picture the predecessors of the Rex, the Regina sacrorum, the
flamines, and the Vestal Virgins.
Stat puer et manibus lata canistra tenet.
Inde ubi ter fruges medios immisit in ignes,
Porrigit incisos filia parva favos.
De-Marchi, p. 231, gives a cut of a painting at Herculaneum which may
represent a scene of this kind.
Footnote 1470:
_Gromatici veteres_, i. 141. See Rudorff in vol. ii. 236 for an
interesting discussion of the religio terminorum and its ethical and
legal results.
Footnote 1471:
Rudorff, l. c. 237.
Footnote 1472:
Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 149.
Footnote 1473:
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 187 foll.
Footnote 1474:
See under September, p. 229 foll. I may here notice the very curious
‘oraculum’ in _Grom. Vet._ p. 350 (ex libris Vegoiae) which connects
Jupiter with the introduction of termini in Etruria.
Footnote 1475:
Ζεὺς ὅπιος he is called by Dion. Hal. (2. 74), where the cult is
ascribed to Numa. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ i. 159.
Footnote 1476:
Aust, in _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 668.
Footnote 1477:
_Fasti_, 2. 667; Liv. 1. 55; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448. Augustine, _C. D._
4. 23, adds Mars, and Dion. Hal. 3. 69 Iuventus to Terminus, who could
not be ‘exauguratus.’
Footnote 1478:
Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448 ‘Unde in Capitolio prona pars tecti patet, quae
lapidem ipsum Termini spectat.’ This is the ‘Capitoli immobile saxum’
of Virgil; see above, p. 230.
Footnote 1479:
Ovid, l. c. 671.
Footnote 1480:
See above, p. 140. Varro, _L. L._ 5. 66.
Footnote 1481:
Plut. _Q. R._ 28.
Footnote 1482:
Ambrosch, _Studien_, 199 foll.
Footnote 1483:
It would exactly correspond to the spot of sacred ground on which the
terminus-stone stood between two properties (Rudorff, l. c). In the
latter case, it is worth noting, the sacrifices and sacrificers are
doubles, as with the Salii, Luperci, &c, of the two Roman settlements.
Mr. Granger (_Worship of the Romans_, 163) suggests that this stone
was ‘a relic from the original dwellers by the Tiber,’ i.e. pre-Roman.
But the question is, How did the Romans come to associate it with
Terminus?
Footnote 1484:
_Fasti_, 2. 685 foll. He is probably following Varro and common
opinion, which latter Verrius refers to (Paul. 279) ‘Regifugium sacrum
dicebant, quo die rex Tarquinius fugerit e Roma.’ The word _dicebant_
seems to show that this was not Verrius’ own opinion.
Footnote 1485:
_C. I. L._ i. 289. This gloss is no doubt the equivalent in Festus to
that of Paulus just quoted; but the leading word Regifugium is lost. I
have only quoted so much as is needed for our purpose. For other
completions of the gloss see Müller, _Festus_, l. c, and Huschke,
_Röm. Jahr_, p. 166.
Footnote 1486:
If this gloss really refers to Feb. 24, the presence of the Salii is
difficult to account for, as their period of activity begins in March.
Frazer in an interesting note (_G. B._ ii. 210) suggests that the use
of the Salii was to drive away evil demons; if the Regifugium was a
solemn piaculum, and the victim a scapegoat, this explanation might
serve for Feb. 24.
Footnote 1487:
_Röm. Jahr_, 166 foll.
Footnote 1488:
_L. L._ 6. 31, where Hirschfeld has conjectured ‘litat ad comitium’
for the MS. ‘dicat.’
Footnote 1489:
_Aglaophamus_, 676.
Footnote 1490:
Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ 58 foll.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 35
foll.; Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 286 foll. Cp. Lang,
_Myth, Ritual and Religion_, ii. 233 foll. See also Farnell, _Cults of
the Greek States_, i. 88 foll., who agrees in the main with Robertson
Smith.
Footnote 1491:
Frazer, l. c.
Footnote 1492:
Aelian, _N. A._ 12. 34.
Footnote 1493:
_Relig. der Römer_, ii. 35. Cp. Gilbert, i. 343, note. The presence of
the Salii (see above, p. 328), if a fact, would be in favour of this
explanation.
Footnote 1494:
_Röm. Jahr_, 199.
Footnote 1495:
See on Aug. 21 (Consualia).
Footnote 1496:
_Myth. Forsch._ 170 foll.; _Baumkultus_, 382 foll.
Footnote 1497:
This, though with impossible combinations, is what Huschke does (199,
note 53). Feb. 27 is the Roman, March 14 the Quirinal Equirria, in his
view. That the Quirinalia falls in February may perhaps give some
support to the view.
Footnote 1498:
Varro, _L. L._ 6. 13; Fest. 81. See under Oct. 15.
Footnote 1499:
i. 361.
Footnote 1500:
So Ovid, on Feb. 26, writes (2. 853);
Fallimur, an veris praenuntia venit hirundo,
Et metuit ne qua versa recurrat hiems?
This would be early now for central Italy; but Columella, 11. 2, gives
Feb. 23 as the date.
Footnote 1501:
_Fasti_, 2. 857 foll.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the introductory chapter a promise was made that when we
had completed the round of the year, we would sum up our results, sketch
in outline the history of Roman religious ideas, and estimate the
influence of all this elaborate ceremonial on the life and character of
the Roman people. This undertaking I must now endeavour to fulfil,
though with doubt and diffidence; for even after the most careful
examination of the Calendar, both the character and the history of the
Roman religious system must still in great degree remain a mystery. With
such knowledge however as may have been gleaned in the preceding pages,
the reader may be able to appreciate or criticize a few conclusions of a
more general character.
The Roman religion has been ably discussed in general terms by several
writers of note in the century just closing. Mommsen’s chapters in the
early books of his Roman History are familiar to every one. The
introduction to Marquardt’s volume on our subject is indispensable; and
Preller, less exact perhaps, but more sympathetic and inspiring, still
holds the field with the opening chapters of his work on Roman
Mythology. To these classical works may be added the section on the
Roman religion in the second volume of the _Religionsgeschichte_ of
Chantepie de la Saussaye, and the first chapter of Boissier’s work on
the Roman religion from Augustus onwards. Professor Granger’s _Worship
of the Romans_ also contains here and there some suggestive remarks,
though as a rule these are not based upon any elaborate investigation of
the cult. Lastly I may mention a small but valuable treatise, published
as long ago as 1837 by Leopold Krahner, on the history of the decay of
the Roman religion down to the time of Augustus, which fell into my
hands many years ago, and is in almost every sentence of value to the
student of Roman history.
In all these works the one point insisted on at the outset is this: that
the Romans were more interested in the cult of their deities, that is,
in the ritual and routine by which they could be rightly and
successfully propitiated, than in the character and personality of the
deities themselves. This is indeed a truth which has been abundantly
borne out in our examination of the Calendar, and might be further
illustrated in almost every public act of procedure in the Roman State.
Cicero himself expresses it well in the second book of his _De Natura
Deorum_ (2. 3. 8) ‘Si conferre volumus nostra cum externis, ceteris
rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores reperiemur, religione, id est cultu
deorum, multo superiores.’ The second book of his work _De Legibus_ is
also an invaluable witness to the conviction, lasting on even in an age
of scepticism and indifference among the educated, that the due
performance of sacred rites was a necessary function of the State, on
which its very existence depended. The Christian Fathers, some of whom,
like St. Augustine and Tertullian, were men of learning who had studied
the voluminous works of Varro, were well aware of this character; and
Tertullian in a curious passage went so far as to suggest that the Devil
had here perpetrated an imitation or parody of the minute ritual of
Leviticus[1502]. So far as externals go, the comparison he suggested is
a useful one; but there is an essential difference in the religious
spirit which lay at the root of the two ceremonial systems—a difference
that makes it impossible that any work should be written on the Roman
religion as inspiring for the student of religious history as _The
Religion of the Semites_ so often quoted in these pages.
This elaborate Roman ceremonial consisted in the main of sacrifices of
different kinds, conducted with an endless but ordered variety of
detail, of prayers, processions, and festivities, the object of which
was either to obtain certain practical results, to discover the will of
the gods, or to rejoice with the divine inhabitants of the city over the
prosperous event of some undertaking. When we survey it in the Calendar
as a whole, it seems to fall naturally into three divisions, which
correspond with and illustrate the development of the State from its
constituent materials. The Calendar contains in fact in a fossilized
condition the remains of three different strata of religious or social
development.
(1) Here and there we find survivals of what we can only regard as the
most primitive condition of human life in ancient Latium: that of men
dwelling on forest-clad hill-tops, surrounded by a world of spirits,
some of which have taken habitation in, or are in some sort represented
by, objects such as trees, animals, or stones. Examples of such objects
are the oak of Jupiter Feretrius, the sacred fig-tree of Rumina, the
stone of Terminus with its buried sacrifice, and the wolf, the
wood-pecker, and spear of Mars. To this earliest stratum may also belong
in their ultimate origin those quaint sacrificial or semi-dramatic rites
of which we have had examples in the Lupercalia, the Fordicidia, and the
Parilia. The casting of the Argei into the Tiber may perhaps also be
reckoned here, though connected later on with certain divisions of the
developed city of which the meaning and origin are lost to us. This
primitive population knew also of charms and spells and omens, not
reduced indeed as yet to a definite system, of which the Calendar
naturally supplies hardly any indications, while in Ovid and Cato not a
few survivals meet us. But the investigation of the oldest culture of
central Italy is more especially the province of archaeology, and to the
archaeologists, who are now in Italy doing excellent and elaborate work,
I must be content to leave it.
(2) We next come conjecturally to clearly-defined evidence of a period
in which the ordered processes of agriculture, and the settled life of
the farm-house, are the distinctive features. We have the beginnings of
a calendar in the observation of the quarters of the moon and their
connexion with the deities of light. We have the discipline of the
house, represented in the cult of Vesta the hearth-spirit, under the
care of the daughters of the family, while the sons as _flamines_ have
their special sacrificial duties, the head of the house presiding over
all, and having as his own special department the worship of the spirit
of the door-way (Janus). The occupations of the family are reflected in
the series of festivals which represent the processes and perils of
pastoral and agricultural industry: e.g. the Robigalia, Ambarvalia,
Vestalia, Consualia, Opiconsivia, Vinalia, Saturnalia, and Terminalia:
this last indicating also the idea of property, whether of the community
or the individual. We have also clear traces of the union of farms in a
group (_pagus_); for the Paganalia still survived in the full-grown
city, and both at the Saturnalia and Compitalia the households met
together at the winter period of ease and rejoicing.
(3) The further development of social life is also reflected in the
annual rites we have been investigating. We see the aggregation of small
communities in the Septimontium, in the Fornacalia or feast of the
Curiae, possibly also in the ritual of the twenty-four or twenty-seven
Sacella Argeorum, round which a procession seems to have gone in March
and May. The Parentalia again is the systematized cult of the dead in
their own city, outside the walls of the city of the living. The Lares
Praestites, worshipped on May 1, are the guardian spirits of the whole
community. The Regia, the dwelling of the king, is its political and
religious centre, with its sacrarium of Mars, the peculiar deity of the
stock, and with the house and hearth of Vesta close by, now grown to be
the symbol of the State’s vitality. The Vestals and Flamines have become
priests of special worships in an organized state, and at the head of
all is the Rex, still specially concerned with the cult of Janus, but
representing in his priestly capacity the whole community. The steadily
increasing tendency to organize, a tendency rooted in the very fibre of
this people, is producing colleges of pontifices and augurs, to assist
by associated effort in making sure of the laws of intercourse with the
unseen world, and of the best methods of divining its will and
intention. And lastly, not only have we found in the festivals traces of
the growth and systematization of the life of the city, but in the great
Latin festival we have also religious evidence of the early tendency of
the cities of Latin blood to combine in some sort with each other.
We have thus reached what has been called by Preller the period of Numa,
the king with whose name and personality the Romans always associated
the redaction of the Fasti and the state-organization of their religion:
a personality so clearly conceived by them as to bear witness at once to
its own historical reality, and to their conviction of the vital
importance of his work. Before we go further, let us pause here to
interrogate the Calendar as to the nature of the divine beings who in
these same stages of development were the objects of popular worship.
The simplest way to do this will be to present a table showing the list
of the most ancient festivals, with the deities concerned in them, so
far as they can be identified, in a parallel column:—
_Festivals._ _Deities._
KALENDS JUNO.
IDES JUPITER.
EQUIRRIA MARS.
LIBERALIA LIBER.
FORDICIDIA TELLUS?
CERIALIA CERES.
PARILIA PALE?
ROBIGALIA ROBIGUS.
LEMURIA Ghosts
(unburied).
ARGEORUM SACRA Unknown.
AGONIA VEDIOVIS?
VESTALIA VESTA.
MATRALIA MATER MATUTA.
POPLIFUGIA Unknown.
LUCARIA Unknown.
NEPTUNALIA NEPTUNUS.
FURRINALIA FURRINA?
PORTUNALIA PORTUNUS.
VINALIA JUPITER.
CONSUALIA CONSUS.
VOLCANALIA VOLCANUS.
OPICONSIVIA OPS CONSIVA.
MEDITRINALIA Unknown.
FONTINALIA FONS?
AGONIA Unknown.
CONSUALIA CONSUS.
SATURNALIA SATURNUS.
OPALIA OPS.
DIVALIA ANGERONA?
LARENTALIA LARENTIA?
AGONIA JANUS?
CARMENTALIA. CARMENTA.
LUPERCALIA Unknown.
QUIRINALIA QUIRINUS.
FERALIA BURIED
ANCESTORS.
TERMINALIA TERMINUS.
REGIFUGIUM Unknown.
Here it will be noticed that in those festivals which seem to be
survivals from the oldest stratum of civilization (the period of Faunus,
as Preller has named it), viz. the Lupercalia, Parilia, Fordicidia,
Argeorum Sacra, the deities concerned are either altogether doubtful, or
so wanting in clearness and prominence as to be altogether subordinate
in interest to the details of the ceremony. The Parilia and Fordicidia
were believed in later times to have belonged to Pales and Tellus; but
our authority for the grounds of such belief is not strong, and as a
matter of fact these two, together with the sacrifice of the October
horse, were interconnected by details of antique ceremonial, rather than
separately defined by their relation to particular _numina_. In other
festivals which may have possibly come down from the oldest period, the
deity is almost entirely lost. Here is good evidence of the
indistinctness of the Roman conception of the divine; the cult appealed
to this people as the practical method of obtaining their desires, but
the unseen powers with whom they dealt in this cult were beyond their
ken, often unnamed, and only visible in the sense of being seated in, or
in some sort symbolized by, tree or stone or animal. They are often
multiplex, like the Fauni, Silvani, Lares, Penates, Semones, Carmentes;
or they run into each other, like Bona Dea, Maia, Tellus, Ceres, Dea
Dia, and others. Only the great deity of the stock stands out at all
clearly; Father Mars of the Romans; Father Diovis of the whole Latin
race; to these we may perhaps add the Hercules or Genius, and Juno,
representing respectively the male and female principles of human life.
In the second and third of the strata which the Calendar offers to the
excavator, representing the ordered life of the household and afterwards
of the city, we still find much of the same indistinctness. Vesta
indeed, the spirit of the hearth-fire, becomes clearly though not
personally delineated; so too, but in a less degree, does Janus the
spirit of the doorway. Two other groups of spirits also occupy the
house; the Lares, who may have been the spirits of dead ancestors duly
buried, and the Penates or spirits of the store-chamber; both of them
becoming sufficiently clear in the popular conception to be represented
by images at a very early period. But in the round of ancient festivals,
some at least of the so-called gods, so far as we can guess at their
original nature, hardly deserve that name. Liber and Ceres seem to have
been originally general names for an ill-defined class of spirits;
Robigus is the spirit of the mildew; Consus and Ops are not
personalities, but _numina_ protecting the gathered harvest, as Saturnus
probably protected the sown seed. The Compitalia was concerned only with
the Lares Compitales, spirits of the crossways; in the Paganalia we have
but very indistinct information as to the object of worship. The
Vinalia, marking a later and more skilled agricultural process, seems on
the other hand always to have been clearly connected with Jupiter
himself.
Thus in the so-called period of Numa, the period of the earlier monarchy
and the first organization of the city-state, the religious life of the
community had become highly systematized in respect of the cult, of the
priest in charge of it, and the _ius_ which governed all the citizens in
their relation to the world of divinities. Of any real change however in
the character of these divinities, of any approach to polytheism in the
way of an increased individuality of conception, of iconic
representation, or definite temple-worship, the Calendar then drawn up
supplies no certain evidence. There may indeed have been a tendency
towards a clearer definition of _numina_, arising from the very fact of
the definite organization of prayer and sacrifice, and of the allotment
of cults to particular priesthoods or families. There may, even at that
early stage in Roman history, have been an influence at work on the
Roman mind, coming from Etruria and Greece, where polytheism found its
nourishment in works of art and mythological fancy. These are
possibilities of which we must take account, but the Calendar has
nothing positive to tell us of them.
It is when we advance to the later monarchy, which we may speak of
without hesitation as an Etruscan dynasty, that we find a change
beginning, both in the forms and objects of the cult, which marks an
epoch in Roman religious history. The oldest Calendar, that of the large
letters in the Fasti, tells us of course nothing of this. But in the
_additamenta ex fastis_, and in later literary allusions, we have a
considerable body of material to help us in following out the character
and consequences of this change. It is at this point, or rather at the
end of the monarchy, that we begin to hear of the building of real
temples, as distinct from luci, sacella, arae, or fana; of the
introduction into these of statues of the gods, of the _Graecus ritus_
in sacrifice, and of the appearance of new deities, some of them
apparently connected with new elements of population.
This epoch is most clearly marked by the building of the great temple on
the Capitol of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, an Etruscan Trias, perhaps
ultimately of Greek origin, whose statues, as we have seen, were invited
in true polytheistic fashion to partake of a feast every year on the
Ides of September, the _dies natalis_ of the temple. This temple was
dedicated in B.C. 509, directly after the expulsion of Tarquinius
Superbus. The next of which we hear is that of the old Roman Saturnus
(B.C. 497), now strangely represented by a fettered statue, and
worshipped henceforward _Graeco ritu_, with the head uncovered. Next
comes Mercurius (B.C. 495), a god unknown to the most ancient Fasti;
then Ceres, the Greek Demeter under a familiar Italian name (B.C. 493);
next Fortuna with a statue (B.C. 486), an imported goddess, to whom
Servius Tullius, if tradition can be trusted, had already erected
temples. To this same age belongs probably the temple of Diana on the
Aventine, with a Greek ξόανον and the introduction of Apollo-worship as
a popular cult. If we follow the catalogue of dedications during the two
centuries following the abolition of the monarchy[1503], we find that
out of fourteen of which the dates are known to us, six are Greek or
Graeco-Etruscan, three more admit before long a non-Roman ritual under
the influence of the _duoviri sacris faciundis_, and five are known to
have contained statues from an early period. Only three, those of Dius
Fidius, of Juno Lucina, and of Mater Matuta, can be said to have been
genuine Roman foundations. Without doubt a great change is here
indicated which has come over the Roman religion, both in cult and
theology. New elements of population, new relations with conquerors or
conquered, new commercial enterprise, new experiences of war, famine,
and pestilence, bring in new deities, suggest recourse to new divine
aids. The old Rome is almost a thing of the past; the cults and deities
of the Numan period no longer suffice, and are perhaps already beginning
to be forgotten; the oldest priesthoods begin to give place in all
except empty externals to the semi-political colleges of pontifices and
augurs, and to the important new foundation of _duoviri sacris
faciundis_; the old Italian ritual of simple apparatus and detailed
ceremony is becoming overshadowed by the showy ceremonial of
lectisternia and supplicationes.
Was there no reaction, we may well ask, against a tendency so expansive
and denationalizing? I answer this question with hesitation, for so far
as I am aware it has never yet been fully investigated. But I am
strongly disposed to believe that there was such a reaction in the third
century B.C., in the period, that is, between the Samnite wars and
Hannibal’s invasion of Italy. This, unlike the preceding century, was a
period of almost uniform success of the Roman arms, and one in which the
State was at no time in serious peril; and the temptation to have
recourse to strange divinities, as a patient betakes himself to new
physicians, would not present itself to the minds of the senate or the
priesthoods. If we pursue the history of the temple-foundations of this
period, under Aust’s invaluable guidance, the result is very remarkable.
Between 304 and 217 B.C. we know the dates of twenty-five foundations;
and of these no less than twenty are in honour of indigenous, or at
least what I may perhaps call, home-made deities. No doubt there is a
growing tendency to identify Roman gods with Greek; but this does not
show itself plainly till the end of the century, and the only genuine
Greek foundation is that of Aesculapius, the consequence of a severe
pestilence in 293 B.C. Three or four, e. g. those of Fors Fortuna,
Minerva Capta, and Feronia, were probably of non-Roman origin; but they
were transplanted from the near neighbourhood of Rome and may almost
count as indigenous.