|Sanctity of the storeroom (penus) and of the Penates in a Roman house.| If the storeroom (penus) of a Roman house was deemed so holy that its contents could only be handled by persons ceremonially clean, the reason was that the Penates or gods of the storeroom dwelt in it.[[677]] The domestic hearth, where the household meals were cooked in the simple days of old, was the natural altar of the Penates;[[678]] their images, together with those of the Lares, stood by it and shone in the cheerful glow of the fire, when the family gathered round it in the evening.[[679]] Thus in every house Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was intimately bound up with the Penates or gods of the storeroom; indeed, she was reckoned one of them.[[680]] Now the temple of Vesta, being nothing more than a type of the oldest form of Roman house, naturally had, like an ordinary house, its sacred storeroom, and its Penates or gods of the storeroom.[[681]] Hence if in every common house strict chastity was, theoretically at least, expected of all who entered the storeroom, we can well understand why such an obligation should have been laid on the Vestals, who had in their charge the holiest of all storerooms, the chamber in which were popularly supposed to be preserved the talismans on which the safety of the state depended.[[682]]
|Thus the temple of Vesta, with its perpetual fire and its sacred storeroom, was merely a copy of the Roman king’s house.| Thus on the whole we may regard it as highly probable that the round temple of Vesta in the Forum, with its sacred storeroom and perpetual fire, was merely a survival, under changed conditions, of the old house of the Roman kings, which again may have been a copy of the still older house of the kings of Alba. Both were modelled on the round huts of wattled osiers in which the early Latins dwelt among the woods and hills of Latium in the days when the Alban Mountain was still an active volcano. Hence it is legitimate to compare the old legends of the royal hearth with the later practice in regard to the hearth of Vesta, and from the comparison to explain, if we can, the meaning both of the legends and of the practice.
CHAPTER XV
THE FIRE-DRILL
|Mode of rekindling the Vestal fire at Rome by means of the fire-drill.| In historical times, whenever the Vestal fire at Rome happened to be extinguished, the virgins were beaten by the pontiff; after which it was their custom, apparently with the aid of the pontiff, to rekindle the fire by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till a flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus obtained was carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve.[[683]] As this mode of producing fire is one of the most primitive known to man, and has been commonly employed by many savage |Use of the fire-drill by savages.| tribes down to modern times,[[684]] we need have no difficulty in believing that its use in the worship of Vesta was a survival from prehistoric ages, and that whenever the fire on the hearth of the Latin kings went out it was regularly relit in the same fashion. In its simplest form the fire-drill, as the apparatus has been appropriately named by Professor E. B. Tylor, consists of two sticks, the one furnished with a point and the other with a hole. The point of the one stick is inserted into the hole of the other, which is laid flat on the ground, while the operator holds the pointed stick upright in position and twirls it rapidly between his hands till the rubbing of the two sticks against each other produces sparks and at last a flame.
|Many savages regard the two sticks of the fire-drill as male and female, and the rubbing of the two together as a sexual union.| Many savages see in this operation a resemblance to the union of the sexes, and have accordingly named the pointed stick the man and the holed stick the woman. Thus we are told that among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia “fire was obtained by means of the fire-drill, which consisted of two dried sticks, each over a foot in length, and rounded off to less than an inch in diameter. One stick was sharpened at one end; while the other was marked with a couple of notches close to each other—one on the side, and the other on top. The sharpened end of the first stick was placed in the top notch of the other stick, and turned rapidly between the straightened palms of both hands. The heat thus produced by the friction of the sticks caused sparks to fall down the side notch upon tinder placed underneath, which, when it commenced to smoke, was taken in the hands, and blown upon until fanned into a flame. The tinder was dry grass, the shredded dry bark of the sagebrush, or cedar-bark. The sharpened stick was called the ‘man,’ and was made of black-pine root, tops of young yellow pine, heart of yellow-pine cones, service-berry wood, etc. The notched stick was called the ‘woman,’ and was generally made of poplar-root. However, many kinds of wood were used for this purpose. When hot ashes or a spark fell upon the tinder, they said, ‘The woman has given birth.’”[[685]] The Hopi Indians kindle fire ceremonially by the friction of two sticks, which are regarded respectively as male and female. The female stick has a notch in it and is laid flat on the floor; the point of the male stick is inserted in the notch of the female stick and is made to revolve rapidly by twirling the stick between the hands. Pollen is added as a male symbol, and the spark is caught in a tinder of shredded cedar bark.[[686]] The Urabunna tribe of Central Australia, who also make fire by means of the fire-drill, call the upright piece “the child-stick,” while they give to the horizontal or notched piece the name of “the mother-stick” or “the mother of the fire.”[[687]] So in the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, the upright stick is called the child (werem), and the horizontal stick the mother (apu). In Mabuiag, Torres Straits, on the other hand, the vertical stick is known as the male organ (ini), and the horizontal stick as the hole (sakai).[[688]]
