The Golden Bough
by
Sir James George Frazer
Part 5 out of 19
XIII. The Kings of Rome and Alba
1. Numa and Egeria
FROM THE FOREGOING survey of custom and legend we may infer that the
sacred marriage of the powers both of vegetation and of water has
been celebrated by many peoples for the sake of promoting the
fertility of the earth, on which the life of animals and men
ultimately depends, and that in such rites the part of the divine
bridegroom or bride is often sustained by a man or woman. The
evidence may, therefore, lend some countenance to the conjecture
that in the sacred grove at Nemi, where the powers of vegetation and
of water manifested themselves in the fair forms of shady woods,
tumbling cascades, and glassy lake, a marriage like that of our King
and Queen of May was annually celebrated between the mortal King of
the Wood and the immortal Queen of the Wood, Diana. In this
connexion an important figure in the grove was the water-nymph
Egeria, who was worshipped by pregnant women because she, like
Diana, could grant them an easy delivery. From this it seems fairly
safe to conclude that, like many other springs, the water of Egeria
was credited with a power of facilitating conception as well as
delivery. The votive offerings found on the spot, which clearly
refer to the begetting of children, may possibly have been dedicated
to Egeria rather than to Diana, or perhaps we should rather say that
the water-nymph Egeria is only another form of the great
nature-goddess Diana herself, the mistress of sounding rivers as
well as of umbrageous woods, who had her home by the lake and her
mirror in its calm waters, and whose Greek counterpart Artemis loved
to haunt meres and springs. The identification of Egeria with Diana
is confirmed by a statement of Plutarch that Egeria was one of the
oak-nymphs whom the Romans believed to preside over every green
oak-grove; for, while Diana was a goddess of the woodlands in
general, she appears to have been intimately associated with oaks in
particular, especially at her sacred grove of Nemi. Perhaps, then,
Egeria was the fairy of a spring that flowed from the roots of a
sacred oak. Such a spring is said to have gushed from the foot of
the great oak at Dodona, and from its murmurous flow the priestess
drew oracles. Among the Greeks a draught of water from certain
sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic powers.
This would explain the more than mortal wisdom with which, according
to tradition, Egeria inspired her royal husband or lover Numa. When
we remember how very often in early society the king is held
responsible for the fall of rain and the fruitfulness of the earth,
it seems hardly rash to conjecture that in the legend of the
nuptials of Numa and Egeria we have a reminiscence of a sacred
marriage which the old Roman kings regularly contracted with a
goddess of vegetation and water for the purpose of enabling him to
discharge his divine or magical functions. In such a rite the part
of the goddess might be played either by an image or a woman, and if
by a woman, probably by the Queen. If there is any truth in this
conjecture, we may suppose that the King and Queen of Rome
masqueraded as god and goddess at their marriage, exactly as the
King and Queen of Egypt appear to have done. The legend of Numa and
Egeria points to a sacred grove rather than to a house as the scene
of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the King and Queen
of May, or of the vine-god and the Queen of Athens, may have been
annually celebrated as a charm to ensure the fertility not only of
the earth but of man and beast. Now, according to some accounts, the
scene of the marriage was no other than the sacred grove of Nemi,
and on quite independent grounds we have been led to suppose that in
that same grove the King of the Wood was wedded to Diana. The
convergence of the two distinct lines of enquiry suggests that the
legendary union of the Roman king with Egeria may have been a
reflection or duplicate of the union of the King of the Wood with
Egeria or her double Diana. This does not imply that the Roman kings
ever served as Kings of the Wood in the Arician grove, but only that
they may originally have been invested with a sacred character of
the same general kind, and may have held office on similar terms. To
be more explicit, it is possible that they reigned, not by right of
birth, but in virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives
or embodiments of a god, and that as such they mated with a goddess,
and had to prove their fitness from time to time to discharge their
divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may
often have proved fatal to them, leaving the crown to their
victorious adversary. Our knowledge of the Roman kingship is far too
scanty to allow us to affirm any one of these propositions with
confidence; but at least there are some scattered hints or
indications of a similarity in all these respects between the
priests of Nemi and the kings of Rome, or perhaps rather between
their remote predecessors in the dark ages which preceded the dawn
of legend.
2. The King as Jupiter
IN THE FIRST place, then, it would seem that the Roman king
personated no less a deity than Jupiter himself. For down to
imperial times victorious generals celebrating a triumph, and
magistrates presiding at the games in the Circus, wore the costume
of Jupiter, which was borrowed for the occasion from his great
temple on the Capitol; and it has been held with a high degree of
probability both by ancients and moderns that in so doing they
copied the traditionary attire and insignia of the Roman kings. They
rode a chariot drawn by four laurel-crowned horses through the city,
where every one else went on foot: they wore purple robes
embroidered or spangled with gold: in the right hand they bore a
branch of laurel, and in the left hand an ivory sceptre topped with
an eagle: a wreath of laurel crowned their brows: their face was
reddened with vermilion; and over their head a slave held a heavy
crown of massy gold fashioned in the likeness of oak leaves. In this
attire the assimilation of the man to the god comes out above all in
the eagle-topped sceptre, the oaken crown, and the reddened face.
For the eagle was the bird of Jove, the oak was his sacred tree, and
the face of his image standing in his four-horse chariot on the
Capitol was in like manner regularly dyed red on festivals; indeed,
so important was it deemed to keep the divine features properly
rouged that one of the first duties of the censors was to contract
for having this done. As the triumphal procession always ended in
the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, it was peculiarly appropriate
that the head of the victor should be graced by a crown of oak
leaves, for not only was every oak consecrated to Jupiter, but the
Capitoline temple of the god was said to have been built by Romulus
beside a sacred oak, venerated by shepherds, to which the king
attached the spoils won by him from the enemy's general in battle.
We are expressly told that the oak crown was sacred to Capitoline
Jupiter; a passage of Ovid proves that it was regarded as the god's
special emblem.
According to a tradition which we have no reason to reject, Rome was
founded by settlers from Alba Longa, a city situated on the slope of
the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna. Hence if the
Roman kings claimed to be representatives or embodiments of Jupiter,
the god of the sky, of the thunder, and of the oak, it is natural to
suppose that the kings of Alba, from whom the founder of Rome traced
his descent, may have set up the same claim before them. Now the
Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can hardly be
without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of
Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as
well as a poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned
with oak. A chaplet of oak leaves would thus seem to have been part
of the insignia of the old kings of Alba Longa as of their
successors the kings of Rome; in both cases it marked the monarch as
the human representative of the oak-god. The Roman annals record
that one of the kings of Alba, Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius Silvius
by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or
superior of Jupiter. To support his pretensions and overawe his
subjects, he constructed machines whereby he mimicked the clap of
thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus relates that in the
season of fruitage, when thunder is loud and frequent, the king
commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of heaven's artillery by
clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid the penalty
of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a
thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain,
the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says
an ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface
unruffled by a breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the
bottom of the clear lake. Taken along with the similar story of
Salmoneus, king of Elis, this legend points to a real custom
observed by the early kings of Greece and Italy, who, like their
fellows in Africa down to modern times, may have been expected to
produce rain and thunder for the good of the crops. The priestly
king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning
from the sky. Mock thunder, we know, has been made by various
peoples as a rain-charm in modern times; why should it not have been
made by kings in antiquity?
Thus, if the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the
oak by wearing a crown of oak leaves, they seem also to have copied
him in his character of a weather-god by pretending to make thunder
and lightning. And if they did so, it is probable that, like Jupiter
in heaven and many kings on earth, they also acted as public
rain-makers, wringing showers from the dark sky by their
enchantments whenever the parched earth cried out for the refreshing
moisture. At Rome the sluices of heaven were opened by means of a
sacred stone, and the ceremony appears to have formed part of the
ritual of Jupiter Elicius, the god who elicits from the clouds the
flashing lightning and the dripping rain. And who so well fitted to
perform the ceremony as the king, the living representative of the
sky-god?
If the kings of Rome aped Capitoline Jove, their predecessors the
kings of Alba probably laid themselves out to mimic the great Latian
Jupiter, who had his seat above the city on the summit of the Alban
Mountain. Latinus, the legendary ancestor of the dynasty, was said
to have been changed into Latian Jupiter after vanishing from the
world in the mysterious fashion characteristic of the old Latin
kings. The sanctuary of the god on the top of the mountain was the
religious centre of the Latin League, as Alba was its political
capital till Rome wrested the supremacy from its ancient rival.
Apparently no temple, in our sense of the word, was ever erected to
Jupiter on this his holy mountain; as god of the sky and thunder he
appropriately received the homage of his worshippers in the open
air. The massive wall, of which some remains still enclose the old
garden of the Passionist monastery, seems to have been part of the
sacred precinct which Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome,
marked out for the solemn annual assembly of the Latin League. The
god's oldest sanctuary on this airy mountain-top was a grove; and
bearing in mind not merely the special consecration of the oak to
Jupiter, but also the traditional oak crown of the Alban kings and
the analogy of the Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, we may suppose that
the trees in the grove were oaks. We know that in antiquity Mount
Algidus, an outlying group of the Alban hills, was covered with dark
forests of oak; and among the tribes who belonged to the Latin
League in the earliest days, and were entitled to share the flesh of
the white bull sacrificed on the Alban Mount, there was one whose
members styled themselves the Men of the Oak, doubtless on account
of the woods among which they dwelt.
But we should err if we pictured to ourselves the country as covered
in historical times with an unbroken forest of oaks. Theophrastus
has left us a description of the woods of Latium as they were in the
fourth century before Christ. He says: "The land of the Latins is
all moist. The plains produce laurels, myrtles, and wonderful
beeches; for they fell trees of such a size that a single stem
suffices for the keel of a Tyrrhenian ship. Pines and firs grow in
the mountains. What they call the land of Circe is a lofty headland
thickly wooded with oak, myrtle, and luxuriant laurels. The natives
say that Circe dwelt there, and they show the grave of Elpenor, from
which grow myrtles such as wreaths are made of, whereas the other
myrtle-trees are tall." Thus the prospect from the top of the Alban
Mount in the early days of Rome must have been very different in
some respects from what it is to-day. The purple Apennines, indeed,
in their eternal calm on the one hand, and the shining Mediterranean
in its eternal unrest on the other, no doubt looked then much as
they look now, whether bathed in sunshine, or chequered by the
fleeting shadows of clouds; but instead of the desolate brown
expanse of the fever-stricken Campagna, spanned by its long lines of
ruined aqueducts, like the broken arches of the bridge in the vision
of Mirza, the eye must have ranged over woodlands that stretched
away, mile after mile, on all sides, till their varied hues of green
or autumnal scarlet and gold melted insensibly into the blue of the
distant mountains and sea.
But Jupiter did not reign alone on the top of his holy mountain. He
had his consort with him, the goddess Juno, who was worshipped here
under the same title, Moneta, as on the Capitol at Rome. As the oak
crown was sacred to Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol, so we may
suppose it was on the Alban Mount, from which the Capitoline worship
was derived. Thus the oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the
sacred oak grove. So at Dodona the oak-god Zeus was coupled with
Dione, whose very name is only a dialectically different form of
Juno; and so on the top of Mount Cithaeron, as we have seen, he
appears to have been periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera.
It is probable, though it cannot be positively proved, that the
sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno was annually celebrated by all
the peoples of the Latin stock in the month which they named after
the goddess, the midsummer month of June.
