SALII
SALII These were an ancient guild of priests, traditionally
first instituted by Numa for the service of Mars and the guardianship of the
sacred shields (
Liv. 1.20;
Cic. de Rep. 2.14, 26;
Dionys. A. R. 2.70;
Plut. Num. 13;
Ov.
Fast. 3.378; Fest. p. 131); other traditions represented them as
derived from Greece (Fest. p. 320; Plut.
l.c.; Serv.
ad Aen.. 2.325, 8.285); but we should
rather regard these rites as a primitive Italian religion, very possibly a
relic of superstitions inherited alike by the Greek and Italian stocks, but
not borrowed from Greece after the Greeks and Italians were separate
nations. It is at least probable that the Salii date from an earlier and
ruder state than the age of Numa. They were at any rate widely spread
through Italy, for we find them at Alba, Lanuvium, Tibur, Tusculum, Anagnia,
Verona (Macrob. 3.12, 7; Serv.
l.c.;
C. I. L. 1.150, 5.4492, 6.270, 10.5925; see also other
inscriptions cited by Marquardt,
Staatsverw. 3.428); nor was
the name restricted to the priests of a single deity: at Tibur they belonged
to the worship of Hercules Victor. In Rome (i. e. in the Palatine city)
there were originally twelve, forming a collegium with officials, a
magister, praesul, and
vates: they assembled at the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine, and
were called
Salii Palatini to distinguish them
from the other similar guild of twelve
Salii
Collini (called also
Agonales or
Agonenses), who were supposed to have been instituted by
Hostilius, and had their sacrarium in the Quirinal (
Liv.
1.27;
Dionys. A. R. 2.70,
3.32; Serv.
l.c.). We can scarcely doubt that these two guilds existed in their
separate localities when the Palatine and Quirinal were distinct
communities, and the doubling of the Salii, like the doubling of the
Luperci, tells of the amalgamation of the Quirinal with the Palatine city
(compare Mommsen,
Rom. Hist. 1.56;
Staatsrecht, 3.111:
LUPERCI).
The Salii were patricians (
Cic. de Dom.
14, 38;
Lucan 9.477; cf. Lucian,
de Salt. 20), chosen (by co-optation of the college) from
patrimi et matrimi in early youth, but, as
they held the appointment for life, the colleges contained
seniores and
juniores (
“hic juvenum chorus, ille senum,”
Verg. A. 8.285):> if however one of
them became a flamen, augur, pontifex or consul, he passed out of the
college of Salii by
exauguratio (
C. I.
L. 6.1978); but the assumption of the praetorship and consulship
did not
necessarily vacate the Salian priesthood, as
may be seen from the case of Scipio (
Liv. 37.33）
and others (
V. Max. 1.1,
9; Macrob. 3.14). The distinguishing dress of the Salii was an
embroidered tunic, a brazen breast-plate, the trabea and the priestly cap
[
APEX], a sword girt at the
side, on the left arm the
ancile or sacred
shield, and in the right hand a short staff with which the shield from time
to time was struck. It is significant of their function that in dress they
were half-priests, half-warriors. The two collegia were distinct not only in
name: the Palatini had their sanctuary on the Palatine hill and were
consecrated to Mars; the Collini had their sanctuary on the Quirinal and
were consecrated to Quirinus (
Liv. 5.52;
Stat. Silv. 6.29), both deities alike
presiding over Roman warfare. Each collegium had charge of twelve ancilia.
That both guilds had shields is not only the natural view, but is also
distinctly stated by Livy (
5.52) in the words
“quid loquar de ancilibus
vestris,
Mars Gradive tuque Quirine pater.”
The great festival season of the Salii began with March, as the beginning
alike of the campaigning and the agricultural season, and occupied the
greater part of the month (Dionys. ii.
