MENSIS IUNIUS.

IUNONI MONETAE (VEN.)

FABARICI C[IRCENSES] M[ISSUS]. (PHILOC.)

On the name of the mensis Junius some remarks have already been made under May 1. There is no sure ground for connecting it with Juno[505]. The first day of June was sacred to her, but so were all Kalends; and if this was also thedies natalisof the temple of Juno Monetain arce, we have no reason to suppose the choice of day to be specially significant[506]. We know the date of this dedication; it was in 344B.C.and in consequence of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus Dictator in a war against the Aurunci[507]. Of a Juno Moneta of earlier date we have no knowledge; and, in spite of much that has been said to the contrary, I imagine that the title was only given to a Juno of thearxin consequence of the popular belief that the Capitol was saved from the attack of the Gauls (390B.C.) by the warning voices of her sacred geese. What truth there was in that story may be a matter of doubt, but it seems easier to believe that it had a basis of fact than to account for it aetiologically[508]. There maywell have been an altar orsacellum[509]of Juno on thearx, near which her noisy birds were kept[510]; and when a temple was eventually built here in 344B.C., it was appropriately dedicated to Juno of the warning voice. From the fact that part of this temple was used as a mint[511], the wordMonetagradually passed into another sense, which has found its way into our modern languages[512].

One tradition connected the name of the month with M. Junius Brutus, who is said to have performed asacrumon this day after the flight of Tarquinius, on the Caelian Hill[513]. Thissacrumhad no connexion with Juno, and the tradition which thus absurdly brings Brutus into the question shows plainly that the derivation from Juno was not universally accepted[514]. The real deity of the Kalends of June was not Juno, but an antique goddess whose antiquity is attested both by the meagreness of our knowledge of her, and the strange confusion about her which Ovid displays. Had Carna been more successful in the struggle for existence of Roman deities, we might not have been so sure of her extreme antiquity; but no foreign cult grafted on her gave her a new lease of life, and by the end of the Republic she was all but dead.

What little we do know of her savours of the agricultural life and folk-lore of the old Latins. Her sacrifices were of bean-meal and lard[515]; and this day went by the name of Kalendae fabariae[516], ‘quia hoc mense adultae fabae divinis rebus adhibentur.’ The fact was that it was the time of bean-harvest[517]; and beans, as we have already seen, were much in request for sacred purposes. ‘Maximus honos fabae,’ saysPliny[518], alluding to the value of the bean as food, to its supposed narcotic power, and its use in religious ritual. We have already found beans used in the cult of the dead and the ejection of ghosts from the house[519]; and Prof. Wissowa has of late ingeniously conjectured that this day (June 1) was concerned with rites of the same kind[520]. He quotes an inscription, a will in which a legacy is left ‘ut rosas Carnar[iis] ducant’[521]. Undoubtedly the reference here is to rites of the dead (cf. Rosalia), and Mommsen may be right in suggesting that by Carnar[iis] is meant the Kalends of June. But it is going a little too far to argue on this slender evidence, even if we add to it the fact that the day wasnefastus, that the festival of Carna was of the same kind as the Parentalia, Rosalia, &c.; a careful reading of Ovid’s comments seems to show that there were curious survivals of folk-lore connected with the day and with Carna which cannot all be explained by reference to rites of the dead.

Ovid does indeed at once mislead his readers by identifying Carna and Cardea, and thus making the former the deity of door-hinges, and bringing her into connexion with Janus[522]. But we may guess that he does this simply because he wants to squeeze in a pretty folk-tale of Janus and Cardea, for which his readers may be grateful, and which need not deceive them. When he writes of the ritual of Carna[523]—our only safe guide—he makes it quite plain that he is mixing up the attributes of two distinct deities. He brings the two together by contriving that Janus, as a reward to Cardea for yielding to hisadvances, should bestow on her not only the charge ofcardines, but also that of protecting infants from thestriges[524], creatures of the nature of vampires, but described by Ovid as owls, who were wont to suck their blood and devour their vitals. But this last duty surely belonged to Carna, of whom Macrobius says ‘Hanc deam vitalibus humanis praeesse credunt’: and thus Carna’s attribute is conjoined with Cardea’s. The lines are worth quoting in which Ovid describes the charms which are to keep off thestriges, for as preserving a remnant of old Italian folk-lore they are more interesting than the doubtful nature of an obscure deity[525]:

