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

655 The story is told in Livy x. 40 and 41, and must have been taken by him from the records of the pontifices, which had almost certainly begun by this date (see above, p. 283). While on these chapters the reader may also note the curious vow of this Papirius to Jupiter Victor at the end of ch. xlii.; and the description of the religious horrors of the Samnites witnessed by the army, and especially the words "respersae fando infandoque sanguine arae" (see above, p. 196), which clearly indicate a practice abhorrent to Romans.

656 Val. Max. i. 5. 3 and 4; Cic. de Div. i. 16. 29; Livy, Epit. xix.

657 The locus classicus is Livy xxi. 63.

658 Cic. de Div. ii. 36. 77. I find an illustration of this effect of lightning in Major Bruce's Twenty Years in the Himalaya, p. 130: "Directly the ice-axes begin to hum (in a storm) they should be put away."

659 He notices it in connection with the war only in iii. 112. 6, after the battle of Cannae: a striking passage, but cast in general language.

660 Livy xxi. 62 foll. Wissowa comments on this passage in R.K. p. 223.

661 See the author's Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 28 foll.

662 The rule seems to have been that no prodigia were accepted, and procurata by the authorities, which were announced from beyond the ager Romanus. See Mommsen in O. Jahn's edition of the Periochae of Livy's books, and of Iulius Obsequens, preface, p. xviii. But this does not appear from the records of this war; and, at any rate, the religious panic was Italian as well as Roman.

663 Red sand still occasionally falls in Italy, brought by a sirocco from the Sahara, and this accounts for the prodigium, "pluit sanguine," which is often met with. I have a record of it in the Daily Mail of March 11, 1901. But the lapides were probably of volcanic origin.

664 Wissowa, R.K. p. 328.

665 This must have been a special performance of the yearly Amburbium, of which unluckily we known hardly anything (Wissowa, R.K. 130).

666R.F. p. 56, where unfortunately the word is misprinted Pubertas. Wissowa, R.K. 126, thinks of Hebe in a Latin form; in his view it must be a Greek deity, being brought in by the decemviri and the books. But we shall find that these begin now to interfere with Roman cults, and in such a crisis we need not wonder at it. Wissowa allows that we do not know where this Hebe can have come from, nor, I may add, why she should have come. That there was some special meaning in the combination Juventas, Hercules, Genius I feel sure, and I conjecture that it may be found in the urgent need of a supply of iuvenes. Hercules and Genius seem both to represent the male principle of life (R.F. 142 foll.). Juventas speaks for herself, but we may remember that the tirones sacrificed to her on the day of the Liberalia (17th March), and that Liber is almost certainly another form of Genius (R.F. 55).

667 Livy xxii. 1.

668 It is only from this passage that we know of the oracle. See Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de divination, iv. 146. That of Caere is mentioned in Livy xxi. 62. Both cities were mainly Etruscan.

669 Livy xxvii. 37 betrays some knowledge of the infectious nature of prodigy-reporting: "Sub unius prodigii, ut fit, mentionem, alia quoque nuntiata."

670 Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 115, where the verses are quoted as inscribed on the paintings in her temple at Ardea. Note that Juno is here called the wife of Jupiter by a Greek artist from Asia.

671 For Juno as the woman's deity and guardian spirit, see above, p. 135. To refer this prominence of the goddess to her connection with Carthage and mythical enmity to the Romans, as we see it in the Aeneid, is premature; we must suppose that each Juno was still a local deity, and no general conception in the later Greek sense is as yet possible.

672 For Feronia, see R.F. 252 foll.

673 The procurationes ordered were doubtless recorded in the annales maximi. The books of the decemviri, we must suppose, were burnt with the oracles in 38 B.C. (Diels, Sib. Blätter, p. 6 note).

674 Wissowa, R.K. 170; Marq. 586 foll.

675 Livy xxii. 9-10.

676 See above, p. 204 foll.; Strabo, p. 250; Festus, p. 106.

677 If it be asked why Jupiter is here without his titles Optimus Maximus, the answer is that just below, where ludi magni are vowed to him, as all such ludi were, he is also simply Jupiter.

678R.K. 356. In his view the new amalgam of twelve gods was known as di Consentes, an expression of Varro's which has been much discussed. See Müller-Deecke, Etrusker, ii. 83; C.I.L. vi. 102; Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 190 foll. In de Re Rust. i. 1, Varro speaks of twelve dei consentes, urbani, whose gilded statues stood in the forum.

679 Livy xxii. 57.

680 See above, p. 207. Orosius' account of this is worth reading; he calls it "obligamentum hoc magicum" (iv. 13). He mentions a Gallic pair and a Greek woman, and dates it in 226 (227 according to Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 227). Cp. Plut. Marcell. 3. Livy's words, "iam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano sacro, imbutum," agree with this. There must have been an outbreak of feeling and recourse to the Sibylline books in the stress of the Gallic war.

681Sib. Blätter, p. 86.

682 Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 12 and 13. Plutarch, l.c., confirms him. Pliny, it may be noticed, is here writing of spells, etc., among which he classes the precatio of this rite.

683 The first gladiatorial show was in 264 B.C. (Val. Max. ii. 4. 7).

684 The arguments are stated fully in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 211 foll.

685 The best account of these, or rather of the Argean itinerary, of which fragments are preserved in Varro, L.L. v. 45 foll., is still that of Jordan in his Römische Topographie, ii. 603 foll. The extracts seem to be from a record of directions for the passage of a procession round the sacella (or sacraria, Varro v. 48). Though quoting these, Varro has nothing to say of their origin, which would be strange indeed if they were of such comparatively late date.

686 In Varro, L.L. vii. 44. There is no doubt that the line is from Ennius; it is also quoted as his in Festus, p. 355.

687 Schanz, Gesch. der röm. Literatur, vol. i. ed. 3, p. 110.

688 Some examples of substitution will be found in Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, i. 469. It is of course a well-known phenomenon, but is now generally rejected as an explanation of oscilla, maniae, etc. (see Wissowa, R.K. p. 355, and Frazer, G.B. ii. 344). I know of no case of it on good evidence at Rome, unless it be one in the devotio, of an effigy for the soldier, ("ni moritur," Livy viii. 10).

689 See Roman Festivals, p. 117, with references to Mannhardt; Frazer, G.B. ii. 256; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. 181.

690 Livy xxiii. 11. See also Diels, Sib. Blätter, pp. 11 and 92.

691 Livy xxiv. 10.

692Ib. xxiv. 44.

693Ib. xxv. 1.

694Ib. xxv. 12. On the Marcian oracles and their metre, see Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de divination, iv. 128 foll.; Wissowa, R.K. 463 note 2; Diels, op. cit. p. 7 foll.