By her victory at Zama in 202 B.C. Rome made her position as
mistress of the western Mediterranean secure; and in the next century
she extended her political dominion over Greece. But the same period
saw captured Greece take her captor captive. Nor was this subjugation
of the victor by the vanquished any sudden thing—in fact it had begun
centuries earlier. The course of that conquest will be the main subject
of the present lecture.
The story of the sale of the Sibylline Books to King Tarquin is
familiar to all: how the Cumaean Sibyl brought to the King nine books
of oracles; when he refused their purchase she went away and burned
three, and offered the remaining six at the price she had originally
demanded for the nine; upon his second refusal she burned three more,
and then offered the last three on the original terms. Tradition says
that her confidence in human curiosity was justified, and that Tarquin,
after consultation with his seers, purchased the last three books.[262]
Although we cannot today determine what historical truth lies behind
this naïve story, the date of the reputed sale—the sixth century
before our era—coincides with the first period of Greek influence at
Rome.
By their geographical position the early Romans were exposed to
influences from two superior civilizations—the Etruscan at the
north, the Greek in southern Italy. The Etruscans had entered Italy
probably from the East at some time between the eleventh and the eighth
centuries B.C.; but before their coming they had advanced in
culture beyond the Latins whose territories they touched on the Tiber.
By the sixth century certainly the Romans had come into close political
and commercial relations with them, and indeed had already felt
their power, for an Etruscan dynasty ruled at Rome. In spite of the
patriotic efforts of Roman historians, we can now see that the Etruscan
domination lasted long after the traditional expulsion of the kings.
From their northern neighbors the Romans took many political and social
institutions as well as certain religious elements. The most important
of the latter were the College of the Haruspices, the Great Games in
the Circus, the Triumph, and the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno,
and Minerva, which was established by the Tarquins to strengthen their
political position.
But far greater was the influence of the Greeks, whose colonies, firmly
established, rich and prosperous, fringed the whole southern part of
the Italian peninsula. From them the Romans got their alphabet, their
weights and measures, and certain political institutions; but most
important of all for our present interest, they received from them
religious influences which finally so overlaid the early Roman religion
that the Romans themselves could not well discover its original
elements, and we are hardly in a better situation. Furthermore, if we
can believe that there is a kernel of historic truth in the story that
King Tarquin the Proud sent an embassy to consult the oracle at Delphi,
Rome was not wholly without connection with Greece proper in the sixth
century before our era. We have then in Rome of the sixth and earlier
centuries an example of a state whose rude civilization was brought
into close and intensive contact with the higher civilizations about
her. It was inevitable that the results should be rapid and profound.
Of Roman religion before it was influenced by the Greeks and the
Etruscans we have comparatively little knowledge. Our literary sources
for that period are late and fragmentary, and consist almost wholly of
the speculations of the learned. But we have preserved in fragmentary
form some twenty stone calendars, dating from the early empire. These
calendars are not unlike that classic work known to us all, the Old
Farmer’s Almanack, in that they not only enumerate the days and the
months, but also note religious festivals and great historic events.
In all of them two styles of letters are employed. The larger letters
in part indicate one class of religious festivals; other festivals and
historical notices are inscribed in letters of smaller size. Theodor
Mommsen was the first to see the meaning of this difference. He showed
that the religious festivals recorded in the larger letters represented
the earliest stage of Roman religion known to us.[263] Some forty-five
fixed public festivals in the year’s round are thus indicated. We
cannot now discover the character of a number of these, and the
functions of some of the gods who belonged to that earliest stage
were as obscure to the scholars of the time of Cicero as they are to
us today. But we can determine the approximate date at which this
earliest period of Roman religion closed, so to speak, for there is
no mention in these entries of the triad of the Capitol—Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva. As I have just said, tradition tells us that this
group was introduced by the Tarquin dynasty in the first half of the
sixth century before our era; so that the date that can be set for the
close of this first stage of Roman religion is somewhere about 600-550
B.C.
An examination of the character of the earliest festivals shows the
stage of civilization which had been attained by the Romans. Some
thirteen or fourteen among those whose nature can be discovered had
to do with agriculture, a few perhaps with grazing, a few others with
war; certain ones were connected with the household and the cult of
dead ancestors, or were the occasions on which special efforts were
made to avert the baneful influences of the dead. The Romans then at
this stage were a simple agricultural people, busy with their efforts
to get a living from the soil with the aid of their flocks and herds,
and engaged in armed conflicts with the neighbors. Their religion
had little in it that showed the exercise of the imagination; it was
confined rather to those elements which a life rooted in the ground,
possessing no broad outlook, required. The heavenly bodies, the sun,
moon, and stars, and the operations of nature were not deified; and the
social relations, which later furnished many abstract divinities, as
yet had no place among the divine powers. Only those things which had
to do with the Roman’s daily life in his own neighborhood received his
devotion.
