[131] Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship, lect. viii. Dr. Frazer finds traces of
Mutterrecht only in the succession to the kingship of
Alba and Rome, of which the evidence is of course purely
legendary. If the legends represent fact in any sense,
they point, if I understand him rightly, to a kingship
held by a non-Latin race, or, as he calls it, plebeian.
Binder, Die Plebs, p. 403 foll., believes that the
original Latin population, i.e. the plebs of later
times, lived under Mutterrecht.
[132] Aust, Religion der Römer, p. 212.
[133] In historical times the household deities were
often represented by images of Greek type: e.g. the
Penates by those of the Dioscuri. Wissowa, Rel. und
Kult. p. 147, and Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 95
foll., and 289. See also De Marchi, La Religione nella
vita privata, i. p. 41 foll. and p. 90 foll.
[134] De Marchi, op. cit. i. 13 foll. In the ordinary
and regular religion of the family the State, i.e. the
pontifices, did not interfere; but they might do so in
matters such as the succession of sacra, the care of
graves, or the fulfilment of vows undertaken by private
persons. See Cicero, de Legibus, ii. 19. 47.
[135] Mucius Scaevola, the great lawyer, defined
gentiles as those "qui eodem nomine sunt, qui ab
ingenuis oriundi sunt, quorum maiorum nemo servitutem
servivit, qui capite non sunt deminuti," Cic. Topica,
vi. 29. This is the practical view of a lawyer of the
last century B.C., and does not take account of the
sacra gentilicia, which had by that time decayed or
passed into the care of sodalitates: Marquardt, p. 132
foll.; De Marchi, ii. p. 3 foll. The notion of descent
from a common ancestor is of course ideal, but none the
less a factor in the life of the gens; it crops up,
e.g., in Virgil, Aen. v. 117, 121, and Servius ad
loc.
[136] Crawley, The Tree of Life, p. 47.
[137] For the alleged extinction of the gens Potitia,
and the legend connected with it, Livy i. 7, Festus 237.
[138] See Marquardt, Privataltertümer, p. 56, and note
6.
[139] There is, I believe, no doubt that the
etymological affinities of the word familia point to
the idea of settlement and not that of kin; e.g. Oscan
Faama, a house, and Sanscrit dhâ, to settle.
[140] The exact meaning and origin of the word has been
much discussed. It is tempting to connect it with pax,
paciscor, and make it a territory within whose bounds
there is pax; see Rudorff, Gromatici veteres, ii.
239, and Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, ii. 8 foll.
[141] See Rudorff, Grom. vet. ii. 236 foll.; Mommsen,
Staatsrecht, iii. 116 foll.; Kornemann in Klio, vol.
v. (1905) p. 80 foll.; Greenidge, Roman Public Life,
p. 1 foll.
[142] Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 22 foll.; Kornemann,
l.c.; Roby in Dict. of Antiquities, s.v.
"Agrimetatio," p. 85. The view that there was freehold
garden land attached to the homestead gains strength
from a statement of Pliny (N.H. xix. 50) that the word
used in the XII. Tables for villa, which was the word in
classical times for the homestead, was hortus, a
garden, and that this was heredium, private property.
See Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 23. It would indeed be
strange if the house had no land immediately attached to
it; we know that in the Anglo-Saxon village community
the villani, bordarii and cotagii, had their garden
croft attached to their dwellings, apart from such
strips as they might hold from the lord of the manor in
the open fields. See Vinogradoff, Villainage in
England, p. 148. For the centuriatus ager, Roby
l.c. We have no direct knowledge of the system in the
earliest times, but it is almost certain that it was
old-Italian in outline, and not introduced by the
Etruscans, as stated, e.g., by Deecke-Müller,
Etrusker, ii. 128.
[143] For Latium this is proved by the sepulchral
hut-urns found at Alba and also on the Esquiline. One of
these in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford shows the
construction well. See article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa,
Real-Encyclopädie; Helbig, Die Italiker in der
Poebene, p. 50 foll. Later there was an opening in the
roof.
