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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Religion of Ancient Rome + +Author: Cyril Bailey + +Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18564] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME *** + + + + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Thierry Alberto and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p> +<br /> +<p class="noin">The close spacing of <span class="np"> NP</span> in the <a href="#Page_89">table</a> on page 89 is +representative of the <a href="images/np.png">original ligature.</a></p> +</div> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h2 style="margin-bottom: .4em;">THE RELIGION OF</h2> +<h1 style="margin-top: .4em;">ANCIENT ROME</h1> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4>By</h4> +<h2>CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.</h2> +<h5>FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD</h5> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h5>LONDON<br /> +ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO <span class="sc">Ltd</span><br /> +1907</h5> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="block"> +<p>I wish to express my warm thanks to Mr. W. Warde Fowler for his +kindness in reading my proofs, and for many valuable hints and +suggestions.</p> + +<p class="right">C.B.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="sc">Balliol College</span>,<br /> +<i>Jan 25th, 1907</i>.</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<br /> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents"> + <tr> + <td width="10%" class="tdr"><span style="font-size: 80%;">CHAP.</span></td> + <td width="80%" class="tdl"> </td> + <td width="10%" class="tdr"><span style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Introduction—Sources and Scope</a></td> + <td class="tdr">1</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">The ‘Antecedents’ of Roman Religion</a></td> + <td class="tdr">4</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">Main Features of the Religion of Numa</a></td> + <td class="tdr">12</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">Early History of Rome—The Agricultural Community</a></td> + <td class="tdr">31</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Worship of the Household</a></td> + <td class="tdr">36</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VI.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Worship of the Fields</a></td> + <td class="tdr">58</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Worship of the State</a></td> + <td class="tdr">75</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Auguries and Auspices</a></td> + <td class="tdr">96</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IX.</td> + <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Religion and Morality—Conclusion</a></td> + <td class="tdr">103</td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br /> + +<h2>THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME</h2> + +<h3>CHAPTER I<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>INTRODUCTION—SOURCES AND SCOPE</h4> +<br /> + +<p>The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome +may perhaps be best illustrated by a parallel from Roman archæology. +The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to +reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not +merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told, +must picture to himself a totally different orientation of the whole: +the upper layer of remains, which he sees before him, is for his +purpose in most cases not merely useless, but positively misleading. +In the same way, if we wish to form a picture of the genuine Roman +religion, we cannot find it immediately in classical literature; we +must banish from our minds all that is due to the contact with the +East and Egypt, and even with the other races of Italy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>and we must +imagine, so to speak, a totally different mental orientation before +the great influx of Greek literature and Greek thought, which gave an +entirely new turn to Roman ideas in general, and in particular +revolutionised religion by the introduction of anthropomorphic notions +and sensuous representations. But in this difficult search we are not +left without indications to guide us. In the writings of the savants +of the late Republic and of the Empire, and in the Augustan poets, +biassed though they are in their interpretations by Greek tendencies, +there is embodied a great wealth of ancient custom and ritual, which +becomes significant when we have once got the clue to its meaning. +More direct evidence is afforded by a large body of inscriptions and +monuments, and above all by the surviving Calendars of the Roman +festival year, which give us the true outline of the ceremonial +observances of the early religion.</p> + +<p>It is not within the scope of this sketch to enter, except by way of +occasional illustration, into the process of interpretation by which +the patient work of scholars has disentangled the form and spirit of +the native religion from the mass of foreign accretions. I intend +rather to assume the process, and deal, as far as it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>possible in +so controversial a subject, with results upon which authorities are +generally agreed. Neither will any attempt be made to follow the +development which the early religion underwent in later periods, when +foreign elements were added and foreign ideas altered and remoulded +the old tradition. We must confine ourselves to a single epoch, in +which the native Roman spirit worked out unaided the ideas inherited +from half-civilised ancestors, and formed that body of belief and +ritual, which was always, at least officially, the kernel of Roman +religion, and constituted what the Romans themselves—staunch +believers in their own traditional history—loved to describe as the +'Religion of Numa.' We must discover, as far as we can, how far its +inherited notions ran parallel with those of other primitive +religions, but more especially we must try to note what is +characteristically Roman alike in custom and ritual and in the motives +and spirit which prompted them.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>THE 'ANTECEDENTS' OF ROMAN RELIGION</h4> +<br /> + + +<p>In every early religion there will of course be found, apart from +external influence, traces of its own internal development, of stages +by which it must have advanced from a mass of vague and primitive +belief and custom to the organised worship of a civilised community. +The religion of Rome is no exception to this rule; we can detect in +its later practice evidences of primitive notions and habits which it +had in common with other semi-barbarous peoples, and we shall see that +the leading idea in its theology is but a characteristically Roman +development of a marked feature in most early religions.</p> + +<p><b>1. Magic.</b>—Anthropology has taught us that in many primitive +societies religion—a sense of man's dependence on a power higher than +himself—is preceded by a stage of magic—a belief in man's own power +to influence by occult means the action of the world around him. That +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>ancestors of the Roman community passed through this stage seems +clear, and in surviving religious practice we may discover evidence of +such magic in various forms. There is, for instance, what anthropology +describes as 'sympathetic magic'—the attempt to influence the powers +of nature by an imitation of the process which it is desired that they +should perform. Of this we have a characteristic example in the +ceremony of the <i>aquaelicium</i>, designed to produce rain after a long +drought. In classical times the ceremony consisted in a procession +headed by the pontifices, which bore the sacred rain-stone from its +resting-place by the Porta Capena to the Capitol, where offerings were +made to the sky-deity, Iuppiter, but<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> from the analogy of other +primitive cults and the sacred title of the stone (<i>lapis manalis</i>), +it is practically certain that the original ritual was the purely +imitative process of pouring water over the stone. A similar +rain-charm may possibly be seen in the curious ritual of the <i>argeorum +sacra</i>, when puppets of straw were thrown into the Tiber—a symbolic +wetting of the crops to which many parallels may be found among other +primitive peoples. A sympathetic charm of a rather <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>different +character seems to survive in the ceremony of the <i>augurium canarium</i>, +at which a red dog was sacrificed for the prosperity of the crop—a +symbolic killing of the red mildew (<i>robigo</i>); and again the slaughter +of pregnant cows at the <i>Fordicidia</i> in the middle of April, before +the sprouting of the corn, has a clearly sympathetic connection with +the fertility of the earth. Another prominent survival—equally +characteristic of primitive peoples—is the sacredness which attaches +to the person of the priest-king, so that his every act or word may +have a magic significance or effect. This is reflected generally in +the Roman priesthood, but especially in the ceremonial surrounding the +<i>flamen Dialis</i>, the priest of Iuppiter. He must appear always in +festival garb, fire may never be taken from his hearth but for sacred +purposes, no other person may ever sleep in his bed, the cuttings of +his hair and nails must be preserved and buried beneath an <i>arbor +felix</i>—no doubt a magic charm for fertility—he must not eat or even +mention a goat or a bean, or other objects of an unlucky character.</p> + +<p><b>2. Worship of Natural Objects.</b>—A very common feature in the early +development of religious consciousness is the worship of natural +objects—in the first place of the objects <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>themselves and no more, +but later of a spirit indwelling in them. The distinction is no doubt +in individual cases a difficult one to make, and we find that among +the Romans the earlier worship of the object tends to give way to the +cult of the inhabiting spirit, but examples may be found which seem to +belong to the earlier stage. We have, for instance, the sacred stone +(<i>silex</i>) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the +Capitol, and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony +of treaty-making. The fetial, who on that occasion represented the +Roman people, at the solemn moment of the oath-taking, struck the +sacrificial pig with the <i>silex</i>, saying as he did so, 'Do thou, +Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, +and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger.' Here no +doubt the underlying notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin +the stone is itself the god, an idea which later religion expressed in +the cult-title specially used in this connection, <i>Iuppiter Lapis</i>. So +again, in all probability, the <i>termini</i> or boundary-stones between +properties are in origin the objects—though later only the site—of a +yearly ritual at the festival of the Terminalia on February the 23rd, +and they are, as it were, summed up in 'the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>god Terminus,' the great +sacred boundary-stone, which had its own shrine within the Capitoline +temple, because, according to the legend, 'the god' refused to budge +even to make room for Iuppiter. The same notion is most likely at the +root of the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the hearth,' and +Ianus, 'the door,' though a more spiritual idea was soon associated +with them; we may notice too in this connection the worship of +springs, summed up in the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such +as Volturnus, the cult-name of the Tiber.</p> + +<p><b>3. Worship of Trees.</b>—But most conspicuous among the cults of +natural objects, as in so many primitive religions, is the worship of +trees. Here, though doubtless at first the tree was itself the object +of veneration, surviving instances seem rather to belong to the later +period when it was regarded as the abode of the spirit. We may +recognise a case of this sort in the <i>ficus Ruminalis</i>, once the +recipient of worship, though later legend, which preferred to find an +historical or mythical explanation of cults, looked upon it as sacred +because it was the scene of the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the +wolf. Another fig-tree with a similar history is the <i>caprificus</i> of +the Campus Martius, subsequently the site of the worship of Iuno +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>Caprotina. A more significant case is the sacred oak of Iuppiter +Feretrius on the Capitol, on which the <i>spolia opima</i> were hung after +the triumph—probably in early times a dedication of the booty to the +spirit inhabiting the tree. Outside Rome, showing the same ideas at +work among neighbouring peoples, was the 'golden bough' in the grove +of Diana at Aricia. Nor was it only special trees which were thus +regarded as the home of a deity; the tree in general is sacred, and +any one may chance to be inhabited by a spirit. The feeling of the +country population on this point comes out clearly in the prayer which +Cato recommends his farmer to use before making a clearing in a wood: +'Be thou god or goddess, to whom this grove is sacred, be it granted +to us to make propitiatory sacrifice to thee with a pig for the +clearing of this sacred spot'; here we have a clear instance of the +tree regarded as the dwelling of the sacred power, and it is +interesting to compare the many similar examples which<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Dr. Frazer +has collected from different parts of the world.</p> + +<p><b>4. Worship of Animals.</b>—Of the worship of animals we have +comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may perhaps +detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>Lupercalia, +where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed +goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying +to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may +recognise it too in the association of particular animals with +divinities, such as the sacred wolf and woodpecker of Mars, but on the +whole we may doubt whether the worship of animals ever played so +prominent a part in Roman religion as the cult of other natural +objects.</p> + +<p><b>5. Animism.</b>—Such are some of the survivals of very early stages of +religious custom which still kept their place in the developed +religion of Rome, but by far the most important element in it, which +might indeed be described as its 'immediate antecedent,' is the state +of religious feeling to which anthropologists have given the name of +'Animism.' As far as we can follow the development of early religions, +this attitude of mind seems to be the direct outcome of the failure of +magic. Primitive man begins to see that neither he nor his magicians +really possess that occult control over the forces of nature which was +the supposed basis of magic: the charm fails, the spell does not +produce the rain and when he looks for the cause, he can only argue +that these things must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>be in the hands of some power higher than his +own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him +peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and +his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree +in which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their +co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit +who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must +by suitable offerings entice the indwelling spirit to leave it. His +'theology' in this stage is the knowledge of the various spirits and +their dwellings, his ritual the due performance of sacrifice for +purposes of propitiation and expiation. It was in this state of +religious feeling that the ancestors of Rome must have lived before +they founded their agricultural settlement on the Palatine: we must +try now to see how far it had retained this character and what +developments it had undergone when it had crystallised into the +'Religion of Numa.'</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 10%;' /> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i>, vol. i. pp. 81 ff.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Golden Bough</i>, vol. i. pp. 181-185.</p></div> + + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>MAIN FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF NUMA</h4> +<br /> + +<p><b>1. Theology.</b>—The characteristic appellation of a divine spirit in +the oldest stratum of the Roman religion is not <i>deus</i>, a god, but +rather <i>numen</i>, a power: he becomes <i>deus</i> when he obtains a name, and +so is on the way to acquiring a definite personality, but in origin he +is simply the 'spirit' of the 'animistic' period, and retains +something of the spirit's characteristics. Thus among the divinities +of the household we shall see later that the Genius and even the Lar +Familiaris, though they attained great dignity of conception, and were +the centre of the family life, and to some extent of the family +morality, never quite rose to the position of full-grown gods; while +among the spirits of the field the wildness and impishness of +character associated with Faunus and his companion Inuus—almost the +cobolds or hobgoblins of the flocks—reflects clearly the old +'animistic' belief in the natural evilness of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>the spirits and their +hostility to men. The notion of the <i>numen</i> is always vague and +indefinite: even its sex may be uncertain. 'Be thou god or goddess' is +the form of address in the farmer's prayer already quoted from Cato: +'be it male or female' is the constant formula in liturgies and even +dedicatory inscriptions of a much later period.