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.John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, translated by Janet Lloyd (Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 51–52 online. 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.Hendrik Wagenvoort, "The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares," in Studies in Roman Literature, Culture and Religion (Brill, 1956), p. 224 online.
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, then sacrificed. The horse's head (caput) 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 freshly bloodied cauda was carried to the Regia for sprinkling the sacred hearth of Rome.Robert E.A. Palmer, Studies of the Northern Campus Martius in Ancient Rome (American Philosophical Society, 1990), pp. 16, 33, 35, 52.
Ancient references to the Equus October are scattered over more than six centuries: the earliest is that of Timaeus (3rd century BC), who linked the sacrifice to the Trojan Horse and the Romans' claim to Trojan descent, with the latest in the Calendar of Philocalus (354 AD), where it is noted as still occurring, even as Christianity was becoming the dominant religion of the Empire. Most scholars see an Etruscan influence on the early formation of the ceremonies.
The October Horse is the only instance of horse sacrifice in Roman religion;C. Bennett Pascal, "October Horse," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), p. 263. Two vague references in Ovid and Propertius are usually taken to refer to the October Horse, unless they preserve otherwise unknown rites. the Romans typically sacrificed animals that were a normal part of their diet. The unusual ritual of the October Horse has thus been analyzed at times 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,M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 428 online. the October Horse's collocation of agriculture and war is characteristic of the Republic. The sacred topography of the rite and the role of Mars in other equestrian festivals also suggest aspects of youth initiation and rebirth ritual. The complex or even contradictory aspects of the October Horse probably result from overlays of traditions accumulated over time.Pascal, "October Horse," p. 287ff.
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.Pascal, "October Horse," p. 261. 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).Festus 190 (edition of Lindsay). Plutarch's description of the rite (Roman Questions 97) concurs with that of Festus. See Frederick E. Brenk, "An Imperial Heritage: The Religious Spirit of Plutarch of Chaironeia," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.36.1 (1987), p. 340, on Plutarch's interpretational efforts.
In a separate passage,Festus 246 (Lindsay). the Augustan antiquarian Verrius Flaccus adds the detail that the horse's head is adorned with bread. The Calendar of PhilocalusCIL I2, p. 274. notes that on October 15 "the Horse takes place at the Nixae," either an altar to birth deities (di nixi) or less likely an obscure landmark called the Ciconiae Nixae. According to Roman tradition,Reported by the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 5.13.2: "This field their ancestors had by a public decree consecrated to Mars as a meadow for horses and the most suitable drill-field for the youth to perform their exercises in arms." the Campus Martius had been consecrated to Mars by their ancestors as horse pasturage and an equestrian training ground for youths.
The "sacred rite" that the horse's blood became part of is usually taken to be the Parilia, a festival of rural character on April 21, which became the date on which the founding of Rome was celebrated.
War and agriculture
Verrius Flaccus notesPreserved by Paulus in the epitome of Festus 246 L, as cited by Hendrik Wagenvoort, "On the Magical Significance of the Tail," in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), p. 147. that the horse ritual was carried out ob frugum eventum, usually taken to mean "in thanks for the completed harvest" or "for the sake of the next harvest",Wagenvoort, "On the Magical Significance of the Tail," pp. 147–148. since winter wheat was sown in the fall.Pascal, "October Horse," p. 267, as noted in Roman farmers' almanacs (menologia rustica). The phrase has been connected to the divine personification Bonus Eventus, "Good Outcome,"Pascal, "October Horse," p. 285. who had a temple of unknown date in the Campus MartiusLawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 60. and whom Varro lists as one of the twelve agricultural deities.Varro, De re rustica 1.1.4–6. Later Eventus came to represent success in general. 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."A horse was sacrificed rather than an ox, because it is suited for war as the ox is for tending crops" (et equus potius quam bos immolabatur, quod hic bello, bos frugibus pariendis est aptus), as quoted by Wagenvoort, "On the Magical Significance of the Tail," p. 148. The Romans did not use horses as draft animals for farm work,Robert Drews, The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East (Princeton University Press, 1988, 1989), p. 152, notes that "Roman farm horses, alas, are as imaginary as unicorns." nor chariots in warfare, but Polybius specifies that the victim is a war horse.Polybius 12.4.
The ritual was held outside the pomerium, Rome's sacred boundary, presumably because of its martial character.Fred K. Drogula, "Imperium, potestas, and the pomerium in the Roman Republic," Historia 56 (2007), p. 436, p. 119. By religious custom, soldiers returning from war could not enter the city of Rome before laying down arms ceremonially, with the exception of reentering the city for the first time if a triumph were celebrated; civil wars in which this principle was violated thus broke the pax deorum, Rome's "treaty" with the gods. 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).Vitruvius, De architectura 1.7.2; Pascal, "October Horse," p. 286. 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. … 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.Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 47–48 online and 53.
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.Wagenvoort, "On the Magical Significance of the Tail," p. 148. Further discussion in a Dumézilian context by Wouter W. Belier, Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumézil's 'Idéologie Tripartite', (Brill, 1991), pp. 88–89 online. On Mars' virility, R.B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate (Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 470–471. Onians connects the name of Mars to the Latin mas, maris, "male" (p. 178). In antiquity, vis ("force, power") was thought to be related etymologically to vita, "life." Varro (De lingua latina 5.64, quoting Lucilius) notes that vis is vita: "vis drives us to do everything."
The Parilia and suffimen The Augustan poets PropertiusPropertius 4.1.20: qualia nunc curto lustra novantur equo. and Ovid both mention horse 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 may imply that this horse was not an original part of the preparation: "the purification rites (lustra) are now renewed by means of the dismembered horse".Pascal, "October Horse," pp. 262, 267, 275. Ovid specifies that the horse's blood was used for the suffimen.Ovid, Fasti 4.732f.: sanguis equi (line 733). While the blood from the tail was dripped or smeared on the sacred hearth of Rome in October, blood or ashes from the rest of the animal could have been processed and preserved for the suffimen as well.Pascal, "October Horse," pp. 276ff. Although no other horse sacrifice in Rome is recorded, Georges Dumézil and others have attempted to exclude the Equus October as the source of equine blood for the Parilia.Pascal, "October Horse," pp. 266, 268. Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001; originally published in French 1998), pp. 69 and 79, also asserts that this was not the blood of the October Horse, as do some other scholars.
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.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; William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), p. 71. One source, from late antiquity and not always reliable, notes that beans were sacred to Mars.Ioannes Lydus, De mensibus 4.42, as noted by Pascal, "October Horse," pp. 284–285.
Suffimentum is a general word for a preparation used for healing, purification, or warding off ill influence. In his treatise on veterinary medicine, Vegetius recommends a suffimentum as an effective cure for draft animals and for humans prone to emotional outbursts, as well as for driving off hailstorms, demons and ghosts (daemones and umbras).Vegetius, Ars Mulomedicina 3.12.4 (see also 1.20.3); J.N. Adams, Pelagonius and Latin Veterinary Terminology in the Roman Empire (Brill, 1995), p. 186. Pelagonius also uses the word.
The victim