Part 23

Footnote 912:

Fest. 128. So Varro, ap. Macrob. 1. 16. 18 ‘Mundus cum patet, deorum tristium atque inferum ianua patet.’ _Lex._ s. v. Dis Pater, 1184; Preller, ii. 68.

Footnote 913:

Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 100. Plutarch is explicit: ἀπαρχαί τε πάντων, ὅσοις νόμῳ μὲν ὡς καλοῖς ἐχρῶντο, φύσει δὲ ὡς ἀναγκαίοις, ἀπετέθησαν ἐνταῦθα. See above on the Consualia for the practice of burying grain, &c.

Footnote 914:

Macrob. 1. 16. 17. For similar ideas in Greece see A. Mommsen, _Heortologie_, 345 foll.

Footnote 915:

_de Feriis_, vi.

Footnote 916:

Varro, _L. L._ 6. 21; Festus, 187.

Footnote 917:

Varro, _L. L._. 5. 57 and 64; Festus, 186; Macrob. 1. 10. 19. So Preller, ii. 20. The keen-sighted Ambrosch had, I think, a doubt about it (_Studien_, 149), and about the conjugal tie generally among Italian deities. See his note on p. 149.

Footnote 918:

Gell. 13. 23. Ops Toitesia (if the reading be right) of the Esquiline vase (Jordan in Preller, ii. 22) may be a combination of this kind (toitesia, conn. tutus?): cf. Ops opifera.

Footnote 919:

Wissowa himself goes so far as to say that male and female divinities were joined together ‘non per iustum matrimonium sed ex officiorum adfinitate,’ op. cit. vi.

Footnote 920:

Op. cit. vii.; Mommsen, _C. I. L._ 327 declines to follow him here.

Footnote 921:

_L. L._ 6. 20. The MSS. read Ope Consiva; so Mommsen in _C. I. L._ 327. Wissowa adopts the other form.

Footnote 922:

See Mommsen, l. c., and Marquardt, 212.

Footnote 923:

See on Vestalia above, p. 147, and Marq. 251.

Footnote 924:

Colum. 12 4. Cited in De Marchi, _Il Culto privato di Roma Antica_ (Milan, 1896), p. 56. See my paper in _Classical Review_ for Oct. 1896: vol. x. p. 317 foll.

Footnote 925:

_C. I. L._ 327.

Footnote 926:

Preller, ii. 142.

Footnote 927:

_Aen._ 8. 330.

Footnote 928:

In Preller, ii. 143. In the passage of Lucretius Volturnus is coupled with Auster: ‘Inde aliae tempestates ventique secuntur, Altitonam Volturnus et Auster fulmine pollens.’ Columella (11. 2. 65) says that some people use the name for the east wind (cp. Liv. 22. 43).

Footnote 929:

_Röm. Jahr_, 251.

MENSIS SEPTEMBER.

The Calendar of this month is almost a blank. Only the Kalends, Nones and Ides are marked in the large letters with which we have become familiar; no other festival is here associated with a special deity. But the greater part of the month is occupied with the ludi Romani (5th to 19th)[930], and the 13th (Ides), as we know from two Calendars, was not only, like all Ides, sacred to Jupiter, but was distinguished as the day of the famous ‘epulum Jovis,’ and also as the _dies natalis_ of the great Capitoline temple.

The explanation of the absence of great festivals in this month is comparatively simple. September was for the Italian farmer, and therefore for the primitive Roman agricultural community, a period of comparative rest from urgent labour and from religious duties; for no operations were then going on which called for the invocation of special deities to favour and protect. A glance at the rustic calendars will show this well enough[931]. The _messes_ which figure in July and August have come to an end, and the vintage does not appear until October. There is of course work to be done, as always, but it is the easy work of the garden and orchard. ‘Dolia picantur: poma legunt: arborum oblaqueatio.’ Varro, who divides the year for agricultural purposes into eight irregular periods, has little to say of the fifth of these, i. e. that which preceded the autumn equinox. ‘Quinto intervallo inter caniculam et aequinoctium autumnale oportet stramenta desecari, et acervos construi, aratro offringi, frondem caedi, prata irrigua iterum secari[932].’

