this lecture. For years after the death of Flaminius we have no trace of
it: that was no time for speculating, and it would have been dangerous.
The religious history of the time, as recorded by Livy, shows on the
contrary that _religio_ in the old sense of the word is once more
occupying the Roman mind--the sense of awe in the presence of the
Unknown, the sense of sin or of duties omitted, or merely a vague sense
of terror that suggested recourse to the supernatural. No wonder: for
though Italy had been invaded within the memory of living man, it was
not then invaded by one who had sworn to his father in infancy to
destroy the enemy root and branch. Instinctively both Romans and loyal
Italians knew that they were face to face with a struggle for life and
death. It is hard for us to realise the terror of the situation as it
must have been in those days of slow communication and doubtful news. It
is to Livy's credit that he recognised it fully, and all who look on
history as something more than wars and battles must be eternally
grateful to him for searching the records of the pontifices for evidence
of a people's emotion and the means taken to soothe it. Polybius has
nothing to tell us of this but a few generalisations, drawn from his own
experience a century later.[659] In all essential attributes of a Roman
historian Livy is far the better of the two. I propose to follow his
guidance in trying to gain some knowledge of the revived _religio_ of
the age and the way in which it was dealt with by the authorities.
It is in the winter of 218-17, when Hannibal was wintering in north
Italy after his victory at the Trebbia, that Livy first brings the
matter before us.[660] He uses the word I have just now and so often
used: men's minds were _moti in religionem_, and they reported many
_prodigia_ which were uncritically accepted by the vulgar. He begins
with Rome, and here it is worth noting that these portents issue from
the crowded haunts of the markets, the _forum olitorium_, and the _forum
boarium_, both close to the river and the quays. In the latter place,
for example, an ox was said to have climbed to the third story of a
house, whence it threw itself down, terrified by the panic of the
inhabitants--a story which incidentally throws light on the housing of
the lower population at the time.[661] Other wonders were announced from
various parts of Italy,[662] and the decemviri were directed to have
recourse to the Sibylline books, except for the _procuratio_ of one
miracle, common in a volcanic country, the fall of pebble-rain.[663]
This had a _procuratio_ to itself by settled custom, the _novendiale
sacrum_,[664] an expiation parallel with that which, in the religion of
the family, followed a birth or a death. For the rest, the whole city
was subjected to _lustratio_,[665] and, in fact, the whole population
was busy with the work. A _lectisternium_ was ordered for Iuventas,[666]
the deity of the young recruits, a _supplicatio_ for Hercules at
one of his temples, and five special victims were ordered for
_Genius_--directions which have been variously interpreted. I am
disposed to think of them as referring to the capacity of the State to
increase its male population in the face of military peril. That the
authorities were looking ahead is clear from the fact next stated, that
one of the praetors had to undertake a special vow if the State should
survive for ten years. These measures, ordered by the books, "magna ex
parte levaverant religione animos." Unfortunately, the wayward consul
Flaminius spoilt their endeavours by wilfully neglecting his religious
duties at the Capitol, and also at the Alban mount, where he should have
presided at the Latin festival, and hurrying secretly to the seat of
war, lest his command should be interfered with by the aristocrats.
Spring came on, and with the immediate prospect of a crisis the
_religio_ broke out afresh.[667] Marvels were reported from Sicily and
Sardinia, as well as Italy and Rome. We need not trouble ourselves with
them, except so far as to note that one, at least, was pure invention;
at Falerii, where there was an oracle by lots,[668] one tablet fell out
of the bundle with the words written on it, _Mavors telum suum
concutit_. The mental explanation of all this is lost to us;[669] it
would be interesting to know how the reports really originated and were
conveyed to Rome. That a widely spread _religio_ is really indicated we
can hardly doubt. The steps taken to soothe it, the religious
prescriptions, are of more value to us. The Senate received the reports,
and the consul then introduced the question of procuration. Besides
decreeing, no doubt with the sanction of the pontifices, certain
ordinary measures, the Senate referred the matter to the decemviri and
the Sibylline books. A _fulmen_, weighing fifty pounds, was awarded to
Jupiter, and gifts of silver to his consorts in the Capitoline temple.
