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].
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].
MAT[RALIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)
MATR[I] MATUTÆ. (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]:
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].
FERIAE IOVI. (VEN.)
IOVI. (TUSC.)
To these notes in the calendars we may add a few lines from Ovid:
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:
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.
SUMMAN[O] AD CIRC[UM] MAXIM[UM]. (VEN. ESQ. AMIT.)
To this note may be added that of Ovid[655]:
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.
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]:
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].
But the chief argument is based on the cult of Fortuna Primigenia, ‘the first-born of the gods,’ as he translates the word, in accordance with a recent elaborate investigation of its meaning[679]. This cult does indeed show very curious and interesting characters. It belonged originally to Praeneste, where Fortuna was the presiding deity of an ancient and famous oracle. Here have been found inscriptions to Fortuna, ‘DIOVO[S] FILEA[I] PRIMOGENIA[I],’ the first-born daughter of Jupiter[680]. Here also, strange to say, Cicero describes[681] an enclosure sacred to Jupiter Puer, who was represented there with Juno as sitting in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammam appetens.’ This very naturally attracted Prof. Max Müller’s keenest attention, and he had no difficulty in finding his explanation: Fortuna is ‘the first-born of all the bright powers of the sky, and the daughter of the sky; but likewise from another point of view the mother of the daily sun who is the bright child she carries in her arms.’ This is charming; but it is the language and thought, not of ancient Italians, but of Vedic poets. The great Latin scholar, who had for years been soaking his mind in Italian antiquities, will hardly venture on an explanation at all: ‘haud ignarus quid deceat eum qui Aboriginum regiones attingat[682].’
I shall have occasion later on[683] to say something of this very interesting and mysterious cult at Praeneste. At present I must be content with pointing out that it is altogether unsafe to regard it as representative of any general ideas of ancient Italian religion. As Italian archaeologists are aware, Praeneste was a city in which Etruscan and Greek influences are most distinctly traceable, and in which foreign deities and myths seem to have become mixed up with native ones, to the extreme bewilderment of the careful inquirer[684]. We may accept the Professor’s explanation of it with all respect as a most interesting hypothesis, but as no more than a hypothesis which needs much more information than we as yet possess to render it even a probable one.
By his own account the Professor would not have been led so far afield for an explanation of Fortuna if he had not been struck by the apparent difficulty involved in such a goddess as ‘she who brings.’ Towards the removal of this difficulty, however, the late Mr. Vigfusson did something in a letter to the Academy of March 17, 1888[685]. He equated Fors and Fortuna with the Icelandic buror, from a verb having quite as wide and general a meaning as fero, and being its etymological equivalent. ‘There is a department of its meanings,’ he tells us, ‘through which runs the notion of an invisible, passive, sudden, involuntary, chance agency’; and another, in which bera means to give birth, and produces a noun meaning birth, and so lucky birth, honour, &c. The two ideas come together in the Norse notion of the Norns who presided at the birth of each child, shaping at that hour the child’s fortune[686].
It is rather to the ideas of peoples like the early Teutons and Celts that we must look for mental conditions resembling those of the early Italians, than to the highly developed poetical mythology of the Vedas; and it is in the direction which Mr. Vigfusson pointed out that I think we should search for the oldest Italian ideas of Fortuna and for the causes which led to her popularity and development. In a valuable paper, to which I shall have occasion to refer again, Prof. Nettleship[687] suggested that Carmenta (or Carmentes) may be explained with S. Augustine[688] as the goddess or prophetess who tells the fortunes of the children, and that this was the reason why she was especially worshipped by matrons, like Mater Matuta, Fortuna and others. The Carmentes were in fact the Norns of Italy. Such a practical need as the desire to know your child’s fortunes would be quite in harmony with what we know of the old Italian character; and I think it far from impossible that Fortuna, as an oracular deity in Italy, may have been originally a conception of the same kind, perhaps not only a prophetess as regards the children, but also of the good luck of the mother in childbirth. Perhaps the most striking fact in her multifarious cults is the predominance in them of women as worshippers. Of the very Fortuna Primogenia of whom we have been speaking Cicero tells us that her ancient home at Praeneste was the object of the special devotion of mothers[689]. The same was the case with Fortuna Virilis, Muliebris, Mammosa, and others.
