Part 3

In this case Italian animism has held its own, not unsuccessfully, against imported polytheism. Our second instance, however, will show it less successful. When polytheism was spreading from Hellas over Italy, there would be no difficulty in adding the myths and cult of the Greek god Zeus bodily on to the worship of the Italian sky-spirit Jupiter. Nor would the process be much harder even when the Greek god and the Italian spirit were of totally different origin (as _e.g._ Hermes and Mercury, Kronos and Saturn), provided that some point of resemblance, in attribute or function, could be discovered between them. It was only one, and the least important of Hermes' functions, to protect traders, but it was quite enough to lead to the identification of the Greek god with the Italian spirit of gain (_Mercurius_, from _merces_). The case of Heracles, however, presented more difficulty; he was a hero, and the very conception of a hero was new to the Italians. Being new, it was, not unnaturally, misunderstood. The nearest parallel which Italian religion offered to a being who was in a way a man and yet was also a sort of god was the genius, who also was in a way the man himself, and yet was worshipped like a god. Heracles, therefore, was identified with the genius, his name was Latinised into the form _Hercules_ (cf. _Æsculapius_, from _Asclepios_), and the cults of the two were amalgamated. This amalgamation is the source and the explanation of some of Plutarch's _Roman Questions_. Plutarch was puzzled by the fact that on the one hand some elements in the cult of Hercules had counterparts in the worship of the Greek god, while on the other hand there were elements which received no explanation from a comparison of the cult of the Greek Heracles. Thus Plutarch is surprised to find an altar common to Hercules and to the Muses (_R. Q._ 59); but this is simply a loan from the ritual of the Greek Heracles, Musagêtês. On the other hand, as Plutarch informs us (_R. Q._ 60), there was an altar of Hercules from which women were excluded. This is a non-Greek element in the cult of Hercules, with which we may safely compare the fact, that whereas a man might swear "by his Hercules," a woman might not. Here the imported god has taken the place of the native genius both in the oath and at the altar; for the reason why the oath "me hercule" was restricted to men is that, until Hercules and the genius were identified, a man swore by his genius and a woman by her Juno. Again, in the time before Italy was invaded by the gods of Greece, in the time when temples were as yet unknown, the genius was worshipped and invoked, like other spirits, in the open air; and even after the Italians had learned from the Greeks that the gods were shaped in the likeness of men, and, like men, must have houses, an oath was felt to be more sacred and more binding if taken in the open air in the old fashion, than if sworn in the new way under a roof.[52] Eventually, however, the old custom died out, and in Plutarch's day it was only children who were told that they must go out of doors if they wanted to swear "by Hercules" (_R. Q._ 28). Plutarch's attention was also arrested by the custom of giving tithes to Hercules (_R. Q._ 18). The practice is undoubtedly purely and characteristically Italian; but there is no evidence to show whether it was ever the custom to offer tithes to the genius. Another point, however, which is noted by Plutarch (_R. Q._ 90) in the cult of Hercules, may be more satisfactorily explained. When sacrifice was being offered to Hercules, no dog was suffered _to be seene, within the purprise and precinct of the place where the sacrifice is celebrated_. Now, if Hercules represents the genius, and if the dog was the shape in which a departed spirit appears, then the danger lest the genius should be tempted away by the Manes is great enough to account for the prohibition.

This identification of Heracles with the genius shows in a striking way how far the Italians were from having reached the belief in personal individual gods at the time when Greek religion found its way into Italy, and how artificially Greek polytheism was superimposed on native beliefs. There were as many _genii virorum_ as there were living men, and yet they were identified with Heracles.[53] To the Italian convert, doubtless, it seemed nothing strange that every man should have his Hercules; while his Greek teacher probably never fully realised the catechumen's point of view.

The case is parallel to that of Hestia and Vesta. Both before and after the appearance in Italy of the anthropomorphised Hestia, every Roman household revered its own "hearth-spirit;" yet this class of spirits came to be identified with the personal individual goddess from Greece. Doubtless, also, in course of time Romans who shook off animism and became true polytheists explained the relation between their "hearth-spirits" and the State-goddess by regarding the former as so many manifestations of the latter. But it is, I submit, a mistake on the part of modern mythologists to accept this piece of late theology as primitive—unless, indeed, we are also prepared to say that the Lares were regarded as so many manifestations of one Lar, or all the many Manes as manifestations of one dead man. The _genii virorum_, at any rate, were not, in the first instance, so many manifestations of Hercules: on the contrary, they existed (in Italy), to begin with, and Heracles afforded them a collective name and a Greek cult.

