[413] Valerius Maximus iv. 1. 10.
[414] A list of these is given in Aust, De aedibus
sacris populi Romani (Marpurg, 1889). A valuable work,
which will be of service to us later on.
[415] Livy xxxvi. 2. 3.
[416] Ib. xxii. 10.
[417] Ib. sec. 6. The meaning is that if any one has
stolen an animal which was intended to be dedicated, no
blame attaches to the person so robbed; and that if a
man performs his dedication on a day of ill omen
unwittingly, it will hold good none the less.
[418] Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 195.
[419] The fact that words like reus and damnatus
were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow
and to those who had performed it, i.e. as being
liable like a defendant, and then released from that
position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, R.K.
p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the
transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius
says (iii. 2. 6) se numinibus obligat, as an accused
person is obligatus to the authorities of the State
(Mommsen, Strafrecht, 189 foll.). It is the natural
tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a
legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the
original idea was really thought of as a contract, and
we have only to reflect that the final act was a
thank-offering to see the difference between the civil
and the religious process.
[420] Livy v. 21.
[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the
fifth book of Res reconditae by one Sammonicus
Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in
cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."
[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in
Pauly-Wissowa.
[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori
praetori...." Cp. Cic. de Nat. deorum, ii. 10, "at
vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam
imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite
velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."
[424] See Münzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa,
Real-Encycl.; Soltau, Die Anfänge der röm.
Geschichtschreibung, p. 48 foll.
[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Cassius, fragment, xxxv.
6; Ennius, Ann. vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment
is the oldest reference to the event which we possess,
and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc
audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis
certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."
[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect
struck St. Augustine. In Civ. Dei, v. 18, he writes:
"Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes
Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum
sanguine suo placantibus Romanus liberaretur exercitus,"
and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs.
I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on
Cicero, de Nat. deor. ii. 3. 10.
[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, R.K. p. 352, note 1.
[428] By Deubner in Archiv, 1905, p. 69 foll. This
touching of the chin seems to be an example of that
personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see,
e.g., Westermarck, op. cit. i. 586. Decius makes
himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching
(as priest) the only part of his person which was
exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O.
Weinrich, Antike Heiligungswünder, p. 63 foll., and
Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a
sacrificing priest.
[429] See above, p. 180.
[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates
at length by examples of the worship of the spear or
sword among various peoples.
[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9.
Is it possible that it may have some reference to the
fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the
Latins?
[432] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos
inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive
nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however,
the translator from the Umbrian is assisted by the Latin
formulae we are discussing.
[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me
sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc.
This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed
to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C.
(Wissowa, R.K. p. 257). The interesting feature in
this devotio, used at the siege at Carthage, is that
it is not himself whom the commander devotes--the common
sense of the Romans had got beyond that--but the enemy
as substitutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide
magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do
devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones
exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the
enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only gods
invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes,
while in the older formula it is the gods of Romans and
Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called Decius wrote:
"Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck,
p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur
sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word eliciatur
shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last
passage is that the parallel passage in the Euripidean
Iph. in Aul. (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the
idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be
witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant
points down and up respectively in invoking them, as
also in the devotio of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii.
6), which was an abnormal procuratio prodigii.
[434] Cp. the language used by Livy of the second Decius
(x. 29): "prae se agere formidinem ac fugam ...
contacturum funebribus diris signa tela arma hostium."
For spells or curses of this kind see Westermarck i.
563: a curse is conveyable by speech, especially if
spoken by a magistrate or priest. "Among the Maoris the
anathema of the priest is regarded as a thunderbolt that
an enemy cannot escape." See also Robertson Smith,
Semites, p. 434, for the Jewish ban, by which impious
sinners, or enemies of the city and its God, were
devoted to destruction. He remarks that the Hebrew verb
to ban is sometimes rendered "consecrate": Micah iv. 13;
Deut. xiii. 16; and Joshua vi. 26 (Jericho), which
exactly answers to the consecratio of Carthage. For
curses conveyable by sacrifices, as in all the cases I
have mentioned, see Westermarck ii. 618 foll. 624, and
the same author's paper on conditional curses in
Morocco, in Anthropological Essays, addressed to E. B.