Protinus arbutea[526]postes ter in ordine tangitFronde, ter arbutea limina fronde notat:Spargit aquis aditus—et aquae medicamen habebant—Extaque de porca cruda bimenstre tenet[527].Atque ita ‘noctis aves, extis puerilibus’ inquit‘Parcite: pro parvo victima parva cadit.Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras.Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.’Sic ubi libavit, prosecta sub aethere ponit,Quique adsint sacris, respicere illa vetat[528].Virgaque Ianalis de spina ponitur alba[529]Qua lumen thalamis parva fenestra dabat.Post illud nec aves cunas violasse feruntur,Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color.

Protinus arbutea[526]postes ter in ordine tangit

Fronde, ter arbutea limina fronde notat:

Spargit aquis aditus—et aquae medicamen habebant—

Extaque de porca cruda bimenstre tenet[527].

Atque ita ‘noctis aves, extis puerilibus’ inquit

‘Parcite: pro parvo victima parva cadit.

Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras.

Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.’

Sic ubi libavit, prosecta sub aethere ponit,

Quique adsint sacris, respicere illa vetat[528].

Virgaque Ianalis de spina ponitur alba[529]

Qua lumen thalamis parva fenestra dabat.

Post illud nec aves cunas violasse feruntur,

Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color.

Having told his folk-tale and described his charms, Ovid returns to Carna, and asks why people eat bean-gruel on the Kalends of June, with the rich fat of pigs. The answeris that the cult of Carna is of ancient date, and that the healthy food of man in early times is retained in it[530].

Sus erat in pretio; caesa sue festa colebant.Terra fabas tantum duraque farra dabat.Quae duo mixta simul sextis quicunque KalendisEderit, huic laedi viscera posse negant.

Sus erat in pretio; caesa sue festa colebant.

Terra fabas tantum duraque farra dabat.

Quae duo mixta simul sextis quicunque Kalendis

Ederit, huic laedi viscera posse negant.

This was undoubtedly the real popular belief—that by eating this food on Carna’s day your digestion was secured for the year. Macrobius[531]makes the practice into a much more definite piece of ritual. ‘Prayersare offered to this goddess,’ he says, ‘for the good preservation of liver, heart, and the other internal organs of our bodies. Hersacrificesare bean-meal and lard, because this is the best food for the nourishment of the body.’ Ovid is here the genuine Italian, Macrobius the scholar and theologian: both may be right.

Whatever, then, may be the meaning or etymology of the name Carna, we may at least be sure that the cult belongs to the age of ancient Latin agriculture[532], since it was in connexion with her name that the popular belief survived in Ovid’s time of the virtue of bean-eating on the Kalends of June.

We learn from Ovid (line 191) that this same day was thedies natalisof the temple of Marsextra portam Capenam, i. e. on the Via Appia—a favourite spot for the mustering of armies, and the starting-point for the yearlytransvectio equitum[533]. I have already alluded to the baseless fabric of conjecture builton the conjunction of Mars and Juno on this day[534]; and need here only repeat that in no well-attested Roman myth is Mars the son of Juno, or Juno the wife of Jupiter. And it is even doubtful whether June 1 was theoriginaldedication-day of this temple of Mars: the Venusian calendar does not mention it, and Ovid may be referring to a re-dedication by Augustus[535]. There is absolutely no ground for the myth-making of Usener and Roscher about Mars and Juno: but it is to the credit of the latter that he has inserted in his article on Mars a valuable note by Aust, in which his own conclusions are cogently controverted.

BELLONÆ IN CIRC[O] FLAM[INIO]. (VEN.)

This temple was vowed by the Consul Ap. Claudius in an Etruscan war[536](296B.C.): the date of dedication is unknown. In front of the temple was an area of which the truly Roman story is told[537], that being unable to declare war with Pyrrhus with the orthodox ritual of thefetiales, as he had no land in Italy into which they could throw the challenging spear[538], they caught a Pyrrhan soldier and made him buy this spot to suit their purpose. Here stood the ‘columella’ from which henceforward the spear was thrown[539].

