2 From America also comes a good account of the Cults of Ostia, by Lily Ross Taylor,1 a student at the American school of Rome. The subject was suggested by the Director, Dr J. B. Carter, and the treatise of nearly a hundred pages is published as one of the Bryn Mawr College monographs. It may be read in connexion with Dr Ashby's paper in J.R.S. on recent discoveries at Ostia. The religious history of Ostia is peculiar. It does not begin till the third century B.C.; Vulcan, who always remained important on this site, may have been worshipped here earlier, but the inscriptions do not prove it, and the colonia founded here cannot well be earlier. A peculiarity here is that the pontifex Volcani was the pontifex maximus, so to speak, of Ostia, and inscriptions prove that no temples could be erected here without his leave. What was the meaning of the cult we do not know; Wissowa's view that it was intended to preserve the docks and granaries from fire is only a guess. As yet we know little or nothing of the true Roman Volcanus. There was a Capitolium here, erected probably before the end of the third century; but whether this is to be identified with the prominent one on a high podium, of which Dr Ashby speaks, must be doubtful: he himself is disposed to call it the temple of Vulcan. In the second and third centuries of our era, the evidence becomes far more complete for the religions of Ostia, and the prominent fact is the influence of Orientalism brought in by merchants and sailors. Apart from those with which we are now familiar, Cybele, Mithras, and Isis-Serapis, a Greek inscription of Gordian III. seems to point to the existence of a cult of the Tárpios Ocós of the port of Gaza at Portus3: such a god at Gaza was Marnas, but this is the only known occurrence of his cult in the Mediterranean. I have said enough to show the value of Miss Taylor's work. The contributions to our subject in Pauly-Wissowa, Roscher's Lexicon, and Hastings' Encyclopædia, are not 1 See also p. 76. 2 J.R.S. vol. ii. (1912), p. 153 f. See also p. 124, 3 Inscr. Graec. ad res Rom. pert. i. 387. 1 numerous or important. Prof. Deubner, writing on 'Fleece' in the last of these (vol. v. p. 50), touches some interesting points, e.g., the goat's hide of Juno Sospita, the albogalerus of the flamen Dialis, and the custom of confarreatio, where bride and bridegroom sat on a seat covered with the fleece of a sacrificed sheep. The special importance of wool in religious rites probably finds its explanation in the significance of the sacrificial hide.' This subject has been recently treated of by F. Pley, 'de lanae in antiquorum ritibus usu,' Giessen, 1911. Dr Deubner has also written a brief but instructive paper 1 on the word lustrum, which seems to bring us a step nearer to a real understanding of that most elusive word. Lustrum is related to luere, and must signify a getting rid of foul or dangerous matter, or more strictly, the means whereby we get rid of it. On the other hand, lustrare, lustratio, are in Roman religious language used for rites of which the object seems to be, not to get rid of existing evil, but to keep off such evil as may be expected——¿.e., in an apotropaeic sense rather than a cathartic one. The explanation probably lies in the fact that at one time lustratio consisted of a double process, of which the first part was cathartic, the second apotropaeic. Capitolium purgatum atque lustratum,' says Livy. At the Vestalia, which can trace its descent from the primitive religion of the farm, the refuse from the penus Vestae was taken away and deposited in a particular spot, after which we may presume (though this seems a weak point in Dr Deubner's account) that apotropaeic ceremonies began. So, too, lustrum condere' must originally have meant some burying or hiding away of refuse, after which the familiar lustratio followed with the suovetaurilia, at the censorial ceremony. The primitive part of these rites lost its meaning and was forgotten; the processional part, with the sacrifice that followed, survived by reason of its stately beauty, and its appeal to the eye of the spectator (I am here adding my own opinion to Dr Deubner's account). Naturally enough too, the lustratio 6 1 Arch. f. Relig. 1912, 127 f. 2 Liv. iii. 18. 10. 6 came to be looked on as cathartic as well as apotropaeic. Lastly, I may mention that the article on Etruscan religion in Hastings' Encycl. by Dr Merbig of Munich is furnished with a remarkably complete bibliography. W. WARDE FOWLER. K XVII ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY IN Philosophy no works of a specially sensational kind have appeared during the past year, but the output, largely German, has been considerable. H. Diels, to whom students of Ancient Philosophy can never be too grateful, has issued a third edition of his monumental Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.1 A dissertation by L. Otten2 upon Anaximander mainly consists of a violent attack on Zeller's interpretation of the aπeipov as a material substance. In Otten's view it has a spiritual as well as a material side. Besides being extended in space, it is a rational efficient cause in time. J. Dörfler3 continues his investigations into the influence of Orphism upon the early philosophers by an attempt to show that Anaximenes was borrowing from Orphism when he made air his first principle and applied the term kóσuos to the world-order. H. Slonimsky's Heraklit und Parmenides is an excellent study of the central doctrines of these philosophers, with a concluding section on the influence of Eleatic principles upon Democritus. 'The author emphasises the strength of the polemical motive in Parmenides, whose Not-Being is simply the Becoming of Heracleitus. Parmenides' Being has two distinct and irreconcilable aspects. First, it is a product of pure thought, an epitome of thought's most abstract deter 3 Zur Urstofflehre des Anaximenes, Freistadt, 1912. |