Now to return to Varro and his lists of names. What is Dr. Wissowa's conclusion about these, after examining the two examples of Sondergoetter which have not come down to us through so much book-learning as the rest?

Varro's di certi, he says[336]—and I think there is no doubt that he is right—included the name of every deity, great or small, of which he could feel sure that he knew something, as he found it in the books of the pontifices; and the part of those books in which he found these names, known as Indigitamenta, probably contained formulae of invocation, precationum carmina,[337] of the same kind as the comprecationes deorum immortalium from which Gellius quoted the pairs of male and female deities which we discussed above. Varro arranged all these names in groups of principal and subordinate or assistant deities, the latter amplifying in detail the meaning and scope of the former, as we have just seen; and of this grouping some traces are still visible in the accounts of Augustine and Tertullian. But the good Fathers tumbled the whole collection about sadly in their search for material for their mockery, having no historical or scientific object in view; with the result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan. The difficulty is increased by the etymologies and explanations which they offer of the divine names, which, as a rule, are even more absurd than the divinities themselves.[338]

But, in the last place, the question must be asked whether these Sondergoetter of the real kind, such, for example, as those twelve agricultural ones invoked by the flamen at the Cereale sacrum, had their origin in any sense in popular usage or belief. At the end of his paper Wissowa emphatically says that he does not believe it. For myself, I would only modify this conclusion so far as this: they must, I think, have been the theological, or perhaps rather the ritualistic outcome, of a psychological tendency rooted in the popular mind. I have already noticed that curious bit of folklore in which three spirits of cultivation were invoked with a kind of acted parable at the birth of a child;[339] and I cannot regard this custom as a piece of pontifical ritualism, though the names may have been invented by the priests to suit the practice. The old Roman seems to have had a tendency to ascribe what for want of a better word we may call divinity, not only to animate and inanimate objects, but to actions and abstractions; this, I take it, is an advanced stage of animism, peculiar, it would seem, to a highly practical agricultural people, and it is this stage which is reflected in the ritualistic work of the priests. They turned dim and nameless powers into definite and prehensible deities with names, and arranged them in groups so as to fall in with the life of the city as well as the farm. What was the result of all this ingenuity, or whether it had any popular result at all, is a question hardly admitting of solution. What is really interesting in the matter, if my view is the right one, is the curious way in which the early Roman seems to have looked upon all life and force and action, human or other, as in some sense associated with, and the result of, divine or spiritual agency.

NOTES TO LECTURE VII

[291] For loca sacra and consecratio see Marquardt, p. 148 foll.; Wissowa, R.K. p. 400.

[292] Serv. ad Aen. xii. 119, "Romani moris fuerat cespitem arae super imponere, et ita sacrificare." Cp. some valuable remarks of Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 23. The altar of the Fratres was in front of their grove; they used also a movable one (foculus) of silver, but cespiti ornatus (ib. p. 21): this was for the preliminary offering of wine and incense (Wissowa, R.K. p. 351).

[293] In Aug. Civ. Dei, iv. 31; Agahd's edition of the fragments of Varro's Ant. rer. div. p. 164.

[294] Aug. Civ. Dei, iv. 23; Agahd, p. 159. See Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 280 foll.

[295] Strabo iv. 180.

[296] Fasti, vi. 305.

[297] Tibull. ii. 5. 27. The lines of Propertius are iv. (v.) 2. 59, "Stipes acernus eram, properanti falce dolatus, Ante Numam grata pauper in urbe deus." The question is whether these are genuine examples of the natural evolution of a "stock or stone" into something in the nature of an anthropomorphic image of a deity, or whether they are the result of the introduction of Greek statues acting on the popular mind in rustic parts of Italy. The passages, so far as I know, stand alone, and we have no means of deciding whether the anthropomorphic tendency was native or foreign. Vortumnus was, however, undoubtedly of Etruscan origin; Wissowa, R.K. p. 233. The subject of iconic development of this kind is well summarised in E. Gardner's little volume on Religion and Art in Ancient Greece, ch. i.

[298] See Sayce, Gifford Lectures on the Religions of Egypt and Babylonia, p. 302. An interesting paper on the evolution of dei at Rome out of functional numina will be found in von Domaszewski's Abhandlungen zur roem. Religion, p. 155 foll., based on Usener's theory of Sondergoetter. It is ingenious and imaginative, but in my view does not square with the facts as far as we know them. His stages are: (1) momentary function of numina, e.g. lightning; (2) elevation of this into a permanent power or function; (3) consequent limitation of the numen to a special well-marked function; (4) elevation of the numen to a deus, conceived in the likeness of man, and male or female, because man cannot think of power otherwise than on the analogy of male or female creative energy. Lastly, when the deus is complete, the functions of the former numen become attributes or qualities, traces of which we find in the pairs of deities in Gellius, xiii. 23, which are discussed later on in this lecture. Some of these, of course, eventually became separate deities—Salacia, Maia, Lua. As I cannot accept the view that the earliest Roman idea of the supernatural is to be found in comprecationes of a comparatively late period, i.e. in the so-called Indigitamenta, this charmingly symmetrical account has no charm for me beyond its symmetry.

[299] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 144, 146; Cato, R.R. 139; C.I.L. vi. 110 and 111. Other references are given by Wissowa, R.K. p. 33, note 2.

[300] For Pales, R.F. p. 80 note; for Pomona, Wissowa, R.K. p. 165.

[301] The passage runs thus (Aug. C.D. iv. 32): "Dicit enim (Varro) de generationibus deorum magis ad poetas quam ad physicos fuisse populos inclinatos, et ideo et sexum et generationes deorum maiores suos (id est veteres credidisse Romanos) et eorum constituisse coniugia." There is an amusing passage in Lactantius, i. 17 (de Falsa Religione), which Dr. Frazer might read with advantage. It begins, "Si duo sunt sexus deorum, sequitur concubitus." Then he goes on mockingly to argue that the gods must have houses, cities, lands which they plough and sow, which proves them mortal. Finally he takes the whole series of inferences backwards, finishing with "si domibus carent, ergo et concubitu. Si concubitus ab his abest, et sexus igitur foemineus," etc. All this, he means, can be inferred from the fact that gods are of both sexes; but that they have concubitus can no more be inferred from his argument than that they plough and sow.

[302] Dr. Frazer conjectures a sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana, in Kingship, p. 214; but he is well aware that it is pure guesswork. There was, indeed, at Falerii such a marriage of Juno with an unknown deity (Ovid, Amores, iii. 13), of which, however, we do not know the history. Falerii was one of those cities, like Praeneste, where Etruscan, Greek, and Latin influences met. The "Orci nuptiae" on which Frazer lays stress was simply the Greek marriage of Pluto and Proserpine: "Orci coniux Proserpina," Aug. C.D. vii. 23 and 28, Agahd, p. 152. Wissowa shows this conclusively, R.K. p. 246. Orcus was Graecised as Plutus, but was himself totally without personality.

[303] Dr. Frazer wrongly translates this as "ancient prayers" (p. 411), adding "the highest possible authority on the subject." Oratio is never used in this sense until Christian times: the word is always precatio. All scholars are agreed that what is meant is invocations to deities in old speeches, such as occur once or twice in Cicero (e.g. at the end of the Verrines); cp. Livy xxix. 15. As the recording of speeches cannot be assumed to have begun before the third century B.C., this does not carry us very far back. That century is also the age in which the pontifices were probably most active in drawing up comprecationes; see below, p. 285 foll.

[304] See Appendix B at end of volume.

[305] Cp. Ovid, Fasti, iii. 850, "forti sacrificare deae." In R.F. p. 60 foll., I have criticised the attempts, ancient and modern, to make this Nerio the subject of myths.

[306] Macrob. i. 12. 18. This word Maiestas shows the doubtful nature of these feminine names, and probably betrays the real meaning of Maia. I may mention here that Bellona instead of Nerio is ascribed as wife to Mars by Seneca ap. Aug. C.D. vi. 10; also Venus to Volcanus instead of Maia. Neither have any connection, so far as we know, with the gods to whom Seneca ascribes them as wives: Venus-Vulcan is, of course, Greek. Both Augustine and Dr. Frazer might with advantage have abstained from citing Seneca on such a point: as a Spaniard by birth he was not likely to know much about technical questions of Roman ritual.

[307] See Schanz, Gesch. der roem. Literatur, i. 274.

[308] In the Graeco-Roman age Mars seems to have been rather a favourite subject of myth-making; see Usener's article on Italian myths in Rhein. Mus. vol. xxx.; Roscher in Myth. Lex. for works of Graeco-Etruscan art in which he appears in certain mythical scenes.

[309] H. Jordan, quoted in R.F. p. 61 note. I relegate to an appendix what needs to be said about the other pairs of deities mentioned by Gellius.

[310] Leipzig, 1898, p. 7 foll.

[311] Wissowa, R.K. p. 168. Carter, op. cit. p. 21.

[312] See Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 22 and 98.

