Chapter 37

285.Serv. l. c. tells the aetiological legend. Cp. Plin.N. H.7. 11. It has been dealt with fully by Mannhardt,A. W. F.318 foll.

286.Plin. l. c.; Varro (ap. Serv. l. c.) asserted that they used a salve for their feet which protected them. The same thing is said, I believe, of the Harawara in India.

287.According to Strabo, p. 226, this fire-ceremony took place in the grove of Feronia, at the foot of the hill. Feronia may have been a corn- or harvest-deity, and of this Mannhardt makes all he can. We may at least guess that the rite took place at Midsummer.

288.Cp. the cult of Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia; Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, i. 41.

289.Myth., Ritual, and Religion, ii. 212.

290.This peculiar notation is common to this day and Aug. 19 (the Vinalia Rustica), and to the Feralia (Feb. 21). See Introduction, p.10.

291.Ovid,Fasti, 4. 877, asks: ‘Cur igitur Veneris festum Vinalia dicant, Quaeritis?‘

292.Varro,L. L.6. 16; Fest. 65 and 374. The latter gloss is: ‘Vinalia diem festum habebant, quo die vinum novum Iovi libabant.’ Ovid,Fasti, 4. 899, after telling the Mezentius story (alluded to in the note in Praen.), addsDicta dies hinc est Vinalia: Iuppiter illamVindicat, et festis gaudet inesse suis.

Dicta dies hinc est Vinalia: Iuppiter illamVindicat, et festis gaudet inesse suis.

Dicta dies hinc est Vinalia: Iuppiter illam

Vindicat, et festis gaudet inesse suis.

293.Ovid,Fasti, 4. 871Templa frequentari Collinae proxima portaeNunc decet; a Siculo nomina colle tenent.He seems to have confused this temple with that on the Capitol (Aust,de Aedibus, 23).

293.Ovid,Fasti, 4. 871

Templa frequentari Collinae proxima portaeNunc decet; a Siculo nomina colle tenent.

Templa frequentari Collinae proxima portae

Nunc decet; a Siculo nomina colle tenent.

He seems to have confused this temple with that on the Capitol (Aust,de Aedibus, 23).

294.Liv. 40. 34. 4.

295.Aust, ib. p. 24. Varro wrote a satire ‘Vinalia περὶ ἀφροδισίων.’ Plutarch (Q. R.45) confuses Vinalia and Veneralia.

296.Festus, 264 and 265; in the Vallis Murcia (or Circus maximus), and the lucus Libitinae. (In 265, xiii Kal. Sept. should be xiv.) For the date of the former temple, 293B.C., Liv. 10. 31. 9.

297.Varro,R. R.1. 1; Fest. 265; Preller-Jordan, i. 441.

298.C. I. L.iv. 2776.

299.Varro,L. L.6. 16. SeeMyth. Lex.s. v. Iuppiter, 704 foll.

300.Mommsen,C. I. L.326. Vindemia is thegrape-harvest. Hartmann,Röm. Kal.138, differs from Mommsen on this point.

301.Q. R.45.

302.Fest. 65.

303.H. N.18. 287.

304.L. L.6. 16.Hortisis Mommsen’s very probable emendation forsortisof the MSS. O. Müller hassacris, which is preferred by Jordan (Preller, i. 196).

305.264.

306.Mommsen (C. I. L.326) thinks that there is no mistake in the gloss; but that the Vinalia Rustica represent a later and luxurious fashion of allowing a whole year to elapse before tasting the wine, instead of six months. From the vintage, however (end of September or beginning of October), to August 19 is not a whole year. See under August 19.

307.‘Tria namque tempora fructibus metuebant, propter quod instituerunt ferias diesque festos, Robigalia, Floralia, Vinalia.’ That the Vinalia here referred to is the August one is clear, not only from the order of the words, but from what follows, down to the end of sec. 289. Secs. 287 to end of 288 deal with the Vinalia prioraparenthetically; in 289 Pliny returns to the Vinalia altera (or rustica), after thus clearing the ground by making it clear that the April Vinalia ‘nihil ad fructus attinent.’ He then quotes Varro to show that in August the object is to avert storms which might damage the vineyards. Mommsen,C. I. L. 326, seems to me to have misread this passage.

