(Liberalia), May 21 (Agon. Vediovi), Dec. 11 (Septimontium); but it is
impossible to make out any connexion between these and Jan. 9. Nor can
we be sure that the sacrifice (if such it was), indicated by Agon, had
any relation to the other ceremonies of the days thus marked[1248]. On
Jan. 9 Ovid does indeed say that Janus was ‘agonali luce piandus,’ and
on May 21 the Fasti Venusini add a note ‘Vediovi’ to the letters AGON;
but there is no distinct proof that the agonium was a sacrifice to Janus
or to Vediovis. We are utterly in the dark[1249].
On this day the Rex sacrorum offered a ram (to Janus?) in the Regia.
Ovid says[1250] that though the meaning of Agon is doubtful,
ita rex placare sacrorum
Numina lanigerae coniuge debet ovis.
It is provokingly uncertain whether this ram was actually sacrificed to
Janus: Varro does not say so, and Ovid only implies it[1251]. But we may
perhaps assume it on the ground that once at least in the ritual of the
Fratres Arvales[1252] the ram is mentioned as Janus’ victim.
If this be so, we are carried back by this sacrifice to the very
beginnings of Rome, and get a useful clue to the nature of the god
Janus. The Rex sacrorum was the special representative in later times of
the king; the king, living in the Regia, was the equivalent in the State
of the head of the household. The two most important and sacred parts of
the house are the door (ianua, ianus), and the hearth (vesta)[1253], and
the numina inhabiting and guarding these are Janus and Vesta, who, as is
well known, were respectively the first and the last deities to be
invoked at all times in Roman religious custom. The whole house
certainly had a religious importance, like everything else in intimate
relation to man; and Macrobius is not romancing when he says (quoting
_mythici_) ‘Regnante Iano omnium domos religione et sanctitate fuisse
munitas[1254].’ But the door and the hearth were of special importance,
as the folk-lore of every people fully attests; and it is hardly
possible to avoid the conclusion that we must look for the origin of
Janus in the ideas connected with the house-door, just as we have always
found Vesta in the fire on the hearth. Whatever be the true etymology of
Janus, and however wild the interpretations of his nature and cult both
in ancient and modern times, we shall always have firm ground to stand
on if we view him in relation to the primitive worship of the
house[1255]. There is hardly an attribute or a cult-title of Janus that
cannot be deduced with reason from this root-idea.
The old Roman scholars, who knew as little about Janus as we do, started
several explanations of a cosmical kind, which must have been quite
strange to the average Roman worshipper. He was a sun-god[1256], and his
name is the masculine form of Diana (= moon); he was the _mundus_, i. e.
the heaven, or the atmosphere[1257]. These were, of course, mere guesses
characteristic of a pedantic age which knew nothing of the old Roman
religious mind. If Janus ever had been a nature-deity, his attributes as
such were completely worn away in historical times, or had lost their
essential character in the process of constant application to practical
matters by a prosaic people. How far the Roman of the Augustan age
understood his great _deorum deus_ may be gathered from Ovid’s treatment
of the subject, itself no doubt a poetical version of the learned
speculation of Varro and others. The poet ‘interviews’ the deity with
the object of finding out the lost and hidden meaning of his most
obvious peculiarities, and the old god condescends to answer with a
promptness and good temper that would do credit to the victims of the
modern journalist. The curious thing is that the real origin, humble,
simple, and truly Latin, escaped the observation both of the interviewer
and the deity.
Before I state more definitely the grounds on which this simple
explanation of Janus is based, it will be as well to deal shortly with
the more ambitious ones.
1. The theory that Janus was a sun-god has the support of Roman
antiquarians[1258], and was probably suggested by them to the moderns.
Nigidius Figulus, the Pythagorean mystic, seems to have been the first
to broach the idea: we have no evidence that Varro gave his sanction to
it. It was Nigidius who first suggested the idea of the relation of
Janus to Diana (Dianus, Diana = Janus, Jana), which found much favour
with Preller and Schwegler[1259] at a time when neither comparative
philology nor comparative mythology were as well understood as now. But
the common argument, both in ancient and modern times, has been that
which Macrobius quotes from certain speculators whom he does not name:
‘Ianum quidam solem demonstrari volunt, et ideo geminum quasi utriusque
ianuae coelestis potentem, qui exoriens aperiat diem, occidens claudat,’
&c. It is obvious that this is pure speculation by a Roman of the
cosmopolitan age: it is an attempt to explain the Janus geminus as the
representation of one of the great forces of nature. But it has nothing
to do with the ideas of the early Italian farmer.
