Pythagoreanism in the time of Cicero, and I need not now attempt to
explain what such a revival might mean. All we need to note is that
something subversive of the Roman religion was believed to be
circulating in 181 in Roman society under the assumed authority of
Numa's name, and that the senate, warned by recent experience,
determined to stamp it out at once. They seem to have suddenly become
alive to the fact that Greece, and in this instance mainly Magna
Graecia, was sending clever agents to Rome for the propagation of ideas
which might make the people less tractable to authority. In the stress
of the great war, indeed for years afterwards, they had probably never
had leisure to reflect on the inevitable result of the writings of a man
like Ennius, who was not improbably responsible for the propagation of
these very Pythagorean notions.[746] Now a reaction seems to set in
against the flowing tide of admiration for everything Greek;[747] but it
was too late to arrest the flood. All that could be hoped for was that
in the lives and minds of the wiser Romans the new Greek civilisation
might so leaven the old Roman ignorance that no permanent harm should be
done to the instincts of _virtus_ and _pietas_: and to some extent this
hope was realised. But for the masses there was no such hope. What Greek
teaching reached their minds was almost wholly that of the _ludi
scenici_; and I must now say a word in conclusion about this unwholesome
influence--unwholesome, that is, so far as it affected the old religious
ideas.
I had occasion, when dealing with Dr. Frazer's notion that the Roman
religion admitted such ideas as the marriage of the gods with all its
natural consequences,[748] to point out that his evidence was almost
wholly derived from the play-writers of the very period on which we are
now engaged. I said that he seems to be justified in concluding that
there was a popular idea of such a kind, which the State religion did
not recognise; but that it can very easily be explained as the natural
effect of a degenerate Greek mythology, popularised by Greek dramas
adapted to the Roman stage, upon certain peculiarities of the Roman
theology, and especially the functional combination of male and female
divine names in Italian invocations of the deities. Nothing could be
more natural than that playwrights should take advantage of such
combinations to invent or translate comic passages to please a Roman
audience, "now largely consisting of semi-educated men who had lost
faith in their own religion, and a host of smaller people of mixed
descent and nationality." We do not know enough of the older comedies to
be at all sure how far they had gone in this direction, though we are
certain, to use the words of Zeller,[749] that it was impossible to
transplant Greek poetry to Roman soil without bringing Greek mythology
with it; or, as I should put it, without subordinating the old
reasonable idea of the Power manifesting itself in the universe to the
Greek fancy for clothing that Power in the human form and endowing it
with human faults and frailties.
But of the two great literary figures of the age we have now reached,
Ennius and Plautus, we know beyond all doubt that they taught the
ignorant Roman of their day not only to be indifferent to his deities,
but to laugh at them. Just at the very time when the forged books of
Numa were being burnt in the Comitium, Ennius' famous translation of the
_Sacred History of Euhemerus_ was becoming known at Rome, in which was
taught the doctrine of the human origin of all deities; and though we
have hardly a fragment left of the comedies of Ennius, we may presume
that he would not have hesitated for a moment to make the gods
ridiculous on the stage. It was he who wrote the celebrated lines in his
tragedy of Telamo:[750]
ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
which (as I have said elsewhere)[751] strike a direct blow at the
efficacy of sacrifice and prayer by openly declaring that the gods did
not interest themselves in mankind. This is the same Epicurean doctrine
afterwards preached by Lucretius, and I must return to it in the next
lecture. At present let us select a couple of specimens of the more
explicit evidence of the extant plays of Plautus, which began to be
exhibited at Rome just about the end of the war with Hannibal.
Here is an example of the way in which the family relationships of Greek
gods could be made amusing under Roman names. Alcesimarchus in the
_Cistellaria_ wishes to make a strong asseveration, and begins:[752]
at ita me di deaeque, superi et inferi et medioxumi,
but immediately goes on to specify these deities more particularly by
their names and relationships--_and gets the latter wrong_. Melaenis
corrects him in a way which (as Aust notes)[753] could only have seemed
comical to a Roman audience if they had already some acquaintance with
the divine family gossip.
itaque me Iuno regina et Iovi' supremi filia
itaque me Saturnus eiius patruos--ME. ecastor, pater.
AL. itaque me Ops opulenta, illius avia--ME. immo mater quidem.
Perhaps it was the fancy of the age for divine genealogy that is here
being made fun of rather than the gods themselves; but in any case the
passage shows how irrecoverably lost was the real impersonal character
of the old Roman _numen_, and how impossible it must have been in such
an age to believe that anything was really to be gained by the once
solemn rites of the _ius divinum_.