Then follow directions which show that the _religio_ of women was to be
particularly cared for. Juno Regina of the Aventine was to have a
tribute collected by matrons, and she and the famous Juno Sospita of
Lanuvium were to have special sacrifices; and it is probable that
another Juno Regina, she of Ardea, was the object of a sacrifice, which
the decemviri themselves undertook in the forum of that city.[670] This
prominence of Juno may be a counterpart, I think, to the special
attention shown to Hercules and Genius in the previous winter.[671] And
it is interesting to notice that the libertinae were directed to collect
money for their own goddess Feronia.[672]
It is evident that Livy, in detailing these directions from the books of
the pontifices,[673] took them in the chronological order in which they
were to be carried out; for the day sacred to Juno Regina of the
Aventine is September 1, that of Feronia November 13, and the last
instruction he mentions is in December, when Saturnus was to have a
sacrifice and _lectisternium_ at his own temple in the forum (prepared
by senators), and a _convivium publicum_. This meant, we note with
interest, the Graecising of this old Roman cult, which now took the form
which is so familiar to us of public rejoicing by all classes, including
slaves.[674] But long before these dates the terrible disaster of
Trasimene had forced the Senate, at the urgent persuasion of the
dictator Fabius, to have recourse to the sacred books again.[675] Never
before had they been so frequently consulted; the ordinary _piacula_ of
the pontifices were not thought of; a consul had grievously broken the
_pax deorum_, and what remedy was possible no Roman authority could
tell. The prescriptions of the books were many and various; the most
interesting of them is the famous _ver sacrum_, an old Italian custom,
already referred to, but here prescribed by a Greek authority. This was
submitted to the people in Comitia, and carried with quaint provisions
suited to protect them against any unconscious mistake in carrying out
the vow, such as might produce further _religio_. We will only notice
that though, according to the old tradition, it was to Mars that the
Italian stocks were wont in time of famine and distress to dedicate the
whole agricultural produce of the year, together with the male children
born that spring,[676] in this crisis it is to Jupiter that the vow is
made. It is the Roman people only who here make the vow, and they make
it, I doubt not, to that great Jupiter of the Capitol who for 300 years
has been their guardian, and in whose temple are kept the sacred books
that ordered it.[677]
But the authorities were determined to make now a supreme effort to
still the alarm, and to restore the people to cheerfulness. They went on
to vow _ludi magni_, _i.e._ extra games beside the usual yearly _ludi
Romani_, at a cost of 333,333 and one-third asses, three being the
sacred number. Then a _supplicatio_ was decreed, which was attended not
only by the urban population, but by crowds from the country, and for
three days the decemviri superintended a _lectisternium_ on a grand
scale, such as had never been seen in Rome before, in which twelve
deities in pairs, Roman and Greek indistinguishable from each other,
were seen reclining on cushions. If Wissowa interprets this
rightly,[678] as I think he does, it marks a turning-point in the
religious history of Rome. The old distinction between _di indigetes_
and _di novensiles_ now vanishes for good; the showy Greek ritual is
applied alike to Roman and to Greek deities; the Sibylline books have
conquered the _ius divinum_, and the decemviri in religious matters are
more trusted physicians than the pontifices. The old Roman State
religion, which we have been so long examining, may be said henceforward
to exist only in the form of dead bones, which even Augustus will hardly
be able to make live.
So far, however, all had been orderly and dignified. But after Cannae we
begin to divine that the stress of disaster is telling more severely on
the nervous fibre of the people. Two Vestals were found guilty of
adultery always a suspicious event; in such times a wicked rumour once
spread would have its own way. One killed herself; the other was buried
alive at the Colline gate. A _scriba pontificis_, who had seduced one of
them, was beaten to death by the pontifex maximus. Such a violation of
the _pax deorum_ was itself a prodigium, and again the books were
consulted, and an embassy was sent to Delphi with Fabius Pictor as
leader.[679] Greece is looming ever larger in the eyes of the frightened
Roman.
