Terminus, Part 1: The Unmovable god
At first glance the image of the top half of a man perched upon a pedestal isn’t all that interesting, although you have to admit there is a curiousness about it and a strangeness which begs for a closer look. This bust looking directly back at the viewer with an odd blank stare was actually the first emblem I recall ever seeing. Something about it was so intriguing and compelled me to understand what it meant and it still amazes me to this day that such a simple image with a simple text can encapsulate such a profound and deep meaning on a variety of levels.
Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata, 1621. Terminus
The figure called Terminus depicted here has been portrayed in a few different ways throughout history in terms of likeness as an old man or a young man, curly headed, or sometimes bald, but always of a man from just below the chest up. It is an archaic figure, lost to time in origin, found in some of ancient Rome’s earliest stories. He is a god, obscure due to his lack of action and mention in the mythology, yet of the highest order even on par or above Jupiter. From the foggy distant past, hard to distinguish from myth, Terminus emerges as a fixture already on the scene as Ovid describes in his book of festivals. In a way, very much like his visage on a sturdy pedestal, he was as an old tree long rooted in the land to be stumbled upon by the newcomers.
Terminus is a strange god since, like I said earlier, he doesn’t have much personality and rarely features in the myths. This has led some to think Terminus is a holdover from animism, where the people ascribed deity or spirits to inanimate things they felt held great importance to life and society. For purposes of this analysis, it doesn’t matter much what kind of entity Terminus was, just that he is synonymous with the standing boundary stone he was represented as. It was the very stone pedestal and graven image which constituted the god and giving reason to his general inactivity was that a good deal of his importance was staying right where he was. If ever you think of an idol in the sense of an object imbued by a spirit to be worshiped, Terminus was such a thing to the ancient Romans. Though worship and sacrifice to the deity might not be the appropriate respect paid to Terminus by us today, the idea behind it is very much worth great attention.
An important story is told by Ovid in book 2 of Festi, where he describes the early founding of Rome and the decision to construct the temple of Juptiter upon the site of a more ancient shrine housing the entire pantheon. Upon asking the other gods to make way for Jupiter, they capitulated and all fled except one, Terminus. There in the center of the shrine he stood unmovable, and Jupiter was forced to share his temple with the recalcitrant god. It’s a fascinating tale showing the immense importance Terminus had and so reverent were the Romans toward him they cut a hole in the roof of the new temple for him to ever be worshiped under the stars.
This background information about Terminus may not be completely necessary to understanding the emblem, but does go a long way to add wonder and a little majesty to an otherwise maybe uninspiring image. Aside from the historical aspects of Terminus, there is a great deal of meaning behind the figure pertinent to our everyday life and even to the very foundations of the physical world! We will get into all that in the next parts. As a little foreshadowing, if you happen to walk about your backyard or the area of space you own and occupy, think about how important it is and then your neighbors’ and why respecting each others property is paramount to a flourishing society.