"Stretch'd out all the chimney's lengthBasks at the fire;"
"Stretch'd out all the chimney's length
Basks at the fire;"
so the Mauthe dog, "as soon as candles were lighted, came and lay down before the fire."[38]From this point of view we may consider that the black dog, which in modern folk-lore comes and lies down or howls before a house, in token that one of the inmates is about to die, was originally a spirit summoning the inmate to join the dead. This belief, it may further be conjectured, has been incorporated into Hindoo mythology, where a dog acts as the messenger of the death-god, Yama; and probably the Greekdog, Cerberus, was taken up into the literary mythology of Hellas from the same folk-belief.
Finally, we may here notice the fifty-second of Plutarch's Questions, wherein he wonders why a dog was sacrificed to Genita Mana, and a prayer made to her that none born in the house should become Manes. Genita Mana was, as her name plainly indicates, a spirit of birth and of death; and the prayer was such as might properly be offered to her. The sacrifice may be explained on the principle laid down by Professor Robertson Smith,[39]that an animal sacrificed to a deity was itself originally the deity. That one and the same spirit should have to do with "the child from the womb and the ghost from the tomb," points to the existence of a belief among the Romans similar to one held by the Algonkins. "Algonkin women who wished to become mothers flocked to the side of a dying person, in the hope of receiving and being impregnated by the passing soul."[40]
Let us now turn to another point in which early Italian beliefs and modern folk-lore mutually illustrate each other. On the origin offairies various theories have been held, and without denying that fairies are sometimes the representatives of earlier gods, sometimes of still earlier satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and wild men of the wood, we may recognise that they are sometimes spirits of the departed. In the first place, as the Italians called the dead "the good,"manes, so in England and in Ireland fairies are "the good people."[41]Next, fairies are small; and the savage conceives the soul of man as a smaller man. It is, according to Hurons, "a complete little model of the man himself," like the man, but smaller, of course, because, as the Australian blacks explain, it is within the man's breast.[42]According to Kaffir ideas, the world ofmanesis exactly like that of the living, only much smaller, and the dead are themselves but mannikins.[43]Again, the Teutonic house-spirit on the one hand is admittedly a deceased ancestor, and on the other is an indubitable fairy. Further, fairies are sometimes explicitly stated in folk-tales to be deceased spirits.[44]
Now, one of most marked differences between the Greek and the Roman modes of worship was that the Greeks worshipped with their heads uncovered, the Romans with heads covered,velato capite. Roman antiquaries explained the practice as due to fear lest the worshipper should see anything of evil omen during his prayer. But I submit that we must connect it with the folk-belief that fairies resent being seen by mortals. "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die." If fairies were originally departed souls, the fear and the danger of seeing them is at once explained. On the other hand, the Roman custom of worshippingvelato capitedates from a time before the introduction of polytheism, and must therefore have been attached originally to the worship of some beings other than gods. It is at least plausible, therefore, to conjecture that it was a precaution adopted in the worship of deceased ancestors and of spirits, which, like Genita Mana, are best explained as spirits of the departed. The conjecture is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Romans veiled their heads at the funeral of father or mother (R. Q.14).
V. Genii.
No form of religion is easily or at once rooted out, even by a new religion. Amodus vivendihas to be found between the old faith and the new. The animal, which was once itself worshipped, is tolerated merely as the symbol of some divine attribute. The nixies continue to ply their old calling under the new name of Old Nick. The sacrifices to the dead, condemned by the Indiculus Superstitionum, are subsequently licensed by the Church as the Feast of All Souls.[45]Hence it comes about that what means one thing to the apostle of the new religion is long understood as something very different by the reluctant convert. The devil of folk-lore has attributes quite different from those assigned to him in any scheme of Christian theology.
If, therefore, polytheism was, as I have suggested, an importation into Italy, forced by the State on a people not yet prepared for anything higher than animism and ancestor-worship, we should expect to find the borrowed worship ofa Greek loan-god sometimes concealing a native Italian cult of very dissimilar nature. Instances of the kind are forthcoming, and this section will be devoted to some of them.