Furthermore in this earliest stage the gods were hardly conceived
anthropomorphically. Varro says that for the first hundred and seventy
years of Roman history the Romans did not represent their gods by
statues. According to his chronology this brings us to the founding of
the Capitoline temple in which the Etruscan triad of Jupiter, Juno,
and Minerva were worshipped. In general we may say that his statement
is true, for the Romans were in the aniconic stage until they learned
from their neighbors to represent their divinities by images in human
form. In this primitive period the Roman thought of his gods not as
individuals but as powers (numina), resident in and associated with
departments. This is an idea extremely difficult for us to grasp
with our sophisticated minds. To the early Roman Janus, for example,
was not the god of the door or the threshold, he was the door or the
threshold—not simply resident in it, but not even distinguished from
the object itself. So Vesta was the fire on the hearth; Saturn was the
sown grain; Ceres the growing grain; Flora the blossoming flower; Fons
the spring of water; and so on. The circle of such powers could never
be closed, as the number of departments in which divine powers might
reside was indefinite. Yet even in this early stage certain numina were
regarded as more prominent than others. At the head of the list stood
Janus, the numen of the door or passage, whose importance was such that
still in later times his priest, the rex sacrorum, took precedence
of all others, and prayers began with an appeal to him. Jupiter was
the god of the sky and of all the phenomena which seem to have their
origin there; Juno the feminine counterpart of Jove; Mars the god of
war and protector of the land; Quirinus a similar divinity, belonging
originally perhaps to a separate settlement on the Quirinal Hill. The
list closed with Vesta, the goddess of the hearthfire, with whose
name the ancient litanies always ended. These were the great gods of
the period before Greek influence came. Yet in this earliest time the
divinities had little, if any, personality in our sense of the word.
They were simply powers. Personalities and anthropomorphic forms they
acquired under the influence of the Greeks, who had left the primitive
stage many centuries behind them and had long represented their
divinities in human shape.
The religion of the early Romans was at once both simple and elaborate.
There were no temples in the later sense; no cult images of the gods.
But religion was thought to consist primarily in the employment of a
scrupulous care in all dealings with the divine powers, that is to say
the ritual had to be exactly performed so that the numina might be
forced, if need be, to perform the things the suppliant desired. Such a
concept naturally led to the development even in this earliest time of
an elaborate ritual, on the exact performance of which all depended.
This character Roman religion maintained to the end. So fixed was the
ritual that the ancient litanies could not be changed. We have still
preserved the songs of the Arval Brothers and of the Salii, which are
of such primitive form that in the historical period they were largely
unintelligible to those who sang them; yet no syllable of the venerable
formulae might be varied. Furthermore religion was regarded as a state
affair. It was by state action that certain gods had been recognized
and given a kind of citizenship; no others therefore were of concern
to the Romans unless the state adopted them also by formal decree. The
state likewise determined where and when worship should be carried on.
These legislative enactments, according to tradition, had followed the
actual establishment of the state by Romulus; and in the historical
period the establishment of the religious organization of a colony, for
example, was regularly subsequent to the political. In fact the Romans
said that the earliest religious system had been established by King
Numa, as the political system had been made by Romulus, for they had
a natural tendency to regard their institutions as the creations of
individuals. The historical significance of this belief for us is that
the “religion of Numa” marked the earliest stage of which the Romans
were conscious. It is that indicated in the calendars by the entries in
large letters.
The Romans further thought of their religion as a contract between the
state and its gods. This view comes out clearly in the vows made at
the beginning of the year or of a campaign. At such seasons the king,
and later the consuls or other officials, promised that if the divine
powers should prosper them against their foes, and should grant them
abundant harvests, increase of the crops and herds, then the state,
when the gods had done their part, would in its turn pay the price
promised in the form of votive gifts and sacrifices. Livy furnishes
us many illustrations. For example, in a crisis during the struggle
with the Samnites the Roman leader prayed thus to the goddess of war:
“Bellona, if thou wilt today grant us victory, then I promise thee a
temple.”[264] Another is the vow made near the beginning of the Second
Punic War: “If the state of the Roman People, the Quirites, shall be
preserved, as I would have it preserved, for the next five years in
these wars—the war which the Roman People is carrying on with the
Carthaginians and the wars which they have with the Gauls who live this
side the Alps,—then the Roman People, the Quirites, will give a gift,
etc.”; a long list of the offerings to be made follows.[265]
In this first period the religion of the family also was already fixed
in the form which it retained to the end of antiquity. Vesta of the
hearthfire, the Penates of the larder, the Lar of the farm, the Genius
of the pater familias, were the divine powers which were worshipped in
the house. Rites were paid also to the Manes, the shades of the dead.
As within the home the head of the family naturally performed the
priestly offices, so in the state during the regal period the king was
chief priest. Advisers and assistants were given him, who with the
organization of the republic acquired an independent position, so that
thereafter the Pontifex Maximus and his associates, who formed the
College of the Pontifices, were at the head of the state religion.
Although it is impossible here to go into the details of the Roman
priesthoods, it is important to note that these priestly offices were
state magistracies just as much as the offices of consul and praetor,
and that with a few exceptions priestly office never debarred its
holder from performing any other political function. The Roman state
was not burdened with sacerdotalism.
Now this early religion of which I have been giving a brief summary
was the religion of a little city-state; it was suited to a small,
unimaginative community. As such it remained formal and practical—a
religion intended to secure material blessings; but it lacked all
spiritual elements, and offered little or nothing to satisfy man’s
natural hope for a happy future life. More than this, it contained
little to ennoble daily life, save as it taught the lesson of duty and
of fidelity towards the gods in the performance of contracts agreed
upon. Yet it was not an uncomfortable religion for unreflective men,
winning their existence from the soil and gaining their wealth from
crops, their power through war. It did not, however, have in it the
possibility of satisfying men’s higher desires.
Under the influence of the Greeks and the Etruscans the Hellenic gods
were early introduced to Rome. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline,
which the Tarquin kings apparently built to establish a new religious
center associated with their own dynasty, housed Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva; but they were only the Greek gods Zeus, Hera, and Athena,
who had travelled to Rome by way of Etruria. In this temple the
gods were represented in human form, and thereafter the process of
anthropomorphizing and individualizing the divinities must have gone
on apace. Some gods came by migration and trade, like the Greek Castor
and Pollux, who were introduced to Rome from the neighboring town of
Tusculum, and Hercules, whom Greek immigrants had established at Tibur.