In the same way, I submit, the original Italian Juno was no Nature-deity, no moon-goddess—the name was that of a class of spirits, like the correlative term _genii virorum_. There were many Junones, as there were many fauns in Italy, many satyrs and nymphs in Greece, many Pucks and fairies in England. When the Italians learnt that Hera was the goddess under whose protection the Greek women were, they naturally thought of the Juno who was the guardian-spirit of each Italian woman, and applied to Juno the cult and myths that belonged to Hera. Hence the answer to Plutarch's question, why were the months sacred to Juno? (_R. Q._ 77). Because they were sacred to Hera.

But there were other spirits whom Italian women invoked besides their Junones, such as Juga, who yoked man and wife, Matrona, Pronuba, Domiduca, Unxia, Cinxia, Fluonia, Lucina, and other departmental spirits or _indigetes_, whose names appear in the _Indigitamenta_. These spirits, when once Juno had become a personal individual deity, came to be explained as special manifestations of the goddess, who was consequently called Juno Juga, Juno Matrona, &c.[54]

VI. DI INDIGETES.

Before Greek gods and myths were known to them, the Italians worshipped not only Lares, Manes, Genii, and Junones, but also the spirits known as Di Indigetes. These spirits were not conceived in human or in animal form. They had not human parts or passions. They did not form a community. They had no common abode. There is nothing in Italian religion corresponding to the Olympus of Greek mythology. They did not marry or give in marriage. Above all, what distinguishes them both from Greek gods and from the tree-spirits, which also were worshipped by the Italians, is that they were rather _numina_ or forces than beings. They were the forces which regulated and controlled all human actions, psychological and physiological, and through which all the work of man's hands could alone be brought to a favourable issue. When, however, we come to examine these _numina_, we find that the name of the _Indiges_ is simply the name of the action which he controls: the _Indiges_ of sowing is Saturnus; of remembering, Minerva; of suckling, Rumina, and so on. It is a canon of savage logic that he who possesses the name of a person or thing has that person or thing in his power; hence the Roman's belief that he could control any process, psychical or physical, if only he could put a name to it. This primitive form of magic was organised by the Roman State. The pontiffs were intrusted with the duty of drawing up catalogues (_indigitamenta_) of all the stages and processes of a man's life, from his begetting and birth to his death and burial; and as the State was but a community of farmers, similar catalogues were made of all the agricultural operations by which crops are raised. To be effectual, it was necessary that these lists should be complete. As the Roman could avert or remedy any evil by simply naming the proper spirit, it was essential that his roll of spirits should have no omissions. Then, if he were in doubt what spirit to name, he could make assurance doubly sure by naming all.

Let it not be imagined that this State-organised magic, though it appear to us inconsistent with civilisation, is mere matter of inference, or belongs purely to pre-historic times. Not only did it survive the introduction of polytheism, it was a firm article of Roman faith in the most glorious days of the Republic, and until B.C. 211 or later, the belief was so living as to give birth continually to fresh spirits, as fresh departments of human activity were opened up.[55] Nor did it cease then. It changed, but it did not die. In the worship of such abstractions as Fortuna, Spes, Juventas, Concordia, Pietas, Libertas, Felicitas, Annona, &c., we have evidence that abstract names exercised as great a hold over the minds of Romans of the Empire as they had over the earliest Italians.

On some _indigetes_ Greek cults and myths were grafted, and these _numina_, which were in truth but _nomina_, henceforth lived as gods. Mercurius was declared to be Hermes. Minerva, the spirit of memory, was seen to be Athênê, the goddess of wisdom. Saturnus was identified with Kronos, and was henceforth worshipped in the Greek fashion with uncovered head (_R. Q._ 13). Opis was identified with Dêmêtêr, Venus with Aphroditê, and Libitina, the _numen_ of funerals, was interpreted, by a pedantic etymological confusion with Libentina, as a bye-name of the new goddess (_R. Q._ 23). The _indiges_ Liber[56] was recognised in Dionysius Eleutherios (_R. Q._ 104).

In all these cases the identification proceeded on a fancied resemblance in name or an actual similarity of function. There seems to be only one instance of identification based on similarity of cult, that of the Roman Matuta and the Greek Leucothea. According to Plutarch (_R. Q._ 16) maid-servants were excluded from the temples of both, except when _the Dames of Rome, bringing in thither one alone and no more with them, fall to cuffing and boxing her about the eares and cheeks_. Here the servant is the scapegoat, to whom are transferred the evils which may or might afflict the free women of the community, and the beating is done for purification. It is just conceivable that the Greek cult may have been borrowed by the Romans; but the use of a scapegoat and of beating in this way is so wide-spread over all the world, and so deeply seated in European folk-lore, that it is difficult to imagine it was unknown to the Romans. As a matter of fact, even in the _Roman Questions_, without going further, we have indications that both practices were known in Italy. In _R. Q._ 20 a myth is given, the earlier form of which is to be found in Macrobius (_S._ i. 12), who states that the Bona Dea was on a day scourged with myrtles. On the principle that customs often give rise to myths but cannot be originated by them, we may infer that the representative, or else the worshippers of the Bona Dea, were purified by scourging. Still less can it be doubted after Mannhardt's exhaustive investigation (_Myth. Forsch._, pp. 72 _ff._), that the Luperci, described in _R. Q._ 68, drove out the evil spirits of disease, sterility, &c., by the blows from their scourges. Again, the expulsion of evil tends in many places to become periodic; a day or season is devoted annually to the driving out of all devils and evil spirits, after which the community is expected to live sober and clean. The community, not unnaturally, indulges in a kind of carnival immediately before this season, and allows itself all sorts of license: slaves behave as though they were masters, men dress up in women's clothes, &c. This, presumably, is the explanation of the fact related by Plutarch (_R. Q._ 55), that _upon the Ides of Januarie, the minstrels at Rome who plaied upon the hautboies, were permitted to goe up and downe the city disguised in women's apparell_.[57]