Tylor, p. 360.
[435] "Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and
confound their devices." I well remember hearing this
read in church throughout the Crimean war.
[436] "Pro republica Quiritium," in the formula quoted
above.
[437] Livy viii. 10 ad fin.
[438] See above, note 28.
[439] See Marquardt, p. 276 and notes; Mommsen,
Strafrecht, 900 foll. The subject has generally been
treated from the legal point of view rather than the
religious; but from the religious point of view it has
generally been assumed that the sacrifice was to appease
the god. So no doubt it was; but I venture also to
conjecture that the victim was vicarius for the
contamination of the community. On the subject generally
Westermarck's two chapters on human sacrifice and
blood-revenge (xix. and xx. in vol. i.) are extremely
well worth reading.
[440] Aen. i. 607 foll. Cp. Aen. iii. 429--
praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni
cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus,
where the slow movement and circuitous course of a
lustratio must have been in Virgil's mind. The movement
round an object for lustral purposes is seen in Aen.
vi. 229, "idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda," where
Servius explains circumtulit by purgavit. As early
as Livius Andronicus (second century B.C.) we find
"classem lustratur" of fishes swimming round a fleet
(Ribb. Trag. Fragmenta, p. 1).
[441] Marquardt, p. 324, for the februa of the
Luperci, R.F. p. 320 foll., and the explanations there
given. More will be found alluded to in Van Gennep, Les
Rites de passage, p. 249. To my mind none are quite
convincing. The Romans believed that blows with these
februa (strips of the victim's skin) made women
fertile; they were therefore clearly magical implements,
but beyond this we do not seem to get. (See also Deubner
in Archiv, 1910, p. 495 foll.)
[442] Varro, L.L. vi. 13, "Februum Sabini purgamentum,
et id in sacris nostris verbum." Cp. Varro, ap.
Nonium, p. 114; Ovid, Fasti, ii. 19 foll., where he
calls februa piamina, purgamenta, in the language of
the ius divinum.
[443] L.L. vi. 11.
[444] Servius, ad Aen. x. 32; xi. 842; cp. i. 136.
[445] See R.F. p. 127, for the same rite in the Church
of England (Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 292).
[446] Les Rites de passage, ch. ii.
[447] For boundary marks in historical times see
Gromatici auctores, vol. ii. p. 250 foll. (Rudorff).
[448] If the cattle were in the woodland beyond the
settlement, as they would be in summer, they could not
be protected in this way: like an army going into the
country of hostes (see above, p. 216) they were
treated in another way, which we may connect with the
ritual of the Parilia, as Dr. Frazer has beautifully
shown in his paper on St. George and the Parilia (Revue
des études ethnographiques et sociologiques, 1908, p. 1
foll.).
[449] Georg. i. 338 foll.
[450] Varro, L.L. v. 143; Servius, Aen. v. 755 (from
Cato); Plutarch, Romulus, xi.
[451] See above, p. 117.
[452] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 12 foll. and 42 foll.
[453] The deities of the city were invoked to preserve
the name, the magistrates, rites, men, cattle, land, and
crops: a list in which the name is the only item that
carries us back to pre-Christian times.
[454] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 21 and 84 foll.
[455] Livy xl. 6 init.
[456] See above, p. 96.
[457] Numbers xxxi. 19.
[458] Festus, p. 117.
[459] See Hülsen-Jordan, Röm. Topographie, vol. iii.
p. 495; Von Domaszewski, Abhandlungen, p. 217 foll.
[460] Suggested by Van Gennep, Les Rites de passage,
p. 28.
[461] Livy iii. 28. 11.
[462] Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 132 foll.
[463] The account of lustratio given in this lecture
is adapted from the author's chapter on the same subject
in Anthropology and the Classics, Oxford University
Press, 1908.