Civitate Dei_ of St. Augustine.[323] These scholarly theologians,
wishing to show up the absurdity of the heathen religions, found a mine
of material in the great work of Varro on the Roman religious
antiquities; and though they found him by no means so elegant a writer
as Cicero, they studied him with pains, and have incidentally added
immensely to our knowledge both of Varro himself and of the Roman
religion. St. Augustine tells us that it was in the last three books of
his work that Varro treated of the Roman deities, and that he divided
them under the heads of _di certi_, _di incerti_, and _di selecti_. In
the first of these he dealt chiefly with those with which we are now
concerned: they were _certi_ because their names expressed their
supposed activity quite clearly.[324] We know for certain that Varro
found these names in the books of the pontifices, and that they were
there called Indigitamenta:[325] a word which has been variously
interpreted, and has been the subject of much learned disputation. I
believe with Wissowa that it means "forms of invocation," _i.e._ the
correct names by which gods should be addressed.
Thus these lists of names come down to us at third hand: Varro took them
from the pontifical books, and the Christian fathers took them from
Varro. It is obvious that this being the case they need very careful
critical examination; and till recently they were accepted in full
without hesitation, and without reflection on such questions as, _e.g._,
whether they are psychologically probable, or whether they can be
paralleled from the religious experience of other peoples. Some
preliminary critical attempts were made about fifty years ago in this
direction,[326] but the first thoroughgoing examination of the subject
was published by R. Peter in the article "Indigitamenta" in Roscher's
_Mythological Lexicon_. This most industrious scholar, though his
interpretation of the word Indigitamenta is probably erroneous,[327] was
the first to reach the definite conclusion that the lists are not really
primitive, and do not, as we have them, represent primitive religious
thought. It was after a very careful study of this article, which is
long enough to fill a small volume, that I wrote in my _Roman Festivals_
of the Indigitamenta as "based on"--not actually representing, I might
have added--"old ideas of divine agency, now systematised by something
like scientific terminology and ordered classification by skilled legal
theologians"; and as "an artificial priestly exaggeration of a primitive
tendency to see a world of nameless spirits surrounding and influencing
all human life."[328]
I was not then specially concerned with the Indigitamenta, and only
alluded to them in passing. But before my book was published there had
already appeared a most interesting work on the names of deities
(_Goetternamen_) by H. Usener, a brilliant investigator, which drew fresh
attention to the subject. Usener found in mediaeval records of the
religion of the heathen Lithuanians what seemed to be a remarkable
parallel with this old Roman theology, and he also compared these
records with certain facts in what we may call the pre-Olympian
religious ideas of the Greeks. "The conclusion which he draws," writes
Dr. Farnell[329]--and I cannot state it better--"is that the
Indo-Germanic peoples, on the way to the higher polytheism, passed
through an earlier stage when the objects of cult were beings whom he
designated by the newly-coined words 'Augenblickgoetter' and
'Sondergoetter'" (gods of momentary or limited function). He went further
than this, and claimed that the anthropomorphic gods of Greece and
Italy, of the Indo-Iranians, Persians, and Slavs, were developed out of
these spirits presiding over special functions and particular moments of
human life; but with this latter part of his theory I am not now
concerned. What we want to know now is whether in writing thus of the
Roman Indigitamenta Usener was using a record which really represents an
early stage of religious thought in Italy; and I may add that we should
be glad to know whether his Lithuanian records are also to be
unhesitatingly relied on.[330] As regards Greece, Dr. Farnell has
criticised his theories with considerable effect.
The most recent contribution to the discussion of the Roman part of the
subject is that of Wissowa, who in 1904 published a paper on "True and
False Sondergoetter at Rome";[331] this is a piece of most valuable and
weighty criticism, but extremely difficult to follow and digest. I here
give only the main results of it. Wissowa takes two genuine examples of
Sondergoetter which have come down to us from other sources, and more
directly than those mentioned above: the first from Fabius Pictor, the
oldest Roman historian,[332] and the other from the Acta Fratrum
Arvalium.[333] Fabius said that the flamen (Cerealis?), when sacrificing
to Tellus and Ceres, also invoked the following deities: Vervactor, for
the first ploughing, as Wissowa interprets it; Redarator, for the second
ploughing; Imporcitor, for the harrowing; Insitor, for the sowing;
Oberator, for the top-dressing; Occator, Sarritor, Subrincator, Messor,
Convector, Conditor, Promitor, for subsequent operations up to the
harvest and actual distribution of the corn for food. Secondly, in the
Acta of the Arval Brethren we find, on the occasion of a _piaculum_
caused by the growth of a fig-tree on the roof of the temple of Dea Dia,
at the end of a long list of deities invoked, and before the names of
the _divi_ of the Imperial families, the names of three Sondergoetter,
Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda, and on another occasion, Adolenda and
Coinquenda; these seem beyond doubt to refer to the process of getting
the obnoxious tree down from the roof, of breaking it up, and burning
it.
