satisfactory, though it seems to be sanctioned by Mommsen (_C. I. L._
i. 2. 332, note on Id. Oct. sub fin.). It is however undoubtedly
preferable to the view I had taken before reading Wissowa’s tract,
that the omission was due to an aristocratic neglect of usages which
only survived among the common people and had ceased to concern the
whole community.
Footnote 1053:
Polyb. xii. 4b.
Footnote 1054:
Ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τινὶ κατακοντίζειν ἵππον πολεμιστὴν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐν τῷ
κάμπῳ καλουμένῳ. This is quoted from “τὰ περὶ Πυρρόν.”
Footnote 1055:
Fest. 178 ‘October equus appellatur, qui in campo Martio mense Oct.
immolatur quotannis Marti, bigarum victricum dexterior. De cuius
capite non levis contentio solebat esse inter Suburanenses et
Sacravienses, ut hi in regiae pariete, illi ad turrim Mamiliam id
figerent; eiusdemque coda tanta celeritate perfertur in regiam, ut ex
ea sanguis distillet in focum participandae rei divinae gratia, quem
hostiae loco quidam Marti bellico deo sacrari dicunt,’ &c. Then follow
three examples of horse-sacrifices. Paul. 179 adds no fresh
information. Paul. 220 ‘Panibus redimibant caput equi immolati idibus
Octobribus in campo Martio, quia id sacrificium fiebat ob frugum
eventum, et equus potius quam bos immolabatur, quod hic bello, bos
frugibus pariendis est aptus.’ (The meaning of these last words will
be considered presently.) Cp. Plutarch, _Qu. Rom._ 97; probably from
Verrius, perhaps indirectly through Juba. Plut. by a mistake puts the
rite on the Ides of December.
Footnote 1056:
See note in Preller’s _Regionen der Stadi Rom_, p. 174. They are
placed by Kiepert and Hülsen (map 2) close to the Tiber and near the
Mausoleum of Augustus, and a long way from the old ara Martis. Perhaps
the position of the latter had changed as the Campus came to be built
over.
Footnote 1057:
Livy, 35. 10; 40. 45 (the censors after their election sat in Campo on
their curule chairs ‘ad aram Martis’). Roscher, _Lex._ s. v. Mars,
2389.
Footnote 1058:
What this was is not known: some think a kind of peel-tower. Possibly
a tower in _quadriviis_: cf. definition of _compitum_ in _Schol.
Pers._ 4. 28.
Footnote 1059:
Ovid, _Fasti_, 4. 731 foll.; Prop. 5. (4.) 1. 19. See on Parilia and
Fordicidia.
Footnote 1060:
Preller, 1. 366; Marquardt, 334; Schwegler, _Röm. Gesch._ ii. 46;
Roscher, _Apollo und Mars_, 64 foll.
Footnote 1061:
_Mythologische Forschungen_, 156-201.
Footnote 1062:
_de Feriis_, ix.
Footnote 1063:
I add this (see on Vestalia). Mannhardt had not handled it.
Footnote 1064:
Levit. 23 fin.
Footnote 1065:
Had they referred to the crops of the next season we might have
expected ‘ob _bonum_ frugum eventum.’
Footnote 1066:
So Wissowa, _de Feriis_, ix. He thinks that it was only an attempt to
explain the _panes_: but he is wrong in insisting that the Vestalia
(where, as we saw, the same decoration occurs) had _nothing_ to do
with ‘frugum eventus.’
Footnote 1067:
To me it looks as if some words had dropped out of the text, perhaps
after the word _eventum_; see the passage quoted above, p. 242, note
1.
Footnote 1068:
Given in Mannhardt’s next section, p. 169.
Footnote 1069:
See under May 15 (Argei).
Footnote 1070:
Mannhardt has not suggested what seems not impossible, that the horse
represented Mars himself—in which case we might allow that Mars was,
among other things, a vegetation deity.
Footnote 1071:
See his language at the top of p. 164.
