Religion
Roman Religion
The Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated,(1) was a
higher counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in
which the little and the great were alike repeated with painstaking
exactness. The state and the clan, the individual phenomenon of
nature as well as the individual mental operation, every man, every
place and object, every act even falling within the sphere of Roman
law, reappeared in the Roman world of gods; and, as earthly things
come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent
a corresponding fluctuation. The tutelary spirit, which presided
over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself: the
tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man;
and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in
so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore
spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh.
As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman community, so every foreign
community was presided over by its own gods; but sharp as was the
distinction between the burgess and non-burgess, between the Roman
and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could
be admitted by resolution of the community to the freedom of Rome,
and when the citizens of a conquered city were transported to Rome,
the gods of that city were also invited to take up their new abode
there.
Oldest Table of Roman Festivals
We obtain information regarding the original cycle of the gods, as
it stood in Rome previous to any contact with the Greeks, from the
list of the public and duly named festival-days (-feriae publicae-)
of the Roman community, which is preserved in its calendar and is
beyond all question the oldest document which has reached us from
Roman antiquity. The first place in it is occupied by the gods
Jupiter and Mars along with the duplicate of the latter, Quirinus.
To Jupiter all the days of full moon (-idus-) are sacred, besides
all the wine-festivals and various other days to be mentioned
afterwards; the 21st May (-agonalia-) is dedicated to his counterpart,
the "bad Jovis" (-Ve-diovis-). To Mars belongs the new-year of the
1st March, and generally the great warrior-festival in this month
which derived its very name from the god; this festival, introduced
by the horse-racing (-equirria-) on the 27th February, had during
March its principal solemnities on the days of the shield-forging
(-equirria- or -Mamuralia-, March 14), of the armed dance at the
Comitium (-quinquatrus-, March 19), and of the consecration of
trumpets (-tubilustrium-, March 23). As, when a war was to be waged,
it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign
in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of
the consecration of arms (-armilustrium-, October 19). Lastly,
to the second Mars, Quirinus, the 17th February was appropriated
(-Quirinalia-). Among the other festivals those which related to
the culture of corn and wine hold the first place, while the pastoral
feasts play a subordinate part. To this class belongs especially
the great series of spring-festivals in April, in the course of
which sacrifices were offered on the 15th to Tellus, the nourishing
earth (-fordicidia-, sacrifice of the pregnant cow), on the 19th
to Ceres, the goddess of germination and growth (-Cerialia-) on the
21st to Pales, the fecundating goddess of the flocks (-Parilia-),
on the 23rd to Jupiter, as the protector of the vines and of the
vats of the previous year's vintage which were first opened on this
day (-Vinalia-), and on the 25th to the bad enemy of the crops, rust
(-Robigus-: -Robigalia-). So after the completion of the work of
the fields and the fortunate ingathering of their produce double
festivals were celebrated in honour of the god and goddess of
inbringing and harvest, Census (from -condere-) and Ops; the first,
immediately after the completion of cutting (August 21, -Consualia-;
August 25, -Opiconsiva-); and the second, in the middle of winter,
when the blessings of the granary are especially manifest (December
15, -Consualia-; December 19, -Opalia-); between these two latter
days the thoughtfulness of the old arrangers of the festivals inserted
that of seed-sowing (Saturnalia from -Saeturnus- or -Saturnus-,
December 17). In like manner the festival of must or of healing
(-meditrinalia-, October 11), so called because a healing virtue
was attributed to the fresh must, was dedicated to Jovis as the
wine-god after the completion of the vintage; the original reference
of the third wine-feast (-Vinalia-, August 19) is not clear. To
these festivals were added at the close of the year the wolf-festival
(-Lupercalia-, February 17) of the shepherds in honour of the
good god, Faunus, and the boundary-stone festival (-Terminalia-,
February 23) of the husbandmen, as also the summer grove-festival
of two days (-Lucaria-, July 19, 21) which may have had reference
to the forest-gods (-Silvani-), the fountain-festival (-Fontinalia-,
October 13), and the festival of the shortest day, which brings in
the new sun (-An-geronalia-, -Divalia-, December 21).
Of not less importance--as was to be expected in the case of the
port of Latium--were the mariner-festivals of the divinities of the
sea (-Neptunalia-, July 23), of the harbour (-Portunalia-, August
17), and of the Tiber stream (-Volturnalia-, August 27).
