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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
To Ovid, sophisticated as he was, ancient and simple piety made an appeal; not, as in the case of Vergil, because it accorded with deep-seated feelings of his own, but rather in the same way as plain fare will sometimes please an over-indulged palate, by a certain piquancy of contrast. It is therefore not so surprising that in him we find one of the most perfect expressions of the oldest recoverable stratum of Italian, or even ancient Mediterranean, religious sentiment. It occurs in the Fasti, iii, 296–7: Frazer thus renders the couplet: ‘Under the Aventine there lay a grove black with the shade of holm-oaks; at sight of it you could say, “There is a spirit here.’”
1 W. Warde Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, 15.
2 Same, Religious Experience of the Roman People, 73.
3 Same, Religious Experience of the Roman People, 77.
4 Op. cit., 84.
5 Preller-Jordan, Römische Mythologie, Vol. i, 60.
6 Abhandlungen zur römischen Religion, 161.
7 L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults, 12.
8 M. P. Nilsson, History of Greek Religion, 106.
9 Georg., ii, 493: fortunatus et ille deos qui nouit agrestis. The whole tone is Italian, though the examples he gives of such deities are mostly Greek.
10 Tib., i, 1, 19 ff.; uos quoque … fertis munera uestra, Lares … agna cadet uobis, quam circum rustica pubes / clamet, Io, messes et bona uina date.
11 As Carm., iii, 13.
12 Abundant examples in A. J. N. Tremearne, The Ban of (he Bori, especially chaps, xviii–xxviii.
13 E. Thurston, Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, 162.
14 Genesis, 32, 24 ff.; cf. Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, ii, p. 410 ff.
15 ϕ 104.
16 λ 95 ff., 153, etc.
17 Notably the ‘hero’ of Temesa, Pausanias, vi, 6, 7–11; cf. Rose, Primitive Culture in Greece, 104 f.
18 E 127–8.
19 ἠερoϕῖτιν ’Eρινν, I 571, T 87.
20 αἰμα γρ νθρώπoιν περικρρδιóν στι νóηνα, Empedokles in Porphyry ap. Stob., i, 424, 19, Wachsmuth; it is interesting that the Neoplatonist cannot understand Empedokles'; materialism and supposes that he thought the blood was δργανoν πρòν σνεσιν, ibid., 15.
21 Lucretius, i, 304; Tert., de anima, 5.
22 Father W. Schmidt, Origin and Growth of Religion, 266.
23 Tremeame, op. cit., 300, 864, 361, 365.
24 As B 6 ff.; ω 1 ff.
25 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, ant. Rom., ii, 18, 3, Romulus instituted very fitting rites in honour of the gods, τoὐν δ παραδεδoμνoυν περ αὐτν μὐθoυν, ν oν βλασφημαι τινν νεισι κατ’ αὐτν κακηγoραι, πoνηρoὺν κα σχμoναν ὑπoλαβὼν εναι κα αὺχ δτι θεν λλ’ αὐδ’ νθν ξoυν, ᾰπανταν ξβαλε.
26 So Plato, Crat., 398 b, followed by some moderns; the revised Liddell and Scott prefers the suggested connection with δαω.
27 The following examples are taken from Bp. Codrington’s classical work, The Melanesians, their Anthropology and Folklore, 52, 57, 90,115,119, 200, 307.
28 J. H. King, The Supernatural, its Origin, Nature and Evolution, a book neglected in its own day and now so rare that I have only once seen a copy; R. R. Marett, Preanimistic Religion, in Folk-Lore, xi, 1900, 162–82 = The Threshold of Religion (London, Methuen, 1909), 1–32.
29 As by Karsten, R., Origins of Religion, London, Kegan Paul, 1935, 83Google Scholar.
30 Vilhelm Grϕnbech, Soul or Mana? (Copenhagen, 1913).
31 Erland Ehnmark, The Idea of God in Homer (Uppsala, 1935), 10, ‘Divine nature is power and power is the essential attribute of the gods.’
32 See Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, xxii (1924), 363 ff.; the above is translated from p. 384. The whole passage is well worth study.
33 ω 149, κα τóτε δ δ’ 'Oδυσα κακóν πoθεν γαγε δαμων.
34 θ 166.
35 Hesiod, op. et di., 314.
36 As Τ 420.
37 α 38.
38 θ 325; also Hesiodic.
