Chapter XII: Part 12

It should be noticed that the harvest character of the rite was suggested to Mannhardt by the passage from Paulus (220), from which we learn that the head of the sacrificed horse was decked with cakes, like those of the live draught-animals at the Vestalia and Consualia and feriae Sementivae [q. v.]. This, Paulus adds, was done ‘quia id sacrum fiebat ob frugum eventum,’ which last words can hardly mean anything but ‘on account of the _past_ harvest[1065].’ There are, I may add, two points open to doubt here, which Mannhardt does not point out: (1) the reason here given may be only a guess of Verrius’, and not one generally understood at Rome[1066]. (2) The concluding words of the gloss seem to make no sense, a fact which throws some doubt on the whole passage. The rite is ‘ob frugum eventum,’ yet ‘a horse, and not an ox, is the victim, because a horse is suited for war, and an ox is not[1067].’ However this may be understood, we need not quarrel with the conclusion[1068], that the real meaning of the adornment was to show that the head was an object possessed of power to procure fertility—an inference confirmed by the eagerness of the rival city-quarters to get possession of it.

2. The _sacrificed horse represented a Corn-spirit_. The Corn-spirit was Mannhardt’s chief discovery, and its various forms are now familiar to English readers of Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, and of Farnell’s _Cults of the Greek States_. Almost every common animal, wild or tame, may be found to represent the Corn-spirit at harvest-time in one locality or another, where the nomadic age has given place to an agricultural one; or a man, woman, boy or puppet represents the animal, and so indirectly the Corn-spirit[1069]. Mannhardt produces from his stores of folk-lore many instances in which the horse thus figures, including the hobby-horse which in old England used to prance round the May-pole. Those examples, however, are not strong enough to convince us that the October horse was a Corn-spirit, though they prove well enough that the Corn-spirit often took this shape[1070]. But we must remember that he is only suggesting an _origin_ in the simple rites of the farm, indicating a class of ideas to which this survival may be traceable[1071].

He does, however, produce an example which has one or two features in common with the Roman rite, only in this case the animal is a goat instead of a horse. In Dauphiné a goat is decked with ribbons and flowers and let loose in the harvest-field. The reapers run after it, and finally the farmer cuts off its head[1072], while his wife holds it. Parts of its body (we are not told whether the head is among them) are kept as ‘medicine’ till the next harvest. So too the head, and also the tail and the blood, of the October horse were the seat of some great Power; but whether this was a vegetation-spirit does not seem satisfactorily shown.

3. _The chariot-race was an elaborated and perhaps Graecized form or survival of the simple race of men and women so often met with in the harvest-field, often in pursuit of a representative of the Corn-spirit._

Mannhardt gives examples from France and Germany of races in pursuit of cock, calf, kid, sheep, or whatever shape may be the one in vogue for the Corn-spirit; often the animal is in some way decorated for the occasion. Two of a rather different kind may be mentioned here, though they occur, not on the harvest-field, but at Whitsuntide and Easter respectively; but they show how horse-races may originate in the customs of the farm. In the Hartz the farm-horses, gaily decorated, are raced by the labourers for possession of a wreath, which is hung on the neck of the winning horse. In Silesia the finest near horse of the team, decorated by the girls, is ridden (raced?) round the boundary of the farm, and then round a neighbouring village, while Easter hymns are sung. We have already noticed the racing of horses and mules at the Consualia in August: according to Dionysius, these too were decked out with flowers[1073]. Mannhardt makes also a somewhat lengthy digression to point out the possibility that in the original form of the Passover (on which was afterwards engrafted the Jahvistic worship and the history of the escape from Egypt) a race or something of the kind may be indicated by the custom of eating the victim with the loins girt.

There is undoubtedly a possible origin for the horse-racing of Greeks and Romans in the customs of the farm at different seasons of the year, and I accept Mannhardt’s view so far, with a probability, not certainty, as to the Corn-spirit. We may perhaps be able to trace the development of the custom a little further in this case.

4. _The horse’s head, fixed on the Regia or the turris Mamilia, is the effigy of the Corn-spirit, which is to bring fertility and to keep off evil influences for the year to come._[1074]

Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore[1075]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione[1076], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse[1077], which in course of time becomes a permanency.

5. _The cutting off the tail is explained by the idea that a remnant of the body of the representative of the Corn-spirit is sufficient to produce this spirit afresh in the vegetation of the coming year._

The examples Mannhardt quotes are numerous, and only gain force when brought together: I must refer the reader to his work for them[1078]. The word _tail_ not only occurs frequently in harvest customs (e. g. the cutter of the last sheaf is called the wheat-tail or barley-tail[1079]), but there is little doubt that virtue was believed to reside in a tail[1080]. Who knows but that the preservation of the fox’s brush by fox-hunters has some origin of this kind?

6. The use made of the blood, which was kept and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves of the Fordicidia, and with sulphur and bean-straw as a medicine to be distributed to the people at the Parilia, tells its own story without need of illustration (see on April 15 and 21). The blood was the life[1081]; the fire and sulphur-fumes were to purify and avert evil. Both men and beasts leapt over the fire into which this mixture was thrown at the Parilia, to gain new life and strength, and to avert the influences which might retard them.

Finally, Mannhardt has some remarks on the origin of the rite, which were suggested by Schwegler and Ambrosch[1082]. The Campus Martius, the scene of the sacrifice, was originally _terra regis_, cultivated for him by the people[1083]. When the king was the chief farmer, the horse’s head was carried to his house (regia) and fixed thereon, and the tail allowed to drip on to his hearth. When the neighbouring community of the Subura was united with that of the Palatine, the seat of the oldest community, the remembrance of their duality survived in the contest for the head: if the men of the Subura won it, they fixed it on the turris Mamilia, which may have been the dwelling of their own chief. Such contests are even now well known, or have[1084] but lately disappeared; and some of them may owe their origin to a fight for the Corn-spirit. Mannhardt gives some examples—one very curious one from Granada, and one from Brittany. At Derby, Hawick, Ludlow, and other places in this country, they or the recollection of them may still be found.

On the whole we may agree with him that the rite was in its origin one of the type to which he has referred it—a final harvest festival of the Latin farm. There is yet, however, a word to be said. He does not treat it from the point of view of the Roman calendar, and thus fails to note the turn it took when Latin farmers became Roman citizens. Wissowa, on the other hand, takes the calendar as his sole basis for judging of it, and with a strange perversity, as it seems to me, brushes Mannhardt’s conclusions aside, and would explain the rite simply as a sacrifice to the god of war[1085]. Now doubtless it had come to be this in the organized city-calendar, as Mars himself began to be brought into prominence in a new light, as the _iuvenes_ of the community came to be more and more employed in war as well as agriculture, and as the Campus Martius came to be used as an exercising-ground for the armed host. The Calendars show us a curious correspondence between the beginning and the end of the season of arms, i. e. the middle of March and the middle of October, which leaves little doubt of the change which had taken place in the accepted character of the rites of the two periods by the time the Numan calendar was drawn up. This correspondence has already been noted[1086]; it may be here briefly referred to again.

On March 14[1087] there was a horse-race in the Campus Martius; on the 19th (Quinquatrus) was the _lustratio armorum_ for the coming war-season, as is seen from the fact that the _ancilia_ of the Salii at least—if not all arms—were _lustrata_ on that day[1088]. So too on October 15 there was a horse-race, as we have seen, in the Campus Martius, and on the 19th we find the Armilustrium in the oldest calendars[1089], a name which tells its own tale. The inference is that the horse-races on Oct. 15 and March 14 had much the same origin, and it is just this which induces Wissowa to slight Mannhardt’s explanation of the former. He thinks that on each day the horses, like the arms, were lustrated (p. x.), i. e. before the war-season began, and after it was over. This is likely enough; but might not the same have been the case with the horses of the farm? The Roman farmer’s year began with March, and the heavy work of carrying, &c., would be over in October. I am disposed to think that we must look on organized war-material as a development later than the primitive times to which Mannhardt would carry us back, a side of Roman life which only in course of time became highly specialized.

We must never forget that the oldest Roman calendar is the record of the life of an agricultural people. So much is clear on the face of it; and in some instances, as in the Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, and in the October rite we have been discussing, something of the original intent can be made out from researches into modern folk-lore or savage custom. Yet this calendar is at the same time the table of feasts of a fully developed city-state, and in the process of its development the original meaning of the feasts was often lost, or they were explained by some mythical or historical event, or again they themselves may have changed character as the life of the people changed from an agricultural to a political one. In the rite of the October horse we may see an agricultural harvest custom taking a new shape and meaning as the State grew to be accustomed to war, just as Mars, originally perhaps the protector of man, herds, and crops alike, becomes—it may be even before Greek influence is brought to bear upon him—the deity of warriors and war-horses, of the yearly renewed strength of a struggling community[1090]. It is looking with modern eyes at the institution of an old world if we try to separate the Roman warrior from the Roman husbandman, or the warlike aspect of his god from his universal care for his people.

XIV KAL. NOV. (OCTOBER 19). NP.

ARM[ILUSTRIUM]. (ARV. SAB. MAFF. AMIT. ANT.)

The first three letters of this word, which alone appear in the calendars, are explained by Varro and Verrius: ‘Armilustrium ab eo quod in armilustrio armati sacra faciunt ... ab ludendo aut lustro, quod circumibant ludentes ancilibus armati[1091].’ This passage may be taken as referring both to March 19 and Oct. 19, and as showing that the Salii with the sacred shields were active on both days. This can also be inferred from the fact that in 190 B.C. a Roman army, on its march into Asia, had to halt at the Hellespont, ‘quia dies forte, quibus ancilia moventur. religiosi ad iter inciderant’[1092]—its commander Scipio being one of the Salii. It can be shown that this was in the autumn, as the army did not leave Italy till July 15[1093]. It may be taken as certain, then, that this was the last day on which the Salii appeared, and that _arma_ and _ancilia_ were now purified[1094], and put away for the winter.

There are no festivals in any way connected with Mars from this day to the Roman new year, March 1. As Roscher has remarked, his activity, like that of Apollo, is all in the warm season—the season of vegetation and of arms. His priests, who seem in their dances, their song, and their equipment, to form a connecting link between his fertilizing powers and his warlike activity, are seen no more from this day till his power is felt again on the threshold of spring.

We learn from Varro[1095] that the place of _lustratio_ on this day was the Aventine ‘ad circum maximum.’ I can find no explanation of this: we know of no Mars-altar in that part of Rome, which was the seat of the cults of Hercules and Consus. It was probably the last point in a procession of the Salii[1096].

Footnote 1024:

_C. I. L._ i 2. 281.

Footnote 1025:

Varro, _R. R._ 1. 34. Pliny, _N. H._ 18. 315: ‘Vindemiam antiqui
nunquam existimavere maturam ante aequinoctium, iam passim rapi
cerno.’ Sec. 319 ‘Iustum vindemiae tempus ab aequinoctio ad
Vergiliarum occasum dies xliii.’

Footnote 1026:

See above, p. 97.

Footnote 1027:

Pliny, _N. H._ 14. 88 ‘Vino rogum ne respargito.’ Cp. 18. 24.

Footnote 1028:

_Kulturpflanzen_, &c., p. 65.

Footnote 1029:

1. 21. Dion. Hal. 2. 75. The significance of this covered vehicle
seems to be unknown.

Footnote 1030:

Many passages might be collected to bear out Dionysius’ remarks: the
reader may refer to Preller, i. 250 foll.

Footnote 1031:

Pliny, _N. H._ xi. 250. So ‘dextram fidemque dare.’

Footnote 1032:

Wissowa, in _Lex._ s. v. Fides, Preller. i. 251. Serv. _Aen._ 1. 292
and 8. 636: but Serv. in the latter note says ‘Quia fides tecta esse
debet et velata.’

Footnote 1033:

Libanius, _Decl._ 19; Photius, s. v. κροκοῦν (Bötticher, _Baumkultus_,
p. 43) οἱ μύσται ὡς φασὶ κρόκῃ τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα καὶ τὸν πόδα
ἀναδοῦνται.

Footnote 1034:

Hor. _Od._ 1. 35. 21.

Footnote 1035:

The authorities for this and the altars connected with it are Livy, 1.
26; Dion. Hal. 3. 22; Festus, 297 and Paul. 307; Aur. Vict. 4. 9;
_Schol. Bob. ad Cic._ p. 277 Orelli; Lydus _de Mensibus_, 4. 1.

Footnote 1036:

Kiepert u. Huelsen, _Formae urbis Romae antiquae_, p. 92 and map 1;
Jordan, _Topogr._ ii. 100.

Footnote 1037:

So Roscher, in _Lex._ s. v. Ianus, 21; Gilbert, _Topogr._ 1. 180, who
would make it the ‘porta Ianualis’ of Macrob. 1. 19. 17, wrongly.

Footnote 1038:

It is always in the singular, e. g. ‘Transmisso per viam tigillo,’
Livy, l. c. Dionys. writes as if it were originally a _iugum_, i. e.
two uprights and a cross-beam, but does not imply that it was so in
his day.

Footnote 1039:

The altars are mentioned by Festus, Dionys, and _Schol. Bob._

Footnote 1040:

_Lex._ s. v. Janus, 21; quoting Grimm, _Deutsche Myth._ (E. T. 1157,
with quotation from White’s _Selborne_).

Footnote 1041:

Marquardt, 584.

Footnote 1042:

Macrob. 1. 9. 16 ‘[Ianum] Iunonium quia non solum mensis Ianuarii sed
mensium omnium ingressum tenentem: in dicione autem Iunonis sunt omnes
Kalendae.’

Footnote 1043:

This Juno may be the ‘Weibliche Genius einer Frau,’ as Roscher
suggests (s. v. Janus, 22; s. v. Juno. 598, he seems to think
otherwise). But as she is connected with Janus, I should doubt it. For
an explanation of ‘Ianus Curiatius’ cp. Lydus, l. c. ἔφορος εὐγενῶν.

Footnote 1044:

Curriti Arv.: Q[uiriti] Paul.

Footnote 1045:

p. 223.

Footnote 1046:

Paulus, 123; Varro, _L. L._ 6. 21.

Footnote 1047:

Henzen, _Act. Fr. Arv._ pp. 11, 12, 14.

Footnote 1048:

_L. L._ vi. 22. Cp. Festus, 85.

Footnote 1049:

Cic. _N. D._ iii. 20.

Footnote 1050:

Preller, i. 176.

Footnote 1051:

Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ 146. The deities to whom _piacula_ are here to
be sacrificed are deities of the grove of the Brethren: hence I should
conclude that this Fons simply represented a particular spring there.

Footnote 1052:

_de Feriis_, &c., p. xi. To me this explanation does not seem quite
satisfactory, though it seems to be sanctioned by Mommsen (_C. I. L._
i. 2. 332, note on Id. Oct. sub fin.). It is however undoubtedly
preferable to the view I had taken before reading Wissowa’s tract,
that the omission was due to an aristocratic neglect of usages which
only survived among the common people and had ceased to concern the
whole community.

Footnote 1053:

Polyb. xii. 4b.

Footnote 1054:

Ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τινὶ κατακοντίζειν ἵππον πολεμιστὴν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐν τῷ
κάμπῳ καλουμένῳ. This is quoted from “τὰ περὶ Πυρρόν.”

Footnote 1055:

Fest. 178 ‘October equus appellatur, qui in campo Martio mense Oct.
immolatur quotannis Marti, bigarum victricum dexterior. De cuius
capite non levis contentio solebat esse inter Suburanenses et
Sacravienses, ut hi in regiae pariete, illi ad turrim Mamiliam id
figerent; eiusdemque coda tanta celeritate perfertur in regiam, ut ex
ea sanguis distillet in focum participandae rei divinae gratia, quem
hostiae loco quidam Marti bellico deo sacrari dicunt,’ &c. Then follow
three examples of horse-sacrifices. Paul. 179 adds no fresh
information. Paul. 220 ‘Panibus redimibant caput equi immolati idibus
Octobribus in campo Martio, quia id sacrificium fiebat ob frugum
eventum, et equus potius quam bos immolabatur, quod hic bello, bos
frugibus pariendis est aptus.’ (The meaning of these last words will
be considered presently.) Cp. Plutarch, _Qu. Rom._ 97; probably from
Verrius, perhaps indirectly through Juba. Plut. by a mistake puts the
rite on the Ides of December.

Footnote 1056:

See note in Preller’s _Regionen der Stadi Rom_, p. 174. They are
placed by Kiepert and Hülsen (map 2) close to the Tiber and near the
Mausoleum of Augustus, and a long way from the old ara Martis. Perhaps
the position of the latter had changed as the Campus came to be built
over.

Footnote 1057:

Livy, 35. 10; 40. 45 (the censors after their election sat in Campo on
their curule chairs ‘ad aram Martis’). Roscher, _Lex._ s. v. Mars,
2389.

Footnote 1058:

What this was is not known: some think a kind of peel-tower. Possibly
a tower in _quadriviis_: cf. definition of _compitum_ in _Schol.
Pers._ 4. 28.

Footnote 1059:

Ovid, _Fasti_, 4. 731 foll.; Prop. 5. (4.) 1. 19. See on Parilia and
Fordicidia.

Footnote 1060:

Preller, 1. 366; Marquardt, 334; Schwegler, _Röm. Gesch._ ii. 46;
Roscher, _Apollo und Mars_, 64 foll.

Footnote 1061:

_Mythologische Forschungen_, 156-201.

