section 63.. [201] "st. George and the Parilia," in _revue Des Etudes

"St. George and the Parilia," in Revue des etudes ethnographiques et sociologiques for Jan. 1908. I owe my knowledge of this admirable study to the kindness of its author.

Frazer, G.B. ii. 318 foll.

Varro, L.L. v. 64, says, "Ab satu dictus Saturnus." And in Augustine (Civ. Dei, vi. 8) he is quoted as holding the opinion "quod pertineat Saturnus ad semina, quae in terram de qua oriuntur iterum recidunt." He was probably the numen of the seed-sowing (Saeturnus), and as his festival comes after the end of sowing, we may presume that he was the numen of the sown as well as of the unsown seed. In the article "Saturnus" in Roscher's Lexicon, which has appeared since the above note was written, Wissowa provisionally accepts Varro's etymology.

Festus, p. 245a, "Publica sacra quae publico sumptu pro populo fiunt, quaeque pro montibus, pagis, curiis, sacellis." See article "Sacra" in Dict. of Antiqq. ii. 577.

"Routine is the only safeguard of a people under a perfect autocracy" (Select Charters, Introduction, p. 19).

The annalists believed that the publication first took place in the year 304 B.C.: Livy ix. 46. Mommsen (Chronologie, p. 31) thought it possible that it had already been done by the Decemvirs in one of the two last of the XII. Tables, but again withdrawn. The object of keeping the Fasti secret was, of course, to control the times available for legal and political business.

This paragraph is abridged from a passage in the author's paper in the Hibbert Journal for 1907, p. 848.

See Anthropology and the Classics (Oxford, 1908), p. 44.

R.F. p. 241 foll.

Wissowa holds that it dates from the third century B.C.: Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., s.v. "Argei." I endeavoured to refute this view in the Classical Review for 1902, p. 115 foll., and Dr. Wissowa criticised my criticism in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 222. It is dealt with at length in R.F. p. 111 foll. See below, p. 321 foll.

This is not exactly the view expressed in R.F. p. 315 foll., where I was inclined to adopt that of Mannhardt that the laughing symbolised the return to life after sacrificial death. I am now disposed to think of it as parallel with the ecstasy of the Pythoness and other inspired priests, or the shivering and convulsive movements which denote that a human being is "possessed" by a god or spirit. See Jevons, Introduction, p. 174. Mannhardt's view seems, however, to gain support from Pausanias' description of the ordeal he underwent himself at the cave of Trophonius, after which he could laugh again: Paus. ix. 39. See also Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 580. Deubner in Archiv, 1910, p. 501.

R.F. p. 109; Ov. Fasti, v. 421 foll. Ovid's account is of a private rite in the house, as elsewhere he tells us of things done by private persons on festival days. We do not know whether there was any public ritual for these days. For further discussion of the contrast between the two festivals of the dead, see below, Lect. XVII. p. 393.

G.B. iii. 138 foll. The attempt to connect the so-called Saturnalia of the army of the Danube in the third century A.D. with the early practice of Roman Saturnalia seems to me to fail entirely, even after reading Prof. Cumont's paper in the Revue de philologie, 1897, p. 133 foll. I should imagine that Cumont would now admit that the Saturn who was sacrificed on the Danube as described in the Martyrdom of St. Dasius must have been of Oriental origin, and that the soldiers concerned were in no sense Roman or Italian. For the hellenisation of the Saturnalia, see Wissowa in Roscher's Lexicon, s.v. "Saturnus," p. 432. Wissowa, I may note, does not believe in the accuracy of the account of the "Martyrdom."

Nothing, that is, in the regular ritual of the Roman State--except in so far as the killing of a criminal who was sacer to a god can be so regarded; and the only instance of any kind that can be quoted is that of the two pairs of Gaulish and Greek men and women who in the stress of the second Punic war and afterwards were buried alive, as it was said, in the Forum Boarium. Wissowa, R.K. p. 355 and notes. I shall return to this in Lecture XIV.

The earliest mention of the slaying of a victim (bestiarius) to Jupiter is in Minucius Felix, Octav. 22 and 30, i.e. towards the end of the second century A.D. or even later. Cp. Tertull. Apol. 9, Lactantius i. 21. I do not go so far as to say with Wissowa (p. 109, note 3) that this story is "ganz gewiss apokryph," but I take it as simply a case of degeneracy under the influence of the amphitheatre and of Orientalism.

For Numa see Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. i. 551 foll.

See Dr. Frazer's most recent account of this subject, in his Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, chaps, iii.-v. Prof. Ridgeway's idea that the Flamen Dialis was really a Numan institution is of course simply impossible, and the arguments he founds on it fall to the ground. Ovid, probably reflecting Varro, speaks of the Flamen Dialis as belonging to the Pelasgian religion, which at least means that he was aware of the extreme antiquity of the office; Fasti, ii. 281. Dr. Doellinger (The Gentile and the Jew, vol. ii. p. 72) with his usual insight was inclined to see in this Flamen the "ruins of an older system of ceremonial ordinances."

He was sui iuris (Gaius i. 130), as soon as he was chosen or taken (captus) by the Pontifex maximus; but he was subject to the authority of the P.M., like all the other flamines and the Vestals. See Wissowa, R.K. p. 438; Tac. Ann. iv. 16.