Id. Mai. (May 15). NP.
FER[IAE] IOVI. MERCUR[IO] MAIAE. (VENUS[[426]].)
MAIAE AD CIRC[UM] M[AXIMUM]. (CAER.) MERC[URIO]. (TUSC.)
The very curious rite which took place on this day is not mentioned in the calendars; it belonged to those which, like the Paganalia, were publica indeed and pro populo, but represented the people as divided in certain groups rather than the State as a whole[[427]]. But its obvious antiquity, and the interesting questions which arise out of it, tempt me to treat it in detail, at the risk of becoming tedious.
I have already mentioned[[428]] that there was a procession in March, as we infer from the sacra Argeorum quoted by Varro, which went round the sacella Argeorum, or twenty-four chapels situated in the four Servian regions of the city[[429]]. What was done at these sacella we do not know; the procession and its doings had become so obscure in Ovid’s time that he could dispose of it in two lines of his Fasti, and express a doubt as to whether it took place on one day or two[[430]]. Nor do we know what the sacella really were. The best conjecture is that of Jordan, who has brought some evidence together to show that they were small chapels or sacred places where holy things were deposited until the time came round for them to be used in some religious ceremony[[431]].
But on May 15 there was another rite in which the word Argei plays a prominent part; and here the details have in part at least survived. The Argei in this case are not chapels, but a number of puppets or bundles of rushes, resembling (as Dionysius has recorded) men bound hand and foot, which were taken down to the pons sublicius by the Pontifices and magistrates, and cast into the river by the Vestal Virgins[[432]]. The Flaminica Dialis, the priestess of Jupiter, was present at the ceremony in mourning. The number of the puppets was probably the same as that of the sacella of the same name[[433]].
Explanations of these rites were invented by Roman scholars. The sacella were the graves of Greeks who had come to Italy with Hercules; and the puppets represented the followers of Hercules who had died on their journey and were to return home as it were by proxy[[434]]. Apart from the theories of the learned, it was the fact that the common people at Rome believed the puppets to be substitutes for old men, who at one time used to be thrown into the Tiber as victims. Sexagenarios de ponte was a well-known proverb which in Cicero’s time was explained by supposing that the bridges alluded to were those over which the voters passed in the Comitia[[435]]; but this view may at once be put aside. Those bridges were certainly a comparatively late invention, while the proverb was of remote antiquity.
But, given the details of the rite, and the popular belief about the old men as victims, what explanation can we hope to arrive at? We may freely admit that no satisfactory etymology of the word Argei is forthcoming; but this is perhaps, in a negative sense, an advantage to our inquiry[[436]]. The Romans derived it from the Greek Ἀργεῖοι; and to this etymology Mommsen is now disposed to return. The writer of the article ‘Argei’ in the Mythological Lexicon derived it from varka-s = ‘wolf’; others have believed it to come from a root arg = ‘white’ or ‘shining,’ and though the termination eus is hardly a Latin one, it may be that this is the true basis of the word[[437]].
Instead of prejudging the case by fanciful etymologies, or by attempting to decide the question whether the Romans ever practised the rites of human sacrifice, we will take the leading features of the ceremony, and see in what direction they may on the whole direct us. That done, it may be possible to sum up the debate, though a final and decisive verdict is not to be expected.
The features which demand attention are (1) the processional character of the rites; (2) the presence of the Pontifices and the Vestals; (3) the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis; (4) the rush-puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.
1. We can hardly doubt that there was a procession to the pons sublicius, though the fact is not expressly stated. We are tempted to believe that it visited each sacellum, and there found, or possibly made, the puppet (simulacrum), which thus represented the district of which the sacellum was the sacred centre; and that it then proceeded, bearing the puppets, probably by the Forum and Vicus Tuscus to the bridge[[438]]. Now if this feature can help us at all—if we accept the connexion of the March and May ceremonies and their processional character—it must point in the direction of the purification of land or city, on the analogy of other Italian ceremonies of the same kind. At the end of this month took place the Ambarvalia, when the priests went round the land with prayer and sacrifice to ensure the good growth of the crops; and we have a remarkable instance of the same kind of practice in the celebrated inscription of Iguvium. Not only each city, but each pagus, and even each farmer, duly purified his land in some such way, cleansing it from the powers of evil and sterility, while at the same time the boundaries were renewed in the memories of all concerned. Bearing this in mind, and also the season of the year, we may fairly guess that the Argean processions had some relation to agriculture, and to the welfare of the precarious stock of wealth of an agricultural community.
2. The presence of the Pontifices and Vestals.—The former would be present, partly as the representative sacred college of the united city[[439]], partly as having under their special care the sacred bridge from which the puppets were thrown. Whether or not the word pontifex be directly derived from pons[[440]], it is certain that the ancient bridge, with its strong religious associations, was under their care, and that the river was an object of their constant liturgical attention[[441]]. It has been suggested that the whole ceremony was one of bridge-worship[[442]]; but this view, as we shall see, will hardly explain all the facts. It leaves the March rites unexplained, and also the presence of the Vestals; nor does it seem to suit the season of the year.
