xvii Kal. Quinct. (June 15). Q. St. D. F.
It would seem from these notes in the calendars, and from passages in Ovid and Festus[[595]], that both before and after the day of the true Vestalia there were days set apart for the cult of the goddess, which were nefasti and also religiosi[[596]]. Ovid’s lines are worth quoting; he consults the Flaminica Dialis[[597]] about the marriage of his daughter:
Tum mihi post sacras monstratur Iunius idus
Utilis et nuptis, utilis esse viris,
Primaque pars huius thalamis aliena reperta est,
Nam mihi sic coniunx sancta Dialis ait;
‘Donec ab Iliaca placidus purgamina Vesta
Detulerit flavis in mare Thybris aquis,
Non mihi detonsos crines depectere buxo,
Non ungues ferro subsecuisse licet,
Non tetigisse virum, quamvis Iovis ille sacerdos,
Quamvis perpetua sit mihi lege datus.
Tu quoque ne propera. Melius tua filia nubet
Ignea cum pura Vesta nitebit humo.’
What is the meaning of this singular aspect of the Vesta-cult? Why should these days be so ill-omened or so sacred that during them marriages might not be celebrated, and the priestess of Jupiter might not hold any intercourse with her husband, cut her hair, or pare her nails? And what is the explanation of the annotation Q[uando] St[ercus] D[elatum] F[as][[598]], which on the 15th indicated the breaking of the spell, and a return to ordinary ways of life? Before attempting to answer these questions, it will be as well to say a few words about the nature and probable origin of the worship of Vesta. Owing to the remarkable vitality and purity of this cult throughout the whole of Roman history, we do not meet here with those baffling obscurities which so often beset us in dealing with deities that had lost all life and shape when Roman scholars began to investigate them. And yet we know that we are here in the presence of rites and ideas of immemorial antiquity.
In an article of great interest in the Journal of Philology for 1885[[599]], Mr. J. G. Frazer first placed the origin of the cult in a clear light for English scholars. By comparing it with similar practices of existing peoples still in a primitive condition of life, he made apparent the real germ of the institution of the Vestal Virgins. Helbig, in his Italiker in der Poebene[[600]], had already recognized that germ in the necessity of keeping one fire always alight in each settlement, so that its members could at any time supply themselves with the flame, then so hard to procure at a moment’s notice; and Mr. Frazer had only to go one step further, and show that the task of keeping this fire alight was that of the daughters of the chief. This step he was able to take, supported by evidence from Damaraland in South Africa, where the priestess of the perpetual fire is the chief’s daughter; quoting also the following example from Calabria in Southern Italy: ‘At the present day the fire in a Calabrian peasant’s house is never (except after a death) allowed to die quite out, even in the heat of summer; it is a bad omen if it should chance to be extinguished, and the girls of the house, whose special care it is to keep at least a single brand burning on the hearth, are sadly dismayed at such a mishap.’ The evidence of the Roman ius sacrum quite confirms this modern evidence; the Vestals were under the patria potestas of the pontifex maximus, who represented in republican times the legal powers of the Rex, and from this fact we may safely argue that they had once been the daughters of the primitive chief. The flamines too, or kindlers, as being under the potestas of the pontifex, may be taken as representing the sons of the primitive household[[601]]. But from various reasons[[602]] the duties of the flamines became obsolete or obscure; while those of the Vestals remained to give us an almost perfect picture of life in the household of the oldest Latins.
From the first, no doubt, the tending of the fire was in some sense a religious service, and the flame a sacred flame[[603]]. There must have been many stages of growth from this beginning to the fully developed Vesta of the Republic and Empire; yet we can see that the lines of development were singularly simple and consistent. The sacred fire for example was maintained in the aedes Vestae, adjoining the king’s house[[604]] (regia); and the penus Vestae, which must originally have contained the stores on which the family depended for their sustenance, was always believed to preserve the most sacred and valuable objects possessed by the State[[605]].
We return to the Vestalia, of which the ritual was as follows. On June 7, the penus Vestae, which was shut all the rest of the year, and to which no man but the pontifex maximus had at any time right of entry, was thrown open to all matrons. During the seven following days they crowded to it barefoot[[606]]. Ovid relates his own experience[[607]]:
Forte revertebar festis Vestalibus illa
Qua nova Romano nunc via iuncta foro est.
Huc pede matronam vidi descendere nudo:
Obstipui tacitus sustinuique gradum.
The object of this was perhaps to pray for a blessing on the household. On plain and old-fashioned ware offerings of food were carried into the temple: the Vestals themselves offered the sacred cakes made of the first ears of corn plucked, as we saw, in the early days of May[[608]]; bakers and millers kept holiday, all mills were garlanded, and donkeys decorated with wreaths and cakes[[609]].
Ecce coronatis panis dependet asellis
Et velant scabras florida serta molas.
On June 15 the temple (aedes, not templum) was swept and the refuse taken away and either thrown into the Tiber or deposited in some particular spot[[610]]. Then the dies nefasti came to an end; and the 15th itself became fastus as soon as the last act of cleansing had been duly performed: ‘Quando stercus delatum fas.’
In this account of the ritual of these days, two features claim special attention: (1) the duties of the Vestals in connexion with the provision of food; (2) the fact that the days were religiosi, as is illustrated by the prohibition of marriage and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis. That these two features were in some way connected seems proved by the cessation of the mourning when the penus Vestae was once more closed.
1. It needs but little investigation to discover that, though the germ of the cult was doubtless the perpetual fire in the king’s house, the cult itself was by no means confined to attendance on the fire; and this was so probably from the very first. The king’s daughters fetched the water from the spring, both for sacred and domestic purposes; and this duty was kept up throughout Roman history, for water was never ‘laid on’ to the house of the Vestals, but carried from a sacred fountain[[611]]. They also crushed the corn with pestle and mortar, and prepared the cakes for the use of the family—duties which survived in all their pristine simplicity in the preparation of the mola salsa in the early days of May[[612]]; and they swept the house, as the Vestals afterwards continued to cleanse the penus Vestae, on June 15. The penus, or store-closet of the house, was under their charge; on the state of its contents the family depended for its comfort and prosperity, and from the very outset it must have had a kind of sacred character[[613]]. The close connexion of Vesta and her ministrants with the simple materials and processes of the house and the farm is thus quite plain; and we may trace it in every rite in which they took any part. The Fordicidia and the Parilia in April were directly concerned with the flocks and herds of the community; in May the festival of the Bona Dea and the mysterious ceremony of the Argei point to the season of peril during the ripening of the crops. After the Vestalia the Vestals were present at the Consualia and the festival of Ops Consiva in August, which, as we shall see, were probably harvest festivals; and on the Ides of October the blood of the ‘October horse’ was deposited in their care for use at the Fordicidia as a charm for fertility. So constant is the connexion of Vesta with the fruits of the earth, that it is not surprising that some Roman scholars[[614]] should have considered her an earth goddess; especially as, in a volcanic region, the proper home of fire would be thought to be beneath the earth. But such explanations, and also the views of modern scholars who have sought to find in Vesta a deity of abstract ideas, such as ‘the nourishing element in the fire’[[615]], are really superfluous. The associations which grew up around the sacred hearth-fire can all be traced to the original germ, if it be borne in mind that the fire, the provision-store, and the protecting deities of that store, were all placed together in the centre of the house, and that all domestic operations, sacrificial or culinary, took place at or by means of, the necessary fire. ‘What is home but another word for cooking?’ Nor must we forget that the living fire was for primitive man a mysterious thing, and invested from the first with divine attributes[[616]].
2. The fact that from the 5th to the 15th the days were not only nefasti but also religiosi is not easy to explain. It is true that in two other months, February and April, we find a parallel series of dies nefasti in the first half of the month; in February it extended from the Kalends to the Lupercalia (15th), and in April from the Nones to the Vinalia (23rd)[[617]]. But these days in February and April were nefasti in the ordinary sense of the word, i. e. the cessation of judicial business, and we are not told of them that they were also religiosi, or that the Flaminica Dialis lay during them under any special restrictions, as in the days we are speaking of. On the other hand, we find to our surprise that the other days on which this priestess was forbidden to comb hair or cut nails were not even nefasti in the ordinary sense, viz. those of the ‘moving’ of the ancilia and of the ceremony of the Argei[[618]]: so that we are baffled at every point in looking for a solution to the calendar.