2. The theory that Janus was a god of the ‘vault of heaven’ was also
started by the ancients, as may be seen from the chapter of Macrobius
quoted above. Recently it has been adopted by Professor Deecke in his
Etruscan researches[1260]. He seems to hold that Janus in Etruria, as a
god of the arch of heaven, was represented on arches and gates in that
country, and came to Rome when the Romans learnt the secret of the arch
from the Etruscans. That the Romans were the pupils of the Etruscans in
this particular seems to be true; but if Janus only came to Rome with
the arch (Deecke says in Numa’s time) it is hard to see how he could
have so quickly gained his peculiar place in Roman worship and legend. I
cannot think that Deecke has here improved on the conclusions of his
predecessor.
Speculations about Janus as a heaven-god have been pushed still further.
Here is a passage from a book which is almost a work of genius[1261],
yet embodies many theories of which its author may by this time have
repented: ‘He who prayed (in ancient Italy) began his prayer looking to
the East, but ended it looking to the West. Herein we find expressed the
conception of the unity and indivisibility of Nature; whose symbol is
the most characteristic figure of the Italian religion, the
double-headed Janus, the highest god, and the god of all things, all
times, and all gods. He unites the dualistic opposites which complete
the world—beginning and end, morning and evening, outgoing and ingoing.
He is the god of the year, which finds its completion in its own orbit,
and as he is the god of time, so he is the god of the Kosmos, which like
a circle displays both beginning and end at once.’ He then quotes a
passage from Messalla, which Macrobius has preserved, in support of this
astonishing product of the rude mind of the primitive Roman[1262]. Of
this Messalla we only know that he was consul in 53 B.C., and that (as
Macrobius tells us) he was augur for fifty-five years, in the course of
which period, after the fashion of his day, he wrote works of which the
object was to find a philosophic basis for the quaint phenomena of the
Roman religion. His speculations on the double head of Janus cannot help
us to discover the primitive nature of our deity; Janus may have been
the ancient heaven-god of the Latins, but these guesses are the product
of a spurious and eclectic Greek philosophy.
3. There is another possible explanation of Janus, which is not
mentioned in Roscher’s article, but is perhaps worth as much
consideration as the two last. Professor Rhys, in his _Hibbert Lectures
on Celtic Mythology_[1263], somewhat casually identified Janus with the
Celtic god Cernunnos, whom he considers to be the Gallic deity called by
Caesar _Dis Pater_. The one striking fact in favour of this equation is
that Cernunnos was represented as having three faces, and like Janus, as
a head without a body—the lower portion of the block being utilized for
other purposes[1264]. He seems to have been a chthonic deity, and is
compared to and even identified by Rhys with Heimdal of the Norsemen and
Teutons, who was the warder or porter of the gods, and of the
underworld[1265], who sits as the ‘wind-listening’ god, whose ears are
of miraculous sharpness, who is the father of man, and the sire of
kings. Both Cernunnos and Heimdal are thought further to have been like
Janus, the _fons et origo_ of all things. According to Caesar the Gauls
believed themselves to be descended from their deity; and both the
Celtic and Scandinavian gods seem to have had, like the Roman, some
connexion with the divisions of time.
It must be allowed that these two gods taken together supply parallels
to Janus’ most salient characteristics; and even to one or two of the
less prominent and more puzzling ones, such as the connexion with
springs[1266]. It is not impossible that all three may have grown out of
a common root; but in the cases of Cernunnos and Heimdal it does not
seem any longer possible to trace this, owing to heavy incrustations of
poetical mythology. In the case of the Roman, the chance is a better
one, in spite of philosophical speculation, ancient and modern.
