Part 4

Of this tale Preller remarked long ago that it has a Greek setting: it is in fact in its Ovidian form a reflex from stories such as those of the birth of Athena and of Kora. Yet it has been stoutly maintained[69] that it sprang from a real Italian germ, and is a fragment of the lost Italian mythology. Now, though it is certainly untrue that the Italians had no native mythology, and though there are faint traces, as we shall see, of tales about Mars himself, yet the Latins at least so rarely took these liberties with their deities[70], that every apparent case of a divine myth needs to be carefully examined and well supported. In this case we must conclude that there is hardly any evidence for a general belief that March 1 was the birthday of Mars; and that Ovid’s story of Juno and Mars must be looked on with suspicion so far as these deities are concerned.

The idea that Mars was born on March 1 might arise simply from the fact that the day was the first of his month and also the first of the year. It is possible however to account for it in another way. It was the _dies natalis_ of the temple of Juno Lucina on the Esquiline, as we learn from the note in the Fasti Praenestini; and this Juno had a special power in childbirth. The temple itself was not of very ancient date[71], but Juno had no doubt always been especially the matrons’ deity, and in a sense represented the female principle of life[72]. To her all kalends were sacred, and more especially the first kalends of the year, on which we find that wives received presents from their husbands[73], and entertained their slaves. In fact the day was sometimes called the Matronalia[74], though the name has no technical or religious sense. Surely, if a mother was to be found for Mars, no one could be more suitable that Juno Lucina; and if a day were to be fixed for his birth, no day could be better than the first kalends of the year, which was also the dedication-day of the temple of the goddess. At what date the mother and the birthday were found for him it is impossible to discover. The latter may be as late as the Empire; the former may have been an older invention, since Mars seems to have been apt to lend himself, under Greek or Etruscan influence, somewhat more easily to legendary treatment than some other deities[75] But we may at any rate feel pretty sure that it was the Matronalia on March 1 that suggested the motherhood of Juno and the birth of Mars; and we cannot, as Roscher does, use the Matronalia to show that these myths were old and native[76].

Yet another legend was attached to this day. It was said that the original _ancile_, or sacred shield of Mars, fell down from heaven[77], or was found in the house of Numa[78], on March 1. This was the type from which were copied the other eleven belonging to the collegium of Salii Palatini; in the legend the smith who did this work was named Mamurius, and was commemorated in the Salian hymn[79]. These are simply fragments of a tangle of myth which grew up out of the mystery attaching to the Salii, or dancing priests of Mars, and to the curious shields which they carried, and the hymns which they sang[80]; in the latter we know that the word _Mamuri_ often occurred, which is now generally recognized as being only a variant of the name Mars[81]. We shall meet with the word again later in the month. This also was the first day on which the shields were ‘moved,’ as it was called; i. e. taken by the Salii from the _sacrarium Martis_ in the Regia[82], and carried through the city in procession. Dionysius (ii. 70) has left us a valuable description of these processions, which continued till the 24th of the month; the Salii leaped and danced, reminding the writer of the Greek Curetes, and continually struck the shields with a short spear or staff[83] as they sang their ancient hymns and performed their rhythmical dances.

The original object and meaning of all these strange performances is now fairly well made out, thanks to the researches of Müllenhoff, Mannhardt, Roscher, Frazer and others. Roscher, in his comparison of Apollo and Mars[84], pointed out the likeness in the spring festivals of the two gods. At Delphi, at the Theophania (7th of Bysios = March), there were decorations, sacrifices, dances, and songs; and of these last, some were ὔμνοι κλητικοί, or invocations to the god to appear, some παιᾶνες, or shouts of encouragement in his great fight with the dragon, or perhaps intended to scare the dragon away. For Apollo was believed to return in the spring, to be born anew, and to struggle in his infancy with the demon of evil. At other places in Greece similar performances are found; at Delos[85], at Ortygia[86] near Ephesus, at Tegyra, and elsewhere. At Ortygia the Κουρῆτες stood and clashed their arms to frighten away Hera the enemy of Apollo’s mother Leto, in the annual dramatic representation of the perilous labour of the mother and the birth of her son. These practices (and similar ones among northern peoples) seem to be the result of the poetical mythology of an imaginative race acting on still more primitive ideas. From all parts of the world Mr. Frazer has collected examples of rites of this kind occurring at some period of real or supposed peril, and often at the opening of a new year, in which dances, howling, the beating of pots and pans, brandishing of arms, and even firing of guns are thought efficacious in driving out evil spirits which bring hurt of some kind to mankind or to the crops which are the fruits of his labour[87]. This notion of evil spirits and the possibility of expelling them is at the root of the whole series of practices, which in the hands of the Greeks became adorned with a beautiful mythical colouring, while the Romans after their fashion embodied them in the cult of their city with a special priesthood to perform them, and connected them with the name of their great priest king.

