Part 24

3. The fact that Cicero describes a statue is itself suspicious, in the absence of corroborative evidence of any other kind[977]: for it suggests that the cult may have arisen, and have taken its peculiar form, as a result of the introduction of Greek or Graeco-Etruscan works of art. In Praeneste itself, and in other parts of Latium and of Campania, innumerable terra-cottas have been found[978], of the type of the Greek κουροτρόφος, i. e. a mother, sitting or standing, with a child, and occasionally two children[979] in her lap. These may, indeed, be simply votive offerings, to Fortuna and other deities of childbirth: but such objects may quite well have served as the foundation from which the idea of Fortuna and her infants arose. There is a passage in Servius which seems to me to show a trace of a similar confusion elsewhere in this region of Italy. ‘Circa hunc tractum Campaniae colebatur _puer Iuppiter_ qui Anxyrus dicebatur quasi ἄνευ ξυροῦ, id est sine novacula: quia barbam nunquam rasisset: et _Iuno virgo_ quae Feronia dicebatur[980].’ True, the Jupiter of Anxur is a boy or youth[981], not an infant: but the passage serves well to show the fluidity of Italian deities, at any rate in regard to the names attached to them. That this _puer Iuppiter_ was originally some other deity, and very possibly a Greek one, I have little doubt: while Juno Virgo, Feronia, Fortuna, Proserpina, all seem to slide into each other in a way which is very bewildering to the investigator[982]. This is no doubt owing to two chief causes—the daemonistic character of the early Italian religion, in which many of the spiritual conceptions were even _unnamed_; and, secondly, the confusion which arose when Greek artistic types were first introduced into Italy. Two currents of religious thought met at this point, perhaps in the eighth and following centuries B.C.; and the result was a whirlpool, in which the deities were tossed about, lost such shape as they possessed, or got inextricably entangled with each other. The French student of Praenestine antiquities writes with reason of ‘the negligence with which the Praenestine artists placed the names of divinities and heroes on designs borrowed from Greek models, and often representing a subject which they did not understand[983].’

4. And lastly, there is no doubt that Praeneste, in spite of its lofty position on the hills, was at an early stage of its existence subject to foreign influences, like so many other towns on or near the western coast of central Italy. This has been made certain by works of art found in its oldest tombs[984]. Whether these objects came from Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, or Etruria, the story they tell is for us the same, and may well make us careful in accepting a statement like that of Cicero’s without some hesitation. There was even a Greek foundation-legend of Praeneste, as well as the pure Italian one of Caeculus[985]. Evidence is slowly gathering which points to a certain basis of fact in these foundation-stories—of fact, at least, in so far as they seem to indicate that the transformation of the early Italian community into a city and a centre of civilization was coincident with the era of the introduction of foreign trade.

While, then, we cannot hope as yet to account for the singular anomaly in the Jupiter-cult, which is presented to us at Praeneste, we may at least hesitate to make use of it in answering the main question with which we set out—viz. how far we can find in the cult of the genuine Italian Jupiter any tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception of the god. Before we return to Rome a word is needed about the Latin Jupiter. The Latin festival has already been described[986]: it will be sufficient here to point out that none of its features show any advance towards an anthropomorphic conception of Jupiter Latiaris. The god here is of the same type as at Iguvium, one whose sanctuary—whatever it may originally have been—is in a grove on a hill-top[987], the conspicuous religious centre of the whole Latin stock inhabiting the plain below. Of this stock he is the uniting and protecting deity; and when once a year his sacred victim is slain, after offerings have been made to him by the representatives of each member of the league, it is essential that each should also receive (and probably consume through its deputies) a portion of the sacrificial flesh (_carnem petere_). This, the main feature, and other details of the ritual, point to a survival from a very early stage of religious culture, and one that we may fairly call aniconic. The victim, a white heifer, the absence of wine in the libations, and the mention of milk and cheese among the offerings, all suggest an origin in the pastoral age; and it would seem that foreign ideas never really penetrated into this worship of a pastoral race. The objects that have been found during excavations near the site of the ancient temple[988] show that, as in the worship of the Fratres Arvales and in that of the curiae, so here, the most antique type of sacred vessels remained in use. Undoubtedly there was in later times a temple, and also a statue of the god[989]: and it is just possible that, as Niebuhr supposed[990], these were the goal of an ancient Alban triumphal procession, older than the later magnificent rite of the Capitol. But we know _for certain_ that the ancient cult here suggests neither gorgeous ritual nor iconic usage. We see nothing but the unadorned practices of a simple cattle-breeding people.