[p. 2.590]20;
Plb. 21.10,
12;> cf. Huschke,
Das alte röm. Jahr,
p. 362). On the 1st of March they were said
arma
movere (
τὰ ὅπλα κινεῖν, Lyd.
de Mens. 3.15), of which we must conceive
the meaning to be that they brought forth the shields from their sacraria:
then, equipped as above described, they went through the city in a
procession which was continued for several days. They were preceded by
trumpeters, and they themselves as they walked beat the shields with their
staves, the
praesul leading their dance in
three-time (
tripudium) and being said
amptruare, while his followers
redamptruabant, and the vates leading the Salian chant (see
below). There were various stations (
mansiones）
for the annual processsion, at each of which successively the ancilia were
deposited for one night (
C. I. L. 6.2158), and there the
Salii feasted (Fest. p. 329); [for these banquets and their luxury see Hor.
Od. 1.37,
2;
Cic. Att. 10.9;
Suet. Cl. 33:] on the next day the procession
passed to another mansio. It seems to us possible that in this is to be
found the explanation of the fact that “arma moventur” is
stated of three days,--March 1st (Lyd. 3.15), March 9th (Cal. Philoc.), and
March 23rd (Lyd. 4.42): we may suppose that--the ceremonies which marked the
shields being brought forth from the Curia Saliorum on March 1st, were
repeated on the other two days when they were moved from two special
mansiones, one probably being the sacrarium of the Regia. The exact progress
of the procession cannot be traced out: we know that they offered sacrifice
in the Regia (Fest.
l.c.), where the Pontifex
Maximus also and the
Saliae virgines officiated
(the latter, so far as we know, on that day only); they visited the Comitium
(Varro,
L. L. 5.85), the Capitol (
Dionys. A. R. 2.70), the Pons Sublicius
(
Serv. ad Aen. 2.165, which
explains the allusion in Catull. 17, 5), in each place with the
characteristic dance and chant; probably in each there was a mansio. [For
the special March festivals, in which the Salii officiated, see EQUIRRIA; AGONIA; QUINQUATRUS.] It is not certain
whether we are to understand from the “30 days” mentioned by
Polybius (
21.10) that not only the whole month
of March was
religiosus on this account for the
Salii, but a whole month in autumn also. The 24th is the last day in March
on which their functions are distinctly mentioned; and either immediately
after this day, or at the end of the month, the shields were replaced
(
condita) in their sacrarium. As March
opened the campaigning season, so October closed it (theoretically, not in
practice), and this was marked on the 19th> by an
armilustrium, when the Salii again brought out the ancilia (Varr.
6.22), and then stored them in their sacrarium till the next season. It is
clear from a comparison of
Tac. Hist. 1.89,
Suet.
Oth. 8,
Liv. 37.33, and
Plb. 21.10, that the words
arma moventur and
arma
condita apply equally to the spring and the autumn ceremonies: the
first two passages refer to an expedition in March, the last two to the
autumn; in each period for all the days (whatever their true number may have
been) between the
arma mota and the
arma condita, no member of a Salian college could
rightly travel from the place where he was for any expedition. Thus we find
Scipio stopped in the autumn, and Otho regarded as unconventional because he
refused to be stopped in the spring, “motis necdum conditis
ancilibus.” We have no precise information as to the parts taken in
these ceremonies by the two colleges respectively: we should probably be
right in assuming that the 24 Salii of both colleges together joined in the
processions above mentioned, which signified the beginning and ending of the
war season, with which both were equally concerned; on the other hand, we
can have no doubt that on certain days specially belonging to one of the two
deities or one of the two localities the chief, if not the sole, part fell
to one of the colleges. In the Equirria, for instance, we must suppose the
Salii Palatini to have taken the lead or officiated alone as the special
priests of Mars, and so also in the tubilustrium, which was on the Palatine;
but the Agonia on March 17 would naturally belong to the Salii Collini, who
thence derived one of their names.
Carmen Saliare.--This chant, led by the
vates> of each Salian college, belonged to a very ancient ritual, and
was in Quintilian's time scarcely intelligible (
Quint. Inst. 1.6,
40: cf.
