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Title: The Religion of Ancient Rome
Author: Cyril Bailey
Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18564]
Language: English
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THE RELIGION OF
ANCIENT ROME
By
CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
1907
I wish to express my warm thanks to Mr. W. Warde Fowler for his
kindness in reading my proofs, and for many valuable hints and
suggestions.
C.B.
BALLIOL COLLEGE,
_Jan 25th, 1907_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION--SOURCES AND SCOPE 1
II. THE 'ANTECEDENTS' OF ROMAN RELIGION 4
III. MAIN FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF NUMA 12
IV. EARLY HISTORY OF ROME--THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 31
V. WORSHIP OF THE HOUSEHOLD 36
VI. WORSHIP OF THE FIELDS 58
VII. WORSHIP OF THE STATE 75
VIII. AUGURIES AND AUSPICES 96
IX. RELIGION AND MORALITY--CONCLUSION 103
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--SOURCES AND SCOPE
The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome
may perhaps be best illustrated by a parallel from Roman archæology.
The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to
reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not
merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told,
must picture to himself a totally different orientation of the whole:
the upper layer of remains, which he sees before him, is for his
purpose in most cases not merely useless, but positively misleading.
In the same way, if we wish to form a picture of the genuine Roman
religion, we cannot find it immediately in classical literature; we
must banish from our minds all that is due to the contact with the
East and Egypt, and even with the other races of Italy, and we must
imagine, so to speak, a totally different mental orientation before
the great influx of Greek literature and Greek thought, which gave
an entirely new turn to Roman ideas in general, and in particular
revolutionised religion by the introduction of anthropomorphic notions
and sensuous representations. But in this difficult search we are not
left without indications to guide us. In the writings of the savants of
the late Republic and of the Empire, and in the Augustan poets, biassed
though they are in their interpretations by Greek tendencies, there is
embodied a great wealth of ancient custom and ritual, which becomes
significant when we have once got the clue to its meaning. More direct
evidence is afforded by a large body of inscriptions and monuments, and
above all by the surviving Calendars of the Roman festival year, which
give us the true outline of the ceremonial observances of the early
religion.
It is not within the scope of this sketch to enter, except by way of
occasional illustration, into the process of interpretation by which
the patient work of scholars has disentangled the form and spirit of
the native religion from the mass of foreign accretions. I intend
rather to assume the process, and deal, as far as it is possible in so
controversial a subject, with results upon which authorities are
generally agreed. Neither will any attempt be made to follow the
development which the early religion underwent in later periods, when
foreign elements were added and foreign ideas altered and remoulded the
old tradition. We must confine ourselves to a single epoch, in which
the native Roman spirit worked out unaided the ideas inherited from
half-civilised ancestors, and formed that body of belief and ritual,
which was always, at least officially, the kernel of Roman religion,
and constituted what the Romans themselves--staunch believers in their
own traditional history--loved to describe as the 'Religion of Numa.'
We must discover, as far as we can, how far its inherited notions ran
parallel with those of other primitive religions, but more especially
we must try to note what is characteristically Roman alike in custom
and ritual and in the motives and spirit which prompted them.
CHAPTER II
THE 'ANTECEDENTS' OF ROMAN RELIGION
In every early religion there will of course be found, apart from
external influence, traces of its own internal development, of stages
by which it must have advanced from a mass of vague and primitive
belief and custom to the organised worship of a civilised community.
The religion of Rome is no exception to this rule; we can detect in its
later practice evidences of primitive notions and habits which it had
in common with other semi-barbarous peoples, and we shall see that the
leading idea in its theology is but a characteristically Roman
development of a marked feature in most early religions.
=1. Magic.=--Anthropology has taught us that in many primitive
societies religion--a sense of man's dependence on a power higher than
himself--is preceded by a stage of magic--a belief in man's own power
to influence by occult means the action of the world around him. That
the ancestors of the Roman community passed through this stage seems
clear, and in surviving religious practice we may discover evidence of
such magic in various forms. There is, for instance, what anthropology
describes as 'sympathetic magic'--the attempt to influence the powers
of nature by an imitation of the process which it is desired that they
should perform. Of this we have a characteristic example in the
ceremony of the _aquaelicium_, designed to produce rain after a long
drought. In classical times the ceremony consisted in a procession
headed by the pontifices, which bore the sacred rain-stone from its
resting-place by the Porta Capena to the Capitol, where offerings were
made to the sky-deity, Iuppiter, but[1] from the analogy of other
primitive cults and the sacred title of the stone (_lapis manalis_), it
is practically certain that the original ritual was the purely
imitative process of pouring water over the stone. A similar rain-charm
may possibly be seen in the curious ritual of the _argeorum sacra_,
when puppets of straw were thrown into the Tiber--a symbolic wetting of
the crops to which many parallels may be found among other primitive
peoples. A sympathetic charm of a rather different character seems to
survive in the ceremony of the _augurium canarium_, at which a red dog
was sacrificed for the prosperity of the crop--a symbolic killing of
the red mildew (_robigo_); and again the slaughter of pregnant cows at
the _Fordicidia_ in the middle of April, before the sprouting of the
corn, has a clearly sympathetic connection with the fertility of the
earth. Another prominent survival--equally characteristic of primitive
peoples--is the sacredness which attaches to the person of the
priest-king, so that his every act or word may have a magic
significance or effect. This is reflected generally in the Roman
priesthood, but especially in the ceremonial surrounding the _flamen
Dialis_, the priest of Iuppiter. He must appear always in festival
garb, fire may never be taken from his hearth but for sacred purposes,
no other person may ever sleep in his bed, the cuttings of his hair and
nails must be preserved and buried beneath an _arbor felix_--no doubt a
magic charm for fertility--he must not eat or even mention a goat or a
bean, or other objects of an unlucky character.
=2. Worship of Natural Objects.=--A very common feature in the early
development of religious consciousness is the worship of natural
objects--in the first place of the objects themselves and no more, but
later of a spirit indwelling in them. The distinction is no doubt in
individual cases a difficult one to make, and we find that among the
Romans the earlier worship of the object tends to give way to the cult
of the inhabiting spirit, but examples may be found which seem to
belong to the earlier stage. We have, for instance, the sacred stone
(_silex_) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the Capitol,
and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony of
treaty-making. The fetial, who on that occasion represented the Roman
people, at the solemn moment of the oath-taking, struck the sacrificial
pig with the _silex_, saying as he did so, 'Do thou, Diespiter, strike
the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the
more, as thou art greater and stronger.' Here no doubt the underlying
notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the
god, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-title specially
used in this connection, _Iuppiter Lapis_. So again, in all
probability, the _termini_ or boundary-stones between properties are in
origin the objects--though later only the site--of a yearly ritual at
the festival of the Terminalia on February the 23rd, and they are, as
it were, summed up in 'the god Terminus,' the great sacred
boundary-stone, which had its own shrine within the Capitoline temple,
because, according to the legend, 'the god' refused to budge even to
make room for Iuppiter. The same notion is most likely at the root of
the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the hearth,' and Ianus, 'the
door,' though a more spiritual idea was soon associated with them; we
may notice too in this connection the worship of springs, summed up in
the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such as Volturnus, the
cult-name of the Tiber.
=3. Worship of Trees.=--But most conspicuous among the cults of natural
objects, as in so many primitive religions, is the worship of trees.
Here, though doubtless at first the tree was itself the object of
veneration, surviving instances seem rather to belong to the later
period when it was regarded as the abode of the spirit. We may
recognise a case of this sort in the _ficus Ruminalis_, once the
recipient of worship, though later legend, which preferred to find an
historical or mythical explanation of cults, looked upon it as sacred
because it was the scene of the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the
wolf. Another fig-tree with a similar history is the _caprificus_ of
the Campus Martius, subsequently the site of the worship of Iuno
Caprotina. A more significant case is the sacred oak of Iuppiter
Feretrius on the Capitol, on which the _spolia opima_ were hung after
the triumph--probably in early times a dedication of the booty to the
spirit inhabiting the tree. Outside Rome, showing the same ideas at
work among neighbouring peoples, was the 'golden bough' in the grove of
Diana at Aricia. Nor was it only special trees which were thus regarded
as the home of a deity; the tree in general is sacred, and any one may
chance to be inhabited by a spirit. The feeling of the country
population on this point comes out clearly in the prayer which Cato
recommends his farmer to use before making a clearing in a wood: 'Be
thou god or goddess, to whom this grove is sacred, be it granted to us
to make propitiatory sacrifice to thee with a pig for the clearing of
this sacred spot'; here we have a clear instance of the tree regarded
as the dwelling of the sacred power, and it is interesting to compare
the many similar examples which[2] Dr. Frazer has collected from
different parts of the world.
=4. Worship of Animals.=--Of the worship of animals we have
comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may perhaps
detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the Lupercalia,
where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed
goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying
to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may
recognise it too in the association of particular animals with
divinities, such as the sacred wolf and woodpecker of Mars, but on the
whole we may doubt whether the worship of animals ever played so
prominent a part in Roman religion as the cult of other natural
objects.
=5. Animism.=--Such are some of the survivals of very early stages of
religious custom which still kept their place in the developed religion
of Rome, but by far the most important element in it, which might
indeed be described as its 'immediate antecedent,' is the state of
religious feeling to which anthropologists have given the name of
'Animism.' As far as we can follow the development of early religions,
this attitude of mind seems to be the direct outcome of the failure of
magic. Primitive man begins to see that neither he nor his magicians
really possess that occult control over the forces of nature which was
the supposed basis of magic: the charm fails, the spell does not
produce the rain and when he looks for the cause, he can only argue
that these things must be in the hands of some power higher than his
own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him
peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and
his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in
which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their
co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit
who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by
suitable offerings entice the indwelling spirit to leave it. His
'theology' in this stage is the knowledge of the various spirits and
their dwellings, his ritual the due performance of sacrifice for
purposes of propitiation and expiation. It was in this state of
religious feeling that the ancestors of Rome must have lived before
they founded their agricultural settlement on the Palatine: we must try
now to see how far it had retained this character and what developments
it had undergone when it had crystallised into the 'Religion of Numa.'
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, vol. i. pp. 81 ff.
[2] _Golden Bough_, vol. i. pp. 181-185.
CHAPTER III
MAIN FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF NUMA
=1. Theology.=--The characteristic appellation of a divine spirit in
the oldest stratum of the Roman religion is not _deus_, a god, but
rather _numen_, a power: he becomes _deus_ when he obtains a name, and
so is on the way to acquiring a definite personality, but in origin he
is simply the 'spirit' of the 'animistic' period, and retains something
of the spirit's characteristics. Thus among the divinities of the
household we shall see later that the Genius and even the Lar
Familiaris, though they attained great dignity of conception, and were
the centre of the family life, and to some extent of the family
morality, never quite rose to the position of full-grown gods; while
among the spirits of the field the wildness and impishness of character
associated with Faunus and his companion Inuus--almost the cobolds or
hobgoblins of the flocks--reflects clearly the old 'animistic' belief
in the natural evilness of the spirits and their hostility to men. The
notion of the _numen_ is always vague and indefinite: even its sex may
be uncertain. 'Be thou god or goddess' is the form of address in the
farmer's prayer already quoted from Cato: 'be it male or female' is the
constant formula in liturgies and even dedicatory inscriptions of a
much later period.
These spirits are, as we have seen, indwellers in the objects of nature
and controllers of the phenomena of nature: but to the Roman they were
more. Not merely did they inhabit places and things, but they presided
over each phase of natural development, each state or action in the
life of man. Varro, for instance, gives us a list of the deities
concerned in the early life of the child, which, though it bears the
marks of priestly elaboration, may yet be taken as typical of the
feeling of the normal Roman family. There is Vaticanus, who opens the
child's mouth to cry, Cunina, who guards his cradle, Edulia and Potina,
who teach him to eat and drink, Statilinus, who helps him to stand up,
Adeona and Abeona, who watch over his first footstep, and many others
each with his special province of protection or assistance. The farmer
similarly is in the hands of a whole host of divinities who assist him
at each stage of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, reaping, and so forth. If
the _numen_ then lacks personal individuality, he has a very distinct
specialisation of function, and if man's appeal to the divinity is to
be successful, he must be very careful to make it in the right quarter:
it was a stock joke in Roman comedy to make a character 'ask for water
from Liber, or wine from the nymphs.' Hence we find in the prayer
formulæ in Cato and elsewhere the most careful precautions to prevent
the accidental omission of the deity concerned: usually the worshipper
will go through the whole list of the gods who may be thought to have
power in the special circumstances; sometimes he will conclude his
prayer with the formula 'whosoever thou art,' or 'and any other name by
which thou mayest desire to be called.' The _numen_ is thus vague in
his conception but specialised in his function, and so later on, when
certain deities have acquired definite names and become prominent above
the rest, the worshipper in appealing to them will add a cult-title, to
indicate the special character in which he wishes the deity to hear:
the woman in childbirth will appeal to Iuno Lucina, the general praying
for victory to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to
Iuppiter as the deus Fidius. As a still later development the
cult-title will, as it were, break off and set up for itself, usually
in the form of an abstract personification: Iuppiter, in the two
special capacities just noted, gives birth to Victoria and Fides.
