FLAMINES. - From flare "to blow," in the sense of feeding the sacrificial flame (cf. the Brahmins of ancient India, ministers of sacrifice); among the Romans they are the priests assigned to the cult of individual deities, all belonging to the most ancient stratum of Roman religion. There are 15 of them: three major ones: Dialis (of Jupiter), Martialis (of Mars), Quirinalis (of Quirinus), and 12 minor ones, of seven of which the name is known: Carmentalis, Falacer, Floralis, Furrinalis, Palatualis, Pomonalis, Volcanalis. They were not united in a college because their duties were individual and not collective, but they were attached to the college of pontiffs, under the control of the pontifex maximus. Over the toga they wore a woolen covering (laena), and they wore a headpiece of sheepskin (galerus) surmounted by a small disc and a little olive-wood rod. They were elected following a favorable auspice.
In any case the flamen of Jupiter enjoyed a high formal privilege but had to submit to many prohibitions which reveal in him originally the supreme head of the social group, whose prerogatives in historical times passed to the rex sacrorum, successor of the ancient patriarchal king, and to the pontifex maximus, leaving to him those strictly magical-sacral ones which made him almost a personification of Jupiter and rendered his office incompatible with any other. It was his obligation to be always in a state of ritual sacredness (quotidie feriatus), ready to sacrifice; he had to avoid the sight and contact of funerary or impure things; he had to be united to his wife in confarreate marriage, from which only her death could release him, at the same time rendering him no longer fit for the office. These prohibitions and many others (Aulus Gellius [X, 15, 32] lists 22 of them, drawn from the annalist Fabius Pictor) in time became so intolerable that no one was willing any longer to take on this priesthood, which remained for 87 years without an incumbent. Augustus in his religious restoration recalled it to life, lightening its obligations. The flaminate of Dialis lasted until Theodosius.
The other two major flamines were much less burdened than the Dialis; the flamen Martialis participated in the rite of the October horse, the flamen Quirinalis took part in ceremonies that had a connection with agriculture, such as the Robigalia, the Consualia and the Larentalia.
In the imperial age, after the apotheosis of deceased emperors, special flamines were instituted for their cult: Augustales, Claudiales, Flaviales, etc.
Bibliography4 works
Nicola Turchi