The temple became well known as a suitable meeting-place for the Senate outside thepomoerium, when it was necessary to do business with generals and ambassadors who could not legally enter the city[540]. But of the goddess very little is known. There is no sufficient reason to identify her with that Neriowith whom we made acquaintance in March, as is done too confidently by the writer of the article in Roscher’sLexicon[541].

HERC[ULI] MAGN[O] CUSTO[DI]. (VEN.)

SACRUM HERCULI. (RUST.)

This temple also was near the Circus Flaminius[542]. It was a foundation of Sulla’s, 82B.C., and the cult was Greek, answering to that of Ἡρακλῆς ἀλεξίκακος[543].

DIO FIDIO IN COLLE. (VEN.)

The temple on the Quirinal of which this was thedies natalisis said by Dionysius[545]to have been vowed by Tarquinius Superbus, and dedicated by Sp. Postumius inB.C.466. But that there was afanumorsacellumof this deity on or near the same site at a much earlier time is almost certain; such asacellum‘ad portam Sanqualem’ is mentioned, also by Dionysius[546], as ἱερὸν Διὸς Πιστίου, and we know that in many cases the finalaedesortemplumwas a development from an uncovered altar or sacred place.

Dius Fidius, as the adjectival character of his name shows, was a genuine old Italian religious conception, but one that in historical times was buried almost out of sight. Among gods and heroes there has been a struggle for existence, as among animals and plants; with some peoples a struggle between indigenous and exotic deities, in which the latter usually winthe day, and displace or modify the native species[547]. What laws, if any, govern this struggle for existence it is not possible to discern clearly; the result is doubtless the survival of the fittest, if by the fittest we understand those which flourish best under the existing conditions of society and thought; but it would hardly seem to be the survival of those which are most beneficial to the worshipping race. Among the Romans the fashionable exotic deities of the later Republic and Empire had no such ethical influence on the character of the people as those older ones of the type of Dius Fidius, who in historical times was known to the ordinary Roman only through the medium of an old-fashioned oath.

Ovid knows very little about Dius Fidius[548]:

Quaerebam Nonas Sanco Fidione referrem,An tibi, Semo pater: cum mihi Sancus ait‘Cuicunque ex illis dederis, ego munus habebo;Nomina trina fero, sic voluere Cures.’

Quaerebam Nonas Sanco Fidione referrem,

An tibi, Semo pater: cum mihi Sancus ait

‘Cuicunque ex illis dederis, ego munus habebo;

Nomina trina fero, sic voluere Cures.’

He finds three names for the deity, but two would have sufficed; the only individual Semo known to us is Sancus himself. The Semones, so far as we can guess, were spirits of the ‘pandaemonic’ age, nameless like the Lares with whom they are associated in the hymn of the Fratres Arvales[549]; but one only, Semo Sancus, seems to have taken a name and survived into a later age, and this one was identified with Dius Fidius. Aelius Stilo, the Varro of the seventh centuryA. U. C., seems to have started this identification[550]. Varro does not comment on it; but Verrius accepted it: he writes of an ‘aedes Sancus, qui deus Dius Fidius vocatur’[551]. The evidence of inscriptions is explicit for a later period; an altar, for example, found near the supposed site of his temple on the Quirinal, bears the inscription ‘Sanco Sancto Semon[i] deo fidio sacrum’[552].And there is nothing in the words Sancus and Fidius to forbid the identification, for both point to the same class of ideas—that of the bond which religious feeling places on men in their duties to, and contracts with, each other. They are in fact two different names for the same religious conception. It is interesting to find them both occurring in the great processional inscription of Iguvium in Umbria: Fisus or Fisovius Sancius, who is there invoked next after Jupiter, seems to unite the two deities in a single name[553]. This conjunction would seem to save us from the necessity of discussing the question whether Sancus, as has often been insisted on by scholars both ancient and modern[554], was really the Sabine form of Dius Fidius; for if in Umbria the two are found together, as at Rome, there is no reason why the same should not have been the case throughout central Italy. The question would never have been asked had the fluid nature of the earliest Italian deities and the adjectival character of their names been duly taken account of. We are all of us too apt to speak of this primitive spirit-world in terms of a later polytheistic theology, and to suppose that the doubling of a name implies some distinction of origin or race.

