Pinaria Gens
One of the most ancient patrician gentes at Rome, tracing its origin to a time long
previous to the foundation of the city. The legend related that when Hercules came into Italy
he was hospitably received, on the spot where Rome was afterwards built, by the Potitii and
the Pinarii, two of the most distinguished families in the country. The hero, in return,
taught them the way in which he was to be worshipped; but as the Pinarii were not at hand when
the sacrificial banquet was ready, and did not come till the entrails of the victim were
eaten, Hercules, in anger, determined that the Pinarii should, in all future time, be excluded
from partaking of the entrails of the victims, and that in all matters relating to his worship
should be inferior to the Potitii (
Livy, i. 7;
Dionys. i. 40; Macrob. iii. 6, 12). These two families continued to be the hereditary
priests of Hercules till the censorship of Appius Claudius (B.C. 312), who purchased from the
Potitii the knowledge of the sacred rites, and intrusted them to public slaves; whereat the
god was so angry that the whole Potitia gens, containing twelve families and thirty grown-up
men, perished within a year, or, according to other accounts, within thirty days, and Appius
himself became blind (
Livy, ix. 29). The Pinarii did not share in
the guilt of communicating the sacred knowledge, and therefore did not receive the same
punishment as the Potitii, but continued in existence to the latest times. It appears that the
worship of Hercules by the Potitii and Pinarii was a
sacrum gentilicium
belonging to these gentes, and that in the time of Appius Claudius these
sacra
privata were made
sacra publica. The Pinarii were divided into the
families of Mamercinus, Natta, Posca, Rusca, and Scarpus, but none of them obtained sufficient
importance to require a separate notice.