Handicraft and art, on the other hand, are represented in this cycle
of the gods only by the god of fire and of smith's work, Vulcanus,
to whom besides the day named after him (-Volcanalia-, August 23)
the second festival of the consecration of trumpets was dedicated
(-tubilustrium-, May 23), and eventually also by the festival of
Carmentis (-Carmentalia- January 11, 15), who probably was adored
originally as the goddess of spells and of song and only inferentially
as protectress of births.
Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival
of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber,
Vesta and the Penates (-Vestalia-, June 9); the festival of the
goddess of birth(2) (-Matralia-, June 11); the festival of the
blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (-Liberalia-,
March 17), the festival of departed spirits (-Feralia-, February
21), and the three days' ghost-celebration (-Lemuria- May 9,
11, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the
two--otherwise to us somewhat obscure--festivals of the king's
flight (-Regifugium-, February 24) and of the people's flight
(-Poplifugia-, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted
to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (-Agonia- or
-Septimontium-, December 11). A special day (-agonia-, January
9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning. The real
nature of some other days--that of Furrina (July 25), and that
of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a
feast of the Lares (December 23)--is no longer known.
This table is complete for the immoveable public festivals;
and--although by the side of these standing festal days there
certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional
festivals--this document, in what it says as well as in what it
omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise
almost wholly lost to us. The union of the Old Roman community and
the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of
festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars;
but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple
was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent; nor was
the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine; nor was any notion of
worship borrowed from the Greeks.
Mars and Jupiter
The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally
in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the
peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars,
the killing god,(3) preeminently regarded as the divine champion
of the burgesses, hurling the spear, protecting the flock,
and overthrowing the foe. Each community of course possessed its
own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all;
and accordingly every "-ver sacrum-" setting out to found a new
community marched under the protection of its own Mars. To Mars
was dedicated the first month not only in the Roman calendar of
the months, which in no other instance takes notice of the gods,
but also probably in all the other Latin and Sabellian calendars:
among the Roman proper names, which in like manner contain no allusion
to any gods, Marcus, Mamercus, and Mamurius appear in prevailing
use from very early times; with Mars and his sacred woodpecker was
connected the oldest Italian prophecy; the wolf, the animal sacred
to Mars, was the badge of the Roman burgesses, and such sacred
national legends as the Roman imagination was able to produce
referred exclusively to the god Mars and to his duplicate Quirinus.
In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis--a purer and
more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman
community--occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest
of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war;
but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and
it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals
was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda
by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman
community still really centred at this time in the martial god of
death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer"
afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who
was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.
Nature of the Roman Gods
It is no part of our present task to consider the Roman deities in
detail; but it is important, even in an historical point of view,
to call attention to the peculiar character at once of shallowness
and of fervour that marked the Roman faith. Abstraction
and personification lay at the root of the Roman as well as of
the Hellenic mythology: the Hellenic as well as the Roman god was
originally suggested by some natural phenomenon or some mental
conception, and to the Roman just as to the Greek every divinity
appeared a person. This is evident from their apprehending the
individual gods as male or female; from their style of appeal to
an unknown deity,--"Be thou god or goddess, man or woman;" and from
the deeply cherished belief that the name of the proper tutelary
spirit of the community ought to remain for ever unpronounced, lest
an enemy should come to learn it and calling the god by his name
should entice him beyond the bounds. A remnant of this strongly
sensuous mode of apprehension clung to Mars in particular, the
oldest and most national form of divinity in Italy. But while
abstraction, which lies at the foundation of every religion, elsewhere
endeavoured to rise to wider and more enlarged conceptions and to
penetrate ever more deeply into the essence of things, the forms
of the Roman faith remained at, or sank to, a singularly low level
of conception and of insight. While in the case of the Greek
every influential motive speedily expanded into a group of forms
and gathered around it a circle of legends and ideas, in the case
of the Roman the fundamental thought remained stationary in its
original naked rigidity. The religion of Rome had nothing of its
own presenting even a remote resemblance to the religion of Apollo
investing earthly morality with a halo of glory, to the divine
intoxication of Dionysus, or to the Chthonian and mystical worships
with their profound and hidden meanings. It had indeed its "bad
god" (-Ve-diovis-), its apparitions and ghosts (-lemures-), and
afterwards its deities of foul air, of fever, of diseases, perhaps even
of theft (-laverna-); but it was unable to excite that mysterious
awe after which the human heart has always a longing, or thoroughly
to embody the incomprehensible and even the malignant elements
in nature and in man, which must not be wanting in religion if it
would reflect man as a whole. In the religion of Rome there was
hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of
the city, the Penates; the real character, moreover, even of these
gods was manifest to every one.
