Part 33

After the sacrifice was completed, Plutarch[1410] tells us that the foreheads of the two youths were touched with the bloody knife that had slain the victims, and the stain was then wiped off with wool dipped in milk, after which the youths had to laugh. This has often been supposed to indicate an original human sacrifice[1411], the he-goats being substituted for human victims, and the death of the latter symbolized by the smearing with their blood. This explanation might be admissible if this were the only feature of the ceremony; but it is so entirely out of keeping with those that follow—the wearing of the skins and the running—that it is preferable to look for another before adopting it. At the same time it may be observed that no reasonable hypothesis can be ruled out of court where our knowledge of the rite is so meagre and so hard to bring satisfactorily into harmony with others occurring among other peoples[1412].

There is a curious passage in Apollonius Rhodius[1413], where purification from a murder is effected by smearing the hands of the murderer with the blood of a young pig, and then wiping it off ἄλλοις χύτλοισι; and the Scholiast on the lines describes a somewhat similar method of purification which was practised in Greece. This would raise a presumption that the youths were not originally the victims at the Lupercalia, but rather the slayers; and that they had to be purified from the guilt of the blood of the sacrosanct victim[1414]. When this was done they became one with the victim and the god by the girding on of the skins, and were able to communicate the new life thus acquired in the course of their lustratio of the city by means of the strips of skin to the women who met them. This explanation is open to one or two objections; for example, it hardly accounts for the laughter of the youths, unless we are to suppose that it was an expression of joy at their release from blood-guiltiness[1415]. And we have indeed no direct evidence that the youths were ever themselves the sacrificers, though the collateral evidence on this point, as I have already said, seems to be fairly strong[1416]. Yet I cannot but think that the true significance of the essential features of the ceremony is to be looked for somewhere in the direction thus indicated.

There is, however, another explanation of the application of the bloody knife, the wiping, and the laughing, which Mannhardt proposed, not without some modest hesitation, in his posthumous work[1417]. In his view these were symbolic or quasi-dramatic acts, signifying death and renewed life. The youths were never actually killed, but they were the figures in a kind of acted parable. The smearing with blood denoted that they partook of the death of the victim[1418]; the wiping with milky wool signified the revival to a new life, for milk is the source of life. The laughing is the outward sign of such revival: the dead are silent, cannot laugh[1419]. And the meaning of all this was the death and the revival of the Vegetation-spirit. I have already more than once profited by Mannhardt’s researches into this type of European custom, and they are now familiar to Englishmen in the works of Mr. Frazer, Mr. Farnell, and others. Undoubtedly there are many bits of grotesque custom which can best be explained if we suppose them to mean the death of the Power of growth at harvest-time, or its resuscitation in the spring, perhaps after the death of the powers of winter and darkness. But whether the Lupercalia is one of these I cannot be so sure. These rites do not seem to have any obvious reference to _crops_, but rather to have come down from the pastoral stage of society: and it is not in this case the _fields_ which are lustrated by the runners, but the _urbs_ and its women[1420]. And the earlier parts of the ritual bear the marks of a _piaculum_ so distinctly that it seems unnecessary and confusing to introduce into it a different set of ideas.

There is a similar divergence of opinion in explaining the next feature, the wearing of the skins of the victims[1421]. Dr. Mannhardt believed that this was one of the innumerable instances in which, at certain times of the year, animals are personated by human beings, e. g. at Christmas, at the beginning of Lent (Carnival), and at harvest. These he explained as representations of the Vegetation-spirit, which was conceived to be dead in winter, to come to life in spring, and at harvest to die again, and which was believed to assume all kinds of animal forms. This has been generally accepted as explaining several curious rites both in Greece and Italy, e. g. that of the Hirpi Sorani at Soracte not far from Rome[1422]. But it is a question whether it will equally well explain the Luperci and their goat-skins. In this case Mannhardt is driven to somewhat far-fetched hypotheses; he derives Lupercus from _lupus-hircus_[1423] (p. 90), and suggests that the two collegia represented respectively wolves and goats, according to the view of the Vegetation-spirit taken by the two communities of Palatine and Quirinal[1424]. But this solution, the result of a bias in favour of his favourite Vegetation-spirit, does not strike us as happy, and Dr. Mannhardt himself does not seem well pleased with it[1425].

