INTRODUCTION.

I. The Subject of the "Romane Questions" and of this Introduction.

The "fashions and customes of Rome," which prompted Plutarch's questions, are directly or indirectly associated with the worship of the gods, while the solutions which he suggests contain occasionally myths. It is not, however, all Roman gods, cults, and myths that are discussed by Plutarch: he limits himself, on the whole, to those which are purely Roman, or rather purely Italian. This limitation is not accidental, and it is significant. It does not indeed appear that Plutarch designed to confine himself thus: the fact seems rather to be that, long before his time, the Romans had borrowed the myths, the ritual, and the gods of Greece, and that Plutarch, as a Greek, found nothing strange or unintelligible in the resemblances which the Roman ritual of his day bore to the religion of his native land. It was the points of difference which caught his attention.

And here we must note a further limitation of the subject of the Romane Questions and of this Introduction. Surprise and inquiry are excited not by the familiar, but by the unusual; so Plutarch's attention was arrested not by customs which, though purely Italian, were universal in Italy, e.g., the practice of covering the head during worship, but by fashions for which he could find no analogy or parallel in the stage of religion with which alone he was acquainted. In such isolated customs, out of harmony with their surroundings, modern science sees "survivals" from an earlier stage of culture; and it is as survivals that they will be treated in this Introduction. Now, the stage of religion with which Plutarch was familiar, and in which he could find no analogies for those "fashions and customes," was polytheism; and if those practices are survivals, they must be survivals from a stage of religion earlier than polytheism.

Here, however, a difficulty meets us. If the teaching of the Solar Mythologists be true, the Aryans, having a mythology, were already polytheists: much more, therefore, must the Italians have been polytheists from the beginning. I am sorry to say that I cannot meet this difficulty: I can only frankly warn the reader that it exists. But in an Introduction which professes to confine itself to myths and cults which are purely Italian, it is impossible to discuss Solar Mythology, for the simple reason that there is no such thing in existence as an Italian solar myth, or indeed Nature-myth of any kind. The only story which is seriously claimed as a Nature-myth is that of Hercules and Cacus. Cacus, a monster or giant, stole some cows from Hercules, and hid them in his cave. Hercules discovered them, according to some accounts, by the aid of Caca, the sister of Cacus, according to other accounts, by the lowing which the cows in the cave set up when Hercules went by with the rest of his oxen. Hercules forced his way into the cave, and, in spite of the fire and flames which Cacus spat at him, killed the monster with his club. Then Hercules, in commemoration of the discovery of his cattle, erected an altar to Jupiter the Discoverer (Jupiter Inventor). Now a similar story, it would appear, is to be found in the Vedas. Vritra, a three-headed snake, steals cows from Indra, who discovers them in a cave by their lowing, and kills Vritra with a club. And the Vaidic story must be a Nature-myth, because the Vedas expressly explain that the cows are clouds, the lowing is thunder, the club is the lightning, and Indra, on this occasion, the blue sky. But why is the interpretation given by the Vaidic philosophers to be accepted without examination, when we reject the teaching of the Stoics, who interpreted Rhea as matter, and Zeus, Posidon, and Hades as fire, water, and air respectively, in accordance with the Stoic philosophy of the universe? I submit it as a possibility, worth consideration at least, that we have here an ordinary folk-tale: the trick of using the bulls to make the cows reveal their hiding-place is like the trick in the folk-tale about the groom of Darius who caused his master's horse to neigh and so secured the Persian empire to Darius. The story may have been told of some clever fellow (not necessarily or probably of a god) in pro-ethnic Aryan times, or it may have been hit on by Hindoo and Italian story-tellers independently. Once invented, however, it was used by each of these two peoples in a characteristic manner. The learned Roman, whose object was to explain the origin of the customs, cults, institutions, &c., of Rome, seized on it as the obvious explanation of two facts which required explanation, viz., first, how the altar to Jupiter Inventor came into existence; and second, why the offering made in gratitude for the recovery of lost property, was an ox. The learned Hindoo, on the other hand, had the satisfaction of showing that even the stories with which (alone or chiefly) the common people were acquainted bore unsuspected witness to the truth of the religion he taught. But to return to our interpretation of the "fashions and customes" of Rome as survivals of a stage of religion earlier than polytheism.

A second difficulty remains. Distinguished writers on the philosophy of religion hold that polytheism is not developed out of fetichism or animism, but is primitive and underived from any earlier stage. The survivals, then, which Plutarch records, could not point to the existence of an earlier stage. Here, again, it is not for me to handle such high themes as the philosophy of religion. I am bound down to the humbler task of noting the simple fact that, until borrowed from Hellas, polytheism was unknown in Italy.

This is a very bare statement—so naked as almost to amount to a literary impropriety. I must, therefore, take three sections to clothe it.

II. Italian Gods.

That some of the great gods of Rome were but Greek gods borrowed is universally admitted (see e.g. Mommsen's History of Rome, i. 186 ff., or Ihne, i. 119). Even so strong a supporter of the theory of a Græco-Italian period as Roscher admits unreservedly that the mythology, worship, and the very name of Apollo were borrowed in early but still historic times (Lexikon, i. 446). When, then, we find Plutarch putting the question why the temples of Æsculapius and Vulcan were built outside Rome (Romane Questions, 94 and 47), we at once surmise that these were imported gods, whose worship was indeed sanctioned and ordained by the Roman State but was not admitted within the sacred circle of the pomœrium, reserved for the temples of indigenous Roman gods. In the case of Æsculapius we have historical proof that his was an imported worship; in consequence of a pestilence in Rome in B.C. 293 the god was fetched from Epidaurus, and the temple in question was erected two years afterwards.^[1] We do not happen to have any similar historical record of the introduction of Vulcan's worship, but the name of the god, be it Cretan or Etruscan, is foreign.^[2]

Having eliminated these and other loan-gods, we find that the genuine Italian deities which remain fall into two classes. The one class consists of such abstractions as Forculus, the spirit of doors; Cardea, that of hinges; Limentinus, that of the threshold, &c., which can scarcely be dignified by the name of gods, but are rather spirits, and amply warrant Chantepie de la Saussaye's remark that Roman religion was still steeped in animism.^[3] The other class includes such gods as Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Diana, Venus, Hercules, &c. It is necessary to note, however, that the worship even of these gods can be proved to have been considerably Hellenised in historic times:^[4] some of their ritual and all their mythology was borrowed from Greece, as we shall subsequently see. And when the loan-myths and loan-cults have been removed, the genuine Italian gods stand forth essentially and fundamentally different from those of Greece.^[5] Here, too, we may note that if comparative mythologists adhere to their principle of not identifying the gods of different nations, unless their names can be shown by comparative philology to be identical, they must admit that Mars and Ares, Venus and Aphrodite, Diana and Artemis, Juno and Hera, and all the other pairs of deities which the ancients identified, are, with the sole exception of Jupiter and Zeus and of Vesta and Hestia, not of cognate but of diverse origin. In fine, the differences between Greek and Italian gods are fundamental and original: the resemblances can be shown to be due to borrowing in historic times.

There is, however, one of the great Roman gods who was never identified with any Hellenic deity, Janus. Now, although Janus ranks with Jupiter and Mars in the Roman system as an indubitable god, yet in origin and function he is not to be distinguished from those inferior, animistic powers to whom the title of spirit is the highest that can be assigned. Janus is the spirit that resides in or presides over door-openings (ianus, ianua), just as Forculus has to do with doors (fores), Limentinus with the threshold (limen), and Cardea with the hinges (cardo). He is also the "spirit of opening,"^[6] who was to be invoked at the commencement of every act. Plutarch's questions why he should be represented with two heads, and why the year should begin with the month named after him, January (R. Q., 22 and 19), are thus at once explained: "The double-head looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways;" and in January, "after the rest of the middle of winter, the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh."^[7]

That the door or the threshold is the seat of a tutelary spirit or genius is a belief familiar enough in folk-lore: the door must not be banged,^[8] nor wood chopped on the threshold,^[9] for fear of disturbing him. He is apt to disappear, taking the luck of the house with him, if a cat is maliciously buried under the door-sill,^[10] or if human hair is so buried.^[11] The importance of the door as a possible entrance for evil spirits, or exit for lucky ones, is manifest in many customs, e.g., nailing a horse-shoe on the door or sticking a knife into the door, and in such beliefs as that when a door opens (apparently) of itself, a spirit is entering.

Whether the Italian spirit of the doorway, who in origin is indistinguishable from the similar though nameless spirits to be found elsewhere, was capable by his own unaided efforts of raising himself to the rank of a god, is matter for speculation. What is clear is that he had not the chance: the introduction of Greek polytheism into Italy promoted him without exertion on his part.

As, thus far, I have assumed a distinction between "gods" and "spirits," and have also assumed that a belief in the latter may exist without polytheism and precede it, it will be well here to state explicitly the distinction. And that I may not be suspected of drawing the distinction so as to suit my own ends, I shall here borrow from a standard work, Chantepie de la Saussaye's Religionsgeschichte (i. 90). De la Saussaye notes five characteristics involved in the conception of "gods." First, they are related to one another as members of a family or community, and as subject to one god, who is either lord of all, or at any rate primus inter pares. Second, with the growth of art, they are represented plastically and are made in the image of man. Third, as ethics advance, moral benefits are associated with their worship. Hence, in the fourth place, the gods are conceived as personal, individual beings, ideally good and beautiful. Finally, the human intellect demands that the relations of the gods to one another and to Nature should be co-ordinated into a system, and so theogonies and cosmogonies are invented.

Now, if these be the marks whereby gods are distinguished from spirits, I submit that, before the introduction of Greek gods and cults, the Romans had not advanced as far as polytheism, but were still in the purely animistic stage. Here again, to avoid the temptation of interpreting the evidence unduly in favour of the conclusion to which it seems to me to point, I will confine myself to quotations. Ihne (Hist. of Rome, i. 118) says that to the Romans, before the period of Hellenic influence, "the gods were only mysterious spiritual beings, without human forms, without human feelings and impulses, without human virtues or weaknesses.... Though the divine beings were conceived as male or female, they did not join in marriage or beget children.... No genuine Roman legend tells of any race of nobles sprung from gods." Again, "The original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them" (Mommsen, i. 183). "A simple spear, even a rough stone, sufficed as a symbol" (Ihne, 119). Roman religion had nothing to do with morality: "it was designed for use in practical life" (Ibid. 120). "The religion of Rome had nothing of its own peculiar growth even remotely parallel to the religion of Apollo investing earthly morality with its halo of glory" (Mommsen, 172). Mommsen's observation that "the hero-worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans" (174) is explained by the fact that a hero is a being of human origin raised by good deeds to the rank of a god, and the Romans had no gods. Myths about the love-adventures of the gods and theogonies were unknown to early Rome.^[12] An Italian cosmogony has not yet been discovered, and even the wide-spread belief in the union of Father Sky and Mother Earth had not been evolved in Italy.

In fine "the beings which the Romans worshipped were rather numina than personal gods."^[13] Even the spirits whom we can trace back under definite names to the purely Italian period, such as Jupiter, Juno, Vesta, Mars, are not individual, personal beings. Each of these names is the name of a class of spirits. "Each community of course had its own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all" (Mommsen, i. 175). Each household had its own Vesta. There were many Jupiters, many Junos. In England, in the same way, the name of Puck, who is a definite individual personality in one stage of our fairy mythology, was originally a class-name of the spirits whom, as Burton says in his Anatomy, "we commonly call poukes."

I will conclude this section with quotations from two distinguished authorities on Mythology, who would both dissent from the views which have been advanced above, but whose words seem to me to bear unintentional testimony in favour of those views. E. H. Meyer, in his Indogermanische Mythen (ii. 612), says, "Roman religion seldom displays more than the elementary rudiments, or rather let us say the last remnants of mythology," and "whereas the cult of the greater gods is known to us in a form greatly affected by Hellenism, ... the local gods usually scarcely rise above the rank of spirits (sich meistens kaum über daemonischen Rang erheben)." Preller, in his Römische Mythologie (i. 48), says, "The Romans' belief in gods would be termed more rightly pandæmonism than polytheism.... One is involuntarily reminded of those Pelasgians of Dodona who, according to Herodotus, assigned neither names nor epithets to their gods.... Indeed, most of the names of the oldest Roman gods have such a shifting, indefinite meaning, that they can scarcely be regarded as proper names, as the names of persons."

III. Italian Cults.

The Italians borrowed cults as well as gods from Greece, but "these external additions gathered round the kernel of the Roman religion without affecting or transforming its inmost core" (Ihne, i. 119). The distinguishing characteristic of the religion of Rome is that "it was designed for use in practical life" (Ibid. 120), "The god of the Italian was above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very solid earthly objects" (Mommsen, i. 181). In fact, the Italian god was a fetich, i.e., a magical implement; and in this sense of the word it is true that "the Romans saw everywhere and in all things the agency and the direction of the gods" (Ihne, i. 118). Every act of life was entangled in a complicated network of ritual.^[14] Every part of the house, the door, doorway, threshold, hinges, every process of farming, sowing, manuring, &c., every act of life from birth to burial, had its own particular spirit; and the object of the Roman with reference to each particular spirit was "to manage, and even in case of need to over-reach or to constrain him" (Mommsen, i. 177). Preller in his Römische Mythologie characterises the religion of Rome as, above all things, "a cultus-religion." We may add that in Rome, as in China, Assyria, and Babylonia, the cult was nothing but organised magic,^[15] the superstitious customs, charms, and incantations familiar to the folk-lorist in all countries were organised by the practical Roman and were state-established by him. In fine, the Romans "in their gods worshipped the abstract natural forces, to whose power man is conscious that he is subject every instant, but which he can win over and render subservient to his purposes by scrupulously obeying the external injunctions which the State issues for the worship of the gods."^[16]

A fundamental difference between the Greek and Roman religions manifests itself in the matter of magic. Magic was foreign to the Greeks, and was disliked by them: when it appears in their mythology, it is practised by foreigners—e.g., Medea, Circe, Hecate—and is "barbarous." In fact, magic belongs to the animistic stage, and is opposed to the higher tendencies of polytheism. The forces of Nature, conceived as numina rather than as moral ideals, may well be influenced by magic to the advantage of the savage; but to control a deity by means other than prayer and good life is antitheistic.

Finally, it is not accidental or unmeaning that, on the one hand, the Greeks had oracles while the Italians had none; and on the other hand, that in China and Babylon (which resemble Rome in other pertinent points) divination played as large and as official a part as at Rome. An oracle is the voice of a god; whereas divination is simply sympathetic magic inverted.^[17]

IV. Italian Myths.

In sect. 1 it has been said that the Italians had no Nature-myths. The reason why they had none should now be clear: the Italians had no Nature-gods. The sky-spirit, Jupiter, was undoubtedly distinguished from the vault of heaven by the primitive Italians, but he was not generically different from the spirits of vegetation, of sowing, of manuring, &c., and he seems to have been even of inferior dignity to the spirit of doorways.^[18] The earth, on the other hand, does not seem to have been conceived of as a spirit even, much less as a goddess; but, if worshipped at all, was worshipped as a fetich.^[19] Hence, the absence from Italy of any trace of the myth of the origin of all living creatures from a union between the earth and the sky.

Indeed, if by a myth we mean a tale told about gods or heroes, there are no Italian myths.^[20] Myths attached to Greek loan-gods were borrowed with the gods from Greece. Myths in which Italian gods figure were borrowed or invented when the Italian gods were identified with Greek gods. Thus the Golden Age myth, for instance, can be referred to the time (A.U.C. 257) when Saturnus was identified with Kronos.^[21] And of course, all the myths in which Æneas appears, and the whole mythical connection between Rome and Greece or Troy, are late.^[22] Evander,^[23] again, who figures in various passages of the Romane Questions, owes his existence wholly and solely to the attempt to connect Rome with Greece.

If, on the other hand, under the head of myth we include "the popular explanation of observed facts," then early Roman history, as Ihne says (i. 17), "is really nothing more than a string of tales, in which an attempt is made to explain old names, religious ceremonies and monuments, political institutions and antiquities, and to account for their origin." Some examples of this may be drawn from the Romane Questions. Marriage by capture has left traces behind it in the wedding customs of many countries, and the meaning of these survivals is usually wholly forgotten. But the historic consciousness of the Romans was so far alive to the actual facts of the case that the mock capture was explained as the commemoration of an actual historical rape—the Rape of the Sabines. Thus were explained the lifting of the bride over the threshold (Q. R. 19), the use of a javelin point to divide the bride's hair (Ibid. 87), the hymeneal cry Talassio (Ibid. 31), and the fact that maids might not (though widows might) marry on festival days (Ibid. 105). The first of these customs is probably a survival from marriage by capture, and the last is indirectly connected with it. In Rome,^[24] as in many other places,^[25] the lamentations of the bride who was actually captured survived in the formal, extravagant lamentations of the bride who, in quieter times, was more peacefully won; and these cries would have been of bad omen on a day dedicated to the worship of the gods. Lamentation seems not to have been required of widows. The use of an iron javelin point is probably due to the dangers which, in the opinion of primitive man, attend on those about to marry, and require to be averted by the use of iron,^[26] from the head^[27] especially. The origin of the cry Talassio is beyond recovery.^[28]

But though the chief branch of Italian folk-tales consisted of popular explanations of observed facts, we can detect traces of those other folk-tales which from the beginning must have been designed simply and solely to gratify man's inherent desire for tales of adventure and the marvellous. Here it must suffice to point to two of the Romane Questions. In the fourth question we have a tale told of successful trickery on the part of Servius Tullius, which may well have formed part of some story of a Master Thief; and in Romane Questions 36, the nightly visits of Fortuna through the window to her lover, Servius Tullius, at once remind us of the "soul-maidens" and "swan-maidens," who visit, and eventually desert, their human lover through the window or the keyhole^[29]—the orthodox means of entrance and exit for spirits from the time of Homer at least.

IV. The Soul.

The customs and beliefs, the superstitious practices and supernatural beings, of modern European folk-lore are sometimes explained as the wrecks and remnants of the Pagan polytheism which preceded Christianity. And if the Aryan peoples were from the very beginning polytheists; if the Hellenes and the Hindoos, the Teutons and the Scandinavians, brought their myths and their cults with them from the original Aryan home, then this explanation seems more reasonable than that which proceeds on a mere conjecture, a pure assumption that the Aryan religion was animistic ere it was polytheistic; for then we are obliged to relegate Aryan animism almost to the æon "of chaos and eternal night,"—at any rate, to an abysm of time which is such that neither linguistic palæontology nor any other science has dared

But if the proposition submitted in the previous sections be sound, if in early but still historic times Italian religion was still in a stage anterior to polytheism, then Aryan animism is no longer a mere assumption, and need no longer be thrust back into pro-ethnic times. Early Italian customs and beliefs will not be the débris of a previous polytheism, and it will therefore be unreasonable to explain their counterparts in modern folk-lore as mutilated myths or as the cult of gods degraded but worshipped still.

