These data (which I dare say might easily be amplified[1]) show that this grim superstition was an Aryan one, and of great antiquity.
But this is not all. Ubicini, who tells us (Folk-Lore Becord, vol. iii. p. 283) of the existing superstition of his countrymen, tells us also how the acute Latin mind which has descended to them from their Roman ancestors has enabled them to retain the efficacy of the old custom without bringing themselves, by the commission of palpable murder, into conflict with the police and criminal law of their country, both which might hold in contempt even such a time-honoured piece of Folk-lore as this. The Roumanian builders, instead of immolating an unoffending human, lay down in his stead a rod or stick of the same length as the man whom their eyes have selected as the proper object, and this substituted sacrifice ensures to the building all the advantages of stability which an actual immolation would have given in an age less humane.
The Romans who constructed the buildings to which Sig. Lanciani refers were equally hampered by the law as the modern Roumans, and could not murder at their will. Like the Roumans, therefore, they found a substitute for the human sacrifice, and, being an art-loving people, living in the midst of a teeming population of statues and busts, they kidnapped from them as many representations of the human form to do duty for living men as they required. As they could not procure a living body they contented themselves with its simulachrum.
I submit this to be the explanation of the two facts—the Aryan superstition, and Sig. Lanciani’s interesting information.
In conclusion I will say that the Roman facts have been paralleled in London by the discovery, a few years ago, in the interior of a bastion of London Wall, of the figure of a cohortal signifer and other sculptures, now in the Museum at Guildhall, for which valuable discovery, made under circumstances more than adverse, the English public are indebted to the well-known antiquary, J. E. Price, Esq., F.S.A.
- ↑ See The Antiquary, January, 1881, vol. iii. pp. 8-13.—Ed.
