Fourth in invocations came Quirinus, and fourth in order of precedence was his flamen. But of Quirinus I need say little; there is, on the whole, a consensus of opinion that he was a form of Mars belonging to the community settled on the hill that still bears his name. The most convincing proof of his identity with Mars (though identity is doubtless too strong a word) lies in the well-known fact that there were twelve Salii Collini, i.e. belonging to the Collis Quirinalis, occupied with the cult of Quirinus, answering to the twelve Salii Palatini of the cult of Mars. "Quid de ancilibus vestris," Camillus says in Livy's glowing rhetoric, "Mars Gradive (the particular cult-title of the warlike Mars), tuque Quirine pater?"277 Now the Quirinal was, of course, within the walls, and the Romans who identified the two deities noted this point of contrast with the Mars-cult; for Servius writes, "Quirinus est Mars qui praeest paci et intra civitatem colitur, nam belli Mars extra civitatem templum habet." In keeping with this is the use of the word Quirites of the Romans in their civil capacity; but unluckily we are altogether uncertain as to the etymology and history of both Quirites and Quirinus.278 And as Quirinus never became, like Mars, an important property of the Roman people, but was speedily obscured and only revived by the legend of late origin which identified him with Romulus, he is not of importance for my subject, and I may leave him to etymologists and speculators.
There is one other deity of whom I might naturally be expected to say something; I mean Juno. But our familiarity with Juno in Roman literature must not be allowed to lead us into believing too rashly that she was one of those great numina of the early Roman State with whom I have just been dealing. She had no special festival in the calendar;279 her connection with the Kalends she shared, as we have seen, with Janus. She had no special priest of her own; for in spite of all assertions that the flaminica Dialis was attached to her cult, I am convinced that I was right some years ago in maintaining that this is an error, though a natural one.280 It cannot be proved that she had any ancient temple in the city; for the oldest known to us as strictly indigenous, that of Juno Moneta on the arx, was not dedicated till 344 b.c., and we do not know that there was an older altar on the same spot.281 Assuredly Rome was not in early times a great centre of the Juno cult, as were some of the cities in her neighbourhood, e.g. Lanuvium, Falerii, and Veii;282 and the gradual establishment of her position as a truly Roman goddess may be explained by her appearance in the trias of deities in the Capitoline temple at the end of the regal period, and by the removal to Rome of Juno Regina of Veii still later, after the destruction of that city.
What, then, was Juno originally to the Roman religious mind? There is no more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that women used to speak of their Juno as men spoke of their Genius;283 and it is not by any means impossible that this may be the clue to the original Italian conception of her.284 In that case we should have to explain her appearance as a well-defined goddess in so many Latin towns, as the anthropomorphising result of that penetration of Greek ideas into Latium from the south, of which I shall have something to say later on. Such ideas, when they reached Rome, may have produced the notion that she was the consort of Jupiter, for which I must confess that I can find no sufficient evidence in the early cult of either.285 But I must here leave her, for in truth she does not belong to this lecture; and it would need at least one whole lecture to discuss her adequately in all her later aspects. The latest German discussion of her occupied sixty closely printed pages; and instructive as it was in some ways, arrived at the apparently impossible conclusion that she was a deity of the earth.
