Chapter VII: Part 7

Dius Fidius, then, and Semo Sancus are both Latin names for the same religious conception, the impersonality of which caused it to lose vitality as new and anthropomorphic ideas of the divine came into vogue at Rome. But there is at least some probability that it survived in a fashion under the name of an intruder, Hercules; and the connexion with Hercules will show, what we might already have guessed, that the religious conception we are speaking of was very near akin to that of Jupiter himself.

There is clear evidence that the best Roman scholars identified not only Dius Fidius with Semo Sancus, but both of these with Hercules. Varro, in a passage already quoted, tells us that Stilo believed Dius Fidius to be the Sabine Sancus and the Greek Hercules; Verrius Flaccus, if his excerptors represent him rightly, in two separate glosses identified all these three[555].

Again, the Roman oaths _me dius fidius_ and _me hercule_ are synonymous; that the former was the older can hardly be doubted, and the latter must have come into vogue when the Greek oath by Heracles became familiar. Thus the origin of _me hercule_ must be found in a union of the characteristics of Hercules with those of the native Dius Fidius. It is worth noting that in pronouncing both these oaths it was the custom to go out into the open air[556]. Here is a point at which both Hercules and Dius Fidius seem to come into line with Jupiter; for the most solemn oath of all was _per Iovem_ (_lapidem_), also taken under the light of heaven[557], as was the case with the oath at the altar of Ζεὺς Ἑρκεῖος in Greece[558]. Yet another point of conjunction is the _ara maxima_ at the entrance to the Circus Maximus, which was also a place where oaths were taken and treaties ratified[559]; this was the altar of Hercules Victor, to whom the tithes of spoil were offered; and this was also associated with the legend of Hercules and Cacus. In the deity by whom oaths were sworn, and in the deity of the tithes and the legend, it is now acknowledged on all hands that we should recognize a great Power whom we may call Dius Fidius, or Semo Sancus, or the Genius Iovius, or even Jupiter himself[560]. Tithes, oaths, and the myth of the struggle of light with darkness, cannot be associated with such a figure as the Hercules who came to Italy from Greece; tithes are the due of some great god, or lord of the land[561], oaths are taken in the presence of the god of heaven, and the great nature myth only descends by degrees to attach itself to semi-human figures.

We are here indeed in the presence of very ancient Italian religious ideas, which we can only very dimly apprehend, and for the explanation of which—so far as explanation is possible—there is not space in this work. But before we leave Dius Fidius, I will briefly indicate the evidence on which we may rest our belief (1) that as Semo Sancus, he is connected with Jupiter as the god of the heaven and thunder; and (2) that as Hercules he is closely related to the same god as seen in a different aspect.

1. In the Iguvian inscription referred to above Sancius in one place appears in conjunction with Iovius[562]; and, as we have seen, it is also found in the same ritual with Fisu or Fisovius. In this same passage of the inscription (which is a manual of ritual for the Fratres Attidii, an ancient religious brotherhood of Iguvium), the priest is directed to have in his hand an _urfita_ (_orbita_), i. e. either disk or globe; and this _urfita_ has been compared[563], not without reason, with the _orbes_ mentioned by Livy[564] as having been made of brass after the capture of Privernum and placed in the temple of Semo Sancus. If we may safely believe that such symbols occur chiefly in the worship of deities of sun and heaven, as seems probable, we have here some evidence, however imperfect, for the common origin of Sancus and Jupiter.

Again, there was in Roman augural lore a bird called _sanqualis avis_, which can hardly be dissociated from the cult of Sancus; for there was also an ancient city gate, the porta Sanqualis, near the sacellum Sancus on the Quirinal[565]. Pliny’s language about this bird shows that this bit of ancient lore was almost lost in his time; but at the same time he makes it clear that it was believed to belong to the eagle family, which played such an important part in the science of augury. The only concrete fact that seems to be told us about this bird is that in B.C. 177 one struck with its beak a sacred stone at Crustumerium—a stone, it would seem, that had fallen from heaven, i. e. a thunder-stone or a meteorite[566].

Bearing this in mind, we are not surprised to find further traces of a connexion between Sancus and thunderbolts. There was at Rome a _decuria_ of _sacerdotes bidentales_, in close association with the cult of Sancus. Three votive altars are extant, dedicated to the god by this _decuria_[567]; two of them were found on the Quirinal, close to the site of the sacellum Sancus. Now the meaning of the word _bidental_ shows that the _decuria_ had as its duty the care of the sacred spots which had been struck by thunderbolts; such a spot, which was also called _puteal_ from its resemblance to a well fenced with a circular wall, bore the name _bidental_, presumably because two-year-old sheep (_bidentes_) were sacrificed there[568]. Consequently we again have Sancus brought into connexion with the augural lore of lightning, which made it a religious duty to bury the bolt, and fence off the spot from profane intrusion. Yet another step forward in this dim light. A _bidental_ was one kind of _templum_, as we are expressly told[569]; and the temple of Sancus itself seems to have had this peculiarity. Varro says that its roof was _perforatum_, so that the sky might be seen through it[570]. In a fragment of augural lore, apparently genuine though preserved by a writer of late date, the _caeli templum_ seems to have been conceived as a dome, or a ball (_orbis_) cut in half, _with a hole in the top_[571]. We may allow that we are here getting out of our depth; but the general result of what has been put forward is that Sancus = Dius Fidius was originally a spirit or _numen_ of the heaven, and a wielder of the lightning, closely allied to the great Jupiter, whose cult, combined with that of Hercules, had almost obliterated him in historical times.

