MENSIS FEBRUARIUS

The name of the last month of the old Roman year is derived from the wordfebruum, usually understood as an instrument of purification[1331]. This word, and its derivatives were, as we shall see, best known in connexion with the Lupercalia, the most prominent of the festivals of the month. Now the ritual of the Lupercalia seems to suggest that our word ‘purification’ does not cover all the ground occupied by the ‘religio’ of that festival; nor does it precisely suit some of the other rites of February. We are indeed here on difficult and dangerous ground. Certainly we must not assume that there was any general lustration of the whole people, or any period corresponding in religious intent to the Christian Lent, which in time only is descended from the Roman February. Assuredly there were no such ideas as penitence or forgiveness of sins involved in the ritual of the month. Let so much be said for the benefit of those who are only acquainted with Jewish or Christian history.

What at least is certain is that at this time the character of the festivals changes. Since the middle of December we have had a series of joyful gatherings of an agricultural people in homestead, market-place, cross-roads; now we find them fulfilling their duties to their dead ancestors at the commonnecropolis, or engaged in a mysterious piacular rite under the walls of the oldest Rome. The Parentalia and the Lupercalia are the characteristic rites of February; we shall see later on whether any of the others can be brought into the same category. If pleasure is the object of the mid-winter festivals, the fulfilment of duties towards the gods and themaneswould seem to be that of the succeeding period.

From an agricultural point of view February was a somewhat busy month; but in the time of Varro the work was chiefly the preparatory operations in the culture of olives, vines and fruit-trees[1332]. The one great operation in the oldest and simplest agricultural system was the spring sowing. Spring was understood to begin on Feb. 7 (Favonius)[1333], and it is precisely at this point that the rites change their character. We are in fact close upon the new year, when the powers of vegetation awake and put on strength; but the Romans approached it as it were with hesitation, preparing for it carefully by steady devotion to work and duty, the whole community endeavouring to place itself in a proper position toward thenuminaof the land’s fertility, and the dead reposing in the land’s embrace.

Before taking the rites one by one, it will perhaps be as well to say a word in general about the nature of Roman expiatory rites, in order to determine in what sense we are to understand those of February.

The first point to notice is that these rites were applicable only toinvoluntaryacts of commission or omission—an offence against the gods (nefas) if wittingly committed, was inexpiable. In this case the offender wasimpius, i. e. had wilfully failed in his duty; and him no rites could absolve[1334]. But by ordinary offences against the gods we are not to understandsin, in the Christian sense of the word; they were rather mistakes inritual, or involuntary omissions—in fact any real or supposed or possible errors in any of a man’s relations to thenuminaaround him. He might always be putting himself in the wrong in regard to these relations, and he must as sedulously endeavour to right himself. In the life of the ‘privatus’ these trespasses in sacred law would chiefly be in matters of marriages and funerals and the regular sacrifices of the household; in the life of the magistrate they would be mistakes or omissions in his duties on behalf of the State[1335]. Whether in private or public life, they must be duly expiated. It is needless to point out how powerful a factor this belief must have been in the growth of a conscience and of the sense of duty; or how stringent a ‘religio’ was that which, assuming that a man could hardly commit an offence except unwittingly, made the possible exceptional case fatal to his position as a member of a community which depended for its wholesome existence on the good will of the gods.

Remembering that among the divine beings to whom it was most essential for each family to fulfil its duties, were thedi manes, or dead ancestors and members of the family, we see at once that February with its Parentalia was an important month in the matter of expiatory rites. Ovid, though suggesting a fancy derivation for the name of the month, expresses this idea clearly enough:

Aut quiaplacatissunt tempora pura sepulcrisTum cum ferales praeteriere dies[1336].

Aut quiaplacatissunt tempora pura sepulcris

Tum cum ferales praeteriere dies[1336].

But the other etymology given by the poet is, as we have seen, the right one, and may bring us to another class ofpiacula, of which we find an example this month in the Lupercalia.

Mensis ab his dictus, secta quia pelle LuperciOmne solum lustrant, idque piamen habent[1337].

Mensis ab his dictus, secta quia pelle Luperci

Omne solum lustrant, idque piamen habent[1337].