In both these examples, which have come down to us more directly than
the lists in the Fathers, Wissowa sees assistant or subordinate deities
(if such they can be called) grouped around a central idea, that of the
main object of sacrifice in each case;[334] these are the result of the
_cura_ and _caerimonia_ supervised and over-elaborated by pontifical law
and ritual. It is, I may add on my own account, most unlikely, and
psychologically almost impossible, that any individual farmer should
have troubled himself to remember and enumerate by name twelve deities
representing the various stages of an agricultural process; and Cato, in
fact, says nothing of such ritual. It was the flamen of the City-state,
who, when sacrificing to Tellus and Ceres before harvest,[335] pictured,
or recalled to mind, the various processes of a year of what we may call
high farming rather than primitive, under the names of deities plainly
invented out of the words which express those processes--words which
themselves are certainly not all antique. And in the second example,
which dates from the second century A.D., we see that the process of
destroying the intruding fig-tree is represented in ritual in exactly
the same curious way: the names of the deities, Deferunda and the rest,
being invented for the occasion out of the words which express the
several acts of the process of destruction. These Arval Brethren of the
second century inherited the traditions of their predecessors of an
earlier age, and carried out the work of amplification in their
invocations by pedantically imitating the pontifices of five or six
centuries earlier. They held, in a way which to us is ludicrous, to the
old notion that you should try and cover as much ground as possible in
worship, and to cover it in detail, so that no chance might be missed
of securing the object for which you were taking so much trouble.
Now to return to Varro and his lists of names. What is Dr. Wissowa's
conclusion about these, after examining the two examples of Sondergoetter
which have not come down to us through so much book-learning as the
rest?
Varro's _di certi_, he says[336]--and I think there is no doubt that he
is right--included the name of every deity, great or small, of which he
could feel sure that he knew something, as he found it in the books of
the pontifices; and the part of those books in which he found these
names, known as Indigitamenta, probably contained formulae of
invocation, _precationum carmina_,[337] of the same kind as the
_comprecationes deorum immortalium_ from which Gellius quoted the pairs
of male and female deities which we discussed above. Varro arranged all
these names in groups of principal and subordinate or assistant deities,
the latter amplifying in detail the meaning and scope of the former, as
we have just seen; and of this grouping some traces are still visible in
the accounts of Augustine and Tertullian. But the good Fathers tumbled
the whole collection about sadly in their search for material for their
mockery, having no historical or scientific object in view; with the
result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and
can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan. The
difficulty is increased by the etymologies and explanations which they
offer of the divine names, which, as a rule, are even more absurd than
the divinities themselves.[338]
But, in the last place, the question must be asked whether these
Sondergoetter of the real kind, such, for example, as those twelve
agricultural ones invoked by the flamen at the Cereale sacrum, had their
origin in any sense in popular usage or belief. At the end of his paper
Wissowa emphatically says that he does not believe it. For myself, I
would only modify this conclusion so far as this: they must, I think,
have been the theological, or perhaps rather the ritualistic outcome,
of a psychological tendency rooted in the popular mind. I have already
noticed that curious bit of folklore in which three spirits of
cultivation were invoked with a kind of acted parable at the birth of a
child;[339] and I cannot regard this custom as a piece of pontifical
ritualism, though the names may have been invented by the priests to
suit the practice. The old Roman seems to have had a tendency to ascribe
what for want of a better word we may call divinity, not only to animate
and inanimate objects, but to actions and abstractions; this, I take it,
is an advanced stage of animism, peculiar, it would seem, to a highly
practical agricultural people, and it is this stage which is reflected
in the ritualistic work of the priests. They turned dim and nameless
powers into definite and prehensible deities with names, and arranged
them in groups so as to fall in with the life of the city as well as the
farm. What was the result of all this ingenuity, or whether it had any
popular result at all, is a question hardly admitting of solution. What
is really interesting in the matter, if my view is the right one, is the
curious way in which the early Roman seems to have looked upon all life
and force and action, human or other, as in some sense associated with,
and the result of, divine or spiritual agency.
