Section 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome.
WE are now prepared to notice the use of the human scapegoat in
classical antiquity. Every year on the fourteenth of March a man clad in
skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long
white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius,
that is, "the old Mars," and as the ceremony took place on the day
preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on the
first of March), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the
past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars
was originally not a god of war but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that
the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his
vines, his fruit-trees and his copses; it was to Mars that the priestly
college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the
growth of the crops, addressed their petitions almost exclusively; and it
was to Mars, as we saw, that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure
an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of "Mars of
the woods" (Mars Silvanus), that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of
their cattle. We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to
be under the special patronage of tree-gods. Once more, the consecration
of the vernal month of March to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of
the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars
at the beginning of the new year in spring is identical with the Slavonic
custom of "carrying out Death," if the view here taken of the latter custom
is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been
already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken
Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic
ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god
of vegetation. It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to
be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them.
But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be
primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the
representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity
of vegetation but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this; for there
is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the
city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat; it then becomes
necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry his
sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius
appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies
of Rome. 1
