boundary, so the city had to be clearly marked off from all that was
outside of it. Its walls were sacred, or, strictly speaking, a certain
imaginary line outside of them called the _pomoerium_ was sacred. This
is well shown in the traditional method of founding a city even in
historical times, _e.g._ a _colonia_, as described by Varro, Servius,
and Plutarch.[450] A white ox and a white cow were harnessed to a
plough, of which the share must be made of bronze--a rule which shows at
once the antiquity and the religious character of the rite, for iron, as
we saw, was taboo in most religious ceremonies. A rectangular furrow was
drawn where the walls of the city were to be; the earth was turned
inwards to mark the future line of the wall, and the furrow represented
the future _pomoerium_. When the plough came to the place where there
was to be a gate, it was lifted over it, and the ploughing resumed
beyond it. This probably meant, as Plutarch expressed it, that the walls
(or rather the _pomoerium_), were sacred while the gates were profane;
had the gates been holy, scruple would necessarily have been felt about
the passage in and out of them of things profane. Thus the _pomoerium_
was a boundary line between the sacred and the profane, like that of the
farm; but in historical times it acquired a more definite religious
meaning, for within it there could only dwell those deities who belonged
to the city and its inhabitants, _i.e._ the _di indigetes_, and who were
recognised as its divine inhabitants.[451] And only within its limits
could the _auspicia_ of the city be taken.
We should naturally expect that this sacred boundary would have its
holiness secured or revived by an annual _lustratio_ like that of the
farm and _pagus_; and so no doubt it was. But the memory of this
survives only in the word _amburbium_, which, on the analogy of
_ambarvalia_, must mean a rite of this processional kind. Luckily we
have definite knowledge of the real _lustratio_ of a city in those
ritualistic inscriptions of Iguvium which I have more than once referred
to.[452] It is the _lustratio_ of the _arx_, the citadel of Iguvium,
which we may guess to have been the original _oppidum_ or germ of the
historical city. The details are complex, and show clear traces of
priestly organisation; but the main features stand out unmistakably. A
procession goes round the _arx_ (_ocris Fisia_), with the
_suovetaurilia_--ox, sheep, and pig--as in the Latin _lustratio_; at
each gate it stops, while sacrifice and prayer are offered on behalf of
the citadel, the city, and the whole people of Iguvium. There were three
gates, and each of them is the scene of sacrifice and prayer, because
they are the weak points in the wall, and they need to be strengthened
by annual religious operations; such at least is the most obvious
explanation. Whether the Fratres Attiedii would have been able to
explain it thus we may doubt; neither in the sacrificial ritual nor in
the prayers, as recorded in the inscription, do we find any clear trace
of a distinction between the sacred and the profane, or of the idea of a
hostile spiritual world outside the sacred boundary. So far as we can
judge from the prayers, the object is really a religious one, to implore
the deities of the city to preserve it and all within it. The language
of these prayers hardly differs from that in which a Christian Church of
to-day asks for a blessing on a community.[453]
So far I have been speaking of the permanent separation of land or city
by a sacred boundary line from the profane world without. But human
beings _en masse_ might be subjected to the same process--an army, for
example, at the opening of the season of war; and so, too, might its
appurtenances--horses, arms, and trumpets. In the account of the census
and _lustrum_ in the Campus Martius given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
who passed some years in Rome in the time of Augustus, we find the
_suovetaurilia_ driven three times round the assembled host and
sacrificed to Mars. This was doubtless the early form of the political
census, which had a military meaning and origin. But we have a more
exact and reliable account of a similar rite in the Iguvian documents,
which contain instructions for the _lustratio_ of the people apparently
before a campaign.[454] So far as we can gather from the Umbrian text,
the male population was assembled in a particular spot in its military
divisions, and round this host a procession went three times; at the end
of each circuit there was sacrifice and prayer to Mars and two female
associates of his power, the object of which, as we can read in the
words of the prayer, was to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse its
enemies, who were to be confounded and frightened and paralysed.
