Part 7

It was adopted by Usener (p. 222, note 6), but has obtained no further support. For another curious etymology of the latter part of the word _latrus_, which, however, does not assist us here, see Deecke, _Falisker_, p. 90 (_Dies ater = dies alter = postridie_).

Footnote 161:

Wissowa, _de Feriis_, ix.

Footnote 162:

Mommsen, in _C. I. L._ 312.

Footnote 163:

Mommsen, _R. H._ i. 78, note 1.

Footnote 164:

Festus, 254 ‘Quinquatrus appellari quidam putant a numero dierum qui fere his (? feriis iis) celebrantur: qui scilicet errant tam hercule quam qui triduo Saturnalia, et totidem diebus Compitalia; nam omnibus his singulis diebus fiunt sacra. Forma autem vocabuli eius exemplo multorum populorum Italicorum enuntiata est, quod post diem quintum Iduum est is dies festus, ut apud Tusculanos Triatrus,’ &c.

Footnote 165:

Wissowa, _op. cit._ viii. We find one in April, between the Fordicidia (April 15) and Cerialia (April 19).

Footnote 166:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 3. 809 ‘Una dies media est, et fiunt sacra Minervae,’ &c.

Footnote 167:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 3. 835 foll.

Caelius ex alto qua mons descendit in aequum, Hic ubi non plana est sed prope plana via, Parva licet videas Captae delubra Minervae Quae dea natali coepit habere suo.

As from the note in Praen. we learn that March 19 was also the dedication-day of Minerva on the Aventine, there must either be a confusion between the two, or both had the same foundation-day. About the day of Minerva Capta there is no doubt; for that of Minerva on the Aventine see Aust, _de Aedibus_, p. 42.

Footnote 168:

Preller, i. 342; Usener, _Rh. Mus._, xxx. 221; Roscher, _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Mars, 2410; _Lyd. de Mens._ 4. 42; Gell. 13. 23 (from _Gellii Annales_) is the _locus classicus_ for Nerio.

Footnote 169:

Nerio gen. Nerienis (Gell. l. c., who compares Anio Anienis).

Footnote 170:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 3. 850: ‘_forti_ sacrificare deae,’ though clearly meant to refer to Minerva, is thought to be a reminiscence of a characteristic of Nerio (‘the strong one’), attached to her supplanter.

Footnote 171:

Aul. Gell. l. c.

Footnote 172:

Usener, l. c., _passim_.

Footnote 173:

H. Jordan expressed a somewhat different view in his _Symbolae ad hist. Ital. religionum alterae_, p. 9. He thinks that ‘volgari opinione hominum feminini numinis cum masculo coniunctionem non potuisse non pro coniugali aestimari.’ But this would seem to imply that the _opinio volgaris_ was a mistaken one: and if so, how should it have arisen but under Greek influence?

Footnote 174:

Mommsen, in a note on the Feriale Cumanum (Hermes, 17. 637), calls them _weibliche Hilfsgöttinnen_; and this is not far removed from the view I have expressed in the text. The other alternative, viz that we have in these names traces of an old Italian anthropomorphic age, with a mythology, is in my view inadmissible. I see in them survivals of a mode of thought about the supernatural which might easily lend itself to a foreign anthropomorphizing influence.

Footnote 175:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 3. 835 foll.

Footnote 176:

Wissowa in _Lex._ s. v. Minerva 2986: a model article, to which the reader must be referred for further information about Minerva.

Footnote 177:

Lydus, 4. 42, adds ‘Nerine,’ and further tells us that this was the last day on which the _ancilia_ were ‘moved’ (κίνησις τῶν ὅπλων). The Salii were also active on the 24th (Fest. 278).

Footnote 178:

The note is thus completed by Mommsen from Varro, _L. L._ 6. 31 ‘Dies qui vocatur sic, Quando Rex Comitiavit Fas, is dictus ab eo quod eo die rex sacrificulus itat [we should probably read _litat_] ad comitium, ad quod tempus est nefas, ab eo fas’ (see Marq. 323, note 8). The MS. has ‘_dicat_ ad comitium.’ If we adopt _litat_ with Hirschfeld and Jordan, we are not on that account committed to the belief corrected in Praen., that it was on this day and May 24 that the Rex fled after sacrificing in _comitio_ (see Hartmann, _Röm. Kal._ 162 foll.). The question will be discussed under Feb. 24.

Footnote 179:

_Röm. Chronol._ p. 241; _Staatsrecht_, iii. 375.

Footnote 180:

Gaius, 2. 101 ‘Comitia calata quae bis in anno testamentis faciendis destinata erant.’ Cp. Maine, _Ancient Law_, 199.

Footnote 181:

It may have been of Etruscan origin: Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 206. A special kind of _tuba_ seems to have been used at funerals: Gell. _N. A._ 20. 2; Marq. _Privatleben_, i. 341.

Footnote 182:

For the military use, Liv. ii. 64. They were also used in _sacris Saliaribus_ Paul. 19, s. v. Armilustrium. Wissowa (_de Feriis_ xv) mentions a relief in which the Salii are preceded by _tubicines laureati_ (published in St. Petersburgh by E. Schulze, 1873).

Footnote 183:

_C. I. L._ 313. He is of opinion that the note was among those ‘non tam a Verrio scriptas quam male ex scriptis eius excerptas.’

Footnote 184:

_de Div._ i. 17. 30.

Footnote 185:

Varro, _L. L._ 5. 91.

MENSIS APRILIS.

There can hardly be a doubt that this month takes its name, not from a deity, but from the verb _aperio_; the etymology is as old as Varro and Verrius, and seems perfectly natural[186]. The year was opening and the young corn and the young cattle were growing. It was therefore a critical time for crops and herds; but there was not much to be done by man to secure their safety. The crops might be hoed and cleaned[187], but must for the most part be left to the protection of the gods. The oldest festivals of the month, the Robigalia and Fordicidia, clearly had this object. So also with the cattle; _oves lustrantur_, say the rustic calendars[188]; and such a _lustratio_ of the cattle of the ancient Romans survived in the ceremonies of the Parilia.

Thus, if we keep clear of fanciful notions, such as those of Huschke[189], about these early months of the year, which he seems to imagine was thought of as growing like an organic creature, we need find no great difficulty in April. We need not conclude too hastily that this was a month of purification preliminary to May, as February was to March. Like February, indeed, it has a large number of _dies nefasti_[190], and its festivals are of a cathartic character, while March and May have some points in common; but beyond this we cannot safely venture. The later Romans would hardly have connected April with Venus[191], had it been a sinister month; it was not in April, but in March and May, that weddings were ill-omened.

We may note the prevalence in this month of female deities, or of those which fluctuate between male and female—a sure sign of antiquity. These are deities of the earth, or vegetation, or generation, such as Tellus, Pales, Ceres, Flora, and perhaps also Fortuna. Hence the month became easily associated in later times with Venus, who was originally, perhaps, a garden deity[192], but was overlaid in course of time with ideas brought from Sicily and Greece, and possibly even from Cyprus and the East. Lastly, we may note that the Magna Mater Idaea found a suitable position for her worship in this month towards the end of the third century B.C.

KAL. APR. (APRIL 1). F.

VENERALIA: LUDI. (PHILOC.)

Note in Praen.: ‘FREQUENTER MULIERES SUPPLICANT FORTUNAE VIRILI, HUMILIORES ETIAM IN BALINEIS, QUOD IN IIS EA PARTE CORPOR[IS] UTIQUE VIRI NUDANTUR, QUA FEMINARUM GRATIA DESIDERATUR.’

Lydus[193] seems to have been acquainted with this note of Verrius in the Fasti of Praeneste; if so, we may guess that some words have been omitted by the man who cut the inscription, and we should insert with Mommsen[194], after ‘supplicant,’ the words ‘honestiores Veneri Verticordiae.’ If we compare the passage of Lydus with the name Veneralia given to this day in the calendar of Philocalus, we may guess that the cult of Venus on April 1 came into fashion in late times among ladies of rank, while an old and gross custom was kept up by the humiliores in honour of Fortuna Virilis[195]. This seems to be the most obvious explanation of the concurrence of the two goddesses on the same day; they were probably identified or amalgamated under the Empire, for example by Lydus, who does not mention Fortuna by name, and seems to confuse her worship on this day with that of Venus. But the two are still distinct in Ovid, though he seems to show some tendency to amalgamation[196].

