Moral Reflections and Sacred Constraints: About a lucus at Gabii

In this paper, I am going to develop the question whether ethics or ritualism conditioned human behaviour in Roman polytheism by analysing the conceptual mechanism of orthopraxy, focusing upon standardized ritual rather than standardized belief, through an obscure episode of the Third Samnite War.1 This episode involves a member of the gens Postumia in the ager Gabinus, whose sacredness and special position of territory in augural doctrine is well attested in the literary sources. I am going to concentrate on L. Postumius Megellus. He had been consul three times (305, 294, 291), and played an important role in the Third Samnite War, but in the literary sources there were accounts of a trial, a conviction and also conflicts involving imperium between him and the senate.