Part 11
2. Macrobius[388] tells us that wine could not be brought into the temple _suo nomine_, but only under the name of milk, and that the vase in which it was carried was called _mellarium_, i. e. a vase for honey. A legend grew up to account for the custom, to which we shall refer again, that Faunus had beaten his daughter Fauna (i. e. Bona Dea) with a rod of myrtle because she would not yield to his incestuous love or drink the wine he pressed on her[389]. This may indicate a survival from the time when the herdsman used no wine in sacred rites, but milk and honey only; Pliny tells us of such a time[390], and his evidence is confirmed by the poets. In any case milk would be the appropriate offering to the Earth-mother, and it is hard to see why it should have been changed to wine, unless it were that life in the city and Greek influence altered the character both of the Bona Dea and her worshippers. The really rustic deities had milk offered them, e. g. Silvanus, Pales, and Ceres. The general inference from this survival is that the Bona Dea was originally of the same nature with these deities, but lost her rusticity when she became part of an organized city worship.
3. Myrtle was not allowed in this temple; hence the myth that Faunus beat his daughter with a myrtle rod[391]. But could the exclusion of myrtle by itself have suggested the beating? Dr. Mannhardt answers in the negative, and conjectures that there must have been some kind of beating in the cult itself, which gave rise to the story[392]. Dr. Mannhardt never made a conjecture without a large collection of facts on which to base it; and here he depends upon a number of instances from Greece and Northern Europe, in which man or woman, or some object such as the image of a deity, is whipped with rods, nettles, strips of leather, &c., in order, as it would seem, to produce fertility and drive away hostile influences. We shall see the same peculiarity occurring at the Lupercalia in February[393], where its object and meaning are almost beyond doubt. Many of these practices occur, it is worth noting, on May-day. If the Bona Dea was a representative in any sense of the fertility of women, as well as of the fructifying powers of the earth—and the two ideas seem naturally to have run together in the primitive mind—we may provisionally accept Dr. Mannhardt’s ingenious suggestion. If it be objected that as myrtle was excluded from the cult it could not have been used therein for the purpose of whipping, the answer is simply that as being invested with some mysterious power it was tabooed from ordinary use, but, like certain kinds of victims, was introduced on special and momentous occasions.
4. The temple was a kind of _herbarium_ in which herbs were kept with healing properties[394]. A group of interesting inscriptions shows that the Bona Dea did not confine her healing powers to cases of women, but cured the ailments of both sexes[395]. This attribute of the goddess is borne out by the presence of snakes in her temple, the usual symbol of the medicinal art, and at the same time appropriate to the Bona Dea as an Earth-goddess[396]. It is possible that this feature is a Greek importation; but on the whole I see no reason why the female ministrants of the temple should not have exercised such healing powers, or have sold or given herbs at request, even at a very early period. No doubt Greek medicinal learning became associated with it, but that the knowledge of simples was indigenous in Italy we have abundant proof[397]; and that it should have been connected with no cult of a deity until Aesculapius was introduced from Greece, is most improbable.
5. The sacrifice mentioned is that of a _porca_[398]. The pig is also the victim in the worship of Ceres, of Juno Lucina[399] (as alternative for a lamb), and as a piacular sacrifice in the ritual of the deity of the Fratres Arvales (Dea Dia); it seems in fact, as in Greece, to be appropriate to deities of the earth and of women. There is no reason to suppose that wherever it is found it had a Greek origin; even in the cult of Ceres, which, as we saw, became early overlaid with Greek practice[400], the pig may have been the victim before that change took place. But it is a singular fact that in the worship of the Bona Dea, either at the temple of the Aventine, or in the December rite—more probably perhaps in the latter—the victim was called by a name which looks suspiciously Greek, viz. _Damium_[401]. It seems that there was a deity Damia who was worshipped here and there in Greece, and also in Southern Italy, e. g. at Tarentum, where she had a festival called Dameia[402]. It looks as if this Greek deity had at one time migrated from Tarentum to Rome, and become engrafted upon the indigenous Bona Dea; for we are expressly told that Damia was identical with the Bona Dea, and that the priestess of the latter was called _Damiatrix_[403]. Much has been written about these very obscure names, without any very definite result; but it seems to be generally agreed that the form of the word _damiatrix_ indicates a high antiquity for the Graecized form of the cult, and may indeed possibly suggest an Italian origin for the whole group of names. In this uncertainty conjectures are almost useless.
