the nature of the evidence; and it is one which we can never hope
entirely to overcome. We have always to bear in mind that the Romans
produced no literature till the third century B.C.; and the documentary
evidence that survives from an earlier age in the form of inscriptions,
or fragments of hymns or of ancient law (such as the calendar of which I
spoke just now), is of the most meagre character, and usually most
difficult to interpret. Thus the Roman religion stands alone among the
religions of ancient civilisations in that we are almost entirely
without surviving texts of its forms of prayer, of its hymns or its
legends;[11] even in Greece the Homeric poems, with all the earliest
Greek literature and art, make up to some extent for the want of that
documentary evidence which throws a flood of light on the religions of
Babylon, Egypt, the Hindus, and the Jewish people. We know in fact as
little about the religion of the old Italian populations as we do about
that of our own Teutonic ancestors, less perhaps than we do about that
of the Celtic peoples. The Romans were a rude and warlike folk, and
meddled neither with literature nor philosophy until they came into
immediate contact with the Greeks; thus it was that, unfortunately for
our purposes, the literary spirit, when at last it was born in Italy,
was rather Greek than Roman. When that birth took place Rome had spread
her influence over Italy,--perhaps the greatest work she ever
accomplished; and thus the latest historian of Latin literature can
venture to write that "the greatest time in Roman history was already
past when real historical evidence becomes available."[12]
We have thus to face two formidable facts: (1) that the period covered
by my earlier lectures must in honesty be called prehistoric; and (2)
that when the Romans themselves began to write about it they did so
under the overwhelming influence of Greek culture. With few exceptions,
all that we can learn of the early Roman religion from Roman or Greek
writers comes to us, not in a pure Roman form, clearly conceived as all
things truly Roman were, but seen dimly through the mist of the
Hellenistic age. The Roman gods, for example, are made the sport of
fancy and the subject of Hellenistic love-stories, by Greek poets and
their Roman imitators,[13] or are more seriously treated by Graeco-Roman
philosophy after a fashion which would have been absolutely
incomprehensible to the primitive men in whose minds they first had
their being. The process of disentangling the Roman element from the
Greek in the literary evidence is one which can never be satisfactorily
accomplished; and on the whole it is better, with Wissowa and Marquardt,
to hold fast by the facts of the cult, where the distinction between the
two is usually obvious, than to flounder about in a slough of what I can
only call pseudo-evidence. If all that English people knew about their
Anglo-Saxon forefathers were derived from Norman-French chroniclers, how
much should we really know about government or religion in the centuries
before the Conquest! And yet this comparison gives but a faint idea of
the treacherous nature of the literary evidence I am speaking of. It is
true indeed that in the last age of the Republic a few Romans began to
take something like a scientific interest in their own religious
antiquities; and to Varro, by far the most learned of these, and to
Verrius Flaccus, who succeeded him in the Augustan age, we owe directly
or indirectly almost all the solid facts on which our knowledge of the
Roman worship rests. But their works have come down to us in a most
imperfect and fragmentary state, and what we have of them we owe mainly
to the erudition of later grammarians and commentators, and the learning
of the early Christian fathers, who drew upon them freely for
illustrations of the absurdities of paganism. And it must be added that
when Varro himself deals with the Roman gods and the old ideas about
them, he is by no means free from the inevitable influence of Greek
thought.
