FESCENNI´NA
FESCENNI´NA scil.
carmina, one of the earliest kinds of Italian poetry, which
consisted of rude and jocose verses, or rather dialogues in extempore verses
(
Liv. 7.2), in which the merry country folks
assailed and ridiculed one another. (
Hor. Ep.
2.1,
145.) This amusement seems
originally to have been peculiar to country people, but it was also
introduced into the towns of Italy and at Rome, where we find it mentioned
as one of those in which young people indulged at weddings. (
Serv. ad Aen. 7.695; Seneca,
Controv. 21,
Med. 113;
Plin. Nat. 15.22.) We have rather feeble
specimens of these in the four poems by Claudian “in nuptias Honorii
Aug. et Mariae.” The fescennina were one of the popular
amusements at various festivals, and on many other occasions, but especially
after the harvest was over. Munro (
on Catullus,
pp. 76 ff.) has well shown how they were employed to avert the evil eye or
the envy of the gods on great occasions of good fortune, such as marriages
or triumphs. After their introduction into the towns they seem to have lost
much of their original rustic character, and perhaps were modified by the
influence of Greek refinement (see
Verg. G.
2.385, &c. ;
Tib. 2.1,
55; Catull. 61.127); they remained, however, in so
far the same, as they were at all times irregular, and mostly extempore
doggerel verses usually in the Saturnian metre, though the specimens which
are preserved are in trochaics, and the cretic is called
pes Fescenninus by Diomedes, p. 479 k. Sometimes, however,
versus fescennini were also written as satires
upon persons. (Macrob.
Saturn. 2.4, 21.) That
these railleries had no malicious character, and were not intended to hurt
or injure, may be inferred from the circumstance that one person often
called upon another to answer and retort in a similar strain. The fescennina
are asserted by Festus (s. v.) to have been introduced among the Romans from
Etruria, and to have derived their name from Fescennia, a town of that
country. But, in the first place, Fescennia was not an Etruscan but a
Faliscan town (Niebuhr,
Hist. of Rome, i. p. 136), and, in
the second, this kind of amusement was at all times so popular in Italy,
that it can scarcely be considered as peculiar to any particular place. The
derivation of a name of this kind from that of some particular place was
formerly a favourite custom, as may be seen in the derivation of
caerimonia from Caere. Festus gives an alternative
derivation from
fascinum, either because they
were thought to be a protection against sorcerers and witches, or because
fascinum (
phallus), the symbol of fertility,
had in early times, or in rural districts, been connected with the
amusements of the fescennina. This etymology is far more probable. Teuffel
(
Rom. Lit. § 5) needlessly attempts to combine
the two, suggesting that Fescennia may have derived its name from
fascinum. Nettleship (
Journ. Phil.
11.190) plausibly assumes a substantive
fescennus,
“a charmer,” from
fas,
“saying” : hence
fescennini would be
“the verses used by charmers.” Ellis in Catull. 61.127
prefers the form
Fascennina locutio; the latter reading
being, however, clearly inferior to
jocatio.
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