Nov. 4, 1892,] oil [Brintoii. 



The Eirusco-Libyan Elements in the Song of the Arval Breih7-en. 



By D. G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D. 



{Read before the Americati Philosophical Society, November 4, j8g2.) 



In two communications to the American Philosophical Society, 

 published respectively in 1889 and 1890, I offered a series of con- 

 siderations which led me to believe that there existed an affinity, or 

 ethnic relationship, between the ancient Etruscans and the Libyans, 

 or Berber tribes, of North Africa.* In the present paper I would 

 supplement what I there said by a brief study of the Etrusco-Libyan 

 elements in one of the oldest literary monuments of Roman an- 

 tiquity — the Song of the Arval Brethren. 



These Fratres Arvales were a priestly sodality, which, according 

 to tradition, dated back to the foundation of Rome, Romulus him- 

 self having been one of the twelve members of which the sacred 

 college was composed. Their function was to perform certain acts 

 of worship at a festival in the month of May in honor of " the 

 divine goddess" Dea Dia, whose proper name is nowhere men- 

 tioned. The object of the festival was propitiatory to the divinities 

 of agriculture, that the fields might yield bounteous harvests; whence 

 the brotherhood derived its name — ut feruni fruges arva. The 

 rites consisted of sacrifices, processions, and, at a certain stage 

 of the proceedings, of the repetition of a very ancient song, the 

 words of which, as being too archaic for the members, were in the 

 time of the Empire written down in small books, which the Brethren 

 held in their hands as they chanted. 



Although classical authors scarcely mention the Arval Brethren, 

 we have very minute accounts of their rites, for it was their lauda- 

 ble custom at the close of each annual festival to inscribe the fact 

 of the celebration with its date and some other particulars on a 

 slab of stone. Nearly one hundred of these memorials have been 

 discovered from time to time, and on one of the tablets, exhumed 

 in 1778, recording the annual festival in May, A. D. 218, the 

 Brethren had the happy idea to cause the song itself to be inscribed. 

 They apparently gave the "copy" to the local stonecutter, and 

 did not stay to read the proof, for he has made several palpable 

 blunders, such as spelling the same word differently in different 



* " The Ethnologic AfBnities of the Ancient Etruscans," Froc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. 

 xxvi ; " On Etruscan and Libyan Names," ibid.. Vol. xxviii. 



FROC. AMER. PHILOS. 800. XXX. 139. 2o. I'RXNTED JAN. 13, 1893. 