The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct
conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them
in its terminology, and to classify them systematically--in the
first instance, according to that division of persons and things
which also formed the basis of private law--that it might thus be
able in due fashion to invoke the gods individually or by classes,
and to point out (-indigitare-) to the multitude the modes of
appropriate invocation. Of such notions, the products of outward
abstraction--of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable,
sometimes ridiculous--Roman theology was in substance made up.
Conceptions such as sowing (-saeturnus-) and field-labour (-ops-)
ground (-tellus-) and boundary-stone (-terminus-), were among
the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities. Perhaps the most
peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only
one for whose worship there was devised an effigy peculiarly Italian,
was the double-headed lanus; and yet it was simply suggestive of the
idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion,
that at the commencement of every act the "spirit of opening" should
first be invoked, while it above all betokened the deep conviction
that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as
it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should
stand singly and apart.(4) Of all the worships of Rome that which
perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits
that presided in and over the household and the storechamber: these
were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship
the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods
of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom
their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before
whom it was, even in the time of Cato the Elder, the first duty
of the father of the household on returning home to perform his
devotions. In the ranking of the gods, however, these spirits
of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the
highest place; it was--and it could not be otherwise with a religion
which renounced all attempts to idealize--not the broadest and
most general, but the simplest and most individual abstraction, in
which the pious heart found most nourishment.
This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was
accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly
enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already
explained. Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry
and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce--this
was what the Roman desired from his gods; and it very well accords
with this view, that the god of good faith (-deus fidius-), the
goddess of chance and good luck (-fors fortuna-), and the god of
traffic (-mercurius-), all originating out of their daily dealings,
although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear
very early as adored far and near by the Romans. Strict frugality
and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too
deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart.
Spirits
Respecting the world of spirits little can be said. The departed
souls of mortal men, the "good" (-manes-) continued to exist as
shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (-dii inferi-), and
received meat and drink from the survivors. But they dwelt in the
depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower
world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above.
The hero-worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans,
and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the
foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation
of king Romulus into the god Quirinus. Numa, the oldest and most
venerable name in Roman tradition, never received the honours of
a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens.
Priests
The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore reference to
Mars; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated
for life, "the kindler of Mars" (-flamen Martialis-) as he was
designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve "leapers"
(-salii-), a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance
in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song. We have already
explained(5) how the amalgamation of the Hill-community with that
of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication of the Roman Mars,
and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars--the
-flamen Quirinalis- --and a second guild of dancers--the -salii
collini-.
To these were added other public worships (some of which probably
had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either
single priests were appointed--as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus,
of the god of the harbour and the river--or the celebration of
which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the
people. Such a college was probably that of the twelve "field-brethren"
(-fratres arvales-) who invoked the "creative goddess" (-dea dia-) in
May to bless the growth of the seed; although it is very doubtful
whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration
which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the
empire. These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which
had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive -cultus- of the
Roman Sabines,(6) and by the thirty "curial kindlers" (-flamines
curiales-), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies. The
"wolf festival" (-lupercalia-) already mentioned was celebrated for
the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the "favourable
god" (-faunus-) by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were
associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in
the month of February--a genuine shepherds' carnival, in which the
"Wolves" (-luperci-) jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin,
and whipped with thongs those whom they met. In like manner the
community may be conceived as represented and participating in the
case of other gentile worships.