Plutarch, in the fifth of his Romane Questions (p. 8 below), propounds an interesting problem: Why are they who have beene falsly reported dead in a strange countrey, although they returne home alive, not received nor suffred to enter directly at the dores, but forced to climbe up to the tiles of the house, and so to get down from the roufe into the house? This remarkable custom continued to be practised long after its origin and object had been forgotten; for Plutarch relates a tale which is obviously a popular explanation, invented to account for a practice the rationale of which had become unintelligible.^[30] Hard, however, as Plutarch's question appears at first sight, it may by the aid of modern folk-lore and savage custom be explained. We have to note, in the first place, that the mode of entry prescribed for the returned traveller is not spontaneously adopted by him; and presumably, therefore, is not prescribed in his interest: it is enforced by his relatives, and probably for their own protection. In the next place, though the traveller himself knows, of course, that he has not returned from that bourne from which no traveller returns, his relatives have no such assurance: it may be, indeed, that he did not die whilst away, as they were informed or led to believe; but, on the other hand, he may be "the ghost of their dear friend dead," seeking to obtain an entrance into his old home. The reasonable course for them to pursue, therefore, is to treat him as though he were a ghost: if he is no ghost, it will do him no harm; if he is, they will have protected themselves.

Thus far our explanation is hypothetical: to verify the hypothesis it is necessary to show that the dead are or were as a matter of fact treated as the Roman custom prescribes that the soi disant living man shall be treated. That the spirits of the dead are considered unwelcome visitors both in modern folk-lore and by savage man, has been insisted on most recently by Mr. G. L. Gomme.^[31] I will, therefore, only add one or two instances of the precautions taken to prevent the return of the deceased to his home.^[32] The first thing is to get the soul out of the house; this may be effected by sweeping out the house and by flapping dusters about, care being taken to shake and turn upside down all vessels, meal-boxes, &c., in which the soul might take refuge. Then the coffin must be carried foot foremost through the door; for if the corpse's face be turned to the house, the ghost can return. In Siam they run the corpse three times round the house, apparently on the same principle as, in the game of blind-man's buff, the blind-man is spun round in order to make him lose his bearings. In Bohemia they turn the coffin about cross-wise, outside the house-door, to prevent the dead man from coming back.

More pertinent for our present purpose are the precautions taken to prevent the dead from obtaining access to the house through the door. The safest course is to carry the corpse out, not through the door, for that gives the dead man the right of way which it is sought to bar, but through some opening which is specially made for the purpose and can be permanently closed. Thus the Hottentots make a breach through the wall for the purpose. The ancient Norsemen did the same.^[33] The Teutons, in pre-Christian times, dug a hole under the threshold and pulled the corpse through with a rope. In Christian times they only treated the bodies of criminals and suicides in this way, though in the thirteenth century Brother Berthhold of Regensburg recommended it in the case of heretics and usurers.

When circumstances make it difficult or impossible to construct a special exit of this kind for the corpse, then some other means is found to avoid carrying the corpse through the door. The Eskimo take the body through a window; and a window was in 1858 used in Sonneberg in the case of a hanged man; while even now in East Prussia, if several children have died one after another, the corpse of the next to die is conveyed through the window.

Eventually it comes to be considered sufficient if a special means of egress is provided, not for the corpse, which is not likely to "walk," but for the spirit, which may want to return. Thus in China, at the moment of death, a small hole is made through the roof; while the custom of opening the window, to allow the soul of the dying man to depart, is universal in Germany and not unknown in England.

Finally, all that is considered necessary to bar the right of way to the dead man's spirit is to close the house-door immediately after the departure of the corpse, and keep it closed until the return of the funeral party.

If the explanation which has now been given of Plutarch's fifth question be correct, we must ascribe to the early Italians beliefs and customs similar to or identical with those quoted above from modern folk-lore; and it will not be illegitimate to seek further parallels to Italian religion from the same source. Thus, in Romane Questions, 51, Plutarch inquires why the Lares Præstites are represented as clad in dog-skins and as having a dog by their side.^[34] Now, it is universally admitted that the Lar Familiaris of the Romans is the same as the house-spirit of the Teutons, and that both are the spirits of a deceased ancestor, the founder of the family and its spirit guardian. In the absence of any presumption to the contrary, we may conclude that the Lares Præstites were also spirits of deceased ancestors. The dog which accompanies the Lares was explained by the ancients as a symbolic representation of the fidelity and watch-dog functions of the Lares.^[35] So, too, the priests of ancient Egypt said that the animal forms in which their gods were represented were merely symbolical.^[36] But it may safely be laid down as a law in the evolution of religion that beast-worship is primitive, and that the theory of symbolism is but a via media whereby more elevated conceptions of deity are reconciled with the older and more savage worship. Analogy, then, is all in favour of the supposition that the Lares Præstites were originally conceived not in human shape, but in the form of dogs. What we require to confirm the analogy is evidence that the dead—if possible, evidence that guardian spirits—sometimes appear in the shape of a dog. As a matter of fact, the belief that a dead man's spirit may manifest itself in the likeness of a black dog still survives in Germany.^[37] As for the guardian spirit, I would suggest that the Mauthe dog of Peel Castle is a house-spirit; for as the hearth was the peculiar seat of the Lar Familiaris and of the Hûsing or Herdgota, and as the English house-spirit

so the Mauthe dog, "as soon as candles were lighted, came and lay down before the fire."^[38] From this point of view we may consider that the black dog, which in modern folk-lore comes and lies down or howls before a house, in token that one of the inmates is about to die, was originally a spirit summoning the inmate to join the dead. This belief, it may further be conjectured, has been incorporated into Hindoo mythology, where a dog acts as the messenger of the death-god, Yama; and probably the Greek dog, Cerberus, was taken up into the literary mythology of Hellas from the same folk-belief.

Finally, we may here notice the fifty-second of Plutarch's Questions, wherein he wonders why a dog was sacrificed to Genita Mana, and a prayer made to her that none born in the house should become Manes. Genita Mana was, as her name plainly indicates, a spirit of birth and of death; and the prayer was such as might properly be offered to her. The sacrifice may be explained on the principle laid down by Professor Robertson Smith,^[39] that an animal sacrificed to a deity was itself originally the deity. That one and the same spirit should have to do with "the child from the womb and the ghost from the tomb," points to the existence of a belief among the Romans similar to one held by the Algonkins. "Algonkin women who wished to become mothers flocked to the side of a dying person, in the hope of receiving and being impregnated by the passing soul."^[40]

Let us now turn to another point in which early Italian beliefs and modern folk-lore mutually illustrate each other. On the origin of fairies various theories have been held, and without denying that fairies are sometimes the representatives of earlier gods, sometimes of still earlier satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and wild men of the wood, we may recognise that they are sometimes spirits of the departed. In the first place, as the Italians called the dead "the good," manes, so in England and in Ireland fairies are "the good people."^[41] Next, fairies are small; and the savage conceives the soul of man as a smaller man. It is, according to Hurons, "a complete little model of the man himself," like the man, but smaller, of course, because, as the Australian blacks explain, it is within the man's breast.^[42] According to Kaffir ideas, the world of manes is exactly like that of the living, only much smaller, and the dead are themselves but mannikins.^[43] Again, the Teutonic house-spirit on the one hand is admittedly a deceased ancestor, and on the other is an indubitable fairy. Further, fairies are sometimes explicitly stated in folk-tales to be deceased spirits.^[44]

Now, one of most marked differences between the Greek and the Roman modes of worship was that the Greeks worshipped with their heads uncovered, the Romans with heads covered, velato capite. Roman antiquaries explained the practice as due to fear lest the worshipper should see anything of evil omen during his prayer. But I submit that we must connect it with the folk-belief that fairies resent being seen by mortals. "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die." If fairies were originally departed souls, the fear and the danger of seeing them is at once explained. On the other hand, the Roman custom of worshipping velato capite dates from a time before the introduction of polytheism, and must therefore have been attached originally to the worship of some beings other than gods. It is at least plausible, therefore, to conjecture that it was a precaution adopted in the worship of deceased ancestors and of spirits, which, like Genita Mana, are best explained as spirits of the departed. The conjecture is somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Romans veiled their heads at the funeral of father or mother (R. Q. 14).

V. Genii.

No form of religion is easily or at once rooted out, even by a new religion. A modus vivendi has to be found between the old faith and the new. The animal, which was once itself worshipped, is tolerated merely as the symbol of some divine attribute. The nixies continue to ply their old calling under the new name of Old Nick. The sacrifices to the dead, condemned by the Indiculus Superstitionum, are subsequently licensed by the Church as the Feast of All Souls.^[45] Hence it comes about that what means one thing to the apostle of the new religion is long understood as something very different by the reluctant convert. The devil of folk-lore has attributes quite different from those assigned to him in any scheme of Christian theology.

If, therefore, polytheism was, as I have suggested, an importation into Italy, forced by the State on a people not yet prepared for anything higher than animism and ancestor-worship, we should expect to find the borrowed worship of a Greek loan-god sometimes concealing a native Italian cult of very dissimilar nature. Instances of the kind are forthcoming, and this section will be devoted to some of them.