Finally, it would seem that those moral attributes of Jupiter which give him a unique position in the Roman theology as the god of truth, order, and concord, belonged at one period also to Sancus as Dius Fidius; for in his temple was kept the most ancient treaty of which the Romans knew, that said to have been made by Tarquinius Superbus with Gabii, which Dionysius must himself have seen[572], and which he describes as consisting of a wooden _clypeus_, bound with the hide of a sacrificed ox, and bearing ancient letters. Here also was the reputed statue of Gaia Caecilia or Tanaquil, the ideal Roman matron; of which it has been conjectured, rashly perhaps, but by an authority of weight, that it really represented a humanized female form of Dius Fidius, standing to him as the Junones of women stood to the Genii of men, or as Juno in the abstract to Genius in the abstract[573].

2. The last sentence of the preceding paragraph may aptly bring us to our second point, viz. the relation to Jupiter of Dius Fidius as = Hercules. Those who read the article ‘Dius Fidius’ in Roscher’s _Lexicon_ will be struck by the fact that so cautious a writer as Professor Wissowa should boldly identify this deity, at the very outset of his account, with the ‘Genius Iovis’; and this conjecture, which is not his own, but rather that of the late Professor Reifferscheid of Breslau[574], calls for a word of explanation.

More than thirty years ago Reifferscheid published a paper in which he compared certain points in the cults of Juno and Hercules, of which we have a meagre knowledge from Roman literature, with some works of art of Etruscan or ancient Italian origin (i. e. not Greek), and found that they seemed to throw new and unexpected light on each other.

The Roman women, we are told[575], did not swear by Hercules, but by ‘their Juno’; the men swore by Hercules, Dius Fidius, or by their Genius[576]. Women were excluded from the cult of Hercules at the ara maxima[577]; men were excluded, not indeed from the cult of Juno, but (as Reifferscheid puts it) ‘from that of Bona Dea, who was not far removed from Juno[578].’ At the birth of a child, a couch (_lectus_) was spread in the _atrium_ for Juno, a _mensa_ for Hercules[579]. The bride’s girdle (_cingulum_) seems to have given rise to a cult-title of Juno, viz. Cinxia, while the knot in it which was loosed by the bridegroom at the _lectus genialis_ was called the _nodus herculaneus_[580].

Now Reifferscheid believed that he found the same conjunction of Juno and Hercules in several works of art, which may be supposed to be reflections from the same set of ideas which produced the usages just indicated. In the most important of these there is indeed no doubt about it; this is a mirror of Etruscan workmanship[581], in which three figures are marked with the Latin names IOVEI (Jupiter), IUNO and HERCELE. Jupiter sits on an altar in the middle, and with his right hand is touching Juno, who has her left hand on his shoulder; Hercules stands with his club, apparently expectant, on the left. From certain indications in the mirror (for which I must refer the reader to the illustration on p. 2259 of Roscher’s _Lexicon_) Reifferscheid concluded that Jupiter was here giving Juno in marriage to Hercules; and, in spite of some criticism, this interpretation has been generally accepted[582]. In other works of art he found the same conjunction, though no names mark the figures; in these Hercules and Juno, if such they be, appear to be contending for the mastery, rather than uniting peacefully in wedlock[583]. This conjunction, or opposition, of Juno and Hercules, is thus explained by Reifferscheid. The name Juno represents the female principle in human nature[584]; the ‘genius’ of a woman was called by this name, and the cult of Juno as a developed goddess shows many features that bear out the proposition[585]. If these facts be so, then the inference to be drawn from the conjunction or opposition of Juno and Hercules is that the name Hercules indicates the _male_ principle in human nature. But the male principle is also expressed in the word Genius, as we see e. g. in the term _lectus genialis_; Hercules therefore and Genius mean the same thing—the former name having encroached upon the domain of the latter, as a Latinized form of Heracles, of all Greek heroes or divinities the most _virile_. And if Hercules, Semo Sancus and Dius Fidius are all different names for the same idea, then the word Genius may be taken as equivalent to the two last of these as well as to Hercules[586].

But why does Reifferscheid go on to tell us that this Genius, i. e. Hercules = Sancus = Dius Fidius, is the _Genius Iovis_? How does he connect this many-titled conception with the great father of the sky? As a matter of fact, he has but slender evidence for this; he relies on the mirror in which he found Jupiter giving Juno to Hercules, and on the conjecture that the Greek Hercules, the son of Zeus, would easily come to occupy in Italy the position of Genius, if the latter were, in an abstract form and apart from individual human life, regarded as the Genius of Jupiter[587]. And in this he is followed by Wissowa and other writers in Roscher’s _Lexicon_.

It would perhaps have been wiser not to go so far as this. He has already carried us back to a world of ideas older than these varying names which so often bewilder us in the Roman worship—to a world of spirits, Semones, Lares, Cerri, ghosts of deceased ancestors, vegetation demons, and men’s ‘other souls.’ When he talks of a _Genius Iovis_[588], he is surely using the language of later polytheism to express an idea which belonged, not to a polytheistic age, but to that older world of religious thought. He is doing, in fact, the very thing which the Romans themselves were doing all through the period of the Republic—the one thing which above all others has made the study of their religious ideas such a treacherous quagmire for the modern student.