The conception of the _numen_ being so formless and indefinite, it is
not surprising that in the genuine Roman religion there should have
been no anthropomorphic representations of the divinity at all. 'For
170 years,' Varro tells us, taking his date from the traditional
foundation of the city in 754 B.C., 'the Romans worshipped their gods
without images,' and he adds the characteristic comment, 'those who
introduced representations among the nations, took away fear and
brought in falsehood.' Symbols of a few deities were no doubt
recognised: we have noticed already the _silex_ of Iuppiter and the
boundary-stone of Terminus, which were probably at an earlier period
themselves objects of worship, and to these we may add the sacred
spears of Mars, and the _sigilla_ of the State-Penates. But for the
most part the _numina_ were without even such symbolic representation,
nor till about the end of the regal period was any form of temple built
for them to dwell in. The sacred fire of Vesta near the Forum was, it
is true, from the earliest times enclosed in a building; this, however,
was no temple, but merely an erection with the essentially practical
purpose of preventing the extinction of the fire by rain. The first
temple in the full sense of the word was according to tradition built
by Servius Tullius to Diana on the Aventine: the tradition is
significant, for Diana was not one of the _di indigetes_, the old
deities of the 'Religion of Numa,' but was introduced from the
neighbouring town of Aricia, and the attribution to Servius Tullius
nearly always denotes an Etruscan[3] or at any rate a non-Roman origin.
There were, however, altars in special places to particular deities,
built sometimes of stone, sometimes in a more homely manner of earth or
sods. We hear for instance of the altar of Mars in the Campus Martius,
of Quirinus on the Quirinal, of Saturnus at the foot of the Capitol,
and notably of the curious underground altar of Consus on what was
later the site of the Circus Maximus. But more characteristic than the
erection of altars is the connection of deities with special
localities. Naturally enough in the worship of the household Vesta had
her seat at the hearth, Ianus at the door, and the 'gods of the
storehouse' (_Penates_) at the cupboard by the hearth, but the same
idea appears too in the state-cult. Hilltops, groves, and especially
clearings in groves (_luci_) are the most usual sacred localities. Thus
Quirinus has his own sacred hill, Iuppiter is worshipped on the
Capitol, Vesta and Iuno Lucina have their sacred groves within the
boundaries of the city, and Dea Dia, Robigus, and Furrina similar
groves at the limits of Roman territory. The record of almost every
Roman cult reveals the importance of locality in connection with the
_di indigetes_, and the localities are usually such as would be
naturally chosen by a pastoral and agricultural people.
Such were roughly the main outlines of the genuine Roman 'theology.'
It has no gods of human form with human relations to one another,
interested in the life of men and capable of the deepest passions of
hatred and affection towards them, such as we meet, for instance, in
the mythology of Greece, but only these impersonal individualities, if
we may so call them, capable of no relation to one another, but able to
bring good or ill to men, localised usually in their habitations, but
requiring no artificial dwelling or elaborate adornment of their abode;
becoming gradually more and more specialised in function, yet gaining
thereby no more real protective care for their worshippers--a cold and
heartless hierarchy, ready to exact their due, but incapable of
inspiring devotion or enthusiasm. Let us ask next how the Romans
conceived of their own relations towards them.
=2. The Relation of Gods and Men.=--The character of the Roman was
essentially practical and his natural mental attitude that of the
lawyer. And so in his relation towards the divine beings whom he
worshipped there was little of sentiment or affection: all must be
regulated by clearly understood principles and carried out with formal
exactness. Hence the _ius sacrum_, the body of rights and duties in the
matter of religion, is regarded as a department of the _ius publicum_,
the fundamental constitution of the state, and it is significant, as
Marquardt has observed, that it was Numa, a king and lawgiver, and not
a prophet or a poet, who was looked upon as the founder of the Roman
religion. Starting from the simple general feeling of a dependence on a
higher power (_religio_), which is common to all religions, the Roman
gives it his own characteristic colour when he conceives of that
dependence as analogous to a civil contract between man and god. Both
sides are under obligation to fulfil their part: if a god answers a
man's prayer, he must be repaid by a thank-offering: if the man has
fulfilled 'his bounden duty and service,' the god must make his return:
if he does not, either the cause lies in an unconscious failure on the
human side to carry out the exact letter of the law, or else, if the
god has really broken his contract, he has, as it were, put himself out
of court and the man may seek aid elsewhere. In this notion we have the
secret of Rome's readiness under stress of circumstances, when all
appeals to the old gods have failed, to adopt foreign deities and cults
in the hope of a greater measure of success.
The contract-notion may perhaps appear more clearly if we consider one
or two of the normal religious acts of the Roman individual or state.
Take first of all the performance of the regular sacrifices or acts of
worship ordained by the state-calendar or the celebration of the
household _sacra_. The _pietas_ of man consists in their due
fulfilment, but he may through negligence omit them or make a mistake
in the ritual to be employed. In that case the gods, as it were, have
the upper hand in the contract and are not obliged to fulfil their
share, but the man can set himself right again by the offering of a
_piaculum_, which may take the form either of an additional sacrifice
or a repetition of the original rite. So, for instance, when Cato is
giving his farmer directions for the lustration of his fields, he
supplies him at the end with two significant formulæ: 'if,' he says,
'you have failed in any respect with regard to all your offerings, use
this formula: "Father Mars, if thou hast not found satisfaction in my
former offering of pig, sheep, and ox (the most solemn combination in
rustic sacrifices), then let this offering of pig and sheep and ox
appease thee": but if you have made a mistake in one or two only of
your offerings, then say, "Father Mars, because thou hast not found
satisfaction in that pig (or whatever it may be), let this pig appease
thee."' On the other hand, for intentional neglect, there was no
remedy: the man was _impius_ and it rested with the gods to punish him
as they liked (_deorum iniuriae dis curae_).
But apart from the regularly constituted ceremonies of religion, there
might be special occasions on which new relations would be entered into
between god and man. Sometimes the initiative would come from man:
desiring to obtain from the gods some blessings on which he had set
his heart, he would enter into a _votum_, a special contract by which
he undertook to perform certain acts or make certain sacrifices, in
case of the fulfilment of his desire. The whole proceeding is strictly
legal: from the moment when he makes his vow the man is _voti reus_, in
the same position, that is, as the defendant in a case whose decision
is still pending; as soon as the gods have accomplished their side of
the contract he is _voti damnatus_, condemned, as it were, to damages,
having lost his suit; nor does he recover his independence until he has
paid what he undertook: _votum reddidi lubens merito_ ('I have paid my
vow gladly as it was due') is the characteristic wording of votive
inscriptions. If the gods did not accomplish the wish, the man was of
course free, and sometimes the contract would be carried so far that a
time-limit for their action would be fixed by the maker of the vow:
legal exactness can hardly go further.
Or again, the initiative might come from the gods. Some marked
misfortune, an earthquake, lightning, a great famine, a portentous
birth, or some such occurrence would be recognised as a _prodigium_, or
sign of the god's displeasure. Somehow or other the contract must have
been broken on the human side and it was the duty of the state to see
to the restoration of the _pax deum_, the equilibrium of the normal
relation of god and man. The right proceeding in such a case was a
_lustratio_, a solemn cleansing of the people--or the portion of the
people involved in the god's displeasure--with the double object of
removing the original reason of misfortune and averting future causes
of the divine anger. The commercial notion is not perhaps quite so
distinct here, but the underlying legal relationship is sufficiently
marked.
If then the question be asked whether the relation between the Roman
and his gods was friendly or unfriendly, the correct answer would
probably be that it was neither. It was rather what Aristotle in
speaking of human relations describes as 'a friendship for profit': it
is entered into because both sides hope for some advantage--it is
maintained as long as both sides fulfil their obligations.
=3. Ceremonial.=--It has been said sometimes that the old Roman
religion was one of cult and ritual without dogma or belief. As we have
seen this is not in origin strictly true, and it would be fairer to say
that belief was latent rather than non-existent: this we may see, for
instance, from Cicero's dialogues on the subject of religion, where in
discussion the fundamental sense of the dependence of man on the help
of the gods comes clearly into view: in the domestic worship of the
family too cult was always to some extent 'tinged with emotion,' and
sanctified by a belief which made it a more living and in the end a
more permanent reality than the religion of the state. But it is no
doubt true that as the community advanced, belief tended to sink into
the background: development took place in cult and not in theology, so
that by the end of the Republic, to take an example, though the
festival of the Furrinalia was duly observed every year on the 25th of
July, the nature or function of the goddess Furrina was, as we learn
from Cicero, a pure matter of conjecture, and Varro tells us that her
name was known only to a few persons. Nor was it mere lapse of time
which tended to obscure theology and exalt ceremonial: their relative
position was the immediate and natural outcome of the underlying idea
of the relation of god and man. Devotion, piety--in our sense of the
term--and a feeling of the divine presence could not be enjoined or
even encouraged by the strictly legal conception on which religion was
based: the 'contract-notion' required not a 'right spirit' but right
performance. And so it comes about that in all the records we have left
of the old religion the salient feature which catches and retains our
attention is exactness of ritual. All must be performed not merely
'decently and in order,' but with the most scrupulous care alike for
every detail of the ceremonial itself, and for the surrounding
circumstances. The omission or misplacement of a single word in the
formulæ, the slightest sign of resistance on the part of the victim,
any disorder among the bystanders, even the accidental squeak of a
mouse, are sufficient to vitiate the whole ritual and necessitate its
repetition from the very beginning. One of the main functions of the
Roman priesthood was to preserve intact the tradition of formulæ and
ritual, and, when the magistrate offered sacrifice for the state, the
_pontifex_ stood at his side and dictated (_praeire_) the formulæ which
he must use. Almost the oldest specimen of Latin which we now possess
is the song of the Salii, the priests of Mars, handed on from
generation to generation and repeated with scrupulous care, even though
the priests themselves, as Quintilian assures us, had not the least
notion what it meant. Nor was it merely the words of ceremonial which
were of vital importance: other details must be attended to with equal
exactness. Place, as we have seen, was an essential feature even in the
conception of deity, and it must have required all the personal
influence of Augustus and his entourage to reconcile the people of
Rome, with the ancient home of the goddess still before their eyes, to
the second shrine of Vesta within the limits of his palace on the
Palatine. The choice of the appropriate offering again was a matter of
the greatest moment and was dictated by a large number of
considerations. The sex of the victim must correspond to the sex of the
deity to whom it is offered, white beasts must be given to the gods of
the upper world, black victims to the deities below. Mars at his
October festival must have his horse, Iuno Caprotina her goat, and
Robigus his dog, while in the more rustic festivals such as the
Parilia, the offering would be the simpler gift of millet-cakes and
bowls of milk: in the case of the Bona Dea we have the curious
provision that if wine were used in the ceremonial, it must, as she was
in origin a pastoral deity, always be spoken of as 'milk.' The persons
who might be present in the various festivals were also rigidly
determined: men were excluded from the Matronalia on March 1, from the
Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of the Bona
Dea: the notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal
raised by a breach of this rule even at the period when religious
enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb. Slaves were specifically admitted to
a share in certain festivals such as the Saturnalia and the Compitalia
(the festival of the Lares), whereas at the Matralia (the festival of
the matrons) a female slave was brought in with the express purpose of
being significantly driven away.
The general notion of the exactness of ritual will perhaps become
clearer when we come to examine some of the festivals in detail, but it
is of extreme importance for the understanding of the Roman religious
attitude, to think of it from the first as an essential part in the
expression of the relation of man to god.
=4. Directness of Relation--Functions of Priests.=--In contrast to all
this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from
deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the
Roman religion--the immediateness of relation between the god and his
worshippers. Not only may the individual at any time approach the altar
of the god with his prayer or thank-offering, but in every community of
persons its religious representative is its natural head. In the
family the head of the household (_pater familias_) is also the priest
and he is responsible for conducting the religious worship of the whole
house, free and slave alike: to his wife and daughters he leaves the
ceremonial connected with the hearth (_Vesta_) and the deities of the
store-cupboard (_Penates_), and to his bailiff the sacrifice to the
powers who protect his fields (_Lares_), but the other acts of worship
at home and in the fields he conducts himself, and his sons act as his
acolytes. Once a year he meets with his neighbours at the boundaries of
their properties and celebrates the common worship over the
boundary-stones. So in[4] the larger outgrowth of the family, the
_gens_, which consisted of all persons with the same surname (_nomen_,
not _cognomen_), the gentile _sacra_ are in the hands of the more
wealthy members who are regarded as its heads; we have the curious
instance of Clodius even after his adoption into another family,
providing for the worship of the _gens Clodia_ in his own house, and we
may remember Virgil's picture of the founders of the _gentes_ of the
Potitii and the Pinarii performing the sacrifice to Hercules at the
_ara maxima_, which was the traditional privilege of their houses.
When societies (_sodalitates_) are formed for religious purposes they
elect their own _magistri_ to be their religious representatives, as we
see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great
community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of
parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he--like the _pater
familias_--leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,'
the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special
official, the _rex sacrorum_, inherits the king's ritual duties, while
the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the
matter of religious law, the _pontifex maximus_, whose official
residence is always the _regia_, Numa's palace. The state is but the
enlarged household and the head of the state is its religious
representative.
If then the approach to the gods is so direct, where, it may be asked,
in the organisation of Roman religion is there room for the priest? Two
points about the Roman priesthood are of paramount importance. In the
first place, they are not a caste apart: though there were restrictions
as to the holding of secular magistracies in combination with the
priesthood--always observed strictly in the case of the _rex sacrorum_
and with few exceptions in the case of the greater _flamines_--yet the
_pontifices_ might always take their part in public life, and no kind
of barrier existed between them and the rest of the community: Iulius
Cæsar himself was _pontifex maximus_. In the second place they are not
regarded as representatives of the gods or as mediators between god and
man, but simply as administrative officials appointed for the
performance of the acts of state-worship, just as the magistrates were
for its civil and military government. In origin they were chosen to
assist the king in the multifarious duties of the state-cult--the
_flamines_ were to act as special priests of particular deities, the
most prominent among them being the three great priests of Iuppiter
(_flamen Dialis_), Mars, and Quirinus; the _pontifices_ were sometimes
delegates of the king on special occasions, but more particularly
formed his religious _consilium_, a consulting body, to give him advice
as to ritual and act as the repositories of tradition. In later times
the _flamines_ still retain their original character, the _pontifices_
and especially the _pontifex maximus_ are responsible for the whole
organisation of the state-religion and are the guardians and
interpreters of religious lore. In the state-cult then the priests play
a very important part, but their relation to the worship of the
individual was very small indeed. They had a general superintendence
over private worship and their leave would be required for the
introduction of any new domestic cult; in cases too where the private
person was in doubt as to ritual or the legitimacy of any religious
practice, he could appeal to the _pontifices_ for decision. Otherwise
the priest could never intervene in the worship of the family, except
in the case of the most solemn form of marriage (_confarreatio_),
which, as it conferred on the children the right to hold certain of the
priesthoods, was regarded itself as a ceremony of the state-religion.