But the most remarkable evidence is in the Amphitruo,[754] where Jupiter
and Mercurius are among the _dramatis personae_. This comedy is
extremely amusing, and was quite capable of entertaining the Parisians
in the form given it by Moliere; but for them it could hardly have been
so funny as for the Greeks in the age of the New Comedy and their
disciples the Romans of Plautus' day, who saw Zeus and Hermes, Jupiter
and Mercurius, brought by their own misdoings into absurd and degrading
situations. Jupiter personates Amphitruo, and so gains admission to his
wife, Alkmene! Comment is needless, unless we take the last line of the
play as a comment:--
Nunc, spectatores, Iovi' summi causa clare plaudite!
I do not propose to follow further the downfall of the old Roman ideas
about the objects of worship, or the neglect and decay of the _ius
divinum_. They do not fall within the scope of my subject--the religious
experience of the Roman people. So long as there was any life in these
ideas and in the cult which was the practical expression of them, they
formed part of that experience. But I think I have sufficiently proved
that the life has gone out of the ideas, and that the worship has
consequently become meaningless. Ideas about the divine may be discussed
by philosophers as the Romans begin to read and in some degree to think;
and the outward forms of the cult may be maintained in such particulars
as most closely concern the public life of the community; but as a
religious system expressing human experience we have done with these
things.
NOTES TO LECTURE XV
[706] Polybius vi. 56.
[707] Livy xxxi. 4 _ad fin._, cp. xxv. 2, xxvii. 36,
etc. For the _Iovis epulum_ see _R.F._ 216 foll. and the
references there given. Wissowa, _R.K._ foll. 111. 385
foll. I am not sure that I am right in limiting the
human partakers of the epulum of Nov. 13 to the plebeian
magistrates.
[708] Livy xxxi. 5. The importance of the words
"prolationem finium" does not seem to have been noticed
by historians. If they are genuine they indicate an
undoubtedly aggressive attitude.
[709] Livy xxxi. 7 and 8.
[710] Livy xxxvi. 1.
[711] Augustine, _Civ. Dei_, iv. 27: "Relatum est in
litteras doctissimum pontificem Scaevolam disputasse
tria genera tradita deorum: unum a poetis, alterum a
philosophis, tertium a principibus civitatis. Primum
genus nugatorium dicit esse, quod multa de diis
fingantur indigna, etc. Expedire igitur falli in
religione civitates."
[712] Livy xxxii. 9, cp. 28. In connection with these
_prodigia_ it may be worth noting that in xxxii. 30 we
are told that a consul vowed a temple to Juno Sospita,
who had in her famous seat at Lanuvium been a constant
centre of marvel-mongering. Livy xxxiv. 53 places the
building of this temple _in foro olitorio_ three years
later, if we may read there Sospitae instead of the
Matutae of the MSS. with Sigonius: (cp. Aust, _de
Aedibus_, p. 21, and Wissowa, _R.K._ 117). This
interesting deity had been taken into the Roman worship
in 338 B.C., but not moved from Lanuvium, which had
peculiar religious relations with Rome. See _Myth. Lex._
vol. ii. p. 608, where the attributes of this Juno in
art are described by Vogel. The date of the temple at
Rome was 194. Whether the object of it was to diminish
the portents at Lanuvium it is impossible to say, but
judging from the records of _prodigia_ in Julius
Obsequens it had that effect. I find only four
_prodigia_ reported from Lanuvium after this date.
[713] See the passage in Frontinus, _de Aqueductibus_,
i. 7 (C. Herschel's edition gives the reading of the
best MS.), and the mutilated passage in the new epitomes
of Livy found by Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt
(_Oxyrrhyncus Papyri_, vol. iv. pp. 101 and 113). The
general bearing of the two passages taken together seems
to me to be that given in the text.
[714] Cic. _ad Fam._ i. 1 and 2. A somewhat similar case
in 190 B.C. will be found in Livy xxxviii. 45, where the
oracle forbade a Roman army to cross the Taurus range.
[715] Livy xxxiv. 55.
[716] Livy xxxviii. 56, mentions statues which were
believed to be those of Scipio the elder, his brother
Lucius, and Ennius, "in Scipionum monumento" outside the
Porta Capena, and another of Scipio at Liternum, where
he had a villa; this one Livy says that he saw himself
blown down by a storm. On statues and busts at Rome, see
Pliny xxxiv. 28 foll.; Mrs. Strong, _Roman Sculpture_,
p. 28 foll.; _Cambridge Companion to Latin Studies_, p.
550 foll.; and for coins, p. 456.
[717] See above, p. 240, for the remarkable exception in
the case of the elder Scipio, whose practice when in
Rome was to go up to the Capitoline temple before
daybreak and contemplate the statue of Jupiter; the dogs
never barked at him, and the aedituus opened the _cella
Iovis_ at his summons. I see no good ground for
rejecting this story, which is not likely to have been
invented. It can be traced back to two writers, Oppius,
the friend of Caesar, and Julius Hyginus, the librarian
of Augustus (Gell. vi. 1. 1), and was probably based on
tradition. Livy mentions it in xxvi. 19, and suggests
that this and other ways of Scipio were assumed to
impress the multitude. The Roman mind was naturally
averse from such individualism in religion; but Scipio
was beyond doubt more familiar than his contemporaries
with Greek ideas. In a chapter on Idealism in his little
book on _Religion and Art in Ancient Greece_, Professor
Ernest Gardner writes: "The statue (of Athene) by
Phidias within the Parthenon offered not merely that
form in which she would choose to appear if she showed
herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her form as
if she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon
such an image helped the worshipper as much as--perhaps
more than--any service or ritual, to bring himself into
communion with the goddess, and to fit himself, as a
citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in
contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in
politics, in literature, and in art." That Scipio had
some feeling of this kind need not be doubted, though
the statue was not a great work of art like that of
Phidias. Cp. Lucretius, vi. 75 foll.
[718] See below, p. 386.
[719] Marquardt, 332, and Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i. ed.
2, p. 463 foll.
[720] Livy, _Epit._ xix.
[721] Livy xxxvii. 51: "Religio ad postremum vicit, ut
dicto audiens esset flamen pontifici." Here _religio_ is
used in the sense of obligation to the _ius divinum_.
[722] Livy xxvii. 6; cp. 36.
[723] This story is told in Livy xl. 42.
[724] Livy xxvii. 8. For the compelling power (_capere_)
of the Pont. Max., see Marq. 314. The story may have
come from the annals of the Valerii Flacci, and also
from those of the pontifices; it was apparently well
known, as Valerius Maximus knew it (vi. 9. 2).
[725] Velleius ii. 43.
[726] Livy xxxi. 50.
[727] For the oath see "Lex incerta reperta Bantiae,"
lines 16 and 17, in Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_. The
oath taboo is mentioned by Gellius 10. 15. 3.; Festus
104, and Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 113.
[728] Livy xxxii. 7; xxxix. 39.
[729] Tac. _Ann._ iv. 16.
[730] See above, p. 255.
[731] Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. v. p.
85 foll. Very interesting is the modern survival of
Dionysiac rites recently discovered in Thrace by Mr.
Dawkins (_Hellenic Journal_, 1906, p. 191).
[732] Farnell, _op. cit._ vol. v. p. 150.
[733] Quoted by Farnell, p. 151, from Rohde's _Psyche_.
[734] It is possible that _superstitio_ may originally
have had some such meaning; see W. Otto in _Archiv fuer
Religionswissenschaft_, 1909, p. 548 foll.; Mayor's
edition of Cic. _de Nat. Deorum_, note on ii. 72 foll.
[735] Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 523 foll. See also _Roman
Society in the Age of Cicero_, p. 289.
[736] See Mr. Heitland's _History of the Roman
Republic_, vol. ii. p. 229 note, and cp. Wissowa in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ _s.v._ "Bacchanalia."
[737] Livy xxxix. 8 foll.
[738] Plato, _de Rep._ 364 B; cp. _Laws_, 933 D.
[739] "Quaestio de clandestinis coniurationibus decreta
est," Livy xxxix. 8; so also in chs. 14 and 17. Cp.
_Sctm. de Bacchanalibus_, line 13, "conioura (se)." This
document is, strictly speaking, a letter to the
magistrates "in agro Teurano" in Bruttium embodying the
orders of the Senatus consultum. It will be found in
Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani_, or in Wordsworth,
_Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_.
[740] Livy xxxix. 16: "Omnia, dis propitiis
volentibusque, faciemus, qui quia suum numen sceleribus
libidinibusque contaminari indigne ferebant," etc.
[741] Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, p. 567 foll.
[742] Livy xxxix. 18 _ad fin._ _Sctm. de Bacch._ lines 3
foll.
[743] _Religion der Roemer_, p. 78.
[744] Livy xl. 29 seems to have put his account together
from Cassius Hemina and other annalists, so far as we
can judge from the reference to them in Pliny, _N.H._
xiii. 84; Valerius Antias, who simply stated that the
writings were Pythagorean as well as Numan, Livy
rejects as ignorant of the chronological impossibility
of making the king contemporary with the philosopher.
The fragment of Cassius Hemina is quoted in Pliny, sec.
86; Val. Max. i. 1, and Plutarch, _Numa_ 22, add nothing
to our knowledge of the incident.
[745] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, i. 268;
Pliny, _loc. cit._, calls him "vetustissimus auctor
annalium," but his work was later than the _Annals_ or
_Origines_ of Cato.
[746] Ennius came from South Italy (Rudiae in Messapia),
the home of Pythagoreanism. For traces of it in his
works, see Reid on Cicero, _Academica priora_, ii. 51.
[747] This is the view taken by Colin, _Rome et la
Grece, 200-146 B.C._, p. 269 foll. This reaction was
probably only a part of the general reversion to
conservatism which we have been noticing in the action
of the government in religious matters.
[748] See above, p. 149 foll.
[749] Quoted by Aust, _Religion der Roemer_, p. 64. The
passage is in Zeller's _Religion und Philosophie bei den
Roemern_, a short treatise reprinted in his _Vortraege und
Abhandlungen_, ii. 93 foll.
[750] Ribbeck, _Fragmenta Tragicorum Latinorum_, p. 54.
[751] _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_, p.
334.
[752] _Cistellaria_, ii. 1. 45 foll.
[753] Aust, _op. cit._ p. 66.
[754] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, vol. i.
p. 75.
LECTURE XVI
GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND ROMAN RELIGION
I said at the end of the last lecture that ideas about the Divine might
be discussed at Rome by philosophers, as the Romans began to read and in
some degree to think. At the era we have now reached, the latter half of
the second century B.C., this process actually began, and I propose in
this lecture to deal with it briefly. But my subject is the Roman
religious experience, and I can only find room for philosophy so far as
the philosophy introduced at Rome had a really religious side. Another
reason forbidding me to give much space to it is that it was at Rome
entirely exotic, did not spring from an indigenous root in Roman life
and thought, and never seriously affected the minds of the lower and
less educated population. And I must add that the types of Greek
philosophy which concern us at all have been fully and ably dealt with,
the one in vol. ii. of Dr. Caird's lectures on this foundation on _The
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, a work from which I
have learnt much, and the other by Dr. Masson in his most instructive
work on the great Epicurean poet Lucretius.
We have seen in the two last lectures that in that second century B.C.
the Roman was fast becoming religiously destitute--a castaway without
consolation, and without the sense that he needed it. He was destitute,
first, in regard to his idea of God and of his relation to God; for if
we take our old definition of religion, which seems to me to be
continually useful, we can hardly say of that age that it showed any
effective desire to be in right relation with the Power manifesting
itself in the universe. The old idea of the manifestation of the Power
in the various _numina_ had no longer any relation to Roman life; the
kind of life in which it germinated and grew, the life of agriculture
and warlike self-defence, had passed away with the growth of the great
city, the decay of the small farmer, and the extension of the empire;
and no new informing and inspiring principle had taken its place.
Secondly, he was destitute in regard to his sense of duty, which had
been largely dependent on religion, both in the family and in the State.
No new force had come in to create and maintain conscience. In public
life, indeed, the religious oath was still powerful, and continued to be
so, though there are some signs that its binding force was less strong
than of yore, especially in the army.[755] But in a society so complex
as that of Rome in the last two centuries B.C. much more was wanted than
a bond sanctioned by civil and religious law; there was needed a sense
of duty to the family, the slave, the provincials, the poor and
unfortunate. There was no spring of moral action, no religious
consecration of morality, no stimulus to moral endeavour. The individual
was rapidly developing, emancipating himself from the State and the
group-system of society; but he was developing in a wrong direction. The
importance of self, when realised in high and low alike, was becoming
self-seeking, indifference to all but self. We have now to see whether
philosophy could do anything to relieve this destitution of the Romans
in regard both to God and duty.
