Nenia Dea (Engl.: Goddess Nenia; rarely ''Naenia'') was an ancient funeral deity of
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, who had a sanctuary outside of the Porta
Viminalis. The cult of the Nenia is doubtlessly a very old one, but according to
Georg Wissowa
Georg Otto August Wissowa (17 June 1859 – 11 May 1931) was a German classical philologist born in Neudorf, near Breslau.
Education and career
Wissowa studied classical philology under August Reifferscheid at the University of Bresla ...
the location of Nenia's shrine ''(
sacellum
In ancient Roman religion, a ''sacellum'' is a small shrine. The word is a diminutive from ''sacrum'' (neuter of ''sacer'', "belonging to a god"). The numerous ''sacella'' of ancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by fa ...
)'' outside of the center of early Rome indicates that she didn't belong to the earliest circle of Roman deities. In a different interpretation her shrine was located outside of the old city walls, because it had been custom for all gods connected to death or dying.
Goddess of the Roman funerary lament
Nenia shares her name with the ''nenia'' that sometimes took the meaning of ''carmen funebre'' ("dirge"), and
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...
regarded the Nenia Dea as a personification of the funerary lament's protective power. She was therefore a goddess also connected to the end of a person's life. Varro assigned the Nenia Dea to a polar position with respect to the god
Ianus, which was probably inspired by one of the ancient Roman etymologies of the word ''nenia'', defining it as ''nenia finis'' ("end", ''fig.'': "finale").
Arnobius
Arnobius (died c. 330) was an early Christian apologist of Berber origin during the reign of Diocletian (284–305).
According to Jerome's ''Chronicle,'' Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Ven ...
places men who are near to death under Nenia's care. Although Arnobius' writings are mainly influenced by
Cornelius Labeo, the identification of Nenia as the goddess of human transience here also suggests a Varronian origin. It is unclear whether
Tertullian
Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of L ...
referred to the Nenia Dea when he wrote about the "goddess of death herself". Whether the worship of Nenia herself was part of the last rites is uncertain. However,
Lucius Afranius clearly associates the term ''nenia'' (i.e. the funeral song) with the obsequies.
Further hypotheses
Heller rejects Nenia's status as a funerary deity and makes a guess as to her original nature as the goddess of "children's playtime". Heller's restrictive emphasis on ''nenia'' as a "jingle" or "plaything" alone has however been refuted, since sufficient sources on the funerary nature have been delivered by Heller himself, albeit disregarded.
In any case, even Heller's erroneous interpretation of the term ''nenia'' could in principle be applicable to Roman funerary customs, because death was also seen as a rebirth into the afterlife.
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into En ...
explicitly connects the funeral lamentations with the "wail that children raise upon first seeing the shores of light." Furthermore, the dirges could sometimes also have paralleled the lullabies that mothers sing to their children, since some ''neniae'' were sung with a soothing voice. However, this source and other sources on the ''nenia'' as a lullaby do not specifically refer to dirges, but to ''neniae'' in general.
[Still, it was speculated that the worship of Nenia was to "procure rest and peace for the departed in the lower world" (cf]
"Naenia"
, in: William Smith (ed.), ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', Boston 1870, p. 1135). Beside the lament to fend off perdition, Nenia's character might have included some of the hypothesized philosophies, e.g. the wailing of rebirth, but since the sources are silent with respect to the goddess herself, these views on the Nenia Dea remain speculation.
See also
*
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...
*
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome consisted of varying imperial and provincial religious practices, which were followed both by the people of Rome as well as those who were brought under its rule.
The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, ...
*
Ianus, the Roman god
* ''
Di inferi
The ''di inferi'' or ''dii inferi'' (Latin, "the gods below") were a shadowy collective of ancient Roman deities associated with death and the underworld. The epithet ''inferi'' is also given to the mysterious Manes, a collective of ancestral sp ...
'', the underworld gods as a collective
*
List of Roman birth and childhood deities
In ancient Roman religion, birth and childhood deities were thought to care for every aspect of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and child development. Some major deities of Roman religion had a specialized function they contributed to this ...
Notes
References
{{Citizendium
* John Lewis Heller
"Nenia 'παίγνιον'" in: ''Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association'', Vol. 74, 1943, p. 215–268
Roman goddesses