Hor. Ep. 2.1,
86;> Varro,
L. L. 7.3;
Cic. de Orat. 3.51, 197); the surviving
portions may be seen in Wordsworth,
Fragments of Early Latin,
564-566. The verses were called
axamenta, which
is itself a word of disputed origin, probably
not,
as some have said, akin to
axis, like the Greek
ἄξονες, inscribed tablets, but rather,
as Curtius, Corssen, and Vanicek agree, it came from the root
ag, to which belong both
ἠμὶ and
aio, and therefore
signified
utterances. In their chant the Salii sang
not only of Mars, to whom they seem to appeal as the averter of evil
influences (perhaps in agriculture as well as in war), and Mamurius, who is
doubtless the same as Mars, but also of Janus (Janus Quirinus), Jupiter
(Lucetius), Juno and Minerva (Macrob. 1.9, 14, and 15, 14; Varro,
L.
L. 7.26; Fest. pp. 3 and 122); and afterwards, as though it were
a sort of “state prayer,” they included the names of the
reigning emperor and imperial princes (
Mon. Ancyr. 2.21;
Tac. Ann. 2.83,
4.9; Capitol.
M. Anton. Phil. 21). [For the
effect of political changes and developments in the priesthoods, see
SACERDOS]
Ancilia.--These sacred shields were, according
to the legends, at first twelve, viz. the shield which fell from heaven and
the eleven copies. It is clear that these twelve were in the charge of the
Salii Palatini, and, though some (as Ambrosch and Preller) have said that
they were kept in the sacrarium of the Regia, we should rather follow
Marquardt and Jordan (
Top. 2.271) in holding that they were
kept in the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine. It was into this
sacrarium Martis that the praetor or consul setting
out for war entered, when, touching the shields, he said, “Mars
vigila.” With this corresponds the custody of the other twelve
shields by the Salii Collini in the sacrarium on the Quirinal (
Dionys. A. R. 2.70). The
ancile (for
ancidile,
amcaedo, i.e. cut on both sides) was an oblong shield, which would have
been a complete oval but for a curved indentation on each side (
ἐκτομὴ γράμμης ἑλικοειδοῦς,
Plut. Num. 13; cf. Varro,
L.
L. 7.43, “ab utraque parte, ut Thracum, incisa.” See
PELTA). It is probable that
this
[p. 2.591]pattern of shield was handed down from a time
when the shields were slung at the back, as is seen in vase-paintings as
late as 500 B.C. The indentations then in these “figure of
eight” shields were to allow for the free movement of the arms, when
drawn back, especially in
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riding. It is, we think, probable that
ancile was originally an adjective, and that the full name was
arma ancilia, as in the calendar for March
9. The shape is clearly shown in the coin of the Licinii representing two
ancilia and the priestly cap with the apex.
A representation is often relied upon from a gem in the museum of Florence,
which shows two figures bearing ancilia (of the correct shape) hung on a
staff. This has an Etruscan inscription, and may safely be pronounced not
Roman; even its antiquity is now questioned (see Marquardt, p. 431;
Baumeister,
Denk. p. 1546), but it is likely that it is a
correct representation of what did happen--not of the Salii in procession,
for they carried each his own shield, in warrior-fashion, on the left arm,
but of two attendants (
Dionys. A. R.
2.70) bearing on a pole the shields (which probably they were not
allowed to touch), to deposit them either in their permanent sacrarium, or
in one of the
mansiones for the night. A coin
has been found which represents a round shield. This may possibly be, as
Marquardt suggests, the special form of the shields borne by the Colline
Salii: his other suggestion, that it was a later form adopted for all
ancilia, seems to be negatived by the fact that the coin is Domitian's, and
therefore was struck at the time when Plutarch was writing of the shape as
quoted above. The relief at Anagnia which shows perfectly oval ancilia may
represent, as Benndorff says (
Annal. d. Inst. 1869), a
local variation in shape, differing from that of
Rome. The common-sense view seems to us to be that the type of shield
familiar in the time and place where each guild took its origin, was
perpetuated and handed down in that guild. In this relief the staves are
about as high as a man's shoulder, and have a knob at each end. We cannot
agree with Marquardt that Ovid's words (
Fast.
