population to the city on the Tiber, the chief strategic point of middle
Italy,--a new element of plebs, whatever the old one may have been.[542]
We have seen signs, even in the religious history of this age, that
commerce and industry were increasing, and that their increase was due
to a movement from without, rather than to the old patrician _gentes_.
When the Etruscan dynasty fell and the old patrician influence was
restored, the government must have been face to face with new
difficulties, and among them the supply of corn for an increasing
population in years of bad harvest. With a fresh source of supply from
the south came the cult of the Greek corn-deities at the bidding of a
Sibylline utterance; and henceforward that remedy was available for
other troubles. But the patrician rulers of Rome were true, it would
seem, as far as was possible, to the old ways, and for a long time they
used this foreign remedy very sparingly. At what date the utterances
were collected in "books" and deposited in the Capitoline temple we do
not know, nor have we any certain knowledge of their original nature or
form. Tradition said that the collection dated from the last king's
reign, and that it was placed in the care of _duoviri sacris faciundis_,
as we have seen, who in 367 B.C. gave way to _decemviri_, five of whom
might be members of the plebs. I am myself inclined to conjecture that
this comparatively late date may be the real date of the origin of a
_permanent collection_ and a _permanent college of keepers_, and that
the earlier _duoviri_ were only temporary religious officers, _sacris
faciundis_, _i.e._ for the carrying out of the directions of Sibylline
utterances specially sought for at Cumae. They would thus be of the same
class as other special commissions appointed by the Senate for
administrative purposes;[543] while the decemviri, though retaining the
old title, were permanent religious officers appointed to collect and
take charge of a new and important set of regulations for the benefit of
the community, and one which concerned the plebs at least as much as the
patricians.
But I must turn to the more important question how far, down to the war
with Hannibal, when I shall take up the subject afresh, the Roman
religion was affected for good or harm by these utterances and their
keepers. They took effect in two ways: either by introducing new deities
and settling them in new temples, or by ordering and organising new
ceremonies such as Rome had never seen before.
The introduction of a new deity now and again was not of great account
from the point of view of religion, except in so far as it encouraged
the new ceremonies; the Romans had never taken much personal interest in
their deities, and the arrival (outside the pomoerium in each case) of
Hermes under the name of Mercurius, or Poseidon bearing the name of the
old Roman water _numen_ Neptunus, or even of Asclepios with a Romanised
name Aesculapius, would not be likely to affect greatly their ideas of
the divine. These facts have rather a historical than a religious
significance; Hermes Empolaios, for example, suggests trade with Greek
cities, perhaps in grain,[544] and belongs therefore to the same class
as Ceres, Liber, Libera, of whom I have already spoken. The arrival of
Poseidon-Neptune may mean, as Dr. Carter has suggested, a kind of
"marine insurance" for the vessels carrying the grain from Greek
ports.[545] The settling of Aesculapius in the Tiber island in 293, as
the result of a terrible pestilence, is interesting as being the first
fact known to us in the history of medicine at Rome; the temple became a
kind of hospital on the model of Epidaurus, where the god had been
brought in the form of a snake by an embassy sent for the purpose, and
the priests who served it were probably Greeks skilled in the healing
art.[546] This last case is a curious example of new Roman religious
experience, but it can hardly be said to have any deep significance in
the religious history of Rome. Of the obliteration of the old _numen_
Neptunus by the Greek god who took his name we know nothing for good or
ill; we are ignorant of the real meaning of the old _numen_, and cannot
tell whether the loss of him was compensated by the usefulness of his
name in Roman literature to represent the Greek god of the sea.
Let us turn to the much more important subject of the new ceremonies
ordered by the Sibylline "books." The first authentic case of such
innovation occurred in 399 B.C., during the long and troublesome siege
of the dangerous neighbour city Veii; I call it authentic because all
the best modern authorities so reckon it, though it occurred before the
destruction of old records during the capture of the city by the Gauls.
