SACRA´RIUM
SACRA´RIUM was, according to the definition of
Ulpian (
Dig. 1,
8,
9.1; cf.
Serv. ad
Aen. 12.199), a place in which sacred things were deposited and
kept, whether this place was a part of a temple or of a private house. (Cf.
Cic. Ver. 4.3, 5;
ad Fam. 13.2,
Suet. Tib.
51.) In a temple it was probably, as Marquardt thinks, directly
behind the wall of the
cella, and only the
priests could enter it (
Staatsverwaltung, 3.168). Thus in the
sacrarium of the Capitoline temple the
thensa Jovis Opt. Max.
was kept (Suet.
Vesp. 5); the
hastae
Martis in the sacrarium of the REGIA; the lituus of Romulus and the ancilia (probably) in the
sacrarium Martis or
curia Saliorum on the Palatine [
SALII]. Sacrifices also were offered in the
sacrarium of Ops Consiva (in the Regia), but they were not open to the
public, since into this as into other sacraria those only could enter who
held a sacred office. We may perhaps attach a similar significance to the
fact that Varro (
L. L. 5.45) calls, the twenty-four chapels
of the Argei
sacraria, not
sacella. They were chapels covered in from the public gaze,
in which the sacred figures were kept, and into which in the processions
ad Argeos the priests alone entered. Livy
(
1.21) gives the same name to a shrine of
Fides, to which it appears that he in his priestly office and the flamines
alone had access: Tacitus alone uses it of the shrine in which an image was
kept for the cult of Augustus at Bovillae (cf.
Stat. Silv. 5.1,
240).
Respecting the sacrarium or lararium of private houses, see
LARARIUM
[
L.S] [
G.E.M]
