User:Cynwolfe/October Horse

<!-- And notes on the horse in general in Roman religion, myth, and magic for now, until I get it all sorted out …


 * Festus, Lindsay
 * Festus, Müller

In ancient Roman religion, the October Horse (Latin Equus October) was an animal sacrifice to Mars carried out on October 15, coinciding with the end of the agricultural and military campaigning season. The rite took place during one of three horse-racing festivals held in honor of Mars, the others being the two Equirria on February 27 and March 14.

Two-horse chariot races (bigae) were held in the Campus Martius, the area of Rome named for Mars, after which the right-hand horse of the winning team was transfixed by a spear and sacrificed. The horse's head and tail (cauda) were cut off and used separately in the two subsequent parts of the ceremonies: two neighborhoods staged a fight for the right to display the head, and the still-bleeding cauda was carried to the Regia to sprinkle on the sacred hearth of Rome.

The October Horse is the only instance of horse sacrifice in Roman religion; the Romans typically sacrificed animals that were a normal part of their diet. The unusual ritual has thus often been analyzed in light of other Indo-European forms of horse sacrifice, such as the Vedic ashvamedha and the Irish ritual described by Giraldus Cambrensis, both of which have to do with kingship. Although the ritual battle for possession of the head may preserve an element from the early period when Rome was ruled by kings, the October Horse's collocation of agriculture and war is characteristic of the Republic. The complex and even contradictory aspects of the rite probably result from overlays of diverse traditions accumulated over time.

Description
The rite of the October Horse took place on the Ides of October, but no name is recorded for a festival on that date. The grammarian Festus describes it as follows:

The October Horse is named from the annual sacrifice to Mars in the Campus Martius during the month of October. It is the right-hand horse of the winning team in the two-horse chariot races. The customary competition for its head between the residents of the Suburra and those of the Sacra Via was no trivial affair; the latter would get to attach it to the wall of the Regia, or the former to the Mamilian Tower. Its tail was transported to the Regia with sufficient speed that the blood from it could be dripped onto the hearth for the sake of becoming part of the sacred rite (res divina).

In a separate passage, the Augustan antiquarian Verrius Flaccus says that the horse's head is adorned with bread. The Calendar of Philocalus notes that on October 15 "the Horse takes place at the Nixae," an obscure landmark, most likely an altar to birth deities (di nixi). Plutarch describes the rite in the same terms as Festus, but places it on the Ides of December, presumably because in the original Roman calendar December instead of October was the tenth month, as its etymology (decem, "ten") indicates.

The "sacred rite" that the horse's blood became part of is usually taken to be the Parilia, an agricultural festival on April 21, which became the date on which the founding of Rome was celebrated.

War and agriculture
Verrius Flaccus notes that the horse ritual was carried out ob frugum eventum: the phrase may mean "in thanks for the completed harvest" or "for the sake of the next harvest," and has been connected to the divine personification Bonus Eventus, "Good Outcome." But like other ceremonies in October, the sacrifice occurred during the time of the army's return and reintegration into society, for which Verrius also accounted by explaining that a horse is suited for war, an ox for tilling. The ritual was held outside the pomerium, Rome's sacred boundary, presumably because of its martial character, but agriculture was also an extra-urban activity, as Vitruvius indicates when he notes that the correct sacred place for Ceres was outside the city (extra urbem loco).

In Rome's early history, the roles of soldier and farmer were complementary:

In early Rome agriculture and military activity were closely bound up, in the sense that the Roman farmer was also a soldier (and a voter as well). … In the case of the October Horse, for example, we should not be trying to decide whether it is a military, or an agricultural festival; but see it rather as one of the ways in which the convergence of farming and warfare (or more accurately of farmers and fighters) might be expressed.

This polyvalence was characteristic of the god for whom the sacrifice was conducted, since among the Romans Mars brought war and bloodshed, agriculture and virility, and thus both death and fertility within his sphere of influence.