|The fire-drill among the Arabs.| “The ancient Bedouins kindled fire by means of the fire-drill, which was composed of a horizontal stick, the zenda, and an upright stick, the zend. The science of language furnishes us with many parallels for this mode of regarding the two parts as male and female; the two parts of the lock are distinguished in like manner; the spark is then the child, tifl; compare also our German Schraubenmutter, Muttergewinde. The sticks for making fire by friction are not taken from the same tree; on the contrary, they choose one as hard and tough as possible, and the other soft, which allows the hard one to fit into it more easily and catches fire the quicker on account of its loose texture. The soft wood was naturally the horizontal stick, the zenda, which the Arabs made out of Calotropis procera (’oshar), while for the upright stick they used a hard branch of markh.”[[689]]
|The fire-drill in Africa.| The Ngumbu of South Cameroons, in West Africa, formerly made fire by rubbing two sticks against each other. Of the sticks the one, called the male nschio, was put into a hole of the other, which was called the female nschio.[[690]] In East Africa the Masai men make fire by drilling a hole in a flat piece of wood with a hard pointed stick. They say that the hard pointed stick is a man and that the flat piece of wood is his wife. The former is cut from Ficus sycomorus and Ekebergia sp., the latter from any fibrous tree, such as Kigelia africana, Cordia ovalis, or Acacia albida. The women get their fire from the one which has thus been kindled by the men.[[691]] The Nandi similarly produce fire by rapidly drilling a hard pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of soft wood. The hard stick is called the male (kirkit) and the piece of soft wood the female (kôket). Among the Nandi, as apparently among the Masai, fire-making is an exclusive privilege of the men of the tribe.[[692]] The Baganda of Central Africa also made fire by means of the fire-drill; they called the upright stick the male, and the horizontal stick the female.[[693]] Among the Bantu tribes of south-eastern Africa, “when the native Africans use special fire, either in connection with sacrifice or the festival of first-fruits, it is produced by a doctor, and in the following manner:—Two sticks, made of the Uzwati tree, and called the ‘husband and wife,’ are given to him by the chief. These sticks are prepared by the magicians, and are the exclusive property of the chief, the ‘wife’ being the shorter of the two. The doctor cuts a piece off each stick, and proceeds to kindle fire in the usual manner, by revolving the one rapidly between the palms of his hands, while its end rests in a small hollow dug in the side of the other. After he has obtained fire, he gives it to his attendant, who gets the pots in order, and everything ready for cooking the newly-reaped fruits. The sticks are handed back to the chief by the doctor—no other hand must touch them—and put away till they are required next season. They are regarded as in a measure sacred, and no one, except the chief’s personal servant, may go to the side of the hut where they are kept. After being repeatedly used for fire-making, the doctor disposes of what remains, and new ones are made and consecrated by the magician. A special pot is used for the preparation of the feast, and no other than it may be set on a fire produced from the ‘husband and wife.’ When the feast is over, the fire is carefully extinguished, and the pot placed along with the sticks, where it remains untouched for another year.”[[694]] But even for the purposes of daily life these tribes still kindle fire in this manner, if they happen to be without matches. “A native takes two special sticks, made of a light wood. One of these he points: this is called the male stick. He then makes a conical hole in the centre of the other stick, which is called the female. Placing the female stick on the ground, he holds it firmly by his feet—a native finds no difficulty in this, as he can easily pick things off the ground with his toes if his hands are full. He then places the pointed stick into the conical hole, and slowly twirls the male stick between his hands. He does this while using a good deal of pressure, and the wood becomes powdered, lying round the revolving point in a little heap of dust. When he thinks he has made sufficient of the wood dust, he twirls the stick very fast, and in a moment the powder bursts into flame, which he uses to set fire to some dried grass.”[[695]]
|Fire-customs of the Herero.| The Damaras or Herero of Damaraland, in south-western Africa, maintain sacred fires in their villages, and their customs and beliefs in this respect present a close resemblance to the Roman worship of Vesta. Fortunately the Herero fire-worship has been described by a number of independent witnesses, and as their accounts agree substantially with each other, we may assume that they are correct. The people are a tall, finely-built race of nomadic herdsmen belonging to the Bantu stock, who seem to have migrated into their present country from the north and east about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago. The desert character of the country and its seclusion from the outer world long combined to preserve the primitive manners of the inhabitants.[[696]] In their native state the Herero are a purely pastoral people, possessing |The Herero a pastoral people.| immense herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats, which are the pride and joy of their hearts, almost their idols. They subsist chiefly on the milk of their herds, which they commonly drink sour. Of the flesh they make but little use, for they seldom kill any of their cattle, and never a cow, a calf, or a lamb. Even oxen and weathers are only slaughtered on solemn and festal occasions, such as visits, burials, and the like. Such slaughter is a great event in a village, and young and old flock from far and near to partake of the meat.[[697]] Their huts are of a round |Huts and villages of the Herero.| beehive shape, about ten feet in diameter. The framework consists of stout branches, of which the lower ends are rammed into the ground, while the upper ends are bent together and tied with bark. A village is composed of a number of these round huts arranged in a circle about the calves’ pen as a centre and surrounded by an artificial hedge of thorn-bushes.[[698]] At night the cattle are driven in through the hedge and take up their quarters in the open space round the calves’ pen.[[699]]
|Sacred fire of the Herero village maintained in or before the hut of the chief’s principal wife.| The hut of the great or principal wife of the chief, built and furnished in a more elaborate style than the rest, regularly stands to the east of the calves’ pen, in the direction of sunrise, so that from its position we can always learn approximately the season of the year when the village was founded. The chief or headman of the village has no special hut of his own; he passes the day in the hut of the great wife, and the night commonly in one of the huts of his other wives in the northern semicircle. Between the house of the great wife and the calves’ pen, but somewhat nearer to the pen, is a large heap of ashes on which, in good weather, a small, faintly glimmering fire may be seen to burn at any time of the day. The heap of ashes is the sacred hearth (okuruo); the fire is the holy fire (omurangere or omurangerero) of the village. The open space between the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife is known as the holy ground or the holy house (otyizero).[[700]] Betwixt the hearth and the calves’ fold stands a great withered branch of the omumborombonga (Combretum primigenum), the sacred tree of the Herero, from which they believe that both they and their cattle are descended. When a branch of this tree cannot be obtained its place is taken by a bough of the omwapu tree (Grevia spec.)[[701]] At night and in rainy weather the fire is transferred to the hut of the great wife, where it is carefully kept alight.[[702]] According to another account, the fire is regularly preserved in the house, and a brand is only brought out into the open air when the cattle are being milked at morning and evening in order that in presence of the fire the cow may be healthy and give much milk.[[703]] The custom in this respect perhaps varies in different villages, and may be determined in some measure by the climate. The sacred fire is regarded as the centre of the village; from it at evening the people fetch a light to kindle the fire on their own hearths, for every householder has his own private hearth in front of his hut. At the holy hearth are kept the most sacred possessions of the tribe, to wit, the bundle of sticks which represent their ancestors; here sacrifices are offered and enchantments performed; here the flesh of the victims is cooked; here is the proper place of the chief; here the elders assemble in council, and judgment is given; here strangers are received and ambassadors entertained. At the banquets held on solemn occasions all may partake of the flesh, whether they be friends or foes; the stranger’s curse would rest on the churl who should refuse him his just share; and this curse the Herero dreads above everything because he believes its effect to be infallible. So great is the veneration felt by the natives for the sacred hearth, with its hallowed bough, that they dare not approach it without testifying the deepest respect. They take off their sandals, throw themselves on the ground, and pray their great ancestor (Tate Mukuru) to be gracious to them. The horns of the oxen slaughtered at festivals lie beside the hearth; the chief sits on the largest pair when he is engaged in performing his magical rites. Near the fire, too, is a stone on which none but the chief has the right to sit.[[704]]
|The sacred fire among the Herero is watched and fed by the chief’s eldest unmarried daughter, who performs other priestly duties.| The duty of maintaining the sacred fire and preserving it from extinction is entrusted to the eldest unmarried daughter of the chief by his great wife; if he has no daughter, the task devolves on the unmarried girl who is next of kin to him. She bears the title of ondangere, derived from the name of the sacred fire (omurangere).[[705]] Besides keeping up the fire she has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their foreheads.[[706]] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal, as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child.[[707]] Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water.[[708]] When an ox dies by accident at the village, she lays a piece of wood on its back, praying at the same time for long life, plenty of cattle, and so forth. Moreover, she ties a double knot in her apron for the dead beast, for a curse would follow if she neglected to do so.[[709]] Lastly, when the site of the village is changed, the priestess walks at the head of the people and of the herds, carrying a firebrand from the old sacred hearth and taking the utmost care to keep it alight.[[710]]