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The Original meaning of the word Sacer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

W. Warde Fowler
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Extract

In Roman religious law the word sacer indicated that the object to which it was applied was the property of a deity, taken out of the region of the profanum by the action of the state, and passed on into that of the sacrum. We have an exact account of it which can be traced through Verrius Flaccus to a scholar apparently of the age of Cicero, Aelius Gallus. “Gallus Aelius ait sacrum esse, quodcunque more atque instituto civitatis consecratum sit, sive aedis sive ara sive signum sive pecunia sive quid aliud quod dis dedicatum atque consecratum sit: quod autem privati suae religionis causa aliquid earum rerum deo dedicent, id pontifices Romanos non existimare sacrum.” This very explicit passage makes it plain that the state, through its religious authorities, had appropriated the word, and fixed it to a definite meaning, at some period when there were already temples in which deities could dwell and enjoy the possession of their own property, made over to them by the state to do them honour and propitiate them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 1 , November 1911 , pp. 57 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © W. Warde Fowler 1911. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 57 note 1 This is Lachmann's correction for MS. “quocunque modo.” See Marquardt, , Staatsverwaltung, iii, 145Google Scholar.

page 57 note 2 Festus, p. 321. Cf. Gaius, ii, 5.

page 57 note 3 See Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 27.

page 57 note 4 Marquardt, op. cit. 161, ff. Wissowa, op. cit. 400, ff.

page 58 note 1 Macrob. Sat. iii, 7, 3Google Scholar. The explanation is a curious example of the semi-mystical tendency of Trebatius' time. The souls of homines sacrati were dis debitae, and might therefore be sent ad caelum as soon as possible, i.e. by anyone who had the chance.

page 58 note 2 P. 434. Mr. Marett, Threshold of Religion, 126, compares sacer and taboo, but is thinking of sacer in all its senses. Of course that which is the property of a god can be called taboo as much as the accursed man; but in that sense it is a survival from an older age into the religious law of a theological one. Mr. Marett tells me, what is very interesting in this connexion, that taboo tends in the Pacific to connote “prohibited by religious law.”

page 59 note 1 This is, I think, the right way to look on the process of sacrificium. The preliminary steps, e.g. the pouring on the victim of mola salsa and libations of wine, are only consummated by the actual slaughter, and that again might fail to put the victim into the region of the sacrum, if its exta were not found perfect. (This is the only object of examining the organs in genuine old Roman ritual.)

page 59 note 2 See below at the end of this paper.

page 59 note 3 Cf. the prayers in Cato, De re rust. 132, 134, 139, 141.

page 59 note 4 Festus, s.v. sacer homo. Lactantius, Inst. i, 21Google Scholar. Wissowa (op. cit. 326, note 4), has seen that the homo sacer cannot be the subject of a sacrificium: “der mit Strafschuld beladene Verbrecher konnte ebensowenig als eine Ehrung den Göttern dargebracht werden, wie die Missgeburt, die man stillschweigend beseitigt.”

page 59 note 5 Cic. Pro. Rosc. Amer. 26, 72.

page 60 note 1 Dio Cassius, xliii, 24. Mommsen, Strafrecht, 913; Wissowa, op. cit. 355, note 3, considers it an undoubted case of imitation of an ancient rite. See also my Roman Festivals, 249, note 2.

page 60 note 2 Serv. Aen. 6, 609: cf. Dion. Hal. ii, 74.

page 60 note 3 Plin. xviii, 8, 12.

page 60 note 4 Plut. Rom. 22.

page 60 note 5 Festus, 230.

page 60 note 6 Wissowa, op. cit. 161.

page 60 note 7 Livy, viii, 9, 6-8: and cf. the explanations of the ritual by Prof. Deubner in Archiv. für Religions-wissenschaft, 1905, 69, ff.

page 60 note 8 In a later formula quoted by Macrobius (iii, 9, 10) as used at the siege of Carthage, the deities are Dis Pater, Vediovis, Manes. Dis Pater is the Greek name for Orcus.

page 61 note 1 This was so until the Graeco-Roman period and the introduction of Greek deities of the underworld (e.g. at the ludi saeculares, when black victims were sacrificed at night). For animal sacrifice at the Parentalia the only evidence is that of Virg. Aen. iii, 67, which need by no means be taken as proving a Roman practice. Vediovis and the Manes had no temples or altars, so far as we know, till towards the end of the republican period. By the devotio a man's life was put into their power: and so with the sacratio. (See article Inferi in the Mythological Lexicon, 256).

page 61 note 2 Livy, iii, 55, 8.

page 61 note 3 Mommsen, Strafrecht, 933.

page 62 note 1 The Threshold of Religion, 90-92.

page 62 note 2 This is the view of Marquardt, , Staatsverwaltung, iii, 277Google Scholar, ff. I cannot find a definite proof of the statement that the pontifex maximus declared a man impius, but the assumption seems a safe one. In the case of Clodius and the Bona Dea mysteries the pontifical college declared the act nefas before further steps could be taken. Cic. Att. i, 13, 3.

page 62 note 3 I am indebted for this statement of Momsen's view, which he says is maintained throughout the Strafrecht, to the Master of Balliol, who kindly allowed me to read the proof of the first chapter of his forthcoming book on Roman Criminal Law. This reading suggested to me the subject of this paper, and also supplied me conveniently with a few of the passages I have noticed.

page 62 note 4 The compound consecratio retained this meaning throughout: e.g. in Pliny's Panegyric on Trajan, 64, we read: “ille iuravit expressit explanavitque verba quibus caput suum, domum suam, si sciens fefellisset, deorum irae consecraret.”

page 63 note 1 I may add in a footnote the curious use of the word (apparently in an antique form) mentioned by Varro in two passages in book ii of his De re rustica i, 20; 4, 16). Sacrificial animals were not reckoned fit for sacrifice until a certain number of days after birth (e.g. ten in the case of pigs); after this they were called in Varro's time puri, but formerly sacres. In each case he quotes a line of Plautus in the Menaechmi, which, as we have it, stands thus (ed. Lindsay, Oxford, ii, 289): “quibus hic pretiis porci veneunt sacres sinceri?” It may be that Plautus was here translating a Greek word (ὄσιōσ?), and so misled Varro into fancying that sacres was here really used in a primitive sense. The word sinceri seems to be added to make the meaning clear to a Roman audience. The ignis sacer of medical writers (Plin. N.H. xxvi, 121Google Scholar), i.e. an eruption on the skin, may also be mentioned: the word here may be supposed to mean “uncanny” or “dangerous.” Lastly the use of the word in the term sacra via suggests that that path was originally reserved for religious purposes under the ius divinum of the city of the four regions; but its early history, except so far as excavation has thrown light on it as a material object, is entirely lost to us.