Footnote 1062:

_de Feriis_, ix.

Footnote 1063:

I add this (see on Vestalia). Mannhardt had not handled it.

Footnote 1064:

Levit. 23 fin.

Footnote 1065:

Had they referred to the crops of the next season we might have
expected ‘ob _bonum_ frugum eventum.’

Footnote 1066:

So Wissowa, _de Feriis_, ix. He thinks that it was only an attempt to
explain the _panes_: but he is wrong in insisting that the Vestalia
(where, as we saw, the same decoration occurs) had _nothing_ to do
with ‘frugum eventus.’

Footnote 1067:

To me it looks as if some words had dropped out of the text, perhaps
after the word _eventum_; see the passage quoted above, p. 242, note
1.

Footnote 1068:

Given in Mannhardt’s next section, p. 169.

Footnote 1069:

See under May 15 (Argei).

Footnote 1070:

Mannhardt has not suggested what seems not impossible, that the horse
represented Mars himself—in which case we might allow that Mars was,
among other things, a vegetation deity.

Footnote 1071:

See his language at the top of p. 164.

Footnote 1072:

He ingeniously suggests that these cases of decapitation may be
explained by the old custom of cutting off the corn-ears so as to
leave almost the whole of the stalk. (See his _Korndämonen_, p. 35.)
That this method existed in Latium seems proved by a passage in Livy,
22. 1 ‘Antii metentibus cruentas in corbem spicas cecidisse.’

Footnote 1073:

Dion. Hal. i. 33, who compares an Arcadian Hippokrateia.

Footnote 1074:

Op. cit. p. 182.

Footnote 1075:

See _Golden Bough_, i. 68 foll., and Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ 214 foll.

Footnote 1076:

Mannhardt, _A. W. F._ l. c.

Footnote 1077:

Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 167.

Footnote 1078:

p. 185 foll. The tail in Roman ritual was ‘offa penita.’ Marq. 335,
note 1.

Footnote 1079:

In Silesia, &c., the word is _Zâl_, _Zôl_, which I suppose = tail.

Footnote 1080:

_Golden Bough_, ii. 65. Jevons, Introduction to Plut. _Q. R._ p. lxix.
He quotes an example from Africa.

Footnote 1081:

Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, Lect. ix. In this case,
according to M., it was the life of the Corn-spirit—so of generation
in general.

Footnote 1082:

Schwegler, _R. G._ i. 739; Ambrosch, _Studien_, 200 foll.

Footnote 1083:

Evidence for this in Liv. i 2; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 274.

Footnote 1084:

See e. g. Crooke’s _Folklore of Northern India_, vol. ii. pp. 176 and
321. Crooke looks on these fights (he should have said, the possession
of the object which is the cause of the fight) as charms for rain or
fertility. So in the plains of N.-W. India, ‘plenty is supposed to
follow the side which is victorious.’

Footnote 1085:

Veram huius sacri rationem inter veteres ii viderunt quorum sententiam
ita refert Festus ‘equum hostiae loco Marti bellico deo sacrari’ (_de
Feriis_, p. x).

Footnote 1086:

See under March 14 and 19.

Footnote 1087:

Wissowa thinks it was originally the 15th (Ides); but Mommsen dissents
in his note on Oct. 15 (_C. I. L._ 332). It is the only feast-day in
the calendar which is an _even_ number. Perhaps it was changed because
of the popularity of the revels, &c., on the Ides.

Footnote 1088:

Charisius, p. 81; Marq. 435.

Footnote 1089:

This point of the parallel was first noticed by Wissowa, who, as just
noted, believes the day of Equirria to have been in each case the
Ides.

Footnote 1090:

An apt illustration of this aspect of Mars, in combination with the
older primitive form of ritual, is supplied by the strange sacrifice
by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers, recorded by Dio Cassius,
43. 24. They were offered to Mars in the Campus Martius by the Flamen
Martialis in the presence of the Pontifices, _and their heads were
nailed up on the Regia_. (Hence Marq. infers that it was this flamen
who sacrificed the October horse.) Caesar was in Rome in _October_ of
the year to which D. C. attributes this deed, B.C. 46.

Footnote 1091:

_L. L._ 6. 62. Cp. Festus, 19 ‘Armilustrium festum erat apud Romanos,
quo res divinas armati faciebant ac dum sacrificarent tubis canebant.’
See on March 19 and 23.

Footnote 1092:

Liv. 37. 33. 7. Cp. Polyb. 21. 10. 12.

Footnote 1093:

Marq. 437, note 1. The suggestion was Huschke’s, _Röm. Jahr_, 363.

Footnote 1094:

Charisius, pp. 81. 20 (Keil), for _lustratio_ in March. The word
Armilustrium, used for this day, speaks for itself.

Footnote 1095:

_L. L._ 5. 153.

Footnote 1096:

We have a faint indication that they reached the _pons sublicius_,
which was quite near to the Circus maximus. See Marq. 433, note 8.

MENSIS NOVEMBER.

Of all the months in the Roman year November is the least important from a religious point of view. It was the month of ploughing and sowing—not of holiday-time[1097]; then, as now, it was a quiet month, and in the calendars, with the exception of the ludi plebeii, not a festival appears of any importance. Later on, the worship of Isis gained a hold upon the month[1098], which remained open to intruders long after city-life had taken the place of November agricultural operations.

The ludi plebeii, as a public festival, date from 220 B.C.; they took place in the Circus Flaminius, which was built in that year[1099]; they and the epulum Iovis (Nov. 13) are first mentioned by Livy four years later. The _epulum_ has already been discussed in connexion with the ludi Romani. The plebeian games were probably at first on a single day (Nov. 13), and were gradually extended, like the ludi Romani; finally, they lasted from Nov. 4 to Nov. 17[1100].

The 8th was one of the three days on which the _mundus_ was open: see under Oct. 5.

ID. NOV. (NOV. 13). NP.