The spirits which after the death of the body were termed manes by the Romans, were during its life called genii (or in the case of women Junones). The belief in genii was not borrowed from Greece. How primitive it is may be seen from two facts. First, it is itself the essence of animism, for not only had every man a genius, but every place and every thing had, in the belief of the Romans, a soul, to which the same name, genius, was given.^[46] Next, the genius was, I submit, the "external soul," which, as Mr. Frazer has shown, appears in the folk-tales of every Aryan nation, and in the religions of many savage peoples. The genius of a man did not reside inside the man. Amongst the Romans, as amongst the Zulus, it resided in a serpent. As, according to the Banks Islanders, "the life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamanin,"^[47] so with the Romans, the man's health depended on his genius.^[48] When the serpent which was the genius of the father of the Gracchi was killed, Tiberius died;^[49] and, as all Romans were liable to the same mischance, these snakes were carefully protected from all harm, were reared in the house and the bed-chamber, and consequently grew so numerous, that Pliny says, had their numbers not been kept down by occasional conflagrations, they would have crowded out the human inhabitants of Rome.^[50]

This belief in the genius, however etherealised and spiritualised the form in which it appears in Horace or was held by highly-educated Romans, continued even in Imperial times amongst all other classes as primitive as it was tenacious. Its hold over the ordinary Italian mind was much greater than the Hellenised gods ever secured; for, in order to make them even comprehensible, the average Italian had to suppose that these fashionable, State-ordained gods were really worked by genii—just as it is self-evident to the savage that, if a locomotive engine moves, it is because it has horses inside. This, I suggest, is the explanation, in accord with the principle laid down at the beginning of this section, which must be given of the remarkable fact that, beginning from B.C. 58,^[51] and in ever-increasing numbers afterwards, inscriptions are found which ascribe a genius to Apollo, Asclepius, Mars, Juno, Jupiter, &c.

In this case Italian animism has held its own, not unsuccessfully, against imported polytheism. Our second instance, however, will show it less successful. When polytheism was spreading from Hellas over Italy, there would be no difficulty in adding the myths and cult of the Greek god Zeus bodily on to the worship of the Italian sky-spirit Jupiter. Nor would the process be much harder even when the Greek god and the Italian spirit were of totally different origin (as e.g. Hermes and Mercury, Kronos and Saturn), provided that some point of resemblance, in attribute or function, could be discovered between them. It was only one, and the least important of Hermes' functions, to protect traders, but it was quite enough to lead to the identification of the Greek god with the Italian spirit of gain (Mercurius, from merces). The case of Heracles, however, presented more difficulty; he was a hero, and the very conception of a hero was new to the Italians. Being new, it was, not unnaturally, misunderstood. The nearest parallel which Italian religion offered to a being who was in a way a man and yet was also a sort of god was the genius, who also was in a way the man himself, and yet was worshipped like a god. Heracles, therefore, was identified with the genius, his name was Latinised into the form Hercules (cf. Æsculapius, from Asclepios), and the cults of the two were amalgamated. This amalgamation is the source and the explanation of some of Plutarch's Roman Questions. Plutarch was puzzled by the fact that on the one hand some elements in the cult of Hercules had counterparts in the worship of the Greek god, while on the other hand there were elements which received no explanation from a comparison of the cult of the Greek Heracles. Thus Plutarch is surprised to find an altar common to Hercules and to the Muses (R. Q. 59); but this is simply a loan from the ritual of the Greek Heracles, Musagêtês. On the other hand, as Plutarch informs us (R. Q. 60), there was an altar of Hercules from which women were excluded. This is a non-Greek element in the cult of Hercules, with which we may safely compare the fact, that whereas a man might swear "by his Hercules," a woman might not. Here the imported god has taken the place of the native genius both in the oath and at the altar; for the reason why the oath "me hercule" was restricted to men is that, until Hercules and the genius were identified, a man swore by his genius and a woman by her Juno. Again, in the time before Italy was invaded by the gods of Greece, in the time when temples were as yet unknown, the genius was worshipped and invoked, like other spirits, in the open air; and even after the Italians had learned from the Greeks that the gods were shaped in the likeness of men, and, like men, must have houses, an oath was felt to be more sacred and more binding if taken in the open air in the old fashion, than if sworn in the new way under a roof.^[52] Eventually, however, the old custom died out, and in Plutarch's day it was only children who were told that they must go out of doors if they wanted to swear "by Hercules" (R. Q. 28). Plutarch's attention was also arrested by the custom of giving tithes to Hercules (R. Q. 18). The practice is undoubtedly purely and characteristically Italian; but there is no evidence to show whether it was ever the custom to offer tithes to the genius. Another point, however, which is noted by Plutarch (R. Q. 90) in the cult of Hercules, may be more satisfactorily explained. When sacrifice was being offered to Hercules, no dog was suffered to be seene, within the purprise and precinct of the place where the sacrifice is celebrated. Now, if Hercules represents the genius, and if the dog was the shape in which a departed spirit appears, then the danger lest the genius should be tempted away by the Manes is great enough to account for the prohibition.

This identification of Heracles with the genius shows in a striking way how far the Italians were from having reached the belief in personal individual gods at the time when Greek religion found its way into Italy, and how artificially Greek polytheism was superimposed on native beliefs. There were as many genii virorum as there were living men, and yet they were identified with Heracles.^[53] To the Italian convert, doubtless, it seemed nothing strange that every man should have his Hercules; while his Greek teacher probably never fully realised the catechumen's point of view.

The case is parallel to that of Hestia and Vesta. Both before and after the appearance in Italy of the anthropomorphised Hestia, every Roman household revered its own "hearth-spirit;" yet this class of spirits came to be identified with the personal individual goddess from Greece. Doubtless, also, in course of time Romans who shook off animism and became true polytheists explained the relation between their "hearth-spirits" and the State-goddess by regarding the former as so many manifestations of the latter. But it is, I submit, a mistake on the part of modern mythologists to accept this piece of late theology as primitive—unless, indeed, we are also prepared to say that the Lares were regarded as so many manifestations of one Lar, or all the many Manes as manifestations of one dead man. The genii virorum, at any rate, were not, in the first instance, so many manifestations of Hercules: on the contrary, they existed (in Italy), to begin with, and Heracles afforded them a collective name and a Greek cult.

In the same way, I submit, the original Italian Juno was no Nature-deity, no moon-goddess—the name was that of a class of spirits, like the correlative term genii virorum. There were many Junones, as there were many fauns in Italy, many satyrs and nymphs in Greece, many Pucks and fairies in England. When the Italians learnt that Hera was the goddess under whose protection the Greek women were, they naturally thought of the Juno who was the guardian-spirit of each Italian woman, and applied to Juno the cult and myths that belonged to Hera. Hence the answer to Plutarch's question, why were the months sacred to Juno? (R. Q. 77). Because they were sacred to Hera.

But there were other spirits whom Italian women invoked besides their Junones, such as Juga, who yoked man and wife, Matrona, Pronuba, Domiduca, Unxia, Cinxia, Fluonia, Lucina, and other departmental spirits or indigetes, whose names appear in the Indigitamenta. These spirits, when once Juno had become a personal individual deity, came to be explained as special manifestations of the goddess, who was consequently called Juno Juga, Juno Matrona, &c.^[54]

VI. Di Indigetes.

Before Greek gods and myths were known to them, the Italians worshipped not only Lares, Manes, Genii, and Junones, but also the spirits known as Di Indigetes. These spirits were not conceived in human or in animal form. They had not human parts or passions. They did not form a community. They had no common abode. There is nothing in Italian religion corresponding to the Olympus of Greek mythology. They did not marry or give in marriage. Above all, what distinguishes them both from Greek gods and from the tree-spirits, which also were worshipped by the Italians, is that they were rather numina or forces than beings. They were the forces which regulated and controlled all human actions, psychological and physiological, and through which all the work of man's hands could alone be brought to a favourable issue. When, however, we come to examine these numina, we find that the name of the Indiges is simply the name of the action which he controls: the Indiges of sowing is Saturnus; of remembering, Minerva; of suckling, Rumina, and so on. It is a canon of savage logic that he who possesses the name of a person or thing has that person or thing in his power; hence the Roman's belief that he could control any process, psychical or physical, if only he could put a name to it. This primitive form of magic was organised by the Roman State. The pontiffs were intrusted with the duty of drawing up catalogues (indigitamenta) of all the stages and processes of a man's life, from his begetting and birth to his death and burial; and as the State was but a community of farmers, similar catalogues were made of all the agricultural operations by which crops are raised. To be effectual, it was necessary that these lists should be complete. As the Roman could avert or remedy any evil by simply naming the proper spirit, it was essential that his roll of spirits should have no omissions. Then, if he were in doubt what spirit to name, he could make assurance doubly sure by naming all.

Let it not be imagined that this State-organised magic, though it appear to us inconsistent with civilisation, is mere matter of inference, or belongs purely to pre-historic times. Not only did it survive the introduction of polytheism, it was a firm article of Roman faith in the most glorious days of the Republic, and until B.C. 211 or later, the belief was so living as to give birth continually to fresh spirits, as fresh departments of human activity were opened up.^[55] Nor did it cease then. It changed, but it did not die. In the worship of such abstractions as Fortuna, Spes, Juventas, Concordia, Pietas, Libertas, Felicitas, Annona, &c., we have evidence that abstract names exercised as great a hold over the minds of Romans of the Empire as they had over the earliest Italians.

On some indigetes Greek cults and myths were grafted, and these numina, which were in truth but nomina, henceforth lived as gods. Mercurius was declared to be Hermes. Minerva, the spirit of memory, was seen to be Athênê, the goddess of wisdom. Saturnus was identified with Kronos, and was henceforth worshipped in the Greek fashion with uncovered head (R. Q. 13). Opis was identified with Dêmêtêr, Venus with Aphroditê, and Libitina, the numen of funerals, was interpreted, by a pedantic etymological confusion with Libentina, as a bye-name of the new goddess (R. Q. 23). The indiges Liber^[56] was recognised in Dionysius Eleutherios (R. Q. 104).

In all these cases the identification proceeded on a fancied resemblance in name or an actual similarity of function. There seems to be only one instance of identification based on similarity of cult, that of the Roman Matuta and the Greek Leucothea. According to Plutarch (R. Q. 16) maid-servants were excluded from the temples of both, except when the Dames of Rome, bringing in thither one alone and no more with them, fall to cuffing and boxing her about the eares and cheeks. Here the servant is the scapegoat, to whom are transferred the evils which may or might afflict the free women of the community, and the beating is done for purification. It is just conceivable that the Greek cult may have been borrowed by the Romans; but the use of a scapegoat and of beating in this way is so wide-spread over all the world, and so deeply seated in European folk-lore, that it is difficult to imagine it was unknown to the Romans. As a matter of fact, even in the Roman Questions, without going further, we have indications that both practices were known in Italy. In R. Q. 20 a myth is given, the earlier form of which is to be found in Macrobius (S. i. 12), who states that the Bona Dea was on a day scourged with myrtles. On the principle that customs often give rise to myths but cannot be originated by them, we may infer that the representative, or else the worshippers of the Bona Dea, were purified by scourging. Still less can it be doubted after Mannhardt's exhaustive investigation (Myth. Forsch., pp. 72 ff.), that the Luperci, described in R. Q. 68, drove out the evil spirits of disease, sterility, &c., by the blows from their scourges. Again, the expulsion of evil tends in many places to become periodic; a day or season is devoted annually to the driving out of all devils and evil spirits, after which the community is expected to live sober and clean. The community, not unnaturally, indulges in a kind of carnival immediately before this season, and allows itself all sorts of license: slaves behave as though they were masters, men dress up in women's clothes, &c. This, presumably, is the explanation of the fact related by Plutarch (R. Q. 55), that upon the Ides of Januarie, the minstrels at Rome who plaied upon the hautboies, were permitted to goe up and downe the city disguised in women's apparell.^[57]

Though the influence of Hellenic religion failed to transform the many other indigetes into gods, still it affected their cult in other ways. For one thing, it provided them now for the first time with temples or chapels. This innovation was doubtless found strange by the folk to whom the fashionable ideas from Hellas penetrated slow and late. In the case of Carmenta it must have seemed particularly strange. Carmenta was one of the several indigetes whose power was manifested in the various processes of gestation;^[58] and she was invoked as Porrima (Prorsa or Antevorta) or Postverta, according as the child came into the world head or foot foremost. From the mention of a saxum Carmentæ,^[59] near which was the porta Carmentalis, and near which the temple in question was erected, we may venture to infer that this rock was originally the local habitation of the spirit. Why then needed she to have a temple built? This was a point which, to the popular mind, required explanation; and a popular explanation was accordingly forthcoming, which has fortunately been preserved to us by Plutarch. It starts from a folk-etymology or confusion between the name Carmenta and the word carpenta, meaning "coaches," and may be read at length in R. Q. 56.

There remains one other indiges who is mentioned in the Romane Questions—Rumina (R. Q. 57) the numen of suckling. As the temple of Carmenta was erected near the saxum Carmentæ, so the sacellum of Rumina was built near the ficus Ruminalis; and as we may conjecture that the rock was in the nature of a fetich, so we may infer that Rumina was a tree-spirit. It is easy to understand why a fig-tree was chosen as the abode of the spirit of suckling; the sap of this tree resembles milk and was known to the Romans as lac. The fact reported by Plutarch,^[60] that milk, not wine, was offered in the cult of Rumina, is quite in accord with the principles of sympathetic magic.

The worship of this spirit bears every mark of hoar antiquity, and it was worked into the legend of the foundation of Rome by the device of making the wolf suckle the twins under the ficus Ruminalis.

VII. Tree and Field Cults.

Whenever two peoples come into contact with each other for the first time, a comparison of religions is set up; and one of the first-fruits of this earliest exercise of the comparative study of religions is that identification of gods and borrowing of cults and myths to which the term "syncretism" is applied. The part played by syncretism in the history of Italian religion is of singular importance: the Italian's misty, vaporous belief in abstract, impersonal spirits was precipitated into premature polytheism by the introduction of the anthropomorphic gods of Greece. Fortunately, the process being premature, was, and to the end remained, incomplete; and we are therefore able to employ the survivals from the older form of belief so as to form some idea of the original Italian religion. To the last, many spirits resisted the individualising process, which is the essence and condition of polytheism: the Lares and the Manes not only never became gods, but none of them was dignified by a proper name, or attained even so much individuality as Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Not can such general abstract appellations as Bona Dea, Dea Dia, be regarded as personal names, i.e., as the names of definite, individual, personal beings: they have not the personality of Venus or Vulcan, and yet they were the beings whom the people at large worshipped in preference to the State-gods, whose cult and myths were fashionably Hellenised.

She who, under the influence of Greek religion, became the goddess Diana, was originally a tree-spirit, having no personal name, but known only by an appellation as general and abstract as that of Bona Dea. The proof that the qualities and attributes of the Greek goddess Artemis were attached by syncretism to the Italian tree-spirit is brought to light by two of Plutarch's penetrating questions (R. Q. 3 and 4), why harts' horns are set up in all the temples of Diana save that on Mount Aventine, in which are ox-horns? and why men are excluded from one particular temple of the same goddess? These differences in cult obviously point to the worship of different goddesses under the same name; and, as a matter of fact, we know first that harts were sacred to the Greek goddess, Artemis, whereas the genuine Italian Diana was the goddess of oxen; next, we know that the identification of Artemis and Diana was effected by Servius Tullius.^[61] To understand the exclusion of men from the temple in the Patrician Street, however, we must inquire into the nature of the Italian Diana. With this object, we may either assume that the pro-ethnic Aryans were polytheists, and that therefore the primitive Italians also worshipped Nature-gods; in which case, starting from the etymology of the word Diana (from the root div, "shine"), we must either at once make Diana a moon-goddess,^[62] and thus account for the fact that she was a goddess of child-birth, and therefore men were excluded from her temple. But this seems improbable even to a writer in Roscher's Lexikon (Birt), who very properly notes (p. 1007) that "it is doubtful whether the belief that the moon influenced child-birth can be shown to be Italian." Birt, therefore, interprets the name to mean "the bright goddess," i.e., the goddess of bright daylight, and boldly writes it down as a matter of course that the first attribute of a daylight or sky goddess is her close relation to vegetable nature, especially woods and forests. Those who find this mortal leap beyond their power to follow, and who prefer to argue to the original nature of the goddess from what we know of her cult as a matter of fact, rather than from hypotheses as to the Nature-myths of the primitive Aryans, will note first that her name is as purely general and abstract as that of the Dea Dia or the Bona Dea, and means simply a bright spirit, or possibly simply a spirit. Next, wherever Diana was worshipped in Italy, she was originally worshipped in woods and groves, e.g., in the forests on Mount Tifata, Mount Algidus at Anagnia, Corne, and Aricia. Indeed, in Aricia the place of her worship was simply called Nemus, and the goddess herself plain Nemorensis. In the next place, her worship is frequently associated with that of Silvanus,^[63] who is plainly a wood-spirit, and who is also a patron-spirit of domestic cattle.^[64] From this we may venture to class her with the "agrestes feminæ quas silvaticas vocant" of Burchard of Worms:^[65] she is a wood-spirit who became a goddess because of her likeness to the Greek Artemis. Her connection with child-birth does not indicate that she was a moon-goddess. Roman women in primitive times, like Swedish women, "twined their arms about a tree to ensure easy delivery in the pangs of child-birth; and we remember how, in our English ballads, women, in like time of need, 'set their backs against an oak.'"^[66] Finally, the annual washing and cleansing of the head, which Plutarch mentions in R. Q. 100, was done on a day sacred to Diana, probably because, on the one hand, women felt that they were under her protection specially, while, on the other, so great is the sanctity of the head amongst primitive peoples,^[67] that washing it is not to be undertaken lightly: "the guardian spirit of the head does not like to have the hair washed too often, it might injure or incommode him."^[68]

The Romane Questions afford another instance in which syncretism has obscured the original nature of an Italian field-spirit, and in which the cult of the Hellenised deity still betrays the primitive object of worship. In the pages of Virgil, Mars has so completely assumed the guise of the Greek Ares, that if we had only the verses and the mythology of the court-poet to instruct us, we could never even suspect that Mars had other functions than those of a war-god. When, however, we turn from myth to cult, and are confronted by the ceremony of the October horse, described in R. Q. 97, we find, that though Mars was sung as "Lenker der Schlachten," he was worshipped as the spirit that makes the corn to grow. At Rome the corn-spirit was represented as a horse, as it still is amongst the peasants of Europe, not only near Stuttgart, but in our own country, in Hertfordshire and in Shropshire. The fructifying power of the spirit is supposed in modern folk-lore and in Africa, as it was at Rome, to reside specially in the animal's tail, which therefore was preserved over the hearth of the king's house, in order to secure a good harvest next year. The antiquity of this custom at Rome, and the fact that it dates from long before the Romans knew anything of the Greek Ares, are shown by the fight for the horse's head waged between the inhabitants of the two wards, the Via Sacra and the Subura, a fight which shows that the ceremonial goes back to a time when the Subura and Rome were separate and independent villages.

