Part 35
They were also called ‘amiculum Iunonis’ (Fest. 85: cp. Ovid, _Fasti_, 2. 427 foll.); Juno here, as so often, representing the female principle. Farnell (_Cults_, i. 100) aptly compares with this the Athenian custom of carrying Athena’s _aegis_ round Athens, and taking it into the houses of married women.
Footnote 1444:
Lactantius, _Inst._ 1. 21. 45, describes them as ‘nudi, uncti, coronati, personati, aut luto obliti currunt’; but we have no certain confirmation from earlier sources except as to the nakedness (Ovid, _Fasti_, 2. 267).
Footnote 1445:
‘_Iocantes_ obvios petiverunt’ (Val. Max.). Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ 140 foll.
Footnote 1446:
Mon. Ancyr. iv. 2; Marq. 446.
Footnote 1447:
Baronius, _Annal. Eccles._ viii. 60 foll.
Footnote 1448:
Aust, _de Aedibus sacris_, p. 11; Jordan, _Eph. Epigr._ iii. 238.
Footnote 1449:
e. g. Cic. _ad Quint. Fratr._ 2. 3. 2.
Footnote 1450:
See other references in Preller, i. 374, note. Ambrosch (_Studien_, 169, note 50) observes that Cicero (_de Off._ 3. 10) writes with a trace of scepticism: ‘Romulus fratre interempto sine controversia peccavit, pace vel Quirini vel Romuli dixerim.’
Footnote 1451:
See Jordan on Preller, i. 369. The article ‘Quirinus’ in _Myth. Lex._ has not yet appeared as I write.
Footnote 1452:
_Studien_, 169.
Footnote 1453:
_C. I. L._ i. 41 = vi. 475 and i. 630 = vi. 565. The older one is attributed by Mommsen to the consul P. Cornelius of B.C. 236: ‘P. Corn[elios] L. f. coso[l] prob[avit] Mar[te sacrom].’ The other, ‘Quirino L. Aimilius L. f. praitor,’ must be set down to an Aemilius praetor in 204, 191, or 190. The inference is that Mars became known as Quirinus in that spot at the end of the third century B.C. It is worth noting that the legendary smith, Mamurius, had a statue on the Quirinal (Jord. _Top._ ii. 125).
Footnote 1454:
This is much what Dion. Hal. 2. 48 says was one view held in his time: οὐκ ἔχοντας εἰπεῖν τὸ ἀκριβὲς εἴτε Ἄρης ἐστὶν εἴτε ἕτερός τις ὁμοίας Ἄρει τιμὰς ἔχων.
Footnote 1455:
See on Jan. 9. Fest. 254.
Footnote 1456:
Gilbert, i. 283, points out that in the Argean itinerary (Jord. _Top._ ii. 237 foll.) one of the _divisions_ of the Quirinal bears the name, and infers the gradual spread of the cult of Quirinus over the whole hill; but he insists that it was introduced from the Palatine. The general result of his wild but ingenious combinations is to infer a religious conquest of the Quirinal from the Palatine.
Footnote 1457:
Aust, op. cit. pp. 11 and 33. Mommsen, _C. I. L._ i. 310, takes the one of unknown date as the older.
Footnote 1458:
Aust, op. cit. 51, where for Liv. 4. 21 read Liv. 5. 40.
Footnote 1459:
Preller, i. 356.
Footnote 1460:
_Q. R._ 46; Ennius ap. Nonium 120; Gell. 13. 23.
Footnote 1461:
Plin. _H. N._ 15. 120.
Footnote 1462:
i. 373.
Footnote 1463:
See under April 25, Aug. 21, Dec. 23. Marq. 335; Schwegler, i. 334.
Footnote 1464:
Liv. 5. 40, 7 and 8.
Footnote 1465:
_L. L._ 6. 13. According to Macrob. (1. 13. 15) the five last days of February were added after the intercalation, in order that March might follow on Feb., and not on the intercalated days.
Footnote 1466:
_H. N._ 18. 8. See above, p. 304.
Footnote 1467:
_Fasti_, 2. 643 foll.
Footnote 1468:
Te duo diversa domini pro parte coronant, Binaque serta tibi binaque liba ferunt.
Footnote 1469:
This must be a son of the family. We have, therefore, in this charming picture the predecessors of the Rex, the Regina sacrorum, the flamines, and the Vestal Virgins.
