Ancile- Roman ArtifactArtifact"The Shield from Heaven"

The Fall

A plague was killing Rome. King Numa Pompilius prayed to Jupiter for relief, and the sky answered with lightning and a gift: a bronze shield dropped into Numa's arms, cut in a figure-eight shape that no Roman forge had ever produced. With it came a voice. Rome would endure as long as this shield was kept safe.

Numa brought the shield to the Regia. It became one of the pignora imperii, the pledges of empire, objects whose survival guaranteed Roman power.

Mamurius and the Copies

Numa saw the problem at once. One shield, one theft, one fallen city. He summoned Mamurius Veturius, a smith whose hands could copy anything. Numa's order: make eleven shields identical to the one from the sky.

Mamurius worked until he had twelve figure-eight shields racked side by side, and not even Numa could pick out the original. The secret of which shield fell from heaven died with the king. Any enemy who wanted to destroy Rome's talisman would have to steal all twelve, from a locked room in the Regia, guarded by priests who carried swords.

For his payment, Mamurius asked only that his name be remembered. The Salii sang it in their hymn every March.

The Dance of the Salii

The twelve shields belonged to the Salii, priests of Mars split between the Palatine and Quirinal hills. Each March, when the campaigning season opened, they carried the shields through Rome in procession.

They danced. The Salii wore bronze breastplates and pointed caps, carried the ancilia on their left arms, and struck them with rods while leaping in a stamping war dance that shook the streets. They sang the carmen Saliare, a hymn so old that by Cicero's time the priests themselves could barely parse the archaic Latin. Ovid records the verses invoking Mamurius by name. Quintilian called the words nearly unintelligible.

The procession lasted days. At each stop the Salii feasted, and their banquets became proverbial for excess. By the time the shields returned to the Regia, the war season had begun.