LUSTRA´TIO
LUSTRA´TIO (
luo, to
purify), called by the Greeks
κάθαρσις, is
a term which covers a great variety of ceremonies in the religious usage of
the ancients: of these only the most remarkable and best attested can be
referred to in this article. It should be remarked at the outset, that
ceremonial purification, which is found in some shape among peoples of all
stages of development, may be traced to an origin in the necessities of
bodily ablution, especially in connexion with certain well-marked events in
human life, such as birth, marriage, bloodshed, and burial. There gradually
follows a transition “from practical to symbolic cleansing, from
removal of bodily impurity to deliverance from invisible, spiritual, and
at last moral evil” (Tylor,
Primitive
Culture, 2.388).
This transition was complete by the time at which Greek and Roman literature
enables us to become acquainted with the rites of this kind practised by the
two peoples; but the primitive idea may be often noted underlying usages
which had lost their original meaning. Cicero reflects this idea in the
following remarkable passage:--“Caste jubet lex adire ad deos, animo
videlicet, in quo sunt omnia; nec tollit castimoniam corporis, sed hoc
oportet intelligi, quum multum animus corpori praestet observeturque, ut
casta corpora adhibeantur, multo esse in animis id servandum magis; nam
illud vel
aspersione aquae vel dierum
numero tollitur; animi labes nec diuturnitate evanescere nec amnibus
ullis elui potest” (
de Legibus,
2.10, 24).
The various usages of lustration may conveniently be grouped under the
following heads:--1, purification necessary before entering holy places; 2,
purification from blood-guiltiness; 3, purification at birth, marriage, and
death; 4, purification of house, land, city, or people, on certain stated
occasions, or with, some special temporary object.
1. Both in Greece and Italy we have sufficient evidence that worshippers
could not enter a temple without a previous symbolic act of washing. Even
before engaging in ordinary prayer this was proper, as may be seen from
Homer;
Od. 4.750 (cf.
Il. 16.228 ff.); but in templeworship it was
indispensable. At the entrance of temples were placed vessels holding pure
water (
περιρραντήρια), in which the
worshippers dipped their hands; or the water was sprinkled over them by a
whisk, frequently a laurelbranch (Bötticher,
Baumkultus der
Hellenen, p. 353; Lucian,
Sacrif. 13; Pollux,
1.8). Seawater or spring-water was preferred; and salt was sometimes added
to fresh water (Theoer. 24, 95). Temples were usually placed near running
water, for convenience (Bötticher,
Tektonik der
Hellenen, 2.485). In Latium the word
delubrum signified the space before the temple where this
purification was performed (
Serv. ad Aen.
2.225); and it was as indispensable as in Greece, as may be
clearly seen from Livy (
45.5,
4): “Cum omnis praefatio sacrorum eos, quibus non sint
purae manus, arceat” (cf. 1.45, 6, where the priest of the temple
of Diana, on the Aventine, requests a Sabine who wished to sacrifice there,
to bathe in the Tiber in the valley below). The temples themselves were no
doubt kept pure from defilement in the same manner as the worshippers; for
we find that the Vestal Virgins daily sprinkled that of Vesta with some kind
of mop (which is represented on coins) and with water brought fiom the holy
springs of Egeria or the Camenae (cf.
Eur. Ion
101). For further information about this kind of lustration, see K.
F. Hermann,
Griech. Alterthümer, vol. ii. sects. 19
and 23, ed. 2; Marquardt,
Staatsverwaltung, vol. iii. (ed.
2), pp. 154 and 175.
2. The notion that blood-guiltiness could be removed by symbolic purification
was not apparently indigenous in Greece, for it is not found in Homer
(Grote,
Hist. of Greece, 1.21). Müller
(
Eumen. § 53) takes a different view. In later
times, whether the murder had been voluntary or not, it was indispensable
(see Lobeck,
Aglaoph. 968, where passages are collected); and
is familiar to us in the story of Orestes, both from the Eumenides of
Aeschylus and from numerous painted vases. Herodotus (
1.35) tells us that the
κάθαρσις of the Greeks was identical with
[p. 2.102]that used by the Lydians, whence it has been inferred that the
Greeks borrowed the idea from Lydia; and considering the strong negative
evidence of the Homeric poems on the point, it is not unlikely that the
practice of expiation from blood-guiltiness may have been of later date, and
suggested by Eastern influences. There is no certain sign of it in Roman
antiquity; the so-called lex regia of Numa, quoted in Festus (221, s. v.
parricida), makes no mention of it; and it
would seem that a murderer was totally and permanently excluded from
temple-worship (
Liv. 45.5,
3), though this cannot be regarded as fully proved by the evidence.