39 Hesiod, op. et di., 763–4.
40 Scholia ad Hesiodum, 841 (in Vol. III of Gaisford, Poetae minores Graeci, Oxford, 1820).
41 Cicero, Tusc, i, 5. Characteristic passages in the Fathers are Augustine, epp., 137, 9, hominem … quern non consumpsit utique (Christus) sed assumpsit; ibid., 12, Verbum igitur Dei … suscepit hominem seque et illo fecit unum Iesum Christum … minorem…. Patre secundum carnem, hoc est secundumhominem; 14, 3, ille homo quern Deus suscepit. Jerome, epp., 98, 4, assumpsithominem, dumtaxat sine peccato.
42 Ver., Aen., i, 8, quo numine laeso; to which may be added scores of passages where numen is coupled with the name of a god in the gen.
43 Horace, Carm., iii, 10, 7, positas ut glaciet niues puro numine Iuppiter.
44 Livy, vii, 30, 20, adnuite, patres conscripti, nutum numenque uestrum inuictum Campanis. It is true that the Senate are here being invited to behave very like the Homeric Zeus (A 528), but no one suggests that they are actually divine. Cicero, Phil., iii, 32, ascribes numen to the Senate; Post reditum ad Quirites, 13, to the people of Rome. Cf. Ovid, Ars amatoria, i, 203, date numen eunti.
45 Manilius, ii, 23; with the tone of the whole passage cf. Choirilos,frag. 1, Naeckius.
46 v, 96–112.
47 Verg., Aen., i, 159–169, partly imitated from Homer, 136–141.
48 Kall., hymn, in Cer., 26 ff.
49 Longus, Pastoralia, i, 4–5.
50 Verg., Aen., ii, 154.
51 He says (ibid., IS? ff.) that it is fas for him to hate the Greeks and reveal all their secrets, and that he is not bound by any laws of his native country. This is true; he is a prisoner in the hands of the Trojans, and therefore, by Roman ideas, has suffered capitis deminutio and is not a Greek citizen until and unless restored by postliminium; it is perfectly open to him to make the best bargain he can with his captors and induce them by his services to their cause to admit him into their community. If they assume from his ambiguous language that he is really going to do so, that is their affair; he has sworn merely that he may if he likes, and is therefore not liable to any supernatural punishment for perjury. See Horace, Carm., iii, 5, 42, and the parallels collected by commentators there; Callistratus and Ulpian in Dig., iv, 6, 14–15.
52 τ 396.
53 Livy, i, 32, 6, audi Iuppiter, inquit, audite fines (cuiuscunque gentis sunt, nominat), audiat fas.
54 Ovid, Fast., ii, 642.
55 Siculus Flaccus in Gromatici ueteres, p. 141 Lachmann. See the excellent commentary of Frazer on the passage of Ovid cited in n. 54 and on the whole matter of the cult of Terminus, Fasti of Ovid, Vol. ii, p. 481 ff.
56 For Venus' connection with gardens, see Wissowa, Rel. u. Kult.,2 289.
57 Servius auctus on Verg., Georg., i, 21; cf. Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhand., 309 ff.
58 See, besides the innumerable longer and fuller discussions of these anieonic deities, Rose, Primitive Culture in Italy, 45–47. But I would abandon the statement I there made that ‘the stone is older than Iuppiter’ (p. 46), at least in so far as the veneration of the stone, or stones, is concerned. It was, I take it, a supposed thunderbolt, therefore a ‘numinous’ thing from the sky. Now Iuppiter and all his etymological peers have in common celestial activity; therefore, if Iuppiter was essentially sky-numen, then storm, thunder, thunderbolt, frost, and so forth might all alike be Iuppiter. So, therefore, might the stone be, and consequently it is Iuppiter Lapis, not lapis Iouius.
59 For the three titles of Zeus, see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i, 149. For the Delphic stone, see the references in de Visser, Die nicht menschengestaltigen Götter der Griechen, 79–80.
60 As appears from Theog., 498–500. But it is not known whether the stone was connected with Zeus before the legend grew up; it may have been venerated without anyone exactly knowing why.
61 See W. Schmidt, Origin and Growth of Religion, 43 ff.
62 Those which seem really to be Italian are given in Rose, Handbook of Greek Mythology, 318, 320 ff.
63 This point is well made by C. Bailey, Religion in Virgil, especially chap. iii.