The spirits which after the death of the body were termedmanesby the Romans, were during its life calledgenii(or in the case of womenJunones). The belief in genii was not borrowed from Greece. How primitive it is may be seen from two facts. First, it is itself the essence of animism, for not only had every man a genius, but every place and every thing had, in the belief of the Romans, a soul, to which the same name, genius, was given.[46]Next, the genius was, I submit, the "external soul," which, as Mr. Frazer has shown, appears in the folk-tales of every Aryan nation, and in the religions of many savage peoples. The genius of a man did not reside inside the man. Amongst the Romans, as amongst the Zulus, it resided in a serpent. As, according to the Banks Islanders, "the life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamanin,"[47]so with the Romans, the man'shealth depended on his genius.[48]When the serpent which was the genius of the father of the Gracchi was killed, Tiberius died;[49]and, as all Romans were liable to the same mischance, these snakes were carefully protected from all harm, were reared in the house and the bed-chamber, and consequently grew so numerous, that Pliny says, had their numbers not been kept down by occasional conflagrations, they would have crowded out the human inhabitants of Rome.[50]
This belief in the genius, however etherealised and spiritualised the form in which it appears in Horace or was held by highly-educated Romans, continued even in Imperial times amongst all other classes as primitive as it was tenacious. Its hold over the ordinary Italian mind was much greater than the Hellenised gods ever secured; for, in order to make them even comprehensible, the average Italian had to suppose that these fashionable, State-ordained gods were really worked by genii—just as it is self-evident to the savage that,if a locomotive engine moves, it is because it has horses inside. This, I suggest, is the explanation, in accord with the principle laid down at the beginning of this section, which must be given of the remarkable fact that, beginning fromB.C.58,[51]and in ever-increasing numbers afterwards, inscriptions are found which ascribe a genius to Apollo, Asclepius, Mars, Juno, Jupiter, &c.
In this case Italian animism has held its own, not unsuccessfully, against imported polytheism. Our second instance, however, will show it less successful. When polytheism was spreading from Hellas over Italy, there would be no difficulty in adding the myths and cult of the Greek god Zeus bodily on to the worship of the Italian sky-spirit Jupiter. Nor would the process be much harder even when the Greek god and the Italian spirit were of totally different origin (ase.g.Hermes and Mercury, Kronos and Saturn), provided that some point of resemblance, in attribute or function, could be discovered between them. It was only one, and the least important of Hermes' functions, to protect traders, but it was quite enough tolead to the identification of the Greek god with the Italian spirit of gain (Mercurius, frommerces). The case of Heracles, however, presented more difficulty; he was a hero, and the very conception of a hero was new to the Italians. Being new, it was, not unnaturally, misunderstood. The nearest parallel which Italian religion offered to a being who was in a way a man and yet was also a sort of god was the genius, who also was in a way the man himself, and yet was worshipped like a god. Heracles, therefore, was identified with the genius, his name was Latinised into the formHercules(cf.Æsculapius, fromAsclepios), and the cults of the two were amalgamated. This amalgamation is the source and the explanation of some of Plutarch'sRoman Questions. Plutarch was puzzled by the fact that on the one hand some elements in the cult of Hercules had counterparts in the worship of the Greek god, while on the other hand there were elements which received no explanation from a comparison of the cult of the Greek Heracles. Thus Plutarch is surprised to find an altar common to Hercules and to the Muses (R. Q.59); but this is simply a loan from the ritual of the Greek Heracles,Musagêtês. On the other hand, as Plutarch informs us (R. Q.60), there was an altar of Hercules from which women were excluded. This is a non-Greek element in the cult of Hercules, with which we may safely compare the fact, that whereas a man might swear "by his Hercules," a woman might not. Here the imported god has taken the place of the native genius both in the oath and at the altar; for the reason why the oath "me hercule" was restricted to men is that, until Hercules and the genius were identified, a man swore by his genius and a woman by her Juno. Again, in the time before Italy was invaded by the gods of Greece, in the time when temples were as yet unknown, the genius was worshipped and invoked, like other spirits, in the open air; and even after the Italians had learned from the Greeks that the gods were shaped in the likeness of men, and, like men, must have houses, an oath was felt to be more sacred and more binding if taken in the open air in the old fashion, than if sworn in the new way under a roof.[52]Eventually, however, the old customdied out, and in Plutarch's day it was only children who were told that they must go out of doors if they wanted to swear "by Hercules" (R. Q.28). Plutarch's attention was also arrested by the custom of giving tithes to Hercules (R. Q.18). The practice is undoubtedly purely and characteristically Italian; but there is no evidence to show whether it was ever the custom to offer tithes to the genius. Another point, however, which is noted by Plutarch (R. Q.90) in the cult of Hercules, may be more satisfactorily explained. When sacrifice was being offered to Hercules, no dog was sufferedto be seene, within the purprise and precinct of the place where the sacrifice is celebrated. Now, if Hercules represents the genius, and if the dog was the shape in which a departed spirit appears, then the danger lest the genius should be tempted away by the Manes is great enough to account for the prohibition.