Not only was the Roman most careful to expiate involuntary offences, and also to appease the wrath of the gods, if shown in any special active way, e.g. by lightning and many other prodigia[1338], but he also sought to avert evil influencesbefore-hand,which might possibly emanate from hostile or offendednumina. This religious object is well illustrated in the sacrifice of thehostia praecidanea, which was offered beforehand to make up for any involuntary errors in the ritual that followed[1339]. But it is also seen in numerous other rites of which we have had many examples; all those, for instance, which included alustratio. We generally translate this word by ‘purification’; but it also involves the ideas of intercession, and of the removal of unseen hostile influences which may be likely to interfere with the health and prosperity of man, beast, or crop. At such rites special victims were sometimes offered, or the victim was treated in a peculiar manner; we find, perhaps, some part of it used as a charm or potent spell, as the strips of skin at the Lupercalia, or the ashes of the unborn calves at the Fordicidia, or the tail and blood of the October horse[1340]. To the first of these, at least, if not to the other two, the wordfebruumwas applied, and we may assume it of the others: also to many other objects which had some magical power, and carry us back to a very remote religious antiquity. Ovid gives a catalogue of them[1341]:

Februa Romani dixere piamina patres,Nunc quoque dant verbo plurima signa fidem.Pontifices ab rege petunt et flaminelanas,Quis veterum lingua februa nomen erat.Quaeque capit lictor domibus purgamina †ternis†[1342]Torrida cum mica farra, vocantur idem.Nomen idemramo, qui caesus ab arbore puraCasta sacerdotum tempora fronde tegit.Ipse ego flaminicam poscentem februa vidi:Februa poscentipinea virgadata est.Denique quodcunque est, quo corpora nostra piantur,Hoc apud intonsos nomen habebat avos.

Februa Romani dixere piamina patres,

Nunc quoque dant verbo plurima signa fidem.

Pontifices ab rege petunt et flaminelanas,

Quis veterum lingua februa nomen erat.

Quaeque capit lictor domibus purgamina †ternis†[1342]

Torrida cum mica farra, vocantur idem.

Nomen idemramo, qui caesus ab arbore pura

Casta sacerdotum tempora fronde tegit.

Ipse ego flaminicam poscentem februa vidi:

Februa poscentipinea virgadata est.

Denique quodcunque est, quo corpora nostra piantur,

Hoc apud intonsos nomen habebat avos.

Objects such as these, called by a name which is explained bypiamen, orpurgamentum, must have been understood as charms potent to keep off evil influences, and so to enable nature to take its ordinary course unhindered. Only in this sense can we call them instruments ofpurification.

The use of thefebruain the Lupercalia was, as we shall see, to procure fertility in the women of the community. Here then, as well as in the rites of the Fornacalia and Parentalia, is some reason for calling the month a period of purification; but only if we bear in mind that at the Parentalia the process consisted simply in the performance of duties towards the dead, which freed or purified a man from their possible hostility; while at the Lupercalia the women were freed or purified from influences which might hinder them in the fulfilment of their natural duties to their families and the State. Beyond this it is not safe to go in thinking of February as a month of expiation.

This was the dedication-day of a temple of the great Lanuvian goddess, Juno Sospita, in the Forum olitorium[1343]. It was vowed in the year 197B.C.by the consul Cornelius Cethegus, but had fallen into decay in Ovid’s time[1344]. For the famous cult of this deity at Lanuvium, see Roscher, inLex.s. v. Iuno, 595.

This temple was vowed almost at the same time as the last, 296B.C., by plebeian aediles; it was built by fines exacted from holders of ager publicus who had not paid their rents[1345]. See under Dec. 5, p. 257.

I have drawn attention to the change in the character of the festivals at this season. But before we go on to the Parentalia and Lupercalia, which chiefly mark this change, we have to consider one festival which seems to belong rather to the class which we found in December and January. This was theFornacalia, or feast of ovens; one which does not appear in the calendars, as it was a moveable feast (conceptivae); and one which was asacrum publicumonly in the sense of being pro curiis, as the Paganalia were pro pagis, the Septimontium pro montibus, and the Argean rite pro sacellis[1346]. Each curia conducted its own rites, under the supervision of its curio and (for the last day) of the Curio Maximus[1347]: the great priests of the State had no official part in it. In this it differs in some degree from the Fordicidia (April 15), the other feast of the curiae, which appears in three of our calendars, and in which the Pontifices and Vestals took some part[1348].

