Indigitamenta

The books of the Pontiffs are known only through scattered passages preserved throughout Latin literature. Varro, a 1st-century BCE writer, is assumed to have drawn on direct knowledge of the lists in writing his now-fragmentary theological books.^[2] Servius the Grammarian claims that, according to Varro, the indigitamenta were a series of pontifical books that contained the names of gods and the justifications for those names,^[3] and also that the names of the numina were present in these texts.^[4] Varro's work was also used as a reference by the Church Fathers for their mocking catalogues of minor deities.^[5] As William Warde Fowler noted,

the good Fathers tumbled the whole collection about sadly in their search for material for their mockery, having no historical or scientific object in view; with the result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan.^[6]

Georg Wissowa, however, asserted that Varro's lists were not indigitamenta, but di certi, gods whose function could still be identified with certainty, since by the late Republic some of the most archaic deities of the Roman pantheon were not widely cultivated and understood.^[7] Another likely source for the patristic catalogues is the lost work De indigitamentis of Granius Flaccus, Varro's contemporary.^[8] Arnobius, a 3rd-century Christian apologist, writes that the name of the god Apollo was not present in the indigitamenta of Numa Pompilius,^[9] who was generally considered in Roman legend to have been the organizer of many Roman religious practices. It is probable that these specific early indigitamenta date back prior to 431 BCE—the date when Apollo received an official temple, and therefore presumably a place in the Roman pantheon.^[10] However, the passage also implies that Apollo was present in later versions of the indigitamenta, which is perhaps further supported by the works of the 4th-century CE theologian Augustine, who does mention Apollo among a list of gods that appears to have been drawn from an older Varronian source covering the indigitamenta.^[11][10]

W.H. Roscher collated the standard modern list of indigitamenta,^[12] though other scholars may differ with him on some points.^{[citation needed]}

It is unclear whether the written indigitamenta contained complete prayer formularies, or simply an index of names.^[13] If formulas of invocation, the indigitamenta were probably precationum carmina, chants or hymns of address.^[14] Paulus defines them as incantamenta, incantations, and indicia, signs or intimations.^[15]

A further point of uncertainty is whether these names represent distinct minor entities, or epithets pertaining to an aspect of a major deity's sphere of influence, that is, an indigitation, or name intended to "fix" or focalize the action of the god so invoked.^[16] If the former, the indigitamenta might be described as indexing "significant names which bespoke a specialized divine function," for which the German term Sondergötter is sometimes used;^[17] for instance, Vagitanus gives the newborn its first cry (vagitus).^[18] If the indigitamenta record invocational epithets, however, an otherwise obscure deity such as Robigus, the red god of wheat rust, should perhaps be understood as an indigitation of Mars, red god of war and agriculture;^[19] Maia, "a deity known apparently only to the priests and the learned," would be according to Macrobius^[20] an indigitation of the Bona Dea.^[21] Roscher, however, does not consider Robigus and Maia to have been part of the indigitamenta.

Many of the indigitamenta are involved in the cycle of conception, birth, and child development (marked BCh); see List of Roman birth and childhood deities. Several appear in a list of twelve helper gods of Ceres as an agricultural goddess^[22] or are named elsewhere as having specialized agricultural functions (Ag). Gods not appearing on either of those lists are described briefly here, or are more fully described in their own articles as linked.