VII. Tree and Field Cults.
Whenever two peoples come into contact with each other for the first time, a comparison of religions is set up; and one of the first-fruits of this earliest exercise of the comparative study of religions is that identification of gods and borrowing of cults and myths to which the term "syncretism" is applied. The part played by syncretism in the history of Italian religion is of singular importance: the Italian's misty, vaporous belief in abstract, impersonal spirits was precipitated into premature polytheism by the introduction of the anthropomorphic gods of Greece. Fortunately, the process being premature, was, and to the end remained, incomplete; and we are therefore able to employ the survivals from the older form of belief so as to form some idea of the original Italian religion. To the last, many spirits resisted the individualising process, which is the essence and condition of polytheism: the Lares and the Manes not only never became gods, but none of them was dignified by a proper name, or attained even so much individuality as Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Not can such general abstract appellations as Bona Dea, Dea Dia, be regarded as personal names, i.e., as the names of definite, individual, personal beings: they have not the personality of Venus or Vulcan, and yet they were the beings whom the people at large worshipped in preference to the State-gods, whose cult and myths were fashionably Hellenised.
She who, under the influence of Greek religion, became the goddess Diana, was originally a tree-spirit, having no personal name, but known only by an appellation as general and abstract as that of Bona Dea. The proof that the qualities and attributes of the Greek goddess Artemis were attached by syncretism to the Italian tree-spirit is brought to light by two of Plutarch's penetrating questions (R. Q. 3 and 4), why harts' horns are set up in all the temples of Diana save that on Mount Aventine, in which are ox-horns? and why men are excluded from one particular temple of the same goddess? These differences in cult obviously point to the worship of different goddesses under the same name; and, as a matter of fact, we know first that harts were sacred to the Greek goddess, Artemis, whereas the genuine Italian Diana was the goddess of oxen; next, we know that the identification of Artemis and Diana was effected by Servius Tullius.[[61]] To understand the exclusion of men from the temple in the Patrician Street, however, we must inquire into the nature of the Italian Diana. With this object, we may either assume that the pro-ethnic Aryans were polytheists, and that therefore the primitive Italians also worshipped Nature-gods; in which case, starting from the etymology of the word Diana (from the root div, "shine"), we must either at once make Diana a moon-goddess,[[62]] and thus account for the fact that she was a goddess of child-birth, and therefore men were excluded from her temple. But this seems improbable even to a writer in Roscher's Lexikon (Birt), who very properly notes (p. 1007) that "it is doubtful whether the belief that the moon influenced child-birth can be shown to be Italian." Birt, therefore, interprets the name to mean "the bright goddess," i.e., the goddess of bright daylight, and boldly writes it down as a matter of course that the first attribute of a daylight or sky goddess is her close relation to vegetable nature, especially woods and forests. Those who find this mortal leap beyond their power to follow, and who prefer to argue to the original nature of the goddess from what we know of her cult as a matter of fact, rather than from hypotheses as to the Nature-myths of the primitive Aryans, will note first that her name is as purely general and abstract as that of the Dea Dia or the Bona Dea, and means simply a bright spirit, or possibly simply a spirit. Next, wherever Diana was worshipped in Italy, she was originally worshipped in woods and groves, e.g., in the forests on Mount Tifata, Mount Algidus at Anagnia, Corne, and Aricia. Indeed, in Aricia the place of her worship was simply called Nemus, and the goddess herself plain Nemorensis. In the next place, her worship is frequently associated with that of Silvanus,[[63]] who is plainly a wood-spirit, and who is also a patron-spirit of domestic cattle.[[64]] From this we may venture to class her with the "agrestes feminæ quas silvaticas vocant" of Burchard of Worms:[[65]] she is a wood-spirit who became a goddess because of her likeness to the Greek Artemis. Her connection with child-birth does not indicate that she was a moon-goddess. Roman women in primitive times, like Swedish women, "twined their arms about a tree to ensure easy delivery in the pangs of child-birth; and we remember how, in our English ballads, women, in like time of need, 'set their backs against an oak.'"[[66]] Finally, the annual washing and cleansing of the head, which Plutarch mentions in R. Q. 100, was done on a day sacred to Diana, probably because, on the one hand, women felt that they were under her protection specially, while, on the other, so great is the sanctity of the head amongst primitive peoples,[[67]] that washing it is not to be undertaken lightly: "the guardian spirit of the head does not like to have the hair washed too often, it might injure or incommode him."[[68]]
The Romane Questions afford another instance in which syncretism has obscured the original nature of an Italian field-spirit, and in which the cult of the Hellenised deity still betrays the primitive object of worship. In the pages of Virgil, Mars has so completely assumed the guise of the Greek Ares, that if we had only the verses and the mythology of the court-poet to instruct us, we could never even suspect that Mars had other functions than those of a war-god. When, however, we turn from myth to cult, and are confronted by the ceremony of the October horse, described in R. Q. 97, we find, that though Mars was sung as "Lenker der Schlachten," he was worshipped as the spirit that makes the corn to grow. At Rome the corn-spirit was represented as a horse, as it still is amongst the peasants of Europe, not only near Stuttgart, but in our own country, in Hertfordshire and in Shropshire. The fructifying power of the spirit is supposed in modern folk-lore and in Africa, as it was at Rome, to reside specially in the animal's tail, which therefore was preserved over the hearth of the king's house, in order to secure a good harvest next year. The antiquity of this custom at Rome, and the fact that it dates from long before the Romans knew anything of the Greek Ares, are shown by the fight for the horse's head waged between the inhabitants of the two wards, the Via Sacra and the Subura, a fight which shows that the ceremonial goes back to a time when the Subura and Rome were separate and independent villages.
In connection with the killing of the corn-spirit, we may note a passage of the Romane Questions (63) which has not yet taken its place in modern works on the subject. Speaking of the rex sacrorum, Plutarch says, "Neere unto Comitium, they use to have a solemn sacrifice for the good estate of the citie; which, so soone as ever this king hath performed, he taketh his legs and runnes out of the place as fast as ever he can." Necessary as it was, according to primitive notions, that the vegetation-spirit should be, as it were, decanted into a new vessel, when the animal in which he was for the time residing was threatened with infirmity and decay, still the killing of the sacred animal was a dangerous and semi-sacrilegious act. Hence in Greece, the man who killed the ox in the sacrifice known as the bouphonia ran away as soon as he had felled the animal, and was subsequently tried for murder, but was acquitted on the ground that the axe was the real murderer; and so the axe was found guilty and cast into the sea. The Roman regifugium is obviously a fragment of a similar rite. The folk-explanation treated it as a symbol commemorative of the expulsion of the Tarquinii.
VIII. Man-Worship.
The rules of life prescribed for the priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, are given in part by Plutarch (Q. R. 40, 44, 50, 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113),[[69]] and are a signal instance of the necessity of explaining Roman cults, not by reference to the artificial mythology of the Vedas or to the civilised myths of Greece, but to the customs of peoples who are still steeped in animism. That a spirit may take up its abode as a Dryad in a tree or in an animal, as in the beasts worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, or may temporarily take possession of a human being, as Apollo possessed the Pythian priestess, is easily comprehended. But that a spirit should permanently dwell in a man, and that the man should exercise all the powers and receive all the worship that belong to the spirit, would be almost incredible were it not for the numerous instances of such worship collected by the erudition of Mr. Frazer.[[70]] In Japan the sun-goddess dwelt in the Mikado; in Lower Guinea and among the Zapotecs of South Mexico the sun-spirit takes human form. In Cambodia the spirit of fire and the spirit of water manifest themselves in the (human) kings of fire and water. Rain-kings are found on the Congo, the Upper Nile, and among Abyssinian tribes. The weather-spirit is worshipped in the kings of Loango, Mombaza, Quiteva, the Banjars, and the Muyscas. In the South Sea Islands, generally, "every god can take possession of a man and speak through him."[[71]]
In the next place, these divine kings or priests are all charged with a force which enables them to control the course of Nature. Lest, therefore, this force should be inadvertently and unintentionally discharged, with results disastrous to the recipient of the shock or to the universe at large, the divine priest or king must be insulated. And this insulation is effected by taboos: every action is taboo to him which might bring him into dangerous contact with others.[[72]]
When, therefore, we learn that the Flamen Dialis was subject to a very large number of taboos, all of which find analogies, while some find their exact counterparts, in the taboos laid on the divine priests and kings previously mentioned; and when we further discover that Preller,[[73]] on totally different grounds, considered the Flamen to have been "the living counterpart" of Jupiter, it seems not unreasonable to regard the Flamen Dialis as the human embodiment of the sky-spirit.
The Flamen, according to Plutarch (R. Q. 40), was forbidden to anoint his body in the open air, i.e. sub Jove; and of the Mikado we are told, "Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air."[[74]] The Flamen was forbidden to touch meal or raw meat, i.e., meal or meat which might be consumed by others; so, too, the vessels used by the Mikado were "generally broke, for fear they should come into the hands of laymen; for they believe religiously that if any layman should presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame his mouth and throat."[[75]]