For the many other taboos imposed on the Flamen, I must refer to Mr. Frazer's great work.[[76]] I will here only mention one, which is not explicitly explained in the Golden Bough. If the Flamen's wife died, he had to resign (Q. R. 50). Now, it is obvious from this that a widowed Flamen was somehow dangerous or in danger, and that the danger was one which re-marriage would not avert. I submit, therefore, that a widowed Flamen was considered in danger of sudden death, and that this danger (a danger to the community, which might thus lose the sky-spirit) consisted in the probability that the soul of the departed wife might tempt away the soul of the living Flamen. In Burmah, proper precautions are taken to prevent a baby's soul from following that of its dead mother, or the soul of a bereaved husband or wife from rejoining the lost one, or to prevent the soul of a dead child "from luring away the soul of its playmate to the spirit-land."[[77]] But accidents will happen, and it is so important for an agricultural community to have the sky-spirit under direct control, that the Romans were doubtless well advised in running no risks, and in transferring the spirit into another Flamen.
IX. Taboos.
In fairy tales it is not surprising that the hero should be forbidden to see his wife on certain days, or whilst she is washing, or at night, and that he should be required to take precautions lest he should take her unawares in one of the forbidden moments.[[78]] But it is surprising to find that the prosaic Roman punctiliously observed fairy etiquette in these matters, and habitually behaved like an inhabitant of fairy-land. See R. Q. 9 and 65. It is also surprising to discover that in Italy, where, owing to "the vigorous development of the marital authority, regardless of the natural rights of persons as such," the wife's "moral subjection became transformed into legal slavery,"[[79]] the wife was "exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking," because, according to Mommsen, those tasks were menial.[[80]] The exemption is mentioned by Plutarch in R. Q. 85; but we must take leave to question Mommsen's explanation. The exemption is not an exemption, but a prohibition: it is identical with the taboo laid on the Flamen Dialis (R. Q. 109), and has the same object. Doubtless if a Roman ate food touched by a woman, "it would swell and inflame his mouth or throat," or have some disastrous effect. For that even indirect contact with women at certain periods, e.g. child-birth, &c., is highly dangerous, is a belief found amongst the Australian blacks and the Eskimo, the Indians of North America, and the Kafirs of South Africa. An Australian blackfellow, having been brought accidentally into this dangerous contact, died of terror within a fortnight.[[81]] It is not strange, therefore, that the Romans, returning home after absence, if their wives were at home, used to send a messenger unto them before, for to give warning and advertisement of their comming. And we can understand that the primitive public for whom the fairy tales in question were composed found the incident of the violated taboo as thrilling and as full of "actuality" as a modern reader finds the latest sensational novel.
The belief that a mother and her new-born babe are peculiarly at the mercy of malevolent spirits is world-wide. In the fairy tales of Christian Europe the period of danger is terminated by baptism, until which time various precautions, such as burning a light in the chamber, must be observed.[[82]] In ancient Italy the danger ended when the child received its name, which, as Plutarch (R. Q. 103) informs us, was on the ninth day after birth in the case of boys, on the eighth in the case of girls. Until that day a candle was to be kept lighted, and the spirit Candelifera was to be invoked. On that day the child was purified (which indicates an original taboo), and received the bulla, mentioned by Plutarch (R. Q. 102), to preserve him henceforth from evil spirits and the evil eye. Whether the bulla derived its virtue from the substances which were enclosed in it, as in a box, or from its moon shape, is uncertain. If the latter be the true explanation, we may compare the fact recorded by Plutarch (R. Q. 76), that those who are descended of the most noble and auncient houses of Rome carried little moones upon their shoes. The daughters of Sion also wore as amulets "round tires like the moon" (Isaiah, iii. 18). The moon-spirit sends disease or takes possession of the person who is "lunatick" or "moon-struck." But the spirit may be deluded, and will enter any moon-shaped object which the person attacked is wearing. The Chaldæans diverted the spirit of disease from the sick man by providing an image in the likeness of the spirit to attract the plague.[[83]]
X.—Sympathetic Magic.
The traveller who has little or no acquaintance with the language of the land in which he is, resorts naturally to the language of gesture, and mimics the thing which he wishes to have done. Primitive man communicates his wishes to Nature in exactly the same way: if he wishes to have game caught in the trap which he sets, he first pretends to fall into it himself. He has not learnt to "interrogate" Nature in her own language by means of experiment and crucial instances, but he has a presentiment of the method of Concomitant Variations and of the Substitution of Similars. If a thing is itself beyond his reach, he substitutes its counterpart, its image or its name, or something related to it or connected with it, in confidence that any changes he may work in the one will be accompanied by concomitant variations in the other. Hence the reluctance shown by many savages to allow their likenesses to be taken or their names to be known, as with the name or the likeness the man himself would pass into the power of the stranger.[[84]] So the Romans, as Plutarch informs us (R. Q. 61), kept the name of their tutelar god secret, for the same reason, as Plutarch acutely observes, as other nations kept the images of their gods chained;[[85]] and for the same reason, we may add, as the Romans forbade the living counterpart of the sky-spirit to leave the city, viz., lest he should pass out of their control.