Coming now once more to Rome itself, where of course we have fuller information, fragmentary though it be, we find sufficiently clear indications of an ancient cult of Jupiter showing characteristics of much the same kind as those we have already noticed as being genuine Italian.

In the first place the cult is associated with hills and also with trees. It is found on that part of the Esquiline which was known as lucus Fagutalis or Fagutal: here there was a sacellum Iovis ‘in quo fuit fagus arbor quae Iovis (so MSS.) sacra habebatur[991]‘: and the god himself was called Fagutalis. Not far off on the Viminal, or hill of the osiers, there was also an altar of Jupiter Viminius, which we may suppose to have been ancient[992]. The mysterious Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal may be assumed as telling the same tale, though in historical times the memory of the cult there included Minerva and Juno with Jupiter, i. e. the Etruscan ‘Trias.’ Lastly, on the Capitol itself was the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, reputed to be the oldest in Rome[993]. It was attributed to Romulus, who, after slaying the king of the Caeninenses, dedicated the first spolia opima on an ancient oak ‘pastoribus sacram,’ and at the same time ‘designavit templo Iovis fines cognomenque addidit deo.’ The oak, we may assume, was the original dwelling of the god, and upon it were fixed the arms taken from the conquered enemy as a thank-offering for his aid[994]. In this case we seem to be able to guess the development of the cult from this beginning in the tree-worship of primitive ‘pastores.’ The next step would be the erection of an altar below the tree, in a small enclosure, i. e. a sacellum of the same kind as those of the Argei or the Sacellum Larum[995]. The third stage would be the building of the aedes known to us in history, which Cornelius Nepos says had fallen into decay in his time, and was rebuilt by Augustus on the suggestion of Atticus. Even this was a very small building, for Dionysius saw the foundations of it and found them only fifteen feet wide. This oldest cult of Jupiter was completely overshadowed by the later one of the Etruscan Trias—the aniconic by the iconic, the pure Italian by the mongrel ritual from Etruria.

That this Jupiter Feretrius[996] was the great Jupiter of pre-Etruscan Rome seems to be proved by his connexion with oaths and treaties, in which he resembles the god of the Latin festival. To him apparently belonged the priestly college of the Fetiales, who played so important a

## part in the declaring of war and the making of treaties: at any rate it

was from his temple that the _lapis silex_ and the _sceptrum_ were taken which accompanied them on their official journeys[997]. It has been supposed that this _lapis silex_ was a symbol of the god himself, like the spear of Mars in the Regia, and other such objects of cult[998]. ‘We recognize here the primitive forms of a nature-worship, in which the simple flint was sufficient to bring up in men’s minds the idea of the heavenly power of lightning and thunder,’ i. e. the flint if struck would emit sparks and remind the beholder of lightning. Unluckily the existence of a stone in this temple as an object of worship is not clearly attested. Servius (_Aen._ 8. 641) says that the Fetials took to using a stone instead of a sword to slay their victims with, ‘quod antiquum Iovis signum lapidem silicem _putaverunt_ esse.’ The learned commentator makes a mistake here which will be obvious to all archaeologists, in putting the age of iron before that of stone; but it has not been equally clear to scholars that he by no means implies his belief that Jupiter was ever worshipped under the form of a stone. He only says that the Fetials _fancied_ that this was so: and the whole passage has an aetiological colouring which should put us on our guard[999]. It is not supported by any other statement or tradition, except an allusion in S. Augustine[1000] to a ‘lapis Capitolinus,’ which is surely the stone of Terminus (see below): and by the oath ‘per Iovem lapidem,’ which has been interpreted by some as meaning ‘Jupiter in the form of a stone.’ But this interpretation is at least open to grave doubt; and in the absence of clearer evidence for the ‘Iuppiter lapis’ of the temple it is better to understand the oath as being sworn by the god and also by the stone, ‘two distinct aspects of the transaction being run together,’ in a way not uncommon in Latin formulae[1001].