Footnote 1072:
He ingeniously suggests that these cases of decapitation may be
explained by the old custom of cutting off the corn-ears so as to
leave almost the whole of the stalk. (See his _Korndämonen_, p. 35.)
That this method existed in Latium seems proved by a passage in Livy,
22. 1 ‘Antii metentibus cruentas in corbem spicas cecidisse.’
Footnote 1073:
Dion. Hal. i. 33, who compares an Arcadian Hippokrateia.
Footnote 1074:
Op. cit. p. 182.
Footnote 1075:
See _Golden Bough_, i. 68 foll., and Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ 214 foll.
Footnote 1076:
Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ l. c.
Footnote 1077:
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 167.
Footnote 1078:
p. 185 foll. The tail in Roman ritual was ‘offa penita.’ Marq. 335,
note 1.
Footnote 1079:
In Silesia, &c., the word is _Zâl_, _Zôl_, which I suppose = tail.
Footnote 1080:
_Golden Bough_, ii. 65. Jevons, Introduction to Plut. _Q. R._ p. lxix.
He quotes an example from Africa.
Footnote 1081:
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, Lect. ix. In this case,
according to M., it was the life of the Corn-spirit—so of generation
in general.
Footnote 1082:
Schwegler, _R. G._ i. 739; Ambrosch, _Studien_, 200 foll.
Footnote 1083:
Evidence for this in Liv. i 2; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 274.
Footnote 1084:
See e. g. Crooke’s _Folklore of Northern India_, vol. ii. pp. 176 and
321. Crooke looks on these fights (he should have said, the possession
of the object which is the cause of the fight) as charms for rain or
fertility. So in the plains of N.-W. India, ‘plenty is supposed to
follow the side which is victorious.’
Footnote 1085:
Veram huius sacri rationem inter veteres ii viderunt quorum sententiam
ita refert Festus ‘equum hostiae loco Marti bellico deo sacrari’ (_de
Feriis_, p. x).
Footnote 1086:
See under March 14 and 19.
Footnote 1087:
Wissowa thinks it was originally the 15th (Ides); but Mommsen dissents
in his note on Oct. 15 (_C. I. L._ 332). It is the only feast-day in
the calendar which is an _even_ number. Perhaps it was changed because
of the popularity of the revels, &c., on the Ides.
Footnote 1088:
Charisius, p. 81; Marq. 435.
Footnote 1089:
This point of the parallel was first noticed by Wissowa, who, as just
noted, believes the day of Equirria to have been in each case the
Ides.
Footnote 1090:
An apt illustration of this aspect of Mars, in combination with the
older primitive form of ritual, is supplied by the strange sacrifice
by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers, recorded by Dio Cassius,
43. 24. They were offered to Mars in the Campus Martius by the Flamen
Martialis in the presence of the Pontifices, _and their heads were
nailed up on the Regia_. (Hence Marq. infers that it was this flamen
who sacrificed the October horse.) Caesar was in Rome in _October_ of
the year to which D. C. attributes this deed, B.C. 46.
Footnote 1091:
_L. L._ 6. 62. Cp. Festus, 19 ‘Armilustrium festum erat apud Romanos,
quo res divinas armati faciebant ac dum sacrificarent tubis canebant.’
See on March 19 and 23.
Footnote 1092:
Liv. 37. 33. 7. Cp. Polyb. 21. 10. 12.
Footnote 1093:
Marq. 437, note 1. The suggestion was Huschke’s, _Röm. Jahr_, 363.
Footnote 1094:
Charisius, pp. 81. 20 (Keil), for _lustratio_ in March. The word
Armilustrium, used for this day, speaks for itself.
Footnote 1095:
_L. L._ 5. 153.
Footnote 1096:
We have a faint indication that they reached the _pons sublicius_,
which was quite near to the Circus maximus. See Marq. 433, note 8.
MENSIS NOVEMBER.
