[340] See Appendix C.
[341] Cato, R.R. 139, where the language suggests that as the deity was unknown, the ius of the religious act was also uncertain, i.e. the ritual was not laid down. De Marchi translates (La Religione nella vita domestica, i. 132) "sia a te fatto il debito sacrificio," etc., which sufficiently expresses the anxiety of the situation. Keil reads here "ut tibi ius est," and gives no variant in his critical note; but the words just below, "uti id recte factum siet," seem to me to suggest the subjunctive. In any case there is no doubt about ius. In Tab. Iguv. vi. A. 28 (Umbrica, p. 58) Buecheler translates the Umbrian persei mersei by "quicquid ius sit," and compares this passage of Cato, together with Gellius i. 12. 14, where the phrase is used of the duties of a Vestal under the ius divinum in the formula used by the Pontifex Maximus, cum virginem capiat: "Sacerdotem Vestalem, quae sacra faciat, quae ius siet sacerdotem Vestalem facere pro pop. Rom." etc.
[342] e.g. Aen. iv. 56, x. 31 ("si sine pace tua atque invito numine," etc.). Cp. Tab. Iguv. vi. 30, 33, etc. (Umbrica, p. 59), "esto volens propitiusque pace tua arci Fisiae."
[343] Livy vi. 41 ad fin.
[344] Wissowa, R.K. p. 318, and p. 319 for the illustrations that follow. Cp. Cicero, Part. Or. xxii. 78, where religio is explained as "iustitia erga deos."
[345] Lex Coloniae Genetivae, cap. 64; C.I.L. ii., supplement No. 5439.
[346] Livy i. 20. 5.
[347] This follows from the definition in Festus, p. 321, and in Macrobius iii. 3. 2. This last is quoted from Trebatius de religionibus: "sacrum est quicquid est quod deorum habetur." In common use sacrificium seems to be reserved for animal sacrifice, but the verb sacrificare is not so limited. Festus, p. 319: "mustum quod Libero sacrificabant pro vineis ... sicut praemetium de spicis, quas primum messuissent, sacrificabant Cereri." It has been suggested to me by Mr. Marett that the termination of the word sacrificium may have reference to the use of facere for animal sacrifice, as in Greek [Greek: rhezein, erdein, dran]; but on the whole I doubt this. Facere and fieri are in that sense, I think, euphemisms, occasioned by the mystic character of the act (examples are collected in Brissonius de formulis, p. 9). Rem divinam facere seems to be the general expression, as in Cato, R.R. 83; or the particular victim is in the ablative, e.g. agna Iovi facit (Flamen Dialis) in Varro, L.L. vi. 16; cp. Virg. Ecl. iii. 77.
[348] This classification, originally due to R. Smith, article "Sacrifice" in Encycl. Brit., ed. 10, has lately been criticised by Hubert et Mauss, in Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 9 foll.; but it is sufficiently complete for our purposes. At the same time it is well to be aware that no classification of the various forms of sacrifice can be complete at present; that which these authors prefer, i.e. constant and occasional sacrifices, is, however, a useful one.
[349] R.F. p. 95 foll. Cp. Robertson Smith, Rel. of Semites, Lect. VIII.
[350] R.F. p. 217 foll.
[351] R.F. p. 302 foll. Meals in connection with sacrifice are also found at the Parilia (R.F. p. 81, and Ovid, Fasti, iv. 743 foll.) and Terminalia (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 657); but in both cases Ovid seems to be describing rustic rites; nor is it certain that the meal was really sacramental. What does seem proved is that the old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the house to be present at their meals--
ante focos olim scamnis considere longis mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos (Fasti, vi. 307),
and thus the idea was maintained that in some sense all meals had a sacred character, i.e. all in which the members of a familia (see above, p. 78), or of gens or curia, met together. Cp. R. Smith, op. cit. p. 261 foll. We may remember that the Penates were the spirits of the food itself, not merely of the place in which it was stored; it had therefore a sacred character, which is also shown by the sanctification of the firstfruits (R.F. pp. 151, 195). (The cenae collegiorum, dinners of collegia of priests, were in no sense sacrificial meals; see Marquardt, p. 231, note 7; Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 13, 39, 40.)