It would seem safer to take this as one of the many well-known _piacula_ in which the worshipper wears the skin of a very holy victim, thereby entering sacramentally into the very nature of the god to whom the victim is sacrificed[1426]. Whether or no we are to look for the origin of these practices in a totemistic age, is a question that cannot be discussed here; and there is no sign of totemism in the Lupercalia save this one[1427].

But if this be the right explanation, what, we may ask, was meant by the name Luperci? If it meant wolves, are we not rather thrown back on Mannhardt’s theory? To this it may be answered; (1) that no classical author suggests that the runners were looked upon as representing wolves; by the common people we are told that they were called _creppi_[1428], the meaning of which is quite uncertain, though it has been explained as = _capri_, and as simply arising from the fact that the runners were clad in goat-skins[1429]. There is in fact no necessary connexion at all between the skins and the name Luperci. If that name originally meant wolf-priests, its explanation is to be found rather in connexion with the wolf of Mars, and the cave of the she-wolf, than in the skins of the sacrificed goats, which were worn by only two members of the two collegia bearing the name.

We must now turn our attention to the last features of the festival; the course taken by the runners round the Palatine Hill, and the whipping of women with the strips of sacred skin. The two youths, having girded on the skins (though otherwise naked) and also cut strips from them, proceeded to run a course which seems almost certainly to have followed that of the pomoerium at the foot of the Palatine. The starting-point was the Lupercal, or a point near it, and Tacitus[1430] has described the course of the pomoerium as far as the ‘sacellum Larum forumque Romanum’: in his day it was marked out by stones (‘cippi’). We are concerned with it here only so far as it affects the question whether the running was a _lustratio_ of the Palatine city. The last points mentioned by Tacitus, the ‘sacellum Larum, forumque Romanum[1431],’ show plainly that the course was round the Palatine from south-west to north-east, but they do not bring the runners back to the point from which they started, and complete the circle[1432]. Varro is, however, quite clear that the running was a _lustratio_: ‘Lupercis nudis lustratur antiquum oppidum Palatinum gregibus humanis cinctum.’ The passage is obscure, and attempts have been made to amend it; but there can be no doubt that it points to a religious ceremony[1433].

This lustratio, then, as we may safely call it, was at the same time a beating of the bounds and a rite of purification and fertilization. Just as the peeled wands of our Oxford bound-beaters on Ascension Day[1434] may perhaps have originally had a use parallel to that of the _februa_, so the parish boundaries correspond to the Roman pomoerium. We have already had examples of processional bound-beating in the rites of the Argei and the Ambarvalia; in all there is the same double object—the combination of a religious with a juristic act; but the Lupercalia stands alone in the quaintness of its ritual, and may probably be the oldest of all.

Before we go on to the _februa_ and their use, mention must be made of a difficulty in regard to the duality of the collegia of Luperci and the runners. These have been supposed to have originated from two gentile priesthoods of the Fabii and Quinctii[1435]; and as we know that the gens Fabia had a cult on the Quirinal[1436], it is conjectured that the Luperci Fabiani represented the Sabine city, and the Quinctiales the Romans of the Palatine, just as we also find two collegia of Salii, viz. Palatini and Collini[1437]. If, however, the running of the Luperci was really a lustratio of the Palatine, we must suppose that the lustratio of the Quirinal city by its own Luperci was given up and merged in that of the older settlement[1438]; and such an abandonment of a local rite would be most surprising in Roman antiquity. It is true that there is no other explanation of the existence of the two guilds; but we may hesitate to accept this one, if we have to pay for it by so bold a hypothesis[1439].

