Id. Oct. (Oct. 15). NP.
EQUUS AD NIXAS FIT. (PHILOC.)
No calendar but the late one of Philocalus mentions the undoubtedly primitive rite of horse-sacrifice which took place on this day. Wissowa has tried to explain this difficulty, which meets us elsewhere in the Calendar, e. g. on the Ides of May (Argei), June 1 (festival of Carna)[[1052]]. Where two festivals fell on the same day, both would not be found in calendars which were meant for the use, not of the pontifices themselves, but of the unlearned vulgar; for the latter would not be able to distinguish, or to get one clear name for the day, and confusion would result. Now all Kalends and Ides were sacred to Juno and Jupiter respectively; all other rites falling on these days would stand a chance of being omitted, unless indeed they were noticed in later annotations such as we find cut in smaller letters in the Fasti Praenestini and others.
Luckily the entry in Philocalus’ calendar is supplemented sufficiently from other sources. The earliest hint we get comes from the Greek historian Timaeus, and is preserved in a fragment of the twelfth book of Polybius[[1053]]. Timaeus after the Greek fashion connects the horse-sacrifice with the legend of Troy and the wooden horse: but he also tells us the important detail that on a certain day a war-horse was killed with a spear in the Campus Martius[[1054]]. The passage is no doubt characteristic of Timaeus, both in regard to the detail, and the mythology which Polybius despised. But though we do not know that Timaeus was ever at Rome, we may hope that he was correct in the one particular which we do not learn from other sources, viz. the slaughter of the horse with the sacred weapon of Mars.
Fuller information comes from Verrius Flaccus, as represented in the epitomes of Festus and Paulus Diaconus[[1055]]. On this day there was a two-horse chariot race in the Campus Martius; and the near horse of the winning pair was sacrificed to Mars—killed with a spear, if we may believe Timaeus. The place is indicated in Philocalus’ calendar as ‘ad nixas,’ i. e. the ciconiae nixae, which seem to have been three storks carved in stone with bills crossing each other[[1056]]: this however was non-existent under the Republic. The real scene of the sacrifice must have been an old ‘ara Martis,’ and that there was such an altar in the Campus we know for certain, though we cannot definitely fix its position[[1057]]. The tail of the horse was cut off and carried with speed to the Regia so that the warm blood might drip upon the focus or sacred hearth there. The head also was cut off and decked with cakes; and at one time there was a hard fight for its possession between the men of the two neighbouring quarters of the Via Sacra and the Subura. If the former carried off the prize, they fixed it on the wall of the Regia; if the latter, on the turris Mamilia[[1058]].
It is probable[[1059]], though not quite certain, that the congealed blood from the tail was used, together with the ashes of the unborn calves sacrificed on the Fordicidia, as ‘medicine’ to be distributed to the people at the Parilia on April 21.
The rite of the ‘October-horse’ had been adequately described and in some degree explained by Preller, Marquardt, Schwegler, and others[[1060]], before the late Dr. Mannhardt took it in hand not long before his death[[1061]]. Mannhardt studied it in the light of his far-reaching researches in folk-lore, and succeeded in treating it as all such survivals should be treated, i.e. in bringing it into relation with the practices of other peoples—not so much by way of explaining its original meaning precisely, as in order to make some progress by its help towards an understanding of the attitude of primitive man to the supernatural. His conclusions have been generally accepted, and, with very slight modifications, are to be found in Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (ii. 64), and in Roscher’s article ‘Mars’ in the Mythological Lexicon (2416). Recently, however, they have been called in question by no less a person than Prof. Wissowa[[1062]] of Berlin, who seems to take a different view of the Mars-cult from that at which we thought we had at last safely arrived: it may be as well therefore to give yet another account of Mannhardt’s treatment of the question, and to follow his track somewhat more elaborately than Mr. Frazer. It does not of course follow that he has said the last word; but it is as well to begin by making clear what he has said.
1. This is the last of the series of harvest festivals, as we may call them generically. We have had the Ambarvalia and the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals in May: the Vestalia in June[[1063]]; the festivals of Consus and Ops Consiva in August; and lastly we find this one coming after all the fruits of the land have been gathered in. In this respect it is parallel to the Pyanepsia and Oschophoria of the Greeks, to the Jewish feast of Tabernacles[[1064]], and to the true Michaelmas harvest-festivals of modern Europe, which follow at an interval the great variety of quaint harvest customs which occur at the actual in-gathering. Even now in the Roman Campagna there is a lively festival of this kind in October.
It should be noticed that the harvest character of the rite was suggested to Mannhardt by the passage from Paulus (220), from which we learn that the head of the sacrificed horse was decked with cakes, like those of the live draught-animals at the Vestalia and Consualia and feriae Sementivae [q. v.]. This, Paulus adds, was done ‘quia id sacrum fiebat ob frugum eventum,’ which last words can hardly mean anything but ‘on account of the past harvest[[1065]].’ There are, I may add, two points open to doubt here, which Mannhardt does not point out: (1) the reason here given may be only a guess of Verrius’, and not one generally understood at Rome[[1066]]. (2) The concluding words of the gloss seem to make no sense, a fact which throws some doubt on the whole passage. The rite is ‘ob frugum eventum,’ yet ‘a horse, and not an ox, is the victim, because a horse is suited for war, and an ox is not[[1067]].’ However this may be understood, we need not quarrel with the conclusion[[1068]], that the real meaning of the adornment was to show that the head was an object possessed of power to procure fertility—an inference confirmed by the eagerness of the rival city-quarters to get possession of it.
2. The sacrificed horse represented a Corn-spirit. The Corn-spirit was Mannhardt’s chief discovery, and its various forms are now familiar to English readers of Frazer’s Golden Bough, and of Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States. Almost every common animal, wild or tame, may be found to represent the Corn-spirit at harvest-time in one locality or another, where the nomadic age has given place to an agricultural one; or a man, woman, boy or puppet represents the animal, and so indirectly the Corn-spirit[[1069]]. Mannhardt produces from his stores of folk-lore many instances in which the horse thus figures, including the hobby-horse which in old England used to prance round the May-pole. Those examples, however, are not strong enough to convince us that the October horse was a Corn-spirit, though they prove well enough that the Corn-spirit often took this shape[[1070]]. But we must remember that he is only suggesting an origin in the simple rites of the farm, indicating a class of ideas to which this survival may be traceable[[1071]].
He does, however, produce an example which has one or two features in common with the Roman rite, only in this case the animal is a goat instead of a horse. In Dauphiné a goat is decked with ribbons and flowers and let loose in the harvest-field. The reapers run after it, and finally the farmer cuts off its head[[1072]], while his wife holds it. Parts of its body (we are not told whether the head is among them) are kept as ‘medicine’ till the next harvest. So too the head, and also the tail and the blood, of the October horse were the seat of some great Power; but whether this was a vegetation-spirit does not seem satisfactorily shown.
3. The chariot-race was an elaborated and perhaps Graecized form or survival of the simple race of men and women so often met with in the harvest-field, often in pursuit of a representative of the Corn-spirit.
Mannhardt gives examples from France and Germany of races in pursuit of cock, calf, kid, sheep, or whatever shape may be the one in vogue for the Corn-spirit; often the animal is in some way decorated for the occasion. Two of a rather different kind may be mentioned here, though they occur, not on the harvest-field, but at Whitsuntide and Easter respectively; but they show how horse-races may originate in the customs of the farm. In the Hartz the farm-horses, gaily decorated, are raced by the labourers for possession of a wreath, which is hung on the neck of the winning horse. In Silesia the finest near horse of the team, decorated by the girls, is ridden (raced?) round the boundary of the farm, and then round a neighbouring village, while Easter hymns are sung. We have already noticed the racing of horses and mules at the Consualia in August: according to Dionysius, these too were decked out with flowers[[1073]]. Mannhardt makes also a somewhat lengthy digression to point out the possibility that in the original form of the Passover (on which was afterwards engrafted the Jahvistic worship and the history of the escape from Egypt) a race or something of the kind may be indicated by the custom of eating the victim with the loins girt.
There is undoubtedly a possible origin for the horse-racing of Greeks and Romans in the customs of the farm at different seasons of the year, and I accept Mannhardt’s view so far, with a probability, not certainty, as to the Corn-spirit. We may perhaps be able to trace the development of the custom a little further in this case.
4. The horse’s head, fixed on the Regia or the turris Mamilia, is the effigy of the Corn-spirit, which is to bring fertility and to keep off evil influences for the year to come.[[1074]]
Examples of this practice of fixing up some object after harvest in a prominent place in farm or village are so numerous as almost to defy selection, and are now familiar to all students of folk-lore[[1075]]. Sometimes it is a bunch of corn or flowers, as in the Greek Eiresione[[1076]], and to this day at Charlton-on-Otmoor, where it is placed over the beautiful rood-screen in the church. Such bunches are often called by the name of some animal; occasionally their place is taken by the effigy of an animal’s head, e. g. that of a horse[[1077]], which in course of time becomes a permanency.
5. The cutting off the tail is explained by the idea that a remnant of the body of the representative of the Corn-spirit is sufficient to produce this spirit afresh in the vegetation of the coming year.