Fortuna Virilis, thus worshipped by the women when bathing, would seem from Ovid to have been that Fortuna who gave women good luck in their relations with men[197]. The custom of bathing in the men’s baths may probably be taken as some kind of lustration, more especially as the women were adorned with myrtle, which had purifying virtues[198]. How old this curious custom was we cannot guess. Plutarch[199] mentions a temple of this Fortuna dedicated by Servius Tullius; but there was a strong tendency, as we shall see later on, to attribute all Fortuna-cults to this king.

The Venus who eventually supplanted Fortuna is clearly Venus Verticordia[200], whose earliest temple was founded in 114 B.C., in obedience to an injunction of the Sibylline books, after the discovery of incest on the part of three vestal virgins, ‘quo facilius virginum mulierumque mens a libidine ad pudicitiam converteretur[201].’ Macrobius insists that Venus had originally no share in the worship of this day or month[202]; she must therefore have been introduced into it as a foreigner. Robertson Smith[203] has shown some ground for the conjecture that she was the Cyprian Aphrodite (herself identical with the Semitic Astarte), who came to Rome by way of Sicily and Latium. For if Lydus can be trusted, the Roman ceremony of April 1 was found also in Cyprus, on the same day, with variations in detail. If that be so, the addition of the name Verticordia is a curious example of the accretion of a Roman cult-title expressive of domestic morality on a foreign deity of questionable reputation[204].

PRID. NON. APR. (APRIL 4). C.

MATR[I] MAG[NAE]. (MAFF.) LUDI MEGALESIACI. (PHILOC.)

Note in Praen.: LUDI M[ATRI] D[EUM] M[AGNAE] I[DAEAE]. MEGALESIA VOCANTUR QUOD EA DEA MEGALE APPELLATUR. NOBILIUM MUTITATIONES CENARUM SOLITAE SUNT FREQUENTER FIERI, QUOD MATER MAGNA EX LIBRIS SIBULLINIS ARCESSITA LOCUM MUTAVIT EX PHRYGIA ROMAM.

The introduction of the Magna Mater Idaea into Rome can only be briefly mentioned here, as being more important for the history of religion at Rome than for that of the Roman religion. In B.C. 204, in accordance with a Sibylline oracle which had previously prophesied that the presence of this deity alone could drive the enemy out of Italy, the sacred stone representing the goddess arrived at Rome from Pessinus in Phrygia[205]. Attalus, King of Pergamus, had acquired this territory, and now, as a faithful friend to Rome, consented to the transportation of the stone, which was received at Rome with enthusiasm by an excited and now hopeful people[206]. Scipio was about to leave with his army for Africa; a fine harvest followed; Hannibal was forced to evacuate Italy the next year; and the goddess did everything that was expected of her[207].

The stone was deposited in the temple of Victory on the Palatine on April 4[208]. The day was made a festival; though no Roman festival occurs between the Kalends and Nones of any month, the rule apparently did not hold good in the case of a foreign worship[209]. Great care was taken to keep up the foreign character of the cult. The name of the festival was a Greek one (Megalesia), as Cicero remarked[210]; all Romans were forbidden by a senatus consultum to take any part in the service of the goddess[211]. The temple dedicated thirteen years later on April 10[212] seems to have been frequented by the nobilitas only, and the custom of giving dinner-parties on April 4, which is well attested, was confined to the upper classes[213], while the plebs waited for its festivities till the ensuing Cerealia. The later and more extravagant developments of the cult did not come in until the Empire[214].

The story told by Livy of the introduction of the goddess is an interesting episode in Roman history. It illustrates the far-reaching policy of the Senate in enlisting Eastern kings, religions, and oracles in the service of the state at a critical time, and also the curious readiness of the Roman people to believe in the efficacy of cults utterly foreign to their own religious practices. At the same time it shows how careful the government was then, as always, to keep such cults under strict supervision. But the long stress of the Hannibalic War had its natural effect on the Italian peoples; and less than twenty years later the introduction of the Bacchic orgies forced the senate to strain every nerve to counteract a serious danger to the national religion and morality.

XVII KAL. MAI. (APRIL 15). NP.

FORD[ICIDIA][215]. (CAER. MAFF. VAT. PRAEN.)

