a word before I return for a while to the house and its inhabitants. One
of the most important matters for the pagus, as for the landholding
household, was the fixing of the boundaries of their land, whether as
against other pagi or households, or as separating that land from
unreclaimed forest. This was of course, like all these other operations
of the farm, a matter of religious care and anxiety--a matter in which
the feeling of anxiety and awe (_religio_) brought with it, to use an
expression of Cicero's, both _cura_ and _caerimonia_.[171] The _religio
terminorum_ is known to us in some detail, as it existed in historical
times, from the Roman writers on _agrimetatio_; and with their help the
whole subject has been made intelligible by Rudorff in the second volume
of the _Gromatici_.[172] We know that many different objects might serve
as boundary marks, according to the nature of the land, especially trees
and stones; and in the case of the latter, which would be the usual
_termini_ in agricultural land at some distance from forest, we have the
religious character of the stone and its fixing most instructively
brought out. "Fruits of the earth, and the bones, ashes, and blood of a
victim were put into a hole in the ground by the landholders whose lands
converged at the point, and the stone was rammed down on the top and
carefully fixed."[173] This had the practical effect--for all Latin
religion has a practical side--of enabling the stone to be identified in
the future. But Ovid[174] gives us a picture of the yearly commemorative
rite of the same nature, from which we see still better the force of the
_religio terminorum_. The boundary-stone is garlanded, and an altar is
built; the fire is carried from the hearth of the homestead by a
materfamilias, the priestess of the family; a young son of the family
holds a basket full of fruits of the earth, and a little daughter shakes
these into the fire and offers honey-cakes. Others stand by with wine,
or look on in silence, clothed in white. The victims are lamb and
sucking-pig, and the stone is sprinkled with their blood, an act which
all the world over shows that an object is holy and tenanted by a
spirit.[175] And the ceremony ends with a feast and hymns in honour of
holy Terminus, who in Ovid's time in the rural districts, and long
before on the Capitolium of Rome, had risen from the spirit sanctifying
the stone to become a deity, closely connected with Jupiter himself, and
to give his name to a yearly city festival on February 23.
These festivals on the land were, some of them at least, scenes of
revelry, accompanied with dancing and singing, as the poets describe
them, the faces of the peasants painted red with minium,[176] according
to an old Italian custom which survived in the case of the triumphator
of the glorious days of the City-state. But if we may now return for a
moment to the homestead, there were events of great importance to the
family which were celebrated there in more serious and sober fashion,
with rites that were in part truly religious, yet not without some
features that show the prevailing anxiety, rooted in the age of taboo,
which we learnt to recognise under the word _religio_. Marriage was a
religious ceremony, for we can hardly doubt that the patrician
_confarreatio_, in which a cake made of the anciently used grain called
_far_ was offered to Jupiter, and perhaps partaken of sacramentally by
bride and bridegroom, was the oldest form of marriage, and had its
origin in an age before the State came into being. We must remember that
the house was a sacred place, with religious duties carried on within
it, and the abode of household spirits; and when a bride from another
family or gens was to be brought into it, it was essential that such
introduction should be carried out in a manner that would not disturb
the happy relations of the human and divine inhabitants of the house. It
was essential, too, that the children expected of her should be such as
should be able to discharge their duties in the household without
hurting the feelings of these spirits. Some of the quaint customs of the
_deductio_ of later times strongly suggest an original anxiety about
matters of such vital interest; the torch, carried by a boy whose
parents were both living, was of whitethorn (_Spina alba_), which was a
powerful protective against hostile magic, and about which there were
curious superstitions.[177] Arrived at the house, the bride smeared the
doorposts with wolf's fat and oil, and wound fillets of wool around
them--so dangerous was the moment of entrance, so sacred the doorway;
and finally, she was carried over the threshold, and then, and then
only, was received by her husband into communion of fire and water,
symbolic of her acceptance as materfamilias both by man and deity.[178]
When the new materfamilias presented her husband with a child, there was
another perilous moment; the infant, if accepted by the father
(_sublatus_, _i.e._ raised from the earth on which it had been
placed),[179] did not immediately become a member of the family in the
religious sense, and was liable to be vexed by evil or mischievous
spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days,
by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which
was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and
struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of
agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile
spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly
spirits of household life and of settled agricultural pursuits had taken
up their abode. Nothing can better show the anxiety of life in those
primitive times, especially in a country like Italy, full of forest and
mountain, where dwelt mischievous Brownies who would tease the settler
if they could. But on the ninth day after the birth (or the eighth in
the case of a girl) the child was "purified" and adopted into the family
and its sacra, and into the gens to which the family belonged, and
received its name--the latter a matter of more importance than we can
easily realise.[180] From this time till it arrived at the age of
puberty it was protected by amulet and _praetexta_; the tender age of
childhood being then passed, and youth and maiden endued with new
powers, the peculiar defensive armour of childhood might be dispensed
with.[181]
Lastly, the death of a member of the family was an occasion of extreme
anxiety, which might, however, be allayed by the exact performance of
certain rites (_iusta facere_). The funeral ceremonies of the City-state
were of a complicated character, and the details are not all of them
easy to interpret. But the principle must have been always the
same--that the dead would "walk" unless they had been deposited with due
ceremony in the bosom of Mother Earth, and that their natural tendency
in "walking" was to find their way back to the house which had been
their home in life. Whether buried or burnt, the idea was the same: if
burnt, as seems to have been common Roman practice from very early
times, at least one bone had to be buried as representing the whole
body. We have seen that certain precautions were taken to prevent the
dead man from finding his way back, such as carrying him out of the
house feet foremost; and if he were properly buried and the house duly
purified afterwards, the process of prevention was fairly complete. His
ghost, shade, or double then passed beneath the earth to join the whole
body of Manes in the underworld,[182] and could only return at certain
fixed times--such at least was the idea expressed in the customs of
later ages. But if a paterfamilias or his representative had omitted
_iusta facere_, or if the dead man had never been buried at all, carried
off by an enemy or some wild beast, he could never have descended to
that underworld, and was roaming the earth disconsolately, and with an
evil will. The primitive idea of anxiety is well expressed in the Roman
festival of the Lemuria in May, when the head of a household could get
rid of the ghosts by spitting out black beans[183] from his mouth and
saying, "With these I redeem me and mine." Nine times he says this
without looking round: then come the ghosts behind him and gather up the
beans unseen. After other quaint performances he nine times repeats the
formula, "Manes exite paterni," then at last looks round, and the ghosts
are gone.[184] This is plainly a survival from the private life of the
primitive household, and well illustrates its fears and anxieties; but
the State provided, as we shall see, another and more religious
ceremony, put limitations on the mischievous freedom of the ghosts, and
ordained the means of expiation for those who had made a slip in the
funeral ceremonies, or whose dead had been buried at sea or had died in
a far country.
I have thus tried to sketch the life of the early Latin family in its
relations with the various manifestations of the Power in the universe.
We have seen enough, I think, to conclude that it had a strong desire to
be in right relations with that Power, and to understand its will; but
we may doubt whether that desire had as yet become very effective. The
circumstances of the life of the Latin farmer were hardly such as to rid
him of much of the _religio_ that he had inherited from his wilder
ancestors, or had found springing up afresh within him as he contended
with the soil, the elements, and the hostile beings surrounding him,
animal, human, and spiritual. He is living in an age of transition; he
is half-way between the age of magic and a new age of religion and duty.
NOTES TO LECTURE IV
[131] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship_, lect. viii. Dr. Frazer finds traces of
Mutterrecht only in the succession to the kingship of
Alba and Rome, of which the evidence is of course purely
legendary. If the legends represent fact in any sense,
they point, if I understand him rightly, to a kingship
held by a non-Latin race, or, as he calls it, plebeian.
Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 403 foll., believes that the
original Latin population, _i.e._ the plebs of later
times, lived under Mutterrecht.
[132] Aust, _Religion der Roemer_, p. 212.
[133] In historical times the household deities were
often represented by images of Greek type: _e.g._ the
Penates by those of the Dioscuri. Wissowa, _Rel. und
Kult._ p. 147, and _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 95
foll., and 289. See also De Marchi, _La Religione nella
vita privata_, i. p. 41 foll. and p. 90 foll.
[134] De Marchi, _op. cit._ i. 13 foll. In the ordinary
and regular religion of the family the State, _i.e._ the
pontifices, did not interfere; but they might do so in
matters such as the succession of _sacra_, the care of
graves, or the fulfilment of vows undertaken by private
persons. See Cicero, _de Legibus_, ii. 19. 47.
