Terminus

Summary

Terminus is the Roman god of boundaries, the stone or tree stump planted in a field where one man's land meets his neighbour's. Ovid addresses him: whether you are a stone or a stump buried in the field, you too have been a god since ancient times.

His best-known story is that of the Capitol. King Tarquin wanted to clear the hill for the great temple of Jupiter, but it held small shrines vowed by the Sabine king Titus Tatius in his war with Romulus, so he asked the birds' leave to move them. The birds allowed every shrine to be moved except that of Terminus, and the seers read this to mean that Rome's rule would stand firm and unmoved. Elsewhere Livy adds that Juventas, goddess of youth, also refused to be moved. Ovid says the whole company of gods withdrew and made room for Jupiter, except Terminus, who stayed where he was and shares the temple with Jupiter; a small hole was left in the roof so that he sees nothing above him but the stars. Then the poet addresses him: stay where you were placed, yield not an inch to your neighbour though he ask, lest you seem to put a man above Jupiter; and if they beat you with ploughshares or rakes, cry out: this is your land, and that is his.

The system of boundaries is credited to Numa, the king who followed Romulus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says Numa ordered every man to draw a line around his land and set stones on its bounds, consecrated the stones to Jupiter of the Boundaries, and ordered the people to gather at them every year and sacrifice; whoever demolished or moved one was to be devoted to the god, so that anyone might kill him without guilt. The offerings were cakes of grain and first fruits, with no blood. Plutarch says Numa built the first temple to Terminus and kept his sacrifices bloodless, because the god of boundaries is a guardian of peace and a witness of just dealing, and that Romulus set no bounds to Rome's land because he did not want to admit how much he had taken from others: a boundary, if kept, fetters force; if not kept, it convicts of injustice.

His feast, the Terminalia, fell on 23 February. The two owners meet at the stone from either side, and each sets a garland and a cake on it. An altar is built; the farmer's wife brings fire from her own hearth on a potsherd, the old man chops the wood, the boy throws grain into the fire three times, the little daughter offers honeycombs, wine is poured, and the company stands by in white, in silence. Then the stone is sprinkled with a lamb's blood and given a suckling pig, and the neighbours feast together and sing: you set bounds to peoples, cities and kingdoms; without you every field would be a cause of quarrels. Another offering is made to him at the sixth milestone on the road to Laurentum. Varro says the Terminalia was the last day of the year, since February was the twelfth month.

The idea his stories turn on is that the boundary does not move, even when the greatest of the gods asks it to. The stone that would not give way to Jupiter is the stone that stands between two fields, each of which says: this is your land and that is his. The Roman story has two boundaries: the plough line at which Remus was killed for crossing it, and Numa's stones, offered cakes, at which the neighbours eat together. The first is guarded by the sword, the second by agreement.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Take the Latin ending -us off Terminus and termin- remains; Latin also keeps the forms termen and termo, so the base is term-, with the consonants t, r and m. The Roman essay in this project reads it from t-r-m, "cutting and limit", and from ḥarama, "to forbid". Lane has no root t-r-m, but if we read the same letters through the Juthoor sound laws, Latin t is Arabic ṭ and m is f, since m and f belong to the one labial group, and the root that results is ṭaraf. Lane gives ṭaraf as "the extremity, or end, of anything; a side", and aṭrāf al-arḍ are the borders of the land. That is Terminus: the stone that stands at the edge of the land, where it ends. This is a reading proposed on the method that keeps both the essay's sense and its consonants. Ḥaram gives the second sense: Lane's ḥarīm is what surrounds a house or a well and belongs to no one but its owner, "a place which it is incumbent on one to defend", which is what Numa makes of the boundary stones.

Linguistic Root

The Latin table of the Juthoor sound laws gives Arabic ṭ as Latin t, since Latin has no emphatic consonants, and the reading method treats m, f, b and w as one group whose letters change places in transmission. So the t, r and m of term- are the ṭ, r and f of ṭaraf. Lane gives ṭaraf as "the extremity, or end, of anything", as of a sword, a spear or a rope, then a side or region; its plural is aṭrāf.

Latin also has a noun suffix -men. If the m belongs to it, the name's base is ter-, with ṭ and r, and under the root ṭ-r-r Lane gives ṭurrah as "the side, or edge, of a river, and of a valley; the border of a land or country; the edge of anything", and aṭrār al-bilād as the extremities of a country. Either way the reading rests on one nucleus, ṭ and r, whose sense is the edge and limit of the land. The Latin dictionary sets the word beside Greek τέρμα, "end, goal", which is the sense of ṭaraf.

The essay says Terminus comes from an Akkadian word termu, "boundary", and calls this certain. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary does not know the word: in the T volume there is no such entry between terkullu and terru. The same volume has taḫūmu, "border, boundary" between lands, which the ancient word lists explain by miṣru, "border"; it is the sister of Arabic tukhūm, and it was inscribed on Assyrian boundary stelae. The essay also compares Hebrew ḥērem, which the Hebrew dictionary gives as "devoted thing" and "ban"; this agrees with Numa's law that whoever moves a stone is devoted to the god, but it is a sense that meets the story, not a letter that meets the name, since ḥ does not become t.

Key Mythic Narratives

The stone Saturn swallowed

Lactantius, the Christian writer, mocks those who worship a rough stone called Terminus, and says it is the stone that Saturn is said to have swallowed in place of Jupiter; perhaps, he says, it would not give way to Jupiter on the Capitol because it trusted that it had freed him from his father's jaws. He notes that Virgil called it "the unmoving rock of the Capitol", and that the hole was left in the roof above it so that it could enjoy the open sky. This version ties Terminus to the wrapped stone of Ops in the story of Jupiter's birth.

The altars of Tatius

Varro counts Terminus among the gods to whom the Sabine king Titus Tatius vowed altars in Rome, along with Quirinus and the Lares, and says their names have the smell of the Sabine tongue. The shrines that Tarquin wanted to move from the Capitol were among these vows.

Symbolic Reading

The other Roman essay in this project reads the plough line Romulus drew as a sacred boundary and Remus's death as law: whoever crosses the boundary without leave is killed, "a law, not a myth". It treats all the founding legends as legal precedents, and sees the separation of the gods' right from men's right as Rome's greatest achievement. On this reading Terminus is the boundary of private property itself made into a god, at which the two neighbours meet once a year and agree on it anew.

The Semitic essay ties Terminus to ḥaram, the forbidden place, which is what Dionysius says when he makes the man who moves the stone devoted to the god. The Terminalia shows the other face of the boundary: the fire the woman carries from her own hearth to the stone, the cakes, honey and grain, and the neighbours who eat together after each has crowned the stone from his side.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Laws Plato makes the first of his agricultural laws the law of Zeus of Boundaries: no one shall move the boundary stones between himself and his neighbour, whether citizen or foreigner. This is the Jupiter of the Boundaries to whom Numa consecrated the stones in Dionysius. In Assyria the borders between lands were marked with stelae inscribed with the word taḫūmu, the sister of Arabic tukhūm.

In Rome itself Janus guards the door, the place one passes through, and Terminus guards the boundary one may not cross; the comparison of Janus and threshold guardians sets the Roman door beside the gate guardians of Mesopotamia. The Terminalia is a farmers' feast at the end of the old year, when neighbours meet at the line between their fields, so it belongs among the witnesses to the agricultural year and human life.