Here religion of a rude sort has been superimposed on the originally
magical ceremonial. For the idea must have been that by drawing a "magic
circle" around the host, which might have to march against enemies
living far beyond the pale of the _ager Romanus_ (or Iguvinus), where
hostile magical influences might be brought to bear against them, they
were in some mysterious way marked off, rendered "holy," and so
protected against the wiles of the enemy. A later and animistic age
would think of them as needing protection against hostile spirits, of
whose ways and freaks they were of course entirely ignorant. Of these
primitive ideas about the danger of entering hostile territory and of
leaving your own, Dr. Frazer has collected some examples in his _Golden
Bough_ (i. 304 foll.), both from savage tribes and from Greek usage. A
single parallel from the pen of a Roman historian, which Dr. Frazer has
not mentioned, may suffice us here. Livy tells us that the method in
Macedonia was to march the whole host in spring between the severed
limbs of a dog:[455] the principle is here the same as in Italy, but the
method differs slightly. In each case some mysterious influence is
brought to bear on the whole army without exception; but in the one case
a line is drawn round it, in the other it passes through the parts of an
object which must have been supposed to be endowed with magical power.
And once more, in spring before the season of arms, all the belongings
of the host were subjected to some process of the same kind. I have
alluded to this in my lecture on the calendar, and need not now
reproduce the evidence of the Equirria at the end of February and on
March 14, or of the Quinquatrus on March 19, when the _lustratio_ took
place of the shields (_ancilia_) of the Salii, the war-priests of Mars,
and the Tubilustrium on March 23, which tells its own tale.[456] But I
may recall the fact that the calendar supplies us also with evidence
that on the return of the host to their own territory all these
lustrations had to be repeated in order to rid men, horses, arms, and
trumpets of such evil contagion as they might have contracted during
their absence. It may be that one special object of lustration after the
return of an army was to rid it, with all belonging to it, of the taint
of bloodshed, just as the Jewish warriors and their captives were
purified before re-entering the camp.[457] But in the Roman pontifical
law this idea is hardly discernible, and the only trace I can find of it
is a statement of Festus that the soldiers who followed the general's
car in a triumph wore laurel wreaths "ut quasi purgati a caede humana
intrarent urbem."[458] I may add here that the passage of a triumphing
army through the Porta triumphalis, which was probably an isolated arch
in the Campus Martius just outside the city wall,[459] most likely had
as its original meaning the separation of the host from the profane
world in which it had been moving; and the triumphal arches of later
times, which were within the city, were thus developed architecturally
from an origin which belongs to the region of magic.[460] To the same
class of ideas, if I am not much mistaken, belongs the familiar Italian
practice of compelling a surrendered army to pass under the yoke. As
Livy explains this when he first mentions it, it was symbolical of
subjection: "ut exprimatur confessio subactam domitamque esse
gentem";[461] and this was no doubt the idea in the minds of the
historical Romans. But it may well have been that it had its root in a
process which was supposed to deprive the conquered enemy of all
dangerous contagion--to separate them from their own land and people
before they came into peaceful contact with their conquerors.
A last word before I leave this part of my subject. Though it is
interesting to try to get at the root-idea of these processes of
_lustratio_, we must remember that in the Rome of history they had lost
not only such magical meaning as they ever had, but also much of the
religious meaning which in course of time was superimposed upon it. The
sacrifices and the prayers remained, but the latter were muttered and
unheard by the people. And except in the country districts these
ceremonies were more and more absorbed, as time went on, into the
social, military, and political life of the community, as _e.g._ the
lustration of the host became a political census; or they tended to
disappear altogether, like the _ambarvalia_ and perhaps the _amburbium_.
They grew up in the religious experience of the Romans, beginning with
its very earliest and quasi-magical forms; but they came at last to
represent that experience no longer, and when we meet with them in
historical times it is impossible to ascribe to them any real influence
on life and conduct. _Lustratio_ never in pagan Italy developed an
ethical meaning as _catharsis_ did in Greece.[462] But meaningless as
they were, the stately processions remained, and could be watched with
pride by the patriotic Roman all through the period of the Empire, until
the Roman Church adapted them to its own ritual and gave them, as we
saw, a new meaning. As the cloud-shadows still move slowly over the
hollows of the Apennines, so does the procession of the patron saint
pass still through the streets of many an Italian city.[463]
NOTES TO LECTURE IX
[406] Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century of the
Western Empire_, p. 63.