VI ID. IUN. (JUNE 8). N.

MENTI IN CAPITOLIO. (VEN. MAFF. VI MINORES.)

The temple of Mens was vowed by T. Otacilius (praetor) in 217 B.C., after the battle of Trasimenus ‘propter neglegentiam caerimoniarum auspiciorumque[589],’ and dedicated in 215 B.C., by the same man as _duumvir aedibus dedicandis_[590]. The vow was the result of an inspection of the Sibylline books, from which we might infer that the goddess was a stranger[591]. If so, who was she, and whence? Reasoning from the fact that in the same year, in the same place, and by the same man, a temple was dedicated to Venus Erycina[592], Preller guessed that this Mens was not a mere abstraction, but another form of the same Venus; for a Venus Mimnermia or Meminia is mentioned by Servius[593], ‘quod meminerit omnium.’

However this may be, the foundation of a cult of Mens at so critical a moment of their fortunes is very characteristic of the Roman spirit of that age; it was an appeal to ‘something not themselves which made for righteousness’ to help them to remember their caerimoniae, and not to neglect their auspicia. It is remarkable that this temple of Mens was restored by M. Aemilius Scaurus probably amid the disasters of the Cimbrian war a century later[594].

VII ID. IUN. (JUNE 7). N.

VESTA APERIT. (PHILOC.)

V ID. IUN. (JUNE 9). N.

VESTALIA. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)

XVII KAL. QUINCT. (JUNE 15). N.

VESTA CLUDITUR. (PHILOC.)

XVII KAL. QUINCT. (JUNE 15). Q. ST. D. F.

It would seem from these notes in the calendars, and from passages in Ovid and Festus[595], that both before and after the day of the true Vestalia there were days set apart for the cult of the goddess, which were _nefasti_ and also _religiosi_[596]. Ovid’s lines are worth quoting; he consults the Flaminica Dialis[597] about the marriage of his daughter:

Tum mihi post sacras monstratur Iunius idus
Utilis et nuptis, utilis esse viris,
Primaque pars huius thalamis aliena reperta est,
Nam mihi sic coniunx sancta Dialis ait;
‘Donec ab Iliaca placidus purgamina Vesta
Detulerit flavis in mare Thybris aquis,
Non mihi detonsos crines depectere buxo,
Non ungues ferro subsecuisse licet,
Non tetigisse virum, quamvis Iovis ille sacerdos,
Quamvis perpetua sit mihi lege datus.
Tu quoque ne propera. Melius tua filia nubet
Ignea cum pura Vesta nitebit humo.’

What is the meaning of this singular aspect of the Vesta-cult? Why should these days be so ill-omened or so sacred that during them marriages might not be celebrated, and the priestess of Jupiter might not hold any intercourse with her husband, cut her hair, or pare her nails? And what is the explanation of the annotation Q[uando] St[ercus] D[elatum] F[as][598], which on the 15th indicated the breaking of the spell, and a return to ordinary ways of life? Before attempting to answer these questions, it will be as well to say a few words about the nature and probable origin of the worship of Vesta. Owing to the remarkable vitality and purity of this cult throughout the whole of Roman history, we do not meet here with those baffling obscurities which so often beset us in dealing with deities that had lost all life and shape when Roman scholars began to investigate them. And yet we know that we are here in the presence of rites and ideas of immemorial antiquity.

In an article of great interest in the _Journal of Philology_ for 1885[599], Mr. J. G. Frazer first placed the origin of the cult in a clear light for English scholars. By comparing it with similar practices of existing peoples still in a primitive condition of life, he made apparent the real germ of the institution of the Vestal Virgins. Helbig, in his _Italiker in der Poebene_[600], had already recognized that germ in _the necessity of keeping one fire always alight in each settlement_, so that its members could at any time supply themselves with the flame, then so hard to procure at a moment’s notice; and Mr. Frazer had only to go one step further, and show that the task of keeping this fire alight was that of the daughters of the chief. This step he was able to take, supported by evidence from Damaraland in South Africa, where the priestess of the perpetual fire is the chief’s daughter; quoting also the following example from Calabria in Southern Italy: ‘At the present day the fire in a Calabrian peasant’s house is never (except after a death) allowed to die quite out, even in the heat of summer; it is a bad omen if it should chance to be extinguished, and the girls of the house, whose special care it is to keep at least a single brand burning on the hearth, are sadly dismayed at such a mishap.’ The evidence of the Roman _ius sacrum_ quite confirms this modern evidence; the Vestals were under the patria potestas of the pontifex maximus, who represented in republican times the legal powers of the Rex, and from this fact we may safely argue that they had once been the daughters of the primitive chief. The _flamines_ too, or _kindlers_, as being under the potestas of the pontifex, may be taken as representing the sons of the primitive household[601]. But from various reasons[602] the duties of the _flamines_ became obsolete or obscure; while those of the Vestals remained to give us an almost perfect picture of life in the household of the oldest Latins.

From the first, no doubt, the tending of the fire was in some sense a religious service, and the flame a sacred flame[603]. There must have been many stages of growth from this beginning to the fully developed Vesta of the Republic and Empire; yet we can see that the lines of development were singularly simple and consistent. The sacred fire for example was maintained in the aedes Vestae, adjoining the king’s house[604] (_regia_); and the penus Vestae, which must originally have contained the stores on which the family depended for their sustenance, was always believed to preserve the most sacred and valuable objects possessed by the State[605].

