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 hands 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]. The ‘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 centre-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. Even 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
inscription 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.
Even 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]: for 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 placed 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; and 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. Not 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 festival. 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,’ which
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 Jupiter 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].