This is not the place to investigate the difficult question of what thecuriaereally were. So much at least is clear, that while, like the montes, pagi, and sacella (argea), they were divisions of the people and the land, they were more important than the others, in that they formed the basis of the earliest political and military organization[1349]. It need hardly be said that each curia had also itself a religious organization: their places of assembly, though not temples, were quasi-religious buildings[1350], used for sacred purposes, but furnished with hearth and eating-room like an ordinary house[1351]. We hear also of tables (mensae, τράπεσαι) ‘in quibus immolabatur Iunoni quae Curis appellata est[1352].’ There is no need to assume any etymological connexion between Cŭris and Cūria[1353]; but the cult of the goddess of the spear is interesting here, as seeming at once to illustrate the military importance of the curiae, the power of the paterfamilias[1354], and the necessity of continuing the family throughthe fertility of woman, an idea which we shall come upon again at the Lupercalia[1355]. Lastly, each curia had its own curio, or religious superintendent, and its own flamen, and at the head of all the curiae was the Curio Maximus; officers who coincide with the general character of the curiae in being (like the heads of families) not strictly priests, but capable of religious duties, for the performance of which they are said to have been instituted[1356].

The ritual of the Fornacalia has been evolved with difficulty, and without much certainty, from a few passages in Ovid, Dionysius, Varro, Festus, and Pliny[1357]. We seem to see—1. An offering in each private house in each curia: it consisted offar, i. e. meal of the oldest kind of Italian wheat, roasted in antique fashion in the oven which was to be found in thepistrinaof each house, and made into cakes by crushing in the manner still common in India and elsewhere[1358]. 2. A rite in which each curia took part as a whole. This is deduced from the fact that on the 17th (Quirinalia) any one who by forgetfulness or ignorance had omitted to perform his sacra on the day fixed by the curio for the meeting of his own curia, might do so then at a general assembly of all the thirty curiae[1359]. This was the reason why the Quirinalia was called ‘stultorum feriae.’ It has also been conjectured that the bounds of each curia were beaten on this day, on which its members thus met: for Pliny says ‘Numa et Fornacalia instituit farris torrendi feriaset aequereligiosas terminis agrorum[1360].’ 3. What happened on the Quirinalia Ovid shall tell us himself[1361]:

Curio legitimis nunc Fornacalia verbisMaximus indicit, nec stata sacra facit;Inque foro, multa circum pendente tabella,Signatur certa curia quaeque nota:Stultaque pars populi, quae sit sua curia, nescit,Sed facit extrema sacra relata die.

Curio legitimis nunc Fornacalia verbis

Maximus indicit, nec stata sacra facit;

Inque foro, multa circum pendente tabella,

Signatur certa curia quaeque nota:

Stultaque pars populi, quae sit sua curia, nescit,

Sed facit extrema sacra relata die.

It should be noted that no certain connexion can be made out between Quirinus and curia, and I imagine it was only accident or convenience that made this day the last of the Fornacalia[1362]. Ovid’s words ‘nec stata sacra facit’ seem to me to imply that the Curio Maximus carefully abstained from using a formula of announcement likely to confuse the ‘stultorum feriae’ with the Quirinalia, which was always on the same day. But it may well have been the case that by usage the two coincided.

Ovid’s lines make it clear that on the 17th (as a rule) the Forum was the scene of a general meeting of curiae, each of which had a certain space assigned it, indicated by a placard. Is it possible that this was merely a survival of the assembly of the armed host in comitia curiata, now used only for religious purposes? If so, the tendency to fix it on the festival of Quirinus might find a natural explanation.

The meaning and object of the Fornacalia are very far from being clear. Preller[1363]fancied it was the occasion of the first eating of the fruits of the last harvest: but it is hardly possible to imagine this postponed as late as February. On the other hand Dionysius’ description[1364], already quoted, of what he saw in the curiae, would suit this well enough if it could be set down to a suitable time of year: it suggests a common meal, in which the first fruits are offered to the god, while the worshippers eat of the new grain. But this cannot have been in February. Steuding (in theLex.) suggests that the object was to thank the gods for preserving the corn through the winter, and topray for the welfare of the seed still in the ground (i. e. in a lustratio). Ovid says (though Steuding does not quote him)

Facta dea est Fornax: laeti Fornace coloniOrant, ut fruges temperet illa suas[1365].

Facta dea est Fornax: laeti Fornace coloni

Orant, ut fruges temperet illa suas[1365].

But neither Steuding’s conjecture, nor the German parallels he appeals to, seem convincing. I am rather inclined to think that the making of cakes in each household was simply a preliminary to thesacrathat followed in the curia, i. e. each family brought its contribution to a common religious meal. The roasting was naturally accompanied by an offering to the spirit of the oven[1366](fornax); hence the name Fornacalia. The object of the sacra in the curia is doubtful; but they probably had some relation to the land and its fertility, in view of the new year about to begin. Of the final meeting of all the curiae in the forum I have already suggested an explanation: the phrase ‘stultorum feriae’ was, in my opinion, of late origin, and illustrates the diminishing importance of the curiate organization after the admission of plebeians[1367].

