The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 17

_l.u.s.trare_, _l.u.s.tratio_, are words which, as I think, belong to an age of religion, that is, according to our formula, of effective desire to be in right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the Universe.

In other processes which are usually called purificatory, magic seems to survive: the word _februum_, from which comes the name of our second month, meant an object with magical potency, such as water, fire, sulphur, laurel, wool, or the strips of the victims sacrificed at the Lupercalia, and the verb _februare_ meant to get rid of certain unwholesome or miasmatic influences by means of these objects.[441] What was the really primitive idea attached to these words need not concern us now; but Varro, and Ovid following him, explicitly explain them as meaning _purifying_ agents and processes,[442] from which we may infer that they had a magical power to produce certain desired conditions, or to protect from evil influences, like charms and amulets. But _l.u.s.trare_ and _l.u.s.tratio_ seem to belong to an age when the thing to be driven or kept away is rather spiritual mischief, and when the means used are sacrifices and prayers, with processional movement.

What is the original meaning of the word _l.u.s.trare_? It seems to be a strong form of _luere_; and _luere_ is explained by Varro as equivalent to _solvere_.[443] The word _l.u.s.trum_, he says, _i.e._ the solemn five-yearly ceremony in the Campus Martius, is derived from _luere_ in the sense of _solvere_, to pay; because every fifth year the contract-moneys for the collection of taxes and for public undertakings were paid into the treasury through the censors. Servius,[444] doubtless following him, explains such expressions as _peccata luere_, _supplicium luere_, on the same principle--in the sense of payment, just as we speak of paying the penalty. We might thus be tempted to fancy that the root-idea of _l.u.s.trare_ is to perform a duty and so get rid of it, as we do in paying for anything we buy; but this would be to misapprehend the original meaning of the word as completely as Varro did when he explained _luere_ by reference to the payments of contractors. Varro and Servius do, however, suggest the right clue; they see that the idea lurking in the word is that of getting rid of something, but they understand that something in the light, not of primitive man's intelligence, but of the duty of man in a civilised State. What exactly it was that was to be got rid of is a more difficult question; but all that we have so far learnt about the early religious ideas of the Romans strongly suggests that they were in what we may call an advanced _animistic_ stage of religious ideas, and that whatever may have been the notion of their primitive ancestors, they themselves, in these rites as we know them, saw the means of getting rid of and so keeping away hostile spirits. A French sociologist, M. van Gennep, whose book _Les Rites de pa.s.sage_ I have read with great interest, has kindly written me a long letter in which he insists that this animistic interpretation of _l.u.s.tratio_ is really superfluous, and that the idea of separation alone, _i.e._ of separation between sacred and profane, without any reference to spirits or _dei_, is a fully sufficient explanation. So no doubt it may be among many savage peoples; but he would probably allow that as a people advances from one stage of superst.i.tion to another, while it retains in outline the scheme of its rites, it will apply new meanings to them in keeping with the changes in its mental att.i.tude.

This is one of the most interesting processes with which modern research has been occupied; we are now familiar with the adoption of pre-Christian ceremonies, with a complete change of meaning, in the ritual of the Christian Church. These very processions of _l.u.s.tratio_, which had already been once metamorphosed in an animistic period, were seized upon by the Roman Church with characteristic adroitness, adapted to its ritual, and given a new meaning; and the Catholic priest still leads his flock round the fields with the prayers of the _Litania maior_ in Rogation week, begging a blessing on the flocks and herds, and deprecating the anger of the Almighty.[445]

But let us now pa.s.s briefly in review the more important of these rites of l.u.s.tration and compare them with each other; we shall find the essential features the same in all of them.

The first permanent difficulty of new settlers in Latium was to mark off their cultivated land from the forest or waste land beyond it, and so, as M. van Gennep would phrase it,[446] to make a margin of separation between the sacred and the profane, within which the sacred processes of domestic life and husbandry might go forward, undisturbed by dangers--human, spiritual, or what not--coming from the profane world without. The boundary was marked out in some material way, perhaps by stones (_cippi_) or posts, placed at intervals;[447] and thus "a fixed piece of ground is appropriated by a particular social group, so that if any stranger penetrated it he would be committing a sacrilege as complete as he would if he trespa.s.sed in a sacred grove or a temple."

