Kal. Iun. (June 1). N.
IUNONI MONETAE (VEN.)
FABARICI C[IRCENSES] M[ISSUS]. (PHILOC.)
On the name of the mensis Junius some remarks have already been made under May 1. There is no sure ground for connecting it with Juno[[505]]. The first day of June was sacred to her, but so were all Kalends; and if this was also the dies natalis of the temple of Juno Moneta in arce, we have no reason to suppose the choice of day to be specially significant[[506]]. We know the date of this dedication; it was in 344 B.C. and in consequence of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus Dictator in a war against the Aurunci[[507]]. Of a Juno Moneta of earlier date we have no knowledge; and, in spite of much that has been said to the contrary, I imagine that the title was only given to a Juno of the arx in consequence of the popular belief that the Capitol was saved from the attack of the Gauls (390 B.C.) by the warning voices of her sacred geese. What truth there was in that story may be a matter of doubt, but it seems easier to believe that it had a basis of fact than to account for it aetiologically[[508]]. There may well have been an altar or sacellum[[509]] of Juno on the arx, near which her noisy birds were kept[[510]]; and when a temple was eventually built here in 344 B.C., it was appropriately dedicated to Juno of the warning voice. From the fact that part of this temple was used as a mint[[511]], the word Moneta gradually passed into another sense, which has found its way into our modern languages[[512]].
One tradition connected the name of the month with M. Junius Brutus, who is said to have performed a sacrum on this day after the flight of Tarquinius, on the Caelian Hill[[513]]. This sacrum had no connexion with Juno, and the tradition which thus absurdly brings Brutus into the question shows plainly that the derivation from Juno was not universally accepted[[514]]. The real deity of the Kalends of June was not Juno, but an antique goddess whose antiquity is attested both by the meagreness of our knowledge of her, and the strange confusion about her which Ovid displays. Had Carna been more successful in the struggle for existence of Roman deities, we might not have been so sure of her extreme antiquity; but no foreign cult grafted on her gave her a new lease of life, and by the end of the Republic she was all but dead.
What little we do know of her savours of the agricultural life and folk-lore of the old Latins. Her sacrifices were of bean-meal and lard[[515]]; and this day went by the name of Kalendae fabariae[[516]], ‘quia hoc mense adultae fabae divinis rebus adhibentur.’ The fact was that it was the time of bean-harvest[[517]]; and beans, as we have already seen, were much in request for sacred purposes. ‘Maximus honos fabae,’ says Pliny[[518]], alluding to the value of the bean as food, to its supposed narcotic power, and its use in religious ritual. We have already found beans used in the cult of the dead and the ejection of ghosts from the house[[519]]; and Prof. Wissowa has of late ingeniously conjectured that this day (June 1) was concerned with rites of the same kind[[520]]. He quotes an inscription, a will in which a legacy is left ‘ut rosas Carnar[iis] ducant’[[521]]. Undoubtedly the reference here is to rites of the dead (cf. Rosalia), and Mommsen may be right in suggesting that by Carnar[iis] is meant the Kalends of June. But it is going a little too far to argue on this slender evidence, even if we add to it the fact that the day was nefastus, that the festival of Carna was of the same kind as the Parentalia, Rosalia, &c.; a careful reading of Ovid’s comments seems to show that there were curious survivals of folk-lore connected with the day and with Carna which cannot all be explained by reference to rites of the dead.
Ovid does indeed at once mislead his readers by identifying Carna and Cardea, and thus making the former the deity of door-hinges, and bringing her into connexion with Janus[[522]]. But we may guess that he does this simply because he wants to squeeze in a pretty folk-tale of Janus and Cardea, for which his readers may be grateful, and which need not deceive them. When he writes of the ritual of Carna[[523]]—our only safe guide—he makes it quite plain that he is mixing up the attributes of two distinct deities. He brings the two together by contriving that Janus, as a reward to Cardea for yielding to his advances, should bestow on her not only the charge of cardines, but also that of protecting infants from the striges[[524]], creatures of the nature of vampires, but described by Ovid as owls, who were wont to suck their blood and devour their vitals. But this last duty surely belonged to Carna, of whom Macrobius says ‘Hanc deam vitalibus humanis praeesse credunt’: and thus Carna’s attribute is conjoined with Cardea’s. The lines are worth quoting in which Ovid describes the charms which are to keep off the striges, for as preserving a remnant of old Italian folk-lore they are more interesting than the doubtful nature of an obscure deity[[525]]:
Protinus arbutea[[526]] postes ter in ordine tangit
Fronde, ter arbutea limina fronde notat:
Spargit aquis aditus—et aquae medicamen habebant—
Extaque de porca cruda bimenstre tenet[[527]].
Atque ita ‘noctis aves, extis puerilibus’ inquit
‘Parcite: pro parvo victima parva cadit.
Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras.
Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.’
Sic ubi libavit, prosecta sub aethere ponit,
Quique adsint sacris, respicere illa vetat[[528]].
Virgaque Ianalis de spina ponitur alba[[529]]
Qua lumen thalamis parva fenestra dabat.
Post illud nec aves cunas violasse feruntur,
Et rediit puero qui fuit ante color.
Having told his folk-tale and described his charms, Ovid returns to Carna, and asks why people eat bean-gruel on the Kalends of June, with the rich fat of pigs. The answer is that the cult of Carna is of ancient date, and that the healthy food of man in early times is retained in it[[530]].
Sus erat in pretio; caesa sue festa colebant.
Terra fabas tantum duraque farra dabat.
Quae duo mixta simul sextis quicunque Kalendis
Ederit, huic laedi viscera posse negant.
This was undoubtedly the real popular belief—that by eating this food on Carna’s day your digestion was secured for the year. Macrobius[[531]] makes the practice into a much more definite piece of ritual. ‘Prayers are offered to this goddess,’ he says, ‘for the good preservation of liver, heart, and the other internal organs of our bodies. Her sacrifices are bean-meal and lard, because this is the best food for the nourishment of the body.’ Ovid is here the genuine Italian, Macrobius the scholar and theologian: both may be right.
Whatever, then, may be the meaning or etymology of the name Carna, we may at least be sure that the cult belongs to the age of ancient Latin agriculture[[532]], since it was in connexion with her name that the popular belief survived in Ovid’s time of the virtue of bean-eating on the Kalends of June.
We learn from Ovid (line 191) that this same day was the dies natalis of the temple of Mars extra portam Capenam, i. e. on the Via Appia—a favourite spot for the mustering of armies, and the starting-point for the yearly transvectio equitum[[533]]. I have already alluded to the baseless fabric of conjecture built on the conjunction of Mars and Juno on this day[[534]]; and need here only repeat that in no well-attested Roman myth is Mars the son of Juno, or Juno the wife of Jupiter. And it is even doubtful whether June 1 was the original dedication-day of this temple of Mars: the Venusian calendar does not mention it, and Ovid may be referring to a re-dedication by Augustus[[535]]. There is absolutely no ground for the myth-making of Usener and Roscher about Mars and Juno: but it is to the credit of the latter that he has inserted in his article on Mars a valuable note by Aust, in which his own conclusions are cogently controverted.