Vacuna was an ancient

Sabine The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divi ...

goddess, identified by ancient Roman sources and later scholars with numerous other goddesses, including Ceres, Diana,

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, Bellona,

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and Victoria. She was mainly worshipped at a sanctuary near Horace's villa (now in the commune of Licenza), in sacred woods at

Reate Rieti (; lat, Reate, Sabino: ) is a town and ''comune'' in Lazio, central Italy, with a population of 47,700. It is the administrative seat of the province of Rieti and see of the diocese of Rieti, as well as the modern capital of the Sabina ...

, and at Rome. The protection she was asked to provide remains obscure. Pomponius Porphyrion calls her ''incerta specie'' (of an uncertain kind) in his commentaries on

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ...

. Renaissance authors and

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state that she was a divinity to whom the country people offered sacrifices when the labours of the field were over, that is, when they were at leisure, ''vacui''. The etymology of her name is linked to lack and

privation Privation is the absence or lack of basic necessities. Child psychology In child psychology, privation occurs when a child has no opportunity to form a relationship with a parent figure, or when such relationship is distorted, due to their treatm ...

, and Horace appears to call upon her in favour of a friend to whom one of his epistles is addressed. From this, it has been conjectured that she was prayed to in favour of absent people, family members or friends.G. Dumézil, ''La religion romaine archaïque'', 2nd ed., p. 369, n. 3; id., ''Mélanges Geo Widengren'', 1972, p. 307-311. Ovid mentions rites linked to sacramental fires with attendants either standing or sitting, that he compares to olden ceremonies observed on behalf of Vesta, without any suggestion of field work nor absent dear ones.

References

Sources

Ancient sources

, ''Epistles'', l. 1, ep. 10, v. 49-50 (commented by Pomponius Porphyrion, Helenius Acron and the scholiast of Cruquius); *

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the t ...

, ''Fasti'', 6, v. 305 to 308; *

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ...

, ''Natural History'', l. 3 (ch. 12), par. 109; * Auson, Epistle 4, v. 101. Epigraphical sources: * ''

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum The ''Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum'' (''CIL'') is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions thr ...

'', IX, 4636, 4751, 4752.

Modern sources

* Edmond Courbaud, ''Horace : sa vie et sa pensée à l’époque des Épîtres'', Paris, 1914, ch. 2, § 7, note 16
Online on espace-horace
* A. W. van Buren, « Vacuna », The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 6, 1916 (1916), pp. 202–204. * Elizabeth Cornelia Evans, « Horace's Sabine Goddess Vacuna », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 65, 1934 (1934). *

External links

*{{Commonsinline Agricultural goddesses Roman goddesses