Part 27

The cult was Greek in detail; Graeco ritu, according to Varro as quoted by Macrobius iii. 6. 17; see also references in Wissowa, R.K. 222, note 2. Following R. Peter in the articles in Roscher, I assumed, in R.F. p. 194, that this might be a later reconstruction of an originally Italian cult; but for the present it is safer to look on the Graecus ritus as primitive, and on the presence of Salii, a genuine Italian institution, as brought from Tibur by the gens Pinaria, of which there is a trace in that city (C.I.L. xiv. 3541). There also Salii were engaged in the cult of Hercules Victor, to whom tithes were also offered (C.I.L. xiv. 3541). The evidence for the theory that the cult came to Rome from Tibur is summarised by Wissowa, R.K. p. 220.

Op. cit., p. 37.

For the connection of the cult with trade, Wissowa, R.K. 225; and the story told in Macrobius iii. 6. 11, from Masurius Sabinus, of a tibicen who became a merchant and had an interview with the god in a dream. For the connection with oaths, R.F. p. 138. I may say before leaving Hercules that though I accept the latest hypotheses provisionally, I am far from believing that the last word has been said on the subject.

See, e.g., Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, p. 271 foll. The date of the temple is 482 B.C., but it was vowed in 496 after the Regillus battle. The three columns still standing date from 7 B.C.

Wissowa, R.K. p. 217, who points out that the Dioscuri never appear in lectisternia at Rome, as they do at Tusculum, which shows that the latter cult was more directly Greek than that at Rome, and that the Roman authorities admitted it as a Latin cult without the Greek details.

Carter, op. cit. p. 38. There seemed to be difficulties in the way of his conclusion; the Dioscuri were very strong in the Peloponnese, yet the Spartans neglected the use of cavalry. At any rate the theory needs careful historical testing. See article "Dioscuri" in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. It would seem natural that when once the cult had been introduced by traders it might become specially attached to the cavalry, owing to the ancient connection of the Twins with horses.

Ecastor and Edepol, which were oaths used especially by women, who were not allowed to swear by Hercules, Gell. xi. 6.

The reasoning will be found in full in Wissowa, R.K. p. 203 foll., and in his article "Minerva" in the Mythological Lexicon. See also Carter, Religion of Numa, p. 45 foll. For the position of this temple and that of Diana on the Aventine, a suburb which cannot be proved to have been then within any city wall, see Carter in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1909, p. 136 foll.

Waltzing, Etude historique sur les corporations romaines, vol. i. pp. 63 and 199. The relation between town life and trades is stated with his usual insight by von Jhering, Evolution of the Aryan, p. 93 foll.

See Mueller-Deecke, Etrusker, ii. 47; Deecke, Falisker, p. 89 foll.

Minerva or Menrva is assuredly not Etruscan, though frequently found on Etruscan monuments; see Deecke, l.c. p. 89 foll.

Fasti Praenestini in C.I.L. i.2 March 19. "Artificum dies (quod Minervae) aedis in Aventino eo die est (dedicata)." This is one of those additional notes in the Fast. Praen., which are believed to have been the work of Verrius Flaccus: see Roman Festivals, p. 12.

Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 288. We know the fact from Strabo's account of Massilia, Bk. iv. p. 180.

Dion. Hal. iv. 26. See R.F. p. 198.

Statius, Silvae iii. 1. 60. See Wissowa's article "Diana" in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl.

Wissowa, l.c. p. 332.

Golden Bough, i. p. 1 foll.; Early History of the Kingship, Lecture I.

Varro, L.L. 5. 43; Carter, op. cit. p. 55.

See on Fortuna the exhaustive article by R. Peter in the Mythological Lexicon; Wissowa, R.K. 206 foll.; R.F. p. 161 foll., and 223 foll.; Carter, op. cit. p. 50 foll. Dr. Carter seems to me to be too certain of the absence of any idea of luck or chance in the original conception of Fortuna: the word fors, so far as we know, never had any other meaning, and the deity Fors must be a personification of an abstraction, like Ops, Fides, and Salus. See Axtell, Deification of abstract idea in Roman literature, p. 9, with whom I agree in rejecting the notion of Marquardt and Wissowa that she was a deity of horticulture. He rightly points out that she is not included in the list of agricultural deities in Varro, R.R. i. 1. 6.

See Aust in his article "Jupiter" in the Myth. Lex. p. 689, where the evidence for the contemporaneous origin of the temple on the Alban hill and that on the Capitol is fully stated. In this case excavations have confirmed the Roman tradition, which ascribed the former temple to one or other of the Tarquinii. Jordan, Roem. Top. i. pt. 2. p. 9.

See the speech of Claudius the emperor, C.I.L. xiii. 1668, printed in Furneaux' Tacitus' Annals, vol. ii. Gardthausen, Mastarna, p. 40; Mueller-Deecke, Etrusker, i. 111. For the Etruscan name Mastarna, see Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria3, ii. 506 foll.: Gardthausen gives a cut of the painting found in a tomb at Vulci in which he appears with the name attached. Even the ultra-sceptical Pais does not doubt the fact of an Etruscan domination in Rome; but he does not believe the Tarquinii and Mastarna to have been historical personages, and will not date the temples attributed to this age earlier than the fourth century B.C. See his Ancient Legends of Roman History, ch. vii.; Storia di Roma, i. 310 foll. But the names of these kings do not concern us, except so far as they connect Etruria with Roman history in the sixth century.

Cic. Rep. ii. 24. 44; Livy i. 38. and 55; Dionys. iii. 69; iv. 59. 61. The whole evidence will be found collected in Jordan, Topogr. i. pt. ii. p. 9 foll., and in Aust, Myth. Lex., s.v. Jupiter, p. 706 foll. If the date 509 were seriously impugned Roman chronology would be in confusion, for this is believed to be the earliest date on which we can rely, and on it the subsequent chronology hangs: Mommsen, Roem. Chronologie, ed. 2, p. 198.

Aust, p. 707 foll.; Jordan, op. cit., p. 9.

i.e. the admission of more than one deity into a single building. The word "trias" is sometimes used of the three old Roman deities, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus (e.g. by Wissowa, Myth. Lex. s.v. Quirinus), but this is in a different sense. On the idea of a trias generally, see Kuhfeldt, de Capitoliis imperii Romani, p. 82 foll.; Cumont, Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, p. 290, note 51.

The technical name of the temple was aedes Iovis Opt. Max.: for other indications of Jupiter's supremacy see Aust, p. 720.

On Oriental developments of Jupiter Opt. Max. see an interesting paper by Cumont in Archiv for 1906, p. 323 foll. (Iuppiter summus exsuperantissimus). A relief in the Berlin Museum has a dedication I.O.M. summo exsuperantissimo; but Prof. Cumont believes the deity to have been really Oriental, introduced by Greek philosophical theologians in the last century B.C., but probably Chaldaean in origin.

Jordan, op. cit. p. 7 and note. It is uncertain whether the whole hill had any earlier name. The Mons Saturnius of Varro, L.L. v. 42, with the legend of an oppidum Saturnia, and the Mons Tarpeius (Rhet. ad Herenn., iv. 32. 43; Pais, Ancient Legends, chs. v. and vi.) need not be taken into account.

Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History, ch. v.

See above, p. 130.

This is an inference from the fact that this Flamen is nowhere mentioned as connected with the Capitoline cult. Macrob. i. 15, 16, speaks of the ovis Idulis as sacrificed on every ides a flamine, and this, it is true, took place on the Capitolium (Aust, in Lex. s.v. Jupiter, 655), but (1) Festus, 290, mentions sacerdotes, Ovid, Fasti i. 588, castus sacerdos only; and (2) this sacrifice may well, as O. Gilbert conjectured, have originally taken place in the Regia (Gesch. und Topogr. Roms, i. 236). In any case the Flamen was not in any special sense priest of Iup. Opt. Max.

The locus classicus for this is Pliny, N.H. xxxv. 157. The artist was said to have been one Volcas of Veii. Ovid, Fasti i. 201, says that the god had in his hand a fictile fulmen. Varro believed this to be the oldest statue of a god in Rome; see above, p. 146, and Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 280, accepts his statement as probably correct.

Cic. Catil. iii. 9. 21.

Jordan, Topogr. i. 2. pp. 39 and 62, notes. The most convincing passages quoted by him are Suet. Aug. 59, and Serv. Ecl. iv. 50 (of boys taking toga virilis who "ad Capitolium eunt"); but was not this to sacrifice to Liber or Iuventas? R.F. p. 56.

Gellius vi. 1. 6, from C. Oppius et Iulius Hyginus. In his famous character of Scipio (xxvi. 19) Livy seems to think that Scipio did this to make people think him superhuman or of divine descent.