This was also the time when military work would be coming to an end. In early times there were of course no lengthy campaigns; and such fighting as there was, the object of which would be to destroy your enemies’ crops and harvest, would as a rule be over in August. Even in later times, when campaigns were longer, the same would usually be the case; and the performance of vows made by the generals in the field, and also their vacation of office, would naturally fall in this month. We find, in fact, that the ludi which occupied so large a number of September days, had their origin in the performance of the _vota_ of kings or consuls after the close of the wars[933]; and we have evidence that the Ides of September was the day on which the earliest consuls laid down their office[934]. There was, in fact, every opportunity for a lengthened time of ease; the people were at leisure and in good temper after harvest and victory; even the horses which took part in the games were home from war service or resting from their labours on the farm[935].

It is not strictly within the scope of this work to describe the ludi Romani, which in their fully organized form were of comparatively late date; but their close connexion with the cult of Jupiter affords an opportunity for some remarks on that most imposing of all the Roman worships.

The ludi Romani came in course of time, as has been said above, to extend from the 5th to the 19th; they spread out in fact on each side of the Ides[936], the day on which took place the ‘epulum Jovis’ in the Capitoline temple. As this day was also the _dies natalis_ of the same temple, and that on which the nail was driven into the wall of the cella Jovis[937], we have a very close connexion between the ludi and the cult of Jupiter. The link is to be found in the fact that in the _ludi votivi_, which were developed into ludi Romani, the vows were made and paid to the supreme god of the State[938]. We have from a later time the formula of such a vow preserved by Livy[939]. ‘Si duellum quod cum rege Antiocho sumi populus iussit id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit, tum tibi, Iuppiter, populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet, donaque ad omnia pulvinaria dabuntur de pecunia, quantam senatus decreverit: quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti donaque data recte sunto.’

The epulum Jovis, thus occurring in the middle of the ludi, is believed by some writers to have originally belonged to the Ides of November and to the ludi plebeii, as it does not happen to be alluded to by Livy in connexion with the ludi Romani, and our first notice of it in September is in the Augustan calendars[940]. But it is surely earlier than B.C. 230, the received date of the ludi plebeii, and of the circus Flaminius in which they took place. We may agree with the latest investigator of the Jupiter-cult that the origin of the epulum is to be looked for in a form of thanksgiving to Jupiter for the preservation of the state from the perils of the war season, and that no better day could be found for it than the foundation-day of the Capitoline temple[941]. This epulum was one of the most singular and striking scenes in Roman public life. It began with a sacrifice; the victim is not mentioned, but was no doubt a heifer, and probably a white one[942]. Then took place the epulum proper[943], which the three deities of the Capitol seem to have shared in visible form with the magistrates and senate. The images of the gods were decked out as for a feast, and the face of Jupiter painted red with _minium_, like that of the triumphator. Jupiter had a couch, and Juno and Minerva each a sella, and the meal went on in their presence[944].

Now an investigator of the Roman religious system is here confronted with a difficult problem. Was this simply a Greek practice like that of the lectisternium, and one which began with the Etruscan dynasty and the foundation of the Capitoline temple with its triad of deities? Or is it possible that in the cult of the Roman Jupiter there was of old a common feast of some kind, shared by gods and worshippers, on which this gorgeous ritual was eventually grafted?