308.Ovid,Fasti, 877 foll.: the legend was an old one for it is quoted by Macrob. (Sat.3. 5. 10) from Cato’sOrigines. See also Hehn,Kulturpflanzen, 65 foll., who is, however, in error as to the identification of Jupiter (Liber) with Ζεὶς Ἐλευθέριος.

309.See Columella, 2. 12; Plin.N. II.18. 91; and article, ‘Mildew,’ inEncycl. Brit.For the botanical character of this parasite see Worthington Smith’sDiseases of Field and Garden Crops, chs. 21 and 23; and Hugh Macmillan’sBible Teachings from Nature, p. 120 foll.

310.N. H.18. 273: cp. 154. Pliny thought it chiefly the result ofdew(cf. mildew, German mehlthau), and was not wholly wrong.

311.The masc. is no doubt correct. Ovid,Fasti, 4. 907, uses the feminine Robigo, but is alone among the older writers in doing so: see Preller-Jordan, ii. 44, note 2.

312.Indigitation is the fixing of thelocal actionof a god to be invoked, by means of his name, if I understand rightly Reifferscheid’s view as given by R. Peter inMyth. Lex.s. v. Indigitamenta, p. 137. The priest of the Robigalia was the flamen Quirinalis: Quirinus is one form of Mars.

313.de Spectaculis, 5.

314.Cato,R. R.141; Preller-Jordan, i. 340.

315.Strabo, 613: see Roscher,Apollo and Mars, p. 62. Ἐρυσίβη = mildew, of which ἐρυθίβη is the Rhodian form.

316.See Mommsen’s ingenious explanation inC. I. L.316.

317.Fasti, 4. 901 foll. The victims had been slain at Rome and in the morning; and were offered at the grove later in the day (see Marq. 184).

318.Villis mantele solutis (cp. Serv.Aen.12. 169).

319.R. R.141.

320.So we may perhaps translatequo sidere moto: but Ovid certainly thought the star rose (cf. 904). Hartmann explains Ovid’s blunder by reference to Serv.Georg.1. 218 (Röm. Kal.193). See also H. Peter, ad loc.

321.Mannhardt,Myth. Forsch.107 foll.

322.Festus, 285; Paul, 45. It was outside the Porta Catularia, of which, unluckily, nothing is known.

323.N. H.18. 14 ‘Ita est in commentariis pontificum: Augurio canario agendo dies constituantur priusquam frumenta vaginis exeant et antequam in vaginas perveniant.’ For ‘etantequam’ we should perhaps read ‘necantequam.’ Thevaginais the sheath which protects the ear and from which it eventually protrudes; and it seems that in this stage, which in Italy would occur at the end of April or beginning of May, the corn is peculiarly liable to ‘rust.’ (So Virg.Georg.1. 151 ‘Ut malaculmosEsset robigo’: i. e. the stalks including thevagina.) See Hugh Macmillan, op. cit. p. 121.

324.Myth. Forsch.106. Mr. Frazer (G. B.ii. 59: cp. i. 306) takes the other view of this and similar sacrifices, but with some hesitation.

325.It must be confessed that the occurrence of red colour in victims cannot well be always explained in this way; e. g. the red heifer of the Israelites (Numbers xix), and the red oxen of the Egyptians (Plut.Isis and Osiris, 31). But in this rite, occurring so close to the Cerialia, where, as we have seen,foxeswere turned out in thecircus maximus, the colour of the puppies must have had some meaning in relation to the growing crops.

326.‘Ludi cursoribus maioribus minoribusque.’ What these were is not known: Mommsen,C. I. L.317.

327.Usener,Religionsgeschichte, i. 298 foll.

328.See Introduction, p.15.

