|
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held April 15, that pertained to farming and animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, the ancient Roman goddess of the Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres (Cerealia) on April 19.〔Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, ''Religions of Rome: A History'' (Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, (p. 45. )〕 On the Roman religious calendar, the month of April ''(Aprilis)'' was in general preoccupied with deities who were female or ambiguous in gender, opening with the Feast of Venus on the Kalends.〔William Warde Fowler, ''The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic'' (London, 1908), pp. 66–67.〕 Several other festivals pertaining to farm life were held in April: the Parilia, a feast of shepherds, on April 21; the Robigalia on April 25, to protect crops from blight;〔 and the Vinalia, one of the two wine festivals on the calendar,〔The other was held August 19.〕 at the end of the month. Of these, the Fordicidia and Robigalia are likely to have been of greatest antiquity. William Warde Fowler, whose early 20th-century work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference, asserted that the Fordicidia was "beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in Roman religion."〔Fowler, ''Roman Festivals'', p. 71.〕 ==Sacrifice and ritual== The late Republican scholar Varro explains the name of the festival as follows: The forms ''horda'' and ''Hordicalia'' are also found.〔Varro, ''De re rustica'' 2.5.6.; Fowler, ''Roman Festivals'', p. 71.〕 Like many other aspects of Roman law and religion,〔William Warde Fowler, ''The Religious Experience of the Roman People'' (London, 1922), p. 108.〕 the institution of the Fordicidia was attributed to Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome. The rustic god Faunus instructed Numa in a dream that a sacrifice to Tellus would mitigate the harsh agricultural conditions Rome was grappling with, but the oracular message required interpretation: "By the death of cattle, King, Tellus must be placated: two cows, that is. Let a single heifer yield two lives ''(animae)'' for the rites."〔Ovid, ''Fasti'' 4.641–666: ''morte boum tibi, rex, Tellus placanda duarum: / det sacris animas una iuvenca duas''.〕 Numa solved the riddle by instituting the sacrifice of a pregnant cow.〔Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, "Fundamentals of Diachronic Linguistics", ''Semiotics around the World: Synthesis in Diversity'' (Mouton de Gruyter, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 64–66, with discussion of Vedic and Hittite parallels.〕 As with other rituals in which public cult was mirrored by private, or ''vice versa'', one sacrifice was conducted on behalf of the state, in this case at the Capitol, and one in each of the thirty ''curiae'', the most ancient divisions of the city made by Romulus from the original three tribes. This was the first of two festivals involving the ''curiae'', the other being the Fornacalia on February 17, which differed in that there was no ritual of state corresponding to the local ceremonies〔Fowler, ''Roman Festivals'', pp. 71 and 303; Smith, ''The Roman Clan'', pp. 206–207.〕 and its moveable date was fixed annually by the ''curio maximus''.〔H.H. Scullard, ''History of the Roman World 753 to 146 BC'' (Routledge, 1980), p. 68 (online ); Kurt A. Raaflaub, ''Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders'' (Blackwell, 1986, 2005), p. 109.〕 In the state sacrifice for the Fordicidia, the unborn calf was wrenched from its mother's womb by the attendants of the ''Virgo Vestalis Maxima'', or Vestal Maxima, and burnt. Its ashes were preserved by the Vestals and used as one of the ingredients in the ritual substance ''suffimen'', along with the dried blood of the October Horse from the previous year, and the stalks from which beans had been harvested.〔Ovid, ''Fasti'' 4.731–734; Daniel P. Harmon, "Religion in the Latin Elegists", ''Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt'' 2.16.3 (1986), p. 1958 (online ); Fowler, ''Roman Festivals'', p. 71.〕 The ''suffimen'' was sprinkled on the bonfires of the Parilia, the festival devoted to purifying shepherds and their sheep, and later celebrated also as the "birthday" of the city.〔Beard ''et al.'', ''Religions of Rome'' pp. 53 and 383.〕 The sacrifice at the Fordicidia and preparation of the ''suffimen'' constituted the first public ceremony of the year in which the Vestals played an active role.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fordicidia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|