</p> + +<p>These spirits are, as we have seen, indwellers in the objects of +nature and controllers of the phenomena of nature: but to the Roman +they were more. Not merely did they inhabit places and things, but +they presided over each phase of natural development, each state or +action in the life of man. Varro, for instance, gives us a list of the +deities concerned in the early life of the child, which, though it +bears the marks of priestly elaboration, may yet be taken as typical +of the feeling of the normal Roman family. There is Vaticanus, who +opens the child's mouth to cry, Cunina, who guards his cradle, Edulia +and Potina, who teach him to eat and drink, Statilinus, who helps him +to stand up, Adeona and Abeona, who watch over his first footstep, and +many others each with his special province of protection or +assistance. The farmer similarly is in the hands of a whole host of +divinities who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>assist him at each stage of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, +reaping, and so forth. If the <i>numen</i> then lacks personal +individuality, he has a very distinct specialisation of function, and +if man's appeal to the divinity is to be successful, he must be very +careful to make it in the right quarter: it was a stock joke in Roman +comedy to make a character 'ask for water from Liber, or wine from the +nymphs.' Hence we find in the prayer formulæ in Cato and elsewhere the +most careful precautions to prevent the accidental omission of the +deity concerned: usually the worshipper will go through the whole list +of the gods who may be thought to have power in the special +circumstances; sometimes he will conclude his prayer with the formula +'whosoever thou art,' or 'and any other name by which thou mayest +desire to be called.' The <i>numen</i> is thus vague in his conception but +specialised in his function, and so later on, when certain deities +have acquired definite names and become prominent above the rest, the +worshipper in appealing to them will add a cult-title, to indicate the +special character in which he wishes the deity to hear: the woman in +childbirth will appeal to Iuno Lucina, the general praying for victory +to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to Iuppiter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>as the +deus Fidius. As a still later development the cult-title will, as it +were, break off and set up for itself, usually in the form of an +abstract personification: Iuppiter, in the two special capacities just +noted, gives birth to Victoria and Fides.</p> + +<p>The conception of the <i>numen</i> being so formless and indefinite, it is +not surprising that in the genuine Roman religion there should have +been no anthropomorphic representations of the divinity at all. 'For +170 years,' Varro tells us, taking his date from the traditional +foundation of the city in 754 <span class="fakesc">B.C.</span>, 'the Romans worshipped +their gods without images,' and he adds the characteristic comment, +'those who introduced representations among the nations, took away +fear and brought in falsehood.' Symbols of a few deities were no doubt +recognised: we have noticed already the <i>silex</i> of Iuppiter and the +boundary-stone of Terminus, which were probably at an earlier period +themselves objects of worship, and to these we may add the sacred +spears of Mars, and the <i>sigilla</i> of the State-Penates. But for the +most part the <i>numina</i> were without even such symbolic representation, +nor till about the end of the regal period was any form of temple +built for them to dwell in. The sacred fire of Vesta near the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>Forum +was, it is true, from the earliest times enclosed in a building; this, +however, was no temple, but merely an erection with the essentially +practical purpose of preventing the extinction of the fire by rain. +The first temple in the full sense of the word was according to +tradition built by Servius Tullius to Diana on the Aventine: the +tradition is significant, for Diana was not one of the <i>di indigetes</i>, +the old deities of the 'Religion of Numa,' but was introduced from the +neighbouring town of Aricia, and the attribution to Servius Tullius +nearly always denotes an Etruscan<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> or at any rate a non-Roman +origin. There were, however, altars in special places to particular +deities, built sometimes of stone, sometimes in a more homely manner +of earth or sods. We hear for instance of the altar of Mars in the +Campus Martius, of Quirinus on the Quirinal, of Saturnus at the foot +of the Capitol, and notably of the curious underground altar of Consus +on what was later the site of the Circus Maximus. But more +characteristic than the erection of altars is the connection of +deities with special localities. Naturally enough in the worship of +the household Vesta had her seat at the hearth, Ianus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>at the door, +and the 'gods of the storehouse' (<i>Penates</i>) at the cupboard by the +hearth, but the same idea appears too in the state-cult. Hilltops, +groves, and especially clearings in groves (<i>luci</i>) are the most usual +sacred localities. Thus Quirinus has his own sacred hill, Iuppiter is +worshipped on the Capitol, Vesta and Iuno Lucina have their sacred +groves within the boundaries of the city, and Dea Dia, Robigus, and +Furrina similar groves at the limits of Roman territory. The record of +almost every Roman cult reveals the importance of locality in +connection with the <i>di indigetes</i>, and the localities are usually +such as would be naturally chosen by a pastoral and agricultural +people.</p> + +<p>Such were roughly the main outlines of the genuine Roman 'theology.' +It has no gods of human form with human relations to one another, +interested in the life of men and capable of the deepest passions of +hatred and affection towards them, such as we meet, for instance, in +the mythology of Greece, but only these impersonal individualities, if +we may so call them, capable of no relation to one another, but able +to bring good or ill to men, localised usually in their habitations, +but requiring no artificial dwelling or elaborate adornment of their +abode; becoming <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>gradually more and more specialised in function, yet +gaining thereby no more real protective care for their worshippers—a +cold and heartless hierarchy, ready to exact their due, but incapable +of inspiring devotion or enthusiasm. Let us ask next how the Romans +conceived of their own relations towards them.</p> + +<p><b>2. The Relation of Gods and Men.</b>—The character of the Roman was +essentially practical and his natural mental attitude that of the +lawyer. And so in his relation towards the divine beings whom he +worshipped there was little of sentiment or affection: all must be +regulated by clearly understood principles and carried out with formal +exactness. Hence the <i>ius sacrum</i>, the body of rights and duties in +the matter of religion, is regarded as a department of the <i>ius +publicum</i>, the fundamental constitution of the state, and it is +significant, as Marquardt has observed, that it was Numa, a king and +lawgiver, and not a prophet or a poet, who was looked upon as the +founder of the Roman religion. Starting from the simple general +feeling of a dependence on a higher power (<i>religio</i>), which is common +to all religions, the Roman gives it his own characteristic colour +when he conceives of that dependence as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>analogous to a civil contract +between man and god. Both sides are under obligation to fulfil their +part: if a god answers a man's prayer, he must be repaid by a +thank-offering: if the man has fulfilled 'his bounden duty and +service,' the god must make his return: if he does not, either the +cause lies in an unconscious failure on the human side to carry out +the exact letter of the law, or else, if the god has really broken his +contract, he has, as it were, put himself out of court and the man may +seek aid elsewhere. In this notion we have the secret of Rome's +readiness under stress of circumstances, when all appeals to the old +gods have failed, to adopt foreign deities and cults in the hope of a +greater measure of success.</p> + +<p>The contract-notion may perhaps appear more clearly if we consider one +or two of the normal religious acts of the Roman individual or state. +Take first of all the performance of the regular sacrifices or acts of +worship ordained by the state-calendar or the celebration of the +household <i>sacra</i>. The <i>pietas</i> of man consists in their due +fulfilment, but he may through negligence omit them or make a mistake +in the ritual to be employed. In that case the gods, as it were, have +the upper hand in the contract and are not obliged to fulfil <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>their +share, but the man can set himself right again by the offering of a +<i>piaculum</i>, which may take the form either of an additional sacrifice +or a repetition of the original rite. So, for instance, when Cato is +giving his farmer directions for the lustration of his fields, he +supplies him at the end with two significant formulæ: 'if,' he says, +'you have failed in any respect with regard to all your offerings, use +this formula: "Father Mars, if thou hast not found satisfaction in my +former offering of pig, sheep, and ox (the most solemn combination in +rustic sacrifices), then let this offering of pig and sheep and ox +appease thee": but if you have made a mistake in one or two only of +your offerings, then say, "Father Mars, because thou hast not found +satisfaction in that pig (or whatever it may be), let this pig appease +thee."' On the other hand, for intentional neglect, there was no +remedy: the man was <i>impius</i> and it rested with the gods to punish him +as they liked (<i>deorum iniuriae dis curae</i>).</p> + +<p>But apart from the regularly constituted ceremonies of religion, there +might be special occasions on which new relations would be entered +into between god and man. Sometimes the initiative would come from +man: desiring to obtain from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>the gods some blessings on which he had +set his heart, he would enter into a <i>votum</i>, a special contract by +which he undertook to perform certain acts or make certain sacrifices, +in case of the fulfilment of his desire. The whole proceeding is +strictly legal: from the moment when he makes his vow the man is <i>voti +reus</i>, in the same position, that is, as the defendant in a case whose +decision is still pending; as soon as the gods have accomplished their +side of the contract he is <i>voti damnatus</i>, condemned, as it were, to +damages, having lost his suit; nor does he recover his independence +until he has paid what he undertook: <i>votum reddidi lubens merito</i> ('I +have paid my vow gladly as it was due') is the characteristic wording +of votive inscriptions. If the gods did not accomplish the wish, the +man was of course free, and sometimes the contract would be carried so +far that a time-limit for their action would be fixed by the maker of +the vow: legal exactness can hardly go further.</p> + +<p>Or again, the initiative might come from the gods. Some marked +misfortune, an earthquake, lightning, a great famine, a portentous +birth, or some such occurrence would be recognised as a <i>prodigium</i>, +or sign of the god's displeasure. Somehow or other the contract must +have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>broken on the human side and it was the duty of the state +to see to the restoration of the <i>pax deum</i>, the equilibrium of the +normal relation of god and man. The right proceeding in such a case +was a <i>lustratio</i>, a solemn cleansing of the people—or the portion of +the people involved in the god's displeasure—with the double object +of removing the original reason of misfortune and averting future +causes of the divine anger. The commercial notion is not perhaps quite +so distinct here, but the underlying legal relationship is +sufficiently marked.</p> + +<p>If then the question be asked whether the relation between the Roman +and his gods was friendly or unfriendly, the correct answer would +probably be that it was neither. It was rather what Aristotle in +speaking of human relations describes as 'a friendship for profit': it +is entered into because both sides hope for some advantage—it is +maintained as long as both sides fulfil their obligations.</p> + +<p><b>3. Ceremonial.</b>—It has been said sometimes that the old Roman +religion was one of cult and ritual without dogma or belief. As we +have seen this is not in origin strictly true, and it would be fairer +to say that belief was latent rather than non-existent: this we may +see, for instance, from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>Cicero's dialogues on the subject of +religion, where in discussion the fundamental sense of the dependence +of man on the help of the gods comes clearly into view: in the +domestic worship of the family too cult was always to some extent +'tinged with emotion,' and sanctified by a belief which made it a more +living and in the end a more permanent reality than the religion of +the state. But it is no doubt true that as the community advanced, +belief tended to sink into the background: development took place in +cult and not in theology, so that by the end of the Republic, to take +an example, though the festival of the Furrinalia was duly observed +every year on the 25th of July, the nature or function of the goddess +Furrina was, as we learn from Cicero, a pure matter of conjecture, and +Varro tells us that her name was known only to a few persons. Nor was +it mere lapse of time which tended to obscure theology and exalt +ceremonial: their relative position was the immediate and natural +outcome of the underlying idea of the relation of god and man. +Devotion, piety—in our sense of the term—and a feeling of the divine +presence could not be enjoined or even encouraged by the strictly +legal conception on which religion was based: the 'contract-notion' +required not a 'right spirit' but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>right performance. And so it comes +about that in all the records we have left of the old religion the +salient feature which catches and retains our attention is exactness +of ritual. All must be performed not merely 'decently and in order,' +but with the most scrupulous care alike for every detail of the +ceremonial itself, and for the surrounding circumstances. The omission +or misplacement of a single word in the formulæ, the slightest sign of +resistance on the part of the victim, any disorder among the +bystanders, even the accidental squeak of a mouse, are sufficient to +vitiate the whole ritual and necessitate its repetition from the very +beginning. One of the main functions of the Roman priesthood was to +preserve intact the tradition of formulæ and ritual, and, when the +magistrate offered sacrifice for the state, the <i>pontifex</i> stood at +his side and dictated (<i>praeire</i>) the formulæ which he must use. +Almost the oldest specimen of Latin which we now possess is the song +of the Salii, the priests of Mars, handed on from generation to +generation and repeated with scrupulous care, even though the priests +themselves, as Quintilian assures us, had not the least notion what it +meant. Nor was it merely the words of ceremonial which were of vital +importance: other details must be attended <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>to with equal exactness. +Place, as we have seen, was an essential feature even in the +conception of deity, and it must have required all the personal +influence of Augustus and his entourage to reconcile the people of +Rome, with the ancient home of the goddess still before their eyes, to +the second shrine of Vesta within the limits of his palace on the +Palatine. The choice of the appropriate offering again was a matter of +the greatest moment and was dictated by a large number of +considerations. The sex of the victim must correspond to the sex of +the deity to whom it is offered, white beasts must be given to the +gods of the upper world, black victims to the deities below. Mars at +his October festival must have his horse, Iuno Caprotina her goat, and +Robigus his dog, while in the more rustic festivals such as the +Parilia, the offering would be the simpler gift of millet-cakes and +bowls of milk: in the case of the Bona Dea we have the curious +provision that if wine were used in the ceremonial, it must, as she +was in origin a pastoral deity, always be spoken of as 'milk.' The +persons who might be present in the various festivals were also +rigidly determined: men were excluded from the Matronalia on March 1, +from the Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of +the Bona Dea: the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 <span class="fakesc">B.C.</span> +shows the scandal raised by a breach of this rule even at the period +when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb. Slaves were +specifically admitted to a share in certain festivals such as the +Saturnalia and the Compitalia (the festival of the Lares), whereas at +the Matralia (the festival of the matrons) a female slave was brought +in with the express purpose of being significantly driven away.</p> + +<p>The general notion of the exactness of ritual will perhaps become +clearer when we come to examine some of the festivals in detail, but +it is of extreme importance for the understanding of the Roman +religious attitude, to think of it from the first as an essential part +in the expression of the relation of man to god.</p> + +<p><b>4. Directness of Relation—Functions of Priests.</b>—In contrast to all +this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from +deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the +Roman religion—the immediateness of relation between the god and his +worshippers. Not only may the individual at any time approach the +altar of the god with his prayer or thank-offering, but in every +community of persons its religious representative is its natural head. +In <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>the family the head of the household (<i>pater familias</i>) is also +the priest and he is responsible for conducting the religious worship +of the whole house, free and slave alike: to his wife and daughters he +leaves the ceremonial connected with the hearth (<i>Vesta</i>) and the +deities of the store-cupboard (<i>Penates</i>), and to his bailiff the +sacrifice to the powers who protect his fields (<i>Lares</i>), but the +other acts of worship at home and in the fields he conducts himself, +and his sons act as his acolytes. Once a year he meets with his +neighbours at the boundaries of their properties and celebrates the +common worship over the boundary-stones. So in<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> the larger outgrowth +of the family, the <i>gens</i>, which consisted of all persons with the +same surname (<i>nomen</i>, not <i>cognomen</i>), the gentile <i>sacra</i> are in the +hands of the more wealthy members who are regarded as its heads; we +have the curious instance of Clodius even after his adoption into +another family, providing for the worship of the <i>gens Clodia</i> in his +own house, and we may remember Virgil's picture of the founders of the +<i>gentes</i> of the Potitii and the Pinarii performing the sacrifice to +Hercules at the <i>ara maxima</i>, which was the traditional privilege of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>their houses. When societies (<i>sodalitates</i>) are formed for religious +purposes they elect their own <i>magistri</i> to be their religious +representatives, as we see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. +Finally, in the great community of the state the king is priest, and +with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, +he—like the <i>pater familias</i>—leaves the worship of Vesta in the +hands of his 'daughters,' the Vestal virgins. And so, when the +Republic is instituted, a special official, the <i>rex sacrorum</i>, +inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the +Vestals passes to his representative in the matter of religious law, +the <i>pontifex maximus</i>, whose official residence is always the +<i>regia</i>, Numa's palace. The state is but the enlarged household and +the head of the state is its religious representative.