The first system of philosophy actually to make its appearance at Rome
was that of Epicurus[756]; but it speedily disappeared for the time, and
only became popular in the last century B.C., and then in its most
repulsive form. It was indeed destined to inspire the noblest mind among
all Roman thinkers with some of the greatest poetry ever written; but I
need say little of it, for it was never really a part of Roman religious
experience. Though capable of doing men much good in a turbulent and
individualistic age, it did not and could not do this by establishing a
religious sanction for conduct. The Epicurean gods were altogether out
of reach of the conscience of the individual. They were superfluous even
for the atomic theory on which the whole system was pivoted;[757] and
what Epicurus himself understood by them, or any of his followers down
to Lucretius, is matter of subtle and perplexing disputation.[758] One
point is clear, that they had no interest in human beings;[759] and the
natural inference would be that human beings had no call to worship
them; yet, strange to say, Epicurus himself took part in worship, and in
the worship of the national religion of his native city. Philodemus, the
contemporary of Lucretius, expressly asserts this,[760] and even insists
that Epicurism gave a religious sanction to morality which was absent in
Stoicism.[761] Lucretius himself clearly thought that worship was
natural and possible. "If you do not clear your mind of false notions,"
he says, "nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis."[762] Man might
go on with his ancestral worship, but entirely without fear, and as with
"placid mind" he took part in the rites of his fathers, a mysterious
divine influence might enter his mind; "the images of a Zeus, a
Heracles, an Athene, might pass in and impress on him the aspect and
character of each deity, and carry with them suggestions of virtue, of
courage, of wise counsel in difficulty."[763] Evidently both Epicurus
and his followers had felt the difficulty and the peril of breaking
entirely with the religious habits of the mass of the people, and had
conscientiously done their best to reconcile their own belief with
popular practice--an attempt which has its parallel in the religious
speculation of the present day.
But for the Roman follower of Epicurus, wholly unused to such subtle
ideas as the passage of divine influence into the mind by means of
religious contemplation, this lame attempt to bring apathetic gods into
relation with human life must have been quite meaningless. Cicero well
expresses the common sense of a Roman at the very beginning of his
treatise on the _Nature of the Gods_.[764] "If they are right who deny
that the gods have any interest in human affairs, where is there room
for _pietas_, for _sanctitas_, for _religio_?" What, he adds, is the use
of worship, of honour, of prayer? If these are simply make-believes,
_pietas_ cannot exist, and with it we may almost assume that _fides_ and
_iustitia_, and the social virtues generally, which hold society
together, must vanish too. Such criticism is characteristically Roman,
and we may take it as representing accurately the feeling of the
old-fashioned Roman of Cicero's day, as well as of the Stoic or Academic
critic of Epicurism. On the other hand, the believing Epicurean at Rome
was not more likely to accept the compromise; he had done with his own
gods and their worship, and such a "ficta simulatio" was not likely to
attract him. Even Lucretius, whose mind was in a sense really religious,
does no more in the passage I quoted just now than _allude_ to actual
worship of the gods, and he makes it quite clear that the tranquillity
and happiness coming from contemplation, and the punishment that follows
misdoing, are both purely subjective; the gods are not active in
influencing man's life, but man influences that life himself by opening
his mind to the contemplation of the gods. This passage of Lucretius
(vi. 68 foll.) is, if I am not mistaken, the nearest approach to real
religion that we find in the history of Roman Epicurism; yet so far as
we know it bore no fruit. It seems to me to express a genuine feeling, a
_religio_, but the expression is blurred by a consciousness of
inconsistency.
The fact is that in the system of Epicurus the Power manifesting itself
in the universe is not a divine Power, but a mechanical one; the gods
have nothing to do with it, they cannot be active, their perfection is
found in repose; they are an adjunct, an after-thought in the system.
Thus all attempts to reconcile the Power with the popular religion must
inevitably be failures, and more especially so in the Roman world. At
best the Epicurean gods could but set an example of quietism which could
not possibly be a force for good in that active world of business and
government.[765] The real force of Epicurism, for the Roman at least, if
I am not mistaken, was _analogous_ to a religious force, though far
indeed from being one in reality--I mean the profound and touching
belief in the Founder himself as a saviour, which is so familiar to all
readers of Lucretius.[766] And the real legacy of Lucretius himself to
Roman religion is only indirectly a religious one--I mean the wholesome
contempt for "_superstitio_" and all the baser side of religious belief
and practice, old and new.[767] If his devotion to the Master had been
rooted more in the love of goodness and less in the admiration for his
speculations, and if his contempt for _superstitio_ had been less
harshly dogmatic, had he been more sympathetic and generous in his
attitude to the Italian ideas of the divine--the power of Lucretius
might possibly have been strong and permanent.