Among the Syrians, we likewise find that the use of voluntary Flagellations had been adopted; and their Priests practised them upon themselves with astonishing severity. Apuleius, in his Metamorphosis of the Golden Ass, relates the manner in which these Priests both made incisions in their own flesh, and lashed themselves voluntarily.
‘In fine, they dissect their own arms with two-edged knives, which they use constantly to carry about them. In the mean while, one of them begins to rave and sigh, and seems to draw his breath from his very bowels. He at last feigns to fall into a kind of phrenetic fit, pretending that he is replete with the spirit of the Goddess; as if the presence of the Gods ought not to make Men better, instead of rendering them disordered and weak. But now, behold what kind of favour the Divine Will is going to bestow upon him. He begins to vociferate, and, by purposely contrived lies, to upbraid and accuse himself in the same manner as if he had been guilty of having entertained bad designs against the mysteries of their holy Religion. He then proceeds to award a sentence of punishment against himself; and at the same time grasping his scourge, an instrument which those Priests constantly wear about them, and which is made of twisted woollen cords armed with small bones, he lashes himself with repeated blows; all the while manifesting a wonderful, though affected firmness, notwithstanding the violence and number of the stripes.’ From all that is above related, it is pretty evident that those Syrian Priests used (or seemed to use) themselves, in this cruel manner, only with a view to raise admiration in the minds of weak and superstitious persons by this extraordinary affectation of superior sanctity, and thereby to cheat them out of their money. At least this is the conjecture made by Philippus Beroaldus, in his Commentaries on the Metamorphosis of the Golden Ass, who says, that those Priests were no better than Jugglers, or rather Cheats, who only aimed at catching the money of the Fools who gazed at them[31].
Nay, the opinion of the merit of voluntary or religious Flagellations, was in antient times grown so universal, that we find them to have also been practised among the Romans, who had adopted notions on that subject of the same kind with those of the Syrians and the Egyptians, and thought that the Gods were, upon particular occasions, to be appeased by using scourges and whips. An instance of this notion or practice is to be met with in the Satyricon of Petronius, in which Encolpus relates, that, being upon the sea, the people of the ship flagellated him, in order, as they thought, to prevent a storm. ‘It was resolved (he says) among the Mariners, to give us each forty stripes, in order to appease the tutelar Deity of the ship. No time accordingly is lost; the furious Mariners set upon us with cords in their hands, and endeavour to appease the Deity by the effusion of the meanest blood: as to me, I received three lashes, which I endured with Spartan magnanimity[32].’
But the most curious instance of religious Flagellations, among the Romans, and indeed among all other Nations, is that of the ceremony which the Romans called Lupercalia; a ceremony which was performed in honour of the God Pan, and had been contrived in Arcadia, where it was in use so early as the times of King Evander, and whence it was afterwards brought over to Italy. In this Festival, a number of Men used to dance naked, as Virgil informs us: ‘Here (says he) the dancing Salii, and naked Luperci[33].’ And Servius, in his Commentary upon this verse of Virgil, explains to us who these Luperci were. They were (he says) Men who, upon particular solemnities, used to strip themselves stark naked; in this situation they ran about the streets, carrying straps of leather in their hands, with which they struck the Women they met in their way. Nor did those Women run away from them; on the contrary, they willingly presented the palms of their hands to them, in order to receive their blows; imagining, through a superstitious notion received among the Romans, that these blows, whether applied to their hands or to their belly, had the power of rendering them fruitful, or procuring them an easy delivery.
The same facts are also alluded to, by Juvenal, who says in his second Satire, ‘Nor is it of any service to her, to offer the palms of her hands to a nimble Lupercus[34].’ And the antient Scholiast on Juvenal observes on this verse, that barren Women, in Rome, used to throw themselves into the way of the Luperci when become furious, and were beaten by them with straps[35].
Other Authors, besides those above, have mentioned this festival of the Lupercalia. Among others, Festus, in his Book on the Signification of words, informs us, that the Luperci were also sometimes called Crepi, on account of the kind of noise (crepitus) which they made with their straps, when they struck the Women with them: ‘For it is a custom among the Romans (continues the same Author) for Men to run about naked during the festival of the Lupercalia, and to strike all the Women they meet, with straps.’
Prudentius, I find, has also mentioned the same festival in his Roman Martyr: ‘What is the meaning (says he) of this shameful ceremony? By thus running about the streets under the shape of Luperci, you show that you are persons of low condition. Would you not deem a Man to be the meanest of Slaves, who would run naked about the public streets, and amuse himself with striking the young Women[36]?’