|The marriage of the divine king or human god often followed by his death.| But, as we have seen, Romulus, the first king of Rome, is said to have perished on the day of this festival of the fig, which, if our hypothesis is correct, was also the day of his ceremonial marriage to the tree. That the real date of his death should have been preserved by tradition is very improbable; rather we may suppose that the reason for dating his death and his marriage on the same day was drawn from some ancient ritual in which the two events were actually associated. But we have still to ask, Why should the king’s wedding-day be also the day of his death? The answer must be deferred for the present. All we need say now is that elsewhere the marriage of the divine king or human god has been regularly followed at a brief interval by his violent end. For him, as for others, death often treads on the heels of love.[[1033]]
|Violent ends of Tatius, Tullus Hostilius, and other Roman kings.| Another Roman king who perished by violence was Tatius, the Sabine colleague of Romulus. It is said that he was at Lavinium offering a public sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men to whom he had given umbrage despatched him with the sacrificial knives and spits which they had snatched from the altar.[[1034]] The occasion and the manner of his death suggest that the slaughter may have been a sacrifice rather than an assassination. Again, Tullus Hostilius, the successor of Numa, was commonly said to have been killed by lightning, but many held that he was murdered at the instigation of Ancus Marcius, who reigned after him.[[1035]] Speaking of the more or less mythical Numa, the type of the priestly king, Plutarch observes that “his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of the five who reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his life in exile, and of the remaining four not one died a natural death; for three of them were assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was consumed by thunderbolts.”[[1036]] This implies that King Ancus Marcius, as well as Tarquin the Elder and Servius Tullius, perished by the hand of an assassin. No other ancient historian, so far as I know, records this of Ancus Marcius, though one of them says that the king “was carried off by an untimely death.”[[1037]] Tarquin the Elder was slain by two murderers whom the sons of his predecessor, Ancus Marcius, had hired to do the deed.[[1038]] Lastly, Servius Tullius came by his end in circumstances which recall the combat for the priesthood of Diana at Nemi. He was attacked by his successor and killed by his orders, though not by his hand. Moreover, he lived among the oak groves of the Esquiline Hill at the head of the Slope of Virbius, and it was here, beside a sanctuary of Diana, that he was slain.[[1039]]
|The succession to the Latin kingshipmay sometimes have been decided by single combat.| These legends of the violent ends of the Roman kings suggest that the contest by which they gained the throne may sometimes have been a mortal combat rather than a race. If that were so, the analogy which we have traced between Rome and Nemi would be still closer. At both places the sacred kings, the living representatives of the godhead, would thus be liable to suffer deposition and death at the hand of any resolute man who could prove his divine right to the holy office by the strong arm and the sharp sword. It would not be surprising if among the early Latins the claim to the kingdom should often have been settled by single combat; for down to historical times the Umbrians regularly submitted their private disputes to the ordeal of battle, and he who cut his adversary’s throat was thought thereby to have proved the justice of his cause beyond the reach of cavil.[[1040]] “Any one who remembers how in the forests of Westphalia the Femgericht set the modern civil law at defiance down into the eighteenth century, and how in the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia blood-revenge has persisted and persists to our own days, will not wonder that hardly a century after the union of Italy the Roman legislation had not yet succeeded in putting down the last relics of this ancient Italian or rather Indo-European mode of doing justice in the nests of the Apennines.”[[1041]]
|Combats for the kingdom in Africa.| A parallel to what I conceive to have been the rule of the old Latin kingship is furnished by a West African custom of to-day. When the Maluango or king of Loango, who is deemed the representative of God on earth, has been elected, he has to take his stand at Nkumbi, a large tree near the entrance to his sacred ground. Here, encouraged by one of his ministers, he must fight all rivals who present themselves to dispute his right to the throne.[[1042]] This is one of the many instances in which the rites and legends of ancient Italy are illustrated by the practice of modern Africa. Similarly among the Banyoro of Central Africa, whose king had to take his life with his own hand whenever his health and strength began to fail, the succession to the throne was determined by a mortal combat among the claimants, who fought till only one of them was left alive.[[1043]] Even in England a relic of a similar custom survived till lately in the coronation ceremony, at which a champion used to throw down his glove and challenge to mortal combat all who disputed the king’s right to the crown. The ceremony was witnessed by Pepys at the coronation of Charles the Second.[[1044]]
