Трактат за општа социологија II

Теорија за резидуи

Глава 6. Резидуи: Комбинации и групна перзистенција

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1(фус.) The conception of Buddha was attended by so many that it would be a

long and not very profitable task to recount them even in brief proportion. Kern,

Histoire du bouddhisme, Vol. I, pp. 23-24: The virtuous queen Maya dreamed that

"the four divine sovereigns, the Cardinal Points, gathered her up with her bed and

transported her to the Himalayas, where they set her down in the shade of a wide-

spreading tree. . . . The Bodhisatva assumed the form of a white elephant, de-

parted from the Golden Mount on which he dwelt, ascended the Mount of Silver,

entered the Golden Grotto with a terrible thunder and, bearing a white water-lily

in his trunk, marched thrice about the bed where Maya was resting, moving to the

right as a sign of courtesy, opened the right side of the queen, and so entered her

body. ... At the moment of the Bodhisatva's conception in his mother's womb all

nature was set in motion, and thirty-two presages were observed: an incomparable

radiance encompassed the Universe. . . ." Latins do not indulge in these Oriental

extravagances. Suetonius, on the authority of Asclepias Mendes, recounts the con-

ception of Augustus by Atia as follows, Divus Augustus, 94, 4: "She had entered the

temple of Apollo in the middle of the night to perform a sacrifice. Her litter was

set on the floor and the other matrons went home {domi irent: also dormirent:

went to sleep). She fell asleep. A serpent suddenly made its way to her side, and

soon after departed. Awaking, she purified herself as was her custom after her hus-

band's embrace. And at once on her body appeared a spot of the shape and colour

of a serpent, and she could never remove it, and in view of it abstained from the

public baths." Serpents, be it said in no disrespect to the reptile that tempted our

Mother Eve, seem to have had a peculiar predilection for relations with women.

One of them, whether on its own account or in behalf of Zeus, was responsible for

Olympia's becoming the mother of Alexander the Great. Justin, Historiae Philip-

picae, XII, 16 (Clarke, p. 126): "The night in which his mother, Olympia, con-

ceived him, she dreamed in her sleep that she lay with a huge serpent. Nor was the

dream a mere illusion, for assuredly she was not fertilized by any mortal man."

[So Pareto; literally: "She bore in her womb a work too great for human mortal-

ity."— A. L.] In XI, 11 (Clarke, p. 105), Justin tells how Alexander "hastened to

the oracle of Jupiter Amon for light on his future and on his origin; for his mother

had confessed to her husband Philip that 'she had conceived Alexander not of him

but of a serpent of gigantic size.' Thereafter, being come almost to the end of his

days, Philip proclaimed openly that 'her son was not his' and therefore divorced

Olympia as proven guilty of adultery." The legend grows and grows. Plutarch,

Alexander, 2, 3-4 (Perrin, Vol. VII, pp. 227-29), relates that Philip saw a serpent

near his sleeping wife (adding, 6, that according to one story Olympia kept tame

serpents). Philip, he goes on, lost an eye, the eye "which he had applied to the

chink in the door in order to see the god in the form of a serpent in embrace with

his wife." [In reality Philip lost the eye at the siege of Methone.] [In reality,

Plutarch (Clough, Vol. IV, pp. 3-4) merely records a prophecy that Philip would

lose the eye. — A. L.] New embellishments finally evolve the story of Alexander's

birth that is given by the Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia fabulosa Alexandri Magni,

I, 1-13 (Budge, pp. 1-13). It matters little for our purposes just what share in it is

to be ascribed to naive credulousness and what to sheer artifice, or whether there

may have been some real basis for the legends, such as the fact that is vouched for

by Lucian, Pseudo-mantis, 7 (Harmon, Vol. IV, p. 185), that Macedonian women

often kept pet snakes. The mere fact that the legends existed, and more especially

the fact that they met with a favourable reception, show that they corresponded to

certain sentiments; and that is the one point we are concerned to establish. Here too

and as usual, we get a nucleus with a fog of derivations extending around it. Publius

