The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 11

[260] See Aust's article "Jupiter" in _Myth. Lex._ p.

673.

[261] Aust gives a cut of a coin of the consul Claudius Marcellus (223 B.C.) dedicating _spolia opima_ in this little temple, according to the ancient fashion, supposed to be initiated by Romulus, Livy i. 10.

[262] Dionys. Hal. ii. 34.

[263] _R.F._ p. 230.

[264] See De Marchi's careful investigation, _La Religione_, _etc._, i. p. 156 foll.; Gaius i. 112. The cult-t.i.tle should indicate that the G.o.d was believed to be immanent in the cake of _far_, rather than that it was offered to him (so I should also take I. Dapalis, though in later times the idea had pa.s.sed into that of sacrifice, Cato, _R.R._ 132), and if so, the use of the cake was sacramental; cp. the rite at the Latin festival, _R.F._ p. 96.

[265] There are distinct traces of a practice of taking oaths in the open air, _i.e._ under the sky; of Dius Fidius, unquestionably a form of Jupiter, Varro says (_L.L._ v. 66), "quidam negant sub tecto per hunc deiurare oportere." Cp. Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 28; _R.F._ p. 138. For the conception of a single great deity as primitive, see Lang, _The Making of Religion_, ch. xii.; Flinders Petrie, _Religion of Egypt_ (in Constable's shilling series), ch. i.; Ross, _The Original Religion of China_, p. 128 foll.; Warneck, _Die Lebenskrafte des Evangeliums_, p. 20 (of the Indian Archipelago). The last reference I owe to Professor Paterson, of Edinburgh University.

[266] Serv. _Aen._ viii. 552, "more enim veteri sacrorum neque Martialis flamen neque Quirinalis omnibus caerimoniis tenebantur quibus flamen Dialis, neque diurnis sacrificiis distinebatur." It is, however, possible that under the word _caerimonia_ Servius is not here including taboos, but active duties only.

[267] See my paper, "The Strange History of a Flamen Dialis," in _Cla.s.sical Review_, vol. vii. p. 193.

[268] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 26.

[269] Cato, _R.R._ 141; Henzen, _op. cit._ p. 48.

[270] Frazer, _G.B._ iii. 123, note 3; _R.F._ p. 40, for further examples. It may be worth while to point out here that the coupling of all farm animals except goats took place in spring or early summer; Varro, _R.R._ ii.

2 foll. Isidorus (_Orig._ v. 33), who embodies Varro and Verrius to some extent, derived the name Mars from _mares_, because in the month of March "cuncta animalia ad mares aguntur."

[271] I prefer, with De Marchi, to take Silva.n.u.s here as a cult-t.i.tle, though we do not meet with it elsewhere; see _La Religione_, _etc._, p. 130 note; but Wissowa, who has a prejudice against the view that Mars was connected with agriculture, insists on taking Marti Silvano as a case of asyndeton, _i.e._ as two deities.

[272] See, _e.g._, Varro, _L.L._ v. 36, "quos agros non colebant propter silvas aut id genus, ubi pecus possit pasci, et possidebant, ab usu salvo saltus nominarunt."

[273] Cato, _R.R._ 141. Mars is there invoked as able to keep off (_averruncare_) evil influences and to make the crops grow, etc.; he has become in the second century B.C. a powerful deity in the actual processes of husbandry, just as he became in the city a powerful deity of war. But as he was not localised either on the farm or in the city, I prefer to think that he was originally conceived as a Power outside the boundary in each case, but for that very reason all the more to be propitiated by the settlers within it.

[274] See below, p. 235.

[275] So Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 131. Cp. _R.F._ p. 39, note 4. Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 75.

[276] Servius, commenting on line 3 of _Aen._ viii.

(_utque impulit arma_) writes: "nam is qui belli susceperat curam, sacrarium Martis ingressus, primo ancilia commovebat, post hastam simulacri ipsius, dicens, Mars vigila." The mention of a statue shows that this account belongs to a late period. But Varro seems to have stated that there was originally only a spear; see a pa.s.sage of Clement of Alexandria in the fragments of the _Ant. rer. div._, Agahd, p. 210, to which Deubner (_l.c._) adds Arn.o.bius vi. 11. Deubner calls this spear a fetish, which is not the right word if the deity were immanent in it in the sense suggested by "Mars vigila."

See above, p. 116. If Servius correctly reports the practice, it must be compared with the clashing of shields and spears by the Salii, which may thus have had a positive as well as negative object.

[277] Livy v. 52.