[144] Von Duhn in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1896,
p. 125 foll., and article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa.
[145] This is Aust's admirable expression, Religion der
Römer, p. 214.
[146] See the author's Social Life at Rome in the Age
of Cicero, p. 242.
[147] Serv. Aen. i. 270; Marquardt, p. 126.
[148] Ap. Gellium, iv. 1. 17. For the sacredness of
food and meals, see below (Lect. VIII. p. 172).
[149] See a paper by the author in Classical Rev. vol.
x. (1896) p. 317, and references there given. Cp. the
passage of Servius quoted above (Aen. i. 730), where a
boy is described as announcing at the daily meal that
the gods were propitious. For the purity necessary I may
refer to Hor. Odes, iii. 23 ad fin., "Immunis aram
si tetigit manus," etc.
[150] Primitive Culture, i. 393.
[151] The feminine counterpart of Genius was Juno, of
which more will be said later on. Each woman had her
Juno; but this "other-soul" has little importance as
compared with Genius.
[152] See J. B. Carter in Hastings' Dict. of Religion
and Ethics, i. 462 foll. For Genius in general, Birt in
Myth. Lex. s.v.; Wissowa, R.K. p. 154 foll.;
Stewart, Myths of Plato, p. 450, for the connexion of
souls with ancestry.
[153] See the fifth of Plutarch's Quaestiones Romanae,
and Dr. Jevons' interesting comments in his edition of
Phil. Holland's translation, pp. xxii. and xxxv. foll.
Cp. the throwing the fetters of a criminal out by the
roof of the Flamen's house.
[154] Civ. Dei, vi. 9. These are deities of the
Indigitamenta; see below, p. 84.
[155] De Marchi, La Religione, etc. i. 188 foll.;
Marquardt, Privatleben der Römer, p. 336, "la porte
est la limite entre le monde étranger et le monde
domestique" (A. van Gennep, Rites de passage, p. 26,
where other illustrations are given).
[156] See below, Lect. XII. p. 281.
[157] Wissowa, R.K. p. 96; Aust, Rel. der Römer, p.
117; Roscher in Myth. Lex. s.v. "Janus"; J. B. Carter,
Religion of Numa, p. 13. Cp. Von Domaszewski in
Archiv, 1907, p. 337.
[158] Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of
Kingship, p. 286 foll.; A. B. Cook in Classical
Review, 1904, p. 367 foll.
[159] Gromat. vet. i. 302, line 20 foll., describes
the chapels, but without mentioning the Lares. Varro
(L.L. vi. 25) supplies the name: "Compitalia dies
attributus Laribus Compitalibus; ideo ubi viae competunt
tum in competis sacrificatur." Cp. Wissowa, R.K. p.
148. But the nature of the land thus marked off is not
clear to me, nor explained (for primitive times) by
Wissowa in Real-Encycl., s.vv. "Compitum" and
"Compitalia."
[160] "Enos Lases juvate." See Henzen, Acta Fratr.
Arv. p. 26 foll.
[161] Cato, R.R. 5. Cp. Dion. Hal. iv. 13. 2. In Cato
143 the vilica is to put a wreath on the focus on
Kalends, Nones and Ides, and to pray to the Lar
familiaris pro copia (at the compita?).
[162] Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 172.
[163] The controversy about the Lar may be read in the
Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 1904, p. 42 foll.
(Wissowa), and 1907, p. 368 foll. (Samter in reply). De
Marchi (La Religione, etc. i. 28 foll.) takes the same
view as Samter, who originally stated it in his
Familienfesten, p. 105 foll., in criticism of
Wissowa's view. See also a note by the author in the
Archiv, 1906, p. 529.
