certain indications of the activity of the _pontifices_, as
distinguished from the _duoviri sacris faciundis_; i. e. the activity of
that college of priests whose special charge was the Roman religion
proper, and who were only indirectly concerned with foreign
introductions. For example, we may note with interest a group of four
agricultural deities, to whom temples were dedicated in the eight years
between 272 and 264 B.C., the years, that is, of the pacification and
settlement of Italy after the invasion of Pyrrhus[1504]. These deities
were Consus, Tellus, Pales, and Vortumnus. Owing to the loss of Livy’s
second decade we cannot be very certain of the immediate object of these
foundations; but we may guess that they had a definite meaning in
connexion with the events of the time, and that they were chiefly the
work of the pontifical college. Less distinct perhaps, but still worth
noticing, is a group of foundations in honour of deities connected with
water[1505], i.e. to Tempestates, Juturna and Fons, which seem to have
had some reference to the naval operations of the First Punic War. The
temple of Juturna was vowed by Lutatius Catulus in the battle at the
Aegates Insulae in 241 B.C.; that to the Tempestates by Cornelius
Scipio, when the fleet was almost destroyed near Corsica in 259 B.C.;
and that of Fons in the Corsican war in 231 B.C. It was characteristic
of the Roman mind, and of the pontifical methods, thus to connect the
spirits of the springs in Rome with those of the sea and its tempests.
It is at this time also that we notice the appearance of abstractions
resolved into deities, such as Salus, Spes, Fides, Honos et Virtus,
Concordia, and Mens. These, as I have said elsewhere[1506], are not
genuine old Roman cults, but pontifical creations in the spirit of the
old Roman impersonal and daemonic ideas of divine agency. In connexion
with these I may mention the conviction which has grown upon me in the
course of these investigations, that it was in this reactionary period,
as we may call it, that the pontifices drew up that extraordinary list
of deities, classified according to their functions in relation to man
and his activity and suffering, which we know as the _Indigitamenta_.
This seems to me characteristic of the period, inasmuch as it was
probably based on the old Roman ideas of divine agency, now systematized
by something like scientific terminology and ordered classification. It
is the old national belief in the ubiquity of the world of spirits, now
edited and organized by skilled legal theologians. But it would be
beyond the province of this work to venture farther into this tangled
question.
From the Hannibalic war to the end of the Republic is the period of the
decay and downfall of the old Roman religion. This period need not
detain us long; it has been no part of my plan to exhibit this religion
on its death-bed, for the Fasti do not admit us to that scene. They show
us a living and genuine, not a spurious and enfeebled religious life. A
few salient facts shall suffice as illustrations of the slow process of
this dissolution.
At the very outset of the period we mark the solemn introduction into
Rome of Cybele, the Magna Mater Idaea, and the stone which was supposed
to represent her; and we are thus warned that even the Greek cults, with
all their adjuncts of art and mythology, are no longer sufficient for
Roman needs. The State is once more in peril, and the far-reaching
struggle with Hannibal has brought her into touch with new peoples and
cults. The Greeks do indeed continue to be the chief invaders of the
Roman religious territory, but the religion they bring with them is a
debased one. The extraordinary rapidity with which the orgiastic rites
of Dionysus spread over Italy in 186 B.C. proves at once that the
Italian religious forms were wearing out, and that the Greek substitute
was no longer a wholesome one[1507]. From this time forward the lower
strata of population show a tendency to run after exciting Oriental
forms of worship, which neither the attempted restoration of the old
religion by Augustus, nor the subsequent rapid growth of Christianity,
could entirely and permanently check. Among the educated classes the old
beliefs were being eaten away by the acids of a second-hand philosophy.
The Greeks had long begun to inquire into the nature of the gods, and
they passed on their disintegrating criticism to their conquerors.
Euhemerus, the arch-destroyer of ancient faiths, became known to the
Romans through a translation by Ennius at the beginning of the second
century B.C.; and it took only another century and a half to produce the
sceptical and eclectic treatise of Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_.
Again, nothing is more characteristic of this period than the contempt
and neglect into which the old priesthoods gradually fell; Rome now
swarmed with a mongrel population that knew little of them and cared
less. In the year 209 B.C. even the priesthood of Jupiter was filled by
the youthful black sheep of an old patrician family, apparently for no
other reason than the hope that so objectionable a character might be
reformed by the many quaint restrictions imposed upon the office[1508].
