religious law of the City-state the sites of all temples, _i.e._ all
places in which deities had consented to take up their abode, were of
course holy; but this is a much more mature development, though it
unquestionably had its root in the same idea that we are now discussing.
Such sites, as we shall see in a later lecture, were _loca sacra_, and
_sacer_ is a word of legal ritual, meaning that the place has been made
over to the deity by certain formulae, accompanied with favourable
auspices, under the authority of the State.[61] But there were other
holy places which were not _sacra_ but _religiosa_; and the word
_religiosum_ here might almost be translated "affected by taboo."
Wissowa provides us with a list of these places, and this and the
quotations he supplies with it are of the utmost value for my present
subject.[62] They comprised, of course, all holy places which the State
had not duly consecrated, and therefore some which hardly concern us
here, such as shrines belonging to families and gentes, and temple-sites
in the provinces of a later age. More to our purpose at this moment are
the spots where thunderbolts were supposed to have fallen. Such spots
were encircled with a low wall and called _puteal_ from their
resemblance to a well, or _bidental_ from the sacrifice there of a lamb
as a _piaculum_; the bolt was supposed to be thus buried, and the place
became _religiosum_.[63] So, too, all burial-grounds were not _loca
sacra_ but _loca religiosa_, technically because they were not the
property of the state or consecrated by it; in reality, I venture to
say, because the place where a corpse was deposited was of necessity
taboo. Such places were _extra commercium_, and their sanctity might not
be violated: "religiosum est," wrote the learned Roman Masurius Sabinus,
"quod propter sanctitatem aliquam _remotum et sepositum est_ a
nobis."[64] So, too, the great lawyer of Cicero's time, Servius
Sulpicius, defines _religio_ as "quae propter sanctitatem aliquam remota
ac seposita a nobis sit," where he is using _religio_ in the sense of a
thing or place to which a taboo attaches.[65] And again, another
authority, Aelius Gallus, said that _religiosum_ was properly applied to
an object in regard to which there were things which a man might not do:
"quod si faciat," he goes on, "adversus deorum voluntatem videatur
facere."[66] These last words are in the language of the City-state; if
we would go behind it to that of an earlier age, we should substitute
words which would express the feeling or scruple, the _religio_, without
reference to any special deity. Virgil has pictured admirably this
feeling as applied to places, in describing the visit of Aeneas to the
site of the future Rome under the guidance of his host Evander (_Aen._
viii. 347):--
hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit,
aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis.
_iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis_
_dira loci_: iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant.
"hoc nemus, hunc," inquit, "frondoso vertice collem,
(quis deus, incertum est) habitat deus."
This is a passage on which I shall have to comment again: at present I
will content myself with noting how accurately the poet, who of all
others best understood the instincts of the less civilised Italians of
his own day, has used his knowledge to express the antique feeling that
there were places which man must shrink from entering--a feeling far
older than the invention of legal _consecratio_ by the authorities of a
City-state.
Lastly, the principle of taboo, or _religio_, if we use the Latin word,
affected certain times as well as places. Just as under the _ius
divinum_ of the fully-developed State certain spots were made over to
the deities for their habitation and rendered inviolable by
_consecratio_, so certain days were also appointed as theirs which the
human inhabitants might not violate by the transaction of profane
business. But I have just pointed out that the consecration of holy
places in this legal fashion was a late development of a primitive
feeling or _religio_; exactly the same, if I am not mistaken, was the
case with regard to the holy days. These were called _nefasti_, and
belong to the life of the State; but there were others, called
_religiosi_, which I believe to have been tabooed days long before the
State arose.
When we come to examine the ancient religious calendar, it will be found
that I shall not then be called upon to deal with _dies religiosi_, for
the very good reason that they are not indicated in that calendar--there
is no mark for them as _religiosi_, and some of them are not even _dies
nefasti_, as we might naturally have expected.[67] What, then, is the
history of them? We may be able to make a fair guess at this by noting
exactly what these days were; Dr. Wissowa has put them together for us
in a very succinct passage.[68] He begins the list with the 18th of
Quinctilis (July), on which two great disasters had happened to Roman
armies, the defeats on the Cremera and the Allia; and also the 16th, the
day after the Ides, because, according to the legend, the Roman
commander had sacrificed on that day with a view to gaining the favour
of the gods in the battle. We may regard the story about the 18th as
historical; but then we are told that _all_ days following on Kalends,
Nones, and Ides were likewise made _religiosi_ (or _atri_, _vitiosi_,
which have the same meaning) as being henceforward deemed unlucky by
pronouncement of senate and pontifices;[69] thus all _dies postriduani_,
as they were called, were put out of use, or at any rate declared
unlucky, for many purposes, both public and private, _e.g._ marriages,
levies, battles, and sacred rites,[70] simply because on one occasion
disaster had followed the offering of a sacrifice on the 16th of
Quinctilis. It is difficult to believe that thirty-six days in the year
were thus tabooed, by a Roman senate and Roman magistrates, in a period
when the practical wisdom of the government was beginning to be a marked
characteristic of the State. Some people, we are told, went so far as to
treat the _fourth day before_ Kalends, Nones, and Ides in the same way;
but Gellius declares that he could find no tradition about this except a
single passage of Claudius Quadrigarius, in which he said that the
fourth day before the Nones of Sextilis was that on which the battle of
Cannae was fought.[71]
I am strongly inclined to suggest that the traditional explanation of
the tabooing of these thirty-six, or possibly seventy-two days was
neither more nor less than an aetiological myth, like hundreds of others
which were invented to account for Roman practices, religious and other;
and this supposition seems to be confirmed as we go on with the list of
_dies religiosi_ as given by Wissowa. The three days--Sextilis 24,
October 5, November 8--on which the Manes were believed to come up from
the underworld through the _mundus_ (to which I shall return later on)
were _religiosi_;[72] so were those when the temple of Vesta remained
open (June 7 to 15),[73] those on which the Salii performed their
dances in March and October,[74] two days following the _feriae Latinae_
(a movable festival),[75] and the days of the Parentalia in February and
the Lemuria in May, which were concerned with the cult and the memory of
the dead.[76] Now the _religio_ or taboo on these days obviously springs
either from a feeling of anxiety suggested by very primitive notions of
the dead and of departed spirits; or in the case of the temple of Vesta,
by some mystical purification or disinfection preparatory to the
ingathering of the crops, which I noticed in my _Roman Festivals_ (p.
152 foll.); or again in the case of the Salii, by some danger to the
crops from evil spirits, etc., which might be averted by their peculiar
performances. In fact, all these _dies religiosi_ date as such, we may
be pretty sure, from a very primitive period before the genesis of the
City-state, and were not recognised--for what reason we will not at
present attempt to guess--as _religiosi_ by the authorities who drew up
the Calendar. Some of them appear in that calendar as _dies nefasti_,
but not all; and I am entirely at one with Wissowa, whose knowledge of
the Roman religious law is unparalleled for exactness, in believing that
a _religio_ affecting a day had nothing whatever to do with its
character as _fastus_ or _nefastus_.[77]
If all these last-mentioned _dies religiosi_ are such because ancient
popular feeling attached the _religio_ to them, we may infer, I think,
that the same was really the case also with the _dies postriduani_. The
fact that the authorities of the State had made one or two days
_religiosi_ as anniversaries of disasters, supplied a handy explanation
for a number of other _dies religiosi_ of which the true explanation had
been entirely lost; but that there was such a true explanation, resting
on very primitive beliefs, I have very little doubt. Lucky and unlucky
days are found in the unwritten calendars of primitive peoples in many
parts of the world. An old pupil, now a civil servant in the province
of Madras, has sent me an elaborate account of the notions of this kind
existing in the minds of the Tamil-speaking people of his district of
southern India. The Celtic calendar recently discovered at Coligny in
France contains a number of mysterious marks, some of which may have had
a meaning of this kind.[78] Dr. Jevons has collected some other examples
from various parts of the world, _e.g._ Mexico.[79] The old Roman
superstition about the luckiness of odd days and the unluckiness of even
ones, which appears, as we shall see, in the arrangement of the
calendar, was probably at one time a popular Italian notion, not
derived, as used to be thought, from Pythagoras and his school.
I therefore conclude that we may add times and seasons to the list of
those objects, animate and inanimate, which were affected by the
practice of taboo in primitive Rome; and I hold that the word
_religiosus_, as applied both to times and places, exactly expresses the
feeling on which that practice is based. The word _religiosus_ came to
have another meaning (though it retained the old one as well) in
historical times, and the Romans could be called _religiosissimi
mortalium_ in the sense of paying close attention to worship and all its
details. But the original meaning of _religio_ and _religiosus_ may
after all have been that nervous anxiety which is a special
characteristic of an age of taboo.[80] To discover the best methods of
soothing that anxiety, or, in other words, the methods of disinfection,
was the work of the organised religious life of family and State which
we are going to study. But I must first devote a lecture to another
class of primitive survivals.
NOTES TO LECTURE II
[23] Renel, _Les Enseignes_, p. 43 foll. For the
contrary view, Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 490.
[24] On taboo in general, Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_, ch. vi.; Robertson Smith,
_Religion of the Semites_, p. 142 foll.; Frazer, _Golden
Bough_ (ed. 2), i. 343; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
_passim_. On the relation of taboo to magic, Marett,
_Threshold of Religion_, p. 85 foll. Lately M. van
Gennep in his _Rites de passage_ has attempted to
classify and explain the various rites resulting from
taboo.
[25] See the _Transactions of the Congress_ (Oxford
University Press), vol. i. p. 121 foll. M. Reinach had
alleged that the gens Fabia was originally a totem clan,
_Mythes et cultes_, i. p. 47.
[26] Marett, _On the Threshold of Religion_, p. 137
foll. "In _taboo_ the mystic thing is not to be lightly
approached (negative aspect); _qua mana_, it is instinct
with mystic power (positive aspect)": so Mr. Marett
states the distinction in a private letter.
[27] _Evolution of Religion_, p. 94.
[28] _Introduction_, ch. viii.; Westermarck, _Origin and
Development of Ethical Ideas_, i. 233 foll.
[29] See a paper by the author in the _Transactions of
the Congress of the History of Religions_, 1908, ii. 169
foll.
[30] Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 36; De Marchi, _La
Religione nella vita domestica_, i. p. 169 foll.;
Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Roemer,_ p. 62
foll., where the _dies lustricus_ is compared with the
Greek [Greek: amphidromia]. Unfortunately the details of
the Roman rite are unknown to us, which seems to
indicate that the primitive or magical character of it
had disappeared. Van Gennep, _op. cit._ ch. v., reviews
and classifies our present knowledge of this kind of
rite. See also Crawley, _Mystic Rose_, p. 435 foll.
[31] Crawley, _op. cit._ p. 436; Frazer, _G.B._ i. 403
foll. From this point of view Roman names need a closer
examination than they have yet received. See, however,
Marquardt, _Privatleben der Roemer_, pp. 10 and 81, and
Mommsen, _Roem. Forschungen_, i. 1 foll. Marquardt must
be wrong in stating (p. 10) that only the _praenomen_
was given on the _dies lustricus_; children dying before
that day usually, as he says on p. 82 note, have no name
in inscriptions, and that ceremony must surely have
introduced the child to the gens of its parents.
Certainly that introduction had not to wait till the
_toga virilis_ was taken; though Tertull. _de Idol._ 16
looks at first a little like it. The same statement is
made in the _Dict. of Antiq., s.v._ "nomen." Macr.
_Sat._ i. 16. 36, and Fest. 120, simply speak of
_nomen_.
[32] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 56; De Marchi, _op. cit._ p. 176.
For the primitive ideas about puberty, Crawley, _Mystic
Rose_, ch. xiii. The idea of the Romans seems to have
been simply that the child, who had so far needed
special protection from evil influences (of what kind in
particular it is impossible to say) by purple-striped
toga and amulet (see below, p. 60), was now entering a
stage when these were no longer needed. All notions of
taboo seem to have vanished.
[33] Marquardt, _Privataltertuemer_, p. 337 foll.
[34] Serv. _Aen._ ii. 714, and especially iii. 64. Other
references in Marq. _op. cit._ p. 338, note 5, and De
Marchi, _La Religione nella_ _vita domestica_, p. 190.
For similar usages of prohibition see van Gennep, _op.
cit._ ch. ii.
[35] Festus, p. 3, "itaque funus prosecuti redeuntes
ignem supragradiebantur aqua aspersi, quod purgationis
genus vocabant suffitionem." For the possibly magic
influence of these elements, see Jevons, _op. cit._ p.
70.
[36] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 325, iii. 222 foll.; Jevons, p.
59.
[37] Cato, _R.R._ 83, "mulier ad eam rem divinam ne
adsit neve videat quomodo fiat."
[38] Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 60. Dogs were also
excluded (_ib._ 90); Gellius xi. 6. 2; Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 227; Fowler, _R.F._ p. 194, where the private and
public taboos are compared.
[39] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto." For similar taboos in
Greece, Farnell in _Archiv_ for 1904, p. 76.
[40] Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 143 foll. Cp. Westermarck, _Origin, etc._, vol. i.
ch. xxvi., especially p. 652 foll.
[41] _G.B._ i. 298 foll.
[42] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto."
[43] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, p. 94 foll. Cp. Livy v. 50,
where it is said that, after the Gauls had left Rome,
all the temples, _quod ea hostis possedisset_, were to
be restored, to have their bounds laid down afresh
(_terminarentur_) and to be disinfected (_expiarentur_).
_Digest_, xi. 7. 36, "cum loca capta sunt ab hostibus,
omnia desinunt religiosa vel sacra esse, sicut homines
liberi in servitutem perveniunt; quod si ab hac
calamitate fuerint liberata, quasi quodam postliminio
reversa pristino statui restituerentur." Cp. Plutarch,
_Aristides_, 20. A friend reminds me that Bishop
Berkeley, when in Italy, had his bedroom sprinkled with
holy water by his landlady.
[44] See Marquardt, p. 420, notes 5 and 6. The
_verbenarius_ is mentioned in Serv. _Aen._ xii. 120, and
Pliny _N.H._ xxii. 5. For the disinfecting power of
verbena (_myrtea verbena_) see Pliny xv. 119, where it
is said to have been used by Romans and Sabines after
the rape of the Sabine virgins.
[45] See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 192 foll., based
on the famous essay of Mommsen in his _Roemische
Forschungen_, i. 319 foll. The passages quoted from Livy
for the practice in early times (i. 45, v. 50) are not,
of course, historical evidence; but we may fairly argue
back from the more explicit evidence of later times,
_e.g._ the Senatusconsultum de Asclepiade of 78 B.C.
(_C.I. Graec._ 5879).
There is a good example of the feeling in modern Italy
in a book called _In the Abruzzi_, by Anne Macdonell, p.
275. I have experienced it in remote parts of South
Wales long ago. Moritz, the German pastor who travelled
on foot in England towards the end of the eighteenth
century, noted that even the innkeepers were constantly
unwilling to take him in. His book was reprinted in
Cassell's National Library some years ago.
[46] See the very interesting chapter in _The Origin
and Development of Moral Ideas_, vol. i. p. 570 foll.,
especially p. 590 foll. Dr. Westermarck aptly points out
that hospitality is almost universal among "rude"
peoples, and loses its hold as they become more
civilised. M. van Gennep in his recently published work,
_Les Rites de Passage_, has attempted to classify the
various rites relating to taboo of strangers; see ch.
iii., especially p. 38 foll.
[47] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 70.
[48] Gellius x. 15. 8, "vinctum, si aedes eius
introierit, solui necessum est." (In hot countries
chains still usually, or in some degree, take the place
of bolts and bars, _e.g._ in the Soudan, as I am told by
an old pupil now in the Soudan civil service.) The
regular Latin phrase for imprisonment is "in vincula
conicere": Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "carcer."
[49] Gellius, _l.c._; Serv. _Aen._ ii. 57, a curious
passage, in which the release of Sinon from his bonds by
King Priam is compared with that of the prisoner who
enters the flaminia (house of the Flamen Dialis). That
there was something in the iron which interfered with
the religious efficacy of the Flamen seems likely; cp.
the rule that he might wear no ring unless it were
broken, and have no knot about his dress. But the latter
restriction suggests that binding may have been
originally the object of the taboo (cp. Ovid, _Fasti_,
v. 432), and that the iron taboo came in with the iron
age. Appel, _de Romanorum precationibus_, p. 82, note 2,
seems so to understand it. Cp. Eurip. _Iph. Taur._ 468,
where Orestes and Pylades are unbound before entering
the temple.
[50] There has been much discussion of this question; I
entirely agree with Wissowa (_R.K._ p. 354, where
references are given for the opposite opinion) that
there is no evidence for human sacrifice in the old
Roman religion or law, except in the rule that a
condemned criminal was made over to a deity (_sacer_),
which may have been a legal survival of an original form
of actual sacrifice. The alleged sacrifice by Julius
Caesar of two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius
(Dio Cass. xliii. 24) is of the same nature as the
sacrifice of captives to Orcus in _Aen._ xi. 81, _i.e._
it is outside of the civil life and religious law; this
is shown in the latter case by the mention of blood in
the ritual (_caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas_), and in
the former by the beheading of the mutineers.
[51] Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, p. 917 foll.; Livy x. 9;
Cic. _de Rep._ ii. 31. 65. All other methods of
execution were bloodless. _Decollatio_ remained in use
in the army (as in the case just mentioned), but the axe
disappeared from the fasces in the city with the
abolition of kingship. As further illustration of the
dislike of all bloodshed, cp. the rule of XII. Tables,
"mulieres genas ne radunto," _i.e._ at funerals, Cic.
_de Legibus_, ii. 59, and Serv. _Aen._ iii. 67 from
Varro, and v. 78. The gladiatorial _ludi_ may have been
a revival of an old custom akin to human sacrifice of
captives in the field. See _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 304, note 3.
We may also note in this connection that there is no
distinct trace of the blood-feud in old Roman law; see
_Zum aeltesten Strafrecht der Kulturvoelker_, p. 38
(questions of comparative law suggested by Mommsen and
answered by various specialists). Doubtless it once
existed, but vanished at an early date.
[52] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 242. The tail of the sacrificed
horse was carried to the Regia, where the blood was
allowed to drip on the sacred hearth (_participandae rei
divinae gratia_), Festus, p. 178.
[53] _R.F._ p. 311 foll., from Plutarch, _Rom._ 21.
[54] For this practice in many ancient religions, and
its substitute, the smearing of the stone with turmeric
or other red stain, see Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 139
foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 415.
[55] This is found in Zosimus ii. 1. 5; Diels,
_Sibyllinische Blaetter_, 132, and 73 note. Cp. Virg.
_Aen._ viii. 106; also a Greek rite.
[56] _G.B._ ed. 2, i. 241 foll.
[57] The bronze and iron ages, of course, overlap; see
Helbig, _Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 78 foll.
[58] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 22 and 128 foll.
Other examples are collected by Helbig, _op. cit._ p.
80.
[59] Dion. Hal. iii. 45; Mommsen in _C.I.L._ i. p. 177.
It may be as well to point out that iron, like wheat in
the taboos of the Flamen, was considered dangerous, as
being a novelty. The old Italian grain was not true
wheat but _far_, which continued to be used in religious
rites; _R.F._ p. 304, and Marquardt, _Privatleben der
Roemer_, p. 399 foll.
[60] Varro, _L.L._ vii. 84; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 629;
Petronius, _Sat._ 44. There are many parallels in Greek
ritual.
[61] See below, p. 146. Mr. Marett suggests to me a
comparison with the _rongo_ (sacred) of the Melanesians,
and _tapu_ as used of a place by them, _i.e._ set apart
by a human authority; Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 77.
[62] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 408 foll.; cp. 323 and notes.
[63] The fullest account of this will be found in
Marquardt, p. 262 foll. For the case of a man killed by
lightning, see note 4 on p. 263; the body was not burnt
but buried, and the grave became a _bidental_, and
_religiosum_.
[64] For the intricate pontifical law of burial-places
see Wissowa, p. 409. The quotation from Masurius is in
Gellius iv. 9. 8, "M. Sabinus in commentariis quos de
indigenis composuit." The word _sanctitas_ is here used
merely by way of explanation and not in a technical
sense; for which see Marq. p. 145 and references; but it
seems to have had a special use in the cult of the dead.
(See below, p. 470.)
[65] Quoted by Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 3. 8. For
Sulpicius see _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 118 foll.
[66] Festus, p. 278. This Aelius lived at the end of the
Republican period, and belonged to the school of
Sulpicius; Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._ i. pt. 2, p.
486.
[67] _e.g._ the three days on which the _mundus_ was
open were all _comitiales_, though at the same time
_religiosi_.
[68] _R.K._ pp. 376, 377.
[69] The authorities for the story are Verrius Flaccus,
_ap._ Gell. v. 17, and Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 21.
[70] For the extent of the taboo see Gell. iv. 9. 5;
Macr. i. 16. 18.
[71] Gell. v. 17. 3 foll. (_annalium quinto_).
[72] Festus, p. 278.
[73] _R.F._ p. 151.
[74] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 377, note 6.
[75] Cic. _ad Qu. Fratr._ ii. 4. 2.
[76] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 187, 189.
[77] _R.K._ p. 377. Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the
_multitudo imperitorum_ confused the _dies religiosi_
and _dies nefasti_. The distinction is most clearly seen
in the fact that on _dies religiosi_ the temples were
(or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was
ill-omened (Gell., _ib._), while on _dies nefasti_ the
latter was regular, such days being made over to the
gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular
ignorance with such words as _prave_ and _perperam_.
[78] See Prof. Rhys's paper read before the British
Academy, "Notes on the Coligny Calendar," p. 33 and
elsewhere.
[79] _Introduction_, p. 65 foll.
[80] Since writing this sentence I have read the paper
by W. Otto on "Religio and Superstitio" in _Archiv fuer
Religionswissenschaft_, 1909, p. 533 foll.; in which at
p. 544 he hints at a connection of _religio_ with the
practice of taboo. With some of his conclusions,
however, I cannot agree. The same explanation of the
origin of _religio_, _i.e._ in an age of taboo, has also
been suggested since my lecture was written by
Maximilianus Kobbert, _De verborum "religio atque
religiosus" usu apud Romanos_, p. 31 (Koenigsberg,
1910).
LECTURE III
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC
Taboo, the traces of which at Rome we examined in the last lecture, is,
as we saw, closely allied to magic, even if it be not, as Dr. Frazer
thinks, magic in a negative form. We have now to see what traces are to
be found of magic in the proper or usual sense of the word--active or
positive magic, as we may call it. By this we are to understand the
exercise of a mysterious mechanical power by an individual on man,
spirit, or deity, to enforce a certain result. In magic there is no
propitiation, no prayer. "He who performs a purely magical act," says
Dr. Westermarck,[81] "utilises such mechanical power without making any
appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being." Religion, on the
other hand, is an attitude of regard and dependence; in a religious
stage man feels himself in the hands of a supernatural power with whom
he desires to be in right relation.