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On the Original Significance of the Genius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. J. Rose
Affiliation:
University College, Aberystwyth

Extract

Not a little speculation has been expended on the Genius in ancient and modern times. I propose very briefly to recapitulate the known facts about him, examine the chief explanations, and give what I consider the true one.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1923

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References

page 57 note 1 For art representations of the two serpents, male and female (genius and iuno), see Otto in Pauly-Wissowa, art. Genius, col. 1162. The relation of all this (a) to the two snakes that mark a sacred place in Persius, Sat. I. 113; (b) to the twin serpents which are an omen of death, see Verg. Aen. Vlll. 697, with Henry's note on the passage, and Warde Fowler's discussion, Aeneas at the Site of Rome, p. 113, cf. Iul. Obsequens 58, is very obscure. That all three are really the same I do not believe; possibly (a) is an extension of the two serpents often painted in a private lararium to other loca sacra, and (b) influenced by the equation genius = ghost, discussed in the text. Or Etruscan serpent-brand- ishing Furies may have something to do with it, for it seems not to be Greek; the two serpents may be a sort of shorthand for the death-demon, See Martha, , L'Art étrusque, p. 394Google Scholar , Tuchalcha threatening Theseus and Peirithoos.

page 58 note 1 Examples in Otto, op. cit., col. 1163. For some comment on the Greek usage, see Usener, , Göttcrnamen, p. 271Google Scholar .

page 58 note 2 Cic. Phil., I. 13.

page 58 note 3 Epist. Cornel.: ubi mortua ero, parentabis mihi et inuocabis deum parentem. It is noteworthy that when Cicero was anxious to deify Tullia he could no find no Latin word to express his desire, but only ποθέωσɩς.

page 58 note 4 Tac. Ann. II. 8, I, precatus Drusum patrem.

page 59 note 1 Frazer, , Belief in Immortality, Vol. II., p. 255 sqGoogle Scholar .

page 60 note 1 See Punjab Customary Law, Vol. VIII. (Tahsil Kaithal and Parganah Indri, district Karnal). By SirDouie, J. M., Lahore, C.S., 1892Google Scholar.

page 60 note 2 π 117 sqq

page 60 3 The clan seems regularly to be so; and note that there is no uox propria for ‘family’ in Latin, familia being ‘household,’ and stirps obviously a metaphor. Tha undivided family, familiar from Maine's investigations, seems to be the transitional stage.

page 60 note 4 Class. Quart., July–October, 1923.