The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 2

Certain _places_ were also affected by the idea of taboo. In the later religious law of the City-state the sites of all temples, _i.e._ all places in which deities had consented to take up their abode, were of course holy; but this is a much more mature development, though it unquestionably had its root in the same idea that we are now discussing.

Such sites, as we shall see in a later lecture, were _loca sacra_, and _sacer_ is a word of legal ritual, meaning that the place has been made over to the deity by certain formulae, accompanied with favourable auspices, under the authority of the State.[61] But there were other holy places which were not _sacra_ but _religiosa_; and the word _religiosum_ here might almost be translated "affected by taboo."

Wissowa provides us with a list of these places, and this and the quotations he supplies with it are of the utmost value for my present subject.[62] They comprised, of course, all holy places which the State had not duly consecrated, and therefore some which hardly concern us here, such as shrines belonging to families and gentes, and temple-sites in the provinces of a later age. More to our purpose at this moment are the spots where thunderbolts were supposed to have fallen. Such spots were encircled with a low wall and called _puteal_ from their resemblance to a well, or _bidental_ from the sacrifice there of a lamb as a _piaculum_; the bolt was supposed to be thus buried, and the place became _religiosum_.[63] So, too, all burial-grounds were not _loca sacra_ but _loca religiosa_, technically because they were not the property of the state or consecrated by it; in reality, I venture to say, because the place where a corpse was deposited was of necessity taboo. Such places were _extra commercium_, and their sanct.i.ty might not be violated: "religiosum est," wrote the learned Roman Masurius Sabinus, "quod propter sanct.i.tatem aliquam _remotum et sepositum est_ a n.o.bis."[64] So, too, the great lawyer of Cicero's time, Servius Sulpicius, defines _religio_ as "quae propter sanct.i.tatem aliquam remota ac seposita a n.o.bis sit," where he is using _religio_ in the sense of a thing or place to which a taboo attaches.[65] And again, another authority, Aelius Gallus, said that _religiosum_ was properly applied to an object in regard to which there were things which a man might not do: "quod si faciat," he goes on, "adversus deorum voluntatem videatur facere."[66] These last words are in the language of the City-state; if we would go behind it to that of an earlier age, we should subst.i.tute words which would express the feeling or scruple, the _religio_, without reference to any special deity. Virgil has pictured admirably this feeling as applied to places, in describing the visit of Aeneas to the site of the future Rome under the guidance of his host Evander (_Aen._ viii. 347):--

hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit, aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis.

_iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis_ _dira loci_: iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant.

"hoc nemus, hunc," inquit, "frondoso vertice collem, (quis deus, incertum est) habitat deus."

This is a pa.s.sage on which I shall have to comment again: at present I will content myself with noting how accurately the poet, who of all others best understood the instincts of the less civilised Italians of his own day, has used his knowledge to express the antique feeling that there were places which man must shrink from entering--a feeling far older than the invention of legal _consecratio_ by the authorities of a City-state.

Lastly, the principle of taboo, or _religio_, if we use the Latin word, affected certain times as well as places. Just as under the _ius divinum_ of the fully-developed State certain spots were made over to the deities for their habitation and rendered inviolable by _consecratio_, so certain days were also appointed as theirs which the human inhabitants might not violate by the transaction of profane business. But I have just pointed out that the consecration of holy places in this legal fas.h.i.+on was a late development of a primitive feeling or _religio_; exactly the same, if I am not mistaken, was the case with regard to the holy days. These were called _nefasti_, and belong to the life of the State; but there were others, called _religiosi_, which I believe to have been tabooed days long before the State arose.