[313] So Fides is usually explained, as originally belonging to Jupiter (Wissowa, R.K. p. 103 foll.); but a different view is taken by Harold L. Axtell in his work on the Deification of Abstract Ideas at Rome (Chicago, 1907), p. 20.

[314] In the Festschrift f. O. Hirschfeld, p. 243 foll.

[315] Religion of the Babylonians, introductory chapter.

[316] Op. cit. p. 412.

[317] L.L. v. 64.

[318] This fragment is No. 503 in Baehrens, Fragm. Poet. Rom.

[319] Lactantius, Div. inst. iv. 3.

[320] Crawley, The Tree of Life, p. 256; Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 180; von Domaszewski, Abhandlungen, p. 166, "Man ruft sie an im Gebete als pater und mater zum Zeichen der Unterwerfung unter ihren Willen, wie der Sohn dem Gebote des paterfamilias sich fuegt. Der sittlich strenge Gehorsam, der das Familienleben der Roemer beherrscht, die pietas, ist der Sinn der roemischen religio." Cp. also Appel, de Rom. precationibus, pp. 102-3, who thinks that they regarded the gods "velut patriarchas sive patres familias." He quotes Preller-Jordan i. 55 and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 142 sq. So too with mater—"velut mater familias."

[321] The expression seems to mean "a father made for the purpose of the embassy." Wissowa, R.K. p. 477, note 3.

[322] p. 19. This was written, it may be noted, several years after Aust had thoroughly investigated the cult of Jupiter for his article in the Mythological Lexicon; in which cult, if anywhere, one may be tempted to see evidence of a personal conception of deities. As Dr. Frazer has referred to the cult of Jupiter at Praeneste, to which I referred him as evidence of a possibly personal conception of the god in that Latin city, I may say here that I adhere to what I said about this in R.F. p. 226 foll.; no piece of antique cult has occupied my attention more than this, and I have tried to lay open every source of confirmation or criticism. Wissowa has expressed himself in almost exactly the same terms in R.K. p. 209: we arrived at our conclusions independently.

[323] Tertullian, ad Nationes 11, and de Anima, 37 foll.; Aug. de Civ. Dei, iv. passim, and especially ch. xi.; R. Peter compiled a complete list (Myth. Lex., s.v. "Indigitamenta," p. 143) from these and other sources.

[324] Aug. C.D. vii. 17. That this was what Varro meant by di certi was first affirmed by Wissowa in a note to his edition of Marquardt, p. 9; it has been generally accepted as the true account. A full discussion will be found in Agahd's edition of the fragments of Varro's work, p. 126 foll.; cf. Peter's article quoted above, and Wissowa, R.K. pp. 61 and 65. A somewhat different view is given in Domaszewski's article in Archiv for 1907, p. 1 foll., suggested by Usener's Goetternamen.

[325] The evidence for this will be found in Marquardt's note 4 on p. 9. I have no doubt that Wissowa is right in explaining Indigitamenta as "Gebetsformeln," formulae of invocation; in which the most important matter, we may add, would be the name of the deity. See his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 177 foll. The Indigitamenta contained, as one section, the invocations of di certi.

[326] Chiefly by Ambrosch in his Religionsbuecher der Roemer. Peter's article contains a useful account of the whole progress of research on this subject.

[327] Lex. p. 137; it was that of his master Reifferscheid. Cp. Wissowa, op. cit. (Ges. Abhandl. p. 306 foll.).

[328] R.F. pp. 191, 341.

[329] "The place of the Sondergoetter in Greek Polytheism," printed in Anthropological Essays addressed to E. B. Tylor, p. 81. Usener's discussion of the Roman and Lithuanian Sondergoetter is in his Goetternamen, p. 73 foll.

[330] Wissowa writes (Ges. Abhandl. p. 320 note) that he has reason to believe that a great number of the Lithuanian Sondergoetter only became such through the treatment of the subject by the mediaeval writers on whom Usener relied!

[331] Ges. Abhandl. p. 304 foll.

[332] Servius (Interpol.) ad Georg. i. 21.

[333] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 147; C.I.L. vi. 2099 and 2107.

[334] Op. cit. p. 323 foll.; for famuli and anculi divi, Henzen, op. cit. p. 145.

[335] See above, p. 121.

[336] p. 312; cp. 320, where he further asserts his belief that Varro is responsible himself for the creation of a great number of these Sondergoetter, owing to his extreme desire to fix and define the function of every deity in relation to human life; just as the mediaeval writers Laskowski and Pretorius may have created many Lithuanian Sondergoetter. As I am not quite clear on this point, I have not mentioned it in the text.

[337] Op. cit. p. 314, note 1. See above, note 33.

[338] e.g. Vaticanus, "qui infantum vagitibus praesidet"; Rusina from rus; Consus from consilium, etc.

[339] See above, p. 84.



LECTURE VIII

RITUAL OF THE IUS DIVINUM

I have already frequently mentioned the ius divinum, the law governing the relations between the divine and human inhabitants of the city, as the ius civile governed the relations between citizen and citizen.[340] When we examined the calendar of Numa, we were in fact examining a part of this law; we began with this our studies of the religion of the Roman city-state, because it is the earliest document we possess which illuminates the dark ages of city life, so far as religion is concerned. The study of the calendar naturally led us on to consider the evidence it yields, taken together with other sources of information, as to the nature of the deities for whose worship it fixes times and seasons, or, more accurately, the amount of knowledge to which the Romans had attained about their divine beings. But we must now return to the ius divinum, and study it in another aspect, for which the calendar itself does not suffice as evidence.

Perhaps the simplest way of explaining this ius is to describe it as laying down the rules for the maintenance of right relations between the citizens and their deities; as ordaining what things are to be done or avoided in order to keep up a continual pax, or quasi-legal covenant, between these two parties. The two words ius and pax, we may note, are continually meeting us in Roman religious documents. In a prayer sanctioned by the pontifices for use at the making of a new clearing, we read: "Si deus, si dea sit cuius illud sacrum est, ut tibi ius siet porco piaculo facere illiusce sacri coercendi ergo,"[341] i.e. "O unknown deity, whether god or goddess, whose property this wood is, let it be legally proper to sacrifice to thee this pig as an expiatory offering, for the sake of cutting down trees in this wood of thine." "Pacem deorum exposcere" (or "petere") is a standing formula, as all readers of Virgil know;[342] and it occurs in many other authors and religious documents. When Livy wants to express the horror of the old patrician families at the idea of plebeians being consuls—men who had no knowledge of the ius divinum and no right to have any—he makes Appius Claudius exclaim, "Nunc nos, tanquam iam nihil pace deorum opus sit, omnes caerimonias polluimus."[343] How can we maintain our right relations with the gods, if plebeians have the care of them?

Thus it is not going too far to describe the whole Roman religion of the city-state as a Rechtsverkehr,[344] a legal process going on continually. When a colonia was founded, i.e. a military outpost which was to be a copy in all respects of the Roman State, it was absolutely essential that its ius divinum should be laid down; it must have a religious charter as well as a civil one. Even at the very end of the life of the Republic, when Caesar founded a colony in Spain, he ordained that, within ten days of its first magistrates taking office, they should consult the Senate "quos et quot dies festos esse et quae sacra fieri publice placeat et quos ea sacra facere placeat," i.e. as to the calendar, the ritual, and the priesthood.[345] The Romans, of course, assumed that Numa, their priest-king, had done the same thing for Rome; Livy describes him as ordaining a pontifex to whom he entrusted the care of all these matters, with written rules to follow.[346] This was the imaginary religious charter of the Roman State. Without it the citizen, or rather his official representative, would not know with the necessary accuracy the details of the cura and caerimonia; without it, too, the deities could not be expected to perform their part of advancing the interests of the State, and indeed, as I think we shall find, could not be expected to retain the strength and vitality which they needed for the work. Support was needed on each side; the State needed the help of the gods, and the gods needed the help of the State's care and worship.

The ways and means towards the maintenance of this pax were as follows. First, the deities must be duly placated, and their powers kept in full vigour, by the ritual of sacrifice and prayer, performed at the proper times and places by authorised persons skilled in the knowledge of that ritual. Secondly, there must be an exact fulfilment of all vows or solemn promises made to the deities by the State or its magistrates, or by such private persons as might have made similar engagements. Thirdly, the city, its land and its people, must be preserved from all evil or hostile influences, whether spiritual or material or both, by the process broadly known as lustratio, which we commonly translate purification. Lastly, strict attention must be paid to all outward signs of the will of the gods, as shown by omens and portents of various kinds. This last method of securing the pax became specially prominent much later in Roman history, and I prefer to postpone detailed discussion of it for the present; but the other three we will now examine, with the help of evidence mainly derived from facts of cult, not from the fancies of mythologists.

