Part 6

Crawley, op. cit. p. 436; Frazer, G.B. i. 403 foll. From this point of view Roman names need a closer examination than they have yet received. See, however, Marquardt, Privatleben der Roemer, pp. 10 and 81, and Mommsen, Roem. Forschungen, i. 1 foll. Marquardt must be wrong in stating (p. 10) that only the praenomen was given on the dies lustricus; children dying before that day usually, as he says on p. 82 note, have no name in inscriptions, and that ceremony must surely have introduced the child to the gens of its parents. Certainly that introduction had not to wait till the toga virilis was taken; though Tertull. de Idol. 16 looks at first a little like it. The same statement is made in the Dict. of Antiq., s.v. "nomen." Macr. Sat. i. 16. 36, and Fest. 120, simply speak of nomen.

Fowler, R.F. p. 56; De Marchi, op. cit. p. 176. For the primitive ideas about puberty, Crawley, Mystic Rose, ch. xiii. The idea of the Romans seems to have been simply that the child, who had so far needed special protection from evil influences (of what kind in particular it is impossible to say) by purple-striped toga and amulet (see below, p. 60), was now entering a stage when these were no longer needed. All notions of taboo seem to have vanished.

Marquardt, Privataltertuemer, p. 337 foll.

Serv. Aen. ii. 714, and especially iii. 64. Other references in Marq. op. cit. p. 338, note 5, and De Marchi, La Religione nella vita domestica, p. 190. For similar usages of prohibition see van Gennep, op. cit. ch. ii.

Festus, p. 3, "itaque funus prosecuti redeuntes ignem supragradiebantur aqua aspersi, quod purgationis genus vocabant suffitionem." For the possibly magic influence of these elements, see Jevons, op. cit. p. 70.

Frazer, G.B. i. 325, iii. 222 foll.; Jevons, p. 59.

Cato, R.R. 83, "mulier ad eam rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quomodo fiat."

Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 60. Dogs were also excluded (ib. 90); Gellius xi. 6. 2; Wissowa, R.K. p. 227; Fowler, R.F. p. 194, where the private and public taboos are compared.

Festus, s.v. "exesto." For similar taboos in Greece, Farnell in Archiv for 1904, p. 76.

Fowler, Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 143 foll. Cp. Westermarck, Origin, etc., vol. i. ch. xxvi., especially p. 652 foll.

G.B. i. 298 foll.

Festus, s.v. "exesto."

Buecheler, Umbrica, p. 94 foll. Cp. Livy v. 50, where it is said that, after the Gauls had left Rome, all the temples, quod ea hostis possedisset, were to be restored, to have their bounds laid down afresh (terminarentur) and to be disinfected (expiarentur). Digest, xi. 7. 36, "cum loca capta sunt ab hostibus, omnia desinunt religiosa vel sacra esse, sicut homines liberi in servitutem perveniunt; quod si ab hac calamitate fuerint liberata, quasi quodam postliminio reversa pristino statui restituerentur." Cp. Plutarch, Aristides, 20. A friend reminds me that Bishop Berkeley, when in Italy, had his bedroom sprinkled with holy water by his landlady.

See Marquardt, p. 420, notes 5 and 6. The verbenarius is mentioned in Serv. Aen. xii. 120, and Pliny N.H. xxii. 5. For the disinfecting power of verbena (myrtea verbena) see Pliny xv. 119, where it is said to have been used by Romans and Sabines after the rape of the Sabine virgins.

See Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 192 foll., based on the famous essay of Mommsen in his Roemische Forschungen, i. 319 foll. The passages quoted from Livy for the practice in early times (i. 45, v. 50) are not, of course, historical evidence; but we may fairly argue back from the more explicit evidence of later times, e.g. the Senatusconsultum de Asclepiade of 78 B.C. (C.I. Graec. 5879).

There is a good example of the feeling in modern Italy in a book called In the Abruzzi, by Anne Macdonell, p. 275. I have experienced it in remote parts of South Wales long ago. Moritz, the German pastor who travelled on foot in England towards the end of the eighteenth century, noted that even the innkeepers were constantly unwilling to take him in. His book was reprinted in Cassell's National Library some years ago.

See the very interesting chapter in The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. i. p. 570 foll., especially p. 590 foll. Dr. Westermarck aptly points out that hospitality is almost universal among "rude" peoples, and loses its hold as they become more civilised. M. van Gennep in his recently published work, Les Rites de Passage, has attempted to classify the various rites relating to taboo of strangers; see ch. iii., especially p. 38 foll.

Jevons, Introduction, p. 70.

Gellius x. 15. 8, "vinctum, si aedes eius introierit, solui necessum est." (In hot countries chains still usually, or in some degree, take the place of bolts and bars, e.g. in the Soudan, as I am told by an old pupil now in the Soudan civil service.) The regular Latin phrase for imprisonment is "in vincula conicere": Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "carcer."

