Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/136

 basis of Roman law, it need not surprise us that this song of a religious brotherhood is to be reckoned among the oldest of Rome's literary monuments. This primitive hymn was discovered at Rome in 1778, on a tablet containing the acts of the sacred college. Varro tells us that these Arval Brothers—"Brothers of the Fields"—were a rustic priesthood whose duty it was "to perform public rites that the fields (arva) may bear fruits." At the Ambarvalia, or Lustration of the Fields, the Arval Brothers apparently performed for the Roman people as a community what each house-father did for his own farm. Cato and Tibullus have described these Ambarvalian ceremonies, which seem to have been thoroughly in keeping with the agricultural spirit of certain Hebrew festivals. As in the Carmen Sæculare of Horace, in spite of Sapphic measure having displaced the old Saturnian, and sundry other signs of Greek influence, we may fancy an elegant improvement of the old communal hymns of Rome, so in the elegiac poem of Tibullus on the Ambarvalia we may find, if not an imitation of the Arvalian prayer, at least a description of the festival.

Whosoe'er is by, be silent:

Fruits and fields we purify

As the rite, from hoary ages

Handed duly, doth ordain.

Bacchus, come with tender vine-branch

Hanging from thy horns, and Ceres

Bind thy temples with the corn-ears.

Rest the earth this holy dawning,

Rest the ploughman from his toiling,

Let his heavy work be ended

While the ploughshare idle hangs.

Loose the yoke-chains; now by full stalls

Oxen with wreathed heads shall stand.

For the god be all things sacred;

Nor let any set her hand

Woollen-weaving to the task-work. …