If we look at her in this light, there is really no difficulty in understanding why what seems to us at first sight a very vague conception, ‘the goddess who brings,’ should not have meant something very real and concrete to the early Italian mind. And again, if that be so, if Fortuna be once recognized as a great power in ways which touched these essential and practical needs of human nature, we may feel less astonishment at finding her represented either as the daughter or the mother of Jupiter. Such representation could indeed hardly have been the work of really primitive Italians; it arose, one may conjecture, if not from some confusion which we cannot now unravel, from the fame of the oracle—one of the very few in Italy—and the consequent fame of the goddess whose name came to be attached to that oracle. Or, as Jordan seems to think, it may have been the vicinity of the rock-oracle to the temple of Jupiter which gave rise to the connexion between the two in popular belief; a belief which was expressed in terms of relationship, perhaps under Greek influence, but certainly in a manner for the most part absent from the unmythological Italian religion. Why indeed in the same place she should be mother as well as daughter of Jupiter (if Cicero be accurate in his account, which is perhaps not quite certain) may well puzzle us all. Those who cannot do without an explanation may accept that of Prof. Max Müller, if they can also accept his etymology. Those who have acquired what Mommsen has called the ‘difficillima ars nesciendi,’ will be content with Jordan’s cautious remark, ‘Non desunt vestigia divinum numen Italis notum fuisse deis deabusve omnibus et hoc ipso in quo vivimus mundo antiquius[690].’
But Fortuna has not only been conjectured to be a deity of the dawn; she has been made out to be both a moon-goddess and a sun-goddess. For her origin in the moon there is really nothing of any weight to be urged; the advocate of this view is one of the least judicious of German specialists, and his arguments need not detain us[691]. But for her connexion with the sun there is something more to be said.
The dedication day of the temple of Fors Fortuna was exactly at the summer solstice. It is now St. John the Baptist’s day, and one on which a great variety of curious local customs, some of which still survive, regularly occur; and especially the midsummer fires which were until recently so common in our own islands. Attention has often been drawn to the fondness for parallelism which prompted the early Christians to place the birth of Christ at the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer, and that of the Baptist—for June 24 is his reputed birthday as well as festival—at the summer solstice when they begin to shorten; following the text, ‘He must increase and I must decrease[692].’ Certainly the sun is an object of special regard at all midsummer festivals, and is supposed to be often symbolized in them by a wheel, which is set on fire and in many cases rolled down a hill[693]. Now the wheel is of course a symbol in the cult of Fortuna, and is sometimes found in Italian representations of her, though not so regularly as the cornucopia and the ship’s rudder which almost invariably accompany her[694]. Putting this in conjunction with the date of the festival of Fors Fortuna, the Celtic scholar Gaidoz has concluded that Fortuna was ultimately a solar deity[695]. The solar origin of the symbol was, he thinks, quite forgotten; but the wheel, or the globe which sometimes replaces it, was certainly at one time solar, and perhaps came from Assyria. If so (he concludes), the earliest form of Fortuna must have been a female double of the sun.
All hints are useful in Roman antiquities, and something may yet be made of this. But it cannot be accepted until we are sure of the history and descent of this symbol in the representations of Fortuna; it is far from impossible that the wheel or globe may in this case have nothing more to do with the sun than the rudder which always accompanies it. In any case it can hardly be doubted that it is not of Italian origin; it is found, e. g. also in the cult of Nemesis, who, like Tyche, Eilithyia, and Leucothea, is probably responsible for much variation and confusion in the worship of Italian female deities[696]. As to the other fact adduced by Gaidoz, viz. the date of the festival, it is certainly striking, and must be given its full weight. It is surprising that Prof. Max Müller has made no use of it. But we must be on our guard. It is remarkable that we find in the Roman calendars no other evidence that the Romans attached the same importance to the summer solstice as some other peoples; the Roman summer festivals are concerned, in accordance with the true Italian spirit, much more with the operations of man in dealing with nature than with the phenomena of nature taken by themselves. It is perhaps better to avoid a hasty conclusion that this festival of Fors Fortuna was on the 24th because the 24th was the end of the solstice, and rather to allow the equal probability that it was fixed then because harvest was going on. Columella seems to be alluding to it in the following lines[697]: