The Childhood of Rome :: THE SACRED YEAR

THE SACRED YEAR

In the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did not at all know what they would find.

They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go into an unknown [pg 29]world, and it was not likely that they would ever come back.

They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they lived plainly they were comfortable.

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But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and forgotten.

After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on. Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.

Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the “sacred spring.” It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if they kept a “sacred spring” their guardian god, [pg 31]Mars, would help them. All this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.

When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep, goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new home.

Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country [pg 32]round had a son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact, there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms, provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make their great undertaking successful.

At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.

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Illustration: All the young voices took up the song

Flam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass [pg 34]through which they could cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way, the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of the attention of the whole party.

On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.

In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool evenings the leaping flames were pleasant. [pg 35]They also kept wild beasts from coming too near.

There were three groups of the young people, from three different villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each “company” which ate bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do next. It was very important now to take the right course.

The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky waste, and another to a fertile valley.

Mauros was their leader, so far as they had [pg 36]one, but he called on each man in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place. If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place. Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong, active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go on and waited only for a sign.

Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show them what to do.

Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were [pg 37]flickering slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade, followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp. The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this. Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick. Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not very common in that part of the country.

In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox, one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree, and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all the company [pg 38]gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces, and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again. Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred spring and the bird of Mars.

The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height, where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign [pg 39]as one could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf People.

All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and happy, and they were, for many a long year.

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