law, and not to the history of Roman religious experience. It will be
found fully explained, in that connection, in Mommsen's _Staatsrecht_,
or in Dr. Greenidge's volume on _Roman Public Life_.[638] All we have to
note here is the complete secularisation of what was once really a part
of the Roman religion; the augurs themselves were public men and could
hold magistracies, and their art of interpretation came to be used for
secular and political purposes only. They could declare a magistrate
_vitio creatus_, whether they had been present at the taking of the
auspices or not; they could also on appeal stop the proceedings at a
public assembly, whether for election or legislation; it may be said of
them that in one way or another they had a veto on every public
transaction.[639] As Cicero expresses it in his _ius divinum_, in the
second book of his work on the constitution: "Quae augur iniusta nefasta
vitiosa dira defixerit inrita infectaque sunto, quique non paruerit,
capital esto."[640] But in spite of the fine words _iniusta nefasta
vitiosa_, there was no religious principle involved in this solemn
injunction. When Bibulus in 59 B.C. sought as consul to stop Caesar's
proceedings by using his right of _spectio_, all he had to do was to
announce that he was going to look for lightning (_obnuntiare_); and if
there had been the smallest remnant of religious belief left in the
Roman mind about such transactions, it would quietly have acquiesced, in
the conviction that Jupiter would send lightning to the Roman magistrate
who asked for it; as it was, Caesar took no notice, and the Roman people
only laughed. Caesar was at the time, let us note, the head of the Roman
religion, pontifex maximus. So with the augurs as the interpreters of
the magisterial _spectio_; proud as Cicero was of becoming an augur,
with all the old surviving elective ritual,[641] he never, we may be
sure, believed for a moment that he had the power of interpreting the
will of the gods. A century before his augurship the whole business of
public divination had been regulated by statute, like any other secular
matter; and in his own day it was an open question with men of education
whether there were such a thing as divination at all.[642] True, as we
shall see, the _illegitimate_ forms of divination were at this very time
gaining ground, as the current of superstition increased in strength
which marks this last period of the republic; but the augur's art and
the _spectio_ of the magistrate were still surviving as mere
constitutional fossils, and were not destined to share largely in
Augustus' heroic attempt to put fresh life into the _ius divinum_. _Vile
damnum_, as Tacitus said of the foreign quacks banished to Sardinia by
Tiberius; for neither in the sphere of religion nor later in that of
politics can the art of divination be said to have had any lasting
value.
I have not dealt at any length with the augurs and the State system of
divination, but I hope I have said enough to show that, as I hinted at
the beginning of this lecture, it affords an excellent illustration of
the way in which the religious instinct, the desire to be in right
relation with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, was first
soothed and satisfied, then hypnotised and paralysed, by the
formalisation and gradual secularisation of religious processes. The
desire to obtain the sanction of the Power by seeking for favourable
signs or omens seems to be a universal instinct of human nature, though
a perverse one; if left to itself it will apparently pass into the
region of harmless folklore, where it does not seriously interfere with
human progress, either secular or religious; but where, as at Rome, it
is taken up into the ritual of a religious system, and is further
allowed to express itself mechanically in the region of public law, it
exhausts itself rapidly, loses all its original significance, and
becomes a clog on human progress.
In ancient Italy this instinct for divination was nowhere so strongly
and so perversely developed into a mechanical system as in Etruria, and
it is highly probable that this development contributed largely to the
rapid political and moral decay of the Etruscan people. The narrow
aristocratic constitution of the Etruscan cities, worked by a kind of
priestly nobility, seems to have afforded great opportunities for the
cultivation of the perverse art which (as we are now beginning to
recognise) this people had brought with them from the East.[643] I have
already suggested that an Etruscan dominion at Rome had very probably
unfortunate results in developing and formalising the art of the augurs.
But the age of the Tarquinii was not the only one in which the sinister
influence of this strange people was brought to bear on Roman religious
institutions; and before I close this lecture I must say a very few
words about a second invasion of Etruscan perversity, which began some
two centuries and a half later. This was the result of that renewed
_religio_, that feeling of anxiety and sometimes of despair
characteristic of the last half of the third century B.C., the perilous
era of the Punic wars, with which I shall deal more particularly in the
next lecture. The state religion could not soothe it; neither pontifices
nor augurs had any sufficient native remedy for it, and as the ritual of
worship was reinforced from Greece and the East, so the ritual of
divination was reinforced from Etruria.
The Etruscans seem to have educated their diviners with care and system.
We do not know the details of such education, but it seems likely that
there were schools of these prophets, by means of which the art was
handed down and developed.[644] The word for the person thus trained was
_haruspex_ in its Italian form as known to us, though it had an Etruscan
original.[645] The art acquired was of three kinds--the interpretation
of lightning; the explanation and interpretation of the entrails of
victims, and especially of the liver; and, thirdly, the explanation and
expiation of portents and prodigia.[646] All three departments seem to
have been carried to an extreme degree of perverse development. To give
an idea of it I need but refer to recent discussions of the relation
between the divisions marked on a bronze model of a victim's liver
(found in 1877 at Piacenza), in which are written the Etruscan names of
a great number of deities, and the somewhat similar divisions of the
templum of the heavens as given by Martianus Capella in explanation of
the celestial dwellings of the Italian deities. A study of this
unprofitable subject, of which the only interest lies in the
illustration it offers of the prostitution of human ingenuity, will be
found in a little work by Carl Thulin, published in the series called
_Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten_.[647]
Just as the Roman authorities had recourse from time to time to the
Sibylline books, so also they occasionally, though not apparently before
the Punic wars, sought the help of the trained Etruscan diviners. We
shall come across instances of this in the next two lectures, and I need
not specify them now. They seem to have used their art in all its
departments; and in the most degraded of these, the examination of
entrails, it was found so convenient to have their services in a
campaign that in course of time one at least seems to have accompanied
every Roman army.[648] The complicated art of augury might in fact be
dispensed with if you had a _haruspex_ ready and willing at a moment's
notice to give you a good report of the victim's liver. To keep up the
supply of experts, the senate, probably in the second century B.C.,
determined to select and train ten boys of noble family in each Etruscan
city. This was the last service that the degenerate Etruscan people
rendered to its conquerors, and a more degrading one it is impossible to
imagine. These foreign diviners were never admitted to the dignity of a
_collegium_;[649] they rather played the part of the domestic chaplain
kept to say grace before meat. For a moment they attract our attention
in connection with the persecution of Cicero by his political enemies,
and the _consecratio_ after his exile of the site of his house on the
Palatine hill.[650] For a moment again we meet with them in the reign of
Claudius, who was interested in the Etruscans and wrote a work about
them, and once raised the question in the senate of the revival of the
haruspices and their art--such part of it, at least, as might seem worth
preserving--"ne vetustissima Italiae disciplina per desidium
exolesceret."[651] And strange to say, though in fact no part of this
ancient Italian discipline was in the least worth preserving, it
survived in outward form into the fourth century of the empire.[652] We
read with astonishment in the code of the Christian emperor Theodosius,
that if the imperial palace or other public buildings are struck by
lightning the haruspices are to be consulted, according to ancient
custom, as to the meaning of the portent.[653] Thirteen years after the
death of Theodosius, in 408, Etruscan experts offered their services to
Pompeianus, prefect of Rome, to save the city from the Goths. Pompeianus
was tempted, but consulted Innocent, the Bishop of Rome, who "did not
see fit to oppose his own opinion to the wishes of the people at such a
crisis, but stipulated that the magic rites should be performed
secretly." What followed is uncertain. "The Christian historian says
that the rites were performed, but were unavailing; the pagan Zosimus
affirms that the aid of the Tuscans was declined."[654] So hard died the
futile arts of the most unfruitful of all Italian races.
NOTES TO LECTURE XIII
[594] Stanley's _Jewish Church_ (ed. 1906), vol. i. p.
398 foll.
[595] _Hist. de divination dans l'antiquite_, vol. i. p.
7 foll.; divination is "contemplative," magic "active."
But this learned author did not deal with divination
except as it existed in Greece and Italy; and in view of
our present extended knowledge this differentia is not
instructive.
[596] See Tylor's article in the last edition of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and his _Gifford Lectures_,
Pt. ii. ch. iv.; Haddon, _Magic and Fetishism_, p. 40.
Bouche-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination dans l'antiquite_,
vol. i. p. 7, distinguishes divination from magic; but
his knowledge of the subject was limited to civilised
races.
[597] Mr. Marett seems doubtful about it: see his
_Threshold of Religion_, pp. 42 and 83. In the latter
passage he says that it may or may not be treated as a
branch of magic, and may be "originally due to some dim
sort of theorising about causes, the theory engendering
the practice rather than the practice the theory." I
should doubt whether, when the facts have been fully
collected, this will be the conclusion to which they
point.
[598] _Evolution of the Aryan_, Drucker's translation,
p. 369.
[599] _Ib._ pp. 364, 374.
[600] A curious survival of divination from the
agricultural period, which was taken over by the State,
but not fixed to a day in the calendar, is the _augurium
canarium_. The exta of red puppies which had been
sacrificed were consulted, apparently with a view to
ascertain the probability of the corn ripening well
(Festus, p. 285, quoting Ateius Capito). See _R.F._ p.
90, and the references there given; also Cic. _de
Legibus_, ii. 20; Fest. 379; and Wissowa in
Pauly-Wissowa, p. 2328.
[601] See above, p. 102.
[602] See Dr. Jevons' account in Gardner and Jevons,
_Manual of Greek Antiquities_, ch. vii.
[603] Bouche-Leclercq in the introduction to his first
volume (p. 3) expresses a different opinion. He thinks
that the benefit conferred by divination in the conduct
of life was the most valuable part of religion. With
this I entirely disagree.
[604] Cic. _de Divinatione_, ii. 51.
[605] See Bouche-Leclercq, iv. 119 foll. In a recently
published essay, _De antiquorum daemonismo_, by J.
Tamburnino (Giessen, 1909), the only genuine Roman
evidence adduced of possession is Minucius Felix,
_Octavius_, ch. 27, _i.e._ it belongs to the late second
century A.D. In the so-called Italian oracles there is
no question of it: _e.g._ the lots at Praeneste were
worked by a boy (Cic. _de Div._ ii. 86).
[606] Livy i. 36; Cic. _de Div._ i. 17. It is Dion. Hal.
iii. 70 who says that his art was Etruscan.
[607] Bouche-Leclercq, iv. 120.
[608] For Carmenta see _R.F._ 167 and 291 foll. For
Fortuna, _ib._ 223 foll.; cp. 170 foll.
[609] Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, iv. 11; he uses the plural
_Carmentes_; see _R.F._ as above. Virgil, _Aen._ viii.
336.
[610] As "superstitiosi vates" in the passage of Ennius
quoted below. In his imaginary _ius divinum_ Cicero uses
the word for "fatidici" authorised by the State (_de
Legg._ ii. 20). He is perhaps thinking of the
haruspices.
[611] Ribbeck, _Fragm. tragicorum Romanorum_, p. 55. For
hariolus outside the play-writers, Cic. _de Nat. Deor._
i. 20. 55, where it is combined with haruspices,
augures, vates, and coniectores (interpreters of
dreams). _Ad Att._ viii. 11. 3.
[612] Cato, _R.R._ ch. 54; cp. Columella, i. 8 and xi.
1.
[613] See P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, p.
6 "Omnia illa auguria quae futurarum rerum aliquid
predicunt ... augurum publicorum disciplinae abroganda
sunt: aut privati sunt augurii, aut Tuscorum
disciplinae." Cp. Cic. _de Har. Resp._ 9. 18.
[614] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16. 28; Val. Max. ii. 1. 1.
[615] _La Religione nella vita domestica_, i. 153 foll.;
232 foll.
[616] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16, 28.
[617] This fragment is preserved in Gellius vii. 6. 10.
Nigidius may be responsible for many of Pliny's omens.
Regell, _op. cit._ p. 8.
[618] Hor. _Odes_, iii. 27. 1 foll.
[619] Exactly the same misfortune occurred in the middle
ages. The monks had abundant opportunity of observation,
but were occupied with other matters, and have left
behind them no works on natural history.
[620] See above, p. 169 foll.
[621] Livy vi. 12.
[622] See the fragment of Ennius' _Annales_ in Cic. _de
Div._ i. 107.
[623] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 450; _Lex coloniae Genetivae_,
66 and 67.
[624] Livy vi. 41.
[625] See a good account in the _Dict. of Antiquities_,
vol. i. 252 and 255; and Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa,
_s.v._ "auspicia."
[626] _Roman Public Life_, p. 162.
[627] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 2; Marq. 241.
[628] Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i. 86.
[629] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 7; Plut. _Quaest. Rom._
99; Pliny, _Ep._ 4. 8. Plutarch asks why an augur can
never be deprived of his office, and answers that the
secrecy of his art made it impossible. Cp. Paulus, 16.
[630] The latest authoritative account of the auspicia
is in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._, where the necessary
literature and material will be found for a study of an
extremely complicated subject.