If at any time of the year the Romans celebrated the sacred marriage
of Jupiter and Juno, as the Greeks commonly celebrated the
corresponding marriage of Zeus and Hera, we may suppose that under
the Republic the ceremony was either performed over images of the
divine pair or acted by the Flamen Dialis and his wife the
Flaminica. For the Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove; indeed,
ancient and modern writers have regarded him, with much probability,
as a living image of Jupiter, a human embodiment of the sky-god. In
earlier times the Roman king, as representative of Jupiter, would
naturally play the part of the heavenly bridegroom at the sacred
marriage, while his queen would figure as the heavenly bride, just
as in Egypt the king and queen masqueraded in the character of
deities, and as at Athens the queen annually wedded the vine-god
Dionysus. That the Roman king and queen should act the parts of
Jupiter and Juno would seem all the more natural because these
deities themselves bore the title of King and Queen.
Whether that was so or not, the legend of Numa and Egeria appears to
embody a reminiscence of a time when the priestly king himself
played the part of the divine bridegroom; and as we have seen reason
to suppose that the Roman kings personated the oak-god, while Egeria
is expressly said to have been an oak-nymph, the story of their
union in the sacred grove raises a presumption that at Rome in the
regal period a ceremony was periodically performed exactly analogous
to that which was annually celebrated at Athens down to the time of
Aristotle. The marriage of the King of Rome to the oak-goddess, like
the wedding of the vine-god to the Queen of Athens, must have been
intended to quicken the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic.
Of the two forms of the rite we can hardly doubt that the Roman was
the older, and that long before the northern invaders met with the
vine on the shores of the Mediterranean their forefathers had
married the tree-god to the tree-goddess in the vast oak forests of
Central and Northern Europe. In the England of our day the forests
have mostly disappeared, yet still on many a village green and in
many a country lane a faded image of the sacred marriage lingers in
the rustic pageantry of May Day.
XIV. The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium
IN REGARD to the Roman king, whose priestly functions were inherited
by his successor the king of the Sacred Rites, the foregoing
discussion has led us to the following conclusions. He represented
and indeed personated Jupiter, the great god of the sky, the
thunder, and the oak, and in that character made rain, thunder, and
lightning for the good of his subjects, like many more kings of the
weather in other parts of the world. Further, he not only mimicked
the oak-god by wearing an oak wreath and other insignia of divinity,
but he was married to an oak-nymph Egeria, who appears to have been
merely a local form of Diana in her character of a goddess of woods,
of waters, and of child-birth. All these conclusions, which we have
reached mainly by a consideration of the Roman evidence, may with
great probability be applied to the other Latin communities. They
too probably had of old their divine or priestly kings, who
transmitted their religious functions, without their civil powers,
to their successors the Kings of the Sacred Rites.
But we have still to ask, What was the rule of succession to the
kingdom among the old Latin tribes? According to tradition, there
were in all eight kings of Rome, and with regard to the five last of
them, at all events, we can hardly doubt that they actually sat on
the throne, and that the traditional history of their reigns is, in
its main outlines, correct. Now it is very remarkable that though
the first king of Rome, Romulus, is said to have been descended from
the royal house of Alba, in which the kingship is represented as
hereditary in the male line, not one of the Roman kings was
immediately succeeded by his son on the throne. Yet several left
sons or grandsons behind them. On the other hand, one of them was
descended from a former king through his mother, not through his
father, and three of the kings, namely Tatius, the elder Tarquin,
and Servius Tullius, were succeeded by their sons-in-law, who were
all either foreigners or of foreign descent. This suggests that the
right to the kingship was transmitted in the female line, and was
actually exercised by foreigners who married the royal princesses.
To put it in technical language, the succession to the kingship at
Rome and probably in Latium generally would seem to have been
determined by certain rules which have moulded early society in many
parts of the world, namely exogamy, _beena_ marriage, and female
kinship or mother-kin. Exogamy is the rule which obliges a man to
marry a woman of a different clan from his own: _beena_ marriage is
the rule that he must leave the home of his birth and live with his
wife's people; and female kinship or mother-kin is the system of
tracing relationship and transmitting the family name through women
instead of through men. If these principles regulated descent of the
kingship among the ancient Latins, the state of things in this
respect would be somewhat as follows. The political and religious
centre of each community would be the perpetual fire on the king's
hearth tended by Vestal Virgins of the royal clan. The king would be
a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or even of another
race, who had married a daughter of his predecessor and received the
kingdom with her. The children whom he had by her would inherit
their mother's name, not his; the daughters would remain at home;
the sons, when they grew up, would go away into the world, marry,
and settle in their wives' country, whether as kings or commoners.
Of the daughters who stayed at home, some or all would be dedicated
as Vestal Virgins for a longer or shorter time to the service of the
fire on the hearth, and one of them would in time become the consort
of her father's successor.
This hypothesis has the advantage of explaining in a simple and
natural way some obscure features in the traditional history of the
Latin kingship. Thus the legends which tell how Latin kings were
born of virgin mothers and divine fathers become at least more
intelligible. For, stripped of their fabulous element, tales of this
sort mean no more than that a woman has been gotten with child by a
man unknown; and this uncertainty as to fatherhood is more easily
compatible with a system of kinship which ignores paternity than
with one which makes it all-important. If at the birth of the Latin
kings their fathers were really unknown, the fact points either to a
general looseness of life in the royal family or to a special
relaxation of moral rules on certain occasions, when men and women
reverted for a season to the licence of an earlier age. Such
Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of social evolution. In
our own country traces of them long survived in the practices of May
Day and Whitsuntide, if not of Christmas. Children born of more or
less promiscuous intercourse which characterises festivals of this
kind would naturally be fathered on the god to whom the particular
festival was dedicated.
In this connexion it may be significant that a festival of jollity
and drunkenness was celebrated by the plebeians and slaves at Rome
on Midsummer Day, and that the festival was specially associated
with the fireborn King Servius Tullius, being held in honour of
Fortuna, the goddess who loved Servius as Egeria loved Numa. The
popular merrymakings at this season included foot-races and
boat-races; the Tiber was gay with flower-wreathed boats, in which
young folk sat quaffing wine. The festival appears to have been a
sort of Midsummer Saturnalia answering to the real Saturnalia which
fell at Midwinter. In modern Europe, as we shall learn later on, the
great Midsummer festival has been above all a festival of lovers and
of fire; one of its principal features is the pairing of
sweethearts, who leap over the bonfires hand in hand or throw
flowers across the flames to each other. And many omens of love and
marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic
season. It is the time of the roses and of love. Yet the innocence
and beauty of such festivals in modern times ought not to blind us
to the likelihood that in earlier days they were marked by coarser
features, which were probably of the essence of the rites. Indeed,
among the rude Esthonian peasantry these features seem to have
lingered down to our own generation, if not to the present day. One
other feature in the Roman celebration of Midsummer deserves to be
specially noticed. The custom of rowing in flower-decked boats on
the river on this day proves that it was to some extent a water
festival; and water has always, down to modern times, played a
conspicuous part in the rites of Midsummer Day, which explains why
the Church, in throwing its cloak over the old heathen festival,
chose to dedicate it to St. John the Baptist.
The hypothesis that the Latin kings may have been begotten at an
annual festival of love is necessarily a mere conjecture, though the
traditional birth of Numa at the festival of the Parilia, when
shepherds leaped across the spring bonfires, as lovers leap across
the Midsummer fires, may perhaps be thought to lend it a faint
colour of probability. But it is quite possible that the uncertainty
as to their fathers may not have arisen till long after the death of
the kings, when their figures began to melt away into the cloudland
of fable, assuming fantastic shapes and gorgeous colouring as they
passed from earth to heaven. If they were alien immigrants,
strangers and pilgrims in the land they ruled over, it would be
natural enough that the people should forget their lineage, and
forgetting it should provide them with another, which made up in
lustre what it lacked in truth. The final apotheosis, which
represented the kings not merely as sprung from gods but as
themselves deities incarnate, would be much facilitated if in their
lifetime, as we have seen reason to think, they had actually laid
claim to divinity.
If among the Latins the women of royal blood always stayed at home
and received as their consorts men of another stock, and often of
another country, who reigned as kings in virtue of their marriage
with a native princess, we can understand not only why foreigners
wore the crown at Rome, but also why foreign names occur in the list
of the Alban kings. In a state of society where nobility is reckoned
only through women--in other words, where descent through the mother
is everything, and descent through the father is nothing--no
objection will be felt to uniting girls of the highest rank to men
of humble birth, even to aliens or slaves, provided that in
themselves the men appear to be suitable mates. What really matters
is that the royal stock, on which the prosperity and even the
existence of the people is supposed to depend, should be perpetuated
in a vigorous and efficient form, and for this purpose it is
necessary that the women of the royal family should bear children to
men who are physically and mentally fit, according to the standard
of early society, to discharge the important duty of procreation.
Thus the personal qualities of the kings at this stage of social
evolution are deemed of vital importance. If they, like their
consorts, are of royal and divine descent, so much the better; but
it is not essential that they should be so.
At Athens, as at Rome, we find traces of succession to the throne by
marriage with a royal princess; for two of the most ancient kings of
Athens, namely Cecrops and Amphictyon, are said to have married the
daughters of their predecessors. This tradition is to a certain
extent confirmed by evidence, pointing to the conclusion that at
Athens male kinship was preceded by female kinship.
Further, if I am right in supposing that in ancient Latium the royal
families kept their daughters at home and sent forth their sons to
marry princesses and reign among their wives' people, it will follow
that the male descendants would reign in successive generations over
different kingdoms. Now this seems to have happened both in ancient
Greece and in ancient Sweden; from which we may legitimately infer
that it was a custom practised by more than one branch of the Aryan
stock in Europe. Many Greek traditions relate how a prince left his
native land, and going to a far country married the king's daughter
and succeeded to the kingdom. Various reasons are assigned by
ancient Greek writers for these migrations of the princes. A common
one is that the king's son had been banished for murder. This would
explain very well why he fled his own land, but it is no reason at
all why he should become king of another. We may suspect that such
reasons are afterthoughts devised by writers, who, accustomed to the
rule that a son should succeed to his father's property and kingdom,
were hard put to it to account for so many traditions of kings' sons
who quitted the land of their birth to reign over a foreign kingdom.
In Scandinavian tradition we meet with traces of similar customs.
For we read of daughters' husbands who received a share of the
kingdoms of their royal fathers-in-law, even when these
fathers-in-law had sons of their own; in particular, during the five
generations which preceded Harold the Fair-haired, male members of
the Ynglingar family, which is said to have come from Sweden, are
reported in the _Heimskringla_ or _Sagas of the Norwegian Kings_ to
have obtained at least six provinces in Norway by marriage with the
daughters of the local kings.
Thus it would seem that among some Aryan peoples, at a certain stage
of their social evolution, it has been customary to regard women and
not men as the channels in which royal blood flows, and to bestow
the kingdom in each successive generation on a man of another
family, and often of another country, who marries one of the
princesses and reigns over his wife's people. A common type of
popular tale, which relates how an adventurer, coming to a strange
land, wins the hand of the king's daughter and with her the half or
the whole of the kingdom, may well be a reminiscence of a real
custom.