Last in the order of invocation, even to the latest days of Rome, came Vesta, "the only female deity among the highest gods of the most ancient State,"286 for Juno can hardly be reckoned among them, and Tellus had no special cult or priesthood of her own. We have already noticed Vesta as the religious centre of the house, making it into a home in a sense almost more vivid than that in which we use the sacred word. Through all stages of development from house to city this religious centre must have been preserved, and in the Rome of historical times Vesta was still there, inherent in her sacred hearth-fire, which was tended by her six virgin priestesses, and renewed on the Roman New Year's day (March 1) by the primitive method of friction.287 The Vestals beyond doubt represented the unmarried daughters of the primitive Latin family, and the penus Vestae, a kind of Holy of Holies of the Roman State, recalled the penus or store-closet of the agricultural home; this penus was cleansed on June 15 for the reception of the first fruits of the harvest, and then closed until June 7 of the following year.288 These and other simple duties of the Vestals, all of them traceable to the old life on the farm, together with their own sex and maidenhood, preserved this beautiful cult throughout Roman history from all contamination. Vesta in her aedes, a round dwelling which was never a temple in the technical sense, was represented by no statue, and her title of Mater never suggested to the true Roman worshipper anything but her motherly grace and beneficence.289 Far more than any other cult, that of Vesta represents the reality and continuity of Roman religious feeling; and the remains of her latest dwelling, and the statues of her priestesses with no statue of herself among them, may still give the visitor to the Forum some dim idea of the spirit of Roman worship.290
NOTES TO LECTURE VI
219 Arnobius (v. 155) fortunately mentions that this story came from the second book of Valerius Antias, whose bad reputation is well known. It was plainly meant to account for the cult-title of Jupiter Elicius, and the origin of the procuratio fulminis, and was invented by Greeks or Graecising Romans at a time (2nd century b.c.) when all reverence for the gods had vanished as completely as in Greece. Yet Dr. Frazer writes of Numa as "an adept at bringing down lightning from heaven" (Early History of Kingship, p. 204).
220 On this subject, the evolution of the knowledge of God, I may refer to Professor Gwatkin's Gifford Lectures of 1904-5, published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.
221 The meaning of deus is well put by Mr. C. Bailey in his sketch of Roman Religion (Constable & Co.), p. 12.
222 Guesses can be made about these, but little or nothing is to be learnt from them to help us in this lecture.
223 I adhere to what was said in R.F. p. 312 foll. We do not know, and probably never shall know, the original deity concerned in that festival. The ritual is wholly unlike that of the rustica Faunalia (R.F. p. 256 foll.). I believe that it dates from a time anterior to the formation of real gods—possibly from an aboriginal people who did not know any. (I am glad to see this view taken in the latest summary of German learning on this subject, Einleitung in die Altertumswissenschaft, by Gaercke and Norden, vol. ii. p. 262.) At the moment of printing an interesting discussion of the Lupercalia, by Prof. Deubner, who treats it as a historical growth, in which are embodied ideas and rites of successive ages, has appeared in Archiv (1910, p. 481 foll.). See Appendix B.
224 Wissowa, R.K. pp. 170 and 250 foll.
225 Strabo, p. 164. Cp. Usener, Götternamen, p. 277, whose comment is, "Die Götter aller dieser Stämme waren 'namenlos,' weil sie nicht mit Eigennamen sondern durch Eigenschaftsworte benannt wurden. Für einen griechischen Reisenden vorchristlicher Zeit waren sie nicht fassbar." Arnobius iii. 43, Gellius ii. 28. 2 are good passages for the principle. The latter alludes to the anxiety of veteres Romani on this point, "ne alium pro alio nominando falsa religione populum alligarent." Hence the formulae "si deus si dea," or "sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare," Serv. Aen. ii. 351; "quisquis es," Aen. iv. 576. See also Farnell, Evolution of Religion, 184 foll.; Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 110 foll.
226 Serv. Aen. ii. 351. I am inclined to think it is only an inference from the want of substantival names in so many Roman deities; surely, it would be argued, the pontifices must have had some reason for this. It is contradicted by the fact that in such ancient formulae as that of the devotio (Livy viii. 9) the great gods are called by their own names, though the army was in the field and in presence of the enemy. There was, however, an old idea that the name of the special tutelary god of the city was never divulged, lest he should become captivus, and that the true name of the city itself was unknown; see Macrob. iii. 9. 2 foll. I believe that these ideas were encouraged by the pontifices, but were not founded on fact.
227 For the Indigitamenta see below, p. 159; R.F. p. 341; R. Peter's able article in Myth. Lex., s.v. Scholars do not seem to me to have reckoned sufficiently with the tendency of a legal priesthood, devoted to the strict maintenance of religious minutiae, to elaborate and organise the material for god-making which was within their reach. To judge by the elaboration of the ritual at Iguvium, the same tendency must have existed in other kindred Italian communities, both to develop ritualistic priesthoods, and through them to elaborate the ritual. This is, I think, the weak point of Usener's reasoning in his Götternamen, and as applied to Roman deities it is the weak point of an interesting article by von Domaszewski, reprinted in his Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion, p. 155 foll.