When Ovid, in the well-known lines, “A nimium faciles qui tristia
crimina caedis Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua” (
Fasti, 2.45), refers to the Greek belief and
practice as based on a delusion, he is perhaps reflecting not only the
opinions of educated scepticism, but also the view which was natural to the
Roman mind.
3. Purification was necessary after the birth of an infant, as is shown by
the Roman expression
dies lustricus for the day
(the ninth after birth for a boy, the eighth for a girl) on which the child
received its name (Macrob. 1.16, 36: “Est autem lustricus dies
quo infantes lustrantur et nomen
accipiunt” ). In the corresponding Athenian rite of the
Amphidromia, we are not informed of any such lustration, except that the
women who had attended at the birth then washed their hands (Suidas, s. v.
ἀμφιδρόμια); but the practice of some
form of baptism is so universal (Tylor,
Prim. Culture, 2.389
ff.) that we may be justified in assuming it. At marriage the practice of
lustration is clearly seen in Greece: both bride and bridegroom bathed, on
the day before the wedding, in water brought from a holy spring (e. g.
Callirrhoe, at Athens), to signify that they entered the married state in
purity (Pollux, 3.43; Schol. Eur.
Phaen. 349). So at Rome,
the bride, on arriving at her husband's house, was sprinkled with lustral
water (Festus, p. 87), and her feet were washed (
Serv. ad Aen. 4.167). In Greece, after a
death, all who were in the house, and all who subsequently came in contact
with the corpse, were contaminated and in need of purification
(
Odyss. 10.481; Eur.
Iph. Taur. 380), and
a cask of water, called
ἀρδάνιον, was
placed outside the house with this object (Pollux, 8.65). Among the Romans
we find the same ideas prevailing in funeral rites: a day was fixed on
which, by sacrifices and other ceremonies, the polluted household was
cleansed. This was called “feriae denicales” (Festus, p. 70;
cf.
Cic. de Leg. 2.2. 2,
25); a pig had been previously sacrificed at the grave (Cic.
l.c.) to render it holy ground.
4. From the illustrations given in the three preceding paragraphs it will
have been seen that the idea of the necessity of purification, in the simple
and ordinary sense of the word, and as symbolised chiefly by some act of
ablution, was one which pervaded the whole life of the individual and the
family, both in Italy and Greece. The words
καθαιρεῖν and
lustrare, however,
were applied to a great number of other purificatory rites on a larger
scale, and occurring either on days fixed in the calendar of religious
operations, or on peculiar occasions, which concerned certain portions of
land, cities, or a whole community of individuals. It is by no means clear
in all these rites, how far the leading idea is simple purification, or
expiation for some crime or other taint, or even a kind of dedication to a
divinity for the purpose of procuring good fortune, e. g. in agriculture or
in war. Doubtless these ideas ran into each other, and were not clearly
distinguished in the minds of those who took part in the rites at the time
when we first become acquainted with them. A few examples, of which the most
instructive are the Italian, will serve to show the nature of the rites, and
to give some idea of their object or objects.
Of extraordinary purifications of this kind, the most famous in Greece were:
1. The work done by Epimenides at Athens after the Cylonian massacre,
described by Plutarch in his Life of Solon (ch. 12; cf.
D. L. 1.10,
3); the details are
uncertain, but the general character seems to have resembled that
combination of actual and moral purification which was wrought on the
worshippers in the Greek mysteries. 2. The purification of Delos by the
Athenians in the year 426 B.C., with the object of
releasing their own city from the plague and the wrath of Apollo. All dead
bodies were then removed from the island, and it was decreed that neither
birth nor death should take place there in future (
Thuc. 3.104). With these examples may be compared the Roman
amburbium, which, unlike other rites of the
kind at Rome, seems only to have been celebrated on occasions of great
distress, as, for example, after the battle of the Trebia (
Liv. 21.62,
7). Victims
were led round the city wall and sacrificed, accompanied by the Pontifices,
Vestal Virgins, and members of the other priestly colleges. (
Lucan 1.592 ff.; Festus, p. 5.)
