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Title: The Religious Experience of the Roman People
From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
Author: W. Warde Fowler
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23349]
Language: English
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THE
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
OF THE
ROMAN PEOPLE
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
AGE OF AUGUSTUS
THE GIFFORD LECTURES FOR 1909-10
DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
BY
W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
FELLOW AND LATE SUB-RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD
HON. D.LITT. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMAN FESTIVALS OF THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC,' ETC.
"Sanctos ausus recludere fontes"
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1911
TO
PROFESSOR W.R. HARDIE
AND
MY MANY OTHER KIND FRIENDS AND FRIENDLY HEARERS
IN EDINBURGH
PREFACE
Lord Gifford in founding his lectureship directed that the lectures
should be public and popular, _i.e._ not restricted to members of a
University. Accordingly in lecturing I endeavoured to make myself
intelligible to a general audience by avoiding much technical discussion
and controversial matter, and by keeping to the plan of describing in
outline the development and decay of the religion of the Roman
City-state. And on the whole I have thought it better to keep to this
principle in publishing the lectures; they are printed for the most part
much as they were delivered, and without footnotes, but at the end of
each lecture students of the subject will find the notes referred to by
the numbers in the text, containing such further information or
discussion as has seemed desirable. My model in this method has been the
admirable lectures of Prof. Cumont on "les Religions Orientales dans le
Paganisme Romain."
I wish to make two remarks about the subject-matter of the lectures.
First, the idea running through them is that the primitive religious (or
magico-religious) instinct, which was the germ of the religion of the
historical Romans, was gradually atrophied by over-elaboration of
ritual, but showed itself again in strange forms from the period of the
Punic wars onwards. For this religious instinct I have used the Latin
word _religio_, as I have explained in the _Transactions of the Third
International Congress for the History of Religions_, vol. ii. p. 169
foll. I am, however, well aware that some scholars take a different view
of the original meaning of this famous word, which has been much
discussed since I formed my plan of lecturing. But I do not think that
those who differ from me on this point will find that my general
argument is seriously affected one way or another by my use of the word.
Secondly, while I have been at work on the lectures, the idea seems to
have been slowly gaining ground that the patrician religion of the early
City-state, which became so highly formalised, so clean and austere, and
eventually so political, was really the religion of an invading race,
like that of the Achaeans in Greece, engrafted on the religion of a
primitive and less civilised population. I have not definitely adopted
this idea; but I am inclined to think that a good deal of what I have
said in the earlier lectures may be found to support it. Once only, in
Lecture XVII., I have used it myself to support a hypothesis there
advanced.
I have retained the familiar English spelling of certain divine names,
_e.g._ Jupiter (instead of Iuppiter), as less startling to British
readers.
I wish to express my very deep obligations to the works of Prof. Wissowa
and Dr. J. G. Frazer, and also to Mr. R. R. Marett, who gave me useful
personal help in my second and third lectures. From Prof. Wissowa and
Dr. Frazer I have had the misfortune to differ on one or two points; but
"difference of opinion is the salt of life," as a great scholar said to
me not long ago. In reading the proofs I have had much kind and valuable
help from my Oxford friends Mr. Cyril Bailey and Mr. A. S. L.
Farquharson, who have read certain parts of the work, and to whose
suggestions I am greatly indebted. The whole has been read through by my
old pupil Mr. Hugh Parr, now of Clifton College, to whom my best thanks
are due for his timely discovery of many misprints and awkward
expressions. The loyalty and goodwill of my old Oxford pupils never seem
to fail me.
W. W. F.
Kingham, Oxon,
_3rd March 1911_.
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
PAGE
Accounts of the Roman religion in recent standard works;
a hard and highly formalised system. Its interest lies
partly in this fact. How did it come to be so? This the
main question of the first epoch of Roman religious
experience. Roman religion and Roman law compared. Roman
religion a technical subject. What we mean by religion.
A useful definition applied to the plan of Lectures
I.-X.; including (1) survivals of primitive or
quasi-magical religion; (2) the religion of the
agricultural family; (3) that of the City-state, in its
simplest form, and in its first period of expansion.
Difficulties of the subject; present position of
knowledge and criticism. Help obtainable from (1)
archaeology, (2) anthropology 1-23
LECTURE II
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: SURVIVALS
Survivals at Rome of previous eras of quasi-religious
experience. Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the
means adopted of escaping from it; both survived at Rome
into an age of real religion. Examples: impurity (or
holiness) of new-born infants; of a corpse; of women in
certain worships; of strangers; of criminals. Almost
complete absence of blood-taboo. Iron. Strange taboos on
the priest of Jupiter and his wife. Holy or tabooed
places; holy or tabooed days; the word _religiosus_ as
applied to both of these 24-46
LECTURE III
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC
Magic; distinction between magic and religion. Religious
authorities seek to exclude magic, and did so at Rome.
Few survivals of magic in the State religion. The
_aquaelicium_. Vestals and runaway slaves. The magical
whipping at the Lupercalia. The throwing of puppets from
the _pons sublicius_. Magical processes surviving in
religious ritual with their meaning lost. Private magic:
_excantatio_ in the XII. Tables; other spells or
_carmina_. Amulets: the _bulla_; _oscilla_ 47-67
LECTURE IV
THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
Continuity of the religion of the Latin agricultural
family. What the family was; its relation to the _gens_.
The _familia_ as settled on the land, an economic unit,
embodied in a _pagus_. The house as the religious centre
of the _familia_; its holy places. Vesta, Penates,
Genius, and the spirit of the doorway. The _Lar
familiaris_ on the land. Festival of the Lar belongs to
the religion of the _pagus_: other festivals of the
_pagus_. _Religio terminorum._ Religion of the
household: marriage, childbirth, burial and cult of the
dead 68-91
LECTURE V
THE CALENDAR OF NUMA
Beginnings of the City-state: the _oppidum_. The
earliest historical Rome, the city of the four regions;
to this belongs the surviving religious calendar. This
calendar described; the basis of our knowledge of early
Roman religion. It expresses a life agricultural,
political, and military. Days of gods distinguished from
days of man. Agricultural life the real basis of the
calendar; gradual effacement of it. Results of a fixed
routine in calendar; discipline, religious confidence.
Exclusion from it of the barbarous and grotesque.
Decency and order under an organising priestly authority
92-113
LECTURE VI
THE DIVINE OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
Sources of knowledge about Roman deities. What did the
Romans themselves know about them? No personal deity in
the religion of the family. Those of the City-state are
_numina_, marking a transition from animism to
polytheism. Meaning of _numen_. Importance of names,
which are chiefly adjectival, marking functional
activity. Tellus an exception. Importance of priests in
development of _dei_. The four great Roman gods and
their priests: Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus.
Characteristics of each of these in earliest Rome. Juno
and the difficulties she presents. Vesta 114-144
LECTURE VII
THE DEITIES OF THE EARLIEST RELIGION:
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
No temples in the earliest Rome; meaning of _fanum, ara,
lucus, sacellum_. No images of gods in these places,
until end of regal period. Thus deities not conceived as
persons. Though masculine and feminine they were not
married pairs; Dr. Frazer's opinion on this point.
Examination of his evidence derived from the _libri
sacerdotum_; meaning of Nerio Martis. Such combinations
of names suggest forms or manifestations of a deity's
activity, not likely to grow into personal deities
without Greek help. Meaning of _pater_ and _mater_
applied to deities; procreation not indicated by them.
The deities of the _Indigitamenta_; priestly inventions
of a later age. Usener's theory of Sondergötter
criticised so far as it applies to Rome 145-168
LECTURE VIII
RITUAL OF THE IUS DIVINUM
Main object of _ius divinum_ to keep up the _pax
deorum_; meaning of _pax_ in this phrase. Means towards
the maintenance of the _pax_: sacrifice and prayer,
fulfilment of vows, lustratio, divination. Meaning of
_sacrificium_. Little trace of sacramental sacrifice.
Typical sacrifice of _ius divinum_: both priest and
victim must be acceptable to the deity; means taken to
secure this. Ritual of slaughter: examination and
_porrectio_ of entrails. Prayer; the phrase _Macte esto_
and its importance in explaining Roman sacrifice.
Magical survivals in Roman and Italian prayers; yet they
are essentially religious 169-199
LECTURE IX
RITUAL (continued)
_Vota_ (vows) have suggested the idea that Roman worship
was bargaining. Examination of private vows, which do
not prove this; of public vows, which in some degree do
so. Moral elements in both these. Other forms of vow:
_evocatio_ and _devotio_.
_Lustratio_: meaning of _lustrare_ in successive stages
of Roman experience. _Lustratio_ of the farm and
_pagus_; of the city; of the people (at Rome and
Iguvium); of the army; of the arms and trumpets of the
army: meaning of _lustratio_ in these last cases, both
before and after a campaign 200-222
LECTURE X
THE FIRST ARRIVAL OF NEW CULTS IN ROME
Recapitulation of foregoing lectures. Weak point of the
organised State religion: it discouraged individual
development. Its moral influence mainly a disciplinary
one; and it hypnotised the religious instinct.
Growth of a new population at end of regal period, also
of trade and industry. New deities from abroad represent
these changes: Hercules of Ara Maxima; Castor and
Pollux; Minerva. Diana of the Aventine reflects a new
relation with Latium. Question as to the real religious
influence of these deities. The Capitoline temple of
Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, of Etruscan origin. Meaning
of cult-titles Optimus Maximus, and significance of this
great Jupiter in Roman religious experience 223-247
LECTURE XI
CONTACT OF THE OLD AND NEW IN RELIGION
Plan of this and following lectures. The formalised
Roman religion meets with perils, material and moral,
and ultimately proves inadequate. Subject of this
lecture, the introduction of Greek deities and rites;
but first a proof that the Romans were a really
religious people; evidence from literature, from
worship, from the practice of public life, and from
Latin religious vocabulary.
Temple of Ceres, Liber, Libera (Demeter, Dionysus,
Persephone); its importance for the date of Sibylline
influence at Rome. Nature of this influence; how and
when it reached Rome. The keepers of the "Sibylline
books"; new cults introduced by them. New rites:
lectisternia and supplicationes, their meaning and
historical importance 248-269
LECTURE XII
THE PONTIFICES AND THE SECULARISATION OF RELIGION
Historical facts about the Pontifices in this period; a
powerful exclusive "collegium" taking charge of the _ius
divinum_. The legal side of their work; they
administered the oldest rules of law, which belonged to
that _ius_. New ideas of law after Etruscan period;
increasing social complexity and its effect on legal
matters; result, publication of rules of law, civil and
religious, in XII. Tables, and abolition of legal
monopoly of Pontifices. But they keep control of (1)
procedure, (2) interpretation, till end of fourth
century B.C. Publication of Fasti and _Legis actiones_;
the college opened to Plebeians. Work of Pontifices in
third century: (1) admission of new deities, (2)
compilation of annals, (3) collection of religious
formulae. General result; formalisation of religion; and
secularisation of pontifical influence 270-291
LECTURE XIII
THE AUGURS AND THE ART OF DIVINATION
Divination a universal practice: its relation to magic.
Want of a comprehensive treatment of it. Its object at
Rome: to assure oneself of the _pax deorum_; but it was
the most futile method used. Private divination; limited
and discouraged by the State, except in the form of
family _auspicia_. Public divination; _auspicia_ needed
in all State operations; close connection with
_imperium_. The augurs were skilled advisers of the
magistrates, but could not themselves take the auspices.
Probable result of this: Rome escaped subjection to a
hierarchy. Augurs and _auspicia_ become politically
important, but cease to belong to religion. State
divination a clog on political progress. Sinister
influence on Rome of Etruscan divination; history of the
_haruspices_ 292-313
LECTURE XIV
THE HANNIBALIC WAR
Tendency towards contempt of religious forms in third
century B.C.; disappears during this war. _Religio_ in
the old sense takes its place, _i.e._ fear and anxiety.
This takes the form of reporting _prodigia_; account of
these in 218 B.C., and of the prescriptions supplied by
Sibylline books. Fresh outbreak of _religio_ after
battle of Trasimene; _lectisternium_ of 216, without
distinction of Greek and Roman deities; importance of
this. Religious panic after battle of Cannae;
extraordinary religious measures, including human
sacrifice. Embassy to Delphi and its result; symptoms of
renewed confidence. But fresh and alarming outbreak in
213; met with remarkable skill. Institution of Apolline
games. Summary of religious history in last years of the
war; gratitude to the gods after battle of Metaurus.
Arrival of the Great Mother of Phrygia at Rome. Hannibal
leaves Italy 314-334
LECTURE XV
AFTER THE HANNIBALIC WAR
Religion used to support Senatorial policy in declaring
war (1) with Philip of Macedon, (2) with Antiochus of
Syria; but this is not the old religion. Use of
_prodigia_ and Sibylline oracles to secure political and
personal objects; mischief caused in this way. Growth of
individualism; rebellion of the individual against the
_ius divinum_. Examples of this from the history of the
priesthoods; strange story of a Flamen Dialis. The
story of the introduction of Bacchic rites in 186 B.C.;
interference of the Senate and Magistrates, and
significance of this. Strange attempt to propagate
Pythagoreanism; this also dealt with by the government.
Influence of Ennius and Plautus, and of translations
from Greek comedy, on the dying Roman religion 335-356
LECTURE XVI
GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND ROMAN RELIGION
Religious destitution of the Roman in second century
B.C. in regard to (1) his idea of God, (2) his sense of
Duty. No help from Epicurism, which provided no
religious sanction for conduct; Lucretius, and Epicurean
idea of the Divine. Arrival of Stoicism at Rome;
Panaetius and the Scipionic circle. Character of Scipio.
The religious side of Stoicism; it teaches a new
doctrine of the relation of man to God. Stoic idea of
God as Reason, and as pervading the universe; adjustment
of this to Roman idea of _numina_. Stoic idea of Man as
possessing Reason, and so partaking the Divine nature.
Influence of these two ideas on the best type of Roman;
they appeal to his idea of Duty, and ennoble his idea of
Law. Weak points in Roman Stoicism: (1) doctrine of
Will, (2) neglect of emotions and sympathy. It failed to
rouse an "enthusiasm of humanity" 357-379
LECTURE XVII
MYSTICISM--IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE
Early Pythagoreanism in S. Italy; its reappearance in
last century B.C. under the influence of Posidonius, who
combined Stoicism with Platonic Pythagoreanism. Cicero
affected by this revival; his Somnium Scipionis and
other later works. His mysticism takes practical form on
the death of his daughter; letters to Atticus about a
_fanum_. Individualisation of the Manes; freedom of
belief on such questions. Further evidence of Cicero's
tendency to mysticism at this time (45 B.C.), and his
belief in a future life. But did the ordinary Roman so
believe? Question whether he really believed in the
torments of Hades. Probability of this: explanation to
be found in the influence of Etruscan art and Greek
plays on primitive Roman ideas of the dead. Mysticism in
the form of astrology; Nigidius Figulus 380-402
LECTURE XVIII
RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE POEMS OF VIRGIL
Virgil sums up Roman religious experience, and combines
it with hope for the future. Sense of depression in his
day; want of sympathy and goodwill towards men. Virgil's
sympathetic outlook; shown in his treatment of animals,
Italian scenery, man's labour, and man's worship. His
idea of _pietas_. The theme of the Aeneid; Rome's
mission in the world, and the _pietas_ needed to carry
it out. Development of the character of Aeneas; his
_pietas_ imperfect in the first six books, perfected in
the last six, resulting in a balance between the ideas
of the Individual and the State. Illustration of this
from the poem. Importance of Book vi., which describes
the ordeal destined to perfect the _pietas_ of the hero.
The sense of Duty never afterwards deserts him; his
_pietas_ enlarged in a religious sense 403-427
LECTURE XIX
THE AUGUSTAN REVIVAL
Connection of Augustus and Virgil. Augustus aims at
re-establishing the national _pietas_, and securing the
_pax deorum_ by means of the _ius divinum_. How this
formed part of his political plans. Temple restoration
and its practical result. Revival of the ancient ritual;
illustrated from the records of the Arval Brethren. The
new element in it; Caesar-worship; but Augustus was
content with the honour of re-establishing the _pax
deorum_. Celebration of this in the Ludi saeculares, 17
B.C. Our detailed knowledge of this festival; meaning of
_saeculum_; description of the _ludi_, and illustration
of their meaning from the _Carmen saeculare_ of Horace.
Discussion of the performance of this hymn by the choirs
of boys and girls 428-451
LECTURE XX
CONCLUSION
Religious ingredients in Roman soil likely to be
utilised by Christianity. The Stoic ingredient;
revelation of the Universal, and ennobling of
Individual. The contribution of Mysticism; preparation
for Christian eschatology. The contribution of Virgil;
sympathy and sense of Duty. The contribution of Roman
religion proper: (1) sane and orderly character of
ritual, (2) practical character of Latin Christianity
visible in early Christian writings, (3) a religious
vocabulary, _e.g. religio, pietas, sanctus,
sacramentum_. But all this is but a slight contribution;
essential difference between Christianity and all that
preceded it in Italy; illustration from the language of
St. Paul 452-472
APPENDIX
I. ON THE USE OF HUTS OR BOOTHS IN RELIGIOUS RITUAL 473
II. PROF. DEUBNER'S THEORY OF THE LUPERCALIA 478
III. THE PAIRS OF DEITIES IN GELLIUS xiii. 23 481
IV. THE EARLY USAGE OF THE WORDS IUS AND FAS 486
V. THE WORSHIP OF SACRED UTENSILS 489
INDEX 491
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
I was invited to prepare these lectures, on Lord Gifford's foundation,
as one who has made a special study of the religious ideas and practice
of the Roman people. So far as I know, the subject has not been touched
upon as yet by any Gifford lecturer. We are in these days interested in
every form of religion, from the most rudimentary to the most highly
developed; from the ideas of the aborigines of Australia, which have now
become the common property of anthropologists, to the ethical and
spiritual religions of civilised man. Yet it is remarkable how few
students of the history of religion, apart from one or two specialists,
have been able to find anything instructive in the religion of the
Romans--of the Romans, I mean, as distinguished from that vast
collection of races and nationalities which eventually came to be called
by the name of Rome. At the Congress for the History of Religions held
at Oxford in 1908, out of scores of papers read and offered, not more
than one or two even touched on the early religious ideas of the most
practical and powerful people that the world has ever known.
This is due, in part at least, to the fact that just when Roman history
begins to be of absorbing interest, and fairly well substantiated by
evidence, the Roman religion, as religion, has already begun to lose its
vitality, its purity, its efficacy. It has become overlaid with foreign
rites and ideas, and it has also become a religious monopoly of the
State; of which the essential characteristic, as Mommsen has well put
it, and as we shall see later on, was "the conscious retention of the
principles of the popular belief, which were recognised as irrational,
for reasons of outward convenience."[1] It was not unlike the religion
of the Jews in the period immediately before the Captivity, and it was
never to profit by the refining and chastening influence of such lengthy
suffering. In this later condition it has not been attractive to
students of religious history; and to penetrate farther back into the
real religious ideas of the genuine Roman people is a task very far from
easy, of which indeed the difficulties only seem to increase as we
become more familiar with it.
It must be remarked, too, that as a consequence of this
unattractiveness, the accounts given in standard works of the general
features of this religion are rather chilling and repellent. More than
fifty years ago, in the first book of his _Roman History_, Mommsen so
treated of it--not indeed without some reservation,--and in this matter,
as in so many others, his view remained for many years the dominant one.
He looked at this religion, as was natural to him, from the point of
view of law; in religion as such he had no particular interest. If I am
not mistaken, it was for him, except in so far as it is connected with
Roman law, the least interesting part of all his far-reaching Roman
studies. More recent writers of credit and ability have followed his
lead, and stress has been laid on the legal side of religion at Rome; it
has been described over and over again as merely a system of contracts
between gods and worshippers, secured by hard and literal formalism, and
without ethical value or any native principle of growth. Quite recently,
for example, so great an authority as Professor Cumont has written of it
thus:--
"Il n'a peut être jamais existé aucune religion aussi froide, aussi
prosaïque que celle des Romains. Subordonnée à la politique, elle
cherche avant tout, par la stricte exécution de pratiques appropriées, à
assurer à l'État la protection des dieux ou à détourner les effets de
leur malveillance. Elle a conclu avec les puissances célestes un contrat
synallagmatique d'où découlent des obligations réciproques: sacrifices
d'une part, faveurs de l'autre.... Sa liturgie rappelle par la minutie
de ses prescriptions l'ancien droit civil. Cette religion se défie des
abandons de l'âme et des élans de la dévotion." And he finishes his
description by quoting a few words of the late M. Jean Réville: "The
legalism of the Pharisees, in spite of the dryness of their ritualistic
minutiae, could make the heart vibrate more than the formalism of the
Romans."[2]
Now it is not for me to deny the truth of such statements as this,
though I might be disposed to say that it is rather approximate than
complete truth as here expressed, does not sum up the whole story, and
only holds good for a single epoch of this religious history. But
surely, for anyone interested in the history of religion, a religious
system of such an unusual kind, with characteristics so well marked,
must, one would suppose, be itself an attractive subject. A religion
that becomes highly formalised claims attention by this very
characteristic. At one time, however far back, it must have accurately
expressed the needs and the aspirations of the Roman people in their
struggle for existence. It is obviously, as described by the writers I
have quoted, a very mature growth, a highly developed system; and the
story, if we could recover it, of the way in which it came to be thus
formalised, should be one of the deepest interest for students of the
history of religion. Another story, too, that of the gradual discovery
of the _inadequacy_ of this system, and of the engrafting upon it, or
substitution for it, of foreign rites and beliefs, is assuredly not less
instructive; and here, fortunately, our records make the task of telling
it an easier one.
Now these two stories, taken together, sum up what we may call the
_religious experience of the Roman people_; and as it is upon these that
I wish to concentrate your attention during this and the following
course, I have called these lectures by that name. My plan is not to
provide an exhaustive account of the details of the Roman worship or of
the nature of the Roman gods: that can be found in the works of
carefully trained specialists, of whom I shall have something to say
presently. More in accordance with the intentions of the Founder of
these lectures, I think, will be an attempt to follow out, with such
detailed comment as may be necessary, the religious experience of the
Romans, as an important part of their history. And this happens to
coincide with my own inclination and training; for I have been all my
academic life occupied in learning and teaching Roman history, and the
fascination which the study of the Roman religion has long had for me is
simply due to this fact. Whatever may be the case with other religions,
it is impossible to think of that of the Romans as detached from their
history as a whole; it is an integral part of the life and growth of the
people. An adequate knowledge of Roman history, with all its
difficulties and doubts, is the only scientific basis for the study of
Roman religion, just as an adequate knowledge of Jewish history is the
only scientific basis for a study of Jewish religion. The same rule must
hold good in a greater or less degree with all other forms of religion
of the higher type, and even when we are dealing with the religious
ideas of savage peoples it is well to bear it steadfastly in mind. I may
be excused for suggesting that in works on comparative religion and
morals this principle is not always sufficiently realised, and that the
panorama of religious or quasi-religious practice from all parts of the
world, and found among peoples of very different stages of development,
with which we are now so familiar, needs constant testing by increased
knowledge of those peoples in all their relations of life. At any rate,
in dealing with Roman evidence the investigator of religious history
should also be a student of Roman history generally, for the facts of
Roman life, public and private, are all closely concatenated together,
and spring with an organic growth from the same root. The branches tend
to separate, but the tree is of regular growth, compact in all its
parts, and you cannot safely concentrate your attention on one of these
parts to the comparative neglect of the rest. Conversely, too, the great
story of the rise and decay of the Roman dominion cannot be properly
understood without following out the religious history of this
people--their religious experience, as I prefer to call it. To take an
example of this, let me remind you of two leading facts in Roman
history: first, the strength and tenacity of the family as a group under
the absolute government of the paterfamilias; secondly, the strength and
tenacity of the idea of the State as represented by the _imperium_ of
its magistrates. How different in these respects are the Romans from the
Celts, the Scandinavians, even from the Greeks! But these two facts are
in great measure the result of the religious ideas of the people, and,
on the other hand, they themselves react with astonishing force on the
fortunes of that religion.
I do not indeed wish to be understood as maintaining that the religion
of the Roman was the most important element in his mental or civic
development: far from it. I should be the first to concede that the
religious element in the Roman mind was not that part of it which has
left the deepest impress on history, or contributed much, except in
externals, to our modern ideas of the Divine and of worship. It is not,
as Roman law was, the one great contribution of the Roman genius to the
evolution of humanity. But Roman law and Roman religion sprang from the
same root; they were indeed in origin _one and the same thing_.
Religious law was a part of the _ius civile_, and both were originally
administered by the same authority, the Rex. Following the course of the
two side by side for a few centuries, we come upon an astonishing
phenomenon, which I will mention now (it will meet us again) as showing
how far more interest can be aroused in our subject if we are fully
equipped as Roman historians than if we were to study the religion
alone, torn from the living body of the State, and placed on the
dissecting-board by itself. As the State grew in population and
importance, and came into contact, friendly or hostile, with other
peoples, both the religion and the law of the State were called upon to
expand, and they did so. But they did so in different ways; Roman law
expanded _organically_ and intensively, absorbing into its own body the
experience and practice of other peoples, while Roman religion expanded
_mechanically_ and extensively, by taking on the deities and worship of
others _without any organic change of its own being_. Just as the
English language has been able to absorb words of Latin origin, through
its early contact with French, into the very tissue and fibre of its
being, while German has for certain reasons never been able to do this,
but has adopted them as strangers only, without making them its very
own: so Roman law contrived to take into its own being the rules and
practices of strangers, while Roman religion, though it eventually
admitted the ideas and cults of Greeks and others, did so without taking
them by a digestive process into its own system. Had the law of Rome
remained as inelastic as the religion, the Roman people would have
advanced as little in civilisation as those races which embraced the
faith of Islam, with its law and religion alike impermeable to any
change.[3] Here is a phenomenon that at once attracts attention and
suggests questions not easy to answer. Why is it that the Roman religion
can never have the same interest and value for mankind as Roman law? I
hope that we shall find an answer to this question in the course of our
studies: at this moment I only propose it as an example of the advantage
gained for the study of one department of Roman life and thought by a
pretty complete equipment in the knowledge of others.
At the same time we must remember that the religion of the Romans is a
highly technical subject, like Roman law, the Roman constitution, and
almost everything else Roman; it calls for special knowledge as well as
a sufficient training in Roman institutions generally. Each of these
Roman subjects is like a language with a delicate accidence, which is
always presenting the unwary with pitfalls into which they are sure to
blunder unless they have a thorough mastery of it. I could mention a
book full of valuable thoughts about the relation to Paganism of the
early Christian Church, by a scholar at once learned and sympathetic;[4]
who when he happens to deal for a moment with the old Roman religion, is
inaccurate and misleading at every point. He knew, for example, that
this religion is built on the foundation of the worship of the family,
but he yielded to the temptation to assume that the family in heaven was
a counterpart of the family on earth, "as it might be seen in any palace
of the Roman nobility." "Jupiter and Juno," he says, "were the lord and
lady, and beneath them was an army of officers, attendants, ministers,
of every rank and degree." Such a description of the pantheon of his
religion would have utterly puzzled a Roman, even in the later days of
theological syncretism. Again he says that this religion was strongly
moral; that "the gods gave every man his duty, and expected him to
perform it." Here again no Roman of historical times, or indeed of any
age, could have allowed this to be his creed. Had it really been so, not
only the history of the Roman religion, but that of the Roman state,
would have been very different from what it actually was.
The principles then on which I wish to proceed in these lectures
are--(1) to keep the subject in continual touch with Roman history and
the development of the Roman state; (2) to exercise all possible care
and accuracy in dealing with the technical matters of the religion
itself. I may now go on to explain more exactly the plan I propose to
follow.
It will greatly assist me in this explanation if I begin by making clear
what I understand, for our present purposes, by the word _religion_.
There have been many definitions propounded--more in recent years than
ever before, owing to the recognition of the study of religion as a
department of anthropology. Controversies are going on which call for
new definitions, and it is only by slow degrees that we are arriving at
any common understanding as to the real essential thing or fact for
which we should reserve this famous word, and other words closely
connected with it, _e.g._ the supernatural. We are still disputing, for
example, as to the relation of religion to magic, and therefore as to
the exact meaning to be attributed to each of these terms.
Among the many definitions of religion which I have met with, there is
one which seems to me to be particularly helpful for our present
purposes; it is contributed by an American investigator. "_Religion is
the effective desire to be in right relation to the Power manifesting
itself in the universe._"[5] Dr. Frazer's definition is not different in
essentials: "By religion I understand a propitiation or conciliation of
powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the
course of nature and of human life;"[6] only that here the word is used
of acts of worship rather than of the feeling or desire that prompts
them. The definition of the late M. Jean Réville, in a chapter on
"Religious Experience," written near the end of his valuable life, is in
my view nearer the mark, and more comprehensive. "Religion," he says,
"is essentially a principle of life, the feeling of a living relation
between the human individual and the powers or power of which the
universe is the manifestation. What characterises each religion is its
way of looking upon this relation and its method of applying it."[7] And
a little further on he writes: "It is generally admitted that this
feeling of dependence upon the universe is the root of all religion."
But this is not so succinct as the definition which I quoted first, and
it introduces at least one term, _the individual_, which, for certain
good reasons, I think it will be better for us to avoid in studying the
early Roman religious ideas.
"_Religion is the effective desire to be in right relations with the
Power manifesting itself in the universe._" This has the advantage of
treating religion as primarily and essentially a _feeling_, an
instinctive desire, and the word "effective," skilfully introduced,
suggests that this feeling manifests itself in certain actions
undertaken in order to secure a desired end. Again, the phrase "right
relations" seems to me well chosen, and better than the "living
relation" of M. Réville, which if applied to the religions of antiquity
can only be understood in a sacramental sense, and is not obviously so
intended. "Right relation" will cover all religious feeling, from the
most material to the most spiritual. Think for a moment of the 119th
Psalm, the high-water mark of the religious feeling of the most
religious people of antiquity; it is a magnificent declaration of
conformity to the will of God, _i.e._ of the desire to be in right
relation to Him, to His statutes, judgments, laws, commands,
testimonies, righteousness. This is religion in a high state of
development; but our definition is so skilfully worded as to adapt
itself readily to much earlier and simpler forms. The "Power manifesting
itself in the universe" may be taken as including all the workings of
nature, which even now we most imperfectly understand, and which
primitive man so little understood that he misinterpreted them in a
hundred different ways. The effective desire to be in right relation
with these mysterious powers, so that they might not interfere with his
material well-being--with his flocks and herds, with his crops, too, if
he were in the agricultural stage, with his dwelling and his land, or
with his city if he had got so far in social development--this is what
we may call the religious instinct, the origin of what the Romans called
_religio_.[8] The effective desire to have your own will brought into
conformity to the will of a heavenly Father is a later development of
the same feeling; to this the genuine Roman never attained, and the
Greek very imperfectly.
If we keep this definition steadily in mind, I think we shall find it a
valuable guide in following out what I call the religious experience of
the Roman people; and at the present moment it will help me to explain
my plan in drawing up these lectures. To begin with, in the prehistoric
age of Rome, so far as we can discern from survivals of a later age, the
feeling or desire must have taken shape, ineffectively indeed, in many
quaint acts, some of them magical or quasi-magical, and possibly taken
over from an earlier and ruder population among whom the Latins settled.
Many of these continued, doubtless, to exist among the common folk,
unauthorised by any constituted power, while some few were absorbed into
the religious practice of the State, probably with the speedy loss of
their original significance. Such survivals of ineffective religion are
of course to be found in the lowest stratum of the religious ideas of
every people, ancient and modern; even among the Israelites,[9] and in
the rites of Islam or Christianity. They form, as it were, _a kind of
protoplasm of religious vitality_, from which an organic growth was
gradually developed. But though they are necessarily a matter of
investigation as survivals which have a story to tell, they do not carry
us very far when we are tracing the religious experience of a people,
and in any case the process of investigating them is one of groping in
the dark. I shall deal with these survivals in my next two lectures, and
then leave them for good.
I am more immediately concerned with the desire expressed in our
definition _when it has become more effective_; and this we find in the
Latins when they have attained to a complete settlement on the land, and
are well on in the agricultural stage of social development. This stage
we can dimly see reflected in the life of the home and farm of later
times; we have, I need hardly say, no contemporary evidence of it,
though archaeology may yet yield us something. But the conservatism of
rural life is a familiar fact, and comes home to me when I reflect that
in my own English village the main features of work and worship remained
the same through many centuries, until we were revolutionised by the
enclosure of the parish and the coming of the railroad in the middle of
the nineteenth century. The intense conservatism of rural Italy, up to
the present day, has always been an acknowledged fact, and admits of
easy explanation. We may be sure that the Latin farmer, before the
City-state was developed, was like his descendants of historical times,
the religious head of a family, whose household deities were
_effectively_ worshipped by a regular and orderly procedure, whose dead
were cared for in like manner, and whose land and stock were protected
from malignant spirits by a boundary made sacred by yearly rites of
sacrifice and prayer. Doubtless these wild spirits beyond his boundaries
were a constant source of anxiety to him; doubtless charms and spells
and other survivals from the earlier stage were in use to keep them from
mischief; but these tend to become exceptions in an orderly life of
agricultural routine which we may call _religious_. Spirits may accept
domicile within the limits of the farm, and tend, as always in this
agricultural stage, to become fixed to the soil and to take more
definite shape as in some sense deities. This stage--that of the
agricultural family--is the foundation of Roman civilised life, in
religious as in all other aspects, and it will form the subject of my
fourth lecture.
The growing effectiveness of the desire, as seen in the family and in
the agricultural stage, prepares us for still greater effectiveness in
the higher form of civilisation which we know as that of the City-state.
That desire, let me say once more, is to be in right relations with the
Power manifesting itself in the universe. It is only in the higher
stages of civilisation that this desire can really become effective;
social organisation, as I shall show, produces an increased knowledge of
the nature of the Power, and with it a systematisation of the means
deemed necessary to secure the right relations. The City-state, the
peculiar form in which Greek and Italian social and political life
eventually blossomed and fructified, was admirably fitted to secure this
effectiveness. It was, of course, an intensely _local_ system; and the
result was, first, that the Power is localised in certain spots and
propitiated by certain forms of cult within the city wall, thus bringing
the divine into closest touch with the human population and its
interests; and secondly, that the concentration of intelligence and
will-power within a small space might, and did at Rome, develop a very
elaborate system for securing the right relations--in other words, it
produced a religious system as highly ritualistic as that of the Jews.
With the several aspects of this system my fifth and succeeding lectures
will be occupied. I shall deal first with the religious calendar of the
earliest historical form of the City-state, which most fortunately has
come down to us entire. I shall devote two lectures to the early Roman
ideas of divinity, and the character of their deities as reflected in
the calendar, and as further explained by Roman and Greek writers of the
literary age. Two other lectures will discuss the ritual of sacrifice
and prayer, with the priests in charge of these ceremonies, and the
ritual of vows and of "purification." In each of these I shall try to
point out wherein the weakness of this religious system lay--viz. in
attempts at effectiveness so elaborate that they overshot their mark, in
a misconception of the means necessary to secure the right relations,
and in a failure to grow in knowledge of the Power itself.
Lastly, as the City-state advances socially and politically, in trade
and commerce, in alliance and conquest, we shall find that the ideas of
other peoples about the Power, and their methods of propitiation, begin
to be adopted in addition to the native stock. The first stages of this
revolution will bring us to the conclusion of my present course; but we
shall be then well prepared for what follows. For later on we shall find
the Romans feeling afresh the desire to be in right relation with the
Power, discovering that their own highly formalised system is no longer
equal to the work demanded of it, and pitiably mistaking their true
course in seeking a remedy. Their knowledge of the Divine, always narrow
and limited, becomes by degrees blurred and obscured, and their sight
begins to fail them. I hope in due course to explain this, and to give
you some idea of the sadness of their religious experience before the
advent of an age of philosophy, of theological syncretism, and of the
worship of the rulers of the state.
Let us now turn for a few minutes to the special difficulties of our
subject. These are serious enough; but they have been wonderfully and
happily reduced since I began to be interested in the Roman religion
some twenty-five years ago. There were then only two really valuable
books which dealt with the whole subject. Though I could avail myself of
many treatises, good and bad, on particular aspects of it, some few of
which still survive, the only two comprehensive and illuminating books
were Preller's _Römische Mythologie_, and Marquardt's volume on the cult
in his _Staatsverwaltung_. Both of these were then already many years
old, but they had just been re-edited by two eminent scholars
thoroughly well equipped for the task--Preller's work by H. Jordan, and
Marquardt's by Georg Wissowa. They were written from different points of
view; Preller dealt with the deities and the ideas about them rather
than with the cults and the priests concerned with them; while Marquardt
treated the subject as a part of the administration of government,
dealing with the worship and the _ius divinum_, and claiming that this
was the only safe and true way of arriving at the ideas underlying that
law and worship.[10] Both books are still indispensable for the student;
but Marquardt's is the safer guide, as dealing with facts to the
exclusion of fancies. The two taken together had collected and sifted
the evidence so far as it was then available.
The _Corpus Inscriptionum_ had not at that time got very far, but its
first volume, edited by Mommsen, contained the ancient Fasti, which
supply us with the religious calendar of early Rome, and with other
matter throwing light upon it. This first volume was an invaluable help,
and formed the basis (in a second edition) of the book I was eventually
able to write on the _Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_. At
that time, too, in the 'eighties, Roscher's _Lexicon of Greek and Roman
Mythology_ began to appear, which aimed at summing up all that was then
known about the deities of both peoples; this is not even yet completed,
and many of the earlier articles seem now almost antiquated, as
propounding theories which have not met with general acceptance. All
these earlier articles are now being superseded by those in the new
edition of Pauly's _Real-Encyclopädie_, edited by Wissowa. Lastly,
Wissowa himself in 1902 published a large volume entitled _Die Religion
und Kultus der Römer_, which will probably be for many years the best
and safest guide for all students of our subject. Thoroughly trained in
the methods of dealing with evidence both literary and archaeological,
Wissowa produced a work which, though it has certain limitations, has
the great merit of not being likely to lead anyone astray. More
skilfully and successfully than any of his predecessors, he avoided the
chief danger and difficulty that beset all who meddle with Roman
religious antiquities, and invariably lead the unwary to their
destruction; he declined to accept as evidence what in nine cases out of
ten is no true evidence at all--the statements of ancient authors
influenced by Greek ideas and Greek fancy. He holds in the main to the
principle laid down by Marquardt, that we may use, as evidence for their
religious ideas, what we are told that the Romans _did_ in practising
their worship, but must regard with suspicion, and subject to severe
criticism, what either they themselves or the Greeks wrote about those
religious ideas--that is, about divine beings and their doings.
It is indeed true that the one great difficulty of our subject lies in
the nature of the evidence; and it is one which we can never hope
entirely to overcome. We have always to bear in mind that the Romans
produced no literature till the third century B.C.; and the documentary
evidence that survives from an earlier age in the form of inscriptions,
or fragments of hymns or of ancient law (such as the calendar of which I
spoke just now), is of the most meagre character, and usually most
difficult to interpret. Thus the Roman religion stands alone among the
religions of ancient civilisations in that we are almost entirely
without surviving texts of its forms of prayer, of its hymns or its
legends;[11] even in Greece the Homeric poems, with all the earliest
Greek literature and art, make up to some extent for the want of that
documentary evidence which throws a flood of light on the religions of
Babylon, Egypt, the Hindus, and the Jewish people. We know in fact as
little about the religion of the old Italian populations as we do about
that of our own Teutonic ancestors, less perhaps than we do about that
of the Celtic peoples. The Romans were a rude and warlike folk, and
meddled neither with literature nor philosophy until they came into
immediate contact with the Greeks; thus it was that, unfortunately for
our purposes, the literary spirit, when at last it was born in Italy,
was rather Greek than Roman. When that birth took place Rome had spread
her influence over Italy,--perhaps the greatest work she ever
accomplished; and thus the latest historian of Latin literature can
venture to write that "the greatest time in Roman history was already
past when real historical evidence becomes available."[12]
We have thus to face two formidable facts: (1) that the period covered
by my earlier lectures must in honesty be called prehistoric; and (2)
that when the Romans themselves began to write about it they did so
under the overwhelming influence of Greek culture. With few exceptions,
all that we can learn of the early Roman religion from Roman or Greek
writers comes to us, not in a pure Roman form, clearly conceived as all
things truly Roman were, but seen dimly through the mist of the
Hellenistic age. The Roman gods, for example, are made the sport of
fancy and the subject of Hellenistic love-stories, by Greek poets and
their Roman imitators,[13] or are more seriously treated by Graeco-Roman
philosophy after a fashion which would have been absolutely
incomprehensible to the primitive men in whose minds they first had
their being. The process of disentangling the Roman element from the
Greek in the literary evidence is one which can never be satisfactorily
accomplished; and on the whole it is better, with Wissowa and Marquardt,
to hold fast by the facts of the cult, where the distinction between the
two is usually obvious, than to flounder about in a slough of what I can
only call pseudo-evidence. If all that English people knew about their
Anglo-Saxon forefathers were derived from Norman-French chroniclers, how
much should we really know about government or religion in the centuries
before the Conquest! And yet this comparison gives but a faint idea of
the treacherous nature of the literary evidence I am speaking of. It is
true indeed that in the last age of the Republic a few Romans began to
take something like a scientific interest in their own religious
antiquities; and to Varro, by far the most learned of these, and to
Verrius Flaccus, who succeeded him in the Augustan age, we owe directly
or indirectly almost all the solid facts on which our knowledge of the
Roman worship rests. But their works have come down to us in a most
imperfect and fragmentary state, and what we have of them we owe mainly
to the erudition of later grammarians and commentators, and the learning
of the early Christian fathers, who drew upon them freely for
illustrations of the absurdities of paganism. And it must be added that
when Varro himself deals with the Roman gods and the old ideas about
them, he is by no means free from the inevitable influence of Greek
thought.
Apart from the literary material and the few surviving fragments of
religious law and ritual, there are two other sources of light of which
we can now avail ourselves, archaeology and anthropology; but it must be
confessed that as yet their illuminating power is somewhat uncertain. It
reminds the scrupulous investigator of those early days of the electric
light, when its flickering tremulousness made it often painful to read
by, and when, too, it might suddenly go out and leave the reader in
darkness. It is well to remember that both sciences are young, and have
much of the self-confidence of youth; and that Italian archaeology, now
fast becoming well organised within Italy, has also to be co-ordinated
with the archaeology of the whole Mediterranean basin, before we can
expect from it clear and unmistakable answers to hard questions about
race and religion. This work, which cannot possibly be done by an
individual without _co-operation_--the secret of sound work which the
Germans have long ago discovered--is in course of being carried out, so
far as is at present possible, by a syndicate of competent
investigators.[14]
In order to indicate the uncertain nature of the light which for a long
time to come is all we can expect from Italian archaeology, I have only
to remind you that one of the chief questions we have to ask of it is
the relation of the mysterious Etruscan people to the other Italian
stocks, in respect of language, religion, and art. Whether the Etruscans
were the same people whom the Greeks called Pelasgians, as many
investigators now hold: whether the earliest Roman city was in any true
sense an Etruscan one: these are questions on the answers to which it is
not as yet safe to build further hypotheses. In regard to religion, too,
we are still very much in the dark. For example, there are many Etruscan
works of art in which Roman deities are portrayed, as is certain from
the fact that their names accompany the figures; but it is as yet almost
impossible to determine how far we can use these for the interpretation
of Roman religious ideas or legends. Many years ago a most attractive
hypothesis was raised on the evidence of certain of these works of art,
where Hercules and Juno appear together in a manner which strongly
suggests that they are meant to represent the male and female principles
of human life; this hypothesis was taken up by early writers in the
_Mythological Lexicon_, and relying upon them I adopted it in my _Roman
Festivals_,[15] and further applied it to the interpretation of an
unsolved problem in the fourth _Eclogue_ of Virgil.[16] But since then
doubt has been thrown on it by Wissowa, who had formerly accepted it. As
being of Etruscan origin, and found in places very distant from each
other and from Rome, we have, he says, no good right to use these works
of art as evidence for the Roman religion.[17] The question remains open
as to these and many other works of art, but the fact that the man of
coolest judgment and most absolute honesty is doubtful, suggests that we
had best wait patiently for more certain light.
In Rome itself, where archaeological study is concentrated and admirably
staffed, great progress has been made, and much light thrown on the
later periods of religious history. But for the religion of the ancient
Roman state, with which we are at present concerned, it must be
confessed that very little has been gleaned. The most famous discovery
is that recently made in the Forum of an archaic inscription which
almost certainly relates to some religious act; but as yet no scholar
has been able to interpret it with anything approaching to
certainty.[18] More recently excavations on the further bank of the
Tiber threw a glint of light on the nature of an ancient deity, Furrina,
about whom till then we practically knew nothing at all; but the
evidence thus obtained was late and in Greek characters. We must in fact
entertain no great hopes of illumination from excavations, but accept
thankfully what little may be vouchsafed to us. On the other hand, from
the gradual development of Italian archaeology as a whole, and, I must
here add, from the study of the several old Italian languages, much may
be expected in the future.
The other chief contributory science is anthropology, _i.e._ the study
of the working of the mind of primitive man, as it is seen in the ideas
and practices of uncivilised peoples at the present day, and also as it
can be traced in survivals among more civilised races. For the history
of the religion of the Roman City-state its contribution must of
necessity be a limited one; that is a part of Roman history in general,
and its material is purely Roman, or perhaps I should say, Graeco-Roman;
and Wissowa in all his work has consistently declined to admit the value
of anthropological researches for the elucidation of Roman problems.
Perhaps it is for this very reason that his book is the safest guide we
possess for the study of what the Romans did and thought in the matter
of religion; but if we wish to try and get to the original significance
of those acts and thoughts, it is absolutely impossible in these days to
dispense with the works of a long series of anthropologists, many of
them fortunately British, who have gradually been collecting and
classifying the material which in the long run will fructify in definite
results. If we consider the writings of eminent scholars who wrote about
Greek and Roman religion and mythology before the appearance of Dr.
Tylor's _Primitive Culture_--Klausen, Preuner, Preller, Kuhn, and many
others, who worked on the comparative method but with slender material
for the use of it--we see at once what an immense advance has been
effected by that monumental work, and by the stimulus that it gave to
others to follow the same track. Now we have in this country the works
of Lang, Robertson Smith, Farnell, Frazer, Hartland, Jevons, and others,
while a host of students on the Continent are writing in all languages
on anthropological subjects. Some of these I shall quote incidentally in
the course of these lectures; at present I will content myself with
making one or two suggestions as to the care needed in using the
collections and theories of anthropologists, as an aid in Roman
religious studies.
First, let us bear in mind that anthropologists are apt to have their
favourite theories--conclusions, that is, which are the legitimate
result of reasoning inductively on the class of facts which they have
more particularly studied. Thus Mannhardt had his theory of the
Vegetation-spirit, Robertson Smith that of the sacramental meal, Usener
that of the Sondergötter, Dr. Frazer that of divine Kingship; all of
which are perfectly sound conclusions based on facts which no one
disputes. They have been of the greatest value to anthropological
research; but when they are applied to the explanation of Roman
practices we should be instantly on our guard, ready indeed to welcome
any glint of light that we may get from them, but most carefully
critical and even suspicious of their application to other phenomena
than those which originally suggested them. It is in the nature of man
as a researcher, when he has found a key, to hasten to apply it to all
the doors he can find, and sometimes, it must be said, to use violence
in the application; and though the greatest masters of the science will
rarely try to force the lock, they will use so much gentle persuasion as
sometimes to make us fancy that they have unfastened it. All such
attempts have their value, but it behoves us to be cautious in accepting
them. The application by Mannhardt of the theory of the
Vegetation-spirit to certain Roman problems, _e.g._ to that of the
Lupercalia,[19] and the October horse,[20] must be allowed, fascinating
as it was, to have failed in the main. The application by Dr. Frazer of
the theory of divine Kingship to the early religious history of Rome, is
still _sub judice_, and calls for most careful and discriminating
criticism.[21]
Secondly, as I have already said, Roman evidence is peculiarly difficult
to handle, except in so far as it deals with the simple facts of
worship; when we use it for traditions, myths, ideas about the nature of
divine beings, we need a training not only in the use of evidence in
general, but in the use of Roman evidence in particular.
Anthropologists, as a rule, have not been through such a training, and
they are apt to handle the evidence of Roman writers with a light heart
and rather a rough hand. The result is that bits of evidence are put
together, each needing conscientious criticism, to support hypotheses
often of the flimsiest kind, which again are used to support further
hypotheses, and so on, until the sober inquirer begins to feel his brain
reeling and his footing giving way beneath him. I shall have occasion to
notice one or two examples of this uncritical use of evidence later on,
and will say no more of it now. No one can feel more grateful than I do
to the many leading anthropologists who have touched in one way or
another on Roman evidence; but for myself I try never to forget the
words of Columella, with which a great German scholar began one of his
most difficult investigations: "In universa vita pretiosissimum est
intellegere quemque nescire se quod nesciat."[22]
NOTES TO LECTURE I
[1] Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_ (_E.T._), vol. ii. p. 433.
[2] Cumont, _Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme
romain_, p. 36. Cp. Dill, _Roman Society in the Last
Century of the Western Empire_, p. 63. Gwatkin, _The
Knowledge of God_, vol. ii. p. 133.
[3] See some valuable remarks in Lord Cromer's _Modern
Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 135.
[4] Since this lecture was written this scholar has
passed away, to the great grief of his many friends; and
I refrain from mentioning his name.
[5] Ira W. Howerth, in _International Journal of
Ethics_, 1903, p. 205. I owe the reference to R.
Karsten, _The Origin of Worship_, Wasa, 1905, p. 2,
note. Cp. E. Caird, _Gifford Lectures_ ("Evolution of
Theology in the Greek Philosophers"), vol. i. p. 32.
"That which underlies all forms of religion, from the
highest to the lowest, is the idea of God as an absolute
power or principle." To this need only be added the
desire to be in right relation to it. Mr. Marett's word
"supernaturalism" seems to mean the same thing; "There
arises in the region of human thought a powerful impulse
to objectify, and even to personify, the mysterious or
supernatural something felt; and in the region of will a
corresponding impulse to render it innocuous, or, better
still, propitious, by force of constraint (_i.e._
magic), communion, or conciliation." See his _Threshold
of Religion_, p. 11. Prof. Haddon, commenting on this
(_Magic and Fetishism_, p. 93), adds that "there are
thus produced the two fundamental factors of religion,
the belief in some mysterious power, and the desire to
enter into communication with the power by means of
worship." Our succinct definition seems thus to be
adequate.
[6] _The Golden Bough_, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 62.
[7] _Liberal Protestantism_, p. 64.
[8] For _religio_ as a feeling essentially, see Wissowa,
_Religion und Kultus der Römer_, p. 318 (henceforward to
be cited as _R.K._). For further development of the
meaning of the word in Latin literature, see the
author's paper in _Proceedings of the Congress for the
History of Religions_ (Oxford, 1908), vol. ii. p. 169
foll. A different view of the original meaning of the
word is put forward by W. Otto in _Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft_, vol. xii., 1909, p. 533
(henceforward to be cited as _Archiv_ simply). See also
below, p. 459 foll.
[9] See, _e.g._, Frazer in _Anthropological Essays
presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 101 foll.
[10] _Staatsverwaltung_, iii. p. 2. This will
henceforward be cited as _Marquardt_ simply. It forms
part of the great _Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer_
of Mommsen and Marquardt, and is translated into French,
but unfortunately not into English. I may add here that
I have only recently become acquainted with what was, at
the time it was written, a remarkably good account of
the Roman religion, full of insight as well as learning,
viz. Döllinger's _The Gentile and the Jew_, Book VII.
(vol. ii. of the English translation, 1906).
[11] Two fragments of ancient carmina, _i.e._ formulae
which are partly spells and partly hymns, survive--those
of the Fratres Arvales and the Salii or dancing priests
of Mars. For surviving formulae of prayer see below, p.
185 foll. Our chief authority on the ritual of prayer
and sacrifice comes from Iguvium in Umbria, and is in
the Umbrian dialect; it will be referred to in
Bücheler's _Umbrica_ (1883), where a Latin translation
will be found. The Umbrian text revised by Prof. Conway
forms an important part of that eminent scholar's work
on the Italian dialects.
[12] F. Leo, in _Die griechische und lateinische
Literatur und Sprache_, p. 328. Cp. Schanz, _Geschichte
der röm. Literatur_, vol. i. p. 54 foll.
[13] Among Roman poets Ovid is the worst offender,
Propertius and Tibullus mislead in a less degree; but
they all make up for it to some extent by preserving for
us features of the worship as it existed in their own
day. The confusion that has been caused in Roman
religious history by mixing up Greek and Roman evidence
is incalculable, and has recently been increased by Pais
(_Storia di Roma_, and _Ancient Legends of Roman
History_), and by Dr. Frazer in his lectures on the
early history of Kingship--writers to whom in some ways
we owe valuable hints for the elucidation of Roman
problems. See also Soltau, _Die Anfänge der römischen
Geschichtsschreibung_, 1909, p. 3.
[14] Most welcome to English readers has been Mr. T. E.
Peet's recently published volume on _The Stone and
Bronze Ages in Italy_, and still more valuable for our
purposes will be its sequel, when it appears, on the
Iron Age.
[15] _Roman Festivals_, p. 142 foll.; henceforward to be
cited as _R.F._
[16] See Virgil's _Messianic Eclogue_, by Mayor, Fowler,
and Conway, p. 75 foll.
[17] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 227.
[18] An account of this in English, with photographs,
will be found in Pais's _Ancient Legends of Roman
History_, p. 21 foll., and notes.
[19] Mannhardt, _Mythologische Forschungen_, p. 72 foll.
[20] _Ibid._, p. 156 foll.
[21] _Lectures on the Early History of Kingship_,
lectures 7-9.
[22] Not long after these last sentences were written, a
large work appeared by Dr. Binder, a German professor of
law, entitled _Die Plebs_, which deals freely with the
oldest Roman religion, and well illustrates the
difficulties under which we have to work while
archaeologists, ethnologists, and philologists are still
constantly in disagreement as to almost every important
question in the history of early Italian culture. Dr.
Binder's main thesis is that the earliest Rome was
composed of two distinct communities, each with its own
religion, _i.e._ deities, priests, and sacra; the one
settled on the Palatine, a pastoral folk of primitive
culture, and of pure Latin race; the other settled on
the Quirinal, Sabine in origin and language, and of more
advanced development in social and religious matters. So
far this sounds more or less familiar to us, but when
Dr. Binder goes on to identify the Latin folk with the
Plebs and the Sabine settlement with the Patricians, and
calls in religion to help him with the proof of this, it
is necessary to look very carefully into the religious
evidence he adduces. So far as I can see, the limitation
of the word _patrician_ to the Quirinal settlement is
very far from being proved by this evidence (see _The
Year's Work in Classical Studies_, 1909, p. 69). Yet the
hypothesis is an extremely interesting one, and were it
generally accepted, would compel us to modify in some
important points our ideas of Roman religious history,
and also of Roman legal history, with which Dr. Binder
is mainly concerned.
LECTURE II
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: SURVIVALS
My subject proper is the religion of an organised State: the religious
experience of a comparatively civilised people. But I wish, in the first
place, to do what has never yet been done by those who have written on
the Roman religion--I wish to take a survey of the relics, surviving in
later Roman practice and belief, of earlier stages of rudimentary
religious experience. In these days of anthropological and sociological
research, it is possible to do this without great difficulty; and if I
left it undone, our story of the development of religion at Rome would
be mutilated at the beginning. Also we should be at a disadvantage in
trying to realise the wonderful work done by the early authorities of
the State in eliminating from their rule of worship (_ius divinum_)
almost all that was magical, barbarous, or, as later Romans would have
called it, superstitious. This is a point on which I wish to lay
especial stress in the next few lectures, and it entails a somewhat
tiresome account of the ideas and practices of which, as I believe, they
sought to get rid. These, I may as well say at once, are to be found for
the most part surviving, as we might expect, _outside_ of the religion
of the State; where they survive within its limits, they will be found
to have almost entirely lost their original force and meaning.
Every student of religious history knows that a religious system is a
complex growth, far more complex than would appear at first sight; that
it is sure to contain relics of previous eras of human experience,
embedded in the social strata as lifeless fossils. These only indeed
survive because human nature is intensely conservative, especially in
religious matters; and of this conservative instinct the Romans afford
as striking an example as we can readily find. They clung with
extraordinary tenacity, all through their history, to old forms; they
seem to have had a kind of superstitious feeling that these dead forms
had still a value as such, though all the life was gone out of them. It
would be easy to illustrate this curious feature of the Roman mind from
the history of its religion; it never disappeared; and to this day the
Catholic church in Italy retains in a thinly-disguised form many of the
religious practices of the Roman people.
Stage after stage must have been passed by the Latins long before our
story rightly begins; how many revolutions of thought they underwent,
how much they learnt and took over from earlier inhabitants of the
country in which they finally settled, we cannot even guess. As I said
in the last lecture, we have no really ancient history of the Romans, as
we have, for example, of the Egyptians or Babylonians; to us it is all
darkness, save where a little light has been thrown on the buried strata
by archaeology and anthropology. That little light, which may be
expected to increase in power, shows survivals here and there of
primitive modes of thought; and these I propose to deal with now in the
following order. _Totemism_ I shall mention merely to clear it out of
the way; but _taboo_ will take us some little time, and so will _magic_
in its various forms.
About totemism all I have to say is this. As I write, Dr. Frazer's great
work on this subject has just appeared; it is entirely occupied with
totemism among modern savages, true totemic peoples, with the object of
getting at the real principles of that curious stratum of human thought,
and he leaves to others the discussion of possible survivals of it among
Aryans, Semites, and Egyptians. He himself is sceptical about all the
evidence that has been adduced to prove its existence in classical
antiquity (see vol. i. p. 86 and vol. iv. p. 13). Under these
circumstances, and seeing that Dr. Frazer has always been the accepted
exponent of totemism in this country since the epoch-making works
appeared of Tylor and Robertson Smith, it is obviously unnecessary for
me either to attempt to explain what it is, or to examine the attempts
to find survivals of it in ancient Italy. When it first became matter of
interest to anthropologists it was only natural that they should be apt
to find it everywhere. Dr. Jevons, for example, following in the steps
of Robertson Smith, found plenty of totemistic survivals both in Greece
and Italy in writing his valuable _Introduction to the History of
Religion_; but he is now aware that he went too far in this direction.
Quite recently there has been a run after the same scent in France; not
long ago a French scholar published a book on the ensigns of the Roman
army,[23] which originally represented certain animals, and using Dr.
Frazer's early work on totemism with a very imperfect knowledge of the
subject, tried to prove that these were originally totem signs. Roman
names of families and old Italian tribe-names are still often quoted as
totemistic; but the Fabii and Caepiones, named after cultivated plants,
and the Picentes and Hirpini, after woodpecker and wolf, though tempting
to the totemist, have not persuaded Dr. Frazer to accept them as
totemistic, and may be left out of account here; there may be many
reasons for the adoption of such names besides the totemistic one. In
the course of the last Congress of religious history, a sober French
scholar, M. Toutain, made an emphatic protest against the prevailing
tendency in France, of which the leading representative is M. Salomon
Reinach.[24] Let us pass on at once to the second primitive mode of
thought which I mentioned just now, and which is not nearly so
remote--speaking anthropologically--from classical times as totemism.
Totemism belongs to a form of society, that of tribe or clan, in which
family life is unknown in our sense of the word, and it is therefore
wholly remote from the life of the ancient Italian stocks, in whose
social organisation the family was a leading fact; but _taboo_ seems
rather to be a mode of thought common to primitive peoples up to a
comparatively advanced stage of development, and has left its traces in
all systems of religion, including those of the present day.
By this famous word _taboo_, of Polynesian origin, is to be understood a
very important part of what I have called the protoplasm of primitive
religion, and one closely allied both to magic and fetishism. For our
present purposes we may define it as a mysterious influence believed to
exist in objects both animate and inanimate, which makes them
_dangerous_, _infectious_, _unclean_, _or holy_, which two last
qualities are often almost identical in primitive thought, as Robertson
Smith originally taught us.[25] What exactly the savage or
semi-civilised mind thought about this influence we hardly yet know; we
have another Polynesian word, _mana_, which expresses conveniently its
positive aspect, and may in time help us towards a better understanding
of it.[26] It is in origin pre-animistic, _i.e._ it is not so much
believed to emanate from a _spirit_ residing in the object, as from some
occult miasmatic quality. All human beings in contact with other men or
things possessing this quality are believed to suffer in some way, and
to communicate the infection which they themselves receive. As Dr.
Farnell says in his chapter on the ritual of purification,[27] "The
sense-instinct that suggests all this was probably some primeval terror
or aversion evoked by certain objects, as we see animals shrink with
disgust at the sight or smell of blood. The nerves of savage man are
strangely excited by certain stimuli of touch, smell, taste, sight; the
specially exciting object is something that we should call mysterious,
weird, or uncanny."
Based on this notion of constant danger from infection, there arose a
code of unwritten custom as rigid as that enforced by a careful
physician in infectious cases at the present day; and thus, too, in
course of time there was developed the idea of the possibility of
_disinfection_, an idea as salutary as the discovery in medical science
of effective methods for the disinfection of disease. The code of taboo
had an obvious ethical value, as Dr. Jevons pointed out long ago;[28]
like all discipline carried out with a social end in view, it helped men
to realise that they were under obligations to the community of which
they were a part, and that they would be visited by severe penalties if
they neglected these duties. But it inevitably tended to forge a set of
fetters binding and cramping the minds of its captives with a countless
number of terrors; life was full of constant anxiety, of that feeling
expressed by the later Romans in the word _religio_,[29] which, as we
shall see, probably had its origin in this period of primitive
superstition. The only remedy is the _discovery of the means of
disinfection_, or, as we commonly call it, of _purification_: a
discovery which must have been going on for ages, and only finds its
completion at Rome in the era of the City-state. We shall return to this
part of the subject when we deal with the ritual of purification; at
present we must attend to certain survivals in that ritual which suggest
that at one time the ancestors of the Roman people lived under this
unwritten code of taboo.
Let us see, in the first place, how human beings were supposed to be
affected by this mysterious influence under certain circumstances and at
particular periods of their existence. As universally in primitive life,
the new-born infant must originally have been taboo; for every Roman
child needed purification or disinfection, boys on the ninth, girls on
the eighth day after birth. This day was called the _dies lustricus_,
the day of a purificatory rite; "est lustricus dies," says Macrobius,
"_quo infantes lustrantur_ et nomen accipiunt."[30] In historical times
the naming of the child was doubtless the more practically important
part of the ceremony; though we may note in passing that the mystic
value attaching to names, of which there are traces in Roman usage, may
have even originally given that part a greater significance than we
should naturally attribute to it.[31] Again, when the child reaches the
age of puberty, it is all the world over believed to be in a critical or
dangerous condition, needing disinfection; of this idea, so far as I
know, the later Romans show hardly a trace, but we may suppose that the
ceremony of laying aside the _toga_ of childhood, which was accompanied
by a sacrifice, was a faint survival of some process of
purification.[32] Once more, after a death the whole family had to be
purified with particular care from the contagion of the corpse,[33]
which was here as everywhere taboo; a cypress bough was stuck over the
door of the house of a noble family to give warning to any passing
pontifex that he was not to enter it;[34] and those who followed the
funeral cortège were purified by being sprinkled with water and by
stepping over fire.[35] _Society had effectually protected itself
against the miasma in all these cases by the discovery of the means of
disinfection._
One of the commonest forms of taboo is that on women, who, especially at
certain periods, were apparently believed to be "infectious."[36] Of
this belief we have very distinct survivals in Roman ritual, which I
must here be content to mention only, leaving details to trained
anthropologists to explain. We find them both in _sacra privata_ and
_sacra publica_. Cato has preserved the formula for the propitiation of
Mars Silvanus in the private rites of the farm; it is to take place _in
silva_, and its object is the protection of the cattle, doubtless those
which have been turned out to pasture in the forest, and are therefore
in danger from evil beasts and evil spirits. Now this _res divina_ may
be performed either by a free man or a slave, _but no woman may be
present_, nor see what is going on.[37] In _sacra publica_ women were
excluded from the cult of Hercules at the Ara Maxima, and were not
allowed to swear by the name of that god; facts which are usually
connected with the doubtful identification of Hercules with Genius, or
the male principle of life.[38] More conclusive evidence of taboo in the
case of women is the fact that at certain sacrifices they were ordered
to withdraw, both _mulieres_ and _virgines_, together with other persons
to be mentioned directly.[39] Unfortunately we are not told what those
sacrifices were; but it seems clear enough that there had been at one
time a scruple (_religio_) about admitting women of any age to certain
sacred rites. If so, it is remarkable how the good sense of the Roman
people overcame any serious disabilities which might have been produced
by such ideas; the Roman woman gained for herself a position of dignity,
and even of authority, in her household, which had very important
results on the formation of the character of the people.[40] Traces of
the old superstition doubtless continued to survive in folklore; an
example, interesting because it seems to illustrate the positive aspect
of taboo (_mana_), may be found by the curious in Pliny's _Natural
History_, xxviii. 78.
Another widely-spread example of the class of ideas we are discussing is
the belief that _strangers_ are dangerous. Dr. Frazer tells us that "to
guard against the baneful influence exerted voluntarily or involuntarily
by strangers is an elementary dictate of savage prudence." You have to
disarm them of their magical powers, to counteract "the baneful
influence which is believed to emanate from them."[41] Of this feeling
he has collected a great number of convincing illustrations. We find it
also surviving in Roman ritual. A note, referred to above, which has
come down to us from the learned Verrius Flaccus, informs us that at
certain sacrifices the lictor proclaimed "_hostis vinctus mulier virgo
exesto_," where _hostis_ has its old meaning of stranger.[42] This is,
of course, merely the old feeling of taboo surviving in the religious
ritual of the City-state, and is also no doubt connected with the belief
that the recognised deities of a community could not be approached by
any but the members of that community; but its taproot is probably to be
found in the ideas described by Dr. Frazer. We can illustrate it well
from the ritual of another Italian city, Iguvium in Umbria, which, as I
mentioned in a note to my last lecture, has come down to us in a very
elaborate form. In the ordinance for the _lustratio populi_ of that city
the magistrate is directed to expel all members of certain neighbouring
communities by a thrice-repeated proclamation.[43] Such fear of
strangers is not even yet extinct in Italy. Professor von Duhn told me
that once when approaching an Italian village in search of inscriptions
he was taken for the devil, being unluckily mounted on a black horse and
dressed in black, and was met by a priest with a crucifix, who was at
last persuaded to "disinfect" him with holy water as a condition of his
being admitted to the village. But the Romans of historical times, in
this as in so many other ways, discovered easy methods of overcoming
these fears and scruples: we find a good example of this in the
organised college of Fetiales, who, on entering as envoys a foreign
territory, were fully protected by their sacred herbs, carried by a
_verbenarius_, against all hostile contamination.[44]
A remark seems here necessary about the apparent inconsistency between
this feeling of anxiety about strangers and the well-known ancient
Italian practice of _hospitium_, by which two communities, or two
individuals, or an individual and a community, entered into relations
which bound them to mutual hospitality and kindness in case of need:[45]
a practice so widely spread and so highly developed that it may be
considered one of the most valuable civilising agents in the early
history of Italy. There is, however, no real inconsistency here. In the
first place, the stranger who was removed on the occasion of solemn
public religious rites may be assumed not to have been in possession of
the _ius hospitii_ with the Roman state, and in any case it must be
doubtful whether that _ius_ would give him the right of being present at
all sacrificial rites. Secondly, the researches of Dr. Westermarck have
recently, for the first time, made it clear that both the taboo on
strangers and the very widely-spread practice of hospitality can
ultimately be traced down to the same root. The stranger is dangerous;
but for that very reason it is desirable to secure his good-will at
once. He may have the evil eye; but if so, it is as well to disarm him
by offering him food and drink, and, when he has partaken of these, by
entering into communion with him in the act of partaking also yourself.
Expediency would obviously suggest some such remedy for the danger of
his presence, and this would in course of time, in accordance with the
instinct of Romans and Italians, grow into a set of rules sanctioned by
law as well as custom--the _ius hospitii_.[46]
_Hostis vinctus mulier virgo exesto._ We have noticed traces of taboo on
women and strangers: what of the _vinctus_? This is, so far as I know,
the only proof we have that a man in chains was thought to be
religiously dangerous. I am not sure how his expulsion from religious
rites is to be explained. It is, however, as well to note that criminals
were in primitive societies thought to be uncanny, probably because the
commonest of all crimes, if not the only one affecting society as a
whole, was the breaking of taboo, which made the individual an
outcast.[47] And we may put this together with the fact that in the
early City-state such outcasts were probably not kept shut up in a
prison, but allowed to wander about secured with chains; this seems a
fair inference from the power which the priest of Jupiter (_Flamen
Dialis_) possessed of releasing from his chains any prisoner who entered
his house, _i.e._ who had taken refuge there as in an asylum.[48] Thus
the fettered criminal, who was certainly not a citizen, might find his
way to the place where a sacrifice was going on, and have to submit to
expulsion together with the strangers. It is, however, also possible
that the iron of the chains, if they were of iron, made him doubly
dangerous; for, as we shall see directly, iron was taboo, and the chains
of the prisoner who took refuge with the Flamen had to be thrown out of
the house, no doubt for this reason, by the _impluvium_.[49]
Turning to inanimate objects, which are supposed by primitive man to be
dangerous or taboo, we are met by a fact which will astonish
anthropologists, and which I cannot satisfactorily explain. Blood is
everywhere in the savage world regarded with suspicion and anxiety;
there is something mysterious about it as containing (so they thought)
the life, and its colour and smell are also uncanny; horses cannot
endure it, and there are still strong men who faint at the sight of it.
Yet at Rome, so far as I can discover, there was in historical times
hardly a trace left of this anxiety in its original form of taboo; the
religious law had effectually eliminated the various chances that might
arouse it. No student of Roman religious antiquities seems to have
noticed this singular fact. No anthropologist, as far as I know, has
observed that among the many taboos to which the Flamen Dialis was
subject, blood does not appear. The reason no doubt is that
anthropologists are not as a rule Roman historians; their curiosity is
not excited by a fact which must have some explanation in Roman
religious history. From a single passage of Festus (p. 117) we learn
that soldiers following the triumphal car carried laurel "ut quasi
purgati a caede humana intrarent urbem"; and this is the only distinct
relic of the idea that I can find. Pliny's _Natural History_, that
wonderful thesaurus of odds and ends, affords no help; the mystic
qualities of blood are hardly alluded to there, and the same can be said
of Servius' commentary on the _Aeneid_. The word blood is not to be
found in the index to Wissowa's great work, of which the supreme value
is its accurate record of the religious law and all the ceremonies of
the State. I am constrained to believe that the priests or priest-kings
who developed the _ius divinum_ of the Roman City-state deliberately
suppressed the superstition, for reasons which it is impossible to
conjecture with certainty. And this guess, which I put forward with
hesitation, is indeed in keeping with certain other facts of Roman life.
It is doubtful whether human sacrifice ever existed among this
people;[50] it is certain that the execution of citizens in civil life
by beheading was abandoned at a very early period.[51] The shedding of
blood, except when a victim was sacrificed under the rules of sacred
law, was carefully avoided; thus the horror of blood had a social and
ethical result of value, instead of remaining a mere _religio_ (taboo).
It is true that in one or two rites, such as that of the October horse,
the blood of a sacrifice seems to have been thought to possess peculiar
powers;[52] but it is at the same time noticeable that this rite is not
included in the old calendar, a fact of which a wholly satisfactory
explanation has not yet been offered. In the Lupercalia there is a trace
of the mystic use of blood in sacrifice, but a very faint one: to this
we shall return later on. The two Luperci had their foreheads smeared
with the knife bloody from the slaughter of the victims, but the blood
was at once wiped off with wool dipped in milk.[53] This rite is of
course in the old calendar; it stands almost alone in its mystical
character, and may have been taken over by the Romans from previous
inhabitants of the site of Rome. Lastly, in the Terminalia, or
boundary-festival of arable land in country districts, the
boundary-stone was sprinkled with the blood of the victims, showing that
a spirit, or _numen_, was believed to reside in it;[54] but I cannot
find that this practice survived in the public sacrifices of the city.
It is found only in the sacrifices (_Graeco ritu_) supervised by the _XV
viri sacris faciundis_ in that part of the Ludi Saeculares of Augustus
which was concerned with Greek chthonic deities in the Campus
Martius.[55]
Yet unquestionably there had been a time when many inanimate objects
were supposed to have a mystic or dangerous influence; this is
sufficiently proved by the long list of taboos to which the unfortunate
Flamen Dialis was even in historical times subject. He was forbidden to
touch a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, ivy, wheat, leavened bread; he
might not walk under a vine, and his hair and nails might not be cut
with an iron knife; and he might not have any knot or unbroken ring
about his person. Dr. Frazer has the merit of being the first to point
out the real meaning of this strange list of disabilities, and to
explain the mystic or miasmatic origin of some of them.[56] They need
not detain us now, as they are survivals only, and survivals of ideas
which must have been long extinct before Roman history can be said to
begin. Almost the only one among them of which we have other traces is
the taboo on iron, which must have been of comparatively late date, as
the use of iron in Italy seems only to have begun about the eighth
century B.C.[57] This is found also in the ritual of the Arval
Brotherhood, the ancient agricultural priesthood revived by Augustus,
and better known to us than any other owing to the discovery of its
_Acta_ in the site of the sacred grove between Rome and Ostia. These
Brethren had originally suffered from the taboo on iron; but in
characteristic fashion they had discovered that a piacular or
disinfecting sacrifice would sufficiently atone for its use whenever it
was necessary to take a pruning-hook within the limits of the grove.[58]
We may here also recall the fact that no iron might be used in the
building or repairing of the ancient _pons sublicius_, the oldest of all
the bridges of the Tiber.[59]
Every one who wishes to get an idea of the nature of taboo in primitive
Rome, and of the way in which it was got rid of, should study the
disabilities of the Flamen Dialis, and satisfy himself of their absence,
with the exception just mentioned, and possibly one or two more, in the
ritual of historical Rome. Nothing is more likely to convince him of the
way in which Roman civilisation contrived to leave these superstitions
as mere fossils, incapable any longer of doing mischief by cramping the
conscience and inducing constant anxiety. If he is disposed to ask why
such a large number of these fossils should be found attached to the
priesthood of Jupiter, I must ask him to let me postpone that question,
which would at this moment lead us too far afield.
I may, however, mention here that the Flaminica Dialis, who was not
priestess of Juno as is commonly supposed, but assisted her husband in
the cult of Jupiter, was also subject to certain taboos. On three
occasions in the religious year she might not appear in public with her
hair "done up," viz. the moving of the _ancilia_ in March, the festival
of the Argei in March and May, and during the cleansing of the _penus
Vestae_ in June. Also she might not wear shoes made from the skin of a
beast that had died a natural death, but only from that of a sacrificial
victim. There are traces of a _religio_ about shoe-leather, I may
remark, both in the Roman and in other religious systems. Varro tells us
that "in aliquot sacris et sacellis scriptum habemus, Ne quid scorteum
adhibeatur: ideo _ne morticinum_ quid adsit." Leather was taboo in the
worship of the almost unknown deity Carmenta. Petronius describes women
in the cult of Jupiter Elicius walking barefoot; and we are reminded of
the well-known rule which still survives in Mahommedan mosques.[60] The
original idea may have been that the skin of an animal not made sacred
by sacrifice might destroy the efficacy of the worship contemplated. On
the other hand, the skin of a duly sacrificed animal had potency of a
useful kind--a fact or belief so widespread as to need no illustration
here; but we shall come upon an example of it in my next lecture.
Certain _places_ were also affected by the idea of taboo. In the later
religious law of the City-state the sites of all temples, _i.e._ all
places in which deities had consented to take up their abode, were of
course holy; but this is a much more mature development, though it
unquestionably had its root in the same idea that we are now discussing.
Such sites, as we shall see in a later lecture, were _loca sacra_, and
_sacer_ is a word of legal ritual, meaning that the place has been made
over to the deity by certain formulae, accompanied with favourable
auspices, under the authority of the State.[61] But there were other
holy places which were not _sacra_ but _religiosa_; and the word
_religiosum_ here might almost be translated "affected by taboo."
Wissowa provides us with a list of these places, and this and the
quotations he supplies with it are of the utmost value for my present
subject.[62] They comprised, of course, all holy places which the State
had not duly consecrated, and therefore some which hardly concern us
here, such as shrines belonging to families and gentes, and temple-sites
in the provinces of a later age. More to our purpose at this moment are
the spots where thunderbolts were supposed to have fallen. Such spots
were encircled with a low wall and called _puteal_ from their
resemblance to a well, or _bidental_ from the sacrifice there of a lamb
as a _piaculum_; the bolt was supposed to be thus buried, and the place
became _religiosum_.[63] So, too, all burial-grounds were not _loca
sacra_ but _loca religiosa_, technically because they were not the
property of the state or consecrated by it; in reality, I venture to
say, because the place where a corpse was deposited was of necessity
taboo. Such places were _extra commercium_, and their sanctity might not
be violated: "religiosum est," wrote the learned Roman Masurius Sabinus,
"quod propter sanctitatem aliquam _remotum et sepositum est_ a
nobis."[64] So, too, the great lawyer of Cicero's time, Servius
Sulpicius, defines _religio_ as "quae propter sanctitatem aliquam remota
ac seposita a nobis sit," where he is using _religio_ in the sense of a
thing or place to which a taboo attaches.[65] And again, another
authority, Aelius Gallus, said that _religiosum_ was properly applied to
an object in regard to which there were things which a man might not do:
"quod si faciat," he goes on, "adversus deorum voluntatem videatur
facere."[66] These last words are in the language of the City-state; if
we would go behind it to that of an earlier age, we should substitute
words which would express the feeling or scruple, the _religio_, without
reference to any special deity. Virgil has pictured admirably this
feeling as applied to places, in describing the visit of Aeneas to the
site of the future Rome under the guidance of his host Evander (_Aen._
viii. 347):--
hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit,
aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis.
_iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis_
_dira loci_: iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant.
"hoc nemus, hunc," inquit, "frondoso vertice collem,
(quis deus, incertum est) habitat deus."
This is a passage on which I shall have to comment again: at present I
will content myself with noting how accurately the poet, who of all
others best understood the instincts of the less civilised Italians of
his own day, has used his knowledge to express the antique feeling that
there were places which man must shrink from entering--a feeling far
older than the invention of legal _consecratio_ by the authorities of a
City-state.
Lastly, the principle of taboo, or _religio_, if we use the Latin word,
affected certain times as well as places. Just as under the _ius
divinum_ of the fully-developed State certain spots were made over to
the deities for their habitation and rendered inviolable by
_consecratio_, so certain days were also appointed as theirs which the
human inhabitants might not violate by the transaction of profane
business. But I have just pointed out that the consecration of holy
places in this legal fashion was a late development of a primitive
feeling or _religio_; exactly the same, if I am not mistaken, was the
case with regard to the holy days. These were called _nefasti_, and
belong to the life of the State; but there were others, called
_religiosi_, which I believe to have been tabooed days long before the
State arose.
When we come to examine the ancient religious calendar, it will be found
that I shall not then be called upon to deal with _dies religiosi_, for
the very good reason that they are not indicated in that calendar--there
is no mark for them as _religiosi_, and some of them are not even _dies
nefasti_, as we might naturally have expected.[67] What, then, is the
history of them? We may be able to make a fair guess at this by noting
exactly what these days were; Dr. Wissowa has put them together for us
in a very succinct passage.[68] He begins the list with the 18th of
Quinctilis (July), on which two great disasters had happened to Roman
armies, the defeats on the Cremera and the Allia; and also the 16th, the
day after the Ides, because, according to the legend, the Roman
commander had sacrificed on that day with a view to gaining the favour
of the gods in the battle. We may regard the story about the 18th as
historical; but then we are told that _all_ days following on Kalends,
Nones, and Ides were likewise made _religiosi_ (or _atri_, _vitiosi_,
which have the same meaning) as being henceforward deemed unlucky by
pronouncement of senate and pontifices;[69] thus all _dies postriduani_,
as they were called, were put out of use, or at any rate declared
unlucky, for many purposes, both public and private, _e.g._ marriages,
levies, battles, and sacred rites,[70] simply because on one occasion
disaster had followed the offering of a sacrifice on the 16th of
Quinctilis. It is difficult to believe that thirty-six days in the year
were thus tabooed, by a Roman senate and Roman magistrates, in a period
when the practical wisdom of the government was beginning to be a marked
characteristic of the State. Some people, we are told, went so far as to
treat the _fourth day before_ Kalends, Nones, and Ides in the same way;
but Gellius declares that he could find no tradition about this except a
single passage of Claudius Quadrigarius, in which he said that the
fourth day before the Nones of Sextilis was that on which the battle of
Cannae was fought.[71]
I am strongly inclined to suggest that the traditional explanation of
the tabooing of these thirty-six, or possibly seventy-two days was
neither more nor less than an aetiological myth, like hundreds of others
which were invented to account for Roman practices, religious and other;
and this supposition seems to be confirmed as we go on with the list of
_dies religiosi_ as given by Wissowa. The three days--Sextilis 24,
October 5, November 8--on which the Manes were believed to come up from
the underworld through the _mundus_ (to which I shall return later on)
were _religiosi_;[72] so were those when the temple of Vesta remained
open (June 7 to 15),[73] those on which the Salii performed their
dances in March and October,[74] two days following the _feriae Latinae_
(a movable festival),[75] and the days of the Parentalia in February and
the Lemuria in May, which were concerned with the cult and the memory of
the dead.[76] Now the _religio_ or taboo on these days obviously springs
either from a feeling of anxiety suggested by very primitive notions of
the dead and of departed spirits; or in the case of the temple of Vesta,
by some mystical purification or disinfection preparatory to the
ingathering of the crops, which I noticed in my _Roman Festivals_ (p.
152 foll.); or again in the case of the Salii, by some danger to the
crops from evil spirits, etc., which might be averted by their peculiar
performances. In fact, all these _dies religiosi_ date as such, we may
be pretty sure, from a very primitive period before the genesis of the
City-state, and were not recognised--for what reason we will not at
present attempt to guess--as _religiosi_ by the authorities who drew up
the Calendar. Some of them appear in that calendar as _dies nefasti_,
but not all; and I am entirely at one with Wissowa, whose knowledge of
the Roman religious law is unparalleled for exactness, in believing that
a _religio_ affecting a day had nothing whatever to do with its
character as _fastus_ or _nefastus_.[77]
If all these last-mentioned _dies religiosi_ are such because ancient
popular feeling attached the _religio_ to them, we may infer, I think,
that the same was really the case also with the _dies postriduani_. The
fact that the authorities of the State had made one or two days
_religiosi_ as anniversaries of disasters, supplied a handy explanation
for a number of other _dies religiosi_ of which the true explanation had
been entirely lost; but that there was such a true explanation, resting
on very primitive beliefs, I have very little doubt. Lucky and unlucky
days are found in the unwritten calendars of primitive peoples in many
parts of the world. An old pupil, now a civil servant in the province
of Madras, has sent me an elaborate account of the notions of this kind
existing in the minds of the Tamil-speaking people of his district of
southern India. The Celtic calendar recently discovered at Coligny in
France contains a number of mysterious marks, some of which may have had
a meaning of this kind.[78] Dr. Jevons has collected some other examples
from various parts of the world, _e.g._ Mexico.[79] The old Roman
superstition about the luckiness of odd days and the unluckiness of even
ones, which appears, as we shall see, in the arrangement of the
calendar, was probably at one time a popular Italian notion, not
derived, as used to be thought, from Pythagoras and his school.
I therefore conclude that we may add times and seasons to the list of
those objects, animate and inanimate, which were affected by the
practice of taboo in primitive Rome; and I hold that the word
_religiosus_, as applied both to times and places, exactly expresses the
feeling on which that practice is based. The word _religiosus_ came to
have another meaning (though it retained the old one as well) in
historical times, and the Romans could be called _religiosissimi
mortalium_ in the sense of paying close attention to worship and all its
details. But the original meaning of _religio_ and _religiosus_ may
after all have been that nervous anxiety which is a special
characteristic of an age of taboo.[80] To discover the best methods of
soothing that anxiety, or, in other words, the methods of disinfection,
was the work of the organised religious life of family and State which
we are going to study. But I must first devote a lecture to another
class of primitive survivals.
NOTES TO LECTURE II
[23] Renel, _Les Enseignes_, p. 43 foll. For the
contrary view, Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 490.
[24] On taboo in general, Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_, ch. vi.; Robertson Smith,
_Religion of the Semites_, p. 142 foll.; Frazer, _Golden
Bough_ (ed. 2), i. 343; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
_passim_. On the relation of taboo to magic, Marett,
_Threshold of Religion_, p. 85 foll. Lately M. van
Gennep in his _Rites de passage_ has attempted to
classify and explain the various rites resulting from
taboo.
[25] See the _Transactions of the Congress_ (Oxford
University Press), vol. i. p. 121 foll. M. Reinach had
alleged that the gens Fabia was originally a totem clan,
_Mythes et cultes_, i. p. 47.
[26] Marett, _On the Threshold of Religion_, p. 137
foll. "In _taboo_ the mystic thing is not to be lightly
approached (negative aspect); _qua mana_, it is instinct
with mystic power (positive aspect)": so Mr. Marett
states the distinction in a private letter.
[27] _Evolution of Religion_, p. 94.
[28] _Introduction_, ch. viii.; Westermarck, _Origin and
Development of Ethical Ideas_, i. 233 foll.
[29] See a paper by the author in the _Transactions of
the Congress of the History of Religions_, 1908, ii. 169
foll.
[30] Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 36; De Marchi, _La
Religione nella vita domestica_, i. p. 169 foll.;
Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer,_ p. 62
foll., where the _dies lustricus_ is compared with the
Greek [Greek: amphidromia]. Unfortunately the details of
the Roman rite are unknown to us, which seems to
indicate that the primitive or magical character of it
had disappeared. Van Gennep, _op. cit._ ch. v., reviews
and classifies our present knowledge of this kind of
rite. See also Crawley, _Mystic Rose_, p. 435 foll.
[31] Crawley, _op. cit._ p. 436; Frazer, _G.B._ i. 403
foll. From this point of view Roman names need a closer
examination than they have yet received. See, however,
Marquardt, _Privatleben der Römer_, pp. 10 and 81, and
Mommsen, _Röm. Forschungen_, i. 1 foll. Marquardt must
be wrong in stating (p. 10) that only the _praenomen_
was given on the _dies lustricus_; children dying before
that day usually, as he says on p. 82 note, have no name
in inscriptions, and that ceremony must surely have
introduced the child to the gens of its parents.
Certainly that introduction had not to wait till the
_toga virilis_ was taken; though Tertull. _de Idol._ 16
looks at first a little like it. The same statement is
made in the _Dict. of Antiq., s.v._ "nomen." Macr.
_Sat._ i. 16. 36, and Fest. 120, simply speak of
_nomen_.
[32] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 56; De Marchi, _op. cit._ p. 176.
For the primitive ideas about puberty, Crawley, _Mystic
Rose_, ch. xiii. The idea of the Romans seems to have
been simply that the child, who had so far needed
special protection from evil influences (of what kind in
particular it is impossible to say) by purple-striped
toga and amulet (see below, p. 60), was now entering a
stage when these were no longer needed. All notions of
taboo seem to have vanished.
[33] Marquardt, _Privataltertümer_, p. 337 foll.
[34] Serv. _Aen._ ii. 714, and especially iii. 64. Other
references in Marq. _op. cit._ p. 338, note 5, and De
Marchi, _La Religione nella_ _vita domestica_, p. 190.
For similar usages of prohibition see van Gennep, _op.
cit._ ch. ii.
[35] Festus, p. 3, "itaque funus prosecuti redeuntes
ignem supragradiebantur aqua aspersi, quod purgationis
genus vocabant suffitionem." For the possibly magic
influence of these elements, see Jevons, _op. cit._ p.
70.
[36] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 325, iii. 222 foll.; Jevons, p.
59.
[37] Cato, _R.R._ 83, "mulier ad eam rem divinam ne
adsit neve videat quomodo fiat."
[38] Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 60. Dogs were also
excluded (_ib._ 90); Gellius xi. 6. 2; Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 227; Fowler, _R.F._ p. 194, where the private and
public taboos are compared.
[39] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto." For similar taboos in
Greece, Farnell in _Archiv_ for 1904, p. 76.
[40] Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 143 foll. Cp. Westermarck, _Origin, etc._, vol. i.
ch. xxvi., especially p. 652 foll.
[41] _G.B._ i. 298 foll.
[42] Festus, _s.v._ "exesto."
[43] Bücheler, _Umbrica_, p. 94 foll. Cp. Livy v. 50,
where it is said that, after the Gauls had left Rome,
all the temples, _quod ea hostis possedisset_, were to
be restored, to have their bounds laid down afresh
(_terminarentur_) and to be disinfected (_expiarentur_).
_Digest_, xi. 7. 36, "cum loca capta sunt ab hostibus,
omnia desinunt religiosa vel sacra esse, sicut homines
liberi in servitutem perveniunt; quod si ab hac
calamitate fuerint liberata, quasi quodam postliminio
reversa pristino statui restituerentur." Cp. Plutarch,
_Aristides_, 20. A friend reminds me that Bishop
Berkeley, when in Italy, had his bedroom sprinkled with
holy water by his landlady.
[44] See Marquardt, p. 420, notes 5 and 6. The
_verbenarius_ is mentioned in Serv. _Aen._ xii. 120, and
Pliny _N.H._ xxii. 5. For the disinfecting power of
verbena (_myrtea verbena_) see Pliny xv. 119, where it
is said to have been used by Romans and Sabines after
the rape of the Sabine virgins.
[45] See Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 192 foll., based
on the famous essay of Mommsen in his _Römische
Forschungen_, i. 319 foll. The passages quoted from Livy
for the practice in early times (i. 45, v. 50) are not,
of course, historical evidence; but we may fairly argue
back from the more explicit evidence of later times,
_e.g._ the Senatusconsultum de Asclepiade of 78 B.C.
(_C.I. Graec._ 5879).
There is a good example of the feeling in modern Italy
in a book called _In the Abruzzi_, by Anne Macdonell, p.
275. I have experienced it in remote parts of South
Wales long ago. Moritz, the German pastor who travelled
on foot in England towards the end of the eighteenth
century, noted that even the innkeepers were constantly
unwilling to take him in. His book was reprinted in
Cassell's National Library some years ago.
[46] See the very interesting chapter in _The Origin
and Development of Moral Ideas_, vol. i. p. 570 foll.,
especially p. 590 foll. Dr. Westermarck aptly points out
that hospitality is almost universal among "rude"
peoples, and loses its hold as they become more
civilised. M. van Gennep in his recently published work,
_Les Rites de Passage_, has attempted to classify the
various rites relating to taboo of strangers; see ch.
iii., especially p. 38 foll.
[47] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 70.
[48] Gellius x. 15. 8, "vinctum, si aedes eius
introierit, solui necessum est." (In hot countries
chains still usually, or in some degree, take the place
of bolts and bars, _e.g._ in the Soudan, as I am told by
an old pupil now in the Soudan civil service.) The
regular Latin phrase for imprisonment is "in vincula
conicere": Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "carcer."
[49] Gellius, _l.c._; Serv. _Aen._ ii. 57, a curious
passage, in which the release of Sinon from his bonds by
King Priam is compared with that of the prisoner who
enters the flaminia (house of the Flamen Dialis). That
there was something in the iron which interfered with
the religious efficacy of the Flamen seems likely; cp.
the rule that he might wear no ring unless it were
broken, and have no knot about his dress. But the latter
restriction suggests that binding may have been
originally the object of the taboo (cp. Ovid, _Fasti_,
v. 432), and that the iron taboo came in with the iron
age. Appel, _de Romanorum precationibus_, p. 82, note 2,
seems so to understand it. Cp. Eurip. _Iph. Taur._ 468,
where Orestes and Pylades are unbound before entering
the temple.
[50] There has been much discussion of this question; I
entirely agree with Wissowa (_R.K._ p. 354, where
references are given for the opposite opinion) that
there is no evidence for human sacrifice in the old
Roman religion or law, except in the rule that a
condemned criminal was made over to a deity (_sacer_),
which may have been a legal survival of an original form
of actual sacrifice. The alleged sacrifice by Julius
Caesar of two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius
(Dio Cass. xliii. 24) is of the same nature as the
sacrifice of captives to Orcus in _Aen._ xi. 81, _i.e._
it is outside of the civil life and religious law; this
is shown in the latter case by the mention of blood in
the ritual (_caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas_), and in
the former by the beheading of the mutineers.
[51] Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, p. 917 foll.; Livy x. 9;
Cic. _de Rep._ ii. 31. 65. All other methods of
execution were bloodless. _Decollatio_ remained in use
in the army (as in the case just mentioned), but the axe
disappeared from the fasces in the city with the
abolition of kingship. As further illustration of the
dislike of all bloodshed, cp. the rule of XII. Tables,
"mulieres genas ne radunto," _i.e._ at funerals, Cic.
_de Legibus_, ii. 59, and Serv. _Aen._ iii. 67 from
Varro, and v. 78. The gladiatorial _ludi_ may have been
a revival of an old custom akin to human sacrifice of
captives in the field. See _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 304, note 3.
We may also note in this connection that there is no
distinct trace of the blood-feud in old Roman law; see
_Zum ältesten Strafrecht der Kulturvölker_, p. 38
(questions of comparative law suggested by Mommsen and
answered by various specialists). Doubtless it once
existed, but vanished at an early date.
[52] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 242. The tail of the sacrificed
horse was carried to the Regia, where the blood was
allowed to drip on the sacred hearth (_participandae rei
divinae gratia_), Festus, p. 178.
[53] _R.F._ p. 311 foll., from Plutarch, _Rom._ 21.
[54] For this practice in many ancient religions, and
its substitute, the smearing of the stone with turmeric
or other red stain, see Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 139
foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 415.
[55] This is found in Zosimus ii. 1. 5; Diels,
_Sibyllinische Blätter_, 132, and 73 note. Cp. Virg.
_Aen._ viii. 106; also a Greek rite.
[56] _G.B._ ed. 2, i. 241 foll.
[57] The bronze and iron ages, of course, overlap; see
Helbig, _Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 78 foll.
[58] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 22 and 128 foll.
Other examples are collected by Helbig, _op. cit._ p.
80.
[59] Dion. Hal. iii. 45; Mommsen in _C.I.L._ i. p. 177.
It may be as well to point out that iron, like wheat in
the taboos of the Flamen, was considered dangerous, as
being a novelty. The old Italian grain was not true
wheat but _far_, which continued to be used in religious
rites; _R.F._ p. 304, and Marquardt, _Privatleben der
Römer_, p. 399 foll.
[60] Varro, _L.L._ vii. 84; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 629;
Petronius, _Sat._ 44. There are many parallels in Greek
ritual.
[61] See below, p. 146. Mr. Marett suggests to me a
comparison with the _rongo_ (sacred) of the Melanesians,
and _tapu_ as used of a place by them, _i.e._ set apart
by a human authority; Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 77.
[62] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 408 foll.; cp. 323 and notes.
[63] The fullest account of this will be found in
Marquardt, p. 262 foll. For the case of a man killed by
lightning, see note 4 on p. 263; the body was not burnt
but buried, and the grave became a _bidental_, and
_religiosum_.
[64] For the intricate pontifical law of burial-places
see Wissowa, p. 409. The quotation from Masurius is in
Gellius iv. 9. 8, "M. Sabinus in commentariis quos de
indigenis composuit." The word _sanctitas_ is here used
merely by way of explanation and not in a technical
sense; for which see Marq. p. 145 and references; but it
seems to have had a special use in the cult of the dead.
(See below, p. 470.)
[65] Quoted by Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 3. 8. For
Sulpicius see _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 118 foll.
[66] Festus, p. 278. This Aelius lived at the end of the
Republican period, and belonged to the school of
Sulpicius; Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Lit._ i. pt. 2, p.
486.
[67] _e.g._ the three days on which the _mundus_ was
open were all _comitiales_, though at the same time
_religiosi_.
[68] _R.K._ pp. 376, 377.
[69] The authorities for the story are Verrius Flaccus,
_ap._ Gell. v. 17, and Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 16. 21.
[70] For the extent of the taboo see Gell. iv. 9. 5;
Macr. i. 16. 18.
[71] Gell. v. 17. 3 foll. (_annalium quinto_).
[72] Festus, p. 278.
[73] _R.F._ p. 151.
[74] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 377, note 6.
[75] Cic. _ad Qu. Fratr._ ii. 4. 2.
[76] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 187, 189.
[77] _R.K._ p. 377. Gell. iv. 9. 5 says that the
_multitudo imperitorum_ confused the _dies religiosi_
and _dies nefasti_. The distinction is most clearly seen
in the fact that on _dies religiosi_ the temples were
(or ought to be) shut, and "res divinas facere" was
ill-omened (Gell., _ib._), while on _dies nefasti_ the
latter was regular, such days being made over to the
gods. No wonder that Gellius brands the popular
ignorance with such words as _prave_ and _perperam_.
[78] See Prof. Rhys's paper read before the British
Academy, "Notes on the Coligny Calendar," p. 33 and
elsewhere.
[79] _Introduction_, p. 65 foll.
[80] Since writing this sentence I have read the paper
by W. Otto on "Religio and Superstitio" in _Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft_, 1909, p. 533 foll.; in which at
p. 544 he hints at a connection of _religio_ with the
practice of taboo. With some of his conclusions,
however, I cannot agree. The same explanation of the
origin of _religio_, _i.e._ in an age of taboo, has also
been suggested since my lecture was written by
Maximilianus Kobbert, _De verborum "religio atque
religiosus" usu apud Romanos_, p. 31 (Königsberg,
1910).
LECTURE III
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC
Taboo, the traces of which at Rome we examined in the last lecture, is,
as we saw, closely allied to magic, even if it be not, as Dr. Frazer
thinks, magic in a negative form. We have now to see what traces are to
be found of magic in the proper or usual sense of the word--active or
positive magic, as we may call it. By this we are to understand the
exercise of a mysterious mechanical power by an individual on man,
spirit, or deity, to enforce a certain result. In magic there is no
propitiation, no prayer. "He who performs a purely magical act," says
Dr. Westermarck,[81] "utilises such mechanical power without making any
appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being." Religion, on the
other hand, is an attitude of regard and dependence; in a religious
stage man feels himself in the hands of a supernatural power with whom
he desires to be in right relation.
If we accept this distinction, as I think we may (though one school of
anthropologists is hardly disposed to do so), it is plain that magical
practices are of a totally different kind from religious practices, as
being the result of a different mental attitude towards the
supernatural; they belong to a ruder and more rudimentary idea of the
relation of Man to the Power manifesting itself in the universe. True,
they have their origin in the same kind of human experience, in the
difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence, and his
desire to overcome these; but unlike religion, magic is a wholly
inadequate attempt to overcome them. This inadequacy was long ago well
explained by Dr. Jevons.[82] He showed that man in that early stage of
his experience did not understand the true relation of cause and effect;
that, "turned loose as it were among innumerable possible causes (of a
given effect), with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his
making the right choice were considerable." As a matter of fact he
usually made the wrong one, and is still apt to do so. There is probably
more magic going on behind the scenes even in civilised countries, and
more especially both in Greece and Italy, than either men of science or
men of religion have any idea of. In its various forms as they are now
classified,[83] _e.g._ contagious magic, and homoeopathic magic, the
exercise of the mysterious will-power, real or imaginary, is to be found
all the world over, accompanied usually with a spell or incantation
which is believed to enforce and increase that power--a kind of
telepathy, which seems to be the psychological basis, so far as there is
one, of the whole system. In these rites the virtue resides in some
action, which, together with the spell or incantation, enforces the
desired result by calling out the will-power, or _mana_, if we adopt the
convenient Melanesian word lately brought into use. Whatever percentage
of psychological truth may lie at the root of such performances, it is
obvious that they must in the main be wholly inadequate, and must
constantly tend to pass into mere quackery and become discredited; and
it was the special function of the religious organisation of early
society to eliminate and discredit them.
But it was a long stage in the evolution of society before man arrived
at a better knowledge of his relation to the Power manifesting itself in
the universe; before he reached the idea of a god or spirit realisable
and nameable, and thus capable of being addressed, placated, worshipped.
When this stage is reached, there supervenes almost always a strong
tendency to regulate and systematise the methods of address, placation,
and worship; and among some peoples, _e.g._ the Romans, for reasons
which it is by no means easy to explain, this tendency is much stronger
than among others. Wherever it has been strong, wherever these methods
of putting oneself in right relation with the Power have been
systematised by a central authority or priesthood, and thus made into
religious law, there, as we might naturally expect, the performances and
performers of magic have been most vigorously discountenanced and
outlawed. The interests of religion and its officials are wholly
antagonistic to those of magic and magicians. In civilised communities
and in historical times magic is in the main individualistic, not
social; magical ceremonies for the good of the community seem to be
confined to races in a very early stage of development. The examples on
which Dr. Frazer relies for his theory of the development of the public
magician into a king[84] are of this primitive kind, or are mere
survivals of magic in a higher stage of civilisation--such survivals as
there will always be among forms and ceremonies, of which it is man's
nature to be tenacious. But religion, once firmly established,
invariably seeks to exclude magic; and the priest does his best to
discredit the magician, as claiming to exercise mysterious powers
outside the pale of the legally recognised methods of propitiation and
worship. As Dr. Tylor observed long ago, the more civilised the race,
the more apt it is to associate magic with men of inferior
civilisation.[85] In the Jewish law, though magic was well known to the
Jews and privately practised, there is no recognition of it; the magical
books attributed to Solomon were suppressed, according to tradition, by
the pious king Hezekiah.[86] So too at Rome, where the outward forms of
religion were also very highly systematised, magic, as it seems to me,
was rigorously excluded from the State ritual, though it continued in
use in private life under certain precautions taken by the State; in the
few genuine examples of it in the rites belonging to the _ius divinum_
(_i.e._ those used and sanctioned for the purposes of the community),
it is nothing more than a survival of which the magical meaning was
unknown to the writers from whom we hear of it.
A good example of such survivals is the curious ceremony of
the _aquaelicium_, without doubt a genuine case of magical
"rain-making"--one of the many inadequate and blundering attempts on the
part of primitive man to obtain what he needs. Probably it may be
classed under the head of "sympathetic magic," but the evidence as to
what was done in the ceremony is not quite explicit enough to allow us
to do this confidently.[87] It was, of course, not included in the
religious calendar, as it would be only occasionally called for, and
could not be fixed to a day; but there is clear evidence that it was
sanctioned by the State, for the pontifices took part in it, and the
magistrates without the _toga praetexta_, and the lictors carrying the
fasces reversed.[88] A stone, which lay outside the walls near the Porta
Capena, was brought into the city by the pontifices, so far as we can
make out the details, and it has been conjectured that it was taken to
an altar of Jupiter Elicius on the Aventine hard by, this cult-title of
the god of the sky having possibly some relation to the technical name
of the ceremony. What was done with the stone we unluckily do not know;
but it has been reasonably conjectured that it was a hollow one, and
that it was filled with water which was allowed to run over the edge, as
a means of inducing the rain-god to suffer the heavens to overflow.[89]
It was called _lapis manalis_; and the epithet here can have nothing to
do with the Manes, as in the case of another _lapis manalis_, of which I
shall have a word to say later on, but must mean "pouring" or
"overflowing." One or two other fragments of evidence point in the same
direction, and I think we may fairly conclude that the rite was
originally one of sympathetic magic--that as the stone overflowed, so
the sky would pour down rain. In my _Roman Festivals_ I have pointed out
a remarkable parallel to this in the collections of the _Golden Bough_;
in a Samoan village a stone represented the god of rain, and in a
drought his priests carried it in procession and dipped it in a stream.
This parallel I owe to Dr. Frazer's wide knowledge of all such practices
among savage peoples. But this ever helpful and friendly guide, in
treating of the Jupiter Elicius concerned in this ceremony, has gone
beyond the evidence, and attributed to the Romans another kind of magic
of which I believe they were quite innocent. He has been led to this by
his theory that kings were developed out of successful magicians. In his
lectures on the early history of the Kingship[90] he maintains that the
Roman kings practised the magical art of bringing down lightning from
heaven. "The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of
drawing down lightning from the sky.... Tullus Hostilius is reported to
have met with the same end (as Salmoneus, king of Elis) in an attempt to
draw down Jupiter in the form of lightning from the clouds." To support
these statements Dr. Frazer quotes Pliny, Livy, Ovid, Plutarch,
Arnobius, Aurelius Victor, and Zonaras--truly a formidable list of
authorities; but without any attempt to discover where any of these late
writers found the stories. Yet he had but to read Aust's admirable
article "Jupiter" in the _Mythological Lexicon_[91] to assure himself
that legends which cannot be traced farther back than the middle of the
second century B.C. cannot seriously be assumed to be genuinely Roman.
Pliny happens to mention Calpurnius Piso as his authority; this was the
man who is well known in Roman history as the author of the first _lex
de repetundis_ of the year 149 B.C., a good statesman, but as an
annalist much given to indulging a mythological fancy.[92] We happen to
know that he wrote with happy confidence about the life and habits of
Romulus, and a story about wine-drinking which he attributes to that
king is obviously transferred to him from some more historical
personage. Romulus would not drink wine one day because he was going to
be very busy on the next. Then they said to him, "If we all did so,
Romulus, wine would be cheap." "Nay, dear," he replied, "if every one
drank as much as he wished; and that is exactly what I am doing."[93] I
quote the story simply as a good example of the way in which Roman
historians could deal with their kings, and of the absolute necessity of
acquainting oneself with their methods before building hypotheses upon
their statements. I hardly need to add that another of Dr. Frazer's
authorities, Arnobius, informs us that he took the story from the second
book of Valerius Antias, a later writer than Piso, whose name is a
byword even with the uncritical Livy for shameless exaggeration and
mis-statement.[94]
But how did these writers come by such legends, which, as Dr. Frazer
shows, are to be found also in Greece and in other parts of the world?
Why should they have wished to make Roman kings into magicians?
Rain-making we can understand at Rome,--it had a practical end in view,
the procuring of rain for the crops,--but why lightning and thunder,
which were so much dreaded that every bit of damage done by a
thunderstorm had to be carefully expiated by a religious process? Rome
is not in the tropics, where rain and thunder so often come together,
and where an attempt to produce rain by magic might naturally include
thunder, as in some of Dr. Frazer's examples from tropical lands. I
entirely agree with the latest and most sober investigators of Roman
ritual that this kind of magic is quite foreign to Roman ideas and
practice;[95] there is no vestige of it in the Roman cult; these stories
must have come from outside. And there is every probability that they
came from Etruria, where the lore of lightning had become a
pseudo-science, a waste of human ingenuity, for the origin of which we
must look, as we are now beginning to understand, to Babylonia and the
Eastern magic.[96] The Jupiter Elicius of the Aventine had nothing to do
with lightning; he took his cult-title from the rite of _aquaelicium_;
but as soon as the Romans began to interest themselves in the Etruscan
lightning-lore, of which this electrical magic was only a part,[97] they
perverted the meaning of the epithet to suit their new studies, and
began to attribute to their legendary kings powers which properly
belonged to Etruscan or Oriental magicians. The second century B.C.,
when Piso wrote his _Annals_, is exactly the period when we should
naturally expect such studies to come into fashion, and with such
perversions of "history" as their consequence.[98]
I go on to note one or two more examples of real magic in the State
religion; but they are hard to find. Pliny tells that even in his day
people believed that a runaway slave who had not escaped out of the city
might be arrested by a spell uttered by the Vestal virgins.[99] I take
this to mean that any one who had lost his slave might get the Vestals
to use the spell as a means of keeping the runaway within the city. The
word for spell is here _precatio_, _i.e._ a prayer, not _carmen_, which
is the usual word for a spell; and Pliny evidently thinks of it as
addressed to some god. But no doubt it was originally at least a genuine
spell, of the same kind as others used in private life, which we shall
notice directly; and it implies a belief in some magical power inherent
in the Vestals, of whom we are told that if they accidentally met a
criminal being led to punishment they might secure his release.[100] As
the spell in this case seems to be telepathic, _i.e._ an exercise of
will-power projected from a distance, it may perhaps be paralleled with
certain mystical powers exercised by women, especially when their
husbands are at war, among some savage peoples;[101] but we have no
information about it beyond the passage in Pliny, and further guessing
would be useless.
This last is a case of genuine magic, but it is outside the ritual of
the State, though exercised by a State priesthood. Within that ritual
there is one other very curious case of what must be classed as a
magical process, and one that has accidentally become famous. At the
Lupercalia on February 15, the two young men called Luperci, or, more
strictly, belonging respectively as leaders to the two collegia of
Luperci, girt themselves with the skins of the slaughtered victims,
which were goats, and then ran round the base of the Palatine hill,
striking at all the women who came near them or offered themselves to
their blows, with strips of skin cut from the hides of these same
victims. The object was to produce fertility; on this point our
authorities are explicit.[102] Thus this particular feature of the whole
extraordinary ritual of the Lupercalia is unmistakably within the region
of magic rather than of religion. Some potency was believed to work in
the act of striking, though apparently without a spoken spell or
_carmen_, such as usually accompanies acts of this kind; and this part
of the rite, grotesque though it was, was allowed to survive by the
grave religious authorities who drew up the calendar of religious
festivals. It was probably a superstition too deeply rooted in the minds
of the people to admit of being excluded; and, strange to say, it
survived, in outward form at least, until Rome had become cosmopolitan
and even Christian. The Lupercalia has always been a puzzle to students
of early religion, and as each new theory is advanced, this strange
festival is seized on for fresh interpretation;[103] but for our present
purposes it must suffice to point out that we clearly find embedded in
it a piece of genuine magic, dating beyond doubt from a very primitive
stage of thought.
There is one other very curious performance, occurring each year on the
ides of May, which in my view is rather magical than religious, though
the ancients themselves looked upon it as a kind of purification: I mean
the casting into the Tiber from the _pons sublicius_ of twenty-four or
twenty-seven straw puppets by the Vestal virgins, in the presence of the
magistrates and pontifices. Recently an attempt has been made by Wissowa
to prove that this strange ceremony was not primitive, but simply a case
of the substitution of puppets for real human victims as late as the age
of the Punic wars.[104] These puppets were called Argei, which word
naturally suggests Greeks; and Wissowa has contrived to persuade himself
not only that a number of Greeks were actually put to death by drowning
in an age when everything Greek was beginning to be reverenced at Rome,
but (still more extraordinary to an anthropologist) that the primitive
device of substitution was had in requisition at that late date in order
to carry on the memory of the ghastly deed. And the world of German
learning has silently followed their leader, without taking the trouble
to test his conclusions by a careful and independent examination of the
evidence. It happens that this fascinating puzzle of the Argei was the
first curiosity that enticed me into the study of the Roman religion,
and for some thirty years I have been familiar with every scrap of
evidence bearing on it; and after going over that evidence once more I
can emphatically state my conviction that Wissowa's theory will not hold
water for a moment. I shall return to the subject in a later lecture
dealing with the religious history of the second Punic war; at present I
merely express a belief that, whatever be the history of the accessories
of the rite,--and they are various and puzzling,--the actual immersion
of the puppets is the survival of a primitive piece of sympathetic
magic, the object being possibly to procure rain. It is, in my opinion,
quite impossible to resist the anthropological evidence for this
conclusion, though we cannot really be certain about the object; for
this evidence I must refer you to my _Roman Festivals_, and to the
references there given.[105]
This rite of the Argei, then, was a case of genuine magic, and exercised
by a State priesthood, virgins to whom certain magical powers were
supposed to be attached; it was, I think, a popular performance, like
one or two others which are also outside the limit of the Fasti,[106]
and was embodied in a more complicated ceremonial long after that
calendar had been drawn up. In the ritual authorised by the State, with
public objects in view, _i.e._ for the benefit of society as a whole,
there is hardly a trace of anything that we can call genuine magic
apart from the examples I have just been explaining. There were, I need
not say, many survivals of magical processes of which the true magical
intent had long been lost--ancient magical deposits in a social stratum
of religion, which I shall notice in their proper place. This is not
peculiar to the religion of the Romans; it is a phenomenon to be found
in all religions, even in those of the most highly developed type, and
it is one apt to cause some confusion as to the true distinction between
magic and religion.[107] It is easy to find magical processes even in
Christian worship, if we have the will to do so; but if we steadily bear
in mind that the true test of magic is not the nature of an act, but the
intent or volition which accompanies it, the search will not be an easy
one.
The modern French school of sociologists, which now has to be reckoned
with in investigating the early history of religion, claims that magic
was not originally, as we now see it, a matter of individual skill, but
a sociological fact, _i.e._ it was used for the benefit of the
community, as religion came to be in a later age. If this be true, as it
very possibly is, we see at once how the dead bones of magical processes
might survive, with their original meaning entirely lost, into an age in
which higher and more reasonable ideas had been developed about the
relation of Man to the Power manifesting itself in the universe. To take
a single example from Rome, divination by the examination of a victim's
entrails was originally a magical process, according to the opinion of
most modern authorities;[108] but it ceases to be magic when it is used
simply to determine in the State ritual whether in a religious process
the victim is perfect and agreeable to the deity. In fact magical
formulae, magical instruments, unless they are used in the true spirit
of magic, to compel, not to propitiate a deity, are no longer magic, and
may be passed over here. When we come to discuss the ritual of sacrifice
and prayer, of _lustratio_, of vows, of divination, we may find it
necessary to recall what has here been said. On the whole, we may
conclude that organised religious cult, from its very nature and object,
everywhere excluded magic in the true sense of the word; it implies
prayer and propitiation, both of which are absolutely inconsistent with
the object and methods of magic. Religion is the product of a higher
stage of social development; it is the expression of a real advance of
human thought; and in telling the story of the religious experience of
the Roman people we are but indirectly concerned with those more rude
and rudimentary ideas which it displaced.
But in private life, outside of the organised cult of the State and the
family, magic was all through Roman history abundant, even
over-abundant, and in this form I cannot pass it over entirely. Though
the State authorities seem to have taken pains to exclude it rigidly
from the public rites, and though there is little trace of it in the
religious life of family and gens, yet there is evidence that it was
deeply rooted in the nature of the people, and that they must have
passed through an age in which it was an important factor in their
social life. This fact, taken together with its almost complete
elimination from the public religion, throws into relief the persistent
efforts of the State authorities, from the framing of the old religious
calendar to the time of the Augustan revival, to keep their relations
with the Power clear of all that they believed to be unworthy or
injurious. No better example can be found of the inherent antagonism
between religion and magic.
Private magic may be divided into two kinds, according as it was used to
damage another, or only to benefit oneself. In the former case the State
interfered to protect the person threatened with damage, and treated
this kind of magic as a crime. The commonest form of it was that of the
spell, or _carmen_, no doubt often sung, and accompanied by some action
which would bring it under the head of sympathetic magic; but the spell
alone is taken cognisance of by the State. Pliny has preserved three
words from the XII. Tables which tell their own tale: "qui fruges
excantassit."[109] Servius, commenting on the line of Virgil's 8th
_Eclogue_, "atque satas alio vidi traducere messes," writes, "magicis
quibusdam artibus hoc fiebat, unde est in XII. Tabb. 'Neve alienam
segetem pellexeris.'" These last words, with the verb in the second
person, are probably not quoted exactly from the ancient text,[110] but
they help to show us the nature of this hostile spell. There must have
been a belief that the spirit, or life, or fructifying power of your
neighbour's crops could be enticed away and transferred to your own.
This is confirmed by a remark of St. Augustine in the _de Civitate
Dei_;[111] after quoting the same line from Virgil, he adds, "eo quod
hac pestifera scelerataque doctrina fructus alieni in alias terras
transferri perhibentur, nonne in XII. Tabulis, id est Romanorum
antiquissimis legibus, Cicero commemorat esse conscriptum et ei qui hoc
fecerit supplicium constitutum?" Given the belief, the temptation can be
well understood if we reflect that the arable land of the old Romans was
divided in sections of a square, and that each man's allotment would
have that of a neighbour on two sides at least.[112] If one man's corn
were found to be more flourishing than that of his neighbours, what more
likely than that he should have enticed away the spirit of their crops?
The process reminds us, as it reminded Pliny, of the _evocatio_ of the
gods of foreign communities, a rite which belongs to religion and not to
magic, though it doubtless had its origin in the same class of ideas as
the _excantatio_.
In more general terms the old Roman law (_i.e._ originally the _ius
divinum_) forbade the use of evil spells, as we see in another fragment
of the Tables, "qui malum carmen incantassit." In later times this was
usually taken as referring to libel and slander, but there can be no
doubt that the carmina here alluded to were originally magical, and
became _carmina famosa_ in the course of legal interpretation. Cicero
seems to combine the two meanings in the _de Rep._ (iv. 10. 2) when he
says that the Tables made it a capital offence "si quis occentavisset,
sive carmen condidisset quod infamiam faceret flagitiumve alteri" (to
bring shame or criminal reproach on another). In the later sense these
carmina have a curious history, into which I cannot enter now.[113] In
the earlier sense they existed and flourished without doubt, in spite of
the law; or it may be that, as the words of the Tables were interpreted
in the new sense, the old form of offence was tolerated in private. "We
are all afraid," says Pliny, "of being 'nailed' (_defigi_) by spells and
curses" (_diris precationibus_).[114] These _dirae_, and all the various
forms of love-charms, _defixiones_, accompanied by the symbolic actions
which are found all the world over, lie outside my present subject, and
are so familiar to us all in Roman literature that I do not need to
dwell on them.[115]
Nor of the common harmless kind of magic need I say much now. It
survived, of course, alongside of the religion of the family and State,
from the earliest times to the latest, as it survives at the present day
in all countries civilised and uncivilised; and being harmless the State
took no heed of it. Some assortment of charms and spells for the cure of
diseases will be found in Cato's book on agriculture, and one or two
incidentally occur in that of Varro.[116] They performed the work of
insurance against both fire and accident, and even such a man as Julius
Caesar was not independent of such arts. Pliny tells us that after
experiencing a carriage accident he used to repeat a certain spell three
times as soon as he had taken his seat in a vehicle, and adds
significantly, "id quod plerosque nunc facere scimus."[117] Such carmina
were written on the walls of houses to insure them against fire.[118]
Pliny has a large collection of small magical delusions and
superstitions, many of which have an interest for anthropologists, in
the 28th book of his _Natural History_.
