The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, by W. Warde Fowler

416. de Genio Socratis, 15. The passage is interesting, but historically worthless, as is that of Martianus Capella, 2. 162.

417. Fasti, 5. 451 foll.; Porph. l. c. Remus, as one dead before his time, would not lie quiet: ‘Umbra cruenta Remi visa est adsistere lecto,’ &c.

418. See e. g. Von Duhn’s paper on Italian excavations, translated in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1897.

419. ‘Habent vincula nulla pedes’ (Fasti, 5. 432). In performing sacred rites a man must be free; e. g. the Flamen Dialis might not wear a ring, or anything binding, and a fettered prisoner had to be loosed in his house (Plut. Q. R. 111). Cp. Numa in his interview with Faunus (Ov. Fasti, 4. 658), ‘Nec digitis annulus ullus inest.’ Serv. Aen. 4. 518; Hor. Sat. 1. 8. 24.

420. Manes must be here used, either loosely by the poet, or euphemistically by the house-father.

421. It is curious to find them used for the very same purpose of ghost-ridding as far away as Japan (Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 176). For their antiquity as food, Hehn, Kulturpflanzen, 459; Schrader, Sprachvergleichung, 362.

422. A. Lang, Myth, &c., ii. 265; Jevons, Roman Questions, Introd. p. lxxxvi; O. Crusius, Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 164 foll.; and especially Lobeck, Aglaoph. 251 foll. For superstitions of a similar kind attached to the mandrake and other plants see Sir T. Browne’s Vulgar Errors, bk. ii. ch. 6; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, p. 356 (the berries of the rowan).

423. There was a notion that beans sown in a manure-heap produced men. Cp. Plin. H. N. 18. 118 ‘quoniam mortuorum animae sint in ea.’

424. Gell. 10. 15. 2 (from Fabius Pictor).

425. Serv. Ecl. 8. 82; Marq. 343 note. Mannhardt, A. W. F. 269, attempts an explanation of the difficulty arising here from the fact that in historical times the calendar was some weeks in advance of the seasons, but without much success.

426. This note is wrongly entered in the Fasti Venusini, under May 16.

427. Festus, 245, s. v. Publica sacra. Cp. Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 123. Festus distinguishes pagi, montes, sacella, of which the festivals would seem to be the Paganalia, Septimontium, and sacra Argeorum, respectively.

428. See under March 17. We arrive at the procession by comparing the Varronian extracts from the sacra Argeorum (L. L. 545) with Gellius, 10. 15.30, and Ovid, Fasti, 3. 791. See a restoration of the itinerary of the procession in Jordan, Topogr. ii. 603.

429. Sacella in Varro (L. L. 545); sacraria, ib. 548; Argea in Festus, 334, where the word seems to be an adjective; Argei in Liv. 1. 24 ‘loca sacris faciendis, quae Argeos pontifices vocant.’ The number depends on the reading of Varro, 7. 44, xxiv or xxvii; Jordan decided for xxiv: but see Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 123.

430. Fasti, 3. 791.

431. Jordan, Topogr. ii. 271 foll.

432. Dionysius, 1. 38; Ovid, Fasti, 5. 621 foll.; Festus, p. 334, s. v. Sexagenarii; Plutarch, Q. R. 32 and 86.

433. Dionysius says there were thirty; he had probably seen the ceremony, but may have only made a rough guess at the number or have thought of the thirty Curiae. Ovid writes of two: ‘Falcifero libata seni duo corpora gentis Mittite,’ &c. (Jordan proposed to read ‘senilia’ for ‘seni duo.’)

435. Festus, l. c.; Cicero, pro Roscio Amerino, 35. 100. Sexagenarios de ponte was apparently an old saying (cp. ‘depontani,’ Festus, 75); the earliest notice we have of it, which comes from the poet Afranius, seems to connect it with the pons sublicius.

436. ‘The etymology will of course explain a word, but only if it happens to be right; the history of the word is a surer guide’ (Skeat). In this case we have not even the history.