Apart from the literary material and the few surviving fragments of
religious law and ritual, there are two other sources of light of which
we can now avail ourselves, archaeology and anthropology; but it must be
confessed that as yet their illuminating power is somewhat uncertain. It
reminds the scrupulous investigator of those early days of the electric
light, when its flickering tremulousness made it often painful to read
by, and when, too, it might suddenly go out and leave the reader in
darkness. It is well to remember that both sciences are young, and have
much of the self-confidence of youth; and that Italian archaeology, now
fast becoming well organised within Italy, has also to be co-ordinated
with the archaeology of the whole Mediterranean basin, before we can
expect from it clear and unmistakable answers to hard questions about
race and religion. This work, which cannot possibly be done by an
individual without _co-operation_--the secret of sound work which the
Germans have long ago discovered--is in course of being carried out, so
far as is at present possible, by a syndicate of competent
investigators.[14]
In order to indicate the uncertain nature of the light which for a long
time to come is all we can expect from Italian archaeology, I have only
to remind you that one of the chief questions we have to ask of it is
the relation of the mysterious Etruscan people to the other Italian
stocks, in respect of language, religion, and art. Whether the Etruscans
were the same people whom the Greeks called Pelasgians, as many
investigators now hold: whether the earliest Roman city was in any true
sense an Etruscan one: these are questions on the answers to which it is
not as yet safe to build further hypotheses. In regard to religion, too,
we are still very much in the dark. For example, there are many Etruscan
works of art in which Roman deities are portrayed, as is certain from
the fact that their names accompany the figures; but it is as yet almost
impossible to determine how far we can use these for the interpretation
of Roman religious ideas or legends. Many years ago a most attractive
hypothesis was raised on the evidence of certain of these works of art,
where Hercules and Juno appear together in a manner which strongly
suggests that they are meant to represent the male and female principles
of human life; this hypothesis was taken up by early writers in the
_Mythological Lexicon_, and relying upon them I adopted it in my _Roman
Festivals_,[15] and further applied it to the interpretation of an
unsolved problem in the fourth _Eclogue_ of Virgil.[16] But since then
doubt has been thrown on it by Wissowa, who had formerly accepted it. As
being of Etruscan origin, and found in places very distant from each
other and from Rome, we have, he says, no good right to use these works
of art as evidence for the Roman religion.[17] The question remains open
as to these and many other works of art, but the fact that the man of
coolest judgment and most absolute honesty is doubtful, suggests that we
had best wait patiently for more certain light.
In Rome itself, where archaeological study is concentrated and admirably
staffed, great progress has been made, and much light thrown on the
later periods of religious history. But for the religion of the ancient
Roman state, with which we are at present concerned, it must be
confessed that very little has been gleaned. The most famous discovery
is that recently made in the Forum of an archaic inscription which
almost certainly relates to some religious act; but as yet no scholar
has been able to interpret it with anything approaching to
certainty.[18] More recently excavations on the further bank of the
Tiber threw a glint of light on the nature of an ancient deity, Furrina,
about whom till then we practically knew nothing at all; but the
evidence thus obtained was late and in Greek characters. We must in fact
entertain no great hopes of illumination from excavations, but accept
thankfully what little may be vouchsafed to us. On the other hand, from
the gradual development of Italian archaeology as a whole, and, I must
here add, from the study of the several old Italian languages, much may
be expected in the future.
The other chief contributory science is anthropology, _i.e._ the study
of the working of the mind of primitive man, as it is seen in the ideas
and practices of uncivilised peoples at the present day, and also as it
can be traced in survivals among more civilised races. For the history
of the religion of the Roman City-state its contribution must of
necessity be a limited one; that is a part of Roman history in general,
and its material is purely Roman, or perhaps I should say, Graeco-Roman;
and Wissowa in all his work has consistently declined to admit the value
of anthropological researches for the elucidation of Roman problems.
Perhaps it is for this very reason that his book is the safest guide we
possess for the study of what the Romans did and thought in the matter
of religion; but if we wish to try and get to the original significance
of those acts and thoughts, it is absolutely impossible in these days to
dispense with the works of a long series of anthropologists, many of
them fortunately British, who have gradually been collecting and
classifying the material which in the long run will fructify in definite
results. If we consider the writings of eminent scholars who wrote about
Greek and Roman religion and mythology before the appearance of Dr.
Tylor's _Primitive Culture_--Klausen, Preuner, Preller, Kuhn, and many
others, who worked on the comparative method but with slender material
for the use of it--we see at once what an immense advance has been
effected by that monumental work, and by the stimulus that it gave to
others to follow the same track. Now we have in this country the works
of Lang, Robertson Smith, Farnell, Frazer, Hartland, Jevons, and others,
while a host of students on the Continent are writing in all languages
on anthropological subjects. Some of these I shall quote incidentally in
the course of these lectures; at present I will content myself with
making one or two suggestions as to the care needed in using the
collections and theories of anthropologists, as an aid in Roman
religious studies.
First, let us bear in mind that anthropologists are apt to have their
favourite theories--conclusions, that is, which are the legitimate
result of reasoning inductively on the class of facts which they have
more particularly studied. Thus Mannhardt had his theory of the
Vegetation-spirit, Robertson Smith that of the sacramental meal, Usener
that of the Sondergoetter, Dr. Frazer that of divine Kingship; all of
which are perfectly sound conclusions based on facts which no one
disputes. They have been of the greatest value to anthropological
research; but when they are applied to the explanation of Roman
practices we should be instantly on our guard, ready indeed to welcome
any glint of light that we may get from them, but most carefully
critical and even suspicious of their application to other phenomena
than those which originally suggested them. It is in the nature of man
as a researcher, when he has found a key, to hasten to apply it to all
the doors he can find, and sometimes, it must be said, to use violence
in the application; and though the greatest masters of the science will
rarely try to force the lock, they will use so much gentle persuasion as
sometimes to make us fancy that they have unfastened it. All such
attempts have their value, but it behoves us to be cautious in accepting
them. The application by Mannhardt of the theory of the
Vegetation-spirit to certain Roman problems, _e.g._ to that of the
Lupercalia,[19] and the October horse,[20] must be allowed, fascinating
as it was, to have failed in the main. The application by Dr. Frazer of
the theory of divine Kingship to the early religious history of Rome, is
still _sub judice_, and calls for most careful and discriminating
criticism.[21]
Secondly, as I have already said, Roman evidence is peculiarly difficult
to handle, except in so far as it deals with the simple facts of
worship; when we use it for traditions, myths, ideas about the nature of
divine beings, we need a training not only in the use of evidence in
general, but in the use of Roman evidence in particular.
Anthropologists, as a rule, have not been through such a training, and
they are apt to handle the evidence of Roman writers with a light heart
and rather a rough hand. The result is that bits of evidence are put
together, each needing conscientious criticism, to support hypotheses
often of the flimsiest kind, which again are used to support further
hypotheses, and so on, until the sober inquirer begins to feel his brain
reeling and his footing giving way beneath him. I shall have occasion to
notice one or two examples of this uncritical use of evidence later on,
and will say no more of it now. No one can feel more grateful than I do
to the many leading anthropologists who have touched in one way or
another on Roman evidence; but for myself I try never to forget the
words of Columella, with which a great German scholar began one of his
most difficult investigations: "In universa vita pretiosissimum est
intellegere quemque nescire se quod nesciat."[22]
NOTES TO LECTURE I
[1] Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_ (_E.T._), vol. ii. p. 433.
[2] Cumont, _Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme
romain_, p. 36. Cp. Dill, _Roman Society in the Last
Century of the Western Empire_, p. 63. Gwatkin, _The
Knowledge of God_, vol. ii. p. 133.
[3] See some valuable remarks in Lord Cromer's _Modern
Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 135.
[4] Since this lecture was written this scholar has
passed away, to the great grief of his many friends; and
I refrain from mentioning his name.
[5] Ira W. Howerth, in _International Journal of
Ethics_, 1903, p. 205. I owe the reference to R.
Karsten, _The Origin of Worship_, Wasa, 1905, p. 2,
note. Cp. E. Caird, _Gifford Lectures_ ("Evolution of
Theology in the Greek Philosophers"), vol. i. p. 32.