Stat puer et manibus lata canistra tenet. Inde ubi ter fruges medios immisit in ignes, Porrigit incisos filia parva favos.
De-Marchi, p. 231, gives a cut of a painting at Herculaneum which may represent a scene of this kind.
Footnote 1470:
_Gromatici veteres_, i. 141. See Rudorff in vol. ii. 236 for an interesting discussion of the religio terminorum and its ethical and legal results.
Footnote 1471:
Rudorff, l. c. 237.
Footnote 1472:
Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 149.
Footnote 1473:
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 187 foll.
Footnote 1474:
See under September, p. 229 foll. I may here notice the very curious ‘oraculum’ in _Grom. Vet._ p. 350 (ex libris Vegoiae) which connects Jupiter with the introduction of termini in Etruria.
Footnote 1475:
Ζεὺς ὅπιος he is called by Dion. Hal. (2. 74), where the cult is ascribed to Numa. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ i. 159.
Footnote 1476:
Aust, in _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 668.
Footnote 1477:
_Fasti_, 2. 667; Liv. 1. 55; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448. Augustine, _C. D._ 4. 23, adds Mars, and Dion. Hal. 3. 69 Iuventus to Terminus, who could not be ‘exauguratus.’
Footnote 1478:
Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448 ‘Unde in Capitolio prona pars tecti patet, quae lapidem ipsum Termini spectat.’ This is the ‘Capitoli immobile saxum’ of Virgil; see above, p. 230.
Footnote 1479:
Ovid, l. c. 671.
Footnote 1480:
See above, p. 140. Varro, _L. L._ 5. 66.
Footnote 1481:
Plut. _Q. R._ 28.
Footnote 1482:
Ambrosch, _Studien_, 199 foll.
Footnote 1483:
It would exactly correspond to the spot of sacred ground on which the terminus-stone stood between two properties (Rudorff, l. c). In the latter case, it is worth noting, the sacrifices and sacrificers are doubles, as with the Salii, Luperci, &c, of the two Roman settlements. Mr. Granger (_Worship of the Romans_, 163) suggests that this stone was ‘a relic from the original dwellers by the Tiber,’ i.e. pre-Roman. But the question is, How did the Romans come to associate it with Terminus?
Footnote 1484:
_Fasti_, 2. 685 foll. He is probably following Varro and common opinion, which latter Verrius refers to (Paul. 279) ‘Regifugium sacrum dicebant, quo die rex Tarquinius fugerit e Roma.’ The word _dicebant_ seems to show that this was not Verrius’ own opinion.
Footnote 1485:
_C. I. L._ i. 289. This gloss is no doubt the equivalent in Festus to that of Paulus just quoted; but the leading word Regifugium is lost. I have only quoted so much as is needed for our purpose. For other completions of the gloss see Müller, _Festus_, l. c, and Huschke, _Röm. Jahr_, p. 166.
Footnote 1486:
If this gloss really refers to Feb. 24, the presence of the Salii is difficult to account for, as their period of activity begins in March. Frazer in an interesting note (_G. B._ ii. 210) suggests that the use of the Salii was to drive away evil demons; if the Regifugium was a solemn piaculum, and the victim a scapegoat, this explanation might serve for Feb. 24.
Footnote 1487:
_Röm. Jahr_, 166 foll.
Footnote 1488:
_L. L._ 6. 31, where Hirschfeld has conjectured ‘litat ad comitium’ for the MS. ‘dicat.’
Footnote 1489:
_Aglaophamus_, 676.
Footnote 1490:
Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ 58 foll.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 35 foll.; Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 286 foll. Cp. Lang, _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, ii. 233 foll. See also Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, i. 88 foll., who agrees in the main with Robertson Smith.
Footnote 1491:
Frazer, l. c.
Footnote 1492:
Aelian, _N. A._ 12. 34.
Footnote 1493:
_Relig. der Römer_, ii. 35. Cp. Gilbert, i. 343, note. The presence of the Salii (see above, p. 328), if a fact, would be in favour of this explanation.
Footnote 1494:
_Röm. Jahr_, 199.
Footnote 1495:
See on Aug. 21 (Consualia).
Footnote 1496:
_Myth. Forsch._ 170 foll.; _Baumkultus_, 382 foll.
Footnote 1497:
This, though with impossible combinations, is what Huschke does (199, note 53). Feb. 27 is the Roman, March 14 the Quirinal Equirria, in his view. That the Quirinalia falls in February may perhaps give some support to the view.