In connection with the killing of the corn-spirit, we may note a passage of the Romane Questions (63) which has not yet taken its place in modern works on the subject. Speaking of the rex sacrorum, Plutarch says, "Neere unto Comitium, they use to have a solemn sacrifice for the good estate of the citie; which, so soone as ever this king hath performed, he taketh his legs and runnes out of the place as fast as ever he can." Necessary as it was, according to primitive notions, that the vegetation-spirit should be, as it were, decanted into a new vessel, when the animal in which he was for the time residing was threatened with infirmity and decay, still the killing of the sacred animal was a dangerous and semi-sacrilegious act. Hence in Greece, the man who killed the ox in the sacrifice known as the bouphonia ran away as soon as he had felled the animal, and was subsequently tried for murder, but was acquitted on the ground that the axe was the real murderer; and so the axe was found guilty and cast into the sea. The Roman regifugium is obviously a fragment of a similar rite. The folk-explanation treated it as a symbol commemorative of the expulsion of the Tarquinii.

VIII. Man-Worship.

The rules of life prescribed for the priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, are given in part by Plutarch (Q. R. 40, 44, 50, 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113),^[69] and are a signal instance of the necessity of explaining Roman cults, not by reference to the artificial mythology of the Vedas or to the civilised myths of Greece, but to the customs of peoples who are still steeped in animism. That a spirit may take up its abode as a Dryad in a tree or in an animal, as in the beasts worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, or may temporarily take possession of a human being, as Apollo possessed the Pythian priestess, is easily comprehended. But that a spirit should permanently dwell in a man, and that the man should exercise all the powers and receive all the worship that belong to the spirit, would be almost incredible were it not for the numerous instances of such worship collected by the erudition of Mr. Frazer.^[70] In Japan the sun-goddess dwelt in the Mikado; in Lower Guinea and among the Zapotecs of South Mexico the sun-spirit takes human form. In Cambodia the spirit of fire and the spirit of water manifest themselves in the (human) kings of fire and water. Rain-kings are found on the Congo, the Upper Nile, and among Abyssinian tribes. The weather-spirit is worshipped in the kings of Loango, Mombaza, Quiteva, the Banjars, and the Muyscas. In the South Sea Islands, generally, "every god can take possession of a man and speak through him."^[71]

In the next place, these divine kings or priests are all charged with a force which enables them to control the course of Nature. Lest, therefore, this force should be inadvertently and unintentionally discharged, with results disastrous to the recipient of the shock or to the universe at large, the divine priest or king must be insulated. And this insulation is effected by taboos: every action is taboo to him which might bring him into dangerous contact with others.^[72]

When, therefore, we learn that the Flamen Dialis was subject to a very large number of taboos, all of which find analogies, while some find their exact counterparts, in the taboos laid on the divine priests and kings previously mentioned; and when we further discover that Preller,^[73] on totally different grounds, considered the Flamen to have been "the living counterpart" of Jupiter, it seems not unreasonable to regard the Flamen Dialis as the human embodiment of the sky-spirit.

The Flamen, according to Plutarch (R. Q. 40), was forbidden to anoint his body in the open air, i.e. sub Jove; and of the Mikado we are told, "Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air."^[74] The Flamen was forbidden to touch meal or raw meat, i.e., meal or meat which might be consumed by others; so, too, the vessels used by the Mikado were "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."^[75]

For the many other taboos imposed on the Flamen, I must refer to Mr. Frazer's great work.^[76] I will here only mention one, which is not explicitly explained in the Golden Bough. If the Flamen's wife died, he had to resign (Q. R. 50). Now, it is obvious from this that a widowed Flamen was somehow dangerous or in danger, and that the danger was one which re-marriage would not avert. I submit, therefore, that a widowed Flamen was considered in danger of sudden death, and that this danger (a danger to the community, which might thus lose the sky-spirit) consisted in the probability that the soul of the departed wife might tempt away the soul of the living Flamen. In Burmah, proper precautions are taken to prevent a baby's soul from following that of its dead mother, or the soul of a bereaved husband or wife from rejoining the lost one, or to prevent the soul of a dead child "from luring away the soul of its playmate to the spirit-land."^[77] But accidents will happen, and it is so important for an agricultural community to have the sky-spirit under direct control, that the Romans were doubtless well advised in running no risks, and in transferring the spirit into another Flamen.

IX. Taboos.

In fairy tales it is not surprising that the hero should be forbidden to see his wife on certain days, or whilst she is washing, or at night, and that he should be required to take precautions lest he should take her unawares in one of the forbidden moments.^[78] But it is surprising to find that the prosaic Roman punctiliously observed fairy etiquette in these matters, and habitually behaved like an inhabitant of fairy-land. See R. Q. 9 and 65. It is also surprising to discover that in Italy, where, owing to "the vigorous development of the marital authority, regardless of the natural rights of persons as such," the wife's "moral subjection became transformed into legal slavery,"^[79] the wife was "exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking," because, according to Mommsen, those tasks were menial.^[80] The exemption is mentioned by Plutarch in R. Q. 85; but we must take leave to question Mommsen's explanation. The exemption is not an exemption, but a prohibition: it is identical with the taboo laid on the Flamen Dialis (R. Q. 109), and has the same object. Doubtless if a Roman ate food touched by a woman, "it would swell and inflame his mouth or throat," or have some disastrous effect. For that even indirect contact with women at certain periods, e.g. child-birth, &c., is highly dangerous, is a belief found amongst the Australian blacks and the Eskimo, the Indians of North America, and the Kafirs of South Africa. An Australian blackfellow, having been brought accidentally into this dangerous contact, died of terror within a fortnight.^[81] It is not strange, therefore, that the Romans, returning home after absence, if their wives were at home, used to send a messenger unto them before, for to give warning and advertisement of their comming. And we can understand that the primitive public for whom the fairy tales in question were composed found the incident of the violated taboo as thrilling and as full of "actuality" as a modern reader finds the latest sensational novel.

The belief that a mother and her new-born babe are peculiarly at the mercy of malevolent spirits is world-wide. In the fairy tales of Christian Europe the period of danger is terminated by baptism, until which time various precautions, such as burning a light in the chamber, must be observed.^[82] In ancient Italy the danger ended when the child received its name, which, as Plutarch (R. Q. 103) informs us, was on the ninth day after birth in the case of boys, on the eighth in the case of girls. Until that day a candle was to be kept lighted, and the spirit Candelifera was to be invoked. On that day the child was purified (which indicates an original taboo), and received the bulla, mentioned by Plutarch (R. Q. 102), to preserve him henceforth from evil spirits and the evil eye. Whether the bulla derived its virtue from the substances which were enclosed in it, as in a box, or from its moon shape, is uncertain. If the latter be the true explanation, we may compare the fact recorded by Plutarch (R. Q. 76), that those who are descended of the most noble and auncient houses of Rome carried little moones upon their shoes. The daughters of Sion also wore as amulets "round tires like the moon" (Isaiah, iii. 18). The moon-spirit sends disease or takes possession of the person who is "lunatick" or "moon-struck." But the spirit may be deluded, and will enter any moon-shaped object which the person attacked is wearing. The Chaldæans diverted the spirit of disease from the sick man by providing an image in the likeness of the spirit to attract the plague.^[83]

X.—Sympathetic Magic.

The traveller who has little or no acquaintance with the language of the land in which he is, resorts naturally to the language of gesture, and mimics the thing which he wishes to have done. Primitive man communicates his wishes to Nature in exactly the same way: if he wishes to have game caught in the trap which he sets, he first pretends to fall into it himself. He has not learnt to "interrogate" Nature in her own language by means of experiment and crucial instances, but he has a presentiment of the method of Concomitant Variations and of the Substitution of Similars. If a thing is itself beyond his reach, he substitutes its counterpart, its image or its name, or something related to it or connected with it, in confidence that any changes he may work in the one will be accompanied by concomitant variations in the other. Hence the reluctance shown by many savages to allow their likenesses to be taken or their names to be known, as with the name or the likeness the man himself would pass into the power of the stranger.^[84] So the Romans, as Plutarch informs us (R. Q. 61), kept the name of their tutelar god secret, for the same reason, as Plutarch acutely observes, as other nations kept the images of their gods chained;^[85] and for the same reason, we may add, as the Romans forbade the living counterpart of the sky-spirit to leave the city, viz., lest he should pass out of their control.

In the same spirit, the Romans would not allow a table to be completely stripped of food (R. Q. 64) or a light to be extinguished (75): the action might produce permanent effects. The same feeling prevailed or prevails with regard to the table in Chemnitz, though it is regarded as a sign of death if a light goes out of its own accord.^[86]

The practice of allowing the spoils taken from an enemy to rust—a practice which Plutarch (37) cannot comprehend—was doubtless a piece of sympathetic magic: as the armour rusted, the enemy's power of armed resistance would diminish.

Another interesting instance of sympathetic magic lurks in R. Q. 32. The images which, as Plutarch says, were thrown into the river, represented a spirit of vegetation or a corn-spirit; and the object of plunging them into the river was thereby to secure that the crops should be correspondingly drenched with rain.^[87] This rite also illustrates the origin of a conception which has its roots in sympathetic magic and yet exerts considerable influence in the civilised world—the conception of "legal fictions." The images, undoubtedly, were substitutes for human beings who were (as representing the corn-spirit) drowned in the Tiber. Human sacrifice, though exceptional, was not unknown at Rome in historic times, as appears from R. Q. 83; and the substitution of animals or of inanimate objects for human beings is not peculiar to Rome, but is the usual means by which the transition from the more to the less barbarous custom is effected. But the Romans, who were practical and logical to the extreme, who reduced magic to a system whereby they regulated their daily life, consistently enough also utilised sympathetic magic as a legal instrument. For it would be a great mistake to infer from the ridicule poured by Cicero (Pro Murena, xii. 62) on the fictions of Roman law, that those symbolisms were puerile mummeries designed to benefit the legal profession at the expense of its clients. The clod of earth which was brought into court was no mere symbol, but gave to those who held it exactly the same control over the estate from which it came, as the image of a god gives to its possessor, or as the hair or clothing of a person who is to be bewitched gives to the worker of the spell.

A form of sympathetic magic which is practised by agricultural peoples all over the world is a "sacred marriage," whereby two spirits or their images, or their living representatives, are united, in order that their union may be sympathetically followed by fertility in flock and field. The ceremony of the "sacred marriage" frequently survives when its purpose has been forgotten, and then a popular explanation is invented for and by the folk. The myth of Acca Larentia, given by Plutarch, R. Q. 35, seems to me a piece of folk-lore of this kind. To begin with, it is not uncommon to find in Greek and Asiatic cults, for instance,^[88] a woman shut up with a god in his temple. And the result of this union is an increase in the agricultural wealth or fertility of the community. The same result appears in the "rationalised" explanation of the "sacred marriage" of Acca Larentia and Hercules, given by Plutarch. Further, an exactly similar tale is told of Hercules and Flora,^[89] whose name shows that she is a spirit of flowering and blossoming vegetation, whilst her cult points to a realistic sacred marriage in which she took part.^[90] Again, Acca Larentia and Flora were evidently felt to be spirits of the same class as the Dea Dia, for sacrifices were offered to them as part of the worship of the Dea Dia; and the Dea Dia was a corn-spirit, as is plainly shown by the Acta Arvalium Fratrum.^[91] At the same time, though Acca Larentia, Flora, and the Dea Dia were all spirits of the same class, it is clear that they were distinguished from each other, for the Arval Brothers sacrificed to each of them separately and under distinct names. Finally, whether Acca Larentia had originally anything to do with the Lares seems doubtful,^[92] and in spite of the fact that, in later times at any rate, she was called "the mother of the Lares," one cannot build much on the etymology which makes "Acca" mean "mother."^[93] Certain it is, however, that the Arval Brothers, in worshipping the Dea Dia, began their famous and very ancient song with an invocation of the Lares.^[94] It is plain, therefore, that there was from pre-historic times a tendency to associate the worship of the kindly Lares with that of spirits of the class to which the Dea Dia and Acca Larentia belonged. But the feast of the Larentalia (or Larentinalia), to which Plutarch alludes in R. Q. 34, was evidently a piece of ancestor-worship, and may therefore have been part of the worship of the Lares from the beginning. If this really be so, Acca Larentia will be a soul promoted to the rank of a spirit of vegetation.

The theory of sympathetic magic may perhaps afford the solution of Plutarch's problem (97), why they that would live chaste were forbidden to eat pulse. Plutarch suggests that as far as beans are concerned the reason may be that the Pythagoreans abominated them. This "symbol" of the Pythagoreans is well-known. Milton was inspired by it to put the case—

and, according to Neanthes, quoted by Iamblichus in his life of Pythagoras, the prohibition extended even to treading down the growing bean; for, he informs us, Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans: and when another disciple, who was shortly afterwards captured and brought before Dionysius, was bidden by that tyrant to explain the strange conduct of his fellows, he replied, "They suffered themselves to be put to death rather than tread beans under foot; and I will rather tread beans under foot than reveal the reason."

This is sufficiently mysterious; and the Pythagorean symbol can scarcely be said to explain the Italian prohibition. But though Plutarch has committed the error of defining ignotum per ignotius, he has nevertheless been led by a sound instinct, in comparing the two things together. Mr. Frazer (in Folk-Lore, i. 145 ff.) has abundantly shown that many of the symbols of Pythagoras are but maxims of folk-lore which have gathered round the name of that mysterious philosopher. It would be nothing strange, then, if a piece of Italian folklore should be fathered on Pythagoras, for Magna Graecia was the home of Pythagoreanism.

Now the folk has at all times been fond of discovering resemblances between plants and other objects, as the common names of flowers, &c., sufficiently show. Further, according to popular notions, these resemblances do not exist for nothing: between the plant and the object it resembles there exists an occult but potent relation. The "Doctrine of Signatures" was a quasi-scientific organisation of this branch of folk-lore. "Turmeric has a brilliant yellow colour, which indicates that it has the power of curing jaundice; for the same reason, poppies must relieve diseases of the head," to take a couple of instances from the Pharmacologia of Dr. Paris (p. 43). The ancient Romans who substituted an offering of poppy-heads for a sacrifice of human beings were not practising a childish cheat on the gods: on all sound principles of folk-lore they were offering a perfectly valid equivalent.

When then we find Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras (§ 43), saying that Pythagoras bade his followers "abstain from beans as from human flesh," we may reasonably infer that beans were regarded, in the folk-lore of the day, as resembling some part of the human body, and as having a mysterious affinity with it. This conjecture receives some support from the fact that, whereas Porphyry explains all the other "symbols" as allegorical statements of various moral and civic duties, he explains this by a piece of folk-lore of the same kind as the modern popular belief that a hair kept in water will turn into an eel. The exact part of the body to which beans were supposed to bear a resemblance may be difficult at this distance of time to determine. The passage in Porphyry gives some hints.^[95]

A more interesting fact is that, according to Herodotus, ii. 37, the Egyptians had the same aversion to eating beans, and that Egyptian priests might not even look at a bean, so unclean was it considered. From this passage it is usually inferred that Pythagoras obtained this piece of his doctrine from the Egyptians; and V. D. Link (Die Urwelt, 225) sought to support the inference by the suggestion that the prohibition originally had reference to the sacred Egyptian bean, and was subsequently extended to the common bean (faba vulgaris). Pursuing this line of thought, we are at once struck by the fact that the sacred Egyptian bean (nelumbium speciosum) is a lotus; and the lotus, both as a plant and as a symbol,^[96] carries our thoughts to India. We thus seem to see a piece of folk-lore migrating, along with the plant to which it was attached, from India to Egypt, from Egypt to Europe.

But when did this interesting migration take place? The prohibition was known pretty early in Sicily, for it makes its appearance in the fragments of Empedocles, who was born at Agrigentum, B.C. 490. We can, however, trace it back much earlier in Italy. There it dates from pre-historic times, for it was one of the taboos laid upon the flamen Dialis. And the idea that beans were human flesh is implied in the part which they played in the funeral ceremonies of the primitive Italians. That part is remarkably interesting. Plutarch tells us that "the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead were usually served with pulse above all other viands." This is a strange contrast to the aversion shown otherwise for eating beans, and it cries aloud for explanation.

Mr. E. S. Hartland, in Folk Lore, III. ii., has put forward the theory that the practice of sin-eating is the transformed survival of a savage custom of eating deceased kinsmen. Even those who dissent from his conclusion will not be able to deny that the custom does exist among savages, and that the object of cannibalism is to secure to the eater the courage, cunning, strength, &c., of the person eaten; nor will it be denied that on the first movement from savagery a tendency would manifest itself to substitute for the corpse anything which, according to the canons of savage logic, might be regarded as an equivalent substitute. The Italians, regarding beans as human flesh, might, we may conjecture, substitute beans; as the Bavarian peasant substitutes Leichen-nudeln. Before, however, we can regard this as anything more than a guess, we want proof that the Italians did really look upon the beans which they ate at funeral feasts as representative of the deceased. That proof is forthcoming, I submit, in the belief mentioned by Pliny (N. H., xviii. 30. 2) that "the spirit of the deceased was in the bean" (mortuorum animæ sint in ea, i.e., in the faba). And inasmuch as the law forbade them that would be chaste to eat pulse, it seems probable that the object of eating beans at funeral banquets was to convey the propagating powers of the deceased to his kinsmen.

If then the superstition about the bean was borrowed by the Italians, it must have been borrowed in primitive times; and we must think that the belief reached the Italians at the same time as the cultivation of the bean itself spread from its original (unknown) home. But, if we may trust comparative philology, the bean was probably known to the European Aryans before they divided into separate peoples, such as Slavs, Italians, &c. And thus we can catch glimpses of this piece of folk-lore on its travels in pro-ethnic times. But this, I confess, I find it rather hard to believe. Of course, if there were channels of communication by which the plant itself could travel in that "time long past," then by those same channels the superstition might be conveyed. But on the other hand, if one people could see a resemblance between the bean and some part of the human body, so might another. We do not imagine that because some of the taboos laid on the Mikado were the same as some laid on the flamen Dialis, they were therefore borrowed. Why, then, should we resort to the hypothesis of borrowing to account for the fact the flamen of pre-historic times was forbidden, exactly in the same way as the priests of ancient Egypt, to see or name a bean?