We return to the Vestalia, of which the ritual was as follows. On June 7, the penus Vestae, which was shut all the rest of the year, and to which no man but the pontifex maximus had at any time right of entry, was thrown open to all matrons. During the seven following days they crowded to it barefoot[606]. Ovid relates his own experience[607]:

Forte revertebar festis Vestalibus illa
Qua nova Romano nunc via iuncta foro est.
Huc pede matronam vidi descendere nudo:
Obstipui tacitus sustinuique gradum.

The object of this was perhaps to pray for a blessing on the household. On plain and old-fashioned ware offerings of food were carried into the temple: the Vestals themselves offered the sacred cakes made of the first ears of corn plucked, as we saw, in the early days of May[608]; bakers and millers kept holiday, all mills were garlanded, and donkeys decorated with wreaths and cakes[609].

Ecce coronatis panis dependet asellis
Et velant scabras florida serta molas.

On June 15 the temple (aedes, not templum) was swept and the refuse taken away and either thrown into the Tiber or deposited in some particular spot[610]. Then the _dies nefasti_ came to an end; and the 15th itself became _fastus_ as soon as the last act of cleansing had been duly performed: ‘Quando stercus delatum fas.’

In this account of the ritual of these days, two features claim special attention: (1) the duties of the Vestals in connexion with the provision of food; (2) the fact that the days were _religiosi_, as is illustrated by the prohibition of marriage and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis. That these two features were in some way connected seems proved by the cessation of the mourning when the penus Vestae was once more closed.

1. It needs but little investigation to discover that, though the germ of the cult was doubtless the perpetual fire in the king’s house, the cult itself was by no means confined to attendance on the fire; and this was so probably from the very first. The king’s daughters fetched the water from the spring, both for sacred and domestic purposes; and this duty was kept up throughout Roman history, for water was never ‘laid on’ to the house of the Vestals, but carried from a sacred fountain[611]. They also crushed the corn with pestle and mortar, and prepared the cakes for the use of the family—duties which survived in all their pristine simplicity in the preparation of the _mola salsa_ in the early days of May[612]; and they swept the house, as the Vestals afterwards continued to cleanse the penus Vestae, on June 15. The penus, or store-closet of the house, was under their charge; on the state of its contents the family depended for its comfort and prosperity, and from the very outset it must have had a kind of sacred character[613]. The close connexion of Vesta and her ministrants with the simple materials and processes of the house and the farm is thus quite plain; and we may trace it in every rite in which they took any part. The Fordicidia and the Parilia in April were directly concerned with the flocks and herds of the community; in May the festival of the Bona Dea and the mysterious ceremony of the Argei point to the season of peril during the ripening of the crops. After the Vestalia the Vestals were present at the Consualia and the festival of Ops Consiva in August, which, as we shall see, were probably harvest festivals; and on the Ides of October the blood of the ‘October horse’ was deposited in their care for use at the Fordicidia as a charm for fertility. So constant is the connexion of Vesta with the fruits of the earth, that it is not surprising that some Roman scholars[614] should have considered her an earth goddess; especially as, in a volcanic region, the proper home of fire would be thought to be beneath the earth. But such explanations, and also the views of modern scholars who have sought to find in Vesta a deity of abstract ideas, such as ‘the nourishing element in the fire’[615], are really superfluous. The associations which grew up around the sacred hearth-fire can all be traced to the original germ, if it be borne in mind that the fire, the provision-store, and the protecting deities of that store, were all placed together in the centre of the house, and that all domestic operations, sacrificial or culinary, took place at or by means of, the necessary fire. ‘What is home but another word for cooking?’ Nor must we forget that the living fire was for primitive man a mysterious thing, and invested from the first with divine attributes[616].

2. The fact that from the 5th to the 15th the days were not only _nefasti_ but also _religiosi_ is not easy to explain. It is true that in two other months, February and April, we find a parallel series of _dies nefasti_ in the first half of the month; in February it extended from the Kalends to the Lupercalia (15th), and in April from the Nones to the Vinalia (23rd)[617]. But these days in February and April were _nefasti_ in the ordinary sense of the word, i. e. the cessation of judicial business, and we are not told of them that they were also _religiosi_, or that the Flaminica Dialis lay during them under any special restrictions, as in the days we are speaking of. On the other hand, we find to our surprise that the other days on which this priestess was forbidden to comb hair or cut nails were not even _nefasti_ in the ordinary sense, viz. those of the ‘moving’ of the _ancilia_ and of the ceremony of the Argei[618]: so that we are baffled at every point in looking for a solution to the calendar.

But there is one fact that is quite clear, namely, that the _tempus nefastum_ was in some way or other the result of the purification of the aedes Vestae, since it ceased at the moment the last act of cleansing was completed. Now it does seem to be the case that among some peoples living by agriculture but as yet comparatively uncivilized, special importance is attached to the days immediately before harvest and the gathering of the first-fruits—at which time there is a general cleaning out of house, barns, and all receptacles and utensils, and following upon this a period of rejoicing. Mr. Frazer, in his _Golden Bough_ has collected some examples of this practice, though he has not brought them together under one head or given them a single explanation. The most striking, and at the same time the best attested, example is as follows[619]:

‘Among the Creek Indians of North America, the _busk_, or festival of firstfruits, was the chief ceremony of the year. It was held in July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians would eat or even handle any of the new harvest.... Before celebrating the Busk, the people provided themselves with new clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their old clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old provisions, cast them together in one common heap and consumed them with fire. As a preparation for the ceremony all the fires in the village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up, and the ashes carried out.... Meanwhile the women at home were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and the new fruits. The public or sacred square was carefully swept of even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, for fear of polluting the first-fruit offerings. Also every vessel that had contained any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before sunset.’ A general fast followed, we are told; ‘and when the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and offered it together with some flesh to the bountiful spirit of fire as a first-fruit offering and an annual oblation for sin.... Finally the chief priest made a speech, exhorting the people to observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women that if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted any impurity, they must forthwith depart lest the divine fire should spoil both them and the people.’

The four chief points in this very interesting account are, (1) the extremely solemn and critical character of the whole ceremonial, as indicated in the general fast; (2) the idea of the necessity of purification preparatory to the reception of first-fruits, a purification which seems to extend to human beings as well as to houses, receptacles, and utensils; (3) the renewal of the sacred fire, which was coincident with the beginning of a new year; (4) the solemn reception of the first-fruits. Comparing these with Roman usage, we notice that the first two are fully represented at the Vestalia, the one by the religious character of the days, and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, the other by the cleansing of the penus Vestae, and the careful removal of all its refuse. The third is represented, not at the Vestalia, but at the beginning of the year on March 1, when the sacred fire was renewed, as we saw, in the primitive fashion by the friction of two pieces of wood, and the temple of Vesta was adorned with fresh laurels, as was the case also with the altar in the American example just quoted. The fourth point is represented neither in March nor June, but rather by the plucking of the first ears of corn by the Vestals before the Ides of May, from which they made the sacred salt-cakes of sacrifice.

Now we need not go the length of assuming that the Roman ceremonies of March, May and June were three parts of one and the same rite which in course of time had been separated and attached to different periods of the year; though this indeed may not be wholly impossible. But we may at least profitably notice that all the four striking features of the Indian ceremony are found in the cult of Vesta, and descended no doubt to the later Romans from an age in which both the crops, the fire and the store-houses were regarded as having much the same sacred character as they had for the Creek Indians.

To me indeed it had seemed probable, even before the publication of Mr. Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, that the cleansing of the penus Vestae was nothing but a survival of a general purification of store-houses, barns, utensils, and probably of all the apparatus of farming, including perhaps human beings, before the completion of the harvest which was now close at hand. The date of the Vestalia is indeed too early to let us suppose it to have been a real harvest festival, nor had it any of the joyous character found in such rites; and, as we shall see, the true harvest festivals are to be found in the month of August. The corn harvest in middle Italy took place in the latter half of June and in July[620]; and, as is everywhere still the practice, the festivals proper did not occur until the whole work of harvesting was done. But at the time of the Vestalia the crops were certainly ripening; in May we have already had the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals, and the _lustratio segetum_ which has been described under the head of Ambarvalia on May 28.

I must leave to anthropologists the further investigation of the ideas underlying the ritual we have been examining; it is something to have been able to co-ordinate it with rites which are so well attested as those of the Creek Indians, and which admit without difficulty of a reasonable interpretation[621].

III ID. IUN. (JUNE 11). N.

MAT[RALIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.) MATR[I] MATUT[AE]. (VEN.) MATRALIA. (PHILOC.)

The temple of which this day was apparently the _dies natalis_ dated from the Veientine War, 396 B.C., and was the result of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus[622]. An earlier temple was attributed to Servius Tullius; but it is extremely improbable that anything more than a _sacellum_ or altar existed at such an early date[623]. The cult of Mater Matuta was widely extended in Italy, and clearly of genuine and ancient Italian origin; she can be separated with certainty from the Greek goddess Leucothea with whom Ovid mixes her up, and from whom she derived a connexion with harbours which did not originally belong to her[624]. The evidence for the wide spread of her cult consists of (1) two extremely old inscriptions from Pisaurum in Umbria, of which Mommsen observes, ‘lingua meram vetustatem spirat’[625]; (2) certain inscriptions and passages of Livy which prove that her worship existed among the Volsci, in Campania, and at Praeneste[626]. At Satricum she was apparently the chief deity of the place and probably also at Pyrgi, the port of Caere in Etruria[627]. The cult seems to have had some marked peculiarities, of which one or two fragments have come down to us. Only the wife of a first marriage could deck the image of the goddess[628]; no female slaves were allowed in the temple except one, who was also driven out of it with a box on the ear, apparently as a yearly recurring memorial of the rule[629]; the sacred cakes offered were cooked in old-fashioned earthenware[630]; and, lastly, the women are said to have prayed to this goddess for their nephews and nieces in the first place, and for their own children only in the second[631]. All that can be deduced from these fragments is that the Mater Matuta was an ancient deity of matrons, and perhaps of the same type as other deities of women such as Carmenta, Fortuna, and Bona Dea[632]. The best modern authorities explain her as a goddess of the dawn’s light and of child-birth, and see a parallel in Juno Lucina[633]; and Mommsen has pointed out that the dawn was thought to be the lucky time for birth, and that the Roman names Lucius and Manius have their origin in this belief[634]. Lucretius shows us that in his day Mater Matuta was certainly associated with the dawn[635]:

roseam Matuta per oras
Aetheris auroram differt et lumina pandit.