Footnote 1498:
Varro, _L. L._ 6. 13; Fest. 81. See under Oct. 15.
Footnote 1499:
i. 361.
Footnote 1500:
So Ovid, on Feb. 26, writes (2. 853);
Fallimur, an veris praenuntia venit hirundo, Et metuit ne qua versa recurrat hiems?
This would be early now for central Italy; but Columella, 11. 2, gives Feb. 23 as the date.
Footnote 1501:
_Fasti_, 2. 857 foll.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the introductory chapter a promise was made that when we had completed the round of the year, we would sum up our results, sketch in outline the history of Roman religious ideas, and estimate the influence of all this elaborate ceremonial on the life and character of the Roman people. This undertaking I must now endeavour to fulfil, though with doubt and diffidence; for even after the most careful examination of the Calendar, both the character and the history of the Roman religious system must still in great degree remain a mystery. With such knowledge however as may have been gleaned in the preceding pages, the reader may be able to appreciate or criticize a few conclusions of a more general character.
The Roman religion has been ably discussed in general terms by several writers of note in the century just closing. Mommsen’s chapters in the early books of his Roman History are familiar to every one. The introduction to Marquardt’s volume on our subject is indispensable; and Preller, less exact perhaps, but more sympathetic and inspiring, still holds the field with the opening chapters of his work on Roman Mythology. To these classical works may be added the section on the Roman religion in the second volume of the _Religionsgeschichte_ of Chantepie de la Saussaye, and the first chapter of Boissier’s work on the Roman religion from Augustus onwards. Professor Granger’s _Worship of the Romans_ also contains here and there some suggestive remarks, though as a rule these are not based upon any elaborate investigation of the cult. Lastly I may mention a small but valuable treatise, published as long ago as 1837 by Leopold Krahner, on the history of the decay of the Roman religion down to the time of Augustus, which fell into my hands many years ago, and is in almost every sentence of value to the student of Roman history.
In all these works the one point insisted on at the outset is this: that the Romans were more interested in the cult of their deities, that is, in the ritual and routine by which they could be rightly and successfully propitiated, than in the character and personality of the deities themselves. This is indeed a truth which has been abundantly borne out in our examination of the Calendar, and might be further illustrated in almost every public act of procedure in the Roman State. Cicero himself expresses it well in the second book of his _De Natura Deorum_ (2. 3. 8) ‘Si conferre volumus nostra cum externis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores reperiemur, religione, id est cultu deorum, multo superiores.’ The second book of his work _De Legibus_ is also an invaluable witness to the conviction, lasting on even in an age of scepticism and indifference among the educated, that the due performance of sacred rites was a necessary function of the State, on which its very existence depended. The Christian Fathers, some of whom, like St. Augustine and Tertullian, were men of learning who had studied the voluminous works of Varro, were well aware of this character; and Tertullian in a curious passage went so far as to suggest that the Devil had here perpetrated an imitation or parody of the minute ritual of Leviticus[1502]. So far as externals go, the comparison he suggested is a useful one; but there is an essential difference in the religious spirit which lay at the root of the two ceremonial systems—a difference that makes it impossible that any work should be written on the Roman religion as inspiring for the student of religious history as _The Religion of the Semites_ so often quoted in these pages.
This elaborate Roman ceremonial consisted in the main of sacrifices of different kinds, conducted with an endless but ordered variety of detail, of prayers, processions, and festivities, the object of which was either to obtain certain practical results, to discover the will of the gods, or to rejoice with the divine inhabitants of the city over the prosperous event of some undertaking. When we survey it in the Calendar as a whole, it seems to fall naturally into three divisions, which correspond with and illustrate the development of the State from its constituent materials. The Calendar contains in fact in a fossilized condition the remains of three different strata of religious or social development.