But the greatest influence in introducing Greek gods was the Sibylline
Books. Whenever need pressed the state, these books were consulted that
they might indicate what new means should be employed to win divine
aid. We can name at least ten Greek divinities who were thus brought in
before the outbreak of the Second Punic War. Apollo must have come at
the time of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books, or soon after, for
the Books were believed to contain his directions; we know that he had
a temple by 433 B.C. Under the name of the Italian divinity
Mercury, the Greek Hermes had received a shrine in 495; two years later
the triad Ceres, Liber, and Libera, an Italian disguise for Demeter,
Dionysus, and Kore, were domiciled near Mercury; and not long before
399 B.C. the Greek Poseidon, with the name of Neptunus, was
established near the city walls. Then there was apparently a pause for
about a century. But in 293 B.C. a serious plague ravaged the
city, so that the Sibylline Books were consulted. This time they were
found to say that relief was certain if the Greek god of healing,
Aesculapius, were brought to Rome. The divinity consented, and two
years later a temple was dedicated to him on the island in the Tiber
where the hospital of San Bartolomeo today continues his kindly work.
Again in the crisis of the year 249 B.C., warned by many
omens, the Romans obeyed the Books’ injunction to establish on the
Campus Martius a festival to the Greek Pluto and Persephone under the
names Dispater and Proserpina. This festival was to be renewed every
saeculum, and ultimately became the festival which Augustus celebrated
with such magnificence in 17 B.C. Finally in 238 B.C. the Greek
Aphrodite was adopted under the Italian name Flora. You will observe
that most of the Greek gods were identified with Roman or Italian
divinities long familiar to the Romans; but in every case sooner or
later the Greek god so completely overshadowed his Italian counterpart
that the Italian lost his identity in the Greek. Besides these
divinities which I have named the popular mind identified many others,
and in the end a large part of the Greek pantheon crept into the Roman
system. The temple for Jupiter and his associates, Juno and Minerva,
had been built on the Capitoline Hill in the Etruscan style and the
three gods were represented by Etruscan terra-cotta images; but the
homes of the Greek divinities were erected in the Greek style by Greek
architects, and the statues of the divinities were copies of statues in
Greek cities. These set models for the representation of other gods. We
can readily understand how men’s concepts of their gods were profoundly
influenced by their artistic representations.
The introduction of these Greek gods is probably to be connected with
the political struggles of the two centuries between 500 and 300 B.C.
At the beginning of the Republic the patricians were the only ones who
had considerable political rights or who enjoyed the privileges of
the state religion, whereas the plebeians were struggling to secure
admission to both political and priestly offices; and during these
two centuries the humbler class found religious satisfaction in the
worship of these new gods, whose rites were public, open to all, and
not restricted to the privileged citizens, as were the rites of the
older divinities. In 367/6 B.C., the plebeians secured admission to the
consulate and to the College of Ten who had charge of the Sibylline
Books, and by the year 300 they had obtained a right to all important
political offices, including practically all the priesthoods. A social
significance also attached to the temples of these new gods: that of
Mercury, the god of trade, became the resort of the guild of merchants;
the temple of Minerva on the Aventine the center for the various guilds
of craftsmen, including that of poets. Along with the Greek gods had
come also the Greek ritual. The Hellenization of Roman religion may be
said to have been completed by the year 217 B.C. when, as ordered by
the Sibylline Books, at the great festival of the lectisternium twelve
gods were represented as sharing a sacred meal with the people; these
twelve gods were Greek divinities, although all but Apollo were called
by Roman names: Jupiter and Juno, Neptune and Minerva, Mars and Venus,
Apollo and Diana, Volcanus and Vesta, Mercury and Ceres.[266] While
the practical character of Roman religion still remained, the Romans’
concept of the gods themselves, as well as much of the ritual, had been
profoundly altered.
In other fields as well Greece began her conquest of Rome before
Rome entered on her political subjugation of Greece. An educated
young Greek, taken captive at the fall of Tarentum in the year 272
B.C., became the teacher of his master’s children at Rome;
when set free, he continued his profession under the name of Livius
Andronicus. There was, however, no Roman literature available, so that
he had to supply this lack by translating the Odyssey into the rude
Saturnian verse current in the mouths of the Latins. In the year 240
B.C. he presented a tragedy and a comedy adapted from Greek
originals, and thus through epic and dramatic poetry he became the
founder of Latin literature.
We must realize that at this time the only literature existing was the
Greek, which in its unexampled history of six centuries and more had
originated and perfected almost every major literary form since known.
It was inevitable that Andronicus and his successors should turn to the
Greek for their models and that the early drama should largely consist
of adaptations, chiefly from the cosmopolitan comedy of Greece. That
this was possible and natural shows in part how common knowledge of
the Greek language and of Greek customs was already in Rome of the
third and second centuries before our era. Now these adapted plays,
both tragedies and comedies, had a share in breaking down the older
religious and social strictness, as we can easily see from the extant
comedies of Plautus and of Terence. These prove beyond question that
the later Greek drama, when adapted for Roman audiences, must have had
a considerable influence upon Roman religion and Roman society. The
gods are intentionally held up to ridicule; they are represented as
being more immoral and baser than common men; nor is the human society
which is presented in these plays an edifying spectacle. Although we
should not attribute too great influence in such matters to the stage,
there is no possible question that the theatre had its effect then, as
it has its influence now.