Of all the months in the Roman year November is the least important from
a religious point of view. It was the month of ploughing and sowing—not
of holiday-time[1097]; then, as now, it was a quiet month, and in the
calendars, with the exception of the ludi plebeii, not a festival
appears of any importance. Later on, the worship of Isis gained a hold
upon the month[1098], which remained open to intruders long after
city-life had taken the place of November agricultural operations.
The ludi plebeii, as a public festival, date from 220 B.C.; they took
place in the Circus Flaminius, which was built in that year[1099]; they
and the epulum Iovis (Nov. 13) are first mentioned by Livy four years
later. The _epulum_ has already been discussed in connexion with the
ludi Romani. The plebeian games were probably at first on a single day
(Nov. 13), and were gradually extended, like the ludi Romani; finally,
they lasted from Nov. 4 to Nov. 17[1100].
The 8th was one of the three days on which the _mundus_ was open: see
under Oct. 5.
ID. NOV. (NOV. 13). NP.
FERONIAE IN CAMPO[1101]. (ARV., a later addition to the original.)
FORTUNAE PRIMIGENIAE IN COLLE. (ARV., a later addition to the original.)
This is the only mention we have of Feronia in Rome. She was a goddess
of renown in Latium and central Italy, but never made her mark at Rome,
as did others of her kind—Diana, Fortuna, Ceres, Flora—all of whom
appear there with plebeian associations about them, as not belonging to
the earliest patrician community[1102]. It is curious to find this
Feronia too in the calendar only in the middle of the ludi plebeii, and
probably on the day which was the original nucleus of the games. We may
either date the cult from the establishment of the _ludi_ or guess that
it was there before them, and was subsequently eclipsed by the cult of
Jupiter.
The latter is perhaps the more probable conjecture; for the little that
we know of the cult elsewhere points to a possible origin of the games
which has not, so far as I know, been noticed. They took place, be it
remembered, in the Circus Flaminius, which was in the Campus Martius;
where also was this cult of Feronia. Now the most famous shrine of
Feronia in Italy, that of Trebula Mutusca, was the centre of a great
fair or market held on the feast-days of the goddess[1103], and on the
whole her attributes seem to be those of a deity of fertility and
plenty[1104]. Is it impossible that she had also some share in a fair in
the Campus Martius long before the establishment of the _ludi_?
The connexion of Feronia with the plebs seems suggested not only by her
position in the calendar, but by the devotion of _libertini_[1105]. In
the year 217 B.C. the Roman _freedwomen_ collected a sum of money as a
gift to Feronia[1106]; though this offering need not be taken as
destined for the Roman goddess, but rather for her of Soracte, to whom
first-fruits and other gifts were frequently offered. The temple of
Feronia at Terracina was specially devoted to the manumission of slaves,
of which the process, as described by Servius, presents at least one
feature of special interest[1107]. Manumissions would take place on
public occasions, such as markets, when the necessary authorities and
witnesses were to be easily found, and the temple of the market-goddess
was at hand; and this may be the original point of relation between this
cult and the Roman plebs, which was beyond doubt by the third century
B.C. largely composed of descendants of manumitted slaves.
The conjunction of Feronia on this day with Fortuna Primigenia (_in
colle_) is curious, as both were goddesses of Praeneste, where Feronia
in legend was the mother of Erulus, a daemon with threefold body and
soul, who had to be killed three times by Evander[1108]. The date of the
introduction of this cult of Fortuna at Rome is 204 B.C.[1109]
Footnote 1097:
Rustic calendars: ‘Sementes triticariae et hordiar[iae].’ Varro, _R.
R._ 1. 34.
Footnote 1098:
Mommsen in _C. I. L._ i. 2, 333.
Footnote 1099:
Friedländer in _Marq._ 499; Liv. 23. 30.
Footnote 1100:
See the table in _C. I. L._ i. 2, 335.