This identification of Heracles with the genius shows in a striking way how far the Italians were from having reached the belief in personal individual gods at the time when Greek religion found its way into Italy, and how artificially Greek polytheism was superimposed on native beliefs. There were as manygenii virorumas there were living men, and yet they were identified with Heracles.[53]To the Italian convert, doubtless, it seemed nothing strange that every man should have his Hercules; while his Greek teacher probably never fully realised the catechumen's point of view.
The case is parallel to that of Hestia and Vesta. Both before and after the appearance in Italy of the anthropomorphised Hestia, every Roman household revered its own "hearth-spirit;" yet this class of spirits came to be identified with the personal individual goddessfrom Greece. Doubtless, also, in course of time Romans who shook off animism and became true polytheists explained the relation between their "hearth-spirits" and the State-goddess by regarding the former as so many manifestations of the latter. But it is, I submit, a mistake on the part of modern mythologists to accept this piece of late theology as primitive—unless, indeed, we are also prepared to say that the Lares were regarded as so many manifestations of one Lar, or all the many Manes as manifestations of one dead man. Thegenii virorum, at any rate, were not, in the first instance, so many manifestations of Hercules: on the contrary, they existed (in Italy), to begin with, and Heracles afforded them a collective name and a Greek cult.
In the same way, I submit, the original Italian Juno was no Nature-deity, no moon-goddess—the name was that of a class of spirits, like the correlative termgenii virorum. There were many Junones, as there were many fauns in Italy, many satyrs and nymphs in Greece, many Pucks and fairies in England. When the Italians learnt that Hera was the goddess under whose protection the Greek women were, theynaturally thought of the Juno who was the guardian-spirit of each Italian woman, and applied to Juno the cult and myths that belonged to Hera. Hence the answer to Plutarch's question, why were the months sacred to Juno? (R. Q.77). Because they were sacred to Hera.
But there were other spirits whom Italian women invoked besides their Junones, such as Juga, who yoked man and wife, Matrona, Pronuba, Domiduca, Unxia, Cinxia, Fluonia, Lucina, and other departmental spirits orindigetes, whose names appear in theIndigitamenta. These spirits, when once Juno had become a personal individual deity, came to be explained as special manifestations of the goddess, who was consequently called Juno Juga, Juno Matrona, &c.[54]
VI.Di Indigetes.
Before Greek gods and myths were known to them, the Italians worshipped not only Lares, Manes, Genii, and Junones, but also the spirits known as Di Indigetes. These spirits were not conceived in human or in animal form. They had not human parts or passions. They did not form a community. They had no common abode. There is nothing in Italian religion corresponding to the Olympus of Greek mythology. They did not marry or give in marriage. Above all, what distinguishes them both from Greek gods and from the tree-spirits, which also were worshipped by the Italians, is that they were rathernuminaor forces than beings. They were the forces which regulated and controlled all human actions, psychological and physiological, and through which all the work of man's hands could alone be brought to a favourable issue. When, however, we come to examine thesenumina, we find that the nameof theIndigesis simply the name of the action which he controls: theIndigesof sowing is Saturnus; of remembering, Minerva; of suckling, Rumina, and so on. It is a canon of savage logic that he who possesses the name of a person or thing has that person or thing in his power; hence the Roman's belief that he could control any process, psychical or physical, if only he could put a name to it. This primitive form of magic was organised by the Roman State. The pontiffs were intrusted with the duty of drawing up catalogues (indigitamenta) of all the stages and processes of a man's life, from his begetting and birth to his death and burial; and as the State was but a community of farmers, similar catalogues were made of all the agricultural operations by which crops are raised. To be effectual, it was necessary that these lists should be complete. As the Roman could avert or remedy any evil by simply naming the proper spirit, it was essential that his roll of spirits should have no omissions. Then, if he were in doubt what spirit to name, he could make assurance doubly sure by naming all.
Let it not be imagined that this State-organised magic, though it appear to us inconsistent withcivilisation, is mere matter of inference, or belongs purely to pre-historic times. Not only did it survive the introduction of polytheism, it was a firm article of Roman faith in the most glorious days of the Republic, and untilB.C.211 or later, the belief was so living as to give birth continually to fresh spirits, as fresh departments of human activity were opened up.[55]Nor did it cease then. It changed, but it did not die. In the worship of such abstractions as Fortuna, Spes, Juventas, Concordia, Pietas, Libertas, Felicitas, Annona, &c., we have evidence that abstract names exercised as great a hold over the minds of Romans of the Empire as they had over the earliest Italians.