[631] The technical term was _templum minus_, in
contradistinction to the _templum maius_, _i.e._ the
space in which he was to look for signs. See
Bouche-Leclercq, iv. 197; Fest. 157. The usual place was
the _arx_, where was the _auguraculum_, on which the
magistrate taking the auspices "pitched his tent"
(_tabernaculum_), looking to the east, with the north as
his left or lucky side. Von Jhering, _op. cit._ p. 364,
makes some ingenious use of this procedure to support
his theory that the origin of such institutions is to be
found in the period of migration.
[632] That the division of the _templum_ into _regiones_
was necessary only for the _auguria caelestia_, and not
for the observation of birds, is the conclusion drawn by
Wissowa (_R.K._ 457, note 2) from the words of Cicero
(_de Legibus_, ii. 21) in his _ius divinum_: "caelique
fulgura regionibus ratis temperanto" (_i.e._ the
magistrates).
[633] Cicero expressly says that even old Cato
complained of the neglect of the auspicia by the
college: _de Div._ i. 15. 28; above, in sec. 25, he had
said the same thing of the augurs of his own day, _i.e._
including himself. We know of a work on the _auspicia_
by M. Messalla, an augur, from which Gellius, xiii. 15,
quotes a lengthy extract (cp. ch. 14). This man was
consul in 53 B.C.; Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Lit._, ii.
492. Just at the same time Appius Claudius, Cicero's
predecessor as governor of Cilicia, wrote _libri
augurales_, to which Cicero more than once alludes in
his correspondence with Appius: _ad Fam._ iii. 9. 3 and
11. 4. It is plain that the old augural lore is now
treated only as a curiosity, of which the secrecy need
no longer be respected.
[634] P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, whose
excellent little work has never been superseded, thinks
(p. 19) that the _libri_ were the result of the neglect
of the art, _i.e._ that it was necessary to put it in
writing, because otherwise it would be forgotten. "Tota
eius vita," he says, "lenta est mors." The lore was
complete about the time of the decemvirate, but
_decreta_ must have been continually added (p. 23). The
nucleus may be represented in Cicero, _de Legibus_, ii.
20. 21, and perhaps existed in Saturnian verse (Festus,
290). The additions in the way of decree or comment
would probably range over the fourth and third centuries
B.C. like those of the pontifices. No doubt the
Hannibalic war had the effect of diminishing the
importance of the lore, as the next lecture should show.
On the whole we may put the great period of the college
between the decemvirate and the war with Hannibal.
[635] This is the opinion of Bouche-Leclercq, _op. cit._
vol. iv. p. 205 foll.; cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 457.
Cicero calls the augurs "interpretes Iovis Optimi
maximi" (_de Legibus_, ii. 20), and herein could hardly
have made a mistake, as he was himself an augur. As the
great deity was of Etruscan origin in this form, I
should conjecture that the college took new ground and
gained new influence under the Etruscan dynasty.
[636] Cp. also Mueller-Deecke, _Die Etrusker_, ii. 165
foll. Our knowledge comes chiefly from the learned but
obscure writer Martianus Capella (ed. Eyssenhardt), who
wrote under the later Empire.
[637] For these meetings see Cic. _de Div._ i. 41. 90;
Regell, p. 23. They were obsolete in Cicero's time, but
seem to have still existed in the time of Scipio
Aemilianus: Cic. _Lael._ 2. 7.
[638] _Staatsrecht_, i. 73 foll.; Greenidge, _Roman
Public Life_, p. 172 foll.
[639] The best account of the constitutional power of
the augurs is in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyclopaedie_,
_s.v._ "augur," vol. i. p. 2334 foll.; cp. Wissowa,
_R.K._ 457-8.
[640] _De Legibus_, ii. 21.
[641] The outward form of _co-optatio_ was still
preserved, like our "election" of a bishop by a chapter.
Cicero was co-opted by Hortensius after nomination by
two other augurs. See his interesting account of this in
his _Brutus_, ch. i. The survival may be taken as
throwing light on the original secrecy and closeness of
the _collegium_.
[642] For the _leges Aelia et Fufia_, cf. Greenidge,
_op. cit._ p. 173. The Stoics of the last century B.C.
were divided on this point. See below, p. 399. In the
second book of his _de Divinatione_, following the
Academic or agnostic school, he himself confutes his
brother Quintus' argument for divination contained in
Bk. I.
[643] This is the view of Thulin, _Die Goetter des
Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza_
(Giessen, 1906), p. 7 foll., and it seems at present to
hold the field: see Gruppe, _Die mythologische Literatur
aus den Jahren 1898-1905_, p. 336.