In his private worship then the individual had immediate access to the
deity, and it was no doubt this absence of priestly mediation and the
consequent sense of personal responsibility, no less than its emotional
significance, which caused the greater reality and permanence of the
domestic worship as compared with the organised and official cults of
the state.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Etruscan builders were according to tradition employed on the
earliest Roman temples.
[4] This is all open to doubt, but see De Marchi, _Il Culto Privato_,
vol. ii.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY HISTORY OF ROME--THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY
After this sketch of the main features which we must expect to find in
Roman religion, we may attempt to look a little more in detail at its
various departments, but before doing so it is necessary to form some
notion of the situation and character of the Roman community: religion
is not a little determined by men's natural surroundings and
occupations. The subject is naturally one of considerable controversy,
but certain facts of great significance for our purpose may fairly be
taken as established. The earliest settlement which can be called
'Rome' was the community of the Palatine hill, which rises out of the
valleys more abruptly than any of the other hills and was the natural
place to be selected for fortification: the outline of the walls and
sacred enclosure running outside them (_pomoerium_) may still be
traced, marking the limits of 'square Rome' (_Roma quadrata_), as the
historians called it. The Palatine community no doubt pursued their
agricultural labours over the neighbouring valleys and hills, and
gradually began to extend their settlement till it included the
Esquiline and Caelian and other lesser heights which made up the
Septimontium--the next stage of Rome's development. Meanwhile a kindred
settlement had been established on the opposite hills of the Quirinal
and Viminal, and ultimately the two communities united, enclosing
within their boundaries the Capitol and their meeting-place in the
valley which separated them--the Forum. In this way was formed the Rome
of the Four Regions, which represents the utmost extent of its
development during the period which gave rise to the genuine Roman
religion. All these stages have left their mark on the customs of
religion. _Roma quadrata_ comes to the fore in the Lupercalia: not
merely is the site of the ceremony a grotto on the Palatine
(_Lupercal_), but when the _Luperci_ run their purificatory course
around the boundaries, it is the circuit of the Palatine hill which
marks its limits. Annually on the 11th of December the festival of the
Septimontium was celebrated, not by the whole people, but by the
_montani_, presumably the inhabitants of those parts of Rome which
were included in the second settlement. Finally, the addition of the
Quirinal settlement is marked by the inclusion among the great
state-gods of Quirinus, who must have been previously the local deity
of the Quirinal community.
But more important for us than the history of the early settlement is
its character. We have spoken of early Rome as an agricultural
community: it would be more exact and more helpful to describe it as a
community of agricultural households. The institutions of Rome, legal
as well as religious, all point to the household (_familia_) as the
original unit of organisation: the individual, as such, counted for
nothing, the community was but the aggregate of families. Domestic
worship then was not merely independent of the religion of the
community: it was prior to it, and is both its historical and logical
origin. Yet the life of the early Roman agriculturalist could not be
confined to the household: in the tilling of the fields and the care of
his cattle he meets his neighbour, and common interests suggest common
prayer and thanksgiving. Thus there sprung up the great series of
agricultural festivals which form the basis of the state-calendar, but
were in origin--as some of them still continued to be--the independent
acts of worship of groups of agricultural households. Gradually, as the
community grew on the lines we have just seen, there grew with it a
sense of an organised state, as something more than the casual
aggregation of households or clans (_gentes_). As the feeling of union
became stronger, so did the necessity for common worship of the gods,
and the state-cult came into being primarily as the repetition on
behalf of the community as a whole of the worship which its members
performed separately in their households or as joint-worshippers in the
fields. But the conception of a state must carry with it at least two
ideas over and beyond the common needs of its members: there must be
internal organisation to secure domestic tranquillity, and--since there
will be collision with other states--external organisation for purposes
of offence and defence. Religion follows the new ideas, and in two of
the older deities of the fields develops the notions of justice and
war. Organisation ensues, and the general conceptions of state-deities
and state-ritual are made more definite and precise.
It will be at once natural and convenient that we should consider these
three departments of religion in the order that has just been
suggested--the worship of the household, the worship of the fields, the
worship of the state. But it must not be forgotten that both the
departments themselves and the evidence for them frequently overlap.
The domestic worship is not wholly distinguishable from that of the
fields, the state-cult is, as we have seen, very largely a replica of
the other two. The evidence for the domestic and agricultural cults is
in itself very scanty, and we shall frequently have to draw inferences
from their counterparts in the state. Above all, it is not to be
supposed that any hard and fast line between the three existed in the
Roman's mind; but for the purposes of analysis the distinction is
valuable and represents a historical reality.
CHAPTER V
WORSHIP OF THE HOUSEHOLD
=1. The Deities.=--The worship of the household seems to have
originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of
certain objects closely bound up with the family life--the door, the
protection against the external world, by which the household went out
to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver
of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved
the food for future use. At first, in all probability, the worship was
actually of the objects themselves, but by the time that Rome can be
said to have existed at all, 'animism' had undoubtedly transformed it
into a veneration of the indwelling spirits, Ianus, Vesta, and the
Penates.
Of the domestic worship of Ianus no information has come down to us,
but we may well suppose that as the defence of the door and its main
use lay with the men of the household, so they, under the control of
the _pater familias_, were responsible for the cult of its spirit.
Vesta was, of course, worshipped at the hearth by the women, who most
often used it in the preparation of the domestic meals. In the original
round hut, such as the primitive Roman dwelt in--witness the models
which he buried with his dead and which recent excavations in the Forum
have brought to light--the 'blazing hearth' (such seems to be the
meaning of Vesta) would be the most conspicuously sacred thing; it is
therefore not surprising to find that her simple cult was the most
persistent of all throughout the history of Rome, and did not vary from
its original notion. Even Ovid can tell the inquirer 'think not Vesta
to be ought else than living flame,' and again, 'Vesta and fire require
no effigy'--notions in which he has come curiously near to the
conceptions of the earliest religion. The Penates in the same way were
at first 'the spirits'--whoever they might be--who preserved and
increased the store in the cupboard. Then as the conception of
individual deities became clearer, they were identified with some one
or other of the gods of the country or the state, among whom the
individual householder would select those who should be the particular
Penates of his family: Ceres, Iuno, Iuppiter, Pales would be some of
those chosen in the earlier period. Nor are we to suppose that
selection was merely arbitrary: the tradition of family and clan, even
possibly of locality, would determine the choice, much as the
patron-saints of a church are now determined in a Roman Catholic
country.
Two other deities are very prominent in the worship of the early
household, and each is a characteristic product of Roman religious
feeling, the Lar Familiaris and the Genius. The Lares[5] seem to have
been in origin the spirits of the family fields: they were worshipped,
as Cicero tells us, 'on the farm in sight of the house,' and they had
their annual festival in the Compitalia, celebrated at the
_compita_--places where two or more properties marched. But one of
these spirits, the _Lar Familiaris_, had special charge of the house
and household, and as such was worshipped with the other domestic gods
at the hearth. As his protection extended over all the household,
including the slaves, his cult is placed specially in the charge of the
bailiff's wife (_vilica_). He is regularly worshipped at the great
divisions of the month on Calends, Nones, and Ides, but he has also an
intimate and beautiful connection with the domestic history of the
family. An offering is made to the Lar on the occasion of a birth, a
wedding, a departure, or a return, and even--a characteristically Roman
addition--on the occasion of the first utterance of a word by a son of
the house: finally, a particularly solemn sacrifice is made to him
after a death in the family.
The Genius is perhaps the most difficult conception in the Roman
religion for the modern mind to grasp. It has been spoken of as the
'patron-saint' or 'guardian-angel,' both of them conceptions akin to
that of the Genius, but both far too definite and anthropomorphic: we
shall understand it best by keeping the '_numen_' notion clearly in
mind and looking to the root-meaning of the word (_genius_ connected
with the root of _gignere_, to beget). It was after all only a natural
development of the notions of 'animism' to imagine that man too, like
other objects, had his indwelling spirit--not his 'soul' either in our
sense of moral and intellectual powers, or in the ancient sense of the
vital principle--but rather as the derivation suggests, in origin
simply the spirit which gave him the power of generation. Hence in the
house, the sphere of the Genius is no longer the hearth but the
marriage-bed (_lectus genialis_). This notion growing somewhat wider,
the Genius comes to denote all the full powers, almost the personality,
of developed manhood, and especially those powers which make for
pleasure and happiness: this is the origin of such common phrases as
_genium curare_, _genio indulgere_, meaning practically to 'look after
oneself,' 'to indulge oneself.' Every man, then, has this 'spirit of
his manhood' in his Genius, and correspondingly every woman her Iuno,
or spirit of womanhood, which are worshipped on the birthdays of their
owners. No doubt later the Genius was accredited with powers over the
fortune and misfortune of his possessor, but he never really developed
anything like the independence of a god, and remained always rather a
_numen_. The individual revered his own Genius, but the household cult
was concerned, as one would expect, with the Genius of the master of
the house, the pre-eminent Genius of the family. Its special locality
was, for the reason just noticed, the marriage-bed and its symbol, the
house-snake, kept as a revered inmate and cherished in the feeling that
evil happening to it meant misfortune to the master. The festival of
the Genius was naturally the master's birthday, and on that day slaves
and freedmen kept holiday with the family and brought offerings to the
_Genius domus_. It is a significant fact, and may serve to bring out
the underlying notion, that in later paintings, when anthropomorphism
and sensuous representation held sway over all Roman religion, though
the other gods of the household were depicted after the manner of Greek
deities, the Genius is either represented by his symbolic snake or
appears with the human features and characteristics of the head of the
house, his owner.
The spirit-gods then of the door and the hearth, the specially chosen
deities of the store-cupboard, the particular field-power presiding
over the household, and the spirit of the master's personality were the
gods of the early home, and round their worship centred the domestic
religion. We must attempt to see what was its relation to family life.
=2. Religion and the Family Life.=--We have already noticed the main
occasions of regular sacrifice to the deities of the household, the
offerings to the Lar on Calends, Nones, and Ides, to the Genius on the
master's birthday, and so on, and we are enabled to form a fair picture
of the rites from paintings which, although of later date, undoubtedly
represent the continuous tradition of domestic custom. In a
wall-painting at Herculaneum, for instance, we have a picture of the
_pater familias_, represented with veiled head (according to regular
Roman custom) and the cornucopia of the Genius, making sacrifice at a
round altar or hearth. Opposite him stands the flute-player (_tibicen_)
playing to drown any unpropitious sound, while on either side are two
smaller figures, presumably the sons, acting as attendants (_camilli_),
and both clad (_succincti_) in the short sacrificial tunic (_limus_);
one carries in his left hand the sacred dish (_patera_), and in his
right garlands or, more probably, ribbons for the decoration of the
victim: the other is acting as _victimarius_ and bringing the pig for
sacrifice, but the animal is hurrying with almost excessive eagerness
towards the altar, no doubt to show that there is none of the
reluctance which would have been sufficient to vitiate the sacrifice.
But from our point of view such formal acts of worship are of less
importance than the part played by religion in the daily life of the
household. There is evidence both for earlier and later periods that
the really 'pious' would begin their day with prayer and sacrifice to
the household gods, and like Virgil's Aeneas, typically _pius_ in all
the meanings of the word, would 'rouse the slumbering flame upon the
altar and gladly approach again the Lar and little Penates whom he
worshipped yesterday.' But this was perhaps exceptional devotion, and
the daily worship in the normal household centred rather round the
family meal. In the old and simple house the table would be placed at
the side of the hearth, and, as the household sat round it, master and
man together, a part of the meal, set aside on a special sacred dish
(_patella_), would be thrown into the flames as the gods' portion.
Sometimes incense might be added, and later a libation of wine: when
images had become common, the little statuettes of Lares and Penates
would be fetched from the shrine (_lararium_) and placed upon the table
in token of their presence at the meal. Even in the luxurious,
many-roomed house of the imperial epoch, when the dining-table was far
from the kitchen-hearth, a pause was made in the meal and an offering
sent out to the household-gods, nor would the banquet proceed until the
slave had returned and announced that the gods were favourable (_deos
propitios_): so persistent was this tradition of domestic piety. Prayer
might be made at this point on special occasions to special deities,
as, for instance, before the beginning of the sowing of the crops,
appeal was made to Iuppiter, and a special portion of the meal (_daps_)
was set aside for him. The sanctification of the one occasion when the
whole household met in the day cannot fail to have had its effect on
the domestic life, and, even if it was no direct incentive to morality,
it yet bound the family together in a sense of dependence on a higher
power for the supply of their daily needs.