To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were
gradually added. The most important of these worships had reference
to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the
construction of the great wall and stronghold. In it the highest
and best lovis of the Capitol--that is, the genius of the Roman
people--was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and
his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed
in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad
of high-priests. Contemporaneously began the -cultus- of the new
single city-hearth--Vesta--and the kindred -cultus- of the Penates
of the community.(7) Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of
the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service,
and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always
blazing as an example(8) and an omen to the burgesses. This
worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in
Rome, and it accordingly was the latest of all the heathen worships
there to give way before the ban of Christianity. The Aventine,
moreover, was assigned to Diana as the representative of the Latin
confederacy,(9) but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood
was appointed for her; and the community gradually became accustomed
to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions
by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods
specially destined for their service; in particular instances--such
as those of the goddess of flowers (-Flora-) and of fruits (-Pomona-)--it
appointed also special -flamines-, so that the number of these was
at length fifteen. But among them they carefully distinguished
those three "great kindlers" (-flamines maiores-), who down to the
latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses,
just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal -Salii-
always asserted precedence over all the other colleges of priests.
Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the
community were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges
or regular ministers; and the expense of sacrifices, which was
presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation
of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines.(10)
It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin,
and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially
similar in character. At any rate it can be shown that the Flamines,
Salii, Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome,
but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges
appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently
of the Roman model.
Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods,
so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual
sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also
consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities.
Colleges of Sacred Lore
There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome. Those,
however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not
to the priest. Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself
directly to the divinity--the community of course by the king as its
mouthpiece, just as the -curia- by the -curio- and the -equites-by
their colonels; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal
or to obscure this original and simple relation. But it was no
easy matter to hold converse with a god. The god had his own way
of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted
with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how
to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even
in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural,
therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult
such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose
the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious
lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far
more important influence on political development than the individual
priests and priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but
erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods
were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled
colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of
traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances,
the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge
and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should
provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge. These
close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from
the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of
skilled arts and sciences.
Augurs--Pontifices
Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in
general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the
augurs and that of the Pontifices.(11)
The six "bird-carriers" (-augures-) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was
prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific
system. The six "bridge-builders" (-Pontifices-) derived their
name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important,
of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the
Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery
of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the
duty of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the
people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and
of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place
on the right day. As they had thus an especial supervision of all
religious observances, it was to them in case of need--on occasion
of marriage, testament, and -adrogatio- --that the preliminary
question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in
any respect offend against divine law; and it was they who fixed
and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which
were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired
(although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition
of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of
whatever was connected with it--and what was there that was not so
connected? They themselves described the sum of their knowledge
as "the science of things divine and human." In fact the rudiments
of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical
recording proceeded from this college. For all writing of history
was associated with the calendar and the book of annals; and, as
from the organization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could
originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the
knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally
preserved in the college of the Pontifices, which alone was competent
to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious
law.
Fetiales
By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corporations of men
versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college
of the twenty state-heralds (-fetiales-, of uncertain derivation),
destined as a living repository to preserve traditionally the
remembrance of the treaties concluded with neighbouring communities,
to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of
treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or
declare war. They had precisely the same position with reference
to international, as the Pontifices had with reference to religious,
law; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out
the law, although not to administer it.
But in however high repute these colleges were, and important and
comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never
forgotten--least of all in the case of those which held the highest
position--that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled
advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to
explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer. Thus the highest
of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but
might not even give advice to him unasked. It was the province of
the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation
of birds; the "bird-seer" simply stood beside him and interpreted
to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven.
In like manner the Fetialis and the Pontifex could not interfere in
matters of international or common law except when those concerned
therewith desired it. The Romans, notwithstanding all their zeal
for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle
that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state
and--excluded from all command-- ought like any other burgess to
render obedience to the humblest magistrate.
Character of the -Cultus-
The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man's enjoyment of
earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate degree on his fear
of the wild forces of nature; it consisted pre-eminently therefore
in expressions of joy, in lays and songs, in games and dances, and
above all in banquets. In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural
tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter
of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a
pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it
was the usual roast for a feast. But all extravagance of expense
as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid
character of the Romans. Frugality in relation to the gods was
one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship;
and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity
by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained. In
consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which
grow out of unrestrained indulgence. At the very core of the Latin
religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to
bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the
world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the
gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal
condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to
the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief
who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to
Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and
the good spirits on the field of battle. The profound and fearful
idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the
community were angry and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely
guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself
up (-devovere se-); noxious chasms in the ground were closed,
and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave
burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or
upon the foe. The "sacred spring" was based on a similar view;
all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified
period were presented to the gods. If acts of this nature are to
be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the
essence of the Latin faith; but we are bound to add that, far back
as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life
was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted
before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose
to die. Human sacrifices of a different description run counter
to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they
occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later
degeneracy and barbarism. They never gained admission among the
Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair
induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary
deliverance through means so revolting. Of belief in ghosts, fear
of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, comparatively slight
traces are to be found among the Romans. Oracles and prophecy never
acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece,
and never were able to exercise a serious control over private or
public life. But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into
an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled
into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the
Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument
for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims;
this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his
tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly
apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy.