[644] Mueller-Deecke, vol. ii. p. 7 foll.
[645] See Deecke's note on p. 12 of Mueller-Deecke, vol.
ii. It is possibly connected with _hariolus_.
[646] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 470, and Mueller-Deecke, vol.
ii. 165 foll.
[647] See above, note 50.
[648] References to Livy will be found in Wissowa,
_R.K._ p. 473, note 11. One of these, to Livy xxvii. 16.
14, is worth quoting as suggesting that a _haruspex_
might give useful advice in spite of his art: "Hostia
quoque caesa consulenti (Fabio) deos haruspex, cavendum
a fraude hostili et ab insidiis, praedixit."
[649] They were not _sacerdotes publici Romani_, nor is
a _collegium_ mentioned till the reign of Claudius: Tac.
_Ann._ xi. 15. The proper term seems to have been
_ordo_, which occurs in inscriptions of the Empire:
Marq. p. 415.
[650] typo fixed: 54: See the oration _De haruspicum
responsis_ (especially 5. 9), the genuineness of which
is now generally acknowledged. Asconius quotes it as
Cicero's (ed. Clark, p. 70): so also Quintilian, v. 11.
42.
[651] Tac. _Ann._ 11. 15.
[652] The _haruspices_ mentioned in inscriptions (above,
note 56) were not the genuine article; they were Romans
and _equites_. Probably this was only one of the many
ways of finding dignity or employment for persons of
good birth under the Empire.
[653] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 1 (of the year 321 A.D.),
quoted by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 475, note 1. In ix. 16. 3.
5, however, the practice of consulting such experts is
strictly prohibited.
[654] The story is told in Prof. Dill's _Roman Society
in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, ed. 1, p.
41.
LECTURE XIV
THE HANNIBALIC WAR
We have noticed two different, if not opposing, tendencies in Roman
religious experience since the disappearance of the kingship. First,
there was a tendency towards the reception of new and more emotional
forms of worship, under the direction of the Sibylline books and their
keepers; secondly, we have seen how, in the hands of pontifices and
augurs, religious practice became gradually so highly formularised and
secularised that the real religious instinct is hardly discernible in
it, except indeed in the degraded form of scruple as to the exact
performance of the ritual laid down. There was also, towards the end of
that period, a third tendency beginning to show itself, which was
eventually to complete the paralysis of the old religion--a tendency to
neglect and despise the old religious forms. This need not surprise us,
if we keep in mind two facts: (1) that Rome is now continually in close
contact with Greece and her life and thought; (2) that it seems to be
inevitable in western civilisation that a hard and fast system of
religious rule should eventually arouse rebellion in certain minds.
Already there are a few signs that the regulations of the _ius divinum_
are not invariably treated with respect.
As long ago as 293 B.C. and the last struggle with the Samnites, we find
a trace of this neglect or carelessness. One of the chicken-keepers
(_pullarii_) reported falsely to the consul Papirius that the sacred
chickens had given good omen in their eating: this was discovered by a
young nephew of Papirius, "iuvenis ante doctrinam deos spernentem
natus," as Livy calls him, and came to the consul's ears. Papirius'
reception of the news was characteristic of the way in which a Roman
could combine practical common-sense with the formal respect claimed by
his _ius divinum_; he declared that the omen had been reported to him as
good, and therefore "populo Romano exercituique egregium auspicium est."
The umpire had decided favourably for him, and there was an end of the
matter, except indeed that that umpire was placed in the forefront of
the battle that the gods might punish him themselves, and there of
course he died.[655] A generation later we have a case of far more
pronounced contempt in the familiar story of P. Claudius Pulcher and his
colleague Junius, each of whom lost a Roman fleet after neglecting the
warning of the _pullarius_: of Claudius it is told that he had the
sacred chickens thrown into the sea.[656] Another well-known story is
that of Flaminius, the democrat consul who, as we shall learn directly,
was defeated and killed at Trasimene after leaving Rome with none of
his religious duties performed.[657] The famous Marcellus of this second
Punic war, though himself an "augur optimus," according to Cicero,
declined to act upon an _auspicium ex acuminibus_--electric sparks seen
at the end of the soldiers' spears--and was accustomed to ride in his
litter with blinds drawn, so that he should not see any evil omen.[658]
Assuredly the transition from superstition to reason had its ludicrous
side even in public life.