Part 26

It should be noticed that the harvest character of the rite was suggested to Mannhardt by the passage from Paulus (220), from which we learn that the head of the sacrificed horse was decked with cakes, like those of the live draught-animals at the Vestalia and Consualia and feriae Sementivae [q. v.]. This, Paulus adds, was done ‘quia id sacrum fiebat ob frugum eventum,’ which last words can hardly mean anything but ‘on account of the _past_ harvest[1065].’ There are, I may add, two points open to doubt here, which Mannhardt does not point out: (1) the reason here given may be only a guess of Verrius’, and not one generally understood at Rome[1066]. (2) The concluding words of the gloss seem to make no sense, a fact which throws some doubt on the whole passage. The rite is ‘ob frugum eventum,’ yet ‘a horse, and not an ox, is the victim, because a horse is suited for war, and an ox is not[1067].’ However this may be understood, we need not quarrel with the conclusion[1068], that the real meaning of the adornment was to show that the head was an object possessed of power to procure fertility—an inference confirmed by the eagerness of the rival city-quarters to get possession of it.

2. The _sacrificed horse represented a Corn-spirit_. The Corn-spirit was Mannhardt’s chief discovery, and its various forms are now familiar to English readers of Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, and of Farnell’s _Cults of the Greek States_. Almost every common animal, wild or tame, may be found to represent the Corn-spirit at harvest-time in one locality or another, where the nomadic age has given place to an agricultural one; or a man, woman, boy or puppet represents the animal, and so indirectly the Corn-spirit[1069]. Mannhardt produces from his stores of folk-lore many instances in which the horse thus figures, including the hobby-horse which in old England used to prance round the May-pole. Those examples, however, are not strong enough to convince us that the October horse was a Corn-spirit, though they prove well enough that the Corn-spirit often took this shape[1070]. But we must remember that he is only suggesting an _origin_ in the simple rites of the farm, indicating a class of ideas to which this survival may be traceable[1071].

He does, however, produce an example which has one or two features in common with the Roman rite, only in this case the animal is a goat instead of a horse. In Dauphiné a goat is decked with ribbons and flowers and let loose in the harvest-field. The reapers run after it, and finally the farmer cuts off its head[1072], while his wife holds it. Parts of its body (we are not told whether the head is among them) are kept as ‘medicine’ till the next harvest. So too the head, and also the tail and the blood, of the October horse were the seat of some great Power; but whether this was a vegetation-spirit does not seem satisfactorily shown.

3. _The chariot-race was an elaborated and perhaps Graecized form or survival of the simple race of men and women so often met with in the harvest-field, often in pursuit of a representative of the Corn-spirit._

Mannhardt gives examples from France and Germany of races in pursuit of cock, calf, kid, sheep, or whatever shape may be the one in vogue for the Corn-spirit; often the animal is in some way decorated for the occasion. Two of a rather different kind may be mentioned here, though they occur, not on the harvest-field, but at Whitsuntide and Easter respectively; but they show how horse-races may originate in the customs of the farm. In the Hartz the farm-horses, gaily decorated, are raced by the labourers for possession of a wreath, which is hung on the neck of the winning horse. In Silesia the finest near horse of the team, decorated by the girls, is ridden (raced?) round the boundary of the farm, and then round a neighbouring village, while Easter hymns are sung. We have already noticed the racing of horses and mules at the Consualia in August: according to Dionysius, these too were decked out with flowers[1073]. Mannhardt makes also a somewhat lengthy digression to point out the possibility that in the original form of the Passover (on which was afterwards engrafted the Jahvistic worship and the history of the escape from Egypt) a race or something of the kind may be indicated by the custom of eating the victim with the loins girt.

There is undoubtedly a possible origin for the horse-racing of Greeks and Romans in the customs of the farm at different seasons of the year, and I accept Mannhardt’s view so far, with a probability, not certainty, as to the Corn-spirit. We may perhaps be able to trace the development of the custom a little further in this case.

4. _The horse’s head, fixed on the Regia or the turris Mamilia, is the effigy of the Corn-spirit, which is to bring fertility and to keep off evil influences for the year to come._[1074]

Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore[1075]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione[1076], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse[1077], which in course of time becomes a permanency.