The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor;
each of them had a duly acquired right to certain performances and
payments; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number
of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance
of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident,
it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of
a man's religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled
in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements--the
-Pontifices- --could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence.
The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with
the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly
obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had
done so on his part. Man even dealt in speculation with his god;
a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god
and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain
service to be rendered a certain equivalent return; and the Roman
legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was
not the least important of the reasons on account of which all
priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns
of man in Latium. Nay, as the Roman merchant was entitled, without
injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely
in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the teaching
of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received
instead of the object itself. They presented to the lord of the sky
heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at
these rather than at the heads of men. In payment of the offering
annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes
were annually thrown into the stream.(12) The ideas of divine mercy
and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with
a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable
a master by means of a sham satisfaction. The Roman fear of the
gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the
multitude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence
of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the
foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively;
on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely
different in any material respect from the trembling with which the
Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful
creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to
stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the
Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human
flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became
the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that
universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics
of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all
religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such means the
simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a
cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle
of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion
was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical
views--the whole ideal development of the nation--and to expand
in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until
imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had
nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of
deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity
for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion
always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art As the
god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualizattion
of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterpart naturally
formed his place of abode (-templum-) and his image; walls and
effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to
embarrass the spiritual conception. Accordingly the original Roman
worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them;
and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium,
probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and
had a little chapel (-aedicula-) built for him, such a figurative
representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was
generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation. The Roman
religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the
exception, perhaps, of the double-headed Ianus; and Varro even
in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and
effigies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion
was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always
marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.
The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain
of its practical use. The practical gain which accrued to the Roman
community from their religion was a code of moral law gradually
developed by the priests, and the -Pontifices- in particular,
which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations
at a time when the state was still far from providing any direct
police-guardianship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought
to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach
of moral obligations. To the regulations of the former class
belonged the religious inculcation of a due observance of holidays
and of a cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the
rules of good husbandry--which we shall have occasion to notice
more fully in the sequel--as well as the worship of the heath or
of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary
police,(13) and above all the practice of burning the bodies of
the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period,
far earlier than among the Greeks--a practice implying a rational
conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive
times and is even foreign to ourselves at the present day. It must
be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the
Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements. But
the civilizing effect of this law was still more important. If
a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a
child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in-law;
if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest
or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or
the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common
good faith; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth
on the head of the offender. Not that the person thus accursed
(-sacer-) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its
nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence--an
aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels
between the orders. It was not the province of the individual
burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into
effect such a divine curse. Primarily the person thus accursed
became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice;
and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must
have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked. But the
banning was not confined to this; the king was in reality entitled
and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on
which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious
conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were,
as a victim offered up to the injured deity (-supplicium-), and thus
to purify the community from the crime of the individual. If the
crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there
was substituted a ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial
victim or of similar gifts. Thus the whole criminal law rested as
to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation.
But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance
of civil order and morality by such means as these. In this field
Hellas had an unspeakable advantage over Latium; it owed to its
religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also
its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all;
the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the
Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all
that was great in Hellenic life and all in it that was the common
heritage of the nation. And yet even here Latium had, as compared
with Hellas, its own advantages. The Latin religion, reduced
as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely
intelligible to every one and accessible in common to all; and
therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens,
while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest
thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing
and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like
every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the
infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to
the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent
spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared
with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning
disappears before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came
subsequently to wither; but the Latins preserved their simplicity
of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the
Greeks. As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim
it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the
destroyers of faith; and, much as this process at once of development
and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of
nature certain results have been reserved to the epoch of early
simplicity--results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours
to attain. The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes,
which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect
as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible
for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed
thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self-devotion, the
power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such
union. It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of
history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the
expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the
Greeks; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose,
so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest
organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth
that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with
their respective defects. The deepest and ultimate reason of the
diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that
Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth
come into contact with the East. No people on earth was great
enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic
or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history
has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of
Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil. But if for
this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not
less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it
is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from
both.