We observed incidentally how the small events of domestic life were
given their religious significance, particularly in connection with the
worship of Lar and Genius, but to complete the sketch of domestic
religion, we must examine a little more closely its relation to the
process of life, and especially to the two important occasions of birth
and marriage. In no department of life is the specialisation of
function among the _numina_ more conspicuous than in connection with
birth and childhood. Apart from the general protection of Iuno Lucina,
the prominent divinity of childbirth, we can count in the records that
have come down to us some twenty subordinate spirits, who from the
moment of conception to the moment of birth watched, each in its own
particular sphere, over the mother and the unborn child. As soon as the
birth had taken place began a series of ceremonies, which are of
particular interest, as they seem to belong to a very early stage of
religious thought, and have a markedly rustic character. Immediately a
sacred meal was offered to the two field-deities, Picumnus and
Pilumnus, and then the Roman turned his attention to the practical
danger of fever for the mother and child. At night three men gathered
round the threshold, one armed with an axe, another with a stake, and a
third with a broom: the two first struck the threshold with their
implements, the third swept out the floor. Over this ceremony were said
to preside three _numina_, Intercidona (connected with the axe),
Pilumnus (connected with the stake, _pilum_), and Deverra (connected
with the act of sweeping). Its object was, as Varro explains it, to
avert the entrance of the half-wild Silvanus by giving three
unmistakeable signs of human civilisation; we shall probably not be
wrong in seeing in it rather an actual hacking, beating, and sweeping
away of evil spirits. On the ninth day after birth, in the case of a
boy, on the eighth in the case of a girl, occurred the festival of the
naming (_solemnitas nominalium_). The ceremony was one of purification
(_dies lustricus_ is its alternative title), and a piacular offering
was made to preserve the child from evil influences in the future.
Friends brought presents, especially neck-bands in the form of a
half-moon (_lunulae_), and the golden balls (_bullae_) which were worn
as a charm round the neck until the attainment of manhood.
Of the numerous petty divinities which watched over the child's early
years we have already given some account. In their protection he
remained until he arrived at puberty, about the age of seventeen, when
with due religious ceremony he entered on his manhood. At home, on the
morning of the festival, he solemnly laid aside the _bulla_ and the
purple-striped garb of childhood (_toga praetexta_) before the shrine
of the household gods, and made them a thank-offering for their
protection in the past. Afterwards, accompanied by his father and
friends and clad now in the _toga virilis_, he went solemnly to the
Capitol, and, after placing a contribution in the coffers of
Iuventas--or probably in earlier times of Iuppiter Iuventus--made an
offering to the supreme deity Iuppiter Capitolinus. The sacred
character of the early years of a young Roman's life could hardly be
more closely marked.
Though _confarreatio_ was the only essentially religious form of
marriage, and was sanctified by the presence of the _pontifex maximus_
and the _flamen Dialis_, yet marriage even in the less religious
ceremony of _coemptio_ was always a _sacrum_. It must not take place on
the days of state-festivals (_feriae_), nor on certain other _dies
religiosi_, such as those of the Vestalia or the feast of the dead
(_Parentalia_). Both the marriage itself and the preliminary betrothal
(_sponsalia_) had to receive the divine sanction by means of auspices,
and in the ceremonies of both rites the religious element, though bound
up with superstition and folk-customs, emerges clearly enough. The
central ceremony of the _confarreatio_ was an act partly of sacrifice,
partly, one might almost say, of communion. The bride and bridegroom
sat on two chairs united to one another and covered with a lambskin,
they offered to Iuppiter bloodless offerings of a rustic character
(_fruges et molam salsam_), they employed in the sacrifice the
fundamental household necessaries, water, fire, and salt, and
themselves ate of the sacred spelt-cake (_libus farreus_), from which
the ceremony derived its name. The crucial point in the more civil
ceremony of _coemptio_ was the purely human and legal act of the
joining of hands (_dextrarum iunctio_), but it was immediately followed
by the sacrifice of a victim, which gave the ceremony a markedly
religious significance. The customs connected with the bringing of the
bride to the bridegroom's house--so beautifully depicted in Catullus'
_Epithalamium_--her forcible abduction from her parents, the ribaldry
of the bridegroom's companions, the throwing of nuts as a symbol of
fecundity, the carrying of the bride over the threshold, a relic
probably of primitive marriage by capture, the untying of the bridal
knot on the bridal couch--are perhaps more akin to superstition than
religion, but we may notice two points in the proceedings. Firstly, the
three coins (_asses_) which the bride brought with her, one to give to
her husband as a token of dowry, one to be offered at the hearth to her
new Lar Familiaris, one to be offered subsequently at the nearest
_compitum_ (a clear sign of connection between the household Lar and
those of the fields); and secondly, an echo of the feature so marked
all through domestic life, the crowd of little _numina_, who took their
part in assisting the ceremony. There was Domiduca, who brought the
bride to the bridegroom's house, Iterduca, who looked after her on the
transit, Unxia, who anointed her, Cinxia, who bound and unbound her
girdle, and many others.
This sketch of the household worship of the Romans will, I hope, have
justified my contention that there was in it an element more truly
'religious' than anything we should gather from the ceremonies of the
state. The ideas are simpler, the _numina_ seem less cold and more
protective, the worshippers more sensible of divine aid. When we have
looked at the companion picture of the farmer in the fields, we shall
go on to see how the worship of the agricultural household is the
prototype and basis of the state-cult, but first we must consider
briefly the very difficult question of the relation of the living to
the dead.
=3. Relation of the Living and the Dead.=--The worship of the spirits
of dead ancestors is so common a feature in most primitive religions
that it may seem strange even to doubt whether it existed among the
Romans, but, although the question is one of extreme difficulty, and
the evidence very insufficient, I am inclined to believe that, though
the living were always conscious of their continued relation to the
dead, and sensitive of the influence of the powers of the underworld,
yet there was not, strictly speaking, any cult of the dead. Let us
attempt briefly to collect the salient features in ritual, and see to
what conclusion they point as to the underlying belief.
One of the most remarkable facts in domestic worship is that, whereas
the moment of birth and the other great occasions of life are
surrounded with religious ceremony and belief, the moment of death
passes without any trace of religious accompaniment: it is as though
the dying man went out into another world where the ceremonials of this
life can no more avail him, nor its gods protect him. As to his state
after death, opinion varied at different times under different
influences, but the simple early notion, connected especially with the
practice of burial as opposed to cremation,[6] was that his spirit just
sank into the earth, where it rested and returned from time to time to
the upper world through certain openings in the ground (_mundi_), whose
solemn uncovering was one of the regular observances of the festal
calendar: later, no doubt, a more spiritual notion prevailed, though it
never reached definiteness or universality. One idea, however, seems
always to be prominent, that the happiness of the dead could be much
affected by the due performance of the funeral rites; hence it was the
most solemn duty of the heir to perform the _iusta_ for the dead, and
if he failed in any respect to carry them out, he could only atone for
his omission by the annual sacrifice of a sow (_porca praecidanea_) to
Ceres and Tellus--to the divinities of the earth, be it noticed, and
not to the dead themselves. The actual funeral was not a religious
ceremony; a procession was formed (originally at night) of the family
and friends, in which the body of the dead was carried--accompanied by
the busts (_imagines_) of his ancestors--to a tomb outside the town,
and was there laid in the grave. The family on their return proceeded
at once to rites of purification from the contamination which had
overtaken them owing to the presence of a dead body. Two ceremonies
were performed, one for the purification of the house by the sacrifice
of a sow (_porca praesentanea_) to Ceres accompanied by a solemn
sweeping out of refuse (_exverræ_), the other the lustration of their
own persons by fire and water. This done, they sat down with their
friends to a funeral feast (_silicernium_), which, Cicero tells us, was
regarded as an honour rather to the surviving members of the family
than to the dead, so that mourning was not worn. Two other ceremonies
within the following week, the _feriae denicales_ and the _novendiale
sacrum_, brought the religious mourning to a close. Not that the dead
were forgotten after the funeral: year by year, on the anniversaries of
death and burial, and on certain fixed occasions known by such
suggestive titles as 'the day of roses' and 'the day of violets,' the
family would revisit the tomb and make simple offerings of salt cake
(_mola salsa_), of bread soaked in wine, or garlands of flowers: there
is some trace, on such occasions, of prayer, but it would seem to be
rather the repetition of general religious formulæ than a petition to
the dead for definite blessings.
Such are the principal features of the family ritual in relation to
their dead; but if we are to form any just notion of belief, we must
supplement them by reference to the ceremonies of the state, which
here, as elsewhere, are very clearly the household-cult 'writ large.'
In the Calendars we find two obvious celebrations in connection with
the dead, taking place at different seasons of the year, and consisting
of ceremonies markedly different in character. In the gloomy month of
February--associated with solemn lustrations--occurs the festival known
popularly (though not in the Calendars) as the Parentalia or dies
Parentales, that is, the days of sacrifice in connection with the dead
members of the family (_parentes_, _parentare_). It begins with the
note on February 13, _Virgo Vestalis parentat_, and continues till the
climax, _Feralia_, on February 21. During these days the magistrates
laid aside the insignia of their offices, the temples were shut,
marriages were forbidden, and every family carried out at the tombs of
its relatives ceremonies resembling those of the _sacra privata_. The
whole season closed on February 22 with the festival of the Caristia or
_cara cognatio_, a family reunion of the survivors in a kind of
'love-feast,' which centred in the worship of the Lar Familiaris. Here
we seem to have simply, as in the family rites, a peaceful and solemn
acknowledgment by the community as a whole of the still subsisting
relation of the living and the dead. On the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May
occurs the Lemuria, a ceremony of a strikingly different order. Once
again temples are shut and marriages forbidden, but the ritual is of a
very different nature. The _Lemures_ or _Larvae_--for there seems to be
little distinction between the two names--are regarded no longer as
members of the family to be welcomed back to their place, but as
hostile spirits to be exorcised.[7] The head of the house rises from
bed at midnight, washes, and walks barefoot through the house, making
signs for the aversion of evil spirits. In his mouth he carries black
beans--always a chthonic symbol--which he spits out nine times without
looking round, saying, as he does so, 'With these I redeem me and
mine': he washes again, and clanks brass vessels together; nine times
he repeats the formula, 'depart, Manes of our fathers' (no doubt using
the dignified title Manes euphemistically), and then finally turns
round. Here we have in a quite unmistakeable manner the feeling of the
hostility of the spirits of the dead: they must be given their
appropriate food and got out of the place as quickly as possible. Some
scholars have attempted to explain the difference between these two
festivals on the assumption that the Parentalia represents the
commemoration of the duly buried dead, the Lemuria the apotropaic right
for the aversion of the unburied, and therefore hostile spirits; but
Ovid has given a far more significant hint, when he tells us that the
Lemuria was the more ancient festival of the two.
So far we have had no indication of anything approaching divinity in
connection with the dead or the underworld as distinct from the
earth-goddesses, but the evidence for it, though vague and shadowy, is
not wanting. Certain mysterious female deities, Tarpeia, Acca Larentia,
Carna, and Laverna, of whom late ætiological myth had its own
explanation, have, in all probability, been rightly interpreted by
Mommsen as divinities of the lower world: the commemorative 'sacrifice
at the tomb,' which we hear of in connection with the first two, was in
reality, we may suppose, an offering to a chthonic deity at a _mundus_.
A rather more tangible personality is Vediovis, who three times a year
has his celebration (_Agonia_ not _feriae_) in the Calendar: he, as his
name denotes, must be the 'opposite of Iove,' that is, probably, his
chthonic counterpart, a notion sufficiently borne out by his subsequent
identification with the Greek Pluto. Finally, of course, there is that
vague body, the Di Manes, 'the good gods,' the principal deities of the
world of the dead; to them invocations are addressed, and they have
their place in the formulæ of the _parentalia_ and the opening of the
_mundi_.[8] In connection with them, acting as a link with the female
deities, we have the strange goddess Genita Mana, the 'spirit of birth
and death.'
Controversy is acute as to the interpretation of these facts,
especially in regard to the question whether or no the spirits of the
dead were actually worshipped. I would hazard the following
reconstruction of history as consistent with what we otherwise know of
Roman religion, and with the evidence before us. From the earliest
times the Roman looked upon his dead relations as in some sense living,
lying beneath the earth, but capable alike of returning to the world
above and of influencing in some vague way the fortunes of the living,
especially in relation to the crops which sprung from the ground in
which they lay. At first, when his religion was one of fear, he
regarded the dead as normally hostile, and their presence as something
to be averted; this is the stage which gave birth to the Lemuria. As
civilisation increased, and the sense of the unity of household and
community developed, fear, proving ungrounded, gave place to a kindlier
feeling of the continued existence of the dead as members of household
and state, and even in some sense as an additional bond between the
living: this is the period which produced the _sacra privata_ and the
Parentalia. When the _numen_-feeling began to pass into that of _deus_,
in the first place a connection was felt between the spirits of the
dead and the deities of the earth associated with the growth of the
crops, in the second the notion that the underworld must have its gods
as well as the world above, produced the shadowy female deities and
Vediovis. Lastly, the same kind of feeling which added Parentalia to
Lemuria developed the vague general notion of the Di Manes, not the
deified spirits of the dead, but peaceful and on the whole kindly
divinities holding sway in the world of dead spirits, yet accessible to
the prayers of the living. The dead, then, were not themselves
worshipped, but they needed commemoration and kindly gifts, and they
had in their lower world deities to whom prayer might be made and
worship given.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] It is right to state that there is a totally different theory,
according to which the Lares were the spirits of the dead ancestors and
the Lar Familiaris an embodiment, as it were, of all the family dead.
[6] It is significant that even when the dead were cremated, one bone
was carefully preserved in order to be symbolically buried.
[7] We may note that, though it is a state festival, our information is
solely of rites in individual households.
[8] Their mention in sepulchral inscriptions dates from the time of the
Empire, when a new conception of their nature had sprung up.