Dius Fidius, then, and Semo Sancus are both Latin names for the same religious conception, the impersonality of which caused it to lose vitality as new and anthropomorphic ideas of the divine came into vogue at Rome. But there is at least some probability that it survived in a fashion under the name of an intruder, Hercules; and the connexion with Hercules will show, what we might already have guessed, that thereligious conception we are speaking of was very near akin to that of Jupiter himself.

There is clear evidence that the best Roman scholars identified not only Dius Fidius with Semo Sancus, but both of these with Hercules. Varro, in a passage already quoted, tells us that Stilo believed Dius Fidius to be the Sabine Sancus and the Greek Hercules; Verrius Flaccus, if his excerptors represent him rightly, in two separate glosses identified all these three[555].

Again, the Roman oathsme dius fidiusandme herculeare synonymous; that the former was the older can hardly be doubted, and the latter must have come into vogue when the Greek oath by Heracles became familiar. Thus the origin ofme herculemust be found in a union of the characteristics of Hercules with those of the native Dius Fidius. It is worth noting that in pronouncing both these oaths it was the custom to go out into the open air[556]. Here is a point at which both Hercules and Dius Fidius seem to come into line with Jupiter; for the most solemn oath of all wasper Iovem(lapidem), also taken under the light of heaven[557], as was the case with the oath at the altar of Ζεὺς Ἑρκεῖος in Greece[558]. Yet another point of conjunction is theara maximaat the entrance to the Circus Maximus, which was also a place where oaths were taken and treaties ratified[559]; this was the altar of Hercules Victor, to whom the tithes of spoil were offered; and this was also associated with the legend of Hercules and Cacus. In the deity by whom oaths were sworn, and in the deity of the tithes and the legend, it is now acknowledged on all hands that we should recognize a great Power whom we may call Dius Fidius, or Semo Sancus, or the Genius Iovius, or even Jupiter himself[560]. Tithes, oaths,and the myth of the struggle of light with darkness, cannot be associated with such a figure as the Hercules who came to Italy from Greece; tithes are the due of some great god, or lord of the land[561], oaths are taken in the presence of the god of heaven, and the great nature myth only descends by degrees to attach itself to semi-human figures.

We are here indeed in the presence of very ancient Italian religious ideas, which we can only very dimly apprehend, and for the explanation of which—so far as explanation is possible—there is not space in this work. But before we leave Dius Fidius, I will briefly indicate the evidence on which we may rest our belief (1) that as Semo Sancus, he is connected with Jupiter as the god of the heaven and thunder; and (2) that as Hercules he is closely related to the same god as seen in a different aspect.

1. In the Iguvian inscription referred to above Sancius in one place appears in conjunction with Iovius[562]; and, as we have seen, it is also found in the same ritual with Fisu or Fisovius. In this same passage of the inscription (which is a manual of ritual for the Fratres Attidii, an ancient religious brotherhood of Iguvium), the priest is directed to have in his hand anurfita(orbita), i. e. either disk or globe; and thisurfitahas been compared[563], not without reason, with theorbesmentioned by Livy[564]as having been made of brass after the capture of Privernum and placed in the temple of Semo Sancus. If we may safely believe that such symbols occur chiefly in the worship of deities of sun and heaven, as seems probable, we have here some evidence, however imperfect, for the common origin of Sancus and Jupiter.

Again, there was in Roman augural lore a bird calledsanqualis avis, which can hardly be dissociated from the cult ofSancus; for there was also an ancient city gate, the porta Sanqualis, near the sacellum Sancus on the Quirinal[565]. Pliny’s language about this bird shows that this bit of ancient lore was almost lost in his time; but at the same time he makes it clear that it was believed to belong to the eagle family, which played such an important part in the science of augury. The only concrete fact that seems to be told us about this bird is that inB.C.177 one struck with its beak a sacred stone at Crustumerium—a stone, it would seem, that had fallen from heaven, i. e. a thunder-stone or a meteorite[566].