Foreign Worships
Such was the nature and such the influence of the Roman religion
in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly national development. Its
national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the
earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from
abroad; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on
individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state. An exchange
of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must
have been a matter of course; the transplantation to Rome of gods
and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable.
Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we
have already spoken.(14) Whether any conceptions of the gods were
borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful: for the Lases, the older
designation of the genii (from -lascivus-), and Minerva the goddess
of memory (-mens-, -menervare-), which it is customary to describe
as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological
grounds, indigenous to Latium. It is at any rate certain, and in
keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman intercourse that
the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention
in Rome than any other of foreign origin. The Greek oracles
furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction. The language
of the Roman gods was on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at
the most to the making their will known by the method of casting
lots, which appears in its origin Italian;(15) while from very ancient
times--although not apparently until the impulse was received from
the East--the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual
utterances of prophecy. The Romans made efforts, even at an early
period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of
the soothsaying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly
a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from
Campania. For the reading and interpretation of the fortune-telling
book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and
Pontifices, was instituted in early times, consisting of two men
of lore (-duoviri sacris faciundis-), who were furnished at the
expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek
language. To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in
cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid
some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or
with what rites it was to be performed. But Romans in search of
advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself.
Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already
mentioned,(16) it is attested partly by the reception of the word
-thesaurus- so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all
the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by
the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, -Aperta-, the "opener,"
an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of
which is betrayed by its very barbarism. The Greek Herakles was
naturalized in Italy as Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early
period and under a peculiar conception of his character, apparently
in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any
extraordinary increase of wealth; for which reason the general was
wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and
the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to
Hercules at the chief altar (-ara maxima-) in the cattle-market.
Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally,
which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and
confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin
god of good faith (-deus fidius-). The worship of Hercules was
from an early date among the most widely diffused; he was, to use
the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy,
and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the
cities and along the country roads. The gods also of the mariner,
Castor and Polydeukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traffic
Hermes--the Roman Mercurius--and the god of healing, Asklapios or
Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public
worship only began at a later period. The name of the festival
of the "good goddess" (-bona dea-) -damium-, corresponding to the
Greek --damion-- or --deimion--, may likewise reach back as far as
this epoch. It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that
the old -Liber pater- of the Romans was afterwards conceived as
"father deliverer" and identified with the wine-god of the Greeks,
the "releaser" (-Lyaeos-), and that the Roman god of the lower
regions was called the "dispenser of riches" (-Pluto- - -Dis pater-),
while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of
the initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman
Proserpina, that is, "germinatrix." Even the goddess of the
Romano-Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been
copied from the federal goddess of the lonians of Asia Minor, the
Ephesian Artemis; at least her carved image in the Roman temple
was formed after the Ephesian type.(17) It was in this way alone,
through the myths of Apollo, Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis,
which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic
religion exercised at this period a remote and indirect influence
on Italy. We clearly perceive from these facts that the introduction
of the Greek religion was especially due to commercial intercourse,
and that it was traders and mariners who primarily brought the
Greek gods to Italy.
These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but
of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism
of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may
perhaps be a specimen,(18) had virtually disappeared. In all its
leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the
people among whom we find it.
Religion of the Sabellians
The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the little we know
of it, rested upon quite the same fundamental views as the Latin
with local variations of colour and form. That it was different
from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding
of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine
rites;(19) but that very fact affords an instructive illustration
of the nature of the difference. Observation of the flight of
birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods;
but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs.
Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity
of comparing them. Both stocks in common regarded the gods as
abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature; they
differed in expression and ritual. It was natural that these
diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those
days; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic
distinction, if any really existed.
Religion of the Etruscans
But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have
reached us are marked by a different spirit. Their prevailing
characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing
the changes on numbers, soothsaying, and that solemn enthroning of
pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees.
We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness
and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable--indeed
it cannot well be doubted--that several of its features were only
imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that
the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the
Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to
us by tradition. But enough still remains to show that the mysticism
and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential
character of the Etruscan people.