The presence of the Vestals is more significant; and it was they, as it seems, who performed the act of throwing the puppets from the bridge[[443]]. In all the public duties performed by them (as we shall see more fully in dealing with the Vestalia[[444]]) a reference can be traced to one leading idea, viz. that the food and nourishment of the State, of which the sacred fire was the symbol, depended for its maintenance on the accurate performance of these duties. We have just seen that they spent the seven days preceding the Ides of May in preparing their sacred cakes from the first ripening ears of corn. We shall see them using these cakes in June, September, and at the Lupercalia. At the Parilia and the Fordicidia they also take a prominent part, both of them festivals relating to the fruitfulness of herds and flocks; so also at the harvest festivals in August of Ops Consiva and Consus. And we can hardly suppose that their presence at the rite under discussion should have a different significance from that of their public service on all other occasions. Even if we had no other evidence to go upon, we might on the facts just adduced base a fair inference that this ceremony too had some relation to the processes and perils awaiting the ripening crops.
3. The Flaminica Dialis had on this day to lay aside her usual bridal dress, and to appear in mourning[[445]]. The same rule was laid down for her during the ‘moving’ of the ancilia in March, and during the Vestalia up to the completion of the purification of the temple of Vesta. It is not easy to see what the meaning of this rule may have been. On the other two occasions there is nothing to lead us to suppose that it was some such terrible rite as human sacrifice which caused the change of costume; we need not therefore suppose that it was so on May 15. But if all three occasions are times of purification and the averting of evil influences: if they each mark the conclusion of an old season, and the necessity of great care in entering on a new one, we can better understand it. This was the case, as we saw, when in March the Salii were pervading the city, and it was so also at the Vestalia, which was preparatory to the ingathering of the crops. Some such critical moment, I think, the day we are discussing must also have been. Some light may be thrown on this aspect of the question by practices which have been collected by Dr. Mannhardt from Northern Europe[[446]], some of which still survive. I will give a single instance from Russia. At Murom on June 29 a figure of straw, dressed in female clothing, is laid on a bier and carried to the edge of a lake or river; it is eventually torn up and thrown into the river, while the spectators hide their faces and behave as though they bewailed the death of Kostroma. In another district on the same day an old man carried out of the town a puppet representing the spring, and was followed by the women singing mournful songs and expressing by their gestures grief and despair.
4. The Puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.—There are two possible explanations of this curious practice.
(1) The puppets were substitutes for human victims, and probably for old men. The evidence for this view is—first, the Roman tradition expressed in the saying sexagenarios de ponte[[447]], and supported by the fact that the puppets appeared, to Dionysius at least, like men bound hand and foot[[448]]; secondly, the fact that human sacrifice was not entirely unknown at Rome, though there is no trace of any such custom regularly recurring. We may allow that Italy could not have been entirely free from a practice which existed even in Greece, and also that the habit of substituting some object for the original victim is common and well attested in religious history; but whether either the Argei, or the oscilla or maniae, which are often compared with the Argei, really had this origin, may well indeed be doubted[[449]]. Thirdly, there is evidence that not only human sacrifice, but the sacrifice of old men, was by no means unknown in primitive times. Passing over the general evidence as to human sacrifice, we know that the old and weak were sometimes put to death[[450]]. Being of no further use in the struggle for existence, they were got rid of in various ways—an act perhaps not so much of cruelty as of kindness, and under certain circumstances not incompatible with filial piety[[451]]. The chief objections to this explanation are—first, that it obliges us to ascribe to the early Romans a habit which seems quite incompatible with their well-known respect for old age and their horror of parricide; secondly, that it does not explain why a practice, which can hardly have ever been a regularly recurring one, should have passed into a yearly ceremony[[452]].
(2) The rite was of a dramatic rather than a sacrificial character[[453]], and belongs to a class of which we have numerous examples both from Greek, Teutonic, and Slavonic peoples. In Greece, or rather in Egypt, we have the cult of Adonis, in which a puppet is immersed in the water amid wailings and lamentations. In Greece proper semi-dramatic rites are found at Chaeronea and Athens[[454]], though somewhat different in character to those of the Argei and Adonis. Tacitus describes the immersion in water of the image of the German goddess Nerthus[[455]]. But most significant are the many examples, of which Mannhardt formed an ample collection, in which puppets are found, made as a rule of straw, carried along in procession and thrown into a river or water of some kind, often from a bridge[[456]]. Sometimes the place of these puppets is taken by a sheaf, a small tree, or a man or boy dressed up in foliage or fastened in the sheaf[[457]]: but in almost all cases the object is ducked in water or at least sprinkled with it, though now and then it is burnt or buried. The best known example is that of the Bavarian ‘Wasservogel,’ which is either a boy or a puppet, as the custom may be in different places; he or it was decorated, carried round the fields at Whitsuntide[[458]], and thrown from the bridge into the stream. So constant and inconvenient was this kind of custom in the Middle Ages that a law of 1351, still extant, forbade the ducking of people at Erfurt in the water at Easter and Whitsuntide[[459]]. In many of these cases the simulacrum may have been substituted for a human being[[460]]; but I find none where the notion of sacrifice survived, or where there was any trace of a popular belief that the object was a substitute for an actual victim. What these curious customs, according to Dr. Mannhardt, do really represent, is the departure of winter and the arrival of the fruitful season, or possibly the exhaustion of the vernal Power of vegetation after its work is done[[461]].
Two features in these old customs may strike us as interesting in connexion with the Argei—(1) The fact that the central object is often either actually an old man, or is at least called ‘the old one.’ A Whitsuntide custom at Halle shows us, for example, a straw puppet called Der alte[[462]]. (2) The constant occurrence of white objects in these customs; the puppet is called ‘the white man with the white hair, the snow-white husband,’ or is dressed in a white shirt[[463]]. In these expressions it is perhaps not impossible that we may find a clue to the long-lost meaning of the word Argei. Can it be that the Roman puppets were originally called ‘the white ones,’ i. e. old ones, from a root arg = ‘white’[[464]]; and that from a natural mistake as to the meaning of the word there arose not only the story about the Greek victims but also the common belief about sexagenarii being thrown over the bridge?
We have to choose between the two explanations given above. I am, on the whole, disposed to agree with Dr. Mannhardt, and in the absence of convincing evidence as to the regular and periodical occurrence of human sacrifice in ancient Italy, to regard these strange survivals as semi-dramatic performances rather than sacrificial rites. This view, however, need not exclude the possibility of the union of both drama and sacrifice at a very remote period, probably before the Latins settled in the district.
The immersion in water, whether or no it involved the death of a victim, is reasonably explained, on the basis of comparative evidence, to have been a rain-spell[[465]]. In the cases already mentioned of Adonis, Nerthus, &c., this idea seems the prominent one. I am inclined to think, however, that the notion of purification was also present—the two uniting in the idea of regeneration. Plutarch calls the Argean rite ‘the greatest of the purifications,’ and he is here most probably reproducing the opinion of Varro[[466]]. This is indicated by the presence of the priests and the Vestals, by the processions, and by the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, as we have already seen. We may regard the rite as in fact a casting out of old things, and in that sense a purification; and also at the same time as a spell or earnest of rain and fertility in the ensuing year. The puppets were perhaps hung in the sacella in the course of the procession in March, as a symbol of the fertility then beginning, and cast into the river as ‘the old ones’ when that fertility had reached its height[[467]].
In the last place, it might be asked in honour of what deity the rite was performed. It is hardly necessary, and certainly is not possible, to answer a question about which the Romans themselves were not agreed. Ovid and Dionysius[[468]] believed it was Saturnus, probably following an old Greek oracle which was known to Varro[[469]]. Verrius Flaccus thought it was Dis Pater[[470]]. Modern writers have concluded on the general evidence of the rite that it was the river-god Tiberinus; Jordan, however, regarded the question as irrelevant[[471]]. We may agree with him, and at least return a verdict of non liquet. If it was a sacrificial act, the ancient river-god is indeed likely enough; if it was a quasi-dramatic one, it does not follow that any deity was specially concerned in it. But we may go so far as to guess that it was connected with the worship of those vaguely-conceived deities of vegetation whose influence on the calendar we have been tracing since March 1.
This same day is marked in one calendar as Feriae Iovi, Mercurio, Maiae. The conjunction of these deities is to some extent accidental. In the first place the Ides of every month were sacred to Jupiter; and the addition of Mercurius is probably to be explained simply by the adaptation of a Greek myth which made Hermes the son of Jupiter, suggesting the selection of the Ides as an appropriate day for the cult of the Latin representative of Hermes[[472]]. Mercurius, again, was associated with Maia, perhaps simply because the dedication-day of his oldest temple in Rome (ad circum maximum) was the Ides of the Mensis Maius[[473]]. The Roman Mercurius was considered especially as the god of trade, and dated, like Ceres, from the time when an extensive corn trade first began in Rome[[474]]. It is highly probable that the Tarquinian dynasty had encouraged Roman trade, and that the increase of population which was the result, together with the wars which followed their expulsion, had occasioned a series of severe famines. To this we trace the Roman knowledge of the Greek or Graeco-Etruscan Hermes, through a trade in corn with Sicilian Greeks or Etruscans, and the appearance of the god at Rome as Mercurius, the god of trade. His first temple was dedicated in B.C. 495, and as in other cases, the dedication was celebrated each year by those specially interested in the worship, in this case the mercatores, who were already, at this early period, formed into an organized guild[[475]].