This boundary-line was made sacred itself by the pa.s.sage round it (_l.u.s.tratio_) at some fixed time of the year, usually in May, when crops were ripening and especially liable to be attacked by hostile influences, of a procession occupied with sacrifice and prayer. The two main features of the rite, as formulated by Cato in his treatise on agriculture, are--1, the procession of the victims, ox, sheep, and pig (_suovetaurilia_), the farmer's most valuable property; 2, the prayer to Mars pater, after libations to Ja.n.u.s and Jupiter, asking for his kindly protection of the whole _familia_ of the farm, together with the crops of all kinds and the cattle within the boundary-line.[448] We are not expressly told that this procession followed the boundary throughout, but the a.n.a.logy of other l.u.s.trations forbids us to doubt it; and thus the rite served the practical purpose of keeping it clear in the memory,--a matter of the utmost importance, especially for the practical Roman. In Cato's formula the farmer's object is to ward off disease, calamity, dearth, and infertility; and it is Mars who is invoked, _i.e._ a great G.o.d who has long ago emerged from the crowd of impersonal spirits; but we may safely believe that the primitive farmer used other language, addressing the spirits of disease and dearth themselves; and we may guess, if we will, that again before that there was no invocation or sacrifice at all, but that the object was only to mark the boundary between land civilised and sacred and land uncivilised and profane.

As we have seen, the farms and homesteads of the early Latins were grouped together in a.s.sociations called _pagi_; and we can hardly doubt that these were subjected to the same process of _l.u.s.tratio_ as the farms themselves. We have no explicit account of a circ.u.mambulation in this case, but we have in the later poets several charming allusions to a _l.u.s.tratio pagi_, and it is of a rite of this kind that Virgil must have been thinking when he wrote the beautiful pa.s.sage in the first Georgic beginning "In primis venerare deos";[449] and the lines

terque novas circ.u.m felix eat hostia fruges, omnis quam chorus et socii comitentur ovantes, etc.,

clearly imply a procession with the object of keeping away harmful influences from the crops at a critical time. And when the city-state came into being we may be equally sure that its _ager_, so long at least as it was small enough to admit of such a processional ritual, was l.u.s.trated in the same way. In historical times this _ager_ had become too extensive, and there is no procession to be found among the duties of the Fratres Arvales as we know them when they were revived by Augustus; but we have not, of course, the whole of the "acta" of the Brethren, and even if we had, it would not be likely that we should find any trace of a practice which must have been dropped in course of time as the Roman territory increased. Let us go on to the beginnings of the city, where we shall find the same principle and practice applied in striking fas.h.i.+on.

As it was necessary to protect the homestead and its land by a sacred boundary, so the city had to be clearly marked off from all that was outside of it. Its walls were sacred, or, strictly speaking, a certain imaginary line outside of them called the _pomoerium_ was sacred. This is well shown in the traditional method of founding a city even in historical times, _e.g._ a _colonia_, as described by Varro, Servius, and Plutarch.[450] A white ox and a white cow were harnessed to a plough, of which the share must be made of bronze--a rule which shows at once the antiquity and the religious character of the rite, for iron, as we saw, was taboo in most religious ceremonies. A rectangular furrow was drawn where the walls of the city were to be; the earth was turned inwards to mark the future line of the wall, and the furrow represented the future _pomoerium_. When the plough came to the place where there was to be a gate, it was lifted over it, and the ploughing resumed beyond it. This probably meant, as Plutarch expressed it, that the walls (or rather the _pomoerium_), were sacred while the gates were profane; had the gates been holy, scruple would necessarily have been felt about the pa.s.sage in and out of them of things profane. Thus the _pomoerium_ was a boundary line between the sacred and the profane, like that of the farm; but in historical times it acquired a more definite religious meaning, for within it there could only dwell those deities who belonged to the city and its inhabitants, _i.e._ the _di indigetes_, and who were recognised as its divine inhabitants.[451] And only within its limits could the _auspicia_ of the city be taken.

We should naturally expect that this sacred boundary would have its holiness secured or revived by an annual _l.u.s.tratio_ like that of the farm and _pagus_; and so no doubt it was. But the memory of this survives only in the word _amburbium_, which, on the a.n.a.logy of _ambarvalia_, must mean a rite of this processional kind. Luckily we have definite knowledge of the real _l.u.s.tratio_ of a city in those ritualistic inscriptions of Iguvium which I have more than once referred to.[452] It is the _l.u.s.tratio_ of the _arx_, the citadel of Iguvium, which we may guess to have been the original _oppidum_ or germ of the historical city. The details are complex, and show clear traces of priestly organisation; but the main features stand out unmistakably. A procession goes round the _arx_ (_ocris Fisia_), with the _suovetaurilia_--ox, sheep, and pig--as in the Latin _l.u.s.tratio_; at each gate it stops, while sacrifice and prayer are offered on behalf of the citadel, the city, and the whole people of Iguvium. There were three gates, and each of them is the scene of sacrifice and prayer, because they are the weak points in the wall, and they need to be strengthened by annual religious operations; such at least is the most obvious explanation. Whether the Fratres Attiedii would have been able to explain it thus we may doubt; neither in the sacrificial ritual nor in the prayers, as recorded in the inscription, do we find any clear trace of a distinction between the sacred and the profane, or of the idea of a hostile spiritual world outside the sacred boundary. So far as we can judge from the prayers, the object is really a religious one, to implore the deities of the city to preserve it and all within it. The language of these prayers hardly differs from that in which a Christian Church of to-day asks for a blessing on a community.[453]