The Parilia and suffimen
The Augustan poets Propertius and Ovid both mention horse blood as an ingredient in the ritual preparation suffimen or suffimentum, which the Vestals compounded for use in the lustration of shepherds and their sheep at the Parilia. Propertius's emphasis that "the purification rites (lustra) are now renewed by means of the bobbed horse" implies that the horse's blood was not part of the original ceremony. Although no other horse sacrifice in Rome is recorded, Dumézil attempted to exclude the October Horse as the source of the blood for the Parilia. That the blood from the tail was dripped or smeared on the sacred hearth of Rome does not preclude the use of the blood from the rest of the animal for the suffimen.

Another important ingredient for the suffimen was the ash produced from the holocaust of an unborn calf at the Fordicidia on April 15, along with the stalks from which beans had been harvested. The suffimen was sprinkled on the bonfires at the Parilia.NOTE NOT RIGHT

Suffimentum is a general word for a preparation used for purification or warding off ill influence. In his treatise on veterinary medicine, Vegetius advises that livestock be protected from disease [and so on], and daemones et umbras by means of a suffimentum.

vegetius and suffimentum suffimentum cicero vestals Fasti ANRW

Sacrificial victims were most often domestic animals normally part of the Roman diet, and the meat was eaten at a banquet shared by those celebrating the rite. Horse meat, however, was distasteful to the Romans. Inedible victims such as the October Horse and the dogs sacrificed at the Lupercalia and Robigalia were typically offered to chthonic deities in the form of a holocaust, resulting in no shared meal. The head of the Equus October, however, was adorned with bread, normally associated with Ceres and Vesta, as was the customary ass sacrificed to Priapus.

Since the Roman military was based on infantry, the importance of the horse to the war god is not self-evident. Mars' armed priests the Salii, attired as "typical representatives of the archaic infantry," performed their rituals emphatically on foot, with dance steps. The equestrian order was of lesser social standing than the senatorial patres, "fathers" (compare "patrician"). By the late Republic, the Roman cavalry was formed primarily from allies (auxilia), and Arrian emphasizes the foreign origin of cavalry training techniques, particularly in regard to the Celts.

The potency of the horse has been described sometimes as mana or numen.

The horse in magic and religion
Images of chariot races were considered good luck, but the races themselves might attract unfavorable magic in attempts to influence the outcome. Some of the ornaments placed on horses were good-luck charms or devices to ward off malevolence, including bells, wolves' teeth, crescents, and brands. This counter-magic was directed at actual practices; binding spells (defixiones) have been found at race tracks. The defixio sometimes employed the spirits of the prematurely dead to work harm. Chariot races are the most common scene depicted on the sarcophagi of Roman children, and typically show Cupids driving bigae.

Ahl in ANRW

The Trojan Horse
Timaeus (3rd century BC) attempted to explain the ritual of the October Horse in connection with the Trojan Horse—an attempt mostly regarded by ancient and modern scholars as "hardly convincing." As recorded by Polybius (2nd century BC),

he tells us that the Romans still commemorate the disaster at Troy by shooting (κατακοντίζειν, "to spear down") on a certain day a war-horse before the city in the Campus Martius, because the capture of Troy was due to the wooden horse — a most childish statement. For at that rate we should have to say that all barbarian tribes were descendants of the Trojans, since nearly all of them, or at least the majority, when they are entering on a war or on the eve of a decisive battle sacrifice a horse, divining the issue from the manner in which it falls. Timaeus in dealing with the foolish practice seems to me to exhibit not only ignorance but pedantry in supposing that in sacrificing a horse they do so because Troy was said to have been taken by means of a horse.

Festus also takes note of this interpretation: ''Quem hostiae loco quidam Marti bellico deo sacrari dicunt, non ut vulgus putat, quia velut supplicium de eo sumatur, quod Romani Ilio sunt oriundi, et Troiani ita effigie in equi sint capti. Multi autem gentibus equum hostiarum numero haberi testimonio sunt Lacedaemoni, qui in monte Taygeto equum ventis immolant, ibidemque adolent, ut eorum flatu cinis eius per finis quam latissime differatur. Et Sallentini, aput quos Menzanae Iovi dicatus vivos conicitur in ignem. Et Rhodi, qui quotannis quadrigas soli consecratas in mare iaciunt, qud is tali curriculo fertus circumvehi mundum.''

