Chapter V: The Worship of Sacred Utensils 489 (2)

About totemism all I have to say is this. As I write, Dr. Frazer's great work on this subject has just appeared; it is entirely occupied with totemism among modern savages, true totemic peoples, with the object of getting at the real principles of that curious stratum of human thought, and he leaves to others the discussion of possible survivals of it among Aryans, Semites, and Egyptians. He himself is sceptical about all the evidence that has been adduced to prove its existence in classical antiquity (see vol. i. p. 86 and vol. iv. p. 13). Under these circumstances, and seeing that Dr. Frazer has always been the accepted exponent of totemism in this country since the epoch-making works appeared of Tylor and Robertson Smith, it is obviously unnecessary for me either to attempt to explain what it is, or to examine the attempts to find survivals of it in ancient Italy. When it first became matter of interest to anthropologists it was only natural that they should be apt to find it everywhere. Dr. Jevons, for example, following in the steps of Robertson Smith, found plenty of totemistic survivals both in Greece and Italy in writing his valuable _Introduction to the History of Religion_; but he is now aware that he went too far in this direction. Quite recently there has been a run after the same scent in France; not long ago a French scholar published a book on the ensigns of the Roman army,[23] which originally represented certain animals, and using Dr. Frazer's early work on totemism with a very imperfect knowledge of the subject, tried to prove that these were originally totem signs. Roman names of families and old Italian tribe-names are still often quoted as totemistic; but the Fabii and Caepiones, named after cultivated plants, and the Picentes and Hirpini, after woodpecker and wolf, though tempting to the totemist, have not persuaded Dr. Frazer to accept them as totemistic, and may be left out of account here; there may be many reasons for the adoption of such names besides the totemistic one. In the course of the last Congress of religious history, a sober French scholar, M. Toutain, made an emphatic protest against the prevailing tendency in France, of which the leading representative is M. Salomon Reinach.[24] Let us pass on at once to the second primitive mode of thought which I mentioned just now, and which is not nearly so remote--speaking anthropologically--from classical times as totemism. Totemism belongs to a form of society, that of tribe or clan, in which family life is unknown in our sense of the word, and it is therefore wholly remote from the life of the ancient Italian stocks, in whose social organisation the family was a leading fact; but _taboo_ seems rather to be a mode of thought common to primitive peoples up to a comparatively advanced stage of development, and has left its traces in all systems of religion, including those of the present day.

By this famous word _taboo_, of Polynesian origin, is to be understood a very important part of what I have called the protoplasm of primitive religion, and one closely allied both to magic and fetishism. For our present purposes we may define it as a mysterious influence believed to exist in objects both animate and inanimate, which makes them _dangerous_, _infectious_, _unclean_, _or holy_, which two last qualities are often almost identical in primitive thought, as Robertson Smith originally taught us.[25] What exactly the savage or semi-civilised mind thought about this influence we hardly yet know; we have another Polynesian word, _mana_, which expresses conveniently its positive aspect, and may in time help us towards a better understanding of it.[26] It is in origin pre-animistic, _i.e._ it is not so much believed to emanate from a _spirit_ residing in the object, as from some occult miasmatic quality. All human beings in contact with other men or things possessing this quality are believed to suffer in some way, and to communicate the infection which they themselves receive. As Dr. Farnell says in his chapter on the ritual of purification,[27] "The sense-instinct that suggests all this was probably some primeval terror or aversion evoked by certain objects, as we see animals shrink with disgust at the sight or smell of blood. The nerves of savage man are strangely excited by certain stimuli of touch, smell, taste, sight; the specially exciting object is something that we should call mysterious, weird, or uncanny."

Based on this notion of constant danger from infection, there arose a code of unwritten custom as rigid as that enforced by a careful physician in infectious cases at the present day; and thus, too, in course of time there was developed the idea of the possibility of _disinfection_, an idea as salutary as the discovery in medical science of effective methods for the disinfection of disease. The code of taboo had an obvious ethical value, as Dr. Jevons pointed out long ago;[28] like all discipline carried out with a social end in view, it helped men to realise that they were under obligations to the community of which they were a part, and that they would be visited by severe penalties if they neglected these duties. But it inevitably tended to forge a set of fetters binding and cramping the minds of its captives with a countless number of terrors; life was full of constant anxiety, of that feeling expressed by the later Romans in the word _religio_,[29] which, as we shall see, probably had its origin in this period of primitive superstition. The only remedy is the _discovery of the means of disinfection_, or, as we commonly call it, of _purification_: a discovery which must have been going on for ages, and only finds its completion at Rome in the era of the City-state. We shall return to this part of the subject when we deal with the ritual of purification; at present we must attend to certain survivals in that ritual which suggest that at one time the ancestors of the Roman people lived under this unwritten code of taboo.

