on

A word of explanation seems needed about the form this book has taken. Many years ago I became specially interested in the old Roman religion, chiefly, I think, through studying Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae, at a time when bad eyesight was compelling me to abandon a project for an elaborate study of all Plutarch’s works. The ‘scrappy’ character not only of the Quaestiones, but of all the material for the study of Roman ritual, suited weak eyes better than the continual reading of Greek text; but I soon found it necessary to discover a thread on which to hang these fragments in some regular order. This I naturally found in the Fasti as edited by Mommsen in the first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum; and it gradually dawned on me that the only scientific way of treating the subject was to follow the calendar throughout the year, and to deal with each festival separately. I had advanced some way in this work, when Roscher’s Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology began to appear in parts, and at once convinced me that I should have to do my work all over again in the increased light afforded by the indefatigable industry of the writers of the Roman articles. I therefore dropped my work for several years while the Lexicon was in progress, and should have waited still longer for its completion, had not Messrs. Macmillan viiiinvited me to contribute a volume on the Roman religion to their series of Handbooks of Archaeology and Antiquities.

Having once set out on the plan of following the Fasti, I could not well abandon it, and I still hold it to be the only sound one: especially if, as in this volume, the object is to exhibit the religious side of the native Roman character, without getting entangled to any serious extent in the colluvies religionum of the last age of the Republic and the earlier Empire. The book has thus taken the form of a commentary on the Fasti, covering in a compressed form almost all the public worship of the Roman state, and including incidentally here and there certain ceremonies which strictly speaking lay outside that public worship. Compression has been unavoidable; yet it has been impossible to avoid stating and often discussing the conflicting views of eminent scholars; and the result probably is that the book as a whole will not be found very interesting reading. But I hope that British and American students of Roman history and literature, and possibly also anthropologists and historians of religion, may find it useful as a book of reference, or may learn from it where to go for more elaborate investigations.

The task has often been an ungrateful one—one indeed of

The more carefully I study any particular festival, the more (at least in many cases) I have been driven into doubt and difficulty both as to reported facts and their interpretation. Had the nature of the series permitted it, I should have wished to print the chief passages quoted from ancient authors in full, as was done by ixMr. Farnell in his Cults of the Greek States, and so to present to the reader the actual material on which conclusions are rightly or wrongly based. I have only been able to do this where it was indispensable: but I have done my best to verify the correctness of the other references, and have printed in full the entries of the ancient calendars at the head of each section. Professor Gardner, the editor of the series, has helped me by contributing two valuable notes on coins, which will be found at the end of the volume: and I hope he may some day find time to turn his attention more closely to the bearing of numismatic evidence on Roman religious history.

It happens, by a curious coincidence, that I am writing this on the last day of the old Roman year; and the lines which Ovid has attached to that day may fitly express my relief on arriving at the end of a very laborious task:

W. W. F.

Oxford: Feb. 28, 1899.

The following are the most important abbreviations which occur in the notes:

C. I. L. stands for Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Where the volume is not indicated the reference is invariably to the second edition of that part of vol. i which contains the Fasti (Berlin, 1893).

Marquardt or Marq. stands for the third volume of Marquardt’s Römische Staatsverwaltung, second edition, edited by Wissowa (Berlin, 1885). It is the sixth volume of the complete Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer of Mommsen and Marquardt.

Preller, or Preller-Jordan, stands for the third edition of Preller’s Römische Mythologie by H. Jordan (Berlin, 1881).

Myth. Lex. or Lex. stands for the Ausführliches Lexicon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie, edited by W. H. Roscher, which as yet has only been completed to the letter N.

Festus, or Paulus, stands for K. O. Müller’s edition of the fragments of Festus, De Significatione Verborum, and the Excerpta ex Festo of Paulus Diaconus; quoted by the page.

I. The Roman Method of Reckoning the Year.^[1]

There are three ways in which the course of the year may be calculated. It can be reckoned—

1. By the revolution of the moon round the earth, twelve of which = 354 days, or a ring (annus), sufficiently near to the solar year to be a practicable system with modifications.

2. By the revolution of the earth round the sun i. e. 365-1/4 days; a system which needs periodical adjustments, as the odd quarter (or, more strictly, 5 hours 48 minutes 48 seconds) cannot of course be counted in each year. In this purely solar year the months are only artificial divisions of time, and not reckoned according to the revolutions of the moon. This is our modern system.

3. By combining in a single system the solar and lunar years as described above. This has been done in various ways by different peoples, by adopting a cycle of years of varying length, in which the resultants of the two bases of calculation should be brought into harmony as nearly as possible. In 2other words, though the difference between a single solar year and a single lunar year is more than 11 days, it is possible, by taking a number of years together and reckoning them as lunar years, one or more of them being lengthened by an additional month, to make the whole period very nearly coincide with the same number of solar years. Thus the Athenians adopted for this purpose at different times groups or cycles of 8 and 19 years. In the Octaeteris or 8-year cycle there were 99 lunar months, 3 months of 30 days being added in 3 of the 8 years—a plan which falls short of accuracy by about 36 hours. Later on a cycle of 19 years was substituted for this, in which the discrepancy was greatly reduced. The Roman year in historical times was calculated on a system of this kind, though with such inaccuracy and carelessness as to lose all real relation to the revolutions both of earth and moon.

But there was a tradition that before this historical calendar came into use there had been another system, which the Romans connected with the name of Romulus. This year was supposed to have consisted of 10 months, of which 4—March, May, July, October—had 31 days, and the rest 30; in all 304. But this was neither a solar nor a lunar year; for a lunar year of 10 months = 295 days 7 hours 20 minutes, while a solar year = 365-1/4. Nor can it possibly be explained as an attempt to combine the two systems. Mommsen has therefore conjectured that it was an artificial year of 10 months, used in business transactions, and in periods of mourning, truces^[2], &c., to remedy the uncertainty of the primitive calculation of time; and that it never really was the basis of a state calendar. This view has of course been the subject of much criticism^[3]. But no better solution has been found; the hypothesis that the year of 10 months was a real lunar year, to which an undivided period of time was added at each year’s end, to make it correspond with the solar year and the seasons, has not much to recommend it or any analogy among other peoples. It was not, then, the so-called year of Romulus which was the basis of the earliest state-calendar, but another system which the Romans themselves 3usually ascribed to Numa. This was originally perhaps a lunar year; at any rate the number of days in it is very nearly that of a true lunar year (354 days 8 hours 48 minutes)^[4]. It consisted of 12 months, of which March, May, July, October had 31 days, and the rest 29, except February, which had 28. All the months therefore had an odd number of days, except the one which was specially devoted to purification and the cult of the dead; according to an old superstition, probably adopted from the Greeks of Southern Italy^[5], that odd numbers were of good omen, even numbers of ill omen. This principle, as we shall see, holds good throughout the Roman calendar.

But this reckoning of the year, if it ever existed at all, could not have lasted long as it stood. As we know it in historical times, it has become modified by applying to it the principle of the solar year. The reason for this should be noted carefully. A lunar year, being about 11 days short of the solar year, would in a very short time become out of harmony with the seasons. Now if there is one thing certain about the Roman religious calendar, it is that many at least of its oldest festivals mark those operations of husbandry on which the population depended for its subsistence, and for the prosperous result of which divine agencies must be propitiated. These festivals, when fixed in the calendar, must of course occur at the right seasons, which could not be the case if the calendar were that of a purely lunar year. It was therefore necessary to work in the solar principle; and this was done^[6] by a somewhat rude expedient, not unlike that of the Athenian Octaeteris, and probably derived from it^[7]. A cycle of 4 years was devised, of which the first had the 355 days of the lunar year, the second 355 + 22, the third 355 again, 4and the fourth 355 + 23. The extra periods of 22 and 23 days were inserted in February, not at the end, but after the 23rd (Terminalia)^[8]. The total number of days in the cycle was 1465, or about 1 day too much in each year; and in course of time even this system got out of harmony with the seasons and had to be rectified from time to time by the Pontifices, who had charge of the calendar. Owing to ignorance on their part, misuse or neglect of intercalation had put the whole system out of gear before the last century of the Republic. All relation to sun and moon was lost; the calendar, as Mommsen says, ‘went on its own way tolerably unconcerned about moon and sun.’ When Caesar took the reform of the calendar in hand the discrepancy between it and the seasons was very serious; the former being in advance of the latter probably by some weeks. Caesar, aided by the mathematician Sosigenes, put an end to this confusion by extending the year 46 B.C. to 445 days, and starting afresh on Jan. 1, 45 B.C.^[9]—a day henceforward to be that of the new year—with a cycle of 4 years of 365 days^[10]; in the last of which a single day was added, after the Terminalia. This cycle produced a true solar year with a slight adjustment at short intervals; and after a few preliminary blunders on the part of the Pontifices, lasted without change until A.D. 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII set right a slight discrepancy by a fresh regulation. This regulation was only adopted in England in 1752, and is still rejected in Russia and by the Greek Church generally.

That the Roman year originally began with March is certain^[11], not only from the evidence of the names of the months, which after June are reckoned as 5th (Quinctilis), 6th (Sextilis), and so on, but from the nature of the March festivals, as will be shown in treating of that month. In the character of the religious festivals there is a distinct break between February and March, and the operations both of nature and of man take a fresh turn at that point. Between the festivals of December and those of January there is no such break. No doubt January 1, just after the winter solstice, was even at an early time considered in some sense as a beginning; but it is going too far to assume, as some have done, that an ancient religious or priestly year began at that point^[12]. It was not on January 1, but on March 1, that the sacred fire in the Aedes Vestae was renewed and fresh laurels fixed up on the Regia, the two buildings which were the central points of the oldest Roman religion^[13]. March 1, which in later times at least was considered the birthday of the special protecting deity of the Romans, continued to be the Roman New Year’s Day long after the official beginning of the year had been changed to January 1^[14]. It was probably not till 153 B.C., when the consuls began to enter on office on January 1, that this official change took place; and the date was then adopted, not so much for religious reasons as because it was convenient, when the business of administration was increasing, to have the consuls in Rome for some time before they left for their provinces at the opening of the war season in March.

No rational account can in my opinion be given of the Roman religious calendar of the Republic unless it be taken as beginning with March; and in this work I have therefore restored the old order of months. With the Julian calendar I am not concerned; though it is unfortunate that all the 6Roman calendars we possess, including the Fasti of Ovid, date from after the Julian era, and therefore present us with a distorted view of the true course of the old Roman worship.

Next after March came Aprilis, the month of opening or unfolding vegetation; then Maius, the month of growing, and Junius, that of ripening and perfecting. After this the names cease to be descriptive of the operations of nature; the six months that follow were called, as four of them still are, only by their positions relative to March, on which the whole system of the year thus turned as on a pivot.

The last two months of the twelve were January and February. They stand alone among the later months in bearing names instead of mere numbers, and this is sufficient to suggest their religious importance. That they were not mere appendages to a year of ten months is almost certain from the antique character of the rites and festivals which occur in them—Agonia, Carmentalia, Lupercalia, &c.; and it is safer to consider them as marking an ancient period of religious importance preparatory to the beginning of the year, and itself coinciding with the opening of the natural year after the winter solstice. This latter point seems to be indicated in the name Januarius, which, whether derived from janua, ‘a gate,’ or Janus, ‘the god of entrances,’ is appropriate to the first lengthening of the days, or the entrance of the sun on a new course; while February, the month of purifying or regenerative agencies (februa), was, like the Lent of the Christian calendar, the period in which the living were made ready for the civil and religious work of the coming year, and in which also the yearly duties to the dead were paid.

It is as well here to refer to a passage of Ovid (Fasti, ii. 47 foll.), itself probably based on a statement of Varro, which has led to a controversy about the relative position of these two months:

7This plainly means that from the time when March ceased to be the first month, the year always began with January and ended with February; in other words the order was January, March, April, and so on, ending with February; until the time of the Decemvirate, when February became the second month, and December the last, as at present, January still retaining its place. A little consideration of Ovid’s lines will, however, suggest the conclusion that he, and his authority, whoever that may have been, were arguing aetiologically rather than on definite knowledge. January, they thought, must always have been the first month, because janua, ‘a door,’ is the first thing, the entrance, through which you pass into a new year as into a house or a temple. How, they would argue, could a month thus named have ever been the eleventh month? This once supposed impossible, it was necessary to infer that the place of January was the first, from the time of its introduction, and that it was followed by March, April, &c., February coming last of all, immediately after December; and finally that at the time of the Decemvirs, who are known to have made some alterations in the calendar, the positions of January and February were reversed, January remaining the first month, but February becoming the second.

III. The Divisions of the Month.

The Romans, with their usual conservatism, preserved the shell of the lunar system of reckoning long after the reality had disappeared. The month was at all times divided by the real or imaginary phases of the moon, though a week of eight days was introduced at an early period, and though the month was no longer a lunar one.

The two certain points in a lunar month are the first appearance of the crescent^[15] and the full moon; between these is the point when the moon reaches the first quarter, which is a less certain one. Owing to this uncertainty of the reckoning of the first days of the month there were no festivals in the calendars on the days before the first quarter (Nones), with a single exception of the obscure Poplifugia on July 5. The day of 8the new moon was called Kalendae, as Varro tells us, ‘quod his diebus calantur eius mensis nonae a pontificibus, quintanae an septimanae sint futurae, in Capitolio in curia Calabra sic: Dies te quinque calo, Iuno Covella. Septem dies te calo Iuno Covella’^[16]. All the Kalends were sacred to Juno, whose connexion with the moon is certain though not easy to explain.

With the Nones, which were sacred to no deity, all uncertainty ceased. The Ides, or day of the full moon, was always the eighth after the first quarter. This day was sacred to Jupiter; a fact which is now generally explained as a recognition of the continuous light of the two great heavenly bodies during the whole twenty-four hours^[17]. On the Nones the Rex sacrorum (and therefore before him the king himself) announced the dates of the festivals for the month.

There was another internal division of the month, with which we are not here specially concerned, that of the Roman week or nundinal period of eight days, which is indicated in all the calendars by the letters A to H. The nundinae were market days, on which the rustic population came into Rome; whether they were also feast days (feriae) was a disputed question even in antiquity.

IV. The Days.

Every day in the Roman calendar has a certain mark attached to it, viz. the letters F, C, N, NP, EN, Q.R.C.F., Q.St.D.F., or FP. All of these have a religious significance, positive or negative.

F, i. e. fas or fastus, means that on the day so marked civil and especially judicial business might be transacted without fear of divine displeasure^[18]. Correctness in the time as well as place of all human actions was in the mind of the early Roman of the most vital importance; and the floating traditional ideas which governed his life before the formation of the State were 9systematized and kept secret by kings and priests, as a part, so to speak, of the science of government. Not till B.C. 304 was the calendar published, with its permissive and prohibitive regulations^[19].

C (comitialis) means that the day so marked was one on which the comitia might meet^[20], and on which also legal business might be transacted, as on the days marked F, if there were no other hindrance. The total number of days thus available for secular business, i.e. days marked F and C, was in the Julian calendar 239 out of 365.

N, i. e. nefastus, meant that the day so marked was religiosus, vitiosus, or ater; as Gellius has it^[21], ‘tristi omine et infames impeditique, in quibus et res divinas facere et rem quampiam novam exordiri temperandum est.’ Some of these days received the mark in historical times for a special reason, e. g. a disaster to the State; among these were the postriduani or days following the Kalends, Nones and Ides, because two terrible defeats had occurred on such days^[22]. But most of them (in all they are 57) were probably so marked as being devoted to lustrations, or worship of the dead or of the powers of the earth, and therefore unsuitable for worldly business. One long series of such dies nefasti occurs Feb. 1-14, the time of purification; another, April 5-22, in the month occupied by the rites of deities of growing vegetation; a third, June 5-14, when the rites of the Vestals preparatory to harvest were taking place; and a fourth, July 1-9, for reasons which are unfortunately by no means clear to us.

NP was not a mark in the pre-Julian calendars, for it was apparently unknown to Varro and Ovid. Verrius Flaccus seems to have distinguished it from N, but his explanation is mutilated, even as it survives in Festus^[23]. No one has yet determined for certain the origin of the sign, and discussion of the various conjectures would be here superfluous^[24]. It appears 10to distinguish, in the Julian calendars, those days on which fell the festivals of deities who were not of an earthly and therefore doubtful character from those marked N. Thus in the series of dies nefasti in February and April the Ides in each case have the mark NP as being sacred to Jupiter.

EN. We have a mutilated note in the calendar of Praeneste which indicates what this abbreviation meant, viz. endotercisus = intercisus, i. e. ‘cut into parts’^[25]. In morning and evening, as Varro tells us, the day was nefastus, but in the middle, between the slaying of the victim and the placing of the entrails upon the altar, it was fastus. But why eight days in the calendar were thus marked we do not know, and have no data for conjecturing. All the eight were days coming before some festival, or before the Ides. Of the eight two occur in January and two in February, the others in March, August, October and December. But on such facts no conjectures can be built.

Q.R.C.F. (Quando Rex Comitiavit Fas) will be explained under March 24; the only other day on which it occurs is May 24. Q.St.D.F. (Quando stercus delatum fas) only occurs on June 15, and will there be fully dealt with.

FP occurs thrice, but only in three calendars. Feb. 21 (Feralia) is thus marked in Caer.^[26], but is F in Maff. April 23 (Vinalia) is FP in Caer. but NP in Maff. and F in Praen. Aug. 19 (Vinalia rustica) is FP in Maff. and Amit, F in Antiat. and Allif., NP in Vall. Mommsen explains FP as fastus principio, i. e. the early part of the day was fastus, and suggests that in the case of the Feralia, as the rites of the dead were performed at night, there was no reason why the earlier part of the day should be nefastus. But in the case of the two Vinalia we can hardly even guess at the meaning of the mark, and it does not seem to have been known to the Romans themselves.

The basis of our knowledge of the old Roman religious year is to be found in the fragments of calendars which still survive. None of these indeed is older than the Julian era; and all but one are mere fragments. But from the fragments and the one almost perfect calendar we can infer the character of the earlier calendar with tolerable certainty.

The calendar, as the Romans generally believed, was first published by Cnaeus Flavius, curule aedile, in 304 B.C., who placed the fasti conspicuously in the Forum, in order that every one might know on what days legal business might be transacted^[27]; in other words, a calendar was published with the marks of the days and the indications of the festivals. After this we hear nothing until 189 B.C., when a consul, M. Fulvius Nobilior, adorned his temple of Hercules and the Muses with a calendar which contained explanations or notes as well as dates^[28]. These are the only indications we have of the way in which the pre-Julian calendar was made known to the people.

But the rectification of the calendar by Julius, and the changes then introduced, brought about a multiplication of copies of the original one issued under the dictator’s edict^[29]. Not only in Rome, but in the municipalities round about her, where the ancient religious usage of each city had since the enfranchisement of Italy been superseded, officially at least, by that of Rome, both public and private copies were made and set up either on stone, or painted on the walls or ceiling of a building.

Of such calendars we have in all fragments of some thirty, and one which is all but complete. Fourteen of these fragments were found in or near Rome, eleven in municipalities 12such as Praeneste, Caere, Amiternum, and others as far away as Allifae and Venusia; four are of uncertain origin^[30]; and one is a curious fragment from Cisalpine Gaul^[31]. Most of them are still extant on stone, but for a few we have to depend on written copies of an original now lost^[32]. No day in the Roman year is without its annotation in one or more of these; the year is almost complete, as I have said, in the Fasti Maffeiani; and several others contain three or four months nearly perfect^[33]. Two, though in a fragmentary condition, are of special interest. One of these, that of the ancient brotherhood of the Fratres Arvales, discovered in 1867 and following years in the grove of the brethren near Rome, contains some valuable additional notes in the fragments which survive of the months from August to November. The other, that of Praeneste, containing January, March, April and parts of February and December, is still more valuable from the comments it contains, most of which we can believe with confidence to have come from the hand of the great Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus. We are told by Suetonius that Verrius put up a calendar in the forum at Praeneste^[34], drawn up by his own hand; and the date^[35] and matter of these fragments found at Praeneste agree with what we know of the life and writings of Verrius. It is unlucky that recent attempts to find additional fragments should have been entirely without result; for the whole annotated calendar, if we possessed it, would probably throw light on many dark corners of our subject.

To these fragments of Julian calendars, all drawn up between B.C. 31 and A.D. 46, there remain to be added two in MSS.: (i) that of Philocalus, A.D. 354, (ii) that of Polemius Silvius, A.D. 448; neither of which are of much value for our present purpose, though they will be occasionally referred to. Lastly, we have two farmer’s almanacs on cubes 13of bronze, which omit the individual days, but are of use as showing the course of agricultural operations under the later Empire^[36].

All these calendars, some of which had been printed wholly or in part long ago, while a few have only been discovered of late, have been brought together for the first time in the first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, edited by Mommsen with all his incomparable skill and learning, and furnished with ample elucidations and commentaries. And we now have the benefit of a second edition of this by the same editor, to whose labours in this as in every other department of Roman history it is almost impossible to express our debt in adequate words. All references to the calendars in the following pages will be made to this second edition.

A word remains to be said about the Fasti of Ovid^[37], which is a poetical and often fanciful commentary on the calendar of the first half of the Julian year, i.e. January to June inclusive; each month being contained in one book. Ovid tells us himself^[38] that he completed the year in twelve books; but the last six were probably never published, for they are never quoted by later writers. The first six were written but not published before the poet’s exile, and taken in hand again after the death of Augustus, but only the first book had been revised when the work was cut short by Ovid’s death.

Ovid’s work merits all praise as a literary performance, for the neatness and felicity of its versification and diction; but as a source of knowledge it is too much of a medley to be used without careful criticism. There is, however, a great deal in it that helps us to understand the views about the gods and their worship, not only of the scholars who pleased themselves and Augustus by investigating these subjects, but also of the common people both in Rome and in the country. But the value varies greatly throughout the work. Where the poet describes some bit of ritual which he has himself seen, or tells 14some Italian story he has himself heard, he is invaluable; but as a substitute for the work of Varro on which he drew, he only increases our thirst for the original. No great scholar himself, he aimed at producing a popular account of the results of the work of scholars, picking and choosing here and there as suited his purpose, and not troubling himself to write with scientific accuracy. Moreover, he probably made free use of Alexandrine poets, and especially of Callimachus, whose Aetia is in some degree his model for the whole poem; and thus it is that the work contains a large proportion of Greek myth, which is often hard to distinguish from the fragments of genuine Italian legend which are here and there imbedded in it. Still, when all is said, a student of the Roman religion should be grateful to Ovid; and when after the month of June we lose him as a companion, we may well feel that the subject not only loses with him what little literary interest it can boast of, but becomes for the most part a mere investigation of fossil rites, from which all life and meaning have departed for ever.

VI. The Calendar of the Republic and its Religious Festivals.

All the calendars still surviving belong, as we saw, to the early Empire, and represent the Fasti as revised by Julius. But what we have to do with is the calendar of the Republic. Can it be recovered from those we still possess? Fortunately this is quite an easy task, as Mommsen himself has pointed out^[39]; we can reconstruct for certain the so-called calendar of Numa as it existed throughout the Republican era. The following considerations must be borne in mind:

1. It is certain that Caesar and his advisers would alter the familiar calendar as little as possible, acting in the spirit of persistent conservatism from which no true Roman was ever free. They added 10 days to the old normal year of 355 days, i. e. two at the end of January, August, and December, and one at the end of April, June, September, and November; but they retained the names of the months, and their division by Kalends, Nones, and Ides, and also the signs of the days, 15and the names of all festivals throughout the year. Later on further additions were made, chiefly in the way of glorification of the Emperors and their families; but the skeleton remained as it had been under the Republic.

2. It is almost certain that the Republican calendar itself had never been changed from its first publication down to the time of Caesar. There is no historical record of any alteration, either by the introduction of new festivals or in any other way. The origin of no festival is recorded in the history of the Republic, except the second Carmentalia, the Saturnalia, and the Cerealia^[40]; and in these three cases we can be morally certain that the record, if such it can be called, is erroneous.

3. If Julius and his successors altered only by slight additions, and if the calendar which they had to work on was of great antiquity and unchanged during the Republic, how, in the next place, are we to distinguish the skeleton of that ancient calendar from the Julian and post-Julian additions? Nothing is easier; in Mommsen’s words, it is not a matter of calculation; a glance at the Fasti is sufficient. In all these it will be seen that the numbers, names, and signs of the days were cut or painted in large capital letters; while ludi, sacrifices, and all additional notes and comments appear in small capital letters. It cannot be demonstrated that the large capital letters represent the Republican calendar; but the circumstantial evidence, so to speak, is convincing. For inscribed in these large capitals is all the information which the Roman of the Republic would need; the dies fasti, comitiales, nefasti, &c.; the number of the days in the month; the position of the Nones and the Ides and the names of those days on which fixed festivals took place; all this in an abbreviated but no doubt familiar form. The minor sacrificial rites, which concerned the priests and magistrates rather than the people, he did not find there; they would only have confused him. The moveable festivals, too, he did not find there, as they changed their date from year to year and were fixed by the priesthood as the time for each came round. The ludi, or public games, were also absent from the old calendar, for they were, originally at least, only adjuncts to certain 16festivals out of which they had grown in course of time. Lastly, all rites which did not technically concern the State as a whole, but only its parts and divisions^[41], i. e. of gentes and curiae, of pagi (paganalia), montes (Septimontium) and sacella (Sacra Argeorum), could not be included in the public calendar of the Roman people.

But the Roman of the Republic, even if his calendar were confined to the indications given by the large capital letters in the Julian calendar, could find in these the essential outline of the yearly round of his religious life. This outline we too can reconstruct, though the detail is often wholly beyond our reach. For this detail we have to fall back upon other sources of information, which are often most unsatisfactory and difficult to interpret. What are these other sources, of what value are they, and how can that value be tested?

Apart from the surviving Fasti, we have to depend, both for the completion of the religious calendar, and for the study and interpretation of all its details, chiefly on the fragmentary remains of the works of the two great scholars of the age of Julius and Augustus, viz. Varro and Verrius Flaccus, and on the later grammarians, commentators, and other writers who drew upon their voluminous writings. Varro’s book de Lingua Latina, though not complete, is in great part preserved, and contains much information taken from the books of the pontifices, which, did we but possess them, would doubtless constitute our one other most valuable record besides the Fasti themselves^[42]. Such, too, is the value of the dictionary of Verrius Flaccus, which, though itself lost, survives in the form of two series of condensed excerpts, made by Festus probably in the second century, A.D., and by Paulus Diaconus as late as the beginning of the ninth^[43]. Much of the work of Varro and Verrius is also imbedded in the grammatical writings of Servius the commentator on Virgil, in Macrobius, Nonius, Gellius, and 17many others, and also in Pliny’s Natural History, and in some of the Christian Fathers, especially St. Augustine and Tertullian; but all these need to be used with care and caution, except where they quote directly from one or other of their two great predecessors. The same may be said of Laurentius Lydus^[44], who wrote in Greek a work de Mensibus in the sixth century, which still survives. To these materials must be added the great historical writers of the Augustine age; Livy, who, uncritical as he was, and incapable of distinguishing the genuine Italian elements in religious tradition from the accretions of Greek and Graeco-Etruscan myth, yet supplies us with much material for criticism; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who as a foreigner resident for some time in Rome, occasionally describes ritual of which he was himself a witness. The Roman lives of Plutarch, and his curious collection entitled Roman Questions, also contain much interesting matter, taken from several sources, e.g. Juba, the learned king of Mauritania, but as a rule ultimately referable to Varro. Beyond these there is no one author of real importance; but the ‘plant’ of the investigator will include of course the whole of Roman literature, and Greek literature so far as it touches Roman life and history. Of epigraphical evidence there is not much for the period of the Republic, beyond the fragments of the Fasti; by far the most valuable Italian religious inscription is not Roman but Umbrian; and the Acta Fratrum Arvalium only begin with the Empire. Yet from these^[45], and from a few works of art, however hard of interpretation, some light has occasionally been thrown upon the difficulties of our subject; and the study of early Italian culture is fast progressing under the admirable system of excavation now being supervised by the Italian government.

All this material has been collected, sifted, and built upon by modern scholars, and chiefly by Germans. The work of collecting was done to a great extent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the rest of the process mainly in the 18nineteenth. The chief writers will be quoted as occasion demands; here can only be mentioned, honoris causa, the writings of Ambrosch, Preller, Schwegler, Marquardt^[46], and of some of the writers in the Mythological Lexicon, edited by Roscher, especially Professor Wissowa of Berlin, whose short but pithy articles, as well as his treatises de Feriis and de Dis Indigetibus are models of scholarly investigation^[47]. Of late, too, anthropologists and folk-lorists have had something to say about Roman religious antiquities; of these, the most conspicuous is the late lamented Dr. Mannhardt, who applied a new method to certain problems both of the Greek and the Roman religion, and evolved a new theory for their interpretation. Among other works of this kind, which incidentally throw light on our difficulties, the most useful to me have been those of Professor Tylor, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Andrew Lang, and the late Professor Robertson Smith. In the Religion of the Semites, by the last named scholar, I seem to see a deeper insight into the modes of religious thought of ancient peoples than in any other work with which I am acquainted.

Yet in spite of all this accumulation of learning and acumen, it must be confessed that the study of the oldest Roman religion is still one of insuperable difficulty, and apt to try the patience of the student all the more as he slowly becomes aware of the conditions of the problem before him. There are festivals in the calendar about which we really know nothing at all, and must frankly confess our ignorance; there are others about which we know just enough to be doubtful; others again, in interpreting which the Romans themselves plainly went astray, leaving us perhaps nothing but a baseless legend to aid us in guessing their original nature. It must be borne in mind that the Roman religion was in ruins when the Julian calendar was drawn up, and that the archaeological research which was brought to bear upon it by Varro and Verrius was not of a strictly scientific character. And during 19the last two centuries of the Republic, as the once stately building crumbled away, it became overlaid with growths of foreign and especially of Greek origin, under which it now lies hopelessly buried. The ground-plan alone remains, in the form of the calendar as it has been explained above; to this we must hold fast if we would obtain any true conception of the religion of the earliest Roman State^[48]. Here and there some portion of the building of which it was the basis can however still be conjecturally restored by the aid of Varro and Verrius and a few other ancient writers, tested by the criticism of modern scholars, and sometimes by the results of the science of comparative religion. Such particular restoration is what has been attempted in this work, not without much misgiving and constant doubt.

The fall of the Republic is in any case a convenient point from which to survey the religious ideas and practice of the conquerors of the civilized world. It is not indeed a more significant epoch in the history of the Roman religion than the era of the Punic wars, when Rome ceased to be a peninsular, and began to be a cosmopolitan state; but it is a turning-point in the history of the calendar and of religious worship as well as of the constitution. Henceforward, in spite of the strenuous efforts of Augustus to revive the old forms of worship, all religious rites have a tendency to become transformed or overshadowed, first by the cult of the Caesars^[49]; secondly, by the steadily increasing influence of foreign and especially of Oriental cults; and lastly, by Christianity itself^[50].

Taking our stand, then, in the year 46 B.C., the last year of the pre-Julian calendar, we are able in a small volume, by carefully working through that calendar, to lay a firm foundation of material for the study of the religious life and thought of the Roman people while it was still in some sense really Roman. The plan has indeed its disadvantages; it excludes the introduction of a systematic account of certain departments of the subject, such as the development of the priesthoods, the sacrificial ritual, the auspicia, and the domestic 20practice of religious rites^[51]. But if it is true, as it undoubtedly is, that in dealing with the Roman religion we must begin with the cult^[52], and that for the cult the one ‘sincerum documentum’ is to be found in the surviving Fasti, these drawbacks may fairly be deemed to be counterbalanced by distinct advantages. And in order to neutralize any bewilderment that may be caused by the constant variety of the rites we shall meet with, both in regard to their origin, history, and meaning, some attempt will be made, when we have completed the round of the year, to sum up our results, to sketch in outline the history of Roman religious ideas, and to estimate the influence of all this elaborate ceremonial on the life and character of the Roman people.

In order to fit the calendar of each month into a single page of this work it has been necessary to print the names of the festivals, and the indications of Kalends, Nones, &c. in small capital letters instead of the large capitals in which they appear in the originals (see above, p. 15). In the headings to the days as they occur throughout the book the method of the originals will be reproduced exactly, i. e. large capitals represent in every case the most ancient calendar of the Republic, and small capitals the additamenta ex fastis.

MENSIS MARTIUS

The mensis Martius stands alone among the Roman months. Not only was it the first in matters both civil and religious down to the time of Julius Caesar, but it is more closely associated with a single deity than any other, and that deity the protector and ancestor of the legendary founder of the city. It bears too the name of the god, which is not the case with any other month except January; and it is less certain that January was named after Janus than that March was named after Mars. The cult of Janus is not specially obvious in January except on a single day; but the cult of Mars is paramount all through March, and gives a peculiar character to the month’s worship.

It follows on a period which we may call one of purification, or the performance of piacular duties towards dead ancestors and towards the gods; and this has itself succeeded a time of general festivity in the homestead, the group of homesteads, the market, and the cross-roads. The rites of December and January are for the most part festive and social, those of February mystic and melancholy—characteristics which have their counterpart in the Christian Christmas, New Year, and Lent. The rites of March are distinct from those of either period, as we shall see. They again are followed by those of April, the opening month, which are gay and apt to be licentious; then comes the mensis Maius or month of growth, which is a time of peril for the crops, and has a certain character of doubt and darkness in its rites; lastly comes June, the month of maturity, when harvest is close at hand, and life 34begins to brighten up once more. After this the Roman months cease to denote by their names those workings of nature on which the husbandman’s fortune for the year depends.

By a process of elimination we can make a guess at the kind of ideas which must have been associated with the month which the Romans called Martius, even before examining its rites in detail. It is the time when the spring, whose first breath has been felt in February, begins to show its power upon the land^[61]. Some great numen is at work, quickening vegetation, and calling into life the powers of reproduction in man and the animals. The way in which this quickening Power or Spirit was regarded by primitive man has been very carefully investigated of recent years, and though the variation is endless both in myth and in ritual, we may now safely say that he was looked on as coming to new life after a period of death, or as returning after an absence in the winter, or as conquering the hostile powers that would hinder his activity. Among civilized peoples these ideas only survive in legend or poetry, or in some quaint bit of rural custom, often semi-dramatic, which may or may not have found its way into the organized cults of a city state of Greece or Italy, or even into the calendar of a Christian Church. But when these survivals have been collected in vast numbers both from modern Europe and from classical antiquity, and compared with the existing ideas and practices of savage peoples, they can leave no doubt in our minds as to the general character of the primitive 35husbandman’s conception of the mysterious power at work in spring-time.

