Chapter 13. The Kings of Rome and Alba.
Section 1. Numa and Egeria.
FROM THE FOREGOING survey of custom and legend we may infer that the sacred
marriage of the powers both of vegetation and of water has been celebrated by many
peoples for the sake of promoting the fertility of the earth, on which the life of animals and
men ultimately depends, and that in such rites the part of the divine bridegroom or bride is
often sustained by a man or woman. The evidence may, therefore, lend some countenance
to the conjecture that in the sacred grove at Nemi, where the powers of vegetation and of
water manifested themselves in the fair forms of shady woods, tumbling cascades, and
glassy lake, a marriage like that of our King and Queen of May was annually celebrated
between the mortal King of the Wood and the immortal Queen of the Wood, Diana. In this
connexion an important figure in the grove was the water-nymph Egeria, who was
worshipped by pregnant women because she, like Diana, could grant them an easy delivery.
From this it seems fairly safe to conclude that, like many other springs, the water of Egeria
was credited with a power of facilitating conception as well as delivery. The votive offerings
found on the spot, which clearly refer to the begetting of children, may possibly have been
dedicated to Egeria rather than to Diana, or perhaps we should rather say that the
water-nymph Egeria is only another form of the great nature-goddess Diana herself, the
mistress of sounding rivers as well as of umbrageous woods, who had her home by the lake
and her mirror in its calm waters, and whose Greek counterpart Artemis loved to haunt
meres and springs. The identification of Egeria with Diana is confirmed by a statement of
Plutarch that Egeria was one of the oak-nymphs whom the Romans believed to preside
over every green oak-grove; for, while Diana was a goddess of the woodlands in general,
she appears to have been intimately associated with oaks in particular, especially at her
sacred grove of Nemi. Perhaps, then, Egeria was the fairy of a spring that flowed from the
roots of a sacred oak. Such a spring is said to have gushed from the foot of the great oak
at Dodona, and from its murmurous flow the priestess drew oracles. Among the Greeks a
draught of water from certain sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic
powers. This would explain the more than mortal wisdom with which, according to tradition,
Egeria inspired her royal husband or lover Numa. When we remember how very often in
early society the king is held responsible for the fall of rain and the fruitfulness of the earth,
it seems hardly rash to conjecture that in the legend of the nuptials of Numa and Egeria we
have a reminiscence of a sacred marriage which the old Roman kings regularly contracted
with a goddess of vegetation and water for the purpose of enabling him to discharge his
divine or magical functions. In such a rite the part of the goddess might be played either by
an image or a woman, and if by a woman, probably by the Queen. If there is any truth in this
conjecture, we may suppose that the King and Queen of Rome masqueraded as god and
goddess at their marriage, exactly as the King and Queen of Egypt appear to have done.
The legend of Numa and Egeria points to a sacred grove rather than to a house as the
scene of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the King and Queen of May, or of the
vine-god and the Queen of Athens, may have been annually celebrated as a charm to
ensure the fertility not only of the earth but of man and beast. Now, according to some
accounts, the scene of the marriage was no other than the sacred grove of Nemi, and on
quite independent grounds we have been led to suppose that in that same grove the King
of the Wood was wedded to Diana. The convergence of the two distinct lines of enquiry
suggests that the legendary union of the Roman king with Egeria may have been a
reflection or duplicate of the union of the King of the Wood with Egeria or her double
Diana. This does not imply that the Roman kings ever served as Kings of the Wood in the
Arician grove, but only that they may originally have been invested with a sacred character
of the same general kind, and may have held office on similar terms. To be more explicit, it is
possible that they reigned, not by right of birth, but in virtue of their supposed divinity as
representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such they mated with a goddess, and
had to prove their fitness from time to time to discharge their divine functions by engaging
in a severe bodily struggle, which may often have proved fatal to them, leaving the crown
to their victorious adversary. Our knowledge of the Roman kingship is far too scanty to
allow us to affirm any one of these propositions with confidence; but at least there are
some scattered hints or indications of a similarity in all these respects between the priests
of Nemi and the kings of Rome, or perhaps rather between their remote predecessors in
the dark ages which preceded the dawn of legend. 1
Section 2. The King as Jupiter.