Of the flamines in general, of the Fratres Arvales, Salii, Sodales
Titii, and others of the ancient priesthoods we henceforward hear little
or nothing until the revival of learning and religion in the Augustan
age. Old forms continued to be used, but mainly for political purposes,
like the _obnuntiatio_ or observation of lightning; and only those
religious offices which had considerable political power continued to be
sought after by men of light and leading.
Temples continued to be vowed and built, especially in the earlier part
of this period; but their cults are, with few exceptions, of Greek
origin, or are new and fanciful forms of old worships, such as the Lares
Permarini, Venus Verticordia, Fortuna Equestris, Ops Opifera, Fortuna
Huiusce Diei. Before the fall of the Republic a great number of the old
temples had fallen almost irretrievably into decay; Augustus tells us in
his record of his own reign that he restored no less than eighty-two of
them. This too is the period when the identification of Roman gods with
Greek became a general fashion; a process which had begun long before,
but originally with a genuine meaning and object, not as the sport of a
sceptical society educated in Greek speculation. Salus takes the
attributes of Hygieia, Mater Matuta becomes Leucothea, Faunus Pan,
Sancus Hercules, Carmenta Nicostrate, Neptunus Poseidon, the god of
Soracte, Apollo Soranus; and even the greater gods like Mars, Diana, and
others assume more and more the likeness and mythical adornment of their
supposed Greek equivalents.
The civil troubles of the age of revolution completed the work of
disintegration. Men became careless, reckless, self-regarding; the
δεισιδαιμονία of which Polybius could say only just before the
revolution began, that more than anything else it served to knit the
Roman state together, was lost to view in the tumult of political
passion and personal greed. Not indeed that it was altogether extinct;
that could never be, and never has been the case in Italy. Augustus, who
came by degrees to know the people he governed better than any statesman
in Italian history, was well aware that to inspire the Roman world once
more with confidence, he must bring the religious instinct into play
again. The task he thus set himself he accomplished with extraordinary
skill and tact; the old religion seemed to live again, the old
priesthoods were revived, the old minutiae of worship were restored. He
did what he could to bring to life again even the spirit and the
principles of the old _religio_; and in the _Carmen Saeculare_ of
Horace, written to his order at a moment when he wished to make these
things obvious to the eyes of all Romans, we probably have the best
succinct exposition of them to be found in Roman literature[1509]. But
of the Augustan revival, and of the reasons why it could not be
permanent, I must forbear here to speak further.
* * * * *
I have yet to say a few words in answer to the interesting question
whether the religious system we have been examining had any appreciable
influence on the character of the Roman people: whether it contributed
to build up that _virtus_ of the State and the individual which enabled
them to subdue and govern the world, as the _pietas_ of Aeneas in the
poem armed him for the subjugation and civilization of the wild Italian
tribes. The question may at first sight seem a superfluous one, since
the religion of a people is rather the expression of its own genius for
dealing with the perplexities of human life, than a _vera causa_ in
determining its character; yet it is worth asking, for it is
unquestionable that the peculiar turn taken by a nation’s religious
beliefs and practices does in course of time come to react upon its
character and morals.
It has often been said of the Roman religion that it had nothing to do
with righteousness, and was without ethical value. The admirable
criticism of it given by Mommsen in the first volume of his History may
originally have suggested this view; but if so, the copyists have
exaggerated the opinion of the master in one particular point, failing
to give due weight to the general tenor of his exposition. However this
may be, we certainly are now always invited to conclude that this great
people, which in its dealings with human beings discovered an
extraordinary genius for expansion and adaptation, in its attitude to
the supernatural remained cooped up within curiously narrow mental
limits, drawing no real sustenance either from its primitive beliefs or
its quaint and detailed practice. The current views of this kind have
just lately been so well summed up in an admirable English work on the
latest age of Roman society and thought, that I cannot do better than
borrow a few sentences from it[1510]:—
‘The old Roman theology was a hard, narrow, unexpansive system of
abstraction and personification, which strove to represent in its
Pantheon the phenomena of nature, the relations of man in the State
or in the clan, every act and feeling and incident in the life of
the individual. Unlike the mythologies of Hellas and the East, it
had no native principle of growth, or adaptation to altered needs of
society and the individual imagination. It was also singularly
wanting in awe and mystery. The religious spirit which it cultivated
was formal, timid, and scrupulous.... The old Roman worship was
businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a contract
with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterized by the hard
and literal formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper
performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness
required in pleadings before the praetor. To allow devotional
feeling to transgress the bounds prescribed by immemorial custom was
“superstitio.”’
