Italian "Sondergötter." Author(s): H. J. Rose Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 3, Part 2 (1913), pp. 233-241 Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/296227 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 01:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Roman Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 01:31:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ITALIAN " SONDERGOTTER." By H. J. ROSE. Since Usener put prominently forward the theory of Sonder- g6tter,1 the idea has been subjected to trenchant negative criticism by two expertsin the fields of Greek and Roman religion respectively, Farnell2and Wissowa.3 The formerprotests, and rightly so, against the cheerfulassumption that, whenevera deity has a name describing a function, " Saviour," " Queen," " Victory," for example, we should regard him or her as a primitive Sondergott; since many examples teach us that such figures are often the products of a developed polytheism. He would suggest, as a better test than the name, the non-anthropomorphicconception of the god, or rather daimon, in the minds of his worshippers. Thus he clears the field of Greekreligion of a great many heroes and daimoneswho, whatever their names may be, are too developed and too late to have any claim to representprimitive thought. Wissowaattacks the question from a somewhat different standpoint. He sees in the formidable list of Roman Sonderg6tter nothing more recondite than Varro's attempt to arrangeall possible deities under " di certi," or at most the artificial" indigitamenta" of the pontifices which, in accordance with "die peinliche Genauigkeit in der Aufstellung der r6mischen Gebetsformeln," endeavoured to call upon whatever god was addressedunder all the names which applied to the actual petition. The Roman Sonderg6tter,he points out, have a habit of appearing in lists which contain, among the various names composing them, the various attributes of some important deity. Take for instance one of the principal passages in ancient literature relating to the point. Servius on Georg.i, 21, quotes from Fabius Pictor the well- known list of deities invoked in the SacrumCeriale, beginning with Veruactorand ending with Promitor. Here, says Wissowa,we have a " des ' Kreislauf der Feld- Zerlegung iibergeordneten Begriffes 4 arbeiten.'" In the familiarpassage in the Acta of the FratresArvales we have a similar"Zerlegung " of the processof felling and removing a tree. These are artificial developments of a state-cult. Gitternamen, pp. 73, ff. 3 Ges. Abh. 304, ff. 2 Anthrop. Essays to Tylor, 81, ff. 4 p. cxxxvi, Henzen: cf. I47. This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 01:31:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 234 ITALIAN CcSONDERGOTTER." Now it cannot be denied that both these attacks on Usener's position contain much that is correct. Wissowa, in particular, has, as it seems to me, made it impossible for any fair-minded scholar to believe-in lists such as those of the Sondergotter of conception, birth, etc. which Augustine and other fathers of the church quote from Varro. Nor is it likely that such an elaborate list of parallel formations as Veruactor Reparator Imporcitor Insitor, or Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda, spring direct from popular belief. But when all this is cleared away, we are left with a residue which forces us to accept Sondergdtter as an element in Roman religion. Firstly, we have such dim figures as Anna Perenna and Genita Mana, which do not attach themselves to the cult of a higher deity nor form into lists, but are simply the daimones of a single event or set of events. Secondly, the list of the deities of the Sacrum Ceriale is not only, as Wissowa points out, incomplete, since, for instance, the spirits of manuring and threshing are not represented in it; it is also not a full list of the known agricultural daimones, since, even apart from the more important spirits like Consus, we find outside it Stercutus or Stercutius,2 and Spiniensis.3 This surely " indicates that it contains, not a mere Zerlegung" of an artificial kind, such as the list of the Arvales almost certainly is, but rather a selection, here motived by the desire to have a body of twelve deities, from a larger existing number. Such selection was no doubt supple- mented by the insertion of fresh names of formation analogous to those already found in the list. In short, if the people had not believed in Sonderg6tter, we can hardly imagine their priests inventing them. I propose to follow up the negative criticism of these eminent scholars by a few positive suggestions as to the manner in which we may imagine the belief in Sonderg6tter to have originated. For it is clear that if we can arrive at such a conception by following up known trains of thought among men of undeveloped civilisation, it becomes a more natural and tenable theory that the early Italians did really think that way, and that the examples I have given are really survivals of an old stratum of religion, as Usener thought, and not fragments of priestly elaborations which have for the most part been lost. If we can find among Aryan or partly Aryan peoples any such processes of thought, it becomes still likelier that the Aryan Italians also possessed them. But first I wish to distinguish between two classes of Sonderg6tter, which appear to me to arise from quite different causes. In the 1 I do not believein the close connexionbetween 2 Augustine, C.D. xviii, 15, cf. Plin. N.H. Anna Perenna and Mars postulated by Usener xvii, 50. (Rhein. Mus. xxx, 224) and Roscher (Lex. s.v. 3 Aug. C.D. iv, 21. Mars, 2401, 29). For Genita Mana as an indepen- dent deity see Plut. Q.R. 52. This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 01:31:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ITALIAN SONDERGOTTER. 235 former of these is the daimon postulated to account for some isolated phenomenon in the external world, or as the highly specialised genius of a particular place. In the second is the daimon postulated to correspond to some action of the worshipper himself. The former class is represented by Eudromos and Taraxippos ; the latter by Spiniensis. Now it is apparent that the former class contains more objective reality. There really was at Olympia something which frightened the horses; there really was at Delphi a running-place which seems to have had, in or near it, something which was regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a tomb. The assumption was merely that in one case a buried hero was likely to cause disaster to the charioteers if not placated, in the other that a similar figure made the stadium his shrine. Whether men drove and ran or not, there remained something of the existence of those deities in the existence of the altar-like'stone at Olympial and of the temenos at Delphi.2 But Spiniensis and his like are of a different kind. He was invoked <' ut spinas ex agris eradicaret " says Augustine. If no pulling up of thorn-bushes was going on or contemplated, there was no proof that Spiniensis existed at all. He was " projected," to use a popular modern term, from the thorn-pulling or thorn-pullers, as a merely temporary deity, whereas the permanently existing stones of Olympia and Delphi permanently enshrined the others. It is this second class which I propose especially to consider. It is clear that they answer well enough to Farnell's proposed test. They are certainly not anthropomorphic, but amorphous. Their functions show them to be Sonderg6tter, if not Augenblicksgottheiten. Can we make it reasonably probable that they arose out of any early process of thought, conceivable among Aryan peasants and supported by real examples ? If not, despite all that has been said so far, we are justified in saying that those theorists who see in them nothing but " a late development of a certain logical tendency in Roman religious thought," 3 still hold their position. I think that we have the required evidence, from a people partly Aryan and long under Aryan domination, those of the Madras Presidency. Thurston4 gives a description so important for our purpose that I quote it at length: " The festival of Ayudha Puja (worship of tools or implements) is observed by all Hindu castes during the last three days of the Dasara or Navarathri in the month of Purattasi (September-October). It is a universal holiday for all Hindu workmen. Even the Brahman takes part in this puja. His tools, however, being books, it is called Saraswati Pnja, or worship to the goddess or god of learning, who is either Saraswati or Hayagriva ...... Non-Brahmans clean the various implements used by them in their daily work, and worship them." 1 Paus. vi, xx, 15. 4 Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, 2 Bull. Corr. Hell. xxiii, p.