Let us see, in the first place, how human beings were supposed to be affected by this mysterious influence under certain circumstances and at particular periods of their existence. As universally in primitive life, the new-born infant must originally have been taboo; for every Roman child needed purification or disinfection, boys on the ninth, girls on the eighth day after birth. This day was called the _dies lustricus_, the day of a purificatory rite; "est lustricus dies," says Macrobius, "_quo infantes lustrantur_ et nomen accipiunt."[30] In historical times the naming of the child was doubtless the more practically important part of the ceremony; though we may note in passing that the mystic value attaching to names, of which there are traces in Roman usage, may have even originally given that part a greater significance than we should naturally attribute to it.[31] Again, when the child reaches the age of puberty, it is all the world over believed to be in a critical or dangerous condition, needing disinfection; of this idea, so far as I know, the later Romans show hardly a trace, but we may suppose that the ceremony of laying aside the _toga_ of childhood, which was accompanied by a sacrifice, was a faint survival of some process of purification.[32] Once more, after a death the whole family had to be purified with particular care from the contagion of the corpse,[33] which was here as everywhere taboo; a cypress bough was stuck over the door of the house of a noble family to give warning to any passing pontifex that he was not to enter it;[34] and those who followed the funeral cortege were purified by being sprinkled with water and by stepping over fire.[35] _Society had effectually protected itself against the miasma in all these cases by the discovery of the means of disinfection._

One of the commonest forms of taboo is that on women, who, especially at certain periods, were apparently believed to be "infectious."[36] Of this belief we have very distinct survivals in Roman ritual, which I must here be content to mention only, leaving details to trained anthropologists to explain. We find them both in _sacra privata_ and _sacra publica_. Cato has preserved the formula for the propitiation of Mars Silvanus in the private rites of the farm; it is to take place _in silva_, and its object is the protection of the cattle, doubtless those which have been turned out to pasture in the forest, and are therefore in danger from evil beasts and evil spirits. Now this _res divina_ may be performed either by a free man or a slave, _but no woman may be present_, nor see what is going on.[37] In _sacra publica_ women were excluded from the cult of Hercules at the Ara Maxima, and were not allowed to swear by the name of that god; facts which are usually connected with the doubtful identification of Hercules with Genius, or the male principle of life.[38] More conclusive evidence of taboo in the case of women is the fact that at certain sacrifices they were ordered to withdraw, both _mulieres_ and _virgines_, together with other persons to be mentioned directly.[39] Unfortunately we are not told what those sacrifices were; but it seems clear enough that there had been at one time a scruple (_religio_) about admitting women of any age to certain sacred rites. If so, it is remarkable how the good sense of the Roman people overcame any serious disabilities which might have been produced by such ideas; the Roman woman gained for herself a position of dignity, and even of authority, in her household, which had very important results on the formation of the character of the people.[40] Traces of the old superstition doubtless continued to survive in folklore; an example, interesting because it seems to illustrate the positive aspect of taboo (_mana_), may be found by the curious in Pliny's _Natural History_, xxviii. 78.

Another widely-spread example of the class of ideas we are discussing is the belief that _strangers_ are dangerous. Dr. Frazer tells us that "to guard against the baneful influence exerted voluntarily or involuntarily by strangers is an elementary dictate of savage prudence." You have to disarm them of their magical powers, to counteract "the baneful influence which is believed to emanate from them."[41] Of this feeling he has collected a great number of convincing illustrations. We find it also surviving in Roman ritual. A note, referred to above, which has come down to us from the learned Verrius Flaccus, informs us that at certain sacrifices the lictor proclaimed "_hostis vinctus mulier virgo exesto_," where _hostis_ has its old meaning of stranger.[42] This is, of course, merely the old feeling of taboo surviving in the religious ritual of the City-state, and is also no doubt connected with the belief that the recognised deities of a community could not be approached by any but the members of that community; but its taproot is probably to be found in the ideas described by Dr. Frazer. We can illustrate it well from the ritual of another Italian city, Iguvium in Umbria, which, as I mentioned in a note to my last lecture, has come down to us in a very elaborate form. In the ordinance for the _lustratio populi_ of that city the magistrate is directed to expel all members of certain neighbouring communities by a thrice-repeated proclamation.[43] Such fear of strangers is not even yet extinct in Italy. Professor von Duhn told me that once when approaching an Italian village in search of inscriptions he was taken for the devil, being unluckily mounted on a black horse and dressed in black, and was met by a priest with a crucifix, who was at last persuaded to "disinfect" him with holy water as a condition of his being admitted to the village. But the Romans of historical times, in this as in so many other ways, discovered easy methods of overcoming these fears and scruples: we find a good example of this in the organised college of Fetiales, who, on entering as envoys a foreign territory, were fully protected by their sacred herbs, carried by a _verbenarius_, against all hostile contamination.[44]

A remark seems here necessary about the apparent inconsistency between this feeling of anxiety about strangers and the well-known ancient Italian practice of _hospitium_, by which two communities, or two individuals, or an individual and a community, entered into relations which bound them to mutual hospitality and kindness in case of need:[45] a practice so widely spread and so highly developed that it may be considered one of the most valuable civilising agents in the early history of Italy. There is, however, no real inconsistency here. In the first place, the stranger who was removed on the occasion of solemn public religious rites may be assumed not to have been in possession of the _ius hospitii_ with the Roman state, and in any case it must be doubtful whether that _ius_ would give him the right of being present at all sacrificial rites. Secondly, the researches of Dr. Westermarck have recently, for the first time, made it clear that both the taboo on strangers and the very widely-spread practice of hospitality can ultimately be traced down to the same root. The stranger is dangerous; but for that very reason it is desirable to secure his good-will at once. He may have the evil eye; but if so, it is as well to disarm him by offering him food and drink, and, when he has partaken of these, by entering into communion with him in the act of partaking also yourself. Expediency would obviously suggest some such remedy for the danger of his presence, and this would in course of time, in accordance with the instinct of Romans and Italians, grow into a set of rules sanctioned by law as well as custom--the _ius hospitii_.[46]

