the Carmen in the light of the ceremonial of which it was to mark the
conclusion. He was to bring into it, as we have already seen, the ideas
which were to be revived and made resonant, of religion, morality, and
the fertility of man, beast, and crop; and they are all there. He was
also to include all the deities who had been addressed in prayer both by
day and night, by Tiber bank and on the Capitol, and to give the most
prominent place to those who on this last day were worshipped on the
Palatine; to Apollo, for whom Augustus had built a great temple close to
his own house (_in privato solo_[944]), as his own specially protecting
deity since Actium, and Diana, who as equivalent to Artemis, could not
but be associated with Apollo. Thus the deities of the hymn are both
Latin and Greek,[945] and this expresses the undoubted fact that the
religion of the Romans was henceforward to be even in outward expression
a cosmopolitan or Romano-Hellenic one, in keeping with the fact that all
free men of every race might take part in this great festival. But it
cannot fail to strike every careful reader that the great trias of the
Capitol is hardly visible in the poem, though Jupiter and Juno had been
the chief objects of worship on the two previous days. Jupiter is twice
incidentally named, but in no connection with the Capitol;[946] and it
is only when we read between the lines of the fourteenth stanza that we
discover Jupiter and Juno as the recipients of the white oxen which had
been sacrificed to them there. I have already said that we must not make
too much of the neglect of Jupiter and Juno by Augustus; but it is plain
that he directed Horace not to make them too prominent in this hymn, and
I think it is quite possible that Horace a little overdid his obedience.
The result of all this is that the hymn, in spite of its neatness and
adequacy, is wanting in spontaneity, and presents the casual reader with
an apparently unmeaning jumble of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
The only way to clear it up is by taking it in immediate relation with
what we know about the places in which it was sung. To me at last it has
become clear enough in all its main points; and I will give here my own
results, which do not altogether coincide with those of other recent
inquirers.
Before the discovery of the great inscription we knew that this hymn was
sung before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine; we now know that
it was also sung on the Capitol,[947] thus uniting in one performance
the old religion of republican Rome with the new imperial cult of
Apollo. But this new fact has, in my opinion, led to misapprehensions
both of the manner of singing and the order of subjects in the hymn.
Mommsen thought that the first part was sung on the Palatine, the middle
part on the Capitol, and the last again on the Palatine, and he is
followed by Wissowa; and both seem to think it possible that there may
have been singing too during the procession from the one hill to the
other.[948] I think we need not trouble ourselves about the latter
point, for the Via Sacra, by which the procession must have gone, was
far too narrow and irregular to allow fifty-four singers, with the
_tibicines_ who must have been accompanying them, to walk and perform at
the same time.[949] The inscription, too, says plainly that the hymn was
sung on the Palatine and then on the Capitol, and by that plain
statement of fact we had better abide.
Now let us note that these two stations on the two hills were the best
possible positions for Augustus' purpose, not only because of their
religious importance, but because they afforded the most spacious views
of the city, now everywhere adorned with new or restored buildings. The
temple of Apollo was built upon a large and lofty area at the north-east
end of the Palatine.[950] Recent excavations have shown it to be some
hundred yards broad by a hundred and fifty in length, and Ovid, in a
passage of his _Tristia_[951] gives us an idea of its height:
inde tenore pari gradibus sublimia celsis
ducor ad intonsi candida templa dei.
On this area the choirs of boys and girls took their station, facing the
marble temple, on the _fastigium_ of which was represented the Sun
driving his four-horse chariot.[952] After singing, probably together,
the first two stanzas or exordium of the hymn, they addressed this Sol:
alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui
promis et celas, aliusque et idem
nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma
visere maius.
As they sang these last words, they would turn towards the city that lay
behind them, and look over it to the Tiber and the scene of the nightly
sacrifices of the Tarentum; and with the deities of these rites, who
must of course be taken before those of day and light, as in the order
of the festival, the next five stanzas are occupied:[953] Eilithyia, the
Moirae (Parcae), and Tellus or Ceres. When that duty is over they turn
once more to the temple, and the Greek deities of the Tarentum are
mentioned no more. Three stanzas are devoted to Apollo and Diana (Luna),
with a happy allusion to the _Aeneid_, and then once more the choirs
turn, and this time they face the Capitol; the hymn is long, and these
changes of movement would be at once a relief to the singers and a
pleasant sight to the spectators. They address the deities of the
Capitol in appropriate language:
di probos mores docili iuventae,
di, senectuti placidae quietem,
Romulae genti date remque prolemque
et decus omne.