It only remains to conjecture what the ‘silex’ or ‘lapis’ was which the Fetials took from the temple together with the sceptrum. Helbig has attempted to prove that it was not a survival of the stone age, e. g. an axe of stone. Had that been so, he argues, the Roman antiquaries, who were acquainted with such implements[1002], would have noticed it: and those who describe the rites of the Fetials would have stated that the stone was artificially sharpened. But this negative argument is not a strong one; and I am rather inclined to agree with the suggestion of Dr. Tylor[1003], that it was a stone celt believed to have been a thunder-bolt. There may indeed have been more than one of these kept in the temple, for in B.C. 201 the Fetials who went to Africa took with them _each a stone_[1004] (privos lapides silices) along with their ‘sagmina,’ &c. This fact seems to me to prove that the silices, like the sagmina and sceptrum, were only part of the ritualistic apparatus of the Fetials[1005], and not objects in which the god was supposed to be manifested. The idea that he was originally worshipped in the form of a stone may well have arisen from this use of stones in the ritual, especially if those stones were believed to be in some way his handiwork[1006]. We may think then of the cult of Jupiter Feretrius as an example of primitive tree-worship, but we are not justified in going further and finding him also in the form of a stone.

There is yet another stone that may have belonged to the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter, but the connexion is not very certain. ‘The (rite of) Aquaelicium,’ says Festus[1007], ‘is when rain is procured (elicitur) by certain methods, as for example when the lapis manalis is carried into the city.’ This stone lay by the temple of Mars, outside the Porta Capena; we learn from other passages that it was carried by the pontifices[1008], but we are not told what they did with it within the walls. It has been ingeniously suggested that this rain-spell, as we may call it, was a part of the cult of Jupiter Elicius, to whom there was an altar close by under the Aventine[1009], the cult-title being identical with the latter part of the word ‘aquaelicium[1010].’ We may agree that the stone had nothing to do with the temple of Mars, which happened to be near it, and also that any such rain-spell as this would be more likely to belong to the cult of Jupiter than of any other deity. The heaven-god, who launches the thunder-bolt, is naturally and almost everywhere also the rain-giver[1011]: and that this was one of the functions of Jupiter is fully attested, for later times at least[1012].

But it must be confessed that the evidence is very slight[1013]: and it is as well here to remember that the further we probe back into old Italian rites, the less distinctly can we expect to be able to connect them with particular deities. The formula ‘si deus, si dea es’ should always be borne in mind in attempting to connect gods and ceremonies. And this ceremony, like that of the Argei[1014] (which also wants a clearly-conceived deity as its object), is obviously a survival from a very primitive class of performances which Mr. Frazer has called acts of ‘sympathetic magic[1015].’ I am indebted to the _Golden Bough_ for a striking parallel to the rite of the lapis manalis, among many others which more or less resemble it. ‘In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making god: and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a stream[1016].’ What was done with the lapis manalis we are not told, but it is pretty plain from the word ‘manalis,’ and from the fragments of explanation which have come down to us from Roman scholars, that it was either the object of some splashing or pouring, or was itself hollow and was filled with water which was to be poured out in imitation of the desired rain[1017]. Such rites need not necessarily be connected by us with the name of a god: and the Jupiter Elicius, with whom it is sought to connect this one, was always associated by the Romans not with this obsolete rite, but with the elaborated science of augury which was in the main Etruscan[1018].