IN THE FIRST place, then, it would seem that the Roman king personated no less a deity
than Jupiter himself. For down to imperial times victorious generals celebrating a triumph,
and magistrates presiding at the games in the Circus, wore the costume of Jupiter, which
was borrowed for the occasion from his great temple on the Capitol; and it has been held
with a high degree of probability both by ancients and moderns that in so doing they
copied the traditionary attire and insignia of the Roman kings. They rode a chariot drawn by
four laurel-crowned horses through the city, where every one else went on foot: they wore
purple robes embroidered or spangled with gold: in the right hand they bore a branch of
laurel, and in the left hand an ivory sceptre topped with an eagle: a wreath of laurel crowned
their brows: their face was reddened with vermilion; and over their head a slave held a
heavy crown of massy gold fashioned in the likeness of oak leaves. In this attire the
assimilation of the man to the god comes out above all in the eagle-topped sceptre, the
oaken crown, and the reddened face. For the eagle was the bird of Jove, the oak was his
sacred tree, and the face of his image standing in his four-horse chariot on the Capitol was
in like manner regularly dyed red on festivals; indeed, so important was it deemed to keep
the divine features properly rouged that one of the first duties of the censors was to
contract for having this done. As the triumphal procession always ended in the temple of
Jupiter on the Capitol, it was peculiarly appropriate that the head of the victor should be
graced by a crown of oak leaves, for not only was every oak consecrated to Jupiter, but the
Capitoline temple of the god was said to have been built by Romulus beside a sacred oak,
venerated by shepherds, to which the king attached the spoils won by him from the
enemy's general in battle. We are expressly told that the oak crown was sacred to
Capitoline Jupiter; a passage of Ovid proves that it was regarded as the god's special
emblem. 1
According to a tradition which we have no reason to reject, Rome was founded by settlers
from Alba Longa, a city situated on the slope of the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the
Campagna. Hence if the Roman kings claimed to be representatives or embodiments of
Jupiter, the god of the sky, of the thunder, and of the oak, it is natural to suppose that the
kings of Alba, from whom the founder of Rome traced his descent, may have set up the
same claim before them. Now the Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can
hardly be without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome revealed to
Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a poet, should represent all the line
of Silvii as crowned with oak. A chaplet of oak leaves would thus seem to have been part of
the insignia of the old kings of Alba Longa as of their successors the kings of Rome; in
both cases it marked the monarch as the human representative of the oak-god. The Roman
annals record that one of the kings of Alba, Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius Silvius by name,
set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter. To support his
pretensions and overawe his subjects, he constructed machines whereby he mimicked the
clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus relates that in the season of fruitage,
when thunder is loud and frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of
heaven's artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid the penalty of
his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a thunderbolt in the midst of a
dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace.
But still, says an ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface unruffled by a
breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the bottom of the clear lake. Taken along with
the similar story of Salmoneus, king of Elis, this legend points to a real custom observed by
the early kings of Greece and Italy, who, like their fellows in Africa down to modern times,
may have been expected to produce rain and thunder for the good of the crops. The
priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky.
Mock thunder, we know, has been made by various peoples as a rain-charm in modern
times; why should it not have been made by kings in antiquity? 2
Thus, if the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the oak by wearing a crown
of oak leaves, they seem also to have copied him in his character of a weather-god by
pretending to make thunder and lightning. And if they did so, it is probable that, like Jupiter
in heaven and many kings on earth, they also acted as public rain-makers, wringing
showers from the dark sky by their enchantments whenever the parched earth cried out for
the refreshing moisture. At Rome the sluices of heaven were opened by means of a sacred
stone, and the ceremony appears to have formed part of the ritual of Jupiter Elicius, the
god who elicits from the clouds the flashing lightning and the dripping rain. And who so
well fitted to perform the ceremony as the king, the living representative of the
sky-god? 3
If the kings of Rome aped Capitoline Jove, their predecessors the kings of Alba probably
laid themselves out to mimic the great Latian Jupiter, who had his seat above the city on the
summit of the Alban Mountain. Latinus, the legendary ancestor of the dynasty, was said to
have been changed into Latian Jupiter after vanishing from the world in the mysterious
fashion characteristic of the old Latin kings. The sanctuary of the god on the top of the
mountain was the religious centre of the Latin League, as Alba was its political capital till
Rome wrested the supremacy from its ancient rival. Apparently no temple, in our sense of
the word, was ever erected to Jupiter on this his holy mountain; as god of the sky and
thunder he appropriately received the homage of his worshippers in the open air. The
massive wall, of which some remains still enclose the old garden of the Passionist
monastery, seems to have been part of the sacred precinct which Tarquin the Proud, the
last king of Rome, marked out for the solemn annual assembly of the Latin League. The
god's oldest sanctuary on this airy mountain-top was a grove; and bearing in mind not
merely the special consecration of the oak to Jupiter, but also the traditional oak crown of
the Alban kings and the analogy of the Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, we may suppose that the
trees in the grove were oaks. We know that in antiquity Mount Algidus, an outlying group of
the Alban hills, was covered with dark forests of oak; and among the tribes who belonged
to the Latin League in the earliest days, and were entitled to share the flesh of the white bull
sacrificed on the Alban Mount, there was one whose members styled themselves the Men
of the Oak, doubtless on account of the woods among which they dwelt. 4
But we should err if we pictured to ourselves the country as covered in historical times
with an unbroken forest of oaks. Theophrastus has left us a description of the woods of
Latium as they were in the fourth century before Christ. He says: "The land of the Latins is
all moist. The plains produce laurels, myrtles, and wonderful beeches; for they fell trees of
such a size that a single stem suffices for the keel of a Tyrrhenian ship. Pines and firs grow
in the mountains. What they call the land of Circe is a lofty headland thickly wooded with
oak, myrtle, and luxuriant laurels. The natives say that Circe dwelt there, and they show the
grave of Elpenor, from which grow myrtles such as wreaths are made of, whereas the other
myrtle-trees are tall." Thus the prospect from the top of the Alban Mount in the early days
of Rome must have been very different in some respects from what it is to-day. The purple
Apennines, indeed, in their eternal calm on the one hand, and the shining Mediterranean in
its eternal unrest on the other, no doubt looked then much as they look now, whether
bathed in sunshine, or chequered by the fleeting shadows of clouds; but instead of the
desolate brown expanse of the fever-stricken Campagna, spanned by its long lines of
ruined aqueducts, like the broken arches of the bridge in the vision of Mirza, the eye must
have ranged over woodlands that stretched away, mile after mile, on all sides, till their
varied hues of green or autumnal scarlet and gold melted insensibly into the blue of the
distant mountains and sea. 5
But Jupiter did not reign alone on the top of his holy mountain. He had his consort with
him, the goddess Juno, who was worshipped here under the same title, Moneta, as on the
Capitol at Rome. As the oak crown was sacred to Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol, so we
may suppose it was on the Alban Mount, from which the Capitoline worship was derived.
Thus the oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the sacred oak grove. So at Dodona the
oak-god Zeus was coupled with Dione, whose very name is only a dialectically different
form of Juno; and so on the top of Mount Cithaeron, as we have seen, he appears to have
been periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera. It is probable, though it cannot be
positively proved, that the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno was annually celebrated by
all the peoples of the Latin stock in the month which they named after the goddess, the
midsummer month of June. 6
If at any time of the year the Romans celebrated the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno,
as the Greeks commonly celebrated the corresponding marriage of Zeus and Hera, we may
suppose that under the Republic the ceremony was either performed over images of the
divine pair or acted by the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica. For the Flamen Dialis
was the priest of Jove; indeed, ancient and modern writers have regarded him, with much
probability, as a living image of Jupiter, a human embodiment of the sky-god. In earlier
times the Roman king, as representative of Jupiter, would naturally play the part of the
heavenly bridegroom at the sacred marriage, while his queen would figure as the heavenly
bride, just as in Egypt the king and queen masqueraded in the character of deities, and as at
Athens the queen annually wedded the vine-god Dionysus. That the Roman king and queen
should act the parts of Jupiter and Juno would seem all the more natural because these
deities themselves bore the title of King and Queen. 7
Whether that was so or not, the legend of Numa and Egeria appears to embody a
reminiscence of a time when the priestly king himself played the part of the divine
bridegroom; and as we have seen reason to suppose that the Roman kings personated the
oak-god, while Egeria is expressly said to have been an oak-nymph, the story of their
union in the sacred grove raises a presumption that at Rome in the regal period a ceremony
was periodically performed exactly analogous to that which was annually celebrated at
Athens down to the time of Aristotle. The marriage of the King of Rome to the
oak-goddess, like the wedding of the vine-god to the Queen of Athens, must have been
intended to quicken the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic. Of the two forms of
the rite we can hardly doubt that the Roman was the older, and that long before the
northern invaders met with the vine on the shores of the Mediterranean their forefathers
had married the tree-god to the tree-goddess in the vast oak forests of Central and
Northern Europe. In the England of our day the forests have mostly disappeared, yet still
on many a village green and in many a country lane a faded image of the sacred marriage
lingers in the rustic pageantry of May Day. 8