CHAPTER VI
WORSHIP OF THE FIELDS
The life of the early Roman in the fields, his activities, his hopes
and fears, are reflected in the long list of agricultural festivals
which constitute the greater part of the celebrations in the Calendar,
and follow closely the seasons and occupations of the agricultural
year. We are, of course, in the Calendar dealing, to speak strictly,
with the worship of the state, and not with the semi-private festivals
of groups of farmers, but in many instances, such as the Robigalia, the
state seems only to have taken over the cult of the farmers, preserving
carefully the site on which the celebration took place; in others, such
as the Terminalia and the Parilia, it seems to have established, as it
were, a state-counterpart of a rite performed independently at many
rustic centres: in both cases we are justified in inferring the
practice of the early Roman agriculturalist. We shall see that in most
cases these festivals are associated--though often loosely
enough--with the worship of a particular divinity. Sometimes,
however,--as in the case of the Lupercalia--it is very difficult to
discover who this divinity was; in other festivals, such as the
Robigalia, it looks as if the eponymous deity was a comparatively late
development. We may, therefore, suppose, on the analogy of what we have
already seen to be the general lines of development in Roman religion,
that the festivals in origin centred round a purpose rather than a
personality, and were addressed 'to all spirits whom it might concern';
and that later, when the _deus_ notion was on the increase, they either
attached themselves to some god whose personality was already distinct,
as the Vinalia were attached to Iuppiter, or 'developed' a deity of
their own. Among these deities, strictly functional as a rule and
existing only in connection with their special festival, we shall
notice the frequent recurrence of a divinity pair, not, of course,
mythologically related as husband and wife, but representing, perhaps,
the male and female aspects of the same process of development.
The festivals divide themselves naturally into three groups: those of
Spring, expressive of the hopes and fears for the growing crops and
herds; those of Summer, the festivals of fulfilment, including the
celebration of harvest; and those of Winter, the festivals of sowing,
of social rejoicing, and in the later months of purificatory
anticipation of the coming year.
=1. Festivals of Spring.=--The old Roman year--as may be seen clearly
enough from the names of the months still known by numbers, September,
October, etc.--began in March: according to tradition Romulus reckoned
a year of ten months altogether, and Numa added January and February.
The Spring months properly speaking may be reckoned as March, April,
and May. In March there were in the developed Calendar no festivals of
an immediately recognisable agricultural character, but the whole month
was practically consecrated to its eponymous deity, Mars. Now, to the
Roman of the Republic, Mars was undoubtedly the deity associated with
war, and his special festivals in this month are of a warlike
character: on the 9th the priests (_Salii_) began the ancient custom of
carrying his sacred shields (_ancilia_) round the town from one
ordained resting-place to another: on the 19th, Quinquatrus, the
shields were solemnly purified, and on the 23rd the same ceremony was
performed with the war-trumpets: the Equirria (horse-races) of March
14 may have had an agricultural origin--we shall meet with races later
on as a feature of rustic festivals--but they were certainly celebrated
in a military manner. Yet there is good reason for believing that Mars
was in origin associated not with war, but with the growth of
vegetation: he was, as we shall see, the chief deity addressed in the
solemn lustration of the fields (_Ambarvalia_), and if our general
notion of the development of religion with the growing needs of the
agricultural community crystallising into a state be correct, it may
well be that a deity originally concerned with the interests of the
farmer took on himself the protection of the soldier, when the fully
developed state came into collision with its neighbours. If so, we may
well have in these recurring festivals of Mars the sense, as Mr. Warde
Fowler has put it, of 'some great _numen_ at work, quickening
vegetation, and calling into life the powers of reproduction in man and
the animals.' Possibly another agricultural note is struck in the
Liberalia of the 17th: though the cult of Liber was almost entirely
overlaid by his subsequent identification with Dionysus, it seems right
to recognise in him and his female counterpart, Libera, a general
spirit of creativeness.
The character of April is much more clearly marked: the month is filled
with a series of festivals--all of a clearly agricultural
nature--prayers for the crops now in the earth, and the purification of
the men and animals on the farm. The series opens with the Fordicidia
on the 15th, when pregnant cows were sacrificed: their unborn calves
were torn from them and burnt, the ashes being kept by the Vestal
Virgin in Vesta's storehouse (_penus Vestæ_) for use at the Parilia.
The general symbolism of fertility is very clear; the goddess
associated with the festival is Tellus, the earth herself, and the
local origin of these festivals is shown in the fact that not only was
the sacrifice made for the whole people on the Capitol, but separately
in each one of the _curiae_. The Fordicidia is closely followed by the
Cerealia on the 19th--the festival of another earth-goddess (_Ceres_,
_creare_)--more especially connected with the growth of corn. A very
curious feature of the ritual was the fastening of fire-brands to the
tails of foxes, which were then let loose in what was afterwards the
Circus Maximus: a symbol possibly, as Wissowa thinks, of sunlight,
possibly of the vegetation-spirit. But the most important of the April
ceremonies is undoubtedly the Parilia of the 21st, the festival of the
very ancient rustic _numen_, Pales. Ovid's[9] description of the
celebration is so interesting and so full of the characteristic colour
of the Roman rustic festivals that I may perhaps be pardoned for
reproducing it at greater length. 'Shepherd,' he says, addressing the
rustic worshipper, 'at the first streak of dawn purify thy well-fed
flocks: let water first besprinkle them, and a branch sweep clean the
ground. Let the folds be adorned with leaves and branches fastened to
them, while a trailing wreath covers the gay-decked gates. Let blue
flames rise from the living sulphur and the sheep bleat loud as she
feels the touch of the smoking sulphur. Burn the male olive-branch and
the pine twig and juniper, and let the blazing laurel crackle amid the
hearth. A basket full of millet must go with the millet cakes: this is
the food wherein the country goddess finds pleasure most of all. Give
her too her own share of the feast and her pail of milk, and when her
share has been set aside, then with milk warm from the cow make prayer
to Pales, guardian of the woods.' The poet then recites a long prayer,
in which the farmer first begs forgiveness for any unwitting sins he
may have committed against the rustic deities, such as trespassing on
their groves or sheltering his flocks beneath their altar, and then
prays for the aversion of disease and the prosperity of crops, flocks,
and herds. 'Thus must the goddess be won, this prayer say four times
turning to the sunrise, and wash thy hands in the running stream. Then
set the rustic bowl upon the table in place of the wine-bowl, and drink
the snowy milk and dark must, and soon through the heaps of crackling
straw leap in swift course with eager limbs.' All the worshippers then
set to leaping through the blazing fires, even the flocks and herds
were driven through, and general hilarity reigned. Many points of
detail might be noticed, such as that in the urban counterpart of the
festival, which Ovid carefully distinguishes from the country
celebrations, the fire was sprinkled with the ashes from the calves of
the Fordicidia and the blood of Mars' October horse--another link
between Mars and agriculture. But it is most interesting to note the
double character of the ceremony--as a purification of man and beast on
the one hand, and on the other a prayer for the prosperity of the
season to come. Three special festivals remain in April. At the Vinalia
(_priora_) of the 23rd, the wine-skins of the previous year were opened
and the wine tasted, and, we may suppose, supplication was made for
the vintage to come, the festival being dedicated to the sky-god,
Iuppiter. At the Robigalia of the 25th the offering of a dog was made
for the aversion of mildew (_robigo_), to Robigus (who looks like a
developed eponymous deity) at the fifth milestone on the Via
Claudia--the ancient boundary of Roman territory. The Floralia of the
28th does not occur in the old Calendars, probably because it was a
moveable feast (_feriae conceptivae_), but it is an unmistakeable
petition to the _numen_ Flora for the blossoming of the season's
flowers.
May was a month of more critical importance for the welfare of the
crops, and therefore its festivals were mostly of a more sombre
character. The 9th, 11th, and 13th were the days set apart for the
Lemuria, the aversion of the hostile spirits of the dead, of which we
have already spoken, and a similarly gloomy character probably attached
to the Agonia of Vediovis on the 21st. But of far the greatest interest
is the moveable feast of the Ambarvalia, the great lustration of the
fields, which took place towards the end of the month: the date of its
occurrence was no doubt fixed according to the state of the crops in
any given year. As the individual farmer purified his own fields for
the aversion of evil, so a solemn lustration of the boundaries of the
state was performed by special priests, known as the Arval brethren
(_fratres Arvales_). With ceremonial dancing (_tripudium_) they moved
along the boundary-marks and made the farmer's most complete offering
of the pig, sheep, and ox (_suovetaurilia_): the fruits of the last
year and the new harvest (_aridae et virides_) played a large part in
the ceremonial, and a solemn litany was recited for the aversion of
every kind of pest from the crops. In Virgil's account the prayer is
made to Ceres, and we know that in imperial times, when the Ambarvalia
became very closely connected with the worship of the imperial house,
the centre of the cult was the earth-goddess, Dea Dia; but in the
earliest account of the rustic ceremony which we possess in Cato, Mars
is addressed in the unmistakeable character of an agricultural deity.
'Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee that thou mayest be gracious and
favourable to me, to my home, and my household, for which cause I have
ordained that the offering of pig, sheep, and ox be carried round my
fields, my land, and my farm: that thou mayest avert, ward off, and
keep afar all disease, visible and invisible, all barrenness, waste,
misfortune, and ill weather: that thou mayest suffer our crops, our
corn, our vines and bushes to grow and come to prosperity: that thou
mayest preserve the shepherds and the flocks in safety, and grant
health and strength to me, to my home, and my household.' We have
perhaps here another rustic ceremony addressed in origin to all
_numina_, whom it might concern, and, as it were, specialising itself
from time to time in an appeal to one definite deity or another, but it
is also clear evidence of an early agricultural association of Mars.
The Ambarvalia is one of the most picturesque of the field ceremonies,
and a peculiarly beautiful and imaginative description of it may be
found in the first chapter of Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_.
In June and July the farmer was waiting for the completion of the
harvest, and the great state-festivals of the period are not
agricultural.
=2. Festivals of the Harvest.=--In August the farmer's hopes are at
last realised, and the harvest is brought in. The season is marked by
two closely connected festivals on the 21st and 25th in honour of the
old divinity-pair, Consus (_condere_), the god of the storehouse and
Ops, the deity of the wealth of harvest. At the Consualia, an offering
is made by the _flamen Quirinalis_, assisted by the Vestal virgins, at
an underground altar in the Circus Maximus, specially uncovered for
the occasion: here we have probably not so much the notion of a
chthonic deity, as a relic of the simple practices of an early
agricultural age, when the crops were stored underground. The beasts
who had taken part in the harvest were released from their labours
during the day, and were decorated with flowers: the festival included
a race of mules, the regular Italian beasts of burden. Four days after
this general festivity occurred the second harvest-ceremony of the
Opiconsivia, held in the shrine (_sacrarium_) of the Regia, and
attended only by the _pontifex maximus_ and the Vestal virgins. This is
clearly the state-harvest of the regal period, the symbolic storing of
the state-crops in the sacred storehouse of the palace by the king and
his daughters. Both festivals are significant, and we shall meet with
Consus and Ops again in close connection in December. The _Portunalia_
of the 17th may have been another harvest-home, if we can believe the
old authorities, who tell us that Portunus was a 'god of doors'
(_portae_).
The _Vinalia Rustica_ of August 19 we cannot sufficiently interpret
through lack of information: it cannot, of course, have been the
festival of the vintage, for it is too early: it may have been a
propitiatory ceremony for the ripening grapes, in which case it was
probably connected with the _auspicatio vindemiae_, in which the
_flamen Dialis_ (note again the association of Iuppiter and the vine)
solemnly plucked the first grapes; or it may be a festival of wine, not
vines, in which case its main feature would most likely be the opening
of the last year's vintage.
September contains no great festival, and the harvest-season closes on
October 11 with the _Meditrinalia_--the nearest approach to a
thanksgiving for the vintage. On that day the first must of the new
vintage and the wine of the old were solemnly tasted, apparently as a
spell against disease, the worshipper using the strange formula, 'I
drink the new and the old wine, with new wine and old I heal (_medeor_)
disease.' This ceremony gave its name to the festival and was the cause
of the subsequent evolution of an eponymous deity, Meditrina, but there
is little doubt that in origin here, as in the other wine-festivals,
the deity concerned was at first Iuppiter. Among the other rustic
ceremonies of the month we may notice the festival of springs
(_Fontinalia_) on October 13: wells were decorated with garlands and
flowers flung into the waters.
=3. Festivals of the Winter.=--The winter-festivals cannot be summed up
under one general notion so easily as those of spring or summer, but
they fall fairly naturally into two groups--the festivals immediately
connected with agricultural life and those associated with the dead and
the underworld or with solemn purification. The main action of the
farmer's life during the winter is, of course, the sowing of the next
year's crop, which was commemorated in the ancient festival of the
Saturnalia on December 17. Though the Saturnalia is perhaps the most
familiar to us of all the Roman festivals, partly from the allusions in
the classics, especially in Horace, partly because it is no doubt the
source of many of our own Christmas festivities, it is yet almost
impossible now to recover anything of its original Roman character.
