The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 3

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

[52] 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 (_partic.i.p.andae rei divinae gratia_), Festus, p. 178.

[53] _R.F._ p. 311 foll., from Plutarch, _Rom._ 21.

[54] For this practice in many ancient religions, and its subst.i.tute, the smearing of the stone with turmeric or other red stain, see Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 139 foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 415.

[55] This is found in Zosimus ii. 1. 5; Diels, _Sibyllinische Blatter_, 132, and 73 note. Cp. Virg.

_Aen._ viii. 106; also a Greek rite.

[56] _G.B._ ed. 2, i. 241 foll.

[57] The bronze and iron ages, of course, overlap; see Helbig, _Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 78 foll.

[58] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 22 and 128 foll.

Other examples are collected by Helbig, _op. cit._ p.

80.

[59] 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 Romer_, p. 399 foll.

[60] Varro, _L.L._ vii. 84; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 629; Petronius, _Sat._ 44. There are many parallels in Greek ritual.

[61] 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.

[62] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 408 foll.; cp. 323 and notes.

[63] 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_.

[64] 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 _sanct.i.tas_ 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.)

[65] Quoted by Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 3. 8. For Sulpicius see _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p. 118 foll.

[66] Festus, p. 278. This Aelius lived at the end of the Republican period, and belonged to the school of Sulpicius; Schanz, _Gesch. der rom. Lit._ i. pt. 2, p.

486.

[67] _e.g._ the three days on which the _mundus_ was open were all _comitiales_, though at the same time _religiosi_.

[68] _R.K._ pp. 376, 377.

[69] The authorities for the story are Verrius Flaccus, _ap._ Gell. v. 17, and Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 21.

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

[71] Gell. v. 17. 3 foll. (_annalium quinto_).

[72] Festus, p. 278.

[73] _R.F._ p. 151.

[74] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 377, note 6.

[75] Cic. _ad Qu. Fratr._ ii. 4. 2.

[76] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 187, 189.

[77] _R.K._ p. 377. Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the _mult.i.tudo 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 G.o.ds. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular ignorance with such words as _prave_ and _perperam_.

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

[79] _Introduction_, p. 65 foll.

[80] Since writing this sentence I have read the paper by W. Otto on "Religio and Superst.i.tio" in _Archiv fur 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 Maximilia.n.u.s Kobbert, _De verborum "religio atque religiosus" usu apud Romanos_, p. 31 (Konigsberg, 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,[81] "utilises such mechanical power without making any appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being." Religion, on the other hand, is an att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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.[82] 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 cla.s.sified,[83] _e.g._ contagious magic, and h.o.m.oeopathic 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d or spirit realisable and nameable, and thus capable of being addressed, placated, wors.h.i.+pped.

When this stage is reached, there supervenes almost always a strong tendency to regulate and systematise the methods of address, placation, and wors.h.i.+p; 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[84] 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 wors.h.i.+p. As Dr. Tylor observed long ago, the more civilised the race, the more apt it is to a.s.sociate magic with men of inferior civilisation.[85] 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.[86] 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 cla.s.sed 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.[87] 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.[88] 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-t.i.tle of the G.o.d 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-G.o.d to suffer the heavens to overflow.[89]

It was called _lapis ma.n.a.lis_; and the epithet here can have nothing to do with the Manes, as in the case of another _lapis ma.n.a.lis_, 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 G.o.d 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 Kings.h.i.+p[90] he maintains that the Roman kings practised the magical art of bringing down lightning from heaven. "The priestly king Numa pa.s.sed 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, Arn.o.bius, 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_[91] to a.s.sure himself that legends which cannot be traced farther back than the middle of the second century B.C. cannot seriously be a.s.sumed 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.[92] 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."[93] 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, Arn.o.bius, 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.[94]

But how did these writers come by such legends, which, as Dr. Frazer shows, are to be found also in Greece and in other parts of the world?

Why should they have wished to make Roman kings into magicians?

Rain-making we can understand at Rome,--it had a practical end in view, the procuring of rain for the crops,--but why lightning and thunder, which were so much dreaded that every bit of damage done by a thunderstorm had to be carefully expiated by a religious process? Rome is not in the tropics, where rain and thunder so often come together, and where an attempt to produce rain by magic might naturally include thunder, as in some of Dr. Frazer's examples from tropical lands. I entirely agree with the latest and most sober investigators of Roman ritual that this kind of magic is quite foreign to Roman ideas and practice;[95] there is no vestige of it in the Roman cult; these stories must have come from outside. And there is every probability that they came from Etruria, where the lore of lightning had become a pseudo-science, a waste of human ingenuity, for the origin of which we must look, as we are now beginning to understand, to Babylonia and the Eastern magic.[96] The Jupiter Elicius of the Aventine had nothing to do with lightning; he took his cult-t.i.tle from the rite of _aquaelicium_; but as soon as the Romans began to interest themselves in the Etruscan lightning-lore, of which this electrical magic was only a part,[97] they perverted the meaning of the epithet to suit their new studies, and began to attribute to their legendary kings powers which properly belonged to Etruscan or Oriental magicians. The second century B.C., when Piso wrote his _Annals_, is exactly the period when we should naturally expect such studies to come into fas.h.i.+on, and with such perversions of "history" as their consequence.[98]