Where usages and ideas of this sort prevail, it is obvious that the
kingship is merely an appanage of marriage with a woman of the blood
royal. The old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus puts this view of
the kingship very clearly in the mouth of Hermutrude, a legendary
queen of Scotland. "Indeed she was a queen," says Hermutrude, "and
but that her sex gainsaid it, might be deemed a king; nay (and this
is yet truer), whomsoever she thought worthy of her bed was at once
a king, and she yielded her kingdom with herself. Thus her sceptre
and her hand went together." The statement is all the more
significant because it appears to reflect the actual practice of the
Pictish kings. We know from the testimony of Bede that, whenever a
doubt arose as to the succession, the Picts chose their kings from
the female rather than the male line.
The personal qualities which recommended a man for a royal alliance
and succession to the throne would naturally vary according to the
popular ideas of the time and the character of the king or his
substitute, but it is reasonable to suppose that among them in early
society physical strength and beauty would hold a prominent place.
Sometimes apparently the right to the hand of the princess and to
the throne has been determined by a race. The Alitemnian Libyans
awarded the kingdom to the fleetest runner. Amongst the old
Prussians, candidates for nobility raced on horseback to the king,
and the one who reached him first was ennobled. According to
tradition the earliest games at Olympia were held by Endymion, who
set his sons to run a race for the kingdom. His tomb was said to be
at the point of the racecourse from which the runners started. The
famous story of Pelops and Hippodamia is perhaps only another
version of the legend that the first races at Olympia were run for
no less a prize than a kingdom.
These traditions may very well reflect a real custom of racing for a
bride, for such a custom appears to have prevailed among various
peoples, though in practice it has degenerated into a mere form or
pretence. Thus "there is one race, called the 'Love Chase,' which
may be considered a part of the form of marriage among the Kirghiz.
In this the bride, armed with a formidable whip, mounts a fleet
horse, and is pursued by all the young men who make any pretensions
to her hand. She will be given as a prize to the one who catches
her, but she has the right, besides urging on her horse to the
utmost, to use her whip, often with no mean force, to keep off those
lovers who are unwelcome to her, and she will probably favour the
one whom she has already chosen in her heart." The race for the
bride is found also among the Koryaks of North-eastern Asia. It
takes place in a large tent, round which many separate compartments
called _pologs_ are arranged in a continuous circle. The girl gets a
start and is clear of the marriage if she can run through all the
compartments without being caught by the bridegroom. The women of
the encampment place every obstacle in the man's way, tripping him
up, belabouring him with switches, and so forth, so that he has
little chance of succeeding unless the girl wishes it and waits for
him. Similar customs appear to have been practised by all the
Teutonic peoples; for the German, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse languages
possess in common a word for marriage which means simply bride-race.
Moreover, traces of the custom survived into modern times.
Thus it appears that the right to marry a girl, and especially a
princess, has often been conferred as a prize in an athletic
contest. There would be no reason, therefore, for surprise if the
Roman kings, before bestowing their daughters in marriage, should
have resorted to this ancient mode of testing the personal qualities
of their future sons-in-law and successors. If my theory is correct,
the Roman king and queen personated Jupiter and his divine consort,
and in the character of these divinities went through the annual
ceremony of a sacred marriage for the purpose of causing the crops
to grow and men and cattle to be fruitful and multiply. Thus they
did what in more northern lands we may suppose the King and Queen of
May were believed to do in days of old. Now we have seen that the
right to play the part of the King of May and to wed the Queen of
May has sometimes been determined by an athletic contest,
particularly by a race. This may have been a relic of an old
marriage custom of the sort we have examined, a custom designed to
test the fitness of a candidate for matrimony. Such a test might
reasonably be applied with peculiar rigour to the king in order to
ensure that no personal defect should incapacitate him for the
performance of those sacred rites and ceremonies on which, even more
than on the despatch of his civil and military duties, the safety
and prosperity of the community were believed to depend. And it
would be natural to require of him that from time to time he should
submit himself afresh to the same ordeal for the sake of publicly
demonstrating that he was still equal to the discharge of his high
calling. A relic of that test perhaps survived in the ceremony known
as the Flight of the King (_regifugium_), which continued to be
annually observed at Rome down to imperial times. On the
twenty-fourth day of February a sacrifice used to be offered in the
Comitium, and when it was over the King of the Sacred Rites fled
from the Forum. We may conjecture that the Flight of the King was
originally a race for an annual kingship, which may have been
awarded as a prize to the fleetest runner. At the end of the year
the king might run again for a second term of office; and so on,
until he was defeated and deposed or perhaps slain. In this way what
had once been a race would tend to assume the character of a flight
and a pursuit. The king would be given a start; he ran and his
competitors ran after him, and if he were overtaken he had to yield
the crown and perhaps his life to the lightest of foot among them.
In time a man of masterful character might succeed in seating
himself permanently on the throne and reducing the annual race or
flight to the empty form which it seems always to have been within
historical times. The rite was sometimes interpreted as a
commemoration of the expulsion of the kings from Rome; but this
appears to have been a mere afterthought devised to explain a
ceremony of which the old meaning was forgotten. It is far more
likely that in acting thus the King of the Sacred Rites was merely
keeping up an ancient custom which in the regal period had been
annually observed by his predecessors the kings. What the original
intention of the rite may have been must probably always remain more
or less a matter of conjecture. The present explanation is suggested
with a full sense of the difficulty and obscurity in which the
subject is involved.
Thus if my theory is correct, the yearly flight of the Roman king
was a relic of a time when the kingship was an annual office
awarded, along with the hand of a princess, to the victorious
athlete or gladiator, who thereafter figured along with his bride as
a god and goddess at a sacred marriage designed to ensure the
fertility of the earth by homoeopathic magic. If I am right in
supposing that in very early times the old Latin kings personated a
god and were regularly put to death in that character, we can better
understand the mysterious or violent ends to which so many of them
are said to have come. We have seen that, according to tradition,
one of the kings of Alba was killed by a thunderbolt for impiously
mimicking the thunder of Jupiter. Romulus is said to have vanished
mysteriously like Aeneas, or to have been cut to pieces by the
patricians whom he had offended, and the seventh of July, the day on
which he perished, was a festival which bore some resemblance to the
Saturnalia. For on that day the female slaves were allowed to take
certain remarkable liberties. They dressed up as free women in the
attire of matrons and maids, and in this guise they went forth from
the city, scoffed and jeered at all whom they met, and engaged among
themselves in a fight, striking and throwing stones at each other.
Another Roman king who perished by violence was Tatius, the Sabine
colleague of Romulus. It is said that he was at Lavinium offering a
public sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men, to whom he
had given umbrage, despatched him with the sacrificial knives and
spits which they had snatched from the altar. The occasion and the
manner of his death suggest that the slaughter may have been a
sacrifice rather than an assassination. Again, Tullus Hostilius, the
successor of Numa, was commonly said to have been killed by
lightning, but many held that he was murdered at the instigation of
Ancus Marcius, who reigned after him. Speaking of the more or less
mythical Numa, the type of the priestly king, Plutarch observes that
"his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of
the five who reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his
life in exile, and of the remaining four not one died a natural
death; for three of them were assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was
consumed by thunderbolts."
These legends of the violent ends of the Roman kings suggest that
the contest by which they gained the throne may sometimes have been
a mortal combat rather than a race. If that were so, the analogy
which we have traced between Rome and Nemi would be still closer. At
both places the sacred kings, the living representatives of the
godhead, would thus be liable to suffer deposition and death at the
hand of any resolute man who could prove his divine right to the
holy office by the strong arm and the sharp sword. It would not be
surprising if among the early Latins the claim to the kingdom should
often have been settled by single combat; for down to historical
times the Umbrians regularly submitted their private disputes to the
ordeal of battle, and he who cut his adversary's throat was thought
thereby to have proved the justice of his cause beyond the reach of
cavil.
XV. The Worship of the Oak
THE WORSHIP of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been
shared by all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. Both Greeks
and Italians associated the tree with their highest god, Zeus or
Jupiter, the divinity of the sky, the rain, and the thunder. Perhaps
the oldest and certainly one of the most famous sanctuaries in
Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was revered in the oracular
oak. The thunder-storms which are said to rage at Dodona more
frequently than anywhere else in Europe, would render the spot a
fitting home for the god whose voice was heard alike in the rustling
of the oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the bronze
gongs which kept up a humming in the wind round the sanctuary were
meant to mimick the thunder that might so often be heard rolling and
rumbling in the coombs of the stern and barren mountains which shut
in the gloomy valley. In Boeotia, as we have seen, the sacred
marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak goddess, appears
to have been celebrated with much pomp by a religious federation of
states. And on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia the character of Zeus as god
both of the oak and of the rain comes out clearly in the rain charm
practised by the priest of Zeus, who dipped an oak branch in a
sacred spring. In his latter capacity Zeus was the god to whom the
Greeks regularly prayed for rain. Nothing could be more natural; for
often, though not always, he had his seat on the mountains where the
clouds gather and the oaks grow. On the Acropolis at Athens there
was an image of Earth praying to Zeus for rain. And in time of
drought the Athenians themselves prayed, "Rain, rain, O dear Zeus,
on the cornland of the Athenians and on the plains."
Again, Zeus wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain.
At Olympia and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname of
Thunderbolt; and at Athens there was a sacrificial hearth of
Lightning Zeus on the city wall, where some priestly officials
watched for lightning over Mount Parnes at certain seasons of the
year. Further, spots which had been struck by lightning were
regularly fenced in by the Greeks and consecrated to Zeus the
Descender, that is, to the god who came down in the flash from
heaven. Altars were set up within these enclosures and sacrifices
offered on them. Several such places are known from inscriptions to
have existed in Athens.
Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be descended from Zeus, and
even to bear his name, we may reasonably suppose that they also
attempted to exercise his divine functions by making thunder and
rain for the good of their people or the terror and confusion of
their foes. In this respect the legend of Salmoneus probably
reflects the pretensions of a whole class of petty sovereigns who
reigned of old, each over his little canton, in the oak-clad
highlands of Greece. Like their kinsmen the Irish kings, they were
expected to be a source of fertility to the land and of fecundity to
the cattle; and how could they fulfil these expectations better than
by acting the part of their kinsman Zeus, the great god of the oak,
the thunder, and the rain? They personified him, apparently, just as
the Italian kings personified Jupiter.
In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian
counterpart of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was
worshipped as the deity not merely of the oak, but of the rain and
the thunder. Contrasting the piety of the good old times with the
scepticism of an age when nobody thought that heaven was heaven, or
cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in former days
noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure
minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain.
And straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never,
and everybody returned dripping like drowned rats. "But nowadays,"
says he, "we are no longer religious, so the fields lie baking."
When we pass from Southern to Central Europe we still meet with the
great god of the oak and the thunder among the barbarous Aryans who
dwelt in the vast primaeval forests. Thus among the Celts of Gaul
the Druids esteemed nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the
oak on which it grew; they chose groves of oaks for the scene of
their solemn service, and they performed none of their rites without
oak leaves. "The Celts," says a Greek writer, "worship Zeus, and the
Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak." The Celtic conquerors, who
settled in Asia in the third century before our era, appear to have
carried the worship of the oak with them to their new home; for in
the heart of Asia Minor the Galatian senate met in a place which
bore the pure Celtic name of Drynemetum, "the sacred oak grove" or
"the temple of the oak." Indeed the very name of Druids is believed
by good authorities to mean no more than "oak men."