The allusion to Jupiter and Juno is thus veiled:
quaeque vos bobus veneratur albis
clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis,
impetret, bellante prior, iacentem
lenis in hostem.
Horace has cleverly made Augustus himself the leading figure in this and
the following stanza, and the listeners forget the Capitoline gods as
they note the allusion to Venus, the ancestress of the Julii, the
prestige of Augustus that has brought envoys to him from Scythia, Media,
and India, and in the next stanza the public virtues, presented here as
deities--Fides, Pax, Honos, Pudor, Virtus--on whose aid and worship the
new regime is based.[954]
At the sixteenth stanza the choirs again face about to the temple of
Apollo, and with him and Diana again the next two stanzas have to do.
Only one remains, in which as an _exodos_ we may be sure the two choirs
of boys and girls joined; it sums up the whole body of deities, but with
Apollo and Diana as the special objects of the day's worship:
haec Iovem sentire deosque cunctos
spem bonam certamque domum reporto,
doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae
dicere laudes.
The performance on the Palatine was now over, and the procession
streamed down the hill to join the Via Sacra near the Regia and the
Vesta temple, and so to make its way up to the Capitol, where the
performance was repeated.[955] Taking station at this noble point of
view, he who will can again follow its movement with the hymn in his
hand. The area in front of the Capitoline temple looked across to the
Palatine, and the image of Sol and his _quadriga_ must have been in full
view; thus the _exordium_ and the next stanza (alme Sol) would be sung
looking in that direction. Equally well in view, if they turned to the
right, would be the scene of the midnight sacrifices across the Campus
Martius; and so on throughout the singing the changes of position would
be easy and graceful, here as on the Palatine.
Here I prefer to make an end of the performance, following the text of
the inscription, which tells us nothing of a return to the Palatine. It
would be far more in keeping with Roman practice that the Capitol should
be the scene of the conclusion of the processional ceremony, even on a
day when Apollo was, with Augustus himself, the principal figure. From
the musical point of view, too, a third performance is improbable, for
the singers were young and tender.
And here, too, with this impressive scene, which can hardly fail to move
the imagination of any one who has stood on Palatine and Capitol, I will
close my account of the religious experience of the Romans. A few
remarks only remain for me to make about its contribution, such as it
was, to the Latin form of Christianity.
NOTES TO LECTURE XIX
[900] A summary of the relations between Virgil and
Augustus may be found in Mr. Glover's _Studies in
Virgil_, p. 144 foll.
[901] Tiberius added to his Augustan inheritance a
curious and possibly morbid anxiety about religious
matters and details of cult, of which examples may be
found in Tac. _Ann._ iii. 58, vi. 12, among other
passages. Perhaps, however, the most interesting is that
connected with the famous story of "the Great Pan is
dead," told by Plutarch in the _de Defectu Oraculorum_,
ch. xvii. The news of this strange story reached the
ears of Tiberius, who at once set the learned men about
him to inquire into it; and they came to the no less
strange conclusion that "this was the Pan who was born
of Hermes and Penelope." S. Reinach has recently offered
an explanation of this story, which is at least better
than previous ones, in _Cultes, mythes, et religions_,
vol. iii. p. 1 foll.
[902] _C.I.L._ vi. 1001.
[903] Jul. Capitolinus, 13.
[904] Symmachus, _Rel._ 3.
[905] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 2. On this subject
generally consult Dill's _Roman Society in the Last
Century of the Western Empire_, bk. i. chs. i. and iv.
[906] This idea is exactly expressed by Horace in _Odes_
iii. 23, perhaps addressed to the _vilica_ of his own
farm. Cp. Cato, _R.R._ 143, where the _vilica_ is to
pray to the _Lar familiaris pro copia_. Horace mentions
only the Kalends for this rite; Cato adds Nones and
Ides. Cp. Tibull. i. 3. 34; i. 10. 15 foll.
[907] See above, Lectures iv. and v.
[908] _Greatness and Decline of Rome_ (E.T.), v. 93.
[909] See especially lines 45 foll. and 56 foll.
[910] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323, or Dessau, _Inscriptiones
selectae_, vol. ii. part i. p. 284.