It was this Power, we can hardly doubt, that the Latins knew by the name of Mars, the god whose cult is so prominent throughout the critical period of the quickening processes. We know him in Roman literature as a full-grown deity, with characteristics partly taken from the Greeks, partly extended and developed by a state priesthood and the usage of a growing and cosmopolitan city. We cannot trace him back, step by step, to his earliest vague form as an undefined Spirit, Power, or numen; it is very doubtful whether we can identify him, as mythologists have often done, with anything so obvious and definite as the sun, which by itself does not seem to have been held responsible by primitive peoples for the workings of nature at this time of year. We do not even know for certain the meaning of his name, and can get no sure help from comparative philology. Nevertheless there is a good deal of cumulative evidence which suggests a comparatively humble origin for this great god, some points of which we shall meet with in studying his cult during the month. The whole subject has been worked up by Roscher in the article on Mars in his Mythological Lexicon, which has the great advantage of being based on an entire re-examination of the Mars-cult, which he had handled in an earlier essay on Apollo and Mars.

Kal. Mart. (March 1). NP.

FERIAE MARTI. (PRAEN.)
N̄ MARTIS. (PHILOC.)
IUN[O]NI LUCINAE E[S]QUILIIS QUOD EO DIE AEDES EI [DEDICA]TA EST PER MATRONAS QUAM VOVERAT ALBI[NIA] ... VEL UXOR ... SI PUERUM ... [AT]QUE IPSA[M].... (PRAEN.)

This was the New Year’s day of the Roman religious calendar. From Macrobius^[62] we learn that in his day the sacred fire of Vesta was now renewed, and fresh laurels fixed on the Regia, the Curiae, and the houses of the flamens; the custom therefore was kept up long after the first of March had ceased to be the 36civil New Year. Ovid alludes to the same rites, and adds the Aedes Vestae as also freshly decorated^[63]:

The mention of these buildings carries us back to the very earliest Rome, when the rex and his sons and daughters^[64] (Flamines and Vestales, in their later form) performed between them the whole religious duty of the community; to these we may perhaps add the warrior-priests of Mars (Salii). The connexion of the decoration with the Mars-cult is probable, if not certain; the laurel was sacred to Mars, for in front of his sacrarium in the regia there grew two laurels^[65], and it has been conjectured that they supplied the boughs used on this day^[66].

March 1 is also marked in the calendar of Philocalus as the birthday of Mars (N̄ = natalis Martis). This appears in no other calendar as yet discovered, and is conspicuously absent in the Fasti Praenestini; it is therefore very doubtful whether any weight should be given to a fourth-century writer whose calendar had certainly an urban and not a rustic basis^[67]. There is no trace of allusion to a birth of Mars on this day in Latin literature, though the day is often mentioned. There was indeed a pretty legend of such a birth, told by Ovid under 37May 2^[68], which has its parallels in other mythologies; Juno became pregnant of Mars by touching a certain flower of which the secret was told her by Flora:

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 38from 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 39eleven 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 40ὔμνοι 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 41below 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 42is 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, 43when 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; 44the 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 45his 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 46explanation 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 47growth, 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:

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 48was 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. 49The 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 50myth. 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.)

This is a survival of an old popular festival, as is clearly seen from Ovid’s account of it; but the absence of any mention of it in the rustic calendars or in those of Philocalus and Silvius leads us to suppose that it had died out in the early Empire. This may be accounted for by the fact that the people came to be more and more attracted by spectacles and games; and also by the ever-increasing cosmopolitanism of the city populace, which would be continually losing interest in old Roman customs which it could not understand.

On this day, Ovid tells us^[126], the ‘plebs’ streamed out to the ‘festum geniale’ of Anna Perenna, and taking up a position in the Campus Martius, not far from the Tiber^[127], and lying 51about on the grass in pairs of men and women, passed the day in revelry and drinking^[128]. Some lay in the open; some pitched tents and some constructed rude huts of stakes and branches, stretching their togas over them for shelter. As they drank they prayed for as many years of life as they can swallow cups of wine; meanwhile singing snatches of song with much gesticulation and dancing. The result of these performances was naturally that they returned to the city in a state of intoxication. Ovid tells us that he had seen this spectacle himself^[129].

Whether there was any sacrificial rite in immediate connexion with these revels we do not know. Macrobius indeed tells us^[130] that sacrifice was offered in the month of March to Anna Perenna ‘ut annare perannareque commode liceat’^[131]; and Lydus, that on the Ides there were εὐχαὶ δημόσιαι ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὑγιεινὸν γενέσθαι τὸν ἐνιαυτόν; but we do not know what was the relation between these and the scene described by Ovid.

Who was the Anna Perenna in whose honour these revels, sacrifices, and prayers took place, whatever their relation to each other? Ovid and Silius Italicus^[132] tell legends about her which are hardly genuine Italian, and in which Anna Perenna is confused with the other Anna whom they knew, the sister of Dido. Hidden under such stories may sometimes be found traces of a belief or a cult of which we have no other knowledge; but in this poetical medley there seems to be only one feature that calls on us to pause. After her wanderings Anna disappears in the waters of the river Numicius:

52Her companions traced her footsteps to the bank: she seemed to tell them

This tale led Klausen^[133] into some very strange fancies about the goddess, whom he regarded as a water-nymph, thinking that all her other characteristics (e.g. the year) might be explained symbolically; the running water representing the flow of time, &c. But it is probable that she only came into connexion with the river Numicius because Aeneas was there already. If Aeneas, as Jupiter Indiges, was buried on its banks^[134], what could be more natural than that another figure of the Dido legend should be brought there too? There does not indeed seem to be any reason for connecting the real Anna Perenna with water^[135]. All genuine Roman tradition seems to represent her, as we shall see directly, as an old woman; and when she appears in another shape, she must have become mixed up with other ideas and stories. It may perhaps be just possible that on this day some kind of an image of her may have been thrown into the Tiber, as was the case with the straw puppets (Argei) on May 15, and that the ceremony dropped out of practice, but just survived in the Numicius legend^[136]. But this is simply hypothesis.

The fact is that, whatever else Anna Perenna may have been, all that we can confidently say of her is that she represented in some way the circle or ring of the year. This is indicated not only by the name, which can hardly be anything but a feminine form of annus, but by the time at which her 53festival took place, the first full moon of the new year. The one legend preserved about her which is of undoubted Italian origin is thought to point in the same direction. Ovid, wishing to explain ‘cur cantent obscena puellae’ in that revel of the ‘plebs’ on the Tiber-bank, tells us^[137] how Mars, once in love with Minerva^[138], came to Anna and asked her aid. It was at length granted, and Mars had the nuptial couch prepared: thither a bride was led, but not the desired one; it was old Anna with her face veiled like a bride who was playing the passionate god such a trick as we may suppose not uncommon in the rude country life of old Latium.

There is no need to be startled at the rude handling of the gods in this story, which seems so unlike the stately and orderly ideas of Roman theology. It must be borne in mind that folk-tales like this need not originally have been applied to the gods at all. They are probably only ancient country stories of human beings, based on some rude marriage custom—stories such as delighted the lower farm folk and slaves on holiday evenings; and they have survived simply because they became in course of time attached to the persons of the gods, as the conception of divinities grew to be more anthropomorphic. Granted that Anna or Perenna^[139] was the old woman of the past year, that Mars was the god of the first month, and that the story as applied to human beings was a favourite one, we can easily understand how it came to attach itself to the persons of the gods^[140].

Yet another story is told by Ovid of an Anna^[141], in writing of whom he does not add the name Perenna. The Plebs had seceded to the Mons Sacer, and were beginning to suffer from starvation, when an old woman from Bovillae, named Anna, came to the rescue with a daily supply of rustica liba. This myth seems to me to have grown out of the custom, to be described directly, of old women^[142] selling liba on the 17th 54(Liberalia), the custom having been transferred to that day through an etymological confusion between liba and Liberalia. Usener, however, saw here a connexion between Anna and Annona^[143]; and recently it has been suggested that a certain Egyptian Anna, who is said by Plutarch to have invented a mould for bread-baking, may have found her way to Rome through Greek channels^[144].

XVI Kal. Apr. (March 17). NP.

LIB[ERALIA]. (MAFF. FARN. RUST.)
LIB. AG[ONIA]. LIBERO LIB. (CAER.)
AG[ONIA]. (VAT.)
LIBERO IN CA[PITOLIO]. (FARN.)

This is one of the four days marked AG. or AGON. in the Fasti (Jan. 9, May 21, Dec. 11)^[145]. It is curious that on this day two of the old calendars should mark the Liberalia only, and one the Agonia only, and one both. The day was generally known as Liberalia^[146]; the other name seems to have been known to the priests only, and more especially to the Salii Collini or Agonenses^[147], who must have had charge of the sacrifice. Wissowa seems to be right in thinking (de Feriis xii) that the conjunction of Liberalia and Agonia is purely accidental, and that the day took its common name from the former simply because, as the latter occurred four times in the year, confusion would be likely to arise.

Liber is beyond doubt an old Italian deity, whose true nature, like that of so many others, came to be overgrown with Greek ideas and rites. There is no sign of any connexion between this festival and the cult of Dionysus; hence we 55infer that there was an old Latin Liber before the arrival of the Greek god in Italy. What this god was, however, can hardly be inferred from his cult, of which we only know a single feature, recorded by Ovid^[148]. He tells us that old women, sacerdotes Liberi, sat crowned with ivy all about the streets on this day with cakes of oil and honey (liba), and a small portable altar (foculus), on which to sacrifice for the benefit of the buyer of these cakes. This tells us nothing substantial, and we have to fall back on the name—always an uncertain method. The best authorities seem now agreed in regarding the word Liber (whatever be its etymology) as having something of the same meaning as genius, forming an adjective liberalis as genius forms genialis, and meaning a creative, productive spirit, full of blessing, and so generous, free, &c.^[149] If this were so it would not be unnatural that the characteristics and rites of Dionysus should find here a stem on which to engraft themselves, or that Liber should become the object of obscene ceremonies which need not be detailed here, and also the god of the Italian vine-growers.

It is possible that Liber may have been an ancient cult-title of Jupiter; we do in fact find a Jupiter Liber in inscriptions, though the combination is uncommon^[150]. In that case Liber may have been an emanation or off-shoot from Jupiter, as Silvanus probably was from Mars^[151]. But I am disposed to think that the characteristics of Liber, so far as we know them, are not in keeping with those of Jupiter; and that the process was rather of the opposite kind, that is, the cult of Liber in its later form became attached to that of Jupiter, who was always the presiding deity of vineyards and wine-making^[152].

56This was also the usual day on which boys assumed the toga virilis (toga recta, pura, libera):

We know indeed that in the late Republic and Empire other days were used for this ceremony: Virgil took his toga on Oct. 15, Octavian on Oct. 18, Tiberius on April 24, Nero on July 7^[154]; but it is likely that this day was in earlier times the regular one, in spite of the inconvenience of a disparity of age thence resulting amongst the tirones. For whether or no the toga libera has any real connexion with the Liberalia, this was the time when the army was called out for the year, and when the tirones would be required to present themselves^[155]. Ovid tells us that on this day the rustic population flocked into the city for the Liberalia, and the opportunity was doubtless taken to make known the list of tirones, as the boys were called when the toga was assumed and they were ready for military service.

They sacrificed, it appears, before leaving home and again on the Capitol, either to Pubertas or Liber, or both^[156].

On this day also, according to Ovid, and also on the previous one, some kind of a procession ‘went to the Argei’^[157]; by which word is meant, we may be almost sure, the Argeorum sacella. There were in various parts of the four regions of the Servian city a number of sacella or sacraria, which were called Argei, Argea, or Argeorum sacella. What these were we never 57shall know for certain; but we may be fairly sure that their number was twenty-four, six for each region; the same number as that of the rush puppets or simulacra also called Argei, which were thrown into the Tiber by the Vestal Virgins on May 15. The identity of the name and number leads to the belief that there was a connexion between these sacella and the simulacra; but the very difficult questions which arose about both must be postponed till we have before us the whole of the ceremonial, i. e. that of May 15 as well as that of March 17. About this last we know nothing and can at best attempt to infer its character from the ceremony in May, of which we fortunately have some particulars on which we can fully rely.

Kal. xiv Apr. (March 19). NP Caer. Vat. N. Maff.

QUINQ[VATRUS]. (CAER. MAFF. PRAEN. VAT. FARN.)
QUINQUATRIA. (RUST. PHIL. SILV.)

A note is appended in Praen., which is thus completed by Mommsen with the help of a Verrian gloss (Fest. 254).

[RECTIUS TAMEN ALII PUTARUNT DICTUM AB EO QUOD HIC DIES EST POST DIEM V IDUS. QUO]D IN LATIO POST [IDUS DIES SIMILI FERE RATIONE DECLI]NARENTUR.

FERIAE MARTI (VAT.)

[SALI] FACIUNT IN COMITIO SALTUS [ADSTANTIBUS PO]NTIFICIBUS ET TRIB[UNIS] CELER[UM]. Praen., in which we find yet another note: ARTIFICUM DIES [QUOD MINERVAE] AEDIS IN AVENTINO EO DIE EST [DEDICATA].

The original significance of this day is indicated by the note Feriae Marti in Vat., and also by that in Praen., which has been amplified with tolerable certainty. The Salii were active this day in the worship of Mars, and the scene of their activity was the Comitium. With this agrees, as Mommsen has pointed out, the statement of Varro^[158] that the Comitium was the scene 58of some of their performances, though he does not mention which. More light is thrown on the matter by the grammarian Charisius^[159], who, in suggesting an explanation of the name Quinquatrus by which this day was generally known, remarks that it was derived from a verb quinquare, to purify, ‘quod eo die arma ancilia lustrari sint solita.’ His etymology is undoubtedly wrong, but the reason given for it is valuable^[160]. The ancilia were purified on this day (perhaps by the Salii dancing around them), and thus it exactly answers to the Armilustrium on Oct. 19, just as the horse-races on the Ides of March, if that indeed were the original day, correspond to the ceremony of the ‘October horse’^[161].

The object and meaning of the lustratio in each case is not, however, quite clear. Since in March the season of war began, and ended, no doubt, originally in October^[162], and as the Salii seem to be a kind of link between the religious and military sides of the state’s life, we are tempted to guess that the lustration of the ancilia represented in some way the lustration of the arms of the entire host, or perhaps that the latter were all lustrated so as to be ready for use, on this day, and once again on Oct. 19 before they were put away for the winter. In this latter case the Salii would be the leaders of, as well as sharers in, a general purifying process. And that this is the right view seems to be indicated by Verrius’ note in the Praenestine calendar, from which it is clear that the tribuni celerum were present, and took some part in the ceremony. These tribuni were almost certainly the three leaders of the original cavalry force of the three ancient tribes, and they seem to have united both priestly and military characteristics^[163]; and from their presence in the Comitium may perhaps also be inferred that of the leaders of the infantry tribuni militum. In the earliest times, therefore, the arms of the whole host may have been lustrated in the presence of its leaders, the Salii, so to 59speak, performing the service; but in later times the Salii alone were left, and their arms alone lustrated, though possibly individuals representing the ancient tribuni celerum may have appeared as congregation.

But this day was generally known as Quinquatrus, simply because it was the fifth day after the Ides^[164]; i.e. there was a space of three days between the Ides and the festival. Such intervals of three days, either between the Ides and the festival or between one festival and another, occur several times in the Roman calendar^[165], though in this instance alone the day following the interval appears in the calendars as Quinquatrus. The term was no doubt a pontifical one, and the meaning was unknown to the common people; in any case it came to be misunderstood, and was in later times popularly applied to the four days following the festival as well as the festival itself; its first syllable being taken to indicate a five-day period instead of the fifth day after the Ides. This popular mistake led to still further confusion owing to a curious change in the religious character of these days, about the nature of which there can be no serious doubt.

The 19th came to be considered as sacred to Minerva^[166], because a temple to that goddess was consecrated on this day, on the Caelian or the Aventine, or possibly both^[167]. There is no obvious connexion between Mars and Minerva; and it is now thought probable that Minerva has here simply taken 60the place of another goddess, Nerio—one almost lost to sight in historical times, but of whose early connexion with Mars some faint traces are to be found. Thus where we find Minerva brought into close relation with Mars, as in the myth of Anna Perenna, it is thought that we should read Nerio instead of Minerva^[168]. This conclusion is strengthened by a note of Porphyrion on Horace Epist. ii. 2. 209 ‘Maio mense religio est nubere, et etiam Martio, in quo de nuptiis habito certamine a Minerva Mars victus est: obtenta virginitate Neriene est appellata.’ As Neriene must = Nerio^[169], this looks much like an attempt to explain the occurrence of two female names, Minerva and Nerio, in the same story; the original heroine, Nerio, having been supplanted by the later Minerva^[170].

Of this Nerio much, perhaps too much, has been made in recent years by ingenious scholars. A complete love-story has been discovered, in which Mars, at first defeated in his wooing, as Porphyrion tells us in the passage just quoted, eventually becomes victorious; for Nerio is called wife of Mars in a fragment of an old comedy by Licinius Imbrex, in a passage of Plautus, and in a prayer put into the mouth of Hersilia by Gellius the annalist, when she asked for peace at the hand of T. Tatius^[171]. And this story has been fitted on, without sufficient warrant, to the Mars-festivals of this month. Mars is supposed to have been born on the Kalends, to have grown wondrously between Kalends and Ides, to have fallen then in love with Nerio, to have been fooled as we saw by Anna Perenna, to have been rejected and defeated by his sweetheart, and finally to have won her as his wife on the 19th^[172]. Are we to find here a fragment of real Italian mythology, or an elaborate example of the Graecizing anthropomorphic tendencies of the third and second centuries B.C.?

The question is a difficult one, and lies rather outside the scope of this work. Those who have read Usener’s brilliant 61paper will find it hard to shake themselves free of the conviction that he has unearthed a real myth, unless they carefully study the chapter of Aulus Gellius which is its chief foundation. Such a study has brought me back to the conviction that Plautus and the others were writing in terms of the fashionable modes of thought of their day, and were not appealing to popular ideas of the relations of Italian deities to each other^[173]. Aulus Gellius begins by quoting a comprecatio from the book of the Libri sacerdotum populi Romani. ‘In his scriptum est: Luam Saturni, Salaciam Neptuni, Horam Quirini, Virites Quirini, Maiam Volcani, Heriem Iunonis, Moles Martis Nerienemque Martis.’ A glance at the names thus coupled together is enough to show that Mars is not here thought of as the husband of Neriene; the names Lua, Salacia, &c., seem rather to express some characteristic of the deity with whose name they are joined or some mode of his operation^[174]; and Gellius himself, working on an etymology of Nerio which has generally been accepted as correct, explains the name thus: ‘Nerio igitur Martis vis et potentia et maiestas quaedam esse Martis demonstratur.’ In the latter part of his chapter, after quoting Plautus, he says that he has heard the poet blamed by an eminent critic for the strange and false notion that Nerio was the wife of Mars; but he is inclined to think that there was a real tradition to that effect, and cites his namesake the annalist and Licinius Imbrex in support of his view.

But neither annalist nor play-writer can stand against that passage from the sacred books with which he began his chapter; and if we give the latter its due weight, the value of the others is relatively diminished. It appears to me that 62the one represents the true primitive Italian idea of divine powers, which with its abundance of names offered excellent opportunities to anthropomorphic tendencies of the Graecizing school, while the others show those tendencies actually producing their results. Any conclusion on the point must be of the nature of a guess; but I am strongly disposed to think (1) that Nerio was not originally an independent deity, but a name attached to Mars expressive of some aspect of his power, (2) that the name gradually became endowed with personality, and (3) that out of the combination of Mars and Nerio the Graecizing school developed a myth of which the fragments have been taken by Usener and his followers as pure Roman.

Having once been displaced by Minerva, Nerio vanished from the calendar, and with her that special aspect of Mars—whatever it may have been—which the name was intended to express. The five days, 18th to 23rd, became permanently associated with Minerva. The 19th was the dedication-day of at least one of her temples, and counted as her birthday^[175]: the 23rd was the Tubilustrium, with a sacrifice to ‘dea fortis,’ who seems to have been taken for Minerva, owing to an incorrect idea that the latter was specially the deity of trumpet-players^[176]. She was no doubt an old Italian deity of artificers and trade-guilds; but the Tubilustrium was really a Mars-festival, and Minerva had no immediate connexion with it.

x Kal. Apr. (March 23). NP.

TUBILUST[RIUM]. (CAER. MAFF. VAT. FARN. MIN. III.)
TUBILUSTRIUM. (PHILOC.)

Note in Praen.: [FERIAE] MARTI^[177]. HIC DIES APPELLATUR ITA, QUOD IN ATRIO SUTORIO TUBI LUSTRANTUR, QUIBUS IN SACRIS UTUNTUR. LUTATIUS QUIDEM CLAVAM EAM AIT ESSE IN RUINIS PALA[TI I]NCENSI A GALLIS REPERTAM, QUA ROMULUS URBEM INAUGURAVERIT.

Q. R. C. F. (VAT. CAER.)

Q. REX. C. F. (MAFF. PRAEN.)

Note in Praen.: HUNC DIEM PLERIQUE PERPERAM INTERPRETANTES PUTANT APPELLAR[I] QUOD EO DIE EX COMITIO FUGERIT [REX: N]AM NEQUE TARQUINIUS ABIIT EX COMITIO [URBIS], ET ALIO QUOQUE MENSE EADEM SUNT [IDEMQUE S]IGNIFICANT. QU[ARE COMITIIS PERACTIS IUDICI]A FIERI INDICA[RI IIS MAGIS PUTAMUS]^[178].

These two days must be taken in connexion with the 23rd and 24th of May, which are marked in the calendars in exactly the same way. The explanation suggested by Mommsen is simple and satisfactory^[179]; the 24th of March and of May were the two fixed days on which the comitia curiata met for the sanctioning of wills^[180] under the presidency of the Rex. The 23rd in each month, called Tubilustrium, would be the day of the lustration of the tubae or tubi used in summoning the assembly. The letters Q. R. C. F. (quando rex comitiavit fas) mean that on the days so marked proceedings in the courts might only begin when the king had dissolved the Comitia.

The tuba, as distinguished from the tibia, which was the typical Italian instrument, was a long straight tube of brass with a bell mouth^[181]. It was used chiefly in military^[182] and 64religious ceremonies; and as the comitia curiata was an assembly both for military and religious objects, this would suit well with Mommsen’s idea of the object of the lustration. The Tubilustrium was the day on which these instruments, which were to be used at the meeting of the comitia on the following day, were purified by the sacrifice of a lamb. Of the Atrium Sutorium, where the rite took place, we know nothing.

There are some words at the end of Verrius’ note in the Praenestine Calendar, which, as Mommsen has pointed out^[183], come in abruptly and look as if something had dropped out: ‘Lutatius quidem clavam eam ait esse in ruinis Pala[ti i]ncensi a Gallis repertam, qua Romulus urbem inauguraverit.’ This clava must be the lituus of Romulus, mentioned by Cicero^[184], which was found on the Palatine and kept in the Curia Saliorum. We cannot, however, see clearly what Verrius or his excerptor meant to tell us about it; there would seem to have been a confusion between lituus in the sense of baculum and lituus in the sense of a tuba incurva. The latter was in use as well as the ordinary straight tuba^[185]; in shape it closely resembled the clava of the augur, and perhaps the resemblance led to the notion that it was the clava of Romulus and not a tuba which was this day purified with the other tubae.

We can learn little or nothing from the calendar of this month about the origin of Mars, and we have no other sufficient evidence on which to base a satisfactory conjecture. But from the cults of the month, and partly also from those of October, we can see pretty clearly what ideas were prominent in his worship even in the early days of the Roman state. They were chiefly two, and the two were closely connected. He was the Power who must be specially invoked to procure the safety of crops and cattle; and secondly, in his keeping were the safety and success of the freshly-enrolled host with its armour and its trumpets. In short, he was that deity to whom the most ancient Romans looked for aid at the season when all living things, man included, broke into fresh activity. He represents 65the characteristics of the early Roman more exactly than any other god; for there are two things which we may believe with certainty about the Roman people in the earliest times—(1) that their life and habits of thought were those of an agricultural race; and (2) that they continually increased their cultivable land by taking forcible possession in war of that of their neighbours.

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 67are 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 68we 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 69converteretur^[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]. 70Scipio 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 71twenty 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].

72Many 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 73first 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, 74that 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, 75and 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 76with 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 77Greek 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].

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]:

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 78corruption of the MSS. has obscured for us^[250]. Then he concludes:

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 79ear 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—

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 80the 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:

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 81foliage 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:

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 82religion—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]:

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:

The Parilia of the urbs was celebrated in much the same way in its main features; but the day was reckoned as the 83birthday 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:

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 84Parilia 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 85the 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 86Ovid 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]:

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 87to 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 88that 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] 89tells 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]:

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]:

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 91that 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 FLORÆ (CAER.) LUDI FLORÆ. (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.

92This 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].

There may, however, have been something in the nature of ludi before this date and at the same time of year, but not of a regular or public character. Flora was beyond doubt an old Italian deity^[334], probably closely related to Ceres and Venus. There was a Flamen Floralis of very old standing^[335]; and Flora is one of the deities to whom piacula were offered by the Fratres 93Arvales^[336]—a list beginning with Janus and ending with Vesta. There is no doubt, then, that there was a Flora-cult in Rome long before the foundation of the temple and the games in 238; and though its character may have changed under the influence of the Sibylline books, we may be able to glean some particulars as to its original tendency.

In the account of Ovid and from other hints we gather—

1. That indecency was let loose^[337] at any rate on the original day of the ludi (April 28), which were in later times extended to May 3. The numen of Flora, says Ovid, was not strict. Drunkenness was the order of the day, and the usual results followed:

The prostitutes of Rome hailed this as their feast-day, as well as the Vinalia on the 23rd; and if we may trust a story told by Valerius Maximus^[338], Cato the younger withdrew from the theatre rather than behold the mimae unclothe themselves, though he would not interfere with the custom. Flora herself, like Acca Larentia, was said by late writers to have been a harlot whose gains enabled her to leave money for the ludi^[339]. These characteristics of the festival were no doubt developed under the influence of luxury in a large city, and grew still more objectionable under the Empire^[340]. But it is difficult to believe that such practices would have grown up as they did at this particular time of year, had there not been some previous customs of the kind existing before the ludi were regularly instituted.

2. We find another curious custom belonging to the last days of the ludi, which became common enough under the Empire^[341], but may yet have had an origin in the cult of Flora. 94Hares and goats were let loose in the Circus Maximus on these days. Ovid asks Flora:

and gets the answer:

If we take this answer as at least appropriate, we may add to it the reflection that hares and goats are prolific animals and also that they are graminivorous. Flora as a goddess of fertility and bloom could have nothing in common with fierce carnivora. But we are also reminded of the foxes that were let loose in the Circus at the Cerialia^[343], and may see in these beasts as in the foxes animal representations of the spirit of fertility.

3. Another custom is possibly significant in something the same way. From a passage in Persius we learn that vetches, beans, and lupines were scattered among the people in the circus^[344]. The commentators explain this as meaning that they were thrown simply to be scrambled for as food; and we know that other objects besides eatables were thrown on similar occasions, at any rate at a later time^[345]. But it is noticeable that among these objects were medals with obscene representations on them; and putting two and two together it is not unreasonable to guess that the original custom had a meaning connected with fructification. Dr. Mannhardt^[346] has collected a very large number of examples of the practice of sprinkling and throwing all kinds of grain, including rice, peas, beans, &c., from all parts of the world, in the marriage rite and at the birth of children; amply sufficient to prove that the custom is symbolic of fertility. Bearing in mind the time of year, the nature of Flora, the character of the April rites generally, and 95the occurrence of the women’s cult of the Bona Dea on May 1, viz. one of the days of the ludi, we may perhaps conjecture that the custom in question was a very old one—far older than the organized games—and had reference to the fertility both of the earth and of man himself^[347].

Feriae Latinae.

A brief account may be here given of the great Latin festival which usually in historical times took place in April. Though it was not held at Rome, but on the Alban Mount, it was under the direct supervision of the Roman state, and was in reality a Roman festival. The consuls on their entrance upon office on the Ides of March had to fix and announce the date of it^[348]; and when in 153 B.C. the day of entrance was changed to January 1, the date of the festival does not seem to have been changed to suit it. The consuls must be present themselves, leaving a praefectus urbi at Rome^[349]; or in case of the compulsory absence of both consuls a dictator might be appointed Feriarum Latinarum causa. Only when the festival was over could they leave Rome for their provinces.

It was therefore a festival of the highest importance to the Roman state. But the ritual will show that it must in fact have been much older than that state as we know it in historical times; it was a common festival of the most ancient Latin communities^[350], celebrated on the lofty hill which arose in their midst, where dwelt the great protecting deity of their race. At what date Rome became the presiding city at the festival we do not know. The foundation of the temple on the hill was 96ascribed to the Tarquinii, and this tradition seems to be borne out by the character of the foundations discovered there, which resemble those of the Capitoline temple^[351]. No doubt the Tarquinii may have renovated the cult or even given it an extended significance; but the Roman presidency must conjecturally be placed still further back. Perhaps no festival, Greek or Roman, carries us over such a vast period of time as this; its features betray its origin in the pastoral age, and it continued in almost uninterrupted grandeur till the end of the third century A.D., or even later^[352].

The ritual as known to us was as follows^[353]. When the magistrates or (their deputies) of all the Latin cities taking part had assembled at the temple, the Roman consul offered a libation of milk, while the deputies from the other cities brought sheep, cheeses, or other such offerings. But the characteristic rite was the slaughter of a pure white heifer that had never felt the yoke. This sacrifice was the duty of the consul, who acted on behalf of the whole number of cities. When it was concluded, the flesh of the victim was divided amongst all the deputies and consumed by them. To be left out of this common meal, or sacrament, would be equivalent to being excluded from communion with the god and the Latin league, and the desire to obtain the allotted flesh is more than once alluded to^[354]. A general festivity followed the sacrifice, while oscilla, or little puppets, were hung from the branches of trees as at the Paganalia^[355]. As usual in Italy, the least oversight in the ceremony or evil omen made it necessary to begin it all over again; and this occasionally happened^[356]. Lastly, during the festival there was a truce between all the cities, and it 97would seem that the alliance between Rome and the Latins was yearly renewed on the day of the Feriae^[357].

Some of the leading characteristics of the Italian Jupiter will be considered further on^[358]. But this festival may teach us that we are here in the presence of the oldest and finest religious conception of the Latin race, which yearly acknowledges its common kinship of blood and seals it by partaking in the common meal of a sacred victim, thus entering into communion with the god, the victim, and each other^[359]. The offerings are characteristic rather of a pastoral than an agricultural age, and suggest an antiquity that is fully confirmed by the ancient utensils dug up on the Alban Mount^[360]. As Helbig has pointed out, the absence of any mention of wine proves that the origin of the festival must be dated earlier than the introduction of the grape into Italy. The white victim may be a reminiscence of some primitive white breed of cattle. The common meal of the victim’s flesh is a survival from the age when cattle were sacred animals, and were never slain except on the solemn annual occasions when the clan renewed its kinship and its mutual obligations by a solemn sacrament^[361].

As Rome absorbed Latium, so Jupiter Latiaris gave way before the great god of the Capitol, who is the symbol of the later victorious and imperial Rome; but the god of the Alban hill and his yearly festival continued to recall the early share of the Latins in the rise of their leading city, long after the population of their towns had been so terribly thinned that some of them could hardly find a surviving member to represent them at the festival and take their portion of the victim^[362].

Was the name of this month taken from a deity Maia, or had it originally only a signification of growing or increasing, such as we might expect in a word derived from the same root as maior, maiestas, &c.? The following passage of Macrobius will show how entirely the Roman scholars were at sea in their answer to this question^[363]:

‘Maium Romulus tertium posuit. De cuius nomine inter auctores lata dissensio est. Nam Fulvius Nobilior in Fastis quos in aede Herculis Musarum posuit^[364] Romulum dicit postquam populum in maiores iunioresque diuisit, ut altera pars consilio altera armis rem publicam tueretur, in honorem utriusque partis hunc Maium, sequentem Iunium mensem uocasse^[365]. Sunt qui hunc mensem ad nostros fastos a Tusculanis transisse commemorent, apud quos nunc quoque uocatur deus Maius, qui est Iuppiter, a magnitudine scilicet ac maiestate dictus^[366]. Cingius^[367] mensem nominatum putat a Maia quam Vulcani dicit uxorem, argumentoque utitur quod flamen Vulcanalis Kalendis Maiis huic deae rem diuinam facit. Sed Piso uxorem Vulcani Maiestam non Maiam dicit uocari. Contendunt alii Maiam Mercurii matrem mensi nomen dedisse, hinc maxime probantes quod hoc mense mercatores omnes 99Maiae pariter Mercurioque sacrificant^[368]. Adfirmant quidam, quibus Cornelius Labeo consentit, hanc Maiam cui mense Maio res diuina celebratur terram esse hoc adeptam nomen a magnitudine, sicut et Mater Magna in sacris uocatur adsertionemque aestimationis suae etiam hinc colligunt quod sus praegnans ei mactatur, quae hostia propria est terrae. Et Mercurium ideo illi in sacris adiungi dicunt quia uox nascenti homini terrae contactu datur, scimus autem Mercurium uocis et sermonis potentem. Auctor est Cornelius Labeo huic Maiae id est terrae aedem Kalendis Maiis dedicatam sub nomine Bonae Deae et eandem esse Bonam Deam et terram ex ipso ritu occultiore sacrorum doceri posse confirmat. Hanc eandem Bonam deam Faunamque et Opem et Fatuam pontificum libris indigitari, &c.’

It is clear from this passage that the Romans themselves were not agreed, either in the case of May or June, that the name of the month was derived from a deity. No Roman scholar doubted that Martius was derived from Mars, the characteristic god of the Roman race; but Maia was a deity known apparently only to the priests and the learned. Had she been a popular one, what need could there have been to question so obvious an etymology? And if she were an obscure one, how could she have given her name to a month? As a matter of fact March is the only month of which we can be sure that it was named after a god. Even January is doubtful, June still more so. The natural assumption about this latter word would be that it comes from Juno, more especially as we find in Latium the words Junonius and Junonalis as names of months^[369]. But if Junius came from Juno, it must have come by the dropping out of a syllable; and this, in the case of a long and accented o, would be at least unlikely to happen^[370]. Nor can we discover any sufficient reason why the month of June should be called after Juno; none at any rate such as accounts for the connexion of Mars with the initial month of the year. This is enough to show 100that the derivation of June from Juno must be left doubtful; and if so, certainly that of May from Maia. In the case of this month, not only does the natural meaning of mensis Maius suit well as following the mensis Aprilis, but there is no cult of a deity Maia which is found throughout the month.