VIRGO VESTALIS PARENTAT. (PHIL.)

PARENTATIO TUMULORUM INCIPIT. (SILV.)

Thedies parentales, or days of worshipping the dead (placandis Manibus), began at the sixth hour on this day, and continued either to the 21st (Feralia), or the 22nd (cara cognatio)[1368]. The parentatio of the Vestal was at the tomb of Tarpeia, herself a Vestal[1369]. Undoubtedly, the Feralia (21st) was the oldest and the best known of these days, and the only one which was a public festival: it appears in three calendars (Caer. Maff. Farn.) in large letters. Yet there is reason for believing that even the Feralia was not the oldest day for worshipping themanes: it was in part at least a dies fastus, and none of the dies parentales are marked N in the calendars; and this, according to Mommsen[1370], shows that the rites of those days were of later origin than those of the Lemuria (May 9-13), which are all marked N. This seems also to have been the opinion of Latin scholars[1371].

Whatever the Lemuria may have been, it is certain that the Parentalia were not days of terror or ill-omen; but rather days on which the performance of duty was the leading idea in men’s minds. Nor was the duty an unpleasant one. There was a general holiday: the dead to be propitiated had been duly buried in the family tomb in the great necropolis, had been well cared for since their departure, and were still members of the family. There was nothing to fear from them, so long as the living members performed their duties towards them under the supervision of the State and its Pontifices[1372]. They had theiriura, and the relations between them and their living relations were all regulated by aius sacrum: they lived on in their city outside the walls of the city of the living[1373], each family in their own dwelling: they did not interfere with the comfort of the living, or in any way show themselves hostile or spiteful. Such ideas as these are of course the result ofa well developed city life; experience has taught the citizen how his conduct towards the Di Manes can best be regulated and organized for the benefit of both parties. The Parentalia belong to a later stage of development than the Lemuria, though both have the same original basis of thought. The Parentalia was practically a yearly renewal of the rite of burial. Assacra privatathey took place on the anniversary of the death of a deceased member of the family, and it was a special charge on the heir that he should keep up their observance[1374]. On that day the family would go in procession to the grave, not only to see that all was well with him who abode there, but to present him with offerings of water, wine, milk, honey, oil, and the blood of black victims[1375]: to deck the tomb with flowers[1376], to utter once more the solemn greeting and farewell (Salve, sancte parens), to partake of a meal with the dead, and to petition them for good fortune and all things needful. This last point comes out clearly in Virgil’s picture:

Poscamus ventos, atque haec me sacra quotannisUrbe velit posita templis sibi ferre dicatis.

Poscamus ventos, atque haec me sacra quotannis

Urbe velit posita templis sibi ferre dicatis.

The true meaning of these lines is, as Henry quaintly puts it[1377], ‘Let us try if we cannot kill two birds with one stone, and not only pay my sire the honours due to him, but at the same time help ourselves forward on our journey by getting him to give us fair winds for our voyage.’

As we have seen, the dies parentales began on the 13th; from that day till the 21st all temples were closed, marriages were forbidden, and magistrates appeared without their insignia[1378]. On the 22nd was the family festival of theCaristia, orcara cognatio: the date of its origin is unknown, but Ovid[1379]writes of it as well established in his time, and it may be very much older. He describes it as a reunion of the living members of the family after they have paid their duties to the dead:

Scilicet a tumulis et qui periere, propinquisProtinus ad vivos ora referre iuvat;Postque tot amissos quicquid de sanguine restat,Aspicere, et generis dinumerare gradus.

Scilicet a tumulis et qui periere, propinquis

Protinus ad vivos ora referre iuvat;

Postque tot amissos quicquid de sanguine restat,

Aspicere, et generis dinumerare gradus.

It was a kind of love-feast of the family, and gives a momentary glimpse of the gentler side of Roman family life. All quarrels were to be forgotten[1380]in a general harmony: no guilty or cruel member may be present[1381]. The centre of the worship was the Lares of the family, who were ‘incincti,’ and shared in the sacred meal[1382].

