writes: ‘Humanum sacrificium dicebant quod mortui causa fiebat’—which
does not greatly help us. Preller reasonably suggested that the goat
might be a substitutory victim in place of a ‘homo sacer’ or criminal
(i. 265).
Footnote 483:
Above, p. 63.
Footnote 484:
_Fasti_, 5. 725.
Footnote 485:
_de Feriis_, xv.
Footnote 486:
Gell. 13. 23.
Footnote 487:
The Hephaestus-myth has been treated on the comparative method by F.
von Schröder (_Griech. Götter u. Heroen_, i. 79 foll.), and by Rapp in
_Myth. Lex._ It is of course possible that it may have been known to
the early Italians, but what we know of Volcanus does not favour this.
Footnote 488:
Vitruvius, 3. 2. 2; it was ‘proxime portam Collinam.’
Footnote 489:
See below, pp. 165, 223.
Footnote 490:
Liv. 34. 53; Aust, _de Aedibus_, p. 20.
Footnote 491:
This seems to have been the date among the Anauni of N. Italy as late
as 393 A.D.: see the _Acta Martyrum_, p. 536 (Verona, 1731). (For the
Anauni, Rushforth, _Latin Historical Inscriptions_, p. 99 foll.)
Footnote 492:
_Chron._ 70 foll.: a difficult bit of calculation.
Footnote 493:
Mommsen, l. c. Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ xlvi-xlviii; Jordan on Preller,
i. 420, and _Topogr._ i. 289, ii. 236. The latter would also identify
Ambarvalia and Amburbium; but the two seem clearly distinguished by
Servius (_Ecl._ 3.77).
Footnote 494:
p. 200. Huschke, _Röm. Jahr_, 63.
Footnote 495:
p. 5. See Jordan on Preller, i. 420, note 2; Marq. 200, note 3.
Footnote 496:
_Georg._ 1. 338 foll.
Footnote 497:
‘Extremae sub casum hiemis’ might possibly suit the Italian April, but
certainly not the Italian May. May 1 is the earliest date we have for
an agri lustratio, i. e. in Campania (_C. I. L._ x. 3792). ‘Tunc
mollissima vina’ may contain a reference to the Vinalia of April 23,
when the new wine was first drunk; and if that were so, the general
reference might be to the Cerialia or its rustic equivalent.
Footnote 498:
_R. R._ 141. Cp. Siculus Flaccus in _Gromatici Veteres_, p. 164. The
lustratio should be celebrated before even the earliest crops (e. g.
beans) were cut.
Footnote 499:
Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ xlviii.
Footnote 500:
Cato, _R. R._ 141. I have availed myself of the Italian translation
and commentary of Prof. De Marchi in his work on the domestic religion
of the Romans, p. 128 foll.
Footnote 501:
Bücheler, _Umbrica_; Bréal, _Les Tables Eugubines_.
Footnote 502:
Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, p. 292.
Footnote 503:
I am informed that it visited one hamlet, Horton, which is not at
present in the parish of Charlton; of this there should be some
topographical explanation.
Footnote 504:
The cross is very commonly carried about on the continent, and in
Holland the week is called cross-week for this reason. But at Charlton
there seems to have been a confusion between this cross and the
May-queen or May-doll; for on May-day, 1898, the old woman who decked
it called it ‘my lady,’ and spoke of ‘her waist,’ &c. I am indebted to
the Rev. C. E. Prior, the present incumbent, for information about
this interesting survival.
MENSIS IUNIUS.
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 well 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 Pliny[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 advances, 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]:
Protinus arbutea[526] postes ter in ordine tangit
Fronde, ter arbutea limina fronde notat:
Spargit aquis aditus—et aquae medicamen habebant—
Extaque de porca cruda bimenstre tenet[527].
Atque ita ‘noctis aves, extis puerilibus’ inquit
‘Parcite: pro parvo victima parva cadit.
Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras.
Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.’
Sic ubi libavit, prosecta sub aethere ponit,
Quique adsint sacris, respicere illa vetat[528].
Virgaque Ianalis de spina ponitur alba[529]
Qua lumen thalamis parva fenestra dabat.
Post illud nec aves cunas violasse feruntur,
Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color.
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 is that the cult of Carna is of ancient
date, and that the healthy food of man in early times is retained in
it[530].
Sus erat in pretio; caesa sue festa colebant.
Terra fabas tantum duraque farra dabat.
Quae duo mixta simul sextis quicunque Kalendis
Ederit, huic laedi viscera posse negant.
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 on 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.
BELLON[AE] 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 with 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 the 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]:
Quaerebam Nonas Sanco Fidione referrem,
An tibi, Semo pater: cum mihi Sancus ait
‘Cuicunque ex illis dederis, ego munus habebo;
Nomina trina fero, sic voluere Cures.’
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]. And 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
religious 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, and 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 Sancus; 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_, so 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].
2. 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.