Any one who reads the passage of Macrobius with some knowledge of the Roman theological system will hardly fail to conclude that Maia is only a priestly indigitation of another deity, and that the name thus invented was simply taken from the name of the month as explained above. This deity was more generally known, as Macrobius implies, by the name Bona Dea, and her temple was dedicated on the Kalends of May.

It is difficult to characterize the position of the month of May in the religious calendar. It was to some extent no doubt a month of purification. At the Lemuria the house was purified of hostile ghosts; the curious ceremony of the Argei on the Ides is called by Plutarch the greatest of the purifications; and at the end of the month took place the lustratio of the growing crops. We note too that it was considered ill-omened to marry in May, as it still is in many parts of Europe. The agricultural operations of the month were not of a marked character. Much work had indeed to be done in oliveyards and vineyards; some crops had to be hoed and cleaned, and the hay-harvest probably began in the latter part of the month. In the main it was a time of somewhat anxious expectation and preparation for the harvest to follow; and this falls in fairly well with the general character of its religious rites.

Kal. Mai. (May 1.) F.

LAR[IBUS]. (VEN.) L——. (ESQ.)

This was the day on which, according to Ovid^[371], an altar and ‘parva signa’ had been erected to the Lares praestites. They were originally of great antiquity, but had fallen into decay in Ovid’s time:

101Ovid himself had apparently not seen the signa, though he looked for them; and no doubt he took from Varro the description he gives. They had the figure of a dog at their feet^[373], and, according to Plutarch, were clothed in dogs’ skins. Both Ovid and Plutarch explained the dog as symbolizing their watch over the city; though Plutarch, following, as he says, certain Romans, preferred to think of them rather as evil demons searching out and punishing guilt like dogs. The mention of the skins is very curious, and we can hardly separate it from the numerous other instances in which the images of deities are known to have been clothed in the skins of victims sacrificed to them^[374]. We may indeed fairly conclude that the Lares were chthonic deities, and as such were originally appeased, like Hekate in Greece^[375], by the sacrifice of dogs. We have already had one example of the dog used as a victim^[376]. Two others are mentioned by Plutarch^[377]; in one case the deity was the obscure Genita Mana, and in the other the unknown god of the Lupercalia, both of which belong in all probability to the same stratum of Italian religious antiquity as the Lares. Whether we should go further, and infer from the use of the skins that the Lares were originally worshipped in the form of dogs^[378], is a question I must leave undecided; the evidence is very scanty. There is no trace of any connexion with the dog in the cult of the Lares domestici^[379], or Compitales.

This is also the traditional day of the dedication of a temple to the Bona Dea, on the slopes of the Aventine, under a big sacred rock. It is thus described by Ovid^[380]:

The allusion to Remus fixes the site on the Aventine. The date is uncertain^[381]; so too the alleged foundation by Claudia, which may be only a reflection from the story of the part played by a Claudia in the introduction of the Magna Mater Idaea to Rome^[382]. The temple, as Ovid says, was restored by Livia, in accordance with the policy of her husband, also at an unknown date.

Of the cult belonging to this temple we have certain traces, which also help us to some vague conception of the nature of the deity. It should be observed that though in one essential particular, viz. the exclusion of men, this cult was similar to that of December, it must have been quite distinct from it, as the latter took place, not in a temple, but in the house of a magistrate cum imperio^[383].

1. The temple was cared for, and the cult celebrated, by women only^[384]. There was an old story that Hercules, when driving the cattle of Geryon, asked for water by the cave of Cacus of the women celebrating the festival of the goddess, and was refused, because the women’s festival was going on, and men were not allowed to use their drinking-vessels; and that this led to the corresponding exclusion of women from the worship of Hercules^[385]. The myth obviously arose out of the practice. The exclusion of men points to the earth-nature 103of the Bona Dea; the same was the case in the worship of the Athenian Demeter Thesmophoros. The earth seems always to be spiritualized as feminine even among savage peoples^[386], and the reason of the exclusion of men is not difficult to conjecture, just as the exclusion of women from the worship of Hercules is explained by the fact that Hercules represents the male principle in the ancient Roman religion^[387].

2. Macrobius^[388] tells us that wine could not be brought into the temple suo nomine, but only under the name of milk, and that the vase in which it was carried was called mellarium, i. e. a vase for honey. A legend grew up to account for the custom, to which we shall refer again, that Faunus had beaten his daughter Fauna (i. e. Bona Dea) with a rod of myrtle because she would not yield to his incestuous love or drink the wine he pressed on her^[389]. This may indicate a survival from the time when the herdsman used no wine in sacred rites, but milk and honey only; Pliny tells us of such a time^[390], and his evidence is confirmed by the poets. In any case milk would be the appropriate offering to the Earth-mother, and it is hard to see why it should have been changed to wine, unless it were that life in the city and Greek influence altered the character both of the Bona Dea and her worshippers. The really rustic deities had milk offered them, e. g. Silvanus, Pales, and Ceres. The general inference from this survival is that the Bona Dea was originally of the same nature with these deities, but lost her rusticity when she became part of an organized city worship.

3. Myrtle was not allowed in this temple; hence the myth that Faunus beat his daughter with a myrtle rod^[391]. But could 104the exclusion of myrtle by itself have suggested the beating? Dr. Mannhardt answers in the negative, and conjectures that there must have been some kind of beating in the cult itself, which gave rise to the story^[392]. Dr. Mannhardt never made a conjecture without a large collection of facts on which to base it; and here he depends upon a number of instances from Greece and Northern Europe, in which man or woman, or some object such as the image of a deity, is whipped with rods, nettles, strips of leather, &c., in order, as it would seem, to produce fertility and drive away hostile influences. We shall see the same peculiarity occurring at the Lupercalia in February^[393], where its object and meaning are almost beyond doubt. Many of these practices occur, it is worth noting, on May-day. If the Bona Dea was a representative in any sense of the fertility of women, as well as of the fructifying powers of the earth—and the two ideas seem naturally to have run together in the primitive mind—we may provisionally accept Dr. Mannhardt’s ingenious suggestion. If it be objected that as myrtle was excluded from the cult it could not have been used therein for the purpose of whipping, the answer is simply that as being invested with some mysterious power it was tabooed from ordinary use, but, like certain kinds of victims, was introduced on special and momentous occasions.

4. The temple was a kind of herbarium in which herbs were kept with healing properties^[394]. A group of interesting inscriptions shows that the Bona Dea did not confine her healing powers to cases of women, but cured the ailments of both sexes^[395]. This attribute of the goddess is borne out by the presence of snakes in her temple, the usual symbol of the medicinal art, and at the same time appropriate to the Bona Dea as an Earth-goddess^[396]. It is possible that this feature is a Greek importation; but on the whole I see no reason why 105the female ministrants of the temple should not have exercised such healing powers, or have sold or given herbs at request, even at a very early period. No doubt Greek medicinal learning became associated with it, but that the knowledge of simples was indigenous in Italy we have abundant proof^[397]; and that it should have been connected with no cult of a deity until Aesculapius was introduced from Greece, is most improbable.

5. The sacrifice mentioned is that of a porca^[398]. The pig is also the victim in the worship of Ceres, of Juno Lucina^[399] (as alternative for a lamb), and as a piacular sacrifice in the ritual of the deity of the Fratres Arvales (Dea Dia); it seems in fact, as in Greece, to be appropriate to deities of the earth and of women. There is no reason to suppose that wherever it is found it had a Greek origin; even in the cult of Ceres, which, as we saw, became early overlaid with Greek practice^[400], the pig may have been the victim before that change took place. But it is a singular fact that in the worship of the Bona Dea, either at the temple of the Aventine, or in the December rite—more probably perhaps in the latter—the victim was called by a name which looks suspiciously Greek, viz. Damium^[401]. It seems that there was a deity Damia who was worshipped here and there in Greece, and also in Southern Italy, e. g. at Tarentum, where she had a festival called Dameia^[402]. It looks as if this Greek deity had at one time migrated from Tarentum to Rome, and become engrafted upon the indigenous Bona Dea; for we are expressly told that Damia was identical with the Bona Dea, and that the priestess of the latter was called Damiatrix^[403]. Much has been written about these very obscure names, without any very definite result; but it seems to be 106generally agreed that the form of the word damiatrix indicates a high antiquity for the Graecized form of the cult, and may indeed possibly suggest an Italian origin for the whole group of names. In this uncertainty conjectures are almost useless.

We have seen enough of the cult to gain some idea of the nature of this mysterious deity, whose real name was not known, even if she had one^[404]. We need not identify her with Vesta, as some have done^[405], nor with Juno Lucina, nor with any other female deity of the class to which she seems to have belonged. She must at one time have been, whatever she afterwards became, a protective deity of the female sex, the Earth-mother^[406], a kindly and helpful, but shy and unknowable deity of fertility. The name Bona Dea is probably to be regarded as one indigitation of the Earth-spirit known by a variety of other names and appearing in a number of different phases. There is indeed a remarkable indefiniteness about the Italian female deities of this class; they never gained what we may call complete specific distinctness, but are rather half-formed species developed from a common type. They form, in fact, an excellent illustration of the nature of that earliest stratum of Roman religious belief which has been called pandaemonism—a belief in a world of spiritual powers not yet grown into the forms of individual deities, but ready at any moment, under influences either native or foreign, to take a more definite shape.

VII. Id. Mai. (May 9). N.

LEM[VRIA]. (VEN. MAFF.)

V. Id. Mai. (May 11). N.

LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)

III. Id. Mai. (May 13). N.

LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)

The word Lemuria indicates clearly enough some kind of worship of the dead; but we know of no such public cult on 107these three days except from the calendars. What Ovid describes as taking place at this time is a private and domestic rite performed by the head of the household^[407]; and Ovid is our only informant in regard to details. In historical times the public festival of the dead was that of the dies parentales in February, ending with the Feralia on the 21st. How, then, is it that the three days of the Lemuria appear in those large letters in the ancient calendars, which, as we have seen^[408], indicate the public festivals of the religious system of the Republic? There is no certain answer to this question. We can but guess that the Lemuria was at one time, like the Feralia, a public festival, but descended from a more ancient deposit of superstition which in historical times was buried deep beneath the civilization of a developed city life^[409]. Ovid himself implies that the Lemuria was an older festival than the Feralia^[410], and we may suppose him to be following Varro as a guide. And if we compare his account of the grotesque domestic rites of the Lemuria with those of February, which were of a systematic, cheerful, and even beautiful character, we may feel fairly sure that the latter represents the organized life of a city state, the former the ideas of an age when life was wilder and less secure, and the fear of the dead and of demons generally was a powerful factor in the minds of the people. If we may argue from Ovid’s account, to be described directly, it is not impossible that the Lemuria may have been one of those periodical expulsions of demons of which Mr. Frazer has told us so much in his Golden Bough^[411], and which are performed on behalf of the community as well as in the domestic circle amongst savage peoples. It is noticeable that the offering of food to the demons is a feature common to these practices, and that it also appears in those described by Ovid.

The difference of character in the two Roman festivals of the dead is perhaps also indicated by the fact that the days of the Lemuria are marked in the calendars with the letter N, 108while the Feralia is marked F or FP^[412]. This may perhaps point to two different views of the attitude of the dead to the living, affecting the character of the festival days; they are friendly or hostile, as they have been buried with due rites and carefully looked after, or as they have failed of these dues and are consequently angry and jealous^[413]. The latter of these attitudes is more in keeping with the notions of uncivilized man, and of a life not as yet wholly brought under the influence of the civilization of the city-state. To be more certain, however, on this point, we must try and discover the real meaning of the word lemur.

The definition given by Porphyrio is ‘Umbras vagantes hominum ante diem mortuorum atque ideo metuendas^[414].’ Nonius has the following: ‘Lemures larvae nocturnae et terrificationes imaginum et bestiarum^[415].’ From these passages it would seem that lemures and larvae mean much the same thing; on the other hand Appuleius^[416] implies that lemures is a general word for spirits after they have left the body, while those that haunt houses are especially called larvae. But on a question of this kind, the philosophical and uncritical Appuleius is not to be weighed as an authority against either Nonius or Porphyrio, who may quite possibly be here representing the learning of the Augustan age; and a perusal of the whole of his passage will show that he is simply trying to classify ghosts by the light of his own imagination. Judging from the hints of the two other scholars, we may perhaps conclude that lemures and larvae are to be distinguished as hostile ghosts from manes, the good people (as the word is generally explained), i. e. those duly buried in the city of the dead, and whom their living descendants have no need to fear so long as they pay them their due rites at the proper seasons as members of the family. And this conclusion is confirmed by the curious etymology of Ovid^[417], reproduced by Porphyrio, deriving Lemuria from Remus. 109whose violent death was supposed to have been expiated by the institution of the festival. The difficulty is to see why, if the lemures were unburied, evil, or hostile spirits, a special festival of three days should have been necessary to appease or quiet them; and I can only account for this by supposing that such spirits were especially numerous in an age of uncivilized life and constant war and violence, and that they formed a large part of the whole world of evil demons whose expulsion was periodically demanded. It may have been the case that at this particular time in May, when the days were nefasti and marriages were ill-omened, these spirits became particularly restless and needed to be laid.

Such an explanation as this of the Lemuria is on the whole preferable to that which would regard it as the original Roman festival of all the dead; for there is now abundant evidence that even in the earliest ages of Italian life the practice of orderly burial in necropoleis was universal^[418], and this is a practice that seems inconsistent with a general belief in the dead as hostile and haunting spirits.

The following is Ovid’s description of the way in which the ghosts were laid at the Lemuria by the father of a family. At midnight he rises, and with bare feet^[419] and washed hands, making a peculiar sign with his fingers and thumbs to keep off the ghosts, he walks through the house. He has black beans in his mouth, and these he spits out as he walks, looking the other way, and saying, ‘With these I redeem me and mine.’ Nine times he says this without looking round; then come the ghosts behind him, and gather up the beans unseen. He proceeds to wash again and to make a noise with brass vessels; and after nine times repeating the formula ‘manes^[420] exite paterni,’ he at last looks round, and the ceremony is over.

110The only point in this quaint bit of ritual which need detain us is the use of beans. We have had bean-straw used at the Parilia, and we shall find that beans were also used at the festival of the dead in February. Assuredly it is not easy to see what could have made them into such valuable ‘medicine.’ Beans were not a newly discovered vegetable. Their exclusion from the rites of Demeter must have been of great antiquity, and the notions of the Pythagoreans about them were probably based on very ancient popular superstitions^[421]. No one, as far as I know, has as yet successfully solved the problem why beans had so strange a religious character about them^[422]; they probably were an ancient symbol of fertility, but it is impossible now to discover how or why the ideas grouped themselves around them, which we so constantly find both in Greece and Italy. If we ask why the ghosts picked them up, or were supposed to do so, there is some reason for believing that by eating them they might possibly hope to get a new lease of life^[423]. Whatever was the real basis of the superstition, it was a widely spread one, and ramified in more than one direction; the Roman priest of Jupiter, for example, might not touch beans nor even mention them^[424]. In his case the taboo was no doubt very old, but might have grown out of some such practice as that just described, all things ill-omened and mysterious being carefully kept out of his reach.

The days from May 7 to 14 were occupied by the Vestal Virgins in preparing the mola salsa, or sacred salt-cake, for use at the Vestalia in June, on the Ides of September, and at the Lupercalia^[425]. This was made from the first ears of standing corn in 111a primitive fashion by the three senior Vestals, and is no doubt, like most of their ritual, a relic of the domestic functions of the daughters of the family. But we must postpone further consideration of the Vestals and their duties till we come to the Vestalia in June.

Id. Mai. (May 15). NP.

FER[IAE] IOVI. MERCUR[IO] MAIAE. (VENUS^[426].)
MAIAE AD CIRC[UM] M[AXIMUM]. (CAER.) MERC[URIO]. (TUSC.)

The very curious rite which took place on this day is not mentioned in the calendars; it belonged to those which, like the Paganalia, were publica indeed and pro populo, but represented the people as divided in certain groups rather than the State as a whole^[427]. But its obvious antiquity, and the interesting questions which arise out of it, tempt me to treat it in detail, at the risk of becoming tedious.

I have already mentioned^[428] that there was a procession in March, as we infer from the sacra Argeorum quoted by Varro, which went round the sacella Argeorum, or twenty-four chapels situated in the four Servian regions of the city^[429]. What was done at these sacella we do not know; the procession and its doings had become so obscure in Ovid’s time that he could dispose of it in two lines of his Fasti, and express a doubt as to whether it took place on one day or two^[430]. Nor do we know what the sacella really were. The best conjecture is that of Jordan, who has brought some evidence together to show that they were small chapels or sacred places where holy things 112were deposited until the time came round for them to be used in some religious ceremony^[431].

But on May 15 there was another rite in which the word Argei plays a prominent part; and here the details have in part at least survived. The Argei in this case are not chapels, but a number of puppets or bundles of rushes, resembling (as Dionysius has recorded) men bound hand and foot, which were taken down to the pons sublicius by the Pontifices and magistrates, and cast into the river by the Vestal Virgins^[432]. The Flaminica Dialis, the priestess of Jupiter, was present at the ceremony in mourning. The number of the puppets was probably the same as that of the sacella of the same name^[433].

Explanations of these rites were invented by Roman scholars. The sacella were the graves of Greeks who had come to Italy with Hercules; and the puppets represented the followers of Hercules who had died on their journey and were to return home as it were by proxy^[434]. Apart from the theories of the learned, it was the fact that the common people at Rome believed the puppets to be substitutes for old men, who at one time used to be thrown into the Tiber as victims. Sexagenarios de ponte was a well-known proverb which in Cicero’s time was explained by supposing that the bridges alluded to were those over which the voters passed in the Comitia^[435]; but this view may at once be put aside. Those bridges were certainly a comparatively late invention, while the proverb was of remote antiquity.

But, given the details of the rite, and the popular belief about the old men as victims, what explanation can we hope to arrive at? We may freely admit that no satisfactory etymology of the word Argei is forthcoming; but this is perhaps, in 113a negative sense, an advantage to our inquiry^[436]. The Romans derived it from the Greek Ἀργεῖοι; and to this etymology Mommsen is now disposed to return. The writer of the article ‘Argei’ in the Mythological Lexicon derived it from varka-s = ‘wolf’; others have believed it to come from a root arg = ‘white’ or ‘shining,’ and though the termination eus is hardly a Latin one, it may be that this is the true basis of the word^[437].

Instead of prejudging the case by fanciful etymologies, or by attempting to decide the question whether the Romans ever practised the rites of human sacrifice, we will take the leading features of the ceremony, and see in what direction they may on the whole direct us. That done, it may be possible to sum up the debate, though a final and decisive verdict is not to be expected.

The features which demand attention are (1) the processional character of the rites; (2) the presence of the Pontifices and the Vestals; (3) the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis; (4) the rush-puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.

1. We can hardly doubt that there was a procession to the pons sublicius, though the fact is not expressly stated. We are tempted to believe that it visited each sacellum, and there found, or possibly made, the puppet (simulacrum), which thus represented the district of which the sacellum was the sacred centre; and that it then proceeded, bearing the puppets, probably by the Forum and Vicus Tuscus to the bridge^[438]. Now if this feature can help us at all—if we accept the connexion of the March and May ceremonies and their processional character—it must point in the direction of the purification of land or city, on the analogy of other Italian ceremonies of the same kind. 114At the end of this month took place the Ambarvalia, when the priests went round the land with prayer and sacrifice to ensure the good growth of the crops; and we have a remarkable instance of the same kind of practice in the celebrated inscription of Iguvium. Not only each city, but each pagus, and even each farmer, duly purified his land in some such way, cleansing it from the powers of evil and sterility, while at the same time the boundaries were renewed in the memories of all concerned. Bearing this in mind, and also the season of the year, we may fairly guess that the Argean processions had some relation to agriculture, and to the welfare of the precarious stock of wealth of an agricultural community.

2. The presence of the Pontifices and Vestals.—The former would be present, partly as the representative sacred college of the united city^[439], partly as having under their special care the sacred bridge from which the puppets were thrown. Whether or not the word pontifex be directly derived from pons^[440], it is certain that the ancient bridge, with its strong religious associations, was under their care, and that the river was an object of their constant liturgical attention^[441]. It has been suggested that the whole ceremony was one of bridge-worship^[442]; but this view, as we shall see, will hardly explain all the facts. It leaves the March rites unexplained, and also the presence of the Vestals; nor does it seem to suit the season of the year.

The presence of the Vestals is more significant; and it was they, as it seems, who performed the act of throwing the puppets from the bridge^[443]. In all the public duties performed by them (as we shall see more fully in dealing with the Vestalia^[444]) a reference can be traced to one leading idea, viz. that the food and nourishment of the State, of which the sacred fire was the symbol, depended for its maintenance on 115the accurate performance of these duties. We have just seen that they spent the seven days preceding the Ides of May in preparing their sacred cakes from the first ripening ears of corn. We shall see them using these cakes in June, September, and at the Lupercalia. At the Parilia and the Fordicidia they also take a prominent part, both of them festivals relating to the fruitfulness of herds and flocks; so also at the harvest festivals in August of Ops Consiva and Consus. And we can hardly suppose that their presence at the rite under discussion should have a different significance from that of their public service on all other occasions. Even if we had no other evidence to go upon, we might on the facts just adduced base a fair inference that this ceremony too had some relation to the processes and perils awaiting the ripening crops.

3. The Flaminica Dialis had on this day to lay aside her usual bridal dress, and to appear in mourning^[445]. The same rule was laid down for her during the ‘moving’ of the ancilia in March, and during the Vestalia up to the completion of the purification of the temple of Vesta. It is not easy to see what the meaning of this rule may have been. On the other two occasions there is nothing to lead us to suppose that it was some such terrible rite as human sacrifice which caused the change of costume; we need not therefore suppose that it was so on May 15. But if all three occasions are times of purification and the averting of evil influences: if they each mark the conclusion of an old season, and the necessity of great care in entering on a new one, we can better understand it. This was the case, as we saw, when in March the Salii were pervading the city, and it was so also at the Vestalia, which was preparatory to the ingathering of the crops. Some such critical moment, I think, the day we are discussing must also have been. Some light may be thrown on this aspect of the question by practices which have been collected by Dr. Mannhardt from Northern Europe^[446], some of which still 116survive. I will give a single instance from Russia. At Murom on June 29 a figure of straw, dressed in female clothing, is laid on a bier and carried to the edge of a lake or river; it is eventually torn up and thrown into the river, while the spectators hide their faces and behave as though they bewailed the death of Kostroma. In another district on the same day an old man carried out of the town a puppet representing the spring, and was followed by the women singing mournful songs and expressing by their gestures grief and despair.

4. The Puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.—There are two possible explanations of this curious practice.

(1) The puppets were substitutes for human victims, and probably for old men. The evidence for this view is—first, the Roman tradition expressed in the saying sexagenarios de ponte^[447], and supported by the fact that the puppets appeared, to Dionysius at least, like men bound hand and foot^[448]; secondly, the fact that human sacrifice was not entirely unknown at Rome, though there is no trace of any such custom regularly recurring. We may allow that Italy could not have been entirely free from a practice which existed even in Greece, and also that the habit of substituting some object for the original victim is common and well attested in religious history; but whether either the Argei, or the oscilla or maniae, which are often compared with the Argei, really had this origin, may well indeed be doubted^[449]. Thirdly, there is evidence that not only human sacrifice, but the sacrifice of old men, was by no means unknown in primitive times. Passing over the general evidence as to human sacrifice, we know that the old and weak 117were sometimes put to death^[450]. Being of no further use in the struggle for existence, they were got rid of in various ways—an act perhaps not so much of cruelty as of kindness, and under certain circumstances not incompatible with filial piety^[451]. The chief objections to this explanation are—first, that it obliges us to ascribe to the early Romans a habit which seems quite incompatible with their well-known respect for old age and their horror of parricide; secondly, that it does not explain why a practice, which can hardly have ever been a regularly recurring one, should have passed into a yearly ceremony^[452].

(2) The rite was of a dramatic rather than a sacrificial character^[453], and belongs to a class of which we have numerous examples both from Greek, Teutonic, and Slavonic peoples. In Greece, or rather in Egypt, we have the cult of Adonis, in which a puppet is immersed in the water amid wailings and lamentations. In Greece proper semi-dramatic rites are found at Chaeronea and Athens^[454], though somewhat different in character to those of the Argei and Adonis. Tacitus describes the immersion in water of the image of the German goddess Nerthus^[455]. But most significant are the many examples, of which Mannhardt formed an ample collection, in which puppets are found, made as a rule of straw, carried along in procession and thrown into a river or water of some kind, often from a bridge^[456]. Sometimes the place of these puppets is taken by a sheaf, a small tree, or a man or boy dressed up in foliage or 118fastened in the sheaf^[457]: but in almost all cases the object is ducked in water or at least sprinkled with it, though now and then it is burnt or buried. The best known example is that of the Bavarian ‘Wasservogel,’ which is either a boy or a puppet, as the custom may be in different places; he or it was decorated, carried round the fields at Whitsuntide^[458], and thrown from the bridge into the stream. So constant and inconvenient was this kind of custom in the Middle Ages that a law of 1351, still extant, forbade the ducking of people at Erfurt in the water at Easter and Whitsuntide^[459]. In many of these cases the simulacrum may have been substituted for a human being^[460]; but I find none where the notion of sacrifice survived, or where there was any trace of a popular belief that the object was a substitute for an actual victim. What these curious customs, according to Dr. Mannhardt, do really represent, is the departure of winter and the arrival of the fruitful season, or possibly the exhaustion of the vernal Power of vegetation after its work is done^[461].

Two features in these old customs may strike us as interesting in connexion with the Argei—(1) The fact that the central object is often either actually an old man, or is at least called ‘the old one.’ A Whitsuntide custom at Halle shows us, for example, a straw puppet called Der alte^[462]. (2) The constant occurrence of white objects in these customs; the puppet is called ‘the white man with the white hair, the snow-white husband,’ or is dressed in a white shirt^[463]. In these expressions it is perhaps not impossible that we may find a clue to the long-lost meaning of the word Argei. Can it be that the Roman puppets were originally called ‘the white ones,’ i. e. old ones, from a root 119arg = ‘white’^[464]; and that from a natural mistake as to the meaning of the word there arose not only the story about the Greek victims but also the common belief about sexagenarii being thrown over the bridge?

We have to choose between the two explanations given above. I am, on the whole, disposed to agree with Dr. Mannhardt, and in the absence of convincing evidence as to the regular and periodical occurrence of human sacrifice in ancient Italy, to regard these strange survivals as semi-dramatic performances rather than sacrificial rites. This view, however, need not exclude the possibility of the union of both drama and sacrifice at a very remote period, probably before the Latins settled in the district.

The immersion in water, whether or no it involved the death of a victim, is reasonably explained, on the basis of comparative evidence, to have been a rain-spell^[465]. In the cases already mentioned of Adonis, Nerthus, &c., this idea seems the prominent one. I am inclined to think, however, that the notion of purification was also present—the two uniting in the idea of regeneration. Plutarch calls the Argean rite ‘the greatest of the purifications,’ and he is here most probably reproducing the opinion of Varro^[466]. This is indicated by the presence of the priests and the Vestals, by the processions, and by the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, as we have already seen. We may regard the rite as in fact a casting out of old things, and in that sense a purification; and also at the same time as a spell or earnest of rain and fertility in the ensuing year. The puppets 120were perhaps hung in the sacella in the course of the procession in March, as a symbol of the fertility then beginning, and cast into the river as ‘the old ones’ when that fertility had reached its height^[467].

In the last place, it might be asked in honour of what deity the rite was performed. It is hardly necessary, and certainly is not possible, to answer a question about which the Romans themselves were not agreed. Ovid and Dionysius^[468] believed it was Saturnus, probably following an old Greek oracle which was known to Varro^[469]. Verrius Flaccus thought it was Dis Pater^[470]. Modern writers have concluded on the general evidence of the rite that it was the river-god Tiberinus; Jordan, however, regarded the question as irrelevant^[471]. We may agree with him, and at least return a verdict of non liquet. If it was a sacrificial act, the ancient river-god is indeed likely enough; if it was a quasi-dramatic one, it does not follow that any deity was specially concerned in it. But we may go so far as to guess that it was connected with the worship of those vaguely-conceived deities of vegetation whose influence on the calendar we have been tracing since March 1.

This same day is marked in one calendar as Feriae Iovi, Mercurio, Maiae. The conjunction of these deities is to some extent accidental. In the first place the Ides of every month were sacred to Jupiter; and the addition of Mercurius is probably to be explained simply by the adaptation of a Greek myth which made Hermes the son of Jupiter, suggesting the selection of the Ides as an appropriate day for the cult of the Latin representative of Hermes^[472]. Mercurius, again, was associated with Maia, perhaps simply because the dedication-day of his oldest temple in Rome (ad circum maximum) was the Ides 121of the Mensis Maius^[473]. The Roman Mercurius was considered especially as the god of trade, and dated, like Ceres, from the time when an extensive corn trade first began in Rome^[474]. It is highly probable that the Tarquinian dynasty had encouraged Roman trade, and that the increase of population which was the result, together with the wars which followed their expulsion, had occasioned a series of severe famines. To this we trace the Roman knowledge of the Greek or Graeco-Etruscan Hermes, through a trade in corn with Sicilian Greeks or Etruscans, and the appearance of the god at Rome as Mercurius, the god of trade. His first temple was dedicated in B.C. 495, and as in other cases, the dedication was celebrated each year by those specially interested in the worship, in this case the mercatores, who were already, at this early period, formed into an organized guild^[475].

xii Kal. Iun. (May 21). NP.

AGON[IA]^[476]. (ESQ. CAER. VEN. MAFF.)

VEDIOVI. (VEN.)

The other days sacred to Vediovis were January 1 and the Nones of March, from which latter day we postponed the consideration of this mysterious deity, in hopes of future enlightenment. But Vediovis is wrapped still, and always will be, in at least as profound an obscurity for us as he was for Varro and Ovid.

We have but his name to go upon, and two or three indistinct traces of his cult. The name seems certainly to be Vediovis, i. e. apparently ‘the opposite of,’ or ‘separated from,’ Jupiter (= Diovis); or, as Preller has it^[477], comparing, like Ovid, vegrandia farra (‘corn that has grown badly’), vescus, &c., Jupiter in a sinister sense. But this last explanation must, on the whole, be rejected. It is true that each deity has a sinister or threatening 122aspect as well as a smiling one; but in no other case was this separately personified, and the name, if its origin be rightly given as above (which is not indeed certain), might be explained by the well-known Roman habit of calling deities by their qualities and their business rather than by substantival names. In this case the name would be negatively deduced from that of one of the few gods who really had a name.

What we know of the cult is only this. First, it was peculiar, so far as we know, to Rome and Bovillae^[478]; secondly, the temples in Rome were in the space between the arx and Capitolium, ‘inter duos lucos’^[479], and another in the Tiber island^[480]—two places outside the Servian wall, and of importance for the security of the city; thirdly, the god was represented as young, holding arrows, and having a goat standing beside him, on account of which characteristics he was usually, according to Gellius, identified with Apollo^[481]; fourthly, the usual victim was a goat which was sacrificed humano ritu^[482].

On such faint traces it will be obvious that no sound conclusion can be based. The connexion with Bovillae and the gens Julia points to a genuine Latin origin. The sites on the Capitol and the island do not lead to any definite conclusion; in the former the god seems to have been connected with the so-called Asylum, in the latter with Aesculapius; but both these connexions may be accidental or later developments. Preller conjectured cleverly that Vediovis was a god of criminals who might take refuge in Rome and there find purification; but the idea of an Asylum, on which this is based, is Greek, and of much later date than any age which could have given a definite meaning to such a deity. We must here, as occasionally elsewhere, give up the attempt to discover the original nature of this god.

TUBIL[USTRIUM]. (ESQ. CAER. VEN. MAFF.)

FER[IAE] VOLCANO. (VEN. AMIT.)

I have already explained^[483] the view taken by Mommsen of the two pairs of days, March 23 and 24 and May 23 and 24, accepting his theory that the 24th in each month was the day on which wills could be made and witnessed in the Comitia calata, and that the 23rd in each month was the day on which the tubae were lustrated by which the assembly was summoned.

But May 23 is also marked in two calendars as feriae Volcano; and Ovid has noticed this in a single couplet:^[484]

The difficult question of the original character of Volcanus must be postponed until we come to his festival in August. We only need here to ask whether Ovid was right in regarding Volcanus as the smith who made the trumpets. This has been strenuously denied by Wissowa^[485], who goes so far as to believe that the deity originally invoked on this day was not Volcanus but Mars—since the corresponding day in March was a festival of that deity—and that Volcanus was at an early period thrust into his place under the influence of Greek notions of Hephaestus as a smith who made armour and also trumpets. Wissowa has, however, to throw over the two calendars quoted above (Ven. Amit.) in order to support his argument—and so far we are hardly entitled to go.

It is safer to take Volcanus as an ancient Roman deity whose cult was closely connected with that of Maia, or the Bona Dea, and was prominent in this month as well as in August. The Flamen Volcanalis sacrificed to the Bona Dea on May 1; and Maia was addressed in invocations as Maia Volcani^[486]. The coincidence of this festival of his with the Tubilustrium I take to have been accidental; but it led naturally, as the Romans 124became acquainted with Greek mythology, to the erroneous view represented by Ovid that Volcanus was himself a smith^[487].

viii Kal. Iun. (May 25). C.

FORTUNAE P[UBLICAE] P[OPULI] R[OMANI] Q[UIRITIUM] IN COLLE QUIRIN[ALI]. (CAER.)

FORTUNÆ PUBLICÆ P[OPULI] R[OMANI] IN COLL[E]. (ESQ.)

FORTUNÆ PRIM[IGENIAE] IN COL[LE]. (VEN.)

This was the dedication-day of one of three temples of Fortuna on the Quirinal; the place was known as ‘tres Fortunae^[488].’ The goddess in this case was Fortuna Primigenia, imported from Praeneste—of whom something will be said later on^[489]. The temple was vowed after the Second Punic War in B.C. 204, and dedicated ten years later^[490]. Our consideration of Fortuna may be postponed till the festival of Fors Fortuna, an older Roman form of the cult, on June 24.

Kal. Iun. (May 29). C.

The Ambarvalia, originally a religious procession round the land of the early Roman community, the object of which was to purify the crops from evil influences, does not appear in the Julian calendars, not being feriae stativae; but it is indicated in the later rustic calendars by the words, Segetes lustrantur. Its date may be taken as May 29^[491]: and this fixity will not appear incompatible with its character as a sacrum conceptivum, if we accept Mommsen’s explanation of the way in which some feasts might be fixed to a day according to the usage of the Italian farmer, but of varying date according to the civil calendar^[492].