NOTES TO LECTURE VII
[291] For _loca sacra_ and _consecratio_ see Marquardt,
p. 148 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 400.
[292] Serv. _ad Aen._ xii. 119, "Romani moris fuerat
cespitem arae super imponere, et ita sacrificare." Cp.
some valuable remarks of Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p.
23. The altar of the Fratres was in front of their
grove; they used also a movable one (_foculus_) of
silver, but _cespiti ornatus_ (_ib._ p. 21): this was
for the preliminary offering of wine and incense
(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 351).
[293] In Aug. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 31; Agahd's edition of the
fragments of Varro's _Ant. rer. div._ p. 164.
[294] Aug. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 23; Agahd, p. 159. See
Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 280 foll.
[295] Strabo iv. 180.
[296] _Fasti_, vi. 305.
[297] Tibull. ii. 5. 27. The lines of Propertius are iv.
(v.) 2. 59, "Stipes acernus eram, properanti falce
dolatus, Ante Numam grata pauper in urbe deus." The
question is whether these are genuine examples of the
natural evolution of a "stock or stone" into something
in the nature of an anthropomorphic image of a deity, or
whether they are the result of the introduction of Greek
statues acting on the popular mind in rustic parts of
Italy. The passages, so far as I know, stand alone, and
we have no means of deciding whether the anthropomorphic
tendency was native or foreign. Vortumnus was, however,
undoubtedly of Etruscan origin; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 233.
The subject of iconic development of this kind is well
summarised in E. Gardner's little volume on _Religion
and Art in Ancient Greece_, ch. i.
[298] See Sayce, _Gifford Lectures on the Religions of
Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 302. An interesting paper on
the evolution of _dei_ at Rome out of functional
_numina_ will be found in von Domaszewski's
_Abhandlungen zur roem. Religion_, p. 155 foll., based on
Usener's theory of Sondergoetter. It is ingenious and
imaginative, but in my view does not square with the
facts as far as we know them. His stages are: (1)
momentary function of _numina_, _e.g._ lightning; (2)
elevation of this into a permanent power or function;
(3) consequent limitation of the numen to a special
well-marked function; (4) elevation of the numen to a
_deus_, conceived in the likeness of man, and male or
female, because man cannot think of power otherwise than
on the analogy of male or female creative energy.
Lastly, when the _deus_ is complete, the functions of
the former numen become attributes or qualities, traces
of which we find in the pairs of deities in Gellius,
xiii. 23, which are discussed later on in this lecture.
Some of these, of course, eventually became separate
deities--Salacia, Maia, Lua. As I cannot accept the view
that the earliest Roman idea of the supernatural is to
be found in _comprecationes_ of a comparatively late
period, _i.e._ in the so-called Indigitamenta, this
charmingly symmetrical account has no charm for me
beyond its symmetry.
[299] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 144, 146; Cato,
_R.R._ 139; _C.I.L._ vi. 110 and 111. Other references
are given by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 33, note 2.
[300] For Pales, _R.F._ p. 80 note; for Pomona, Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 165.
[301] The passage runs thus (Aug. _C.D._ iv. 32):
"Dicit enim (Varro) de generationibus deorum magis ad
poetas quam ad physicos fuisse populos inclinatos, et
ideo et sexum et generationes deorum maiores suos (id
est veteres credidisse Romanos) et eorum constituisse
coniugia." There is an amusing passage in Lactantius, i.
17 (_de Falsa Religione_), which Dr. Frazer might read
with advantage. It begins, "Si duo sunt sexus deorum,
sequitur concubitus." Then he goes on mockingly to argue
that the gods must have houses, cities, lands which
they plough and sow, which proves them mortal. Finally
he takes the whole series of inferences backwards,
finishing with "si domibus carent, ergo et concubitu. Si
concubitus ab his abest, et sexus igitur foemineus,"
etc. All this, he means, can be inferred from the fact
that gods are of both sexes; but that they have
_concubitus_ can no more be inferred from his argument
than that they plough and sow.