At the close of the third century before our era native epic poetry
began under the influence naturally of the Homeric epics. Naevius,
who flourished during the Second Punic War, wrote a narrative poem,
the Bellum Punicum, in the native Saturnian measure—a poem which
enjoyed great success and continued to be read in Horace’s day. In it
he popularized among the Romans a simple form of the legend of Rome’s
connection with Troy, which is familiar to us from Virgil and Livy. His
successor in this field was Ennius, who died in 169 B.C. He
boldly adopted the Greek hexameter for his poetic history of Rome, the
Annales, and moulded the Latin language to this measure so successfully
that thereafter this remained the metre for the Roman epic. From
Naevius and Ennius through Virgil to the end of the fourth Christian
century, when Claudian closed the long line of classical Latin poets,
every one drew his form, his imagery, and many of his incidents from
the Greek epics.
The splendid results of the Second Punic War, made the more glorious by
the long years of doubt and disaster, stirred the Romans to a desire to
record their national history in prose form. But the only prose which
had been developed for this purpose was Greek; therefore the Roman
historians wrote in that language for half a century until Cato the
Censor set the fashion of writing in Latin prose. So we might go on
and point out how in oratory, lyric poetry, elegy, and in almost every
other form of literature the Greeks were the direct models for the
Romans, as in a way they have been for the literatures of all peoples
since. Furthermore in poetry, history, and indeed in all classes of
literature, Greek myths and legends were adopted or worked over to fit
new conditions, tales and genealogies invented on Greek models, and
everywhere the Greek gods were given Latin names and adapted to their
new environment. The disastrous result for the indigenous religion is
self-evident.
During the third and second centuries education came to mean first of
all the study of the Greek language and literature. I have just spoken
of some of the evidence we possess which shows that Greek was early
widely known among all classes at Rome. By the Second Punic War it
became customary in well-to-do and noble families to employ a private
teacher (grammaticus) within the house to give instruction in the
Greek language and literature; in the middle of the second century
B.C., with the growth of a wider interest in the formal study
of Greek literature, schools arose in which the grammatici taught a
considerable number of pupils together. The Greek authors studied were
first of all Homer, and then the great tragedians; among the writers of
comedy Menander was the favorite; the fables of Aesop and lyric poetry
also found their place. Modelled on this Greek curriculum was the
study of Latin literature—Livius Andronicus, Ennius, with selections
from the Roman writers of tragedy and comedy. In due season Virgil and
Horace occupied the first rank. Furthermore not far from the beginning
of the last century before our era Greek rhetoricians began formal
instruction at Rome, and they continued to hold the field against Latin
rhetoricians throughout antiquity. We see therefore that all education
of every grade from the time of the Second Punic War was either Greek
or modelled directly on the Greek. By it the Latin tongue was refined
and perfected; but more significant for us at the present moment is the
fact that thereby Latin society was made familiar with Greek social,
philosophic, and religious ideas so far as they were represented in
Greek literature.
I have earlier said that the temples of the Greek gods at Rome were
built in Greek style by Greek architects, and that the images of the
gods within were copies of famous Greek works of art. By these the
Romans’ ideas as to the personality of their divinities were fixed
in the Greek concepts. As Rome extended her conquests over Greek
lands, first in southern Italy and Sicily, and then in Greece proper,
she acquired as part of the spoils of war great treasures of Greek
sculpture and painting; the number of statues and other works of
art which were brought home by Memmius alone after the destruction
of Corinth in 146 B.C. can hardly be estimated. A large
number of them represented the gods, and intensified the process
of Hellenization with which we are now concerned, for the statues
and other representations of Cronos, Zeus, Hera, Ares, and Athena
readily represented Saturn, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, and Minerva. In cases
where the similarity was not so close, the nearest Greek analogy was
selected; if none was satisfactory, still the best was made of the
case, as when the Greek representations of the Dioscuri, Castor and
Pollux, came to do service for the Lares Praestites. Among the spoils
of war were many Greek paintings, for which mythological scenes were
favorite subjects, and such frequently represented the baser, sensual
side of traditional religion. The effect on the ignorant was to give
them a lower concept of divinity; the intellectual classes were
disgusted with the gods of such a sort and rejected them.
But the most potent influence that came from Greece to Rome was
naturally philosophy. We cannot fix any date for the introduction of
Greek philosophic thought at Rome, yet it certainly became influential
soon after the close of the Second Punic War. We have already seen that
long before this time the Greek philosophic systems were highly
developed and had done much to drive the traditional gods from their
high places. It was inevitable that these philosophies should have
a swift effect when they once became known to the newly Hellenized
Roman society of the second century B.C. The poet Ennius,
who belonged to the first half of that century, was a man of strong
religious bent and moral convictions, and he heartily scorned the
superstitious notions of his day. He had been already influenced by
Epicurean scepticism with regard to the existence of the gods, and the
following words, spoken by Teucer in one of his tragedies, may well
have represented his own view: “I have always said, and I shall always
say, that the gods of heaven exist, but I believe that they have no
care for what the race of man does. For if they had such care, it would
be well with the good and ill with the wicked; which is not the case
now.”[267] It is the ancient difficulty of justifying the ways of God to
men. Ennius adopted the easy solution by denial, which he had already
learned from Epicureanism.
The same poet also translated and made known to the Romans the Sacred
History of Euhemerus. This was a romantic tale written in the third
century before our era in which the author told of an imaginary voyage
which he had made from Arabia to the island Panchaea in the Indian
Ocean; there he found inscribed on a column the history of the supposed
gods Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus, and learned that they and the other gods
and heroes had been originally historical persons who were raised to
their high position because of the services they had rendered mankind.
