Part 2
The Italians borrowed cults as well as gods from Greece, but "these external additions gathered round the kernel of the Roman religion without affecting or transforming its inmost core" (Ihne, i. 119). The distinguishing characteristic of the religion of Rome is that "it was designed for use in practical life" (_Ibid._ 120), "The god of the Italian was above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very solid earthly objects" (Mommsen, i. 181). In fact, the Italian god was a fetich, _i.e._, a magical implement; and in this sense of the word it is true that "the Romans saw everywhere and in all things the agency and the direction of the gods" (Ihne, i. 118). Every act of life was entangled in a complicated network of ritual.[14] Every part of the house, the door, doorway, threshold, hinges, every process of farming, sowing, manuring, &c., every act of life from birth to burial, had its own particular spirit; and the object of the Roman with reference to each particular spirit was "to manage, and even in case of need to over-reach or to constrain him" (Mommsen, i. 177). Preller in his _Römische Mythologie_ characterises the religion of Rome as, above all things, "a cultus-religion." We may add that in Rome, as in China, Assyria, and Babylonia, the cult was nothing but organised magic,[15] the superstitious customs, charms, and incantations familiar to the folk-lorist in all countries were organised by the practical Roman and were state-established by him. In fine, the Romans "in their gods worshipped the abstract natural forces, to whose power man is conscious that he is subject every instant, but which he can win over and render subservient to his purposes by scrupulously obeying the external injunctions which the State issues for the worship of the gods."[16]
A fundamental difference between the Greek and Roman religions manifests itself in the matter of magic. Magic was foreign to the Greeks, and was disliked by them: when it appears in their mythology, it is practised by foreigners—_e.g._, Medea, Circe, Hecate—and is "barbarous." In fact, magic belongs to the animistic stage, and is opposed to the higher tendencies of polytheism. The forces of Nature, conceived as _numina_ rather than as moral ideals, may well be influenced by magic to the advantage of the savage; but to control a deity by means other than prayer and good life is antitheistic.
Finally, it is not accidental or unmeaning that, on the one hand, the Greeks had oracles while the Italians had none; and on the other hand, that in China and Babylon (which resemble Rome in other pertinent points) divination played as large and as official a part as at Rome. An oracle is the voice of a god; whereas divination is simply sympathetic magic inverted.[17]
IV. ITALIAN MYTHS.
In sect. 1 it has been said that the Italians had no Nature-myths. The reason why they had none should now be clear: the Italians had no Nature-gods. The sky-spirit, Jupiter, was undoubtedly distinguished from the vault of heaven by the primitive Italians, but he was not generically different from the spirits of vegetation, of sowing, of manuring, &c., and he seems to have been even of inferior dignity to the spirit of doorways.[18] The earth, on the other hand, does not seem to have been conceived of as a spirit even, much less as a goddess; but, if worshipped at all, was worshipped as a fetich.[19] Hence, the absence from Italy of any trace of the myth of the origin of all living creatures from a union between the earth and the sky.
Indeed, if by a myth we mean a tale told about gods or heroes, there are no Italian myths.[20] Myths attached to Greek loan-gods were borrowed with the gods from Greece. Myths in which Italian gods figure were borrowed or invented when the Italian gods were identified with Greek gods. Thus the Golden Age myth, for instance, can be referred to the time (A.U.C. 257) when Saturnus was identified with Kronos.[21] And of course, all the myths in which Æneas appears, and the whole mythical connection between Rome and Greece or Troy, are late.[22] Evander,[23] again, who figures in various passages of the _Romane Questions_, owes his existence wholly and solely to the attempt to connect Rome with Greece.