_Hostis vinctus mulier virgo exesto._ We have noticed traces of taboo on women and strangers: what of the _vinctus_? This is, so far as I know, the only proof we have that a man in chains was thought to be religiously dangerous. I am not sure how his expulsion from religious rites is to be explained. It is, however, as well to note that criminals were in primitive societies thought to be uncanny, probably because the commonest of all crimes, if not the only one affecting society as a whole, was the breaking of taboo, which made the individual an outcast.[47] And we may put this together with the fact that in the early City-state such outcasts were probably not kept shut up in a prison, but allowed to wander about secured with chains; this seems a fair inference from the power which the priest of Jupiter (_Flamen Dialis_) possessed of releasing from his chains any prisoner who entered his house, _i.e._ who had taken refuge there as in an asylum.[48] Thus the fettered criminal, who was certainly not a citizen, might find his way to the place where a sacrifice was going on, and have to submit to expulsion together with the strangers. It is, however, also possible that the iron of the chains, if they were of iron, made him doubly dangerous; for, as we shall see directly, iron was taboo, and the chains of the prisoner who took refuge with the Flamen had to be thrown out of the house, no doubt for this reason, by the _impluvium_.[49]

Turning to inanimate objects, which are supposed by primitive man to be dangerous or taboo, we are met by a fact which will astonish anthropologists, and which I cannot satisfactorily explain. Blood is everywhere in the savage world regarded with suspicion and anxiety; there is something mysterious about it as containing (so they thought) the life, and its colour and smell are also uncanny; horses cannot endure it, and there are still strong men who faint at the sight of it. Yet at Rome, so far as I can discover, there was in historical times hardly a trace left of this anxiety in its original form of taboo; the religious law had effectually eliminated the various chances that might arouse it. No student of Roman religious antiquities seems to have noticed this singular fact. No anthropologist, as far as I know, has observed that among the many taboos to which the Flamen Dialis was subject, blood does not appear. The reason no doubt is that anthropologists are not as a rule Roman historians; their curiosity is not excited by a fact which must have some explanation in Roman religious history. From a single passage of Festus (p. 117) we learn that soldiers following the triumphal car carried laurel "ut quasi purgati a caede humana intrarent urbem"; and this is the only distinct relic of the idea that I can find. Pliny's _Natural History_, that wonderful thesaurus of odds and ends, affords no help; the mystic qualities of blood are hardly alluded to there, and the same can be said of Servius' commentary on the _Aeneid_. The word blood is not to be found in the index to Wissowa's great work, of which the supreme value is its accurate record of the religious law and all the ceremonies of the State. I am constrained to believe that the priests or priest-kings who developed the _ius divinum_ of the Roman City-state deliberately suppressed the superstition, for reasons which it is impossible to conjecture with certainty. And this guess, which I put forward with hesitation, is indeed in keeping with certain other facts of Roman life. It is doubtful whether human sacrifice ever existed among this people;[50] it is certain that the execution of citizens in civil life by beheading was abandoned at a very early period.[51] The shedding of blood, except when a victim was sacrificed under the rules of sacred law, was carefully avoided; thus the horror of blood had a social and ethical result of value, instead of remaining a mere _religio_ (taboo). It is true that in one or two rites, such as that of the October horse, the blood of a sacrifice seems to have been thought to possess peculiar powers;[52] but it is at the same time noticeable that this rite is not included in the old calendar, a fact of which a wholly satisfactory explanation has not yet been offered. In the Lupercalia there is a trace of the mystic use of blood in sacrifice, but a very faint one: to this we shall return later on. The two Luperci had their foreheads smeared with the knife bloody from the slaughter of the victims, but the blood was at once wiped off with wool dipped in milk.[53] This rite is of course in the old calendar; it stands almost alone in its mystical character, and may have been taken over by the Romans from previous inhabitants of the site of Rome. Lastly, in the Terminalia, or boundary-festival of arable land in country districts, the boundary-stone was sprinkled with the blood of the victims, showing that a spirit, or _numen_, was believed to reside in it;[54] but I cannot find that this practice survived in the public sacrifices of the city. It is found only in the sacrifices (_Graeco ritu_) supervised by the _XV viri sacris faciundis_ in that part of the Ludi Saeculares of Augustus which was concerned with Greek chthonic deities in the Campus Martius.[55]

Yet unquestionably there had been a time when many inanimate objects were supposed to have a mystic or dangerous influence; this is sufficiently proved by the long list of taboos to which the unfortunate Flamen Dialis was even in historical times subject. He was forbidden to touch a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, ivy, wheat, leavened bread; he might not walk under a vine, and his hair and nails might not be cut with an iron knife; and he might not have any knot or unbroken ring about his person. Dr. Frazer has the merit of being the first to point out the real meaning of this strange list of disabilities, and to explain the mystic or miasmatic origin of some of them.[56] They need not detain us now, as they are survivals only, and survivals of ideas which must have been long extinct before Roman history can be said to begin. Almost the only one among them of which we have other traces is the taboo on iron, which must have been of comparatively late date, as the use of iron in Italy seems only to have begun about the eighth century B.C.[57] This is found also in the ritual of the Arval Brotherhood, the ancient agricultural priesthood revived by Augustus, and better known to us than any other owing to the discovery of its _Acta_ in the site of the sacred grove between Rome and Ostia. These Brethren had originally suffered from the taboo on iron; but in characteristic fashion they had discovered that a piacular or disinfecting sacrifice would sufficiently atone for its use whenever it was necessary to take a pruning-hook within the limits of the grove.[58] We may here also recall the fact that no iron might be used in the building or repairing of the ancient _pons sublicius_, the oldest of all the bridges of the Tiber.[59]