Of regularly recurring lustrations we find the best examples in Italy; but
they also took place at Athens. Every meeting of the Ecclesia was preceded
by a lustration (
περίστια), when the
περιστίαρχος sacrificed young pigs,
which were afterwards thrown into the sea. [
ECCLESIA Vol. I. p. 699
b.] Of the great Athenian festivals, some at least had the object
of purification: such for example was the harvest festival of the Thargeia
(
ὅτε καθαίρουσιν Ἀθηναῖοι τὴν πόλιν,
D. L. 2.5,
23), on
which occasion two men called
φαρμακοὶ were
driven out of the city as
καθάρσια
(Harpocrat. s. v.
φαρμακός).
Of parallel rites at Rome we have more certain information. Sometimes it was
the
land that was the object of lustration, whether
the land of a private owner or the land of the state; sometimes it was the
people, whether brought together in the form of
a public assembly, or in the form of an army or fleet. Of the lustration of
a farm we have an account preserved in Cato's treatise
de
Re Rustica ( § 41). The
suovetaurilia (offering of pig, sheep, and ox) were driven
round the farm, libations offered to Janus and Jupiter, and a fixed form of
prayer used to propitiate Mars, the special deity of the agriculturist. This
was doubtless the original and simplest form of this kind of lustratio, for
we find exactly the same ritual applied to the land of the state on the 29th
of May each year, in the Ambarvalia [
AMBARVALIA], of which the best description will be
found in Verg.
[p. 2.103]Georg. 1.345. The
great inscription from Iguvium in Umbria, which consists of exact
regulations and formulae to be observed in a procession round the land of
that city, offers a parallel case of lustration from North Italy, and a more
minute description of the kind of ritual in use than we possess from any
other source. (See Bréal,
Tables Eugubines, p.
xxi. f.)
A complete lustration of the whole Roman people took place at the end of
every
lustrum, when the censor had finished his
census and before he laid down his office. This took place in the Campus
Martius, where the people were assembled for the purpose. The sacrifices
were carried three times round the assembled multitude, as in the Ambarvalia
they were carried round the land (
Dionys. A. R.
4.22). All Roman armies before they took the field were lustrated
(
D. C. 47.38; App.
Hist. 19, and B.C. 4.89); and as this solemnity was probably
always connected with a review of the troops, the word lustratio is also
used in the sense of the modern review (
Cic. Att.
5.2. 0,
2). The rites customary
on such occasions are not mentioned, but they probably resembled those with
which a fleet was lustrated before it set sail, and which are described by
Appian (
App. BC 5.96). Altars were erected
on the shore, and the vessels manned with their troops assembled close at
hand. Silence was kept, while the priests carried the purifying sacrifices
（
καθάρσια) in boats three times round
the fleet; these sacrifices were then divided into two parts, one of which
was thrown into the sea, and the other burnt on the altars, while the
multitude prayed to the gods. (Cf.
Liv. 36.42
and 29.27, where also a prayer is recorded such as generals used on these
occasions.)
The examples given in the foregoing account are to be taken only as selected
illustrations of a very large and widespread series of purificatory rites.
There were indeed few religious ceremonies either in Greece or Italy of
which some kind of lustration did not form a part; for as the simple idea of
purification became connected with other ideas, such as fertilisation, as in
rites of spring and summer, or the averting of evil from a community and its
property, the field over which its influence extended became continually
enlarged. It may be studied in the Greek Mysteries, which had as their chief
object the removal of moral evil from the minds of the worshippers, and were
accompanied by preliminary rites of a purely lustral character; in the
Bacchic rites, where fire, sulphur, and air were used as means of purgation,
besides water (
Serv. ad Aen. 6.741); in
the Palilia of the Romans, where the flocks and herds were made to pass
through the fire, as a means both of purification and fertilising; in the
Lupercalia in the month of February, which was the special season of
purification (februum=an instrument of purifying); in the singular ceremony
of the
ARGEI on the Ides of May,
called by Plutarch “the greatest of the purifications”
(
Quaest. Rom. 86), and in many other rites.
The articles on the festivals above mentioned may be referred to for further
information: and on the general subject of lustration, for Greece, Hermann,
Griech. Alterthümer, vol. ii. sects. 19, 23 and
24; for Rome, Marquardt,
Staatsverwaltung, vol. iii. (2nd
edit.), pp. 200 ff., and Preller,
Röm. Mlythol. (3rd
edit.), vol. 1.419 ff.
[
W.W.F]
