Cacus

vol. III p.1165-1169

Cacus

The name of a missing figure from ancient Roman religion, who has been preserved in the names for the places atrium Caci and scalae Caci (see above); the information hints to an old cult of a god-pairing Cacus and Caca, and that Caca (see her respective article) was honoured by the Vestal Virgins <60> (Serv. Aen. VIII 190, cf. Lact. I 20, 36); we can’t hope to find much out about the nature of this divinity and her former place in history, since nothing more than her name and the mentioned note about the cult of Caca were handed down to the ancients (varying degrees of unfounded hypotheses see eg. Preuner Hestia-Vesta 386f. Osthoff Quaestiones mythologicae, Bonnae 1869, 7ff. <page break 1165/1166> A. Schneider Röm. Mitt. X 1895, 163.; about the meaning of the word R. Peter in Roscher’s Myth. Lexik. I 2273f.). The aetiological development of the myth has become so busy with trying to explain the name and the setting, and indeed, since the Cacus-stairs lead down from the Palatine to the Forum boarium and the Ara maxima, on the one hand, Cacus is related to the earliest settlement on the Palatine by Evander, <10> and on the other hand, he is related to Hercules’ presence in Rome. The oldest report available to us seems to be that from Timaios in Diod. IV 21, 2 (about the origin on Timaios O. Sieroka Die mythogr. Quellen f. Diodors 3. und 4. Buch [1878] 23f. Bethe Quaest. Diodor. mythogr. [1887] 35f.; in contrast, with insufficient reasons, Geffcken Timaios Geogr. des Westens [Philol. Untersuch. XIII] 54); <20> and according to that, Κάκιος (this form of the name is probably derived from the name scalae Caciae) and Πινάριος were noble citizens of the people on the Palatine, who took in Herakles hospitably and gave him gifts, which the relationship of the Pinaria to the Hercules-cult is reminiscent of (this was, of course, emphasised in Diodorus’ source, while he only stressed the age of the family), and which the κλῖμαξ Κακία on the Palatine is also reminiscent of. In the ancient history of Italy’s origin by the annalist Gn. Gellius, <30> Cacus was connected in a different and rather individual way: according to him (Solin. 1, 8f.), Cacus, together with a phrygian Megales (severely misunderstood by R. Peter in Roscher’s Mythol. Lexik. I 2276), was sent as an envoy to the Tyrrhenian king Tarchon, who threw them both into prison; Cacus however managed to escape and turned back to where he had come from (ie, to the land of the Marsi, whose king, according to Cn. Gellius, was Marsyas, Plin. n. h. III 108; cf. Solin. 2, 6. Sil. Ital. VIII 503); <40> with the help of a larger force, he founded his own rule on the Volturnus in Campania; but when he went for the land that rightly belonged to the Arcadians, he was killed by Hercules, who was staying in Italy at the time; Megales found refuge with the Sabines, and taught them the art of augury (cf. also Serv. Aen. III 359 nonnulli autem dicunt a Marsya rege missos e Phrygia regnante Fauno, qui disciplinam auguriorum Italis ostenderunt); <50> so, here the relationship between Cacus and the Arcadian settlement on the Palatine ends up hostile, and Hercules changes from being Cacus’ guest-friend to being his conqueror. If the story from Diodorus as well as the version of Cn. Gellius are generally taken to be newer and more arbitrary remixes of the usual myth of Cacus’ cattle-theft and him being killed by Hercules, <60> then it cannot be overlooked that for the latter myth, Vergil is the oldest source, and indeed even the only source for some of the important elements. According to him (Aen. VIII 190ff.), Cacus is a son of Volcanus, [he’s] a half-animal fire-breathing monster, which lives in a cave on the Aventine, and ravages the local area by killing people; when Hercules, on the way back from killing the Geryone with whom <page break 1166/1167> [he was] rushing towards his stolen herd on the Tiber, had eight of his most beautiful cattle stolen from him by Cacus, who had lead them backwards by the tail into his cave. After searching in vain, Hercules wanted to set off again with the rest of the herd, when the cattle trapped in the cave responded to the lowing of their companions, and so revealed their location; at once, Hercules stormed towards the cave, the entrance of which Cacus had barricaded with rocks; <10> by ripping out a giant holm oak tree by the roots, Hercules managed to gain entrance from above, the monster spewed out fire and smoke against him to no avail, the god pressed in, struck him dead, and dragged the body out of the cave by its feet; outside, the inhabitants celebrated their saviour, and the Ara maxima preserves the memory of this heroic deed for all time. The stories of Ovid. fast. I 543ff. (cf. V 648. VI 80ff.) and Prop. V 9, 1ff. (though this one, clearly reminiscent of the Geryone-myth, gives Cacus three heads, v. 10. 15) came from Vergil’s version; Cacus' lineage from Volcanus (from Vergil, also Serv. Aen. VIII 190. Augustin. c. d. XIX 12. Euseb. chron. I p. 283 Sch. = Sync. I p. 323 Ddf. Plut. amat. 18), the presentation of him as a fire-breathing monster (cf. also Serv. Augustin. Plut. loc. cit. Claud. rapt. Pros. II pr. 43. Myth. Vat. III 13, 1. Fulg. myth. II 6. Alberic. 22; silvarum tremor Martial. V 65, 5 also comes from Vergil’s depiction), <30> and probably also the placement of the cave on the Aventine (Solin. 1, 8. Colum. I 3, 6) are particular to Vergil’s version. Separate from this are the stories told by Liv. I 7, 3ff. and Dion. Hal. I 39 (Cassius Dio also told τὰ τοῦ Κάκου, Tzetz. hist. V 21) which are consistent with each other, portrayed in such a way that anything fantastical or supernatural is removed. Cacus is a shepherd and a thug, who, after he has carried out his theft in the previously mentioned sly manner, <40> and has been found out by the lowing of his stolen cattle, he calls his local shepherds to help him against the intruding god; the killing of Cacus here doesn’t have the impact of a liberation of the area from a horror, but rather it has the impact of a murder, which stirs up the minds of the people (concursu pastorum trepidantium circa advenam manifestae reum caedis Liv. I 7, 9), <50> and hence, in this version, the establishment of the Hercules-cult in the Ara maxima doesn’t directly follow the fall of Cacus, but instead, it’s followed by the foundation of an altar to Iuppiter Inventor, which Hercules founds as thanks for finding the cattle again (Dion. I 39, 4; cf. Solin. 1, 7. Origo g. R. 6, 5. 8, 1. Samter Quaest. Varron., Berol. 1891, 22f.). This portrayal, which he describes as the μυθικὸς λόγος (I 39, 1), is compared with the ἀληθέστερος λόγος in Dionysios I 42, 2f., <60> which is characterised as a historic reworking of the first; according to that, Cacus was a wild bandit of a prince who lived in a mountain fortress, who attacked Heracles’ army lying on the plains at night, and stole his herds, on account of which the Greeks turned their sights towards him and besieged him, until they had broken his castle and he himself had died; the surrounding area was owned by the Arcadians under Evander, and [by] the native people under Faunus. <page break 1167/1168> The latest portrayal, according to Euhemerus (veritas secundum philologos et historicos Serv.), takes Cacus as a good-for-nothing scoundrel and a slave of Evander, who stole Hercules’ cattle, and wasn’t held accountable by [Hercules], but instead by his master (Serv. Aen. VIII 190 = Mythogr. Vat. I 66. II 153. Origo g. R. 6); the character of the man is already evident from his name, <10> which - regardless of its quantity - is interpreted as κακός (Serv. loc. cit. August. c. d. XIX 12. Fulg. myth. II 6. Alber. 22; in contrast to that, Eustath. Hom. p. 157, 1 καὶ Κάκος μὲν λῃστής, κακὸς δὲ τὸ ἐπίθετον; cf. 906, 45. 1817, 11); Vergil talking about a fire-breathing monster is ingeniously explained by quod agros igne populabatur (Serv. loc. cit.). The commentary also won’t present anything other than a similarly euhemeristic reinterpretation, <20> for which Verrius Flaccus is explicitly said to be the only source, which says that Cacus' conqueror was instead called Garanus and was a shepherd of extraordinary bodily strength, because of which people called him Hercules, since people tended to give this name to anybody who was especially physically strong (solus Verrius Flaccus dicit Garanum fuisse pastorem magnarum virium, qui Cacum adflixit, omnes autem magnarum virium apud veteres Hercules dictos Serv. Aen. VIII 203, from this, Origo g. R. 6, where the name Recaranus [so] is used in place of Hercules in the regular telling of the story); <30> we simply don’t know where Verrius Flaccus got the name Garanus from (Jordan to Preller Röm. Myth. II 283f., 4 thinks it has something to do with the Heraclid Karanos, see its respective article, though he’s not very persuasively at all), but any attempts to recognise him as Genius with the help of an utterly indefensible etymology of Cerus = Genius (Preller loc. cit. I 80. Reifferscheid Annali d. Inst. 1867, 353. R. Peter in Roscher’s Mythol. Lexik. I 2257f.), <40> and with that to find evidence for the identification of Hercules = Genius as well as the ancient Italian character of the Cacus-”myth”, should be universally abandoned.

