3. Myrtle was not allowed in this temple; hence the myth that Faunus beat his daughter with a myrtle rod[[391]]. But could the exclusion of myrtle by itself have suggested the beating? Dr. Mannhardt answers in the negative, and conjectures that there must have been some kind of beating in the cult itself, which gave rise to the story[[392]]. Dr. Mannhardt never made a conjecture without a large collection of facts on which to base it; and here he depends upon a number of instances from Greece and Northern Europe, in which man or woman, or some object such as the image of a deity, is whipped with rods, nettles, strips of leather, &c., in order, as it would seem, to produce fertility and drive away hostile influences. We shall see the same peculiarity occurring at the Lupercalia in February[[393]], where its object and meaning are almost beyond doubt. Many of these practices occur, it is worth noting, on May-day. If the Bona Dea was a representative in any sense of the fertility of women, as well as of the fructifying powers of the earth—and the two ideas seem naturally to have run together in the primitive mind—we may provisionally accept Dr. Mannhardt’s ingenious suggestion. If it be objected that as myrtle was excluded from the cult it could not have been used therein for the purpose of whipping, the answer is simply that as being invested with some mysterious power it was tabooed from ordinary use, but, like certain kinds of victims, was introduced on special and momentous occasions.
4. The temple was a kind of herbarium in which herbs were kept with healing properties[[394]]. A group of interesting inscriptions shows that the Bona Dea did not confine her healing powers to cases of women, but cured the ailments of both sexes[[395]]. This attribute of the goddess is borne out by the presence of snakes in her temple, the usual symbol of the medicinal art, and at the same time appropriate to the Bona Dea as an Earth-goddess[[396]]. It is possible that this feature is a Greek importation; but on the whole I see no reason why the female ministrants of the temple should not have exercised such healing powers, or have sold or given herbs at request, even at a very early period. No doubt Greek medicinal learning became associated with it, but that the knowledge of simples was indigenous in Italy we have abundant proof[[397]]; and that it should have been connected with no cult of a deity until Aesculapius was introduced from Greece, is most improbable.
5. The sacrifice mentioned is that of a porca[[398]]. The pig is also the victim in the worship of Ceres, of Juno Lucina[[399]] (as alternative for a lamb), and as a piacular sacrifice in the ritual of the deity of the Fratres Arvales (Dea Dia); it seems in fact, as in Greece, to be appropriate to deities of the earth and of women. There is no reason to suppose that wherever it is found it had a Greek origin; even in the cult of Ceres, which, as we saw, became early overlaid with Greek practice[[400]], the pig may have been the victim before that change took place. But it is a singular fact that in the worship of the Bona Dea, either at the temple of the Aventine, or in the December rite—more probably perhaps in the latter—the victim was called by a name which looks suspiciously Greek, viz. Damium[[401]]. It seems that there was a deity Damia who was worshipped here and there in Greece, and also in Southern Italy, e. g. at Tarentum, where she had a festival called Dameia[[402]]. It looks as if this Greek deity had at one time migrated from Tarentum to Rome, and become engrafted upon the indigenous Bona Dea; for we are expressly told that Damia was identical with the Bona Dea, and that the priestess of the latter was called Damiatrix[[403]]. Much has been written about these very obscure names, without any very definite result; but it seems to be generally agreed that the form of the word damiatrix indicates a high antiquity for the Graecized form of the cult, and may indeed possibly suggest an Italian origin for the whole group of names. In this uncertainty conjectures are almost useless.
We have seen enough of the cult to gain some idea of the nature of this mysterious deity, whose real name was not known, even if she had one[[404]]. We need not identify her with Vesta, as some have done[[405]], nor with Juno Lucina, nor with any other female deity of the class to which she seems to have belonged. She must at one time have been, whatever she afterwards became, a protective deity of the female sex, the Earth-mother[[406]], a kindly and helpful, but shy and unknowable deity of fertility. The name Bona Dea is probably to be regarded as one indigitation of the Earth-spirit known by a variety of other names and appearing in a number of different phases. There is indeed a remarkable indefiniteness about the Italian female deities of this class; they never gained what we may call complete specific distinctness, but are rather half-formed species developed from a common type. They form, in fact, an excellent illustration of the nature of that earliest stratum of Roman religious belief which has been called pandaemonism—a belief in a world of spiritual powers not yet grown into the forms of individual deities, but ready at any moment, under influences either native or foreign, to take a more definite shape.
VII. Id. Mai. (May 9). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (VEN. MAFF.)
V. Id. Mai. (May 11). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)
III. Id. Mai. (May 13). N.
LEM[VRIA]. (TUSC. VEN. MAFF.)