The circumstances were such as to fix themselves in the memory of the
people, and in one way or another they found their way into the earliest
annals, probably those of Fabius Pictor, composed during the Second
Punic War.[547]
The previous winter, Livy tells us,[548] was one of extraordinary
severity; the roads were blocked with snow, and navigation on the Tiber
stopped by the ice. This miserable winter was followed too suddenly by a
hot season, in which a plague broke out which consumed both man and
beast, and continued so persistently that the Senate ordered the
Sibylline books to be consulted. This persistence is the first point we
should notice; "Cuius insanabili pernicie quando nec causa nec finis
inveniebatur,"--so wrote Livy, evidently meaning to express an extremity
of trouble which would not give way to ordinary religious remedies. We
may compare his account of the next recorded consultation of the books
(Livy vii. 2), when neither the old rites nor even the new ones were
sufficient to secure the _pax deorum_ and abate another pestilence, and
recourse was had to yet another remedy in the form of _ludi scenici_.
The times were out of joint,--the peace of the gods was broken, and thus
the community was no longer in right relation to the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. The result was a revival of _religio_, of the
feeling of alarm and anxiety out of which the whole religious system had
grown. The old deities might seem to be forsaking their functions, since
the old rites had ceased to appeal to them. Mysterious and persistent
pestilence is a great tamer of human courage; it is a new experience
that man knows not how to meet, and in ancient life it was also a new
_religious_ experience.
The remedy was as new as the pestilence, and almost as pernicious.
During eight days Rome saw three pairs of deities reclining in the form
of images on couches, before which were spread tables covered with food
and drink. Whether in this first case they were taken out of the temples
and exposed to view in certain places, _e.g._ the forum, is not clear;
later on, in the days of _supplicationes_, of which more will be said
presently, they were visited in procession. The three pairs were Apollo
and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus; all of them
Greek, or, as in the case of Diana, Mercurius, and Neptunus, Roman
deities in their new Greek form. We cannot trace the special
applicability of all of them to the trouble they were thus invoked to
appease,--another point that suggests a complete revolution in the Roman
ways of contemplating divine beings. These are not functional _numina_,
but foreigners whose ways were only known to the manipulators of the
Sibylline utterances. They seem like quack remedies, of which the action
is unknown to the consumer.
New also, but better in its effect, was the publicity of these
proceedings, and the part taken in them by the whole population,
patrician and plebeian, men, women, and children. If we can trust Livy's
further statements, every one left his door open and kept open house,
inviting all to come in, whether known or unknown; all old quarrels were
made up, and no new ones suffered to begin; prisoners were freed from
their chains, and universal good-will prevailed. These eight days were
in fact kept as holidays, and doubtless by the novelty of the whole
scene the astute authorities hoped to inspire fresh hope and confidence,
and to divert attention from the prevailing misery, just as our soldiers
in India are induced to forget the presence of cholera in a station by
constant games and amusements. That this was really one leading object
of the whole show is not generally recognised by historians; but it
seems fully explained by the fact I mentioned just now, that in the
similar trouble of 349 B.C. recourse was had for the first time to _ludi
scenici_ in order to amuse the people. In the history of the Hannibalic
war we shall have plenty of opportunity of noting this kind of
expedient. The Roman people, we must remember, were getting more and
more to be inhabitants of a large city, and, as such, to seek for
entertainment, like all citizens in all ages. The religious rites of the
old calendar were perhaps by this time getting too familiar, losing
their original meaning; whether they had ever been very entertaining to
a city population may be doubted. Something more showy was needed;
processions had always been to the taste of the Roman, and banquets,
such as the epulum Iovis, which I have already noticed, often
accompanied the processions.