We have seen enough of the cult to gain some idea of the nature of this mysterious deity, whose real name was not known, even if she had one[404]. We need not identify her with Vesta, as some have done[405], nor with Juno Lucina, nor with any other female deity of the class to which she seems to have belonged. She must at one time have been, whatever she afterwards became, a protective deity of the female sex, the Earth-mother[406], a kindly and helpful, but shy and unknowable deity of fertility. The name Bona Dea is probably to be regarded as one indigitation of the Earth-spirit known by a variety of other names and appearing in a number of different phases. There is indeed a remarkable indefiniteness about the Italian female deities of this class; they never gained what we may call complete specific distinctness, but are rather half-formed species developed from a common type. They form, in fact, an excellent illustration of the nature of that earliest stratum of Roman religious belief which has been called pandaemonism—a belief in a world of spiritual powers not yet grown into the forms of individual deities, but ready at any moment, under influences either native or foreign, to take a more definite shape.
VII. ID. MAI. (MAY 9). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (VEN. MAFF.)
V. ID. MAI. (MAY 11). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)
III. ID. MAI. (MAY 13). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)
The word Lemuria indicates clearly enough some kind of worship of the dead; but we know of no such _public_ cult on these three days except from the calendars. What Ovid describes as taking place at this time is a private and domestic rite performed by the head of the household[407]; and Ovid is our only informant in regard to details. In historical times the public festival of the dead was that of the _dies parentales_ in February, ending with the Feralia on the 21st. How, then, is it that the three days of the Lemuria appear in those large letters in the ancient calendars, which, as we have seen[408], indicate the public festivals of the religious system of the Republic? There is no certain answer to this question. We can but guess that the Lemuria was at one time, like the Feralia, a public festival, but descended from a more ancient deposit of superstition which in historical times was buried deep beneath the civilization of a developed city life[409]. Ovid himself implies that the Lemuria was an older festival than the Feralia[410], and we may suppose him to be following Varro as a guide. And if we compare his account of the grotesque domestic rites of the Lemuria with those of February, which were of a systematic, cheerful, and even beautiful character, we may feel fairly sure that the latter represents the organized life of a city state, the former the ideas of an age when life was wilder and less secure, and the fear of the dead and of demons generally was a powerful factor in the minds of the people. If we may argue from Ovid’s account, to be described directly, it is not impossible that the Lemuria may have been one of those periodical expulsions of demons of which Mr. Frazer has told us so much in his _Golden Bough_[411], and which are performed on behalf of the community as well as in the domestic circle amongst savage peoples. It is noticeable that the offering of food to the demons is a feature common to these practices, and that it also appears in those described by Ovid.
The difference of character in the two Roman festivals of the dead is perhaps also indicated by the fact that the days of the Lemuria are marked in the calendars with the letter N, while the Feralia is marked F or FP[412]. This may perhaps point to two different views of the attitude of the dead to the living, affecting the character of the festival days; they are friendly or hostile, as they have been buried with due rites and carefully looked after, or as they have failed of these dues and are consequently angry and jealous[413]. The latter of these attitudes is more in keeping with the notions of uncivilized man, and of a life not as yet wholly brought under the influence of the civilization of the city-state. To be more certain, however, on this point, we must try and discover the real meaning of the word _lemur_.
The definition given by Porphyrio is ‘Umbras vagantes hominum ante diem mortuorum atque ideo metuendas[414].’ Nonius has the following: ‘Lemures larvae nocturnae et terrificationes imaginum et bestiarum[415].’ From these passages it would seem that _lemures_ and _larvae_ mean much the same thing; on the other hand Appuleius[416] implies that _lemures_ is a general word for spirits after they have left the body, while those that haunt houses are especially called _larvae_. But on a question of this kind, the philosophical and uncritical Appuleius is not to be weighed as an authority against either Nonius or Porphyrio, who may quite possibly be here representing the learning of the Augustan age; and a perusal of the whole of his passage will show that he is simply trying to classify ghosts by the light of his own imagination. Judging from the hints of the two other scholars, we may perhaps conclude that _lemures_ and _larvae_ are to be distinguished as hostile ghosts from _manes_, the good people (as the word is generally explained), i. e. those duly buried in the city of the dead, and whom their living descendants have no need to fear so long as they pay them their due rites at the proper seasons as members of the family. And this conclusion is confirmed by the curious etymology of Ovid[417], reproduced by Porphyrio, deriving Lemuria from Remus. whose violent death was supposed to have been expiated by the institution of the festival. The difficulty is to see why, if the _lemures_ were unburied, evil, or hostile spirits, a special festival of three days should have been necessary to appease or quiet them; and I can only account for this by supposing that such spirits were especially numerous in an age of uncivilized life and constant war and violence, and that they formed a large part of the whole world of evil demons whose expulsion was periodically demanded. It may have been the case that at this particular time in May, when the days were _nefasti_ and marriages were ill-omened, these spirits became