This Sacred History was an interesting example of the rationalizing
tendency of the age that produced it; its effect upon the Roman, whose
belief in the traditional religion was already shaken, we can readily
understand. Unquestionably Ennius’ work and the plays of the comedians
hastened the work of unbelief, although they were only two of many
factors that contributed to the ultimate result.
The first half of this same second century was also a time of religious
unrest. Whatever may have been the reason, whether the common longing
for mystic assurance of safety and salvation had come naturally to
the front in the Roman and Italian mind, or whether the large number
of Greeks, slaves, traders, and other members of the lower and
immigrant classes had moved the natives by mystic practices which
they had brought with them, certain it is that a considerable part
of the Romans found no satisfaction for their deeper longings in the
traditional religion, and turned to a form of the Greek mysteries.[268]
The mysteries of Bacchus which had gradually made their way up the
peninsula from the Greek cities of the south led to such excesses in
186 B.C. that the Roman senate felt obliged to adopt stern measures;
yet it is significant that it did not dare to forbid the celebration
of these mysteries, but attempted only to control them. The Bacchic
mysteries offered essentially the same religious satisfaction that the
great mysteries at Eleusis did. Their influence at this time in Italy
shows how conscious men had become of larger religious desires and how
little the current forms of religion satisfied them. The conservatives
in the state abhorred the Bacchic rites and would have no more part in
them than in philosophy, towards which they showed an amusing timidity.
Five years after the regulation of the mysteries an attempt was made to
introduce at Rome some philosophic books which were generally regarded
as subversive in their tendencies. The method of their introduction
was the same one which has been used many times for similar purposes.
Some farmers plowing in their fields at the foot of the Janiculum found
two stone chests or coffins with inscriptions upon them in both Latin
and Greek, saying that in one King Numa Pompilius had been buried,
and that in the other were the books of the sacred law established by
him. On opening the sarcophagi it was discovered that the body of the
king had disappeared, but in the second chest were found two rolls of
seven books each; one set was in Latin and treated of the pontifical
law, the other, in Greek, dealt with Greek philosophy—tradition said
it was the philosophy of Pythagoras. After solemn deliberation by the
officials it was found that these books tended to destroy religion, and
a timid senate ordered them to be publicly burned.[269] Again about
173 B.C., the senate required the Epicurean philosophers, Aldus and
Philiscus, to leave the state;[270] and once more in 161 it passed a
vote banishing the Greek philosophers and rhetoricians.[271] In 156/5
an embassy from Athens included the Peripatetic philosopher Critolaus,
the Academic Carneades, and the Stoic Diogenes, who during their stay
at Rome exhibited their skill in disputation and their eloquence in
speeches before the people. The populace was charmed, but old fashioned
people were horrified at such exhibitions. Cato the Censor was so
shocked that he moved in the senate that the Roman youth should not
be allowed to listen to such teachings.[272] But it was too late;
philosophers might be driven from the state, but philosophy had found a
foothold at Rome.
The two schools that made the strongest appeal to the Romans at the
end of the Republic were Epicureanism and Stoicism. The former had
wide influence until the first century of our era, chiefly because its
agnosticism, or rather its denial of the existence of any future life,
offered a refuge from the uncertainty which prevailed now that the
old beliefs were broken up and men, harrassed by political disorders,
had not yet found an abiding place in any positive philosophy. The
Epicureans did not deny the existence of gods, it is true, but they
declared that the gods, if they existed, must dwell in some remote
place in the upper ether in eternal sunshine, undisturbed by any care
for mortals. They explained the universe by a resort to the atomistic
materialism of Democritus, a philosopher of the late fifth century.
Their religious aim, if we may so define it, was to free men from the
terror which their superstitious beliefs in the gods and in future
punishment brought upon them. No writer sets this forth with greater
genius or with greater passion than Lucretius, the contemporary of
Cicero. His six books are devoted to an explanation of the universe
and its phenomena, of the nature of man, and of the impossibility of
immortality. This splendid poem furnishes us the best proof that in
that day the mass of men still believed in immortality and longed for
an assurance that their belief was not in vain.
In practical ethics the Epicureans did not differ much from the other
systems of their time. They taught that happiness must be found in the
avoidance of pain, and that inasmuch as some pleasures have painful
results they were to be rejected, as some pains were to be accepted,
for they were followed by pleasure; and they held that in self-control
and choice lay the means by which man could attain to his goal, which
was ἀταραξία, complete repose of the mind. So the Epicurean tried to
reach an end similar to that of the Stoic, although his premises were
somewhat different. Epicureanism made a natural appeal to men in a time
like the last century and a half of the Republic, when the ancient
confidence in the state religion was gone, when the simplicity of the
earlier centuries had been replaced by a more elaborate method of
living, made possible through the rapid increase of wealth, and when in
every department of Roman life rapid changes were taking place.
Yet for various reasons Epicureanism gradually lost its hold. It may be
that the passivity which it engendered failed to make a lasting appeal
to the Roman mind, or more probably other philosophies may have offered
more attractive means of attaining the same goal of happiness. At any
rate, as I pointed out in an earlier lecture, the Roman temperament had
an especial leaning towards Stoicism. I there spoke of the introduction
of Stoicism at Rome by Panaetius during the second century B.C., and
I sketched the tendencies of his system so far as popular religion
was concerned. It was probably Panaetius who was responsible for that
threefold theology which was set forth by the famous Scaevola, who
declared that there were three classes of gods—those of the poets,
those of the statesmen, and those of the philosophers. The mythical
theology of the poets, he said, was full of absurd and degrading
stories unworthy of the attention of men; the religion of the state was
nothing but a wise device, a useful convention adopted by statesmen as
suited to the necessities of the political organism; but the theology
of the intelligent man, the philosopher, was alone true, yet naturally
it was beyond the power of the common man to grasp. Such was the
attitude of the most famous jurist and the head of the state religion
at the beginning of the last century before our era.[273] A little
later Varro, the famous polyhistor, in writing of the gods and religion
in his great Encyclopedia of Roman Antiquities, made a similar
distinction between theologies and showed throughout his treatment the
pantheistic influence of the Stoic philosophy. In his works he was the
first fully to combine the mythological traditions with the philosophic
doctrines which the Romans had been learning for over a century.