Another kind of harmless magic, to which the Romans, like all Italians
ancient and modern, were peculiarly addicted, is the use of amulets.
Here there is no spell, or obvious and expressed exercise of will-power
on the part of the individual, but the potent influence, _mana_, or
whatever we choose to call it, resides in a material object which brings
good luck, like the cast horse-shoe of our own times, or protects
against hostile will-power, and especially against the evil eye. This
curious and widely-spread superstition was probably the _raison d'être_
of most of the amulets worn or carried by Romans. A modern Italian, even
if he be a complete sceptic and materialist, will probably be found to
have some amulet about him against the evil eye, "just to be on the
safe side."[119] A list of amulets, both Greek and Roman, will be
found in the _Dictionary of Antiquities_, and in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encyclopädie, s.v._ "amulet," and it is not necessary here to
explain the various kinds in use in Italy; but I must dwell for a moment
on one type, which had been taken up into the life of the family, and in
one sense into that of the State, viz. the _bulla_ worn by children,
both boys and girls.
The bulla was a small object, enclosed in historical times in a capsule,
and suspended round the child's neck. It was popularly believed to have
been originally an Etruscan custom,[120] and borrowed by the Romans,
like so many other ornaments. It is, however, much more probable that
the custom was old Italian (as indeed the "medicine-bag" is world-wide),
and that the Etruscan contribution to it was merely the case or capsule,
which was of gold where the family could afford it--gold itself being
supposed to have some potency as a charm.[121] The object within the
case was, as Pliny tells us, a _res turpicula_ as a rule,[122] and this
may remind us that a _fascinum_ was carried in the car of the
triumphator as _medicus invidiae_, to use Pliny's pregnant expression.
The triumphing general needed special protection; he appeared in the
guise of Jupiter himself, and was for the moment lifted above the
ordinary rank of humanity. Some feeling of the same kind must have
originally suggested similar means for the protection of children under
the age of puberty. They also wore the _toga praetexta_, which, though
associated by us with secular magistrates, had undoubtedly a religious
origin. There are distinct signs that children were in some sense
sacred, and at the same time that they needed special protection against
the all-abounding evil influences to be met with in daily life.[123]
Thus this particular form of amulet became a recognised institution of
family life, and in due time little more than a mark of childhood.
Yet another kind of charm must be mentioned here which was used at
certain festivals, though apparently not at any of those belonging to
the authorised calendar. At the Compitalia, Paganalia, and _feriae
Latinae_ we are told that small images of the human figure, or masks, or
simply round balls (_pilae_), were hung up on trees or doorways, and
left to swing in the wind.[124] At the Compitalia the images had a
special name, _maniae_, of which the meaning is lost; but inasmuch as
the charms were hung up at cross-roads on that occasion, where the Lares
compitales of the various properties had their shrine, it was not
difficult to manufacture out of them a goddess, Mania, mother of the
Lares.[125] The common word for these figures was _oscilla_, and the
fact of their swinging in the wind suggested a verb _oscillare_, which
survives in our own tongue with the same meaning. Until lately it used
to be believed that they were substitutes for original human sacrifices:
a view for which there is not a particle of evidence, though it was
originated by Roman scholars.[126] Modern anthropology has found another
explanation, which is by no means improbable. Dr. Frazer, in an appendix
to the 2nd volume of the _Golden Bough_, has collected a number of
examples of the practice of swinging _by human beings_ as a magical
rite; they come from many parts of the world, including ancient Athens,
and even modern Calabria. He also points out that at the _feriae
Latinae_ the swingers seem to have been human beings, if we accept the
evidence of Festus, _s.v._ "oscillantes"; thus we are left with the
possibility that the oscilla were really imitations of men and women,
though not of human sacrificial victims.
Dr. Frazer is obviously hard put to it to explain the original meaning
and object of this curious custom. In the Paganalia, as described by
Virgil in the second _Georgic_,[127] the object would seem to be the
prosperity of the vine-crop.
coloni
versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto,
oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis,
et te Bacche vocant per carmina laeta, tibique
oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu.
hinc omnis largo pubescit vinea fetu, etc.[128]
But here we must leave a question which is still unsolved. All we can
say is that the old idea of substitutes for human sacrifice must be
finally given up, and that the _oscilla_, whether or not they were
substitutes for human swingers, were probably charms intended to ward
off evil influences from the crops. I am not disposed to put any
confidence in what Servius tells us, that this was a purification by
means of air, just as fire and water were also purifying agents; this
looks like the ingenious explanation of a later and a religious
age.[129]
So much, then, for magical charms and spells, and the survivals of them
in the fully developed Roman religion.[130] It might seem hardly worth
while to spend even so much time on them as I have done, and I cannot
deny that I am glad now to be able to leave them. My object has simply
been to show how little of this kind of practice, which meets us on the
threshold of religion, was allowed to survive by the religious
authorities of the State; in other words, I wished to make clear that in
our inquiries into the nature of the Roman religion it is really
religion and not magic that we have to do with.
It is really religion; it is desire, beginning already to be effective,
to be in right relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe.
The Romans, as I hope to show in the next lecture, when we can begin to
know and feel an interest in them, had not only begun to recognise this
Power in various forms and functions as one that must be propitiated,
because they were dependent on it for their daily needs, but to regulate
and make permanent the methods of propitiation. What was the relation
between this simple religion and morality--between ritual and
conduct--is a very difficult question, to which I shall return later on.
Dr. Westermarck has recently come to the conclusion that the religion of
primitive man has no true relation to morality, that it is not apt to
give a sanction to good action, or to develop the germs of a conscience.
But so far as I can discern, the idea of active duty, and therefore the
germ of conscience, must have been so intimately connected with the
religious practice of the old Latin family that it is to me impossible
to think of the one apart from the other. Surely it is in that life that
the famous word "_pius_" must have originated, which throughout Roman
history meant the sense of duty towards family, State, and gods, as
every reader of the _Aeneid_ knows. That the formalised religion of
later times had become almost entirely divorced from morality there is
indeed no doubt; but in the earliest times, in the old Roman family and
then in the budding State, the whole life of the Roman seems to me so
inextricably bound up with his religion that I cannot possibly see how
that religion can have been distinguishable from his simple idea of duty
and discipline.
NOTES TO LECTURE III
[81] Westermarck, _Origin etc. of Moral Ideas_, ii. 584.
[82] Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 33.
[83] A useful summary of the whole subject, embodying
the results and terminology of Tylor, Frazer, and other
anthropologists, is Dr. Haddon's _Magic and Fetishism_,
in Messrs. Constable's series, _Religions Ancient and
Modern_. See also Marett, _On the Threshold of
Religion_, passim.
[84] _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, p.
89 foll. For an example not mentioned in the text
(_devotio_) see below, p. 206 foll. This may have been
originally practised by the Latin kings. I may here
draw attention to the almost dogmatic conclusions of the
modern French sociological school of research; _e.g._ M.
Huvelin, in _L'Année sociologique_ for 1907, begins by
asserting as a fundamental law, proved by MM. Hubert et
Mauss, that magic is just as much a social fact as
religion: "Les uns et les autres sont des produits de
l'activité collective" (_Magie et droit individuel_, p.
1). But M. Huvelin's paper is to some extent a
modification of this dogma. He seeks to explain the fact
that magic is both secret and private, not public and
social, in historical times; and in the domain of law,
with which he is specially concerned, he concludes that
"a magical rite is only a religious rite twisted from
its proper social end, and employed to realise the will
or belief of an individual" (p. 46). This is the only
form in which we shall find magic at Rome, except in so
far as a few of its forms survive in the ritual of
religion with their meaning changed. In early Roman law,
as a quasi-religious body of rules and practices, there
are a few magical survivals which will be found
mentioned by M. Huvelin in this article; but they are of
no importance for our present subject.
[85] _Primitive Culture_, vol. i. ch. iv. See also
Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 36 foll.
[86] See Schürer, _Jewish People in the Time of Christ_
(Eng. trans.), Division II. vol. iii. p. 151 foll.
[87] Fowler, _R.F._ p. 232; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 106. The
most careful examination of the rite and the evidence
for it is that of Aust in _Mythological Lexicon_, _s.v._
"Iuppiter," p. 656 foll. See also M.H. Morgan in vol.
xxxii. of _Transactions of the American Philological
Association_, p. 104.
[88] Tertullian, _de Jejun_. 16. Petronius, _Sat._ 44,
adds that the matrons went in the procession with bare
feet and streaming hair (cp. Pliny xvii. 266); but this
seems rather Greek than Roman in character, and
Petronius is plainly thinking of the town (_colonia_ he
calls it) in southern Italy where the scene of
Trimalchio's supper is laid; probably a Greek city by
origin, Croton or Cumae. A translation of this passage
will be found in Dill's _Roman Society from Nero to
Marcus Aurelius_, p. 133. The most useful words in it
for our purpose are "Jovem aquam exorabant."
[89] This suggestion was originally made by O. Gilbert,
_Röm. Topographie_, ii. 184.
[90] p. 204 foll.
[91] p. 657. The story is mixed up with Greek fables,
_e.g._ that of Proteus, as Wissowa has pointed out,
_R.K._ p. 106, note 10.
[92] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, vol. i.
(ed. 3) p. 270 foll.
[93] This fragment of Piso is preserved by Gellius, xi.
14. 1.
[94] See, _e.g._, Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_,
vol. ii. p. 106.
[95] Wissowa, _l.c._ Aust in Roscher's _Lexicon_, _s.v._
"Iuppiter," p. 657.
[96] Cumont, _Religions Orientales dans le paganisme
romain_, ch. 5. I shall return to this subject in my
second course of lectures.
[97] Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. ch. vii., especially
p. 176 foll.
[98] Cp. below, Lecture XV.
[99] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 13: "Vestales nostras hodie
credimus nondum egressa urbe mancipia fugitiva retinere
in loco precationibus."
[100] Plutarch, _Numa_, 10. Virginity would increase the
power of the spell; see Fehrle, _Die kultische
Keuschheit im Altertum_, p. 54 foll.
[101] See, _e.g._, Frazer, _G.B._ i. 360 foll.
[102] See _R.F._ p. 320, notes 6 and 7.
[103] Within the last thirty years or so the Lupercalia
has been discussed (apart from writers on classical
subjects exclusively) by Mannhardt in his _Mythologische
Studien_, p. 72 foll.; Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p.
459; Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 481 foll.; and at the
moment of writing by E. S. Hartland, _Primitive
Paternity_, i. ch. ii. _R.F._ p. 310 foll. See Appendix
D.
[104] This view was originally stated in Pauly-Wissowa,
_s.v._ "Argei." I endeavoured to confute it in the
_Classical Review_, 1902, p. 115 foll., and Wissowa
replied in _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 211 foll. Since
then my conviction has become stronger that this great
scholar is for once wrong. Ennius alluded to the Argei
as an institution of Numa, _i.e._ as primitive (frag.
121, Vahlen, from Festus p. 355, and Varro, _L.L._ vii.
44), yet Ennius was a youth at the very time when
Wissowa insists that the rite originated. Wissowa makes
no attempt to explain this. See below, p. 321 foll.
[105] _R.F._ p. 111 foll.
[106] _e.g._ the October horse, which also occurred on
the Ides; see _R.F._ p. 241 foll.; and the festival of
Anna Perenna, also on Ides (March 15), _R.F._ p. 50
foll. It is just possible that all the three festivals
were originally in the old calendar, and dropped out
because the mark of the Ides had to be affixed to the
day in the first place. See Wissowa, _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 164 foll.; _R.F._ p. 241.
[107] Thus Messrs. Hubert et Mauss (_Mélanges d'histoire
des religions_, Preface, p. xxiv.) maintain that there
is no real antinomy between "les faits du système
magique et les faits du système religieux." There is in
every rite, they insist, a magical as well as a
religious element. Yet on the same page we find that
they exclude magic from all organised cult, because it
is not obligatory, and cannot (if I understand them
rightly) be laid down in a code, like religious
practice. I think it would have been simpler to consider
the magical element in religious rites as surviving,
with its original meaning lost, from an earlier stage of
thought. M. van Gennep, in his interesting work _Les
Rites de passage_, p. 17, goes so far as to call all
religious _ceremonies_ magical, as distinguished from
the _theories_ (_e.g._ animism) which constitute
religion. This seems to me apt to bring confusion into
the discussion; for all rites are the outward expression
of thought, and it is by the thought (or, as he calls
it, theories) that we must trace the sociological
development of mankind, the rites being used as indexes
only. I cannot but think that (as indeed in these days
is quite natural) this French school lays too much
stress upon the outward acts, and that this tendency has
led them to find real living magic where it is present
only in a fossil state.
[108] _e.g._ Tylor, article "Magic" in _Encycl. Brit._,
and _Primitive Culture_, 1. ch. iv.; Marett, _Threshold
of Religion_, 83. See below, p. 180.
[109] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 17 and 18. For the singing
or murmuring of spells in many countries, see Jevons,
_Anthropology and the Classics_, p. 93 foll.
[110] Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_, note on this
passage.
[111] _Civ. Dei_, viii. 19.
[112] See, _e.g._, Wordsworth, _Fragments and Specimens
of Early Latin_, p. 446, for an account of simple land
measurement which will suffice to illustrate the point
made here.
[113] The _carmina famosa_ sung at a triumph by the
soldiers had the same origin, but were used to avert
evil from the triumphator. The best exposition of this
is in H. A. J. Munro's _Elucidations of Catullus_, p. 76
foll.
[114] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 19. For the technical sense
of _defigere_, _defixio_, see Jevons in _Anthropology
and the Classics_, p. 108 foll.
[115] The most familiar examples are Virgil's eighth
_Eclogue_, 95 foll.; Ovid, _Met._ vii. 167, and
elsewhere; _Fasti_, iv. 551; Horace, _Epode_ v. 72; cp.
article "Magia" in Daremberg-Saglio; Falz, _De poet.
Rom. doctrina magica_, Giessen, 1903. There is a
collection of Roman magical spells in Appel's _De
Romanorum precationibus_, p. 43 foll. Many modern
Italian examples and survivals will be found in Leland's
_Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition_, pt. ii.
[116] Cato, _R.R._ 160; Varro, _R.R._ i. 3.
[117] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 21.
[118] _Ib._ xxviii. 20. The following sections of this
book are the _locus classicus_ for these popular
superstitions.
[119] See, _e.g._, _Italian Home Life_, by Lina Duff
Gordon, p. 230 foll.
[120] Juvenal v. 164. The idea probably arose, as a
passage of Plutarch suggests (_Rom._ 25), from the fact
that the triumphator, whose garb was no doubt of
Etruscan origin, wore the bulla.
[121] Frazer, _G.B._ i. 345, note 2, where we learn that
gold was taboo in some Greek worships, _e.g._ at the
mysteries of Andania, which sufficiently proves that it
possessed potency. Pliny, xxxiii. 84, mentions cases of
such potency as medicine, and among them its application
to children who have been poisoned.
[122] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 39.
[123] See an article by the author on the original
meaning of the _toga praetexta_ in _Classical Review_,
vol. x. (1896) p. 317.
[124] For the Compitalia, Macrob. i. 7. 34; Festus p.
238. For the Paganalia, Probus, _ad Georg._ ii. 385,
assuming the _feriae Sementinae_ there mentioned to be
the Paganalia (see _R.F._ p. 294). For the _feriae
Latinae_, Festus, _s.v._ "oscillantes."
[125] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 193, with whose view I entirely
agree. We learn of the imaginary goddess from Varro,
_L.L._ ix. 61. Pais, I may remark in passing, is certain
that Acca Larentia was the mater Larum; see his
_Lectures on Ancient Legends of Roman History_, p. 60
foll.
[126] 46. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 354, note 5.
[127] _Georg._ ii. 380 foll. It is not certain that
Virgil is describing the festival generally known as
Paganalia, which took place early in January; but it
seems probable from line 382 that he is thinking of some
festival of the pagus. The _oscilla_ may have been used
at more than one.
[128] Note that Virgil writes of masks used in rude
play-acting, as well as of _oscilla_ hung on trees, and
conjoins the two as though they had something in common.
The evidence of an engraved onyx cup in the Louvre, of
which a cut is given in the article "Oscilla" in the
_Dict. of Antiquities_, seems to make it probable that
masks worn by rustics on these occasions were afterwards
hung by them on trees as _oscilla_. Some of these masks
on the cup are adorned with horns, which may explain an
interesting passage of Apuleius (_Florida_, i. 1):
"neque enim iustius religiosam moram viatori obiecerit
aut ara floribus redimita ... aut quercus cornibus
onerata, aut fagus pellibus coronata," etc. See also
_Gromatici veteres_, ii. 241.
[129] See, however, Dr. Frazer's remarks in _G.B._ ii.
p. 454. He thinks that the air might in this way be
purged of vagrant spirits or baleful ghosts, as the
Malay medicine man swings in front of the patient's
house in order to chase away the disease. Cp. _G.B._ ii.
343, where a rather different explanation is attempted
of the _maniae_ and _pilae_.
[130] Magic in the old forms, or many of them, has
survived not only into the old Roman religion, but to
the present day, in many parts of Italy. "The peasants
have recourse to the priests and the saints on great
occasions, but they use magic all the time for
everything," was said by a woman of the Romagna Toscana
to the late C.G. Leland (_Etruscan Roman Remains_,
Introduction, p. 9). This enterprising American's
remarkable book, though dealing only with a small region
of northern Italy, deserves more consideration than it
has received. The author may have been uncritical, but
beyond doubt he had the gift of extracting secrets from
the peasantry. He claims to have proved that "la vecchia
religione" contains much that has come down direct from
pre-Christian times; and the appearance of Mr. Lawson's
remarkable book on _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient
Greek Religion_ may tempt some really qualified
investigator to undertake a similar work in Italy before
it is too late.
LECTURE IV
THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
Some of the survivals mentioned in the last two lectures seem to carry
us back to a condition of culture anterior to the family and to the
final settlement on the land. Some attempt has recently been made to
discover traces of descent by the mother in early Latium;[131] if this
could be proved, it would mean that the Latins were already in Latium
before they had fully developed the patriarchal system on which the
family is based. However this may be, the first real fact that meets us
in the religious experience of the Romans is the attitude towards the
supernatural, or "the Power that manifests itself in the Universe," of
the family as settled down upon the land. The study of religion in the
family, as we know it in historical times, is also that of the earliest
organisation of religion, and of the most permanent type of ancient
Italian religious thought. Aust, whose book on the Roman religion is the
most masterly sketch of the subject as yet published, writes thus of
this religion of the family:[132] "Here the limits of religion and
superstition vanish ... and in vain we seek here for the boundary marks
of various epochs." By the first of these propositions he means that the
State has not here been at work, framing a _ius divinum_, including
religion and excluding magic; in the family, magic of all kinds would be
admissible alongside of the daily worship of the family deities, and
thus the family would represent a kind of half-way house between the age
of magic and all such superstitions, and the age of the rigid
regulation of worship by the law of a City-state. By the second
proposition he means that the religious experience of the family is far
simpler, and therefore far less liable to change than that of the State.
Greek forms and ideas of religion, for example, hardly penetrated into
its worship:[133] new deities do not find their way in--the family
experience did not call for them as did that of the State. It may be
said without going beyond the truth that the religion of the family
remained the same in all essentials throughout Roman history, and the
great priesthoods of the State never interfered with it in any such
degree as to affect its vitality.[134]
But in order to understand the religion of the family, we must have some
idea of what the family originally was. When a stock or tribe
(_populus_) after migration took possession of a district, it was beyond
doubt divided into clans, _gentes_, which were the oldest kinship
divisions in Italian society. All members of a clan had the same name,
and were believed to descend from a common ancestor.[135] According to
the later juristic way of putting it, all would be in the _patria
potestas_ of that ancestor supposing that no deaths had ever occurred in
the gens; and, indeed, the idea that the gens is immortal in spite of
the deaths of individuals is one which constitutes it as a permanent
entity, and gives it a quasi-religious sanction. For primitive religion,
as has been well said, disbelieves in death; most of the lower races
believe both in a qualified immortality and in the non-reality or
unnaturalness of death.[136] In regard to the kinship of a clan, death
at any rate has no effect: the bond of union never breaks.
Now a little reflection will show that a clan or gens of this kind might
be maintained intact in a nomadic state, or during any number of
migrations; it is, in fact, manifestly appropriate to such a mobile
condition of society, and expresses its natural need of union; and when
the final settlement occurs, this body of kin will hold together in the
process, whether or no it has smaller divisions within it. We may be
certain that this was the one essential kin-division of the Latin stock
when it settled in Latium, and all through Roman history it continues
so, a permanent entity though families may die.[137] Every Roman lawyer
will recognise this fact as true, and I need not dwell on it now.
It is when the gens has settled upon the land that the family begins to
appear as a fact of importance for our purpose. Such operations as the
building of a permanent house, the clearing and cultivation of a piece
of land, can best be carried out by a smaller union than the gens, and
this smaller union is ready to hand in the shape of a section of the
gens comprising the living descendants of a _living_ ancestor, whether
of two, three, or even four generations.[138] This union, clearly
visible to mortal eye, and realisable in every-day work, settles
together in one house, tends its own cattle and sheep, cultivates its
own land with the help of such dependants as it owns, slave or other,
and is known by the word _familia_. This famous word, so far as we know,
does not contain the idea of kinship, at any rate as its leading
connotation; it is inseparable from the idea of land-settlement,[139]
and is therefore essentially _das Hauswesen_, the house itself, with the
persons living in it, free or servile, and with their land and other
property, all governed and administered by the paterfamilias, the master
of the household, who is always the oldest living male ancestor. The
familia is thus an economic unit, developed out of the gens, which is a
unit of kin and little more. And thus the religion of the familia will
be a religion of practical utility, of daily work, of struggle with
perils to which the shepherd and the tiller of the soil are liable; it
is not the worship of an idea of kinship expressed in some dimly
conceived common ancestor; the familia, as I hope to show, had no common
ancestor who could be the object of worship, except that of the gens
from which it had sprung. The life of the familia was a realisation of
the present and its needs and perils, without the stimulus to take much
thought about the past, or indeed about the future; for it, sufficient
for the day was the evil thereof; for what had been and what was to come
it could look to the gens to which it owed its existence. But in
practical life the gens was not of much avail; and instead of it,
exactly as we might expect, we find an artificial union of familiae, a
union of which the essential thing is not the idea of kin, but that of
the land occupied, and known all over Italy by the word _pagus_.[140]
Before I go on to describe the religion of the family, it is necessary
to put the familia into its proper relation with this territorial union.
The pagus is the earliest Italian administrative unit of which we know
anything; a territory, of which the essential feature was the boundary,
not any central point within the boundary. In all probability it was
originally the land on which a gens had settled, though settlement
produces changes, and the land of gens and pagus was not identical in
later times. But within this boundary line, of which we shall hear
something more presently, how were the component parts, the familiae of
the gens, settled down on the land? Of the village community so familiar
to us in Teutonic countries, there is no certain trace in Latium.
_Vicus_, the only word which might suggest it, is identical with the
Greek [Greek: oikos], a house; later it is used for houses standing
together, or for a street in a town. But the vicus in the country has
left no trace of itself as a distinct administrative union like our
village community; the vico-magistri of the Roman city were urban
officers; and what is more important, we know of no religious festivals
of the vicus, like those of the pagus, of which there are well-attested
records. The probability then is that the unit within the pagus was not
the village but the homestead, and that these stood at a distance from
each other, as they do in Celtic countries, not united together in a
village, and each housing a family group working its own land and owning
its own cattle.[141] The question of the amount and the tenure of the
land of this group is a very difficult one, into which it is not
necessary to enter closely here. There can, however, be no doubt that it
possessed in its own right a small piece of garden ground (_heredium_),
and also an allotment of land in the arable laid out by the settlers in
common--_centuriatus ager_; whether the ownership of this was vested in
the individual paterfamilias or in the gens as a whole, does not greatly
matter for our purposes.[142] Lastly, as it is certain that the familia
owned cattle and sheep, we may be sure that it enjoyed the right of
common pasture on the land not divided up for tillage.
We see all this through a mist, and a mist that is not likely ever to
lift; but yet the outlines of the picture are clear enough to give us
the necessary basis for a study of the religion of the familia. The
religious points, if I may use the expression--those points, that is,
which are the object of special anxiety (_religio_)--lie in the
boundaries, both of the pagus as a whole, and of the arable land of the
familia, in the house itself and its free inhabitants, and in the family
burying-place; and to these three may no doubt be added the spring which
supplied the household with water. Boundaries, house, burying-place,
spring,--all these are in a special sense sacred, and need constant and
regular religious care.
Let us begin with the house, the central point of the economic and
religious unit. The earliest Italian house was little more than a
wigwam, more or less round, constructed of upright posts connected with
wattles, and with a closed roof of straw or branches.[143] This would
seem to have been the type of house of the immigrating people who
settled on the tops of hills and lived a pastoral life; when they
descended into the plains and became a settled agricultural people, they
adopted a more roomy and convenient style of building, suitable for
storing their grain or other products, and for the maintenance of a fire
for cooking these. Whether the rectangular house, with which alone we
are here concerned, was developed under Greek or Etruscan influence, or
suggested independently by motives of practical convenience, is matter
of dispute, and must be left to archaeologists to decide.[144]
This is the house in which the Latin family lived throughout historical
times, the house which we know as the sacred local habitation of divine
and human beings. It consisted in its simplest form, as we all know, of
a single room or hall, the atrium, with a roof open in the middle and
sloping inwards to let the rain fall into a basin (_compluvium_). Here
the life of the family went on, and here was the hearth (_focus_), the
"natural altar of the dwelling-room of man,"[145] and the seat of Vesta,
the spirit of the fire, whose aid in the cooking of the food was
indispensable in the daily life of the settlers. This sacred hearth was
the centre of the family worship of later times, until under Greek
influence the arrangement of the house was modified;[146] and we may be
certain that it was so in the simple farm life of early Latium. In front
of it was the table at which the family took their meals, and on this
was placed the salt-cellar (_salinum_), and the sacred salt-cake, baked
even in historical times in primitive fashion by the daughters of the
family, as in all periods for the State by the Vestal virgins. After the
first and chief course of the mid-day meal, silence was enjoined, and an
offering of a part of the cake was thrown on to the fire from a small
sacrificial plate or dish (_patella_).[147] This alone is enough to
prove that Vesta, the spirit of the fire, was the central point of the
whole worship, the spiritual embodiment of the physical welfare of the
family.
Behind the hearth, _i.e._ farther at the back of the _atrium_, was the
_penus_, or storing-place of the household. _Penus_ was explained by the
learned Scaevola[148] as meaning anything that can be eaten or drunk,
but not so much that which is each day set out on the table, as that
which is kept in store for daily consumption; it is therefore in origin
the food itself, though in later times it became also the receptacle in
which that food was stored. This store was inhabited or guarded by
spirits, the _di penates_, who together with Vesta represent the
material vitality of the family; these spirits, always conceived and
expressed in the plural, form a group in a way which is characteristic
of the Latins, and their plurality is perhaps due to the variety and
frequent change of the material of the store. The religious character of
the store is also well shown by the fact, if such it be, that no impure
person was allowed to meddle with it; the duty was especially that of
the children of the family,[149] whose purity and religious capability
was symbolised throughout Roman history by the purple-striped toga which
they wore, and secured also by the amulet, within its capsule the
_bulla_, of which I spoke in the last lecture.
Vesta and the Penates represent the spiritual side of the material needs
of the household; but there was another divine inhabitant of the house,
the Genius of the paterfamilias, who was more immediately concerned with
the continuity of the family. Analogy with the world-wide belief in the
spiritual double of a man, his "other-soul," compels us to think of this
Genius, who accompanied the Latin from the cradle to the grave, as
originally a conception of this kind. The Latins had indeed, in common
with other races, what we may call the breath-idea of the soul, as we
see from the words _animus_ and _anima_, and also the shadow-idea, as is
proved by the word _umbra_ for a departed spirit. But the Genius was one
of those guardian spirits, treated by Professor Tylor as a different
species of the same genus, which accompany a man all his life and help
him through its many changes and chances;[150] and the peculiarity of
this Latin guardian is that he was specially helpful in continuing the
life of the family. The soul of a man is often conceived as the cause of
life, but not often as the procreative power itself; and that this
latter was the Latin idea is certain, both from the etymology of the
word and from the fact that the marriage-bed was called _lectus
genialis_. I am inclined to think that this peculiarity of the Latin
conception of Genius was the result of the unusually strong idea that
the Latins must have had, even when they first passed into Italy, of
kinship as determined not by the mother but by the father.[151] It is
possible, I think, that the Genius was a soul of later origin than those
I have just mentioned, and developed in the period when the gens arose
as the main group of kinsmen real or imaginary. I would suggest that we
may see in it the connecting link between that group and the individual
adult males within it; in that case the Genius would be that soul of a
man which enables him to fulfil the work of continuing the life of the
gens. We can easily imagine how it might eventually come to be his
guardian spirit, and to acquire all the other senses with which we are
familiar in Roman literature. With the development of the idea of
individuality, the individuality of a man as apart from the kin group,
the idea of the individuality of the Genius also became emphasised,
until it became possible to think of it as even living on after the
death of its companion;[152] in this way, in course of time, the Genius
came to exercise a curious influence on the idea of the Manes. The
history of the idea of Genius, and its application to places, cities,
etc., is indeed a curious one, and of no small interest in the study of
religion; but we must return to the primitive house and its divine
inhabitants. There is one more of these who calls for a word before I
pass to the land and the boundaries; we meet him on the threshold as we
leave the dwelling.
It is, of course, well known to anthropologists that the door of a house
is a dangerous point, because evil spirits or the ghosts of the dead may
gain access to the house through it. Among the innumerable customs which
attest this belief there are one or two Roman ones, _e.g._ the practice
of making a man, who has returned home after his supposed death in a
foreign country, enter the house by the roof instead of the door; for
the door must be kept barred against ghosts, and this man may be after
all a ghost, or at least he may have evil spirits or miasma about
him.[153] It was at the doorway that a curious ceremony took place (to
which I shall ask your attention again) immediately after the birth of a
child, in order to prevent Silvanus, who may stand for the dangerous
spirits of the forest, from entering in and vexing the baby.[154] Again,
a dead man, as among so many other peoples, was carried out of the
doorway with his feet foremost, so that he should not find his way back;
and the old Roman practice of burial by night probably had the same
object.[155] Exactly the same anxiety (_religio_) is seen in regard to
the gates of a city; the wall was in some sense holy (_sanctus_), but
the gates, through which was destined to pass much that might be
dangerous, could not be thus sanctified. Was there, then, no protecting
spirit of these doors and gates?
St. Augustine, writing with Varro before him, finds no less than three
spirits of the entrance to a house: Forculus, of the door itself;
Limentinus, of the threshold; and Cardea, of the hinges of the door; and
these Varro seems to have found in the books of the pontifices.[156] I
must postpone the question as to what these pontifical books really
represented; but the passage will at least serve to show us the popular
anxiety about the point of entrance to a house, and its association with
the spirit world. Of late sober research has reached the conclusion that
the original door-spirit was Janus, whom we know in Roman history as
residing in the symbolic gate of the Forum, and as the god of
beginnings, the first deity to be invoked in prayer, as Vesta was the
last.[157] But Janus is also wanted for far higher purposes by some
eminent Cambridge scholars; they have their own reasons for wanting him
as a god of the sky, as a double of Jupiter, as the mate of Diana, and a
deity of the oak.[158] So, too, he was wanted by the philosophical
speculators of the last century B.C., who tried to interpret their own
humble deities in terms of Greek philosophy and Greek polytheism. The
poets too, who, as Augustine says, found Forculus and his companions
beneath their notice, played strange tricks with this hoary old god, as
any one may read in the first book of Ovid's _Fasti_. I myself believe
that the main features of the theology (if we may use the word) of the
earliest Rome were derived from the house and the land as an economic
and religious unit, and I am strongly inclined to see in Janus bifrons
of the Forum a developed form of the spirit of the house-door; but the
question is a difficult one, and I shall return to it in a lecture on
the deities of early Rome.
So far I have said nothing of the Lar familiaris who has become a
household word as a household deity; and yet we are on the point of
leaving the house of the old Latin settler to look for the spirits whom
he worships on his land. The reason is simply that after repeated
examination of the evidence available, I find myself forced to believe
that at the period of which I am speaking the Lar was not one of the
divine inhabitants of the house. When Fustel de Coulanges wrote his
brilliant book _La Cité antique_, which popularised the importance of
the worship of ancestors as a factor in Aryan civilisation, he found in
the Lar, who in historical times was a familiar figure in the house, the
reputed founder of the family; and until lately this view has been
undisputed. But if my account of the relation of the family to the gens
is correct, the family would stand in no need of a reputed founder; that
symbol of the bond of kinship was to be found in the gens of which the
family was an offshoot, a cutting, as it were, planted on the land.
Still more convincing is the fact that when we first meet with the Lar
as an object of worship he is not in the house but on the land. The
oldest Lar of whom we know anything was one of a characteristic Roman
group of which the individuals lived in the _compita_, _i.e._ the spots
where the land belonging to various households met, and where there were
chapels with as many faces as there were properties, each face
containing an altar to a Lar,--the presiding spirit of that allotment,
or rather perhaps of the whole of the land of the familia, including
that on which the house stood.[159] Thus the Lar fills a place in the
private worship which would otherwise be vacant, that of the holding and
its productive power. In this sense, too, we find the Lares in the hymn
of the Arval Brethren, one of the oldest fragments of Latin we possess;
for the spirits of the land would naturally be invoked in the lustration
of the _ager Romanus_ by this ancient religious gild.[160]
But how, it may be asked, did the Lar find his way into the house, to
become the characteristic deity of the later Roman private worship
there? I believe that he gained admittance through the slaves of the
familia, who had no part in the worship of the dwelling, but were
admitted to the Compitalia, or yearly festival of which the Lares of the
compita were the central object. Cato tells us that the vilicus, the
head of the familia of slaves, might not "facere rem divinam nisi
Compitalibus in compito aut in foco";[161] which I take to mean that he
might sacrifice for his fellow-slaves to the Lar at the compitum, or to
the Lar in the house, if the Lar were already transferred from the
compitum to the house. In the constant absence of the owner, the
paterfamilias of Rome's stirring days, the worship of the Lar at the
compitum or in the house came to be more and more distinctly the right
of the vilicus and his wife as representing the slaves, and thus too the
Lar came to be called by the epithet _familiaris_, which plainly
indicates that in his cult the slaves were included. And as it was the
old custom that the slaves should sit at the meals of the family on
benches below the free members (_subsellia_),[162] what more natural
than that they should claim to see there the Lar whom alone of the
deities of the farm they were permitted to worship, and that they should
bring the Lar or his double from the compitum to the house, in the
frequent absence of the master?[163]
The festival of the Lar was celebrated at the compitum, and known as
Compitalia or Laralia; it took place soon after the winter solstice, on
a day fixed by the paterfamilias, in concert, no doubt, with the other
heads of families in the pagus. Like most rejoicings at this time of
year, it was free and jovial in character, and the whole familia took
part in it, both bond and free. Each familia sacrificed on its own
altar, which was placed fifteen feet in front of the compitum, so that
the worshippers might be on their own land; but if, as we may suppose,
the whole pagus celebrated this rite on the same day, there was in this
festival, as in others to be mentioned directly, a social value, a means
of widening the outlook of the familia and associating it with the needs
of others in its religious duties. This is the _religio Larium_ of which
Cicero speaks in the second book of his _de Legibus_, which was "posita
in fundi villaeque conspectu," and handed down for the benefit both of
masters and men from remote antiquity.[164]
There were other festivals in which all the familiae of a pagus took
part. Of these we know little, and what we do know is almost entirely
due to the love of the Augustan poets for the country and its life and
customs; "Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes," wrote Virgil,
contrasting himself with the philosopher poet whom he revered. Varro, in
his list of Roman festivals,[165] just mentions a festival called
Sementivae, associated with the sowing of the seed, and celebrated by
all pagi, if we interpret him rightly; but Ovid has given us a charming
picture of what must be this same rite, and places it clearly in winter,
after the autumn sowing[166]:--
state coronati plenum ad praesaepe iuvenci:
cum tepido vestrum vere redibit opus.
rusticus emeritum palo suspendit aratrum:
omne reformidat frigida volnus humus.
vilice, da requiem terrae, semente peracta:
da requiem terram qui coluere viris.
pagus agat festum: pagum lustrate, coloni,
et date paganis annua liba focis.
placentur frugum matres Tellusque Ceresque,
farre suo gravidae visceribusque suis.
Ovid may here be writing of his own home at Sulmo, and what took place
there in the Augustan age; but we may read his description into the
life of old Latium, for rustic life is tenacious of old custom,
especially where the economic conditions remain always the same. We may
do the same with another beautiful picture left us by Tibullus, also a
poet of the country, which I have recently examined at length in the
_Classical Review_.[167] The festival he describes has often been
identified with Ovid's, but I am rather disposed to see in it a
lustratio of the _ager paganus_ in the spring, of the same kind as the
famous one in Virgil's first _Georgic_, to be mentioned directly; for
Tibullus, after describing the scene, which he introduces with the words
"fruges lustramus et agros," puts into perfect verse a prayer for the
welfare of the crops and flocks, and looks forward to a time when (if
the prayer succeeds) the land shall be full of corn, and the peasant
shall heap wood upon a bonfire--perhaps one of the midsummer fires that
still survive in the Abruzzi. Virgil's lines are no less
picturesque;[168] and though he does not mention the pagus, he is
clearly thinking of a lustratio in which more than one familia takes
part--
cuncta tibi Cererem pubes agrestis adoret.
This is a spring festival "extremae sub casum hiemis, iam vere sereno";
and I shall return to it when we come to deal with the processional
lustratio of the farm. Like the descriptions of Ovid and Tibullus, it is
more valuable to us for the idea it gives us of the spirit of old
Italian agricultural religion than for exact knowledge about dates and
details. There was, of course, endless variety in Italy in both these;
and it is waste of time to try and make the descriptions of the rural
poets fit in with the fixed festivals of the Roman city calendar.
Nor is it quite safe to argue back from that calendar to the life of the
familia and the pagus, except in general terms. As we shall see, the
calendar is based on the life and work of an agricultural folk, and we
may by all means guess that its many agricultural rites existed
beforehand in the earlier social life; but into detail we may not
venture. As Varro, however, has mentioned the Saturnalia in the same
sentence with the Compitalia, we may guess that that famous jovial
festival was a part of the rustic winter rejoicing. And here, too, I may
mention another _festa_ of that month, of which a glimpse is given us by
Horace, another country-loving poet, who specially mentions the pagus as
taking part in it. Faunus and Silvanus were deities or spirits of the
woodland among which these pagi lay, and in which the farmers ran their
cattle in the summer;[169] by Horace's time Faunus had been more or less
tarred with a Greek brush, but in the beautiful little ode I am alluding
to he is still a deity of the Italian farmer,[170] who on the Nones of
December besought him to be gracious to the cattle now feeding
peacefully on the winter pasture:--
ludit herboso pecus omne campo
cum tibi Nonae redeunt Decembres:
festus in _pratis_ vacat otioso
cum bove pagus.
There is one more rite of familia or pagus, or both, of which I must say
a word before I return for a while to the house and its inhabitants. One
of the most important matters for the pagus, as for the landholding
household, was the fixing of the boundaries of their land, whether as
against other pagi or households, or as separating that land from
unreclaimed forest. This was of course, like all these other operations
of the farm, a matter of religious care and anxiety--a matter in which
the feeling of anxiety and awe (_religio_) brought with it, to use an
expression of Cicero's, both _cura_ and _caerimonia_.[171] The _religio
terminorum_ is known to us in some detail, as it existed in historical
times, from the Roman writers on _agrimetatio_; and with their help the
whole subject has been made intelligible by Rudorff in the second volume
of the _Gromatici_.[172] We know that many different objects might serve
as boundary marks, according to the nature of the land, especially trees
and stones; and in the case of the latter, which would be the usual
_termini_ in agricultural land at some distance from forest, we have the
religious character of the stone and its fixing most instructively
brought out. "Fruits of the earth, and the bones, ashes, and blood of a
victim were put into a hole in the ground by the landholders whose lands
converged at the point, and the stone was rammed down on the top and
carefully fixed."[173] This had the practical effect--for all Latin
religion has a practical side--of enabling the stone to be identified in
the future. But Ovid[174] gives us a picture of the yearly commemorative
rite of the same nature, from which we see still better the force of the
_religio terminorum_. The boundary-stone is garlanded, and an altar is
built; the fire is carried from the hearth of the homestead by a
materfamilias, the priestess of the family; a young son of the family
holds a basket full of fruits of the earth, and a little daughter shakes
these into the fire and offers honey-cakes. Others stand by with wine,
or look on in silence, clothed in white. The victims are lamb and
sucking-pig, and the stone is sprinkled with their blood, an act which
all the world over shows that an object is holy and tenanted by a
spirit.[175] And the ceremony ends with a feast and hymns in honour of
holy Terminus, who in Ovid's time in the rural districts, and long
before on the Capitolium of Rome, had risen from the spirit sanctifying
the stone to become a deity, closely connected with Jupiter himself, and
to give his name to a yearly city festival on February 23.
These festivals on the land were, some of them at least, scenes of
revelry, accompanied with dancing and singing, as the poets describe
them, the faces of the peasants painted red with minium,[176] according
to an old Italian custom which survived in the case of the triumphator
of the glorious days of the City-state. But if we may now return for a
moment to the homestead, there were events of great importance to the
family which were celebrated there in more serious and sober fashion,
with rites that were in part truly religious, yet not without some
features that show the prevailing anxiety, rooted in the age of taboo,
which we learnt to recognise under the word _religio_. Marriage was a
religious ceremony, for we can hardly doubt that the patrician
_confarreatio_, in which a cake made of the anciently used grain called
_far_ was offered to Jupiter, and perhaps partaken of sacramentally by
bride and bridegroom, was the oldest form of marriage, and had its
origin in an age before the State came into being. We must remember that
the house was a sacred place, with religious duties carried on within
it, and the abode of household spirits; and when a bride from another
family or gens was to be brought into it, it was essential that such
introduction should be carried out in a manner that would not disturb
the happy relations of the human and divine inhabitants of the house. It
was essential, too, that the children expected of her should be such as
should be able to discharge their duties in the household without
hurting the feelings of these spirits. Some of the quaint customs of the
_deductio_ of later times strongly suggest an original anxiety about
matters of such vital interest; the torch, carried by a boy whose
parents were both living, was of whitethorn (_Spina alba_), which was a
powerful protective against hostile magic, and about which there were
curious superstitions.[177] Arrived at the house, the bride smeared the
doorposts with wolf's fat and oil, and wound fillets of wool around
them--so dangerous was the moment of entrance, so sacred the doorway;
and finally, she was carried over the threshold, and then, and then
only, was received by her husband into communion of fire and water,
symbolic of her acceptance as materfamilias both by man and deity.[178]
When the new materfamilias presented her husband with a child, there was
another perilous moment; the infant, if accepted by the father
(_sublatus_, _i.e._ raised from the earth on which it had been
placed),[179] did not immediately become a member of the family in the
religious sense, and was liable to be vexed by evil or mischievous
spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days,
by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which
was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and
struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of
agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile
spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which friendly
spirits of household life and of settled agricultural pursuits had taken
up their abode. Nothing can better show the anxiety of life in those
primitive times, especially in a country like Italy, full of forest and
mountain, where dwelt mischievous Brownies who would tease the settler
if they could. But on the ninth day after the birth (or the eighth in
the case of a girl) the child was "purified" and adopted into the family
and its sacra, and into the gens to which the family belonged, and
received its name--the latter a matter of more importance than we can
easily realise.[180] From this time till it arrived at the age of
puberty it was protected by amulet and _praetexta_; the tender age of
childhood being then passed, and youth and maiden endued with new
powers, the peculiar defensive armour of childhood might be dispensed
with.[181]
Lastly, the death of a member of the family was an occasion of extreme
anxiety, which might, however, be allayed by the exact performance of
certain rites (_iusta facere_). The funeral ceremonies of the City-state
were of a complicated character, and the details are not all of them
easy to interpret. But the principle must have been always the
same--that the dead would "walk" unless they had been deposited with due
ceremony in the bosom of Mother Earth, and that their natural tendency
in "walking" was to find their way back to the house which had been
their home in life. Whether buried or burnt, the idea was the same: if
burnt, as seems to have been common Roman practice from very early
times, at least one bone had to be buried as representing the whole
body. We have seen that certain precautions were taken to prevent the
dead man from finding his way back, such as carrying him out of the
house feet foremost; and if he were properly buried and the house duly
purified afterwards, the process of prevention was fairly complete. His
ghost, shade, or double then passed beneath the earth to join the whole
body of Manes in the underworld,[182] and could only return at certain
fixed times--such at least was the idea expressed in the customs of
later ages. But if a paterfamilias or his representative had omitted
_iusta facere_, or if the dead man had never been buried at all, carried
off by an enemy or some wild beast, he could never have descended to
that underworld, and was roaming the earth disconsolately, and with an
evil will. The primitive idea of anxiety is well expressed in the Roman
festival of the Lemuria in May, when the head of a household could get
rid of the ghosts by spitting out black beans[183] from his mouth and
saying, "With these I redeem me and mine." Nine times he says this
without looking round: then come the ghosts behind him and gather up the
beans unseen. After other quaint performances he nine times repeats the
formula, "Manes exite paterni," then at last looks round, and the ghosts
are gone.[184] This is plainly a survival from the private life of the
primitive household, and well illustrates its fears and anxieties; but
the State provided, as we shall see, another and more religious
ceremony, put limitations on the mischievous freedom of the ghosts, and
ordained the means of expiation for those who had made a slip in the
funeral ceremonies, or whose dead had been buried at sea or had died in
a far country.
I have thus tried to sketch the life of the early Latin family in its
relations with the various manifestations of the Power in the universe.
We have seen enough, I think, to conclude that it had a strong desire to
be in right relations with that Power, and to understand its will; but
we may doubt whether that desire had as yet become very effective. The
circumstances of the life of the Latin farmer were hardly such as to rid
him of much of the _religio_ that he had inherited from his wilder
ancestors, or had found springing up afresh within him as he contended
with the soil, the elements, and the hostile beings surrounding him,
animal, human, and spiritual. He is living in an age of transition; he
is half-way between the age of magic and a new age of religion and duty.
NOTES TO LECTURE IV
[131] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship_, lect. viii. Dr. Frazer finds traces of
Mutterrecht only in the succession to the kingship of
Alba and Rome, of which the evidence is of course purely
legendary. If the legends represent fact in any sense,
they point, if I understand him rightly, to a kingship
held by a non-Latin race, or, as he calls it, plebeian.
Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 403 foll., believes that the
original Latin population, _i.e._ the plebs of later
times, lived under Mutterrecht.
[132] Aust, _Religion der Römer_, p. 212.
[133] In historical times the household deities were
often represented by images of Greek type: _e.g._ the
Penates by those of the Dioscuri. Wissowa, _Rel. und
Kult._ p. 147, and _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 95
foll., and 289. See also De Marchi, _La Religione nella
vita privata_, i. p. 41 foll. and p. 90 foll.
[134] De Marchi, _op. cit._ i. 13 foll. In the ordinary
and regular religion of the family the State, _i.e._ the
pontifices, did not interfere; but they might do so in
matters such as the succession of _sacra_, the care of
graves, or the fulfilment of vows undertaken by private
persons. See Cicero, _de Legibus_, ii. 19. 47.
[135] Mucius Scaevola, the great lawyer, defined
_gentiles_ as those "qui eodem nomine sunt, qui ab
ingenuis oriundi sunt, quorum maiorum nemo servitutem
servivit, qui capite non sunt deminuti," Cic. _Topica_,
vi. 29. This is the practical view of a lawyer of the
last century B.C., and does not take account of the
_sacra gentilicia_, which had by that time decayed or
passed into the care of _sodalitates_: Marquardt, p. 132
foll.; De Marchi, ii. p. 3 foll. The notion of descent
from a common ancestor is of course ideal, but none the
less a factor in the life of the gens; it crops up,
_e.g._, in Virgil, _Aen._ v. 117, 121, and Servius _ad
loc._
[136] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, p. 47.
[137] For the alleged extinction of the gens Potitia,
and the legend connected with it, Livy i. 7, Festus 237.
[138] See Marquardt, _Privataltertümer_, p. 56, and note
6.
[139] There is, I believe, no doubt that the
etymological affinities of the word _familia_ point to
the idea of settlement and not that of kin; _e.g._ Oscan
_Faama_, a house, and Sanscrit _dhâ_, to settle.
[140] The exact meaning and origin of the word has been
much discussed. It is tempting to connect it with _pax_,
_paciscor_, and make it a territory within whose bounds
there is _pax_; see Rudorff, _Gromatici veteres_, ii.
239, and Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 8 foll.
[141] See Rudorff, _Grom. vet._ ii. 236 foll.; Mommsen,
_Staatsrecht_, iii. 116 foll.; Kornemann in _Klio_, vol.
v. (1905) p. 80 foll.; Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_,
p. 1 foll.
[142] Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. 22 foll.; Kornemann,
_l.c._; Roby in _Dict. of Antiquities_, _s.v._
"Agrimetatio," p. 85. The view that there was freehold
garden land attached to the homestead gains strength
from a statement of Pliny (_N.H._ xix. 50) that the word
used in the XII. Tables for villa, which was the word in
classical times for the homestead, was _hortus_, a
garden, and that this was _heredium_, private property.
See Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. 23. It would indeed be
strange if the house had no land immediately attached to
it; we know that in the Anglo-Saxon village community
the villani, bordarii and cotagii, had their garden
croft attached to their dwellings, apart from such
strips as they might hold from the lord of the manor in
the open fields. See Vinogradoff, _Villainage in
England_, p. 148. For the _centuriatus ager_, Roby
_l.c._ We have no direct knowledge of the system in the
earliest times, but it is almost certain that it was
old-Italian in outline, and not introduced by the
Etruscans, as stated, _e.g._, by Deecke-Müller,
_Etrusker_, ii. 128.
[143] For Latium this is proved by the sepulchral
hut-urns found at Alba and also on the Esquiline. One of
these in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford shows the
construction well. See article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encyclopädie_; Helbig, _Die Italiker in der
Poebene_, p. 50 foll. Later there was an opening in the
roof.
[144] Von Duhn in _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1896,
p. 125 foll., and article "Domus" in Pauly-Wissowa.
[145] This is Aust's admirable expression, _Religion der
Römer_, p. 214.
[146] See the author's _Social Life at Rome in the Age
of Cicero_, p. 242.
[147] Serv. _Aen._ i. 270; Marquardt, p. 126.
[148] _Ap. Gellium_, iv. 1. 17. For the sacredness of
food and meals, see below (Lect. VIII. p. 172).
[149] See a paper by the author in _Classical Rev._ vol.
x. (1896) p. 317, and references there given. Cp. the
passage of Servius quoted above (_Aen._ i. 730), where a
boy is described as announcing at the daily meal that
the gods were propitious. For the purity necessary I may
refer to Hor. _Odes_, iii. 23 _ad fin._, "Immunis aram
si tetigit manus," etc.
[150] _Primitive Culture_, i. 393.
[151] The feminine counterpart of Genius was Juno, of
which more will be said later on. Each woman had her
Juno; but this "other-soul" has little importance as
compared with Genius.
[152] See J. B. Carter in Hastings' _Dict. of Religion
and Ethics_, i. 462 foll. For Genius in general, Birt in
_Myth. Lex._ s.v.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 154 foll.;
Stewart, _Myths of Plato_, p. 450, for the connexion of
souls with ancestry.
[153] See the fifth of Plutarch's _Quaestiones Romanae_,
and Dr. Jevons' interesting comments in his edition of
Phil. Holland's translation, pp. xxii. and xxxv. foll.
Cp. the throwing the fetters of a criminal out by the
roof of the Flamen's house.
[154] _Civ. Dei_, vi. 9. These are deities of the
Indigitamenta; see below, p. 84.
[155] De Marchi, _La Religione_, etc. i. 188 foll.;
Marquardt, _Privatleben der Römer_, p. 336, "la porte
est la limite entre le monde étranger et le monde
domestique" (A. van Gennep, _Rites de passage_, p. 26,
where other illustrations are given).
[156] See below, Lect. XII. p. 281.
[157] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 96; Aust, _Rel. der Römer_, p.
117; Roscher in _Myth. Lex._ s.v. "Janus"; J. B. Carter,
_Religion of Numa_, p. 13. Cp. Von Domaszewski in
_Archiv_, 1907, p. 337.
[158] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of
Kingship_, p. 286 foll.; A. B. Cook in _Classical
Review_, 1904, p. 367 foll.
[159] _Gromat. vet._ i. 302, line 20 foll., describes
the chapels, but without mentioning the Lares. Varro
(_L.L._ vi. 25) supplies the name: "Compitalia dies
attributus Laribus Compitalibus; ideo ubi viae competunt
tum in competis sacrificatur." Cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ p.
148. But the nature of the land thus marked off is not
clear to me, nor explained (for primitive times) by
Wissowa in _Real-Encycl._, _s.vv._ "Compitum" and
"Compitalia."
[160] "Enos Lases juvate." See Henzen, _Acta Fratr.
Arv._ p. 26 foll.
[161] Cato, _R.R._ 5. Cp. Dion. Hal. iv. 13. 2. In Cato
143 the vilica is to put a wreath on the focus on
Kalends, Nones and Ides, and to pray to the Lar
familiaris pro copia (at the compita?).
[162] Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 172.
[163] The controversy about the Lar may be read in the
_Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, p. 42 foll.
(Wissowa), and 1907, p. 368 foll. (Samter in reply). De
Marchi (_La Religione_, etc. i. 28 foll.) takes the same
view as Samter, who originally stated it in his
_Familienfesten_, p. 105 foll., in criticism of
Wissowa's view. See also a note by the author in the
_Archiv_, 1906, p. 529.
[164] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 148; the details as to the
altar occur in _Gromatici vet._ i. 302. It was on this
occasion that _maniae_ and _pilae_ were hung on the
house and compitum ("pro foribus," Macr. i. 7. 35); see
above, p. 61. For the _religio Larium_, Cic. _de Legg._,
ii. 19 and 27. That the Compitalia was an old Latin
festival is undoubted; but as we are uncertain about the
exact nature of the earliest form of landholding, we
cannot be sure about the nature of the compita in remote
antiquity. The passage from the _Gromatici_ (Dolabella),
quoted above, refers to the _fines templares_ of
_possessiones_, _i.e._ the boundaries marked by these
chapels in estates of later times. See Rudorff in vol.
ii. p. 263; Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "Compitum."
[165] Varro, _L.L._ vi. 26. I have discussed this
passage in _R.F._ p. 294; it is still not clear to me
whether Varro is identifying his Paganicae with the
Sementivae, but on the whole I think he uses the latter
word of a city rite (_dies a pontificibus dictus_), and
the former of the country festivals of the same kind.
[166] _Fasti_, i. 663.
[167] _Cl. Rev._, 1908, p. 36 foll.
[168] _Georg._ i. 338 foll.
[169] See my discussion of Faunus in _R.F._ p. 258 foll.
I am still unable to agree with Wissowa in his view of
Faunus (_R.K._ p. 172 foll.). I may here mention a
passage of the gromatic writer Dolabella (_Gromatici_,
i. 302), in which he says that there were three Silvani
to each _possessio_ or large estate of later times: "S.
domesticus, possessioni consecratus: alter agrestis,
pastoribus consecratus: tertius orientalis, cui est in
confinio lucus positus, a quo inter duo pluresque fines
oriuntur." Faunus never became domesticated, but he
belongs to the same type as Silvanus. Von Domaszewski,
in his recently published _Abhandlungen zur röm.
Religion_, p. 61, discredits the passage about the three
Silvani, following a paper of Mommsen. But his whole
interesting discussion of Silvanus shows well how many
different forms that curious semi-deity could take.
[170] _Odes_, iii. 18.
[171] Cic. _de Inventione_, ii. 161.
[172] pp. 236-284.
[173] _R.F._ 325, condensed from Siculus Flaccus
(_Gromatici_, i. 141).
[174] _Fasti_, ii. 641 foll.
[175] See, _e.g._, Jevons, _Introduction_, etc., p. 138;
Robertson Smith, _Semites_, p. 321.
[176] See, _e.g._, Tibullus ii. 1. 55; Virg. _Ecl._ vi.
22, x. 27, and Servius on both these passages. Pliny,
_N.H._ xxxiii. 111; and cp. below, p. 177. For primitive
ideas about the colour red see Jevons, _Introd._ pp. 67
and 138; Samter, _Familienfeste_, p. 47 foll. Cp. also
the very interesting paper of von Duhn in _Archiv_,
1906, p. 1 foll., esp. p. 20: "Es soll eben wirklich
pulsierendes kraftvolles Leben zum Ausdruck gebracht
werden." His conclusions are based on the widespread
custom of using red in funerals, coffins, and for
colouring the dead man himself: the idea being to give
him a chance of new life--which is what he wants--red
standing for blood.
[177] I am not sure that I am right in calling this
whitethorn. For the qualities of the _Spina alba_ see
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 129 and 165, "Sic fatus spinam, quae
tristes pellere posset A foribus nexas, haec erat alba,
dedit." In line 165 he calls it _Virga Janalis_. See
also Festus, p. 289, and Serv. _ad Ecl._ viii. 29;
Bücheler, _Umbrica_, p. 136.
[178] The details are fully set forth in Marquardt,
_Röm. Privataltertümer_, p. 52 foll. The religious
character of _confarreatio_ and its antiquity are fully
recognised by Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_,
p. 427. Some interesting parallels to the smearing of
the doorposts from modern Europe will be found collected
in Samter, _Familienfeste_, p. 81 foll. The authority
for the wolf's fat was Masurius Sabinus, quoted by
Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 142 (cp. 157), who adds from the
same author, "ideo novas nuptas illo perungere postes
solitas, ne quid mali medicamenti inferretur." The real
reason was, no doubt, that it was a charm against evil
_spirits_, not against poison; but it is worth while to
quote here another passage of Pliny (xx. 101), where he
says that a squill hung _in limine ianuae_ had the same
power, according to Pythagoras. Some may see a
reminiscence of totemism in the wolf's fat: in any case
the mention of the animal as obtainable is interesting.
[179] Dieterich, _Mutter Erde_, p. 6 foll. The idea is
that the child comes from mother earth, and will
eventually return to her.
[180] For Roman names Marquardt, _Privatleben_, p. 7
foll., and Mommsen, _Forschungen_, i. I foll., are still
the most complete authorities. For the importance of the
name among wild and semi-civilised peoples, Frazer,
_G.B._ i. 403 foll.; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 430
foll. All these ceremonies of birth, naming, and
initiation (puberty) have recently been included by M.
van Gennep in what he calls _Rites de passage_ (see his
book with that title, which appeared after these
lectures were prepared, especially chapters v. and vi.).
In all these ceremonies he traces more or less
successfully a sequence of rites of separation (_i.e._
from a previous condition), of margin, where the ground
is, so to speak, neutral, and of "aggregation," when the
subject is introduced to a new state or condition of
existence. If I understand him rightly, he looks on this
as the proper and primitive explanation of all such
rites, and denies that they need to be accounted for
animistically, _i.e._ by assuming that riddance of evil
spirits, or purification of any kind, is the leading
idea in them. They are, in fact, quasi-dramatic
celebrations of a process of going over from one status
to another, and may be found in connection with all the
experiences of man in a social state. But the Roman
society, of which I am describing the religious aspect,
had beyond doubt reached the animistic stage of thought,
and was in process of developing it into the theological
stage; hence these ceremonies are marked by sacrifices,
as marriage, the _dies lustricus_ (see De Marchi, p.
169, and Tertull. _de Idol._ 16) most probably, and
puberty (_R.F._ p. 56). I do not fully understand how
far van Gennep considers sacrifice as marking a later
stage in the development of the ideas of a society on
these matters (see his note in criticism of Oldenburg,
p. 78); but I see no good reason to abandon the words
purification and lustration, believing that even if he
is right in his explanation of the original
performances, these ideas had been in course of time
engrafted on them.
[181] In historical times the _toga pura_ was assumed
when the parents thought fit; earlier there may have
been a fixed day (_R.F._ p. 56, "Liberalia"). In any
case there was, of course, no necessary correspondence
between "social and physical puberty"; van Gennep, p. 93
foll.
[182] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 191; J. B. Carter in Hastings'
_Dict. of Religion and Ethics_, i. 462 foll.; Dieterich,
_Mutter Erde_, p. 77. The whole question of the
so-called cult of the dead at Rome calls for fresh
investigation in the light of ethnological and
archaeological research. The recent work of Mr. J. C.
Lawson, _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion_, seems to throw grave doubt on some of the
most important conclusions of Rohde's _Psyche_, the work
which most writers on the ideas of the Greeks and Romans
have been content to follow. Mr. Lawson seems to me to
have proved that the object of both burial and cremation
(which in both peninsulas are found together) was to
secure dissolution for the substance of the body, so
that the soul might not be able to inhabit the body
again, and the two together return to annoy the living
(see especially chapters v. and vi.). But his answer to
the inevitable question, why in that case sustenance
should be offered to the dead at the grave, is less
satisfactory (see pp. 531, 538), and I do not at present
see how to co-ordinate it with Roman usage. But I find
hardly a trace of the belief that the dead had to be
placated like the gods by sacrifice and prayer, except
in _Aen._ iii. 63 foll. and v. 73 foll. In the first of
these passages Polydorus had not been properly buried,
as Servius observes _ad loc._ to explain the nature of
the offerings; the second presents far more difficulties
than have as yet been fairly faced.
[183] For recent researches about beans as tabooed by
the Pythagoreans and believed to be the food of ghosts,
see Gruppe, _Mythologische Literatur_, p. 370 (Samter
and Wünsch). Cp. _R.F._, p. 110.
[184] Ov. _Fasti_, v. 421 foll.; _R.F._ p. 107.
LECTURE V
THE CALENDAR OF NUMA
The religion of the household had two main characteristics. First, it
was a perfectly natural and organic growth, the result of the Roman
farmer's effective desire to put himself and his in right relations with
the spiritual powers at work for good or ill around him. His conception
of these powers I shall deal with more fully in the next lecture; but I
have said enough to prove that it was not a degrading one. The spirits
of his house and his land and his own Genius were friendly powers, all
of them of the greatest importance for his life and his work, and their
claims were attended to with regularity and devotion. From Vesta and the
Penates, the Lar, the Genius, the Manes, and the spirits of the doorway
and the spring, there was nothing to fear if they were carefully
propitiated; and as his daily life and comfort depended on this
propitiation, they were really divine members of the _familia_, and
might become, and perhaps did become, the objects of real affection as
well as worship. In this well-regulated practical life of the early
agricultural settlers, with its careful attention to the claims of its
divine protectors, we may perhaps see the germs of a real religious
expression of human life.
Secondly, there was doubtless at the same time constant cause for
anxiety. Beyond the house and the land there were unreclaimed spirits of
the woodland which might force an entrance into the sacred limits of the
house; the ghosts of the dead members were constantly wishing to
return; the crops might be attacked by strange diseases, by storms or
drought, and man himself was liable to seasonal disease or sudden
pestilence. The cattle and sheep might stray into the remote forest and
become the prey of evil beasts, if not of evil spirits. How was the
farmer to meet all these troubles, caused, as he supposed, by spirits
whose ways he did not understand? How were they to be propitiated as
they themselves would wish? How were the omens to be interpreted from
which their will might be guessed? How were the proper times and seasons
for each religious operation to be discovered? If my imagination is not
at fault, I seem to see that the Latin farmer must have had to shift for
himself in most of his dealings with the supernatural powers about him;
_religio_, the sense of awe and of dependence, must have been constantly
with him. But even here we may see, I think, a possible germ of
religious development; for without this feeling of awe religious forms
tend to become meaningless: lull _religio_ to sleep, and the forms cease
to represent effectively man's experience of life. We have to see later
on how this paralysis of the religious instinct did actually take place
in early Roman history.
For we now have to leave the religion of the household, and to study
that of the earliest form of the City-state. We have enjoyed a glint of
light reflected from later times on the religion of the early Roman
family, and are about to enjoy another glint--nay, a gleam of real
light, and not merely a reflected one--which the earliest religious
document we possess casts on the religion of the City-state of Rome.
Between the two there is a long period of almost complete darkness. We
know hardly anything as yet, and it is not likely that we shall ever
know anything definite, about the stages of development which must have
been passed before Rome became the so-called city of the Four Regions,
when her history may be said really to begin. The pagus hardly helps us
here; it was not an essential advance on the family, and its religion
was comprehensive, not intensive. Each pagus, however, seems to have
had within its bounds an _oppidum_, or stronghold on a hill; and such
oppida were the seven _montes_ of early Rome, which, with the pagi
belonging to them, survived in name to the end of the Republic, with
some kind of a religious festival uniting them together, about which we
have hardly any knowledge.[185] This looks like a stage in the process
of change from farm to city, and it has generally been believed to mark
one. Unfortunately nothing to our purpose can be founded on it. We must
be content with the undoubted fact that about the eighth or seventh
century B.C. the site of Rome was occupied and strengthened as a bulwark
against the Etruscan people who were pressing down from the north upon
the valley of the Tiber;[186] we may take it that the old central
fortress of Latium, on the Alban hill, was not in the right position for
defence, and that it was seen to be absolutely necessary to make a
stronghold of the position offered by the hills which abut on the river
twenty miles above its mouth--the only real position of defence for the
Latin settlements in its rear. Here an _urbs_ was made with _murus_ and
_pomoerium_, _i.e._ material and spiritual boundaries, taking in a space
sufficient to hold the threatened rural population with their flocks and
herds, with the river in the front and a common citadel on the
Capitoline hill, and including the Palatine, Quirinal, Esquiline,
Caelian and Aventine hills, though the last named remained technically
outside the pomoerium.[187]
It is to this city that our earliest religious document, the so-called
Calendar of Numa, belongs. That calendar includes the cult of Quirinus
on the hill which still bears his name, and that hill was an integral
part of the city as just described. On the other hand, it tells us
nothing of the great cult of the _trias_ on the Capitoline--Jupiter,
Juno, Minerva--which by universal tradition was instituted much later by
the second Tarquinius, _i.e._ under an Etruscan dynasty; nor does Diana
appear in it, the goddess who was brought from Latium and settled on the
Aventine before the end of the kingly period. We have, then, a
_terminus ex quo_ for the date of the calendar in the inclusion in the
city of the Quirinal hill, and a _terminus ad quem_ in the foundation of
the Diana temple on the Aventine.[188] We cannot date these events
precisely; but it is sufficient for our purpose if it be taken as proved
that the Fasti belong to the fully developed city, and yet were drawn up
before that conquest by the Etruscans which we may regard as a
certainty, and which is marked by the foundations of Etruscan masonry
which served to support the great Capitoline temple. And this is also
borne out by the undoubted fact that the calendar itself shows no trace
of Etruscan influence. But I must now go on to explain exactly what this
calendar is.
The _Fasti anni Romani_ exist chiefly on stone as inscriptions, and date
from the Early Empire, between 31 B.C. and A.D. 51. They give us, in
fact, the calendar as revised by Caesar; but no one now doubts that
Mommsen was right in detecting in these inscriptions the skeleton of the
original calendar which the Romans ascribed to Numa.[189] This is
distinguished from later additions by the large capital letters in which
it is written or inscribed in all the fragments we possess; it gives us
the days of the month with their religious characteristics as affecting
state business, the names of the religious festivals which concern the
whole state, and the Kalends, Nones, and Ides in each month. Excluding
these last, we have the names, in a shortened form, of forty-five
festivals; and these festivals, thus placed by an absolutely certain
record in their right place in each month and in the year, must be the
foundation of all scientific study of the religious practice of the
Roman state, taken together with certain additions in smaller capitals,
and with such information about them as we can obtain from literary
sources.[190]
The smaller capitals give us such entries as _feriae Iovi_, _feriae
Saturno_, _i.e._ the name of a deity to whom a festival was sacred, the
foundation days of temples, generally with the name of the deity in the
dative and the position of the temple in the city, and certain _ludi_
and memorial days, which belong to a much later age than the original
festivals. But the names of those which are inscribed in large letters
bear witness beyond all question to their own antiquity; for among them
there is not one which has anything to do, so far as we know, with a
non-Roman deity, and we know that foreign deities began to arrive in
Rome before the end of the kingly period. Here, then, we have genuine
information about the oldest religious doings of the City-state, in what
indeed is, as Mommsen said, the most ancient source of our knowledge
about Roman antiquity generally.
The first point we notice in studying this calendar (putting aside for
the present the question as to the agency by which it was drawn up) is
this: it exactly reflects a transition from the life of a rural
population engaged in agriculture, to the highly-organised political and
military life of a City-state. In other words, the State, whose
religious needs and experience it reflects, was one whose economic basis
was agriculture, whose life included legal and political business, and
whose activity in the season of arms was war.
This last characteristic is discernible chiefly, if not entirely, in the
months of March and October; and the former of these bears the name of
the great deity, who, whatever may have been his origin or the earliest
conception of him, was throughout Roman history the god of war. All
through March up to the 23rd the Salii, the warlike priests of Mars,
were active, dancing and singing those hymns of which an obscure
fragment has come down to us, and clashing and brandishing the sacred
spears and shields of the god (_ancilia_).[191] On the 19th these
ancilia were lustrated--a process to which I shall recur in another
lecture; and on the 23rd we find in the calendar the festival
Tubilustrium, which suggests the lustration of the trumpets of the host
before it took the field. On the 14th of March,[192] and also on the
27th of February, we find Equirria in the calendar, which must be
understood as lustrations of the horses of the host, accompanied with
races. If we may take the ancilia as symbolising the arms of the host,
we see in the festivals of this month a complete religious process
preparing the material of war for the perils inevitably to be met with
beyond the _ager Romanus_, whether from human or spiritual enemies; and
that the warriors themselves were subjected to a process of the same
kind we know from the historical evidence of later times.[193] Now in
October, when the season of arms was over, we find indications of a
parallel process, which Wissowa was the first to point out clearly, but
without fully recognising its religious import.[194] It was not so much
thanksgiving (_Dankfest_) after a campaign that was necessary on the
return of the army, as purification (or disinfection) from the taint of
bloodshed, and from contact with strange beings human and
spiritual.[195] On October 15, the Ides, there was a horse-race in the
Campus Martius, with a sacrifice of the winning horse to Mars with
peculiar primitive ritual; this, however, for some reason which I shall
presently try to discover, was not embodied in the calendar under any
special name. On the 19th, however, we find the entry ARMILUSTRIUM,
which tells its own tale. The Salii, too, were active again in these
days of October, and on the day of the Armilustrium, as it would seem,
put their shields away (_condere_) in their _sacrarium_ until the March
following. As Wissowa says, the ritual of the Salii is thus a symbolic
copy of the procedure of war.[196] From these indications in the
calendar, helped out by information drawn from the later entries and
from literary evidence, we see quite plainly that we are dealing with
the religion of a state which for half the year is liable to be engaged
in war. Rome was, in fact, a frontier fortress on the Tiber against
Etruscan enemies; she is destined henceforward to be continually in
arms, and she has already expressed this great fact in her religious
calendar.
The legal and political significance of the calendar consists in the
division of the days of the year into two great groups, _dies fasti_
and _nefasti_: the former are those on which it is _fas_, _i.e._
religiously permissible, to transact civil business, the latter those on
which it would be _nefas_ to do so, _i.e._ sacrilege, because they are
given over to the gods. We need not, indeed, assume that these marks F
and N descend in every case from the very earliest times into the
pre-Julian calendar, or that the few days which have other marks stood
originally as we find them; but of the primitive character of the main
division we can have no doubt. In the calendar as we have it 109 days
belong to the divine, 235 to the human inhabitants of the city. All but
two of the former are days of odd numbers in the month, and it is
reasonable to suppose that these two exceptions were later alterations.
The belief that odd numbers are lucky is a very widely-spread
superstition, and we do not need to have recourse to Pythagoras to
explain it; in this rule, as in others, _e.g._ their taboo on eating
beans, the Pythagoreans were only following a native prejudice of
southern Italy. "The idea of luck in odd numbers," says Mr. Crooke,[197]
writing of the Hindus, "is universal." Thus the simpler odd numbers,
three, five, seven, and nine, all recur constantly in folklore; and the
result is visible in this calendar. Where a festival occupies more than
one day in a month, there is an interval between the two of one or three
days, making the whole number three or five. Thus Carmentalia occur on
11th and 15th January, and the Lemuria in May are on the 9th, 11th, and
13th; the Lucaria in July on 19th and 21st. In some months, too, _e.g._
August and December, perhaps also July and February, there seem to be
traces of an arrangement by which festivals which probably had some
connection with each other are thus arranged; _e.g._ in August six
festivals, all concerned in some way with the fruits of the earth and
the harvest, occur on the 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, and 27th. It has
recently been suggested[198] that these are arranged round one central
festival, which gives a kind of colouring to the others, as the
Volcanalia in August, the Saturnalia in December. But the reasons von
Domaszewski gives for the arrangement, and the further speculation that
where it does not occur we may find traces of an older system, as yet
unaffected by the so-called Pythagorean prejudice, do not seem to me
satisfactory. We may be content with the general principle as I have
stated it, and note that while religious duties _must_ be performed on
days of odd number, civil duties were not so restricted: the days
belonging to the gods, which were, so to speak, taboo days, were more
important than those belonging to men. There are, as I have said, but
two days marked in the large letters as festivals, which are on days of
even number, 24th February and 14th March, the Regifugium and the second
Equirria; and about these we know so little that it is almost useless to
speculate as to the reason for their exception from the rule. Two
others, 24th March and 24th May, were partly the property of the gods
and partly of men, and are marked QRCF (_quando rex comitiavit fas_);
but the sense in which they partially belonged to the gods is not the
same as in the case of sacrificial festivals.
This calendar thus shows obvious signs of both military and political
development; in other words, its witness to the religious experience of
the Romans proves that they had successfully adjusted the forms and
seasons of their worship to the processes of government at home and of
military service in the field. But the most conspicuous feature in it is
the testimony it bears to the agricultural habits of the people--to the
fact that agriculture and not trade, of which there is hardly a trace,
was the economic basis of their life. At the time when it was drawn up,
the Romans must have been able to subsist upon the _ager Romanus_,
though, as we shall see later on, it was probably not long before they
began commercial relations with other peoples; for their food, which was
almost entirely vegetarian, and their clothing, which was entirely of
wool and leather,[199] they depended on their crops, flocks, and herds;
and the perils to which these were liable remain for the State, as for
the farming household, the main subject of the propitiation of the gods,
the main object of their endeavours to keep themselves in right relation
with the Power manifest in the universe.
We can trace the series of agricultural operations in the calendar
without much difficulty all through the year. The Roman year, we must
remember, began with March, and March, as we have seen, had under the
military necessities of the State become peculiarly appropriated to the
religious preparation of the burgher host for warlike activity. But the
festivals of April, when crops were growing, cattle bringing forth young
or seeking summer pasture, all have direct reference to the work of
agriculture.[200] At the Fordicidia, on the 15th, pregnant cows were
sacrificed to the Earth-goddess, and their unborn calves burnt,
apparently with the object of procuring the fertility of the corn; and
the Cerealia on the 19th, to judge by the name, must have had an object
of the same kind, though the supersession of Ceres by the Greek Demeter
had obscured this in historical times. The Parilia on the 19th, recently
illuminated by Dr. Frazer,[201] was a lustration of the cattle and sheep
before they left their winter pasture to encounter the dangers of wilder
hill or woodland, and may be compared with the lustratio of the host
before a campaign. On the 23rd the Vinalia tells its own tale, and shows
that the cultivation of the vine was already a part of the agricultural
work. On the 25th the spirit of the red mildew, Robigus, was the object
of propitiation, at the time when the ear was beginning to be formed in
the corn, and was particularly liable to attack from this pest.
The religious precautions thus taken in April were not renewed in May;
but at the end of that month of ripening the whole of the _ager Romanus_
was lustrated by the Fratres Arvales. This important rite, for some
reason which we cannot be sure of, was a movable feast, left to the
discretion of the brethren, and therefore does not appear in the
calendar. In June the sacred character of the new crops, now approaching
their harvest, becomes apparent; the _penus Vestae_, the symbolic
receptacle of the grain-store of the State, after remaining open from
the 7th to the 15th, was closed on that day for the rest of the year,
after being carefully cleansed: the refuse was religiously deposited in
a particular spot. Thus all was made ready for the reception of the new
grain, which, as is now well known, has a sacred character among
primitive peoples, and must be stored and eaten with precaution.[202]
This was the chief religious work of June; in July, the month when the
harvest was actually going on, the festivals are too obscure to delay
us; they seem to have some reference to water, rain, storms, but it is
not clear to me whether the object was to avert stormy weather during
the cutting of the crops, or, on the other hand, to avert a drought in
the hottest time of the year. The true harvest festivals begin in
August; the Consualia on 21st and Opiconsiva on 25th both seem to
suggest the operation of storing up (_condere_) the grain, and between
them we find the Volcanalia, of which the object was perhaps to
propitiate the fire-spirit at a time when the heat of the sun might be
dangerous to the freshly-gathered crops.
After the crops were once harvested, ploughing and sowing chiefly
occupied the farming community until December; and as these operations
were not accompanied by the same perils which beset the agriculturist in
spring and summer, they have left no trace in the calendar. Special
religious action was not necessary on their behalf. It is not till the
autumn sowing was over, and the workers could rest from their labours,
that we find another set of festivals, of which the centre-point is the
Saturnalia on the 17th, Saturnus being the deity, I think, both of the
operation of sowing and of the sown seed, now reposing in the bosom of
mother earth.[203] A second Consualia on the 15th, and the Opalia on the
19th, like the corresponding August festivals, seem to be concerned with
the housed grain harvested in the previous August; I am disposed to
think that in all three we should see not only the natural rejoicing
after the labours of the autumn, but the opening of the granaries and,
perhaps, the first eating of the grain. For on the Saturnalia there was
a sacrifice at Saturnus' altar, followed by a feast, which was
afterwards Graecised, but doubtless originally represented the primitive
feasting of the farm, in which the whole familia took part. This brings
us practically to the end of the agricultural year as represented in the
calendar; for spring sowing was exceptional, the joyful feasts of pagus
and compitum are not to be found in our document, and the month of
February is specially occupied with the care and cult of the dead
(_Manes_).
At this point I wish to notice one or two results of the adoption of a
religious calendar such as I have been describing, which are more to the
purpose of these lectures than some of the details I have had to point
out. First, let us remember that agricultural operations necessarily
vary in date according to the season, and that most of the rural
festivals of ancient Italy were not fixed to a particular day, but were
_feriae conceptivae_, settled perhaps according to the decision of some
meeting of heads of families or officers of a pagus. That this was so we
may conjecture from the fact that those which survived into historical
times, _e.g._ Compitalia and Paganalia, and were celebrated in the city,
though not as _sacra pro populo_,[204] were of varying date. But all the
festivals of the calendar were necessarily fixed, and the days on which
they were held were made over to the gods. Now by being thus fixed they
would soon begin to get out of relation to agricultural life; just as,
if the harvest festivals of our churches were fixed to one day
throughout the country, the meaning of the religious service would
sooner or later begin to lose something of its force. And how much the
more would this be so if the calendar itself, from ignorance or
mismanagement, began to get out of relation with the true season, as in
course of time was frequently the case? When once under such
circumstances the meaning of a religious rite is lost, where is its
psychological efficacy? In the life of the old Latin farmer, as we saw,
his religion was a reality, an organic growth, coincident at every point
with the perils he encountered in his daily toil; here, in the
City-state, it must from the beginning have had a tendency to become an
unreality, and it ended by becoming one entirely. Some of the old rites
may have attached new meanings to themselves; it is possible, for
example, that beneath the military rites of March there was an original
agricultural significance; the Saturnalia became a merry mid-winter
festival for a town population. But a great number wholly lost meaning,
and were so forgotten or neglected in course of time that even learned
men like Varro do not seem to have been able to explain them. The only
practical question about them for the later Romans was whether their
days were _dies fasti_ or _nefasti_ or _comitiales_,--what work might or
might not be done on them.
Another point, closely connected with the last, and tending in the same
direction, is that such a calendar as this implies rigidity and routine
in religious duties. A well-ordered city life under a strong government
must, of course, be subject to routine; law, religious or civil, written
or unwritten, forces the individual into certain stereotyped ways of
life, subjects him to a certain amount of wholesome discipline. The
value of such routine to an undisciplined people has been well pointed
out by Bishop Stubbs, in writing of the effect of the rule of the Norman
and Angevin kings on the English people,[205] where it was also a
religious as well as a legal discipline that was at work. In neither
case was it the ignorant and superstitious routine of savage life, which
of late years we have had to substitute for old fancies about the
freedom of the savage; it is the willing obedience of civilised man for
his own benefit. But if it means a routine of religious rites which are
beginning to lose their meaning; if the relation between them and man's
life and work is lost; and lastly, if, as was probably the case, the
Fasti were not published, but remained in the hands of a priesthood or
an aristocracy,[206]--then there is serious loss as well as gain. You
begin sooner or later to cease to feel your dependence on the divine
beings around you for your daily bread, to get out of right relation
with the Power manifesting itself in the universe.
But, in the third place, we must believe that at first, and indeed
perhaps for ages, this very routine had an important psychological
result in producing increased comfort, convenience, and confidence in
the Roman's relations with the divine inhabitants of his city. A certain
number of deities have taken up their abode within the walls of the
city, and are as much its inhabitants, its citizens, as the human beings
who live there; and all the relations between the divine and human
citizens are regulated now by law, by a _ius divinum_, of which the
calendar is a very important part. _Religio_, the old feeling of doubt
and scruple, arising from want of knowledge in the individual, is still
there; it is, in fact, the feeling which has given rise to all this
organisation and routine, the _cura_ and _caerimonia_, as Cicero phrases
it. But it must be already losing its strength, its life; it was, so to
speak, a constitutional weakness, and the _ius divinum_ is already
beginning to act on it as a tonic. Doubt has passed into fixed usage,
tradition has given place to organisation. Time, place, procedure in all
religious matters, are guaranteed by those skilled in the _ius divinum_;
they know what to do as the festival of each deity comes round, and at
the right time and place they do it with scrupulous attention to every
detail. Thus the organisation of which the calendar is our best example
would have as its first result the destruction of fear and doubt in the
mind of the ordinary Roman; it would tend to kill, or at least to put to
sleep, the _religio_ which was the original motive cause of this very
organisation. As the State in our own day has a tendency to relieve
families of such duties as the care and education of children, so the
State at Rome relieved the family of constant anxiety about matters in
which they were ever in danger from the spirit-world. The State and its
authorities have taken the whole responsibility of adjusting the
relations of the human and divine citizens.[207]
Entirely in keeping with this psychological result of the calendar is
the fact, to which I have already alluded, that it supplies us with
hardly any evidence of the existence of magic, or of those "beastly
devices of the heathen" which may roughly be included under that word;
to use the language of Mr. Lang, we find none of those "distressing
vestiges of savagery and barbarism which meet us in the society of
ancient Greece." It is true enough that we do not know much about what
was done at the various festivals of the calendar, but what we do know,
with one or two exceptions, suggests an idea of worship as clean and
rational as that of the Homeric poems, which stands in such striking
contrast to that reflected in later Greek literature.[208] When we do
read of any kind of grossness in worship or the accompanying
festivities, it is almost always in the case of some rite which is _not_
among those in the Fasti. Such was the old festival of Anna Perenna in
March, where the plebs in Ovid's time spent the day in revelry and
drinking, and prayed for as many years of life as they could drink cups
of wine. Such again was that of the October horse, when after a
chariot-race in the Campus the near horse of the winning team was
sacrificed, and his tail carried in hot haste to the Regia, where the
blood was allowed to drip on the sacred hearth; while the head was the
object of a fight between the men of the Via Sacra and those of the
Subura.[209] We may perhaps include in the list the ritual of the Argei,
if it was indeed, as I believe, of great antiquity;[210] on May 15, as
we have seen, twenty-seven puppets of reeds or straw were thrown into
the Tiber from the _pons sublicius_, possibly with the object of
procuring rain for the growing crops. Let us also note that _dies
religiosi_ were not marked in the Fasti, _i.e._ days on which some
uncomfortable feeling prevailed, such as the three days on which the
_mundus_ was open to allow the Manes to come up from their shadowy abode
below the earth; with the character of such days as "uncanny" the
calendar has simply nothing to do. It is a document of religious law,
not of _superstitio_, a word which in Roman usage almost invariably
means what is outside that religious law, outside the _ius divinum_; and
it is a document of _religio_ only so far as it is meant to organise and
carry out the _cura_ and _caerimonia_, the natural results of that
feeling which the Romans called _religio_. It stands on exactly the same
footing as the Law of the Israelites, which supplied them in full detail
with the _cura_ and _caerimonia_, and rigidly excluded all foreign and
barbarous rites and superstitions.
I do not, of course, mean to say that the State did not recognise or
allow the festivals which are not marked in the calendar; the pontifices
and Vestals were present at the ceremony of the Argei, and the Regia was
the scene of a part of that of the October horse. But those who drew up
the calendar as the fundamental charter of the _ius divinum_ must have
had their reasons for the selection of forty-five days as made over to
the deities who were specially concerned with the State's welfare. And
on these days, so far as we know, there was a regular ordered routine of
sacrifice and prayer, with but little trace of the barbarous or
grotesque. The ritual of the Lupercalia is almost a solitary exception.
The Luperci had their foreheads smeared with the blood of the victims,
which were goats, and then this was wiped off with wool dipped in milk;
after this they were obliged to laugh, probably as a sign that the god
(whoever he was) was in them, or that they were identified with
him.[211] They then girt themselves with the skins of the victims and
ran round the ancient pomoerium, striking at any women they met with
strips of the same victims in order to produce fertility. This was
perhaps a rite taken over from aboriginal settlers on the Palatine, and
so intimately connected with that hill that it could not be omitted from
the calendar. The ritual of the three days of Lemuria in May, when
ghosts were expelled from the house, as Ovid describes the process, by
means of beans,[212] seems also to have been a reminiscence of ideas
about the dead more primitive than those which took effect in the more
cheerful Parentalia of February: here again we may perhaps see a
concession to the popular tradition and prejudice of a primitive
population. On the other hand, the revelry of the Saturnalia in
December, of which Dr. Frazer has made so much in the second edition of
the _Golden Bough_,[213] is nothing more than the licence of the
population of a great cosmopolitan city, an out-growth, under Greek
influence, from the rude winter rejoicings of the farmer and his
_familia_; and for his conjecture that a human victim was sacrificed on
this occasion in ancient Rome there is simply no evidence whatever.
There is, indeed, not a trace of human sacrifice at Rome so long as the
_ius divinum_ was the supreme religious law of the State; in the whole
Roman literature of the Republic hardly anything of the kind is alluded
to;[214] it is only when we come to an age when the taste for bloodshed
was encouraged by the shows of the amphitheatre, and when the
blood-loving religions of the East were pressing in, that we hear of
human sacrifice, and then only from Christian writers, who would
naturally seize on anything that came to hand to hold up paganism to
derision, without inquiring into the truth or the history of the alleged
practice.[215]
Thus we may take it as highly probable that those who drew up the
calendar had the deliberate intention of excluding from the State
ritual, as far as was possible, everything in the nature of barbarism
and magic. For the religious purposes of a people occupied in
agriculture and war, and already beginning to develop some idea of law
and order, there was no need of any religious rites except such as would
serve, in decency and order, to propitiate the deities concerned with
the fertilisation of man, beast, and crop, and with the safety and
efficacy of the host in its struggle with the enemies of the city. The
Roman people grew up, in their city life as in the life of the family,
in self-restraint, dignity, and good order, confident in the course of
_cura_ and _caerimonia_, itself decent and stately, if soulless, which
the religious authorities had drawn up for them.
We should naturally like to know something about those authorities, who
thus placed the religion of the State on a comparatively high level of
ritualistic decency, if not of theological subtlety. The Romans
themselves attributed the work to a priest-king, Numa Pompilius, and
probably their instinct was a right one. Names matter little in such
matters; but there is surely something in the universal Roman tradition
of a great religious legislator, something too, it may be, in the
tradition that he was a Sabine, a representative of the community on the
Quirinal which had been embodied in the Roman city before the calendar
was drawn up, and of the sturdy, serious stock of central Italy, which
retained its _virtus_ longer than any other Italian people.[216] We are
quite in the dark as to all this, unless we can put any kind of
confidence in the traditional belief of the Romans themselves. But there
is one point on which I should like to make a suggestion--a new one so
far as I know. Numa was said to have been the first Flamen Dialis; but
that is absolutely impossible, for the ancient taboos on that priesthood
would have made it impossible for him to become supreme legislator.
Evidently this Flamen, who could hardly leave his own house, might never
leave the city, and was at every turn hedged in by restrictions on his
activity, was a survival of those magician-kings who make rain and do
other useful things, but would lose their power if they were exposed to
certain contingencies; the number of possible contingencies increases
till the unfortunate owner of the powers becomes powerless by virtue of
the care so painfully taken of him.[217] The priest of Jupiter and his
taboos carry us back, beyond a doubt, into the far-away dim history of
primitive Latium. By the time the eternal city was founded on the Tiber,
he must have been already practically obsolete. My suggestion is that he
is the representative in the Roman religious system of another and more
primitive system which existed in Latium, probably at Alba, where
Jupiter was worshipped on the mountain from time immemorial. When the
strength of Latium was concentrated at the best strategical point on the
Tiber, the priest of Jupiter was transferred to the new city, because he
was too "precious" to be left behind, though even then a relic of
antiquity. There he became what he was throughout Roman history, a
practically useless personage, about whom certain sacred traditions had
gathered, but placed in complete subjection to the new legal and
religious king, and afterwards to the Pontifex maximus.[218]
If there be any truth in this--and I believe it to be a legitimate
inference from the legal position of this Flamen, and his permanent
state of taboo--then I think we may see a great religious change in the
era of the "calendar of Numa." Inspired with new ideas of the duty and
destiny of the new city of the four regions, a priest-king, doubtless
with the help and advice of a council, according to the true Roman
fashion, put an end for ever to the reign of the old magician-kingship,
but preserved the magician-king as a being still capable of
wonder-working in the eyes of the people. As religious law displaced
magic in the State ritual, so the new kings, with their collegia of
legal priests, pontifices and augurs, neutralised and gradually
destroyed the prestige of the effete survivor of an age of barbarism.
NOTES TO LECTURE V.
[185] Kornemann, _op. cit._ p. 87; Wissowa, _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 230 foll.; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_,
iii. p. 790, note 1. For the festival of the
Septimontium, Varro, _L.L._ vi. 24; Plutarch, _Quaest.
Rom._ 69; Fowler, _R.F._ p. 265 foll. This festival does
not appear in the calendar, as not being "feriae populi,
sed montanorum modo" (Varro, _l.c._). There are some
interesting remarks on the relation between agricultural
life and the origin of towns in von Jhering's _Evolution
of the Aryan_ (Eng. trans.), p. 86 foll., with special
reference to Rome.
[186] Von Duhn in _J.H.S._ xvi. 126 foll. The latest
research (Korte in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "Etrusker," p.
747) concludes that the arrival of the Etruscans on the
west coast of Italy cannot be safely put earlier than
the eighth century.
[187] Hülsen-Jordan, _Rom. Topogr._ iii. 153. In a brief
but masterly paper in the publications of the _American
School at Rome_, 1908, p. 173 foll., J. B. Carter deals
with the whole problem of the pomoerium and the
pre-Servian city.
[188] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 27.
[189] In _C.I.L._ i.^2, p. 297 foll. See _R.F._ p. 14
foll.
[190] See the Fasti in _R.F._ p. 21 foll.; or in
Wissowa, _R.K._, at end of the book.
[191] _R.F._ p. 38 foll. Marindin's article "Salii,"
_Dict. of Antiqq._, is very useful and sensible. There
is little doubt that the dress and armour of the Salii
represented that of the primitive Latin warrior,
calculated to frighten away evil spirits as well as
enemies, and that their dances in procession had some
object of this kind. It is noticeable that there were
two gilds or collegia of them belonging to the Palatine
and Quirinal cities respectively; and they are also
found at Tibur, Alba, Lanuvium, and other Latin cities.
[192] Or 15th (Ides), according to the conjecture of
Wissowa; see _R.F._ p. 44 and _R.K._ p. 131. It is
almost incredible that this should originally have been
on a day of even number, contrary to the universal rule
of the Fasti.
[193] See below, p. 212 foll., for further consideration
of this so-called purification.
[194] _R.K._ p. 131.
[195] See below, p. 217.
[196] _R.K._ p. 131.
[197] _Popular Religion and Folklore of India_, ii. 51.
For the sacredness of the number three and its
multiples, see Diels, _Sibyllinische Blätter_, p. 40
foll.; but he limits it too much to chthonic religious
ritual. See also H. Usener, "Dreizahl," in _Rheinisches
Museum_, vol. 58, pp. 1 foll., 161 foll., and 321 foll.
There is a summary of the results of these papers in
Gruppe's _Mythologische Literatur_, 1898-1905, p. 360
foll. I may also refer to my friend Prof. Goudy's very
interesting _Trichotomy in Roman Law_ (Oxford, 1910), p.
8 foll.
[198] By von Domaszewski in _Archiv_ for 1907, p. 333
foll. The learned author's reasoning is often based on
mere hypotheses as to the meaning of the festivals or
the gods concerned in them, and his ideas as to the
agricultural features of the months July, August,
December seem to me doubtful; but the paper is one that
all students of the calendar must reckon with.
[199] Marquardt, _Privatleben_, pp. 459 and 569 foll.
[200] For the festivals mentioned in the following
paragraphs see _R.F._, _s.v._, and Wissowa, _R.K._,
section 63.
[201] "St. George and the Parilia," in _Revue des études
ethnographiques et sociologiques_ for Jan. 1908. I owe
my knowledge of this admirable study to the kindness of
its author.
[202] Frazer, _G.B._ ii. 318 foll.
[203] Varro, _L.L._ v. 64, says, "Ab _satu_ dictus
Saturnus." And in Augustine (_Civ. Dei_, vi. 8) he is
quoted as holding the opinion "quod pertineat Saturnus
ad semina, quae in terram de qua oriuntur iterum
recidunt." He was probably the _numen_ of the
seed-sowing (Saeturnus), and as his festival comes
after the end of sowing, we may presume that he was the
_numen_ of the sown as well as of the unsown seed. In
the article "Saturnus" in Roscher's _Lexicon_, which has
appeared since the above note was written, Wissowa
provisionally accepts Varro's etymology.
[204] Festus, p. 245a, "Publica sacra quae publico
sumptu pro populo fiunt, quaeque pro montibus, pagis,
curiis, sacellis." See article "Sacra" in _Dict. of
Antiqq._ ii. 577.
[205] "Routine is the only safeguard of a people under a
perfect autocracy" (_Select Charters_, Introduction, p.
19).
[206] The annalists believed that the publication first
took place in the year 304 B.C.: Livy ix. 46. Mommsen
(_Chronologie_, p. 31) thought it possible that it had
already been done by the Decemvirs in one of the two
last of the XII. Tables, but again withdrawn. The object
of keeping the Fasti secret was, of course, to control
the times available for legal and political business.
[207] This paragraph is abridged from a passage in the
author's paper in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p.
848.
[208] See _Anthropology and the Classics_ (Oxford,
1908), p. 44.
[209] _R.F._ p. 241 foll.
[210] Wissowa holds that it dates from the third century
B.C.: Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "Argei." I
endeavoured to refute this view in the _Classical
Review_ for 1902, p. 115 foll., and Dr. Wissowa
criticised my criticism in his _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 222. It is dealt with at length in
_R.F._ p. 111 foll. See below, p. 321 foll.
[211] This is not exactly the view expressed in _R.F._
p. 315 foll., where I was inclined to adopt that of
Mannhardt that the laughing symbolised the return to
life after sacrificial death. I am now disposed to think
of it as parallel with the ecstasy of the Pythoness and
other inspired priests, or the shivering and convulsive
movements which denote that a human being is "possessed"
by a god or spirit. See Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 174.
Mannhardt's view seems, however, to gain support from
Pausanias' description of the ordeal he underwent
himself at the cave of Trophonius, after which he could
laugh again: Paus. ix. 39. See also Miss Harrison,
_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 580.
Deubner in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 501.
[212] _R.F._ p. 109; Ov. _Fasti_, v. 421 foll. Ovid's
account is of a private rite in the house, as elsewhere
he tells us of things done by private persons on
festival days. We do not know whether there was any
public ritual for these days. For further discussion of
the contrast between the two festivals of the dead, see
below, Lect. XVII. p. 393.
[213] _G.B._ iii. 138 foll. The attempt to connect the
so-called Saturnalia of the army of the Danube in the
third century A.D. with the early practice of Roman
Saturnalia seems to me to fail entirely, even after
reading Prof. Cumont's paper in the _Revue de
philologie_, 1897, p. 133 foll. I should imagine that
Cumont would now admit that the Saturn who was
sacrificed on the Danube as described in the _Martyrdom
of St. Dasius_ must have been of Oriental origin, and
that the soldiers concerned were in no sense Roman or
Italian. For the hellenisation of the Saturnalia, see
Wissowa in Roscher's _Lexicon_, _s.v._ "Saturnus," p.
432. Wissowa, I may note, does not believe in the
accuracy of the account of the "Martyrdom."
[214] Nothing, that is, in the regular ritual of the
Roman State--except in so far as the killing of a
criminal who was _sacer_ to a god can be so regarded;
and the only instance of any kind that can be quoted is
that of the two pairs of Gaulish and Greek men and women
who in the stress of the second Punic war and afterwards
were buried alive, as it was said, in the Forum Boarium.
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 355 and notes. I shall return to this
in Lecture XIV.
[215] The earliest mention of the slaying of a victim
(_bestiarius_) to Jupiter is in Minucius Felix, _Octav._
22 and 30, _i.e._ towards the end of the second century
A.D. or even later. Cp. Tertull. _Apol._ 9, Lactantius
i. 21. I do not go so far as to say with Wissowa (p.
109, note 3) that this story is "ganz gewiss apokryph,"
but I take it as simply a case of degeneracy under the
influence of the amphitheatre and of Orientalism.
[216] For Numa see Schwegler, _Rom. Gesch._ i. 551 foll.
[217] See Dr. Frazer's most recent account of this
subject, in his _Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship_, chaps, iii.-v. Prof. Ridgeway's idea that the
Flamen Dialis was really a Numan institution is of
course simply impossible, and the arguments he founds on
it fall to the ground. Ovid, probably reflecting Varro,
speaks of the Flamen Dialis as belonging to the
Pelasgian religion, which at least means that he was
aware of the extreme antiquity of the office; _Fasti_,
ii. 281. Dr. Döllinger (_The Gentile and the Jew_, vol.
ii. p. 72) with his usual insight was inclined to see
in this Flamen the "ruins of an older system of
ceremonial ordinances."
[218] He was _sui iuris_ (Gaius i. 130), as soon as he
was chosen or taken (_captus_) by the Pontifex maximus;
but he was subject to the authority of the P.M., like
all the other flamines and the Vestals. See Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 438; Tac. _Ann._ iv. 16.
LECTURE VI
THE DIVINE OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
We must now turn our attention to what is the most difficult part of our
subject, the ideas of the early Romans about "the Power manifesting
itself in the universe." In my first lecture I indicated in outline what
the difficulties are which beset us all through our studies; they are in
no part of it so insurmountable as in this. Material fails us, because
there was no contemporary literature; because the Romans were not a
thinking people, and probably thought very little about the divine
beings whom they propitiated; and again, because comparative religion,
as it is called, is of scant value in such a study. We have to try and
get rid of our own ideas about God or gods, to keep our minds free of
Greek ideas and mythology, and, in fact, to abstain from bringing the
ideas of any other peoples to bear upon the question until we are pretty
sure that we have some sort of understanding of those Roman ideas with
which we are tempted to compare them. The first duty of the student of
any system of religion is to study that religion in and by itself. As M.
S. Reinach observed in an address at the Congress for the History of
Religions at Oxford, it is time that we began to attend to differences
as well as similarities; and this can only be done by the conscientious
use of such materials as are available for the study of each particular
religion.
The only materials available in the case of the earliest Rome are (1)
the calendar which I was explaining in the last lecture, which gives us
the names of the festivals of the religious year; (2) the names of the
deities concerned in these festivals, so far as we know them from later
additions to the calendar, from Roman literature, and from evidence,
chiefly epigraphical, of the names of deities among kindred Italian
peoples; (3) the fragments of information, now most carefully collected
and sifted, about what the Romans did in the worship of their deities.
The names and order of the festivals, the names of the deities
themselves, the cult, or detail of worship, including priesthoods and
holy places,--these are the only real materials we possess, and our only
safe guides. To trust to legends is fatal, because such legends as there
were in Italy were never written down until the Greeks turned their
attention to them, colouring them with their own fancy and with
reminiscences of their own mythology. For example, no sane investigator
would now make use of the famous story told by Ovid and Plutarch about
Numa's interview with Jupiter, and the astute way in which he deceived
the god, as an illustration of the Roman's ideas of the divine; we know
that it can be traced back to the greatest liar among all Roman
annalists,[219] that it was in part derived from a Greek story, and in
part invented to explain a certain piece of ritual, the _procuratio
fulminis_. Even what was done in the cult must be handled with knowledge
and discretion. Dr. Frazer has a theory that the Roman kings personated
Jupiter, and uses as evidence of this the fact that in the triumph the
triumphator was dressed after the fashion of the statue of the god in
the Capitoline temple, with his face reddened with _minium_: forgetting
that the temple, its cult and its statue, all date from the very end of
the period of the kingship, and were the work of an Etruscan monarch,
almost beyond doubt. There may be truth in his theory, but this is not
the way to prove it; this is not the way to arrive at a true
understanding of Roman religious ideas.
What did the old Romans know about the nature of the objects of their
worship? All religion is in its development a process of gaining such
knowledge: if it makes no progress it is doomed. It is because the Jews
made such wonderful progress in this path, in spite of formalism and
backsliding, that they were chosen to produce a Teacher whose life and
doctrine revealed the will and the nature of His Father for the eternal
benefit of mankind. The fear of the Lord is imperfect knowledge, it is
but the beginning of wisdom; but it could become, in a Jew like St.
Paul, the perfect knowledge of His will. It may seem absurd to think of
two such religions as the Jewish and the Roman side by side; but the
absurdity vanishes when we begin to understand the humble beginnings of
the Jewish religion as scientific research has already laid it bare.
Knowledge of the Power manifesting itself in the universe is open to all
peoples alike, and some few have made much progress in it beside the
Jews. The Romans were not among these, at any rate in all the later
stages of their history; but we have to ask how far they got in the
process, and later on again to ask also why they could go no
farther.[220]
We have seen how one great forward step in the attainment of this
knowledge was made in the religion of the household, when the house had
become a kind of temple, being the dwelling of divine as well as human
beings, and when the cultivated land had been separated by a sacred
boundary from the mountain or forest beyond, with their wild and unknown
spiritual inhabitants. We met, however, with nothing in the house or on
the land that we can properly call a god, if we may use that word for
the moment in the sense of a personality as well as a name, and a
personality perfectly distinct from the object in which it resides.
Vesta seems to be the fire, Penates the store, or at least spirits
undistinguishable from the substance composing the store. But inasmuch
as the farmer knew how to serve these spirits and address them, looking
upon them as friends and co-habitants of his own dwelling, we may go so
far as to guess that they were somewhat advanced in their career as
spirits, and might possibly develop into powers of a more definite kind,
if not into gods, real _dei_ conceived as persons.[221] In other
words--for it is better to keep as far as we can to the subjective or
psychological aspect of them--the Roman might realise the Power better
by getting to think of his nameless spirits as _dei_ at work for his
benefit if rightly propitiated. There are some signs in the calendar and
the other sources I mentioned just now that such a process had been
going on before the State arose; and it is certain that the whole field
of divine operation had been greatly widened by that time, as we might
expect from the enlarged sphere of man's experience and activity.
The deities originally belonging to the city of the four regions, _i.e._
to the city of the calendar of Numa, were known to Roman antiquarians as
_di indigetes_, in contra-distinction from the _di novensiles_ or
imported deities, with which at present we have nothing to do. On the
basis of the calendar, and of the names of the most ancient priesthoods
attached to particular cults, the Rex and the Flamines, Wissowa (_R.K._
p. 16) has constructed a list of these _di indigetes_ which may be
accepted without any further reservation than he himself applies to it.
They are thirty-three in number, but in two cases we have groups instead
of individuals, viz. the Lares and the Lemures: the plurality of the
Lares (_compitales_) we have already explained, and the Lemures, the
ghosts of departed ancestors, we may also for the present leave out of
account. Others are too obscure to help us, _e.g._ Carna, Angerona,
Furrina, Neptunus, Volturnus,[222] except in so far as their very
obscurity, and the neglect into which they and their cults fell in later
times, is proof that they were not thought of as lively personal
deities. Then, again, there are others whose names are suggested by
certain festivals, Terminus, Fons, Robigus, who seem to be simply
survivals from the animistic period--spirits inherent in the
boundary-stone, the spring, or the mildew, and incapable of further
development in the new conditions of city life. Faunus, the rural
semi-deity, perhaps representing a group of such beings, appears in the
list as the deity of the Lupercalia; but this is a point in which I
cannot agree with Wissowa and the majority of modern authorities.[223]
We are struck, as we examine the list further, by the adjectival
character of many of the names--Neptunus, Portunus, Quirinus, Saturnus,
Volcanus, Volturnus: these are not proper names, but clearly express
some character or function exercised by the power or _numen_ to whom the
name is given. Saturnus is the most familiar example; the word suggests
no personality, but rather a sphere of operations (whether we take the
name as referring to sowing or to seed maturing in the soil) in which a
certain _numen_ is helpful. Saturnus, Volcanus, Neptunus were indeed
identified later on with Greek gods of a ripe polytheistic system, and
have thus become quite familiar to us, far too familiar for a right
understanding of early Roman ideas. We might naturally expect that the
identification of Saturnus with Kronos, of Neptunus with Poseidon, would
give us some clue to the original Roman conception of the _numen_ thus
Graecised, but it is not so. Neptunus may have had some connection with
water, rain, or springs, but we have no real proof of it, and it is
impossible to say why Saturnus became Kronos.[224] The only certain
result that we can win from the study of these adjectival titles is that
they represent a transition between animism and polytheism, a transition
exactly expressed by the one word _numen_.
_Numen_ is so important a word in the Roman religion that it is
necessary to be perfectly clear as to what was meant by it. It must be
formed from _nuere_ as _flumen_ from _fluere_, with a sense of activity
inherent in the verb. As _flumen_ is that which actively flows, so
_numen_ is that which actively does whatever we understand by the word
_nuere_; and so far as we can determine, that was a manifestation of
will. _Adnuere_ is to consent, to give your good will to some act
proposed or completed, and is often so used of Jupiter in the _Aeneid_.
_Nuere_ should therefore express a simple exercise of will-power, and
_numen_ is the being exercising it. In time it came to be used for the
will of a god as distinct from himself, as in the fourth _Aeneid_
(269)--
ipse deum tibi me claro demittit Olympo
regnator, caelum ac terras qui numine torquet.
Or in the fourth _Eclogue_ (47)--
concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae,
where Servius explains it as "potestate, divinatione, ac maiestate." But
beyond doubt this use is a product of the literary age, and the word
originally indicated the being himself who exercised the will--a sense
familiar to us in the opening lines of the _Aeneid_ ("quo numine laeso")
and in innumerable other passages. Thus von Domaszewski in his collected
papers (p. 157) is undoubtedly right in defining a _numen_ as a being
with a will--"ein wollendes Wesen"; though his account of its evolution,
and of the way in which in its turn it may produce a _deus_, may be open
to criticism.
The word thus suggests that the Roman divine beings were functional
spirits with will-power, their functions being indicated by their
adjectival names. Proper names they had not as a rule, but they are
getting cult-titles under the influence of a priesthood, which titles
may in time perhaps attain to something of the definiteness of
substantival names. This indeed could hardly have been so in the mind of
the ordinary Roman even at a later age; and it is quite possible that if
an intelligent Greek traveller of the sixth century B.C. had given an
account of the gods of Rome,[225] he would have said, as Strabo said of
an Iberian people in the time of Augustus, that they were without gods,
or worshipped gods without names. But the name, even as a cult-title, is
of immense importance in the development of a spirit into a deity, and
in most cases, at any rate at Rome, it was the work of officials, of a
state priesthood, not of the people. To address a deity rightly was
matter of no small difficulty: how were you to know how he would wish
to be addressed? Servius tells us that the pontifices addressed even
Jupiter himself thus: "Iupiter optime maxime, _sive quo alio nomine te
appellari volueris_." On the other hand, in the same comment he tells us
that "iure pontificio cautum est, ne suis nominibus di Romani
appellarentur, ne exaugurari possent," _i.e._ lest they should be
enticed away from the city by enemies. This last statement seems indeed
to me to be a doubtful one,[226] but it will serve to illustrate the
nervousness about divine names, of which there is no doubt whatever. We
know for certain that those religious lawyers the pontifices were
greatly occupied with the task of drawing up lists of names by which
_numina_ should be invoked,--formularising the ritual of prayer, as we
shall see in another lecture; and this must have become at one time
almost a craze with them, to judge by the lists of Indigitamenta
preserved in their books, to which Varro had access, and which were
copied from him by St. Augustine.[227] But after all it needed the
stimulus given by actual contact with a polytheistic system to turn a
Roman numen into a full-fledged personal deity: the pontifices might
carry the process some way, but they never could have completed it
themselves without the help of the Greeks.
One deity seems to stand alone in the list--Tellus or Terra Mater,
Mother Earth.[228] We are coming directly to the great deity of the
heaven, and we might naturally expect that an agricultural folk would be
much concerned with her who is his counterpart among so many peoples.
She does not give her name to any of the festivals of the calendar; but
at one of them, the Fordicidia in April, at a time when the earth is
teeming with mysterious power, and when the festivals are of a
peculiarly agricultural character, she has her own special sacrifice--a
pregnant cow, whose young are torn from her womb, burnt by the _Virgo
vestalis maxima_, and their ashes used in certain mystic rites, _e.g._
at the Parilia which followed on the 21st.[229] She seems to have had
her function in human life as well; but about this we are much in the
dark in spite of Dieterich's attempts to elucidate it in his _Mutter
Erde_.[230] Whether she played a part at the birth of a child we cannot
be sure; but at marriage there is little doubt that she was originally
an object of worship, though in later days she gave way before Ceres and
Juno.[231] And as at death the body was laid in her embrace, we are not
surprised to find her prominent here also: she was the home of the dead
whether buried or burnt, and of the whole mass of the Manes. We shall
presently see how a Roman commander might devote himself and the whole
army of the enemy to Tellus and the Manes; and it is interesting to find
that a similar formula of _devotio_, of later date, combines Tellus with
Jupiter, the speaker touching the ground when he mentions her name, and
holding his hands upwards to heaven when he names the god.[232] Very
curious, too, is the rite of the _porca praecidanea_, which in
historical times was offered to Ceres as well as Tellus immediately
before harvest; in case a man had wittingly or unwittingly omitted to
pay the proper rites (_iusta facere_) to his own dead, it was his duty
to make this offering, lest as a result of the neglect the earth-power
should not yield him a good harvest.[233] Originally, we need hardly
doubt, Tellus was alone concerned in this; but Ceres, who at all times
represented rather the ripening and ripened corn than the seed in the
bosom of the earth, gradually took her place beside her, and the idea
gained ground that the offering was more immediately concerned with the
harvest than with the Manes.[234] When Cato wrote his book on
agriculture, he included in it the proper formula for this sacrifice,
without any indication that Tellus or the Manes had any part in the
business.[235] Tellus was not a deity whose life would be vigorous in a
busy City-state destined gradually to lose its agricultural outlook;
there the supply of grain, from whatever quarter it might come, was a
far more important matter than the process of producing it, and it was
natural that Ceres and her April festival should become more popular
than Tellus and her Fordicidia, and that the Cerealia should eventually
develop into _ludi_ of no less than eight days' duration. Yet Tellus
survived in such forms as that of the _devotio_; and even under the
Empire we find her as Terra on sepulchral monuments, _e.g._--
ereptam viro et matri mater me Terra recepit,
or
terra mater rerum quod dedit ipsa teget.
And there is a curious story, noticed by Wissowa and by Dieterich after
him, that on the death of Tiberius the plebs shouted not only "Tiberius
in Tiberim," but "Terram matrem deosque Manes," in order that his lot
might be among the _impii_ beneath the earth.[236]
So far we have met with nothing to suggest that the Roman idea of
divinity had passed much beyond an advanced type of animism; we have
found little or no trace of personal deities of a polytheistic cast.
There is, however, a fact of importance now to be considered, which has
some bearing upon this difficult subject. Some of the _numina_ of the
calendar had special priests attached to their cults; _e.g._ among those
I have already mentioned, Volcanus, Furrina, Portunus, and Volturnus, to
which we may now add Pales, Flora, Carmenta, Pomona, and a wholly
unknown deity, Falacer. These nine all had flamines, a word which is
generally derived from _flare_, _i.e._ they were the kindlers of the
sacrificial fire.[237] Sacrificing priests they undoubtedly always were,
each limited to the sacrificial rites of a particular cult, unless
authorised by religious law to undertake those of some other deity whose
name he did not bear, and who was destitute, like Robigus, of a priest
of his own.[238] We have no certain evidence that all these flamines
were of high antiquity; but those attached to deities of the calendar
were probably of earlier origin than that document, and as we have no
record of the creation of a new flaminium in historical times until the
era of Caesar-worship, it is fair to conclude that the others I have
mentioned were not younger.
Now what bearing has this fact on the question as to how the early
Romans conceived the objects of their worship? There are, of course,
so-called priests all the world over, even among the lowest fetishistic
and animistic peoples, who exercise power over the various kinds of
spirits by potent charms and spells; these should rather be called
wizards, medicine-men, magicians, and so on.[239] But the flamines as we
know them were not such; they were officials of a State, entrusted with
the performance of definite ritualistic duties, more particularly with
sacrifice, and therefore, as we may assume from universal Roman practice
so far as we know it, also with prayer. If they did not actually slay
the victims themselves--and in historical times this was done by an
assistant--they superintended the whole process and were responsible for
its correct performance.[240] Does the existence of such priests come
into relation with the development of the idea of a _deus_ out of a
numen or a spirit? What is the influence of the sacrificing priest on
the divinity whom he serves? This last is a question to which it is not
easy to find a ready answer; the history of priesthood, and of the moral
and intellectual results of the institution, has yet to be written. Even
Dr. Westermarck, in his recently published great work on the development
of moral ideas, has little to say of it. It is greatly complicated by
the undoubted fact that among many peoples, perhaps to some extent even
among the Latins, the earliest real priests had a tendency to personate
the deity themselves, to be considered as the deity, or in some sense
divine.[241] But in regard to Roman priests we may, I think, go at least
as far as this. When a spirit was named and localised as a friendly
being at a particular spot within the walls of the city, which is made
over to him, and where he has his _ara_; when the ritual performed at
this spot is laid down in definite detail, and undertaken by an
individual appointed for this purpose by the head of the community with
solemn ceremony; then the spirit, hitherto but vaguely conceived, must
in course of time become individualised. The priestly if not the popular
conception of him is fixed; there is now no question who he is or how he
should be called; "quis deus incertum est"[242] can no longer be said of
him. Once provided with a flamen and an ordered cult of sacrifice and
prayer, I conceive that he had now in him the possibility of turning
into a _deus_ personally conceived, if he came by the chance.[243] A few
did get the chance; others did not; Volcanus, for example, became a god
after the model of the Greek Hephaestus, while Volturnus remained a
numen and made no further progress, though he was doubtless ready to
"take" the Graecising epidemic when it came. I do not say that he or any
other numen was the better for the change. But I must not now pursue the
story of this strange double fate of the old Roman deities; I have
perhaps said enough to show that city life, with its priesthoods and its
ordered ritual, had some appreciable effect on the deities who were
admitted to it.
Among these deities there were four of whom I have as yet said nothing
at all, though they are the most famous of all the divine inhabitants of
Rome. I have mentioned nine flamines; there were in all twelve, and
besides these there was in historical times a priest known as the _rex
sacrorum_, the republican successor to some of the religious functions
of the civil king. This rex, and the three _flamines maiores_, so called
in contra-distinction to the other nine, were specially attached to the
cults of Janus, Jupiter (_Flamen Dialis_), Mars (_Flamen Martialis_),
and Quirinus (_Flamen Quirinalis_). I have kept these deities apart from
the others already mentioned, not only because their priests stand apart
from the rest, but because they themselves seem from the first to have
been more really gods (_dei_); Quirinus is the only one who has an
adjectival name. Two of them, Jupiter and Mars, remained throughout
Roman history of real importance to the State, and in Jupiter there were
at least some germs of possible development into a deity capable of
influencing conduct and enforcing morality. Of Janus this cannot
possibly be said; and as he is historically the least important of the
four, I will begin by saying a few words about him as a puzzle and a
curiosity only.