In an elaborate note[88] Mr. Frazer has attempted to explain the rites of the Salii in the light of the material he has collected. He is inclined to see two objects in their performances: (1) the routing out of demons of all kinds in order to collect them for transference to the human scapegoat, Mamurius Veturius (see below on March 14), who was driven out a fortnight later; and (2) to make the corn grow, by a charm consisting in leaping and dancing, which is known in many parts of the world. It will perhaps be safer to keep to generalities in matters of which we have but slender knowledge; and to conclude that the old Latins believed that the Spirit which was beginning to make the crops grow must at this time be protected from hostile demons, in order that he might be free to perform his own friendly functions for the community. Though the few words preserved of the Salian hymns are too obscure to be of much use[89], we seem to see in them a trace of a deity of vegetation; and the prayer to Mars, which is given in Cato’s agricultural treatise, is most instructive on this point[90].

The Salii in these processions were clothed in a _trabea_ and _tunica picta_[91], the ‘full dress’ of the warrior inspired by some special religious zeal, wearing helmet, breastplate, and sword. They carried the _ancile_ on the left arm, and a staff or club of some kind to strike it with[92]. At certain sacred places they stopped and danced, their praesul giving them the step and rhythm; and here we may suppose that they also sang the song of which a few fragments have come down to us, where the recurring word Mamurius seems beyond doubt to be a variant of Mars[93]. Each evening they rested at a different place—_mansiones Saliorum_, as they were called—and here the sacred arms were hung up till the next day, and the Salii feasted. They were twenty-four in number, twelve Palatini and twelve Collini (originally Agonales or Agonenses), the former specially devoted to the worship of Mars Gradivus, the latter to that of Quirinus[94]. The antiquity of the priesthood is proved by the fact that the Salii must be of patrician birth, and _patrimi_ and _matrimi_ (i. e. with both parents living) according to the ancient rule which descended from the worship of the household[95].

It has been suggested that the shields (_ancilia_) which the Salii carried, being twelve in number for each of the two guilds, represented the twelve months of the year, either as twelve suns[96] (the sun being renewed each month), or as twelve moons, which is a little more reasonable. This idea implies that the number of the Salii (which was the same as that of the Fratres Arvales) was based on the number of months in the year, which is very far from likely; it would seem also to assume that the shape of the shields was round, like sun or moon, which was almost certainly not the case. According to the legend, the original shield fell on the first new moon of the year; but it is quite unnecessary to jump to the conclusion that the others represent eleven other new moons. It would rather seem probable to a cautious inquirer that though an incrustation of late myth may have grown upon the Salii and their carmen and their curious arms, no amount of ingenious combination has as yet succeeded in proving that such myths had their origin in any really ancient belief of the Romans. What we know for certain is that there were twelve warrior-priests of the old Palatine city, and that they carried twelve shields of an antique type, which Varro compares to the Thracian peltae (_L. L._ 7. 43); shaped not unlike the body of a violin, with a curved indentation on each side[97], which, when the shield was slung on the back, would leave space for the arms to move freely. In this respect, as in the rest of his equipment, the Salius simply represented the old Italian warrior in his ‘war-paint.’ In the examples of expulsion of evils referred to above as collected by Mr. Frazer, it is interesting to notice how often the expellers use military arms, or are dressed in military fashion. This may perhaps help us to understand how attributes apparently so distinct as the military and the agricultural should be found united in Mars and his cult.

NON. MART. (MARCH 7). F.

... [VEDI]OVI. ARTIS VEDIOVIS INTER DUOS LUCOS. (PRAEN.)

Various conjectures have been made for correcting this note. We may take it that the first word is rightly completed: some letters seem to have preceded it, and _feriae_ has been suggested[98], but not generally accepted. The next word, _Artis_, must be a slip of the stone-cutter. That it was not Martis we are sure, as Ovid says that there was no note in the Fasti for this day except on the cult of Vediovis[99]. Even Mommsen is in despair, but suggests _Aedis_ as a possibility, and that _dedicata_ was accidentally omitted after it.