5. _The cutting off the tail is explained by the idea that a remnant of the body of the representative of the Corn-spirit is sufficient to produce this spirit afresh in the vegetation of the coming year._

The examples Mannhardt quotes are numerous, and only gain force when brought together: I must refer the reader to his work for them[1078]. The word _tail_ not only occurs frequently in harvest customs (e. g. the cutter of the last sheaf is called the wheat-tail or barley-tail[1079]), but there is little doubt that virtue was believed to reside in a tail[1080]. Who knows but that the preservation of the fox’s brush by fox-hunters has some origin of this kind?

6. The use made of the blood, which was kept and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves of the Fordicidia, and with sulphur and bean-straw as a medicine to be distributed to the people at the Parilia, tells its own story without need of illustration (see on April 15 and 21). The blood was the life[1081]; the fire and sulphur-fumes were to purify and avert evil. Both men and beasts leapt over the fire into which this mixture was thrown at the Parilia, to gain new life and strength, and to avert the influences which might retard them.

Finally, Mannhardt has some remarks on the origin of the rite, which were suggested by Schwegler and Ambrosch[1082]. The Campus Martius, the scene of the sacrifice, was originally _terra regis_, cultivated for him by the people[1083]. When the king was the chief farmer, the horse’s head was carried to his house (regia) and fixed thereon, and the tail allowed to drip on to his hearth. When the neighbouring community of the Subura was united with that of the Palatine, the seat of the oldest community, the remembrance of their duality survived in the contest for the head: if the men of the Subura won it, they fixed it on the turris Mamilia, which may have been the dwelling of their own chief. Such contests are even now well known, or have[1084] but lately disappeared; and some of them may owe their origin to a fight for the Corn-spirit. Mannhardt gives some examples—one very curious one from Granada, and one from Brittany. At Derby, Hawick, Ludlow, and other places in this country, they or the recollection of them may still be found.

On the whole we may agree with him that the rite was in its origin one of the type to which he has referred it—a final harvest festival of the Latin farm. There is yet, however, a word to be said. He does not treat it from the point of view of the Roman calendar, and thus fails to note the turn it took when Latin farmers became Roman citizens. Wissowa, on the other hand, takes the calendar as his sole basis for judging of it, and with a strange perversity, as it seems to me, brushes Mannhardt’s conclusions aside, and would explain the rite simply as a sacrifice to the god of war[1085]. Now doubtless it had come to be this in the organized city-calendar, as Mars himself began to be brought into prominence in a new light, as the _iuvenes_ of the community came to be more and more employed in war as well as agriculture, and as the Campus Martius came to be used as an exercising-ground for the armed host. The Calendars show us a curious correspondence between the beginning and the end of the season of arms, i. e. the middle of March and the middle of October, which leaves little doubt of the change which had taken place in the accepted character of the rites of the two periods by the time the Numan calendar was drawn up. This correspondence has already been noted[1086]; it may be here briefly referred to again.

On March 14[1087] there was a horse-race in the Campus Martius; on the 19th (Quinquatrus) was the _lustratio armorum_ for the coming war-season, as is seen from the fact that the _ancilia_ of the Salii at least—if not all arms—were _lustrata_ on that day[1088]. So too on October 15 there was a horse-race, as we have seen, in the Campus Martius, and on the 19th we find the Armilustrium in the oldest calendars[1089], a name which tells its own tale. The inference is that the horse-races on Oct. 15 and March 14 had much the same origin, and it is just this which induces Wissowa to slight Mannhardt’s explanation of the former. He thinks that on each day the horses, like the arms, were lustrated (p. x.), i. e. before the war-season began, and after it was over. This is likely enough; but might not the same have been the case with the horses of the farm? The Roman farmer’s year began with March, and the heavy work of carrying, &c., would be over in October. I am disposed to think that we must look on organized war-material as a development later than the primitive times to which Mannhardt would carry us back, a side of Roman life which only in course of time became highly specialized.

We must never forget that the oldest Roman calendar is the record of the life of an agricultural people. So much is clear on the face of it; and in some instances, as in the Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, and in the October rite we have been discussing, something of the original intent can be made out from researches into modern folk-lore or savage custom. Yet this calendar is at the same time the table of feasts of a fully developed city-state, and in the process of its development the original meaning of the feasts was often lost, or they were explained by some mythical or historical event, or again they themselves may have changed character as the life of the people changed from an agricultural to a political one. In the rite of the October horse we may see an agricultural harvest custom taking a new shape and meaning as the State grew to be accustomed to war, just as Mars, originally perhaps the protector of man, herds, and crops alike, becomes—it may be even before Greek influence is brought to bear upon him—the deity of warriors and war-horses, of the yearly renewed strength of a struggling community[1090]. It is looking with modern eyes at the institution of an old world if we try to separate the Roman warrior from the Roman husbandman, or the warlike aspect of his god from his universal care for his people.

