The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the...

291 For loca sacra and consecratio see Marquardt, p. 148 foll.; Wissowa, R.K. p. 400.

292 Serv. ad Aen. xii. 119, "Romani moris fuerat cespitem arae super imponere, et ita sacrificare." Cp. some valuable remarks of Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 23. The altar of the Fratres was in front of their grove; they used also a movable one (foculus) of silver, but cespiti ornatus (ib. p. 21): this was for the preliminary offering of wine and incense (Wissowa, R.K. p. 351).

293 In Aug. Civ. Dei, iv. 31; Agahd's edition of the fragments of Varro's Ant. rer. div. p. 164.

294 Aug. Civ. Dei, iv. 23; Agahd, p. 159. See Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 280 foll.

295 Strabo iv. 180.

296Fasti, vi. 305.

297 Tibull. ii. 5. 27. The lines of Propertius are iv. (v.) 2. 59, "Stipes acernus eram, properanti falce dolatus, Ante Numam grata pauper in urbe deus." The question is whether these are genuine examples of the natural evolution of a "stock or stone" into something in the nature of an anthropomorphic image of a deity, or whether they are the result of the introduction of Greek statues acting on the popular mind in rustic parts of Italy. The passages, so far as I know, stand alone, and we have no means of deciding whether the anthropomorphic tendency was native or foreign. Vortumnus was, however, undoubtedly of Etruscan origin; Wissowa, R.K. p. 233. The subject of iconic development of this kind is well summarised in E. Gardner's little volume on Religion and Art in Ancient Greece, ch. i.

298 See Sayce, Gifford Lectures on the Religions of Egypt and Babylonia, p. 302. An interesting paper on the evolution of dei at Rome out of functional numina will be found in von Domaszewski's Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion, p. 155 foll., based on Usener's theory of Sondergötter. It is ingenious and imaginative, but in my view does not square with the facts as far as we know them. His stages are: (1) momentary function of numina, e.g. lightning; (2) elevation of this into a permanent power or function; (3) consequent limitation of the numen to a special well-marked function; (4) elevation of the numen to a deus, conceived in the likeness of man, and male or female, because man cannot think of power otherwise than on the analogy of male or female creative energy. Lastly, when the deus is complete, the functions of the former numen become attributes or qualities, traces of which we find in the pairs of deities in Gellius, xiii. 23, which are discussed later on in this lecture. Some of these, of course, eventually became separate deities—Salacia, Maia, Lua. As I cannot accept the view that the earliest Roman idea of the supernatural is to be found in comprecationes of a comparatively late period, i.e. in the so-called Indigitamenta, this charmingly symmetrical account has no charm for me beyond its symmetry.

299 Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 144, 146; Cato, R.R. 139; C.I.L. vi. 110 and 111. Other references are given by Wissowa, R.K. p. 33, note 2.

300 For Pales, R.F. p. 80 note; for Pomona, Wissowa, R.K. p. 165.

301 The passage runs thus (Aug. C.D.. iv. 32): "Dicit enim (Varro) de generationibus deorum magis ad poetas quam ad physicos fuisse populos inclinatos, et ideo et sexum et generationes deorum maiores suos (id est veteres credidisse Romanos) et eorum constituisse coniugia." There is an amusing passage in Lactantius, i. 17 (de Falsa Religione), which Dr. Frazer might read with advantage. It begins, "Si duo sunt sexus deorum, sequitur concubitus." Then he goes on mockingly to argue that the gods must have houses, cities, lands which they plough and sow, which proves them mortal. Finally he takes the whole series of inferences backwards, finishing with "si domibus carent, ergo et concubitu. Si concubitus ab his abest, et sexus igitur foemineus," etc. All this, he means, can be inferred from the fact that gods are of both sexes; but that they have concubitus can no more be inferred from his argument than that they plough and sow.

302 Dr. Frazer conjectures a sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana, in Kingship, p. 214; but he is well aware that it is pure guesswork. There was, indeed, at Falerii such a marriage of Juno with an unknown deity (Ovid, Amores, iii. 13), of which, however, we do not know the history. Falerii was one of those cities, like Praeneste, where Etruscan, Greek, and Latin influences met. The "Orci nuptiae" on which Frazer lays stress was simply the Greek marriage of Pluto and Proserpine: "Orci coniux Proserpina," Aug. C.D. vii. 23 and 28, Agahd, p. 152. Wissowa shows this conclusively, R.K. p. 246. Orcus was Graecised as Plutus, but was himself totally without personality.

303 Dr. Frazer wrongly translates this as "ancient prayers" (p. 411), adding "the highest possible authority on the subject." Oratio is never used in this sense until Christian times: the word is always precatio. All scholars are agreed that what is meant is invocations to deities in old speeches, such as occur once or twice in Cicero (e.g. at the end of the Verrines); cp. Livy xxix. 15. As the recording of speeches cannot be assumed to have begun before the third century b.c., this does not carry us very far back. That century is also the age in which the pontifices were probably most active in drawing up comprecationes; see below, p. 285 foll.

304 See Appendix B at end of volume.

305 Cp. Ovid, Fasti, iii. 850, "forti sacrificare deae." In R.F. p. 60 foll., I have criticised the attempts, ancient and modern, to make this Nerio the subject of myths.