"That which underlies all forms of religion, from the
highest to the lowest, is the idea of God as an absolute
power or principle." To this need only be added the
desire to be in right relation to it. Mr. Marett's word
"supernaturalism" seems to mean the same thing; "There
arises in the region of human thought a powerful impulse
to objectify, and even to personify, the mysterious or
supernatural something felt; and in the region of will a
corresponding impulse to render it innocuous, or, better
still, propitious, by force of constraint (_i.e._
magic), communion, or conciliation." See his _Threshold
of Religion_, p. 11. Prof. Haddon, commenting on this
(_Magic and Fetishism_, p. 93), adds that "there are
thus produced the two fundamental factors of religion,
the belief in some mysterious power, and the desire to
enter into communication with the power by means of
worship." Our succinct definition seems thus to be
adequate.
[6] _The Golden Bough_, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 62.
[7] _Liberal Protestantism_, p. 64.
[8] For _religio_ as a feeling essentially, see Wissowa,
_Religion und Kultus der Roemer_, p. 318 (henceforward to
be cited as _R.K._). For further development of the
meaning of the word in Latin literature, see the
author's paper in _Proceedings of the Congress for the
History of Religions_ (Oxford, 1908), vol. ii. p. 169
foll. A different view of the original meaning of the
word is put forward by W. Otto in _Archiv fuer
Religionswissenschaft_, vol. xii., 1909, p. 533
(henceforward to be cited as _Archiv_ simply). See also
below, p. 459 foll.
[9] See, _e.g._, Frazer in _Anthropological Essays
presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 101 foll.
[10] _Staatsverwaltung_, iii. p. 2. This will
henceforward be cited as _Marquardt_ simply. It forms
part of the great _Handbuch der roemischen Alterthuemer_
of Mommsen and Marquardt, and is translated into French,
but unfortunately not into English. I may add here that
I have only recently become acquainted with what was, at
the time it was written, a remarkably good account of
the Roman religion, full of insight as well as learning,
viz. Doellinger's _The Gentile and the Jew_, Book VII.
(vol. ii. of the English translation, 1906).
[11] Two fragments of ancient carmina, _i.e._ formulae
which are partly spells and partly hymns, survive--those
of the Fratres Arvales and the Salii or dancing priests
of Mars. For surviving formulae of prayer see below, p.
185 foll. Our chief authority on the ritual of prayer
and sacrifice comes from Iguvium in Umbria, and is in
the Umbrian dialect; it will be referred to in
Buecheler's _Umbrica_ (1883), where a Latin translation
will be found. The Umbrian text revised by Prof. Conway
forms an important part of that eminent scholar's work
on the Italian dialects.
[12] F. Leo, in _Die griechische und lateinische
Literatur und Sprache_, p. 328. Cp. Schanz, _Geschichte
der roem. Literatur_, vol. i. p. 54 foll.
[13] Among Roman poets Ovid is the worst offender,
Propertius and Tibullus mislead in a less degree; but
they all make up for it to some extent by preserving for
us features of the worship as it existed in their own
day. The confusion that has been caused in Roman
religious history by mixing up Greek and Roman evidence
is incalculable, and has recently been increased by Pais
(_Storia di Roma_, and _Ancient Legends of Roman
History_), and by Dr. Frazer in his lectures on the
early history of Kingship--writers to whom in some ways
we owe valuable hints for the elucidation of Roman
problems. See also Soltau, _Die Anfaenge der roemischen
Geschichtsschreibung_, 1909, p. 3.
[14] Most welcome to English readers has been Mr. T. E.
Peet's recently published volume on _The Stone and
Bronze Ages in Italy_, and still more valuable for our
purposes will be its sequel, when it appears, on the
Iron Age.
[15] _Roman Festivals_, p. 142 foll.; henceforward to be
cited as _R.F._
[16] See Virgil's _Messianic Eclogue_, by Mayor, Fowler,
and Conway, p. 75 foll.
[17] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 227.
[18] An account of this in English, with photographs,
will be found in Pais's _Ancient Legends of Roman
History_, p. 21 foll., and notes.