There has been much discussion whether the Ambarvalia 125was identical with the similar festival of the Fratres Arvales. On the ground that the acta fratrum Arvalium seemed to prove a general similarity of the two in time and place, and at least in some points of ritual, Mommsen, Henzen, and Jordan answer in the affirmative^[493]. On the other side there is no authority of any real weight. The judicious Marquardt^[494] found a difficulty in the absence of any mention in the acta fratrum Arvalium of a lustratio in the form of a procession; but it should be remembered (1) that we have not the whole of the acta; (2) that it is almost certain that, as the Roman territory continued to increase, the brethren must have dropped the duty of driving victims round it, for obvious reasons. A passage in Paulus^[495] places the matter beyond doubt if we can be sure of the reading: ‘Ambarvales hostiae dicebantur quae pro arvis a duodecim (MSS. duobus) fratribus sacrificantur.’ As no duo fratres are known, the old emendation duodecim seems certain, but will of course not convince those who disbelieve in the identity of the Ambarvalia and the sacra fratrum Arvalium. The question is, however, for us of no great importance, as the acta do not add to our knowledge of what was done at the Ambarvalia.

The best description we have of such lustrations as the Ambarvalia is that of Virgil; it is not indeed to be taken as an exact description of the Roman rite, but rather as referring to Italian customs generally:

126It is not clear to what festival or festivals Virgil is alluding in the first few of these lines^[497]; probably to certain rustic rites which did not exactly correspond to those in the city of Rome. But from line 343 onwards the reference is certainly to Ambarvalia of some kind, perhaps to the private lustratio of the farmer before harvest began, of which the Roman festival was a magnified copy. His description answers closely to the well-known directions of Cato^[498]; and if it is Ceres who appears in Virgil’s lines, and not Mars, the deity most prominent in Cato’s account, this may be explained by the undoubted extension of the worship of Ceres, and the corresponding contraction of that of Mars, as the latter became more and more converted into a god of war^[499].

The leading feature in the original rite was the procession of victims—bull, sheep, and pig—all round the fields, driven by a garlanded crowd, carrying olive branches and chanting. These victims represent all the farmer’s most valuable stock, thus devoted to the appeasing of the god. The time was that when the crops were ripening, and were in greatest peril from storms and diseases; before the harvest was begun, and before the Vestalia took place in the early part of June, which was, as we shall see, a festival preliminary to harvest. Three times the procession went round the land; at the end of the third round the victims were sacrificed, and a solemn prayer was offered in antique language, which ran, in Cato’s formula of the farmer’s lustration, as follows: ‘Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee to be willing and propitious to me, my household, and my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land. I pray thee keep, avert, and turn from us all disease, seen or unseen, all desolation, ruin, damage, and unseasonable influence; I pray thee give increase to the fruits, the corn, the vines, and the 127plantations, and bring them to a prosperous issue. Keep also in safety the shepherds and their flocks, and give good health and vigour to me, my house, and household. To this end it is, as I have said—namely, for the purification and making due lustration of my farm, my land cultivated and uncultivated—that I pray thee to bless this threefold sacrifice of sucklings. O Father Mars, to this same end I pray thee bless this threefold sacrifice of sucklings^[500].’

Not only in this prayer, but in the ritual that follows, as also in other religious directions given in the preceding chapters, we may no doubt see examples of the oldest agricultural type of the genuine Italian worship. They are simple rustic specimens of the same type as the elaborate urban ritual of Iguvium, fortunately preserved to us^[501]; and we may fairly assume that they stood in much the same relation to the Roman ritual of the Ambarvalia.

Of all the Roman festivals this is the only one which can be said with any truth to be still surviving. When the Italian priest leads his flock round the fields with the ritual of the Litania major in Rogation week he is doing very much what the Fratres Arvales did in the infancy of Rome, and with the same object. In other countries, England among them, the same custom was taken up by the Church, which rightly appreciated its utility, both spiritual and material; the bounds of the parish were fixed in the memory of the young, and the wrath of God was averted by an act of duty from man, cattle, and crops. ‘It was a general custom formerly, and is still observed in some country parishes, to go round the bounds and limits of the parish on one of the three days before Ascension-day; when the Minister, accompanied by his Churchwardens and Parishioners, was wont to deprecate the vengeance of God, beg a blessing on the fruits of the earth, and preserve the rights and properties of the parish^[502].’

At Oxford, and it is to be hoped in some other places, this laudable custom still survives. But the modern clergy, from 128want of interest in ritual, except such as is carried on within their churches, or from some strong distrust of any merry-making not initiated by their own zeal, are apt to drop the ceremonies; and there is some danger that even in Oxford the processions and peeled wands may soon be things of the past. To all such ministers I would recommend the practice of the judicious Hooker, as described by his biographer, Isaak Walton:

‘He would by no means omit the customary time of procession, persuading all, both rich and poor, if they desired the preservation of Love, and their Parish rights and liberties, to accompany him in his Perambulation—and most did so; in which Perambulation he would usually express more pleasant Discourse than at other times, and would then always drop some loving and facetious Observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the Boys and young people; still inclining them, and all his present Parishioners, to meekness and mutual Kindnesses and Love.’

At Charlton-on-Otmoor, near Oxford, there was a survival of the ‘agri lustratio’ until recent years. On the beautiful rood-screen of the parish church there is a cross, which was carried in procession through the parish^[503], freshly decorated with flowers, on May-day; it was then restored to its place on the screen, and remained there until the May-day of the next year. It may still be seen there, but it is no longer carried round, and its decoration seems to have been transferred from May-day to the harvest-festival^[504].

Kal. Iun. (June 1). N.

IUNONI MONETAE (VEN.)

FABARICI C[IRCENSES] M[ISSUS]. (PHILOC.)

On the name of the mensis Junius some remarks have already been made under May 1. There is no sure ground for connecting it with Juno^[505]. The first day of June was sacred to her, but so were all Kalends; and if this was also the dies natalis of the temple of Juno Moneta in arce, we have no reason to suppose the choice of day to be specially significant^[506]. We know the date of this dedication; it was in 344 B.C. and in consequence of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus Dictator in a war against the Aurunci^[507]. Of a Juno Moneta of earlier date we have no knowledge; and, in spite of much that has been said to the contrary, I imagine that the title was only given to a Juno of the arx in consequence of the popular belief that the Capitol was saved from the attack of the Gauls (390 B.C.) by the warning voices of her sacred geese. What truth there was in that story may be a matter of doubt, but it seems easier to believe that it had a basis of fact than to account for it aetiologically^[508]. There may 130well have been an altar or sacellum^[509] of Juno on the arx, near which her noisy birds were kept^[510]; and when a temple was eventually built here in 344 B.C., it was appropriately dedicated to Juno of the warning voice. From the fact that part of this temple was used as a mint^[511], the word Moneta gradually passed into another sense, which has found its way into our modern languages^[512].

One tradition connected the name of the month with M. Junius Brutus, who is said to have performed a sacrum on this day after the flight of Tarquinius, on the Caelian Hill^[513]. This sacrum had no connexion with Juno, and the tradition which thus absurdly brings Brutus into the question shows plainly that the derivation from Juno was not universally accepted^[514]. The real deity of the Kalends of June was not Juno, but an antique goddess whose antiquity is attested both by the meagreness of our knowledge of her, and the strange confusion about her which Ovid displays. Had Carna been more successful in the struggle for existence of Roman deities, we might not have been so sure of her extreme antiquity; but no foreign cult grafted on her gave her a new lease of life, and by the end of the Republic she was all but dead.

What little we do know of her savours of the agricultural life and folk-lore of the old Latins. Her sacrifices were of bean-meal and lard^[515]; and this day went by the name of Kalendae fabariae^[516], ‘quia hoc mense adultae fabae divinis rebus adhibentur.’ The fact was that it was the time of bean-harvest^[517]; and beans, as we have already seen, were much in request for sacred purposes. ‘Maximus honos fabae,’ says 131Pliny^[518], alluding to the value of the bean as food, to its supposed narcotic power, and its use in religious ritual. We have already found beans used in the cult of the dead and the ejection of ghosts from the house^[519]; and Prof. Wissowa has of late ingeniously conjectured that this day (June 1) was concerned with rites of the same kind^[520]. He quotes an inscription, a will in which a legacy is left ‘ut rosas Carnar[iis] ducant’^[521]. Undoubtedly the reference here is to rites of the dead (cf. Rosalia), and Mommsen may be right in suggesting that by Carnar[iis] is meant the Kalends of June. But it is going a little too far to argue on this slender evidence, even if we add to it the fact that the day was nefastus, that the festival of Carna was of the same kind as the Parentalia, Rosalia, &c.; a careful reading of Ovid’s comments seems to show that there were curious survivals of folk-lore connected with the day and with Carna which cannot all be explained by reference to rites of the dead.

Ovid does indeed at once mislead his readers by identifying Carna and Cardea, and thus making the former the deity of door-hinges, and bringing her into connexion with Janus^[522]. But we may guess that he does this simply because he wants to squeeze in a pretty folk-tale of Janus and Cardea, for which his readers may be grateful, and which need not deceive them. When he writes of the ritual of Carna^[523]—our only safe guide—he makes it quite plain that he is mixing up the attributes of two distinct deities. He brings the two together by contriving that Janus, as a reward to Cardea for yielding to his 132advances, should bestow on her not only the charge of cardines, but also that of protecting infants from the striges^[524], creatures of the nature of vampires, but described by Ovid as owls, who were wont to suck their blood and devour their vitals. But this last duty surely belonged to Carna, of whom Macrobius says ‘Hanc deam vitalibus humanis praeesse credunt’: and thus Carna’s attribute is conjoined with Cardea’s. The lines are worth quoting in which Ovid describes the charms which are to keep off the striges, for as preserving a remnant of old Italian folk-lore they are more interesting than the doubtful nature of an obscure deity^[525]:

Having told his folk-tale and described his charms, Ovid returns to Carna, and asks why people eat bean-gruel on the Kalends of June, with the rich fat of pigs. The answer 133is that the cult of Carna is of ancient date, and that the healthy food of man in early times is retained in it^[530].

This was undoubtedly the real popular belief—that by eating this food on Carna’s day your digestion was secured for the year. Macrobius^[531] makes the practice into a much more definite piece of ritual. ‘Prayers are offered to this goddess,’ he says, ‘for the good preservation of liver, heart, and the other internal organs of our bodies. Her sacrifices are bean-meal and lard, because this is the best food for the nourishment of the body.’ Ovid is here the genuine Italian, Macrobius the scholar and theologian: both may be right.

Whatever, then, may be the meaning or etymology of the name Carna, we may at least be sure that the cult belongs to the age of ancient Latin agriculture^[532], since it was in connexion with her name that the popular belief survived in Ovid’s time of the virtue of bean-eating on the Kalends of June.

We learn from Ovid (line 191) that this same day was the dies natalis of the temple of Mars extra portam Capenam, i. e. on the Via Appia—a favourite spot for the mustering of armies, and the starting-point for the yearly transvectio equitum^[533]. I have already alluded to the baseless fabric of conjecture built 134on the conjunction of Mars and Juno on this day^[534]; and need here only repeat that in no well-attested Roman myth is Mars the son of Juno, or Juno the wife of Jupiter. And it is even doubtful whether June 1 was the original dedication-day of this temple of Mars: the Venusian calendar does not mention it, and Ovid may be referring to a re-dedication by Augustus^[535]. There is absolutely no ground for the myth-making of Usener and Roscher about Mars and Juno: but it is to the credit of the latter that he has inserted in his article on Mars a valuable note by Aust, in which his own conclusions are cogently controverted.

III. Non. Iun. (June 3). C.

BELLONÆ IN CIRC[O] FLAM[INIO]. (VEN.)

This temple was vowed by the Consul Ap. Claudius in an Etruscan war^[536] (296 B.C.): the date of dedication is unknown. In front of the temple was an area of which the truly Roman story is told^[537], that being unable to declare war with Pyrrhus with the orthodox ritual of the fetiales, as he had no land in Italy into which they could throw the challenging spear^[538], they caught a Pyrrhan soldier and made him buy this spot to suit their purpose. Here stood the ‘columella’ from which henceforward the spear was thrown^[539].

The temple became well known as a suitable meeting-place for the Senate outside the pomoerium, when it was necessary to do business with generals and ambassadors who could not legally enter the city^[540]. But of the goddess very little is known. There is no sufficient reason to identify her with that Nerio 135with whom we made acquaintance in March, as is done too confidently by the writer of the article in Roscher’s Lexicon^[541].

Prid. Non. Iun. (June 4). C.

HERC[ULI] MAGN[O] CUSTO[DI]. (VEN.)

SACRUM HERCULI. (RUST.)

This temple also was near the Circus Flaminius^[542]. It was a foundation of Sulla’s, 82 B.C., and the cult was Greek, answering to that of Ἡρακλῆς ἀλεξίκακος^[543].

Non. Iun. (June 5). N.^[544]

DIO FIDIO IN COLLE. (VEN.)

The temple on the Quirinal of which this was the dies natalis is said by Dionysius^[545] to have been vowed by Tarquinius Superbus, and dedicated by Sp. Postumius in B.C. 466. But that there was a fanum or sacellum of this deity on or near the same site at a much earlier time is almost certain; such a sacellum ‘ad portam Sanqualem’ is mentioned, also by Dionysius^[546], as ἱερὸν Διὸς Πιστίου, and we know that in many cases the final aedes or templum was a development from an uncovered altar or sacred place.

Dius Fidius, as the adjectival character of his name shows, was a genuine old Italian religious conception, but one that in historical times was buried almost out of sight. Among gods and heroes there has been a struggle for existence, as among animals and plants; with some peoples a struggle between indigenous and exotic deities, in which the latter usually win 136the day, and displace or modify the native species^[547]. What laws, if any, govern this struggle for existence it is not possible to discern clearly; the result is doubtless the survival of the fittest, if by the fittest we understand those which flourish best under the existing conditions of society and thought; but it would hardly seem to be the survival of those which are most beneficial to the worshipping race. Among the Romans the fashionable exotic deities of the later Republic and Empire had no such ethical influence on the character of the people as those older ones of the type of Dius Fidius, who in historical times was known to the ordinary Roman only through the medium of an old-fashioned oath.

Ovid knows very little about Dius Fidius^[548]:

He finds three names for the deity, but two would have sufficed; the only individual Semo known to us is Sancus himself. The Semones, so far as we can guess, were spirits of the ‘pandaemonic’ age, nameless like the Lares with whom they are associated in the hymn of the Fratres Arvales^[549]; but one only, Semo Sancus, seems to have taken a name and survived into a later age, and this one was identified with Dius Fidius. Aelius Stilo, the Varro of the seventh century A. U. C., seems to have started this identification^[550]. Varro does not comment on it; but Verrius accepted it: he writes of an ‘aedes Sancus, qui deus Dius Fidius vocatur’^[551]. The evidence of inscriptions is explicit for a later period; an altar, for example, found near the supposed site of his temple on the Quirinal, bears the inscription ‘Sanco Sancto Semon[i] deo fidio sacrum’^[552]. 137And there is nothing in the words Sancus and Fidius to forbid the identification, for both point to the same class of ideas—that of the bond which religious feeling places on men in their duties to, and contracts with, each other. They are in fact two different names for the same religious conception. It is interesting to find them both occurring in the great processional inscription of Iguvium in Umbria: Fisus or Fisovius Sancius, who is there invoked next after Jupiter, seems to unite the two deities in a single name^[553]. This conjunction would seem to save us from the necessity of discussing the question whether Sancus, as has often been insisted on by scholars both ancient and modern^[554], was really the Sabine form of Dius Fidius; for if in Umbria the two are found together, as at Rome, there is no reason why the same should not have been the case throughout central Italy. The question would never have been asked had the fluid nature of the earliest Italian deities and the adjectival character of their names been duly taken account of. We are all of us too apt to speak of this primitive spirit-world in terms of a later polytheistic theology, and to suppose that the doubling of a name implies some distinction of origin or race.

Dius Fidius, then, and Semo Sancus are both Latin names for the same religious conception, the impersonality of which caused it to lose vitality as new and anthropomorphic ideas of the divine came into vogue at Rome. But there is at least some probability that it survived in a fashion under the name of an intruder, Hercules; and the connexion with Hercules will show, what we might already have guessed, that the 138religious conception we are speaking of was very near akin to that of Jupiter himself.

There is clear evidence that the best Roman scholars identified not only Dius Fidius with Semo Sancus, but both of these with Hercules. Varro, in a passage already quoted, tells us that Stilo believed Dius Fidius to be the Sabine Sancus and the Greek Hercules; Verrius Flaccus, if his excerptors represent him rightly, in two separate glosses identified all these three^[555].

Again, the Roman oaths me dius fidius and me hercule are synonymous; that the former was the older can hardly be doubted, and the latter must have come into vogue when the Greek oath by Heracles became familiar. Thus the origin of me hercule must be found in a union of the characteristics of Hercules with those of the native Dius Fidius. It is worth noting that in pronouncing both these oaths it was the custom to go out into the open air^[556]. Here is a point at which both Hercules and Dius Fidius seem to come into line with Jupiter; for the most solemn oath of all was per Iovem (lapidem), also taken under the light of heaven^[557], as was the case with the oath at the altar of Ζεὺς Ἑρκεῖος in Greece^[558]. Yet another point of conjunction is the ara maxima at the entrance to the Circus Maximus, which was also a place where oaths were taken and treaties ratified^[559]; this was the altar of Hercules Victor, to whom the tithes of spoil were offered; and this was also associated with the legend of Hercules and Cacus. In the deity by whom oaths were sworn, and in the deity of the tithes and the legend, it is now acknowledged on all hands that we should recognize a great Power whom we may call Dius Fidius, or Semo Sancus, or the Genius Iovius, or even Jupiter himself^[560]. Tithes, oaths, 139and the myth of the struggle of light with darkness, cannot be associated with such a figure as the Hercules who came to Italy from Greece; tithes are the due of some great god, or lord of the land^[561], oaths are taken in the presence of the god of heaven, and the great nature myth only descends by degrees to attach itself to semi-human figures.

We are here indeed in the presence of very ancient Italian religious ideas, which we can only very dimly apprehend, and for the explanation of which—so far as explanation is possible—there is not space in this work. But before we leave Dius Fidius, I will briefly indicate the evidence on which we may rest our belief (1) that as Semo Sancus, he is connected with Jupiter as the god of the heaven and thunder; and (2) that as Hercules he is closely related to the same god as seen in a different aspect.

1. In the Iguvian inscription referred to above Sancius in one place appears in conjunction with Iovius^[562]; and, as we have seen, it is also found in the same ritual with Fisu or Fisovius. In this same passage of the inscription (which is a manual of ritual for the Fratres Attidii, an ancient religious brotherhood of Iguvium), the priest is directed to have in his hand an urfita (orbita), i. e. either disk or globe; and this urfita has been compared^[563], not without reason, with the orbes mentioned by Livy^[564] as having been made of brass after the capture of Privernum and placed in the temple of Semo Sancus. If we may safely believe that such symbols occur chiefly in the worship of deities of sun and heaven, as seems probable, we have here some evidence, however imperfect, for the common origin of Sancus and Jupiter.

Again, there was in Roman augural lore a bird called sanqualis avis, which can hardly be dissociated from the cult of 140Sancus; for there was also an ancient city gate, the porta Sanqualis, near the sacellum Sancus on the Quirinal^[565]. Pliny’s language about this bird shows that this bit of ancient lore was almost lost in his time; but at the same time he makes it clear that it was believed to belong to the eagle family, which played such an important part in the science of augury. The only concrete fact that seems to be told us about this bird is that in B.C. 177 one struck with its beak a sacred stone at Crustumerium—a stone, it would seem, that had fallen from heaven, i. e. a thunder-stone or a meteorite^[566].

Bearing this in mind, we are not surprised to find further traces of a connexion between Sancus and thunderbolts. There was at Rome a decuria of sacerdotes bidentales, in close association with the cult of Sancus. Three votive altars are extant, dedicated to the god by this decuria^[567]; two of them were found on the Quirinal, close to the site of the sacellum Sancus. Now the meaning of the word bidental shows that the decuria had as its duty the care of the sacred spots which had been struck by thunderbolts; such a spot, which was also called puteal from its resemblance to a well fenced with a circular wall, bore the name bidental, presumably because two-year-old sheep (bidentes) were sacrificed there^[568]. Consequently we again have Sancus brought into connexion with the augural lore of lightning, which made it a religious duty to bury the bolt, and fence off the spot from profane intrusion. Yet another step forward in this dim light. A bidental was one kind of templum, as we are expressly told^[569]; and the temple of Sancus itself seems to have had this peculiarity. Varro says that its roof was perforatum, 141so that the sky might be seen through it^[570]. In a fragment of augural lore, apparently genuine though preserved by a writer of late date, the caeli templum seems to have been conceived as a dome, or a ball (orbis) cut in half, with a hole in the top^[571]. We may allow that we are here getting out of our depth; but the general result of what has been put forward is that Sancus = Dius Fidius was originally a spirit or numen of the heaven, and a wielder of the lightning, closely allied to the great Jupiter, whose cult, combined with that of Hercules, had almost obliterated him in historical times.

Finally, it would seem that those moral attributes of Jupiter which give him a unique position in the Roman theology as the god of truth, order, and concord, belonged at one period also to Sancus as Dius Fidius; for in his temple was kept the most ancient treaty of which the Romans knew, that said to have been made by Tarquinius Superbus with Gabii, which Dionysius must himself have seen^[572], and which he describes as consisting of a wooden clypeus, bound with the hide of a sacrificed ox, and bearing ancient letters. Here also was the reputed statue of Gaia Caecilia or Tanaquil, the ideal Roman matron; of which it has been conjectured, rashly perhaps, but by an authority of weight, that it really represented a humanized female form of Dius Fidius, standing to him as the Junones of women stood to the Genii of men, or as Juno in the abstract to Genius in the abstract^[573].

1422. The last sentence of the preceding paragraph may aptly bring us to our second point, viz. the relation to Jupiter of Dius Fidius as = Hercules. Those who read the article ‘Dius Fidius’ in Roscher’s Lexicon will be struck by the fact that so cautious a writer as Professor Wissowa should boldly identify this deity, at the very outset of his account, with the ‘Genius Iovis’; and this conjecture, which is not his own, but rather that of the late Professor Reifferscheid of Breslau^[574], calls for a word of explanation.

More than thirty years ago Reifferscheid published a paper in which he compared certain points in the cults of Juno and Hercules, of which we have a meagre knowledge from Roman literature, with some works of art of Etruscan or ancient Italian origin (i. e. not Greek), and found that they seemed to throw new and unexpected light on each other.

The Roman women, we are told^[575], did not swear by Hercules, but by ‘their Juno’; the men swore by Hercules, Dius Fidius, or by their Genius^[576]. Women were excluded from the cult of Hercules at the ara maxima^[577]; men were excluded, not indeed from the cult of Juno, but (as Reifferscheid puts it) ‘from that of Bona Dea, who was not far removed from Juno^[578].’ At the birth of a child, a couch (lectus) was spread in the atrium for Juno, a mensa for Hercules^[579]. The bride’s girdle (cingulum) seems to have given rise to a cult-title of Juno, viz. Cinxia, while the knot in it which was loosed by the bridegroom at the lectus genialis was called the nodus herculaneus^[580].

143Now Reifferscheid believed that he found the same conjunction of Juno and Hercules in several works of art, which may be supposed to be reflections from the same set of ideas which produced the usages just indicated. In the most important of these there is indeed no doubt about it; this is a mirror of Etruscan workmanship^[581], in which three figures are marked with the Latin names Iovei (Jupiter), Iuno and Hercele. Jupiter sits on an altar in the middle, and with his right hand is touching Juno, who has her left hand on his shoulder; Hercules stands with his club, apparently expectant, on the left. From certain indications in the mirror (for which I must refer the reader to the illustration on p. 2259 of Roscher’s Lexicon) Reifferscheid concluded that Jupiter was here giving Juno in marriage to Hercules; and, in spite of some criticism, this interpretation has been generally accepted^[582]. In other works of art he found the same conjunction, though no names mark the figures; in these Hercules and Juno, if such they be, appear to be contending for the mastery, rather than uniting peacefully in wedlock^[583]. This conjunction, or opposition, of Juno and Hercules, is thus explained by Reifferscheid. The name Juno represents the female principle in human nature^[584]; the ‘genius’ of a woman was called by this name, and the cult of Juno as a developed goddess shows many features that bear out the proposition^[585]. If these facts be so, then the inference to be drawn from the conjunction or opposition of Juno and Hercules is that the name Hercules indicates the male principle in human nature. But the male principle is also expressed in the word Genius, as we see e. g. in the term lectus genialis; Hercules therefore and Genius mean the same thing—the former name having encroached upon the domain of the latter, as a Latinized form of Heracles, of all Greek heroes or divinities the most virile. And if Hercules, Semo 144Sancus and Dius Fidius are all different names for the same idea, then the word Genius may be taken as equivalent to the two last of these as well as to Hercules^[586].

But why does Reifferscheid go on to tell us that this Genius, i. e. Hercules = Sancus = Dius Fidius, is the Genius Iovis? How does he connect this many-titled conception with the great father of the sky? As a matter of fact, he has but slender evidence for this; he relies on the mirror in which he found Jupiter giving Juno to Hercules, and on the conjecture that the Greek Hercules, the son of Zeus, would easily come to occupy in Italy the position of Genius, if the latter were, in an abstract form and apart from individual human life, regarded as the Genius of Jupiter^[587]. And in this he is followed by Wissowa and other writers in Roscher’s Lexicon.

It would perhaps have been wiser not to go so far as this. He has already carried us back to a world of ideas older than these varying names which so often bewilder us in the Roman worship—to a world of spirits, Semones, Lares, Cerri, ghosts of deceased ancestors, vegetation demons, and men’s ‘other souls.’ When he talks of a Genius Iovis^[588], he is surely using the language of later polytheism to express an idea which belonged, not to a polytheistic age, but to that older world of religious thought. He is doing, in fact, the very thing which the Romans themselves were doing all through the period of the Republic—the one thing which above all others has made 145the study of their religious ideas such a treacherous quagmire for the modern student.

vi Id. Iun. (June 8). N.

MENTI IN CAPITOLIO. (VEN. MAFF. VI MINORES.)

The temple of Mens was vowed by T. Otacilius (praetor) in 217 B.C., after the battle of Trasimenus ‘propter neglegentiam caerimoniarum auspiciorumque^[589],’ and dedicated in 215 B.C., by the same man as duumvir aedibus dedicandis^[590]. The vow was the result of an inspection of the Sibylline books, from which we might infer that the goddess was a stranger^[591]. If so, who was she, and whence? Reasoning from the fact that in the same year, in the same place, and by the same man, a temple was dedicated to Venus Erycina^[592], Preller guessed that this Mens was not a mere abstraction, but another form of the same Venus; for a Venus Mimnermia or Meminia is mentioned by Servius^[593], ‘quod meminerit omnium.’

However this may be, the foundation of a cult of Mens at so critical a moment of their fortunes is very characteristic of the Roman spirit of that age; it was an appeal to ‘something not themselves which made for righteousness’ to help them to remember their caerimoniae, and not to neglect their auspicia. It is remarkable that this temple of Mens was restored by M. Aemilius Scaurus probably amid the disasters of the Cimbrian war a century later^[594].

vii Id. Iun. (June 7). N.

VESTA APERIT. (PHILOC.)

v Id. Iun. (June 9). N.

VESTALIA. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)

xvii Kal. Quinct. (June 15). N.

VESTA CLUDITUR. (PHILOC.)

xvii Kal. Quinct. (June 15). Q. St. D. F.

It would seem from these notes in the calendars, and from 146passages in Ovid and Festus^[595], that both before and after the day of the true Vestalia there were days set apart for the cult of the goddess, which were nefasti and also religiosi^[596]. Ovid’s lines are worth quoting; he consults the Flaminica Dialis^[597] about the marriage of his daughter:

What is the meaning of this singular aspect of the Vesta-cult? Why should these days be so ill-omened or so sacred that during them marriages might not be celebrated, and the priestess of Jupiter might not hold any intercourse with her husband, cut her hair, or pare her nails? And what is the explanation of the annotation Q[uando] St[ercus] D[elatum] F[as]^[598], which on the 15th indicated the breaking of the spell, and a return to ordinary ways of life? Before attempting to answer these questions, it will be as well to say a few words about the nature and probable origin of the worship of Vesta. Owing to the remarkable vitality and purity of this cult throughout the whole of Roman history, we do not meet here with those baffling obscurities which so often beset us in dealing with deities that had lost all life and shape when Roman scholars began to investigate them. And yet we know that we are here in the presence of rites and ideas of immemorial antiquity.

147In an article of great interest in the Journal of Philology for 1885^[599], Mr. J. G. Frazer first placed the origin of the cult in a clear light for English scholars. By comparing it with similar practices of existing peoples still in a primitive condition of life, he made apparent the real germ of the institution of the Vestal Virgins. Helbig, in his Italiker in der Poebene^[600], had already recognized that germ in the necessity of keeping one fire always alight in each settlement, so that its members could at any time supply themselves with the flame, then so hard to procure at a moment’s notice; and Mr. Frazer had only to go one step further, and show that the task of keeping this fire alight was that of the daughters of the chief. This step he was able to take, supported by evidence from Damaraland in South Africa, where the priestess of the perpetual fire is the chief’s daughter; quoting also the following example from Calabria in Southern Italy: ‘At the present day the fire in a Calabrian peasant’s house is never (except after a death) allowed to die quite out, even in the heat of summer; it is a bad omen if it should chance to be extinguished, and the girls of the house, whose special care it is to keep at least a single brand burning on the hearth, are sadly dismayed at such a mishap.’ The evidence of the Roman ius sacrum quite confirms this modern evidence; the Vestals were under the patria potestas of the pontifex maximus, who represented in republican times the legal powers of the Rex, and from this fact we may safely argue that they had once been the daughters of the primitive chief. The flamines too, or kindlers, as being under the potestas of the pontifex, may be taken as representing the sons of the primitive household^[601]. But from various reasons^[602] the duties of the flamines became obsolete or obscure; while those of the Vestals remained to give us an almost perfect picture of life in the household of the oldest Latins.

From the first, no doubt, the tending of the fire was in some sense a religious service, and the flame a sacred flame^[603]. There 148must have been many stages of growth from this beginning to the fully developed Vesta of the Republic and Empire; yet we can see that the lines of development were singularly simple and consistent. The sacred fire for example was maintained in the aedes Vestae, adjoining the king’s house^[604] (regia); and the penus Vestae, which must originally have contained the stores on which the family depended for their sustenance, was always believed to preserve the most sacred and valuable objects possessed by the State^[605].

We return to the Vestalia, of which the ritual was as follows. On June 7, the penus Vestae, which was shut all the rest of the year, and to which no man but the pontifex maximus had at any time right of entry, was thrown open to all matrons. During the seven following days they crowded to it barefoot^[606]. Ovid relates his own experience^[607]:

The object of this was perhaps to pray for a blessing on the household. On plain and old-fashioned ware offerings of food were carried into the temple: the Vestals themselves offered the sacred cakes made of the first ears of corn plucked, as we saw, in the early days of May^[608]; bakers and millers kept holiday, all mills were garlanded, and donkeys decorated with wreaths and cakes^[609].

On June 15 the temple (aedes, not templum) was swept and the refuse taken away and either thrown into the Tiber 149or deposited in some particular spot^[610]. Then the dies nefasti came to an end; and the 15th itself became fastus as soon as the last act of cleansing had been duly performed: ‘Quando stercus delatum fas.’

In this account of the ritual of these days, two features claim special attention: (1) the duties of the Vestals in connexion with the provision of food; (2) the fact that the days were religiosi, as is illustrated by the prohibition of marriage and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis. That these two features were in some way connected seems proved by the cessation of the mourning when the penus Vestae was once more closed.

1. It needs but little investigation to discover that, though the germ of the cult was doubtless the perpetual fire in the king’s house, the cult itself was by no means confined to attendance on the fire; and this was so probably from the very first. The king’s daughters fetched the water from the spring, both for sacred and domestic purposes; and this duty was kept up throughout Roman history, for water was never ‘laid on’ to the house of the Vestals, but carried from a sacred fountain^[611]. They also crushed the corn with pestle and mortar, and prepared the cakes for the use of the family—duties which survived in all their pristine simplicity in the preparation of the mola salsa in the early days of May^[612]; and they swept the house, as the Vestals afterwards continued to cleanse the penus Vestae, on June 15. The penus, or store-closet of the house, was under their charge; on the state 150of its contents the family depended for its comfort and prosperity, and from the very outset it must have had a kind of sacred character^[613]. The close connexion of Vesta and her ministrants with the simple materials and processes of the house and the farm is thus quite plain; and we may trace it in every rite in which they took any part. The Fordicidia and the Parilia in April were directly concerned with the flocks and herds of the community; in May the festival of the Bona Dea and the mysterious ceremony of the Argei point to the season of peril during the ripening of the crops. After the Vestalia the Vestals were present at the Consualia and the festival of Ops Consiva in August, which, as we shall see, were probably harvest festivals; and on the Ides of October the blood of the ‘October horse’ was deposited in their care for use at the Fordicidia as a charm for fertility. So constant is the connexion of Vesta with the fruits of the earth, that it is not surprising that some Roman scholars^[614] should have considered her an earth goddess; especially as, in a volcanic region, the proper home of fire would be thought to be beneath the earth. But such explanations, and also the views of modern scholars who have sought to find in Vesta a deity of abstract ideas, such as ‘the nourishing element in the fire’^[615], are really superfluous. The associations which grew up around the sacred hearth-fire can all be traced to the original germ, if it be borne in mind that the fire, the provision-store, and the protecting deities of that store, were all placed together in the centre of the house, and that all domestic operations, sacrificial or culinary, took place at or by means of, the necessary fire. ‘What is home but another word for cooking?’ 151Nor must we forget that the living fire was for primitive man a mysterious thing, and invested from the first with divine attributes^[616].

2. The fact that from the 5th to the 15th the days were not only nefasti but also religiosi is not easy to explain. It is true that in two other months, February and April, we find a parallel series of dies nefasti in the first half of the month; in February it extended from the Kalends to the Lupercalia (15th), and in April from the Nones to the Vinalia (23rd)^[617]. But these days in February and April were nefasti in the ordinary sense of the word, i. e. the cessation of judicial business, and we are not told of them that they were also religiosi, or that the Flaminica Dialis lay during them under any special restrictions, as in the days we are speaking of. On the other hand, we find to our surprise that the other days on which this priestess was forbidden to comb hair or cut nails were not even nefasti in the ordinary sense, viz. those of the ‘moving’ of the ancilia and of the ceremony of the Argei^[618]: so that we are baffled at every point in looking for a solution to the calendar.