(1) Here and there we find survivals of what we can only regard as the most primitive condition of human life in ancient Latium: that of men dwelling on forest-clad hill-tops, surrounded by a world of spirits, some of which have taken habitation in, or are in some sort represented by, objects such as trees, animals, or stones. Examples of such objects are the oak of Jupiter Feretrius, the sacred fig-tree of Rumina, the stone of Terminus with its buried sacrifice, and the wolf, the wood-pecker, and spear of Mars. To this earliest stratum may also belong in their ultimate origin those quaint sacrificial or semi-dramatic rites of which we have had examples in the Lupercalia, the Fordicidia, and the Parilia. The casting of the Argei into the Tiber may perhaps also be reckoned here, though connected later on with certain divisions of the developed city of which the meaning and origin are lost to us. This primitive population knew also of charms and spells and omens, not reduced indeed as yet to a definite system, of which the Calendar naturally supplies hardly any indications, while in Ovid and Cato not a few survivals meet us. But the investigation of the oldest culture of central Italy is more especially the province of archaeology, and to the archaeologists, who are now in Italy doing excellent and elaborate work, I must be content to leave it.
(2) We next come conjecturally to clearly-defined evidence of a period in which the ordered processes of agriculture, and the settled life of the farm-house, are the distinctive features. We have the beginnings of a calendar in the observation of the quarters of the moon and their connexion with the deities of light. We have the discipline of the house, represented in the cult of Vesta the hearth-spirit, under the care of the daughters of the family, while the sons as _flamines_ have their special sacrificial duties, the head of the house presiding over all, and having as his own special department the worship of the spirit of the door-way (Janus). The occupations of the family are reflected in the series of festivals which represent the processes and perils of pastoral and agricultural industry: e.g. the Robigalia, Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, Opiconsivia, Vinalia, Saturnalia, and Terminalia: this last indicating also the idea of property, whether of the community or the individual. We have also clear traces of the union of farms in a group (_pagus_); for the Paganalia still survived in the full-grown city, and both at the Saturnalia and Compitalia the households met together at the winter period of ease and rejoicing.
(3) The further development of social life is also reflected in the annual rites we have been investigating. We see the aggregation of small communities in the Septimontium, in the Fornacalia or feast of the Curiae, possibly also in the ritual of the twenty-four or twenty-seven Sacella Argeorum, round which a procession seems to have gone in March and May. The Parentalia again is the systematized cult of the dead in their own city, outside the walls of the city of the living. The Lares Praestites, worshipped on May 1, are the guardian spirits of the whole community. The Regia, the dwelling of the king, is its political and religious centre, with its sacrarium of Mars, the peculiar deity of the stock, and with the house and hearth of Vesta close by, now grown to be the symbol of the State’s vitality. The Vestals and Flamines have become priests of special worships in an organized state, and at the head of all is the Rex, still specially concerned with the cult of Janus, but representing in his priestly capacity the whole community. The steadily increasing tendency to organize, a tendency rooted in the very fibre of this people, is producing colleges of pontifices and augurs, to assist by associated effort in making sure of the laws of intercourse with the unseen world, and of the best methods of divining its will and intention. And lastly, not only have we found in the festivals traces of the growth and systematization of the life of the city, but in the great Latin festival we have also religious evidence of the early tendency of the cities of Latin blood to combine in some sort with each other.
We have thus reached what has been called by Preller the period of Numa, the king with whose name and personality the Romans always associated the redaction of the Fasti and the state-organization of their religion: a personality so clearly conceived by them as to bear witness at once to its own historical reality, and to their conviction of the vital importance of his work. Before we go further, let us pause here to interrogate the Calendar as to the nature of the divine beings who in these same stages of development were the objects of popular worship. The simplest way to do this will be to present a table showing the list of the most ancient festivals, with the deities concerned in them, so far as they can be identified, in a parallel column:—
_Festivals._ _Deities._
KALENDS JUNO.
IDES JUPITER.
EQUIRRIA MARS.
LIBERALIA LIBER.
FORDICIDIA TELLUS?
CERIALIA CERES.
PARILIA PALE?
ROBIGALIA ROBIGUS.
LEMURIA Ghosts (unburied).
ARGEORUM SACRA Unknown.
AGONIA VEDIOVIS?
VESTALIA VESTA.
MATRALIA MATER MATUTA.
POPLIFUGIA Unknown.
LUCARIA Unknown.
NEPTUNALIA NEPTUNUS.
FURRINALIA FURRINA?
PORTUNALIA PORTUNUS.
VINALIA JUPITER.
CONSUALIA CONSUS.
VOLCANALIA VOLCANUS.
OPICONSIVIA OPS CONSIVA.
MEDITRINALIA Unknown.
FONTINALIA FONS?
AGONIA Unknown.
CONSUALIA CONSUS.
SATURNALIA SATURNUS.
OPALIA OPS.