We might naturally expect that, especially in Italy—so tenacious of old ideas and superstitions—we should find some survival of primitive folk-lore, even in the midst of this highly organized civic cult of the dead. Ovid supplies us with a curious contrast to the ethical beauty of the Caristia, in describing the spells which an old woman works, apparently on the day of the Feralia[1383]. ‘An old hag sitting among the girls performs rites to Tacita: with three fingers she places three bits of incense at the entrance of a mouse-hole. Muttering a spell, she weaves woollen threads on a web of dark colour, and mumbles seven black beans in her mouth. Then she takes a fish, themaena, smears its head with pitch, sews its mouth up, drops wine upon it, and roasts it before the fire: the rest of the wine she drinks with the girls. Now, quoth she, we have bound the mouth of the enemy:

Hostiles linguas inimicaque vinximus ora,Dicit discedens, ebriaque exit anus.’

Hostiles linguas inimicaque vinximus ora,

Dicit discedens, ebriaque exit anus.’

In spite of the names of deities we find here, Tacita and DeaMuta[1384], and of the pretty story of the mother of the Lares which the poet’s fancy has added to it, it is plain that this is no more than one of a thousand savage spells for counteracting hostile spirits[1385]. The picture is interesting, as showing the survival of witchcraft in the civilized Rome of Ovid’s time, and reminds us of the horrible hags in Horace’s fifth epode; but it may be doubted whether it has any real connexion with the Feralia. Doubtless its parallel could be found even in the Italy of today[1386].

LUPER(CALIA). (CAER. MAFF. FARN. PHILOC. SILV. AND RUSTIC CALENDARS.)

There is hardly another festival in the calendar so interesting and so well known as this. Owing to the singular interest attaching to its celebration inB.C.44, only a month before Caesar’s death, we are unusually well informed as to its details; but these present great difficulties in interpretation, which the latest research has not altogether overcome[1387]. I shall content myself with describing it, and pointing out such explanations of ritual as seem to be fairly well established.

On Feb. 15 the celebrants of this ancient rite met at the cave called the Lupercal, at the foot of the steep south-western corner of the Palatine Hill—the spot where, according to the tradition, the flooded Tiber had deposited the twin children at the foot of the sacred fig-tree[1388], and where they were nourished by the she-wolf. The name of the cave is almostwithout doubt built up fromlupus, ‘a wolf’[1389]; but we cannot be equally sure whether the name of the festival is derived directly from Lupercal, or on the analogy of Quirinalia, Volcanalia, and others, from Lupercus, the alleged name of the deity concerned in the rites, and also of the celebrants themselves[1390]. In any case we are fairly justified in calling this the wolf-festival; the more so as the wolf was the sacred animal of Mars, who was in a special sense the god of the earliest settlers on the Palatine[1391].

The first act of the festival seems to have been the sacrifice of goats (we are not told how many), and of a dog[1392]; and at the same time were offered sacred cakes made by the Vestals, from the first ears of last year’s harvest. This was the last batch of themola salsa, some of which had been used at the Vestalia in June, and some on the Ides of September[1393].

Next, two youths of high rank, belonging, we may suppose, one to each of the two collegia of Luperci (of which more directly), were brought forward; these had their foreheads smeared with the knife bloody from the slaughter of the victims, and then wiped with wool dipped in milk. As soon as this was done they were obliged to laugh. Then they girt themselves with the skins of the slaughtered goats, and feasted luxuriously[1394]; after which they ran round the base of the Palatine Hill, or at least a large part of its circuit, apparently in two companies, one led by each of the two youths. As they ran they struck at all the women who came near them or offered themselves to their blows, with strips of skin cut from the hides of the same victims; which strips, as we have seen, were among the objects which were called by the priestsfebrua.

Here, in what at first sight looks like a grotesque jumble, there are two clearly distinguishable elements; (1) an extremely primitive ritual, probably descended from the pastoral stage of society; (2) a certain co-ordination of this with definite local settlements. The sacrifices, the smearing and wiping, the wearing of the skins, and the striking with thefebrua, all seem to be survivals from a very early stage of religious conceptions; but the two companies of runners, and their course round the Palatine, which apparently followed the most ancient line of the pomoerium, bring us into touch with the beginning and with the development of urban life. Surviving through the whole Republican period, with a tenacity which the Roman talent for organization alone could give it, the Lupercalia was still further developed for his own purposes by the dictator Caesar, and thenceforward lived on for centuries under his successors into the age of imperial Christianity.

Let us now examine the several acts of the festival, to see how far they admit of explanation under the light of modern research into primitive ideas and ritual.