On someindigetesGreek cults and myths were grafted, and thesenumina, which were in truth butnomina, henceforth lived as gods. Mercurius was declared to be Hermes. Minerva, the spirit of memory, was seen to be Athênê, the goddess of wisdom. Saturnus was identified with Kronos,and was henceforth worshipped in the Greek fashion with uncovered head (R. Q.13). Opis was identified with Dêmêtêr, Venus with Aphroditê, and Libitina, thenumenof funerals, was interpreted, by a pedantic etymological confusion with Libentina, as a bye-name of the new goddess (R. Q.23). TheindigesLiber[56]was recognised in Dionysius Eleutherios (R. Q.104).
In all these cases the identification proceeded on a fancied resemblance in name or an actual similarity of function. There seems to be only one instance of identification based on similarity of cult, that of the Roman Matuta and the Greek Leucothea. According to Plutarch (R. Q.16) maid-servants were excluded from the temples of both, except whenthe Dames of Rome, bringing in thither one alone and no more with them, fall to cuffing and boxing her about the eares and cheeks. Here the servant is the scapegoat, to whom are transferred the evils which may or might afflict the free women of the community, and the beating is done for purification. It is just conceivable that the Greek cult may have been borrowed by theRomans; but the use of a scapegoat and of beating in this way is so wide-spread over all the world, and so deeply seated in European folk-lore, that it is difficult to imagine it was unknown to the Romans. As a matter of fact, even in theRoman Questions, without going further, we have indications that both practices were known in Italy. InR. Q.20 a myth is given, the earlier form of which is to be found in Macrobius (S.i. 12), who states that the Bona Dea was on a day scourged with myrtles. On the principle that customs often give rise to myths but cannot be originated by them, we may infer that the representative, or else the worshippers of the Bona Dea, were purified by scourging. Still less can it be doubted after Mannhardt's exhaustive investigation (Myth. Forsch., pp. 72ff.), that the Luperci, described inR. Q.68, drove out the evil spirits of disease, sterility, &c., by the blows from their scourges. Again, the expulsion of evil tends in many places to become periodic; a day or season is devoted annually to the driving out of all devils and evil spirits, after which the community is expected to live sober and clean. The community, not unnaturally, indulges in a kind ofcarnival immediately before this season, and allows itself all sorts of license: slaves behave as though they were masters, men dress up in women's clothes, &c. This, presumably, is the explanation of the fact related by Plutarch (R. Q.55), thatupon the Ides of Januarie, the minstrels at Rome who plaied upon the hautboies, were permitted to goe up and downe the city disguised in women's apparell.[57]
Though the influence of Hellenic religion failed to transform the many otherindigetesinto gods, still it affected their cult in other ways. For one thing, it provided them now for the first time with temples or chapels. This innovation was doubtless found strange by the folk to whom the fashionable ideas from Hellas penetrated slow and late. In the case of Carmenta it must have seemed particularly strange. Carmenta was one of the severalindigeteswhose power was manifested in thevarious processes of gestation;[58]and she was invoked as Porrima (Prorsa or Antevorta) or Postverta, according as the child came into the world head or foot foremost. From the mention of asaxum Carmentæ,[59]near which was theporta Carmentalis, and near which the temple in question was erected, we may venture to infer that this rock was originally the local habitation of the spirit. Why then needed she to have a temple built? This was a point which, to the popular mind, required explanation; and a popular explanation was accordingly forthcoming, which has fortunately been preserved to us by Plutarch. It starts from a folk-etymology or confusion between the name Carmenta and the wordcarpenta, meaning "coaches," and may be read at length inR. Q.56.
There remains one otherindigeswho is mentioned in theRomane Questions—Rumina (R. Q.57) thenumenof suckling. As the templeof Carmenta was erected near thesaxum Carmentæ, so thesacellumof Rumina was built near theficus Ruminalis; and as we may conjecture that the rock was in the nature of a fetich, so we may infer that Rumina was a tree-spirit. It is easy to understand why a fig-tree was chosen as the abode of the spirit of suckling; the sap of this tree resembles milk and was known to the Romans aslac. The fact reported by Plutarch,[60]that milk, not wine, was offered in the cult of Rumina, is quite in accord with the principles of sympathetic magic.
The worship of this spirit bears every mark of hoar antiquity, and it was worked into the legend of the foundation of Rome by the device of making the wolf suckle the twins under theficus Ruminalis.
