purification from a murder is effected by smearing the hands of the
murderer with the blood of a young pig, and then wiping it off ἄλλοις
χύτλοισι; and the Scholiast on the lines describes a somewhat similar
method of purification which was practised in Greece. This would raise a
presumption that the youths were not originally the victims at the
Lupercalia, but rather the slayers; and that they had to be purified
from the guilt of the blood of the sacrosanct victim[1414]. When this
was done they became one with the victim and the god by the girding on
of the skins, and were able to communicate the new life thus acquired in
the course of their lustratio of the city by means of the strips of skin
to the women who met them. This explanation is open to one or two
objections; for example, it hardly accounts for the laughter of the
youths, unless we are to suppose that it was an expression of joy at
their release from blood-guiltiness[1415]. And we have indeed no direct
evidence that the youths were ever themselves the sacrificers, though
the collateral evidence on this point, as I have already said, seems to
be fairly strong[1416]. Yet I cannot but think that the true
significance of the essential features of the ceremony is to be looked
for somewhere in the direction thus indicated.
There is, however, another explanation of the application of the bloody
knife, the wiping, and the laughing, which Mannhardt proposed, not
without some modest hesitation, in his posthumous work[1417]. In his
view these were symbolic or quasi-dramatic acts, signifying death and
renewed life. The youths were never actually killed, but they were the
figures in a kind of acted parable. The smearing with blood denoted that
they partook of the death of the victim[1418]; the wiping with milky
wool signified the revival to a new life, for milk is the source of
life. The laughing is the outward sign of such revival: the dead are
silent, cannot laugh[1419]. And the meaning of all this was the death
and the revival of the Vegetation-spirit. I have already more than once
profited by Mannhardt’s researches into this type of European custom,
and they are now familiar to Englishmen in the works of Mr. Frazer, Mr.
Farnell, and others. Undoubtedly there are many bits of grotesque custom
which can best be explained if we suppose them to mean the death of the
Power of growth at harvest-time, or its resuscitation in the spring,
perhaps after the death of the powers of winter and darkness. But
whether the Lupercalia is one of these I cannot be so sure. These rites
do not seem to have any obvious reference to _crops_, but rather to have
come down from the pastoral stage of society: and it is not in this case
the _fields_ which are lustrated by the runners, but the _urbs_ and its
women[1420]. And the earlier parts of the ritual bear the marks of a
_piaculum_ so distinctly that it seems unnecessary and confusing to
introduce into it a different set of ideas.
There is a similar divergence of opinion in explaining the next feature,
the wearing of the skins of the victims[1421]. Dr. Mannhardt believed
that this was one of the innumerable instances in which, at certain
times of the year, animals are personated by human beings, e. g. at
Christmas, at the beginning of Lent (Carnival), and at harvest. These he
explained as representations of the Vegetation-spirit, which was
conceived to be dead in winter, to come to life in spring, and at
harvest to die again, and which was believed to assume all kinds of
animal forms. This has been generally accepted as explaining several
curious rites both in Greece and Italy, e. g. that of the Hirpi Sorani
at Soracte not far from Rome[1422]. But it is a question whether it will
equally well explain the Luperci and their goat-skins. In this case
Mannhardt is driven to somewhat far-fetched hypotheses; he derives
Lupercus from _lupus-hircus_[1423] (p. 90), and suggests that the two
collegia represented respectively wolves and goats, according to the
view of the Vegetation-spirit taken by the two communities of Palatine
and Quirinal[1424]. But this solution, the result of a bias in favour of
his favourite Vegetation-spirit, does not strike us as happy, and Dr.
Mannhardt himself does not seem well pleased with it[1425].
It would seem safer to take this as one of the many well-known _piacula_
in which the worshipper wears the skin of a very holy victim, thereby
entering sacramentally into the very nature of the god to whom the
victim is sacrificed[1426]. Whether or no we are to look for the origin
of these practices in a totemistic age, is a question that cannot be
discussed here; and there is no sign of totemism in the Lupercalia save
this one[1427].
But if this be the right explanation, what, we may ask, was meant by the
name Luperci? If it meant wolves, are we not rather thrown back on
Mannhardt’s theory? To this it may be answered; (1) that no classical
author suggests that the runners were looked upon as representing
wolves; by the common people we are told that they were called
_creppi_[1428], the meaning of which is quite uncertain, though it has
been explained as = _capri_, and as simply arising from the fact that
the runners were clad in goat-skins[1429]. There is in fact no necessary
connexion at all between the skins and the name Luperci. If that name
originally meant wolf-priests, its explanation is to be found rather in
connexion with the wolf of Mars, and the cave of the she-wolf, than in
the skins of the sacrificed goats, which were worn by only two members
of the two collegia bearing the name.
We must now turn our attention to the last features of the festival; the
course taken by the runners round the Palatine Hill, and the whipping of
women with the strips of sacred skin. The two youths, having girded on
the skins (though otherwise naked) and also cut strips from them,
proceeded to run a course which seems almost certainly to have followed
that of the pomoerium at the foot of the Palatine. The starting-point
was the Lupercal, or a point near it, and Tacitus[1430] has described
the course of the pomoerium as far as the ‘sacellum Larum forumque
Romanum’: in his day it was marked out by stones (‘cippi’). We are
concerned with it here only so far as it affects the question whether
the running was a _lustratio_ of the Palatine city. The last points
mentioned by Tacitus, the ‘sacellum Larum, forumque Romanum[1431],’ show
plainly that the course was round the Palatine from south-west to
north-east, but they do not bring the runners back to the point from
which they started, and complete the circle[1432]. Varro is, however,
quite clear that the running was a _lustratio_: ‘Lupercis nudis
lustratur antiquum oppidum Palatinum gregibus humanis cinctum.’ The
passage is obscure, and attempts have been made to amend it; but there
can be no doubt that it points to a religious ceremony[1433].
This lustratio, then, as we may safely call it, was at the same time a
beating of the bounds and a rite of purification and fertilization. Just
as the peeled wands of our Oxford bound-beaters on Ascension Day[1434]
may perhaps have originally had a use parallel to that of the _februa_,
so the parish boundaries correspond to the Roman pomoerium. We have
already had examples of processional bound-beating in the rites of the
Argei and the Ambarvalia; in all there is the same double object—the
combination of a religious with a juristic act; but the Lupercalia
stands alone in the quaintness of its ritual, and may probably be the
oldest of all.
Before we go on to the _februa_ and their use, mention must be made of a
difficulty in regard to the duality of the collegia of Luperci and the
runners. These have been supposed to have originated from two gentile
priesthoods of the Fabii and Quinctii[1435]; and as we know that the
gens Fabia had a cult on the Quirinal[1436], it is conjectured that the
Luperci Fabiani represented the Sabine city, and the Quinctiales the
Romans of the Palatine, just as we also find two collegia of Salii, viz.
Palatini and Collini[1437]. If, however, the running of the Luperci was
really a lustratio of the Palatine, we must suppose that the lustratio
of the Quirinal city by its own Luperci was given up and merged in that
of the older settlement[1438]; and such an abandonment of a local rite
would be most surprising in Roman antiquity. It is true that there is no
other explanation of the existence of the two guilds; but we may
hesitate to accept this one, if we have to pay for it by so bold a
hypothesis[1439].
The last point to be noticed, the whipping with the strips of
skin[1440], might have attracted little notice as a relic of antiquity
in the late Republic but for the famous incident in the life of Caesar,
when Antonius was one of the runners. We have it on excellent evidence,
not only that the runners struck women who met them with the strips, but
that they did so in order to produce fertility[1441]. Such an
explanation of the object would hardly have been invented, and it
tallies closely with some at least of a great number of practices of the
kind which have been investigated by Mannhardt[1442]. His parallel are
not indeed all either complete or convincing; but the collection is
valuable for many purposes, and the general result is to show that
whipping certain parts of the body with some instrument supposed to
possess magic power is efficacious in driving away the powers of evil
that interfere with fertilization. Whether the thing beaten be man,
woman, image, or human or animal representative of the Vegetation
spirit, the object is always more or less directly to quicken or restore
the natural powers of reproduction; the notion being that the hostile or
hindering spirit was thus driven out, or that the beating actually woke
up and energized the power. The latter is perhaps a later idea,
rationalized from the earlier. In any case the thongs, as part of the
sacrosanct victim, were supposed to possess a special magical
power[1443]; and the word applied to them, _februa_, though not meaning
strictly instruments of purification in our sense of the word, may be
translated _cathartic_ objects, since they had power to free from
hostile influences and quicken natural forces. And those who wielded
them were regarded in some at least as priests or magicians; they were
naked but for the goat-skins, and probably had wreaths on their
heads[1444]. Their wild and lascivious behaviour as they ran is
paralleled in many ceremonies of the kind[1445].
It is singular that a festival of a character so rude and rustic should
have lived on in the great city for centuries after it had become
cosmopolitan and even Christian. This is one of the many results due to
the religious enterprise of Augustus, who rebuilt the decayed Lupercal,
and set the feast on a new footing[1446]. It continued to exist down to
the year 494 A.D. when the Pope, Gelasius I, changed the day (Feb. 15)
to that of the Purification of the Virgin Mary[1447].
XIII KAL. MART. (Feb. 17). NP.
QUIR[INALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. FARN. PHILOC.)
QUIRINO IN COLLE. (FARN. CAER.)
How the festival of Quirinus came to be placed at this time I cannot
explain: we know nothing of it, and cannot assume that it was of an
expiatory character, like the Lupercalia preceding it, and the Feralia
following. Of the temple ‘in colle’ we also know nothing[1448] that can
help us. We have already learnt that this day was called ‘stultorum
feriae,’ and why; but the conjunction of the last day of the sacra of
the curiae with those of Quirinus is probably accidental; we cannot
safely assume any connexion through the word ‘curia.’ The name
Quirinalia was familiar enough[1449]; but it may be that it only
survived through the _stultorum feriae_.
The Roman of the later Republic identified Quirinus with Romulus;
Virgil, e. g. in the first _Aeneid_ (292) speaks of ‘Remo cum fratre
Quirinus[1450].’ We have no clue to the origin of this identification.
It may have been suggested by the use of the name Quirites; but neither
do we know when or why that name came to signify the Roman people in
their civil capacity, and the etymology of these words and their
relation to each other still entirely baffles research[1451].
There is, however, a general agreement that Quirinus was another form
of Mars, having his abode on the hill which still goes by his name.
That Mars and Quirinus were ever the same deities was indeed denied by
so acute an inquirer as Ambrosch[1452]; but he denied it partly on the
ground that no trace of the worship of Mars had been found on the
Quirinal; and since his time two inscriptions have been found there on
the same spot, one at least of great antiquity, which indicate votive
offerings to Mars and Quirinus respectively[1453]. From these Mommsen
concludes that Quirinus was at one time worshipped there under the
name of Mars; which involves also the converse, that Mars was once
worshipped under the adjectival cult-title Quirinus. Unluckily Mars
Quirinus is a combination as yet undiscovered; and as the existence of
a patrician Flamen Quirinalis distinct from the Flamen Martialis
points at least to a very early differentiation of the two, it may be
safer to think of the two, not as identical deities, but rather as
equivalent cult-expressions of the same religious conception in two
closely allied communities[1454].
That the Quirinal was the seat of the cult of Quirinus admits of no
doubt; and the name of the hill, which we are told was originally Agonus
or Agonalis[1455], arose no doubt from the cult[1456]. Here were
probably two temples of the god, the one dating from B.C. 293, and
having June 29 as its day of dedication; the other of unknown date,
which celebrated its birthday on the Quirinalia[1457]. A ‘sacellum
Quirini in colle’ is also mentioned at the time of the Gallic
invasion[1458] (this was perhaps the predecessor of the temple of June
29), and also the house of the Flamen Quirinalis which adjoined it. To
the Quirinal also belong the Salii Agonenses, Collini, or Quirinales,
who correspond to the Salii of the Palatine and of Mars[1459]. And here,
lastly, seems to belong the mysterious Flora or Horta Quirini, whose
temple, according to Plutarch[1460], was ‘formerly’ always open. About
the cult of Quirinus on his hill we know, however, nothing, except that
there were two myrtles growing in front of his temple, one called the
patrician and the other the plebeian[1461], and to which a curious story
is attached. Preller[1462] noted that these correspond to the two
laurels in the _sacrarium Martis_ in the Regia, and conjectured that
each pair symbolized the union of the state in the cults of the two
communities.
Of the duties of the Flamen Quirinalis we have already seen
something[1463]: unluckily they throw little or no new light on the cult
of Quirinus. He was concerned in the worship of Robigus, of Consus, and
of Acca Larentia, all of them ancient cults of agricultural Rome; and he
seems to have been in close connexion with the Vestal Virgins[1464].
These are just such duties as we might have expected would fall to the
Flamen of Mars; and probably the two cults were much alike in character.
VII KAL. MART. (FEB. 23.) NP.
TER[MINALIA]. (CAER. MAFF. RUST. PHILOC. SILV.)
Was there any connexion between the Terminalia and the end of the year?
The Roman scholars thought so; Varro[1465] writes, ‘Terminalia quod is
dies anni extremus constitutus; duodecimus enim fuit Februarius, et quum
intercalatur, inferiores quinque dies duodecimo demuntur mense.’ So
Ovid,
Tu quoque sacrorum, Termine, finis eras.
But Terminus is the god of the boundaries of land, and has nothing to do
with time; and the Terminalia is not the last festival of the year in
the oldest calendars. The Romans must have been misled by the
coincidence of the day of Terminus with the last day before
intercalation. The position in the year of the rites to be described
seems parallel to that of the Compitalia and Paganalia, which were
concerned with matters of common interest to a society of farmers: and
we may remember that Pliny[1466] said of the Fornacalia that it was
‘farris torrendi feriae et _aeque religiosae terminis agrorum_.’
The ritual of the Terminalia in the country districts is described by
Ovid[1467]. The two landowners garlanded each his side of the
boundary-stone, and all offerings were double[1468]. An altar is made;
and fire is carried from the hearth by the farmer’s wife, while the old
man cuts up sticks and builds them in a framework of stout stakes. Then
with dry bark the fire is kindled; from a basket, held ready by a
boy[1469], the little daughter of the family thrice shakes the fruits of
the earth into the fire, and offers cakes of honey. Others stand by with
wine; and the neighbours (or dependants) look on in silence and clothed
in white. A lamb is slain, and a sucking-pig, and the boundary-stone
sprinkled with their blood; and the ceremony ends with a feast and songs
in praise of holy Terminus.
This rite was, no doubt, practically a yearly renewal of that by which
the stone was originally fixed in its place. The latter is described by
the gromatic writer Siculus Flaccus[1470]. Fruits of the earth, and the
bones, ashes, and blood of a victim which had been offered were put into
a hole by the two (or three) owners whose land converged at the point,
and the stone was rammed down on the top and carefully fixed. The reason
given for this was of course that the stone might be identified in the
future, e. g. by an arbiter, if one should be called in[1471]; but it
also reminds us of the practice of burying the remains of a
victim[1472], and the use of the blood shows the extreme sanctity of the
operation.
That the stone was regarded as the dwelling-place of a _numen_ is proved
by the fact that it was sprinkled with blood and garlanded[1473]; and
the development of a god Terminus is perfectly in keeping with Roman
religious ideas. It is more difficult to determine what was the relation
of this Terminus to the great Jupiter who was so intimately associated,
as we have seen[1474] with the idea of keeping faith with your
neighbours. Was he the _numen_ originally thought to occupy the stone,
and is the name Terminus, as marking a distinct deity, a later growth? I
am disposed to think that this was so; for we saw that there is some
reason to believe that Jupiter did not disdain to dwell in objects such
as trees and stones, and there is no need to look to Greece for the
origin of his connexion with boundaries[1475]. But Jupiter and Terminus
remained on the whole distinct; and a Jupiter Terminus or Terminalis is
first found on the coins of Varro the great scholar, probably in B.C.
76[1476].
The close connexion of the two is seen in the legend that when Jupiter
was to be introduced into the great Capitoline temple, from the
Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal, all the gods made way for him but
Terminus[1477].
Quid nova cum fierent Capitolia? nempe deorum
Cuncta Iovi cessit turba, locumque dedit.
Terminus, ut veteres memorant, inventus in aede
Restitit, et magno cum love templa tenet.
This, as Preller truly observes, is only a poetical way of expressing
his stubbornness, and his close relation to Jupiter, with whom he
continued to share the great temple. It seems certain that there was in
that temple a stone supposed to be that of Terminus, over which there
was a hole in the roof[1478]: for all sacrifice to Terminus must be made
in the open air.
Nunc quoque, se supra ne quid nisi sidera cernat,
Exiguum templi tecta foramen habent[1479].
Precisely the same feature is found in the cult of Semo Sancus or Dius
Fidius[1480], who was concerned with oaths and treaties; and of Hercules
we are told that the oath taken in his name must be taken out of
doors[1481].
Of the stone itself we know nothing. It is open to us to guess that it
was originally a boundary-stone, perhaps between the ager of the
Palatine city and that of the Quirinal. The mons Capitolinus seems to
have been neutral ground, as we may guess by the tradition of the asylum
there; it was outside the pomoerium, and in the early Republic was the
property of the priestly collegia[1482]. It was, therefore, a very
appropriate place for a terminus between two communities[1483].
From Ovid (679 foll.) we gather that there was a terminus-stone at the
sixth milestone on the via Laurentina, at which public sacrifices were
made, perhaps on the day of the Terminalia: this was probably at one
time the limit of the ager Romanus in that direction.
VI KAL. MART. (FEB. 24). N.
REGIF[UGIUM], (CAER. MAFF. PHILOC.) REGIFUGIUM, CUM TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS
FERTUR AB URBE EXPULSUS. (SILV.)
This note of Silvius is based on a very old and natural misapprehension.
Ovid[1484], and probably most Romans, believed that the expulsion of
Tarquin was commemorated on this day. There is, however, strong indirect
evidence to show that the ‘flight of the king’ on Feb. 24 was something
very different.
1. We have already had a ‘flight of the people’ (Poplifugia) on July 5;
and we saw that this was probably a purificatory rite of which the
meaning had been lost—the sacrifice perhaps of a sacred animal followed
by the flight of the crowd as from a murder. It seems impossible, at any
rate unwise, to separate Poplifugia and Regifugium in general meaning,
for there is no other parallel to them in the calendar. Both were
explained historically by the Romans, because in both the obscure (and
perhaps obsolete) religious rite was inexplicable otherwise; and we must
also endeavour to treat both on the same principle.
2. It seems pretty clear that Verrius Flaccus did not believe in the
historical explanation of the Regifugium. In Festus, page 278, we find a
mutilated gloss which evidently refers to this day, and is thus
completed by Mommsen[1485]:—
_[Regifugium notatur in fastis dies a.d.] vi kal. [Mart. qui creditur
sic dict]us quia [eo die Tarquinius rex fugerit ex urbe]. Quod fal[sum
est; nam e castris in exilium abisse cum r]ettul[erunt annales. Rectius
explicabit qui regem e]t Salios[1486] [hoc die ... facere sacri]ficium
in [comitio eoque perfecto illum inde fugere n]overit ..._
It may be said that this is all guesswork, and no evidence; but it is
borne out by the following passage in Plutarch’s sixty-third Roman
question:
Ἔστι γοῦν τις ἐν ἀγορᾷ θυσία πρὸς τῷ λεγομένῳ Κομητίῳ πάτριος, ἣν θύσας
ὁ Βασιλεὺς κατὰ τάχος ἄπεισι Φεύγων ἐξ ἀγορϡας.
Whence Plutarch drew this statement we cannot tell. He does not give the
day on which the sacrifice and flight took place; and Huschke[1487] has
denied that he refers to the Regifugium at all. He believes that
Plutarch is thinking of the days marked Q. R. C. F. (March 24 and May
24), on which Varro says, or seems to say, that the Rex sacrorum
sacrificed in the Comitium[1488]; and this may have been so, for the
note in the Fasti Praenestini on March 24 shows that there was a popular
misinterpretation of Q. R. C. F., which took the letters to mean, ‘quod
eo die ex comitio fugerit rex.’ In this confusion we can but appeal to
the word Regifugium, which is attached to Feb. 24 only. Taking this
together with Plutarch’s statement, and remembering the great
improbability of the historical explanation being the true one, we are
justified in accepting Mommsen’s completion of the passage in Festus,
and in concluding that there was really on Feb. 24 a flight of the Rex
after a sacrifice.
And this view is strengthened by the frequent occurrence of sacerdotal
flights in ancient and primitive religions. These were first collected
by Lobeck[1489], and have of late been treated of and variously
explained by Mannhardt, Frazer, and Robertson Smith[1490]. The best
known examples are those of the Bouphonia (‘ox murder’) at Athens, in
which every feature shows that the slain ox was regarded, ‘not merely as
a victim offered to a god, but in itself a sacred creature, the
slaughter of which was sacrilege or murder’[1491]; and the sacrifice of
a bull-calf to Dionysus at Tenedos, where the priest was attacked with
stones, and had to flee for his life[1492]. We do not yet know for
certain whether the origin of these ideas is to be found in totemism, or
in the sanctity of cattle in the pastoral age, or in the representation
of the spirit of vegetation in animal form. The second of these
explanations, as elucidated by Robertson Smith, would seem most
applicable to the Athenian rite; but in the case of the Roman one, we do
not know what the victim was. It is also just possible, as Hartung long
ago suggested[1493], that the victim was a scapegoat carrying away
pollution, and therefore to be avoided; but I do not find any example of
flight from a scapegoat, among the many instances collected by Mr.
Frazer (_Golden Bough_, ii. 182 foll.).