[352] Cic. de Legibus, ii. 8. 19.
[353] Livy i. 18. For constitutional difficulties in this passage, see, e.g., Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 50.
[354] For this and the augurs generally, see Lecture XII.
[355] The passages are collected by Wissowa, R.K. p. 420, note 3. There is no doubt about the inauguratio of the three great flamines and the rex sacrorum, who were all specially concerned with sacrifice, and of the augurs, who would obviously need it in order to perform the same ceremony for others--as a bishop needs consecration for the same reason. As regards the pontifices, Dionysius (ii. 73. 3) clearly thought it was needed for them, and we might a priori assume that one who might become a pontifex maximus would need it; but Wissowa discounts Dionysius' opinion, and I am unwilling to differ from him on a point of the ius divinum, of which he is our best exponent. If he is right, it may be that the three flamines maiores, who were reckoned in strict religious sense as above the pontifices, including their head (Festus, p. 185), needed "holiness" more than any pontifex, and so with the augurs. The insignia of the pontifices, as well as many historical facts, show that the pontifices were competent to perform sacrifice in a general sense (Marq. p. 248 foll.); but it is possible that they never had the right, like the flamines, actually to slay the victim. I do not feel sure that the securis was really one of their symbols, though Horace seems to say so in Ode iii. 23. 12. The whole question needs further investigation. It may be found that the essential distinction between the pontifices and magistrates cum imperio on the one hand, and the flamines on the other, is to be sought in the ideas of holiness connected with the shedding of blood in sacrifice. The flamen is permanently holy, having charge of constant sacrifices; e.g. the Dialis had duties every day. He is the duly sanctified guide for all rites within his own religious range.
[356] Wissowa, R.K. pp. 339, 410 foll.
[357] The whole subject of the preparation of the sacrificer for his work, and of the steps by which he becomes separated from the profane, is well treated by Hubert et Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 23 foll. The reference to Dr. Jevons is Introduction, ch. xx. p. 270 foll.
[358] Serv. Aen. xii. 173; Virgil wrote "dant fruges manibus salsas, et tempora ferro Summa notant pecudum"; to which Servius adds that the symbolic movement was a (pretended) cut from head to tail of the victim. Wissowa, R.K. p. 352.
[359] Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., s.v. "cinctus Gabinus."
[360] Marquardt, p. 340. The Vestals were never, so far as we know, directly concerned in animal sacrifice.
[361] See below, p. 190. For the colour of the garments, and the explanation referred to, see Samter, Familienfeste, p. 40 foll.; Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter, p. 70; and cp. von Duhn's paper, "Rot und Tot" in Archiv, 1906, p. 1 foll. That red colouring was used in various ways in sacred and quasi-sacred rites there is no doubt (see above, p. 89, note 46); but whether it can be always connected with bloodshed is by no means so certain (Rohde, Psyche, i. 226). In the case of women it is at least hard to understand. The idea of consecration through blood, which is very rare in Roman literature, comes out curiously in the words which Livy puts into the mouth of Virginius after the slaughter of his daughter (iii. 48): "Te Appi tuumque caput sanguine hoc consecro" (i.e. to a deity not mentioned). The sentence to which this note refers was written before the appearance of Messrs. Hubert et Mauss' essay on sacrifice (Mélanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 1-122). The theory there developed, that the victim is the intermediary in all cases between the sacrificer and the deity, and that the force religieuse passes from one to the other in one direction or another, does not essentially differ from the words in the text; but the French savants would, I imagine, prefer to look on the insignia in a general sense as bringing the person wearing them within the region of the sacrum, the force of which would react on him still more strongly after the destruction of the victim (see p. 28 foll.).