Every one who wishes to get an idea of the nature of taboo in primitive Rome, and of the way in which it was got rid of, should study the disabilities of the Flamen Dialis, and satisfy himself of their absence, with the exception just mentioned, and possibly one or two more, in the ritual of historical Rome. Nothing is more likely to convince him of the way in which Roman civilisation contrived to leave these superstitions as mere fossils, incapable any longer of doing mischief by cramping the conscience and inducing constant anxiety. If he is disposed to ask why such a large number of these fossils should be found attached to the priesthood of Jupiter, I must ask him to let me postpone that question, which would at this moment lead us too far afield.

I may, however, mention here that the Flaminica Dialis, who was not priestess of Juno as is commonly supposed, but assisted her husband in the cult of Jupiter, was also subject to certain taboos. On three occasions in the religious year she might not appear in public with her hair "done up," viz. the moving of the _ancilia_ in March, the festival of the Argei in March and May, and during the cleansing of the _penus Vestae_ in June. Also she might not wear shoes made from the skin of a beast that had died a natural death, but only from that of a sacrificial victim. There are traces of a _religio_ about shoe-leather, I may remark, both in the Roman and in other religious systems. Varro tells us that "in aliquot sacris et sacellis scriptum habemus, Ne quid scorteum adhibeatur: ideo _ne morticinum_ quid adsit." Leather was taboo in the worship of the almost unknown deity Carmenta. Petronius describes women in the cult of Jupiter Elicius walking barefoot; and we are reminded of the well-known rule which still survives in Mahommedan mosques.[60] The original idea may have been that the skin of an animal not made sacred by sacrifice might destroy the efficacy of the worship contemplated. On the other hand, the skin of a duly sacrificed animal had potency of a useful kind--a fact or belief so widespread as to need no illustration here; but we shall come upon an example of it in my next lecture.

Certain _places_ were also affected by the idea of taboo. In the later religious law of the City-state the sites of all temples, _i.e._ all places in which deities had consented to take up their abode, were of course holy; but this is a much more mature development, though it unquestionably had its root in the same idea that we are now discussing. Such sites, as we shall see in a later lecture, were _loca sacra_, and _sacer_ is a word of legal ritual, meaning that the place has been made over to the deity by certain formulae, accompanied with favourable auspices, under the authority of the State.[61] But there were other holy places which were not _sacra_ but _religiosa_; and the word _religiosum_ here might almost be translated "affected by taboo." Wissowa provides us with a list of these places, and this and the quotations he supplies with it are of the utmost value for my present subject.[62] They comprised, of course, all holy places which the State had not duly consecrated, and therefore some which hardly concern us here, such as shrines belonging to families and gentes, and temple-sites in the provinces of a later age. More to our purpose at this moment are the spots where thunderbolts were supposed to have fallen. Such spots were encircled with a low wall and called _puteal_ from their resemblance to a well, or _bidental_ from the sacrifice there of a lamb as a _piaculum_; the bolt was supposed to be thus buried, and the place became _religiosum_.[63] So, too, all burial-grounds were not _loca sacra_ but _loca religiosa_, technically because they were not the property of the state or consecrated by it; in reality, I venture to say, because the place where a corpse was deposited was of necessity taboo. Such places were _extra commercium_, and their sanctity might not be violated: "religiosum est," wrote the learned Roman Masurius Sabinus, "quod propter sanctitatem aliquam _remotum et sepositum est_ a nobis."[64] So, too, the great lawyer of Cicero's time, Servius Sulpicius, defines _religio_ as "quae propter sanctitatem aliquam remota ac seposita a nobis sit," where he is using _religio_ in the sense of a thing or place to which a taboo attaches.[65] And again, another authority, Aelius Gallus, said that _religiosum_ was properly applied to an object in regard to which there were things which a man might not do: "quod si faciat," he goes on, "adversus deorum voluntatem videatur facere."[66] These last words are in the language of the City-state; if we would go behind it to that of an earlier age, we should substitute words which would express the feeling or scruple, the _religio_, without reference to any special deity. Virgil has pictured admirably this feeling as applied to places, in describing the visit of Aeneas to the site of the future Rome under the guidance of his host Evander (_Aen._ viii. 347):--

hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit,
aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis.
_iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis_
_dira loci_: iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant.
"hoc nemus, hunc," inquit, "frondoso vertice collem,
(quis deus, incertum est) habitat deus."

This is a passage on which I shall have to comment again: at present I will content myself with noting how accurately the poet, who of all others best understood the instincts of the less civilised Italians of his own day, has used his knowledge to express the antique feeling that there were places which man must shrink from entering--a feeling far older than the invention of legal _consecratio_ by the authorities of a City-state.

Lastly, the principle of taboo, or _religio_, if we use the Latin word, affected certain times as well as places. Just as under the _ius divinum_ of the fully-developed State certain spots were made over to the deities for their habitation and rendered inviolable by _consecratio_, so certain days were also appointed as theirs which the human inhabitants might not violate by the transaction of profane business. But I have just pointed out that the consecration of holy places in this legal fashion was a late development of a primitive feeling or _religio_; exactly the same, if I am not mistaken, was the case with regard to the holy days. These were called _nefasti_, and belong to the life of the State; but there were others, called _religiosi_, which I believe to have been tabooed days long before the State arose.