</p> + +<p>If then the approach to the gods is so direct, where, it may be asked, +in the organisation of Roman religion is there room for the priest? +Two points about the Roman priesthood are of paramount importance. In +the first place, they are not a caste apart: though there were +restrictions as to the holding of secular magistracies in combination +with the priesthood—always observed strictly in the case of the <i>rex +sacrorum</i> and with few exceptions in the case of the greater +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span><i>flamines</i>—yet the <i>pontifices</i> might always take their part in +public life, and no kind of barrier existed between them and the rest +of the community: Iulius Cæsar himself was <i>pontifex maximus</i>. In the +second place they are not regarded as representatives of the gods or +as mediators between god and man, but simply as administrative +officials appointed for the performance of the acts of state-worship, +just as the magistrates were for its civil and military government. In +origin they were chosen to assist the king in the multifarious duties +of the state-cult—the <i>flamines</i> were to act as special priests of +particular deities, the most prominent among them being the three +great priests of Iuppiter (<i>flamen Dialis</i>), Mars, and Quirinus; the +<i>pontifices</i> were sometimes delegates of the king on special +occasions, but more particularly formed his religious <i>consilium</i>, a +consulting body, to give him advice as to ritual and act as the +repositories of tradition. In later times the <i>flamines</i> still retain +their original character, the <i>pontifices</i> and especially the +<i>pontifex maximus</i> are responsible for the whole organisation of the +state-religion and are the guardians and interpreters of religious +lore. In the state-cult then the priests play a very important part, +but their relation to the worship of the individual was very small +indeed. They had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>a general superintendence over private worship and +their leave would be required for the introduction of any new domestic +cult; in cases too where the private person was in doubt as to ritual +or the legitimacy of any religious practice, he could appeal to the +<i>pontifices</i> for decision. Otherwise the priest could never intervene +in the worship of the family, except in the case of the most solemn +form of marriage (<i>confarreatio</i>), which, as it conferred on the +children the right to hold certain of the priesthoods, was regarded +itself as a ceremony of the state-religion.</p> + +<p>In his private worship then the individual had immediate access to the +deity, and it was no doubt this absence of priestly mediation and the +consequent sense of personal responsibility, no less than its +emotional significance, which caused the greater reality and +permanence of the domestic worship as compared with the organised and +official cults of the state.</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 10%;' /> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Etruscan builders were according to tradition employed on +the earliest Roman temples.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> This is all open to doubt, but see De Marchi, <i>Il Culto +Privato</i>, vol. ii.</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>EARLY HISTORY OF ROME—THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY</h4> +<br /> + +<p>After this sketch of the main features which we must expect to find in +Roman religion, we may attempt to look a little more in detail at its +various departments, but before doing so it is necessary to form some +notion of the situation and character of the Roman community: religion +is not a little determined by men's natural surroundings and +occupations. The subject is naturally one of considerable controversy, +but certain facts of great significance for our purpose may fairly be +taken as established. The earliest settlement which can be called +'Rome' was the community of the Palatine hill, which rises out of the +valleys more abruptly than any of the other hills and was the natural +place to be selected for fortification: the outline of the walls and +sacred enclosure running outside them (<i>pomoerium</i>) may still be +traced, marking the limits <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>of 'square Rome' (<i>Roma quadrata</i>), as the +historians called it. The Palatine community no doubt pursued their +agricultural labours over the neighbouring valleys and hills, and +gradually began to extend their settlement till it included the +Esquiline and Caelian and other lesser heights which made up the +Septimontium—the next stage of Rome's development. Meanwhile a +kindred settlement had been established on the opposite hills of the +Quirinal and Viminal, and ultimately the two communities united, +enclosing within their boundaries the Capitol and their meeting-place +in the valley which separated them—the Forum. In this way was formed +the Rome of the Four Regions, which represents the utmost extent of +its development during the period which gave rise to the genuine Roman +religion. All these stages have left their mark on the customs of +religion. <i>Roma quadrata</i> comes to the fore in the Lupercalia: not +merely is the site of the ceremony a grotto on the Palatine +(<i>Lupercal</i>), but when the <i>Luperci</i> run their purificatory course +around the boundaries, it is the circuit of the Palatine hill which +marks its limits. Annually on the 11th of December the festival of the +Septimontium was celebrated, not by the whole people, but by the +<i>montani</i>, presumably the inhabitants of those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>parts of Rome which +were included in the second settlement. Finally, the addition of the +Quirinal settlement is marked by the inclusion among the great +state-gods of Quirinus, who must have been previously the local deity +of the Quirinal community.</p> + +<p>But more important for us than the history of the early settlement is +its character. We have spoken of early Rome as an agricultural +community: it would be more exact and more helpful to describe it as a +community of agricultural households. The institutions of Rome, legal +as well as religious, all point to the household (<i>familia</i>) as the +original unit of organisation: the individual, as such, counted for +nothing, the community was but the aggregate of families. Domestic +worship then was not merely independent of the religion of the +community: it was prior to it, and is both its historical and logical +origin. Yet the life of the early Roman agriculturalist could not be +confined to the household: in the tilling of the fields and the care +of his cattle he meets his neighbour, and common interests suggest +common prayer and thanksgiving. Thus there sprung up the great series +of agricultural festivals which form the basis of the state-calendar, +but were in origin—as some of them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>still continued to be—the +independent acts of worship of groups of agricultural households. +Gradually, as the community grew on the lines we have just seen, there +grew with it a sense of an organised state, as something more than the +casual aggregation of households or clans (<i>gentes</i>). As the feeling +of union became stronger, so did the necessity for common worship of +the gods, and the state-cult came into being primarily as the +repetition on behalf of the community as a whole of the worship which +its members performed separately in their households or as +joint-worshippers in the fields. But the conception of a state must +carry with it at least two ideas over and beyond the common needs of +its members: there must be internal organisation to secure domestic +tranquillity, and—since there will be collision with other +states—external organisation for purposes of offence and defence. +Religion follows the new ideas, and in two of the older deities of the +fields develops the notions of justice and war. Organisation ensues, +and the general conceptions of state-deities and state-ritual are made +more definite and precise.</p> + +<p>It will be at once natural and convenient that we should consider +these three departments of religion in the order that has just been +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>suggested—the worship of the household, the worship of the fields, +the worship of the state. But it must not be forgotten that both the +departments themselves and the evidence for them frequently overlap. +The domestic worship is not wholly distinguishable from that of the +fields, the state-cult is, as we have seen, very largely a replica of +the other two. The evidence for the domestic and agricultural cults is +in itself very scanty, and we shall frequently have to draw inferences +from their counterparts in the state. Above all, it is not to be +supposed that any hard and fast line between the three existed in the +Roman's mind; but for the purposes of analysis the distinction is +valuable and represents a historical reality.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>WORSHIP OF THE HOUSEHOLD</h4> +<br /> + +<p><b>1. The Deities.</b>—The worship of the household seems to have +originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of +certain objects closely bound up with the family life—the door, the +protection against the external world, by which the household went out +to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver +of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved +the food for future use. At first, in all probability, the worship was +actually of the objects themselves, but by the time that Rome can be +said to have existed at all, 'animism' had undoubtedly transformed it +into a veneration of the indwelling spirits, Ianus, Vesta, and the +Penates.</p> + +<p>Of the domestic worship of Ianus no information has come down to us, +but we may well suppose that as the defence of the door and its main +use lay with the men of the household, so they, under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>the control of +the <i>pater familias</i>, were responsible for the cult of its spirit. +Vesta was, of course, worshipped at the hearth by the women, who most +often used it in the preparation of the domestic meals. In the +original round hut, such as the primitive Roman dwelt in—witness the +models which he buried with his dead and which recent excavations in +the Forum have brought to light—the 'blazing hearth' (such seems to +be the meaning of Vesta) would be the most conspicuously sacred thing; +it is therefore not surprising to find that her simple cult was the +most persistent of all throughout the history of Rome, and did not +vary from its original notion. Even Ovid can tell the inquirer 'think +not Vesta to be ought else than living flame,' and again, 'Vesta and +fire require no effigy'—notions in which he has come curiously near +to the conceptions of the earliest religion. The Penates in the same +way were at first 'the spirits'—whoever they might be—who preserved +and increased the store in the cupboard. Then as the conception of +individual deities became clearer, they were identified with some one +or other of the gods of the country or the state, among whom the +individual householder would select those who should be the particular +Penates of his family: Ceres, Iuno, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>Iuppiter, Pales would be some of +those chosen in the earlier period. Nor are we to suppose that +selection was merely arbitrary: the tradition of family and clan, even +possibly of locality, would determine the choice, much as the +patron-saints of a church are now determined in a Roman Catholic +country.</p> + +<p>Two other deities are very prominent in the worship of the early +household, and each is a characteristic product of Roman religious +feeling, the Lar Familiaris and the Genius. The Lares<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> seem to have +been in origin the spirits of the family fields: they were worshipped, +as Cicero tells us, 'on the farm in sight of the house,' and they had +their annual festival in the Compitalia, celebrated at the +<i>compita</i>—places where two or more properties marched. But one of +these spirits, the <i>Lar Familiaris</i>, had special charge of the house +and household, and as such was worshipped with the other domestic gods +at the hearth. As his protection extended over all the household, +including the slaves, his cult is placed specially in the charge of +the bailiff's wife (<i>vilica</i>). He is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>regularly worshipped at the +great divisions of the month on Calends, Nones, and Ides, but he has +also an intimate and beautiful connection with the domestic history of +the family. An offering is made to the Lar on the occasion of a birth, +a wedding, a departure, or a return, and even—a characteristically +Roman addition—on the occasion of the first utterance of a word by a +son of the house: finally, a particularly solemn sacrifice is made to +him after a death in the family.</p> + +<p>The Genius is perhaps the most difficult conception in the Roman +religion for the modern mind to grasp. It has been spoken of as the +'patron-saint' or 'guardian-angel,' both of them conceptions akin to +that of the Genius, but both far too definite and anthropomorphic: we +shall understand it best by keeping the '<i>numen</i>' notion clearly in +mind and looking to the root-meaning of the word (<i>genius</i> connected +with the root of <i>gignere</i>, to beget). It was after all only a natural +development of the notions of 'animism' to imagine that man too, like +other objects, had his indwelling spirit—not his 'soul' either in our +sense of moral and intellectual powers, or in the ancient sense of the +vital principle—but rather as the derivation suggests, in origin +simply the spirit which gave him the power of generation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>Hence in +the house, the sphere of the Genius is no longer the hearth but the +marriage-bed (<i>lectus genialis</i>). This notion growing somewhat wider, +the Genius comes to denote all the full powers, almost the +personality, of developed manhood, and especially those powers which +make for pleasure and happiness: this is the origin of such common +phrases as <i>genium curare</i>, <i>genio indulgere</i>, meaning practically to +'look after oneself,' 'to indulge oneself.' Every man, then, has this +'spirit of his manhood' in his Genius, and correspondingly every woman +her Iuno, or spirit of womanhood, which are worshipped on the +birthdays of their owners. No doubt later the Genius was accredited +with powers over the fortune and misfortune of his possessor, but he +never really developed anything like the independence of a god, and +remained always rather a <i>numen</i>. The individual revered his own +Genius, but the household cult was concerned, as one would expect, +with the Genius of the master of the house, the pre-eminent Genius of +the family. Its special locality was, for the reason just noticed, the +marriage-bed and its symbol, the house-snake, kept as a revered inmate +and cherished in the feeling that evil happening to it meant +misfortune to the master. The festival of the Genius was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>naturally +the master's birthday, and on that day slaves and freedmen kept +holiday with the family and brought offerings to the <i>Genius domus</i>. +It is a significant fact, and may serve to bring out the underlying +notion, that in later paintings, when anthropomorphism and sensuous +representation held sway over all Roman religion, though the other +gods of the household were depicted after the manner of Greek deities, +the Genius is either represented by his symbolic snake or appears with +the human features and characteristics of the head of the house, his +owner.</p> + +<p>The spirit-gods then of the door and the hearth, the specially chosen +deities of the store-cupboard, the particular field-power presiding +over the household, and the spirit of the master's personality were +the gods of the early home, and round their worship centred the +domestic religion. We must attempt to see what was its relation to +family life.</p> + +<p><b>2. Religion and the Family Life.</b>—We have already noticed the main +occasions of regular sacrifice to the deities of the household, the +offerings to the Lar on Calends, Nones, and Ides, to the Genius on the +master's birthday, and so on, and we are enabled to form a fair +picture of the rites from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>paintings which, although of later date, +undoubtedly represent the continuous tradition of domestic custom. In +a wall-painting at Herculaneum, for instance, we have a picture of the +<i>pater familias</i>, represented with veiled head (according to regular +Roman custom) and the cornucopia of the Genius, making sacrifice at a +round altar or hearth. Opposite him stands the flute-player +(<i>tibicen</i>) playing to drown any unpropitious sound, while on either +side are two smaller figures, presumably the sons, acting as +attendants (<i>camilli</i>), and both clad (<i>succincti</i>) in the short +sacrificial tunic (<i>limus</i>); one carries in his left hand the sacred +dish (<i>patera</i>), and in his right garlands or, more probably, ribbons +for the decoration of the victim: the other is acting as <i>victimarius</i> +and bringing the pig for sacrifice, but the animal is hurrying with +almost excessive eagerness towards the altar, no doubt to show that +there is none of the reluctance which would have been sufficient to +vitiate the sacrifice.