As regards this last feature, the fatherhood of Jupiter, Jordan says emphatically[[973]]—and no scholar was more careful in his judgements—that in the whole range of Italian religions ‘liberorum procreatio nulla est unquam’: and he would understand ‘filia’ in the inscription quoted above in a metaphorical rather than a physical sense. Yet however we choose to think of it, Mommsen is justified in remarking[[974]] on the peculiarly anthropomorphic idea of Fortuna (and we may add of Jupiter) at which the Latins of Praeneste must have arrived, in comparison with the character of Italian religion generally.
Even more singular than this is the sonship of Jupiter and the fact that he appeared together with Juno in the lap of Fortuna ‘mammae appetens.’ Cicero’s language leaves no doubt that there was some work of art at Praeneste in which the three were so represented, or believed to be represented. Yet there are considerations which may suggest that we should hesitate before hastily concluding that all this is a genuine Italian development of genuine Italian ideas.
1. Italy presents us with no real parallel to this child-Jupiter though in Greece we find many. Jordan has mentioned three possible Italian parallels, but rejected them all: Caeculus Volcani, the legendary founder of Praeneste, Hercules bullatus, and the beardless Veiovis. The attributes of the last-named are explained by a late identification with Apollo[[975]]; Hercules bullatus is undoubtedly Greek: the story of the birth of Caeculus is a foundation-legend, truly Italian in character, but belonging to a different class of religious ideas from that we are discussing. To these we may add that the boy-Mars found on a Praenestine cista is clearly of Etruscan origin, as is shown by Deecke in the Lexicon, s. v. Maris.
2. Cicero’s statement is not confirmed by any inscription from Praeneste. Those which were formerly thought to refer to Iupiter Puer[[976]] are now proved to belong to Fortuna as Iovis puer (= filia). It is most singular that Fortuna should be thus styled Iovis puer in the same place where Jupiter himself was worshipped as puer; still more so that in one inscription (2868) the cutter should have dropped out the ‘s’ in Iovis, so that we actually read Iovi puero. It may seem tempting to guess that the name Jupiter Puer arose from a misunderstanding of the word puer as applied to Fortuna: but the evidence as it stands supplies no safe ground for this.
3. The fact that Cicero describes a statue is itself suspicious, in the absence of corroborative evidence of any other kind[[977]]: for it suggests that the cult may have arisen, and have taken its peculiar form, as a result of the introduction of Greek or Graeco-Etruscan works of art. In Praeneste itself, and in other parts of Latium and of Campania, innumerable terra-cottas have been found[[978]], of the type of the Greek κουροτρόφος, i. e. a mother, sitting or standing, with a child, and occasionally two children[[979]] in her lap. These may, indeed, be simply votive offerings, to Fortuna and other deities of childbirth: but such objects may quite well have served as the foundation from which the idea of Fortuna and her infants arose. There is a passage in Servius which seems to me to show a trace of a similar confusion elsewhere in this region of Italy. ‘Circa hunc tractum Campaniae colebatur puer Iuppiter qui Anxyrus dicebatur quasi ἄνευ ξυροῦ, id est sine novacula: quia barbam nunquam rasisset: et Iuno virgo quae Feronia dicebatur[[980]].’ True, the Jupiter of Anxur is a boy or youth[[981]], not an infant: but the passage serves well to show the fluidity of Italian deities, at any rate in regard to the names attached to them. That this puer Iuppiter was originally some other deity, and very possibly a Greek one, I have little doubt: while Juno Virgo, Feronia, Fortuna, Proserpina, all seem to slide into each other in a way which is very bewildering to the investigator[[982]]. This is no doubt owing to two chief causes—the daemonistic character of the early Italian religion, in which many of the spiritual conceptions were even unnamed; and, secondly, the confusion which arose when Greek artistic types were first introduced into Italy. Two currents of religious thought met at this point, perhaps in the eighth and following centuries B.C.; and the result was a whirlpool, in which the deities were tossed about, lost such shape as they possessed, or got inextricably entangled with each other. The French student of Praenestine antiquities writes with reason of ‘the negligence with which the Praenestine artists placed the names of divinities and heroes on designs borrowed from Greek models, and often representing a subject which they did not understand[[983]].’
4. And lastly, there is no doubt that Praeneste, in spite of its lofty position on the hills, was at an early stage of its existence subject to foreign influences, like so many other towns on or near the western coast of central Italy. This has been made certain by works of art found in its oldest tombs[[984]]. Whether these objects came from Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, or Etruria, the story they tell is for us the same, and may well make us careful in accepting a statement like that of Cicero’s without some hesitation. There was even a Greek foundation-legend of Praeneste, as well as the pure Italian one of Caeculus[[985]]. Evidence is slowly gathering which points to a certain basis of fact in these foundation-stories—of fact, at least, in so far as they seem to indicate that the transformation of the early Italian community into a city and a centre of civilization was coincident with the era of the introduction of foreign trade.