Janus, ever since he ceased to be an intelligible deity, has been the
sport of speculators; and this happened long before the Roman religion
came to an end. In the last century B.C. philosophic writers about the
gods got hold of him, and Varro tells us that some made him out to be
the heaven, others the universe (_mundus_).[244] Ovid amused himself
with this uncertainty of the philosophers, and in the first book of his
_Fasti_ "interviewed" the god, whose answers are unluckily of little
value for us.[245] At various times and in different hands Janus has
been pronounced a sun-god, a heaven-god, a year-god, a wind-god; and now
a Cambridge school of speculators, to whose learning I am in many ways
indebted, has claimed him as an oak-god, the mate of Diana, the Jupiter
of aboriginal Latium, and so on.[246] We have fortunately long left
behind us the age when it was thought necessary to resolve the Greek and
Roman gods into personifications of natural phenomena, and to try to
explain all their attributes on one principle; but my learned friends at
Cambridge have of late been showing a tendency to return to methods not
less dangerous; they hanker, for example, after etymological evidence,
which in the case of deities is almost sure to be misleading unless it
is absolutely certain, and supported by the history of the name. This is
unluckily not the case with Janus; his etymology is matter of
dispute,[247] and he is therefore open, and always will be so, to the
inquirer who is hunting a scent, and more concerned to prove a point
than to discover what the early Romans really thought about a god. In
this lecture I am but humbly trying to do this last, and I may therefore
leave etymology, with the mythology and philosophy of a later age, and
confine myself to such facts of the cult of Janus as are quite
undisputed. They will admit of being put together very shortly.
The first and leading fact is that Janus was the first deity to be
addressed in all prayers and invocations; of this we have abundant
evidence, as also of the corresponding fact that Vesta came last.[248]
Secondly, we know that he was the object of worship on the Kalends of
January, and probably of every month, and that the sacrificing priest
was in this case the _rex sacrorum_. Thirdly, we know that he had no
temple until the year 260 B.C., but that he was associated with the
famous gateway at the north-east end of the Forum--not a gate in the
wall, but a symbolic entrance to the heart of the city, as the round
temple of Vesta at the opposite end, with its eternal fire, was symbolic
of the common life of the community. Fourthly, we know a few cult-titles
of Janus, among them Clusius (or Clusivius), and Patulcius, in which the
connection with gates is obvious; Junonius, which may have originated in
the fact that Juno also was worshipped on the Kalends; Matutinus, which
seems to be a late reference to the dawn as the opening or gate of the
day, and Quirinus, which last is also almost certainly of late origin.
Clusius and Patulcius are genuine old titles, if the text of the Salian
hymn is rightly interpreted; so too is another, Curiatius, for it was
used of the god only as residing in an ancient gateway near the Subura
called the _tigillum sororium_.[249] These are all the most important
facts we have to go upon; the double head of Janus on the earliest Roman
_as_ is of uncertain origin, and Wissowa seems to have conclusively
shown that this representation was not admitted to the gate called Janus
Geminus until towards the close of the republican period.[250] The
connection of the god with the fortress on the hill across the Tiber,
which still bears his name, admits of no quite satisfactory explanation.
Now if we recall the fact that the entrance to the house and the
entrance to a city were points of great moment, and the cause of
constant anxiety to the early Italian mind, we may naturally infer that
they would be in the care of some particular numen, and that his
worship would be in the care of the head of the family or community--in
the case of the city, in the care of the _rex_, whose duties of this
kind were afterwards taken over by the priest called _rex sacrorum_. The
fact that the word for an entrance was _ianus_ confirms this conjecture;
Janus was perhaps the spirit guarding the entrance to the real wall of
the earliest city, but when the city was enlarged in the age from which
the calendar dates, a symbolic gateway was set up where you entered the
forum from the direction of Latium, answering to the symbolic hearth in
the _aedes Vestae_, and this very naturally took the name of the deity
associated with entrances. Two other _iani_ probably existed in the
forum, and the name was later on transferred as a substantive to similar
objects in Roman colonies, while a feminine form, _ianua_, came to be
used for ordinary house entrances.[251] Whether there ever was a cult of
the god at the real gateway of a city we do not know; there was none at
the symbolic gateway of Rome, which was in no sense a temple. But the
idea of entrance stuck to the old spirit of the doorway long after the
reconstruction of the city, and the rex now sacrifices to him on the
entrance-day of each month, and more particularly on the entrance-day of
the month which bears his name and is the beginning of the natural year
after the winter solstice. This is the best account to be had of the
original Janus,[252] a deity, let it be remembered, of a simple
agricultural and warlike people, without literature or philosophy. But
it is not difficult to see how, when philosophy and literature did at
last come in a second-hand form to this people, they might well have
overlaid with cobwebs of story and speculation a deity for whom they had
no longer any real use, who was best known to them by the mysterious
double-head on the _as_ and the gateway, and for whom they could find no
conclusive parallel among the gods of Greece.
Next in order of invocation to Janus came Jupiter, and his priest, the
Flamen Dialis, was likewise the second in rank, according to ancient
rule, after the _rex sacrorum_. Unlike Janus, Jupiter (to use the
spelling familiar in England) was at all times a great power for the
Roman people, and one who could be all the more valued because he was
intelligible. No one doubted then, and no one doubts now, that he was
the god of the light and of heaven, _Diovis pater_, or rather perhaps
the heaven itself[253] with all its manifestations of rain and thunder,
of blessing and damage to the works of man; the common inheritance of
the Italian peoples, dwelling and worshipped in their woods and on their
hills; and, as we know now, also the common inheritance of all Aryan
stocks, the "European Sky-god," as Mr. A. B. Cook has traced him with
learning and ingenuity from the Euxine to Britain.[254]
Jupiter must have had a long and important history in Latium before the
era of the Roman City-state; Dr. Frazer has seen this, and set it forth
in his lectures on the early history of the kingship, though basing his
conclusions on evidence much of which will not bear a close
examination.[255] The one substantial proof of it lies in the unique and
truly extraordinary character of the taboos placed on his flamen, and to
some extent on the flamen's wife, by the Roman _ius divinum_. Even if we
suppose that some of these may have been later inventions of an
ecclesiastical college like the pontifices (and this is hardly
probable), many of them are obviously of remote antiquity, and can only
have originated at a time when the magical power of the man responsible
for the conduct of Jupiter was so precious that it had to be safeguarded
in these many curious ways. I have already suggested that the scene of
the early paramount importance of Jupiter and his flamen, in that age
perhaps a king of some kind, was Alba Longa, which by universal
tradition was the leading city of Latium before Rome rose to importance,
and where the sky-god was worshipped on his holy mountain as the
religious centre of Latium from the earliest times. I have also
suggested that when the new warlike city on the Tiber took the place of
Alba, the worship was transferred thither, but lost its strength in the
process, and that the flamen was little more than a survival even in the
most primitive period of what we may call for the moment Roman history.
This can be accounted for by the fact that the traditions of primitive
Rome were connected much more closely with Mars than with Jupiter. Not
till Etruscan kings founded the great temple on the Capitol, which was
to endure throughout all later ages of Roman dominion, did the sky-god
become the supreme guardian deity of his people, under the titles of
Optimus Maximus, the best and greatest of all her deities.
But Jupiter was there; and we know certain facts of his cult which give
us a pretty clear idea of what the Romans of the pre-Etruscan period
thought about him. In the calendar all Ides belonged to him, were
_feriae Iovis_;[256] he seems to be the source of light, whether of sun
or moon, for neither of which the Romans had any special divinity; in
the hymn of the Salii he is addressed as Lucetius, the giver or source
of light. The festivals of the vintage belonged to him, since the
production of wine specially needed the aid of sun and light, and his
flamen was employed in the cult on these occasions.[257] When rain was
sorely needed, the aid of the sky-god was sought under the cult-title
Elicius, and as Fulgur or Summanus[258] he was the Power who sent the
lightning by day and by night. The ideas thus reflected in the Roman
cult were common to all Italian peoples of the same stock; everywhere we
find him worshipped on the summits of hills, and in woods of oak, ilex,
or beech,[259] where nothing but the trees he loved intervened between
the heaven and the earth.
His oldest cult at Rome was on the Capitoline hill, but at all times
quite distinct from that which became so famous afterwards; he was known
here as Feretrius, a cult-title of which the meaning is uncertain,[260]
and here, so far as we can guess, there must have been an ancient oak
regarded either as the dwelling of the numen or as the numen himself,
upon which Romulus is said to have hung the _spolia opima_ taken from
the king of the Caeninenses;[261] here we may see the earliest trace of
the triumphal procession that was to be. Doubtless an _ara_ was here
from the first, and then followed a tiny temple, only fifteen feet wide
as Dionysius describes it from personal knowledge in the time of
Augustus,[262] who restored it. There was no image of the god, but in
the temple was kept a _silex_, probably a stone celt believed to have
been a thunderbolt;[263] this stone the Fetiales took with them on their
official journeys, and used it in the oath, _per Iovem lapidem_, with
which they ratified their treaties. As the Romans thought of Jupiter,
not as a personal deity living in the sky like Zeus, but rather as the
heaven itself, so they could think of him as immanent in this stone,
_Iuppiter lapis_. And the use of the flint in treaty-making suggests
another aspect of the god, which he retained in one way or another
throughout Roman history; it is his sanction that is called in to the
aid of moral and legal obligations, resulting from treaties, oaths, and
contracts such as that of marriage. As Dius Fidius he was invoked in the
common Roman oath _medius fidius_; as Farreus (if this were an old
cult-title) he gave his sanction to the solemn contract entered into in
the ancient form of marriage by _confarreatio_, where his flamen had to
be present, and where in all probability the cake of _far_ was eaten as
a kind of sacrament by the parties to the covenant.[264] In much of this
it is tempting to see, as we can see nowhere else in the Roman religion,
faint traces of a feeling about the heaven-god brought from a remote
pastoral life under the open sky, where neither forest nor mountain
intervened to shelter man from the great Presence;[265] and it is also
tempting to think that there was here, even for Latins who had learnt to
worship Jupiter under the form of stocks and stones in the land of their
final settlement, some chance of the development of a deity "making for
righteousness."
Third and fourth in the order of invocation came Mars and Quirinus, and
the same order held good for their flamines. These two priests may have
been subject to some of the taboos which restricted the Flamen
Dialis;[266] they too, that is, may have been to some extent precious,
and have been endowed in a lost period of history with magical powers;
but if so, the memory and importance of such disabilities was rapidly
forgotten in the City-state, and they were early allowed to fill civil
offices, a privilege which the Dialis did not attain till the second
century B.C.[267] Of the sacrificial duties of the Martialis we know
nothing for certain, and can get no help from him as to the ideas of the
early Romans about their great deity Mars.
Mars is in some ways the most interesting of all the Roman deities; but
except as the familiar war-god of Roman history he remains a somewhat
doubtful conception. Like Jupiter and Janus he has attained to a real
name; but of that name, which in various forms is still so often on our
lips, no convincing account has ever been given. Comparative mythology
used to be much occupied with him, and he has been compared with Indra,
Apollo, Odin, and others. But as M. Reinach said, it is time to attend
more closely to differences; and Mars seems to stand best by himself, as
a genuine Italian religious conception. His name is found all over
ancient Italy in various forms--Mavors, Mamers, Marmor, and as Cerfus
Martius at Iguvium. His wild and warlike character, his association with
the wolf and the spear, seem to suggest the struggle for existence that
must have gone on among the tribes that pushed down into a peninsula of
rugged mountain and dense forest, abounding with the wolves which are
not yet wholly extinct there. Whether or no his antecedents are to be
found in other lands, we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the
Roman Mars was the product of life and experience in Italy, and Italy
only.
There is an excellent general account of him in Roscher's article in
his _Lexicon_, which, like that on Janus, has the advantage of being the
result of a second elaborate study, free from the enticements of the
comparative method. What we know for certain about his cult at Rome in
early times can be very briefly stated. First, we have the striking fact
that he is conspicuous, together with the Lares, in the _carmen_ which
has come down to us as sung by the Arval Brethren in their lustration of
the cultivated land of the Roman city:[268] "Neve luerve Marmor sins
incurrere in pleores, satur fu fere Mars!" One is naturally inclined to
ask how this wild and warlike spirit can have anything to do with
cultivation and crops. But there is no mistake; the connection is
confirmed by the fact that he is also the chief object of invocation in
the private _lustratio_ of the farm, which Cato has preserved for
us.[269] In each case the victims are the same, the _suovetaurilia_ of
ox, sheep, and pig, the farmer's most valuable property. Again, let us
remember that the month which bears his name is that not only of the
opening of the war season, but of the springing up of vegetation, and
that the dances and singing of the Salii at this time may probably have
been meant, like similar performances of savage peoples,[270] to
frighten away evil demons from the precious cultivated land and its
growing produce, and to call on the Power to wake to new life. The clue
to the mystery is perhaps to be found in the cult-title Silvanus which
we find in the prayer set down by Cato as proper for the protection of
the cattle when they are on their summer pasture (_in silva_): "Marti
Silvano in silva interdius in capita singula boum facito."[271] We know
that wealth in early Italy consisted chiefly of sheep and cattle; we
know that these were taken in the warm months, as they still are, into
the forest (_saltus_) to feed;[272] and from this passage of Cato we
know that Mars was there. It is only going one step farther if we
conjecture that Mars, like Silvanus, who may have been an offshoot of
his own being, was for the early settler never a peaceful inhabitant of
the farm or the dwelling, but a spirit of the woodland of great
importance for the cattle-owner, and of great importance, too, in all
circumambulation of the boundaries which divided the woodland from the
cultivated land.[273]
But with conjecture I deal on principle but sparingly. It is time to
turn to the Mars of the City-state of Rome; and it is at once
interesting to find that until the age of Augustus, who introduced a new
form of Mars-worship, he had no temple within the walls, and even
outside only two _fana_, one an altar in his own field the Campus
Martius, the other a temple dedicated in 388 B.C. outside the Porta
Capena. "He was always worshipped outside the city," says Dr. J. B.
Carter in his _Religion of Numa_, "as a god who must be kept at a
distance." Should we not rather say that the god was unwilling to come
within those sacred boundaries encircling the works of man? So stated,
we may see in this singular fact a reminiscence of the time when Mars
was really the wild spirit of the "outland," where wolves and human
enemies might be met with; he was perhaps in some sense a _hostis_, a
stranger, like the many other deities originally strange to Rome who,
until the second Punic war, were never allowed to settle within the
sacred precincts.[274] In one sense, however, Mars was actually resident
in the very heart of the city. In a _sacrarium_ or chapel of the
regia,[275] the ancient dwelling of the king, were kept the spears and
shields which the Salii carried in their processions in March and
October; and that the deity was believed to be there too must be
inferred from the fact, if it be correctly stated by Servius, that the
consul who was about to take the field entered the chapel and shook
these spears and shields together, saying, "Mars vigila." I am, however,
rather disposed to think that this practice belongs to a time when Mars
was more distinctly recognised as a god of war, and when the weapons of
the Salii were thought of rather as symbols of his activity than as
objects in which he was immanent.[276]
These are the salient facts in the oldest cult of Mars, and they are
entirely in keeping with all we know of the early history and economy
of the Roman people--a people economically dependent on agriculture, and
especially on cattle-breeding, living in settlements in the midst of a
wilder country, and constantly liable to the attacks of enemies who
might raid their cattle and destroy their crops. I do not see in him
only a deity of agriculture, or only a god of war; in my view he is a
spirit of the wilder regions, where dwell the wolf and woodpecker which
are connected with him in legend: a spirit who dwells on the outskirts
of civilisation, and can with profit be propitiated both for help
against the enemies beyond, and for the protection of the crops and
cattle within, the boundaries of human activity.
Fourth in invocations came Quirinus, and fourth in order of precedence
was his flamen. But of Quirinus I need say little; there is, on the
whole, a consensus of opinion that he was a form of Mars belonging to
the community settled on the hill that still bears his name. The most
convincing proof of his identity with Mars (though identity is doubtless
too strong a word) lies in the well-known fact that there were twelve
Salii Collini, _i.e._ belonging to the Collis Quirinalis, occupied with
the cult of Quirinus, answering to the twelve Salii Palatini of the cult
of Mars. "Quid de ancilibus vestris," Camillus says in Livy's glowing
rhetoric, "Mars Gradive (the particular cult-title of the warlike Mars),
tuque Quirine pater?"[277] Now the Quirinal was, of course, _within_ the
walls, and the Romans who identified the two deities noted this point of
contrast with the Mars-cult; for Servius writes, "Quirinus est Mars qui
praeest paci et _intra civitatem_ colitur, nam belli Mars _extra
civitatem_ templum habet." In keeping with this is the use of the word
Quirites of the Romans in their civil capacity; but unluckily we are
altogether uncertain as to the etymology and history of both Quirites
and Quirinus.[278] And as Quirinus never became, like Mars, an important
property of the Roman people, but was speedily obscured and only revived
by the legend of late origin which identified him with Romulus, he is
not of importance for my subject, and I may leave him to etymologists
and speculators.
There is one other deity of whom I might naturally be expected to say
something; I mean Juno. But our familiarity with Juno in Roman
literature must not be allowed to lead us into believing too rashly that
she was one of those great _numina_ of the early Roman State with whom I
have just been dealing. She had no special festival in the
calendar;[279] her connection with the Kalends she shared, as we have
seen, with Janus. She had no special priest of her own; for in spite of
all assertions that the flaminica Dialis was attached to her cult, I am
convinced that I was right some years ago in maintaining that this is an
error, though a natural one.[280] It cannot be proved that she had any
ancient temple in the city; for the oldest known to us as strictly
indigenous, that of Juno Moneta on the arx, was not dedicated till 344
_B.C._, and we do not know that there was an older altar on the same
spot.[281] Assuredly Rome was not in early times a great centre of the
Juno cult, as were some of the cities in her neighbourhood, _e.g._
Lanuvium, Falerii, and Veii;[282] and the gradual establishment of her
position as a truly Roman goddess may be explained by her appearance in
the trias of deities in the Capitoline temple at the end of the regal
period, and by the removal to Rome of Juno Regina of Veii still later,
after the destruction of that city.
What, then, was Juno originally to the Roman religious mind? There is no
more difficult question than this in our whole subject; as we probe
carefully in those dark ages she baffles us continually. Undoubtedly she
was a woman's deity, and we may aptly say of her "varium et mutabile
semper femina." The most singular fact we know about her cult is that
women used to speak of their Juno as men spoke of their Genius;[283] and
it is not by any means impossible that this may be the clue to the
original Italian conception of her.[284] In that case we should have to
explain her appearance as a well-defined goddess in so many Latin towns,
as the anthropomorphising result of that penetration of Greek ideas
into Latium from the south, of which I shall have something to say later
on. Such ideas, when they reached Rome, may have produced the notion
that she was the consort of Jupiter, for which I must confess that I can
find no sufficient evidence in the early cult of either.[285] But I must
here leave her, for in truth she does not belong to this lecture; and it
would need at least one whole lecture to discuss her adequately in all
her later aspects. The latest German discussion of her occupied sixty
closely printed pages; and instructive as it was in some ways, arrived
at the apparently impossible conclusion that she was a deity of the
earth.
Last in the order of invocation, even to the latest days of Rome, came
Vesta, "the only female deity among the highest gods of the most ancient
State,"[286] for Juno can hardly be reckoned among them, and Tellus had
no special cult or priesthood of her own. We have already noticed Vesta
as the religious centre of the house, making it into a _home_ in a sense
almost more vivid than that in which we use the sacred word. Through all
stages of development from house to city this religious centre must have
been preserved, and in the Rome of historical times Vesta was still
there, inherent in her sacred hearth-fire, which was tended by her six
virgin priestesses, and renewed on the Roman New Year's day (March 1) by
the primitive method of friction.[287] The Vestals beyond doubt
represented the unmarried daughters of the primitive Latin family, and
the _penus Vestae_, a kind of Holy of Holies of the Roman State,
recalled the _penus_ or store-closet of the agricultural home; this
_penus_ was cleansed on June 15 for the reception of the first fruits of
the harvest, and then closed until June 7 of the following year.[288]
These and other simple duties of the Vestals, all of them traceable to
the old life on the farm, together with their own sex and maidenhood,
preserved this beautiful cult throughout Roman history from all
contamination. Vesta in her _aedes_, a round dwelling which was never a
temple in the technical sense, was represented by no statue, and her
title of Mater never suggested to the true Roman worshipper anything but
her motherly grace and beneficence.[289] Far more than any other cult,
that of Vesta represents the reality and continuity of Roman religious
feeling; and the remains of her latest dwelling, and the statues of her
priestesses with no statue of herself among them, may still give the
visitor to the Forum some dim idea of the spirit of Roman worship.[290]
NOTES TO LECTURE VI
[219] Arnobius (v. 155) fortunately mentions that this
story came from the second book of Valerius Antias,
whose bad reputation is well known. It was plainly meant
to account for the cult-title of Jupiter Elicius, and
the origin of the _procuratio fulminis_, and was
invented by Greeks or Graecising Romans at a time (2nd
century B.C.) when all reverence for the gods had
vanished as completely as in Greece. Yet Dr. Frazer
writes of Numa as "an adept at bringing down lightning
from heaven" (_Early History of Kingship_, p. 204).
[220] On this subject, the evolution of the knowledge of
God, I may refer to Professor Gwatkin's _Gifford
Lectures_ of 1904-5, published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark,
Edinburgh.
[221] The meaning of _deus_ is well put by Mr. C. Bailey
in his sketch of _Roman Religion_ (Constable & Co.), p.
12.
[222] Guesses can be made about these, but little or
nothing is to be learnt from them to help us in this
lecture.
[223] I adhere to what was said in _R.F._ p.
312 foll. We do not know, and probably never shall know,
the original deity concerned in that festival. The
ritual is wholly unlike that of the _rustica Faunalia_
(_R.F._ p. 256 foll.). I believe that it dates from a
time anterior to the formation of real gods--possibly
from an aboriginal people who did not know any. (I am
glad to see this view taken in the latest summary of
German learning on this subject, _Einleitung in die
Altertumswissenschaft_, by Gaercke and Norden, vol. ii.
p. 262.) At the moment of printing an interesting
discussion of the Lupercalia, by Prof. Deubner, who
treats it as a historical growth, in which are embodied
ideas and rites of successive ages, has appeared in
_Archiv_ (1910, p. 481 foll.). See Appendix B.
[224] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 170 and 250 foll.
[225] Strabo, p. 164. Cp. Usener, _Götternamen_, p. 277,
whose comment is, "Die Götter aller dieser Stämme waren
'namenlos,' weil sie nicht mit Eigennamen sondern durch
Eigenschaftsworte benannt wurden. Für einen
griechischen Reisenden vorchristlicher Zeit waren sie
nicht fassbar." Arnobius iii. 43, Gellius ii. 28. 2 are
good passages for the principle. The latter alludes to
the anxiety of _veteres Romani_ on this point, "ne alium
pro alio nominando falsa religione populum alligarent."
Hence the formulae "si deus si dea," or "sive quo alio
nomine fas est nominare," Serv. _Aen._ ii. 351;
"quisquis es," _Aen._ iv. 576. See also Farnell,
_Evolution of Religion_, 184 foll.; Dieterich, _Eine
Mithrasliturgie_, p. 110 foll.
[226] Serv. _Aen._ ii. 351. I am inclined to think it is
only an inference from the want of substantival names in
so many Roman deities; surely, it would be argued, the
pontifices must have had some reason for this. It is
contradicted by the fact that in such ancient formulae
as that of the _devotio_ (Livy viii. 9) the great gods
are called by their own names, though the army was in
the field and in presence of the enemy. There was,
however, an old idea that the name of the special
tutelary god of the city was never divulged, lest he
should become _captivus_, and that the true name of the
city itself was unknown; see Macrob. iii. 9. 2 foll. I
believe that these ideas were encouraged by the
pontifices, but were not founded on fact.
[227] For the Indigitamenta see below, p. 159; _R.F._ p.
341; R. Peter's able article in _Myth. Lex._, _s.v._
Scholars do not seem to me to have reckoned sufficiently
with the tendency of a legal priesthood, devoted to the
strict maintenance of religious minutiae, to elaborate
and organise the material for god-making which was
within their reach. To judge by the elaboration of the
ritual at Iguvium, the same tendency must have existed
in other kindred Italian communities, both to develop
ritualistic priesthoods, and through them to elaborate
the ritual. This is, I think, the weak point of Usener's
reasoning in his _Götternamen_, and as applied to Roman
deities it is the weak point of an interesting article
by von Domaszewski, reprinted in his _Abhandlungen zur
röm. Religion_, p. 155 foll.
[228] The best account of Tellus is in Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 159 foll.
[229] _R.F._ p. 71; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 631 foll. This
was a festival of the populus as a whole, and also of
each Curia, like the Fornicalia in February. Both were
clearly agricultural in origin, though the Curia as we
know it was probably an institution of the city. I must
own that I am quite uncertain as to what the thing was
which was originally meant by the word Curia; my friend
Dr. J. B. Carter may have something to say on the
subject in his book on the Roman religion in the Jastrow
series.
[230] Dieterich, _Mutter Erde_, pp. 11 and 73 foll.
[231] Virg. _Aen._ iv. 166, "prima et Tellus et pronuba
Iuno Dant signum"; commenting on which Servius wrote,
"quidam sane etiam Tellurem praeesse nuptiis tradunt;
nam et in auspiciis nuptiarum invocatur: cui etiam
virgines, vel cum ire ad domum mariti coeperint, vel iam
ibi positae, diversis nominibus vel ritu sacrificant."
There is little doubt that Tellus is frequently
concealed under the names of Ceres, Dea Dia, etc. For
Ceres and Juno in marriage rites, see Marquardt,
_Privatleben_, p. 49.
[232] See below, p. 206 foll.; Macrob. iii. 9. 11;
Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 66 foll.
[233] See De Marchi, _La Religione_, _etc._, i. p. 188
and reff. (The reference to Gellius should be iv. 6. 7,
not iv. 67.) Like some other operations of the Roman
religion, this became a form, and was used as a kind of
insurance, whether or no there had been any omission;
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 160.
[234] That Ceres represented the _fructus_ is shown by
the fact that in the XII. Tables the man who raided a
field of standing corn at night was made _sacer_ to her;
Pliny, _N.H._ xviii. 12.
[235] Cato, _R.R._ 134. De Marchi, _op. cit._ p. 135.
Janus, Jupiter, and Juno are concerned in this rite,
Ceres coming last. Varro has preserved the part of
Tellus for us: "quod humatus non sit, heredi porca
praecidanea suscipienda Telluri et Cereri, aliter
familia non pura est" (_ap. Nonium_, p. 163).
[236] The verses are quoted by Dieterich, _Mutter Erde_,
p. 75, among others from Buecheler's _Anthology of Roman
Epitaphs_, Nos. 1544 and 1476. The story is told in
Suetonius' _Life of Tib._ c. 75, and again of Gallienus
by Aurelius Victor (_Caes._ c. 33).
[237] Marquardt, p. 326, who notes that the Romans
themselves derived the word from _filum_, a fillet;
_e.g._ Varro, _L.L._ v. 84, "quod in Latio capite velato
erant semper, ac caput cinctum habebant _filo_." Modern
etymologists equate the word with _Brahman_.
[238] Thus the Flamen Quirinalis sacrificed at the
Robigalia, _R.F._ p. 89, and with the Pontifices and
Vestals took part in the Consualia, Marq. 335.
[239] We may note here that the most general Latin name
for a priest was _sacerdos_, which seems to have
excluded all magic, etc.; it means an office sanctioned
by the State. On the general question of the origin of
priesthood see Jevons, _Introduction_, _etc._, ch. xx.,
with whose explanations, however, I cannot entirely
agree. I should prefer to keep the word priest for an
official who sacrifices and prays to his god. In this
view I am at one with E. Meyer, _Geschichte des
Altertums_, i.^2 p. 121 foll. God and priest go together
as permanent, regular in function, and entrusted by a
community with certain duties.
[240] Marquardt, p. 180; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 427. The
popa or victimarius is seen in many artistic
representations of sacrifice, _e.g._ Schreiber, _Atlas
of Classical Antiquities_, plate xvii. figs. 1 and 3.
[241] Jevons, ch. xx.; Frazer, _G.B._ i. 245 foll., and
_Lectures on Early History of Kingship_, Lectures ii.
and v.
[242] Virg. _Aen._ viii. 352.
[243] In a valuable paper in his _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_ (p. 284) Wissowa says that "personal
conception of deity is absolutely strange to the old
Roman religion of the _di indigetes_." I believe this to
be essentially true; but my point is that localisation
and ritual prepared the way for the reception of Greek
ideas of personality. The process had already begun in
the religion of the house; but it was not likely there
to come in contact with foreign germs. When Janus and
Vesta, who were in every house (Wissowa, p. 285), were
localised in certain points in a city, they would be far
more likely to acquire personality, if such an idea came
in their way, than in the worship of the family.
[244] Aug. _Civ. Dei_, vii. 28, "quem alii caelum, alii
dixerunt esse mundum." Dr. Frazer, citing this passage
(_Kingship_, p. 286) in support of his view that Janus
was a duplicate of Jupiter, has omitted to notice that
some theorisers fancied he was the _universe_, which by
itself is enough to betray the delusive nature of this
kind of theological speculation. Varro elsewhere gives
us a clue to the liability of Janus to be exalted in
this unnatural fashion, _L.L._ vii. 27, "divum deo" (in
the Salian hymn), if this be taken as referring to
Janus, as it may be, comparing Macrob. i. 9. 14. But
this is easily explained by the position of Janus in
prayers; cp. Cic. _Nat. Deor._ ii. 27. 67, "cum in
omnibus rebus vim haberent maximam prima et extrema,
principem in sacrificando Ianum esse voluerunt." The
phrase "Deorum" or "Divum deus" is indeed remarkable,
and unparalleled in Roman worship; but no one acquainted
with Roman or Italian ritual will for a moment suspect
it of meaning "God of gods" in either a Christian or
metaphysical sense. I shall have occasion to notice the
peculiar use of the genitive case and of genitival
adjectives in worship later on. See below, p. 153 foll.
[245] _Fasti_, i. 89 foll.; _R.F._ p. 281 foll.
[246] Frazer, _l.c._ (a page of which every line appears
to me to be written under a complete misapprehension of
the right methods of research into the nature of Roman
gods); A. B. Cook, _Classical Review_, vol. xviii. 367
foll.; Professor Ridgeway, _Who were the Romans?_ p. 12,
where, among other remarkable statements, Janus is
confidently said to have been introduced at Rome by the
Sabine Numa, and therefore to have been a Sabine deity,
an assumption quite irreconcilable with those of Dr.
Frazer and Mr. Cook. In striking contrast with such
speculations is a sensible paper on Janus in M.
Toutain's _Études de mythologie et d'histoire_, p. 195
foll. (Paris, 1909).
[247] Dr. Frazer is aware of this; see his _Kingship_,
p. 285, note 1. See also Roscher in _Myth. Lex._, _s.v._
"Janus," p. 45 foll.
[248] For the evidence for this and the following facts,
see Roscher's article just cited, or Wissowa, _R.K._ p.
91 foll.; cp. _R.F._ p. 280 foll. The cult epithets of
Janus are thus explained by von Domaszewski,
_Abhandlungen_, p. 223, note 1, "Bei Ianus tritt
regelmässig der Begriff des Wesens hinzu, dessen Wirkung
er von Anfang an bestimmt, so I. Consevius der Anfang
der in Consus wirkenden Kraft, und in derselbe Weise I.
Iunonius, Matutinus," etc. This is reasonable, but it
does not suit with I. Patulcius-Clusius, and I cannot
accept it with confidence at present.
[249] Roscher, _op. cit._ p. 34.
[250] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 284 foll.
[251] Festus, p. 185.
[252] It is due to the good sense and learning of Dr.
Roscher; he had previously, when working on the old
methods, tried to prove that Janus was a "wind-god"
(_Hermes der Windgott_, Leipzig, 1878); but a more
searching inquiry into the Roman evidence, when the
prepossessions had left him which the comparative method
is so likely to produce, brought him to the view I have
explained in outline, which has been adopted in the main
by Wissowa, Aust, and J. B. Carter, as well as by myself
in _R.F._ The last word about so puzzling a deity can of
course never be said; but if we indulge in speculations
about him we must use the Roman evidence with adequate
knowledge of the criticism it needs.
[253] This difference between Zeus and Jupiter has been
pointed out by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 100; Jupiter stands
for the heaven even in classical Latin literature, as we
all know.
[254] See his papers in the _Classical Review_, vol.
xvii. 270 and xviii. 365 foll., and in _Folklore_, vol.
xv. 301; xvi. 260 foll.
[255] _Kingship_, p. 196 foll.
[256] Macrobius i. 15. 14. In historical times a white
victim, _ovis idulis_, was taken to the Capitol by the
_via sacra_ in procession (Ov. _Fasti_, i. 56. 588).
Festus says that some derived the term _via sacra_ from
this procession (p. 290); and to this Horace may be
alluding in _Ode_ iii. 30. 8, "dum Capitolium Scandet
cum tacita virgine pontifex."
[257] _R.F._ pp. 86, 204.
[258] _R.F._ p. 160.
[259] No doubt Jupiter was specially connected with the
oak, as Mr. Cook has shown with great learning in the
paper cited above, note 36; but at Rome he had an
ancient shrine among beeches, and was known as I.
Fagutalis: Varro, _L.L._ v. 152; Paulus 87. For I.
Viminalis, see _R.F._ p. 229.
[260] See Aust's article "Jupiter" in _Myth. Lex._ p.
673.
[261] Aust gives a cut of a coin of the consul Claudius
Marcellus (223 B.C.) dedicating _spolia opima_ in this
little temple, according to the ancient fashion,
supposed to be initiated by Romulus, Livy i. 10.
[262] Dionys. Hal. ii. 34.
[263] _R.F._ p. 230.
[264] See De Marchi's careful investigation, _La
Religione_, _etc._, i. p. 156 foll.; Gaius i. 112. The
cult-title should indicate that the god was believed to
be immanent in the cake of _far_, rather than that it
was offered to him (so I should also take I. Dapalis,
though in later times the idea had passed into that of
sacrifice, Cato, _R.R._ 132), and if so, the use of the
cake was sacramental; cp. the rite at the Latin
festival, _R.F._ p. 96.
[265] There are distinct traces of a practice of taking
oaths in the open air, _i.e._ under the sky; of Dius
Fidius, unquestionably a form of Jupiter, Varro says
(_L.L._ v. 66), "quidam negant sub tecto per hunc
deiurare oportere." Cp. Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 28;
_R.F._ p. 138. For the conception of a single great
deity as primitive, see Lang, _The Making of Religion_,
ch. xii.; Flinders Petrie, _Religion of Egypt_ (in
Constable's shilling series), ch. i.; Ross, _The
Original Religion of China_, p. 128 foll.; Warneck, _Die
Lebenskräfte des Evangeliums_, p. 20 (of the Indian
Archipelago). The last reference I owe to Professor
Paterson, of Edinburgh University.
[266] Serv. _Aen._ viii. 552, "more enim veteri sacrorum
neque Martialis flamen neque Quirinalis omnibus
caerimoniis tenebantur quibus flamen Dialis, neque
diurnis sacrificiis distinebatur." It is, however,
possible that under the word _caerimonia_ Servius is not
here including taboos, but active duties only.
[267] See my paper, "The Strange History of a Flamen
Dialis," in _Classical Review_, vol. vii. p. 193.
[268] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 26.
[269] Cato, _R.R._ 141; Henzen, _op. cit._ p. 48.
[270] Frazer, _G.B._ iii. 123, note 3; _R.F._ p. 40, for
further examples. It may be worth while to point out
here that the coupling of all farm animals except goats
took place in spring or early summer; Varro, _R.R._ ii.
2 foll. Isidorus (_Orig._ v. 33), who embodies Varro and
Verrius to some extent, derived the name Mars from
_mares_, because in the month of March "cuncta animalia
ad mares aguntur."
[271] I prefer, with De Marchi, to take Silvanus here as
a cult-title, though we do not meet with it elsewhere;
see _La Religione_, _etc._, p. 130 note; but Wissowa,
who has a prejudice against the view that Mars was
connected with agriculture, insists on taking Marti
Silvano as a case of asyndeton, _i.e._ as two deities.
[272] See, _e.g._, Varro, _L.L._ v. 36, "quos agros non
colebant propter silvas aut id genus, ubi pecus possit
pasci, et possidebant, ab usu salvo saltus nominarunt."
[273] Cato, _R.R._ 141. Mars is there invoked as able to
keep off (_averruncare_) evil influences and to make the
crops grow, etc.; he has become in the second century
B.C. a powerful deity in the actual processes of
husbandry, just as he became in the city a powerful
deity of war. But as he was not localised either on the
farm or in the city, I prefer to think that he was
originally conceived as a Power outside the boundary in
each case, but for that very reason all the more to be
propitiated by the settlers within it.
[274] See below, p. 235.
[275] So Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 131. Cp. _R.F._ p. 39, note
4. Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 75.
[276] Servius, commenting on line 3 of _Aen._ viii.
(_utque impulit arma_) writes: "nam is qui belli
susceperat curam, sacrarium Martis ingressus, primo
ancilia commovebat, post hastam simulacri ipsius,
dicens, Mars vigila." The mention of a statue shows that
this account belongs to a late period. But Varro seems
to have stated that there was originally only a spear;
see a passage of Clement of Alexandria in the fragments
of the _Ant. rer. div._, Agahd, p. 210, to which Deubner
(_l.c._) adds Arnobius vi. 11. Deubner calls this spear
a fetish, which is not the right word if the deity were
immanent in it in the sense suggested by "Mars vigila."
See above, p. 116. If Servius correctly reports the
practice, it must be compared with the clashing of
shields and spears by the Salii, which may thus have had
a positive as well as negative object.
[277] Livy v. 52.
[278] Mr. A. B. Cook (_Classical Review_, 1904, p. 368)
has tried to connect both names with the Greek word
[Greek: prinos], and Professor Conway, quoted by him, is
inclined to lend the weight of his great authority to
the conjecture. Thus Quirinus would be an oak-god, and
Quirites oak-spearmen. We must, however, remember that
Mr. Cook is, so to speak, on an oak scent, and his
keenness as a hunter leads him sometimes astray. One is
a little perplexed to understand why Jupiter, Janus,
Mars, and Quirinus should all be oak-gods (and all in
origin identical as such!). On the other hand, it is
fair to note that the original spear was probably of
wood, with the point hardened in the fire, like the
_hasta praeusta_ of the Fetiales: Festus, p. 101. If
_quiris_ has really anything to do with oaks, it would
be more natural to explain the two words as springing
from an old place-name, Quirium, as Niebuhr did long
ago, and to derive that again from the oaks among which
it may have stood. But I am content to take _quiris_ as
simply a spear, as Buecheler did; see Deubner, _op.
cit._ p. 76. Since the above was written, the article
"Quirinus" by Wissowa in the _Myth. Lex._ has appeared.
Naturally it does not add anything to our knowledge; but
Wissowa holds to the opinion that the most probable
derivation of the name Quirinus is from Quirium,
possibly the name of the settlement on the Quirinal; and
compares _Q. pater_ (_e.g._ Livy v. 52. 7) with the
_Reatinus pater_ of _C.I.L._ ix. 4676.
[279] The Nonae Caprotinae (July 7), the day when women
sacrificed to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig-tree in
the Campus Martius, is not known to us except from
Varro. See _R.F._ p. 178, where (note 8) is a suggestion
that the festival had to do with the _caprificatio_, or
method of ripening the figs, which Dr. Frazer has
expanded in his _Lectures on Kingship_, p. 270,
believing the process to be that of fertilisation.
[280] _Classical Review_, vol. ix. p. 474 foll. The same
view has recently been taken independently by W. Otto in
_Philologus_, 1905, pp. 215 foll., 221. It is perfectly
clear that the monthly sacrifice to Juno was the duty of
the wife of the _rex sacrorum_; a pontifex minor is also
mentioned (Macrob. i. 15. 19).
[281] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 116.
[282] _Ib._ p. 114.
[283] See Ihm's article "Iunones" in _Myth. Lex._ vol.
ii. 615; Pliny, _N.H._ ii. 16.
[284] Dr. J. B. Carter tells me that he has abandoned
this explanation of the evolution of Juno. On the other
hand, von Domaszewski seems in some measure to accept it
(_Abhandlungen_, p. 169 foll.), when he says that
"similar functions, when exercised by different
_numina_, can eventually produce a god. _Auf diese Weise
ist Iuno geworden._" He means that the creative power is
called Juno in a woman, or in a people (Iuno Populonia),
or in the curiae (Iuno Curitis), and that an independent
deity, Juno _par excellence_, emerges from all these.
But so far I cannot follow him.
[285] There is no real evidence from purely Roman
sources of this fancied conjugal or other relation, if
we exclude that of the alleged cult of Juno by the
Flaminica Dialis. This has been well seen and expressed
by W. Otto, _l.c._ p. 215 foll.; see also _Classical
Review_ as quoted above. As we shall see in the next
lecture, Dr. Frazer is much concerned to show that
Jupiter and Juno are actually a married pair, and
consequently he will have nothing to do with my opinion
on this point: _Early History of Kingship_, p. 214
foll., and _Adonis_, _Attis,_ _Osiris_, ed. 2, p. 410,
note 1.
[286] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 141.
[287] Festus, p. 106; Macrob. i. 12. 6.
[288] I have discussed the Vestalia and the nature of
Vesta and her cult in _R.F._ p. 145 foll. See also
Marquardt, p. 336 foll., and Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 141
foll.
[289] Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 296, says that he had been
stupid enough to believe that there was a statue in the
_aedes Vestae_, but found out his mistake:--
esse diu stultus Vestae simulacra putavi;
mox didici curvo nulla subesse tholo.
The passage is interesting as showing how natural it was
for a Roman of the Graeco-Roman period to suppose that
his deities must be capable of taking iconic form. For
anthropomorphic representations of Vesta in other places
and at Pompeii, see Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_,
p. 67 foll.
[290] See Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient
Rome_, p. 223 foll. The statues of the _virgines
vestales maximae_, discovered in the Atrium Vestae, all
belong to the period of the Empire. They are now in the
museum of the Baths of Diocletian.
LECTURE VII
THE DEITIES OF THE EARLIEST RELIGION: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
In the last lecture we interrogated the calendar as to the deities whose
festivals are recorded in it, with the aid of what we know of the most
ancient priesthoods attached to particular cults. The result may be
stated thus: we found a number of impersonal _numina_, with names of
adjectival form, such as Saturnus, Vertumnus, and so on; others with
substantival names, Tellus, Robigus, Terminus; the former apparently
functional deities, concerned in the operations of nature or man, and
the latter spirits immanent in objects--Mother Earth herself, a stone,
the mildew, or (like Janus and Vesta) the entrance and the hearth-fire
of human dwellings or cities. Lastly, we found from the evidence,
chiefly of the priesthoods, that certain more important divinities stand
out from the crowd of spirits, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and
Vesta; and we found some reason to think that these, and possibly a few
of the others, by becoming the objects of priestly _cura_ and
_caerimonia_ at particular spots in the city, were not unlikely to
become also in some sense personal deities, to acquire a quasi-human
personality, if they came by the chance. In the present lecture I must
go rather more closely into such evidence as we possess bearing on the
mental conception which these early Romans had formed of the divine
beings whom they had admitted within their city.
And, first, we must be quite clear that in those early ages there was
nothing in Rome which we can call a temple, as we understand the word;
nor was there any such representation of a deity as we can call an image
or _eidolon_. The deities were settled in particular spots of ground,
which were made _loca sacra_, _i.e._ handed over to the deity by the
process of _consecratio_ authorised by the _ius divinum_.[291] It was
matter of no moment what might be erected on this bit of ground; there
might be a rude house like that of Vesta, round in shape like the oldest
Italian huts; there might be a gateway like that of Janus; or the spot
might be a grove, or a clearing within it (_lucus_), as in the case of
Robigus or the Dea Dia of the Arval Brethren. All such places might be
called by the general name _fanum_; and as a rule no doubt each _fanum_
contained a _sacellum_, _i.e._ a small enclosure without a roof,
containing a little altar (_ara_). These "altars" may at first have been
nothing more than temporary erections of turf and sods; permanent stone
altars were probably a later development. Servius tells us that in later
times it was the custom to place a sod (_caespes_) on the top of such a
stone altar, which must be one of the many survivals in cult of the
usages of a simpler age.[292]
With such spots as these we cannot associate anything in the nature of
an image of the deity established there; and we have every reason to
believe that no such thing was known at Rome until the Etruscan temple
of the Capitoline trias was built near the end of the regal period.
Varro expressly declared that the Romans remained for more than 170
years without any images of their gods, and added that those who first
introduced such images "civitatibus suis et metum dempsisse et errorem
addidisse."[293] What he had in his mind is clear; he had indeed no
direct knowledge of those early times, but he is thinking of a definite
traditional date in the kingly period--the last year of the reign of
Tarquinius Priscus, who, according to Varro's own account, built the
temple on the Capitol and placed in it a statue of Jupiter.[294] That
was the oldest image of which he knew anything; and, as Wissowa has
remarked, his belief is entirely corroborated by the fact that in every
single case in which the image of a god has any part in his cult, it is
always either this Capitoline Jupiter or some deity of later
introduction and non-Roman origin. It is also borne out by another
significant and interesting fact--that the next image to be introduced,
that of Diana in the temple on the Aventine, was a copy of the [Greek:
xoanon] of Artemis at Massilia, itself a copy of the famous one at
Ephesus.[295] Let us note that these two earliest statues were placed in
roofed temples which were the dwelling-places of gods in an entirely new
sense; so far no Roman deity of the city had been so housed, because he
could not be thought of in terms of human life, as visible in human form
and needing shelter. But this later and foreign notion of divinity so
completely took possession of the minds of the Romans of the
cosmopolitan city that Varro is the only writer who has preserved the
tradition of the older way of thinking. In the religion of the family
Ovid indeed has charmingly expressed it, perhaps on the authority of
some lost passage of Varro[296]:--
ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat, et mensae credere adesse deos.
Tibullus in one passage has mentioned what seems to be some rude attempt
to give outward shape and form to an ancient pastoral deity[297]:--
lacte madens illic suberat Pan ilicis umbrae
et facta agresti lignea falce Pales.
And Propertius hints at a like representation of Vertumnus, the garden
deity. But without some corroborative evidence it is hardly safe to take
these as genuine examples of early iconic worship.
Thus we may take it as certain that even the greater deities of the
calendar, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and Vesta, were not thought of
as existing in any sense in human form, nor as personal beings having
any human characteristics. The early Romans were destitute of
mythological fancy, and as they had never had their deities presented to
them in visible form, could hardly have invented such stories about
them as sprang up in a most abundant crop when Greek literature and
Greek art had changed their mental view of divinity. Roman legends were
occupied with practical matters, with kings and the foundation of
cities; and even among these it is hardly possible to detect those which
may be really Roman, for they are hidden away, like rude ancient
frescoes, under the elaborate decorations of the Greek artists, who
seized upon everything that came to hand, including the old deities
themselves, to amuse themselves and win the admiration of their dull
pupils at Rome. He who would appreciate the difficulty of getting at the
original rude drawings must be well acquainted with the decorative
activity of the Alexandrian age.
Thus we might well presume _a priori_ that the old Roman gods were not
conceived as married pairs, nor as having children; and this is indeed
the conclusion at which we have arrived after half a century or more of
most careful and conscientious investigation by a series of German
scholars. But quite recently in this country the contrary view has been
put forward by an author of no less weight than Dr. Frazer; and another
eminent Cambridge scholar, Mr. A. B. Cook, evidently inclines to the
same view. I should in any case be reluctant to engage in controversy
with two valued personal friends; but it is just possible that in what
follows I may be able to throw some faint light on the evolution of the
idea of marriage among divine beings; and on the strength of this I am
content for the moment to be controversial. Dr. Frazer's arguments, with
strictures on my opinions, will be found in an appendix to his book on
_Adonis,_ _Attis_, _Osiris_, 2nd edition.
In pure animism the spirits are nameless; when their residence and
functions are more clearly recognised they acquire names, and these
names are naturally masculine or feminine among peoples whose language
is not genderless, as was the case with the Sumerians of
Babylonia.[298] This would seem to be the first step on the path to a
personal conception of divinity. But there are signs that the Romans had
not got very far on this path when we begin to know anything about their
religion. I have already alluded to the formula "Sive deus sive dea,"
which occurs in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales, in the formula given
by Cato for making a new clearing, and elsewhere;[299] and indeed there
seems to have been always some uncertainty about the sex of one or two
well-known deities, such as Pales and Pomonus or Pomona.[300] It is not,
therefore, _a priori_ probable that the process of personalisation (if I
may coin the word) should have proceeded, at the period we are treating
of, so far as to ascribe to these named deities of both sexes the
characteristics of human beings in social life and intercourse. Yet
Varro, as Dr. Frazer points out, is quoted by St. Augustine as saying
that his ancestors (that is, as Augustine adds), "veteres Romanos,"
believed in the marriage of gods and in their procreative power.[301] If
Varro wrote "maiores meos," as he seems to have done, of whom was he
really thinking? Was Augustine's comment based on the rest of Varro's
text, or was he jumping to a conclusion which would naturally serve his
own purpose? Varro, of course, was not a Roman, but from Reate in the
Sabine country. But even if he were thinking of Rome, how far back would
his knowledge extend? The Romans had known Greek married gods for three
or four centuries before his time, and he may quite well be thinking of
these. Of the _di indigetes_ of an earlier period he could hardly know
more than we do ourselves; his only sources of information were the
facts of the cult and the books of the pontifices. The facts of the
cult, so far as he and others have recorded them, suggest no pairing of
deities, no "sacred marriage."[302] The pontifical books, which
contained rules and formulae for the proper invocation of deities by
their right names, do indeed seem to have suggested a certain
conjunction of male and female divine names; and it is just possible
that this is what Varro had in his mind when he wrote the passage seized
upon by Augustine. I will proceed at once to examine this evidence, as
it is incidentally of great interest in the history of Italian religion;
and Dr. Frazer will probably allow that his conclusion must stand or
fall by it.
The evidence to which I allude is preserved in the 13th book of the
_Noctes Atticae_ of Aulus Gellius (ch. xxiii.), and extracted from
"libri sacerdotum populi Romani," as "comprecationes deorum
immortalium"; these also occur, he says, in _plerisque antiquis
orationibus_, _i.e._ in the invocations to the gods made by the orator
at the beginning or end of his speech.[303] Among these Gellius found
the following conjunctions of divine names: Lua Saturni, Salacia
Neptuni, Hora Quirini, Virites Quirini, Maia Volcani, Herie Iunonis,
Moles Martis, and Neriene Martis, or Nerio Martis. Now among these
conjunctions there are three which obviously do not express pairs of
deities, married or other, viz. Virites Quirini, Moles Martis, and Herie
Iunonis; the first two of which plainly mean the strength or force of
Quirinus and Mars, and the third conjoins two female names. The question
is whether the others are to be understood as giving us the names of the
"wives" of Saturnus, Neptunus, Quirinus, Volcanus, and Mars. The fact
that these are associated with others which cannot mean anything of the
kind is itself against this conclusion; but I have carefully examined
each pair by the light of such stray information about them as we
possess, and have failed to find anything to suggest Dr. Frazer's
emphatic conclusion that these are married pairs. I should be tedious if
I were to go through the evidence in detail in a lecture like this; but
I will take the pair which Gellius himself discusses, and on which Dr.
Frazer chiefly relies, Neriene or Nerio Martis: it is the pair about
which we know most, and in every way is the most interesting of the
set.[304]
After giving the list of names, Gellius goes on to express his own
opinion that _Nerio Martis_ means (like _Moles Martis_) the _virtus_ or
_fortitudo_ of Mars, _Nerio_ being a Sabine word meaning strength or
courage;[305] and a little further he sums up his view thus: "Nerio
igitur Martis vis et potentia et maiestas quaedam esse Martis
demonstratur." This seems to fit in very comfortably with what can be
guessed of the meaning of two of the other pairs, Virites Quirini and
Maia Volcani: Maia was explained by another Roman scholar as equivalent
to Maiestas.[306]
But Gellius goes on to quote three passages from old Latin authors in
which Nerio (or Neria) appears positively as the wife of Mars; and again
concludes that there was also a tradition that these two were
_coniuges_. Of these passages we luckily have the context of one, for it
occurs in the _Truculentus_ of Plautus: turning this out (line 515) we
find that a rough soldier, arriving at Athens, salutes his sweetheart
with the words "Mars peregre adveniens salutat Nerienen uxorem
suam"--words which Plautus must have adapted from his Greek original in
such a way as to make them intelligible to a Roman audience. Gellius
says that he had often heard a learned friend blame Plautus for thus
putting a false notion about Mars (that he had a wife) into the mouth of
his soldier--"nimis comice"--merely to produce a comic effect. But, he
adds, there was some justification for it; for if you read the third
book of the annals of Gellius (a namesake who lived in the second
century B.C.) you will find that he puts into the mouth of Hersilia,
pleading for peace before Ti. Tatius, words which actually make Nerio
the wife of Mars: "De tui, inquit, coniugis consilio, Martem scilicet
significans." Little, I fear, can be said to the credit of this
Gellius;[307] he lived in an age when annalists were many and inventive,
and long after the Romans had grown accustomed to Greek ideas of the
gods; but we may take this passage as evidence of what may have been in
his day a popular idea of Mars and his consort. Lastly, Aulus Gellius
quotes a brace of lines from one Licinius Imbrex, an old comic writer of
the same century, who, in a _fabula palliata_ called Neaera, wrote:--
nolo ego Neaeram te vocent, aut Nerienem,
cum quidem Marti es in connubium data.
The real question is whether these passages from comic writers and an
annalist of no reputation combine to prove that there was an ancient
popular idea of Mars as a married god; as to the priestly view of the
matter they can, of course, prove nothing. It seems to me that Dr.
Frazer is entitled to argue that in the second century B.C. such a
popular idea existed,[308] which the Roman state religion did not
recognise, and which Aulus Gellius, as we have seen, could not agree
with. I do not, however, think him entitled to go farther, and to infer
that this was an idea of divinity native to Italy or of very old
standing. Is it not much simpler to suppose, with a cool-headed scholar
whom Dr. Frazer is willing to follow when it suits his turn, that pairs
or conjunctions of this kind, the true meaning of which I hope to
explain directly, were easily mistaken by the vulgar mind for married
god and goddess?[309] In those degenerate days of the Roman religion,
after the war with Hannibal, to which these writers belong--and all are
later than Ennius, the first to make mischief by ridiculing the
gods--nothing could be easier than to take advantage of what looked like
married life to invent comic passages to please a Roman audience, now
consisting largely of semi-educated men who had lost faith in their own
religion, and of a crowd of smaller people of mixed descent and
nationality. Such passages, in fact, cannot safely be used as evidence
of religious ideas, apart from the tendencies of the age in which they
were written. Had there really been religious beliefs, rooted in the old
Roman mind, about the wedded life of gods and goddesses, it would even
then have been dangerous to use them mockingly in comedy. And once more,
had there been such genuinely Roman ideas, why, in an age that made for
anthropomorphism, did they not find their way into the Roman
Pantheon,--why did they survive only in literary allusions, to the
bewilderment of scholars like Aulus Gellius?
The real explanation of these curious conjunctions of masculine and
feminine names is, I think, not very hard to come by. Let us remember,
in the first place, that they were found in the books of the priests,
and that they belonged to forms of prayer--_comprecationes deorum
immortalium_; in other words, they do not represent popular ideas of the
deities, but ritualistic forms of invocation. As such they may indeed no
doubt be regarded as expressing, or as growing out of, a popular way of
thinking of the Power manifesting itself in the universe; but they are
themselves none the less, like those strange lists of divine names
called _Indigitamenta_, with which I shall deal directly, the creations
of an active professional priesthood, working upon the principle that
every deity must be addressed in precisely the correct way and no other,
and accounting the name of the deity, as indicating his or her exact
function, the most vitally important thing in the whole invocation. I
have already pointed out how difficult the early Latin must have found
it to discover how to address the _numina_ at work around him, and I
shall return to the subject in another lecture; at present all I want to
insist upon is that the priests of the City-state relieved him of this
anxiety, and indeed must have carried the work so far as to develop a
kind of science of divine nomenclature. Every one who has studied the
history of religions knows well how strong the tendency is, when once
invocation has become ritualised, for the names and titles of the
objects of worship to abound and multiply. The Roman Church of to-day
still shows this tendency in its elaborate invocation of the Virgin.
With the old Romans the common method of elaboration lay in the
invention of cult-titles, of which the different kinds have been
distinguished and explained by Dr. J. B. Carter in his treatise "de
Deorum Romanorum cognominibus."[310] Most of them are suggestive of
function or character, as, _e.g._, Janus Patulcius Clusivius, or Jupiter
Lucetius, Ops Opifera; sometimes they doubled the idea, as in Aius
Locutius, or Anna Perenna, or Fors Fortuna; and in one or two cases
they seem to have combined two deities together in rather puzzling
conjunctions, which usually, however, admit of some possible
explanation, as Janus Junonius, or Ops Consiva (_i.e._ Ops belonging to
Consus).[311] In the Iguvian ritual, which is the highly-elaborated work
of a priesthood as active as the Roman, we find combinations of not less
than four names:[312] Cerfe Martie, Praestita Cerfia Cerfi Martii, Tursa
Cerfia Cerfi Martii, which may perhaps be rendered "Spirit of Mars,
protecting (female) spirit of the (male) spirit of Mars, fear-inspiring
(female) spirit of the (male) spirit of Mars."
Such strange multiple combinations as these suggest that expressions
like Moles Martis or Virites Quirini are only another form of the usual
cult-title, expressing adoration of the power of the deity addressed;
and it is only reasonable to explain the others of the same group on the
same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained
Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably
means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily
explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have
said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for
supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive
indicate a relationship of any kind except a qualitative one. Abstract
qualities, let us note, are usually feminine in Latin, and I think it is
not improbable that abstractions such as Fides and Salus, which were
deified at a very early period at Rome, may have reached divinity by
attachment to some god from whom they subsequently became again
separated.[313] And lastly, we can trace the same tendency to combine
names and ideas together far down the course of Roman history; witness
the combination of Genius with cities, legions, gods, etc., as well as
with the individual man, and again such expressions as Pietas Legionis,
by analogy with which von Domaszewski, wrongly as I think, would explain
those we have been discussing.[314]
Before leaving this complicated and cloudy system of divine
nomenclature, it is as well to ask the question once more, even if we
cannot answer it, whether if left to itself it might have developed into
a polytheistic system of personal deities. I will give my own opinion
for what it is worth. I do not think that such a result could have been
reached without the magic touch of the Greek poet and artist, or the
arrival of Greek deities and their images in Latium. Professor Sayce, in
his Gifford lectures on the religion of Babylonia, has shown how the
non-Semitic Sumerians knew only of spirits and demons until the Semite
arrived in the Persian Gulf with his personal gods of both sexes;[315]
and I gather that he does not suppose that without such immigration the
Sumerian ideas of divinity could have become personalised. The question
is not exactly the same at Rome; for there the spirit world had passed
into the hands of an organised priesthood occupied with ritual, and
especially with its terminological aspect; and the chance of
personalisation, if it were there at all, lay in the importance of the
functional name. But the question is after all beside the mark; we shall
see what happened when the Greeks arrived. We may be content at present
to note the fact that they found the functional terminology sufficiently
advanced to take advantage of it, and to revolutionise the whole Roman
conception of the divine.
Dr. Frazer gives me an opportunity of adverting to another point bearing
on the question we are discussing,--the way in which the old Roman
thought of his deities. "It is difficult," he says,[316] "to deny that
the epithets Pater and Mater, which the Romans bestow on so many of
their gods, do really imply paternity and maternity; if this implication
be admitted, the inference appears to be inevitable that these divine
beings were supposed to exercise sexual functions, etc." In a footnote
he adds a number of formidable-looking references, meant, I suppose, to
prove this point. I have closely examined these passages; what they do
prove is simply that many deities were called Pater and Mater. Not one
even suggests that paternity and maternity were in such cases to be
understood literally and, so to speak, physically. The two that come
nearest to what he is looking for are those from Varro and Lactantius.
Varro says[317] that Ops was called Mater because she was identical with
Terra, who was, of course, Terra Mater: "Haec enim--
'terris gentes omnes peperit et resumit denuo,
quae dat cibaria,' ut ait Ennius."[318] It is clear, then, that neither
Varro nor Ennius understood this title of Ops and Terra in Dr. Frazer's
sense of the word. The quotation from the early Christian father
Lactantius, which contains three well-known lines of Lucilius, might
possibly deceive those who neglect to turn it out and read the context;
there we find at once that not even Lactantius could attribute to these
epithets the meaning which Dr. Frazer wishes to put on them. He would
have been as glad to do so as Dr. Frazer himself, though for a very
different reason; but what he actually wrote is this:--
"Omnem Deum qui ab homine colitur, necesse est inter solennes ritus et
precationes patrem nuncupari, non tantum honoris gratia, verum etiam
rationis; quod et antiquior est homine, et quod vitam, salutem, victum
praestat, ut pater. Itaque ut Iuppiter a precantibus pater vocatur,
etc."[319]
Dr. Frazer's quotation begins with this last sentence; it is a pity that
he did not read the context. If he had read it, his candour would have
compelled him to confess that not even a Christian father, with a keen
sense of what was ridiculous or degrading in the pagan religion,
understood the fatherhood of the gods as he wishes to understand it.
But I am wasting time in pressing this point. Dr. Frazer would hardly
have used such an argument if he had not been hard put to it. The
figurative use of human relationships is surely a common practice, when
addressing their deities, of all peoples who have reached the stage of
family life. As another distinguished anthropologist says: "The very
want of an object tends to supply an object through the imagination; and
this will be either the vital energy inherent in things, or the reflex
of the human father, who once satisfied his needs (_i.e._ of the
worshipper). So, in Aryan religions, the supreme god is father, [Greek:
Zeus patêr], Diespiter, Marspiter. Ahura-Mazda is a father.... Another
analogy shows the relationship of brother and friend, as in the case of
Mithra."[320] The Romans themselves were familiar from the first with
such figurative use of relationship, as was natural to a people in whom
the family instinct was so strong; we have but to think of the _pater
patratus_ of the Fetiales,[321] of the Fratres Arvales, or the Fratres
Attiedii of Iguvium. What exactly they understood by Pater and Mater
when applied to deities is not so easy to determine: we have not the
necessary data. They were never applied, I believe, to imported deities,
_di novensiles_; always to _di indigetes_, those on whom the original
Roman stock looked as their fellow-citizens and guardians. And we shall
not be far wrong if we conclude that in general they imply the
dependence of the human citizen upon his divine protector, and thus
bring the usage into line with that of other Aryan peoples. Behind this
feeling of dependence there may have been the idea, handed down from
remote ages, that Father Sky and Mother Earth were in a sense the
parents of all living things; but there is nothing in the Roman religion
to suggest that the two were thought of as personally uniting in
marriage or a sexual act.
I will sum up this part of the discussion by translating an admirable
passage in Aust's book on the Roman religion, with which I am in cordial
agreement[322]:--
"The deities of Rome were deities of the cult only. They had no human
form; they had not the human heart with its virtues and vices. They had
no intercourse with each other, and no common or permanent residence;
they enjoyed no nectar and ambrosia ... they had no children, no
parental relation. They were indeed both male and female, and a male and
female deity are often in close relations with each other; but this is
not a relation of marriage, and rests only on a similarity in the sphere
of their operations.... These deities never become independent
existences; they remain cold, colourless conceptions, _numina_ as the
Romans called them, that is, supernatural beings whose existence only
betrays itself in the exercise of certain powers."
They were, indeed, cold and colourless conceptions as compared with the
Greek gods of Olympus, whose warmth and colour is really that of human
life, of human passions; but the one remarkable and interesting thing
about these Roman and Italian numina is the life and force for good or
evil which is the very essence of their being. The puzzling combinations
we have just been studying are quite enough to illustrate this
character. Moles, Virites, Nerio, and perhaps others too, seem to mean
the strength or force inherent in the numen; Cerfius, or Cerus, as the
Latins called it, Liber, Genius, all are best interpreted as meaning a
functional or creative force. Jupiter is the sky or heaven itself, with
all its manifestations of activity; Tellus is Mother Earth, full of
active productive power. At the bottom of these cold and colourless
conceptions there is thus a real idea of power, not supernatural but
rather natural power, which may both hurt and benefit man, and which he
must attempt to enlist on his side. This enlistment was the task of the
Roman priesthood and the Roman government, and so effectually was it
carried out that the divine beings lost their vitality in the process.
We shall be better able to follow out this curious fate of the Roman
deities in later lectures; here I wish to note one other aspect of the
Roman idea of divinity, which will help to explain what I have just been
saying about the life and force inherent in these numina.
In most cursory accounts of the Roman religion it has been the practice
to lay particular stress upon an immense number of "gods," as they used
to be called, each of which is supposed to have presided over some
particular act or suffering of the Roman from the cradle to the
grave--from Cunina, the "goddess" of his cradle, to Libitina who looked
after his interment. I have as yet said nothing about all these. I will
now briefly explain why I have not done so, and why I hesitate to
include them, at any rate in the uncompromising form in which they are
usually presented, among the genuine religious conceptions of the
earliest period. Later on I shall have further opportunity of discussing
them; at the end of this lecture I can only sum up the results of recent
research into this curious cloud of so-called deities.
We know of them mainly, but not entirely, from Tertullian, and the _de
Civitate Dei_ of St. Augustine.[323] These scholarly theologians,
wishing to show up the absurdity of the heathen religions, found a mine
of material in the great work of Varro on the Roman religious
antiquities; and though they found him by no means so elegant a writer
as Cicero, they studied him with pains, and have incidentally added
immensely to our knowledge both of Varro himself and of the Roman
religion. St. Augustine tells us that it was in the last three books of
his work that Varro treated of the Roman deities, and that he divided
them under the heads of _di certi_, _di incerti_, and _di selecti_. In
the first of these he dealt chiefly with those with which we are now
concerned: they were _certi_ because their names expressed their
supposed activity quite clearly.[324] We know for certain that Varro
found these names in the books of the pontifices, and that they were
there called Indigitamenta:[325] a word which has been variously
interpreted, and has been the subject of much learned disputation. I
believe with Wissowa that it means "forms of invocation," _i.e._ the
correct names by which gods should be addressed.
Thus these lists of names come down to us at third hand: Varro took them
from the pontifical books, and the Christian fathers took them from
Varro. It is obvious that this being the case they need very careful
critical examination; and till recently they were accepted in full
without hesitation, and without reflection on such questions as, _e.g._,
whether they are psychologically probable, or whether they can be
paralleled from the religious experience of other peoples. Some
preliminary critical attempts were made about fifty years ago in this
direction,[326] but the first thoroughgoing examination of the subject
was published by R. Peter in the article "Indigitamenta" in Roscher's
_Mythological Lexicon_. This most industrious scholar, though his
interpretation of the word Indigitamenta is probably erroneous,[327] was
the first to reach the definite conclusion that the lists are not really
primitive, and do not, as we have them, represent primitive religious
thought. It was after a very careful study of this article, which is
long enough to fill a small volume, that I wrote in my _Roman Festivals_
of the Indigitamenta as "based on"--not actually representing, I might
have added--"old ideas of divine agency, now systematised by something
like scientific terminology and ordered classification by skilled legal
theologians"; and as "an artificial priestly exaggeration of a primitive
tendency to see a world of nameless spirits surrounding and influencing
all human life."[328]
I was not then specially concerned with the Indigitamenta, and only
alluded to them in passing. But before my book was published there had
already appeared a most interesting work on the names of deities
(_Götternamen_) by H. Usener, a brilliant investigator, which drew fresh
attention to the subject. Usener found in mediaeval records of the
religion of the heathen Lithuanians what seemed to be a remarkable
parallel with this old Roman theology, and he also compared these
records with certain facts in what we may call the pre-Olympian
religious ideas of the Greeks. "The conclusion which he draws," writes
Dr. Farnell[329]--and I cannot state it better--"is that the
Indo-Germanic peoples, on the way to the higher polytheism, passed
through an earlier stage when the objects of cult were beings whom he
designated by the newly-coined words 'Augenblickgötter' and
'Sondergötter'" (gods of momentary or limited function). He went further
than this, and claimed that the anthropomorphic gods of Greece and
Italy, of the Indo-Iranians, Persians, and Slavs, were developed out of
these spirits presiding over special functions and particular moments of
human life; but with this latter part of his theory I am not now
concerned. What we want to know now is whether in writing thus of the
Roman Indigitamenta Usener was using a record which really represents an
early stage of religious thought in Italy; and I may add that we should
be glad to know whether his Lithuanian records are also to be
unhesitatingly relied on.[330] As regards Greece, Dr. Farnell has
criticised his theories with considerable effect.
The most recent contribution to the discussion of the Roman part of the
subject is that of Wissowa, who in 1904 published a paper on "True and
False Sondergötter at Rome";[331] this is a piece of most valuable and
weighty criticism, but extremely difficult to follow and digest. I here
give only the main results of it. Wissowa takes two genuine examples of
Sondergötter which have come down to us from other sources, and more
directly than those mentioned above: the first from Fabius Pictor, the
oldest Roman historian,[332] and the other from the Acta Fratrum
Arvalium.[333] Fabius said that the flamen (Cerealis?), when sacrificing
to Tellus and Ceres, also invoked the following deities: Vervactor, for
the first ploughing, as Wissowa interprets it; Redarator, for the second
ploughing; Imporcitor, for the harrowing; Insitor, for the sowing;
Oberator, for the top-dressing; Occator, Sarritor, Subrincator, Messor,
Convector, Conditor, Promitor, for subsequent operations up to the
harvest and actual distribution of the corn for food. Secondly, in the
Acta of the Arval Brethren we find, on the occasion of a _piaculum_
caused by the growth of a fig-tree on the roof of the temple of Dea Dia,
at the end of a long list of deities invoked, and before the names of
the _divi_ of the Imperial families, the names of three Sondergötter,
Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda, and on another occasion, Adolenda and
Coinquenda; these seem beyond doubt to refer to the process of getting
the obnoxious tree down from the roof, of breaking it up, and burning
it.
In both these examples, which have come down to us more directly than
the lists in the Fathers, Wissowa sees assistant or subordinate deities
(if such they can be called) grouped around a central idea, that of the
main object of sacrifice in each case;[334] these are the result of the
_cura_ and _caerimonia_ supervised and over-elaborated by pontifical law
and ritual. It is, I may add on my own account, most unlikely, and
psychologically almost impossible, that any individual farmer should
have troubled himself to remember and enumerate by name twelve deities
representing the various stages of an agricultural process; and Cato, in
fact, says nothing of such ritual. It was the flamen of the City-state,
who, when sacrificing to Tellus and Ceres before harvest,[335] pictured,
or recalled to mind, the various processes of a year of what we may call
high farming rather than primitive, under the names of deities plainly
invented out of the words which express those processes--words which
themselves are certainly not all antique. And in the second example,
which dates from the second century A.D., we see that the process of
destroying the intruding fig-tree is represented in ritual in exactly
the same curious way: the names of the deities, Deferunda and the rest,
being invented for the occasion out of the words which express the
several acts of the process of destruction. These Arval Brethren of the
second century inherited the traditions of their predecessors of an
earlier age, and carried out the work of amplification in their
invocations by pedantically imitating the pontifices of five or six
centuries earlier. They held, in a way which to us is ludicrous, to the
old notion that you should try and cover as much ground as possible in
worship, and to cover it in detail, so that no chance might be missed
of securing the object for which you were taking so much trouble.
Now to return to Varro and his lists of names. What is Dr. Wissowa's
conclusion about these, after examining the two examples of Sondergötter
which have not come down to us through so much book-learning as the
rest?
Varro's _di certi_, he says[336]--and I think there is no doubt that he
is right--included the name of every deity, great or small, of which he
could feel sure that he knew something, as he found it in the books of
the pontifices; and the part of those books in which he found these
names, known as Indigitamenta, probably contained formulae of
invocation, _precationum carmina_,[337] of the same kind as the
_comprecationes deorum immortalium_ from which Gellius quoted the pairs
of male and female deities which we discussed above. Varro arranged all
these names in groups of principal and subordinate or assistant deities,
the latter amplifying in detail the meaning and scope of the former, as
we have just seen; and of this grouping some traces are still visible in
the accounts of Augustine and Tertullian. But the good Fathers tumbled
the whole collection about sadly in their search for material for their
mockery, having no historical or scientific object in view; with the
result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and
can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan. The
difficulty is increased by the etymologies and explanations which they
offer of the divine names, which, as a rule, are even more absurd than
the divinities themselves.[338]
But, in the last place, the question must be asked whether these
Sondergötter of the real kind, such, for example, as those twelve
agricultural ones invoked by the flamen at the Cereale sacrum, had their
origin in any sense in popular usage or belief. At the end of his paper
Wissowa emphatically says that he does not believe it. For myself, I
would only modify this conclusion so far as this: they must, I think,
have been the theological, or perhaps rather the ritualistic outcome,
of a psychological tendency rooted in the popular mind. I have already
noticed that curious bit of folklore in which three spirits of
cultivation were invoked with a kind of acted parable at the birth of a
child;[339] and I cannot regard this custom as a piece of pontifical
ritualism, though the names may have been invented by the priests to
suit the practice. The old Roman seems to have had a tendency to ascribe
what for want of a better word we may call divinity, not only to animate
and inanimate objects, but to actions and abstractions; this, I take it,
is an advanced stage of animism, peculiar, it would seem, to a highly
practical agricultural people, and it is this stage which is reflected
in the ritualistic work of the priests. They turned dim and nameless
powers into definite and prehensible deities with names, and arranged
them in groups so as to fall in with the life of the city as well as the
farm. What was the result of all this ingenuity, or whether it had any
popular result at all, is a question hardly admitting of solution. What
is really interesting in the matter, if my view is the right one, is the
curious way in which the early Roman seems to have looked upon all life
and force and action, human or other, as in some sense associated with,
and the result of, divine or spiritual agency.
NOTES TO LECTURE VII
[291] For _loca sacra_ and _consecratio_ see Marquardt,
p. 148 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 400.
[292] Serv. _ad Aen._ xii. 119, "Romani moris fuerat
cespitem arae super imponere, et ita sacrificare." Cp.
some valuable remarks of Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p.
23. The altar of the Fratres was in front of their
grove; they used also a movable one (_foculus_) of
silver, but _cespiti ornatus_ (_ib._ p. 21): this was
for the preliminary offering of wine and incense
(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 351).
[293] In Aug. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 31; Agahd's edition of the
fragments of Varro's _Ant. rer. div._ p. 164.
[294] Aug. _Civ. Dei_, iv. 23; Agahd, p. 159. See
Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 280 foll.
[295] Strabo iv. 180.
[296] _Fasti_, vi. 305.
[297] Tibull. ii. 5. 27. The lines of Propertius are iv.
(v.) 2. 59, "Stipes acernus eram, properanti falce
dolatus, Ante Numam grata pauper in urbe deus." The
question is whether these are genuine examples of the
natural evolution of a "stock or stone" into something
in the nature of an anthropomorphic image of a deity, or
whether they are the result of the introduction of Greek
statues acting on the popular mind in rustic parts of
Italy. The passages, so far as I know, stand alone, and
we have no means of deciding whether the anthropomorphic
tendency was native or foreign. Vortumnus was, however,
undoubtedly of Etruscan origin; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 233.
The subject of iconic development of this kind is well
summarised in E. Gardner's little volume on _Religion
and Art in Ancient Greece_, ch. i.
[298] See Sayce, _Gifford Lectures on the Religions of
Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 302. An interesting paper on
the evolution of _dei_ at Rome out of functional
_numina_ will be found in von Domaszewski's
_Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion_, p. 155 foll., based on
Usener's theory of Sondergötter. It is ingenious and
imaginative, but in my view does not square with the
facts as far as we know them. His stages are: (1)
momentary function of _numina_, _e.g._ lightning; (2)
elevation of this into a permanent power or function;
(3) consequent limitation of the numen to a special
well-marked function; (4) elevation of the numen to a
_deus_, conceived in the likeness of man, and male or
female, because man cannot think of power otherwise than
on the analogy of male or female creative energy.
Lastly, when the _deus_ is complete, the functions of
the former numen become attributes or qualities, traces
of which we find in the pairs of deities in Gellius,
xiii. 23, which are discussed later on in this lecture.
Some of these, of course, eventually became separate
deities--Salacia, Maia, Lua. As I cannot accept the view
that the earliest Roman idea of the supernatural is to
be found in _comprecationes_ of a comparatively late
period, _i.e._ in the so-called Indigitamenta, this
charmingly symmetrical account has no charm for me
beyond its symmetry.
[299] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 144, 146; Cato,
_R.R._ 139; _C.I.L._ vi. 110 and 111. Other references
are given by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 33, note 2.
[300] For Pales, _R.F._ p. 80 note; for Pomona, Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 165.
[301] The passage runs thus (Aug. _C.D._ iv. 32):
"Dicit enim (Varro) de generationibus deorum magis ad
poetas quam ad physicos fuisse populos inclinatos, et
ideo et sexum et generationes deorum maiores suos (id
est veteres credidisse Romanos) et eorum constituisse
coniugia." There is an amusing passage in Lactantius, i.
17 (_de Falsa Religione_), which Dr. Frazer might read
with advantage. It begins, "Si duo sunt sexus deorum,
sequitur concubitus." Then he goes on mockingly to argue
that the gods must have houses, cities, lands which
they plough and sow, which proves them mortal. Finally
he takes the whole series of inferences backwards,
finishing with "si domibus carent, ergo et concubitu. Si
concubitus ab his abest, et sexus igitur foemineus,"
etc. All this, he means, can be inferred from the fact
that gods are of both sexes; but that they have
_concubitus_ can no more be inferred from his argument
than that they plough and sow.
[302] Dr. Frazer conjectures a sacred marriage of
Jupiter and Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana, in
_Kingship_, p. 214; but he is well aware that it is pure
guesswork. There was, indeed, at Falerii such a marriage
of Juno with an unknown deity (Ovid, _Amores_, iii. 13),
of which, however, we do not know the history. Falerii
was one of those cities, like Praeneste, where Etruscan,
Greek, and Latin influences met. The "Orci nuptiae" on
which Frazer lays stress was simply the Greek marriage
of Pluto and Proserpine: "Orci coniux Proserpina," Aug.
_C.D._ vii. 23 and 28, Agahd, p. 152. Wissowa shows this
conclusively, _R.K._ p. 246. Orcus was Graecised as
Plutus, but was himself totally without personality.
[303] Dr. Frazer wrongly translates this as "ancient
prayers" (p. 411), adding "the highest possible
authority on the subject." _Oratio_ is never used in
this sense until Christian times: the word is always
_precatio_. All scholars are agreed that what is meant
is invocations to deities in old speeches, such as occur
once or twice in Cicero (_e.g._ at the end of the
_Verrines_); cp. Livy xxix. 15. As the recording of
speeches cannot be assumed to have begun before the
third century B.C., this does not carry us very far
back. That century is also the age in which the
pontifices were probably most active in drawing up
_comprecationes_; see below, p. 285 foll.
[304] See Appendix B at end of volume.
[305] Cp. Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 850, "_forti_ sacrificare
deae." In _R.F._ p. 60 foll., I have criticised the
attempts, ancient and modern, to make this Nerio the
subject of myths.
[306] Macrob. i. 12. 18. This word Maiestas shows the
doubtful nature of these feminine names, and probably
betrays the real meaning of Maia. I may mention here
that Bellona instead of Nerio is ascribed as wife to
Mars by Seneca ap. Aug. _C.D._ vi. 10; also Venus to
Volcanus instead of Maia. Neither have any connection,
so far as we know, with the gods to whom Seneca ascribes
them as wives: Venus-Vulcan is, of course, Greek. Both
Augustine and Dr. Frazer might with advantage have
abstained from citing Seneca on such a point: as a
Spaniard by birth he was not likely to know much about
technical questions of Roman ritual.
[307] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, i. 274.
[308] In the Graeco-Roman age Mars seems to have been
rather a favourite subject of myth-making; see Usener's
article on Italian myths in _Rhein. Mus._ vol. xxx.;
Roscher in _Myth. Lex._ for works of Graeco-Etruscan
art in which he appears in certain mythical scenes.
[309] H. Jordan, quoted in _R.F._ p. 61 note. I relegate
to an appendix what needs to be said about the other
pairs of deities mentioned by Gellius.
[310] Leipzig, 1898, p. 7 foll.
[311] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 168. Carter, _op. cit._ p. 21.
[312] See Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 98.
[313] So Fides is usually explained, as originally
belonging to Jupiter (Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 103 foll.); but
a different view is taken by Harold L. Axtell in his
work on the _Deification of Abstract Ideas at Rome_
(Chicago, 1907), p. 20.
[314] In the Festschrift f. O. Hirschfeld, p. 243 foll.
[315] _Religion of the Babylonians_, introductory
chapter.
[316] _Op. cit._ p. 412.
[317] _L.L._ v. 64.
[318] This fragment is No. 503 in Baehrens, _Fragm.
Poet. Rom._
[319] Lactantius, _Div. inst._ iv. 3.
[320] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, p. 256; Farnell,
_Evolution of Religion_, p. 180; von Domaszewski,
_Abhandlungen_, p. 166, "Man ruft sie an im Gebete als
pater und mater zum Zeichen der Unterwerfung unter ihren
Willen, wie der Sohn dem Gebote des paterfamilias sich
fügt. Der sittlich strenge Gehorsam, der das
Familienleben der Römer beherrscht, die pietas, ist der
Sinn der römischen religio." Cp. also Appel, _de Rom.
precationibus_, pp. 102-3, who thinks that they regarded
the gods "velut patriarchas sive patres familias." He
quotes Preller-Jordan i. 55 and Dieterich, _Eine
Mithrasliturgie_, p. 142 sq. So too with mater--"velut
mater familias."
[321] The expression seems to mean "a father made for
the purpose of the embassy." Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 477,
note 3.
[322] p. 19. This was written, it may be noted, several
years after Aust had thoroughly investigated the cult of
Jupiter for his article in the _Mythological Lexicon_;
in which cult, if anywhere, one may be tempted to see
evidence of a personal conception of deities. As Dr.
Frazer has referred to the cult of Jupiter at Praeneste,
to which I referred him as evidence of a possibly
personal conception of the god in that Latin city, I may
say here that I adhere to what I said about this in
_R.F._ p. 226 foll.; no piece of antique cult has
occupied my attention more than this, and I have tried
to lay open every source of confirmation or criticism.
Wissowa has expressed himself in almost exactly the same
terms in _R.K._ p. 209: we arrived at our conclusions
independently.
[323] Tertullian, _ad Nationes_ 11, and _de Anima_, 37
foll.; Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, iv. _passim_, and especially
ch. xi.; R. Peter compiled a complete list (_Myth.
Lex._, _s.v._ "Indigitamenta," p. 143) from these and
other sources.
[324] Aug. _C.D._ vii. 17. That this was what Varro
meant by _di certi_ was first affirmed by Wissowa in a
note to his edition of Marquardt, p. 9; it has been
generally accepted as the true account. A full
discussion will be found in Agahd's edition of the
fragments of Varro's work, p. 126 foll.; cf. Peter's
article quoted above, and Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 61 and 65.
A somewhat different view is given in Domaszewski's
article in _Archiv_ for 1907, p. 1 foll., suggested by
Usener's _Götternamen_.
[325] The evidence for this will be found in Marquardt's
note 4 on p. 9. I have no doubt that Wissowa is right in
explaining Indigitamenta as "Gebetsformeln," formulae of
invocation; in which the most important matter, we may
add, would be the name of the deity. See his _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, p. 177 foll. The Indigitamenta contained,
as one section, the invocations of _di certi_.
[326] Chiefly by Ambrosch in his _Religionsbücher der
Römer_. Peter's article contains a useful account of the
whole progress of research on this subject.
[327] _Lex._ p. 137; it was that of his master
Reifferscheid. Cp. Wissowa, _op. cit._ (_Ges. Abhandl._
p. 306 foll.).
[328] _R.F._ pp. 191, 341.
[329] "The place of the Sondergötter in Greek
Polytheism," printed in _Anthropological Essays
addressed to E. B. Tylor_, p. 81. Usener's discussion of
the Roman and Lithuanian Sondergötter is in his
_Götternamen_, p. 73 foll.
[330] Wissowa writes (_Ges. Abhandl._ p. 320 note) that
he has reason to believe that a great number of the
Lithuanian Sondergötter only became such through the
treatment of the subject by the mediaeval writers on
whom Usener relied!
[331] _Ges. Abhandl._ p. 304 foll.
[332] Servius (Interpol.) _ad Georg._ i. 21.
[333] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 147; _C.I.L._ vi.
2099 and 2107.
[334] _Op. cit._ p. 323 foll.; for _famuli_ and _anculi
divi_, Henzen, _op. cit._ p. 145.
[335] See above, p. 121.
[336] p. 312; cp. 320, where he further asserts his
belief that Varro is responsible himself for the
creation of a great number of these Sondergötter, owing
to his extreme desire to fix and define the function of
every deity in relation to human life; just as the
mediaeval writers Laskowski and Pretorius may have
created many Lithuanian Sondergötter. As I am not quite
clear on this point, I have not mentioned it in the
text.
[337] _Op. cit._ p. 314, note 1. See above, note 33.
[338] _e.g._ Vaticanus, "qui infantum vagitibus
praesidet"; _Rusina_ from _rus_; _Consus_ from
_consilium_, etc.
[339] See above, p. 84.
LECTURE VIII
RITUAL OF THE _IUS DIVINUM_
I have already frequently mentioned the _ius divinum_, the law governing
the relations between the divine and human inhabitants of the city, as
the _ius civile_ governed the relations between citizen and
citizen.[340] When we examined the calendar of Numa, we were in fact
examining a part of this law; we began with this our studies of the
religion of the Roman city-state, because it is the earliest document we
possess which illuminates the dark ages of city life, so far as religion
is concerned. The study of the calendar naturally led us on to consider
the evidence it yields, taken together with other sources of
information, as to the nature of the deities for whose worship it fixes
times and seasons, or, more accurately, the amount of knowledge to which
the Romans had attained about their divine beings. But we must now
return to the _ius divinum_, and study it in another aspect, for which
the calendar itself does not suffice as evidence.
Perhaps the simplest way of explaining this _ius_ is to describe it as
laying down the rules for the maintenance of right relations between the
citizens and their deities; as ordaining what things are to be done or
avoided in order to keep up a continual _pax_, or quasi-legal covenant,
between these two parties. The two words _ius_ and _pax_, we may note,
are continually meeting us in Roman religious documents. In a prayer
sanctioned by the pontifices for use at the making of a new clearing, we
read: "Si deus, si dea sit cuius illud sacrum est, _ut tibi ius siet_
porco piaculo facere illiusce sacri coercendi ergo,"[341] _i.e._ "O
unknown deity, whether god or goddess, whose property this wood is, let
it be legally proper to sacrifice to thee this pig as an expiatory
offering, for the sake of cutting down trees in this wood of thine."
"Pacem deorum exposcere" (or "petere") is a standing formula, as all
readers of Virgil know;[342] and it occurs in many other authors and
religious documents. When Livy wants to express the horror of the old
patrician families at the idea of plebeians being consuls--men who had
no knowledge of the _ius divinum_ and no right to have any--he makes
Appius Claudius exclaim, "Nunc nos, tanquam iam nihil pace deorum opus
sit, omnes caerimonias polluimus."[343] How can we maintain our right
relations with the gods, if plebeians have the care of them?
Thus it is not going too far to describe the whole Roman religion of the
city-state as a _Rechtsverkehr_,[344] a legal process going on
continually. When a _colonia_ was founded, _i.e._ a military outpost
which was to be a copy in all respects of the Roman State, it was
absolutely essential that its _ius divinum_ should be laid down; it must
have a religious charter as well as a civil one. Even at the very end of
the life of the Republic, when Caesar founded a colony in Spain, he
ordained that, within ten days of its first magistrates taking office,
they should consult the Senate "quos et quot dies festos esse et quae
sacra fieri publice placeat et quos ea sacra facere placeat," _i.e._ as
to the calendar, the ritual, and the priesthood.[345] The Romans, of
course, assumed that Numa, their priest-king, had done the same thing
for Rome; Livy describes him as ordaining a pontifex to whom he
entrusted the care of all these matters, with written rules to
follow.[346] This was the imaginary religious charter of the Roman
State. Without it the citizen, or rather his official representative,
would not know with the necessary accuracy the details of the _cura_ and
_caerimonia_; without it, too, the deities could not be expected to
perform their part of advancing the interests of the State, and indeed,
as I think we shall find, could not be expected to retain the strength
and vitality which they needed for the work. Support was needed on each
side; the State needed the help of the gods, and the gods needed the
help of the State's care and worship.
The ways and means towards the maintenance of this _pax_ were as
follows. First, the deities must be duly placated, and their powers kept
in full vigour, by the ritual of sacrifice and prayer, performed at the
proper times and places by authorised persons skilled in the knowledge
of that ritual. Secondly, there must be an exact fulfilment of all vows
or solemn promises made to the deities by the State or its magistrates,
or by such private persons as might have made similar engagements.
Thirdly, the city, its land and its people, must be preserved from all
evil or hostile influences, whether spiritual or material or both, by
the process broadly known as _lustratio_, which we commonly translate
_purification_. Lastly, strict attention must be paid to all outward
signs of the will of the gods, as shown by omens and portents of various
kinds. This last method of securing the _pax_ became specially prominent
much later in Roman history, and I prefer to postpone detailed
discussion of it for the present; but the other three we will now
examine, with the help of evidence mainly derived from facts of cult,
not from the fancies of mythologists.
First, then, I take sacrifice, dealing only with the general principles
of sacrificial rites, so far as we can discern them in the numerous
details which have come down to us. The word _sacrificium_, let us note,
in its widest sense, may cover any religious act in which something is
made _sacrum_, _i.e._ (in its legal sense) the property of a deity;[347]
I am not now concerned to conjecture what exactly may have been the
meaning of this immortal word before it was embodied in the _ius
divinum_. "Sacrificium" is limited in practical use by the Romans
themselves to offerings, animal or cereal, made on the spot where the
deity had taken up his residence, or at some place on the boundary of
land or city (_e.g._ the gate) which was under his protection, or (in
later times at least) at a temporary altar erected during a campaign.
Thus it was as much a sacrificium when the paterfamilias threw at each
meal a portion of the food into the fire, the residence of Vesta, as
when the consul offered a victim to Mars on the eve of a battle.
Sacrifices have generally been divided into the three classes of (1)
honorific, where the offering is believed to be in some sense a gift to
the deity; (2) piacular, or sin-offerings, where the victim was usually
burnt whole, no part being retained for eating (though this was not the
case at Rome); (3) sacramental sacrifices, where the worshippers enter
into communion with the deity by partaking of the sacred offering
together with him.[348] The two former are constant and typical in the
Roman religion; but traces of the sacramental type, which Robertson
Smith believed to be the oldest, are also found, and it will clear the
ground if I refer to them at once. By far the most interesting example
is that of the Latin festival on the Alban mount, where the flesh of the
victim, a white heifer that had never felt the yoke, was partaken of by
the deputies of all the cities of the Latin league, great importance
being attached to the due distribution.[349] Here the Latin race "yearly
acknowledges its common kinship of blood, and seals it by partaking in
the common meal of a sacred victim," thus entering into communion with
Jupiter, the ancient god of the race, and with each other, by
participation in the flesh of the sacred animal. "This common meal is
perhaps a survival from the age when cattle were sacred animals, and
were never slain or eaten except on the solemn annual occasions when the
clan or race renewed its kinship and its mutual obligations by a solemn
sacrament." It is tempting to compare with this great sacrament the
_epulum Iovis_ on the Ides of September, the dedication-day of the
Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which three deities
seem to have been present in visible form to share the meal with the
magistrates and senate.[350] But we have not yet arrived at the age when
this temple was built, and we have no evidence enabling us to carry the
rite back in any form to the pre-Etruscan period. There are, however,
faint indications that the old Italians believed the deities to be in
some sense present at their meals, though not in visible form; and at
one festival, the Fornacalia, which was a concern not of the State as a
whole, but of the thirty _curiae_ into which it was divided,[351] there
seems to be no doubt that a common meal took place in which the gods
were believed to have a part, or at any rate to be present though
invisible. Yet the _ius divinum_ of the Roman State assuredly did not
encourage this kind of sacrament; for in the regular round of State
festivals, in which we cannot include even the _feriae Latinae_, the
sacrifices, so far as we are informed, were all honorific or piacular.
If I am not mistaken, the idea of participation by the people in solemn
sacred rites was discouraged by the Roman priesthood; in the _ius
divinum_ the line drawn between _sacrum_ and _profanum_ was clear;
scenes of gluttony or revelry, like the Greek hecatombs, were eliminated
from the _sacra publica_, as I have already pointed out. Not till the
advent of the Sibylline books and the _Graecus ritus_ did the people
take an active part in the State religion; their duty was merely to
abstain from disturbance during the performance of sacred rites. "Feriis
iurgia amovento" is the only reference in Cicero's imaginary sketch of
the _ius divinum_ to the conduct of the citizen on festival days.[352]
Within the family, the curia, the gens, there might be direct and active
participation in daily or yearly ceremonies, but it was an essential
principle of the life of the city-state that its business, religious as
well as civil, should be carried out for the citizens by officials
specially appointed.
In the typical and organised worship of the State, _i.e._ sacrifice
honorific and piacular, sanctioned by the _ius divinum_, the utmost care
was taken that the whole procedure should be in every sense acceptable
to the deity; that nothing _profanum_ should cross the threshold of the
divine; hence it was quiet, orderly, dignified. The feeling that
communication with the deity invoked was impossible save under such
conditions was very strong in the Roman mind, stronger perhaps than with
any other people whose religious practice is known to us; and the sense
of obligation and duty, _pietas_, as they called it, was thus very early
developed, and of infinite value to the State in its youth. This is
entirely in keeping with what we have learnt in the last two lectures of
the ideas of the Romans about the nature of their deities, and throws
additional light on those ideas. They did not as yet know too much about
the divine beings and their powers and wishes; familiarity had not yet
bred contempt; _religio_, as we saw, was still strong among them--the
feeling of awe that is likely to diminish or disappear when you have
your god before you in the form of an idol. It is a principle of human
nature that where knowledge is imperfect, care must be taken to be on
the safe side; this is true of all practical undertakings, and as the
religion of the Romans was that of a practical people with a practical
end in view, it was particularly true of them.
First then, in order that the worship might be entirely acceptable to
the deity invoked, it was essential that the person who conducted it
should be also acceptable. At the head of the whole system was the rex,
who was priest as well as king. We do not know, of course, exactly how
the rex was appointed; but in the case of the typical priest-king Numa,
Livy has described his _inauguratio_ in terms of the _ius divinum_ of
later times for the appointment of priests, and we may take it as fairly
certain that the same principle held good from the earliest times.[353]
After being summoned (so the story ran) from the Sabine city of Cures by
the Senate, he consulted the gods about his own fitness. He was then
conducted by the augur to the arx on the Capitol, and sat down on a
stone facing the south. The augur took his seat on his left hand (the
lucky side) with veiled head, holding the _lituus_[354] of his office
in his right hand, with which, after a prayer, he marked out the
_regiones_ from east to west, the north being to the left, the south to
the right, and silently noted some object in the extreme distance of the
_ager Romanus_, as the farthest point where the appearance of an omen
might be accepted. Then, passing the _lituus_ to his left hand, he laid
his right on the head of Numa, and uttered this prayer: "Father Jupiter,
if it be thy will (_fas_) that this Numa Pompilius, on whose head my
hand is laid, be king of Rome, I pray thee give us clear token within
the limits which I have marked out." Then he said aloud what auspicia he
sought for (_i.e._ whether of birds, lightning, or what); and when they
appeared, Numa descended as rex from the citadel. This process was
called _inauguratio_; it is attested for the confirmation of the
election of the three flamines maiores, the rex, and the augurs, in
historical times,[355] whatever was the method of that election, and
without it the priest was not believed to be acceptable to the gods. It
is not mentioned by Roman writers in connection with the Pontifices or
the Vestals; if this be not merely from dearth of evidence, it is not
easy to account for, unless the reason were that neither body was
specially concerned with sacrifice. But the principle is perfectly
clear--that the person who is to represent the community in worship must
be one of whom the _numina_ openly express approval.
A priest, _sacerdos_, is thus a person set apart by special ritual for
the service of the _sacra populi Romani_. The rex no doubt himself made
the selection and supervised the inauguratio of the other priests at
whose head he was. When the kingship came to an end, his powers of this
kind passed to the pontifex maximus; and it may be as well to add at
once that his sacrificial powers, though they were in a special sense
inherited by a priest who took his title, the _rex sacrorum_, passed
with the civil power to all magistrates _cum imperio_, who wore the
_toga praetexta_ symbolic of priestly function, and had the right of
presiding at sacrificial rites both at home and in the field. Thus
magistrate and priest, though quite distinct under the Republic from the
point of view of public law, have certain characteristics in common as
deriving from a common source in the powers of the rex.[356]
But to return to the period of Numa and the calendar: it was not only
necessary that the priest should be acceptable to the gods, but that he
should be marked off from the rest of the community as being dedicated
to their service. As Dr. Jevons says,[357] in all early religions
priests are marked off from other worshippers, partly by what they do,
and partly by what they may not do; and what he means is (1) that the
priest originally was the person who alone could slay a victim; (2) that
in consequence of his sacredness he was subject to a great number of
restrictions. I have already spoken of these restrictions or priestly
taboos in my second lecture; and as I believe that in the period we are
now dealing with they were little more than a survival, I shall not
return to them now. But of the outward insignia, which marked off the
priest as alone entitled to perform the essential act of worship, the
sacrifice, and which bring him out of the region of the _profanum_ into
that of _sacrum_, I must say a few words before going farther.
In historical times the actual slaying of the victim was done by
subordinates, _popae_, _victimarii_, etc.; but there is no doubt
whatever that it was originally the work of the priest, for he seems at
all times to have used one gesture which is clearly symbolic of it,[358]
and there are traces also of a practice of wearing the toga in such a
way as to leave the right arm free for the act.[359] That toga, or any
other special robe worn by the priest, was always in whole or part red
or purple. The purple-edged _toga praetexta_ was worn both by priests
and magistrates, and by children under age; and I think there is good
reason to believe that in all these cases the original idea was the
same--that they took part, directly or indirectly, as primary or
secondary agents in sacrificial acts. The Salii and the augurs wore the
_trabea_, which was of purple or red, or both; the flamines had a
special robe about the colour of which we are not informed, but the
Flaminica Dialis wore a purple garment called _rica_, and a red veil
called _flammeum_, which was also worn by the bride in the religious
ceremony of marriage. Whether we are to see in this prevalence of red or
purple any symbolism of the shedding of blood in sacrifice I cannot be
sure, but the inference is a tempting one, and has been put forward with
confidence by some recent investigators. It is worth noting that the
Vestals, who did not sacrifice animals, wore white only.[360] If the red
colour has anything to do with blood-shedding, it is probably more than
merely symbolic; it may mean that the sacrificing priest partakes of
that life and strength which he passes on to the god through the blood,
that is the life, of the victim.[361]
The Roman priests had also other insignia, of which the original meaning
is less evident. The Flamen Dialis, and probably all the flamines, wore
a cap with an olive-twig fastened to the top of it; this is well shown
in the sculptures of the Ara Pacis of Augustus.[362] The flaminicae had
a head-dress called _tutulus_, which consisted in part, at least, of a
purple fillet or ribbon. The flamines, when actually sacrificing, wore a
_galerus_, or hood of some kind made of the skin of a victim, and the
Flamen Dialis in particular wore one made of the skin of a white heifer
sacrificed to Jupiter.[363] In these various ways all priests were
outwardly shown to be holy men, _sacerdotes_, marked off from the
_profanum vulgus_. Only for the pontifices we have no information as to
a special dress, just as we also have none as to their inauguratio.[364]
Thus there is no question that the priests were chosen and separated
from the people in such a way as to meet with the approval of the gods;
and even the acolytes, _camilli_ and _camillae_, boys and girls who
frequently appear in sacrificial scenes on monuments, wore the _toga
praetexta_, and, in order to be acceptable, must be the children of
living parents.[365] This rule has lately been the subject of a
discussion by Dr. Frazer, on which he has brought to bear, as usual, a
great range of learning. He regards the restriction not so much as a
matter of good omen, _i.e._ of freedom from contamination by the death
of a parent, but as pointing to a notion that they were "fuller of life
and therefore luckier than orphans."[366] Whether or no this explanation
is the right one, it is quite consistent, as we shall see directly, with
the general idea of sacrifice at Rome, and the learning by which it is
supported is in any case of interest and value.
There is abundant evidence from historical times that all worshippers,
and therefore _a fortiori_ all priests, when sacrificing, had to be
personally clean and free from every kind of taint; a rule which also
held good for the utensils used in the worship, which in many cases at
least were of primitive make and material, not such as were in common
use.[367] The need of personal purity is well expressed by Tibullus in
his description of a rural festival[368]:--
vos quoque abesse procul iubeo, discedat ab aris
cui tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus.
casta placent superis: pura cum veste venite
et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam.
These lines indicate an approach at least to the idea of mental as well
as material purity; and Cicero in his _ius divinum_ in the _de
Legibus_[369] actually reaches that idea: "caste iubet lex adire ad
deos, animo videlicet, in quo sunt omnia: nec tollit castimoniam
corporis," etc. But this is the language of a later age, and does not
reflect the notions of the old Roman, but rather those of the religious
philosophy of the Greek. The personal purity which the Roman rule
required was a survival from a set of primitive ideas, closely connected
with taboo, which we are only now beginning to understand fully. They
are common to all or almost all peoples who have made any progress in
systematising their sacrificial worship. As Dr. Westermarck has
recently expressed it,[370] "they spring from the idea that the contact
of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by injurious
consequences. It is supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its
holiness.... So also a sacred act is believed to lose its sacredness by
being performed by an unclean individual." And in the next sentence he
goes still farther back in the history of the belief, pointing out that
a polluting substance is itself held to contain mysterious energy of a
baneful kind. But I must leave this interesting subject now; the story
of the evolution of the habit of cleanliness from these ancient ideas
will be found in the thirty-ninth chapter of his _Origin and Development
of Moral Ideas_.
Coming next to the act of sacrifice itself, it is needless to say that
the victim must be as exactly fitted to please the deity--if that be the
right way to express the obligation--as the priest who sacrificed it. It
must be of the right kind, sex, age, colour; it must go willingly to the
slaughter, adorned with fillets and ribbons (_infulae_, _vittae_), in
order to mark it off from other animals as holy; in the case of oxen, we
hear also of the gilding of the horns, but this must have been costly
and unusual.[371] All these details were doubtless laid down in the _ius
divinum_, and in later times, when the deities dwelt in roofed temples,
they were embodied in the _lex_ or charter of each temple.[372] I do not
need to go into them here minutely; for my present purpose, the
elucidation of the meaning which the Romans attached to sacrificial
worship, it will be sufficient to point out that all victims, so far as
we know, were domestic animals, and in almost all cases they were
valuable property (_pecunia_), such as belonged to the stock of the
Latin farmer, ox, sheep, pig, varying according to age and sex. Goats
were used at the Lupercalia, and a horse was sacrificed to Mars, as we
have seen, on October 15, and at the Robigalia in April a red dog was
offered to the spirit of the mildew. But though time forbids me to
explain all these rules, a careful study of the evidence for them is
most useful for any one who wishes to understand the influence of the
_ius divinum_ on the mind of the early Roman. In the family what rules
were needed were matter of tradition; deities were few, and offerings
limited. But in the city-state it was very different; here even the _di
indigetes_ were many, with diverse wishes and likings as well as
functions: how were these to be ascertained and remembered at the right
moment? Here, as in all methods of securing the _pax deorum_, a central
supervising authority was needed, in whose knowledge and wisdom the
whole community had confidence; and he was found in the rex, as is
clearly shown in the whole traditional account of the priest-king Numa.
Very naturally tradition also ascribed to Numa the institution of the
pontifices, whom the historical Romans knew as succeeding the rex in the
supervision of religious law.[373]
If all went well, the victim going willingly and no ill omen
supervening, the actual slaughter followed at the altar. During the
whole operation silence was enjoined; the priests' heads were veiled
with the folds of the toga;[374] pipers (_tibicines_) continued to play,
in order that no unlucky sound or word might be heard which would make
it necessary to start afresh with another victim (_instauratio_).
Immediately before the slaughter the victim was made holier than ever by
sprinkling upon it fragments of sacred cake made of _far_ (_immolatio_),
and by pouring on it libations of wine from a _foculus_ or movable altar
containing this holy condiment, together with incense if that were used
in the rite. As soon as it was dead, the internal organs were examined
to make sure that there was no physical defect or abnormal growth, for
it was, of course, quite as necessary that the animal should be "purus"
within as without; this was the only object of the examination, until
the Etruscan art of _extipicina_ made its way to Rome. What became of
the blood we are not told; I have already remarked that blood has
curiously little part in Roman ritual and custom.[375] But the _exta_,
_i.e._ internal organs of life, were separated from the rest of the
carcase, and carefully cooked in holy vessels, before being laid upon
the altar (_porrectio_), together with certain slices of flesh called
_magmenta_, or increase-offerings, while the rest of the flesh, which
had now lost its holiness, was retained for the use of the priests.[376]
The time occupied in the actual slaughter and inspection of the organs
was not long; but the cooking of these must have been often a lengthy
process. Ovid tells us how on April 25 he met the Flamen Quirinalis
carrying out the exta of a dog and a sheep, which had been sacrificed at
Rome to Robigus that morning, in order to lay them on the altar of that
deity at the fifth milestone on the Via Claudia.[377] Certain days in
the calendar, called _endotercisi_, which were _nefasti_ in morning and
evening, were _fasti_ in the middle of the day, between the slaying of a
victim and the placing of its exta on the altar (_inter hostiam caesam
et exta porrecta_).[378]
I have so far purposely omitted one important detail--the prayer which,
so far as we know, invariably accompanied the sacrifice. It is not
absolutely certain at what moment of the rite it was said at Rome; in
the ritual of Iguvium we find it occurring immediately before the
placing of the exta on the altar;[379] but as that ritual is a
processional one, concerned with sacrifices at several spots, the two
chief parts of the rite, the slaughter and the _porrectio_, probably
followed closely on one another. We may perhaps guess that where these
two parts were separated by a considerable interval, as in the majority
of Roman festivals, the prayer was said by the priest also at the moment
of _porrectio_. The prayer is so important a detail as to need separate
handling--important because it helps us to interpret the ideas of the
Romans about their sacrifices, and the attitude in which they conceived
themselves as standing towards the deities whom they thus approached. I
propose to occupy the rest of this lecture in considering this most
interesting topic. I wish first to draw attention to a particular
feature, or rather expression, which occurs in the authentic wording of
certain prayers which we are lucky enough to possess, because I think it
throws some light on the meaning which the Romans attached to the
sacrifice it accompanied; and secondly, to consider the character of
Roman prayers generally, in view of a question now being largely
discussed, _i.e._ whether prayer is a development from spell or charm,
belonging in its origin to the region of magic.
We have various forms of prayer surviving in Roman literature: some of
them are versified by the poets, and therefore give us a general
impression of the contents without the actual and genuine wording; we
have also two fragments of ancient _carmina_ which have the form of
prayers, those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales; and we have certain
forms used on special occasions, such as the _evocatio_ of the gods of a
hostile community, or the formulae of vows (_vota_) which I must
postpone to the next lecture. But the only unquestionably genuine old
Roman prayers used at sacrifice, taken from the books of the pontifices
and preserved word for word, are those which Cato embodied in his
treatise on agriculture in the second century B.C., as proper to be used
with sacrifice on certain occasions in the agricultural year.[380] It is
here that we meet with the phrase, familiar in another form to all Latin
scholars, on which I wish to lay stress now. It occurs in all the four
forms of prayer which Cato copied down. The first is at the time of the
flowering of the pear-trees, on behalf of the oxen: "Iuppiter dapalis,
quod tibi fieri oportet in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi eius
rei[381] ergo, _macte hac illace dape polucenda esto_." And again, when
the wine is offered: "Iuppiter dapalis, _macte istace dape polucenda
esto. Macte vino inferio esto_." So in the piacular sacrifice when a
clearing is made, the unknown deity is addressed in the last words of
the prayer thus: "harum rerum ergo _macte hoc porco piaculo immolando
esto_." We find this _macte esto_ again in the prayer for the ceremony
of lustratio, at the end of the formula: "_macte hisce suovetaurilibus
lactentibus immolandis esto_." In the rite of the _porca praecidanea_,
to which I have already referred, the instruction for the invocation of
Jupiter runs: "_Fertum_ (_i.e._ a kind of cake) _Iovi obmoveto et
mactato sic, Iuppiter, te hoc ferto_ obmovendo bonas preces precor, uti
sies volens propitius mihi liberisque meis domo familiaeque meae _mactus
hoc ferto_." Janus gets another kind of cake (_strues_) and a
wine-offering, and is addressed in the same way. Then we read, "Iovi
fertum obmoveto _mactatoque item_, ut prius feceris."
What is the real meaning of this phrase _macte esto_, which must surely
have been in universal use at sacrifices, not only at private rites like
those of Cato, since it came to be used in common speech of
congratulation or felicitation, e.g. _macte virtute esto_?[382] Servius
in commenting on Virgil has made it sufficiently clear. He explains it
as _magis aucte_, and connects it with _magmentum_, increase-offering,
_quasi magis augmentum_, and adds that when the victims had been slain
and their exta placed on the altar, they were said to be _mactatae_. So,
too, in another comment he seems to connect the word with the victim
rather than with the deity. But he is quite clear as to the meaning of
the word, as signifying an increase or addition of some kind; and though
his etymology is wrong, we may be sure that he was right in this
respect, for it is beyond doubt built on a base, _mac_ or _mag_, which
produced _magnus_, _maius_, _maiestas_, and so on. "Macte nova virtute
puer" means "Be thou increased, strengthened in _virtus_"; a fragment of
Lucilius (quoted by Servius) brings this out well, "_Macte inquam
virtute simulque his viribus esto_," and another from Ennius, "Livius
inde redit magno _mactatus_ triumpho."[383] We might almost translate it
in these passages by "glorified"; but it most certainly includes the
meaning of "strengthened" or "increased in might."
Now in the formulae of Cato we have seen that it is applied to the
deity and not to the victim; this naturally did not occur to Servius,
whose mind was occupied rather with Virgil and the literary use of the
word than with the original use and meaning of the language of prayer.
Undoubtedly he has made a mistake here, which Cato's piety has enabled
us to detect. It was, in fact, the deity whose strength was to be
increased by the offerings; so much at least seems to me to be beyond
doubt. There is, indeed, no certain trace in the ritual, or in Roman
literature, that the gods were supposed to consume the exta, or the
cakes and wine offered them; that primitive notion must have been
excluded from the _ius divinum_. But instead of it we find the more
spiritual idea that by placing on the altar the organs of the life of
the victim, with ancient forms of sacred cake and offerings of wine, the
vitality of the deity, his power to help his worshippers, to make the
corn grow and the cattle bring forth young, to aid the State against
enemies, or what not, was really increased in this semi-mystic way. Let
us remember that the Roman numina were powers constantly at work in
their own sphere; they are the various manifestations of the one Power
as conceived in immediate relation to man and his wants; they are
sometimes addressed in prayer, as we have seen, by additional titles
which suggest their strength and vitality: Virites Quirini, Nerio
Martis, Moles Martis, Maia or Maiestas Volcani. What, then, could be
more natural than that the Roman should call upon his divine
fellow-citizen to accept that which, according to ancient tradition and
practice, will keep up his strength, and at the same time increase his
glory and his goodwill towards his worshippers? This is, then, the idea
which I believe to have been at the root of Roman sacrificial ritual,
and it seems to confirm the dynamic theory of sacrifice recently
propounded by some French anthropologists, _i.e._ that a mystic current
of _religious force_ passed through the victim, from priest to deity,
and perhaps back again.[384] I believe that we have here a transitional
idea of the virtue of sacrifice--an idea that bridges over the gulf
between the crude notion that the gods actually partake of the offering,
and the later more spiritual view that the offering is an honorary gift
"to the glory of God." It seems also to be found in the Vedic religion.
Dr. Farnell writes: "In the Vedic ritual we find a pure and spiritual
form of prayer; yet a certain spell-power may attach even to the highest
types, for we find not infrequently the conception that not only the
power of the worshipper, but the power of the deity also is nourished
and strengthened by prayer, and the prayer itself is usually accompanied
by a potent act (such as that of sacrifice). "May our prayers increase
Agni": "The prayers fill thee with power and strengthen thee, like great
rivers the Sindhu."[385]
I must now turn to the form and manner of Roman prayers, in order to
gain further light on the question as to the mental attitude of the
worshipper towards the deity invoked. Of late years there has been a
strong tendency to find the origin of prayer in spell; or, in other
words, to discover a bridge between that mental attitude which believes
that a deity can be forced into a certain course of action by magical
formulae, and the humble attitude of the petitioner in prayer, which
assumes that the power of the deity altogether transcends that of his
worshipper. The evidence of Roman prayers is, I think, of considerable
value in dealing with this question; but it needs to be carefully
studied and handled. The general impression conveyed by those who have
written on the subject is that Roman prayers were dull, dry formulae,
which were believed to have a constraining influence on the deity simply
as formulae, if they were repeated with perfect precision the right
number of times. Dr. Westermarck, for example, has no shadow of a doubt
about this; quoting Renan, he says that "in the Roman, as in the
majority of the old Italian cults, prayer is a magic formula, producing
its effect by its own inherent quality." And again, he writes that the
Romans were much more addicted to magic than to religion; "they wanted
to compel the gods rather than to be compelled by them. Their _religio_
was probably near akin to the Greek [Greek: katadesmos], which meant not
only an ordinary tie, but also a magic tie or knot or a bewitching
thereby."[386] I need not stop to point out the misconception of the
word _religio_ which suggested the whole of this passage; the supposed
derivation from _ligare_ was quite enough to suggest magic to those who
are on the trail of it.[387] Let us go on to examine the prayers
themselves; I think we shall find that though there is much truth in the
common view of them, it is not quite the whole truth.
The oldest Roman prayers we possess are usually called hymns, because
the Latin word for them was _carmen_, viz. the _Carmen Saliare_, which
is too obscure and fragmentary to be of use to us, and the _Carmen_ of
the Arval Brethren, which is preserved on stone and is quite
intelligible.[388] The word _carmen_, let us notice, was used by the old
Romans for any kind of metrical formula, whether hymn, prayer, or spell.
Pliny, when writing of magic and incantations, plainly includes prayer
among them;[389] and Dr. Jevons has recently pointed out that singing,
and especially singing in a low voice or muttered tones, is a
characteristic of magic not only in Greece and Rome, but in many parts
of the world at the present day.[390] The evidence of the word is thus
strongly in favour of the view that these ancient _carmina_ of Roman
worship were really spells; and the _Carmen Arvalium_ itself does not
contradict it. After an elaborate sacrificial ceremonial the priests,
using a written copy of the _carmen_ (_libellis acceptis_), danced in
triple rhythm (_tripodaverunt_) while they sang it; it consisted of six
clauses, each repeated three times. "_Enos Lases iuvate! Neve luerve
Marmar sins incurrere in pleores! Satur fu fere Mars, limen sali, sta
berber! Semunes alternei advocapit cunctos! Enos Marmar iuvato!
Triumpe!_" With the precise interpretation of these words I am not now
concerned; but they obviously contain invocations to the Lares and Mars,
which may be either petitions or commands, and which perhaps are really
on the borderland between the two; and as thrice repeated, and
accompanied with dancing and gesticulation, they seem certainly to
belong rather to the region of magic than of religion proper.
It is interesting to compare with this _carmen_ the prayers of the guild
of brethren (_Attiedii_) at Iguvium; these are the best preserved of all
old Italian prayers, and though not Roman, are the product of the same
race. In the lustratio of the _arx_ (_Ocris Fisius_) of Iguvium we find
three several deities invoked, with elaborate sacrificial ritual, at
three gates, and a long prayer addressed to each deity, thrice repeated,
as in the _Carmen Arvale_. It is to be said under the breath (_tacitus
precator totum_, vi. A. 55), which was a common practice also at Rome,
and is believed to be characteristic of the magical spell;[391] and
except in the case of the first prayer, which is addressed to the chief
deity Jupiter Grabovius, it is accompanied by some kind of dancing or
rhythmical movement (_tripodatio_).[392] Thus in outward form this
ritual seems to show but little advance on the Roman prayer of the
Arvales, and indeed it may in substance go back to a time as remote as
that in which the latter had its origin. But when we examine the matter
of the prayer, we find that it is cast in the language of petition
beyond all doubt--if it be rightly interpreted, as we may believe it
is:--
"Te invocavi invoco divum Grabovium pro arce Fisia, pro urbe Iguvina,
pro arcis nomine, pro urbis nomine: _volens sis, propitius sis_ arci
Fisiae, urbi Iguvinae, arcis nomini, urbis nomini. Sancte, te invocavi
invoco divum Grabovium. Sancti fiducia te invocavi invoco divum
Grabovium. Dive Grabovie te hoc bove opimo piaculo pro arce Fisia, etc.