The last point to be noticed, the whipping with the strips of skin[1440], might have attracted little notice as a relic of antiquity in the late Republic but for the famous incident in the life of Caesar, when Antonius was one of the runners. We have it on excellent evidence, not only that the runners struck women who met them with the strips, but that they did so in order to produce fertility[1441]. Such an explanation of the object would hardly have been invented, and it tallies closely with some at least of a great number of practices of the kind which have been investigated by Mannhardt[1442]. His parallel are not indeed all either complete or convincing; but the collection is valuable for many purposes, and the general result is to show that whipping certain parts of the body with some instrument supposed to possess magic power is efficacious in driving away the powers of evil that interfere with fertilization. Whether the thing beaten be man, woman, image, or human or animal representative of the Vegetation spirit, the object is always more or less directly to quicken or restore the natural powers of reproduction; the notion being that the hostile or hindering spirit was thus driven out, or that the beating actually woke up and energized the power. The latter is perhaps a later idea, rationalized from the earlier. In any case the thongs, as part of the sacrosanct victim, were supposed to possess a special magical power[1443]; and the word applied to them, _februa_, though not meaning strictly instruments of purification in our sense of the word, may be translated _cathartic_ objects, since they had power to free from hostile influences and quicken natural forces. And those who wielded them were regarded in some at least as priests or magicians; they were naked but for the goat-skins, and probably had wreaths on their heads[1444]. Their wild and lascivious behaviour as they ran is paralleled in many ceremonies of the kind[1445].

It is singular that a festival of a character so rude and rustic should have lived on in the great city for centuries after it had become cosmopolitan and even Christian. This is one of the many results due to the religious enterprise of Augustus, who rebuilt the decayed Lupercal, and set the feast on a new footing[1446]. It continued to exist down to the year 494 A.D. when the Pope, Gelasius I, changed the day (Feb. 15) to that of the Purification of the Virgin Mary[1447].

XIII KAL. MART. (Feb. 17). NP.

QUIR[INALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. FARN. PHILOC.)

QUIRINO IN COLLE. (FARN. CAER.)

How the festival of Quirinus came to be placed at this time I cannot explain: we know nothing of it, and cannot assume that it was of an expiatory character, like the Lupercalia preceding it, and the Feralia following. Of the temple ‘in colle’ we also know nothing[1448] that can help us. We have already learnt that this day was called ‘stultorum feriae,’ and why; but the conjunction of the last day of the sacra of the curiae with those of Quirinus is probably accidental; we cannot safely assume any connexion through the word ‘curia.’ The name Quirinalia was familiar enough[1449]; but it may be that it only survived through the _stultorum feriae_.

The Roman of the later Republic identified Quirinus with Romulus; Virgil, e. g. in the first _Aeneid_ (292) speaks of ‘Remo cum fratre Quirinus[1450].’ We have no clue to the origin of this identification. It may have been suggested by the use of the name Quirites; but neither do we know when or why that name came to signify the Roman people in their civil capacity, and the etymology of these words and their relation to each other still entirely baffles research[1451].

There is, however, a general agreement that Quirinus was another form of Mars, having his abode on the hill which still goes by his name. That Mars and Quirinus were ever the same deities was indeed denied by so acute an inquirer as Ambrosch[1452]; but he denied it partly on the ground that no trace of the worship of Mars had been found on the Quirinal; and since his time two inscriptions have been found there on the same spot, one at least of great antiquity, which indicate votive offerings to Mars and Quirinus respectively[1453]. From these Mommsen concludes that Quirinus was at one time worshipped there under the name of Mars; which involves also the converse, that Mars was once worshipped under the adjectival cult-title Quirinus. Unluckily Mars Quirinus is a combination as yet undiscovered; and as the existence of a patrician Flamen Quirinalis distinct from the Flamen Martialis points at least to a very early differentiation of the two, it may be safer to think of the two, not as identical deities, but rather as equivalent cult-expressions of the same religious conception in two closely allied communities[1454].

