4. The Puppets and their immersion in the Tiber.—There are two possible explanations of this curious practice.
(1) The puppets were substitutes for human victims, and probably for old men. The evidence for this view is—first, the Roman tradition expressed in the saying sexagenarios de ponte[[447]], and supported by the fact that the puppets appeared, to Dionysius at least, like men bound hand and foot[[448]]; secondly, the fact that human sacrifice was not entirely unknown at Rome, though there is no trace of any such custom regularly recurring. We may allow that Italy could not have been entirely free from a practice which existed even in Greece, and also that the habit of substituting some object for the original victim is common and well attested in religious history; but whether either the Argei, or the oscilla or maniae, which are often compared with the Argei, really had this origin, may well indeed be doubted[[449]]. Thirdly, there is evidence that not only human sacrifice, but the sacrifice of old men, was by no means unknown in primitive times. Passing over the general evidence as to human sacrifice, we know that the old and weak were sometimes put to death[[450]]. Being of no further use in the struggle for existence, they were got rid of in various ways—an act perhaps not so much of cruelty as of kindness, and under certain circumstances not incompatible with filial piety[[451]]. The chief objections to this explanation are—first, that it obliges us to ascribe to the early Romans a habit which seems quite incompatible with their well-known respect for old age and their horror of parricide; secondly, that it does not explain why a practice, which can hardly have ever been a regularly recurring one, should have passed into a yearly ceremony[[452]].
(2) The rite was of a dramatic rather than a sacrificial character[[453]], and belongs to a class of which we have numerous examples both from Greek, Teutonic, and Slavonic peoples. In Greece, or rather in Egypt, we have the cult of Adonis, in which a puppet is immersed in the water amid wailings and lamentations. In Greece proper semi-dramatic rites are found at Chaeronea and Athens[[454]], though somewhat different in character to those of the Argei and Adonis. Tacitus describes the immersion in water of the image of the German goddess Nerthus[[455]]. But most significant are the many examples, of which Mannhardt formed an ample collection, in which puppets are found, made as a rule of straw, carried along in procession and thrown into a river or water of some kind, often from a bridge[[456]]. Sometimes the place of these puppets is taken by a sheaf, a small tree, or a man or boy dressed up in foliage or fastened in the sheaf[[457]]: but in almost all cases the object is ducked in water or at least sprinkled with it, though now and then it is burnt or buried. The best known example is that of the Bavarian ‘Wasservogel,’ which is either a boy or a puppet, as the custom may be in different places; he or it was decorated, carried round the fields at Whitsuntide[[458]], and thrown from the bridge into the stream. So constant and inconvenient was this kind of custom in the Middle Ages that a law of 1351, still extant, forbade the ducking of people at Erfurt in the water at Easter and Whitsuntide[[459]]. In many of these cases the simulacrum may have been substituted for a human being[[460]]; but I find none where the notion of sacrifice survived, or where there was any trace of a popular belief that the object was a substitute for an actual victim. What these curious customs, according to Dr. Mannhardt, do really represent, is the departure of winter and the arrival of the fruitful season, or possibly the exhaustion of the vernal Power of vegetation after its work is done[[461]].
Two features in these old customs may strike us as interesting in connexion with the Argei—(1) The fact that the central object is often either actually an old man, or is at least called ‘the old one.’ A Whitsuntide custom at Halle shows us, for example, a straw puppet called Der alte[[462]]. (2) The constant occurrence of white objects in these customs; the puppet is called ‘the white man with the white hair, the snow-white husband,’ or is dressed in a white shirt[[463]]. In these expressions it is perhaps not impossible that we may find a clue to the long-lost meaning of the word Argei. Can it be that the Roman puppets were originally called ‘the white ones,’ i. e. old ones, from a root arg = ‘white’[[464]]; and that from a natural mistake as to the meaning of the word there arose not only the story about the Greek victims but also the common belief about sexagenarii being thrown over the bridge?
We have to choose between the two explanations given above. I am, on the whole, disposed to agree with Dr. Mannhardt, and in the absence of convincing evidence as to the regular and periodical occurrence of human sacrifice in ancient Italy, to regard these strange survivals as semi-dramatic performances rather than sacrificial rites. This view, however, need not exclude the possibility of the union of both drama and sacrifice at a very remote period, probably before the Latins settled in the district.
The immersion in water, whether or no it involved the death of a victim, is reasonably explained, on the basis of comparative evidence, to have been a rain-spell[[465]]. In the cases already mentioned of Adonis, Nerthus, &c., this idea seems the prominent one. I am inclined to think, however, that the notion of purification was also present—the two uniting in the idea of regeneration. Plutarch calls the Argean rite ‘the greatest of the purifications,’ and he is here most probably reproducing the opinion of Varro[[466]]. This is indicated by the presence of the priests and the Vestals, by the processions, and by the mourning of the Flaminica Dialis, as we have already seen. We may regard the rite as in fact a casting out of old things, and in that sense a purification; and also at the same time as a spell or earnest of rain and fertility in the ensuing year. The puppets were perhaps hung in the sacella in the course of the procession in March, as a symbol of the fertility then beginning, and cast into the river as ‘the old ones’ when that fertility had reached its height[[467]].
In the last place, it might be asked in honour of what deity the rite was performed. It is hardly necessary, and certainly is not possible, to answer a question about which the Romans themselves were not agreed. Ovid and Dionysius[[468]] believed it was Saturnus, probably following an old Greek oracle which was known to Varro[[469]]. Verrius Flaccus thought it was Dis Pater[[470]]. Modern writers have concluded on the general evidence of the rite that it was the river-god Tiberinus; Jordan, however, regarded the question as irrelevant[[471]]. We may agree with him, and at least return a verdict of non liquet. If it was a sacrificial act, the ancient river-god is indeed likely enough; if it was a quasi-dramatic one, it does not follow that any deity was specially concerned in it. But we may go so far as to guess that it was connected with the worship of those vaguely-conceived deities of vegetation whose influence on the calendar we have been tracing since March 1.
This same day is marked in one calendar as Feriae Iovi, Mercurio, Maiae. The conjunction of these deities is to some extent accidental. In the first place the Ides of every month were sacred to Jupiter; and the addition of Mercurius is probably to be explained simply by the adaptation of a Greek myth which made Hermes the son of Jupiter, suggesting the selection of the Ides as an appropriate day for the cult of the Latin representative of Hermes[[472]]. Mercurius, again, was associated with Maia, perhaps simply because the dedication-day of his oldest temple in Rome (ad circum maximum) was the Ides of the Mensis Maius[[473]]. The Roman Mercurius was considered especially as the god of trade, and dated, like Ceres, from the time when an extensive corn trade first began in Rome[[474]]. It is highly probable that the Tarquinian dynasty had encouraged Roman trade, and that the increase of population which was the result, together with the wars which followed their expulsion, had occasioned a series of severe famines. To this we trace the Roman knowledge of the Greek or Graeco-Etruscan Hermes, through a trade in corn with Sicilian Greeks or Etruscans, and the appearance of the god at Rome as Mercurius, the god of trade. His first temple was dedicated in B.C. 495, and as in other cases, the dedication was celebrated each year by those specially interested in the worship, in this case the mercatores, who were already, at this early period, formed into an organized guild[[475]].