Part 8
To return to the Cerealia of April 19. We have still to notice a relic of apparently genuine Italian antiquity which survived in it down to Ovid’s time, and may be taken as evidence that there was a real Roman substratum on which the later Greek ritual was superimposed.
Every one who reads Ovid’s account of the Cerealia will be struck by his statement that on the 19th it was the practice to fasten burning brands to the tails of foxes and set them loose to run in the Circus Maximus[249]:
Cur igitur missae vinctis ardentia taedis Terga ferant volpes, causa docenda mihi est.
He tells a charming story to explain the custom, learnt from an old man of Carseoli, an Aequian town, where he was seeking information while writing the _Fasti_. A boy of twelve years’ old caught a vixen fox which had done damage to the farm, and tied it up in straw and hay. This he set on fire, but the fox escaped and burnt the crops. Hence a law at Carseoli forbidding—something about foxes, which the corruption of the MSS. has obscured for us[250]. Then he concludes:
Utque luat poenas gens haec, Cerialibus ardet; Quoque modo segetes perdidit, ipsa perit.
We are, of course, reminded of Samson burning the corn of the Philistines[251]; and it is probable that the story in each case is a myth explanatory of some old practice like the one Ovid describes at Rome. But what the practice meant it is not very easy to see. Preller has his explanation ready[252]; it was a ‘sinnbildliche Erinnerung’ of the _robigo_ (i. e. ‘red fox’), which was to be feared and guarded against at this time of year. Mannhardt thinks rather of the corn-foxes or corn-spirits of France and Germany, of which he gives many instances[253]. If the foxes were corn spirits, one does not quite see why they should have brands fastened to their tails[254]. No exactly parallel practice seems to be forthcoming, and the fox does not appear elsewhere in ancient Italian or Greek folk-tales, as far as I can discover. All that can be said is that the fox’s tail seems to have been an object of interest, and possibly to have had some fertilizing power[255], and some curious relation to ears of corn. Prof. Gubernatis believes this tail to have been a phallic symbol[256]. We need not accept his explanation, but we may be grateful to him for a modern Italian folk-tale, from the region of Leghorn and the Maremma, in which a fox is frightened away by chickens which carry each in its beak an ear of millet; the fox is told that these ears are all foxes’ tails, and runs for it.
Here we must leave this puzzle[257]; but whoever cares to read Ovid’s lines about his journey towards his native Pelignian country, his turning into the familiar lodging—
Hospitis antiqui solitas intravimus aedes,
and the tales he heard there—among them that of the fox—will find them better worth reading than the greater part of the _Fasti_.
XI KAL. MAI. (APR. 21). NP.[258]
PAR[ILIA]. (CAER. MAFF. PRAEN.)
ROMA COND[ITA] FERIAE CORONATIS OM[NIBUS]. (CAER.)
N[ATALIS] URBIS. CIRCENSES MISSUS XXIV. (PHILOC.)
[A note in Praen. is hopelessly mutilated, with the exception of the words IGNES and PRINCIPIO AN[NI PASTORICII[259]?]]
The Parilia[260], at once one of the oldest and best attested festivals of the whole year, is at the same time the one whose features have been most clearly explained by the investigations of parallels among other races.
The first point to notice is that the festival was both public and private, urban and rustic[261]. Ovid clearly distinguishes the two; lines 721-734 deal with the urban festival, 735-782 with the rustic. The explanations which follow deal with both. Pales, the deity (apparently both masculine and feminine[262]) whose name the festival bears, was, like Faunus, a common deity of Italian pasture land. A Palatium was said by Varro to have been named after Pales at Reate, in the heart of the Sabine hill-country[263]; and though this may not go for much, the character of the Parilia, and the fact that Pales is called _rusticola_, _pastoricia_, _silvicola_, &c., are sufficient to show the original non-urban character of the deity. He (or she) was a shepherd’s deity of the simplest kind, and survived in Rome as little more than a name[264] from the oldest times, when the earliest invaders drove their cattle through the Sabine mountains. Here, then, we seem to have a clear example of a rite which was originally a rustic one, and survived as such, while at the same time one local form of it was kept up in the great city, and had become entangled with legend and probably altered in some points of ritual. We will take the rustic form first.
Here we may distinguish in Ovid’s account[265] the following ritualistic acts.