Marquardt has gone so far as to separate the epulum Jovis altogether from the lectisternia, and apparently also from the inundation of Greek influence[945]. It answers rather, he says, to such domestic rites as the offering to Jupiter Dapalis described thus by Cato in the _De Re Rustica_[946]: ‘Dapem hoc modo fieri oportet. Iovi dapali culignam vini quantum vis polluceto. Eo die feriae bubus et bubulcis, et qui dapem facient. Cum pollucere oportebit, sic facies. Iupiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet, in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi, eius rei ergo macte hac illace dape pollucenda esto. Manus interluito. Postea vinum sumito. Iupiter dapalis, macte istace dape pollucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto. Vestae, si voles, dato[947]. Daps Iovi assaria pecuina, urna vini lovis caste.’

I confess that I do not see wherein lies the point of the comparison of this passage with the ceremony of the epulum; and Marquardt himself does not attempt to elaborate it. There is no mention here of a visible presence of Jupiter in the form of an image, which is the one striking feature of the epulum. Marquardt, as it seems to me, might better have adduced some example from old Italian usage of the _belief_ that the gods were spiritually present at a common religious meal—a belief on which might easily be engrafted the practice of presenting them there in actual iconic form. Ovid, for example, writes thus of the cult of the Sabine Vacuna[948]:

Ante focos olim scamnis considere longis Mos erat, _et mensae credere adesse deos_. Nunc quoque cum fiunt antiquae sacra Vacunae, Ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos.

Or again in the sacra of the curiae, if Dionysius reports them rightly[949], we find a clear case of a common meal in which the gods took part. He tells us that he saw tables in the ‘sacred houses’ of the curiae spread for the gods with simple food in very primitive earthenware dishes. He does not mention the presence of any images of the gods, but it is probable from his interesting description that each curia partook with its gods of a common meal of a religious character, and one not likely to have come under Greek influence[950].

This last example may suggest a hypothesis which is at least not likely to do any serious harm. Let it be remembered that each curia was a constituent part of the whole Roman community. We might naturally expect to find a common religious meal of the same kind in which the _whole_ state took part through its magistrates and senate. This is just what we do find in the epulum Jovis, though the character of its ceremonial is different; and it is certainly possible that this epulum had its origin in a feast like that which Dionysius saw, but one which afterwards underwent vital changes at the hands of the Etruscan dynasty of Roman kings. I am strongly inclined to believe that it was under the influence of these kings that the meal came to take place on the Capitol, and in the temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which they intended to be the new centre of the Roman dominion[951]; and to them also I would ascribe the presence at the feast of the three deities in iconic form. It may be that before that critical era in Roman history the epulum took place not on the Capitol but in the Regia, which with the temple of Vesta hard by formed the oldest centre of the united Rome; and that the presence of Jupiter[952] or any other god was there a matter of belief, like that of Vacuna with the Sabines, and not of the actual evidence of eyesight.

But this conjecture is a somewhat bold one; and it seems worth while to take this opportunity of examining more closely into the cult of Jupiter, with the object of determining whether the great god was apt, in any part of Italy but Etruria, to lend himself easily to anthropomorphic ideas and practices[953].

The cult of Jupiter is found throughout Italy under several forms of the same name, with or without the suffix -piter = pater, which, so far as we can guess, points to a conception of the god as protector, if not originator, of a stock. This paternal title, which was applied to other deities also, does not necessarily imply an early advance beyond the ‘daemonistic’ conception of divine beings; it rather suggests that some one such being had been brought into peculiarly close relations with a

## particular stock, and does no more than indicate a possibility of

further individual development in the future[954]. The ‘father’ in this case has no wife, though we find the word ‘mater’ applied to goddesses[955]; Juno is undoubtedly the female principle, but she is not, as has so often been imagined, the wife of Jupiter. The attempt to prove this by arguing from the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica cannot succeed: the former was the priest of Jupiter, but his wife was not the priestess of Juno[956]. There is indeed a certain mysterious dualism of male and female among the old Italian divinities, as we know from the _locus classicus_ in Gellius (_N. A._ 13. 23. 2); but we are not entitled to say that the relation was a conjugal one[957].

Before we proceed to examine traces of the oldest Jupiter in Rome and Latium let us see what survivals are to be found in other parts of Italy.