Bearing this in mind, we are not surprised to find further traces of a connexion between Sancus and thunderbolts. There was at Rome adecuriaofsacerdotes bidentales, in close association with the cult of Sancus. Three votive altars are extant, dedicated to the god by thisdecuria[567]; two of them were found on the Quirinal, close to the site of the sacellum Sancus. Now the meaning of the wordbidentalshows that thedecuriahad as its duty the care of the sacred spots which had been struck by thunderbolts; such a spot, which was also calledputealfrom its resemblance to a well fenced with a circular wall, bore the namebidental, presumably because two-year-old sheep (bidentes) were sacrificed there[568]. Consequently we again have Sancus brought into connexion with the augural lore of lightning, which made it a religious duty to bury the bolt, and fence off the spot from profane intrusion. Yet another step forward in this dim light. Abidentalwas one kind oftemplum, as we are expressly told[569]; and the temple of Sancus itself seems to have had this peculiarity. Varro says that its roof wasperforatum,so that the sky might be seen through it[570]. In a fragment of augural lore, apparently genuine though preserved by a writer of late date, thecaeli templumseems to have been conceived as a dome, or a ball (orbis) cut in half,with a hole in the top[571]. We may allow that we are here getting out of our depth; but the general result of what has been put forward is that Sancus = Dius Fidius was originally a spirit ornumenof the heaven, and a wielder of the lightning, closely allied to the great Jupiter, whose cult, combined with that of Hercules, had almost obliterated him in historical times.

Finally, it would seem that those moral attributes of Jupiter which give him a unique position in the Roman theology as the god of truth, order, and concord, belonged at one period also to Sancus as Dius Fidius; for in his temple was kept the most ancient treaty of which the Romans knew, that said to have been made by Tarquinius Superbus with Gabii, which Dionysius must himself have seen[572], and which he describes as consisting of a woodenclypeus, bound with the hide of a sacrificed ox, and bearing ancient letters. Here also was the reputed statue of Gaia Caecilia or Tanaquil, the ideal Roman matron; of which it has been conjectured, rashly perhaps, but by an authority of weight, that it really represented a humanized female form of Dius Fidius, standing to him as the Junones of women stood to the Genii of men, or as Juno in the abstract to Genius in the abstract[573].

2. The last sentence of the preceding paragraph may aptly bring us to our second point, viz. the relation to Jupiter of Dius Fidius as = Hercules. Those who read the article ‘Dius Fidius’ in Roscher’sLexiconwill be struck by the fact that so cautious a writer as Professor Wissowa should boldly identify this deity, at the very outset of his account, with the ‘Genius Iovis’; and this conjecture, which is not his own, but rather that of the late Professor Reifferscheid of Breslau[574], calls for a word of explanation.

More than thirty years ago Reifferscheid published a paper in which he compared certain points in the cults of Juno and Hercules, of which we have a meagre knowledge from Roman literature, with some works of art of Etruscan or ancient Italian origin (i. e. not Greek), and found that they seemed to throw new and unexpected light on each other.

The Roman women, we are told[575], did not swear by Hercules, but by ‘their Juno’; the men swore by Hercules, Dius Fidius, or by their Genius[576]. Women were excluded from the cult of Hercules at the ara maxima[577]; men were excluded, not indeed from the cult of Juno, but (as Reifferscheid puts it) ‘from that of Bona Dea, who was not far removed from Juno[578].’ At the birth of a child, a couch (lectus) was spread in theatriumfor Juno, amensafor Hercules[579]. The bride’s girdle (cingulum) seems to have given rise to a cult-title of Juno, viz. Cinxia, while the knot in it which was loosed by the bridegroom at thelectus genialiswas called thenodus herculaneus[580].