With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic
contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and
the Italian; but it is clear that the most prominent among the
Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed
their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice
of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and
at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners. Instead of a tranquil world of
departed "good spirits" ruling peacefully in the realms beneath,
such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented
a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured
by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the
conductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man
with wings and a large hammer--a figure which afterwards served in
the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the
man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena. So fixed
was the association of torture with this condition of the shades,
that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain
mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of
the gods above. It is remarkable that, in order to people their
lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their
gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon,
which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.
But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation
of signs and portents. The Romans heard the voice of the gods
in nature; but their bird-seer understood only the signs in their
simplicity, and knew only in general whether the occurrence boded
good or ill. Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were
regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in
hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed
the comitia; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for
example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death
as speedily as possible. But beyond the Tiber matters were carried
much further. The profound Etruscan read off to the believer his
future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails
of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language
of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more
confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by
which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore
of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation
of prodigies--all of them, and the science of lightning especially,
devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the
mind in pursuit of absurdities. A dwarf called Tages with the
figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up
by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii--we might almost fancy that
practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present
in this figure a caricature of themselves--betrayed the secret of
this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died. His disciples
and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the
lightning; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by
its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether
the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event;
and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed,
or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed:
how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel
the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts
of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no
small desire of pocketing fees. How deeply repugnant this jugglery
was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when
people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome,
no attempt was made to naturalize it; during our present period
the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with
the Greek oracles.
The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the Roman, in
so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly
wanting among the Romans--a speculation veiled under religious
forms. Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods
(-Dii involuti-), consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that
world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was
it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time,
whose sections were the -saecula-. Respecting the intellectual
value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and
philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however
to have been from the very first characterized by a dull fatalism
and an insipid play upon number.
Notes for Book I Chapter XII
1. I. II. Religion
2. This was, to all appearance, the original nature of the
"morning-mother" or -Mater matuta-; in connection with which we may
recall the circumstance that, as the names Lucius and especially
-Manius- show, the morning hour was reckoned as lucky for birth.
-Mater matuta-probably became a goddess of sea and harbour only
at a later epoch under the influence of the myth of Leucothea; the
fact that the goddess was chiefly worshipped by women tells against
the view that she was originally a harbour-goddess.
3. From -Maurs-, which is the oldest form handed down by tradition,
there have been developed by different treatment of the -u -Mars-,
-Mavors-, -Mors-; the transition to -o (similar to -Paula-, -Pola-,
and the like) appears also in the double form Mar-Mor (comp.
-Ma-murius-) alongside of -Mar-Mor- and -Ma-Mers-.
4. The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (-ianus
matutinus-) were sacred to Ianus, and that he was always invoked
before any other god and was even represented in the series of
coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that
he was the abstraction of opening and beginning. The double-head
looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways.
To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable,
because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh,
not the first; that month seems rather to have derived its name
from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the
middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh.
It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year
should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after
Ianuarius came to be placed at its head.
5. I. IV. Tities and Luceres
6. I. VI. Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities
7. I. VII. Servian Wall
8. I. III. Latium
9. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium
10. I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses, I. XI. Crimes
11. The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the
communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and Pontifices
occur everywhere (e. g. Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous
inscriptions), as does likewise the -pater patratus- of the Fetiales
in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but the other colleges do not. The
former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of
ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and Luperci, as very ancient
heirlooms of the Latin stock; whereas the Duoviri -sacris faciundis-,
and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes
and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to,
Rome. But in the case of the second college--the pontifices--the
influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name
into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier--perhaps
more than one--designation; or--a hypothesis which philologically
has much in its favour-- -pons- originally signified not "bridge,"
but "way" generally, and -pontifex- therefore meant "constructor
of ways."
The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in
particular vary. The view that it was necessary for the number to
be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96); and
Livy (x. 6) does not say so, but only states that the number of
Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had
an odd number as its basis. According to Livy (l. c.) the number
was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same is virtually
affirmed by Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14) when he represents Romulus
as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls. On the number
of the pontifices comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 20.
12. It is only an unreflecting misconception that can discover
in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.
13. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
14. I. XII. Priests
15. -Sors- from -serere-, to place in row. The -sortes- were
probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when
thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts
one in mind of the Runic characters.
16. I. X. Hellenes and Latins
17. I. VII. Servian Wall
18. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture
19. I. IV. Tities and Luceres