Greek influence set to work on it very early, identifying Saturnus with
Cronos and establishing him in a Greek temple with all the
accompaniments of Greek ritual. All the familiar features of the
festival--the freedom and license of the slaves, the giving of
presents, even the wax-candles, which are the prototype of those on our
own Christmas-tree--are almost certainly due to Greek origin. We are
left with nothing but the name Saturnus (connected with the root of
_semen_, _serere_) and the date to assure us that we have here in
reality a genuine Roman festival of the sowing of the crops. Of a
similar nature--marking, as Ovid tells us, the completion of the
sowing--was the _feriae sementivae_ or Paganalia, associated with the
earth-goddesses, Ceres and Tellus. Meal-cakes and a pregnant sow were
the offerings, the beasts who had helped in the ploughing were
garlanded, and prayer was made for the seed resting in the ground. A
curious feature of the winter worship is the repetition of festivals to
the harvest deities, Consus and Ops, separated by the same interval of
three days, on December 15 and 19: it may be that we have here an
indication of the final completion of the harvest, or, as Mr. Warde
Fowler has suggested, a ceremonial opening of the storehouses, to see
that the harvest is not rotting. Among the other country festivals of
the period we may notice that of Carmenta, on the 11th and 15th of
January: she seems to have been in origin a water-_numen_, but was
early associated with childbirth: hence the rigid exclusion of men from
her ceremonies and possibly the taboo on leathern thongs, on the ground
that nothing involving death must be used in the worship of a deity of
birth. The repetition of her festival may possibly point to separate
celebrations of the communities of Palatine and Quirinal. At this time,
too, occurred the rustic ceremonies at the boundaries (_Terminalia_)
and the offering to the Lares at the 'marches' (_Compitalia_), of which
we have spoken in treating of the worship of the house.
The other group of winter-festivals is of a much more gloomy and less
definitely rustic type, though they clearly date from the period of the
agricultural community. Of the Feralia of February 21, the culmination
of the festival of the kindred dead (_Parentalia_), we have already
spoken. The Larentalia is a very mysterious occasion, and was supposed
by the Romans themselves to be an offering 'at the tomb' of a legendary
Acca Larentia, mistress of Hercules. But we have seen reason to think
that Larentia was in reality a deity of the dead, and the 'tomb' a
_mundus_: if so, we have another link between the winter season and the
worship of the underworld. There remains the weird festival of the
Lupercalia on February 15, to which we have had occasion to refer
several times, and which has become more familiar to most of us than
other Roman festivals owing to its political use by Mark Antony in 44
B.C. As we have argued already, it seems to belong to the very oldest
stratum of the Palatine settlement, and we may therefore appropriately
close this account of the early festivals with a somewhat fuller
description of it. The worshippers assembled at the Lupercal, a cave on
the Palatine hill: there goats and a dog were sacrificed, and two
youths belonging to the two colleges of Fabian and Quintian (or
Quintilian) Luperci had their foreheads smeared with the knife used for
the sacrifice and wiped with wool dipped in milk--at which point it was
ordained that they should laugh. Then they girt on the skins of the
slain goats and, after feasting, ran their course round the boundaries
of the Palatine hill, followed each by his own company of youths, and
striking women on their way with strips, known as _februae_ or _Iunonis
amicula_, cut from the goats' hides. Here we have a summary of many of
the important points which we have noticed in the rustic festivals:
from the pre-Roman stratum comes the idea of communion with the
sacrificed animal in the smearing of the blood and the wearing of the
skin, and also the magic charm involved in the striking of the women to
procure fertility: it is typical of the true feeling of Roman religion
that we cannot with any certainty tell what deity was associated with
the rite, though probably it was Faunus: the rustic character of the
ceremony is indicated by the bowl of milk in which the wool was dipped
and the sacrifice of goats: the idea of lustration is clearly marked
in the course round the boundaries: the original Palatine settlement
stands out in the limits of that course and the site of the Lupercal,
and the later synoecismus is seen in the, presumably subsequent,
addition of the second college of Luperci. A careful study of the
Lupercalia as an epitome of the character and development of the Roman
agricultural festivals, though it would not show the brighter aspect of
some of the spring and summer celebrations, would yet give a true
notion of the history and spirit of the whole.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Ov., _Fast._, iv. 735.
CHAPTER VII
WORSHIP OF THE STATE
Since, in the matter of religion, the Roman state is in the main but
the agricultural household magnified, we shall not, in considering its
worship, be entering on a new stratum of ideas, but rather looking at
the development of notions and sentiments already familiar. To deal,
however, with the state-worship in full would not only far exceed the
limits of this sketch, but would lead us away from religious ideas into
the region of what we might now call 'ecclesiastical management.' I
propose therefore to confine myself to two points, firstly, the
broadening of the old conceptions of the household and the fields and
their adaptation to the life of the state, and secondly--to be treated
very shortly and as an indication of the Roman character--the
organisation of religion.
=1. Development of the Worship of House and Fields.=--Here we shall
find two main characteristics. The state in the first place, as we
have several times hinted in anticipation, establishes its own
counterpart of the household and rustic cults and adapts to its own use
the ideas which they involve: in the second, and particularly in
connection with some of the field-deities, it evolves new and very
frequently abstract notions, foreign to the life of the independent
country households, but necessary and vital to the life of an organised
community. Let us look first at the fate of the household deities.
=Ianus.=--We left Ianus as the _numen_ of the house-door: he passes
into the state exactly in the same capacity: the state too has its
'door,' the gate at the north-east corner of the Forum, and this
becomes the seat of his state-cult--the door which, according to
Augustan legend, is opened in the time of war and only shut when Rome
is at peace with all the world. But reflection soon gets to work on
Ianus: a door has two sides, it can both open and shut; therefore, as
early as the song of the Salii, he has developed the cult-epithets
'Opener,' 'Shutter' (_Patulci_, _Cloesi_), and as soon as he is thought
of as anything approaching a personality he is 'two-headed'
(_bifrons_), as he appears in later representations. The door again is
the first thing you come to in entering a house: the 'door-spirit'
then, with that tendency to abstraction which we shall see shortly in
other cases, becomes the god of beginnings. He watches over the very
first beginning of human life in his character of _Consevius_; to him
is sacred the first hour of the day (_pater matutinus_), the Calends of
every month, and the first month of the year (_Ianuarius_); to him too
is offered by the _rex sacrorum_ the first sacrifice of the year, the
Agonium on the 9th of January. In this capacity, moreover, his name
comes first in all the formulæ of prayer, and he is looked upon--not
indeed as the father of the gods--for that is a much too
anthropomorphic notion--but as what we might now term their 'logical
antecedent': _divum deus_, as the song of the Salii quaintly puts it,
_principium deorum_, as later interpretation explained it. Yet through
all he remains the most typical Roman deity: he does not acquire a
temple till 217 B.C., nor a bust until quite late, nor is he ever
identified with a Greek counterpart. In his capacity as _pater
matutinus_ he has a native female counterpart in Matuta, a dawn-deity,
who becomes a protectress in childbirth, and as such is the centre of
the matrons' festival, the Matralia of June 11.
=Vesta.=--The history of Vesta is perhaps less romantic, but it affords
a more exact parallel between household and state. In the primitive
community the king's hearth is not merely of symbolical importance, but
of great practical utility, in that it is kept continually burning as
the source of fire on which the individual householder may draw: hence
it is the duty of the king's daughters to care for it and keep the
flame perpetually alight. In Rome the temple of Vesta is the king's
hearth, situated, as one would expect, in close proximity to the
_regia_. The fire is kept continually blazing except on the 1st of
March of every year, when it is allowed to go out and is ceremonially
renewed. The Vestal virgins, sworn to perpetual virginity and charged
with the preservation of the sacred flame, are 'the king's daughters,'
living in a kind of convent (_atrium Vestæ_) and under the charge of
the king's representative, the _pontifex maximus_. It is their duty
too, as the natural cooks of the sacred royal household, to make the
salt cake (_mola salsa_) to be used at the year's festivals and to
preserve it and other sacred objects, such as the ashes of the
Fordicidia, in the storehouse of Vesta (_penus Vestæ_). In the month of
June from the 7th to the 15th, with a climax on the 9th, the day of
the Vestalia, the matrons who all the year round have tended their own
hearths, come in solemn procession bare-footed to make their homely
offerings at the state-hearth, and the virgins meanwhile offer the
cakes that they have made. For eight days the ceremony continues,
during which time the bakers and millers keep holiday; the days are
_religiosi_ (marriages are unlucky and other taboos are observed) and
also _nefasti_ (no public business may be performed); until the
ceremony closes on the 15th, with the solemn cleansing of the temple
and the casting of the refuse into the Tiber, and then the normal life
of the state may be renewed--Q. St. D. F. (_Quando Stercus Delatum Fas_)
is the unique entry in the Calendars. This is all less imaginative than
the development of Ianus, but the underlying feeling is intensely Roman
and there could be no clearer idea of the natural adaptation of the
household-cult to the religion of the state.
=Penates, Lares, and Genius.=--The other household deities too have
their counterpart, though not so prominently marked, in the worship of
the state. The magistrates, on entering office, took oath by Iuppiter
and the _Di Penates populi Romani Quiritium_, and that the conception
was as wide in the state as in the household is shown by the fact that
on less formal occasions the formula appears as _Iuppiter et ceteri di
omnes immortales_. The Penates of the state then would include all the
state-deities; but that their original character is not lost sight of
we can see from the statement of Varro that in the _penus Vestæ_ (the
'state storehouse') were preserved their _sigilla_--not apparently
sensuous representations, but symbolic objects, such as we have seen
before in cases like that of the _silex_ of Iuppiter. The _Lares_ again
find their counterpart in the _Lares Praestites_ of the state, and
their rustic festival, the Compitalia, has its urban reproduction,
which, as it involved considerable license on the part of populace and
slaves, was often in the later period of the Republic a cause of
serious political disturbance. Even the Genius, though rather vaguely,
passes over to the state and we hear of the _Genius populi Romani_ or
the _Genius urbis Romæ_, with regard to which Servius quotes from an
inscription on a shield the characteristic addition, _sive mas sive
femina_: in much later times we find the exact counterpart of the
domestic worship of the Genius of the _pater familias_ in the cult of
the Genius of the Emperor--the foundation of the whole of the imperial
worship.
We have observed already how the cults of the fields were taken over by
the state and their counterparts established in the great festivals of
the Calendar. Naturally enough most of the deities concerned, existing
only for the part they played in these festivals, retained their
original character without further development. But with a few it was
different: it was their fate to acquire new characteristics and new
functions, and, developing with the needs of the community, to become
the great gods of the state: of these we must give some brief account.
=Iuppiter.=--We have known Iuppiter hitherto either in connection with
certain very primitive survivals, or in the genuine Roman period as a
sky-_numen_, concerned with the grape-harvest in the two Vinalia and
the Meditrinalia, and the recipient at the family meal of a _daps_ as a
general propitiation before the beginning of the sowing. As sky-god he
passes to the state: _Lucetius_ (_lux_) is his title in the song of the
Salii and to him are sacred the Ides of every month--the time of the
full moon, when there is most light in the heavens by night as well as
day. In his agricultural connection he has his wine-festivals in the
state as in the country, and the household _daps_ becomes the more
elaborate _epulum Iovis_, in which the whole community, as it were,
entertained him at a banquet. As a sky-deity, too, he is particularly
concerned with the thunderbolt and the lightning-flash (_Iuppiter
Fulmen_, _Fulgur_), and to him are sacred the always ominous spots
which had been struck by lightning (_bidentalia_): with the more
alarming occurrence of lightning by night he has a special connection
under the cult-title _Iuppiter Summanus_. But as the little community
grew, and especially perhaps after the union of the two settlements,
the worship of Iuppiter Feretrius, associated with the sacred oak upon
the Capitol--the hill between Palatine and Quirinal--comes more and
more into prominence as a bond of union and the central point of the
state's religious life: it tends indeed to take the place of priority,
which had previously been occupied by Ianus. The community goes to war
with its neighbours, and after a signal victory the _spolia opima_ must
be dedicated on the sacred oak: indeed Iuppiter is in a special sense
with them in the battle and must now be worshipped as the 'stayer of
rout' (_Stator_) and the 'giver of victory' (_Victor_). War is a new
province of the state's activity, but, characteristically enough, it
does not evolve its own _numen_, but enlarges the sphere of the
somewhat elastic spirits already existing. So too in the internal
organisation of the state there is felt the need of a religious
sanction for public morality, and Iuppiter--though vaguely at
first--takes on him the character of a deity of justice. In this
connection he is primarily the god of oaths: we have seen how his
sacred _silex_ was used in the oath of treaty: it is also the most
solemn witness to the oath of the citizen. Iuppiter Lapis becomes
specially the Dius Fidius, a cult-title which subsequently sets up for
itself and produces a further offshoot in the abstract Fides. Finally,
towards the end of our period the Iuppiter of the Capitol emerges
triumphant, as it were, from his struggle with his rivals and, with the
new title of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus,--the 'best and greatest,' that
is, of all the Iuppiters--takes his place as the supreme deity of the
Roman state and the personification of the greatness and majesty of
Rome itself. To his temple hereafter the Roman youth will come to make
his offering when he takes the dress of manhood; here the magistrates
will do sacrifice before entering on their year of office: here the
victorious general will pass in procession with the spoils of his
victory: on the walls shall be suspended treaties with foreign nations
and offerings sent by subject princes and states from all quarters of
the world: all that Rome is to be, will be, as it were, embodied in the
sky-spirit of the sacred oak, the god of justice and of victory in war.
=Iuno.=--Iuppiter carries with him into the state-worship his female
counterpart, Iuno, with his own characteristics, in a certain degree,
and his own privileges. She is Lucina and Fulgura as he is Lucetius and
Fulgur: white cows are her offerings as white steers are his: as the
Ides are sacred to Iuppiter, so--though they are not a festival--are
the Calends to Iuno. But from the first she shows a certain
independence and develops on lines of her own. In the curious ceremony
of the fixing of the Nones (the first quarter of the month), held on
the Calends in the _curia Calabra_, she seems to appear as a
moon-goddess: the _rex sacrorum_, after a report from a _pontifex_ as
to the appearance of the new moon, announces the result in the formula:
'I summon thee for five (or seven) days, hollow Iuno' (_dies te
quinque_ [_septem_] _kalo, Iuno Covella_: hence the name _Kalendae_).