First, then, I take sacrifice, dealing only with the general principles of sacrificial rites, so far as we can discern them in the numerous details which have come down to us. The word sacrificium, let us note, in its widest sense, may cover any religious act in which something is made sacrum, i.e. (in its legal sense) the property of a deity;[347] I am not now concerned to conjecture what exactly may have been the meaning of this immortal word before it was embodied in the ius divinum. "Sacrificium" is limited in practical use by the Romans themselves to offerings, animal or cereal, made on the spot where the deity had taken up his residence, or at some place on the boundary of land or city (e.g. the gate) which was under his protection, or (in later times at least) at a temporary altar erected during a campaign. Thus it was as much a sacrificium when the paterfamilias threw at each meal a portion of the food into the fire, the residence of Vesta, as when the consul offered a victim to Mars on the eve of a battle.

Sacrifices have generally been divided into the three classes of (1) honorific, where the offering is believed to be in some sense a gift to the deity; (2) piacular, or sin-offerings, where the victim was usually burnt whole, no part being retained for eating (though this was not the case at Rome); (3) sacramental sacrifices, where the worshippers enter into communion with the deity by partaking of the sacred offering together with him.[348] The two former are constant and typical in the Roman religion; but traces of the sacramental type, which Robertson Smith believed to be the oldest, are also found, and it will clear the ground if I refer to them at once. By far the most interesting example is that of the Latin festival on the Alban mount, where the flesh of the victim, a white heifer that had never felt the yoke, was partaken of by the deputies of all the cities of the Latin league, great importance being attached to the due distribution.[349] Here the Latin race "yearly acknowledges its common kinship of blood, and seals it by partaking in the common meal of a sacred victim," thus entering into communion with Jupiter, the ancient god of the race, and with each other, by participation in the flesh of the sacred animal. "This common meal is perhaps a survival from the age when cattle were sacred animals, and were never slain or eaten except on the solemn annual occasions when the clan or race renewed its kinship and its mutual obligations by a solemn sacrament." It is tempting to compare with this great sacrament the epulum Iovis on the Ides of September, the dedication-day of the Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which three deities seem to have been present in visible form to share the meal with the magistrates and senate.[350] But we have not yet arrived at the age when this temple was built, and we have no evidence enabling us to carry the rite back in any form to the pre-Etruscan period. There are, however, faint indications that the old Italians believed the deities to be in some sense present at their meals, though not in visible form; and at one festival, the Fornacalia, which was a concern not of the State as a whole, but of the thirty curiae into which it was divided,[351] there seems to be no doubt that a common meal took place in which the gods were believed to have a part, or at any rate to be present though invisible. Yet the ius divinum of the Roman State assuredly did not encourage this kind of sacrament; for in the regular round of State festivals, in which we cannot include even the feriae Latinae, the sacrifices, so far as we are informed, were all honorific or piacular. If I am not mistaken, the idea of participation by the people in solemn sacred rites was discouraged by the Roman priesthood; in the ius divinum the line drawn between sacrum and profanum was clear; scenes of gluttony or revelry, like the Greek hecatombs, were eliminated from the sacra publica, as I have already pointed out. Not till the advent of the Sibylline books and the Graecus ritus did the people take an active part in the State religion; their duty was merely to abstain from disturbance during the performance of sacred rites. "Feriis iurgia amovento" is the only reference in Cicero's imaginary sketch of the ius divinum to the conduct of the citizen on festival days.[352] Within the family, the curia, the gens, there might be direct and active participation in daily or yearly ceremonies, but it was an essential principle of the life of the city-state that its business, religious as well as civil, should be carried out for the citizens by officials specially appointed.

In the typical and organised worship of the State, i.e. sacrifice honorific and piacular, sanctioned by the ius divinum, the utmost care was taken that the whole procedure should be in every sense acceptable to the deity; that nothing profanum should cross the threshold of the divine; hence it was quiet, orderly, dignified. The feeling that communication with the deity invoked was impossible save under such conditions was very strong in the Roman mind, stronger perhaps than with any other people whose religious practice is known to us; and the sense of obligation and duty, pietas, as they called it, was thus very early developed, and of infinite value to the State in its youth. This is entirely in keeping with what we have learnt in the last two lectures of the ideas of the Romans about the nature of their deities, and throws additional light on those ideas. They did not as yet know too much about the divine beings and their powers and wishes; familiarity had not yet bred contempt; religio, as we saw, was still strong among them—the feeling of awe that is likely to diminish or disappear when you have your god before you in the form of an idol. It is a principle of human nature that where knowledge is imperfect, care must be taken to be on the safe side; this is true of all practical undertakings, and as the religion of the Romans was that of a practical people with a practical end in view, it was particularly true of them.

First then, in order that the worship might be entirely acceptable to the deity invoked, it was essential that the person who conducted it should be also acceptable. At the head of the whole system was the rex, who was priest as well as king. We do not know, of course, exactly how the rex was appointed; but in the case of the typical priest-king Numa, Livy has described his inauguratio in terms of the ius divinum of later times for the appointment of priests, and we may take it as fairly certain that the same principle held good from the earliest times.[353] After being summoned (so the story ran) from the Sabine city of Cures by the Senate, he consulted the gods about his own fitness. He was then conducted by the augur to the arx on the Capitol, and sat down on a stone facing the south. The augur took his seat on his left hand (the lucky side) with veiled head, holding the lituus[354] of his office in his right hand, with which, after a prayer, he marked out the regiones from east to west, the north being to the left, the south to the right, and silently noted some object in the extreme distance of the ager Romanus, as the farthest point where the appearance of an omen might be accepted. Then, passing the lituus to his left hand, he laid his right on the head of Numa, and uttered this prayer: "Father Jupiter, if it be thy will (fas) that this Numa Pompilius, on whose head my hand is laid, be king of Rome, I pray thee give us clear token within the limits which I have marked out." Then he said aloud what auspicia he sought for (i.e. whether of birds, lightning, or what); and when they appeared, Numa descended as rex from the citadel. This process was called inauguratio; it is attested for the confirmation of the election of the three flamines maiores, the rex, and the augurs, in historical times,[355] whatever was the method of that election, and without it the priest was not believed to be acceptable to the gods. It is not mentioned by Roman writers in connection with the Pontifices or the Vestals; if this be not merely from dearth of evidence, it is not easy to account for, unless the reason were that neither body was specially concerned with sacrifice. But the principle is perfectly clear—that the person who is to represent the community in worship must be one of whom the numina openly express approval.

A priest, sacerdos, is thus a person set apart by special ritual for the service of the sacra populi Romani. The rex no doubt himself made the selection and supervised the inauguratio of the other priests at whose head he was. When the kingship came to an end, his powers of this kind passed to the pontifex maximus; and it may be as well to add at once that his sacrificial powers, though they were in a special sense inherited by a priest who took his title, the rex sacrorum, passed with the civil power to all magistrates cum imperio, who wore the toga praetexta symbolic of priestly function, and had the right of presiding at sacrificial rites both at home and in the field. Thus magistrate and priest, though quite distinct under the Republic from the point of view of public law, have certain characteristics in common as deriving from a common source in the powers of the rex.[356]

But to return to the period of Numa and the calendar: it was not only necessary that the priest should be acceptable to the gods, but that he should be marked off from the rest of the community as being dedicated to their service. As Dr. Jevons says,[357] in all early religions priests are marked off from other worshippers, partly by what they do, and partly by what they may not do; and what he means is (1) that the priest originally was the person who alone could slay a victim; (2) that in consequence of his sacredness he was subject to a great number of restrictions. I have already spoken of these restrictions or priestly taboos in my second lecture; and as I believe that in the period we are now dealing with they were little more than a survival, I shall not return to them now. But of the outward insignia, which marked off the priest as alone entitled to perform the essential act of worship, the sacrifice, and which bring him out of the region of the profanum into that of sacrum, I must say a few words before going farther.