Though the influence of Hellenic religion failed to transform the many other _indigetes_ into gods, still it affected their cult in other ways. For one thing, it provided them now for the first time with temples or chapels. This innovation was doubtless found strange by the folk to whom the fashionable ideas from Hellas penetrated slow and late. In the case of Carmenta it must have seemed particularly strange. Carmenta was one of the several _indigetes_ whose power was manifested in the various processes of gestation;[58] and she was invoked as Porrima (Prorsa or Antevorta) or Postverta, according as the child came into the world head or foot foremost. From the mention of a _saxum Carmentæ_,[59] near which was the _porta Carmentalis_, and near which the temple in question was erected, we may venture to infer that this rock was originally the local habitation of the spirit. Why then needed she to have a temple built? This was a point which, to the popular mind, required explanation; and a popular explanation was accordingly forthcoming, which has fortunately been preserved to us by Plutarch. It starts from a folk-etymology or confusion between the name Carmenta and the word _carpenta_, meaning "coaches," and may be read at length in _R. Q._ 56.

There remains one other _indiges_ who is mentioned in the _Romane Questions_—Rumina (_R. Q._ 57) the _numen_ of suckling. As the temple of Carmenta was erected near the _saxum Carmentæ_, so the _sacellum_ of Rumina was built near the _ficus Ruminalis_; and as we may conjecture that the rock was in the nature of a fetich, so we may infer that Rumina was a tree-spirit. It is easy to understand why a fig-tree was chosen as the abode of the spirit of suckling; the sap of this tree resembles milk and was known to the Romans as _lac_. The fact reported by Plutarch,[60] that milk, not wine, was offered in the cult of Rumina, is quite in accord with the principles of sympathetic magic.

The worship of this spirit bears every mark of hoar antiquity, and it was worked into the legend of the foundation of Rome by the device of making the wolf suckle the twins under the _ficus Ruminalis_.

VII. TREE AND FIELD CULTS.

Whenever two peoples come into contact with each other for the first time, a comparison of religions is set up; and one of the first-fruits of this earliest exercise of the comparative study of religions is that identification of gods and borrowing of cults and myths to which the term "syncretism" is applied. The part played by syncretism in the history of Italian religion is of singular importance: the Italian's misty, vaporous belief in abstract, impersonal spirits was precipitated into premature polytheism by the introduction of the anthropomorphic gods of Greece. Fortunately, the process being premature, was, and to the end remained, incomplete; and we are therefore able to employ the survivals from the older form of belief so as to form some idea of the original Italian religion. To the last, many spirits resisted the individualising process, which is the essence and condition of polytheism: the Lares and the Manes not only never became gods, but none of them was dignified by a proper name, or attained even so much individuality as Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Not can such general abstract appellations as Bona Dea, Dea Dia, be regarded as personal names, _i.e._, as the names of definite, individual, personal beings: they have not the personality of Venus or Vulcan, and yet they were the beings whom the people at large worshipped in preference to the State-gods, whose cult and myths were fashionably Hellenised.

She who, under the influence of Greek religion, became the goddess Diana, was originally a tree-spirit, having no personal name, but known only by an appellation as general and abstract as that of Bona Dea. The proof that the qualities and attributes of the Greek goddess Artemis were attached by syncretism to the Italian tree-spirit is brought to light by two of Plutarch's penetrating questions (_R. Q._ 3 and 4), why harts' horns are set up in all the temples of Diana save that on Mount Aventine, in which are ox-horns? and why men are excluded from one particular temple of the same goddess? These differences in cult obviously point to the worship of different goddesses under the same name; and, as a matter of fact, we know first that harts were sacred to the Greek goddess, Artemis, whereas the genuine Italian Diana was the goddess of oxen; next, we know that the identification of Artemis and Diana was effected by Servius Tullius.[61] To understand the exclusion of men from the temple in the Patrician Street, however, we must inquire into the nature of the Italian Diana. With this object, we may either assume that the pro-ethnic Aryans were polytheists, and that therefore the primitive Italians also worshipped Nature-gods; in which case, starting from the etymology of the word Diana (from the root _div_, "shine"), we must either at once make Diana a moon-goddess,[62] and thus account for the fact that she was a goddess of child-birth, and therefore men were excluded from her temple. But this seems improbable even to a writer in Roscher's _Lexikon_ (Birt), who very properly notes (p. 1007) that "it is doubtful whether the belief that the moon influenced child-birth can be shown to be Italian." Birt, therefore, interprets the name to mean "the bright goddess," _i.e._, the goddess of bright daylight, and boldly writes it down as a matter of course that the first attribute of a daylight or sky goddess is her close relation to vegetable nature, especially woods and forests. Those who find this mortal leap beyond their power to follow, and who prefer to argue to the original nature of the goddess from what we know of her cult as a matter of fact, rather than from hypotheses as to the Nature-myths of the primitive Aryans, will note first that her name is as purely general and abstract as that of the Dea Dia or the Bona Dea, and means simply a bright spirit, or possibly simply a spirit. Next, wherever Diana was worshipped in Italy, she was originally worshipped in woods and groves, _e.g._, in the forests on Mount Tifata, Mount Algidus at Anagnia, Corne, and Aricia. Indeed, in Aricia the place of her worship was simply called _Nemus_, and the goddess herself plain _Nemorensis_. In the next place, her worship is frequently associated with that of Silvanus,[63] who is plainly a wood-spirit, and who is also a patron-spirit of domestic cattle.[64] From this we may venture to class her with the "agrestes feminæ quas silvaticas vocant" of Burchard of Worms:[65] she is a wood-spirit who became a goddess because of her likeness to the Greek Artemis. Her connection with child-birth does not indicate that she was a moon-goddess. Roman women in primitive times, like Swedish women, "twined their arms about a tree to ensure easy delivery in the pangs of child-birth; and we remember how, in our English ballads, women, in like time of need, 'set their backs against an oak.'"[66] Finally, the annual washing and cleansing of the head, which Plutarch mentions in _R. Q._ 100, was done on a day sacred to Diana, probably because, on the one hand, women felt that they were under her protection specially, while, on the other, so great is the sanctity of the head amongst primitive peoples,[67] that washing it is not to be undertaken lightly: "the guardian spirit of the head does not like to have the hair washed too often, it might injure or incommode him."[68]

The _Romane Questions_ afford another instance in which syncretism has obscured the original nature of an Italian field-spirit, and in which the cult of the Hellenised deity still betrays the primitive object of worship. In the pages of Virgil, Mars has so completely assumed the guise of the Greek Ares, that if we had only the verses and the mythology of the court-poet to instruct us, we could never even suspect that Mars had other functions than those of a war-god. When, however, we turn from myth to cult, and are confronted by the ceremony of the October horse, described in _R. Q._ 97, we find, that though Mars was sung as "Lenker der Schlachten," he was worshipped as the spirit that makes the corn to grow. At Rome the corn-spirit was represented as a horse, as it still is amongst the peasants of Europe, not only near Stuttgart, but in our own country, in Hertfordshire and in Shropshire. The fructifying power of the spirit is supposed in modern folk-lore and in Africa, as it was at Rome, to reside specially in the animal's tail, which therefore was preserved over the hearth of the king's house, in order to secure a good harvest next year. The antiquity of this custom at Rome, and the fact that it dates from long before the Romans knew anything of the Greek Ares, are shown by the fight for the horse's head waged between the inhabitants of the two wards, the Via Sacra and the Subura, a fight which shows that the ceremonial goes back to a time when the Subura and Rome were separate and independent villages.

In connection with the killing of the corn-spirit, we may note a passage of the _Romane Questions_ (63) which has not yet taken its place in modern works on the subject. Speaking of the _rex sacrorum_, Plutarch says, "Neere unto _Comitium_, they use to have a solemn sacrifice for the good estate of the citie; which, so soone as ever this king hath performed, he taketh his legs and runnes out of the place as fast as ever he can." Necessary as it was, according to primitive notions, that the vegetation-spirit should be, as it were, decanted into a new vessel, when the animal in which he was for the time residing was threatened with infirmity and decay, still the killing of the sacred animal was a dangerous and semi-sacrilegious act. Hence in Greece, the man who killed the ox in the sacrifice known as the _bouphonia_ ran away as soon as he had felled the animal, and was subsequently tried for murder, but was acquitted on the ground that the axe was the real murderer; and so the axe was found guilty and cast into the sea. The Roman _regifugium_ is obviously a fragment of a similar rite. The folk-explanation treated it as a symbol commemorative of the expulsion of the Tarquinii.

VIII. MAN-WORSHIP.