If, on the other hand, under the head of myth we include "the popular explanation of observed facts," then early Roman history, as Ihne says (i. 17), "is really nothing more than a string of tales, in which an attempt is made to explain old names, religious ceremonies and monuments, political institutions and antiquities, and to account for their origin." Some examples of this may be drawn from the _Romane Questions_. Marriage by capture has left traces behind it in the wedding customs of many countries, and the meaning of these survivals is usually wholly forgotten. But the historic consciousness of the Romans was so far alive to the actual facts of the case that the mock capture was explained as the commemoration of an actual historical rape—the Rape of the Sabines. Thus were explained the lifting of the bride over the threshold (_Q. R._ 19), the use of a javelin point to divide the bride's hair (_Ibid._ 87), the hymeneal cry _Talassio_ (_Ibid._ 31), and the fact that maids might not (though widows might) marry on festival days (_Ibid._ 105). The first of these customs is probably a survival from marriage by capture, and the last is indirectly connected with it. In Rome,[24] as in many other places,[25] the lamentations of the bride who was actually captured survived in the formal, extravagant lamentations of the bride who, in quieter times, was more peacefully won; and these cries would have been of bad omen on a day dedicated to the worship of the gods. Lamentation seems not to have been required of widows. The use of an iron javelin point is probably due to the dangers which, in the opinion of primitive man, attend on those about to marry, and require to be averted by the use of iron,[26] from the head[27] especially. The origin of the cry _Talassio_ is beyond recovery.[28]
But though the chief branch of Italian folk-tales consisted of popular explanations of observed facts, we can detect traces of those other folk-tales which from the beginning must have been designed simply and solely to gratify man's inherent desire for tales of adventure and the marvellous. Here it must suffice to point to two of the _Romane Questions_. In the fourth question we have a tale told of successful trickery on the part of Servius Tullius, which may well have formed part of some story of a Master Thief; and in _Romane Questions_ 36, the nightly visits of Fortuna through the window to her lover, Servius Tullius, at once remind us of the "soul-maidens" and "swan-maidens," who visit, and eventually desert, their human lover through the window or the keyhole[29]—the orthodox means of entrance and exit for spirits from the time of Homer at least.
IV. THE SOUL.
The customs and beliefs, the superstitious practices and supernatural beings, of modern European folk-lore are sometimes explained as the wrecks and remnants of the Pagan polytheism which preceded Christianity. And if the Aryan peoples were from the very beginning polytheists; if the Hellenes and the Hindoos, the Teutons and the Scandinavians, brought their myths and their cults with them from the original Aryan home, then this explanation seems more reasonable than that which proceeds on a mere conjecture, a pure assumption that the Aryan religion was animistic ere it was polytheistic; for then we are obliged to relegate Aryan animism almost to the æon "of chaos and eternal night,"—at any rate, to an abysm of time which is such that neither linguistic palæontology nor any other science has dared
"to venture down The dark descent and up to reascend."
But if the proposition submitted in the previous sections be sound, if in early but still historic times Italian religion was still in a stage anterior to polytheism, then Aryan animism is no longer a mere assumption, and need no longer be thrust back into pro-ethnic times. Early Italian customs and beliefs will not be the _débris_ of a previous polytheism, and it will therefore be unreasonable to explain their counterparts in modern folk-lore as mutilated myths or as the cult of gods degraded but worshipped still.
Plutarch, in the fifth of his _Romane Questions_ (p. 8 below), propounds an interesting problem: _Why are they who have beene falsly reported dead in a strange countrey, although they returne home alive, not received nor suffred to enter directly at the dores, but forced to climbe up to the tiles of the house, and so to get down from the roufe into the house?_ This remarkable custom continued to be practised long after its origin and object had been forgotten; for Plutarch relates a tale which is obviously a popular explanation, invented to account for a practice the _rationale_ of which had become unintelligible.[30] Hard, however, as Plutarch's question appears at first sight, it may by the aid of modern folk-lore and savage custom be explained. We have to note, in the first place, that the mode of entry prescribed for the returned traveller is not spontaneously adopted by him; and presumably, therefore, is not prescribed in his interest: it is enforced by his relatives, and probably for their own protection. In the next place, though the traveller himself knows, of course, that he has not returned from that bourne from which no traveller returns, his relatives have no such assurance: it may be, indeed, that he did not die whilst away, as they were informed or led to believe; but, on the other hand, he may be "the ghost of their dear friend dead," seeking to obtain an entrance into his old home. The reasonable course for them to pursue, therefore, is to treat him as though he were a ghost: if he is no ghost, it will do him no harm; if he is, they will have protected themselves.
Thus far our explanation is hypothetical: to verify the hypothesis it is necessary to show that the dead are or were as a matter of fact treated as the Roman custom prescribes that the _soi disant_ living man shall be treated. That the spirits of the dead are considered unwelcome visitors both in modern folk-lore and by savage man, has been insisted on most recently by Mr. G. L. Gomme.[31] I will, therefore, only add one or two instances of the precautions taken to prevent the return of the deceased to his home.[32] The first thing is to get the soul out of the house; this may be effected by sweeping out the house and by flapping dusters about, care being taken to shake and turn upside down all vessels, meal-boxes, &c., in which the soul might take refuge. Then the coffin must be carried foot foremost through the door; for if the corpse's face be turned to the house, the ghost can return. In Siam they run the corpse three times round the house, apparently on the same principle as, in the game of blind-man's buff, the blind-man is spun round in order to make him lose his bearings. In Bohemia they turn the coffin about cross-wise, outside the house-door, to prevent the dead man from coming back.
