Sigillaria (ancient Rome)

In ancient Roman culture, sigillaria were pottery or wax figurines given as traditional gifts during the Saturnalia. Sigillaria as a proper noun was also the name for the last day of the Saturnalia, December 23,[1] and for a place where sigillaria were sold.[2]

In the dialogue of Macrobius's Saturnalia, the interlocutor Praetextatus says that sigillaria were substitutes for the sacrificial victims of the primitive religious rituals.[3] Interpreted as such, they raise questions about human sacrifice among the earliest Romans[4] (see also Argei and oscilla). The speaker Evangelus, however, counters that the figures are nothing more than toys to amuse children.[5]

Vendors set up in locations such as the porticoes of the Baths of Trajan to sell the figurines.[6]

References

  1. ^ Robert A. Kaster, Macrobius: Saturnalia Books 1–2 (Loeb Classical Library, 2011), pp. 81 (note 110) and 110 (note 178).
  2. ^ Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 152.
  3. ^ Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.10.24.
  4. ^ Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 166.
  5. ^ Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.1.
  6. ^ Scholiast to Juvenal 6.154; Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 398.