But there is one fact that is quite clear, namely, that the tempus nefastum was in some way or other the result of the purification of the aedes Vestae, since it ceased at the moment the last act of cleansing was completed. Now it does seem to be the case that among some peoples living by agriculture but as yet comparatively uncivilized, special importance is attached to the days immediately before harvest and the gathering of the first-fruits—at which time there is a general cleaning out of house, barns, and all receptacles and utensils, and following upon this a period of rejoicing. Mr. Frazer, in his Golden Bough has collected some examples of this practice, though he has not brought them together under one head or given them a single explanation. The most striking, and at the same time the best attested, example is as follows[[619]]:
‘Among the Creek Indians of North America, the busk, or festival of firstfruits, was the chief ceremony of the year. It was held in July or August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Before it took place none of the Indians would eat or even handle any of the new harvest.... Before celebrating the Busk, the people provided themselves with new clothes and new household utensils and furniture; they collected their old clothes and rubbish, together with all the remaining grain and other old provisions, cast them together in one common heap and consumed them with fire. As a preparation for the ceremony all the fires in the village were extinguished, and the ashes swept clean away. In particular the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up, and the ashes carried out.... Meanwhile the women at home were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new fire and the new fruits. The public or sacred square was carefully swept of even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, for fear of polluting the first-fruit offerings. Also every vessel that had contained any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before sunset.’ A general fast followed, we are told; ‘and when the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear’s oil, and offered it together with some flesh to the bountiful spirit of fire as a first-fruit offering and an annual oblation for sin.... Finally the chief priest made a speech, exhorting the people to observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine fire had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the women that if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had contracted any impurity, they must forthwith depart lest the divine fire should spoil both them and the people.’
The four chief points in this very interesting account are, (1) the extremely solemn and critical character of the whole ceremonial, as indicated in the general fast; (2) the idea of the necessity of purification preparatory to the reception of first-fruits, a purification which seems to extend to human beings as well as to houses, receptacles, and utensils; (3) the renewal of the sacred fire, which was coincident with the beginning of a new year; (4) the solemn reception of the first-fruits. Comparing these with Roman usage, we notice that the first two are fully represented at the Vestalia, the one by the religious character of the days, and the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, the other by the cleansing of the penus Vestae, and the careful removal of all its refuse. The third is represented, not at the Vestalia, but at the beginning of the year on March 1, when the sacred fire was renewed, as we saw, in the primitive fashion by the friction of two pieces of wood, and the temple of Vesta was adorned with fresh laurels, as was the case also with the altar in the American example just quoted. The fourth point is represented neither in March nor June, but rather by the plucking of the first ears of corn by the Vestals before the Ides of May, from which they made the sacred salt-cakes of sacrifice.
Now we need not go the length of assuming that the Roman ceremonies of March, May and June were three parts of one and the same rite which in course of time had been separated and attached to different periods of the year; though this indeed may not be wholly impossible. But we may at least profitably notice that all the four striking features of the Indian ceremony are found in the cult of Vesta, and descended no doubt to the later Romans from an age in which both the crops, the fire and the store-houses were regarded as having much the same sacred character as they had for the Creek Indians.
To me indeed it had seemed probable, even before the publication of Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough, that the cleansing of the penus Vestae was nothing but a survival of a general purification of store-houses, barns, utensils, and probably of all the apparatus of farming, including perhaps human beings, before the completion of the harvest which was now close at hand. The date of the Vestalia is indeed too early to let us suppose it to have been a real harvest festival, nor had it any of the joyous character found in such rites; and, as we shall see, the true harvest festivals are to be found in the month of August. The corn harvest in middle Italy took place in the latter half of June and in July[[620]]; and, as is everywhere still the practice, the festivals proper did not occur until the whole work of harvesting was done. But at the time of the Vestalia the crops were certainly ripening; in May we have already had the plucking of the first ears by the Vestals, and the lustratio segetum which has been described under the head of Ambarvalia on May 28.
I must leave to anthropologists the further investigation of the ideas underlying the ritual we have been examining; it is something to have been able to co-ordinate it with rites which are so well attested as those of the Creek Indians, and which admit without difficulty of a reasonable interpretation[[621]].