Ovid, Fasti, iv. 158. 257; Virg. Ecl. iv. 4, Aen. vi. 42; Marquardt, 352, note 7, for evidence that the books came to Cumae from Erythrae. See also Diels, Sibyllinische Blaetter, p. 80 foll.

LECTURE XI

CONTACT OF THE OLD AND NEW IN RELIGION

I said at the beginning of my first lecture that Roman religious experience can be summed up in two stories. The first of these was the story of the way in which a strong primitive religious instinct, the desire to put yourself in right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, religio as the Romans called it, was gradually soothed and satisfied under the formalising influence of the settled life of the agricultural family, and still more so under the organising genius of the early religious rulers of the City-state. This story I tried to tell in the last few lectures. The second story was to be that of the gradual discovery of the inadequacy of this early formalised and organised religion to cope with what we may call new religious experience; that is, with the difficulties and perils met with by the Roman people in their extraordinary advance in the world, and with the new ideas of religion and morals which broke in on them in the course of their contact with other peoples. This story I wish to tell in the present course of lectures. It is a long and complicated one, including the introduction of new rites and ideas of the divine, the anxious attempts of the religious authorities to put off the evil day by stretching to the uttermost the capacity of the old forms, and the final victory of the new ideas as Roman life and thought became gradually hellenised.

This Lecture was the first of a second and separate course.

I propose to divide the story thus. In the latter part of this first lecture I will deal with the first introduction of Greek rites into the State worship under the directions of the so-called Sibylline books. Then I will turn to the efforts of the lay priesthoods, pontifices and augurs, to meet the calls of new experience by formalising the old religion still more completely in the name of the State, until it became a mere skeleton of dry bones, without life and power. That will bring us to the great turning-point in Roman history, the war with Hannibal, to the religious history of which I shall devote my fourth lecture; and the fifth will pursue the subject into the century that followed. In the next lecture I hope to sketch the influence on Roman religious ideas of the Stoic school of philosophy, and in the seventh to discuss, so far as I may be able, the tendency towards mysticism prevalent in the last period of the life of the Republic. My eighth lecture I intend to devote to the noble attempt of Virgil to combine religion, legend, philosophy, and consummate art in a splendid appeal to the conscience of the Roman of that day. Then I turn to the more practical attempt of Augustus to revive the dying embers of the old religion; and in my last lecture I shall try to estimate the contribution, such as it was, of the religious experience we have been discussing, to the early Christian church.

We shall shortly hear so much of petrifaction and disintegration, that it may be as well, before I actually begin my story, to convince ourselves that the old religion was in its peculiar way a real expression of religious feeling, and not merely a set of meaningless conventions and formulae. It was the positive belief of the later Romans that both they and their ancestors were religiosissimi mortales, full to the brim, that is, of religious instinct, and most scrupulous in fulfilling its claims upon them; for the word religio had come, by the time (and probably long before the time) when it was used by men of letters, to mean the fulfilment of ritualistic obligation quite as much as the anxious feeling which had originally suggested it. Cicero, writing in no rhetorical mood, declared that, as compared with other peoples, the Romans were far superior "in religione, id est cultu." This is in his work on the nature of the gods; in an oration he naturally puts it more strongly: "We have overcome all the nations of the world, because we have realised that the world is directed and governed by the will of the gods." Sallust, Livy, and other Roman prose writers have said much the same thing; the Aeneid as a whole might be adduced as evidence, and in a less degree all the poets of the Augustan age. Foreigners, too, were struck with the strange phenomenon, in an age of philosophic doubt. Polybius in the second century B.C. declared his opinion that what was reckoned among other peoples as a thing to be blamed, deisidaimonia, both in public and private life, was really what was holding together the Roman state. Even in the wild century that followed, Posidonius could repeat the assertion of Polybius, and in the age of Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, then resident at Rome, looking back on the early history of Rome, stated his conviction that one needed to know the pietas of the Romans in order to understand their wonderful career of conquest. Aulus Gellius, in a curious passage in which he notes that the Romans had no deity to whose activity they could with certainty ascribe earthquakes, describes them as "in constituendis religionibus atque in dis immortalibus animadvertendis castissimi cautissimique,"—a rhetorical but happy conjunction of epithets. He means that they would order religious rites, though ignorant of the numen to whom they were due.