437. See Schwegler, i 383. note; Marq. 183. Mommsen (Staatsrecht, iii. 123) reverts to the opinion that Argei is simply Ἀργεῖοι, and preserves a reminiscence of Greek captives. Nettleship, in his Notes in Latin Lexicography, p. 271, is inclined to connect the word with ‘arcere’, in the sense of confining prisoners. More fanciful developments in a paper by O. Keller, in Fleckeisen’s Jahrbuch, cxxxiii. 845 foll.

438. The puppets may have been made in March, and then hung in the sacella till May: so Jordan, Topogr. l. c. The writer in Myth. Lex. thinks that human victims were originally kept in these sacella, for whom the puppets were surrogates.

439. There is an interesting modern parallel in Mannhardt, A. W. F. 178.

440. Varro, L. L. 5. 83, and Jordan, Topogr. i. 398. The general opinion seems now to favour the view that there was an original connexion between the pontifices and the pons sublicius.

441. Varro, L. L. 5. 83; Dionys. 2. 73, 3. 45.

442. This was the suggestion of Mr. Frazer in a note in the Journal of Philology, vol. xiv. p. 156. The late Prof. Nettleship once expressed this view to me.

443. Paulus, p. 15 ‘per Virgines Vestales’; Ovid, Fasti, 5. 621.

444. See below, p. 149.

445. Plut. Quaest. Rom. 86; Gell. 10. 15; Marq. 318. Her usual head-dress was the flammeum, or bride’s veil. No mention is made of the Flamen her husband; the prominence of women in all these rites is noticeable.

446. Baumkultus, 155, 411, 416. The cult of Adonis has some features like that of the Argei: e. g. the puppet, the immersion in water and the mourning (see Lex. s. v. Adonis, p. 73; Mannhardt, A. W. F. 276).

447. i. e. ‘old men must go over the bridge.’ See Cic. pro Roscio Amerino, 35, where the old edition of Osenbrüggen has a useful note. Also Varro, apud Lactant. Inst. 1. 21. 6. Ovid alludes to the proverb (5. 623 foll.) ‘Corpora post decies senos qui credidit annos Missa neci, sceleris crimine damnat avos.’

448. Dionys. 1. 38. But he may have been deceived simply by the appearance of the bindings of the sheaves or bundles, especially if he had been told beforehand of the proverb.

449. The best known instances of human sacrifice at Rome are collected in a note to Merivale’s History (vol. iii. 35); and by Sachse, Die Argeer, p. 17. O. Müller thought that it came to Rome from Etruria (Etrusker, ii. 20). For Greece, see Hermann, Griech. Alt. ii. sec. 27; Strabo. 10. 8. See also some valuable remarks in Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 362, on substitution in sacrifice.

450. Caesar, B. G. 6. 16; Tac. Germ. 9 and 39. Strabo, 10. 8, is interesting, as giving an example of the dropping out of the actual killing, while the form survived. See below on Lupercalia, p. 315.

451. A point suggested to me some years ago by Mr. A. J. Evans.

452. Sir A. Lyall (Asiatic Studies, p. 19) writes of human sacrifice as having been common in India as a last resort for appeasing divine wrath when manifested in some strange manner; i. e. it was never regular. So Procopius, Bell. Goth. 3. 13. Tacitus, indeed, writes of ‘certis diebus’ (Germ. 9), but it is not clear that he meant fixed recurring days. As a rule in human sacrifice and cannibalism the victims are captives, who would not be always at hand.

453. Dionysius (1. 38) speaks of sacrifice before the immersion of the puppets: προθύσαντες ἱερὰ τὰ κατὰ τοὺς νόμους.

454. The βούλιμος and φαρμακός, Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. 129 foll.

455. Germania, 40: Mannhardt, Baumkultus, 567 foll. The evidence is perhaps hardly adequate as to detail.

456. Baumkultus, chapters 3, 4, and 5, which should be used by all who wish to form some idea of the amount of evidence collected on this one head.

457. Our Jack-in-the-Green is probably a survival of this kind of rite.

458. Nearly all these customs occur either at Whitsuntide or harvest. Mannhardt conjectured that the Argei-rite was originally a harvest custom (A. W. F. 269); quite needlessly, I think.

459. Baumkultus, 331.

460. Mannhardt allows this, Baumkultus, 336 note.

461. Baumkultus, 358 foll. His theory is expressed in judicious and by no means dogmatic language. It may be that he runs his Vegetation-spirit somewhat too hard—and no mythologist is free from the error of seeing his own discovery exemplified wherever he turns. But the spirit of vegetation had been found at Rome long before Mannhardt’s time (see e. g. Preller’s account of Mars and the deities related to him).

462. Baumkultus, 359, 420; Korndämonen, 24.

463. Baumkultus, 349 foll., 365, 414.

464. Cp. the root cas-, which (according to Corssen, Aussprache, i. 652 note), appears both in canus and cascus, and also in the Oscan casnar = ‘an old man.’ The word casnar is used by Varro (ap. Nonium, 86) for sexagenarius, or possibly argeus: ‘Vix ecfatus erat cum more maiorum carnales (= casnales) arripiunt et de ponte deturbant.’ Cf. Varro, L. L. 7. 73; Mommsen, Unteritalische Dialekten, p. 268. The root arg may perhaps have meant holy as well as old or white, like the Welsh gwen (Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 527 note).

465. Baumkultus, 214-16, 355, &c. On p. 356 is a valuable note giving examples from America, India, &c. For a remarkable case from ancient Egypt, of which the object is not rain, but inundation, see Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 368. See also Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (E. T.), p. 593 foll.

466. Quaest. Rom. 86. This work is undoubtedly drawn chiefly from Varro’s writings, but largely through the medium of those of Juba the king of Mauretania, who wrote in Greek (Barth de Jubae Ὁμοιότησιν in Plutarcho expressis: Göttingen, 1876).

467. Parallels in Baumkultus, pp. 170, 178, 211, 409. These are examples of May-trees and other objects, sometimes decked out as human beings, which are hung up in the homestead for a certain time—e. g. in Austria from May-day to St. John Baptist’s day, a period closely corresponding both in length and season to that at Rome, from March 15 to May 15. In the church of Charlton-on-Otmoor, near Oxford, it is hung on the rood-screen from May 1 onwards.

468. Ovid, Fasti, 5. 627; Dionys. 1. 38.

469. See Macrob. 1. 7. 28. In Dionysius’ version, however, of the line it is Ἅιδης to whom the sacrifice is offered.

471. Topogr. ii. 285.

472. Lex. s. v. Mercurius, p. 2804.

473. Aust, de Aedibus sacris, p. 5.

474. It seems to me probable that there was a Mercurius at Rome before the introduction of Hermes; but this cannot be proved. It seems likely that the temple-cult established in 495 B.C. was really that of Hermes under an Italian name, as in the parallel case of Ceres. This was one year later than the date of the Ceres-temple (above, p. 74).

475. Mercuriales, or Mercatores (Jordan, Topogr. i. 1. 278). They belonged to the collegia of the pagi.

476. See on March 17 and January 9.

477. i. 262 foll.; Ovid, Fasti, 3. 445; Gell. N. A. 5. 12.

478. C. I. L. i. 807; the dedication of an altar (Vediovei Patrei genteiles Iuliei) found at Bovillae.

479. Ovid, Fasti, 3. 429; Gell. 5. 12. It was this temple which had May 21 as its ‘dies natalis.’

480. Liv. 31. 21. 12 (reading Vediovi for deo Iovi, with Merkel and Jordan).

481. Gell. l. c.; Preller, i. 264, and Jordan’s note.

482. Gell. 5. 12. The meaning of the expression is not clear. Paulus (165) writes: ‘Humanum sacrificium dicebant quod mortui causa fiebat’—which does not greatly help us. Preller reasonably suggested that the goat might be a substitutory victim in place of a ‘homo sacer’ or criminal (i. 265).

484. Fasti, 5. 725.

485. de Feriis, xv.