But there is one fact that is quite clear, namely, that the tempus nefastum was in some way or other the result of the purification of the aedes Vestae, since it ceased at the moment the last act of cleansing was completed. Now it does seem to be the case that among some peoples living by agriculture but as yet comparatively uncivilized, special importance is attached to the days immediately before harvest and the gathering of the first-fruits—at which time there is a general cleaning out of house, barns, and all receptacles and utensils, and following upon this a period of rejoicing. Mr. Frazer, in his Golden Bough has collected some examples of this practice, though he has not brought them together under one head or given them a single explanation. The most striking, and at the same time the best attested, example is as follows^[619]:

152‘Among the Creek Indians of North America, the busk, or festival of firstfruits, was the chief ceremony of the year. It was held in July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians would eat or even handle any of the new harvest.... Before celebrating the Busk, the people provided themselves with new clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their old clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old provisions, cast them together in one common heap and consumed them with fire. As a preparation for the ceremony all the fires in the village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up, and the ashes carried out.... Meanwhile the women at home were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and the new fruits. The public or sacred square was carefully swept of even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, for fear of polluting the first-fruit offerings. Also every vessel that had contained any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before sunset.’ A general fast followed, we are told; ‘and when the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and offered it together with some flesh to the bountiful spirit of fire as a first-fruit offering and an annual oblation for sin.... Finally the chief priest made a speech, exhorting the people to observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women 153that if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted any impurity, they must forthwith depart lest the divine fire should spoil both them and the people.’

The four chief points in this very interesting account are, (1) the extremely solemn and critical character of the whole ceremonial, as indicated in the general fast; (2) the idea of the necessity of purification preparatory to the reception of first-fruits, a purification which seems to extend to human beings as well as to houses, receptacles, and utensils; (3) the renewal of the sacred fire, which was coincident with the beginning of a new year; (4) the solemn reception of the first-fruits. Comparing these with Roman usage, we notice that the first two are fully represented at the Vestalia, the one by the religious character of the days, and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, the other by the cleansing of the penus Vestae, and the careful removal of all its refuse. The third is represented, not at the Vestalia, but at the beginning of the year on March 1, when the sacred fire was renewed, as we saw, in the primitive fashion by the friction of two pieces of wood, and the temple of Vesta was adorned with fresh laurels, as was the case also with the altar in the American example just quoted. The fourth point is represented neither in March nor June, but rather by the plucking of the first ears of corn by the Vestals before the Ides of May, from which they made the sacred salt-cakes of sacrifice.

Now we need not go the length of assuming that the Roman ceremonies of March, May and June were three parts of one and the same rite which in course of time had been separated and attached to different periods of the year; though this indeed may not be wholly impossible. But we may at least profitably notice that all the four striking features of the Indian ceremony are found in the cult of Vesta, and descended no doubt to the later Romans from an age in which both the crops, the fire and the store-houses were regarded as having much the same sacred character as they had for the Creek Indians.

To me indeed it had seemed probable, even before the publication of Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough, that the cleansing of the penus Vestae was nothing but a survival of a general purification of store-houses, barns, utensils, and probably of all the apparatus of farming, including perhaps human beings, 154before the completion of the harvest which was now close at hand. The date of the Vestalia is indeed too early to let us suppose it to have been a real harvest festival, nor had it any of the joyous character found in such rites; and, as we shall see, the true harvest festivals are to be found in the month of August. The corn harvest in middle Italy took place in the latter half of June and in July^[620]; and, as is everywhere still the practice, the festivals proper did not occur until the whole work of harvesting was done. But at the time of the Vestalia the crops were certainly ripening; in May we have already had the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals, and the lustratio segetum which has been described under the head of Ambarvalia on May 28.

I must leave to anthropologists the further investigation of the ideas underlying the ritual we have been examining; it is something to have been able to co-ordinate it with rites which are so well attested as those of the Creek Indians, and which admit without difficulty of a reasonable interpretation^[621].

iii Id. Iun. (June 11). N.

MAT[RALIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)
MATR[I] MATUTÆ. (VEN.)
MATRALIA. (PHILOC.)

The temple of which this day was apparently the dies natalis dated from the Veientine War, 396 B.C., and was the result of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus^[622]. An earlier temple was attributed to Servius Tullius; but it is extremely improbable that anything more than a sacellum or altar existed at such an early date^[623]. The cult of Mater Matuta was widely extended in Italy, and clearly of genuine and ancient Italian origin; she can be separated with certainty from the Greek goddess Leucothea with whom Ovid mixes her up, and from whom she derived a connexion with harbours which did not originally 155belong to her^[624]. The evidence for the wide spread of her cult consists of (1) two extremely old inscriptions from Pisaurum in Umbria, of which Mommsen observes, ‘lingua meram vetustatem spirat’^[625]; (2) certain inscriptions and passages of Livy which prove that her worship existed among the Volsci, in Campania, and at Praeneste^[626]. At Satricum she was apparently the chief deity of the place and probably also at Pyrgi, the port of Caere in Etruria^[627]. The cult seems to have had some marked peculiarities, of which one or two fragments have come down to us. Only the wife of a first marriage could deck the image of the goddess^[628]; no female slaves were allowed in the temple except one, who was also driven out of it with a box on the ear, apparently as a yearly recurring memorial of the rule^[629]; the sacred cakes offered were cooked in old-fashioned earthenware^[630]; and, lastly, the women are said to have prayed to this goddess for their nephews and nieces in the first place, and for their own children only in the second^[631]. All that can be deduced from these fragments is that the Mater Matuta was an ancient deity of matrons, and perhaps of the same type as other deities of women such as Carmenta, Fortuna, and Bona Dea^[632]. 156The best modern authorities explain her as a goddess of the dawn’s light and of child-birth, and see a parallel in Juno Lucina^[633]; and Mommsen has pointed out that the dawn was thought to be the lucky time for birth, and that the Roman names Lucius and Manius have their origin in this belief^[634]. Lucretius shows us that in his day Mater Matuta was certainly associated with the dawn^[635]:

We should, however, be glad to be more certain that Matuta was originally a substantive meaning dawn or morning. Verrius Flaccus^[636] seems to have believed that the words mane, maturus, matuta, manes, and mānus, all had the meaning of ‘good’ contained in them; so that Mater Matuta might after all be only another form of the Bona Dea, who is also specially a woman’s deity. But this cult was not preserved, like that of Vesta, by being taken up into the essential life of the State, and we are no longer able to discern its meaning with any approach to certainty.

It is noticeable that this day was, according to Ovid^[637], the dedication of a temple of Fortuna, also in foro boario: but no immediate connexion can be discovered between this deity and Mater Matuta. This temple was remarkable as containing a wooden statue, veiled in drapery, which was popularly believed to represent Servius Tullius^[638], of whose connexion with Fortuna we shall have more to say further on. No one, however, really knew what the statue was; Varro and Pliny^[639] write of one of Fortuna herself which was heavily draped, and may have been the one in this temple. Pliny says that the statue of Fortuna was covered with the togae praetextae of Servius Tullius, which lasted intact down to the death of Seianus; and 157it is singular that Seianus himself is said to have possessed a statue of Fortuna which dated from the time of Servius^[640], and which turned its face away from him just before his fall. Seianus was of Etruscan descent, we may remember; Servius Tullius, or Mastarna, was certainly Etruscan; and among Etruscan deities we find certain shrouded gods^[641]. These facts seem to suggest that the statue (or statues, if we cannot refer all the passages above quoted to one statue) came from Etruria, and was on that account a mystery both to the learned and the ignorant at Rome. To us it must also remain unexplained^[642].

Id. Iun. (June 13). NP.

FERIAE IOVI. (VEN.)

IOVI. (TUSC.)

To these notes in the calendars we may add a few lines from Ovid:

All Ides, as we have seen, were sacred to Jupiter; they are so noted in the surviving calendars in May, June, August, September, October and November, and were probably originally so noted in all the months^[643]. On this day the collegium or guild of the tibicines feasted in the temple of Jupiter 158Capitolinus^[644]. The temple referred to by Ovid of Jupiter Invictus as having been dedicated on this day may possibly have been one of two mentioned by Livy as dedicated on the Capitol in B.C. 192^[645]; but the coincidence of a dedication-day with the Ides may perhaps suggest a higher antiquity^[646].

For the right meaning and derivation of the word Quinquatrus the reader is referred to what has been already said under March 19. June 13 was usually called Quinquatrus minusculae, not because it was really Quinquatrus (i. e. five days after the Ides), but because through the feast of the tibicines it was associated with their patron Minerva^[647], in whose temple on the Aventine they met, apparently before they set out on the revelling procession to which Ovid refers^[648]. Varro makes this clear when he writes ‘Quinquatrus minusculae dictae Iuniae Idus ab similitudine maiorum’^[649], i. e. it was not really Quinquatrus, but was popularly so called because the other festival of Minerva and her followers bore that name. Verrius Flaccus was equally explicit on the point: ‘Minusculae Quinquatrus appellantur quod is dies festus est tibicinum, qui colunt Minervam cuius deae proprie festus dies est Quinquatrus mense Martio’^[650].

The revelry of the tibicines, during which they wore the masks and long robes mentioned by Ovid, was explained by a story which the poet goes on to tell, and which is told also by Livy and by Plutarch with some variations^[651]; how they fled to Tibur in anger at being deprived by Appius 159Claudius the censor of their feast in the Capitol: how they were badly missed at Rome, tricked and made drunk by a freedman at Tibur, and sent home unconscious on a big waggon. The story is genuinely Roman in its rudeness and in the rough humour which Ovid fully appreciates; the favourite feature of a secession is seen in it, and also the peaceful settlement of difficulties by compromise and contract. I see no reason why it should not be the echo of an actual event, though in detail it is obviously intended to explain the masks and the long robes. These are to be seen represented on a coin of the gens Plautia^[652], to which the fierce censor’s milder colleague belonged, who negotiated the return of the truants. Plutarch calls the ‘stolae longae’ women’s clothes; but it is more natural to suppose that they were simply the dress of Etruscan pipe-players of the olden time^[653].

The story well shows the universal use of the tibia in all sacred rites; the tibicines were indispensable, and had to be got back from Tibur by fair means or foul. As Ovid says:

The instrument was probably indigenous in Italy, and the only indigenous one of which we know. ‘The word tibia,’ says Professor Nettleship^[654], ‘is purely Italian, and has, so far as I can find, no parallel in the cognate languages.’ Müller, in his work on the Etruscans, does indeed assume that the Roman tibicines were of Etruscan origin, which would leave the Romans without any musical instrument of their own. The probability may rather be that it was the general instrument of old Italy, specially cultivated by the one Italian race endowed with anything like an artistic temperament.

SUMMAN[O] AD CIRC[UM] MAXIM[UM]. (VEN. ESQ. AMIT.)

To this note may be added that of Ovid^[655]:

The date of the foundation of the temple of Summanus was probably between 278 and 275 B.C.^[656]; the foundation was the result of the destruction by lightning, no doubt at night, of a figure of Jupiter on the Capitol^[657]. Who was this Summanus? Ovid’s language, quisquis is est, shows that even in his time this god, like Semo Sancus, Soranus, and others, had been fairly shouldered out of the course by more important or pushing deities. In the fourth century A.D. S. Augustine^[658], well read in the works of Varro and the Roman antiquarians, could write as follows: ‘Sicut enim apud ipsos legitur, Romani veteres nescio quem Summanum, cui nocturna fulmina tribuebant, coluerunt magis quam Iovem—sed postquam Iovi templum insigne ac sublime constructum est, propter aedis dignitatem sic ad eum multitudo confluxit, ut vix inveniatur, qui Summani nomen, quod audire iam non potest, se saltem legisse meminerit.’ In spite of the decay and disappearance of this god we may believe that the Christian Father has preserved the correct tradition as to his nature when he tells us that he was the wielder of the lightning of the night, or in other words a nocturnal Jupiter. We do in fact find a much earlier statement to the same effect traceable to Verrius Flaccus^[659]. Varro also mentions him and classes him with Veiovis, and with the Sabine deities whom he believed to have been brought to Rome by Tatius^[660]. There is, however, no need to suppose with Varro that he was Sabine, or with Müller that he was Etruscan^[661]; the name is Latin 161and probably = Submanus, i. e. the god who sends the lightning before the dawn.

It is interesting to find the wheel symbol here again, as is noticed by Gaidoz in his Studies of Gallic Mythology^[662]. We can hardly doubt that the Summanalia which Festus explains as ‘liba farinacea in modum rotae ficta^[663]‘, were cakes offered or eaten on this day: it is hard to see what other connexion they could have had. Mr. Arthur Evans has some interesting remarks^[664] on what seem to be moulds for making religious cakes of this kind, found at Tarentum; they are decorated, not only with the wheel or cross, but with many curious symbols. ‘It is characteristic,’ he writes, ‘in a whole class of religious cakes that they are impressed with a wheel or cross, and in other cases divided into segments as if to facilitate distribution. This symbolical division seems to connect itself with the worship of the ancestral fire rather than with any solar cult. In a modified form they are still familiar to us as “hot-cross buns.”’ Summanus, however, does not seem to have had anything to do with the ancestral fire.

viii Kal. Quinct. (June 24). C.

FORTI FORTUNAE TRANS TIBER[IM] AD MILLIAR[IUM] PRIM[UM] ET SEXT[UM]. (AMIT.)

FORTIS FORTUNAE. (VEN. PHILOC.)

SACRUM FORTIS FORTUNAE. (RUST.)

Ovid writes of this day as follows^[665]:

162H. Peter, in his additional notes to Ovid’s Fasti^[666], has one so lucid on the subject of the temples of Fors Fortuna mentioned in this passage that I cannot do better than reproduce it. ‘We find three temples of the goddess mentioned, all of which lay on the further side of the Tiber. The first was that of Servius Tullius mentioned by Varro in the following passage^[667]: “Dies Fortis Fortunae appellatus ab Servio Tullio rege, quod is fanum Fortis Fortunae secundum Tiberim extra urbem Romam dedicavit Iunio mense.” The second is one stated by Livy^[668] to have been built by the consul Spurius Carvilius in 460 B.C. near the temple of Servius. The third is mentioned by Tacitus^[669] as having been dedicated at the end of the year 17 A.D. by Tiberius, also on the further side of the Tiber in the gardens of Caesar. Of these three temples the third does not concern us in dealing with Ovid’s lines, because it was completed and dedicated long after the composition of the sixth book of the Fasti, perhaps at a time when Ovid was already dead; we have to do only with the first two. Now we find in the Fasti of Amiternum^[670] the following note on the 24th of June: “Forti Fortunae trans Tiberim ad milliarium primum et sextum”; and this taken together with Ovid suggests that either besides the temple of Carvilius there were two temples of Fors Fortuna attributed to Servius, or (and this appears to me more probable) the temple of Carvilius itself was taken for a foundation of Servius as it had the same dedication-day and was in the same locality. In this way the difficulties may be solved.’ I am disposed to accept the second suggestion of Peter’s; for, as Mommsen has remarked^[671], it is quite according to Roman usage that Carvilius should have placed his temple close to a much more ancient fanum of the same deity; i. e. the principle of the locality of cults often held good through many centuries.

Many cults of Fortuna were referred to Servius Tullius, but especially this one, because, as Ovid says, it was particularly a festival of the plebs of which he was the traditional hero; and also because it was open to slaves, a fact which was naturally connected with the supposed servile birth of this 163king. The jollity and perhaps looseness of the occasion seemed to indicate a connexion between the lower stratum of population and the worship of Fortuna: ‘On foot and in boats,’ says Ovid, ‘the people enjoyed themselves even to the extent of getting drunk.’ We are reminded in fact of the plebeian license of the festival of Anna Perenna in March^[672]. It is perhaps worth noting that on June 18 the calendar of Philocalus has the note Annae Sacrum, which unluckily finds no corroboration from any other source. Whether it was an early popular cult, whether it was connected in any way with that of Fors Fortuna, and whether both or either of them had any immediate relation to the summer solstice, are questions admitting apparently of no solution.

It has rarely happened that any Roman cult has been discussed at length in the English language, especially by scholars of unquestionable learning and resource. But on the subject of Fortuna, and Fors Fortuna, an interesting paper appeared some years ago by Prof. Max Müller in his volume entitled Biographies of Words^[673], which I have been at great pains to weigh carefully. The skill and lucidity with which the Professor’s arguments are, as usual, presented, make this an unusually pleasant task.

He starts, we must note, with a method which in dealing with Italian deities has been justly and emphatically condemned^[674]; he begins with an etymology in order to discover the nature of the deity, and goes on to support this by selecting a few features from the various forms of the cult. This method will not of course be dangerous, if the etymology be absolutely certain; and absolute certainty, so far as our present knowledge reaches, is indeed what the Professor claims for his. Though we may doubt whether the science of Comparative Philology is as yet old and sure enough to justify us in violating a useful principle in order to pay our first attentions to its results, we may waive this scruple for the present and take the etymology in this case at the outset.

The Professor alludes to the well-known and universally accepted derivation of Fors and Fortuna from ferre, but rejects 164it: ‘I appeal to those who have studied the biographies of similar Latin words, whether they do not feel some misgiving about so vague and abstract a goddess as “Dea quae fert,” the goddess who brings.’ But feeling the difficulty that Fortuna may not indeed have been originally a deity at all, but an abstract noun which became a deity, like Fides, Spes, &c., in which case his objection to the derivation from ferre would not apply, he hastens to remove it by trying to show from the early credentials of Fortuna, that she did not belong to this latter class, but has characteristics which were undoubtedly heaven-born. The process therefore was this: the ordinary etymology, though quite possible, is vague and does not seem to lead to anything; is there another to be discovered, which will fulfil philological requirements and also tell us something new about Fortuna? And are there any features to be found in the cult which will bear out the new etymology when it is discovered?

He then goes on to derive the word from the Sanskrit root HAER, ‘to glow,’ from which many names expressive of the light of day have come: ‘From this too comes the Greek Χάρις with the Χάριτες, the goddess of morning; and from this we may safely derive fors, fortis, taking it either as a mere contraction, or a new derivative, corresponding to what in Sanskrit would be Har-ti, and would mean the brightness of the day, the Fortuna huiusce diei.’

So much for the etymological argument; on which we need only remark, (1) that while it may be perfectly possible in itself, it does not impugn the possibility of the older derivation; (2) that it introduces an idea ‘bright,’ hardly less vague and unsubstantial than that conveyed by ‘the thin and unmeaning name’ she who brings or carries away. When, indeed, the Professor goes on, by means of this etymology, to trace Fortuna to a concrete thing, viz. the dawn, he is really making a jump which the etymology does not specifically justify. All he can say is that it would be ‘a most natural name for the brightest of all goddesses, the dawn, the morning, the day.’

He looks, however, for further justification of the etymology to the cult and mythology of Fortuna. From among her many cult-names he selects two or three which seem suitable. The first of these is Fortuna huiusce diei. This Fortuna was, he 165tells us, like the Ushas of the Veda, ‘the bright light of each day, very much like what we might call “Good morning.”’ But as a matter of fact all we know of this Fortuna is that Aemilius Paullus, the victor of Pydna, vowed a temple to her in which he dedicated certain statues^[675]; that Catulus, the hero of Vercellae, may have repaired or rebuilt it, and that on July 30, the day of the latter battle, there was a sacrifice at this temple^[676]. Whatever therefore was the origin of this cult (and it may date no further back than Pydna) it seems to have been specially concerned, as its name implies, with the events of particular famous days. It is pure guesswork to imagine that its connexion with such days may have arisen from an older meaning, viz. the bright light of each day. Nothing is more natural than the huiusce diei, if we believe that this Fortuna simply represented chance, that inexplicable power which appealed so strongly to the later sceptical and Graecized Roman, and which we see in the majority of cult-names by which Fortuna was known in the later Republic. The advocate of the dawn-theory, on the other hand, has to account for the total loss in the popular belief of the nature-meaning of the epithet and cult—a loss which is indeed quite possible, but one which must necessarily make the theory less obvious and acceptable than the ordinary one.

Secondly, the Professor points out, that on June 11, the day of the Matralia, Fortuna was worshipped coincidently with Mater Matuta—the latter being, as he assumes beyond doubt, a dawn-goddess. But we have already seen that this assumption is not a very certain one^[677]; and we may now add that the coincident worship must simply mean that two temples had the same dedication-day, which may be merely accidental^[678].

But the chief argument is based on the cult of Fortuna Primigenia, ‘the first-born of the gods,’ as he translates the word, in accordance with a recent elaborate investigation of its 166meaning^[679]. This cult does indeed show very curious and interesting characters. It belonged originally to Praeneste, where Fortuna was the presiding deity of an ancient and famous oracle. Here have been found inscriptions to Fortuna, ‘DIOVO[S] FILEA[I] PRIMOGENIA[I],’ the first-born daughter of Jupiter^[680]. Here also, strange to say, Cicero describes^[681] an enclosure sacred to Jupiter Puer, who was represented there with Juno as sitting in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammam appetens.’ This very naturally attracted Prof. Max Müller’s keenest attention, and he had no difficulty in finding his explanation: Fortuna is ‘the first-born of all the bright powers of the sky, and the daughter of the sky; but likewise from another point of view the mother of the daily sun who is the bright child she carries in her arms.’ This is charming; but it is the language and thought, not of ancient Italians, but of Vedic poets. The great Latin scholar, who had for years been soaking his mind in Italian antiquities, will hardly venture on an explanation at all: ‘haud ignarus quid deceat eum qui Aboriginum regiones attingat^[682].’

I shall have occasion later on^[683] to say something of this very interesting and mysterious cult at Praeneste. At present I must be content with pointing out that it is altogether unsafe to regard it as representative of any general ideas of ancient Italian religion. As Italian archaeologists are aware, Praeneste was a city in which Etruscan and Greek influences are most distinctly traceable, and in which foreign deities and myths seem to have become mixed up with native ones, to the extreme bewilderment of the careful inquirer^[684]. We may accept the Professor’s explanation of it with all respect as a most interesting hypothesis, but as no more than a hypothesis which needs much more information than we as yet possess to render it even a probable one.

By his own account the Professor would not have been led so far afield for an explanation of Fortuna if he had not been struck by the apparent difficulty involved in such a goddess 167as ‘she who brings.’ Towards the removal of this difficulty, however, the late Mr. Vigfusson did something in a letter to the Academy of March 17, 1888^[685]. He equated Fors and Fortuna with the Icelandic buror, from a verb having quite as wide and general a meaning as fero, and being its etymological equivalent. ‘There is a department of its meanings,’ he tells us, ‘through which runs the notion of an invisible, passive, sudden, involuntary, chance agency’; and another, in which bera means to give birth, and produces a noun meaning birth, and so lucky birth, honour, &c. The two ideas come together in the Norse notion of the Norns who presided at the birth of each child, shaping at that hour the child’s fortune^[686].

It is rather to the ideas of peoples like the early Teutons and Celts that we must look for mental conditions resembling those of the early Italians, than to the highly developed poetical mythology of the Vedas; and it is in the direction which Mr. Vigfusson pointed out that I think we should search for the oldest Italian ideas of Fortuna and for the causes which led to her popularity and development. In a valuable paper, to which I shall have occasion to refer again, Prof. Nettleship^[687] suggested that Carmenta (or Carmentes) may be explained with S. Augustine^[688] as the goddess or prophetess who tells the fortunes of the children, and that this was the reason why she was especially worshipped by matrons, like Mater Matuta, Fortuna and others. The Carmentes were in fact the Norns of Italy. Such a practical need as the desire to know your child’s fortunes would be quite in harmony with what we know of the old Italian character; and I think it far from impossible that Fortuna, as an oracular deity in Italy, may have been originally a conception of the same kind, perhaps not only a prophetess as regards the children, but also of the good luck of the mother in childbirth. Perhaps the most striking fact in her multifarious cults is the predominance in them of women as worshippers. Of the very Fortuna Primogenia of whom we have been speaking Cicero tells us 168that her ancient home at Praeneste was the object of the special devotion of mothers^[689]. The same was the case with Fortuna Virilis, Muliebris, Mammosa, and others.

If we look at her in this light, there is really no difficulty in understanding why what seems to us at first sight a very vague conception, ‘the goddess who brings,’ should not have meant something very real and concrete to the early Italian mind. And again, if that be so, if Fortuna be once recognized as a great power in ways which touched these essential and practical needs of human nature, we may feel less astonishment at finding her represented either as the daughter or the mother of Jupiter. Such representation could indeed hardly have been the work of really primitive Italians; it arose, one may conjecture, if not from some confusion which we cannot now unravel, from the fame of the oracle—one of the very few in Italy—and the consequent fame of the goddess whose name came to be attached to that oracle. Or, as Jordan seems to think, it may have been the vicinity of the rock-oracle to the temple of Jupiter which gave rise to the connexion between the two in popular belief; a belief which was expressed in terms of relationship, perhaps under Greek influence, but certainly in a manner for the most part absent from the unmythological Italian religion. Why indeed in the same place she should be mother as well as daughter of Jupiter (if Cicero be accurate in his account, which is perhaps not quite certain) may well puzzle us all. Those who cannot do without an explanation may accept that of Prof. Max Müller, if they can also accept his etymology. Those who have acquired what Mommsen has called the ‘difficillima ars nesciendi,’ will be content with Jordan’s cautious remark, ‘Non desunt vestigia divinum numen Italis notum fuisse deis deabusve omnibus et hoc ipso in quo vivimus mundo antiquius^[690].’

But Fortuna has not only been conjectured to be a deity of the dawn; she has been made out to be both a moon-goddess and a sun-goddess. For her origin in the moon there 169is really nothing of any weight to be urged; the advocate of this view is one of the least judicious of German specialists, and his arguments need not detain us^[691]. But for her connexion with the sun there is something more to be said.

The dedication day of the temple of Fors Fortuna was exactly at the summer solstice. It is now St. John the Baptist’s day, and one on which a great variety of curious local customs, some of which still survive, regularly occur; and especially the midsummer fires which were until recently so common in our own islands. Attention has often been drawn to the fondness for parallelism which prompted the early Christians to place the birth of Christ at the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer, and that of the Baptist—for June 24 is his reputed birthday as well as festival—at the summer solstice when they begin to shorten; following the text, ‘He must increase and I must decrease^[692].’ Certainly the sun is an object of special regard at all midsummer festivals, and is supposed to be often symbolized in them by a wheel, which is set on fire and in many cases rolled down a hill^[693]. Now the wheel is of course a symbol in the cult of Fortuna, and is sometimes found in Italian representations of her, though not so regularly as the cornucopia and the ship’s rudder which almost invariably accompany her^[694]. Putting this in conjunction with the date of the festival of Fors Fortuna, the Celtic scholar Gaidoz has concluded that Fortuna was ultimately a solar deity^[695]. The solar origin of the symbol was, he thinks, quite forgotten; but the wheel, or the globe which sometimes replaces it, was certainly at one time solar, and perhaps came from Assyria. If so (he concludes), the earliest form of Fortuna must have been a female double of the sun.

170All hints are useful in Roman antiquities, and something may yet be made of this. But it cannot be accepted until we are sure of the history and descent of this symbol in the representations of Fortuna; it is far from impossible that the wheel or globe may in this case have nothing more to do with the sun than the rudder which always accompanies it. In any case it can hardly be doubted that it is not of Italian origin; it is found, e. g. also in the cult of Nemesis, who, like Tyche, Eilithyia, and Leucothea, is probably responsible for much variation and confusion in the worship of Italian female deities^[696]. As to the other fact adduced by Gaidoz, viz. the date of the festival, it is certainly striking, and must be given its full weight. It is surprising that Prof. Max Müller has made no use of it. But we must be on our guard. It is remarkable that we find in the Roman calendars no other evidence that the Romans attached the same importance to the summer solstice as some other peoples; the Roman summer festivals are concerned, in accordance with the true Italian spirit, much more with the operations of man in dealing with nature than with the phenomena of nature taken by themselves. It is perhaps better to avoid a hasty conclusion that this festival of Fors Fortuna was on the 24th because the 24th was the end of the solstice, and rather to allow the equal probability that it was fixed then because harvest was going on. Columella seems to be alluding to it in the following lines^[697]:

The power of Fortuna as a deity of chance would be as important for the perils of harvest as for those of childbirth; and it is in this connexion that the Italians understood the 171meaning of that cornucopia which is perhaps her most constant symbol in art^[698].

Lastly, there is a formidable question, which may easily lead the unwary into endless complications, and on which I shall only touch very briefly. How are we to explain the legendary connexion between the cult of Fortuna and Servius Tullius? That king, the so-called second founder of Rome, was said, as we have seen, to have erected more than one sanctuary to Fortuna, and was even believed to have had illicit dealings with the goddess herself^[699]. The dedication-day of Fors Fortuna was said to have been selected by him, and, as Ovid describes it, was a festival of the poorer kind of people, who thus kept up the custom initiated by the popular friend of the plebs.

Since the Etruscan origin of Servius Tullius has been placed beyond a doubt by the discovery of the famous tomb at Vulci, with the paintings of Cales Vibenna released from his bonds by Mastarna^[700], which has thus confirmed the Etruscan tradition of the identity of Mastarna and Servius preserved by the emperor Claudius in his famous speech^[701], it would seem that we may consider it as highly probable that if Servius did really institute the cult of Fortuna at Rome, that cult came with him from Etruria. This by no means compels us to look on Fortuna as an Etruscan deity only; but it seems to be a fact that there was an Etruscan goddess who was recognized by the Romans as the equivalent of their Fortuna^[702]. This was Nortia, a great deity at Volsinii, as is fully proved by the remains found there^[703]; and we may note that the city was near to and in close alliance with Vulci, where the tomb was found containing the paintings just alluded to. Seianus, a native of Volsinii^[704], was supposed to be under the protection of this deity, and, as we have already seen, to possess an ancient statue of her.

172In her temple a nail was driven every year as in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus^[705], and hence some have concluded that she was a goddess of time. It cannot, however, be regarded as certain whether this nail-driving was originally symbolical only, or at all, of time; it may quite as well remind us of the famous Fortuna of Antium and the ‘clavos trabales’ of Horace’s Ode^[706]. However this may be, it is a fair guess, though it must be made with hesitation, that the Fortuna of Servius was the equivalent of this Nortia, to whom the Roman plebs gave a name with which they were in some way already familiar. Mastarna continued to worship his native deity after he was settled in Rome; and the plebs continued to revere her, not because of his luck, which was indeed imperfect, but simply because she was his protectress^[707]. If we try to get beyond this we lose our footing; and even this is only conjecture, though based upon evidence which is not entirely without weight.

The festivals of this month are so exceedingly obscure that it seems hopeless to try to connect them in any definite way with the operations either of nature or of man. We know that this was the time when the sun’s heat became oppressive and dangerous; statistics show at the present day that the rate of mortality rises at Rome to its greatest height in July and August, as indeed is the case in southern latitudes generally. We know also that harvest of various kinds was going on in this month: ‘Quarto intervallo inter solstitium et caniculam plerique messem faciunt,’ writes Varro (R. R. 1. 32). We should have expected that the unhealthy season and the harvest would have left their mark on the calendar; but in the scantiness of our information we can find very few traces of their influence. We here lose the company of Ovid, who might, in spite of his inevitable ignorance, have incidentally thrown some ray of light upon the darkness; but it is clear that even Varro and Verrius knew hardly anything of the almost obsolete festivals of this month. The Poplifugia, the Lucaria, the Neptunalia, and the Furrinalia, had all at one time been great festivals, for they are marked in large capitals in the ancient calendars; but they had no more meaning for the Roman of Varro’s time than the lesser saints’-days of our calendar have for the ordinary Englishman of to-day. The ludi Apollinares, of much later date, which always maintained their interest, did not fall upon the days of any of these festivals, or obliterate them in the minds of the people; they must have decayed from pure inanition—want of practical correlation with the life and interests of a great city.

POPLIF[UGIA]. (MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)

FERIAE IOVI. (AMIT.)

The note ‘feriae Iovi’ in the calendar of Amiternum is confirmed in a curious way, by a statement of Dio Cassius^[708], who says that in B.C. 42 the Senate passed a decree that Caesar’s birthday should be celebrated on this day^[709], and that any one who refused to take part in the celebration should be ‘sacer Iovi et Divo Iulio.’ But we know far too little of the rites of this day to enable us to make even a guess at the meaning of its connexion with Jupiter. It is just worth noting that two days later we find a festival of Juno, the Nonae Caprotinae; the two days may have had some connexion with each other, being separated by an interval of one day, as is the case with the three days of the Lemuria, the two days of the Lucaria in this month, and in other instances^[710]; and their rites were explained by two parts of the same aetiological story—viz. that the Romans fled before the Fidenates on the 5th, and in turn defeated them on the 7th^[711]. But we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of such a connexion, if such there was. Nor can we explain the singular fact that this is the only festival in the whole year, marked in large capitals in the calendars, which falls before the Nones^[712].

There is hardly a word in the whole calendar the meaning of which is so entirely unknown to us as this word Poplifugia. Of the parallel one, the Regifugium in February, something can be made out, as we shall see^[713]; and it is not unlikely that the ritualistic meaning concealed in both may be much the same. But all attempts to find a definite explanation for Poplifugia have so far been fruitless, with the single exception 175perhaps of that of Schwegler^[714], who himself made the serious blunder of confounding this day with the Nonae Caprotinae. It is true that the two days and their rites were confused even in antiquity, but only by late writers^[715]; the calendars, on the other hand, are perfectly plain and so is Varro^[716], who proceeds from the one to the other in a way that can leave no doubt that he understood them as distinct.

The simple fact is that the meaning of the word Poplifugia had wholly vanished when the calendar began to be studied. Ingenuity and fancy, as usual, took the place of knowledge, and two legends were the result—the one connecting the word with the flight of the Romans from an army of their neighbours of Fidenae, after the retirement of the Gauls from the city^[717]; the other interpreting it as a memorial of the flight of the people after the disappearance of Romulus in the darkness of an eclipse or sudden tempest^[718]. The first of these legends may be dismissed at once; the large capitals in which the name Poplifugia appears in the fragments of the three calendars which preserve it, are sufficient evidence that it must have been far older than the Gallic invasion^[719]. The second legend might suggest that the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some religious rite performed at this time of year; and it was indeed traditionally connected with the Nones of this month^[720]. But that day is unluckily not the day of the Poplifugia, which it is hardly possible to connect with the disappearance of Romulus. There may, however, have been a connexion between the rites of the two days, as has been pointed out above; and this being so, it is worth while to notice a suggestion made by Schwegler, in spite of the fact that he confused the two days together. He saw that the disappearance of Romulus was said to have occurred while he was holding a lustratio of the citizens^[721], and concluded that 176the Poplifugia may have been an ancient rite of lustration—an idea which other writers have been content to follow without always giving him the credit of it^[722].

Such a rite may very well be indicated by the following sentence of Varro^[723]—the only one which gives us any solid information on the question: Aliquot huius diei vestigia fugae in sacris apparent, de quibus rebus antiquitatum libri plura referunt. It seems not unreasonable to guess that the rite was one of those in which the priest, or in this case, as it would seem, the people also, fled from the spot after the sacrifice had been concluded. As the slayer of the ox at the Athenian Bouphonia (which curiously enough took place just at this same time of year) fled as one guilty of blood, so it may possibly have been that priest and people at Rome fled after some similar sacrifice, and for the same reason^[724]. Or it may have been that they fled from the victim as a scapegoat which was destined to carry away from the city some pollution or pestilence. It is interesting to find at Iguvium in Umbria some ‘vestigia fugae,’ not of the people, indeed, but of victims, at a lustratio populi which seems to have had some object of this kind^[725]. Heifers were put to flight, then caught and killed, apparently in order to carry off evils from the city^[726], as well as to represent and secure the defeat of its enemies. Such performances seem especially apt to occur at sickly seasons^[727]; and as the unhealthy season began at Rome in July^[728], it is just possible that the Poplifugia was a ceremony of this class.

Non. Quinct. (July 7). N.

This day does not appear as a festival in the old calendars; but the late one of Silvius^[729] notes it as Ancillarum Feriae, or 177Feast of Handmaids, and adds the explanatory story which is found also in Plutarch and Macrobius^[730]. The victorious Fidenates having demanded the surrender of the wives of the Romans, the latter made over to them their ancillae, dressed in their mistresses’ robes, by the advice of a certain Philotis, or Tutula^[731], one of the handmaids. Ausonius alludes to the custom that gave rise to the story:

Plutarch also tells us that on this day the ancillae not only wore the matron’s dress, but had license for what may be described as a game of romps; they beat each other, threw stones at each other, and scoffed at the passers by^[733].

This last point supplies us with a possible clue both to the origin of the custom and the explanatory legend. One of the most frequent customs at harvest-time used to be, and still is in some places, for the harvesters to mock at, and even to use roughly, any stranger who appears on the field; frequently he is tied up with straw, even by the women binding the sheaves, and only released on promise of money, brandy, &c.; or he is ducked in water, or half-buried, or in pretence beheaded^[734]. The stranger in such cases is explained as representing the spirit of the corn; the examples collected by Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer seem fairly conclusive on this point^[735]. The wearing of the matron’s dress also seems to be a combination of the familiar practices of the winter Saturnalia with harvest customs, which in various forms is by no means uncommon^[736], though I have not found a case of exchange of dress after harvest.

178Thus it would seem possible that we have here a relic of Italian harvest-custom; and this is confirmed by the statement of Tertullian that there was on this day a sacrifice to the harvest-god Consus^[737], at his underground altar in the Circus Maximus, of which we shall have more to say under Aug. 21 (Consualia). It is worth noting here that just as the legend of the Rape of the Sabines was connected with the Consualia^[738], so the analogous story of the demand of the Fidenates for Roman women is associated with the Ancillarum Feriae, and the day of the sacrifice to Consus. This not only serves to connect together the two days of Consus-worship, but suggests that harvest was a favourable opportunity for the practice of capturing wives in primitive Italy, when the women were out in the fields, and might be carried off by a sudden incursion.

This day was also known as Nonae Caprotinae, because the women, presumably those who had been helping at the harvest, both bond and free^[739], sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree (caprificus) in the Campus Martius^[740]. Juno Caprotina was a Latin goddess, of great renown at Falerii^[741], where the goat from which she took her name appears in the legend of her cult. The character of Juno as the representative of the female principle of human life^[742] suits well enough with the prominence of women both in the customs and legends connected with the day; and the fig-tree with its milky juice, which was used, according to Macrobius, in the sacrifice to Juno instead of milk, has also its significance^[743]. Varro adds that a rod (virga) was also cut from this tree^[744], without telling 179us for what purpose it was used; and it has been ingeniously conjectured that it was with this that the handmaids beat each other as Plutarch describes, to produce fertility, just as at the Lupercalia the women were beaten with strips cut from the skins of the victims (amiculum Junonis). But this is mere conjecture, and Varro’s statement is too indefinite to be pressed^[745].

viii Id. Quinct. (July 8). N.

‘Piso ait vitulam victoriam nominari, cuius rei hoc argumentum profert, quod postridio nonas Iulias re bene gesta, cum pridie populus a Tuscis in fugam versus sit (unde Populifugia vocantur), post victoriam certis sacrificiis fiat vitulatio^[746].’

I must be content with quoting this passage, and without comment; it will suffice to show that the meaning of the word ‘vitulatio’ was entirely unknown to Roman scholars. Why they should not have connected it with vitulus I know not: we may remember that in the Iguvian ritual vituli seem to have performed the function of scapegoats^[747]. If the vitulatio is in any way to be connected with the Poplifugia, as it was indeed in the legend as given by Macrobius above, it may be worth while to remember that that day is marked in one calendar as ‘feriae Iovi,’ and that the vitulus (heifer) was the special victim of Jupiter^[748].

Prid. Non. Quinct.—iii Id. Quinct. (July 6-13).

LUDI APOLLINARES.

All these days are marked ‘ludi’ in Maff. Amit. Ant.; the 6th ‘ludi Apoll[ini],’ and the 13th ‘ludi in circo.’

These games^[749] were instituted in 212 B.C., for a single occasion only, at the most dangerous period of the war with Hannibal, when he had taken Tarentum and invaded Campania. Recourse was had to the Sibylline books and to the Italian oracles of Marcius, and the latter answered as follows^[750]:

180‘Hostes Romani si expellere voltis, vomicamque quae gentium venit longe, Apollini vovendos censeo ludos, qui quotannis Apollini fiant,’ &c. The games were held, as we may suppose, on the analogy of the ludi plebeii, originally on the 13th day of the month^[751], and were, in course of time, extended backwards till in the Julian calendar we find them lasting from the 6th to the 13th. They had a Greek character from the first; they were superintended by the Decemviri sacris faciundis, who consulted the Sibylline books and organized the ritual of foreign cults; and they included scenic shows, after the Greek fashion, as well as chariot races^[752].

It was matter of dispute whether in this year, 212, Apollo was expected to show his favour to Rome as a conqueror of her foe or as an averter of pestilence in the summer heats; both functions were within his range. But in 208 we are told that the ludi were renewed by a lex, made permanent, and fixed for July 13 in consequence of a pestilence^[753]; and we may fairly assume that this was, in part at least, the cause of their institution four years earlier. What little we know of the traditions of Apollo-worship at Rome points in the same direction. His oldest temple in the Flaminian fields, where, according to Livy, a still more ancient shrine once stood^[754], was vowed in 432 B.C. in consequence of a pestilence; and the god had also the cult-title Medicus^[755]. The next occasion on which we meet with the cult is that of the first institution of a lectisternium in 397 B.C., Livy’s account of which is worth condensing^[756]. That year was remarkable for an extremely cold 181winter, which was followed by an equally unhealthy summer, destructive to all kinds of animals. As the cause of this pestilence could not be discovered, the Sibylline books were consulted; the result of which was the introduction of a lectisternium, at which three couches were laid out with great magnificence, on which reposed Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus, whose favour the people besought for eight days.

The cult of Apollo, though thus introduced in its full magnificence at Rome in historical times, was, ‘so old in Italy as almost to give the impression of being indigenous^[757].’ Tradition ascribed to Tarquinius Superbus the introduction from Cumae of the Sibylline oracles, which were intimately connected with Apollo-worship; and that Etruscan king may well have been familiar with the Greek god, who was well known in Etruria as Aplu^[758], and who was worshipped at Caere, the home of the Tarquinian family, which city had a ‘treasury’ at Delphi^[759]. The Romans themselves, according to a tradition which is by no means improbable, had very early dealings with the Delphic oracle.

It does not seem certain that Apollo displaced any other deity when transplanted to Rome. It has been thought that the obscure Veiovis became clothed with some of Apollo’s characteristics, but this is extremely doubtful^[760]. The mysterious deity of Soracte, Soranus, is called Apollo by Virgil^[761]; this, however, is not a true displacement, like that, e. g., of the ancient Ceres by the characteristics of Demeter, but merely a poetical substitution of a familiar name for an unfamiliar one which was unquestionably old Italian.

It does not seem probable that in the Republican period the cult of Apollo had any special influence, either religious or ethical, for the Roman people generally. It was a priestly experiment—a new physician was called in at perilous times, according to the fashion of the Roman oligarchy, either to give advice by his oracles, or to receive honours for his benefits as ἀλεξίκακος. It is in the age of Augustus that the cult begins to 182be important; the family of the Caesars was said to have had an ancient connexion with it^[762], and after the victory at Actium, where a temple of Apollo stood on the promontory, Augustus not only enlarged and adorned this one, but built another on the Palatine, near his own house, to Apollo Palatinus. But for the ‘Apollinism’ of Augustus, and for the important part played by the god in the ludi saeculares of B.C. 17, I must refer the reader to other works^[763].

xiv Kal. Sext. (July 19). NP.

LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.)

xii Kal. Sext. (July 21). NP.

LUCAR[IA]. (MAFF. AMIT.)

Here, as in the next two festivals we have to consider, we are but ‘dipping buckets into empty wells.’ The ritual, and therefore the original meaning of this festival, is wholly lost to us, as indeed it was to the Romans of Varro’s time. Varro, in his list of festivals, does not even mention this one; but it is possible that some words have here dropped out of his text^[764]. The only light we have comes at second-hand from Verrius Flaccus^[765]. ‘Lucaria festa in luco colebant Romani, qui permagnus inter viam Salariam et Tiberim fuit, pro eo, quod victi a Gallis fugientes^[766] e praelio ibi se occultaverint.’ This passage 183reminds us of the story explanatory of the Poplifugia, and might suggest, as in that case, an expiatory sacrifice and flight of the people from a scapegoat destined to carry away disease. But here we know of no vestigia fugae in the cult, such as Varro tells us were apparent at the Poplifugia.

The only possible guess we can make must rest on the name itself, taken together with what Festus tells us of the great wood once existing between the Via Salaria and the Tiber, in which the festival was held—a wood which no doubt occupied the Pincian hill, and the region afterwards laid out in gardens by Lucullus, Pompeius, and Sallust the historian. Lucaria is formed from lucar as Lemuria from lemur; and lucar, though in later times it meant ‘the sum disbursed from the aerarium for the games^[767],’ drawn probably from the receipts of the sacred groves, may also at one time itself have meant a grove. An inscription from the Latin colony of Luceria shows us lucar in this sense^[768]:

IN · HOCE · LUCARID · STIRCUS · NE · IS · FUNDATID, &c.

Now there can be no doubt about the great importance of woods, or rather of clearings in them, in the ancient Italian religion. ‘Nemus and lucus,’ says Preller^[769], ‘like so many other words, remind us of the old Italian life of woodland and clearing. Nemus is a pasturage, lucus a “light” or clearing^[770], in the forest, where men settled and immediately began to look to the interests of the spirits of the woodland, and especially of Silvanus, who is at once the god of the wild life of the woodland and of the settler in the forest—the backwoodsman.’ The woods left standing as civilization and agriculture advanced continued to be the abodes of numina, not only of the great Jupiter, who, as we shall see, was worshipped in groves all over Italy^[771], and of Diana, who at Aricia bore the title of Nemorensis, but of innumerable spirits of the old worship, 184Fauni, Silvani, and other manifestations of the idea most definitely conceived in the great god Mars^[772]. But men could not of course know for certain what spirits dwelt in a wood, whose anger might be roused by intrusion or tree-felling; and old Cato, among his many prescriptions, material and religious, gives one in the form of an invocation to such unknown deities if an intrusion had to be made. It is worth quoting, and runs as follows^[773]: ‘Lucum conlucare Romano more sic oportet. Porco piaculo facito. Sic verba concipito: Si Deus, si Dea es, quoium illud sacrum est, uti tibi ius siet porco piaculo facere, illiusce sacri coercendi ergo. Harumce rerum ergo, sive ego, sive quis iussu meo fecerit, uti id recte factum siet. Eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo immolando bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi, domo familiaeque meae, liberisque meis. Harumce rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto.’

Applying these facts to the problem of the Lucaria, though necessarily with hesitation, and remembering the position of the wood and the date of the festival, we may perhaps arrive at the following conclusion; that this was a propitiatory worship offered to the deities inhabiting the woods which bordered on the cultivated Roman ager. The time when the corn was being gathered in, and the men and women were in the fields, would be by no means unsuitable for such propitiation. It need not have been addressed to any special deity, any more than that of Cato, or as I believe, the ritual of the Lupercalia^[774]; it belonged to the most primitive of Roman rites, and partly for that reason, partly also from the absorption of land by large private owners^[775], it fell into desuetude. The grove of the Fratres Arvales and the decay of their cult (also 185addressed to a nameless deity) offers an analogy on the other side of Rome, towards Ostia.

Such a hypothesis seems not unreasonable, though it is based rather on general than particular evidence. It is at any rate better than the wild guessing of one German inquirer, who is always at home when there is no information. Huschke^[776] believes that the words Lucaria and Luceres (the ancient Roman tribe-name) are both derived from lucus because the Lucaria take place in July, which is the auspication-month of the Luceres. And there are two days of this festival, because the Luceres owed protection both to the Romani and Quirites (Rhamnes and Tities) and therefore worshipped both Janus and Quirinus.

x Kal. Sext. (July 23). NP.

NEPT[UNALIA]. (PINC. MAFF.)

FERIAE NEPTUNO. (PINC. ALLIF.)

The early history of Neptunus is a mystery, and we learn hardly anything about him from his festival. We know that it took place in the heat of summer, and that booths or huts made of the foliage of trees were used at it, to keep the sun off the worshippers—and that is all^[777]. Neither of these facts suggests a sea-god, such as we are accustomed to see in Neptune; yet they are hardly strong enough to enable us to build on them any other hypothesis as to his character or functions. Nor does his name help us. Though it constantly appears in Etruscan art as the name of a god who has the characteristics of the Greek Poseidon, it is said not to be of genuine Etruscan origin^[778]. If this be so, the Etruscans must 186have borrowed it from some people who already used it of a sea-god when the loan was made; but one does not see why this great seafaring people should have gone outside the language of their own religion for a name for their deity of the sea.

In the ancient cult-formulae preserved by Gellius^[779], Neptunus is coupled with a female name Salacia; and of this Varro writes ‘Salacia Neptuni a salo’—an etymology no doubt suggested by the later identification of Neptunus with Poseidon. Salacia is in my opinion rather to be referred to salax (‘lustful,’ &c.), and, like Nerio Martis^[780], to be taken as indicating the virile force of Neptunus as the divine progenitor of a stock^[781]. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that this god was known as Neptunus pater, like Mars, Janus, Saturnus, and Jupiter himself^[782]; all of whom are associated in cult or legend with the early history of Latin stocks.

When Neptunus first meets us in Roman history, he has already put on the attributes of the Greek Poseidon; this was in B.C. 399, at the first lectisternium, where he is in company with Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules, and is specially coupled with Mercurius (= Hermes)^[783]. What characteristics of his suggested the identification, either here or in Etruria, we cannot tell. We find no trace of any evidence connecting him with the sea; and the coupling with Hermes need mean no more than that both this god and Poseidon found their way to Rome through the medium of Greek trade.

It has recently been conjectured^[784] that the object of both the Lucaria and Neptunalia was to avert the heat and drought 187of July, and to propitiate the deities of water and springs, of whom Neptunus (judging from his identification with Poseidon) may possibly have been one; but this is no more than a vague guess, which its author only puts forward ‘with all reserve.’

viii Kal. Sext. (July 25). NP.

FURR[INALIA]. (PINC. ALLIF. MAFF.)

FERIAE FURRINAE (PINC. ALLIF.)

It seems to be the lesson of the festivals of July that there was an early stage of the Roman religion which had lost all meaning for the Romans themselves when they began to inquire into the history of their own religion. Of this last festival of the month we know no single item in the cult, and therefore have nothing substantial to guide us. It seems almost certain that even Varro and Verrius Flaccus^[785] knew nothing of the festival but its name as it stood in the calendar. Nor did they know anything of the goddess Furrina or Furina. Varro is explicit; he says that she was celebrated ‘apud antiquos,’ for they gave her an annual festival and a flamen, but that in his day there were hardly a dozen Romans who knew either her name or anything about her.

Varro is no doubt right in arguing from the festival and the flamen to the ancient honour in which she was held; and these facts also tend to prove that she was a single deity, and quite distinct from the Furiae with whom the later Romans as well as the Greeks naturally confounded her—an inference which is confirmed by the long u indicated by the double r in the calendars^[786].

There is therefore nothing but the etymology to tell us anything about the goddess, and from this source we cannot expect to learn anything certain. Preller plausibly suggested a connexion with fur, furvus, and fuscus, from a root meaning 188dark or secret; and if this were correct she might be a deity of the under-world or of the darkness. Bücheler in his Umbrica^[787] suggested a comparison with the Umbrian furfare = februare (‘to purify’), which will at least serve to show the difficulty of basing conclusions on etymological reasoning. Jordan conjectured that the festival had to do with the averting of dangerous summer heat^[788]—a conclusion that is natural enough, but does not seem to rest on any evidence but its date. Lastly, Huschke^[789], again in his element, boldly asserts that the Furrinalia served to appease the deities of revenge who hailed from the black region of Vediovis—wrongly confusing Furrina and the Furiae. It will be quite obvious from these instances that it is as hopeless as it is useless to attempt to discover the nature of either goddess or festival by means of etymological reasoning.

August is with us the month when the corn-harvest is begun; in Italy it is usually completed in July, and the final harvest-festivals, when all the operations of housing, &c., have been brought to a close, would naturally have fallen for the primitive Roman farmer in the sixth month. The Kalends of Quinctilis would be too early a date for notice to be given of these; some farmers might be behindhand, and so cut off from participation. The Kalends of Sextilis would do well enough; for by the Nones, before which no festival could be held, there would be a general cessation from labour. No other agricultural operations would then for a time be specially incumbent on the farmer^[790].

Before the Ides we find no great festival in the old calendar, though the sacrifice on the 12th at the ara maxima was without doubt of great antiquity. The list begins with the Portunalia on the 17th; and then follow, with a day’s interval between each, the Vinalia Rustica, Consualia, Volcanalia, Opeconsivia, and Volturnalia. The Vinalia had of course nothing to do with harvest, and the character of the Portunalia and Volturnalia is almost unknown; but all the rest may probably have had some relation to the harvesting and safe-keeping of crops, and the one or two scraps of information we possess about the Portunalia bear in the same direction. Deities of fire and water seem to be propitiated at this time, in order to preserve the harvest from disaster by either element. The rites are 190secret and mysterious, the places of worship not familiar temples, but the ara maxima, the underground altar of Consus, or the Regia; which may perhaps account for the comparatively early neglect and decadence of some of these feasts. We may also note two other points: first, the rites gather for the most part in the vicinity of the Aventine, the Circus Maximus, and the bank of the Tiber; which in the earliest days must have been the part of the cultivated land nearest the city^[791], or at any rate that part of it where the crops were stored. Secondly, there is a faint trace of commerce and connexion between Rome and her neighbours—Latins and Sabines—both in the rites and legends of this month, which may perhaps point to an intercourse, whether friendly or hostile, brought about by the freedom and festivities of harvest time.

Non. Sext. (Aug. 5). F. (NP. ant.)

SALUTI IN COLLE QUIRINALE SACRIFICIUM PUBLICUM. (VALL.)

SALUTI IN COLLE. (AMIT. ANT.)

NATALIS SALUTIS. (PHILOC.)

The date of the foundation of the temple of Salus was 302 B.C., during the Samnite wars^[792]. The cult was probably not wholly new. The Augurium Salutis, which we know through its revival by Augustus, was an ancient religious performance at the beginning of each year, or at the accession of new consuls, which involved, first the ascertaining whether prayers would be acceptable to the gods, and secondly the offering of such prayers on an auspicious day^[793]. Two very old inscriptions also suggest that the cult was well distributed in Italy at an early period^[794]. Such impersonations of abstract ideas as Salus, Concordia, Pax, Spes, &c., do not belong to the oldest stage of religion, but were no doubt of pontifical origin, i. e. belonged to the later monarchy or early republic^[795]. We need not suppose 191that they were due to the importation of Greek cults and ideas, though in some cases they became eventually overlaid with these. They were generated by the same process as the gods of the Indigitamenta^[796]—being in fact an application to the life of the state of that peculiarly Roman type of religious thought which conceived a distinct numen as presiding over every act and suffering of the individual. This again, as I believe, in its product the Indigitamenta, was an artificial priestly exaggeration of a very primitive tendency to see a world of nameless spirits surrounding and influencing all human life.

The history of the temple is interesting^[797]. Not long after its dedication its walls were painted by Gaius Fabius, consul in 269 B.C., whose descendants, among them the historian, bore the name of Pictor, in commemoration of a feat so singular for a Roman of that age^[798]. It was struck by lightning no less than four times, and burnt down in the reign of Claudius. Livy^[799] tells us that in 180 B.C., by order of the decemviri a supplicatio was held, in consequence of a severe pestilence, in honour of Apollo, Aesculapius, and Salus; which shows plainly that the goddess was already being transformed into the likeness of the Greek ῾Υγίεια, and associated rather with public health than with public wealth in the most general sense of the word.

vi Id. Sext. (Aug. 9). F. (allip.) NP. (amit. maff. etc.)

SOLI INDIGITI IN COLLE QUIRINALE. (AMIT. ALLIF.)

SOL[IS] INDIGITIS IN COLLE QUIRINALE SACRIFICIUM PUBLICUM. (VALL.)

There was an ancient worship of Sol on the Quirinal, which was believed to be of Sabine origin. A Solis pulvinar close to the temple of Quirinus is mentioned, and the Gens Aurelia was said to have had charge of the cult^[800].

192But the Sol of August 9 is called in the calendars Sol Indiges. What are we to understand by this word, which appears in the names Di Indigetes, Jupiter Indiges, or Indigetes simply? The Roman scholars themselves were not agreed on the point; the general opinion was that it meant ‘of or belonging to a certain place,’ i. e. fixed there by origin and protecting it^[801]. This view has also been generally adopted, on etymological or other grounds, by modern writers, including Preller^[802]. Recently a somewhat different explanation has been put forward in the Mythological Lexicon, suggested by Reifferscheid in his lectures at Breslau. According to this view, Indiges (from indu and root ag in agere) was a deity working in a particular act, business, place, &c., of men’s activity, and in no other; it is of pontifical origin, like its cognate indigitamenta, and is therefore not a survival from the oldest religious forms^[803].

The second of these explanations does not seem to help us to understand what was meant by Sol Indiges; and its exponent in the Lexicon, in order to explain this, falls back on an ingenious suggestion made long ago by Preller. In dealing with Sol Indiges, Preller explained Indiges as = index, and conjectured that the name was not given to Sol until after the eclipse which foretold the death of Caesar, comparing the lines of Virgil (Georg. 1. 463 foll.):

Preller may be right; and if he were, we should have no further trouble in this case. In the pre-Julian calendar, on this hypothesis, the word Indiges was absent. This is also the opinion of the last scholar who, so far as I know, has touched 193the question; but Wissowa^[804], with reason as I think, reverts to the first explanation given above of the word Indiges (‘of or belonging to a certain place’), and believes that the word, when added to Sol in the Julian calendar, was simply meant to distinguish the real indigenous Sun-god from foreign solar deities.

Prid. Id. Sext. (Aug. 12). C.

HERCULI INVICTO AD CIRCUM MAXIM[UM]. (ALLIF. AMIT.)

[HERCULI MAGNO CUSTODI IN CIRCO FLAMIN[IO] (VALL.) is generally taken as a confusion with June 4^[805].]

This is the only day to which we can ascribe, on the evidence of the calendars, the yearly rites of the ara maxima, and of the aedes Herculis in the Forum boarium. These two shrines were close together; the former just at the entrance of the Circus maximus, the latter, as has been made clear by a long series of researches, a little to the north-east of it^[806]. We are led to suppose that the two must have been closely connected in the cult, though we are not explicitly informed on the point.

The round temple indicates a very ancient worship, as in the case of the aedes Vestae, and the legends confirm this. The story of Hercules and Cacus, the foundation-legend of the cult, whatever be its origin, shows a priesthood of two ancient patrician families, the Potitii and Pinarii^[807]. Appius Claudius, the censor of 312 B.C., is said to have bribed the Potitii, the chief celebrants, to hand over their duties to public slaves^[808]; but in the yearly rites, consisting chiefly in the sacrifice of a heifer, these were presided over by the praetor urbanus, whose connexion with the cult is attested by inscriptions^[809]. That there was at one time a reconstruction of the cult, 194especially in the direction of Greek usage, seems indeed probable; for the praetor wore a laurel wreath and sacrificed with his head uncovered after the Greek fashion^[810]. But there is enough about it that was genuine Roman to prove that the foundation-legend had some of its roots in an ancient cult; e. g. at the sacred meal which followed the previous sacrifice in the evening, the worshippers did not lie down but sat, as was the most ancient practice both in Greece and Italy^[811]. Women were excluded, which is in keeping with the Italian conception of Hercules as Genius, or the deity of masculine activity^[812]. The sacrifice was followed by a meal on the remainder, which was perhaps an old practice in Italy, as in Greece. In this feature, as in two others, we have a very interesting parallel with this cult, which does not seem to have been noticed, in the prescription given by Cato for the invocation of Mars on behalf of the farmer’s cattle^[813]. After prescribing the material of the offering to Mars Silvanus, he goes on as follows: ‘Eam rem divinam vel servus, vel liber licebit faciat. Ubi res divina facta erit, statim ibidem consumito. Mulier ad eam rem divinam ne adsit, neve videat quomodo fiat. Hoc votum in annos singulos, si voles, licebit vovere.’ Here we have the eating of the remainder^[814], the exclusion of women, and the participation in the cult by slaves; the exclusion of women is very curious in this case, and seems to show that such a practice was not confined to worships of a sexual character. It is also worth noting that just as Cato’s formula invokes Mars Silvanus, so in Virgil’s description of the cult of the ara maxima^[815], we find one special feature of Mars-worship, namely the presence of the Salii^[816]. It is hardly possible to suppose that Virgil here was guilty of a wilful confusion: is it possible, then, that in this cult some 195form of Mars is hidden behind Hercules, and that the Hercules of the ara maxima is not the Genius after all, as modern scholars have persuaded themselves?

But what marks out this curious cult more especially from all others is the practice of offering on the ara maxima ‘decumae’ or tithes, of booty, commercial gains, sudden windfalls, and so on^[817]. The custom seems to be peculiar to this cult, though it is proved by inscriptions of Hercules-cults elsewhere in Italy—e. g. at Sora near Arpinum, at Reate, Tibur, Capua and elsewhere^[818]. But these inscriptions, old as some of them are, cannot prove that the practice they attest was not ultimately derived from Rome. At Rome, indeed, there is no question about it; it is abundantly proved by literary allusions, as well as by fragments of divine law^[819]. Was it an urban survival from an old Italian rural custom, or was it an importation from elsewhere?

In favour of the first of these explanations is the fact that the offering of first-fruits was common, if not universal, in rural Italy^[820]. They are not, indeed, known to have been offered specially to Hercules; but the date, Aug. 12, of the sacrifice at Rome might suggest an original offering of the first-fruits of the Roman ager, before the growth of the city had pushed agriculture to some distance away. Now first-fruits are the oldest form of tribute to a god as ‘the lord of the land,’ developing in due time into fixed tithes as temple-ritual becomes more elaborate and expensive^[821]. In their primitive form they are found in all parts of the world, as Mr. Frazer has shown us in an appendix to the second volume of his Golden Bough^[822]. It is certainly possible that in this way the August cult of the ara maxima may be connected with the general character of the August festivals; that the offering of the first-fruits of harvest gave way to a regulated system of tithes^[823], of which 196we find a survival in the offerings of the tenth part of their booty by great generals like Sulla and Crassus. As the city grew, and agriculture became less prominent than military and mercantile pursuits, the practice passed into a form adapted to these—i. e. the decumae of military booty or mercantile gain^[824].

But there is another possibility which must at least be suggested. The myth attached to the ara maxima and the Aventine, that of Hercules and Cacus, stands alone among Italian stories, as the system of tithe-giving does among Italian practices. We may be certain that the practice did not spring from the myth; rather that an addition was made to the myth, when Hercules was described as giving the tenth of his booty, in order to explain an unusual practice. Yet myth and practice stand in the closest relation to each other, and the strange thing about each is that it is unlike its Italian kindred.

Of late years it has become the fashion to claim the myth as genuine Italian, in spite of its Graeco-Oriental character, on the evidence of comparative mythology^[825]: but no explanation is forthcoming of its unique character among Italian myths, all of which have a marked practical tendency, and a relation to some human institution such as the foundation of a city. They are legends of human beings and practices: this is an elemental myth familiar in different forms to the Eastern mind. Again, the Hercules of the myth has nothing in common with the genuine Italian Hercules, whom we may now accept as = genius, or the masculine principle—as may be seen from the sorry lameness of the attempt to harmonize the two^[826]. Beyond doubt there was an Italian spirit or deity to whom the name Hercules was attached: but there is no need to force all the forms of Hercules that meet us into exact connexion with the genuine one. We have seen above that the Hercules of the ara maxima may possibly have concealed Mars himself, in his original form of a deity of cattle, pasture, and clearings. But there is yet another possible explanation of this tangled problem.

The Roman form of the Cacus-myth, in which Cacus steals 197the cattle from Hercules, and tries to conceal his theft by dragging them backwards into his cave by their tails, has recently been found in Sicily depicted on a painted vase, whither, as Professor Gardner has suggested, it may have been brought by way of Cyprus by Phoenician traders^[827]; and the inference of so cautious an archaeologist is, apparently, that the myth may have found its way from Sicily to the Tiber. Nothing can be more probable; for it is certain that even before the eighth century B.C. the whole western coast of Italy was open first to Phoenician trade and then to Greek. And we are interested to find that the only other traces of the myth to be found in Italy are located in places which would be open to the same influence. From Capua we have a bronze vase on which is depicted what seems to be the punishment of Cacus by Hercules^[828]; and a fragment of the annalist Gellius gives a story connecting Cacus with Campania, Etruria, and the East^[829]. At Tibur also, which claimed a Greek origin, there is a faint trace of the myth in an inscription^[830].

Now assuming for a moment that the myth was thus imported, is it impossible that the anomalies of the cult should be foreign also? That one of them at least which stands out most prominently is a peculiarly Semitic institution; tithe-giving in its systematized form is found in the service of that Melcarth who so often appears in Hellas as Herakles^[831]. The coincidence at the Aventine of the name, the myth, and the practice, is too striking to be entirely passed over—especially if we cannot find certain evidence of a pure Italian origin, and if we do find traces of all three where Phoenicians and Greeks are known to have been. We may take it as not impossible that the ara maxima was older than the traditional foundation of Rome, and that its cult was originally not that of the characteristic Italian Hercules, but of an adventitious deity established there by foreign adventurers.

FER[IAE] IOVI. (AMIT. ALLIF.)

DIANAE IN AVENTINO. (AMIT. VALL. ANT. ALLIF.)

SACRUM DEANAE. (RUST.) NATALIS DIANES. (PHILOC.)

VORTUMNO IN AVENTINO. (AMIT. ALLIF.)

HERC[ULI] INVICTO AD PORTAM TRIGEMINAM. (ALLIF.)

CASTORI POLLUCI IN CIRCO FLAMINIO. (AMIT. ALLIF.)

FLORAE AD C[IRCUM] MAXIMUM. (ALLIF.)

All Ides, as we have seen, were sacred to Jupiter; and it does not seem that there is here any further significance in the note ‘feriae Iovi.’ Though there was a conjunction here of many cults, this day was best known as that of the dedication of the temple of Diana on the Aventine, which was traditionally ascribed to Servius Tullius. There are interesting features in this cult, and indeed in the worship of this goddess throughout Latium and Italy. For the most famous of all her cults, that of Aricia^[832], I need only refer to Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough—the most elaborate and convincing examination of any ancient worship that has yet appeared. Of the goddess in general it will be sufficient to say here that whatever be the etymology of her name or the earliest conception of her nature—and both are very far from certain—she was for the old Latins second only to Jupiter Latiaris in the power she exercised of uniting communities together and so working in the cause of civilization. This was the ease with the cult on the Aventine, as it was also with that at Aricia^[833].

About the political origin of the temple on the Aventine tradition was explicit^[834]. Livy says that Servius Tullius persuaded the chiefs of the Latins to build a temple of Diana in conjunction with the Romans; and Varro calls it ‘commune Latinorum Dianae templum.’ The ‘lex templi,’ or ordinance for the common worship of Romans and Latins, was seen by Dionysius—so he declares—written in Greek characters and 199preserved in the temple^[835]. The horns of a cow^[836], hung up in front of this temple, gave rise to legends, one of which is preserved by Livy, and seems to bring the Sabines also into the connexion. This temple was, then, from the beginning in some sense extra-Roman, i. e. did not belong to the purely Roman gentile worship. And it had other characteristics of the same kind; it was specially connected with the Plebs and with slaves, and as, in the case of the neighbouring temple at Ceres, there was a Greek character in the cult from the beginning.

I. The Connexion with the Plebs. The position on the Aventine would of itself be some evidence of a non-patrician origin; so also the traditional ascription to Servius Tullius as the founder. More direct evidence seems wanting^[837], but it is not impossible that the temple marks a settlement of Latins in this part of the city.

II. The Connexion with Slaves. The day was a holiday for slaves^[838], perhaps after the work of harvest. There was one other Latin goddess, Feronia, who was especially beloved by emancipated slaves^[839]; and as Feronia was a deity both of markets and harvests, there is something to be said for the suggestion^[840] that both slave holidays and slave emancipation would find a natural place on occasions of this kind. It would seem also that this temple was an asylum for runaway or criminal slaves—a fact which slips out in Festus’ curious reproduction of a gloss of Verrius Flaccus^[841]: ‘Servorum dies festus vulgo existimatur Idus Aug., quod eo die Servius Tullius, natus servus, aedem Dianae dedicaverit in Aventino, cuius tutelae sint cervi, a quo celeritate fugitivos vocent servos.’ The stag, as the favourite beast of Diana, may 200perhaps have a Greek origin; but the inference from the false etymology remains the same.