So far I have been speaking of the permanent separation of land or city by a sacred boundary line from the profane world without. But human beings _en ma.s.se_ might be subjected to the same process--an army, for example, at the opening of the season of war; and so, too, might its appurtenances--horses, arms, and trumpets. In the account of the census and _l.u.s.trum_ in the Campus Martius given by Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, who pa.s.sed some years in Rome in the time of Augustus, we find the _suovetaurilia_ driven three times round the a.s.sembled host and sacrificed to Mars. This was doubtless the early form of the political census, which had a military meaning and origin. But we have a more exact and reliable account of a similar rite in the Iguvian doc.u.ments, which contain instructions for the _l.u.s.tratio_ of the people apparently before a campaign.[454] So far as we can gather from the Umbrian text, the male population was a.s.sembled in a particular spot in its military divisions, and round this host a procession went three times; at the end of each circuit there was sacrifice and prayer to Mars and two female a.s.sociates of his power, the object of which, as we can read in the words of the prayer, was to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse its enemies, who were to be confounded and frightened and paralysed.

Here religion of a rude sort has been superimposed on the originally magical ceremonial. For the idea must have been that by drawing a "magic circle" around the host, which might have to march against enemies living far beyond the pale of the _ager Roma.n.u.s_ (or Iguvinus), where hostile magical influences might be brought to bear against them, they were in some mysterious way marked off, rendered "holy," and so protected against the wiles of the enemy. A later and animistic age would think of them as needing protection against hostile spirits, of whose ways and freaks they were of course entirely ignorant. Of these primitive ideas about the danger of entering hostile territory and of leaving your own, Dr. Frazer has collected some examples in his _Golden Bough_ (i. 304 foll.), both from savage tribes and from Greek usage. A single parallel from the pen of a Roman historian, which Dr. Frazer has not mentioned, may suffice us here. Livy tells us that the method in Macedonia was to march the whole host in spring between the severed limbs of a dog:[455] the principle is here the same as in Italy, but the method differs slightly. In each case some mysterious influence is brought to bear on the whole army without exception; but in the one case a line is drawn round it, in the other it pa.s.ses through the parts of an object which must have been supposed to be endowed with magical power.

And once more, in spring before the season of arms, all the belongings of the host were subjected to some process of the same kind. I have alluded to this in my lecture on the calendar, and need not now reproduce the evidence of the Equirria at the end of February and on March 14, or of the Quinquatrus on March 19, when the _l.u.s.tratio_ took place of the s.h.i.+elds (_ancilia_) of the Salii, the war-priests of Mars, and the Tubil.u.s.trium on March 23, which tells its own tale.[456] But I may recall the fact that the calendar supplies us also with evidence that on the return of the host to their own territory all these l.u.s.trations had to be repeated in order to rid men, horses, arms, and trumpets of such evil contagion as they might have contracted during their absence. It may be that one special object of l.u.s.tration after the return of an army was to rid it, with all belonging to it, of the taint of bloodshed, just as the Jewish warriors and their captives were purified before re-entering the camp.[457] But in the Roman pontifical law this idea is hardly discernible, and the only trace I can find of it is a statement of Festus that the soldiers who followed the general's car in a triumph wore laurel wreaths "ut quasi purgati a caede humana intrarent urbem."[458] I may add here that the pa.s.sage of a triumphing army through the Porta triumphalis, which was probably an isolated arch in the Campus Martius just outside the city wall,[459] most likely had as its original meaning the separation of the host from the profane world in which it had been moving; and the triumphal arches of later times, which were within the city, were thus developed architecturally from an origin which belongs to the region of magic.[460] To the same cla.s.s of ideas, if I am not much mistaken, belongs the familiar Italian practice of compelling a surrendered army to pa.s.s under the yoke. As Livy explains this when he first mentions it, it was symbolical of subjection: "ut exprimatur confessio subactam domitamque esse gentem";[461] and this was no doubt the idea in the minds of the historical Romans. But it may well have been that it had its root in a process which was supposed to deprive the conquered enemy of all dangerous contagion--to separate them from their own land and people before they came into peaceful contact with their conquerors.

A last word before I leave this part of my subject. Though it is interesting to try to get at the root-idea of these processes of _l.u.s.tratio_, we must remember that in the Rome of history they had lost not only such magical meaning as they ever had, but also much of the religious meaning which in course of time was superimposed upon it. The sacrifices and the prayers remained, but the latter were muttered and unheard by the people. And except in the country districts these ceremonies were more and more absorbed, as time went on, into the social, military, and political life of the community, as _e.g._ the l.u.s.tration of the host became a political census; or they tended to disappear altogether, like the _ambarvalia_ and perhaps the _amburbium_.

They grew up in the religious experience of the Romans, beginning with its very earliest and quasi-magical forms; but they came at last to represent that experience no longer, and when we meet with them in historical times it is impossible to ascribe to them any real influence on life and conduct. _l.u.s.tratio_ never in pagan Italy developed an ethical meaning as _catharsis_ did in Greece.[462] But meaningless as they were, the stately processions remained, and could be watched with pride by the patriotic Roman all through the period of the Empire, until the Roman Church adapted them to its own ritual and gave them, as we saw, a new meaning. As the cloud-shadows still move slowly over the hollows of the Apennines, so does the procession of the patron saint pa.s.s still through the streets of many an Italian city.[463]

NOTES TO LECTURE IX

[406] Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, p. 63.

[407] See Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ii. 615 foll.

[408] _C.I.L._ i. Nos. 43 foll.

[409] _C.I.L._ xiv. 2863. See _R.F._ p. 224, and Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 209.

[410] _Op. cit._ vol. i. p. 252; cp. 271.

[411] See Sir Alfred Lyall's _Asiatic Studies_, Series I. ch. vi. No one would call the vow of Aeneas, in _Aen._ vi. 69, a bargain with Apollo and the Sibyl.

[412] Marquardt, p. 266; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i.^2 594 foll. The ceremony is best described by Ovid, _Ex Ponto_, iv. 9. 5 foll. He is addressing the consul of the year from his place of exile:

at c.u.m Tarpeias esses deductus in arces, dum caderet iussu victima sacra tuo, me quoque secreto grates sibi magnus agentem audisset media qui sedet aede deus.

(II. 28 foll.)

[413] Valerius Maximus iv. 1. 10.

[414] A list of these is given in Aust, _De aedibus sacris populi Romani_ (Marpurg, 1889). A valuable work, which will be of service to us later on.

[415] Livy x.x.xvi. 2. 3.

[416] _Ib._ xxii. 10.

[417] _Ib._ sec. 6. The meaning is that if any one has stolen an animal which was intended to be dedicated, no blame attaches to the person so robbed; and that if a man performs his dedication on a day of ill omen unwittingly, it will hold good none the less.

[418] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 195.

[419] The fact that words like _reus_ and _d.a.m.natus_ were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow and to those who had performed it, _i.e._ as being liable like a defendant, and then released from that position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius says (iii. 2. 6) _se numinibus obligat_, as an accused person is _obligatus_ to the authorities of the State (Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, 189 foll.). It is the natural tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the original idea was really thought of as a contract, and we have only to reflect that the final act was a thank-offering to see the difference between the civil and the religious process.

[420] Livy v. 21.

[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the fifth book of _Res reconditae_ by one Sammonicus Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."

[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in Pauly-Wissowa.

[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori praetori...." Cp. Cic. _de Nat. deorum_, ii. 10, "at vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."

[424] See Munzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._; Soltau, _Die Anfange der rom.

Geschichtschreibung_, p. 48 foll.

[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Ca.s.sius, fragment, x.x.xv.

6; Ennius, _Ann._ vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment is the oldest reference to the event which we possess, and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."

[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect struck St. Augustine. In _Civ. Dei_, v. 18, he writes: "Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum sanguine suo placantibus Roma.n.u.s liberaretur exercitus,"

and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs.

I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on Cicero, _de Nat. deor._ ii. 3. 10.

[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 352, note 1.

[428] By Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 69 foll. This touching of the chin seems to be an example of that personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see, _e.g._, Westermarck, _op. cit._ i. 586. Decius makes himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching (as priest) the only part of his person which was exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O.

Weinrich, _Antike Heiligungswunder_, p. 63 foll., and Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a sacrificing priest.

[429] See above, p. 180.

[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates at length by examples of the wors.h.i.+p of the spear or sword among various peoples.

[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9.

Is it possible that it may have some reference to the fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the Latins?

[432] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however, the translator from the Umbrian is a.s.sisted by the Latin formulae we are discussing.

[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc.

This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C.

(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 257). The interesting feature in this _devotio_, used at the siege at Carthage, is that it is not himself whom the commander devotes--the common sense of the Romans had got beyond that--but the enemy as subst.i.tutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only G.o.ds invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes, while in the older formula it is the G.o.ds of Romans and Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called _Decius_ wrote: "Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck, p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word _eliciatur_ shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last pa.s.sage is that the parallel pa.s.sage in the Euripidean _Iph. in Aul._ (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant points down and up respectively in invoking them, as also in the _devotio_ of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii.

6), which was an abnormal _procuratio prodigii_.