[164] Wissowa, R.K. p. 148; the details as to the
altar occur in Gromatici vet. i. 302. It was on this
occasion that maniae and pilae were hung on the
house and compitum ("pro foribus," Macr. i. 7. 35); see
above, p. 61. For the religio Larium, Cic. de Legg.,
ii. 19 and 27. That the Compitalia was an old Latin
festival is undoubted; but as we are uncertain about the
exact nature of the earliest form of landholding, we
cannot be sure about the nature of the compita in remote
antiquity. The passage from the Gromatici (Dolabella),
quoted above, refers to the fines templares of
possessiones, i.e. the boundaries marked by these
chapels in estates of later times. See Rudorff in vol.
ii. p. 263; Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Compitum."
[165] Varro, L.L. vi. 26. I have discussed this
passage in R.F. p. 294; it is still not clear to me
whether Varro is identifying his Paganicae with the
Sementivae, but on the whole I think he uses the latter
word of a city rite (dies a pontificibus dictus), and
the former of the country festivals of the same kind.
[166] Fasti, i. 663.
[167] Cl. Rev., 1908, p. 36 foll.
[168] Georg. i. 338 foll.
[169] See my discussion of Faunus in R.F. p. 258 foll.
I am still unable to agree with Wissowa in his view of
Faunus (R.K. p. 172 foll.). I may here mention a
passage of the gromatic writer Dolabella (Gromatici,
i. 302), in which he says that there were three Silvani
to each possessio or large estate of later times: "S.
domesticus, possessioni consecratus: alter agrestis,
pastoribus consecratus: tertius orientalis, cui est in
confinio lucus positus, a quo inter duo pluresque fines
oriuntur." Faunus never became domesticated, but he
belongs to the same type as Silvanus. Von Domaszewski,
in his recently published Abhandlungen zur röm.
Religion, p. 61, discredits the passage about the three
Silvani, following a paper of Mommsen. But his whole
interesting discussion of Silvanus shows well how many
different forms that curious semi-deity could take.
[170] Odes, iii. 18.
[171] Cic. de Inventione, ii. 161.
[172] pp. 236-284.
[173] R.F. 325, condensed from Siculus Flaccus
(Gromatici, i. 141).
[174] Fasti, ii. 641 foll.
[175] See, e.g., Jevons, Introduction, etc., p. 138;
Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 321.
[176] See, e.g., Tibullus ii. 1. 55; Virg. Ecl. vi.
22, x. 27, and Servius on both these passages. Pliny,
N.H. xxxiii. 111; and cp. below, p. 177. For primitive
ideas about the colour red see Jevons, Introd. pp. 67
and 138; Samter, Familienfeste, p. 47 foll. Cp. also
the very interesting paper of von Duhn in Archiv,
1906, p. 1 foll., esp. p. 20: "Es soll eben wirklich
pulsierendes kraftvolles Leben zum Ausdruck gebracht
werden." His conclusions are based on the widespread
custom of using red in funerals, coffins, and for
colouring the dead man himself: the idea being to give
him a chance of new life--which is what he wants--red
standing for blood.
[177] I am not sure that I am right in calling this
whitethorn. For the qualities of the Spina alba see
Ovid, Fasti, vi. 129 and 165, "Sic fatus spinam, quae
tristes pellere posset A foribus nexas, haec erat alba,
dedit." In line 165 he calls it Virga Janalis. See
also Festus, p. 289, and Serv. ad Ecl. viii. 29;
Bücheler, Umbrica, p. 136.
[178] The details are fully set forth in Marquardt,
Röm. Privataltertümer, p. 52 foll. The religious
character of confarreatio and its antiquity are fully
recognised by Westermarck, History of Human Marriage,
p. 427. Some interesting parallels to the smearing of
the doorposts from modern Europe will be found collected
in Samter, Familienfeste, p. 81 foll. The authority
for the wolf's fat was Masurius Sabinus, quoted by
Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 142 (cp. 157), who adds from the
same author, "ideo novas nuptas illo perungere postes
solitas, ne quid mali medicamenti inferretur." The real
reason was, no doubt, that it was a charm against evil
spirits, not against poison; but it is worth while to
quote here another passage of Pliny (xx. 101), where he
says that a squill hung in limine ianuae had the same
power, according to Pythagoras. Some may see a
reminiscence of totemism in the wolf's fat: in any case
the mention of the animal as obtainable is interesting.