|In Greece and Italy kings probably personated Cronus and Saturn, the god of the seed, before they personated Zeus and Jupiter, the god of the oak.| In the foregoing enquiry we have found reason to suppose that the Roman kings personated not only Jupiter the god of the oak, but Saturn the god of the seed and perhaps also the god of the fig-tree. The question naturally arises, Did they do so simultaneously or successively? In other words, did the same king regularly represent the oak-god at one season of the year, the seed-god at another, and the fig-god at a third? or were there separate dynasties of oak-kings, seed-kings, and fig-kings, who belonged perhaps to different stocks and reigned at different times? The evidence does not allow us to answer these questions definitely. But tradition certainly points to the conclusion that in Latium and perhaps in Italy generally the seed-god Saturn was an older deity than the oak-god Jupiter, just as in Greece Cronus appears to have preceded Zeus. Perhaps Saturn and Cronus were the gods of an old indigenous and agricultural people; while Jupiter and Zeus were the divinities of a ruder invading race, which swarmed down into Italy and Greece from the forests of central Europe, bringing their wild woodland deities to dwell in more fertile lands, under softer skies, side by side with the gods of the corn and the vine, the olive and the fig. If that was so, we may suppose that before the irruption of these northern barbarians the old kings of Greece and Italy personated the gods of the fat field and fruitful orchard, and that it was not till after the conquest that their successors learned to pose as the god of the verdant oak and the thundering sky. However, on questions so obscure we must be content to suspend our judgment. It is unlikely that the student’s search-light will ever pierce the mists that hang over these remote ages. All that we can do is to follow the lines of evidence backward as far as they can be traced, till, after growing fainter and fainter, they are lost altogether in the darkness.
CHAPTER XIX
ST. GEORGE AND THE PARILIA
|The early Italians were as much a pastoral as an agricultural people, and their kings would be expected to ensure the safety and fecundity of the flocks and herds.| In the course of the preceding investigation we found reason to assume that the old Latin kings, like their brethren in many parts of the world, were charged with certain religious duties or magical functions, amongst which the maintenance of the fertility of the earth held a principal place. By this I do not mean that they had to see to it only that the rain fell, and that the corn grew and trees put forth their fruit in due season. In those early days it is probable that the Italians were quite as much a pastoral as an agricultural people, or, in other words, that they depended for their subsistence no less on their flocks and herds than on their fields and orchards. To provide their cattle with grass and water, to ensure their fecundity and the abundance of their milk, and to guard them from the depredations of wild beasts, would be objects of the first importance with the shepherds and herdsmen who, according to tradition, founded Rome;[[1045]] and the king, as the representative or embodiment of the deity, would be expected to do his part towards procuring these blessings for his people by the performance of sacred rites. The Greeks of the Homeric age, as we have seen, thought that the reign of a good king not only made the land to bear wheat and barley, but also caused the flocks to multiply and the sea to yield fish.[[1046]]
|Numa is said to have been born and Rome to have been founded on the shepherds’ festival of the Parilia, the twenty-first of April.| In this connexion, accordingly, it can be no mere accident that Rome is said to have been founded and the pious king Numa to have been born on the twenty-first of April, the day of the great shepherds’ festival of the Parilia.[[1047]] It is very unlikely that the real day either of the foundation of the city or of Numa’s birth should have been remembered, even if we suppose Numa to have been an historical personage rather than a mythical type; it is far more probable that both events were arbitrarily assigned to this date by the speculative antiquaries of a later age on the ground of some assumed fitness or propriety. In what did this fitness or propriety consist? The belief that the first Romans were shepherds and herdsmen would be reason enough for supposing that Rome was founded on the day of the shepherds’ festival, or even that the festival was instituted to commemorate the event.[[1048]] But why should Numa be thought to have been born on that day of all days? Perhaps it was because the old sacred kings, of whom he was the model, had to play an important part in the ceremonies of the day. The birthdays of the gods were celebrated by festivals;[[1049]] the kings were divine or semi-divine; it would be natural, therefore, that their birthdays should be identified with high feasts and holidays. Whether this was so or not, the festival of the Parilia presents so many points of resemblance to some of the popular customs discussed in these volumes that a brief examination of it may not be inappropriate in this place.[[1050]]
|The Parilia, a festival celebrated by shepherds and herdsmen in honour of Pales, for the safety and increase of their flocks and herds.| The spring festival of the twenty-first of April, known as the birthday of Rome,[[1051]] was deemed second in importance to none in the calendar.[[1052]] It was held by shepherds and herdsmen for the welfare and increase of their flocks and herds.[[1053]] The pastoral deity to whom they paid their devotions was Pales, as to whose sex the ancients themselves were not at one. In later times they commonly spoke of her as a goddess; but Varro regarded Pales as masculine,[[1054]] and we may follow his high authority. The day was celebrated with similar rites both in the town and the country, but in its origin it must have been a strictly rural festival. Indeed, it could hardly be carried out in full except among the sheepfolds and cattle-pens. At some time of the day, probably in the morning, the people repaired to the temple of Vesta, where they received from the Vestal Virgins ashes, blood, and bean-straw to be used in fumigating themselves and probably their beasts. The ashes were those of the unborn calves which had been torn from their mothers’ wombs on the fifteenth of April; the blood was that which had dripped from the tail of a horse sacrificed in October.[[1055]] Both were probably supposed to exercise a fertilising as well as a cleansing influence on the people and on the cattle;[[1056]] for apparently one effect of the ceremonies, in the popular opinion, was to quicken the wombs of women no less than of cows and ewes.[[1057]] At break of day the shepherd purified his sheep, after sprinkling and sweeping the ground. The fold was decked with leafy boughs, and a great wreath was hung on the door.[[1058]] The purification of the flocks apparently consisted in driving them over burning heaps of grass, pine-wood, laurel, and branches of the male olive-tree.[[1059]] Certainly at some time of |The flocks purified by being driven through fire.| the day the sheep were compelled to scamper over a fire.[[1060]] Moreover, the bleating flocks were touched with burning sulphur and fumigated with its blue smoke.[[1061]] Then the shepherd offered to Pales baskets of millet, cakes of millet, and pails of warm milk. Next he prayed to the god that he would guard the fold from the evil powers, including probably witchcraft;[[1062]] that the flocks, the men, and the dogs might be hale and free from disease; that the sheep might not fall a prey to wolves; that grass and leaves might abound; that water might be plentiful; that the udders of the dams might be full of milk; that the rams might be lusty, and the ewes prolific; that many lambs might be born; and that there might be much wool at shearing.[[1063]] This prayer the shepherd had to repeat four times, looking to the east; then he washed his hands in the morning dew. After that he drank a bowl of milk and wine, and, warmed with the liquor, leaped ever burning heaps of crackling straw. This practice of jumping over a straw fire would seem to have been a principal part of the ceremonies: at least it struck the ancients themselves, for they often refer to it.[[1064]]
|The shepherd’s prayer.| The shepherd’s prayer at the Parilia is instructive, because it gives us in short a view of the chief wants of |The shepherd has to propitiate the tree-spirits and water-spirits.| the pastoral life. The supplication for grass and leaves and water reminds us that the herdsman no less than the husbandman depends ultimately on vegetation and rain; so that the same divine powers which cover the fields of the one with yellow corn may be conceived to carpet the meadows of the other with green grass, and to diversify them with pools and rivers for the refreshment of the thirsty cattle. And it is to be borne in mind that in countries where grass is less plentiful than under the rainy skies of northern Europe, sheep, goats, and cattle still subsist in great measure on the leaves and juicy twigs of trees.[[1065]] Hence in these lands the pious shepherd and goatherd cannot afford to ignore or to offend the tree-spirits, on whose favour and bounty his flocks are dependent for much of their fodder. Indeed, at the Parilia the shepherd made elaborate excuses to these divine beings for any trespass he might unwittingly have committed on their hallowed domain by entering a sacred grove, sitting in the shadow of a holy tree, or lopping leafy branches from it with which to feed a sickly sheep.[[1066]] In like manner he craved pardon of the water-nymphs, if the hoofs of his cattle had stirred up the mud in their clear pools; and he implored Pales to intercede for him with the divinities of springs “and the gods dispersed through every woodland glade.”[[1067]]