[407] See Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral
Ideas_, ii. 615 foll.
[408] _C.I.L._ i. Nos. 43 foll.
[409] _C.I.L._ xiv. 2863. See _R.F._ p. 224, and
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 209.
[410] _Op. cit._ vol. i. p. 252; cp. 271.
[411] See Sir Alfred Lyall's _Asiatic Studies_, Series
I. ch. vi. No one would call the vow of Aeneas, in
_Aen._ vi. 69, a bargain with Apollo and the Sibyl.
[412] Marquardt, p. 266; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i.^2
594 foll. The ceremony is best described by Ovid, _Ex
Ponto_, iv. 9. 5 foll. He is addressing the consul of
the year from his place of exile:
at cum Tarpeias esses deductus in arces,
dum caderet iussu victima sacra tuo,
me quoque secreto grates sibi magnus agentem
audisset media qui sedet aede deus.
(II. 28 foll.)
[413] Valerius Maximus iv. 1. 10.
[414] A list of these is given in Aust, _De aedibus
sacris populi Romani_ (Marpurg, 1889). A valuable work,
which will be of service to us later on.
[415] Livy xxxvi. 2. 3.
[416] _Ib._ xxii. 10.
[417] _Ib._ sec. 6. The meaning is that if any one has
stolen an animal which was intended to be dedicated, no
blame attaches to the person so robbed; and that if a
man performs his dedication on a day of ill omen
unwittingly, it will hold good none the less.
[418] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 195.
[419] The fact that words like _reus_ and _damnatus_
were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow
and to those who had performed it, _i.e._ as being
liable like a defendant, and then released from that
position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the
transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius
says (iii. 2. 6) _se numinibus obligat_, as an accused
person is _obligatus_ to the authorities of the State
(Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, 189 foll.). It is the natural
tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a
legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the
original idea was really thought of as a contract, and
we have only to reflect that the final act was a
thank-offering to see the difference between the civil
and the religious process.
[420] Livy v. 21.
[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the
fifth book of _Res reconditae_ by one Sammonicus
Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in
cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."
[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in
Pauly-Wissowa.
[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori
praetori...." Cp. Cic. _de Nat. deorum_, ii. 10, "at
vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam
imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite
velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."
[424] See Muenzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encycl._; Soltau, _Die Anfaenge der roem.
Geschichtschreibung_, p. 48 foll.
[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Cassius, fragment, xxxv.
6; Ennius, _Ann._ vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment
is the oldest reference to the event which we possess,
and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc
audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis
certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."
[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect
struck St. Augustine. In _Civ. Dei_, v. 18, he writes:
"Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes
Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum
sanguine suo placantibus Romanus liberaretur exercitus,"
and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs.
I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on
Cicero, _de Nat. deor._ ii. 3. 10.
[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 352, note 1.
[428] By Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 69 foll. This
touching of the chin seems to be an example of that
personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see,
_e.g._, Westermarck, _op. cit._ i. 586. Decius makes
himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching
(as priest) the only part of his person which was
exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O.
Weinrich, _Antike Heiligungswuender_, p. 63 foll., and
Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a
sacrificing priest.
[429] See above, p. 180.
[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates
at length by examples of the worship of the spear or
sword among various peoples.
[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9.
Is it possible that it may have some reference to the
fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the
Latins?
[432] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos
inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive
nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however,
the translator from the Umbrian is assisted by the Latin
formulae we are discussing.
[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me
sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc.
This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed
to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C.