In historical times the actual slaying of the victim was done by subordinates, popae, victimarii, etc.; but there is no doubt whatever that it was originally the work of the priest, for he seems at all times to have used one gesture which is clearly symbolic of it,[358] and there are traces also of a practice of wearing the toga in such a way as to leave the right arm free for the act.[359] That toga, or any other special robe worn by the priest, was always in whole or part red or purple. The purple-edged toga praetexta was worn both by priests and magistrates, and by children under age; and I think there is good reason to believe that in all these cases the original idea was the same—that they took part, directly or indirectly, as primary or secondary agents in sacrificial acts. The Salii and the augurs wore the trabea, which was of purple or red, or both; the flamines had a special robe about the colour of which we are not informed, but the Flaminica Dialis wore a purple garment called rica, and a red veil called flammeum, which was also worn by the bride in the religious ceremony of marriage. Whether we are to see in this prevalence of red or purple any symbolism of the shedding of blood in sacrifice I cannot be sure, but the inference is a tempting one, and has been put forward with confidence by some recent investigators. It is worth noting that the Vestals, who did not sacrifice animals, wore white only.[360] If the red colour has anything to do with blood-shedding, it is probably more than merely symbolic; it may mean that the sacrificing priest partakes of that life and strength which he passes on to the god through the blood, that is the life, of the victim.[361]

The Roman priests had also other insignia, of which the original meaning is less evident. The Flamen Dialis, and probably all the flamines, wore a cap with an olive-twig fastened to the top of it; this is well shown in the sculptures of the Ara Pacis of Augustus.[362] The flaminicae had a head-dress called tutulus, which consisted in part, at least, of a purple fillet or ribbon. The flamines, when actually sacrificing, wore a galerus, or hood of some kind made of the skin of a victim, and the Flamen Dialis in particular wore one made of the skin of a white heifer sacrificed to Jupiter.[363] In these various ways all priests were outwardly shown to be holy men, sacerdotes, marked off from the profanum vulgus. Only for the pontifices we have no information as to a special dress, just as we also have none as to their inauguratio.[364]

Thus there is no question that the priests were chosen and separated from the people in such a way as to meet with the approval of the gods; and even the acolytes, camilli and camillae, boys and girls who frequently appear in sacrificial scenes on monuments, wore the toga praetexta, and, in order to be acceptable, must be the children of living parents.[365] This rule has lately been the subject of a discussion by Dr. Frazer, on which he has brought to bear, as usual, a great range of learning. He regards the restriction not so much as a matter of good omen, i.e. of freedom from contamination by the death of a parent, but as pointing to a notion that they were "fuller of life and therefore luckier than orphans."[366] Whether or no this explanation is the right one, it is quite consistent, as we shall see directly, with the general idea of sacrifice at Rome, and the learning by which it is supported is in any case of interest and value.

There is abundant evidence from historical times that all worshippers, and therefore a fortiori all priests, when sacrificing, had to be personally clean and free from every kind of taint; a rule which also held good for the utensils used in the worship, which in many cases at least were of primitive make and material, not such as were in common use.[367] The need of personal purity is well expressed by Tibullus in his description of a rural festival[368]:—

vos quoque abesse procul iubeo, discedat ab aris cui tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus. casta placent superis: pura cum veste venite et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam.

These lines indicate an approach at least to the idea of mental as well as material purity; and Cicero in his ius divinum in the de Legibus[369] actually reaches that idea: "caste iubet lex adire ad deos, animo videlicet, in quo sunt omnia: nec tollit castimoniam corporis," etc. But this is the language of a later age, and does not reflect the notions of the old Roman, but rather those of the religious philosophy of the Greek. The personal purity which the Roman rule required was a survival from a set of primitive ideas, closely connected with taboo, which we are only now beginning to understand fully. They are common to all or almost all peoples who have made any progress in systematising their sacrificial worship. As Dr. Westermarck has recently expressed it,[370] "they spring from the idea that the contact of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by injurious consequences. It is supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its holiness.... So also a sacred act is believed to lose its sacredness by being performed by an unclean individual." And in the next sentence he goes still farther back in the history of the belief, pointing out that a polluting substance is itself held to contain mysterious energy of a baneful kind. But I must leave this interesting subject now; the story of the evolution of the habit of cleanliness from these ancient ideas will be found in the thirty-ninth chapter of his Origin and Development of Moral Ideas.

Coming next to the act of sacrifice itself, it is needless to say that the victim must be as exactly fitted to please the deity—if that be the right way to express the obligation—as the priest who sacrificed it. It must be of the right kind, sex, age, colour; it must go willingly to the slaughter, adorned with fillets and ribbons (infulae, vittae), in order to mark it off from other animals as holy; in the case of oxen, we hear also of the gilding of the horns, but this must have been costly and unusual.[371] All these details were doubtless laid down in the ius divinum, and in later times, when the deities dwelt in roofed temples, they were embodied in the lex or charter of each temple.[372] I do not need to go into them here minutely; for my present purpose, the elucidation of the meaning which the Romans attached to sacrificial worship, it will be sufficient to point out that all victims, so far as we know, were domestic animals, and in almost all cases they were valuable property (pecunia), such as belonged to the stock of the Latin farmer, ox, sheep, pig, varying according to age and sex. Goats were used at the Lupercalia, and a horse was sacrificed to Mars, as we have seen, on October 15, and at the Robigalia in April a red dog was offered to the spirit of the mildew. But though time forbids me to explain all these rules, a careful study of the evidence for them is most useful for any one who wishes to understand the influence of the ius divinum on the mind of the early Roman. In the family what rules were needed were matter of tradition; deities were few, and offerings limited. But in the city-state it was very different; here even the di indigetes were many, with diverse wishes and likings as well as functions: how were these to be ascertained and remembered at the right moment? Here, as in all methods of securing the pax deorum, a central supervising authority was needed, in whose knowledge and wisdom the whole community had confidence; and he was found in the rex, as is clearly shown in the whole traditional account of the priest-king Numa. Very naturally tradition also ascribed to Numa the institution of the pontifices, whom the historical Romans knew as succeeding the rex in the supervision of religious law.[373]

If all went well, the victim going willingly and no ill omen supervening, the actual slaughter followed at the altar. During the whole operation silence was enjoined; the priests' heads were veiled with the folds of the toga;[374] pipers (tibicines) continued to play, in order that no unlucky sound or word might be heard which would make it necessary to start afresh with another victim (instauratio). Immediately before the slaughter the victim was made holier than ever by sprinkling upon it fragments of sacred cake made of far (immolatio), and by pouring on it libations of wine from a foculus or movable altar containing this holy condiment, together with incense if that were used in the rite. As soon as it was dead, the internal organs were examined to make sure that there was no physical defect or abnormal growth, for it was, of course, quite as necessary that the animal should be "purus" within as without; this was the only object of the examination, until the Etruscan art of extipicina made its way to Rome. What became of the blood we are not told; I have already remarked that blood has curiously little part in Roman ritual and custom.[375] But the exta, i.e. internal organs of life, were separated from the rest of the carcase, and carefully cooked in holy vessels, before being laid upon the altar (porrectio), together with certain slices of flesh called magmenta, or increase-offerings, while the rest of the flesh, which had now lost its holiness, was retained for the use of the priests.[376] The time occupied in the actual slaughter and inspection of the organs was not long; but the cooking of these must have been often a lengthy process. Ovid tells us how on April 25 he met the Flamen Quirinalis carrying out the exta of a dog and a sheep, which had been sacrificed at Rome to Robigus that morning, in order to lay them on the altar of that deity at the fifth milestone on the Via Claudia.[377] Certain days in the calendar, called endotercisi, which were nefasti in morning and evening, were fasti in the middle of the day, between the slaying of a victim and the placing of its exta on the altar (inter hostiam caesam et exta porrecta).[378]

I have so far purposely omitted one important detail—the prayer which, so far as we know, invariably accompanied the sacrifice. It is not absolutely certain at what moment of the rite it was said at Rome; in the ritual of Iguvium we find it occurring immediately before the placing of the exta on the altar;[379] but as that ritual is a processional one, concerned with sacrifices at several spots, the two chief parts of the rite, the slaughter and the porrectio, probably followed closely on one another. We may perhaps guess that where these two parts were separated by a considerable interval, as in the majority of Roman festivals, the prayer was said by the priest also at the moment of porrectio. The prayer is so important a detail as to need separate handling—important because it helps us to interpret the ideas of the Romans about their sacrifices, and the attitude in which they conceived themselves as standing towards the deities whom they thus approached. I propose to occupy the rest of this lecture in considering this most interesting topic. I wish first to draw attention to a particular feature, or rather expression, which occurs in the authentic wording of certain prayers which we are lucky enough to possess, because I think it throws some light on the meaning which the Romans attached to the sacrifice it accompanied; and secondly, to consider the character of Roman prayers generally, in view of a question now being largely discussed, i.e. whether prayer is a development from spell or charm, belonging in its origin to the region of magic.

We have various forms of prayer surviving in Roman literature: some of them are versified by the poets, and therefore give us a general impression of the contents without the actual and genuine wording; we have also two fragments of ancient carmina which have the form of prayers, those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales; and we have certain forms used on special occasions, such as the evocatio of the gods of a hostile community, or the formulae of vows (vota) which I must postpone to the next lecture. But the only unquestionably genuine old Roman prayers used at sacrifice, taken from the books of the pontifices and preserved word for word, are those which Cato embodied in his treatise on agriculture in the second century B.C., as proper to be used with sacrifice on certain occasions in the agricultural year.[380] It is here that we meet with the phrase, familiar in another form to all Latin scholars, on which I wish to lay stress now. It occurs in all the four forms of prayer which Cato copied down. The first is at the time of the flowering of the pear-trees, on behalf of the oxen: "Iuppiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi eius rei[381] ergo, macte hac illace dape polucenda esto." And again, when the wine is offered: "Iuppiter dapalis, macte istace dape polucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto." So in the piacular sacrifice when a clearing is made, the unknown deity is addressed in the last words of the prayer thus: "harum rerum ergo macte hoc porco piaculo immolando esto." We find this macte esto again in the prayer for the ceremony of lustratio, at the end of the formula: "macte hisce suovetaurilibus lactentibus immolandis esto." In the rite of the porca praecidanea, to which I have already referred, the instruction for the invocation of Jupiter runs: "Fertum (i.e. a kind of cake) Iovi obmoveto et mactato sic, Iuppiter, te hoc ferto obmovendo bonas preces precor, uti sies volens propitius mihi liberisque meis domo familiaeque meae mactus hoc ferto." Janus gets another kind of cake (strues) and a wine-offering, and is addressed in the same way. Then we read, "Iovi fertum obmoveto mactatoque item, ut prius feceris."