Yet the Epicurean and the Stoic schools were not the only ones which
numbered adherents among the Romans. The representatives of the later
Academy, Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon, had many pupils.
Cicero, Atticus, Brutus, and Varro had all heard the latter lecture at
Athens. But the teachings of Plato had been greatly modified, inasmuch
as these later Academicians had adopted the greater part of Stoicism
into their philosophy. Furthermore the sceptical tendency which is so
clearly marked among the Sophists of the fifth century had gradually
developed during the fourth and third centuries into something like
a philosophic system. The Sceptics, however, can hardly be called a
school; they included those men in the various schools who doubted
the possibility of attaining to absolute knowledge. Among the Romans
they had close affinity with the tenets of the later Academicians on
the one hand and with Stoic doctrines on the other. But their keen
consciousness of the limitations of human knowledge made them also a
factor in producing a certain agnosticism among the educated. As a
matter of fact, the majority of the Romans were plain men, not given to
speculation, with a fondness for the concrete rather than the abstract.
They naturally selected from the various philosophies the elements which
appealed to their practical sense, and which fortified them to meet the
burdens and responsibilities of their daily life. On the whole Stoicism
did this service more than any other of the current systems, and in
the end, as we have already seen, Stoicism became the chief philosophy
under the early Empire. The Stoics’ interest in grammar and logic also
appealed to the legal character of the Roman mind; their system of
duties, which were to be met unflinchingly, accorded with the Roman
temper, and their cosmopolitan view found favor with a people that were
masters of the greater part of the known world. But whatever the system
of philosophy or selection of philosophic doctrines the Roman adopted,
he found therein no warrant for a belief in the state religion.
Philosophy could go no further than it did with Scaevola and Varro. The
traditional religion was abandoned by the intellectual Romans; they
substituted for it either agnosticism, some form of moral philosophy,
or a pantheistic concept of the world. In truth the conquest of Greece
over Rome was complete: in literature, art, philosophy, and religion
captured Greece had taken her captor captive; by the beginning of
our era Greek thought had penetrated to all the great centers of the
Roman Empire, and under that long peace, which with comparatively few
interruptions lasted for two centuries after the battle for Actium,
philosophy and many new religions, including Christianity, travelled
the great Roman roads from one end of the ancient world to the other.
The last century of the Republic from the time of the Gracchi to the
battle of Actium in 31 B.C. was not only a period of religious
change but also a time of political decay. The strength of the Republic
was so far gone that democratic government no longer existed, and the
rule fell into the hands of political leaders. However much the Gracchi
may have been inspired by public spirit and high purpose, they set in
motion a train of events that was destined to result in the loss of
all public liberty and in the foundation of the Empire. The history of
this last century must be read in the history of individuals—Tiberius
and Gaius Gracchus; Saturninus; Marius, Cinna, and Sulla; Pompey,
Caesar, and Crassus; Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus. These were the
political bosses who for good or ill led the state and combined for its
control. From the day that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in January 49
to the battle of Actium in September 31 B.C., Italy and many
other lands around the Mediterranean were harassed almost continuously
by civil war. The Italian peninsula never fully recovered from the
disasters of this time. Even with the horrors of the European struggle
before us, we in this land can hardly picture to ourselves either
these disasters or the joy with which the majority of the inhabitants
of the Roman world hailed the pax Romana which the Emperor Augustus
established. With peace came a revival of trade and a return of
prosperity, to which eloquent witness is given by Virgil and Horace.
The founder of the Empire, Augustus, attempted to revive the old state
religion and to introduce certain modifications to the advantage of
his own position. In this he was aided by the sense of dissatisfaction
which the preceding disasters had increased, and by that inherent
belief which always seems to persist, even in times of great religious
doubt, that somehow the prosperity of the state is inseparably
connected with the rites of religion. Under his direction temples
were rebuilt, old priesthoods reestablished, and the ancient ritual
performed with a magnificence that men had never before seen. He also
magnified the worship of Apollo and of Apollo’s sister Diana; the
former god in fact he regarded as his patron divinity, and three years
after his victory at Actium he dedicated a magnificent temple to him
on the Palatine. But the new worship of Apollo did not attain to the
supreme position to which Augustus apparently wished to raise it, and
his efforts to recall the old state religion could not bring back men’s
belief, although they could restore its practices. Indeed we must
bear in mind that the traditional worship of the greater Roman gods
continued to exist to the end of antiquity, in spite of the fact that
it had lost its vitality centuries before its final downfall.
One important and permanent contribution to religion Augustus did
make: as early as the year 42 B.C., the masterful youth had
forced an unwilling senate to declare Julius Caesar divine; thereby he
established the worship of the deified emperors—a cult which was to
last nearly four centuries. The significance for us of this worship
of the emperor lies in the fact that now for the first time there was
introduced into the entire civilized world a common religion. From the
remotest East to the farthest West, from Britain on the north to the
edge of the Great Desert on the south, temples to the deified emperors
had been erected before a century of the Empire had passed, and these
did much to accustom men to the idea of one common worship for the
whole world.