[911] For this reason the veiled figure in one of the
fine sculptures on the Ara Pacis frieze, which used to
be taken as Augustus Pont. Max., cannot be so identified
(see Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen zur roemischen Religion_,
p. 90 foll.), for the date of the Ara Pacis is 13 B.C.,
the year before Lepidus died. The figure can be most
conveniently seen by English students in Mrs. Strong's
_Roman Sculpture_, plate xi. p. 46. It may be Agrippa
acting as Pont. Max. for Lepidus.
[912] _Monumentum Ancyranum_, ed. Mommsen (Lat.), iv.
17.
[913] See above, p. 129.
[914] Livy iv. 20. 7.
[915] Valerius Maximus, _Epit._ 3, 4.
[916] Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 901 foll.
[917] See Marquardt, 326 foll.
[918] Dio Cassius, l. 4, 5.
[919] Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_, p. xxv. of the
exordium.
[920] Henzen, p. 154.
[921] See above, p. 98.
[922] Henzen, pp. 24, 28.
[923] For the hymn, Henzen, p. 26; Dessau, _Inscr.
select._ ii. pt. i. p. 276. See also above, p. 186.
[924] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 487, note 5.
[925] Henzen, 142 foll.; Dessau, p. 279; see above, p.
162.
[926] Henzen, p. 105.
[927] _Ib._ p. 107.
[928] Tac. _Ann._ iii.
[939] Zosimus, ii. 5 and 6. The oracle and the extract
from Zosimus are printed in Dr. Wickham's introduction
to the _Carmen saeculare_, and in Diels, _Sibyllinische
Blaetter_, p. 131 foll.
[930] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323. _Ephemeris epigraphica_,
viii. 255 foll., contains the text and Mommsen's
exposition. Dessau, _Inscr. selectae_, ii. pt. i. 282,
does not give the whole document.
[931] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 192 foll.;
Ferrero, vol. v. 85 foll.
[932] The word was first explained by Mommsen, _Roem.
Chronologie_, ed. 2, p. 172.
[933] See, _e.g._, _Golden Bough_, ed. 2, vol. ii. p. 70
foll.
[934] The religious or mystical conception of time is
the subject of an interesting discussion by Hubert et
Mauss, _Melanges d'histoire et de religion_, p. 189
foll.; but the _saeculum_ does not seem to have
attracted their attention.
[935] The actual words of Varro, from his work _de gente
Populi Romani_, are quoted by St. Augustine, _de Civ.
Dei_, xxii. 28: "Genethliaci quidam scripserunt esse in
renascendis hominibus quam appellant [Greek:
palingenesian] Graeci; hac scripserunt confici in annis
numero quadringentis quadraginta, ut idem corpus et
eadem anima, quae fuerint coniuncta in homine aliquando,
eadem rursus redeant in coniunctionem." The passage well
illustrates the mystical tendency of which I was
speaking in the last lecture.
[936] For attempts to explain the difficulty see
Wissowa, _op. cit._ p. 204.
[937] The cakes offered to Eilithyia, and again to
Apollo, are nine in number; see the inscription lines
117 and 143. The choirs of boys and girls were each
twenty-seven.
[938] The _suffimenta_ are described by Zosimus, _l.c._
There is a coin of Domitian, who also celebrated _Ludi
saeculares_, in which he appears seated and distributing
the _suffimenta_, as the inscription shows.
[939] So Zosimus, who says they consisted of wheat,
barley, and beans.
[940] _R.F._ p. 148 foll.
[941] See the inscription, line 92 foll. Ferrero assumes
that these words were to be taken as representing the
families of all worshippers present, who would repeat
the words "mihi domo familiae." But this is arbitrary;
the prayer follows the old form as we have it, _e.g._,
in Cato, _R.R._ (see above, p. 182), and as Cato or any
landowner would represent the rest of the human beings
on the estate, so did Augustus represent the whole
community.
[942] So J. B. Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 160.
[943] The matrons, equal in number to the years of the
_saeculum_, first appear on 2nd June in the worship of
Juno.
[944] _Mon. Ancyr._ (Lat.), iv. 21.
[945] Zosimus, _l.c._, says that "hymns" were sung in
Greek as well as Latin; but this is not borne out by any
other authority.
[946] Line 31 (_et Iovis aurae_), where Jupiter simply
stands for the heaven and its influence on the earth;
and line 73 (_haec Iovem sentire_, etc.), where he is
introduced in the most general way as head of all
deities.
[947] Line 147 of the inscription: "Sacrificioque
perfecto puer[i X] XVII quibus denuntiatum erat patrimi
et matrimi et puellae totidem carmen cecinerunt:
_eodemque modo in Capitolio_. Carmen composuit Q.
Horatius Flaccus."
[948] _Eph. epigr._ viii. 256. Wissowa, _Gesamm.
Abhandl._ p. 206, note, who refers to Vahlen and Christ
as differing from Mommsen, in papers which I have not
seen. Wissowa says that the threefold division of the
hymn "springt in die Augen"; but this has never been my
experience.
[949] Apart from the awkwardness for singers of the
descent from the Palatine and the steep ascent to the
Capitol, we may remember that they would have to pass
under the fornix Fabianus, which was not much more than
nine feet broad (Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations_, p.
217).
[950] See Huelsen-Jordan, _Topographie_, iii. 72 and
note. See also map at the end of the volume, No. 1 of
the series. There is, however, some doubt as to whether
the site was not on the side of the Palatine looking
towards the Tiber over the Circus maximus. See my paper
in the _Classical Quarterly_, 1910, p. 145 foll. If so,
my explanation of the performance of the hymn seems
rather to be confirmed than weakened.
[951] Ovid, _Tristia_, iii. 1. 59 foll.
[952] Propertius, iii. 28 (31): "In quo Solis erat supra
fastigia currus." No one seems to have noticed the
connection between this and Horace's allusion to Sol,
which is otherwise not easy to explain.
[953] I will not enter on the insoluble question as to
what stanzas or parts of stanzas were sung by the boys
and girls respectively. That the hymn was so sung in
double chorus is intrinsically probable, and stated in
the oracle, lines 20, 21. Some of the schemes which have
been propounded are given in Wickham's _Horace_. I
imagine that the stanzas may have been sung alternately
except in the case of the first two and the last, but
the ninth looks as though it might have been divided
between the two choirs. Ferrero has a scheme of his
own, p. 91 foll.; and if he had taken a little more
pains might have worked out the whole problem
satisfactorily.
[954] Of these quasi-deities Fides is the oldest, and
was associated with Jupiter on the Capitol; Wissowa,
_R.K._ 103 foll. Thus we may find a _callida iunctura_
between the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
stanzas, for Fides and Pax would fit in well with the
_responsa petunt_ of the fourteenth. Whether Pax was
recognised as a deity at this time is not quite certain;
but a few years later, in 9 B.C., an altar of Pax
Augusta was dedicated. The Ara Pacis was begun in 13
B.C. See Axtell, _Deification of Abstract Ideas_
(Chicago, 1907), p. 37, who may also be consulted for
the other deities here mentioned. See also above, p.
285. In Tibull. i. 10. 45 foll., Pax seems to be on the
verge of deification, but not to have attained it except
in the poet's fancy.
[955] The route may be followed in the map of the Via
Sacra in Lanciani's _Ruins and Excavations_, and in his
chapter entitled, "A Walk through the Sacra Via," or
more shortly in my _Social Life in the Age of Cicero_,
p. 18 foll.
_Note._--The whole question of the singing of
the _Carmen saeculare_ in its relation to the two
principal sites and to the topography of the festival
generally, is fully discussed by the author in
_Classical Review_ for 1910, p. 145 foll.
LECTURE XX
CONCLUSION
"A time of spiritual awakening, of a calling to higher destinies, came
upon the world, the civilised world which lay around the Mediterranean
Sea, at the beginning of our era. The calling was concentrated in the
life and death of the Founder of Christianity."[956] The writer of these
words goes on to point out that the beginning of our era was "a time of
general stirring in all the higher fields of human activity," and that
all such stirring, all that brings higher ideals before the minds of men
of action, of imagination, or of reflection, if not itself religion, is
in some sense religious, and in that age must be taken into account as
having some bearing on the origin of Christianity, the greatest of all
religious movements. And inasmuch as the new spirit of the age seems to
have put new life into the old religious systems, with the help of
philosophy and poetry, as well as of a purer and more effective
conception of Man's relation to the Power manifesting itself in the
universe, he finds it useful and legitimate to show how the ideas and
characteristics of the leading types of religion in the civilised world
of which he speaks were absorbed or "baptized" into the spirit of
Christianity. In other words, we may ask what was the contribution of
each of these religious types to the formation of the Christian type of
religion; for however new was the inspiration which was the essential
living germ of our religion, yet that germ was of necessity planted in
soil full of other religious ingredients, which found their way into the
sap of the plant as it grew towards maturity.
