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THE RELIGION OF NUMA C THE RELIGION OF NUMA AND OTHER ESSAYS ON THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME BY JESSE BENEDICT CARTER MACMILLAN AND NEW YORK : CO., Limited THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1906 /ill rights reseJi-ed TO K. F. C. PREFACE This life book little Romans from of the the story of the religious tries to tell when the time their history begins for us until the close of the reign of Augustus. Each of and is its five in a development separation essays deals with a distinct period sense complete in inherent itself the in ; but the dramatic whole forbids In save as acts or in the study of religion, chapters. their spite of Roman modern interest religion has been in general relegated to specialists in ancient history ing for Roman and appearance, but though parably less This classics. is religion it attractive than is not at is not surpris- prepossessing first Greek sight religion, in incomit is, if even properly understood, fully as interesting, nay, In Mr. W. Warde Fowler's Romati more so. Festivals its however the subject was presented in all and if the present book shall serve attractiveness, vii THE RELIGION OF NUMA viii a as introduction simple will purpose No have been to his work, larger its fulfilled. one can write of Roman without religion being almost inestimably indebted to Georg Wissowa whose Religiott und Cultus der Rbmer the best is systematic presentation of the subject. was the It author's privilege to be Wissowa's pupil, and that in is this book is directly even the ideas that are new, ones, waters returning to him after religion, emphasise men the many psychological no matter what may be. may have as there are any good if days. careful student of the history of the doubt cannot much him, and to only the bread which he cast upon the are The owing It a is their personal metaphysics the author's hope that these essays human this his Romans of reality interest because reality and to he has tried to present the Romans of like passions to ourselves, in spite of all differences of time and race. Hearty thanks are due to Mr. W. Warde Fowler and to Mr. Albert W. Van Kuren for their great kindness in reading the proofs of the book which my is at best ; and the dedication a poor return for the help wife has given me. J. Rome, November, 1905. B. C. CONTENTS The Religion of Numa The Reorganisation of Servius 27 The Coming of the Sibyl 62 . The Decline of Faith The Augustan Renaissance 104 . 146 THE RELIGION OF NUMA Rome forms no exception to the general rule that grow by contact with the nations, like individuals, outside world. of her republic In the middle of the five centuries came the Punic wars and the intimate association with Greece which made the last half of her history as a republic so different from the first and in the kingdom, which preceded the half; republic, there was a similar coming of foreign influence, which made the semi-historical later kingdom with its names of the Tarquins and Servius Tullius so different from the earlier its altogether Hostilius and legendary Romulus, kingdom with Numa, Tullus We have thus four Ancus Martius. distinct phases in the history of Roman society, a corresponding phase of religion in each period and and ; if we add to this that new social structure which came into being by the reforms of Augustus at the beginning of the empire, together with the religious changes which accompanied it, we shall have the five periods which these five essays try to describe B : the THE RELIGION OF XUMA 2 period before the Tarquins, that Xuma " the later kingdom, that ; tion of Servius republic, the the that the ; the centuries closing " " is Decline Faith of empire and the " is Coming the of the the " Religion of " Reorganisa- three centuries of the first " is " " the Sibyl that republic, and ; of finally Augustan Renaissance." the ; is early Like all attempts to cut historj^ into sections these divisions are more or less arbitrary, sufficiently justifies but their convenience their creation. They must be thought of however not as representing independent blocks, arbitrarily arranged in a certain consecutive order, not as five successive religious consciousnesses, but merely as marking the entrance of certain new ideas into the continuous religious consciousness of the Roman people. The history of each of these simply the record of the change which new social conditions produced in that great barometer is periods of society, the religious consciousness of the comIt is in the period of the old kingdom that munity. our story begins. At try to first sight it may seem draw a picture of the a foolish thing to of religious condition time about the political history of which we know so little, and it is only right therefore that we should inquire what sources of knowledge we a possess. There was a time, not so very long ago, when under the banner of the new-born science of " Com- THE RELIGION OF NUMA " parative Philology of 3 there gathered together a group men who thought history, they held the key to prehistoric and that words themselves would tell the story where ancient monuments and literature were was a great and beautiful thought, and the science which encouraged it has taken its place silent. It and reputable member of the community as a useful of sciences, but its pretensions to the throne of the revealer of mysteries have been withdrawn who are most ardent its " Germanic religion followers, which by those and the " Indo- brought into being is is a pleasant thought for an idle hour rather than a foundation and starting-point for the study of ancient religion in general. Altogether aside from the fact that although primitive religion and nationality are the in ma in identical, — language and nationality by no means so—— we have the great practical difficulty in the case of Greece and Rome that in are ' the earliest period of which these two religions bear so we must we have knowledge little resemblance that either assert for the time of unity a religious development Indo-Germanic much more primitive than that which comparative philology has sketched, or we must suppose the presence of a strong decadent influence in is equally Rome's case difficult. If after the separation, we which realise that in a primitive name of the god is usually the same as of the thing which he represents, the existence of a Greek god and a Roman god with names religion the the name THE RELIGION OF NUMA 4 which correspond to the same Indo-Germanic word proves Hnguistically that the thing existed and had a name before the separation, but not at name was thing was deified or that the a We at that time. god that the all the name of must therefore be content our study of religion much more humbly much later period. In fact we cannot go back appreciably before the dawn of political history, but there are certain to begin and at a which enable us considerations stand the at least dawn the of phenomena under- to those itself, loom up in the twilight and the understanding of which gives us a fair start For this knowledge in our historical development. survivals in culture which we to the so-called are indebted method, which mankind is is based on " " anthropological the that assumption and that this essential essentially uniform, uniformity justifies us in drawing inferences about very ancient thought from the very primitive thought of the barbarous and savage peoples of our own day. At first sight the apparent than that the weakness of its strength, prehistoric primitive destined to civilisation primitive culture of this contention and is it is culture is more easy to show of a people one thing, and the retarded modern tribes stunted in their growth is quite another thing, so that, as has so often been said, the two bear a relation to each other not unlike that of a healthy young child to a grown idiot. And yet there is full- a decided resemblance THE RELIGION OF NUMA 5 between the child and the idiot, and whether prehistoric or retarded, primitive culture shows every- where strong likeness, and the method is productive of good if we confine our reasoning backwards to those things in savage life which the two kinds of primitive culture, the prehistoric and the retarded, common. To do this however we must have some knowledge of the prehistoric, and our modern retarded savage must be used merely to illumine certain things which we see only in half-light he must never be employed as a lay-figure in sketching in those features of prehistoric life of which we are have in ; It is peculiarly useful to totally in ignorance. Roman student of religion because he stands the on the borderland and looking backwards sees just enough dark shapes looming up behind him to crave more light. to For in phases of early many Roman religion go back old manners of thought, and these manners of there are characteristics present which Romans but are found The own day. which anthropology has made thought are not peculiar to the in primitive peoples of our many greatest contribution Roman to the study of early Not much more than the word " animism " religion is " animism." a quarter of a century ago began to be used to describe that phase of the psychological condition of primitive peoples by which they believe that a spirit {aniina) resides in everything, material and imparticular material. This spirit is generally closely associated THE RELIGION OF NUMA 6 with the thing with it. When it is thing, be to in sometimes actually identified itself, thought of as distinct from the supposed to have the form of the thing, a word its " double." These doubles is it exercise an influence, often for evil, over the thing, expedient and necessary therefore that they should be propitiated so that their evil influence may be removed and the thing itself may prosper. and is it These doubles are not as yet gods, they are merely powers, potentialities, but in the course of time they The develop into gods. is first the obtaining of a name, a step in this direction name the knowledge of which gives a certain control over the him who knows it. name begin with a to power Finally these powers equipped to take on personal characteristics, to be thought of as individuals, and