In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred
groves seems to have held the foremost place, and according to Grimm
the chief of their holy trees was the oak. It appears to have been
especially dedicated to the god of thunder, Donar or Thunar, the
equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a sacred oak near Geismar, in
Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth century, went among the
heathen by the name of Jupiter's oak (_robur Jovis_), which in old
German would be _Donares eih,_ "the oak of Donar." That the Teutonic
thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian
thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar's day,
which is merely a rendering of the Latin _dies Jovis._ Thus among
the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of
the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded
as the great fertilising power, who sent rain and caused the earth
to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that "Thor presides in
the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and rains,
fine weather and crops." In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic
thunder god again resembled his southern counterparts Zeus and
Jupiter.
Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree
of the thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter. It is
said that at Novgorod there used to stand an image of Perun in the
likeness of a man with a thunder-stone in his hand. A fire of oak
wood burned day and night in his honour; and if ever it went out the
attendants paid for their negligence with their lives. Perun seems,
like Zeus and Jupiter, to have been the chief god of his people; for
Procopius tells us that the Slavs "believe that one god, the maker
of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him
oxen and every victim."
The chief deity of the Lithuanians was Perkunas or Perkuns, the god
of thunder and lightning, whose resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter has
often been pointed out. Oaks were sacred to him, and when they were
cut down by the Christian missionaries, the people loudly complained
that their sylvan deities were destroyed. Perpetual fires, kindled
with the wood of certain oak-trees, were kept up in honour of
Perkunas; if such a fire went out, it was lighted again by friction
of the sacred wood. Men sacrificed to oak-trees for good crops,
while women did the same to lime-trees; from which we may infer that
they regarded oaks as male and lime-trees as female. And in time of
drought, when they wanted rain, they used to sacrifice a black
heifer, a black he-goat, and a black cock to the thunder god in the
depths of the woods. On such occasions the people assembled in great
numbers from the country round about, ate and drank, and called upon
Perkunas. They carried a bowl of beer thrice round the fire, then
poured the liquor on the flames, while they prayed to the god to
send showers. Thus the chief Lithuanian deity presents a close
resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter, since he was the god of the oak,
the thunder, and the rain.
From the foregoing survey it appears that a god of the oak, the
thunder, and the rain was worshipped of old by all the main branches
of the Aryan stock in Europe, and was indeed the chief deity of
their pantheon.
XVI. Dianus and Diana
IN THIS CHAPTER I propose to recapitulate the conclusions to which
the enquiry has thus far led us, and drawing together the scattered
rays of light, to turn them on the dark figure of the priest of
Nemi.
We have found that at an early stage of society men, ignorant of the
secret processes of nature and of the narrow limits within which it
is in our power to control and direct them, have commonly arrogated
to themselves functions which in the present state of knowledge we
should deem superhuman or divine. The illusion has been fostered and
maintained by the same causes which begot it, namely, the marvellous
order and uniformity with which nature conducts her operations, the
wheels of her great machine revolving with a smoothness and
precision which enable the patient observer to anticipate in general
the season, if not the very hour, when they will bring round the
fulfilment of his hopes or the accomplishment of his fears. The
regularly recurring events of this great cycle, or rather series of
cycles, soon stamp themselves even on the dull mind of the savage.
He foresees them, and foreseeing them mistakes the desired
recurrence for an effect of his own will, and the dreaded recurrence
for an effect of the will of his enemies. Thus the springs which set
the vast machine in motion, though they lie far beyond our ken,
shrouded in a mystery which we can never hope to penetrate, appear
to ignorant man to lie within his reach: he fancies he can touch
them and so work by magic art all manner of good to himself and evil
to his foes. In time the fallacy of this belief becomes apparent to
him: he discovers that there are things he cannot do, pleasures
which he is unable of himself to procure, pains which even the most
potent magician is powerless to avoid. The unattainable good, the
inevitable ill, are now ascribed by him to the action of invisible
powers, whose favour is joy and life, whose anger is misery and
death. Thus magic tends to be displaced by religion, and the
sorcerer by the priest. At this stage of thought the ultimate causes
of things are conceived to be personal beings, many in number and
often discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of
the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and
their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence. Their
sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not
yet begun, under the powerful solvent of philosophy, to melt and
coalesce into that single unknown substratum of phenomena which,
according to the qualities with which our imagination invests it,
goes by one or other of the high-sounding names which the wit of man
has devised to hide his ignorance. Accordingly, so long as men look
on their gods as beings akin to themselves and not raised to an
unapproachable height above them, they believe it to be possible for
those of their own number who surpass their fellows to attain to the
divine rank after death or even in life. Incarnate human deities of
this latter sort may be said to halt midway between the age of magic
and the age of religion. If they bear the names and display the pomp
of deities, the powers which they are supposed to wield are commonly
those of their predecessor the magician. Like him, they are expected
to guard their people against hostile enchantments, to heal them in
sickness, to bless them with offspring, and to provide them with an
abundant supply of food by regulating the weather and performing the
other ceremonies which are deemed necessary to ensure the fertility
of the earth and the multiplication of animals. Men who are credited
with powers so lofty and far-reaching naturally hold the highest
place in the land, and while the rift between the spiritual and the
temporal spheres has not yet widened too far, they are supreme in
civil as well as religious matters: in a word, they are kings as
well as gods. Thus the divinity which hedges a king has its roots
deep down in human history, and long ages pass before these are
sapped by a profounder view of nature and man.
In the classical period of Greek and Latin antiquity the reign of
kings was for the most part a thing of the past; yet the stories of
their lineage, titles, and pretensions suffice to prove that they
too claimed to rule by divine right and to exercise superhuman
powers. Hence we may without undue temerity assume that the King of
the Wood at Nemi, though shorn in later times of his glory and
fallen on evil days, represented a long line of sacred kings who had
once received not only the homage but the adoration of their
subjects in return for the manifold blessings which they were
supposed to dispense. What little we know of the functions of Diana
in the Arician grove seems to prove that she was here conceived as a
goddess of fertility, and particularly as a divinity of childbirth.
It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that in the discharge of
these important duties she was assisted by her priest, the two
figuring as King and Queen of the Wood in a solemn marriage, which
was intended to make the earth gay with the blossoms of spring and
the fruits of autumn, and to gladden the hearts of men and women
with healthful offspring.
If the priest of Nemi posed not merely as a king, but as a god of
the grove, we have still to ask, What deity in particular did he
personate? The answer of antiquity is that he represented Virbius,
the consort or lover of Diana. But this does not help us much, for
of Virbius we know little more than the name. A clue to the mystery
is perhaps supplied by the Vestal fire which burned in the grove.
For the perpetual holy fires of the Aryans in Europe appear to have
been commonly kindled and fed with oak-wood, and in Rome itself, not
many miles from Nemi, the fuel of the Vestal fire consisted of oaken
sticks or logs, as has been proved by a microscopic analysis of the
charred embers of the Vestal fire, which were discovered by
Commendatore G. Boni in the course of the memorable excavations
which he conducted in the Roman forum at the end of the nineteenth
century. But the ritual of the various Latin towns seems to have
been marked by great uniformity; hence it is reasonable to conclude
that wherever in Latium a Vestal fire was maintained, it was fed, as
at Rome, with wood of the sacred oak. If this was so at Nemi, it
becomes probable that the hallowed grove there consisted of a
natural oak-wood, and that therefore the tree which the King of the
Wood had to guard at the peril of his life was itself an oak;
indeed, it was from an evergreen oak, according to Virgil, that
Aeneas plucked the Golden Bough. Now the oak was the sacred tree of
Jupiter, the supreme god of the Latins. Hence it follows that the
King of the Wood, whose life was bound up in a fashion with an oak,
personated no less a deity than Jupiter himself. At least the
evidence, slight as it is, seems to point to this conclusion. The
old Alban dynasty of the Silvii or Woods, with their crown of oak
leaves, apparently aped the style and emulated the powers of Latian
Jupiter, who dwelt on the top of the Alban Mount. It is not
impossible that the King of the Wood, who guarded the sacred oak a
little lower down the mountain, was the lawful successor and
representative of this ancient line of the Silvii or Woods. At all
events, if I am right in supposing that he passed for a human
Jupiter, it would appear that Virbius, with whom legend identified
him, was nothing but a local form of Jupiter, considered perhaps in
his original aspect as a god of the greenwood.
The hypothesis that in later times at all events the King of the
Wood played the part of the oak god Jupiter, is confirmed by an
examination of his divine partner Diana. For two distinct lines of
argument converge to show that if Diana was a queen of the woods in
general, she was at Nemi a goddess of the oak in particular. In the
first place, she bore the title of Vesta, and as such presided over
a perpetual fire, which we have seen reason to believe was fed with
oak wood. But a goddess of fire is not far removed from a goddess of
the fuel which burns in the fire; primitive thought perhaps drew no
sharp line of distinction between the blaze and the wood that
blazes. In the second place, the nymph Egeria at Nemi appears to
have been merely a form of Diana, and Egeria is definitely said to
have been a Dryad, a nymph of the oak. Elsewhere in Italy the
goddess had her home on oak-clad mountains. Thus Mount Algidus, a
spur of the Alban hills, was covered in antiquity with dark forests
of oak, both of the evergreen and the deciduous sort. In winter the
snow lay long on these cold hills, and their gloomy oak-woods were
believed to be a favourite haunt of Diana, as they have been of
brigands in modern times. Again, Mount Tifata, the long abrupt ridge
of the Apennines which looks down on the Campanian plain behind
Capua, was wooded of old with evergreen oaks, among which Diana had
a temple. Here Sulla thanked the goddess for his victory over the
Marians in the plain below, attesting his gratitude by inscriptions
which were long afterwards to be seen in the temple. On the whole,
then, we conclude that at Nemi the King of the Wood personated the
oak-god Jupiter and mated with the oak-goddess Diana in the sacred
grove. An echo of their mystic union has come down to us in the
legend of the loves of Numa and Egeria, who according to some had
their trysting-place in these holy woods.
To this theory it may naturally be objected that the divine consort
of Jupiter was not Diana but Juno, and that if Diana had a mate at
all he might be expected to bear the name not of Jupiter, but of
Dianus or Janus, the latter of these forms being merely a corruption
of the former. All this is true, but the objection may be parried by
observing that the two pairs of deities, Jupiter and Juno on the one
side, and Dianus and Diana, or Janus and Jana, on the other side,
are merely duplicates of each other, their names and their functions
being in substance and origin identical. With regard to their names,
all four of them come from the same Aryan root _DI,_ meaning
"bright," which occurs in the names of the corresponding Greek
deities, Zeus and his old female consort Dione. In regard to their
functions, Juno and Diana were both goddesses of fecundity and
childbirth, and both were sooner or later identified with the moon.
As to the true nature and functions of Janus the ancients themselves
were puzzled; and where they hesitated, it is not for us confidently
to decide. But the view mentioned by Varro that Janus was the god of
the sky is supported not only by the etymological identity of his
name with that of the sky-god Jupiter, but also by the relation in
which he appears to have stood to Jupiter's two mates, Juno and
Juturna. For the epithet Junonian bestowed on Janus points to a
marriage union between the two deities; and according to one account
Janus was the husband of the water-nymph Juturna, who according to
others was beloved by Jupiter. Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was
regularly invoked, and commonly spoken of under the title of Father.
Indeed, he was identified with Jupiter not merely by the logic of
the learned St. Augustine, but by the piety of a pagan worshipper
who dedicated an offering to Jupiter Dianus. A trace of his relation
to the oak may be found in the oakwoods of the Janiculum, the hill
on the right bank of the Tiber, where Janus is said to have reigned
as a king in the remotest ages of Italian history.
Thus, if I am right, the same ancient pair of deities was variously
known among the Greek and Italian peoples as Zeus and Dione, Jupiter
and Juno, or Dianus (Janus) and Diana (Jana), the names of the
divinities being identical in substance, though varying in form with
the dialect of the particular tribe which worshipped them. At first,
when the peoples dwelt near each other, the difference between the
deities would be hardly more than one of name; in other words, it
would be almost purely dialectical. But the gradual dispersion of
the tribes, and their consequent isolation from each other, would
favour the growth of divergent modes of conceiving and worshipping
the gods whom they had carried with them from their old home, so
that in time discrepancies of myth and ritual would tend to spring
up and thereby to convert a nominal into a real distinction between
the divinities. Accordingly when, with the slow progress of culture,
the long period of barbarism and separation was passing away, and
the rising political power of a single strong community had begun to
draw or hammer its weaker neighbours into a nation, the confluent
peoples would throw their gods, like their dialects, into a common
stock; and thus it might come about that the same ancient deities,
which their forefathers had worshipped together before the
dispersion, would now be so disguised by the accumulated effect of
dialectical and religious divergencies that their original identity
might fail to be recognised, and they would take their places side
by side as independent divinities in the national pantheon.
This duplication of deities, the result of the final fusion of
kindred tribes who had long lived apart, would account for the
appearance of Janus beside Jupiter, and of Diana or Jana beside Juno
in the Roman religion. At least this appears to be a more probable
theory than the opinion, which has found favour with some modern
scholars, that Janus was originally nothing but the god of doors.
That a deity of his dignity and importance, whom the Romans revered
as a god of gods and the father of his people, should have started
in life as a humble, though doubtless respectable, doorkeeper
appears very unlikely. So lofty an end hardly consorts with so lowly
a beginning. It is more probable that the door (_janua_) got its
name from Janus than that he got his name from it. This view is
strengthened by a consideration of the word _janua_ itself. The
regular word for door is the same in all the languages of the Aryan
family from India to Ireland. It is _dur_ in Sanscrit, _thura_ in
Greek, _tür_ in German, _door_ in English, _dorus_ in old Irish, and
_foris_ in Latin. Yet besides this ordinary name for door, which the
Latins shared with all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name
_janua,_ to which there is no corresponding term in any
Indo-European speech. The word has the appearance of being an
adjectival form derived from the noun _Janus._ I conjecture that it
may have been customary to set up an image or symbol of Janus at the
principal door of the house in order to place the entrance under the
protection of the great god. A door thus guarded might be known as a
_janua foris,_ that is, a Januan door, and the phrase might in time
be abridged into _janua,_ the noun _foris_ being understood but not
expressed. From this to the use of _janua_ to designate a door in
general, whether guarded by an image of Janus or not, would be an
easy and natural transition.
If there is any truth in this conjecture, it may explain very simply
the origin of the double head of Janus, which has so long exercised
the ingenuity of mythologists. When it had become customary to guard
the entrance of houses and towns by an image of Janus, it might well
be deemed necessary to make the sentinel god look both ways, before
and behind, at the same time, in order that nothing should escape
his vigilant eye. For if the divine watchman always faced in one
direction, it is easy to imagine what mischief might have been
wrought with impunity behind his back. This explanation of the
double-headed Janus at Rome is confirmed by the double-headed idol
which the Bush negroes in the interior of Surinam regularly set up
as a guardian at the entrance of a village. The idol consists of a
block of wood with a human face rudely carved on each side; it
stands under a gateway composed of two uprights and a cross-bar.
Beside the idol generally lies a white rag intended to keep off the
devil; and sometimes there is also a stick which seems to represent
a bludgeon or weapon of some sort. Further, from the cross-bar hangs
a small log which serves the useful purpose of knocking on the head
any evil spirit who might attempt to pass through the gateway.
Clearly this double-headed fetish at the gateway of the negro
villages in Surinam bears a close resemblance to the double-headed
images of Janus which, grasping a stick in one hand and a key in the
other, stood sentinel at Roman gates and doorways; and we can hardly
doubt that in both cases the heads facing two ways are to be
similarly explained as expressive of the vigilance of the guardian
god, who kept his eye on spiritual foes behind and before, and stood
ready to bludgeon them on the spot. We may, therefore, dispense with
the tedious and unsatisfactory explanations which, if we may trust
Ovid, the wily Janus himself fobbed off an anxious Roman enquirer.
To apply these conclusions to the priest of Nemi, we may suppose
that as the mate of Diana he represented originally Dianus or Janus
rather than Jupiter, but that the difference between these deities
was of old merely superficial, going little deeper than the names,
and leaving practically unaffected the essential functions of the
god as a power of the sky, the thunder, and the oak. It was fitting,
therefore, that his human representative at Nemi should dwell, as we
have seen reason to believe he did, in an oak grove. His title of
King of the Wood clearly indicates the sylvan character of the deity
whom he served; and since he could only be assailed by him who had
plucked the bough of a certain tree in the grove, his own life might
be said to be bound up with that of the sacred tree. Thus he not
only served but embodied the great Aryan god of the oak; and as an
oak-god he would mate with the oak-goddess, whether she went by the
name of Egeria or Diana. Their union, however consummated, would be
deemed essential to the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of
man and beast. Further, as the oak-god was also a god of the sky,
the thunder, and the rain, so his human representative would be
required, like many other divine kings, to cause the clouds to
gather, the thunder to peal, and the rain to descend in due season,
that the fields and orchards might bear fruit and the pastures be
covered with luxuriant herbage. The reputed possessor of powers so
exalted must have been a very important personage; and the remains
of buildings and of votive offerings which have been found on the
site of the sanctuary combine with the testimony of classical
writers to prove that in later times it was one of the greatest and
most popular shrines in Italy. Even in the old days, when the
champaign country around was still parcelled out among the petty
tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove is known to
have been an object of their common reverence and care. And just as
the kings of Cambodia used to send offerings to the mystic kings of
Fire and Water far in the dim depths of the tropical forest, so, we
may well believe, from all sides of the broad Latian plain the eyes
and footsteps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter where,
standing sharply out against the faint blue line of the Apennines or
the deeper blue of the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before
them, the home of the mysterious priest of Nemi, the King of the
Wood. There, among the green woods and beside the still waters of
the lonely hills, the ancient Aryan worship of the god of the oak,
the thunder, and the dripping sky lingered in its early, almost
Druidical form, long after a great political and intellectual
revolution had shifted the capital of Latin religion from the forest
to the city, from Nemi to Rome.
XVII. The Burden of Royalty
1. Royal and Priestly Taboos
AT A CERTAIN stage of early society the king or priest is often
thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an
incarnation of a deity, and consistently with this belief the course
of nature is supposed to be more or less under his control, and he
is held responsible for bad weather, failure of the crops, and
similar calamities. To some extent it appears to be assumed that the
king's power over nature, like that over his subjects and slaves, is
exerted through definite acts of will; and therefore if drought,
famine, pestilence, or storms arise, the people attribute the
misfortune to the negligence or guilt of their king, and punish him
accordingly with stripes and bonds, or, if he remains obdurate, with
deposition and death. Sometimes, however, the course of nature,
while regarded as dependent on the king, is supposed to be partly
independent of his will. His person is considered, if we may express
it so, as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of
force radiate to all quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of
his--the turning of his head, the lifting of his
hand--instantaneously affects and may seriously disturb some part of
nature. He is the point of support on which hangs the balance of the
world, and the slightest irregularity on his part may overthrow the
delicate equipoise. The greatest care must, therefore, be taken both
by and of him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details,
must be so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary,
may disarrange or upset the established order of nature. Of this
class of monarchs the Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of
Japan, is or rather used to be a typical example. He is an
incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe,
gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and
spend a month at his court. During that month, the name of which
means "without gods," no one frequents the temples, for they are
believed to be deserted. The Mikado receives from his people and
assumes in his official proclamations and decrees the title of
"manifest or incarnate deity," and he claims a general authority
over the gods of Japan. For example, in an official decree of the
year 646 the emperor is described as "the incarnate god who governs
the universe."
The following description of the Mikado's mode of life was written
about two hundred years ago:
"Even to this day the princes descended of this family, more
particularly those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons
most holy in themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in order to
preserve these advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects,
they are obliged to take an uncommon care of their sacred persons,
and to do such things, which, examined according to the customs of
other nations, would be thought ridiculous and impertinent. It will
not be improper to give a few instances of it. He thinks that it
would be very prejudicial to his dignity and holiness to touch the
ground with his feet; for this reason, when he intends to go
anywhere, he must be carried thither on men's shoulders. Much less
will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open
air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head. There
is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body that he
dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails.
However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the
night when he is asleep; because, they say, that which is taken from
his body at that time, hath been stolen from him, and that such a
theft doth not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times,
he was obliged to sit on the throne for some hours every morning,
with the imperial crown on his head, but to sit altogether like a
statue, without stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor
indeed any part of his body, because, by this means, it was thought
that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his empire; for if,
unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or if he
looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was
apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some other great misfortune
was near at hand to desolate the country. But it having been
afterwards discovered, that the imperial crown was the palladium,
which by its immobility could preserve peace in the empire, it was
thought expedient to deliver his imperial person, consecrated only
to idleness and pleasures, from this burthensome duty, and therefore
the crown is at present placed on the throne for some hours every
morning. His victuals must be dressed every time in new pots, and
served at table in new dishes: both are very clean and neat, but
made only of common clay; that without any considerable expense they
may be laid aside, or broke, after they have served once. They are
generally broke, for fear they should come into the hands of laymen,
for they believe religiously, that if any layman should presume to
eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame
his mouth and throat. The like ill effect is dreaded from the
Dairi's sacred habits; for they believe that if a layman should wear
them, without the Emperor's express leave or command, they would
occasion swellings and pains in all parts of his body." To the same
effect an earlier account of the Mikado says: "It was considered as
a shameful degradation for him even to touch the ground with his
foot. The sun and moon were not even permitted to shine upon his
head. None of the superfluities of the body were ever taken from
him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were cut. Whatever
he eat was dressed in new vessels."
Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found, at a lower level
of barbarism, on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape
Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a
wood. He may not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may
not even quit his chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting,
for if he lay down no wind would arise and navigation would be
stopped. He regulates storms, and in general maintains a wholesome
and equable state of the atmosphere. On Mount Agu in Togo there
lives a fetish or spirit called Bagba, who is of great importance
for the whole of the surrounding country. The power of giving or
withholding rain is ascribed to him, and he is lord of the winds,
including the Harmattan, the dry, hot wind which blows from the
interior. His priest dwells in a house on the highest peak of the
mountain, where he keeps the winds bottled up in huge jars.
Applications for rain, too, are made to him, and he does a good
business in amulets, which consist of the teeth and claws of
leopards. Yet though his power is great and he is indeed the real
chief of the land, the rule of the fetish forbids him ever to leave
the mountain, and he must spend the whole of his life on its summit.