Dive Grabovi, illius anni quiquomque in arce Fisia ignis ortus est, in
urbe Iguvina ritus debiti omissi sunt, pro nihilo ducito. Dive Grabovi,
quicquid tui sacrificii vitiatum est, peccatum est, peremptum est,
fraudatum est, demptum est, tui sacrificii visum invisum vitium est,
dive Grabovi, quicquid ius sit, hoc bove opimo piaculo piando.... Dive
Grabovi, piato arcem Fisiam, piato urbem Iguvinam. Dive Grabovi, piato
arcis Fisiae, urbis Iguvinae, nomen, magistratus, ritus, viros, pecora,
fundos, fruges: piato, _esto volens propitius pace tua_ arci Fisiae,
etc. Dive Grabovi, salvam servato arcem Fisiam salvam servato urbem
Iguvinam .... Dive Grabovi, te hoc bove opimo piaculo pro arce Fisia,
pro urbe Iguvina, pro arcis nomine, pro urbis nomine, Dive Grabovi, te
invocavi."[393]
That in this prayer, and the others which accompany it, exactness of
wording was believed to be essential, as in the ritual which preceded it
exactness of performance, there is no doubt; for at the end of the whole
document (vi. B. 48) we find that if there had been any slip in the
ritual, the Brethren had to go back to the first gate and begin all over
again. There is plainly present the idea, surviving from an age of
magic, that the deities had strong feelings about the right way of
invocation, and would not respond to the performance unless those
feelings were understood and appealed to; that they would miss something
and decline to do their part. Yet are we justified in going on to assume
that they were bound, as by a solemn contract, to perform their part, if
there were no slip in the ritual? I confess it is difficult for me to
take this further step, in view of the language of the prayers, which is
so clearly that of petition, nay, of humble petition. We are not dealing
here with _vota_, to which I shall come in the next lecture, and in
which there is a kind of legal contract between the man and the god--the
former undertaking to do something pleasing to the deity, if the latter
shall have faithfully performed what is asked of him. These _vota_, so
abundant in historical times, are really responsible for the idea that
Roman prayer is simply a binding formula--a magical spell, let us say,
which in the hands of a city priesthood has become a quasi-legal
formula. But these prayers are not _vota_; they do not contain any
language which betrays the notion of binding the deity. They seem to me
to mark a process of transition between the age of spell and magic and
the age of prayer and religion; they retain some of the outward
characteristics of spell, but internally, _i.e._ in the spirit in which
they were intended, they have the real characteristics of prayer.[394]
The numina to whom they were addressed were powerful spirits, unknown,
unfamiliar, until their wishes were discovered by the organised
priesthood which handed down these forms of petition.
To return to Rome, and to the prayers in Cato's book, to which I
referred just now when discussing the word _macte_. Attempts have been
made to prove that these were originally written in metre;[395] and this
is quite possible. If so, it only means that they retained the outward
form of the primitive spell; it must not lead us on to fancy that the
sacrifice which accompanied the prayer was a magical act, or that the
whole process was believed to compel the deity. No doubt there was
believed to be efficacy in the exact repetition, as is shown by the
directions for piacular sacrifices in case of error of any kind.[396]
But the language is the language of prayer, not of compulsion, nor even
of bargaining: "Eius rei ergo te hoc porco piaculo immolando bonas
preces precor, ut sies volens propitius mihi, domo familiaeque
meis."[397] "Mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius
mihi, domo," etc.[398] No amount of vain repetition or scruple can
deprive this language of its natural meaning. The god is powerful in his
own sphere of action, and man has no control over him; man is fully
recognised as liable to misfortune unless the god helps him; but he can
worship in full assurance of faith that his prayer will be answered, if
it be such as the authorities of the State have laid down as the right
wording, and if the ritual accompanying it is equally in order. The
faith is, indeed, thus founded upon man's devices rather than the god's
good-will as such; it is a belief in the State and its authorities and
_ius divinum_, which is conceived, not indeed as constraining the deity,
but as calling upon him (_invocare_) to perform his part, in formulae
which he cannot well neglect, simply because it would be unreasonable
to do so, contrary to his nature as a deity of the Roman State and its
_ager_.
It is obvious in all this sacrificial ritual that the officiating person
or persons were expected to observe the traditional forms with the
utmost care and exactness. Any slip or omission was, in fact, a
_piaculum_, or _sacrum commissum_--terms of the _ius divinum_ which seem
to suggest, if I may use the expression, the obverse side of holiness.
It is now well known that cleanness and uncleanness, holiness and its
opposite, can be expressed in religious vocabulary by the same terms,
for in both cases there is something beyond the ordinary, something
dangerous, uncanny; thus we are not surprised to find that such words as
I have just mentioned can be used to express some kind of impurity
caused by a breach of ritual as well as that ritual itself. If we accept
the latest theory of sacrifice, _i.e._ the dynamic theory, as it is
called, we explain this intense nervousness about a ritualistic flaw as
occasioned by the consciousness of a breach in the current of "religious
force" (the expression is that of Messrs. Hubert and Mauss[399]), which
must pass in regular sequence from the sacrificer through the victim to
the deity, or vice versa. If this is the true explanation--and at
present it may be said to hold the field--then the extreme exactness of
the Roman ritual was a survival from an age when this strange feeling
was a reality; but no more than a survival, for, so far as I can
discover, the Roman idea was rather that the deity to whom the ritual
was addressed was in some way offended by the omission.[400] The dynamic
notion is lost, if it ever were there, and its place has been taken by
one that we may perhaps call theological. But however that may be, the
culprit was regarded as in a state of sin or impurity, "un être sacré,"
and had to get rid of this sin or impurity by another sacrifice before
the whole ritual could be started afresh (_instaurare_).
According to the "dynamic" theory of sacrifice, we might naturally
expect that the victim, as being destined to carry away the unholiness
(or whatever we choose to call it) of the culprit, would be burnt whole,
not offered to the deity in the form of exta, or eaten by the
sacrificers.[401] But this does not seem to have been the case in the
Roman practice; in all the examples of _piacula_ of which we have
details, the exta are laid on the altar as in the typical
sacrifice.[402] The inference seems to be that the theological idea of
sacrifice had established itself completely ever since the formation of
the _ius divinum_; the victim is not a scapegoat in any sense, but
really an expiatory offering; and not only does the sacrificer yield up
something of value, but he offers it to increase the strength of the
deity as well as to appease his anger.
A curious point may be noticed in the last place. The practical Roman
mind seems to have invented a kind of sacrificial insurance, by which a
piacular sacrifice might be offered beforehand to atone for any omission
in the ritual which was to follow. Thus the Fratres Arvales, if they had
to take an iron implement into their sacred grove, offered a piaculum
before as well as after this breach of religious rule.[403] Again, the
_porca praecidanea_, which I have already mentioned as offered before
harvest, was an example of the same system of insurance; for the first
cutting of the corn was a sacred rite, and one in which it was easy to
take a false step. Writing of this, Gellius says in general terms that
_hostiae praecidaneae_ are those which are offered the day before
_sacrificia solennia_.[404]
The term "piacular sacrifice" (_piaculum_) had a wide range of meaning,
apart from the examples here given. With one important form of it I
shall deal in the next lecture:[405] others we shall come across later
on.
NOTES TO LECTURE VIII
[340] See Appendix C.
[341] Cato, _R.R._ 139, where the language suggests that
as the deity was unknown, the _ius_ of the religious act
was also uncertain, _i.e._ the ritual was not laid down.
De Marchi translates (_La Religione_ _nella vita
domestica_, i. 132) "sia a te fatto il debito
sacrificio," etc., which sufficiently expresses the
anxiety of the situation. Keil reads here "ut tibi ius
_est_," and gives no variant in his critical note; but
the words just below, "uti id recte factum siet," seem
to me to suggest the subjunctive. In any case there is
no doubt about _ius._ In _Tab. Iguv._ vi. A. 28
(_Umbrica_, p. 58) Buecheler translates the Umbrian
_persei mersei_ by "quicquid ius sit," and compares this
passage of Cato, together with Gellius i. 12. 14, where
the phrase is used of the duties of a Vestal under the
_ius divinum_ in the formula used by the Pontifex
Maximus, _cum virginem capiat_: "Sacerdotem Vestalem,
quae sacra faciat, quae ius siet sacerdotem Vestalem
facere pro pop. Rom." etc.
[342] _e.g._ _Aen._ iv. 56, x. 31 ("si sine pace tua
atque invito numine," etc.). Cp. _Tab. Iguv._ vi. 30,
33, etc. (_Umbrica_, p. 59), "esto volens propitiusque
pace tua arci Fisiae."
[343] Livy vi. 41 _ad fin._
[344] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 318, and p. 319 for the
illustrations that follow. Cp. Cicero, _Part. Or._ xxii.
78, where _religio_ is explained as "iustitia erga
deos."
[345] _Lex Coloniae Genetivae_, cap. 64; _C.I.L._ ii.,
supplement No. 5439.
[346] Livy i. 20. 5.
[347] This follows from the definition in Festus, p.
321, and in Macrobius iii. 3. 2. This last is quoted
from Trebatius _de religionibus_: "sacrum est quicquid
est quod deorum habetur." In common use _sacrificium_
seems to be reserved for animal sacrifice, but the verb
_sacrificare_ is not so limited. Festus, p. 319: "mustum
quod Libero sacrificabant pro vineis ... sicut
praemetium de spicis, quas primum messuissent,
sacrificabant Cereri." It has been suggested to me by
Mr. Marett that the termination of the word
_sacrificium_ may have reference to the use of _facere_
for animal sacrifice, as in Greek [Greek: rhezein,
erdein, dran]; but on the whole I doubt this. _Facere_
and _fieri_ are in that sense, I think, euphemisms,
occasioned by the mystic character of the act (examples
are collected in Brissonius _de formulis_, p. 9). _Rem
divinam facere_ seems to be the general expression, as
in Cato, _R.R._ 83; or the particular victim is in the
ablative, _e.g. agna Iovi facit_ (Flamen Dialis) in
Varro, _L.L._ vi. 16; cp. Virg. _Ecl._ iii. 77.
[348] This classification, originally due to R. Smith,
article "Sacrifice" in _Encycl. Brit._, ed. 10, has
lately been criticised by Hubert et Mauss, in _Mélanges
d'histoire des religions_, p. 9 foll.; but it is
sufficiently complete for our purposes. At the same time
it is well to be aware that no classification of the
various forms of sacrifice can be complete at present;
that which these authors prefer, _i.e._ constant and
occasional sacrifices, is, however, a useful one.
[349] _R.F._ p. 95 foll. Cp. Robertson Smith, _Rel. of
Semites_, Lect. VIII.
[350] _R.F._ p. 217 foll.
[351] _R.F._ p. 302 foll. Meals in connection with
sacrifice are also found at the Parilia (_R.F._ p. 81,
and Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 743 foll.) and Terminalia (Ovid,
_Fasti_, ii. 657); but in both cases Ovid seems to be
describing rustic rites; nor is it certain that the meal
was really sacramental. What does seem proved is that
the old Latins and other Italians believed the deities
of the house to be present at their meals--
ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos (_Fasti_, vi. 307),
and thus the idea was maintained that in some sense all
meals had a sacred character, _i.e._ all in which the
members of a _familia_ (see above, p. 78), or of _gens_
or _curia_, met together. Cp. R. Smith, _op. cit._ p.
261 foll. We may remember that the Penates were the
spirits of the food itself, not merely of the place in
which it was stored; it had therefore a sacred
character, which is also shown by the sanctification of
the firstfruits (_R.F._ pp. 151, 195). (The _cenae
collegiorum_, dinners of collegia of priests, were in no
sense sacrificial meals; see Marquardt, p. 231, note 7;
Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ pp. 13, 39, 40.)
[352] Cic. _de Legibus_, ii. 8. 19.
[353] Livy i. 18. For constitutional difficulties in
this passage, see, _e.g._, Greenidge, _Roman Public
Life_, p. 50.
[354] For this and the augurs generally, see Lecture
XII.
[355] The passages are collected by Wissowa, _R.K._ p.
420, note 3. There is no doubt about the inauguratio of
the three great flamines and the rex sacrorum, who were
all specially concerned with sacrifice, and of the
augurs, who would obviously need it in order to perform
the same ceremony for others--as a bishop needs
consecration for the same reason. As regards the
pontifices, Dionysius (ii. 73. 3) clearly thought it was
needed for them, and we might a priori assume that one
who might become a pontifex maximus would need it; but
Wissowa discounts Dionysius' opinion, and I am unwilling
to differ from him on a point of the _ius divinum_, of
which he is our best exponent. If he is right, it may be
that the three _flamines maiores_, who were reckoned in
strict religious sense as above the pontifices,
including their head (Festus, p. 185), needed "holiness"
more than any pontifex, and so with the augurs. The
insignia of the pontifices, as well as many historical
facts, show that the pontifices were competent to
perform sacrifice in a general sense (Marq. p. 248
foll.); but it is possible that they never had the
right, like the flamines, actually to slay the victim. I
do not feel sure that the _securis_ was really one of
their symbols, though Horace seems to say so in _Ode_
iii. 23. 12. The whole question needs further
investigation. It may be found that the essential
distinction between the pontifices and magistrates _cum
imperio_ on the one hand, and the flamines on the other,
is to be sought in the ideas of holiness connected with
the shedding of blood in sacrifice. The flamen is
permanently holy, having charge of constant sacrifices;
_e.g._ the Dialis had duties every day. He is the duly
sanctified guide for all rites within his own religious
range.
[356] Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 339, 410 foll.
[357] The whole subject of the preparation of the
sacrificer for his work, and of the steps by which he
becomes separated from the profane, is well treated by
Hubert et Mauss, _Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, p.
23 foll. The reference to Dr. Jevons is _Introduction_,
ch. xx. p. 270 foll.
[358] Serv. _Aen._ xii. 173; Virgil wrote "dant fruges
manibus salsas, et tempora ferro Summa notant pecudum";
to which Servius adds that the symbolic movement was a
(pretended) cut from head to tail of the victim.
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 352.
[359] Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl., s.v._ "cinctus
Gabinus."
[360] Marquardt, p. 340. The Vestals were never, so far
as we know, directly concerned in animal sacrifice.
[361] See below, p. 190. For the colour of the garments,
and the explanation referred to, see Samter,
_Familienfeste_, p. 40 foll.; Diels, _Sibyllinische
Blätter_, p. 70; and cp. von Duhn's paper, "Rot und Tot"
in _Archiv_, 1906, p. 1 foll. That red colouring was
used in various ways in sacred and quasi-sacred rites
there is no doubt (see above, p. 89, note 46); but
whether it can be always connected with bloodshed is by
no means so certain (Rohde, _Psyche_, i. 226). In the
case of women it is at least hard to understand. The
idea of consecration through blood, which is very rare
in Roman literature, comes out curiously in the words
which Livy puts into the mouth of Virginius after the
slaughter of his daughter (iii. 48): "Te Appi tuumque
caput sanguine hoc consecro" (_i.e._ to a deity not
mentioned). The sentence to which this note refers was
written before the appearance of Messrs. Hubert et
Mauss' essay on sacrifice (_Mélanges d'histoire des
religions_, pp. 1-122). The theory there developed, that
the victim is the intermediary in all cases between the
sacrificer and the deity, and that the _force
religieuse_ passes from one to the other in one
direction or another, does not essentially differ from
the words in the text; but the French savants would, I
imagine, prefer to look on the insignia in a general
sense as bringing the person wearing them within the
region of the _sacrum_, the force of which would react
on him still more strongly after the destruction of the
victim (see p. 28 foll.).
[362] See, _e.g._, _Roman Sculpture_ by Mrs. Strong,
Plates xi. and xv.
[363] For this and other insignia see Marquardt, p. 222
foll. The question is under discussion whether some of
these insignia are not old Italian forms of dress (see
Gruppe, _Mythologische Literatur_, 1898-1905, p. 343).
For the wearing of the skin of a victim, which meets us
also at the Lupercalia (_R.F._ p. 311), see Robertson
Smith, _Semites_, p. 416 foll.; Jevons, _Introduction_,
p. 252 foll.; Frazer, _G.B._ iii. 136 foll.
[364] They, of course, wore the _praetexta_ when
performing religious acts. Cp. the Fratres Arvales, who
laid aside the _praetexta_ after sacrificing. Henzen,
_Acta Fr. Arv._ pp. 11, 21, and 28.
[365] Serv. _Aen._ xi. 543. The _camillae_ assisted the
_flaminicae_, Marquardt, p. 227. This is one of the most
beautiful features of the stately Roman ritual, and has
been handed on to the Roman Church. It was, of course,
derived from the worship of the household (see above, p.
74).
[366] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, p. 413 foll. Dr. Frazer
is criticising Dr. Farnell, who had touched on the
subject in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 689, and
had taken the more obvious view that death in a family
disqualified for actions requiring extreme holiness.
[367] The passages are collected in Marquardt, p. 174
foll.; we may notice in particular Livy xlv. 5. 4,
where, though only the washing of hands is referred to,
we have the important statement that "omnis praefatio
sacrorum," _i.e._ the preliminary exhortation of the
priest, enjoined _purae manus_. Livy must be using the
language of Roman ritual, though he is not speaking here
of a Roman rite. For the material of sacred utensils see
Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 30.
[368] Tibullus ii. 1. 11.
[369] Cic. _de Legibus_, ii. 10. 24.
[370] Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral
Ideas_, ii. 352 foll.; consult the index for further
allusions to the subject. Cp. Farnell, _Evolution of
Religion_, Lecture III. [Fehrle, _Die kultische
Keuschheit im Altertum_ (Giessen, 1910), has reached me
too late for use in this chapter.]
[371] Full details, with the most important references
quoted in full, are in Marquardt, p. 172 foll.; but some
of the latter are applicable only to the Graeco-Roman
period.
[372] So we may gather from the Lex Furfensis of 58 B.C.
(_C.I.L._ ix. 3513), and that of the Ara Augusti at
Narbo of A.D. 12 (_C.I.L._ xii. 4333).
[373] The real origin of the pontifices and their name
is unknown to us. If they took their name from the
bridging of the Tiber, as Varro held (_L.L._ v. 83) and
as the majority of scholars believe (see O. Gilbert,
_Rom. Topographie_, ii. 220, note), the difficulty
remains that they are found in such a city as Praeneste,
where there was no river to be bridged, and where they
could not well have been merely an offshoot from the
Roman college; see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 432, note. Nor can
we explain how they came to be set in charge of the _ius
divinum_; and where there are no data conjecture is
useless.
[374] The covering of the head (_operto capite_, as
opposed to _aperto capite_ of the _Graecus ritus_) is
usually explained as meant to shut out all sounds
belonging to the world of the _profanum_; and the
playing of the tibicines is interpreted in the same way.
Hubert et Mauss explain the covered head differently:
"le rituel romain prescrivit généralement l'usage du
voile, signe de séparation et partant de consécration"
(p. 28). Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena to_ _the Study of
Greek Religion_, p. 522, also holds that it is the
outward sign of consecration; cp. S. Reinach, _Cultes,
mythes, et religions_, i. 300 foll. The fact, noted by
Miss Harrison, that in Festus's account of the _ver
sacrum_ (p. 379, ed. Müller) the children expelled were
veiled, seems to point to the idea of
dedication--unless, indeed, _velabant_ here means that
they blindfolded them.
[375] The wine was poured over the altar as well as on
the victim, which suggests a substitution for blood;
Arnobius vii. 29 and 30; Dion. Hal. vii. 72. I cannot
find that any one of the many utensils used in sacrifice
were for pouring out blood. Blood was, however, poured
on the stone at the Terminalia (_R.F._ pp. 325-326); but
the rite here described by Ovid seems to be a rural one,
outside the _ius divinum_. In the sacrifice of victims
to Hecate in Virg. _Aen._ vi. 243 foll., which cannot be
_ritus Romanus_, the warm blood is collected in
_paterae_; but nothing is said of what was done with it,
nor does Servius help. Cp. _Aen._ viii. 106. In
Lucretius v. 1202, "aras sanguine multo spargere
quadrupedum," the context shows that the ritual alluded
to is not old Roman. In Livy's description of the
"occulti paratus sacri" of the Samnites (ix. 41), we
find "_respersae fando nefandoque sanguine arae_, et
dira exsecratio ac furiale carmen." Livy seems to think
of this blood-sprinkling, whether the blood be human or
animal, as unusual and horrible. Ancient, no doubt, is
the practice, recorded in the _Acta Fratr. Arv._ (see
Henzen, pp. 21 and 23), of using the blood in a
religious feast, in the process of cooking: "porcilias
piaculares epulati sunt et sanguem." (There is a mention
of the pouring of blood in an inscription from Lusitania
in _C.I.L._ ii. 2395.) For the use of wine as a
substitute for blood, see the recently published work of
Karl Kircher, "Die sakrale Bedeuting des Weines," in
_Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche, etc._, p. 82 foll.,
where, however, the subject is not worked out.
[376] According to Lübbert (_Commentarii pontificales_,
p. 121 foll.) _magmentum_ is the same as _augmentum_,
which word is also found (Varro, _L.L._ v. 112). Festus,
p. 126, "magmentum magis augmentum"; Serv. _Aen._ iv.
57, to which passage I shall return. For the equivalent
in the Vedic ritual of the cooking and offering of the
exta, see Hubert et Mauss, _op. cit._ p. 60 foll.
[377] _R.F._ p. 89.
[378] _ib._ p. 10.
[379] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 60, 69, etc. Of course
the prayer might be said while other operations were
going on. For the constant connection of prayer and
sacrifice, see Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 10, "quippe
victimam caedi sine precatione non videtur referre aut
deos rite consuli." If Macrobius is right (iii. 2. 7
foll.) in asserting that the prayer must be said while
the priest's hand touches the altar, one may guess that
this was done at the same time that the exta were laid
on it. Ovid saw the priest at the Robigalia offer the
exta and say the prayer at the same time (_Fasti_, iv.
905 foll.), but does not mention the hand touching the
altar. For this see Serv. _Aen._ vi. 124; Horace, _Ode_
iii. 23. 17, and Dr. Postgate on this passage in
_Classical Review_ for March 1910.
[380] Cato, _R.R._ 132, 134, 139, and 141. That these
formulae were taken from the books of the pontifices is
almost certain, not only from the internal evidence of
the prayers themselves, but because Servius (Interpol.)
on _Aen._ ix. 641 quotes the words: "macte hoc vino
inferio esto," which occur in 132, introducing them
thus: "et in pontificalibus sacrificantes dicebant
deo...."
[381] The verb is omitted here for some ritualistic
reason, as in the Iguvian prayers (_Umbrica_, p. 55).
[382] Virg. _Aen._ ix. 641, "macte nova virtute puer,
sic itur ad astra," etc., and many other passages. The
verb _mactare_ acquired a general sense of sacrificial
slaying, as did also _immolare_, though neither had
originally any direct reference to slaughter. The best
account I find of the word is in H. Nettleship's
_Contributions to Latin Lexicography_, p. 520. He takes
_mactus_ as the participle of a lost verb _maco_ or
_mago_, to make great, increase, equivalent to _augeo_,
which is also a word of semi-religious meaning, as
Augustus knew. Nettleship quotes Cicero _in Vatinium_,
14, "puerorum extis deos manes mactare."
[383] Baehrens, _Fragm. Poet. Lat._ 180; Lusilius fragm.
143; Nonius, 341, 28 has "versibus."
[384] It may possibly be objected that some of the
deities were powerful for evil as well as good, _e.g._
Robigus, the spirit of the red mildew, and that the
power of such a deity was not to be encouraged or
increased. But all such deities (and I cannot mention
another besides Robigus) were of course conceived as
able to restrain their own harmful function; they were
not invoked to go away and leave the ager Romanus in
peace, but to limit their activity in the land where
they had been settled for worship. We have no prayer to
Robigus (or Robigo, feminine, as Ovid has it) except
that which Ovid somewhat fancifully versified after
hearing the Flamen Quirinalis say it (_Fasti_, iv. 911
foll.), in which of course the word _macte_ does not
occur. As the victim was a dog, an uneatable one, it is
possible that the ritual was not quite the usual one.
But the language of the prayer is interesting and brings
out my point:
aspera Robigo, parcas Cerialibus herbis.
vis tua non levis est;...
parce precor, scabrasque manus a messibus aufer
neve noce cultis: posse nocere sat est.
It concludes by praying Robigo to direct her strength
and attention to other objects, _gladios et tela
nocentia_; but this is the poet's fancy.
[385] _Evolution of Religion_, p. 212, quoting _Vedic
Hymns_, pt. ii. pp. 259 and 391.
[386] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, vol. ii.
p. 585 foll.; cp. 657. See also Farnell, _Evolution of
Religion_, p. 195.
[387] See above, p. 9. _Religio_ in the sense of an
obligation to perform certain ritualistic acts is in my
view a secondary and later use of the word. See
_Transactions of the Congress of Historical Religion for
1908_, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.
[388] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 26 foll.; _C.I.L._
vi. 2104, 32 foll.; Buecheler und Riese, _Carmina Lat._,
epigr. pars ii., no. 1. All surviving Roman prayers are
collected in Appel's _De Romanorum precationibus_,
Giessen, 1909.
[389] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 10 foll.
[390] In _Anthropology and the Classics_, p. 94.
[391] Cp. Tibullus ii. 1. 84, "vos celebrem cantate deum
pecorique vocate, Voce palam pecori, clam sibi quisque
vocet." This murmuring was certainly characteristic of
Roman magic; see Jevons, p. 99, and especially the
reference to a Lex Cornelia, which condemned those "qui
susurris magicis homines occiderunt" (Justinian, _Inst._
iv. 18. 5).
[392] On the nature of this _tripodatio_ see Henzen,
_op. cit._ p. 33. Buecheler, _Umbrica_, p. 69, gives the
Umbrian verb a different meaning, though he translates
it _tripodato_.
[393] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 13 and 52.
[394] Wissowa, _R.K._, 333, inclines to the belief that
prayer had a legal binding force upon the deity; but he
does not cite any text which confirms this view, and is
arguing on general grounds. I gather from the language
of Aust (_Religion der Römer_, p. 30) that he thinks
there was a germ which might have developed into a more
truly religious attitude towards the gods, if it had not
been killed by priestly routine and quasi-legal
formulae. With this opinion I am strongly inclined to
agree. Cp. the story of Scipio Aemilianus audaciously
altering and elevating the formula dictated by the
priest in the censor's lustratio (Val. Max. iv. 1. 10),
to which I shall return in the proper place.
[395] Westphal, quoted by De Marchi, _La Religione,
etc._, i. p. 133, note.
[396] See, _e.g._, ch. 141 _ad fin._ The prayer in the
Acta of the Ludi Saeculares to the Moirae is an
imitation of old prayers. See below, p. 442.
[397] _ib._ ch. 139.
[398] _ib._ ch. 141.
[399] Hubert et Mauss, _Mélanges d'histoire des
religions_, p. 74.
[400] So Cato, _R.R._ 141, "si minus in omnes litabit,
sic verba concipito; Mars pater, quod tibi illuc porco
neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo." (The word
for the slaughter is here euphemistically omitted; De
Marchi, p. 134.)
[401] Hubert et Mauss, _op. cit._ p. 55 foll.; Leviticus
vi. I doubt whether the theory of the learned authors
will hold good generally on this point.
[402] Marquardt, p. 185, asserted the contrary, but
cited no evidence except Serv. _Aen._ vi. 253, which
does not prove the practice of the holocaust to be
really Roman. Wissowa's exactness is well illustrated in
his detection of this error; see _R. K._ p. 352, note 6.
Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 135, leaves no doubt on
the question possible.
[403] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 131. See above, p.
35. Festus, p. 218.
[404] Gellius iv. 6. 7.
[405] _i.e._ lustratio. That this was a form of piaculum
is clear from the use of the word _pihaklu_ of the
victim in the lustratio of the arx of Iguvium, _e.g._
Buecheler, _Umbrica_, index, 5, v.
LECTURE IX
RITUAL--_continued_
In the last lecture we found that the magical element in the Roman
ritual is exaggerated by recent writers. But it has also long been the
practice to describe that ritual as a system of bargaining with the
gods: as partaking of the nature of a legal contract. "The old Roman
worship was businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a
contract with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterised by the
hard formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper performed his
part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness required in pleadings
before the praetor."[406] This is an excellent statement of a view very
generally held, especially since Mommsen, whose training in Roman law
made him apt to dwell on the legal aspects of Roman life, wrote the
famous chapter in the first volume of his history. I now wish to examine
this view briefly.
No doubt it was suggested by the necessary familiarity of the Roman
historian with _vota publica_, the vows so frequently made on behalf of
the State by its magistrates, in terms supplied by the pontifices, and
dictated by them to the magistrate undertaking the duty. Some few of
these formulae have survived, and it may certainly be said of them that
they are analogous to legal formulae, and express the quasi-contractual
nature of the process. Such legalised religious contracts seem to be
peculiar to Rome; they are curiously characteristic of the Roman genius
for formularisation, which in course of time had most important effects
in the domain of civil law. But the vow as such is, of course, by no
means peculiar to Rome; it is familiar in Greek history, and is found in
an elementary form among savages at the present day.[407] But at Rome
both in public and private life it is far more frequent and striking
than elsewhere. This is a phenomenon that calls for careful study; and
we must beware that we are not misled by quasi-legal developments into
missing the real significance of it from the point of view of morality
and religion.
The _vota privata_, which include vows and offerings made to deities by
private individuals, had never been adequately examined till De Marchi
wrote his book on the private religion of the Romans; nor could they
have been so examined until the _Corpus Inscriptionum_ was fairly well
advanced. There the material is extraordinarily abundant, but it is, of
course, almost entirely of comparatively late date, and the great
majority of votive inscriptions belong to the period of the Empire. Yet
it is quite legitimate to argue from this to an origin of this form of
worship in the earliest times, and we have enough early evidence to
justify the inference. Among the oldest Latin inscriptions are some
found on objects such as cups or vases, showing that the latter were
votive offerings to a deity: thus we have _Saeturni poculum, Kerri
poculum_, and other similar ones which will be found at the beginning of
the first volume of the _Corpus_.[408] They give only the name of the
deity as a rule, and do not tell us why the object was offered to him;
but they must have been thank-offerings for some supposed blessing. In
one case, not indeed at Rome, but not far away at Praeneste, we have
proof of this; for a mother makes a dedication to Fortuna _nationu
cratia_, which plainly expresses gratitude for good luck in
childbirth;[409] and this inscription is one of the oldest we possess.
Nor do they tell us whether there was a previous vow or promise of which
the offering is the fulfilment. But in the majority of inscriptions of
late date the familiar letters V.S.L.M. (_votum solvit lubens merito_)
betray the nature of the transaction, and it is not unreasonable to
guess that there was usually a previous undertaking of some kind, to be
carried out if the deity were gracious.
But these private _vota_ were not, strictly speaking, legal
transactions, supposed to bind both parties in a contract, as we shall
see was to some extent the case with the _vota publica_. They could not
have needed the aid of a pontifex, or a solemn _voti nuncupatio_, _i.e._
statement of the promise; they were rather, as De Marchi asserts,[410]
spontaneous expressions of what we may call religious feeling; and it
may be that he is right in maintaining that throughout Roman history
they remained as expressions of the religious sense and of the better
feeling of the lower classes. The practice implies three conceptions:
(1) of the deity as really powerful for good and evil; (2) of the gift,
a work of supererogation, as likely to please him; (3) of the grateful
act and feeling as good in themselves. Surely there must have been in
this practice a germ of moral development; I am surprised that Dr.
Westermarck has not mentioned in his chapter on gratitude the
extraordinary abundance of Roman votive offerings and inscriptions.
Doubtless there lies at the root of it the idea of _Do ut des_, or
rather of _Dabo ut des_; doubtless also it could be turned to evil
purposes in the form of _devotio_, when promises were made to a deity on
condition that he killed or injured an enemy; but in the ordinary and
common example it is impossible to deny that the final act, the
performance of the vow, must have been accompanied by a feeling of
gratitude. The merest recognition of a supposed blessing is of value in
moral development.
But it is in the _vota publica_ that we undoubtedly find something in
the nature of a bargain--covenant would be a more graceful word--with a
deity in the name of the State. Even here, however, the impression is
rather produced by the use of legal terms and the formularisation of the
process, than by any assumed attitude of contempt towards, or even of
equality with, the deity concerned. There is no trace in early Roman
religious history of any tendency to abuse or degrade the divine beings
if they did not perform their part, such as is well known in China,[411]
or even, strange to say, occasionally met with in the southern Italy of
to-day; the attitude towards the deity in cult (though not invariably in
the later Graeco-Roman literature) was ever respectful, as it was
towards the magistrates of the State. The farthest the Romans ever went
in condemning their gods was when misfortune persuaded them that they
were become indifferent or useless; then they began to neglect them, and
to turn to other gods, as we shall see in subsequent lectures.
The public _vota_ were of two kinds: the ordinary, or regularly
recurring, and the extraordinary, which were occasioned by some
particular event. Of the ordinary, the most familiar is that undertaken
by the consul, and no doubt in some form by the Rex in the days of the
kingship, for the benefit of the State on the first day of the official
year. Accompanied by the Senate and a crowd of people, the consuls went
up to the Capitoline temple, and performed the sacrifice which had been
vowed by their predecessors of a year before; after which they undertook
a new _votum_, "_pro reipublicae salute_."[412] We have not the formula
of this vow, and cannot tell what resemblance it bore to a bargain; but
the ceremony itself must have been most impressive, and calculated to
remind all who were present of the greatness and goodwill of the supreme
deity who watched over the interests of the State. So too at the
_lustrum_ of the censors, which took place in the Campus Martius every
five years, it is almost certain that the _votum_ of the predecessors in
office was fulfilled by a sacrifice, and a new one undertaken. Here
again we are without the formula, but that there was one we know from a
very interesting passage of Valerius Maximus. He tells us that Scipio
Aemilianus, when as censor he was conducting this sacrifice, and the
_scriba_ (on behalf of the pontifex?) was dictating to him the _solemne
precationis carmen ex publicis tabulis_, in which the immortal gods were
besought to make the prosperity of the Roman State "better and
greater," had the audacity to interrupt him, saying that the condition
of the State was sufficiently good and great: "itaque precor ut eas
(res) perpetuo incolumes servent." This change, Valerius says, was
accepted, and the formula altered accordingly in the _tabulae_.[413]
This story, which is probably genuine and is quite characteristic of
Scipio, must convince an impartial mind that in this votive ceremony
there was enough truth and dignity to suggest a real advance in
religious thought, so far at least as the State was concerned.
The extraordinary _vota_ were innumerable. They were occasioned by
dangers or misfortunes of various kinds, the magistrate undertaking to
dedicate something to the god concerned if the State should have come
safely through the peril. Many temples had their origin in this
practice;[414] we meet also with _ludi_, special sacrifices, or a tithe
of the booty taken in war. In two or three cases Livy has copied the
formula from the _tabulae_ of the pontifices; thus before the war with
Antiochus in 191 B.C., the consul recited the following words after the
pontifex maximus: "Si duellum quod cum Antiocho rege sumi populus
iussit, id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit; tum
tibi Iuppiter populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet
... quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte
facti, donaque data recte sunto."[415] This document dates from the days
of the decay of the Roman religion, and is, of course, modernised by
Livy; but it may give an idea of what is meant by writers who speak of
an element of bargain or covenant in these _vota_. Still more elaborate,
and probably more antique, is the famous formula of the vow of the _ver
sacrum_ in the darkest hour of the war with Hannibal.[416] This very
curious rite, which proves beyond question the devotion of the Italian
stocks to the principle of the _votum_, consisted of a promise to
dedicate to Mars or Jupiter all the valuable products of a single
spring, including the male children born at that time; to this the
Romans had recourse for the last time in 217 B.C., and Livy has
fortunately preserved the words of the vow. These, with the exception of
the dedication of the children, which is judiciously omitted, probably
stand much as they had come down from a remote antiquity. The _votum_ is
put in the form of a _rogatio_ to the people, without whose sanction it
could not be put in force; are they willing to dedicate to Jupiter all
the young of oxen, sheep, or pigs born in the spring five years after
date, if the State shall have been preserved during those years from all
its enemies? The curious feature of the document is, not that it binds
the deity to any course of action, but that it secures the individual
Roman against his anger in case of any chance slip in his part of the
process, and the people against any evil consequences arising from such
a slip or from misdoing on the part of an individual. "Si quis clepsit,
ne populo scelus esto neve cui cleptum erit: si atro die faxit insciens,
probe factum esto."[417] Of this formula a recent writer of great
learning and ability has written thus: "The well-known liturgical
archive containing Rome's address to Jupiter in the critical days of the
Hannibalic war is a wary and cleverly drawn legal document, intended to
bind the god as well as the State."[418] He is no exception to the rule
that those who have not habitually occupied themselves with the Roman
religion are liable to misinterpret its details. This is not an address
to Jupiter, nor is there any sign in it that the god was considered as
bound to perform his part as in a contract; the covenant is a one-sided
one, the people undertaking an act of self-renunciation if the god be
gracious to them, and thereby going far to assure themselves that he
will so be gracious. And the legal cast of the language, which seems so
apt to mislead the unwary,[419] is only to be found in the clauses which
guarantee the people against the contingency of the whole vow being
ruined by the inadvertence or the rascality of an individual; surely a
very natural and inevitable _caveat_, where for once the whole people,
and not only their priests or magistrates, were concerned in the
transaction.
A curious form of the _votum_, which, however, I can only mention in
passing, is that addressed to the gods of a hostile city, with a view to
induce them to desert their temples and take up their abode at Rome;
this is the process called _evocatio_, which was successfully applied at
the siege of Veii, when Juno Regina consented to betray her city.[420]
Macrobius, commenting on Virgil's lines (_Aen._ ii. 351),
excessere omnes adytis arisque relictis
di quibus imperium hoc steterat,
has preserved the _carmen_ used at the siege of Carthage.[421] It is
cast in the language of prayer: "Si deus si dea est cui populus
civitasque Carthaginiensis est in tutela ... precor venerorque veniamque
a vobis peto ut vos populum civitatemque Carthaginiensem deseratis,"
etc.; but it ends with a vow to build temples and establish _ludi_ in
honour of these deities if they should comply with the petition. It is
worth noting here that it was, of course, impossible to make a bargain
with strange or hostile gods, or in any way to force their hand; the
promise is entirely one-sided; and I am inclined to think that in
dealing with his own gods the mental attitude of the Roman was much the
same, though his faith in them was undoubtedly greater.
This is the proper place to mention another very curious rite, closely
allied to the _votum_, but differing from it in one or two important
points, which is almost peculiar to the Romans and most characteristic
of them; I mean the _devotio_ of himself on the field of battle by a
magistrate _cum imperio_.[422] The famous example, familiar to us all,
is that of Decius Mus at the battle of Vesuvius in the great Latin
war[423] (340 B.C.): the same story is told of his son in a war with
Gauls and Samnites, and of his grandson in the war with Pyrrhus.[424]
The historical difficulties of these accounts do not concern us now; by
common consent of scholars the method and formula of the _devotio_ are
authentic, and the rite must have had its origin in remote antiquity.
The story runs[425] that Decius, at whose preliminary sacrifice before
the battle with the Latins the liver of the victim had been found
imperfect, while that of his colleague was normal, perceived that his
wing of the army was giving way. He therefore resolved to sacrifice
himself by _devotio_, and called on the pontifex maximus, who was
present, to dictate for him the correct formula. He was directed to put
on the toga praetexta, to wear it with the cinctus Gabinus, to veil his
head with it, to touch his chin with his hand under the folds of the
robe, and to stand upon a spear. He then repeated after the pontifex the
following formula: "Iane, Iuppiter, Mars pater, Quirine, Bellona, Lares,
divi Novensiles, di Indigetes, divi quorum est potestas nostrorum
hostiumque, diique Manes, vos precor, veneror, veniam peto feroque, uti
populo Romano Quiritium vim victoriamque prosperetis, hostesque populi
Romani Quiritium terrore formidine morteque adficiatis. Sicut verbis
nuncupavi, ita pro re publica Quiritium, exercitu legionibus auxiliis
populi Romani Quiritium, legiones auxiliaque hostium _mecum_ deis
Manibus Tellurique devoveo" (Livy ix. 9). He then mounted his horse and
rode into the midst of the enemy to meet his death. The Latins were
seized with panic and the Romans were victorious.
Here the vow is made and fulfilled almost at the same moment,--_the
fulfilment takes place before the gods have done their part_. Here too
the offering made is the life of a human being which brings the act
within the domain of sacrifice. Its sacrificial nature is obvious in all
the details.[426] The dress is that of the sacrificing priest or
magistrate;[427] Decius was therefore priest and victim at the same
time, and the two characters seem to be combined in the symbolic
touching of the chin, which has been rightly explained,[428] I think, as
analogous to the laying on of hands in the consecratio of the Rex, as we
saw it in the case of Numa, and perhaps to the _immolatio_ of a victim
by sprinkling the _mola salsa_ on its head; where the object of
consecration is made holy by contact with holy things.[429] The
standing on the spear is difficult to explain; it may have been a
symbolic dedication to Mars, whose spear or spears, as we have seen,
were kept in the Regia.[430]
The formula contains certain points of great interest. Firstly, it is
not only the Roman gods of all sorts and conditions who are invoked, but
those of the enemy also, or, in vague language, those who have power
over both Romans and Latins.[431] Secondly, it begins with a prayer
combined with a curse upon the enemy: in which respect it resembles the
prayer at the _lustratio populi_ at Iguvium[432] (which I shall mention
again directly) and to a later type of _devotio_ used at the siege of
Carthage and preserved by Macrobius.[433] Thirdly, in spite of this
religious aspect of the formula, it ends with what can only be called a
magical spell. By the act of self-sacrifice, which is the potent element
in the spell, Decius exercises magical power over the legions of the
enemy, and devotes them with himself to death,--to the Manes and Mother
Earth.[434]
The story suggests to me that the rite had been at one time well known;
the pontifex maximus was ready with the instructions and formula. It was
a survival from an age of magic, but the priests have given it a
religious turn, and the language of the first part is quite as much that
of prayer as is the language of the collect to be said in time of war
which still disfigures the Anglican prayer-book.[435] What is still more
remarkable is that it has not only a religious but an ethical character.
The idea of service to the State is here seen at its highest point. The
sacrifice is a vicarious one.[436] Livy significantly adds that a
private soldier might be chosen by the commander to represent him, and
that if this man were not killed by the enemy an image seven feet long
must be buried in the earth and a piacular sacrifice offered.[437] Later
on it would seem that instead of sacrificing himself, the consul might
implore the gods to accept the hostile army or city as his substitutes:
"eos _vicarios_ pro me fide magistratuque meo pro populi Romani
exercitibus do devoveo, ut me exercitumque nostrum ... bene salvos
siritis esse."[438] The idea here, and indeed in the _devotio_ of
Decius, bears some analogy to that which lies at the root of the old
Roman practice, of making a criminal _sacer_ to the deity chiefly
concerned in his crime; when this was done, any man might kill him, and
he was practically a victim offered as _vicarius_ for the Roman people,
who had been contaminated by his deed.[439]
But I must now pass on the last kind of ritual to be explained in these
lectures, and far the most impressive of all, that of _lustratio_, or
the purification, as it is commonly called, of land, city, human beings,
or even inanimate objects, by means of a solemn procession accompanied
with sacrifice.
So important a part did these processional rites play in the public life
of the Roman people,--so characteristic are they too of the old Roman
habit of thought and action, that they have given a wonderful word to
the Latin language. _Lustrare_ has many meanings; but the one which is
immediately derived from the rites I speak of, that of slow processional
movement, is the most beautiful and impressive of them all. When Aeneas
first sees Dido in all her stately beauty, he says:[440]
in freta dum fluvii current, _dum montibus umbrae
lustrabunt convexa_, polus dum sidera pascet,
semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt,
quae me cunque vocant terrae.
"So long as the cloud-shadows move slowly over the hollows of the
hills." Here in Scotland you must have all seen this procession of the
shadows, as I have watched it when fishing in Wales; let us always
associate it with the magic of a poet of nature as well as with the
religious processions of his people.
_Lustrare_, _lustratio_, are words which, as I think, belong to an age
of religion, that is, according to our formula, of effective desire to
be in right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the Universe.
In other processes which are usually called purificatory, magic seems to
survive: the word _februum_, from which comes the name of our second
month, meant an object with magical potency, such as water, fire,
sulphur, laurel, wool, or the strips of the victims sacrificed at the
Lupercalia, and the verb _februare_ meant to get rid of certain
unwholesome or miasmatic influences by means of these objects.[441] What
was the really primitive idea attached to these words need not concern
us now; but Varro, and Ovid following him, explicitly explain them as
meaning _purifying_ agents and processes,[442] from which we may infer
that they had a magical power to produce certain desired conditions, or
to protect from evil influences, like charms and amulets. But _lustrare_
and _lustratio_ seem to belong to an age when the thing to be driven or
kept away is rather spiritual mischief, and when the means used are
sacrifices and prayers, with processional movement.
What is the original meaning of the word _lustrare_? It seems to be a
strong form of _luere_; and _luere_ is explained by Varro as equivalent
to _solvere_.[443] The word _lustrum_, he says, _i.e._ the solemn
five-yearly ceremony in the Campus Martius, is derived from _luere_ in
the sense of _solvere_, to pay; because every fifth year the
contract-moneys for the collection of taxes and for public undertakings
were paid into the treasury through the censors. Servius,[444] doubtless
following him, explains such expressions as _peccata luere_, _supplicium
luere_, on the same principle--in the sense of payment, just as we speak
of paying the penalty. We might thus be tempted to fancy that the
root-idea of _lustrare_ is to perform a duty and so get rid of it, as we
do in paying for anything we buy; but this would be to misapprehend the
original meaning of the word as completely as Varro did when he
explained _luere_ by reference to the payments of contractors. Varro
and Servius do, however, suggest the right clue; they see that the idea
lurking in the word is that of getting rid of something, but they
understand that something in the light, not of primitive man's
intelligence, but of the duty of man in a civilised State. What exactly
it was that was to be got rid of is a more difficult question; but all
that we have so far learnt about the early religious ideas of the Romans
strongly suggests that they were in what we may call an advanced
_animistic_ stage of religious ideas, and that whatever may have been
the notion of their primitive ancestors, they themselves, in these rites
as we know them, saw the means of getting rid of and so keeping away
hostile spirits. A French sociologist, M. van Gennep, whose book _Les
Rites de passage_ I have read with great interest, has kindly written me
a long letter in which he insists that this animistic interpretation of
_lustratio_ is really superfluous, and that the idea of separation
alone, _i.e._ of separation between sacred and profane, without any
reference to spirits or _dei_, is a fully sufficient explanation. So no
doubt it may be among many savage peoples; but he would probably allow
that as a people advances from one stage of superstition to another,
while it retains in outline the scheme of its rites, it will apply new
meanings to them in keeping with the changes in its mental attitude.
This is one of the most interesting processes with which modern research
has been occupied; we are now familiar with the adoption of
pre-Christian ceremonies, with a complete change of meaning, in the
ritual of the Christian Church. These very processions of _lustratio_,
which had already been once metamorphosed in an animistic period, were
seized upon by the Roman Church with characteristic adroitness, adapted
to its ritual, and given a new meaning; and the Catholic priest still
leads his flock round the fields with the prayers of the _Litania maior_
in Rogation week, begging a blessing on the flocks and herds, and
deprecating the anger of the Almighty.[445]
But let us now pass briefly in review the more important of these rites
of lustration and compare them with each other; we shall find the
essential features the same in all of them.
The first permanent difficulty of new settlers in Latium was to mark off
their cultivated land from the forest or waste land beyond it, and so,
as M. van Gennep would phrase it,[446] to make a margin of separation
between the sacred and the profane, within which the sacred processes of
domestic life and husbandry might go forward, undisturbed by
dangers--human, spiritual, or what not--coming from the profane world
without. The boundary was marked out in some material way, perhaps by
stones (_cippi_) or posts, placed at intervals;[447] and thus "a fixed
piece of ground is appropriated by a particular social group, so that if
any stranger penetrated it he would be committing a sacrilege as
complete as he would if he trespassed in a sacred grove or a temple."
This boundary-line was made sacred itself by the passage round it
(_lustratio_) at some fixed time of the year, usually in May, when crops
were ripening and especially liable to be attacked by hostile
influences, of a procession occupied with sacrifice and prayer. The two
main features of the rite, as formulated by Cato in his treatise on
agriculture, are--1, the procession of the victims, ox, sheep, and pig
(_suovetaurilia_), the farmer's most valuable property; 2, the prayer to
Mars pater, after libations to Janus and Jupiter, asking for his kindly
protection of the whole _familia_ of the farm, together with the crops
of all kinds and the cattle within the boundary-line.[448] We are not
expressly told that this procession followed the boundary throughout,
but the analogy of other lustrations forbids us to doubt it; and thus
the rite served the practical purpose of keeping it clear in the
memory,--a matter of the utmost importance, especially for the practical
Roman. In Cato's formula the farmer's object is to ward off disease,
calamity, dearth, and infertility; and it is Mars who is invoked, _i.e._
a great god who has long ago emerged from the crowd of impersonal
spirits; but we may safely believe that the primitive farmer used other
language, addressing the spirits of disease and dearth themselves; and
we may guess, if we will, that again before that there was no invocation
or sacrifice at all, but that the object was only to mark the boundary
between land civilised and sacred and land uncivilised and profane.
As we have seen, the farms and homesteads of the early Latins were
grouped together in associations called _pagi_; and we can hardly doubt
that these were subjected to the same process of _lustratio_ as the
farms themselves. We have no explicit account of a circumambulation in
this case, but we have in the later poets several charming allusions to
a _lustratio pagi_, and it is of a rite of this kind that Virgil must
have been thinking when he wrote the beautiful passage in the first
Georgic beginning "In primis venerare deos";[449] and the lines
terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges,
omnis quam chorus et socii comitentur ovantes, etc.,
clearly imply a procession with the object of keeping away harmful
influences from the crops at a critical time. And when the city-state
came into being we may be equally sure that its _ager_, so long at least
as it was small enough to admit of such a processional ritual, was
lustrated in the same way. In historical times this _ager_ had become
too extensive, and there is no procession to be found among the duties
of the Fratres Arvales as we know them when they were revived by
Augustus; but we have not, of course, the whole of the "acta" of the
Brethren, and even if we had, it would not be likely that we should find
any trace of a practice which must have been dropped in course of time
as the Roman territory increased. Let us go on to the beginnings of the
city, where we shall find the same principle and practice applied in
striking fashion.
As it was necessary to protect the homestead and its land by a sacred
boundary, so the city had to be clearly marked off from all that was
outside of it. Its walls were sacred, or, strictly speaking, a certain
imaginary line outside of them called the _pomoerium_ was sacred. This
is well shown in the traditional method of founding a city even in
historical times, _e.g._ a _colonia_, as described by Varro, Servius,
and Plutarch.[450] A white ox and a white cow were harnessed to a
plough, of which the share must be made of bronze--a rule which shows at
once the antiquity and the religious character of the rite, for iron, as
we saw, was taboo in most religious ceremonies. A rectangular furrow was
drawn where the walls of the city were to be; the earth was turned
inwards to mark the future line of the wall, and the furrow represented
the future _pomoerium_. When the plough came to the place where there
was to be a gate, it was lifted over it, and the ploughing resumed
beyond it. This probably meant, as Plutarch expressed it, that the walls
(or rather the _pomoerium_), were sacred while the gates were profane;
had the gates been holy, scruple would necessarily have been felt about
the passage in and out of them of things profane. Thus the _pomoerium_
was a boundary line between the sacred and the profane, like that of the
farm; but in historical times it acquired a more definite religious
meaning, for within it there could only dwell those deities who belonged
to the city and its inhabitants, _i.e._ the _di indigetes_, and who were
recognised as its divine inhabitants.[451] And only within its limits
could the _auspicia_ of the city be taken.
We should naturally expect that this sacred boundary would have its
holiness secured or revived by an annual _lustratio_ like that of the
farm and _pagus_; and so no doubt it was. But the memory of this
survives only in the word _amburbium_, which, on the analogy of
_ambarvalia_, must mean a rite of this processional kind. Luckily we
have definite knowledge of the real _lustratio_ of a city in those
ritualistic inscriptions of Iguvium which I have more than once referred
to.[452] It is the _lustratio_ of the _arx_, the citadel of Iguvium,
which we may guess to have been the original _oppidum_ or germ of the
historical city. The details are complex, and show clear traces of
priestly organisation; but the main features stand out unmistakably. A
procession goes round the _arx_ (_ocris Fisia_), with the
_suovetaurilia_--ox, sheep, and pig--as in the Latin _lustratio_; at
each gate it stops, while sacrifice and prayer are offered on behalf of
the citadel, the city, and the whole people of Iguvium. There were three
gates, and each of them is the scene of sacrifice and prayer, because
they are the weak points in the wall, and they need to be strengthened
by annual religious operations; such at least is the most obvious
explanation. Whether the Fratres Attiedii would have been able to
explain it thus we may doubt; neither in the sacrificial ritual nor in
the prayers, as recorded in the inscription, do we find any clear trace
of a distinction between the sacred and the profane, or of the idea of a
hostile spiritual world outside the sacred boundary. So far as we can
judge from the prayers, the object is really a religious one, to implore
the deities of the city to preserve it and all within it. The language
of these prayers hardly differs from that in which a Christian Church of
to-day asks for a blessing on a community.[453]
So far I have been speaking of the permanent separation of land or city
by a sacred boundary line from the profane world without. But human
beings _en masse_ might be subjected to the same process--an army, for
example, at the opening of the season of war; and so, too, might its
appurtenances--horses, arms, and trumpets. In the account of the census
and _lustrum_ in the Campus Martius given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
who passed some years in Rome in the time of Augustus, we find the
_suovetaurilia_ driven three times round the assembled host and
sacrificed to Mars. This was doubtless the early form of the political
census, which had a military meaning and origin. But we have a more
exact and reliable account of a similar rite in the Iguvian documents,
which contain instructions for the _lustratio_ of the people apparently
before a campaign.[454] So far as we can gather from the Umbrian text,
the male population was assembled in a particular spot in its military
divisions, and round this host a procession went three times; at the end
of each circuit there was sacrifice and prayer to Mars and two female
associates of his power, the object of which, as we can read in the
words of the prayer, was to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse its
enemies, who were to be confounded and frightened and paralysed.
Here religion of a rude sort has been superimposed on the originally
magical ceremonial. For the idea must have been that by drawing a "magic
circle" around the host, which might have to march against enemies
living far beyond the pale of the _ager Romanus_ (or Iguvinus), where
hostile magical influences might be brought to bear against them, they
were in some mysterious way marked off, rendered "holy," and so
protected against the wiles of the enemy. A later and animistic age
would think of them as needing protection against hostile spirits, of
whose ways and freaks they were of course entirely ignorant. Of these
primitive ideas about the danger of entering hostile territory and of
leaving your own, Dr. Frazer has collected some examples in his _Golden
Bough_ (i. 304 foll.), both from savage tribes and from Greek usage. A
single parallel from the pen of a Roman historian, which Dr. Frazer has
not mentioned, may suffice us here. Livy tells us that the method in
Macedonia was to march the whole host in spring between the severed
limbs of a dog:[455] the principle is here the same as in Italy, but the
method differs slightly. In each case some mysterious influence is
brought to bear on the whole army without exception; but in the one case
a line is drawn round it, in the other it passes through the parts of an
object which must have been supposed to be endowed with magical power.
And once more, in spring before the season of arms, all the belongings
of the host were subjected to some process of the same kind. I have
alluded to this in my lecture on the calendar, and need not now
reproduce the evidence of the Equirria at the end of February and on
March 14, or of the Quinquatrus on March 19, when the _lustratio_ took
place of the shields (_ancilia_) of the Salii, the war-priests of Mars,
and the Tubilustrium on March 23, which tells its own tale.[456] But I
may recall the fact that the calendar supplies us also with evidence
that on the return of the host to their own territory all these
lustrations had to be repeated in order to rid men, horses, arms, and
trumpets of such evil contagion as they might have contracted during
their absence. It may be that one special object of lustration after the
return of an army was to rid it, with all belonging to it, of the taint
of bloodshed, just as the Jewish warriors and their captives were
purified before re-entering the camp.[457] But in the Roman pontifical
law this idea is hardly discernible, and the only trace I can find of it
is a statement of Festus that the soldiers who followed the general's
car in a triumph wore laurel wreaths "ut quasi purgati a caede humana
intrarent urbem."[458] I may add here that the passage of a triumphing
army through the Porta triumphalis, which was probably an isolated arch
in the Campus Martius just outside the city wall,[459] most likely had
as its original meaning the separation of the host from the profane
world in which it had been moving; and the triumphal arches of later
times, which were within the city, were thus developed architecturally
from an origin which belongs to the region of magic.[460] To the same
class of ideas, if I am not much mistaken, belongs the familiar Italian
practice of compelling a surrendered army to pass under the yoke. As
Livy explains this when he first mentions it, it was symbolical of
subjection: "ut exprimatur confessio subactam domitamque esse
gentem";[461] and this was no doubt the idea in the minds of the
historical Romans. But it may well have been that it had its root in a
process which was supposed to deprive the conquered enemy of all
dangerous contagion--to separate them from their own land and people
before they came into peaceful contact with their conquerors.
A last word before I leave this part of my subject. Though it is
interesting to try to get at the root-idea of these processes of
_lustratio_, we must remember that in the Rome of history they had lost
not only such magical meaning as they ever had, but also much of the
religious meaning which in course of time was superimposed upon it. The
sacrifices and the prayers remained, but the latter were muttered and
unheard by the people. And except in the country districts these
ceremonies were more and more absorbed, as time went on, into the
social, military, and political life of the community, as _e.g._ the
lustration of the host became a political census; or they tended to
disappear altogether, like the _ambarvalia_ and perhaps the _amburbium_.
They grew up in the religious experience of the Romans, beginning with
its very earliest and quasi-magical forms; but they came at last to
represent that experience no longer, and when we meet with them in
historical times it is impossible to ascribe to them any real influence
on life and conduct. _Lustratio_ never in pagan Italy developed an
ethical meaning as _catharsis_ did in Greece.[462] But meaningless as
they were, the stately processions remained, and could be watched with
pride by the patriotic Roman all through the period of the Empire, until
the Roman Church adapted them to its own ritual and gave them, as we
saw, a new meaning. As the cloud-shadows still move slowly over the
hollows of the Apennines, so does the procession of the patron saint
pass still through the streets of many an Italian city.[463]
NOTES TO LECTURE IX
[406] Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century of the
Western Empire_, p. 63.
[407] See Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral
Ideas_, ii. 615 foll.
[408] _C.I.L._ i. Nos. 43 foll.
[409] _C.I.L._ xiv. 2863. See _R.F._ p. 224, and
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 209.
[410] _Op. cit._ vol. i. p. 252; cp. 271.
[411] See Sir Alfred Lyall's _Asiatic Studies_, Series
I. ch. vi. No one would call the vow of Aeneas, in
_Aen._ vi. 69, a bargain with Apollo and the Sibyl.
[412] Marquardt, p. 266; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i.^2
594 foll. The ceremony is best described by Ovid, _Ex
Ponto_, iv. 9. 5 foll. He is addressing the consul of
the year from his place of exile:
at cum Tarpeias esses deductus in arces,
dum caderet iussu victima sacra tuo,
me quoque secreto grates sibi magnus agentem
audisset media qui sedet aede deus.
(II. 28 foll.)
[413] Valerius Maximus iv. 1. 10.
[414] A list of these is given in Aust, _De aedibus
sacris populi Romani_ (Marpurg, 1889). A valuable work,
which will be of service to us later on.
[415] Livy xxxvi. 2. 3.
[416] _Ib._ xxii. 10.
[417] _Ib._ sec. 6. The meaning is that if any one has
stolen an animal which was intended to be dedicated, no
blame attaches to the person so robbed; and that if a
man performs his dedication on a day of ill omen
unwittingly, it will hold good none the less.
[418] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 195.
[419] The fact that words like _reus_ and _damnatus_
were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow
and to those who had performed it, _i.e._ as being
liable like a defendant, and then released from that
position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the
transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius
says (iii. 2. 6) _se numinibus obligat_, as an accused
person is _obligatus_ to the authorities of the State
(Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, 189 foll.). It is the natural
tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a
legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the
original idea was really thought of as a contract, and
we have only to reflect that the final act was a
thank-offering to see the difference between the civil
and the religious process.
[420] Livy v. 21.
[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the
fifth book of _Res reconditae_ by one Sammonicus
Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in
cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."
[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in
Pauly-Wissowa.
[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori
praetori...." Cp. Cic. _de Nat. deorum_, ii. 10, "at
vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam
imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite
velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."
[424] See Münzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encycl._; Soltau, _Die Anfänge der röm.
Geschichtschreibung_, p. 48 foll.
[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Cassius, fragment, xxxv.
6; Ennius, _Ann._ vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment
is the oldest reference to the event which we possess,
and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc
audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis
certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."
[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect
struck St. Augustine. In _Civ. Dei_, v. 18, he writes:
"Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes
Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum
sanguine suo placantibus Romanus liberaretur exercitus,"
and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs.
I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on
Cicero, _de Nat. deor._ ii. 3. 10.
[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 352, note 1.
[428] By Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 69 foll. This
touching of the chin seems to be an example of that
personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see,
_e.g._, Westermarck, _op. cit._ i. 586. Decius makes
himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching
(as priest) the only part of his person which was
exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O.
Weinrich, _Antike Heiligungswünder_, p. 63 foll., and
Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a
sacrificing priest.
[429] See above, p. 180.
[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates
at length by examples of the worship of the spear or
sword among various peoples.
[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9.
Is it possible that it may have some reference to the
fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the
Latins?
[432] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos
inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive
nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however,
the translator from the Umbrian is assisted by the Latin
formulae we are discussing.
[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me
sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc.
This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed
to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C.
(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 257). The interesting feature in
this _devotio_, used at the siege at Carthage, is that
it is not himself whom the commander devotes--the common
sense of the Romans had got beyond that--but the enemy
as substitutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide
magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do
devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones
exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the
enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only gods
invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes,
while in the older formula it is the gods of Romans and
Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called _Decius_ wrote:
"Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck,
p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur
sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word _eliciatur_
shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last
passage is that the parallel passage in the Euripidean
_Iph. in Aul._ (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the
idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be
witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant
points down and up respectively in invoking them, as
also in the _devotio_ of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii.
6), which was an abnormal _procuratio prodigii_.
[434] Cp. the language used by Livy of the second Decius
(x. 29): "prae se agere formidinem ac fugam ...
contacturum funebribus diris signa tela arma hostium."
For spells or curses of this kind see Westermarck i.
563: a curse is conveyable by speech, especially if
spoken by a magistrate or priest. "Among the Maoris the
anathema of the priest is regarded as a thunderbolt that
an enemy cannot escape." See also Robertson Smith,
_Semites_, p. 434, for the Jewish ban, by which impious
sinners, or enemies of the city and its God, were
devoted to destruction. He remarks that the Hebrew verb
to ban is sometimes rendered "consecrate": Micah iv. 13;
Deut. xiii. 16; and Joshua vi. 26 (Jericho), which
exactly answers to the consecratio of Carthage. For
curses conveyable by sacrifices, as in all the cases I
have mentioned, see Westermarck ii. 618 foll. 624, and
the same author's paper on conditional curses in
Morocco, in _Anthropological Essays_, addressed to E. B.
Tylor, p. 360.
[435] "Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and
confound their devices." I well remember hearing this
read in church throughout the Crimean war.
[436] "Pro republica Quiritium," in the formula quoted
above.
[437] Livy viii. 10 _ad fin._
[438] See above, note 28.
[439] See Marquardt, p. 276 and notes; Mommsen,
_Strafrecht_, 900 foll. The subject has generally been
treated from the legal point of view rather than the
religious; but from the religious point of view it has
generally been assumed that the sacrifice was to appease
the god. So no doubt it was; but I venture also to
conjecture that the victim was _vicarius_ for the
contamination of the community. On the subject generally
Westermarck's two chapters on human sacrifice and
blood-revenge (xix. and xx. in vol. i.) are extremely
well worth reading.
[440] _Aen._ i. 607 foll. Cp. _Aen._ iii. 429--
praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni
cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus,
where the slow movement and circuitous course of a
lustratio must have been in Virgil's mind. The movement
round an object for lustral purposes is seen in _Aen._
vi. 229, "idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda," where
Servius explains _circumtulit_ by _purgavit_. As early
as Livius Andronicus (second century B.C.) we find
"classem lustratur" of fishes swimming round a fleet
(Ribb. _Trag. Fragmenta_, p. 1).
[441] Marquardt, p. 324, for the _februa_ of the
Luperci, _R.F._ p. 320 foll., and the explanations there
given. More will be found alluded to in Van Gennep, _Les
Rites de passage_, p. 249. To my mind none are quite
convincing. The Romans believed that blows with these
_februa_ (strips of the victim's skin) made women
fertile; they were therefore clearly magical implements,
but beyond this we do not seem to get. (See also Deubner
in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 495 foll.)
[442] Varro, _L.L._ vi. 13, "Februum Sabini purgamentum,
et id in sacris nostris verbum." Cp. Varro, _ap.
Nonium_, p. 114; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 19 foll., where he
calls _februa piamina, purgamenta_, in the language of
the _ius divinum_.
[443] _L.L._ vi. 11.
[444] Servius, _ad Aen._ x. 32; xi. 842; cp. i. 136.
[445] See _R.F._ p. 127, for the same rite in the Church
of England (Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, p. 292).
[446] _Les Rites de passage_, ch. ii.
[447] For boundary marks in historical times see
_Gromatici auctores_, vol. ii. p. 250 foll. (Rudorff).
[448] If the cattle were in the woodland beyond the
settlement, as they would be in summer, they could not
be protected in this way: like an army going into the
country of _hostes_ (see above, p. 216) they were
treated in another way, which we may connect with the
ritual of the Parilia, as Dr. Frazer has beautifully
shown in his paper on St. George and the Parilia (_Revue
des études ethnographiques et sociologiques_, 1908, p. 1
foll.).
[449] _Georg._ i. 338 foll.
[450] Varro, _L.L._ v. 143; Servius, _Aen._ v. 755 (from
Cato); Plutarch, _Romulus_, xi.
[451] See above, p. 117.
[452] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 12 foll. and 42 foll.
[453] The deities of the city were invoked to preserve
the name, the magistrates, rites, men, cattle, land, and
crops: a list in which the name is the only item that
carries us back to pre-Christian times.
[454] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 21 and 84 foll.
[455] Livy xl. 6 init.
[456] See above, p. 96.
[457] Numbers xxxi. 19.
[458] Festus, p. 117.
[459] See Hülsen-Jordan, _Röm. Topographie_, vol. iii.
p. 495; Von Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen_, p. 217 foll.
[460] Suggested by Van Gennep, _Les Rites de passage_,
p. 28.
[461] Livy iii. 28. 11.
[462] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 132 foll.
[463] The account of _lustratio_ given in this lecture
is adapted from the author's chapter on the same subject
in _Anthropology and the Classics_, Oxford University
Press, 1908.
LECTURE X
THE FIRST ARRIVAL OF NEW CULTS IN ROME
I said in my first lecture that the whole story of Roman religious
experience falls into two parts: first, that of the formularisation of
rules and methods for getting effectively into right relations with the
Power manifesting itself in the universe; secondly, that of the gradual
discovery of the inadequacy of these, and of the engrafting on the State
religion of Rome of an ever-increasing number of foreign rites and
deities. The first of these stories has been occupying us so far, and
before I leave it for what will be practically an introduction to
succeeding lectures, it will be as well for me to sum up the results at
which we have already arrived.
I began with what I called the protoplasm of religion, the primitive
ideas and practices which form the psychological basis of the whole
growth. The feeling of awe and anxiety about that which is mysterious
and unknown, the feeling which the Romans called _religio_, seems to
have manifested itself in Italy, as elsewhere, in those various ways
which I discussed in my second and third lectures, in the various forms
of magic, negative and positive. We find unmistakable evidence of the
existence of those strict rules of conduct called taboos, which fetter
the mind and body of primitive man, which probably arise from an
ineffective desire to put himself in right relations with forces he does
not understand, and which have their value as a social discipline.
Again, we find surviving in historical Rome numerous forms of active or
positive magic, by which it was thought possible to compel or overcome
those powers, so as to use them for your own benefit and against your
enemies. But I was careful to point out that on the whole little of all
this evidence of the early existence of magic at Rome is to be found in
the public religion of the Roman State, and that the natural inference
from this is that at one time or another there must have been a very
powerful influence at work in cutting away these obsolete root-leaves of
the plant that was to be, and in making of that plant a neat,
well-defined growth.
I went on to deal with the first stage in the working of this influence,
which we found reflected in the religion of the family as we know it in
historical times. The family, settled on the land, with its homestead
and its regular routine of agricultural process, developed a more
effective desire to get into right relation with the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. Anxiety is greatly lessened both in the house
and on the land, because within those limits there is a "peace" (or
covenant) between the divine and human inhabitants who have taken up
their residence there. The supernatural powers, conceived now (whatever
they may have been before) as spirits, are friendly if rightly
propitiated, and much advance has been made in the methods of
propitiation; magic and religion are still doubtless mixed up together
in these, but the tendency seems to be to get gradually rid of the more
inadequate and blundering methods. In fact, man's knowledge of the
Divine has greatly advanced; spirits have some slight tendency to become
deities, and magic is in part at least superseded by an orderly round of
sacrifice and prayer, which is performed daily within the house, and
within the boundary of the land at certain seasons of the year. This
stage of settlement and routine was the first great revolution in the
religious experience of the Romans, and supplied the basis of their
national character.
The second revolution which we can clearly discern, and far the most
important as a factor in Roman history, is that of the organisation of
the religion of the city-state of Rome. Doubtless there were stages
intermediate between the two, but they are entirely lost to us. We had
to concentrate our attention on the city of the four regions--the first
city we really know--and to examine the one document which has survived
from it, the so-called calendar of Numa. In my fifth lecture I explained
the nature of that calendar, and noted how it reflects the life of a
people at once agricultural and military, and how it must presuppose the
existence of a highly organised legal priesthood, or of some powerful
genius for political as well as religious legislation. The tradition of
a great priest-king is not wholly to be despised, for it expresses the
feeling of the Romans that religious law and order were indispensable
parts of their whole political and social life. During the rest of these
lectures I have been trying to interrogate this religious calendar, with
such help as could be gained from any other sources, on two points: (1)
the conception, or, if we can venture to use the word, the knowledge,
which the Romans of that early city-state had of the Divine; (2) the
chief forms and methods of their worship. We saw that they did not think
of the divine beings as existing in human form with human weaknesses,
but as invisible and intangible functional powers, _numina_. Each had
its special limited sphere of action; and some were now localised within
the _pomoerium_, or just outside it within the _ager Romanus_, and
worshipped under a particular name. I suggested that this very
settlement had probably some influence in preparing them for assuming a
more definite and personal character, should the chance be given them.
In regard to the forms of cult with which they were propitiated, I found
in the ritual of sacrifice and prayer a genuine advance towards a really
religious attitude to the deity, the sacrifices being meant to increase
his power to benefit the community, and the prayers to diminish such
inclination as he might have to damage it; but that there are in these
certain survivals of the age of magic, which are, however, only formal,
and have lost their original significance. I found some curious
examples of such survivals in the rite of _devotio_, and in vows
generally a somewhat lower type of method in dealing with the
supernatural. But, on the other hand, the forms of _lustratio_, at the
bottom of which seems to lie the idea of getting rid of evil spirits and
influences, present very beautiful examples of what we may really call
religious ceremony.
There was, then, in this highly-organised religion of the city-state, in
some ways at least, a great advance. But in spite of this gain, it had
serious drawbacks. Most prominent among these was the fact that it was
the religion of the State as a whole, and not of the individual or the
family. Religion, I think we may safely say, had placed a certain
consecration upon the simple life of the family, which was, in fact, the
life of the individual; for the essence of religion in all stages of
civilisation lies in the feeling of the individual that his own life,
his bodily and mental welfare, is dependent on the Divine as he and his
regard it. But to what extent can it be said that religion so
consecrated the life of the State as to enable each individual in his
family group to feel that consecration more vividly? That would have
constituted a real advance in religious development; that was the
result, if I am not mistaken, of the religion of the Jewish State, which
with all the force of a powerful hierarchical authority addressed its
precepts to the mind and will of the individual. But at Rome, though the
earliest traces and traditions of law show a certain consecration of
morality, inasmuch as the criminal is made over as a kind of
propitiatory sacrifice to the deity whom he has offended, yet in the
ordinary course of life, so far as I can discern, the individual was
left very much where he was, before the State arose, in his relation to
the Divine.
In no other ancient State that we know of did the citizen so entirely
resign the regulation of all his dealings with the State's gods to the
constituted authorities set over him. His obligatory part in the
religious ritual of the State was simply _nil_, and all his religious
duty on days of religious importance was to abstain from civil business,
to make no disturbance. Within the household he used his own simple
ritual, the morning prayer, the libation to the household deities at
meals; and it is exactly here that we see a _pietas_, a sense of duty
consecrated by religion, which seems to have had a real ethical value,
and reminds us of modern piety. But in all his relations with the gods
_qua_ citizen, he resigned himself to the trained and trusted
priesthoods, who knew the secrets of ritual and all that was comprised
in the _ius divinum_; and by passive obedience to these authorities he
gradually began to deaden the sense of _religio_ that was in him. And
this tendency was increased by the mere fact of life in a city, which as
time went on became more and more the rule; for, as I pointed out, the
round of religious festivals no longer exactly expressed the needs and
the work of that agricultural life in which it had its origin.
It would be an interesting inquiry, if the material for an answer were
available, to try and discover how this gradual absorption of religion
(or rather religious duties) by the State and its authorities affected
the morality of the individual Roman. It has often been maintained of
late that religion and morality have nothing in common; and even Dr.
Westermarck,[464] who, unlike most anthropologists, treats the whole
subject from a psychological point of view, seems inclined to come to
this conclusion. For myself, I am rather disposed to agree with another
eminent anthropologist,[465] that religion and morality are really
elemental instincts of human nature, primarily undistinguishable from
each other; and if that be so, then the over-elaboration of either the
moral or religious law, or of the two combined, will tend to weaken the
binding force of both. If, as at Rome, the citizen is made perfectly
comfortable in his relations with the Power manifesting itself in the
universe, owing to the complete mastery of the _ius divinum_ by the
State and its officials, there will assuredly be a tendency to paralyse
the elemental religious impulse, and with it, if I am not mistaken, the
elemental sense of right and wrong. For in the life of a state with such
a legalised religious system as this, so long at least as it thrives and
escapes serious disaster, there will be few or none of those moments of
peril and anxiety in which "man is brought face to face with the eternal
realities of existence,"[466] and when he becomes awakened to a new
sense of religion and duty. In the life of the family, the critical
moments of birth, puberty, marriage, and death regularly recur, and keep
up the instinct, because man is then brought face to face with these
eternal facts; there is no need of extraordinary perils, such as
tempests or pestilences, to keep the instinct alive. But in the life of
the State as such there were no such continually recurring reminders;
even the old agricultural perils were out of sight of the ordinary
citizen. Thus the farthest we can go in ascribing a moral influence to
the State religion is in giving it credit for helping to maintain that
sense of law and order which served to keep the life of the family sound
and wholesome. That it did to some extent perform this service I have
already pointed out;[467] and it is a remarkable fact that the decay of
the State religion was coincident, in the last two centuries B.C., with
the decay of the family life and virtues. But on the whole, as we shall
see, the _ius divinum_ had rather the effect of hypnotising the
religious and moral instinct than of keeping it awake. It needed new
perils for the State as a whole to re-create that feeling which is the
root of the growth of conscience; and when the craving did at last come
upon the Roman, which in times of doubt and peril has come upon
individuals and communities in all ages, for support and comfort from
the Unseen, it had to be satisfied by giving him new gods to worship in
new ways--aliens with whom he had nothing in common, who had no home in
his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[468]
I wish to conclude this first part of my subject by giving some account
of the first beginning of this introduction of new deities, _di
novensiles_ as they were called,[469] into the old Roman religious
world. Those, however, of whom I shall speak here were not introduced as
the result of disaster or distress, but were simply the inevitable
consequence of the growing importance of the city on the Tiber--of the
beginnings of her commercial and political relations with her
neighbours, and also of her own development in the arts of civilisation.
The religious system with which I have so far been dealing was the
exclusive property, we must remember, of those _gentes_, with the
families composing them, which formed the original human material of the
State, and were known as _patrician_. If we had no other reason for
being sure of this, the fact that all State priesthoods were originally
limited to patrician families would be sufficient to prove it;[470] even
down to the latest times the _rex sacrorum_, the three _flamines
maiores_, and the _Salii_ were necessarily of patrician birth--a fact
which had much to do with their tendency to disappear in the last age of
the Republic.
But in the course of the period within which the Numan calendar was
drawn up, this community of patrician burghers began to suffer certain
changes. A population of "outsiders," as in so many Greek cities, had
gained admittance to the site of Rome, though not into its political and
religious organism.[471] So solid a city, in such an important position,
was sure to attract such settlers, whether from the Latins dwelling
about it, or from the Etruscans on the north, or the Greek cities along
the coast southwards and in Sicily. The Latins were, of course, of the
same stock as the Romans, and already in some loose political relation
to them; and as each Latin city was open, like Rome, to Greek and
Etruscan influences, we should probably see in Latium an indirect
channel of communication between those peoples and Rome, to be reckoned
in addition to the direct and obvious one. As Dr. J. B. Carter has well
said,[472] "the Latins, becoming rapidly inferior to Rome, were enabled
to do her at least this service, that of absorbing the foreign
influences which came, and in certain cases of Latinising them, and thus
transmitting them to Rome in a more or less assimilated condition." As
Dr. Carter has been the first to explain the arrival of these new
religious influences to English readers, I shall in what follows closely
follow his footsteps. They indicate and also reflect a change from
agricultural economy and habits to a society interested in trade and
travel: I say interested, because we cannot be quite sure how far the
old Romans engaged in such pursuits themselves, as well as admitting
from outside those who did, with their worships. They indicate also the
growth of an industrial population, organised in gilds, as in the Middle
Ages; here beyond doubt the workers were mainly of native birth. Lastly,
they indicate an advance in military efficiency and, as a result of this
military progress, some change in the relation of Rome to her
fellow-communities of Latium.
Perhaps the first of these new deities to arrive was the famous Hercules
Victor or Invictus of the _ara maxima_ in the Forum Boarium, who
continued for centuries to accept the tithes of the booty of generals
and the profits of successful merchants. Virgil in the eighth
_Aeneid_[473] makes Evander show his guest this altar and the
celebration of its festival, and tell him the tale of Cacus and the oxen
and the cave on the Aventine hard by; the poet, like every one else
until the last few years, believed the cult to be primeval and Roman.
But one of the many gains for the history of Roman religion which have
recently been secured--even since the publication of my _Roman
Festivals_--is the certainty that the Italian Hercules is really the
Greek Heracles acclimatised in the sister peninsula, and that the cult
of the _ara maxima_, though that altar was inside the sacred boundary of
the _pomoerium_, was not native in Rome.[474] It seems, however, almost
certain that it did not come direct from any part of Hellas, though its
position, close to the Tiber and its landing-place, might naturally lead
us to think so. It is almost impossible to believe that Heracles would
have been allowed inside the _pomoerium_, had he been introduced by
foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be
learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have
made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of
the _ara_ came from a Latin city,--from that Tibur which by tradition
was of Greek origin--"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"--and which, like its
neighbour Praeneste, was curiously receptive of foreign influence.[475]
It is believed that the Greek traders from Campania and Magna Graecia
made their way northwards through Latium, and thus eventually reached
Rome with the deity whom they seem to have always carried with them. He
was, in the words of Dr. Carter,[476] a deity of whom, by the contagion
of commerce, the Romans already felt a great need, a god of great power
from whom came success in the practical undertakings of life; and it was
quite natural that his shrine should be in the busy cattle-market of the
city, if we remember that the wealth of the early Romans, _pecunia_ as
they called it, mainly consisted in sheep and oxen. As Heracles in
various forms was to be met with all over the Mediterranean coasts, it
would indeed be strange if he were not found in the growing city
commanding the central water-way of Italy; and his appearance there may
be said to have put Rome in touch with the Mediterranean business of
that day. There he was destined to remain, with all the honour of an
oldest cult, though other cults of the same god came in later, and were
established quite close to him; and though never a State deity of much
importance, he exercised a wholesome influence in matters of trade, as
the god who sanctioned your oath, and who accepted the tithe of your
gain which you had vowed at the outset of an enterprise.[477]
In the same period, though the traditional date of their temple is
later, came the Twin Brethren, Castor and Pollux, and found their way,
like Hercules, into the city within the _pomoerium_. The famous temple
of Castor (before whom his brother gradually gave way) was at the end
of the Forum under the Palatine, close to the fountain of Juturna, where
the Twins watered their horses after the battle of Lake Regillus; and
there the beautiful remains of the latest reconstruction of it still
stand.[478] This position alone should make us feel confident that the
cult did not come direct from Greek sources; and it had its origin,
perhaps, in the period when Rome was in close relation with Latin
cities, which themselves had been gradually absorbing the cults and
products of the Greeks of Campania. There is a strong probability that
it came from Tusculum, with which the legend of the Regillus battle is
closely connected, and where the cult had beyond doubt taken strong
root.[479] Like the Hercules of the _ara maxima_, the Twins were no
doubt brought by the course of trade, which was continually pushing up
from the south; for they too were favourites of the merchant adventurer,
and throughout Hellas were the special protectors of the seafarer. Their
connection with horses is well known, and not as yet satisfactorily
explained in its Roman aspect; but Dr. J. B. Carter thinks that they
first became prominent in Greece when the Homeric use of chariots was
abandoned for a primitive kind of cavalry, and that "the Castor-cult
moved steadily northward (from Magna Graecia), carried, as it were, on
horseback," and that when it reached Rome it became connected with the
reorganisation of the cavalry. This seems to be almost pure guess-work,
and, attractive as it is, I fear we cannot put much faith in it.[480]
The position in the Forum, and the well-known connection of both twins
with oaths,[481] seem to me rather to suggest a more natural origin in
trade. I would suggest that the equine character of the cult in Latium
was secondary, and that the connection of the temple and cult with the
Roman cavalry was a natural result, but not a primary feature, of its
introduction. I should be inclined to look on it as coming in with the
building of the temple, which was probably of later origin than the
original introduction of the cult.
Some time after the calendar was drawn up, a deity was established on
the Aventine, _i.e._ not within the _pomoerium_, whose arrival marks a
development in the organisation of handicraft. We cannot indeed _prove_
that the settlement of Minerva on the Aventine took place so early, but
we have strong grounds for the conclusion.[482] This temple was in
historical times the religious centre of trade-gilds; and these gilds
were by universal Roman tradition ascribed to Numa as founder, which
simply means that they were among the oldest institutions of the
City-state. As Minerva does not appear in the calendar, had no _flamen_,
and therefore must have been altogether outside the original patrician
religious system, the natural inference is that the temple was founded,
like the shrines of Hercules and the Twin Brethren, towards the end of
the period we are dealing with, and was from the first the centre of the
gilds. Of those mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Numa (ch. 17), we
know that the following gilds belonged to Minerva: _tibicines_, _fabri_
(carpenters?), _fullones_, _sutores_; and it is a reasonable guess that
the others, _coriarii_, _fabri aerarii_, and _aurifices_, were also
under her protection. These trades, as Waltzing remarks in his great
work on Roman gilds,[483] are all in keeping with the rudimentary
civilisation of primitive Rome; they are those which were first carried
on outside of the family. Workers in iron are not among them; bronze is
still the common metal.
Now of course we must not go so far as to assume that none of these
trades existed before the cult of Minerva came to Rome; but from her
close association with them all through Roman history, and from the fact
that the Romans were originally an agricultural folk, as the calendar
shows, with a simple economy and simple needs, it is legitimate to
connect the arrival of the goddess with the growth of town life and the
demand for articles once made in rude fashion chiefly on the farms, and
with a period of improvement in manufacture, and the use of better
materials and better methods. Whence, then, did these improvements come?
This is only another way of asking the question, Whence did Minerva
come?
By the common consent of investigators she came from the semi-Latin town
of Falerii in southern Etruria, where these arts were practised by
Etruscans, or those who had learnt of Etruscans.[484] Her name is
Italian, not Etruscan;[485] she was an old Italian deity taken over by
the invading Etruscans from the peoples whose land they occupied. But
while in the hands of Etruscans she had adopted Greek characteristics,
especially those of Athene, the patroness of arts and crafts. She soon,
indeed, appeared with some of the character of Athene Polias, as we
shall see at the end of this lecture; but her real importance, far down
into the period of the Empire, was in the temple on the Aventine, and in
connection with the crafts. The dedication day of the temple was March
19, which was known, as we learn on the best authority, also as
_artificum dies_.[486]
There was another famous temple on the Aventine which by universal
consent is attributed to the same period as that of Minerva. Diana does
not appear in the calendar, and had no _flamen_; Roman tradition
ascribed her arrival to Servius Tullius, and we shall not be far wrong
if we place it at or towards the end of the age of the kingship. The
temple was celebrated as containing an ancient statue of Diana, the
oldest or almost the oldest representation of a deity in human form
known at Rome, which was a copy of a rude image of Artemis at Massilia,
of the type of the famous [Greek: xoanon] of the Ephesian Artemis.[487]
It also contained a _lex templi_ in Greek characters, and a treaty or
charter of a federation of Latin cities with Rome as their head, which
was seen by Dionysius of Halicarnassus when in Rome in the time of
Augustus.[488]
The explanation of the arrival of Diana is simple. The _dies natalis_ of
the temple is the same as that of the famous shrine of the same goddess
at Aricia--the Ides of August.[489] Aricia was at this time the centre
of a league of cities including Tusculum and Tibur, with both of which,
as we have just seen, Rome was closely connected at this time; a league
which is generally supposed to have superseded that of Alba, marking
some revolution in Latium consequent on the fall of Alba.[490] Diana
was a wood-spirit, a tree-spirit, as Dr. Frazer has taught us, with some
relation to the moon and to the life of women; of late she has become
familiar to every one, not as she was known later, in the disguise of
Artemis, but as the deity of that shrine--"pinguis et placabilis ara
Dianae"--of which the priest was the Rex Nemorensis: he who "slew the
slayer and shall himself be slain."[491] But in those days it was only
the fact that she was the chief local deity of Aricia, the leading city
of the new league, which brought her suddenly into notice. When the
strategic position of Rome gave her in turn the lead in Latium, Diana
passed on from Aricia to the Tiber, entered on a new life, and
eventually took over the attributes of Artemis, with whom she had much
in common. The Diana whom we know in Roman literature is really Artemis;
but Diana of the Aventine, when she first arrived there, was the
wood-spirit of Aricia, and her temple was an outward sign of Rome's new
position in Latium: it was built by the chiefs of the Latin cities in
conjunction with Rome, and is described by Varro as "commune Latinorum
Dianae templum."[492] It was appropriately placed on the only Roman hill
which was then still covered with wood, and was outside the _pomoerium_.
There was one other goddess, a Latin one, who was traditionally
associated with this period, and especially with king Servius
Tullius--Fortuna, or Fors Fortuna; she does not appear in the calendar,
had no _flamen_, and must have been introduced from outside. But it was
long before Fortuna became of any real importance in Rome, and I shall
leave her out of account here. She had two homes of renown in Latium, at
Antium and Praeneste, and was in each connected with a kind of oracle,
which seems to have been specially resorted to by women before and after
childbirth. She was also very probably a deity of other kinds of
fertility; and in course of time she took on the characteristics of the
Greek Tyche, and became a favourite deity of good luck.[493]
Let us pause for one moment to reflect on the character of these new
deities of whom I have been speaking: Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana.
It must be confessed that, as compared with the great deities of the
calendar, they are uninteresting; with the exception, perhaps, of
Hercules, they do not seem to have any real _religious_ significance.
They are local deities brought in from outside, and have no root in the
mind of the Roman people as we have so far been studying it. They seem
to indicate the growth of a population in which the true old Roman
religious instinct was absent; they represent commerce, business,
handicraft, or politics, pursuits in which the old Roman and Latin
farmers were not directly interested; they were suffered to be in Rome
because the new population and the new interests must of necessity have
their own worships, but they were not taken into the heart and mind of
the people. So at least it seems to us, after we have been examining the
development of the native religious plant from its root upwards. But we
must remember that of that new population, its life and its needs, we
know hardly anything, and it would not be safe to assume that the
conception of Minerva had no influence on the conscience of the artisan,
or that of Hercules no power of binding the trader to honest dealing and
respect for his oath. As for Diana, though, as Dr. Carter says, she had
been introduced "as part of a diplomatic game, not because Rome felt any
religious need of her," the fact that the Latin treaty was kept in her
temple has a certain moral as well as political significance which ought
not to be overlooked. It is impossible to put ourselves mentally in the
position of the men who brought these cults to Rome, or of the Romans
who granted them admittance; but we shall be on the safe side if we
imagine the former at least to have had a conviction that their dealings
at Rome would not prosper unless they were carried out with the blessing
of their own gods.
But we now come, in the last place, to the foundation of a cult of a
very different kind from these, and of far greater import than any of
them in the history of Roman religious experience. We have seen that the
temple of Diana on the Aventine meant the transference of the headship
of the Latin league from Aricia to Rome. When Rome took over this
headship, and by removing its religious centre to Rome--or, perhaps more
accurately, by offering Diana of Aricia a new home by the Tiber--removed
also any danger of a new power growing up in Latium outside her own
influence, she seems to have taken another important step in the same
direction. Archæological evidence confirms the tradition that at this
time the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, the real and original god of the
league, on the Alban hill, was rebuilt;[494] and as the remains of its
foundation are of Etruscan workmanship, we may believe that the work was
undertaken at that period of an Etruscan dominion in Rome which no one
now seriously doubts, and which is marked by the Etruscan name
Tarquinius, and by the old tradition that Servius Tullius was really an
Etruscan bearing the Etruscan name Mastarna.[495] Now those in power at
Rome at this time, whoever they were, not content with rebuilding the
ancient temple of Jupiter on the Alban hill, conceived the idea of also
building a great temple at Rome, on the steep rock overlooking the
Forum, to the same deity of the heaven who had long presided over the
Latin league. The tradition was that this temple was vowed by the first
Tarquinius, begun by the second, and finally dedicated by the first
consul Horatius in the year 509.[496] It is quite possible that this
tradition indicates the truth in outline--that it was an Etruscan who
conceived the idea of the great work, and that the foreign domination
gave way to a Roman reaction before the temple was ready for dedication.
We cannot know what exactly was the Etruscan intention as to the cult;
but we know that the temple was built in the Etruscan style, that its
foundations were of Etruscan masonry,[497] and that the deities
inhabiting it were three--a _trias_--a feature quite foreign to the
native Roman religion.[498] Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva had each a
separate dwelling (_cella_) within the walls of the temple, which, in
order to meet this innovation, was almost as broad as it was long.
Whether this trias was the one originally intended by the Etruscan king
or kings it is impossible to say; but I have great doubts of it. I
confess that I have no ground but probability to go on when I conjecture
that a long period elapsed between the beginning of this great
undertaking and the final completion, and that in the meantime many
things had happened of which we have no record; that when the temple was
finished it was in Roman hands, though retaining its Etruscan
characteristics, and especially the combination of three deities; and
that those three deities were essentially Roman in conception. Roman,
too, was the idea that one of the three should be paramount; the two
goddesses never attained to any special significance, and the temple
always remained essentially the dwelling of the great Jupiter, the
Father of heaven.[499]
The cult-titles of this Jupiter, Optimus Maximus, the best and greatest,
seem to raise him to a position not only far above his colleagues in the
temple, but above all other Jupiters in Latium or elsewhere, and
presumably above all other deities. They thus suggest a deliberate
attempt to place him in a higher position than even the Jupiter Latiaris
of the Mons Albanus, whose temple had been rebuilt in the same period.
The very novelty of such cult-titles betrays both power and genius in
their originator; they are wholly unlike any we have met with so far;
they do not suggest a function or a locality or a connection with some
other deity; they stand absolutely alone in the history of the Roman
religion till far on in the Empire.[500] Here is no _numen_ needed at a
particular season to bless some agricultural operation; Jupiter Optimus
Maximus seems hardly to be limited by space or season, and is to be
always there looking down on his people from his seat on the hill which
was henceforward to be called Capitolinus, because the space which had
been prepared there for his reception bore the name of Capitolium, the
place of headship.[501] These titles, Best and Greatest, call for
reflection, for more thought than we are apt to give them; one wonders
whether they can be as old as tradition claimed, and in fact at least
one recent writer has been tempted, without sufficient reason, to date
the whole foundation two centuries later than the Tarquinii.[502] To me
they rather suggest the hypothesis that the break-up of the Etruscan
domination in Rome was the work of a man or men inspired by a new
national feeling which ascribed the revolution to the great god of the
race, to whose shrine on the same hill the kings had been used to bring
the spoils of their enemies[503]; and that they took advantage of the
uncompleted Etruscan temple, with its huge foundations and underground
_favissae_, to settle there a new Jupiter, better and greater than any
other, to whom his people would be for ever grateful, and in whom they
would for ever put their trust. All older associations with cults of the
Heaven-god were to be banished from the Capitolium, just as all other
deities were believed to have fled from the spot, save only Terminus;
the ancient priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, had no special
connection with this temple and its cult, which were under the immediate
charge of an _aedituus_ only.[504] Here was the centre of the public
worship of the State as a whole, not only of the old patrician State;
and no such ancient curiosity as the Flamen Dialis, who, as I have
suggested, was a survival from some older era of Latin religious
history, was to be supreme there. Here the Consul of the free Republic
was to offer, on entering office, the victim--the white heifer of the
Alban cult--which his predecessor had vowed, and himself to bind his
successor to a like sacrifice; and this he did on behalf of patrician
and plebeian alike. Here the victorious general was to deposit his
spoils, reaching the temple in the solemn procession of the _triumphus_,
and wearing the _ornamenta_ of the deity himself; for here, contrary to
all precedent in the worship of Romans, there was an image of the god
wrought in terra cotta and brought from Etruria.[505] It is in
connection with such solemn events as these that we may find the origin
of those imposing processions which for centuries were to impress the
minds of the Roman people, and indeed of their enemies also, with the
might and magnificence of their Empire; for apart from the triumphal
processions with which we are all familiar, the scene at the entrance of
new consuls on their office must have been most impressive. They were
accompanied by the other magistrates, the Senate, the priests in their
robes of office, and by an immense crowd of citizens. After the ceremony
the Senate met _in the temple_ to transact the first religious business
of the year. Here too the tribal assembly met for the purpose of
enrolling the new levies before each season of war, in order that the
youths who were to fight the battles of Rome might realise the presence
of Rome's great protecting deity. Even in the most degenerate days of
the Roman religion, though Jupiter had suffered from the ridicule of
playwrights or the speculations of philosophers, an orator's appeal to
the Best and Greatest looking down on the Forum from his seat above it,
could not fail to move the hearers; "Ille, ille Iuppiter restitit,"
cried Cicero in the peril of the Catilinarian conspiracy, "ille
Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille vos omnes salvos
esse voluit."[506]
Nor was it only the State as represented by its officials that could and
did address itself to the worship of this great god. It seems probable
that the new idea of a single guardian deity, with his two attendant
goddesses, for which the Romans were indebted to the genius (whoever he
may have been) who released them from the yoke of the Etruscan, opened
the cult to the individual in a way which must have been a novelty in
the religious life of the people.[507] The most memorable example of
this is in the famous story told of Scipio, the conqueror of Hannibal,
which is not likely to be an invention of the annalists. As Gellius
records it, it stands thus: Scipio was wont to ascend to the temple just
before daylight, to order the _cella Iovis_ to be opened for him, and
there to remain alone for a long time, as if taking counsel with the
god about the affairs of the State. The dogs, it was said, which guarded
the entrance, astonished the temple-keepers by treating him always with
respect, while they would attack or bark at others.[508]
The reader may remark, that during the last few minutes I have wandered
quite away from the Roman religion which we have so far been trying to
understand, and he will be right. I have but just touched on this great
cult, which properly belongs to Rome of the Republic, in order to show
how great a change must have taken place, how great a revolution must
have been consummated, when this temple arose on its Etruscan
substructures. We have marked two forward steps in the social and
political experience of the Romans: the settlement of the family on the
land and the organisation of the City-state with its calendar. Here is a
third, the liberation of that State from a foreign dominion, and the
development, in matters both internal and external, which subjection and
liberation alike brought with them. In regard to religious experience,
the first produced the ordered worship of the household, which had a
lasting effect on the Roman character; the second produced the _ius
divinum_, the priesthoods and the ritual for the service of the various
_numina_ which had consented to take up their abode in the city and its
precincts. These two taken together changed doubt and anxiety into
confidence, stilled the _religio_ natural to uncivilised man, and
developed the machinery of magic into forms and ceremonies which were
more truly religious. Now we note a third great social step forward,
which brings with it a new conception and expression of the religious
unity of the State; henceforward, alongside of a multiplicity of cults
and of priests attached to them, we have one central worship to which
all free citizens may resort, and a trinity of guardian deities, of whom
one, Jupiter Best and Greatest, is the one presiding genius of the whole
State.
Lastly, there can hardly be a doubt that this new cult marks a more
extensive communication with neighbouring peoples than the State had as
yet experienced or encouraged. Etruria, Latium, and Greece, all seem to
have had a hand in it. Of its relation to the Latins and Etruscans I
have already spoken. It only remains for me to note the fact that it was
here, in this Capitoline temple, according to unanimous tradition, that
those legendary "Sibylline books" were deposited which came from a Greek
source, and according to the story, from Cumae.[509] These mysterious
books were destined to change the whole character of the religion of the
Romans during the next two centuries; and this is why the dedication of
the great temple is a convenient halting-place on our journey. I propose
to begin the second part of my subject by examining the nature of this
change, and then to pass on to others, until we have reached the end of
the religious experience of the genuine Roman people.
NOTES TO LECTURE X.
[464] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, chapters
l.-lii.: "Gods as guardians of morality."
[465] Crawley, _The Tree of Life_, in a remarkable
chapter on the function of religion (ch. ix.),
especially p. 287 foll. "Morality," says Mr. Crawley,
"is one of the results of the religious impulse." What
he means here by morality is not "that elaborated by
abstract thinkers," but the "morality of elemental human
nature." "Elemental morality" may be a somewhat obscure
term; but I think it is highly probable that Mr. Crawley
is, in part at least, right in ascribing the origin of
morality to the religious impulse.
[466] Crawley, _op. cit._, p. 265.
[467] Above, pp. 107-8.
[468] See the author's article in _Hibbert Journal_ for
July 1907, p. 894.
[469] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 15 foll.
[470] _Ib._ p. 421: Aust, _Religion der Römer_, p. 47.
[471] I am, of course, well aware that quite recently
attempts have been made to explain the _plebs_ as the
original inhabitants of Latium, and the Romans as
conquering invaders; _e.g._ by Prof. Ridgeway in his
paper, "Who were the Romans," read to the British
Academy, and by Binder in his recently published volume
_Die Plebs_. The theory is a natural one, and not out
of harmony with the facts as known; but it has yet to be
further developed and tested, and as those who hold it
are not as yet in agreement with each other, and as the
evidence which alone can prove it is of a very special
character, archaeological and linguistic, I have
expressed myself in terms of the older view.
[472] _The Religion of Numa_, p. 30.
[473] _Aen._ viii. 184 foll.; the description of the
festival is in 280 foll.; where the interesting points
are the priests of the gentes appointed to look after
the cult (the Potitii only are here mentioned) "pellibus
in morem cincti," and the Salii "populeis evincti
tempora ramis."
[474] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 219 foll.; Carter, _Religion of
Numa_, p. 31 foll. The ground had been prepared for the
new view by the elaborate articles in Roscher's
_Mythological Lexicon_, vol. ii. pp. 2253 foll. and 2901
foll. Of late a painstaking discussion by J. G. Winter
has appeared in the _University of Michigan Studies for
1910_, p. 171 foll.; he mainly confirms Wissowa's
conclusions, but provisionally accepts a suggestion of
mine (_R.F._ 197) that the tithe practice of the _ara
maxima_ may possibly have been of Phoenician origin, and
points out that E. Curtius made the same suggestion as
long ago as 1845. On p. 269 he also dwells, very
properly, I think, on the part which the Etruscans may
have had in the dissemination of the myth and cult of
the Greek Heracles. Wissowa, however, stoutly maintains
that these are simply Greek and of commercial origin. It
has been Wissowa's special and valuable function to
elucidate the Greek origin of many Roman cults and
legends; but I doubt if he has adequately considered the
influence of other peoples, and in particular of
Phoenicians and Etruscans. Certainly the Hercules
question is not finally settled by his masterly analysis
of it in _R.K._ p. 220 foll. But most of what I said in
_R.F._ about the Hercules of the _ara maxima_ may now be
considered obsolete; and I may add that my remarks on
the supposed connection of Hercules with Genius, Dius
Fidius, and Jupiter in the same work, p. 143 foll., have
lost much strength since Wissowa's book appeared. Yet I
am not prepared to accept the view which would deny to
Hercules on Italian soil all contamination with Italian
ideas; as Willamowitz-Moellendorf puts it (_Herakles_,
ed. 2, vol. i. p. 25), "Die Italiker haben dem Körper,
den sie übernahmen, den Odem ihrer eigenen Seele
eingeblasen: aber wie der Name ist der Gestalt des
Hercules hellenischer Import." There are points in
connection with the Roman Hercules, _e.g._ the _nodus
herculaneus_ of the bride's girdle, which Wissowa does
not explain, and which, so far as I can see, can only be
explained by assuming that, as might have been expected,
the Greek Hercules became to some extent entangled in
the web of Italian thought.
[475] The cult was Greek in detail; _Graeco ritu_,
according to Varro as quoted by Macrobius iii. 6. 17;
see also references in Wissowa, _R.K._ 222, note 2.
Following R. Peter in the articles in Roscher, I
assumed, in _R.F._ p. 194, that this might be a later
reconstruction of an originally Italian cult; but for
the present it is safer to look on the _Graecus ritus_
as primitive, and on the presence of Salii, a genuine
Italian institution, as brought from Tibur by the gens
Pinaria, of which there is a trace in that city
(_C.I.L._ xiv. 3541). There also Salii were engaged in
the cult of Hercules Victor, to whom tithes were also
offered (_C.I.L._ xiv. 3541). The evidence for the
theory that the cult came to Rome from Tibur is
summarised by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 220.
[476] _Op. cit._, p. 37.
[477] For the connection of the cult with trade,
Wissowa, _R.K._ 225; and the story told in Macrobius
iii. 6. 11, from Masurius Sabinus, of a _tibicen_ who
became a merchant and had an interview with the god in a
dream. For the connection with _oaths_, _R.F._ p. 138. I
may say before leaving Hercules that though I accept the
latest hypotheses provisionally, I am far from believing
that the last word has been said on the subject.
[478] See, _e.g._, Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of
Ancient Rome_, p. 271 foll. The date of the temple is
482 B.C., but it was vowed in 496 after the Regillus
battle. The three columns still standing date from 7
B.C.
[479] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 217, who points out that the
Dioscuri never appear in _lectisternia_ at Rome, as they
do at Tusculum, which shows that the latter cult was
more directly Greek than that at Rome, and that the
Roman authorities admitted it as a Latin cult without
the Greek details.
[480] Carter, _op. cit._ p. 38. There seemed to be
difficulties in the way of his conclusion; the Dioscuri
were very strong in the Peloponnese, yet the Spartans
neglected the use of cavalry. At any rate the theory
needs careful historical testing. See article "Dioscuri"
in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ It would seem natural
that when once the cult had been introduced by traders
it might become specially attached to the cavalry, owing
to the ancient connection of the Twins with horses.
[481] Ecastor and Edepol, which were oaths used
especially by women, who were not allowed to swear by
Hercules, Gell. xi. 6.
[482] The reasoning will be found in full in Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 203 foll., and in his article "Minerva" in the
_Mythological Lexicon_. See also Carter, _Religion of
Numa_, p. 45 foll. For the position of this temple and
that of Diana on the Aventine, a suburb which cannot be
proved to have been then within any city wall, see
Carter in _Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society for 1909_, p. 136 foll.
[483] Waltzing, _Étude historique sur les corporations
romaines_, vol. i. pp. 63 and 199. The relation between
town life and trades is stated with his usual insight by
von Jhering, _Evolution of the Aryan_, p. 93 foll.
[484] See Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 47; Deecke,
_Falisker_, p. 89 foll.
[485] Minerva or Menrva is assuredly not Etruscan,
though frequently found on Etruscan monuments; see
Deecke, _l.c._ p. 89 foll.
[486] Fasti Praenestini in _C.I.L._ i.^2 March 19.
"Artificum dies (quod Minervae) aedis in Aventino eo die
est (dedicata)." This is one of those additional notes
in the Fast. Praen., which are believed to have been the
work of Verrius Flaccus: see _Roman Festivals_, p. 12.
[487] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 288. We
know the fact from Strabo's account of Massilia, Bk. iv.
p. 180.
[488] Dion. Hal. iv. 26. See _R.F._ p. 198.
[489] Statius, _Silvae_ iii. 1. 60. See Wissowa's
article "Diana" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._
[490] Wissowa, _l.c._ p. 332.
[491] _Golden Bough_, i. p. 1 foll.; _Early History of
the Kingship_, Lecture I.
[492] Varro, _L.L._ 5. 43; Carter, _op. cit._ p. 55.
[493] See on Fortuna the exhaustive article by R. Peter
in the _Mythological Lexicon_; Wissowa, _R.K._ 206
foll.; _R.F._ p. 161 foll., and 223 foll.; Carter, _op.
cit._ p. 50 foll. Dr. Carter seems to me to be too
certain of the absence of any idea of luck or chance in
the original conception of Fortuna: the word _fors_, so
far as we know, never had any other meaning, and the
deity Fors must be a personification of an abstraction,
like Ops, Fides, and Salus. See Axtell, _Deification of
abstract idea in Roman literature_, p. 9, with whom I
agree in rejecting the notion of Marquardt and Wissowa
that she was a deity of horticulture. He rightly points
out that she is not included in the list of agricultural
deities in Varro, _R.R._ i. 1. 6.
[494] See Aust in his article "Jupiter" in the _Myth.
Lex._ p. 689, where the evidence for the contemporaneous
origin of the temple on the Alban hill and that on the
Capitol is fully stated. In this case excavations have
confirmed the Roman tradition, which ascribed the former
temple to one or other of the Tarquinii. Jordan, _Röm.
Top._ i. pt. 2. p. 9.
[495] See the speech of Claudius the emperor, _C.I.L._
xiii. 1668, printed in Furneaux' _Tacitus' Annals_, vol.
ii. Gardthausen, _Mastarna_, p. 40; Müller-Deecke,
_Etrusker_, i. 111. For the Etruscan name Mastarna, see
Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_^3, ii. 506
foll.: Gardthausen gives a cut of the painting found in
a tomb at Vulci in which he appears with the name
attached. Even the ultra-sceptical Pais does not doubt
the fact of an Etruscan domination in Rome; but he does
not believe the Tarquinii and Mastarna to have been
historical personages, and will not date the temples
attributed to this age earlier than the fourth century
B.C. See his _Ancient Legends of Roman History_, ch.
vii.; _Storia di Roma_, i. 310 foll. But the names of
these kings do not concern us, except so far as they
connect Etruria with Roman history in the sixth century.
[496] Cic. _Rep._ ii. 24. 44; Livy i. 38. and 55;
Dionys. iii. 69; iv. 59. 61. The whole evidence will be
found collected in Jordan, _Topogr._ i. pt. ii. p. 9
foll., and in Aust, _Myth. Lex._, _s.v._ Jupiter, p. 706
foll. If the date 509 were seriously impugned Roman
chronology would be in confusion, for this is believed
to be the earliest date on which we can rely, and on it
the subsequent chronology hangs: Mommsen, _Röm.
Chronologie_, ed. 2, p. 198.
[497] Aust, p. 707 foll.; Jordan, _op. cit._, p. 9.
[498] _i.e._ the admission of more than one deity into a
single building. The word "trias" is sometimes used of
the three old Roman deities, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus
(_e.g._ by Wissowa, _Myth. Lex._ _s.v._ Quirinus), but
this is in a different sense. On the idea of a trias
generally, see Kuhfeldt, _de Capitoliis imperii Romani_,
p. 82 foll.; Cumont, _Religions orientales dans le
paganisme romain_, p. 290, note 51.
[499] The technical name of the temple was aedes Iovis
Opt. Max.: for other indications of Jupiter's supremacy
see Aust, p. 720.
[500] On Oriental developments of Jupiter Opt. Max. see
an interesting paper by Cumont in _Archiv_ for 1906, p.
323 foll. (_Iuppiter summus exsuperantissimus_). A
relief in the Berlin Museum has a dedication _I.O.M.
summo exsuperantissimo_; but Prof. Cumont believes the
deity to have been really Oriental, introduced by Greek
philosophical theologians in the last century B.C., but
probably Chaldaean in origin.
[501] Jordan, _op. cit._ p. 7 and note. It is uncertain
whether the whole hill had any earlier name. The Mons
Saturnius of Varro, _L.L._ v. 42, with the legend of an
oppidum _Saturnia_, and the Mons Tarpeius (_Rhet. ad
Herenn._, iv. 32. 43; Pais, _Ancient Legends_, chs. v.
and vi.) need not be taken into account.
[502] Pais, _Ancient Legends of Roman History_, ch. v.
[503] See above, p. 130.
[504] This is an inference from the fact that this
Flamen is nowhere mentioned as connected with the
Capitoline cult. Macrob. i. 15, 16, speaks of the ovis
Idulis as sacrificed on every ides _a flamine_, and
this, it is true, took place on the Capitolium (Aust, in
_Lex._ _s.v._ Jupiter, 655), but (1) Festus, 290,
mentions sacerdotes, Ovid, _Fasti_ i. 588, castus
sacerdos only; and (2) this sacrifice may well, as O.
Gilbert conjectured, have originally taken place in the
Regia (_Gesch. und Topogr. Roms_, i. 236). In any case
the Flamen was not in any special sense priest of Iup.
Opt. Max.
[505] The _locus classicus_ for this is Pliny, _N.H._
xxxv. 157. The artist was said to have been one Volcas
of Veii. Ovid, _Fasti_ i. 201, says that the god had in
his hand a _fictile fulmen_. Varro believed this to be
the oldest statue of a god in Rome; see above, p. 146,
and Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 280, accepts
his statement as probably correct.
[506] Cic. _Catil._ iii. 9. 21.
[507] Jordan, _Topogr._ i. 2. pp. 39 and 62, notes. The
most convincing passages quoted by him are Suet. _Aug._
59, and Serv. _Ecl._ iv. 50 (of boys taking toga virilis
who "ad Capitolium eunt"); but was not this to sacrifice
to Liber or Iuventas? _R.F._ p. 56.
[508] Gellius vi. 1. 6, from C. Oppius et Iulius
Hyginus. In his famous character of Scipio (xxvi. 19)
Livy seems to think that Scipio did this to make people
think him superhuman or of divine descent.
[509] Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 158. 257; Virg. _Ecl._ iv. 4,
_Aen._ vi. 42; Marquardt, 352, note 7, for evidence that
the books came to Cumae from Erythrae. See also Diels,
_Sibyllinische Blätter_, p. 80 foll.
LECTURE XI*
CONTACT OF THE OLD AND NEW IN RELIGION
I said at the beginning of my first lecture that Roman religious
experience can be summed up in two stories. The first of these was the
story of the way in which a strong primitive religious instinct, the
desire to put yourself in right relation with the Power manifesting
itself in the universe, _religio_ as the Romans called it, was gradually
soothed and satisfied under the formalising influence of the settled
life of the agricultural family, and still more so under the organising
genius of the early religious rulers of the City-state. This story I
tried to tell in the last few lectures. The second story was to be that
of the gradual discovery of the inadequacy of this early formalised and
organised religion to cope with what we may call new religious
experience; that is, with the difficulties and perils met with by the
Roman people in their extraordinary advance in the world, and with the
new ideas of religion and morals which broke in on them in the course of
their contact with other peoples. This story I wish to tell in the
present course of lectures. It is a long and complicated one, including
the introduction of new rites and ideas of the divine, the anxious
attempts of the religious authorities to put off the evil day by
stretching to the uttermost the capacity of the old forms, and the final
victory of the new ideas as Roman life and thought became gradually
hellenised.
[*] This Lecture was the first of a second and separate
course.
I propose to divide the story thus. In the latter part of this first
lecture I will deal with the first introduction of Greek rites into the
State worship under the directions of the so-called Sibylline books.
Then I will turn to the efforts of the lay priesthoods, pontifices and
augurs, to meet the calls of new experience by formalising the old
religion still more completely in the name of the State, until it became
a mere skeleton of dry bones, without life and power. That will bring us
to the great turning-point in Roman history, the war with Hannibal, to
the religious history of which I shall devote my fourth lecture; and the
fifth will pursue the subject into the century that followed. In the
next lecture I hope to sketch the influence on Roman religious ideas of
the Stoic school of philosophy, and in the seventh to discuss, so far as
I may be able, the tendency towards mysticism prevalent in the last
period of the life of the Republic. My eighth lecture I intend to devote
to the noble attempt of Virgil to combine religion, legend, philosophy,
and consummate art in a splendid appeal to the conscience of the Roman
of that day. Then I turn to the more practical attempt of Augustus to
revive the dying embers of the old religion; and in my last lecture I
shall try to estimate the contribution, such as it was, of the religious
experience we have been discussing, to the early Christian church.
We shall shortly hear so much of petrifaction and disintegration, that
it may be as well, before I actually begin my story, to convince
ourselves that the old religion was in its peculiar way a real
expression of religious feeling, and not merely a set of meaningless
conventions and formulae. It was the positive belief of the later Romans
that both they and their ancestors were _religiosissimi mortales_,[510]
full to the brim, that is, of religious instinct, and most scrupulous in
fulfilling its claims upon them; for the word _religio_ had come, by the
time (and probably long before the time) when it was used by men of
letters, to mean the fulfilment of ritualistic obligation quite as much
as the anxious feeling which had originally suggested it.[511] Cicero,
writing in no rhetorical mood, declared that, as compared with other
peoples, the Romans were far superior "in religione, id est cultu."[512]
This is in his work on the nature of the gods; in an oration he
naturally puts it more strongly: "We have overcome all the nations of
the world, because we have realised that the world is directed and
governed by the will of the gods."[513] Sallust, Livy, and other Roman
prose writers have said much the same thing[514]; the _Aeneid_ as a
whole might be adduced as evidence, and in a less degree all the poets
of the Augustan age. Foreigners, too, were struck with the strange
phenomenon, in an age of philosophic doubt. Polybius in the second
century B.C. declared his opinion that what was reckoned among other
peoples as a thing to be blamed, _deisidaimonia_, both in public and
private life, was really what was holding together the Roman state.[515]
Even in the wild century that followed, Posidonius could repeat the
assertion of Polybius, and in the age of Augustus, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, then resident at Rome, looking back on the early history
of Rome, stated his conviction that one needed to know the _pietas_ of
the Romans in order to understand their wonderful career of
conquest.[516] Aulus Gellius, in a curious passage in which he notes
that the Romans had no deity to whose activity they could with
certainty ascribe earthquakes, describes them as "in constituendis
religionibus atque in dis immortalibus animadvertendis _castissimi
cautissimique_,"--a rhetorical but happy conjunction of epithets. He
means that they would order religious rites, though ignorant of the
_numen_ to whom they were due.[517]
It might be argued that these later writers knew really little or
nothing about the primitive Romans, and that these passages only prove
that this people had an extraordinary scrupulosity about forms and
ceremonies in this as in other departments of action. But the argument
will not hold; the survival of all this formalism into an age of
disintegration really proves beyond a doubt that there must have been a
time when these forms really expressed anxieties, fears, convictions,
the earliest germs of _conscience_.
May we not take the constant occurrence in literature of such phrases as
_dis faventibus_, _dis iuvantibus_ or _volentibus_, as evidence of an
idea deeply rooted at one time in the Roman mind, that nothing should be
undertaken until the will of the deities concerned had been ascertained
and that early form of conscience satisfied? Let us remember that the
whole story of the _Aeneid_ is one of the bending of the will of the
hero, as a type of the ideal Roman, to the ascertainable will of the
powers in the universe.
And we have abundant evidence that as a matter of fact the good-will of
the divine inhabitants of house and city was asked for whenever any kind
of work was undertaken,--even the ordinary routine work of the farm or
of government. In the household every morning some offering with prayer
was made to the Lar familiaris in historical times, and again before the
_cena_, the chief meal of the day.[518] On Kalends, Nones, Ides, and on
all _dies festi_ a _corona_ was placed on the hearth, and prayer was
made to the Lar; we know that this was so in the old Roman home, because
in the second century B.C. Cato instructs the _vilicus_ to discharge
these duties on behalf of the absent or non-resident owner.[519] Before
the flocks were taken out to summer pasture, and doubtless when they
returned, some religious service (so we should call it) was held,[520]
just as in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland the blessing of God is
asked when the cows first ascend to the alpine pastures, and again when
they leave them for the valleys. Before a journey the later Romans
prayed for good fortune;[521] in the old times travelling was of course
unusual, and when it did occur the traveller was surrounded by so many
spiritual as well as material dangers that _special_ religious measures
must have been taken, as by fetials or armies on entering foreign
territory. The survival of the same kind of belief and practice is also
seen in private life in the religious commendations of some authors at
the outset of their literary work; Varro, for example, at the beginning
of his work on agriculture, calls on all the agrarian deities (_iis deis
ad venerationem advocatis_) before he goes on to mention even the
bibliography of his subject.[522] Livy in the last sentence of his
preface would fain imitate the poets in calling on the gods to bless and
favour his undertaking. And in all time of their tribulation, even if
not in all time of their wealth, the pious Romans sought help from the
deities from whom help might be expected; if, at least, the many
instances occurring in Roman poetry may point to a practice of the
ordinary individual and family.[523] So too, if we may judge by many
passages in the plays of Plautus and Terence,[524]--if here we have
genuine Roman usage, as is probable,--the feeling of dependence on a
Power manifesting itself in the affairs of daily life is shown also in
the expression of _thankfulness_ which followed success or escape from
peril. Gratitude was not a prominent characteristic of the Roman, but I
have already remarked on the presence of it in the practice of the
_votum_, and there is at least some evidence that it was recognised as
due to benignant deities as well as human beings.[525]
In public life, throughout Roman history, the forms of religious rites
were maintained on all important occasions. When Varro wrote a little
manual of Senatorial procedure for the benefit of the inexperienced
Pompeius when consul in 70 B.C., he was careful to mention the
preliminary sacrifice and _auspicatio_, performed by the presiding
magistrate, who also had to see that the business _de rebus divinis_
came first on the paper of agenda.[526] At one time every speaker
invoked the gods at the beginning of his oration, as well indeed he
might in a situation so unusual and trying for a Roman before the days
of Greek education; and the earliest speeches preserved in the literary
age, _e.g._ those of Cato and the Gracchi, retained the religious
exordium.[527] We have a trace of the Gracchan practice in a famous
passage at the end of the work called _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ of
_circ._ 82 B.C., where the death of Ti. Gracchus is graphically
described.[528] But there is no need to multiply examples of public
religious formalism on occasions of all kinds, on entering on an office,
founding a colony, leaving Rome for a provincia, and so on; some of them
I have already mentioned, others are familiar to all classical students.