228 The best account of Tellus is in Wissowa, R.K. p. 159 foll.
229 R.F. p. 71; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 631 foll. This was a festival of the populus as a whole, and also of each Curia, like the Fornicalia in February. Both were clearly agricultural in origin, though the Curia as we know it was probably an institution of the city. I must own that I am quite uncertain as to what the thing was which was originally meant by the word Curia; my friend Dr. J. B. Carter may have something to say on the subject in his book on the Roman religion in the Jastrow series.
230 Dieterich, Mutter Erde, pp. 11 and 73 foll.
231 Virg. Aen. iv. 166, "prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno Dant signum"; commenting on which Servius wrote, "quidam sane etiam Tellurem praeesse nuptiis tradunt; nam et in auspiciis nuptiarum invocatur: cui etiam virgines, vel cum ire ad domum mariti coeperint, vel iam ibi positae, diversis nominibus vel ritu sacrificant." There is little doubt that Tellus is frequently concealed under the names of Ceres, Dea Dia, etc. For Ceres and Juno in marriage rites, see Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 49.
232 See below, p. 206 foll.; Macrob. iii. 9. 11; Deubner in Archiv, 1905, p. 66 foll.
233 See De Marchi, La Religione, etc., i. p. 188 and reff. (The reference to Gellius should be iv. 6. 7, not iv. 67.) Like some other operations of the Roman religion, this became a form, and was used as a kind of insurance, whether or no there had been any omission; Wissowa, R.K. p. 160.
234 That Ceres represented the fructus is shown by the fact that in the XII. Tables the man who raided a field of standing corn at night was made sacer to her; Pliny, N.H. xviii. 12.
235 Cato, R.R. 134. De Marchi, op. cit. p. 135. Janus, Jupiter, and Juno are concerned in this rite, Ceres coming last. Varro has preserved the part of Tellus for us: "quod humatus non sit, heredi porca praecidanea suscipienda Telluri et Cereri, aliter familia non pura est" (ap. Nonium, p. 163).
236 The verses are quoted by Dieterich, Mutter Erde, p. 75, among others from Buecheler's Anthology of Roman Epitaphs, Nos. 1544 and 1476. The story is told in Suetonius' Life of Tib. c. 75, and again of Gallienus by Aurelius Victor (Caes. c. 33).
237 Marquardt, p. 326, who notes that the Romans themselves derived the word from filum, a fillet; e.g. Varro, L.L. v. 84, "quod in Latio capite velato erant semper, ac caput cinctum habebant filo." Modern etymologists equate the word with Brahman.
238 Thus the Flamen Quirinalis sacrificed at the Robigalia, R.F. p. 89, and with the Pontifices and Vestals took part in the Consualia, Marq. 335.
239 We may note here that the most general Latin name for a priest was sacerdos, which seems to have excluded all magic, etc.; it means an office sanctioned by the State. On the general question of the origin of priesthood see Jevons, Introduction, etc., ch. xx., with whose explanations, however, I cannot entirely agree. I should prefer to keep the word priest for an official who sacrifices and prays to his god. In this view I am at one with E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i.2 p. 121 foll. God and priest go together as permanent, regular in function, and entrusted by a community with certain duties.
240 Marquardt, p. 180; Wissowa, R.K. p. 427. The popa or victimarius is seen in many artistic representations of sacrifice, e.g. Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities, plate xvii. figs. 1 and 3.
241 Jevons, ch. xx.; Frazer, G.B. i. 245 foll., and Lectures on Early History of Kingship, Lectures ii. and v.
242 Virg. Aen. viii. 352.
243 In a valuable paper in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen (p. 284) Wissowa says that "personal conception of deity is absolutely strange to the old Roman religion of the di indigetes." I believe this to be essentially true; but my point is that localisation and ritual prepared the way for the reception of Greek ideas of personality. The process had already begun in the religion of the house; but it was not likely there to come in contact with foreign germs. When Janus and Vesta, who were in every house (Wissowa, p. 285), were localised in certain points in a city, they would be far more likely to acquire personality, if such an idea came in their way, than in the worship of the family.