Folk-lorists will naturally inquire whether any traces of the conceptions and customs we have been examining can be found in fairy-tales.

I may therefore conclude by pointing out that in a Lithuanian tale, published and translated into German in the Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen of A. Leskien and K. Brugman (p. 202 and p. 471), the bean has the same "signature" as it had in ancient Italy. Another story in the same collection (pp. 363-371 and 490-494) should also be noticed here: a maiden is given the heart of a dead man to eat, and two hours afterwards she bore a son, who could speak and run the moment he was born.

XI. Aryan Marriage.

In the Romane Questions^[97] Plutarch has preserved for us various marriage customs, which raise the whole question, not perhaps of human marriage, but certainly of Aryan marriage. Has monandry always been the prevailing form among the Aryan-speaking peoples? Among those peoples has the family, as far as we can see or guess, from the beginning been patriarchal and agnatic?

As a starting-point for the discussion of this question, two propositions may be laid down as broadly true. The first is, that at some period or other, all Aryans have been in the habit of obtaining their wives (or some of their wives) by capture and by purchase. This fact may ultimately imply scarcity of native women, female infanticide, polyandry, and kinship through the female line; or it may prove to be perfectly compatible with a patriarchal and agnatic system. But it is a fact, and a fact of the first importance for this discussion. The second proposition that may safely be made is, that in historical times at least, the patriarchal form of family has always been the prevailing form amongst Aryan nations. The exceptions may be real, or they may be due to faulty observation; they may be of the highest importance, as being the sole indications of a prior and very different form of family life, or they may be merely local, transient departures from the normal patriarchal form, and so be insignificant or deceptive; but in any case, they are relatively so few as to leave it a practically true statement to say that the patriarchal family has been normal among the Aryans in historic times.

The evidence of the existence of marriage by capture is furnished by folk-lore. It is not necessary, nor is this the place to review that evidence; but the survivals of this form of marriage which are recorded in the Romane Questions must be mentioned. The Romans, Plutarch says (R. Q., 29), "would not permit the new wedded bride to passe of herself over the door-sill or threshold, when she is brought home to her husband's house, but they that accompanie her must lift her up between them from the ground, and so convey her in."^[98] That the Romans themselves were dimly conscious of the real origin of this custom is implied in the first solution suggested by Plutarch, viz., that the ceremony was "in remembrance of those first wives whom they ravished perforce from the Sabines;" and Rossbach, in his great work on Roman marriage,^[99] sees in the custom a survival from times when the bride, captured by force, was conveyed against her will into the house (or den) of her captor. Parallels to the Roman custom are to be found elsewhere. Among the modern Greeks the bride is lifted over the threshold, as it would be most unlucky if she touched it in crossing.^[100] It is the most important wedding-guest among the Servians,^[101] the bride's nearest relation in Lorraine,^[102] who carries her in his arms from the waggon into her new home. Among the North Frisians the "bride-lifter" (bridlefstr) is a regular wedding-official.^[103] The ceremony seems to have been known to the ancient Hindoos also.^[104] The Finnish-Ugrians, whether they borrowed or lent, or independently developed the custom, uniformly practise it.^[105] It is further noteworthy that the Finnish-Ugrians agree with the Romans, the Hindoos, and the Russians in this, viz., that the bride is not only carried over the threshold by some of the bridal party (not by the bridegroom) but is then caused by them "to sit upon a fliece of wooll."^[106] The meaning and object of this strange proceeding were quite unknown to the Romans, who practised it in Plutarch's time, as they are to the Finnish-Ugrians and Russians who still observe the custom. Rossbach rightly compares the ancient Roman custom of making the flamen and flaminica, when married per farreationem, sit upon the fleece of the sheep that was slaughtered during the wedding ceremonies;^[107] he then refers to the Roman practice of sitting for a short time after prayer in silent meditation, and this he thinks explains the custom in question. But surely it leaves unexplained just that which requires explanation. Granted, that the Romans showed more reverence than, say the Scots whom Dr. Boyd can remember; still, are we to imagine them so rapt into "the mind's internal heaven" that they could sit down in the grease and the gore of a freshly-slaughtered sheep's fell, "nor heed nor see what things these be"? Why did they not sit down somewhere else?

A possible answer to this question may be found in the following considerations. Many savages consider themselves peculiarly liable on their wedding-day to the attacks of evil spirits. The Hindoos and the Finnish-Ugrians unanimously regard the seating of the bride on the fleece as the right time for exorcising evil spirits and purifying the bride: the Hindoos recite an incantation, the Esthonians clash daggers over her head, for iron is generally dreaded by spirits. It is, therefore, an easy inference that the fleece itself had purificatory powers; and, as a matter of fact, we find that the Greeks, at any rate, regarded a sheepskin in this light, for in the preliminary ceremonies of the Eleusinia was a purificatory rite which was known as the Zeus-fleece.^[108] In the collection of the Hôtel Lambert^[109] is a red-figured vase bearing a representation of this rite, in which the person purified is represented as crouching on the fleece.

In days when marriage by capture was real, and not merely symbolical, it was highly important that a strange woman should, immediately on entering the house, be, so to speak, spiritually disinfected, lest she should introduce unwelcome spirits into her new home; or, in the intimate relations which were to subsist between her and her captor,^[110] should bring him into the power of strange and hostile gods. Hence the close adhesion of the ceremony of the fleece, long after its meaning was forgotten, to that of lifting the bride over the threshold.

But it was necessary not merely to detach the strange woman from her own gods, she must also be introduced to the gods of her new home. This introduction survived in the Roman custom, whereby new wedded wives are bidden to touch fire and water (R. Q. 1).^[111] That this custom goes back to the time when wives were captured is indicated by the words "are bidden:" the force which was at first necessarily used survives in this gentle compulsion. Parallels to this custom are forthcoming: the Hindoo bride, according to the Kâuçikasûtra (77. 16), was led thrice round the hearth in the bridegroom's house. Exactly the same ceremony not only was practised by the ancient Teutons, but is still observed in some places in North Germany and in Westphalia.^[112] The Esthonians and Wotjaks still honour the custom.^[113] The first thing a Servian bride has to do on entering her new home is to mend the fire,^[114] and in ancient Greece she was taken at once to the hearth. It need hardly be said that the hearth is the abode of the house-spirit and the centre of the family worship. At Rome, we find from Festus,^[115] the bride was also sprinkled with water. In Sardinia,^[116] her mother-in-law empties a glass of water over her. Amongst the ancient Hindoos^[117] this was the bridegroom's duty; with the Servians it is the function of the Djewer.^[118] That this sprinkling was originally an introduction of the strange woman to the local water-spirit seems indicated by the fact that amongst the Servians the sprinkling is performed at the well, in the Unterkrain at the burn,^[119] in Albania^[120] at the village-spring, while in modern Greece the bride casts offerings into the spring.^[121]

The conventionally extravagant lamentation which was required of the Roman bride^[122] is regarded by Rossbach (p. 329) as a survival of marriage by capture, and may be paralleled amongst many Aryan nations: with the Hindoos it was part of the officially prescribed programme;^[123] in the Oberpfalz it is obligatory; in Bohemia and in Russia it is required by public opinion.^[124]

The evidence of folk-lore (so far as it is called for by the Romane Questions) that the Aryans obtained wives by capturing the women of other households or family groups than their own, has now been stated. It does not suffice to show that an Aryan was forbidden to marry a woman of his own household; but a wider survey of early Aryan wedding-customs would bring out this important fact, that however other parts of the ceremony vary, there is one which is always present, and which may be regarded as essential—that is the domum deductio, the bringing-home of the bride; and from this fact we may fairly draw the conclusion that normally, and—so strong is custom—probably uniformly, the bride and the bridegroom belonged to different households, and that the bride came to live in the home of the bridegroom.

Marriage by purchase does not happen to be mentioned in the Romane Questions, nor is it necessary to prove what is universally admitted. All that need be remarked here is that purchase was not necessarily preceded by a state of things in which capture prevailed; frequently it may have been a peaceable remedy for the grievances caused by capture, but quite as often it may have been practised side by side with capture from the beginning. Further, the purchase, like the capture, of wives implies that husband and wife belonged to different households; and purchase indicates that the wife thus bought was the property of the husband, or at least that she was subject to him.

Let us now turn to the evidence showing that the family was patriarchal and agnatic. The evidence is furnished by the comparative study of law, especially the law regulating the order in which the relatives of a dead man shall succeed to his property. The order of succession prescribed by the earliest legal codes is strikingly similar among all the Aryan peoples; first, the deceased's male descendants to the third generation (his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons); next, the male descendants of the deceased's father to the third generation (i.e., the deceased's brothers, nephews, and grand-nephews); then the male descendants of the deceased's grandfather to the third generation (i.e., his uncles, cousins, and their children); and finally, the male descendants of his great-grandfather to the third generation (i.e., his great-uncles, his first cousins once removed, and his second cousins once removed). Beyond these degrees, kin was not counted; and if no heir were forthcoming within them, the property went, amongst the Hindoos, to those of the same name as the deceased; amongst the Romans, to the members of his gens; in Crete, to the village community. What is the origin of this unanimous and well-marked distinction between the Near and the Remote Kin? Why were the anchisteis, "the nearest relations," as the Greeks technically named them, so sharply distinguished from the others?