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Mana in Greece and Rome*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
There can be little doubt that of all the services rendered by the late Rector to learning the most widely known is his introduction to anthropologists and comparative religionists of the concept of mana. The debates excited by his short and modest survey of the matter, just before the beginning of this century, have not yet died down, and the “odd piece of twine” wherewith he proposed to bind certain facts together has grown into a thick rope, known by many fine names, such as preanimim, predeism, orendism and so forth, which is stoutly hauled upon by some, while others stumble over it or try to unwind it or prove that it was never really there, or at least that it has replaced something much earlier which formed an essential and legitimate part of the tackle. It is indeed a remarkable thing, on which a Hellenistic philosopher might have founded a thoughtful treatise on the inscrutable ways of Chance, that that one lecture and its unassuming successors raised such a pother, whereas the much longer, more elaborate and by no means unlearned or ill-reasoned work of J. H. King, only eight years earlier, fell still-born from the press and owes its reintroduction to science to the bitter opponent of all such theories of the origin of religion, the redoubtable Father Wilhelm Schmidt.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1949
References
1 Folk-Lore, 1900, 162–82, reprinted in The Threshold of Religion.
2 The Supernatural, its Origin, Nature and Evolution, London and New York, 1892Google ScholarPubMed. See W. Schmidt, Origin and Growth of Religion, 120 sqq.
3 κ 190–92, which I take to be a stock saying like our phrase “to lose one's bearings.” I doubt if Homer would think of a “hexenhaft verzauberte Landschaft,” as a romantically inclined modern might, cf. K. Kerényi, Töchter der Sonne, 73.
4 κ 306.
5 ν 429, Cf. κ 238.
6 ϒ 321 sqq.
7 See N 20.
8 A 47.
9 A 50–52; for arrow-poison, which is not a thing a gentleman uses in battle, cf. α 261 sqq. What Odysseus there wanted it for is not stated, but Telemachos takes his use of it as a matter of course.
10 π 702 sqq.
11 E 330 sqq., 846 sqq.
12 Hesiod, Theog. 411 sqq.
13 See de Waele, F. J. M., The Magic Staff or Rod in Graeco-Italian Antiquity (1927), 29 sqqGoogle Scholar.
14 L. R. Farnell, C.G.S., v, 30.
15 The Wiro Sky-God, in Custom is King, 51 sqq.
16 Theokritos vii, 106–8.
17 Tzetzes, Chibiades v, 734, σκίλλαις σνκαῖς ἀγρίαις τɛ καὶ ἄλλοις τῶν ἀγρίων.
18 Theophrastos, Char. 16, 14.
19 Dion Chrysostom (Dion Prusaensis), xlviii, 17, πɛρικαθήραντας τὴν πόλιν μὴ σκίλλῃ μηδὲ ὕδατι, πολὺ δὲ καθαρωτέρῳ χρήματι τῷ λόγῳ.
20 Hesiod, O.D. 735–6.
21 Ibid., 742–3.
22 Herodotos, vi, 86 γ, ζ
23 Boehm, F., De symbolis Pythagoreis, diss., Berlin 1905Google Scholar. My examples are his Nos. 49, 32, 38, 6 and 61, in that order.
24 Imperium: studiën over het “Mana”-begrip in zede en taal der Romeinen (Amsterdam, 1941)Google Scholar. Revised and somewhat enlarged English edition, Roman Dynamism: Studies in ancient Roman thought, language and custom (Oxford 1947), from which I quote.
25 τ 109 sqq.