It is impossible to deny that there is much truth in all this; yet I may
venture to express a doubt whether it contains the whole truth. The fact
is that the subject needs a more historical treatment, and perhaps also
something of the historical imagination, to do it full justice.
In the earliest periods of Roman civilization, those of the family and
the beginnings of the State, the Roman attitude towards the supernatural
was, if I am not mistaken, a real contributing cause towards the
formation of _virtus_. It was not merely an attitude of business and
bargaining. So far as we know it, the common form of address to the gods
was not ‘send me what I want—sun, rain, victory, &c., and you shall then
have these gifts’; but ‘I give you these sacrifices and expect you to do
your part; in taking all this trouble to act correctly by you, I
establish a right as against you.’ It is true that in one particular
form of dealing with the gods, the vow, or solemn undertaking (_votum_),
the transaction wears more the character of a definite bargain; if the
god will do certain things, he shall then have his reward. So Cloanthus
in Virgil addresses the gods of the sea[1511]—
Di, quibus imperium est pelagi, quorum aequora curro,
Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum
Constituam ante aras, _voti reus_, extaque salsos
Proiciam in fluctus et vina liquentia fundam.
But the _votum_ was the exception, not the rule; it was a promise made
by an individual at some critical moment, not the ordered and recurring
ritual of the family or the State. It takes its peculiar form simply
because the maker of the vow is not at the particular moment in a
position to fulfil it. The normal attitude of the Roman in prayer and
sacrifice was not this; it is much more exactly expressed in the formula
of the farmer’s prayer already quoted in these pages: ‘Father Mars, I
pray and beseech thee be willing and propitious to me, my household, and
my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice
to be driven round my farm and land.’ This is the usual and natural
attitude of all peoples in sacrificing to their gods, and is far from
being peculiar to Rome; but it was the nature of the Roman to express it
in a more formal and definite way than others, and this led to an
outward religion of formulae which has done much to obscure for us, as
indeed for the Romans themselves, the real thought underlying them.
These exact formulae of invocation and sacrifice were really the outward
expression of a fear of the unknown, and its power to hinder and injure
man; for the old Roman did not know his gods intimately, inasmuch as
they took no human shape, and did not dwell in buildings made by hands.
We have illustrated this ignorance of his again and again, and the
vagueness and fluidity of the religious conceptions of the Roman mind.
The remedy for this weakness was found, as with the Jews, in a
remarkable formularity of ritual, both as regards time, place, and
method of worship: in a series of elaborate prescriptions drawn up by
experts, going even so far as to anticipate the consequence of an
unintentional omission or error by piacular acts. This in time, and
under State organization, became a science, and finds its parallel in
the science of legal formulae. But there was a difference between the
two sciences, even for the Roman. In religious acts, the human mind is
dealing with the unseen and unknown, not with human beings who can be
calculated with or outwitted. His fear of the unknown was thus for the
primitive Roman a wholesome discipline; and his attitude towards it he
aptly and characteristically called _religio_, because it _bound_ him to
the performance of certain regulated duties, calculated to keep his
footsteps straight as he walked daily in this unseen world: duties which
even in the family and clan must have been to some extent systematized,
and which when the city-state was reached took the definite form of a
calendar of public prayers, sacrifices, and festivities.
Now surely in this motive of fear, thus remedied by exact ritual, we may
trace a true civilizing element—the idea of Duty, Pietas, which as
Cicero defined it, was ‘iustitia erga deos’: righteous dealing towards
the gods, in expectation of righteous treatment on their part. And he
would be a bold man who should assert that ‘iustitia erga deos’ had no
effect in inducing the habit of ‘iustitia erga homines’: in other words
that it could not react upon conduct. In the _pietas_ of the one typical
Roman in literature both these elements are equally present. The
_pietas_ of Aeneas is a sense of duty towards god and man alike; to his
father, his son, and his people, as well as to the will of the gods, and
to that solemn mission which is at once the religion of his life and the
key to the great Roman poem[1512]. This is indeed that same sense of
duty and responsibility which governed every Roman in authority in the
best days of the State, whether paterfamilias, patronus, priest, or
magistrate, and which was the motive power in the working of a
constitution which lasted for centuries though only resting on a basis
of trust. In this _pietas_, it is true, we find no sense of contrition
for sin, no humbling of the individual self before an almighty Governor
of the world; but we do find a very sensitive conscientiousness, arising
from the dread of neglect or trespass in the discharge of religious
observance, in the trust committed by family or State to its constituted
representative. And this trust included also the discharge of duties to
other men, the neglect of which might bring down the anger of the
Unknown, and even compel the surrender of a criminal as _sacer_ to an
offended deity. We find abundant evidence of this aspect of the
_religio_ in the language of solemn oaths and treaties, and especially
in connexion with the cult of the great Jupiter.