DIVALIA ANGERONA?
LARENTALIA LARENTIA?
AGONIA JANUS?
CARMENTALIA. CARMENTA.
LUPERCALIA Unknown.
QUIRINALIA QUIRINUS.
FERALIA BURIED ANCESTORS.
TERMINALIA TERMINUS.
REGIFUGIUM Unknown.
Here it will be noticed that in those festivals which seem to be survivals from the oldest stratum of civilization (the period of Faunus, as Preller has named it), viz. the Lupercalia, Parilia, Fordicidia, Argeorum Sacra, the deities concerned are either altogether doubtful, or so wanting in clearness and prominence as to be altogether subordinate in interest to the details of the ceremony. The Parilia and Fordicidia were believed in later times to have belonged to Pales and Tellus; but our authority for the grounds of such belief is not strong, and as a matter of fact these two, together with the sacrifice of the October horse, were interconnected by details of antique ceremonial, rather than separately defined by their relation to particular _numina_. In other festivals which may have possibly come down from the oldest period, the deity is almost entirely lost. Here is good evidence of the indistinctness of the Roman conception of the divine; the cult appealed to this people as the practical method of obtaining their desires, but the unseen powers with whom they dealt in this cult were beyond their ken, often unnamed, and only visible in the sense of being seated in, or in some sort symbolized by, tree or stone or animal. They are often multiplex, like the Fauni, Silvani, Lares, Penates, Semones, Carmentes; or they run into each other, like Bona Dea, Maia, Tellus, Ceres, Dea Dia, and others. Only the great deity of the stock stands out at all clearly; Father Mars of the Romans; Father Diovis of the whole Latin race; to these we may perhaps add the Hercules or Genius, and Juno, representing respectively the male and female principles of human life.
In the second and third of the strata which the Calendar offers to the excavator, representing the ordered life of the household and afterwards of the city, we still find much of the same indistinctness. Vesta indeed, the spirit of the hearth-fire, becomes clearly though not personally delineated; so too, but in a less degree, does Janus the spirit of the doorway. Two other groups of spirits also occupy the house; the Lares, who may have been the spirits of dead ancestors duly buried, and the Penates or spirits of the store-chamber; both of them becoming sufficiently clear in the popular conception to be represented by images at a very early period. But in the round of ancient festivals, some at least of the so-called gods, so far as we can guess at their original nature, hardly deserve that name. Liber and Ceres seem to have been originally general names for an ill-defined class of spirits; Robigus is the spirit of the mildew; Consus and Ops are not personalities, but _numina_ protecting the gathered harvest, as Saturnus probably protected the sown seed. The Compitalia was concerned only with the Lares Compitales, spirits of the crossways; in the Paganalia we have but very indistinct information as to the object of worship. The Vinalia, marking a later and more skilled agricultural process, seems on the other hand always to have been clearly connected with Jupiter himself.
Thus in the so-called period of Numa, the period of the earlier monarchy and the first organization of the city-state, the religious life of the community had become highly systematized in respect of the cult, of the priest in charge of it, and the _ius_ which governed all the citizens in their relation to the world of divinities. Of any real change however in the character of these divinities, of any approach to polytheism in the way of an increased individuality of conception, of iconic representation, or definite temple-worship, the Calendar then drawn up supplies no certain evidence. There may indeed have been a tendency towards a clearer definition of _numina_, arising from the very fact of the definite organization of prayer and sacrifice, and of the allotment of cults to particular priesthoods or families. There may, even at that early stage in Roman history, have been an influence at work on the Roman mind, coming from Etruria and Greece, where polytheism found its nourishment in works of art and mythological fancy. These are possibilities of which we must take account, but the Calendar has nothing positive to tell us of them.
It is when we advance to the later monarchy, which we may speak of without hesitation as an Etruscan dynasty, that we find a change beginning, both in the forms and objects of the cult, which marks an epoch in Roman religious history. The oldest Calendar, that of the large letters in the Fasti, tells us of course nothing of this. But in the _additamenta ex fastis_, and in later literary allusions, we have a considerable body of material to help us in following out the character and consequences of this change. It is at this point, or rather at the end of the monarchy, that we begin to hear of the building of real temples, as distinct from luci, sacella, arae, or fana; of the introduction into these of statues of the gods, of the _Graecus ritus_ in sacrifice, and of the appearance of new deities, some of them apparently connected with new elements of population.