It began, as we saw, with the sacrifice of goats and a dog. Unluckily we cannot be sure of the god to whom they were offered, nor of the sacrificing priest. According to Ovid[1395]the deity was Faunus; according to Livy it was a certain mysterious Inuus, of whom hardly anything else is known[1396], though much has been written. There was no Lupercus, as some have vainly imagined; much less any such combination as Faunus Lupercus, which has been needlessly created out of a passage of Justin[1397]. Liber is suggested by Servius[1398]; who adds that others fancied it was a ‘bellicosus deus.’ Recently Juno has been suggested, because the strips which the runners carried were called ‘Iunonis amiculum’[1399]. Thus it is quite plain that the Roman of the literary age did not know who the god was. Thecommon idea that he was Faunus is discredited by Livy’s account and his mention of Inuus, and also by the fact that Faunus is not associated with urban settlements: and may easily be accounted for by the myth of Evander and the Arcadians, whose Pan Lycaeus was of course identified with Faunus[1400], or by the girding of the Luperci with skins, which made them resemble the popular conception of the Fauni[1401]. Possibly the name was a secret; for there was a tendency to avoid fixing a god’s name in ritual, in order to escape making mistakes, and so offending him. ‘Iure pontificum cautum est ne suis nominibus dii Romani appellarentur, ne exaugurari possint[1402].’ We must also remember that the Lupercalia undoubtedly descends from the very earliest period of the Roman religion, when the individuality of deities was not clearly conceived, and when their names were unknown, doubtful, or adjectival only. In fact, we need not greatly trouble ourselves about the name of the god: his nature is deducible to some extent from the ritual. The connexion with the Palatine, with the wolf, and with fructification, seems to me to point very clearly in the direction of Mars and his characteristics.

It would be almost more profitable if we could be sure of the sacrificing priest; but here again we are in the dark. Ovid says, ‘Flamen ad haec prisco more Dialis erat[1403]‘; but it is impossible that this priest could have been the sacrificer (though Marquardt committed himself to this), for he was expressly forbidden to touch either goat or dog[1404], which seem to have been excluded from the cult of Jupiter. Even in the case of such exceptionalpiaculaas this no doubt was, we can hardly venture without further evidence to ascribe the slaughter of the sacred animal to the great priest of the heavenly deity in whose cult it was tabooed. Plutarch says that the Luperci themselves sacrificed[1405]; and this is more probable, and is borne outby comparison with other cases in which the priest clothes himself, as the Luperci did, in the skin of the victim. It does not indeed seem certain that the two youths who thus girt themselves had also performed the sacrifice; but they represent the two collegia of Luperci, and lead the race[1406], as Romulus and Remus did in the explanatory legend.

As regards the victims, there is here at least no doubt that both goat and dog were exceptional animals in sacrifice[1407], and that their use here betokens a piacular rite of unusual ‘holiness.’ Thus their offering is a mystic sacrifice, and belongs to that ‘small class of exceptional rites in which the victim was drawn from some species of animals that retained even in modern times their ancient repute of natural holiness[1408].’ It is exactly in this kind of sacrifice that we find such peculiar points of ritual as meet us in the Lupercalia. ‘The victim is sacrosanct, and the peculiar value of the ceremony lies in the operation performed on its life, whether that life is merely conveyed to the god on the altar (i. e. as in burnt-sacrifices) or is also applied to the worshippers by the sprinkling of the blood, or some other lustral ceremony[1409].’ The writer might very well have been thinking of the Lupercalia when he wrote these lines. The meaning of these rites was originally, as he states it, that the holiness of the victim means kinship to the worshippers and their god, ‘that all sacred relations and all moral obligations depend on physical unity of life, and that physical unity of life can be created or reinforced by common participation in living flesh and blood.’ We may postpone consideration of this view as applied to the Lupercalia till we have examined the remaining features of the ceremony.

After the sacrifice was completed, Plutarch[1410]tells us that theforeheads of the two youths were touched with the bloody knife that had slain the victims, and the stain was then wiped off with wool dipped in milk, after which the youths had to laugh. This has often been supposed to indicate an original human sacrifice[1411], the he-goats being substituted for human victims, and the death of the latter symbolized by the smearing with their blood. This explanation might be admissible if this were the only feature of the ceremony; but it is so entirely out of keeping with those that follow—the wearing of the skins and the running—that it is preferable to look for another before adopting it. At the same time it may be observed that no reasonable hypothesis can be ruled out of court where our knowledge of the rite is so meagre and so hard to bring satisfactorily into harmony with others occurring among other peoples[1412].

There is a curious passage in Apollonius Rhodius[1413], where purification from a murder is effected by smearing the hands of the murderer with the blood of a young pig, and then wiping it off ἄλλοις χύτλοισι; and the Scholiast on the lines describes a somewhat similar method of purification which was practised in Greece. This would raise a presumption that the youths were not originally the victims at the Lupercalia, but rather the slayers; and that they had to be purified from the guilt of the blood of the sacrosanct victim[1414]. When this was done they became one with the victim and the god by the girding on of the skins, and were able to communicate the new life thus acquired in the course of their lustratio of the city by means of the strips of skin to the women who met them. This explanation is open to one or two objections; for example, it hardly accounts for the laughter of the youths, unless we areto suppose that it was an expression of joy at their release from blood-guiltiness[1415]. And we have indeed no direct evidence that the youths were ever themselves the sacrificers, though the collateral evidence on this point, as I have already said, seems to be fairly strong[1416]. Yet I cannot but think that the true significance of the essential features of the ceremony is to be looked for somewhere in the direction thus indicated.

There is, however, another explanation of the application of the bloody knife, the wiping, and the laughing, which Mannhardt proposed, not without some modest hesitation, in his posthumous work[1417]. In his view these were symbolic or quasi-dramatic acts, signifying death and renewed life. The youths were never actually killed, but they were the figures in a kind of acted parable. The smearing with blood denoted that they partook of the death of the victim[1418]; the wiping with milky wool signified the revival to a new life, for milk is the source of life. The laughing is the outward sign of such revival: the dead are silent, cannot laugh[1419]. And the meaning of all this was the death and the revival of the Vegetation-spirit. I have already more than once profited by Mannhardt’s researches into this type of European custom, and they are now familiar to Englishmen in the works of Mr. Frazer, Mr. Farnell, and others. Undoubtedly there are many bits of grotesque custom which can best be explained if we suppose them to mean the death of the Power of growth at harvest-time, or its resuscitation in the spring, perhaps after the death of the powers of winter and darkness. But whether the Lupercalia is one of these I cannot be so sure. These rites do not seem to have any obvious reference tocrops, but rather to have come down from thepastoral stage of society: and it is not in this case thefieldswhich are lustrated by the runners, but theurbsand its women[1420]. And the earlier parts of the ritual bear the marks of apiaculumso distinctly that it seems unnecessary and confusing to introduce into it a different set of ideas.

There is a similar divergence of opinion in explaining the next feature, the wearing of the skins of the victims[1421]. Dr. Mannhardt believed that this was one of the innumerable instances in which, at certain times of the year, animals are personated by human beings, e. g. at Christmas, at the beginning of Lent (Carnival), and at harvest. These he explained as representations of the Vegetation-spirit, which was conceived to be dead in winter, to come to life in spring, and at harvest to die again, and which was believed to assume all kinds of animal forms. This has been generally accepted as explaining several curious rites both in Greece and Italy, e. g. that of the Hirpi Sorani at Soracte not far from Rome[1422]. But it is a question whether it will equally well explain the Luperci and their goat-skins. In this case Mannhardt is driven to somewhat far-fetched hypotheses; he derives Lupercus fromlupus-hircus[1423](p. 90), and suggests that the two collegia represented respectively wolves and goats, according to the view of the Vegetation-spirit taken by the two communities of Palatine and Quirinal[1424]. But this solution, the result of a bias in favour of his favourite Vegetation-spirit, does not strike us as happy, and Dr. Mannhardt himself does not seem well pleased with it[1425].

It would seem safer to take this as one of the many well-knownpiaculain which the worshipper wears the skin of a very holy victim, thereby entering sacramentally into the very nature of the god to whom the victim is sacrificed[1426]. Whether or no we are to look for the origin of these practices in a totemistic age, is a question that cannot be discussed here; and there is no sign of totemism in the Lupercalia save this one[1427].

But if this be the right explanation, what, we may ask, was meant by the name Luperci? If it meant wolves, are we not rather thrown back on Mannhardt’s theory? To this it may be answered; (1) that no classical author suggests that the runners were looked upon as representing wolves; by the common people we are told that they were calledcreppi[1428], the meaning of which is quite uncertain, though it has been explained as =capri, and as simply arising from the fact that the runners were clad in goat-skins[1429]. There is in fact no necessary connexion at all between the skins and the name Luperci. If that name originally meant wolf-priests, its explanation is to be found rather in connexion with the wolf of Mars, and the cave of the she-wolf, than in the skins of the sacrificed goats, which were worn by only two members of the two collegia bearing the name.