Gellius, l.c.; Serv. Aen. ii. 57, a curious passage, in which the release of Sinon from his bonds by King Priam is compared with that of the prisoner who enters the flaminia (house of the Flamen Dialis). That there was something in the iron which interfered with the religious efficacy of the Flamen seems likely; cp. the rule that he might wear no ring unless it were broken, and have no knot about his dress. But the latter restriction suggests that binding may have been originally the object of the taboo (cp. Ovid, Fasti, v. 432), and that the iron taboo came in with the iron age. Appel, de Romanorum precationibus, p. 82, note 2, seems so to understand it. Cp. Eurip. Iph. Taur. 468, where Orestes and Pylades are unbound before entering the temple.

There has been much discussion of this question; I entirely agree with Wissowa (R.K. p. 354, where references are given for the opposite opinion) that there is no evidence for human sacrifice in the old Roman religion or law, except in the rule that a condemned criminal was made over to a deity (sacer), which may have been a legal survival of an original form of actual sacrifice. The alleged sacrifice by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius (Dio Cass. xliii. 24) is of the same nature as the sacrifice of captives to Orcus in Aen. xi. 81, i.e. it is outside of the civil life and religious law; this is shown in the latter case by the mention of blood in the ritual (caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas), and in the former by the beheading of the mutineers.

Mommsen, Strafrecht, p. 917 foll.; Livy x. 9; Cic. de Rep. ii. 31. 65. All other methods of execution were bloodless. Decollatio remained in use in the army (as in the case just mentioned), but the axe disappeared from the fasces in the city with the abolition of kingship. As further illustration of the dislike of all bloodshed, cp. the rule of XII. Tables, "mulieres genas ne radunto," i.e. at funerals, Cic. de Legibus, ii. 59, and Serv. Aen. iii. 67 from Varro, and v. 78. The gladiatorial ludi may have been a revival of an old custom akin to human sacrifice of captives in the field. See Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 304, note 3.

We may also note in this connection that there is no distinct trace of the blood-feud in old Roman law; see Zum aeltesten Strafrecht der Kulturvoelker, p. 38 (questions of comparative law suggested by Mommsen and answered by various specialists). Doubtless it once existed, but vanished at an early date.

Fowler, R.F. p. 242. The tail of the sacrificed horse was carried to the Regia, where the blood was allowed to drip on the sacred hearth (participandae rei divinae gratia), Festus, p. 178.

R.F. p. 311 foll., from Plutarch, Rom. 21.

For this practice in many ancient religions, and its substitute, the smearing of the stone with turmeric or other red stain, see Jevons, Introduction, p. 139 foll.; Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 415.

This is found in Zosimus ii. 1. 5; Diels, Sibyllinische Blaetter, 132, and 73 note. Cp. Virg. Aen. viii. 106; also a Greek rite.

G.B. ed. 2, i. 241 foll.

The bronze and iron ages, of course, overlap; see Helbig, Italiker in der Poebene, p. 78 foll.

Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 22 and 128 foll. Other examples are collected by Helbig, op. cit. p. 80.

Dion. Hal. iii. 45; Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 177. It may be as well to point out that iron, like wheat in the taboos of the Flamen, was considered dangerous, as being a novelty. The old Italian grain was not true wheat but far, which continued to be used in religious rites; R.F. p. 304, and Marquardt, Privatleben der Roemer, p. 399 foll.

Varro, L.L. vii. 84; Ovid, Fasti, i. 629; Petronius, Sat. 44. There are many parallels in Greek ritual.

See below, p. 146. Mr. Marett suggests to me a comparison with the rongo (sacred) of the Melanesians, and tapu as used of a place by them, i.e. set apart by a human authority; Codrington, Melanesians, p. 77.

Wissowa, R.K. p. 408 foll.; cp. 323 and notes.

The fullest account of this will be found in Marquardt, p. 262 foll. For the case of a man killed by lightning, see note 4 on p. 263; the body was not burnt but buried, and the grave became a bidental, and religiosum.

For the intricate pontifical law of burial-places see Wissowa, p. 409. The quotation from Masurius is in Gellius iv. 9. 8, "M. Sabinus in commentariis quos de indigenis composuit." The word sanctitas is here used merely by way of explanation and not in a technical sense; for which see Marq. p. 145 and references; but it seems to have had a special use in the cult of the dead. (See below, p. 470.)

Quoted by Macrobius, Sat. iii. 3. 8. For Sulpicius see Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 118 foll.

Festus, p. 278. This Aelius lived at the end of the Republican period, and belonged to the school of Sulpicius; Schanz, Gesch. der roem. Lit. i. pt. 2, p. 486.

e.g. the three days on which the mundus was open were all comitiales, though at the same time religiosi.