1. The sheep-fold[266] was decked with green boughs and a great wreath was hung on the gate:
Frondibus et fixis decorentur ovilia ramis, Et tegat ornatas longa corona fores.
With this Mannhardt[267] aptly compares the like concomitants of the midsummer fires in North Germany, Scotland, and England. In Scotland, for example, before the bonfires were kindled on midsummer eve, the houses were decorated with foliage brought from the woods[268]. The custom of decoration at special seasons, May-day, mid-summer, harvest, and Christmas, is even now, with the exception of midsummer, universal, and is probably descended from these primitive rites, by which our ancestors sought in some mysterious way to influence the working of the powers of vegetation.
2. At the earliest glimmer of daybreak the shepherd purified the sheep. This was done by sprinkling and sweeping the fold; then a fire was made of heaps of straw, olive-branches, and laurel, to give good omen by the crackling, and through this apparently the shepherds leapt, and the flocks were driven[269]. For this we have, of course, numerous parallels from all parts of the world. Burning sulphur was also used:
Caerulei fiant vivo de sulfure fumi Tactaque fumanti sulfure balet ovis[270].
3. After this the shepherd brought offerings to Pales, of whom there may perhaps have been in the farmyard a rude image made of wood[271]; among these were baskets of millet and cakes of the same, pails of milk, and other food of appropriate kinds. The meal which followed the shepherd himself appears to have shared with Pales[272]. Then he prays to the deity to avert all evil from himself and his flocks; whether he or they have unwittingly trespassed on sacred ground and caused the nymphs or fauni to fly from human eyes; or have disturbed the sacred fountains, and used branches of a sacred tree for secular ends. In these petitions the genuine spirit of Italian religion—the awe of the unknown, the fear of committing unwittingly some act that may bring down wrath upon you—is most vividly brought out in spite of the Greek touches and names which are introduced. He then goes on to his main object[273]:
Pelle procul morbos: valeant hominesque gregesque, Et valeant vigiles, provida turba, canes.
Absit iniqua fames. Herbae frondesque supersint, Quaeque lavent artus, quaeque bibantur, aquae. Ubera plena premam: referat mihi caseus aera, Dentque viam liquido vimina rara sero. Sitque salax aries, conceptaque semina coniunx Reddat, et in stabulo multa sit agna meo. Lanaque proveniat nullas laesura puellas, Mollis et ad teneras quamlibet apta manus. Quae precor eveniant: et nos faciamus ad annum Pastorum dominae grandia liba Pali.
This prayer must be said four times over[274], the shepherd looking to the east and wetting his hands with the morning dew[275]. The position, the holy water, and the prayer in its substance, though now addressed to the Virgin, have all descended to the Catholic shepherd of the Campagna.
4. Then a bowl is to be brought, a wooden antique bowl apparently[276], from which milk and purple _sapa_, i. e. heated wine, may be drunk, until the drinker feels the influence of the fumes, and when he is well set he may leap over the burning heaps:
Moxque per ardentes stipulae crepitantis acervos Traiicias celeri strenua membra pede[277].
The Parilia of the urbs was celebrated in much the same way in its main features; but the day was reckoned as the birthday of Rome, and doubtless on this account it came under the influence of priestly organization[278]. It is connected with two other very ancient festivals: that of the Fordicidia and that of the ‘October horse.’ The blood which streamed from the head of the horse sacrificed on the Ides of October was kept by the Vestals in the Penus Vestae, and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves burnt at the Fordicidia; and the mixture seems to have been thrown upon heaps of burning bean-straw to make it smoke, while over the smoke and flames men and women leaped on the Palatine Hill[279]. The object was of course purification; Ovid calls the blood, ashes, and straw _februa casta_, i. e. holy agents of purification, and adds in allusion to their having been kept by the Vestals:
Vesta dabit: Vestae munere _purus_ eris.