Scipio, the first Africanus, also had a serpent for a father, an unusually big one, of

course, and, of course also, divine: Livy, Ab urbe condita, XXVI, 19: Scipio's man-

ner of living led to the belief that "he was a man of divine lineage, and so revived

the story that was earlier told of Alexander the Great and was equally fatuous and

fictional, that he was conceived of intercourse with a huge snake, and that the sem-

blance of that prodigy \i.e., something shaped like a snake] was time and again

seen in his mother's bed, suddenly crawling away at the approach of human beings

and vanishing from sight." And cf. Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae, VI, 1, 1-3. Servius

Tullius could not be allowed to remain the son of a slave. Livy, Ibid., I, 39, 5, as-

signs a less marvellous origin to that legendary character, suggesting that his mother

was already with child by her husband, headman at Corniculum, at the time when

she was made a prisoner. That is also the story told by Dionysius of Halicarnassus,

Antiquitates Romanae, IV, 1 (Spelman, Vol. II, pp. 144-45). But for so great a man

our present residue could be relied upon to provide something more and better. And

in fact, Dionysius himself relates, IV, 2, that in the annals of Corniculum and in

many Roman histories he has found another family-tree that smacks more of the leg-

endary; and he tells a long story, which is later repeated by Ovid and Pliny, accord-

ing to which Vulcan is to be held responsible for Servius Tullius and in a somewhat

fantastic manner. Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXXVI, 70 (Bostock-Riley, Vol. VI, p.

384), tells the story as though he believed it, but robs Vulcan of the fatherhood and

bestows it on the god of the hearth: "I must not omit one episide (exemplum) in-

volving the hearth-fire that is famous in Roman letters. The story goes that while

Tarquinius Priscus was on the throne, genitals of the male sex arose from the ashes

in the flame of his hearth [i.e., the sacred home-fire] and that the woman who

was tending it, a slave, Ocresia, maid to queen Tanaquil, arose from her work with

child. So was born Servius Tullius, who succeeded the Tarquin as king." Ovid,

Fasti, VI, vv. 627-34, hands the paternity back to Vulcan, the latter functioning as

in the miracle recounted by Pliny:

"Namque pater Tulli Vulcanus, Ocresia mater,

praesignis facie Corniculana, fuit.

Hanc secum Tanaquil sacris de more paratis

jussit in ornatum fundere vina focum.

Hie inter cineres obscaeni forma virilis

aut fuit aut visa est — sed fuit ilia magis,

lussa loco captiva fovet: conceptus ab ilia

Servius a coelo semina gentis habet."

("Tully's father was Vulcan and his mother, Ocresia, a beautiful girl from Corni-

culum. Having prepared for the rites according to custom, Tanaquil bade her assist

in pouring the wine upon the hearth, which had been adorned for the ceremonies.

There among the ashes an unsightly shape of male form was visible — or they

thought it was (and my belief is that it was). At the command of her mistress, the

slave Ocresia leaned upon the hearth, and since she there became his mother, Servius

has his lineage of heaven.") Whatever Ovid's inner thought, he leaves the impres-

sion (sed fuit ilia magis) of believing that it was not an illusion on the part of

Ocresia. Arnobius, Disputationes adversus gentes, V, 18 (Bryce-Campbell, pp. 241-

42), is impressed only with the obscenity of the story and charges it to the account

of the pagans. Divine origins may be found even for philosophers when they are

very very great. Origen says, Contra Celsum, I (Augsburg, p. 30) : "Some writers —

not in ancient or heroic histories, but in books dealing with matters of very recent

date— have seen fit to assert as a fact altogether possible that Plato was born of his

mother Amphiction [Perictione] , . . . Ariston [her husband] having been forbid-

den to have knowledge of her until she should have borne fruit of Apollo. But such

are mere tales born of a belief that men esteemed superior to others in wisdom must

have sprung of some divine seed, as would befit natures greater than human." And

so it is, but without going such a long way round. It is simply because in the hu-

man mind sublime things are associated with sublime things and bad things with

bad.

(The Mind and Society by Vilfredo Pareto, изд. Харкорт, Брејс енд комп. 1935 - САД)