[362] See, e.g., Roman Sculpture by Mrs. Strong, Plates xi. and xv.
[363] For this and other insignia see Marquardt, p. 222 foll. The question is under discussion whether some of these insignia are not old Italian forms of dress (see Gruppe, Mythologische Literatur, 1898-1905, p. 343). For the wearing of the skin of a victim, which meets us also at the Lupercalia (R.F. p. 311), see Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 416 foll.; Jevons, Introduction, p. 252 foll.; Frazer, G.B. iii. 136 foll.
[364] They, of course, wore the praetexta when performing religious acts. Cp. the Fratres Arvales, who laid aside the praetexta after sacrificing. Henzen, Acta Fr. Arv. pp. 11, 21, and 28.
[365] Serv. Aen. xi. 543. The camillae assisted the flaminicae, Marquardt, p. 227. This is one of the most beautiful features of the stately Roman ritual, and has been handed on to the Roman Church. It was, of course, derived from the worship of the household (see above, p. 74).
[366] Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 413 foll. Dr. Frazer is criticising Dr. Farnell, who had touched on the subject in the Hibbert Journal for 1907, p. 689, and had taken the more obvious view that death in a family disqualified for actions requiring extreme holiness.
[367] The passages are collected in Marquardt, p. 174 foll.; we may notice in particular Livy xlv. 5. 4, where, though only the washing of hands is referred to, we have the important statement that "omnis praefatio sacrorum," i.e. the preliminary exhortation of the priest, enjoined purae manus. Livy must be using the language of Roman ritual, though he is not speaking here of a Roman rite. For the material of sacred utensils see Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 30.
[368] Tibullus ii. 1. 11.
[369] Cic. de Legibus, ii. 10. 24.
[370] Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, ii. 352 foll.; consult the index for further allusions to the subject. Cp. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, Lecture III. [Fehrle, Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum (Giessen, 1910), has reached me too late for use in this chapter.]
[371] Full details, with the most important references quoted in full, are in Marquardt, p. 172 foll.; but some of the latter are applicable only to the Graeco-Roman period.
[372] So we may gather from the Lex Furfensis of 58 B.C. (C.I.L. ix. 3513), and that of the Ara Augusti at Narbo of A.D. 12 (C.I.L. xii. 4333).
[373] The real origin of the pontifices and their name is unknown to us. If they took their name from the bridging of the Tiber, as Varro held (L.L. v. 83) and as the majority of scholars believe (see O. Gilbert, Rom. Topographie, ii. 220, note), the difficulty remains that they are found in such a city as Praeneste, where there was no river to be bridged, and where they could not well have been merely an offshoot from the Roman college; see Wissowa, R.K. p. 432, note. Nor can we explain how they came to be set in charge of the ius divinum; and where there are no data conjecture is useless.
[374] The covering of the head (operto capite, as opposed to aperto capite of the Graecus ritus) is usually explained as meant to shut out all sounds belonging to the world of the profanum; and the playing of the tibicines is interpreted in the same way. Hubert et Mauss explain the covered head differently: "le rituel romain prescrivit généralement l'usage du voile, signe de séparation et partant de consécration" (p. 28). Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 522, also holds that it is the outward sign of consecration; cp. S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. 300 foll. The fact, noted by Miss Harrison, that in Festus's account of the ver sacrum (p. 379, ed. Müller) the children expelled were veiled, seems to point to the idea of dedication--unless, indeed, velabant here means that they blindfolded them.