Footnote 1101:
Probably these notes belong to the Ides. In the Arval calendar the
entry is opposite the 14th, but from its position may be really meant
as an additional note to the Ides. There is no other example of
religious rites on a day _after_ Ides. (Henzen, _Arv._ 240; _C. I. L._
i. 2, 296.) The same was the case with all ‘dies postriduani.’
Footnote 1102:
See under Cerialia and Floralia.
Footnote 1103:
Liv. 1. 30. Roman merchants were seized by the Sabines in this market
(Dion. Hal. 3. 32).
Footnote 1104:
Steuding in _Lex._ s. v. Feronia; Liv. 26 11. I cannot see any reason
to connect her with November _sowing_, as Steuding does, p. 1480.
Footnote 1105:
Serv. _Aen._ 8. 564.
Footnote 1106:
Liv. 22. 1.
Footnote 1107:
The cutting of the hair, and putting on of the pileus. See Robertson
Smith, _Religion of Semites_, p. 307.
Footnote 1108:
Serv. _Aen._ l. c. The myth must be Graeco-Etruscan.
Footnote 1109:
Liv. 29. 36. The dedication was 194 B.C. (Liv. 34. 53).
MENSIS DECEMBER
In the middle of winter, until well on in January, the Roman husbandman
had comparatively little to do. Varro[1110] writes of sowing lilies,
crocuses, &c., and of cleaning out ditches and pruning vines, and such
light operations of the farm. Columella[1111] tells us that the autumn
sowing should be ended by the beginning of December, though some sow
beans in this month; and in this he agrees with the rustic calendars
which mention, besides this operation, only the manuring of vineyards
and the gathering of olives.
It is not unnatural, then, that we should find in this ‘slack
time’[1112] several festivals which are at once antique and obscure, and
almost all of which seem to carry us back to husbandry and the primitive
ideas of a country life. On the night of the 3rd or thereabouts was the
women’s sacrifice to the Bona Dea; on the 5th the rustic Faunalia in
some parts of Italy, though probably not in Rome; on the 15th the winter
Consualia; on the 17th the Saturnalia; and on the 19th the Opalia; and
so on to the Compitalia and Paganalia. All this is in curious contrast
with the absence of festivals in the busy month of November.
Women’s Sacrifice to the Bona Dea.
This fell, in the year 63 B.C., on the night between Dec. 3 and 4, if we
may trust Plutarch and Dio[1113]; but the date does not seem to have
been a fixed one[1114]. The rite does not appear in the calendars, and,
though attended by the Vestals, did not take place in the temple of the
goddess, but in the house of a consul or praetor, ‘in ea domo quae est
in imperio[1115].’ It seems to have been in some sense a State
sacrifice, i. e. it was ‘pro populo Romano’ (according to Cicero); but
it was not ‘publico sumptu’[1116], and it was never woven into the
calendar by the pontifices, or it could hardly have occurred between the
Kalends and the Nones. Its very nature would exclude the interference of
the pontifical college, and there would be no need to give public notice
of it.
The character of the goddess and her rites have already been discussed
under May 1. All that need be said of the December sacrifice is that it
was clearly a survival from the time when the wife of the chief of the
community—himself its priest—together with her daughters (represented in
later times by the Vestals), and the other matrons, made sacrifice of a
young pig or pigs[1117] to the deity of fertility, from all share in
which men were rigorously excluded. It must have been originally a
perfectly decorous rite, and so have continued to the famous sacrilege
of Clodius; it was only under the empire that it became the scene of
such orgies as Juvenal describes in his second and sixth satires[1118].
NON. DEC. (DEC. 5). F.
Here we have another festival unknown to the calendars, the Faunalia
rustica, as it has been called. Our knowledge of it comes from the
familiar ode of Horace (iii. 18), and from the comments of the
scholiasts thereon:
Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator,
Per meos fines et aprica rura
Lenis incedas abeasque parvis
Aequus alumnis,
Si tener pleno eadit haedus anno,
Larga nec desunt Veneris sodali
Vina craterae, vetus ara multo
Fumat odore.