[302] Dr. Frazer conjectures a sacred marriage of
Jupiter and Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana, in
_Kingship_, p. 214; but he is well aware that it is pure
guesswork. There was, indeed, at Falerii such a marriage
of Juno with an unknown deity (Ovid, _Amores_, iii. 13),
of which, however, we do not know the history. Falerii
was one of those cities, like Praeneste, where Etruscan,
Greek, and Latin influences met. The "Orci nuptiae" on
which Frazer lays stress was simply the Greek marriage
of Pluto and Proserpine: "Orci coniux Proserpina," Aug.
_C.D._ vii. 23 and 28, Agahd, p. 152. Wissowa shows this
conclusively, _R.K._ p. 246. Orcus was Graecised as
Plutus, but was himself totally without personality.
[303] Dr. Frazer wrongly translates this as "ancient
prayers" (p. 411), adding "the highest possible
authority on the subject." _Oratio_ is never used in
this sense until Christian times: the word is always
_precatio_. All scholars are agreed that what is meant
is invocations to deities in old speeches, such as occur
once or twice in Cicero (_e.g._ at the end of the
_Verrines_); cp. Livy xxix. 15. As the recording of
speeches cannot be assumed to have begun before the
third century B.C., this does not carry us very far
back. That century is also the age in which the
pontifices were probably most active in drawing up
_comprecationes_; see below, p. 285 foll.
[304] See Appendix B at end of volume.
[305] Cp. Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 850, "_forti_ sacrificare
deae." In _R.F._ p. 60 foll., I have criticised the
attempts, ancient and modern, to make this Nerio the
subject of myths.
[306] Macrob. i. 12. 18. This word Maiestas shows the
doubtful nature of these feminine names, and probably
betrays the real meaning of Maia. I may mention here
that Bellona instead of Nerio is ascribed as wife to
Mars by Seneca ap. Aug. _C.D._ vi. 10; also Venus to
Volcanus instead of Maia. Neither have any connection,
so far as we know, with the gods to whom Seneca ascribes
them as wives: Venus-Vulcan is, of course, Greek. Both
Augustine and Dr. Frazer might with advantage have
abstained from citing Seneca on such a point: as a
Spaniard by birth he was not likely to know much about
technical questions of Roman ritual.
[307] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, i. 274.
[308] In the Graeco-Roman age Mars seems to have been
rather a favourite subject of myth-making; see Usener's
article on Italian myths in _Rhein. Mus._ vol. xxx.;
Roscher in _Myth. Lex._ for works of Graeco-Etruscan
art in which he appears in certain mythical scenes.
[309] H. Jordan, quoted in _R.F._ p. 61 note. I relegate
to an appendix what needs to be said about the other
pairs of deities mentioned by Gellius.
[310] Leipzig, 1898, p. 7 foll.
[311] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 168. Carter, _op. cit._ p. 21.
[312] See Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 98.
[313] So Fides is usually explained, as originally
belonging to Jupiter (Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 103 foll.); but
a different view is taken by Harold L. Axtell in his
work on the _Deification of Abstract Ideas at Rome_
(Chicago, 1907), p. 20.
[314] In the Festschrift f. O. Hirschfeld, p. 243 foll.
[315] _Religion of the Babylonians_, introductory
chapter.
[316] _Op. cit._ p. 412.
[317] _L.L._ v. 64.
[318] This fragment is No. 503 in Baehrens, _Fragm.
Poet. Rom._
[319] Lactantius, _Div. inst._ iv. 3.
[320] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, p. 256; Farnell,
_Evolution of Religion_, p. 180; von Domaszewski,
_Abhandlungen_, p. 166, "Man ruft sie an im Gebete als
pater und mater zum Zeichen der Unterwerfung unter ihren
Willen, wie der Sohn dem Gebote des paterfamilias sich
fuegt. Der sittlich strenge Gehorsam, der das
Familienleben der Roemer beherrscht, die pietas, ist der
Sinn der roemischen religio." Cp. also Appel, _de Rom.
precationibus_, pp. 102-3, who thinks that they regarded
the gods "velut patriarchas sive patres familias." He
quotes Preller-Jordan i. 55 and Dieterich, _Eine
Mithrasliturgie_, p. 142 sq. So too with mater--"velut
mater familias."
[321] The expression seems to mean "a father made for
the purpose of the embassy." Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 477,
note 3.
[322] p. 19. This was written, it may be noted, several
years after Aust had thoroughly investigated the cult of
Jupiter for his article in the _Mythological Lexicon_;
in which cult, if anywhere, one may be tempted to see
evidence of a personal conception of deities. As Dr.