## particularly restless and needed to be laid.
Such an explanation as this of the Lemuria is on the whole preferable to that which would regard it as the original Roman festival of _all_ the dead; for there is now abundant evidence that even in the earliest ages of Italian life the practice of orderly burial in necropoleis was universal[418], and this is a practice that seems inconsistent with a general belief in the dead as hostile and haunting spirits.
The following is Ovid’s description of the way in which the ghosts were laid at the Lemuria by the father of a family. At midnight he rises, and with bare feet[419] and washed hands, making a peculiar sign with his fingers and thumbs to keep off the ghosts, he walks through the house. He has black beans in his mouth, and these he spits out as he walks, looking the other way, and saying, ‘With these I redeem me and mine.’ Nine times he says this without looking round; then come the ghosts behind him, and gather up the beans unseen. He proceeds to wash again and to make a noise with brass vessels; and after nine times repeating the formula ‘manes[420] exite paterni,’ he at last looks round, and the ceremony is over.
The only point in this quaint bit of ritual which need detain us is the use of beans. We have had bean-straw used at the Parilia, and we shall find that beans were also used at the festival of the dead in February. Assuredly it is not easy to see what could have made them into such valuable ‘medicine.’ Beans were not a newly discovered vegetable. Their exclusion from the rites of Demeter must have been of great antiquity, and the notions of the Pythagoreans about them were probably based on very ancient popular superstitions[421]. No one, as far as I know, has as yet successfully solved the problem why beans had so strange a religious character about them[422]; they probably were an ancient symbol of fertility, but it is impossible now to discover how or why the ideas grouped themselves around them, which we so constantly find both in Greece and Italy. If we ask why the ghosts picked them up, or were supposed to do so, there is some reason for believing that by eating them they might possibly hope to get a new lease of life[423]. Whatever was the real basis of the superstition, it was a widely spread one, and ramified in more than one direction; the Roman priest of Jupiter, for example, might not touch beans nor even mention them[424]. In his case the taboo was no doubt very old, but might have grown out of some such practice as that just described, all things ill-omened and mysterious being carefully kept out of his reach.
The days from May 7 to 14 were occupied by the Vestal Virgins in preparing the _mola salsa_, or sacred salt-cake, for use at the Vestalia in June, on the Ides of September, and at the Lupercalia[425]. This was made from the first ears of standing corn in a primitive fashion by the three senior Vestals, and is no doubt, like most of their ritual, a relic of the domestic functions of the daughters of the family. But we must postpone further consideration of the Vestals and their duties till we come to the Vestalia in June.
ID. MAI. (MAY 15). NP.
FER[IAE] IOVI. MERCUR[IO] MAIAE. (VENUS[426].) MAIAE AD CIRC[UM] M[AXIMUM]. (CAER.) MERC[URIO]. (TUSC.)
The very curious rite which took place on this day is not mentioned in the calendars; it belonged to those which, like the Paganalia, were _publica_ indeed and _pro populo_, but represented the people as divided in certain groups rather than the State as a whole[427]. But its obvious antiquity, and the interesting questions which arise out of it, tempt me to treat it in detail, at the risk of becoming tedious.
I have already mentioned[428] that there was a procession in March, as we infer from the _sacra Argeorum_ quoted by Varro, which went round the _sacella Argeorum_, or twenty-four chapels situated in the four Servian regions of the city[429]. What was done at these _sacella_ we do not know; the procession and its doings had become so obscure in Ovid’s time that he could dispose of it in two lines of his _Fasti_, and express a doubt as to whether it took place on one day or two[430]. Nor do we know what the _sacella_ really were. The best conjecture is that of Jordan, who has brought some evidence together to show that they were small chapels or sacred places where holy things were deposited until the time came round for them to be used in some religious ceremony[431].
But on May 15 there was another rite in which the word _Argei_ plays a prominent part; and here the details have in part at least survived. The _Argei_ in this case are not chapels, but a number of puppets or bundles of rushes, resembling (as Dionysius has recorded) men bound hand and foot, which were taken down to the _pons sublicius_ by the Pontifices and magistrates, and cast into the river by the Vestal Virgins[432]. The Flaminica Dialis, the priestess of Jupiter, was present at the ceremony in mourning. The number of the puppets was probably the same as that of the _sacella_ of the same name[433].