VII. Tree and Field Cults.
Whenever two peoples come into contact with each other for the first time, a comparison of religions is set up; and one of the first-fruits of this earliest exercise of the comparative study of religions is that identification of gods andborrowing of cults and myths to which the term "syncretism" is applied. The part played by syncretism in the history of Italian religion is of singular importance: the Italian's misty, vaporous belief in abstract, impersonal spirits was precipitated into premature polytheism by the introduction of the anthropomorphic gods of Greece. Fortunately, the process being premature, was, and to the end remained, incomplete; and we are therefore able to employ the survivals from the older form of belief so as to form some idea of the original Italian religion. To the last, many spirits resisted the individualising process, which is the essence and condition of polytheism: the Lares and the Manes not only never became gods, but none of them was dignified by a proper name, or attained even so much individuality as Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Not can such general abstract appellations as Bona Dea, Dea Dia, be regarded as personal names,i.e., as the names of definite, individual, personal beings: they have not the personality of Venus or Vulcan, and yet they were the beings whom the people at large worshipped in preference to the State-gods, whose cult and myths were fashionably Hellenised.
She who, under the influence of Greek religion, became the goddess Diana, was originally a tree-spirit, having no personal name, but known only by an appellation as general and abstract as that of Bona Dea. The proof that the qualities and attributes of the Greek goddess Artemis were attached by syncretism to the Italian tree-spirit is brought to light by two of Plutarch's penetrating questions (R. Q.3 and 4), why harts' horns are set up in all the temples of Diana save that on Mount Aventine, in which are ox-horns? and why men are excluded from one particular temple of the same goddess? These differences in cult obviously point to the worship of different goddesses under the same name; and, as a matter of fact, we know first that harts were sacred to the Greek goddess, Artemis, whereas the genuine Italian Diana was the goddess of oxen; next, we know that the identification of Artemis and Diana was effected by Servius Tullius.[61]To understand the exclusion of men from the temple in the Patrician Street, however, we must inquire into the nature of the Italian Diana. With this object,we may either assume that the pro-ethnic Aryans were polytheists, and that therefore the primitive Italians also worshipped Nature-gods; in which case, starting from the etymology of the word Diana (from the rootdiv, "shine"), we must either at once make Diana a moon-goddess,[62]and thus account for the fact that she was a goddess of child-birth, and therefore men were excluded from her temple. But this seems improbable even to a writer in Roscher'sLexikon(Birt), who very properly notes (p. 1007) that "it is doubtful whether the belief that the moon influenced child-birth can be shown to be Italian." Birt, therefore, interprets the name to mean "the bright goddess,"i.e., the goddess of bright daylight, and boldly writes it down as a matter of course that the first attribute of a daylight or sky goddess is her close relation to vegetable nature, especially woods and forests. Those who find this mortal leap beyond their power to follow, and who prefer to argue to the original nature of the goddess from what we know of her cult as a matter of fact, rather than from hypotheses as to the Nature-myths of the primitive Aryans, will note first that her nameis as purely general and abstract as that of the Dea Dia or the Bona Dea, and means simply a bright spirit, or possibly simply a spirit. Next, wherever Diana was worshipped in Italy, she was originally worshipped in woods and groves,e.g., in the forests on Mount Tifata, Mount Algidus at Anagnia, Corne, and Aricia. Indeed, in Aricia the place of her worship was simply calledNemus, and the goddess herself plainNemorensis. In the next place, her worship is frequently associated with that of Silvanus,[63]who is plainly a wood-spirit, and who is also a patron-spirit of domestic cattle.[64]From this we may venture to class her with the "agrestes feminæ quas silvaticas vocant" of Burchard of Worms:[65]she is a wood-spirit who became a goddess because of her likeness to the Greek Artemis. Her connection with child-birth does not indicate that she was a moon-goddess. Roman women in primitive times, like Swedish women, "twined their arms about a tree to ensure easy delivery in the pangs of child-birth;and we remember how, in our English ballads, women, in like time of need, 'set their backs against an oak.'"[66]Finally, the annual washing and cleansing of the head, which Plutarch mentions inR. Q.100, was done on a day sacred to Diana, probably because, on the one hand, women felt that they were under her protection specially, while, on the other, so great is the sanctity of the head amongst primitive peoples,[67]that washing it is not to be undertaken lightly: "the guardian spirit of the head does not like to have the hair washed too often, it might injure or incommode him."[68]
TheRomane Questionsafford another instance in which syncretism has obscured the original nature of an Italian field-spirit, and in which the cult of the Hellenised deity still betrays the primitive object of worship. In the pages of Virgil, Mars has so completely assumed the guise of the Greek Ares, that if we had only the verses and the mythology of the court-poet to instruct us, we could never even suspect that Mars had other functions than those of a war-god. When, however, we turn from myth to cult, and are confronted by the ceremony of the October horse, described inR. Q.97, we find, that though Mars was sung as "Lenker der Schlachten," he was worshipped as the spirit that makes the corn to grow. At Rome the corn-spirit was represented as a horse, as it still is amongst the peasants of Europe, not only near Stuttgart, but in our own country, in Hertfordshire and in Shropshire. The fructifying power of the spirit is supposed in modern folk-lore and in Africa, as it was at Rome, to reside specially in the animal's tail, whichtherefore was preserved over the hearth of the king's house, in order to secure a good harvest next year. The antiquity of this custom at Rome, and the fact that it dates from long before the Romans knew anything of the Greek Ares, are shown by the fight for the horse's head waged between the inhabitants of the two wards, the Via Sacra and the Subura, a fight which shows that the ceremonial goes back to a time when the Subura and Rome were separate and independent villages.