It might be argued that these later writers knew really little or nothing about the primitive Romans, and that these passages only prove that this people had an extraordinary scrupulosity about forms and ceremonies in this as in other departments of action. But the argument will not hold; the survival of all this formalism into an age of disintegration really proves beyond a doubt that there must have been a time when these forms really expressed anxieties, fears, convictions, the earliest germs of conscience.

May we not take the constant occurrence in literature of such phrases as dis faventibus, dis iuvantibus or volentibus, as evidence of an idea deeply rooted at one time in the Roman mind, that nothing should be undertaken until the will of the deities concerned had been ascertained and that early form of conscience satisfied? Let us remember that the whole story of the Aeneid is one of the bending of the will of the hero, as a type of the ideal Roman, to the ascertainable will of the powers in the universe.

And we have abundant evidence that as a matter of fact the good-will of the divine inhabitants of house and city was asked for whenever any kind of work was undertaken,—even the ordinary routine work of the farm or of government. In the household every morning some offering with prayer was made to the Lar familiaris in historical times, and again before the cena, the chief meal of the day. On Kalends, Nones, Ides, and on all dies festi a corona was placed on the hearth, and prayer was made to the Lar; we know that this was so in the old Roman home, because in the second century B.C. Cato instructs the vilicus to discharge these duties on behalf of the absent or non-resident owner. Before the flocks were taken out to summer pasture, and doubtless when they returned, some religious service (so we should call it) was held, just as in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland the blessing of God is asked when the cows first ascend to the alpine pastures, and again when they leave them for the valleys. Before a journey the later Romans prayed for good fortune; in the old times travelling was of course unusual, and when it did occur the traveller was surrounded by so many spiritual as well as material dangers that special religious measures must have been taken, as by fetials or armies on entering foreign territory. The survival of the same kind of belief and practice is also seen in private life in the religious commendations of some authors at the outset of their literary work; Varro, for example, at the beginning of his work on agriculture, calls on all the agrarian deities (iis deis ad venerationem advocatis) before he goes on to mention even the bibliography of his subject. Livy in the last sentence of his preface would fain imitate the poets in calling on the gods to bless and favour his undertaking. And in all time of their tribulation, even if not in all time of their wealth, the pious Romans sought help from the deities from whom help might be expected; if, at least, the many instances occurring in Roman poetry may point to a practice of the ordinary individual and family. So too, if we may judge by many passages in the plays of Plautus and Terence,—if here we have genuine Roman usage, as is probable,—the feeling of dependence on a Power manifesting itself in the affairs of daily life is shown also in the expression of thankfulness which followed success or escape from peril. Gratitude was not a prominent characteristic of the Roman, but I have already remarked on the presence of it in the practice of the votum, and there is at least some evidence that it was recognised as due to benignant deities as well as human beings.

In public life, throughout Roman history, the forms of religious rites were maintained on all important occasions. When Varro wrote a little manual of Senatorial procedure for the benefit of the inexperienced Pompeius when consul in 70 B.C., he was careful to mention the preliminary sacrifice and auspicatio, performed by the presiding magistrate, who also had to see that the business de rebus divinis came first on the paper of agenda. At one time every speaker invoked the gods at the beginning of his oration, as well indeed he might in a situation so unusual and trying for a Roman before the days of Greek education; and the earliest speeches preserved in the literary age, e.g. those of Cato and the Gracchi, retained the religious exordium. We have a trace of the Gracchan practice in a famous passage at the end of the work called Rhetorica ad Herennium of circ. 82 B.C., where the death of Ti. Gracchus is graphically described. But there is no need to multiply examples of public religious formalism on occasions of all kinds, on entering on an office, founding a colony, leaving Rome for a provincia, and so on; some of them I have already mentioned, others are familiar to all classical students.

So let us not hesitate for a moment to give this people credit for their religiousness. True, their neighbours, Greeks like Polybius, approved of it only with an ironical smile on their lips, as we may smile at the devoted formalism of extreme Catholic or Protestant, while we secretly—if we have some sympathy with strangely varying human nature—admire the confidence and regularity that we cannot ourselves claim. At the moment where I have thus paused before beginning my second story, at the end, that is, of the regal period, I believe that this religious system, though perhaps beginning to harden, still meant a profound belief in the Power thus manifested in many forms, and an ardent and effective desire to be in right relation to it. I believe that it contained the germ of a living and fruitful growth; but that growth was at this very moment arrested by the beginning of a process of which I shall have much to say in the next two or three lectures.