III. The Greek Character in the Cult. As in the case of Ceres, the temple-foundations of this age might naturally have a Greek character, owing to the foreign relations of the Etruscan dynasty in Rome^[842]. We have already noticed the lex templi, said to have been written in Greek characters. It is a still more striking fact that there was in this temple a ξόανον, or wooden statue of Diana, closely resembling that of Artemis at Massilia, which was itself derived from the famous temple at Ephesus^[843]. The transference to Diana of the characteristics of Artemis was no doubt quite natural and easy; for, hard as it is to distinguish the Greek and Italian elements in the cult, we know enough of some at least of the latter to be sure that they would easily lend themselves to a Greek transformation. This transformation must have begun at a very early period, for in B.C. 398 we find Diana already associated with Apollo and Latona, in the first lectisternium celebrated at Rome, where she certainly represented Artemis^[844].

On the whole this temple and its cult seem a kind of anticipation of the great temple on the Capitol, in marking an advance in the progress of Rome from the narrow life of a small city-state to a position of influence in Western Italy. The advance of the Plebs, the emancipation of slaves, the new relations with Latin cities, and the introduction of Greek religious ideas are all reflected here. New threads are being woven into the tissue of Roman social and political life.

The close relation of Diana to human life is not very difficult to explain. Like Fortuna, Juno Lucina, Bona Dea, and others, she was a special object of the worship of women; she assisted the married woman at childbirth^[845]; and on this day the Roman 201women made a special point of washing their heads^[846]—an unusual performance, perhaps, which has been explained by reference to the sanctity of the head among primitive peoples^[847]. But Diana, like Silvanus, with whom she is found in connexion^[848], was no doubt originally a spirit of holy trees and woods, i. e. of wild life generally, who became gradually reclaimed and brought into friendly and useful relations with the Italian farmer, his wife, and his cattle^[849].

This was also the dies natalis of another temple on the Aventine, that of Vortumnus, which was dedicated in B.C. 264 by the consul M. Fulvius Flaccus^[850]. About the character of this god there is fortunately no doubt. Literature here comes to our aid, as it too rarely does: Propertius^[851] describes him elaborately as presiding over gardens and fruit, and Ovid^[852] tells a picturesque story of his love for Pomona the fruit-goddess, whose antiquity at Rome is proved by the fact that she had a flamen of her own^[853]. The date, August 13, when the fruit would be ripe, suits well enough with all we know of Vortumnus.

The god had a bronze statue in the Vicus Tuscus, and perhaps for that reason was believed to have come to Rome from Etruria^[854]. But his name, like Picumnus, is beyond doubt Latin, and may be supposed to indicate the turn or change in the year at the fruit-season^[855]; and if he really was an immigrant, which is possible, his original cult in Etruria was not Etruscan proper, but old Italian.

Three other dedications are mentioned in the calendars as occurring on Aug. 13: to Hercules invictus ad portam trigeminam; 202to Castor and Pollax in circo Flaminio; and to Flora ad circum maximum. Of these cults nothing of special interest is known, and the deities are treated of in other parts of this work.

xvi Kal. Sept. (Aug. 17). NP.

PORT[UNALIA]. (MAFF. AMIT. VALL.)
TIBERINALIA. (PHILOC.)
FERIAE PORTUNO. (AMIT. ANT.)
PORTUNO AD PONTEM AEMILIUM. (AMIT. VALL. ALLIF.)
IANO AD THEATRUM MARCELLI. (VALL. ALLIF.)

Who was Portunus, and why was his festival in August? Why was it at the Pons Aemilius, and where was that bridge? Can any connexion be found between this and the other August rites? These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily; the scraps of evidence are too few and too doubtful. We have here to do with another ancient deity, who survives in the calendars only, and in the solitary record that he had a special flamen. This flamen might be a plebeian^[856], which seems to suit with the character of other cults in the district by the Tiber, and may perhaps point to a somewhat later origin than that of the most ancient city worships.

There are but two or three texts which help us to make an uncertain guess at the nature of Portunus. Varro^[857] wrote ‘Portunalia et Portuno, quoi eo die aedes in portu Tiberino facta et feriae institutae.’ Mommsen takes the portus here as meaning Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, and imagines a yearly procession thither from Rome on this day^[858]. This of course is pure hypothesis; but if, as he insists, portus is rarely or never used for a city wharf on a river such as that at Rome, we may 203perhaps accept it provisionally; but in doing so we have to yield another point to Mommsen, viz. the identity of Portunus and Tiberinus. In the very late calendar of Philocalus this day is called Tiberinalia, and from this Mommsen infers the identity of the two deities^[859].

But it may be that the original Portunus had no immediate connexion either with river or harbour. We find a curious but mutilated note in the Veronese commentary on Virgil^[860]: ‘Portunus, ut Varro ait, deus port[uum porta]rumque praeses. Quare huius dies festus Portunalia, qua apud veteres claves in focum add ... mare institutum.’ Huschke^[861] here conjectured ‘addere et infumare,’ and inferred that we should see in Portunus the god of the gates and keys which secured the stock of corn, &c., in storehouses. Wild as this writer’s conjectures usually are, in this case it seems to me possible that he has hit the mark. If the words ‘claves in focum’ are genuine, as they seem to be, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that something was done to keys on this day; perhaps the old keys of very hard wood were held in the fire to harden them afresh^[862]. It is worth noting that according to Verrius^[863] Portunus was supposed ‘clavim manu tenere et deus esse portarum.’ This would suit very well with harvest-time, when barns and storehouses would be repaired and their gates and fastenings looked to—more especially as it is not unlikely that the word portus originally meant a safe place of any kind, and only as civilization advanced became specially appropriated to harbours^[864]. This appropriation may have come about through the medium of storehouses near the Tiber; and it was long ago suggested by Jordan that these were under the particular care of Portunus^[865].

204If Portunus were really a god of keys and doors and storehouses, it would be natural to look for some close relation between him and Janus. But what can be adduced in favour of such a relation does not amount to much^[866]; and it may have been merely by accident that this was the dedication-day of a temple of Janus ‘ad theatrum Marcelli’^[867].

xiv Kal. Sept. (Aug. 19). FP. (MAFF. AMIT.) F.

(ANT. ALLIF.) NP. (VALL.^[868])

VIN[ALIA]. (MAFF. VALL. AMIT. ETC.)

FERIAE IOVI. (ALLIF.)

VENERI AD CIRCUM MAXIMUM. (VALL.)

The ‘Aedes Veneris ad Circum Maximum’ alluded to in the Fasti Vallenses was dedicated in 295 B.C., and the building was begun at the expense of certain matrons who were fined for adultery^[869]. As has been already explained, no early connexion can be proved between Venus and wine or the vintage^[870]; though both August 19 and April 23, the days of the two Vinalia, were dedication-days of temples of the goddess.

The difficult question of the two festivals called Vinalia has been touched upon under April 23. The one in August was known as Vinalia Rustica^[871], and might naturally be supposed to be concerned with the ripening grapes. It has been conjectured^[872] that it was on this day, which one calendar marks as a festival of Jupiter, that the Flamen Dialis performed the auspicatio vindemiae, i. e. plucked the first grapes, and prayed and sacrificed for the safety of the whole crop^[873]. If it be 205argued that August 23 was too early a date for such a rite, since the vintage was never earlier than the middle of September, we may remember that the Vestal Virgins plucked the first ears of corn as early as the first half of May for the purpose of making sacred cakes, some weeks before the actual harvest^[874].

But it is certainly possible that both Vinalia have to do with wine, and not with the vintage. Festus says that this day was a festival because the new wine was then first brought into the city^[875]; and this does not conflict with Varro^[876], who tells us that on this day fiunt feriati olitores—for it would naturally be a day of rejoicing for the growers. Mommsen, with some reason, refers these passages to the later custom of not opening the wine of the last vintage for a year^[877], in which case the year must be understood roughly as from October to August. He would, in fact, explain this second Vinalia as instituted when this later and more luxurious custom arose, the old rule of a six months’ period surviving in the April ceremony. If we ask why the August Vinalia are called Rustica, Mommsen answers that the country growers were now at liberty to bring in their wine.

It is difficult to decide between these conflicting views. When an authority like Mommsen bids us beware of connecting the Vinalia Rustica with the auspicatio vindemiae, we feel that it is at our peril that we differ from him. He is evidently quite unable to look upon such a date as August 19 as in any way associated with the vintage which followed some weeks later. Yet I cannot help thinking, that this association is by no means impossible; for the grapes would by this time be fully formed on the vines, and the next few weeks would be an anxious time for the growers^[878]. Ceremonies like that of the 206Auspicatio, intended to avert from crops the perils of storm or disease, are known sometimes to take place when the crops are still unripe. I have already alluded to the proceedings of the Vestals in May. Mr. Frazer, in an Appendix to his Golden Bough^[879], gives a curious instance of this kind from Tonga in the Pacific Ocean, where what we may call the auspicatio of the Yam-crop took place before the whole crop was fit for gathering. It was celebrated ‘just before the yams in general are arrived at a state of maturity; those which are used in this ceremony being planted sooner than others, and consequently they are the firstfruits of the yam season. The object of this offering is to ensure the protection of the gods, that their favour may be extended to the welfare of the nation generally and in particular to the productions of the earth, of which yams are the most important.’

xii Kal. Sept. (Aug. 21). NP.

CONS[UALIA]. (PINC. MAFF. VALL. ETC.)

CONSO IN AVENTINO SACRIFICIUM. (VALL.)

There was a second festival of Consus on Dec. 15; but the note ‘Conso in Aventino’ there appears three days earlier, Dec. 12. The temple on the Aventine was a comparatively late foundation^[880]; but as the cult of this old god became gradually obscured, it seems to have been confused with the most ancient centre of Consus-worship, the underground altar in the Circus maximus, ‘ad primas metas’^[881]. It is with this latter that we must connect the two Consualia. What the altar was like we do not exactly know; it was only uncovered on the festival days. Dionysius calls it a τέμενος, Servius a ‘templum sub tecto’; and Tertullian, who explicitly says that it was ‘sub terra,’ asserts that there was engraved on it the following inscription: ‘Consus consilio, Mars duello, Lares coillo^[882] potentes.’ Wissowa remarks that this statement ‘is not 207free from suspicion’; and we may take it as pretty certain that if it was really there it was not very ancient. The false etymology of Consus, and the connexion of Mars with war, both show the hand of some comparatively late interpreter of religion; and the form of the inscription, nominative and descriptive, is most suspiciously abnormal.

For the true etymology of Consus we are, strange to say, hardly in doubt; and it helps us to conjecture the real origin of this curious altar. Consus is connected with ‘condere’^[883], and may be interpreted as the god of the stored-up harvest; the buried altar will thus be a reminiscence of the very ancient practice—sometimes of late suggested as worth reviving for hay—of storing the corn underground^[884]. Or if this practice cannot be proved of ancient Italy, we may aptly remember that sacrifices to chthonic deities were sometimes buried; a practice which may in earliest times have given rise to the connexion of such gods with wealth—when agricultural produce rather than the precious metals was the common form of wealth^[885]. Or again we may combine the two interpretations, and guess that the corn stored up underground was conceived as in some sense sacrificed to the chthonic deities.

If these views of the altar are correct, we might naturally infer that the Consualia in August was a harvest festival of some kind. Plutarch^[886] asks why at the Consualia horses and asses have a holiday and are decked out with flowers; and such a custom would suit excellently with harvest-home. Unluckily in the only trace of this custom preserved in the calendars, it is attributed to the December festival, and is so mutilated as to be useless for detail^[887].

The amplifications here are Mommsen’s, the first two based on Plutarch’s statement. It is a difficulty, as regards the first, that the middle of December would be a bad time for flowers: perhaps this did not occur to the great scholar. I would suggest that either Verrius’ note is here accidentally misplaced, or that the lacunae must be filled up differently. In any case I do not think we need fear to refer Plutarch’s passage to the Consualia of August, and therefore to harvest rejoicings on that day.

The connexion of the Consus-cult with horses was so obvious as to give rise eventually to the identification of the god with Poseidon Hippios. It is certain that there were horse-races in the Circus maximus at one of the two Consualia, and as Dionysius^[888] connects them with the day of the Rape of the Sabines, which Plutarch puts in August, we may be fairly sure that they took place at the August festival. Mules also raced—according to Festus^[889], because they were said to be the most ancient beasts of burden. This looks like a harvest festival, and may carry us back to the most primitive agricultural society and explain the origin of the Circus maximus; for the only other horse-races known to us from the old calendar were those of Mars in the Campus Martius on Feb. 27 and March 13^[890]. We may suppose that when the work of harvest was done, the farmers and labourers enjoyed themselves in this way and laid the foundation for a great Roman social institution^[891].

Once more, it is not impossible that in the legendary connexion of the Rape of the Sabine women with the Consualia^[892] we may see a reflection of the jollity and license which accompanies the completion of harvest among so many peoples. 209Romulus was said to have attracted the Sabines by the first celebration of the Consualia. Is it not possible that the meeting of neighbouring communities on a festive occasion of this kind may have been a favourable opportunity for capturing new wives^[893]? The sexual license common on such occasions has been abundantly illustrated by Mr. Frazer in his Golden Bough^[894].

Before leaving the Consualia we may just remark that Consus had no flamen of his own, in spite of his undoubted antiquity; doubtless because his altar was underground, and only opened once or perhaps twice a year. On August 21 his sacrifice was performed, says Tertullian^[895], by the Flamen Quirinalis in the presence of the Vestals. This flamen seems to have had a special relation to the corn-crops, for it was he who also sacrificed a dog to Robigus on April 25^[896], to avert the mildew from them; and thus we get one more confirmation from the cult of the view taken as to the agricultural origin of the Consualia.

x Kal. Sept. (Aug. 23). NP.

VOLCANALIA. (PINC. MAFF. VALL. ETC.)
VOLCANO IN CIRCO FLAMINIO. (VALL.)
VOLCANO. (PINC.)

(A mutilated fragment of the calendar of the Fratres Arvales gives QUIR[INO] IN COLLE, VOLK[ANO] IN COMIT[IO]. OPI OPIFERÆ IN ..., [NYMP]HIS(?) IN CAMPO).

Of the cult of this day, apart from the extracts from the calendars, we know nothing, except that the heads of Roman families threw into the fire certain small fish with scales, which were to be had from the Tiber fishermen at the ‘area Volcani’^[897]. We cannot explain this; but it reminds us of the fish called maena, with magical properties, which the old 210woman offered to Tacita and the ghost-world at the Parentalia^[898]. Fish-sacrifices were rare; and if in one rite fish are used to propitiate the inhabitants of the underworld, they seem not inappropriate in another of which the object is apparently to propitiate the fire-god, who in a volcanic country like that of Rome must surely be a chthonic deity.

The antiquity of the cult of Volcanus is shown by the fact that there was a Flamen Volcanalis^[899], who on May 1 sacrificed to Maia, the equivalent, as we saw, of Bona Dea, Terra, &c. With Volcanus we may remember that Maia was coupled in the old prayer formula preserved by Gellius (13.23)—Maia Volcani. From these faint indications Preller^[900] conjectured that the original notion of Volcanus was that of a favouring nature-spirit, perhaps of the warmth and fertilizing power of the earth. However this may be, in later times, under influences which can only be guessed at, he became a hostile fire-god, hard to keep under control. Of this aspect of him Wissowa has written concisely at the conclusion of his little treatise de Feriis. He suggests that the appearance of the nymphs^[901] in the rites of this day indicates the use of water in conflagrations, and that Ops Opifera was perhaps invoked to protect her own storehouses. The name Volcanus became a poetical word for devouring fire as early as the time of Ennius, and is familiar to us in this sense in Virgil^[902]. After the great fire at Rome in Nero’s time a new altar was erected to Volcanus by Domitian, at which (and at all Volcanalia) on this day a red calf and a boar were offered for sacrifice^[903]. At Ostia the cult became celebrated; there was an ‘aedes’ and a ‘pontifex Volcani’ and a ‘praetor sacris Volcani faciundis.’ In August the storehouses at Ostia would be full of new grain arrived from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, and in that hot month would be especially in danger from fire; an elaborate cult of Volcanus the fire-god was therefore at this place particularly desirable.

211The aedes Volcani in circo Flaminio was dedicated before 215 B.C.; the exact date is not known^[904]. Its position was explained by Vitruvius^[905] as having the object of keeping conflagrations away from the city. Mr. Jevons, in his Introduction to a translation of Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae^[906], has argued from this position, outside the pomoerium, and from a doubtful etymology, that the cult of Volcanus was a foreign introduction; but the position of the temple is no argument, as has been well shown by Aust^[907], and the chief area Volcani, or Volcanal, was in the Comitium, in the heart of the city^[908].

ix Kal. Sept. (Aug. 24). Mundus Patet.

This does not appear in the calendars. We learn from Festus^[909] that on this day, on Oct. 5, and Nov. 8, the ‘mundus’ was open. This mundus was a round pit on the Palatine, the centre of Roma quadrata^[910]—the concave hollow being perhaps supposed to correspond to the concave sky above^[911]. It was closed, so it was popularly believed, by a ‘lapis manalis’ (Festus s. v.). When this was removed, on the three days there was supposed to be free egress for the denizens of the underworld^[912].

I am much inclined to see in this last idea a later Graeco-Etruscan accretion upon a very simple original fact. O. Müller long ago suggested this—pointing out that in Plutarch’s description of the foundation of Roma quadrata the casting into the trench of first-fruits of all necessaries of life gives us a clue to the original meaning of the mundus. If we suppose 212that it was the penus of the new city—a sacred place, of course—used for storing grain, we can see why it should be open on Aug. 24^[913]. Nor is it difficult to understand why, when the original use and meaning had vanished, the Graeco-Etruscan doctrine of the underworld should be engrafted on this simple Roman stem. Dis and Proserpina claim the mundus: it is ‘ianua Orci,’ ‘faux Plutonis’^[914]—ideas familiar to Romans who had come under the spell of Etruscan religious beliefs.

viii Kal. Sept. (Aug. 25). NP.

OPIC[ONSIVIA]. (ALLIF. MAFF. VALL.)

OPICID. (PINC.) The last two letters must be a cutter’s error.

Feriae Opi; Opi Consiv. in Regia. (Arv.) The last four words seem to belong to Aug. 26 (see Mommsen ad loc.).

This festival follows that of Consus after an interval of three days; and Wissowa^[915] has pointed out that in December the same interval occurs between the Consualia (15th) and the Opalia (19th). This and the epithet or cognomen Consiva, which is fully attested^[916], led him to fancy that Ops was the wife of Consus, and not the wife of Saturnus, as has been generally supposed both in ancient and modern times^[917]. We may agree with him that there is no real evidence for any primitive connexion of Saturnus and Ops of this kind; as far as we can tell the idea was adopted from the relation of Cronos and Rhea. But there was no need to find any husband for Ops; the name Consiva need imply no such relation, any more than Lua Saturni, Moles Martis, Maia Volcani, and the rest^[918], or the Tursa Iovia of the Iguvian inscription so often quoted. Both adjectival and genitive forms are in my view no more 213than examples of the old Italian instinct for covering as much ground as possible in invoking supernatural powers^[919]; and this is again a result of the indistinctness with which those powers were conceived, in regard both to their nature and function. A distinct specialization of function was, I am convinced, the later work of the pontifices. Ops and Consus are obviously closely related; and Wissowa is probably right in treating the one as a deity ‘messis condendae,’ and the other as representing the ‘opima frugum copia quae horreis conditur.’ But when he goes further than this, his arguments ring hollow^[920].

Of the ritual of the Opiconsivia we know only what Varro tells us^[921]: ‘Opeconsiva dies ab dea Ope Consiva, quoius in Regia sacrarium, quod ideo actum (so MSS.) ut eo praeter Virgines Vestales et sacerdotem publicum introeat nemo.’ Many conjectures have been made for the correction of ‘quod ideo actum’^[922]; but the real value of the passage does not depend on these words. The Regia is the king’s house, and represents that of the ancient head of the family: the sacrarium Opis was surely then the sacred penus of that house—the treasury of the fruits of the earth on which the family subsisted. It suits admirably with this view that, as Varro says, only the Vestals and a ‘publicus sacerdos’ were allowed to enter it—i. e. the form was retained from remote antiquity that the daughters of the house were in charge of it^[923]—the master of the house being here represented by the sacerdos—the rex sacrorum or a pontifex. In this connexion it is worth while to quote a passage of Columella^[924] which seems to be derived from some ancient practice of the rural household: ‘Ne contractentur pocula vel cibi nisi aut ab impube aut certe abstinentissimo rebus venereis, quibus si fuerit operatus vel vir vel femina 214debere eos flumine aut perenni aqua priusquam penora contingant ablui. Propter quod his necessarium esse pueri vel virginis ministerium, per quos promantur quae usus postulaverit.’

vi Kal. Sept. (Aug. 27). NP.

VOLT[URNALIA]. (ALLIF. MAFF. VALL.)

FERIAE VOLTURNO. (ARV. INTER ADDITA POSTERIORA.)

VOLTURNO FLUMINI SACRIFICIUM. (VALL.)

Of this very ancient and perhaps obsolete rite nothing seems to have been known to the later Latin scholars, or they did not think it worth comment. Varro mentions a Flamen Volturnalis, but tells us nothing about him. From the occurrence of the name for a river in Campania it may be guessed that the god in this case was a river also; and if so, it must be the Tiber. This is Mommsen’s conclusion, and the only difficulty he finds in it is that (in his view) Portunus is also the Tiber^[925]. Why did he not see that the same river-god, even if bearing different names, could hardly have two flamines? I am content to see in Volturnus an old name for the Tiber, signifying the winding snake-like river^[926], and in Portunus a god of storehouses, as I have explained above.

Here, then, we perhaps have a trace of the lost cult of the Tiber, which assuredly must have existed in the earliest times—and the flamen is the proof of its permanent importance. When the name was changed to Tiber we do not know, nor whether ‘Albula’ marks an intermediate stage between the two; but that this was the work of the pontifices seems likely from Servius^[927], who writes ‘Tiberinus ... a pontificibus indigitari solet.’ Of a god Tiberinus there is no single early record.

It should just be mentioned that Jordan^[928], relying on Lucretius, 5. 745, thought it probable that Volturnus might be a god of whirlwinds; and Huschke^[929] has an even wilder suggestion, which need not here be mentioned.

The Calendar of this month is almost a blank. Only the Kalends, Nones and Ides are marked in the large letters with which we have become familiar; no other festival is here associated with a special deity. But the greater part of the month is occupied with the ludi Romani (5th to 19th)^[930], and the 13th (Ides), as we know from two Calendars, was not only, like all Ides, sacred to Jupiter, but was distinguished as the day of the famous ‘epulum Jovis,’ and also as the dies natalis of the great Capitoline temple.

The explanation of the absence of great festivals in this month is comparatively simple. September was for the Italian farmer, and therefore for the primitive Roman agricultural community, a period of comparative rest from urgent labour and from religious duties; for no operations were then going on which called for the invocation of special deities to favour and protect. A glance at the rustic calendars will show this well enough^[931]. The messes which figure in July and August have come to an end, and the vintage does not appear until October. There is of course work to be done, as always, but it is the easy work of the garden and orchard. ‘Dolia picantur: poma legunt: arborum oblaqueatio.’ Varro, who divides the year for agricultural purposes into eight irregular periods, has little to say of the fifth of these, i. e. that which preceded the autumn equinox. ‘Quinto intervallo inter caniculam 216et aequinoctium autumnale oportet stramenta desecari, et acervos construi, aratro offringi, frondem caedi, prata irrigua iterum secari^[932].’

This was also the time when military work would be coming to an end. In early times there were of course no lengthy campaigns; and such fighting as there was, the object of which would be to destroy your enemies’ crops and harvest, would as a rule be over in August. Even in later times, when campaigns were longer, the same would usually be the case; and the performance of vows made by the generals in the field, and also their vacation of office, would naturally fall in this month. We find, in fact, that the ludi which occupied so large a number of September days, had their origin in the performance of the vota of kings or consuls after the close of the wars^[933]; and we have evidence that the Ides of September was the day on which the earliest consuls laid down their office^[934]. There was, in fact, every opportunity for a lengthened time of ease; the people were at leisure and in good temper after harvest and victory; even the horses which took part in the games were home from war service or resting from their labours on the farm^[935].

It is not strictly within the scope of this work to describe the ludi Romani, which in their fully organized form were of comparatively late date; but their close connexion with the cult of Jupiter affords an opportunity for some remarks on that most imposing of all the Roman worships.

The ludi Romani came in course of time, as has been said above, to extend from the 5th to the 19th; they spread out in fact on each side of the Ides^[936], the day on which took place the ‘epulum Jovis’ in the Capitoline temple. As this day was also 217the dies natalis of the same temple, and that on which the nail was driven into the wall of the cella Jovis^[937], we have a very close connexion between the ludi and the cult of Jupiter. The link is to be found in the fact that in the ludi votivi, which were developed into ludi Romani, the vows were made and paid to the supreme god of the State^[938]. We have from a later time the formula of such a vow preserved by Livy^[939]. ‘Si duellum quod cum rege Antiocho sumi populus iussit id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit, tum tibi, Iuppiter, populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet, donaque ad omnia pulvinaria dabuntur de pecunia, quantam senatus decreverit: quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti donaque data recte sunto.’

The epulum Jovis, thus occurring in the middle of the ludi, is believed by some writers to have originally belonged to the Ides of November and to the ludi plebeii, as it does not happen to be alluded to by Livy in connexion with the ludi Romani, and our first notice of it in September is in the Augustan calendars^[940]. But it is surely earlier than B.C. 230, the received date of the ludi plebeii, and of the circus Flaminius in which they took place. We may agree with the latest investigator of the Jupiter-cult that the origin of the epulum is to be looked for in a form of thanksgiving to Jupiter for the preservation of the state from the perils of the war season, and that no better day could be found for it than the foundation-day of the Capitoline temple^[941]. This epulum was one of the most singular and striking scenes in Roman public life. It began with a sacrifice; the victim is not mentioned, but was no doubt a heifer, and probably a white 218one^[942]. Then took place the epulum proper^[943], which the three deities of the Capitol seem to have shared in visible form with the magistrates and senate. The images of the gods were decked out as for a feast, and the face of Jupiter painted red with minium, like that of the triumphator. Jupiter had a couch, and Juno and Minerva each a sella, and the meal went on in their presence^[944].

Now an investigator of the Roman religious system is here confronted with a difficult problem. Was this simply a Greek practice like that of the lectisternium, and one which began with the Etruscan dynasty and the foundation of the Capitoline temple with its triad of deities? Or is it possible that in the cult of the Roman Jupiter there was of old a common feast of some kind, shared by gods and worshippers, on which this gorgeous ritual was eventually grafted?

Marquardt has gone so far as to separate the epulum Jovis altogether from the lectisternia, and apparently also from the inundation of Greek influence^[945]. It answers rather, he says, to such domestic rites as the offering to Jupiter Dapalis described thus by Cato in the De Re Rustica^[946]: ‘Dapem hoc modo fieri oportet. Iovi dapali culignam vini quantum vis polluceto. Eo die feriae bubus et bubulcis, et qui dapem facient. Cum pollucere oportebit, sic facies. Iupiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet, in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi, eius rei ergo macte hac illace dape pollucenda esto. Manus interluito. Postea vinum sumito. Iupiter dapalis, macte istace dape pollucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto. Vestae, si voles, dato^[947]. Daps Iovi assaria pecuina, urna vini lovis caste.’

219I confess that I do not see wherein lies the point of the comparison of this passage with the ceremony of the epulum; and Marquardt himself does not attempt to elaborate it. There is no mention here of a visible presence of Jupiter in the form of an image, which is the one striking feature of the epulum. Marquardt, as it seems to me, might better have adduced some example from old Italian usage of the belief that the gods were spiritually present at a common religious meal—a belief on which might easily be engrafted the practice of presenting them there in actual iconic form. Ovid, for example, writes thus of the cult of the Sabine Vacuna^[948]:

Or again in the sacra of the curiae, if Dionysius reports them rightly^[949], we find a clear case of a common meal in which the gods took part. He tells us that he saw tables in the ‘sacred houses’ of the curiae spread for the gods with simple food in very primitive earthenware dishes. He does not mention the presence of any images of the gods, but it is probable from his interesting description that each curia partook with its gods of a common meal of a religious character, and one not likely to have come under Greek influence^[950].

This last example may suggest a hypothesis which is at least not likely to do any serious harm. Let it be remembered that each curia was a constituent part of the whole Roman community. We might naturally expect to find a common religious meal of the same kind in which the whole state took part through its magistrates and senate. This is just what we do find in the epulum Jovis, though the character of its ceremonial is different; and it is certainly possible that this epulum had its origin in a feast like that which Dionysius saw, but one which afterwards underwent vital changes at the 220hands of the Etruscan dynasty of Roman kings. I am strongly inclined to believe that it was under the influence of these kings that the meal came to take place on the Capitol, and in the temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which they intended to be the new centre of the Roman dominion^[951]; and to them also I would ascribe the presence at the feast of the three deities in iconic form. It may be that before that critical era in Roman history the epulum took place not on the Capitol but in the Regia, which with the temple of Vesta hard by formed the oldest centre of the united Rome; and that the presence of Jupiter^[952] or any other god was there a matter of belief, like that of Vacuna with the Sabines, and not of the actual evidence of eyesight.

But this conjecture is a somewhat bold one; and it seems worth while to take this opportunity of examining more closely into the cult of Jupiter, with the object of determining whether the great god was apt, in any part of Italy but Etruria, to lend himself easily to anthropomorphic ideas and practices^[953].

The cult of Jupiter is found throughout Italy under several forms of the same name, with or without the suffix -piter = pater, which, so far as we can guess, points to a conception of the god as protector, if not originator, of a stock. This paternal title, which was applied to other deities also, does not necessarily imply an early advance beyond the ‘daemonistic’ conception of divine beings; it rather suggests that some one such being had been brought into peculiarly close relations with a particular stock, and does no more than indicate a possibility of further individual development in the future^[954]. 221The ‘father’ in this case has no wife, though we find the word ‘mater’ applied to goddesses^[955]; Juno is undoubtedly the female principle, but she is not, as has so often been imagined, the wife of Jupiter. The attempt to prove this by arguing from the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica cannot succeed: the former was the priest of Jupiter, but his wife was not the priestess of Juno^[956]. There is indeed a certain mysterious dualism of male and female among the old Italian divinities, as we know from the locus classicus in Gellius (N. A. 13. 23. 2); but we are not entitled to say that the relation was a conjugal one^[957].

Before we proceed to examine traces of the oldest Jupiter in Rome and Latium let us see what survivals are to be found in other parts of Italy.

In Umbria we find Jovis holding the first place among the gods of the great inscription of Iguvium, which beyond doubt retains the primitive features of the cult, though it dates probably from the last century B.C., and records rites which indicate a fully developed city-life^[958]. His cult-titles here are Grabovius, of which the meaning is still uncertain, and Sancius, which brings him into connexion with the Semo Sancus and Dius Fidius of the Romans. The sacrifices and prayers are elaborately recorded, but there is no trace in the ritual of anything approaching to an anthropomorphic conception of the god, unless it be the apparent mention of a temple^[959]. No image is mentioned, and there is no sign of a common meal. The titles of the deities too have the common old-Italian fluidity, i. e. the same title belongs to more than one deity^[960]. Everything points to a stage of religious thought in which the personality of gods had no distinct place. The 222centre-point of the cult seems to be a hill, the ocris fisius, within the town of Iguvium, which reminds us of the habits of the Greek Zeus and the physical or elemental character—unanthropomorphized—which seems to belong to that earlier stage in his worship^[961].

It is on a hill also that we find the cult among the Sabellians. An inscription from Rapino in the land of the Marrucini tells us of a festal procession in honour of ‘Iovia Ioves patres ocris Tarincris,’ i. e. Jovia (Juno?) belonging to the Jupiter of the hill Tarincris^[962].

Among the Oscan peoples the cult-title Lucetius is the most striking fact. Servius^[963] says: ‘Sane lingua Osca Lucetius est Iuppiter dictus a luce quam praestare hominibus dicitur.’ The same title is found in the hymn of the Roman Salii^[964], and is evidently connected with lux; Jupiter being beyond doubt the giver of light, whether that of sun or moon. So Macrobius^[965]: ‘Nam cum Iovem accipiamus lucis auctorem, unde et Lucetium Salii in carminibus canunt et Cretenses Δία τὴν ἡμέραν vocant, ipsi quoque Romani Diespitrem appellant ut diei patrem. Iure hic dies Iovis fiducia vocatur, cuius lux non finitur cum solis occasu, sed splendorem diei et noctem continuat inlustrante luna,’ &c. The Ides of all months, i. e. the days of full moon, were sacred to Jupiter. But in all ceremonies known to us in which the god appears in this capacity of his, there is, as we might expect, no trace whatever of a personal or anthropomorphic conception.

The Etruscan Tina, or Tinia, is now generally identified, even etymologically, with Jupiter^[966]. The attributes of the two are essentially the same, though one particular side of the Etruscan god’s activity, that of the lightning-wielder, is specially developed. But Tina is also the protector of cities, along with Juno and Minerva (Cupra and Menvra); and it is in connexion with this function of his that we first meet with a decided tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception. 223Even here, however, the stimulus can hardly be said to have come from Italy. ‘The one fact,’ says Aust^[967], ‘which is at present quite clear is that the oldest Etruscan representations of gods can be traced back to Greek models. Tinia was completely identified in costume and attributes with the Greek Zeus by Etruscan artists.’ The insignia of Etruscan magistrates were again copied from these, and have survived for us in the costume of the Roman triumphator^[968], and in part in the insignia of the curule magistrate, i. e. in sceptrum, sella, toga palmata, &c., and in the smearing of the face of the triumphator with minium.

Coming nearer to Rome we find at Falerii, a town subject to Roman and Sabellian as well as Graeco-Etruscan influence, the curious rite of the ἱερὸς γάμος described by Ovid (Amores, 3. 13), and found also in many parts of Greece^[969]. In this elaborate procession Juno is apparently the bride, but the bridegroom is not mentioned. At Argos, Zeus was the bridegroom, and the inference is an obvious one that Jupiter was the bridegroom at Falerii. But this cannot be proved, and is in fact supported by no real evidence as to the old-Italian relation of the god and goddess. The rite is extremely interesting as pointing to what seems to be an early penetration of Greek religious ideas and practices into the towns of Western Italy; but it has no other bearing on the Jupiter-question, nor are we enlightened by the little else we know of the Falerian Jupiter^[970].

