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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