487. The Hephaestus-myth has been treated on the comparative method by F. von Schröder (Griech. Götter u. Heroen, i. 79 foll.), and by Rapp in Myth. Lex. It is of course possible that it may have been known to the early Italians, but what we know of Volcanus does not favour this.

488. Vitruvius, 3. 2. 2; it was ‘proxime portam Collinam.’

489. See below, pp. 165, 223.

490. Liv. 34. 53; Aust, de Aedibus, p. 20.

491. This seems to have been the date among the Anauni of N. Italy as late as 393 A.D.: see the Acta Martyrum, p. 536 (Verona, 1731). (For the Anauni, Rushforth, Latin Historical Inscriptions, p. 99 foll.)

492. Chron. 70 foll.: a difficult bit of calculation.

493. Mommsen, l. c. Henzen, Acta Fr. Arv. xlvi-xlviii; Jordan on Preller, i. 420, and Topogr. i. 289, ii. 236. The latter would also identify Ambarvalia and Amburbium; but the two seem clearly distinguished by Servius (Ecl. 3.77).

494. p. 200. Huschke, Röm. Jahr, 63.

495. p. 5. See Jordan on Preller, i. 420, note 2; Marq. 200, note 3.

496. Georg. 1. 338 foll.

497. ‘Extremae sub casum hiemis’ might possibly suit the Italian April, but certainly not the Italian May. May 1 is the earliest date we have for an agri lustratio, i. e. in Campania (C. I. L. x. 3792). ‘Tunc mollissima vina’ may contain a reference to the Vinalia of April 23, when the new wine was first drunk; and if that were so, the general reference might be to the Cerialia or its rustic equivalent.

498. R. R. 141. Cp. Siculus Flaccus in Gromatici Veteres, p. 164. The lustratio should be celebrated before even the earliest crops (e. g. beans) were cut.

499. Henzen, Acta Fr. Arv. xlviii.

500. Cato, R. R. 141. I have availed myself of the Italian translation and commentary of Prof. De Marchi in his work on the domestic religion of the Romans, p. 128 foll.

501. Bücheler, Umbrica; Bréal, Les Tables Eugubines.

502. Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 292.

503. I am informed that it visited one hamlet, Horton, which is not at present in the parish of Charlton; of this there should be some topographical explanation.

504. The cross is very commonly carried about on the continent, and in Holland the week is called cross-week for this reason. But at Charlton there seems to have been a confusion between this cross and the May-queen or May-doll; for on May-day, 1898, the old woman who decked it called it ‘my lady,’ and spoke of ‘her waist,’ &c. I am indebted to the Rev. C. E. Prior, the present incumbent, for information about this interesting survival.

505. What can be said for this view may be read in Roscher’s article in Lex. s. v. Iuno, p. 575, note.

506. Roscher’s treatment of Juno Moneta (Lex. s. v. Iuno, 593) seems to me pure fancy; this writer is apt to twist his facts and his inferences to suit a prepossession—in this case the notion of a ἱερὸς γάμος of Jupiter and Juno.

507. Liv. 7. 28; Ovid, Fasti, 6. 183; Macrob. 1. 12. 30.

508. On this point see Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman Hist. vol. ii. 345.

509. Dionys., 13. 7, says, Χῆνες ἱεροὶ περὶ τὸν νεὼν τῆς Ἥρας; but this is no evidence for an early temple of Juno Moneta.

510. Apparently she was fond of such birds: crows also were ‘in tutela Iunonis’ at a certain spot north of the Tiber (Paul. 64), and at Lanuvium (Preller, i. 283).

512. I have assumed that Moneta is connected with moneo; but there are other views (Roscher, Lex. 593). Livius Andronicus (ap. Priscian, p. 679) helps us to the meaning by translating Μνημοσύνη (of the Odyssey) by Moneta.