Now Reifferscheid believed that he found the same conjunction of Juno and Hercules in several works of art, which may be supposed to be reflections from the same set of ideas which produced the usages just indicated. In the most important of these there is indeed no doubt about it; this is a mirror of Etruscan workmanship[581], in which three figures are marked with the Latin namesIovei(Jupiter),IunoandHercele. Jupiter sits on an altar in the middle, and with his right hand is touching Juno, who has her left hand on his shoulder; Hercules stands with his club, apparently expectant, on the left. From certain indications in the mirror (for which I must refer the reader to the illustration on p. 2259 of Roscher’sLexicon) Reifferscheid concluded that Jupiter was here giving Juno in marriage to Hercules; and, in spite of some criticism, this interpretation has been generally accepted[582]. In other works of art he found the same conjunction, though no names mark the figures; in these Hercules and Juno, if such they be, appear to be contending for the mastery, rather than uniting peacefully in wedlock[583]. This conjunction, or opposition, of Juno and Hercules, is thus explained by Reifferscheid. The name Juno represents the female principle in human nature[584]; the ‘genius’ of a woman was called by this name, and the cult of Juno as a developed goddess shows many features that bear out the proposition[585]. If these facts be so, then the inference to be drawn from the conjunction or opposition of Juno and Hercules is that the name Hercules indicates themaleprinciple in human nature. But the male principle is also expressed in the word Genius, as we see e. g. in the termlectus genialis; Hercules therefore and Genius mean the same thing—the former name having encroached upon the domain of the latter, as a Latinized form of Heracles, of all Greek heroes or divinities the mostvirile. And if Hercules, SemoSancus and Dius Fidius are all different names for the same idea, then the word Genius may be taken as equivalent to the two last of these as well as to Hercules[586].

But why does Reifferscheid go on to tell us that this Genius, i. e. Hercules = Sancus = Dius Fidius, is theGenius Iovis? How does he connect this many-titled conception with the great father of the sky? As a matter of fact, he has but slender evidence for this; he relies on the mirror in which he found Jupiter giving Juno to Hercules, and on the conjecture that the Greek Hercules, the son of Zeus, would easily come to occupy in Italy the position of Genius, if the latter were, in an abstract form and apart from individual human life, regarded as the Genius of Jupiter[587]. And in this he is followed by Wissowa and other writers in Roscher’sLexicon.

It would perhaps have been wiser not to go so far as this. He has already carried us back to a world of ideas older than these varying names which so often bewilder us in the Roman worship—to a world of spirits, Semones, Lares, Cerri, ghosts of deceased ancestors, vegetation demons, and men’s ‘other souls.’ When he talks of aGenius Iovis[588], he is surely using the language of later polytheism to express an idea which belonged, not to a polytheistic age, but to that older world of religious thought. He is doing, in fact, the very thing which the Romans themselves were doing all through the period of the Republic—the one thing which above all others has madethe study of their religious ideas such a treacherous quagmire for the modern student.

MENTI IN CAPITOLIO. (VEN. MAFF. VI MINORES.)

The temple of Mens was vowed by T. Otacilius (praetor) in 217B.C., after the battle of Trasimenus ‘propter neglegentiam caerimoniarum auspiciorumque[589],’ and dedicated in 215B.C., by the same man asduumvir aedibus dedicandis[590]. The vow was the result of an inspection of the Sibylline books, from which we might infer that the goddess was a stranger[591]. If so, who was she, and whence? Reasoning from the fact that in the same year, in the same place, and by the same man, a temple was dedicated to Venus Erycina[592], Preller guessed that this Mens was not a mere abstraction, but another form of the same Venus; for a Venus Mimnermia or Meminia is mentioned by Servius[593], ‘quod meminerit omnium.’

However this may be, the foundation of a cult of Mens at so critical a moment of their fortunes is very characteristic of the Roman spirit of that age; it was an appeal to ‘something not themselves which made for righteousness’ to help them to remember their caerimoniae, and not to neglect their auspicia. It is remarkable that this temple of Mens was restored by M. Aemilius Scaurus probably amid the disasters of the Cimbrian war a century later[594].

VESTA APERIT. (PHILOC.)

VESTALIA.(TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)

VESTA CLUDITUR. (PHILOC.)

It would seem from these notes in the calendars, and frompassages in Ovid and Festus[595], that both before and after the day of the true Vestalia there were days set apart for the cult of the goddess, which werenefastiand alsoreligiosi[596]. Ovid’s lines are worth quoting; he consults the Flaminica Dialis[597]about the marriage of his daughter:

Tum mihi post sacras monstratur Iunius idusUtilis et nuptis, utilis esse viris,Primaque pars huius thalamis aliena reperta est,Nam mihi sic coniunx sancta Dialis ait;‘Donec ab Iliaca placidus purgamina VestaDetulerit flavis in mare Thybris aquis,Non mihi detonsos crines depectere buxo,Non ungues ferro subsecuisse licet,Non tetigisse virum, quamvis Iovis ille sacerdos,Quamvis perpetua sit mihi lege datus.Tu quoque ne propera. Melius tua filia nubetIgnea cum pura Vesta nitebit humo.’