FERONIAE IN CAMPO[1101]. (ARV., a later addition to the original.)

FORTUNAE PRIMIGENIAE IN COLLE. (ARV., a later addition to the original.)

This is the only mention we have of Feronia in Rome. She was a goddess of renown in Latium and central Italy, but never made her mark at Rome, as did others of her kind—Diana, Fortuna, Ceres, Flora—all of whom appear there with plebeian associations about them, as not belonging to the earliest patrician community[1102]. It is curious to find this Feronia too in the calendar only in the middle of the ludi plebeii, and probably on the day which was the original nucleus of the games. We may either date the cult from the establishment of the _ludi_ or guess that it was there before them, and was subsequently eclipsed by the cult of Jupiter.

The latter is perhaps the more probable conjecture; for the little that we know of the cult elsewhere points to a possible origin of the games which has not, so far as I know, been noticed. They took place, be it remembered, in the Circus Flaminius, which was in the Campus Martius; where also was this cult of Feronia. Now the most famous shrine of Feronia in Italy, that of Trebula Mutusca, was the centre of a great fair or market held on the feast-days of the goddess[1103], and on the whole her attributes seem to be those of a deity of fertility and plenty[1104]. Is it impossible that she had also some share in a fair in the Campus Martius long before the establishment of the _ludi_?

The connexion of Feronia with the plebs seems suggested not only by her position in the calendar, but by the devotion of _libertini_[1105]. In the year 217 B.C. the Roman _freedwomen_ collected a sum of money as a gift to Feronia[1106]; though this offering need not be taken as destined for the Roman goddess, but rather for her of Soracte, to whom first-fruits and other gifts were frequently offered. The temple of Feronia at Terracina was specially devoted to the manumission of slaves, of which the process, as described by Servius, presents at least one feature of special interest[1107]. Manumissions would take place on public occasions, such as markets, when the necessary authorities and witnesses were to be easily found, and the temple of the market-goddess was at hand; and this may be the original point of relation between this cult and the Roman plebs, which was beyond doubt by the third century B.C. largely composed of descendants of manumitted slaves.

The conjunction of Feronia on this day with Fortuna Primigenia (_in colle_) is curious, as both were goddesses of Praeneste, where Feronia in legend was the mother of Erulus, a daemon with threefold body and soul, who had to be killed three times by Evander[1108]. The date of the introduction of this cult of Fortuna at Rome is 204 B.C.[1109]

Footnote 1097:

Rustic calendars: ‘Sementes triticariae et hordiar[iae].’ Varro, _R.
R._ 1. 34.

Footnote 1098:

Mommsen in _C. I. L._ i. 2, 333.

Footnote 1099:

Friedländer in _Marq._ 499; Liv. 23. 30.

Footnote 1100:

See the table in _C. I. L._ i. 2, 335.

Footnote 1101:

Probably these notes belong to the Ides. In the Arval calendar the
entry is opposite the 14th, but from its position may be really meant
as an additional note to the Ides. There is no other example of
religious rites on a day _after_ Ides. (Henzen, _Arv._ 240; _C. I. L._
i. 2, 296.) The same was the case with all ‘dies postriduani.’

Footnote 1102:

See under Cerialia and Floralia.

Footnote 1103:

Liv. 1. 30. Roman merchants were seized by the Sabines in this market
(Dion. Hal. 3. 32).

Footnote 1104:

Steuding in _Lex._ s. v. Feronia; Liv. 26 11. I cannot see any reason
to connect her with November _sowing_, as Steuding does, p. 1480.

Footnote 1105:

Serv. _Aen._ 8. 564.

Footnote 1106:

Liv. 22. 1.

Footnote 1107:

The cutting of the hair, and putting on of the pileus. See Robertson
Smith, _Religion of Semites_, p. 307.

Footnote 1108:

Serv. _Aen._ l. c. The myth must be Graeco-Etruscan.

Footnote 1109:

Liv. 29. 36. The dedication was 194 B.C. (Liv. 34. 53).

MENSIS DECEMBER

In the middle of winter, until well on in January, the Roman husbandman had comparatively little to do. Varro[1110] writes of sowing lilies, crocuses, &c., and of cleaning out ditches and pruning vines, and such light operations of the farm. Columella[1111] tells us that the autumn sowing should be ended by the beginning of December, though some sow beans in this month; and in this he agrees with the rustic calendars which mention, besides this operation, only the manuring of vineyards and the gathering of olives.

It is not unnatural, then, that we should find in this ‘slack time’[1112] several festivals which are at once antique and obscure, and almost all of which seem to carry us back to husbandry and the primitive ideas of a country life. On the night of the 3rd or thereabouts was the women’s sacrifice to the Bona Dea; on the 5th the rustic Faunalia in some parts of Italy, though probably not in Rome; on the 15th the winter Consualia; on the 17th the Saturnalia; and on the 19th the Opalia; and so on to the Compitalia and Paganalia. All this is in curious contrast with the absence of festivals in the busy month of November.

Women’s Sacrifice to the Bona Dea.

This fell, in the year 63 B.C., on the night between Dec. 3 and 4, if we may trust Plutarch and Dio[1113]; but the date does not seem to have been a fixed one[1114]. The rite does not appear in the calendars, and, though attended by the Vestals, did not take place in the temple of the goddess, but in the house of a consul or praetor, ‘in ea domo quae est in imperio[1115].’ It seems to have been in some sense a State sacrifice, i. e. it was ‘pro populo Romano’ (according to Cicero); but it was not ‘publico sumptu’[1116], and it was never woven into the calendar by the pontifices, or it could hardly have occurred between the Kalends and the Nones. Its very nature would exclude the interference of the pontifical college, and there would be no need to give public notice of it.

The character of the goddess and her rites have already been discussed under May 1. All that need be said of the December sacrifice is that it was clearly a survival from the time when the wife of the chief of the community—himself its priest—together with her daughters (represented in later times by the Vestals), and the other matrons, made sacrifice of a young pig or pigs[1117] to the deity of fertility, from all share in which men were rigorously excluded. It must have been originally a perfectly decorous rite, and so have continued to the famous sacrilege of Clodius; it was only under the empire that it became the scene of such orgies as Juvenal describes in his second and sixth satires[1118].

NON. DEC. (DEC. 5). F.

Here we have another festival unknown to the calendars, the Faunalia rustica, as it has been called. Our knowledge of it comes from the familiar ode of Horace (iii. 18), and from the comments of the scholiasts thereon:

Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator,
Per meos fines et aprica rura
Lenis incedas abeasque parvis
Aequus alumnis,

Si tener pleno eadit haedus anno,
Larga nec desunt Veneris sodali
Vina craterae, vetus ara multo
Fumat odore.

Ludit herboso pecus omne campo
Cum tibi Nonae redeunt Decembres;
Festus in pratis vacat otioso
Cum bove pagus;

Inter audaces lupus errat agnos;
Spargit agrestes tibi silva frondes;
Gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor
Ter pede terram.

No picture could be choicer or neater than this; for once it is a treat to have our best evidence in the form of a perfect work of art. We are for a moment let into the heart and mind of ancient Italy, as they showed themselves on a winter holiday. There is an ancient altar—not a temple—to a supernatural being who is not yet fully god, who can play pranks like the ‘Brownies’ and do harm, but is capable of doing good if duly propitiated. On the Nones of December, possibly of other months too[1119], he is coaxed with tender kid, libations of wine, and incense[1120]; the little rural community of farmers (_pagus_), with their labourers, take part in the rite, and bring their cattle into the common pasture, plough-oxen and all. Then, after the sacrifice, they dance in triple measure, like the Salii in March.

Horace is of course describing a rite which was entirely rural, as the word _pagus_ would indicate sufficiently, apart from other features. Unless he were the god of the Lupercalia, which is open to much doubt[1121], Faunus was not introduced into the city of Rome till 196 B.C., when the aediles very appropriately built him a temple in the Tiber-island with money taken as fines from defaulting _pecuarii_[1122], or holders of public land used for cattle-runs. We may assume that his settlement in the city was suggested by the pontifices, and that we have here a case of the transformation of a purely rustic cult into an urban one by priestly manipulation. It is not impossible that the idea that Faunus was the deity of the Lupercalia came in about the same time[1123]. Both priests and annalists got hold of him, and did their best to rob him of his true character as an intelligible and useful god of woodland and pasture. He became a Rex Aboriginum[1124], and the third on the list of mythical kings of Latium[1125]. He became identified with the Greek Pan. But, in spite of all their efforts, Faunus would not tamely accept his new position. We hear no more of the _aedes_ in the island: the Roman _vulgus_ do not seem to have recognized him at the Lupercalia, and his insertion in the legends had no political effect. The fact that not a single inscription from Rome or its vicinity records his name shows plainly that he never took the popular fancy as a deity with city functions: and the absence of inscriptions in the country districts also, in most singular contrast to the ubiquitous stone records of Silvanus-worship, seems to show that he remained always much as wild as he was before the age of inscriptions began, while the kindred deity was adopted into the organized life and culture of the Italian and provincial farmer[1126].

It may be as well, before leaving the subject of this singular being, to sum up under a very few heads what is really known about him. But so little is known about the cult of Faunus—and indeed it can hardly be said that any elaborate cult ever grew up around him—that it may be legitimate for once first to glance at the etymological explanations of his name which have been suggested by scholars.

(1) Faunus is connected with _favere_, and means ‘the kind or propitious one,’ like Faustus and Faustulus, and as some think, Favonius[1127] and Fons. This derivation was known to Servius[1128]: ‘quidam Faunos putant dictos ab eo quod frugibus faveant.’ It is not in itself inconsistent with what we know of the rural Faunus, or with analogous supernatural beings, like the ‘good people.’ It was accepted by Preller and Schwegler, and has affected their conclusions about Faunus; e. g. Schwegler based on it the view, now generally held, that Evander is a Greek translation of Faunus[1129].

(2) Faunus is from _fari_, i. e. the speaker, or foreteller. This too was known to Latin scholars: thus Isidorus (perhaps from Varro[1130]), ‘fauni a fando, ἀπὸ τὴς φωνῆς dicti, quod voce non signis ostendere viderentur futura.’ It was revived not long ago by the late Prof. Nettleship: ‘Once imagine Faunus as a “speaker,” and all becomes clear. He is not only the composer and reciter of verses[1131], but generally the seer or wise man, whose superior knowledge entitles him to the admiration and dread of the country folk who consult him. But as his real nature and functions are superseded, his character is misconceived: he becomes a divinity, the earliest king of Latium, the god of prophecy, the god of agriculture.’ We may compare with this Scaliger’s note on Varro, _L. L._ 7. 36: ‘The Fauni were a class of men who exercised, at a very remote period, the same functions which belonged to the Magi in Persia, and to the Bards in Gaul.’

(3) Faunus may = Favonius, which itself may come from the same root as Pan (i. e. _pu_ = purify). Thus Faunus, like Pan, might be taken as a mythological expression of the ‘purifying breeze,’ the god of the gentler winds[1132]. The characteristics of Faunus are of course very like those of Pan; but as it is no easy matter to determine how far those of the Italian were taken over by the Roman litterati from the Greek deity, and as the etymology itself is confessedly a questionable one, this conjecture must be left to take its chance.

But the first two are worth attending to, and each finds some support in what we know of Faunus from other sources. Let us see in the next place what this amounts to.

(1) There is fairly strong evidence that Faunus was not originally conceived as a single deity, but as _multiplex_. Varro quotes the line of Ennius:

Versibus quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,

and comments thus[1133]: ‘Fauni dii Latinorum, ita ut Faunus et Fauna sit.’ The evidence of Virgil, always valuable for rural antiquities, is equally clear:

Et vos agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni,
Ferte simul Faunique pedem Dryadesque puellae[1134].

Servius has an interesting note on these lines: why, he asks, does the poet put Faunus in the plural, when there is but one? We might be tempted to think Virgil wrong and his commentator right, the poet representing Greek ideas and the scholar Italian, but for a still more curious note of Probus on the same passage: ‘Plures (Fauni) existimantur esse etiam praesentes: idcirco rusticis persuasum est incolentibus eam partem Italiae quae suburbana est, saepe eos in agris conspici.’ My belief is that these words give us the genuine idea of Faunus in the rustic mind, surviving in central Italy long after he had been appropriated as a conventional Roman deity. We seem in the case of Faunus to be able to catch a deity in the process of manufacture—of elevation from a lower, multiplex, daemonistic form, to a higher and more uniform and more rigid one. Yet so excellent a scholar as Wissowa holds exactly the opposite view, that there was but one Faunus, and that his multiplication is simply the result of Roman acquaintance with Pan and the Satyrs[1135]. It would have been more satisfactory if he had given us an explanation from his point of view of the passage of Probus just quoted, or had shown us how these Greek notions could have penetrated into the rural parts of Italy.

(2) Another point which comes out distinctly—unless our Roman authorities were wholly misled—is the _woodland_ character of the Fauni. A passage of Varro, of which I quoted the first words just now, goes on thus: ‘hos versibus quos vocant Saturnios _in silvestribus locis_ traditum est solitos fari futura, a quo fando Faunos dictos.’ This seems to be a genuine Italian tradition. Virgil was not talking Greek when he wrote[1136]

Haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant
Gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata,
Queis neque mos neque cultus erat, &c.

The poet imagines an ancient race, sprung from the trees themselves: a ‘genus indocile et dispersum montibus altis,’ living on the forest-clad hills[1137], to whom foreign invaders brought the means of civilization. Why should not this tradition be a native one? It is singularly in accord with the most recent results of Italian excavation; for it is now absolutely certain that the oldest inhabitants of central Italy dwelt on the hill-tops, and that the first traces of foreign influence only occur in lower and later settlements[1138]. The valleys were still undrained and malarious. These earliest inhabitants who have left their traces for the excavator, or a still older race scattered on the hills after their invasion, may have been the traditional representatives of what Preller has called ‘the period of Faunus[1139],’ regarded by the later civilization, from their wild and woodland habits, as half demons and half men. The name of the kindred Silvanus tells its own tale; and his actual connexion with trees was even closer than that of Faunus[1140].

(3) A third well-attested point is the attribution to Faunus or the Fauni of power for good or evil over the crops and herds, as we have seen it already implied in Horace’s ode. Porphyrion[1141] in his commentary on this ode tells us that Faunus, on the Nones of December, wishes the cattle, which are under his protection, to be free from danger. Just before this passage he had spoken of him as ‘deum inferum et pestilentem,’ thus giving us the dark and hurtful side of his power as well as the bright and gracious. The same combination of the powers of doing and averting harm is seen in Mars, as we have already learnt from the hymn of the Arval Brethren and the formula of prayers preserved by Cato[1142].

Under this head may be mentioned the belief that both Faunus and Silvanus were dangerous for women, an idea which finds expression in the significant word _incubus_, so often applied to them[1143]. We may perhaps find a reason for the identification of Faunus as god of the Lupercalia in the most striking feature of the festival—the pursuit of the women by the _creppi_, who struck them with thongs in order to render them productive[1144].

(4) The last characteristic of the Fauni to be noticed is that they had the power of foretelling the future. The verse of Ennius already quoted is the earliest literary evidence we have of this; but the quaint story of the capture of Picus and Faunus by Numa[1145], who caught them by making them drunk with wine at the fountain where they came to drink, and compelled them as the price of their liberty to reveal the art of staying a disaster, has an unmistakeable old-Italian ring. The idea seems to have been, not that Faunus was a ‘god of prophecy,’ as Preller seems to fancy, but that there was an ancient race of Fauni, who might be coaxed or compelled to reveal secrets. Sometimes indeed they ‘spoke’ of their own accord; when a Roman army needed to be warned or encouraged on its march, their voice was heard by all as it issued from thicket or forest. Cicero and Livy[1146] write of these voices with a distinctness which (as it seems to me) admits of no suspicion that they are inserting Greek ideas into Roman annals.

There are also traces to be found of a belief in the existence of local woodland oracles of Faunus and his kind. It was in a grove sacred to Faunus that Numa, in Ovid’s vivid description[1147], slew two sheep, the one to Faunus, the other to Sleep, and after twice sprinkling water on his head, and twice wreathing it with beech-leaves, stretched himself on the fleeces to receive the prophetic inspiration as he slumbered. Almost every touch in this story seems to me to be genuine; and especially the conditions necessary to success—the continence of the devotee, and the removal of the metal ring from the finger. Virgil, with something more of foreign adornment, tells in exquisite verse what is really the same story as Ovid’s[1148]. And a later poet writes of a sacred beech-grove, where under like conditions of temperance, &c., the shepherds might find the oracles of Faunus inscribed on the bark of a beech-tree[1149]. All this reminds us of Dodona and the oldest Greek oracles: we have here the quaint methods of primitive shepherds, appealing to prophetic powers localized in particular woodland spots. Roman exigencies of state drew by degrees the whole of the secrets of fore-knowledge into the hands of a priestly aristocracy, with its fixed doctrine and methods of divination; but the country folk long retained their faith in the existence of an ancient race, possessed of prophetic power, which haunted forest and mountain.

These four points, taken together, i. e. the multiplicity of the Fauni, their woodland character, and their supposed powers of productivity and prophecy, seem by no means to exclude the possibility of the human origin suggested long ago by Scaliger, and recently by Prof. Nettleship, though I would shape the explanation somewhat differently. Wild men from the hills and woods, for example, might well be supposed to be possessed of supernatural powers, like the gipsies of modern times[1150]. And the striking absence of any epigraphical survivals of a definite cult may possibly be explained by a persistence of the belief in the Italian mind that Faunus was never really and truly a god, but one of a race with some superhuman attributes—a link in the chain that always in antiquity connected together the human and the divine. Horace’s ode shows the divine element predominating; some local Faunus has, so to speak, been caught and half deified; and yet, even then, the process is hardly complete.

