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Mundus Patet. 24th August, 5th October, 8th November

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

W. Warde Fowler
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Extract

The mundus of Rome was believed to be a hole or underground pit or vault on the Palatine. It was said to be closed by a stone called the lapis manalis, which same name, oddly enough, is also given to an entirely different kind of stone, with which the pontifices occasionally worked some sort of magic in a drought. Plutarch, in the chapter in which he describes the foundation of Rome, says that the mundus, like the process of marking out a city, was of Etruscan origin; that firstfruits of all kinds were thrown into the pit, and that each new settler brought a bit of earth from his own country and cast it into the pit; he places the pit in the Comitium instead of the Palatine, but notes the word mundus as applied to it there, and the identity of this word with that for the heaven or universe.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 2 , November 1912 , pp. 25 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © W. Warde Fowler 1912. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 25 note 1 See my Roman Festivals, 232.

page 25 note 2 Romulus, 11.

page 25 note 3 Macrobius, i, 16, 18. He adds evidence that the days were religiosi: an army might not give battle, nor any military operation of importance be performed; nor might a marriage take place.

page 25 note 4 Festus, 154. Paulus, 156, gives the dates, which are mutilated in Festus, 142.

page 25 note 5 See the fragment in H. Jordan's Catonis Libri Deperditi, 84, with his note.

page 26 note 1 P. 211. Cf. Müller-Deecke, , Etrusker, ii, 100Google Scholar.

page 26 note 2 See Wissowa, Relig. und Kultus der Römer, 168 (ed. 2, p. 203).

page 27 note 1 Potui is Scaliger's emendation for potuit of the codex.

page 27 note 2 Fasti, iv, 821 : cf. Plutarch, Rom. 11.

page 27 note 3 Varro, R.R. i, 52, init. Quae seges grandissima atque optima fuerit, seorsum in aream secerni oportet spicas, ut semen optimum habeat (i.e. the farmer). Cf. Pliny, xviii, 195; Columella, ii. 9, 11; and also Virgil, Georg. i, 197Google Scholar, who says that the farmer must pick out the largest by hand, or they will degenerate in the keeping.

page 27 note 4 Varro, R.R. i, 50, 51 and the beginning of 52 already quoted. When the corn has been reaped, it must be brought to the area (threshing-floor), which Varro then describes in c. 51 : then, returning to the crop, he urges the separation of the seed-corn from the rest. The same is clearly implied in Columella, ii, 21.

page 27 note 5 See Mommsen's note in C.I.L. i, ed. 2, p. 326, followed by Wissowa Rel. und Kult. 167 (ed. 2, p. 201). As from 5 to 10 modii of various kinds of seed were needed for each iugerum, a fairly roomy receptacle would be necessary.

page 28 note 1 Pliny, H.N. xviii, 205Google Scholar: cf. Varro, i, 34.

page 28 note 2 Ante tibi Eoae Atlantides abscondantur, Gnosiaque ardentis decedat Stella Coronae, Debita quam sulcis committas semina quamque Invitae properes anni spem credere terrae.” Varro, i, 34, rather vaguely describes sowing as extending from the equinox to the bruma; but Columella, ii, 8, quotes and supports Virgil: only in this passage he seems to be thinking of the true morning setting of the Pleiades, i.e. 24th October, though in other places he obviously alludes to the apparent setting. See Dict. of Antiquities, s.v. Astronomia, p. 227.

page 28 note 3 Dict. of Antiquities, loc. cit. “The true morning setting was at Rome at that epoch on 29th October, the apparent morning setting on 9th November.” This date has been confirmed for the time of the Roman kings by Dr. Fotheringham, who has most kindly made elaborate calculations for me. He sums them up thus in a letter: “Anyhow, you will see that the date given in the Dict. of Antiquities (9th November) appears to apply excellently to the time of the kings. It does not seem to apply so well to the time of Julius Caesar, to which it was intended (in the dictionary) to refer.” In a later letter he wrote: “As the Roman 8th November did not occupy a fixed place in the natural year before the time of Julius Caesar, I presume that a general and not an exact coincidence with the cosmical setting of the Pleiades is all that is required.”

page 28 note 4 Macrobius, i, 16, 18.

page 29 note 1 In Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, 1911, p. 323.

page 29 note 2 The Religious experience of the Roman people, 391, ff.

page 29 note 3 The best account of the word mundus known to me is in Nettleship's Contributions to Latin Lexicography, p. 528. I have abstained from invoking the aid of etymology; but if Nettleship is right, the word may be developed from a root mu, meaning to enclose, or fence round. In regard to an Etruscan origin of a similar word see Müller-Deecke, , Die Etrusker, ii, 100Google Scholar, n. 65a.

page 30 note 1 cf. Paulus, 128. In case the contrast between the original Latin meaning of the mundus and that here assumed to have been superimposed, should astonish any one, let me refer him to the remarks of Dr. J. B. Carter in Hastings' Dict. of Religion and Ethics, i 464. He points out that the Romans do not seem to have been much interested in the lower world, and that every bit description of it comes from writers under Greek influence, and all the details are identical with those of the Greeks. Hence it is probable that the Roman lower world was not mythologically adorned till Greeks (and Etruscans) did it for them. As we have seen, the idea of a stone covering the abode of the dead, the removal of which gave egress to the ghosts, is found only in Festus, 154, and nowhere alluded to in Roman literature. It has been compared to the Dillestein of German mythology (Preller-Jordan, ii, 67), but a perusal of the description of that mysterious stone in Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, iii, 806Google Scholar (Engl. trans.) makes it clear to me that there is nothing in common between the two. The Dillestein was ceiling or grating of the underworld, lying at the bottom of our earth. I may add to this note a few words of Dr. Frazer's, contained in a letter to me: “The ancient explanation of the mundus is perhaps not wholly irreconcileable with your theory. For observe that the spirits of the dead are often supposed to watch over or further the growth of the crops: that is why the firstfruits are often presented to them. For examples see the Golden Bough (ed. 2), ii, 459, seq.” On the connexion at Rome between Tellus Mater, the dead, and the crops, see my Religious experience of the Roman people, 121, 138; cf. Dieterich, Mutter Erde cap. iv.

page 30 note 2 Golden Bough, ii, 172.

page 30 note 3 i.e. it is kept separate, as intended for seed-corn. Cf. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen 334, translated in G.B. p. 181.

page 32 note 1 Does this mean that the first use of the grain for sowing occurred forty days after it was thus deposited? It is curious that the time between the Opiconsivia on 25th August, and the first opening of the mundus on 5th October, is almost exactly forty days, a coincidence which I do not in the least wish to emphasise, but the number forty has often a religious significance.

page 32 note 2 In his Modern Greek Folklore and ancient Greek Religion, Mr. J. C. Lawson has some interesting remarks about the beehive structures at Mycenae, suggesting that they may possibly have been megara, “temples of Chthonian deities such as Demeter” : see p. 94, ff.

page 32 note 3 Apud Fest. 154.

page 33 note 1 Cults, iii, 105, ff.

page 33 note 2 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. iii, 271Google Scholar.

page 33 note 3 Cults, iii, 184.

page 33 note 4 See e.g. Miss Harrison's Prolegomena, pp. 137 and 143.

page 33 note 5 See Miss Harrison, op. cit. 137.