When we come to examine the ancient religious calendar, it will be found that I shall not then be called upon to deal with _dies religiosi_, for the very good reason that they are not indicated in that calendar--there is no mark for them as _religiosi_, and some of them are not even _dies nefasti_, as we might naturally have expected.[67] What, then, is the history of them? We may be able to make a fair guess at this by noting exactly what these days were; Dr. Wissowa has put them together for us in a very succinct pa.s.sage.[68] He begins the list with the 18th of Quinctilis (July), on which two great disasters had happened to Roman armies, the defeats on the Cremera and the Allia; and also the 16th, the day after the Ides, because, according to the legend, the Roman commander had sacrificed on that day with a view to gaining the favour of the G.o.ds in the battle. We may regard the story about the 18th as historical; but then we are told that _all_ days following on Kalends, Nones, and Ides were likewise made _religiosi_ (or _atri_, _vitiosi_, which have the same meaning) as being henceforward deemed unlucky by p.r.o.nouncement of senate and pontifices;[69] thus all _dies postriduani_, as they were called, were put out of use, or at any rate declared unlucky, for many purposes, both public and private, _e.g._ marriages, levies, battles, and sacred rites,[70] simply because on one occasion disaster had followed the offering of a sacrifice on the 16th of Quinctilis. It is difficult to believe that thirty-six days in the year were thus tabooed, by a Roman senate and Roman magistrates, in a period when the practical wisdom of the government was beginning to be a marked characteristic of the State. Some people, we are told, went so far as to treat the _fourth day before_ Kalends, Nones, and Ides in the same way; but Gellius declares that he could find no tradition about this except a single pa.s.sage of Claudius Quadrigarius, in which he said that the fourth day before the Nones of s.e.xtilis was that on which the battle of Cannae was fought.[71]

I am strongly inclined to suggest that the traditional explanation of the tabooing of these thirty-six, or possibly seventy-two days was neither more nor less than an aetiological myth, like hundreds of others which were invented to account for Roman practices, religious and other; and this supposition seems to be confirmed as we go on with the list of _dies religiosi_ as given by Wissowa. The three days--s.e.xtilis 24, October 5, November 8--on which the Manes were believed to come up from the underworld through the _mundus_ (to which I shall return later on) were _religiosi_;[72] so were those when the temple of Vesta remained open (June 7 to 15),[73] those on which the Salii performed their dances in March and October,[74] two days following the _feriae Latinae_ (a movable festival),[75] and the days of the Parentalia in February and the Lemuria in May, which were concerned with the cult and the memory of the dead.[76] Now the _religio_ or taboo on these days obviously springs either from a feeling of anxiety suggested by very primitive notions of the dead and of departed spirits; or in the case of the temple of Vesta, by some mystical purification or disinfection preparatory to the ingathering of the crops, which I noticed in my _Roman Festivals_ (p.

152 foll.); or again in the case of the Salii, by some danger to the crops from evil spirits, etc., which might be averted by their peculiar performances. In fact, all these _dies religiosi_ date as such, we may be pretty sure, from a very primitive period before the genesis of the City-state, and were not recognised--for what reason we will not at present attempt to guess--as _religiosi_ by the authorities who drew up the Calendar. Some of them appear in that calendar as _dies nefasti_, but not all; and I am entirely at one with Wissowa, whose knowledge of the Roman religious law is unparalleled for exactness, in believing that a _religio_ affecting a day had nothing whatever to do with its character as _fastus_ or _nefastus_.[77]

If all these last-mentioned _dies religiosi_ are such because ancient popular feeling attached the _religio_ to them, we may infer, I think, that the same was really the case also with the _dies postriduani_. The fact that the authorities of the State had made one or two days _religiosi_ as anniversaries of disasters, supplied a handy explanation for a number of other _dies religiosi_ of which the true explanation had been entirely lost; but that there was such a true explanation, resting on very primitive beliefs, I have very little doubt. Lucky and unlucky days are found in the unwritten calendars of primitive peoples in many parts of the world. An old pupil, now a civil servant in the province of Madras, has sent me an elaborate account of the notions of this kind existing in the minds of the Tamil-speaking people of his district of southern India. The Celtic calendar recently discovered at Coligny in France contains a number of mysterious marks, some of which may have had a meaning of this kind.[78] Dr. Jevons has collected some other examples from various parts of the world, _e.g._ Mexico.[79] The old Roman superst.i.tion about the luckiness of odd days and the unluckiness of even ones, which appears, as we shall see, in the arrangement of the calendar, was probably at one time a popular Italian notion, not derived, as used to be thought, from Pythagoras and his school.

I therefore conclude that we may add times and seasons to the list of those objects, animate and inanimate, which were affected by the practice of taboo in primitive Rome; and I hold that the word _religiosus_, as applied both to times and places, exactly expresses the feeling on which that practice is based. The word _religiosus_ came to have another meaning (though it retained the old one as well) in historical times, and the Romans could be called _religiosissimi mortalium_ in the sense of paying close attention to wors.h.i.+p and all its details. But the original meaning of _religio_ and _religiosus_ may after all have been that nervous anxiety which is a special characteristic of an age of taboo.[80] To discover the best methods of soothing that anxiety, or, in other words, the methods of disinfection, was the work of the organised religious life of family and State which we are going to study. But I must first devote a lecture to another cla.s.s of primitive survivals.

NOTES TO LECTURE II

[23] Renel, _Les Enseignes_, p. 43 foll. For the contrary view, Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 490.

[24] On taboo in general, Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, ch. vi.; Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 142 foll.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_ (ed. 2), i. 343; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, _pa.s.sim_. On the relation of taboo to magic, Marett, _Threshold of Religion_, p. 85 foll. Lately M. van Gennep in his _Rites de pa.s.sage_ has attempted to cla.s.sify and explain the various rites resulting from taboo.

[25] See the _Transactions of the Congress_ (Oxford University Press), vol. i. p. 121 foll. M. Reinach had alleged that the gens Fabia was originally a totem clan, _Mythes et cultes_, i. p. 47.

[26] Marett, _On the Threshold of Religion_, p. 137 foll. "In _taboo_ the mystic thing is not to be lightly approached (negative aspect); _qua mana_, it is instinct with mystic power (positive aspect)": so Mr. Marett states the distinction in a private letter.

[27] _Evolution of Religion_, p. 94.

[28] _Introduction_, ch. viii.; Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Ethical Ideas_, i. 233 foll.

[29] See a paper by the author in the _Transactions of the Congress of the History of Religions_, 1908, ii. 169 foll.

[30] Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 36; De Marchi, _La Religione nella vita domestica_, i. p. 169 foll.; Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Romer,_ p. 62 foll., where the _dies l.u.s.tricus_ is compared with the Greek [Greek: amphidromia]. Unfortunately the details of the Roman rite are unknown to us, which seems to indicate that the primitive or magical character of it had disappeared. Van Gennep, _op. cit._ ch. v., reviews and cla.s.sifies our present knowledge of this kind of rite. See also Crawley, _Mystic Rose_, p. 435 foll.

[31] 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 Romer_, pp. 10 and 81, and Mommsen, _Rom. Forschungen_, i. 1 foll. Marquardt must be wrong in stating (p. 10) that only the _praenomen_ was given on the _dies l.u.s.tricus_; 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_.

[32] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 56; De Marchi, _op. cit._ p. 176.

For the primitive ideas about p.u.b.erty, 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.

[33] Marquardt, _Privataltertumer_, p. 337 foll.

[34] 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.

[35] 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.

[36] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 325, iii. 222 foll.; Jevons, p.

59.

[37] Cato, _R.R._ 83, "mulier ad eam rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quomodo fiat."

[38] 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.

[39] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto." For similar taboos in Greece, Farnell in _Archiv_ for 1904, p. 76.

[40] 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.

[41] _G.B._ i. 298 foll.

[42] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto."

[43] Bucheler, _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, "c.u.m 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 rest.i.tuerentur." Cp. Plutarch, _Aristides_, 20. A friend reminds me that Bishop Berkeley, when in Italy, had his bedroom sprinkled with holy water by his landlady.

[44] 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.

[45] See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 192 foll., based on the famous essay of Mommsen in his _Romische Forschungen_, i. 319 foll. The pa.s.sages 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 Ca.s.sell's National Library some years ago.

[46] 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 Pa.s.sage_, has attempted to cla.s.sify the various rites relating to taboo of strangers; see ch.

iii., especially p. 38 foll.

[47] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 70.

[48] 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."

[49] Gellius, _l.c._; Serv. _Aen._ ii. 57, a curious pa.s.sage, 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.

[50] 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 Ca.s.s. 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.

[51] 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 kings.h.i.+p. As further ill.u.s.tration 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.