R.K. pp. 376, 377.

The authorities for the story are Verrius Flaccus, ap. Gell. v. 17, and Macrobius, Sat. i. 16. 21.

For the extent of the taboo see Gell. iv. 9. 5; Macr. i. 16. 18.

Gell. v. 17. 3 foll. (annalium quinto).

Festus, p. 278.

R.F. p. 151.

Wissowa, R.K. p. 377, note 6.

Cic. ad Qu. Fratr. ii. 4. 2.

Wissowa, R.K. pp. 187, 189.

R.K. p. 377. Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the multitudo imperitorum confused the dies religiosi and dies nefasti. The distinction is most clearly seen in the fact that on dies religiosi the temples were (or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was ill-omened (Gell., ib.), while on dies nefasti the latter was regular, such days being made over to the gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular ignorance with such words as prave and perperam.

See Prof. Rhys's paper read before the British Academy, "Notes on the Coligny Calendar," p. 33 and elsewhere.

Introduction, p. 65 foll.

Since writing this sentence I have read the paper by W. Otto on "Religio and Superstitio" in Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft, 1909, p. 533 foll.; in which at p. 544 he hints at a connection of religio with the practice of taboo. With some of his conclusions, however, I cannot agree. The same explanation of the origin of religio, i.e. in an age of taboo, has also been suggested since my lecture was written by Maximilianus Kobbert, De verborum "religio atque religiosus" usu apud Romanos, p. 31 (Koenigsberg, 1910).

LECTURE III

ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC

Taboo, the traces of which at Rome we examined in the last lecture, is, as we saw, closely allied to magic, even if it be not, as Dr. Frazer thinks, magic in a negative form. We have now to see what traces are to be found of magic in the proper or usual sense of the word—active or positive magic, as we may call it. By this we are to understand the exercise of a mysterious mechanical power by an individual on man, spirit, or deity, to enforce a certain result. In magic there is no propitiation, no prayer. "He who performs a purely magical act," says Dr. Westermarck, "utilises such mechanical power without making any appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being." Religion, on the other hand, is an attitude of regard and dependence; in a religious stage man feels himself in the hands of a supernatural power with whom he desires to be in right relation.

If we accept this distinction, as I think we may (though one school of anthropologists is hardly disposed to do so), it is plain that magical practices are of a totally different kind from religious practices, as being the result of a different mental attitude towards the supernatural; they belong to a ruder and more rudimentary idea of the relation of Man to the Power manifesting itself in the universe. True, they have their origin in the same kind of human experience, in the difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence, and his desire to overcome these; but unlike religion, magic is a wholly inadequate attempt to overcome them. This inadequacy was long ago well explained by Dr. Jevons. He showed that man in that early stage of his experience did not understand the true relation of cause and effect; that, "turned loose as it were among innumerable possible causes (of a given effect), with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his making the right choice were considerable." As a matter of fact he usually made the wrong one, and is still apt to do so. There is probably more magic going on behind the scenes even in civilised countries, and more especially both in Greece and Italy, than either men of science or men of religion have any idea of. In its various forms as they are now classified, e.g. contagious magic, and homoeopathic magic, the exercise of the mysterious will-power, real or imaginary, is to be found all the world over, accompanied usually with a spell or incantation which is believed to enforce and increase that power—a kind of telepathy, which seems to be the psychological basis, so far as there is one, of the whole system. In these rites the virtue resides in some action, which, together with the spell or incantation, enforces the desired result by calling out the will-power, or mana, if we adopt the convenient Melanesian word lately brought into use. Whatever percentage of psychological truth may lie at the root of such performances, it is obvious that they must in the main be wholly inadequate, and must constantly tend to pass into mere quackery and become discredited; and it was the special function of the religious organisation of early society to eliminate and discredit them.