I go on to note one or two more examples of real magic in the State religion; but they are hard to find. Pliny tells that even in his day people believed that a runaway slave who had not escaped out of the city might be arrested by a spell uttered by the Vestal virgins.[99] I take this to mean that any one who had lost his slave might get the Vestals to use the spell as a means of keeping the runaway within the city. The word for spell is here _precatio_, _i.e._ a prayer, not _carmen_, which is the usual word for a spell; and Pliny evidently thinks of it as addressed to some G.o.d. But no doubt it was originally at least a genuine spell, of the same kind as others used in private life, which we shall notice directly; and it implies a belief in some magical power inherent in the Vestals, of whom we are told that if they accidentally met a criminal being led to punishment they might secure his release.[100] As the spell in this case seems to be telepathic, _i.e._ an exercise of will-power projected from a distance, it may perhaps be paralleled with certain mystical powers exercised by women, especially when their husbands are at war, among some savage peoples;[101] but we have no information about it beyond the pa.s.sage in Pliny, and further guessing would be useless.

This last is a case of genuine magic, but it is outside the ritual of the State, though exercised by a State priesthood. Within that ritual there is one other very curious case of what must be cla.s.sed as a magical process, and one that has accidentally become famous. At the Lupercalia on February 15, the two young men called Luperci, or, more strictly, belonging respectively as leaders to the two collegia of Luperci, girt themselves with the skins of the slaughtered victims, which were goats, and then ran round the base of the Palatine hill, striking at all the women who came near them or offered themselves to their blows, with strips of skin cut from the hides of these same victims. The object was to produce fertility; on this point our authorities are explicit.[102] Thus this particular feature of the whole extraordinary ritual of the Lupercalia is unmistakably within the region of magic rather than of religion. Some potency was believed to work in the act of striking, though apparently without a spoken spell or _carmen_, such as usually accompanies acts of this kind; and this part of the rite, grotesque though it was, was allowed to survive by the grave religious authorities who drew up the calendar of religious festivals. It was probably a superst.i.tion too deeply rooted in the minds of the people to admit of being excluded; and, strange to say, it survived, in outward form at least, until Rome had become cosmopolitan and even Christian. The Lupercalia has always been a puzzle to students of early religion, and as each new theory is advanced, this strange festival is seized on for fresh interpretation;[103] but for our present purposes it must suffice to point out that we clearly find embedded in it a piece of genuine magic, dating beyond doubt from a very primitive stage of thought.

There is one other very curious performance, occurring each year on the ides of May, which in my view is rather magical than religious, though the ancients themselves looked upon it as a kind of purification: I mean the casting into the Tiber from the _pons sublicius_ of twenty-four or twenty-seven straw puppets by the Vestal virgins, in the presence of the magistrates and pontifices. Recently an attempt has been made by Wissowa to prove that this strange ceremony was not primitive, but simply a case of the subst.i.tution of puppets for real human victims as late as the age of the Punic wars.[104] These puppets were called Argei, which word naturally suggests Greeks; and Wissowa has contrived to persuade himself not only that a number of Greeks were actually put to death by drowning in an age when everything Greek was beginning to be reverenced at Rome, but (still more extraordinary to an anthropologist) that the primitive device of subst.i.tution was had in requisition at that late date in order to carry on the memory of the ghastly deed. And the world of German learning has silently followed their leader, without taking the trouble to test his conclusions by a careful and independent examination of the evidence. It happens that this fascinating puzzle of the Argei was the first curiosity that enticed me into the study of the Roman religion, and for some thirty years I have been familiar with every sc.r.a.p of evidence bearing on it; and after going over that evidence once more I can emphatically state my conviction that Wissowa's theory will not hold water for a moment. I shall return to the subject in a later lecture dealing with the religious history of the second Punic war; at present I merely express a belief that, whatever be the history of the accessories of the rite,--and they are various and puzzling,--the actual immersion of the puppets is the survival of a primitive piece of sympathetic magic, the object being possibly to procure rain. It is, in my opinion, quite impossible to resist the anthropological evidence for this conclusion, though we cannot really be certain about the object; for this evidence I must refer you to my _Roman Festivals_, and to the references there given.[105]

This rite of the Argei, then, was a case of genuine magic, and exercised by a State priesthood, virgins to whom certain magical powers were supposed to be attached; it was, I think, a popular performance, like one or two others which are also outside the limit of the Fasti,[106]

and was embodied in a more complicated ceremonial long after that calendar had been drawn up. In the ritual authorised by the State, with public objects in view, _i.e._ for the benefit of society as a whole, there is hardly a trace of anything that we can call genuine magic apart from the examples I have just been explaining. There were, I need not say, many survivals of magical processes of which the true magical intent had long been lost--ancient magical deposits in a social stratum of religion, which I shall notice in their proper place. This is not peculiar to the religion of the Romans; it is a phenomenon to be found in all religions, even in those of the most highly developed type, and it is one apt to cause some confusion as to the true distinction between magic and religion.[107] It is easy to find magical processes even in Christian wors.h.i.+p, if we have the will to do so; but if we steadily bear in mind that the true test of magic is not the nature of an act, but the intent or volition which accompanies it, the search will not be an easy one.