We should, however, be glad to be more certain that Matuta was originally a substantive meaning dawn or morning. Verrius Flaccus[636] seems to have believed that the words _mane_, _maturus_, _matuta_, _manes_, and _mānus_, all had the meaning of ‘good’ contained in them; so that Mater Matuta might after all be only another form of the Bona Dea, who is also specially a woman’s deity. But this cult was not preserved, like that of Vesta, by being taken up into the essential life of the State, and we are no longer able to discern its meaning with any approach to certainty.

It is noticeable that this day was, according to Ovid[637], the dedication of a temple of Fortuna, also _in foro boario_: but no immediate connexion can be discovered between this deity and Mater Matuta. This temple was remarkable as containing a wooden statue, veiled in drapery, which was popularly believed to represent Servius Tullius[638], of whose connexion with Fortuna we shall have more to say further on. No one, however, really knew what the statue was; Varro and Pliny[639] write of one of Fortuna herself which was heavily draped, and may have been the one in this temple. Pliny says that the statue of Fortuna was covered with the _togae praetextae_ of Servius Tullius, which lasted intact down to the death of Seianus; and it is singular that Seianus himself is said to have possessed a statue of Fortuna which dated from the time of Servius[640], and which turned its face away from him just before his fall. Seianus was of Etruscan descent, we may remember; Servius Tullius, or Mastarna, was certainly Etruscan; and among Etruscan deities we find certain shrouded gods[641]. These facts seem to suggest that the statue (or statues, if we cannot refer all the passages above quoted to one statue) came from Etruria, and was on that account a mystery both to the learned and the ignorant at Rome. To us it must also remain unexplained[642].

ID. IUN. (JUNE 13). NP.

FERIAE IOVI. (VEN.)

IOVI. (TUSC.)

To these notes in the calendars we may add a few lines from Ovid:

Idibus Invicto sunt data templa Iovi.
Et iam Quinquatrus iubeor narrare minores:
Nunc ades o coeptis, flava Minerva, meis.
Cur vagus incedit tota tibicen in urbe?
Quid sibi personae, quid stola longa volunt?

All Ides, as we have seen, were sacred to Jupiter; they are so noted in the surviving calendars in May, June, August, September, October and November, and were probably originally so noted in all the months[643]. On this day the _collegium_ or guild of the tibicines feasted in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus[644]. The temple referred to by Ovid of Jupiter Invictus as having been dedicated on this day may possibly have been one of two mentioned by Livy as dedicated on the Capitol in B.C. 192[645]; but the coincidence of a dedication-day with the Ides may perhaps suggest a higher antiquity[646].

For the right meaning and derivation of the word Quinquatrus the reader is referred to what has been already said under March 19. June 13 was usually called Quinquatrus minusculae, not because it was really Quinquatrus (i. e. five days after the Ides), but because through the feast of the tibicines it was associated with their patron Minerva[647], in whose temple on the Aventine they met, apparently before they set out on the revelling procession to which Ovid refers[648]. Varro makes this clear when he writes ‘Quinquatrus minusculae dictae Iuniae Idus _ab similitudine_ maiorum’[649], i. e. it was not really Quinquatrus, but was popularly so called because the other festival of Minerva and her followers bore that name. Verrius Flaccus was equally explicit on the point: ‘Minusculae Quinquatrus appellantur quod is dies festus est tibicinum, qui colunt Minervam cuius deae proprie festus dies est Quinquatrus mense Martio’[650].

The revelry of the tibicines, during which they wore the masks and long robes mentioned by Ovid, was explained by a story which the poet goes on to tell, and which is told also by Livy and by Plutarch with some variations[651]; how they fled to Tibur in anger at being deprived by Appius Claudius the censor of their feast in the Capitol: how they were badly missed at Rome, tricked and made drunk by a freedman at Tibur, and sent home unconscious on a big waggon. The story is genuinely Roman in its rudeness and in the rough humour which Ovid fully appreciates; the favourite feature of a secession is seen in it, and also the peaceful settlement of difficulties by compromise and contract. I see no reason why it should not be the echo of an actual event, though in detail it is obviously intended to explain the masks and the long robes. These are to be seen represented on a coin of the gens Plautia[652], to which the fierce censor’s milder colleague belonged, who negotiated the return of the truants. Plutarch calls the ‘stolae longae’ women’s clothes; but it is more natural to suppose that they were simply the dress of Etruscan pipe-players of the olden time[653].

The story well shows the universal use of the _tibia_ in all sacred rites; the tibicines were indispensable, and had to be got back from Tibur by fair means or foul. As Ovid says:

Cantabat fanis, cantabat tibia ludis,
Cantabat maestis tibia funeribus.

The instrument was probably indigenous in Italy, and the only indigenous one of which we know. ‘The word _tibia_,’ says Professor Nettleship[654], ‘is purely Italian, and has, so far as I can find, no parallel in the cognate languages.’ Müller, in his work on the Etruscans, does indeed assume that the Roman tibicines were of Etruscan origin, which would leave the Romans without any musical instrument of their own. The probability may rather be that it was the general instrument of old Italy, specially cultivated by the one Italian race endowed with anything like an artistic temperament.

XII KAL. IUN. (JUNE 20). C.