329.Plin.N. H.18. 286; two years earlier, according to Velleius, 1. 14. This is, I think, the only case in which a deity taken in hand by thedecemviri sacris faciundiscannot be traced to a Greek origin; but the characteristics of Flora are so like those of Venus that in the former, as in the latter, Aphrodite may be concealed. The games as eventually organized had points in common with the cult of Aphrodite at Hierapolis (Lucian,Dea Syr.49; Farnell,Cults, ii. 643); and it is worth noting that their date (173B.C.) is subsequent to the Syrian war. Up to that time the games were not regular or annual (Ovid,Fasti, 5. 295).

330.Tac.Ann.2. 49; Aust, p. 17.

331.Plebis ad aediles: Ovid, ib. v. 287; Festus, 238, probably in error, calls the Publiciicuruleaediles.

332.Ovid, ib. 5.277 foll., in which he draws a picture of the misdoings of the landholders. Cp. Liv. 33. 42, for the temple of Faunusin insula, founded by the same means.

333.Ovid, ib. 5. 352.

334.Steuding inMyth. Lex.s. v. Flora. There was a Sabine month Flusalis (Momms.Chron.219) = Floralis, and answering to July. Varro considered Flora a Sabine deity (L. L.5. 74).

335.Varro,L. L.7. 45. Flora had an ancient templein colle, near the so-called Capitolium vetus (Steuding, l. c.), i. e. in the ‘Sabine quarter.’

336.Henzen,Acta Fratr. Arv.146.

337.Ov. 5. 331 foll ‘Volt sua plebeio sacra patere choro.’

338.Val. Max. 2. 10. 8. Steuding inMyth. Lex.has oddly misunderstood this passage, making Val. Max. write of this custom as an ancient one, whereas he clearly implies the opposite. It was no doubt the relic of some rude country practice, degenerated under the influence of city life.

339.Lactantius,De falsa religione, i. 20.

340.Aug.Civ. Dei, ii. 27.

341.Friedländer on Martial, 8. 67. 4.

342.H. Peter takes this to mean that they were let loose from a net and hunted into it again. See note ad loc. 5. 371.

343.See above, p.77.

344.Sat. 5. 177:Vigila et cicer ingere largeRixanti populo, nostra ut Floralia possintAprici meminisse senes.—Cp. Hor.Sat.2. 3. 182.

344.Sat. 5. 177:

Vigila et cicer ingere largeRixanti populo, nostra ut Floralia possintAprici meminisse senes.—Cp. Hor.Sat.2. 3. 182.

Vigila et cicer ingere large

Rixanti populo, nostra ut Floralia possint

Aprici meminisse senes.—Cp. Hor.Sat.2. 3. 182.

345.Friedländer,Sittengeschichte, ii. 286; and his note on Martial, 8. 78.

346.Kind. u. Korn.351 foll.

347.Another point that may strike the reader of Ovid is the wearing of parti-coloured dress on these days (5. 355: cp. Martial, 5. 23)—Cur tamen ut dantur vestes Cerialibus albae,Sic haec est cultu versicolore decens?Flora answers him doubtfully. Was this a practice of comparatively late date? See Friedländer,Sittengeschichteii. 275.

347.Another point that may strike the reader of Ovid is the wearing of parti-coloured dress on these days (5. 355: cp. Martial, 5. 23)—

Cur tamen ut dantur vestes Cerialibus albae,Sic haec est cultu versicolore decens?

Cur tamen ut dantur vestes Cerialibus albae,

Sic haec est cultu versicolore decens?

Flora answers him doubtfully. Was this a practice of comparatively late date? See Friedländer,Sittengeschichteii. 275.

348.Mommsen inC. I. L.vi. p. 455 (Tabula fer. Lat.). The day was March 15 fromB.C.222 to 153; in earlier times it had been frequently changed. See Mommsen.Chron.p. 80 foll.

349.On this office and its connexion with theferiaesee Vigneaux,Essai sur l’histoire de la praefectura urbis, p. 37 foll.

350.Plin.H. N.3. 69; Dionys. 4. 49. The difficult questions arising out of the numbers given by these authorities are discussed by Beloch,Italischer Bund, 178 foll., and Mommsen inHermes, vol. xvii. 42 foll.

351.Aust, inMyth. Lex.s. v. Iuppiter, p. 689.

352.C. I. L.vi. 2021.