In the same spirit, the Romans would not allow a table to be completely stripped of food (R. Q. 64) or a light to be extinguished (75): the action might produce permanent effects. The same feeling prevailed or prevails with regard to the table in Chemnitz, though it is regarded as a sign of death if a light goes out of its own accord.[[86]]
The practice of allowing the spoils taken from an enemy to rust—a practice which Plutarch (37) cannot comprehend—was doubtless a piece of sympathetic magic: as the armour rusted, the enemy's power of armed resistance would diminish.
Another interesting instance of sympathetic magic lurks in R. Q. 32. The images which, as Plutarch says, were thrown into the river, represented a spirit of vegetation or a corn-spirit; and the object of plunging them into the river was thereby to secure that the crops should be correspondingly drenched with rain.[[87]] This rite also illustrates the origin of a conception which has its roots in sympathetic magic and yet exerts considerable influence in the civilised world—the conception of "legal fictions." The images, undoubtedly, were substitutes for human beings who were (as representing the corn-spirit) drowned in the Tiber. Human sacrifice, though exceptional, was not unknown at Rome in historic times, as appears from R. Q. 83; and the substitution of animals or of inanimate objects for human beings is not peculiar to Rome, but is the usual means by which the transition from the more to the less barbarous custom is effected. But the Romans, who were practical and logical to the extreme, who reduced magic to a system whereby they regulated their daily life, consistently enough also utilised sympathetic magic as a legal instrument. For it would be a great mistake to infer from the ridicule poured by Cicero (Pro Murena, xii. 62) on the fictions of Roman law, that those symbolisms were puerile mummeries designed to benefit the legal profession at the expense of its clients. The clod of earth which was brought into court was no mere symbol, but gave to those who held it exactly the same control over the estate from which it came, as the image of a god gives to its possessor, or as the hair or clothing of a person who is to be bewitched gives to the worker of the spell.
A form of sympathetic magic which is practised by agricultural peoples all over the world is a "sacred marriage," whereby two spirits or their images, or their living representatives, are united, in order that their union may be sympathetically followed by fertility in flock and field. The ceremony of the "sacred marriage" frequently survives when its purpose has been forgotten, and then a popular explanation is invented for and by the folk. The myth of Acca Larentia, given by Plutarch, R. Q. 35, seems to me a piece of folk-lore of this kind. To begin with, it is not uncommon to find in Greek and Asiatic cults, for instance,[[88]] a woman shut up with a god in his temple. And the result of this union is an increase in the agricultural wealth or fertility of the community. The same result appears in the "rationalised" explanation of the "sacred marriage" of Acca Larentia and Hercules, given by Plutarch. Further, an exactly similar tale is told of Hercules and Flora,[[89]] whose name shows that she is a spirit of flowering and blossoming vegetation, whilst her cult points to a realistic sacred marriage in which she took part.[[90]] Again, Acca Larentia and Flora were evidently felt to be spirits of the same class as the Dea Dia, for sacrifices were offered to them as part of the worship of the Dea Dia; and the Dea Dia was a corn-spirit, as is plainly shown by the Acta Arvalium Fratrum.[[91]] At the same time, though Acca Larentia, Flora, and the Dea Dia were all spirits of the same class, it is clear that they were distinguished from each other, for the Arval Brothers sacrificed to each of them separately and under distinct names. Finally, whether Acca Larentia had originally anything to do with the Lares seems doubtful,[[92]] and in spite of the fact that, in later times at any rate, she was called "the mother of the Lares," one cannot build much on the etymology which makes "Acca" mean "mother."[[93]] Certain it is, however, that the Arval Brothers, in worshipping the Dea Dia, began their famous and very ancient song with an invocation of the Lares.[[94]] It is plain, therefore, that there was from pre-historic times a tendency to associate the worship of the kindly Lares with that of spirits of the class to which the Dea Dia and Acca Larentia belonged. But the feast of the Larentalia (or Larentinalia), to which Plutarch alludes in R. Q. 34, was evidently a piece of ancestor-worship, and may therefore have been part of the worship of the Lares from the beginning. If this really be so, Acca Larentia will be a soul promoted to the rank of a spirit of vegetation.