Under such circumstances it is hardly astonishing to read of a new (or
almost new) and horrible rite, in which a Greek man and woman and a
Gallic man and woman (slaves, no doubt) were buried alive in the _forum
boarium_ in a hole closed by a big stone, which had already, says Livy,
been used for human victims--"minime Romano sacro." As in the case of
the Vestals, blood-shedding is avoided, but the death is all the more
horrible. What are we to make of such barbarism? Technically, it must
have been a sacrifice to Tellus and the Manes, like the _devotio_ of
Decius, and like that also, it probably had in it a substratum of
magic.[680] As regards the choice of victims it baffles us, for if we
can understand the selection of a Gallic pair at a time when the Gauls
of North Italy were taking Hannibal's side, it is not so easy to see why
the Greeks were just now the objects of public animosity. Diels has
suggested that Gelo, son of Hiero of Syracuse, deserted Rome for
Carthage after Cannae,[681] and wanting a better explanation we may
accept this, and imagine, if we can, that the cruel death of a pair of
Greek slaves need not be taken as expressing any general feeling of
antagonism or hatred for things Greek. But, after all, the most
astonishing fact in the whole story is this--that the abominable
practice lasted into the Empire; Pliny, at least, emphatically states
that his own age had seen it, and heard the solemn form of prayer which
the magister of the quindecemviri used to dictate over the victims.[682]
Pliny, we may note, also speaks of the _forum boarium_ as the scene of
the sacrifice, where also the first gladiatorial games were
exhibited.[683] Rome was already accustomed to see horrors there.
As we have now reached the climax of the religious panic of these years,
I may pause here for a moment to refer to an interesting matter which I
mentioned in my third lecture. At this very time, if we accept Wissowa's
conjecture, the twenty-seven puppets of straw known as Argei, which were
thrown over the _pons sublicius_ by the Vestals on the ides of May, were
being substituted as surrogates for the sacrifice by drowning of the
same number of Greeks (Argei); an atrocity which he fancies actually
took place somewhere in the interval between the first and second Punic
wars, under orders found in the Sibylline books.[684] All scholars know
that there were in the four regions of the old city twenty-seven (or
twenty-four) chapels, _sacella_, which were also called Argei, and have
caused great trouble to topographers and archaeologists.[685] To
complete his hypothesis, Wissowa conjectures that these too date from
this same age, and were distributed over the city in order to take away
the miasma caused by some great pestilence or other trouble, of which,
owing to the loss of Livy's second decade, we have no information. But
neither have we a scrap of information about the building of the
chapels, or the drowning of the twenty-seven Greeks, an atrocity so
abominable that the only way in which we might conceivably account for
its disappearance in the records would be the hypothesis of a conspiracy
of silence, an impossible thing at Rome. The loss of Livy's second
decade cannot of itself be an explanation; such an event is just what an
epitomator would have seized on, yet there is no trace of it in the
surviving epitomes, nor in any other author who may have had Livy before
him. Varro knew nothing of it, so far as we can tell; where he refers to
the Argei he makes no mention of such an astonishing origin either of
puppets or chapels. If there had been a record in the books of the
pontifices, it is impossible to imagine that he was not aware of it.
On the contrary, he quotes no official record, but a line of Ennius
which attributes the origin of the Argei to Numa:[686]
libaque fictores Argeos et tutulatos.
