Numen and numinousity - on some religious aspects
of the Roman concept of authority
This paper gives a short account of some philological and religious aspects of the concept of ’numen’ defined by H. Rose as ’superhuman force, impersonal in itself, but belonging to a person (a god of some kind), or occasionally to an exceptionally important body of human beings, as the Roman senate or people’. Etymological ’numen’ simply means ’nodding’ or ’movement’ as an act of will, e. g. like that of Iuppiter: ’adnuit et totum tremefecit Olympum’ (Verg. Aen. 10, 115). The triumphator, adorned with the ornaments of the Iuppiter Capitolinus, represents in his personal appearance the numen of the god; as Spengler remarks: ’er (scil. der Triumphator) trug hier die Rüstung des kapitolinischen Iuppiter, und in der älteren Zeit waren Gesicht und Arme mit roter Farbe bestrichen, um die Aehnlichkeit mit der Terrakottastatue des Gottes, dessen numen sich in diesem Augenblick in ihm verkörperte, zu erhöhen.’ The flamen Dialis represented during his life (described by K. Kerényi as ’ein joviales Leben’) the permanent presence of Iuppiter, and his ritual reminded the Romans of the numinous and archetypal act of the ’hieros gamos’. The concept of the ’numen Augusti’ is also based on his ’imperium’ and ’auctoritas’, concepts belonging to an archetypal sphere of the Roman religion.