In connection with the killing of the corn-spirit, we may note a passage of theRomane Questions(63) which has not yet taken its place in modern works on the subject. Speaking of therex sacrorum, Plutarch says, "Neere untoComitium, they use to have a solemn sacrifice for the good estate of the citie; which, so soone as ever this king hath performed, he taketh his legs and runnes out of the place as fast as ever he can." Necessary as it was, according to primitive notions, that the vegetation-spirit should be, as it were, decanted into a new vessel, when the animal in which he was for the time residing was threatened with infirmity and decay, still the killing of the sacredanimal was a dangerous and semi-sacrilegious act. Hence in Greece, the man who killed the ox in the sacrifice known as thebouphoniaran away as soon as he had felled the animal, and was subsequently tried for murder, but was acquitted on the ground that the axe was the real murderer; and so the axe was found guilty and cast into the sea. The Romanregifugiumis obviously a fragment of a similar rite. The folk-explanation treated it as a symbol commemorative of the expulsion of the Tarquinii.
VIII. Man-Worship.
The rules of life prescribed for the priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, are given in part by Plutarch (Q. R.40, 44, 50, 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113),[69]and are a signal instance of the necessity of explaining Roman cults, not by reference to the artificial mythology of the Vedas or to the civilised myths of Greece, but to the customs of peoples who are still steeped in animism. That a spirit may take up its abode as a Dryad in a tree or in an animal, as in the beasts worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, or maytemporarily take possession of a human being, as Apollo possessed the Pythian priestess, is easily comprehended. But that a spirit should permanently dwell in a man, and that the man should exercise all the powers and receive all the worship that belong to the spirit, would be almost incredible were it not for the numerous instances of such worship collected by the erudition of Mr. Frazer.[70]In Japan the sun-goddess dwelt in the Mikado; in Lower Guinea and among the Zapotecs of South Mexico the sun-spirit takes human form. In Cambodia the spirit of fire and the spirit of water manifest themselves in the (human) kings of fire and water. Rain-kings are found on the Congo, the Upper Nile, and among Abyssinian tribes. The weather-spirit is worshipped in the kings of Loango, Mombaza, Quiteva, the Banjars, and the Muyscas. In the South Sea Islands, generally, "every god can take possession of a man and speak through him."[71]
In the next place, these divine kings or priests are all charged with a force which enables them to control the course of Nature. Lest, therefore, this force should be inadvertently andunintentionally discharged, with results disastrous to the recipient of the shock or to the universe at large, the divine priest or king must be insulated. And this insulation is effected by taboos: every action is taboo to him which might bring him into dangerous contact with others.[72]
When, therefore, we learn that the Flamen Dialis was subject to a very large number of taboos, all of which find analogies, while some find their exact counterparts, in the taboos laid on the divine priests and kings previously mentioned; and when we further discover that Preller,[73]on totally different grounds, considered the Flamen to have been "the living counterpart" of Jupiter, it seems not unreasonable to regard the Flamen Dialis as the human embodiment of the sky-spirit.
The Flamen, according to Plutarch (R. Q.40), was forbidden to anoint his body in the open air,i.e.sub Jove; and of the Mikado we are told, "Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air."[74]The Flamen was forbidden to touchmeal or raw meat,i.e., meal or meat which might be consumed by others; so, too, the vessels used by the Mikado were "generally broke, for fear they should come into the hands of laymen; for they believe religiously that if any layman should presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame his mouth and throat."[75]
For the many other taboos imposed on the Flamen, I must refer to Mr. Frazer's great work.[76]I will here only mention one, which is not explicitly explained in theGolden Bough. If the Flamen's wife died, he had to resign (Q. R.50). Now, it is obvious from this that a widowed Flamen was somehow dangerous or in danger, and that the danger was one which re-marriage would not avert. I submit, therefore, that a widowed Flamen was considered in danger of sudden death, and that this danger (a danger to the community, which might thus lose the sky-spirit) consisted in the probability that the soul of the departed wife might temptaway the soul of the living Flamen. In Burmah, proper precautions are taken to prevent a baby's soul from following that of its dead mother, or the soul of a bereaved husband or wife from rejoining the lost one, or to prevent the soul of a dead child "from luring away the soul of its playmate to the spirit-land."[77]But accidents will happen, and it is so important for an agricultural community to have the sky-spirit under direct control, that the Romans were doubtless well advised in running no risks, and in transferring the spirit into another Flamen.