The examples Mannhardt quotes are numerous, and only gain force when brought together: I must refer the reader to his work for them[[1078]]. The word tail not only occurs frequently in harvest customs (e. g. the cutter of the last sheaf is called the wheat-tail or barley-tail[[1079]]), but there is little doubt that virtue was believed to reside in a tail[[1080]]. Who knows but that the preservation of the fox’s brush by fox-hunters has some origin of this kind?
6. The use made of the blood, which was kept and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves of the Fordicidia, and with sulphur and bean-straw as a medicine to be distributed to the people at the Parilia, tells its own story without need of illustration (see on April 15 and 21). The blood was the life[[1081]]; the fire and sulphur-fumes were to purify and avert evil. Both men and beasts leapt over the fire into which this mixture was thrown at the Parilia, to gain new life and strength, and to avert the influences which might retard them.
Finally, Mannhardt has some remarks on the origin of the rite, which were suggested by Schwegler and Ambrosch[[1082]]. The Campus Martius, the scene of the sacrifice, was originally terra regis, cultivated for him by the people[[1083]]. When the king was the chief farmer, the horse’s head was carried to his house (regia) and fixed thereon, and the tail allowed to drip on to his hearth. When the neighbouring community of the Subura was united with that of the Palatine, the seat of the oldest community, the remembrance of their duality survived in the contest for the head: if the men of the Subura won it, they fixed it on the turris Mamilia, which may have been the dwelling of their own chief. Such contests are even now well known, or have[[1084]] but lately disappeared; and some of them may owe their origin to a fight for the Corn-spirit. Mannhardt gives some examples—one very curious one from Granada, and one from Brittany. At Derby, Hawick, Ludlow, and other places in this country, they or the recollection of them may still be found.
On the whole we may agree with him that the rite was in its origin one of the type to which he has referred it—a final harvest festival of the Latin farm. There is yet, however, a word to be said. He does not treat it from the point of view of the Roman calendar, and thus fails to note the turn it took when Latin farmers became Roman citizens. Wissowa, on the other hand, takes the calendar as his sole basis for judging of it, and with a strange perversity, as it seems to me, brushes Mannhardt’s conclusions aside, and would explain the rite simply as a sacrifice to the god of war[[1085]]. Now doubtless it had come to be this in the organized city-calendar, as Mars himself began to be brought into prominence in a new light, as the iuvenes of the community came to be more and more employed in war as well as agriculture, and as the Campus Martius came to be used as an exercising-ground for the armed host. The Calendars show us a curious correspondence between the beginning and the end of the season of arms, i. e. the middle of March and the middle of October, which leaves little doubt of the change which had taken place in the accepted character of the rites of the two periods by the time the Numan calendar was drawn up. This correspondence has already been noted[[1086]]; it may be here briefly referred to again.
On March 14[[1087]] there was a horse-race in the Campus Martius; on the 19th (Quinquatrus) was the lustratio armorum for the coming war-season, as is seen from the fact that the ancilia of the Salii at least—if not all arms—were lustrata on that day[[1088]]. So too on October 15 there was a horse-race, as we have seen, in the Campus Martius, and on the 19th we find the Armilustrium in the oldest calendars[[1089]], a name which tells its own tale. The inference is that the horse-races on Oct. 15 and March 14 had much the same origin, and it is just this which induces Wissowa to slight Mannhardt’s explanation of the former. He thinks that on each day the horses, like the arms, were lustrated (p. x.), i. e. before the war-season began, and after it was over. This is likely enough; but might not the same have been the case with the horses of the farm? The Roman farmer’s year began with March, and the heavy work of carrying, &c., would be over in October. I am disposed to think that we must look on organized war-material as a development later than the primitive times to which Mannhardt would carry us back, a side of Roman life which only in course of time became highly specialized.
We must never forget that the oldest Roman calendar is the record of the life of an agricultural people. So much is clear on the face of it; and in some instances, as in the Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, and in the October rite we have been discussing, something of the original intent can be made out from researches into modern folk-lore or savage custom. Yet this calendar is at the same time the table of feasts of a fully developed city-state, and in the process of its development the original meaning of the feasts was often lost, or they were explained by some mythical or historical event, or again they themselves may have changed character as the life of the people changed from an agricultural to a political one. In the rite of the October horse we may see an agricultural harvest custom taking a new shape and meaning as the State grew to be accustomed to war, just as Mars, originally perhaps the protector of man, herds, and crops alike, becomes—it may be even before Greek influence is brought to bear upon him—the deity of warriors and war-horses, of the yearly renewed strength of a struggling community[[1090]]. It is looking with modern eyes at the institution of an old world if we try to separate the Roman warrior from the Roman husbandman, or the warlike aspect of his god from his universal care for his people.