26 Cf. Hocart, A. M. in Man xxiv (1924), 54Google Scholar.
27 Hesiod, O.D. 225 sqq. Opinions had really changed very little between Hesiod's date and the reign of Zenon, A.D. 474–91. That enlightened emperor hopes officially (Euagrios, Hist. Eccl. iii, 14, p. 111, 25–30 Bidez-Parmentier) that if his empire remains unitedly orthodox τὰ μὲν τῶν πολεμίων ἐκτριβήσεται καὶ ἐξαλειϕθήσεται γένη, πάντες δὲ τὸν οἰκεῖον ὑποκλινοῦσιν αὐχένα τῷ ἡμετέρῳ μετὰ θεὸν κράτει, εὶρήνη δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐκ ταύτης ἀγαθὰ ἀέρων τε εὐκρασία καὶ καρπῶν εὐϕορία καὶ τὰ ἄλλα δὲ τὰ λυσιτελοῦντα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ϕιλοτιμηθήσεται.
28 Rom. Dynamism, 69 sq.
29 Festus (Paulus) 96, 3 Lindsay: Imporcitor, qui porcas in agro facit arando. porca autem est inter duos sulcos terra eminens.
30 References in Wissowa, RKR, 555; for Salii outside Rome see the Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.u.
31 Festus, 439, 18 Lindsay: Salias uirgines Cincius ait esse conducticias quae ad Salios adhibeantur cum apicibus paludatas, quas Aelius Stilo scripsit sacrificium facere in Regia cum pontifice paludatas cum apicibus in modum Saliorum. I would delete paludatas cum apicibus.
32 Examples in GB i, 126 sqq.
33 Wagenvoort, op. cit., 60 sqq.
34 Livy i, 26, 12–13; Dion. Hal., Antiquit. iii, 6–7.
35 See Kiepert-Huelsen, Formae Urbis Romae Antiquae, map I, Ko; Platner-Ashby, Topographical Dict. of Anc. Rome, art. Cliuus Orbius.
36 J.R.S. xxxvii (1947), 185.
37 Livy i, 26, 11; 23, 3; 25, 14.
38 See Mnemosyne liii, 407 sqq., C.Q. xxviii, 157.
39 Festus 380, 25 sqq.: sororiare mammae dicuntur puellarum, cum primum tumescunt, ut fraterculare puerorum. Plautus in Friuolaria d………… papillae pri………. uolui dicere, so… Paulus' extract from the passage contains the quotation unmutilated and nearly right.
40 That it is a nonsense-word invented for the sake of the joke ought to be clear, but was not so to some ancient lexicographers, including it would seem Verrius Flaccus himself. For the dreams which such men dreamed see Lindsay's larger edition of Festus (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1930), p. 209, art. fratrare.
41 Varro, L.L. v, 159, nam ciprum (sic) Sabine bonum. Read cuprum, cf. the Umbrian and Picene goddess Cupra and the city Cupra maritima which was named after her. She was evidently the Good One, cf. the Bona Dea and the Agathos Theos near Megalopolis in Arkadia, Paus. viii, 36, 5.
42 Klausen, R. H., Aeneas und die Penaten (1840), 714Google Scholar.
43 Ovid, Fasti, i, 90.
44 Livy ii, 49, 8: infelici uia, dextro iano portae Carmentalis, profecti (Fabii) ad Cremeram flumen perueniunt.
45 ἐπιχωρίου θɛοῦ τινος ἢ δαίμονος Ἰανοῦ λɛγομένον, Ant. iii, 7, p. 313, 7 Jacoby.
46 Varro, R.R. i, 36, 3: nusquam rure audisti, inquit, octauo Ianam lunam ….. quaedam melius fieri post octauo Ianam lunam quam ante? I found nothing on Tertullian, ad nat. ii, 15, for the text there is uncertain.
47 Varro, L.L. vi, 6, 10.
48 Macrobius, Sat. i, 9, 16, cf. 15, 19; the former passage quotes Varro for the statement that Ianus has twelve altars, one for each month.
49 Livy v, 32, 6; 50, 5.
50 Fabius Pictor ap. Daniel's Servius on G. i, 21.
51 See, e.g., Roby, Latin Grammar, i, p. 315.
52 Terence, Andria 134.