[428] By Deubner in Archiv, 1905, p. 69 foll. This touching of the chin seems to be an example of that personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see, e.g., Westermarck, op. cit. i. 586. Decius makes himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching (as priest) the only part of his person which was exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O. Weinrich, Antike Heiligungswünder, p. 63 foll., and Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a sacrificing priest.
[429] See above, p. 180.
[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates at length by examples of the worship of the spear or sword among various peoples.
[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9. Is it possible that it may have some reference to the fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the Latins?
[432] Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however, the translator from the Umbrian is assisted by the Latin formulae we are discussing.
[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc. This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C. (Wissowa, R.K. p. 257). The interesting feature in this devotio, used at the siege at Carthage, is that it is not himself whom the commander devotes—the common sense of the Romans had got beyond that—but the enemy as substitutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only gods invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes, while in the older formula it is the gods of Romans and Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called Decius wrote: "Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck, p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word eliciatur shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last passage is that the parallel passage in the Euripidean Iph. in Aul. (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant points down and up respectively in invoking them, as also in the devotio of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii. 6), which was an abnormal procuratio prodigii.
[434] Cp. the language used by Livy of the second Decius (x. 29): "prae se agere formidinem ac fugam ... contacturum funebribus diris signa tela arma hostium." For spells or curses of this kind see Westermarck i. 563: a curse is conveyable by speech, especially if spoken by a magistrate or priest. "Among the Maoris the anathema of the priest is regarded as a thunderbolt that an enemy cannot escape." See also Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 434, for the Jewish ban, by which impious sinners, or enemies of the city and its God, were devoted to destruction. He remarks that the Hebrew verb to ban is sometimes rendered "consecrate": Micah iv. 13; Deut. xiii. 16; and Joshua vi. 26 (Jericho), which exactly answers to the consecratio of Carthage. For curses conveyable by sacrifices, as in all the cases I have mentioned, see Westermarck ii. 618 foll. 624, and the same author's paper on conditional curses in Morocco, in Anthropological Essays, addressed to E. B. Tylor, p. 360.
[435] "Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices." I well remember hearing this read in church throughout the Crimean war.
[436] "Pro republica Quiritium," in the formula quoted above.
[437] Livy viii. 10 ad fin.