SUMMAN[O] AD CIRC[UM] MAXIM[UM]. (VEN. ESQ. AMIT.)

To this note may be added that of Ovid[655]:

Reddita, quisquis is est, Summano templa feruntur,
Tum cum Romanis, Pyrrhe, timendus eras.

The date of the foundation of the temple of Summanus was probably between 278 and 275 B.C.[656]; the foundation was the result of the destruction by lightning, no doubt at night, of a figure of Jupiter on the Capitol[657]. Who was this Summanus? Ovid’s language, _quisquis is est_, shows that even in his time this god, like Semo Sancus, Soranus, and others, had been fairly shouldered out of the course by more important or pushing deities. In the fourth century A.D. S. Augustine[658], well read in the works of Varro and the Roman antiquarians, could write as follows: ‘Sicut enim apud ipsos legitur, Romani veteres nescio quem Summanum, cui nocturna fulmina tribuebant, coluerunt magis quam Iovem—sed postquam Iovi templum insigne ac sublime constructum est, propter aedis dignitatem sic ad eum multitudo confluxit, ut vix inveniatur, qui Summani nomen, quod audire iam non potest, se saltem legisse meminerit.’ In spite of the decay and disappearance of this god we may believe that the Christian Father has preserved the correct tradition as to his nature when he tells us that he was the wielder of the lightning _of the night_, or in other words a nocturnal Jupiter. We do in fact find a much earlier statement to the same effect traceable to Verrius Flaccus[659]. Varro also mentions him and classes him with Veiovis, and with the Sabine deities whom he believed to have been brought to Rome by Tatius[660]. There is, however, no need to suppose with Varro that he was Sabine, or with Müller that he was Etruscan[661]; the name is Latin and probably = Submanus, i. e. the god who sends the lightning before the dawn.

It is interesting to find the wheel symbol here again, as is noticed by Gaidoz in his _Studies of Gallic Mythology_[662]. We can hardly doubt that the Summanalia which Festus explains as ‘liba farinacea in modum rotae ficta[663]‘, were cakes offered or eaten on this day: it is hard to see what other connexion they could have had. Mr. Arthur Evans has some interesting remarks[664] on what seem to be moulds for making religious cakes of this kind, found at Tarentum; they are decorated, not only with the wheel or cross, but with many curious symbols. ‘It is characteristic,’ he writes, ‘in a whole class of religious cakes that they are impressed with a wheel or cross, and in other cases divided into segments as if to facilitate distribution. This symbolical division seems to connect itself _with the worship of the ancestral fire_ rather than with any solar cult. In a modified form they are still familiar to us as “hot-cross buns.”’ Summanus, however, does not seem to have had anything to do with the ancestral fire.

VIII KAL. QUINCT. (JUNE 24). C.

FORTI FORTUNAE TRANS TIBER[IM] AD MILLIAR[IUM] PRIM[UM] ET SEXT[UM]. (AMIT.)

FORTIS FORTUNAE. (VEN. PHILOC.)

SACRUM FORTIS FORTUNAE. (RUST.)

Ovid writes of this day as follows[665]:

Ite, deam laeti Fortem celebrate, Quirites!
In Tiberis ripa munera regis habet.
Pars pede, pars etiam celeri decurrite cymba,
Nec pudeat potos inde redire domum.
Ferte coronatae iuvenum convivia lintres:
Multaque per medias vina bibantur aquas.
Plebs colit hanc, quia, qui posuit, de plebe fuisse
Fertur, et ex humili sceptra tulisse loco.
Convenit et servis; serva quia Tullius ortus
Constituit dubiae templa propinqua deae.

H. Peter, in his additional notes to Ovid’s _Fasti_[666], has one so lucid on the subject of the temples of Fors Fortuna mentioned in this passage that I cannot do better than reproduce it. ‘We find three temples of the goddess mentioned, all of which lay on the further side of the Tiber. The first was that of Servius Tullius mentioned by Varro in the following passage[667]: “Dies Fortis Fortunae appellatus ab Servio Tullio rege, quod is fanum Fortis Fortunae secundum Tiberim extra urbem Romam dedicavit Iunio mense.” The second is one stated by Livy[668] to have been built by the consul Spurius Carvilius in 460 B.C. near the temple of Servius. The third is mentioned by Tacitus[669] as having been dedicated at the end of the year 17 A.D. by Tiberius, also on the further side of the Tiber in the gardens of Caesar. Of these three temples the third does not concern us in dealing with Ovid’s lines, because it was completed and dedicated long after the composition of the sixth book of the _Fasti_, perhaps at a time when Ovid was already dead; we have to do only with the first two. Now we find in the _Fasti_ of Amiternum[670] the following note on the 24th of June: “Forti Fortunae trans Tiberim ad milliarium primum et sextum”; and this taken together with Ovid suggests that either besides the temple of Carvilius there were two temples of Fors Fortuna attributed to Servius, or (and this appears to me more probable) the temple of Carvilius itself was taken for a foundation of Servius as it had the same dedication-day and was in the same locality. In this way the difficulties may be solved.’ I am disposed to accept the second suggestion of Peter’s; for, as Mommsen has remarked[671], it is quite according to Roman usage that Carvilius should have placed his temple close to a much more ancient _fanum_ of the same deity; i. e. the principle of the locality of cults often held good through many centuries.