* * * * *
Thus far we have been considering almost wholly those forces which
were operating in the Roman world first to obscure the original Roman
religion and finally to break down faith in that traditional religion
which had resulted from the victory of the gods of Greece over those of
Rome. Yet the age of Augustus was far from being irreligious. Of the
truth of this statement Virgil alone would be sufficient witness if all
others were lacking, for the Aeneid owed its immediate popularity and
its permanent high place, not only to the unmatched expression which it
gave to Roman imperialism, but also to its religious tone, which the
poet’s contemporaries and their successors found partly in Virgil’s
exact knowledge of Roman ritual and felt still more in the sixth book
of the Aeneid, where the current beliefs in a future life with rewards
and punishments were set forth in combination with impressive prophecy
after the event; all was planned and combined in such a way as to make
a strong appeal to the Romans’ national pride and religious sense
alike. Moreover under the Empire positive elements tending to elevate
religious thought and to purify morals were not lacking. On many of
these we have already touched in our last lecture, for they were
largely to be found in philosophy, one of the greatest gifts which
Greece gave to her conqueror. Even at the risk of repetition, we shall
now consider briefly some of these constructive forces.
Although Epicureanism taught that man’s highest good was pleasure,
it was far from being a thoroughgoing hedonism, as I pointed out
a little while ago. On the contrary its founder taught that the
pleasures of the mind were superior to those of the body, and that the
cardinal virtue of man was correct insight, that is to say, wisdom,
virtue, and justice; and that these three factors—wisdom, virtue, and
justice—were necessary for a pleasant life.[274] Such doctrine as this
does not properly make for religion, but it does contribute to the
welfare and comfort of society. Epicureanism was the most quietistic
of the later philosophic schools and so was well adapted to the
conditions of the later Republic and the early Empire. We have seen how
Pythagoreanism in its revival had something approaching the Christian
cult of the Saints, and made sanctity an ideal of human life as well as
an object of admiration. Platonism never lost its own religious fervor
and missionary zeal, but had indeed communicated them to most of the
eclectic later schools. Yet of all the schools perhaps Stoicism made
the largest contribution directly to the moral and indirectly to the
religious life of the first two centuries of our era.
The Stoic, like the Cynic, his doctrinaire and less effective
intellectual cousin, at this time conceived of his task as that of
a missionary to a lost world; he was a director of men’s souls.
Speculation was by most regarded as unpractical and useless, save
as it might help to elevate men’s minds and so contribute to their
moral edification. Many of the aristocracy, whose wealth furnished
only a splendid cloak for the disorder of their souls within, had
in their houses philosophers who served as confessors and private
chaplains—physicians to the soul. Such was Seneca, to whose real
significance and merit we must not be blinded either by his own
weakness or by the monstrosity of the emperor whose minister he was.
He was a spiritual director, a confessor, and a guide to many of the
aristocracy. His correspondence shows how he endeavored to build up his
friends in virtue and moral strength, not by theoretical speculation as
to the nature of virtue, but by wise instructions as to the practice
of a virtuous life. Epictetus on the other hand was more of a preacher
to the masses. Arrian occasionally gives us the dramatic setting of
his master’s discourses, as for example: “When a man asked his advice
as to the way in which he could persuade his brother to be no longer
angry at him, Epictetus said,” etc.[275] These words show that the text
of Epictetus’ sermons might often be furnished by the question of an
individual, but the sermons themselves make it clear that any one who
wished might hear the teacher. Seneca and Epictetus are simply the
two examples best known to us of the philosophic director and the
missionary, but it is clear that there were many of both classes. Their
essential moral and religious teachings were in practical accord.
What were some of the supports and satisfactions which Stoicism offered
serious men in the disordered political and social world of the early
Empire? First of all, it laid stress on conduct and frankly proposed
to give rules by which men could attain to the peace they sought.
Both Seneca and Epictetus inculcated daily self-examination, and this
practice was not the habit of their school alone. The eclectic Sextius,
who belonged to the generation before Seneca, at the end of each day
asked his soul: “What fault of yours have you cured today? What vice
resisted? In what way are you a better man?” Seneca himself found the
same practice helpful; he would say to himself: “In that discussion
you spoke with too much warmth. Do not engage again with the ignorant,
for they who have never learned do not wish to learn.”[276] Epictetus
quoted from the “Golden Words” of Pythagoras and reminded his hearers
that the verses were not for recitation but for use: “Never let sleep
come to thy languid eyes e’er thou hast considered each act of the day.
‘Where have I slipped?’ ‘What done, what failed to do?’ Begin thus and
go through all; and then chide thyself for thy shameful acts, rejoice
over thy good.”[277] Such a searching of one’s daily acts Epictetus
regarded as an essential exercise to prepare and train a man to meet
the vicissitudes of life. In the discourse in which he quotes these
Pythagorean verses, he continues with the question: “What is
philosophy?” “Is it not a preparation against things which may happen
to a man?” He argues that a man who throws away the patience which
philosophy teaches him is like an athlete who because of the blows he
receives wishes to withdraw from the pancratium—still worse than he,
for the athlete may avoid his contest and escape the blows; but no man
can escape the buffetings of life. Therefore the preacher says that to
give up philosophy is to abandon the one resource against misfortune,
the only source of happiness and courage.