513. Macrob. Sat. 1. 12. 22 and 31. There was no temple of Carna there but Tertullianus (ad Nat. 2. 9) mentions a fanum.

514. Cp. also the explanation from iuniores (e. g. in Ovid, Fasti, 6. 83 foll.).

515. Macrob. 1. 12. 33 ‘Cui pulte fabacia et larido sacrificatur.’

516. Even in the fourth century A.D. this was so: see the calendar of Philocalus.

517. Colum. II. 2. 20; Pallad. 7. 3; Hartmann, Das Röm. Kal. 135.

518. H. N. 18. 117.

519. See above on Lemuria, p. 110.

520. de Feriis, xiii.

521. C. I. L. iii. 3893.

522. There is really nothing in common between the two: see Wissowa in Lex. s. v. Carna, following Merkel, clxv. What the real etymology of Carna may be is undecided; Curtius and others have connected it with cor, and on this O. Gilbert has built much foolish conjecture (ii. 19 foll.). I would rather compare it with the words Garanus or Recaranus of the Hercules legend (Bréal, Herc. et Cacus, pp. 59, 60), and perhaps with Gradivus, Grabovius. The name of the ‘nymph’ Cranae in Ovid’s account is in some MSS. Grane or Crane. H. Peter (Fasti, pt. ii. p. 89) adopts the connexion with caro: she is ‘die das Fleisch kräftigende Göttin’ (cp. Ossipago).

523. Fasti, 6. 169-182. Lines 101-130 are concerned with Cardea; 130 to 168, or the middle section of the comment, seem, as Marquardt suggested (p. 13, note), to be referable to Carna (as the averter of striges), though the charms fixed on the postes show that Ovid is still confounding her with Cardea.

524. The word strix is Greek, or at least identical with the Greek word. But the belief in vampires is so widely spread (cf. Tylor, Prim. Cult. ii. 175 foll.) that we must not conclude hastily that it came to Italy with the Greeks: it is met with as early as Plautus (Pseud. 3. 2. 20). Cf. Pliny, H. N. 11. 232.

525. Fasti, 6. 155 foll.

526. The arbutus does not seem to be mentioned in connexion with charms except in this passage; we might have expected the laurel. Bötticher, Baumkultus, 324.

527. The sucking-pig is sacrificed, as we gather from prosecta below; i. e. to Carna: cp. the cakes of lard eaten this day (169 foll.).

528. Cp. in the process of ghost-laying (above, p. 109) the prohibition to look at the beans scattered.

529. For the blackthorn (Germ. Weissdorn) see Bötticher, Baumkultus, 361. Varro, ap. Charisium, p. 117 ‘fax ex spinu alba praefertur, quod purgationis causa adhibetur.’

530. This is the passage that must have inspired O. Crusius in his paper on beans in Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 164 foll. ‘Beans,’ he says, ‘were the oldest Italian food, and like stone knives, &c., survived in ritual.’ We want, indeed, some more definite proof that they were really the oldest food; and anyhow their use had not died out like that of stone implements. They were a common article of food at Athens: Aristoph. Knights, 41; Lysist. 537 and 691. But it is not unlikely that their use in the cult of the dead may be a survival, upon which odd superstitions grafted themselves. For a parallel argument see Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, 36; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 356.

531. Sat. 1. 12. 32.

532. No safe conclusion can be drawn from Tertullian’s inclusion (ad Nat. 2. 9) of the fanum of Carna on the Caelian among those of di adventicii. O. Gilbert has lately tried to make much of this (ii. 42 foll.), and to find an Etruscan origin for Carna: but see Aust on the position of temples outside the pomoerium (de Aedibus sacris, 47).

533. Liv. 7. 23; Dionys. 6. 13.

534. See on March 1, above, p. 37.

535. Aust, de Aedibus sacris, p. 8. The Fasti Venusini are ‘omnium accuratissimi’; ib. p. 43. Aust goes so far as to doubt the true Roman character of this Mars, and believes him to be the Greek god Ares. See his note in Lex. 2391. The date of foundation is not certain, but was probably not earlier than the Gallic war, 388 B.C., if it is this to which Livy alludes in 6. 5. 8.

536. Liv. 10. 19. There was a tradition that Ap. Claudius, Cos. 495 B.C., had dedicated statues of his ancestors in a temple of Bellona (Pliny, N. H. 35. 12).