Explanations of these rites were invented by Roman scholars. The _sacella_ were the graves of Greeks who had come to Italy with Hercules; and the puppets represented the followers of Hercules who had died on their journey and were to return home as it were by proxy[434]. Apart from the theories of the learned, it was the fact that the common people at Rome believed the puppets to be substitutes for old men, who at one time used to be thrown into the Tiber as victims. _Sexagenarios de ponte_ was a well-known proverb which in Cicero’s time was explained by supposing that the bridges alluded to were those over which the voters passed in the Comitia[435]; but this view may at once be put aside. Those bridges were certainly a comparatively late invention, while the proverb was of remote antiquity.
But, given the details of the rite, and the popular belief about the old men as victims, what explanation can we hope to arrive at? We may freely admit that no satisfactory etymology of the word _Argei_ is forthcoming; but this is perhaps, in a negative sense, an advantage to our inquiry[436]. The Romans derived it from the Greek Ἀργεῖοι; and to this etymology Mommsen is now disposed to return. The writer of the article ‘Argei’ in the _Mythological Lexicon_ derived it from _varka-s_ = ‘wolf’; others have believed it to come from a root _arg_ = ‘white’ or ‘shining,’ and though the termination _eus_ is hardly a Latin one, it may be that this is the true basis of the word[437].
Instead of prejudging the case by fanciful etymologies, or by attempting to decide the question whether the Romans ever practised the rites of human sacrifice, we will take the leading features of the ceremony, and see in what direction they may on the whole direct us. That done, it may be possible to sum up the debate, though a final and decisive verdict is not to be expected.
The features which demand attention are (1) the processional character of the rites; (2) the presence of the Pontifices and the Vestals; (3) the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis; (4) the rush-puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.
1. We can hardly doubt that there was a procession to the _pons sublicius_, though the fact is not expressly stated. We are tempted to believe that it visited each _sacellum_, and there found, or possibly made, the puppet (_simulacrum_), which thus represented the district of which the _sacellum_ was the sacred centre; and that it then proceeded, bearing the puppets, probably by the Forum and Vicus Tuscus to the bridge[438]. Now if this feature can help us at all—if we accept the connexion of the March and May ceremonies and their processional character—it must point in the direction of the purification of land or city, on the analogy of other Italian ceremonies of the same kind. At the end of this month took place the Ambarvalia, when the priests went round the land with prayer and sacrifice to ensure the good growth of the crops; and we have a remarkable instance of the same kind of practice in the celebrated inscription of Iguvium. Not only each city, but each _pagus_, and even each farmer, duly purified his land in some such way, cleansing it from the powers of evil and sterility, while at the same time the boundaries were renewed in the memories of all concerned. Bearing this in mind, and also the season of the year, we may fairly guess that the Argean processions had some relation to agriculture, and to the welfare of the precarious stock of wealth of an agricultural community.
2. _The presence of the Pontifices and Vestals._—The former would be present, partly as the representative sacred college of the united city[439], partly as having under their special care the sacred bridge from which the puppets were thrown. Whether or not the word _pontifex_ be directly derived from _pons_[440], it is certain that the ancient bridge, with its strong religious associations, was under their care, and that the river was an object of their constant liturgical attention[441]. It has been suggested that the whole ceremony was one of bridge-worship[442]; but this view, as we shall see, will hardly explain all the facts. It leaves the March rites unexplained, and also the presence of the Vestals; nor does it seem to suit the season of the year.
The presence of the Vestals is more significant; and it was they, as it seems, who performed the act of throwing the puppets from the bridge[443]. In all the public duties performed by them (as we shall see more fully in dealing with the Vestalia[444]) a reference can be traced to one leading idea, viz. that the food and nourishment of the State, of which the sacred fire was the symbol, depended for its maintenance on the accurate performance of these duties. We have just seen that they spent the seven days preceding the Ides of May in preparing their sacred cakes from the first ripening ears of corn. We shall see them using these cakes in June, September, and at the Lupercalia. At the Parilia and the Fordicidia they also take a prominent part, both of them festivals relating to the fruitfulness of herds and flocks; so also at the harvest festivals in August of Ops Consiva and Consus. And we can hardly suppose that their presence at the rite under discussion should have a different significance from that of their public service on all other occasions. Even if we had no other evidence to go upon, we might on the facts just adduced base a fair inference that this ceremony too had some relation to the processes and perils awaiting the ripening crops.