I have all along wished to bring our subject, the religious experience
of the Roman people, into touch with Christianity, whether by marking
points of contact, or of contrast, or both. In the last few lectures I
have laid stress on certain points likely to be useful to us in this
last stage of our studies, and these will, I hope, furnish us with some
amount of material. But I confess that I have approached this subject
with great hesitation. What I shall have to say will be tentative and
suggestive only; but I hope that the account that I have given in these
lectures of Roman religious experience may be of use in helping a better
qualified student to carry on the work more adequately.
Let us glance back for a moment at the results of the last four
lectures, in which I have been dealing with Roman religious experience
after the paralysis or hypnotism of the old religion of the State. We
saw, in the first place, that the educated part of Roman society had
been brought to the very threshold of a new and more elevating type of
religion, by Greek philosophy transplanted to Roman soil, and chiefly by
Stoicism. True, one great Epicurean genius had had his share in this
process, by denouncing the weakness and wickedness of the Roman society,
and the futility of all the religious forms and fancies with which they
still dallied; but Lucretius had nothing to offer in the place of these
forms and fancies--nothing, that is, which could grip the conscience and
act as a real force upon conduct. The Roman was in a religious sense
destitute, both of a real sense of duty to his fellow-men of all grades,
and in regard to God; and for this destitution Lucretius' remedy, the
accurate knowledge of a philosophical theory of the universe, was wholly
inadequate. The first real appeal to the conscience of the Roman came
from Stoicism, the reasonable and less austere type of Stoicism which
Panaetius preached to the Scipionic circle. From this the Roman learnt
that as a part of the divine universe Man himself is divine: that as
endowed with a portion of that Reason which itself is God, he has a
sacred duty to perform in using it. Thus, as the Universal was revealed,
so the Individual was ennobled; and the only thing wanting to make of
this a real religion was a bond that might unite the two more
effectually in conduct as well as in thought. Though a later development
of Stoicism did indeed all but achieve this union, that of the later
Republic failed to do so, because it inherited the old Stoic neglect of
the emotional side of man's nature, and could take little advantage from
a strong current of mystical feeling that was running side by side with
it. The Stoic ingredient in the soil which was being prepared for
Christianity was rich and valuable, but in this one respect it was poor.
It was intellectually beautiful, but it stirred as yet no "enthusiasm of
humanity."[957]
Another ingredient in the soil was that imaginative transcendentalism
which we discussed under the name of Mysticism, in which the soul
becomes of greater interest than the body, and a strange yearning
possesses the mind to speculate on the nature of the soul, its existence
before this life, and its lot in another world. These imaginative
yearnings were not native to the Roman, who had never had any very
definite idea of a future life, nor had ever troubled himself about a
previous one; they filtered through the Pythagorean and Platonic
philosophy into that type of later Stoicism which attracted him. They
were hardly treated in Roman society with real religious earnestness,
except perhaps in some few moments of sorrow and emotion such as I dwelt
on in the experience of Cicero. But the mere fact that they were in the
air at Rome is of importance for us. They _stimulated the imaginative
faculty in religious thought_; they kept alive in the minds at least of
some men the questions why we are here, what we are, and what becomes of
us after death. They prepared the Roman mind for Christian eschatology;
and this, though never so important in the Latin Church as in the
Greek, was yet an important part of the teaching of the early Church.
St. Paul exactly expresses the yearning thus dimly foreshadowed in the
mystical movement of which I am speaking: "We that are in this
tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed,
but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed
up of life" (2 Cor. v. 4). It was essential that the Roman should be
able to understand words like these, and to associate them with a
religion which, though in its most vital points one mainly affecting
this life, was also, like those of Isis and Mithras, strongly tinged
with mysticism. "All religions of that time," it has lately been said,
"were religions of hope. Stress was laid on the future: the present time
was but for preparation. So in the mysterious cults of Hellenism, whose
highest aim is to offer guarantees for other worldly happiness; so too
in Judaism, whose legacy has but the aim of furnishing the happy life in
the kingdom of the future. But Christianity is a religion of faith, the
gospel not only giving guarantees for the future life, but bringing
confidence, peace, joy, salvation, forgiveness, righteousness--whatever
man's heart yearns after."[958]