The amplifications here are Mommsen’s, the first two based on Plutarch’s statement. It is a difficulty, as regards the first, that the middle of December would be a bad time for flowers: perhaps this did not occur to the great scholar. I would suggest that either Verrius’ note is here accidentally misplaced, or that the lacunae must be filled up differently. In any case I do not think we need fear to refer Plutarch’s passage to the Consualia of August, and therefore to harvest rejoicings on that day.
The connexion of the Consus-cult with horses was so obvious as to give rise eventually to the identification of the god with Poseidon Hippios. It is certain that there were horse-races in the Circus maximus at one of the two Consualia, and as Dionysius[888] connects them with the day of the Rape of the Sabines, which Plutarch puts in August, we may be fairly sure that they took place at the August festival. Mules also raced—according to Festus[889], because they were said to be the most ancient beasts of burden. This looks like a harvest festival, and may carry us back to the most primitive agricultural society and explain the origin of the Circus maximus; for the only other horse-races known to us from the old calendar were those of Mars in the Campus Martius on Feb. 27 and March 13[890]. We may suppose that when the work of harvest was done, the farmers and labourers enjoyed themselves in this way and laid the foundation for a great Roman social institution[891].
Once more, it is not impossible that in the legendary connexion of the Rape of the Sabine women with the Consualia[892] we may see a reflection of the jollity and license which accompanies the completion of harvest among so many peoples. Romulus was said to have attracted the Sabines by the first celebration of the Consualia. Is it not possible that the meeting of neighbouring communities on a festive occasion of this kind may have been a favourable opportunity for capturing new wives[893]? The sexual license common on such occasions has been abundantly illustrated by Mr. Frazer in his Golden Bough[894].
Before leaving the Consualia we may just remark that Consus had no flamen of his own, in spite of his undoubted antiquity; doubtless because his altar was underground, and only opened once or perhaps twice a year. On August 21 his sacrifice was performed, says Tertullian[895], by the Flamen Quirinalis in the presence of the Vestals. This flamen seems to have had a special relation to the corn-crops, for it was he who also sacrificed a dog to Robigus on April 25[896], to avert the mildew from them; and thus we get one more confirmation from the cult of the view taken as to the agricultural origin of the Consualia.
VOLCANALIA. (PINC. MAFF. VALL. ETC.)
VOLCANO IN CIRCO FLAMINIO. (VALL.)
VOLCANO. (PINC.)
(A mutilated fragment of the calendar of the Fratres Arvales gives QUIR[INO] IN COLLE, VOLK[ANO] IN COMIT[IO]. OPI OPIFERÆ IN ..., [NYMP]HIS(?) IN CAMPO).
Of the cult of this day, apart from the extracts from the calendars, we know nothing, except that the heads of Roman families threw into the fire certain small fish with scales, which were to be had from the Tiber fishermen at the ‘area Volcani’[897]. We cannot explain this; but it reminds us of the fish called maena, with magical properties, which the old woman offered to Tacita and the ghost-world at the Parentalia[898]. Fish-sacrifices were rare; and if in one rite fish are used to propitiate the inhabitants of the underworld, they seem not inappropriate in another of which the object is apparently to propitiate the fire-god, who in a volcanic country like that of Rome must surely be a chthonic deity.
The antiquity of the cult of Volcanus is shown by the fact that there was a Flamen Volcanalis[899], who on May 1 sacrificed to Maia, the equivalent, as we saw, of Bona Dea, Terra, &c. With Volcanus we may remember that Maia was coupled in the old prayer formula preserved by Gellius (13.23)—Maia Volcani. From these faint indications Preller[900] conjectured that the original notion of Volcanus was that of a favouring nature-spirit, perhaps of the warmth and fertilizing power of the earth. However this may be, in later times, under influences which can only be guessed at, he became a hostile fire-god, hard to keep under control. Of this aspect of him Wissowa has written concisely at the conclusion of his little treatise de Feriis. He suggests that the appearance of the nymphs[901] in the rites of this day indicates the use of water in conflagrations, and that Ops Opifera was perhaps invoked to protect her own storehouses. The name Volcanus became a poetical word for devouring fire as early as the time of Ennius, and is familiar to us in this sense in Virgil[902]. After the great fire at Rome in Nero’s time a new altar was erected to Volcanus by Domitian, at which (and at all Volcanalia) on this day a red calf and a boar were offered for sacrifice[903]. At Ostia the cult became celebrated; there was an ‘aedes’ and a ‘pontifex Volcani’ and a ‘praetor sacris Volcani faciundis.’ In August the storehouses at Ostia would be full of new grain arrived from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, and in that hot month would be especially in danger from fire; an elaborate cult of Volcanus the fire-god was therefore at this place particularly desirable.
The aedes Volcani in circo Flaminio was dedicated before 215 B.C.; the exact date is not known[904]. Its position was explained by Vitruvius[905] as having the object of keeping conflagrations away from the city. Mr. Jevons, in his Introduction to a translation of Plutarch’s Quaestiones Romanae[906], has argued from this position, outside the pomoerium, and from a doubtful etymology, that the cult of Volcanus was a foreign introduction; but the position of the temple is no argument, as has been well shown by Aust[907], and the chief area Volcani, or Volcanal, was in the Comitium, in the heart of the city[908].
