fairer than before and taller than a man, who told him: forbid the Quirites to mourn; tell them to bring incense to the new Quirinus and to practise the art of their fathers, war. Temples were built to him, the hill was named after him, and his feast, the Quirinalia, fell on 17 February.

In the Metamorphoses Ovid adds that Mars came down in his chariot to the Palatine and took Romulus as he was giving judgement; his mortal body melted into the air as a lead bullet melts when it is slung upwards, and he was given the form of Quirinus in the royal robe. His wife Hersilia wept for him until Juno sent her messenger Iris, who led her to a grove on the hill of Quirinus; a star came down from the sky, Hersilia rose with it, Romulus received her and changed her name to Hora, and she became the consort of Quirinus.

Quirinus was not originally a name of Romulus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that the Sabines, and the Romans who learned it from them, called their war god Quirinus, without knowing whether he was Mars or another god with the same honours. Varro says that the Sabine king Titus Tatius vowed altars in Rome to gods including Quirinus, and that the Quirinal hill was named after his shrine, or after the Quirites who came with Tatius from Cures and camped there.

The idea his stories turn on is that Quirinus is the god of the people gathered together. The Romans called themselves Quirites when they met as citizens, ever since the Romans and the Sabines became one people after the war over the Sabine women, and the god of that name is the founder who joined the two peoples and was then taken from among them. In the ancient group, Jupiter holds sovereignty, Mars armed force, and Quirinus the community itself, the division the structural essay reads in them.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Take the Latin ending -us off Quirīnus and Quirīn- remains, with the consonants q, r and n. The Roman essay in this project reads it from the root q-r-n: first qarn, "horn", strength and the distinguishing mark, and beside it qarana, "to join, to bind", and it takes the name of the Quirites from the same root. Lane gives qarana al-shayʾ bi-l-shayʾ, "he connected, coupled or conjoined a thing with a thing", qarīn, "a companion", and aqrana li-l-amr, "he was able and strong to do it". Joining is what the text gives Quirinus: one of Ovid's explanations of his name is that "he joined Cures to Rome", and Livy says the two sides made one people of the two and its citizens were named Quirites. Latin keeps the q as a sound of its own, written qu, so the first letter stands as it is.

Linguistic Root

Ovid gives three reasons for the name: that the Sabines called the spear curis, or that the Quirites gave their king their own name, or that he joined Cures to Rome. Plutarch gives the spear and the citizens, and a third view that makes Quirinus Mars himself. The Latin dictionary sets the name beside Quiris and Cures and makes curia one of their family.

The qu answers Arabic q; the Latin table of the Juthoor sound laws gives q as Latin c or qu. The r answers r. The n is the one limit of the qarn reading: Latin has an adjective suffix -īnus, as in Latīnus and Sabīnus, and the Quirites, Cures and the spear curis all lack the n. If the n belongs to the suffix, Quir- remains, with q and r.

Read this way, the essay's reading stands on the nucleus of the root, q and r, and we propose on the method that Quir- is Arabic qarya, which Lane gives as a small town. The Phoenician and Ugaritic word for city is qrt, which the structural essay names as qart when it speaks of the city the gods protect, and which this project reads in the name of Melqart, "king of the city". On this view the Quirites are the townsfolk in assembly, and Cures their first town. The two readings meet in sense: qarana is joining one thing to another, and the qarya is the place where people come together. The essay also proposes Quraysh and qahara, to subdue, both further off in their letters.

Key Mythic Narratives

The oath of Julius

Plutarch says that Romulus vanished on the Nones of July, that the nobles forbade the commons to inquire into his disappearance and told them to worship him as a god, and that some accused them of killing him. Then Julius Proculus swore in the Forum by the most sacred oaths that he had met Romulus on the road in shining armour and asked him why he had left them; Romulus answered: it pleased the gods that I should be with mankind only a short time and then return to heaven, having founded a city greatest in empire and glory; tell the Romans that if they join self-restraint to courage they will reach the heights of human power, and I will be your propitious god, Quirinus. Dionysius gives the same speech in another form, "the genius allotted to me at my birth is conducting me to the gods, and I am Quirinus", and says that Numa ordered Romulus honoured under that name with a temple and sacrifices throughout the year.

The People's Flight

Plutarch says the day of Romulus's disappearance is called the People's Flight and the Capratine Nones, because people go out of the city to sacrifice at the Goat's Marsh, shouting local names such as Marcus, Lucius and Gaius, in imitation of the way they called to one another in fear on the day he vanished.

The priest of Quirinus and Larentia

Gellius reports that Acca Larentia, whom another story makes Romulus's nurse, left her property to Romulus or to the people, and so the priest of Quirinus offered her the public sacrifice.

Symbolic Reading

The structural essay sets Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus as a triad of sovereignty, force and people, and pairs it with an eastern triad of El, Baal and Ishtar or Dagon, saying that the division shares out the gods' tasks so that "the city or village", qart, may endure. The other Roman essay reads the deification of rulers as a political promotion after death, and distinguishes divus, the deified man, from deus, the god, as the Romans themselves did. In these accounts Romulus is a king who became a god after death; the texts make the senators the first to say he was taken up, and then Proculus's oath ends the doubt.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Dionysius says the Sabines call Enyalius Quirinus, and Enyalius is a title of Ares in the Iliad and a war god beside him in later writers; LSJ gives it as the Greek for Quirinus in Polybius and Dionysius, so Quirinus in his Sabine origin is close to the god of war. The Semitic essay pairs him with Ares, Resheph, Nergal and Montu, while the structural essay makes him the god of the people, not of war.

Romulus's ascent in the storm resembles the end of Heracles: a cloud passed under him on the pyre and carried him to the sky with a peal of thunder; he became immortal, was reconciled with Hera, and married her daughter Hebe. In both stories a hero born of a mortal mother and a divine father is taken up in thunder and cloud and then given a wife in heaven. The people of Tyre saw Melqart as the founder and king of their city who dies and is honoured, and his name is "king of the city".

Romulus's disappearance and his appearance to Julius as a god bring him near the motif of death and return: the people mourn him, and then are told not to mourn, for he has become a god.