But it was a long stage in the evolution of society before man arrived at a better knowledge of his relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe; before he reached the idea of a god or spirit realisable and nameable, and thus capable of being addressed, placated, worshipped. When this stage is reached, there supervenes almost always a strong tendency to regulate and systematise the methods of address, placation, and worship; and among some peoples, e.g. the Romans, for reasons which it is by no means easy to explain, this tendency is much stronger than among others. Wherever it has been strong, wherever these methods of putting oneself in right relation with the Power have been systematised by a central authority or priesthood, and thus made into religious law, there, as we might naturally expect, the performances and performers of magic have been most vigorously discountenanced and outlawed. The interests of religion and its officials are wholly antagonistic to those of magic and magicians. In civilised communities and in historical times magic is in the main individualistic, not social; magical ceremonies for the good of the community seem to be confined to races in a very early stage of development. The examples on which Dr. Frazer relies for his theory of the development of the public magician into a king are of this primitive kind, or are mere survivals of magic in a higher stage of civilisation—such survivals as there will always be among forms and ceremonies, of which it is man's nature to be tenacious. But religion, once firmly established, invariably seeks to exclude magic; and the priest does his best to discredit the magician, as claiming to exercise mysterious powers outside the pale of the legally recognised methods of propitiation and worship. As Dr. Tylor observed long ago, the more civilised the race, the more apt it is to associate magic with men of inferior civilisation. In the Jewish law, though magic was well known to the Jews and privately practised, there is no recognition of it; the magical books attributed to Solomon were suppressed, according to tradition, by the pious king Hezekiah. So too at Rome, where the outward forms of religion were also very highly systematised, magic, as it seems to me, was rigorously excluded from the State ritual, though it continued in use in private life under certain precautions taken by the State; in the few genuine examples of it in the rites belonging to the ius divinum (i.e. those used and sanctioned for the purposes of the community), it is nothing more than a survival of which the magical meaning was unknown to the writers from whom we hear of it.

A good example of such survivals is the curious ceremony of the aquaelicium, without doubt a genuine case of magical "rain-making"—one of the many inadequate and blundering attempts on the part of primitive man to obtain what he needs. Probably it may be classed under the head of "sympathetic magic," but the evidence as to what was done in the ceremony is not quite explicit enough to allow us to do this confidently. It was, of course, not included in the religious calendar, as it would be only occasionally called for, and could not be fixed to a day; but there is clear evidence that it was sanctioned by the State, for the pontifices took part in it, and the magistrates without the toga praetexta, and the lictors carrying the fasces reversed. A stone, which lay outside the walls near the Porta Capena, was brought into the city by the pontifices, so far as we can make out the details, and it has been conjectured that it was taken to an altar of Jupiter Elicius on the Aventine hard by, this cult-title of the god of the sky having possibly some relation to the technical name of the ceremony. What was done with the stone we unluckily do not know; but it has been reasonably conjectured that it was a hollow one, and that it was filled with water which was allowed to run over the edge, as a means of inducing the rain-god to suffer the heavens to overflow. It was called lapis manalis; and the epithet here can have nothing to do with the Manes, as in the case of another lapis manalis, of which I shall have a word to say later on, but must mean "pouring" or "overflowing." One or two other fragments of evidence point in the same direction, and I think we may fairly conclude that the rite was originally one of sympathetic magic—that as the stone overflowed, so the sky would pour down rain. In my Roman Festivals I have pointed out a remarkable parallel to this in the collections of the Golden Bough; in a Samoan village a stone represented the god of rain, and in a drought his priests carried it in procession and dipped it in a stream.

This parallel I owe to Dr. Frazer's wide knowledge of all such practices among savage peoples. But this ever helpful and friendly guide, in treating of the Jupiter Elicius concerned in this ceremony, has gone beyond the evidence, and attributed to the Romans another kind of magic of which I believe they were quite innocent. He has been led to this by his theory that kings were developed out of successful magicians. In his lectures on the early history of the Kingship he maintains that the Roman kings practised the magical art of bringing down lightning from heaven. "The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky.... Tullus Hostilius is reported to have met with the same end (as Salmoneus, king of Elis) in an attempt to draw down Jupiter in the form of lightning from the clouds." To support these statements Dr. Frazer quotes Pliny, Livy, Ovid, Plutarch, Arnobius, Aurelius Victor, and Zonaras—truly a formidable list of authorities; but without any attempt to discover where any of these late writers found the stories. Yet he had but to read Aust's admirable article "Jupiter" in the Mythological Lexicon to assure himself that legends which cannot be traced farther back than the middle of the second century B.C. cannot seriously be assumed to be genuinely Roman. Pliny happens to mention Calpurnius Piso as his authority; this was the man who is well known in Roman history as the author of the first lex de repetundis of the year 149 B.C., a good statesman, but as an annalist much given to indulging a mythological fancy. We happen to know that he wrote with happy confidence about the life and habits of Romulus, and a story about wine-drinking which he attributes to that king is obviously transferred to him from some more historical personage. Romulus would not drink wine one day because he was going to be very busy on the next. Then they said to him, "If we all did so, Romulus, wine would be cheap." "Nay, dear," he replied, "if every one drank as much as he wished; and that is exactly what I am doing." I quote the story simply as a good example of the way in which Roman historians could deal with their kings, and of the absolute necessity of acquainting oneself with their methods before building hypotheses upon their statements. I hardly need to add that another of Dr. Frazer's authorities, Arnobius, informs us that he took the story from the second book of Valerius Antias, a later writer than Piso, whose name is a byword even with the uncritical Livy for shameless exaggeration and mis-statement.