</p> + +<p>But from our point of view such formal acts of worship are of less +importance than the part played by religion in the daily life of the +household. There is evidence both for earlier and later periods that +the really 'pious' would begin their day with prayer and sacrifice to +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>household gods, and like Virgil's Aeneas, typically <i>pius</i> in all +the meanings of the word, would 'rouse the slumbering flame upon the +altar and gladly approach again the Lar and little Penates whom he +worshipped yesterday.' But this was perhaps exceptional devotion, and +the daily worship in the normal household centred rather round the +family meal. In the old and simple house the table would be placed at +the side of the hearth, and, as the household sat round it, master and +man together, a part of the meal, set aside on a special sacred dish +(<i>patella</i>), would be thrown into the flames as the gods' portion. +Sometimes incense might be added, and later a libation of wine: when +images had become common, the little statuettes of Lares and Penates +would be fetched from the shrine (<i>lararium</i>) and placed upon the +table in token of their presence at the meal. Even in the luxurious, +many-roomed house of the imperial epoch, when the dining-table was far +from the kitchen-hearth, a pause was made in the meal and an offering +sent out to the household-gods, nor would the banquet proceed until +the slave had returned and announced that the gods were favourable +(<i>deos propitios</i>): so persistent was this tradition of domestic +piety. Prayer might be made at this point on special <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>occasions to +special deities, as, for instance, before the beginning of the sowing +of the crops, appeal was made to Iuppiter, and a special portion of +the meal (<i>daps</i>) was set aside for him. The sanctification of the one +occasion when the whole household met in the day cannot fail to have +had its effect on the domestic life, and, even if it was no direct +incentive to morality, it yet bound the family together in a sense of +dependence on a higher power for the supply of their daily needs.</p> + +<p>We observed incidentally how the small events of domestic life were +given their religious significance, particularly in connection with +the worship of Lar and Genius, but to complete the sketch of domestic +religion, we must examine a little more closely its relation to the +process of life, and especially to the two important occasions of +birth and marriage. In no department of life is the specialisation of +function among the <i>numina</i> more conspicuous than in connection with +birth and childhood. Apart from the general protection of Iuno Lucina, +the prominent divinity of childbirth, we can count in the records that +have come down to us some twenty subordinate spirits, who from the +moment of conception to the moment of birth watched, each in its own +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>particular sphere, over the mother and the unborn child. As soon as +the birth had taken place began a series of ceremonies, which are of +particular interest, as they seem to belong to a very early stage of +religious thought, and have a markedly rustic character. Immediately a +sacred meal was offered to the two field-deities, Picumnus and +Pilumnus, and then the Roman turned his attention to the practical +danger of fever for the mother and child. At night three men gathered +round the threshold, one armed with an axe, another with a stake, and +a third with a broom: the two first struck the threshold with their +implements, the third swept out the floor. Over this ceremony were +said to preside three <i>numina</i>, Intercidona (connected with the axe), +Pilumnus (connected with the stake, <i>pilum</i>), and Deverra (connected +with the act of sweeping). Its object was, as Varro explains it, to +avert the entrance of the half-wild Silvanus by giving three +unmistakeable signs of human civilisation; we shall probably not be +wrong in seeing in it rather an actual hacking, beating, and sweeping +away of evil spirits. On the ninth day after birth, in the case of a +boy, on the eighth in the case of a girl, occurred the festival of the +naming (<i>solemnitas nominalium</i>). The ceremony was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>one of +purification (<i>dies lustricus</i> is its alternative title), and a +piacular offering was made to preserve the child from evil influences +in the future. Friends brought presents, especially neck-bands in the +form of a half-moon (<i>lunulae</i>), and the golden balls (<i>bullae</i>) which +were worn as a charm round the neck until the attainment of manhood.</p> + +<p>Of the numerous petty divinities which watched over the child's early +years we have already given some account. In their protection he +remained until he arrived at puberty, about the age of seventeen, when +with due religious ceremony he entered on his manhood. At home, on the +morning of the festival, he solemnly laid aside the <i>bulla</i> and the +purple-striped garb of childhood (<i>toga praetexta</i>) before the shrine +of the household gods, and made them a thank-offering for their +protection in the past. Afterwards, accompanied by his father and +friends and clad now in the <i>toga virilis</i>, he went solemnly to the +Capitol, and, after placing a contribution in the coffers of +Iuventas—or probably in earlier times of Iuppiter Iuventus—made an +offering to the supreme deity Iuppiter Capitolinus. The sacred +character of the early years of a young Roman's life could hardly be +more closely marked.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>Though <i>confarreatio</i> was the only essentially religious form of +marriage, and was sanctified by the presence of the <i>pontifex maximus</i> +and the <i>flamen Dialis</i>, yet marriage even in the less religious +ceremony of <i>coemptio</i> was always a <i>sacrum</i>. It must not take place +on the days of state-festivals (<i>feriae</i>), nor on certain other <i>dies +religiosi</i>, such as those of the Vestalia or the feast of the dead +(<i>Parentalia</i>). Both the marriage itself and the preliminary betrothal +(<i>sponsalia</i>) had to receive the divine sanction by means of auspices, +and in the ceremonies of both rites the religious element, though +bound up with superstition and folk-customs, emerges clearly enough. +The central ceremony of the <i>confarreatio</i> was an act partly of +sacrifice, partly, one might almost say, of communion. The bride and +bridegroom sat on two chairs united to one another and covered with a +lambskin, they offered to Iuppiter bloodless offerings of a rustic +character (<i>fruges et molam salsam</i>), they employed in the sacrifice +the fundamental household necessaries, water, fire, and salt, and +themselves ate of the sacred spelt-cake (<i>libus farreus</i>), from which +the ceremony derived its name. The crucial point in the more civil +ceremony of <i>coemptio</i> was the purely human and legal act of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>joining of hands (<i>dextrarum iunctio</i>), but it was immediately +followed by the sacrifice of a victim, which gave the ceremony a +markedly religious significance. The customs connected with the +bringing of the bride to the bridegroom's house—so beautifully +depicted in Catullus' <i>Epithalamium</i>—her forcible abduction from her +parents, the ribaldry of the bridegroom's companions, the throwing of +nuts as a symbol of fecundity, the carrying of the bride over the +threshold, a relic probably of primitive marriage by capture, the +untying of the bridal knot on the bridal couch—are perhaps more akin +to superstition than religion, but we may notice two points in the +proceedings. Firstly, the three coins (<i>asses</i>) which the bride +brought with her, one to give to her husband as a token of dowry, one +to be offered at the hearth to her new Lar Familiaris, one to be +offered subsequently at the nearest <i>compitum</i> (a clear sign of +connection between the household Lar and those of the fields); and +secondly, an echo of the feature so marked all through domestic life, +the crowd of little <i>numina</i>, who took their part in assisting the +ceremony. There was Domiduca, who brought the bride to the +bridegroom's house, Iterduca, who looked after her on the transit, +Unxia, who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>anointed her, Cinxia, who bound and unbound her girdle, +and many others.</p> + +<p>This sketch of the household worship of the Romans will, I hope, have +justified my contention that there was in it an element more truly +'religious' than anything we should gather from the ceremonies of the +state. The ideas are simpler, the <i>numina</i> seem less cold and more +protective, the worshippers more sensible of divine aid. When we have +looked at the companion picture of the farmer in the fields, we shall +go on to see how the worship of the agricultural household is the +prototype and basis of the state-cult, but first we must consider +briefly the very difficult question of the relation of the living to +the dead.</p> + +<p><b>3. Relation of the Living and the Dead.</b>—The worship of the spirits +of dead ancestors is so common a feature in most primitive religions +that it may seem strange even to doubt whether it existed among the +Romans, but, although the question is one of extreme difficulty, and +the evidence very insufficient, I am inclined to believe that, though +the living were always conscious of their continued relation to the +dead, and sensitive of the influence of the powers of the underworld, +yet there was not, strictly speaking, any cult of the dead. Let us +attempt briefly to collect the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>salient features in ritual, and see to +what conclusion they point as to the underlying belief.</p> + +<p>One of the most remarkable facts in domestic worship is that, whereas +the moment of birth and the other great occasions of life are +surrounded with religious ceremony and belief, the moment of death +passes without any trace of religious accompaniment: it is as though +the dying man went out into another world where the ceremonials of +this life can no more avail him, nor its gods protect him. As to his +state after death, opinion varied at different times under different +influences, but the simple early notion, connected especially with the +practice of burial as opposed to cremation,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> was that his spirit +just sank into the earth, where it rested and returned from time to +time to the upper world through certain openings in the ground +(<i>mundi</i>), whose solemn uncovering was one of the regular observances +of the festal calendar: later, no doubt, a more spiritual notion +prevailed, though it never reached definiteness or universality. One +idea, however, seems always to be prominent, that the happiness of the +dead could be much affected by the due performance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>of the funeral +rites; hence it was the most solemn duty of the heir to perform the +<i>iusta</i> for the dead, and if he failed in any respect to carry them +out, he could only atone for his omission by the annual sacrifice of a +sow (<i>porca praecidanea</i>) to Ceres and Tellus—to the divinities of +the earth, be it noticed, and not to the dead themselves. The actual +funeral was not a religious ceremony; a procession was formed +(originally at night) of the family and friends, in which the body of +the dead was carried—accompanied by the busts (<i>imagines</i>) of his +ancestors—to a tomb outside the town, and was there laid in the +grave. The family on their return proceeded at once to rites of +purification from the contamination which had overtaken them owing to +the presence of a dead body. Two ceremonies were performed, one for +the purification of the house by the sacrifice of a sow (<i>porca +praesentanea</i>) to Ceres accompanied by a solemn sweeping out of refuse +(<i>exverræ</i>), the other the lustration of their own persons by fire and +water. This done, they sat down with their friends to a funeral feast +(<i>silicernium</i>), which, Cicero tells us, was regarded as an honour +rather to the surviving members of the family than to the dead, so +that mourning was not worn. Two other ceremonies within the following +week, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span><i>feriae denicales</i> and the <i>novendiale sacrum</i>, brought the +religious mourning to a close. Not that the dead were forgotten after +the funeral: year by year, on the anniversaries of death and burial, +and on certain fixed occasions known by such suggestive titles as 'the +day of roses' and 'the day of violets,' the family would revisit the +tomb and make simple offerings of salt cake (<i>mola salsa</i>), of bread +soaked in wine, or garlands of flowers: there is some trace, on such +occasions, of prayer, but it would seem to be rather the repetition of +general religious formulæ than a petition to the dead for definite +blessings.</p> + +<p>Such are the principal features of the family ritual in relation to +their dead; but if we are to form any just notion of belief, we must +supplement them by reference to the ceremonies of the state, which +here, as elsewhere, are very clearly the household-cult 'writ large.' +In the Calendars we find two obvious celebrations in connection with +the dead, taking place at different seasons of the year, and +consisting of ceremonies markedly different in character. In the +gloomy month of February—associated with solemn lustrations—occurs +the festival known popularly (though not in the Calendars) as the +Parentalia or dies Parentales, that is, the days of sacrifice in +connection <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>with the dead members of the family (<i>parentes</i>, +<i>parentare</i>). It begins with the note on February 13, <i>Virgo Vestalis +parentat</i>, and continues till the climax, <i>Feralia</i>, on February 21. +During these days the magistrates laid aside the insignia of their +offices, the temples were shut, marriages were forbidden, and every +family carried out at the tombs of its relatives ceremonies resembling +those of the <i>sacra privata</i>. The whole season closed on February 22 +with the festival of the Caristia or <i>cara cognatio</i>, a family reunion +of the survivors in a kind of 'love-feast,' which centred in the +worship of the Lar Familiaris. Here we seem to have simply, as in the +family rites, a peaceful and solemn acknowledgment by the community as +a whole of the still subsisting relation of the living and the dead. +On the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May occurs the Lemuria, a ceremony of a +strikingly different order. Once again temples are shut and marriages +forbidden, but the ritual is of a very different nature. The <i>Lemures</i> +or <i>Larvae</i>—for there seems to be little distinction between the two +names—are regarded no longer as members of the family to be welcomed +back to their place, but as hostile spirits to be exorcised.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>The +head of the house rises from bed at midnight, washes, and walks +barefoot through the house, making signs for the aversion of evil +spirits. In his mouth he carries black beans—always a chthonic +symbol—which he spits out nine times without looking round, saying, +as he does so, 'With these I redeem me and mine': he washes again, and +clanks brass vessels together; nine times he repeats the formula, +'depart, Manes of our fathers' (no doubt using the dignified title +Manes euphemistically), and then finally turns round. Here we have in +a quite unmistakeable manner the feeling of the hostility of the +spirits of the dead: they must be given their appropriate food and got +out of the place as quickly as possible. Some scholars have attempted +to explain the difference between these two festivals on the +assumption that the Parentalia represents the commemoration of the +duly buried dead, the Lemuria the apotropaic right for the aversion of +the unburied, and therefore hostile spirits; but Ovid has given a far +more significant hint, when he tells us that the Lemuria was the more +ancient festival of the two.</p> + +<p>So far we have had no indication of anything approaching divinity in +connection with the dead or the underworld as distinct from the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>earth-goddesses, but the evidence for it, though vague and shadowy, is +not wanting. Certain mysterious female deities, Tarpeia, Acca +Larentia, Carna, and Laverna, of whom late ætiological myth had its +own explanation, have, in all probability, been rightly interpreted by +Mommsen as divinities of the lower world: the commemorative 'sacrifice +at the tomb,' which we hear of in connection with the first two, was +in reality, we may suppose, an offering to a chthonic deity at a +<i>mundus</i>. A rather more tangible personality is Vediovis, who three +times a year has his celebration (<i>Agonia</i> not <i>feriae</i>) in the +Calendar: he, as his name denotes, must be the 'opposite of Iove,' +that is, probably, his chthonic counterpart, a notion sufficiently +borne out by his subsequent identification with the Greek Pluto. +Finally, of course, there is that vague body, the Di Manes, 'the good +gods,' the principal deities of the world of the dead; to them +invocations are addressed, and they have their place in the formulæ of +the <i>parentalia</i> and the opening of the <i>mundi</i>.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> In connection with +them, acting as a link with the female deities, we have the strange +goddess Genita Mana, the 'spirit of birth and death.'</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>Controversy is acute as to the interpretation of these facts, +especially in regard to the question whether or no the spirits of the +dead were actually worshipped. I would hazard the following +reconstruction of history as consistent with what we otherwise know of +Roman religion, and with the evidence before us. From the earliest +times the Roman looked upon his dead relations as in some sense +living, lying beneath the earth, but capable alike of returning to the +world above and of influencing in some vague way the fortunes of the +living, especially in relation to the crops which sprung from the +ground in which they lay. At first, when his religion was one of fear, +he regarded the dead as normally hostile, and their presence as +something to be averted; this is the stage which gave birth to the +Lemuria. As civilisation increased, and the sense of the unity of +household and community developed, fear, proving ungrounded, gave +place to a kindlier feeling of the continued existence of the dead as +members of household and state, and even in some sense as an +additional bond between the living: this is the period which produced +the <i>sacra privata</i> and the Parentalia. When the <i>numen</i>-feeling began +to pass into that of <i>deus</i>, in the first place a connection was felt +between the spirits of the dead and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>deities of the earth +associated with the growth of the crops, in the second the notion that +the underworld must have its gods as well as the world above, produced +the shadowy female deities and Vediovis. Lastly, the same kind of +feeling which added Parentalia to Lemuria developed the vague general +notion of the Di Manes, not the deified spirits of the dead, but +peaceful and on the whole kindly divinities holding sway in the world +of dead spirits, yet accessible to the prayers of the living. The +dead, then, were not themselves worshipped, but they needed +commemoration and kindly gifts, and they had in their lower world +deities to whom prayer might be made and worship given.