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Ancient Italy and Modern Borneo: a Study in Comparative Culture1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

The valuable work of Messrs. Hose & McDougall on the ‘Pagan Tribes of Borneo“ was published in 1912, and contains an account of the methods of divination practised by some of these peoples. In compiling it the authors had been led to consult Smith's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, so striking did the parallelism appear between the augural practices of Borneo and those of ancient Italy. And they were not mistaken; the parallelism is even stronger than they suspected, and induced me to write a notice of the book in the Journal of Roman Studies, in order to call the attention of students to the subject. Since then I have again gone carefully through the work, and noted a number of other points in which the habits of the one people remind me of the other. It seems worth while to bring these together.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © W. Warde Fowler1916. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 13 note 2 J.R.S. ii (1912), p. 269 fGoogle Scholar.

page 13 note 3 For example, the Kayans, etc. live chiefly by agriculture, but they also keep domestic animals, particularly the pig (the favourite sacrifice), and they hunt wild animals, pigs, deer, etc. See Hose and McDougall, chs. vi and ix. That the peoples of the pile-dwellings and terremare were in much the same condition as regards their food is proved by the remains of it which have been found. Seeds of cultivated plants have been discovered among the earliest of these settlements, and the people seem to have become more agricultural as the settlements became more permanent. They had domesticated the pig, but continued to hunt it in its wild form. In the terremare we find evidence of distinct advance on the same lines: the people practised agriculture more elaborately, but had not ceased to be hunters. Peet, Stone and Bronze Age in Italy, chs. xiii and xiv; Modestow, Introduction à l'histoire Romaine, ch. iv.

page 13 note 4 Peet, op. cit. p. 505 f.

page 14 note 1 H. and McD. ii, 233. On the next page the authors state their reasons for believing that the Kayans have passed on their culture to other tribes.

page 14 note 2 H. and McD. i, pp. 39 and 51.

page 14 note 3 Peet, op. cit. ch. xiii. For the shape of the house (80 yards by 30) see p. 291 f.

page 14 note 4 ibid. p. 297.

page 14 note 5 Wissowa, Rel. und Kult. der Römer, ed. 2, p. 550; Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, iii, p. 419.

page 15 note 1 H. and Mc.D. ii, p. 205-206. The policy was started among the Kenyahs before they were incorporated in the Raj of Sarawak.

page 15 note 2 See Peet, op. cit. 355, 297; H. and McD.i, 161. For the practice of hardening wood in the fire see my Roman Festivals, p. 203, and Skutsch in Classical Quarterly, 1910, p. 270. I find that it is familiar to anthropologists, and I have been shown spears thus hardened in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford. For the smearing with blood, Prof. Reid sends me an interesting parallel in Ammian, xix, 2, 61.

page 15 note 3 There are three classes in all: the lowest consists of slaves. mainly belonging to the upper class, and the middle class of all other members. See H. and Mc.D.i, p. 68 f.

page 15 note 4 But see vol. ii, p. 10.

page 16 note 1 H.& McD.i,pp.63 and 68. Other points relating to the chiefs and their class will be mentioned below. A photograph of a chief haranguing his followers will be found opposite i, p. 70.

page 16 note 2 See e.g. Prof. Conway in Classical Review, 1914, p. 275. Of course in ancient Italy the great difficulty is to distinguish what is Greek in origin from genuine Italian tradition, and especially in matters of religion. In civil history and law we are rather better able to see through the mist.

page 16 note 3 Conway, loc. cit.; H. and McD. index, 8.v. Tama Bulan.

page 16 note 4 Individuality is everywhere apparent in Hose and McDougall's book. Even dancing, which is so often represented nowadays as the result of ‘collective mental action,’ is often performed by a single person (e.g.ii, 157). For the ‘mentalite prélogique,’ etc. to which allusion is made above, see e.g. Lévy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés primitives, chapter iv.

page 17 note 1 H. and McD. ii, 205.

page 17 note 2 ibid, i, 184. For head-hunting, see end of ch. x.

page 17 note 3 ibid, i, 181.

page 17 note 4 ibid, i, 170 f.

