The word Lemuria indicates clearly enough some kind of worship of the dead; but we know of no such public cult on these three days except from the calendars. What Ovid describes as taking place at this time is a private and domestic rite performed by the head of the household[[407]]; and Ovid is our only informant in regard to details. In historical times the public festival of the dead was that of the dies parentales in February, ending with the Feralia on the 21st. How, then, is it that the three days of the Lemuria appear in those large letters in the ancient calendars, which, as we have seen[[408]], indicate the public festivals of the religious system of the Republic? There is no certain answer to this question. We can but guess that the Lemuria was at one time, like the Feralia, a public festival, but descended from a more ancient deposit of superstition which in historical times was buried deep beneath the civilization of a developed city life[[409]]. Ovid himself implies that the Lemuria was an older festival than the Feralia[[410]], and we may suppose him to be following Varro as a guide. And if we compare his account of the grotesque domestic rites of the Lemuria with those of February, which were of a systematic, cheerful, and even beautiful character, we may feel fairly sure that the latter represents the organized life of a city state, the former the ideas of an age when life was wilder and less secure, and the fear of the dead and of demons generally was a powerful factor in the minds of the people. If we may argue from Ovid’s account, to be described directly, it is not impossible that the Lemuria may have been one of those periodical expulsions of demons of which Mr. Frazer has told us so much in his Golden Bough[[411]], and which are performed on behalf of the community as well as in the domestic circle amongst savage peoples. It is noticeable that the offering of food to the demons is a feature common to these practices, and that it also appears in those described by Ovid.
The difference of character in the two Roman festivals of the dead is perhaps also indicated by the fact that the days of the Lemuria are marked in the calendars with the letter N, while the Feralia is marked F or FP[[412]]. This may perhaps point to two different views of the attitude of the dead to the living, affecting the character of the festival days; they are friendly or hostile, as they have been buried with due rites and carefully looked after, or as they have failed of these dues and are consequently angry and jealous[[413]]. The latter of these attitudes is more in keeping with the notions of uncivilized man, and of a life not as yet wholly brought under the influence of the civilization of the city-state. To be more certain, however, on this point, we must try and discover the real meaning of the word lemur.
The definition given by Porphyrio is ‘Umbras vagantes hominum ante diem mortuorum atque ideo metuendas[[414]].’ Nonius has the following: ‘Lemures larvae nocturnae et terrificationes imaginum et bestiarum[[415]].’ From these passages it would seem that lemures and larvae mean much the same thing; on the other hand Appuleius[[416]] implies that lemures is a general word for spirits after they have left the body, while those that haunt houses are especially called larvae. But on a question of this kind, the philosophical and uncritical Appuleius is not to be weighed as an authority against either Nonius or Porphyrio, who may quite possibly be here representing the learning of the Augustan age; and a perusal of the whole of his passage will show that he is simply trying to classify ghosts by the light of his own imagination. Judging from the hints of the two other scholars, we may perhaps conclude that lemures and larvae are to be distinguished as hostile ghosts from manes, the good people (as the word is generally explained), i. e. those duly buried in the city of the dead, and whom their living descendants have no need to fear so long as they pay them their due rites at the proper seasons as members of the family. And this conclusion is confirmed by the curious etymology of Ovid[[417]], reproduced by Porphyrio, deriving Lemuria from Remus. whose violent death was supposed to have been expiated by the institution of the festival. The difficulty is to see why, if the lemures were unburied, evil, or hostile spirits, a special festival of three days should have been necessary to appease or quiet them; and I can only account for this by supposing that such spirits were especially numerous in an age of uncivilized life and constant war and violence, and that they formed a large part of the whole world of evil demons whose expulsion was periodically demanded. It may have been the case that at this particular time in May, when the days were nefasti and marriages were ill-omened, these spirits became particularly restless and needed to be laid.
Such an explanation as this of the Lemuria is on the whole preferable to that which would regard it as the original Roman festival of all the dead; for there is now abundant evidence that even in the earliest ages of Italian life the practice of orderly burial in necropoleis was universal[[418]], and this is a practice that seems inconsistent with a general belief in the dead as hostile and haunting spirits.
The following is Ovid’s description of the way in which the ghosts were laid at the Lemuria by the father of a family. At midnight he rises, and with bare feet[[419]] and washed hands, making a peculiar sign with his fingers and thumbs to keep off the ghosts, he walks through the house. He has black beans in his mouth, and these he spits out as he walks, looking the other way, and saying, ‘With these I redeem me and mine.’ Nine times he says this without looking round; then come the ghosts behind him, and gather up the beans unseen. He proceeds to wash again and to make a noise with brass vessels; and after nine times repeating the formula ‘manes[[420]] exite paterni,’ he at last looks round, and the ceremony is over.
The only point in this quaint bit of ritual which need detain us is the use of beans. We have had bean-straw used at the Parilia, and we shall find that beans were also used at the festival of the dead in February. Assuredly it is not easy to see what could have made them into such valuable ‘medicine.’ Beans were not a newly discovered vegetable. Their exclusion from the rites of Demeter must have been of great antiquity, and the notions of the Pythagoreans about them were probably based on very ancient popular superstitions[[421]]. No one, as far as I know, has as yet successfully solved the problem why beans had so strange a religious character about them[[422]]; they probably were an ancient symbol of fertility, but it is impossible now to discover how or why the ideas grouped themselves around them, which we so constantly find both in Greece and Italy. If we ask why the ghosts picked them up, or were supposed to do so, there is some reason for believing that by eating them they might possibly hope to get a new lease of life[[423]]. Whatever was the real basis of the superstition, it was a widely spread one, and ramified in more than one direction; the Roman priest of Jupiter, for example, might not touch beans nor even mention them[[424]]. In his case the taboo was no doubt very old, but might have grown out of some such practice as that just described, all things ill-omened and mysterious being carefully kept out of his reach.
The days from May 7 to 14 were occupied by the Vestal Virgins in preparing the mola salsa, or sacred salt-cake, for use at the Vestalia in June, on the Ides of September, and at the Lupercalia[[425]]. This was made from the first ears of standing corn in a primitive fashion by the three senior Vestals, and is no doubt, like most of their ritual, a relic of the domestic functions of the daughters of the family. But we must postpone further consideration of the Vestals and their duties till we come to the Vestalia in June.
Id. Mai. (May 15). NP.
FER[IAE] IOVI. MERCUR[IO] MAIAE. (VENUS[[426]].)
MAIAE AD CIRC[UM] M[AXIMUM]. (CAER.) MERC[URIO]. (TUSC.)
The very curious rite which took place on this day is not mentioned in the calendars; it belonged to those which, like the Paganalia, were publica indeed and pro populo, but represented the people as divided in certain groups rather than the State as a whole[[427]]. But its obvious antiquity, and the interesting questions which arise out of it, tempt me to treat it in detail, at the risk of becoming tedious.