We do not know when the temple was dedicated[100]. The cult of Vediovis seems to have no special connexion with other March rites: and it seems as well to postpone consideration of it till May 21, the dedication-day of the temple _in arce_. See also on Jan. 1.

VII ID. MART. (MARCH 9). C.

ARMA ANCILIA MOVENT. (PHILOC.)

As we have seen, the first ‘moving’ of the ancilia was on the 1st. This is the second mentioned in the calendars; the third, according to Lydus (4. 42), was on the 23rd (Tubilustrium, q.v.). As the Salii seem to have danced with the shields all through the month up to the 24th[101], it has been supposed that these were the three principal days of ‘moving’; and Mr. Marindin suggests that they correspond to the three most important _mansiones Saliorum_, of which two were probably the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine and the Sacrarium Martis in the Regia[102].

PRID. ID. MART. (MARCH 14). NP.

EQUIRR[IA]. (MAFF. VAT. ESQ.) FERIAE MARTI. (VAT.) SACRUM MAMURIO. (RUSTIC CALENDARS[103].) MAMURALIA. (PHILOC.)

These notes involve several difficulties. To begin with, this day is an even number, and there is no other instance in the calendar of a festival occurring on such a day. Wissowa[104], usually a very cautious inquirer, here boldly cuts the knot by conjecturing that the Mars festival of this day had originally been on the next, i.e. the Ides, but was put back one day to enable the people to frequent both the horse-races (Equirria) and the festival of Anna Perenna[105]. The latter, he might have added, was obviously extremely popular with the lower classes, as we shall see from Ovid’s description; and though the scene of it was close to that of the Equirria, or certainly not far away, it is not impossible that it may have diverted attention from the nobler and more manly amusement. Wissowa strengthens his argument by pointing out an apparent parallel between the festival dates of March and October. Here, as elsewhere, in the calendar, we find an interval of three days between two festivals, viz. between March 19 (Quinquatrus) and March 23 (Tubilustrium), and between Oct. 15 (‘October horse’) and Oct. 19 (Armilustrium). Now, as we shall see, the rites of March 19 and Oct. 19 seem to correspond to each other[106]; and if there were a chariot-race on March 15, it would also answer to the race on the day of the ‘October horse,’ Oct. 15, with a three days’ interval as in October. The argument is not a very strong one, but there is a good deal to be said for it.

A much more serious difficulty lies in the discrepancy between the three older calendars in which we have notes for this day and the almanacs of the later Empire, viz. that of Philocalus (A.D. 354) and the rustic calendars. The former tell us of a Mars-festival, with a horse-race; the latter know nothing of these, but note a festival of Mamurius, a name which, as we saw, occurred in the Saliare Carmen apparently as a variant of Mars, and came to be affixed to the legendary smith who made the eleven copies of the ancile. How are we to account for the change of Mars into Mamurius, and of feriae Marti into Mamuralia? And are we to suppose that the later calendars here indicate a late growth of legend, based on the name Mamurius as occurring in the Carmen Saliare, or that they have preserved the shadow of an earlier and popular side of the March rites, which the State-calendars left out of account?

Apparently Mommsen holds the former opinion[107]. In his note on this day he says that it is easy to understand how the second Equirria came to be known to the _vulgus_ as Mamuralia (i.e. so distinguished from the first Equirria on Feb. 27), seeing that Mamurius who made the ancilia belongs wholly to the cult of Mars, and that this day was one of those on which the Salii and the ancilia were familiar sights in the streets of Rome. In other words, the Salian songs gave rise to the legend of Mamurius, and this in its turn gave a new name to the second Equirria or feriae Marti. And this I believe to be the most rational explanation of our difficulty, seeing that we have no mention of a feast of Mamurius earlier than the calendar of Philocalus in the fourth century A.D., which cannot be regarded as in any sense representing learning or research[108].

But of recent years much has been written in favour of the other view, that the late calendars have here preserved for us a trace of very ancient Roman belief and ritual[109]. This view rests almost entirely on a statement of a still later writer, Laurentius Lydus of Apamea, who wrote a work, _de Mensibus_, in the first half of the sixth century A.D., preserved in part in the form of two summaries or collections of extracts. Lydus was no doubt a man of learning, as is shown by his other work, _de Magistratibus_; but he does not give us his authority for

## particular statements, and his second- or third-hand knowledge must

always be cautiously used.