Ovid had himself taken part in the rite; had fetched the _suffimen_, and leaped three times through the flames, his hands sprinkled with dew from a laurel branch. Whether the _februa_ were considered to have individually any special significance or power, it is hard to say. Mannhardt, who believed the ‘October horse’ to be a corn-demon, thought that the burning of its blood symbolized the renewal of its life in the spring, while the ashes thrown into the fire signified the safe passage of the growing crops through the heat of the summer[280]; but about this so judicious a writer is naturally not disposed to dogmatize. We can, however, be pretty sure that the purification was supposed to carry with it protection from evil influences both for man and beast, and also to aid the growth of vegetation. The theory of Mannhardt, adopted by Mr. Frazer, that the whole class of ceremonies to which the Parilia clearly belongs, i. e. the Easter and Midsummer fires and Need-fires of central and northern Europe, may best be explained as charms to procure sunshine,[281] has much to be said for it, but does not seem to find any special support in the Roman rite.
It may be noted in conclusion that a custom of the same kind, and one perhaps connected with a cult of the sun,[282] took place not far from Rome, at Mount Soracte; at what time of year we do not know. On this hill there was a worship of Apollo Soranus,[283] a local deity, to which was attached a kind of guild of worshippers called Hirpi Sorani, or wolves of Soranus;[284] and of these we may guess, from the legend told of their origin, that in order to avert pestilence, &c., they dressed or behaved themselves like wolves.[285] Also on a particular day, perhaps the summer solstice, these Hirpi ran through the flames, ‘super ambustam ligni struem ambulantes non aduruntur,’[286] and on this account were excused by a senatus consultum from all military or other service. A striking parallel with this last feature is quoted by Mannhardt, from Mysore, where the Harawara are degraded Brahmins who act as priests in harvest-time, and make a living by running through the flames unhurt with naked soles: but in this case there seems to be no animal representation. Mannhardt tries to explain the Hirpi as dramatic representations of the Corn-wolf or vegetation spirit.[287] On the other hand, it is possible to consider them as survivals of an original clan who worshipped the wolf as a totem[288]; a view adopted by Mr. Lang[289], who compares the _bear_-maidens of Artemis at Brauron in Attica. But the last word has yet to be said about these obscure animalistic rites.
IX KAL. MAI. (APR. 23). FP (CAER.) NP (MAFF.) F (PRAEN.)[290]
VEIN[ALIA] (CAER.) VIN[ALIA] (MAFF. PRAEN. ESQ.)
Praen. has a mutilated note beginning IO[VI], and ending with [CUM LATINI BELLO PREME]RENTUR A RUTULIS, QUIA MEZENTIUS REX ETRUS[CO]RUM PACISCEBATUR, SI SUBSIDIO VENISSET, OMNIUM ANNORUM VINI FRUCTUM. (Cp. Festus, 65 and 374, where it appears that libations of all new wine were made to Jupiter.)
VENERI (CAER.)
[V]EBERI ERUC. [EXTR]A PORTAM COLLIN[AM]. (ARV.)
This day was generally known as Vinalia Priora, as distinguished from the Vinalia Rustica of August 19. Both days were believed to be sacred to Venus[291]; the earlier one, according to Ovid, was the foundation-day of the temple of Venus Erycina, with which he connected the legend of Aeneas and Mezentius. But as both Varro and Verrius are agreed that the days were sacred, not to Venus but to Jupiter[292], we may leave the legend alone and content ourselves with asking how Venus came into the connexion.
The most probable supposition is that this day being, as Ovid implies, the dies natalis of one of the temples of Venus[293], the Vinalia also came to be considered as sacred to the goddess. The date of the foundation was 181 B.C., exactly at a time when many new worships, and especially Greek ones, were being introduced into Rome[294]. That of the Sicilian Aphrodite, under the name of Venus, seems to have become at once popular with its _Graecus ritus_ and _lascivia maior_[295]; and the older connexion of the festival with Jupiter tended henceforward to disappear. It must be noted, however, that the day of the Vinalia Rustica in August was also the dies natalis of one if not two other temples of Venus[296], and one of these was as old as the year B.C. 293. Thus we can hardly avoid the conclusion that there was, even at an early date, some connexion in the popular mind between the goddess and wine. The explanation is perhaps to be found in the fact that Venus was specially a deity of gardens, and therefore no doubt of vineyards[297]. An interesting inscription from Pompeii confirms this, and attests the connexion of Venus with wine and gardens, as it is written on a wine-jar[298]:
PRESTA MI SINCERU[M] ITA TE AMET QUE CUSTODIT ORTU[M] VENUS.