Ludit herboso pecus omne campo
Cum tibi Nonae redeunt Decembres;
Festus in pratis vacat otioso
Cum bove pagus;
Inter audaces lupus errat agnos;
Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes;
Gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor
Ter pede terram.
No picture could be choicer or neater than this; for once it is a treat
to have our best evidence in the form of a perfect work of art. We are
for a moment let into the heart and mind of ancient Italy, as they
showed themselves on a winter holiday. There is an ancient altar—not a
temple—to a supernatural being who is not yet fully god, who can play
pranks like the ‘Brownies’ and do harm, but is capable of doing good if
duly propitiated. On the Nones of December, possibly of other months
too[1119], he is coaxed with tender kid, libations of wine, and
incense[1120]; the little rural community of farmers (_pagus_), with
their labourers, take part in the rite, and bring their cattle into the
common pasture, plough-oxen and all. Then, after the sacrifice, they
dance in triple measure, like the Salii in March.
Horace is of course describing a rite which was entirely rural, as the
word _pagus_ would indicate sufficiently, apart from other features.
Unless he were the god of the Lupercalia, which is open to much
doubt[1121], Faunus was not introduced into the city of Rome till 196
B.C., when the aediles very appropriately built him a temple in the
Tiber-island with money taken as fines from defaulting _pecuarii_[1122],
or holders of public land used for cattle-runs. We may assume that his
settlement in the city was suggested by the pontifices, and that we have
here a case of the transformation of a purely rustic cult into an urban
one by priestly manipulation. It is not impossible that the idea that
Faunus was the deity of the Lupercalia came in about the same
time[1123]. Both priests and annalists got hold of him, and did their
best to rob him of his true character as an intelligible and useful god
of woodland and pasture. He became a Rex Aboriginum[1124], and the third
on the list of mythical kings of Latium[1125]. He became identified with
the Greek Pan. But, in spite of all their efforts, Faunus would not
tamely accept his new position. We hear no more of the _aedes_ in the
island: the Roman _vulgus_ do not seem to have recognized him at the
Lupercalia, and his insertion in the legends had no political effect.
The fact that not a single inscription from Rome or its vicinity records
his name shows plainly that he never took the popular fancy as a deity
with city functions: and the absence of inscriptions in the country
districts also, in most singular contrast to the ubiquitous stone
records of Silvanus-worship, seems to show that he remained always much
as wild as he was before the age of inscriptions began, while the
kindred deity was adopted into the organized life and culture of the
Italian and provincial farmer[1126].
It may be as well, before leaving the subject of this singular being, to
sum up under a very few heads what is really known about him. But so
little is known about the cult of Faunus—and indeed it can hardly be
said that any elaborate cult ever grew up around him—that it may be
legitimate for once first to glance at the etymological explanations of
his name which have been suggested by scholars.
(1) Faunus is connected with _favere_, and means ‘the kind or propitious
one,’ like Faustus and Faustulus, and as some think, Favonius[1127] and
Fons. This derivation was known to Servius[1128]: ‘quidam Faunos putant
dictos ab eo quod frugibus faveant.’ It is not in itself inconsistent
with what we know of the rural Faunus, or with analogous supernatural
beings, like the ‘good people.’ It was accepted by Preller and
Schwegler, and has affected their conclusions about Faunus; e. g.
Schwegler based on it the view, now generally held, that Evander is a
Greek translation of Faunus[1129].
(2) Faunus is from _fari_, i. e. the speaker, or foreteller. This too
was known to Latin scholars: thus Isidorus (perhaps from Varro[1130]),
‘fauni a fando, ἀπὸ τὴς φωνῆς dicti, quod voce non signis ostendere
viderentur futura.’ It was revived not long ago by the late Prof.
Nettleship: ‘Once imagine Faunus as a “speaker,” and all becomes clear.