Lydus tells us that on the Ides of March (a mistake, it is supposed[110], for the 14th—which, however, he should not have made), a man clothed in skins was led out and driven with long peeled wands (out of the city, as we may guess from what follows) and shouted at as ‘Mamurius.’ Hence the saying, when any one is beaten, that they are ‘playing Mamurius with him.’ For the legend runs that Mamurius the smith was beaten out of the city because misfortune fell on the Romans when they substituted the new shields (made by Mamurius) for those that had fallen from heaven[111].

This is clearly a late form of the Mamurius-myth: in all the earlier accounts[112] only one ancile is said to have fallen from heaven. Lydus seems rather to be thinking of twelve original ones[113], and twelve copies—perhaps of the Palatine and Colline ancilia respectively. If the form of the myth, then, is of late growth, suspicion may well be aroused as to the antiquity of the rite it was meant to explain, for with the older type of myth the rite does not seem to suit. And this suspicion is strengthened by the fact that in the whole of Latin literature there is no certain allusion to a rite so striking and peculiar, and only one that can possibly, even by forcible treatment, be taken as such. In Propertius v (iv.) 2. 61, we have the following lines, put into the mouth of the god Vertumnus:

At tibi, Mamuri, formae caelator aenae, Tellus artifices ne premat Osca manus, Qui me tam docilis potuisti fundere in usus. Unum opus est: operi non datur unus honos.

Usener took this to mean, or to imply, that Mamurius was driven out of the city to its enemies the Oscans; but how we are to get this out of the words, which will bear very different interpretations, obscure as they are, it is not easy to see. And can we easily believe that, with this exception, no allusion should be found to the rite in either Latin or Greek writers—not in Ovid, Dionysius, Servius, Plutarch[114], or in the fragments of Varro, Varrius, and others—if that curious rite had really been enacted year by year before the eyes of the Roman people? It certainly is not impossible that it may have slipped their notice, or have been mentioned in works that are lost to us; but it is so improbable as to justify us in hesitating to base conclusions as to the antiquity of the rite on the statement of Lydus alone.

There are indeed one or two passages which seem to prove that _skins_ were used by the Salii, and that these skins were _beaten_. Servius[115] says of Mamurius that they consecrated a day to him, on which ‘pellem virgis caedunt ad artis similitudinem,’ i. e. on which they imitate the smith’s art by beating a skin. So also Minucius Felix[116]: ‘alii (we should probably read _Salii_) incedunt pileati, scuta vetera[117] circumferunt, pelles caedunt.’ If we may judge by these passages of writers of the second century, there was something done by the Salii which involved the beating of skins; but if it was a skin-clad Mamurius who was beaten, why is he not mentioned, and why did they, as Servius says (and the context shows that he is speaking of him with all respect), set apart a day in his honour?

Yet Lydus’ account is so interesting from the point of view of folk-lore, that Usener was led by it into very far-reaching conclusions. These have been so well condensed in English by Mr. Frazer that my labour will be lightened if I may borrow his account[118]:

‘Every year on March 14 a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius[119], that is, “the old Mars,” and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year[120] (which began on March 1), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war, but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and vines, his fruit-trees and his copses; it was to Mars that the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops, addressed their petitions almost exclusively.... Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the New Year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death[121],” if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation. It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic ceremony, the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation, but also as a scape-goat[122]. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scape-goat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been driven away to the lands of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome[123].’

My examination of the evidence will, I hope, have made it clear why I hesitate to endorse these conclusions in their entirety (as I did for many years), interesting as they are. I rather incline to believe that the whole Mamurius-legend grew out of the Carmen Saliare, and that we may either have here one of those comparatively rare examples of later ritual growing itself out of myth, or a point of ancient ritual, such as the use of skins—perhaps those of victims—misinterpreted and possibly altered under the influence of the myth. As to Lydus’ statement, it is better to suspend our judgement; he may, for all we know, have confused some foreign custom, or that of some other Italian town where there were Salii, with the ritual of a Roman priesthood[124]. In any case, his account is too much open to question to bear the weight of conjecture that has been piled upon it.

ID. MART. (MARCH 15). NP.

FERIAE[125] ANNAE PERENNAE VIA FLAM[INIA] AD LAPIDEM PRIM[UM]. (VAT.)

ANNAE PER. (FARN.)