[375] The wine was poured over the altar as well as on the victim, which suggests a substitution for blood; Arnobius vii. 29 and 30; Dion. Hal. vii. 72. I cannot find that any one of the many utensils used in sacrifice were for pouring out blood. Blood was, however, poured on the stone at the Terminalia (R.F. pp. 325-326); but the rite here described by Ovid seems to be a rural one, outside the ius divinum. In the sacrifice of victims to Hecate in Virg. Aen. vi. 243 foll., which cannot be ritus Romanus, the warm blood is collected in paterae; but nothing is said of what was done with it, nor does Servius help. Cp. Aen. viii. 106. In Lucretius v. 1202, "aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum," the context shows that the ritual alluded to is not old Roman. In Livy's description of the "occulti paratus sacri" of the Samnites (ix. 41), we find "respersae fando nefandoque sanguine arae, et dira exsecratio ac furiale carmen." Livy seems to think of this blood-sprinkling, whether the blood be human or animal, as unusual and horrible. Ancient, no doubt, is the practice, recorded in the Acta Fratr. Arv. (see Henzen, pp. 21 and 23), of using the blood in a religious feast, in the process of cooking: "porcilias piaculares epulati sunt et sanguem." (There is a mention of the pouring of blood in an inscription from Lusitania in C.I.L. ii. 2395.) For the use of wine as a substitute for blood, see the recently published work of Karl Kircher, "Die sakrale Bedeuting des Weines," in Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche, etc., p. 82 foll., where, however, the subject is not worked out.
[376] According to Lübbert (Commentarii pontificales, p. 121 foll.) magmentum is the same as augmentum, which word is also found (Varro, L.L. v. 112). Festus, p. 126, "magmentum magis augmentum"; Serv. Aen. iv. 57, to which passage I shall return. For the equivalent in the Vedic ritual of the cooking and offering of the exta, see Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 60 foll.
[377] R.F. p. 89.
[378] ib. p. 10.
[379] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 60, 69, etc. Of course the prayer might be said while other operations were going on. For the constant connection of prayer and sacrifice, see Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10, "quippe victimam caedi sine precatione non videtur referre aut deos rite consuli." If Macrobius is right (iii. 2. 7 foll.) in asserting that the prayer must be said while the priest's hand touches the altar, one may guess that this was done at the same time that the exta were laid on it. Ovid saw the priest at the Robigalia offer the exta and say the prayer at the same time (Fasti, iv. 905 foll.), but does not mention the hand touching the altar. For this see Serv. Aen. vi. 124; Horace, Ode iii. 23. 17, and Dr. Postgate on this passage in Classical Review for March 1910.
[380] Cato, R.R. 132, 134, 139, and 141. That these formulae were taken from the books of the pontifices is almost certain, not only from the internal evidence of the prayers themselves, but because Servius (Interpol.) on Aen. ix. 641 quotes the words: "macte hoc vino inferio esto," which occur in 132, introducing them thus: "et in pontificalibus sacrificantes dicebant deo...."
[381] The verb is omitted here for some ritualistic reason, as in the Iguvian prayers (Umbrica, p. 55).
[382] Virg. Aen. ix. 641, "macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad astra," etc., and many other passages. The verb mactare acquired a general sense of sacrificial slaying, as did also immolare, though neither had originally any direct reference to slaughter. The best account I find of the word is in H. Nettleship's Contributions to Latin Lexicography, p. 520. He takes mactus as the participle of a lost verb maco or mago, to make great, increase, equivalent to augeo, which is also a word of semi-religious meaning, as Augustus knew. Nettleship quotes Cicero in Vatinium, 14, "puerorum extis deos manes mactare."
[383] Baehrens, Fragm. Poet. Lat. 180; Lusilius fragm. 143; Nonius, 341, 28 has "versibus."