I maintain then that in this Roman religion, in spite of its dryness and
formality, there was a distinct ethical and civilizing element. And in
conclusion I may perhaps raise the question whether it was really, as
has been so often asserted, such a conception of the unseen as could
never admit of elevation and expansion. A religion, which in its best
and simplest forms, could bind men together in the orderly dutiful life
of family, gens, state, and federation, could hardly, if left to itself,
have speedily become an inanity, even though based on the motive of fear
rather than that of brotherly love. But this religion, as the State
became more fully matured, came under the influence of two retarding
causes. First, its ritual, always obnoxious to formularism, was
gradually deprived of its meaning by great priesthoods which from causes
which need not be here discussed became powerful political agencies.
Secondly, the contact with a mature system of polytheism, adorned and in
some sort materialized by art and literature, drew away the mind of the
simple and wondering Roman from the task of developing his religious
ideas in his own way. When a new world of thought broke on the
conquering Roman of the Republic, his own religious motives were already
drying up under the influence of a powerful State-organization. His
_pietas_ lived on after a fashion for centuries, but more and more it
lost that hold on the conscience, that appeal to trust and
responsibility, which had once promised it a vigorous life and growth.
While foreign gods and cults attracted his attention and admiration, or
appealed to his sense that there was no quarter from which supernatural
aid might not be called in for the advancement of his State, they failed
to bind his conscience with the wholesome motives which lay at the root
of his old native _religio_. And neither in the reaction of the fourth
century B.C., nor in the protests of an austere Cato in the second, nor
in the elaborate revival of Augustus, much less in any later effort of
philosopher or autocrat to return to the old ways, was any permanent
resuscitation of discipline or conduct possible. The problem of giving a
real religion to the world-state into which the Roman dominion had then
grown, was not to be solved either by Roman _pietas_ or Hellenic
polytheism.
Footnote 1502:
Tertullian, _de Praescriptionibus Haereticorum_, 40.
Footnote 1503:
Collected by Aust in his work _de Aedibus sacris_, pp. 4 foll.
Footnote 1504:
Aust, op. cit., p. 14, note 1.
Footnote 1505:
Above, p. 190.
Footnote 1506:
Aust, op. cit., p. 15, note 1.
Footnote 1507:
See especially the speech of the consul Postumius in Livy 39. 15.
Footnote 1508:
See a paper by the author in _Classical Review_, vol. vii. p. 193
foll.
Footnote 1509:
Note for example the way in which Horace has contrived to introduce in
combination the ideas of the fertility of crops and herbs, of marriage
and the increase of population, of public morality and prosperity.
Footnote 1510:
It gives me pleasure to quote this passage from _Roman Society in the
last century of the Western Empire_ (p. 63) by my old friend Professor
Dill.
Footnote 1511:
_Aen._ 5. 235.
Footnote 1512:
See Nettleship, _Essays in Latin Literature_, pp. 103, 104.
NOTES ON TWO COINS.
A. Denarius of P. Licinius Stolo (p. 42).
_Obv._ AVGVSTVS TR POT Augustus, laureate, on horse-back to r.
_Rev._ P. STOLO Helmet (apex) between two shields.
IIIVIR
[Illustration]
The forms of the helmet and shields are very archaic and interesting,
appearing to point to a very early period. The helmet bears a marked
likeness to that worn on Egyptian monuments by the Shardana, one of the
races that invaded Egypt about the thirteenth century B.C. The shield
seems to consist of two small round bosses connected by an oval boss. It
is strikingly like the Mycenaean shield as shown on a number of
monuments, and far earlier than the so-called Boeotian shield which was
common in Greece from the sixth century onwards. The Roman writers
themselves seem to have been puzzled by this shape (Marindin, article
‘Salii’ in Smith’s _Dict. Antiq._), and there can be little doubt that
it came down from a time when the ‘Mycenaean’ civilization was common to
Greece and Italy.
