painfully taken of him.$3 The priest of Jupiter and his taboos carry us back, beyond a doubt, into the far-away dim history of primitive Latium. By the time the eternal city was founded on the Tiber, he must have been already practically obsolete. My suggestion is that he is the representative in the Roman religious system of another and more primitive system which existed in Latium, probably at Alba, where Jupiter was worshipped on the mountain from time immemorial. When the strength of Latium was concentrated at the best strategical point on the Tiber, the priest of Jupiter was transferred to the new city, because he was too "precious" to be left behind, though even then a relic of antiquity. There he became what he was throughout Roman history, a practically useless personage, about whom certain sacred traditions had gathered, but placed in complete subjection to the new legal and religious king, and afterwards to the Pontifex maximus.34 If there be any truth in this and I believe it to be a legitimate inference from the legal position of this Flamen, and his permanent state of taboo-then I think we may see a great religious change in the era of the "calendar of Numa." Inspired with new ideas of the duty and destiny of the new city of the four regions, a priest-king, doubtless with the help and advice of a council, according to the true Roman fashion, put an end for ever to the reign of the old magician-kingship, but preserved the magician-king as a being still capable of wonder-working in the eyes of the people. As religious law displaced magic in the State ritual, so the new kings, with their collegia of legal priests, pontifices and augurs, neutralised and gradually destroyed the prestige of the effete survivor of an age of barbarism. NOTES TO LECTURE V. 1. Kornemann, op. cit. p. 87; Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 230 foll.; Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. p. 790, note 1. For the festival to propitiate the deities concerned with the fertilisation of man, beast, and crop, and with the safety and efficacy of the host in its struggle with the enemies of the city. The Roman people grew up, in their city life as in the life of the family, in self-restraint, dignity, and good order, confident in the course of cura and caerimonia, itself decent and stately, if soulless, which the religious authorities had drawn up for them. We should naturally like to know something about those authorities, who thus placed the religion of the State on a comparatively high level of ritualistic decency, if not of theological subtlety. The Romans themselves attributed the work to a priest-king, Numa Pompilius, and probably their instinct was a right one. Names matter little in such matters; but there is surely something in the universal Roman tradition of a great religious legislator, something too, it may be, in the tradition that he was a Sabine, a representative of the community on the Quirinal which had been embodied in the Roman city before the calendar was drawn up, and of the sturdy, serious stock of central Italy, which retained its virtus longer than any other Italian people. We are quite in the dark as to all this, unless we can put any kind of confidence in the traditional belief of the Romans themselves. But there is one point on which I should like to make a suggestion-a new one so far as I know. Numa was said to have been the first Flamen Dialis; but that is absolutely impossible, for the ancient taboos on that priesthood would have made it impossible for him to become supreme legislator. who could hardly leave his leave the city, and was at restrictions on his activity, magician-kings who make rain and do other useful things, but would lose their power if they were exposed to certain contingencies; the number of possible contingencies increases till the unfortunate owner of the powers becomes powerless by virtue of the care SO Evidently this Flamen, own house, might never every turn hedged in by was a survival of those painfully taken of him.33 The priest of Jupiter and his taboos carry us back, beyond a doubt, into the far-away dim history of primitive Latium. By the time the eternal city was founded on the Tiber, he must have been already practically obsolete. My suggestion is that he is the representative in the Roman religious system of another and more primitive system which existed in Latium, probably at Alba, where Jupiter was worshipped on the mountain from time immemorial. When the strength of Latium was concentrated at the best strategical point on the Tiber, the priest of Jupiter was transferred to the new city, because he was too "precious" to be left behind, though even then a relic of antiquity. There he became what he was throughout Roman history, a practically useless personage, about whom certain sacred traditions had gathered, but placed in complete subjection to the new legal and religious king, and afterwards to the Pontifex maximus.34 If there be any truth in this and I believe it to be a legitimate inference from the legal position of this Flamen, and his permanent state of taboo-then I think we may see a great religious change in the era of the "calendar of Numa." Inspired with new ideas of the duty and destiny of the new city of the cur regions, a priest-king, doubtless with the help and advice of a council, according to the true Roman fashion, put an end for ever to the reign of the old magician-kingship, but preserved the magician-king as a being still capable of wonder-working in the eyes of the people. As religious law displaced magic in the State ritual, so the new kings, with their collegia of legal priests, pontifices and augurs, neutralised and gradually destroyed the prestige of the effete survivor of an age of barbarism. NOTES TO LECTURE V. 1. Kornemann, op. cit. p. 87; Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 230 foll.; Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. p. 790, note 1. For the festival of the Septimontium, Varro, L.L. vi. 24; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 69; Fowler, R.F. p. 265 foll. This festival does not appear in the calendar, as not being "feriae populi, sed montanorum modo " (Varro, l.c.). There are some interesting remarks on the relation between agricultural life and the origin of towns in von Jhering's Evolution of the Aryan (Eng. trans.), p. 86 foll., with special reference to Rome. 2. Von Duhn in J.H.S. xvi. 126 foll. The latest research (Korte in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Etrusker," p. 747) concludes that the arrival of the Etruscans on the west coast of Italy cannot be safely put earlier than the eighth century. 3. Hülsen - Jordan, Rom. Topogr. iii. 153. In a brief but masterly paper in the publications of the American School at Rome, 1908, p. 173 foll., J. B. Carter deals with the whole problem of the pomoerium and the pre-Servian city. 4. Wissowa, R.K. p. 27. 5. In C.I.L. i.2, p. 297 foll. See R.F. p. 14 foll. 6. See the Fasti in R.F. p. 21 foll.; or in Wissowa, R.K., at end of the book. 7. R.F. p. 38 foll. Marindin's article "Salii," Dict. of Antiqq., is very useful and sensible. There is little doubt that the dress and armour of the Salii represented that of the primitive Latin warrior, calculated to frighten away evil spirits as well as enemies, and that their dances in procession had some object of this kind. It is noticeable that there were two gilds or collegia of them belonging to the Palatine and Quirinal cities respectively; and they are also found at Tibur, Alba, Lanuvium, and other Latin cities. 8. Or 15th (Ides), according to the conjecture of Wissowa; see R.F. p. 44 and R.K. p. 131. It is almost incredible that this should originally have been on a day of even number, contrary to the universal rule of the Fasti. 9. See below, p. 212 foll., for further consideration of this socalled purification. 10. R.K. p. 131. 11. See below, p. 217. 12. R.K. p. 131. 13. Popular Religion and Folklore of India, ii. 51. For the sacredness of the number three and its multiples, see Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter, p. 40 foll.; but he limits it too much to chthonic religious ritual. See also H. Usener, "Dreizahl," in Rheinisches Museum, vol. 58, pp. 1 foll., 161 foll., and 321 foll. There is a summary of the results of these papers in Gruppe's Mythologische Literatur, 1898-1905, p. 360 foll. I may also refer to my friend Prof. Goudy's very interesting Trichotomy in Roman Law (Oxford, 1910), p. 8 foll. 14. By von Domaszewski in Archiv for 1907, p. 333 foll. The learned author's reasoning is often based on mere hypotheses as to the meaning of the festivals or the gods concerned in them, and his ideas as to the agricultural features of the months July, August, December seem to me doubtful; but the paper is one that all students of the calendar must reckon with. 15. Marquardt, Privatleben, pp. 459 and 569 foll. 16. For the festivals mentioned in the following paragraphs see R.F., s.v., and Wissowa, R.K., section 63. 17. "St. George and the Parilia," in Revue des études ethnographiques et sociologiques for Jan. 1908. I owe my knowledge of this admirable study to the kindness of its author. 18. Frazer, G.B. ii. 318 foll. 19. Varro, L.L. v. 64, says, "Ab satu dictus Saturnus." And in Augustine (Civ. Dei, vi. 8) he is quoted as holding the opinion "quod pertineat Saturnus ad semina, quae in terram de qua oriuntur iterum recidunt." He was probably the numen of the seedsowing (Saeturnus), and as his festival comes after the end of sowing, we may presume that he was the numen of the sown as well as of the unsown seed. In the article "Saturnus" in Roscher's Lexicon, which has appeared since the above note was written, Wissowa provisionally accepts Varro's etymology. 20. Festus, p. 245a, "Publica sacra quae publico sumptu pro populo fiunt, quaeque pro montibus, pagis, curiis, sacellis." article "Sacra" in Dict. of Antiqq. ii. 577. See 21. "Routine is the only safeguard of a people under a perfect autocracy" (Select Charters, Introduction, p. 19). 22. The annalists believed that the publication first took place in the year 304 B.C.: Livy ix. 46. Mommsen (Chronologie, p. 31) thought it possible that it had already been done by the Decemvirs in one of the two last of the XII. Tables, but again withdrawn. The object of keeping the Fasti secret was, of course, to control the times available for legal and political business. 23. This paragraph is abridged from a passage in the author's paper in the Hibbert Journal for 1907, p. 848. 24. See Anthropology and the Classics (Oxford, 1908), p. 44. 25. R.F. p. 241 foll. 26. Wissowa holds that it dates from the third century B.C.: Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to refute this view in the Classical Review for 1902, p. 115 foll., and Dr. Wissowa criticised my criticism in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, It is dealt with at length in R.F. p. 111 foll. See below, p. 222. 27. This is not exactly the view expressed in R.F. p. 315 foll., where I was inclined to adopt that of Mannhardt that the laughing symbolised the return to life after sacrificial death. I am now disposed to think of it as parallel with the ecstasy of the Pythoness and other inspired priests, or the shivering and convulsive movements which denote that a human being is "possessed" by a god |