While, then, we cannot hope as yet to account for the singular anomaly in the Jupiter-cult, which is presented to us at Praeneste, we may at least hesitate to make use of it in answering the main question with which we set out—viz. how far we can find in the cult of the genuine Italian Jupiter any tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception of the god. Before we return to Rome a word is needed about the Latin Jupiter. The Latin festival has already been described[[986]]: it will be sufficient here to point out that none of its features show any advance towards an anthropomorphic conception of Jupiter Latiaris. The god here is of the same type as at Iguvium, one whose sanctuary—whatever it may originally have been—is in a grove on a hill-top[[987]], the conspicuous religious centre of the whole Latin stock inhabiting the plain below. Of this stock he is the uniting and protecting deity; and when once a year his sacred victim is slain, after offerings have been made to him by the representatives of each member of the league, it is essential that each should also receive (and probably consume through its deputies) a portion of the sacrificial flesh (carnem petere). This, the main feature, and other details of the ritual, point to a survival from a very early stage of religious culture, and one that we may fairly call aniconic. The victim, a white heifer, the absence of wine in the libations, and the mention of milk and cheese among the offerings, all suggest an origin in the pastoral age; and it would seem that foreign ideas never really penetrated into this worship of a pastoral race. The objects that have been found during excavations near the site of the ancient temple[[988]] show that, as in the worship of the Fratres Arvales and in that of the curiae, so here, the most antique type of sacred vessels remained in use. Undoubtedly there was in later times a temple, and also a statue of the god[[989]]: and it is just possible that, as Niebuhr supposed[[990]], these were the goal of an ancient Alban triumphal procession, older than the later magnificent rite of the Capitol. But we know for certain that the ancient cult here suggests neither gorgeous ritual nor iconic usage. We see nothing but the unadorned practices of a simple cattle-breeding people.
Coming now once more to Rome itself, where of course we have fuller information, fragmentary though it be, we find sufficiently clear indications of an ancient cult of Jupiter showing characteristics of much the same kind as those we have already noticed as being genuine Italian.
In the first place the cult is associated with hills and also with trees. It is found on that part of the Esquiline which was known as lucus Fagutalis or Fagutal: here there was a sacellum Iovis ‘in quo fuit fagus arbor quae Iovis (so MSS.) sacra habebatur[[991]]‘: and the god himself was called Fagutalis. Not far off on the Viminal, or hill of the osiers, there was also an altar of Jupiter Viminius, which we may suppose to have been ancient[[992]]. The mysterious Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal may be assumed as telling the same tale, though in historical times the memory of the cult there included Minerva and Juno with Jupiter, i. e. the Etruscan ‘Trias.’ Lastly, on the Capitol itself was the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, reputed to be the oldest in Rome[[993]]. It was attributed to Romulus, who, after slaying the king of the Caeninenses, dedicated the first spolia opima on an ancient oak ‘pastoribus sacram,’ and at the same time ‘designavit templo Iovis fines cognomenque addidit deo.’ The oak, we may assume, was the original dwelling of the god, and upon it were fixed the arms taken from the conquered enemy as a thank-offering for his aid[[994]]. In this case we seem to be able to guess the development of the cult from this beginning in the tree-worship of primitive ‘pastores.’ The next step would be the erection of an altar below the tree, in a small enclosure, i. e. a sacellum of the same kind as those of the Argei or the Sacellum Larum[[995]]. The third stage would be the building of the aedes known to us in history, which Cornelius Nepos says had fallen into decay in his time, and was rebuilt by Augustus on the suggestion of Atticus. Even this was a very small building, for Dionysius saw the foundations of it and found them only fifteen feet wide. This oldest cult of Jupiter was completely overshadowed by the later one of the Etruscan Trias—the aniconic by the iconic, the pure Italian by the mongrel ritual from Etruria.
That this Jupiter Feretrius[[996]] was the great Jupiter of pre-Etruscan Rome seems to be proved by his connexion with oaths and treaties, in which he resembles the god of the Latin festival. To him apparently belonged the priestly college of the Fetiales, who played so important a part in the declaring of war and the making of treaties: at any rate it was from his temple that the lapis silex and the sceptrum were taken which accompanied them on their official journeys[[997]]. It has been supposed that this lapis silex was a symbol of the god himself, like the spear of Mars in the Regia, and other such objects of cult[[998]]. ‘We recognize here the primitive forms of a nature-worship, in which the simple flint was sufficient to bring up in men’s minds the idea of the heavenly power of lightning and thunder,’ i. e. the flint if struck would emit sparks and remind the beholder of lightning. Unluckily the existence of a stone in this temple as an object of worship is not clearly attested. Servius (Aen. 8. 641) says that the Fetials took to using a stone instead of a sword to slay their victims with, ‘quod antiquum Iovis signum lapidem silicem putaverunt esse.’ The learned commentator makes a mistake here which will be obvious to all archaeologists, in putting the age of iron before that of stone; but it has not been equally clear to scholars that he by no means implies his belief that Jupiter was ever worshipped under the form of a stone. He only says that the Fetials fancied that this was so: and the whole passage has an aetiological colouring which should put us on our guard[[999]]. It is not supported by any other statement or tradition, except an allusion in S. Augustine[[1000]] to a ‘lapis Capitolinus,’ which is surely the stone of Terminus (see below): and by the oath ‘per Iovem lapidem,’ which has been interpreted by some as meaning ‘Jupiter in the form of a stone.’ But this interpretation is at least open to grave doubt; and in the absence of clearer evidence for the ‘Iuppiter lapis’ of the temple it is better to understand the oath as being sworn by the god and also by the stone, ‘two distinct aspects of the transaction being run together,’ in a way not uncommon in Latin formulae[[1001]].