353.Condensed from the account given by Aust, l. c. See also Preller-Jordan, i. 210 foll. The chief authority is Dionys. 4. 49.

354.e. g. Liv. 32. 1, 37. 3, in which cases some one city had not received its portion. The result was aninstauratio feriarum.

355.See below, p.294(Feriae Sementivae). The meaning of theoscillawas not really known to the later Romans, who freely indulged in conjectures about them. Macrob. 1. 7. 34; Serv.Georg.2. 389; Paul. 121. My own belief is that, like thebullaeof children, they were only one of the many means of averting evil influences.

356.See the passages of Livy quoted above, and add 40. 45 (on account of a storm); 41. 16 (a failure on the part of Lanuvium).

357.Macrob. 1. 16. 16 ‘Cum Latiar, hoc est Latinarum solemne concipitur, nefas est proelium sumere: quia nec Latinarum tempore, quo publice quondam indutiae inter populum Romanum Latinosque firmatae sunt, inchoari bellum decebat.’

358.See under Sept. 13.

359.For the characteristics and meaning of the common sacrificial meal see especially Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, Lect. viii.

360.Helbig,Die Italiker in der Poebene, 71.

361.Robertson Smith, op. cit., 278 foll.

362.Cic.pro Plancio, 9. 23.

363.Sat. 1. 12. 16.

364.See above, Introduction, p.11.

365.So Varro also (L. L.6. 33). But Censorinus (De die natali, 20. 2) expressly ascribes to Varro the derivation from Maia; the great scholar apparently changed his view.

366.For Iup. Maius see Aust, inMyth. Lex.s. v. Iuppiter, p. 650.

367.This was probably not the early historian Cincius Alimentus, but a contemporary of Augustus, Teuffel,Hist. of Roman Literature, sec. 106. For the flamen Volcanalis see on Aug 23.

368.i. e. on the Ides: see below, p.120. The connexion between Mercurius and Maia seems to arise simply from the fact that the dedication of the temple of the former was on the Ides of this month.

369.Ovid,Fasti, 6. 59 foll.; Mommsen,Chron.218.

370.The etymology was defended by Roscher in Fleckeisen’sJahrbuchfor 1875, and in hisIuno und Hera, p. 105.

371.Fasti, 5. 129 foll. For the doubtful readingCuribusin 131 see Peter, ad loc.; Preller-Jordan, ii. 114.

372.Fasti, 5. 143; Plutarch,Quaest. Rom.51.

373.This appears on coins of the gens Caesia: Cohen,Méd. Cons.pl. viii. Wissowa, inMyth. Lex., s. v. Lares, gives a cut of the coin, on which the Lares are represented sitting with a dog between them. See note at the end of this work (Note B) on the further interpretation of these coins.

374.See Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, 414 foll.

375.Farnell,Cults, ii. 515. Hekate was certainly a deity of the earth. Cf. Plut.Q. R.68.

376.See on Robigalia,April 25.

377.Quaest. Rom.52 and 111; cf.Romulus21.

378.So Jevons,Roman Questions, Introduction, xli.

379.De-Marchi,La Religione nella vita domestica, 48. Wissowa (Myth. Lex., s. v. Lares, p. 1872) prefers the old interpretation, much as Plutarch gives it.

380.Fasti, 5. 149 foll.

381.Aust,De Aedibus sacris, p. 27. It was apparently before 123B.C., when a Vestal Virgin, Licinia, added anaedicula,pulvinar, andarato it (Cic.de Domo, 136).

382.Wissowa, in Pauly’sReal-Encyclopädie, s. v. Bona Dea, 690. See above, p. 69.

383.See below, underDec. 3. There can be hardly a doubt that this December rite was the one famous for thesacrilegiumof Clodius in 62B.C., though Prof. Beesly rashly assumed the contrary in his essay on Clodius (Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius, p. 45 note). Plutarch,Cic.19 and 20; Dio Cass. 37. 35.

384.Ovid, l. c. ‘oculos exosa viriles.’ Cp.Ars Amat.3. 637. On this and other points in the cult see R. Peter inMyth. Lex., and Wissowa, l. c. The latter seems to refer most of them to the December rite; but Ovid and Macrobius expressly connect them with thetemple. Macr. 1. 12. 25 foll.