What is the real meaning of this phrase macte esto, which must surely have been in universal use at sacrifices, not only at private rites like those of Cato, since it came to be used in common speech of congratulation or felicitation, e.g. macte virtute esto?[382] Servius in commenting on Virgil has made it sufficiently clear. He explains it as magis aucte, and connects it with magmentum, increase-offering, quasi magis augmentum, and adds that when the victims had been slain and their exta placed on the altar, they were said to be mactatae. So, too, in another comment he seems to connect the word with the victim rather than with the deity. But he is quite clear as to the meaning of the word, as signifying an increase or addition of some kind; and though his etymology is wrong, we may be sure that he was right in this respect, for it is beyond doubt built on a base, mac or mag, which produced magnus, maius, maiestas, and so on. "Macte nova virtute puer" means "Be thou increased, strengthened in virtus"; a fragment of Lucilius (quoted by Servius) brings this out well, "Macte inquam virtute simulque his viribus esto," and another from Ennius, "Livius inde redit magno mactatus triumpho."[383] We might almost translate it in these passages by "glorified"; but it most certainly includes the meaning of "strengthened" or "increased in might."

Now in the formulae of Cato we have seen that it is applied to the deity and not to the victim; this naturally did not occur to Servius, whose mind was occupied rather with Virgil and the literary use of the word than with the original use and meaning of the language of prayer. Undoubtedly he has made a mistake here, which Cato's piety has enabled us to detect. It was, in fact, the deity whose strength was to be increased by the offerings; so much at least seems to me to be beyond doubt. There is, indeed, no certain trace in the ritual, or in Roman literature, that the gods were supposed to consume the exta, or the cakes and wine offered them; that primitive notion must have been excluded from the ius divinum. But instead of it we find the more spiritual idea that by placing on the altar the organs of the life of the victim, with ancient forms of sacred cake and offerings of wine, the vitality of the deity, his power to help his worshippers, to make the corn grow and the cattle bring forth young, to aid the State against enemies, or what not, was really increased in this semi-mystic way. Let us remember that the Roman numina were powers constantly at work in their own sphere; they are the various manifestations of the one Power as conceived in immediate relation to man and his wants; they are sometimes addressed in prayer, as we have seen, by additional titles which suggest their strength and vitality: Virites Quirini, Nerio Martis, Moles Martis, Maia or Maiestas Volcani. What, then, could be more natural than that the Roman should call upon his divine fellow-citizen to accept that which, according to ancient tradition and practice, will keep up his strength, and at the same time increase his glory and his goodwill towards his worshippers? This is, then, the idea which I believe to have been at the root of Roman sacrificial ritual, and it seems to confirm the dynamic theory of sacrifice recently propounded by some French anthropologists, i.e. that a mystic current of religious force passed through the victim, from priest to deity, and perhaps back again.[384] I believe that we have here a transitional idea of the virtue of sacrifice—an idea that bridges over the gulf between the crude notion that the gods actually partake of the offering, and the later more spiritual view that the offering is an honorary gift "to the glory of God." It seems also to be found in the Vedic religion. Dr. Farnell writes: "In the Vedic ritual we find a pure and spiritual form of prayer; yet a certain spell-power may attach even to the highest types, for we find not infrequently the conception that not only the power of the worshipper, but the power of the deity also is nourished and strengthened by prayer, and the prayer itself is usually accompanied by a potent act (such as that of sacrifice). "May our prayers increase Agni": "The prayers fill thee with power and strengthen thee, like great rivers the Sindhu."[385]

I must now turn to the form and manner of Roman prayers, in order to gain further light on the question as to the mental attitude of the worshipper towards the deity invoked. Of late years there has been a strong tendency to find the origin of prayer in spell; or, in other words, to discover a bridge between that mental attitude which believes that a deity can be forced into a certain course of action by magical formulae, and the humble attitude of the petitioner in prayer, which assumes that the power of the deity altogether transcends that of his worshipper. The evidence of Roman prayers is, I think, of considerable value in dealing with this question; but it needs to be carefully studied and handled. The general impression conveyed by those who have written on the subject is that Roman prayers were dull, dry formulae, which were believed to have a constraining influence on the deity simply as formulae, if they were repeated with perfect precision the right number of times. Dr. Westermarck, for example, has no shadow of a doubt about this; quoting Renan, he says that "in the Roman, as in the majority of the old Italian cults, prayer is a magic formula, producing its effect by its own inherent quality." And again, he writes that the Romans were much more addicted to magic than to religion; "they wanted to compel the gods rather than to be compelled by them. Their religio was probably near akin to the Greek [Greek: katadesmos], which meant not only an ordinary tie, but also a magic tie or knot or a bewitching thereby."[386] I need not stop to point out the misconception of the word religio which suggested the whole of this passage; the supposed derivation from ligare was quite enough to suggest magic to those who are on the trail of it.[387] Let us go on to examine the prayers themselves; I think we shall find that though there is much truth in the common view of them, it is not quite the whole truth.

The oldest Roman prayers we possess are usually called hymns, because the Latin word for them was carmen, viz. the Carmen Saliare, which is too obscure and fragmentary to be of use to us, and the Carmen of the Arval Brethren, which is preserved on stone and is quite intelligible.[388] The word carmen, let us notice, was used by the old Romans for any kind of metrical formula, whether hymn, prayer, or spell. Pliny, when writing of magic and incantations, plainly includes prayer among them;[389] and Dr. Jevons has recently pointed out that singing, and especially singing in a low voice or muttered tones, is a characteristic of magic not only in Greece and Rome, but in many parts of the world at the present day.[390] The evidence of the word is thus strongly in favour of the view that these ancient carmina of Roman worship were really spells; and the Carmen Arvalium itself does not contradict it. After an elaborate sacrificial ceremonial the priests, using a written copy of the carmen (libellis acceptis), danced in triple rhythm (tripodaverunt) while they sang it; it consisted of six clauses, each repeated three times. "Enos Lases iuvate! Neve luerve Marmar sins incurrere in pleores! Satur fu fere Mars, limen sali, sta berber! Semunes alternei advocapit cunctos! Enos Marmar iuvato! Triumpe!" With the precise interpretation of these words I am not now concerned; but they obviously contain invocations to the Lares and Mars, which may be either petitions or commands, and which perhaps are really on the borderland between the two; and as thrice repeated, and accompanied with dancing and gesticulation, they seem certainly to belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper.

It is interesting to compare with this carmen the prayers of the guild of brethren (Attiedii) at Iguvium; these are the best preserved of all old Italian prayers, and though not Roman, are the product of the same race. In the lustratio of the arx (Ocris Fisius) of Iguvium we find three several deities invoked, with elaborate sacrificial ritual, at three gates, and a long prayer addressed to each deity, thrice repeated, as in the Carmen Arvale. It is to be said under the breath (tacitus precator totum, vi. A. 55), which was a common practice also at Rome, and is believed to be characteristic of the magical spell;[391] and except in the case of the first prayer, which is addressed to the chief deity Jupiter Grabovius, it is accompanied by some kind of dancing or rhythmical movement (tripodatio).[392] Thus in outward form this ritual seems to show but little advance on the Roman prayer of the Arvales, and indeed it may in substance go back to a time as remote as that in which the latter had its origin. But when we examine the matter of the prayer, we find that it is cast in the language of petition beyond all doubt—if it be rightly interpreted, as we may believe it is:—

"Te invocavi invoco divum Grabovium pro arce Fisia, pro urbe Iguvina, pro arcis nomine, pro urbis nomine: volens sis, propitius sis arci Fisiae, urbi Iguvinae, arcis nomini, urbis nomini. Sancte, te invocavi invoco divum Grabovium. Sancti fiducia te invocavi invoco divum Grabovium. Dive Grabovie te hoc bove opimo piaculo pro arce Fisia, etc. Dive Grabovi, illius anni quiquomque in arce Fisia ignis ortus est, in urbe Iguvina ritus debiti omissi sunt, pro nihilo ducito. Dive Grabovi, quicquid tui sacrificii vitiatum est, peccatum est, peremptum est, fraudatum est, demptum est, tui sacrificii visum invisum vitium est, dive Grabovi, quicquid ius sit, hoc bove opimo piaculo piando.... Dive Grabovi, piato arcem Fisiam, piato urbem Iguvinam. Dive Grabovi, piato arcis Fisiae, urbis Iguvinae, nomen, magistratus, ritus, viros, pecora, fundos, fruges: piato, esto volens propitius pace tua arci Fisiae, etc. Dive Grabovi, salvam servato arcem Fisiam salvam servato urbem Iguvinam .... Dive Grabovi, te hoc bove opimo piaculo pro arce Fisia, pro urbe Iguvina, pro arcis nomine, pro urbis nomine, Dive Grabovi, te invocavi."[393]