Now, this love of show and novelty, of which we have abundant evidence
later on as a Roman characteristic, taken together with the anxiety and
alarm--the new _religio_--arising from the pestilence, will sufficiently
explain the _lectisternia_, as these shows were called. We have here in
fact the first appearance, constantly recurring in later Roman history,
of a tendency to seek not only for novelty, but for a more emotional
expression of religious feeling than was afforded by the old forms of
sacrifice and prayer, conducted as they were by the priest on behalf of
the community without its active participation. Those old forms might do
for the old patrician community of farmers and warriors, but not so well
for the new and ever-increasing population of artisans and other
workmen, whether of Roman or foreign descent. It would seem, indeed, as
if the sensitiveness of the human fibre of a primitive community
increases with its increasing complexity, and with the greater variety
of experience to which it is exposed; and in the case of Rome, as if the
simple ancient methods of dealing with the divine inhabitants of the
city were no longer adequate to the needs of a State which was steering
its way to empire among so many difficulties and perils. It is not
indeed certain that the new rites, or some points in them, may not have
had their prototypes in old Italian usage, though the _lectisternia_,
the actual display of gods in human form and in need of food like human
beings, are almost certainly Greek in origin.[549] But so far as we can
guess, the emotional element was wholly new. True, Livy tells us in two
passages of his third book of occasions when men, women, and children
flocked to all the shrines (_omnia delubra_) seeking for the _pax
deorum_ at the invitation of the senate; but the early date, the great
improbability of the senate taking any such step, and the absence of any
mention of the priesthoods, makes it difficult to believe that these
assertions are based on any genuine record. We must be content to mark
the first _lectisternia_ in 399 as the earliest authentic example of the
emotional tendency of the Roman plebs.[550]
If we can judge of this period of Roman religious history by the general
tendency of the policy of the Roman government, we may see here a
deliberate attempt to include the new population in worship of a kind
that would calm its fears, engage its attention, and satisfy its
emotion, while leaving uncontaminated the old ritual that had served the
State so long. If this conclusion be a right one, then we must allow
that the new ceremonial had its use. Dr. Frazer has lately told us in
his eloquent and persuasive way, of how much value superstition has been
in building up moral habits and the instinct of submission to civil
order. His thesis might be illustrated adequately from the history of
Rome alone. But from a purely religious point of view the story of the
_lectisternia_ is a sad one. The old Roman invisible _numen_, working
with force in a particular department of human life and its environment,
was a far nobler mental conception, and far more likely to grow into a
power for good, than the miserable images of Graeco-Roman full-blown
gods and goddesses reclining on their couches and appearing to partake
of dinner like a human citizen. Such ideas of the divine must have
forced men's religious ideas clean away from the Power manifesting
itself in the universe, and must have dragged down the Roman _numina_
with them in their corrupting degradation. According to our definition
of it, religion was now in a fair way to disappear altogether; what was
destined to take its place was not really religion at all. Nor did it in
any way assist the growth of an individual conscience, as perhaps did
some of the later religious forms introduced from without. It was of
value for the moment to the State, in satisfying a population greatly
disturbed by untoward events; and that was all.
Closely connected with the _lectisternia_, and following close upon them
in chronological order, were the processional ceremonies called
_supplicationes_. The historical relation between the two is by no means
clear; but if we conclude, as I am fairly sure we may, that the
_lectisternia_ were shows of a joyful character, accompanied, as Livy
describes the first one, with private entertainments, and meant to keep
up the spirits of the plebeian population, and if we then turn to the
early _supplicationes_, in which men, women, and children, _coronati_,
and carrying laurel branches, went in procession to the temples, and
there prostrated themselves after the Greek fashion, the women "crinibus
passis aras verrentes," we shall be disposed to look on them as, in
origin at least, distinct from each other.[551] We may conjecture that
the appearance of the gods in human form at the doors of their temples
suggested to the plebeian women a kind of emotional worship which was
alien to the old Roman feeling, but familiar enough to those (and they
must have been many) who knew the life of the Greek cities of Italy. It
may be that they had tried it even in earlier times; but anyhow, in the
fourth and third centuries B.C. advantage was taken of the _pulvinaria_
to use them as stopping-places in the procession of a _supplicatio_, and
the phrase becomes a common one in the annals, "supplicatio ad omnia
pulvinaria indicta." The _lectisternia_ were ordered five times in the
fourth century;[552] by that time, it would seem likely, the
_supplicationes_ had become an authorised institution, and had perhaps
embodied the practice of _lectisternia_ in the way suggested above. We
shall meet with them again when we come to the religious history of the
war with Hannibal.
One word more before I leave this subject for the present. In all this
innovation we must not forget to note the growth of individual feeling
as distinguished from the old worship of civic grouping, in which the
individual, as such, was of little or no account. I pointed out the
first signs of this individualism when speaking of the temple of the
Capitoline Jupiter, and we shall have reason to mark its rapid growth
further. We are now, in fact, and must realise that we are, in a period
in which, throughout the Graeco-Roman world, the need was beginning to
be felt of some new rule of individualistic morality. The Roman
population, now recruited from many sources, was but reflecting this
need unconsciously when it insisted on new emotional rites and
expiations. The Roman authorities were forced to satisfy the demand; but
in doing so they made no real contribution to the history of Roman
religious experience. It was impossible that they should do so; they
represented the old civic form of religion, "bound up with the life of a
society, and unable to contemplate the individual except as a member of
it."[553] The new forms of worship, the _supplicatio_ and
_lectisternium_, could not be, as the old forms had in some sense been,
the consecration of civic and national life. They were to the Romans as
the worship of Baal to the Jews of the time of the Kings; and, unlike
that poisonous cult, they could never be rooted out.[554][555]
NOTES TO LECTURE XI
[510] This is the expression of Sallust, _Catil._ 12. 3.
