WORSHIP OF THE HOUSEHOLD
=1. The Deities.=--The worship of the household seems to have
originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of
certain objects closely bound up with the family life--the door, the
protection against the external world, by which the household went out
to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver
of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved
the food for future use. At first, in all probability, the worship was
actually of the objects themselves, but by the time that Rome can be
said to have existed at all, 'animism' had undoubtedly transformed it
into a veneration of the indwelling spirits, Ianus, Vesta, and the
Penates.
Of the domestic worship of Ianus no information has come down to us,
but we may well suppose that as the defence of the door and its main
use lay with the men of the household, so they, under the control of
the _pater familias_, were responsible for the cult of its spirit.
Vesta was, of course, worshipped at the hearth by the women, who most
often used it in the preparation of the domestic meals. In the original
round hut, such as the primitive Roman dwelt in--witness the models
which he buried with his dead and which recent excavations in the Forum
have brought to light--the 'blazing hearth' (such seems to be the
meaning of Vesta) would be the most conspicuously sacred thing; it is
therefore not surprising to find that her simple cult was the most
persistent of all throughout the history of Rome, and did not vary from
its original notion. Even Ovid can tell the inquirer 'think not Vesta
to be ought else than living flame,' and again, 'Vesta and fire require
no effigy'--notions in which he has come curiously near to the
conceptions of the earliest religion. The Penates in the same way were
at first 'the spirits'--whoever they might be--who preserved and
increased the store in the cupboard. Then as the conception of
individual deities became clearer, they were identified with some one
or other of the gods of the country or the state, among whom the
individual householder would select those who should be the particular
Penates of his family: Ceres, Iuno, Iuppiter, Pales would be some of
those chosen in the earlier period. Nor are we to suppose that
selection was merely arbitrary: the tradition of family and clan, even
possibly of locality, would determine the choice, much as the
patron-saints of a church are now determined in a Roman Catholic
country.
Two other deities are very prominent in the worship of the early
household, and each is a characteristic product of Roman religious
feeling, the Lar Familiaris and the Genius. The Lares[5] seem to have
been in origin the spirits of the family fields: they were worshipped,
as Cicero tells us, 'on the farm in sight of the house,' and they had
their annual festival in the Compitalia, celebrated at the
_compita_--places where two or more properties marched. But one of
these spirits, the _Lar Familiaris_, had special charge of the house
and household, and as such was worshipped with the other domestic gods
at the hearth. As his protection extended over all the household,
including the slaves, his cult is placed specially in the charge of the
bailiff's wife (_vilica_). He is regularly worshipped at the great
divisions of the month on Calends, Nones, and Ides, but he has also an
intimate and beautiful connection with the domestic history of the
family. An offering is made to the Lar on the occasion of a birth, a
wedding, a departure, or a return, and even--a characteristically Roman
addition--on the occasion of the first utterance of a word by a son of
the house: finally, a particularly solemn sacrifice is made to him
after a death in the family.
The Genius is perhaps the most difficult conception in the Roman
religion for the modern mind to grasp. It has been spoken of as the
'patron-saint' or 'guardian-angel,' both of them conceptions akin to
that of the Genius, but both far too definite and anthropomorphic: we
shall understand it best by keeping the '_numen_' notion clearly in
mind and looking to the root-meaning of the word (_genius_ connected
with the root of _gignere_, to beget). It was after all only a natural
development of the notions of 'animism' to imagine that man too, like
other objects, had his indwelling spirit--not his 'soul' either in our
sense of moral and intellectual powers, or in the ancient sense of the
vital principle--but rather as the derivation suggests, in origin
simply the spirit which gave him the power of generation. Hence in the
house, the sphere of the Genius is no longer the hearth but the
marriage-bed (_lectus genialis_). This notion growing somewhat wider,
the Genius comes to denote all the full powers, almost the personality,
of developed manhood, and especially those powers which make for
pleasure and happiness: this is the origin of such common phrases as
_genium curare_, _genio indulgere_, meaning practically to 'look after
oneself,' 'to indulge oneself.' Every man, then, has this 'spirit of
his manhood' in his Genius, and correspondingly every woman her Iuno,
or spirit of womanhood, which are worshipped on the birthdays of their
owners. No doubt later the Genius was accredited with powers over the
fortune and misfortune of his possessor, but he never really developed
anything like the independence of a god, and remained always rather a
_numen_. The individual revered his own Genius, but the household cult
was concerned, as one would expect, with the Genius of the master of
the house, the pre-eminent Genius of the family. Its special locality
was, for the reason just noticed, the marriage-bed and its symbol, the
house-snake, kept as a revered inmate and cherished in the feeling that
evil happening to it meant misfortune to the master. The festival of
the Genius was naturally the master's birthday, and on that day slaves
and freedmen kept holiday with the family and brought offerings to the
_Genius domus_. It is a significant fact, and may serve to bring out
the underlying notion, that in later paintings, when anthropomorphism
and sensuous representation held sway over all Roman religion, though
the other gods of the household were depicted after the manner of Greek
deities, the Genius is either represented by his symbolic snake or
appears with the human features and characteristics of the head of the
house, his owner.
The spirit-gods then of the door and the hearth, the specially chosen
deities of the store-cupboard, the particular field-power presiding
over the household, and the spirit of the master's personality were the
gods of the early home, and round their worship centred the domestic
religion. We must attempt to see what was its relation to family life.
=2. Religion and the Family Life.=--We have already noticed the main
occasions of regular sacrifice to the deities of the household, the
offerings to the Lar on Calends, Nones, and Ides, to the Genius on the
master's birthday, and so on, and we are enabled to form a fair picture
of the rites from paintings which, although of later date, undoubtedly
represent the continuous tradition of domestic custom. In a
wall-painting at Herculaneum, for instance, we have a picture of the
_pater familias_, represented with veiled head (according to regular
Roman custom) and the cornucopia of the Genius, making sacrifice at a
round altar or hearth. Opposite him stands the flute-player (_tibicen_)
playing to drown any unpropitious sound, while on either side are two
smaller figures, presumably the sons, acting as attendants (_camilli_),
and both clad (_succincti_) in the short sacrificial tunic (_limus_);
one carries in his left hand the sacred dish (_patera_), and in his
right garlands or, more probably, ribbons for the decoration of the
victim: the other is acting as _victimarius_ and bringing the pig for
sacrifice, but the animal is hurrying with almost excessive eagerness
towards the altar, no doubt to show that there is none of the
reluctance which would have been sufficient to vitiate the sacrifice.
But from our point of view such formal acts of worship are of less
importance than the part played by religion in the daily life of the
household. There is evidence both for earlier and later periods that
the really 'pious' would begin their day with prayer and sacrifice to
the household gods, and like Virgil's Aeneas, typically _pius_ in all
the meanings of the word, would 'rouse the slumbering flame upon the
altar and gladly approach again the Lar and little Penates whom he
worshipped yesterday.' But this was perhaps exceptional devotion, and
the daily worship in the normal household centred rather round the
family meal. In the old and simple house the table would be placed at
the side of the hearth, and, as the household sat round it, master and
man together, a part of the meal, set aside on a special sacred dish
(_patella_), would be thrown into the flames as the gods' portion.
Sometimes incense might be added, and later a libation of wine: when
images had become common, the little statuettes of Lares and Penates
would be fetched from the shrine (_lararium_) and placed upon the table
in token of their presence at the meal. Even in the luxurious,
many-roomed house of the imperial epoch, when the dining-table was far
from the kitchen-hearth, a pause was made in the meal and an offering
sent out to the household-gods, nor would the banquet proceed until the
slave had returned and announced that the gods were favourable (_deos
propitios_): so persistent was this tradition of domestic piety. Prayer
might be made at this point on special occasions to special deities,
as, for instance, before the beginning of the sowing of the crops,
appeal was made to Iuppiter, and a special portion of the meal (_daps_)
was set aside for him. The sanctification of the one occasion when the
whole household met in the day cannot fail to have had its effect on
the domestic life, and, even if it was no direct incentive to morality,
it yet bound the family together in a sense of dependence on a higher
power for the supply of their daily needs.
We observed incidentally how the small events of domestic life were
given their religious significance, particularly in connection with the
worship of Lar and Genius, but to complete the sketch of domestic
religion, we must examine a little more closely its relation to the
process of life, and especially to the two important occasions of birth
and marriage. In no department of life is the specialisation of
function among the _numina_ more conspicuous than in connection with
birth and childhood. Apart from the general protection of Iuno Lucina,
the prominent divinity of childbirth, we can count in the records that
have come down to us some twenty subordinate spirits, who from the
moment of conception to the moment of birth watched, each in its own
particular sphere, over the mother and the unborn child. As soon as the
birth had taken place began a series of ceremonies, which are of
particular interest, as they seem to belong to a very early stage of
religious thought, and have a markedly rustic character. Immediately a
sacred meal was offered to the two field-deities, Picumnus and
Pilumnus, and then the Roman turned his attention to the practical
danger of fever for the mother and child. At night three men gathered
round the threshold, one armed with an axe, another with a stake, and a
third with a broom: the two first struck the threshold with their
implements, the third swept out the floor. Over this ceremony were said
to preside three _numina_, Intercidona (connected with the axe),
Pilumnus (connected with the stake, _pilum_), and Deverra (connected
with the act of sweeping). Its object was, as Varro explains it, to
avert the entrance of the half-wild Silvanus by giving three
unmistakeable signs of human civilisation; we shall probably not be
wrong in seeing in it rather an actual hacking, beating, and sweeping
away of evil spirits. On the ninth day after birth, in the case of a
boy, on the eighth in the case of a girl, occurred the festival of the
naming (_solemnitas nominalium_). The ceremony was one of purification
(_dies lustricus_ is its alternative title), and a piacular offering
was made to preserve the child from evil influences in the future.
Friends brought presents, especially neck-bands in the form of a
half-moon (_lunulae_), and the golden balls (_bullae_) which were worn
as a charm round the neck until the attainment of manhood.
Of the numerous petty divinities which watched over the child's early
years we have already given some account. In their protection he
remained until he arrived at puberty, about the age of seventeen, when
with due religious ceremony he entered on his manhood. At home, on the
morning of the festival, he solemnly laid aside the _bulla_ and the
purple-striped garb of childhood (_toga praetexta_) before the shrine
of the household gods, and made them a thank-offering for their
protection in the past. Afterwards, accompanied by his father and
friends and clad now in the _toga virilis_, he went solemnly to the
Capitol, and, after placing a contribution in the coffers of
Iuventas--or probably in earlier times of Iuppiter Iuventus--made an
offering to the supreme deity Iuppiter Capitolinus. The sacred
character of the early years of a young Roman's life could hardly be
more closely marked.
Though _confarreatio_ was the only essentially religious form of
marriage, and was sanctified by the presence of the _pontifex maximus_
and the _flamen Dialis_, yet marriage even in the less religious
ceremony of _coemptio_ was always a _sacrum_. It must not take place on
the days of state-festivals (_feriae_), nor on certain other _dies
religiosi_, such as those of the Vestalia or the feast of the dead
(_Parentalia_). Both the marriage itself and the preliminary betrothal
(_sponsalia_) had to receive the divine sanction by means of auspices,
and in the ceremonies of both rites the religious element, though bound
up with superstition and folk-customs, emerges clearly enough. The
central ceremony of the _confarreatio_ was an act partly of sacrifice,
partly, one might almost say, of communion. The bride and bridegroom
sat on two chairs united to one another and covered with a lambskin,
they offered to Iuppiter bloodless offerings of a rustic character
(_fruges et molam salsam_), they employed in the sacrifice the
fundamental household necessaries, water, fire, and salt, and
themselves ate of the sacred spelt-cake (_libus farreus_), from which
the ceremony derived its name. The crucial point in the more civil
ceremony of _coemptio_ was the purely human and legal act of the
joining of hands (_dextrarum iunctio_), but it was immediately followed
by the sacrifice of a victim, which gave the ceremony a markedly
religious significance. The customs connected with the bringing of the
bride to the bridegroom's house--so beautifully depicted in Catullus'
_Epithalamium_--her forcible abduction from her parents, the ribaldry
of the bridegroom's companions, the throwing of nuts as a symbol of
fecundity, the carrying of the bride over the threshold, a relic
probably of primitive marriage by capture, the untying of the bridal
knot on the bridal couch--are perhaps more akin to superstition than
religion, but we may notice two points in the proceedings. Firstly, the
three coins (_asses_) which the bride brought with her, one to give to
her husband as a token of dowry, one to be offered at the hearth to her
new Lar Familiaris, one to be offered subsequently at the nearest
_compitum_ (a clear sign of connection between the household Lar and
those of the fields); and secondly, an echo of the feature so marked
all through domestic life, the crowd of little _numina_, who took their
part in assisting the ceremony. There was Domiduca, who brought the
bride to the bridegroom's house, Iterduca, who looked after her on the
transit, Unxia, who anointed her, Cinxia, who bound and unbound her
girdle, and many others.
This sketch of the household worship of the Romans will, I hope, have
justified my contention that there was in it an element more truly
'religious' than anything we should gather from the ceremonies of the
state. The ideas are simpler, the _numina_ seem less cold and more
protective, the worshippers more sensible of divine aid. When we have
looked at the companion picture of the farmer in the fields, we shall
go on to see how the worship of the agricultural household is the
prototype and basis of the state-cult, but first we must consider
briefly the very difficult question of the relation of the living to
the dead.
=3. Relation of the Living and the Dead.=--The worship of the spirits
of dead ancestors is so common a feature in most primitive religions
that it may seem strange even to doubt whether it existed among the
Romans, but, although the question is one of extreme difficulty, and
the evidence very insufficient, I am inclined to believe that, though
the living were always conscious of their continued relation to the
dead, and sensitive of the influence of the powers of the underworld,
yet there was not, strictly speaking, any cult of the dead. Let us
attempt briefly to collect the salient features in ritual, and see to
what conclusion they point as to the underlying belief.
One of the most remarkable facts in domestic worship is that, whereas
the moment of birth and the other great occasions of life are
surrounded with religious ceremony and belief, the moment of death
passes without any trace of religious accompaniment: it is as though
the dying man went out into another world where the ceremonials of this
life can no more avail him, nor its gods protect him. As to his state
after death, opinion varied at different times under different
influences, but the simple early notion, connected especially with the
practice of burial as opposed to cremation,[6] was that his spirit just
sank into the earth, where it rested and returned from time to time to
the upper world through certain openings in the ground (_mundi_), whose
solemn uncovering was one of the regular observances of the festal
calendar: later, no doubt, a more spiritual notion prevailed, though it
never reached definiteness or universality. One idea, however, seems
always to be prominent, that the happiness of the dead could be much
affected by the due performance of the funeral rites; hence it was the
most solemn duty of the heir to perform the _iusta_ for the dead, and
if he failed in any respect to carry them out, he could only atone for
his omission by the annual sacrifice of a sow (_porca praecidanea_) to
Ceres and Tellus--to the divinities of the earth, be it noticed, and
not to the dead themselves. The actual funeral was not a religious
ceremony; a procession was formed (originally at night) of the family
and friends, in which the body of the dead was carried--accompanied by
the busts (_imagines_) of his ancestors--to a tomb outside the town,
and was there laid in the grave. The family on their return proceeded
at once to rites of purification from the contamination which had
overtaken them owing to the presence of a dead body. Two ceremonies
were performed, one for the purification of the house by the sacrifice
of a sow (_porca praesentanea_) to Ceres accompanied by a solemn
sweeping out of refuse (_exverræ_), the other the lustration of their
own persons by fire and water. This done, they sat down with their
friends to a funeral feast (_silicernium_), which, Cicero tells us, was
regarded as an honour rather to the surviving members of the family
than to the dead, so that mourning was not worn. Two other ceremonies
within the following week, the _feriae denicales_ and the _novendiale
sacrum_, brought the religious mourning to a close. Not that the dead
were forgotten after the funeral: year by year, on the anniversaries of
death and burial, and on certain fixed occasions known by such
suggestive titles as 'the day of roses' and 'the day of violets,' the
family would revisit the tomb and make simple offerings of salt cake
(_mola salsa_), of bread soaked in wine, or garlands of flowers: there
is some trace, on such occasions, of prayer, but it would seem to be
rather the repetition of general religious formulæ than a petition to
the dead for definite blessings.
Such are the principal features of the family ritual in relation to
their dead; but if we are to form any just notion of belief, we must
supplement them by reference to the ceremonies of the state, which
here, as elsewhere, are very clearly the household-cult 'writ large.'
In the Calendars we find two obvious celebrations in connection with
the dead, taking place at different seasons of the year, and consisting
of ceremonies markedly different in character. In the gloomy month of
February--associated with solemn lustrations--occurs the festival known
popularly (though not in the Calendars) as the Parentalia or dies
Parentales, that is, the days of sacrifice in connection with the dead
members of the family (_parentes_, _parentare_). It begins with the
note on February 13, _Virgo Vestalis parentat_, and continues till the
climax, _Feralia_, on February 21. During these days the magistrates
laid aside the insignia of their offices, the temples were shut,
marriages were forbidden, and every family carried out at the tombs of
its relatives ceremonies resembling those of the _sacra privata_. The
whole season closed on February 22 with the festival of the Caristia or
_cara cognatio_, a family reunion of the survivors in a kind of
'love-feast,' which centred in the worship of the Lar Familiaris. Here
we seem to have simply, as in the family rites, a peaceful and solemn
acknowledgment by the community as a whole of the still subsisting
relation of the living and the dead. On the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May
occurs the Lemuria, a ceremony of a strikingly different order. Once
again temples are shut and marriages forbidden, but the ritual is of a
very different nature. The _Lemures_ or _Larvae_--for there seems to be
little distinction between the two names--are regarded no longer as
members of the family to be welcomed back to their place, but as
hostile spirits to be exorcised.[7] The head of the house rises from
bed at midnight, washes, and walks barefoot through the house, making
signs for the aversion of evil spirits. In his mouth he carries black
beans--always a chthonic symbol--which he spits out nine times without
looking round, saying, as he does so, 'With these I redeem me and
mine': he washes again, and clanks brass vessels together; nine times
he repeats the formula, 'depart, Manes of our fathers' (no doubt using
the dignified title Manes euphemistically), and then finally turns
round. Here we have in a quite unmistakeable manner the feeling of the
hostility of the spirits of the dead: they must be given their
appropriate food and got out of the place as quickly as possible. Some
scholars have attempted to explain the difference between these two
festivals on the assumption that the Parentalia represents the
commemoration of the duly buried dead, the Lemuria the apotropaic right
for the aversion of the unburied, and therefore hostile spirits; but
Ovid has given a far more significant hint, when he tells us that the
Lemuria was the more ancient festival of the two.
So far we have had no indication of anything approaching divinity in
connection with the dead or the underworld as distinct from the
earth-goddesses, but the evidence for it, though vague and shadowy, is
not wanting. Certain mysterious female deities, Tarpeia, Acca Larentia,
Carna, and Laverna, of whom late ætiological myth had its own
explanation, have, in all probability, been rightly interpreted by
Mommsen as divinities of the lower world: the commemorative 'sacrifice
at the tomb,' which we hear of in connection with the first two, was in
reality, we may suppose, an offering to a chthonic deity at a _mundus_.
A rather more tangible personality is Vediovis, who three times a year
has his celebration (_Agonia_ not _feriae_) in the Calendar: he, as his
name denotes, must be the 'opposite of Iove,' that is, probably, his
chthonic counterpart, a notion sufficiently borne out by his subsequent
identification with the Greek Pluto. Finally, of course, there is that
vague body, the Di Manes, 'the good gods,' the principal deities of the
world of the dead; to them invocations are addressed, and they have
their place in the formulæ of the _parentalia_ and the opening of the
_mundi_.[8] In connection with them, acting as a link with the female
deities, we have the strange goddess Genita Mana, the 'spirit of birth
and death.'
Controversy is acute as to the interpretation of these facts,
especially in regard to the question whether or no the spirits of the
dead were actually worshipped. I would hazard the following
reconstruction of history as consistent with what we otherwise know of
Roman religion, and with the evidence before us. From the earliest
times the Roman looked upon his dead relations as in some sense living,
lying beneath the earth, but capable alike of returning to the world
above and of influencing in some vague way the fortunes of the living,
especially in relation to the crops which sprung from the ground in
which they lay. At first, when his religion was one of fear, he
regarded the dead as normally hostile, and their presence as something
to be averted; this is the stage which gave birth to the Lemuria. As
civilisation increased, and the sense of the unity of household and
community developed, fear, proving ungrounded, gave place to a kindlier
feeling of the continued existence of the dead as members of household
and state, and even in some sense as an additional bond between the
living: this is the period which produced the _sacra privata_ and the
Parentalia. When the _numen_-feeling began to pass into that of _deus_,
in the first place a connection was felt between the spirits of the
dead and the deities of the earth associated with the growth of the
crops, in the second the notion that the underworld must have its gods
as well as the world above, produced the shadowy female deities and
Vediovis. Lastly, the same kind of feeling which added Parentalia to
Lemuria developed the vague general notion of the Di Manes, not the
deified spirits of the dead, but peaceful and on the whole kindly
divinities holding sway in the world of dead spirits, yet accessible to
the prayers of the living. The dead, then, were not themselves
worshipped, but they needed commemoration and kindly gifts, and they
had in their lower world deities to whom prayer might be made and
worship given.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] It is right to state that there is a totally different theory,
according to which the Lares were the spirits of the dead ancestors and
the Lar Familiaris an embodiment, as it were, of all the family dead.
[6] It is significant that even when the dead were cremated, one bone
was carefully preserved in order to be symbolically buried.
[7] We may note that, though it is a state festival, our information is
solely of rites in individual households.
[8] Their mention in sepulchral inscriptions dates from the time of the
Empire, when a new conception of their nature had sprung up.