More pertinent for our present purpose are the precautions taken to prevent the dead from obtaining access to the house through the door. The safest course is to carry the corpse out, not through the door, for that gives the dead man the right of way which it is sought to bar, but through some opening which is specially made for the purpose and can be permanently closed. Thus the Hottentots make a breach through the wall for the purpose. The ancient Norsemen did the same.[33] The Teutons, in pre-Christian times, dug a hole under the threshold and pulled the corpse through with a rope. In Christian times they only treated the bodies of criminals and suicides in this way, though in the thirteenth century Brother Berthhold of Regensburg recommended it in the case of heretics and usurers.
When circumstances make it difficult or impossible to construct a special exit of this kind for the corpse, then some other means is found to avoid carrying the corpse through the door. The Eskimo take the body through a window; and a window was in 1858 used in Sonneberg in the case of a hanged man; while even now in East Prussia, if several children have died one after another, the corpse of the next to die is conveyed through the window.
Eventually it comes to be considered sufficient if a special means of egress is provided, not for the corpse, which is not likely to "walk," but for the spirit, which may want to return. Thus in China, at the moment of death, a small hole is made through the roof; while the custom of opening the window, to allow the soul of the dying man to depart, is universal in Germany and not unknown in England.
Finally, all that is considered necessary to bar the right of way to the dead man's spirit is to close the house-door immediately after the departure of the corpse, and keep it closed until the return of the funeral party.
If the explanation which has now been given of Plutarch's fifth question be correct, we must ascribe to the early Italians beliefs and customs similar to or identical with those quoted above from modern folk-lore; and it will not be illegitimate to seek further parallels to Italian religion from the same source. Thus, in _Romane Questions_, 51, Plutarch inquires why the Lares Præstites are represented as clad in dog-skins and as having a dog by their side.[34] Now, it is universally admitted that the Lar Familiaris of the Romans is the same as the house-spirit of the Teutons, and that both are the spirits of a deceased ancestor, the founder of the family and its spirit guardian. In the absence of any presumption to the contrary, we may conclude that the Lares Præstites were also spirits of deceased ancestors. The dog which accompanies the Lares was explained by the ancients as a symbolic representation of the fidelity and watch-dog functions of the Lares.[35] So, too, the priests of ancient Egypt said that the animal forms in which their gods were represented were merely symbolical.[36] But it may safely be laid down as a law in the evolution of religion that beast-worship is primitive, and that the theory of symbolism is but a _via media_ whereby more elevated conceptions of deity are reconciled with the older and more savage worship. Analogy, then, is all in favour of the supposition that the Lares Præstites were originally conceived not in human shape, but in the form of dogs. What we require to confirm the analogy is evidence that the dead—if possible, evidence that guardian spirits—sometimes appear in the shape of a dog. As a matter of fact, the belief that a dead man's spirit may manifest itself in the likeness of a black dog still survives in Germany.[37] As for the guardian spirit, I would suggest that the Mauthe dog of Peel Castle is a house-spirit; for as the hearth was the peculiar seat of the Lar Familiaris and of the Hûsing or Herdgota, and as the English house-spirit
"Stretch'd out all the chimney's length Basks at the fire;"
so the Mauthe dog, "as soon as candles were lighted, came and lay down before the fire."[38] From this point of view we may consider that the black dog, which in modern folk-lore comes and lies down or howls before a house, in token that one of the inmates is about to die, was originally a spirit summoning the inmate to join the dead. This belief, it may further be conjectured, has been incorporated into Hindoo mythology, where a dog acts as the messenger of the death-god, Yama; and probably the Greek dog, Cerberus, was taken up into the literary mythology of Hellas from the same folk-belief.