The pagan missionary no less than the Christian apostle to the Gentiles
regarded life as a battle to be fought and a race to be run. Epictetus
often compared human life to a warfare; he said that men were assigned
their several places and duties in this world, just as in an army one
man is obliged to stand watch, another to spy, and a third to fight,
each doing his part in the place in which the great general, God, had
set him,—a figure which Socrates had used five centuries earlier in
his defence before his judges. In accord with this view of life as a
battle or an athletic contest, the philosophers laid much weight on
training. Seneca and Epictetus both exhorted their pupils to exercise
themselves in the means whereby they could meet misfortune or be ready
to perform any duty which the changes of life might bring them. The
latter had a discourse “On Exercise,” which was apparently a favorite
theme for all Stoic preachers.[278] The purpose of this exercise was to
train the individual in right abstentions and the proper use of his
desires, so that he would be always obedient to reason and do nothing
out of season or place—in short to make him an adept in living so that
he could manage his usual life with adroit uprightness and meet the
sudden changes of fortune undismayed. In another discourse Epictetus
pointed out that the misfortunes of life were tests sent by God to
prove the individual’s fidelity in training; “God says to you, ‘Give
me proof if you have duly practised athletics, if you have eaten what
you should, if you have exercised, if you have obeyed the trainer.’ And
then will you show yourself weak when the time for action comes? Now is
the time for a fever. Bear it well. Now the time for thirst. Endure thy
thirst well.”[279]
In my last lecture I spoke of the doctrine of constant advance in
virtue which these later moral teachers magnified. Stoicism had come
to recognize the facts of human life and in practice had abandoned
the older doctrine of the sudden and complete perfection of man by
philosophy. Seneca’s honest words I must quote again: “I am not yet
wise, nor shall I ever be. Do not ask me to be equal to the best but
rather to be better than the base. This is enough for me—to take away
daily something from my faults and daily to rebuke my errors. I have
not attained complete moral health, nor shall I ever attain it.”[280] It
is unnecessary to point out that such teaching as is given in these
words was far more tonic than the uncompromising doctrine of an earlier
day, for progress in virtue each man could feel was within his
power; sudden perfection he knew was beyond the strength of any man.
Furthermore the philosophers gave detailed injunctions as to the ways
in which one could further his moral progress, as for example when
Seneca, following Epicurus, advised Lucilius to select some person of
noble character like a Cato, a Scipio, or a Laelius, and to imagine
that he was always present, watching and judging the novice’s every
act; then when he had advanced to the point where his self-respect
was sufficient to keep him from wrong-doing, he could dismiss his
guardian.[281] But if Seneca recognized the limitations of human nature,
he still kept clearly in view the ultimate goal of man’s effort—that
perfection of the individual which according to the Stoic was attained
when his reason was harmoniously developed and had become supreme.[282]
Then man was to be wholly independent, happy, and serene; his mind
would be like that of God.
Self-examination, self-training, daily advance in virtue, ultimate calm
and peace—these were the moral habits and the attainable goals which
the later Stoics tried to teach their age. Moreover the Stoic doctrine
of the community between the divine and the human reason gave a dignity
to man; cut off from activity in the political world he realized that
he was dwelling in a world in which God and men were the citizens,
that he shared in that divine polity, free in the freedom which his
relationship to God gave him. Between man and God for the Stoic there
was no gulf fixed; on the contrary as Seneca wrote his younger friend:
“God is near you, with you, within you. This I say, Lucilius: a holy
spirit sits within us, watcher of our good and evil deeds, and guardian
over us. Even as we treat him, he treats us. No man is good without
God. Can any one rise superior to fortune save with God’s help?”[283]
A nobler concept of the worship of the gods and of man’s duty toward
them arose: not by the lighting of lamps, the giving of gifts, the
slaying of bullocks, or visitations to the temples were the gods to be
worshipped, but by a recognition of their true nature and goodness,
by rendering to them again their perfect justice, and by ascribing
to them constant praise.[284] In the contemplation of God alone and in
loving obedience to his commands lay the means of freeing the mind from
sorrow, fear, desire, envy, avarice, and every base thought, and of
securing that peace which no Caesar but only God could give.[285]
A belief in the goodness of God and the perfection of his works made
the Stoic naturally regard this world as the best of all possible
worlds, and urge men to accommodate themselves to the natural order,
in which he saw the perfect product of the supreme reason. He could
not think that the world was out of joint, but he believed that all
was perfect harmony for one who would set himself in tune with the
universe. So Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Everything is harmonious to me
that is harmonious to thee, O Universe; nothing is too early or too
late for me that is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me
that thy seasons bring, O Nature; from thee are all things, in thee are
all things, to thee all things return. ‘Beloved city of Cecrops,’ sings
the poet: Shall I not say, ‘O beloved city of God?’”[286] It is easy to
understand from passages like this how stabilizing and how ennobling
later Stoicism was. To reverence God, to do nothing that God would not
approve, to think ever of God, and to trust in the harmonious purpose
of the universe was the Emperor’s constant exhortation to himself. With
this purpose was associated a similar desire to help his fellowmen;
and yet in spite of the Emperor’s religious devotion and sympathetic
interest in humanity, in spite of the exaltation of spirit which
appears in his Meditations, there is still a note of sadness which
had already been sounded by Seneca and Epictetus; there is a sense of
the vanity of all things which makes itself felt again and again as
we read his book. For all his belief in the harmony of this universe
the Emperor exhorts himself too much to make the best of a sad and
wicked world. What Marcus Aurelius felt others had been feeling for
generations. The passion for assurance of protection here and salvation
hereafter, the longing for union with God, would not be quieted. The
West offered little satisfaction; the answers from the East will occupy
our next lectures.