We return from philosophers and mythologists to early Rome. The one fact
on which we must fix our attention is that on the north-east of the
forum Romanum was the famous Janus geminus, which from representations
on coins[1267] we can see was not a temple, but a gateway, with entrance
and exit connected by walls, within which was, we may suppose, the
double-headed figure of Janus which is familiar on Roman coins. The same
word janus is applied to the gate and to the numen who guarded it, lived
in it, and was as inseparable from it as Vesta from the fire on the
hearth[1268]. The word does not seem to have been used for the gate of a
city, but for the point of passage into a space within a city, such as a
market, or a street. At Rome there were several such jani[1269];
probably two or more leading into the forum, as well as the more famous
one, which alone appears to have had a strictly religious
signification[1270]. The connexion of the god with entrances is thus a
certainty, though we are puzzled by his apparent absence from the gates
of the city[1271]. The double head would signify nothing transcendental,
but simply that the numen of the entrance to house or market was
concerned both with entrance and exit. It is not peculiar to Italy, or
to Janus, but is found on coins in every part of the Mediterranean
(Roscher, _Lex_. 53 foll.): in no case, it is worth noting, does the
double head represent any of the great gods of heaven, such as Zeus,
Apollo, &c., but Dionysus, Boreas, Argos, unknown female heads[1272],
&c. Its history does not seem to have been worked out; but we can be
almost sure that it does not represent the sun, and has no relation to
the arch of heaven.
Now keeping in mind the fact that Janus is the guardian spirit of
entrances, let us recall again the fact that he was the first deity in
all invocations both public and private[1273], and that Vesta was the
last[1274]. Vesta in the house was, as Cicero expresses it, ‘rerum
custos intimarum’; she presided over the penetralia—the _last_ part of
the house to which any stranger could be admitted; exactly the opposite
position to that of Janus at the entrance[1275]. Both deities retained
at all times the essential mark of primitive ideas of the supernatural:
they resided in and in a sense were, the doorway and the hearth
respectively. What we know of the priests who served them tells the same
tale of an origin in the house, and the family—the foundation of all
Italian civilization. Vesta was served by her sacred virgins, and these,
we can no longer doubt, were the later representatives of the daughters
of the head of the family, or the headman of the community[1276]; the
innermost part of the house was theirs, the care of the fire, the stores
(penus), and the cooking. To the father, the defender of the family,
belonged naturally the care of the entrance, the dangerous point, where
both evil men and evil spirits might find a way in. And surely this must
be the explanation of the fact that no priest is to be found for Janus
in the Roman system but the Rex sacrorum[1277], the lineal
representative of the ancient religious duties of the king, and
therefore, we may infer with certainty, of those of the primitive chief,
and of the head of the household[1278]. In the most ancient order of the
priesthoods, the Rex sacrorum came first, just as Janus was the first of
all the gods[1279]: then came the three great Flamines, and then the
Pontifex maximus, in whose care and power were the Vestals. Translating
the order into terms of the primitive family, we have first the head of
the house, next the sons, and lastly (as women do not appear in these
lists), the daughters represented by the later priesthood, to which they
were legally subordinated. The order of the gods, the order of the
priests, and the natural position of the entrance to the house, all seem
to lead us to the same conclusion, that the beginning of Janus and his
cult are to be sought, and may be found, in the early Italian family
dwelling.
We may agree with Roscher, who has worked out this part of the subject
with skill, that this position of Janus in the worship of the family and
the state is the origin of all the practices in which he appears as a
god of beginnings. For these the reader must be referred to Roscher’s
article[1280], or to Preller, or to Mommsen, who sees in this aspect of
the god, and rightly no doubt, that which chiefly reflects the notion of
him held by the ordinary Roman. He was himself the oldest god, the
beginner of all things, and of all acts[1281]; to him in legend is
ascribed the introduction of the arts, of agriculture, ship-building,
&c.[1282]. He is an object of worship at the beginning of the year, the
month, and the day[1283]. All this sprang, not from an abstract idea of
beginning—an idea which has no Roman parallel in being sanctified by a
presiding deity, but from the concrete fact that the entrance of the
house was the _initium_, or beginning of the house, and at the same time
the point from which you started on all undertakings.
Such developments of the original Janus were no doubt as old as the
State itself. In the Salian hymn he is already ‘deorum deus’[1284], and
‘duonus cerus’[1285], which Festus tells us meant creator bonus. But
even in the State there are, as we have seen, sufficiently clear traces
of his original nature to forbid us to attribute these titles to any
lofty and abstract philosophical ideas of religion.
The known cult-titles of Janus are for the most part explicable in the
same way. Geminus, Patulcius, Clusius, and Matutinus, speak for
themselves. Junonius probably arose from the concurrence of the cults of
Janus and Juno on the Kalends of each month, as Macrobius tells
us[1286]. Consivius[1287] is explained by Roscher as connected with
_serere_, and used of Janus as creator (beginner of life: cf. _duonus
cerus_). Curiatius, Patricius, and Quirinus[1288] are titles arising
from the worship of the god in gentes, curiae, and the completed state,
and have no significance in regard to his nature.
III ID. IAN. (JAN. 11). NP.
KARM[ENTALIA]. (PRAEN. MAFF.)
XVIII KAL. FEB. (JAN. 15). NP.
KAR[MENTALIA]. (PRAEN. MAFF. PHIL. CAER.)
The full name of the festival is supplied by Philoc. and Silv. There is
a much mutilated note in Praen. on Jan. 11 which is completed by Mommsen
thus[1289]: ‘[Feriae Carmenti ... quae partus curat omniaque] futura; ob
quam ca[usam in aede eius cavetur ab scorteis tanquam] omine morticino.’
The first point to be noticed here is that the same deity has two
festival days, with an interval of three days between them. There is no
exact parallel to this in the calendar, though there are several
instances of something analogous[1290]. The Lemuria are on May 9, 11,
13; but here are three days, and no special deity. Kindred deities have
their festivals separated by three days, as Consus and Ops (Aug. 21,
25); and we may compare the Fordicidia and Cerealia on April 15 and 19,
and the Quinquatrus and Tubilustrium, both apparently sacred to Mars, on
March 19 and 23. All festivals occur on days of uneven number; and if
there was an extension to two or more days, the even numbers were passed
over[1291]. But the Romans did not apparently consider the two
Carmentalia to be two parts of the same festival, but two different
festivals, or they would not have tried to account as they did for the
origin of the second day. It was said to have been added by a victorious
general who left Rome by the Porta Carmentalis to attack Fidenae[1292],
or by the matrons who had refused to perform the function of women, in
anger at being deprived by the Senate of the right of riding in
_carpenta_; and who, when the decree was withdrawn, testified their
satisfaction in this curious way.
It does not seem possible to discover the real meaning of the double
festival. It has been suggested[1293] that the two days represent the
so-called Roman and Sabine cities, like the two bodies of Salii and
Luperci. This guess is hardly an impossible one, but it is only a guess,
and has nothing to support it but a casual statement by Plutarch that
the Carmentalia were instituted at the time of the _synoikismos_ of
Latin and Sabine cities[1294].
There is fortunately little doubt about the nature of Carmenta and the
general meaning of the cult. In all the legends into which she was
woven[1295] her most prominent characteristic is the gift of prophecy;
she is the ‘vates fatidica,’ &c.,
Cecinit quae prima futuros
Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum.
So Ovid, at the end of his account of her:
At felix _vates_, ut dis gratissima vixit,
Possidet hunc Iani sic dea mense diem.
The power is expressed in her very name, for _carmen_ signifies a spell,
a charm, a prophecy, as well as a poem. Now there is clear evidence that
either women alone had access to the temple at the Porta Carmentalis, or
that they were the chief frequenters of it; and they are even said to
have built a temple themselves[1296]. Where we find women worshipping a
deity of prophecy we may be fairly sure that that deity also has some
influence on childbirth. ‘The reason,’ writes the late Prof.
Nettleship[1297], ‘why the Carmentes are worshipped by matrons is
because they tell the fortunes of the children’—and also, surely,
because they tell the fortunes of the women in childbirth[1298].
I am inclined to agree with my old tutor that the Carmentes may
originally have been wise women whose skill and spells assisted the
operation of birth. I do not think we can look for an explanation of the
titles Porrima and Postverta elsewhere than in the two positions in
which the child may issue from the womb, over each of which a Carmentis
watched[1299]; and there is in fact no doubt that Carmenta was a
birth-goddess[1300]. The argument then would be that the spiritual
origin attributed to superior knowledge transforms the owner of the
knowledge into a divine person. As Sir A. Lyall says[1301] (of the
genesis of local deities in Berar), ‘The immediate motive (of
deification) is nothing but a vague inference from great natural gifts
or from strange fortunes to supernatural visitation, or from power
during life to power prolonged beyond it.’
Of the cult of Carmenta we know hardly anything. She had a flamen of her
own[1302], like other ancient goddesses, Palatua, Furrina, Flora. His
sacrificial duties must have been confined to the preparing of cereal
offerings, for there was a taboo in this cult excluding all skins of
animals—all leather—from the temple.
Scortea non illi fas est inferre sacello[1303],
Ne violent puros exanimata focos.
Varro writes ‘In aliquot sacris et sacellis scriptum habemus: Ne quid
scorteum adhibeatur ideo ne morticinum quid adsit.’ We could wish that
he had told us what these sacra and sacella were[1304]; as it is we must
be content to suppose that a goddess of birth could have nothing to do
with the slaughter of animals.
The position of the temple was at the foot of the southern end of the
Capitol, near the Porta Carmentalis[1305], where, according to Servius,
she was said to have been buried (cp. Acca Larentia, Dec. 23). It is
noticeable that the festivals of this winter period are connected with
sites near the Capitol and Forum; we have already had Saturnus, Ops, and
Janus.
If the reader should ask why a goddess of birth should be specially
worshipped in the depth of winter, he may perhaps find a reason for it
after reading the third chapter of Westermarck’s _History of Human
Marriage_. As far as we can judge from the calendar, April was the month
at Rome when marriages and less legal unions were especially
frequent[1306]; during May and the first days of June marriages were not
desirable[1307]. In January therefore births might naturally be
expected.
Ovid tells us (1. 463) that _Juturna_ was also worshipped on Jan.
11[1308]; but whether in any close connexion with Carmenta we do not
know. They are both called Nymphs; but from this we can hardly make any
inference. Juturna was certainly a fountain-deity: I can find no good
evidence that this was one of Carmenta’s attributes. The fount of
Juturna was near the Vesta-temple[1309], and therefore close to the
Forum: its water was used, says Servius, for all kinds of sacrifices,
and itself was the object of sacrifice in a drought. All took part in
the festival who used water in their daily work (‘qui artificium aqua
exercent’). But the Juturnalia appears in no calendar, and Aust is no
doubt right in explaining it only as the dedication-festival of the
temple built by Augustus in B.C. 2[1310].
Feriae Sementivae[1311]. Paganalia.
Under date of Jan. 24-26, Ovid[1312] writes in charming verse of the
_feriae conceptivae_ called Sementivae (or -tinae), which from his
account would seem to be identical with the so-called Paganalia[1313].
Just as the Compitalia of the city probably had its origin in the
country (see on Jan. 3-5), though the rustic _compita_ were almost
unknown to the later Romans, so the festival of sowing was kept up in
the city (‘a pontificibus dictus,’ Varro, _L. L._ 6. 26) as Sementinae,
long after the Roman population had ceased to sow. In the country it was
known—so we may guess—by the less technical name of Paganalia[1314], as
being celebrated by the rural group of homesteads known as the _pagus_.
As to the object and nature of the festival, let Ovid speak for himself:
State coronati plenum ad praesaepe iuvenei:
Cum tepido vestrum vere redibit opus.
Rusticus emeritum palo suspendat aratrum[1315]:
Omne reformidat frigida volnus humus.
Vilice, da requiem terrae, _semente peracta_:
Da requiem terram qui coluere viris.
Pagus agat festum: pagum lustrate, coloni,
Et date paganis annua liba focis.
Placentur frugum matres, Tellusque Ceresque,
Farre suo, gravidae visceribusque suis.
Officium commune Ceres et Terra tuentur:
Haec praebet causam frugibus, illa locum.
Ceres and Tellus, ‘consortes operis,’ are to be invoked to bring to
maturity the seed sown in the autumn, by preserving it from all pests
and hurtful things; and also to assist the sower in his work in the
spring that is at hand. This at least is how I understand the lines
(681, 682):
Cum serimus, caelum ventis aperite serenis;
Cum latet, aetheria spargite semen aqua.
Or if it be argued that both these lines may very well refer to the
spring, it is at least certain that the poet understood the festival to
cover the past autumn sowing:
Utque dies incerta sacro, sic tempora certa,
Seminibus iactis est ubi fetus ager[1316].
Varro tells us[1317] that the time of the autumn sowing extended from
the equinox to the winter solstice; after which, as we have seen, the
husbandmen rested from their labours in the fields, and enjoyed the
festivals we have been discussing since Dec. 17 (Consualia). The last of
these is the Paganalia, i. e. the one nearest in date, if we may go by
Ovid, to the time for setting to work at the spring sowing, which began
on or about Feb. 7 (Favonius).[1318] It would thus be quite natural that
this festival should have reference not only to the seed already in the
ground, but also to that which was still to be sown. If Ovid lays stress
on the former, Varro and Lydus seem to be thinking chiefly of the
latter[1319].