Now Ennius was born in 239[687] B.C., and was, therefore, living when
the whole astonishing business began. How does he come to ascribe to
Numa institutions which were to himself exactly as the building of the
Forth Bridge might be to an Edinburgh man of middle age? Why, too, if
these institutions were of such recent date, did the Romans of the last
two centuries B.C. invent all sorts of wild explanations of them, at
which Wissowa very properly scoffs? It is for him to explain why these
explanations were needed. It is inconceivable that in a large city, with
colleges of priests preserving religious traditions and formulae, all
memory of the remarkable origin of _sacella_ and puppets should have so
completely vanished as to leave room for the growth of such a crop of
explanations. These will be found in my _Roman Festivals_, p. 112, and
whoever reads them will conclude at once, I am sure, that the Romans
knew nothing at all about the true history of the Argei. We may still
class this curious ceremony with some of the primitive magical or
quasi-magical rites of the ancient settlement. We are not entitled to
cite it as an example of the growing savagery of this trying period; and
if it be argued that it is an example rather of humanity, because for
the original victims straw puppets were substituted, the answer is that
even if we were to grant the human sacrifice, the surrogation of puppets
is a most unlikely thing to have happened.[688] It is a rare practice;
Wissowa himself judiciously rejects it as an explanation of such objects
as _oscilla_ and _maniae_. You cannot adopt it when you choose, to
explain a difficulty, and then reject it when you choose. Why, one may
ask, was this humane method not applied also to the two pairs of Gauls
and Greeks just mentioned? But I need not pursue the subject further; we
may be satisfied to reflect that from an anthropological point of view
the Argei need never have been anything more than puppets.[689]
But to return to the religious history of the war. It would seem that
the extraordinary series of performances ordered during the depression
and despair that followed Cannae had succeeded for the time in quieting
the _religio_. Fabius Pictor too had returned from Delphi,[690] and
brought home in what seems to be hexameter verse instructions as to the
worship of certain deities, with injunctions to the Romans to send gifts
to the Pythian Apollo if prosperity should return to them, and ending
with the significant words, "lasciviam (disorderly excitement) a vobis
prohibete," which may be interpreted as "keep quiet, and do not get into
a religious panic." The hexameters were Greek, but were translated for
the benefit of the people; and Fabius publicly told how he had himself
obeyed the voice of the oracle by sacrificing to the deities it named,
and had worn the wreath, the sign that he was accomplishing religious
work, during the whole of his journey home. This wreath he now deposited
on the altar of Apollo. This was in 216, and it is remarkable that we
hear of no new outbreak of _prodigia_, the normal symptom of _religio_,
till the next year. Then we have a list; as Livy says,[691] "simplices
et religiosi homines" were ready with them at any time. A panic arose in
Rome, not strictly of a religious kind, which shows the nervousness of
the population; a rumour went about that an army had been seen on the
Janiculum, but men who were on the spot refuted it. In this case the
Sibylline books were not consulted, but Etruscan haruspices were called
in, who simply ordered a _supplicatio_ of the new kind, at the
_pulvinaria_. This is the first, or almost the first instance of these
experts being consulted; earlier statements of the kind are probably
apocryphal, as I pointed out in the last lecture. It is not clear why
the authorities had recourse to them at this moment; but I am inclined
to think that the old remedies even of the Sibylline books and their
keepers were getting stale, and that while it was thought undesirable to
excite the people by new rites, it was felt that the familiar ones might
gain some new prestige by being recommended by new experts. The old
prescription, given by a new physician, may gain in authority. The next
year again, 213, brought another crop of _prodigia_, but Livy dismisses
them with the simple words, "His procuratis ex decreto pontificum."[692]
It is reasonable to suppose that a reaction was taking place in the
minds of the senators and pontifices, and that they were determined to
take as little notice as possible of disturbing symptoms, relying on the
prestige of the Delphic oracle, and acting on its advice to suppress
_lascivia_.