Many cults of Fortuna were referred to Servius Tullius, but especially this one, because, as Ovid says, it was particularly a festival of the plebs of which he was the traditional hero; and also because it was open to slaves, a fact which was naturally connected with the supposed servile birth of this king. The jollity and perhaps looseness of the occasion seemed to indicate a connexion between the lower stratum of population and the worship of Fortuna: ‘On foot and in boats,’ says Ovid, ‘the people enjoyed themselves even to the extent of getting drunk.’ We are reminded in fact of the plebeian license of the festival of Anna Perenna in March[672]. It is perhaps worth noting that on June 18 the calendar of Philocalus has the note _Annae Sacrum_, which unluckily finds no corroboration from any other source. Whether it was an early popular cult, whether it was connected in any way with that of Fors Fortuna, and whether both or either of them had any immediate relation to the summer solstice, are questions admitting apparently of no solution.

It has rarely happened that any Roman cult has been discussed at length in the English language, especially by scholars of unquestionable learning and resource. But on the subject of Fortuna, and Fors Fortuna, an interesting paper appeared some years ago by Prof. Max Müller in his volume entitled _Biographies of Words_[673], which I have been at great pains to weigh carefully. The skill and lucidity with which the Professor’s arguments are, as usual, presented, make this an unusually pleasant task.

He starts, we must note, with a method which in dealing with Italian deities has been justly and emphatically condemned[674]; he begins with an etymology in order to discover the nature of the deity, and goes on to support this by selecting a few features from the various forms of the cult. This method will not of course be dangerous, if the etymology be absolutely certain; and absolute certainty, so far as our present knowledge reaches, is indeed what the Professor claims for his. Though we may doubt whether the science of Comparative Philology is as yet old and sure enough to justify us in violating a useful principle in order to pay our first attentions to its results, we may waive this scruple for the present and take the etymology in this case at the outset.

The Professor alludes to the well-known and universally accepted derivation of Fors and Fortuna from _ferre_, but rejects it: ‘I appeal to those who have studied the biographies of similar Latin words, whether they do not feel some misgiving about so vague and abstract a goddess as “Dea quae fert,” the goddess who brings.’ But feeling the difficulty that Fortuna may not indeed have been originally a deity at all, but an abstract noun which became a deity, like Fides, Spes, &c., in which case his objection to the derivation from _ferre_ would not apply, he hastens to remove it by trying to show from the early credentials of Fortuna, that she did not belong to this latter class, but has characteristics which were undoubtedly heaven-born. The process therefore was this: the ordinary etymology, though quite possible, is vague and does not seem to lead to anything; is there another to be discovered, which will fulfil philological requirements and also tell us something new about Fortuna? And are there any features to be found in the cult which will bear out the new etymology when it is discovered?

He then goes on to derive the word from the Sanskrit root HAER, ‘to glow,’ from which many names expressive of the light of day have come: ‘From this too comes the Greek Χάρις with the Χάριτες, the goddess of morning; and from this we may safely derive _fors_, _fortis_, taking it either as a mere contraction, or a new derivative, corresponding to what in Sanskrit would be _Har-ti_, and would mean the brightness of the day, the Fortuna _huiusce diei_.’

So much for the etymological argument; on which we need only remark, (1) that while it may be perfectly possible in itself, it does not impugn the possibility of the older derivation; (2) that it introduces an idea ‘bright,’ hardly less vague and unsubstantial than that conveyed by ‘the thin and unmeaning name’ _she who brings or carries away_. When, indeed, the Professor goes on, by means of this etymology, to trace Fortuna to a concrete thing, viz. the dawn, he is really making a jump which the etymology does not specifically justify. All he can say is that it would be ‘a most natural name for the brightest of all goddesses, the dawn, the morning, the day.’

He looks, however, for further justification of the etymology to the cult and mythology of Fortuna. From among her many cult-names he selects two or three which seem suitable. The first of these is Fortuna _huiusce diei_. This Fortuna was, he tells us, like the Ushas of the Veda, ‘the bright light of each day, very much like what we might call “Good morning.”’ But as a matter of fact all we know of this Fortuna is that Aemilius Paullus, the victor of Pydna, vowed a temple to her in which he dedicated certain statues[675]; that Catulus, the hero of Vercellae, may have repaired or rebuilt it, and that on July 30, the day of the latter battle, there was a sacrifice at this temple[676]. Whatever therefore was the origin of this cult (and it may date no further back than Pydna) it seems to have been specially concerned, as its name implies, with the events of particular famous days. It is pure guesswork to imagine that its connexion with such days may have arisen from an older meaning, viz. the _bright light of each day_. Nothing is more natural than the _huiusce diei_, if we believe that this Fortuna simply represented chance, that inexplicable power which appealed so strongly to the later sceptical and Graecized Roman, and which we see in the majority of cult-names by which Fortuna was known in the later Republic. The advocate of the dawn-theory, on the other hand, has to account for the total loss in the popular belief of the nature-meaning of the epithet and cult—a loss which is indeed quite possible, but one which must necessarily make the theory less obvious and acceptable than the ordinary one.

Secondly, the Professor points out, that on June 11, the day of the Matralia, Fortuna was worshipped coincidently with Mater Matuta—the latter being, as he assumes beyond doubt, a dawn-goddess. But we have already seen that this assumption is not a very certain one[677]; and we may now add that the coincident worship must simply mean that two temples had the same dedication-day, which may be merely accidental[678].