That the Quirinal was the seat of the cult of Quirinus admits of no doubt; and the name of the hill, which we are told was originally Agonus or Agonalis[1455], arose no doubt from the cult[1456]. Here were probably two temples of the god, the one dating from B.C. 293, and having June 29 as its day of dedication; the other of unknown date, which celebrated its birthday on the Quirinalia[1457]. A ‘sacellum Quirini in colle’ is also mentioned at the time of the Gallic invasion[1458] (this was perhaps the predecessor of the temple of June 29), and also the house of the Flamen Quirinalis which adjoined it. To the Quirinal also belong the Salii Agonenses, Collini, or Quirinales, who correspond to the Salii of the Palatine and of Mars[1459]. And here, lastly, seems to belong the mysterious Flora or Horta Quirini, whose temple, according to Plutarch[1460], was ‘formerly’ always open. About the cult of Quirinus on his hill we know, however, nothing, except that there were two myrtles growing in front of his temple, one called the patrician and the other the plebeian[1461], and to which a curious story is attached. Preller[1462] noted that these correspond to the two laurels in the _sacrarium Martis_ in the Regia, and conjectured that each pair symbolized the union of the state in the cults of the two communities.

Of the duties of the Flamen Quirinalis we have already seen something[1463]: unluckily they throw little or no new light on the cult of Quirinus. He was concerned in the worship of Robigus, of Consus, and of Acca Larentia, all of them ancient cults of agricultural Rome; and he seems to have been in close connexion with the Vestal Virgins[1464]. These are just such duties as we might have expected would fall to the Flamen of Mars; and probably the two cults were much alike in character.

VII KAL. MART. (FEB. 23.) NP.

TER[MINALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. RUST. PHILOC. SILV.)

Was there any connexion between the Terminalia and the end of the year? The Roman scholars thought so; Varro[1465] writes, ‘Terminalia quod is dies anni extremus constitutus; duodecimus enim fuit Februarius, et quum intercalatur, inferiores quinque dies duodecimo demuntur mense.’ So Ovid,

Tu quoque sacrorum, Termine, finis eras.

But Terminus is the god of the boundaries of land, and has nothing to do with time; and the Terminalia is not the last festival of the year in the oldest calendars. The Romans must have been misled by the coincidence of the day of Terminus with the last day before intercalation. The position in the year of the rites to be described seems parallel to that of the Compitalia and Paganalia, which were concerned with matters of common interest to a society of farmers: and we may remember that Pliny[1466] said of the Fornacalia that it was ‘farris torrendi feriae et _aeque religiosae terminis agrorum_.’

The ritual of the Terminalia in the country districts is described by Ovid[1467]. The two landowners garlanded each his side of the boundary-stone, and all offerings were double[1468]. An altar is made; and fire is carried from the hearth by the farmer’s wife, while the old man cuts up sticks and builds them in a framework of stout stakes. Then with dry bark the fire is kindled; from a basket, held ready by a boy[1469], the little daughter of the family thrice shakes the fruits of the earth into the fire, and offers cakes of honey. Others stand by with wine; and the neighbours (or dependants) look on in silence and clothed in white. A lamb is slain, and a sucking-pig, and the boundary-stone sprinkled with their blood; and the ceremony ends with a feast and songs in praise of holy Terminus.

This rite was, no doubt, practically a yearly renewal of that by which the stone was originally fixed in its place. The latter is described by the gromatic writer Siculus Flaccus[1470]. Fruits of the earth, and the bones, ashes, and blood of a victim which had been offered were put into a hole by the two (or three) owners whose land converged at the point, and the stone was rammed down on the top and carefully fixed. The reason given for this was of course that the stone might be identified in the future, e. g. by an arbiter, if one should be called in[1471]; but it also reminds us of the practice of burying the remains of a victim[1472], and the use of the blood shows the extreme sanctity of the operation.