But far more prominently--either as a female divinity herself, or, as
some think, owing to the supposed influence of the moon on female
life--does Iuno figure as the deity of women, and especially in
association with childbirth and marriage. As _Lucina_ she is, as we
have seen, the presiding deity of childbirth, and her festival on the
1st of March, though not in the Calendars (because confined to women
and not therefore a festival of the whole people), attained immense
popularity under the title of the Matronalia. She has too a general
superintendence of the rites of marriage, and the various little
_numina_, who play so prominent a part in the ceremonies, tend to
attach themselves to her as cult-titles. The festival of the
servant-maids in honour of Iuno Caprotina on the 7th of July shows the
same notion of Iuno as the women's goddess, which appears again in
common parlance when women speak of their Iuno, just as men do of their
Genius. Later on Iuno acquires the characteristics of majesty
(_Regina_) and protection in war (_Curitis_, _Sospita_), partly no
doubt as Iuppiter's counterpart, but more directly through the
introduction of cults from neighbouring Italian towns.
=Mars.=--We have seen reason to believe that in the earlier stages of
Roman religion Mars was a _numen_ of vegetation, but though the
Ambarvalia was duly taken over into the state-cult and attained a very
high degree of importance, yet there can be no doubt that in the
state-religion Mars was pre-eminently associated with war. Iuppiter
might help at need in averting defeat and awarding victory, but it was
with Mars that the general conduct of war rested. His sacred animal is
the warlike wolf, his symbols the spears and the sacred shields
(_ancilia_), which during his own month (_Martius_)--the 1st of which
is his special festival--his priests (_Salii_) wearing the full
war-dress (_trabea_ and _tunica picta_) carry with sacred dance and
song round the city. His altar is in the Campus Martius, outside the
city-walls and therefore within the sphere of the _imperium militiae_,
and the other festivals associated with him are of a warlike character:
the races of the war-horse (Equirria) on March 14 and February 27, and
the great race on the Ides of October, when the winner was solemnly
slain: the lustration of the arms at the Quinquatrus on March 19 and
the Armilustrium of October 19--at the beginning and end of the
campaigning season: and the lustration of the war-trumpets on the 23rd
of March and the 23rd of May. But above all in honour of Mars is held
the great quinquennial _lustrum_ associated with the census, when the
people are drawn up in military array around his altar in the Campus
Martius and the solemn offering of the _suovetaurilia_ (is this a faint
relic of his agricultural character?) after being carried three times
round the gathered host, is offered on his altar in prayer for the
military future of the state. Hardly any god in the state-cult has his
character so clearly marked, and we may regard Mars as a deity who,
taking on new functions to suit the needs of the times, almost entirely
lost the traces of his original nature.
=Quirinus.=--Iuppiter and Mars then became the great state-deities of
the developed community and to them is added, as the contribution of
the Colline settlement, their own particular deity, Quirinus. He, like
them, has his own _flamen_; like Mars he has his _Salii_, and his
festival finds its place in the Calendars on February the 17th. But of
his ritual and character we know practically nothing: the ritual was
obscured because his festival coincided with the much more popular
festival of the _curiae_, the _stultorum feriae_: of his character, we
can only conjecture that he was to the Colline settlement what Mars was
to the Palatine, whereas later after the complete amalgamation he seems
to have been distinguished from Mars as representing 'armed peace'
rather than war--an idea which is borne out by the associations of the
closely allied word _Quirites_. Be that as it may, we have in Iuppiter,
Mars, and Quirinus the great state-triad of the synoecismus, who held
their own until at the beginning of the next epoch they were supplanted
by the new Etruscan triad of the Capitol, Iuppiter, Iuno and Minerva.
=2. Organisation.=--It might perhaps be thought that the organisation
of religion is a matter remote from its spirit, and is not therefore a
suitable subject for discussion, where the object is rather to bring
out underlying motives and ideas: but in dealing with the Roman
religion, where ceremonial and legal precision were so prominent, it
would be even misleading to omit some reference to the very
characteristic manner in which the state, taking over the rather
chaotic elements of the agricultural worship, organised them into
something like a consistent whole. Its most complete achievement in
this direction was without doubt the regulation of the religious year.
We have spoken many times of the Calendars (_Fasti_): it is necessary
now to obtain some clearer notion of what they were. In Rome itself and
various Italian towns have been found some thirty inscriptions, one
almost complete (Maffeiani), the others more or less fragmentary,
giving the tables of the months and marking precisely the character and
occurrences of every day in the year. We may take as a specimen the
latter half of the month of August from the Fasti Maffeiani.
A. EID. [NP]. | C. VOLC. [NP].
B. F. | D. C.
C. C. | E. OPIC. [NP].
D. C. | F. C.
E. PORT. [NP]. | G. VOLT. [NP].
F. C. | H. [NP].
G. VIN. F.P. | A. F.
H. C. | B. F.
A. CONS. [NP]. | C. C.
B. EN. |
In the first column are given the nundinal letters of the days, showing
their position in the eight days' 'week' from one market day
(_nundinae_) to the next. In the second column are noted first the
great divisions of the month, Calends, Nones, and Ides, and then the
religious character of each individual day is indicated by certain
signs, whose explanations throw a good deal of light on Roman religions
notions. It will be seen that the letters of most frequent occurrence
are F, C, and N (or in our extract [NP]): these correspond to the broad
distinction between days profane and sacred. F (_fastus_) denotes a
day on which the business of the state may be performed, on which the
praetor may say (_fari_) the three words, _do_, _dico_, _addico_, which
summed up the decisions of the Roman law: C (_comitialis_) marks a day
on which the legislative assemblies (_comitia_) may be held: it is by
implication F as well. N (_nefastus_), on the other hand, denotes the
sacred day, consecrated to the worship of the gods, on which therefore
state-business may not be transacted: similarly the very mysterious and
much disputed sign [NP], whether it differs in precise signification
from N or not, certainly marks a day of sacred character. EN, which
occurs once in this extract (from _endotercisus_, the old Latin form of
_intercisus_) signifies a 'split' day (_dies fissus_), the beginning
and end of which were sacred, while the middle period was free for
business. In the second column also (in large letters in some of the
other Calendars) are named the _feriae publicae_, the great annual
state-festivals, fixed for one particular day (_feriae stativae_):
such, in this case, are the Portunalia, Vinalia, and Consualia.
These _fasti_ were exhibited in the Forum and on the walls of temples,
and the conscientious Roman could have no possible difficulty in
finding out when he might lawfully transact his business and what
festivals the state was observing: of the 355 days of the old Calendar
11 were _fissi_, 235 were _fasti_ (192 _comitiales_), and 109
_nefasti_. We may remark as curious features in the Calendar, denoting
rigid adherence to principle, that with one exception, the Poplifugia
of July 5, no festival ever occurs before the Nones, that with two
exceptions, the Regifugium of February 24 and the Equirria of the 14th
of March, no festival falls on an even day of the month, and that there
is a marked avoidance of successive feast-days: even the three days of
the Lemuria allow an interval of a day between each.
In the matter of ritual and observance, state-organisation--and its
absence--are alike significant. Of the general exactness of ritual and
its specific variations on different occasions a fair notion has
perhaps already been gathered; it may help to fill out that notion if
we can put together a sketch of the normal process of a sacrifice to
the gods. Before the sacrifice began the animal to be offered was
selected and tested: if it had any blemish or showed any reluctance, it
was rejected. If it were whole and willing, it was bound with fillets
(_infulae_) around its forehead, and long ribbons (_vittae_) depending
from them. It was then brought to the altar (_ara_) by the side of
which stood a portable brazier (_foculus_). The celebrant--magistrate
or priest--next approached dressed in the _toga_, girt about him in a
peculiar manner (_cinctus Gabinus_), and carried up at the back so as
to form a hood (_velato capite_): the herald proclaimed silence, and
the flute-player began to play his instrument. The first part of the
offering was then made by the pouring of wine and scattering of incense
on the brazier: it was followed by the ceremonial slaughter
(_immolatio_) of the animal. The celebrant sprinkled the victim with
wine and salted cake, and made a symbolic gesture with the knife. The
victim was then taken aside by the attendants (_victimarii_), and
actually slaughtered by them: from it they extracted the sacred parts
(_exta_), liver, heart, gall, lungs, and midriff, and after inspecting
them to see that they had no abnormality--but not in the earlier period
for purposes of augury--wrapped them in pieces of flesh (_augmenta_),
cooked them, and brought them back to the celebrant, who laid them as
an offering upon the altar, where they were burnt. The rest of the
flesh (_viscera_) was divided as a sacred meal between the celebrant
and his friends--or in a state-offering among the priests, and
probably the magistrate. We cannot refrain from remarking here the
extreme precision of ritual, the scrupulous care with which the human
side of the contract was fulfilled and the--almost legal--division of
the victim between gods and men. But though the ritual was so exact,
one must not be led away by modern analogies to suppose that there was
ever anything like a rigid constraint on the private citizen for the
observance of festivals. The state-festivals were in the strictest
sense offerings made to the gods by the representative magistrates or
priests, and if they were present, all was done that was required: the
whole people had been, by a legal fiction, present in their persons. No
doubt the private citizen would often attend in large numbers at the
celebrations, especially at the more popular festivals, but from some,
such as the Vestalia, he was actually excluded. On the other hand,
though it did not demand presence, the state did--at least
theoretically--demand the observance of the feast-day by private
individuals. The root-notion of _feriae_ was a day set apart for the
worship of the gods, and on it therefore the citizen ought to do 'no
manner of work.' The state observed this condition fully in the
closing of law-courts and the absence of legislative assemblies, and
in theory too the private citizen must refrain from any act which was
not concerned with the worship of the gods, or rendered absolutely
necessary, as, for instance, if 'his ox or his ass should fall into a
pit.' But it is characteristic of Rome that the state did not seek for
offence, but only punished it if accidentally seen: on a feast-day the
_rex sacrorum_ and the _flamines_ might not see work being done; they
therefore sent on a herald in advance to announce their presence, and
an actual conviction involved a money-fine. Perhaps more scrupulously
than the _feriae_ were observed the _dies religiosi_, days of
'abstinence,' on which certain acts, such as marriage, the beginning of
any new piece of work, or the offering of sacrifice to the gods, were
forbidden: such, in the oldest period, were the days on which the
_mundus_ was open, or the temple of Vesta received the matrons, the
days when the Salii carried the _ancilia_ in procession, and the
periods of the two festivals of the dead in February and May; but for
eluding their observance too devices were not unknown.
In the state-organisation of religion, then, we seem to see just the
same features from which we started: as a basis the legal conception
of the relation of god to man, as a result the extreme care and
precision in times and ceremonials, as a corollary in the state the
idea of legal representation and the consequent looseness of hold on
the action of the individual.
CHAPTER VIII
AUGURIES AND AUSPICES
So far we have been considering the regular relations of man and god,
seen in recurring or special offerings, in vows and in acts of
purification and lustration--all based on the contract-notion, all
endeavours on man's part to fulfil his bounden duty, that the gods may
be constrained in turn to theirs. But so strong was the feeling of
divine presence and influence in the Roman's mind, that he was not
content with doing his best by these regular means to secure the favour
of the gods, but wished before undertaking any business of importance
to be able to assure himself of their approval. His practical
common-sense evolved, as it were, a complete 'code'--in the flight and
song of birds, in the direction of the lightning-flash, in the conduct
of men and animals--by which he believed that the gods communicated to
him their intentions: sometimes these indications (_auspicia_) might be
vouchsafed by the gods unasked (_oblativa_), sometimes they would be
given in answer to request (_impetrativa_): but as to their meaning,
there could be no doubt, provided they were interpreted by one skilled
in the lore and tradition of augury. We may observe here, though our
evidence is much slighter, the same three stages which we have noticed
in the sacrificial worship, the homely domestic auspices, the auguries
of the agricultural life, and the organised system in the state.
In the household the use of auspices was in origin at any rate very
general indeed: 'Nothing,' Cicero tells us, 'of importance used to be
undertaken unless with the sanction of the auspices' (_auspicato_). The
right of interrogating the will of the gods, rested, as one might
expect, with the master of the house, assisted no doubt by the private
augur as the repository of lore and the interpreter of what the master
saw. But of the details of domestic augury we know but little. Cato in
one passage insists on the extreme importance of silence for the
purpose, and Festus suggests that this was secured by the master of the
house rising in the depths of the night to inspect the heavens. We have
seen already that the taking of the auspices played an important part
in the ceremonies of betrothal and marriage, and that the indications
of the divine will might be very varied we may gather from a story in
Cicero. An aunt wishing to take the auspices for her niece's betrothal,
conducted her into an open consecrated space (_sacellum_) and sat down
on the stool of augury (_sella_) with her niece standing at her side.
After a while the girl tired and asked her aunt to give her a little of
the stool: the aunt replied, 'My child, I give up my seat to you':
nothing further happened and this answer turned out in fact to be the
auspicious sign: the aunt died, the niece married the widower and so
became mistress of the house.
Of augury in agricultural life we have some indication in the annual
observance of the 'spring augury' (_augurium verniserum_) and the
midsummer ceremony of the _augurium canarium_, which seems to have been
a combination of the offering of a red dog (possibly to avert mildew)
and an augury for the success of the crops. To the rustic stratum
possibly belongs also the _augurium salutis populi_, though later it
was a yearly act celebrated whenever the Roman army was not at war and
so became connected with the shutting of the temple of Ianus.