When we come to examine the ancient religious calendar, it will be found that I shall not then be called upon to deal with _dies religiosi_, for the very good reason that they are not indicated in that calendar--there is no mark for them as _religiosi_, and some of them are not even _dies nefasti_, as we might naturally have expected.[67] What, then, is the history of them? We may be able to make a fair guess at this by noting exactly what these days were; Dr. Wissowa has put them together for us in a very succinct passage.[68] He begins the list with the 18th of Quinctilis (July), on which two great disasters had happened to Roman armies, the defeats on the Cremera and the Allia; and also the 16th, the day after the Ides, because, according to the legend, the Roman commander had sacrificed on that day with a view to gaining the favour of the gods in the battle. We may regard the story about the 18th as historical; but then we are told that _all_ days following on Kalends, Nones, and Ides were likewise made _religiosi_ (or _atri_, _vitiosi_, which have the same meaning) as being henceforward deemed unlucky by pronouncement of senate and pontifices;[69] thus all _dies postriduani_, as they were called, were put out of use, or at any rate declared unlucky, for many purposes, both public and private, _e.g._ marriages, levies, battles, and sacred rites,[70] simply because on one occasion disaster had followed the offering of a sacrifice on the 16th of Quinctilis. It is difficult to believe that thirty-six days in the year were thus tabooed, by a Roman senate and Roman magistrates, in a period when the practical wisdom of the government was beginning to be a marked characteristic of the State. Some people, we are told, went so far as to treat the _fourth day before_ Kalends, Nones, and Ides in the same way; but Gellius declares that he could find no tradition about this except a single passage of Claudius Quadrigarius, in which he said that the fourth day before the Nones of Sextilis was that on which the battle of Cannae was fought.[71]

I am strongly inclined to suggest that the traditional explanation of the tabooing of these thirty-six, or possibly seventy-two days was neither more nor less than an aetiological myth, like hundreds of others which were invented to account for Roman practices, religious and other; and this supposition seems to be confirmed as we go on with the list of _dies religiosi_ as given by Wissowa. The three days--Sextilis 24, October 5, November 8--on which the Manes were believed to come up from the underworld through the _mundus_ (to which I shall return later on) were _religiosi_;[72] so were those when the temple of Vesta remained open (June 7 to 15),[73] those on which the Salii performed their dances in March and October,[74] two days following the _feriae Latinae_ (a movable festival),[75] and the days of the Parentalia in February and the Lemuria in May, which were concerned with the cult and the memory of the dead.[76] Now the _religio_ or taboo on these days obviously springs either from a feeling of anxiety suggested by very primitive notions of the dead and of departed spirits; or in the case of the temple of Vesta, by some mystical purification or disinfection preparatory to the ingathering of the crops, which I noticed in my _Roman Festivals_ (p. 152 foll.); or again in the case of the Salii, by some danger to the crops from evil spirits, etc., which might be averted by their peculiar performances. In fact, all these _dies religiosi_ date as such, we may be pretty sure, from a very primitive period before the genesis of the City-state, and were not recognised--for what reason we will not at present attempt to guess--as _religiosi_ by the authorities who drew up the Calendar. Some of them appear in that calendar as _dies nefasti_, but not all; and I am entirely at one with Wissowa, whose knowledge of the Roman religious law is unparalleled for exactness, in believing that a _religio_ affecting a day had nothing whatever to do with its character as _fastus_ or _nefastus_.[77]

If all these last-mentioned _dies religiosi_ are such because ancient popular feeling attached the _religio_ to them, we may infer, I think, that the same was really the case also with the _dies postriduani_. The fact that the authorities of the State had made one or two days _religiosi_ as anniversaries of disasters, supplied a handy explanation for a number of other _dies religiosi_ of which the true explanation had been entirely lost; but that there was such a true explanation, resting on very primitive beliefs, I have very little doubt. Lucky and unlucky days are found in the unwritten calendars of primitive peoples in many parts of the world. An old pupil, now a civil servant in the province of Madras, has sent me an elaborate account of the notions of this kind existing in the minds of the Tamil-speaking people of his district of southern India. The Celtic calendar recently discovered at Coligny in France contains a number of mysterious marks, some of which may have had a meaning of this kind.[78] Dr. Jevons has collected some other examples from various parts of the world, _e.g._ Mexico.[79] The old Roman superstition about the luckiness of odd days and the unluckiness of even ones, which appears, as we shall see, in the arrangement of the calendar, was probably at one time a popular Italian notion, not derived, as used to be thought, from Pythagoras and his school.

I therefore conclude that we may add times and seasons to the list of those objects, animate and inanimate, which were affected by the practice of taboo in primitive Rome; and I hold that the word _religiosus_, as applied both to times and places, exactly expresses the feeling on which that practice is based. The word _religiosus_ came to have another meaning (though it retained the old one as well) in historical times, and the Romans could be called _religiosissimi mortalium_ in the sense of paying close attention to worship and all its details. But the original meaning of _religio_ and _religiosus_ may after all have been that nervous anxiety which is a special characteristic of an age of taboo.[80] To discover the best methods of soothing that anxiety, or, in other words, the methods of disinfection, was the work of the organised religious life of family and State which we are going to study. But I must first devote a lecture to another class of primitive survivals.

NOTES TO LECTURE II

[23] Renel, _Les Enseignes_, p. 43 foll. For the
contrary view, Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 490.

[24] On taboo in general, Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_, ch. vi.; Robertson Smith,
_Religion of the Semites_, p. 142 foll.; Frazer, _Golden
Bough_ (ed. 2), i. 343; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
_passim_. On the relation of taboo to magic, Marett,
_Threshold of Religion_, p. 85 foll. Lately M. van
Gennep in his _Rites de passage_ has attempted to
classify and explain the various rites resulting from
taboo.

[25] See the _Transactions of the Congress_ (Oxford
University Press), vol. i. p. 121 foll. M. Reinach had
alleged that the gens Fabia was originally a totem clan,
_Mythes et cultes_, i. p. 47.

[26] Marett, _On the Threshold of Religion_, p. 137
foll. "In _taboo_ the mystic thing is not to be lightly
approached (negative aspect); _qua mana_, it is instinct
with mystic power (positive aspect)": so Mr. Marett
states the distinction in a private letter.

[27] _Evolution of Religion_, p. 94.

[28] _Introduction_, ch. viii.; Westermarck, _Origin and
Development of Ethical Ideas_, i. 233 foll.

[29] See a paper by the author in the _Transactions of
the Congress of the History of Religions_, 1908, ii. 169
foll.

[30] Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 36; De Marchi, _La
Religione nella vita domestica_, i. p. 169 foll.;
Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Roemer,_ p. 62
foll., where the _dies lustricus_ is compared with the
Greek [Greek: amphidromia]. Unfortunately the details of
the Roman rite are unknown to us, which seems to
indicate that the primitive or magical character of it
had disappeared. Van Gennep, _op. cit._ ch. v., reviews
and classifies our present knowledge of this kind of
rite. See also Crawley, _Mystic Rose_, p. 435 foll.

[31] Crawley, _op. cit._ p. 436; Frazer, _G.B._ i. 403
foll. From this point of view Roman names need a closer
examination than they have yet received. See, however,
Marquardt, _Privatleben der Roemer_, pp. 10 and 81, and
Mommsen, _Roem. Forschungen_, i. 1 foll. Marquardt must
be wrong in stating (p. 10) that only the _praenomen_
was given on the _dies lustricus_; children dying before
that day usually, as he says on p. 82 note, have no name
in inscriptions, and that ceremony must surely have
introduced the child to the gens of its parents.
Certainly that introduction had not to wait till the
_toga virilis_ was taken; though Tertull. _de Idol._ 16
looks at first a little like it. The same statement is
made in the _Dict. of Antiq., s.v._ "nomen." Macr.
_Sat._ i. 16. 36, and Fest. 120, simply speak of
_nomen_.

[32] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 56; De Marchi, _op. cit._ p. 176.
For the primitive ideas about puberty, Crawley, _Mystic
Rose_, ch. xiii. The idea of the Romans seems to have
been simply that the child, who had so far needed
special protection from evil influences (of what kind in
particular it is impossible to say) by purple-striped
toga and amulet (see below, p. 60), was now entering a
stage when these were no longer needed. All notions of
taboo seem to have vanished.

[33] Marquardt, _Privataltertuemer_, p. 337 foll.

[34] Serv. _Aen._ ii. 714, and especially iii. 64. Other
references in Marq. _op. cit._ p. 338, note 5, and De
Marchi, _La Religione nella_ _vita domestica_, p. 190.
For similar usages of prohibition see van Gennep, _op.
cit._ ch. ii.

[35] Festus, p. 3, "itaque funus prosecuti redeuntes
ignem supragradiebantur aqua aspersi, quod purgationis
genus vocabant suffitionem." For the possibly magic
influence of these elements, see Jevons, _op. cit._ p.
70.

[36] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 325, iii. 222 foll.; Jevons, p.
59.

[37] Cato, _R.R._ 83, "mulier ad eam rem divinam ne
adsit neve videat quomodo fiat."

[38] Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 60. Dogs were also
excluded (_ib._ 90); Gellius xi. 6. 2; Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 227; Fowler, _R.F._ p. 194, where the private and
public taboos are compared.

[39] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto." For similar taboos in
Greece, Farnell in _Archiv_ for 1904, p. 76.

[40] Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 143 foll. Cp. Westermarck, _Origin, etc._, vol. i.
ch. xxvi., especially p. 652 foll.

[41] _G.B._ i. 298 foll.

[42] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto."

[43] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, p. 94 foll. Cp. Livy v. 50,
where it is said that, after the Gauls had left Rome,
all the temples, _quod ea hostis possedisset_, were to
be restored, to have their bounds laid down afresh
(_terminarentur_) and to be disinfected (_expiarentur_).
_Digest_, xi. 7. 36, "cum loca capta sunt ab hostibus,
omnia desinunt religiosa vel sacra esse, sicut homines
liberi in servitutem perveniunt; quod si ab hac
calamitate fuerint liberata, quasi quodam postliminio
reversa pristino statui restituerentur." Cp. Plutarch,
_Aristides_, 20. A friend reminds me that Bishop
Berkeley, when in Italy, had his bedroom sprinkled with
holy water by his landlady.

