OSCILLA
OSCILLA were small figures or masks, representing either the
whole human figure or a part of it, generally the face, which is no doubt
its original meaning, for we may assume the etymology to be a diminutive of
os,
“a face,” through
osculum. A less
acceptable derivation is suggested from
Osci,
on the theory that the custom was derived from that nation--a theory which
has no value except so far as it records a belief, that the custom was
indigenous in Italy. These figures or masks were hung up as offerings in
various ways, and in connexion with various rites. We may notice especially
(1) the figures like woollen dolls hung up to Mania=Larunda, the Mother of
the Lares [see
COMPITALIA].
An account of this deity is given under the name Mania in the
Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, but it must be
observed that there is an error in the statement that these were figures of
Mania, for which the authority of Macrobius (1.7) is cited. Marquardt is
undoubtedly right in saying that, in the passage “effigies Maniae
suspensae,”
Maniae is the
dative. The true account is that, as Mania and the Lares were
invoked to protect the household, images of this sort, one to represent each
member of the family, were hung up as propitiatory (or expiatory) offerings
at the cross ways and at the house-doors (Macrob. 1.7, 34). These images
were also themselves sometimes called
maniae,
not because they were figures of Mania, but because they were used in her
worship. In some parts of Scotland (perhaps of England also?) there is or
was not long ago a custom, possibly of similar origin, of hanging up in
cottages wheat and oats from the last harvest-loads, tied up with ribbons
into some sort of doll-shape and called “Maidens:” it may
perhaps be a question whether this name signifies dedicated to the Virgin,
or figures of maidens like the pupae; and again whether the custom dates
since the introduction of Christianity or is an older pagan survival. One
form of Roman oscilla was also called
pila, as
in the fragment ap. Non. p. 538, 14, “Suspendit Laribus manias, molles
pilas;” and in Festus, “pilae et effigies muliebres ex lana
compitalibus suspendebantur in compitis, quod hunc diem festum esse
deorum inferorum, quos vocant Lares, putarent, quibus tot pilae quot
capita servorum, tot effigies quot essent liberi ponebantur, ut vivis
parcerent et essent his pilis et simulacris contenti.” This
passage has important bearing on the expiatory significance, of which more
will be said further on, and it also suggests that the
pilae were not, as Marquardt says, the same as
maniae, but were a ruder sort of woollen bundle,
perhaps signifying a human being, but not so carefully shaped--the use of
these
pilae stuffed with wool in the
amphitheatre is well known--in the Compitalia then the members of the family
are represented by
effigies as oscilla, the
slaves by the ruder
pilae.
(2.) Oscilla were hung up at the Feriae Latinae, and we are told also that
oscillatio (swinging) was a part of the
ceremony. The explanations given are rather suspicious. In
Schol.
Bob. p. 256 we are told that there was a reminiscence of the
fact that, the bodies of Aeneas and Latinus being undiscoverable, their
animae were sought in the air. Festus (s.
v.) says that swinging was called
oscillatio
because persons who indulged in “this sort of amusement” masked
themselves “propter verecundiam.” We may surmise that this was
a comparatively modern addition, and that the swinging of the old religion
was not of living persons amusing themselves, but of
oscilla, which represented, as is explained below, rites of
expiation and purification. If, however, from the first those who partook in
the festival really did swing themselves (as some assert of the wholly
distinct Greek festival
AEORA),
we may assume that the significance was still that of purification (as in
Verg. A. 6.740), and not that of a
search after the bodies of Aeneas and Latinus.
(3.) The oscilla at the festival of Sementivae and in the country Paganalia
are perhaps the best known, from the famous lines of Virgil
(
Georg. 2.382-396). These masks or figures, whether in honour
of Bacchus, Liber pater, or any deity connected with the fruits of the
 |
|
Offerings at a rustic festival. From an ancient engraved cup.
(Bötticher.)
|
[p. 2.305]
earth, were hung upon the boughs of trees--not always the fruitful vine or
olive, for Virgil speaks of a pine--offerings were made below, and songs
were sung, like those of the Ambarvalia. The whole scene, as described in
Virgil, appears very well in the representation on the onyx cup, figured
above. It should be observed that though there can be little doubt that the
oscilla here also, as in the festivals before mentioned, represented
sacrifices, yet the custom had arisen of making the mask a face of the deity
himself to whom it was offered.
(4.) On the Saturnalia presents were made of little pottery figures or faces
(Macrob. 1.11, 1).
As regards the ordinary material of the oscilla, that depended no doubt on
the wealth of the household: oscilla in marble and in pottery may be seen in
the British Museum,
 |
|
Marble Mask of Bacchus, in the British Museum.
|
the former with a metal loop for the suspension (the metal is
ancient also), the latter with holes at the sides of the mask: but these
durable oscilla were not the commonest: the epithet
mollia in Virgil probably refers to the material. Surely we
may reject the views cited by Conington
ad loc.,
that
mollia = mobilia, or that it is
“because of the beautiful, mild expression:” the expression
of many of the oscilla in museums is neither one nor the other. Ladewig's
suggestion that it means “waxen” is nearer the truth, and no
doubt the ordinary mask-shapes were of wax, but many also were, as has been
seen from the passage of Festus quoted above, figures of wool: the word
mollia would express either: it is likely
that wood also was a less common material.
