[180] For Roman names Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 7 foll., and Mommsen, Forschungen, i. I foll., are still the most complete authorities. For the importance of the name among wild and semi-civilised peoples, Frazer, G.B. i. 403 foll.; Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 430 foll. All these ceremonies of birth, naming, and initiation (puberty) have recently been included by M. van Gennep in what he calls Rites de passage (see his book with that title, which appeared after these lectures were prepared, especially chapters v. and vi.). In all these ceremonies he traces more or less successfully a sequence of rites of separation (i.e. from a previous condition), of margin, where the ground is, so to speak, neutral, and of "aggregation," when the subject is introduced to a new state or condition of existence. If I understand him rightly, he looks on this as the proper and primitive explanation of all such rites, and denies that they need to be accounted for animistically, i.e. by assuming that riddance of evil spirits, or purification of any kind, is the leading idea in them. They are, in fact, quasi-dramatic celebrations of a process of going over from one status to another, and may be found in connection with all the experiences of man in a social state. But the Roman society, of which I am describing the religious aspect, had beyond doubt reached the animistic stage of thought, and was in process of developing it into the theological stage; hence these ceremonies are marked by sacrifices, as marriage, the dies lustricus (see De Marchi, p. 169, and Tertull. de Idol. 16) most probably, and puberty (R.F. p. 56). I do not fully understand how far van Gennep considers sacrifice as marking a later stage in the development of the ideas of a society on these matters (see his note in criticism of Oldenburg, p. 78); but I see no good reason to abandon the words purification and lustration, believing that even if he is right in his explanation of the original performances, these ideas had been in course of time engrafted on them.
[181] In historical times the toga pura was assumed when the parents thought fit; earlier there may have been a fixed day (R.F. p. 56, "Liberalia"). In any case there was, of course, no necessary correspondence between "social and physical puberty"; van Gennep, p. 93 foll.
[182] Wissowa, R.K. p. 191; J. B. Carter in Hastings' Dict. of Religion and Ethics, i. 462 foll.; Dieterich, Mutter Erde, p. 77. The whole question of the so-called cult of the dead at Rome calls for fresh investigation in the light of ethnological and archaeological research. The recent work of Mr. J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, seems to throw grave doubt on some of the most important conclusions of Rohde's Psyche, the work which most writers on the ideas of the Greeks and Romans have been content to follow. Mr. Lawson seems to me to have proved that the object of both burial and cremation (which in both peninsulas are found together) was to secure dissolution for the substance of the body, so that the soul might not be able to inhabit the body again, and the two together return to annoy the living (see especially chapters v. and vi.). But his answer to the inevitable question, why in that case sustenance should be offered to the dead at the grave, is less satisfactory (see pp. 531, 538), and I do not at present see how to co-ordinate it with Roman usage. But I find hardly a trace of the belief that the dead had to be placated like the gods by sacrifice and prayer, except in Aen. iii. 63 foll. and v. 73 foll. In the first of these passages Polydorus had not been properly buried, as Servius observes ad loc. to explain the nature of the offerings; the second presents far more difficulties than have as yet been fairly faced.
[183] For recent researches about beans as tabooed by the Pythagoreans and believed to be the food of ghosts, see Gruppe, Mythologische Literatur, p. 370 (Samter and Wünsch). Cp. R.F., p. 110.
[184] Ov. Fasti, v. 421 foll.; R.F. p. 107.
LECTURE V
THE CALENDAR OF NUMA
The religion of the household had two main characteristics. First, it was a perfectly natural and organic growth, the result of the Roman farmer's effective desire to put himself and his in right relations with the spiritual powers at work for good or ill around him. His conception of these powers I shall deal with more fully in the next lecture; but I have said enough to prove that it was not a degrading one. The spirits of his house and his land and his own Genius were friendly powers, all of them of the greatest importance for his life and his work, and their claims were attended to with regularity and devotion. From Vesta and the Penates, the Lar, the Genius, the Manes, and the spirits of the doorway and the spring, there was nothing to fear if they were carefully propitiated; and as his daily life and comfort depended on this propitiation, they were really divine members of the familia, and might become, and perhaps did become, the objects of real affection as well as worship. In this well-regulated practical life of the early agricultural settlers, with its careful attention to the claims of its divine protectors, we may perhaps see the germs of a real religious expression of human life.