[19] Mannhardt, _Mythologische Forschungen_, p. 72 foll.
[20] _Ibid._, p. 156 foll.
[21] _Lectures on the Early History of Kingship_,
lectures 7-9.
[22] Not long after these last sentences were written, a
large work appeared by Dr. Binder, a German professor of
law, entitled _Die Plebs_, which deals freely with the
oldest Roman religion, and well illustrates the
difficulties under which we have to work while
archaeologists, ethnologists, and philologists are still
constantly in disagreement as to almost every important
question in the history of early Italian culture. Dr.
Binder's main thesis is that the earliest Rome was
composed of two distinct communities, each with its own
religion, _i.e._ deities, priests, and sacra; the one
settled on the Palatine, a pastoral folk of primitive
culture, and of pure Latin race; the other settled on
the Quirinal, Sabine in origin and language, and of more
advanced development in social and religious matters. So
far this sounds more or less familiar to us, but when
Dr. Binder goes on to identify the Latin folk with the
Plebs and the Sabine settlement with the Patricians, and
calls in religion to help him with the proof of this, it
is necessary to look very carefully into the religious
evidence he adduces. So far as I can see, the limitation
of the word _patrician_ to the Quirinal settlement is
very far from being proved by this evidence (see _The
Year's Work in Classical Studies_, 1909, p. 69). Yet the
hypothesis is an extremely interesting one, and were it
generally accepted, would compel us to modify in some
important points our ideas of Roman religious history,
and also of Roman legal history, with which Dr. Binder
is mainly concerned.
LECTURE II
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: SURVIVALS
My subject proper is the religion of an organised State: the religious
experience of a comparatively civilised people. But I wish, in the first
place, to do what has never yet been done by those who have written on
the Roman religion--I wish to take a survey of the relics, surviving in
later Roman practice and belief, of earlier stages of rudimentary
religious experience. In these days of anthropological and sociological
research, it is possible to do this without great difficulty; and if I
left it undone, our story of the development of religion at Rome would
be mutilated at the beginning. Also we should be at a disadvantage in
trying to realise the wonderful work done by the early authorities of
the State in eliminating from their rule of worship (_ius divinum_)
almost all that was magical, barbarous, or, as later Romans would have
called it, superstitious. This is a point on which I wish to lay
especial stress in the next few lectures, and it entails a somewhat
tiresome account of the ideas and practices of which, as I believe, they
sought to get rid. These, I may as well say at once, are to be found for
the most part surviving, as we might expect, _outside_ of the religion
of the State; where they survive within its limits, they will be found
to have almost entirely lost their original force and meaning.
Every student of religious history knows that a religious system is a
complex growth, far more complex than would appear at first sight; that
it is sure to contain relics of previous eras of human experience,
embedded in the social strata as lifeless fossils. These only indeed
survive because human nature is intensely conservative, especially in
religious matters; and of this conservative instinct the Romans afford
as striking an example as we can readily find. They clung with
extraordinary tenacity, all through their history, to old forms; they
seem to have had a kind of superstitious feeling that these dead forms
had still a value as such, though all the life was gone out of them. It
would be easy to illustrate this curious feature of the Roman mind from
the history of its religion; it never disappeared; and to this day the
Catholic church in Italy retains in a thinly-disguised form many of the
religious practices of the Roman people.
Stage after stage must have been passed by the Latins long before our
story rightly begins; how many revolutions of thought they underwent,
how much they learnt and took over from earlier inhabitants of the
country in which they finally settled, we cannot even guess. As I said
in the last lecture, we have no really ancient history of the Romans, as
we have, for example, of the Egyptians or Babylonians; to us it is all
darkness, save where a little light has been thrown on the buried strata
by archaeology and anthropology. That little light, which may be
expected to increase in power, shows survivals here and there of
primitive modes of thought; and these I propose to deal with now in the
following order. _Totemism_ I shall mention merely to clear it out of
the way; but _taboo_ will take us some little time, and so will _magic_
in its various forms.