</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 10%;' /> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> It is right to state that there is a totally different +theory, according to which the Lares were the spirits of the dead +ancestors and the Lar Familiaris an embodiment, as it were, of all the +family dead.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> It is significant that even when the dead were cremated, +one bone was carefully preserved in order to be symbolically buried.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> We may note that, though it is a state festival, our +information is solely of rites in individual households.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Their mention in sepulchral inscriptions dates from the +time of the Empire, when a new conception of their nature had sprung +up.</p></div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>WORSHIP OF THE FIELDS</h4> +<br /> + +<p>The life of the early Roman in the fields, his activities, his hopes +and fears, are reflected in the long list of agricultural festivals +which constitute the greater part of the celebrations in the Calendar, +and follow closely the seasons and occupations of the agricultural +year. We are, of course, in the Calendar dealing, to speak strictly, +with the worship of the state, and not with the semi-private festivals +of groups of farmers, but in many instances, such as the Robigalia, +the state seems only to have taken over the cult of the farmers, +preserving carefully the site on which the celebration took place; in +others, such as the Terminalia and the Parilia, it seems to have +established, as it were, a state-counterpart of a rite performed +independently at many rustic centres: in both cases we are justified +in inferring the practice of the early Roman agriculturalist. We shall +see that in most cases these festivals are associated—though <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>often +loosely enough—with the worship of a particular divinity. Sometimes, +however,—as in the case of the Lupercalia—it is very difficult to +discover who this divinity was; in other festivals, such as the +Robigalia, it looks as if the eponymous deity was a comparatively late +development. We may, therefore, suppose, on the analogy of what we +have already seen to be the general lines of development in Roman +religion, that the festivals in origin centred round a purpose rather +than a personality, and were addressed 'to all spirits whom it might +concern'; and that later, when the <i>deus</i> notion was on the increase, +they either attached themselves to some god whose personality was +already distinct, as the Vinalia were attached to Iuppiter, or +'developed' a deity of their own. Among these deities, strictly +functional as a rule and existing only in connection with their +special festival, we shall notice the frequent recurrence of a +divinity pair, not, of course, mythologically related as husband and +wife, but representing, perhaps, the male and female aspects of the +same process of development.</p> + +<p>The festivals divide themselves naturally into three groups: those of +Spring, expressive of the hopes and fears for the growing crops and +herds; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>those of Summer, the festivals of fulfilment, including the +celebration of harvest; and those of Winter, the festivals of sowing, +of social rejoicing, and in the later months of purificatory +anticipation of the coming year.</p> + +<p><b>1. Festivals of Spring.</b>—The old Roman year—as may be seen clearly +enough from the names of the months still known by numbers, September, +October, etc.—began in March: according to tradition Romulus reckoned +a year of ten months altogether, and Numa added January and February. +The Spring months properly speaking may be reckoned as March, April, +and May. In March there were in the developed Calendar no festivals of +an immediately recognisable agricultural character, but the whole +month was practically consecrated to its eponymous deity, Mars. Now, +to the Roman of the Republic, Mars was undoubtedly the deity +associated with war, and his special festivals in this month are of a +warlike character: on the 9th the priests (<i>Salii</i>) began the ancient +custom of carrying his sacred shields (<i>ancilia</i>) round the town from +one ordained resting-place to another: on the 19th, Quinquatrus, the +shields were solemnly purified, and on the 23rd the same ceremony was +performed with the war-trumpets: the Equirria <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>(horse-races) of March +14 may have had an agricultural origin—we shall meet with races later +on as a feature of rustic festivals—but they were certainly +celebrated in a military manner. Yet there is good reason for +believing that Mars was in origin associated not with war, but with +the growth of vegetation: he was, as we shall see, the chief deity +addressed in the solemn lustration of the fields (<i>Ambarvalia</i>), and +if our general notion of the development of religion with the growing +needs of the agricultural community crystallising into a state be +correct, it may well be that a deity originally concerned with the +interests of the farmer took on himself the protection of the soldier, +when the fully developed state came into collision with its +neighbours. If so, we may well have in these recurring festivals of +Mars the sense, as Mr. Warde Fowler has put it, of 'some great <i>numen</i> +at work, quickening vegetation, and calling into life the powers of +reproduction in man and the animals.' Possibly another agricultural +note is struck in the Liberalia of the 17th: though the cult of Liber +was almost entirely overlaid by his subsequent identification with +Dionysus, it seems right to recognise in him and his female +counterpart, Libera, a general spirit of creativeness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>The character of April is much more clearly marked: the month is +filled with a series of festivals—all of a clearly agricultural +nature—prayers for the crops now in the earth, and the purification +of the men and animals on the farm. The series opens with the +Fordicidia on the 15th, when pregnant cows were sacrificed: their +unborn calves were torn from them and burnt, the ashes being kept by +the Vestal Virgin in Vesta's storehouse (<i>penus Vestæ</i>) for use at the +Parilia. The general symbolism of fertility is very clear; the goddess +associated with the festival is Tellus, the earth herself, and the +local origin of these festivals is shown in the fact that not only was +the sacrifice made for the whole people on the Capitol, but separately +in each one of the <i>curiae</i>. The Fordicidia is closely followed by the +Cerealia on the 19th—the festival of another earth-goddess (<i>Ceres</i>, +<i>creare</i>)—more especially connected with the growth of corn. A very +curious feature of the ritual was the fastening of fire-brands to the +tails of foxes, which were then let loose in what was afterwards the +Circus Maximus: a symbol possibly, as Wissowa thinks, of sunlight, +possibly of the vegetation-spirit. But the most important of the April +ceremonies is undoubtedly the Parilia of the 21st, the festival of the +very ancient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>rustic <i>numen</i>, Pales. Ovid's<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> description of the +celebration is so interesting and so full of the characteristic colour +of the Roman rustic festivals that I may perhaps be pardoned for +reproducing it at greater length. 'Shepherd,' he says, addressing the +rustic worshipper, 'at the first streak of dawn purify thy well-fed +flocks: let water first besprinkle them, and a branch sweep clean the +ground. Let the folds be adorned with leaves and branches fastened to +them, while a trailing wreath covers the gay-decked gates. Let blue +flames rise from the living sulphur and the sheep bleat loud as she +feels the touch of the smoking sulphur. Burn the male olive-branch and +the pine twig and juniper, and let the blazing laurel crackle amid the +hearth. A basket full of millet must go with the millet cakes: this is +the food wherein the country goddess finds pleasure most of all. Give +her too her own share of the feast and her pail of milk, and when her +share has been set aside, then with milk warm from the cow make prayer +to Pales, guardian of the woods.' The poet then recites a long prayer, +in which the farmer first begs forgiveness for any unwitting sins he +may have committed against the rustic deities, such as trespassing on +their groves or sheltering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>his flocks beneath their altar, and then +prays for the aversion of disease and the prosperity of crops, flocks, +and herds. 'Thus must the goddess be won, this prayer say four times +turning to the sunrise, and wash thy hands in the running stream. Then +set the rustic bowl upon the table in place of the wine-bowl, and +drink the snowy milk and dark must, and soon through the heaps of +crackling straw leap in swift course with eager limbs.' All the +worshippers then set to leaping through the blazing fires, even the +flocks and herds were driven through, and general hilarity reigned. +Many points of detail might be noticed, such as that in the urban +counterpart of the festival, which Ovid carefully distinguishes from +the country celebrations, the fire was sprinkled with the ashes from +the calves of the Fordicidia and the blood of Mars' October +horse—another link between Mars and agriculture. But it is most +interesting to note the double character of the ceremony—as a +purification of man and beast on the one hand, and on the other a +prayer for the prosperity of the season to come. Three special +festivals remain in April. At the Vinalia (<i>priora</i>) of the 23rd, the +wine-skins of the previous year were opened and the wine tasted, and, +we may suppose, supplication was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>made for the vintage to come, the +festival being dedicated to the sky-god, Iuppiter. At the Robigalia of +the 25th the offering of a dog was made for the aversion of mildew +(<i>robigo</i>), to Robigus (who looks like a developed eponymous deity) at +the fifth milestone on the Via Claudia—the ancient boundary of Roman +territory. The Floralia of the 28th does not occur in the old +Calendars, probably because it was a moveable feast (<i>feriae +conceptivae</i>), but it is an unmistakeable petition to the <i>numen</i> +Flora for the blossoming of the season's flowers.</p> + +<p>May was a month of more critical importance for the welfare of the +crops, and therefore its festivals were mostly of a more sombre +character. The 9th, 11th, and 13th were the days set apart for the +Lemuria, the aversion of the hostile spirits of the dead, of which we +have already spoken, and a similarly gloomy character probably +attached to the Agonia of Vediovis on the 21st. But of far the +greatest interest is the moveable feast of the Ambarvalia, the great +lustration of the fields, which took place towards the end of the +month: the date of its occurrence was no doubt fixed according to the +state of the crops in any given year. As the individual farmer +purified his own fields for the aversion of evil, so a solemn +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>lustration of the boundaries of the state was performed by special +priests, known as the Arval brethren (<i>fratres Arvales</i>). With +ceremonial dancing (<i>tripudium</i>) they moved along the boundary-marks +and made the farmer's most complete offering of the pig, sheep, and ox +(<i>suovetaurilia</i>): the fruits of the last year and the new harvest +(<i>aridae et virides</i>) played a large part in the ceremonial, and a +solemn litany was recited for the aversion of every kind of pest from +the crops. In Virgil's account the prayer is made to Ceres, and we +know that in imperial times, when the Ambarvalia became very closely +connected with the worship of the imperial house, the centre of the +cult was the earth-goddess, Dea Dia; but in the earliest account of +the rustic ceremony which we possess in Cato, Mars is addressed in the +unmistakeable character of an agricultural deity. 'Father Mars, I pray +and beseech thee that thou mayest be gracious and favourable to me, to +my home, and my household, for which cause I have ordained that the +offering of pig, sheep, and ox be carried round my fields, my land, +and my farm: that thou mayest avert, ward off, and keep afar all +disease, visible and invisible, all barrenness, waste, misfortune, and +ill weather: that thou mayest suffer our crops, our corn, our vines +and bushes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>to grow and come to prosperity: that thou mayest preserve +the shepherds and the flocks in safety, and grant health and strength +to me, to my home, and my household.' We have perhaps here another +rustic ceremony addressed in origin to all <i>numina</i>, whom it might +concern, and, as it were, specialising itself from time to time in an +appeal to one definite deity or another, but it is also clear evidence +of an early agricultural association of Mars. The Ambarvalia is one of +the most picturesque of the field ceremonies, and a peculiarly +beautiful and imaginative description of it may be found in the first +chapter of Pater's <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>.</p> + +<p>In June and July the farmer was waiting for the completion of the +harvest, and the great state-festivals of the period are not +agricultural.</p> + +<p><b>2. Festivals of the Harvest.</b>—In August the farmer's hopes are at +last realised, and the harvest is brought in. The season is marked by +two closely connected festivals on the 21st and 25th in honour of the +old divinity-pair, Consus (<i>condere</i>), the god of the storehouse and +Ops, the deity of the wealth of harvest. At the Consualia, an offering +is made by the <i>flamen Quirinalis</i>, assisted by the Vestal virgins, at +an underground altar in the Circus Maximus, specially uncovered for +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>occasion: here we have probably not so much the notion of a +chthonic deity, as a relic of the simple practices of an early +agricultural age, when the crops were stored underground. The beasts +who had taken part in the harvest were released from their labours +during the day, and were decorated with flowers: the festival included +a race of mules, the regular Italian beasts of burden. Four days after +this general festivity occurred the second harvest-ceremony of the +Opiconsivia, held in the shrine (<i>sacrarium</i>) of the Regia, and +attended only by the <i>pontifex maximus</i> and the Vestal virgins. This +is clearly the state-harvest of the regal period, the symbolic storing +of the state-crops in the sacred storehouse of the palace by the king +and his daughters. Both festivals are significant, and we shall meet +with Consus and Ops again in close connection in December. The +<i>Portunalia</i> of the 17th may have been another harvest-home, if we can +believe the old authorities, who tell us that Portunus was a 'god of +doors' (<i>portae</i>).</p> + +<p>The <i>Vinalia Rustica</i> of August 19 we cannot sufficiently interpret +through lack of information: it cannot, of course, have been the +festival of the vintage, for it is too early: it may have been a +propitiatory ceremony for the ripening grapes, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>which case it was +probably connected with the <i>auspicatio vindemiae</i>, in which the +<i>flamen Dialis</i> (note again the association of Iuppiter and the vine) +solemnly plucked the first grapes; or it may be a festival of wine, +not vines, in which case its main feature would most likely be the +opening of the last year's vintage.</p> + +<p>September contains no great festival, and the harvest-season closes on +October 11 with the <i>Meditrinalia</i>—the nearest approach to a +thanksgiving for the vintage. On that day the first must of the new +vintage and the wine of the old were solemnly tasted, apparently as a +spell against disease, the worshipper using the strange formula, 'I +drink the new and the old wine, with new wine and old I heal +(<i>medeor</i>) disease.' This ceremony gave its name to the festival and +was the cause of the subsequent evolution of an eponymous deity, +Meditrina, but there is little doubt that in origin here, as in the +other wine-festivals, the deity concerned was at first Iuppiter. Among +the other rustic ceremonies of the month we may notice the festival of +springs (<i>Fontinalia</i>) on October 13: wells were decorated with +garlands and flowers flung into the waters.</p> + +<p><b>3. Festivals of the Winter.