Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
days. Everything connected with blood used to be connected with Fire, hence Agnatio
may have been Relation by fire, for the Agnati could only be those of the Fire or Father’s
side: no service by bond or free-man, however important, could in early days make an
Agnatus, and none but he could partake of or touch the sacred Fire. The adopted
one could only be present at the daily worship, 1 not partake of it, though he could
share in all the feasts which followed worship; and I believe we see in some of the
words given below, selected casually from ordinary dictionaries, the same idea, viz.,
that relationship signifies springing from the same fire. 2 Ag and Ar—the Sun, are
generally convertible terms, and an Argo (Sanskrit Argha) was a Larissa or Lares, the
Agni-Mandalam, or “place of fire,” of which came the Lemures, at whose Lemuralia
in May the citizens solemnly marched with bulrush images of the Argei and dropped
them into the Tiber. This being done in a month so sacred to fertility as May clearly
signified the renewal of fertility, just as when all the old fires were extinguished and
new ones lit from the Spring or Midsummer Sun. These Argei were said to represent
the fires of every district in the city, and on the Ides of May, the Pontiffs headed
by the Pontifex Maximus, and followed by Vestals, Pretors, and all citizens accompanied
them to their bed in the sacred stream. The Argei, during most of the Republic and
Empire, were thirty in number, and always made in the form of men 3 (e‡dola ¢ndroikela,
priscorum simulacra virorum); which explanation, though it seems to puzzle the
writer, is very clear to all who have seen Sivaik faiths in practical operation.
Thus, then, all relationship and descent of property had to do with the generative
fire of the Gens, and so Plato and Demosthenes, and many old writers, assure
us, that all who broke this bond ceased to be Agnati. 4 Even now, if we discard the
gods of our relatives, we shall find the full strength of the old rule, so far as the relatives
of the present day can possibly apply it. The Paterfamilias, or even the Curiæ,
headed by their curate, can still show the unbeliever in English rites, and idols, that
the laws of the Medes and Persians have not changed in regard to the “Fire of the
Hearth” and the “property of the Gens.” It requires not only strong independence of
2
Agapé . . . . Love.
1
Aryan Civil., p. 62.
Trophonius, who lives in a cave with
Ager . . . . A field.
a column by its side, and to whom
Agnos . . . . A lamb.
rams were offered.
Agonius . . The God.
Agreus . . . A surname of Pan.
Agona . . . Libations to dead.
Agrotēra . . A surname of Artemis.
Agon . . . . A leader.
Aremorika or Armorika, land of this worship.
Age . . . . . A warning word at sacrifices. Ares . . . . God of War—The Sun.
Agenor . . Father of Kadmus and brother of Arestor . . . Father of Argus and guardian of IO.
Belus; descended from Argos. Argæus Mons.—A sacred snow-capped mountain.
Agenora . . The Goddess of Activity (a fit wife Arges . . . . The eldest son of the Kyklopians.
for the active God Agni), for whom Argiva . . . A name of Juno and of Argos.
Rome built a temple on Mount Argos . . . . The boat and city whose citadel was
Aventine.
Larissa.
Aglibolus . . The Shiner, a name of the Sun. The Argei—Phalli of the great chiefs of the Capi-
Agamedes . Prince of Orkomenus, and brother of
toline.
3
Smith’s G. and R. Ants.
4
Ar. Civil., chap. xiv.
391