Thursday, July 28, 2016

THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: CHAPTER TEN



CHAPTER TEN

The Genius of Britain


“I shall first speak of the relics of the prophet. Caphar-Zechariah is a village of the territory of Eleutheropolis, a city of Palestine. The land of this district was cultivated by Calemerus, a serf; he was well disposed to the owner, but hard, discontented, and unjust towards his neighboring peasants. Although he possessed these defects of character, the prophet stood by him in a dream, and manifested himself; pointing out a particular garden, he said to him, ‘Go, dig in that garden at the distance of two cubits from the hedge of the garden by the road leading to the city of Bitheribis. You will there find two coffins, the inner one of wood, the other of lead. Beside the coffins you will see a glass vessel full of water, and two serpents of moderate size, but tame, and perfectly innoxious, so that they seem to be used to being handled.’" [Sozomen]

Now none of the hagiographers I contacted could explain the significance of these two tame snakes, much less the vessel of water. To me Sozomen’s account seemed startingly similar to the Dinas Emrys burial with its vases (= urns), pool and two snakes. And it was the tameness of these two snakes of the Sozomen story that caused me to remember reading years ago about the concept of the Roman genius.

Here is the entry on ‘Genius’ by Harry Thurston Peck from Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, 1898:

“Genius (‘creator, begetter’, from gigno). The Italian peoples regarded the Genius as a higher power which creates and maintains life, assists at the begetting and birth of every individual man, determines his character, tries to influence his destiny for good, accompanies him through life as his tutelary spirit, and lives on in the Lares after his death. As a creative principle, the Genius is attached, strictly speaking, to the male sex only. In the case of women his place is taken by Iuno, the personification of woman's life. Thus, in a house inhabited by a man and his wife, a Genius and a Iuno are worshipped together. But in common parlance, it was usual to speak of the Genius of a house, and to this Genius the marriage bed (lectus genialis) was sacred. A man's birthday was naturally the holiday of his attendant Genius, to whom he offered incense, wine, garlands, cakes, everything, in short, but bloody sacrifices, and in whose honour he gave himself up to pleasure and enjoyment; for the Genius wishes a man to have pleasure in the life that he has given him. Hence the Romans spoke of enjoying one's self as indulging one's Genius, and of renunciation as spiting him ( Hor. Carm.iii. 17Hor. Carm., 14; Pers.iv. 27). Men swore by their Genius as by their higher self, and by the Genius of persons whom they loved and honoured. The philosophers originated the idea of a man having two Genii, a good and a bad one; but in the popular belief the notion of the Genius was that of a good and beneficent being. Families, societies, cities, and peoples had their Genius as well as individuals. The Genius of the Roman people (Genius Publicus or Genius Populi Romani) stood in the Forum, represented in the form of a bearded]man crowned with a diadem, a cornucopia in his right hand, and a sceptre in his left. An annual sacrifice was offered to him on the 9th of October. Under the Empire the Genius of Augustus, the founder of the Empire, and of the reigning emperor, were publicly worshipped at the same time. Localities also, such as open spaces, streets, baths, and theatres, had their own Genii (Inscr. Orell. 343, 1697). These were usually represented under the form of snakes; and hence the common habit of keeping tame snakes.”

It would, therefore, make a great deal of sense to view the tame snakes of the Sozomen story as genii loci, that is, spirit protectors of the place where the prophet had been buried.

In Campanian houses and commercial premises deities are often documented, usually the well-known combination of the Lares Familiares, Genius of the paterfamilias, Genii Loci, and Di Penates. The Lares Familiares protected all inhabitants of a house, including the slaves. As a matter of fact Lar or Lares could even mean ‘house’ from the first century BCE onwards. This cult is encountered in relation to the major events in the life of the family (such as births, weddings, deaths, the departure for a journey and returning home), but also in everyday life. Originally there was only one Lar, but in the Imperial period they always form a pair. In Pompeii and Herculaneum the two Lares Familiares are depicted as dancing youths, wreathed, wearing a tunica, holding a rhyton and patera or situla.

In between the Lares Familiares the Genius is usually found sacrificing at an altar. He was a deity under whose protection the paterfamilias resided. A male and a female snake - the male one with comb and beard - have often been painted in the shrines of Campania. These are Genii Loci, protectors of the place.

There is considerable evidence that the snake could be considered a guardian spirit or genius loci. The regular pattern was for a pair of antithetically posed snakes to be painted on the wall beneath the lararium-niche, their heads reared over a religious emblem (an altar, for example) set between them.

The snakes in the paintings at Pompeii and Herculaneum are of some kind of good spirits of the place that may have been called genii loci. They would appear not to be representations of the genius familiaris or other personal genii.

There are clues in the textual and archaeological record that lead us to believe that the genius loci in the Roman world in the 1st century CE was represented as a serpent when an artistic expression was called for. Modern consensus does not hold to the view that the snake was the representation of the genius of a man. This latter view may have arisen as a confusion over a passage in the Aeneid (see below).