[384] It may possibly be objected that some of the deities were powerful for evil as well as good, e.g. Robigus, the spirit of the red mildew, and that the power of such a deity was not to be encouraged or increased. But all such deities (and I cannot mention another besides Robigus) were of course conceived as able to restrain their own harmful function; they were not invoked to go away and leave the ager Romanus in peace, but to limit their activity in the land where they had been settled for worship. We have no prayer to Robigus (or Robigo, feminine, as Ovid has it) except that which Ovid somewhat fancifully versified after hearing the Flamen Quirinalis say it (Fasti, iv. 911 foll.), in which of course the word macte does not occur. As the victim was a dog, an uneatable one, it is possible that the ritual was not quite the usual one. But the language of the prayer is interesting and brings out my point:
aspera Robigo, parcas Cerialibus herbis. vis tua non levis est;...
parce precor, scabrasque manus a messibus aufer neve noce cultis: posse nocere sat est.It concludes by praying Robigo to direct her strength and attention to other objects, gladios et tela nocentia; but this is the poet's fancy.
[385] Evolution of Religion, p. 212, quoting Vedic Hymns, pt. ii. pp. 259 and 391.
[386] Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. ii. p. 585 foll.; cp. 657. See also Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 195.
[387] See above, p. 9. Religio in the sense of an obligation to perform certain ritualistic acts is in my view a secondary and later use of the word. See Transactions of the Congress of Historical Religion for 1908, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.
[388] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 26 foll.; C.I.L. vi. 2104, 32 foll.; Buecheler und Riese, Carmina Lat., epigr. pars ii., no. 1. All surviving Roman prayers are collected in Appel's De Romanorum precationibus, Giessen, 1909.
[389] Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10 foll.
[390] In Anthropology and the Classics, p. 94.
[391] Cp. Tibullus ii. 1. 84, "vos celebrem cantate deum pecorique vocate, Voce palam pecori, clam sibi quisque vocet." This murmuring was certainly characteristic of Roman magic; see Jevons, p. 99, and especially the reference to a Lex Cornelia, which condemned those "qui susurris magicis homines occiderunt" (Justinian, Inst. iv. 18. 5).
[392] On the nature of this tripodatio see Henzen, op. cit. p. 33. Buecheler, Umbrica, p. 69, gives the Umbrian verb a different meaning, though he translates it tripodato.
[393] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 13 and 52.
[394] Wissowa, R.K., 333, inclines to the belief that prayer had a legal binding force upon the deity; but he does not cite any text which confirms this view, and is arguing on general grounds. I gather from the language of Aust (Religion der Römer, p. 30) that he thinks there was a germ which might have developed into a more truly religious attitude towards the gods, if it had not been killed by priestly routine and quasi-legal formulae. With this opinion I am strongly inclined to agree. Cp. the story of Scipio Aemilianus audaciously altering and elevating the formula dictated by the priest in the censor's lustratio (Val. Max. iv. 1. 10), to which I shall return in the proper place.
[395] Westphal, quoted by De Marchi, La Religione, etc., i. p. 133, note.
[396] See, e.g., ch. 141 ad fin. The prayer in the Acta of the Ludi Saeculares to the Moirae is an imitation of old prayers. See below, p. 442.
[397] ib. ch. 139.
[398] ib. ch. 141.
[399] Hubert et Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 74.
[400] So Cato, R.R. 141, "si minus in omnes litabit, sic verba concipito; Mars pater, quod tibi illuc porco neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo." (The word for the slaughter is here euphemistically omitted; De Marchi, p. 134.)
[401] Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 55 foll.; Leviticus vi. I doubt whether the theory of the learned authors will hold good generally on this point.
[402] Marquardt, p. 185, asserted the contrary, but cited no evidence except Serv. Aen. vi. 253, which does not prove the practice of the holocaust to be really Roman. Wissowa's exactness is well illustrated in his detection of this error; see R. K. p. 352, note 6. Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 135, leaves no doubt on the question possible.
[403] Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 131. See above, p. 35. Festus, p. 218.
[404] Gellius iv. 6. 7.
[405] i.e. lustratio. That this was a form of piaculum is clear from the use of the word pihaklu of the victim in the lustratio of the arx of Iguvium, e.g. Buecheler, Umbrica, index, 5, v.