[278] Mr. A. B. Cook (_Cla.s.sical Review_, 1904, p. 368) has tried to connect both names with the Greek word [Greek: prinos], and Professor Conway, quoted by him, is inclined to lend the weight of his great authority to the conjecture. Thus Quirinus would be an oak-G.o.d, and Quirites oak-spearmen. We must, however, remember that Mr. Cook is, so to speak, on an oak scent, and his keenness as a hunter leads him sometimes astray. One is a little perplexed to understand why Jupiter, Ja.n.u.s, Mars, and Quirinus should all be oak-G.o.ds (and all in origin identical as such!). On the other hand, it is fair to note that the original spear was probably of wood, with the point hardened in the fire, like the _hasta praeusta_ of the Fetiales: Festus, p. 101. If _quiris_ has really anything to do with oaks, it would be more natural to explain the two words as springing from an old place-name, Quirium, as Niebuhr did long ago, and to derive that again from the oaks among which it may have stood. But I am content to take _quiris_ as simply a spear, as Buecheler did; see Deubner, _op.

cit._ p. 76. Since the above was written, the article "Quirinus" by Wissowa in the _Myth. Lex._ has appeared.

Naturally it does not add anything to our knowledge; but Wissowa holds to the opinion that the most probable derivation of the name Quirinus is from Quirium, possibly the name of the settlement on the Quirinal; and compares _Q. pater_ (_e.g._ Livy v. 52. 7) with the _Reatinus pater_ of _C.I.L._ ix. 4676.

[279] The Nonae Caprotinae (July 7), the day when women sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree in the Campus Martius, is not known to us except from Varro. See _R.F._ p. 178, where (note 8) is a suggestion that the festival had to do with the _caprificatio_, or method of ripening the figs, which Dr. Frazer has expanded in his _Lectures on Kingship_, p. 270, believing the process to be that of fertilisation.

[280] _Cla.s.sical Review_, vol. ix. p. 474 foll. The same view has recently been taken independently by W. Otto in _Philologus_, 1905, pp. 215 foll., 221. It is perfectly clear that the monthly sacrifice to Juno was the duty of the wife of the _rex sacrorum_; a pontifex minor is also mentioned (Macrob. i. 15. 19).

[281] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 116.

[282] _Ib._ p. 114.

[283] See Ihm's article "Iunones" in _Myth. Lex._ vol.

ii. 615; Pliny, _N.H._ ii. 16.

[284] Dr. J. B. Carter tells me that he has abandoned this explanation of the evolution of Juno. On the other hand, von Domaszewski seems in some measure to accept it (_Abhandlungen_, p. 169 foll.), when he says that "similar functions, when exercised by different _numina_, can eventually produce a G.o.d. _Auf diese Weise ist Iuno geworden._" He means that the creative power is called Juno in a woman, or in a people (Iuno Populonia), or in the curiae (Iuno Curitis), and that an independent deity, Juno _par excellence_, emerges from all these.

But so far I cannot follow him.

[285] There is no real evidence from purely Roman sources of this fancied conjugal or other relation, if we exclude that of the alleged cult of Juno by the Flaminica Dialis. This has been well seen and expressed by W. Otto, _l.c._ p. 215 foll.; see also _Cla.s.sical Review_ as quoted above. As we shall see in the next lecture, Dr. Frazer is much concerned to show that Jupiter and Juno are actually a married pair, and consequently he will have nothing to do with my opinion on this point: _Early History of Kingship_, p. 214 foll., and _Adonis_, _Attis,_ _Osiris_, ed. 2, p. 410, note 1.

[286] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 141.

[287] Festus, p. 106; Macrob. i. 12. 6.

[288] I have discussed the Vestalia and the nature of Vesta and her cult in _R.F._ p. 145 foll. See also Marquardt, p. 336 foll., and Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 141 foll.

[289] Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 296, says that he had been stupid enough to believe that there was a statue in the _aedes Vestae_, but found out his mistake:--

esse diu stultus Vestae simulacra putavi; mox didici curvo nulla subesse tholo.

The pa.s.sage is interesting as showing how natural it was for a Roman of the Graeco-Roman period to suppose that his deities must be capable of taking iconic form. For anthropomorphic representations of Vesta in other places and at Pompeii, see Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 67 foll.

[290] See Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_, p. 223 foll. The statues of the _virgines vestales maximae_, discovered in the Atrium Vestae, all belong to the period of the Empire. They are now in the museum of the Baths of Diocletian.

LECTURE VII

THE DEITIES OF THE EARLIEST RELIGION: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

In the last lecture we interrogated the calendar as to the deities whose festivals are recorded in it, with the aid of what we know of the most ancient priesthoods attached to particular cults. The result may be stated thus: we found a number of impersonal _numina_, with names of adjectival form, such as Saturnus, Vertumnus, and so on; others with substantival names, Tellus, Robigus, Terminus; the former apparently functional deities, concerned in the operations of nature or man, and the latter spirits immanent in objects--Mother Earth herself, a stone, the mildew, or (like Ja.n.u.s and Vesta) the entrance and the hearth-fire of human dwellings or cities. Lastly, we found from the evidence, chiefly of the priesthoods, that certain more important divinities stand out from the crowd of spirits, Ja.n.u.s, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and Vesta; and we found some reason to think that these, and possibly a few of the others, by becoming the objects of priestly _cura_ and _caerimonia_ at particular spots in the city, were not unlikely to become also in some sense personal deities, to acquire a quasi-human personality, if they came by the chance. In the present lecture I must go rather more closely into such evidence as we possess bearing on the mental conception which these early Romans had formed of the divine beings whom they had admitted within their city.

And, first, we must be quite clear that in those early ages there was nothing in Rome which we can call a temple, as we understand the word; nor was there any such representation of a deity as we can call an image or _eidolon_. The deities were settled in particular spots of ground, which were made _loca sacra_, _i.e._ handed over to the deity by the process of _consecratio_ authorised by the _ius divinum_.[291] It was matter of no moment what might be erected on this bit of ground; there might be a rude house like that of Vesta, round in shape like the oldest Italian huts; there might be a gateway like that of Ja.n.u.s; or the spot might be a grove, or a clearing within it (_lucus_), as in the case of Robigus or the Dea Dia of the Arval Brethren. All such places might be called by the general name _fanum_; and as a rule no doubt each _fanum_ contained a _sacellum_, _i.e._ a small enclosure without a roof, containing a little altar (_ara_). These "altars" may at first have been nothing more than temporary erections of turf and sods; permanent stone altars were probably a later development. Servius tells us that in later times it was the custom to place a sod (_caespes_) on the top of such a stone altar, which must be one of the many survivals in cult of the usages of a simpler age.[292]

With such spots as these we cannot a.s.sociate anything in the nature of an image of the deity established there; and we have every reason to believe that no such thing was known at Rome until the Etruscan temple of the Capitoline trias was built near the end of the regal period.

Varro expressly declared that the Romans remained for more than 170 years without any images of their G.o.ds, and added that those who first introduced such images "civitatibus suis et metum dempsisse et errorem addidisse."[293] What he had in his mind is clear; he had indeed no direct knowledge of those early times, but he is thinking of a definite traditional date in the kingly period--the last year of the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, who, according to Varro's own account, built the temple on the Capitol and placed in it a statue of Jupiter.[294] That was the oldest image of which he knew anything; and, as Wissowa has remarked, his belief is entirely corroborated by the fact that in every single case in which the image of a G.o.d has any part in his cult, it is always either this Capitoline Jupiter or some deity of later introduction and non-Roman origin. It is also borne out by another significant and interesting fact--that the next image to be introduced, that of Diana in the temple on the Aventine, was a copy of the [Greek: xoanon] of Artemis at Ma.s.silia, itself a copy of the famous one at Ephesus.[295] Let us note that these two earliest statues were placed in roofed temples which were the dwelling-places of G.o.ds in an entirely new sense; so far no Roman deity of the city had been so housed, because he could not be thought of in terms of human life, as visible in human form and needing shelter. But this later and foreign notion of divinity so completely took possession of the minds of the Romans of the cosmopolitan city that Varro is the only writer who has preserved the tradition of the older way of thinking. In the religion of the family Ovid indeed has charmingly expressed it, perhaps on the authority of some lost pa.s.sage of Varro[296]:--

ante focos olim scamnis considere longis mos erat, et mensae credere adesse deos.

Tibullus in one pa.s.sage has mentioned what seems to be some rude attempt to give outward shape and form to an ancient pastoral deity[297]:--

lacte madens illic suberat Pan ilicis umbrae et facta agresti lignea falce Pales.

And Propertius hints at a like representation of Vertumnus, the garden deity. But without some corroborative evidence it is hardly safe to take these as genuine examples of early iconic worship.

Thus we may take it as certain that even the greater deities of the calendar, Ja.n.u.s, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and Vesta, were not thought of as existing in any sense in human form, nor as personal beings having any human characteristics. The early Romans were dest.i.tute of mythological fancy, and as they had never had their deities presented to them in visible form, could hardly have invented such stories about them as sprang up in a most abundant crop when Greek literature and Greek art had changed their mental view of divinity. Roman legends were occupied with practical matters, with kings and the foundation of cities; and even among these it is hardly possible to detect those which may be really Roman, for they are hidden away, like rude ancient frescoes, under the elaborate decorations of the Greek artists, who seized upon everything that came to hand, including the old deities themselves, to amuse themselves and win the admiration of their dull pupils at Rome. He who would appreciate the difficulty of getting at the original rude drawings must be well acquainted with the decorative activity of the Alexandrian age.