But in this same year the _lascivia_ broke out again with unprecedented
force. The cause was not only, as Livy explains it, the dreary
continuance of the war with varying success; if we read between the
lines we may guess that the break-up of family life occasioned by the
deaths of so many heads of houses and their sons, had opened the way for
_feminine_ excitement and for the introduction of external rites such as
an old Roman _paterfamilias_ would no more have tolerated than the
pontifices themselves. "Tanta religio," says Livy,[693] "et ea magna ex
parte externa, civitatem incessit, _ut aut homines, aut dii repente alii
viderentur facti_"; it seemed as if the old religious system, in spite
of all its highly formalised apparatus of expiation, was being
deliberately set aside. "Nec iam in secreto modo atque intra parietes
abolebantur Romani ritus: sed in publico etiam ac foro Capitolioque
(this is the hardest cut of all) _mulierum_ turba erat, nec
sacrificantium nec precantium deos patrio more." To understand such an
amazing religious rebellion against the _ius divinum_ we must remember
that 80,000 men had fallen at Cannae, besides great numbers in the two
previous years, and that therefore the real effective human support of
that _ius_ had in great part given way. Private priests and prophets,
vermin to be found all over the Graeco-Roman world, had captured for
gain the minds of helpless women, and of the ruined and despairing
population of the country now flocking into Rome. The aediles and
triumviri capitales, responsible for the order of the city, could do
nothing; the Senate had to commission the praetor urbanus to rid the
people of these _religiones_. When in those days the Senate and
magistrates took such a matter in hand, further rebellion was
impossible. All we are told is that the praetor issued an edict ordering
that all who possessed private forms of prophecy or prayer, or rules of
sacrifice, should bring them to him before the kalends of April next;
and that no one should sacrifice in public with any strange or foreign
rite. I do not know that the wonderful good sense of this decree has
ever been commented on. To take violent or cruel measures would have
been dangerous in the extreme at such a psychological moment. Livy tells
this story at the very end of the year 213, and the kalends of April
referred to must be those of the next year; there was, therefore, plenty
of time to obey the order, and in the meantime the excitement might
subside of itself. The mischief was not absolutely and suddenly
stopped; in private houses the new rites were allowed to go on,--a
policy adhered to in time to come,--but the _ius divinum_ of the Roman
State, the public worship of the Roman deities, must not be tampered
with. This wise policy seems to have succeeded for the time; for even
after the capture of Tarentum by Hannibal, and the prospect of an attack
in that direction from Macedonia, we do not hear of any renewed
outbreak. _Prodigia_ are reported as usual, but the remedy thought
sufficient is only a single day's _supplicatio_ and a _sacrum
novendiale_. The consuls, however, in the true Roman spirit, devoted
themselves for several days to religious duties before leaving Rome for
their commands.
This was at the beginning of the year 212. But after the Latin festival
at the end of April we hear of a new _religio_, and a very curious
one.[694] It looks as though certain Latin oracles, written in Saturnian
verse, and attributed to an apocryphal _vates_ of the suspicious name of
Marcius, had got abroad in the panic of the previous year, and had been
confiscated by the praetor urbanus charged, as we saw, with the
suppression of religious mischief. He had handed them on to the new
praetor urbanus of 212. One of them prophesied the disaster of Cannae
which had already happened; the other gave directions for instituting
games in honour of Apollo, including one which placed the religious part
of these _ludi_ in the hands of the decemviri. I strongly suspect that
the whole transaction was a plan on the part of the Senate and the
religious colleges, in order to quiet the minds of the people by a new
religious festival in honour of a great deity of whose prestige every
one had heard, for he had been long established in Rome; he is now to
take a more worthy place there, to be incorporated in the _ius divinum_
in a new sense, in gratitude perhaps for his recent advice given to
Fabius Pictor at Delphi. Possibly also he is to be regarded here as the
Greek deity of healing, though we do not hear of any pestilence at the
time; but four years later it was in consequence of an epidemic that
these _ludi_ were renewed and made permanent. The main object of the
moment was no doubt to amuse the people and occupy their minds. The
whole population took part in the games, wearing wreaths as partakers in
a sacred rite; the matrons were not left out; and every one kept his
house door open and feasted before the eyes of his fellow-citizens.[695]