SPQR

I was having a discussion with some colleagues wherein I said:

My ancestors were Romans. If you had culture worth appropriating, we did. Hell, we even had a ritual to bribe people’s gods to switch sides during war.

One of my favorite examples of this is Livy, History of Rome 5.22:

An enormous crowd went and filled the camp. After the Dictator had taken the auspices and issued orders for the soldiers to arm for battle, he uttered this prayer: “Pythian Apollo, guided and inspired by thy will I go forth to destroy the city of Veii, and a tenth part of its spoils I devote to thee. Thee too, Queen Juno, who now dwellest in Veii, I beseech, that thou wouldst follow us, after our victory, to the City which is ours and which will soon be thine, where a temple worthy of thy majesty will receive thee.” After this prayer, finding himself superior in numbers, he attacked the city on all sides, to distract the enemies’ attention from the impending danger of the mine. The Veientines, all unconscious that their doom had already been sealed by their own prophets and by oracles in foreign lands, that some of the gods had already been invited to their share in the spoils, whilst others, called upon in prayer to leave their city, were looking to new abodes in the temples of their foes; all unconscious that they were spending their last day, without the slightest suspicion that their walls had been undermined and their citadel already filled with the enemy, hurried with their weapons to the walls, each as best he could, wondering what had happened to make the Romans, after never stirring from their lines for so many days, now run recklessly up to the walls as though struck with sudden frenzy.

That’s how they were able to conquer practically the whole oikoumene.

Which got me thinking – would evocatio still be effective if the gods of one’s opponent are archetypal constructs that exist only within their mind?

I should ask John Halstead what his thoughts on this are when we have pagan tea tonight.