244 Aug. Civ. Dei, vii. 28, "quem alii caelum, alii dixerunt esse mundum." Dr. Frazer, citing this passage (Kingship, p. 286) in support of his view that Janus was a duplicate of Jupiter, has omitted to notice that some theorisers fancied he was the universe, which by itself is enough to betray the delusive nature of this kind of theological speculation. Varro elsewhere gives us a clue to the liability of Janus to be exalted in this unnatural fashion, L.L. vii. 27, "divum deo" (in the Salian hymn), if this be taken as referring to Janus, as it may be, comparing Macrob. i. 9. 14. But this is easily explained by the position of Janus in prayers; cp. Cic. Nat. Deor. ii. 27. 67, "cum in omnibus rebus vim haberent maximam prima et extrema, principem in sacrificando Ianum esse voluerunt." The phrase "Deorum" or "Divum deus" is indeed remarkable, and unparalleled in Roman worship; but no one acquainted with Roman or Italian ritual will for a moment suspect it of meaning "God of gods" in either a Christian or metaphysical sense. I shall have occasion to notice the peculiar use of the genitive case and of genitival adjectives in worship later on. See below, p. 153 foll.
245 Fasti, i. 89 foll.; R.F. p. 281 foll.
246 Frazer, l.c. (a page of which every line appears to me to be written under a complete misapprehension of the right methods of research into the nature of Roman gods); A. B. Cook, Classical Review, vol. xviii. 367 foll.; Professor Ridgeway, Who were the Romans? p. 12, where, among other remarkable statements, Janus is confidently said to have been introduced at Rome by the Sabine Numa, and therefore to have been a Sabine deity, an assumption quite irreconcilable with those of Dr. Frazer and Mr. Cook. In striking contrast with such speculations is a sensible paper on Janus in M. Toutain's Études de mythologie et d'histoire, p. 195 foll. (Paris, 1909).
247 Dr. Frazer is aware of this; see his Kingship, p. 285, note 1. See also Roscher in Myth. Lex., s.v. "Janus," p. 45 foll.
248 For the evidence for this and the following facts, see Roscher's article just cited, or Wissowa, R.K. p. 91 foll.; cp. R.F. p. 280 foll. The cult epithets of Janus are thus explained by von Domaszewski, Abhandlungen, p. 223, note 1, "Bei Ianus tritt regelmässig der Begriff des Wesens hinzu, dessen Wirkung er von Anfang an bestimmt, so I. Consevius der Anfang der in Consus wirkenden Kraft, und in derselbe Weise I. Iunonius, Matutinus," etc. This is reasonable, but it does not suit with I. Patulcius-Clusius, and I cannot accept it with confidence at present.
249 Roscher, op. cit. p. 34.
250 Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 284 foll.
251 Festus, p. 185.
252 It is due to the good sense and learning of Dr. Roscher; he had previously, when working on the old methods, tried to prove that Janus was a "wind-god" (Hermes der Windgott, Leipzig, 1878); but a more searching inquiry into the Roman evidence, when the prepossessions had left him which the comparative method is so likely to produce, brought him to the view I have explained in outline, which has been adopted in the main by Wissowa, Aust, and J. B. Carter, as well as by myself in R.F. The last word about so puzzling a deity can of course never be said; but if we indulge in speculations about him we must use the Roman evidence with adequate knowledge of the criticism it needs.
253 This difference between Zeus and Jupiter has been pointed out by Wissowa, R.K. p. 100; Jupiter stands for the heaven even in classical Latin literature, as we all know.
254 See his papers in the Classical Review, vol. xvii. 270 and xviii. 365 foll., and in Folklore, vol. xv. 301; xvi. 260 foll.
255 Kingship, p. 196 foll.
256 Macrobius i. 15. 14. In historical times a white victim, ovis idulis, was taken to the Capitol by the via sacra in procession (Ov. Fasti, i. 56. 588). Festus says that some derived the term via sacra from this procession (p. 290); and to this Horace may be alluding in Ode iii. 30. 8, "dum Capitolium Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex."
257 R.F. pp. 86, 204.
258 R.F. p. 160.
259 No doubt Jupiter was specially connected with the oak, as Mr. Cook has shown with great learning in the paper cited above, note 36; but at Rome he had an ancient shrine among beeches, and was known as I. Fagutalis: Varro, L.L. v. 152; Paulus 87. For I. Viminalis, see R.F. p. 229.
260 See Aust's article "Jupiter" in Myth. Lex. p. 673.
261 Aust gives a cut of a coin of the consul Claudius Marcellus (223 b.c.) dedicating spolia opima in this little temple, according to the ancient fashion, supposed to be initiated by Romulus, Livy i. 10.
262 Dionys. Hal. ii. 34.
263 R.F. p. 230.
264 See De Marchi's careful investigation, La Religione, etc., i. p. 156 foll.; Gaius i. 112. The cult-title should indicate that the god was believed to be immanent in the cake of far, rather than that it was offered to him (so I should also take I. Dapalis, though in later times the idea had passed into that of sacrifice, Cato, R.R. 132), and if so, the use of the cake was sacramental; cp. the rite at the Latin festival, R.F. p. 96.
265 There are distinct traces of a practice of taking oaths in the open air, i.e. under the sky; of Dius Fidius, unquestionably a form of Jupiter, Varro says (L.L. v. 66), "quidam negant sub tecto per hunc deiurare oportere." Cp. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 28; R.F. p. 138. For the conception of a single great deity as primitive, see Lang, The Making of Religion, ch. xii.; Flinders Petrie, Religion of Egypt (in Constable's shilling series), ch. i.; Ross, The Original Religion of China, p. 128 foll.; Warneck, Die Lebenskräfte des Evangeliums, p. 20 (of the Indian Archipelago). The last reference I owe to Professor Paterson, of Edinburgh University.
266 Serv. Aen. viii. 552, "more enim veteri sacrorum neque Martialis flamen neque Quirinalis omnibus caerimoniis tenebantur quibus flamen Dialis, neque diurnis sacrificiis distinebatur." It is, however, possible that under the word caerimonia Servius is not here including taboos, but active duties only.
267 See my paper, "The Strange History of a Flamen Dialis," in Classical Review, vol. vii. p. 193.
268 Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 26.
269 Cato, R.R. 141; Henzen, op. cit. p. 48.
270 Frazer, G.B. iii. 123, note 3; R.F. p. 40, for further examples. It may be worth while to point out here that the coupling of all farm animals except goats took place in spring or early summer; Varro, R.R. ii. 2 foll. Isidorus (Orig. v. 33), who embodies Varro and Verrius to some extent, derived the name Mars from mares, because in the month of March "cuncta animalia ad mares aguntur."
271 I prefer, with De Marchi, to take Silvanus here as a cult-title, though we do not meet with it elsewhere; see La Religione, etc., p. 130 note; but Wissowa, who has a prejudice against the view that Mars was connected with agriculture, insists on taking Marti Silvano as a case of asyndeton, i.e. as two deities.
272 See, e.g., Varro, L.L. v. 36, "quos agros non colebant propter silvas aut id genus, ubi pecus possit pasci, et possidebant, ab usu salvo saltus nominarunt."
273 Cato, R.R. 141. Mars is there invoked as able to keep off (averruncare) evil influences and to make the crops grow, etc.; he has become in the second century b.c. a powerful deity in the actual processes of husbandry, just as he became in the city a powerful deity of war. But as he was not localised either on the farm or in the city, I prefer to think that he was originally conceived as a Power outside the boundary in each case, but for that very reason all the more to be propitiated by the settlers within it.
274 See below, p. 235.
275 So Wissowa, R.K. p. 131. Cp. R.F. p. 39, note 4. Deubner in Archiv, 1905, p. 75.
276 Servius, commenting on line 3 of Aen. viii. (utque impulit arma) writes: "nam is qui belli susceperat curam, sacrarium Martis ingressus, primo ancilia commovebat, post hastam simulacri ipsius, dicens, Mars vigila." The mention of a statue shows that this account belongs to a late period. But Varro seems to have stated that there was originally only a spear; see a passage of Clement of Alexandria in the fragments of the Ant. rer. div., Agahd, p. 210, to which Deubner (l.c.) adds Arnobius vi. 11. Deubner calls this spear a fetish, which is not the right word if the deity were immanent in it in the sense suggested by "Mars vigila." See above, p. 116. If Servius correctly reports the practice, it must be compared with the clashing of shields and spears by the Salii, which may thus have had a positive as well as negative object.