The state greatly developed and organised the whole system of auguries
and auspices. The college of augurs ranked second only in importance to
the pontifical college, and their duties with regard to both augury and
auspice are sufficiently clear. Like the _pontifices_ in relation to
cult, they are the storehouse of all tradition, and to them appeal may
be made in all cases of doubt both public and private: they were
jealous of their secrets and in later times their mutual consciousness
of deception became proverbial. The right of augury--in origin simply
the inspection of the heavens--was theirs alone, and it was exercised
particularly on the annual occasions mentioned and at the installation
of priests, of which we get a typical instance in Livy's account of the
consecration of Numa.
The auspices on the other hand--in origin 'signs from birds' (_avis_,
_spicere_)--were the province of the magistrate about to undertake some
definite action on behalf of the state whether at home or on the field
of battle. Here the augur's functions were merely preparatory and
advisory. It was his duty to prepare the _templum_, the spot from which
the auspices are to be taken--always a square space, with boundaries
unbroken except at the entrance, not surrounded by wall or necessarily
by line, but clearly indicated (_effatus_) by the augur, and marked off
(_liberatus_) from the surroundings: in the comitia and other places in
Rome there were permanent _templa_, but elsewhere they must be
specially made. The magistrate then enters the _templum_ and observes
the signs (_spectio_): if there is any doubt as to interpretation--and
seeing the immense complication of the traditions (_disciplina_), this
must often have been the case--the augur is referred to as interpreter.
The signs demanded (_impetrativa_) were originally always connected
with the appearance, song or flight of birds--higher or lower, from
left to right or right to left, etc. Later others were included, and
with the army in the field it became the regular practice to take the
auspices from the feeding of the sacred chickens (_pulli_): the best
sign being obtained if, in their eagerness to feed, they let fall some
of the grain from their beaks (_tripudium solistimum_)--a result not
difficult to secure by previous treatment and a careful selection of
the kind of grain supplied to them. But besides this deliberate 'asking
for signs,' public business might at any moment be interrupted if the
gods voluntarily sent an indication of disapproval (_oblativa_): the
augurs then had always to be at hand to advise the magistrates whether
notice should be taken of such signs, and, if so, what was their
signification, and they even seem to have had certain rights of
reporting themselves (_nuntiatio_) the occurrence of adverse ones. The
sign of most usual occurrence would be lightning--sometimes such an
unexpected event as the seizure of a member of the assembly with
epilepsy (_morbus comitialis_)--and we know to what lengths political
obstructionists went in later times in the observation of fictitious
signs, or even the prevention of business by the mere announcement of
their intention to see an unfavourable omen (_servare de caelo_). The
complications and ramifications of the augur's art are infinite, but
the main idea should by now be plain, and it must be remembered that
the kindred art of the soothsayer (_haruspex_), oracles, and the
interpretation of fate by the drawing of lots (_sortes_) are all later
foreign introductions: auspice and augury are the only genuine Roman
methods for interpreting the will of the gods.
Here then in household, fields, and state, we have a second type of
relation to the gods, running parallel to the ordinary practice of
sacrifice and prayer, distinct yet not fundamentally different. As it
is man's function to propitiate the higher spirits and prevent, if
possible, the wrecking of his plans by their opposition, so it is his
business, if he can, to find out their intentions before he engages on
any serious undertaking. As in the _ius sacrum_ his legal mind leads
him to assume that the deities accept the responsibility of the
contract, when his own part is fulfilled, so here, like a practical man
of business, he assumes their construction of a code of communication,
which he has learned to interpret. In its origin it is a notion common
to many primitive religions, but in its elaboration it is peculiarly
and distinctively Italian, and, as we know it, Roman.
CHAPTER IX
RELIGION AND MORALITY--CONCLUSION
It might be said that a religion--the expression of man's relation to
the unseen--has not necessarily any connection with morality--man's
action in himself and towards his neighbours: that an individual--or
even a nation--might perfectly fulfil the duties imposed by the 'powers
above,' without being influenced in conduct and character. Such a view
might seem to find an apt illustration in the religion of Rome: the
ceremonial _pietas_ towards the gods appears to have little to do with
the making of man or nation. But in the history of the world the test
of religions must be their effect on the character of those who
believed in them: religion is no doubt itself an outcome of character,
but it reacts upon it, and must either strengthen or weaken. We are not
therefore justified in dismissing the 'Religion of Numa' without
inquiry as to its relation to morality, for on our answer to that
question must largely depend our judgment as to its value.
We are of course in a peculiarly difficult position to grapple with
this problem through lack of contemporary evidence. The Rome we know,
in the epochs when we can fairly judge of character and morality, was
not the Rome in which the 'Religion of Numa' had grown up and remained
unquestioned: it had been overlaid with foreign cults and foreign
ideas, had been used by priests and magistrates as a political
instrument, and discounted among the educated through the influence of
philosophy. But we may remember in the first place that even then,
especially in the household and in the country, the old religion had
probably a much firmer hold than one might imagine from literary
evidence, in the second that national character is not the growth of a
day, so that we may safely refer permanent characteristics to the
period when the old religion held its own.
It may be admitted at once that the direct influence on morality was
very small indeed. There was no table of commandments backed by the
religious sanction: the sense of 'sin,' except through breach of
ritual, was practically unknown. It is true that in the very early
_leges regiae_ some notion of this kind is seen--a significant glimpse
of what the original relation may have been: it is there ordained that
the patron who betrayed his client, or the client who deceived his
patron, shall be condemned to Iuppiter; the parricide to the spirits of
his dead ancestors, the husband who sells his wife to the gods of the
underworld, the man who removes his neighbour's landmark to Terminus,
the stealer of corn to Ceres. All these persons shall be _sacri_: they
have offended against the gods and the gods will see to their
punishment. But these are old-world notions which soon passed into the
background and the state took over the punishment of such offenders in
the ordinary course of law. Nor again in the prayers of men to gods is
there a trace of a petition for moral blessings: the magistrate prays
for the success and prosperity of the state, the farmer for the
fertility of his crops and herds, even the private individual, who
suspends his votive-tablet in the temple, pays his due for health or
commercial success vouchsafed to himself or his relations. 'Men call
Iuppiter greatest and best,' says Cicero, 'because he makes us not just
or temperate or wise, but sound and healthy and rich and wealthy.'
Still less, until we come to the moralists of the Empire, is there any
sense of that immediate and personal relation of the individual to a
higher being, which is really in religion, far more than commandments
and ordinances, the mainspring and safeguard of morality: even the
conception of the Genius, the 'nearest' perhaps of all unseen powers,
had nothing of this feeling in it, and it may be significant that, just
because of his nearness to man, the Genius never quite attained to
god-head. As far as direct relation is concerned, religion and morality
were to the Roman two independent spheres with a very small point of
contact.
Nor even in its indirect influence does the formal observance of the
Roman worship seem likely at first sight to have done much for personal
or national morality. Based upon fear, stereotyped in the form of a
legal relationship, _religio_--'the bounden obligation'--made, no
doubt, for a kind of conscientiousness in its adherents, but a cold
conscientiousness, devoid of emotion and incapable of expanding itself
to include other spheres or prompt to a similar scrupulousness in other
relations. The rigid and constant distinction of sacred and profane
would incline the Roman to fulfil the routine of his religious duty
and then turn, almost with a sigh of relief, to the occupations of
normal life, carrying with him nothing more than the sense of a burden
laid aside and a pledge of external prosperity. Even the religious act
itself might be without moral significance: as we have seen, the
worshipper might be wholly ignorant of the character, even the name of
the deity he worshipped, and in any case the motive of his action was
naught, the act itself everything. Nor again had the Roman religion any
trace of that powerful incentive to morality, a doctrine of rewards and
punishments in a future life: the ideas as to the fate of the dead were
fluctuating and vague, and the Roman was in any case much more
interested in their influence on himself than in their possible
experiences after death.
The divorce then between religion and morality seems almost complete
and it is not strange that most modern writers speak of the Roman
religion as a tiresome ritual formalism, almost wholly lacking in
ethical value. And yet it did not present itself in this light to the
Romans themselves. Cicero, sceptic as he was, could speak of it as the
cause of Rome's greatness; Augustus, the practical politician, could
believe that its revival was an essential condition for the
renaissance of the Roman character. Have we, in our brief examination
of its characteristics, seen any features which may suggest the
solution of this apparent antagonism? Was there in this formalism a
life which escapes us, as we handle the dry bones of antiquarianism?
In the first place there may be a danger that we underrate the value
of formalism itself. It spells routine, but routine is not without
value in the strengthening of character. The private citizen, who
conscientiously day by day had carried out the worship of his household
gods and month by month observed the sacred abstinence from work on the
days of festival, was certainly not less fitted to take his place as a
member of a strenuous and well-organised community, or to serve
obediently and quietly in the army on campaign. Even the magistrate in
the execution of his religious duties must have acquired an exactness
and method, which would not be valueless in the conduct of public
business. And when we pass to the origin of this formalism--the legal
relation--the connection with the Roman character becomes at once more
obvious. The 'lawgivers of the world,' who developed constitution and
code to a systematised whole such as antiquity had not dreamed of
before, imported, we may say if we like, their legal notions into the
sphere of religion: but we must not forget the other side of the
question. The permanence and success of this greater contract with
higher powers--the feeling that the gods did regard and reward exact
fulfilment of duty--cannot have been without re-action on the relations
of the life of the community: it was, as it were, a higher sanction to
the legal point of view: a pledge that the relations of citizen and
state too were rightly conceived. 'There is,' says Cicero, speaking of
the death of Clodius in the language of a later age, 'there is a divine
power which inspired that criminal to his own ruin: it was not by
chance that he expired before the shrine of the Bona Dea, whose rites
he had violated': the divine justice is the sanction of the human law.
Even in the fear, from which all ultimately sprang, there was a
training in self-repression and self-subordination, which in a more
civilised age must result in a valuable respect and obedience. The
descendants of those who had made religion out of an attempt to appease
the hostile _numina_, feeling themselves not indeed on more familiar
terms with their 'unknown gods,' but only perhaps a little more
confident of their own strength, were not likely to be wanting in a
disciplined sense of dependence and an appreciation of the value of
respect for authority, which alone can give stability to a
constitution. If fear with the Romans was not the beginning of
theological wisdom, it was yet an important contribution to the
character of a disciplined state.
But, as I have hinted in the course of this sketch more than once, the
answer to this problem, as well as the key to the general understanding
of the Roman religion, is to be found in the worship of the household.
If we knew more of it, we should see more clearly where religion and
morality joined hands, but we know enough to give us a clue. There not
only are the principal events of life, birth, adolescence, marriage,
attended by their religious sanction, but in the ordinary course of the
daily round the divine presence and the dependence of man are
continually emphasised. The gods are given their portion of the family
meal, the sanctified dead are recalled to take their share of the
family blessings. The result was not merely an approach--collectively,
not individually--to that sense of the nearness of the unseen, which
has so great an effect on the actions of the living, but a very strong
bond of family union which lay at the root of the life of the state.
It would be difficult to find a clearer expression of the notion than
in the fact that the same word _pietas_, which expresses the due
fulfilment of man's duty to god, is also the ideal of the relations of
the members of a household: filial piety was, in fact, but another
aspect of that rightness of relation, which reveals itself in the
worship of the gods. No doubt that, in the city-life of later periods,
this ideal broke down on both sides: household worship was neglected
and family life became less dutiful. But it was still, especially in
the country, the true backbone of Roman society, and no one can read
the opening odes of Horace's third book without feeling the strength of
Augustus' appeal to it.
And if we translate this, as we have learned to do, into terms of the
state, we can get some idea of what the Romans meant by their debt to
their religion. As the household was bound together by the tie of
common worship, as in the intermediate stage the clan, severed
politically and socially, yet felt itself reunited in the gentile
rites, so too the state was welded into a whole by the regularly
recurring annual festivals and the assurance of the divine sanction on
its undertakings. It might be that in the course of time these rites
lost their meaning and the community no longer by personal presence
expressed its service to the gods, but the cult stood there still, as
the type of Rome's union to the higher powers and a guarantee of their
assistance against all foes: the religion of Rome was, as it has been
said, the sanctification of patriotism--the Roman citizen's highest
moral ideal. It has been remarked, perhaps with partial truth, that the
religion of the _Æneid_--in many ways a summary of Roman thought and
feeling--is the belief in the _fata Romae_ and their fulfilment. The
very impersonality of this conception makes it a good picture of what
religion was in the Roman state. It was not, as with the Jews, a strong
conviction of the rightness of their own belief and a certainty that
their divine protectors must triumph over those of other nations, but a
feeling of the constant presence of some spirits, who, 'if haply they
might find them,' would, on the payment of their due, bear their part
in the great progress of right and justice and empire on which Rome
must march to her victory. It was the duty of the citizen, with this
conception of his city before his eyes, to see to it that the state's
part in the contract was fulfilled. From his ancestors had been
inherited the tradition, which told him the when, where, and how, and
in the preservation of that tradition and its due performance consisted
at once Rome's duty and her glory. 'If we wish,' says Cicero, 'to
compare ourselves with other nations, we may be found in other respects
equal or even inferior; in religion, that is in the worship of the
gods, we are far superior.' The religion of Rome may not have advanced
the theology or the ethics of the world, but it made and held together
a nation.
WORKS BEARING ON THE EARLY RELIGION OF ROME
_The Golden Bough_, (2nd Ed.). J.G. FRAZER.
_History of Rome_, BOOK I. CHAP XII. TH. MOMMSEN.
_Die Religion der Römer._ E. AUST.
_Religion und Kultus der Römer._ G. WISSOWA.
_Il Culto Privato di Roma Antica_, PART I. A. DE-MARCHI.
_The Roman Festivals._ W. WARDE FOWLER.
_The Religion of Numa._ J.B. CARTER.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
* * * * *
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