That the stone was regarded as the dwelling-place of a _numen_ is proved by the fact that it was sprinkled with blood and garlanded[1473]; and the development of a god Terminus is perfectly in keeping with Roman religious ideas. It is more difficult to determine what was the relation of this Terminus to the great Jupiter who was so intimately associated, as we have seen[1474] with the idea of keeping faith with your neighbours. Was he the _numen_ originally thought to occupy the stone, and is the name Terminus, as marking a distinct deity, a later growth? I am disposed to think that this was so; for we saw that there is some reason to believe that Jupiter did not disdain to dwell in objects such as trees and stones, and there is no need to look to Greece for the origin of his connexion with boundaries[1475]. But Jupiter and Terminus remained on the whole distinct; and a Jupiter Terminus or Terminalis is first found on the coins of Varro the great scholar, probably in B.C. 76[1476].

The close connexion of the two is seen in the legend that when Jupiter was to be introduced into the great Capitoline temple, from the Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal, all the gods made way for him but Terminus[1477].

Quid nova cum fierent Capitolia? nempe deorum Cuncta Iovi cessit turba, locumque dedit. Terminus, ut veteres memorant, inventus in aede Restitit, et magno cum love templa tenet.

This, as Preller truly observes, is only a poetical way of expressing his stubbornness, and his close relation to Jupiter, with whom he continued to share the great temple. It seems certain that there was in that temple a stone supposed to be that of Terminus, over which there was a hole in the roof[1478]: for all sacrifice to Terminus must be made in the open air.

Nunc quoque, se supra ne quid nisi sidera cernat, Exiguum templi tecta foramen habent[1479].

Precisely the same feature is found in the cult of Semo Sancus or Dius Fidius[1480], who was concerned with oaths and treaties; and of Hercules we are told that the oath taken in his name must be taken out of doors[1481].

Of the stone itself we know nothing. It is open to us to guess that it was originally a boundary-stone, perhaps between the ager of the Palatine city and that of the Quirinal. The mons Capitolinus seems to have been neutral ground, as we may guess by the tradition of the asylum there; it was outside the pomoerium, and in the early Republic was the property of the priestly collegia[1482]. It was, therefore, a very appropriate place for a terminus between two communities[1483].

From Ovid (679 foll.) we gather that there was a terminus-stone at the sixth milestone on the via Laurentina, at which public sacrifices were made, perhaps on the day of the Terminalia: this was probably at one time the limit of the ager Romanus in that direction.

VI KAL. MART. (FEB. 24). N.

REGIF[UGIUM], (CAER. MAFF. PHILOC.) REGIFUGIUM, CUM TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS FERTUR AB URBE EXPULSUS. (SILV.)

This note of Silvius is based on a very old and natural misapprehension. Ovid[1484], and probably most Romans, believed that the expulsion of Tarquin was commemorated on this day. There is, however, strong indirect evidence to show that the ‘flight of the king’ on Feb. 24 was something very different.

1. We have already had a ‘flight of the people’ (Poplifugia) on July 5; and we saw that this was probably a purificatory rite of which the meaning had been lost—the sacrifice perhaps of a sacred animal followed by the flight of the crowd as from a murder. It seems impossible, at any rate unwise, to separate Poplifugia and Regifugium in general meaning, for there is no other parallel to them in the calendar. Both were explained historically by the Romans, because in both the obscure (and perhaps obsolete) religious rite was inexplicable otherwise; and we must also endeavour to treat both on the same principle.

2. It seems pretty clear that Verrius Flaccus did not believe in the historical explanation of the Regifugium. In Festus, page 278, we find a mutilated gloss which evidently refers to this day, and is thus completed by Mommsen[1485]:—

_[Regifugium notatur in fastis dies a.d.] vi kal. [Mart. qui creditur sic dict]us quia [eo die Tarquinius rex fugerit ex urbe]. Quod fal[sum est; nam e castris in exilium abisse cum r]ettul[erunt annales. Rectius explicabit qui regem e]t Salios[1486] [hoc die ... facere sacri]ficium in [comitio eoque perfecto illum inde fugere n]overit ..._