Finally, we may here notice the fifty-second of Plutarch's Questions, wherein he wonders why a dog was sacrificed to Genita Mana, and a prayer made to her that none born in the house should become Manes. Genita Mana was, as her name plainly indicates, a spirit of birth and of death; and the prayer was such as might properly be offered to her. The sacrifice may be explained on the principle laid down by Professor Robertson Smith,[39] that an animal sacrificed to a deity was itself originally the deity. That one and the same spirit should have to do with "the child from the womb and the ghost from the tomb," points to the existence of a belief among the Romans similar to one held by the Algonkins. "Algonkin women who wished to become mothers flocked to the side of a dying person, in the hope of receiving and being impregnated by the passing soul."[40]
Let us now turn to another point in which early Italian beliefs and modern folk-lore mutually illustrate each other. On the origin of fairies various theories have been held, and without denying that fairies are sometimes the representatives of earlier gods, sometimes of still earlier satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and wild men of the wood, we may recognise that they are sometimes spirits of the departed. In the first place, as the Italians called the dead "the good," _manes_, so in England and in Ireland fairies are "the good people."[41] Next, fairies are small; and the savage conceives the soul of man as a smaller man. It is, according to Hurons, "a complete little model of the man himself," like the man, but smaller, of course, because, as the Australian blacks explain, it is within the man's breast.[42] According to Kaffir ideas, the world of _manes_ is exactly like that of the living, only much smaller, and the dead are themselves but mannikins.[43] Again, the Teutonic house-spirit on the one hand is admittedly a deceased ancestor, and on the other is an indubitable fairy. Further, fairies are sometimes explicitly stated in folk-tales to be deceased spirits.[44]
Now, one of most marked differences between the Greek and the Roman modes of worship was that the Greeks worshipped with their heads uncovered, the Romans with heads covered, _velato capite_. Roman antiquaries explained the practice as due to fear lest the worshipper should see anything of evil omen during his prayer. But I submit that we must connect it with the folk-belief that fairies resent being seen by mortals. "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die." If fairies were originally departed souls, the fear and the danger of seeing them is at once explained. On the other hand, the Roman custom of worshipping _velato capite_ dates from a time before the introduction of polytheism, and must therefore have been attached originally to the worship of some beings other than gods. It is at least plausible, therefore, to conjecture that it was a precaution adopted in the worship of deceased ancestors and of spirits, which, like Genita Mana, are best explained as spirits of the departed. The conjecture is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Romans veiled their heads at the funeral of father or mother (_R. Q._ 14).
V. GENII.
No form of religion is easily or at once rooted out, even by a new religion. A _modus vivendi_ has to be found between the old faith and the new. The animal, which was once itself worshipped, is tolerated merely as the symbol of some divine attribute. The nixies continue to ply their old calling under the new name of Old Nick. The sacrifices to the dead, condemned by the Indiculus Superstitionum, are subsequently licensed by the Church as the Feast of All Souls.[45] Hence it comes about that what means one thing to the apostle of the new religion is long understood as something very different by the reluctant convert. The devil of folk-lore has attributes quite different from those assigned to him in any scheme of Christian theology.
If, therefore, polytheism was, as I have suggested, an importation into Italy, forced by the State on a people not yet prepared for anything higher than animism and ancestor-worship, we should expect to find the borrowed worship of a Greek loan-god sometimes concealing a native Italian cult of very dissimilar nature. Instances of the kind are forthcoming, and this section will be devoted to some of them.
The spirits which after the death of the body were termed _manes_ by the Romans, were during its life called _genii_ (or in the case of women _Junones_). The belief in genii was not borrowed from Greece. How primitive it is may be seen from two facts. First, it is itself the essence of animism, for not only had every man a genius, but every place and every thing had, in the belief of the Romans, a soul, to which the same name, genius, was given.[46] Next, the genius was, I submit, the "external soul," which, as Mr. Frazer has shown, appears in the folk-tales of every Aryan nation, and in the religions of many savage peoples. The genius of a man did not reside inside the man. Amongst the Romans, as amongst the Zulus, it resided in a serpent. As, according to the Banks Islanders, "the life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamanin,"[47] so with the Romans, the man's health depended on his genius.[48] When the serpent which was the genius of the father of the Gracchi was killed, Tiberius died;[49] and, as all Romans were liable to the same mischance, these snakes were carefully protected from all harm, were reared in the house and the bed-chamber, and consequently grew so numerous, that Pliny says, had their numbers not been kept down by occasional conflagrations, they would have crowded out the human inhabitants of Rome.[50]
This belief in the genius, however etherealised and spiritualised the form in which it appears in Horace or was held by highly-educated Romans, continued even in Imperial times amongst all other classes as primitive as it was tenacious. Its hold over the ordinary Italian mind was much greater than the Hellenised gods ever secured; for, in order to make them even comprehensible, the average Italian had to suppose that these fashionable, State-ordained gods were really worked by genii—just as it is self-evident to the savage that, if a locomotive engine moves, it is because it has horses inside. This, I suggest, is the explanation, in accord with the principle laid down at the beginning of this section, which must be given of the remarkable fact that, beginning from B.C. 58,[51] and in ever-increasing numbers afterwards, inscriptions are found which ascribe a genius to Apollo, Asclepius, Mars, Juno, Jupiter, &c.