Pompa

POMPA. - From the Greek πομπή "procession" (from πέμπω "I send," "I accompany"), it is the solemn procession that in Greece and Rome accompanies: 1) magistrates and sacred symbols toward a consecrated place, a temple (v. PROCESSION) or toward a site of public games; 2) the bride to the house of the groom; 3) the deceased to burial. In the p. a religious value is always implicit.

In the nuptial p. (p. nuptialis) the young girl leaves her paternal home accompanied by her relatives and preceded by an escort of girls of her own age and of young boys; in funerals (p. funeris) the bier was preceded by the herald (praeco) and the tibicen (sitice) who modulated the funeral chant, by the insignia of the offices held, and by the wax images of the ancestors; in the triumphal p. (p. triumphalis) the general, dressed in purple and crowned with laurel, advanced on a quadriga drawn by white horses toward the Capitoline; from there the solemn procession descended into the circus for the games either vowed by the victor or customary at the end of the autumn military campaign; and this explains the affinity between the triumphal p. and the circus one.

In the circus p. (p. circensis) the first place was held by the magistrate who proceeded on a biga, with the purple toga, the tunica palmata, the crown on his head and the scepter with the eagle in his hand. The procession was opened by young boys who had both parents living; there followed those who took part in the games, the lower ministers of the cult with smoking censers, the priests, the images of the gods carried in arms, or on litters (fercula), and their primitive attributes and symbols, perhaps of a fetish type, called with benevolent euphemism exuviae deorum, on small two-wheeled carts. The circus p., having set out from the Capitoline, reached the Circus Maximus and there circled around the spina to be admired by the people. When the procession arrived beneath the balcony of the presiding magistrate, a sacrifice was celebrated, then the games began. The fullest description of the circus p. is that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (VII, 70).

The ostentatious manifestation of pagan cult proper to the p., which for Christianity was a diabolical manifestation (omnes di gentium daemonia), has meant that in the baptismal rite the catechumen is invited to renounce the p. (Tertullian, De cor., 3 "to the p.") of Satan, summarizing in this word all the ceremonies and vanities deriving from paganism.

Nicola Turchi