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 Paulus 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, Summanus, &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
mythology 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].
It 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, to 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 age 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; but 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 of
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.
Finally, Mannhardt has some remarks on the origin of the rite, which
were suggested by Schwegler and Ambrosch[1082]. The Campus Martius, the
scene of the sacrifice, was originally _terra regis_, cultivated for him
by the people[1083]. When the king was the chief farmer, the horse’s
head was carried to his house (regia) and fixed thereon, and the tail
allowed to drip on to his hearth. When the neighbouring community of the
Subura was united with that of the Palatine, the seat of the oldest
community, the remembrance of their duality survived in the contest for
the head: if the men of the Subura won it, they fixed it on the turris
Mamilia, which may have been the dwelling of their own chief. Such
contests are even now well known, or have[1084] but lately disappeared;
and some of them may owe their origin to a fight for the Corn-spirit.
Mannhardt gives some examples—one very curious one from Granada, and one
from Brittany. At Derby, Hawick, Ludlow, and other places in this
country, they or the recollection of them may still be found.
On the whole we may agree with him that the rite was in its origin one
of the type to which he has referred it—a final harvest festival of the
Latin farm. There is yet, however, a word to be said. He does not treat
it from the point of view of the Roman calendar, and thus fails to note
the turn it took when Latin farmers became Roman citizens. Wissowa, on
the other hand, takes the calendar as his sole basis for judging of it,
and with a strange perversity, as it seems to me, brushes Mannhardt’s
conclusions aside, and would explain the rite simply as a sacrifice to
the god of war[1085]. Now doubtless it had come to be this in the
organized city-calendar, as Mars himself began to be brought into
prominence in a new light, as the _iuvenes_ of the community came to be
more and more employed in war as well as agriculture, and as the Campus
Martius came to be used as an exercising-ground for the armed host. The
Calendars show us a curious correspondence between the beginning and the
end of the season of arms, i. e. the middle of March and the middle of
October, which leaves little doubt of the change which had taken place
in the accepted character of the rites of the two periods by the time
the Numan calendar was drawn up. This correspondence has already been
noted[1086]; it may be here briefly referred to again.
On March 14[1087] there was a horse-race in the Campus Martius; on the
19th (Quinquatrus) was the _lustratio armorum_ for the coming
war-season, as is seen from the fact that the _ancilia_ of the Salii at
least—if not all arms—were _lustrata_ on that day[1088]. So too on
October 15 there was a horse-race, as we have seen, in the Campus
Martius, and on the 19th we find the Armilustrium in the oldest
calendars[1089], a name which tells its own tale. The inference is that
the horse-races on Oct. 15 and March 14 had much the same origin, and it
is just this which induces Wissowa to slight Mannhardt’s explanation of
the former. He thinks that on each day the horses, like the arms, were
lustrated (p. x.), i. e. before the war-season began, and after it was
over. This is likely enough; but might not the same have been the case
with the horses of the farm? The Roman farmer’s year began with March,
and the heavy work of carrying, &c., would be over in October. I am
disposed to think that we must look on organized war-material as a
development later than the primitive times to which Mannhardt would
carry us back, a side of Roman life which only in course of time became
highly specialized.
We must never forget that the oldest Roman calendar is the record of the
life of an agricultural people. So much is clear on the face of it; and
in some instances, as in the Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, and in the
October rite we have been discussing, something of the original intent
can be made out from researches into modern folk-lore or savage custom.
Yet this calendar is at the same time the table of feasts of a fully
developed city-state, and in the process of its development the original
meaning of the feasts was often lost, or they were explained by some
mythical or historical event, or again they themselves may have changed
character as the life of the people changed from an agricultural to a
political one. In the rite of the October horse we may see an
agricultural harvest custom taking a new shape and meaning as the State
grew to be accustomed to war, just as Mars, originally perhaps the
protector of man, herds, and crops alike, becomes—it may be even before
Greek influence is brought to bear upon him—the deity of warriors and
war-horses, of the yearly renewed strength of a struggling
community[1090]. It is looking with modern eyes at the institution of an
old world if we try to separate the Roman warrior from the Roman
husbandman, or the warlike aspect of his god from his universal care for
his people.
XIV KAL. NOV. (OCTOBER 19). NP.
ARM[ILUSTRIUM]. (ARV. SAB. MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)
The first three letters of this word, which alone appear in the
calendars, are explained by Varro and Verrius: ‘Armilustrium ab eo quod
in armilustrio armati sacra faciunt ... ab ludendo aut lustro, quod
circumibant ludentes ancilibus armati[1091].’ This passage may be taken
as referring both to March 19 and Oct. 19, and as showing that the Salii
with the sacred shields were active on both days. This can also be
inferred from the fact that in 190 B.C. a Roman army, on its march into
Asia, had to halt at the Hellespont, ‘quia dies forte, quibus ancilia
moventur. religiosi ad iter inciderant’[1092]—its commander Scipio being
one of the Salii. It can be shown that this was in the autumn, as the
army did not leave Italy till July 15[1093]. It may be taken as certain,
then, that this was the last day on which the Salii appeared, and that
_arma_ and _ancilia_ were now purified[1094], and put away for the
winter.