306 Macrob. i. 12. 18. This word Maiestas shows the doubtful nature of these feminine names, and probably betrays the real meaning of Maia. I may mention here that Bellona instead of Nerio is ascribed as wife to Mars by Seneca ap. Aug. C.D. vi. 10; also Venus to Volcanus instead of Maia. Neither have any connection, so far as we know, with the gods to whom Seneca ascribes them as wives: Venus-Vulcan is, of course, Greek. Both Augustine and Dr. Frazer might with advantage have abstained from citing Seneca on such a point: as a Spaniard by birth he was not likely to know much about technical questions of Roman ritual.

307 See Schanz, Gesch. der röm. Literatur, i. 274.

308 In the Graeco-Roman age Mars seems to have been rather a favourite subject of myth-making; see Usener's article on Italian myths in Rhein. Mus. vol. xxx.; Roscher in Myth. Lex. for works of Graeco-Etruscan art in which he appears in certain mythical scenes.

309 H. Jordan, quoted in R.F. p. 61 note. I relegate to an appendix what needs to be said about the other pairs of deities mentioned by Gellius.

310 Leipzig, 1898, p. 7 foll.

311 Wissowa, R.K. p. 168. Carter, op. cit. p. 21.

312 See Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 22 and 98.

313 So Fides is usually explained, as originally belonging to Jupiter (Wissowa, R.K. p. 103 foll.); but a different view is taken by Harold L. Axtell in his work on the Deification of Abstract Ideas at Rome (Chicago, 1907), p. 20.

314 In the Festschrift f. O. Hirschfeld, p. 243 foll.

315Religion of the Babylonians, introductory chapter.

316Op. cit. p. 412.

317L.L. v. 64.

318 This fragment is No. 503 in Baehrens, Fragm. Poet. Rom.

319 Lactantius, Div. inst. iv. 3.

320 Crawley, The Tree of Life, p. 256; Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 180; von Domaszewski, Abhandlungen, p. 166, "Man ruft sie an im Gebete als pater und mater zum Zeichen der Unterwerfung unter ihren Willen, wie der Sohn dem Gebote des paterfamilias sich fügt. Der sittlich strenge Gehorsam, der das Familienleben der Römer beherrscht, die pietas, ist der Sinn der römischen religio." Cp. also Appel, de Rom. precationibus, pp. 102-3, who thinks that they regarded the gods "velut patriarchas sive patres familias." He quotes Preller-Jordan i. 55 and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 142 sq. So too with mater—"velut mater familias."

321 The expression seems to mean "a father made for the purpose of the embassy." Wissowa, R.K. p. 477, note 3.

322 p. 19. This was written, it may be noted, several years after Aust had thoroughly investigated the cult of Jupiter for his article in the Mythological Lexicon; in which cult, if anywhere, one may be tempted to see evidence of a personal conception of deities. As Dr. Frazer has referred to the cult of Jupiter at Praeneste, to which I referred him as evidence of a possibly personal conception of the god in that Latin city, I may say here that I adhere to what I said about this in R.F. p. 226 foll.; no piece of antique cult has occupied my attention more than this, and I have tried to lay open every source of confirmation or criticism. Wissowa has expressed himself in almost exactly the same terms in R.K. p. 209: we arrived at our conclusions independently.

323 Tertullian, ad Nationes 11, and de Anima, 37 foll.; Aug. de Civ. Dei, iv. passim, and especially ch. xi.; R. Peter compiled a complete list (Myth. Lex., s.v. "Indigitamenta," p. 143) from these and other sources.

324 Aug. C.D. vii. 17. That this was what Varro meant by di certi was first affirmed by Wissowa in a note to his edition of Marquardt, p. 9; it has been generally accepted as the true account. A full discussion will be found in Agahd's edition of the fragments of Varro's work, p. 126 foll.; cf. Peter's article quoted above, and Wissowa, R.K. pp. 61 and 65. A somewhat different view is given in Domaszewski's article in Archiv for 1907, p. 1 foll., suggested by Usener's Götternamen.

325 The evidence for this will be found in Marquardt's note 4 on p. 9. I have no doubt that Wissowa is right in explaining Indigitamenta as "Gebetsformeln," formulae of invocation; in which the most important matter, we may add, would be the name of the deity. See his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 177 foll. The Indigitamenta contained, as one section, the invocations of di certi.

326 Chiefly by Ambrosch in his Religionsbücher der Römer. Peter's article contains a useful account of the whole progress of research on this subject.

327Lex. p. 137; it was that of his master Reifferscheid. Cp. Wissowa, op. cit. (Ges. Abhandl. p. 306 foll.).

328R.F. pp. 191, 341.

329 "The place of the Sondergötter in Greek Polytheism," printed in Anthropological Essays addressed to E. B. Tylor, p. 81. Usener's discussion of the Roman and Lithuanian Sondergötter is in his Götternamen, p. 73 foll.

330 Wissowa writes (Ges. Abhandl. p. 320 note) that he has reason to believe that a great number of the Lithuanian Sondergötter only became such through the treatment of the subject by the mediaeval writers on whom Usener relied!