[511] See my paper on the Latin history of the word
_religio_, in _Transactions of the Congress for the
History of Religions_, 1909, vol. ii. p. 172. W. Otto in
_Archiv_, 1909, p. 533 foll.
[512] Cic. _de Nat. Deorum_, ii. 8.
[513] Cic. _Harusp. resp._ 19.
[514] Livy xliv. 1. 11; Sallust, _l.c._; Gellius, _Noct.
Att._ ii. 28. 2.
[515] Polyb. vi. 56.
[516] Posidonius ap. Athenaeum vi. 274 A; Dion.
Hal. ii. 27. 3.
[517] Gell. ii. 28.
[518] Marquardt, iii. 126.
[519] Cato, _R.R._ 142.
[520] Calpurnius, _Eclogue_, v. 24. I have described a
similar scene in the Alps in _A Year with the Birds_,
ed. 2, p. 126.
[521] Petronius, _Sat._ 117: "His ita ordinatis, quod
bene feliciterque eveniret precati deos, viam
ingredimur." I owe this reference, as others in this
context, to Appel's treatise _de Romanorum
precationibus_, p. 56 foll.
[522] Varro, _R.R._ i. 1.
[523] _e.g._ Virg. _Aen._ v. 685 (Aeneas during the
burning of the fleet); _Aen._ xii. 776 (Turnus in
extremity). Cp. Tibull. iii. 5. 6 (in sickness).
[524] A good example is _Captivi_, 922: "Iovi disque ago
gratias merito magnas quom te redducem tuo patri
reddiderunt," etc.
[525] For gratitude to human beings see Valerius Maximus
v. 2. A good example of gratitude to a deity is in Gell.
_N.A._ iv. 18; but it is told of Scipio the elder, who
was eccentric for a Roman. When accused by a tribune of
peculation in Asia he said, "Non igitur simus adversum
deos ingrati et, censeo, relinquamus nebulonem hunc,
eamus hinc protinus Iovi Optimo Maximo gratulatum."
Public gratitude to the gods is frequent in later
_supplicationes_, _e.g._ Livy xxx. 17. 6.
[526] Gellius, _N.A._ xiv. 7. 9.
[527] Servius ad _Aen._ xi. 301 ("praefatus divos solio
rex infit ab alto").
[528] This was in a _contio_: "Cum Gracchus deos
inciperet precari." See above, Lecture VII. note 13.
[529] See _R.F._ p. 74 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 243.
For the relation of the pomoerium to the wall, see
above, p. 94.
[530] The process is amusingly explained by Carter in
_The Religion of Numa_, p. 72 foll.
[531] _R.F._ p. 75.
[532] See Aust, _De aedibus sacris P.R._, passim.
[533] Lately this has been denied by Pais, _Storia di
Roma_, i. 339.
[534] Pliny, _N.H._ 35, 154.
[535] I owe the information to my friend Prof. Percy
Gardner.
[536] See Carter, _op. cit._ p. 66; but I am not sure
that his reasons are conclusive.
[537] Diels, _Sibyllinische Blaetter_, p. 6 foll., and
cp. 79.
[538] It should be noted that the cult of Apollo in Rome
was older than the introduction of Sibylline influence;
so at least it is generally assumed. Wissowa, however
(_R.K._ p. 239), puts it as "gleichzeitig." The date of
the Apollinar in pratis Flaminiis, the oldest Apolline
fanum in Rome (outside pomoerium), is unknown; that of
the temple on the same site was 431 (Livy iv. 25 and
29). There is little doubt that the Apollo-cult spread
from Cumae northwards, and was by this time well
established in Italy. (The foundation of the temple of
431, consisting of opus quadratum, still in part
survives: Huelsen-Jordan, _Rom. Topographie_, iii. 535).
[539] Heracleitus, _fragm._ xii., ed. Bywater.
[540] _Phaedrus_, p. 244.