This does not appear in the calendars. We learn from Festus[909] that on this day, on Oct. 5, and Nov. 8, the ‘mundus’ was open. This mundus was a round pit on the Palatine, the centre of Roma quadrata[910]—the concave hollow being perhaps supposed to correspond to the concave sky above[911]. It was closed, so it was popularly believed, by a ‘lapis manalis’ (Festus s. v.). When this was removed, on the three days there was supposed to be free egress for the denizens of the underworld[912].
I am much inclined to see in this last idea a later Graeco-Etruscan accretion upon a very simple original fact. O. Müller long ago suggested this—pointing out that in Plutarch’s description of the foundation of Roma quadrata the casting into the trench of first-fruits of all necessaries of life gives us a clue to the original meaning of the mundus. If we suppose that it was the penus of the new city—a sacred place, of course—used for storing grain, we can see why it should be open on Aug. 24[913]. Nor is it difficult to understand why, when the original use and meaning had vanished, the Graeco-Etruscan doctrine of the underworld should be engrafted on this simple Roman stem. Dis and Proserpina claim the mundus: it is ‘ianua Orci,’ ‘faux Plutonis’[914]—ideas familiar to Romans who had come under the spell of Etruscan religious beliefs.
OPIC[ONSIVIA]. (ALLIF. MAFF. VALL.)
OPICID. (PINC.) The last two letters must be a cutter’s error.
Feriae Opi; Opi Consiv. in Regia. (Arv.) The last four words seem to belong to Aug. 26 (see Mommsen ad loc.).
This festival follows that of Consus after an interval of three days; and Wissowa[915] has pointed out that in December the same interval occurs between the Consualia (15th) and the Opalia (19th). This and the epithet or cognomen Consiva, which is fully attested[916], led him to fancy that Ops was the wife of Consus, and not the wife of Saturnus, as has been generally supposed both in ancient and modern times[917]. We may agree with him that there is no real evidence for any primitive connexion of Saturnus and Ops of this kind; as far as we can tell the idea was adopted from the relation of Cronos and Rhea. But there was no need to find any husband for Ops; the name Consiva need imply no such relation, any more than Lua Saturni, Moles Martis, Maia Volcani, and the rest[918], or the Tursa Iovia of the Iguvian inscription so often quoted. Both adjectival and genitive forms are in my view no more than examples of the old Italian instinct for covering as much ground as possible in invoking supernatural powers[919]; and this is again a result of the indistinctness with which those powers were conceived, in regard both to their nature and function. A distinct specialization of function was, I am convinced, the later work of the pontifices. Ops and Consus are obviously closely related; and Wissowa is probably right in treating the one as a deity ‘messis condendae,’ and the other as representing the ‘opima frugum copia quae horreis conditur.’ But when he goes further than this, his arguments ring hollow[920].
Of the ritual of the Opiconsivia we know only what Varro tells us[921]: ‘Opeconsiva dies ab dea Ope Consiva, quoius in Regia sacrarium, quod ideo actum (so MSS.) ut eo praeter Virgines Vestales et sacerdotem publicum introeat nemo.’ Many conjectures have been made for the correction of ‘quod ideo actum’[922]; but the real value of the passage does not depend on these words. The Regia is the king’s house, and represents that of the ancient head of the family: the sacrarium Opis was surely then the sacred penus of that house—the treasury of the fruits of the earth on which the family subsisted. It suits admirably with this view that, as Varro says, only the Vestals and a ‘publicus sacerdos’ were allowed to enter it—i. e. the form was retained from remote antiquity that the daughters of the house were in charge of it[923]—the master of the house being here represented by the sacerdos—the rex sacrorum or a pontifex. In this connexion it is worth while to quote a passage of Columella[924] which seems to be derived from some ancient practice of the rural household: ‘Ne contractentur pocula vel cibi nisi aut ab impube aut certe abstinentissimo rebus venereis, quibus si fuerit operatus vel vir vel femina debere eos flumine aut perenni aqua priusquam penora contingant ablui. Propter quod his necessarium esse pueri vel virginis ministerium, per quos promantur quae usus postulaverit.’
VOLT[URNALIA]. (ALLIF. MAFF. VALL.)
FERIAE VOLTURNO. (ARV. INTER ADDITA POSTERIORA.)
VOLTURNO FLUMINI SACRIFICIUM. (VALL.)
Of this very ancient and perhaps obsolete rite nothing seems to have been known to the later Latin scholars, or they did not think it worth comment. Varro mentions a Flamen Volturnalis, but tells us nothing about him. From the occurrence of the name for a river in Campania it may be guessed that the god in this case was a river also; and if so, it must be the Tiber. This is Mommsen’s conclusion, and the only difficulty he finds in it is that (in his view) Portunus is also the Tiber[925]. Why did he not see that the same river-god, even if bearing different names, could hardly have two flamines? I am content to see in Volturnus an old name for the Tiber, signifying the winding snake-like river[926], and in Portunus a god of storehouses, as I have explained above.
Here, then, we perhaps have a trace of the lost cult of the Tiber, which assuredly must have existed in the earliest times—and the flamen is the proof of its permanent importance. When the name was changed to Tiber we do not know, nor whether ‘Albula’ marks an intermediate stage between the two; but that this was the work of the pontifices seems likely from Servius[927], who writes ‘Tiberinus ... a pontificibus indigitari solet.’ Of a god Tiberinus there is no single early record.
It should just be mentioned that Jordan[928], relying on Lucretius, 5. 745, thought it probable that Volturnus might be a god of whirlwinds; and Huschke[929] has an even wilder suggestion, which need not here be mentioned.