[44] See Marquardt, p. 420, notes 5 and 6. The
_verbenarius_ is mentioned in Serv. _Aen._ xii. 120, and
Pliny _N.H._ xxii. 5. For the disinfecting power of
verbena (_myrtea verbena_) see Pliny xv. 119, where it
is said to have been used by Romans and Sabines after
the rape of the Sabine virgins.

[45] See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 192 foll., based
on the famous essay of Mommsen in his _Roemische
Forschungen_, i. 319 foll. The passages quoted from Livy
for the practice in early times (i. 45, v. 50) are not,
of course, historical evidence; but we may fairly argue
back from the more explicit evidence of later times,
_e.g._ the Senatusconsultum de Asclepiade of 78 B.C.
(_C.I. Graec._ 5879).

There is a good example of the feeling in modern Italy
in a book called _In the Abruzzi_, by Anne Macdonell, p.
275. I have experienced it in remote parts of South
Wales long ago. Moritz, the German pastor who travelled
on foot in England towards the end of the eighteenth
century, noted that even the innkeepers were constantly
unwilling to take him in. His book was reprinted in
Cassell's National Library some years ago.

[46] See the very interesting chapter in _The Origin
and Development of Moral Ideas_, vol. i. p. 570 foll.,
especially p. 590 foll. Dr. Westermarck aptly points out
that hospitality is almost universal among "rude"
peoples, and loses its hold as they become more
civilised. M. van Gennep in his recently published work,
_Les Rites de Passage_, has attempted to classify the
various rites relating to taboo of strangers; see ch.
iii., especially p. 38 foll.

[47] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 70.

[48] Gellius x. 15. 8, "vinctum, si aedes eius
introierit, solui necessum est." (In hot countries
chains still usually, or in some degree, take the place
of bolts and bars, _e.g._ in the Soudan, as I am told by
an old pupil now in the Soudan civil service.) The
regular Latin phrase for imprisonment is "in vincula
conicere": Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "carcer."

[49] Gellius, _l.c._; Serv. _Aen._ ii. 57, a curious
passage, in which the release of Sinon from his bonds by
King Priam is compared with that of the prisoner who
enters the flaminia (house of the Flamen Dialis). That
there was something in the iron which interfered with
the religious efficacy of the Flamen seems likely; cp.
the rule that he might wear no ring unless it were
broken, and have no knot about his dress. But the latter
restriction suggests that binding may have been
originally the object of the taboo (cp. Ovid, _Fasti_,
v. 432), and that the iron taboo came in with the iron
age. Appel, _de Romanorum precationibus_, p. 82, note 2,
seems so to understand it. Cp. Eurip. _Iph. Taur._ 468,
where Orestes and Pylades are unbound before entering
the temple.

[50] There has been much discussion of this question; I
entirely agree with Wissowa (_R.K._ p. 354, where
references are given for the opposite opinion) that
there is no evidence for human sacrifice in the old
Roman religion or law, except in the rule that a
condemned criminal was made over to a deity (_sacer_),
which may have been a legal survival of an original form
of actual sacrifice. The alleged sacrifice by Julius
Caesar of two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius
(Dio Cass. xliii. 24) is of the same nature as the
sacrifice of captives to Orcus in _Aen._ xi. 81, _i.e._
it is outside of the civil life and religious law; this
is shown in the latter case by the mention of blood in
the ritual (_caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas_), and in
the former by the beheading of the mutineers.

[51] Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, p. 917 foll.; Livy x. 9;
Cic. _de Rep._ ii. 31. 65. All other methods of
execution were bloodless. _Decollatio_ remained in use
in the army (as in the case just mentioned), but the axe
disappeared from the fasces in the city with the
abolition of kingship. As further illustration of the
dislike of all bloodshed, cp. the rule of XII. Tables,
"mulieres genas ne radunto," _i.e._ at funerals, Cic.
_de Legibus_, ii. 59, and Serv. _Aen._ iii. 67 from
Varro, and v. 78. The gladiatorial _ludi_ may have been
a revival of an old custom akin to human sacrifice of
captives in the field. See _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 304, note 3.

We may also note in this connection that there is no
distinct trace of the blood-feud in old Roman law; see
_Zum aeltesten Strafrecht der Kulturvoelker_, p. 38
(questions of comparative law suggested by Mommsen and
answered by various specialists). Doubtless it once
existed, but vanished at an early date.

[52] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 242. The tail of the sacrificed
horse was carried to the Regia, where the blood was
allowed to drip on the sacred hearth (_participandae rei
divinae gratia_), Festus, p. 178.

[53] _R.F._ p. 311 foll., from Plutarch, _Rom._ 21.

[54] For this practice in many ancient religions, and
its substitute, the smearing of the stone with turmeric
or other red stain, see Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 139
foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 415.

[55] This is found in Zosimus ii. 1. 5; Diels,
_Sibyllinische Blaetter_, 132, and 73 note. Cp. Virg.
_Aen._ viii. 106; also a Greek rite.

[56] _G.B._ ed. 2, i. 241 foll.

[57] The bronze and iron ages, of course, overlap; see
Helbig, _Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 78 foll.

[58] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 22 and 128 foll.
Other examples are collected by Helbig, _op. cit._ p.
80.

[59] Dion. Hal. iii. 45; Mommsen in _C.I.L._ i. p. 177.
It may be as well to point out that iron, like wheat in
the taboos of the Flamen, was considered dangerous, as
being a novelty. The old Italian grain was not true
wheat but _far_, which continued to be used in religious
rites; _R.F._ p. 304, and Marquardt, _Privatleben der
Roemer_, p. 399 foll.