In Umbria we find Jovis holding the first place among the gods of the great inscription of Iguvium, which beyond doubt retains the primitive features of the cult, though it dates probably from the last century B.C., and records rites which indicate a fully developed city-life[958]. His cult-titles here are Grabovius, of which the meaning is still uncertain, and Sancius, which brings him into connexion with the Semo Sancus and Dius Fidius of the Romans. The sacrifices and prayers are elaborately recorded, but there is no trace in the ritual of anything approaching to an anthropomorphic conception of the god, unless it be the apparent mention of a temple[959]. No image is mentioned, and there is no sign of a common meal. The titles of the deities too have the common old-Italian fluidity, i. e. the same title belongs to more than one deity[960]. Everything points to a stage of religious thought in which the personality of gods had no distinct place. The centre-point of the cult seems to be a hill, the _ocris fisius_, within the town of Iguvium, which reminds us of the habits of the Greek Zeus and the physical or elemental character—unanthropomorphized—which seems to belong to that earlier stage in his worship[961].

It is on a hill also that we find the cult among the Sabellians. An inscription from Rapino in the land of the Marrucini tells us of a festal procession in honour of ‘Iovia Ioves patres ocris Tarincris,’ i. e. Jovia (Juno?) belonging to the Jupiter of the hill Tarincris[962].

Among the Oscan peoples the cult-title _Lucetius_ is the most striking fact. Servius[963] says: ‘Sane lingua Osca Lucetius est Iuppiter dictus a luce quam praestare hominibus dicitur.’ The same title is found in the hymn of the Roman Salii[964], and is evidently connected with _lux_; Jupiter being beyond doubt the giver of light, whether that of sun or moon. So Macrobius[965]: ‘Nam cum Iovem accipiamus lucis auctorem, unde et Lucetium Salii in carminibus canunt et Cretenses Δία τὴν ἡμέραν vocant, ipsi quoque Romani Diespitrem appellant ut diei patrem. Iure hic dies Iovis fiducia vocatur, cuius lux non finitur cum solis occasu, sed splendorem diei et noctem continuat inlustrante luna,’ &c. The Ides of all months, i. e. the days of full moon, were sacred to Jupiter. But in all ceremonies known to us in which the god appears in this capacity of his, there is, as we might expect, no trace whatever of a personal or anthropomorphic conception.

The Etruscan Tina, or Tinia, is now generally identified, even etymologically, with Jupiter[966]. The attributes of the two are essentially the same, though one particular side of the Etruscan god’s

## activity, that of the lightning-wielder, is specially developed. But

Tina is also the protector of cities, along with Juno and Minerva (Cupra and Menvra); and it is in connexion with this function of his that we first meet with a decided tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception. Even here, however, the stimulus can hardly be said to have come from Italy. ‘The one fact,’ says Aust[967], ‘which is at present quite clear is that the oldest Etruscan representations of gods can be traced back to Greek models. Tinia was completely identified in costume and attributes with the Greek Zeus by Etruscan artists.’ The insignia of Etruscan magistrates were again copied from these, and have survived for us in the costume of the Roman triumphator[968], and in part in the insignia of the curule magistrate, i. e. in sceptrum, sella, toga palmata, &c., and in the smearing of the face of the triumphator with _minium_.

Coming nearer to Rome we find at Falerii, a town subject to Roman and Sabellian as well as Graeco-Etruscan influence, the curious rite of the ἱερὸς γάμος described by Ovid (_Amores_, 3. 13), and found also in many parts of Greece[969]. In this elaborate procession Juno is apparently the bride, but the bridegroom is not mentioned. At Argos, Zeus was the bridegroom, and the inference is an obvious one that Jupiter was the bridegroom at Falerii. But this cannot be proved, and is in fact supported by no real evidence as to the old-Italian relation of the god and goddess. The rite is extremely interesting as pointing to what seems to be an early penetration of Greek religious ideas and practices into the towns of Western Italy; but it has no other bearing on the Jupiter-question, nor are we enlightened by the little else we know of the Falerian Jupiter[970].

