I Claudii, il "propudialis porcus" e Tellus

This paper investigates the sacrifice of the "propudialis porcus", a ritual known thanks to a lemma of Festus (274 L) and that the Claudii were required to celebrate with expiatory purposes for unspecified causes. The reasons for this gentilician sacrifice are identified by the author in the episode of the "magmentarium" of the temple of Tellus in the Carinae: a shrine ("sacellum") where the "lectisternia" took place and that was, according to Cicero’s complaint, illegally annexed by Appius Claudius Pulcher and his brother Clodius to the vestibule of their family "domus" (which bordered precisely with the sanctuary of Tellus). In this regard, we know not only that in 50 BC an official initiative to solicit the restitution of the "magmentarium" was taken by the aedile M. Caelius Rufus, but also that a male pig was the animal usually offered to Tellus for expiatory purposes, as is stated in a famous "epistula" of Horace (II, 1, v. 143: «Tellurem porco...piabant»).