Nunc quoque dant verbo plurima signa fidem.
Pontifices ab rege petunt et flamine _lanas_,
Quis veterum lingua februa nomen erat.
Quaeque capit lictor domibus purgamina †ternis†[1342]
Torrida cum mica farra, vocantur idem.
Nomen idem _ramo_, qui caesus ab arbore pura
Casta sacerdotum tempora fronde tegit.
Ipse ego flaminicam poscentem februa vidi:
Februa poscenti _pinea virga_ data est.
Denique quodcunque est, quo corpora nostra piantur,
Hoc apud intonsos nomen habebat avos.
Objects such as these, called by a name which is explained by _piamen_,
or _purgamentum_, must have been understood as charms potent to keep off
evil influences, and so to enable nature to take its ordinary course
unhindered. Only in this sense can we call them instruments of
_purification_.
The use of the _februa_ in the Lupercalia was, as we shall see, to
procure fertility in the women of the community. Here then, as well as
in the rites of the Fornacalia and Parentalia, is some reason for
calling the month a period of purification; but only if we bear in mind
that at the Parentalia the process consisted simply in the performance
of duties towards the dead, which freed or purified a man from their
possible hostility; while at the Lupercalia the women were freed or
purified from influences which might hinder them in the fulfilment of
their natural duties to their families and the State. Beyond this it is
not safe to go in thinking of February as a month of expiation.
KAL. FEB. IUNONI SOSPITAE. N.
This was the dedication-day of a temple of the great Lanuvian goddess,
Juno Sospita, in the Forum olitorium[1343]. It was vowed in the year 197
B.C. by the consul Cornelius Cethegus, but had fallen into decay in
Ovid’s time[1344]. For the famous cult of this deity at Lanuvium, see
Roscher, in _Lex._ s. v. Iuno, 595.
ID. FEB. FAUNO [I]N INSUL[A]. _C. I. L._ vi. 2302. NP.
This temple was vowed almost at the same time as the last, 296 B.C., by
plebeian aediles; it was built by fines exacted from holders of ager
publicus who had not paid their rents[1345]. See under Dec. 5, p. 257.
FORNICALIA: FERIAE CONCEPTIVAE, ending Feb. 17.
I have drawn attention to the change in the character of the festivals
at this season. But before we go on to the Parentalia and Lupercalia,
which chiefly mark this change, we have to consider one festival which
seems to belong rather to the class which we found in December and
January. This was the Fornacalia, or feast of ovens; one which does not
appear in the calendars, as it was a moveable feast (conceptivae); and
one which was a _sacrum publicum_ only in the sense of being pro curiis,
as the Paganalia were pro pagis, the Septimontium pro montibus, and the
Argean rite pro sacellis[1346]. Each curia conducted its own rites,
under the supervision of its curio and (for the last day) of the Curio
Maximus[1347]: the great priests of the State had no official part in
it. In this it differs in some degree from the Fordicidia (April 15),
the other feast of the curiae, which appears in three of our calendars,
and in which the Pontifices and Vestals took some part[1348].
This is not the place to investigate the difficult question of what the
_curiae_ really were. So much at least is clear, that while, like the
montes, pagi, and sacella (argea), they were divisions of the people and
the land, they were more important than the others, in that they formed
the basis of the earliest political and military organization[1349]. It
need hardly be said that each curia had also itself a religious
organization: their places of assembly, though not temples, were
quasi-religious buildings[1350], used for sacred purposes, but furnished
with hearth and eating-room like an ordinary house[1351]. We hear also
of tables (mensae, τράπεσαι) ‘in quibus immolabatur Iunoni quae Curis
appellata est[1352].’ There is no need to assume any etymological
connexion between Cŭris and Cūria[1353]; but the cult of the goddess of
the spear is interesting here, as seeming at once to illustrate the
military importance of the curiae, the power of the paterfamilias[1354],
and the necessity of continuing the family through the fertility of
woman, an idea which we shall come upon again at the Lupercalia[1355].
Lastly, each curia had its own curio, or religious superintendent, and
its own flamen, and at the head of all the curiae was the Curio Maximus;
officers who coincide with the general character of the curiae in being
(like the heads of families) not strictly priests, but capable of
religious duties, for the performance of which they are said to have
been instituted[1356].
The ritual of the Fornacalia has been evolved with difficulty, and
without much certainty, from a few passages in Ovid, Dionysius, Varro,
Festus, and Pliny[1357]. We seem to see—1. An offering in each private
house in each curia: it consisted of _far_, i. e. meal of the oldest
kind of Italian wheat, roasted in antique fashion in the oven which was
to be found in the _pistrina_ of each house, and made into cakes by
crushing in the manner still common in India and elsewhere[1358]. 2. A
rite in which each curia took part as a whole. This is deduced from the
fact that on the 17th (Quirinalia) any one who by forgetfulness or
ignorance had omitted to perform his sacra on the day fixed by the curio
for the meeting of his own curia, might do so then at a general assembly
of all the thirty curiae[1359]. This was the reason why the Quirinalia
was called ‘stultorum feriae.’ It has also been conjectured that the
bounds of each curia were beaten on this day, on which its members thus
met: for Pliny says ‘Numa et Fornacalia instituit farris torrendi ferias
_et aeque religiosas terminis agrorum_[1360].’ 3. What happened on the
Quirinalia Ovid shall tell us himself[1361]:
Curio legitimis nunc Fornacalia verbis
Maximus indicit, nec stata sacra facit;
Inque foro, multa circum pendente tabella,
Signatur certa curia quaeque nota:
Stultaque pars populi, quae sit sua curia, nescit,
Sed facit extrema sacra relata die.
It should be noted that no certain connexion can be made out between
Quirinus and curia, and I imagine it was only accident or convenience
that made this day the last of the Fornacalia[1362]. Ovid’s words ‘nec
stata sacra facit’ seem to me to imply that the Curio Maximus carefully
abstained from using a formula of announcement likely to confuse the
‘stultorum feriae’ with the Quirinalia, which was always on the same
day. But it may well have been the case that by usage the two coincided.
Ovid’s lines make it clear that on the 17th (as a rule) the Forum was
the scene of a general meeting of curiae, each of which had a certain
space assigned it, indicated by a placard. Is it possible that this was
merely a survival of the assembly of the armed host in comitia curiata,
now used only for religious purposes? If so, the tendency to fix it on
the festival of Quirinus might find a natural explanation.
The meaning and object of the Fornacalia are very far from being clear.
Preller[1363] fancied it was the occasion of the first eating of the
fruits of the last harvest: but it is hardly possible to imagine this
postponed as late as February. On the other hand Dionysius’
description[1364], already quoted, of what he saw in the curiae, would
suit this well enough if it could be set down to a suitable time of
year: it suggests a common meal, in which the first fruits are offered
to the god, while the worshippers eat of the new grain. But this cannot
have been in February. Steuding (in the _Lex._) suggests that the object
was to thank the gods for preserving the corn through the winter, and to
pray for the welfare of the seed still in the ground (i. e. in a
lustratio). Ovid says (though Steuding does not quote him)
Facta dea est Fornax: laeti Fornace coloni
Orant, ut fruges temperet illa suas[1365].
But neither Steuding’s conjecture, nor the German parallels he appeals
to, seem convincing. I am rather inclined to think that the making of
cakes in each household was simply a preliminary to the _sacra_ that
followed in the curia, i. e. each family brought its contribution to a
common religious meal. The roasting was naturally accompanied by an
offering to the spirit of the oven[1366] (fornax); hence the name
Fornacalia. The object of the sacra in the curia is doubtful; but they
probably had some relation to the land and its fertility, in view of the
new year about to begin. Of the final meeting of all the curiae in the
forum I have already suggested an explanation: the phrase ‘stultorum
feriae’ was, in my opinion, of late origin, and illustrates the
diminishing importance of the curiate organization after the admission
of plebeians[1367].
ID. FEB. (FEB. 13). NP.
VIRGO VESTALIS PARENTAT. (PHIL.)
PARENTATIO TUMULORUM INCIPIT. (SILV.)
The _dies parentales_, or days of worshipping the dead (placandis
Manibus), began at the sixth hour on this day, and continued either to
the 21st (Feralia), or the 22nd (cara cognatio)[1368]. The parentatio of
the Vestal was at the tomb of Tarpeia, herself a Vestal[1369].
Undoubtedly, the Feralia (21st) was the oldest and the best known of
these days, and the only one which was a public festival: it appears in
three calendars (Caer. Maff. Farn.) in large letters. Yet there is
reason for believing that even the Feralia was not the oldest day for
worshipping the manes: it was in part at least a dies fastus, and none
of the dies parentales are marked N in the calendars; and this,
according to Mommsen[1370], shows that the rites of those days were of
later origin than those of the Lemuria (May 9-13), which are all marked
N. This seems also to have been the opinion of Latin scholars[1371].
Whatever the Lemuria may have been, it is certain that the Parentalia
were not days of terror or ill-omen; but rather days on which the
performance of duty was the leading idea in men’s minds. Nor was the
duty an unpleasant one. There was a general holiday: the dead to be
propitiated had been duly buried in the family tomb in the great
necropolis, had been well cared for since their departure, and were
still members of the family. There was nothing to fear from them, so
long as the living members performed their duties towards them under the
supervision of the State and its Pontifices[1372]. They had their
_iura_, and the relations between them and their living relations were
all regulated by a _ius sacrum_: they lived on in their city outside the
walls of the city of the living[1373], each family in their own
dwelling: they did not interfere with the comfort of the living, or in
any way show themselves hostile or spiteful. Such ideas as these are of
course the result of a well developed city life; experience has taught
the citizen how his conduct towards the Di Manes can best be regulated
and organized for the benefit of both parties. The Parentalia belong to
a later stage of development than the Lemuria, though both have the same
original basis of thought. The Parentalia was practically a yearly
renewal of the rite of burial. As _sacra privata _they took place on the
anniversary of the death of a deceased member of the family, and it was
a special charge on the heir that he should keep up their
observance[1374]. On that day the family would go in procession to the
grave, not only to see that all was well with him who abode there, but
to present him with offerings of water, wine, milk, honey, oil, and the
blood of black victims[1375]: to deck the tomb with flowers[1376], to
utter once more the solemn greeting and farewell (Salve, sancte parens),
to partake of a meal with the dead, and to petition them for good
fortune and all things needful. This last point comes out clearly in
Virgil’s picture:
Poscamus ventos, atque haec me sacra quotannis
Urbe velit posita templis sibi ferre dicatis.
The true meaning of these lines is, as Henry quaintly puts it[1377],
‘Let us try if we cannot kill two birds with one stone, and not only pay
my sire the honours due to him, but at the same time help ourselves
forward on our journey by getting him to give us fair winds for our
voyage.’
As we have seen, the dies parentales began on the 13th; from that day
till the 21st all temples were closed, marriages were forbidden, and
magistrates appeared without their insignia[1378]. On the 22nd was the
family festival of the _Caristia_, or _cara cognatio_: the date of its
origin is unknown, but Ovid[1379] writes of it as well established in
his time, and it may be very much older. He describes it as a reunion of
the living members of the family after they have paid their duties to
the dead:
Scilicet a tumulis et qui periere, propinquis
Protinus ad vivos ora referre iuvat;
Postque tot amissos quicquid de sanguine restat,
Aspicere, et generis dinumerare gradus.
It was a kind of love-feast of the family, and gives a momentary glimpse
of the gentler side of Roman family life. All quarrels were to be
forgotten[1380] in a general harmony: no guilty or cruel member may be
present[1381]. The centre of the worship was the Lares of the family,
who were ‘incincti,’ and shared in the sacred meal[1382].
We might naturally expect that, especially in Italy—so tenacious of old
ideas and superstitions—we should find some survival of primitive
folk-lore, even in the midst of this highly organized civic cult of the
dead. Ovid supplies us with a curious contrast to the ethical beauty of
the Caristia, in describing the spells which an old woman works,
apparently on the day of the Feralia[1383]. ‘An old hag sitting among
the girls performs rites to Tacita: with three fingers she places three
bits of incense at the entrance of a mouse-hole. Muttering a spell, she
weaves woollen threads on a web of dark colour, and mumbles seven black
beans in her mouth. Then she takes a fish, the _maena_, smears its head
with pitch, sews its mouth up, drops wine upon it, and roasts it before
the fire: the rest of the wine she drinks with the girls. Now, quoth
she, we have bound the mouth of the enemy:
Hostiles linguas inimicaque vinximus ora,
Dicit discedens, ebriaque exit anus.’
In spite of the names of deities we find here, Tacita and Dea
Muta[1384], and of the pretty story of the mother of the Lares which the
poet’s fancy has added to it, it is plain that this is no more than one
of a thousand savage spells for counteracting hostile spirits[1385]. The
picture is interesting, as showing the survival of witchcraft in the
civilized Rome of Ovid’s time, and reminds us of the horrible hags in
Horace’s fifth epode; but it may be doubted whether it has any real
connexion with the Feralia. Doubtless its parallel could be found even
in the Italy of today[1386].
XV. KAL. MART. (FEB. 15). NP.
LUPER(CALIA). (CAER. MAFF. FARN. PHILOC. SILV. AND RUSTIC CALENDARS.)
There is hardly another festival in the calendar so interesting and so
well known as this. Owing to the singular interest attaching to its
celebration in B.C. 44, only a month before Caesar’s death, we are
unusually well informed as to its details; but these present great
difficulties in interpretation, which the latest research has not
altogether overcome[1387]. I shall content myself with describing it,
and pointing out such explanations of ritual as seem to be fairly well
established.
On Feb. 15 the celebrants of this ancient rite met at the cave called
the Lupercal, at the foot of the steep south-western corner of the
Palatine Hill—the spot where, according to the tradition, the flooded
Tiber had deposited the twin children at the foot of the sacred
fig-tree[1388], and where they were nourished by the she-wolf. The name
of the cave is almost without doubt built up from _lupus_, ‘a
wolf’[1389]; but we cannot be equally sure whether the name of the
festival is derived directly from Lupercal, or on the analogy of
Quirinalia, Volcanalia, and others, from Lupercus, the alleged name of
the deity concerned in the rites, and also of the celebrants
themselves[1390]. In any case we are fairly justified in calling this
the wolf-festival; the more so as the wolf was the sacred animal of
Mars, who was in a special sense the god of the earliest settlers on the
Palatine[1391].
The first act of the festival seems to have been the sacrifice of goats
(we are not told how many), and of a dog[1392]; and at the same time
were offered sacred cakes made by the Vestals, from the first ears of
last year’s harvest. This was the last batch of the _mola salsa_, some
of which had been used at the Vestalia in June, and some on the Ides of
September[1393].
Next, two youths of high rank, belonging, we may suppose, one to each of
the two collegia of Luperci (of which more directly), were brought
forward; these had their foreheads smeared with the knife bloody from
the slaughter of the victims, and then wiped with wool dipped in milk.
As soon as this was done they were obliged to laugh. Then they girt
themselves with the skins of the slaughtered goats, and feasted
luxuriously[1394]; after which they ran round the base of the Palatine
Hill, or at least a large part of its circuit, apparently in two
companies, one led by each of the two youths. As they ran they struck at
all the women who came near them or offered themselves to their blows,
with strips of skin cut from the hides of the same victims; which
strips, as we have seen, were among the objects which were called by the
priests _februa_.
Here, in what at first sight looks like a grotesque jumble, there are
two clearly distinguishable elements; (1) an extremely primitive ritual,
probably descended from the pastoral stage of society; (2) a certain
co-ordination of this with definite local settlements. The sacrifices,
the smearing and wiping, the wearing of the skins, and the striking with
the _februa_, all seem to be survivals from a very early stage of
religious conceptions; but the two companies of runners, and their
course round the Palatine, which apparently followed the most ancient
line of the pomoerium, bring us into touch with the beginning and with
the development of urban life. Surviving through the whole Republican
period, with a tenacity which the Roman talent for organization alone
could give it, the Lupercalia was still further developed for his own
purposes by the dictator Caesar, and thenceforward lived on for
centuries under his successors into the age of imperial Christianity.
Let us now examine the several acts of the festival, to see how far they
admit of explanation under the light of modern research into primitive
ideas and ritual.
It began, as we saw, with the sacrifice of goats and a dog. Unluckily we
cannot be sure of the god to whom they were offered, nor of the
sacrificing priest. According to Ovid[1395] the deity was Faunus;
according to Livy it was a certain mysterious Inuus, of whom hardly
anything else is known[1396], though much has been written. There was no
Lupercus, as some have vainly imagined; much less any such combination
as Faunus Lupercus, which has been needlessly created out of a passage
of Justin[1397]. Liber is suggested by Servius[1398]; who adds that
others fancied it was a ‘bellicosus deus.’ Recently Juno has been
suggested, because the strips which the runners carried were called
‘Iunonis amiculum’[1399]. Thus it is quite plain that the Roman of the
literary age did not know who the god was. The common idea that he was
Faunus is discredited by Livy’s account and his mention of Inuus, and
also by the fact that Faunus is not associated with urban settlements:
and may easily be accounted for by the myth of Evander and the
Arcadians, whose Pan Lycaeus was of course identified with Faunus[1400],
or by the girding of the Luperci with skins, which made them resemble
the popular conception of the Fauni[1401]. Possibly the name was a
secret; for there was a tendency to avoid fixing a god’s name in ritual,
in order to escape making mistakes, and so offending him. ‘Iure
pontificum cautum est ne suis nominibus dii Romani appellarentur, ne
exaugurari possint[1402].’ We must also remember that the Lupercalia
undoubtedly descends from the very earliest period of the Roman
religion, when the individuality of deities was not clearly conceived,
and when their names were unknown, doubtful, or adjectival only. In
fact, we need not greatly trouble ourselves about the name of the god:
his nature is deducible to some extent from the ritual. The connexion
with the Palatine, with the wolf, and with fructification, seems to me
to point very clearly in the direction of Mars and his characteristics.
It would be almost more profitable if we could be sure of the
sacrificing priest; but here again we are in the dark. Ovid says,
‘Flamen ad haec prisco more Dialis erat[1403]‘; but it is impossible
that this priest could have been the sacrificer (though Marquardt
committed himself to this), for he was expressly forbidden to touch
either goat or dog[1404], which seem to have been excluded from the cult
of Jupiter. Even in the case of such exceptional _piacula_ as this no
doubt was, we can hardly venture without further evidence to ascribe the
slaughter of the sacred animal to the great priest of the heavenly deity
in whose cult it was tabooed. Plutarch says that the Luperci themselves
sacrificed[1405]; and this is more probable, and is borne out by
comparison with other cases in which the priest clothes himself, as the
Luperci did, in the skin of the victim. It does not indeed seem certain
that the two youths who thus girt themselves had also performed the
sacrifice; but they represent the two collegia of Luperci, and lead the
race[1406], as Romulus and Remus did in the explanatory legend.
As regards the victims, there is here at least no doubt that both goat
and dog were exceptional animals in sacrifice[1407], and that their use
here betokens a piacular rite of unusual ‘holiness.’ Thus their offering
is a mystic sacrifice, and belongs to that ‘small class of exceptional
rites in which the victim was drawn from some species of animals that
retained even in modern times their ancient repute of natural
holiness[1408].’ It is exactly in this kind of sacrifice that we find
such peculiar points of ritual as meet us in the Lupercalia. ‘The victim
is sacrosanct, and the peculiar value of the ceremony lies in the
operation performed on its life, whether that life is merely conveyed to
the god on the altar (i. e. as in burnt-sacrifices) or is also applied
to the worshippers by the sprinkling of the blood, or some other lustral
ceremony[1409].’ The writer might very well have been thinking of the
Lupercalia when he wrote these lines. The meaning of these rites was
originally, as he states it, that the holiness of the victim means
kinship to the worshippers and their god, ‘that all sacred relations and
all moral obligations depend on physical unity of life, and that
physical unity of life can be created or reinforced by common
participation in living flesh and blood.’ We may postpone consideration
of this view as applied to the Lupercalia till we have examined the
remaining features of the ceremony.
After the sacrifice was completed, Plutarch[1410] tells us that the
foreheads of the two youths were touched with the bloody knife that had
slain the victims, and the stain was then wiped off with wool dipped in
milk, after which the youths had to laugh. This has often been supposed
to indicate an original human sacrifice[1411], the he-goats being
substituted for human victims, and the death of the latter symbolized by
the smearing with their blood. This explanation might be admissible if
this were the only feature of the ceremony; but it is so entirely out of
keeping with those that follow—the wearing of the skins and the
running—that it is preferable to look for another before adopting it. At
the same time it may be observed that no reasonable hypothesis can be
ruled out of court where our knowledge of the rite is so meagre and so
hard to bring satisfactorily into harmony with others occurring among
other peoples[1412].