But at Praeneste, that remarkable town perched high upon the hills which enclose the Latin Campagna to the north, we find a very remarkable form of the Jupiter-cult, and one which must be mentioned here, puzzling and even inexplicable as it certainly is. The great goddess of Praeneste was Fortuna Primigenia—a cult-title which cannot well mean anything but first-born^[971]; and that she was, or came to be thought of as, the first-born daughter of Jupiter is placed beyond a doubt by an 224inscription of great antiquity first published in 1882^[972]. But this is not the only anomaly in the Jupiter-worship of Praeneste. There was another cult of Fortuna, distinct, apparently, from that of Fortuna Primigenia, in which she took the form not of a daughter but of a mother, and, strange as it may seem, of the mother both of Jupiter and Juno. On this point we have the explicit evidence of Cicero (de Divinatione, 2. 85), who says, when speaking of the place where the famous ‘sortes’ of Praeneste were first found by a certain Numerius Suffustius: ‘Is est hodie locus saeptus religiose propter Iovis pueri (sacellum?) qui lactens cum Iunone Fortunae in gremio sedens, castissime colitur a matribus.’ Thus we have Fortuna worshipped in the same place as the daughter and as the mother of Jupiter; and nowhere else in Italy can we find a trace of a similar conception of the relations either of these or any other deities. We cannot well reject the evidence of Cicero, utterly unsupported though it be: we must face the difficulty that we have here to account for the occurrence of a Jupiter who is the child of Fortuna and also apparently the brother of Juno, as well as of a Jupiter who is the father of Fortuna.

As regards this last feature, the fatherhood of Jupiter, Jordan says emphatically^[973]—and no scholar was more careful in his judgements—that in the whole range of Italian religions ‘liberorum procreatio nulla est unquam’: and he would understand ‘filia’ in the inscription quoted above in a metaphorical rather than a physical sense. Yet however we choose to think of it, Mommsen is justified in remarking^[974] on the peculiarly anthropomorphic idea of Fortuna (and we may add of Jupiter) at which the Latins of Praeneste must have arrived, in comparison with the character of Italian religion generally.

225Even more singular than this is the sonship of Jupiter and the fact that he appeared together with Juno in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammae appetens.’ Cicero’s language leaves no doubt that there was some work of art at Praeneste in which the three were so represented, or believed to be represented. Yet there are considerations which may suggest that we should hesitate before hastily concluding that all this is a genuine Italian development of genuine Italian ideas.

1. Italy presents us with no real parallel to this child-Jupiter though in Greece we find many. Jordan has mentioned three possible Italian parallels, but rejected them all: Caeculus Volcani, the legendary founder of Praeneste, Hercules bullatus, and the beardless Veiovis. The attributes of the last-named are explained by a late identification with Apollo^[975]; Hercules bullatus is undoubtedly Greek: the story of the birth of Caeculus is a foundation-legend, truly Italian in character, but belonging to a different class of religious ideas from that we are discussing. To these we may add that the boy-Mars found on a Praenestine cista is clearly of Etruscan origin, as is shown by Deecke in the Lexicon, s. v. Maris.

2. Cicero’s statement is not confirmed by any inscription from Praeneste. Those which were formerly thought to refer to Iupiter Puer^[976] are now proved to belong to Fortuna as Iovis puer (= filia). It is most singular that Fortuna should be thus styled Iovis puer in the same place where Jupiter himself was worshipped as puer; still more so that in one inscription (2868) the cutter should have dropped out the ‘s’ in Iovis, so that we actually read Iovi puero. It may seem tempting to guess that the name Jupiter Puer arose from a misunderstanding of the word puer as applied to Fortuna: but the evidence as it stands supplies no safe ground for this.

3. The fact that Cicero describes a statue is itself suspicious, in the absence of corroborative evidence of any other kind^[977]: 226for it suggests that the cult may have arisen, and have taken its peculiar form, as a result of the introduction of Greek or Graeco-Etruscan works of art. In Praeneste itself, and in other parts of Latium and of Campania, innumerable terra-cottas have been found^[978], of the type of the Greek κουροτρόφος, i. e. a mother, sitting or standing, with a child, and occasionally two children^[979] in her lap. These may, indeed, be simply votive offerings, to Fortuna and other deities of childbirth: but such objects may quite well have served as the foundation from which the idea of Fortuna and her infants arose. There is a passage in Servius which seems to me to show a trace of a similar confusion elsewhere in this region of Italy. ‘Circa hunc tractum Campaniae colebatur puer Iuppiter qui Anxyrus dicebatur quasi ἄνευ ξυροῦ, id est sine novacula: quia barbam nunquam rasisset: et Iuno virgo quae Feronia dicebatur^[980].’ True, the Jupiter of Anxur is a boy or youth^[981], not an infant: but the passage serves well to show the fluidity of Italian deities, at any rate in regard to the names attached to them. That this puer Iuppiter was originally some other deity, and very possibly a Greek one, I have little doubt: while Juno Virgo, Feronia, Fortuna, Proserpina, all seem to slide into each other in a way which is very bewildering to the investigator^[982]. This is no doubt owing to two chief causes—the daemonistic character of the early Italian religion, in which many of the spiritual conceptions were even unnamed; and, secondly, the confusion which arose when Greek artistic types were first introduced into Italy. Two currents of religious thought met at this point, perhaps in the eighth and following centuries B.C.; and the result was a whirlpool, in which the deities were tossed about, lost such shape as they possessed, or got inextricably entangled with each other. The French student of Praenestine antiquities writes with reason of ‘the negligence with which the Praenestine artists 227placed the names of divinities and heroes on designs borrowed from Greek models, and often representing a subject which they did not understand^[983].’

4. And lastly, there is no doubt that Praeneste, in spite of its lofty position on the hills, was at an early stage of its existence subject to foreign influences, like so many other towns on or near the western coast of central Italy. This has been made certain by works of art found in its oldest tombs^[984]. Whether these objects came from Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, or Etruria, the story they tell is for us the same, and may well make us careful in accepting a statement like that of Cicero’s without some hesitation. There was even a Greek foundation-legend of Praeneste, as well as the pure Italian one of Caeculus^[985]. Evidence is slowly gathering which points to a certain basis of fact in these foundation-stories—of fact, at least, in so far as they seem to indicate that the transformation of the early Italian community into a city and a centre of civilization was coincident with the era of the introduction of foreign trade.

While, then, we cannot hope as yet to account for the singular anomaly in the Jupiter-cult, which is presented to us at Praeneste, we may at least hesitate to make use of it in answering the main question with which we set out—viz. how far we can find in the cult of the genuine Italian Jupiter any tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception of the god. Before we return to Rome a word is needed about the Latin Jupiter. The Latin festival has already been described^[986]: it will be sufficient here to point out that none of its features show any advance towards an anthropomorphic conception of Jupiter Latiaris. The god here is of the same type as at Iguvium, one whose sanctuary—whatever it may originally have been—is in a grove on a hill-top^[987], the conspicuous religious centre of the whole Latin stock inhabiting the plain below. Of this stock he is the uniting and protecting deity; 228and when once a year his sacred victim is slain, after offerings have been made to him by the representatives of each member of the league, it is essential that each should also receive (and probably consume through its deputies) a portion of the sacrificial flesh (carnem petere). This, the main feature, and other details of the ritual, point to a survival from a very early stage of religious culture, and one that we may fairly call aniconic. The victim, a white heifer, the absence of wine in the libations, and the mention of milk and cheese among the offerings, all suggest an origin in the pastoral age; and it would seem that foreign ideas never really penetrated into this worship of a pastoral race. The objects that have been found during excavations near the site of the ancient temple^[988] show that, as in the worship of the Fratres Arvales and in that of the curiae, so here, the most antique type of sacred vessels remained in use. Undoubtedly there was in later times a temple, and also a statue of the god^[989]: and it is just possible that, as Niebuhr supposed^[990], these were the goal of an ancient Alban triumphal procession, older than the later magnificent rite of the Capitol. But we know for certain that the ancient cult here suggests neither gorgeous ritual nor iconic usage. We see nothing but the unadorned practices of a simple cattle-breeding people.

Coming now once more to Rome itself, where of course we have fuller information, fragmentary though it be, we find sufficiently clear indications of an ancient cult of Jupiter showing characteristics of much the same kind as those we have already noticed as being genuine Italian.

In the first place the cult is associated with hills and also with trees. It is found on that part of the Esquiline which was known as lucus Fagutalis or Fagutal: here there was a sacellum Iovis ‘in quo fuit fagus arbor quae Iovis (so MSS.) sacra habebatur^[991]‘: and the god himself was called Fagutalis. 229Not far off on the Viminal, or hill of the osiers, there was also an altar of Jupiter Viminius, which we may suppose to have been ancient^[992]. The mysterious Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal may be assumed as telling the same tale, though in historical times the memory of the cult there included Minerva and Juno with Jupiter, i. e. the Etruscan ‘Trias.’ Lastly, on the Capitol itself was the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, reputed to be the oldest in Rome^[993]. It was attributed to Romulus, who, after slaying the king of the Caeninenses, dedicated the first spolia opima on an ancient oak ‘pastoribus sacram,’ and at the same time ‘designavit templo Iovis fines cognomenque addidit deo.’ The oak, we may assume, was the original dwelling of the god, and upon it were fixed the arms taken from the conquered enemy as a thank-offering for his aid^[994]. In this case we seem to be able to guess the development of the cult from this beginning in the tree-worship of primitive ‘pastores.’ The next step would be the erection of an altar below the tree, in a small enclosure, i. e. a sacellum of the same kind as those of the Argei or the Sacellum Larum^[995]. The third stage would be the building of the aedes known to us in history, which Cornelius Nepos says had fallen into decay in his time, and was rebuilt by Augustus on the suggestion of Atticus. Even this was a very small building, for Dionysius saw the foundations of it and found them only fifteen feet wide. This oldest cult of Jupiter was completely overshadowed by the later one of the Etruscan Trias—the aniconic by the iconic, the pure Italian by the mongrel ritual from Etruria.

That this Jupiter Feretrius^[996] was the great Jupiter of pre-Etruscan Rome seems to be proved by his connexion with oaths and treaties, in which he resembles the god of the Latin 230festival. To him apparently belonged the priestly college of the Fetiales, who played so important a part in the declaring of war and the making of treaties: at any rate it was from his temple that the lapis silex and the sceptrum were taken which accompanied them on their official journeys^[997]. It has been supposed that this lapis silex was a symbol of the god himself, like the spear of Mars in the Regia, and other such objects of cult^[998]. ‘We recognize here the primitive forms of a nature-worship, in which the simple flint was sufficient to bring up in men’s minds the idea of the heavenly power of lightning and thunder,’ i. e. the flint if struck would emit sparks and remind the beholder of lightning. Unluckily the existence of a stone in this temple as an object of worship is not clearly attested. Servius (Aen. 8. 641) says that the Fetials took to using a stone instead of a sword to slay their victims with, ‘quod antiquum Iovis signum lapidem silicem putaverunt esse.’ The learned commentator makes a mistake here which will be obvious to all archaeologists, in putting the age of iron before that of stone; but it has not been equally clear to scholars that he by no means implies his belief that Jupiter was ever worshipped under the form of a stone. He only says that the Fetials fancied that this was so: and the whole passage has an aetiological colouring which should put us on our guard^[999]. It is not supported by any other statement or tradition, except an allusion in S. Augustine^[1000] to a ‘lapis Capitolinus,’ 231which is surely the stone of Terminus (see below): and by the oath ‘per Iovem lapidem,’ which has been interpreted by some as meaning ‘Jupiter in the form of a stone.’ But this interpretation is at least open to grave doubt; and in the absence of clearer evidence for the ‘Iuppiter lapis’ of the temple it is better to understand the oath as being sworn by the god and also by the stone, ‘two distinct aspects of the transaction being run together,’ in a way not uncommon in Latin formulae^[1001].

It only remains to conjecture what the ‘silex’ or ‘lapis’ was which the Fetials took from the temple together with the sceptrum. Helbig has attempted to prove that it was not a survival of the stone age, e. g. an axe of stone. Had that been so, he argues, the Roman antiquaries, who were acquainted with such implements^[1002], would have noticed it: and those who describe the rites of the Fetials would have stated that the stone was artificially sharpened. But this negative argument is not a strong one; and I am rather inclined to agree with the suggestion of Dr. Tylor^[1003], that it was a stone celt believed to have been a thunder-bolt. There may indeed have been more than one of these kept in the temple, for in B.C. 201 the Fetials who went to Africa took with them each a stone^[1004] (privos lapides silices) along with their ‘sagmina,’ &c. This fact seems to me to prove that the silices, like the sagmina and sceptrum, were only part of the ritualistic apparatus of the Fetials^[1005], and not objects in which the god was supposed to be manifested. The idea that he was originally worshipped in the form of a stone may well have arisen from this use of stones in the ritual, especially if those stones were believed to be in some way his handiwork^[1006]. We may think then of the cult of 232Jupiter Feretrius as an example of primitive tree-worship, but we are not justified in going further and finding him also in the form of a stone.

There is yet another stone that may have belonged to the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter, but the connexion is not very certain. ‘The (rite of) Aquaelicium,’ says Festus^[1007], ‘is when rain is procured (elicitur) by certain methods, as for example when the lapis manalis is carried into the city.’ This stone lay by the temple of Mars, outside the Porta Capena; we learn from other passages that it was carried by the pontifices^[1008], but we are not told what they did with it within the walls. It has been ingeniously suggested that this rain-spell, as we may call it, was a part of the cult of Jupiter Elicius, to whom there was an altar close by under the Aventine^[1009], the cult-title being identical with the latter part of the word ‘aquaelicium^[1010].’ We may agree that the stone had nothing to do with the temple of Mars, which happened to be near it, and also that any such rain-spell as this would be more likely to belong to the cult of Jupiter than of any other deity. The heaven-god, who launches the thunder-bolt, is naturally and almost everywhere also the rain-giver^[1011]: and that this was one of the functions of Jupiter is fully attested, for later times at least^[1012].

But it must be confessed that the evidence is very slight^[1013]: and it is as well here to remember that the further we probe back into old Italian rites, the less distinctly can we expect to be able to connect them with particular deities. The formula 233‘si deus, si dea es’ should always be borne in mind in attempting to connect gods and ceremonies. And this ceremony, like that of the Argei^[1014] (which also wants a clearly-conceived deity as its object), is obviously a survival from a very primitive class of performances which Mr. Frazer has called acts of ‘sympathetic magic^[1015].’ I am indebted to the Golden Bough for a striking parallel to the rite of the lapis manalis, among many others which more or less resemble it. ‘In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making god: and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a stream^[1016].’ What was done with the lapis manalis we are not told, but it is pretty plain from the word ‘manalis,’ and from the fragments of explanation which have come down to us from Roman scholars, that it was either the object of some splashing or pouring, or was itself hollow and was filled with water which was to be poured out in imitation of the desired rain^[1017]. Such rites need not necessarily be connected by us with the name of a god: and the Jupiter Elicius, with whom it is sought to connect this one, was always associated by the Romans not with this obsolete rite, but with the elaborated science of augury which was in the main Etruscan^[1018].

But this discussion has already been carried on as far as the scope of this work permits. It may be completed by any one who has the patience to work through Aust’s exhaustive article, examining his conclusions with the aid of his abundant references; but I doubt if anything will be found, beyond what I have mentioned, which bears closely on the question with which we set out. That question was, whether the distinctly anthropomorphic treatment of Jupiter in the ‘epulum Iovis’ could be explained by any native Italian practice in his cult (as 234Marquardt tried to explain it), or must be referred with Aust to foreign, i. e. Graeco-Etruscan, influence. I am driven to the conclusion that Aust is probably right. There is no real trace in Italy of an indigenous iconic representation of Jupiter. Trees and hills are apparently sacred to him, and possibly stones, though this last is doubtful: we find a sacrificial meal at the Latin festival, but no sign that he takes part in it as an image or statue. Elsewhere, as at Praeneste, peculiar representations of him arouse strong suspicions of foreign iconic influence. I think, on the whole, that the Italian peoples owed the sacred image to foreign works of art: and that the ‘epulum Iovis’ was introduced from Etruria by the Etruscan dynasty which built the Capitoline temple. It may, indeed, have been engrafted upon an earlier sacrificial meal like that of the feriae Latinae, or that of the curiae, or the rustic one of Jupiter dapalis: but, if so, the meal was one at which the ancient Romans were content to believe, as Ovid says, that the gods were present, and did not need, like the Greeks, the evidence of their eyes to help out their belief. Their gods were still aniconic when the wave of foreign ideas broke over them. We may say of the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter what Tacitus asserts of the Germans of his day^[1019]: ‘nec cohibere parietibus deos neque in ullam humani oris speciem adsimulare ex magnitudine caelestium arbitrantur: lucos ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud quod sola reverentia vident.’

September 13 was also the day on which, according to Livy^[1020] and Verrius Flaccus^[1021], a nail (clavus) was driven annually by the ‘Praetor maximus’ into the wall of the cella of Minerva in the Capitoline temple, in obedience to an old lex which was fixed up on the wall of the temple adjoining this same cella. But Mommsen’s trenchant criticism^[1022] of the locus classicus for this subject in Livy has made it almost certain that the Roman scholars were here in error: that the ceremony was not an annual one, but took place once in a century, in commemoration 235of a vow made in 463 B.C., to commemorate the great pestilence of that year, which carried off both the consuls and several other magistrates^[1023]: that it had no special connexion with the cult of Jupiter, and was not intended, as is generally supposed, to mark the years as they passed. The nail is really the symbol of Fortuna or Necessitas; the rite was Etruscan, and was also celebrated at Volsinii in the temple of the Etruscan deity of Fate; when brought to Rome it was very naturally located in the great temple of the Etruscan Trias, the religious centre of the Roman state. Originally a dictator was chosen (i. e. Praetor maximus) clavi figendi causa; and when the dictatorship was dropped after the Second Punic War, the ceremony was allowed to fall into oblivion. Later on the Roman antiquarians unearthed and misinterpreted it, believing it to have been a yearly rite of which the object was to mark the succession of years. This brief account of Mommsen’s view may suffice for the purpose of this work: but the subject is one that might with advantage be reinvestigated.

In the Italy of historical times, the one agricultural feature of this month was the vintage. The rustic calendars mark this with the single word vindemiae^[1024]. The vintage might begin during the last few days of September, but October was its natural time, though it is now somewhat earlier: this point is clear both from Varro and Pliny^[1025]. But the old calendars have preserved hardly a trace of this; and in fact the only feast which we can in any way connect with wine making (the Meditrinalia on the 11th) is obscure in name and its ritual unknown to us. We may infer that the practice of viticulture was a comparatively late introduction; and this is borne out by such facts as the absence of wine in the ritual of the Latin festival^[1026], and the words of a lex regia (ascribed to Numa) which forbade wine to be sprinkled on a funeral pile^[1027]. Pliny also expressed a decided opinion that viticulture was multo serior: and lately Hehn^[1028] has traced it to the Italian Greeks on etymological grounds. It can hardly have become a common occupation in Latium before the seventh or possibly even the eighth century B.C.

Probably if Ovid had continued his Fasti to the end of the year we might have learnt much of interest about this month: as it is, we have only scraps of information about a very few 237primitive rites, only one of which can be said to be known to us in any detail; and the interpretation of that one is extremely doubtful.

Kal. Oct. (October 1). N.

[FIDEI] IN CAPITOLIO. TIGILL[O] SOROR[IO] AD COMPITUM ACILI. (ARV.)

The sacrifice here indicated to Fides in the Capitol is clearly the one which Livy ascribes to Numa^[1029]: ‘Et soli Fidei sollemne instituit. Ad id sacrarium flamines bigis, curru arcuato (i. e. ‘covered’) vehi iussit, manuque ad digitos usque involuta rem divinam facere: significantes fidem tutandam, sedemque eius etiam in dextris sacratam esse.’ Dionysius also mentions the foundation, without alluding to the peculiar ritual, but dwelling on the moral influence of the cult both in public and private life^[1030].

The personification of a moral idea would hardly seem likely to be as old as Numa; yet there are points in the ritual which suggest a high antiquity, apart from tradition. It was the three chief flamines who thus drove to the Capitol—i. e. those of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus; these at least were the three who had been just instituted by Numa (Liv. 1. 20), and to them Livy must be referring. As has been often pointed out, the presence of flamines at a rite is always evidence of its antiquity; and in this case they may have represented the union of the two communities of Septimontium and Quirinal in a common worship on the Capitol, this central point being represented by the Flamen Dialis. The curious fact that the right hands of these flamens were wrapped up to the fingers in white cloth is another obvious sign of antiquity, and is explained as meaning that the right hand, which was given to another in pledging one’s word, then as now^[1031], was pure and clean, as was the mind of the pledger^[1032]. A sacred object, statue or victim, was often 238thus wrapped or tied with fillets (vittae); and the μύσται in the Eleusinian mysteries seem to have worn a crocus-coloured band on the right hand and right foot^[1033]. The statue of the goddess in her temple had probably the right hand so covered, if at least we are at liberty so to interpret the words of Horace, ‘albo Fides velata panno’^[1034].

A word about the tigillum sororium^[1035]. What this was, and where it was, can be made out with some certainty; beyond that all is obscure. It was a beam, renewed from time to time, let into the opposite walls of a street which led down from the Carinae to the Vicus Cyprius, now the via del Colosseo^[1036]. It remained till at least the fourth century A.D. It is now generally explained as a primitive Janus-arch, apparently on the ground that one of the altars below it was to Janus Curiatius^[1037]. As it seems, however, to have been a single beam, without supports except the street walls^[1038], I am unable to understand this conclusion; and as the Roman antiquaries never supposed it to be such, we can hardly do so safely. They believed it to be a memorial of the expiation undergone by the legendary Horatius for the murder of his sister. Acquitted by the people on appeal, he had to make religious expiation, and this he did by the erection of an altar to Janus Curiatius, and another to Juno Sororia^[1039], and by passing under a yoke, which was afterwards represented by the tigillum.

We may leave the tigillum as really inexplicable, unless we are to accept the suggestion of Roscher^[1040], that the germ of the legend is to be found in the practice of creeping through a split 239tree to get rid of spell or disease. The two altars demand a word.

Livy’s language seems to suggest that these were in the care of the gens Horatia^[1041]: ‘Quibusdam piacularibus sacrificiis factis, quae deinde genti Horatiae tradita sunt.’ If so, perhaps the whole legend of Horatius, or at any rate its connexion with this spot, arose out of this gentile worship of two deities, of whom the cult-titles were respectively Curiatius and Sororia. The coincidence of Janus and Juno is natural enough; both were associated with the Kalends^[1042]. But the original meaning of their cult-titles at the Tigillum remains unknown. All we can say is that the Janus of the curiae and the Juno of a sister may certainly have given point to a legend of which the hero was acquitted by the Comitia Curiata for the murder of a sister^[1043].

3 Non. Oct. (October 5). C.

This was one of the three days on which the mundus was open: see on August 24.

Non. Oct. (October 7). F.

IOVI FULGURI, IUNONI CURRITI^[1044] IN CAMPO. (ARV. PAUL.)

Of these worships in Rome nothing else is known. Iuno Curitis is the goddess of Falerii, whose supposed ἱερὸς γάμος was referred to above^[1045].

v Id. Oct. (October 11). NP.

MEDITR[INALIA]. (SAB. MAFF. AMIT.)

FERIAE IOVI. (AMIT.)

This was the day on which the new wine was tasted. There is no real evidence of a goddess Meditrina. The account in 240Paulus is as follows: ‘Mos erat Latinis populis, quo die quis primum gustaret mustum, dicere ominis gratia “Vetus novum vinum bibo, veteri novo morbo medeor.” A quibus verbis etiam Meditrinae deae nomen conceptum, eiusque sacra Meditrinalia dicta sunt^[1046].’ Varro had already given the same account: ‘Octobri mense Meditrinalia dies, dictus a medendo, quod Flaccus flamen Martialis dicebat hoc die solitum vinum novum et vetus libari et gustari medicamenti causa: quod facere solent etiam nunc multi quom dicunt: Novum vetus vinum bibo, novo veteri vino morbo medeor.’

Note a. A parallel practice of tasting both old and new crops is to be found in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales, who in May ‘fruges aridas et virides contigerunt,’ i. e. the old grain and the new^[1047].

Note b. The belief that the new wine (mustum) was wholesome and non-inebriating is discussed charmingly by Plutarch (Quaest. Conv. vii. 1).

Note c. Mommsen, C. I. L. 1. 2. 332, points out that the real deity here concerned was doubtless Jupiter: see under Vinalia, p. 86.

iii Id. Oct. (October 13). NP.

FONT[INALIA]. (SAB. MAFF. AMIT. MIN. IX.)

FERIAE FONTI. (AMIT.)

All we know of this very ancient festival is contained in a few words of Varro^[1048]: ‘Fontinalia a Fonte, quod is dies feriae eius; ab eo tum et in fontes coronas iaciunt et puteos coronant.’

The holiness of wells and springs is too familiar to need illustration here. The original object of the garlanding was probably to secure abundant water.

It is generally assumed that there was a god Fons or Fontus, to whom this day was sacred. There was a delubrum Fontis^[1049]; an ara Fonti on the Janiculum^[1050]; and a porta Fontinalis in the Campus Martius. Fons also appears with Flora, Mater Larum, 241Summanus, &c., in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales^[1051]. The case seems to be one of those in which multiplicity passes into a quasi-unity: but Fons did not survive long in the latter stage.

Id. Oct. (Oct. 15). NP.

EQUUS AD NIXAS FIT. (PHILOC.)

No calendar but the late one of Philocalus mentions the undoubtedly primitive rite of horse-sacrifice which took place on this day. Wissowa has tried to explain this difficulty, which meets us elsewhere in the Calendar, e. g. on the Ides of May (Argei), June 1 (festival of Carna)^[1052]. Where two festivals fell on the same day, both would not be found in calendars which were meant for the use, not of the pontifices themselves, but of the unlearned vulgar; for the latter would not be able to distinguish, or to get one clear name for the day, and confusion would result. Now all Kalends and Ides were sacred to Juno and Jupiter respectively; all other rites falling on these days would stand a chance of being omitted, unless indeed they were noticed in later annotations such as we find cut in smaller letters in the Fasti Praenestini and others.

Luckily the entry in Philocalus’ calendar is supplemented sufficiently from other sources. The earliest hint we get comes from the Greek historian Timaeus, and is preserved in a fragment of the twelfth book of Polybius^[1053]. Timaeus after the Greek fashion connects the horse-sacrifice with the legend of Troy and the wooden horse: but he also tells us the important detail that on a certain day a war-horse was killed with a spear in the Campus Martius^[1054]. The passage is no doubt characteristic of Timaeus, both in regard to the detail, and the 242mythology which Polybius despised. But though we do not know that Timaeus was ever at Rome, we may hope that he was correct in the one particular which we do not learn from other sources, viz. the slaughter of the horse with the sacred weapon of Mars.

Fuller information comes from Verrius Flaccus, as represented in the epitomes of Festus and Paulus Diaconus^[1055]. On this day there was a two-horse chariot race in the Campus Martius; and the near horse of the winning pair was sacrificed to Mars—killed with a spear, if we may believe Timaeus. The place is indicated in Philocalus’ calendar as ‘ad nixas,’ i. e. the ciconiae nixae, which seem to have been three storks carved in stone with bills crossing each other^[1056]: this however was non-existent under the Republic. The real scene of the sacrifice must have been an old ‘ara Martis,’ and that there was such an altar in the Campus we know for certain, though we cannot definitely fix its position^[1057]. The tail of the horse was cut off and carried with speed to the Regia so that the warm blood might drip upon the focus or sacred hearth there. The head also was cut off and decked with cakes; and at one time there was a hard fight for its possession between the men of the two neighbouring quarters of the Via Sacra and the Subura. If the former carried off the prize, they fixed it on the wall of the Regia; if the latter, on the turris Mamilia^[1058].

243It is probable^[1059], though not quite certain, that the congealed blood from the tail was used, together with the ashes of the unborn calves sacrificed on the Fordicidia, as ‘medicine’ to be distributed to the people at the Parilia on April 21.

The rite of the ‘October-horse’ had been adequately described and in some degree explained by Preller, Marquardt, Schwegler, and others^[1060], before the late Dr. Mannhardt took it in hand not long before his death^[1061]. Mannhardt studied it in the light of his far-reaching researches in folk-lore, and succeeded in treating it as all such survivals should be treated, i.e. in bringing it into relation with the practices of other peoples—not so much by way of explaining its original meaning precisely, as in order to make some progress by its help towards an understanding of the attitude of primitive man to the supernatural. His conclusions have been generally accepted, and, with very slight modifications, are to be found in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (ii. 64), and in Roscher’s article ‘Mars’ in the Mythological Lexicon (2416). Recently, however, they have been called in question by no less a person than Prof. Wissowa^[1062] of Berlin, who seems to take a different view of the Mars-cult from that at which we thought we had at last safely arrived: it may be as well therefore to give yet another account of Mannhardt’s treatment of the question, and to follow his track somewhat more elaborately than Mr. Frazer. It does not of course follow that he has said the last word; but it is as well to begin by making clear what he has said.

1. This is the last of the series of harvest festivals, as we may call them generically. We have had the Ambarvalia and the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals in May: the Vestalia in June^[1063]; the festivals of Consus and Ops Consiva in August; and lastly we find this one coming after all the fruits of the land have been gathered in. In this respect it is parallel to the Pyanepsia and Oschophoria of the Greeks, 244to the Jewish feast of Tabernacles^[1064], and to the true Michaelmas harvest-festivals of modern Europe, which follow at an interval the great variety of quaint harvest customs which occur at the actual in-gathering. Even now in the Roman Campagna there is a lively festival of this kind in October.

It should be noticed that the harvest character of the rite was suggested to Mannhardt by the passage from Paulus (220), from which we learn that the head of the sacrificed horse was decked with cakes, like those of the live draught-animals at the Vestalia and Consualia and feriae Sementivae [q. v.]. This, Paulus adds, was done ‘quia id sacrum fiebat ob frugum eventum,’ which last words can hardly mean anything but ‘on account of the past harvest^[1065].’ There are, I may add, two points open to doubt here, which Mannhardt does not point out: (1) the reason here given may be only a guess of Verrius’, and not one generally understood at Rome^[1066]. (2) The concluding words of the gloss seem to make no sense, a fact which throws some doubt on the whole passage. The rite is ‘ob frugum eventum,’ yet ‘a horse, and not an ox, is the victim, because a horse is suited for war, and an ox is not^[1067].’ However this may be understood, we need not quarrel with the conclusion^[1068], that the real meaning of the adornment was to show that the head was an object possessed of power to procure fertility—an inference confirmed by the eagerness of the rival city-quarters to get possession of it.

2. The sacrificed horse represented a Corn-spirit. The Corn-spirit was Mannhardt’s chief discovery, and its various forms are now familiar to English readers of Frazer’s Golden Bough, and of Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States. Almost every common animal, wild or tame, may be found to represent the Corn-spirit at harvest-time in one locality or another, where the nomadic 245age has given place to an agricultural one; or a man, woman, boy or puppet represents the animal, and so indirectly the Corn-spirit^[1069]. Mannhardt produces from his stores of folk-lore many instances in which the horse thus figures, including the hobby-horse which in old England used to prance round the May-pole. Those examples, however, are not strong enough to convince us that the October horse was a Corn-spirit, though they prove well enough that the Corn-spirit often took this shape^[1070]. But we must remember that he is only suggesting an origin in the simple rites of the farm, indicating a class of ideas to which this survival may be traceable^[1071].

He does, however, produce an example which has one or two features in common with the Roman rite, only in this case the animal is a goat instead of a horse. In Dauphiné a goat is decked with ribbons and flowers and let loose in the harvest-field. The reapers run after it, and finally the farmer cuts off its head^[1072], while his wife holds it. Parts of its body (we are not told whether the head is among them) are kept as ‘medicine’ till the next harvest. So too the head, and also the tail and the blood, of the October horse were the seat of some great Power; but whether this was a vegetation-spirit does not seem satisfactorily shown.

3. The chariot-race was an elaborated and perhaps Graecized form or survival of the simple race of men and women so often met with in the harvest-field, often in pursuit of a representative of the Corn-spirit.

Mannhardt gives examples from France and Germany of races in pursuit of cock, calf, kid, sheep, or whatever shape may be the one in vogue for the Corn-spirit; often the animal is in some way decorated for the occasion. Two of a rather different kind may be mentioned here, though they occur, not on the harvest-field, but at Whitsuntide and Easter respectively; 246but they show how horse-races may originate in the customs of the farm. In the Hartz the farm-horses, gaily decorated, are raced by the labourers for possession of a wreath, which is hung on the neck of the winning horse. In Silesia the finest near horse of the team, decorated by the girls, is ridden (raced?) round the boundary of the farm, and then round a neighbouring village, while Easter hymns are sung. We have already noticed the racing of horses and mules at the Consualia in August: according to Dionysius, these too were decked out with flowers^[1073]. Mannhardt makes also a somewhat lengthy digression to point out the possibility that in the original form of the Passover (on which was afterwards engrafted the Jahvistic worship and the history of the escape from Egypt) a race or something of the kind may be indicated by the custom of eating the victim with the loins girt.

There is undoubtedly a possible origin for the horse-racing of Greeks and Romans in the customs of the farm at different seasons of the year, and I accept Mannhardt’s view so far, with a probability, not certainty, as to the Corn-spirit. We may perhaps be able to trace the development of the custom a little further in this case.

4. The horse’s head, fixed on the Regia or the turris Mamilia, is the effigy of the Corn-spirit, which is to bring fertility and to keep off evil influences for the year to come.^[1074]

Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore^[1075]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione^[1076], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse^[1077], which in course of time becomes a permanency.

5. The cutting off the tail is explained by the idea that a remnant 247of the body of the representative of the Corn-spirit is sufficient to produce this spirit afresh in the vegetation of the coming year.

The examples Mannhardt quotes are numerous, and only gain force when brought together: I must refer the reader to his work for them^[1078]. The word tail not only occurs frequently in harvest customs (e. g. the cutter of the last sheaf is called the wheat-tail or barley-tail^[1079]), but there is little doubt that virtue was believed to reside in a tail^[1080]. Who knows but that the preservation of the fox’s brush by fox-hunters has some origin of this kind?

6. The use made of the blood, which was kept and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves of the Fordicidia, and with sulphur and bean-straw as a medicine to be distributed to the people at the Parilia, tells its own story without need of illustration (see on April 15 and 21). The blood was the life^[1081]; the fire and sulphur-fumes were to purify and avert evil. Both men and beasts leapt over the fire into which this mixture was thrown at the Parilia, to gain new life and strength, and to avert the influences which might retard them.