[135] Mucius Scaevola, the great lawyer, defined
_gentiles_ as those "qui eodem nomine sunt, qui ab
ingenuis oriundi sunt, quorum maiorum nemo servitutem
servivit, qui capite non sunt deminuti," Cic. _Topica_,
vi. 29. This is the practical view of a lawyer of the
last century B.C., and does not take account of the
_sacra gentilicia_, which had by that time decayed or
passed into the care of _sodalitates_: Marquardt, p. 132
foll.; De Marchi, ii. p. 3 foll. The notion of descent
from a common ancestor is of course ideal, but none the
less a factor in the life of the gens; it crops up,
_e.g._, in Virgil, _Aen._ v. 117, 121, and Servius _ad
loc._
[136] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, p. 47.
[137] For the alleged extinction of the gens Potitia,
and the legend connected with it, Livy i. 7, Festus 237.
[138] See Marquardt, _Privataltertuemer_, p. 56, and note
6.
[139] There is, I believe, no doubt that the
etymological affinities of the word _familia_ point to
the idea of settlement and not that of kin; _e.g._ Oscan
_Faama_, a house, and Sanscrit _dha_, to settle.
[140] The exact meaning and origin of the word has been
much discussed. It is tempting to connect it with _pax_,
_paciscor_, and make it a territory within whose bounds
there is _pax_; see Rudorff, _Gromatici veteres_, ii.
239, and Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 8 foll.
[141] See Rudorff, _Grom. vet._ ii. 236 foll.; Mommsen,
_Staatsrecht_, iii. 116 foll.; Kornemann in _Klio_, vol.
v. (1905) p. 80 foll.; Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_,
p. 1 foll.
[142] Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. 22 foll.; Kornemann,
_l.c._; Roby in _Dict. of Antiquities_, _s.v._
"Agrimetatio," p. 85. The view that there was freehold
garden land attached to the homestead gains strength
from a statement of Pliny (_N.H._ xix. 50) that the word
used in the XII. Tables for villa, which was the word in
classical times for the homestead, was _hortus_, a
garden, and that this was _heredium_, private property.
See Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. 23. It would indeed be
strange if the house had no land immediately attached to
it; we know that in the Anglo-Saxon village community
the villani, bordarii and cotagii, had their garden
croft attached to their dwellings, apart from such
strips as they might hold from the lord of the manor in
the open fields. See Vinogradoff, _Villainage in
England_, p. 148. For the _centuriatus ager_, Roby
_l.c._ We have no direct knowledge of the system in the
earliest times, but it is almost certain that it was
old-Italian in outline, and not introduced by the
Etruscans, as stated, _e.g._, by Deecke-Mueller,
_Etrusker_, ii. 128.
[143] For Latium this is proved by the sepulchral
hut-urns found at Alba and also on the Esquiline. One of
these in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford shows the
construction well. See article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encyclopaedie_; Helbig, _Die Italiker in der
Poebene_, p. 50 foll. Later there was an opening in the
roof.
[144] Von Duhn in _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1896,
p. 125 foll., and article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa.
[145] This is Aust's admirable expression, _Religion der
Roemer_, p. 214.
[146] See the author's _Social Life at Rome in the Age
of Cicero_, p. 242.
[147] Serv. _Aen._ i. 270; Marquardt, p. 126.
[148] _Ap. Gellium_, iv. 1. 17. For the sacredness of
food and meals, see below (Lect. VIII. p. 172).
[149] See a paper by the author in _Classical Rev._ vol.
x. (1896) p. 317, and references there given. Cp. the
passage of Servius quoted above (_Aen._ i. 730), where a
boy is described as announcing at the daily meal that
the gods were propitious. For the purity necessary I may
refer to Hor. _Odes_, iii. 23 _ad fin._, "Immunis aram
si tetigit manus," etc.
[150] _Primitive Culture_, i. 393.
[151] The feminine counterpart of Genius was Juno, of
which more will be said later on. Each woman had her
Juno; but this "other-soul" has little importance as
compared with Genius.
[152] See J. B. Carter in Hastings' _Dict. of Religion
and Ethics_, i. 462 foll. For Genius in general, Birt in
_Myth. Lex._ s.v.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 154 foll.;
Stewart, _Myths of Plato_, p. 450, for the connexion of
souls with ancestry.
[153] See the fifth of Plutarch's _Quaestiones Romanae_,
and Dr. Jevons' interesting comments in his edition of
Phil. Holland's translation, pp. xxii. and xxxv. foll.
Cp. the throwing the fetters of a criminal out by the
roof of the Flamen's house.
[154] _Civ. Dei_, vi. 9. These are deities of the
Indigitamenta; see below, p. 84.
[155] De Marchi, _La Religione_, etc. i. 188 foll.;
Marquardt, _Privatleben der Roemer_, p. 336, "la porte
est la limite entre le monde etranger et le monde
domestique" (A. van Gennep, _Rites de passage_, p. 26,
where other illustrations are given).
[156] See below, Lect. XII. p. 281.
[157] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 96; Aust, _Rel. der Roemer_, p.
117; Roscher in _Myth. Lex._ s.v. "Janus"; J. B. Carter,
_Religion of Numa_, p. 13. Cp. Von Domaszewski in
_Archiv_, 1907, p. 337.
[158] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of
Kingship_, p. 286 foll.; A. B. Cook in _Classical
Review_, 1904, p. 367 foll.
[159] _Gromat. vet._ i. 302, line 20 foll., describes
the chapels, but without mentioning the Lares. Varro
(_L.L._ vi. 25) supplies the name: "Compitalia dies
attributus Laribus Compitalibus; ideo ubi viae competunt
tum in competis sacrificatur." Cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ p.
148. But the nature of the land thus marked off is not
clear to me, nor explained (for primitive times) by
Wissowa in _Real-Encycl._, _s.vv._ "Compitum" and
"Compitalia."
[160] "Enos Lases juvate." See Henzen, _Acta Fratr.
Arv._ p. 26 foll.
[161] Cato, _R.R._ 5. Cp. Dion. Hal. iv. 13. 2. In Cato
143 the vilica is to put a wreath on the focus on
Kalends, Nones and Ides, and to pray to the Lar
familiaris pro copia (at the compita?).
[162] Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 172.
[163] The controversy about the Lar may be read in the
_Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, p. 42 foll.
(Wissowa), and 1907, p. 368 foll. (Samter in reply). De
Marchi (_La Religione_, etc. i. 28 foll.) takes the same
view as Samter, who originally stated it in his
_Familienfesten_, p. 105 foll., in criticism of
Wissowa's view. See also a note by the author in the
_Archiv_, 1906, p. 529.
[164] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 148; the details as to the
altar occur in _Gromatici vet._ i. 302. It was on this
occasion that _maniae_ and _pilae_ were hung on the
house and compitum ("pro foribus," Macr. i. 7. 35); see
above, p. 61. For the _religio Larium_, Cic. _de Legg._,
ii. 19 and 27. That the Compitalia was an old Latin
festival is undoubted; but as we are uncertain about the
exact nature of the earliest form of landholding, we
cannot be sure about the nature of the compita in remote
antiquity. The passage from the _Gromatici_ (Dolabella),
quoted above, refers to the _fines templares_ of
_possessiones_, _i.e._ the boundaries marked by these
chapels in estates of later times. See Rudorff in vol.
ii. p. 263; Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "Compitum."
[165] Varro, _L.L._ vi. 26. I have discussed this
passage in _R.F._ p. 294; it is still not clear to me
whether Varro is identifying his Paganicae with the
Sementivae, but on the whole I think he uses the latter
word of a city rite (_dies a pontificibus dictus_), and
the former of the country festivals of the same kind.
[166] _Fasti_, i. 663.
[167] _Cl. Rev._, 1908, p. 36 foll.
[168] _Georg._ i. 338 foll.
[169] See my discussion of Faunus in _R.F._ p. 258 foll.
I am still unable to agree with Wissowa in his view of
Faunus (_R.K._ p. 172 foll.). I may here mention a
passage of the gromatic writer Dolabella (_Gromatici_,
i. 302), in which he says that there were three Silvani
to each _possessio_ or large estate of later times: "S.
domesticus, possessioni consecratus: alter agrestis,
pastoribus consecratus: tertius orientalis, cui est in
confinio lucus positus, a quo inter duo pluresque fines
oriuntur." Faunus never became domesticated, but he
belongs to the same type as Silvanus. Von Domaszewski,
in his recently published _Abhandlungen zur roem.
Religion_, p. 61, discredits the passage about the three
Silvani, following a paper of Mommsen. But his whole
interesting discussion of Silvanus shows well how many
different forms that curious semi-deity could take.
[170] _Odes_, iii. 18.
[171] Cic. _de Inventione_, ii. 161.
[172] pp. 236-284.
[173] _R.F._ 325, condensed from Siculus Flaccus
(_Gromatici_, i. 141).
[174] _Fasti_, ii. 641 foll.
[175] See, _e.g._, Jevons, _Introduction_, etc., p. 138;
Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 321.
[176] See, _e.g._, Tibullus ii. 1. 55; Virg. _Ecl._ vi.
22, x. 27, and Servius on both these passages. Pliny,
_N.H._ xxxiii. 111; and cp. below, p. 177. For primitive
ideas about the colour red see Jevons, _Introd._ pp. 67
and 138; Samter, _Familienfeste_, p. 47 foll. Cp. also
the very interesting paper of von Duhn in _Archiv_,
1906, p. 1 foll., esp. p. 20: "Es soll eben wirklich
pulsierendes kraftvolles Leben zum Ausdruck gebracht
werden." His conclusions are based on the widespread
custom of using red in funerals, coffins, and for
colouring the dead man himself: the idea being to give
him a chance of new life--which is what he wants--red
standing for blood.
[177] I am not sure that I am right in calling this
whitethorn. For the qualities of the _Spina alba_ see
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 129 and 165, "Sic fatus spinam, quae
tristes pellere posset A foribus nexas, haec erat alba,
dedit." In line 165 he calls it _Virga Janalis_. See
also Festus, p. 289, and Serv. _ad Ecl._ viii. 29;
Buecheler, _Umbrica_, p. 136.
[178] The details are fully set forth in Marquardt,
_Roem. Privataltertuemer_, p. 52 foll. The religious
character of _confarreatio_ and its antiquity are fully
recognised by Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_,
p. 427. Some interesting parallels to the smearing of
the doorposts from modern Europe will be found collected
in Samter, _Familienfeste_, p. 81 foll. The authority
for the wolf's fat was Masurius Sabinus, quoted by
Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 142 (cp. 157), who adds from the
same author, "ideo novas nuptas illo perungere postes
solitas, ne quid mali medicamenti inferretur." The real
reason was, no doubt, that it was a charm against evil
_spirits_, not against poison; but it is worth while to
quote here another passage of Pliny (xx. 101), where he
says that a squill hung _in limine ianuae_ had the same
power, according to Pythagoras. Some may see a
reminiscence of totemism in the wolf's fat: in any case
the mention of the animal as obtainable is interesting.
[179] Dieterich, _Mutter Erde_, p. 6 foll. The idea is
that the child comes from mother earth, and will
eventually return to her.
[180] For Roman names Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 7
foll., and Mommsen, _Forschungen_, i. I foll., are still
the most complete authorities. For the importance of the
name among wild and semi-civilised peoples, Frazer,
_G.B._ i. 403 foll.; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 430
foll. All these ceremonies of birth, naming, and
initiation (puberty) have recently been included by M.
van Gennep in what he calls _Rites de passage_ (see his
book with that title, which appeared after these
lectures were prepared, especially chapters v. and vi.).
In all these ceremonies he traces more or less
successfully a sequence of rites of separation (_i.e._
from a previous condition), of margin, where the ground
is, so to speak, neutral, and of "aggregation," when the
subject is introduced to a new state or condition of
existence. If I understand him rightly, he looks on this
as the proper and primitive explanation of all such
rites, and denies that they need to be accounted for
animistically, _i.e._ by assuming that riddance of evil
spirits, or purification of any kind, is the leading
idea in them. They are, in fact, quasi-dramatic
celebrations of a process of going over from one status
to another, and may be found in connection with all the
experiences of man in a social state. But the Roman
society, of which I am describing the religious aspect,
had beyond doubt reached the animistic stage of thought,
and was in process of developing it into the theological
stage; hence these ceremonies are marked by sacrifices,
as marriage, the _dies lustricus_ (see De Marchi, p.
169, and Tertull. _de Idol._ 16) most probably, and
puberty (_R.F._ p. 56). I do not fully understand how
far van Gennep considers sacrifice as marking a later
stage in the development of the ideas of a society on
these matters (see his note in criticism of Oldenburg,
p. 78); but I see no good reason to abandon the words
purification and lustration, believing that even if he
is right in his explanation of the original
performances, these ideas had been in course of time
engrafted on them.
[181] In historical times the _toga pura_ was assumed
when the parents thought fit; earlier there may have
been a fixed day (_R.F._ p. 56, "Liberalia"). In any
case there was, of course, no necessary correspondence
between "social and physical puberty"; van Gennep, p. 93
foll.