Tum mihi post sacras monstratur Iunius idus

Utilis et nuptis, utilis esse viris,

Primaque pars huius thalamis aliena reperta est,

Nam mihi sic coniunx sancta Dialis ait;

‘Donec ab Iliaca placidus purgamina Vesta

Detulerit flavis in mare Thybris aquis,

Non mihi detonsos crines depectere buxo,

Non ungues ferro subsecuisse licet,

Non tetigisse virum, quamvis Iovis ille sacerdos,

Quamvis perpetua sit mihi lege datus.

Tu quoque ne propera. Melius tua filia nubet

Ignea cum pura Vesta nitebit humo.’

What is the meaning of this singular aspect of the Vesta-cult? Why should these days be so ill-omened or so sacred that during them marriages might not be celebrated, and the priestess of Jupiter might not hold any intercourse with her husband, cut her hair, or pare her nails? And what is the explanation of the annotation Q[uando] St[ercus] D[elatum] F[as][598], which on the 15th indicated the breaking of the spell, and a return to ordinary ways of life? Before attempting to answer these questions, it will be as well to say a few words about the nature and probable origin of the worship of Vesta. Owing to the remarkable vitality and purity of this cult throughout the whole of Roman history, we do not meet here with those baffling obscurities which so often beset us in dealing with deities that had lost all life and shape when Roman scholars began to investigate them. And yet we know that we are here in the presence of rites and ideas of immemorial antiquity.

In an article of great interest in theJournal of Philologyfor 1885[599], Mr. J. G. Frazer first placed the origin of the cult in a clear light for English scholars. By comparing it with similar practices of existing peoples still in a primitive condition of life, he made apparent the real germ of the institution of the Vestal Virgins. Helbig, in hisItaliker in der Poebene[600], had already recognized that germ inthe necessity of keeping one fire always alight in each settlement, so that its members could at any time supply themselves with the flame, then so hard to procure at a moment’s notice; and Mr. Frazer had only to go one step further, and show that the task of keeping this fire alight was that of the daughters of the chief. This step he was able to take, supported by evidence from Damaraland in South Africa, where the priestess of the perpetual fire is the chief’s daughter; quoting also the following example from Calabria in Southern Italy: ‘At the present day the fire in a Calabrian peasant’s house is never (except after a death) allowed to die quite out, even in the heat of summer; it is a bad omen if it should chance to be extinguished, and the girls of the house, whose special care it is to keep at least a single brand burning on the hearth, are sadly dismayed at such a mishap.’ The evidence of the Romanius sacrumquite confirms this modern evidence; the Vestals were under the patria potestas of the pontifex maximus, who represented in republican times the legal powers of the Rex, and from this fact we may safely argue that they had once been the daughters of the primitive chief. Theflaminestoo, orkindlers, as being under the potestas of the pontifex, may be taken as representing the sons of the primitive household[601]. But from various reasons[602]the duties of theflaminesbecame obsolete or obscure; while those of the Vestals remained to give us an almost perfect picture of life in the household of the oldest Latins.

From the first, no doubt, the tending of the fire was in some sense a religious service, and the flame a sacred flame[603]. Theremust have been many stages of growth from this beginning to the fully developed Vesta of the Republic and Empire; yet we can see that the lines of development were singularly simple and consistent. The sacred fire for example was maintained in the aedes Vestae, adjoining the king’s house[604](regia); and the penus Vestae, which must originally have contained the stores on which the family depended for their sustenance, was always believed to preserve the most sacred and valuable objects possessed by the State[605].

We return to the Vestalia, of which the ritual was as follows. On June 7, the penus Vestae, which was shut all the rest of the year, and to which no man but the pontifex maximus had at any time right of entry, was thrown open to all matrons. During the seven following days they crowded to it barefoot[606]. Ovid relates his own experience[607]:

Back to Index Next