IX. Taboos.
In fairy tales it is not surprising that the hero should be forbidden to see his wife on certain days, or whilst she is washing, or at night, and that he should be required to take precautions lest he should take her unawares in one of the forbidden moments.[78]But it is surprising to find that the prosaic Roman punctiliously observed fairy etiquette in thesematters, and habitually behaved like an inhabitant of fairy-land. SeeR. Q.9 and 65. It is also surprising to discover that in Italy, where, owing to "the vigorous development of the marital authority, regardless of the natural rights of persons as such," the wife's "moral subjection became transformed into legal slavery,"[79]the wife was "exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking," because, according to Mommsen, those tasks were menial.[80]The exemption is mentioned by Plutarch inR. Q.85; but we must take leave to question Mommsen's explanation. The exemption is not an exemption, but a prohibition: it is identical with the taboo laid on the Flamen Dialis (R. Q.109), and has the same object. Doubtless if a Roman ate food touched by a woman, "it would swell and inflame his mouth or throat," or have some disastrous effect. For that even indirect contact with women at certain periods,e.g.child-birth, &c., is highly dangerous, is a belief found amongst the Australian blacks and the Eskimo, the Indians of North America, and the Kafirs of South Africa. An Australian blackfellow, having been brought accidentallyinto this dangerous contact, died of terror within a fortnight.[81]It is not strange, therefore, that the Romans, returning home after absence,if their wives were at home, used to send a messenger unto them before, for to give warning and advertisement of their comming. And we can understand that the primitive public for whom the fairy tales in question were composed found the incident of the violated taboo as thrilling and as full of "actuality" as a modern reader finds the latest sensational novel.
The belief that a mother and her new-born babe are peculiarly at the mercy of malevolent spirits is world-wide. In the fairy tales of Christian Europe the period of danger isterminated by baptism, until which time various precautions, such as burning a light in the chamber, must be observed.[82]In ancient Italy the danger ended when the child received its name, which, as Plutarch (R. Q.103) informs us, was on the ninth day after birth in the case of boys, on the eighth in the case of girls. Until that day a candle was to be kept lighted, and the spirit Candelifera was to be invoked. On that day the child was purified (which indicates an original taboo), and received thebulla, mentioned by Plutarch (R. Q.102), to preserve him henceforth from evil spirits and the evil eye. Whether thebulladerived its virtue from the substances which were enclosed in it, as in a box, or from its moon shape, is uncertain. If the latter be the true explanation, we may compare the fact recorded by Plutarch (R. Q.76),that those who are descended of the most noble and auncient houses of Rome carried little moones upon their shoes. The daughters of Sion also wore as amulets "round tires like the moon" (Isaiah, iii. 18). The moon-spirit sends disease or takes possession of the person who is "lunatick" or "moon-struck." But the spiritmay be deluded, and will enter any moon-shaped object which the person attacked is wearing. The Chaldæans diverted the spirit of disease from the sick man by providing an image in the likeness of the spirit to attract the plague.[83]
X.—Sympathetic Magic.
The traveller who has little or no acquaintance with the language of the land in which he is, resorts naturally to the language of gesture, and mimics the thing which he wishes to have done. Primitive man communicates his wishes to Nature in exactly the same way: if he wishes to have game caught in the trap which he sets, he first pretends to fall into it himself. He has not learnt to "interrogate" Nature in her own language by means of experiment and crucial instances, but he has a presentiment of themethod of Concomitant Variations and of the Substitution of Similars. If a thing is itself beyond his reach, he substitutes its counterpart, its image or its name, or something related to it or connected with it, in confidence that any changes he may work in the one will be accompanied by concomitant variations in the other. Hence the reluctance shown by many savages to allow their likenesses to be taken or their names to be known, as with the name or the likeness the man himself would pass into the power of the stranger.[84]So the Romans, as Plutarch informs us (R. Q.61), kept the name of their tutelar god secret, for the same reason, as Plutarch acutely observes, as other nations kept the images of their gods chained;[85]and for thesame reason, we may add, as the Romans forbade the living counterpart of the sky-spirit to leave the city, viz., lest he should pass out of their control.
