These are the salient facts in the oldest cult of Mars, and they are entirely in keeping with all we know of the early history and economy of the Roman people—a people economically dependent on agriculture, and especially on cattle-breeding, living in settlements in the midst of a wilder country, and constantly liable to the attacks of enemies who might raid their cattle and destroy their crops. I do not see in him only a deity of agriculture, or only a god of war; in my view he is a spirit of the wilder regions, where dwell the wolf and woodpecker which are connected with him in legend: a spirit who dwells on the outskirts of civilisation, and can with profit be propitiated both for help against the enemies beyond, and for the protection of the crops and cattle within, the boundaries of human activity.
Fourth in invocations came Quirinus, and fourth in order of precedence was his flamen. But of Quirinus I need say little; there is, on the whole, a consensus of opinion that he was a form of Mars belonging to the community settled on the hill that still bears his name. The most convincing proof of his identity with Mars (though identity is doubtless too strong a word) lies in the well-known fact that there were twelve Salii Collini, i.e. belonging to the Collis Quirinalis, occupied with the cult of Quirinus, answering to the twelve Salii Palatini of the cult of Mars. "Quid de ancilibus vestris," Camillus says in Livy's glowing rhetoric, "Mars Gradive (the particular cult-title of the warlike Mars), tuque Quirine pater?"[277] Now the Quirinal was, of course, within the walls, and the Romans who identified the two deities noted this point of contrast with the Mars-cult; for Servius writes, "Quirinus est Mars qui praeest paci et intra civitatem colitur, nam belli Mars extra civitatem templum habet." In keeping with this is the use of the word Quirites of the Romans in their civil capacity; but unluckily we are altogether uncertain as to the etymology and history of both Quirites and Quirinus.[278] And as Quirinus never became, like Mars, an important property of the Roman people, but was speedily obscured and only revived by the legend of late origin which identified him with Romulus, he is not of importance for my subject, and I may leave him to etymologists and speculators.
There is one other deity of whom I might naturally be expected to say something; I mean Juno. But our familiarity with Juno in Roman literature must not be allowed to lead us into believing too rashly that she was one of those great numina of the early Roman State with whom I have just been dealing. She had no special festival in the calendar;[279] her connection with the Kalends she shared, as we have seen, with Janus. She had no special priest of her own; for in spite of all assertions that the flaminica Dialis was attached to her cult, I am convinced that I was right some years ago in maintaining that this is an error, though a natural one.[280] It cannot be proved that she had any ancient temple in the city; for the oldest known to us as strictly indigenous, that of Juno Moneta on the arx, was not dedicated till 344 b.c., and we do not know that there was an older altar on the same spot.[281] Assuredly Rome was not in early times a great centre of the Juno cult, as were some of the cities in her neighbourhood, e.g. Lanuvium, Falerii, and Veii;[282] and the gradual establishment of her position as a truly Roman goddess may be explained by her appearance in the trias of deities in the Capitoline temple at the end of the regal period, and by the removal to Rome of Juno Regina of Veii still later, after the destruction of that city.
What, then, was Juno originally to the Roman religious mind? There is no more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that women used to speak of their Juno as men spoke of their Genius;[283] and it is not by any means impossible that this may be the clue to the original Italian conception of her.[284] In that case we should have to explain her appearance as a well-defined goddess in so many Latin towns, as the anthropomorphising result of that penetration of Greek ideas into Latium from the south, of which I shall have something to say later on. Such ideas, when they reached Rome, may have produced the notion that she was the consort of Jupiter, for which I must confess that I can find no sufficient evidence in the early cult of either.[285] But I must here leave her, for in truth she does not belong to this lecture; and it would need at least one whole lecture to discuss her adequately in all her later aspects. The latest German discussion of her occupied sixty closely printed pages; and instructive as it was in some ways, arrived at the apparently impossible conclusion that she was a deity of the earth.
Last in the order of invocation, even to the latest days of Rome, came Vesta, "the only female deity among the highest gods of the most ancient State,"[286] for Juno can hardly be reckoned among them, and Tellus had no special cult or priesthood of her own. We have already noticed Vesta as the religious centre of the house, making it into a home in a sense almost more vivid than that in which we use the sacred word. Through all stages of development from house to city this religious centre must have been preserved, and in the Rome of historical times Vesta was still there, inherent in her sacred hearth-fire, which was tended by her six virgin priestesses, and renewed on the Roman New Year's day (March 1) by the primitive method of friction.[287] The Vestals beyond doubt represented the unmarried daughters of the primitive Latin family, and the penus Vestae, a kind of Holy of Holies of the Roman State, recalled the penus or store-closet of the agricultural home; this penus was cleansed on June 15 for the reception of the first fruits of the harvest, and then closed until June 7 of the following year.[288] These and other simple duties of the Vestals, all of them traceable to the old life on the farm, together with their own sex and maidenhood, preserved this beautiful cult throughout Roman history from all contamination. Vesta in her aedes, a round dwelling which was never a temple in the technical sense, was represented by no statue, and her title of Mater never suggested to the true Roman worshipper anything but her motherly grace and beneficence.[289] Far more than any other cult, that of Vesta represents the reality and continuity of Roman religious feeling; and the remains of her latest dwelling, and the statues of her priestesses with no statue of herself among them, may still give the visitor to the Forum some dim idea of the spirit of Roman worship.[290]
NOTES TO LECTURE VI
[219] Arnobius (v. 155) fortunately mentions that this story came from the second book of Valerius Antias, whose bad reputation is well known. It was plainly meant to account for the cult-title of Jupiter Elicius, and the origin of the procuratio fulminis, and was invented by Greeks or Graecising Romans at a time (2nd century b.c.) when all reverence for the gods had vanished as completely as in Greece. Yet Dr. Frazer writes of Numa as "an adept at bringing down lightning from heaven" (Early History of Kingship, p. 204).
[220] On this subject, the evolution of the knowledge of God, I may refer to Professor Gwatkin's Gifford Lectures of 1904-5, published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.
[221] The meaning of deus is well put by Mr. C. Bailey in his sketch of Roman Religion (Constable & Co.), p. 12.
[222] Guesses can be made about these, but little or nothing is to be learnt from them to help us in this lecture.