The figure on the coins of M. Sanquinius (Babelon, _Mon. de la Répub.
Rom._ ii. 417), who wears a horned helmet and long tunic and carries a
herald’s staff and round shield, has been identified by several
authorities as one of the Salii. This, however, is certainly wrong. Both
on this coin, and later coins of Domitian, the personage is closely
connected with the Ludi Saeculares. Dr. Dressel, in the _Ephem. Epigr._
viii. 314, maintains him to be a herald proclaiming the festival. This
would admirably suit the caduceus; but the decorations of the helmet
seem to me to be not plumes, as Dr. Dressel thinks, but horns, like
those on the headpiece of Juno Lanuvina. In any case the person is no
Salius.
B. DENARIUS OF L. CAESIUS (p. 101).
_Obv._ Youthful bust l., hair disordered, striking with thunderbolt.
Behind, a monogram.
[Illustration]
_Rev._ L. CAESI Two young male figures seated to r. Each has drapery
wrapped round waist, and grasps a spear. Between them, a dog, which one
of them caresses. In field, in monograms, LARE Above, head of Vulcan and
pinchers (moneyer’s mark). The monogram of the obverse was read by
Mommsen AP for Apollo; but the closed P was not at that time in use: the
interpretation of Montagu (_Numismatic Chronicle_, 1895, p. 162) as Roma
is therefore to be preferred. The head appears to be that of Vedius or
Vejovis, whose statue at Rome carried in the hand a sheaf of arrows,
which would naturally be confused with the Greek thunderbolt. Other
heads of Vejovis on Roman coins, as those of the Gens Fonteia, are more
Apolline in type, with long curls and laurel-wreath.
The two seated figures of the reverse are identified by the inscription
as Lares. They are clearly assimilated to the Greek Dioscuri, early
adopted at Rome. The dog, however, which sits between them is an
attribute properly belonging to them. Dr. Wissowa in Roscher’s _Lexicon_
(p. 1872) says that they are clad in dogs’ skins; this, however, is
certainly not the case, an ordinary cloak or chlamys falls over their
knees.
This representation of the Lares stands by itself, the deities are
frequently represented in later art, especially wall-paintings and
bronze statuettes, but their type is that of boys who hold cornucopiae
or drinking vessel, and are fully clad.
P. G.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Acca Larentia, 74, 93, 275, 276, 324.
Aedes Herculis: _see_ Forum Boarium.
Aedes Vestae: _see_ Vesta.
Aediles, plebeian, 75, 76, 92.
Aesculapius, 105, 191, 278;
connexion with Vediovis, 122, 278;
temple, 278, 340.
Agonia: December, 265, 281;
January, 277, 280-2;
March, 54, 281;
May, 121, 281.
Agonus (or Agonalis), 323.
Agriculture: festivals, 3, 71, 79-82, 85-8, 88-91, 113-4, 124-8,
145-54, 204-6, 206-9, 212-4, 256-8, 268-73, 324-7, 335.
Alban Mount: Feriae Latinae held at, 95, 97, 227-8;
temple of Jupiter Latiaris, 95-6, 228.
Ambarvalia, 114, 124-8, 154.
Ancilia, 38-9, 41-3, 45-6, 250;
lustration, 57-9, 248, 250;
moving, 39, 41, 43-4, 115
Ancillarum Feriae, 176-8.
Angerona, 274-5;
goddess of Divalia, 274, 336.
Anna Perenna: festival, 44, 50-1, 53, 163;
legends, 51-4, 60;
popularity with lower classes, 44, 50-1;
representative of year, 52-3.
Aphrodite: connexion with Venus, 69, 86.
Aplu, 181.
Apollo, 89, 191, 250;
comparison with Mars, 39-40;
connexion with Aesculapius, 278;
with Vediovis, 122, 181, 225, 278;
coupled with Latona, 181, 186, 200;
festivals, 173, 179-81;
functions, 180, 278;
Medicus, 180;
restoration of worship by Augustus, 180 (n. 4), 181-2;
Soranus, 84, 181;
temples, 180, 182;
worship, 117, 179-82, 339.