XIV KAL. NOV. (OCTOBER 19). NP.

ARM[ILUSTRIUM]. (ARV. SAB. MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)

The first three letters of this word, which alone appear in the calendars, are explained by Varro and Verrius: ‘Armilustrium ab eo quod in armilustrio armati sacra faciunt ... ab ludendo aut lustro, quod circumibant ludentes ancilibus armati[1091].’ This passage may be taken as referring both to March 19 and Oct. 19, and as showing that the Salii with the sacred shields were active on both days. This can also be inferred from the fact that in 190 B.C. a Roman army, on its march into Asia, had to halt at the Hellespont, ‘quia dies forte, quibus ancilia moventur. religiosi ad iter inciderant’[1092]—its commander Scipio being one of the Salii. It can be shown that this was in the autumn, as the army did not leave Italy till July 15[1093]. It may be taken as certain, then, that this was the last day on which the Salii appeared, and that _arma_ and _ancilia_ were now purified[1094], and put away for the winter.

There are no festivals in any way connected with Mars from this day to the Roman new year, March 1. As Roscher has remarked, his activity, like that of Apollo, is all in the warm season—the season of vegetation and of arms. His priests, who seem in their dances, their song, and their equipment, to form a connecting link between his fertilizing powers and his warlike activity, are seen no more from this day till his power is felt again on the threshold of spring.

We learn from Varro[1095] that the place of _lustratio_ on this day was the Aventine ‘ad circum maximum.’ I can find no explanation of this: we know of no Mars-altar in that part of Rome, which was the seat of the cults of Hercules and Consus. It was probably the last point in a procession of the Salii[1096].

Footnote 1024:

_C. I. L._ i 2. 281.

Footnote 1025:

Varro, _R. R._ 1. 34. Pliny, _N. H._ 18. 315: ‘Vindemiam antiqui nunquam existimavere maturam ante aequinoctium, iam passim rapi cerno.’ Sec. 319 ‘Iustum vindemiae tempus ab aequinoctio ad Vergiliarum occasum dies xliii.’

Footnote 1026:

See above, p. 97.

Footnote 1027:

Pliny, _N. H._ 14. 88 ‘Vino rogum ne respargito.’ Cp. 18. 24.

Footnote 1028:

_Kulturpflanzen_, &c., p. 65.

Footnote 1029:

1. 21. Dion. Hal. 2. 75. The significance of this covered vehicle seems to be unknown.

Footnote 1030:

Many passages might be collected to bear out Dionysius’ remarks: the reader may refer to Preller, i. 250 foll.

Footnote 1031:

Pliny, _N. H._ xi. 250. So ‘dextram fidemque dare.’

Footnote 1032:

Wissowa, in _Lex._ s. v. Fides, Preller. i. 251. Serv. _Aen._ 1. 292 and 8. 636: but Serv. in the latter note says ‘Quia fides tecta esse debet et velata.’

Footnote 1033:

Libanius, _Decl._ 19; Photius, s. v. κροκοῦν (Bötticher, _Baumkultus_, p. 43) οἱ μύσται ὡς φασὶ κρόκῃ τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα καὶ τὸν πόδα ἀναδοῦνται.

Footnote 1034:

Hor. _Od._ 1. 35. 21.

Footnote 1035:

The authorities for this and the altars connected with it are Livy, 1. 26; Dion. Hal. 3. 22; Festus, 297 and Paul. 307; Aur. Vict. 4. 9; _Schol. Bob. ad Cic._ p. 277 Orelli; Lydus _de Mensibus_, 4. 1.

Footnote 1036:

Kiepert u. Huelsen, _Formae urbis Romae antiquae_, p. 92 and map 1; Jordan, _Topogr._ ii. 100.

Footnote 1037:

So Roscher, in _Lex._ s. v. Ianus, 21; Gilbert, _Topogr._ 1. 180, who would make it the ‘porta Ianualis’ of Macrob. 1. 19. 17, wrongly.

Footnote 1038:

It is always in the singular, e. g. ‘Transmisso per viam tigillo,’ Livy, l. c. Dionys. writes as if it were originally a _iugum_, i. e. two uprights and a cross-beam, but does not imply that it was so in his day.

