It only remains to conjecture what the ‘silex’ or ‘lapis’ was which the Fetials took from the temple together with the sceptrum. Helbig has attempted to prove that it was not a survival of the stone age, e. g. an axe of stone. Had that been so, he argues, the Roman antiquaries, who were acquainted with such implements[[1002]], would have noticed it: and those who describe the rites of the Fetials would have stated that the stone was artificially sharpened. But this negative argument is not a strong one; and I am rather inclined to agree with the suggestion of Dr. Tylor[[1003]], that it was a stone celt believed to have been a thunder-bolt. There may indeed have been more than one of these kept in the temple, for in B.C. 201 the Fetials who went to Africa took with them each a stone[[1004]] (privos lapides silices) along with their ‘sagmina,’ &c. This fact seems to me to prove that the silices, like the sagmina and sceptrum, were only part of the ritualistic apparatus of the Fetials[[1005]], and not objects in which the god was supposed to be manifested. The idea that he was originally worshipped in the form of a stone may well have arisen from this use of stones in the ritual, especially if those stones were believed to be in some way his handiwork[[1006]]. We may think then of the cult of Jupiter Feretrius as an example of primitive tree-worship, but we are not justified in going further and finding him also in the form of a stone.
There is yet another stone that may have belonged to the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter, but the connexion is not very certain. ‘The (rite of) Aquaelicium,’ says Festus[[1007]], ‘is when rain is procured (elicitur) by certain methods, as for example when the lapis manalis is carried into the city.’ This stone lay by the temple of Mars, outside the Porta Capena; we learn from other passages that it was carried by the pontifices[[1008]], but we are not told what they did with it within the walls. It has been ingeniously suggested that this rain-spell, as we may call it, was a part of the cult of Jupiter Elicius, to whom there was an altar close by under the Aventine[[1009]], the cult-title being identical with the latter part of the word ‘aquaelicium[[1010]].’ We may agree that the stone had nothing to do with the temple of Mars, which happened to be near it, and also that any such rain-spell as this would be more likely to belong to the cult of Jupiter than of any other deity. The heaven-god, who launches the thunder-bolt, is naturally and almost everywhere also the rain-giver[[1011]]: and that this was one of the functions of Jupiter is fully attested, for later times at least[[1012]].
But it must be confessed that the evidence is very slight[[1013]]: and it is as well here to remember that the further we probe back into old Italian rites, the less distinctly can we expect to be able to connect them with particular deities. The formula ‘si deus, si dea es’ should always be borne in mind in attempting to connect gods and ceremonies. And this ceremony, like that of the Argei[[1014]] (which also wants a clearly-conceived deity as its object), is obviously a survival from a very primitive class of performances which Mr. Frazer has called acts of ‘sympathetic magic[[1015]].’ I am indebted to the Golden Bough for a striking parallel to the rite of the lapis manalis, among many others which more or less resemble it. ‘In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the rain-making god: and in time of drought his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a stream[[1016]].’ What was done with the lapis manalis we are not told, but it is pretty plain from the word ‘manalis,’ and from the fragments of explanation which have come down to us from Roman scholars, that it was either the object of some splashing or pouring, or was itself hollow and was filled with water which was to be poured out in imitation of the desired rain[[1017]]. Such rites need not necessarily be connected by us with the name of a god: and the Jupiter Elicius, with whom it is sought to connect this one, was always associated by the Romans not with this obsolete rite, but with the elaborated science of augury which was in the main Etruscan[[1018]].
But this discussion has already been carried on as far as the scope of this work permits. It may be completed by any one who has the patience to work through Aust’s exhaustive article, examining his conclusions with the aid of his abundant references; but I doubt if anything will be found, beyond what I have mentioned, which bears closely on the question with which we set out. That question was, whether the distinctly anthropomorphic treatment of Jupiter in the ‘epulum Iovis’ could be explained by any native Italian practice in his cult (as Marquardt tried to explain it), or must be referred with Aust to foreign, i. e. Graeco-Etruscan, influence. I am driven to the conclusion that Aust is probably right. There is no real trace in Italy of an indigenous iconic representation of Jupiter. Trees and hills are apparently sacred to him, and possibly stones, though this last is doubtful: we find a sacrificial meal at the Latin festival, but no sign that he takes part in it as an image or statue. Elsewhere, as at Praeneste, peculiar representations of him arouse strong suspicions of foreign iconic influence. I think, on the whole, that the Italian peoples owed the sacred image to foreign works of art: and that the ‘epulum Iovis’ was introduced from Etruria by the Etruscan dynasty which built the Capitoline temple. It may, indeed, have been engrafted upon an earlier sacrificial meal like that of the feriae Latinae, or that of the curiae, or the rustic one of Jupiter dapalis: but, if so, the meal was one at which the ancient Romans were content to believe, as Ovid says, that the gods were present, and did not need, like the Greeks, the evidence of their eyes to help out their belief. Their gods were still aniconic when the wave of foreign ideas broke over them. We may say of the earliest Roman cult of Jupiter what Tacitus asserts of the Germans of his day[[1019]]: ‘nec cohibere parietibus deos neque in ullam humani oris speciem adsimulare ex magnitudine caelestium arbitrantur: lucos ac nemora consecrant, deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud quod sola reverentia vident.’
September 13 was also the day on which, according to Livy[[1020]] and Verrius Flaccus[[1021]], a nail (clavus) was driven annually by the ‘Praetor maximus’ into the wall of the cella of Minerva in the Capitoline temple, in obedience to an old lex which was fixed up on the wall of the temple adjoining this same cella. But Mommsen’s trenchant criticism[[1022]] of the locus classicus for this subject in Livy has made it almost certain that the Roman scholars were here in error: that the ceremony was not an annual one, but took place once in a century, in commemoration of a vow made in 463 B.C., to commemorate the great pestilence of that year, which carried off both the consuls and several other magistrates[[1023]]: that it had no special connexion with the cult of Jupiter, and was not intended, as is generally supposed, to mark the years as they passed. The nail is really the symbol of Fortuna or Necessitas; the rite was Etruscan, and was also celebrated at Volsinii in the temple of the Etruscan deity of Fate; when brought to Rome it was very naturally located in the great temple of the Etruscan Trias, the religious centre of the Roman state. Originally a dictator was chosen (i. e. Praetor maximus) clavi figendi causa; and when the dictatorship was dropped after the Second Punic War, the ceremony was allowed to fall into oblivion. Later on the Roman antiquarians unearthed and misinterpreted it, believing it to have been a yearly rite of which the object was to mark the succession of years. This brief account of Mommsen’s view may suffice for the purpose of this work: but the subject is one that might with advantage be reinvestigated.
MENSIS OCTOBER.
In the Italy of historical times, the one agricultural feature of this month was the vintage. The rustic calendars mark this with the single word vindemiae[[1024]]. The vintage might begin during the last few days of September, but October was its natural time, though it is now somewhat earlier: this point is clear both from Varro and Pliny[[1025]]. But the old calendars have preserved hardly a trace of this; and in fact the only feast which we can in any way connect with wine making (the Meditrinalia on the 11th) is obscure in name and its ritual unknown to us. We may infer that the practice of viticulture was a comparatively late introduction; and this is borne out by such facts as the absence of wine in the ritual of the Latin festival[[1026]], and the words of a lex regia (ascribed to Numa) which forbade wine to be sprinkled on a funeral pile[[1027]]. Pliny also expressed a decided opinion that viticulture was multo serior: and lately Hehn[[1028]] has traced it to the Italian Greeks on etymological grounds. It can hardly have become a common occupation in Latium before the seventh or possibly even the eighth century B.C.
Probably if Ovid had continued his Fasti to the end of the year we might have learnt much of interest about this month: as it is, we have only scraps of information about a very few primitive rites, only one of which can be said to be known to us in any detail; and the interpretation of that one is extremely doubtful.