So let us not hesitate for a moment to give this people credit for their
religiousness. True, their neighbours, Greeks like Polybius, approved of
it only with an ironical smile on their lips, as we may smile at the
devoted formalism of extreme Catholic or Protestant, while we
secretly--if we have some sympathy with strangely varying human
nature--admire the confidence and regularity that we cannot ourselves
claim. At the moment where I have thus paused before beginning my second
story, at the end, that is, of the regal period, I believe that this
religious system, though perhaps beginning to harden, still meant a
profound belief in the Power thus manifested in many forms, and an
ardent and effective desire to be in right relation to it. I believe
that it contained the germ of a living and fruitful growth; but that
growth was at this very moment arrested by the beginning of a process of
which I shall have much to say in the next two or three lectures.
But it is hard to realise this better side of the religion of a hard and
practical people, and all the more so since it is the worse side that is
almost always presented to us in modern books. It is hard to realise
that it was not merely a system of insurance, so to speak, against all
kinds of material evils,--and here again all the more so because there
is a tendency just now to reduce both religion and law to an origin in
magic, leaving the religious instinct, the _feeling of dependence_, the
progenitor of conscience, quite out of account. One must indeed be
thoroughly familiar with Roman literature and antiquities to overcome
these difficulties, to discover the spiritual residuum in the Roman
character beneath all its hardness and utilitarianism. Before we pass on
to the task before us, let me make two suggestions for the help of those
who would endeavour to find this spiritual residuum. The first is that
they should consider the history and true meaning of three great words
which Latin language has bequeathed to modern speech,--_religio_, the
feeling of awe, taking practical shape in the performance of authorised
ceremonies; _sacrum_, that which by authoritative usage is made over
without reserve to the divine inhabitants of the city; and last but not
least, _pietas_, the sense of duty to god and man alike, to all divine
and human beings having an authorised claim upon you. And this word
_pietas_ shall introduce my second suggestion--that there is no better
way of getting to understand the spirit of the Roman religion than by
continual study of the _Aeneid_, where the hero is the ideal Roman,
_pius_ in the best and widest sense. What makes the _Aeneid_ so helpful
in this way is the poet's intimate and sympathetic knowledge of the
religious ideas of the Italians, in which we may see reflected those of
the Roman of the age we are now dealing with: his love too of antiquity
and of all ancient rites and legends; and his conviction that the great
work of Rome in the world had been achieved not only by _virtus_ but by
_pietas_. What has been won by _virtus_ must be preserved by _pietas_,
by the sense of duty in family and State,--that is the moral of the
_Aeneid_. In no other work of Roman genius is this idea found in
anything like the same degree of prominence and consistency; and when a
student has steeped his mind well in the details of the Roman worship,
and begins to weary of what must seem its soulless Pharisaism, let him
take up the _Aeneid_ and read it right through for the story and the
characters. I will venture to say that he will think better both of the
Romans and their poet than he ever did before. But of the _Aeneid_ I
shall have more to say later on; at present let us turn to the less
inspiring topics which must occupy us for the next few lectures.
The last fact of Roman religious history which I mentioned last year was
the building of the great Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva, and I then explained why this constituted a religious
revolution. The next temple of which tradition tells us was destined for
another trias, Ceres, Liber, and Libera; the traditional date was 493
B.C., the cause a famine, and the site was at the foot of the Aventine,
the plebeian quarter outside the pomoerium, close to the river where
corn-ships might be moored.[529] Ceres, Liber, and Libera are plainly
neither more nor less than the three Greek corn deities, Demeter,
Dionysus, and Persephone, in a Latin form,[530] whose worship was
prominent in South Italy and Sicily; and unless we throw tradition
overboard entirely, as indeed has often been done, the inference is
obvious that this trias came from the Greeks of the south with an
importation of corn to relieve a famine which pressed especially on the
plebs. It is a fact that the temple and its cult remained always closely
connected with the plebs; they were under the charge of the plebeian
aediles, who also in historical times had the care of the corn-supply
necessary for the city population.[531] Thus, though we need not accept
in full Livy's statement that the very next year corn was imported from
Etruria, Cumae, and Sicily, it cannot be denied that there is a strong
consensus in the various traditions about the temple, which taken
together suggest a Greek, non-patrician, and early origin. That the cult
had at all times a Greek character is undisputed fact.
But I am not so much concerned with the temple itself as with the date
and the manner of its foundation. It was said to have been founded in
the year 496, and dedicated in 493, in obedience to directions found in
"the Sibylline books," which books, according to the well-known
tradition, had been acquired by the last Tarquin, after some haggling,
from an old woman, and placed in the charge of _duoviri sacris
faciundis_. The story itself is worthless in detail; but the question
for us is whether it can be taken as showing that the Sibylline
influence then pervading the Greek world gained a footing at Rome in any
form so early as this. Was the temple really founded in 496, or at some
time thereabout? And was it founded in obedience to some Sibylline
direction? These questions are of real importance, for upon our answer
to them depends the date of the beginning of a gradual metamorphosis of
the Roman religious practice. The so-called Sibylline books and their
keepers were responsible, as we shall see directly, for the introduction
at Rome of what was known as the _Graecus ritus_,--for the foundation of
temples to deities of Greek origin, and for other rites which initiated
an entirely new type of religious feeling. We need to be sure when all
this began.
In the first place, so far as I can judge, it is almost impossible to
dissociate the origin of the temple from Sibylline influence. As we have
seen, the cult was Greek, and all such Greek cults of later times were
introduced by the keepers of the Sibylline books; and further, the
records of temple foundations were among the most carefully preserved
facts in Roman annals.[532] I think it is hardly possible to suppose
that a cult which came, not from Latium or southern Etruria, like those
of Diana, Minerva, and the Capitoline deities, but from some Greek
region to the south, and probably from Sicily, could have been
introduced by Roman authorities unaided by Greek influence. If that be
so, and if we can show that the temple really belongs to this early age,
then we have a strong probability that the Sibylline influence gained a
footing at Rome at the very beginning of the republican period.[533]
There is one curious fact in connection with the temple that in my
opinion goes far to prove that the traditional date is not far out.
Pliny tells us explicitly that the two Greek artists who decorated the
temple, Damophilus and Gorgasus, inscribed their names on the walls, and
he added that the work of the former would be found on the right and
that of the latter on the left.[534] Nothing more is known about them;
but I am assured that the fact that they signed their names and added
these statements suits the character of Greek art in the archaic age 580
to 450 B.C. No signatures of artists are known earlier than about 580;
then comes a period when signatures are found, sometimes with statements
such as these. And lastly, about 450, we begin to find simple signatures
without any other words.[535] Thus the presumption is a strong one that
the temple belongs to a time earlier than 450; and if that be so, then I
think the inference holds good that the Sibyl first gained a footing at
Rome about the same time. There are indeed some reasons why we should
not put this event in the period of the kings;[536] but if we accept the
traditional date of the temple we may put it any time between 509 and
496.
I have purposely used vague terms, such as Sibylline _influence_,
instead of speaking in the old manner of Sibylline _books_ or oracles,
because it is almost incredible that at so early a date it could have
been possible to divulge any contents of a store of writings such as
must have been most carefully treasured and concealed. This has been
shown conclusively to be out of the question in Diels' now famous little
book "_Sibylline Leaves_." But we may also follow Diels in assuming that
about the end of the sixth century some kind of Greek oracle or oracular
saying did actually arrive at Rome, purporting to be an utterance of the
famous Sibyl of Cumae.[537]
But what _was_ this Sibylline influence which thus penetrated to Rome,
if I am right, at the beginning of the fifth century? It is no part of
my design to discuss the history of Greek mysticism, though we shall
hear something more of it in a later lecture. It will be enough to
remind you that in the sixth century Greece was not only full of Orphism
and Pythagoreanism, but of floating oracular _dicta_ believed to emanate
from a mystic female figure, a weird figure of whom it is hard to say
how far she was human or divine; and of whose origin we know nothing,
except that her original home was, as we might expect, Asia Minor. She
was inspired by Apollo,[538] it was said, like the Pythia, and like her
too became [Greek: entheos] (_possessed_) when uttering her prophecies;
this is the earliest fact we know about her, for a famous fragment of
Heracleitus represents her as uttering sayings "with frenzied
lips,"[539]--a tradition of which Virgil has made good use in the sixth
_Aeneid_:
non vultus, non color unus,
non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,
et rabie fera corda tument.
But more to our purpose is the sober judgment of Plato a century after
the first Roman experience of her, who in the _Phaedrus_ classes her
among those who have wrought _much good_ by their inspired
utterances.[540] This passage may help us to understand how ready men
were at that time to turn for aid in tribulation to what they believed
to be divine help, to an inspired wisdom beyond the range of the local
deities of their own city-states.
This Sibyl became gradually localised in certain Greek cities, and
thereby broke up, as it were, into several Sibyls. One of these
Sibylline homes was at Cumae in Campania, the oldest Greek city in
Italy, and this enables us to explain easily how the name and fame of
the Sibyl reached Rome. Dim as is all early Roman history, the one clear
fact of the sixth century is, as we have seen, the rapid advance of the
Etruscans, their occupation of Rome, Praeneste, and other Latin cities,
and their conquest of Campania, which is now ascribed to that same
age.[541] Legend told in later days how the last Etruscan king had taken
refuge at Cumae after his expulsion from Rome, and it is just possible
that it may here be founding upon some dim recollection of a fact.
However this may be, it is plain that it was through the great Etruscan
disturbance of that period that Rome came to make trial of Sibylline
utterances. In a moment of distress--the famine of which I spoke just
now, and which I take to be historical because the remedy, the temple
under the Aventine, was so closely connected with the corn-supply--she
sent for or admitted an utterance of the Sibyl of Cumae, with whom she
had come into some kind of contact through her Etruscan kings.
Let us consider that this foreign dynasty must have brought a new
population to the city on the Tiber, the chief strategic point of middle
Italy,--a new element of plebs, whatever the old one may have been.[542]
We have seen signs, even in the religious history of this age, that
commerce and industry were increasing, and that their increase was due
to a movement from without, rather than to the old patrician _gentes_.
When the Etruscan dynasty fell and the old patrician influence was
restored, the government must have been face to face with new
difficulties, and among them the supply of corn for an increasing
population in years of bad harvest. With a fresh source of supply from
the south came the cult of the Greek corn-deities at the bidding of a
Sibylline utterance; and henceforward that remedy was available for
other troubles. But the patrician rulers of Rome were true, it would
seem, as far as was possible, to the old ways, and for a long time they
used this foreign remedy very sparingly. At what date the utterances
were collected in "books" and deposited in the Capitoline temple we do
not know, nor have we any certain knowledge of their original nature or
form. Tradition said that the collection dated from the last king's
reign, and that it was placed in the care of _duoviri sacris faciundis_,
as we have seen, who in 367 B.C. gave way to _decemviri_, five of whom
might be members of the plebs. I am myself inclined to conjecture that
this comparatively late date may be the real date of the origin of a
_permanent collection_ and a _permanent college of keepers_, and that
the earlier _duoviri_ were only temporary religious officers, _sacris
faciundis_, _i.e._ for the carrying out of the directions of Sibylline
utterances specially sought for at Cumae. They would thus be of the same
class as other special commissions appointed by the Senate for
administrative purposes;[543] while the decemviri, though retaining the
old title, were permanent religious officers appointed to collect and
take charge of a new and important set of regulations for the benefit of
the community, and one which concerned the plebs at least as much as the
patricians.
But I must turn to the more important question how far, down to the war
with Hannibal, when I shall take up the subject afresh, the Roman
religion was affected for good or harm by these utterances and their
keepers. They took effect in two ways: either by introducing new deities
and settling them in new temples, or by ordering and organising new
ceremonies such as Rome had never seen before.
The introduction of a new deity now and again was not of great account
from the point of view of religion, except in so far as it encouraged
the new ceremonies; the Romans had never taken much personal interest in
their deities, and the arrival (outside the pomoerium in each case) of
Hermes under the name of Mercurius, or Poseidon bearing the name of the
old Roman water _numen_ Neptunus, or even of Asclepios with a Romanised
name Aesculapius, would not be likely to affect greatly their ideas of
the divine. These facts have rather a historical than a religious
significance; Hermes Empolaios, for example, suggests trade with Greek
cities, perhaps in grain,[544] and belongs therefore to the same class
as Ceres, Liber, Libera, of whom I have already spoken. The arrival of
Poseidon-Neptune may mean, as Dr. Carter has suggested, a kind of
"marine insurance" for the vessels carrying the grain from Greek
ports.[545] The settling of Aesculapius in the Tiber island in 293, as
the result of a terrible pestilence, is interesting as being the first
fact known to us in the history of medicine at Rome; the temple became a
kind of hospital on the model of Epidaurus, where the god had been
brought in the form of a snake by an embassy sent for the purpose, and
the priests who served it were probably Greeks skilled in the healing
art.[546] This last case is a curious example of new Roman religious
experience, but it can hardly be said to have any deep significance in
the religious history of Rome. Of the obliteration of the old _numen_
Neptunus by the Greek god who took his name we know nothing for good or
ill; we are ignorant of the real meaning of the old _numen_, and cannot
tell whether the loss of him was compensated by the usefulness of his
name in Roman literature to represent the Greek god of the sea.
Let us turn to the much more important subject of the new ceremonies
ordered by the Sibylline "books." The first authentic case of such
innovation occurred in 399 B.C., during the long and troublesome siege
of the dangerous neighbour city Veii; I call it authentic because all
the best modern authorities so reckon it, though it occurred before the
destruction of old records during the capture of the city by the Gauls.
The circumstances were such as to fix themselves in the memory of the
people, and in one way or another they found their way into the earliest
annals, probably those of Fabius Pictor, composed during the Second
Punic War.[547]
The previous winter, Livy tells us,[548] was one of extraordinary
severity; the roads were blocked with snow, and navigation on the Tiber
stopped by the ice. This miserable winter was followed too suddenly by a
hot season, in which a plague broke out which consumed both man and
beast, and continued so persistently that the Senate ordered the
Sibylline books to be consulted. This persistence is the first point we
should notice; "Cuius insanabili pernicie quando nec causa nec finis
inveniebatur,"--so wrote Livy, evidently meaning to express an extremity
of trouble which would not give way to ordinary religious remedies. We
may compare his account of the next recorded consultation of the books
(Livy vii. 2), when neither the old rites nor even the new ones were
sufficient to secure the _pax deorum_ and abate another pestilence, and
recourse was had to yet another remedy in the form of _ludi scenici_.
The times were out of joint,--the peace of the gods was broken, and thus
the community was no longer in right relation to the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. The result was a revival of _religio_, of the
feeling of alarm and anxiety out of which the whole religious system had
grown. The old deities might seem to be forsaking their functions, since
the old rites had ceased to appeal to them. Mysterious and persistent
pestilence is a great tamer of human courage; it is a new experience
that man knows not how to meet, and in ancient life it was also a new
_religious_ experience.
The remedy was as new as the pestilence, and almost as pernicious.
During eight days Rome saw three pairs of deities reclining in the form
of images on couches, before which were spread tables covered with food
and drink. Whether in this first case they were taken out of the temples
and exposed to view in certain places, _e.g._ the forum, is not clear;
later on, in the days of _supplicationes_, of which more will be said
presently, they were visited in procession. The three pairs were Apollo
and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus; all of them
Greek, or, as in the case of Diana, Mercurius, and Neptunus, Roman
deities in their new Greek form. We cannot trace the special
applicability of all of them to the trouble they were thus invoked to
appease,--another point that suggests a complete revolution in the Roman
ways of contemplating divine beings. These are not functional _numina_,
but foreigners whose ways were only known to the manipulators of the
Sibylline utterances. They seem like quack remedies, of which the action
is unknown to the consumer.
New also, but better in its effect, was the publicity of these
proceedings, and the part taken in them by the whole population,
patrician and plebeian, men, women, and children. If we can trust Livy's
further statements, every one left his door open and kept open house,
inviting all to come in, whether known or unknown; all old quarrels were
made up, and no new ones suffered to begin; prisoners were freed from
their chains, and universal good-will prevailed. These eight days were
in fact kept as holidays, and doubtless by the novelty of the whole
scene the astute authorities hoped to inspire fresh hope and confidence,
and to divert attention from the prevailing misery, just as our soldiers
in India are induced to forget the presence of cholera in a station by
constant games and amusements. That this was really one leading object
of the whole show is not generally recognised by historians; but it
seems fully explained by the fact I mentioned just now, that in the
similar trouble of 349 B.C. recourse was had for the first time to _ludi
scenici_ in order to amuse the people. In the history of the Hannibalic
war we shall have plenty of opportunity of noting this kind of
expedient. The Roman people, we must remember, were getting more and
more to be inhabitants of a large city, and, as such, to seek for
entertainment, like all citizens in all ages. The religious rites of the
old calendar were perhaps by this time getting too familiar, losing
their original meaning; whether they had ever been very entertaining to
a city population may be doubted. Something more showy was needed;
processions had always been to the taste of the Roman, and banquets,
such as the epulum Iovis, which I have already noticed, often
accompanied the processions.
Now, this love of show and novelty, of which we have abundant evidence
later on as a Roman characteristic, taken together with the anxiety and
alarm--the new _religio_--arising from the pestilence, will sufficiently
explain the _lectisternia_, as these shows were called. We have here in
fact the first appearance, constantly recurring in later Roman history,
of a tendency to seek not only for novelty, but for a more emotional
expression of religious feeling than was afforded by the old forms of
sacrifice and prayer, conducted as they were by the priest on behalf of
the community without its active participation. Those old forms might do
for the old patrician community of farmers and warriors, but not so well
for the new and ever-increasing population of artisans and other
workmen, whether of Roman or foreign descent. It would seem, indeed, as
if the sensitiveness of the human fibre of a primitive community
increases with its increasing complexity, and with the greater variety
of experience to which it is exposed; and in the case of Rome, as if the
simple ancient methods of dealing with the divine inhabitants of the
city were no longer adequate to the needs of a State which was steering
its way to empire among so many difficulties and perils. It is not
indeed certain that the new rites, or some points in them, may not have
had their prototypes in old Italian usage, though the _lectisternia_,
the actual display of gods in human form and in need of food like human
beings, are almost certainly Greek in origin.[549] But so far as we can
guess, the emotional element was wholly new. True, Livy tells us in two
passages of his third book of occasions when men, women, and children
flocked to all the shrines (_omnia delubra_) seeking for the _pax
deorum_ at the invitation of the senate; but the early date, the great
improbability of the senate taking any such step, and the absence of any
mention of the priesthoods, makes it difficult to believe that these
assertions are based on any genuine record. We must be content to mark
the first _lectisternia_ in 399 as the earliest authentic example of the
emotional tendency of the Roman plebs.[550]
If we can judge of this period of Roman religious history by the general
tendency of the policy of the Roman government, we may see here a
deliberate attempt to include the new population in worship of a kind
that would calm its fears, engage its attention, and satisfy its
emotion, while leaving uncontaminated the old ritual that had served the
State so long. If this conclusion be a right one, then we must allow
that the new ceremonial had its use. Dr. Frazer has lately told us in
his eloquent and persuasive way, of how much value superstition has been
in building up moral habits and the instinct of submission to civil
order. His thesis might be illustrated adequately from the history of
Rome alone. But from a purely religious point of view the story of the
_lectisternia_ is a sad one. The old Roman invisible _numen_, working
with force in a particular department of human life and its environment,
was a far nobler mental conception, and far more likely to grow into a
power for good, than the miserable images of Graeco-Roman full-blown
gods and goddesses reclining on their couches and appearing to partake
of dinner like a human citizen. Such ideas of the divine must have
forced men's religious ideas clean away from the Power manifesting
itself in the universe, and must have dragged down the Roman _numina_
with them in their corrupting degradation. According to our definition
of it, religion was now in a fair way to disappear altogether; what was
destined to take its place was not really religion at all. Nor did it in
any way assist the growth of an individual conscience, as perhaps did
some of the later religious forms introduced from without. It was of
value for the moment to the State, in satisfying a population greatly
disturbed by untoward events; and that was all.
Closely connected with the _lectisternia_, and following close upon them
in chronological order, were the processional ceremonies called
_supplicationes_. The historical relation between the two is by no means
clear; but if we conclude, as I am fairly sure we may, that the
_lectisternia_ were shows of a joyful character, accompanied, as Livy
describes the first one, with private entertainments, and meant to keep
up the spirits of the plebeian population, and if we then turn to the
early _supplicationes_, in which men, women, and children, _coronati_,
and carrying laurel branches, went in procession to the temples, and
there prostrated themselves after the Greek fashion, the women "crinibus
passis aras verrentes," we shall be disposed to look on them as, in
origin at least, distinct from each other.[551] We may conjecture that
the appearance of the gods in human form at the doors of their temples
suggested to the plebeian women a kind of emotional worship which was
alien to the old Roman feeling, but familiar enough to those (and they
must have been many) who knew the life of the Greek cities of Italy. It
may be that they had tried it even in earlier times; but anyhow, in the
fourth and third centuries B.C. advantage was taken of the _pulvinaria_
to use them as stopping-places in the procession of a _supplicatio_, and
the phrase becomes a common one in the annals, "supplicatio ad omnia
pulvinaria indicta." The _lectisternia_ were ordered five times in the
fourth century;[552] by that time, it would seem likely, the
_supplicationes_ had become an authorised institution, and had perhaps
embodied the practice of _lectisternia_ in the way suggested above. We
shall meet with them again when we come to the religious history of the
war with Hannibal.
One word more before I leave this subject for the present. In all this
innovation we must not forget to note the growth of individual feeling
as distinguished from the old worship of civic grouping, in which the
individual, as such, was of little or no account. I pointed out the
first signs of this individualism when speaking of the temple of the
Capitoline Jupiter, and we shall have reason to mark its rapid growth
further. We are now, in fact, and must realise that we are, in a period
in which, throughout the Graeco-Roman world, the need was beginning to
be felt of some new rule of individualistic morality. The Roman
population, now recruited from many sources, was but reflecting this
need unconsciously when it insisted on new emotional rites and
expiations. The Roman authorities were forced to satisfy the demand; but
in doing so they made no real contribution to the history of Roman
religious experience. It was impossible that they should do so; they
represented the old civic form of religion, "bound up with the life of a
society, and unable to contemplate the individual except as a member of
it."[553] The new forms of worship, the _supplicatio_ and
_lectisternium_, could not be, as the old forms had in some sense been,
the consecration of civic and national life. They were to the Romans as
the worship of Baal to the Jews of the time of the Kings; and, unlike
that poisonous cult, they could never be rooted out.[554][555]
NOTES TO LECTURE XI
[510] This is the expression of Sallust, _Catil._ 12. 3.
[511] See my paper on the Latin history of the word
_religio_, in _Transactions of the Congress for the
History of Religions_, 1909, vol. ii. p. 172. W. Otto in
_Archiv_, 1909, p. 533 foll.
[512] Cic. _de Nat. Deorum_, ii. 8.
[513] Cic. _Harusp. resp._ 19.
[514] Livy xliv. 1. 11; Sallust, _l.c._; Gellius, _Noct.
Att._ ii. 28. 2.
[515] Polyb. vi. 56.
[516] Posidonius ap. Athenaeum vi. 274 A; Dion.
Hal. ii. 27. 3.
[517] Gell. ii. 28.
[518] Marquardt, iii. 126.
[519] Cato, _R.R._ 142.
[520] Calpurnius, _Eclogue_, v. 24. I have described a
similar scene in the Alps in _A Year with the Birds_,
ed. 2, p. 126.
[521] Petronius, _Sat._ 117: "His ita ordinatis, quod
bene feliciterque eveniret precati deos, viam
ingredimur." I owe this reference, as others in this
context, to Appel's treatise _de Romanorum
precationibus_, p. 56 foll.
[522] Varro, _R.R._ i. 1.
[523] _e.g._ Virg. _Aen._ v. 685 (Aeneas during the
burning of the fleet); _Aen._ xii. 776 (Turnus in
extremity). Cp. Tibull. iii. 5. 6 (in sickness).
[524] A good example is _Captivi_, 922: "Iovi disque ago
gratias merito magnas quom te redducem tuo patri
reddiderunt," etc.
[525] For gratitude to human beings see Valerius Maximus
v. 2. A good example of gratitude to a deity is in Gell.
_N.A._ iv. 18; but it is told of Scipio the elder, who
was eccentric for a Roman. When accused by a tribune of
peculation in Asia he said, "Non igitur simus adversum
deos ingrati et, censeo, relinquamus nebulonem hunc,
eamus hinc protinus Iovi Optimo Maximo gratulatum."
Public gratitude to the gods is frequent in later
_supplicationes_, _e.g._ Livy xxx. 17. 6.
[526] Gellius, _N.A._ xiv. 7. 9.
[527] Servius ad _Aen._ xi. 301 ("praefatus divos solio
rex infit ab alto").
[528] This was in a _contio_: "Cum Gracchus deos
inciperet precari." See above, Lecture VII. note 13.
[529] See _R.F._ p. 74 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 243.
For the relation of the pomoerium to the wall, see
above, p. 94.
[530] The process is amusingly explained by Carter in
_The Religion of Numa_, p. 72 foll.
[531] _R.F._ p. 75.
[532] See Aust, _De aedibus sacris P.R._, passim.
[533] Lately this has been denied by Pais, _Storia di
Roma_, i. 339.
[534] Pliny, _N.H._ 35, 154.
[535] I owe the information to my friend Prof. Percy
Gardner.
[536] See Carter, _op. cit._ p. 66; but I am not sure
that his reasons are conclusive.
[537] Diels, _Sibyllinische Blätter_, p. 6 foll., and
cp. 79.
[538] It should be noted that the cult of Apollo in Rome
was older than the introduction of Sibylline influence;
so at least it is generally assumed. Wissowa, however
(_R.K._ p. 239), puts it as "gleichzeitig." The date of
the Apollinar in pratis Flaminiis, the oldest Apolline
fanum in Rome (outside pomoerium), is unknown; that of
the temple on the same site was 431 (Livy iv. 25 and
29). There is little doubt that the Apollo-cult spread
from Cumae northwards, and was by this time well
established in Italy. (The foundation of the temple of
431, consisting of opus quadratum, still in part
survives: Hülsen-Jordan, _Rom. Topographie_, iii. 535).
[539] Heracleitus, _fragm._ xii., ed. Bywater.
[540] _Phaedrus_, p. 244.
[541] So Korte in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._
"Etrusker."
[542] The present tendency is to take the plebs as
representing an older population of Latium before the
arrival of the patricians; see, _e.g._, Binder, _Die
Plebs_, p. 358 foll. But the plebs of later days is not
to be explained on one hypothesis only.
[543] _e.g._ in religious matters the _duoviri aedi
dedicandae_; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, ii. 601 foll.
[544] Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 77 foll. It is
uncertain whether there was a Roman Mercurius of earlier
origin, or whether the name Mercurius (_i.e._ concerned
in trade) was a new invention to avoid using the Greek
name, as in the case of the trias Ceres, Liber, Libera.
[545] Carter, _op. cit._ 81. The connection of this
Poseidon-Neptunus and Hermes-Mercurius is confirmed by
the fact that the two were paired in the first
_lectisternium_, 399 B.C. Livy v. 13.
[546] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 254.
[547] See Diels, _Sib. Blätter_, p. 12, note 1.
[548] Livy v. 13.
[549] I have discussed the possibility of the epulum
Iovis being an old Italian rite in _R.F._ p. 215 foll.
For the Greek origin of these shows see _Dict. of
Antiquities_, ed. 2, _s.v._ "lectisternia."
[550] Livy iii. 5. 14, and 7. 7.
[551] The plebeian tendencies of the time are suggested,
_e.g._, by the fact that immediately before the first
_lectisternium_ a plebeian was elected military tribune
(Livy v. 13). The fourth century is of course the period
of plebeian advance in all departments, and ends with
the opening of the priesthoods to the plebs by the lex
Ogulnia, and the publication of the Fasti. Plebeian too,
I suspect, was the keeping open house and promiscuous
hospitality which is recorded by Livy of the first
_lectisternia_; this was the practice of the plebs on
the Cerealia (April 19), and was perhaps an old custom
connected with the supply of corn and the temple of
Ceres (see above, p. 255). It was not imitated by the
patrician society, with its reserve and exclusiveness,
till the institution of the Megalesia in 204 B.C. See
Gellius xviii. 2. 11.
[552] The expression _crinibus demissis_ is found in a
lex regia (Festus, _s.v._ "pellices"); the harlot who
touches Juno's altar has to offer a lamb to Juno
"crinibus demissis." This is therefore Roman practice.
[553] For the _supplicationes_ see Wissowa, _R.K._ 357
foll.; Marq. 48 and 188; and the author's article in
_Dict. of Antiquities_. The passages already referred to
as doubtful evidence (Livy iii. 5. 14, 7. 7) describe
all the features of the _supplicatio_ as early as the
first half of the fifth century. A list of later
passages in Livy will be found in Marq. 49, note 4. On
the whole I doubt if much was made of these rites before
the third century and the Punic wars.
[554] Wissowa, _R.K._ 356, note 7.
[555] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 46.
LECTURE XII
THE PONTIFICES AND THE SECULARISATION OF RELIGION
In the last lecture we saw how the new experiences of the Roman people,
during the period from the abolition of the kingship to the war with
Hannibal, led to the introduction of foreign deities and showy
ceremonies of a character quite strange to the old religion. But there
was another process going on at the same time. The authorities of that
old religion were full of vigour in this same period; it may even be
said, that as far as we can trace their activity in the dim light of
those early days, they made themselves almost supreme in the State. And
the result was, in brief, that religion became more and more a matter of
State administration, and thereby lost its chance of developing the
conscience of the individual. It is indeed quite possible, as has
recently been maintained,[556] that it stood actively in the way of such
development. I have no doubt that there was a germ of conscience, of
moral feeling, in the _religio_ of old days--the feeling of anxiety and
doubt which originally suggested the _cura_ and _caerimonia_ of the
State; but the efforts of the authorities in this period were spent in
gradually destroying that germ. True, they did not interfere with the
simple religion of the family, which had its value all through Roman
history; but the attitude of the individual towards public worship will
react on his attitude towards private worship, which may also have lost
some part of its vitality in this period.
The religious authorities of which I speak are of course the two great
colleges of pontifices and augurs. Of the latter, and of the system of
divination of which they held the secrets, I will speak in the next
lecture. Here we have to do with the pontifices and their work in this
period, a thorny and somewhat technical subject, but a most important
one for the history of Roman religious experience.
I have so far assumed that this college existed in the age of the kings,
and assisted the Rex in the administration of the _ius divinum_. It is
legitimate to do this, but as a matter of fact we do not know for
certain what was the origin of the college itself, or of its mysterious
name. In the period we have now reached we come, however, upon a
striking fact, which is luckily easy to interpret; the king's house, the
_Regia_, has become the office of the head of the college, the pontifex
maximus, and also the meeting-place of the college for business.[557]
Obviously this head, whether or no he existed during the kingly period,
has stepped into the place of the Rex in the control of the _ius
divinum_. Again, we know that in the third century B.C., when written
history begins, the pontifices and their head had reached a very high
level of power, as we shall presently see more in detail; the process of
the growth of this power must therefore lie in the two preceding
centuries, during which Rome was slowly attaining that paramount
position in Italy in which we find her at the time of the Punic wars.
Thirdly, we know that in that third century B.C. the college was laid
open to plebeians as well as to members of the old patrician gentes, and
that one of the most famous of all its many distinguished heads was not
only not a patrician, but a Latin from Cameria, Ti. Coruncanius. Putting
these three facts together we can divine in outline the history of the
pontifices during these two centuries. With the instinct for order and
organisation that never failed them, the Romans have constructed a
_permanent_ power to take charge of their _ius divinum_, _i.e._ all
their relations to the deities with whom they must maintain a _pax_; the
circumstances of their career during two centuries have exalted this
power to an extraordinary degree of influence, direct and indirect,
internal and external; and, lastly, in a period which saw the gradual
amalgamation into a unified whole of privileged and unprivileged,
_patres_ and _plebs_, they have with wonderful wisdom thrown open to all
citizens the administration of that _ius_ which was essential to the
welfare of the united community. These are indisputable facts; and they
are thoroughly characteristic of the practical wisdom of the Roman
people in that early age.
In order to understand how the pontifices attained their great position,
the one thing needful is to examine the nature of their work. This I
propose to do next, and then to attempt to sum up the result of their
activity on the Roman religious system.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the college in the
early history of Roman law; and for us in particular that importance
lies in the fact that they were the sole depositaries of the religious
law in the period during which the civil law was being slowly
disentangled from it. If we look at the so-called _leges regiae_, which
are probably the oldest rules of law that have come down to us (though
they may have been made into a collection as late as the very end of the
Republic),[558] we see at once that they belong to the _ius divinum_;
and there is little doubt that they were extracted from those books of
the pontifices which I shall have to explain later on.[559] In other
words, it is the maintenance of the _pax deorum_ that they are chiefly
concerned with; the crime of the citizen is a violation of that _pax_,
and the deity most concerned will punish the community unless some
expiatory step is taken to re-establish the right relation between the
human and divine inhabitants of the city. "Pellex aram Iunonis ne
tangito; si tanget, Iunoni crinibus demissis agnum feminam caedito." "Si
parentem puer verberit, ast olle plorassit, puer divis parentum sacer
esto."[560] The harlot who touches the altar of Juno, the deity of
married women, breaks the _pax_ with that deity, and she must offer a
piacular sacrifice to renew it; the son who strikes a parent is made
over as the property of the _divi parentum_, _i.e._ those of the whole
community,[561] the peaceful relation with whom his act has imperilled.
With such rules as these the civil magistrate of the republic can have
had nothing to do; they belong to an older period of thought and of
government, and survived in the books of the college which under the
republic continued to administer the _ius divinum_; for these rules
doubtless continued to exist side by side with the civil law as it
gradually developed itself, and the necessary modes of expiation were
known to the pontifices only. Roman society was indeed so deeply
penetrated for many ages with the idea of _religio_--the dread of
violating the _pax deorum_,--that the idea of law as a matter of the
relation of man to man, as "the interference of the State in the
passions and interests of humanity only," must have gained ground by
very slow degrees. This primitive religious law then, _i.e._ the
regulation of the proper steps to be taken to avoid a breach of the _pax
deorum_, was entirely in the hands of the religious authorities, the Rex
at first and then the pontifices, as the only experts who could know the
secrets of the _ius divinum_; and from their decisions and prescriptions
there could be no appeal, simply because there was no individual or body
in the State to whom an appeal was conceivable. But after the rule of
the Etruscan kings, with all its disturbing influences, and after the
revolution which got rid of them, there must have been an age of new
ideas and increased mental activity, and also of increasing social
complexity, the signs of which in the way of trade and industry we have
already found in certain facts of religious history. In the domain of
law this meant new problems, new difficulties; and these were met in the
middle of the fifth century B.C., if the received chronology is to be
accepted,[562] by the publication of the XII. Tables.
In order to get some idea of the work of the pontifices at this time,
let us consider one or two of these difficulties and problems.
Within the family every act, every relation, was matter of religion; the
_numina_ had to be considered in regard to it. The end and aim, then as
throughout Roman history, was the maintenance of the _sacra_ of the
family, without which it could not be conceived as existing--the due
worship of its deities, and the religious care of its dead. Take
marriage as an example: "the entry of a bride into the household--of one
who as yet had no lot in the family life--meant some straining of the
relation between the divine and human members,"[563] and the human part
of the family must be assured that the divine part is willing to accept
her before the step can be regarded as complete. She has to enter the
family in such a way as to share in its _sacra_; and if _confarreatio_
was (as we may believe) the oldest form of patrician marriage,[564] the
bride was subjected to a ceremony which was plainly of a sacramental
character--the sacred cake of _far_ being partaken of by both bride and
bridegroom in the presence of the highest religious authority of the
State. In the simplest form of society there would be no call for
further priestly interference in marriage; but in a society growing more
numerous and complex, exceptions, abnormal conditions begin to show
themselves, and new problems arise, which must be solved by new
expedients, prescriptions, permissions, devices, or fictions. For these
the religious authorities are solely responsible; for what is a matter
of religious interest to the family is also matter of religious interest
to the State, simply because the State is composed of families in the
same sense as the human body is composed of cellular tissue. All this,
we believe, was once the work of the Rex, perhaps with the college of
pontifices to help him; when the kingship disappeared it became the work
of that college solely, with the pontifex maximus as the chief
authority.
So, too, in all other questions which concerned the maintenance of the
family, and especially in regard to the devolution of property. I am
here only illustrating the way in which the pontifical college acquired
their paramount influence by having a quantity of new and difficult work
forced upon them, and it is not part of my plan to explain the early
history of adoptions and wills; but I may give a single concrete
illustration for the benefit of those who are not versed in Roman law.
It must constantly have happened, in that disturbed period which brought
the kingship to an end, that by death or capture in war a family was
left without male heirs. Daughters could not take their place, because
the _sacra_ of a family could not be maintained by daughters, who would,
in the natural order of things, be sooner or later married and so become
members of other families. Hence the expedient was adopted of making a
_filius familias_ of another family a member of your own; and this, like
marriage, involved a straining of the relations between the human and
divine members of your family, and was thus a matter for the religious
authorities to contrive in such a manner as to preserve the _pax_
between them. The difficulty was overcome by the practical wisdom of the
pontifical college, which held a solemn inquiry into the case before
submitting it to the people in specially summoned assembly (_comitia
calata_);[565] and thus the new _filius familias_ was enabled not only
to renounce his own _sacra_ (_detestatio sacrorum_), but to pass into
the guardianship of another set of _sacra_, without incurring the anger
of the _numina_ concerned with the welfare of either.
Such difficult matters as these, and many more connected directly or
indirectly with the devolution of property, such as the guardianship of
women and of the incapable, the power to dispose of property otherwise
than by the original rules of succession, the law of burial and the care
of the dead,--all these, at the time of which I am speaking, must have
been among the secrets of the pontifices; and we can also suspect,
though without being sure of our facts, that the great increase of the
importance of the _plebs_ under the Etruscan dynasty offered further
opportunities for the growth alike of the work and influence of the
college.[566] Above all, we must remember that this work was done in
secret, that the mysteries of adjustment were unknown to the people when
once they had passed out of the ken of family and gens, and that there
could have been no appeal from the pontifices to any other body. Nay,
more, we must also bear in mind that this body of religious experts was
_self-electing_. Until the lex Domitia of 104 B.C. both pontifices and
augurs filled up their own colleges with persons whom they believed
qualified both by knowledge and disposition. Thus it would seem that
there was every chance that in that early Rome, where neither in family
nor State could anything be undertaken without some reference to the
religious authority, where the _pax deorum_ was the one essential object
of public and private life, a power might be developed apt one day not
only to petrify religion and stultify its worshippers, but thereby also
to cramp the energies of the community, acting as an obstacle to its
development within its walls and without. Had Roman law remained
entirely in the hands of this self-electing college, one of two things
must have happened: either that college would have become purely secular
in character, or the wonderful legal system that we still enjoy would
never have had space to grow up. But this was not to be; with the
publication of the XII. Tables a new era opens.
If we reject, as we conscientiously may, the latest attempts of
criticism to post-date the drawing up of the Tables,[567] and in fact to
destroy their historical value for us, what is their significance for
our present purpose? It is simply that in the middle of the fifth
century B.C. the pontifices lost a monopoly--ceased to be the sole
depositaries of the rules of law affecting the _pax deorum_, and that
new rules are being set down in writing, on the basis of old custom,
which more especially affect the relations between the human citizens.
For both the _ius divinum_ and the _ius civile_ are to be found in this
collection, but the latter is beginning to assert its independence. I
think we may say, without much hesitation, that this event, however
doubtful its traditional details, did actually save Rome from either of
the two consequences to which I alluded just now. The constitution
developed itself on lay and not on ecclesiastical lines, leaving the
pontifices other work to do, and Roman civil law was eventually able to
free itself from the trammels of the _ius divinum_.
But for another century the college still found abundant legal work to
do, for it was not likely that at Rome, the most conservative of all
city-states, it could be quickly set aside, or that the old ideas of law
could so speedily disappear. What then was this work?
When rules of civil law were written down, it was still necessary to
deal with them in two ways which were open to the pontifices, and indeed
at this early time to no one else. First, it was necessary to make their
provisions effectual by prescribing in each case the proper method of
procedure (_actio_). Now it is most important to grasp the fact that
procedure in the _ius civile_ was originally of precisely the same
nature as procedure in the _ius divinum_, and that precisely the same
rigid exactness is indispensable in both. Action and formula in civil
law belong to the same class of practices as sacrifice and prayer in
religious law, and spring from the same mental soil. Thus, for example,
the most familiar case of action and formula in civil law, the
_sacramentum_, was, as the name proves, a piece of religious procedure,
_i.e._ the deposition in a sacred spot of a sum of money which the
suitor in the case would forfeit if he lost it, together with the
utterance of a certain formula of words which must be correctly spoken.
If we choose to go back so far, we may even see in this combination of
formularised act and speech a survival of magical or quasi-magical
belief;[568] but this is matter rather for the anthropologist than the
historian of religion. The point for us at this moment is that these
acts and formulae (_legis actiones_, as they are known in Roman law)
could not suddenly or rapidly pass out of the hands of that body of
skilled experts which had so long been in sole possession of them; the
publication of old and new rules of law in the XII. Tables made no
immediate difference in this respect. The consuls, the new civil
executive, were still in no sense necessarily skilled in such matters,
and were without the prestige of the former executive, the Rex; they
were also doubtless busy with other work, especially in the field.
Nothing could be more natural than that the pontifices should continue
to provide the procedure for the now written law, just as they had
formerly supplied it for the unwritten.[569]
So, too, with the _interpretation_ of the Tables; this was the second
part of the work that still remained to them. Writing was in that age a
mystery to the mass of the population, and doubtless the idea was still
in their minds that there was something supernatural about it. Writing,
in fact, as well as formularised action and speech, may have had the
flavour of magic about it. However that may be, there can be no doubt
that the interpretation of a legal document was in those days a much
more serious, if a less arduous business, than it is now. Here again,
then, it seems perfectly natural that there should be no rapid or
violent change in the _personnel_ of those deemed capable of such
interpretation; there was no other body of experts capable of the work;
the pontifices remained _iuris-consulti_, _i.e._ interpreters and
advisers, and in the course of two and a half centuries accumulated an
amount of material that formed a basis for the first published system of
Roman law, the _ius Aelianum_ or _tripartita_ of 200 B.C. It is most
useful to remember, as proof of this, that one member of the college was
selected every year for the special purpose of helping the people with
advice in matters of civil law, both in regard to interpretation and the
choice of _legis actiones_; so we are expressly told by Pomponius, who
adds that this practice continued for about a hundred years after the
publication of the Tables, _i.e._ till the election of the first praetor
in 366.[570] After that date the _ius civile_ emerges more distinctly
from the old body of law, which included also the _ius divinum_, and its
interpretation was no longer a matter purely for religious experts. In
337 we hear of the first _plebeian_ praetor--truly a momentous event,
showing that the old profound belief is dying out, which demanded a
religious and patrician qualification for all legal work. And at the end
of the fourth century comes the publication, not only of the _legis
actiones_, but of the Fasti, _i.e._ even of that most vital part of the
_ius divinum_, which distinguished the times and seasons belonging to
the numina from those belonging to the human citizens.[571] One might
well suppose that the power of the pontifices was on the wane, for they
had lost another monopoly.
And indeed in one sense this was so. It must have been so, for as the
range of the State's activity increased, the sphere of religious
influence became relatively less. Marriage, for example, though it still
needed a religious ceremony in common opinion, ceased to need it in the
eye of the law--a change which is familiar to us in our own age. The
pontifex was no longer indispensable to the suitor at law, nor to the
citizen who wished to know on what day he might proceed with his suit.
The college undoubtedly ceased to be the powerful secretly-acting body
in whose hands was the entire _religio_ of the citizen, _i.e._ the
decision of all points on which he might feel the old anxious
nervousness about the good-will of the gods. But now we mark a change
which gave the old institution new life and new work. At the end of this
fourth century (300 B.C.) it was thrown open to plebeians by the lex
Ogulnia; and, as I have already mentioned, within a few years we come
upon a plebeian pontifex maximus, who was not even a Roman by birth, yet
one of the most famous in the whole series of the holders of that great
office. Most probably, too, the numbers of the members have already been
increased from five to nine, of whom five must be plebeian. These
members begin to be found holding also civil magistracies, and the
pontifex maximus was often a consul of the year. It is quite plain then
that this priestly office is becoming more and more secularised; it
expands with the new order of things instead of shrinking into itself.
It leaves religion, in the proper sense of the word, far behind. The
sacrificing priests, the flamines, etc., who were the humbler members in
a technical sense of the same college, go on with their proper and
strictly religious work under the supervision of the pontifex
maximus,[572] but they steadily become of less importance as the greater
members become secularised in their functions and their ambitions. And
these greater members, instead of becoming stranded on a barren shore of
antique religion, boldly venture into a new sphere of human life, and
add definite secular work to their old religious functions.
The events of the latter part of the fourth century B.C., culminating in
the publication of the Fasti and the _legis actiones_, probably meant
much more for the Romans than we can divine by the uncertain light of
historical imagination. It is the age of expansion, internal and
external; the old patrician exclusive rule was gone beyond recall; the
plebeians had forced their way into every department of government,
including at last even the great religious _collegia_; the old Latin
league had been broken up, and the Latin cities organised in various new
relations to Rome, each one being connected with the suzerain city by a
separate treaty, sealed with religious sanctions. After the Samnite wars
and the struggle with Pyrrhus, further organisation was necessary, and
there arose by degrees a loose system of union which we are accustomed
to call the Italian confederation. The adaptation of all these new
conditions to the existing order of things at Rome was the work of the
senate and magistrates so far as it concerned human beings only; but so
far as it affected the relations of the divine inhabitants of the
various communities it must have been the work of the pontifices. That
work is indeed almost entirely hidden from us, for Livy's books of this
period are lost, and Livy is the only historian who has preserved for us
in any substance the religious side of Rome's public life. But what we
have learnt in the course of these lectures will have made it plain that
no political changes could take place without involving religious
adaptation, and also that the only body qualified to undertake such
adaptation was the pontifical college.
We may thus be quite certain, that though they had lost their old
monopoly of religious knowledge, the pontifices found plenty of fresh
work to do in this period. It is my belief that they now became more
active than they ever had been. From this time, for example, we may
almost certainly date their literary or quasi-literary activity; I mean
the practice of recording the leading events of each year, which may
have had its origin a century earlier, with the eclipse of the sun in or
about 404 B.C.[573] I should guess that after the admission of the
plebeians to the college in 300 B.C., the new members put fresh life and
vigour into the old work, and developed it in various directions. It is
in this period that I am inclined to attribute to the college that zeal
for compiling and perhaps inventing religious formulae of all kinds,
which took shape in the _libri_ or _commentarii pontificum_, and
embodied that strange manual of the methods of addressing deities, which
we know as _Indigitamenta_. And again, in the skilled work of the
admission of new deities and the dedication of their temples, occasioned
by the new organisation and condition of Italy, and lastly, in the
supervision of the proper methods of expiating _prodigia_, which (though
the habit is doubtless an old one) began henceforward to be reported to
the Senate from all parts of the ager Romanus and even beyond, their
meetings in the Regia must have been fully occupied. Our loss is great
indeed in the total want of detail about the life and character of the
great plebeian pontifex maximus of the first half of the third century
B.C., that Titus Coruncanius whom I have already mentioned as being a
Latin by birth; for Cicero declares that the _commentarii_ of the
college showed him as a man of the greatest ability,[574] whose
reputation remained for ages as one who was ready with wise counsel in
matters both public and private. Coupling him with two other memorable
holders of the office, he says that "et in senatu et apud populum et in
causis amicorum et domi et militiae consilium suum fidemque
praestabant."[575] This passage should be remembered as a valuable
illustration of the way in which the college and its head were becoming
more and more occupied with secular business; it is worth noting, too,
that this great man was himself consul in the year 280, and took a
useful part in the first campaign against Pyrrhus.[576] Yet Cicero makes
it plain that he looked on him also as a great figure in religious
matters--nay, even as a man whom the gods loved.[577]
I will finish this lecture by illustrating briefly this renewed and
extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in
this third century B.C. Most of it is connected more or less directly
with the State religion, yet with a tendency to become more and more
secular and perfunctory; the word _cura_ would express it better than
_caerimonia_, and _caerimonia_ better than _religio_. The care of the
calendar, for example (a technical matter which lies outside my province
in these lectures), was originally of religious importance, because the
oldest religious festivals marked operations of husbandry, and these,
when fixed in the calendar, must occur at the right seasons.[578] It was
the duty of the pontifices so to adjust the necessary intercalations as
to effect this object--a duty to which they were, as it turned out,
quite unequal. But continued city life broke the connection between the
festivals and the agricultural work to which they originally
corresponded, and what was once a _cura_ of religious import became a
secular matter of which the value was not appreciated. So too with
another duty, for which both the Romans and ourselves have more reason
to be grateful to them--the recording of the leading events of national
history.
It is uncertain what prompted the college, or rather its head, to begin
making these records, though there is no doubt about the fact. But it
would be natural enough that those who had charge of the calendar, which
would necessitate some record of years for purposes of intercalation,
should go on to mark the names of the consuls and such striking events
as would make a year memorable. In any case this was what actually
happened. The pontifex maximus, we are told with precision, kept a
_tabula_, or whited board, on which these events were noted down, with
the consuls' names attached to them, or possibly a kind of almanac, made
out for the whole year, on which they could append their notes to
particular days.[579] This yearly _tabula_ was no doubt at first kept
secret, like all the pontifical documents, but sooner or later, perhaps
at the same time as the publication of the _fasti_ and _legis actiones_,
it was exposed to public view in or at the Regia.[580] This went on for
at least two centuries, and the records, which in the nature of things
must have grown in length and detail as events became more startling and
numerous, were edited in eighty books by the pontifex maximus P. Mucius
Scaevola in 123 B.C.--the year of the first tribunate of C. Gracchus.
The large number of these books has long been a stumbling-block to the
learned, for we are expressly told that the _annales maximi_, as the
records were called, were (in spite of their name) of a very meagre
character; and many conjectures have quite recently been made to explain
it.[581] But guessing is almost useless, seeing that there are no data
for it. The editor may have added matter of his own, amplifying and
adorning after the manner of writers of his day; or he may have worked
in the contents of other pontifical books, _libri_ or _commentarii
pontificales_. The point for us is simply the continued activity of the
pontifex maximus in this work, which must have become almost entirely
secular in character. The notes may have been jejune, but they were
probably accurate, and free from the perversions of family vanity or
such lengthy rhetorical ornamentation as became the universal fashion
among private writers of annalistic history. They were, we may suppose,
exactly what our modern historical conscience demands. But all that is
left of them, or almost all, is the list of consuls (_fasti consulares_)
and of triumphs (_fasti triumphales_) which in their present form must,
or at least may, have been extracted from them.[582] On the whole, we
may reckon them as the most valuable work of the college; and they may
be taken as marking a growing sense of the importance of Rome and her
history, the commemoration of which is thus committed to an official
who, as an individual, had invariably served the State well, and in whom
all classes had perfect confidence.[583]
One important part of the work of the college in this century must have
been the adjustment of the civic religion of the Italian communities to
that of Rome. What deities were to be made citizens of Rome? Which were
to be left in their old homes undisturbed? No doubt many other questions
must have called for attention in religious matters after the conquest
of Italy, but this is the one of which we know most. The temple
foundations of this period have all been carefully put together (chiefly
from Livy's invaluable records) by Aust,[584] and show that there was a
certain tendency to bring in deities from outside, not so much because
they represented some special need of the Romans, corn or art or
industry, as two centuries earlier, but simply because they were deities
of the conquered whom it might be prudent to adopt. The great Juno
Regina of Veii was long ago induced by _evocatio_ to migrate to Rome;
Fors Fortuna from Etruria, Juturna from Lavinium, Minerva Capta from
Falerii, Feronia, a famous Latin goddess from Capena, Vortumnus from
Volsinii,[585] all attest the same liberal tone in religious matters
which on the whole marks the secular Italian policy of the Senate in
this period. If we had but more information about the former, we should
be able to understand the latter far better. We should like to know why
in some cases the chief deity of a community came to Rome, while in
others there is not trace of migration. The famous Vacuna of Reate, for
example, never left her home in the Apennines, possibly because she was
a kind of Vesta, who could not be spared from Reate, and was not wanted
at Rome.[586]
The list of foundations also points to other tendencies and experiences
of the time. We might guess that there was some attempt, with the aid of
pontifical skill, to encourage agriculture or give it a fresh start
after the invasion of Pyrrhus; for between 272 and 264, the years of the
pacification of Italy, we find temples built to four agricultural
deities, three indigenous Roman ones, Consus, Tellus, Pales, and one
Etruscan garden god, Vertumnus.[587] Then we have a group of foundations
in honour of deities connected with water--Juturna, Fons, Tempestates,
which seem to have some reference to the naval activity of the first
Punic war; they all fall between 259 and 241 B.C.[588] Lastly, we notice
a fresh accession of deified abstractions,--Salus (an old deity in a new
form), Spes, Honos et Virtus, Concordia, and Mens.[589] I am glad to
find that the latest investigator of these religious abstractions is at
one with me in believing that they simply mark a developed stage in the
religious bent of the earliest Roman. If the old Romans had the habit of
spiritualising a great variety of material objects, in other words, if
they were in an advanced animistic stage, there seems to be no reason
why they should not have begun to spiritualise mental concepts also (for
which they had words, as for the material objects), even at a very early
period. The whole psychological aspect of such abstractions is most
interesting, but I must pass it over here, merely suggesting that each
of these abstractions was doubtless deified for some particular reason,
under the direction, or with the sanction, of the pontifices.[590]
But we have not as yet reached what is, after all, for our purposes the
most instructive part of the work of the pontifices--I mean the archives
or memoranda (_libri_ or _commentarii_) which they kept, and from which,
indirectly, much of what I have had to say about the _ius divinum_ has
been drawn. It is here that we see the policy of maintaining the _pax
deorum_ carried to its highest point. These books contained a vast
collection of formulae for every kind of process in which the deities
were in any way concerned; here was the complete _pharmacopoeia_ of the
_ius divinum_.[591] We must remember that the pontifex maximus and his
assessors had to be ready at any moment with the correct formula for all
religious acts, whether extraordinary, like the _devotio_ of Decius or
the expiation of some startling "prodigium," or belonging to the
ordinary course of city life, such as prayers in sacrificial ritual,
_vota_ both public and private, charters (_leges_) of newly founded
temples, and so on. The idea that the spoken formula (ultimately, as we
saw, derived from an age of magic) was efficient only if no slip were
made, seems to have gained in strength instead of diminishing, as we
might have expected it to do with advancing civilisation; and the
pontifices not only responded to its importunity, but actually
stimulated it. _Vires acquirit eundo_ are words which apply well in all
ages to the passion for organisation and precision. Though we cannot
prove it, I myself have little doubt that the members of the college, or
some of them, collected and invented formulae simply for the pleasure of
doing it, and that the work became as congenial to them as the
systematisation of the law to Jewish scribes after the captivity, or as
casuistry to the confessors of the middle ages. When the art of writing
became familiar to experts, the natural and primitive desire of the
Roman to have exactness in the spoken word affected him also in his
relations with the word as written. The scribe and the Pharisee found
their opportunity. The whole public religion of the State, and to some
extent also the private religion of the family, became a mass of forms
and formulae, and never succeeded in freeing itself from these fetters.
We can best illustrate this superfluity of priestly zeal in that strange
list of forms of invocation called _Indigitamenta_, which I have already
explained with the help of Wissowa.[592] Working upon the old Roman
animism, and the popular fondness for formulae, the pontifices drew up
those lists in the fourth and third centuries B.C., which have so
seriously misled scholars as to the genuine primitive religious ideas of
the Romans. They are in the main priestly inventions, the work of
ingenious formulators. We may even be tempted to look on them as an
attempt to rivet the yoke of priestly formalism on the life of the
individual as well as on the life of the State as a whole. But if ever
this was the intention, it was too late. A people that was beginning to
get into touch with the civilisation of Hellas could not possibly bear
such a yoke. In the last lecture we have already seen a tendency towards
emotional religion independent of the old State worship; the philosophy
of individualism was to complete the work of emancipation in the last
two centuries B.C. The old State religion remained, but in stunted form
and with paralysed vitality; Rome was the scene of an _arrested
religious development_. The feeling, the religious instinct (_religio_)
was indeed there, though latent; the Romans were human beings, like the
rest of us. But as we go on with the story we shall find that, when
trouble or disaster brought it out of its hiding-place, it was no longer
possible to soothe it on Roman principles or by Roman methods. These
methods--in other words, the _ius divinum_ as formulated by the
authorities--had been meant to soothe it, and had indeed so effectually
lulled it to sleep, that when at last it awoke again they had lost the
power of dealing with it. When the craving did come upon the Roman,
which in time of peril or doubt has come upon individuals and
communities in all ages, for support and comfort from the Unseen, it had
to be satisfied by giving him new gods to worship in new ways, gods from
Greece and the East, some of them concealed under Latin names, but still
aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or
nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in
his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last
lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman
character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its
comparative uselessness lies in this--that the natural desire to be
right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know
more of that Power, became weakened and destroyed by an over-scrupulous
attention to the means taken to realise it, and by the introduction of
foreign methods which had no root in the mental fibre of the people, and
reflected no part of its experience. Religion was effectually divorced
from life and morality.
NOTES TO LECTURE XII
[556] See Mulder, _De notione conscientiae, quae et
qualis fuerit Romanis_, Leyden, 1908, cap. 2. On p. 56
he quotes Luthard (_Die antike Ethik_, p. 131), who says
of the Roman religion that it was even more an affair of
the State than with any other people; hence its peculiar
legal character. Though Mulder overworks his point, his
chapter (especially p. 61 foll.) is full of interest.
[557] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 431. The first chapter of
Ambrosch's _Studien und Andeutungen_, in which the
nature and history of the Regia was first really
investigated, is still valuable. An excellent short
account is given by Mr. Marindin in his article in the
_Dict. of Antiquities_, ed. 2. It is now generally
maintained that the Regia in historical times was rather
a building for sacred purposes than a residence for a
man and his family, and this I hold to be correct; but
it may for all that have originally been the residence
of the Rex and of the Pont. Max. when the Rex had
disappeared.
[558] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, i. 43,
where a succinct account is given of modern opinion as
to the so-called _ius Papirianum_. The main argument for
the late date of the collection is that Cicero does not
seem to have known of it when he wrote the letter _ad
Fam._ ix. 21 in 46 B.C. This of course in no way affects
the primitive character of the rules themselves.
[559] The inference that the rules were found in the
_Libri pontificum_ is inevitable in any case, but seems
proved by the fact that one of them, that relating to
the _spolia opima_, is stated by Festus, p. 189 (_s.v._
"opima"), to have been extracted from those books.
[560] Festus, _s.v._ "pellices" and _s.v._ "plorare,"
which latter word is interpreted as = _inclamare_.
[561] The _divi parentum_ are here generally taken as
those of the particular family, and this may have been
so; but cf. Wissowa, _R.K._ 192.
[562] For the attempts of Pais in Italy and Lambert in
France to date the Tables at the end of the fourth
century or later, see Schanz, _op. cit._ i. 41. In
Germany opinion is universally in favour of the
traditional date.
[563] See _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p.
135.
[564] On the religious character of _confarreatio_ see
De Marchi, _La Religione nella vita privata_, i. p. 145
foll.
[565] Cic. _de Domo_, 12. 14; Gellius, v. 19.
[566] See, _e.g._ Launspach, _State and Family in Early
Rome_, p. 256 foll. The last three chapters of this
little book, on Patria potestas, Marriage, and
Succession, will be found useful by those who cannot
enter into the many disputes and difficulties which have
arisen out of the attempts of writers on Roman law to
adjust legal ideas to the dim early history of Rome.
Binder, in his work _Die Plebs_, starts from the
improbable hypothesis that the plebs was the population
of the Latin part of the city as distinct from that
Sabine part on the Quirinal, which he believes to have
been the only patrician body; and he further believes
that the plebs lived originally under "Mutterrecht," the
patres under "Vaterrecht." Such a condition of society
would, of course, have greatly added to the pontifical
work of religious adjustment; it would have been more
than even the pontifices could have successfully
achieved.
[567] See above, note 7. Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 488
foll., discusses, and in the main rejects, the arguments
of Pais and Lambert.
[568] So Huvelin, in a paper in _L'Année sociologique_,
1905-6, p. 1 foll., criticised by Hubert et Mauss,
_Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, p. xxiii. foll.
[569] From the religious point of view the _legis
actiones_ are best explained in Marquardt, 318 foll. Cp.
Muirhead, _Roman Law_, ed. 1899, pp. 246-7; Greenidge,
_Roman Public Life_, index _s.v._ "legis actio," and
especially p. 87.
[570] The famous passage of Pomponius is in the
_Digest_, i. 2. 2, sec. 6 (for the work of Aelius, see
_Dig._ i. 2. 2, 38) "ex his legibus ... actiones
compositae sunt, quibus inter se homines disceptarent:
quas actiones ne populus prout vellet institueret,
certas sollemnesque esse voluerunt.... Omnium tamen
harum et interpretandi scientia et actiones apud
collegium pontificum erant, ex quibus constituebatur,
quis quoquo anno praeesset privatis."
[571] Livy ix. 46 "civile ius, repositum in penetralibus
pontificum, evulgavit (Cn. Flavius), fastosque circa
forum in albo proponit, ut quando lege agi posset
sciretur." Cp. Val. Max. ii. 5. 2. _Civile ius_ is here
usually taken as meaning the procedure; but this is a
passage which may give some countenance to those who
would put the publication of the XII. Tables later than
the traditional date.
[572] For the relation of the Flamines, Vestals, and Rex
sacrorum to the pontifex maximus, see Wissowa, _R.K._
432 foll.
[573] See above, p. 283. For the eclipse, Cic. _Rep._ i.
16. 25; and for the various scientific determinations of
its exact date, Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Lit._ vol. i.
(ed. 2) p. 37. "Ex hoc die," writes Cicero, "quem apud
Ennium et in maximis annalibus consignatum videmus,
superiores solis defectiones reputatae sunt."
[574] Cic. _Brutus_, 55 "longe plurimum ingenio
valuisse."
[575] _De Orat._ iii. 33. 134.
[576] See _Dict. of Classical Biography_, _s.v._
"Coruncanius."
[577] _Nat. deor._ ii. 165. Coruncanius is mentioned as
one of those whom the gods love, if indeed they take an
interest in human affairs.
[578] See above, p. 100 foll.; and _Roman Festivals_, p.
3.
[579] Our knowledge of this _tabula_ chiefly depends on
a passage in the Danielian scholiast on Virg. _Aen._ i.
373: "ita enim annales conficiebantur. Tabulam dealbatam
quotannis pontifex maximus habuit, in qua praescriptis
consulum nominibus et aliorum magistratum, digna
memoratu notare consueverat domi militiaeque terra
marique gesta per singulos dies. Cuius diligentiae
annuos commentarios in octoginta libros veteres
retulerunt, eosque a pontificibus maximis, a quibus
fiebant, annales maximos appellarunt." The explanation
of the name is no doubt wrong; but all the rest of this
passage can be relied on; cp. Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52; Dion. Hal. i. 73, 74; Gell. ii. 28. 6; Cic. _Legg._
i. 2. 6. For the idea of the almanac, see Cichorius in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "annales maximi."
[580] _Proponebat tabulam domi_, Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52. This must refer to the official residence of the
Pont. Max.; see above, p. 271.
[581] These attempted solutions of an insoluble problem
may be found in brief in Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Lit._
i. 37. Perhaps the boldest is that of Cantorelli, that
the annales were constructed not out of the tabula but
out of the commentarii; but this is in conflict with the
passage in the scholiast on Virgil. To me the difficulty
does not seem overwhelming; events occurring "domi
militiaeque, terra marique," may have filled
considerable space, and yet have been meagre in the eyes
of the rhetoricians of the last century B.C.
[582] Schanz, _op. cit._ p. 35.
[583] The great authority of the Pont. Max. is well
shown in the story of Tremellius the praetor, who in the
middle of the second century B.C. was fined (by a
tribune?) "quod cum M. Aemilio pontifice maximo
iniuriose contenderat, sacrorumque quam magistratuum ius
potentius fuit." Livy, _Epit._ 47.
[584] _De aedibus sacris populi Romani_, p. 10 foll.
[585] Aust, _op. cit._ p. 14 foll. See also _R.F._ p.
340 foll.
[586] For Vacuna, Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 44 and 128. She
was later, but probably without good reason, identified
with Victoria. The conjecture that she was a hearth
deity rests on the lines of Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 305,
which I have before referred to in another context:
ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos.
nunc quoque cum fiunt antiquae sacra Vacunae,
ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos.
[587] Aust, p. 14. For Vertumnus the _locus classicus_
is Propert. v. 2. It is not certain that the connection
with gardens was primitive.
[588] _R.F._ p. 341.
[589] _R.F._ p. 341.
[590] See Axtell, _The Deification of Abstract Ideas in
Roman Literature and Inscriptions_ (Chicago, 1907), p.
59 foll., where the views of Mommsen, Boissier,
Marquardt, and Wissowa are discussed. Axtell's own
conclusion is given on p. 62 foll. In the main it seems
to agree with that hazarded in my _Roman Festivals_, p.
190.
[591] For the evidence as to the contents of the
_commentarii_, which are now generally identified with
the _libri_, see Wissowa, _R.K._ 32 and 441; Schanz,
_op. cit._ i. 32; and the article "Commentarii" in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ As Wissowa remarks (p.
441, note 6), we are greatly in need of a complete
collection of all fragments of these archives.
[592] See above, p. 159 foll. The conviction that these
lists are of comparatively late and priestly origin,
which has long been growing on me, was originally
suggested by the learned article "Indigitamenta" by R.
Peter in Roscher's _Lexicon_, vol. ii. p. 175 foll.
[593] I have here adopted some sentences from my article
in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 854.
LECTURE XIII
THE AUGURS AND THE ART OF DIVINATION
"The one great corruption to which all religion is exposed is its
separation from morality. The very strength of the religious motive has
a tendency to exclude, or disparage, all other tendencies of the human
mind, even the noblest and best. It is against this corruption that the
prophetic order from first to last constantly protested.... Mercy and
justice, judgment and truth, repentance and goodness--not sacrifice, not
fasting, not ablutions,--is the burden of the whole prophetic teaching
of the Old Testament."[594]
The over-formalising, or ritualising, of any religion is sure to bring
about that result against which the Jewish prophets protested. We saw at
the end of the last lecture how the pontifices contributed to such a
result. We are now to study the contribution of the other great college,
the augurs. For instead of developing, as did the wise man or seer of
Israel, into the mouthpiece of God in His demand for the righteousness
of man, the Roman diviner merely assisted the pontifex in his work of
robbing religion of the idea of righteousness. Divination seems to be a
universal instinct of human nature, a perfectly natural instinct,
arising out of man's daily needs, hopes, fears; but though it may have
had the chance, even at Rome, it never has been able, except among the
Jews, to emerge from its cramping chrysalis of magic and become a really
valuable stimulant of morality.
By divination I mean the various ways and methods by which, in all
stages of his development, man has persuaded himself that what he is
going to do or suffer will turn out well or ill for him. It is probably
judicious, with Dr. Tylor and with the majority of recent
anthropologists, to consider it as belonging to the region of
magic;[595] and it is obvious that it affords excellent examples of that
inadequacy which characterises magical attempts to overcome the
difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence.[596] It
belongs, like other forms of magic, to a stage in which man's idea of
his relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe is both
rude and rudimentary. But it shares with magic the power or property of
surviving, in form at least, through the animistic stage into that of
religion, and it is largely practised at the present day even among
highly civilised peoples.
But I must observe, before I go on, that divination as an object of
anthropological inquiry still stands in need of a thorough scientific
examination. At present it seems to puzzle anthropologists;[597] and the
reason probably is that the material for studying it inductively has not
as yet been collected and sifted. Strange to say, it does not appear in
the index to Dr. Westermarck's great work, which I have so often quoted:
it is hardly to be found even in the _Golden Bough_: nor can I find a
thoroughgoing treatment of it in any other books about the early
history of mankind. And any sort of guesswork under these circumstances
only increases our difficulties. Some years ago the great German
philosophical lawyer, von Jhering, in an interesting work called the
_Evolution of the Aryan_, made some most ingenious attempts to explain
the origin of Roman divination. He fancied that the practice of
examining the entrails of a victim, for example, began in the course of
Aryan migration, because when you encamped in a new region you would
catch and kill some of the native cattle in order to see whether they
were wholesome enough to tempt you to stay.[598] Again, the study of the
flight of birds was prompted by the desire to get information about the
mountain passes and the course of great rivers; and this study grew into
an elaborate art as the leader of the host, the prototype of the Roman
augur, gained experience by constant observation from elevated
ground.[599] Such a theory as this last might be worth something if it
were based upon known facts; as it is, it is only most ingenious
guesswork. This great legal writer did not know, as we do now, that
divination by both these methods is found all over the world, and cannot
be explained by any supposed needs of migrating Aryans.
Whatever be the origin of the several forms of divination, the object of
the practice in ancient Italy and Greece is beyond doubt--to find out
whether the Power with whom you wish to be in right relation is
favourable to certain human operations, or willing to aid in removing
certain forms of human suffering. According to our definition, it was a
part of religion, whether or no it belonged originally to magic. It was
a practical expression of that doubt or anxiety to which I believe the
Romans attached the word _religio_. In the agricultural period it must
have been specially useful and even inevitable,[600] because the tiller
of the soil is always in need of knowledge as to the best times and
seasons for his operations, and his out-of-door life gives him constant
opportunity of observing natural phenomena, _diosemeia_, signs from
heaven, and the utterances and movements of birds and other animals. It
is interesting to reflect that these last may often be of real service
in foretelling the weather, which is so important to the farmer. As I
write this on a December day I recall the fact that I have myself within
the last week successfully foretold a spell of cold after observing a
great arrival of winter thrushes from the north. This particular branch
of augury is, in fact, neither so inadequate nor so absurd as most
others. Von Jhering may turn out to be right in his notion that at least
some forms of divination have their origin in practical needs and in the
skill of uncivilised man in discerning the signs of the weather--a skill
which it is well to remember far exceeds that of the house-dweller of
modern civilisation. But with the growth of the City-state and the
habits of life in a town, these early instincts and methods of the
agriculturist came to be caught up into a system of religious practice,
adapted to the conditions of civil and political existence; thus they
gradually lost their original meaning and such real value as they ever
possessed. I have pointed out that the Roman festivals and the ritual of
the oldest calendar gradually got out of relation with the agricultural
life in which they for the most part originated:[601] so it was with
divination, which in the hands of the State authorities became
formalised into a set of rules for ascertaining the good-will of the
gods, and obtaining their sanction for the operations of the community,
which had no scientific basis whatever, no relation to truth and fact.
Of all the methods for putting yourself in right relation with the
Power, this was the least valuable, and indeed the most harmful; it came
in course of time to be a positive obstacle to efficiency and freedom of
action, it wasted valuable time, and it often served as the means of
promoting private ends to the detriment of the public interest.
Before I go on to consider the development of the highly formalised
system of public divination, let me clear the ground by a few remarks
about such forms of the practice as were not sanctioned by the State.
That these existed throughout Roman history there is no doubt, as they
existed in Greece, among the Jews, and elsewhere in the East, alongside
of the advanced and organised methods of official and authorised
experts.
Our information about private divination is scattered about in Roman
literature, and even when brought together there is not a great deal of
it. What is prominent both in Roman literature and Roman history is the
divination authorised by the State and systematised by its authorities;
even in Cicero's treatise _de Divinatione_, though the subject-matter is
of a general kind, drawn from Greece as well as Rome, it is, I think,
apart from philosophical questions, chiefly the art of augurs and
haruspices that interests the writer, who was himself an augur when he
wrote it. In Greek literature exactly the opposite is the case; there we
hear little of State-authorised divination, and a great deal of
wandering soothsayers, soothsaying families, and oracles which (except
at Delphi) were not under the direct control of a City-state.[602] The
methods of divination are much the same in both peninsulas, and indeed
vary little all the world over; the difference lies simply in
this,--that at Rome the adoption and systematisation by the State of
certain methods, especially those which dealt with birds and lightning,
had the effect of discrediting, if not excluding, an immense amount of
private practice of this kind. I mean that if the State strongly
sanctions some forms of divination, working them by its own officials,
it casts a shadow of discredit over the rest. As the _ius divinum_
tended to exclude magic and the barbarous in ritual, so did the _ius
augurale_, which was a part of it, exclude the quack in divination. And
in this particular department of human delusion the result may be said
to have been happy; for though divination belongs to religion as having
survived from an earlier stage into a religious one, yet it is the least
valuable, the least fruitful, part of it.[603] True, the augural
systematisation, as we shall see, had a sinister effect on political
progress; but even there the very emptiness and absurdity of the whole
business helped to bring contempt on it, and, as Cicero tells us in a
well-known passage, even old Cato declared that he could not imagine why
a _haruspex_ did not laugh when he met a brother of the craft.[604] In
Greece, on the contrary, it might, I believe, be shown that the absence
of systematisation by the State only served to prolong the credit and
influence of the professional quack.
Greece was at all periods full of these quacks; did the sham prophet
exist at Rome in the period we have now under review? Later on the
Oriental soothsayer found his way there; of these _Chaldaei_ and
_mathematici_ I shall have a word to say in another lecture, and we
shall see how the State authorities made occasional attempts to exclude
them. Of the _frantic_ type of diviner, the [Greek: entheos], so common
in Greece, we hear nothing in the sober Roman annals; the idea of a
human being "possessed by a spirit of divination" seems foreign to the
Roman character.[605] The only soothsayer, so far as I know, who appears
in Roman legend in a private capacity is that Attus Navius who gave
Tarquinius Priscus the benefit of his knowledge; and he is represented
as a respectable Sabine, and his art as an augural one learnt from the
Etruscans.[606] There are, indeed, ancient traces of a prophetic art at
Rome, but, as the historian of divination has well observed, they are
all connected not with human beings, but with divinities, a fact which
explains the Latin word _divinatio_.[607] To take what is perhaps the
best example, the ancient deity Carmenta, who had a flamen and a double
festival in the month of January, may very probably represent some dim
tradition of a _numen_ at whose shrine women might gain some knowledge
as to their fortunes in childbirth, just as outside Rome, at Praeneste
and Antium, Fortuna seems to have had this gift in historical
times.[608] So St. Augustine interpreted Carmenta,[609] probably
following Varro; and to Virgil she was the "_vates fatidica_, cecinit
quae prima futuros Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum."
But Carmenta, Picus, Faunus, are dim mythical figures which for us can
have no bearing on Roman religious experience; it would be more to the
point to ask what was the original meaning and history of the word
_vates_, if the question were answerable in the absence of an early
Roman literature. All we can say about this is that this word had, as a
rule, a certain dignity about it, which enabled it eventually to stand
for a poet, and that it rarely has a sinister sense, unless accompanied
by some adjective specially used in order to give it.[610] The real word
for a quack is _hariolus_, and the fact that it is comparatively rare
suggests that the character it expresses was not a common one. It occurs
here and there in fragments of old plays, where, unluckily, we cannot be
quite sure whether it represents a Greek or a Latin idea. The following
lines from the Telamo of Ennius shows us the _hariolus_, as well as the
word _vates_ with a discreditable adjective attached:
sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque harioli
aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat,
qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
quibu' divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam ipsi petunt.[611]
A more satisfactory bit of evidence as to the existence of the quack in
the second century B.C., when Greece and the East were beginning to pour
their unauthorised religionists into Italy, is the interesting passage
in old Cato's book on agriculture, in which he urges that the bailiff of
an estate should not be permitted to consult either a _haruspex_,
_augur_, _hariolus_, or _Chaldaeus_.[612] But on the whole, such little
evidence as we possess seems to confirm the view I hazarded just now,
that the overwhelming prestige of State authority at Rome discouraged
and discredited the quack diviner both in public and private life. His
work in private life was largely that of fortune-telling, of foretelling
the future in one sense or another; and this was exactly what the State
authorities never did and never countenanced, at any rate until the
stress of the Hannibalic war, and then only in a very limited sense.
Their object was a strictly religious one, to get the sanction of the
divine members of the community for the undertakings of the human ones.
Even the so-called Sibylline oracles, as we saw, were not prophecies;
and the augural art never provided an answer to the question, "What is
going to happen?" but only to that much more religious one, "Are the
deities willing that we should do this or that?"[613]
But before I leave the subject of private divination, I must note that
there was a department of it which may be called legitimate, as
distinguished from that of the quack. I mean the _auspicia_ of the
family religion, and also the comparatively harmless folklore about
omens of all sorts and kinds.
Naturally we have little information about legitimate _auspicia_ in the
life of the family; but we have seen that the religious instinct of the
Roman forbade him to face any important undertaking or crisis without
making sure of the sanction of the _numina_ concerned, and among the
methods of insurance (if I may use a convenient word) the _auspicia_
must have had a place from the earliest times. No important thing was
done, says Cicero in the _de Divinatione_, "nisi auspicato, ne privatim
quidem."[614] Valerius Maximus says the same in so many words, and some
other evidence has been collected by De Marchi in his work on the
private religion of the Romans.[615] But only in the case of marriage do
we hear of _auspicia_ in historical times, and even there they seem to
have degenerated into a mere form. "Auspices nuptiarum, re omissa, nomen
tantum tenent"--so Cicero wrote of his own time;[616] he seems to be
thinking of augury by means of birds, for he adds, "nam ut nunc extis
sic tunc avibus magnae res impetrari solebant." As we have already seen,
the object of the examination of a victim's entrails was simply to
ascertain its fitness to be offered; but by Cicero's time the Etruscan
art of divination by this method must have penetrated into private life.
I think we may conjecture that in the life of the family on the land the
_auspicia_, as the word itself implies, were worked chiefly by
observation of birds. Nigidius Figulus, the learned mystic of Cicero's
time, wrote a book, _de Augurio Privato_, of which one fragment survives
which has to do with this kind of divination, and with the distinction
between omens from birds seen on the right or left, and from high or low
flyers.[617] In the familiar ode of Horace beginning, "Impios parrae
recinentis omen,"[618] the _corvus_ and _cornix_ are mentioned besides
the _parra_, and in that wholesome old out-of-door life of the farm, as
I said just now, there was a certain basis of truth and fact in the
observation of such presages. But Horace mentions other animals, wolf,
fox, and snake, and some at least of the folklore about omens which is
to be found in Pliny's descriptions of animals may help us to appreciate
the nature of the old Roman ideas on this subject. The tiller of the
land and the shepherd on the uplands used their eyes and ears, not
wholly without advantage to themselves; but in the life of the city such
observation became gradually formal and meaningless, and degenerated
into the superstition reflected in Horace's ode. I must parenthetically
confess to a personal feeling of regret that this people, who in their
early days had good opportunities, made little or no contribution to the
knowledge of animals and their habits.[619] But I must pass on to the
more important subject of divination as developed and formalised by the
authorities of the State.
In explaining the ritual of the _ius divinum_ I laid stress on the fact
that its main object was to maintain the _pax deorum_, the right
relation between the divine and human citizens.[620] To make this _pax_
secure, it was necessary that in every public act the good-will of the
gods should be ascertained by obtaining favourable auspices--it must be
done _auspicato_. To take the first illustration that occurs, Livy
describes a dictator about to fight a battle as leaving his camp
_auspicato_, after sacrificing to obtain the _pax deorum_.[621] It is
for this reason that the _auspicia_ have a leading place in the
foundation legends of the city. We are all familiar with the story of
the _auspicia_ of Romulus and Remus, which goes back at least as far as
Ennius;[622] and we find them also in the foundation of _coloniae_ in
historical times.[623] I do not know that I can better express the place
which the _auspicia_ occupied in the mind of the Roman than by quoting
the words which Livy puts into the mouth of Appius Claudius in 367 B.C.,
when supposed to be inveighing against the opening of the consulship to
plebeians: "Auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace,
domi militiaeque, omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret?" He goes on to argue
that these _auspicia_ belong to patricians only, that no plebeian
magistrate is created _auspicato_, that the man who wants to allow
plebeians to become curule magistrates, _tollit ex civitate auspicia_.
"Nunc nos, tanquam iam nihil pace deorum opus sit, omnes caerimonias
polluimus."[624] This is, of course, only Livy's rhetoric, but it
represents the fundamental Roman idea of the public _auspicia_.
The passage is also useful because it alludes to the fact that the right
of taking the _auspicia_ belonged ultimately to the whole patrician body
of fully qualified citizens.[625] But so far as we can discern in the
dim light of the earliest period, this body entrusted the right and duty
to its chief magistrate, the Rex, exactly as it entrusted him with the
_imperium_, the supreme power of command in civil matters. Thus the
_auspicia_ and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; as Dr.
Greenidge says,[626] "they are the divine and human side of the same
power," and may be found together in a thousand passages in Roman
literature and inscriptions. But at the side of the Rex we find,
according to tradition, two helpers or advisers called _augures_, the
three together perhaps forming a _collegium_.[627] Now there was
certainly an important difference between the Rex and the augurs; the
latter were aiders and interpreters, but the Rex only was said _habere
auspicia_, just as the whole patrician body had this right, though they
delegated it to the Rex during his lifetime, and on his death received
it again. The man who "habet auspicia" has the right of _spectio_,
_i.e._ of taking the auspices in a particular case,[628] of watching the
sky or the conduct of the sacred fowls in eating; this right the augurs
never had. Their power was limited to guidance and interpretation. This
follows necessarily from the fundamental principle that the _auspicia_
and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; for the augur, of
course, never possessed the _imperium_ by virtue of his office. It is
true that of the augur in the regal period we know almost nothing; his
art, as we shall see directly, was kept strictly secret, and he was
bound by oath not to reveal it.[629] But we may safely argue back in
general terms from the relation of magistrate and augur under the later
Republic to the relation of augur and Rex, from whom descended the
magistrate's _imperium_. The one essential thing to remember is that _it
was in all periods the magistrate who was responsible_, under the
sanction and advice of his assistants the pontifices and augurs, for the
maintenance of the _pax deorum_. The lay element in the actual working
of the constitution never lost this prerogative. Rome was never
hierarchically governed.
It would be going beyond the scope of these lectures if I were to plunge
at this point into the thorny question of the exact relation between
magistrate and augur in respect of details. Nor do I propose to go into
the minutiae of augural lore, which are not instructive, like those of
sacrifice, for our survey of Roman religious experience. It will be
sufficient to state in outline what I believe to be necessary for our
purpose.[630] The person who had the _auspicia_, _i.e._ originally the
Rex, like the later magistrate, had to watch for signs from heaven; in
order to do so he marked out a _templum_, a rectangular space, by noting
certain objects, trees or what not, beyond which, whether he looked at
earth or sky, he need take no notice of what he saw. The spot where he
took up his position for this purpose was itself a rectangular
space,[631] marked out on a similar principle; in each case the space
was _liberatus effatus_, _i.e._ freed from previous associations by a
form of words, and ready, if need were (as in the case of _loca sacra_)
to be further handed over to the deities as their property; this
consecration, however, did not, of course, follow in the ordinary
procedure of the _auspicia_. In the _urbana auspicia_ all _loca effata_
must be within the sacred boundary of the _pomoerium_. Within this the
magistrate watched in silence at the dead of night for such signs as he
especially asked for (_auspicia impetrativa_); those which offered
themselves without such specification (_oblativa_) he was not bound to
take cognisance of unless some one claimed his attention for them. The
signs were originally in the regal period, if we may guess from the word
_auspicium_, only such as birds supplied, and the space in which they
were watched for was not complicated by the divisions of the later
augural art.[632] The business of the augur was, we may suppose, to see
that the details were carried out correctly, and to interpret the signs;
but those signs were not sent to _him_, for he was not the actual
representative of the State in this ritual.
If the constitutional position and duty of the augurs have now been made
sufficiently clear, I may go on to explain briefly, as in the case of
the pontifices, how the office became gradually secularised, and the
duty formalised, so that if there ever had been anything of a really
religious character in this art, any genuine belief in the manifestation
by the Power of his will in matters of State life, such character, such
belief, had become by the second century B.C. entirely paralysed and
destroyed. But the history of the augurate is much more difficult to
follow than that of the pontificate. The work of the pontifices touched
the life of every day, public and private, at many points, with the
result that their secrets ceased to be secrets by the end of the fourth
century B.C. The work of the augurs was occasional, and more technical
than that of the other college; it can hardly be said to have affected
the religion of family life, nor did it continually bear upon public
life, as did the pontifical knowledge of the _ius divinum_ and the
calendar. Hence the augural lore was never published, under pressure of
public opinion, and neither ancient nor modern scholars have had to
waste their time in investigating it. Books were indeed written about it
in later times by one or two curious students, but in the time of
Cicero, who was himself an augur, the neglect of it was general, even by
members of the college.[633]
This mysterious augural lore was preserved in books, like that of the
pontifices; and in all probability these books were put together in the
same period as the latter, viz., the two centuries immediately following
the abolition of the kingship.[634] I think there is a strong
probability that the augurate emerged from the age of Etruscan rule
which marks the latter part of the kingly period, with increased
importance and fresh activity, the result of immediate contact with
Etruscan methods of divination.[635] It is likely that they began in
this way to cultivate the art of divination by lightning, which was
peculiarly Etruscan, and to divide their _templum_ into _regiones_,
which, as I said just now, were not apparently needed for the
observation of omens from birds. How far they carried this art we cannot
tell, owing to the loss of their books and the commentaries upon them;
but about the Etruscan discipline we do know something. Those who wish
to have a glimpse of it may consult the first chapter of the fourth
volume of Bouché-Leclercq's _History of Divination_, as a more
intelligible account than any known to me.[636] But all I need to insist
on now is the likelihood that the augurs began the Republican period
with a power of interpretation which was the more important because the
art was changed; it is now the depository not only of the old bird lore,
but of the new lightning lore. And as this last became the peculiar
characteristic of the art of public divination, and as the augurs were,
like the pontifices, a close self-electing corporation until 104 B.C.
and a close self-electing _patrician_ body until the lex Ogulnia of 300
B.C., holding secret meetings every month on the _arx_,[637] and
recording their lore in books which were never made public, they might
well have grown into a powerful hierarchy, _if they had only been
possessed of the right of spectio_. What saved Rome from this fate was
simply the fact that the college was a body of interpreters only, or, in
other words, the principle that the _auspicia_ belonged exclusively to
the magistrate. The _auspicia_ were in fact a matter of public law, not
of religion, properly speaking; the idea on which they were based, that
the sanction of the deities was needed for every public action, very
early lost its true significance, and the process of taking them became
a mere form, the religious character of which was almost entirely
forgotten. They ceased to be matter of religion just as the amulet or
any other form of preventive magic fails to be reckoned as within the
sphere of religion; the feeling was there that they must be attended to
(though even that feeling lost its strength in course of time), but only
as a matter of custom, not because the Power was really believed to
sanction an act in this way.
Thus it seems that the importance of the augurs belongs to Roman public
law, and not to the history of Roman religious experience. It will be
found fully explained, in that connection, in Mommsen's _Staatsrecht_,
or in Dr. Greenidge's volume on _Roman Public Life_.[638] All we have to
note here is the complete secularisation of what was once really a part
of the Roman religion; the augurs themselves were public men and could
hold magistracies, and their art of interpretation came to be used for
secular and political purposes only. They could declare a magistrate
_vitio creatus_, whether they had been present at the taking of the
auspices or not; they could also on appeal stop the proceedings at a
public assembly, whether for election or legislation; it may be said of
them that in one way or another they had a veto on every public
transaction.[639] As Cicero expresses it in his _ius divinum_, in the
second book of his work on the constitution: "Quae augur iniusta nefasta
vitiosa dira defixerit inrita infectaque sunto, quique non paruerit,
capital esto."[640] But in spite of the fine words _iniusta nefasta
vitiosa_, there was no religious principle involved in this solemn
injunction. When Bibulus in 59 B.C. sought as consul to stop Caesar's
proceedings by using his right of _spectio_, all he had to do was to
announce that he was going to look for lightning (_obnuntiare_); and if
there had been the smallest remnant of religious belief left in the
Roman mind about such transactions, it would quietly have acquiesced, in
the conviction that Jupiter would send lightning to the Roman magistrate
who asked for it; as it was, Caesar took no notice, and the Roman people
only laughed. Caesar was at the time, let us note, the head of the Roman
religion, pontifex maximus. So with the augurs as the interpreters of
the magisterial _spectio_; proud as Cicero was of becoming an augur,
with all the old surviving elective ritual,[641] he never, we may be
sure, believed for a moment that he had the power of interpreting the
will of the gods. A century before his augurship the whole business of
public divination had been regulated by statute, like any other secular
matter; and in his own day it was an open question with men of education
whether there were such a thing as divination at all.[642] True, as we
shall see, the _illegitimate_ forms of divination were at this very time
gaining ground, as the current of superstition increased in strength
which marks this last period of the republic; but the augur's art and
the _spectio_ of the magistrate were still surviving as mere
constitutional fossils, and were not destined to share largely in
Augustus' heroic attempt to put fresh life into the _ius divinum_. _Vile
damnum_, as Tacitus said of the foreign quacks banished to Sardinia by
Tiberius; for neither in the sphere of religion nor later in that of
politics can the art of divination be said to have had any lasting
value.
I have not dealt at any length with the augurs and the State system of
divination, but I hope I have said enough to show that, as I hinted at
the beginning of this lecture, it affords an excellent illustration of
the way in which the religious instinct, the desire to be in right
relation with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, was first
soothed and satisfied, then hypnotised and paralysed, by the
formalisation and gradual secularisation of religious processes. The
desire to obtain the sanction of the Power by seeking for favourable
signs or omens seems to be a universal instinct of human nature, though
a perverse one; if left to itself it will apparently pass into the
region of harmless folklore, where it does not seriously interfere with
human progress, either secular or religious; but where, as at Rome, it
is taken up into the ritual of a religious system, and is further
allowed to express itself mechanically in the region of public law, it
exhausts itself rapidly, loses all its original significance, and
becomes a clog on human progress.
In ancient Italy this instinct for divination was nowhere so strongly
and so perversely developed into a mechanical system as in Etruria, and
it is highly probable that this development contributed largely to the
rapid political and moral decay of the Etruscan people. The narrow
aristocratic constitution of the Etruscan cities, worked by a kind of
priestly nobility, seems to have afforded great opportunities for the
cultivation of the perverse art which (as we are now beginning to
recognise) this people had brought with them from the East.[643] I have
already suggested that an Etruscan dominion at Rome had very probably
unfortunate results in developing and formalising the art of the augurs.
But the age of the Tarquinii was not the only one in which the sinister
influence of this strange people was brought to bear on Roman religious
institutions; and before I close this lecture I must say a very few
words about a second invasion of Etruscan perversity, which began some
two centuries and a half later. This was the result of that renewed
_religio_, that feeling of anxiety and sometimes of despair
characteristic of the last half of the third century B.C., the perilous
era of the Punic wars, with which I shall deal more particularly in the
next lecture. The state religion could not soothe it; neither pontifices
nor augurs had any sufficient native remedy for it, and as the ritual of
worship was reinforced from Greece and the East, so the ritual of
divination was reinforced from Etruria.
The Etruscans seem to have educated their diviners with care and system.
We do not know the details of such education, but it seems likely that
there were schools of these prophets, by means of which the art was
handed down and developed.[644] The word for the person thus trained was
_haruspex_ in its Italian form as known to us, though it had an Etruscan
original.[645] The art acquired was of three kinds--the interpretation
of lightning; the explanation and interpretation of the entrails of
victims, and especially of the liver; and, thirdly, the explanation and
expiation of portents and prodigia.[646] All three departments seem to
have been carried to an extreme degree of perverse development. To give
an idea of it I need but refer to recent discussions of the relation
between the divisions marked on a bronze model of a victim's liver
(found in 1877 at Piacenza), in which are written the Etruscan names of
a great number of deities, and the somewhat similar divisions of the
templum of the heavens as given by Martianus Capella in explanation of
the celestial dwellings of the Italian deities. A study of this
unprofitable subject, of which the only interest lies in the
illustration it offers of the prostitution of human ingenuity, will be
found in a little work by Carl Thulin, published in the series called
_Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten_.[647]
Just as the Roman authorities had recourse from time to time to the
Sibylline books, so also they occasionally, though not apparently before
the Punic wars, sought the help of the trained Etruscan diviners. We
shall come across instances of this in the next two lectures, and I need
not specify them now. They seem to have used their art in all its
departments; and in the most degraded of these, the examination of
entrails, it was found so convenient to have their services in a
campaign that in course of time one at least seems to have accompanied
every Roman army.[648] The complicated art of augury might in fact be
dispensed with if you had a _haruspex_ ready and willing at a moment's
notice to give you a good report of the victim's liver. To keep up the
supply of experts, the senate, probably in the second century B.C.,
determined to select and train ten boys of noble family in each Etruscan
city. This was the last service that the degenerate Etruscan people
rendered to its conquerors, and a more degrading one it is impossible to
imagine. These foreign diviners were never admitted to the dignity of a
_collegium_;[649] they rather played the part of the domestic chaplain
kept to say grace before meat. For a moment they attract our attention
in connection with the persecution of Cicero by his political enemies,
and the _consecratio_ after his exile of the site of his house on the
Palatine hill.[650] For a moment again we meet with them in the reign of
Claudius, who was interested in the Etruscans and wrote a work about
them, and once raised the question in the senate of the revival of the
haruspices and their art--such part of it, at least, as might seem worth
preserving--"ne vetustissima Italiae disciplina per desidium
exolesceret."[651] And strange to say, though in fact no part of this
ancient Italian discipline was in the least worth preserving, it
survived in outward form into the fourth century of the empire.[652] We
read with astonishment in the code of the Christian emperor Theodosius,
that if the imperial palace or other public buildings are struck by
lightning the haruspices are to be consulted, according to ancient
custom, as to the meaning of the portent.[653] Thirteen years after the
death of Theodosius, in 408, Etruscan experts offered their services to
Pompeianus, prefect of Rome, to save the city from the Goths. Pompeianus
was tempted, but consulted Innocent, the Bishop of Rome, who "did not
see fit to oppose his own opinion to the wishes of the people at such a
crisis, but stipulated that the magic rites should be performed
secretly." What followed is uncertain. "The Christian historian says
that the rites were performed, but were unavailing; the pagan Zosimus
affirms that the aid of the Tuscans was declined."[654] So hard died the
futile arts of the most unfruitful of all Italian races.
NOTES TO LECTURE XIII
[594] Stanley's _Jewish Church_ (ed. 1906), vol. i. p.
398 foll.
[595] _Hist. de divination dans l'antiquité_, vol. i. p.
7 foll.; divination is "contemplative," magic "active."
But this learned author did not deal with divination
except as it existed in Greece and Italy; and in view of
our present extended knowledge this differentia is not
instructive.
[596] See Tylor's article in the last edition of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and his _Gifford Lectures_,
Pt. ii. ch. iv.; Haddon, _Magic and Fetishism_, p. 40.
Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination dans l'antiquité_,
vol. i. p. 7, distinguishes divination from magic; but
his knowledge of the subject was limited to civilised
races.
[597] Mr. Marett seems doubtful about it: see his
_Threshold of Religion_, pp. 42 and 83. In the latter
passage he says that it may or may not be treated as a
branch of magic, and may be "originally due to some dim
sort of theorising about causes, the theory engendering
the practice rather than the practice the theory." I
should doubt whether, when the facts have been fully
collected, this will be the conclusion to which they
point.
[598] _Evolution of the Aryan_, Drucker's translation,
p. 369.
[599] _Ib._ pp. 364, 374.
[600] A curious survival of divination from the
agricultural period, which was taken over by the State,
but not fixed to a day in the calendar, is the _augurium
canarium_. The exta of red puppies which had been
sacrificed were consulted, apparently with a view to
ascertain the probability of the corn ripening well
(Festus, p. 285, quoting Ateius Capito). See _R.F._ p.
90, and the references there given; also Cic. _de
Legibus_, ii. 20; Fest. 379; and Wissowa in
Pauly-Wissowa, p. 2328.
[601] See above, p. 102.
[602] See Dr. Jevons' account in Gardner and Jevons,
_Manual of Greek Antiquities_, ch. vii.
[603] Bouché-Leclercq in the introduction to his first
volume (p. 3) expresses a different opinion. He thinks
that the benefit conferred by divination in the conduct
of life was the most valuable part of religion. With
this I entirely disagree.
[604] Cic. _de Divinatione_, ii. 51.
[605] See Bouché-Leclercq, iv. 119 foll. In a recently
published essay, _De antiquorum daemonismo_, by J.
Tamburnino (Giessen, 1909), the only genuine Roman
evidence adduced of possession is Minucius Felix,
_Octavius_, ch. 27, _i.e._ it belongs to the late second
century A.D. In the so-called Italian oracles there is
no question of it: _e.g._ the lots at Praeneste were
worked by a boy (Cic. _de Div._ ii. 86).
[606] Livy i. 36; Cic. _de Div._ i. 17. It is Dion. Hal.
iii. 70 who says that his art was Etruscan.
[607] Bouché-Leclercq, iv. 120.
[608] For Carmenta see _R.F._ 167 and 291 foll. For
Fortuna, _ib._ 223 foll.; cp. 170 foll.
[609] Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, iv. 11; he uses the plural
_Carmentes_; see _R.F._ as above. Virgil, _Aen._ viii.
336.
[610] As "superstitiosi vates" in the passage of Ennius
quoted below. In his imaginary _ius divinum_ Cicero uses
the word for "fatidici" authorised by the State (_de
Legg._ ii. 20). He is perhaps thinking of the
haruspices.
[611] Ribbeck, _Fragm. tragicorum Romanorum_, p. 55. For
hariolus outside the play-writers, Cic. _de Nat. Deor._
i. 20. 55, where it is combined with haruspices,
augures, vates, and coniectores (interpreters of
dreams). _Ad Att._ viii. 11. 3.
[612] Cato, _R.R._ ch. 54; cp. Columella, i. 8 and xi.
1.
[613] See P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, p.
6 "Omnia illa auguria quae futurarum rerum aliquid
predicunt ... augurum publicorum disciplinae abroganda
sunt: aut privati sunt augurii, aut Tuscorum
disciplinae." Cp. Cic. _de Har. Resp._ 9. 18.
[614] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16. 28; Val. Max. ii. 1. 1.
[615] _La Religione nella vita domestica_, i. 153 foll.;
232 foll.
[616] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16, 28.
[617] This fragment is preserved in Gellius vii. 6. 10.
Nigidius may be responsible for many of Pliny's omens.
Regell, _op. cit._ p. 8.
[618] Hor. _Odes_, iii. 27. 1 foll.
[619] Exactly the same misfortune occurred in the middle
ages. The monks had abundant opportunity of observation,
but were occupied with other matters, and have left
behind them no works on natural history.
[620] See above, p. 169 foll.
[621] Livy vi. 12.
[622] See the fragment of Ennius' _Annales_ in Cic. _de
Div._ i. 107.
[623] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 450; _Lex coloniae Genetivae_,
66 and 67.
[624] Livy vi. 41.
[625] See a good account in the _Dict. of Antiquities_,
vol. i. 252 and 255; and Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa,
_s.v._ "auspicia."
[626] _Roman Public Life_, p. 162.
[627] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 2; Marq. 241.
[628] Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i. 86.
[629] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 7; Plut. _Quaest. Rom._
99; Pliny, _Ep._ 4. 8. Plutarch asks why an augur can
never be deprived of his office, and answers that the
secrecy of his art made it impossible. Cp. Paulus, 16.
[630] The latest authoritative account of the auspicia
is in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._, where the necessary
literature and material will be found for a study of an
extremely complicated subject.
[631] The technical term was _templum minus_, in
contradistinction to the _templum maius_, _i.e._ the
space in which he was to look for signs. See
Bouché-Leclercq, iv. 197; Fest. 157. The usual place was
the _arx_, where was the _auguraculum_, on which the
magistrate taking the auspices "pitched his tent"
(_tabernaculum_), looking to the east, with the north as
his left or lucky side. Von Jhering, _op. cit._ p. 364,
makes some ingenious use of this procedure to support
his theory that the origin of such institutions is to be
found in the period of migration.
[632] That the division of the _templum_ into _regiones_
was necessary only for the _auguria caelestia_, and not
for the observation of birds, is the conclusion drawn by
Wissowa (_R.K._ 457, note 2) from the words of Cicero
(_de Legibus_, ii. 21) in his _ius divinum_: "caelique
fulgura regionibus ratis temperanto" (_i.e._ the
magistrates).
[633] Cicero expressly says that even old Cato
complained of the neglect of the auspicia by the
college: _de Div._ i. 15. 28; above, in sec. 25, he had
said the same thing of the augurs of his own day, _i.e._
including himself. We know of a work on the _auspicia_
by M. Messalla, an augur, from which Gellius, xiii. 15,
quotes a lengthy extract (cp. ch. 14). This man was
consul in 53 B.C.; Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Lit._, ii.
492. Just at the same time Appius Claudius, Cicero's
predecessor as governor of Cilicia, wrote _libri
augurales_, to which Cicero more than once alludes in
his correspondence with Appius: _ad Fam._ iii. 9. 3 and
11. 4. It is plain that the old augural lore is now
treated only as a curiosity, of which the secrecy need
no longer be respected.
[634] P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, whose
excellent little work has never been superseded, thinks
(p. 19) that the _libri_ were the result of the neglect
of the art, _i.e._ that it was necessary to put it in
writing, because otherwise it would be forgotten. "Tota
eius vita," he says, "lenta est mors." The lore was
complete about the time of the decemvirate, but
_decreta_ must have been continually added (p. 23). The
nucleus may be represented in Cicero, _de Legibus_, ii.
20. 21, and perhaps existed in Saturnian verse (Festus,
290). The additions in the way of decree or comment
would probably range over the fourth and third centuries
B.C. like those of the pontifices. No doubt the
Hannibalic war had the effect of diminishing the
importance of the lore, as the next lecture should show.
On the whole we may put the great period of the college
between the decemvirate and the war with Hannibal.
[635] This is the opinion of Bouché-Leclercq, _op. cit._
vol. iv. p. 205 foll.; cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 457.
Cicero calls the augurs "interpretes Iovis Optimi
maximi" (_de Legibus_, ii. 20), and herein could hardly
have made a mistake, as he was himself an augur. As the
great deity was of Etruscan origin in this form, I
should conjecture that the college took new ground and
gained new influence under the Etruscan dynasty.
[636] Cp. also Müller-Deecke, _Die Etrusker_, ii. 165
foll. Our knowledge comes chiefly from the learned but
obscure writer Martianus Capella (ed. Eyssenhardt), who
wrote under the later Empire.
[637] For these meetings see Cic. _de Div._ i. 41. 90;
Regell, p. 23. They were obsolete in Cicero's time, but
seem to have still existed in the time of Scipio
Aemilianus: Cic. _Lael._ 2. 7.
[638] _Staatsrecht_, i. 73 foll.; Greenidge, _Roman
Public Life_, p. 172 foll.
[639] The best account of the constitutional power of
the augurs is in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyclopädie_,
_s.v._ "augur," vol. i. p. 2334 foll.; cp. Wissowa,
_R.K._ 457-8.
[640] _De Legibus_, ii. 21.
[641] The outward form of _co-optatio_ was still
preserved, like our "election" of a bishop by a chapter.
Cicero was co-opted by Hortensius after nomination by
two other augurs. See his interesting account of this in
his _Brutus_, ch. i. The survival may be taken as
throwing light on the original secrecy and closeness of
the _collegium_.
[642] For the _leges Aelia et Fufia_, cf. Greenidge,
_op. cit._ p. 173. The Stoics of the last century B.C.
were divided on this point. See below, p. 399. In the
second book of his _de Divinatione_, following the
Academic or agnostic school, he himself confutes his
brother Quintus' argument for divination contained in
Bk. I.
[643] This is the view of Thulin, _Die Götter des
Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza_
(Giessen, 1906), p. 7 foll., and it seems at present to
hold the field: see Gruppe, _Die mythologische Literatur
aus den Jahren 1898-1905_, p. 336.
[644] Müller-Deecke, vol. ii. p. 7 foll.
[645] See Deecke's note on p. 12 of Müller-Deecke, vol.
ii. It is possibly connected with _hariolus_.
[646] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 470, and Müller-Deecke, vol.
ii. 165 foll.
[647] See above, note 50.
[648] References to Livy will be found in Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 473, note 11. One of these, to Livy xxvii. 16.
14, is worth quoting as suggesting that a _haruspex_
might give useful advice in spite of his art: "Hostia
quoque caesa consulenti (Fabio) deos haruspex, cavendum
a fraude hostili et ab insidiis, praedixit."
[649] They were not _sacerdotes publici Romani_, nor is
a _collegium_ mentioned till the reign of Claudius: Tac.
_Ann._ xi. 15. The proper term seems to have been
_ordo_, which occurs in inscriptions of the Empire:
Marq. p. 415.
[650] typo fixed: 54: See the oration _De haruspicum
responsis_ (especially 5. 9), the genuineness of which
is now generally acknowledged. Asconius quotes it as
Cicero's (ed. Clark, p. 70): so also Quintilian, v. 11.
42.
[651] Tac. _Ann._ 11. 15.
[652] The _haruspices_ mentioned in inscriptions (above,
note 56) were not the genuine article; they were Romans
and _equites_. Probably this was only one of the many
ways of finding dignity or employment for persons of
good birth under the Empire.
[653] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 1 (of the year 321 A.D.),
quoted by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 475, note 1. In ix. 16. 3.
5, however, the practice of consulting such experts is
strictly prohibited.
[654] The story is told in Prof. Dill's _Roman Society
in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, ed. 1, p.
41.
LECTURE XIV
THE HANNIBALIC WAR
We have noticed two different, if not opposing, tendencies in Roman
religious experience since the disappearance of the kingship. First,
there was a tendency towards the reception of new and more emotional
forms of worship, under the direction of the Sibylline books and their
keepers; secondly, we have seen how, in the hands of pontifices and
augurs, religious practice became gradually so highly formularised and
secularised that the real religious instinct is hardly discernible in
it, except indeed in the degraded form of scruple as to the exact
performance of the ritual laid down. There was also, towards the end of
that period, a third tendency beginning to show itself, which was
eventually to complete the paralysis of the old religion--a tendency to
neglect and despise the old religious forms. This need not surprise us,
if we keep in mind two facts: (1) that Rome is now continually in close
contact with Greece and her life and thought; (2) that it seems to be
inevitable in western civilisation that a hard and fast system of
religious rule should eventually arouse rebellion in certain minds.
Already there are a few signs that the regulations of the _ius divinum_
are not invariably treated with respect.
As long ago as 293 B.C. and the last struggle with the Samnites, we find
a trace of this neglect or carelessness. One of the chicken-keepers
(_pullarii_) reported falsely to the consul Papirius that the sacred
chickens had given good omen in their eating: this was discovered by a
young nephew of Papirius, "iuvenis ante doctrinam deos spernentem
natus," as Livy calls him, and came to the consul's ears. Papirius'
reception of the news was characteristic of the way in which a Roman
could combine practical common-sense with the formal respect claimed by
his _ius divinum_; he declared that the omen had been reported to him as
good, and therefore "populo Romano exercituique egregium auspicium est."
The umpire had decided favourably for him, and there was an end of the
matter, except indeed that that umpire was placed in the forefront of
the battle that the gods might punish him themselves, and there of
course he died.[655] A generation later we have a case of far more
pronounced contempt in the familiar story of P. Claudius Pulcher and his
colleague Junius, each of whom lost a Roman fleet after neglecting the
warning of the _pullarius_: of Claudius it is told that he had the
sacred chickens thrown into the sea.[656] Another well-known story is
that of Flaminius, the democrat consul who, as we shall learn directly,
was defeated and killed at Trasimene after leaving Rome with none of
his religious duties performed.[657] The famous Marcellus of this second
Punic war, though himself an "augur optimus," according to Cicero,
declined to act upon an _auspicium ex acuminibus_--electric sparks seen
at the end of the soldiers' spears--and was accustomed to ride in his
litter with blinds drawn, so that he should not see any evil omen.[658]
Assuredly the transition from superstition to reason had its ludicrous
side even in public life.
But it is not the gradual approach of rationalism that is the subject of
this lecture. For years after the death of Flaminius we have no trace of
it: that was no time for speculating, and it would have been dangerous.
The religious history of the time, as recorded by Livy, shows on the
contrary that _religio_ in the old sense of the word is once more
occupying the Roman mind--the sense of awe in the presence of the
Unknown, the sense of sin or of duties omitted, or merely a vague sense
of terror that suggested recourse to the supernatural. No wonder: for
though Italy had been invaded within the memory of living man, it was
not then invaded by one who had sworn to his father in infancy to
destroy the enemy root and branch. Instinctively both Romans and loyal
Italians knew that they were face to face with a struggle for life and
death. It is hard for us to realise the terror of the situation as it
must have been in those days of slow communication and doubtful news. It
is to Livy's credit that he recognised it fully, and all who look on
history as something more than wars and battles must be eternally
grateful to him for searching the records of the pontifices for evidence
of a people's emotion and the means taken to soothe it. Polybius has
nothing to tell us of this but a few generalisations, drawn from his own
experience a century later.[659] In all essential attributes of a Roman
historian Livy is far the better of the two. I propose to follow his
guidance in trying to gain some knowledge of the revived _religio_ of
the age and the way in which it was dealt with by the authorities.
It is in the winter of 218-17, when Hannibal was wintering in north
Italy after his victory at the Trebbia, that Livy first brings the
matter before us.[660] He uses the word I have just now and so often
used: men's minds were _moti in religionem_, and they reported many
_prodigia_ which were uncritically accepted by the vulgar. He begins
with Rome, and here it is worth noting that these portents issue from
the crowded haunts of the markets, the _forum olitorium_, and the _forum
boarium_, both close to the river and the quays. In the latter place,
for example, an ox was said to have climbed to the third story of a
house, whence it threw itself down, terrified by the panic of the
inhabitants--a story which incidentally throws light on the housing of
the lower population at the time.[661] Other wonders were announced from
various parts of Italy,[662] and the decemviri were directed to have
recourse to the Sibylline books, except for the _procuratio_ of one
miracle, common in a volcanic country, the fall of pebble-rain.[663]
This had a _procuratio_ to itself by settled custom, the _novendiale
sacrum_,[664] an expiation parallel with that which, in the religion of
the family, followed a birth or a death. For the rest, the whole city
was subjected to _lustratio_,[665] and, in fact, the whole population
was busy with the work. A _lectisternium_ was ordered for Iuventas,[666]
the deity of the young recruits, a _supplicatio_ for Hercules at
one of his temples, and five special victims were ordered for
_Genius_--directions which have been variously interpreted. I am
disposed to think of them as referring to the capacity of the State to
increase its male population in the face of military peril. That the
authorities were looking ahead is clear from the fact next stated, that
one of the praetors had to undertake a special vow if the State should
survive for ten years. These measures, ordered by the books, "magna ex
parte levaverant religione animos." Unfortunately, the wayward consul
Flaminius spoilt their endeavours by wilfully neglecting his religious
duties at the Capitol, and also at the Alban mount, where he should have
presided at the Latin festival, and hurrying secretly to the seat of
war, lest his command should be interfered with by the aristocrats.
Spring came on, and with the immediate prospect of a crisis the
_religio_ broke out afresh.[667] Marvels were reported from Sicily and
Sardinia, as well as Italy and Rome. We need not trouble ourselves with
them, except so far as to note that one, at least, was pure invention;
at Falerii, where there was an oracle by lots,[668] one tablet fell out
of the bundle with the words written on it, _Mavors telum suum
concutit_. The mental explanation of all this is lost to us;[669] it
would be interesting to know how the reports really originated and were
conveyed to Rome. That a widely spread _religio_ is really indicated we
can hardly doubt. The steps taken to soothe it, the religious
prescriptions, are of more value to us. The Senate received the reports,
and the consul then introduced the question of procuration. Besides
decreeing, no doubt with the sanction of the pontifices, certain
ordinary measures, the Senate referred the matter to the decemviri and
the Sibylline books. A _fulmen_, weighing fifty pounds, was awarded to
Jupiter, and gifts of silver to his consorts in the Capitoline temple.
Then follow directions which show that the _religio_ of women was to be
particularly cared for. Juno Regina of the Aventine was to have a
tribute collected by matrons, and she and the famous Juno Sospita of
Lanuvium were to have special sacrifices; and it is probable that
another Juno Regina, she of Ardea, was the object of a sacrifice, which
the decemviri themselves undertook in the forum of that city.[670] This
prominence of Juno may be a counterpart, I think, to the special
attention shown to Hercules and Genius in the previous winter.[671] And
it is interesting to notice that the libertinae were directed to collect
money for their own goddess Feronia.[672]
It is evident that Livy, in detailing these directions from the books of
the pontifices,[673] took them in the chronological order in which they
were to be carried out; for the day sacred to Juno Regina of the
Aventine is September 1, that of Feronia November 13, and the last
instruction he mentions is in December, when Saturnus was to have a
sacrifice and _lectisternium_ at his own temple in the forum (prepared
by senators), and a _convivium publicum_. This meant, we note with
interest, the Graecising of this old Roman cult, which now took the form
which is so familiar to us of public rejoicing by all classes, including
slaves.[674] But long before these dates the terrible disaster of
Trasimene had forced the Senate, at the urgent persuasion of the
dictator Fabius, to have recourse to the sacred books again.[675] Never
before had they been so frequently consulted; the ordinary _piacula_ of
the pontifices were not thought of; a consul had grievously broken the
_pax deorum_, and what remedy was possible no Roman authority could
tell. The prescriptions of the books were many and various; the most
interesting of them is the famous _ver sacrum_, an old Italian custom,
already referred to, but here prescribed by a Greek authority. This was
submitted to the people in Comitia, and carried with quaint provisions
suited to protect them against any unconscious mistake in carrying out
the vow, such as might produce further _religio_. We will only notice
that though, according to the old tradition, it was to Mars that the
Italian stocks were wont in time of famine and distress to dedicate the
whole agricultural produce of the year, together with the male children
born that spring,[676] in this crisis it is to Jupiter that the vow is
made. It is the Roman people only who here make the vow, and they make
it, I doubt not, to that great Jupiter of the Capitol who for 300 years
has been their guardian, and in whose temple are kept the sacred books
that ordered it.[677]
But the authorities were determined to make now a supreme effort to
still the alarm, and to restore the people to cheerfulness. They went on
to vow _ludi magni_, _i.e._ extra games beside the usual yearly _ludi
Romani_, at a cost of 333,333 and one-third asses, three being the
sacred number. Then a _supplicatio_ was decreed, which was attended not
only by the urban population, but by crowds from the country, and for
three days the decemviri superintended a _lectisternium_ on a grand
scale, such as had never been seen in Rome before, in which twelve
deities in pairs, Roman and Greek indistinguishable from each other,
were seen reclining on cushions. If Wissowa interprets this
rightly,[678] as I think he does, it marks a turning-point in the
religious history of Rome. The old distinction between _di indigetes_
and _di novensiles_ now vanishes for good; the showy Greek ritual is
applied alike to Roman and to Greek deities; the Sibylline books have
conquered the _ius divinum_, and the decemviri in religious matters are
more trusted physicians than the pontifices. The old Roman State
religion, which we have been so long examining, may be said henceforward
to exist only in the form of dead bones, which even Augustus will hardly
be able to make live.
So far, however, all had been orderly and dignified. But after Cannae we
begin to divine that the stress of disaster is telling more severely on
the nervous fibre of the people. Two Vestals were found guilty of
adultery always a suspicious event; in such times a wicked rumour once
spread would have its own way. One killed herself; the other was buried
alive at the Colline gate. A _scriba pontificis_, who had seduced one of
them, was beaten to death by the pontifex maximus. Such a violation of
the _pax deorum_ was itself a prodigium, and again the books were
consulted, and an embassy was sent to Delphi with Fabius Pictor as
leader.[679] Greece is looming ever larger in the eyes of the frightened
Roman.