Footnote 1039:

The altars are mentioned by Festus, Dionys, and _Schol. Bob._

Footnote 1040:

_Lex._ s. v. Janus, 21; quoting Grimm, _Deutsche Myth._ (E. T. 1157, with quotation from White’s _Selborne_).

Footnote 1041:

Marquardt, 584.

Footnote 1042:

Macrob. 1. 9. 16 ‘[Ianum] Iunonium quia non solum mensis Ianuarii sed mensium omnium ingressum tenentem: in dicione autem Iunonis sunt omnes Kalendae.’

Footnote 1043:

This Juno may be the ‘Weibliche Genius einer Frau,’ as Roscher suggests (s. v. Janus, 22; s. v. Juno. 598, he seems to think otherwise). But as she is connected with Janus, I should doubt it. For an explanation of ‘Ianus Curiatius’ cp. Lydus, l. c. ἔφορος εὐγενῶν.

Footnote 1044:

Curriti Arv.: Q[uiriti] Paul.

Footnote 1045:

p. 223.

Footnote 1046:

Paulus, 123; Varro, _L. L._ 6. 21.

Footnote 1047:

Henzen, _Act. Fr. Arv._ pp. 11, 12, 14.

Footnote 1048:

_L. L._ vi. 22. Cp. Festus, 85.

Footnote 1049:

Cic. _N. D._ iii. 20.

Footnote 1050:

Preller, i. 176.

Footnote 1051:

Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ 146. The deities to whom _piacula_ are here to be sacrificed are deities of the grove of the Brethren: hence I should conclude that this Fons simply represented a particular spring there.

Footnote 1052:

_de Feriis_, &c., p. xi. To me this explanation does not seem quite satisfactory, though it seems to be sanctioned by Mommsen (_C. I. L._ i. 2. 332, note on Id. Oct. sub fin.). It is however undoubtedly preferable to the view I had taken before reading Wissowa’s tract, that the omission was due to an aristocratic neglect of usages which only survived among the common people and had ceased to concern the whole community.

Footnote 1053:

Polyb. xii. 4b.

Footnote 1054:

Ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τινὶ κατακοντίζειν ἵππον πολεμιστὴν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐν τῷ κάμπῳ καλουμένῳ. This is quoted from “τὰ περὶ Πυρρόν.”

Footnote 1055:

Fest. 178 ‘October equus appellatur, qui in campo Martio mense Oct. immolatur quotannis Marti, bigarum victricum dexterior. De cuius capite non levis contentio solebat esse inter Suburanenses et Sacravienses, ut hi in regiae pariete, illi ad turrim Mamiliam id figerent; eiusdemque coda tanta celeritate perfertur in regiam, ut ex ea sanguis distillet in focum participandae rei divinae gratia, quem hostiae loco quidam Marti bellico deo sacrari dicunt,’ &c. Then follow three examples of horse-sacrifices. Paul. 179 adds no fresh information. Paul. 220 ‘Panibus redimibant caput equi immolati idibus Octobribus in campo Martio, quia id sacrificium fiebat ob frugum eventum, et equus potius quam bos immolabatur, quod hic bello, bos frugibus pariendis est aptus.’ (The meaning of these last words will be considered presently.) Cp. Plutarch, _Qu. Rom._ 97; probably from Verrius, perhaps indirectly through Juba. Plut. by a mistake puts the rite on the Ides of December.

Footnote 1056:

See note in Preller’s _Regionen der Stadi Rom_, p. 174. They are placed by Kiepert and Hülsen (map 2) close to the Tiber and near the Mausoleum of Augustus, and a long way from the old ara Martis. Perhaps the position of the latter had changed as the Campus came to be built over.

Footnote 1057:

Livy, 35. 10; 40. 45 (the censors after their election sat in Campo on their curule chairs ‘ad aram Martis’). Roscher, _Lex._ s. v. Mars, 2389.

Footnote 1058:

What this was is not known: some think a kind of peel-tower. Possibly a tower in _quadriviis_: cf. definition of _compitum_ in _Schol. Pers._ 4. 28.

Footnote 1059:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 4. 731 foll.; Prop. 5. (4.) 1. 19. See on Parilia and Fordicidia.

Footnote 1060:

Preller, 1. 366; Marquardt, 334; Schwegler, _Röm. Gesch._ ii. 46; Roscher, _Apollo und Mars_, 64 foll.

Footnote 1061:

_Mythologische Forschungen_, 156-201.

Footnote 1062:

_de Feriis_, ix.

Footnote 1063:

I add this (see on Vestalia). Mannhardt had not handled it.

Footnote 1064:

Levit. 23 fin.

Footnote 1065:

Had they referred to the crops of the next season we might have expected ‘ob _bonum_ frugum eventum.’

Footnote 1066:

So Wissowa, _de Feriis_, ix. He thinks that it was only an attempt to explain the _panes_: but he is wrong in insisting that the Vestalia (where, as we saw, the same decoration occurs) had _nothing_ to do with ‘frugum eventus.’

Footnote 1067:

To me it looks as if some words had dropped out of the text, perhaps after the word _eventum_; see the passage quoted above, p. 242, note 1.

Footnote 1068:

Given in Mannhardt’s next section, p. 169.

Footnote 1069:

See under May 15 (Argei).

Footnote 1070:

Mannhardt has not suggested what seems not impossible, that the horse represented Mars himself—in which case we might allow that Mars was, among other things, a vegetation deity.

Footnote 1071:

See his language at the top of p. 164.

Footnote 1072:

He ingeniously suggests that these cases of decapitation may be explained by the old custom of cutting off the corn-ears so as to leave almost the whole of the stalk. (See his _Korndämonen_, p. 35.) That this method existed in Latium seems proved by a passage in Livy, 22. 1 ‘Antii metentibus cruentas in corbem spicas cecidisse.’

Footnote 1073:

Dion. Hal. i. 33, who compares an Arcadian Hippokrateia.

Footnote 1074:

Op. cit. p. 182.

Footnote 1075:

See _Golden Bough_, i. 68 foll., and Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ 214 foll.

Footnote 1076:

Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ l. c.

Footnote 1077:

Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 167.

Footnote 1078:

p. 185 foll. The tail in Roman ritual was ‘offa penita.’ Marq. 335, note 1.

Footnote 1079:

In Silesia, &c., the word is _Zâl_, _Zôl_, which I suppose = tail.

Footnote 1080:

_Golden Bough_, ii. 65. Jevons, Introduction to Plut. _Q. R._ p. lxix. He quotes an example from Africa.

Footnote 1081:

Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, Lect. ix. In this case, according to M., it was the life of the Corn-spirit—so of generation in general.

Footnote 1082:

Schwegler, _R. G._ i. 739; Ambrosch, _Studien_, 200 foll.

Footnote 1083:

Evidence for this in Liv. i 2; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 274.

Footnote 1084:

See e. g. Crooke’s _Folklore of Northern India_, vol. ii. pp. 176 and 321. Crooke looks on these fights (he should have said, the possession of the object which is the cause of the fight) as charms for rain or fertility. So in the plains of N.-W. India, ‘plenty is supposed to follow the side which is victorious.’

Footnote 1085:

Veram huius sacri rationem inter veteres ii viderunt quorum sententiam ita refert Festus ‘equum hostiae loco Marti bellico deo sacrari’ (_de Feriis_, p. x).

Footnote 1086:

See under March 14 and 19.

Footnote 1087:

Wissowa thinks it was originally the 15th (Ides); but Mommsen dissents in his note on Oct. 15 (_C. I. L._ 332). It is the only feast-day in the calendar which is an _even_ number. Perhaps it was changed because of the popularity of the revels, &c., on the Ides.

Footnote 1088:

Charisius, p. 81; Marq. 435.

Footnote 1089:

This point of the parallel was first noticed by Wissowa, who, as just noted, believes the day of Equirria to have been in each case the Ides.

Footnote 1090:

An apt illustration of this aspect of Mars, in combination with the older primitive form of ritual, is supplied by the strange sacrifice by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers, recorded by Dio Cassius, 43. 24. They were offered to Mars in the Campus Martius by the Flamen Martialis in the presence of the Pontifices, _and their heads were nailed up on the Regia_. (Hence Marq. infers that it was this flamen who sacrificed the October horse.) Caesar was in Rome in _October_ of the year to which D. C. attributes this deed, B.C. 46.

Footnote 1091:

_L. L._ 6. 62. Cp. Festus, 19 ‘Armilustrium festum erat apud Romanos, quo res divinas armati faciebant ac dum sacrificarent tubis canebant.’ See on March 19 and 23.

Footnote 1092:

Liv. 37. 33. 7. Cp. Polyb. 21. 10. 12.

Footnote 1093:

Marq. 437, note 1. The suggestion was Huschke’s, _Röm. Jahr_, 363.

Footnote 1094: