survived, of course, alongside of the religion of the family and State,
from the earliest times to the latest, as it survives at the present day
in all countries civilised and uncivilised; and being harmless the State
took no heed of it. Some assortment of charms and spells for the cure of
diseases will be found in Cato's book on agriculture, and one or two
incidentally occur in that of Varro.[116] They performed the work of
insurance against both fire and accident, and even such a man as Julius
Caesar was not independent of such arts. Pliny tells us that after
experiencing a carriage accident he used to repeat a certain spell three
times as soon as he had taken his seat in a vehicle, and adds
significantly, "id quod plerosque nunc facere scimus."[117] Such carmina
were written on the walls of houses to insure them against fire.[118]
Pliny has a large collection of small magical delusions and
superstitions, many of which have an interest for anthropologists, in
the 28th book of his _Natural History_.
Another kind of harmless magic, to which the Romans, like all Italians
ancient and modern, were peculiarly addicted, is the use of amulets.
Here there is no spell, or obvious and expressed exercise of will-power
on the part of the individual, but the potent influence, _mana_, or
whatever we choose to call it, resides in a material object which brings
good luck, like the cast horse-shoe of our own times, or protects
against hostile will-power, and especially against the evil eye. This
curious and widely-spread superstition was probably the _raison d'etre_
of most of the amulets worn or carried by Romans. A modern Italian, even
if he be a complete sceptic and materialist, will probably be found to
have some amulet about him against the evil eye, "just to be on the
safe side."[119] A list of amulets, both Greek and Roman, will be
found in the _Dictionary of Antiquities_, and in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encyclopaedie, s.v._ "amulet," and it is not necessary here to
explain the various kinds in use in Italy; but I must dwell for a moment
on one type, which had been taken up into the life of the family, and in
one sense into that of the State, viz. the _bulla_ worn by children,
both boys and girls.
The bulla was a small object, enclosed in historical times in a capsule,
and suspended round the child's neck. It was popularly believed to have
been originally an Etruscan custom,[120] and borrowed by the Romans,
like so many other ornaments. It is, however, much more probable that
the custom was old Italian (as indeed the "medicine-bag" is world-wide),
and that the Etruscan contribution to it was merely the case or capsule,
which was of gold where the family could afford it--gold itself being
supposed to have some potency as a charm.[121] The object within the
case was, as Pliny tells us, a _res turpicula_ as a rule,[122] and this
may remind us that a _fascinum_ was carried in the car of the
triumphator as _medicus invidiae_, to use Pliny's pregnant expression.
The triumphing general needed special protection; he appeared in the
guise of Jupiter himself, and was for the moment lifted above the
ordinary rank of humanity. Some feeling of the same kind must have
originally suggested similar means for the protection of children under
the age of puberty. They also wore the _toga praetexta_, which, though
associated by us with secular magistrates, had undoubtedly a religious
origin. There are distinct signs that children were in some sense
sacred, and at the same time that they needed special protection against
the all-abounding evil influences to be met with in daily life.[123]
Thus this particular form of amulet became a recognised institution of
family life, and in due time little more than a mark of childhood.
Yet another kind of charm must be mentioned here which was used at
certain festivals, though apparently not at any of those belonging to
the authorised calendar. At the Compitalia, Paganalia, and _feriae
Latinae_ we are told that small images of the human figure, or masks, or
simply round balls (_pilae_), were hung up on trees or doorways, and
left to swing in the wind.[124] At the Compitalia the images had a
special name, _maniae_, of which the meaning is lost; but inasmuch as
the charms were hung up at cross-roads on that occasion, where the Lares
compitales of the various properties had their shrine, it was not
difficult to manufacture out of them a goddess, Mania, mother of the
Lares.[125] The common word for these figures was _oscilla_, and the
fact of their swinging in the wind suggested a verb _oscillare_, which
survives in our own tongue with the same meaning. Until lately it used
to be believed that they were substitutes for original human sacrifices:
a view for which there is not a particle of evidence, though it was
originated by Roman scholars.[126] Modern anthropology has found another
explanation, which is by no means improbable. Dr. Frazer, in an appendix
to the 2nd volume of the _Golden Bough_, has collected a number of
examples of the practice of swinging _by human beings_ as a magical
rite; they come from many parts of the world, including ancient Athens,
and even modern Calabria. He also points out that at the _feriae
Latinae_ the swingers seem to have been human beings, if we accept the
evidence of Festus, _s.v._ "oscillantes"; thus we are left with the
possibility that the oscilla were really imitations of men and women,
though not of human sacrificial victims.
Dr. Frazer is obviously hard put to it to explain the original meaning
and object of this curious custom. In the Paganalia, as described by
Virgil in the second _Georgic_,[127] the object would seem to be the
prosperity of the vine-crop.
coloni
versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto,
oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis,
et te Bacche vocant per carmina laeta, tibique
oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu.
hinc omnis largo pubescit vinea fetu, etc.[128]
But here we must leave a question which is still unsolved. All we can
say is that the old idea of substitutes for human sacrifice must be
finally given up, and that the _oscilla_, whether or not they were
substitutes for human swingers, were probably charms intended to ward
off evil influences from the crops. I am not disposed to put any
confidence in what Servius tells us, that this was a purification by
means of air, just as fire and water were also purifying agents; this
looks like the ingenious explanation of a later and a religious
age.[129]
So much, then, for magical charms and spells, and the survivals of them
in the fully developed Roman religion.[130] It might seem hardly worth
while to spend even so much time on them as I have done, and I cannot
deny that I am glad now to be able to leave them. My object has simply
been to show how little of this kind of practice, which meets us on the
threshold of religion, was allowed to survive by the religious
authorities of the State; in other words, I wished to make clear that in
our inquiries into the nature of the Roman religion it is really
religion and not magic that we have to do with.
It is really religion; it is desire, beginning already to be effective,
to be in right relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe.
The Romans, as I hope to show in the next lecture, when we can begin to
know and feel an interest in them, had not only begun to recognise this
Power in various forms and functions as one that must be propitiated,
because they were dependent on it for their daily needs, but to regulate
and make permanent the methods of propitiation. What was the relation
between this simple religion and morality--between ritual and
conduct--is a very difficult question, to which I shall return later on.
Dr. Westermarck has recently come to the conclusion that the religion of
primitive man has no true relation to morality, that it is not apt to
give a sanction to good action, or to develop the germs of a conscience.
But so far as I can discern, the idea of active duty, and therefore the
germ of conscience, must have been so intimately connected with the
religious practice of the old Latin family that it is to me impossible
to think of the one apart from the other. Surely it is in that life that
the famous word "_pius_" must have originated, which throughout Roman
history meant the sense of duty towards family, State, and gods, as
every reader of the _Aeneid_ knows. That the formalised religion of
later times had become almost entirely divorced from morality there is
indeed no doubt; but in the earliest times, in the old Roman family and
then in the budding State, the whole life of the Roman seems to me so
inextricably bound up with his religion that I cannot possibly see how
that religion can have been distinguishable from his simple idea of duty
and discipline.
NOTES TO LECTURE III
[81] Westermarck, _Origin etc. of Moral Ideas_, ii. 584.
[82] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 33.
[83] A useful summary of the whole subject, embodying
the results and terminology of Tylor, Frazer, and other
anthropologists, is Dr. Haddon's _Magic and Fetishism_,
in Messrs. Constable's series, _Religions Ancient and
Modern_. See also Marett, _On the Threshold of
Religion_, passim.
[84] _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, p.
89 foll. For an example not mentioned in the text
(_devotio_) see below, p. 206 foll. This may have been
originally practised by the Latin kings. I may here
draw attention to the almost dogmatic conclusions of the
modern French sociological school of research; _e.g._ M.
Huvelin, in _L'Annee sociologique_ for 1907, begins by
asserting as a fundamental law, proved by MM. Hubert et
Mauss, that magic is just as much a social fact as
religion: "Les uns et les autres sont des produits de
l'activite collective" (_Magie et droit individuel_, p.
1). But M. Huvelin's paper is to some extent a
modification of this dogma. He seeks to explain the fact
that magic is both secret and private, not public and
social, in historical times; and in the domain of law,
with which he is specially concerned, he concludes that
"a magical rite is only a religious rite twisted from
its proper social end, and employed to realise the will
or belief of an individual" (p. 46). This is the only
form in which we shall find magic at Rome, except in so
far as a few of its forms survive in the ritual of
religion with their meaning changed. In early Roman law,
as a quasi-religious body of rules and practices, there
are a few magical survivals which will be found
mentioned by M. Huvelin in this article; but they are of
no importance for our present subject.
[85] _Primitive Culture_, vol. i. ch. iv. See also
Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 36 foll.
[86] See Schuerer, _Jewish People in the Time of Christ_
(Eng. trans.), Division II. vol. iii. p. 151 foll.
[87] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 232; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 106. The
most careful examination of the rite and the evidence
for it is that of Aust in _Mythological Lexicon_, _s.v._
"Iuppiter," p. 656 foll. See also M.H. Morgan in vol.
xxxii. of _Transactions of the American Philological
Association_, p. 104.
[88] Tertullian, _de Jejun_. 16. Petronius, _Sat._ 44,
adds that the matrons went in the procession with bare
feet and streaming hair (cp. Pliny xvii. 266); but this
seems rather Greek than Roman in character, and
Petronius is plainly thinking of the town (_colonia_ he
calls it) in southern Italy where the scene of
Trimalchio's supper is laid; probably a Greek city by
origin, Croton or Cumae. A translation of this passage
will be found in Dill's _Roman Society from Nero to
Marcus Aurelius_, p. 133. The most useful words in it
for our purpose are "Jovem aquam exorabant."
[89] This suggestion was originally made by O. Gilbert,
_Roem. Topographie_, ii. 184.
[90] p. 204 foll.
[91] p. 657. The story is mixed up with Greek fables,
_e.g._ that of Proteus, as Wissowa has pointed out,
_R.K._ p. 106, note 10.
[92] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, vol. i.
(ed. 3) p. 270 foll.
[93] This fragment of Piso is preserved by Gellius, xi.
14. 1.
[94] See, _e.g._, Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_,
vol. ii. p. 106.
[95] Wissowa, _l.c._ Aust in Roscher's _Lexicon_, _s.v._
"Iuppiter," p. 657.
[96] Cumont, _Religions Orientales dans le paganisme
romain_, ch. 5. I shall return to this subject in my
second course of lectures.
[97] Mueller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. ch. vii., especially
p. 176 foll.
[98] Cp. below, Lecture XV.
[99] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 13: "Vestales nostras hodie
credimus nondum egressa urbe mancipia fugitiva retinere
in loco precationibus."
[100] Plutarch, _Numa_, 10. Virginity would increase the
power of the spell; see Fehrle, _Die kultische
Keuschheit im Altertum_, p. 54 foll.
[101] See, _e.g._, Frazer, _G.B._ i. 360 foll.
[102] See _R.F._ p. 320, notes 6 and 7.
[103] Within the last thirty years or so the Lupercalia
has been discussed (apart from writers on classical
subjects exclusively) by Mannhardt in his _Mythologische
Studien_, p. 72 foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p.
459; Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 481 foll.; and at the
moment of writing by E. S. Hartland, _Primitive
Paternity_, i. ch. ii. _R.F._ p. 310 foll. See Appendix
D.
[104] This view was originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa,
_s.v._ "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the
_Classical Review_, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa
replied in _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 211 foll. Since
then my conviction has become stronger that this great
scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei
as an institution of Numa, _i.e._ as primitive (frag.
121, Vahlen, from Festus p. 355, and Varro, _L.L._ vii.
44), yet Ennius was a youth at the very time when
Wissowa insists that the rite originated. Wissowa makes
no attempt to explain this. See below, p. 321 foll.
[105] _R.F._ p. 111 foll.
[106] _e.g._ the October horse, which also occurred on
the Ides; see _R.F._ p. 241 foll.; and the festival of
Anna Perenna, also on Ides (March 15), _R.F._ p. 50
foll. It is just possible that all the three festivals
were originally in the old calendar, and dropped out
because the mark of the Ides had to be affixed to the
day in the first place. See Wissowa, _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 164 foll.; _R.F._ p. 241.
[107] Thus Messrs. Hubert et Mauss (_Melanges d'histoire
des religions_, Preface, p. xxiv.) maintain that there
is no real antinomy between "les faits du systeme
magique et les faits du systeme religieux." There is in
every rite, they insist, a magical as well as a
religious element. Yet on the same page we find that
they exclude magic from all organised cult, because it
is not obligatory, and cannot (if I understand them
rightly) be laid down in a code, like religious
practice. I think it would have been simpler to consider
the magical element in religious rites as surviving,
with its original meaning lost, from an earlier stage of
thought. M. van Gennep, in his interesting work _Les
Rites de passage_, p. 17, goes so far as to call all
religious _ceremonies_ magical, as distinguished from
the _theories_ (_e.g._ animism) which constitute
religion. This seems to me apt to bring confusion into
the discussion; for all rites are the outward expression
of thought, and it is by the thought (or, as he calls
it, theories) that we must trace the sociological
development of mankind, the rites being used as indexes
only. I cannot but think that (as indeed in these days
is quite natural) this French school lays too much
stress upon the outward acts, and that this tendency has
led them to find real living magic where it is present
only in a fossil state.
[108] _e.g._ Tylor, article "Magic" in _Encycl. Brit._,
and _Primitive Culture_, 1. ch. iv.; Marett, _Threshold
of Religion_, 83. See below, p. 180.
[109] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 17 and 18. For the singing
or murmuring of spells in many countries, see Jevons,
_Anthropology and the Classics_, p. 93 foll.
[110] Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_, note on this
passage.
[111] _Civ. Dei_, viii. 19.
[112] See, _e.g._, Wordsworth, _Fragments and Specimens
of Early Latin_, p. 446, for an account of simple land
measurement which will suffice to illustrate the point
made here.
[113] The _carmina famosa_ sung at a triumph by the
soldiers had the same origin, but were used to avert
evil from the triumphator. The best exposition of this
is in H. A. J. Munro's _Elucidations of Catullus_, p. 76
foll.
[114] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 19. For the technical sense
of _defigere_, _defixio_, see Jevons in _Anthropology
and the Classics_, p. 108 foll.
[115] The most familiar examples are Virgil's eighth
_Eclogue_, 95 foll.; Ovid, _Met._ vii. 167, and
elsewhere; _Fasti_, iv. 551; Horace, _Epode_ v. 72; cp.
article "Magia" in Daremberg-Saglio; Falz, _De poet.
Rom. doctrina magica_, Giessen, 1903. There is a
collection of Roman magical spells in Appel's _De
Romanorum precationibus_, p. 43 foll. Many modern
Italian examples and survivals will be found in Leland's
_Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition_, pt. ii.
[116] Cato, _R.R._ 160; Varro, _R.R._ i. 3.
[117] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 21.
[118] _Ib._ xxviii. 20. The following sections of this
book are the _locus classicus_ for these popular
superstitions.
[119] See, _e.g._, _Italian Home Life_, by Lina Duff
Gordon, p. 230 foll.
[120] Juvenal v. 164. The idea probably arose, as a
passage of Plutarch suggests (_Rom._ 25), from the fact
that the triumphator, whose garb was no doubt of
Etruscan origin, wore the bulla.
[121] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 345, note 2, where we learn that
gold was taboo in some Greek worships, _e.g._ at the
mysteries of Andania, which sufficiently proves that it
possessed potency. Pliny, xxxiii. 84, mentions cases of
such potency as medicine, and among them its application
to children who have been poisoned.
[122] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 39.
[123] See an article by the author on the original
meaning of the _toga praetexta_ in _Classical Review_,
vol. x. (1896) p. 317.
[124] For the Compitalia, Macrob. i. 7. 34; Festus p.
238. For the Paganalia, Probus, _ad Georg._ ii. 385,
assuming the _feriae Sementinae_ there mentioned to be
the Paganalia (see _R.F._ p. 294). For the _feriae
Latinae_, Festus, _s.v._ "oscillantes."
[125] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 193, with whose view I entirely
agree. We learn of the imaginary goddess from Varro,
_L.L._ ix. 61. Pais, I may remark in passing, is certain
that Acca Larentia was the mater Larum; see his
_Lectures on Ancient Legends of Roman History_, p. 60
foll.
[126] 46. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 354, note 5.
[127] _Georg._ ii. 380 foll. It is not certain that
Virgil is describing the festival generally known as
Paganalia, which took place early in January; but it
seems probable from line 382 that he is thinking of some
festival of the pagus. The _oscilla_ may have been used
at more than one.
[128] Note that Virgil writes of masks used in rude
play-acting, as well as of _oscilla_ hung on trees, and
conjoins the two as though they had something in common.
The evidence of an engraved onyx cup in the Louvre, of
which a cut is given in the article "Oscilla" in the
_Dict. of Antiquities_, seems to make it probable that
masks worn by rustics on these occasions were afterwards
hung by them on trees as _oscilla_. Some of these masks
on the cup are adorned with horns, which may explain an
interesting passage of Apuleius (_Florida_, i. 1):
"neque enim iustius religiosam moram viatori obiecerit
aut ara floribus redimita ... aut quercus cornibus
onerata, aut fagus pellibus coronata," etc. See also
_Gromatici veteres_, ii. 241.
[129] See, however, Dr. Frazer's remarks in _G.B._ ii.
p. 454. He thinks that the air might in this way be
purged of vagrant spirits or baleful ghosts, as the
Malay medicine man swings in front of the patient's
house in order to chase away the disease. Cp. _G.B._ ii.
343, where a rather different explanation is attempted
of the _maniae_ and _pilae_.
[130] Magic in the old forms, or many of them, has
survived not only into the old Roman religion, but to
the present day, in many parts of Italy. "The peasants
have recourse to the priests and the saints on great
occasions, but they use magic all the time for
everything," was said by a woman of the Romagna Toscana
to the late C.G. Leland (_Etruscan Roman Remains_,
Introduction, p. 9). This enterprising American's
remarkable book, though dealing only with a small region
of northern Italy, deserves more consideration than it
has received. The author may have been uncritical, but
beyond doubt he had the gift of extracting secrets from
the peasantry. He claims to have proved that "la vecchia
religione" contains much that has come down direct from
pre-Christian times; and the appearance of Mr. Lawson's
remarkable book on _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient
Greek Religion_ may tempt some really qualified
investigator to undertake a similar work in Italy before
it is too late.
LECTURE IV
THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
Some of the survivals mentioned in the last two lectures seem to carry
us back to a condition of culture anterior to the family and to the
final settlement on the land. Some attempt has recently been made to
discover traces of descent by the mother in early Latium;[131] if this
could be proved, it would mean that the Latins were already in Latium
before they had fully developed the patriarchal system on which the
family is based. However this may be, the first real fact that meets us
in the religious experience of the Romans is the attitude towards the
supernatural, or "the Power that manifests itself in the Universe," of
the family as settled down upon the land. The study of religion in the
family, as we know it in historical times, is also that of the earliest
organisation of religion, and of the most permanent type of ancient
Italian religious thought. Aust, whose book on the Roman religion is the
most masterly sketch of the subject as yet published, writes thus of
this religion of the family:[132] "Here the limits of religion and
superstition vanish ... and in vain we seek here for the boundary marks
of various epochs." By the first of these propositions he means that the
State has not here been at work, framing a _ius divinum_, including
religion and excluding magic; in the family, magic of all kinds would be
admissible alongside of the daily worship of the family deities, and
thus the family would represent a kind of half-way house between the age
of magic and all such superstitions, and the age of the rigid
regulation of worship by the law of a City-state. By the second
proposition he means that the religious experience of the family is far
simpler, and therefore far less liable to change than that of the State.
Greek forms and ideas of religion, for example, hardly penetrated into
its worship:[133] new deities do not find their way in--the family
experience did not call for them as did that of the State. It may be
said without going beyond the truth that the religion of the family
remained the same in all essentials throughout Roman history, and the
great priesthoods of the State never interfered with it in any such
degree as to affect its vitality.[134]
But in order to understand the religion of the family, we must have some
idea of what the family originally was. When a stock or tribe
(_populus_) after migration took possession of a district, it was beyond
doubt divided into clans, _gentes_, which were the oldest kinship
divisions in Italian society. All members of a clan had the same name,
and were believed to descend from a common ancestor.[135] According to
the later juristic way of putting it, all would be in the _patria
potestas_ of that ancestor supposing that no deaths had ever occurred in
the gens; and, indeed, the idea that the gens is immortal in spite of
the deaths of individuals is one which constitutes it as a permanent
entity, and gives it a quasi-religious sanction. For primitive religion,
as has been well said, disbelieves in death; most of the lower races
believe both in a qualified immortality and in the non-reality or
unnaturalness of death.[136] In regard to the kinship of a clan, death
at any rate has no effect: the bond of union never breaks.
Now a little reflection will show that a clan or gens of this kind might
be maintained intact in a nomadic state, or during any number of
migrations; it is, in fact, manifestly appropriate to such a mobile
condition of society, and expresses its natural need of union; and when
the final settlement occurs, this body of kin will hold together in the
process, whether or no it has smaller divisions within it. We may be
certain that this was the one essential kin-division of the Latin stock
when it settled in Latium, and all through Roman history it continues
so, a permanent entity though families may die.[137] Every Roman lawyer
will recognise this fact as true, and I need not dwell on it now.