Walter Burkert has suggested that the October Horse and the Trojan Horse, the success of which depended on its being taken as a votive offering or dedication for a deity, may have shared some mythological origin. For instance, the spear that the Trojan priest Laocoön drives into the side of the wooden horse is paralleled by the spear used by the officiating priest at the October sacrifice.

The head
The significance of the head may be indicated by the caput acris equi, "head of a spirited ("sharp") horse," which Vergil says was found by Dido and her colonists when they began the dig to found Carthage: "by this sign it was shown that the race (gens) would be distinguished in war and abound with the means of life." The 4th-century agricultural writer Palladius advised farmers to place the skull of a horse or ass on their land; the animals were not to be "virgin," because the purpose was to promote fertility. The practice may be related to the effigies known as oscilla, figures or faces that Vergil says were hung from pine trees with invocations (carmina) to Bacchus by mask-wearing Ausonian farmers of Trojan descent.

The substance hippomanes, which was thought to induce sexual passion, was supposedly exuded from the forehead of a foal; Aelian says either the forehead or "loins." Called amor by Vergil, it is an ingredient in Dido's ritual preparations before her suicide in the Aeneid. The location of sexual vitality or fertility in the horse's head may point to its sacrificial potency.

The tail
George Devereux and others have argued that cauda, or οὐρά (oura) in Greek sources, is a euphemism for the penis of the horse, which could be expected to contain more blood. The tail itself, however, held magico-religious significance in terms of fertility and power. The practice of attaching a horse's tail to a helmet may originate in a desire to appropriate the animal's power in battle; in the Iliad, Hector's horse-crested helmet is a terrifying sight. In Mithraic iconography, the tail of the sacrificial bull is often grasped, as is the horse's tail in depictions of the Thracian Rider god. A pinax from Corinth depicts a dwarf holding his phallus with both hands while standing on the tail of an equestrian-mounted stallion; although the dwarf has sometimes been interpreted as the horse-threatening Taraxippus, the phallus is more typically an apotropaic talisman (see fascinum). Satyrs and sileni, though later characterized as goat-like, in the Archaic period were regularly depicted with equine features, including a prominent tail; they were known for uncontrolled sexuality, and are often ithyphallic in art. Pliny says that the tail of a wolf, an animal regularly associated with Mars, contained amatorium virus, aphrodisiac power. Therefore, phallic properties may be attributed to the October Horse's tail without insisting that cauda meant "penis."

Officiant
Because the sacrifice took place in the Campus Martius ("Field of Mars"), during a religious festival celebrated for Mars, it is often assumed that the flamen Martialis presided. The priest of Mars may have wielded a spear ritually on other occasions, but no source names the officiant over the October Horse rite.

The date
The sacrifice of the Equus October took place on the Ides, a day traditionally sacred to Jupiter in every month, and so is one of the examples of a doubling up of holidays in the Roman calendar that may have resulted from the synoecism of Rome.

Altar of Dis and Proserpina

 * Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry p. 219 on Hades and horsemanship

The ruler of the underworld had been associated with horses, horsemanship, horse-breeding, and charioteering since Homeric times.

Dumézil and trifunctionality, or not
The Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil wrote elaborately on the October Horse within his theory of trifunctionality. Dumézil connected the use of the horse's blood for the festival of Pales to the obscure Viśpálā, in Vedic mythology a mare-goddess who loses a leg during a race. The horse's leg is replaced by the twin gods Nāsatya, who were "third function" givers of prosperity, health, and youth, and were associated with horses and cattle. Their counterparts in the classical mythology of the West are Castor and Pollux. Dumézil interprets the name Viśpálā as the *Palā (which he would connect to Pales) of the viś, "the principle of the function of the herdsmen-farmers."

Selected bibliography

 * Pascal, C. Bennett. "October Horse." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981) 261–291.
 * Wagenvoort, Hendrik. "On the Magical Significance of the Tail." In Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion. Leiden: Brill, 1980. Limited preview online.

Category:Roman animal sacrifice Category:Ancient Roman religion Category:October observances Category:Campus Martius