The Vinalia, then, both in April and August, was really and originally sacred to Jupiter. The legendary explanation is given by Ovid in 11. 877-900. Whatever the true explanation may have been, the fact can be illustrated from the ritual employed; for it was the Flamen Dialis[299] who ‘vindemiam auspicatus est,’ i. e. after sacrificing plucked the first grapes. Whether this auspicatio took place on either of the Vinalia has indeed been doubted, for even August 19 would hardly seem to suit the ceremony Varro describes[300]; but the fact that it was performed by the priest of Jupiter is sufficient for our purpose.
Of this day, April 23, we may guess that it was the one on which the wine-skins were first opened, and libations from them made to Jupiter. These are probably the libations about which Plutarch[301] asks ‘Why do they pour much wine from the temple of Venus on the Veneralia’ (i. e. Vinalia)? The same libations are attested by Verrius: ‘Vinalia diem festum habebant quo die vinum novum Iovi libabant’[302]. After the libation the wine was tasted, as we learn from Pliny[303]; and it seems probable that it was brought from the country into Rome for this purpose only a few days before. Varro has preserved an interesting notice which he saw posted in vineyards at Tusculum: ‘In Tusculanis hortis (MSS. sortis) est scriptum: ‘Vinum novum ne vehatur in urbem ante quam vinalia kalentur’[304]; i. e. wine-growers were warned that the new wine was not to be brought into the city until the Vinalia had been proclaimed on the Nones. It must, however, be added that this notice may have had reference to the Vinalia in August; for Verrius, if he is rightly reported by Paulus[305], gives August 19 as the day on which the wine might be brought into Rome. Paulus may be wrong, and have confused the two Vinalia[306]; but in that case we remain in the dark as to what was done at the Vinalia Rustica, unless indeed we explain it as a rite intended to secure the vintage that was to follow against malignant influences. This would seem to be indicated by Pliny (_H. N._ 18. 284), where he classes this August festival with the Robigalia and Floralia[307], and further on quotes Varro to prove that its object was to appease the storms (i. e. to be expected in September).
As regards the connexion of the vine-culture with Jupiter, it should be observed that the god is not spoken of as Jupiter Liber, but simply Jupiter; and though the vine was certainly introduced into Italy from Greece, we need not assume that Dionysus, coming with it, was from the beginning attached to or identified with Jupiter. The gift of wine might naturally be attributed to the great god of the air, light, and heat; the Flamen Dialis who ‘vindemiam auspicatus est’ was not the priest of Jupiter Liber; nor does the aetiological legend, in which the Latins avoid the necessity of yielding their first-fruits to the Etruscan tyrant Mezentius by dedicating them to Jupiter, point to any other than the protecting deity of Latium.[308]
VII KAL. MAI. (APRIL 25). NP.
[ROB]IGALIA. (CAER. ESQ. MAFF. PRAEN.)
Note in Praen: FERIAE ROBIGO VIA CLAUDIA AD MILLIARIUM V NE ROBIGO FRUMENTIS NOCEAT. SACRIFICIUM ET LUDI CURSORIBUS MAIORIBUS MINORIBUSQUE FIUNT. FESTUS EST PUERORUM LENONIORUM, QUIA PROXIMUS SUPERIOR MERETRICUM EST.
Robigo means red rust or mildew which attacks cereals when the ear is beginning to be formed[309], and which is better known and more dreaded on the continent than with us. This destructive disease is not caused by the sun’s heat, as Pliny[310] tells us was the notion of some Italians, but by damp acting in conjunction with a certain height of temperature, as Pliny himself in fact explains it.
Robigus[311] is the spirit who works in the mildew; and it has been conjectured that he was a form or indigitation of Mars[312], since Tertullian tells us that ‘Marti et Robigini Numa ludos instituit’[313]. This is quite consistent with all we know of the Mars of the farm-worship, who is invoked to avert evil simply because he can be the creator of it[314]. The same feature is found in the worship of Apollo, who had at Rhodes the cult-title ἐρυθίβιος[315], or Apollo of the blight, as elsewhere he is Apollo Smintheus, i. e. the power that can bring and also avert the pest of field-mice.
Robigus had a grove of his own at the fifth milestone on the Via Claudia; and Ovid relates in pretty verses how, as he was returning from Nomentum (doubtless by way of his own gardens, which were at the junction of the Via Claudia with the Via Flaminia near the Milvian bridge[316]), he met the Flamen Quirinalis with the _exta_ of a dog and a sheep to offer to the god[317]. He joined the procession, which was apparently something quite new to him, and witnessed the ceremony, noting the _meri patera_, the _turis acerra_, and the rough linen napkin[318], at the priest’s right hand. He versified the prayer which he heard, and which is not unlike that which Cato directs the husbandman to address to Mars in the lustration of the farm[319]:
Aspera Robigo, parcas Cerialibus herbis, Et tremat in summa leve cacumen humo.
Tu sata sideribus caeli nutrita secundi Crescere, dum fiant falcibus apta, sinas.
Parce, precor, scabrasque manus a messibus aufer, Neve noce cultis: posse nocere sat est, &c.
Ovid then asked the flamen why a dog—_nova victima_—was sacrificed, and was told that the dangerous Dog-star was in the ascendant[320]:
Est Canis, Icarium dicunt, quo sidere moto Tosta sitit tellus, praecipiturque seges. Pro cane sidereo canis hic imponitur arae, Et quare pereat, nil nisi nomen habet.
In this, however, both he and the priest were certainly mistaken. Sirius does not rise, but disappears on April 25, at sunset; and it is almost certain that the sacrifice of the dog had nothing to do with the star. The real meaning of the choice of victim was unknown both to priest and poet: but modern research has made a reasonable attempt to recover it[321].
We are told[322] of a sacrifice of reddish sucking whelps, and of augury made from their _exta_, which must have been closely connected with the Robigalia, if not (in later times at least) identified with it. Originally it was not on a fixed day, as is proved by an extract from the _commentarii pontificum_ quoted by Pliny[323]; but it is quite possible that for convenience, as the religio of the urbs got more and more dissociated from the agriculture in which it had its origin, the date was fixed for April 25—the rites of the Robigalia being of the same kind, and the date suitable. The whelps were red or reddish; and from the language of Festus, quoting Ateius Capito, we gather that this colour was supposed to resemble that of the corn when ripe: ‘Rufae canes immolabantur, ut fruges _flavescentes_ ad maturitatem perducerentur’ (p. 285). We should indeed naturally have expected that the rufous colour was thought to resemble the red mildew, as Mannhardt explains it[324]; but we do not know for certain that these puppies were offered to Robigus. In any case, however, we may perhaps see in them an animal representation of the corn, and in the rite a piece of ‘sympathetic magic’[325], the object of which was to bring the corn to its golden perfection, or to keep off the robigo, or both. If we knew more about the dog-offering at the grove of Robigus, we might find that it too, if not indeed identical with the _augurium_, had a similar intention.
The red mildew was at times so terrible a scourge that the Robigalia must in early Rome, when the population lived on the corn grown near the city, have been a festival of very real meaning. But later on it became obscured, and gave way to the races mentioned in the note in the Praenestine calendar[326], and under the later empire to the Christian _litania maior_, the original object of which was also the safety of the crops[327]. The 25th is at present St. Mark’s day.
IV KAL. MAI. (APR. 28). NP.
LOEDI FLOR[AE] (CAER.) LUDI FLOR[AE]. (MAFF. PRAEN.)
V NON. MAI. (MAY 3). C.
FLORAE (VEN.).
On the intervening days were also ludi (_C. I. L._ 317).
Note in Praen. (Apr. 28): EODEM DIE AEDIS FLORAE, QUAE REBUS FLORESCENDIS PRAEEST, DEDICATA EST PROPTER STERILITATEM FRUGUM.
This was not a very ancient festival and is not marked in the Calendars in those large letters which are believed to indicate extreme antiquity[328]. Its history seems to be as follows: in 238 B.C. in consequence of a dearth, the Sibylline Books were consulted, and games in honour of Flora were held for the first time by plebeian aediles[329]; also a temple was dedicated to her _ad circum maximum_ on April 28 of that year[330]. There seems to be a certain connexion between the accounts of the institution of the Floralia and the Cerialia. Dearth was the alleged cause in each case; and the position of the temple of Flora near that of Ceres: the foundation by plebeian magistrates, in this case the two Publicii[331], who as aediles were able to spend part of the fines exacted from defaulting holders of _ager publicus_ on this object[332]: and the coarse character of the games as Ovid describes them, all seem to show that the foundation was a plebeian one, like that of the Cerialia[333].