[541] So Korte in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._
"Etrusker."
[542] The present tendency is to take the plebs as
representing an older population of Latium before the
arrival of the patricians; see, _e.g._, Binder, _Die
Plebs_, p. 358 foll. But the plebs of later days is not
to be explained on one hypothesis only.
[543] _e.g._ in religious matters the _duoviri aedi
dedicandae_; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, ii. 601 foll.
[544] Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 77 foll. It is
uncertain whether there was a Roman Mercurius of earlier
origin, or whether the name Mercurius (_i.e._ concerned
in trade) was a new invention to avoid using the Greek
name, as in the case of the trias Ceres, Liber, Libera.
[545] Carter, _op. cit._ 81. The connection of this
Poseidon-Neptunus and Hermes-Mercurius is confirmed by
the fact that the two were paired in the first
_lectisternium_, 399 B.C. Livy v. 13.
[546] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 254.
[547] See Diels, _Sib. Blaetter_, p. 12, note 1.
[548] Livy v. 13.
[549] I have discussed the possibility of the epulum
Iovis being an old Italian rite in _R.F._ p. 215 foll.
For the Greek origin of these shows see _Dict. of
Antiquities_, ed. 2, _s.v._ "lectisternia."
[550] Livy iii. 5. 14, and 7. 7.
[551] The plebeian tendencies of the time are suggested,
_e.g._, by the fact that immediately before the first
_lectisternium_ a plebeian was elected military tribune
(Livy v. 13). The fourth century is of course the period
of plebeian advance in all departments, and ends with
the opening of the priesthoods to the plebs by the lex
Ogulnia, and the publication of the Fasti. Plebeian too,
I suspect, was the keeping open house and promiscuous
hospitality which is recorded by Livy of the first
_lectisternia_; this was the practice of the plebs on
the Cerealia (April 19), and was perhaps an old custom
connected with the supply of corn and the temple of
Ceres (see above, p. 255). It was not imitated by the
patrician society, with its reserve and exclusiveness,
till the institution of the Megalesia in 204 B.C. See
Gellius xviii. 2. 11.
[552] The expression _crinibus demissis_ is found in a
lex regia (Festus, _s.v._ "pellices"); the harlot who
touches Juno's altar has to offer a lamb to Juno
"crinibus demissis." This is therefore Roman practice.
[553] For the _supplicationes_ see Wissowa, _R.K._ 357
foll.; Marq. 48 and 188; and the author's article in
_Dict. of Antiquities_. The passages already referred to
as doubtful evidence (Livy iii. 5. 14, 7. 7) describe
all the features of the _supplicatio_ as early as the
first half of the fifth century. A list of later
passages in Livy will be found in Marq. 49, note 4. On
the whole I doubt if much was made of these rites before
the third century and the Punic wars.
[554] Wissowa, _R.K._ 356, note 7.
[555] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 46.
LECTURE XII
THE PONTIFICES AND THE SECULARISATION OF RELIGION
In the last lecture we saw how the new experiences of the Roman people,
during the period from the abolition of the kingship to the war with
Hannibal, led to the introduction of foreign deities and showy
ceremonies of a character quite strange to the old religion. But there
was another process going on at the same time. The authorities of that
old religion were full of vigour in this same period; it may even be
said, that as far as we can trace their activity in the dim light of
those early days, they made themselves almost supreme in the State. And
the result was, in brief, that religion became more and more a matter of
State administration, and thereby lost its chance of developing the
conscience of the individual. It is indeed quite possible, as has
recently been maintained,[556] that it stood actively in the way of such
development. I have no doubt that there was a germ of conscience, of
moral feeling, in the _religio_ of old days--the feeling of anxiety and
doubt which originally suggested the _cura_ and _caerimonia_ of the
State; but the efforts of the authorities in this period were spent in
gradually destroying that germ. True, they did not interfere with the
simple religion of the family, which had its value all through Roman
history; but the attitude of the individual towards public worship will
react on his attitude towards private worship, which may also have lost
some part of its vitality in this period.
The religious authorities of which I speak are of course the two great
colleges of pontifices and augurs. Of the latter, and of the system of
divination of which they held the secrets, I will speak in the next
lecture. Here we have to do with the pontifices and their work in this
period, a thorny and somewhat technical subject, but a most important
one for the history of Roman religious experience.