[FIDEI] IN CAPITOLIO. TIGILL[O] SOROR[IO] AD COMPITUM ACILI. (ARV.)
The sacrifice here indicated to Fides in the Capitol is clearly the one which Livy ascribes to Numa[[1029]]: ‘Et soli Fidei sollemne instituit. Ad id sacrarium flamines bigis, curru arcuato (i. e. ‘covered’) vehi iussit, manuque ad digitos usque involuta rem divinam facere: significantes fidem tutandam, sedemque eius etiam in dextris sacratam esse.’ Dionysius also mentions the foundation, without alluding to the peculiar ritual, but dwelling on the moral influence of the cult both in public and private life[[1030]].
The personification of a moral idea would hardly seem likely to be as old as Numa; yet there are points in the ritual which suggest a high antiquity, apart from tradition. It was the three chief flamines who thus drove to the Capitol—i. e. those of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus; these at least were the three who had been just instituted by Numa (Liv. 1. 20), and to them Livy must be referring. As has been often pointed out, the presence of flamines at a rite is always evidence of its antiquity; and in this case they may have represented the union of the two communities of Septimontium and Quirinal in a common worship on the Capitol, this central point being represented by the Flamen Dialis. The curious fact that the right hands of these flamens were wrapped up to the fingers in white cloth is another obvious sign of antiquity, and is explained as meaning that the right hand, which was given to another in pledging one’s word, then as now[[1031]], was pure and clean, as was the mind of the pledger[[1032]]. A sacred object, statue or victim, was often thus wrapped or tied with fillets (vittae); and the μύσται in the Eleusinian mysteries seem to have worn a crocus-coloured band on the right hand and right foot[[1033]]. The statue of the goddess in her temple had probably the right hand so covered, if at least we are at liberty so to interpret the words of Horace, ‘albo Fides velata panno’[[1034]].
A word about the tigillum sororium[[1035]]. What this was, and where it was, can be made out with some certainty; beyond that all is obscure. It was a beam, renewed from time to time, let into the opposite walls of a street which led down from the Carinae to the Vicus Cyprius, now the via del Colosseo[[1036]]. It remained till at least the fourth century A.D. It is now generally explained as a primitive Janus-arch, apparently on the ground that one of the altars below it was to Janus Curiatius[[1037]]. As it seems, however, to have been a single beam, without supports except the street walls[[1038]], I am unable to understand this conclusion; and as the Roman antiquaries never supposed it to be such, we can hardly do so safely. They believed it to be a memorial of the expiation undergone by the legendary Horatius for the murder of his sister. Acquitted by the people on appeal, he had to make religious expiation, and this he did by the erection of an altar to Janus Curiatius, and another to Juno Sororia[[1039]], and by passing under a yoke, which was afterwards represented by the tigillum.
We may leave the tigillum as really inexplicable, unless we are to accept the suggestion of Roscher[[1040]], that the germ of the legend is to be found in the practice of creeping through a split tree to get rid of spell or disease. The two altars demand a word.
Livy’s language seems to suggest that these were in the care of the gens Horatia[[1041]]: ‘Quibusdam piacularibus sacrificiis factis, quae deinde genti Horatiae tradita sunt.’ If so, perhaps the whole legend of Horatius, or at any rate its connexion with this spot, arose out of this gentile worship of two deities, of whom the cult-titles were respectively Curiatius and Sororia. The coincidence of Janus and Juno is natural enough; both were associated with the Kalends[[1042]]. But the original meaning of their cult-titles at the Tigillum remains unknown. All we can say is that the Janus of the curiae and the Juno of a sister may certainly have given point to a legend of which the hero was acquitted by the Comitia Curiata for the murder of a sister[[1043]].
3 Non. Oct. (October 5). C.
This was one of the three days on which the mundus was open: see on August 24.
Non. Oct. (October 7). F.
IOVI FULGURI, IUNONI CURRITI[[1044]] IN CAMPO. (ARV. PAUL.)