[179] Dieterich, Mutter Erde, p. 6 foll. The idea is
that the child comes from mother earth, and will
eventually return to her.
[180] For Roman names Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 7
foll., and Mommsen, Forschungen, i. I foll., are still
the most complete authorities. For the importance of the
name among wild and semi-civilised peoples, Frazer,
G.B. i. 403 foll.; Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 430
foll. All these ceremonies of birth, naming, and
initiation (puberty) have recently been included by M.
van Gennep in what he calls Rites de passage (see his
book with that title, which appeared after these
lectures were prepared, especially chapters v. and vi.).
In all these ceremonies he traces more or less
successfully a sequence of rites of separation (i.e.
from a previous condition), of margin, where the ground
is, so to speak, neutral, and of "aggregation," when the
subject is introduced to a new state or condition of
existence. If I understand him rightly, he looks on this
as the proper and primitive explanation of all such
rites, and denies that they need to be accounted for
animistically, i.e. by assuming that riddance of evil
spirits, or purification of any kind, is the leading
idea in them. They are, in fact, quasi-dramatic
celebrations of a process of going over from one status
to another, and may be found in connection with all the
experiences of man in a social state. But the Roman
society, of which I am describing the religious aspect,
had beyond doubt reached the animistic stage of thought,
and was in process of developing it into the theological
stage; hence these ceremonies are marked by sacrifices,
as marriage, the dies lustricus (see De Marchi, p.
169, and Tertull. de Idol. 16) most probably, and
puberty (R.F. p. 56). I do not fully understand how
far van Gennep considers sacrifice as marking a later
stage in the development of the ideas of a society on
these matters (see his note in criticism of Oldenburg,
p. 78); but I see no good reason to abandon the words
purification and lustration, believing that even if he
is right in his explanation of the original
performances, these ideas had been in course of time
engrafted on them.
[181] In historical times the toga pura was assumed
when the parents thought fit; earlier there may have
been a fixed day (R.F. p. 56, "Liberalia"). In any
case there was, of course, no necessary correspondence
between "social and physical puberty"; van Gennep, p. 93
foll.
[182] Wissowa, R.K. p. 191; J. B. Carter in Hastings'
Dict. of Religion and Ethics, i. 462 foll.; Dieterich,
Mutter Erde, p. 77. The whole question of the
so-called cult of the dead at Rome calls for fresh
investigation in the light of ethnological and
archaeological research. The recent work of Mr. J. C.
Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion, seems to throw grave doubt on some of the
most important conclusions of Rohde's Psyche, the work
which most writers on the ideas of the Greeks and Romans
have been content to follow. Mr. Lawson seems to me to
have proved that the object of both burial and cremation
(which in both peninsulas are found together) was to
secure dissolution for the substance of the body, so
that the soul might not be able to inhabit the body
again, and the two together return to annoy the living
(see especially chapters v. and vi.). But his answer to
the inevitable question, why in that case sustenance
should be offered to the dead at the grave, is less
satisfactory (see pp. 531, 538), and I do not at present
see how to co-ordinate it with Roman usage. But I find
hardly a trace of the belief that the dead had to be
placated like the gods by sacrifice and prayer, except
in Aen. iii. 63 foll. and v. 73 foll. In the first of
these passages Polydorus had not been properly buried,
as Servius observes ad loc. to explain the nature of
the offerings; the second presents far more difficulties
than have as yet been fairly faced.
[183] For recent researches about beans as tabooed by
the Pythagoreans and believed to be the food of ghosts,
see Gruppe, Mythologische Literatur, p. 370 (Samter
and Wünsch). Cp. R.F., p. 110.
[184] Ov. Fasti, v. 421 foll.; R.F. p. 107.