Only once a year may he come down to make purchases in the market;
but even then he may not set foot in the hut of any mortal man, and
must return to his place of exile the same day. The business of
government in the villages is conducted by subordinate chiefs, who
are appointed by him. In the West African kingdom of Congo there was
a supreme pontiff called Chitomé or Chitombé, whom the negroes
regarded as a god on earth and all-powerful in heaven. Hence before
they would taste the new crops they offered him the first-fruits,
fearing that manifold misfortunes would befall them if they broke
this rule. When he left his residence to visit other places within
his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict
continence the whole time he was out; for it was supposed that any
act of incontinence would prove fatal to him. And if he were to die
a natural death, they thought that the world would perish, and the
earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated. Amongst the semi-barbarous nations of
the New World, at the date of the Spanish conquest, there were found
hierarchies or theocracies like those of Japan; in particular, the
high pontiff of the Zapotecs appears to have presented a close
parallel to the Mikado. A powerful rival to the king himself, this
spiritual lord governed Yopaa, one of the chief cities of the
kingdom, with absolute dominion. It is impossible, we are told, to
overrate the reverence in which he was held. He was looked on as a
god whom the earth was not worthy to hold nor the sun to shine upon.
He profaned his sanctity if he even touched the ground with his
foot. The officers who bore his palanquin on their shoulders were
members of the highest families: he hardly deigned to look on
anything around him; and all who met him fell with their faces to
the earth, fearing that death would overtake them if they saw even
his shadow. A rule of continence was regularly imposed on the
Zapotec priests, especially upon the high pontiff; but "on certain
days in each year, which were generally celebrated with feasts and
dances, it was customary for the high priest to become drunk. While
in this state, seeming to belong neither to heaven nor to earth, one
of the most beautiful of the virgins consecrated to the service of
the gods was brought to him." If the child she bore him was a son,
he was brought up as a prince of the blood, and the eldest son
succeeded his father on the pontifical throne. The supernatural
powers attributed to this pontiff are not specified, but probably
they resembled those of the Mikado and Chitomé.
Wherever, as in Japan and West Africa, it is supposed that the order
of nature, and even the existence of the world, is bound up with the
life of the king or priest, it is clear that he must be regarded by
his subjects as a source both of infinite blessing and of infinite
danger. On the one hand, the people have to thank him for the rain
and sunshine which foster the fruits of the earth, for the wind
which brings ships to their coasts, and even for the solid ground
beneath their feet. But what he gives he can refuse; and so close is
the dependence of nature on his person, so delicate the balance of
the system of forces whereof he is the centre, that the least
irregularity on his part may set up a tremor which shall shake the
earth to its foundations. And if nature may be disturbed by the
slightest involuntary act of the king, it is easy to conceive the
convulsion which his death might provoke. The natural death of the
Chitomé, as we have seen, was thought to entail the destruction of
all things. Clearly, therefore, out of a regard for their own
safety, which might be imperilled by any rash act of the king, and
still more by his death, the people will exact of their king or
priest a strict conformity to those rules, the observance of which
is deemed necessary for his own preservation, and consequently for
the preservation of his people and the world. The idea that early
kingdoms are despotisms in which the people exist only for the
sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are
considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for
his subjects; his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the
duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his
people's benefit. So soon as he fails to do so, the care, the
devotion, the religious homage which they had hitherto lavished on
him cease and are changed into hatred and contempt; he is dismissed
ignominiously, and may be thankful if he escapes with his life.
Worshipped as a god one day, he is killed as a criminal the next.
But in this changed behaviour of the people there is nothing
capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary, their conduct is
entirely of a piece. If their king is their god, he is or should be
also their preserver; and if he will not preserve them, he must make
room for another who will. So long, however, as he answers their
expectations, there is no limit to the care which they take of him,
and which they compel him to take of himself. A king of this sort
lives hedged in by a ceremonious etiquette, a network of
prohibitions and observances, of which the intention is not to
contribute to his dignity, much less to his comfort, but to restrain
him from conduct which, by disturbing the harmony of nature, might
involve himself, his people, and the universe in one common
catastrophe. Far from adding to his comfort, these observances, by
trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom and often render
the very life, which it is their object to preserve, a burden and
sorrow to him.
Of the supernaturally endowed kings of Loango it is said that the
more powerful a king is, the more taboos is he bound to observe;
they regulate all his actions, his walking and his standing, his
eating and drinking, his sleeping and waking. To these restraints
the heir to the throne is subject from infancy; but as he advances
in life the number of abstinences and ceremonies which he must
observe increases, "until at the moment that he ascends the throne
he is lost in the ocean of rites and taboos." In the crater of an
extinct volcano, enclosed on all sides by grassy slopes, lie the
scattered huts and yam-fields of Riabba, the capital of the native
king of Fernando Po. This mysterious being lives in the lowest
depths of the crater, surrounded by a harem of forty women, and
covered, it is said, with old silver coins. Naked savage as he is,
he yet exercises far more influence in the island than the Spanish
governor at Santa Isabel. In him the conservative spirit of the
Boobies or aboriginal inhabitants of the island is, as it were,
incorporate. He has never seen a white man and, according to the
firm conviction of all the Boobies, the sight of a pale face would
cause his instant death. He cannot bear to look upon the sea; indeed
it is said that he may never see it even in the distance, and that
therefore he wears away his life with shackles on his legs in the
dim twilight of his hut. Certain it is that he has never set foot on
the beach. With the exception of his musket and knife, he uses
nothing that comes from the whites; European cloth never touches his
person, and he scorns tobacco, rum, and even salt.
Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast "the king is at
the same time high priest. In this quality he was, particularly in
former times, unapproachable by his subjects. Only by night was he
allowed to quit his dwelling in order to bathe and so forth. None
but his representative, the so-called 'visible king,' with three
chosen elders might converse with him, and even they had to sit on
an ox-hide with their backs turned to him. He might not see any
European nor any horse, nor might he look upon the sea, for which
reason he was not allowed to quit his capital even for a few
moments. These rules have been disregarded in recent times." The
king of Dahomey himself is subject to the prohibition of beholding
the sea, and so are the kings of Loango and Great Ardra in Guinea.
The sea is the fetish of the Eyeos, to the north-west of Dahomey,
and they and their king are threatened with death by their priests
if ever they dare to look on it. It is believed that the king of
Cayor in Senegal would infallibly die within the year if he were to
cross a river or an arm of the sea. In Mashonaland down to recent
times the chiefs would not cross certain rivers, particularly the
Rurikwi and the Nyadiri; and the custom was still strictly observed
by at least one chief within recent years. "On no account will the
chief cross the river. If it is absolutely necessary for him to do
so, he is blindfolded and carried across with shouting and singing.
Should he walk across, he will go blind or die and certainly lose
the chieftainship." So among the Mahafalys and Sakalavas in the
south of Madagascar some kings are forbidden to sail on the sea or
to cross certain rivers. Among the Sakalavas the chief is regarded
as a sacred being, but "he is held in leash by a crowd of
restrictions, which regulate his behaviour like that of the emperor
of China. He can undertake nothing whatever unless the sorcerers
have declared the omens favourable; he may not eat warm food: on
certain days he may not quit his hut; and so on." Among some of the
hill tribes of Assam both the headman and his wife have to observe
many taboos in respect of food; thus they may not eat buffalo, pork,
dog, fowl, or tomatoes. The headman must be chaste, the husband of
one wife, and he must separate himself from her on the eve of a
general or public observance of taboo. In one group of tribes the
headman is forbidden to eat in a strange village, and under no
provocation whatever may he utter a word of abuse. Apparently the
people imagine that the violation of any of these taboos by a
headman would bring down misfortune on the whole village.
The ancient kings of Ireland, as well as the kings of the four
provinces of Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster, were subject
to certain quaint prohibitions or taboos, on the due observance of
which the prosperity of the people of the country, as well as their
own, was supposed to depend. Thus, for example, the sun might not
rise on the king of Ireland in his bed at Tara, the old capital of
Erin; he was forbidden to alight on Wednesday at Magh Breagh, to
traverse Magh Cuillinn after sunset, to incite his horse at
Fan-Chomair, to go in a ship upon the water the Monday after
Bealltaine (May day), and to leave the track of his army upon Ath
Maighne the Tuesday after All-Hallows. The king of Leinster might
not go round Tuath Laighean left-hand-wise on Wednesday, nor sleep
between the Dothair (Dodder) and the Duibhlinn with his head
inclining to one side, nor encamp for nine days on the plains of
Cualann, nor travel the road of Duibhlinn on Monday, nor ride a
dirty black-heeled horse across Magh Maistean. The king of Munster
was prohibited from enjoying the feast of Loch Lein from one Monday
to another; from banqueting by night in the beginning of harvest
before Geim at Leitreacha; from encamping for nine days upon the
Siuir; and from holding a border meeting at Gabhran. The king of
Connaught might not conclude a treaty respecting his ancient palace
of Cruachan after making peace on All-Hallows Day, nor go in a
speckled garment on a grey speckled steed to the heath of Dal Chais,
nor repair to an assembly of women at Seaghais, nor sit in autumn on
the sepulchral mounds of the wife of Maine, nor contend in running
with the rider of a grey one-eyed horse at Ath Gallta between two
posts. The king of Ulster was forbidden to attend the horse fair at
Rath Line among the youths of Dal Araidhe, to listen to the
fluttering of the flocks of birds of Linn Saileach after sunset, to
celebrate the feast of the bull of Daire-mic-Daire, to go into Magh
Cobha in the month of March, and to drink of the water of Bo
Neimhidh between two darknesses. If the kings of Ireland strictly
observed these and many other customs, which were enjoined by
immemorial usage, it was believed that they would never meet with
mischance or misfortune, and would live for ninety years without
experiencing the decay of old age; that no epidemic or mortality
would occur during their reigns; and that the seasons would be
favourable and the earth yield its fruit in abundance; whereas, if
they set the ancient usages at naught, the country would be visited
with plague, famine, and bad weather.
The kings of Egypt were worshipped as gods, and the routine of their
daily life was regulated in every detail by precise and unvarying
rules. "The life of the kings of Egypt," says Diodorus, "was not
like that of other monarchs who are irresponsible and may do just
what they choose; on the contrary, everything was fixed for them by
law, not only their official duties, but even the details of their
daily life. . . . The hours both of day and night were arranged at
which the king had to do, not what he pleased, but what was
prescribed for him. . . . For not only were the times appointed at
which he should transact public business or sit in judgment; but the
very hours for his walking and bathing and sleeping with his wife,
and, in short, performing every act of life were all settled. Custom
enjoined a simple diet; the only flesh he might eat was veal and
goose, and he might only drink a prescribed quantity of wine."
However, there is reason to think that these rules were observed,
not by the ancient Pharaohs, but by the priestly kings who reigned
at Thebes and Ethiopia at the close of the twentieth dynasty.