Additionally, when we see serpents on the household shrines in Pompeii, those serpents are often shown in the presence of the genius of the head of a household, who is shown as a man - so it seems redundant to interpret the serpent as another expression of the genius of the head of household.

The passage in Virgil’s Aeneid alluded to above should be quoted in full:

“Aeneas then advanc'd amidst the train, By thousands follow'd thro' the flow'ry plain, To great Anchises' tomb; which when he found, He pour'd to Bacchus, on the hallow'd ground, Two bowls of sparkling wine, of milk two more, And two (from offer'd bulls) of purple gore, With roses then the sepulcher he strow'd And thus his father's ghost bespoke aloud: ‘Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again, Paternal ashes, now review'd in vain! The gods permitted not, that you, with me, Should reach the promis'd shores of Italy, Or Tiber's flood, what flood soe'er it be.’ Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride, A serpent from the tomb began to glide; His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd; Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold: Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass A rolling fire along, and singe the grass. More various colors thro' his body run, Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun. Betwixt the rising altars, and around, The sacred monster shot along the ground; With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd, And with his lolling tongue assay'd the taste: Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest. The pious prince, surpris'd at what he view'd, The fun'ral honors with more zeal renew'd, Doubtful if this place's genius were, Or guardian of his father's sepulcher. Five sheep, according to the rites, he slew; As many swine, and steers of sable hue; New gen'rous wine he from the goblets pour'd. And call'd his father's ghost, from hell restor'd.”

(Book V, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dryden Translation)

The critical lines may also be translated as follows:

“Hoc magis inceptos genitori instaurat honores, incertus, geniumne loci famulumne parentis”

“All the more he renews the honors that he had begun for his father, uncertain whether he should think that it was the genius of the place or his father's familiar (literally, ‘servant’)”

Famulus is literally a servant, but here it seems to be used in the technical sense of a ‘familiar’ for magical rites, like the black cat of a witch. Honores means ‘honours,’ but in this context could be translated ‘sacrifices.’ Indeed, one of the Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary entry definitions for ‘famulus’ is ‘a demon attendant’.

Frequently cited in connection with the two dragons of Dinas Emrys is the ancient Latin document Notitia Dignitatum. This work may depict the shield device of the Segontium military garrison stationed in the Roman fort of Caernarvon not far from Dinas Emrys as two crossed snakes. These two crossed snakes of the Seguntienses can possibly be related to the two snakes atop the shield of the infancy story of Hercules. We can make this tentative identification because Hercules at Roman Silchester was called deo Her(culi) Saegon. ‘Saegon’ is the same component found in Segontium and Seguntienses.

The Hercules serpent story is enlightening. Alcmene placed her twin sons, Hercules and Iphicles, under a lamb coverlet atop a broad bronze shield. At midnight, Hera sent two serpents to the house of Amphitryon, the father of Hercules. They were to destroy Hercules. But the young hero strangled both snakes, one in each hand. However, an alternate version of the tale insists the snakes were harmless and were placed in the cradle by Amphitryon himself.

This second version of the story is doubtless closer to the truth: an iconographic scene of the infant Hercules holding two tame snakes, the genii loci of the House of Amphitryon, was misread at some point as the hero’s killing of the said reptiles. The Greeks did have the agatho-daimôn or agathos daimôn, the ‘good spirit’, and Pindar speaks of a genethlios daimôn, which some have interpreted to be exactly the equivalent of the Roman Genius.

We might imagine such guardian serpent spirits being adopted by the Seguntienses, whose tutelary deity was a Celtic deity named Segontios, identified with the Roman Hercules. If the dragon-chieftains of Dinas Emrys had come to be confused with the Herculean genii loci of the Seguntienses, this would have facilitated the evolution of the dragons into the genius of the British people and the genius of the Saxon people.

But whatever the origin of the serpents of Dinas Emrys, it seems fairly clear that the notion the one represented the British people and the other the Saxons was a late development in the story. When we are told in Lludd and Lleuelys that the two serpents were placed in a vat and then in a stone chest, which was buried at Dinas Emrys, and that

‘As long as they are within that strong place no plague will come to Britain’, obviously the two serpents are being portrayed as protective spirits of the place, i.e. as genii loci. It is not only difficult, but indeed impossible, to reconcile this notion of two protective serpents of Britain with the later view that one dragon was a good being, while the other stood for a non-native enemy.

We know the Genius of Britain was worshipped during the Roman period, as we have a dedication on an altar by Marcus Cocceius Firmus to Genio Terrae Britannicae, found at the Auchendavy fort. This stone is now in the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. A Roman such as M. Cocceius Firmus would naturally have envisioned the Genius as taking serpent form.

Yet another development in the evolution of the dragon story will be discussed below in Chapter 15 and there I will also have more to say on the agathos daimon, as well as the cosmic significance of Uther Pendragon.

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