385.Propert. 4. 9; Macr. 1. 12. 28.

386.Tylor,Primitive Culture, ii. 245 foll.

387.See below, p.143.Lex. Myth.s. v. Hercules, 2258.

388.Macr. l. c. Plutarch also knew of this (Quaest. Rom.20).

389.Otherwise in Lactantius, 1. 22. 11, and Arnob. 5. 18, where Fauna is said to have been beaten because she drank wine; no doubt a later version. Lactantius quotes Sext. Clodius, a contemporary of Cicero.

390.H. N.14. 88. See above on feriae Latinae, p. 97. Virg.Ecl.5. 66;Georg.1. 344;Aen.5. 77. In the last passage milk is offered to theinferiaeof Anchises: we may note the similarity of the cult of Earth-deities and of the dead.

391.Plut.Q. R.20; Macrob. l. c.; Lactant. l. c. The myth has been explained as Greek (Wissowa, in Pauly, 688), but its peculiar feature, the whipping, could hardly have become attached to a Roman cult unless there were something in the cult to attach it to, or unless the cult itself were borrowed from the Greek. That the latter was the case it is impossible to prove; and I prefer to believe that both cult and myth were Roman.

392.Mythologische Forschungen, 115 foll. Cp. Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 213 foll.

393.Below, p.320. See also onJuly 7(Nonae Caprotinae).

394.Macrob. l. c. ‘Quidam Medeam putant, quod in aede eius omne genus herbarum sit ex quibus antistites dant plerumque medicinas.’

395.C. I. L.vi. 54 foll.

396.This no doubt gave rise to the myth that Faunus ‘coisse cum filia’ in the form of a snake. Here again the myth may possibly be Greek, but we have no right to deny that it may have had a Roman basis. Snakes were kept in great numbers both in temples and houses in Italy (Preller-Jordan, i. 87, 385).

397.Plin.H. N.29passim, especially 14, &c., where Cato is quoted as detesting the new Greek art, and urging his son to stick to the old simples; some of which, with their absurd charms, are given in Cato, R. R. 156 foll.

398.Macrob. l. c.; Juv.Sat.2. 86.

399.Marq. 173. Gilbert (Gesch. und Topogr.ii. 159, note) has some impossible combinations on this subject, and concludes that the Bona Dea was a moon-goddess.

400.See above, p.72foll.

401.Paulus, 68 ‘Damium sacrificium, quod fiebat in operto in honorem Bonae deae, ... dea quoque ipsa Damia et sacerdos eius damiatrix appellabatur.’

402.R. Peter inMyth. Lex., s. v. Damia; Wissowa, l. c.

403.Paulus, l. c.

404.Lactantius, 1. 22; Serv.Aen.8. 314.

405.Preuner,Hestia-Vesta, 407 foll. For Lucina, Gilbert, l. c.

406.The combination of the idea of female fecundity with that of the earth is of course common enough. Here is a good example from Abyssinia: ‘She (Atetie) is the goddess of fecundity, and women are her principal votaries; but, as she can also make the earth prolific, offerings are made to her for that purpose’ (Macdonald,Religion and Myth, p. 42).

407.Fasti, 5. 421 foll.

408.See Introduction, p.15.

409.Huschke (Röm. Jahr, 17) tried to prove that the Lemuria was the ‘Todtenfest’ of the Sabine city, the Feralia that of the Latin; but his arguments have convinced no one.

410.Fasti, 5. 423.

411.G. B.ii. 157 foll.; Macdonald,Religion and Myth, ch. vi.

412.Introduction, p.10.

413.Tylor,Prim. Cult.ii. 24. The friendly attitude is well illustrated in F. de Coulanges’La Cité antique, ch. ii.

414.On Hor.Ep.2. 2. 209.

415.Non. p. 135. Cp. Festus, s. v. faba: ‘Lemuralibus iacitur larvis,’ i. e. ‘the bean is thrown tolarvaeat the Lemuralia.’ Serv.Aen.3. 63.

Back to Index Next