page 17 note 5 See e.g. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, pp. 26 and 27; Wissowa, Rel. und Kult. der Römer (ed. 2), p. 160. For the making of fire by friction at Rome cf. Festus, p. 94, ed. Lindsay.

page 17 note 6 See G.B. pt. ii (Taboo, etc.), p. 157 f.

page 17 note 7 H. and McD. i, 171.

page 17 note 8 G.B. ii, 66 f.

page 18 note 1 ibid. pt. vii, vol. ii, 189 f.

page 18 note 2 Class. Rev. 1913, p. 48 f; cf. G.B. pt. vii, vol. ii, 193 f.

page 18 note 3 See Domaszewski, Abhandlungen, p. 222: he seems to guess that the army originally passed out under this arch, and later on, after the building of the ‘Servian’ wall, by the Porta Carmentalis (cf. the story of the Fabii, Ov. Fasti, ii, 201; Liv. ii, 49: ‘infelici uia, dextro iano portae Carmentalis profecti ad Cremeram flumen perveniunt’). Dom. as usual gets out of his depth here, but his main suggestion is worth attending to. This porta had two iani or passages (Wissowa, RK. ed. 2, p. 104), and so had the Ianus Quirinus or Ianus bifrons. Is it possible that this feature had some relation to the exit and return of an army? Note that according to Wissowa this is the real meaning of the term Ianus geminus, the double head being now proved to be later. I find an interesting fact from India bearing on this matter: ‘In northern India it is a common charm to drive the cattle under a rope fixed over the village cattle-path, and among the Dravidians of Mirzapur two poles and a crossbar are fixed at the entrance of the village with the same object, i.e. to protect them against disease.’ etc. (Crooke, Folklore of Northern India, ii, 299).

page 18 note 4 H. and McD. at the beginning of ch. xx. The whole of this chapter is of very peculiar interest.

page 19 note 1 ibid. p. 194 f.

page 19 note 2 In early Italy this was not so, as Prof. Reid reminds me; the provisions for a ius exilii were already elaborate.

page 19 note 3 H. and McD. ii, 196.

page 19 note 4 Religious Experience of the Romans, p. 272 f.

page 19 note 5 See J.R.S. i (1911), p. 59.

page 19 note 6 H. and McD. ii, 196.

page 20 note 1 See e.g. Smith, Robertson, Religion of the Semites, p. 254 f.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 H. and McD. ii, 199.

page 20 note 3 See Religious Experience of the Romans, ch. vi.

page 20 note 4 H. and McD. ii, 2, note.

page 20 note 5 ibid. p. 3; Rel. Exp. p. 119; Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 27, etc.

page 21 note 1 Rel. Exp. 147 and 165, note 7, and Tibullus, ii, s. 27.

page 21 note 2 See my Roman Festivals, p. 325–6.

page 21 note 3 H. and McD. ii, 74; Rel. Exp. 123. See also Lang, A., Gifford Lectures, The Making of Religion, p. 284Google Scholar; Smith, Robertson, Rel. of the Semites, p. 104–5.Google Scholar

page 21 note 4 H. and McD. ii, 6 and 10 f.

page 22 note 1 H. and McD. ii, 6, where this is proved by reference to the sacrifice and prayer offered to this god.

page 22 note 2 ibid. ii, 25.

page 22 note 3 Rel. Exp. 41, 316, and many other passages (see index). Trans. Congr. for the Htst. of Religions, 1908, ii, 170 f.

page 22 note 4 H.and McD.ii,23.

page 22 note 5 Cato, de Agric. ch. 139.

page 22 note 6 H. and McD. ii, 90 f.

page 23 note 1 Ibid., ii, 255.

page 23 note 2 Rel. Exp. p. 304.

page 23 note 3 Jevons in Antbropology and the Classics, 94 f. Rel. Exp. 187. Tama Bulan seems to have disliked the magical character of such praying.

page 23 note 4 See Rel. Exp. 195, note 35, and references there given. Add Aen. iii, 405 f. which leaves no doubt as to the Roman interpretation. So too Serv. ad loc.

page 23 note 5 H. and McD. vol. ii, p. 56.

page 24 note 1 The templum was a rectangular space, of which the frame, so to speak, was an imaginary one; but I suspect that it was originally the space visible from the door or opening in the operator's tabernaculum, which would naturally be a rectangular one; cf. von Jhering, Evolution of the Aryan (Eng. trans.), p. 364.

page 24 note 2 H. and McD. ii, 59. At Rome there were many minutiae in the doctrine of omens from oscines: here too the Black Woodpecker (Picus Martius) was an important bird in augury. Festus (Lindsay), p. 214. On the subject generally, see Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de Divination, vol. iv, 109 f.

page 24 note 3 Cic. Div. ii, 36, 77.

page 24 note 4 vol. ii, p. 80.

page 24 note 5 Wissowa maintains (RK. ed. 2, p. 418 f.) that the Romans did not examine the entrails with a view to divination, except to see whether the god would accept the victim, till they learnt the art from the Etruscans; but I do not feel quite convinced on this point. (Wissowa states the same view in his article on Roman divination in Hastings’ Encycl. vol. iv, p. 824.) The apearance of the liver seems everywhere to have been looked on as a message from the deity; what that message was, whether simply approval of the victim or communication of a more detailed character, is difficult to determine in each case. Some good remarks on this subject, based chiefly on Thulin op. cit. will be found in Mr. Holloway's Divination in Greece, p. 192 f.

page 25 note 1 H. and McD. ii, 64. The authors seem to have no doubt about this; the message is carried, they say, by the spirit of the pig. But this purpose of sacrifice is rare, so far as I know. It is found in connexion with human sacrifice in Greece, but not in Italy. There is the famous case of the Getae in Thrace, who sent a messenger by sacrifice every five years to their god Zalmoxis, telling him what they were in need of (Herodotus, iv, 94): and Herodotus tells us that they expected to go to this god themselves after death. Again in Euripides (Hec. 422–3), Polyxena, about to be sacrificed, asks what message she is to bear from Hecuba to Priam and Hector: which according to Mr. Lawson (Modern Greek Folklore, etc. 340 and 346), who found the same idea in the island of Santorin surviving at the present day, was no mere poetic conceit, but a feature of the popular religion. Lastly, in Aen. ii, 547 (also quoted by Mr. Lawson), Pyrrhus makes Priam a messenger at the moment of his slaughter: ‘referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis Pelidae genitori.’ It seems not unnatural that the idea should spring up in connexion with human sacrifice, but I do not find it associated with ordinary animal sacrifice: is it possible that in Borneo it may be a late interpretation of animal sacrifice combined with prayer, and with the answer of the god in the liver of the sacrificed victim? Messrs. Hubert et Mauss in their essay on Sacrifice (Mélanges d'bistoire des Religions) do not reach, this view, though once or twice they approach it, e.g. on p. 124.

page 25 note 2 Thulin, Martianus Capella und das Leber von Piacenza, p. 7; Hastings' Encvcl. of Religion and Ethics, vol. iv, p. 784.

page 26 note 1 In the Roman ceremony we have the simulated rape of the bride at the deductio, the parting of her hair with a spear, and the lifting her over the threshold of the bridegroom's house, together with the legend of the rape of the Sabines. For the similar rites of the upper class among the Kayans, H. and McD. ii, 172 f. But there is no actual trace of exogamy among either people, apart from these forms, which may be explained, as Mr. Crawley first showed us, in quite a different way. See his Mystic Rose, p. 350 f. There was, of course, no actual purchase at Rome, but the form of coemptio may suggest that it was in use at some remote time, though personally I doubt this: see my article on Roman Marriage in Hastings, Encycl. of Rel. and Etb. vol.8.

page 26 note 2 See her Themis, chapter i and elsewhere.

page 26 note 3 H. and McD. ii, 136 f.

page 26 note 4 ibid, ii, 115 f.

page 26 note 5 ibid, i, III. Here we are in touch with the idea of the vital principle in the seed, which is carried over from one harvest to another through the seed-corn, and is, so to speak, immortal. It may be at the root of many practices still here and there surviving, as I have suggested in my paper Mundus Patet, J.R.S. ii (1911), p. 25.