We must now turn our attention to the last features of the festival; the course taken by the runners round the Palatine Hill, and the whipping of women with the strips of sacred skin. The two youths, having girded on the skins (though otherwise naked) and also cut strips from them, proceeded to run a course which seems almost certainly to have followed that of the pomoerium at the foot of the Palatine. The starting-point was the Lupercal, or a point near it, and Tacitus[1430]hasdescribed the course of the pomoerium as far as the ‘sacellum Larum forumque Romanum’: in his day it was marked out by stones (‘cippi’). We are concerned with it here only so far as it affects the question whether the running was alustratioof the Palatine city. The last points mentioned by Tacitus, the ‘sacellum Larum, forumque Romanum[1431],’ show plainly that the course was round the Palatine from south-west to north-east, but they do not bring the runners back to the point from which they started, and complete the circle[1432]. Varro is, however, quite clear that the running was alustratio: ‘Lupercis nudis lustratur antiquum oppidum Palatinum gregibus humanis cinctum.’ The passage is obscure, and attempts have been made to amend it; but there can be no doubt that it points to a religious ceremony[1433].

This lustratio, then, as we may safely call it, was at the same time a beating of the bounds and a rite of purification and fertilization. Just as the peeled wands of our Oxford bound-beaters on Ascension Day[1434]may perhaps have originally had a use parallel to that of thefebrua, so the parish boundaries correspond to the Roman pomoerium. We have already had examples of processional bound-beating in the rites of the Argei and the Ambarvalia; in all there is the same double object—the combination of a religious with a juristic act; but the Lupercalia stands alone in the quaintness of its ritual, and may probably be the oldest of all.

Before we go on to thefebruaand their use, mention must be made of a difficulty in regard to the duality of the collegia of Luperci and the runners. These have been supposed to have originated from two gentile priesthoods of the Fabii andQuinctii[1435]; and as we know that the gens Fabia had a cult on the Quirinal[1436], it is conjectured that the Luperci Fabiani represented the Sabine city, and the Quinctiales the Romans of the Palatine, just as we also find two collegia of Salii, viz. Palatini and Collini[1437]. If, however, the running of the Luperci was really a lustratio of the Palatine, we must suppose that the lustratio of the Quirinal city by its own Luperci was given up and merged in that of the older settlement[1438]; and such an abandonment of a local rite would be most surprising in Roman antiquity. It is true that there is no other explanation of the existence of the two guilds; but we may hesitate to accept this one, if we have to pay for it by so bold a hypothesis[1439].

The last point to be noticed, the whipping with the strips of skin[1440], might have attracted little notice as a relic of antiquity in the late Republic but for the famous incident in the life of Caesar, when Antonius was one of the runners. We have it on excellent evidence, not only that the runners struck women who met them with the strips, but that they did so in order to produce fertility[1441]. Such an explanation of the object would hardly have been invented, and it tallies closely with some at least of a great number of practices of the kind which have been investigated by Mannhardt[1442]. His parallelare not indeed all either complete or convincing; but the collection is valuable for many purposes, and the general result is to show that whipping certain parts of the body with some instrument supposed to possess magic power is efficacious in driving away the powers of evil that interfere with fertilization. Whether the thing beaten be man, woman, image, or human or animal representative of the Vegetation spirit, the object is always more or less directly to quicken or restore the natural powers of reproduction; the notion being that the hostile or hindering spirit was thus driven out, or that the beating actually woke up and energized the power. The latter is perhaps a later idea, rationalized from the earlier. In any case the thongs, as part of the sacrosanct victim, were supposed to possess a special magical power[1443]; and the word applied to them,februa, though not meaning strictly instruments of purification in our sense of the word, may be translatedcatharticobjects, since they had power to free from hostile influences and quicken natural forces. And those who wielded them were regarded in some at least as priests or magicians; they were naked but for the goat-skins, and probably had wreaths on their heads[1444]. Their wild and lascivious behaviour as they ran is paralleled in many ceremonies of the kind[1445].

It is singular that a festival of a character so rude and rustic should have lived on in the great city for centuries after it had become cosmopolitan and even Christian. This is one of the many results due to the religious enterprise of Augustus, who rebuilt the decayed Lupercal, and set the feast on a new footing[1446]. It continued to exist down to the year 494A.D.when the Pope, Gelasius I, changed the day (Feb. 15) to that of the Purification of the Virgin Mary[1447].

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