This is beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in the Roman religion. It consisted in the slaughter of pregnant cows (_hordae_ or _fordae_), one in the Capitol and one in each of the thirty _curiae_[216]; i. e. one for the state and the rest for each of its ancient divisions. This was the first festival of the _curiae_; the other, the _Fornacalia_, will be treated of under February 17. The cows were offered, as all authorities agree, to Tellus[217], who, as we shall see, may be an indigitation of the same earth power represented by Ceres, Bona Dea, Dea Dia, and other female deities. The unborn calves were torn by attendants of the virgo vestalis maxima from the womb of the mother and burnt[218], and their ashes were kept by the Vestals for use at the Parilia a few days later[219]. This was the first ceremony in the year in which the Vestals took an active part, and it was the first of a series of acts all of which are connected with the fruits of the earth, their growth, ripening and harvesting. The object of burning the unborn calves seems to have been to procure the fertility of the corn now growing in the womb of mother earth, to whom the sacrifice was offered[220].

Many charms of this sacrificial kind have been noticed by various writers; one may be mentioned here which was described by Sir John Barrow, when British Ambassador in China in 1804. In a spring festival in the temple of Earth, a huge porcelain image of a cow was carried about and then broken in pieces, and a number of small cows taken from inside it and distributed among the people as earnests of a good season[221]. This must be regarded as a survival of a rite which was no doubt originally one of the same kind as the Roman.

III ID. APR. (APRIL 11). N.

On this day[222] the oracle of the great temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste was open to suppliants, as we learn from a fragment of the Praenestine Fasti. Though not a Roman festival, the day deserves to be noticed here, as this oracle was by far the most renowned in Italy. The cult of Fortuna will be discussed under June 25 and Sept. 13. It does not seem to be known whether the oracle was open on these days only; see R. Peter in _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Fortuna, 1545.

XIII KAL. MAI. (APRIL 19). NP.

CER[IALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. PRAEN. ESQ.)

CERERI LIBERO (LIBERAE) ESQ.

Note: All the days from 12th to 19th are marked ludi, ludi Cer., or ludi Ceriales, in Tusc. Maff. Praen. Vat., taken together: loid. Cereri in Esq., where the 18th only is preserved: loedi C in Caer. Philocalus has Cerealici c. m. (circenses missus) xxiv on 12th and 19th.

The origin of the ludi Cereales, properly so called, cannot be proved to be earlier than the Second Punic War. The games first appear as fully established in B.C. 202[223]. But from the fact that April 19 is marked CER in large letters in the calendars we may infer, with Mommsen[224], that there was a festival in honour of Ceres as far back as the period of the monarchy. The question therefore arises whether this ancient Ceres was a native Italian deity, or the Greek Demeter afterwards known to the Romans as Ceres.

That there was such an Italian deity is placed almost beyond doubt by the name itself, which all authorities agree in connecting with cerus = genius, and with the _cerfus_ and _cerfia_ of the great inscription of Iguvium[225]. The verbal form seems clearly to be _creare_[226]; and thus, strange to say, we actually get some definite aid from etymology, and can safely see in the earliest Ceres, if we recollect her identification with the Greek goddess of the earth and its fruits, a deity presiding over or representing the generative powers of nature. We cannot, however, feel sure whether this deity was originally feminine only, or masculine also, as Arnobius seems to suggest[227]. Judging from the occurrence of forms such as those quoted above, it is quite likely, as in the case of Pales, Liber, and others, that this numen was of both sexes, or of undetermined sex. So anxious were the primitive Italians to catch the ear of their deities by making no mistake in the ritual of addressing them, that there was a distinct tendency to avoid marking their sex too distinctly; and phrases such as ‘sive mas sive femina,’ ‘si deus si dea,’ are familiar to all students of the Roman religion[228].

We may be satisfied, then, that the oldest Ceres was not simply an importation from Greece. It is curious however, that Ceres is not found exactly where we should expect to find her, viz. in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales[229]. Yet this very fact may throw further light on the primitive nature of Ceres. The central figure of the Arval ritual was the nameless Dea Dia; and in a ritual entirely relating to the fruits of the earth we can fairly account for the absence of Ceres by supposing that she is there represented by the Dea Dia—in fact, that the two are identical[230]. No one at all acquainted with Italian ideas of the gods will be surprised at this. It is surely a more reasonable hypothesis than that of Birt, who thinks that an old name for seed and bread (i. e. Ceres) was transferred to the Greek deity who dispensed seed and bread when she was introduced in Rome[231]. It is, in fact, only the name Ceres that is wanting in the Arval ritual, not the numen itself; and this is less surprising if we assume that the names given by the earliest Romans to supernatural powers were not fixed but variable, representing no distinctly conceived personalities; in other words, that their religion was pandaemonic rather than polytheistic, though with a tendency to lend itself easily to the influence of polytheism. We may agree, then, with Preller[232], that Ceres, with Tellus, and perhaps Ops and Acca Larentia, are different names for, and aspects of, the numen whom the Arval brothers called Dea Dia. At the same time we cannot entirely explain why the name Ceres was picked out from among these to represent the Greek Demeter. Some light may, however, be thrown on this point by studying the early history of the Ceres-cult.

The first temple of Ceres was founded, according to tradition, in consequence of a famine in the year 496 B.C., in obedience to a Sibylline oracle[233]. It was at the foot of the Aventine, by the Circus Maximus[234], and was dedicated on April 19, 493, to Ceres, Liber and Libera, representing Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephone.[235] Thus from the outset the systematized cult of Ceres in the city was not Roman but Greek. The temple itself was adorned in Greek style instead of the Etruscan usual at this period[236]. How is all this to be accounted for?

Let us notice in the first place that from the very foundation of the temple it is in the closest way connected with the plebs. The year of its dedication is that of the first secession of the plebs and of the establishment of the tribuni and aediles plebis[237]. The two events are connected by the fact, repeatedly stated, that any one violating the _sacrosanctitas_ of the tribune was to be held _sacer Cereri_[238]; we are also told that the fines imposed by tribunes were spent on this temple[239]. It was under the care of the plebeian aediles, and was to them what the temple of Saturnus was to the quaestors[240]. Its position was in the plebeian quarter, and at the foot of the Aventine, which in B.C. 456 is said to have become the property of the plebs[241].

Now it can hardly be doubted that the choice of Ceres (with her fellow deities of the _trias_), as the goddess whose temple should serve as a centre for the plebeian community, had some definite meaning. That meaning must be found in the traditions of famine and distress which we read of as immediately following the expulsion of Tarquinius. These traditions have often been put aside as untrustworthy[242], and may indeed be so in regard to details; but there is some reason for thinking them to have had a foundation of fact, if we can but accept the other tradition of the foundation of the temple and its connexion with the plebs. It is likely enough that under Tarquinius the population was increased by ‘outsiders’ employed on his great buildings. Under pressure from the attack of enemies, and from a sudden aristocratic reaction, this population, we may guess, was thrown out of work, deprived of a _raison d’être_, and starved[243]; finally rescuing itself by a secession, which resulted in the institution of its officers, tribunes and aediles, the latter of whom some to have been charged with the duty of looking after the corn-supply[244].

How the corn-supply was cared for we cannot tell for certain; but here again is a tradition which fits in curiously with what we know of the temple and its worship, though it has been rejected by the superfluous ingenuity of modern German criticism. Livy tells us that in B.C. 492, the year after the dedication of the temple, corn was brought from Etruria, Cumae, and Sicily to relieve a famine[245]. We are not obliged to believe in the purchase of corn at Syracuse at so early a date, though it is not impossible; but if we remember that the decorations and ritual of the temple were Greek beyond doubt, we get a singular confirmation of the tradition _in outline_ which has not been sufficiently noticed. If it was founded in 493, placed under plebeian officers, and closely connected with the plebs; if its rites and decorations were Greek from the beginning; we cannot afford to discard a tradition telling us of a commercial connexion with Greek cities, the object of which was to relieve a starving plebeian population.

And surely there is nothing strange in the supposition that Greek influence gained ground, not so much with the patricians who had their own outfit of religious armour, but with the plebs who had no share in the sacra of their betters, and with the Etruscan dynasty which favoured the plebs[246]. We may hesitate to assent to Mommsen’s curious assertion that the merchants of that day were none other than the great patrician landholders[247]; we may rather be disposed to conjecture that it was the more powerful plebeians, incapable of holding large areas of public land, who turned their attention to commerce, and came in contact with the Greeks of Italy and Sicily. The position of the plebeian quarter along the Tiber bank, and near the spot where the quays of Rome have always been, may possibly point in the same direction[248].