Section 3. Many Manii at Aricia.
WE are now able to suggest an explanation of the proverb "There are many
Manii at Aricia." Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called by
the Romans maniae, and it appears that this kind of loaf was especially
made at Aricia. Now, Mania, the name of one of these loaves, was also the
name of the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, to whom woollen effigies of
men and women were dedicated at the festival of the Compitalia. These
effigies were hung at the doors of all the houses in Rome; one effigy was
hung up for every free person in the house, and one effigy, of a different
kind, for every slave. The reason was that on this day the ghosts of the
dead were believed to be going about, and it was hoped that, either out of
good nature or through simple inadvertence, they would carry off the
effigies at the door instead of the living people in the house. According to
tradition, these woollen figures were substitutes for a former custom of
sacrificing human beings. Upon data so fragmentary and uncertain, it is
impossible to build with confidence; but it seems worth suggesting that the
loaves in human form, which appear to have been baked at Aricia, were
sacramental bread, and that in the old days, when the divine King of the
Wood was annually slain, loaves were made in his image, like the paste
figures of the gods in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by his
worshippers. The Mexican sacraments in honour of Huitzilopochtli were
also accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the
founder of the sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom
many Manii were descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented
to explain the name maniae as applied to these sacramental loaves. A dim
recollection of the original connexion of the loaves with human sacrifices
may perhaps be traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at
the Compitalia were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however,
is probably devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies
to divert the attention of ghosts or demons from living people is not
uncommon. 1
For example, the Tibetans stand in fear of innumerable earth-demons, all
of whom are under the authority of Old Mother Khön-ma. This goddess,
who may be compared to the Roman Mania, the Mother or Grandmother of
Ghosts, is dressed in golden-yellow robes, holds a golden noose in her
hand, and rides on a ram. In order to bar the dwelling-house against the
foul fiends, of whom Old Mother Khön-ma is mistress, an elaborate
structure somewhat resembling a chandelier is fixed above the door on the
outside of the house. It contains a ram's skull, a variety of precious objects
such as gold-leaf, silver, and turquoise, also some dry food, such as rice,
wheat, and pulse, and finally images or pictures of a man, a woman, and a
house. "The object of these figures of a man, wife, and house is to deceive
the demons should they still come in spite of this offering, and to mislead
them into the belief that the foregoing pictures are the inmates of the house,
so that they may wreak their wrath on these bits of wood and to save the
real human occupants." When all is ready, a priest prays to Old Mother
Khön-ma that she would be pleased to accept these dainty offerings and to
close the open doors of the earth, in order that the demons may not come
forth to infest and injure the household. 2
Again, effigies are often employed as a means of preventing or curing
sickness; the demons of disease either mistake the effigies for living people
or are persuaded or compelled to enter them, leaving the real men and
women well and whole. Thus the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, will
sometimes transport a sick man to another house, while they leave on his
bed a dummy made up of a pillow and clothes. This dummy the demon is
supposed to mistake for the sick man, who consequently recovers. Cure or
prevention of this sort seems to find especial favour with the natives of
Borneo. Thus, when an epidemic is raging among them, the Dyaks of the
Katoengouw River set up wooden images at their doors in the hope that the
demons of the plague may be deluded into carrying off the effigies instead
of the people. Among the Oloh Ngadju of Borneo, when a sick man is
supposed to be suffering from the assaults of a ghost, puppets of dough or
rice-meal are made and thrown under the house as substitutes for the
patient, who thus rids himself of the ghost. In certain of the western districts
of Borneo if a man is taken suddenly and violently sick, the physician, who
in this part of the world is generally an old woman, fashions a wooden
image and brings it seven times into contact with the sufferer's head, while
she says: "This image serves to take the place of the sick man; sickness,
pass over into the image." Then, with some rice, salt, and tobacco in a little
basket, the substitute is carried to the spot where the evil spirit is supposed
to have entered into the man. There it is set upright on the ground, after the
physician has invoked the spirit as follows: "O devil, here is an image
which stands instead of the sick man. Release the soul of the sick man and
plague the image, for it is indeed prettier and better than he." Batak
magicians can conjure the demon of disease out of the patient's body into
an image made out of a banana-tree with a human face and wrapt up in
magic herbs; the image is then hurriedly removed and thrown away or
buried beyond the boundaries of the village. Sometimes the image, dressed
as a man or a woman according to the sex of the patient, is deposited at a
cross-road or other thoroughfare, in the hope that some passer-by, seeing
it, may start and cry out, "Ah! So-and-So is dead"; for such an
exclamation is supposed to delude the demon of disease into a belief that
he has accomplished his fell purpose, so he takes himself off and leaves
the sufferer to get well. The Mai Darat, a Sakai tribe of the Malay
Peninsula, attribute all kinds of diseases to the agency of spirits which they
call nyani; fortunately, however, the magician can induce these maleficent
beings to come out of the sick person and take up their abode in rude
figures of grass, which are hung up outside the houses in little bell-shaped
shrines decorated with peeled sticks. During an epidemic of small-pox the
Ewe negroes will sometimes clear a space outside of the town, where they
erect a number of low mounds and cover them with as many little clay
figures as there are people in the place. Pots of food and water are also set
out for the refreshment of the spirit of small-pox who, it is hoped, will take
the clay figures and spare the living folk; and to make assurance doubly
sure the road into the town is barricaded against him. 3
With these examples before us we may surmise that the woollen effigies,
which at the festival of the Compitalia might be seen hanging at the doors
of all the houses in ancient Rome, were not substitutes for human victims
who had formerly been sacrificed at this season, but rather vicarious
offerings presented to the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, in the hope
that on her rounds through the city she would accept or mistake the effigies
for the inmates of the house and so spare the living for another year. It is
possible that the puppets made of rushes, which in the month of May the
pontiffs and Vestal Virgins annually threw into the Tiber from the old
Sublician bridge at Rome, had originally the same significance; that is, they
may have been designed to purge the city from demoniac influence by
diverting the attention of the demons from human beings to the puppets and
then toppling the whole uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which
would soon sweep them far out to sea. In precisely the same way the
natives of Old Calabar used periodically to rid their town of the devils
which infested it by luring the unwary demons into a number of lamentable
scarecrows, which they afterwards flung into the river. This interpretation of
the Roman custom is supported to some extent by the evidence of Plutarch,
who speaks of the ceremony as "the greatest of purifications." 4