Under such circumstances it is hardly astonishing to read of a new (or
almost new) and horrible rite, in which a Greek man and woman and a
Gallic man and woman (slaves, no doubt) were buried alive in the _forum
boarium_ in a hole closed by a big stone, which had already, says Livy,
been used for human victims--"minime Romano sacro." As in the case of
the Vestals, blood-shedding is avoided, but the death is all the more
horrible. What are we to make of such barbarism? Technically, it must
have been a sacrifice to Tellus and the Manes, like the _devotio_ of
Decius, and like that also, it probably had in it a substratum of
magic.[680] As regards the choice of victims it baffles us, for if we
can understand the selection of a Gallic pair at a time when the Gauls
of North Italy were taking Hannibal's side, it is not so easy to see why
the Greeks were just now the objects of public animosity. Diels has
suggested that Gelo, son of Hiero of Syracuse, deserted Rome for
Carthage after Cannae,[681] and wanting a better explanation we may
accept this, and imagine, if we can, that the cruel death of a pair of
Greek slaves need not be taken as expressing any general feeling of
antagonism or hatred for things Greek. But, after all, the most
astonishing fact in the whole story is this--that the abominable
practice lasted into the Empire; Pliny, at least, emphatically states
that his own age had seen it, and heard the solemn form of prayer which
the magister of the quindecemviri used to dictate over the victims.[682]
Pliny, we may note, also speaks of the _forum boarium_ as the scene of
the sacrifice, where also the first gladiatorial games were
exhibited.[683] Rome was already accustomed to see horrors there.
As we have now reached the climax of the religious panic of these years,
I may pause here for a moment to refer to an interesting matter which I
mentioned in my third lecture. At this very time, if we accept Wissowa's
conjecture, the twenty-seven puppets of straw known as Argei, which were
thrown over the _pons sublicius_ by the Vestals on the ides of May, were
being substituted as surrogates for the sacrifice by drowning of the
same number of Greeks (Argei); an atrocity which he fancies actually
took place somewhere in the interval between the first and second Punic
wars, under orders found in the Sibylline books.[684] All scholars know
that there were in the four regions of the old city twenty-seven (or
twenty-four) chapels, _sacella_, which were also called Argei, and have
caused great trouble to topographers and archaeologists.[685] To
complete his hypothesis, Wissowa conjectures that these too date from
this same age, and were distributed over the city in order to take away
the miasma caused by some great pestilence or other trouble, of which,
owing to the loss of Livy's second decade, we have no information. But
neither have we a scrap of information about the building of the
chapels, or the drowning of the twenty-seven Greeks, an atrocity so
abominable that the only way in which we might conceivably account for
its disappearance in the records would be the hypothesis of a conspiracy
of silence, an impossible thing at Rome. The loss of Livy's second
decade cannot of itself be an explanation; such an event is just what an
epitomator would have seized on, yet there is no trace of it in the
surviving epitomes, nor in any other author who may have had Livy before
him. Varro knew nothing of it, so far as we can tell; where he refers to
the Argei he makes no mention of such an astonishing origin either of
puppets or chapels. If there had been a record in the books of the
pontifices, it is impossible to imagine that he was not aware of it.
On the contrary, he quotes no official record, but a line of Ennius
which attributes the origin of the Argei to Numa:[686]
libaque fictores Argeos et tutulatos.
Now Ennius was born in 239[687] B.C., and was, therefore, living when
the whole astonishing business began. How does he come to ascribe to
Numa institutions which were to himself exactly as the building of the
Forth Bridge might be to an Edinburgh man of middle age? Why, too, if
these institutions were of such recent date, did the Romans of the last
two centuries B.C. invent all sorts of wild explanations of them, at
which Wissowa very properly scoffs? It is for him to explain why these
explanations were needed. It is inconceivable that in a large city, with
colleges of priests preserving religious traditions and formulae, all
memory of the remarkable origin of _sacella_ and puppets should have so
completely vanished as to leave room for the growth of such a crop of
explanations. These will be found in my _Roman Festivals_, p. 112, and
whoever reads them will conclude at once, I am sure, that the Romans
knew nothing at all about the true history of the Argei. We may still
class this curious ceremony with some of the primitive magical or
quasi-magical rites of the ancient settlement. We are not entitled to
cite it as an example of the growing savagery of this trying period; and
if it be argued that it is an example rather of humanity, because for
the original victims straw puppets were substituted, the answer is that
even if we were to grant the human sacrifice, the surrogation of puppets
is a most unlikely thing to have happened.[688] It is a rare practice;
Wissowa himself judiciously rejects it as an explanation of such objects
as _oscilla_ and _maniae_. You cannot adopt it when you choose, to
explain a difficulty, and then reject it when you choose. Why, one may
ask, was this humane method not applied also to the two pairs of Gauls
and Greeks just mentioned? But I need not pursue the subject further; we
may be satisfied to reflect that from an anthropological point of view
the Argei need never have been anything more than puppets.[689]
But to return to the religious history of the war. It would seem that
the extraordinary series of performances ordered during the depression
and despair that followed Cannae had succeeded for the time in quieting
the _religio_. Fabius Pictor too had returned from Delphi,[690] and
brought home in what seems to be hexameter verse instructions as to the
worship of certain deities, with injunctions to the Romans to send gifts
to the Pythian Apollo if prosperity should return to them, and ending
with the significant words, "lasciviam (disorderly excitement) a vobis
prohibete," which may be interpreted as "keep quiet, and do not get into
a religious panic." The hexameters were Greek, but were translated for
the benefit of the people; and Fabius publicly told how he had himself
obeyed the voice of the oracle by sacrificing to the deities it named,
and had worn the wreath, the sign that he was accomplishing religious
work, during the whole of his journey home. This wreath he now deposited
on the altar of Apollo. This was in 216, and it is remarkable that we
hear of no new outbreak of _prodigia_, the normal symptom of _religio_,
till the next year. Then we have a list; as Livy says,[691] "simplices
et religiosi homines" were ready with them at any time. A panic arose in
Rome, not strictly of a religious kind, which shows the nervousness of
the population; a rumour went about that an army had been seen on the
Janiculum, but men who were on the spot refuted it. In this case the
Sibylline books were not consulted, but Etruscan haruspices were called
in, who simply ordered a _supplicatio_ of the new kind, at the
_pulvinaria_. This is the first, or almost the first instance of these
experts being consulted; earlier statements of the kind are probably
apocryphal, as I pointed out in the last lecture. It is not clear why
the authorities had recourse to them at this moment; but I am inclined
to think that the old remedies even of the Sibylline books and their
keepers were getting stale, and that while it was thought undesirable to
excite the people by new rites, it was felt that the familiar ones might
gain some new prestige by being recommended by new experts. The old
prescription, given by a new physician, may gain in authority. The next
year again, 213, brought another crop of _prodigia_, but Livy dismisses
them with the simple words, "His procuratis ex decreto pontificum."[692]
It is reasonable to suppose that a reaction was taking place in the
minds of the senators and pontifices, and that they were determined to
take as little notice as possible of disturbing symptoms, relying on the
prestige of the Delphic oracle, and acting on its advice to suppress
_lascivia_.
But in this same year the _lascivia_ broke out again with unprecedented
force. The cause was not only, as Livy explains it, the dreary
continuance of the war with varying success; if we read between the
lines we may guess that the break-up of family life occasioned by the
deaths of so many heads of houses and their sons, had opened the way for
_feminine_ excitement and for the introduction of external rites such as
an old Roman _paterfamilias_ would no more have tolerated than the
pontifices themselves. "Tanta religio," says Livy,[693] "et ea magna ex
parte externa, civitatem incessit, _ut aut homines, aut dii repente alii
viderentur facti_"; it seemed as if the old religious system, in spite
of all its highly formalised apparatus of expiation, was being
deliberately set aside. "Nec iam in secreto modo atque intra parietes
abolebantur Romani ritus: sed in publico etiam ac foro Capitolioque
(this is the hardest cut of all) _mulierum_ turba erat, nec
sacrificantium nec precantium deos patrio more." To understand such an
amazing religious rebellion against the _ius divinum_ we must remember
that 80,000 men had fallen at Cannae, besides great numbers in the two
previous years, and that therefore the real effective human support of
that _ius_ had in great part given way. Private priests and prophets,
vermin to be found all over the Graeco-Roman world, had captured for
gain the minds of helpless women, and of the ruined and despairing
population of the country now flocking into Rome. The aediles and
triumviri capitales, responsible for the order of the city, could do
nothing; the Senate had to commission the praetor urbanus to rid the
people of these _religiones_. When in those days the Senate and
magistrates took such a matter in hand, further rebellion was
impossible. All we are told is that the praetor issued an edict ordering
that all who possessed private forms of prophecy or prayer, or rules of
sacrifice, should bring them to him before the kalends of April next;
and that no one should sacrifice in public with any strange or foreign
rite. I do not know that the wonderful good sense of this decree has
ever been commented on. To take violent or cruel measures would have
been dangerous in the extreme at such a psychological moment. Livy tells
this story at the very end of the year 213, and the kalends of April
referred to must be those of the next year; there was, therefore, plenty
of time to obey the order, and in the meantime the excitement might
subside of itself. The mischief was not absolutely and suddenly
stopped; in private houses the new rites were allowed to go on,--a
policy adhered to in time to come,--but the _ius divinum_ of the Roman
State, the public worship of the Roman deities, must not be tampered
with. This wise policy seems to have succeeded for the time; for even
after the capture of Tarentum by Hannibal, and the prospect of an attack
in that direction from Macedonia, we do not hear of any renewed
outbreak. _Prodigia_ are reported as usual, but the remedy thought
sufficient is only a single day's _supplicatio_ and a _sacrum
novendiale_. The consuls, however, in the true Roman spirit, devoted
themselves for several days to religious duties before leaving Rome for
their commands.
This was at the beginning of the year 212. But after the Latin festival
at the end of April we hear of a new _religio_, and a very curious
one.[694] It looks as though certain Latin oracles, written in Saturnian
verse, and attributed to an apocryphal _vates_ of the suspicious name of
Marcius, had got abroad in the panic of the previous year, and had been
confiscated by the praetor urbanus charged, as we saw, with the
suppression of religious mischief. He had handed them on to the new
praetor urbanus of 212. One of them prophesied the disaster of Cannae
which had already happened; the other gave directions for instituting
games in honour of Apollo, including one which placed the religious part
of these _ludi_ in the hands of the decemviri. I strongly suspect that
the whole transaction was a plan on the part of the Senate and the
religious colleges, in order to quiet the minds of the people by a new
religious festival in honour of a great deity of whose prestige every
one had heard, for he had been long established in Rome; he is now to
take a more worthy place there, to be incorporated in the _ius divinum_
in a new sense, in gratitude perhaps for his recent advice given to
Fabius Pictor at Delphi. Possibly also he is to be regarded here as the
Greek deity of healing, though we do not hear of any pestilence at the
time; but four years later it was in consequence of an epidemic that
these _ludi_ were renewed and made permanent. The main object of the
moment was no doubt to amuse the people and occupy their minds. The
whole population took part in the games, wearing wreaths as partakers in
a sacred rite; the matrons were not left out; and every one kept his
house door open and feasted before the eyes of his fellow-citizens.[695]
If it be asked why these games in honour of a Greek god should have been
suggested by a Latin oracle, the answer is, I think, that the latter was
used rather as a pretext for a pre-conceived plan; if it be true that
the Marcian verses had won some prestige among the vulgar, it was an
adroit stroke to invent one that might be used in this way. This is the
only way in which we can satisfactorily account for the direction to the
decemviri to undertake the necessary sacrifices. The government seizes a
chance of taking the material of _religio_ out of the hands of the
vulgar and utilising it for its own purposes. It was clever too to give
the alleged Latin oracles the sanction of the _Graecus ritus_;
"decemviri Graeco ritu hostiis sacra faciant," says the oracle. The
keepers consulted the sacred books as to the projected _ludi_, and
henceforward, as it would seem, these Latin oracles were placed in their
keeping to be added to the Sibylline books in the collection on the
Capitol. The amalgamation of Roman and Greek religion is complete. If
there were any doubt of it after the _lectisternia_ to the twelve gods
which we noticed just now, all such doubt is removed by the religious
events of this year 212--that famous year in which Hannibal came within
sight of Rome, and fell away again, never to return.
The student of Roman religious history, and of all religious psychology,
as he follows carefully the extracts from the priestly records which
Livy has embodied in his story of the last years of the great struggle,
will find much to interest him. Even little things have here their
significance. He will still find relics of the scruple about the
minutiae of the _ius divinum_ to which the Romans had become habituated
under priestly rule--_religio_ in that sense in which it is least really
religious. He will find a Flamen Dialis resigning his priesthood because
he had made a blunder in putting the _exta_ of a victim on the
altar;[696] only too ready, it may have been, to take an opportunity of
getting free of those numerous taboos which deprived the priest of
Jupiter of all possibility of active life. Such a conjecture finds
support in the curious fact that his successor was a youth of such bad
character that his relations induced the pontifex maximus to select him
for the sacred post, in hopes that the restrictive discipline he would
have to undergo might improve his morals and make him a better
citizen.[697] About the later history of this youth I may have something
to say in the next lecture. Again, we find _religio_ of the scrupulous
kind sadly worrying the stout old warrior Marcellus shortly before his
death[698]: "Aliae atque aliae obiectae animo religiones tenebant." One
of these _religiones_ was a curious one; he had vowed a temple of Honos
and Virtus--two deities together; and the pontifices made difficulties,
insisting that two deities could not inhabit the same _cella_, for if it
should be struck by lightning, how were you to tell, in conducting the
_procuratio_, to which of them to sacrifice? The difficulty was solved
by building two temples. Such quaintnesses of the old type of religious
idea are thus still found, but they are becoming mere survivals.
The _prodigia_ continue, and occasionally, as a new crisis in the war
was known to be approaching, became exacerbated. In 208, just before the
old consul Marcellus left the city to meet his death, he and his
colleague were terribly pestered with them, and could not succeed in
their sacrificing (_litare_). For many days they failed to secure the
_pax deorum_.[699] When it was known that Hasdrubal was on his way from
Spain, and that the greatest peril of the war was approaching, special
steps were taken to make sure of that _pax_.[700] The pontifices ordered
that twenty-seven maidens--a number of magical significance both in
Greece and Italy[701]--should chant a _carmen_ composed by the poet
Livius Andronicus; and in the elaborate ritual that followed, as the
result of the striking of the temple of Juno on the Aventine by
lightning, the decemviri and haruspices from Etruria also had a share.
The procession of the maidens, singing and dancing through the city till
they reached the temple of Juno by the Clivus Publicius, was a new
feature in ritual, and must have been a striking one. Doubtless it was
all a part of a deliberate policy to keep the women of the city in good
humour, and in touch with the religion of the State, instead of going
after other gods, as they had already gone and were again to go with
amazing and perilous fervour. For Juno Regina of the Aventine was their
special deity; and in this case they were authorised--all _matronae_
living within ten miles of the city--to contribute in money to a noble
gift to the temple.
Hasdrubal was defeated and killed (207), and the danger passed away.
Then, when the news reached Rome (if Livy's account may be relied on),
there followed such an outburst of gratitude to the deities as we have
never yet met with, and shall not meet with again in Roman history.[702]
It was not only that the State ordered a _supplicatio_ of three days
thanksgiving; men and women alike took advantage of it to press in
crowds to the temples, the materfamilias with her children, and in her
finest robes: "cum omni solutae metu, perinde ac si debellatum foret,
deis immortalibus grates agerent." I would draw attention to the fact
that here is no mere fulfilment of a vow, of a bargain, as some will
have it; in this moment of real religious emotion the first thought is
one of thankfulness that the _pax deorum_ is restored, and that the
Power manifesting itself in the universe, though in the humble form of
these dwellers in Roman temples, would permit the long-suffering people
once more to feel themselves in right relation to him. As we go on with
our studies in the two centuries that follow, let us bear this moment in
mind; it will remind us that the religious instinct never entirely dies
out in the heart of any people.
I would fain stop at this point, and have done with the war and its
religious troubles; but there is one more event which cannot be
omitted,--the solemn advent of a new deity, this time neither Greek nor
Italian. After the Metaurus battle, the dreaded Hannibal yet remained in
Italy, and so long as he was there the Romans could know no security. So
far as religion could help them every possible means had been used;
there seemed no expedient left. In 205 a pretext for inspecting the
Sibylline books was found in an unusual burst of pebble-rain; and there,
as it was given out, an oracle was deciphered, which foretold that
Hannibal would have to leave Italy if the Magna Mater of Pessinus were
brought to Rome.[703] In whose brain this idea originated we do not
know, but it was a brilliant one. The eastern cult was wholly unknown at
Rome, was something entirely new and strange, a fresh and hopeful
prescription for an exhausted patient. The project was seized on with
avidity, and supported by the influence of Delphi and of that strange
soldier mystic the great Scipio.[704] The best man in the State was to
receive the goddess, and when, after many months, she came to Italy in
the form of a black stone, it was Scipio who was chosen for the duty.
For Attalus, king of Pergamus, had consented to let her go from her
Phrygian home; and when she arrived at Ostia, Scipio with all the Roman
matrons went thither by land; alone he boarded the ship, received the
goddess from her priests, and carried her to land, where the noblest
women of the State received her,--received the black stone, that
is,--and carried it in their arms in turns, while all Rome poured out to
meet her, and burned incense at their doors as she passed by. And
praying that she might enter willingly and propitiously into the city,
they carried her into the temple of Victory on the Palatine on the 4th
of April, henceforward to be a festal day, the popular Megalesia.
This Magna Mater was the first Oriental deity introduced into Rome, and
the last deity introduced by the Sibylline books. It is probable that no
Roman then knew much about the real nature of her cult and its noisy
orgiastic character and other degrading features; it was sufficient to
have found a new prescription, and once more to have given the people,
and especially the women, a happy moment of hope and confidence. But the
truth came out soon enough; and though the goddess must have her own
priests, it was ordered by a _Senatusconsultum_ that no Roman should
take part in her service.[705] Though established in the heart of the
city, and ere long to have her own temple, she was to continue a foreign
deity outside the _ius divinum_. As such she belongs to those worships
with which I am not called upon by the plan of these lectures to deal.
Hannibal withdrew at last from Italy, and in 202 the war came to an end.
Looking at the divine inhabitants of the city in that year, we may see
in them almost as much a _colluvies nationum_ as in the human population
itself. Under such circumstances neither the old City-state nor its
religion could any longer continue to exist. The decay of the one
reflects that of the other; the failure to trust the _di indigetes_, the
constant desire to try new and foreign manifestations of divine power,
were sure signs that the State was passing into a new phase. In the next
two centuries Rome gained the world and lost her own soul.
NOTES TO LECTURE XIV
[655] The story is told in Livy x. 40 and 41, and must
have been taken by him from the records of the
pontifices, which had almost certainly begun by this
date (see above, p. 283). While on these chapters the
reader may also note the curious vow of this Papirius to
Jupiter Victor at the end of ch. xlii.; and the
description of the religious horrors of the Samnites
witnessed by the army, and especially the words
"respersae fando infandoque sanguine arae" (see above,
p. 196), which clearly indicate a practice abhorrent to
Romans.
[656] Val. Max. i. 5. 3 and 4; Cic. _de Div._ i. 16. 29;
Livy, _Epit._ xix.
[657] The _locus classicus_ is Livy xxi. 63.
[658] Cic. _de Div._ ii. 36. 77. I find an illustration
of this effect of lightning in Major Bruce's _Twenty
Years in the Himalaya_, p. 130: "Directly the ice-axes
begin to hum (in a storm) they should be put away."
[659] He notices it in connection with the war only in
iii. 112. 6, after the battle of Cannae: a striking
passage, but cast in general language.
[660] Livy xxi. 62 foll. Wissowa comments on this
passage in _R.K._ p. 223.
[661] See the author's _Social Life at Rome in the Age
of Cicero_, p. 28 foll.
[662] The rule seems to have been that no _prodigia_
were accepted, and _procurata_ by the authorities, which
were announced from beyond the ager Romanus. See Mommsen
in O. Jahn's edition of the _Periochae_ of Livy's books,
and of Iulius Obsequens, preface, p. xviii. But this
does not appear from the records of this war; and, at
any rate, the religious panic was Italian as well as
Roman.
[663] Red sand still occasionally falls in Italy,
brought by a sirocco from the Sahara, and this accounts
for the _prodigium_, "_pluit sanguine_," which is often
met with. I have a record of it in the _Daily Mail_ of
March 11, 1901. But the _lapides_ were probably of
volcanic origin.
[664] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 328.
[665] This must have been a special performance of the
yearly Amburbium, of which unluckily we known hardly
anything (Wissowa, _R.K._ 130).
[666] _R.F._ p. 56, where unfortunately the word is
misprinted Pubertas. Wissowa, _R.K._ 126, thinks of Hebe
in a Latin form; in his view it must be a Greek deity,
being brought in by the decemviri and the books. But we
shall find that these begin now to interfere with Roman
cults, and in such a crisis we need not wonder at it.
Wissowa allows that we do not know where this Hebe can
have come from, nor, I may add, why she should have
come. That there was some special meaning in the
combination Juventas, Hercules, Genius I feel sure, and
I conjecture that it may be found in the urgent need of
a supply of _iuvenes_. Hercules and Genius seem both to
represent the male principle of life (_R.F._ 142 foll.).
Juventas speaks for herself, but we may remember that
the _tirones_ sacrificed to her on the day of the
Liberalia (17th March), and that Liber is almost
certainly another form of Genius (_R.F._ 55).
[667] Livy xxii. 1.
[668] It is only from this passage that we know of the
oracle. See Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination_, iv.
146. That of Caere is mentioned in Livy xxi. 62. Both
cities were mainly Etruscan.
[669] Livy xxvii. 37 betrays some knowledge of the
infectious nature of prodigy-reporting: "Sub unius
prodigii, ut fit, mentionem, alia quoque nuntiata."
[670] Pliny, _N.H._ xxxv. 115, where the verses are
quoted as inscribed on the paintings in her temple at
Ardea. Note that Juno is here called the wife of Jupiter
by a Greek artist from Asia.
[671] For Juno as the woman's deity and guardian spirit,
see above, p. 135. To refer this prominence of the
goddess to her connection with Carthage and mythical
enmity to the Romans, as we see it in the _Aeneid_, is
premature; we must suppose that each Juno was still a
local deity, and no general conception in the later
Greek sense is as yet possible.
[672] For Feronia, see _R.F._ 252 foll.
[673] The _procurationes_ ordered were doubtless
recorded in the _annales maximi_. The books of the
decemviri, we must suppose, were burnt with the oracles
in 38 B.C. (Diels, _Sib. Blätter_, p. 6 note).
[674] Wissowa, _R.K._ 170; Marq. 586 foll.
[675] Livy xxii. 9-10.
[676] See above, p. 204 foll.; Strabo, p. 250; Festus,
p. 106.
[677] If it be asked why Jupiter is here without his
titles Optimus Maximus, the answer is that just below,
where _ludi magni_ are vowed to him, as all such _ludi_
were, he is also simply Jupiter.
[678] _R.K._ 356. In his view the new amalgam of twelve
gods was known as _di Consentes_, an expression of
Varro's which has been much discussed. See
Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 83; _C.I.L._ vi. 102;
Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, 190 foll. In _de Re
Rust._ i. 1, Varro speaks of twelve _dei consentes,
urbani_, whose gilded statues stood in the forum.
[679] Livy xxii. 57.
[680] See above, p. 207. Orosius' account of this is
worth reading; he calls it "obligamentum hoc magicum"
(iv. 13). He mentions a Gallic pair and a Greek woman,
and dates it in 226 (227 according to Wissowa,
_Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 227). Cp. Plut. _Marcell._
3. Livy's words, "iam ante hostiis humanis, minime
Romano sacro, imbutum," agree with this. There must have
been an outbreak of feeling and recourse to the
Sibylline books in the stress of the Gallic war.
[681] _Sib. Blätter_, p. 86.
[682] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 12 and 13. Plutarch, _l.c._,
confirms him. Pliny, it may be noticed, is here writing
of spells, etc., among which he classes the _precatio_
of this rite.
[683] The first gladiatorial show was in 264 B.C. (Val.
Max. ii. 4. 7).
[684] The arguments are stated fully in his _Gesammelte
Abhandlungen_, 211 foll.
[685] The best account of these, or rather of the Argean
itinerary, of which fragments are preserved in Varro,
_L.L._ v. 45 foll., is still that of Jordan in his
_Römische Topographie_, ii. 603 foll. The extracts seem
to be from a record of directions for the passage of a
procession round the _sacella_ (or _sacraria_, Varro v.
48). Though quoting these, Varro has nothing to say of
their origin, which would be strange indeed if they were
of such comparatively late date.
[686] In Varro, _L.L._ vii. 44. There is no doubt that
the line is from Ennius; it is also quoted as his in
Festus, p. 355.
[687] Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, vol. i. ed.
3, p. 110.
[688] Some examples of substitution will be found in
Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_, i. 469. It is of course a well-known phenomenon,
but is now generally rejected as an explanation of
_oscilla_, _maniae_, etc. (see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 355,
and Frazer, _G.B._ ii. 344). I know of no case of it on
good evidence at Rome, unless it be one in the
_devotio_, of an effigy for the soldier, ("ni moritur,"
Livy viii. 10).
[689] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 117, with references to
Mannhardt; Frazer, _G.B._ ii. 256; Farnell, _Cults of
the Greek States_, v. 181.
[690] Livy xxiii. 11. See also Diels, _Sib. Blätter_,
pp. 11 and 92.
[691] Livy xxiv. 10.
[692] _Ib._ xxiv. 44.
[693] _Ib._ xxv. 1.
[694] _Ib._ xxv. 12. On the Marcian oracles and their
metre, see Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination_, iv.
128 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ 463 note 2; Diels, _op. cit._
p. 7 foll.
[695] See above, Lect. xi. p. 262. For the Apolline
games, _R.F._ p. 179 foll.
[696] Livy xxvi. 23.
[697] _Ib._ xxvii. 8.
[698] _Ib._ xxvii. 25; Plut. _Marcellus_, p. 28.
[699] _Ib._ xxvii. 23.
[700] _Ib._ xxvii. 37.
[701] The idea that this number was "chthonic" and a
monopoly of the Sibylline utterances was started by
Diels, _Sib. Blätter_, p. 42 foll., with imperfect
anthropological knowledge, and has led Wissowa and
others into wrong conclusions, _e.g._ as to the Argei.
See an article criticising Wissowa in _Classical Rev._
1902, p. 211. On the whole subject of the number three
and its multiples, see Usener, "Dreizahl," in
_Rheinisches Museum_ for 1903, and Goudy, _Trichotomy in
Roman Law_ (Oxford, 1910), p. 5 foll.
[702] Livy xxvii. 51. For gratitude among Romans, see
above, p. 202. A gift of thanksgiving was sent to Delphi
(Livy xxviii. 45).
[703] _Ib._ xxix. 10 foll. For other references see
_R.F._ p. 69 foll.
[704] _Ib._ xxix. 10.
[705] Dion. Hal. ii. 19; _R.F._ p. 70.
LECTURE XV
AFTER THE HANNIBALIC WAR
The long and deadly struggle with Hannibal ended in 201 B.C., and no
sooner was peace concluded than the Senate determined on war with
Macedon. This decision is a critical moment in Roman history, for it
initiated not only a long period of advance and the eventual supremacy
of Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also an age of narrow
aristocratic rule which remained unquestioned till revolution broke out
with Tiberius Gracchus. But we cannot safely deny that it was a just
decision. Hannibal was alive, and his late ally, Philip of Macedon, now
in sinister coalition with Antiochus of Syria, might be capable of
invading exhausted Italy. To have an enemy once more in the peninsula
would probably be fatal to Rome and Italy, and one more effort was
necessary in order to avert such a calamity; an effort that must be made
at once, while Carthage lay prostrate.
It is necessary to grasp fully the danger of the moment if we are to
understand the part played by religion (if I may use the word) in
bringing about the desired result. It was most difficult to persuade a
people worn out by one war that it was essential for their safety that
they should at once face another. Historians naturally look on the
success of the Senate in this task as due to its own prestige, and to
the skilful oratory of the Consul in the speech to the people which Livy
has reproduced in his own admirable rhetoric. But a closer examination
of the chapters at the beginning of the historian's thirty-first book
will show that religion too was used, in accordance with the experience
of the late war, to put pressure on the voters and to inspire their
confidence. As we saw in the last lecture, they had been constantly
cheered and braced by religious expedients,--their often-recurring
_religio_ had been soothed and satisfied; now the same means were to be
used positively rather than negatively, to help in urging them to a
definite course of action. Some sixty years later Polybius, writing of
the extreme religiousness of the Romans, expressed his conviction that
religion was invented for political objects, and only serves as the
means of bridling the fickle and unreasoning Demos; for if it were
possible to have a State consisting of wise men only, no such
institution would be necessary.[706] The philosophic historian is here
thinking mainly of the way in which religion was turned to account by
the Roman authorities in his own lifetime. We cannot have a better
illustration of this than the events of the year 200 B.C.
Already, in the autumn of the previous year, the ground had been
prepared. To the plebeian games in November there had been added a feast
of Jupiter (_Iovis epulum_), as had been done more than once during the
late war.[707] Jupiter, in the form of his image in the Capitoline
temple, lay on his couch at the feast of the outgoing plebeian
magistrates, with his face reddened with minium as at a triumph, and
Juno and Minerva sat each on her _sella_ on either side of him; and to
give practical point to this show, corn from Africa was distributed at
four asses the modius, or at most one quarter of the normal price. When
the new consuls entered on office on the ides of the following March,
further religious steps were at once taken; the political atmosphere was
charged with religiosity. On the first day of their office the consuls
were directed by the Senate, doubtless with the sanction of the
pontifices, to _sacrifice to such deities as they might select_, with a
special prayer for the success of the new war which Senate and people
(the latter by a clever anticipation) are contemplating. Haruspices from
Etruria had been adroitly procured, and no doubt primed, who reported
that the gods had accepted this prayer, and that the examination of the
victims portended extension of the Roman frontier, victory, and
triumph.[708] Yet, in spite of all this, the people were not yet
willing; in almost all the centuries, when the voting for the war took
place, they rejected the proposal of the Senate. Then the consul
Sulpicius was put up to address them, and at the end of Livy's version
of his speech we find him clinching his political arguments with
religious ones. "Ite in suffragium, bene iuvantibus dis, et quae Patres
censuerunt, vos iubete. Huius vobis sententiae non consul modo auctor
est, sed etiam di immortales; qui mihi sacrificanti ... laeta omnia
prosperaque portendere." Thus adjured, the people yielded; and as a
reward, and to stifle any _religio_ that might be troubling them, they
are treated to a _supplicatio_ of three days, including an "_obsecratio
circa omnia pulvinaria_" for the happy result of the war; and once more,
after the levy was over,--a heavy tax on the patience of the
people,--the consul made vows of _ludi_ and a special gift to Jupiter,
in case the State should be intact and prospering five years from that
day.[709]
Exactly the same religious machinery was used a few years later to gain
the consent of the people for a war of far less obvious necessity,--that
with Antiochus of Syria. It was at once successful. The haruspices were
again on the spot and gave the same report; and then, _solutis religione
animis_, the centuries sanctioned the war. The vow that followed, of
which Livy gives a modernised wording, was for _ludi_ to last ten
continuous days, and for gifts of money at all the _pulvinaria_, where
now, as we gather from these same chapters, the images of the gods were
displayed on their couches during the greater part of the year.[710]
We may realise in accounts like these how far we have left behind us the
old Roman religion we discussed in earlier lectures. That religion did
not any longer supply the material needed; it was not suited to be the
handmaid of a political or military policy; it was a real religion, not
invented for political purposes, to use Polybius' language, but itself a
part of the life of the State, whether active in war, or law, or
politics. In the ceremonies I have just been describing almost all the
features are foreign,--the _pulvinaria_, the haruspices, perhaps even
the _Iovis epulum_; and we feel that though the _religio_ in the minds
of the people is doubtless a genuine thing, yet the means taken to
soothe it are far from genuine,--they are _mala medicamenta_, quack
remedies. Such is the method by which a shrewd, masterly government
compels the obedience of a _populus religiosus_. After long experience
of such methods, can we wonder that Polybius could formulate his famous
view of religion, or that a great and good Roman lawyer, himself
pontifex maximus, could declare that political religion stands quite
apart from the religion of the poets, or that of the philosophers, and
must be acted on, whether true or false?[711]
The reporting of _prodigia_ goes on with astonishing vigour in this
period, and seems to have become endemic. I only mention it here (for we
have had quite enough of it already) because the question arises whether
it is now used mainly for political purposes, or to annoy a personal
rival or enemy. This does not appear clearly from Livy's accounts, but
in an age of personal and political rivalries, as this undoubtedly was,
it can hardly have been otherwise. Certain it is that the interests of
the State were grievously interfered with in this way. The consuls at
this time, and until 153 B.C., did not enter on office until March 15,
and they should have been ready to start for their military duties as
soon as the levies had been completed; instead of which, they were
constantly delayed by the duty of expiating these marvels. In 199
Flamininus, whose appointment to the command in Macedonia had of course
annoyed the friends of the man he was superseding, was delayed in this
way for the greater part of the year, and yet he is said to have left
Italy at an earlier date than most consuls.[712] Thus the change to
January 1 for the beginning of the consular year, which took place in
153 B.C., was an unavoidable political necessity. Even the Sibylline
books came to be used for personal and political purposes. In the year
144 the praetor Marcius Rex was commissioned to repair the Appian and
Aniensian aqueducts and to construct a new one. The _decemviri sacris
faciundis_, consulting the books, as it was said, for other reasons,
found an oracle forbidding the water to be conveyed to the Capitoline
hill, and seem on this absurd ground to have been able to delay the
necessary work. Our information is much mutilated, but the real
explanation seems to be that there was some personal spite against
Marcius, who, however, eventually completed the work.[713] Nearly a
century later a Sibylline oracle, beyond doubt invented for the purpose,
was used to prevent Pompeius from taking an army to Egypt to restore
Ptolemy Auletes to his throne. But all students of Roman history in the
last two centuries B.C. are familiar with such cases of the prostitution
of religion or religious processes, and I have already said enough about
it in the lecture on divination.[714]
I do not, of course, mean to assert that personal and political motives
account for all or the greater number of _prodigia_ reported. There is
plenty of evidence that the genuine old _religio_ could be stirred up by
real marvels, which the government were bound to expiate in order to
satisfy public feeling. Thus in 193 B.C. earthquakes were so frequent
that the Senate could not meet, nor could any public business be done,
so busy were the consuls with the work of expiation. At last the
Sibylline books were consulted and the usual religious remedies applied;
but the spirit of the age is apparent in the edict of the consuls,
prompted by the Senate, that if _feriae_ had been decreed to take place
on a certain day for the expiation of an earthquake, no fresh earthquake
was to be reported on that same day.[715] This delicious edict,
unparalleled in Roman history, caused the grave Livy to declare that the
people must have grown tired, not only of the earthquakes, but of the
_feriae_ appointed to expiate them.
Let us turn to another and more interesting feature of this age, which
is plainly visible in the sphere of religion, as in other aspects both
of private and public life: I mean the growth of _individualism_. Men,
and indeed women also, as we shall see, are beginning to feel and to
assert their individual importance, as against the strict rules and
traditions, civil or religious, of the life of the family and the State.
This is a tendency that had long been at work in Greece, and is
especially marked in the teaching of the two great ethical schools of
the post-Alexandrian period, the Epicureans and Stoics. The influence of
Greece on the Romans was already strong enough to have sown the seeds of
individualism in Italy; but the tendency was at the same time a natural
result of enlarged experience and expanding intelligence among the upper
classes. The second century B.C. shows us many prominent men of strong
individual character, who assert themselves in ways to which we have not
been accustomed in Roman history, _e.g._ Scipio the elder, Flamininus,
Cato, Aemilius Paulus and his son, Scipio Aemilianus; and among lesser
and less honourable men we see the tendency in the passionate desire for
personal distinction in the way of military commands, triumphs, and the
giving of expensive games. This is the age in which we first hear of
statues and portrait busts of eminent men; and magistrates begin to put
their names or types connected with their families on the coins which
they issue.[716]
In religion this tendency is seen mainly in the attempts of the
individual, often successful, to shake himself free of the restrictions
of the old _ius divinum_. I pointed out long ago that it was a weak
point in the old Roman religion that it did little or nothing to
encourage and develop the individual religious instinct; it was
formalised as a religion of family and State, and made no appeal, as did
that of the Jews, to the individual's sense of right and wrong.[717] The
sense of sin was only present to the Roman individual mind in the form
of scruple about omissions or mistakes in the performance of religious
duties. Thus religion lost her chance at Rome as an agent in the
development of the better side of human nature. As an illustration of
what I mean I may recall what I said in an early lecture, that the
spirit of a dead Roman was not thought of as definitely individualised;
it joined the whole mass of the Manes in some dimly conceived abode
beneath the earth; there is no singular of the word Manes. It is only in
the third century B.C. that we first meet with memorial tombstones to
individuals, like those of the Scipios, and not till the end of the
Republican period that we find the words Di Manes representing in any
sense the spirit of the individual departed.[718]
In practical life the quarrel of the individual with the _ius divinum_
takes the form of protest against the restrictions placed on the old
sacrificing priesthoods, these of the Flamines and the Rex sacrorum,
who, unlike the pontifices and augurs, were disqualified from holding a
secular magistracy.[719] These priesthoods must be filled up, and when a
vacancy occurred, the pontifex maximus, who retained the power of the
Rex in this sphere, as a kind of _paterfamilias_ of the whole State,
selected the persons, and could compel them to serve even if they were
unwilling. But the interests of public life are now far more attractive
than the duties of the cults,--the individual wishes to assert himself
where his self-assertion will be noted and appreciated.
These attempts at emancipation from the _ius divinum_ were not at first
successful. In 242 a flamen of Mars was elected consul; he hoped to be
in joint command with his colleague Lutatius of the naval campaign
against Carthage. But the _ius divinum_ forbade him to leave Italy, and
the pontifex maximus inexorably enforced it.[720] Of this quarrel we
have no details; but in 190 a similar case is recorded in full. A flamen
Quirinalis, elected praetor, who had Sardinia assigned him as his
province, was stopped by the _ius divinum_ administered by another
inexorable pontifex maximus; and it was only after a long struggle, in
which Senate, tribunes, and people all took part, that he was forced to
submit. So great was his wrath that he was with difficulty persuaded not
to resign his praetorship.[721] Naturally it became difficult to fill
these priesthoods, for it was invidious to compel young men of any
promise to commit what was practically political suicide. The office of
_rex sacrorum_ was vacant for two years between 210 and 208;[722] and in
180 Cornelius Dolabella, a _duumvir navalis_, on being selected for this
priesthood, absolutely refused to obey the pontifex maximus when ordered
to resign his secular command. He was fined for disobedience, and
appealed to the people; at the moment when it became obvious that the
appeal would fail, he contrived to escape by getting up an unlucky omen.
_Religio inde fuit pontificibus inaugurandi Dolabellae_; and here we
have the strange spectacle of the _ius divinum_ being used to defeat its
own ends. Such a state of things needs no comment.[723]
But the most extraordinary story of this kind is that of a flamen of
Jupiter,--a story which many years ago I told in detail in the
_Classical Review_. Here I may just be allowed to reproduce it in
outline. In the year 209 a young C. Valerius Flaccus, the black sheep of
a great family, was inaugurated against his will as Flamen Dialis by the
pontifex maximus P. Licinius.[724] It was within the power of the head
of the Roman religion to use such compulsion, but it must have been
difficult and unusual to do so without the consent of the victim's
relations. In this case, as Livy expressly tells us, it was used because
the lad was of bad character,--_ob adolescentiam negligentem
luxuriosamque_; and it is pretty plain that the step was suggested by
his elder brother and other relations, in order to keep him out of
mischief. For, as we have seen, the taboos on this ancient priesthood
were numerous and strict, and among the restrictions laid on its holder
was one which forbade him to leave his house for a single night. Thus we
learn not only that this priesthood was not much accounted of in those
days, but also that for the _cura_ and _caerimonia_ of religion a pure
mind was no longer needed. But it might be utilised as a kind of penal
settlement for a libertine noble; and it is not impossible that a
century and a quarter later the attempt to put the boy Julius Caesar
into the same priesthood, though otherwise represented by the
historians, may have had the same object.[725] But the strange thing in
the case of Flaccus is that this very _cura_ and _caerimonia_, if Livy's
account is to be trusted, had such a wholesome disciplinary effect, that
the libertine became a model youth, the admiration of his own and other
families. Relying on his excellent character he even asserted the
ancient right of this flamen to take his seat in the Senate, a right
which had long been in abeyance _ob indignitatem flaminum priorum_; and
he eventually gained his point, in spite of obstinate opposition on the
part of a praetor. Some years later, in 200, this same man was elected
curule aedile.[726] This was clearly the first example of an attempt to
combine the priesthood with a magistracy, for a difficulty at once arose
and was solved in a way for which no precedent is quoted. Among the
taboos on this priest there was one forbidding him to take an oath; yet
the law demanded that a magistrate must take the usual oath within five
days of entering on office.[727] Flaccus insisted on asserting his
individuality in spite of the _ius divinum_, and the Senate and people
both backed him up. The Senate decreed that if he could find some one to
take the oath for him, the consuls might, if they chose, approach the
tribune with a view to getting a relieving _plebiscitum_; this was duly
obtained, and he took the oath by proxy. In his year of office as aedile
we find him giving expensive _ludi Romani_; and in 184 he only missed
the praetorship by an unlucky accident.[728] In this story we find the
self-assertion of an individual supported by Senate, consuls, and people
in breaking loose from the antiquated restrictions of a bygone age, and
we cannot but sympathise with it. But Roman history is full of
surprises, and among these I know none more amazing than the successful
attempt of Augustus two centuries later to revive this priesthood with
all its absurdities.[729]
The self-assertion of members of the great families against the _ius
divinum_ was inevitable, and in the instances just noticed the attitude
of compromise taken up by the government was only what was to be
expected in an age of stress and change and new ideas. But in less than
twenty years after the peace with Carthage this government found itself
suddenly face to face with what may be called a religious rebellion
chiefly among the lower orders, including women; and the authorities
unhesitatingly reverted to the position of conscientious guardians of
the religious system of the City-state. They began to realise that they
had been holding a wolf by the ears ever since the beginning of the
Hannibalic war; that they had a population to deal with which was no
longer pure Roman or even pure Italian, and that even the genuine Romans
themselves were liable to be moved by new currents of religious feeling.
During the war they had done all that was possible to meet the mental as
well as the material troubles of this population, even to the length of
introducing the worship, under certain restrictions, of the great
Phrygian Mother of the gods. But now, in 186, the sudden outbreak of
Dionysiac orgies in Italy showed them that all their remedies were stale
and insufficient, and that the wolf was getting loose in their hands.
Dionysus had long been housed at Rome, under the name of Liber, in that
temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera which was discussed in detail in my
eleventh lecture.[730] But it is not likely that many Romans recognised
the identity of Liber and Dionysus, and it is quite certain that the
characteristic features of the Dionysiac ritual were entirely unknown at
Rome for three centuries after the foundation of the temple. That
ritual, as it existed in Greece from the earliest times, retaining the
essential features which it bore in its original Thracian home,[731] has
lately been thoroughly examined and clearly expounded by Dr. Farnell in
the fifth volume of his _Cults of the Greek States_, and the student of
the Roman religious history of this period would do well to study
carefully his fifth chapter. In most Greek states, as at Athens, in
spite of occasional outbreaks, the wilder aspects of the cult had not
been encouraged, but at Delphi and at Thebes, _i.e._ on Parnassus and
Cithaeron, the more striking phenomena of the genuine ritual are found
down to a late period. Dr. Farnell has summed these up under three heads
at the beginning of his account: "The wild and ecstatic enthusiasm that
it inspired, the self-abandonment and communion with the deity achieved
through orgiastic rites and a savage sacramental act, and the prominence
of women in the ritual, which in accordance with a certain psychic law
made a special appeal to their temperament."[732] It meant in fact
exactly that form of religious ecstasy which was peculiarly abhorrent to
the minds of the old Romans, who had built up the _ius divinum_ with its
sober ritual and its practical ideas of the supernatural powers around
them. We found nothing in our studies of this religion to lead us to
suppose for an instant that it had any mental effect such as "the
transcending of the limits of the ordinary consciousness and the feeling
of communion with the divine nature."[733] The Latin language indeed had
no native words for the expression of such emotions.[734]
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that there was no soil in
Italy, or even at Rome, where such emotional rites might take root. We
may believe that the dignity and sobriety of the Roman character was in
part at least the result of the discipline of ordered religion in family
and state; but this is not to say that the Romans were never capable of
religious indiscipline,--far from it. The Italian rural festival, then
as now, was lively and indecorous, so far as we can guess from the few
glimpses we get of it; and at Rome the ancient festival of Anna Perenna,
in which women took part, was a scene of revelry as Ovid describes
it,[735]--of dancing, singing, and intoxication, and we need not wonder
that it found no place in the ancient calendar of the _ius divinum_. And
we have lately had occasion to notice, in the new ritual instituted
under the direction of the Sibylline books, and more especially during
the great war, clear indications that the natural emotions of women,
even of Roman women, had to be satisfied by shows and processions in
which they could share, and that the ideal dignity of the Roman matron
had often given way under the terrible stress of public and domestic
anxiety and peril. No wonder then that when Roman armies had been for
years in Greece, and Greeks were flocking into Rome in larger numbers
every year, the Dionysiac rites should find their way into Italy, and no
wonder too that they should instantly find a congenial soil, exotics
though they were.
The story of the Bacchanalia is told by Livy in his best manner, and
whether or no it be literally true in every particular, is full of life
and interest. It is the fashion now to reject as false whatever is
surprising; and the latest historian of Rome dismisses Livy's account of
the discovery of the mischief as "an interesting romance."[736]
Fortunately we are not now concerned with this romance, if such it be; I
only propose to dwell on one or two points more nearly concerned with
our subject.
First, let us note that the seeds of this evil crop were sown in
Etruria, the most dangerous neighbour of the Romans from a religious
point of view; for it is hardly too much to say that all Greek
influences that filtered through Etruria on their way to Rome were
contaminated in the process. According to the story,[737] a common Greek
religious quack (_sacrificulus et vates_, as Livy calls him), of the
type held up to scorn by Plato in the _Republic_,[738] came to Etruria
and began to initiate in the rites; drunkenness was the result, and with
drinking came crime and immorality of all kinds. From Etruria the
mischief spread to Rome, and was there discovered accidentally.
According to the evidence given, it began with a small association of
women, who met openly in the daytime only three times a year. Then it
fell under the direction of a priestess from Campania,--Rome's other
most dangerous neighbour in regard to religion and morals,--who gave it
a sinister turn. The meetings were held at night, and were accompanied
not only by the characteristic features of the old Thracian ritual, but,
as in Etruria, by the most abominable wickedness. It was said to have
infected a large part of the population, including young members of
noble families; for with the true missionary instinct, young people only
were admitted by the hierophants. We need not necessarily believe all
this; but it is certain, from the steps taken by the government, about
which there is no doubt, that it is in the main a true account. The
storm and stress of the long war with Hannibal would be enough to
account for the phenomena, even if they were not in keeping with
well-known psychical facts.
Let us now turn for a moment to the attitude of the government in this
extraordinary episode of Roman religious experience. The danger is dealt
with entirely by the Senate and the magistrates; the authorities of the
_ius divinum_ as such have nothing to do with it. It is characteristic
of the age that it is not dealt with as a matter of religion merely, but
as a conspiracy--_coniuratio_.[739] This is the word used by Livy, and
we find it also in the document called _Senatusconsultum de
Bacchanalibus_, part of which has most fortunately come down to us. This
is the word also used, we may note, of the conspiracy of Catiline in the
century following, and it always conveys the idea of _rebellion_ against
the order and welfare of the State. In this case it was rebellion
against the whole body of the _mos maiorum_, the [Greek: êthos] of the
City-state of Rome. For it was an attempt to supersede the ancient
religious life of that State by _externa superstitio, prava
religio_--_prava_, because _deorum numen praetenditur sceleribus_; and
hence, as Livy expresses it in the admirable speech put into the mouth
of the consul, the Roman gods themselves felt their _numen_ to be
contaminated.[740] All the speeches in Livy, except perhaps the military
ones, are worth careful study by those who would enter into the Roman
spirit as conceived by an Augustan writer; and this is one of the most
valuable of them.
Lastly, let us note the steps taken by the government in this emergency.
It is treated as a matter of police, both in Rome and Italy; the guilty
are sought out and punished as conspirators against the State, and a
precedent of tremendous force is hereby established for all future
dealings with _externa superstitio_, which held good even to the last
struggle with Christianity. Where foreign rites are believed to be
dangerous to the State or to morality, they must be rigidly suppressed
in the Roman world; when they are harmless they may be tolerated, or
even, like the cult of the Magna Mater, received into the sacred circle
of Roman worships.[741] But there is yet another lesson to be learnt
from the conduct of the government at this crisis. Who would have
suspected, while reading the horrible story, and noting the almost
arbitrary energy with which the _coniuratio_ was stamped out, that the
Dionysiac rites would even now be tolerated under certain conditions?
That this was so is a fact attested not only by Livy, but by the
_Senatusconsultum_ itself.[742] The government was now forced to
recognise the fact that there were Romans for whom the _ius divinum_ no
longer sufficed, and who needed a more emotional form of religion. If
any one (so ran in effect the _Senatusconsultum_) felt conscientiously
that he could not wholly renounce the new religion, he might apply in
person to the praetor urbanus; and the praetor would lay the matter
before a meeting of the Senate, at which not less than a hundred must be
present. The Senate may give leave for the worship, provided that no
more than five persons be present at it; and that there be no common
fund for its support, nor any permanent priest to preside at it. These
clauses, says Aust,[743] are a concession to the strong spiritual
current of feeling which sought for something fresher and better to take
the place of the old religion of forms; and on the whole we may agree
with him. All religious revivals are liable to be accompanied by moral
evil, but they all express unmistakably a natural and honourable
yearning of the human spirit.
Not long after this, in 181, the government put its foot down firmly on
what seems to have been another attempt, though in this case a ludicrous
one, to introduce strange religious ideas at Rome. We have the story of
this on the authority not only of Livy, but of the oldest Roman
annalist, Cassius Hemina, from whose work Pliny has preserved a fragment
relating to this matter.[744] Cassius must almost certainly have been
alive in 181, and would remember the event;[745] and though his account
and Livy's differ in details, we may take the story as in the main true.
A secretary (_scriba_), who had land on the Janiculan hill, dug up there
a stone coffin with an inscription stating that the king Numa was buried
in it. No remains of a body were found, but in a square stone casket
inside the coffin were found books written on paper (_charta_) and
supposed to be writings of Numa about the Pythagorean philosophy. These
writings were read by many people, and eventually by a praetor, who at
once pronounced them to be subversive of religion. That anything
supposed to emanate from Numa should have this character was of course
impossible; and it is plain that the writings were believed even at the
time to be absurd forgeries, drawn up with the idea of investing strange
doctrines with the authority of Numa's name; for the legend of a
religious connection between Numa and Pythagoras must have been known at
the time. The discoverer appealed to the tribunes, who referred the
matter to the senate; and the senate authorised the praetor to burn the
books in the Comitium, which was done in the presence of a large
assembly.
In a later lecture I shall have something to say of the revival of
Pythagoreanism in the time of Cicero, and I need not now attempt to
explain what such a revival might mean. All we need to note is that
something subversive of the Roman religion was believed to be
circulating in 181 in Roman society under the assumed authority of
Numa's name, and that the senate, warned by recent experience,
determined to stamp it out at once. They seem to have suddenly become
alive to the fact that Greece, and in this instance mainly Magna
Graecia, was sending clever agents to Rome for the propagation of ideas
which might make the people less tractable to authority. In the stress
of the great war, indeed for years afterwards, they had probably never
had leisure to reflect on the inevitable result of the writings of a man
like Ennius, who was not improbably responsible for the propagation of
these very Pythagorean notions.[746] Now a reaction seems to set in
against the flowing tide of admiration for everything Greek;[747] but it
was too late to arrest the flood. All that could be hoped for was that
in the lives and minds of the wiser Romans the new Greek civilisation
might so leaven the old Roman ignorance that no permanent harm should be
done to the instincts of _virtus_ and _pietas_: and to some extent this
hope was realised. But for the masses there was no such hope. What Greek
teaching reached their minds was almost wholly that of the _ludi
scenici_; and I must now say a word in conclusion about this unwholesome
influence--unwholesome, that is, so far as it affected the old religious
ideas.
I had occasion, when dealing with Dr. Frazer's notion that the Roman
religion admitted such ideas as the marriage of the gods with all its
natural consequences,[748] to point out that his evidence was almost
wholly derived from the play-writers of the very period on which we are
now engaged. I said that he seems to be justified in concluding that
there was a popular idea of such a kind, which the State religion did
not recognise; but that it can very easily be explained as the natural
effect of a degenerate Greek mythology, popularised by Greek dramas
adapted to the Roman stage, upon certain peculiarities of the Roman
theology, and especially the functional combination of male and female
divine names in Italian invocations of the deities. Nothing could be
more natural than that playwrights should take advantage of such
combinations to invent or translate comic passages to please a Roman
audience, "now largely consisting of semi-educated men who had lost
faith in their own religion, and a host of smaller people of mixed
descent and nationality." We do not know enough of the older comedies to
be at all sure how far they had gone in this direction, though we are
certain, to use the words of Zeller,[749] that it was impossible to
transplant Greek poetry to Roman soil without bringing Greek mythology
with it; or, as I should put it, without subordinating the old
reasonable idea of the Power manifesting itself in the universe to the
Greek fancy for clothing that Power in the human form and endowing it
with human faults and frailties.
But of the two great literary figures of the age we have now reached,
Ennius and Plautus, we know beyond all doubt that they taught the
ignorant Roman of their day not only to be indifferent to his deities,
but to laugh at them. Just at the very time when the forged books of
Numa were being burnt in the Comitium, Ennius' famous translation of the
_Sacred History of Euhemerus_ was becoming known at Rome, in which was
taught the doctrine of the human origin of all deities; and though we
have hardly a fragment left of the comedies of Ennius, we may presume
that he would not have hesitated for a moment to make the gods
ridiculous on the stage. It was he who wrote the celebrated lines in his
tragedy of Telamo:[750]
ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
which (as I have said elsewhere)[751] strike a direct blow at the
efficacy of sacrifice and prayer by openly declaring that the gods did
not interest themselves in mankind. This is the same Epicurean doctrine
afterwards preached by Lucretius, and I must return to it in the next
lecture. At present let us select a couple of specimens of the more
explicit evidence of the extant plays of Plautus, which began to be
exhibited at Rome just about the end of the war with Hannibal.
Here is an example of the way in which the family relationships of Greek
gods could be made amusing under Roman names. Alcesimarchus in the
_Cistellaria_ wishes to make a strong asseveration, and begins:[752]
at ita me di deaeque, superi et inferi et medioxumi,
but immediately goes on to specify these deities more particularly by
their names and relationships--_and gets the latter wrong_. Melaenis
corrects him in a way which (as Aust notes)[753] could only have seemed
comical to a Roman audience if they had already some acquaintance with
the divine family gossip.
itaque me Iuno regina et Iovi' supremi filia
itaque me Saturnus eiius patruos--ME. ecastor, pater.
AL. itaque me Ops opulenta, illius avia--ME. immo mater quidem.
Perhaps it was the fancy of the age for divine genealogy that is here
being made fun of rather than the gods themselves; but in any case the
passage shows how irrecoverably lost was the real impersonal character
of the old Roman _numen_, and how impossible it must have been in such
an age to believe that anything was really to be gained by the once
solemn rites of the _ius divinum_.
But the most remarkable evidence is in the Amphitruo,[754] where Jupiter
and Mercurius are among the _dramatis personae_. This comedy is
extremely amusing, and was quite capable of entertaining the Parisians
in the form given it by Molière; but for them it could hardly have been
so funny as for the Greeks in the age of the New Comedy and their
disciples the Romans of Plautus' day, who saw Zeus and Hermes, Jupiter
and Mercurius, brought by their own misdoings into absurd and degrading
situations. Jupiter personates Amphitruo, and so gains admission to his
wife, Alkmene! Comment is needless, unless we take the last line of the
play as a comment:--
Nunc, spectatores, Iovi' summi causa clare plaudite!
I do not propose to follow further the downfall of the old Roman ideas
about the objects of worship, or the neglect and decay of the _ius
divinum_. They do not fall within the scope of my subject--the religious
experience of the Roman people. So long as there was any life in these
ideas and in the cult which was the practical expression of them, they
formed part of that experience. But I think I have sufficiently proved
that the life has gone out of the ideas, and that the worship has
consequently become meaningless. Ideas about the divine may be discussed
by philosophers as the Romans begin to read and in some degree to think;
and the outward forms of the cult may be maintained in such particulars
as most closely concern the public life of the community; but as a
religious system expressing human experience we have done with these
things.
NOTES TO LECTURE XV
[706] Polybius vi. 56.
[707] Livy xxxi. 4 _ad fin._, cp. xxv. 2, xxvii. 36,
etc. For the _Iovis epulum_ see _R.F._ 216 foll. and the
references there given. Wissowa, _R.K._ foll. 111. 385
foll. I am not sure that I am right in limiting the
human partakers of the epulum of Nov. 13 to the plebeian
magistrates.
[708] Livy xxxi. 5. The importance of the words
"prolationem finium" does not seem to have been noticed
by historians. If they are genuine they indicate an
undoubtedly aggressive attitude.
[709] Livy xxxi. 7 and 8.
[710] Livy xxxvi. 1.
[711] Augustine, _Civ. Dei_, iv. 27: "Relatum est in
litteras doctissimum pontificem Scaevolam disputasse
tria genera tradita deorum: unum a poetis, alterum a
philosophis, tertium a principibus civitatis. Primum
genus nugatorium dicit esse, quod multa de diis
fingantur indigna, etc. Expedire igitur falli in
religione civitates."
[712] Livy xxxii. 9, cp. 28. In connection with these
_prodigia_ it may be worth noting that in xxxii. 30 we
are told that a consul vowed a temple to Juno Sospita,
who had in her famous seat at Lanuvium been a constant
centre of marvel-mongering. Livy xxxiv. 53 places the
building of this temple _in foro olitorio_ three years
later, if we may read there Sospitae instead of the
Matutae of the MSS. with Sigonius: (cp. Aust, _de
Aedibus_, p. 21, and Wissowa, _R.K._ 117). This
interesting deity had been taken into the Roman worship
in 338 B.C., but not moved from Lanuvium, which had
peculiar religious relations with Rome. See _Myth. Lex._
vol. ii. p. 608, where the attributes of this Juno in
art are described by Vogel. The date of the temple at
Rome was 194. Whether the object of it was to diminish
the portents at Lanuvium it is impossible to say, but
judging from the records of _prodigia_ in Julius
Obsequens it had that effect. I find only four
_prodigia_ reported from Lanuvium after this date.
[713] See the passage in Frontinus, _de Aqueductibus_,
i. 7 (C. Herschel's edition gives the reading of the
best MS.), and the mutilated passage in the new epitomes
of Livy found by Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt
(_Oxyrrhyncus Papyri_, vol. iv. pp. 101 and 113). The
general bearing of the two passages taken together seems
to me to be that given in the text.
[714] Cic. _ad Fam._ i. 1 and 2. A somewhat similar case
in 190 B.C. will be found in Livy xxxviii. 45, where the
oracle forbade a Roman army to cross the Taurus range.
[715] Livy xxxiv. 55.
[716] Livy xxxviii. 56, mentions statues which were
believed to be those of Scipio the elder, his brother
Lucius, and Ennius, "in Scipionum monumento" outside the
Porta Capena, and another of Scipio at Liternum, where
he had a villa; this one Livy says that he saw himself
blown down by a storm. On statues and busts at Rome, see
Pliny xxxiv. 28 foll.; Mrs. Strong, _Roman Sculpture_,
p. 28 foll.; _Cambridge Companion to Latin Studies_, p.
550 foll.; and for coins, p. 456.
[717] See above, p. 240, for the remarkable exception in
the case of the elder Scipio, whose practice when in
Rome was to go up to the Capitoline temple before
daybreak and contemplate the statue of Jupiter; the dogs
never barked at him, and the aedituus opened the _cella
Iovis_ at his summons. I see no good ground for
rejecting this story, which is not likely to have been
invented. It can be traced back to two writers, Oppius,
the friend of Caesar, and Julius Hyginus, the librarian
of Augustus (Gell. vi. 1. 1), and was probably based on
tradition. Livy mentions it in xxvi. 19, and suggests
that this and other ways of Scipio were assumed to
impress the multitude. The Roman mind was naturally
averse from such individualism in religion; but Scipio
was beyond doubt more familiar than his contemporaries
with Greek ideas. In a chapter on Idealism in his little
book on _Religion and Art in Ancient Greece_, Professor
Ernest Gardner writes: "The statue (of Athene) by
Phidias within the Parthenon offered not merely that
form in which she would choose to appear if she showed
herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her form as
if she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon
such an image helped the worshipper as much as--perhaps
more than--any service or ritual, to bring himself into
communion with the goddess, and to fit himself, as a
citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in
contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in
politics, in literature, and in art." That Scipio had
some feeling of this kind need not be doubted, though
the statue was not a great work of art like that of
Phidias. Cp. Lucretius, vi. 75 foll.
[718] See below, p. 386.
[719] Marquardt, 332, and Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i. ed.
2, p. 463 foll.
[720] Livy, _Epit._ xix.
[721] Livy xxxvii. 51: "Religio ad postremum vicit, ut
dicto audiens esset flamen pontifici." Here _religio_ is
used in the sense of obligation to the _ius divinum_.
[722] Livy xxvii. 6; cp. 36.
[723] This story is told in Livy xl. 42.
[724] Livy xxvii. 8. For the compelling power (_capere_)
of the Pont. Max., see Marq. 314. The story may have
come from the annals of the Valerii Flacci, and also
from those of the pontifices; it was apparently well
known, as Valerius Maximus knew it (vi. 9. 2).
[725] Velleius ii. 43.
[726] Livy xxxi. 50.
[727] For the oath see "Lex incerta reperta Bantiae,"
lines 16 and 17, in Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_. The
oath taboo is mentioned by Gellius 10. 15. 3.; Festus
104, and Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 113.
[728] Livy xxxii. 7; xxxix. 39.
[729] Tac. _Ann._ iv. 16.
[730] See above, p. 255.
[731] Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. v. p.
85 foll. Very interesting is the modern survival of
Dionysiac rites recently discovered in Thrace by Mr.
Dawkins (_Hellenic Journal_, 1906, p. 191).
[732] Farnell, _op. cit._ vol. v. p. 150.
[733] Quoted by Farnell, p. 151, from Rohde's _Psyche_.
[734] It is possible that _superstitio_ may originally
have had some such meaning; see W. Otto in _Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft_, 1909, p. 548 foll.; Mayor's
edition of Cic. _de Nat. Deorum_, note on ii. 72 foll.
[735] Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 523 foll. See also _Roman
Society in the Age of Cicero_, p. 289.
[736] See Mr. Heitland's _History of the Roman
Republic_, vol. ii. p. 229 note, and cp. Wissowa in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ _s.v._ "Bacchanalia."
[737] Livy xxxix. 8 foll.
[738] Plato, _de Rep._ 364 B; cp. _Laws_, 933 D.
[739] "Quaestio de clandestinis coniurationibus decreta
est," Livy xxxix. 8; so also in chs. 14 and 17. Cp.
_Sctm. de Bacchanalibus_, line 13, "conioura (se)." This
document is, strictly speaking, a letter to the
magistrates "in agro Teurano" in Bruttium embodying the
orders of the Senatus consultum. It will be found in
Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_, or in Wordsworth,
_Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_.
[740] Livy xxxix. 16: "Omnia, dis propitiis
volentibusque, faciemus, qui quia suum numen sceleribus
libidinibusque contaminari indigne ferebant," etc.
[741] Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, p. 567 foll.
[742] Livy xxxix. 18 _ad fin._ _Sctm. de Bacch._ lines 3
foll.
[743] _Religion der Römer_, p. 78.
[744] Livy xl. 29 seems to have put his account together
from Cassius Hemina and other annalists, so far as we
can judge from the reference to them in Pliny, _N.H._
xiii. 84; Valerius Antias, who simply stated that the
writings were Pythagorean as well as Numan, Livy
rejects as ignorant of the chronological impossibility
of making the king contemporary with the philosopher.
The fragment of Cassius Hemina is quoted in Pliny, sec.
86; Val. Max. i. 1, and Plutarch, _Numa_ 22, add nothing
to our knowledge of the incident.
[745] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, i. 268;
Pliny, _loc. cit._, calls him "vetustissimus auctor
annalium," but his work was later than the _Annals_ or
_Origines_ of Cato.
[746] Ennius came from South Italy (Rudiae in Messapia),
the home of Pythagoreanism. For traces of it in his
works, see Reid on Cicero, _Academica priora_, ii. 51.
[747] This is the view taken by Colin, _Rome et la
Grèce, 200-146 B.C._, p. 269 foll. This reaction was
probably only a part of the general reversion to
conservatism which we have been noticing in the action
of the government in religious matters.
[748] See above, p. 149 foll.
[749] Quoted by Aust, _Religion der Römer_, p. 64. The
passage is in Zeller's _Religion und Philosophie bei den
Römern_, a short treatise reprinted in his _Vorträge und
Abhandlungen_, ii. 93 foll.
[750] Ribbeck, _Fragmenta Tragicorum Latinorum_, p. 54.
[751] _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p.
334.
[752] _Cistellaria_, ii. 1. 45 foll.
[753] Aust, _op. cit._ p. 66.
[754] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, vol. i.
p. 75.
LECTURE XVI
GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND ROMAN RELIGION
I said at the end of the last lecture that ideas about the Divine might
be discussed at Rome by philosophers, as the Romans began to read and in
some degree to think. At the era we have now reached, the latter half of
the second century B.C., this process actually began, and I propose in
this lecture to deal with it briefly. But my subject is the Roman
religious experience, and I can only find room for philosophy so far as
the philosophy introduced at Rome had a really religious side. Another
reason forbidding me to give much space to it is that it was at Rome
entirely exotic, did not spring from an indigenous root in Roman life
and thought, and never seriously affected the minds of the lower and
less educated population. And I must add that the types of Greek
philosophy which concern us at all have been fully and ably dealt with,
the one in vol. ii. of Dr. Caird's lectures on this foundation on _The
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, a work from which I
have learnt much, and the other by Dr. Masson in his most instructive
work on the great Epicurean poet Lucretius.
We have seen in the two last lectures that in that second century B.C.
the Roman was fast becoming religiously destitute--a castaway without
consolation, and without the sense that he needed it. He was destitute,
first, in regard to his idea of God and of his relation to God; for if
we take our old definition of religion, which seems to me to be
continually useful, we can hardly say of that age that it showed any
effective desire to be in right relation with the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. The old idea of the manifestation of the Power
in the various _numina_ had no longer any relation to Roman life; the
kind of life in which it germinated and grew, the life of agriculture
and warlike self-defence, had passed away with the growth of the great
city, the decay of the small farmer, and the extension of the empire;
and no new informing and inspiring principle had taken its place.
Secondly, he was destitute in regard to his sense of duty, which had
been largely dependent on religion, both in the family and in the State.
No new force had come in to create and maintain conscience. In public
life, indeed, the religious oath was still powerful, and continued to be
so, though there are some signs that its binding force was less strong
than of yore, especially in the army.[755] But in a society so complex
as that of Rome in the last two centuries B.C. much more was wanted than
a bond sanctioned by civil and religious law; there was needed a sense
of duty to the family, the slave, the provincials, the poor and
unfortunate. There was no spring of moral action, no religious
consecration of morality, no stimulus to moral endeavour. The individual
was rapidly developing, emancipating himself from the State and the
group-system of society; but he was developing in a wrong direction. The
importance of self, when realised in high and low alike, was becoming
self-seeking, indifference to all but self. We have now to see whether
philosophy could do anything to relieve this destitution of the Romans
in regard both to God and duty.
The first system of philosophy actually to make its appearance at Rome
was that of Epicurus[756]; but it speedily disappeared for the time, and
only became popular in the last century B.C., and then in its most
repulsive form. It was indeed destined to inspire the noblest mind among
all Roman thinkers with some of the greatest poetry ever written; but I
need say little of it, for it was never really a part of Roman religious
experience. Though capable of doing men much good in a turbulent and
individualistic age, it did not and could not do this by establishing a
religious sanction for conduct. The Epicurean gods were altogether out
of reach of the conscience of the individual. They were superfluous even
for the atomic theory on which the whole system was pivoted;[757] and
what Epicurus himself understood by them, or any of his followers down
to Lucretius, is matter of subtle and perplexing disputation.[758] One
point is clear, that they had no interest in human beings;[759] and the
natural inference would be that human beings had no call to worship
them; yet, strange to say, Epicurus himself took part in worship, and in
the worship of the national religion of his native city. Philodemus, the
contemporary of Lucretius, expressly asserts this,[760] and even insists
that Epicurism gave a religious sanction to morality which was absent in
Stoicism.[761] Lucretius himself clearly thought that worship was
natural and possible. "If you do not clear your mind of false notions,"
he says, "nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis."[762] Man might
go on with his ancestral worship, but entirely without fear, and as with
"placid mind" he took part in the rites of his fathers, a mysterious
divine influence might enter his mind; "the images of a Zeus, a
Heracles, an Athene, might pass in and impress on him the aspect and
character of each deity, and carry with them suggestions of virtue, of
courage, of wise counsel in difficulty."[763] Evidently both Epicurus
and his followers had felt the difficulty and the peril of breaking
entirely with the religious habits of the mass of the people, and had
conscientiously done their best to reconcile their own belief with
popular practice--an attempt which has its parallel in the religious
speculation of the present day.
But for the Roman follower of Epicurus, wholly unused to such subtle
ideas as the passage of divine influence into the mind by means of
religious contemplation, this lame attempt to bring apathetic gods into
relation with human life must have been quite meaningless. Cicero well
expresses the common sense of a Roman at the very beginning of his
treatise on the _Nature of the Gods_.[764] "If they are right who deny
that the gods have any interest in human affairs, where is there room
for _pietas_, for _sanctitas_, for _religio_?" What, he adds, is the use
of worship, of honour, of prayer? If these are simply make-believes,
_pietas_ cannot exist, and with it we may almost assume that _fides_ and
_iustitia_, and the social virtues generally, which hold society
together, must vanish too. Such criticism is characteristically Roman,
and we may take it as representing accurately the feeling of the
old-fashioned Roman of Cicero's day, as well as of the Stoic or Academic
critic of Epicurism. On the other hand, the believing Epicurean at Rome
was not more likely to accept the compromise; he had done with his own
gods and their worship, and such a "ficta simulatio" was not likely to
attract him. Even Lucretius, whose mind was in a sense really religious,
does no more in the passage I quoted just now than _allude_ to actual
worship of the gods, and he makes it quite clear that the tranquillity
and happiness coming from contemplation, and the punishment that follows
misdoing, are both purely subjective; the gods are not active in
influencing man's life, but man influences that life himself by opening
his mind to the contemplation of the gods. This passage of Lucretius
(vi. 68 foll.) is, if I am not mistaken, the nearest approach to real
religion that we find in the history of Roman Epicurism; yet so far as
we know it bore no fruit. It seems to me to express a genuine feeling, a
_religio_, but the expression is blurred by a consciousness of
inconsistency.
The fact is that in the system of Epicurus the Power manifesting itself
in the universe is not a divine Power, but a mechanical one; the gods
have nothing to do with it, they cannot be active, their perfection is
found in repose; they are an adjunct, an after-thought in the system.
Thus all attempts to reconcile the Power with the popular religion must
inevitably be failures, and more especially so in the Roman world. At
best the Epicurean gods could but set an example of quietism which could
not possibly be a force for good in that active world of business and
government.[765] The real force of Epicurism, for the Roman at least, if
I am not mistaken, was _analogous_ to a religious force, though far
indeed from being one in reality--I mean the profound and touching
belief in the Founder himself as a saviour, which is so familiar to all
readers of Lucretius.[766] And the real legacy of Lucretius himself to
Roman religion is only indirectly a religious one--I mean the wholesome
contempt for "_superstitio_" and all the baser side of religious belief
and practice, old and new.[767] If his devotion to the Master had been
rooted more in the love of goodness and less in the admiration for his
speculations, and if his contempt for _superstitio_ had been less
harshly dogmatic, had he been more sympathetic and generous in his
attitude to the Italian ideas of the divine--the power of Lucretius
might possibly have been strong and permanent.
Thus for the Roman's destitution in regard to God Epicurism could find
no remedy, and as a consequence it could provide no religious sanction
for his conduct in life. What power it had upon conduct as a system of
ethics is a question outside the range of my subject. No doubt a certain
type of mind, naturally pure and good, and apt to retire upon itself,
might find in Epicurism not only no harm but even positive help; perhaps
the best way to appreciate this fact, too often overlooked, is to read
the defence of the Epicurean ethics put into the mouth of Torquatus, in
the first book of the _de Finibus_,[768] by one who was far from being
in sympathy with the creed. But for the Roman of that age, when ideas of
duty and discipline were losing strength, this enticing faith, with
pleasure as its _summum bonum_, and with quietism as its ideal of human
life,[769] could hardly be a real stimulus to active virtue; the Roman
needed bracing, and this was not a tonic, but a sedative. Far more
valuable in every way, and far better suited to the best instincts of
the Roman character, was the rival creed of Stoicism, and I must devote
the rest of this lecture to the consideration of its religious aspect.
It was most fortunate for Rome that her best and ablest men in the
second century B.C. fell into the hands, not of Epicureans, but of
Stoics--into the hands, too, of a single Stoic of high standing, fine
character, and good sense. For destitute as the Roman was both in regard
to God and to Duty, he found in Stoicism an explanation of man's place
in the universe,--an explanation relating him directly to the Power
manifesting itself therein, and deriving from that relation a _binding_
principle of conduct and duty. This should make the religious character
of Stoicism at once apparent. It is perfectly true, as the late Mr.
Lecky said long ago,[770] that "Stoicism, taught by Panaetius of Rhodes,
and soon after by the Syrian Posidonius, became the true religion of the
educated classes. It furnished the principles of virtue, coloured the
noblest literature of the time, and guided all the developments of moral
enthusiasm." To this I only need to add that it woke in the mind an
entirely new idea of Deity, far transcending that of Roman _numina_ and
of Greek polytheism, and yet not incapable of being reconciled with
these; so that it might be taken as an inpouring of sudden light upon
old conceptions of the Power, glorifying and transfiguring them, rather
than, like the Epicurean faith, a bitter and contemptuous negation of
man's inherited religious instincts. But before we go on to consider
this illumination more closely, let me say a few words about Panaetius
the Stoic missionary, and Scipio Aemilianus, his most famous disciple.
Scipio, born 184, was a happy combination of the best Roman aristocratic
character and the receptive intelligence which for a Roman was the chief
result of a Greek liberal education. He had been educated by his famous
father, Aemilius Paulus, in a thoroughly healthy way; he was no mere
book-student, but a practical courageous Roman, with a solid mental
foundation of moral rectitude (_pietas_) fixed firmly in the traditions
and instincts of his own family. On this foundation, as has been well
said,[771] a superstructure of intellectual culture might be built
securely without destroying it, and this was exactly what did take
place, both for Scipio and for that circle of friends of his which has
become so famous in Roman history. In very early life he became the
intimate friend of Polybius, whose account of their first unreserved
intercourse is one of the most delightful passages in all ancient
literature;[772] and from Polybius he doubtless learnt to think. He must
have learnt to understand the real nature of the Roman empire, to
appreciate the forces which had called it into being,[773] the qualities
which had preserved it through the fearful struggle with Hannibal, and
the duty of a noble Roman in regard to it. From Polybius, indeed, it is
not likely that he gained much light on matters either of religion or
morality; but that statesman and historian must inevitably have
accustomed him, in the course of their long intercourse, to think more
deeply than Roman had ever yet thought, about the world in which he
lived and was to act for many years the leading part. Thus he was well
prepared for the friendship of a more spiritual guide.
Panaetius, who was probably about the same age as Scipio, had the
advantage, as a visitor at Rome, of being a Rhodian, _i.e._ a citizen of
the one Greek State which had been almost continuously on good terms
with Rome, and of great value to her. He was also a scion of an old and
honoured family in that city, and was thus in every way a fit friend and
companion for a great Roman noble. When their friendship began we do not
know for certain; but it is a fact that he lived for some two years,
together with Polybius, in the house of Scipio, and these years were
probably between 144 and 141 B.C., after Scipio's return from the
conquest of Carthage.[774] When Scipio in 141 was commissioned by the
Senate to go and set things in order in the eastern Mediterranean, he
took Panaetius with him,[775] and brought him home to live with him
again as a guest, perhaps until he left for the Numantine war in 134,
after which it is not likely that they met again before Scipio's sudden
death in 129. I am particular about the extent of their intimacy,
because I wish to make it clear that this was no ordinary or fleeting
friendship between a commonplace Greek philosopher and an average Roman
statesman. Both statesman and philosopher were far above the usual level
of their kind, and in the course of this long intimacy must have had
full opportunity of learning from each other. From Scipio Panaetius
would learn the secrets of the Roman temperament, and divine the right
methods of dealing with it, and the result of this was a happy
modification of the old rigidity of the Stoic principles--an adaptation
of them to the Roman character which had far-reaching consequences. From
Panaetius Scipio and his friends would learn a new and illuminating
conception of man's place in the universe, and of his relation to the
Power manifested in it. To understand the power of Stoicism on the mind
of these Romans and their intellectual successors, it is necessary to
have a clear idea of this illumination.
Hitherto there had been nothing in the religion of Rome, or of any other
city-state, to make it inevitable, reasonable, that man should worship
the Power, except tradition and self-interest, involved in the tradition
and self-interest of the family and the city. The gods belonged, as we
saw, to family or city as divine inhabitants, and if you neglected them
they would show their anger against you. Originally it was _religio_,
the feeling of awe for something distinct from man and unknown to him,
which forced him to propitiate that which he might fear, but had no
reason, except the instinct of self-preservation, to reverence; and
later on, as he came to know his _numina_ better, to make them, so to
speak, his own, and to formulate the methods of propitiating them, he
gradually came also to take them for granted, and to worship them as a
matter of traditional duty. The idea of conforming his life to the will
of any of these _numina_ would, of course, be absolutely strange to
him--the expression would have no meaning whatever for him. The help
which he sought from them was not moral help, but material.[776] But
now, when the _religio_ has been hypnotised and soothed away, and when
the tradition of ceremonial observance was growing dim and weak, when he
is left alone with his fellow-men, and without any binding reason for
right conduct towards them, he may learn from Stoicism that there is a
Power above and beyond all his _numina_, yet involving and embracing
them all, to which, and by the help of which, as a man endowed with
reason, he _must_ conform his life.
The theology held and taught by Panaetius, in common with all Stoics at
all periods, was based upon two leading thoughts, in the correlation of
which lay the kernel of the Stoic ethical system. The first of these
thoughts is this: the whole universe, in all its forms and
manifestations, shows unmistakably the work of Reason, of Mind; without
mind, reason, _spiritus_, as Cicero calls it,[777] the universe could
not exist. I need not go here into the origin and history of this
thought; what is important for us is to make clear the theological
consequences of it. Obviously it was natural that the Stoic should be
led on to the conviction that this universe endowed with Reason--with a
Reason far transcending all human capacity--must itself be God. The
Stoic arguments in support of this further step are indeed lame, as they
inevitably must be; they are well set forth at the beginning of Book ii.
of Cicero's work _de Natura Deorum_ (based upon one by Posidonius, the
successor and disciple of Panaetius), where they seem to us rather cold
and formal. That step is indeed incapable of being made convincing by
any syllogism; it is only when we try to think with the minds of those
old thinkers, living in a world of unmeaning worship, that we begin to
realise the nobility of a conviction which they tried in vain to reduce
to a syllogism. _Sapiens a principio mundus, et deus habendus est_;[778]
these words, which sound like an article of a creed, suffice for us
without the laborious arguments of Cleanthes and Chrysippus which we may
read in the fifth and sixth chapters of Cicero's book. Cicero has added
to these a characteristic illustration from city life, which I may quote
as more useful for us. "If a man enters a house or a gymnasium or a
forum, and sees reason, method, and discipline reigning there, he cannot
suppose that these came about without a cause, but perceives that there
is someone there who rules and is obeyed: how much more, when he
contemplates the motions and revolutions to be seen in the universe
(_e.g._, in the heavenly bodies), must he conclude that they are all
governed by a conscious Mind!" And this Mind can be nothing else but
God.
This sounds like the Deism of the eighteenth century, and might be
described as "natural religion"; but the Stoics took yet another step,
and developed their thought into Pantheism. The idea of a personal
Deity, distinct from the universe and its Creator, was obnoxious to
them; it would have committed them to a dualism of Mind and Matter
which, from the very outset of their history, they emphatically
repudiated; their conviction was of a Unity in all things, and to this
they consistently held in spite of constant and damaging criticism. The
theological result of this conviction has lately been well expressed by
Dr. Bussell.[779] He is speaking of Seneca in particular, but what he
says applies to all Stoics equally well: "Though he yearns to see God
in 'the moral order of the Universe,' he is forced in the interests of
Unity to identify Him with every other known force. As He is everything,
so any name will suit Him. He is the sum of existence: or the secret and
abstract law which guides it: He is Nature or Fate. The partial names of
special deities are all His, and together they make up the fulness of
the divine title; but _they disappear in the immense nothingness_,
rather than colour or qualify it." This is a point of immense importance
for the study of Stoicism at Rome; it was fully developed by Posidonius,
and copied from him both by Cicero and Varro. "God," says Cicero in the
book I have been quoting, "pervading all nature (_pertinens per naturam
cuiusque rei_), can be understood as Ceres on the land, as Neptune on
the sea, and so on, and may be and should be worshipped in all these
different forms;" not in superstitious fear and grovelling spirit--the
mental attitude which Lucretius had condemned years before this treatise
was written--but with pure heart and mind, following the one and true
God in all his various manifestations.[780] Thus the Stoic Pantheism, in
spite of its weak points, could find room for the deities of the
city-state, and put new illuminating life into them. To us it may seem,
as it seems to Dr. Bussell, that they would disappear in an immense
nothingness; but to the Roman mind of Scipio's age, if I am not
mistaken, they might, on the contrary, save the great Pantheistic idea
from so itself disappearing. I cannot but think that the Roman's idea of
divinity, the force or will-power which he called _numen_,[781] would
find here a means of reviving its former hold on the Roman mind, and
enabling it to grasp as a concrete fact, and not merely as an abstract
idea, the "deus pertinens per naturam cuiusque rei." In particular the
Roman conception of the great Jupiter, the father of heaven, might gain
new life for the people who had so long been used to call him "the Best
and Greatest." Almost from the very beginning of Stoicism the school had
seized upon Zeus to convey, under the guise of a personality and a name,
some idea of the Reason in the universe;[782] and the same use might
just as well, perhaps even better, be made of the great deity of the
Capitoline temple, whom his people recognised as the open heaven with
all its manifestations, the celestial representative of good faith and
righteous dealing, and the special protector of the destinies of Rome
and her empire.
The second thought which lies at the base of the religion or theology of
Stoicism, is this: that Man himself, alone in all the Universe, shares
with God the full possession of Reason. In other words, Man alone,
besides God, is strictly individual, self-conscious, capable of
realising an end and of working towards it; he is so utterly different
from the animals, so far above them (or if we call him an animal, he is,
in Cicero's language,[783] _animal providum, sagax, multiplex, acutum,
memor, plenum rationis et consilii_), that he must surely be of the same
nature as God. And this is what, in strict conformity with all Stoic
teaching, Cicero in this same passage expressly says--man is _generatus
a deo_. So too in the famous hymn of Cleanthes,[784] quoted by St. Paul
at Athens ("For we are also his offspring,"):--
Chiefest glory of deathless Gods, Almighty for ever,
Sovereign of Nature that rulest by law, what name shall
we give thee?
Blessed be Thou, for on Thee should call all things that are mortal.
For that we are Thy offspring: nay, all that in myriad motion
Lives for its day on the earth bears one impress, Thy likeness,
upon it;
Wherefore my song is of Thee, and I hymn Thy power for ever.
In these splendid lines it is plain that not Man only is thought of, but
all living things, animals included with Man; and this is in accordance
with the true Stoic Pantheism. But none the less on this account did
the Stoics believe Man to be the one living thing in the universe
comparable with God, and capable of communion with him by virtue of the
possession of Reason. As Cicero says, a few lines farther on in the work
I am quoting, "virtus eadem in homine ac deo est, neque ullo alio
ingenio praeterea." And since every creature seeks to maintain and
augment its own being, to bring it to perfection, to express it fully,
by an innate law of its nature, Man being endowed with Reason above all
other creatures, strives, or should strive, to bring himself to a
perfect expression, by identifying himself with the divine principle
which he shares with God. As Dr. Caird puts it,[785] "the ruling power
of Reason so dominates his nature that he cannot be described as
anything but a self-conscious _ego_ (_i.e._ in contrast with other
animals); and just because of this, all his impulses become concentrated
in one great effort after self-realisation." But the self that he tries
to realise must be his true self, not his irrational impulses: the self
which is a part of the divine principle. He must desire to realise
himself as having Reason, and so to come into close communion with God,
the Reason of the universe. Those who are at all familiar with the later
Roman Stoics, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, if we may
include him among them, will recognise in this inspiring thought, vague
and impalpable as it may seem, the germ of many beautiful expressions of
the relation of Man to God, which seem to bring Stoicism into closer
spiritual connection with Christianity than any other doctrine of the
ancient world.
The work of Cicero from which I have been quoting, the first book of his
treatise on the Laws, _i.e._ the Roman constitution, is very probably
based on one by Panaetius himself,[786] of whom we are expressly told
that he used to discuss that constitution together with Polybius and
Scipio in the days of their happy intimacy at Rome.[787] In any case we
may find it helpful, taken together with the earlier fragmentary work
_de Republica_, in trying to form some idea of the effect of this second
leading Stoic thought on the best Roman minds of the last ages of the
Republic. We find, as we might expect, that it is not on Man simply as
individual that stress is here laid. Man is not thought of as hoping to
realise his own Reason in isolation; the Stoics, though, like their
rivals, they represent a reaction of the individual against the State,
were all along perfectly clear that man in isolation would be helpless,
and that his own reason bade him realise himself in association with his
fellow-men.[788] It is the position of Man, as associated, 1, with God,
2, with other men, that is here made prominent; and the bond of
connection is in each case Law, which is indeed only one name for the
Supreme Reason and the highest Good. I must say a word about these two
aspects of Man's position in the world, in order to explain what I
believe to have been the effect of this teaching on the Roman mind.
1. In explaining the relation of Man to God Cicero uses an expression
which some years before he had developed in a fine passage in the
Republic: _true law_, he says, _is right reason_.[789] In the Laws he
takes it up again, and argues that as both God and Man have reason,
there must be a direct relation between them.[790] And as Law and right
reason are identical, we may say that Law is the binding force of that
relation. And again, this means that the universe may be looked on as
one great State (_civitas_), of which both God and Man (or gods and men)
are citizens, or in another way as a State of which the constitution is
itself the Reason, or God's law, which all reasonable beings must obey.
Such obedience is itself the effort by which Man realises his own
reason: he is a part of a reasonable universe, and he cannot rebel
against its law without violating his own highest instinct. It is not
hard to see how this way of expressing the Stoic theological principle
would appeal to the Roman mind. That mind was wholly incapable of
metaphysical thinking; but it could without effort understand, with the
help of its social and political principles and experience, the idea of
supreme intelligent rule--a supreme _imperium_, as it were, to rebel
against which would be a moral _perduellio_, high treason against a
supreme Law, unwritten like his own, and resting, as he thought of his
own as resting, on the best instincts, tradition, reason, of his
community; from his own constitution and laws he could lift his mind
without much difficulty to the constitution and law of the _communis
deorum et hominum civitas_. The idea of God in any such sense as this
was indeed new to him; but he could grasp it under the expression
"universal law of right reason" when he would have utterly failed, for
example, to conceive of it as "the Absolute." He can feel himself the
citizen of a State whose maker and ruler is God, and whose law is the
inevitable force of Reason; he can realise his relationship to God as a
part of the same State, gifted with the same power of discerning its
legal basis, nay, even helping to administer its law by rational
obedience.
2. Reason as thus ruling the universe can also provide a basis for Man's
reasonable association with his fellow-men, and a religious basis if
conceived as God; for Man's recognition of the divine law, the _recta
ratio_, as binding on him, is followed quite naturally by his
recognition of the application of that law to the world he lives in.
"Human law comes into existence," says Zeller, explaining this
point,[791] "when man becomes aware of the divine law, and recognises
its claim on him." Here, again, it is easy to see how illuminating would
be this conception of law for the Roman of Scipio's time. So far the
Roman idea and study of law (as I have elsewhere expressed it)[792] had
been of a crabbed, practical character, wanting in breadth of treatment,
destitute of any philosophical conception of the moral principles which
lie behind all law and government. The new doctrine called up life in
these dry bones, and started Roman lawyers, many of whom were Stoics
more or less pronounced, on a career of enlightened legal study which
has left one of the most valuable legacies inherited by the modern
world from ancient civilisation. In another way too it had, I think, an
immediate effect on Scipio himself and his circle, and on their mental
descendants, of whom Cicero was the most brilliant: it made them look on
the law and constitution of their State as eminently reasonable, and on
rebellion against it as unreason, or as the Romans call it, _lascivia_,
wanton disregard of principle. So far as I know, no great Roman lawyer
was ever a revolutionary like Catiline or Clodius, nor yet an obstinate
conservative like Cato, whose Stoicism was of the older and less
Romanised type; the two of whom we know most in the century following
the arrival of Panaetius were both wise, just, and moderate men, Mucius
Scaevola and Servius Sulpicius, of whom it may be truly said they
contributed as much to civilisation as the great military and political
leaders of the same period.[793]
There now remains the question whether this noble Stoic religion, as we
may fairly call it, with its ideas of the relation of Man to God and to
his fellow-men, had, after all, sufficient definiteness for a Roman to
act as a grip on his conscience and his conduct in his daily dealings
with others. It could deduce the existence and beauty of the social
virtues from its own principles; if Man partakes of the eternal Reason,
or, as they otherwise put it, if he is through his Reason a part of God
himself in the highest sense, and if God and Reason are in the highest
sense good, then in realising his own Reason, in obeying the voice of
the God within him,[794] he must be himself good by the natural instinct
of his own being. Accordingly, these social virtues, duties, _officia_,
as the Romans called them, were set forth by Panaetius in two books,
which in a Latinised form we still fortunately possess,--the first two
of Cicero's work _de Officiis_,--and without the uncompromising rigidity
which characterised the original Stoic ethical doctrine inherited from
the Cynics.[795] In the first book he treated of the good simply
(_honestum_), in the second of the useful (_utile_), and in a third,
which it was left for Cicero to execute, of the cases of conflict
between these two. In this charming work there is much to admire, and
even much to learn: the social virtues--benevolence, justice,
liberality, self-restraint, and so on, are enlarged upon and illustrated
by historical examples[796] in perfect Latin by Cicero; and as we read
it we cannot but feel that the influence of Panaetius upon his educated
Roman pupils must have been eminently wholesome.
But at the same time we inevitably feel that there is something wanting.
What power could such a discussion really have to constrain an ordinary
man to right action? The constraint, such as it is, seems purely an
intellectual process, and this is indeed noticeable in the Stoic ethics
of all periods. No Stoic brought his doctrine nearer to a religious
system than Epictetus; yet this is how Epictetus puts the matter:[797]
"If a man could be thoroughly penetrated, as he ought to be, with this
_thought_, that we are all in an especial manner sprung from God, and
that God is the Father of men as well as gods, full sure he would never
conceive aught ignoble or base of himself.... Those few who _hold_ that
they are born for fidelity, modesty, and unerring rightness in dealing
with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of
themselves." He means that, for the real Stoic, _self-respect is the
necessary consequence of his intellectual conception of his place in the
universe_, and that self-respect must as inevitably result in virtue.
Can this intellectual attitude really act as a constraining force on the
will of the average man? This is far too complicated a question for me
to enter upon here, and I can but suggest the study of it for anyone who
would wish to test the actual life-giving moral power of this
philosophy. Suffice it to say that their idea of the universe as Reason
and God naturally led the Stoics into a kind of Fatalism, a destined
order in the world which nothing could effectually oppose;[798] and they
were naturally in some difficulty in reconciling this with the freedom
of Man's will. That freedom they constantly and consistently asserted;
but it comes after all to this, that Man is free to bring his will into
conformity, _through knowledge_, with the Power and the universal
Reason; or, as Dr. Caird puts it,[799] "Man has the choice whether he
will be a willing or an unwilling servant (of the universal Reason):
unwilling, if he makes it his aim to satisfy his particular self, an aim
which he can only attain so far as the general system of things allows
him; willing, if he identifies himself with the divine reason which is
manifested in that system." But that identification of himself with the
divine Reason is again an intellectual process; it can only be realised
by minds highly trained in thinking; it could not have the smallest grip
on the conduct of the ordinary ignorant man, or on the minds of women
and children.
And here we come upon another weak point in Stoicism as presented to the
Roman world in this last century B.C. It was an age in which gentleness,
tenderness, pity, and the philanthropic spirit were most sadly needed,
and it cannot be said of Stoicism that it had any mission to encourage
their growth. The Stoics looked on the mass of men as ignorant and
wicked,[800] and it never occurred to them that it was a duty of the
Good Man to teach and redeem them,--to sacrifice his life, if need be,
in the work of enlightenment. They seem to have thought even of women
and children as hardly partaking of Reason; their ideally good man was
virtuous in a strictly virile way,[801] and it never occurred to them
that training in goodness must begin from the earliest years, and be
gradually developed with infinite sympathy and tenderness. If a man is
to learn that there is something within him which partakes of God, and
which should naturally lead him to right conduct, he must begin to learn
this truth in his infancy.[802] But the absence of a place for emotion
and sympathy in the Stoic system, resulting from the purely intellectual
nature of their central doctrine of Reason, meant also the absence of
any spirit of enthusiastic propaganda. Their notion that emotion or
passion is "a movement of mind contrary to reason and nature,"[803]
lamed their whole system as a progressive force in the world of that
day. Such religious power as it could exercise worked simply through
the radiating influence of a few wise and good men, by nature pure and
unselfish, who gradually familiarised the educated part of society with
a nobler idea of God than the old religion had ever been able to supply,
and with that other inspiring idea of the near relation of Man to God as
partaking of His nature. But the active enthusiasm of a real
religion--the _effective_ desire to be in right relation with the
Power--was strange to Stoicism. In one way or another it had many
excellent results; it cleared the ground, for example, for a new and
universal religion by putting into the shade, if not altogether out of
the way, the old local cults with their narrow and limited civic force:
it glorified the idea of law and order in an age when the Roman world
seemed to be forgetting what these sacred words meant; _but a real
active enthusiasm of humanity was wanting in it_. Hence there is a
certain hopelessness about Stoicism, which increased rather than
diminished as the world went on, and such as is seen in a kind of sad
grandeur in Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor. Of him it may be said,
both as emperor and philosopher, as has been said of the Stoic in
general, that "he was essentially a soldier left to hold a fort
surrounded by overpowering hosts of the enemy. He could not conquer or
drive them away, but he could hold out to the last and die at his post."
NOTES TO LECTURE XVI.
[755] See, _e.g._ Livy iii. 20: "Sed nondum haec, quae
nunc tenet saeculum, neglegentia deum venerat; nec
interpretando sibi quisque iusiurandum et leges aptas
faciebat, sed suos potius mores ad ea accommodabat." Cp.
Cic. _de Off._ iii. 111.
[756] Two Epicureans were expelled from Rome in 173
(probably), Athenaeus, p. 547. Cicero, _Tusc._ iv. 3, 7,
gives some idea of the later popularity of the school in
the first half of the last century B.C.
[757] So Masson, _Lucretius_, i. 263, 271.
[758] See Masson i. ch. xii. and ii. p. 141 foll.;
Mayor's Cicero _de Nat. Deor._ vol. i. xlviii. and 138
foll.; Guyau, _La Morale d'Épicure_ (ed. 4), p. 171
foll.
[759] Cic. _N.D._ i. 19, 49 foll., and many other
passages; Diog. Laert. x. 55; Zeller, _Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics_, p. 441 foll.; Masson i. 292,
who aptly quotes Cotta the academic critic in Cicero's
dialogue: "When Epicurus takes away from the gods the
power of helping and doing good, he extirpates the very
roots of religion from the minds of men" (Cic. _N.D._ i.
45. 121). One may add with Dr. Masson (i. 416 foll.)
that a machine cannot command worship; the _Natura_ of
Lucretius, _i.e._, was really a machine.
[760] Masson i. p. 284, and citations of Philodemus
there given.
[761] Mayor's Cic. _N.D._ vol. i. p. xlix.
[762] Lucr. vi. 68 foll.
[763] Masson i. p. 285.
[764] Cic. _N.D._ i. 2. 3.
[765] Cic. _N.D._ i. 37. 102; to believe the gods idle
"etiam homines inertes efficit."
[766] For this profound reverence for Epicurus see also
Cic. _N.D._ i. 8. 18. It amounted to a faith. In this
passage the Epicurean is described as "nihil tam verens
quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur, tanquam modo ex
deorum concilio et ex Epicuri intermundiis
descendisset." See also sec. 43 and Mayor's note; Cic.
_de Finibus_, i. 5. 14; Masson i. 354-5, who quotes the
most striking passages from Lucretius, _e.g._ v. 8-10:
deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi,
qui princeps vitae rationem invenit eam quae
nunc appellatur sapientia, etc.
In a paper entitled "Die Bekehrung (conversion) im
klassischen Altertum," by W. A. Heidel (_Zeitschrift für
Religionspsychologie_, vol. iii. Heft 2), the author, an
American disciple of W. James, argues that the exordium
of Bk. iii. indicates a psychological conversion of
Lucretius.
[767] See Masson's chapter (p. 399 foll.) on the
teaching and personality of Lucretius. _Social Life at
Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p. 327 foll., and references
there given. I may note here that the power of Epicurism
as a faith depended also largely on the directness,
downrightness, and audacity of its system, working on
minds weary of philosophers' disputations and political
quarrels.
[768] Cic. _de Finibus_, i. viii. to end (translation by
J. S. Reid, Camb. Univ. Press). The following sentence
in ch. 18, sec. 57, puts the Epicurean ethics in a
nutshell: "Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis
voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse iucunde
vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, iusteque vivatur, nec
sapienter, honeste, iuste, nisi iucunde."
[769] What this quietism might mean for a Roman may be
gathered from the following passage in Cic. _de
Finibus_, i. 13. 43, in which _sapientia_ is practical
wisdom, the Aristotelian [Greek: phronêsis] or the _ars
vivendi_, as Cicero has explained it just before:
"Sapientia est adhibenda, quae, et terroribus
cupiditatibusque detractis et omnium falsarum opinionum
temeritate derepta, certissimam se ducem praebeat ad
voluptatem. Sapientia enim est una, quae maestitiam
pellat ex animis, quae nos exhorrescere metu non sinat;
qua praeceptrice in tranquillitate vivi potest, omnium
cupiditatum ardore restincto. Cupiditates enim sunt
insatiabiles, quae non modo singulos homines, sed
universas familias evertunt, totam etiam labefactant
saepe rempublicam. Ex cupiditatibus odia discidia
discordiae seditiones bella nascuntur." And so on to the
end of the chapter. The message of Lucretius to the
Roman was practically the same. The remedy was the wrong
one in that age; though it does not necessarily entail
withdrawal from public life with all its enticements
and risks, it must inevitably have a strong tendency to
suggest it; and such withdrawal had, as a matter of
fact, been one of the characteristics of the Epicurean
life. See Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., ch. xx.; Guyau, _La
Morale d'Épicure_, p. 141 foll.
[770] _History of European Morals_ (1899), vol. i. p.
225. The treatment of Stoicism in this work, though not,
strictly speaking, philosophical, is in many ways most
instructive.
[771] F. Leo, _Die griechische und lateinische
Literatur_, p. 337. See the author's _Social Life at
Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p. 105.
[772] Polybius xxxii. 9-16.
[773] See a discussion by the author of the meaning of
[Greek: tychê] in Polybius, _Classical Review_, vol.
xvii. p. 445, and the passages there quoted relating to
the growth of the Roman dominion.
[774] See Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 3 foll.
[775] _Ib._ p. 6, note 3.
[776] See above, p. 251.
[777] Cic. _N.D._ ii., end of sec. 19. He is translating
the Greek [Greek: pneuma], which in Stoicism is not a
spiritual conception, but a material one, in harmony
with their theory of the universe as being itself
material, including reason and the soul. This is one of
the weak points of the Stoic idea of Unity. For the
meaning of _spiritus_ see Mayor's note on the passage;
it is "the ether or warm air which penetrates and gives
life to all things, and connects them together in one
organic whole."
[778] Cic. _N.D._ ii. xiii. 36 _ad fin._ On all this
department of the Stoic teaching see Zeller, _Stoics_,
etc., p. 135 foll.; Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii.,
Lectures 16 and 17.
[779] _Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics_, by F. W.
Bussell p. 42.
[780] Cic. _N.D._ ii. ch. 28 (secs. 70-72), with Mayor's
commentary; Zeller, _op. cit._ p. 327 foll.; Mayor,
introduction to vol. ii. of his edition of Cic. _N.D._
xi. foll.; _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 334 foll. It is important to note the distinction
drawn by Cicero between religion and superstition; what
Lucretius called _religio_ as a whole Cicero (and Varro
too, cf. Aug. _Civ. Dei_, vi. 9) thus divided. See
Mayor's valuable note, vol. ii. p. 183. Some interesting
remarks on the Stoic way of dealing with popular
mythology will be found in Oakesmith's _Religion of
Plutarch_, p. 68 foll.
[781] See above, p. 118 foll.
[782] See Mayor's note on Cic. _N.D._ ii. 15. 39 (vol.
i. p. 130), with quotation from Philodemus. Zeller,
_Stoics_, etc., p. 337 foll.
[783] Cic. _de Legibus_, i. 7. 22.
[784] _Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum_, Paris, 1883.
I have borrowed the beautiful translation of my friend
Hastings Crossley, printed p. 183 foll. of his _Golden
Sayings of Epictetus_, in Macmillan's Golden Treasury
Series.
[785] _Gifford Lectures_, ii. p. 94.
[786] So Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 61 foll. The
evidence is not conclusive, and the process of argument
is one of elimination; but it raises a fairly strong
probability.
[787] Cic. _de Rep._ i. 21. 34.
[788] See Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 294 foll.
[789] Cic. _de Rep._ iii. 22. 33.
[790] Cic. _de Legibus_, i. 7. 22 foll.: "Est igitur,
quoniam nihil est ratione melius, eaque in homine et in
deo, prima homini cum deo rationis societas. Inter quos
autem ratio, inter eosdem etiam recta ratio communis
est," etc.
[791] Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 226 foll.
[792] _Social Life at Rome_, p. 117.
[793] _Ib._ p. 118 foll.
[794] I may take this opportunity of noting that a Roman
might better understand this notion of his Reason as the
voice of God within him, or conscience, from his own
idea of his "other soul," or genius; see above, p. 75.
But we do not know for certain that it was presented to
him in this way by Panaetius, though Posidonius (_ap.
Galenum_, 469) used the word [Greek: daimôn] in this
sense, as did the later Stoics; see Mulder, _de
Conscientiae notione_, p. 71. Seneca, _Ep._ 41. 2, uses
the word _spiritus_: "Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet ...
in unoquoque virorum bonorum, quis deus incertum est,
habitat deus" (from Virg. _Aen._ viii. 352). Cp. Marcus
Aurelius iii. 3. Seneca uses the word genius clearly in
this sense in _Ep._ 110 foll. On the Stoic daemon
consult Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 332 foll.; Oakesmith,
_Religion of Plutarch_, ch. vi.
[795] See, _e.g._, Zeller, p. 268.
[796] This habit of illustrating by historical examples
had an educational value of its own, but serves well to
show how comparatively feeble was the appeal of Stoicism
to the conscience. It may be seen well in Valerius
Maximus, whose work, compiled of fact and fiction for
educational purposes, is far indeed from being an
inspiring one. See _Social Life at Rome_, p. 189.
[797] Arrian, _Discourses_, i. 3. 1-6 (_Golden Sayings
of Epictetus_, No. 9).
[798] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 190 foll.
(Panaetius), and 244 foll. (Posidonius), Zeller 160
foll. This is the Fate or Providence on which the moral
lesson of the _Aeneid_ is based; see below, p. 409
foll. Aeneas is the servant of Destiny. If he had
persisted in rebelling against it by remaining at
Carthage with Dido, that would not have changed the
inevitable course of things, but it would have ruined
him.
[799] _Gifford Lectures_, ii. 96.
[800] Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 255. This, of course,
did not diminish the duty of general benevolence, _ib._
p. 310 and references, where fine passages of Cicero and
Seneca are quoted about duties to one's inferiors. But
an enthusiasm of humanity was none the less wanting in
Stoicism, and this was largely owing no doubt to their
hard and fast distinction between virtue and vice, and
their want of perception of a growth or evolution in
society. See Caird, _op. cit._ ii. 99; Lecky, _Hist. of
European Morals_, i. 192 foll.; Zeller 251 foll.
[801] See some excellent remarks in Lecky, _op. cit._ i.
p. 242 foll.
[802] See above, note 40.
[803] Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 229. Cic. _de Finibus_,
iii, 10, 35; _Tusc. Disp._ iv. 28, 60.
LECTURE XVII
MYSTICISM--IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE
We have now reached the end of the period of the Republic; but before I
go on to the age of Augustus, with which I must bring these lectures to
an end, I must ask attention to a movement which can best be described
by the somewhat vague term Mysticism, but is generally known to
historians of philosophy as Neo-pythagoreanism. The fact is that such
tendency as there ever was at Rome towards Mysticism--which was never
indeed a strong one till Rome had almost ceased to be Roman[804]--seems
to have taken the form of thinking known as Pythagorean. The ideas at
the root of the Pythagorean doctrine, the belief in a future life, the
conception of this life as only preparatory to another, the conviction
of the need of purgation in another life and of the preparatory
discipline and asceticism to be practised while we are here,--these are
truly religious ideas; and even among Romans the religious instinct,
though it might be hypnotised, could never be entirely destroyed. When
it awoke from time to time in the minds of thinking men it was apt to
express itself in Pythagorean tones. With the ignorant and vulgar it
might find a baser expression in superstition pure and simple,--in the
finding of portents, in astrology, in Dionysiac orgies; but with these
Pythagoreanism must not be reckoned. These, as they appeared on the soil
of Italy, were the bastard children of quasi-religious thought. But the
movement of which I speak marks a reaction, among men who could both
feel and think, against the whole tendency of Roman religious experience
as we have been tracing it; against the extreme formalism, now
meaningless, of the Roman State religion; against the extreme scepticism
and indifference so obvious in the last century and a half of the
republican era; against the purely intellectual appeal of the ethical
systems of which I have been recently speaking. Stoicism indeed, as we
shall see, held out a hand to the new movement, simply because Stoicism
had a religious side which was wanting in Epicurism. But the thought
that our senses and our reason are not after all the sole fountains of
our knowledge, a thought which is the essence of mysticism, was really
foreign to Stoicism; and when this thought did find a soil in the mind
of a thinking Roman of this age, it was likely to spring up in a
transcendental form which we may call Pythagoreanism.
South Italy was indeed the true home of the Pythagorean teaching. There
its founder had established it, and there, mixed up with more popular
Orphic doctrine and practice, it must have remained latent for
centuries.[805] "Tenuit magnam illam Graeciam," says Cicero of
Pythagoras, "cum honore disciplinae, tum etiam auctoritate; multaque
saecula post sic viguit Pythagoreorum nomen, ut nulli alii docti
viderentur."[806] To South Italy Plato is said to have travelled to
study this philosophy, and to learn the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul; and the story is generally accepted as true.[807] But of any
missionary attempt of Pythagoreanism on Rome we know nothing--and
probably there was nothing to tell--till that mysterious plot to
introduce it after the Hannibalic war which I mentioned in a recent
lecture.[808] That war brought Rome into close contact with Tarentum and
southern Italy, and it is likely enough that the attempt to connect King
Numa with the philosopher, both in the familiar legend and in the
alleged discovery of the stone coffin with its forged manuscripts, had
its origin in this contact. The Senate could not object to the legend,
but it promptly stamped out this grotesque attempt at propagandism. Then
we hear no more of the doctrine for a century at least; but in the last
century B.C. we know that there appeared a number of Pythagorean
writings, falsely attributed to the founder himself or his
disciples,[809]--a method of propagandism which, like that of the
previous century, may perhaps be taken as marking the religious nature
of the doctrine, which needed the _ipse dixit_ of the founder or
something as near it as possible.[810] But of the immediate influence of
these writings we know nothing. The person really responsible for the
tendency to this kind of mysticism was undoubtedly the great Posidonius,
philosopher, historian, traveller, who more than any other man dominated
the Roman world of thought in the first half of the last century B.C.,
and whose writings, now surviving in a few fragments only, lie at the
back of nearly all the serious Roman literature of his own and indeed of
the following age.[811] Panaetius, there can be little doubt, had done
something to leaven Stoicism with Platonic-Aristotelian psychology,[812]
the general tendency of which was towards a dualism of Soul and Body.
The Stoics, in the strict sense of the name, "could not be content with
any philosophy which divided heaven from earth, the spiritual from the
material." "They rebelled against the idea of a transcendent God and a
transcendent ideal world, as modern thought has rebelled against the
supernaturalism of mediaeval religion and philosophy."[813] In their
passion for unity they would not separate soul and body. But when once
Panaetius had hinted at a reversion to the older mode of thought, it was
natural and easy to follow his lead in a society which had long ago
abandoned burial for cremation, and bidden farewell to the primitive
notion that the body lived on under the earth: in a society, too, which
had always believed in that "other soul," the _Genius_ of a man, as
distinct from his bodily self of this earthly life.[814]
Now as soon as this dualism of body and soul was suggested, it was taken
up by Posidonius into what we may call his neo-Stoic system, and at once
gave mysticism,--or transcendentalism, if we choose so to call it--its
chance. For in such a dualistic psychology it is the soul that gains in
value, the body that loses. Life becomes an imprisonment of the soul in
the body; the soul seeks to escape, death is but the beginning of a new
life, and the imagination is set to work to fathom the mysteries of
Man's future existence, nay, in some more fanciful minds, those of his
pre-existence as well. This kind of speculation, half philosophic, half
poetical, is the transcendental side of the Platonic psychology, and in
the last age of the Republic was able to connect Platonism and
Pythagoreanism without deserting Stoicism.[815] We can see it reflected
from Posidonius in the Dream of Scipio, the beautiful myth, imitated
from those of Plato, with which Cicero concluded his treatise on the
State, written in the year 54 B.C., after his retirement from political
life. In this, and again in the first book of his _Tusculan
Disputations_, composed nearly ten years later, Cicero is beyond doubt
on the tracks of Posidonius, and therefore also of Pythagoreanism.[816]
Listen to the words put into the mouth of the elder Scipio and addressed
to his younger namesake: "Tu vero enitere et sic habeto, non esse te
mortalem, sed corpus hoc; non enim tu es, quem forma ista declarat; sed
_mens cuiusque is est quisque_, non ea figura quae digito demonstrari
potest."[817] Here is the body plainly losing, the soul gaining
importance. But he goes still further: "_deum igitur te scito esse_: si
quidem deus est qui viget qui sentit qui meminit: qui providet, qui tam
regit et moderatur et movet id corpus cui propositus est, quam hunc
mundum ille princeps deus, et ut mundum ex quadam parte mortalem ipse
deus aeternus, sic fragile corpus animus sempiternus movet."[818]
With such a view of the soul in relation to the body, we can understand
how in this myth it is described as flying upwards, released from
corporeal bondage, and ascending through heavenly stations to pure
aether, if at least (and here we may note the characteristic Roman
touch) its abode on earth has been the body of a good citizen.[819] All
that is of earth earthy, all old ideas of burial, all notions of a
gloomy abode below the earth, are here fairly left behind. So too in the
first book of the _Tusculans_, written after the death of his beloved
daughter, Cicero would persuade himself and others that death cannot be
an evil if we once allow the soul to be immortal: for from its very
nature it must rise into aethereal realms, cannot sink like the body
into the earth.[820] Into its experiences in the aether I do not need to
go here. Enough has been said to show that, as it were, the heavens were
opened, and with the psychological separation of soul from body the
imaginative faculty was released also; not indeed that any Roman, or
even Posidonius himself, could revel in cosmological dreams as did
Plato, but they found in him all they needed, and it would seem that
they made much use of it. Plato's _Timaeus_ was made by Posidonius the
subject of a commentary,[821] and by Cicero himself it was in part at
least translated, about the time when he was writing the _Tusculans_,
and still deeply moved by his recent loss. Of this translation a
fragment survives; and in the introductory sentences he indicates a
second stimulus to his Pythagorean tendencies, besides Posidonius. He
tells how he had met at Ephesus, when on his way to his province of
Cilicia, the famous Pythagorean Nigidius Figulus, and had enjoyed
conversation with him.[822] Nigidius was an old friend, who had helped
Cicero in his consulship; he was one of those "polyhistores" who are
characteristic of the age, like Posidonius and Varro, and wrote works on
all kinds of subjects of which but few fragments remain. But his
reputation as a Pythagorean survived for centuries;[823] and this
mention of him by Cicero is only another proof of the direction the
thoughts of the latter were taking in these last two years of his life.
Clearly, then, Cicero in his philosophical writings of these years was
affected by the current of mysticism that was then running. But to me it
is still more interesting to find it moving him in a practical matter of
which he has himself left the truth on record; for Cicero is a real
human being for whom all who are familiar with his letters must have
something in the nature of affection, and with whom, too, we feel
genuine sympathy in the calamity which now fell upon him. It was early
in 45 B.C. that he lost his only and dearly loved daughter, and the blow
to his sensitive temperament, already hardly tried by political anxiety,
was severe. We still have the private letters which he wrote to Atticus
after her death from his solitude at Astura on the edge of the
melancholy Pomptine marshes;[824] and here, if our minds are
sufficiently divested of modern ideas and trained to look on death with
Roman eyes, we may be startled to find him thinking of her as still in
some sense surviving, and as divine rather than human: as a deity or
spirit to whom a _fanum_ could be erected. He makes it clear to Atticus,
who is acting as his business agent at Rome, that he does not want a
mere tomb (_sepulcrum_), but a _fanum_, which as we have seen was the
general word for a spot of ground sacred to a deity. "I wish to have a
_fanum_ built, and that wish cannot be rooted out of my heart. I am
anxious to avoid any likeness to a tomb, not so much on account of the
penalty of the law, as in order to attain as nearly as possible to an
_apotheosis_. This I could do if I built it in the villa itself, but ...
I dread the changes of owners. Wherever I construct it on the land, I
think that I could secure that posterity should respect its
sanctity."[825] The word here translated sanctity is _religio_; we may
remember that all burial places were _loca religiosa_, not consecrated
by the State, yet hallowed by the feeling of awe or scruple in
approaching them; but Cicero is probably here using the word rather in
that wider sense in which it so often expresses the presence of a deity
in some particular spot.[826]
Atticus was a man of the world and probably an Epicurean, and his
friend in two successive letters half apologises for this strong
desire. "I should not like it to be known by any other name but
_fanum_,--unreasonably, you will perhaps say." And again, "you must bear
with these silly wishes (_ineptiæ_) of mine."[827] But this only makes
the intensity of his feeling about it the more plain and significant; he
really seems to want Tullia to be thought of as having passed into the
sphere of divinity, however vaguely he may have conceived of it. Perhaps
he remembered his own words in Scipio's dream, "Deum te esse scito."
The ashes of Tullia rested in the family tomb, but the godlike thing
imprisoned in her mortal body was to be honoured at this _fanum_, which,
strange as it may seem to us, her father wished to erect in a public and
frequented place. She does not fade away into the common herd of Manes,
but remains, though as a spirit, the same individual Tullia whom her
father had loved so dearly.
I long ago explained the old Roman idea of Manes,[828] a vague
conception of shades of the dead dwelling below the earth, and hardly,
if at all, individualised. But in Tullia's case we meet with a clear
conception of an individual spirit; and this alone would lead us to
suspect a Pythagorean influence at work, such as that under which Virgil
wrote the famous words "Quisque suos patimur Manes," which simply mean
"Each individual of us must endure his own individual ghosthood."[829]
This process of individualisation must have been gradually coming on,
but the steps are lost to us; we only know that the earliest sepulchral
inscription which speaks to it, in the vague plural Di Manes so familiar
in later times, is dateable somewhere about this very time.[830] My
friend Dr. J. B. Carter would explain it, in part at least, by the Roman
conception of Genius to which I alluded just now, and doubtless this
must be taken into account. For myself I would rather think of it as the
natural result of the growth of individualism in the living human being
during the last two centuries B.C. Surely it was impossible for
personality to grow as it did in that period without a corresponding
growth of the idea of individual immortality in the minds of all who
believed in a future life of any kind at all. The Epicureans did not so
believe; but Roman Stoics instructed by Panaetius and Posidonius might
not only believe in immortality but in an immortality of the individual.
Let me take this opportunity of noting that there was, of course, no
sort of restriction on a man's belief about this or any other religious
question. It was perfectly open to every one to hold what view best
pleased him about the state of the dead: all that the State required of
him was that he should fulfil his obligations at the tombs of his own
kin. No dogma reigned in the necropolis, only duty, _pietas_,--and that
_pietas_ implied no conviction. The Parentalia in February were
originally, so far as we can discern, only a yearly renewal of the rite
of burial on its anniversary;[831] this implies civilisation and some
kind of calendar, but not a creed. Later on, in the Fasti of the
City-state, the day was fixed for all citizens without regard of
anniversaries; and here the rites become a matter of _ius_, the _ius
Manium_, to the observance of which the Manes are entitled. Still there
is no creed, though Cicero speaks of this _ius_ as based on the idea of
a future life.[832] As a fact these rites are a survival from an age in
which the dead man was believed to go on living in the grave, but that
primitive idea was no longer held by the educated. Each man was free in
all periods to believe what he pleased about the dead, and as the Romans
began to think, this freedom becomes easy to illustrate. Cicero himself
is usually agnostic, as is in keeping with his Academic tendency in
philosophy; even in one of these very letters he seems to speak of his
own non-existence after death.[833] So, too, the excellent Servius
Sulpicius, in the famous letter of condolence written to Cicero at this
time from Athens, seems to be uncertain.[834] We all know the words of
Caesar (reported by Sallust), which are often quoted with a kind of holy
horror, as though a pontifex maximus might not hold any opinion he
pleased about death, and as though his doubt were not the common doubt
of innumerable thinking men of the age.[835] Catullus wrote of death as
"nox perpetua dormienda"; Lucretius, of course, gloried in the thought
that there is no life beyond. In the following century the learned Pliny
could write of death as the relapsing into the same nothingness as
before we were born, and could scoff at the absurdities of the cult of
the dead.[836]
But when a man like Cicero was deeply touched by grief, his emotional
nature abandoned its neutral attitude, and turned for consolation to
mysticism. As I have said, he was persuading himself that Tullia was
still living,--a glorified spirit. We can gain just a momentary glimpse
of what was in his mind by turning to the fragments of the _Consolatio_
which he was now writing at Astura.
This was a _Consolatio_ of the kind which was a recognised literary form
of this and later times,[837] though in this case it was addressed by
the writer to himself; to write was for Cicero second nature, and he was
sure to take up his pen when he had feelings that needed expression. It
is unfortunately lost, all but one fragment, which he quotes himself in
the first book of his _Tusculans_, and one or two more preserved by the
Christian writer Lactantius, a great admirer of Cicero, who came near to
catching the beauty of his style. The passage quoted by himself is
precious.[838] It insists on the spiritual nature of the soul, which can
have nothing in common with earth or matter of any kind, seeing that it
thinks, remembers, foresees: "ita quicquid est illud, quod sentit, quod
sapit, quod vivit, quod viget, caeleste et divinum, ob eamque rem
aeternum sit necesse est." And in the concluding words he hints strongly
at the _divinity_ of the soul, which is of the same make as God
himself,--of the same immaterial nature as the only Deity of whom we
mortals can conceive. His daughter, therefore, is not only still living
in a spiritual life, but she is in some vague sense divine; that word
_apotheosis_, which he twice uses in the letters, has a real meaning for
him at this moment; and in a fragment of the _Consolatio_ quoted by
Lactantius he makes this quite plain; "Te omnium optimam doctissimamque,
approbantibus dis immortalibus ipsis, in eorum coëtu locatam, ad
opinionem omnium mortalium consecrabo."[839]
Undoubtedly Cicero is here under the influence of the Pythagoreans as
well as of his own emotion. In another chapter Lactantius seems to make
this certain;[840] he begins by combining Stoics and Pythagoreans as
both believing the immortality of the soul, goes on to deal with the
Pythagorean doctrine (or one form of it) that in this life we are
expiating the sins of another, and ends by quoting Cicero's _Consolatio_
to that effect: "Quid Ciceroni faciemus? qui cum in principio
Consolationis suae dixit, luendorum scelerum causa nasci homines,
iteravit id ipsum postea, quasi obiurgans eum qui vitam poenam non esse
putet." Another lost book, the _Hortensius_, which was written
immediately after the _Consolatio_, March to May 45,[841] shows in one
or two surviving fragments exactly the same tendency of thought and
reading.[842] Our conclusion then must be that Cicero, always
impressionable, and in his way also religious, had in this year 45 a
real religious experience. He was brought face to face with one of the
mysterious facts of life, and with one of the great mysteries of the
universe, and the religious instinct awoke within him. How many others,
even in that sordid and materialistic age, may have had the like
experience, with or without a mystical philosophy to guide their
thoughts? In the last words of the famous Laudatio Turiae, of which I
have written at length in my _Social Life in the Age of Cicero_,[843] we
may perhaps catch an echo of a similar religious feeling: "Te di Manes
tui ut quietam patiantur atque ita tueantur opto" (I pray that thy
divine Manes may keep thee in peace and watch over thee). These words,
expressing the hope of a practical man, not of a philosopher, are very
difficult to explain, except as the unauthorised utterances of an
individual. They hardly find a parallel either in literature or
inscriptions. We must not press them, yet they help us to divine that
there was in this last half-century B.C. some mystical yearning to
realise the condition of the loved ones gone before, and the relation of
their life to that of the living. This religious instinct, let us note
once for all, is not identical with the old one which we expressed by
the formula about the Power manifesting itself in the universe. The
religious instinct of the primitive Roman was concerned only with this
life and its perils and mysteries; the religious instinct of Cicero's
time was not that of simple men struggling with agricultural perils, but
that of educated men whose minds could pass in emotional moments far
beyond the troubles of this present world, to speculate on the great
questions, why we are here, what we are, and what becomes of us after
death.
But what of the ordinary Roman of this age--what of the man who was not
trained to think, and had no leisure or desire to read? What did he
believe about a future life, or did he believe anything? This brings us
to a curious question about which I must say a very few words--did this
ordinary Roman, as Lucretius seems to insist, believe in Hades and its
torments? Not in one passage only does Lucretius insist on this. "That
fear of Hell" (so Dr. Masson translates him) "must be driven out
headlong, which troubles the life of man from its inmost depth, and
overspreads everything with the blackness of death, and permits no
pleasure to be pure and unalloyed."[844] I need not multiply quotations;
evidently the poet believed what he said, though he may be using the
exaggeration of poetical diction. And to a certain extent he is borne
out by the literature of his time. In fact Polybius, writing nearly a
century earlier of the Romans and their religion, implies that such
notions were common, and that they were invented by "the ancients" to
frighten the people into submission.[845] Cicero, though he of course
thinks of them as merely the fables of poets, seems to suggest that the
ordinary man did believe in them; thinking of his own recent loss, he
says that our misery would be unbearable when we lose those we love, if
we really thought of them as "_in iis malis quibus vulgo
opinantur_."[846] Of course all these fables were Greek, not Roman.
There is no reason to believe that the old Romans imagined their own
dead experiencing any miseries in Orcus--the old name, as it would seem,
for the dimly imagined abode of the Manes, afterwards personified after
the manner of Plutus.[847] No doubt they believed that the dead were
ghosts, desiring to get back to their old homes, who, in the
well-ordered religion of the City-state, were limited in this strong
desire to certain days in the civic year.[848] But their first
acquaintance with Hades and its tortures may probably be dated early,
_i.e._ when they first became acquainted with Etruscan works of art,
themselves the result of a knowledge of Greek art and myth.[849] Early
in the second century B.C. Plautus in the _Captivi_ alluded to these
paintings as familiar;[850] and we must not forget that the Etruscans
habitually chose the most gruesome and cruel of the Greek fables for
illustration, and especially delighted in that of Charon, one likely
enough to strike the popular imagination. The play-writers themselves
were responsible for inculcating the belief, as Boissier remarked in his
work on the Roman religion of the early empire.[851] In the theatre,
with women and children present, Cicero says in the first book of his
_Tusculans_, the crowded auditorium is moved as it listens to such a
"grande carmen" as that sung by a ghost describing his terrible journey
from the realms of Acheron; and in another passage of the same book he
mentions both painters and poets as responsible for a delusion which
philosophers have to refute.[852] I need not say that the Roman poets
too continually use the imagery of Tartarus; but they use it as
literary tradition, and in the sixth _Aeneid_ it is used also to enforce
the idea of duty to the State which is the real theme of the poem.
As Dr. Masson truly observes, we have the literature but we have not the
folklore of the age of Cicero and Virgil; and it must be confessed that
without the folklore such scanty literary evidence as I have just
mentioned does not come to much. Dr. Masson indeed concludes on this
evidence that the fear of future torments played a considerable part in
the religious notions both of the common people and possibly of some of
the educated. I think it may have been so, but on other grounds, which I
must briefly explain.
From all that I have said in these lectures about the religious ideas
represented in the earliest calendar, _i.e._ those of the governing
Romans of the earliest City-state, it will be plain that a gruesome
eschatology was an impossibility for them. Just the same may be said of
the Greek ideas represented in the Homeric poems; for with the exception
of the Nekuia of the _Odyssey_, which almost all scholars agree in
attributing to a later age than the bulk of the two Homeric epics, in
this poetry _il se fait grand jour_.[853] This is not the first time
that I have compared the religion of the Roman patricians to that of
Homer;[854] and there is a growing conviction among experts that we have
in each case the ideas of a comparatively civilised immigrant
population, whose religion, though it has developed in very different
ways, has the common characteristic of cleanness and brightness. In
Italy it is practical, in Homer imaginative; but in both it is free from
the brutal and the grotesque. Even the eschatology of the eleventh
_Odyssey_ is not cruel, it is comparatively colourless; and, as I said
just now, this also may be said of the Roman ideas of Orcus and the
Manes.
In each case it is life, not death, that is of interest to the living;
death is rather a negation than anything distinctly realised. The state
of the dead in Homer is shadowy and _triste_, a state not to be desired,
as Achilles so painfully expresses it in a famous passage; but the
_life_ of the Achaean in the poems is vivid--nay, such a vivid
realisation of life can alone account for the production of such poems.
So, too, the immigrant population at Rome, to whom is due the regulation
of the religion as we know it, and the inspiring force that made for
ordered government and warlike enterprise, was too full of practical if
not of imaginative vitality to be apt to dwell upon the possibilities of
existence after death, to conceive of such existence as either happy or
miserable, the reward or the punishment for things done in this world.
But in each peninsula this immigrant race was living in the midst of a
far more primitive population; and it is perhaps to this population that
we must look for the origin of the more detailed and imaginative notions
of the life of the dead. Of the Greeks in this matter I have not space
here to speak, nor am I competent to do so. But the conviction is
steadily gaining ground that in early Rome we have to recognise the
existence of two races; whether the older of these was Ligurian, as
Prof. Ridgeway thinks, or primitive Latin, _i.e._ old Italic, as Binder
believes, does not matter for our present purpose;[855] nor are the
arguments drawn from religion which these writers have used at all
convincing to my intelligence. But they have not noticed what is to me a
really valid argument, viz. the double festival of the dead in the
calendar of Numa. In February we find the cheerful and orderly festival
of the Parentalia, the yearly renewal of the seemly rite of burial; in
May, on the other hand, the student of the calendar is astonished to
find three several days called Lemuria, the rites belonging to which are
never mentioned, except where Ovid treats us to a grotesque account of
the driving out of ancestral spirits from the house.[856] No one
doubts, I think, that the Lemuria represents an older stratum of thought
about the dead than the other festival,[857] but no one, so far as I
know, has ventured to claim the Lemures and their three days as
belonging to the religion of the more primitive race. If I make this
suggestion now, it must be taken as a hypothesis only, but as a
hypothesis it can at least do no harm. If I am asked why Lemuria should
have been admitted into the patrician calendar, I answer that I have
long held that a few of the non-patrician religious customs were
absorbed into the religion of the city of the four regions, the
Lupercalia, for example;[858] and nothing could be more likely than that
the old barbarous ideas about the dead should win this amount of
respect, seeing that by the limitation to three days in the year order
and decency might be brought into their service. I may repeat, with a
slight addition, what I wrote ten years ago about these two Roman
festivals of the dead: "If we compare Ovid's account of the grotesque
domestic rites of the Lemuria with those of February, which were of a
systematic, cheerful, and even beautiful character, we may feel fairly
sure that the latter represent the organised life of a City-state, the
former the ideas of an age when life was wilder and less secure, and the
fear of the dead, of ghosts and demons, was a powerful factor in the
minds of the people. If we may argue from Ovid's account, it is not
impossible that the Lemuria may have been one of those periodical
expulsions of demons of which we hear so much in the _Golden Bough_, and
which are performed on behalf of the community as well as in the
domestic circle among savage peoples. It is noticeable that the offering
of food to the demons is a feature common to these practices, and that
it also appears in those described by Ovid."[859] To this I should now
add the suggestion above made, that the Lemuria represents the ideas of
the older race that occupied the site of Rome, while the Parentalia is
originally the festival of the patrician immigrants.
But what has all this to do with the eschatology which Lucretius
attributes to the common people at Rome in his own day? Simply this,
that the ideas at the root of the Lemuria may well have provided the raw
material for such an eschatology, while those at the root of the
Parentalia could not have done this. Dr. Westermarck has recently shown
that primitive religions do spontaneously generate the idea of moral
retribution after death, _e.g._ the notion that the souls of bad people
may reappear as evil spirits or obnoxious animals.[860] We have no proof
whatever of the existence of such notions at Rome; but I contend that
the permanence of this type of belief about the dead which is
represented by the Lemuria--a permanence which is attested by Ovid's
description--raises a presumption that the lower stratum of the Roman
population, if the chance were given it, would the more readily
understand the pictures of Etruscan artists and the allusions of Greek
playwrights, and the more easily become the prey of the eschatological
horrors which Lucretius describes as terrifying them. The material was
there from the earliest times, and all that was needed was for Greeks
and Etruscans to work upon it.
Before leaving this point it may be worth while to remember that though
the well-to-do and educated classes cremated their dead, the poor of the
crowded city population of the period I am now dealing with enjoyed no
such orderly and cleanly funeral rites. The literary evidence is
explicit on this point, and has been confirmed by modern excavation on
the Esquiline, where we know from Varro and Horace that the poor and the
slaves were thrown _en masse_ into _puticuli_, _i.e._ holes where it was
impossible that any memorial ceremonies could be kept up.[861] Horace's
lines are familiar (_Sat._ 8. 8):
huc prius angustis eiecta cadavera cellis
conservus vili portanda locabat in arca.
hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulcrum, etc.
It is dangerous to be too confident about the effect on the religious
imagination of different ways of dealing with the dead; but it is at
least not improbable that any inherited tendency to believe in a
miserable future for the soul would be confirmed and maintained by so
miserable a fate for the body. The mass of the population had little
chance of ridding itself of eschatological superstition.
Thus I am inclined to come to Dr. Masson's conclusion, though on
somewhat different grounds. I think it quite possible that the
uneducated in the age of the poet may have really been inoculated with
these ideas of cruel retribution, and that in many cases this may have
resulted in despair or at least discomfort. Only we must remember that
in a great city like Rome, as in Paris or London to-day, both the
miseries and the enjoyments of life would tend to accustom the minds of
the lower strata to consider the present rather than the future; the
necessities and pleasures of the moment are with them the only material
of thought. Neither comfort nor remonstrance could reach them from
pulpit or from missioner; neither fear nor hope could largely enter into
their lives. In fact I half suspect that most of them were, after all,
so long as they were healthy and active, much what Lucretius would have
them be--free from all religious scruple; but, alas, utterly destitute
of the intellectual support which he claimed from the study of
philosophy. We can well understand how it was among the lower population
of the great cities that early Christianity found its chance. They had
no education or philosophy to stand between them and the gospel of
redemption.
I must say one word about another kind of transcendentalism which was
pushing its way into favour in Roman society at this time--I mean
astrology. One may call it transcendental because it was based, in its
original home in the East, on a mystical notion of sympathy between the
phenomena of the starry heavens and the phenomena of human life;[862]
and that this notion was carefully inculcated by those who taught the
"science" at Rome is shown by the long and wearisome poem on astrology
written by Manilius in the succeeding age. But it is not likely that
this form of mysticism had become really popular before the period of
the Empire, and in any case it can hardly be called a part of Roman
religious experience. I only mention it here as helping to illustrate
the way in which men's minds were now beginning to turn with interest to
speculations altogether beyond the range of that practical ethical
philosophy which was natural and congenial to the Roman, altogether
beyond the horizon of man's daily prospect in this world. The growing
interest in Fortuna, both as natural force and deity, which became
intense under the Empire, is another indication of the same
tendency.[863]
As soon as Rome had come into close contact with Greece, which had long
before been overrun by the eastern astrology--by the Chaldaeans or
_mathematici_, as they are so often called--these experts began to
appear also in Italy. We first hear of them from old Cato, who advises
that the steward of an estate should be strictly forbidden to consult
_Chaldaei_, _harioli_, _haruspices_, and such gentry.[864] In 139
B.C.--a year in which there happened to be in Rome an embassy from Simon
Maccabaeus--Chaldaeans were ordered to leave Rome and Italy within ten
days; but I think there is some evidence that these were really Jews who
were trying to propagate their own religion.[865] For some time we hear
nothing more of these intruders; but they probably gained ground again
in the course of the Mithridatic wars, which were responsible for the
introduction of much Oriental religion into Italy. They are mentioned in
87, together with [Greek: thytai] and Sibyllistae, as persuading the
ill-fated Octavius to remain in Rome to meet his death, as it turned
out, at the hands of the Marians.[866] But no Roman seems to have taken
up astrology as a quasi-scientific study till that Nigidius, of whom I
have already said a word, was persuaded thus to waste his time and
brains. He is said to have foretold the greatness of Augustus at his
birth in 63 B.C.;[867] and from this time forward the taking of
horoscopes or _genethliaca_ became a favourite pursuit at
Rome--unfortunately for the people of Europe, who caught the infection
and kept it endemic for at least fifteen centuries.
Astrology is in no sense religion, and I must leave it with these few
remarks. It represents the individual and his personal interests, not
even the advantage of the community, and it was for this reason that the
Chaldaei were disliked by the Roman government. The individual is not
satisfied with legitimate Roman means of divination; he is employing
illegitimate ways when he entrusts himself to these Orientals, who, most
of them doubtless, well deserved the scathing contempt which Tacitus has
contrived to put into six words: "Genus hominum potentibus infidum,
sperantibus fallax," adding, with no less contempt for the Roman
authorities who had to deal with them, that they will always be
forbidden, and always will be found at Rome.[868]
NOTES TO LECTURE XVII
[804] For the Pythagoreanism of the Neo-platonic
movement in the third century A.D. consult Bussell,
_Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics_ (Edin. 1910), p.
30 foll., who explains the reaction from Stoicism to
Neo-Platonism. See also Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, ii.
162 foll.
[805] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 403, says that
it had ceased to exist for centuries as a philosophy,
but cautiously adds in a note that the knowledge of it
was not extinct. The famous Orphic tablets from South
Italy are taken as dating from the third and fourth
centuries B.C., and if not actually Pythagorean, they
are next door to being so. See Miss Harrison,
_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 660.
[806] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 38.
[807] See, _e.g._, Prof. Taylor's little book on Plato
(Constable), p. 11.
[808] See above, p. 349.
[809] Sextus Empiricus, _adv. Physicos_, ii. 281 foll.
[810] For the devotion of the believers to the founder
and his _ipse dixit_, see Cicero, _Nat. Deor._ i. 5. 10.
[811] The relation of Posidonius to Roman literature has
been much discussed of late. See, _e.g._, Norden,
Virgil, _Aen._ vi., index, _s.v._ "Stoa"; Schmekel, _Die
mittlere Stoa_, 85 foll., 238 foll.
[812] For Panaetius' enthusiasm for Plato and his
teaching, see Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 32. 79; the whole
passage indicates, though it does not exactly prove, an
approach to the Platonic psychology.
[813] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 85.
[814] See above, p. 75. The idea that the practice of
cremation influenced the ideas of the Roman about the
soul was first, I think, suggested by Boissier,
_Religion romaine_, i. 310. Cicero himself hints at this
conclusion in _Tusc. Disp._ i. 16. 36: "In terram enim
cadentibus corporibus, hisque humo tectis, e quo dictum
est humari, sub terra censebant reliquam vitam agi
mortuorum. Quam eorum opinionem magni errores consecuti
sunt; quos auxerunt poetae."
[815] This point is well put by Dill, p. 493 of _Roman
Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_. See also
Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 200 fol.;
Stewart, _Myths of Plato_, 352-53.
[816] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 400 foll.
[817] _De Rep._ vi. 26.
[818] _Ib._ The word _providet_ reminds us that this
transcendental philosophy supplied the later Stoics with
an explanation of divination. See Bouché-Leclercq,
_Hist. de divination_, i. 68; Dill, _op. cit._ p. 439;
Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ ii. 52, fully accepted
divination. Cp. Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 37. 66, where he
quotes his own _Consolatio_; see above, p. 388.
Panaetius, however, had courageously denied divination:
Cic. _Div._ i. 3. 6; Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 352.
[819] _De Rep._ vi. 15, 26, and 29.
[820] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 16. 36 foll. On the whole subject
of the rise of the soul after death see Dieterich, _Eine
Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 179 foll.
[821] Schmekel, _op. cit._ p. 438; Stewart, _Myths of
Plato_, p. 300.
[822] For Nigidius, see Schanz, _Gesch. der röm.
Literatur_ (ed. 2), vol. ii. p. 419 foll.
[823] "Nigidius Figulus Pythagoreus et magus in exilio
moritur" is the notice of him in St. Jerome's Chronicle
for the year 45 B.C.
[824] These letters are in the 12th book of those to
Atticus, Nos. 12-40.
[825] _Ad Att._ xii. 36. The translation is Shuckburgh's.
[826] A good example is Virg. _Aen._ viii. 349, but it
is needless to multiply instances of the _religio loci_.
Serv. _ad Aen._ i. 314 defines _lucus_ as "arborum
multitudo cum religione."
[827] _Ad Att._ xii. 36; cp. 35. He uses the Greek word
[Greek: apotheôsis] in 35. 1, which seems to have come
into use in his own time; see Liddell & Scott, _s.v._
[828] See above, p. 58.
[829] _Aen._ vi. 743. The meaning of these words seems
to be quite plain, though commentators have worried
themselves over them from Servius downwards. The mistake
has been in not sufficiently considering the force of
_quisque_, and puzzling too much over the vague word
_Manes_. Henry discerned the true meaning in our own
time. See his _Aeneidea_, vol. iii. p. 397. Cp. the
words quoted above from _Somn. Scip._: "mens cuiusque is
est quisque." M. S. Reinach (_Cultes_, etc. ii. 135
foll.) is not far out: "Nous souffrons chacun suivant le
degré de souillure de nos âmes."
[830] _C.I.L._ i. 639, with Mommsen's note.
[831] See _R.F._ p. 308.
[832] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 12. 27. For the "ius Manium," _de
Legibus_, ii. 22 and 54 foll.
[833] _Ad Att._ xii. 18: "Longum illud tempus _cum non
ero_ magis me movet quam hoc exiguum," etc. Cp. _Tusc._
i. _ad fin._
[834] _Ad Fam._ iv. 5. 6: "Quod si quis apud inferos
sensus est, qui illius in te amor fuit pietasque in
omnes suos, hoc certe illa te facere nonvult."
[835] Sall. _Cat._ ch. 51: "Mortem cuncta mortalium
dissolvere, ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse."
This is the Epicurean doctrine, which Caesar was said to
hold.
[836] Catull. 5. 6; Pliny, _N.H._ vii. 188. The whole
passage is worth quoting: "Post sepulturam vanae Manium
ambages. Omnibus a supremo die eadem quae ante primum,
nec magis a morte sensus ullus aut corpori aut animae
quam ante natalem. Eadem enim vanitas in futurum etiam
se propagat et in mortis quoque tempora sibi vitam
mentitur, alias immortalitatem animae, alias
transfigurationem, _alias sensum inferis dando et Manes
colendo deumque faciendo qui iam etiam homo esse
desierit_, ceu vero ullo modo spirandi ratio ceteris
animalibus praestet, aut non diuturniora in vita multa
reperiantur quibus nemo similem divinat immortalitatem,"
etc.
[837] There is an essay on this form of literature in
the _Études morales sur l'antiquité_ of Constant Martha,
p. 135 foll.
[838] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 27. 66.
[839] Lact. _Inst._ i. 15. 20.
[840] Lact. iii. 18.
[841] See Schanz, _Gesch. der röm. Literatur_, vol. ii.
p. 376.
[842] Fragments 54 and 55.
[843] P. 158 foll.
[844] Lucr. vi. 764 foll. Cp. iii. 966 foll.; Masson,
_Lucretius_, i. p. 402. Mr. Cyril Bailey also reminds me
of Lucr. iii. 31-93, and 1053 to end; and adds a decided
opinion that the poet is not here thinking of the common
Roman, but of the educated Roman brought up on Greek and
Graeco-Roman poetry and philosophy.
[845] Polyb. vi. 56.
[846] _Tusc._ i. 46. 111.
[847] See Roscher's _Myth. Lex._ _s.v._ "Orcus";
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 192.
[848] See above, p. 107.
[849] Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 108 foll.
Illustrations can be seen in Dennis, _Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, ed. 2.
[850] _Captivi_, v. 4. 1.
[851] _La Religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins_, vol.
i. p. 310.
[852] Cic. _Tusc._ i. 16. 37. For the eschatology of the
sixth _Aeneid_, a curious mélange of religion,
philosophy, and folklore, see Norden's work on Virgil,
_Aeneid_, vi. (index, p. 468). Norden believes, I may
note, that the philosophical and religious elements in
it are mainly derived from Posidonius. Cp. also Glover,
_Studies in Virgil_, ch. x. (Hades). For popular
beliefs in Hades, etc., under the Empire, see
Friedländer's _Sittengeschichte_, vol. iii. last
chapter.
[853] Weil, _Études sur l'antiquité grecque_, p. 12,
quoted by Glover, p. 218.
[854] See above, p. 105.
[855] Since this lecture was written a most interesting
discussion of Greek ideas, Achaean and Pelasgic, about
the relation of soul and body after death, has appeared
in Mr. Lawson's _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion_, especially in chapters v. and vi., confirming
me, to some extent at least, in the conjecture I had
here hazarded. The working of the imagination in regard
to a future state is in Greece, in his view, peculiar to
the older or Pelasgic population; and if the Etruscans
were of Pelasgic stock, as is now believed by many,
their imaginative grotesqueness, a degraded form perhaps
of the original characteristic, acting on the ideas of a
still more primitive population of which the Lemuria is
a survival, might explain the later prevalence of a
gruesome eschatology at Rome. But whoever studies Mr.
Lawson's chapters closely will find serious difficulties
in the way even of such a hypothesis as this.
[856] Ovid, _Fasti_, v. 430 foll.; _R.F._ p. 109.
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 192, attributes the ideas of larvae
(ghosts) and of Orcus, not to religion, but to popular
superstition. If he here means by religion the State
religion and the _Parentalia_ in particular, I can agree
with him.
[857] Dr. Carter allows this in Hastings' _Dict. of
Religion and Ethics_, vol. i. (Roman section of article
"Ancestor Worship.")
[858] See _R.F._ p. 334.
[859] _R.F._ p. 107.
[860] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ii. 693
foll.
[861] Varro, _L.L._ v. 25; Paulus p. 216;
Hülsen-Jordan, _Röm. Topogr._ iii. p. 268 foll. The
remains of these puticuli were unluckily very
imperfectly reported, and have been lost in the building
of the Rome of to-day. On the question of the religious
aspect of the two ways of disposing of the dead, burial
and cremation, it is as well to remember Dieterich's
warning in _Mutter Erde_, p. 66, note: "den Versuch, aus
der Verbreitung und dem Wechsel der Sitte des
Verbrennens und Begrabens für meine Untersuchung
Schlüsse zu gewinnen, habe ich völlig aufgegeben, als
ich angesichts der ungeheueren Materialen meines
Kollegen von Duhn die Unmöglicheit solcher Schlüsse
einsehen musste." In Mr. Lawson's book quoted above it
seems to me to be proved that the object of both methods
is the same, viz. to destroy the body as quickly as
possible in order to prevent the soul from re-entering
it and annoying the survivors.
[862] This is well explained by Cumont in his _Religions
orientales dans le paganisme romain_, p. 196 foll.,
following Bouché-Leclercq's work on astrology in Greece.
Cumont thinks that astrology took over the business of
the augurs and haruspices, which was now dropped, and
this is true in the main as regards the individual, but
not as regards the State; see above, p. 308 foll.
[863] For Fortuna in the writings of Caesar, etc., see
_Classical Review_, vol. xvii. p. 153. The _locus
classicus_ for Fortuna as a deity under the early empire
is Pliny, _N.H._ ii. 22.
[864] Cato, _R.R._ ch. v. 4.
[865] Val. Max. i. 3. 2, who no doubt was following
Livy; for in the Epitomes of some lost books of Livy
discovered at Oxyrrhyncus by Grenfell and Hunt (_Oxyrrh.
Papyri_, vol. iv. p. 101), the same fact is alluded to.
For the embassy, Maccab. i. 14. 24; xv. 15-24. Two
extracts from the text of Valerius, which is here lost,
both state that proselytising Jews were at this time
driven from Rome; the Jupiter Sabazius, whose cult they
were propagating, can hardly be other than that of
Jehovah; see Schürer, _Jewish People in the Time of
Christ_, pt. ii. vol. ii. p. 233 of the English
translation. The expulsion of Chaldaei may, however,
have been a separate measure of the praetor Hispalus.
[866] Plutarch, _Marius_, 42.
[867] Suet. _Aug._ 1. I have seen a learned work about a
century old, now entirely forgotten, in which it is
maintained that Virgil's fourth Eclogue is simply a
genethliacon of Augustus; the arguments, which are
ingenious but futile, are drawn from the poem of
Manilius.
[868] Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 22.
LECTURE XVIII
RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE POEMS OF VIRGIL
My justification for devoting a whole lecture to Virgil must be that
this great poet, more warmly and sympathetically than any other Latin
author, gives expression to the best religious feeling of the Roman
mind. And this is so not only in regard to the tendencies of religion in
his own day; he stands apart from all his literary contemporaries in
that he sums up the past of Roman religious experience, reflects that of
his own time, and also looks forward into the future. No other poet, no
historian, not even Livy, who sprang from the same region and in his
tone and spirit in some ways resembles Virgil, has the same broad
outlook, the same tender interest in religious antiquity, the same
all-embracing sympathy for the Roman world he knew, and the same
confident and cheerful hope for its future. Each of the Augustan
poets--Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus--has his own peculiar gift and
charm; but those who know Virgil through and through will at once
acknowledge the difference between these and the man possessed of
spiritual insight. They are helpful in various ways to the student of
Roman religion, and Tibullus especially has a simple reverence for the
old religion which has inspired a few exquisite descriptions of this
aspect of Italian life. But, if I may use the word, they had no
mission; they were true poets, yet not poets of the prophetic order;
they had not thought deeply and reached conviction, like Lucretius and
Virgil. A few words from the conclusion of an Edinburgh professor's
admirable work on Virgil will sufficiently express what I mean. "His
religious belief," says Sellar, "like his other speculative convictions,
was composite and undefined; yet it embraced what was purest and most
vital in the religions of antiquity, and in its deepest intuitions it
seems to look forward to the belief which became dominant in Rome four
centuries later."[869] In fact, Virgil gathers up what was valuable in
the past of Rome and adds to it a new element, a new source of life and
hope. It was this that made it possible for a great French critic to
assert that for those who have read Virgil there is nothing astonishing
in Christianity.[870] Let us try and realise what these writers mean.
The Scotsman is sober and earnest, the Frenchman epigrammatically
exaggerating; but the feeling that underlies both utterances is a true
one.
We have traced the gradual paralysis of the secularised State religion.
We have glanced at the two types of philosophical thought which took the
place of that religion in the minds of the cultivated section of Roman
society, neither of which could adequately supply the Roman and Italian
mind with an expression of its own natural feeling, never wholly
extinct, of its relation to the Power manifesting itself in the
universe. Stoicism came near to doing what was needed, by rehabilitating
itself on Italian soil and indulging Roman preconceptions of the divine;
but it could not greatly affect the mass of men, and its appeal was not
to feeling, but to reason. Epicurism, though perhaps more popular, was
in reality more in conflict with what was best in the Italian nature,
and the passionate appeal of Lucretius to look for comfort to a
scientific knowledge of the _rerum natura_ had no enduring power to
cheer. Lastly, we have examined the tendency of the same age towards
mysticism and Cicero's doubting and embarrassed expression of it, and we
found that this tendency rather illustrates a sense of something
wanting than hopefully satisfies it. We may well feel ourselves, now we
have arrived at the close of the Republican era, just as the best men of
that day felt, that there _is_ something wanting. In their minds this
feeling almost amounted to despair; in ours, as we read the story of the
troublous time after the death of Caesar, it is pity and wonder. There
was, in fact, more than a sense of weariness and discomfort, moral and
material, in the Roman mind of that generation--there was also what we
may almost call a sense of sin, such a feeling, though doubtless less
real and intense, as that which their prophets, from time to time, awoke
in the Jewish people, and one not unknown in the history of Hellas. It
was essentially a feeling of neglected duty--of neglected duty to the
Power and of goodwill wanting towards men. Lucretius had been
unconsciously a powerful witness to this feeling, but had not found the
remedy. In the early Augustan age it is again expressed by Horace, by
Sallust, and more deeply and truly in the beautiful preface to Livy's
History.[871] Livy there says that he devoted himself to the early
annals of Rome that he might shut his eyes to the evils of his own
time--"tempora quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus."
This something wanting was then a feeling, a _religio_, if we can
venture to use the old word once more in the sense which I have so often
attributed to it. Not an unreasonable or ungovernable feeling, not a
_superstitio_, but a feeling of happy dependence on a higher Power, and
a desire to conform to His will in all the relations of human life. This
is the kind of feeling that had always lain at the root of the Roman
_pietas_, the sense of duty to family and State, and to the deities who
protected them. In the jarring of factions, the cruelty and bloodshed of
tyrants, and the luxurious self-indulgence of the last two generations,
the voice of _pietas_ had been silenced, the better instincts of
humanity had gone down. We have to see what was done by our poet to
awake that voice again and to put fresh life into those instincts. Only
let us remember that more permanent good is done in this world by a
beautiful nature giving itself its natural expression, than by precept
or denunciation; and beware of attributing to Virgil more direct
consciousness of his mission than he really felt. It is the nature of
the man that is of value to us in our studies, as it was to the Romans
in their despair, a nature ruled by sweet, calm feeling, full of
sympathy and full of hope.
The something wanting in others which we find in Virgil only, or in him
more convincingly felt and more resonantly expressed, is a kindly and
hopeful outlook on the world, with a deep and real sympathy for all
sorrow and pain. It is not the result of any definite religious
conviction; it is in the nature of the man, and is of the very fibre of
his being; but it made him a better religious teacher than the rest,
just because real religion is not a matter of reason only, or of
convention, or of art, but of feeling. This was the true antidote to
despair or depression--a sympathy with man in all he does or suffers,
not an indignant cry of remonstrance like that of Lucretius. Virgil's
sympathetic outlook includes not only Man, but the animal world, and
there can be no better proof that his feeling was genuine. The
nightingale robbed of her young,[872]
quem durus arator
observans nido implumes detraxit: at illa
flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
integrat et maestis late loca questibus implet;
the cattle smitten by the plague,[873] the migrating birds coming in
from the sea,[874] and many another tender touch, all show us the
feeling of which I am speaking; for he who could so feel towards animals
must needs have a soul of pity for man. So, too, with the inanimate
nature of Italy; the land in which Virgil's shepherds and husbandmen
live and work is one full of such detailed loveliness as might suggest a
beneficent Power presiding over it all, inviting man to lift up his
heart in gratitude or prayer. As Sellar has well remarked,[875] the
sense of natural beauty is in the _Georgics_ intertwined with the toil
of man, raising, as it were, the toiler to a higher level of humanity as
he lifts his eyes from his work. And this natural beauty is made real
for the reader by the life and force that everywhere pervades it; all
nature is alive and full of feeling; the fruit trees, for example, in
the second _Georgic_ seem instinct with an almost human life.[876] The
moment this comes home to us we see how it harmonises with all we have
learnt of the old Italian conception of the divine, of the forceful
_numina_ working for man's benefit if properly propitiated. And even
when Virgil is using the language of the Stoics to explain the life of
nature, we feel that behind the philosophical theory there lies this
feeling of the Italian:
deum namque ire per omnes
terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:
hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum.[877]
This is the religious spirit of the _Georgics_; the divine forces are
everywhere, and a man must submit himself to them and seek their aid. He
finds his true resource rather in prayer than in philosophy, his part in
the world is "laborare et orare." The hard lot of the Hesiodic labourer
is not that of the _agricola_ of the _Georgics_, who carries on his
campaign of toil with a cheerful heart and a clear conscience, for he is
in right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the life around
him.
This, then, so far as I can describe it without going too far into
detail, is the feeling, the _religio_, which was needed in the Italy of
that day. We may, perhaps, venture to compare its revival in the work of
Virgil with the return to nature in the English poetry of a century ago,
which also brought with it a revival of religious fervency. Though
Virgil and Wordsworth are in many ways as unlike as two poets can be,
they are alike in the possession of that gentle and trustful outlook on
the world of nature which stimulates the mind to think of itself in its
relation to the Power. We do not need to analyse the process or to put
it into any logical shape; we may rest content with it as a fact in the
history of Roman religious experience.
In Virgil's case, as in Wordsworth's, this feeling had the effect of
reconciling the poet's mind to the old forms of religious worship.
Reconcile is, perhaps, hardly the right word; we may doubt whether he
had ever quarrelled with them. As he believed in the Power and its
manifestations, so too he believed in the traditional modes of
propitiating it, not asking himself the _raison d'être_ of this or that
ceremony, still less looking on them with pity and contempt, like
Lucretius, but accepting them in his broad humanity as part of the life
and thought of man in Italy.
fortunatus et ille Deos qui _novit_ agrestes.[878]
Let us mark the word _novit_. The husbandman has come to recognise these
emanations of the Power and to know them as friends; the word could not
have been used of malignant spirits. As I said in an early lecture, man
advances in his knowledge of the Power as he advances in civilisation.
So the rural rites have a claim on his sympathy no less than the men who
performed them; he knew them in their detail, and he knew them in the
spirit which animated them. He must have studied them in detail, and not
only the rural cults, but those of the city too; every gesture in
worship has an interest for him, and so great is our respect for his
accuracy that we accept what he tells us even if we cannot explain
it.[879] His careful learning in all these details has been the means of
preserving for us large sources of knowledge; for Servius, Macrobius,
and other commentators accumulated stores of it in endeavouring to
interpret him.
Now, this is not mere antiquarianism in Virgil, any more than is the
detail of old life which abounds in Scott's poems and novels. These two
men had the same wide, sympathetic outlook on the world. Scott was
interested in everything and everybody, whether living or dead long ago,
and in all they did; and I think we may say the same of Virgil, though
he is said to have been rather reserved and shy than genial and
talkative like Scott. Virgil's mind was not so much "curious," I think,
as sympathetic, and his delight in these religious details arises from
his love of Italy and all that man did in it. He caught the spirit of
the old Italian worship, which, as we saw, demanded that each act should
be performed accurately according to rules laid down. He recognises the
necessity, and with true Italian instinct he acts upon it as he writes.
He knows that these acts of cult are one outward expression of that
quality which had made Rome great--_pietas_, the sense of duty to
family, State, and Deity.
So far I have been considering what I may call the psychological basis
of Virgil's religion--the man's sympathetic nature and wide outlook,
which included in its love of Italy even the old practical worship of
Italians. I have now to go on to the poet's greatest work, in which the
idea of duty was not merely recognised in religious acts but exemplified
in an ideal Roman. It is mainly in the _Aeneid_ that we see him looking
forward as well as backward, for it is there that we have the chart of
the Roman's duty drawn to the scale of his past history, and meant to
guide him in the future in still more glorious travel.
There are two ways in which we may contemplate the _Aeneid_ as a whole
and the teaching it offered the Roman of that day. We may think of it
(if I may for a moment use musical language) as a great fugue, of which
the leading subject is the mission of Rome in the world. Providence,
Divine will, the Reason of the Stoics, or, in the poetical setting of
the poem, Jupiter, the great protecting Roman deity, with the Fates
behind him somewhat vaguely conceived,[880] had guided the State to
greatness and empire from its infancy onwards, and the citizens of that
State must be worthy of that destiny if they were to carry out the great
work. This mighty theme pervades the whole poem and, like the subject of
a fugue, enters and re-enters from time to time in thrilling tones. It
is given out in the prophecy put into the mouth of Jupiter himself at
the beginning of the first book; it is heard in still more magnificent
music from the shade of old Anchises in the last moments of the hero's
visit to Hades in the sixth book, and again in the description of the
shield which Venus gives her son.[881] Though the poem is unequal and
some parts of it are left without the final touches, yet whenever the
poet comes upon this great theme the tone is that of a full organ. This
is, I think, apart from those exquisite beauties of detail which are for
those only who have been initiated in the Virgilian mysteries, what
chiefly moves the modern reader of Virgil. There are drawbacks which,
for us moderns at least, detract from the general effect: the
intervention of gods and goddesses after the Homeric manner, but without
the charm of Homer; the seeming want of warm human blood in the hero;
the stern decrees of Fate overruling human passions and interests; but
he who keeps the great theme ever in mind, watching for it as he reads,
as one watches for the new entry of a great fugue-subject, will never
fail to see in the _Aeneid_ one of the noblest efforts of human art--to
understand what makes it the world's second great epic.
But this great destiny of Rome has been accomplished by the service of
man; by his loyalty, self-sacrifice, and sense of duty; by that quality
known to the Romans as _pietas_; and the second lesson or reminder of
the _Aeneid_ lies in the exemplification of this truth in the person and
character of the hero. We moderns find it hard to interest ourselves in
the character of Aeneas. But as Prof. Nettleship remarked long ago,[882]
a Roman reader would not have thought him dull or uninteresting; if that
had been so, the poem could hardly have become popular from the moment
of its publication. I am inclined to think that the _development_ of the
character of Aeneas under stress of perils, moral and material, was much
more obvious to the Roman than it is to us, and much more keenly
appreciated. For him it was the chief lesson of the poem, which makes it
as it were a "whole duty of the Roman"; and as this lesson is really a
part of Roman religious experience I am going to occupy the rest of this
lecture with it.
The development of the character of Aeneas, under the influence of
perils and temptations through which he is guided by Jupiter and the
Fates, is not a subject which has received much attention from modern
criticism.[883] Yet to me, at least, it would be surprising if the
leading character of the poem were, so to speak, a statue once and for
all conceived and executed by the artist, instead of a human being
subjected to various experiences which work upon his character as well
as his career. There were circumstances in Virgil's time which made it
natural that a poet of a serious and philosophical turn of mind should
be interested in the development of character and make it part of his
great subject. We have more than once had occasion to notice the growth
of individualism in the last two centuries B.C. Beyond doubt personal
character had a great interest at this time for thinking men, apart from
its development; the world was ruled by individuals, and at no time has
so much depended on the disposition of individuals. Men had long begun
to take themselves very seriously, and to write their own biographies.
So entirely had the individual emancipated himself from the State, that
he had almost forgotten that the State existed and claimed his _pietas_;
he worked and played for his own ends.[884] Even the armies of that
melancholy age were known and thought of, not as the servants of the
State, but as Sullani, Pompeiani, and so on. This almost arrogant
self-assertion of the individual was a fact of the time, and could not
be suppressed entirely; it was henceforward impossible to return to the
old times when the State was all in all and the individual counted for
little.
But in the _Aeneid_, if I am not mistaken, there is an almost perfect
balance between the two conflicting interests. The State is the pivot on
which turns all that is best in individual human character; in other
words, Aeneas is not playing his own game, but fulfilling the order of
destiny which was to bring the world under Roman dominion. Individualism
of the wrong type, that of Dido, Turnus, Mezentius, has to be escaped or
overcome by the hero, for whom the call of duty is that of the State to
be; but, all the same, the hero is an _individual_, and one conceived
not merely as a type or a force. True, he is typical of Roman _pietas_,
and bears his constant epithet accordingly; but if we look at him
carefully we shall see that his _pietas_ is at first imperfect, and that
his individualism has to be tamed and brought into the service of the
State _with the help of the State's deities_. This is what makes the
_Aeneid_ a religious poem; the character of Aeneas is pivoted on
religion; religion is the one sanction of his conduct. There is no
appeal in the _Aeneid_ to knowledge, or reason, or pleasure,--always to
the will of God. _Pietas_ is Virgil's word for religion, as it had been
Cicero's in his more exalted moments. In the Dream of Scipio we read
that "_piis_ omnibus retinendus est animus in custodia corporis: nec
iniussu eius a quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita migrandum est,
_ne munus humanum adsignatum a deo defugisse videamini_."[885] In these
words, as is shown by those that follow, the _munus hominum_ is exactly
what it is in the _Aeneid_, duty to Man and the State, and as it is laid
down for man by God, it is also duty to Him. The State finds its
perfection in the individual so long as he thus fulfills the will of
God.[886]
Let us now go on to watch Aeneas as he gradually develops this perfect
balance of motive.
Aeneas is marked at the very outset of the poem as "insignem pietate
virum"; the key-note of his character is sounded here at once with
skill, and the key thus suggested (to use musical metaphor once more) is
maintained steadily throughout it. The quality demanded by the gods from
every true Roman who would take his part in carrying out the divine
mission of Rome must be emphasised in the ideal Roman. Yet, as we read
on, we soon discover that Aeneas was by no means as yet a perfect
character. It can hardly be by accident that the poet has described him
as yielding to despair and bewailing his fate on the first approach of
danger--forgetting the mission before him and the destiny driving him
on, and wishing that he were lying dead with Hector under the walls of
Troy (i. 92 foll.). It would have been easy enough for Virgil to have
taken up at once the heroic vein in the man, as it was left him by
Homer,[887] and to have made him urge his men to bestir themselves or to
yield bravely to fate. And this is precisely what Aeneas does _when the
storm is over and the danger past_ (198 foll.); yet even then he is not
whole-hearted about it:
talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger
_spem voltu simulat_, premit alto corde dolorem.
At the very moment, that is, when he expresses his belief in his destiny
and the duty of making for Italy, he still has misgivings, though he
dare not express them.
Heinze has remarked[888] that before this, at the sack of Troy, he had
shown a want of self-control, and yielded to a mad passion of desperate
fighting that is not to be found in the Aeneas of the last six books
(ii. 314 foll.):
arma amens capio nec sat rationis in armis.
_Furor_ and _ira_ drive him headlong; we are reminded of the mad fury of
Mezentius or Turnus.
Again, after the death of Priam Venus has to remind him of his duty to
his father, wife, and son (ii. 594 foll.), reproaching him for his loss
of sanity and self-control:
nate, quis indomitas tantus dolor excitat iras?
quid furis, aut quonam nostri tibi cura recessit?
non prius aspicies ubi fessum aetate parentem
liqueris Anchisen, superet coniunxne Creusa
Ascaniusque puer?[889]
During the wanderings narrated in the third book it is Anchises who
leads, and who receives and interprets the divine warnings; he seems to
be the guardian and guide of his son: to that son he is "omnis curae
casusque levamen" (iii. 709), and he is "felix nati pietate" (iii. 480).
He is, in fact, the typical Roman father, who, unlike Homer's Laertes,
maintains his activity and authority to the end of his life, and to whom
even the grown-up son, himself a father, owes reverence and obedience.
As Boissier has pointed out,[890] the death of Anchises is postponed in
the story as long as possible, and it is only after his death that
Aeneas is exposed to a really dangerous temptation; it is immediately
after this event that, as we saw, he loses heart at the first storm, and
then, on landing in Africa, falls a victim for the moment to the queenly
charms of Dido. We may notice that up to this point his _pietas_ has
been a limited one, hardly called upon for exercise beyond the bounds of
family life and duty; when he is himself at the head, not only of the
family, but, so to speak, of the State, it has to take a wider range,
and to be put to a severe test.
To all that has at different times been written about Virgil's treatment
of the Dido legend I must venture here to add another word. Heinze has
shown[891] that no certain origin can be discovered for the form of the
story as Virgil tells it; it may have been Naevius who first took Aeneas
to Sicily, but we do not know whether he or any successor of his
invented the essential point of Virgil's story,--the suicide of Dido as
a consequence of her desertion by Aeneas.[892] In any case the question
arises, why our poet should have deliberately abandoned the current and
popular version, and exposed his hero to such imminent danger of
deserting the path which Jupiter and the Fates had marked out for
him,--of sacrificing his great mission to the passion of a magnificent
woman, and to the prospect of illicit ease and unsanctioned dominion.
Heinze is of opinion that Virgil's motive was here a purely artistic
one; he wanted an opportunity to introduce the pathetic element into his
epic. "There was no lack of models; the latest bloom of Greek poetry had
been in nothing more inventive than in dealing with all the phenomena of
the passion of love,--its agony, shame, and despair, and the
self-immolation of its victims."[893] He enforces this view with great
learning, and all he writes about it is of value; but I must confess
that he has not convinced me that this was Virgil's chief motive. He
seems to me to leave out of account two important considerations: first,
that though the poet drew freely on every available source, Greek and
Roman, for the enrichment of his subject and its treatment, yet the
whole design and purpose of the _Aeneid_ is Roman and not Greek, and the
introduction of a love-story _as such_ would have been foreign to that
design, and also to the aims and hopes of Augustus and the best men of
the age. Secondly, Heinze seems to forget, like so many others who have
written about the Dido episode, that Virgil had before his very eyes
facts sufficiently striking, a romance quite sufficiently appalling, to
suggest the adoption of the form of the story as we have it in the
fourth book. Twice in his own lifetime did a single formidable woman
work a baleful spell upon the destinies of the Roman empire. In neither
case did the spell take fatal effect; Julius escaped in time from the
wiles and the splendour of Cleopatra; Antony failed indeed to escape,
but brought himself and her to fortunate ruin. It is to me inexplicable,
considering how all Virgil's poems abound with allusions to the events
of his time, and with side-glances at the chief agents in them, that
neither Heinze nor Norden should have even touched on the possibility
that Cleopatra was in the poet's mind when he wrote the fourth book. It
is perhaps difficult for one who puts the poem on the dissecting-board,
and whose attention is continually absorbed in the investigation of
minute points in the fibre of it, to bear in mind the extraordinary
events of the poet's lifetime,--the civil war, the murder of Julius, the
division of the Roman world, the distraction of Italy, the attempt of
Antony, or rather, indeed, of his enslaver, to set up a rival Oriental
dominion, and the rescue of Romanism and civilisation by Augustus. Had
Lucretius himself lived in that generation, he could hardly have escaped
the influence of these appalling facts. Whoever will turn to the late
Prof. Nettleship's essay on the poetry of Virgil, appended to his
_Ancient Roman Lives of Virgil_,[894] can hardly fail to be convinced
that on the later poet's mind they had produced a profound impression,
the effects of which are traceable throughout the whole mass of his
work. His Roman readers, whose state and empire had been brought to the
verge of ruin by the exaltation of individual passions and ambitions,
would look for these constant allusions and understand them far better
than we can.
I maintain, then, that the poet adopted his version of the story of Dido
not simply as an affecting and pathetic episode, but (in keeping with
his whole design) to emphasise the great lesson of the poem by showing
that the growth and glory of the Roman dominion are due, under
providence, to Roman _virtus_ and _pietas_--that sense of duty to
family, State, and gods, which rises, in spite of trial and danger,
superior to the enticements of individual passion and selfish ease.
Aeneas is sorely tried, but he escapes from Dido to perform the will of
the gods; it is Jupiter, ruler of the Fates and the Roman destinies, who
rescues him, and thus the divine care for Rome, an idea of which
Augustus wished to make the most, is carefully preserved in the tale. If
for us the character of Aeneas suffers by his desertion of Dido, that is
simply because the poet, seized with intense pity for the injured queen,
seems for once, like his own hero, to have forgotten his mission in the
poem, and at the very moment when he means to show Aeneas performing the
noblest act of self-sacrifice, renouncing his individual passion and
listening to the stern call of duty, human nature gets the better of
him, and what he meant to paint as a noble act has come out on his
canvas as a mean one.
In Virgil's story, then, we have in contrast and conflict the opposing
principles of duty and pleasure, of patriotism and selfishness, and the
victory of the latter in the person of Aeneas by the help of the great
god who was the guardian of the destinies of Rome, and of the goddess
who was the mother of the hero and the reputed progenitor of the Julian
family. When once this great trial is over, the way is clear for the
accomplishment of Aeneas' mission, though he still has trials to face,
and as yet is not fully equipped for meeting them.
Whoever, after reading the stormy scenes of the fourth book, will go
straight on to the fifth, cannot but be struck with a change of tone
which would have been doubly welcome to a man of that true Roman feeling
which Virgil was counting on as well as inculcating throughout his
work--doubly welcome, because he would find it not only in the
incidents, but in the character of Aeneas. We here leave self and
passion behind, and are introduced to scenes where the careful
performance of religious and family duties seems to produce ease of mind
and the tranquillity that comes of a soothed conscience. For the first
time in the poem we meet with a characteristic of that best Roman life
which was dear to the heart of Augustus, and with which we may be quite
certain that the poet himself was entirely in sympathy. Strange, indeed,
it is that this should be the case in a book so wholly based for its
externals on Greek poetical traditions; but it is none the less true,
and it is a striking example of Virgil's wonderful genius for
transforming old things with new light and meaning.[895]
It is not only then, or even mainly, the traditional necessity of
describing games in an epic poem, that is the _raison d'être_ of the
fifth book; the object was rather, as I understand it, to gain the
needful contrast to the stormy passion of the fourth, and a relief for
the mind of the Roman reader before he approached the awful scenery and
experiences of the sixth, while at the same time there could be
indicated--and for a Roman reader more than indicated--the _first
beginning of a change_ in the character of the hero. All this is
effected with wonderful skill by making Aeneas perform with detailed
carefulness the Roman ritual of the _Parentalia_ as it was known to the
Romans of the Augustan age. The _Parentalia_, as I have said
elsewhere,[896] were not days of terror or ill-omen, but rather days on
which the performance of duty was the leading idea in men's minds; that
duty was a pleasant and cheerful one, for the dead were still members of
the family, and there was nothing to fear from them so long as the
living performed their duties towards them under the due regulations of
the _ius divinum_. The ritual indicates the idea of the yearly renewal
of the rite of burial, with the propitiation of the departed which was
necessary for the welfare of the family; and when the liturgical nine
days were over, the living members met together in the _Caristia_, a
kind of love feast of the family, at which all quarrels were to be
forgotten, and from which all guilty members were excluded. In families
of wealth and distinction in Virgil's time the days of mourning might be
followed by _games in honour of the departed_. Thus a Roman would at
once recognise the fact that Aeneas is here presented to us for the
first time as a Roman father of a family, discharging the duties
essential to the continuance and prosperity of that family with
cheerfulness as well as with _gravitas_; and that his _pietas_ here
takes a definite, practical, and truly Roman form, though it is not as
yet extended to its full connotation as the performance of duty towards
the State and its gods.
All this is quite in keeping with the little touches of characterisation
which we can also notice in this book. In the second line Aeneas pursues
his way _certus_, even while he gazes at the flames of Dido's funeral
pyre, not knowing what they meant. He presides at the games with the
dignity of a Roman magistrate, and reproachingly consoles the beaten
Dares with words which seem to reflect his late experience at Carthage
(v. 465):
infelix, quae tanta animum dementia cepit?
non vires alias conversaque numina sentis?
_cede deo_.
When the ships are burnt he does not give way to despair, as in the
storm of the first book, but prays for help to the omnipotent Jupiter,
in whose hand were the destinies of his descendants (v. 687 foll.). But
he is not yet perfect in his sense of duty; he feels the blow severely,
and for a moment wavers (v. 700 foll.):
... casu concussus acerbo
nunc huc ingentis, nunc illuc pectore curas
mutabat versans, Siculisne resideret arvis
oblitus fatorum, Italasne capesseret oras.
It needs the cheering advice of old Nautes (_quicquid erit, superanda
omnis fortuna ferendo est_), and the appearance of the shade of
Anchises, to confirm his wavering will with renewed sense of his
mission. This appearance of his father, "omnis curae casusque levamen,"
with the summons to meet him in Hades, is, as Heinze has seen,[897] a
turning-point in the fortunes and the character of Aeneas, and prepares
us for the final ordeal and initiation which he undergoes in the
following book.
I here use the word initiation because I have no doubt that Virgil had
in his mind when writing it the Greek idea of initiation into mysteries
preparatory to a new life. An actual initiation was, of course, out of
the question; on the other hand a _catabasis_, a descent into Hades, was
part of the epic inheritance he derived from Homer, and this, like the
funeral games in the fifth book, he might use with an earnestness of
purpose wanting in Homer, to work in with the great theme of his poem,
not merely as an artistic effort. The purpose here was to make of Aeneas
a new man, to regenerate him; to prepare him by mystic enlightenment for
the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the accomplishment of his
divine mission. We must not look too closely into the process; it is a
strange mélange of popular and philosophic ideas and scenery, made at
once intelligible and magnificent by the wonderful resources of the
poet; but we may be sure that it has the same general meaning as the
visions of Dante long afterwards. As Mr. Tozer has said, Dante's
conversion and ultimate salvation were the primary object of his journey
through the three realms of the spiritual world.[898] In this sense it
can be called an initiation, an ordeal, a sacrament.
So much has been written about this wonderful book that I do not need
to dwell upon it here. I will content myself with pointing out very
briefly a fact which struck me when I last read it. The ordeal of
preparation is not complete till the very end of the book, when the
shade of Anchises has shown his son all the great things to come, the
due accomplishment of which depends on his sense of duty, his _pietas_.
Up to that moment Aeneas is always thinking and speaking of the past,
while in the last six books he is always looking ahead, absorbed in the
work each hour placed before him, and in the prospect of the glory of
Rome and Italy. The poet had contrived that his hero should himself
narrate the story of the sack of Troy and his subsequent wanderings, and
narrate them to the very person who would have made it impossible for
him ever again to look forward on the path of duty. Surely this is
significant of a moral as well as an artistic purpose; the passionate
love of the queen urges her to keep his mind fixed on the past, to
engage him in the story of events that concerned himself and not his
mission (i. 748):
necnon et vario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem
multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa, etc.
After the shade of Creusa had told him of his destiny, which she was not
to share, the past was still in his mind, and he seems to have forgotten
the warning; he calls himself an exile (iii. 10):
litora cum patriae lacrimans portusque relinquo
et campos ubi Troia fuit. Feror exsul in altum--
I find an exception after the meeting with Andromache, when he thinks of
the future for a moment, but even then half-heartedly as it seems to me,
with a very distinct reluctance to face the dangers to come, and with a
touching envy of those who could "stay at home at ease" (iii. 493
foll.). His want of faith in the future is again shown in Book v., in
the passage quoted just now; and even in Book vi. he is at first
purposely depicted as "slack," as having his attention caught by what is
for the moment before him, or with the figures of old friends and
enemies whom he meets, until the last awakening revelation of Anchises.
Thus no sooner has he landed in Italy than he is attracted by the
pictures in the temple of Apollo and incurs a rebuke from the priestess
(vi. 37 foll.):
non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit;
nunc grege de intacto septem mactare iuvencos
praestiterit, etc.;
so also a little farther on she has to warn him again (50 foll.) at the
entrance to the cave:
"cessas in vota precesque,
Tros" ait "Aenea, cessas?"
It may be fancy in me to see even in his prayer which follows a leaning
to think of Troy and his past troubles (56 foll.). But I cannot but
believe that in this book he is meant to take a last farewell of all who
have shared his past fortunes, have helped him or injured him; he meets
Palinurus, Dido, Tydeus, Deiphobus, and the rest, and while meditating
over these he has once more to be hurried by his guide (538):
sed comes admonuit breviterque adfata Sibylla est:
nox ruit, Aenea, nos flendo ducimus horas.
When Anchises appears the whole tone changes, and his famous words seem
to me to show conclusively that hesitation and want of fixed,
undeviating purpose had been so far his son's chief failing (806):
et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis,
aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra?
The father's vision and prophecy are of the _future_ and the great deeds
of men to come, and henceforward Aeneas makes no allusion to the past
and the figures that peopled it, abandons talk and lamentations,
"virtutem extendit factis." At the outset of Book vii. we feel the ship
moving at once; three lines suffice for the fresh start; Circe is passed
unheeded. "Maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo," says the poet in line 43;
"maius opus moveo;" for the real subject of the poem is at last reached,
and a heroic character by heroic deeds is to lay the foundation of the
eternal dominion of Rome.
A very few words shall suffice about the Aeneas of the later books. Let
us freely allow that he is not strongly characterised; that for us
moderns the interest centres rather in Turnus, who is heroic as an
individual, but not as a pioneer of civilisation divinely led; that
there is no real heroine, for feminine passion would be here out of
place and un-Roman, and the courtship of Lavinia is undertaken, so to
speak, for political reasons. The rôle of Aeneas, as the agent of
Jupiter in conquest and civilisation, would appeal to a Roman rather
than to a modern, and it was reserved for the modern critic to complain
of a lack of individual interest in him. So, too, it is in Jewish
history; we feel with Esau more than with Jacob, and with David more
than with Moses, who is none the less the grandest typical Israelite in
the Old Testament. And, indeed, Virgil's theme here is less the
development of a character or the portraiture of a hero than the
idealisation of the people of the Italy which he loved so well, who
needed only a divinely guided leader and civiliser to enter upon the
glorious career that was in store for them.
I cannot escape the belief, as I read again through these books, that
Virgil did intend to depict in Aeneas his ideal of that Roman character
to which the leading writers of his day ascribed the greatness of their
race. His _pietas_ is now confirmed and enlarged, it has become a sense
of duty to the will of the gods as well as to his father, his son, and
his people, and this sense of duty never leaves him, either in his
general course of action or in the detail of sacrifice and propitiation.
His courage and steadfastness never fail him; he looks ever forward,
confident in divine protection; the shield he carries is adorned--a
wonderful stroke of poetic genius--with scenes of the future, and not of
the past (viii. 729 foll.):
talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis,
miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet
attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.
He is never in these books to be found wanting in swiftness and
vigilance; when he cheers his comrades it is no longer in a half-hearted
way, but as at the beginning of the eleventh book, with the utmost
vigour and confidence, "Arma parate, animis et spe praesumite bellum"
(xi. 18).
His _humanitas_ again is here more obvious than in his earlier career,
and it is plainly meant to be contrasted with the heroic savagery of
Mezentius and Turnus. So keenly did the poet feel this development in
his hero's character, that in his descriptions of the death of Lausus
and the burial of Pallas--noble and beautiful youths whom he loved in
imagination as he loved in reality all young things--his tenderness is
so touching that even now we can hardly read them without tears. And not
only is the hero heroic and humane, but he is a just man and keeps
faith; when, in the twelfth book, the Rutulians break the treaty, and
his own men have joined in the unjust combat (xii. 311):
at pius Aeneas dextram tendebat inermem
nudato capite atque suos clamore vocabat:
"quo ruitis? quove ista repens discordia surgit?
o cohibete iras; ictum iam foedus et omnes
compositae leges: mihi ius concurrere soli."
He claims for himself alone, under the guiding hand of providence, the
right to deal with Turnus, the enemy of humanity and righteousness. And
we may note that when it came to that last struggle, though conquering
by divine aid, he was ready to spare the life of the conquered till he
saw the spoils of the young Pallas upon him.
The character of Aeneas, then, though not painted in such strong light
as we moderns might expect or desire, is _intentionally_ developed into
a heroic type in the course of the story--a type which every Roman would
recognise as his own natural ideal. And this growth is the direct result
of religious influence. It is partly the result of the hero's own
natural _pietas_, innate within him from the first, as it was in the
breast of every noble Roman; partly the result of a gradually enlarged
recognition of the will of God, and partly of the strengthening and
almost sacramental process of the journey to Hades, of the revelation
there made of the mysteries of life and death, and of the great future
which Jupiter and the Fates have reserved for the Roman people. In these
three influences Virgil has summed up all the best religious factors of
his day: the instinct of the Roman for religious observance, with all
its natural effect on conduct; the elevating Stoic doctrine which
brought man into immediate relation with the universal; and, lastly,
the tendency to mysticism, Orphic or Pythagorean, which tells of a
yearning in the soul of man to hope for a life beyond this, and to make
of this life a meet preparation for that other.
Only one word more. We can hardly doubt the truth of the story that the
poet died earnestly entreating that this greatest work of his life
should perish with him, and this may aptly remind us that though I have
been treating the Aeneid as a poem of religion and morals, yet, after
all, Virgil was a poet rather than a preacher, and thought of his
Aeneid, not as a sermon, but as a work of art. Had he thought of it as a
sermon he could hardly have wished to deprive the Roman world of it. The
true poet is never a preacher except in so far as he is a poet. If the
Greeks thought of their poets as teachers, says the late Prof. Jebb,
"this was simply a recognition of poetry as the highest influence,
intellectual and spiritual, that they knew." "It was not merely a
recreation of their leisure, but a power pervading and moulding their
whole existence." Surely this is also true of Virgil, and of the best at
least of his Roman readers. No one can read the sixth Aeneid, the
greatest effort of his genius, without feeling that poetry was all in
all to him; that learning, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the
whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it
as poetry and poetry only.[899]
NOTES TO LECTURE XVIII
[869] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 371.
[870] Sainte-Beuve, _Étude sur Virgile_, p. 68.
[871] Horace, _Epode_ 16, where, however, he is not
quite so much in earnest as in _Odes_ iii. 6. Sallust,
prefaces to Jugurtha and Catiline: these do not ring
quite true.
[872] _Georg._ iv. 511 foll.
[873] _Georg._ iii. 440 foll. The famous lines (498
foll.) about the horse smitten with pestilence will
occur to every one.
[874] _Aen._ vi. 309.
[875] _Op. cit._ p. 231. He cites _Georg._ i. 107 and
187 foll.
[876] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 232.
[877] _Georg._ iv. 221 foll.
[878] _Georg._ ii. 493.
[879] Prof. Hardie recently asked me an explanation of
the double altar that we meet with more than once in
Virgil in connection with funeral rites: _e.g._, _Ecl._
5. 66; _Aen._ iii. 305; v. 77 foll. Servius tries to
explain this, but clearly did not understand it. Of
course I could offer no satisfactory solution. Yet we
are both certain that there is a satisfactory one if we
could only get at it.
[880] Much has been written about the part of the Fates
in the _Aeneid_ and their relation to Jupiter. See
Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 286 foll.; Glover,
_Studies in Virgil_, 202 and 277 foll. I may be allowed
to refer also to my _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 342 foll.
[881] _Aen._ i. 257 foll., vi. 756 foll., viii. 615
foll.
[882] _Suggestions preliminary to a Study of the
Aeneid_, p. 36.
[883] It is not likely to strike us unless we read the
whole _Aeneid_ through, without distracting our minds
with other reading, and this few of us do. I did it some
ten years ago; before that the development of character
had not dawned on me fully. I later on found it shortly
but clearly set forth in Heinze's _Vergils epische
Technik_, p. 266 foll.; and this caused me to read the
poem through once more, with the result that I became
confirmed in my view, and read a paper on the subject
to the Oxford Philological Society, which I have in part
embodied in this lecture.
[884] This is dwelt on in _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 124 foll.
[885] _De Republica_, vi. 15.
[886] It may be as well to note here that the actual
representation of God in the _Aeneid_ is its weakest
point. It was an epic poem, and could not dispense with
the Homeric machinery: hence Jupiter is practically the
representative of the Stoic all-pervading deity, with
the Fates behind him. But it is not unlikely that Virgil
may thus have actually helped to make the way clear for
a nobler monotheistic idea by damaging Jupiter in the
course of this treatment; see _Social Life at Rome in
the Age of Cicero_, p. 341 foll.
[887] On the Homeric Aeneas there are some good remarks
in Boissier's _Nouvelles Promenades
archaeologiques_ (_Horace et Virgile_), p. 130
foll. Of all the Homeric heroes he seems to come
nearest, though but slightly sketched, to the Roman
ideal of heroism.
[888] Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 17.
[889] I should be disposed to consider this passage as
decisive of the point, but that it immediately follows
upon the doubtful lines 567-588, in which Aeneas is
tempted in his mad fury to slay Helen; and if those
lines are not Virgil's, we have not sufficient
explanation of the rebuke which Venus here administers
to her son. On the other hand, if they were really
Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the
original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a
convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these
terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman
heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold
blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods.
Into this much-disputed question I must not go farther,
except to note that while Heinze is absolutely confident
that Virgil never wrote these lines, the editor of the
new Oxford text of Virgil is equally certain that he
did. My opinion is of no value on such a point; but I am
disposed to agree with Mr. Hirtzel that "versus valde
Vergilianos, ab optimis codicibus omissos, iniuria
obleverunt Tucca et Varius." They are certainly in
keeping with the picture of Aeneas' _impotentia_ which
is generally suggested in Book ii. If it should be
argued that this _impotentia_, _i.e._ want of
self-control, is only put into the mouth of Aeneas in
order to heighten the effect of his stirring narrative,
it will be well to remember the remonstrances of Venus,
which make such a hypothesis impossible.
[890] _Op. cit._ p. 231.
[891] _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 113 foll.
[892] The original story was, that unable to escape from
an enforced marriage with Iarbas, she killed herself to
mark her unflinching faithfulness to her first husband
Sicharbas. Servius quotes Varro as stating that it was
not Dido, but Anna who committed suicide for love of
Aeneas (on _Aen._ iv. 682); and as Varro died before the
Aeneid was begun, this may be taken as proving that
Virgil's version of the love-story was not his own
invention. But it is quite possible that Servius here
only means that Varro's version differed in this point
from that which the poet soon afterwards adopted; it may
be that the story in the poem is thus practically his
own.
[893] _Op. cit._ p. 116.
[894] _Ancient Lives of Vergil_, Clarendon Press, 1879.
[895] The critics have, I think, been weaker in dealing
with the fifth book than with any of the others. Prof.
Tyrrell is too violent in his contempt for it to admit
of quotation here. Heinze has some good and acute
remarks on Virgil's motive in placing the book where it
is, but seems to me to miss the real importance of it
(_op. cit._ 140 foll.). Even Boissier, whose delightful
account of the scenery of Eryx should be read by every
one who would appreciate this book (_op. cit._ p. 232),
goes so far as to say that it is the one book with which
we feel we might easily dispense so far as the story is
concerned.
[896] _Roman Festivals_, p. 307.
[897] _Op. cit._ p. 270.
[898] _Commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia_, pp. 615
foll. I am indebted for this reference to Stewart's
_Myths of Plato_, p. 367.
[899] Nettleship remarked most truly that there is no
better way of appreciating the heroic Aeneas of these
last books than by studying carefully the early part of
the eleventh.
LECTURE XIX
THE AUGUSTAN REVIVAL
It is a long descent from the inspiring idealism of Virgil to the cool,
tactical attempt of Augustus to revive the outward forms of the old
religion. It seems strange that two men so different in character and
upbringing should have been working in the same years in the same
direction, yet on planes so far apart. How far the two were directly
connected in their work we cannot know for certain. It is said that the
subject of the Aeneid was suggested to Virgil by Augustus, and it is
quite possible that this may be true; but it by no means follows from
this that the inspiration of the poem came from any other source but
Virgil's own thought and feeling. We also know that Augustus from the
first appreciated the Aeneid, and that he saved it for all time; but it
is by no means clear that it inspired him in his efforts towards moral
and religious regeneration. Perhaps the truth is that both were moved by
the wave of mingled depression and hope that swept over Italy for some
years after the death of Julius, and that each used his experience in
his own way and according to his opportunities. They had at least this
in common, that they utilised the past to encourage the present age, and
that by filling old forms and names with new meaning they set men's
minds upon thinking of the future.[900]
Yet the revival of the State religion by Augustus is at once the most
remarkable event in the history of the Roman religion, and one almost
unique in religious history. I have repeatedly spoken of that State
religion as hypnotised or paralysed, meaning that the belief in the
efficacy of the old cults had passed away among the educated classes,
that the mongrel city populace had long been accustomed to scoff at the
old deities, and that the outward practice of religion had been allowed
to decay. To us, then, it may seem almost impossible that the practice,
and to some extent also the belief, should be capable of resuscitation
at the will of a single individual, even if that individual represented
the best interests and the collective wisdom of the State. For it is
impossible to deny that this resuscitation was real; that both _pax
deorum_ and _ius divinum_ became once more terms of force and meaning.
Beset as it was by at least three formidable enemies, which tended to
destroy it even while they fed on it, like parasites in the animal or
vegetable world feeding on their hosts,--the rationalising philosophy of
syncretism, the worship of the Caesars, and the new Oriental cults,--the
old religion continued to exist for at least three centuries in outward
form, and to some extent in popular belief.
We must remember the tenacious conservatism of the Roman mind: the
emotional stimulus of the age of depression and despair which preceded
this revival: and the conscientious care with which the successors of
Augustus, Tiberius in particular, carried out his religious policy.[901]
Then as we become more familiar with the Corpus of inscriptions and the
writings of the early Christian fathers, we begin to appreciate the fact
that the natural and inherited religion of a people cannot altogether
die, and that to describe this old Roman religion as _dead_ is to use
too strong a word. The votive inscriptions of the Empire show us
overwhelming proof of surviving belief in the great deities of the olden
time, and of the care taken of their temples. Antoninus Pius is honoured
"ob insignem erga caerimonias publicas curam et religionem."[902] Marcus
Aurelius himself did not hesitate in times of public distress to put in
action the whole apparatus of the old religion.[903] Constantius in A.D.
329 was shown round the temples when he visited Rome for the first time,
and in spite of his Christianity took a curious interest in them.[904]
That the private worship, too, went on into the fourth century we know
from the Theodosian code, where in the interest of Christianity the
worship of Lares Penates and Genius is strictly forbidden.[905] Again,
the constant ridicule with which the Christian writers speak of the
_minutiae_ of the heathen worship makes it quite plain that they knew it
as actually existing, and not merely from books like those of Varro.
They do not so much attack the Oriental religions of their time as the
genuine old Roman cults; more especially is this the case with St.
Augustine, from whose _de Civitate Dei_ we have learnt so much about the
latter. The very necessity under which the leaders of Christianity
found themselves of suiting their own religious character, and in some
ways even their own ceremonies, to the habits and prejudices of the
pagans, tells the same story. But the question how far Latin
Christianity was indebted to the religion of the Romans must be
postponed to my last lecture; I have said enough to indicate in which
direction we must go for evidence that the work of Augustus was not in
vain, that it gave fresh stimulus to a plant that still had some life in
it.
If, then, the Augustan revival was not a mere sham, but had its measure
of real success, how are we to account for this? I think the explanation
is not really difficult, if we bring to bear upon the problem what we
have learnt from the beginning about the religious experience of the
Romans. Let us note that Augustus troubled himself little about the
later political developments of religion, which we have lately been
examining,--about pontifices, augurs, and Sibylline books; these
institutions, which had been so much used in the republican period for
political and party purposes, it was rather his interest to keep in the
background. But in one way or another he must have grasped the
fundamental idea of the old Roman worship, that the prosperity and the
fertility of man, and of his flocks and herds and crops on the farm, and
the prosperity and fertility of the citizen within the city itself,
equally depended on the dutiful attention (_pietas_) paid to the divine
beings who had taken up their abode in farm or city.[906] The best
expression of this idea in words is _pax deorum_,--the right relation
between man and the various manifestations of the Power,--and the
machinery by which it was secured was the _ius divinum_.[907] We shall
not be far wrong if we say that it was Augustus' aim to re-establish the
_pax_ by means of the _ius_; but if we wished to explain the matter to
some one who has not been trained in these technical terms, it would be
better to say that he appealed to a deeply-rooted idea in the popular
mind,--the idea that unless the divine inhabitants were properly and
continually propitiated, they would not do their part in supporting the
human inhabitants in all their doings and interests. This popular
conviction he deliberately determined to use as his chief political
lever.
This has, I think, been insufficiently emphasised by historians, who
contemplate the work of this shrewd statesman too entirely from the
political point of view. I am sure that he had learnt from his
predecessors in power that reform on political lines only was without
any element of stability, and that he knew that it was far more
important to touch a spring in the feeling of the people, than to occupy
himself, like Sulla, in mending old machinery or inventing new. If he
could but induce them to believe in him as the restorer of the _pax
deorum_, he knew that his work was accomplished. And I believe that we
have what is practically his own word for this conviction; not in his
Res Gestae, the _Monumentum Ancyranum_, which is a record of facts and
of deeds only, but in the famous hymn which Horace wrote at his instance
and to give expression to his ideas, for use in the Secular Games of 17
B.C., to which I am coming presently. Ferrero has lately described that
hymn as a magnificent poem,[908] an opinion which to me is
incomprehensible. It is neat, and embodies the necessary ideas
adequately, but it is far too flat to be the genuine offspring of such a
poet as Horace. To me it reads as though Augustus had written it in
prose and then ordered his poet to put it into metre; and assuredly it
expresses exactly what we should have expected Augustus to wish to be
sung by his youthful choirs. I shall refer to it again shortly to
illustrate another point; all I need say now is that he who reads it
carefully and thinks about it will find there the conviction of which I
have been speaking, that prosperity and fertility, whether of man,
beast, or crop, depend on the Roman's attitude toward his deities;
religion, morality, fertility, and public concord are the points which
the astute ruler wished to be emphasised.[909] That this hymn was a
really important part of the ceremony is certain from the fact that it
was given to the best living poet to write, and that his name is
mentioned as its author in the inscription, discovered not many years
ago, which commemorated the whole performance: "CARMEN COMPOSUIT Q.
HORATIUS FLACCUS."[910]
If, then, I am right, this strange movement was not merely a revival of
religious ceremonies, but an appeal through them to the conscience of
the people. A revival of religious _life_ it, of course, was not, for
what we understand by that term had never existed at Rome; but it was an
attempt to give expression, in a religious form and under State
authorisation, to certain feelings and ideas not far removed in kind
from those which in our own day we describe as our religious experience.
Whether Augustus himself shared in these feelings and ideas it is, of
course, impossible to conjecture. But as a man's religious convictions
are largely the result of his own experience and of that of the society
in which he lives, and as Augustus' own experience for the twenty years
before he took this work in hand had been full of trial and temptation,
I am disposed to guess that he was rather expressing a popular
conviction which he shared himself than merely standing apart and
administering a remedy. And this view seems to me to be on the whole
confirmed by the tone and spirit of the great literary works of the age.
Augustus did not become pontifex maximus till the year 12 B.C., nineteen
years after he had crushed Antony at Actium; he waited with scrupulous
patience until the headship of the Roman religion became vacant by the
death of Lepidus.[911] But this did not prevent him from pursuing his
religious policy with great earnestness before that date, for he had
long been a member of the pontifical college, as well as augur and
quindecemvir. No sooner had he returned to Rome from Egypt than the work
of temple restoration began, the outward and visible sign to all that
the _pax deorum_ was to be firmly re-established. The fact of the
restoration he has told us in half a dozen words in his own Res
Gestae:[912] "Duo et octaginta templa deum in urbe ex decreto senatus
refeci," adding that not one was neglected that needed repair. Among
them was that oldest and smallest temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the
Capitol to which I referred in a former lecture;[913] and his personal
interest in the work is attested by Livy, who says that he himself heard
Augustus tell how he had found an inscription, relating to the second
_spolia opima_ dedicated there, when he went into the temple bent on the
work of restoration.[914] It needs but a little historical imagination
to appreciate the psychological importance of all this work. We have to
think not only of the bystanders who watched, but of the very workmen
themselves, rejoicing at once in new employment and in the revival of an
old sense of religious duty. Little more than twenty years earlier, no
workman could be found to lay a hand upon the newly-built temple of
Isis, when the consul Aemilius Paulus gave orders for its destruction as
a centre of _superstitio_;[915] now abundant work was provided which
every man's conscience would approve. When I think of the Rome of that
year 28, with all its fresh hope and confidence taking visible shape in
this way, even Horace's famous lines seem cold to me (_Od._ ii. 6. 1):
delicta maiorum immeritus lues
Romane, donec templa refeceris
aedesque labentis deorum et
foeda nigro simulacra fumo.
The restoration of the temple buildings implies also a revival of the
old ritual, the _cura et caerimonia_. As to this we are very imperfectly
informed,--we have no correspondence of this age, as of the last, and
the details of life in the Augustan city are not preserved in abundance.
But Ovid comes to the rescue here, as in secular matters, and on the
whole the evidence in his _Fasti_ suggests that the old sacrificing
priesthoods, the Rex and the flamines, were set to their work again. He
tells us, for example, how he himself, as he was returning to Rome from
Nomentum,[916] had seen the flamen Quirinalis carrying out the _exta_ of
a dog and a sheep which had been sacrificed in the morning in the city,
to be laid on the altar in the grove of Robigus. In spite of all its
disabling restrictions, it was possible once more to fill the ancient
priesthood of Jupiter; and of the Rex sacrorum and the other flamines we
hear in the early Empire.[917] They were in the _potestas_ of the
pontifex maximus, and as after 12 B.C. that position was always held by
the Princeps himself, it was not likely that they would be allowed to
neglect their duties. Other ancient colleges were also revived or
confirmed by the inclusion of the Emperor himself among their members (a
fact which Augustus was careful to record in his own words), _e.g._ the
Fetiales, of whom he had made use when declaring war with Antony and
Cleopatra;[918] the Sodales Titienses, an institution of which we have
lost the origin and meaning; the Salii, Luperci, and above all the
Fratres Arvales, the brotherhood whose duty it had once been to lead a
procession round the crops in May, and so to ensure the _pax deorum_ for
the most vital material of human subsistence. The corn-supply now came
almost entirely from Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old
ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration
of the old _caerimonia_ must have appealed rather to the eye than the
mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it
to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of
Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the
work and history of the Fratres, and then go on to find further
illustration of the curious mixture of old and new which the Roman
religion was henceforward to be.
The fortunate survival of large fragments of the records of the
Brotherhood, dating from shortly after the battle of Actium, show that
it continued to work and to flourish down to the reign of Gordian (A.D.
241), and from other sources we know that it was still in existence in
the fourth century.[919] These records have been found on the site of
the sacred grove, at the fifth milestone on the via Campana between Rome
and Ostia, which from the time of this revival onwards was the centre of
the activity of the Fratres.
The brethren were twelve in number, with a _magister_ at their head and
a flamen to assist him; they were chosen from distinguished families by
co-optation, the reigning Emperor being always a member.[920] Their
duties fell into two divisions, which most aptly illustrate respectively
the old and the new ingredients in the religious prescriptions of
Augustus, as they were carried out by his successors. The first of these
is the performance of the yearly rites in honour of the Dea Dia, the
goddess or _numen_ without a substantival name (a form perhaps of Ceres
and Tellus), whose home was in the sacred grove, and who was the special
object of this venerable cult. Secondly, the care of vows, prayers, and
sacrifices for the Emperors and other members of the imperial house. I
must say a few words about each of these divisions of duty.
The worship of the Dea Dia took place in May on three days, with an
interval always of one day between the first and second, according to
the old custom of the calendar.[921] On the first, preliminary rites
were performed at Rome, in the house of the magister; on the second was
the most important part of the whole ceremony, which took place at the
sacred grove. These rites will give a good idea of the old Roman
worship, and of the exactness with which Augustus sought to restore it.
At dawn the magister sacrificed two _porcae piaculares_ to the Dea, and
then a _vacca honoraria_, after which he laid aside the _toga praetexta_
or sacrificial vestment, and rested till noon, when all the brethren
partook of a common meal, of which the _porcae_ formed the chief part.
Then resuming the _praetexta_, and crowned with wreaths of corn-ears,
they proceeded to the altar in the grove, where they sacrificed the
_agna opima_, which was the principal victim in the whole
ceremonial.[922] Other rites followed, _e.g._ the passing round, from
one to another of the brethren, fruits gathered and consecrated on the
previous day, each brother receiving them in his left, _i.e._ lucky
hand, and passing them on with his right; and the singing of the famous
Arval hymn to Mars and the Lares to a rhythmic dance-tune. Then after
another meal and chariot-racing in the neighbouring circus, they
returned to Rome and finished the day with further feasting.[923] A
cynical reader of these Acta might suggest that the appetites of the
good brethren were made more of than their _pietas_; but the feasting
may be just as much a part of the ancient practice as any of the other
curiosities of ritual.
The utensils employed were of the primitive sun-baked clay (_ollae_),
and seem to have been regarded with a veneration almost amounting to
worship.[924] Long ago I had occasion to note how the old form of
piacular sacrifice was used and recorded whenever iron was taken into
the grove, or any damage done to the trees by lightning or other
accident. Once, when a tiny fig-tree sprouted on the roof of the temple,
piacula of all suitable kinds had to be offered to Mars, Dea Dia, Janus,
Jupiter, Juno, Virgines divae, Famuli divi, Lares, Mater Larum, sive
deus sive dea in cuius tutela hic lucus locusque est, Fons, Hora, Vesta
Mater, Vesta deorum dearumque, Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda,--and
sixteen _divi_ of the imperial families![925] As the date of this
extraordinary performance is A.D. 183, nothing can better show the
extent to which the revival of elaborate ritual had been carried by
Augustus, and the amazing tenacity with which it held its ground.
The second part of the activity of the brethren well illustrates the new
element which Augustus adroitly insinuated into the old religious forms:
but I shall not dwell upon it, for the worship of the Caesars in its
developed form is not of either Roman or Italian origin, any more than
the other kinds of cult which were now pressing in from the East; and it
thus lies outside the range of my subject. The revival of this old
priesthood, and doubtless of others, the Salii for example, was turned
to account to mark the sacred character and political and social
predominance of the imperial family. All events of importance in the
life of the Emperor himself and his family were the occasion of vows,
prayers, or thanksgivings on the part of the Fratres; births, marriages,
successions to the throne, journeys and safe return, and the assumption
of the consulship and other offices or priesthoods. These rites all took
place at various temples or altars in Rome, or at the Ara Pacis,
recently excavated, which Augustus had built in the Campus Martius.
Here, by way of example of them, is a "votum susceptum pro salute novi
principis," on his accession.[926]
"Imperatore M. Othone Caesare Augusto, L. Salvio Othone Titiano iterum
consulibus, III kalendas Februarias magistro Imperatore M. Othone
Caesare Augusto, promagistro L. Salvio Othone Titiano: collegi fratrum
Arvalium nomine immolavit in Capitolio ob vota nuncupata pro salute
imperatoris M. Othonis Caesaris Augusti in annum proximum in III nonas
Ianuarias Iovi bovem marem, Iunoni vaccam: Minervae vaccam: Saluti
publicae populi Romani vaccam: divo Augusto bovem marem, divae Augustae
vaccam: divo Claudio bovem marem: in collegio adfuerunt, etc."
This record, which belongs to the year 69 and the accession of Otho,
shows the _divi_, _i.e._ the deified emperors Augustus and Claudius,
together with the deified Livia, associated with the _trias_ of the
Capitoline temple and the _Salus publica_ in the sacrificial rites. But
under the Flavian dynasty which followed this association was
judiciously dropped.[927] It may serve for the moment to illustrate what
was to come of this new element so subtly introduced into the old
worship; how it led to practices which are utterly repulsive to us, and
repulsive too to an honest man even in that day. The noble words of
Tiberius, declining to have temples erected to him in Spain, have been
preserved by Tacitus from the senatorial records:[928] "Ego me, patres
conscripti, mortalem esse fateor"; and he added that his only claim to
immortality lay in the due performance of duty. Tiberius, whatever else
he may have been, was beyond doubt an honest man; and so too was Seneca,
the author of the famous skit on the deification of Claudius. But the
extravagances of Caesar-worship are not to be met with in Augustus'
time; for him the new element may be defined, as in Rome (and in Italy
too, so far as his own wish could limit it) nothing more than _the
encouragement of the belief in him, and loyalty to him as the restorer
of the pax deorum_. To this end he sought to magnify his own
achievements as avenger of the crime of the murder of Julius, by which
the _pax_ had been grievously disturbed. I propose to finish this
lecture by giving some account of the way in which he attained this
object. Let us briefly examine the famous ritual of the _Ludi
saeculares_, of which we have more detailed knowledge than of any other
Roman rite of any period; it marks the zenith of his prosperity and
religious activity, and belongs to the year 17 B.C., two years after the
death of Virgil,--a date which may be said to divide the long power of
Augustus into two nearly equal halves.
This famous celebration is an epoch in the history of the Roman
religion, if not in the history of Rome herself. It stands on the very
verge of an old and a new régime. It was the outward or ritualistic
expression of the idea, already suggested by Virgil in the fourth
_Eclogue_ and the _Aeneid_, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and
Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government; old things are put
away, new sap is to run in the half-withered trunk and branches of a
noble tree. The experience of the past, as with Aeneas after the descent
into Hades, is to lead to new effort and a new type of character, of
which _pietas_ in its broadest sense is the inspiring motive.
Henceforward the Roman is to look ahead of him in hope and confidence,
_virtutem extendere factis_. Augustus, the Aeneas of the actual State,
was firmly established in a prestige which extended beyond Italy even to
the far East; his faithful and capable coadjutor Agrippa was by his side
to take his part in the ritual, and no cloud in that year 17 seemed to
be visible on the horizon.
The _Ludi saeculares_ are also unique in respect of the records we have
of them. By wonderful good fortune we can construct an almost complete
picture of what was done in that year on the last days of May and the
first three of June. We have the text of the Sibylline oracle,--how
manufactured we do not know, nor does it much matter,--which prescribed
the ritual, preserved by Zosimus, a Greek historian of the fifth century
A.D., together with his own account.[929] Thus the outline of the ritual
has been known all along, together with many details; and to help it out
we have also the perfect text of the hymn written by Horace for the
occasion, and sung by two choirs of boys and girls respectively. But
great was the delight of the learned world when, in September 1890,
workmen employed on the Tiber embankment, close, as it turned out, to
the spot where the nightly rites of the _ludi_ took place, came upon a
mediaeval wall partly made of ancient material, in which some marbles
were found covered with inscriptions relating to this same
celebration.[930] This treasure was badly mutilated, but the inscription
was easily decipherable; it contains a letter from Augustus giving
instructions, two decrees of the Senate, and a series of records of the
Quindecemviri, who were of course in charge of a ritual which had been
ordered by a Sibylline oracle. Some few points were at first puzzling,
but have been cleared up since the discovery. Mommsen, of course, took
the work in hand, and his exposition is still, and always will be, the
starting-point for students. Wissowa has an excellent popular account of
it, and recently, in the fifth volume of his _Greatness and Decline of
Rome_, Ferrero has utilised it to give an animated account of the whole
ceremony.[931]
The _Ludi saeculares_ take their name from the word _saeculum_; and the
old Italian idea of a _saeculum_ seems to have been a period stretching
from any given moment to the death of the oldest person born at that
moment,--a hundred years being the natural period so conceived.[932]
Thus a new saeculum might begin at any time, and might be endowed with
special religious significance by certain solemn ceremonies; in this way
the people might be persuaded that a new leaf, so to speak, had been
turned over in their history: that all past evil, material or moral, had
been put away and done with (_saeculum condere_), and a new period
entered on of innocence and prosperity. There are faint traces of three
early celebrations of this kind, beginning in 463 B.C., traditionally a
disastrous year, and renewed in 363 and 263. But in 249, another year of
distress and peril, a new saeculum was entered on with a new and a Greek
ritual, ordered by a Sibylline oracle. A subterranean altar in a spot
by the Tiber, near the present Ponte St. Angelo, and called Tarentum
(possibly to mark the original home of the rite), was dedicated to Dis
and Proserpina, Greek deities of the nether world; and here for three
successive nights black victims were offered to them. The subterranean
altar and the use of the word _condere_ (to put away), might suggest
that this rite may have had something in common with those well-known
quasi-dramatic ones in which objects are _buried_ or thrown into the
water, to represent the cessation of one period of vegetation and the
beginning of another.[933] Or we may look on it in the light of one of
those _rites de passage_ in which a transition is made from one state of
things to another, without any definite religious idea being attached to
it. There is no doubt some mystical element in the primitive idea of the
beginning and ending of periods of time, which has not as yet been
thoroughly investigated.[934]
Now it is easy to see how exactly a rite of this kind, with suitable
modifications, would fit in with Augustus' purposes as we have explained
them. Fortunately too Varro had in 42 B.C. published a book in which the
mystic or Pythagorean doctrine was set forth of the palingenesis of All
Souls after four saecula of 110 years each; the fourth _Eclogue_ of
Virgil may have been influenced by this, among other mystical ideas, as
it was written only three years later; and in any case the doctrine was
well known.[935] But Augustus had to wait a while, until peace and
confidence were restored. Why eventually he chose the year 17 is quite
uncertain; it does not exactly fit in with any calculation of four
saecula of 110 years starting from any known date. But a saeculum, as we
have seen, might begin at any moment; and in any case it was easy to
manufacture a calculation, which was now duly accomplished by trusty
persons, chief among them being the great lawyer, Ateius Capito, an
ardent adherent of Augustus and his projects.[936] Probably too it was
necessary to take advantage of the popular feeling of the moment, that a
better time had come, and that it should be started on its way in some
fitting outward form.
So an elaborate programme was drawn up, the main features of which I
must now explain. On 26th May and the two following days (for the mystic
numbers three, nine, and twenty-seven are noticeable throughout the
ritual)[937] the means of purification (_suffimenta_)--torches, sulphur,
bitumen[938]--were distributed by the priests to all free persons,
whether citizens or not; for this once, all in Rome at the time, with
the exception of slaves, were to give an imperial meaning to the
ceremony by their share in it. Even bachelors, though forbidden to
attend public shows under a recent law _de maritandis ordinibus_, were
allowed to do so on this occasion. No doubt the idea was that the whole
people were to be purified from all pollution of the past; it is what M.
van Gennep calls a _rite de séparation_, the first step in a _rite de
passage_. The next three days all the people came to the Quindecemviri
at certain stated places, and made offerings of _fruges_, the products
of the earth, as we do at our harvest festivals; these were the
firstfruits of the coming harvest.[939] It may be worth while to recall
the facts that it was on these same days that the procession of the
Ambarvalia used to go round the ripening crops, and that in the early
days of June the symbolic _penus_ of Vesta was being cleansed to receive
the new grain.[940] That Augustus wished to emphasise the importance of
Italian agriculture is beyond doubt, and is apparent also in the hymn of
Horace, _Fertilis frugum pecorisque Tellus spicea donet Cererem corona,
etc._
When the _suffimenta_ had been distributed and the offerings made, all
was ready for the putting away or burying of the old _saeculum_. On the
night before 1st June Augustus himself, together with Agrippa,
sacrificed to the Greek Moirae, the Parcae of Horace's hymn, perhaps in
some sense the Fata of the _Aeneid_; on the second night to Eilithyia,
the Greek deity of childbirth; and on the third to Mother Tellus. The
form of prayer accompanying the sacrifice is preserved in the
inscription; it is Latin in language and form, as dry and concise as any
we examined in my lectures on ritual, and contains the _macte esto_
which I was then at pains to explain. Augustus prayed for the safety and
prosperity of the State in every way, and also for himself, his house,
and his familia.[941] The scene on the bank of the Tiber, illuminated by
torches, must have been most impressive.
These were the nightly ceremonies. But each day also had its ritual, in
which the Roman deities of the heaven were the objects of worship, not,
as by the Tiber bank, Greek deities of the earth and the nether world.
On the first two days Augustus and Agrippa offered the proper victims to
Jupiter and Juno respectively on the Capitol; Minerva is omitted, and
probably the other two are reckoned in Greek fashion as a married pair.
The form of prayer was the same as that used by night, with the
necessary modifications. Thus the great Capitoline temple and its
deities have a full share of attention, and they go too far who think
that Augustus was so wanting in tact as to put them in the shade.[942]
But on the third and last day the scene changes from the Capitol to the
Palatine, the residence of Augustus, where he had built his great temple
of Apollo; here for the first time in the ceremony Horace's hymn was
sung. On all the days and nights there had been shows and amusements,
and a hundred and ten chosen matrons had taken solemn part in the
services.[943] But I must pass these over and turn in the last place to
the question, as interesting as it is old and difficult, as to how and
where Horace's hymn was sung, and how we are to understand it.
The instructions given to the poet by Augustus are obvious as we read
the Carmen in the light of the ceremonial of which it was to mark the
conclusion. He was to bring into it, as we have already seen, the ideas
which were to be revived and made resonant, of religion, morality, and
the fertility of man, beast, and crop; and they are all there. He was
also to include all the deities who had been addressed in prayer both by
day and night, by Tiber bank and on the Capitol, and to give the most
prominent place to those who on this last day were worshipped on the
Palatine; to Apollo, for whom Augustus had built a great temple close to
his own house (_in privato solo_[944]), as his own specially protecting
deity since Actium, and Diana, who as equivalent to Artemis, could not
but be associated with Apollo. Thus the deities of the hymn are both
Latin and Greek,[945] and this expresses the undoubted fact that the
religion of the Romans was henceforward to be even in outward expression
a cosmopolitan or Romano-Hellenic one, in keeping with the fact that all
free men of every race might take part in this great festival. But it
cannot fail to strike every careful reader that the great trias of the
Capitol is hardly visible in the poem, though Jupiter and Juno had been
the chief objects of worship on the two previous days. Jupiter is twice
incidentally named, but in no connection with the Capitol;[946] and it
is only when we read between the lines of the fourteenth stanza that we
discover Jupiter and Juno as the recipients of the white oxen which had
been sacrificed to them there. I have already said that we must not make
too much of the neglect of Jupiter and Juno by Augustus; but it is plain
that he directed Horace not to make them too prominent in this hymn, and
I think it is quite possible that Horace a little overdid his obedience.
The result of all this is that the hymn, in spite of its neatness and
adequacy, is wanting in spontaneity, and presents the casual reader with
an apparently unmeaning jumble of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
The only way to clear it up is by taking it in immediate relation with
what we know about the places in which it was sung. To me at last it has
become clear enough in all its main points; and I will give here my own
results, which do not altogether coincide with those of other recent
inquirers.
Before the discovery of the great inscription we knew that this hymn was
sung before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine; we now know that
it was also sung on the Capitol,[947] thus uniting in one performance
the old religion of republican Rome with the new imperial cult of
Apollo. But this new fact has, in my opinion, led to misapprehensions
both of the manner of singing and the order of subjects in the hymn.
Mommsen thought that the first part was sung on the Palatine, the middle
part on the Capitol, and the last again on the Palatine, and he is
followed by Wissowa; and both seem to think it possible that there may
have been singing too during the procession from the one hill to the
other.[948] I think we need not trouble ourselves about the latter
point, for the Via Sacra, by which the procession must have gone, was
far too narrow and irregular to allow fifty-four singers, with the
_tibicines_ who must have been accompanying them, to walk and perform at
the same time.[949] The inscription, too, says plainly that the hymn was
sung on the Palatine and then on the Capitol, and by that plain
statement of fact we had better abide.
Now let us note that these two stations on the two hills were the best
possible positions for Augustus' purpose, not only because of their
religious importance, but because they afforded the most spacious views
of the city, now everywhere adorned with new or restored buildings. The
temple of Apollo was built upon a large and lofty area at the north-east
end of the Palatine.[950] Recent excavations have shown it to be some
hundred yards broad by a hundred and fifty in length, and Ovid, in a
passage of his _Tristia_[951] gives us an idea of its height:
inde tenore pari gradibus sublimia celsis
ducor ad intonsi candida templa dei.
On this area the choirs of boys and girls took their station, facing the
marble temple, on the _fastigium_ of which was represented the Sun
driving his four-horse chariot.[952] After singing, probably together,
the first two stanzas or exordium of the hymn, they addressed this Sol:
alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui
promis et celas, aliusque et idem
nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma
visere maius.
As they sang these last words, they would turn towards the city that lay
behind them, and look over it to the Tiber and the scene of the nightly
sacrifices of the Tarentum; and with the deities of these rites, who
must of course be taken before those of day and light, as in the order
of the festival, the next five stanzas are occupied:[953] Eilithyia, the
Moirae (Parcae), and Tellus or Ceres. When that duty is over they turn
once more to the temple, and the Greek deities of the Tarentum are
mentioned no more. Three stanzas are devoted to Apollo and Diana (Luna),
with a happy allusion to the _Aeneid_, and then once more the choirs
turn, and this time they face the Capitol; the hymn is long, and these
changes of movement would be at once a relief to the singers and a
pleasant sight to the spectators. They address the deities of the
Capitol in appropriate language:
di probos mores docili iuventae,
di, senectuti placidae quietem,
Romulae genti date remque prolemque
et decus omne.
The allusion to Jupiter and Juno is thus veiled:
quaeque vos bobus veneratur albis
clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis,
impetret, bellante prior, iacentem
lenis in hostem.
Horace has cleverly made Augustus himself the leading figure in this and
the following stanza, and the listeners forget the Capitoline gods as
they note the allusion to Venus, the ancestress of the Julii, the
prestige of Augustus that has brought envoys to him from Scythia, Media,
and India, and in the next stanza the public virtues, presented here as
deities--Fides, Pax, Honos, Pudor, Virtus--on whose aid and worship the
new régime is based.[954]
At the sixteenth stanza the choirs again face about to the temple of
Apollo, and with him and Diana again the next two stanzas have to do.
Only one remains, in which as an _exodos_ we may be sure the two choirs
of boys and girls joined; it sums up the whole body of deities, but with
Apollo and Diana as the special objects of the day's worship:
haec Iovem sentire deosque cunctos
spem bonam certamque domum reporto,
doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae
dicere laudes.
The performance on the Palatine was now over, and the procession
streamed down the hill to join the Via Sacra near the Regia and the
Vesta temple, and so to make its way up to the Capitol, where the
performance was repeated.[955] Taking station at this noble point of
view, he who will can again follow its movement with the hymn in his
hand. The area in front of the Capitoline temple looked across to the
Palatine, and the image of Sol and his _quadriga_ must have been in full
view; thus the _exordium_ and the next stanza (alme Sol) would be sung
looking in that direction. Equally well in view, if they turned to the
right, would be the scene of the midnight sacrifices across the Campus
Martius; and so on throughout the singing the changes of position would
be easy and graceful, here as on the Palatine.
Here I prefer to make an end of the performance, following the text of
the inscription, which tells us nothing of a return to the Palatine. It
would be far more in keeping with Roman practice that the Capitol should
be the scene of the conclusion of the processional ceremony, even on a
day when Apollo was, with Augustus himself, the principal figure. From
the musical point of view, too, a third performance is improbable, for
the singers were young and tender.
And here, too, with this impressive scene, which can hardly fail to move
the imagination of any one who has stood on Palatine and Capitol, I will
close my account of the religious experience of the Romans. A few
remarks only remain for me to make about its contribution, such as it
was, to the Latin form of Christianity.
NOTES TO LECTURE XIX
[900] A summary of the relations between Virgil and
Augustus may be found in Mr. Glover's _Studies in
Virgil_, p. 144 foll.
[901] Tiberius added to his Augustan inheritance a
curious and possibly morbid anxiety about religious
matters and details of cult, of which examples may be
found in Tac. _Ann._ iii. 58, vi. 12, among other
passages. Perhaps, however, the most interesting is that
connected with the famous story of "the Great Pan is
dead," told by Plutarch in the _de Defectu Oraculorum_,
ch. xvii. The news of this strange story reached the
ears of Tiberius, who at once set the learned men about
him to inquire into it; and they came to the no less
strange conclusion that "this was the Pan who was born
of Hermes and Penelope." S. Reinach has recently offered
an explanation of this story, which is at least better
than previous ones, in _Cultes, mythes, et religions_,
vol. iii. p. 1 foll.
[902] _C.I.L._ vi. 1001.
[903] Jul. Capitolinus, 13.
[904] Symmachus, _Rel._ 3.
[905] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 2. On this subject
generally consult Dill's _Roman Society in the Last
Century of the Western Empire_, bk. i. chs. i. and iv.
[906] This idea is exactly expressed by Horace in _Odes_
iii. 23, perhaps addressed to the _vilica_ of his own
farm. Cp. Cato, _R.R._ 143, where the _vilica_ is to
pray to the _Lar familiaris pro copia_. Horace mentions
only the Kalends for this rite; Cato adds Nones and
Ides. Cp. Tibull. i. 3. 34; i. 10. 15 foll.
[907] See above, Lectures iv. and v.
[908] _Greatness and Decline of Rome_ (E.T.), v. 93.
[909] See especially lines 45 foll. and 56 foll.
[910] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323, or Dessau, _Inscriptiones
selectae_, vol. ii. part i. p. 284.
[911] For this reason the veiled figure in one of the
fine sculptures on the Ara Pacis frieze, which used to
be taken as Augustus Pont. Max., cannot be so identified
(see Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen zur römischen Religion_,
p. 90 foll.), for the date of the Ara Pacis is 13 B.C.,
the year before Lepidus died. The figure can be most
conveniently seen by English students in Mrs. Strong's
_Roman Sculpture_, plate xi. p. 46. It may be Agrippa
acting as Pont. Max. for Lepidus.
[912] _Monumentum Ancyranum_, ed. Mommsen (Lat.), iv.
17.
[913] See above, p. 129.
[914] Livy iv. 20. 7.
[915] Valerius Maximus, _Epit._ 3, 4.
[916] Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 901 foll.
[917] See Marquardt, 326 foll.
[918] Dio Cassius, l. 4, 5.
[919] Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_, p. xxv. of the
exordium.
[920] Henzen, p. 154.
[921] See above, p. 98.
[922] Henzen, pp. 24, 28.
[923] For the hymn, Henzen, p. 26; Dessau, _Inscr.
select._ ii. pt. i. p. 276. See also above, p. 186.
[924] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 487, note 5.
[925] Henzen, 142 foll.; Dessau, p. 279; see above, p.
162.
[926] Henzen, p. 105.
[927] _Ib._ p. 107.
[928] Tac. _Ann._ iii.
[939] Zosimus, ii. 5 and 6. The oracle and the extract
from Zosimus are printed in Dr. Wickham's introduction
to the _Carmen saeculare_, and in Diels, _Sibyllinische
Blätter_, p. 131 foll.
[930] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323. _Ephemeris epigraphica_,
viii. 255 foll., contains the text and Mommsen's
exposition. Dessau, _Inscr. selectae_, ii. pt. i. 282,
does not give the whole document.
[931] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 192 foll.;
Ferrero, vol. v. 85 foll.
[932] The word was first explained by Mommsen, _Röm.
Chronologie_, ed. 2, p. 172.
[933] See, _e.g._, _Golden Bough_, ed. 2, vol. ii. p. 70
foll.
[934] The religious or mystical conception of time is
the subject of an interesting discussion by Hubert et
Mauss, _Mélanges d'histoire et de religion_, p. 189
foll.; but the _saeculum_ does not seem to have
attracted their attention.
[935] The actual words of Varro, from his work _de gente
Populi Romani_, are quoted by St. Augustine, _de Civ.
Dei_, xxii. 28: "Genethliaci quidam scripserunt esse in
renascendis hominibus quam appellant [Greek:
palingenesian] Graeci; hac scripserunt confici in annis
numero quadringentis quadraginta, ut idem corpus et
eadem anima, quae fuerint coniuncta in homine aliquando,
eadem rursus redeant in coniunctionem." The passage well
illustrates the mystical tendency of which I was
speaking in the last lecture.
[936] For attempts to explain the difficulty see
Wissowa, _op. cit._ p. 204.
[937] The cakes offered to Eilithyia, and again to
Apollo, are nine in number; see the inscription lines
117 and 143. The choirs of boys and girls were each
twenty-seven.
[938] The _suffimenta_ are described by Zosimus, _l.c._
There is a coin of Domitian, who also celebrated _Ludi
saeculares_, in which he appears seated and distributing
the _suffimenta_, as the inscription shows.
[939] So Zosimus, who says they consisted of wheat,
barley, and beans.
[940] _R.F._ p. 148 foll.
[941] See the inscription, line 92 foll. Ferrero assumes
that these words were to be taken as representing the
families of all worshippers present, who would repeat
the words "mihi domo familiae." But this is arbitrary;
the prayer follows the old form as we have it, _e.g._,
in Cato, _R.R._ (see above, p. 182), and as Cato or any
landowner would represent the rest of the human beings
on the estate, so did Augustus represent the whole
community.
[942] So J. B. Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 160.
[943] The matrons, equal in number to the years of the
_saeculum_, first appear on 2nd June in the worship of
Juno.
[944] _Mon. Ancyr._ (Lat.), iv. 21.
[945] Zosimus, _l.c._, says that "hymns" were sung in
Greek as well as Latin; but this is not borne out by any
other authority.
[946] Line 31 (_et Iovis aurae_), where Jupiter simply
stands for the heaven and its influence on the earth;
and line 73 (_haec Iovem sentire_, etc.), where he is
introduced in the most general way as head of all
deities.
[947] Line 147 of the inscription: "Sacrificioque
perfecto puer[i X] XVII quibus denuntiatum erat patrimi
et matrimi et puellae totidem carmen cecinerunt:
_eodemque modo in Capitolio_. Carmen composuit Q.
Horatius Flaccus."
[948] _Eph. epigr._ viii. 256. Wissowa, _Gesamm.
Abhandl._ p. 206, note, who refers to Vahlen and Christ
as differing from Mommsen, in papers which I have not
seen. Wissowa says that the threefold division of the
hymn "springt in die Augen"; but this has never been my
experience.
[949] Apart from the awkwardness for singers of the
descent from the Palatine and the steep ascent to the
Capitol, we may remember that they would have to pass
under the fornix Fabianus, which was not much more than
nine feet broad (Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations_, p.
217).
[950] See Hülsen-Jordan, _Topographie_, iii. 72 and
note. See also map at the end of the volume, No. 1 of
the series. There is, however, some doubt as to whether
the site was not on the side of the Palatine looking
towards the Tiber over the Circus maximus. See my paper
in the _Classical Quarterly_, 1910, p. 145 foll. If so,
my explanation of the performance of the hymn seems
rather to be confirmed than weakened.
[951] Ovid, _Tristia_, iii. 1. 59 foll.
[952] Propertius, iii. 28 (31): "In quo Solis erat supra
fastigia currus." No one seems to have noticed the
connection between this and Horace's allusion to Sol,
which is otherwise not easy to explain.
[953] I will not enter on the insoluble question as to
what stanzas or parts of stanzas were sung by the boys
and girls respectively. That the hymn was so sung in
double chorus is intrinsically probable, and stated in
the oracle, lines 20, 21. Some of the schemes which have
been propounded are given in Wickham's _Horace_. I
imagine that the stanzas may have been sung alternately
except in the case of the first two and the last, but
the ninth looks as though it might have been divided
between the two choirs. Ferrero has a scheme of his
own, p. 91 foll.; and if he had taken a little more
pains might have worked out the whole problem
satisfactorily.
[954] Of these quasi-deities Fides is the oldest, and
was associated with Jupiter on the Capitol; Wissowa,
_R.K._ 103 foll. Thus we may find a _callida iunctura_
between the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
stanzas, for Fides and Pax would fit in well with the
_responsa petunt_ of the fourteenth. Whether Pax was
recognised as a deity at this time is not quite certain;
but a few years later, in 9 B.C., an altar of Pax
Augusta was dedicated. The Ara Pacis was begun in 13
B.C. See Axtell, _Deification of Abstract Ideas_
(Chicago, 1907), p. 37, who may also be consulted for
the other deities here mentioned. See also above, p.
285. In Tibull. i. 10. 45 foll., Pax seems to be on the
verge of deification, but not to have attained it except
in the poet's fancy.
[955] The route may be followed in the map of the Via
Sacra in Lanciani's _Ruins and Excavations_, and in his
chapter entitled, "A Walk through the Sacra Via," or
more shortly in my _Social Life in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 18 foll.
_Note._--The whole question of the singing of
the _Carmen saeculare_ in its relation to the two
principal sites and to the topography of the festival
generally, is fully discussed by the author in
_Classical Review_ for 1910, p. 145 foll.
LECTURE XX
CONCLUSION
"A time of spiritual awakening, of a calling to higher destinies, came
upon the world, the civilised world which lay around the Mediterranean
Sea, at the beginning of our era. The calling was concentrated in the
life and death of the Founder of Christianity."[956] The writer of these
words goes on to point out that the beginning of our era was "a time of
general stirring in all the higher fields of human activity," and that
all such stirring, all that brings higher ideals before the minds of men
of action, of imagination, or of reflection, if not itself religion, is
in some sense religious, and in that age must be taken into account as
having some bearing on the origin of Christianity, the greatest of all
religious movements. And inasmuch as the new spirit of the age seems to
have put new life into the old religious systems, with the help of
philosophy and poetry, as well as of a purer and more effective
conception of Man's relation to the Power manifesting itself in the
universe, he finds it useful and legitimate to show how the ideas and
characteristics of the leading types of religion in the civilised world
of which he speaks were absorbed or "baptized" into the spirit of
Christianity. In other words, we may ask what was the contribution of
each of these religious types to the formation of the Christian type of
religion; for however new was the inspiration which was the essential
living germ of our religion, yet that germ was of necessity planted in
soil full of other religious ingredients, which found their way into the
sap of the plant as it grew towards maturity.
I have all along wished to bring our subject, the religious experience
of the Roman people, into touch with Christianity, whether by marking
points of contact, or of contrast, or both. In the last few lectures I
have laid stress on certain points likely to be useful to us in this
last stage of our studies, and these will, I hope, furnish us with some
amount of material. But I confess that I have approached this subject
with great hesitation. What I shall have to say will be tentative and
suggestive only; but I hope that the account that I have given in these
lectures of Roman religious experience may be of use in helping a better
qualified student to carry on the work more adequately.
Let us glance back for a moment at the results of the last four
lectures, in which I have been dealing with Roman religious experience
after the paralysis or hypnotism of the old religion of the State. We
saw, in the first place, that the educated part of Roman society had
been brought to the very threshold of a new and more elevating type of
religion, by Greek philosophy transplanted to Roman soil, and chiefly by
Stoicism. True, one great Epicurean genius had had his share in this
process, by denouncing the weakness and wickedness of the Roman society,
and the futility of all the religious forms and fancies with which they
still dallied; but Lucretius had nothing to offer in the place of these
forms and fancies--nothing, that is, which could grip the conscience and
act as a real force upon conduct. The Roman was in a religious sense
destitute, both of a real sense of duty to his fellow-men of all grades,
and in regard to God; and for this destitution Lucretius' remedy, the
accurate knowledge of a philosophical theory of the universe, was wholly
inadequate. The first real appeal to the conscience of the Roman came
from Stoicism, the reasonable and less austere type of Stoicism which
Panaetius preached to the Scipionic circle. From this the Roman learnt
that as a part of the divine universe Man himself is divine: that as
endowed with a portion of that Reason which itself is God, he has a
sacred duty to perform in using it. Thus, as the Universal was revealed,
so the Individual was ennobled; and the only thing wanting to make of
this a real religion was a bond that might unite the two more
effectually in conduct as well as in thought. Though a later development
of Stoicism did indeed all but achieve this union, that of the later
Republic failed to do so, because it inherited the old Stoic neglect of
the emotional side of man's nature, and could take little advantage from
a strong current of mystical feeling that was running side by side with
it. The Stoic ingredient in the soil which was being prepared for
Christianity was rich and valuable, but in this one respect it was poor.
It was intellectually beautiful, but it stirred as yet no "enthusiasm of
humanity."[957]
Another ingredient in the soil was that imaginative transcendentalism
which we discussed under the name of Mysticism, in which the soul
becomes of greater interest than the body, and a strange yearning
possesses the mind to speculate on the nature of the soul, its existence
before this life, and its lot in another world. These imaginative
yearnings were not native to the Roman, who had never had any very
definite idea of a future life, nor had ever troubled himself about a
previous one; they filtered through the Pythagorean and Platonic
philosophy into that type of later Stoicism which attracted him. They
were hardly treated in Roman society with real religious earnestness,
except perhaps in some few moments of sorrow and emotion such as I dwelt
on in the experience of Cicero. But the mere fact that they were in the
air at Rome is of importance for us. They _stimulated the imaginative
faculty in religious thought_; they kept alive in the minds at least of
some men the questions why we are here, what we are, and what becomes of
us after death. They prepared the Roman mind for Christian eschatology;
and this, though never so important in the Latin Church as in the
Greek, was yet an important part of the teaching of the early Church.
St. Paul exactly expresses the yearning thus dimly foreshadowed in the
mystical movement of which I am speaking: "We that are in this
tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed,
but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed
up of life" (2 Cor. v. 4). It was essential that the Roman should be
able to understand words like these, and to associate them with a
religion which, though in its most vital points one mainly affecting
this life, was also, like those of Isis and Mithras, strongly tinged
with mysticism. "All religions of that time," it has lately been said,
"were religions of hope. Stress was laid on the future: the present time
was but for preparation. So in the mysterious cults of Hellenism, whose
highest aim is to offer guarantees for other worldly happiness; so too
in Judaism, whose legacy has but the aim of furnishing the happy life in
the kingdom of the future. But Christianity is a religion of faith, the
gospel not only giving guarantees for the future life, but bringing
confidence, peace, joy, salvation, forgiveness, righteousness--whatever
man's heart yearns after."[958]
Yet another ingredient was that kindly, charitable, sympathetic outlook
on the world which we found in the poems of Virgil, and which is
associated throughout them with the idea of duty and honourable service.
The husbandman toiling cheerfully and doing his simple acts of worship,
among the patient animals that he loves, and the scenes of natural
beauty that inspire him with pure and tender thoughts; and then again in
the _Aeneid_ the warrior kept true to his goal by a sense of duty
stimulated by supernatural influence: both these sides of the Virgilian
spirit show well how the soil is being prepared for another and a richer
crop. Love and Duty are the essentials of Christian ethics; they are
both to be found in this poet, and through him made their way into the
ideas of the better Romans of the next generation, and so into the
philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. "To minds touched with the
same sense of life's problems which pervades the poetry of Virgil, the
ideas that came from Galilee brought the rest and peace which they could
not find elsewhere."[959] The early Christian writers loved the "vates
Gentilium," and St. Augustine in particular is for ever quoting him; but
I should be going beyond the limits of my subject if I were to follow
his gentle influence farther down the stream of time.