There is, however, another explanation of conceptions of this kind to which I must briefly allude, which was based by Dr. Mannhardt on an exhaustive examination of the attributes of creatures like the Fauni, as they occur in various parts of Europe and elsewhere[1151]. The general result of his investigation may be stated thus. Spirits which seem to have their origin in woods and mountains find outward expression for their being in the _wind_; so also do those which seem to have their origin in corn and vegetation generally. We thus find three ingredients in their composition: (1) trees, (2) corn, (3) wind. We have only to think how the invisible wind moves the branches of the trees, or bows the corn before it, to see how closely, in the eyes of men used to attribute life to inanimate things, the idea of the wind might run together with that of objects to which it seems to give motion and life. The result of its mysterious agency is the growth of a variety of creatures of the imagination, often half bestial, like Pan and the Russian Ljeschi, sometimes entirely animal, like the Rye-wolf and many another animal corn-spirit now familiar to readers of Frazer’s _Golden Bough_; sometimes entirely human, like Silvanus, perhaps Faunus himself[1152], or the Teutonic ‘wild man of the woods.’ Mannhardt endeavours, not wholly without success, to bring the attributes of Faunus into harmony with this theory. His prophetic _vox_ comes from the forest in which the wind raises strange noises; his relation to crops and flocks is parallel to that of many other spirits who can be traced to a woodland origin; and the word Favonius, used for the western moist and fertilizing breeze, is kindred, if not identical, with Faunus; and so on.

This theory, resting as it does on a very wide induction from unquestionable facts, beyond doubt explains many of the conceptions of primitive agricultural man; whether it can be applied satisfactorily to the Italian Faunus is perhaps less evident. At present I rather prefer to think of the Fauni as arising from the contact of the first clearers and cultivators of Italian soil with a wild aboriginal race of the hills and woods. But on such questions certainty is impossible, and dogmatism entirely out of place.

III ID. DEC. (DEC. 11). NP.

AG. IN.... (AMIT.). AG[ONIA] (MAFF. PRAEN. ANT.)

SEPTIMONTIA (PHILOC.). SEPTIMONTIUM, GUID. SILV.[1153]

For Agonia see on Jan. 9. This (Dec. 11) is the third day on which this mysterious word appears in the calendars. The AG. IN. of the Amiternian calendar was conjectured by Mommsen in the first edition of _C. I. L._, vol. i, to indicate ‘Agonium Inui’[1154]; but in the new edition he withdraws this; ‘ab incertis coniecturis abstinebimus.’ This is done in deference to Wissowa, who has pointed out that there is no other case in the calendars of a festival-name inscribed in large letters being followed immediately by the name of a deity[1155]. We must fall back on the supposition that AG. IN. ... is simply a cutter’s error for the AGON. of three other calendars.

It is impossible to determine what was the relation between this agonium, or solemn sacrifice, and the Septimontium or Septimontiale sacrum, which appears only in very late calendars, or whether indeed there was any relation at all. It is not absolutely certain that the so-called Septimontium took place on this day. It was only a conjecture of Scaliger’s (though a clever one) that completed the gloss in Festus on the word ‘Septimontium’[1156] [_Septimontium dies ap_]_pellatur mense_ [_Decembri qui dicitur in f_]_astis agonalia._ The word Septimontium suggested itself, as the gloss occurred under letter S. Other support for the conjecture is found in the two late calendars, and in a fragment of Lydus[1157], who connects the two ceremonies.

But even if Scaliger’s conjecture be right, it does not follow that the Agonium was identical with or was part of the Septimontiale sacrum. The latter does not appear in the old calendars, as it was not ‘pro populo,’ but only ‘pro montibus’ (see below); and if it was there represented by the word Agonium, it is not easy to see how the latter should have found its way into the calendar. It seems better to conclude that the two were distinct.

About the Septimontium itself we have just enough information to divine its nature, but without details. The word is used by Varro both in a topographical and a religious sense: ‘Ubi nunc est Roma, erat olim Septimontium; nominatum ab tot montibus, quos postea urbs muris comprehendit[1158].’ Here he implies that the old name for Rome was Septimontium; but this is only a guess based on the name of the festival: ‘Dies Septimontium nominatur ab his septem montibus, in quis sita urbs est; feriae _non populi sed montanorum_ modo, ut Paganalia, quae sunt aliquoius pagi[1159].’

The _montes_ here meant are the three divisions of the Palatine, viz. Palatium, Cermalus, Velia; the three of the Esquiline, viz. Mons Oppius, Mons Cispius, and the Fagutal, together with the lower ground of the Subura[1160]. I believe that Mommsen is right in thinking that these were never political divisions—in other words, that they were not originally distinct communities[1161], but probably religious divisions of a city which began on the Palatine, and gradually took in new ground on the Esquiline. The same process can be traced at Falerii, and at Narce a few miles above it; what we seem to see is not the accretion of villages—not συνοικισμός—but the extension of a city from one strong position to another[1162]. This is especially clear at Narce, where it is distinctly proved by the pottery found in the excavations, that the hill (Monte li Santi) subsequently added to the original city was not co-eval with the latter as a settlement; i. e. that it was the absorption by an older settlement of a probably uninhabited position which here took place, and not the synoecizing of distinct political communities[1163]. In the later Rome the _montani_ of the seven districts, together with the _pagani_, or inhabitants of what had originally been the farm-country around Rome, formed the united city[1164]. It is most interesting to find that the earliest divisions, i. e. of the _montes_, were imitated in the foundation of some colonies—we should find them probably in many if we had the necessary information[1165].