But this discussion has already been carried on as far as the scope of this work permits. It may be completed by any one who has the patience to work through Aust’s exhaustive article, examining his conclusions with the aid of his abundant references; but I doubt if anything will be found, beyond what I have mentioned, which bears closely on the question with which we set out. That question was, whether the distinctly anthropomorphic treatment of Jupiter in the ‘epulum Iovis’ could be explained by any native Italian practice in his cult (as Marquardt tried to explain it), or must be referred with Aust to foreign, i. e. Graeco-Etruscan, influence. I am driven to the conclusion that Aust is probably right. There is no real trace in Italy of an indigenous iconic representation of Jupiter. Trees and hills are apparently sacred to him, and possibly stones, though this last is doubtful: we find a sacrificial meal at the Latin festival, but no sign that he takes part in it as an image or statue. Elsewhere, as at Praeneste, peculiar representations of him arouse strong suspicions of foreign iconic influence. I think, on the whole, that the Italian peoples owed the sacred image to foreign works of art: and that the ‘epulum Iovis’ was introduced from Etruria by the Etruscan dynasty which built the Capitoline temple. It may, indeed, have been engrafted upon an earlier sacrificial meal like that of the feriae Latinae, or that of the curiae, or the rustic one of Jupiter dapalis: but, if so, the meal was one at which the ancient Romans were content to _believe_, as Ovid says, that the gods were present, and did not need, like the Greeks, the evidence of their eyes to help out their belief. Their gods were still aniconic when the wave of foreign ideas broke over them. We may say of the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter what Tacitus asserts of the Germans of his day[1019]: ‘nec cohibere parietibus deos neque in ullam humani oris speciem adsimulare ex magnitudine caelestium arbitrantur: lucos ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud quod sola reverentia vident.’

* * * * *

September 13 was also the day on which, according to Livy[1020] and Verrius Flaccus[1021], a nail (_clavus_) was driven _annually_ by the ‘Praetor maximus’ into the wall of the cella of Minerva in the Capitoline temple, in obedience to an old lex which was fixed up on the wall of the temple adjoining this same cella. But Mommsen’s trenchant criticism[1022] of the _locus classicus_ for this subject in Livy has made it almost certain that the Roman scholars were here in error: that the ceremony was not an annual one, but took place once in a century, in commemoration of a vow made in 463 B.C., to commemorate the great pestilence of that year, which carried off both the consuls and several other magistrates[1023]: that it had no special connexion with the cult of Jupiter, and was not intended, as is generally supposed, to mark the years as they passed. The nail is really the symbol of Fortuna or Necessitas; the rite was Etruscan, and was also celebrated at Volsinii in the temple of the Etruscan deity of Fate; when brought to Rome it was very naturally located in the great temple of the Etruscan Trias, the religious centre of the Roman state. Originally a dictator was chosen (i. e. Praetor maximus) _clavi figendi causa_; and when the dictatorship was dropped after the Second Punic War, the ceremony was allowed to fall into oblivion. Later on the Roman antiquarians unearthed and misinterpreted it, believing it to have been a yearly rite of which the object was to mark the succession of years. This brief account of Mommsen’s view may suffice for the purpose of this work: but the subject is one that might with advantage be reinvestigated.

Footnote 930:

This represents the length which the ludi had attained in Cicero’s time (_Verr._ i. 10. 31). September 4 was probably added after Caesar’s death (Mommsen in _C. I. L._ 328).

Footnote 931:

_C. I. L._ 281.

Footnote 932:

_R. R._ I. 33.

Footnote 933:

See Mommsen’s masterly essay in his _Römische Forschungen_, vol. ii. p. 42 foll. Aust, in _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 732.

Footnote 934:

Mommsen, _Röm. Chronol._ 86 foll.

Footnote 935:

The ‘equorum probatio,’ preliminary to the races in the circus, took place on the day after the Ides: see above, p. 27.

Footnote 936:

Mommsen (_C. I. L._ 328, and _Röm. Forsch._ ii. 43 foll.) points out that the real centre-point and original day of the ludi proper was the day of the great procession (pompa) from the Capitol to the Circus maximus; and that this was probably the 15th, two days after the epulum, because the 14th, being _postriduanus_, was unlucky, and that day was also occupied by the ‘equorum probatio.’ (See Fasti Sab., Maff., Vall., Amit. and Antiat.)

Footnote 937:

See below, p. 234. For the _dies natalis_, see Aust, in _Lex._ s.v. Iuppiter, p. 707; Plutarch, _Poplic._ 14.

Footnote 938:

Mommsen, _Röm. Forsch._ l. c.

Footnote 939:

Livy, 36. 2. 3. The passage refers to _ludi magni_, i. e. _special_ votive games, vowed after the fixed organization of the ludi Romani; but it is none the less illustrative of the latter, as they originated in votive games.

Footnote 940:

So Marq. 349 and note; Mommsen in _C. I. L._ 329, 335. I follow Aust, _Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 732. The ‘epulum Minervae’ of the rustic calendars is but slender evidence for an ancient and special connexion of the goddess with this day; but Mommsen thinks that the epulum ‘magis Minervae quam Iovis fuisse.’

Footnote 941:

Aust, l. c.

Footnote 942:

Aust, _Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 670, 735.

Footnote 943:

In Capitolio (Gellius, 12. 8. 2; Liv. 38. 57. 5). For the collegium of _epulones_, which from 196 B.C. had charge of this and other public feasts, see Marq. 347 foll.

Footnote 944:

Val. Max. 2. 1. 2; Plin. _N. H._ 33. 111; Aust, l. c.; Preller, i. 120.

Footnote 945:

Marq. 348.

Footnote 946:

_R. R._ 132. Festus (68) explains daps as ‘res divina quae fiebat aut hiberna semente aut verna,’ and Cato directs the farmer to begin to sow after the ceremony he describes. I do not clearly understand whether Marquardt intended also to connect the epulum Jovis of Nov. 13 with the autumn sowing.

Footnote 947:

I am unable to offer any explanation of these words, though half inclined to suspect that Vesta was the original deity of this rite of the farm, and that Jupiter and the wine-offering are later intrusions.

Footnote 948:

_Fasti_, 6. 307. For Vacuna see Preller, i. 408.

Footnote 949:

Bk. 2. 23 (cp. 2. 50); Marq. 195 foll. For a comparison of Greek and Roman usage of this kind see de Coulanges, _La Cité antique_, p. 132 foll.

Footnote 950:

He compares this common meal with those of the πρυτανεῖα of Greek cities, and also with the φιδίτια at Sparta. But it is most unlikely that the practice of the curiae should have had any but a native origin.

Footnote 951:

See cap. 7 of Ambrosch’s _Studien_; and cp. cap. 1 on the Regia as the older centre.

Footnote 952:

I may relegate to a footnote the further conjecture that the original deity of the epulum was Vesta. We know that this Sept. 13 was one of the three days on which the Vestals prepared the _mola salsa_ (Serv. _Ecl._ 8. 32). We cannot connect this _mola salsa_ with the cult of Jupiter on this day, for the Vestals have no direct connexion with that cult at any period of the year; but it is possible that it was a survival from the time when the common meal took place in the Regia.

Footnote 953:

See Aust’s admirable and exhaustive article on Jupiter in Roscher’s _Lexicon_.

Footnote 954:

Robertson Smith (_Religion of the Semites_, 42 foll.) seems to trace the idea back to an actual physical fatherhood. Mr. Farnell, on the other hand (_Cults of the Greek States_, i. 49), believes that in the case of Zeus it expresses ‘rather a moral or spiritual idea than any real theological belief concerning physical or human origins.’ In Italy, I think, the suffix pater indicates a special connexion with a

## particular stock, and one rather of guardianship than of actual

fatherhood. See above on Neptunalia.

Footnote 955:

See Jordan’s note on Preller, i. 56.

Footnote 956:

See my paper in _Classical Review_, vol. ix. 474 foll.

Footnote 957:

Wissowa, _de Feriis_, p. 6, in the true spirit of Italian worship, concludes that it was ‘non per iustum matrimonium, sed ex officiorum affinitate.’

Footnote 958:

Bücheler, _Umbrica_; Bréal, _Les Tables Eugubines_.

Footnote 959:

_Tab._ 1 B. (Bücheler, p. 2, takes it as a temple or sacellum of _Juno_).

Footnote 960:

Grabovius is an epithet of Mars; Sancius of Fisius; Jovius or Juvius of more than one deity.

Footnote 961:

Farnell, op. cit. i. 50 and notes.

Footnote 962: