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| The Return of Persephone |
"This Befana appears to be heir at law of a certain heathen goddess called Strenia, who presided over the new-year's gifts, 'Strenae,' from which, indeed, she derived her name. Her presents were of the same description as those of the Befana—figs, dates, and honey. Moreover her solemnities were vigorously opposed by the early Christians on account of their noisy, riotous, and licentious character."From the book Domestic Life in Palestine, by Mary E. Rogers (Poe & Hitchcock, 1865)::
"An 'Essay on the Fine Arts,' by E. L. Tarbuck, led me to believe that this custom is a relic of pagan worship, and that the word "Bastrina" refers to the offerings which used to be made to the goddess Strenia. We could hardly expect that the pagans who embraced Christianity could altogether abandon their former creeds and customs. Macaulay says, "Christianity conquered paganism, but paganism infected Christianity; the rites of the Pantheon passed into her 'worship, and the subtilties of the Academy into her creed.' Many pagan customs were adopted by the new Church. T. Hope, in his 'Essay on Architecture,' says: 'The Saturnalia were continued in the Carnival, and the festival with offerings to the goddess Strenia was continued in that of the New Year…'"
"The Roman antiquaries inform us that the term Sacred Way is applicable to a road leading from the Sacellum (chapel) of the Goddess Strenia, in or near the Carinae, to the Capitoline citadel..."Christmas and epiphany gifts in Italy are still called strenae .
Aries represents a Fire symbol as well as bold actions, a lot of these behaviors can be seen during any age. However, the themes emphasised during this age relate to courage, initiative, war & adventure. Nations during this age such as the expanding empires of China, Persia, Greece and Rome, are often cited as examples of the archetypes of Aries in action.
Aries is associated with the metal iron, and iron ore was for the first time smelted and worked into iron swords in Anatolia during the early phase of this era, replacing the heavier, softer-metalled, duller-edged bronze swords of the previous Taurus Age.
The lituus was a crooked wand (similar in shape to the top part of a crosier) used as a cult instrument in ancient Roman religion by augurs to mark out a ritual space in the sky (a templum). The passage of birds through this templum indicated divine favor or disfavor for a given undertaking.
A templum was the sacred space defined by an augur for ritual purposes, a place "cut off" as sacred. It could be created as temporary or permanent, depending on the lawful purpose of the inauguration. Auspices and senate meetings were unlawful unless held in a templum; if the senate house (Curia) was unavailable, an augur could apply the appropriate religious formulae to provide a lawful alternative.
To create a templum, the augur aligned his zone of observation (auguraculum, a square, portable surround) with the cardinal points of heaven and earth. The altar and entrance were sited on the east-west axis: the sacrificer faced east. The precinct was thus "defined and freed" (effatum et liberatum).
In most cases, signs to the augur's left (north) showed divine approval and signs to his right (south), disapproval. Stone-built temples followed this ground-plan and were sacred in perpetuity.
As my wife was born at fruitful Falisci, we went to visit those walls which long ago were conquered, Camillus, by thee. The priestesses were making ready to celebrate the festival of the chaste Juno by holding solemn games and by the sacrifice of a heifer native to the place. It was a strong motive for lingering there awhile, to witness the rite, though full steep is the path that leads to the scene of its performance.
It is an immemorial grove, and so dense is the foliage there that the daylight cannot penetrate the gloom. One needs but to behold it, to realize that it is the abode of a divinity. An altar receives the prayers and incense offered by the faithful, a rough-hewn altar made by the artless folk of olden days.
From this spot, once a year, as soon as the trumpet has given forth its solemn note, the procession sets out and makes its way along the carpeted paths. Snow-white heifers are led along amid the plaudits of the throng, heifers nourished by the grass of their native fields, and calves whose brows are not yet armed with threatening horns, and the humble pig, a lowlier victim, and the leader of the herd with horns curved back over his stubborn head. The goat alone is hateful to the Lady Goddess, ever since the day when by a goat her presence was betrayed in a deep wood and she was forced to abandon her flight. And so, even now, the boys pursue her with their darts and she is given as a prize to the one that brings her low.
All along the way the Goddess is to pass, boys and shy maidens strew the paths with carpets. Gold and gems sparkle in their virgin hair and the proud mantle hides their gold-decked feet. In the Grecian manner of their ancestors they pass on, Clad in white, and on their head they bear the sacred vessels entrusted to their care. Peep silence holds the people while the stately procession is passing by, and after her priestesses, follows the Goddess herself.
The whole procession tells of Greece. After the murder of Agamemnon, Halesus fled the scene of his crime and the rich lands of his forefathers. It was only after many adventures, both by land and sea, that with auspicious hands he reared a high-walled city. ’Twas he that taught the Falisci to celebrate the rites of Juno. May they to me, and to her own people, ever be propitious.
Falerii Veteres reached its zenith in the fifth century BC, confirming undisputed political and cultural capital of Faliscan. Several findings attest to the importance of the city, as the temple of Juno Curite and the temple of Mercury whose remains are on display in Rome.
"Nymphodotus, along with Caprasia, asks you to vote for Marcus Cerrinus Vatia for the aedileship." Another, found on the side of a wine shop reads: "Caprasia along with Nymphius -- her neighbors too -- ask you to vote for Aulus Vettius Firmus for the aedileship; he is worthy of the office."If you're curious, here's an interesting chart breaking down the positions (and responsibilities) of government in Rome. I've also come across more nifty history. I can't decide if I like this better than the computers we vote on nowadays:
It is commonly supposed that at Rome the people were always polled in the comitia by word of mouth, till the passing of the Leges Tabellariae about the middle of the second century BCE [Tabellariae Leges], when the ballot by means of tabellae was introduced.Exciting, I know! Basically, you had to be an adult male landowner to vote, but that doesn't mean women had no say at all. They caused scandals when need be, including the protesting of the Oppian laws where the women showed up in the Forum and lobbied the men to repeal law that women would not be allowed to spend money. I wonder if it was a Lysistrata type situation... hmmm!
Popular assemblies voted by ballot, as well as by word of mouth, long before the passing of the Leges Tabellariae, but that instead of using tabellae they employed stones or pebbles and that each voter received two stones, one white and the other black, the former to be used in the approval and the latter in the condemnation of a measure. The voting by word of mouth seems to have been adopted in elections and trials, and the use of pebbles to have been confined to the enactment and repeal of laws.
Gate to the underworld
One such stone covered the mundus Cereris, a pit thought to contain an entrance to the underworld. Most cities of Latium and Etruria contained a similar pit or ditch; Plutarch describes the custom of a mundus as being of Etruscan origin, and states that it was used as a place where first-fruits were deposited.
The Latin word mundus simply meant "world". Festus, quoting Cato this time, explains that:
Mundo nomen impositum est ab eo mundo qui supra nos est.(The mundus gets its name from that world which is above us.)
The Roman mundus was located in the Comitium , on the Palatine Hill. This stone was ceremonially opened three times a year, during which spirits of the blessed dead (the Manes) were able to commune with the living. The three days upon which the mundus was opened were August 24, October 5, and November 8. Fruits of the harvest were offered to the dead at this time.
"When the mundus is open, it is as if a door stands open for the sorrowful gods of the underworld. -Varro
But contemporary Jesus worshippers might be surprised, even outraged, to learn that one of their preeminent religious symbols antedated the Christian religion, and has its roots in Pagan fertility awareness and sexuality. Barbara G. Walker writes in "The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects," that the acronym pertaining to Jesus Christ was a "rationale invented after the fact... Christians simply copied this pagan symbol along with many others." Ichthys was the offspring son of the ancient Sea goddess Atargatis, and was known in various mythic systems as Tirgata, Aphrodite, Pelagia or Delphine. The word also meant "womb" and "dolphin" in some tongues, and representations of this appeared in the depiction of mermaids. The fish also a central element in other stories, including the Goddess of Ephesus (who has a fish amulet covering her genital region), as well as the tale of the fish that swallowed the penis of Osiris, and was also considered a symbol of the vulva of Isis.
Well before Christianity, the fish symbol was known as "the Great Mother," a pointed oval sign, the "vesica piscis" or Vessel of the Fish. "Fish" and "womb" were synonymous terms in ancient Greek,"delphos." Its link to fertility, birth, feminine sexuality and the natural force of women was acknowledged also by the Celts, as well as pagan cultures throughout northern Europe. Eleanor Gaddon traces a "Cult of the Fish Mother" as far back as the hunting and fishing people of the Danube River Basin in the sixth millennium B.C.E. Over fifty shrines have been found throughout the region which depict a fishlike deity, a female creature who "incorporates aspects of an egg, a fish and a woman which could have been a primeval creator or a mythical ancestress..." The "Great Goddess" was portrayed elsewhere with pendulous breasts, accentuated buttocks and a conspicuous vaginal orifice, the upright "vesica piscis" which Christians later adopted and rotated 90-degrees to serve as their symbol.
The Roman mundus was located in the Comitium, on the Palatine Hill. This stone was ceremonially opened three times a year, during which spirits of the blessed dead (the Manes) were able to commune with the living. The three days upon which the mundus was opened were August 24, October 5, and November 8. Fruits of the harvest were offered to the dead at this time.This fits nicely with the feast of Pomona which took place on the 1st of November- orchards were harvested around this time and these are the fruits which were offered in the mundus.
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| Circus Maximus depicted on the back of a coin |
Situated in the province of Enna in a vast grain-growing region of Sicily, Lake Pergusa is one of very few natural lakes that remain on an island famed in antiquity for its wetlands. Pergusa's basin was formed eons ago because of the sudden sinking of the earth's rock layers and is fed only by rainwater and underground tricklings, which are slightly salinated and sulfurous. Italian scientist Sergio Angeletti has noted, "This lake represents a marvelous example in microcosm ... of the formation of the ocean four to five million years ago."The lake periodically undergoes a remarkable reddening phenomenon because of the presence of a red, sulfur-oxidizing bacterium (Thiocapsa roseopersicina) in its waters. During summer months of years in which the sulfur content reaches a critical level, the bacteria proliferate to such an extent that the lake's waters turn either partially or entirely a deep red color, and the environs smell of sulfur for miles around. Over a period of several weeks, the bacteria reduce the sulfur level; they, in turn, are eaten by a tiny, transparent crustacean; and the lake returns to its normal color. The phenomenon, which has been documented only since the twentieth century, was studied in 1932 by Italian scientist Achille Forti, who dubbed Pergusa "the lake of blood."
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| Lightning striking the top of the Washington Monument |
"Now if the Attendants be bright as the Sun, quick as Lightning, and powerful as Thunder; what is He that is their Lord?" -Thomas Comber, 1676Let's leave off tonight with His Orphic hymn, which is thought to have been, in it's original language, used as an invocation during the Mysteries of Eleusis.
Salt was another of Etruria's great resources. It was either mined, as in Volterra, or extracted from seawater in evaporation ponds that were set up along the Tyrrhenian coast. Between Ostia and Pisa the location name Saline is often found, a name testifying to an activity that had extremely ancient roots in the area. Indeed, wars between Rome and Veii that date back to the time of Romulus were fought over the possession of saltworks, which were quite productive near the mouth of the Tiber.
The role of salt in the greater economy must not be overlooked, though its traces are mostly hypothetical. Salt would explain the arrival of a substantial quantity of Euboean (Greek) pottery in Veii and Rome during the eighth century; sources date the wars between these two cities over the possession of the saltworks at the mouth of the Tiber to this same period.
In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia is the most-frequently mentioned foster-mother of Zeus. Her name in Greek ("tender goddess") is clearly an epithet, signifying the presence of an earlier nurturing goddess, whom the Hellenes, whose myths we know, knew to be located in Crete, where Minoans may have called her a version of "Dikte"
Amalthea's skin, or that of her goat, killed and skinned by the grown Zeus, became the protective aegis in some traditions, a vivid enough metaphor for the transfer of power to this Olympian god from that of the goddess who preceded his cult.
Far back in time as it was when this took place, Italy seems to have already possessed numerous cities, many of which were to become enemies of Rome in later days. The most civilized of the Italian peoples were the Etruscans, a nation dwelling north of the Tiber, and whose many cities displayed a higher degree of civilization than those around them. From these the Romans in later days borrowed many of their religious customs, and to them Romulus sent to learn what were the proper ceremonies to use in founding a city.
The ceremonies he used were the following. At the centre of the chosen area he dug a circular pit through the soil to the hard clay beneath, and cast into this, with solemn observances, some of the first fruits of the season. Each of his men also threw in a handful of earth brought from his native land. Then the pit was filled up, an altar erected upon it, and a fire kindled on the altar. In this way was the city consecrated to the gods.
