Chapter VI. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity.
§ 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome.
Annual expulsion of “the Old Mars”in the month of March in ancient Rome.
We are now prepared to notice the use of the human scapegoat in classical antiquity. Every year on the fourteenth of March a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius,[546] that is, “the old Mars,”[547] and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on the first of March), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses;[548] it was to Mars that the [pg 230] priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops,[549] addressed their petitions almost exclusively;[550] and it was to Mars, as we saw,[551] that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of “Mars of the woods” (Mars Silvanus), that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their cattle.[552] We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods.[553] Once more, the consecration of the vernal month of March to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the new year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death,” if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation.[554] It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive.[555] [pg 231] However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome.[556]
“The Old Mars”seems to have been beaten by the Salii, the dancing priests of Mars. The dances of the Salii in spring and autumn were perhaps intended to quicken the growth of the corn sown at these seasons. The armed processions of the Salii may have been intended to rout out and expel the demons lurking in the city.
The blows with which the “old Mars” was expelled the city seem to have been administered by the dancing priests of Mars, the Salii. At least we know that in their songs these priests made mention of Mamurius Veturius;[557] and we are told that on a day dedicated to him they beat a hide with rods.[558] It is therefore highly probable that the hide which they drubbed on that day was the one worn by the representative of the deity whose name they simultaneously chanted. Thus on the fourteenth day of March every year Rome witnessed the curious spectacle of the human incarnation of a god chased by the god's own priests with blows from the city. The rite becomes at least intelligible on the theory that the man so beaten and expelled stood for the outworn deity of vegetation, who had to be replaced by a fresh and vigorous young divinity at the beginning of a New Year, when everywhere around in field and meadow, in wood and thicket the vernal flowers, the sprouting grass, and the opening buds and blossoms testified to the stirring of new life in nature after the long torpor and stagnation of [pg 232] winter. The dancing priests of the god derived their name of Salii from the leaps or dances which they were bound to execute as a solemn religious ceremony every year in the Comitium, the centre of Roman political life.[559] Twice a year, in the spring month of March and the autumn month of October, they discharged this sacred duty;[560] and as they did so they invoked Saturn, the Roman god of sowing.[561] As the Romans sowed the corn both in spring and autumn,[562] and as down to the present time in Europe superstitious rustics are wont to dance and leap high in spring for the purpose of making the crops grow high,[563] we may conjecture that the leaps and dances performed by the Salii, the priests of the old Italian god of vegetation, were similarly supposed to quicken the growth of the corn by homoeopathic or imitative magic. The Salii were not limited to Rome; similar colleges of dancing priests are known to have existed in many towns of ancient Italy;[564] everywhere, we may conjecture, they were supposed to contribute to the fertility of the earth by their leaps and dances. At Rome they were divided into two colleges, each composed of twelve members; and it is not impossible that the number twelve was fixed with reference to the twelve months of the old lunar year;[565] the Fratres Arvales, or “Brethren of the Ploughed Fields,” another Roman college of priests, whose functions were purely agricultural, and who wore as a badge of their office a wreath of corn-ears, were also twelve in number, [pg 233] perhaps for a similar reason.[566] Nor was the martial equipment of the Salii so alien to this peaceful function as a modern reader might naturally suppose. Each of them wore on his head a peaked helmet of bronze, and at his side a sword; on his left arm he carried a shield of a peculiar shape, and in his right hand he wielded a staff with which he smote on the shield till it rang again.[567] Such weapons in priestly hands may be turned against spiritual foes; in the preceding pages we have met with many examples of the use of material arms to rout the host of demons who oppress the imagination of primitive man, and we have seen that the clash and clangour of metal is often deemed particularly effective in putting these baleful beings to flight.[568] May it not have been so with the martial priests of Mars? We know that they paraded the city for days together in a regular order, taking up their quarters for the night at a different place each day; and as they went they danced in triple time, singing and clashing on their shields and taking their time from a fugleman, who skipped and postured at their head.[569] We may conjecture that in so doing they were supposed to be expelling the powers of evil which had accumulated during the preceding year or six months, and which the people pictured to themselves in the form of demons lurking in the houses, temples, and the other edifices of the city. In savage communities such tumultuous and noisy processions often parade the village for a similar purpose. Similarly, we have seen that among the Iroquois men in fantastic costume used to go about collecting the sins of the people as a preliminary to transferring them to the scapegoat dogs; and we have met with many examples of [pg 234] armed men rushing about the streets and houses to drive out demons and evils of all kinds.[570] Why should it not have been so also in ancient Rome? The religion of the old Romans is full of relics of savagery.
The demons expelled by the Salii may have been above all the demons of blight and infertility. This conjecture is supported by analogous ceremonies performed by savages for the purpose of driving off the demons that would harm the crops.
If there is any truth in this conjecture, we may suppose that, as priests of a god who manifested his power in the vegetation of spring, the Salii turned their attention above all to the demons of blight and infertility, who might be thought by their maleficent activity to counteract the genial influence of the kindly god and to endanger the farmer's prospects in the coming summer or winter. The conjecture may be supported by analogies drawn from the customs of modern European peasants as well as of savages. Thus, to begin with savages, we have seen that at the time of sowing the Khonds drive out the “evil spirits, spoilers of the seed” from every house in the village, the expulsion being effected by young men who beat each other and strike the air violently with long sticks.[571] If I am right in connecting the vernal and the autumnal processions of the Salii with the vernal and the autumnal sowing, the analogy between the Khond and the Roman customs would be very close. In West Africa the fields of the King of Whydah, according to an old French traveller, “are hoed and sowed before any of his subjects has leave to hoe and sow a foot of his own lands. These labours are performed thrice a year. The chiefs lead their people before the king's palace at daybreak, and there they sing and dance for a full quarter of an hour. Half of these people are armed as in a day of battle, the other half have only their farm tools. They go all together singing and dancing to the scene of their labours, and there, keeping time to the sound of the instruments, they work with such speed and neatness that it is a pleasure to behold. At the end of the day they return and dance before the king's palace. This exercise refreshes them and does them more good than all the repose they could take.”[572] From this account we might infer that the dancing was merely a recreation of the field-labourers, and that the music of the [pg 235] band had no other object than to animate them in their work by enabling them to ply their mattocks in time to its stirring strains. But this inference, though it seems to have been drawn by the traveller who has furnished the account, would probably be erroneous. For if half of the men were armed as for war, what were they doing in the fields all the time that the others were digging? A clue to unravel the mystery is furnished by the description which a later French traveller gives of a similar scene witnessed by him near Timbo in French Guinea. He saw some natives at work preparing the ground for sowing. “It is a very curious spectacle: fifty or sixty blacks in a line, with bent backs, are smiting the earth simultaneously with their little iron tools, which gleam in the sun. Ten paces in front of them, marching backwards, the women sing a well marked air, clapping their hands as for a dance, and the hoes keep time to the song. Between the workers and the singers a man runs and dances, crouching on his hams like a clown, while he whirls about his musket and performs other manœuvres with it. Two others dance, also pirouetting and smiting the earth here and there with their little hoe. All that is necessary for exorcising the spirits and causing the grain to sprout.”[573] Here, while the song of the women gives the time to the strokes of the hoes, the dances and other antics of the armed man and his colleagues are intended to exorcise or ward off the spirits who might interfere with the diggers and so prevent the grain from sprouting.