Frazer has referred to the cult of Jupiter at Praeneste,
to which I referred him as evidence of a possibly
personal conception of the god in that Latin city, I may
say here that I adhere to what I said about this in
_R.F._ p. 226 foll.; no piece of antique cult has
occupied my attention more than this, and I have tried
to lay open every source of confirmation or criticism.
Wissowa has expressed himself in almost exactly the same
terms in _R.K._ p. 209: we arrived at our conclusions
independently.
[323] Tertullian, _ad Nationes_ 11, and _de Anima_, 37
foll.; Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, iv. _passim_, and especially
ch. xi.; R. Peter compiled a complete list (_Myth.
Lex._, _s.v._ "Indigitamenta," p. 143) from these and
other sources.
[324] Aug. _C.D._ vii. 17. That this was what Varro
meant by _di certi_ was first affirmed by Wissowa in a
note to his edition of Marquardt, p. 9; it has been
generally accepted as the true account. A full
discussion will be found in Agahd's edition of the
fragments of Varro's work, p. 126 foll.; cf. Peter's
article quoted above, and Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 61 and 65.
A somewhat different view is given in Domaszewski's
article in _Archiv_ for 1907, p. 1 foll., suggested by
Usener's _Goetternamen_.
[325] The evidence for this will be found in Marquardt's
note 4 on p. 9. I have no doubt that Wissowa is right in
explaining Indigitamenta as "Gebetsformeln," formulae of
invocation; in which the most important matter, we may
add, would be the name of the deity. See his _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 177 foll. The Indigitamenta contained,
as one section, the invocations of _di certi_.
[326] Chiefly by Ambrosch in his _Religionsbuecher der
Roemer_. Peter's article contains a useful account of the
whole progress of research on this subject.
[327] _Lex._ p. 137; it was that of his master
Reifferscheid. Cp. Wissowa, _op. cit._ (_Ges. Abhandl._
p. 306 foll.).
[328] _R.F._ pp. 191, 341.
[329] "The place of the Sondergoetter in Greek
Polytheism," printed in _Anthropological Essays
addressed to E. B. Tylor_, p. 81. Usener's discussion of
the Roman and Lithuanian Sondergoetter is in his
_Goetternamen_, p. 73 foll.
[330] Wissowa writes (_Ges. Abhandl._ p. 320 note) that
he has reason to believe that a great number of the
Lithuanian Sondergoetter only became such through the
treatment of the subject by the mediaeval writers on
whom Usener relied!
[331] _Ges. Abhandl._ p. 304 foll.
[332] Servius (Interpol.) _ad Georg._ i. 21.
[333] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 147; _C.I.L._ vi.
2099 and 2107.
[334] _Op. cit._ p. 323 foll.; for _famuli_ and _anculi
divi_, Henzen, _op. cit._ p. 145.
[335] See above, p. 121.
[336] p. 312; cp. 320, where he further asserts his
belief that Varro is responsible himself for the
creation of a great number of these Sondergoetter, owing
to his extreme desire to fix and define the function of
every deity in relation to human life; just as the
mediaeval writers Laskowski and Pretorius may have
created many Lithuanian Sondergoetter. As I am not quite
clear on this point, I have not mentioned it in the
text.
[337] _Op. cit._ p. 314, note 1. See above, note 33.
[338] _e.g._ Vaticanus, "qui infantum vagitibus
praesidet"; _Rusina_ from _rus_; _Consus_ from
_consilium_, etc.
[339] See above, p. 84.
LECTURE VIII
RITUAL OF THE _IUS DIVINUM_
I have already frequently mentioned the _ius divinum_, the law governing
the relations between the divine and human inhabitants of the city, as
the _ius civile_ governed the relations between citizen and
citizen.[340] When we examined the calendar of Numa, we were in fact
examining a part of this law; we began with this our studies of the
religion of the Roman city-state, because it is the earliest document we
possess which illuminates the dark ages of city life, so far as religion
is concerned. The study of the calendar naturally led us on to consider
the evidence it yields, taken together with other sources of
information, as to the nature of the deities for whose worship it fixes
times and seasons, or, more accurately, the amount of knowledge to which
the Romans had attained about their divine beings. But we must now
return to the _ius divinum_, and study it in another aspect, for which
the calendar itself does not suffice as evidence.