(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 257). The interesting feature in
this _devotio_, used at the siege at Carthage, is that
it is not himself whom the commander devotes--the common
sense of the Romans had got beyond that--but the enemy
as substitutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide
magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do
devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones
exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the
enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only gods
invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes,
while in the older formula it is the gods of Romans and
Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called _Decius_ wrote:
"Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck,
p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur
sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word _eliciatur_
shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last
passage is that the parallel passage in the Euripidean
_Iph. in Aul._ (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the
idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be
witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant
points down and up respectively in invoking them, as
also in the _devotio_ of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii.
6), which was an abnormal _procuratio prodigii_.
[434] Cp. the language used by Livy of the second Decius
(x. 29): "prae se agere formidinem ac fugam ...
contacturum funebribus diris signa tela arma hostium."
For spells or curses of this kind see Westermarck i.
563: a curse is conveyable by speech, especially if
spoken by a magistrate or priest. "Among the Maoris the
anathema of the priest is regarded as a thunderbolt that
an enemy cannot escape." See also Robertson Smith,
_Semites_, p. 434, for the Jewish ban, by which impious
sinners, or enemies of the city and its God, were
devoted to destruction. He remarks that the Hebrew verb
to ban is sometimes rendered "consecrate": Micah iv. 13;
Deut. xiii. 16; and Joshua vi. 26 (Jericho), which
exactly answers to the consecratio of Carthage. For
curses conveyable by sacrifices, as in all the cases I
have mentioned, see Westermarck ii. 618 foll. 624, and
the same author's paper on conditional curses in
Morocco, in _Anthropological Essays_, addressed to E. B.
Tylor, p. 360.
[435] "Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and
confound their devices." I well remember hearing this
read in church throughout the Crimean war.
[436] "Pro republica Quiritium," in the formula quoted
above.
[437] Livy viii. 10 _ad fin._
[438] See above, note 28.
[439] See Marquardt, p. 276 and notes; Mommsen,
_Strafrecht_, 900 foll. The subject has generally been
treated from the legal point of view rather than the
religious; but from the religious point of view it has
generally been assumed that the sacrifice was to appease
the god. So no doubt it was; but I venture also to
conjecture that the victim was _vicarius_ for the
contamination of the community. On the subject generally
Westermarck's two chapters on human sacrifice and
blood-revenge (xix. and xx. in vol. i.) are extremely
well worth reading.
[440] _Aen._ i. 607 foll. Cp. _Aen._ iii. 429--
praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni
cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus,
where the slow movement and circuitous course of a
lustratio must have been in Virgil's mind. The movement
round an object for lustral purposes is seen in _Aen._
vi. 229, "idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda," where
Servius explains _circumtulit_ by _purgavit_. As early
as Livius Andronicus (second century B.C.) we find
"classem lustratur" of fishes swimming round a fleet
(Ribb. _Trag. Fragmenta_, p. 1).
[441] Marquardt, p. 324, for the _februa_ of the
Luperci, _R.F._ p. 320 foll., and the explanations there
given. More will be found alluded to in Van Gennep, _Les
Rites de passage_, p. 249. To my mind none are quite
convincing. The Romans believed that blows with these
_februa_ (strips of the victim's skin) made women
fertile; they were therefore clearly magical implements,
but beyond this we do not seem to get. (See also Deubner
in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 495 foll.)
[442] Varro, _L.L._ vi. 13, "Februum Sabini purgamentum,
et id in sacris nostris verbum." Cp. Varro, _ap.
Nonium_, p. 114; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 19 foll., where he
calls _februa piamina, purgamenta_, in the language of
the _ius divinum_.
[443] _L.L._ vi. 11.
[444] Servius, _ad Aen._ x. 32; xi. 842; cp. i. 136.
[445] See _R.F._ p. 127, for the same rite in the Church
of England (Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, p. 292).
[446] _Les Rites de passage_, ch. ii.
[447] For boundary marks in historical times see
_Gromatici auctores_, vol. ii. p. 250 foll. (Rudorff).
[448] If the cattle were in the woodland beyond the
settlement, as they would be in summer, they could not
be protected in this way: like an army going into the
country of _hostes_ (see above, p. 216) they were
treated in another way, which we may connect with the
ritual of the Parilia, as Dr. Frazer has beautifully
shown in his paper on St. George and the Parilia (_Revue
des etudes ethnographiques et sociologiques_, 1908, p. 1
foll.).
[449] _Georg._ i. 338 foll.
[450] Varro, _L.L._ v. 143; Servius, _Aen._ v. 755 (from
Cato); Plutarch, _Romulus_, xi.
[451] See above, p. 117.
[452] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 12 foll. and 42 foll.
[453] The deities of the city were invoked to preserve
the name, the magistrates, rites, men, cattle, land, and
crops: a list in which the name is the only item that
carries us back to pre-Christian times.
[454] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 21 and 84 foll.
[455] Livy xl. 6 init.
[456] See above, p. 96.
[457] Numbers xxxi. 19.
[458] Festus, p. 117.
[459] See Huelsen-Jordan, _Roem. Topographie_, vol. iii.
p. 495; Von Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen_, p. 217 foll.
[460] Suggested by Van Gennep, _Les Rites de passage_,
p. 28.
[461] Livy iii. 28. 11.
[462] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 132 foll.
[463] The account of _lustratio_ given in this lecture
is adapted from the author's chapter on the same subject
in _Anthropology and the Classics_, Oxford University
Press, 1908.
LECTURE X
THE FIRST ARRIVAL OF NEW CULTS IN ROME
I said in my first lecture that the whole story of Roman religious
experience falls into two parts: first, that of the formularisation of
rules and methods for getting effectively into right relations with the
Power manifesting itself in the universe; secondly, that of the gradual
discovery of the inadequacy of these, and of the engrafting on the State
religion of Rome of an ever-increasing number of foreign rites and
deities. The first of these stories has been occupying us so far, and
before I leave it for what will be practically an introduction to
succeeding lectures, it will be as well for me to sum up the results at
which we have already arrived.
I began with what I called the protoplasm of religion, the primitive
ideas and practices which form the psychological basis of the whole
growth. The feeling of awe and anxiety about that which is mysterious
and unknown, the feeling which the Romans called _religio_, seems to
have manifested itself in Italy, as elsewhere, in those various ways
which I discussed in my second and third lectures, in the various forms
of magic, negative and positive. We find unmistakable evidence of the
existence of those strict rules of conduct called taboos, which fetter
the mind and body of primitive man, which probably arise from an
ineffective desire to put himself in right relations with forces he does
not understand, and which have their value as a social discipline.
Again, we find surviving in historical Rome numerous forms of active or
positive magic, by which it was thought possible to compel or overcome
those powers, so as to use them for your own benefit and against your
enemies. But I was careful to point out that on the whole little of all
this evidence of the early existence of magic at Rome is to be found in
the public religion of the Roman State, and that the natural inference
from this is that at one time or another there must have been a very
powerful influence at work in cutting away these obsolete root-leaves of
the plant that was to be, and in making of that plant a neat,
well-defined growth.
I went on to deal with the first stage in the working of this influence,
which we found reflected in the religion of the family as we know it in
historical times. The family, settled on the land, with its homestead
and its regular routine of agricultural process, developed a more
effective desire to get into right relation with the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. Anxiety is greatly lessened both in the house
and on the land, because within those limits there is a "peace" (or
covenant) between the divine and human inhabitants who have taken up
their residence there. The supernatural powers, conceived now (whatever
they may have been before) as spirits, are friendly if rightly
propitiated, and much advance has been made in the methods of
propitiation; magic and religion are still doubtless mixed up together
in these, but the tendency seems to be to get gradually rid of the more
inadequate and blundering methods. In fact, man's knowledge of the
Divine has greatly advanced; spirits have some slight tendency to become
deities, and magic is in part at least superseded by an orderly round of
sacrifice and prayer, which is performed daily within the house, and
within the boundary of the land at certain seasons of the year. This
stage of settlement and routine was the first great revolution in the
religious experience of the Romans, and supplied the basis of their
national character.