Chapter IV: Italian Myths

In sect. 1 it has been said that the Italians had no Nature-myths. The reason why they had none should now be clear: the Italians had no Nature-gods. The sky-spirit, Jupiter, was undoubtedly distinguished from the vault of heaven by the primitive Italians, but he was not generically different from the spirits of vegetation, of sowing, of manuring, &c., and he seems to have been even of inferior dignity to the spirit of doorways.[18] The earth, on the other hand, does not seem to have been conceived of as a spirit even, much less as a goddess; but, if worshipped at all, was worshipped as a fetich.[19] Hence, the absence from Italy of any trace of the myth of the origin of all living creatures from a union between the earth and the sky.

Indeed, if by a myth we mean a tale told about gods or heroes, there are no Italian myths.[20] Myths attached to Greek loan-gods were borrowed with the gods from Greece. Myths in which Italian gods figure were borrowed or invented when the Italian gods were identified with Greek gods. Thus the Golden Age myth, for instance, can be referred to the time (A.U.C. 257) when Saturnus was identified with Kronos.[21] And of course, all the myths in which Æneas appears, and the whole mythical connection between Rome and Greece or Troy, are late.[22] Evander,[23] again, who figures in various passages of the _Romane Questions_, owes his existence wholly and solely to the attempt to connect Rome with Greece.

If, on the other hand, under the head of myth we include "the popular explanation of observed facts," then early Roman history, as Ihne says (i. 17), "is really nothing more than a string of tales, in which an attempt is made to explain old names, religious ceremonies and monuments, political institutions and antiquities, and to account for their origin." Some examples of this may be drawn from the _Romane Questions_. Marriage by capture has left traces behind it in the wedding customs of many countries, and the meaning of these survivals is usually wholly forgotten. But the historic consciousness of the Romans was so far alive to the actual facts of the case that the mock capture was explained as the commemoration of an actual historical rape—the Rape of the Sabines. Thus were explained the lifting of the bride over the threshold (_Q. R._ 19), the use of a javelin point to divide the bride's hair (_Ibid._ 87), the hymeneal cry _Talassio_ (_Ibid._ 31), and the fact that maids might not (though widows might) marry on festival days (_Ibid._ 105). The first of these customs is probably a survival from marriage by capture, and the last is indirectly connected with it. In Rome,[24] as in many other places,[25] the lamentations of the bride who was actually captured survived in the formal, extravagant lamentations of the bride who, in quieter times, was more peacefully won; and these cries would have been of bad omen on a day dedicated to the worship of the gods. Lamentation seems not to have been required of widows. The use of an iron javelin point is probably due to the dangers which, in the opinion of primitive man, attend on those about to marry, and require to be averted by the use of iron,[26] from the head[27] especially. The origin of the cry _Talassio_ is beyond recovery.[28]

But though the chief branch of Italian folk-tales consisted of popular explanations of observed facts, we can detect traces of those other folk-tales which from the beginning must have been designed simply and solely to gratify man's inherent desire for tales of adventure and the marvellous. Here it must suffice to point to two of the _Romane Questions_. In the fourth question we have a tale told of successful trickery on the part of Servius Tullius, which may well have formed part of some story of a Master Thief; and in _Romane Questions_ 36, the nightly visits of Fortuna through the window to her lover, Servius Tullius, at once remind us of the "soul-maidens" and "swan-maidens," who visit, and eventually desert, their human lover through the window or the keyhole[29]—the orthodox means of entrance and exit for spirits from the time of Homer at least.