In the same spirit, the Romans would not allow a table to be completely stripped of food (R. Q.64) or a light to be extinguished (75): the action might produce permanent effects. The same feeling prevailed or prevails with regard to the table in Chemnitz, though it is regarded as a sign of death if a light goes out of its own accord.[86]
The practice of allowing the spoils taken from an enemy to rust—a practice which Plutarch (37) cannot comprehend—was doubtless a piece of sympathetic magic: as the armour rusted, the enemy's power of armed resistance would diminish.
Another interesting instance of sympathetic magic lurks inR. Q.32. The images which, as Plutarch says, were thrown into the river, represented a spirit of vegetation or a corn-spirit; and the object of plunging them into the river was thereby to secure that the cropsshould be correspondingly drenched with rain.[87]This rite also illustrates the origin of a conception which has its roots in sympathetic magic and yet exerts considerable influence in the civilised world—the conception of "legal fictions." The images, undoubtedly, were substitutes for human beings who were (as representing the corn-spirit) drowned in the Tiber. Human sacrifice, though exceptional, was not unknown at Rome in historic times, as appears fromR. Q.83; and the substitution of animals or of inanimate objects for human beings is not peculiar to Rome, but is the usual means by which the transition from the more to the less barbarouscustom is effected. But the Romans, who were practical and logical to the extreme, who reduced magic to a system whereby they regulated their daily life, consistently enough also utilised sympathetic magic as a legal instrument. For it would be a great mistake to infer from the ridicule poured by Cicero (Pro Murena, xii. 62) on the fictions of Roman law, that those symbolisms were puerile mummeries designed to benefit the legal profession at the expense of its clients. The clod of earth which was brought into court was no mere symbol, but gave to those who held it exactly the same control over the estate from which it came, as the image of a god gives to its possessor, or as the hair or clothing of a person who is to be bewitched gives to the worker of the spell.
A form of sympathetic magic which is practised by agricultural peoples all over the world is a "sacred marriage," whereby two spirits or their images, or their living representatives, are united, in order that their union may be sympathetically followed by fertility in flock and field. The ceremony of the "sacred marriage" frequently survives when its purpose has been forgotten, and then a popular explanation isinvented for and by the folk. The myth of Acca Larentia, given by Plutarch,R. Q.35, seems to me a piece of folk-lore of this kind. To begin with, it is not uncommon to find in Greek and Asiatic cults, for instance,[88]a woman shut up with a god in his temple. And the result of this union is an increase in the agricultural wealth or fertility of the community. The same result appears in the "rationalised" explanation of the "sacred marriage" of Acca Larentia and Hercules, given by Plutarch. Further, an exactly similar tale is told of Hercules and Flora,[89]whose name shows that she is a spirit of flowering and blossoming vegetation, whilst her cult points to a realistic sacred marriage in which she took part.[90]Again, Acca Larentia and Flora were evidently felt to be spirits of the same class as the Dea Dia, for sacrifices were offered to them as partof the worship of the Dea Dia; and the Dea Dia was a corn-spirit, as is plainly shown by theActa Arvalium Fratrum.[91]At the same time, though Acca Larentia, Flora, and the Dea Dia were all spirits of the same class, it is clear that they were distinguished from each other, for the Arval Brothers sacrificed to each of them separately and under distinct names. Finally, whether Acca Larentia had originally anything to do with the Lares seems doubtful,[92]and in spite of the fact that, in later times at any rate, she was called "the mother of the Lares," one cannot build much on the etymology which makes "Acca" mean "mother."[93]Certain it is, however, that the Arval Brothers, in worshipping the Dea Dia, began their famous andvery ancient song with an invocation of the Lares.[94]It is plain, therefore, that there was from pre-historic times a tendency to associate the worship of the kindly Lares with that of spirits of the class to which the Dea Dia and Acca Larentia belonged. But the feast of the Larentalia (or Larentinalia), to which Plutarch alludes inR. Q.34, was evidently a piece of ancestor-worship, and may therefore have been part of the worship of the Lares from the beginning. If this really be so, Acca Larentia will be a soul promoted to the rank of a spirit of vegetation.
The theory of sympathetic magic may perhaps afford the solution of Plutarch's problem (97), why they that would live chaste were forbidden to eat pulse. Plutarch suggests that as far as beans are concerned the reason may be that the Pythagoreans abominated them. This "symbol" of the Pythagoreans is well-known. Milton was inspired by it to put the case—