There are no festivals in any way connected with Mars from this day to
the Roman new year, March 1. As Roscher has remarked, his activity, like
that of Apollo, is all in the warm season—the season of vegetation and
of arms. His priests, who seem in their dances, their song, and their
equipment, to form a connecting link between his fertilizing powers and
his warlike activity, are seen no more from this day till his power is
felt again on the threshold of spring.
We learn from Varro[1095] that the place of _lustratio_ on this day was
the Aventine ‘ad circum maximum.’ I can find no explanation of this: we
know of no Mars-altar in that part of Rome, which was the seat of the
cults of Hercules and Consus. It was probably the last point in a
procession of the Salii[1096].
Footnote 1024:
_C. I. L._ i 2. 281.
Footnote 1025:
Varro, _R. R._ 1. 34. Pliny, _N. H._ 18. 315: ‘Vindemiam antiqui
nunquam existimavere maturam ante aequinoctium, iam passim rapi
cerno.’ Sec. 319 ‘Iustum vindemiae tempus ab aequinoctio ad
Vergiliarum occasum dies xliii.’
Footnote 1026:
See above, p. 97.
Footnote 1027:
Pliny, _N. H._ 14. 88 ‘Vino rogum ne respargito.’ Cp. 18. 24.
Footnote 1028:
_Kulturpflanzen_, &c., p. 65.
Footnote 1029:
1. 21. Dion. Hal. 2. 75. The significance of this covered vehicle
seems to be unknown.
Footnote 1030:
Many passages might be collected to bear out Dionysius’ remarks: the
reader may refer to Preller, i. 250 foll.
Footnote 1031:
Pliny, _N. H._ xi. 250. So ‘dextram fidemque dare.’
Footnote 1032:
Wissowa, in _Lex._ s. v. Fides, Preller. i. 251. Serv. _Aen._ 1. 292
and 8. 636: but Serv. in the latter note says ‘Quia fides tecta esse
debet et velata.’
Footnote 1033:
Libanius, _Decl._ 19; Photius, s. v. κροκοῦν (Bötticher, _Baumkultus_,
p. 43) οἱ μύσται ὡς φασὶ κρόκῃ τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα καὶ τὸν πόδα
ἀναδοῦνται.
Footnote 1034:
Hor. _Od._ 1. 35. 21.
Footnote 1035:
The authorities for this and the altars connected with it are Livy, 1.
26; Dion. Hal. 3. 22; Festus, 297 and Paul. 307; Aur. Vict. 4. 9;
_Schol. Bob. ad Cic._ p. 277 Orelli; Lydus _de Mensibus_, 4. 1.
Footnote 1036:
Kiepert u. Huelsen, _Formae urbis Romae antiquae_, p. 92 and map 1;
Jordan, _Topogr._ ii. 100.
Footnote 1037:
So Roscher, in _Lex._ s. v. Ianus, 21; Gilbert, _Topogr._ 1. 180, who
would make it the ‘porta Ianualis’ of Macrob. 1. 19. 17, wrongly.
Footnote 1038:
It is always in the singular, e. g. ‘Transmisso per viam tigillo,’
Livy, l. c. Dionys. writes as if it were originally a _iugum_, i. e.
two uprights and a cross-beam, but does not imply that it was so in
his day.
Footnote 1039:
The altars are mentioned by Festus, Dionys, and _Schol. Bob._
Footnote 1040:
_Lex._ s. v. Janus, 21; quoting Grimm, _Deutsche Myth._ (E. T. 1157,
with quotation from White’s _Selborne_).
Footnote 1041:
Marquardt, 584.
Footnote 1042:
Macrob. 1. 9. 16 ‘[Ianum] Iunonium quia non solum mensis Ianuarii sed
mensium omnium ingressum tenentem: in dicione autem Iunonis sunt omnes
Kalendae.’
Footnote 1043:
This Juno may be the ‘Weibliche Genius einer Frau,’ as Roscher
suggests (s. v. Janus, 22; s. v. Juno. 598, he seems to think
otherwise). But as she is connected with Janus, I should doubt it. For
an explanation of ‘Ianus Curiatius’ cp. Lydus, l. c. ἔφορος εὐγενῶν.
Footnote 1044:
Curriti Arv.: Q[uiriti] Paul.
Footnote 1045:
p. 223.
Footnote 1046:
Paulus, 123; Varro, _L. L._ 6. 21.
Footnote 1047:
Henzen, _Act. Fr. Arv._ pp. 11, 12, 14.
Footnote 1048:
_L. L._ vi. 22. Cp. Festus, 85.
Footnote 1049:
Cic. _N. D._ iii. 20.
Footnote 1050:
Preller, i. 176.
Footnote 1051:
Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ 146. The deities to whom _piacula_ are here to
be sacrificed are deities of the grove of the Brethren: hence I should
conclude that this Fons simply represented a particular spring there.
Footnote 1052: