RE´GIA
RE´GIA (in Greek historians
τὸ
βασίλειον,
ῥηγία), at first the
building in which the king, as head of the state religion, performed the
functions belonging to it: after the overthrow of the monarchy, when the
continuity of the king's religious functions was preserved, it supplied the
offices of the Pontifex Maximus, and perhaps also of the Rex sacrorum
(Mommsen,
Staatsr. ii.3 15). [For the
apparent connexion of the king's or chief's house with the state hearth, see
PRYTANEUM p. 513
b.] But, though many even of the most recent writers
have thought otherwise, there appear to us strong reasons for maintaining
that the Pontifex Maximus and the Rex sacrorum had each his official
dwelling-house elsewhere in the Via Sacra. The Regia was said to have been
built and occupied by Numa (
Ov. Tr. 3.1,
28;
Fast. 6.263;
Tac. Ann. 15.41) [but the words of
Plut. Num. 14 imply that it was never his
dwelling-house]: it was partly destroyed by the Gauls, 391 B.C., and again in great part burnt B.C. 210
(
Liv. 26.27). Julius Caesar as Pontifex
Maximus had his offices by day for religious functions in the Regia, and
lived in the house in the Via Sacra which was assigned to the Pontifex
1 (
Suet. Jul. 48;
Plut. Caes. 10). It is usually said that, when
Augustus became Pontifex Maximus in B.C. 12, he gave the Regin to the
Vestals because it adjoined their house (
ὁμότοιχος
ἦν,
D. C. 54.27): but the historian there speaks of
the house
τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν ἱερῶν, and
we see no reason for assuming that he mistook the Pontifex Maximus for the
Rex sacrorum: on the contrary we have the express testimony of Pliny (
Plin. Ep. 4.11) that the Pontifex used the
Regia as an office in the reign of Trajan. The Vestals pulled down most of
the buildings given up to them, and rebuilt their house on an enlarged scale
upon the same site.
Besides the above-mentioned use, the Regia contained a sacrarium of Mars, in
which were the sacred spears (Geli. 4.6) [but
not
the ancilia: see
SALII], and a
sacrarium of Ops, containing a
PRAEFERICULUM and
SECESPITA perhaps also of Janus and of Jupiter (Varro,
L.
L. 6.21; Marquardt,
Staatsverw. 3.250). In one or
other of these sacraria were preserved the libri pontificum and the
Calendars. (For the topography and the construction of the Regia, see
Middleton,
Rome, p. 185; Richter in Baumeister,
Denkm. 1465; and compare PONTIFEX, REX
SACRORUM, VESTALES.)
[
G.E.M]