For the more modern view of the figure of Cacus, it has become disastrous that people don’t consider this matter as being decided enough according to the age of the individual versions, and that people take Vergil’s version of the story as the only starting point. Nobody can deny the possibility that the first version handed down to us by sources from the Augustan time period could have been the oldest, and that the lack of earlier sources could be merely a coincidence; but there aren’t any good bases upon which this possibility could be turned into a likelihood, or a certainty. On the contrary, people don’t quite understand how, if the tale of a cattle-stealing fire-breathing son of Vulcan once existed, <60> the Gellian, and especially the Diodoran versions could have come about. I see no reason why Vergil’s version couldn’t have originated from Vergil himself, or from a time immediately before him; though even if it is older, we have no right to take anything in the whole story as being from the older myth except for the name of Cacus; <page break 1168/1169> with the Cacus-steps and the name of the forum boarium, the cults of Hercules Invictus and of Iuppiter Inventor were given the elements to be linked aetiologically, though the greek myths of Alkyoneus and Geryon and the story of a cattle-theft by Hermes also offered things. It’s possible that a myth from the lower-Italian Greeks now lost to us told a story of Herakles punishing of a cattle-thief; <10> a bronze container from Capua (Mon. d. Inst. V 25; cf. Minervini Annali 1851, 36ff.) shows an image in which analogies can at least be found: Herakles, armed with a club and a bow, drives a herd of cattle in front of him, and as he does this, he is looking towards a tree on which a man is tied up by his arms and legs, and even appears to be being mauled by a lion; but this artifact doesn’t give a basis for any definite conclusions, <20> since here Herakles could just as well be the cattle-thief, and in any case, because of the difference in the criminal courts[?], we have no authority to relate the image to Cacus (cf. C. Robert Herm. XIX 480, who also points to other stories according to which Herakles, in Italy, ran into the danger of being robbed of Geryone’s cattle, similar to Alebion by the sons of Poseidon [see its respective article], and Derkynos in Liguria). We only come across proper portrayals of the Cacus-myth on the medallions of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius (Eckhel D. N. VII 29. 47. Fröhner Médaillons de l’emp. Rom. 56), and they show us, unmistakably independent from Vergil’s version, Herkules being gratefully honoured by the locals near the corpse of Cacus; on the contrary, the depictions of a cattle-theft on a stone in Berlin are of a modern origin (Winckelmann Descr. des pierres grav. du feu Baron de Stosch cf. II nr. 1759 = Tölken Erklär. Verzeichn. d. antik. vertieft geschn. Steine IV 91 = Furtwängler Beschr. d. gesch. Steine im Antiquar. nr. 1983) <40> and so are those on a bas-relief of a missing marble urn in Montfaucon Antiqu. expl. Suppl. I pl. 50--52.

The signs, which appear to reveal an ancient Italian origin of the Hercules-Cacus-myth (Hartung Relig. d. Römer II 21ff.) or even an Italian interpretation of an even older Indo-Germanic legend, which seems to have parallels with the Vedic battle of Indra against Vritra over the holy cows <50> (A. Kuhn Ztschr. f. deutsch. Altertl. VI 1848, 117ff. M. Bréal Hercule et Cacus, Paris 1863. R. Peter loc. cit. 2279ff. Oldenberg Religion des Veda 144), these signs have turned out to be false, because the whole story is nothing but the relatively late transference of a Greek Herakles-adventure onto Roman soil, and under a Latin name (cf. also U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff Eurip. Herakles² p. X and 25). <60> In general, also see the article Hercules.

[Wissowa.]