</b>—The winter-festivals cannot be summed +up under one general <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>notion so easily as those of spring or summer, +but they fall fairly naturally into two groups—the festivals +immediately connected with agricultural life and those associated with +the dead and the underworld or with solemn purification. The main +action of the farmer's life during the winter is, of course, the +sowing of the next year's crop, which was commemorated in the ancient +festival of the Saturnalia on December 17. Though the Saturnalia is +perhaps the most familiar to us of all the Roman festivals, partly +from the allusions in the classics, especially in Horace, partly +because it is no doubt the source of many of our own Christmas +festivities, it is yet almost impossible now to recover anything of +its original Roman character. Greek influence set to work on it very +early, identifying Saturnus with Cronos and establishing him in a +Greek temple with all the accompaniments of Greek ritual. All the +familiar features of the festival—the freedom and license of the +slaves, the giving of presents, even the wax-candles, which are the +prototype of those on our own Christmas-tree—are almost certainly due +to Greek origin. We are left with nothing but the name Saturnus +(connected with the root of <i>semen</i>, <i>serere</i>) and the date to assure +us that we have here in reality a genuine Roman festival of the sowing +of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>the crops. Of a similar nature—marking, as Ovid tells us, the +completion of the sowing—was the <i>feriae sementivae</i> or Paganalia, +associated with the earth-goddesses, Ceres and Tellus. Meal-cakes and +a pregnant sow were the offerings, the beasts who had helped in the +ploughing were garlanded, and prayer was made for the seed resting in +the ground. A curious feature of the winter worship is the repetition +of festivals to the harvest deities, Consus and Ops, separated by the +same interval of three days, on December 15 and 19: it may be that we +have here an indication of the final completion of the harvest, or, as +Mr. Warde Fowler has suggested, a ceremonial opening of the +storehouses, to see that the harvest is not rotting. Among the other +country festivals of the period we may notice that of Carmenta, on the +11th and 15th of January: she seems to have been in origin a +water-<i>numen</i>, but was early associated with childbirth: hence the +rigid exclusion of men from her ceremonies and possibly the taboo on +leathern thongs, on the ground that nothing involving death must be +used in the worship of a deity of birth. The repetition of her +festival may possibly point to separate celebrations of the +communities of Palatine and Quirinal. At this time, too, occurred the +rustic ceremonies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>at the boundaries (<i>Terminalia</i>) and the offering +to the Lares at the 'marches' (<i>Compitalia</i>), of which we have spoken +in treating of the worship of the house.</p> + +<p>The other group of winter-festivals is of a much more gloomy and less +definitely rustic type, though they clearly date from the period of +the agricultural community. Of the Feralia of February 21, the +culmination of the festival of the kindred dead (<i>Parentalia</i>), we +have already spoken. The Larentalia is a very mysterious occasion, and +was supposed by the Romans themselves to be an offering 'at the tomb' +of a legendary Acca Larentia, mistress of Hercules. But we have seen +reason to think that Larentia was in reality a deity of the dead, and +the 'tomb' a <i>mundus</i>: if so, we have another link between the winter +season and the worship of the underworld. There remains the weird +festival of the Lupercalia on February 15, to which we have had +occasion to refer several times, and which has become more familiar to +most of us than other Roman festivals owing to its political use by +Mark Antony in 44 <span class="fakesc">B.C.</span> As we have argued already, it seems to +belong to the very oldest stratum of the Palatine settlement, and we +may therefore appropriately close this account of the early festivals +with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>somewhat fuller description of it. The worshippers assembled +at the Lupercal, a cave on the Palatine hill: there goats and a dog +were sacrificed, and two youths belonging to the two colleges of +Fabian and Quintian (or Quintilian) Luperci had their foreheads +smeared with the knife used for the sacrifice and wiped with wool +dipped in milk—at which point it was ordained that they should laugh. +Then they girt on the skins of the slain goats and, after feasting, +ran their course round the boundaries of the Palatine hill, followed +each by his own company of youths, and striking women on their way +with strips, known as <i>februae</i> or <i>Iunonis amicula</i>, cut from the +goats' hides. Here we have a summary of many of the important points +which we have noticed in the rustic festivals: from the pre-Roman +stratum comes the idea of communion with the sacrificed animal in the +smearing of the blood and the wearing of the skin, and also the magic +charm involved in the striking of the women to procure fertility: it +is typical of the true feeling of Roman religion that we cannot with +any certainty tell what deity was associated with the rite, though +probably it was Faunus: the rustic character of the ceremony is +indicated by the bowl of milk in which the wool was dipped and the +sacrifice of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>goats: the idea of lustration is clearly marked in the +course round the boundaries: the original Palatine settlement stands +out in the limits of that course and the site of the Lupercal, and the +later synœcismus is seen in the, presumably subsequent, addition of +the second college of Luperci. A careful study of the Lupercalia as an +epitome of the character and development of the Roman agricultural +festivals, though it would not show the brighter aspect of some of the +spring and summer celebrations, would yet give a true notion of the +history and spirit of the whole.</p> + +<br /> +<hr style='width: 10%;' /> + +<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4> + +<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Ov., <i>Fast.</i>, iv. 735.</p></div> + + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>WORSHIP OF THE STATE</h4> +<br /> + +<p>Since, in the matter of religion, the Roman state is in the main but +the agricultural household magnified, we shall not, in considering its +worship, be entering on a new stratum of ideas, but rather looking at +the development of notions and sentiments already familiar. To deal, +however, with the state-worship in full would not only far exceed the +limits of this sketch, but would lead us away from religious ideas +into the region of what we might now call 'ecclesiastical management.' +I propose therefore to confine myself to two points, firstly, the +broadening of the old conceptions of the household and the fields and +their adaptation to the life of the state, and secondly—to be treated +very shortly and as an indication of the Roman character—the +organisation of religion.</p> + +<p><b>1. Development of the Worship of House and Fields.</b>—Here we shall +find two main <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>characteristics. The state in the first place, as we +have several times hinted in anticipation, establishes its own +counterpart of the household and rustic cults and adapts to its own +use the ideas which they involve: in the second, and particularly in +connection with some of the field-deities, it evolves new and very +frequently abstract notions, foreign to the life of the independent +country households, but necessary and vital to the life of an +organised community. Let us look first at the fate of the household +deities.</p> + +<p><b>Ianus.</b>—We left Ianus as the <i>numen</i> of the house-door: he passes +into the state exactly in the same capacity: the state too has its +'door,' the gate at the north-east corner of the Forum, and this +becomes the seat of his state-cult—the door which, according to +Augustan legend, is opened in the time of war and only shut when Rome +is at peace with all the world. But reflection soon gets to work on +Ianus: a door has two sides, it can both open and shut; therefore, as +early as the song of the Salii, he has developed the cult-epithets +'Opener,' 'Shutter' (<i>Patulci</i>, <i>Cloesi</i>), and as soon as he is +thought of as anything approaching a personality he is 'two-headed' +(<i>bifrons</i>), as he appears in later representations. The door again is +the first thing you come to in entering <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>a house: the 'door-spirit' +then, with that tendency to abstraction which we shall see shortly in +other cases, becomes the god of beginnings. He watches over the very +first beginning of human life in his character of <i>Consevius</i>; to him +is sacred the first hour of the day (<i>pater matutinus</i>), the Calends +of every month, and the first month of the year (<i>Ianuarius</i>); to him +too is offered by the <i>rex sacrorum</i> the first sacrifice of the year, +the Agonium on the 9th of January. In this capacity, moreover, his +name comes first in all the formulæ of prayer, and he is looked +upon—not indeed as the father of the gods—for that is a much too +anthropomorphic notion—but as what we might now term their 'logical +antecedent': <i>divum deus</i>, as the song of the Salii quaintly puts it, +<i>principium deorum</i>, as later interpretation explained it. Yet through +all he remains the most typical Roman deity: he does not acquire a +temple till 217 <span class="fakesc">B.C.</span>, nor a bust until quite late, nor is he +ever identified with a Greek counterpart. In his capacity as <i>pater +matutinus</i> he has a native female counterpart in Matuta, a dawn-deity, +who becomes a protectress in childbirth, and as such is the centre of +the matrons' festival, the Matralia of June 11.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span><b>Vesta.</b>—The history of Vesta is perhaps less romantic, but it +affords a more exact parallel between household and state. In the +primitive community the king's hearth is not merely of symbolical +importance, but of great practical utility, in that it is kept +continually burning as the source of fire on which the individual +householder may draw: hence it is the duty of the king's daughters to +care for it and keep the flame perpetually alight. In Rome the temple +of Vesta is the king's hearth, situated, as one would expect, in close +proximity to the <i>regia</i>. The fire is kept continually blazing except +on the 1st of March of every year, when it is allowed to go out and is +ceremonially renewed. The Vestal virgins, sworn to perpetual virginity +and charged with the preservation of the sacred flame, are 'the king's +daughters,' living in a kind of convent (<i>atrium Vestæ</i>) and under the +charge of the king's representative, the <i>pontifex maximus</i>. It is +their duty too, as the natural cooks of the sacred royal household, to +make the salt cake (<i>mola salsa</i>) to be used at the year's festivals +and to preserve it and other sacred objects, such as the ashes of the +Fordicidia, in the storehouse of Vesta (<i>penus Vestæ</i>). In the month +of June from the 7th to the 15th, with a climax on the 9th, the day +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>of the Vestalia, the matrons who all the year round have tended their +own hearths, come in solemn procession bare-footed to make their +homely offerings at the state-hearth, and the virgins meanwhile offer +the cakes that they have made. For eight days the ceremony continues, +during which time the bakers and millers keep holiday; the days are +<i>religiosi</i> (marriages are unlucky and other taboos are observed) and +also <i>nefasti</i> (no public business may be performed); until the +ceremony closes on the 15th, with the solemn cleansing of the temple +and the casting of the refuse into the Tiber, and then the normal life +of the state may be renewed—Q. St. D. F. (<i>Quando Stercus Delatum +Fas</i>) is the unique entry in the Calendars. This is all less +imaginative than the development of Ianus, but the underlying feeling +is intensely Roman and there could be no clearer idea of the natural +adaptation of the household-cult to the religion of the state.</p> + +<p><b>Penates, Lares, and Genius.</b>—The other household deities too have +their counterpart, though not so prominently marked, in the worship of +the state. The magistrates, on entering office, took oath by Iuppiter +and the <i>Di Penates populi Romani Quiritium</i>, and that the conception +was as wide in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>state as in the household is shown by the fact +that on less formal occasions the formula appears as <i>Iuppiter et +ceteri di omnes immortales</i>. The Penates of the state then would +include all the state-deities; but that their original character is +not lost sight of we can see from the statement of Varro that in the +<i>penus Vestæ</i> (the 'state storehouse') were preserved their +<i>sigilla</i>—not apparently sensuous representations, but symbolic +objects, such as we have seen before in cases like that of the <i>silex</i> +of Iuppiter. The <i>Lares</i> again find their counterpart in the <i>Lares +Praestites</i> of the state, and their rustic festival, the Compitalia, +has its urban reproduction, which, as it involved considerable license +on the part of populace and slaves, was often in the later period of +the Republic a cause of serious political disturbance. Even the +Genius, though rather vaguely, passes over to the state and we hear of +the <i>Genius populi Romani</i> or the <i>Genius urbis Romæ</i>, with regard to +which Servius quotes from an inscription on a shield the +characteristic addition, <i>sive mas sive femina</i>: in much later times +we find the exact counterpart of the domestic worship of the Genius of +the <i>pater familias</i> in the cult of the Genius of the Emperor—the +foundation of the whole of the imperial worship.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>We have observed already how the cults of the fields were taken over +by the state and their counterparts established in the great festivals +of the Calendar. Naturally enough most of the deities concerned, +existing only for the part they played in these festivals, retained +their original character without further development. But with a few +it was different: it was their fate to acquire new characteristics and +new functions, and, developing with the needs of the community, to +become the great gods of the state: of these we must give some brief +account.</p> + +<p><b>Iuppiter.</b>—We have known Iuppiter hitherto either in connection with +certain very primitive survivals, or in the genuine Roman period as a +sky-<i>numen</i>, concerned with the grape-harvest in the two Vinalia and +the Meditrinalia, and the recipient at the family meal of a <i>daps</i> as +a general propitiation before the beginning of the sowing. As sky-god +he passes to the state: <i>Lucetius</i> (<i>lux</i>) is his title in the song of +the Salii and to him are sacred the Ides of every month—the time of +the full moon, when there is most light in the heavens by night as +well as day. In his agricultural connection he has his wine-festivals +in the state as in the country, and the household <i>daps</i> becomes the +more elaborate <i>epulum Iovis</i>, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>in which the whole community, as it +were, entertained him at a banquet. As a sky-deity, too, he is +particularly concerned with the thunderbolt and the lightning-flash +(<i>Iuppiter Fulmen</i>, <i>Fulgur</i>), and to him are sacred the always +ominous spots which had been struck by lightning (<i>bidentalia</i>): with +the more alarming occurrence of lightning by night he has a special +connection under the cult-title <i>Iuppiter Summanus</i>. But as the little +community grew, and especially perhaps after the union of the two +settlements, the worship of Iuppiter Feretrius, associated with the +sacred oak upon the Capitol—the hill between Palatine and +Quirinal—comes more and more into prominence as a bond of union and +the central point of the state's religious life: it tends indeed to +take the place of priority, which had previously been occupied by +Ianus. The community goes to war with its neighbours, and after a +signal victory the <i>spolia opima</i> must be dedicated on the sacred oak: +indeed Iuppiter is in a special sense with them in the battle and must +now be worshipped as the 'stayer of rout' (<i>Stator</i>) and the 'giver of +victory' (<i>Victor</i>). War is a new province of the state's activity, +but, characteristically enough, it does not evolve its own <i>numen</i>, +but enlarges the sphere of the somewhat elastic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>spirits already +existing. So too in the internal organisation of the state there is +felt the need of a religious sanction for public morality, and +Iuppiter—though vaguely at first—takes on him the character of a +deity of justice. In this connection he is primarily the god of oaths: +we have seen how his sacred <i>silex</i> was used in the oath of treaty: it +is also the most solemn witness to the oath of the citizen. Iuppiter +Lapis becomes specially the Dius Fidius, a cult-title which +subsequently sets up for itself and produces a further offshoot in the +abstract Fides. Finally, towards the end of our period the Iuppiter of +the Capitol emerges triumphant, as it were, from his struggle with his +rivals and, with the new title of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus,—the 'best +and greatest,' that is, of all the Iuppiters—takes his place as the +supreme deity of the Roman state and the personification of the +greatness and majesty of Rome itself. To his temple hereafter the +Roman youth will come to make his offering when he takes the dress of +manhood; here the magistrates will do sacrifice before entering on +their year of office: here the victorious general will pass in +procession with the spoils of his victory: on the walls shall be +suspended treaties with foreign nations and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>offerings sent by subject +princes and states from all quarters of the world: all that Rome is to +be, will be, as it were, embodied in the sky-spirit of the sacred oak, +the god of justice and of victory in war.</p> + +<p><b>Iuno.</b>—Iuppiter carries with him into the state-worship his female +counterpart, Iuno, with his own characteristics, in a certain degree, +and his own privileges. She is Lucina and Fulgura as he is Lucetius and +Fulgur: white cows are her offerings as white steers are his: as the +Ides are sacred to Iuppiter, so—though they are not a festival—are +the Calends to Iuno. But from the first she shows a certain +independence and develops on lines of her own. In the curious ceremony +of the fixing of the Nones (the first quarter of the month), held on +the Calends in the <i>curia Calabra</i>, she seems to appear as a +moon-goddess: the <i>rex sacrorum</i>, after a report from a <i>pontifex</i> as +to the appearance of the new moon, announces the result in the formula: +'I summon thee for five (or seven) days, hollow Iuno' (<i>dies te +quinque</i> [<i>septem</i>] <i>kalo, Iuno Covella</i>: hence the name <i>Kalendae</i>). +But far more prominently—either as a female divinity herself, or, as +some think, owing to the supposed influence of the moon on female +life—does Iuno figure as the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>deity of women, and especially in +association with childbirth and marriage. As <i>Lucina</i> she is, as we +have seen, the presiding deity of childbirth, and her festival on the +1st of March, though not in the Calendars (because confined to women +and not therefore a festival of the whole people), attained immense +popularity under the title of the Matronalia. She has too a general +superintendence of the rites of marriage, and the various little +<i>numina</i>, who play so prominent a part in the ceremonies, tend to +attach themselves to her as cult-titles. The festival of the +servant-maids in honour of Iuno Caprotina on the 7th of July shows the +same notion of Iuno as the women's goddess, which appears again in +common parlance when women speak of their Iuno, just as men do of their +Genius. Later on Iuno acquires the characteristics of majesty +(<i>Regina</i>) and protection in war (<i>Curitis</i>, <i>Sospita</i>), partly no +doubt as Iuppiter's counterpart, but more directly through the +introduction of cults from neighbouring Italian towns.