Читать книгу The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic - W. Warde Fowler - Страница 30

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PAR[ILIA]. (CAER. MAFF. PRAEN.)

ROMA COND[ITA] FERIAE CORONATIS OM[NIBUS]. (CAER.)

N[ATALIS] URBIS. CIRCENSES MISSUS XXIV. (PHILOC.)

[A note in Praen. is hopelessly mutilated, with the exception of the words IGNES and PRINCIPIO AN[NI PASTORICII^[259]?]]

The Parilia^[260], at once one of the oldest and best attested festivals of the whole year, is at the same time the one whose features have been most clearly explained by the investigations of parallels among other races.

The first point to notice is that the festival was both public and private, urban and rustic^[261]. Ovid clearly distinguishes the two; lines 721–734 deal with the urban festival, 735–782 with the rustic. The explanations which follow deal with both. Pales, the deity (apparently both masculine and feminine^[262]) whose name the festival bears, was, like Faunus, a common deity of Italian pasture land. A Palatium was said by Varro to have been named after Pales at Reate, in the heart of the Sabine hill-country^[263]; and though this may not go for much, the character of the Parilia, and the fact that Pales is called rusticola, pastoricia, silvicola, &c., are sufficient to show the original non-urban character of the deity. He (or she) was a shepherd’s deity of the simplest kind, and survived in Rome as little more than a name^[264] from the oldest times, when the earliest invaders drove their cattle through the Sabine mountains. Here, then, we seem to have a clear example of a rite which was originally a rustic one, and survived as such, while at the same time one local form of it was kept up in the great city, and had become entangled with legend and probably altered in some points of ritual. We will take the rustic form first.

Here we may distinguish in Ovid’s account^[265] the following ritualistic acts.

1. The sheep-fold^[266] was decked with green boughs and a great wreath was hung on the gate:

Frondibus et fixis decorentur ovilia ramis,

Et tegat ornatas longa corona fores.

With this Mannhardt^[267] aptly compares the like concomitants of the midsummer fires in North Germany, Scotland, and England. In Scotland, for example, before the bonfires were kindled on midsummer eve, the houses were decorated with foliage brought from the woods^[268]. The custom of decoration at special seasons, May-day, mid-summer, harvest, and Christmas, is even now, with the exception of midsummer, universal, and is probably descended from these primitive rites, by which our ancestors sought in some mysterious way to influence the working of the powers of vegetation.

2. At the earliest glimmer of daybreak the shepherd purified the sheep. This was done by sprinkling and sweeping the fold; then a fire was made of heaps of straw, olive-branches, and laurel, to give good omen by the crackling, and through this apparently the shepherds leapt, and the flocks were driven^[269]. For this we have, of course, numerous parallels from all parts of the world. Burning sulphur was also used:

Caerulei fiant vivo de sulfure fumi

Tactaque fumanti sulfure balet ovis^[270].

3. After this the shepherd brought offerings to Pales, of whom there may perhaps have been in the farmyard a rude image made of wood^[271]; among these were baskets of millet and cakes of the same, pails of milk, and other food of appropriate kinds. The meal which followed the shepherd himself appears to have shared with Pales^[272]. Then he prays to the deity to avert all evil from himself and his flocks; whether he or they have unwittingly trespassed on sacred ground and caused the nymphs or fauni to fly from human eyes; or have disturbed the sacred fountains, and used branches of a sacred tree for secular ends. In these petitions the genuine spirit of Italian religion—the awe of the unknown, the fear of committing unwittingly some act that may bring down wrath upon you—is most vividly brought out in spite of the Greek touches and names which are introduced. He then goes on to his main object^[273]:

Pelle procul morbos: valeant hominesque gregesque,

Et valeant vigiles, provida turba, canes.

Absit iniqua fames. Herbae frondesque supersint,

Quaeque lavent artus, quaeque bibantur, aquae.

Ubera plena premam: referat mihi caseus aera,

Dentque viam liquido vimina rara sero.

Sitque salax aries, conceptaque semina coniunx

Reddat, et in stabulo multa sit agna meo.

Lanaque proveniat nullas laesura puellas,

Mollis et ad teneras quamlibet apta manus.

Quae precor eveniant: et nos faciamus ad annum

Pastorum dominae grandia liba Pali.

This prayer must be said four times over^[274], the shepherd looking to the east and wetting his hands with the morning dew^[275]. The position, the holy water, and the prayer in its substance, though now addressed to the Virgin, have all descended to the Catholic shepherd of the Campagna.

4. Then a bowl is to be brought, a wooden antique bowl apparently^[276], from which milk and purple sapa, i.e. heated wine, may be drunk, until the drinker feels the influence of the fumes, and when he is well set he may leap over the burning heaps:

Moxque per ardentes stipulae crepitantis acervos

Traiicias celeri strenua membra pede^[277].

The Parilia of the urbs was celebrated in much the same way in its main features; but the day was reckoned as the birthday of Rome, and doubtless on this account it came under the influence of priestly organization^[278]. It is connected with two other very ancient festivals: that of the Fordicidia and that of the ‘October horse.’ The blood which streamed from the head of the horse sacrificed on the Ides of October was kept by the Vestals in the Penus Vestae, and mixed with the ashes of the unborn calves burnt at the Fordicidia; and the mixture seems to have been thrown upon heaps of burning bean-straw to make it smoke, while over the smoke and flames men and women leaped on the Palatine Hill^[279]. The object was of course purification; Ovid calls the blood, ashes, and straw februa casta, i.e. holy agents of purification, and adds in allusion to their having been kept by the Vestals: