extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in
this third century B.C. Most of it is connected more or less directly
with the State religion, yet with a tendency to become more and more
secular and perfunctory; the word _cura_ would express it better than
_caerimonia_, and _caerimonia_ better than _religio_. The care of the
calendar, for example (a technical matter which lies outside my province
in these lectures), was originally of religious importance, because the
oldest religious festivals marked operations of husbandry, and these,
when fixed in the calendar, must occur at the right seasons.[578] It was
the duty of the pontifices so to adjust the necessary intercalations as
to effect this object--a duty to which they were, as it turned out,
quite unequal. But continued city life broke the connection between the
festivals and the agricultural work to which they originally
corresponded, and what was once a _cura_ of religious import became a
secular matter of which the value was not appreciated. So too with
another duty, for which both the Romans and ourselves have more reason
to be grateful to them--the recording of the leading events of national
history.
It is uncertain what prompted the college, or rather its head, to begin
making these records, though there is no doubt about the fact. But it
would be natural enough that those who had charge of the calendar, which
would necessitate some record of years for purposes of intercalation,
should go on to mark the names of the consuls and such striking events
as would make a year memorable. In any case this was what actually
happened. The pontifex maximus, we are told with precision, kept a
_tabula_, or whited board, on which these events were noted down, with
the consuls' names attached to them, or possibly a kind of almanac, made
out for the whole year, on which they could append their notes to
particular days.[579] This yearly _tabula_ was no doubt at first kept
secret, like all the pontifical documents, but sooner or later, perhaps
at the same time as the publication of the _fasti_ and _legis actiones_,
it was exposed to public view in or at the Regia.[580] This went on for
at least two centuries, and the records, which in the nature of things
must have grown in length and detail as events became more startling and
numerous, were edited in eighty books by the pontifex maximus P. Mucius
Scaevola in 123 B.C.--the year of the first tribunate of C. Gracchus.
The large number of these books has long been a stumbling-block to the
learned, for we are expressly told that the _annales maximi_, as the
records were called, were (in spite of their name) of a very meagre
character; and many conjectures have quite recently been made to explain
it.[581] But guessing is almost useless, seeing that there are no data
for it. The editor may have added matter of his own, amplifying and
adorning after the manner of writers of his day; or he may have worked
in the contents of other pontifical books, _libri_ or _commentarii
pontificales_. The point for us is simply the continued activity of the
pontifex maximus in this work, which must have become almost entirely
secular in character. The notes may have been jejune, but they were
probably accurate, and free from the perversions of family vanity or
such lengthy rhetorical ornamentation as became the universal fashion
among private writers of annalistic history. They were, we may suppose,
exactly what our modern historical conscience demands. But all that is
left of them, or almost all, is the list of consuls (_fasti consulares_)
and of triumphs (_fasti triumphales_) which in their present form must,
or at least may, have been extracted from them.[582] On the whole, we
may reckon them as the most valuable work of the college; and they may
be taken as marking a growing sense of the importance of Rome and her
history, the commemoration of which is thus committed to an official
who, as an individual, had invariably served the State well, and in whom
all classes had perfect confidence.[583]
One important part of the work of the college in this century must have
been the adjustment of the civic religion of the Italian communities to
that of Rome. What deities were to be made citizens of Rome? Which were
to be left in their old homes undisturbed? No doubt many other questions
must have called for attention in religious matters after the conquest
of Italy, but this is the one of which we know most. The temple
foundations of this period have all been carefully put together (chiefly
from Livy's invaluable records) by Aust,[584] and show that there was a
certain tendency to bring in deities from outside, not so much because
they represented some special need of the Romans, corn or art or
industry, as two centuries earlier, but simply because they were deities
of the conquered whom it might be prudent to adopt. The great Juno
Regina of Veii was long ago induced by _evocatio_ to migrate to Rome;
Fors Fortuna from Etruria, Juturna from Lavinium, Minerva Capta from
Falerii, Feronia, a famous Latin goddess from Capena, Vortumnus from
Volsinii,[585] all attest the same liberal tone in religious matters
which on the whole marks the secular Italian policy of the Senate in
this period. If we had but more information about the former, we should
be able to understand the latter far better. We should like to know why
in some cases the chief deity of a community came to Rome, while in
others there is not trace of migration. The famous Vacuna of Reate, for
example, never left her home in the Apennines, possibly because she was
a kind of Vesta, who could not be spared from Reate, and was not wanted
at Rome.[586]
The list of foundations also points to other tendencies and experiences
of the time. We might guess that there was some attempt, with the aid of
pontifical skill, to encourage agriculture or give it a fresh start
after the invasion of Pyrrhus; for between 272 and 264, the years of the
pacification of Italy, we find temples built to four agricultural
deities, three indigenous Roman ones, Consus, Tellus, Pales, and one
Etruscan garden god, Vertumnus.[587] Then we have a group of foundations
in honour of deities connected with water--Juturna, Fons, Tempestates,
which seem to have some reference to the naval activity of the first
Punic war; they all fall between 259 and 241 B.C.[588] Lastly, we notice
a fresh accession of deified abstractions,--Salus (an old deity in a new
form), Spes, Honos et Virtus, Concordia, and Mens.[589] I am glad to
find that the latest investigator of these religious abstractions is at
one with me in believing that they simply mark a developed stage in the
religious bent of the earliest Roman. If the old Romans had the habit of
spiritualising a great variety of material objects, in other words, if
they were in an advanced animistic stage, there seems to be no reason
why they should not have begun to spiritualise mental concepts also (for
which they had words, as for the material objects), even at a very early
period. The whole psychological aspect of such abstractions is most
interesting, but I must pass it over here, merely suggesting that each
of these abstractions was doubtless deified for some particular reason,
under the direction, or with the sanction, of the pontifices.[590]
But we have not as yet reached what is, after all, for our purposes the
most instructive part of the work of the pontifices--I mean the archives
or memoranda (_libri_ or _commentarii_) which they kept, and from which,
indirectly, much of what I have had to say about the _ius divinum_ has
been drawn. It is here that we see the policy of maintaining the _pax
deorum_ carried to its highest point. These books contained a vast
collection of formulae for every kind of process in which the deities
were in any way concerned; here was the complete _pharmacopoeia_ of the
_ius divinum_.[591] We must remember that the pontifex maximus and his
assessors had to be ready at any moment with the correct formula for all
religious acts, whether extraordinary, like the _devotio_ of Decius or
the expiation of some startling "prodigium," or belonging to the
ordinary course of city life, such as prayers in sacrificial ritual,
_vota_ both public and private, charters (_leges_) of newly founded
temples, and so on. The idea that the spoken formula (ultimately, as we
saw, derived from an age of magic) was efficient only if no slip were
made, seems to have gained in strength instead of diminishing, as we
might have expected it to do with advancing civilisation; and the
pontifices not only responded to its importunity, but actually
stimulated it. _Vires acquirit eundo_ are words which apply well in all
ages to the passion for organisation and precision. Though we cannot
prove it, I myself have little doubt that the members of the college, or
some of them, collected and invented formulae simply for the pleasure of
doing it, and that the work became as congenial to them as the
systematisation of the law to Jewish scribes after the captivity, or as
casuistry to the confessors of the middle ages. When the art of writing
became familiar to experts, the natural and primitive desire of the
Roman to have exactness in the spoken word affected him also in his
relations with the word as written. The scribe and the Pharisee found
their opportunity. The whole public religion of the State, and to some
extent also the private religion of the family, became a mass of forms
and formulae, and never succeeded in freeing itself from these fetters.
We can best illustrate this superfluity of priestly zeal in that strange
list of forms of invocation called _Indigitamenta_, which I have already
explained with the help of Wissowa.[592] Working upon the old Roman
animism, and the popular fondness for formulae, the pontifices drew up
those lists in the fourth and third centuries B.C., which have so
seriously misled scholars as to the genuine primitive religious ideas of
the Romans. They are in the main priestly inventions, the work of
ingenious formulators. We may even be tempted to look on them as an
attempt to rivet the yoke of priestly formalism on the life of the
individual as well as on the life of the State as a whole. But if ever
this was the intention, it was too late. A people that was beginning to
get into touch with the civilisation of Hellas could not possibly bear
such a yoke. In the last lecture we have already seen a tendency towards
emotional religion independent of the old State worship; the philosophy
of individualism was to complete the work of emancipation in the last
two centuries B.C. The old State religion remained, but in stunted form
and with paralysed vitality; Rome was the scene of an _arrested
religious development_. The feeling, the religious instinct (_religio_)
was indeed there, though latent; the Romans were human beings, like the
rest of us. But as we go on with the story we shall find that, when
trouble or disaster brought it out of its hiding-place, it was no longer
possible to soothe it on Roman principles or by Roman methods. These
methods--in other words, the _ius divinum_ as formulated by the
authorities--had been meant to soothe it, and had indeed so effectually
lulled it to sleep, that when at last it awoke again they had lost the
power of dealing with it. When the craving did come upon the Roman,
which in time of peril or doubt has come upon individuals and
communities in all ages, for support and comfort from the Unseen, it had
to be satisfied by giving him new gods to worship in new ways, gods from
Greece and the East, some of them concealed under Latin names, but still
aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or
nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in
his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last
lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman
character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its
comparative uselessness lies in this--that the natural desire to be
right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know
more of that Power, became weakened and destroyed by an over-scrupulous
attention to the means taken to realise it, and by the introduction of
foreign methods which had no root in the mental fibre of the people, and
reflected no part of its experience. Religion was effectually divorced
from life and morality.
NOTES TO LECTURE XII
[556] See Mulder, _De notione conscientiae, quae et
qualis fuerit Romanis_, Leyden, 1908, cap. 2. On p. 56
he quotes Luthard (_Die antike Ethik_, p. 131), who says
of the Roman religion that it was even more an affair of
the State than with any other people; hence its peculiar
legal character. Though Mulder overworks his point, his
chapter (especially p. 61 foll.) is full of interest.
[557] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 431. The first chapter of
Ambrosch's _Studien und Andeutungen_, in which the
nature and history of the Regia was first really
investigated, is still valuable. An excellent short
account is given by Mr. Marindin in his article in the
_Dict. of Antiquities_, ed. 2. It is now generally
maintained that the Regia in historical times was rather
a building for sacred purposes than a residence for a
man and his family, and this I hold to be correct; but
it may for all that have originally been the residence
of the Rex and of the Pont. Max. when the Rex had
disappeared.
[558] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, i. 43,
where a succinct account is given of modern opinion as
to the so-called _ius Papirianum_. The main argument for
the late date of the collection is that Cicero does not
seem to have known of it when he wrote the letter _ad
Fam._ ix. 21 in 46 B.C. This of course in no way affects
the primitive character of the rules themselves.
[559] The inference that the rules were found in the
_Libri pontificum_ is inevitable in any case, but seems
proved by the fact that one of them, that relating to
the _spolia opima_, is stated by Festus, p. 189 (_s.v._
"opima"), to have been extracted from those books.
[560] Festus, _s.v._ "pellices" and _s.v._ "plorare,"
which latter word is interpreted as = _inclamare_.
[561] The _divi parentum_ are here generally taken as
those of the particular family, and this may have been
so; but cf. Wissowa, _R.K._ 192.
[562] For the attempts of Pais in Italy and Lambert in
France to date the Tables at the end of the fourth
century or later, see Schanz, _op. cit._ i. 41. In
Germany opinion is universally in favour of the
traditional date.
[563] See _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p.
135.
[564] On the religious character of _confarreatio_ see
De Marchi, _La Religione nella vita privata_, i. p. 145
foll.
[565] Cic. _de Domo_, 12. 14; Gellius, v. 19.
[566] See, _e.g._ Launspach, _State and Family in Early
Rome_, p. 256 foll. The last three chapters of this
little book, on Patria potestas, Marriage, and
Succession, will be found useful by those who cannot
enter into the many disputes and difficulties which have
arisen out of the attempts of writers on Roman law to
adjust legal ideas to the dim early history of Rome.
Binder, in his work _Die Plebs_, starts from the
improbable hypothesis that the plebs was the population
of the Latin part of the city as distinct from that
Sabine part on the Quirinal, which he believes to have
been the only patrician body; and he further believes
that the plebs lived originally under "Mutterrecht," the
patres under "Vaterrecht." Such a condition of society
would, of course, have greatly added to the pontifical
work of religious adjustment; it would have been more
than even the pontifices could have successfully
achieved.
[567] See above, note 7. Binder, _Die Plebs_, p. 488
foll., discusses, and in the main rejects, the arguments
of Pais and Lambert.
[568] So Huvelin, in a paper in _L'Annee sociologique_,
1905-6, p. 1 foll., criticised by Hubert et Mauss,
_Melanges d'histoire des religions_, p. xxiii. foll.
[569] From the religious point of view the _legis
actiones_ are best explained in Marquardt, 318 foll. Cp.
Muirhead, _Roman Law_, ed. 1899, pp. 246-7; Greenidge,
_Roman Public Life_, index _s.v._ "legis actio," and
especially p. 87.
[570] The famous passage of Pomponius is in the
_Digest_, i. 2. 2, sec. 6 (for the work of Aelius, see
_Dig._ i. 2. 2, 38) "ex his legibus ... actiones
compositae sunt, quibus inter se homines disceptarent:
quas actiones ne populus prout vellet institueret,
certas sollemnesque esse voluerunt.... Omnium tamen
harum et interpretandi scientia et actiones apud
collegium pontificum erant, ex quibus constituebatur,
quis quoquo anno praeesset privatis."
[571] Livy ix. 46 "civile ius, repositum in penetralibus
pontificum, evulgavit (Cn. Flavius), fastosque circa
forum in albo proponit, ut quando lege agi posset
sciretur." Cp. Val. Max. ii. 5. 2. _Civile ius_ is here
usually taken as meaning the procedure; but this is a
passage which may give some countenance to those who
would put the publication of the XII. Tables later than
the traditional date.
[572] For the relation of the Flamines, Vestals, and Rex
sacrorum to the pontifex maximus, see Wissowa, _R.K._
432 foll.
[573] See above, p. 283. For the eclipse, Cic. _Rep._ i.
16. 25; and for the various scientific determinations of
its exact date, Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._ vol. i.
(ed. 2) p. 37. "Ex hoc die," writes Cicero, "quem apud
Ennium et in maximis annalibus consignatum videmus,
superiores solis defectiones reputatae sunt."
[574] Cic. _Brutus_, 55 "longe plurimum ingenio
valuisse."
[575] _De Orat._ iii. 33. 134.
[576] See _Dict. of Classical Biography_, _s.v._
"Coruncanius."
[577] _Nat. deor._ ii. 165. Coruncanius is mentioned as
one of those whom the gods love, if indeed they take an
interest in human affairs.
[578] See above, p. 100 foll.; and _Roman Festivals_, p.
3.
[579] Our knowledge of this _tabula_ chiefly depends on
a passage in the Danielian scholiast on Virg. _Aen._ i.
373: "ita enim annales conficiebantur. Tabulam dealbatam
quotannis pontifex maximus habuit, in qua praescriptis
consulum nominibus et aliorum magistratum, digna
memoratu notare consueverat domi militiaeque terra
marique gesta per singulos dies. Cuius diligentiae
annuos commentarios in octoginta libros veteres
retulerunt, eosque a pontificibus maximis, a quibus
fiebant, annales maximos appellarunt." The explanation
of the name is no doubt wrong; but all the rest of this
passage can be relied on; cp. Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52; Dion. Hal. i. 73, 74; Gell. ii. 28. 6; Cic. _Legg._
i. 2. 6. For the idea of the almanac, see Cichorius in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._ "annales maximi."
[580] _Proponebat tabulam domi_, Cic. _de Orat._ ii. 12.
52. This must refer to the official residence of the
Pont. Max.; see above, p. 271.
[581] These attempted solutions of an insoluble problem
may be found in brief in Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._
i. 37. Perhaps the boldest is that of Cantorelli, that
the annales were constructed not out of the tabula but
out of the commentarii; but this is in conflict with the
passage in the scholiast on Virgil. To me the difficulty
does not seem overwhelming; events occurring "domi
militiaeque, terra marique," may have filled
considerable space, and yet have been meagre in the eyes
of the rhetoricians of the last century B.C.
