Cornelius Labeo
Encyclopedia
Cornelius Labeo was an ancient Roman theologian
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...

 and antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...

 who wrote on such topics as the Roman calendar
Roman calendar
The Roman calendar changed its form several times in the time between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire. This article generally discusses the early Roman or pre-Julian calendars...

 and the teachings of Etruscan religion (Etrusca disciplina). His works survive only in fragments and testimonia. He has been dated "plausibly but not provably" to the 3rd century AD. Labeo has been called "the most important Roman theologian" after Varro
Varro
Varro was a Roman cognomen carried by:*Marcus Terentius Varro, sometimes known as Varro Reatinus, the scholar*Publius Terentius Varro or Varro Atacinus, the poet*Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul defeated at the battle of Cannae...

, whose work seems to have influenced him strongly. He is usually considered a Neoplatonist.

Labeo and Censorinus
Censorinus
Censorinus, Roman grammarian and miscellaneous writer, flourished during the 3rd century AD.He was the author of a lost work De Accentibus and of an extant treatise De Die Natali, written in 238, and dedicated to his patron Quintus Caerellius as a birthday gift...

 are the only authors with demonstrable interests in writing about Roman religion
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...

 during a time of "military anarchy" between the death of Caracalla
Caracalla
Caracalla , was Roman emperor from 198 to 217. The eldest son of Septimius Severus, he ruled jointly with his younger brother Geta until he murdered the latter in 211...

 and the accession
Roman Emperor (Dominate)
The accession on November 20, 284, of Diocletian, the lower-class, Greek-speaking Dalmatian commander of Carus's and Numerian's household cavalry, marked a major departure from traditional Roman constitutional theory regarding the Emperor, who was nominally first among equals during the Principate...

 of Diocletian
Diocletian
Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244  – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....

 when scholarship seems mostly to have ground to a halt. Because religious and civil law in ancient Rome may overlap, the fragments of this Labeo are sometimes confused with those of the jurist
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...

s Quintus Antistius Labeo and Marcus Antistius Labeo
Marcus Antistius Labeo
Marcus Antistius Labeo was a prominent jurist of ancient Rome.He was the son of Quintus Antistius Labeo, a jurist who caused himself to be slain after the defeat of his party at Philippi...

.

Influence

Labeo was among the sources used by Macrobius, John Lydus, and Servius. It has sometimes been supposed that the Orphic verses given by Macrobius in the first book of his Saturnalia are taken from Labeo. His works were influential enough that he was targeted for criticism by Church Fathers such as Arnobius
Arnobius
Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a...

 and Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

. He may have been Arnobius's intermediate source for Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...

, and possibly Martianus Capella
Martianus Capella
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a pagan writer of Late Antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education...

's for Iamblichus.

Labeo was interested in such problems as the existence of good and bad numina
Numen
Numen is a Latin term for a potential, guiding the course of events in a particular place or in the whole world, used in Roman philosophical and religious thought...

, and whether intermediate beings should be called daimones (δαίμονες) or angeloi (ἄγγελοι). Labeo is one of the Greek and Roman authors with whom Augustine debates over the nature of "demons" in Book 8, On the City of God. In particular, he rejects Labeo's distinction between good and bad daimones, saying they are all impure spirits
Unclean spirit
In English translations of the Bible, unclean spirit is a common rendering of Greek pneuma akatharton , which in its single occurrence in the Septuagint translates Hebrew ....

 and thus evil. In classifying divine figures as gods, demigods, and heroes, Labeo placed Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 among demigods such as Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

 and Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...

.

In De mensibus ("On the months"), Lydus cites Labeo as his source for a list of thirty names for Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....

 (Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

) and for explanations of customs pertaining to the calendar such as the etymologies of the names of the months. Labeo supported the view that the Roman goddess Maia was the Earth (Terra), named for her great size (magnitudine), to be identified with the Great Mother (Magna Mater) and the Good Goddess (Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...

), to whom a temple was dedicated on the Kalends
Kalends
The Calends , correspond to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar. The Romans assigned these calends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle...

 of May.

Apollo and Iao

Labeo wrote a book De oraculo Apollinis Clarii that has provided a key passage for understanding monotheistic
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...

 tendencies in ancient Greek and Roman religious thought. When asked "Who is the supreme God?" Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

 responded:

Alas, you have not come to enquire about small matters.
You want to know who is the king of heaven
Whom even I do not know, yet revere according to tradition.


Apollo says that the supreme God is superior to him, ineffable and unknowable. Labeo also reports that an interpretation was sought for the Orphic verse "Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

 is One, Hades
Hades
Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

 is One, Helios
Helios
Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...

 is One, Dionysus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

 is One." According to Macrobius:


The authority of this line rests on an oracle of Clarian Apollo, in which another name for the sun, too, is added, who is given among other names, in the same holy lines, that of Iao
Iao
Iao may refer to:* a Greek form of Yahweh* the purported secret name or abbreviation of a deity in Gnosticism, Greek mystery cults, and magic* Iao Valley, a popular tourist attraction on Maui, Hawaii* another name for the Wattlebird...

. For the Clarian Apollo, upon being asked which of the gods was meant by Iao, spoke as follows: 'Initiates must hold their secrets—yet know! Iao is Hades in the winter, Zeus in spring, Helios in summer, and Iao in autumn.' The force of this oracular saying, and the interpretation of the divinity and the name, whereby Father Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...

 and Sol
Sol (mythology)
Sol was the solar deity in Ancient Roman religion. It was long thought that Rome actually had two different, consecutive sun gods. The first, Sol Indiges, was thought to have been unimportant, disappearing altogether at an early period. Only in the late Roman Empire, scholars argued, did solar cult...

 are meant by Iao, Cornelius Labeo treats in his book titled On the Oracle of the Clarian Apollo.


This passage has been called "the most far-reaching and prominent evidence for the concept of theocrasy in pagan antiquity." "Many gods," Ramsay MacMullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Ramsay MacMullen is an Emeritus Professor of history at Yale University, where he taught from 1967 to his retirement in 1993 as Dunham Professor of History and Classics...

 observed, "were really aspects of a single god." "Iao" (Ἰαώ) is not explicitly identified as the god of the Jews
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...

, but the name was already established in Latin usage as such. Labeo tried to find a way to situate the Jewish god in the Olympian system
Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...

. In late antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...

, "Iao" has a "magical potency" that came to embody the unifying tendency of Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism
Neopythagoreanism was a Graeco-Alexandrian school of philosophy, reviving Pythagorean doctrines, which became prominent in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE...

and Neoplatonism.

Text

The most extensive treatment of Cornelius Labeo, including the collected fragments, is that of the Italian scholar P. Mastandrea, Un Neoplatonico Latino: Cornelio Labeone, testimonianze e frammenti (Leiden, 1979). The work Peri keraunôn (Περὶ κεραυνῶν, On Lightnings) has sometimes been wrongly ascribed to him.
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