el calendario romano prehistorico

8/14/2019 El Calendario Romano Prehistorico

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THE PREHISTORIC ROMAN CALENDAR.In another paper I have tried to establish a view that goat-

breeding represents one stage of development in the prehistoricRoman calendar; but if we explore a little further, we discover,I believe, that not even this is the very first stage. For one thing,if we review the localities of worship on the first nundinae ofthe 4-month year, it is clear that only the rites for two Paleswere conducted at a place suitable for goats, viz. the slopes ofthe Palatine hill. All the other rites of this day appear to havetaken place in the low-lying ground of the Circus Maximus orthe CampusMartius. In particular, the latter area was the site 2of the Caprae palus (Liv., I, 16, 1) or Caprea palus (Ovid,Fasti, II, 491) where the Poplifugia took place; and it is time,I believe, that someone questioned the meaning of this term.What have goats to do with a swamp or marsh? Columella(VII, 6, 1) puts the answer succinctly: Id auten genus dumetapotius quam campestremsitum desiderat. This breed of animalswants brushwoodrather than a level habitat. He also comments(VII, 6, 5) on the weak health of goats and their susceptibilityto the influence of the elements. Varro (R.R., II, 3, 6), forsimilar reasons, gives careful instructions about tiling the floorsof goat-stalls; and in discussing terms of purchase, suggests thatno seller can guarantee the health of a goat: Caprassanas nemosanus promittit (R.R., II, 3, 5).The animal which belongs in a marshy environment-at leastin antiquity and down to very recent times (modern breedersgive opposite instructions)-is the pig. Columella says (VII,9, 6-7) that the best pasturage for hogs is swampy rather thandry fields-Pascitur melius tamen palustribus agris quam siti-entibus-and that breeders should choose muddy rather thandry soil so that pigs can root up swampy ground, ut paludemrimantur, and roll in the mud-something very gratifying tothis animal, quod est huic pecori gratissimum. Varro (R.R.,II, 4, 5) makes a similar recommendation; and appropriately

1T.A.P.A., XCI (1960), pp. 109-20.2 See Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome

(Oxford, 1929), s. v. caprae palus.28


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THE PREHISTORIC ROMAN CALENDAR.Vergil has Aeneas find his great white sow in a palus (Aen.,VIII, 88).Moreover, wo productsprominent in the rites of the CaprotineNones-viz. figs (cf. Mac., Sat., I, 11, 36-40; Varro, L. L.,VI, 18) and beans (cf. Ovid, Fasti, IV, 725-6; 731-4; 780-2)-would seem more appropriate to pigs than goats which are andwere (cf. Varro, R.R., I, 2, 18-20; II, 3, 7) in Roman timesnotoriously injurious to cultivated growth. For hogs Columella(VII, 9, 6-9) recommends as pasturage land planted with somenut-bearing tree like the oak or the beech, fagus (the Latin wordis indeed a variant of faba, the word for bean), land with fruittrees like the ficus or fig, and finally the faba or bean. Theimplication too is that most of these things grow on low ground:in the case of the fig, Macrobius (Sat., III, 20, 1) supports thisthought by identifying for us a ficus atra palusca, i.e. a blackswamp fig; and Varro (R.R., I, 6, 4) tells us that mariscae fici,the cheapest variety of fig, are grown on low ground. Varro(R. R., II, 4, 6) likewise concurs in the general sentiment whichI have expressed by stating that pigs are best fed on nuts, thenon beans, deinde faba. In fact, he suggests (R.R., II, 4, 17)that pigs are called nefrendes after the suckling stage becausethey cannot yet crunch or munch beans, fabam frendere.Still another approachto our problemis the convincing state-ment of Ovid (Fasti, I, 33-4) that the 10-month calendar ofRomulus was based on the gestation period of human beings-to which we can add the gestation period of cows (see Varro,R.R., II, 5, 13). If there is a similar correlation between the4-month year and the gestation period of some animal, thisanimal cannot be the goat whose period is 156 days, thoughVarro's statement (R.R., II, 3, 8) that the goat bears postquartum menser may be a reminiscence of some attempt toexplain the manifold connection of goats with the 4-monthcalendar. The gestation period of the goat-like that of thesheep which bears after 150 days (cf. Varro, R.R., II, 2, 14)-would have been correlated with a 5-month year, and we haveno evidence for a 5-month calendar.The pig is the animal whose gestation period is exactly 4months (Varro, R.R., II, 4, 7; Columella, VII, 9, 3); more-over, the same sow can produce two litters a year (Varro, R. R.,II, 4, 14; Columella, loc. cit.); and since the suckling period-

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VAN L. JOHNSON.in antiquity at least-was two months in each case, the pro-creation cycle of the pig could be related not only to a 4-monthyear, but roughly, through three such years, with a solar yearof 12 months.3 This means that a 4-month calendarwas probablya better astronomical device than any later phase of the Romancalendar up to Caesar's time.One can, quite exactly, correlatethe 4-month year with a solaryear on the simple basis of Varro's rules for breeding and rearingswine. He says (R.R., II, 4, 7; cf. I, 28, 1-2) that the besttime for breeding hogs is from the rising of Favonius to thevernal equinox, i.e. from February 7 to March 23 in Caesar'scalendar. This means that one 4-month year in a cycle of threesuch years began about the time of our own month of March,and it may account for the eventual determination of this periodas March in the 12-month calendar.

Sows impregnated in March of Year I4 in the cycle of three4-month years would have their first litter in March of Year IIin this cycle, cur pabulo abundat terra (Varro, loc. cit.), i.e.in July of our own year. This litter would suck for two months,viz. March and April of Year II (July and August of ourealendar). In May (September of our calendar) the same sowmight be impregnated again, have her second litter in May(January of our calendar) of Year III, suckle it for two months,viz. May and June (January and February of our calendar),and be ready for a third impregnation in March (March ofour calendar) of Year I in a second cycle of three 4-monthyears. Pigs from the first litter would be sucklings duringMarch and April of Year II; nefrendes, i.e. unable to crunchbeans in May, but no doubt able to forage for such fodder inJune. Boars from this litter would be gelded not later (Varro,R.R., II, 4, 21) than May of Year III, since otherwise theywould be able to cover females at that time (Columella, VII,9, 2). In this same month ungelded boars would be separatedfor breeding purposestwo months hence (Varro, R.R., II, 4, 7),i. e. March of Year I in Cycle II.If the 4-month year was based on the breeding of pigs, as it8 Cf. the observant remark of Varro (R. R., II, 4, 14): Natura divisusearum annus bifariam, quod bis pariat in anno: quaternis mensibus

fert ventrem, binis nutricat.ASee Table appended, p. 35.

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THE PREHISTORIC ROMAN CALENDAR.seems to be, it is to swine that we should look in explaining thenames of these original four months. March is clearly namedfor Mars, but March cannot be the original name for the firstmonth, since no rites for Mars would belong to it.5 The onlyclue we have to its original name is, I believe, in the termNonae Caprotinae,the name for the only ferial Nones in such acalendar and therefore probablynamed for the month in whichit occurred, i.e. Caprotinus.The term Nonae Caprotinae bore at one time the meaningNones of the Goat ; so the name of the month, if Caprotinus,would certainly have come to mean the month of the goat.But capra or caper is a cognate of the Greekword Karpos' hichmeans not goat but boar or even sow ; so it is possiblethat the Latin cognates bore this same meaning in primitivetimes.6 If that is true, then the first month of the Romancalendar was the month of the pig, and this may well explainthe story of Aeneas' sow (Vergil, Aen., III, 390-4; VIII, 43-6,81-5) and her litter of thirty white piglets. This sow and herbrood would represent, it seems to me, the month and the thirtydays of the month Caprotinus. When calendar changes hadobscured this ancient symbolism, the thirty white pigs weretaken to representthe thirty years between the landing of Aeneas

6 See A. J. P., LXXX (1959), p. 146 for the feriae of the 4-month year.My present view is that March was not so named before the introductionof the 10-month year, i.e. in the calendar of Romulus, and I wouldassociate this with Etruscan influence. Later, in the calendar ofNuma, March became the third month, partly under renewed Latininfluence; cf. Ovid, Fasti, III, 87-100 for March as the third month atAricia and Tusculum. It seems probable that June received its presentname under this same influence; see Ovid, Fasti, VI, 59-62 for a monthof June at Aricia and other Latin towns. Of course, one is never surewhich way the influence worked, from Latium to Rome or vice versa.6 On the basis of Sanscrit kaprt, meaning membrum virile, caper andKaprpos have been derived from an Indo-European word, *qapros, sig-nifying male animal (see Boisacq, Dictionnaire etymologique de lalangue grecque, s. v. Karpos, and Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches ety-mologisches W6rterbuch, s. v. caper); but it is uncertain how, if atall, this generic animal was specified: Latin aper, boar, seemsto lack a k prefix which Greek KaIrpos and Latin caper retain (cf.Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire 6tymologique de la langue latine, s. v.caper), suggesting that caper too bore an original reference to swinerather than to goats. In that case capra, with its feminine suffix, musthave meant sow.

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VAN L. JOHNSON.and the founding of Alba Longa. The tradition is more thanthe figment of a poet's imagination, for Varro (R. R., II, 4, 18)tells us that the body of this sow was preservedin brine by thepriests, and that bronze images of her brood existed in his time.A month of the sow would also explain the termination inthe word caprotinus which, with analogues in annotinus anddiutinus, appearsto have a temporal connotation.

Though we have no definite indication that the sacrifice ofa sow characterizes any rite of the Caprotine Nones, it appearspossible to me that the capra sacrificedto Vediovis (concurrentlywith the Caprotine Nones in the 4-month year) may, originally,have been a sow. In historical times a sow, porca (or a lamb)was sacrificedto Juno by the Regina Sacrorumon every Kalends(Mac., Sat., I, 15, 19; cf. Vergil, Aen., VIII, 84-5 for Aeneas'sacrifice of the brood-sow to Juno); and this may well be thevestige of something which once happened on the first nundinaeof the year, i.e. on the Caprotine Nones in the 4-month year.Moreover, Juno was invoked on the Kalends under the strangetitle Covella (Varro, L.L., VI, 27; Mac., Sat., I, 15, 10-11)which false hyphenation, I believe, has made us connect withcovus (cavus) or emend to Novella (as if from novus) on theground that Juno was always a moon goddess and should beaddressed as Hollow or New on the first of the month.It appears to me that in this word covella we may rather havethe root found in vellus, hide or fleece, and in villus,hair or bristle ; and that Covella (i.e. Convella), likeCaprotina, refers to Juno dressed in the skin of some animal,in the beginning a sow and later a goat or a sheep, or to someanimal which embodied Juno. Varro (R.R., II, 4, 9) rightlyreminds us that pigs were the first sacrificial victims, ab suilloenim pecore immolandi initium primum sumptum videtur; andhe traces (L. L., V, 54) the etymology of vellus to the activitiesof certain pastores Palatini who plucked (thus vellus fromvellere) their animals. He comments too (R.R., II, 1, 10; 4, 9)on the antiquity of pig-sacrifices in the rites of Ceres, in thestriking of a foedus or treaty, and of course in the suovetaurilia(where the order of animals-pig, sheep, ox-would seem to behistorically accurate). And 10-day-old pigs, he says (R.R., II,4, 16) were commonly called sacres because they were fit forsacrifice.

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THE PREHISTORIC ROMAN CALENDAR.It is my belief, therefore, that March, originally Caprotinus,was the month of the sow. April, the second month in the 4-month year, has, I think, retained its original name; and aderivation from aper or boar is at least as convincing as thosecurrent in antiquity and quoted in modern literature on thesubject. Certainly a derivation from the Greek aphros, foam

(Varro, L. L., VI, 33; Mac., Sat., I, 12, 12-15; Ovid, Fasti, IV,61-2) must be ruled out; and since April did not always come inthe spring-in any calendar before Caesar's-we cannot acceptVarro's suggestion that April is the month when things open(as if from aperire). In the historical periodthere is no evidencefor a boar-sacrifice n the month of April; but in a 4-month year,the Volcanalia of August 23 would have come on the thirdnundinae in April, and we do have evidence (C.I. L., VI, 826)that a boar was then sacrificed to Vulcan as late as the timeof Domitian.

May too retains its original name, I believe, and is not to bederived (cf. Mac., Sat., I, 12, 18; Varro, L.L., VI, 33; Ovid,Fasti, V, 1-110) from maiores, elders, or from Maia, theGreekname for the mother of Hermes. But there is a hint of itsmeaning in the fact that maius is clearly the base of maialis,the Latin word for a gelding boar (Varro, R. R., II, 4, 21; cf. thecurious fact that maiale is still an Italian word for pig). Inhistorical times there was a sacrifice to the Roman goddess Maiaby the flamen of Vulcan on the Kalends of May, and this maybe identical with the sacrifice of a pig to her or to Bona Deaon the same day (Mac., Sat., I, 12, 16; Juvenal, Sat., II, 86;Festus, 68). When we recall that May was a month for breedingand bearing pigs, as well as for gelding boars, we may certainlyconjecture that Maius was named for one of these animals, andeven that the Roman goddess Maia was herself a sow.7As for June, Macrobius (Sat., I, 12, 30) quotes opinions

7 It seems likely too that the Jupiter Maius worshipped at Tusculum(Macrobius, Sat., I, 12, 17) was originally a boar, and that maiestasin the beginning was simply pigness, i. e. the goodness of a pig;hence Maia's possible identification with Bona Dea. In this form Maiawould have been another form of the Juno worshipped in Picenum andUmbria as the goddess Cupra (cf. Strabo, V, 4, 2) which Varro (L. L.,V, 159) explains as a Sabine word for good and which Buck(Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, s.v. Cubrar) lists as an Umbrianword for good.

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VAN L. JOHNSON.which show that its word-form, if Latin, should have beenJunonius; and it has been suggested8that Junius is an Etruscan-ized form of a Latin word. Since the 4-month year-or at leastthe feriae in it-appears to be thoroughly Latin (or at any rateItalic), and since Juno already had the first month, Caprotinus,named for her, it seems plausible that June at one time boreanother designation. Our only clue to this former name lies oncemore, I believe, in a named day, Kalendae fabariae, the Kalendsof the bean. That beans may have had something to do withnaming the month is indicated by the twisted tale which Macro-bius tells (Sat., I, 12, 31-2) of Junius Brutus naming the monthfor himself-presumably renaming it-because Tarquin was ex-pelled on the Kalends of June and Brutus made offerings toCarna, a goddess of the vital organs, who regularly receivedofferings of bean pulse, puls fabaria, and lard on the Kalendsof June. He then adds (Sat., I, 12, 33) that this Kalends 9 wascommonly called fabariae becauseripe beans, adultae fabae, wereused for sacred purposes in this month, hoc mense.It seems to me that we have here a scrambled version of whatreally happened, viz. that the month was originally calledfabarius from the fact that beans, as we have noted, were commondiet for pigs; that some reminiscence of this fact lurked in therites for Carna; and that efforts to explain the name Junius inreference to these rites ended in the clumsy story about JuniusBrutus. The offering of lard in addition to bean pulse is cer-tainly good evidence that we are dealing with elements connectedwith the kind of hog-cycle on which the 4-month year appearsto have been based.

In Gellius (X, 15. 12) there is an interesting list of fourthings which might not be touched or named by the flamenDialis: they are she-goat, capra, uncooked meat, carnis incocta,ivy, hedera,and beans, faba. Plutarch (Quaest. Rom., 111) addsthe dog, so we cannot be sure how long the list really was norexactly what were the original elements in it; but the fact that

8 Cf. Rose, Ancient Roman Religion (London, 1948), pp. 69-70, andAltheim, History of Roman Religion (New York, 1937), pp. 162-3.9 The Kalends-of June or any other month-may not have existedas a day of special import in the 4-month calendar; but the adjectivefabarius may have clung to the first day of the month even after themonth of Fabarius had changed its name to Junius.

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THE PREHISTORIC ROMAN CALENDAR.caprais first on Gellius' list and faba fourth, while carnis incocta-which might cover raw pork from a boar or aper-is thesecond item, leads me to think that here we have, with minoralterations, a list of those things for which the original fourmonths were named, and indeed in the proper order: i. e. caprafor Caprotinus, aper for April, an unidentifiable product10 forMay, and faba for Fabarius.11

VAN L. JOHNSON.TUFTS UNIVERSITY.10 I cannot explain the strange hedera; it may be a corruption.11Since every day in the 4-month year might be tagged with the

adjectival form of one of these original month names, we can now wellunderstand why the Flamen Dialis was feriatus or subject to his restric-tions every day, cotidie (Gellius, X, 15). If, in the beginning, everyday in the calendar was associated with some tabooed object, an over-whelming tradition was established.

FOUR-MONTH YEAR BASED ON BREEDING CYCLE OF PIGSCYCLE

Year I (begins in March of solar year)March Breeding of first litter.AprilMayJune

Year II (begins in July of solar year)March Bearing and suckling of first litter.April Suckling of first litter.May First litter nefrendes. Breeding of second litter.June First litter able to munch fabae.

Year III (begins in November of solar year)MarchAprilMay Bearing and suckling of second litter. Gelding and separation

of boars (maiales and verres) from first litter.June Suckling of second litter.CYCLE I

Year I (begins in March of solar year)March Breeding of third litter.

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el calendario romano prehistorico

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