Numina

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YOT]RRELICION:
THE I\T]MII\A
oman religion was originally nuministic,basedon a belief in numina,
the divine spirits present in every object and even in abstractions.
There were separatentmina of the door, the hinge, the lintel, and
the threshold; of cattle-, horse-, and sheep-breeding;of the planted seed,
the sprouted seed, and the growing plant-in short, of everything. There
was, for example, a divinity called Limus, the numen of a sidelongglance.
These nlmina were not gods: having no personality or mythology, they
were simply presenceswhich could feel resentmentand bring punishment
on those who offended them. The Romans were not even sure whether one
of the most important state deities, Pales,was male or female. Worship
consistedof bribing the numina to do no harm. If a farmer had to cut down
a grove of trees, he sacrificeda pig to the numen of the grove. If the pig
proved to be deformed internally, it meant that the nimen did not accept
the sacrifice,and another pig would have to be slaughtered.Only the skin,
fat, and bones had to be given to the ntmen by being burned; the farmer
and his family and neighbors could eat the rest.
The nlmina were thought of as watching for even the tiniest breach of
contract,,for which they would take revenge.Hence the rituals had to be
exactly right, and could never be varied. Even an unaccustomedsound could
spoil the rite, and so silence was enjoined on the worshippers with the
words Fav€telinguis, and the celebrantcoveredhis head with a fold of his
toga to keep from hearing outside sounds. Some of the ritual actions,
prayers,and hymns which had beenpasseddown orally from antiquity were
totally incomprehensibleto later Romans, but they went on being repeated
anyway, for fear that some alteration might offend the numina.
Even after Roman religion had arrived at a more sophisticatedstagewith
the developmentof the idea of personal gods, the worship of the numina
played an important role in both state and private religion. A Roman's day
(Continued)
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a numen
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must have been full of small ritual acts, like our superstitiouspracticesof
touching wood or throwing spilt salt over our shoulders.
( b e l o wr i g h t )S t a t u eo f a p a t r i c i ainn p r i e s t l g
y a r b ,f r o mt h e e a r l y
E m p i r e - B o r g h e s e G a l l e r y ,R o m e ( b e l o w / e f r ) S t a t u e o f a
V e s t a l V i r g i n i n t h e H o u s e o f t h e V e s t a l s ,R o m a n F o r u m .
T h e r e m a i n so f t h e T e m p l e o f A n t o n i n u s a n d F a u s t i n a
( n o w a C h r i s t i a nC h u r c h )s t a n d b e h i n d .
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\fhat resemblancedo today's
superstitionshave to the worship
of the numina?
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