In my last lecture we discussed the revival of the old religious forms
by Augustus, and the consummation of this work of his in the splendid
ritual of the _Ludi saeculares_. Can it be said that such an astute and
worldly policy as this had any value in the way of preparation for
Christianity? Only, I think, in one way; it renewed the idea of the
connection between religion and the State, and of the religious duties
of the individual citizen towards the State. It preserved the outward
features of the old State religion, such as the calendar, the ritual,
and the terminology or vocabulary, and handed these down to a time when
they could be of service to a Latin Christian church.[960] Had the old
forms been allowed to go utterly to rack and ruin, as they had been
already doing for the last two centuries, the Roman State would have
been as such without religion, or the worship of the Caesars would have
become disastrously powerful and prominent, or maybe the State would
have adopted the religion of Isis or Mithras or some other Oriental cult
and belief, before Christianity could lay a firm grasp on it. I think it
might be shown that the continuity of the old religion in its connection
with the State was really of value in keeping these growths from
occupying too much ground: of value in checking too rapid a growth of
individualism:[961] of value too in cherishing certain really precious
religious characteristics, orderliness and decency in ritual, for
example, which, as we have seen, were very early developed in the Roman
religious system, and which owed their continued vitality to the
overwhelming influence of the Roman State over all her citizens and
their ideas. Thus when at last, after a period of anxious conflict
between rival religions, the State proclaimed itself Christian, and
henceforward for good or ill extended its protection to the Church, its
religious tradition was still one of decency and order, still free from
almost all that the old Roman State knew and dreaded as _superstitio_.
There was, in fact, a legacy, not indeed a spiritual one, but yet one of
some small value, left by the old Roman religion to the Latin Church:
and this I will turn for a few minutes to examine.
As an example of the orderly, sane, and decent character which the
Church inherited from the Roman religion, I might recall what I said in
Lecture IX. about _lustratio_, that slow and orderly processional
movement in which the old Romans delighted, and which is familiar still
to all travellers in Italy.[962] Another is the tender and reverential
care for the resting-places of departed relatives. I am not sure that
Prof. Gardner is right in asserting that the prayers for the dead of the
Catholic Church took the place of the worship of the dead in the Roman
family;[963] for it is not easy to say how far it is true that the dead
were ever really worshipped at Rome, and the idea of prayer for the
dead, if it can be traced to Roman sources at all, may be rather due to
those tendencies which we discussed under Mysticism, than to anything
inherent in the old Roman attitude to the departed. None the less there
is in the _sacra privata_ of the Parentalia, and especially of the
Caristia which concluded it--a kind of love-feast of all members of the
family, where all quarrels and differences were to be laid
aside,[964]--something that suggests the Christian attitude towards the
dead, and in some dim way too the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
And we may also notice how closely in regard to externals the great
events of family life,--those critical moments when the aid of the
_numina_ was most needed--the first days of infancy, the eras of puberty
and of marriage, passed on in their sober and orderly ritual into the
baptism, confirmation, and sacramental wedding of the Christian Church.
In such ways the private religion of the Roman family had doubtless a
real continuity in the new era, though the line of connection is
difficult to trace. This, and many other examples of survival, the
worship of local saints which took the place of that of local deities,
the use of holy water and of incense as symbolic elements in worship,
and the general resemblance of the arrangement of festivals in the
Calendars, Roman and Christian, might be interesting matter for a
complete course of lectures, but must be omitted here.
Another point of interest, which might also be widely expanded, is the
influence of the Roman religious _spirit_, as distinct from the outward
form, on Christian thought and literature in the Western half of the
Empire. The subtle transcendentalism of the Greek fathers was foreign to
Latin Christianity; the characteristics of Roman life as reflected in
Roman worship are plainly visible in the Latin fathers. From Minucius
Felix onwards, the Christians who wrote in Latin, so far from being
imaginative and dreamy, are one and all matter-of-fact; historical,
abounding in illustration of life and conduct; ethical rather than
speculative; legal in their cast of thought rather than philosophical;
rhetorical in their manner of expression rather than fervent or
poetical. They were well versed in the great literature of Rome, but
most of them, and especially the African school (which carried Roman
tendencies to an extreme), knew comparatively little of Greek. St.
Augustine, for example, could not bring himself to work at Greek with
ardour, nor could he explain why this was so.[965] Of Augustine, as the
type of the literature of Latin Christianity, Bishop Westcott wrote with
something of an exaggerated criticism, lamenting that he had not the
Greek which had so large a place in the Bishop's own training. "He
looked" (more particularly in the _de Civitate Dei_) "at everything from
the side of law and not of freedom: from the side of God, as an
irresponsible sovereign, and not of man, as a loving servant. In spite
of his admiration for Plato, he was driven by a passion for system" (how
this reminds us of the old Roman religious lawyers!) "to fix, to
externalise, to freeze every idea into a rigid shape. In spite of his
genius he could not shake off the influence of a legal and rhetorical
training, which controversy called into active exercise."[966] The
lecture from which I am quoting is an interesting one, on the work and
character of Origen, the great Alexandrian of the third century A.D.,
with whom Augustine is contrasted, as in an earlier age we might
contrast Seneca with Philo; the Latin writers rhetorical, practical,
realistic; the Greek authors idealistic and fervent, apt to see deep
moral significance in all human life. And this is really the manner and
mental attitude of all the famous Latin fathers: of Lactantius, the
clear, precise Ciceronian, whose every page shows the perennial value of
the Latin tongue; of Tertullian, the subtle and acute rhetorician, more
gifted with imagination than his fellows; of Arnobius, another Roman
African, the reputed teacher of Lactantius.
One of the characteristics of these Latin fathers is their fondness for
using the famous words of the old Roman religion, but in new senses.
They inherit that Roman love for a strong technical word of pregnant
meaning which has left us so many imperishable legacies in terminology.
_Municipium_, _colonia_, _imperium_, _collegium_, rise in one's mind the
moment the subject is mentioned; and a few minutes' thought will reveal
another score of words which in various forms pervade all our modern
European terminology. So, too, with the language of religion. These
Latin advocates of Christian doctrine took the old words which we have
so often dwelt on in the course of these lectures, and gave them new but
almost equally clear and pregnant meanings. Let us glance at three or
four of these; for such a legacy as this is no mean property of the
Christian religion of the West.
Let us take, to begin with, the greatest of all these words--_religio_.
I have maintained throughout these lectures that the original sense of
this word was the natural feeling of man in the presence of the
supernatural; and though this has actually been questioned since I began
them,[967] I see no good reason to alter my conviction. But in the age
of Cicero and Lucretius the word begins to take on a different meaning,
of great importance for the future. Though Cicero as a young man had
defined _religio_ as "the feeling of the presence of a higher or divine
nature, which prompts man to worship,--to _cura et caerimonia_,"[968]
yet later on in life he uses it with much freedom of that _cura et
caerimonia_ apart from the feeling. To take a single example among many:
in a passage in his _de Legibus_ he says that to worship private or
strange or foreign gods, "confusionem habet religionum";[969] and again
he calls his own imaginary _ius divinum_ in that treatise a _constitutio
religionum_, a system of religious duties.[970] In many other passages,
on the other hand, we find both the feeling which prompts and the
cult-acts which follow on it equally connoted by the word; for example,
the phrase _religio sepulcrorum_ suggests quite as much the feeling as
the ritual. So it would seem that _religio_ is already beginning to pass
into the sense in which we still use it--_i.e._, _the feeling which
suggests worship, and the forms under which we perform that worship_. In
this broad sense it is also used by Lucretius, who included under it all
that was for him the world's evil and folly, both the feeling of awe
which he believed to be degrading, and the organised worship of the
family and the State, which he no less firmly believed to be futile.
"Tantum _religio_ potuit suadere malorum."[971] The fact is that in that
age, when the old local character of the cults was disappearing, and
when men like Posidonius, Varro, and Cicero were thinking and writing
about the nature of the gods and kindred subjects, a word was wanted to
gather up and express all this religious side of human life and
experience: it must be a word without a definite technical meaning, and
such a word was _religio_.
Thus while _religio_ continues to express the feeling only or the cult
only, if called on to do so, it gains in the age of Cicero a more
comprehensive connotation, as the result of the contemplation of
religion by philosophy as a thing apart from itself; and this enabled
the early Christian writers, who knew their Cicero well, to give it a
meaning in which it is still in use among all European nations.
But there was yet to be a real change in the meaning of the word, one
that was inevitable, as the contrast between Christianity and other
religions called for emphasis. The second century A.D. was that in which
the competition was keenest between various religious creeds and forms,
each with its own vitality, and each clearly marked off from the others.
It is no longer a question of religion as a whole, contemplated by a
critical or a sympathetic philosophy; the question is, which creed or
form is to be the true and the victorious religion. Our wonderful word
again adapts itself to the situation. Each separate religious system can
now be called a _religio_. The old polytheistic system can now be called
_religio Deorum_ by the Christian, while his own creed is _religio Dei_.
In the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, written about the end of the second
century, the word is already used in this sense. _Nostra religio, vera
religio_,[972] is for him the whole Christian faith and practice as it
stood then--the depth of feeling and the acts which gave it outward
form. The one true religion can thus be now expressed by the word. In
Lactantius, Arnobius, Tertullian, in the third century A.D., this new
sense is to be found on almost every page, but a single noble passage of
Lactantius must suffice to illustrate it. "The heathen sacrifice," he
says, "and leave all their religion in the temple; thus it is that such
_religiones_ cannot make men good or firm in their faith. But 'nostra
_religio_ eo firma est et solida et immutabilis, quia mentem ipsam pro
sacrificio habet, quia tota in animo colentis est.'"[973]
Here at last we come upon a force of meaning which the word had never
before attained. _Religio_ here is not awe only or cult only, but _a
mental devotion capable of building up character_. "The kingdom of God
is within you." Surely this is a valuable legacy to the Christian faith
from our hard, dry, old Roman religion.
Another legacy in words is that of _pius_. Our English word "pious" has
suffered some damage from the sanctimoniousness of a certain type of
Puritanism; but _piety_ still remains sweet and wholesome, and, like its
Latin original in the middle ages it seems to express one beautiful
aspect of the Christian life better than any other word. In the old
Roman religion _pius_ meant the man who strictly conforms his life to
the _ius divinum_; this we know from the very definite ancient
explanations of its contrary, _impius_. The _impius_ is the man who
_wilfully_ breaks the _ius divinum_ and the _pax deorum_; for him no
_piaculum_ was of avail.[974] Such a crime is the nearest approach in
Roman antiquity to our idea of sin. _Pius_ is therefore, as we saw in
discussing Aeneas, the man who knows the will of the gods, and so far as
in him lies adjusts his conduct thereto, whether in the life of the
family or as a citizen of the State. As applied to things, to a war for
example, the word _pium_ is almost equivalent to _iustum_ or _purum_,
_i.e._, _pium bellum_ is a war declared and conducted in accordance with
the principles of the _ius divinum_.[975] _Pietas_ is therefore a
virtue, that of obedience to the will of God as shown in private and
public life, and it herein differs from _religio_, which is not a
virtue, but a feeling. But we need not be surprised to find that in
Lactantius _pietas_ can be used to explain _religio_; for _religio_ is
no longer a feeling only or a cult only, but, as we saw just now, a
mental devotion capable of building up character. In one passage he says
that it is no true philosophy which "veram religionem, id est summam
pietatem, non habet."[976] In another interesting chapter he shows
plainly enough that he uses _pietas_ just as he uses _religio_, to
express the whole Christian mental furniture.[977] He begins by
scornfully pointing to Aeneas as the typical _pius_, and asking what we
are to think of the _pietas_ of a man who could bind the hands of
prisoners in order to slaughter them as a sacrifice to the shade of
Pallas[978] (little dreaming, indeed, that Christian piety should ever
be guilty of such slaughter in the cause of the faith); and ends by
asking, "What, then, is _pietas_? Surely it is with those who know not
war; who keep at peace with all men; who love their enemies and count
all men their brethren; who can control their anger and curb all mental
wilfulness." And once again, _pietas_ is the main ingredient in
_iustitia_, that is, in Christian righteousness, for "pietas nihil aliud
est quam Dei notio." Even here it is not so far removed from its old
meaning; but in a Christian writer it can mean conformity to the will of
God, based on a real knowledge of Him, in a sense which shows us by a
sudden illuminating flash the deep gulf set between the old religion and
the new.
Another word, bequeathed in this case rather by the Latin language than
the Roman religion, in which it held no strictly technical meaning, is
_sanctus_, which has played so large a part in the terminology of the
Catholic Church, and passed thence into the language of Puritanism for
the living Christian, as in Baxter's famous book, _The Saints' Rest_.
The exact meaning of _sanctus_ is extremely difficult to fix, and this
may be why it was found to be a convenient word for a type of character
negative rather than positive. The lawyers defined it as meaning what is
_sancitum_ by the State,[979] without tracing it back to a time when the
State was a religious as well as a civil entity. But there was beyond
doubt a religious flavour in it from the beginning, as in other old
Italian words connected with it; and thus it seems to be able to express
a certain conjunction of religious and moral purity which finally
brought it into the hands of the Christian writers. A single verse of
Virgil will serve to explain what I mean. Turnus, before he rushes forth
to meet his death at Aeneas' hand, and knowing that he is to meet it,
asks the Manes to be good to him, "quoniam superis aversa voluntas,"
for--
_sancta_ ad vos _anima_ atque istius nescia culpae
descendam magnorum haud unquam indignus avorum.[980]
He goes to the shades with a conscience clear of guilt or of _impietas_;
as the ancient scholiast interprets the word, it is equivalent to
_incorrupta_.[981] In this sense it became one of the favourite
superlatives to describe in sepulchral inscriptions, pagan or Christian,
the purity of departed women and children.[982]
Lastly, we have the great word _sacer_, with its compounds _sacrificium_
and _sacramentum_. The adjective itself has no new or special
significance, I think, in the language of the early Christians, and in
our Teutonic languages the Roman sense of it, "that which is made over
to God," is expressed by the word _holy_, _sacred_ being retained in a
general sense for that which is not "common." But _sacrificium_, the act
of making a thing, animate or inanimate, or yourself, as in _devotio_,
over to the gods, is indeed a great legacy on which I do not need to
dwell. _Sacramentum_, on the other hand, needs a word of explanation.
_Sacramentum_ in Roman public law meant (1) a legal formula (_legis
actio_), under which a sum of money was deposited, originally in a
temple,[983] to be forfeited by the loser in a suit. The deposition _in
loco sacro_ gives the word to the process, and helps us to see that it
must mean some act which has a religious sanction. So with (2) its other
meaning, _i.e._ the oath of obedience taken by the soldier, who was
_iuratus in verba_, that is, sworn under a formula with a religious
sanction attached.[984] It is tempting to suppose that it is through
this channel that it found its way into the Christian vocabulary--the
soldier of Christ affirming his allegiance in the solemn rites of
baptism, marriage, or the Eucharist. It is a curious fact that it seems
to be used in this way in the religion of Mithras,[985] which was
especially powerful among the Roman legions of the Empire, and in which
there was a grade of the faithful with the title of _milites_.
_Sacramentum_ was here the word for the initiatory rites of a grade. In
the earliest Christian writers of Latin it usually means a mystery; thus
Arnobius writes of the Christian religion as revealing the "veritatis
absconditae sacramenta";[986] but in another passage the idea in his
mind seems to be that of military service. It is better, he says, for
Christians to break their worldly contracts, even of marriage, than to
break the _fides Christiana_, "_et salutaris militiae sacramenta
deponere_;"[987] and Tertullian more than once attaches the same
military meaning to it: "Vocati sumus ad militiam Dei vivi iam tunc _cum
in verba sacramenti spopondimus_."[988] Perhaps we may take it that the
word, though of general significance for a religiously binding force
produced by certain mysterious rites, had a special attraction for
writers of the painful third century A.D., as reflecting into the
Christian life from old Roman times something of the spirit of the duty
and self-sacrifice of the loyal legionary. In any case we have once more
a verbal legacy of priceless value.[989]
To sum up what I have been saying, there were certain ingredients in the
Roman soil, deposits of the Roman religious experience, which were in
their several ways favourable to the growth of a new plant. There were
also certain direct legacies from the old Roman religion, of which
Christianity could dispose with profit, in the shape of forms of ritual,
and, what was even of greater value, words of real significance in the
old religion, which were destined to become of permanent and priceless
value in the Christian speech of the western nations. There were also
other points in the society and organisation of the Roman Empire which
were of great importance for the growth of the new creed; but these lie
outside my proper subject, and have been dealt with by Professor Gardner
in the lecture to which I alluded at the beginning of this lecture, and
most instructively by Sir W. M. Ramsay in more than one of his books,
and especially in _St. Paul, the Traveller and Roman Citizen_.
And yet, all this taken together, so far from explaining Christianity,
does not help us much in getting to understand even the conditions under
which it grew into men's minds as a new power in the life of the world.
The plant, though grown in soil which had borne other crops, was wholly
new in structure and vital principle. I say this deliberately, after
spending so many years on the study of the religion of the Romans, and
making myself acquainted in some measure with the religions of other
peoples. The essential difference, as it appears to me as a student of
the history of religion, is this, that whereas the connection between
religion and morality has so far been a loose one,--at Rome, indeed, so
loose, that many have refused to believe in its existence,--the _new
religion was itself morality_,[990] but morality consecrated and raised
to a higher power than it had ever yet reached. It becomes active
instead of passive; mere good nature is replaced by a doctrine of
universal love; _pietas_, the sense of duty in outward things, becomes
an enthusiasm embracing all humanity, consecrated by such an appeal to
the conscience as there never had been in the world before--the appeal
to the life and death of the divine Master.
This is what is meant, if I am not mistaken, by the great contrast so
often and so vividly drawn by St. Paul between the spirit and the flesh,
between the children of light and the children of darkness, between the
sleep or the death of the world and the waking to life in Christ,
between the blameless and the harmless sons of God and the crooked and
perverse generation among whom they shine as lights in the world. I
confess that I never realised this contrast fully or intelligently until
I read through the Pauline Epistles from beginning to end with a special
historical object in view. It is useful to be familiar with the life and
literature of the two preceding centuries, if only to be able the better
to realise, in passing to St. Paul, a Roman citizen, a man of education
and experience, the great gulf fixed between the old and the new as he
himself saw it.
But historical knowledge, knowledge of the Roman society of the day,
study of the Roman religious experience, cannot do more than give us a
little help; they cannot reveal the secret. History can explain the
progress of morality, but it cannot explain its consecration. With St.
Paul the contrast is not merely one of good and bad, but of the spirit
and the flesh, of life and death. No mere contemplation of the world
around him could have kindled the fervency of spirit with which this
contrast is by him conceived and expressed. Absolute devotion to the
life and death of the Master, apart even from His work and teaching (of
which, indeed, St. Paul says little), this alone can explain it. The
love of Christ is the entirely new power that has come into the
world;[991] not merely as a new type of morality, but as "_a Divine
influence transfiguring human nature in a universal love_." The passion
of St. Paul's appeal lies in the consecration of every detail of it by
reference to the life and death of his Master; and the great contrast is
for him not as with the Stoics, between the universal law of Nature and
those who rebel against it; not as with Lucretius, between the blind
victims of _religio_ and the indefatigable student of the _rerum
natura_; not, as in the _Aeneid_, between the man who bows to the
decrees of fate, destiny, God, or whatever we choose to call it, and the
wilful rebel, victim of his own passions; not, as in the Roman State
and family, between the man who performs religious duties and the man
who wilfully neglects them--between _pius_ and _impius_; but between the
universal law of love, focussed and concentrated in the love of Christ,
and the sleep, the darkness, the death of a world that will not
recognise it.
I will conclude these lectures with one practical illustration of this
great contrast, which will carry us back for a moment to the ritual of
the old Roman _ius divinum_. That ritual, we saw, consisted mainly of
sacrifice and prayer, the two apparently inseparable from each other. I
pointed out that though the efficacy of the whole process was believed
to depend on the strictest adherence to prescribed forms, whether of
actions or words, the prayers, when we first meet with them, have got
beyond the region of charm or spell, and are cast in the language of
petition; they show clearly a sense of the dependence of man on the
Power manifesting itself in the universe. There was here, perhaps, a
germ of religious development; but it was arrested in its growth by the
formalisation of the whole Roman religious system, and no substitute was
to be found for it either in the imported Greek ritual, or in the more
enlightening doctrines of exotic Greek philosophy. The prayers used in
the ritual of Augustus' great festival, which was almost as much Greek
as Roman in character, seem to us as hard and formal as the most ancient
Roman prayers that have come down to us. In the most emotional moments
of the life of a Roman of enlightenment like Cicero, when we can truly
say of him that he was touched by true religious feeling, as well as by
the spiritual aspirations of the nobler Greek philosophers, prayers find
no place at all.
But for St. Paul and the members of the early Christian brotherhood the
whole of life was a continuous worship, and the one great feature of
that worship was prayer. It has been said by a great Christian writer
of recent times that "when the attention of a thinking heathen was
directed to the new religion spreading in the Roman Empire, the first
thing to strike him as extraordinary would be that a religion of prayer
was superseding the religion of ceremonies and invocation of gods; that
it encouraged all, even the most uneducated, to pray, or, in other
words, to meditate and exercise the mind in self-scrutiny and
contemplation of God."[992] And, as the same writer says, prayer thus
became a motive power of moral renewal and _inward civilisation_, to
which nothing else could be compared for efficacy. And more than this,
it was the chief inward and spiritual means of maintaining that
universal law of love, which, so far as this life was concerned, was the
great secret of the new religion.
NOTES TO LECTURE XX
[956] P. Gardner, _The Growth of Christianity_, 1907, p.
2. Cp. some remarks of Prof. Conway in _Virgil's
Messianic Eclogue_, p. 39 foll.
[957] The phrase "enthusiasm of humanity" is, of course,
that of the author of _Ecce Homo_, a most inspiring book
for all students of religious history, as indeed for all
other readers.
[958] Dobschütz on "Early Christian Eschatology," in
_Transactions of the Third Congress for the History of
Religions_, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1908), p. 320.
[959] The words are those of Mr. Glover in the last page
of his _Studies in Virgil_.
[960] It should be understood that these legacies, with
the exception of the last (the vocabulary), were only
taken up by the Church after the first two centuries of
its existence. And even the vocabulary of the early
Roman Church was mainly Greek (Gwatkin, _Early Church
History_, ii. 213), and it was not till the rise of the
African school of writers (Tertullian, Arnobius,
Augustine) that the Latin vocabulary really established
itself. Any real assimilation of Christian and pagan
forms of worship was not possible until the latter were
growing meaningless; then "the assimilation of
Christianity to heathenism from the third century is
matter of history" (Gwatkin, i. 269).
[961] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 353, has
some interesting remarks on this point.
[962] See above, p. 211.
[963] _Growth of Christianity_, p. 144.
[964] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 308.
[965] _Confessions_, i. 14.
[966] Westcott, _Religious Thought in the West_, p. 246.
Gwatkin writes (vol. ii. 236) that all Augustine's
conceptions are shaped by law and Stoicism. Cp. p. 237.
So, too, of Tertullian.
[967] By W. Otto, in the _Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft_, vol. xii. (1909) p. 533 foll.
[968] _De Inventione_, ii. 161.
[969] _De Legibus_, ii. 10. 25.
[970] _Ib._ 10. 23.
[971] Lucretius i. 101.
[972] _E.g._ Octavius 38. 2; and again at the end of
that chapter.
[973] Lactantius, bk. v. (_de Iustitia_) ch. 19. I may
note here that the paragraph in the text where this is
quoted was first published in the _Transactions of the
Congress for the History of Religions_ (Oxford, 1908),
vol. ii. p. 174. I may also add that the restricted
sense of the word _religio_ as meaning the monastic
life is, of course, comparatively late. This restrictive
use of heathen words, from the third century onwards, is
the subject of some valuable remarks by Prof. Gwatkin in
his _Early Church History_, vol. i. p. 268 foll.
[974] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 299, and the references
there given.
[975] Livy i. 32, ix. 8. 6; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 476;
Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 56.
[976] Lactantius iv. 3 (_de vera sapientia_).
[977] _Ib._ v. (_de Iustitia_) ch. 10.
[978] _Aen._ xi. 81.
[979] Marquardt, 145, note 5.
[980] _Aen._ xii. 648.
[981] Servius, _ad Aen._ xii. 648.
[982] The original meaning of _sanctus_ as applied to
things, _e.g._ walls and tombs, was probably
"inviolable"; Nettleship, _Contributions to Latin
Lexicography_, _s.v._ "sanctus," who also suggests a
connection between the word and the attitude of the
Roman towards his dead: thus Cicero in _Topica 90_
writes of _aequitas_ as consisting of three
parts,--_pietas_, _sanctitas_, and _iustitia_,--meaning
man's relation to the gods, the Manes, and his
fellow-men. Nettleship also quotes _Aen._ v. 80 (_salve
sancte parens_), Tibull. ii. 2. 6, and other passages,
which show that the word was specially used of the dead
and their belongings. But when used of persons living,
as frequently in the last century B.C., it expresses a
certain purity of life, not without a religious
tincture, which could not so well be expressed by any
other word, owing to the original meaning being that of
religious inviolability. Thus Cicero uses it in the 9th
Philippic of his old friend Sulpicius, one of the best
and purest men of his time; and long before Cicero, Cato
had used it of an obligation at once ethical and
religious: "Maiores _sanctius_ habuere defendi pupillos
quam clientem non fallere." It is interesting to notice
that it was used later on of Mithras and other oriental
deities (Cumont, _Mon. myst. Mithra_, i. p. 533; _Les
Religions orientales_, p. 289, note 45); in the case of
Mithras, at least, this meant that his life was pure,
and that he wished his worshippers to be pure also.
[983] Marquardt, p. 318, note 4; Mommsen, _Strafrecht_,
pp. 902, 1026. See also Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_,
p. 56; Festus, p. 347.
[984] Greenidge, _op. cit._ p. 154.
[985] Cumont, _Mysterien von Mithras_, p. 116 of the
German edition. See also De Marchi, _La Religione nella
vita privata_, vol. ii. 114. It may be worth noting that
the idea of life as the service of a soldier bound to
obedience by his oath is found also in Stoicism; see
Epictetus (_Arrian_), _Discourses_, i. 14, iii. 24,
99-101, ii. 26, 28-30; (Crossley's _Golden Sayings of
Epictetus_, Nos. 37, 125, 132, 134).
[986] Arnobius, _adv. Nationes_, i. 3.
[987] _Ib._ ii. 6.
[988] Tertull., _ad Martyr._ c. 3. Cp. _de Corona
Militiae_, c. 11.
[989] It is curious that the word _sacerdos_ did not
find its way into the Christian vocabulary. Apparently
it had its chance; for Tertullian uses it in several
ways, _e.g._, "summus sacerdos" for a bishop (_de Bapt._
17; "disciplina sacerdotalis," _de Monog._ 7. 12; and
for other examples see Harnack, _Entstehung und
Entwickelung der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts
in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten_, 1910, p. 85). But the
words finally adopted for the grades of the priesthood
were Greek: bishop, priest, and deacon. Nevertheless,
the general word for the priesthood, as distinguished
from the laity, is Latin (_ordo_); hence "ordination"
and holy "orders." It is not of religious origin, but
taken from the language of municipal life, _ordo et
plebs_ being contrasted just as they were contrasted in
_municipia_ as senate (_decuriones_) and all
non-official persons. See Harnack, _op. cit._ p. 82.
[990] This is, of course, in one light, the legitimate
development of the union of religion and morality in the
Hebrew mind. "For the Israelite morality, righteousness,
is simply doing the will of God, which from the earliest
age is assumed to be ascertainable, and indeed
ascertained. The Law in its simplest form was at once
the rule of morality and the revealed will of God." "The
central feature of O.T. morality is its religious
character" (Alexander, _Ethics of St. Paul_, p. 34). In
the religious system we have been occupied with,
religion can only be reckoned as one of the factors in
the growth of morality; it supplied the sanction for
some acts of righteousness, but (in historical times at
least) by no means for all.
Prof. Gwatkin, in his _Early Church History_, vol. i. p.
54, states the relation of early Christianity to
morality thus: "Christ's person, not His teaching, is
the message of the Gospel. If we know anything for
certain about Jesus of Nazareth, it is that He steadily
claimed to be the Son of God, the Redeemer of mankind,
and the ruler of the world to come, and by that claim
the Gospel stands or falls. Therefore, the Lord's
disciples went not forth as preachers of morality, but
as witnesses of his life, and of the historic
resurrection which proved his mightiest claims. Their
morality is always an inference from these, never the
forefront of their teaching. They seem to think that if
they can only fill men with true thankfulness for the
gift of life in Christ, morality will take care of
itself." I cannot but think that this is expressed too
strongly, or baldly; but it is in the main in keeping
with the impression left on my mind by a study of St.
Paul. It must, however, be remembered that the Pauline
spirit is not exactly that of early Christianity in
general: see Gwatkin, vol. i. p. 98. In the _Didache_,
_e.g._, there is no trace of St. Paul's influence (104).
[991] In a book which had just been published when I was
delivering these lectures at Edinburgh (_The Ethics of
St. Paul_, by Archibald Alexander), I found a very
interesting chapter on "The Dynamic of the New Life," p.
126 foll. The word which for the author best expresses
that dynamic is _faith_, which is "the spring of all
endeavour, the inspiration of all heroism" (p. 150). "It
brings the whole life into the domain of spiritual
freedom, and is the animating and energising principle
of all moral purpose." What exactly is here understood
by faith is explained on p. 151 to the end of the
chapter, of which I may quote the concluding words:
"Faith in Christ means life in Christ. And this complete
yielding of self and vital union with the Saviour, this
dying and rising again, is at once man's supreme ideal
and the source of all moral greatness."
[992] Döllinger, _The First Age of Christianity and the
Church_ (Oxenham's translation), p. 344 foll.
APPENDIX I
ON THE USE OF HUTS OR BOOTHS IN RELIGIOUS RITUAL
This may be taken as an addendum to Lecture II. on taboo at Rome; but
owing to the uncertainty of the explanation given in it, I reserved it
for an Appendix. The custom here dealt with is found both in the public
and private worship of the Romans, and also in Greece and elsewhere, but
has never, so far as I know, been investigated by anthropologists.
On the Ides of March, at the festival of Anna Perenna, a deity explained
as representing "the ring of the year," whose cult is not recognised in
the ancient religious calendar, the lower population came out of the
city, and lay about all day in the Campus Martius, near the Tiber. Ovid,
fortunately, took the trouble to describe the scene in the third book of
his _Fasti_, as he had witnessed it himself. Some of them, he says, lay
in the open, _some constructed tents, and some made rude huts of stakes
and branches, stretching their togas over them to make a shelter_.
plebs venit ac virides passim disiecta per herbas
potat, et accumbit cum pare quisque sua.
sub Iove pars durat, pauci tentoria ponunt,
sunt quibus e ramis frondea facta casa est,
pars, ubi pro rigidis calamos statuere columnis,
desuper extentas imposuere togas.
sole tamen vinoque calent, annosque precantur,
quot sumant cyathos, ad numerumque bibunt.[993]
It appears also from Ovid's account that there was much drunkenness and
obscene language; this was, in fact, a _festa_ very different in
character from those of the Numan calendar; and that there was a magical
element in the cult of the deity seems proved by the mysterious allusion
to "virgineus cruor" in connection with her grove not far from this
scene of revelry, in Martial iv. 64. 17 (cp. Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 78,
and Columella x. 558). Tibullus describes something of the same kind at
a rustic festival,[994] though he does not make it clear what time of
year he is speaking of; a few lines before he had mentioned the drinking
and leaping over the fire at the Parilia, the shepherd's festival in
April, though I cannot feel sure that the following lines are also meant
to refer to it:--
tunc operata deo pubes discumbet in herba,
arboris antiquae qua levis umbra cadit,
aut e veste sua tendent umbracula sertis
vincta, coronatus stabit et ipse calix.
Here it is too much to suppose that the _umbracula_ were contrived
to make up for the want of shade in a country so covered
with woodland as Italy was then; and the words "_sertis vincta_"
show that there was some special meaning in the practice. I
think we may guess that in both instances the extemporised huts
had some forgotten religious meaning. Yet another passage of
Tibullus, which also describes a rural festival, alludes to a similar
custom.[995] I have given reasons in the _Classical Review_ for
thinking that this was a summer festival, accompanied as it was,
like many midsummer rites all over Europe, by bonfires and
revelry, though the usual interpretation ascribes it to the winter.[996]
tunc nitidus plenis confisus rusticus agris
ingeret ardenti grandia ligna foco,
turbaque vernarum, saturi bona signa coloni,
ludet et ex virgis exstruet ante casas.
The slaves can here hardly be playing at building houses of
twigs, like the children in Horace's _Satire_,[997] unless we are to
suppose that Tibullus is thinking of slave children only, which
is indeed possible; but even if that were so, how are we to
account for the popularity of this curious form of sport?
There was, however, at Rome a public summer festival,
included in the calendar, in which we find this same custom.
At the Neptunalia, on July 23, huts or booths were erected,
made of the foliage of trees. "Umbrae vocantur Neptunalibus
_casae frondeae pro tabernaculis_," says Festus[998] (following Verrius
Flaccus), where the last word is one in regular use for military
tents. This is the only thing that is told us about this festival,
and we may assume that even this would not have come down
to us if it had not been a survival rigidly adhered to, _i.e._ the
construction of shelters from the foliage of trees, instead of
using tents, which could easily have been procured in the city.
As the festival was in the hot month of July, we might suppose
that shelter from the sun was the real object here; but we do
not hear of it at other summer festivals, and the parallel practices
I shall now mention make the rationalising explanation very
doubtful. It is unlucky that we know hardly anything about
the older and un-Graecised Neptunus, and nothing about his
festival except this one fact; the comparative method is here
our only hope.
The Jewish feast of tabernacles will, of course, occur at once to every
one; this was in the heat of the summer, and the booths were here, as at
the Neptunalia, made of the branches of trees;[999] the explanation
given to the Israelites was not that they were thus to shelter
themselves from the heat, but to be reminded of their homeless
wanderings in the wilderness, plainly an aetiological account, as in the
case of the passover. There are distinct examples in Greece of the same
practice, _e.g._ the [Greek: skiades] at the Spartan Carneia,[1000] and
tents ([Greek: skênai]) in several cases, as at the mysteries of
Andania, where the peculiar regulations for the construction of the
tents points to a ritualistic origin almost unmistakably.[1001] But
perhaps the most striking parallel is to be found in the famous letter
of Gregory the Great, preserved by Bede, about the British converts to
Christianity, who were to be allowed to use their heathen temples as
churches:
"Et quia boves solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere,
debet iis etiam hac in re aliqua solemnitas immutari: ut die
dedicationis, vel natalicii sanctorum martyrum quorum illic
reliquiae ponuntur, _tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias quae ex
fanis commutatae sunt, de ramis arborum faciant_, et religiosis conviviis
sollemnitatem celebrent: nec diabolo iam animalia immolent,
et ad laudem Dei in esu suo animalia occident," etc.[1002]
Why should Gregory here take the trouble to describe the
material out of which these huts were to be made? Surely
because the custom was one which had been described to him
by Augustine or Mellitus as part of the heathen practice, and
one which he was willing to condone as harmless (possibly with a
recollection of the Jewish feast), since the Britons set great store
by it.
If these examples from Europe and Palestine are sufficient to
suggest that there was originally a religious or mystic meaning in
the custom, we must look for its explanation in anthropological
research. Robertson Smith was,[1003] I think, the first to suggest a
possible explanation of the Feast of Tabernacles, by comparing
with it the rule, stated in Numbers xxxi. 19, that men might not
enter their houses after bloodshed: "Do ye abide without the
camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever
hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your
captives on the third day and on the seventh day." He also
pointed out that pilgrims are subject to the same rule, or
taboo, in Syria and elsewhere. Since then an immense mass of
evidence has been collected showing that all the world over
persons in a holy or unclean state are placed under this or some
similar restriction;[1004] and if this be the case with pilgrims and
warriors after a battle, it may also have been so with worshippers
at some particular festival, even if we are quite unable to recover
the special character of the worship which produced the
restriction.[1005] In the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a harvest
festival, the cause seems to have been the great sanctity of the
first-fruits, which are regarded with extreme veneration in many
parts of the world. In the now famous festival of the first-fruits
among the Natchez Indians of Louisiana, of which the details
have been recorded with singular care and obvious accuracy,[1006] we
find that the chief, the Great Sun, and all the celebrators, have
to live in huts two miles from their village, while the corn, grown
for the purpose in a particular spot, is sacramentally eaten. It
is quite impossible, without further evidence, which is not likely
ever to be forthcoming, to explain either the Greek, Roman, or
British customs in this way; we must be content with the
general principle that the holiness of human beings at particular
times is liable to carry with it the practice of renouncing your
own dwelling and living in an extemporised hut or booth. The
tents that we hear of in the Greek rites I look upon as late
developments of this primitive practice. The inscription of
Andania, which is the best Greek evidence we possess, dates
only from 91 B.C.; and by that time there would have been
every opportunity for the rude huts to become civilised tents.
The _casae_ made by the _vernae_ in Tibullus' poem were, I would
suggest, a kind of unconscious survival of the same feeling and
practice, the real religious meaning being almost entirely lost.
Lastly, I will venture to suggest that the _casae_ of the Roman
custom, made of branches at the Neptunalia and the feast of
Anna Perenna, and of _virgae_ by the slaves on the farm, are
a reminiscence of the earliest form of Italian dwelling, which
survived to historical times in the round temple of Vesta, and of
which we have examples in the hut-urns discovered in the
necropolis at Alba.[1007] The earliest form of all was probably
a round structure made of branches of trees stuck into the
ground, bent inwards at the top and tied together.[1008] Just as
bronze instruments survived from an earlier stage of culture in
some religious rites at Rome, so, I imagine, did this ancient
form of dwelling, which really belongs to an age previous to
that of permanent settlement and agricultural routine. The hut
circles of the neolithic age, such as are abundant on Dartmoor,
were probably roofed with branches supported by a central
pole.[1009]
[993] _Fasti_, iii. 525 foll. See _R.F._ p. 50 foll.
[994] Tibull. ii. 5. 89 foll. Mr. Mackail has pointed
out to me a passage in the _Pervigilium Veneris_, line
5, which seems to contain a hint of the same practice
(cp. line 43).
[995] Tibull. ii. 1. 1-24.
[996] _Classical Review_, 1908, p. 36 foll. My
conclusions were criticised by Dr. Postgate in the
_Classical Quarterly_ for 1909, p. 127.
[997] Hor. _Sat._ ii. 3. 247.
[998] Festus, ed. Müller, p. 377.
[999] Leviticus xxiii. 40-42. Cp. Plutarch, _Quaest.
conviv._ 4. 2. This was a feast of harvest and
first-fruits (Exodus xxiii. 16). Nehemiah viii. 13 foll.
gives a graphic account of the revival of this festival
after the captivity.
[1000] Athenaeus iv. 41. 8 F. Cp. Farnell, _Cults of the
Greek States_, vol. iv., p. 260.
[1001] Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscript._ (ed. 2), 653,
lines 34 foll. Cp. p. 200 (Teos).
[1002] Baeda, _Hist. eccl._ i. 30 (ed. Plummer). There
is a curious case of isolation in a hut in a process by
which the sacrificer of the _soma_ in the Vedic religion
becomes divine, quoted by Hubert et Mauss, _Mélanges_,
p. 34. This may possibly afford a clue to the mystery.
[1003] _Religion of the Semites_, notes K and N at the
end of the volume.
[1004] See _e.g._ Frazer, _G. B._ ed. 2, index, _s.v._
"Seclusion."
[1005] It has occurred to me that the shedding of blood
in animal sacrifice may possibly be the reason in some
of these rites. The last words of the passage quoted
above from Baeda suggest this explanation in the case of
the Britons. In the first-fruits festivals the "killing
of the corn" may be a parallel cause of taboo. See _G.
B._ i. 372.
[1006] Du Pratz, translated in _G. B._ ii. 332 foll.
[1007] See _e.g._ Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_,
p. 50 foll. Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient
Rome_, p. 132. It is worth noting that in a passage
quoted by Helbig, Plutarch (_Numa_ 8) uses for some of
the most ancient Roman attempts at temple building the
same word by which he describes the booths at the feast
of tabernacles ([Greek: kaliades]).
[1008] Whether there was in later days any special
religious signification in the use of green foliage and
branches I will not undertake to say, but I have been
struck by the constant use of them in cases of
religious seclusion, even where the person is secluded
in some part of the house, and not outside it. See _e.g.
G. B._ ii. pp. 205-214.
[1009] Prof. Anwyl, _Celtic Religion_ (Constable's
series), p. 10. Mr. Baring-Gould told Mr. Anwyl that he
had seen in some of the Dartmoor circles central holes
which seemed meant for the fixing of this pole. I will
add here that it has occurred to me that these huts
must, in one sense at least, be a survival (like other
points of ritual), from the days of pastoral life, and
of the migration of the Aryans. Temporary huts are
characteristic of pastoral as contrasted with
agricultural life, and must have been used during the
wanderings, as by the Israelites. See Schrader,
_Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_ (Eng.
Trans., London, 1890), p. 404.
APPENDIX II
PROF. DEUBNER'S THEORY OF THE LUPERCALIA
(See pp. 34 and 106)
In the _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1910, p. 481 foll., Prof.
Deubner has published an interesting study of this puzzling festival, to
which I wish to invite attention, though it has reached me too late for
use in my earlier lectures.
It has long been clear to me that any attempt to explain the details of
the Lupercalia on a single hypothesis must be a failure. If all the
details belong to the same age and the same original festival, we cannot
recover the key to the whole ceremonial, though we may succeed in
interpreting certain features of it with some success. Is it, however,
possible that these details belong to _different_ periods,--that the
whole rite, as we know it, with all the details put together from
different sources of knowledge, was the result of an accretion of
various features upon an original simple basis of ceremonial? Prof.
Deubner answers this question in the affirmative, and works out his
answer with much skill and learning.
He begins by explaining the word _lupercus_ as derived from _lupus_ and
_arceo_, and meaning a "keeper off of wolves." The _luperci_ were
originally men chosen from two gentes or families to keep the wolves
from the sheepfolds, in the days when the Palatine was a shepherd's
settlement, and they did it by running round the base of the hill in a
magical circle (if I understand him rightly). If that be so, we need not
assume a deity Lupercus, nor in fact any deity at all, nor need we see
in the runners a quasi-dramatic representation of wolves as
vegetation-spirits, as Mannhardt proposed (see my _Roman Festivals_, p.
316 foll.). This view has the advantage of making the rite a simple and
practical one, such as would be natural to primitive Latins; and the
etymology is apparently unexceptionable, though it will doubtless be
criticised, as in fact it has been long ago.
But in course of time, Prof. Deubner goes on, there came to be engrafted
on this simple rite of circumambulation without reference to a deity, a
festival of the rustic god Faunus; and now there was added a sacrifice
of goats, which seem to have been his favourite victims (kids in Hor.
_Odes_, iii. 18). The _luperci_, who had formerly run round the hill
quite naked, as in many rites of the kind (see p. 491), now girt
themselves with the skins of the goats, in order to increase their
"religious force" in keeping away the wolves, with strength derived from
the victims.
But the _luperci_ also carried in their hands, in the festival as we
know it, strips of the skins of the victims, with which they struck at
women who offered themselves to the blows, in order to make them
fertile. This, Prof. Deubner thinks, was a still later accretion. Life
in a city had obliterated the original meaning of the rite--the keeping
off wolves; but a new meaning becomes attached to it, presumably growing
out of the use of the skins as magical instruments of additional force.
Here, too, Juno first appears on the scene as the deity of women, for
the strips were known as _amicula Iunonis_ (_R.F._ 321 and note). The
strips may have been substituted for something carried in the hand to
drive away the wolves; the goat, it should be noted, is prominent in the
cult of Juno, _e.g._ at Lanuvium. The mystical meaning of striking or
flogging has been sufficiently explained in this instance by Mannhardt
(_R.F._ p. 320), and is now familiar to anthropologists in other
contexts.
In the period when the fertilisation of women became the leading feature
of the rite, the State took up the popular festival, and it gained
admittance to the religious calendar, which was drawn up for the city of
the four regions (see above, Lect. IV., p. 106). The State was
represented, as we learn from Ovid, by the Flamen Dialis (_Fasti_, ii.
282).
But we still have to account for some strange detail, which has never
been satisfactorily explained in connection with the rest of the
ceremony. The runners had their foreheads smeared with the blood of the
victims, which was then wiped off with wool dipped in milk; after which,
says Plutarch (_Romulus_, 21), they were obliged to laugh. These
details, as Prof. Deubner remarks, seem very un-Roman; we have no
parallel to them in Roman ritual, and I have remarked more than once in
these lectures on the absence of the use of blood in Roman ceremonial. I
have suggested that they were allowed to survive in the religion of the
city-state, though actually belonging to that of a primitive population
living on the site of Rome. Prof. Deubner's explanation is very
different, and at first sight startling. These, he thinks, are Greek
cathartic details added by Augustus when he re-organised the Lupercalia,
as we may guess that he did from Suet. _Aug._ 31. They can all be
paralleled from Greek religion. We know of them only from Plutarch, who
quotes a certain Butas as writing Greek elegiacs in which they were
mentioned; but of the date of this poet we know nothing. Ovid does not
mention these details, nor hint at them in the stories he tells about
the festival. (It is certainly possible that Augustus's revision may
have been made after Ovid wrote the second book of the _Fasti_; it could
not have been done until he became Pont. Max. in 12 B.C., and perhaps
not till long after that, and the _Fasti_ was written some time before
Ovid's banishment in A.D. 9.) That Augustus should insert Greek
cathartic details in the old Roman festival is certainly surprising, but
not impossible. We know that in the _ludi saeculares_ he took great
pains to combine Greek with Roman ritual.
The above is a mere outline of Prof. Deubner's article, but enough, I
hope, to attract the attention of English scholars to it. Whether or no
it be accepted in whole or part by learned opinion, it will at least
have the credit of suggesting a way in which not only the Lupercalia,
but possibly other obscure rites, may be compelled ultimately to yield
up their secrets.
APPENDIX III
THE PAIRS OF DEITIES IN GELLIUS xiii. 23 (see page 150)
The first paired deity mentioned by Gellius is _Lua Saturni_, also known
as _Lua Mater_, of whom Dr. Frazer writes (p. 412), "In regard to Lua we
know that she was spoken of as a mother, which makes it not improbable
that she was also a wife." We are not surprised to find him claiming
that because Vesta is addressed as Mater in the _Acta Fratr. Arv._
(Henzen, p. 147), that virgin deity was also married. This he does in
his lectures on Kingship (p. 222), quoting Ennius and Lactantius as
making Vesta mother of Saturnus and Titan. No comment on this is needed
for any one conversant with Graeco-Roman religion and literature from
Ennius onward. The title Mater here means simply that Vesta was to her
worshippers in a maternal position: "quamvis virginem, indole tamen
quadam materna praeditam fuisse nuper exposuit Preunerus," says Henzen,
quoting Preuner's _Hestia-Vesta_, an old book but a good one (p. 333).
But to return to Lua: I freely confess that I cannot explain why she was
styled Mater. We only know of her, apart from the list in Gellius and
one passage of Servius, from the two passages of Livy quoted without
comment by Dr. Frazer. The first of these (viii. 1), which may be taken
from the pontifical books, seems to let in a ray of light on her nature
and function. In 338 B.C. the Volscians had been beaten, and "armorum
magna vis" was found in their camp. "Ea Luae Matri se dare consul dixit,
finesque hostium usque ad maritimam oram depopulatus est." That is, as I
understand the words, he dedicated the enemy's spoils to the _numen_ who
was the enemy of his own crops.[1010] For if Lua be connected
etymologically with _lues_, she may be the hurtful aspect of Saturnus,
like _Tursa_ Cerfia Cerfii Martii as Buecheler explains it (_Umbrica_,
p. 98).
A curious passage of Servius may be quoted in support of this view, in
which Luae is an almost certain correction for Lunae (see Jordan's
edition of Preller's _Rom. Mythol._ vol. ii. p. 22). Commenting on
Virgil's "Arboribusque satisque lues" (_Aen._ iii. 139), he writes:
"quidam dicunt, diversis numinibus vel bene vel male faciendi potestatem
dicatam, ut Veneri coniugia, Cereri divortia, Iunoni procreationem
liberorum: sterilitatem horum tam Saturno quam Luae, hanc enim sicut
Saturnum orbandi potestatem habere." Whatever Lua may originally have
been, she seems to have been regarded as a power capable of working for
evil in the crops and in women; if you could get her to work on your
enemy's crops (cp. the _excantatio_, above p. 58), so much the better,
and the better would her claim be to the title of Mater (but Dr. Frazer
supplies us with examples of a _hostile_ spirit being called by a
family name, _e.g._, Grandfather Smallpox, _G.B._ iii. p. 98). When the
consul had dedicated the spoils to her he proceeded to assist her in her
functions by ravaging the crops of the enemy; thus she became later on a
deity of spoils. In the Macedonian triumph of B.C. 167 we find her in
company with Mars and Minerva as one of the deities to whom "spolia
hostium dicare ius fasque est" (Livy xlv. 33).
I may add here that Dr. Frazer has another arrow in his quiver to prove
that Saturnus was married: if Lua was not his wife (which no Roman
asserts) certainly (he says) Ops was. He quotes a few words from
Macrobius (i. 13. 19) in which these two are mentioned as husband and
wife. If he had quoted the whole passage, his reader would have been
better able to judge of the value of the writers of whom Macrobius says
that they "crediderunt" that Ops was wife of Saturn. For it appears that
some of them fancied that Saturnus was "a satu dictus _cuius causa de
caelo est_"--(a desperate attempt to make the old spirit of the seed
into a heaven-god), while Ops, whose name speaks for itself, was the
earth. But the real companion deity to Ops was not Saturnus, but Consus.
This has been placed beyond all reasonable doubt by Wissowa in his _de
Feriis_ (reprinted in _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 154 foll.). See also
my _R.F._ p. 212. The names Ops and Consus obviously refer to stored
corn, and everything in their cult points the same way. Saturnus'
connection with Ops is a late and a mistaken one, derived from the
Graecising tendency, which brought Cronos and Rhea to bear on them.
Next a word about Hora Quirini. As this coupling of names is followed by
Virites Quirini, in the characteristic method explained in the text (cp.
Cic. _Nat. Deor._ ii. 27 of Vesta, "_vis_ eius ad aras et focos
pertinet"), it is hardly necessary to comment on it. Hora is perhaps
connected with Umbrian Heris (cp. Buecheler, _Umbrica_, index), which
with kindred forms means will, willingness. Thus in "Nerienem Mavortis
et Herem" (Ennius, fragm. 70, in Baehrens, _Fragm. Poet. Lat._) we may
see the strength and the will of Mars (cp. Herie Iunonis). Hora is also
connected in legend with Hersilia (Ov. _Met._ 14. 829), and this helps
to show how the Alexandrian erotic legend-making faculty got hold of
her. But, says Dr. Frazer, Ennius regarded her as wife of Quirinus:
"Teque Quirine pater veneror, Horamque Quirini" (fragm. 71 of the
_Annales_). This is Dr. Frazer's interpretation of the words, but Ennius
says nothing of conjugal relations; and even if he had, his evidence as
to ancient Roman conceptions would be worthless. Ennius was not a Roman;
he came from Magna Graecia; and if Dr. Frazer will read _all_ that is
said about him, _e.g._ in Schanz's history of Roman literature, he will
allow that every statement of such a man about old Roman ideas of the
divine must be regarded with suspicion and subjected to careful
criticism.
Next we come to Salacia Neptuni. Of this couple Dr. Frazer says that
Varro plainly implies that they were husband and wife, and that this is
affirmed by Augustine, Seneca, and Servius. The accumulation of evidence
seems strong; but Varro implies nothing of the kind (_L.L._ v. 72). He
is indulging in fancy etymologies, and derives Neptunus from _nubere_,
"quod mare terras obnubit ut nubes caelum, ab nuptu id est opertione ut
antiqui, a quo nuptiae, nuptus dictus." If he had meant to make Salacia
wife of Neptunus, this last sentence would surely have suggested it; but
he goes on after a full stop, "Salacia Neptuni a salo." It is only the
later writers, ignorant of the real nature of Roman religious ideas, who
make Salacia into a wife. It is worth noting that Varro adds another
feminine deity in his next sentence, Venilia, whom Virgil makes the
mother of Turnus (_Aen._ x. 76); and Servius, commenting on this line,
goes one better, and says she was identical with Salacia. Perhaps both
were sea or water spirits, connected with Neptunus as _famulae_ or
_anculae_ (see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 19), but they are lost to us, and
speculation is useless. In _R.F._ p. 186, I suggested an explanation of
Salacia which I am disposed to withdraw. But for anyone wishing to study
the treatment of old Roman _numina_ by the mythologists and philosophers
of the Graeco-Roman period, I would recommend an attentive reading of
the whole chapter of Augustine from which Dr. Frazer quotes a few words
(_C.D._ vii. 22); and further a careful study of the Graeco-Roman
methods of fabricating myths about Roman divine names, for which he will
do well to read the passages referred to by Wissowa in _R.K._ pp. 250
and 251, and notes.
Lastly, comes Maia Volcani. Here for once we get a fact of cult, which
is a relief, after the loose and reckless statements of non-Roman and
Christian writers. The flamen Volcanalis sacrificed to Maia on May 1st,
which proves that there was a real and not a fancied connection between
Volcanus and Maia, but certainly not that they were husband and wife.
Dr. Frazer, however, quotes Cincius "on the _Fasti_" as (ap. Macrob. i.
12. 18) stating this, and refers us to Schanz's _Gesch. der röm. Lit._
for information about him. In the second edition of that work he will
find a discussion of the very doubtful question as to whether the
Cincius he quotes is the person whom he asserts him to be, viz., the
annalist of the second Punic War. The writer of the article "Cincius" in
Pauly-Wissowa _Real-Encycl._ is very confident that the one who wrote on
the _Fasti_ lived as late as the age of Augustus. But putting that
aside, what are we to make of the fact that another annalist, L.
Calpurnius Piso (famous as the author of the first lex de repetundis,
149 B.C.), said that the wife of Volcanus was not Maia, but Maiestas?
Piso was not a good authority (see above, p. 51), but he seems here to
bring the "consort" of the fire-god into line with such expressions of
activity as Moles, Virites, and so on; and it seems that as early as the
second century B.C., sport and speculation with these names were
beginning. I have quoted the whole pedantic passage from Macrobius in my
_Roman Festivals_, p. 98, where the reader may enjoy it at leisure. I
shall not be surprised if he comes to the conclusion that neither
Macrobius nor his learned informers knew anything about Maia. When he
reads that she was the mother of Mercurius, he will recollect that
Mercurius was not a Roman deity of the earliest period, and did not
belong to the _di indigetes_; and when he finds that she is identified
with Bona Dea, he must not forget that that deity, as scholars are now
pretty well agreed, was introduced at Rome from Tarentum in the age of
the Punic Wars. The one fact we know is the sacrifice by the flamen
Volcanalis on May 1. Someone went to work to explain this and another,
viz. that the Ides of the month was the dedication day of the first
temple of Mercurius (B.C. 495), and also the fact that the temple of the
Bona Dea on the Aventine was dedicated on the Kalends. The result was an
extraordinary jumble of fancy and myth, which has been recognised as
such by those who have studied closely the methods of Graeco-Roman
scholarship. The unwary, of course, are taken in. A student of these
methods might do well to take as an exercise in criticism the three
"specimens of Roman mythology" which Dr. Frazer says (p. 413) have
"survived the wreck of antiquity"--the loves of Vertumnus and Pomona, of
Jupiter and Juturna, of Janus and Cardea. In the last of these
especially he will find one of the most audacious pieces of charming and
wilful invention that a Latin poet could perpetrate, in imitation of
Hellenistic love tales, and to suit the taste of a public whose
education was mainly Greek.
The above lengthy note was written before I had seen von Domaszewski's
paper on this subject ("Festschrift für O. Hirschfeld") reprinted in
_Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion_, p. 104 foll. cp. p. 162.) His
explanations are different in detail from mine, but rest on the same
general principle that the names Salacia, etc., indicate functions or
attributes of the male deity to whom they are attached.
[1010] For the taboo on such spoils, and their
destruction, see M. S. Reinach's interesting paper
"Tarpeia," in _Cultes, mythes, et religions_, iii. 221
foll.
APPENDIX IV
(LECTURE VIII., PAGE 169 FOLL.) IUS AND FAS
In historical times the two kinds of _ius_, _divinum_ and _humanum_,
were strongly distinguished (see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 318, who quotes
Gaius ii. 2: "summa itaque rerum divisio in duos articulos diducitur,
nam aliae sunt divini iuris, aliae humani"). But it is almost certain
that there was originally no such clear distinction. The general opinion
of historians of Roman law is thus expressed by Cuq (_Institutions
juridiques des Romains_, p. 54): "Le droit civil n'a eu d'abord qu'une
portée fort restreinte. Peu à peu il a gagné du terrain, il a entrepris
de réglementer des rapports qui autrefois étaient du domaine de la
religion. Pendant longtemps à Rome le droit théocratique a coexisté avec
le droit civil." (See also Muirhead, _Introduction to Roman Law_, ed.
Goudy, p. 15.) Possibly the formation of an organised calendar, marking
off the days belonging to the deities from those which were not so made
over to them, first gave the opportunity for the gradual realisation of
the thought that the set of rules under which the citizen was
responsible to the divine beings was not exactly the same as that under
which he was responsible to the civil authorities. The distinction took
many ages to realise in all its aspects, and is not complete even under
the XII. Tables or later, because the sanction for civil offences
remained in great part a divine one; on this point Jhering is certainly
wrong (_Geist des röm. Rechts_, i. 267 foll.). As Cuq remarks (p. 54,
note 1), one institution of the _ius divinum_ kept its force after the
complete secularisation of law, and retains it to this day, viz. the
oath.
If there was originally no distinction between religious and civil rules
of law, it follows that there were originally no two distinguishing
terms for them. The earliest passage in which they are distinguished as
_ius divinum_ and _humanum_ (so far as I know) is Cicero's speech for
Sestius (B.C. 56), sec. 91, quoted by Wissowa, p. 319: "domicilia
coniuncta quas urbes dicimus, _invento et divino iure et humano_,
moenibus cinxerunt." But by all British writers on Roman law, and by
many foreign ones, the word _fas_ is used as equivalent to the ius
divinum, and sharply distinguished from _ius_. Thus the late Dr.
Greenidge, in his useful work on Roman public life (p. 52 and
elsewhere), makes this distinction; he writes of the _rex_ as the chief
expounder of the divine law (_fas_), and of the control exercised by
_fas_ over the citizen's life. Cp. Muirhead, ed. Goudy, p. 15 foll.,
where Mommsen is quoted thus: "Mommsen is probably near the mark when he
describes the _leges regiae_ as mostly rules of the _fas_." But Mommsen,
like Wissowa in his _Religion und Kultus_, does not use the word _fas_,
but speaks of "Sakralrecht." Sohm, on the other hand (_Roman Law_,
trans. Ledlie, p. 15, note), compares _fas_ with Sanscrit _dharma_ and
Greek _themis_, as meaning unwritten rules of divine origin, which
eventually gave way before _ius_, as in Greece before [Greek: dikaion].
(Cp. Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 501.) But it is safer in this case to leave
etymology alone, and to try to discover what the Romans themselves
understood by _fas_, which is indeed a peculiar and puzzling word. (For
its possible connection with _fari_, _effari_ (ager effatus), _fanum_,
and _profanum_, etc., see H. Nettleship's _Contributions to Latin
Lexicography_, s.v. "Fas.")
_Fas_ was at all times indeclinable, and is rarely found even as an
accusative, as in Virg. _Aen._ ix. 96:
mortaline manu factae immortale carinae
fas habeant?
In the oldest examples of its use, _i.e._ in the ancient calendar QRCF,
on March 24 and May 24, _i.e._ "quando rex comitiavit fas" (Varro,
_L.L._ vi. 31), and QStDF on June 15, _i.e._ "Quando stercus delatum
fas" (Varro, _L.L._ vi. 32), it is hard to say whether it is a
substantive at all, and not rather an adverb like _satis_. So, too, in
the antique language of the _lex templi_ of Furfo (58 B.C.) we read,
"Utii tangere sarcire tegere devehere defigere mandare ferro oeti
promovere referre _fasque esto_" (_liceat_ should probably be inserted
before _fasque esto_). See _CIL._ i. 603, line 7; Dessau, _Inscript.
Lat. selectae_, ii. 1. 4906, p. 246. In these examples _fas_ simply
means that you may do certain acts without breaking religious law; it
does not stand for the religious law itself. To me it looks like a
technical word of the _ius divinum_, meaning that which it is lawful to
do under it; thus a _dies fastus_ is one on which it is lawful under
that _ius_ to perform certain acts of civil government, "sine piaculo"
(Varro, _L.L._ vi. 29). _Nefas_ is, therefore, in the same way a word
which conveys a prohibition under the divine law. By constant
juxtaposition with _ius_, _fas_ came in course of time to take on the
character of a substantive, and so too did its opposite _nefas_. The
dictionaries supply many examples of its use as a substantive and as
paralleled with _ius_, but the only one I can find that is earlier than
Cicero is Terence, _Hecyra_, iii. 3. 27, _i.e._ in the work of a
non-Roman.
I cannot find that it is so used by Varro, where we might naturally have
expected it. Cicero does not call his imaginary ius divinum a _fas_, but
iura religionum, constitutio religionum (_de Legibus_ ii. 10-23, 17-32).
_Ius_ is the word always used technically of particular departments of
the religious law, _e.g._ ius pontificium, ius augurale, and ius fetiale
(_CIL._ i. p. 202, is preimus ius fetiale paravit). The notion that
_fas_ could mean a kind of code of religious law is probably due to
Virgil's use of the word in "Quippe etiam festis quaeddam exercere
diebus Fas et iura sinunt," _Georg._ i. 269, and to the comment of
Servius, "id est, divina humanaque iura permittunt: nam ad religionem
fas, ad homines iura pertinent."
It is strange to find it personified as a kind of deity in the formula
of the fetiales, used when they announced the Roman demands at an
enemy's frontier (Livy i. 32): "Audi Iuppiter, inquit, audite Fines
(cuiuscunque gentis sunt nominat), _audiat Fas_." Whence did Livy get
this formula? We have no record of a book of the fetiales; if this came
from those of the pontifices, as is probable, the formula need not be of
ancient date, and the personification of Fines also suggests a doubt as
to the genuineness of the whole formula.
APPENDIX V
THE WORSHIP OF SACRED UTENSILS (page 436)
There can be no doubt that some kind of worship was paid by the Arval
Brethren to certain _ollae_, or primitive vessels of sun-baked clay used
in their most ancient rites. This is attested by two inscriptions of
different ages which are printed on pp. 26 and 27 of Henzen's _Acta
Fratrum Arvalium_. After leaving their grove and entering the temple "in
mensa _sacrum fecerunt ollis_"; and shortly afterwards, "in aedem
intraverunt et _ollas precati sunt_." Then, to our astonishment, we read
that the door of the temple was opened, and the _ollae_ thrown down the
slope in front of it. This last act seems inexplicable; but the worship
finds a singular parallel in the dairy ritual of the Todas of the
Nilghiri hills.
Dr. Rivers, in his work on the Todas (Macmillan, 1906, p. 453), in
summing up his impressions of their worship, observes that "the attitude
of worship which is undoubtedly present in the Toda mind is becoming
transferred from the gods themselves to the material objects used in the
service of the gods." "The religious attitude of worship is being
transferred from the gods themselves _to the objects round which centres
the ritual of the dairy_." These objects are mainly the bells of the
buffaloes and the dairy vessels; and an explicit account of them, the
reverence in which they are held, and the prayers in which they are
mentioned, will be found in the fifth, sixth, and eighth chapters of Dr.
Rivers' work, which, as an account of what seems to be a religion
atrophied by over-development of ritual, is in many ways of great
interest to the student of Roman religious experience. The following
sentence will appeal to the readers of these Lectures:--
"The Todas seem to show us how the over-development of the ritual aspect
of religion may lead to atrophy of those ideas and beliefs through which
the religion has been built up; and then how, in its turn, the ritual
may suffer, and acts which are performed mechanically, with no living
ideas behind them, may come to be performed carelessly and incompletely,
while religious observances which involve trouble and discomfort may be
evaded or completely neglected."
Whether the worship of the _ollae_ was a part of the original ritual of
the Brethren, or grew up after its revival by Augustus, it is impossible
to determine. But if we can allow the dairy ritual of the Todas to
help us in the matter, we may conclude that in any case it was not
really primitive, and that it was a result of that process of
over-ritualisation to which must also be ascribed the _piacula_ caused
by the growth of a fig-tree on the roof of the temple, and the three
Sondergötter Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda. (See above p. 161 foll.,
and Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 147.)
INDEX
Acca Larentia, 67
Acolytes, 177
Adolenda, 162
Addenda Commolenda Deferunda, 162, 490
Aedes Vestae: _see_ Vesta
Aediles, plebeian, 255
Aemilius Paulus, 340, 362, 433
_Aeneid_, the, 119, 206, 230, 250, 251;
as a means of understanding the spirit of the Roman religion, 254;
a poem of religion and morals, 409-425
Aesculapius, 260
_Ager paganus_: lustration, 80, 213
_Romanus_: lustration, 78, 100
Agriculture, the economic basis of Roman life, 99;
festivals, _see_ Festivals
Agrippa, 442, 443
Alba Longa, 109, 128
Alban Mount: Latin festival, 172;
temple of Jupiter Latiaris, 237, 238, 245
Alexander, Archibald, on faith, 472
Ambarvalia, procession of the, 214, 218, 442
Amburbium, 214, 218, 332
Amulets, 42, 59, 60, 74, 84
Ancilia, 97;
lustration, 96, 217;
moving, 36
Angerona, 117
Animism, 65, 122, 148, 164, 287
Anna Perenna: festival, 65, 105, 346;
Ovid's account of, 473
Antoninus Pius, 429
Apollo, 257, 449;
cult of, 268;
associated with Diana, 443, 446;
with Latona, 262;
the Pythian, 323;
temple, 443-445;
institution of Apolline games, 326
Appius Claudius, 300
Aquaelicium, ceremony of the, 50, 52
_Ara_, meaning of, 146
Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium 29, 230
Ara Pacis of Augustus, 177, 437, 448
Argei: festival, 36, 65;
puppets thrown into the Tiber, 54, 105, 321, 322;
chapels called, 321, 322
Armilustrium, 97
Army: lustration of, 96, 100, 215, 217
Arnobius, 51, 52, 459, 461, 465
Artemis, 235, 443
Arval Brethren: _see_ Fratres Arvales
Asclepios, 260
Astrology, 396-398, 401
Ateius Capito, 441
Athene Polias, 234
Attalus, king of Pergamus, 330
Atticus, Cicero's letters to, 385
Attus Navius, soothsayer, 297
_Augurium canarium_, 310
Augurs, 174-176, 193, 271, 276;
and the art of divination, 292-309;
in relation to the Rex, 301;
art strictly secret, 301;
compared with pontifices, 303
lore preserved in books, 303;
political importance, 305
Augustus, 35, 133, 213, 344;
revival of religion, 428-447;
his connection with Virgil, 428;
pontifex maximus, 433;
restoration of temples, 433-434;
revival of ancient ritual, 434-436;
restorer of the _pax deorum_, 438
Aurelius, Marcus, 456
_Auspicia_, 175, 214;
in life of family, 299;
in State operations, 300;
indissolubly connected with _imperuim_, 301
Aust, on religion of the family, 68;
on Roman deities, 157;
on prayer, 198;
on reaction against the _ius divinum_, 349
Aventine: plebeian quarter, 255;
temples, 95, 147, 233, 234, 237, 244, 484
Axtell, Harold L., on Fortuna, 245
Bacchic rites, introduction of, 344-348
Bailey, Cyril, cited, 400
Beans, used to get rid of ghosts, 85, 107;
taboo on eating, 91, 98
Bellona, connection with Mars, 166
Bibulus, 305
Binder, Dr., on the plebs, 23, 86, 242, 289, 393
Birds, used in augury, 293, 296, 299, 302
Birth, spirits invoked at, 83, 84, 164
Blood: taboo on, 33;
mystic use of, 33, 34, 82;
not prominent in Roman ritual, 180-181;
consecration through, 194;
wine as substitute for, 196
Boissier, G., 391;
on the _Aeneid_, 414, 427
Bona Dea, 484
Bouché-Leclercq, M., on divination, 310
Boundary festivals: _see_ Terminalia
Boundary stones, 81-82, 212;
sprinkled with blood of victims, 34, 82, 196
_Bulla_ worn by children, 60, 74
Burial places _loca religiosa_, 37, 385
Bussell, F. W., cited, 366, 367
Caesar, Julius: belief in spells, 59;
calendar, 95;
pontifex maximus, 305;
and the priesthood, 343
Caesar-worship, 437, 438, 456
Caird, Professor, 357;
on Reason in man, 368, 373
Cakes: honey, 82;
sacred, 83, 130, 141, 180, 183, 184, 274, 449;
_see also_ Salt-cake
Calendar, the ancient religious, 12, 14, 34, 38, 55, 65, 217, 225;
described, 94-109;
in relation to agricultural life, 100-102, 282, 295;
festivals necessarily fixed, 102;
a matter of routine, 103;
its psychological result, 104-105;
a document of religious law, 106;
exclusion of the barbarous and grotesque, 107;
attributed to Numa Pompilius, 108
Julian, 95
Calpurnius Piso, L.: _see_ Piso
_Camilli_ and _camillae_, 177, 195
Campus Martius, 34, 447;
lustrum of censors, 203, 210, 215, 219
Cannae, religious panic after the battle of, 319
Cantorelli, on the _annales maximi_, 290
Capitolium, 238, 239, 246, 339;
_Carmen saeculare_ sung, 444-445;
temples, 95, 115, 146, 203, 239, 242, 245, 254, 266, 433, 443, 447
Caprotinae, Nonae, 143
Cardea, 76;
connection with Janus, 485
Caristia, 418, 457
_Carmen_, meaning of, 186;
used at siege of Carthage, 206, 219
_Arvale_, 78, 132, 186, 187, 436
used by _Attiedii_, 187
_saeculare_, 431, 432, 439, 443-447, 450, 451
_Saliare_, 186
Carmenta, 36, 122, 297
Carmentalia, 98
Carna, 117
Carter, J. B., on cult-titles, 153;
on the Latins, 229-230;
on Castor-cult, 232, 244;
on Diana, 236;
on Fortuna, 245;
on Hercules, 231;
on Janus, 141;
on Juno, 144;
on the Manes, 386;
on Mars, 133;
on Poseidon-Neptune, 260
Cassius Hemina, 349, 356
Castor and Pollux, 231, 244;
temple, 231, 244
Cato, the Censor, 121, 132, 182-184, 251, 296, 298, 340
Catullus, on death, 387
Censors, lustrum of the, 203, 210, 215, 219
Census, 215, 218
Cerealia, 100, 121, 269
Ceres, 100, 121, 139, 161, 162, 260, 435, 446;
temple, 255, 269
Cerfius, or Cerus, 158
Chaldeans, 296;
expelled from Rome, 397, 402
Charms, 59-62;
_see also_ Amulets
Chickens, sacred, as omens, 314, 315
Children: purificatory rites, 28;
naming of, 28-29, 42;
amulets and _bulla_ worn by, 42, 60, 74, 84;
dedication of, 204-205
Christianity, early: contributions from the Roman religion, 452-467;
the Greek and Latin fathers compared, 458-459;
its relation to morality, 471
Cicero, 58, 178, 296, 309;
on religiousness of the Romans, 249-250;
on Titus Coruncanius, 281-282;
on divination, 299, 312;
on interest of the gods in human affairs, 360;
on Stoicism, 365-368, 377;
on relation of man to God, 370;
affected by revival of Pythagoreanism, 381, 383, 389;
turns to mysticism, 384, 388;
his letters to Atticus, 385;
his Somnium Scipionis, 383, 386, 412;
belief in a future life, 389;
definition of _religio_, 460
Claudius, Emperor, 309, 438
Claudius Pulcher, P., 315
Quadrigarius, 39
Cleanthes, hymn of, 368, 377
Clusius (or Clusivius), cult-title of Janus, 126
Coinquenda, 162
Colonia, religious rites at founding of, 170
Compitalia, 61, 78, 81, 88, 102
Concordia, 285
Conditor, 161
_Confarreatio_, marriage by, 83, 130, 274
_Coniuratio_, 347, 348, 356
_Consolatio_, 388
Constantius, 430
Consualia, 101, 139
Consuls, annual ceremony at the Capitoline temple, 203, 219, 239-240
Consus, 285;
connection with Ops, 482
Convector, 161
Conway, Professor, on Quirinus and Quirites, 143
Cook, A. B., on Jupiter, 128, 141;
on Janus, 140;
on Quirinus and Quirites, 143
Corn deities, Greek, 255, 259
_Corpus Inscriptionum_, 13, 201
Coruncanius, Titus, 271, 279, 281, 290
Coulanges, Fustel de, on the Lar, 77
Crawley, Mr., on the fatherhood of gods, 157;
on religion and morality, 227, 242
Cremation, 382, 395, 398, 401
Crooke, Mr., on luck in odd numbers, 98
Cult-titles, invention of, 153
Cumont, Professor, on the religion of the Romans, 2;
on Jupiter, 246
Cunina, 159
Cuq, on civil and religious law, 486
_Cura et caerimonia_, Cicero's expression, 81, 104, 106, 108, 145,
162, 170, 270, 282, 343, 434, 460
Curia, 138
Curiatius, 126
Cynics, the, 372
Days, lucky and unlucky, 38-41;
_see also_ Dies
De Marchi, on votive offerings, 201, 202
Dea Dia, 146;
description of rites, 435-436;
veneration for utensils used, 436;
temple, 161, 436
Dead: disposal of the, 45, 84, 121, 395, 401;
cult, 91, 102, 457, 470;
festivals, 40, 112, 418;
contrast between Lemuria and Parentalia, 107, 393-395
Decemviri, 259, 317, 318, 326
Decius Mus, self-sacrifice of, 206-207, 220, 286, 320
Deities, Roman: _see also_ Numen _and_ Spirits;
sources of our knowledge of, 114-115;
mental conception of the Romans regarding, 115-117, 122-123,
139-140, 145, 147, 157, 224-225;
_di indigetes_, 117, 139, 149, 180, 214;
functional spirits with will-power, 119;
the four great gods, 124-134;
epithets of Pater and Mater applied to, 137, 155-157;
the question of marriage, 148-152, 166, 350, 481-485;
fluctuation between male and female, 148-149;
nomenclature, 118, 149-156, 163;
compared with Greek gods, 158;
presence of, at meals, 172-173, 193;
introduction of new, 96, 229-242, 255-262;
women's, _see_ Women
Delphic oracle consulted during Hannibalic war, 323-324, 326
Demeter, 255;
supersession of Ceres by, 100
Deubner, Professor, his theory of the Lupercalia, 138, 478-480
_Devotio_, 206-209, 219-221;
formula, 207-208, 220;
sacrificial nature, 207, 220
Di Manes: _see_ Manes
Di Penates: _see_ Penates
Diana: associated with Janus, 76, 125, 166;
connection with Artemis, 235, 443;
with Apollo, 443, 446;
with Hercules, 262;
functions, 234-236;
temples, 95, 147, 234, 237, 244
_Dies comitiales_, 103
_endotercisi_, 181
_fasti_, 98, 103, 181
_lustricus_, 28, 42, 90
_nefasti_, 38, 40, 98, 103, 181
_postriduani_, 39, 40
_religiosi_, 38-40, 105
Dieterich, on disposal of the dead, 401
Dill, Professor, on Roman worship, 200
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 130, 193, 215, 234, 250
Dionysus: identified with Liber, 255, 344;
ritual, in Greece, 344-345;
outbreak of Dionysiac orgies in Italy, 344
Dis, black victims sacrificed to, 440
Dius Fidius, connection with Jupiter, 130, 142
Divination, 56, 180;
a universal instinct of human nature, 292, 306;
connection with magic, 293, 310;
views on the origin of, 293;
formalised by State authorities, 295, 300;
private, 295;
quack diviners, 296-298;
_auspicia_ of family religion, 298-300;
public, 301;
duties of the Rex, 302;
lore preserved in books, 303;
divination by lightning, 51, 52, 304, 305, 307, 309;
no lasting value in sphere of religion, 306;
a clog on progress, 307;
sinister influence of Etruscan divination on Rome, 307
Dobschütz, on Christianity, 455
Dogs: sacrifices: _see_ Sacrifices
Dolabella, Cornelius, 342
Döllinger, Dr., on the Flamen Dialis, 112;
on prayer, 468
Domaszewski, von, cited, 99, 110, 154, 167;
definition of _numen_, 119;
on the cult epithets of Janus, 140;
on Juno, 144;
on evolution of _dei_ out of functional _numina_, 165
Duhn, Professor von, cited, 31, 89
Dynamic theory of sacrifice, 177, 184, 190, 194
Earthquakes, expiation of, 339
Eilithyia, Greek deity of childbirth, 442, 446, 449
Ennius, cited, 65, 152, 183, 298, 322, 350, 351, 356
Epictetus, 369, 372
Epicurism, 352, 358, 360, 361, 375, 376, 381, 404, 453
Epicurus, 359
Epulum Iovis: _see_ Jupiter
Equirria, 96, 99, 217
Eschatology, Christian: preparation of the Roman mind for, 454
Esquiline, 87, 395
Etruscans, 17;
domination in Rome, 237, 239, 245, 258;
art of divination, 299, 304;
sinister influence on Rome, 307, 346, 347, 391
Evil spirits, 11, 29, 75, 76, 84, 93;
wolf's fat as a charm against, 90
_Evocatio_, 58, 206
_Excantatio_, 58, 482
_Extipicina_, Etruscan rite of, 180
Fabius Pictor, 161, 261, 318, 320, 323, 326
Falacer, 122
Family (_familia_): origin and meaning of, 70, 86;
religion in the, 68, 70, 73, 92, 116, 224, 226-228, 251, 270, 274,
298-300;
description of the house, 72-73, 87;
its holy places, 73;
spirits of the household: _see_ Spirits;
the Lar familiaris, 77;
position of slaves, 78;
_religio terminorum_, 82;
marriage, 83;
childbirth, 83;
burial of the dead, 73, 92;
maintenance of the _sacra_, 274-275
_Fanum_, meaning of, 146
_Far_, sacred cakes of, 45, 83, 130, 141, 180, 274
Farnell, Dr., cited, 19, 27, 160, 161, 205;
on the vow of the _ver sacrum_, 219;
on Dionysiac ritual, 345, 355
Farreus, connection with Jupiter, 130
_Fas_, early usage of, 487-488
Fasti: _see_ Calendar
Faunalia, 137
Faunus, 81, 89, 297, 479;
connection with Lupercalia, 117
_Februum_, meaning of, 210, 222
Feretrius, cult-title of Jupiter: _see_ Jupiter
Feriae Iovis, 129
Latinae, 40, 61, 172
Feronia, 284, 318
Ferrero, on the _Carmen saeculare_, 431, 450;
on the _ludi saeculares_, 440
Fertility, customs to produce, 100, 106, 143, 210, 222, 479
Festivals, 78-81, 97, 105;
agricultural, 34, 82, 98, 100, 120;
harvest, 98, 101, 121;
vintage, 100, 129;
of the dead: _see_ Dead;
Latin festival on Alban mount, 172;
in calendar, necessarily fixed, 95, 99, 102;
women's: _see_ Women
Festus, 33, 61, 141, 217
Fetiales, 31, 130, 143, 157, 251, 434, 488
Fides, 154, 446, 450;
connection with Jupiter, 167
Fig-tree: sprouting of, on roof of temple, 162;
_piacula_ offered to various deities, 436, 490
Flamen Cerealis, 161, 163
Dialis, 32, 112, 124, 129, 193, 239, 246, 327, 342, 479;
insignia, 177;
taboos on, 33-35, 44, 45, 108, 109, 327, 342, 343
Martialis, 124, 131, 142, 341
Quirinalis, 124, 131, 134, 139, 142, 181, 197, 342, 434
Volcanalis, 484
Flamines, 113, 122, 123, 175, 193, 280, 341, 434;
insignia, 177;
personal purity essential, 178, 195
Flaminica Dialis, 135, 144;
insignia, 177;
taboos on, 35-36
Flaminius, 315, 317, 338, 340
Flora, 122
Fons, 117, 285
Forculus, the door spirit, 76
Fordicidia, 100, 120, 121
Fornacalia, 173
Fortuna (Fors Fortuna), 201, 235, 245, 284, 297, 396, 401
Forum Boarium, human sacrifices, 112, 320
Fratres Arvales: Acta Fratrum Arvalium, 161, 213, 435;
altar, 164;
carmen, 78, 132, 186, 187, 436;
ritual of, 35, 100, 146, 149, 157, 162, 182, 191, 195, 213;
revived by Augustus, 434;
duties of the Brethren, 435;
worship of sacred utensils, 489-490
Attiedii, 157, 187, 215
Frazer, Dr. J. G., his definition of religion, 8;
his theory of divine kingship, 19, 20, 49, 51, 52, 115, 128, 140;
on totemism, 25, 26;
on taboo, 30, 34, 47;
on _oscilla_, 61, 62, 67;
on the Parilia, 100, 222;
on marriage of gods, 144, 149, 150, 152, 155, 156, 165, 350, 481-485;
on cult of Jupiter, 167;
on appointment of _camillae_, 177, 195;
on Diana, 235;
on superstition, 264
Fulgur, cult-title of Jupiter, 129
Furrina, 18, 117, 122
Gallus, Aelius, on _religiosum_, 37
Games instituted to divert attention in times of trouble, 262-263;
Apolline, 326;
_see also_ Ludi
Gardner, Professor E., cited, 355
Gardner, Professor P., on Christianity, 452;
on prayers for the dead, 457;
cited, 465
Gellius, Aulus, on the conjunction of divine names, 150-152;
story of Scipio, 240;
on religiousness of the Romans, 250
Genius: the male principle of life, 30, 92, 154, 317, 332;
of the paterfamilias, 30;
doubtful identification of Hercules with, 30;
in combination with Hercules and Juventas, 332;
Juno the feminine counterpart of, 87
Gennep, M. van, on taboo, 42, 44;
on religious ceremonies, 65, 90, 442;
on lustrations, 211, 212
_Gentes_, 69, 259
_Georgics_, the religious spirit of the, 407
Ghosts, 75, 85, 91, 92, 107
Gilds, trade, 230
Glover, Mr., on Christianity, 456
God, as represented in the _Aeneid_, 426
Gods: _see_ Deities
Gratitude, not a prominent characteristic of the Roman, 252, 267
Greek comedy, influence on Roman religion, 351-353
gods, compared with Roman, 158;
introduced into Rome, 230-242
literature, 296
philosophy, influence on Roman religion, 357-375
Greenidge, Dr., on the _auspicia_ and the _imperium_, 301
Gregory the Great, 475
Gwatkin, Professor, on Augustine, 469;
on the relation of early Christianity to morality, 471
Haddon, Professor, on supernaturalism, 21
Hades, 390, 391
Hannibalic War: revival of _religio_, 315, 317;
Sibylline books consulted, 316-319, 329;
sacrifices and offerings made to deities, 318;
religious panic after battle of Cannae, 319;
human sacrifices, 320;
Delphic oracle consulted, 323, 324, 326;
outbreak of _lascivia_, 324;
institutio$1 $2 Apolline games, 326;
religious history of last years, 327-329;
gratitude to deities, 329;
the Magna Mater of Pessinus brought to Rome, 330
Hardie, Professor, and the double altar in connection with funeral
rites, 425
Hariolus, 297, 298, 311
Harrison, Miss, on covering the head at sacrifices, 195
Haruspices, 296, 313, 337, 338, 397;
history of the, 307-309
Hebe, 332
Heinze, on the _Aeneid_, 413-415, 419, 426, 427
Heitland, Mr., on Bacchanalia, 346, 356
Heracleitus, 257
Hercules: associated with Diana, 262;
with Juno, 17;
in combination with Juventas and Genius, 317, 332;
doubtful identification with Genius, 30;
identified with the Greek Heracles, 230, 243;
Victor or Invictus, 230, 231, 236, 243, 244;
cult of, 231, 244;
festival, 243;
worship confined to men, 29
Hermes, 260
Hirtzel, Mr., cited, 426
Homer, religion of, compared with that of Roman patricians, 392
Honey cakes, 82
Honos et Virtus, 285, 446;
temple, 328
Horace, 81, 299, 403, 405;
_Carmen saeculare_, 431-432, 439, 443-447, 450, 451
Hora Quirini, 482-483
Horses: lustrations, 96, 215;
races, 97;
sacrifice of, _see_ Sacrifices
Howerth, Ira W., his definition of religion, 8
Hubert et Mauss, on magic, 64, 65;
on sacrifice, 190, 194, 195, 198
Human sacrifice, 33, 44, 107, 112, 226, 320, 440
Hut-urns, sepulchral, 87, 477
Huts or booths, use of, in religious ritual, 473-477
Huvelin, M., on magic, 64
Ides, 39, 65, 95, 251, 484;
sacred to Jupiter, 129
Iguvium: ritual, 22, 138, 181, 197;
lustration of the _arx_, 187, 214, 215;
of the people, 31, 208, 215-216
Images and statues of gods, 146, 147, 165, 239, 262, 264, 336, 337;
statue of Athene, 355
Immortality, belief in, 69, 386-387, 389, 424
Imporcitor, 161
_Inauguratio_ of the priest-king Numa, 174-175, 193
Incense, 164, 180, 330, 458
Indigetes, di, 117, 139, 149, 180, 214
Indigitamenta, 76, 84, 88, 130, 138, 153, 159-161, 163, 165, 168, 281,
286, 291
Individualism, growth of, 240, 266, 287, 340, 358, 411, 456
Innocent, Bishop of Rome, 309
Iron, tabooed in religious ceremonies, 32, 35, 45, 214
Isis: religion, 455, 456;
temple, 433
_Ius_, early usage of, 486-487
_augurale_, 296
_civile_, 5, 169;
and the _ius divinum_, 58, 276-279
_divinum_, 13, 24, 33, 38, 49, 68, 104, 106, 107, 128, 146, 227, 228,
241, 271-273, 286, 287, 296, 345;
and the _ius civile_, 58, 276-279;
ritual, 169-191, 467;
the pontifical books the pharmacopoeia of, 286;
decay and neglect, 203, 314, 327, 352, 353;
reaction against, 324, 340-344, 348;
Augustan revival, 429
_hospitii_, 31, 32
_Manium_, 387
Janus: the door spirit, 76, 127, 146;
bifrons of the Forum, 77;
speculations regarding, 125, 140, 141;
cult-titles, 126;
worship, 183, 212;
connection with Cardea, 485;
with Diana, 76, 125, 166;
with Juno, 126, 135;
with Vesta, 140, 145;
temple, 126
Jebb, Professor, on poetry of the Greeks, 424
Jevons, Dr., 19;
on totemism, 26;
on taboo, 28, 41;
on magic, 48, 186;
on priests, 176
Jews, proselytising, expelled from Rome, 139 B.C., 397, 402
Jhering, von, on origin of Roman divination, 293, 294, 311
Jordan, H., 13;
on pairing of deities, 152
Junius, 315
Juno, 121, 479;
Caprotina, 143;
Curitis, 144;
Moneta, 135;
Populonia, 144;
Regina, (of Ardea) 318,
(of the Aventine) 318, 329,
(of Veii) 135, 206, 284;
Sospita, 318, 354;
connection with Hercules, 17;
with Janus, 126, 135;
with Jupiter, 136, 144, 166, 443, 444, 446;
one of the Etruscan trias, 94, 237;
representative of female principle, 17, 87, 135, 144;
temples, 135, 172, 237, 328, 329, 354
Junonius, cult-title of Janus, 126
Jupiter, 115, 118, 124, 127, 128, 141, 143, 147, 159, 183, 212;
difference between Jupiter and Zeus, 141;
connection with Diana, 76;
with Dius Fidius, 130, 142, 167, 450;
with Juno, 136, 144, 166, 443, 444, 446;
with Juturna, 485;
with Tellus, 121;
with Terminus, 82;
Capitolinus, 120, 129, 204, 205, 237, 238, 240, 241, 318, 319, 333,
367;
Dapalis, 141;
Elicius, 36, 50-52, 129, 137;
Fagutalis, 141;
Farreus, 130;
Feretrius, 129, 433;
Fulgur, 129;
Grabovius, 187;
Latiaris, 237, 238;
Lucetius, 129;
Sabazius, 402;
Summanus, 129;
one of the Etruscan trias, 94, 172, 237, 336;
cult at Praeneste, 167;
cult-titles Optimus Maximus, 129, 238;
Ides sacred to, 129;
worshipped on Alban Mount, 109, 128, 172;
epulum Iovis, 172, 263, 268, 336, 338, 353;
temples, 95, 115, 129, 146, 172, 237-238, 241, 245, 246, 254, 266,
433, 443
Juturna, 284, 285;
connection with Jupiter, 485
Juventas, in combination with Genius and Hercules, 317, 332
Kalends, 39, 95, 126, 135, 251, 484
Kobbert, Maximilianus, on _religio_, 46
Kronos, identified with Saturnus, 118
Lactantius, 156, 165, 388, 459, 461, 462, 469
Lang, Mr., 19;
cited in connection with the calendar of Numa, 105
_Lapis_: _see_ Stones
Laralia: _see_ Compitalia
Larentia, Acca, 67
Lar familiaris, 77, 78, 92, 251
Lares compitales, 61, 117, 132, 186
Latin Festival: _see_ Feriae Latinae
Latins, the, 10, 23, 25, 86, 123, 130, 172, 193, 229
Latona, associated with Apollo, 262
Laughing, in ritual of Lupercalia, 106, 111
Laurel branches carried in procession, 265
Lawson, J. C., on burial and cremation, 91, 400, 401
Leather, tabooed in the worship of Carmenta, 36
Lecky, Mr., on Stoicism, 362, 377
Lectisternium, 263-266, 268, 317-319, 327
_Leges regiae_, connection with the _ius divinum_, 272
Leland, C. G., 67
Lemuria, 40, 85, 98, 107, 401;
compared with the Parentalia, 393-395
Lepidus, pontifex maximus, 433, 438
Liber, 158, 260, 332;
identified with Dionysus, 255, 344;
temple, 255
Libera, 260;
identified with Persephone, 255
Liberalia, 332
Libitina, 159
Licinius Imbrex, 151
Licinius, P., pontifex maximus, 342
Lightning, divination by, 51, 52, 304, 305, 307, 309
Limentinus, spirit of the threshold, 76
Livius Andronicus, 328
Livy, cited, 170, 174, 204, 205, 216, 217, 252, 261, 264, 269, 280,
300, 316, 324, 405;
on Bacchanalia, 346-348
Lua, 165, 481, 482
Lucaria, 98
Lucetius, cult-title of Jupiter, 129
Lucilius, 156, 183
Lucretius, cited, 352, 359, 360, 376, 387, 394, 396, 403-406, 453;
his contempt for _superstitio_, 361, 367;
on Roman belief in Hades, 390;
his use of _religio_, 460
_Lucus_, meaning of, 146
_Ludi_, 44, 95, 122, 204: _see also_ Games
_magni_, vowed to Jupiter during Hannibalic war, 319, 333
_saeculares_, 34, 431, 480;
prayers used in, 198, 468;
ritual described, 438-447;
discovery of inscriptions, 439
_scenici_, 261, 263, 350
Lupercalia, 20, 34, 53, 65, 106, 118, 179, 194, 210, 393;
whipping to produce fertility, 54, 479;
Prof. Deubner's theory, 137, 478-480
Luperci, 34, 54, 106, 434, 479
Lupercus, 478
Lustrations: meaning of _lustrare_, 209-210;
lustration of the _ager paganus_, 80, 213;
of the _ager Romanus_, 78, 100;
of _ancilia_, 96, 217;
of the army, 96, 100, 215, 217;
of the _arx_ of Iguvium, 187, 199;
of cattle and sheep, 100;
of the city, 214, 317;
of the farm, 132, 212;
of horses, 96, 215;
of people, 31, 216;
of trumpets, 96, 215;
animistic conception of, 211;
ultimately adapted by Roman Church to its own ritual, 211, 218, 457
Luthard, on Roman religion, 288
Macrobius, cited, 28, 196, 206, 208, 219, 220, 484
_Macte esto_, meaning of the phrase, 182, 183, 197, 442
Magic: allied to taboo, 27, 47;
contagious and homoeopathic, 48;
and divination, 293, 309;
harmless, 59;
prayers and incantations, 185, 186, 198;
private, 57, 68;
in purificatory processes, 210;
and religion, 47-49, 56, 224, 253;
rigorously excluded from State ritual, 49, 57, 105, 107, 224;
sympathetic, 50, 55
Magna Mater of Pessinus, brought to Rome, 330, 344, 348
Maia, 165, 166;
connection with Volcanus, 151, 484
Maiestas, 151, 484
_Mana_, the positive aspect of taboo, 27, 30, 42, 48, 60
Manes, 39, 50, 75, 85, 92, 102, 106, 121, 208, 320, 341, 391, 392;
individualisation of, 386;
Di Manes, 341, 386
Mania, mother of the Lares, 61
Manilius, his poem on astrology, 396
Mannhardt, his theory of the Vegetation-spirit, 19-20, 478;
on laughing in ritual of the Lupercalia, 111-112
Marcellus, 315, 328
Marcius, Latin oracles supposed to be written by, 326
Marcius Rex, praetor, 339
Marcus Aurelius, 369, 429
Marett, Mr., on taboo, 42, 45;
on _sacrificium_, 192;
on divination, 310
Marquardt, on Roman religion, 13, 16;
on naming of children, 42
Marriage: a religious ceremony, 83, 177, 274, 279;
Tellus an object of worship at, 121;
among deities, 148-152, 166, 350, 481-485
Mars, 124, 129, 147, 204, 208, 215, 246, 319;
various forms of his name, 131;
as a married god, 150-152, 166;
invocations to, 186, 212;
connection with Bellona, 166;
with Nerio, 150-151, 166;
with Quirinus, 134, 150;
pater, 212;
Silvanus, 29, 132, 142;
cult of, 132-134;
festival, 96-97;
temple, 133
Martianus Capella, 308
Masson, Dr., 357, 395;
on Roman fear of future torments, 391
Mastarna, Etruscan name of Servius Tullus, 237, 246
Masurius Sabinus, 90
Matutinus, cult-title of Janus, 126
Meals, sacrificial, 172, 173, 193, 436;
epulum Iovis: _see under_ Jupiter
Megalesia, 330
Mens, 285
Mercurius (Hermes), 260, 262, 268, 484
Messor, 161
Mildew, spirit of the: _see_ Robigus
Minerva, one of the Etruscan trias, 94, 237;
name Italian, not Etruscan, 234, 245;
associated with trade gilds, 233, 234, 236;
Capta, 284;
temples, 172, 233, 234, 244
Minium, faces painted with, 82, 115, 336
Minucius Felix, 461
Mithras, religion of, 455, 456, 464
Moirae (Parcae), 442, 446
_Mola salsa_: _see_ Salt-cake
Moles, 150, 154, 158
Mommsen, cited, 200, 440;
and the religion of the Romans, 2;
on the _Fasti anni Romani_, 95, 96, 111;
on _Carmen saeculare_, 444
Mucius Scaevola: _see_ Scaevola
_Murus_, 94
Mysticism, 380-398, 404;
in the form of astrology, 396, 401;
not native to the Roman, 454
Neo-Pythagoreanism: _see_ Mysticism
Neptunalia, 474
Neptunus, 117;
identified with Poseidon, 118, 260;
connection with Salacia, 150, 483;
with Mercurius, 262
Nerio: connection with Mars, 150-151, 166;
meaning of Nerio Martis, 150, 154
Nettleship, Professor, on the phrase _macte esto_, 197;
on the character of Aeneas, 410, 427;
on _sanctus_, 470
Nigidius Figulus, 299, 384, 397
Nones, 39, 95, 251;
Nonae Caprotinae, 143
Numa Pompilius, priest-king: Livy's account of his _inauguratio_,
174-175;
legends, 108, 115, 170, 180, 233, 322;
Calendar described, 92-109;
spurious books found in stone coffin, 349, 381
Numbers, mystic, 98, 328, 334, 441, 449
_Numen_, 34, 111, 250, 264, 364, 365, 367, 407;
meaning of the word, 118;
von Domaszewski's definition of, 119;
evolution of _dei_ out of functional _numina_, 165;
_see also_ Spirits _and_ Deities
Oak-gods, 125, 129, 141, 143
Oaths: connection of Castor and Pollux with, 232;
of Hercules, 231;
of Jupiter, 130;
taken in open air, 141-142;
the religious, in public life, 358, 375;
used by women, 244;
taboo on, 343, 355
Oberator, 161
October horse, 20, 34, 65, 106;
sacrifice of, 45, 105, 179
Odd numbers, luck in, 98
_Ollae_, worship of, 489-490
Opalia, 101
Opiconsiva, 101
Ops, 156;
connection with Consus, 482;
with Saturnus, 482
Oracles, 339, 354;
_see also_ Delphic oracle
Orcus, 166;
the old name for the abode of the Manes, 391, 392;
sacrifice of captives to, 44
Orosius, 333
Orphic doctrine, 381;
tablets, 398
Oscilla, 61, 67;
Dr. Frazer's theory, 61;
_see also_ Puppets
Otto, W., on connection of _religio_ with practice of taboo, 46
Ovid, on Roman gods, 22;
his picture of the Sementivae, 79, 80;
rite of pagus, 82;
on the Lemuria, 107, 112, 394;
on Janus, 125;
on images of gods, 147;
on the Robigalia, 181, 196, 197, 434;
on meals at sacrifices, 193;
on the word _februum_, 210;
on annual ceremony by consuls, 219;
on the festival of Anna Perenna, 346, 473
Paganalia, 61, 62, 67, 102
Pagus: the _familia_ in relation to, 71;
meaning of the word, 87;
festival of the Lar, 78;
other festivals, 79;
the _religio terminorum_, 81-82;
lustrations of the, 213, 214
Pais, on Acca Larentia, 67;
on the Tarquinii and Mastarna, 245
Palatine: _Carmen saeculare_ sung on the, 443-447, 450;
temple of Apollo, 443-445
Pales, 122, 149
Panaetius: and the Scipionic circle, 363-364, 453;
his theology, 365;
and Platonic psychology, 382, 398
Pantheism, Stoic, 366-368
Papirius, the consul, 314, 315, 331
Parentalia, 40, 107, 387, 401, 418, 457;
compared with the Lemuria, 393-395
Parilia, 100, 120, 193, 222, 474
Pater and Mater, as applied to deities, 155-157
Patricians, 259, 304;
religious system a monopoly of, 229
Patulcius, cult-title of Janus, 126
Pax (deity), 446, 451
_Pax deorum_, 169, 224, 261, 264, 272, 276, 286, 302, 328, 329;
means towards maintenance of, 171, 180, 273, 300;
violation of, 320;
re-established by Augustus, 429, 431, 433
Pebble-rain, 316, 329, 332
Penates, 73, 74, 86, 92, 116, 193
Persephone, 255
Peter, R., on Indigitamenta, 160
Petronius, on ceremony of the aquaelicium, 64
Philodemus, 359, 375
Picus, 297
_Pietas_, 174, 227, 250, 254, 387, 405, 409-412, 466;
meaning of, 462-463;
Virgil's word for religion, 412
Piso, L. Calpurnius, 51-53, 484
_Pius_, 63, 462;
see _Pietas_
Plague, Sibylline books consulted at outbreak of, 261
Plato, 258, 381
Plautus, 151, 351-352
Playwrights, their influence on Roman religion, 240, 351, 353
Plebeians, 105, 170;
aediles, 255;
the Plebs as the original inhabitants of Latium, 242, 259, 268, 289;
emotional tendency of, 263-264;
opening of priesthoods to, 268, 271, 279;
increase of importance under the Etruscan dynasty, 275;
first plebeian praetor, 279;
pontifex maximus: _see_ Coruncanius, Titus
Pliny, 51, 256;
on spells and charms, 53, 57, 59, 60, 65, 66, 90, 186;
on human sacrifice, 320;
on death, 388, 400
Polybius, cited, 250, 253, 316, 363, 369, 390;
on religion, 336
_Pomoerium_, 94, 214, 225, 230, 231
Pomona (or Pomunus), 122, 149;
connection with Vertumnus, 485
Pompeianus, prefect of Rome, 309
Pomponius, 278, 289
Pons sublicius: no iron used in building, 35;
Argei thrown from, 54, 105, 321
Pontifex Maximus, 175, 271, 280, 341;
_tabula_ kept by, 283;
compelling power of, 342, 355
Pontifices, 120, 177, 200, 341;
share in festivals, 106, 139;
the question of their origin, 180, 195, 271;
insignia of, 193;
College of, 271;
open to plebeians, 268, 271, 279;
legal side of their work, 272-276;
the XII. Tables, 58, 276-278, 289;
self-elected, 276;
abolition of legal monopoly, 279;
work of, in third century B.C., 282;
admission of new deities, 284;
compilation of annals, 285;
collection of religious formulae, 287;
the Pontifical books, 76, 159, 182, 197, 283, 285-286
_Porca praecidanea_, rite of the, 121, 183, 191
Portunus, 118, 122
Poseidon, identified with Neptunus, 118
Posidonius, 250, 365, 367, 382-384, 398
Prayers, 76, 106, 126, 153, 215, 224, 225, 251;
at the _inauguratio_ of the priest-king Numa, 175;
at making of new clearing, 169, 182;
at sacrifices, 181-191;
at flowering of the pear-trees, 182;
when wine is offered, 182;
for the ceremony of lustration, 183;
form and manner of Roman, 185, 189, 196;
magical survivals in, 188-189;
in ritual of _Ludi saeculares_, 442, 449, 468
_Precatio_, 53, 166
Priests: _see_ Pontifices
Processions: of _lustratio_, adapted to the ritual of the Roman
Church, 211, 218, 457;
of the _triumphus_, 217, 239-240;
Roman fondness for, 263;
_see also_ Lustrations
_Procuratio_, 316, 328;
_fulminis_, 115
_Prodigia_, 281, 316, 324, 325, 328, 338, 339, 354
Promitor, 161
Propertius, 22, 147, 403
Proserpina, black victims sacrificed to, 440
Pudor, 446
_Pulvinaria_, 337, 338
Punic War: _see_ Hannibalic War
Puppets: Argei thrown into Tiber, 54, 105, 321;
oscilla, 61, 67
Purification: _see_ Lustrations
_Puticuli_, 395, 401
Pythagoras, legend of a religious connection between Numa and, 349, 381
Pythagoreanism, 349, 380-381
Pythagoreans, 98
Quindecemviri, 440, 442
Quinquatrus, 217
Quirinal, 134
Quirinus, 94, 118, 124, 143, 147, 246;
identified with Mars, 134;
with Romulus, 135
Quirites, 134, 143
Rain-making: _see_ Aquaelicium
Ramsay, Sir W. M., 465
Red colouring in sacred rites and its connection with blood, 89, 177,
194
Redarator, 161
Regia, 45, 105, 106, 271, 288;
sacrarium Martis in, 133, 208
Regifugium, 99
Reinach, M. Salomon, cited, 26, 42, 114, 131, 481
_Religio_, 9, 28, 30, 36, 38, 72, 76, 83, 85, 93, 104, 106, 174, 223,
227, 241, 248, 261, 263, 267, 270, 273, 282, 287, 294, 364, 405, 407;
meanings and uses of the word, 21, 37, 41, 186, 192, 198, 249, 254,
385, 462, 470;
Cicero's definition of, 460;
and taboo, 34, 36, 40, 46;
revival of, during Hannibalic war, 315, 317, 336-339
_Religio Larium_, 79
_terminorum_, 81, 82
Religion, definitions of, 7-9;
and magic, 47-49, 56, 224, 253;
and morality, 227, 242, 292, 466, 471;
primitive, 25-28, 63, 69;
real, a matter of feeling, 406
Roman: a highly formalised system, 3, 63, 103-104, 200, 226, 248-249,
340;
compared with Roman law, 5;
a technical subject, 6;
its difficulties, 13;
aid from archaeology and anthropology, 16-20, 25;
primitive survivals in, 24, 30;
examples of real magic in, 50, 53-54;
a reality, 62-63, 103, 249;
in the family, _see_ Family;
of the State, 93, 105, 226-228, 270;
the Calendar of Numa the basis of our knowledge of, 94-109;
moral influence mainly disciplinary, 108, 228;
Greek influence, 120, 255-262, 346, 350-353;
Roman ideas of divinity, 115-117, 122-123, 145-164;
ritual of the _ius divinum_, 169-222;
personal purity essential in all worshippers, 178;
discouraged individual development, 226;
introduction of new deities, 96, 229-242, 255-262;
priesthoods limited to patrician families, 229;
religious instinct of the Romans, 249;
neglect and decay, 263-265, 287, 314, 429;
growth of individualism, 240, 266, 287, 340, 358, 411, 456;
Sibylline influence, 242, 255-262;
secularisation of, 270-291;
sinister influence of Etruscan divination, 307-309, 346;
_see_ Divination;
used for political purposes, 336;
attempt to propagate Pythagoreanism, 349-350, 381;
destitution of Romans in regard to idea of God and sense of duty,
357-358;
no remedy in Epicurism, 361;
arrival of Stoicism: _see_ Stoicism _and_ Mysticism;
belief in future torments, 390;
religion compared with that of Homer, 392;
early Christianity, 396;
religious feeling in Virgil's poems, 403-427;
Augustan revival, 428-451;
contributions to the Latin form of Christianity, 452-472;
_see also_ Prayer _and_ Sacrifice
Renan, cited, 185
Renel, M., cited, 26
Réville, M. Jean, on the formalism of the Roman religion, 3;
his definition of religion, 8
Rex Nemoreusis, 235
sacrorum, 128, 174, 175, 180, 193, 207, 229, 271, 273, 341, 434;
relation of the Rex to the augurs, 301-302
Ridgeway, Professor, on the Flamen Dialis, 112;
on Janus, 140;
on original inhabitants of Latium, 242, 393
Rivers, Dr., on the ritual aspect of religion among the Todas, 489-490
Robertson Smith, Professor, 19, 26, 27, 172, 221;
on the Feast of the Tabernacles, 476
Robigalia, 139, 196
Robigus, 100, 117, 122, 146, 179, 434;
Ovid's version of prayer to, 197
Roman Church, survival of old religious practices in the, 25, 211, 218,
456-458, 469
Romulus, 51, 130, 135
Roscher, Dr., 141
_Sacellum_, meaning of, 146
_Sacer_ and _sacramentum_, 36, 277, 464
Sacred utensils, worship of, 436, 489-490
Sacrifices, 29, 90, 224, 225;
description of the act, 179-181;
honorific, 172, 173;
piacular, 35, 172, 173, 182, 189, 191, 208, 273, 436;
sacramental, 141, 172;
vicarious, 208;
dynamic theory of, 177, 184, 190, 194;
meals in connection with, 172, 173, 193, 436;
mystic use of blood, 34, 82;
victim must be acceptable to the deity, 179;
women and strangers excluded from rites, 29-31;
prayers at, 181-191;
sacrifice of cakes, 82, 83, 180, 183, 184;
cow, 100, 120, 436;
dog, 181, 197, 216, 434;
goat, 54, 106, 179, 479;
horse, 34, 97, 105, 179;
lamb, 37, 82, 436;
ox, 132, 179, 212, 215, 444;
pig, 82, 132, 170, 179, 212, 215, 436;
red dog, 179, 310;
salt-cake, 73, 207;
sheep, 132, 179, 181, 212, 215, 434;
sow, 121, 183;
white heifer, 172, 177, 239;
wine, 82, 180, 182-184, 196;
_see also_ Human sacrifice
_Sacrificium_, meaning of, 171, 464
_Sacrum_, 171, 254
_Saeculum_, the old Italian idea of a, 440
St. Augustine, cited, 58, 76, 120, 149, 159, 163, 297, 430, 458;
on Decius, 220
Sainte Beuve, on Virgil, 404
St. Paul, 455, 466-468
Salacia, 165;
connection with Neptunus, 483
Salii, 40, 96, 110, 132, 133, 143, 176, 182, 217, 229, 434;
ritual, 97
Collini, 134
Palatini, 134
Sallust, 405
Salt-cake, 73, 207
Salus, 154, 285
_Sanctus_, meaning of, 463-464, 470
Sarritor, 161
Saturnalia, 81, 99, 101-103, 107, 112
Saturnus, 101, 111, 118, 318;
identified with Kronos, 118;
connection with Consus, 482;
with Ops, 482
Sayce, Professor, 155
Scaevola, P. Mucius, 283
Q. Mucius, 73, 86, 338, 353, 371
Scipio, the elder, 240, 247, 267, 340, 354;
receives the Magna Mater at Rome, 330
Aemilianus, 198, 203-204, 340;
his friendship with Polybius and Panaetius, 362-364, 369, 371
Scott, Sir Walter, compared with Virgil, 408
Sellar, Professor, on Virgil, 404, 406
Sementivae, festival, 79, 89
_Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus_, 347, 348, 356
Seneca, 369, 378, 438, 455
Septimontium, 110
Servius, cited, 58, 62, 119, 120, 134, 138, 142, 143, 146, 183, 184,
194, 210
Sulpicius, 371, 387
Tullius, 235;
his Etruscan name Mastarna, 237
Sibyl of Cumae, 257-258
Sibylline books, 173, 242, 255-257, 261, 323;
consulted during the Hannibalic war, 316-319, 329;
used for personal and political purposes, 339
Silvanus, 76, 81, 89, 132, 142
Slaves, 53, 78, 395, 401, 474;
Greek, buried alive in the _Forum boarium_, 112, 320
Sodales Titienses, 434
Sol, image of, on the Palatine, 445, 447, 450
Sondergötter, Usener's theory of, 161-164, 168
Spells, 48, 53, 57-59, 208, 221;
origin of prayer in, 185, 189
Spes, 285
Spirits, 34, 58;
agricultural, 161, 251, 285;
dead, _see_ Ghosts;
of the doorway, 75-76, 92, 127;
evil, _see_ Evil spirits;
household, 11, 68, 73, 74, 77, 83, 84, 86, 92, 104, 193;
spring, 92;
water, 285;
woodland, 76, 81, 83, 92, 132;
development into _dei_, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123-124, 161, 165;
_see also_ Deities _and_ Numen
Spolia opima, 138, 141, 288;
dedicated at temple of Jupiter Feretrius, 130, 433
Stanley, on religion and morality, 292
Statues and busts at Rome, first mention of, 340, 354;
_see also_ Images
Stoicism, 359, 377, 381-383;
introduced into Rome, 362;
its influence on the Roman mind, 370-372, 404, 453;
weak points in Roman, 372-374;
failed to rouse an "enthusiasm of humanity," 375, 454
Stones: lapis manalis, 50;
silex, 130;
stone representing Magna Mater, 330;
_see also_ Boundary stones
Strangers, fear of, 30-32
Stubbs, Bishop, 103
Subrincator, 161
Subterranean altar, black victims offered at, 440, 445
_Suffimenta_, 441, 442, 449
Sulpicius, consul 211 B.C., 337
Summanus, cult-title of Jupiter, 129
_Suovetaurilia_, 132, 212, 215
_Superstitio_, 106, 355, 361, 405;
temple of Isis condemned as a centre of, 433
_Supplicatio_, 262, 265, 269, 337;
ordered during Hannibalic war, 317, 319, 323, 325, 329
Tabernacles, Feast of the, 475, 476
Taboo, 25, 83, 223;
definition of, 27;
its ethical value, 28;
on children, 28;
on women, 29;
on strangers, 30-32;
on criminals, 32;
on inanimate objects, 32;
on places, 36;
on times and seasons, 38-41;
on iron, 35, 44, 214;
on leather, 36;
on the Flamen Dialis, 33-35, 44, 45, 108, 109, 327, 342, 343;
on the Flaminica Dialis, 35
Tacitus, 398
Tarentum, sacrifices on subterranean altar, 440, 445
Tarquinii, the, 146, 237, 245
Tellus (Terra Mater), 100, 120, 122, 136, 138, 139, 156, 158, 161,
162, 320, 435, 442, 446;
an object of worship at marriage, 121;
connection with Jupiter, 121;
temple, 285
Tempestates, 285
Temples: absence of, in earliest Rome, 146;
restored by Augustus, 343; Aesculapius, 260;
Apollo, on the Palatine, 443-445;
Bona Dea on the Aventine, 484;
Castor, 231, 244;
Ceres, Liber, and Libera, 255-257, 269, 344;
Consus, 285;
Dea Dia, 161;
Diana, on the Aventine, 95, 147, 234, 237, 244;
Isis, 433;
Janus, 126;
Juno Moneta, 135, 328-329;
Juno Sospita, 354;
Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, 146, 172, 237-238, 246, 254, 443;
Jupiter Feretrius, on the Capitol, 95, 115, 129-130, 146, 147, 203,
245, 266, 433;
Jupiter Latiaris, on the Alban Hill, 237, 238, 245;
Mars, 133;
Minerva, on the Aventine, 233, 234, 244;
Pales, 285;
Tellus, 285;
Vertumnus, 285;
Vesta, _see_ Vesta: aedes
Terminalia, 34, 193, 196
Terminus, 82, 117, 239
Terra Mater, _see_ Tellus
Tertullian, cited, 159, 163, 459, 461, 465
Theodosian code, 430
Tiberius, 429, 438, 447
Tibicines, 180, 195, 233, 445
Tibullus, cited, 22, 80, 147, 178, 403;
on use of huts at rural festivals, 474
Time, religious or mystical conception of, 440-441, 449
_Toga praetexta_, worn by priests and children, 29, 42, 50, 61, 74, 84,
175-177, 194-195, 436
_virilis_, 42
Tombstones, memorial, first mention of, 341
Totemism, 25-27
Toutain, M., 26
Tozer, Mr., on Dante, 419
Trade: deities brought to Rome by, 230;
connection of Hercules with, 231;
gilds, 233
Trasimene, outbreak of _religio_ after the battle of, 318
Treaties, Jupiter's connection with, 130
_Tripodatio_, 187, 198
Tubilustrium, 96, 217
Turiae, Laudatio, cited, 389
Turnus, 483
Tylor, Dr., 26, 49, 74, 293
Usener, H., 19, 138, 160;
his theory of the Sondergötter, 161-164, 168
Vacuna of Reate, 284, 290
Valerius Antias, 52, 115, 137
Flaccus, C., 342-343, 355
Maximus, 203-204, 299, 378
Varro, cited, 16, 59, 76, 79, 81, 89, 103, 120, 125, 142, 143, 149, 156,
159, 168, 210, 222, 235, 251, 321
_Vates_, meaning of, 297-298
Vedic ritual, 185
Vegetation-spirit, Mannhardt's theory, 19, 20, 478
Venilia, 483
Venus, connection with Volcanus, 166
_Ver sacrum_, 196, 204-205, 318
_Verbenarius_, 31, 43
Verrius Flaccus, 16, 30
Vertumnus, 147, 291;
connection with Pomona, 485;
temple, 285
Vervactor, 161
Vesta, 73, 74, 76, 92, 116, 126, 136, 137, 140, 147, 481;
aedes, 39, 40, 126, 136, 146, 477;
penus Vestae, 36, 73, 101, 136, 442
Vestal virgins, 53, 113, 120, 139, 175, 177, 194, 320;
at the ceremony of the Argei, 54, 55, 106, 321;
salt-cake baked by, 73;
representative of daughters of the family, 136;
statues of, 144
_Vicus_, 71
Vilicus, 78
Vinalia, 100
Virgil, on _religio_, 37;
on the Paganalia, 62, 67;
on _lustratio_, 80, 213, 221;
on the Manes, 386, 399;
religious feeling in his poems, 403-427, 455;
compared with Wordsworth, 407-408; with Scott, 408;
his idea of _pietas_, 409;
his connection with Augustus, 428;
see also _Aeneid_
Virites, 150, 158
Virtus, 446
Volcanalia, 98, 101
Volcanus, 118, 122, 124;
connection with Maia, 151, 484;
with Venus, 166
Volturnus, 117, 118, 122, 124
Vortumnus, 165, 284
Vows, 188, 226, 286;
private, 201-202;
public, 200, 202-204;
extraordinary, 204-208;
see also _Devotio_ and _Evocatio_
Waltzing, on Roman trades, 233
Westcott, Bishop, on Augustine, 458
Westermarck, Dr., cited, 31, 44, 123, 179;
on magic, 47;
on religion of primitive man, 63, 394;
on Roman prayers, 185;
on religion and morality, 227
Williamowitz-Moellendorf, on Hercules, 243
Wine, used at sacrifices, 82, 180, 182-184;
as a substitute for blood, 196
Winter, J. G., cited, 243
Wissowa, Georg, cited, 13, 14, 16-18, 33, 36, 112, 122, 146, 193, 199,
319, 440;
on _dies religiosi_, 38-40;
on the Argei, 54, 55, 65, 111, 321, 322;
on the ritual of the Salii, 97;
his list of _di indigetes_, 117, 139;
on Faunus, 118;
on Janus, 126, 141;
on Mars, 142;
on the Indigitamenta, 159, 161-163, 168;
on cult of Jupiter, 167;
on prayer, 198;
on Hercules, 243;
on Hebe, 332;
on _Carmen saeculare,_ 444, 450
Wolf's fat, used as a charm against evil spirits, 83, 90
Women, 264, 265;
taboo on, 29;
excluded from certain sacrificial rites, 29-30;
at the ceremony of the aquaelicium, 64;
rites to produce fertility, 54, 106, 143, 479;
oaths used by, 244;
excitement among, during Hannibalic war, 324;
rebellion against the _ius divinum,_ 344;
festivals, 143, 346, 443, 450;
deities, 135, 235, 272, 297, 318, 332, 479
Wordsworth, compared with Virgil, 407
Zeller, cited, 351, 356;
on human law and divine law, 371
Zeus, 367
Zosimus, cited, 309, 439, 449, 450
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