277 Livy v. 52.
278 Mr. A. B. Cook (Classical Review, 1904, p. 368) has tried to connect both names with the Greek word πρῖνοϛ, and Professor Conway, quoted by him, is inclined to lend the weight of his great authority to the conjecture. Thus Quirinus would be an oak-god, and Quirites oak-spearmen. We must, however, remember that Mr. Cook is, so to speak, on an oak scent, and his keenness as a hunter leads him sometimes astray. One is a little perplexed to understand why Jupiter, Janus, Mars, and Quirinus should all be oak-gods (and all in origin identical as such!). On the other hand, it is fair to note that the original spear was probably of wood, with the point hardened in the fire, like the hasta praeusta of the Fetiales: Festus, p. 101. If quiris has really anything to do with oaks, it would be more natural to explain the two words as springing from an old place-name, Quirium, as Niebuhr did long ago, and to derive that again from the oaks among which it may have stood. But I am content to take quiris as simply a spear, as Buecheler did; see Deubner, op. cit. p. 76. Since the above was written, the article "Quirinus" by Wissowa in the Myth. Lex. has appeared. Naturally it does not add anything to our knowledge; but Wissowa holds to the opinion that the most probable derivation of the name Quirinus is from Quirium, possibly the name of the settlement on the Quirinal; and compares Q. pater (e.g. Livy v. 52. 7) with the Reatinus pater of C.I.L. ix. 4676.
279 The Nonae Caprotinae (July 7), the day when women sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree in the Campus Martius, is not known to us except from Varro. See R.F. p. 178, where (note 8) is a suggestion that the festival had to do with the caprificatio, or method of ripening the figs, which Dr. Frazer has expanded in his Lectures on Kingship, p. 270, believing the process to be that of fertilisation.
280 Classical Review, vol. ix. p. 474 foll. The same view has recently been taken independently by W. Otto in Philologus, 1905, pp. 215 foll., 221. It is perfectly clear that the monthly sacrifice to Juno was the duty of the wife of the rex sacrorum; a pontifex minor is also mentioned (Macrob. i. 15. 19).
281 Wissowa, R.K. p. 116.
282 Ib. p. 114.
283 See Ihm's article "Iunones" in Myth. Lex. vol. ii. 615; Pliny, N.H. ii. 16.
284 Dr. J. B. Carter tells me that he has abandoned this explanation of the evolution of Juno. On the other hand, von Domaszewski seems in some measure to accept it (Abhandlungen, p. 169 foll.), when he says that "similar functions, when exercised by different numina, can eventually produce a god. Auf diese Weise ist Iuno geworden." He means that the creative power is called Juno in a woman, or in a people (Iuno Populonia), or in the curiae (Iuno Curitis), and that an independent deity, Juno par excellence, emerges from all these. But so far I cannot follow him.
285 There is no real evidence from purely Roman sources of this fancied conjugal or other relation, if we exclude that of the alleged cult of Juno by the Flaminica Dialis. This has been well seen and expressed by W. Otto, l.c. p. 215 foll.; see also Classical Review as quoted above. As we shall see in the next lecture, Dr. Frazer is much concerned to show that Jupiter and Juno are actually a married pair, and consequently he will have nothing to do with my opinion on this point: Early History of Kingship, p. 214 foll., and Adonis, Attis, Osiris, ed. 2, p. 410, note 1.
286 Wissowa, R.K. p. 141.
287 Festus, p. 106; Macrob. i. 12. 6.
288 I have discussed the Vestalia and the nature of Vesta and her cult in R.F. p. 145 foll. See also Marquardt, p. 336 foll., and Wissowa, R.K. p. 141 foll.
289 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 296, says that he had been stupid enough to believe that there was a statue in the aedes Vestae, but found out his mistake:—
The passage is interesting as showing how natural it was for a Roman of the Graeco-Roman period to suppose that his deities must be capable of taking iconic form. For anthropomorphic representations of Vesta in other places and at Pompeii, see Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 67 foll.
290 See Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, p. 223 foll. The statues of the virgines vestales maximae, discovered in the Atrium Vestae, all belong to the period of the Empire. They are now in the museum of the Baths of Diocletian.
LECTURE VII
THE DEITIES OF THE EARLIEST RELIGION: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
In the last lecture we interrogated the calendar as to the deities whose festivals are recorded in it, with the aid of what we know of the most ancient priesthoods attached to particular cults. The result may be stated thus: we found a number of impersonal numina, with names of adjectival form, such as Saturnus, Vertumnus, and so on; others with substantival names, Tellus, Robigus, Terminus; the former apparently functional deities, concerned in the operations of nature or man, and the latter spirits immanent in objects—Mother Earth herself, a stone, the mildew, or (like Janus and Vesta) the entrance and the hearth-fire of human dwellings or cities. Lastly, we found from the evidence, chiefly of the priesthoods, that certain more important divinities stand out from the crowd of spirits, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and Vesta; and we found some reason to think that these, and possibly a few of the others, by becoming the objects of priestly cura and caerimonia at particular spots in the city, were not unlikely to become also in some sense personal deities, to acquire a quasi-human personality, if they came by the chance. In the present lecture I must go rather more closely into such evidence as we possess bearing on the mental conception which these early Romans had formed of the divine beings whom they had admitted within their city.
And, first, we must be quite clear that in those early ages there was nothing in Rome which we can call a temple, as we understand the word; nor was there any such representation of a deity as we can call an image or eidolon. The deities were settled in particular spots of ground, which were made loca sacra, i.e. handed over to the deity by the process of consecratio authorised by the ius divinum.291 It was matter of no moment what might be erected on this bit of ground; there might be a rude house like that of Vesta, round in shape like the oldest Italian huts; there might be a gateway like that of Janus; or the spot might be a grove, or a clearing within it (lucus), as in the case of Robigus or the Dea Dia of the Arval Brethren. All such places might be called by the general name fanum; and as a rule no doubt each fanum contained a sacellum, i.e. a small enclosure without a roof, containing a little altar (ara). These "altars" may at first have been nothing more than temporary erections of turf and sods; permanent stone altars were probably a later development. Servius tells us that in later times it was the custom to place a sod (caespes) on the top of such a stone altar, which must be one of the many survivals in cult of the usages of a simpler age.292
With such spots as these we cannot associate anything in the nature of an image of the deity established there; and we have every reason to believe that no such thing was known at Rome until the Etruscan temple of the Capitoline trias was built near the end of the regal period. Varro expressly declared that the Romans remained for more than 170 years without any images of their gods, and added that those who first introduced such images "civitatibus suis et metum dempsisse et errorem addidisse."293 What he had in his mind is clear; he had indeed no direct knowledge of those early times, but he is thinking of a definite traditional date in the kingly period—the last year of the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, who, according to Varro's own account, built the temple on the Capitol and placed in it a statue of Jupiter.294 That was the oldest image of which he knew anything; and, as Wissowa has remarked, his belief is entirely corroborated by the fact that in every single case in which the image of a god has any part in his cult, it is always either this Capitoline Jupiter or some deity of later introduction and non-Roman origin. It is also borne out by another significant and interesting fact—that the next image to be introduced, that of Diana in the temple on the Aventine, was a copy of the ξὁανον of Artemis at Massilia, itself a copy of the famous one at Ephesus.295 Let us note that these two earliest statues were placed in roofed temples which were the dwelling-places of gods in an entirely new sense; so far no Roman deity of the city had been so housed, because he could not be thought of in terms of human life, as visible in human form and needing shelter. But this later and foreign notion of divinity so completely took possession of the minds of the Romans of the cosmopolitan city that Varro is the only writer who has preserved the tradition of the older way of thinking. In the religion of the family Ovid indeed has charmingly expressed it, perhaps on the authority of some lost passage of Varro296:—