But at Praeneste, that remarkable town perched high upon the hills which enclose the Latin Campagna to the north, we find a very remarkable form of the Jupiter-cult, and one which must be mentioned here, puzzling and even inexplicable as it certainly is. The great goddess of Praeneste was Fortuna Primigenia—a cult-title which cannot well mean anything but _first-born_[971]; and that she was, or came to be thought of as, the first-born daughter of Jupiter is placed beyond a doubt by an inscription of great antiquity first published in 1882[972]. But this is not the only anomaly in the Jupiter-worship of Praeneste. There was another cult of Fortuna, distinct, apparently, from that of Fortuna Primigenia, in which she took the form not of a daughter but of a mother, and, strange as it may seem, of the mother both of Jupiter and Juno. On this point we have the explicit evidence of Cicero (_de Divinatione_, 2. 85), who says, when speaking of the place where the famous ‘sortes’ of Praeneste were first found by a certain Numerius Suffustius: ‘Is est hodie locus saeptus religiose propter Iovis pueri (sacellum?) qui lactens cum Iunone Fortunae in gremio sedens, castissime colitur a matribus.’ Thus we have Fortuna worshipped in the same place as the daughter and as the mother of Jupiter; and nowhere else in Italy can we find a trace of a similar conception of the relations either of these or any other deities. We cannot well reject the evidence of Cicero, utterly unsupported though it be: we must face the difficulty that we have here to account for the occurrence of a Jupiter who is the child of Fortuna and also apparently the brother of Juno, as well as of a Jupiter who is the father of Fortuna.

As regards this last feature, the fatherhood of Jupiter, Jordan says emphatically[973]—and no scholar was more careful in his judgements—that in the whole range of Italian religions ‘liberorum procreatio nulla est unquam’: and he would understand ‘filia’ in the inscription quoted above in a metaphorical rather than a physical sense. Yet however we choose to think of it, Mommsen is justified in remarking[974] on the peculiarly anthropomorphic idea of Fortuna (and we may add of Jupiter) at which the Latins of Praeneste must have arrived, in comparison with the character of Italian religion generally.

Even more singular than this is the sonship of Jupiter and the fact that he appeared together with Juno in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammae appetens.’ Cicero’s language leaves no doubt that there was some work of art at Praeneste in which the three were so represented, or believed to be represented. Yet there are considerations which may suggest that we should hesitate before hastily concluding that all this is a genuine Italian development of genuine Italian ideas.

1. Italy presents us with no real parallel to this child-Jupiter though in Greece we find many. Jordan has mentioned three possible Italian parallels, but rejected them all: Caeculus Volcani, the legendary founder of Praeneste, Hercules bullatus, and the beardless Veiovis. The attributes of the last-named are explained by a late identification with Apollo[975]; Hercules bullatus is undoubtedly Greek: the story of the birth of Caeculus is a foundation-legend, truly Italian in character, but belonging to a different class of religious ideas from that we are discussing. To these we may add that the _boy-Mars_ found on a Praenestine cista is clearly of Etruscan origin, as is shown by Deecke in the _Lexicon_, s. v. Maris.

2. Cicero’s statement is not confirmed by any inscription from Praeneste. Those which were formerly thought to refer to _Iupiter Puer_[976] are now proved to belong to Fortuna as _Iovis puer_ (= _filia_). It is most singular that Fortuna should be thus styled _Iovis puer_ in the same place where Jupiter himself was worshipped as _puer_; still more so that in one inscription (2868) the cutter should have dropped out the ‘s’ in Iovis, so that we actually read _Iovi puero_. It may seem tempting to guess that the name Jupiter Puer arose from a misunderstanding of the word _puer_ as applied to Fortuna: but the evidence as it stands supplies no safe ground for this.