3.377) necessarily imply a
round shield: they only
exclude an angular one; and it is clearly impossible that Ovid should not
know the shape of the shield carried in his own time by the Salii.
It is beyond the scope of this work to discuss at length the mythological
meaning of these rites, but it will be useful to notice briefly one or two
considerations which affect the date and order of the ceremonies described
above, and also to indicate the authorities for several interesting and some
very probable theories about their origin which have been recently put
forward. There can be no doubt that the reason why the month of March was
the great ceremonial period for the Salii was that it was regarded as the
birth month of Mars and the time for resuming warfare; but we may notice as
perhaps more than probable the view that this Mars was in primitive Italian
religion regarded not only as the giver of victory in war, but also as the
deity who drove away the darkness of winter and death, and who, by his
reappearance with spring, introduced not only the campaigning, but also the
agricultural season. Roscher, in dwelling on the connexion of Apollo and
Mars, further maintains with considerable force that a parallel is to be
found between the singing and dancing of the Salii and the songs and dances
in the worship of Apollo, whose birth-time also is in spring: he compares
the ceremonies of the
THEOPHANIA at Delphi, the Curetes at Ortygia, and their clashing of
arms to avert a hostile power (cf.
Strab. xiv.
p.640), and deduces, not of course that the Italian rites were
borrowed from the Greek, but that the idea originally underlying both was
the same--a new birth of the year or of light, the alerting of evil
influence, and protection in the future. Closely connected with this is the
fact that the Flaminica Dialis showed at this period signs of mourning in
her attire, just as she did at the ceremonies of the
Argei [
FLAMEN
Vol. I. p. 866
a], and also that it was
pronounced an unlucky time for marriages; for it is more probable that this
was originally because it was a period of striving against evil powers,
than, as Ovid suggests (
Fast. 3.373), from
associations with war.
We cannot, indeed, accept the view of Usener that the twelve ancilia
symbolised twelve newborn suns, nor the less puzzling theory that they
represented twelve moons. These theories arise from an idea, which we
conceive to be erroneous, that the Salian priests were created for the
shields, and were twelve because that was the number of the shields. It is
more likely that there were twelve shields for each guild because. each
guild had twelve priests. In the Palatine city there were accordingly only
twelve, but in historic Rome altogether twenty-four. As to the number
twelve, whether of Etruscan origin or derived merely from three tribes and
four regions, we need not here inquire.
While, however, we venture to dissent from these interpretations of the
ancilia, we think that weight should be given to the interesting suggestion
of Usener that “Mamurius Veturius” in the Equirria or Mamuralia
[see
EQUIRRIA], (when,
according to Lydus, 4.36, a man clothed in skins was driven out of the city
with peeled rods,) was “old Mars,” and that the rite symbolised
the old season driven out by the new. It might rather, perhaps, be said that
the man driven out represented in scapegoat fashion the darkness of winter
and death, who were expelled, not Mamurius himself, and that the Salian cry
to Mamurius is merely for his aid in the expulsion; but in any case there
seems good reason for comparing these rites with others which have the above
symbolical meaning. (See Grimm,
Mythol. vol. ii. p. 764, E.
T. For the references on the mythology in the latter part of this article,
the present writer is indebted to unpublished notes of Mr. Warde Fowler: a
full discussion will be found in Roscher,
Mars und Apollon,
pp. 25 ff., and Usener, in
Rhein. Mus. xxx. pp.
215 ff. For the history of the Salii and their functions, see Marquardt,
Staatsverw. 3.427-438; Preller,
Röm.
Myth. 1.350; Jordan,
Topog. 2.271; and for the
ancilia, besides the above, Baumeister,
Denkm. p. 1546;
Benndorff,
l.c.）
[
W.S] [
G.E.M]