Of the taboos imposed on priests we may see a striking example in
the rules of life prescribed for the Flamen Dialis at Rome, who has
been interpreted as a living image of Jupiter, or a human embodiment
of the sky-spirit. They were such as the following: The Flamen
Dialis might not ride or even touch a horse, nor see an army under
arms, nor wear a ring which was not broken, nor have a knot on any
part of his garments; no fire except a sacred fire might be taken
out of his house; he might not touch wheaten flour or leavened
bread; he might not touch or even name a goat, a dog, raw meat,
beans, and ivy; he might not walk under a vine; the feet of his bed
had to be daubed with mud; his hair could be cut only by a free man
and with a bronze knife and his hair and nails when cut had to be
buried under a lucky tree; he might not touch a dead body nor enter
a place where one was burned; he might not see work being done on
holy days; he might not be uncovered in the open air; if a man in
bonds were taken into his house, the captive had to be unbound and
the cords had to be drawn up through a hole in the roof and so let
down into the street. His wife, the Flaminica, had to observe nearly
the same rules, and others of her own besides. She might not ascend
more than three steps of the kind of staircase called Greek; at a
certain festival she might not comb her hair; the leather of her
shoes might not be made from a beast that had died a natural death,
but only from one that had been slain or sacrificed; if she heard
thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an expiatory sacrifice.
Among the Grebo people of Sierra Leone there is a pontiff who bears
the title of Bodia and has been compared, on somewhat slender
grounds, to the high priest of the Jews. He is appointed in
accordance with the behest of an oracle. At an elaborate ceremony of
installation he is anointed, a ring is put on his ankle as a badge
of office, and the door-posts of his house are sprinkled with the
blood of a sacrificed goat. He has charge of the public talismans
and idols, which he feeds with rice and oil every new moon; and he
sacrifices on behalf of the town to the dead and to demons.
Nominally his power is very great, but in practice it is very
limited; for he dare not defy public opinion, and he is held
responsible, even with his life, for any adversity that befalls the
country. It is expected of him that he should cause the earth to
bring forth abundantly, the people to be healthy, war to be driven
far away, and witchcraft to be kept in abeyance. His life is
trammelled by the observance of certain restrictions or taboos. Thus
he may not sleep in any house but his own official residence, which
is called the "anointed house" with reference to the ceremony of
anointing him at inauguration. He may not drink water on the
highway. He may not eat while a corpse is in the town, and he may
not mourn for the dead. If he dies while in office, he must be
buried at dead of night; few may hear of his burial, and none may
mourn for him when his death is made public. Should he have fallen a
victim to the poison ordeal by drinking a decoction of sassywood, as
it is called, he must be buried under a running stream of water.
Among the Todas of Southern India the holy milkman, who acts as
priest of the sacred dairy, is subject to a variety of irksome and
burdensome restrictions during the whole time of his incumbency,
which may last many years. Thus he must live at the sacred dairy and
may never visit his home or any ordinary village. He must be
celibate; if he is married he must leave his wife. On no account may
any ordinary person touch the holy milkman or the holy dairy; such a
touch would so defile his holiness that he would forfeit his office.
It is only on two days a week, namely Mondays and Thursdays, that a
mere layman may even approach the milkman; on other days if he has
any business with him, he must stand at a distance (some say a
quarter of a mile) and shout his message across the intervening
space. Further, the holy milkman never cuts his hair or pares his
nails so long as he holds office; he never crosses a river by a
bridge, but wades through a ford and only certain fords; if a death
occurs in his clan, he may not attend any of the funeral ceremonies,
unless he first resigns his office and descends from the exalted
rank of milkman to that of a mere common mortal. Indeed it appears
that in old days he had to resign the seals, or rather the pails, of
office whenever any member of his clan departed this life. However,
these heavy restraints are laid in their entirety only on milkmen of
the very highest class.
2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power
THE BURDENSOME observances attached to the royal or priestly office
produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the
office, which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it,
they sank under its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered
recluses, from whose nerveless fingers the reins of government
slipped into the firmer grasp of men who were often content to wield
the reality of sovereignty without its name. In some countries this
rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and permanent
separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the old royal house
retaining their purely religious functions, while the civil
government passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous
race.
To take examples. In a previous part of this work we saw that in
Cambodia it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and
Water upon the reluctant successors, and that in Savage Island the
monarchy actually came to an end because at last no one could be
induced to accept the dangerous distinction. In some parts of West
Africa, when the king dies, a family council is secretly held to
determine his successor. He on whom the choice falls is suddenly
seized, bound, and thrown into the fetish-house, where he is kept in
durance till he consents to accept the crown. Sometimes the heir
finds means of evading the honour which it is sought to thrust upon
him; a ferocious chief has been known to go about constantly armed,
resolute to resist by force any attempt to set him on the throne.
The savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king, reserve to
themselves the right of beating him on the eve of his coronation;
and they avail themselves of this constitutional privilege with such
hearty goodwill that sometimes the unhappy monarch does not long
survive his elevation to the throne. Hence when the leading chiefs
have a spite at a man and wish to rid themselves of him, they elect
him king. Formerly, before a man was proclaimed king of Sierra
Leone, it used to be the custom to load him with chains and thrash
him. Then the fetters were knocked off, the kingly robe was placed
on him, and he received in his hands the symbol of royal dignity,
which was nothing but the axe of the executioner. It is not
therefore surprising to read that in Sierra Leone, where such
customs have prevailed, "except among the Mandingoes and Suzees, few
kings are natives of the countries they govern. So different are
their ideas from ours, that very few are solicitous of the honour,
and competition is very seldom heard of."
The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of
transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their
infant children; and the rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal
sovereigns of the country, is traced to the abdication of a certain
Mikado in favour of his three-year-old son. The sovereignty having
been wrested by a usurper from the infant prince, the cause of the
Mikado was championed by Yoritomo, a man of spirit and conduct, who
overthrew the usurper and restored to the Mikado the shadow, while
he retained for himself the substance, of power. He bequeathed to
his descendants the dignity he had won, and thus became the founder
of the line of Tycoons. Down to the latter half of the sixteenth
century the Tycoons were active and efficient rulers; but the same
fate overtook them which had befallen the Mikados. Immeshed in the
same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere
puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a
perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of
government was managed by the council of state. In Tonquin the
monarchy ran a similar course. Living like his predecessors in
effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from the throne by an
ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a fisherman had risen to
be Grand Mandarin. But the king's brother Tring put down the usurper
and restored the king, retaining, however, for himself and his
descendants the dignity of general of all the forces. Thenceforward
the kings, though invested with the title and pomp of sovereignty,
ceased to govern. While they lived secluded in their palaces, all
real political power was wielded by the hereditary generals.
In Mangaia, a Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were
lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a
line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government was
entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose
investiture, however, had to be completed by the king. Similarly in
Tonga, besides the civil king whose right to the throne was partly
hereditary and partly derived from his warlike reputation and the
number of his fighting men, there was a great divine chief who
ranked above the king and the other chiefs in virtue of his supposed
descent from one of the chief gods. Once a year the first-fruits of
the ground were offered to him at a solemn ceremony, and it was
believed that if these offerings were not made the vengeance of the
gods would fall in a signal manner on the people. Peculiar forms of
speech, such as were applied to no one else, were used in speaking
of him, and everything that he chanced to touch became sacred or
tabooed. When he and the king met, the monarch had to sit down on
the ground in token of respect until his holiness had passed by. Yet
though he enjoyed the highest veneration by reason of his divine
origin, this sacred personage possessed no political authority, and
if he ventured to meddle with affairs of state it was at the risk of
receiving a rebuff from the king, to whom the real power belonged,
and who finally succeeded in ridding himself of his spiritual rival.
In some parts of Western Africa two kings reign side by side, a
fetish or religious king and a civil king, but the fetish king is
really supreme. He controls the weather and so forth, and can put a
stop to everything. When he lays his red staff on the ground, no one
may pass that way. This division of power between a sacred and a
secular ruler is to be met with wherever the true negro culture has
been left unmolested, but where the negro form of society has been
disturbed, as in Dahomey and Ashantee, there is a tendency to
consolidate the two powers in a single king.
In some parts of the East Indian island of Timor we meet with a
partition of power like that which is represented by the civil king
and the fetish king of Western Africa. Some of the Timorese tribes
recognise two rajahs, the ordinary or civil rajah, who governs the
people, and the fetish or taboo rajah, who is charged with the
control of everything that concerns the earth and its products. This
latter ruler has the right of declaring anything taboo; his
permission must be obtained before new land may be brought under
cultivation, and he must perform certain necessary ceremonies when
the work is being carried out. If drought or blight threatens the
crops, his help is invoked to save them. Though he ranks below the
civil rajah, he exercises a momentous influence on the course of
events, for his secular colleague is bound to consult him in all
important matters. In some of the neighbouring islands, such as
Rotti and eastern Flores, a spiritual ruler of the same sort is
recognised under various native names, which all mean "lord of the
ground." Similarly in the Mekeo district of British New Guinea there
is a double chieftainship. The people are divided into two groups
according to families, and each of the groups has its chief. One of
the two is the war chief, the other is the taboo chief. The office
of the latter is hereditary; his duty is to impose a taboo on any of
the crops, such as the coco-nuts and areca nuts, whenever he thinks
it desirable to prohibit their use. In his office we may perhaps
detect the beginning of a priestly dynasty, but as yet his functions
appear to be more magical than religious, being concerned with the
control of the harvests rather than with the propitiation of higher
powers.
XVIII. The Perils of the Soul
1. The Soul as a Mannikin
THE FOREGOING examples have taught us that the office of a sacred
king or priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome
restrictions or taboos, of which a principal purpose appears to be
to preserve the life of the divine man for the good of his people.
But if the object of the taboos is to save his life, the question
arises, How is their observance supposed to effect this end? To
understand this we must know the nature of the danger which
threatens the king's life, and which it is the intention of these
curious restrictions to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What
does early man understand by death? To what causes does he attribute
it? And how does he think it may be guarded against?
As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or
behind the phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself.
If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because
there is a little animal inside which moves it: if a man lives and
moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside
who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man,
is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by
the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is
explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death
being the permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the
permanent absence of the soul, the way to guard against it is either
to prevent the soul from leaving the body, or, if it does depart, to
ensure that it shall return. The precautions adopted by savages to
secure one or other of these ends take the form of certain
prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules intended to
ensure either the continued presence or the return of the soul. In
short, they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general
statements will now be illustrated by examples.
Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, "I am
not one, as you think, but two." Upon this they laughed. "You may
laugh as much as you like," continued the missionary, "I tell you
that I am two in one; this great body that you see is one; within
that there is another little one which is not visible. The great
body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies away when the
great one dies." To this some of the blacks replied, "Yes, yes. We
also are two, we also have a little body within the breast." On
being asked where the little body went after death, some said it
went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and some
said they did not know. The Hurons thought that the soul had a head
and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little
model of the man himself. The Esquimaux believe that "the soul
exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more
subtle and ethereal nature." According to the Nootkas the soul has
the shape of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head. So long
as it stands erect, its owner is hale and hearty; but when from any
cause it loses its upright position, he loses his senses. Among the
Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River, man is held to have four
souls, of which the principal one has the form of a mannikin, while
the other three are shadows of it. The Malays conceive the human
soul as a little man, mostly invisible and of the bigness of a
thumb, who corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in
complexion to the man in whose body he resides. This mannikin is of
a thin, unsubstantial nature, though not so impalpable but that it
may cause displacement on entering a physical object, and it can
flit quickly from place to place; it is temporarily absent from the
body in sleep, trance, and disease, and permanently absent after
death.
So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other
words, of the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and
thin bodies, so there are fat souls and thin souls; as there are
heavy bodies and light bodies, long bodies and short bodies, so
there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls and short souls.
The people of Nias think that every man, before he is born, is asked
how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the
desired weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul
ever given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man's life
is proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die young
had short souls. The Fijian conception of the soul as a tiny human
being comes clearly out in the customs observed at the death of a
chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men, who
are the hereditary undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled and
ornamented, on fine mats, saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us
be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to
the river side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo
ghosts across the stream. As they thus attend the chief on his last
journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter
him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, "His soul is
only a little child." People in the Punjaub who tattoo themselves
believe that at death the soul, "the little entire man or woman"
inside the mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with the same
tattoo patterns which adorned the body in life. Sometimes, however,
as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in
animal form.
2. Absence and Recall of the Soul
THE SOUL is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of
the body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they
sometimes fasten fish-hooks to a sick man's nose, navel, and feet,
so that if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held
fast. A Turik on the Baram River, in Borneo, refused to part with
some hook-like stones, because they, as it were, hooked his soul to
his body, and so prevented the spiritual portion of him from
becoming detached from the material. When a Sea Dyak sorcerer or
medicine-man is initiated, his fingers are supposed to be furnished
with fish-hooks, with which he will thereafter clutch the human soul
in the act of flying away, and restore it to the body of the
sufferer. But hooks, it is plain, may be used to catch the souls of
enemies as well as of friends. Acting on this principle head-hunters
in Borneo hang wooden hooks beside the skulls of their slain enemies
in the belief that this helps them on their forays to hook in fresh
heads. One of the implements of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow
bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them
to their owners. When any one yawns in their presence the Hindoos
always snap their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul
from issuing through the open mouth. The Marquesans used to hold the
mouth and nose of a dying man, in order to keep him in life by
preventing his soul from escaping; the same custom is reported of
the New Caledonians; and with the like intention the Bagobos of the
Philippine Islands put rings of brass wire on the wrists or ankles
of their sick. On the other hand, the Itonamas of South America seal
up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost
should get out and carry off others; and for a similar reason the
people of Nias, who fear the spirits of the recently deceased and
identify them with the breath, seek to confine the vagrant soul in
its earthly tabernacle by bunging up the nose or tying up the jaws
of the corpse. Before leaving a corpse the Wakelbura of Australia
used to place hot coals in its ears in order to keep the ghost in
the body, until they had got such a good start that he could not
overtake them. In Southern Celebes, to hinder the escape of a
woman's soul in childbed, the nurse ties a band as tightly as
possible round the body of the expectant mother. The Minangkabauers
of Sumatra observe a similar custom; a skein of thread or a string
is sometimes fastened round the wrist or loins of a woman in
childbed, so that when her soul seeks to depart in her hour of
travail it may find the egress barred. And lest the soul of a babe
should escape and be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of
Celebes, when a birth is about to take place, are careful to close
every opening in the house, even the keyhole; and they stop up every
chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the mouths of all
animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might
swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present
in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their
mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the
question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the
child's soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath
being exhaled as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul
would be expelled before it could have time to settle down. Popular
expressions in the language of civilised peoples, such as to have
one's heart in one's mouth, or the soul on the lips or in the nose,
show how natural is the idea that the life or soul may escape by the
mouth or nostrils.
Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it
lingers as a metaphor in poetry. The Malays carry out the conception
of the bird-soul in a number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on
the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so either prevented from
flying away or lured back again from its perilous flight. Thus in
Java when a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a
moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially
dangerous), it is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking
sound, as if she were calling hens. And in Sintang, a district of
Borneo, when a person, whether man, woman, or child, has fallen out
of a house or off a tree, and has been brought home, his wife or
other kinswoman goes as speedily as possible to the spot where the
accident happened, and there strews rice, which has been coloured
yellow, while she utters the words, "Cluck! cluck! soul! So-and-so
is in his house again. Cluck! cluck! soul!" Then she gathers up the
rice in a basket, carries it to the sufferer, and drops the grains
from her hand on his head, saying again, "Cluck! cluck! soul!" Here
the intention clearly is to decoy back the loitering bird-soul and
replace it in the head of its owner.
The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the
acts of which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or
Guiana wakes up from a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his
soul has really been away hunting, fishing, felling trees, or
whatever else he has dreamed of doing, while all the time his body
has been lying motionless in his hammock. A whole Bororo village has
been thrown into a panic and nearly deserted because somebody had
dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily approaching it. A Macusi
Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his employer had made him
haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly
reproached his master next morning for his want of consideration in
thus making a poor invalid go out and toil during the night. The
Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate the most
incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and
heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their
haste that these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are
firmly convinced of the truth of what they relate; for these
wonderful adventures are simply their dreams, which they do not
distinguish from waking realities.
Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from
any cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the
body, the person thus deprived of the vital principle must die.
There is a German belief that the soul escapes from a sleeper's
mouth in the form of a white mouse or a little bird, and that to
prevent the return of the bird or animal would be fatal to the
sleeper. Hence in Transylvania they say that you should not let a
child sleep with its mouth open, or its soul will slip out in the
shape of a mouse, and the child will never wake. Many causes may
detain the sleeper's soul. Thus, his soul may meet the soul of
another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea negro
wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has
been thrashed by another soul in sleep. Or it may meet the soul of a
person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru
Islands the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a
death has taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is
supposed to be still in the house and they fear to meet it in a
dream. Again, the soul of the sleeper may be prevented by an
accident or by physical force from returning to his body. When a
Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he supposes that this
accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends for a wizard,
who fishes for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of water till
he catches it and restores it to its owner. The Santals tell how a
man fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of
a lizard, left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink.
Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul
could not return to the body and the man died. While his friends
were preparing to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to
get water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which
immediately revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why
they were weeping. They told him they thought he was dead and were
about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to get
water, but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So
they saw it all.
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper,
because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if
the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is
absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very
gradually, to allow the soul time to return. A Fijian in Matuku,
suddenly wakened from a nap by somebody treading on his foot, has
been heard bawling after his soul and imploring it to return. He had
just been dreaming that he was far away in Tonga, and great was his
alarm on suddenly wakening to find his body in Matuku. Death stared
him in the face unless his soul could be induced to speed at once
across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement. The man would
probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to
allay his terror.
Still more dangerous is it in the opinion of primitive man to move a
sleeper or alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on
its return might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so
the person would die. The Minangkabauers deem it highly improper to
blacken or dirty the face of a sleeper, lest the absent soul should
shrink from re-entering a body thus disfigured. Patani Malays fancy
that if a person's face be painted while he sleeps, the soul which
has gone out of him will not recognise him, and he will sleep on
till his face is washed. In Bombay it is thought equivalent to
murder to change the aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in
fantastic colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when
the soul returns it will not know its own body, and the person will
die.
But in order that a man's soul should quit his body, it is not
necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking
hours, and then sickness, insanity, or death will be the result.
Thus a man of the Wurunjeri tribe in Australia lay at his last gasp
because his spirit had departed from him. A medicine-man went in
pursuit and caught the spirit by the middle just as it was about to
plunge into the sunset glow, which is the light cast by the souls of
the dead as they pass in and out of the under-world, where the sun
goes to rest. Having captured the vagrant spirit, the doctor brought
it back under his opossum rug, laid himself down on the dying man,
and put the soul back into him, so that after a time he revived. The
Karens of Burma are perpetually anxious about their souls, lest
these should go roving from their bodies, leaving the owners to die.
When a man has reason to fear that his soul is about to take this
fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall it, in which
the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of a
cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then
the head of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice,
and knocking with it thrice on the top of the houseladder says:
"_Prrrroo!_ Come back, soul, do not tarry outside! If it rains, you
will be wet. If the sun shines, you will be hot. The gnats will
sting you, the leeches will bite you, the tigers will devour you,
the thunder will crush you. _Prrrroo!_ Come back, soul! Here it will
be well with you. You shall want for nothing. Come and eat under
shelter from the wind and the storm." After that the family partakes
of the meal, and the ceremony ends with everybody tying their right
wrist with a string which has been charmed by a sorcerer. Similarly
the Lolos of South-western China believe that the soul leaves the
body in chronic illness. In that case they read a sort of elaborate
litany, calling on the soul by name and beseeching it to return from
the hills, the vales, the rivers, the forests, the fields, or from
wherever it may be straying. At the same time cups of water, wine,
and rice are set at the door for the refreshment of the weary
wandering spirit. When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord
round the arm of the sick man to tether the soul, and this cord is
worn by him until it decays and drops off.
Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul
has left his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer
is then called in to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to
the invalid. Generally the physician declares that he has
successfully chased the soul into the branch of a tree. The whole
town thereupon turns out and accompanies the doctor to the tree,
where the strongest men are deputed to break off the branch in which
the soul of the sick man is supposed to be lodged. This they do and
carry the branch back to the town, insinuating by their gestures
that the burden is heavy and hard to bear. When the branch has been
brought to the sick man's hut, he is placed in an upright position
by its side, and the sorcerer performs the enchantments by which the
soul is believed to be restored to its owner.
Pining, sickness, great fright, and death are ascribed by the Bataks
of Sumatra to the absence of the soul from the body. At first they
try to beckon the wanderer back, and to lure him, like a fowl, by
strewing rice. Then the following form of words is commonly
repeated: "Come back, O soul, whether thou art lingering in the
wood, or on the hills, or in the dale. See, I call thee with a
_toemba bras,_ with an egg of the fowl Rajah _moelija,_ with the
eleven healing leaves. Detain it not, let it come straight here,
detain it not, neither in the wood, nor on the hill, nor in the
dale. That may not be. O come straight home!" Once when a popular
traveller was leaving a Kayan village, the mothers, fearing that
their children's souls might follow him on his journey, brought him
the boards on which they carry their infants and begged him to pray
that the souls of the little ones would return to the familiar
boards and not go away with him into the far country. To each board
was fastened a looped string for the purpose of tethering the
vagrant spirits, and through the loop each baby was made to pass a
chubby finger to make sure that its tiny soul would not wander away.
In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a
Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of
the king. The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman.
However, the hunchback is induced to show his skill by transferring
his soul to the dead body of a parrot, and the king seizes the
opportunity to regain possession of his own body. A tale of the same
type, with variations of detail, reappears among the Malays. A king
has incautiously transferred his soul to an ape, upon which the
vizier adroitly inserts his own soul into the king's body and so
takes possession of the queen and the kingdom, while the true king
languishes at court in the outward semblance of an ape. But one day
the false king, who played for high stakes, was watching a combat of
rams, and it happened that the animal on which he had laid his money
fell down dead. All efforts to restore animation proved unavailing
till the false king, with the instinct of a true sportsman,
transferred his own soul to the body of the deceased ram, and thus
renewed the fray. The real king in the body of the ape saw his
chance, and with great presence of mind darted back into his own
body, which the vizier had rashly vacated. So he came to his own
again, and the usurper in the ram's body met with the fate he richly
deserved. Similarly the Greeks told how the soul of Hermotimus of
Clazomenae used to quit his body and roam far and wide, bringing
back intelligence of what he had seen on his rambles to his friends
at home; until one day, when his spirit was abroad, his enemies
contrived to seize his deserted body and committed it to the flames.
The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be
extracted from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or
sorcerers. Hence, when a funeral is passing the house, the Karens
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