V
As illustrating this type of dance among the Romans we may instance the festival of the Ambarvalia; this festival was not celebrated on a fixed date, but varied according to the state of the crops. The duties at the festival were carried out by Fratres Arvales, “the Brethren of the Ploughed Fields.” With solemn prayers, addressed primarily to Mars[267] to keep away all harm from the crops, these Brethren led round in formal procession the victims destined for sacrifice to Mars as the god of vegetation, viz. a pig, a ram, and a bull. The Arval Brothers had a special three-step dance (tripudium) which they performed in honour of Mars and the Lares; it was repeated three times, and during its performance they sang a hymn of praise to the god[268]. A minute account of their three days’ festival is given in the Acta of the year 218 (Elagabalus, CIL, VI. 2104)[269]; the dance, which took place on the second, and most important, day is described as follows: “... Then the priests, shut up in the temple, girding up their togas, took the song-books and, marking the time, danced the three step singing thus ...[270].” Again, at the festival of the Lupercalia, held in February, when the sacrificial feast was ended, the Luperci, crowned and anointed, and, but for an apron of goatskin, entirely naked, ran round the Palatine Hill with thongs cut from the skin of the sacrificed goats in their hands[271]. The feast was held in honour of Faunus (the Greek Pan), who was worshipped under the name of Lupercus, in a grotto in the Palatine Mount called the Lupercal. The running round of the Luperci with the goats’ thongs had a purificatory object[272] (see [p. 101]).
The dances of the Salii may be appropriately mentioned here. Their sacred processions took place in March and October, and continued for over three weeks[273]. Headed by trumpeters and dressed in full battle apparel they marched through the city; at all the altars and temples they halted, and, under the conduct of two leaders, solemnly danced the war-dance in three measures in honour of Mars, singing at the same time[274]. The Salii, however, also performed dances in honour of Saturn, the Roman god of sowing;
“as the Romans,” says Frazer, “sowed the corn both in spring and autumn, and as down to the present time in Europe superstitious rustics are wont to dance and leap high in the spring for the purpose of making the crops grow high, we may conjecture that the leaps and dancing performed by the Salii, the priests of the old Italian god of vegetation, were similarly supposed to quicken the growth of the corn by homoeopathic or imitative magic[275].”
It was not in Rome alone that this type of dancing was performed;
similar colleges of dancing priests are known to have existed in many towns of ancient Italy, and everywhere, we may conjecture, they were supposed to contribute to the fertility of the earth by their leaps and dances[276].
This magical purpose of the sacred dance will come before us again.