That in this prayer, and the others which accompany it, exactness of wording was believed to be essential, as in the ritual which preceded it exactness of performance, there is no doubt; for at the end of the whole document (vi. B. 48) we find that if there had been any slip in the ritual, the Brethren had to go back to the first gate and begin all over again. There is plainly present the idea, surviving from an age of magic, that the deities had strong feelings about the right way of invocation, and would not respond to the performance unless those feelings were understood and appealed to; that they would miss something and decline to do their part. Yet are we justified in going on to assume that they were bound, as by a solemn contract, to perform their part, if there were no slip in the ritual? I confess it is difficult for me to take this further step, in view of the language of the prayers, which is so clearly that of petition, nay, of humble petition. We are not dealing here with vota, to which I shall come in the next lecture, and in which there is a kind of legal contract between the man and the god—the former undertaking to do something pleasing to the deity, if the latter shall have faithfully performed what is asked of him. These vota, so abundant in historical times, are really responsible for the idea that Roman prayer is simply a binding formula—a magical spell, let us say, which in the hands of a city priesthood has become a quasi-legal formula. But these prayers are not vota; they do not contain any language which betrays the notion of binding the deity. They seem to me to mark a process of transition between the age of spell and magic and the age of prayer and religion; they retain some of the outward characteristics of spell, but internally, i.e. in the spirit in which they were intended, they have the real characteristics of prayer.[394] The numina to whom they were addressed were powerful spirits, unknown, unfamiliar, until their wishes were discovered by the organised priesthood which handed down these forms of petition.

To return to Rome, and to the prayers in Cato's book, to which I referred just now when discussing the word macte. Attempts have been made to prove that these were originally written in metre;[395] and this is quite possible. If so, it only means that they retained the outward form of the primitive spell; it must not lead us on to fancy that the sacrifice which accompanied the prayer was a magical act, or that the whole process was believed to compel the deity. No doubt there was believed to be efficacy in the exact repetition, as is shown by the directions for piacular sacrifices in case of error of any kind.[396] But the language is the language of prayer, not of compulsion, nor even of bargaining: "Eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo immolando bonas preces precor, ut sies volens propitius mihi, domo familiaeque meis."[397] "Mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius mihi, domo," etc.[398] No amount of vain repetition or scruple can deprive this language of its natural meaning. The god is powerful in his own sphere of action, and man has no control over him; man is fully recognised as liable to misfortune unless the god helps him; but he can worship in full assurance of faith that his prayer will be answered, if it be such as the authorities of the State have laid down as the right wording, and if the ritual accompanying it is equally in order. The faith is, indeed, thus founded upon man's devices rather than the god's good-will as such; it is a belief in the State and its authorities and ius divinum, which is conceived, not indeed as constraining the deity, but as calling upon him (invocare) to perform his part, in formulae which he cannot well neglect, simply because it would be unreasonable to do so, contrary to his nature as a deity of the Roman State and its ager.

It is obvious in all this sacrificial ritual that the officiating person or persons were expected to observe the traditional forms with the utmost care and exactness. Any slip or omission was, in fact, a piaculum, or sacrum commissum—terms of the ius divinum which seem to suggest, if I may use the expression, the obverse side of holiness. It is now well known that cleanness and uncleanness, holiness and its opposite, can be expressed in religious vocabulary by the same terms, for in both cases there is something beyond the ordinary, something dangerous, uncanny; thus we are not surprised to find that such words as I have just mentioned can be used to express some kind of impurity caused by a breach of ritual as well as that ritual itself. If we accept the latest theory of sacrifice, i.e. the dynamic theory, as it is called, we explain this intense nervousness about a ritualistic flaw as occasioned by the consciousness of a breach in the current of "religious force" (the expression is that of Messrs. Hubert and Mauss[399]), which must pass in regular sequence from the sacrificer through the victim to the deity, or vice versa. If this is the true explanation—and at present it may be said to hold the field—then the extreme exactness of the Roman ritual was a survival from an age when this strange feeling was a reality; but no more than a survival, for, so far as I can discover, the Roman idea was rather that the deity to whom the ritual was addressed was in some way offended by the omission.[400] The dynamic notion is lost, if it ever were there, and its place has been taken by one that we may perhaps call theological. But however that may be, the culprit was regarded as in a state of sin or impurity, "un etre sacre," and had to get rid of this sin or impurity by another sacrifice before the whole ritual could be started afresh (instaurare).

According to the "dynamic" theory of sacrifice, we might naturally expect that the victim, as being destined to carry away the unholiness (or whatever we choose to call it) of the culprit, would be burnt whole, not offered to the deity in the form of exta, or eaten by the sacrificers.[401] But this does not seem to have been the case in the Roman practice; in all the examples of piacula of which we have details, the exta are laid on the altar as in the typical sacrifice.[402] The inference seems to be that the theological idea of sacrifice had established itself completely ever since the formation of the ius divinum; the victim is not a scapegoat in any sense, but really an expiatory offering; and not only does the sacrificer yield up something of value, but he offers it to increase the strength of the deity as well as to appease his anger.

A curious point may be noticed in the last place. The practical Roman mind seems to have invented a kind of sacrificial insurance, by which a piacular sacrifice might be offered beforehand to atone for any omission in the ritual which was to follow. Thus the Fratres Arvales, if they had to take an iron implement into their sacred grove, offered a piaculum before as well as after this breach of religious rule.[403] Again, the porca praecidanea, which I have already mentioned as offered before harvest, was an example of the same system of insurance; for the first cutting of the corn was a sacred rite, and one in which it was easy to take a false step. Writing of this, Gellius says in general terms that hostiae praecidaneae are those which are offered the day before sacrificia solennia.[404]

The term "piacular sacrifice" (piaculum) had a wide range of meaning, apart from the examples here given. With one important form of it I shall deal in the next lecture:[405] others we shall come across later on.

NOTES TO LECTURE VIII

[340] See Appendix C.

[341] Cato, R.R. 139, where the language suggests that as the deity was unknown, the ius of the religious act was also uncertain, i.e. the ritual was not laid down. De Marchi translates (La Religione nella vita domestica, i. 132) "sia a te fatto il debito sacrificio," etc., which sufficiently expresses the anxiety of the situation. Keil reads here "ut tibi ius est," and gives no variant in his critical note; but the words just below, "uti id recte factum siet," seem to me to suggest the subjunctive. In any case there is no doubt about ius. In Tab. Iguv. vi. A. 28 (Umbrica, p. 58) Buecheler translates the Umbrian persei mersei by "quicquid ius sit," and compares this passage of Cato, together with Gellius i. 12. 14, where the phrase is used of the duties of a Vestal under the ius divinum in the formula used by the Pontifex Maximus, cum virginem capiat: "Sacerdotem Vestalem, quae sacra faciat, quae ius siet sacerdotem Vestalem facere pro pop. Rom." etc.

[342] e.g. Aen. iv. 56, x. 31 ("si sine pace tua atque invito numine," etc.). Cp. Tab. Iguv. vi. 30, 33, etc. (Umbrica, p. 59), "esto volens propitiusque pace tua arci Fisiae."

[343] Livy vi. 41 ad fin.

[344] Wissowa, R.K. p. 318, and p. 319 for the illustrations that follow. Cp. Cicero, Part. Or. xxii. 78, where religio is explained as "iustitia erga deos."

[345] Lex Coloniae Genetivae, cap. 64; C.I.L. ii., supplement No. 5439.

[346] Livy i. 20. 5.

[347] This follows from the definition in Festus, p. 321, and in Macrobius iii. 3. 2. This last is quoted from Trebatius de religionibus: "sacrum est quicquid est quod deorum habetur." In common use sacrificium seems to be reserved for animal sacrifice, but the verb sacrificare is not so limited. Festus, p. 319: "mustum quod Libero sacrificabant pro vineis ... sicut praemetium de spicis, quas primum messuissent, sacrificabant Cereri." It has been suggested to me by Mr. Marett that the termination of the word sacrificium may have reference to the use of facere for animal sacrifice, as in Greek [Greek: rhezein, erdein, dran]; but on the whole I doubt this. Facere and fieri are in that sense, I think, euphemisms, occasioned by the mystic character of the act (examples are collected in Brissonius de formulis, p. 9). Rem divinam facere seems to be the general expression, as in Cato, R.R. 83; or the particular victim is in the ablative, e.g. agna Iovi facit (Flamen Dialis) in Varro, L.L. vi. 16; cp. Virg. Ecl. iii. 77.

[348] This classification, originally due to R. Smith, article "Sacrifice" in Encycl. Brit., ed. 10, has lately been criticised by Hubert et Mauss, in Melanges d'histoire des religions, p. 9 foll.; but it is sufficiently complete for our purposes. At the same time it is well to be aware that no classification of the various forms of sacrifice can be complete at present; that which these authors prefer, i.e. constant and occasional sacrifices, is, however, a useful one.

[349] R.F. p. 95 foll. Cp. Robertson Smith, Rel. of Semites, Lect. VIII.

[350] R.F. p. 217 foll.

[351] R.F. p. 302 foll. Meals in connection with sacrifice are also found at the Parilia (R.F. p. 81, and Ovid, Fasti, iv. 743 foll.) and Terminalia (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 657); but in both cases Ovid seems to be describing rustic rites; nor is it certain that the meal was really sacramental. What does seem proved is that the old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the house to be present at their meals—

ante focos olim scamnis considere longis mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos (Fasti, vi. 307),

and thus the idea was maintained that in some sense all meals had a sacred character, i.e. all in which the members of a familia (see above, p. 78), or of gens or curia, met together. Cp. R. Smith, op. cit. p. 261 foll. We may remember that the Penates were the spirits of the food itself, not merely of the place in which it was stored; it had therefore a sacred character, which is also shown by the sanctification of the firstfruits (R.F. pp. 151, 195). (The cenae collegiorum, dinners of collegia of priests, were in no sense sacrificial meals; see Marquardt, p. 231, note 7; Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 13, 39, 40.)

[352] Cic. de Legibus, ii. 8. 19.

[353] Livy i. 18. For constitutional difficulties in this passage, see, e.g., Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 50.

[354] For this and the augurs generally, see Lecture XII.

[355] The passages are collected by Wissowa, R.K. p. 420, note 3. There is no doubt about the inauguratio of the three great flamines and the rex sacrorum, who were all specially concerned with sacrifice, and of the augurs, who would obviously need it in order to perform the same ceremony for others—as a bishop needs consecration for the same reason. As regards the pontifices, Dionysius (ii. 73. 3) clearly thought it was needed for them, and we might a priori assume that one who might become a pontifex maximus would need it; but Wissowa discounts Dionysius' opinion, and I am unwilling to differ from him on a point of the ius divinum, of which he is our best exponent. If he is right, it may be that the three flamines maiores, who were reckoned in strict religious sense as above the pontifices, including their head (Festus, p. 185), needed "holiness" more than any pontifex, and so with the augurs. The insignia of the pontifices, as well as many historical facts, show that the pontifices were competent to perform sacrifice in a general sense (Marq. p. 248 foll.); but it is possible that they never had the right, like the flamines, actually to slay the victim. I do not feel sure that the securis was really one of their symbols, though Horace seems to say so in Ode iii. 23. 12. The whole question needs further investigation. It may be found that the essential distinction between the pontifices and magistrates cum imperio on the one hand, and the flamines on the other, is to be sought in the ideas of holiness connected with the shedding of blood in sacrifice. The flamen is permanently holy, having charge of constant sacrifices; e.g. the Dialis had duties every day. He is the duly sanctified guide for all rites within his own religious range.

[356] Wissowa, R.K. pp. 339, 410 foll.

[357] The whole subject of the preparation of the sacrificer for his work, and of the steps by which he becomes separated from the profane, is well treated by Hubert et Mauss, Melanges d'histoire des religions, p. 23 foll. The reference to Dr. Jevons is Introduction, ch. xx. p. 270 foll.

[358] Serv. Aen. xii. 173; Virgil wrote "dant fruges manibus salsas, et tempora ferro Summa notant pecudum"; to which Servius adds that the symbolic movement was a (pretended) cut from head to tail of the victim. Wissowa, R.K. p. 352.

[359] Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., s.v. "cinctus Gabinus."

[360] Marquardt, p. 340. The Vestals were never, so far as we know, directly concerned in animal sacrifice.

[361] See below, p. 190. For the colour of the garments, and the explanation referred to, see Samter, Familienfeste, p. 40 foll.; Diels, Sibyllinische Blaetter, p. 70; and cp. von Duhn's paper, "Rot und Tot" in Archiv, 1906, p. 1 foll. That red colouring was used in various ways in sacred and quasi-sacred rites there is no doubt (see above, p. 89, note 46); but whether it can be always connected with bloodshed is by no means so certain (Rohde, Psyche, i. 226). In the case of women it is at least hard to understand. The idea of consecration through blood, which is very rare in Roman literature, comes out curiously in the words which Livy puts into the mouth of Virginius after the slaughter of his daughter (iii. 48): "Te Appi tuumque caput sanguine hoc consecro" (i.e. to a deity not mentioned). The sentence to which this note refers was written before the appearance of Messrs. Hubert et Mauss' essay on sacrifice (Melanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 1-122). The theory there developed, that the victim is the intermediary in all cases between the sacrificer and the deity, and that the force religieuse passes from one to the other in one direction or another, does not essentially differ from the words in the text; but the French savants would, I imagine, prefer to look on the insignia in a general sense as bringing the person wearing them within the region of the sacrum, the force of which would react on him still more strongly after the destruction of the victim (see p. 28 foll.).

[362] See, e.g., Roman Sculpture by Mrs. Strong, Plates xi. and xv.

[363] For this and other insignia see Marquardt, p. 222 foll. The question is under discussion whether some of these insignia are not old Italian forms of dress (see Gruppe, Mythologische Literatur, 1898-1905, p. 343). For the wearing of the skin of a victim, which meets us also at the Lupercalia (R.F. p. 311), see Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 416 foll.; Jevons, Introduction, p. 252 foll.; Frazer, G.B. iii. 136 foll.

[364] They, of course, wore the praetexta when performing religious acts. Cp. the Fratres Arvales, who laid aside the praetexta after sacrificing. Henzen, Acta Fr. Arv. pp. 11, 21, and 28.

[365] Serv. Aen. xi. 543. The camillae assisted the flaminicae, Marquardt, p. 227. This is one of the most beautiful features of the stately Roman ritual, and has been handed on to the Roman Church. It was, of course, derived from the worship of the household (see above, p. 74).

[366] Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 413 foll. Dr. Frazer is criticising Dr. Farnell, who had touched on the subject in the Hibbert Journal for 1907, p. 689, and had taken the more obvious view that death in a family disqualified for actions requiring extreme holiness.

[367] The passages are collected in Marquardt, p. 174 foll.; we may notice in particular Livy xlv. 5. 4, where, though only the washing of hands is referred to, we have the important statement that "omnis praefatio sacrorum," i.e. the preliminary exhortation of the priest, enjoined purae manus. Livy must be using the language of Roman ritual, though he is not speaking here of a Roman rite. For the material of sacred utensils see Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 30.

[368] Tibullus ii. 1. 11.

[369] Cic. de Legibus, ii. 10. 24.

[370] Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, ii. 352 foll.; consult the index for further allusions to the subject. Cp. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, Lecture III. [Fehrle, Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum (Giessen, 1910), has reached me too late for use in this chapter.]

[371] Full details, with the most important references quoted in full, are in Marquardt, p. 172 foll.; but some of the latter are applicable only to the Graeco-Roman period.

[372] So we may gather from the Lex Furfensis of 58 B.C. (C.I.L. ix. 3513), and that of the Ara Augusti at Narbo of A.D. 12 (C.I.L. xii. 4333).

[373] The real origin of the pontifices and their name is unknown to us. If they took their name from the bridging of the Tiber, as Varro held (L.L. v. 83) and as the majority of scholars believe (see O. Gilbert, Rom. Topographie, ii. 220, note), the difficulty remains that they are found in such a city as Praeneste, where there was no river to be bridged, and where they could not well have been merely an offshoot from the Roman college; see Wissowa, R.K. p. 432, note. Nor can we explain how they came to be set in charge of the ius divinum; and where there are no data conjecture is useless.

[374] The covering of the head (operto capite, as opposed to aperto capite of the Graecus ritus) is usually explained as meant to shut out all sounds belonging to the world of the profanum; and the playing of the tibicines is interpreted in the same way. Hubert et Mauss explain the covered head differently: "le rituel romain prescrivit generalement l'usage du voile, signe de separation et partant de consecration" (p. 28). Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 522, also holds that it is the outward sign of consecration; cp. S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. 300 foll. The fact, noted by Miss Harrison, that in Festus's account of the ver sacrum (p. 379, ed. Mueller) the children expelled were veiled, seems to point to the idea of dedication—unless, indeed, velabant here means that they blindfolded them.

[375] The wine was poured over the altar as well as on the victim, which suggests a substitution for blood; Arnobius vii. 29 and 30; Dion. Hal. vii. 72. I cannot find that any one of the many utensils used in sacrifice were for pouring out blood. Blood was, however, poured on the stone at the Terminalia (R.F. pp. 325-326); but the rite here described by Ovid seems to be a rural one, outside the ius divinum. In the sacrifice of victims to Hecate in Virg. Aen. vi. 243 foll., which cannot be ritus Romanus, the warm blood is collected in paterae; but nothing is said of what was done with it, nor does Servius help. Cp. Aen. viii. 106. In Lucretius v. 1202, "aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum," the context shows that the ritual alluded to is not old Roman. In Livy's description of the "occulti paratus sacri" of the Samnites (ix. 41), we find "respersae fando nefandoque sanguine arae, et dira exsecratio ac furiale carmen." Livy seems to think of this blood-sprinkling, whether the blood be human or animal, as unusual and horrible. Ancient, no doubt, is the practice, recorded in the Acta Fratr. Arv. (see Henzen, pp. 21 and 23), of using the blood in a religious feast, in the process of cooking: "porcilias piaculares epulati sunt et sanguem." (There is a mention of the pouring of blood in an inscription from Lusitania in C.I.L. ii. 2395.) For the use of wine as a substitute for blood, see the recently published work of Karl Kircher, "Die sakrale Bedeuting des Weines," in Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche, etc., p. 82 foll., where, however, the subject is not worked out.

[376] According to Luebbert (Commentarii pontificales, p. 121 foll.) magmentum is the same as augmentum, which word is also found (Varro, L.L. v. 112). Festus, p. 126, "magmentum magis augmentum"; Serv. Aen. iv. 57, to which passage I shall return. For the equivalent in the Vedic ritual of the cooking and offering of the exta, see Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 60 foll.

[377] R.F. p. 89.

[378] ib. p. 10.

[379] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 60, 69, etc. Of course the prayer might be said while other operations were going on. For the constant connection of prayer and sacrifice, see Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10, "quippe victimam caedi sine precatione non videtur referre aut deos rite consuli." If Macrobius is right (iii. 2. 7 foll.) in asserting that the prayer must be said while the priest's hand touches the altar, one may guess that this was done at the same time that the exta were laid on it. Ovid saw the priest at the Robigalia offer the exta and say the prayer at the same time (Fasti, iv. 905 foll.), but does not mention the hand touching the altar. For this see Serv. Aen. vi. 124; Horace, Ode iii. 23. 17, and Dr. Postgate on this passage in Classical Review for March 1910.

[380] Cato, R.R. 132, 134, 139, and 141. That these formulae were taken from the books of the pontifices is almost certain, not only from the internal evidence of the prayers themselves, but because Servius (Interpol.) on Aen. ix. 641 quotes the words: "macte hoc vino inferio esto," which occur in 132, introducing them thus: "et in pontificalibus sacrificantes dicebant deo...."

[381] The verb is omitted here for some ritualistic reason, as in the Iguvian prayers (Umbrica, p. 55).

[382] Virg. Aen. ix. 641, "macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad astra," etc., and many other passages. The verb mactare acquired a general sense of sacrificial slaying, as did also immolare, though neither had originally any direct reference to slaughter. The best account I find of the word is in H. Nettleship's Contributions to Latin Lexicography, p. 520. He takes mactus as the participle of a lost verb maco or mago, to make great, increase, equivalent to augeo, which is also a word of semi-religious meaning, as Augustus knew. Nettleship quotes Cicero in Vatinium, 14, "puerorum extis deos manes mactare."

[383] Baehrens, Fragm. Poet. Lat. 180; Lusilius fragm. 143; Nonius, 341, 28 has "versibus."

[384] It may possibly be objected that some of the deities were powerful for evil as well as good, e.g. Robigus, the spirit of the red mildew, and that the power of such a deity was not to be encouraged or increased. But all such deities (and I cannot mention another besides Robigus) were of course conceived as able to restrain their own harmful function; they were not invoked to go away and leave the ager Romanus in peace, but to limit their activity in the land where they had been settled for worship. We have no prayer to Robigus (or Robigo, feminine, as Ovid has it) except that which Ovid somewhat fancifully versified after hearing the Flamen Quirinalis say it (Fasti, iv. 911 foll.), in which of course the word macte does not occur. As the victim was a dog, an uneatable one, it is possible that the ritual was not quite the usual one. But the language of the prayer is interesting and brings out my point:

aspera Robigo, parcas Cerialibus herbis. vis tua non levis est;... parce precor, scabrasque manus a messibus aufer neve noce cultis: posse nocere sat est.

It concludes by praying Robigo to direct her strength and attention to other objects, gladios et tela nocentia; but this is the poet's fancy.

[385] Evolution of Religion, p. 212, quoting Vedic Hymns, pt. ii. pp. 259 and 391.

[386] Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. ii. p. 585 foll.; cp. 657. See also Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 195.

[387] See above, p. 9. Religio in the sense of an obligation to perform certain ritualistic acts is in my view a secondary and later use of the word. See Transactions of the Congress of Historical Religion for 1908, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.

[388] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 26 foll.; C.I.L. vi. 2104, 32 foll.; Buecheler und Riese, Carmina Lat., epigr. pars ii., no. 1. All surviving Roman prayers are collected in Appel's De Romanorum precationibus, Giessen, 1909.

[389] Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10 foll.

[390] In Anthropology and the Classics, p. 94.

[391] Cp. Tibullus ii. 1. 84, "vos celebrem cantate deum pecorique vocate, Voce palam pecori, clam sibi quisque vocet." This murmuring was certainly characteristic of Roman magic; see Jevons, p. 99, and especially the reference to a Lex Cornelia, which condemned those "qui susurris magicis homines occiderunt" (Justinian, Inst. iv. 18. 5).

[392] On the nature of this tripodatio see Henzen, op. cit. p. 33. Buecheler, Umbrica, p. 69, gives the Umbrian verb a different meaning, though he translates it tripodato.

[393] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 13 and 52.

[394] Wissowa, R.K., 333, inclines to the belief that prayer had a legal binding force upon the deity; but he does not cite any text which confirms this view, and is arguing on general grounds. I gather from the language of Aust (Religion der Roemer, p. 30) that he thinks there was a germ which might have developed into a more truly religious attitude towards the gods, if it had not been killed by priestly routine and quasi-legal formulae. With this opinion I am strongly inclined to agree. Cp. the story of Scipio Aemilianus audaciously altering and elevating the formula dictated by the priest in the censor's lustratio (Val. Max. iv. 1. 10), to which I shall return in the proper place.

[395] Westphal, quoted by De Marchi, La Religione, etc., i. p. 133, note.

[396] See, e.g., ch. 141 ad fin. The prayer in the Acta of the Ludi Saeculares to the Moirae is an imitation of old prayers. See below, p. 442.

[397] ib. ch. 139.

[398] ib. ch. 141.

[399] Hubert et Mauss, Melanges d'histoire des religions, p. 74.

[400] So Cato, R.R. 141, "si minus in omnes litabit, sic verba concipito; Mars pater, quod tibi illuc porco neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo." (The word for the slaughter is here euphemistically omitted; De Marchi, p. 134.)

[401] Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 55 foll.; Leviticus vi. I doubt whether the theory of the learned authors will hold good generally on this point.

[402] Marquardt, p. 185, asserted the contrary, but cited no evidence except Serv. Aen. vi. 253, which does not prove the practice of the holocaust to be really Roman. Wissowa's exactness is well illustrated in his detection of this error; see R. K. p. 352, note 6. Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 135, leaves no doubt on the question possible.

[403] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 131. See above, p. 35. Festus, p. 218.

[404] Gellius iv. 6. 7.

[405] i.e. lustratio. That this was a form of piaculum is clear from the use of the word pihaklu of the victim in the lustratio of the arx of Iguvium, e.g. Buecheler, Umbrica, index, 5, v.



LECTURE IX

RITUAL—continued

In the last lecture we found that the magical element in the Roman ritual is exaggerated by recent writers. But it has also long been the practice to describe that ritual as a system of bargaining with the gods: as partaking of the nature of a legal contract. "The old Roman worship was businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a contract with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterised by the hard formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness required in pleadings before the praetor."[406] This is an excellent statement of a view very generally held, especially since Mommsen, whose training in Roman law made him apt to dwell on the legal aspects of Roman life, wrote the famous chapter in the first volume of his history. I now wish to examine this view briefly.

No doubt it was suggested by the necessary familiarity of the Roman historian with vota publica, the vows so frequently made on behalf of the State by its magistrates, in terms supplied by the pontifices, and dictated by them to the magistrate undertaking the duty. Some few of these formulae have survived, and it may certainly be said of them that they are analogous to legal formulae, and express the quasi-contractual nature of the process. Such legalised religious contracts seem to be peculiar to Rome; they are curiously characteristic of the Roman genius for formularisation, which in course of time had most important effects in the domain of civil law. But the vow as such is, of course, by no means peculiar to Rome; it is familiar in Greek history, and is found in an elementary form among savages at the present day.[407] But at Rome both in public and private life it is far more frequent and striking than elsewhere. This is a phenomenon that calls for careful study; and we must beware that we are not misled by quasi-legal developments into missing the real significance of it from the point of view of morality and religion.