The true significance is a more important point, and there can be no doubt
that we have in these oscilla a relic of human sacrifice, either expiatory
or propitiatory, or both together. This is stated distinctly by Macrobius
(
l.c.), who says that in the time of Tarquinius
Superbus (the date is immaterial) human sacrifices were offered to the Lares
and Mania, “ut pro capitibus capitibus supplicaretur. . .ut pro
familiarum sospitate pueri mactarentur Maniae deae, matri Larum;”
and he proceeds to say, that in later times the images hung up at each door
sufficed instead “periculum expiare:” and the words of Festus,
quoted above, show even more clearly the appeasing of a dreaded power by a
simulated atoning sacrifice. The same substitution for human sacrifice
appears in the rush images of the Argei thrown from the bridge [ARGEI; PONS], and in the customs and traditions
connected with the somewhat similar Greek Aeora [
AEORA], where no doubt the images swung represented
atoning human sacrifices of earlier times. (It may be doubted, as in the
Feriae Latinae, whether there was really originally any
“swinging” at these rites except of these images.)
As Dionysus was in the older times propitiated by the real bodies sacrificed,
life offered for life, so he was afterwards by the unreal, and this is
precisely the view of Macrobius in the similar rite, “ut faustis
sacrificiis infausta mutarent inferentes Diti, non hominum capita, sed
oscilla ad humanam effigiem arte simulata.”
We have then the propitiation by human sacrifice, once real and afterwards
simulated, at festivals of Jupiter and of gods connected with death,
Saturnus (to whom human sacrifice especially belonged, Lactant.
Inst. 1.21, 6) and the Lares. Further, in the supplication of
country or fruit-giving deities, we have a combination of several
superstitions: we have the actual tree worship (on which see
Bötticher,
Baumcultus, passim) and the worship of
the deities who presided over trees and crops in general, and could give or
withhold the fruits; and there is moreover a double symbolism in the
swinging images, not only the
symbolical sacrifices
for the
real sacrifices, mentioned before (with
which we may suppose the tree-divinities as well as the personal deities to
have once been propitiated), but also a symbolical purification by air,
which is the doctrine of
Verg. A. 6.640,
“aliae panduntur inanes suspensae ad ventos:” on which
Servius says that there are three modes of purification, “either by
fire or water, or by air, which was the mode in the sacred rites of
Liber;” that is, by the oscilla. [See also
LUSTRATIO] Hence the swinging
images were a lustration of the crops, as, well as a propitiation of the
Powers, who could give fruitfulness, by an expiatory offering. If the actual
swinging of those who partook in the festival was originally part of the
Feriae Latinae and the Aeora, then there was also in them a symbol of
purification by air; and, at least in the latter case, there was (as
Bötticher remarks, citing Serv.
ad
Verg. A. 12.603) a
parentatio.
Whether the Italian rite was indigenous or borrowed from Greece, must be
regarded as uncertain. Probus (
ad Verg.
Georg. l.c.) says that it came from Attica: at the same
time there is so much suggestion of antiquity in the expiatory sacrifice to
the Lares, that one is inclined to regard both this and the offerings to
trees and gods of the country as older than the introduction of the Greek
rites, and to think that the similarity with the Aeora is accidental. The
hanging up of propitiatory offerings or thank-offerings in the form of waxen
limbs, figures, &c., is common enough in many religions and many
countries to allow such a coincidence. The chain of connexion afterwards
with Liber, Bacchus, and the Aeora is easy; and it must be recollected
 |
|
Olive-tree with oscilla, fistula, and pedum. (From and engraved
gem.)
|
that the oscilla, which we have surviving, represent not only
Bacchus, but various rustic deities. It should be stated also that in the
oscilla of collections there may be some confusion between the oscilla
properly so called and representations of masks hung up by players in the
festival, not as a symbolical sacrifice, but
[p. 2.306]merely as a dedicatory offering along with other articles used, such as a
thyrsus or syrinx: we find also many discs with figures in relief; but
though Bötticher treats these also as oscilla, it must be a
question whether they are not merely offerings placed on the walls of
shrines. The theory that the name
oscilla could
be applied to the heads of the sacrificed animals, hung up on the trees, is
also put forward, but is hardly consistent with the precise definitions of
the word which we have: we see them so hung in ancient works of art, and
they may have been compared to oscilla (as in a passage cited by
Bötticher), but the true oscilla were probably always manufactured.
In the illustrations given (1) is from an onyxcup in the Paris collection;
(2) is a marble oscillum of Bacchus in the British Museum (described in
Guide to Greek and Roman Sculpture, 1873, Part 2.131);
(3) is from a gem (Maffei,
Gem. Ant. 3.64). (Marquardt,
Staatsverw. iii.2 192, 200; Preller,
Röm. Myth. 105, &c.; Bötticher,
Baumeultus der Hellenen, pp. 80-91; Hermann,
Gr.
Alt. § 27.)
[
G.E.M]