[582] Schanz, _op. cit._ p. 35.
[583] The great authority of the Pont. Max. is well
shown in the story of Tremellius the praetor, who in the
middle of the second century B.C. was fined (by a
tribune?) "quod cum M. Aemilio pontifice maximo
iniuriose contenderat, sacrorumque quam magistratuum ius
potentius fuit." Livy, _Epit._ 47.
[584] _De aedibus sacris populi Romani_, p. 10 foll.
[585] Aust, _op. cit._ p. 14 foll. See also _R.F._ p.
340 foll.
[586] For Vacuna, Wissowa, _R.K._ pp. 44 and 128. She
was later, but probably without good reason, identified
with Victoria. The conjecture that she was a hearth
deity rests on the lines of Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 305,
which I have before referred to in another context:
ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat et mensae credere adesse deos.
nunc quoque cum fiunt antiquae sacra Vacunae,
ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos.
[587] Aust, p. 14. For Vertumnus the _locus classicus_
is Propert. v. 2. It is not certain that the connection
with gardens was primitive.
[588] _R.F._ p. 341.
[589] _R.F._ p. 341.
[590] See Axtell, _The Deification of Abstract Ideas in
Roman Literature and Inscriptions_ (Chicago, 1907), p.
59 foll., where the views of Mommsen, Boissier,
Marquardt, and Wissowa are discussed. Axtell's own
conclusion is given on p. 62 foll. In the main it seems
to agree with that hazarded in my _Roman Festivals_, p.
190.
[591] For the evidence as to the contents of the
_commentarii_, which are now generally identified with
the _libri_, see Wissowa, _R.K._ 32 and 441; Schanz,
_op. cit._ i. 32; and the article "Commentarii" in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ As Wissowa remarks (p.
441, note 6), we are greatly in need of a complete
collection of all fragments of these archives.
[592] See above, p. 159 foll. The conviction that these
lists are of comparatively late and priestly origin,
which has long been growing on me, was originally
suggested by the learned article "Indigitamenta" by R.
Peter in Roscher's _Lexicon_, vol. ii. p. 175 foll.
[593] I have here adopted some sentences from my article
in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 854.
LECTURE XIII
THE AUGURS AND THE ART OF DIVINATION
"The one great corruption to which all religion is exposed is its
separation from morality. The very strength of the religious motive has
a tendency to exclude, or disparage, all other tendencies of the human
mind, even the noblest and best. It is against this corruption that the
prophetic order from first to last constantly protested.... Mercy and
justice, judgment and truth, repentance and goodness--not sacrifice, not
fasting, not ablutions,--is the burden of the whole prophetic teaching
of the Old Testament."[594]
The over-formalising, or ritualising, of any religion is sure to bring
about that result against which the Jewish prophets protested. We saw at
the end of the last lecture how the pontifices contributed to such a
result. We are now to study the contribution of the other great college,
the augurs. For instead of developing, as did the wise man or seer of
Israel, into the mouthpiece of God in His demand for the righteousness
of man, the Roman diviner merely assisted the pontifex in his work of
robbing religion of the idea of righteousness. Divination seems to be a
universal instinct of human nature, a perfectly natural instinct,
arising out of man's daily needs, hopes, fears; but though it may have
had the chance, even at Rome, it never has been able, except among the
Jews, to emerge from its cramping chrysalis of magic and become a really
valuable stimulant of morality.
By divination I mean the various ways and methods by which, in all
stages of his development, man has persuaded himself that what he is
going to do or suffer will turn out well or ill for him. It is probably
judicious, with Dr. Tylor and with the majority of recent
anthropologists, to consider it as belonging to the region of
magic;[595] and it is obvious that it affords excellent examples of that
inadequacy which characterises magical attempts to overcome the
difficulties man meets with in his struggle for existence.[596] It
belongs, like other forms of magic, to a stage in which man's idea of
his relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe is both
rude and rudimentary. But it shares with magic the power or property of
surviving, in form at least, through the animistic stage into that of
religion, and it is largely practised at the present day even among
highly civilised peoples.