</p> + +<p><b>Mars.</b>—We have seen reason to believe that in the earlier stages of +Roman religion Mars was a <i>numen</i> of vegetation, but though the +Ambarvalia was duly taken over into the state-cult and attained a very +high degree of importance, yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>there can be no doubt that in the +state-religion Mars was pre-eminently associated with war. Iuppiter +might help at need in averting defeat and awarding victory, but it was +with Mars that the general conduct of war rested. His sacred animal is +the warlike wolf, his symbols the spears and the sacred shields +(<i>ancilia</i>), which during his own month (<i>Martius</i>)—the 1st of which +is his special festival—his priests (<i>Salii</i>) wearing the full +war-dress (<i>trabea</i> and <i>tunica picta</i>) carry with sacred dance and +song round the city. His altar is in the Campus Martius, outside the +city-walls and therefore within the sphere of the <i>imperium militiae</i>, +and the other festivals associated with him are of a warlike +character: the races of the war-horse (Equirria) on March 14 and +February 27, and the great race on the Ides of October, when the +winner was solemnly slain: the lustration of the arms at the +Quinquatrus on March 19 and the Armilustrium of October 19—at the +beginning and end of the campaigning season: and the lustration of the +war-trumpets on the 23rd of March and the 23rd of May. But above all +in honour of Mars is held the great quinquennial <i>lustrum</i> associated +with the census, when the people are drawn up in military array around +his altar in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>the Campus Martius and the solemn offering of the +<i>suovetaurilia</i> (is this a faint relic of his agricultural character?) +after being carried three times round the gathered host, is offered on +his altar in prayer for the military future of the state. Hardly any +god in the state-cult has his character so clearly marked, and we may +regard Mars as a deity who, taking on new functions to suit the needs +of the times, almost entirely lost the traces of his original nature.</p> + +<p><b>Quirinus.</b>—Iuppiter and Mars then became the great state-deities of +the developed community and to them is added, as the contribution of +the Colline settlement, their own particular deity, Quirinus. He, like +them, has his own <i>flamen</i>; like Mars he has his <i>Salii</i>, and his +festival finds its place in the Calendars on February the 17th. But of +his ritual and character we know practically nothing: the ritual was +obscured because his festival coincided with the much more popular +festival of the <i>curiae</i>, the <i>stultorum feriae</i>: of his character, we +can only conjecture that he was to the Colline settlement what Mars +was to the Palatine, whereas later after the complete amalgamation he +seems to have been distinguished from Mars as representing 'armed +peace' rather than war—an idea which is borne out by the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>associations of the closely allied word <i>Quirites</i>. Be that as it may, +we have in Iuppiter, Mars, and Quirinus the great state-triad of the +synœcismus, who held their own until at the beginning of the next +epoch they were supplanted by the new Etruscan triad of the Capitol, +Iuppiter, Iuno and Minerva.</p> + +<p><b>2. Organisation.</b>—It might perhaps be thought that the organisation +of religion is a matter remote from its spirit, and is not therefore a +suitable subject for discussion, where the object is rather to bring +out underlying motives and ideas: but in dealing with the Roman +religion, where ceremonial and legal precision were so prominent, it +would be even misleading to omit some reference to the very +characteristic manner in which the state, taking over the rather +chaotic elements of the agricultural worship, organised them into +something like a consistent whole. Its most complete achievement in +this direction was without doubt the regulation of the religious year. +We have spoken many times of the Calendars (<i>Fasti</i>): it is necessary +now to obtain some clearer notion of what they were. In Rome itself +and various Italian towns have been found some thirty inscriptions, +one almost complete (Maffeiani), the others more or less fragmentary, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>giving the tables of the months and marking precisely the character +and occurrences of every day in the year. We may take as a specimen +the latter half of the month of August from the Fasti Maffeiani.</p> +<br /> + +<div class="centered"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="40%" summary="Calendar Example"> + <tr> + <td width="50%" class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">A. EID.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + <td width="50%" class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">C. VOLC.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">B. F.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">D. C.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">C. C.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">E. OPIC.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">D. C.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">F. C.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">E. PORT.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">G. VOLT.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">F. C.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">H.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">G. VIN. F.P.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">A. F.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">H. C.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">B. F.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">A. CONS.</span> <span class="np">NP.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"><span class="fakesc">C. C.</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdlb"><span class="fakesc">B. EN.</span></td> + <td class="tdlb1"> </td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<br /> + +<p>In the first column are given the nundinal letters of the days, +showing their position in the eight days' 'week' from one market day +(<i>nundinae</i>) to the next. In the second column are noted first the +great divisions of the month, Calends, Nones, and Ides, and then the +religious character of each individual day is indicated by certain +signs, whose explanations throw a good deal of light on Roman +religions notions. It will be seen that the letters of most frequent +occurrence are <span class="fakesc">F</span>, <span class="fakesc">C</span>, and <span class="fakesc">N</span> (or in our +extract <span class="np">NP </span>): these correspond to the broad distinction +between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>days profane and sacred. <span class="fakesc">F</span> (<i>fastus</i>) denotes a day +on which the business of the state may be performed, on which the +praetor may say (<i>fari</i>) the three words, <i>do, dico, addico</i>, which +summed up the decisions of the Roman law: <span class="fakesc">C</span> (<i>comitialis</i>) +marks a day on which the legislative assemblies (<i>comitia</i>) may be +held: it is by implication <span class="fakesc">F</span> as well. <span class="fakesc">N</span> +(<i>nefastus</i>), on the other hand, denotes the sacred day, consecrated +to the worship of the gods, on which therefore state-business may not +be transacted: similarly the very mysterious and much disputed sign +<span class="np">NP</span>, whether it differs in precise signification from +<span class="fakesc">N</span> or not, certainly marks a day of sacred character. +<span class="fakesc">EN</span>, which occurs once in this extract (from <i>endotercisus</i>, +the old Latin form of <i>intercisus</i>) signifies a 'split' day (<i>dies +fissus</i>), the beginning and end of which were sacred, while the middle +period was free for business. In the second column also (in large +letters in some of the other Calendars) are named the <i>feriae +publicae</i>, the great annual state-festivals, fixed for one particular +day (<i>feriae stativae</i>): such, in this case, are the Portunalia, +Vinalia, and Consualia.</p> + +<p>These <i>fasti</i> were exhibited in the Forum and on the walls of temples, +and the conscientious Roman could have no possible difficulty in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>finding out when he might lawfully transact his business and what +festivals the state was observing: of the 355 days of the old Calendar +11 were <i>fissi</i>, 235 were <i>fasti</i> (192 <i>comitiales</i>), and 109 +<i>nefasti</i>. We may remark as curious features in the Calendar, denoting +rigid adherence to principle, that with one exception, the Poplifugia +of July 5, no festival ever occurs before the Nones, that with two +exceptions, the Regifugium of February 24 and the Equirria of the 14th +of March, no festival falls on an even day of the month, and that +there is a marked avoidance of successive feast-days: even the three +days of the Lemuria allow an interval of a day between each.</p> + +<p>In the matter of ritual and observance, state-organisation—and its +absence—are alike significant. Of the general exactness of ritual and +its specific variations on different occasions a fair notion has +perhaps already been gathered; it may help to fill out that notion if +we can put together a sketch of the normal process of a sacrifice to +the gods. Before the sacrifice began the animal to be offered was +selected and tested: if it had any blemish or showed any reluctance, +it was rejected. If it were whole and willing, it was bound with +fillets (<i>infulae</i>) around its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>forehead, and long ribbons (<i>vittae</i>) +depending from them. It was then brought to the altar (<i>ara</i>) by the +side of which stood a portable brazier (<i>foculus</i>). The +celebrant—magistrate or priest—next approached dressed in the +<i>toga</i>, girt about him in a peculiar manner (<i>cinctus Gabinus</i>), and +carried up at the back so as to form a hood (<i>velato capite</i>): the +herald proclaimed silence, and the flute-player began to play his +instrument. The first part of the offering was then made by the +pouring of wine and scattering of incense on the brazier: it was +followed by the ceremonial slaughter (<i>immolatio</i>) of the animal. The +celebrant sprinkled the victim with wine and salted cake, and made a +symbolic gesture with the knife. The victim was then taken aside by +the attendants (<i>victimarii</i>), and actually slaughtered by them: from +it they extracted the sacred parts (<i>exta</i>), liver, heart, gall, +lungs, and midriff, and after inspecting them to see that they had no +abnormality—but not in the earlier period for purposes of +augury—wrapped them in pieces of flesh (<i>augmenta</i>), cooked them, and +brought them back to the celebrant, who laid them as an offering upon +the altar, where they were burnt. The rest of the flesh (<i>viscera</i>) +was divided as a sacred meal between the celebrant and his friends—or +in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>a state-offering among the priests, and probably the magistrate. +We cannot refrain from remarking here the extreme precision of ritual, +the scrupulous care with which the human side of the contract was +fulfilled and the—almost legal—division of the victim between gods +and men. But though the ritual was so exact, one must not be led away +by modern analogies to suppose that there was ever anything like a +rigid constraint on the private citizen for the observance of +festivals. The state-festivals were in the strictest sense offerings +made to the gods by the representative magistrates or priests, and if +they were present, all was done that was required: the whole people +had been, by a legal fiction, present in their persons. No doubt the +private citizen would often attend in large numbers at the +celebrations, especially at the more popular festivals, but from some, +such as the Vestalia, he was actually excluded. On the other hand, +though it did not demand presence, the state did—at least +theoretically—demand the observance of the feast-day by private +individuals. The root-notion of <i>feriae</i> was a day set apart for the +worship of the gods, and on it therefore the citizen ought to do 'no +manner of work.' The state observed this condition fully in the +closing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>of law-courts and the absence of legislative assemblies, and +in theory too the private citizen must refrain from any act which was +not concerned with the worship of the gods, or rendered absolutely +necessary, as, for instance, if 'his ox or his ass should fall into a +pit.' But it is characteristic of Rome that the state did not seek for +offence, but only punished it if accidentally seen: on a feast-day the +<i>rex sacrorum</i> and the <i>flamines</i> might not see work being done; they +therefore sent on a herald in advance to announce their presence, and +an actual conviction involved a money-fine. Perhaps more scrupulously +than the <i>feriae</i> were observed the <i>dies religiosi</i>, days of +'abstinence,' on which certain acts, such as marriage, the beginning +of any new piece of work, or the offering of sacrifice to the gods, +were forbidden: such, in the oldest period, were the days on which the +<i>mundus</i> was open, or the temple of Vesta received the matrons, the +days when the Salii carried the <i>ancilia</i> in procession, and the +periods of the two festivals of the dead in February and May; but for +eluding their observance too devices were not unknown.</p> + +<p>In the state-organisation of religion, then, we seem to see just the +same features from which we started: as a basis the legal conception +of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>the relation of god to man, as a result the extreme care and +precision in times and ceremonials, as a corollary in the state the +idea of legal representation and the consequent looseness of hold on +the action of the individual.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>AUGURIES AND AUSPICES</h4> +<br /> + +<p>So far we have been considering the regular relations of man and god, +seen in recurring or special offerings, in vows and in acts of +purification and lustration—all based on the contract-notion, all +endeavours on man's part to fulfil his bounden duty, that the gods may +be constrained in turn to theirs. But so strong was the feeling of +divine presence and influence in the Roman's mind, that he was not +content with doing his best by these regular means to secure the +favour of the gods, but wished before undertaking any business of +importance to be able to assure himself of their approval. His +practical common-sense evolved, as it were, a complete 'code'—in the +flight and song of birds, in the direction of the lightning-flash, in +the conduct of men and animals—by which he believed that the gods +communicated to him their intentions: sometimes these indications +(<i>auspicia</i>) might be vouchsafed by the gods <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>unasked (<i>oblativa</i>), +sometimes they would be given in answer to request (<i>impetrativa</i>): +but as to their meaning, there could be no doubt, provided they were +interpreted by one skilled in the lore and tradition of augury. We may +observe here, though our evidence is much slighter, the same three +stages which we have noticed in the sacrificial worship, the homely +domestic auspices, the auguries of the agricultural life, and the +organised system in the state.</p> + +<p>In the household the use of auspices was in origin at any rate very +general indeed: 'Nothing,' Cicero tells us, 'of importance used to be +undertaken unless with the sanction of the auspices' (<i>auspicato</i>). +The right of interrogating the will of the gods, rested, as one might +expect, with the master of the house, assisted no doubt by the private +augur as the repository of lore and the interpreter of what the master +saw. But of the details of domestic augury we know but little. Cato in +one passage insists on the extreme importance of silence for the +purpose, and Festus suggests that this was secured by the master of +the house rising in the depths of the night to inspect the heavens. We +have seen already that the taking of the auspices played <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>an important +part in the ceremonies of betrothal and marriage, and that the +indications of the divine will might be very varied we may gather from +a story in Cicero. An aunt wishing to take the auspices for her +niece's betrothal, conducted her into an open consecrated space +(<i>sacellum</i>) and sat down on the stool of augury (<i>sella</i>) with her +niece standing at her side. After a while the girl tired and asked her +aunt to give her a little of the stool: the aunt replied, 'My child, I +give up my seat to you': nothing further happened and this answer +turned out in fact to be the auspicious sign: the aunt died, the niece +married the widower and so became mistress of the house.</p> + +<p>Of augury in agricultural life we have some indication in the annual +observance of the 'spring augury' (<i>augurium verniserum</i>) and the +midsummer ceremony of the <i>augurium canarium</i>, which seems to have +been a combination of the offering of a red dog (possibly to avert +mildew) and an augury for the success of the crops. To the rustic +stratum possibly belongs also the <i>augurium salutis populi</i>, though +later it was a yearly act celebrated whenever the Roman army was not +at war and so became connected with the shutting of the temple of +Ianus.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>The state greatly developed and organised the whole system of auguries +and auspices. The college of augurs ranked second only in importance +to the pontifical college, and their duties with regard to both augury +and auspice are sufficiently clear. Like the <i>pontifices</i> in relation +to cult, they are the storehouse of all tradition, and to them appeal +may be made in all cases of doubt both public and private: they were +jealous of their secrets and in later times their mutual consciousness +of deception became proverbial. The right of augury—in origin simply +the inspection of the heavens—was theirs alone, and it was exercised +particularly on the annual occasions mentioned and at the installation +of priests, of which we get a typical instance in Livy's account of +the consecration of Numa.</p> + +<p>The auspices on the other hand—in origin 'signs from birds' (<i>avis</i>, +<i>spicere</i>)—were the province of the magistrate about to undertake +some definite action on behalf of the state whether at home or on the +field of battle. Here the augur's functions were merely preparatory +and advisory. It was his duty to prepare the <i>templum</i>, the spot from +which the auspices are to be taken—always a square space, with +boundaries <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>unbroken except at the entrance, not surrounded by wall or +necessarily by line, but clearly indicated (<i>effatus</i>) by the augur, +and marked off (<i>liberatus</i>) from the surroundings: in the comitia and +other places in Rome there were permanent <i>templa</i>, but elsewhere they +must be specially made. The magistrate then enters the <i>templum</i> and +observes the signs (<i>spectio</i>): if there is any doubt as to +interpretation—and seeing the immense complication of the traditions +(<i>disciplina</i>), this must often have been the case—the augur is +referred to as interpreter. The signs demanded (<i>impetrativa</i>) were +originally always connected with the appearance, song or flight of +birds—higher or lower, from left to right or right to left, etc. +Later others were included, and with the army in the field it became +the regular practice to take the auspices from the feeding of the +sacred chickens (<i>pulli</i>): the best sign being obtained if, in their +eagerness to feed, they let fall some of the grain from their beaks +(<i>tripudium solistimum</i>)—a result not difficult to secure by previous +treatment and a careful selection of the kind of grain supplied to +them. But besides this deliberate 'asking for signs,' public business +might at any moment be interrupted if the gods voluntarily sent an +indication of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>disapproval (<i>oblativa</i>): the augurs then had always to +be at hand to advise the magistrates whether notice should be taken of +such signs, and, if so, what was their signification, and they even +seem to have had certain rights of reporting themselves (<i>nuntiatio</i>) +the occurrence of adverse ones. The sign of most usual occurrence +would be lightning—sometimes such an unexpected event as the seizure +of a member of the assembly with epilepsy (<i>morbus comitialis</i>)—and +we know to what lengths political obstructionists went in later times +in the observation of fictitious signs, or even the prevention of +business by the mere announcement of their intention to see an +unfavourable omen (<i>servare de caelo</i>). The complications and +ramifications of the augur's art are infinite, but the main idea +should by now be plain, and it must be remembered that the kindred art +of the soothsayer (<i>haruspex</i>), oracles, and the interpretation of +fate by the drawing of lots (<i>sortes</i>) are all later foreign +introductions: auspice and augury are the only genuine Roman methods +for interpreting the will of the gods.</p> + +<p>Here then in household, fields, and state, we have a second type of +relation to the gods, running parallel to the ordinary practice of +sacrifice and prayer, distinct yet not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>fundamentally different. As it +is man's function to propitiate the higher spirits and prevent, if +possible, the wrecking of his plans by their opposition, so it is his +business, if he can, to find out their intentions before he engages on +any serious undertaking. As in the <i>ius sacrum</i> his legal mind leads +him to assume that the deities accept the responsibility of the +contract, when his own part is fulfilled, so here, like a practical +man of business, he assumes their construction of a code of +communication, which he has learned to interpret. In its origin it is +a notion common to many primitive religions, but in its elaboration it +is peculiarly and distinctively Italian, and, as we know it, Roman.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER IX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> + +<h4>RELIGION AND MORALITY—CONCLUSION</h4> +<br /> + +<p>It might be said that a religion—the expression of man's relation to +the unseen—has not necessarily any connection with morality—man's +action in himself and towards his neighbours: that an individual—or +even a nation—might perfectly fulfil the duties imposed by the +'powers above,' without being influenced in conduct and character. +Such a view might seem to find an apt illustration in the religion of +Rome: the ceremonial <i>pietas</i> towards the gods appears to have little +to do with the making of man or nation. But in the history of the +world the test of religions must be their effect on the character of +those who believed in them: religion is no doubt itself an outcome of +character, but it reacts upon it, and must either strengthen or +weaken. We are not therefore justified in dismissing the 'Religion of +Numa' without inquiry as to its relation to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>morality, for on our +answer to that question must largely depend our judgment as to its +value.</p> + +<p>We are of course in a peculiarly difficult position to grapple with +this problem through lack of contemporary evidence. The Rome we know, +in the epochs when we can fairly judge of character and morality, was +not the Rome in which the 'Religion of Numa' had grown up and remained +unquestioned: it had been overlaid with foreign cults and foreign +ideas, had been used by priests and magistrates as a political +instrument, and discounted among the educated through the influence of +philosophy. But we may remember in the first place that even then, +especially in the household and in the country, the old religion had +probably a much firmer hold than one might imagine from literary +evidence, in the second that national character is not the growth of a +day, so that we may safely refer permanent characteristics to the +period when the old religion held its own.</p> + +<p>It may be admitted at once that the direct influence on morality was +very small indeed. There was no table of commandments backed by the +religious sanction: the sense of 'sin,' except through breach of +ritual, was practically <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>unknown. It is true that in the very early +<i>leges regiae</i> some notion of this kind is seen—a significant glimpse +of what the original relation may have been: it is there ordained that +the patron who betrayed his client, or the client who deceived his +patron, shall be condemned to Iuppiter; the parricide to the spirits +of his dead ancestors, the husband who sells his wife to the gods of +the underworld, the man who removes his neighbour's landmark to +Terminus, the stealer of corn to Ceres. All these persons shall be +<i>sacri</i>: they have offended against the gods and the gods will see to +their punishment. But these are old-world notions which soon passed +into the background and the state took over the punishment of such +offenders in the ordinary course of law. Nor again in the prayers of +men to gods is there a trace of a petition for moral blessings: the +magistrate prays for the success and prosperity of the state, the +farmer for the fertility of his crops and herds, even the private +individual, who suspends his votive-tablet in the temple, pays his due +for health or commercial success vouchsafed to himself or his +relations. 'Men call Iuppiter greatest and best,' says Cicero, +'because he makes us not just or temperate or wise, but sound and +healthy and rich and wealthy.' Still less, until <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>we come to the +moralists of the Empire, is there any sense of that immediate and +personal relation of the individual to a higher being, which is really +in religion, far more than commandments and ordinances, the mainspring +and safeguard of morality: even the conception of the Genius, the +'nearest' perhaps of all unseen powers, had nothing of this feeling in +it, and it may be significant that, just because of his nearness to +man, the Genius never quite attained to god-head. As far as direct +relation is concerned, religion and morality were to the Roman two +independent spheres with a very small point of contact.</p> + +<p>Nor even in its indirect influence does the formal observance of the +Roman worship seem likely at first sight to have done much for +personal or national morality. Based upon fear, stereotyped in the +form of a legal relationship, <i>religio</i>—'the bounden +obligation'—made, no doubt, for a kind of conscientiousness in its +adherents, but a cold conscientiousness, devoid of emotion and +incapable of expanding itself to include other spheres or prompt to a +similar scrupulousness in other relations. The rigid and constant +distinction of sacred and profane would incline the Roman to fulfil +the routine of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>religious duty and then turn, almost with a sigh +of relief, to the occupations of normal life, carrying with him +nothing more than the sense of a burden laid aside and a pledge of +external prosperity. Even the religious act itself might be without +moral significance: as we have seen, the worshipper might be wholly +ignorant of the character, even the name of the deity he worshipped, +and in any case the motive of his action was naught, the act itself +everything. Nor again had the Roman religion any trace of that +powerful incentive to morality, a doctrine of rewards and punishments +in a future life: the ideas as to the fate of the dead were +fluctuating and vague, and the Roman was in any case much more +interested in their influence on himself than in their possible +experiences after death.</p> + +<p>The divorce then between religion and morality seems almost complete +and it is not strange that most modern writers speak of the Roman +religion as a tiresome ritual formalism, almost wholly lacking in +ethical value. And yet it did not present itself in this light to the +Romans themselves. Cicero, sceptic as he was, could speak of it as the +cause of Rome's greatness; Augustus, the practical politician, could +believe that its revival was an essential condition for the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>renaissance of the Roman character. Have we, in our brief examination +of its characteristics, seen any features which may suggest the +solution of this apparent antagonism? Was there in this formalism a +life which escapes us, as we handle the dry bones of antiquarianism?</p> + +<p>In the first place there may be a danger that we underrate the value +of formalism itself. It spells routine, but routine is not without +value in the strengthening of character. The private citizen, who +conscientiously day by day had carried out the worship of his +household gods and month by month observed the sacred abstinence from +work on the days of festival, was certainly not less fitted to take +his place as a member of a strenuous and well-organised community, or +to serve obediently and quietly in the army on campaign. Even the +magistrate in the execution of his religious duties must have acquired +an exactness and method, which would not be valueless in the conduct +of public business. And when we pass to the origin of this +formalism—the legal relation—the connection with the Roman character +becomes at once more obvious. The 'lawgivers of the world,' who +developed constitution and code to a systematised whole such as +antiquity had not dreamed of before, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>imported, we may say if we like, +their legal notions into the sphere of religion: but we must not +forget the other side of the question. The permanence and success of +this greater contract with higher powers—the feeling that the gods +did regard and reward exact fulfilment of duty—cannot have been +without re-action on the relations of the life of the community: it +was, as it were, a higher sanction to the legal point of view: a +pledge that the relations of citizen and state too were rightly +conceived. 'There is,' says Cicero, speaking of the death of Clodius +in the language of a later age, 'there is a divine power which +inspired that criminal to his own ruin: it was not by chance that he +expired before the shrine of the Bona Dea, whose rites he had +violated': the divine justice is the sanction of the human law. Even +in the fear, from which all ultimately sprang, there was a training in +self-repression and self-subordination, which in a more civilised age +must result in a valuable respect and obedience. The descendants of +those who had made religion out of an attempt to appease the hostile +<i>numina</i>, feeling themselves not indeed on more familiar terms with +their 'unknown gods,' but only perhaps a little more confident of +their own strength, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>were not likely to be wanting in a disciplined +sense of dependence and an appreciation of the value of respect for +authority, which alone can give stability to a constitution. If fear +with the Romans was not the beginning of theological wisdom, it was +yet an important contribution to the character of a disciplined state.</p> + +<p>But, as I have hinted in the course of this sketch more than once, the +answer to this problem, as well as the key to the general +understanding of the Roman religion, is to be found in the worship of +the household. If we knew more of it, we should see more clearly where +religion and morality joined hands, but we know enough to give us a +clue. There not only are the principal events of life, birth, +adolescence, marriage, attended by their religious sanction, but in +the ordinary course of the daily round the divine presence and the +dependence of man are continually emphasised. The gods are given their +portion of the family meal, the sanctified dead are recalled to take +their share of the family blessings. The result was not merely an +approach—collectively, not individually—to that sense of the +nearness of the unseen, which has so great an effect on the actions of +the living, but a very strong bond of family union which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>lay at the +root of the life of the state. It would be difficult to find a clearer +expression of the notion than in the fact that the same word <i>pietas</i>, +which expresses the due fulfilment of man's duty to god, is also the +ideal of the relations of the members of a household: filial piety +was, in fact, but another aspect of that rightness of relation, which +reveals itself in the worship of the gods. No doubt that, in the +city-life of later periods, this ideal broke down on both sides: +household worship was neglected and family life became less dutiful. +But it was still, especially in the country, the true backbone of +Roman society, and no one can read the opening odes of Horace's third +book without feeling the strength of Augustus' appeal to it.</p> + +<p>And if we translate this, as we have learned to do, into terms of the +state, we can get some idea of what the Romans meant by their debt to +their religion. As the household was bound together by the tie of +common worship, as in the intermediate stage the clan, severed +politically and socially, yet felt itself reunited in the gentile +rites, so too the state was welded into a whole by the regularly +recurring annual festivals and the assurance of the divine sanction on +its undertakings. It might be that in the course of time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>these rites +lost their meaning and the community no longer by personal presence +expressed its service to the gods, but the cult stood there still, as +the type of Rome's union to the higher powers and a guarantee of their +assistance against all foes: the religion of Rome was, as it has been +said, the sanctification of patriotism—the Roman citizen's highest +moral ideal. It has been remarked, perhaps with partial truth, that +the religion of the <i>Æneid</i>—in many ways a summary of Roman thought +and feeling—is the belief in the <i>fata Romae</i> and their fulfilment. +The very impersonality of this conception makes it a good picture of +what religion was in the Roman state. It was not, as with the Jews, a +strong conviction of the rightness of their own belief and a certainty +that their divine protectors must triumph over those of other nations, +but a feeling of the constant presence of some spirits, who, 'if haply +they might find them,' would, on the payment of their due, bear their +part in the great progress of right and justice and empire on which +Rome must march to her victory. It was the duty of the citizen, with +this conception of his city before his eyes, to see to it that the +state's part in the contract was fulfilled. From his ancestors had +been inherited the tradition, which told him the when, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>where, and +how, and in the preservation of that tradition and its due performance +consisted at once Rome's duty and her glory. 'If we wish,' says +Cicero, 'to compare ourselves with other nations, we may be found in +other respects equal or even inferior; in religion, that is in the +worship of the gods, we are far superior.' The religion of Rome may +not have advanced the theology or the ethics of the world, but it made +and held together a nation.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>WORKS BEARING ON THE EARLY RELIGION OF ROME</h3> +<br /> + +<div class="block"> +<p><i>The Golden Bough</i>, (2nd Ed.). <span class="sc">J.G. Frazer</span>.</p> + +<p><i>History of Rome</i>, <span class="fakesc">BOOK I. CHAP XII.</span> <span class="sc">Th. Mommsen</span>.</p> + +<p><i>Die Religion der Römer.</i> <span class="sc">E. Aust</span>.</p> + +<p><i>Religion und Kultus der Römer.</i> <span class="sc">G. Wissowa</span>.</p> + +<p><i>Il Culto Privato di Roma Antica</i>, <span class="fakesc">PART I.</span> <span class="sc">A. +De-Marchi</span>.</p> + +<p><i>The Roman Festivals.</i> <span class="sc">W. Warde Fowler</span>.</p> + +<p><i>The Religion of Numa.</i> <span class="sc">J.B. Carter</span>.</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h5>Printed by T. and A. <span class="sc">Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty<br /> +at the Edinburgh University Press</h5> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Religion of Ancient Rome, by Cyril Bailey + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME *** + +***** This file should be named 18564-h.htm or 18564-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/5/6/18564/ + +Produced by Jeannie Howse, Thierry Alberto and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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