He is not only the composer and reciter of verses[1131], but generally
the seer or wise man, whose superior knowledge entitles him to the
admiration and dread of the country folk who consult him. But as his
real nature and functions are superseded, his character is misconceived:
he becomes a divinity, the earliest king of Latium, the god of prophecy,
the god of agriculture.’ We may compare with this Scaliger’s note on
Varro, _L. L._ 7. 36: ‘The Fauni were a class of men who exercised, at a
very remote period, the same functions which belonged to the Magi in
Persia, and to the Bards in Gaul.’
(3) Faunus may = Favonius, which itself may come from the same root as
Pan (i. e. _pu_ = purify). Thus Faunus, like Pan, might be taken as a
mythological expression of the ‘purifying breeze,’ the god of the
gentler winds[1132]. The characteristics of Faunus are of course very
like those of Pan; but as it is no easy matter to determine how far
those of the Italian were taken over by the Roman litterati from the
Greek deity, and as the etymology itself is confessedly a questionable
one, this conjecture must be left to take its chance.
But the first two are worth attending to, and each finds some support in
what we know of Faunus from other sources. Let us see in the next place
what this amounts to.
(1) There is fairly strong evidence that Faunus was not originally
conceived as a single deity, but as _multiplex_. Varro quotes the line
of Ennius:
Versibus quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
and comments thus[1133]: ‘Fauni dii Latinorum, ita ut Faunus et Fauna
sit.’ The evidence of Virgil, always valuable for rural antiquities, is
equally clear:
Et vos agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni,
Ferte simul Faunique pedem Dryadesque puellae[1134].
Servius has an interesting note on these lines: why, he asks, does the
poet put Faunus in the plural, when there is but one? We might be
tempted to think Virgil wrong and his commentator right, the poet
representing Greek ideas and the scholar Italian, but for a still more
curious note of Probus on the same passage: ‘Plures (Fauni) existimantur
esse etiam praesentes: idcirco rusticis persuasum est incolentibus eam
partem Italiae quae suburbana est, saepe eos in agris conspici.’ My
belief is that these words give us the genuine idea of Faunus in the
rustic mind, surviving in central Italy long after he had been
appropriated as a conventional Roman deity. We seem in the case of
Faunus to be able to catch a deity in the process of manufacture—of
elevation from a lower, multiplex, daemonistic form, to a higher and
more uniform and more rigid one. Yet so excellent a scholar as Wissowa
holds exactly the opposite view, that there was but one Faunus, and that
his multiplication is simply the result of Roman acquaintance with Pan
and the Satyrs[1135]. It would have been more satisfactory if he had
given us an explanation from his point of view of the passage of Probus
just quoted, or had shown us how these Greek notions could have
penetrated into the rural parts of Italy.
(2) Another point which comes out distinctly—unless our Roman
authorities were wholly misled—is the _woodland_ character of the Fauni.
A passage of Varro, of which I quoted the first words just now, goes on
thus: ‘hos versibus quos vocant Saturnios _in silvestribus locis_
traditum est solitos fari futura, a quo fando Faunos dictos.’ This seems
to be a genuine Italian tradition. Virgil was not talking Greek when he
wrote[1136]
Haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant
Gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata,
Queis neque mos neque cultus erat, &c.
The poet imagines an ancient race, sprung from the trees themselves: a
‘genus indocile et dispersum montibus altis,’ living on the forest-clad
hills[1137], to whom foreign invaders brought the means of civilization.
Why should not this tradition be a native one? It is singularly in
accord with the most recent results of Italian excavation; for it is now
absolutely certain that the oldest inhabitants of central Italy dwelt on
the hill-tops, and that the first traces of foreign influence only occur
in lower and later settlements[1138]. The valleys were still undrained
and malarious. These earliest inhabitants who have left their traces for
the excavator, or a still older race scattered on the hills after their
invasion, may have been the traditional representatives of what Preller
has called ‘the period of Faunus[1139],’ regarded by the later
civilization, from their wild and woodland habits, as half demons and
half men. The name of the kindred Silvanus tells its own tale; and his
actual connexion with trees was even closer than that of Faunus[1140].