[60] Varro, _L.L._ vii. 84; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 629;
Petronius, _Sat._ 44. There are many parallels in Greek
ritual.

[61] See below, p. 146. Mr. Marett suggests to me a
comparison with the _rongo_ (sacred) of the Melanesians,
and _tapu_ as used of a place by them, _i.e._ set apart
by a human authority; Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 77.

[62] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 408 foll.; cp. 323 and notes.

[63] The fullest account of this will be found in
Marquardt, p. 262 foll. For the case of a man killed by
lightning, see note 4 on p. 263; the body was not burnt
but buried, and the grave became a _bidental_, and
_religiosum_.

[64] For the intricate pontifical law of burial-places
see Wissowa, p. 409. The quotation from Masurius is in
Gellius iv. 9. 8, "M. Sabinus in commentariis quos de
indigenis composuit." The word _sanctitas_ is here used
merely by way of explanation and not in a technical
sense; for which see Marq. p. 145 and references; but it
seems to have had a special use in the cult of the dead.
(See below, p. 470.)

[65] Quoted by Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 3. 8. For
Sulpicius see _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 118 foll.

[66] Festus, p. 278. This Aelius lived at the end of the
Republican period, and belonged to the school of
Sulpicius; Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._ i. pt. 2, p.
486.

[67] _e.g._ the three days on which the _mundus_ was
open were all _comitiales_, though at the same time
_religiosi_.

[68] _R.K._ pp. 376, 377.

[69] The authorities for the story are Verrius Flaccus,
_ap._ Gell. v. 17, and Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 21.

[70] For the extent of the taboo see Gell. iv. 9. 5;
Macr. i. 16. 18.

[71] Gell. v. 17. 3 foll. (_annalium quinto_).

[72] Festus, p. 278.

[73] _R.F._ p. 151.

[74] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 377, note 6.

[75] Cic. _ad Qu. Fratr._ ii. 4. 2.

[76] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 187, 189.

[77] _R.K._ p. 377. Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the
_multitudo imperitorum_ confused the _dies religiosi_
and _dies nefasti_. The distinction is most clearly seen
in the fact that on _dies religiosi_ the temples were
(or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was
ill-omened (Gell., _ib._), while on _dies nefasti_ the
latter was regular, such days being made over to the
gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular
ignorance with such words as _prave_ and _perperam_.

[78] See Prof. Rhys's paper read before the British
Academy, "Notes on the Coligny Calendar," p. 33 and
elsewhere.

[79] _Introduction_, p. 65 foll.

[80] Since writing this sentence I have read the paper
by W. Otto on "Religio and Superstitio" in _Archiv fuer
Religionswissenschaft_, 1909, p. 533 foll.; in which at
p. 544 he hints at a connection of _religio_ with the
practice of taboo. With some of his conclusions,
however, I cannot agree. The same explanation of the
origin of _religio_, _i.e._ in an age of taboo, has also
been suggested since my lecture was written by
Maximilianus Kobbert, _De verborum "religio atque
religiosus" usu apud Romanos_, p. 31 (Koenigsberg,
1910).

LECTURE III

ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC

Taboo, the traces of which at Rome we examined in the last lecture, is, as we saw, closely allied to magic, even if it be not, as Dr. Frazer thinks, magic in a negative form. We have now to see what traces are to be found of magic in the proper or usual sense of the word--active or positive magic, as we may call it. By this we are to understand the exercise of a mysterious mechanical power by an individual on man, spirit, or deity, to enforce a certain result. In magic there is no propitiation, no prayer. "He who performs a purely magical act," says Dr. Westermarck,[81] "utilises such mechanical power without making any appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being." Religion, on the other hand, is an attitude of regard and dependence; in a religious stage man feels himself in the hands of a supernatural power with whom he desires to be in right relation.

If we accept this distinction, as I think we may (though one school of anthropologists is hardly disposed to do so), it is plain that magical practices are of a totally different kind from religious practices, as being the result of a different mental attitude towards the supernatural; they belong to a ruder and more rudimentary idea of the relation of Man to the Power manifesting itself in the universe. True, they have their origin in the same kind of human experience, in the difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence, and his desire to overcome these; but unlike religion, magic is a wholly inadequate attempt to overcome them. This inadequacy was long ago well explained by Dr. Jevons.[82] He showed that man in that early stage of his experience did not understand the true relation of cause and effect; that, "turned loose as it were among innumerable possible causes (of a given effect), with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his making the right choice were considerable." As a matter of fact he usually made the wrong one, and is still apt to do so. There is probably more magic going on behind the scenes even in civilised countries, and more especially both in Greece and Italy, than either men of science or men of religion have any idea of. In its various forms as they are now classified,[83] _e.g._ contagious magic, and homoeopathic magic, the exercise of the mysterious will-power, real or imaginary, is to be found all the world over, accompanied usually with a spell or incantation which is believed to enforce and increase that power--a kind of telepathy, which seems to be the psychological basis, so far as there is one, of the whole system. In these rites the virtue resides in some action, which, together with the spell or incantation, enforces the desired result by calling out the will-power, or _mana_, if we adopt the convenient Melanesian word lately brought into use. Whatever percentage of psychological truth may lie at the root of such performances, it is obvious that they must in the main be wholly inadequate, and must constantly tend to pass into mere quackery and become discredited; and it was the special function of the religious organisation of early society to eliminate and discredit them.