finally represented under the form of men. It cannot be shown that all the gods of originated in this way, but certainly did, and it is many not impossible that they all Rome of did ; them and theory of their origin explains better than any other theory certain habits of thought which the this early At Romans the time cherished in regard of when our knowledge to their Roman gods. religion Rome is in possession of a great many gods, but very few of them are much more than names for powers. They are none of them personal enough begins, to be connected together in myths. very simple reason why there And this is the was no such thing as THE RELIGION OF NUMA 7 Roman mythology, a blank in Rome's early development which many modern writers have refused to admit, taking upon themselves the unnecessary a native trouble of positing an original The gods Rome of early given in marriage ; mythology later lost. were neither married nor they had no children or grand- children and there were no divine genealogies. stead they were thought of occasionally In- more as or less individual powers, but usually as masses of potentialities, grouped together the " gods of the country," the for " convenience as gods of the store- " Even when gods of the dead," etc. they were conceived of as somewhat individual, they were usually very closely associated with the corroom," the much " the Hearth " example Vesta was not so object, for responding goddess of the hearth as the goddess itself, Janus not the god of doors so much " god Door." But by just as much as the human element was absent from the concept of the deity, by just so as the much the greater. element of formalism This in the cult was must not be interpreted was not a modern ideas it formalism according to our formalism which was the result and the successor of ; it was not a secondary proa decadent spirituality but it was in an age of the decline of faith ; duct itself ; the essence of religion in the period greatest religious purity. of the In the careful and con- scientious fulfilment of the form consisted the whole THE RELIGION OF NUMA 8 duty of man toward his gods. would have been intolerable instincts were less Such a in purely legal. state of affairs any nation whose So identical were the laws concerning the gods and the laws concerning men that though in the earliest period of Roman jurisprudence the ius divimun and the ius Jiumanum are already separated, they are separated merely formally as two separate fields or provinces in which the spirit of the law and often even the letter of its enactment are the same. Such a formalism implies a very firm belief in the existence of the gods. The dealings of a man with the gods are quite as really reciprocal as his dealings with his fellow citizens. But on the other hand though the existence of the gods is never doubted for a moment, the gods themselves are an unknown quantity hence out of ; the formal relationship an intimacy never developed, and while it is scarcely just to characterise the early cult as exclusively a religion of fear, certainly real not present until a much later day. The potentialit)- of the gods always overshadowed their affection is personality. But this was not all loss, for the absence of personality prevented the growth of those gross myths which are usually found among primitive peoples, for the purer are not process more inspiring myths of gods the primitive product but result from the of refining which accompanies Thus a people's theory of animism illumines the religious condition of that borderland growth in culture. the THE RELIGION OF NUMA of history in which 9 Romulus and Numa Pompilius have their dwelling-place. pleasant fiction of which the to that According — the was so extremely fond institutions could be traced back to ancient world that all establishment by some Rome was individual — belief their the religion of have been founded by her second king Numa, and it was the custom to refer to all that was most antique in the cult as forming supposed to a part of the venerable " religion of Numa." us this can be merely a name, and even as a name misleading, for a part of the beliefs with which we are dealing go back for centuries before Romulus and the Rome. traditional But it is B.C. as the 753 a convenient term foundation of if we mean by merely the old kingdom before foreign influences The Romans of a later time coined began to work. it an excellent name not so much for the period as for the kind of religion which existed then, contrasting the original deities of Rome gods, calling the former the with the " new foreign old indigenous gods " " " {Di Indigetes) and the latter the newly settled gods For our knowledge of the religion {Di Novetisides). of this period we are not dependent upon a mere theory, no matter how good it may be in itself, but we have the best sort of contemporary evidence in addition, and it is to the discovery of this evidence that the owes its modern study of Roman existence. The religion " For virtually records of early political | ^ ^ 1 THE RELIGION OF NUMA ro 390 when the history were largely destroyed in B.C. Gauls sacked Rome, but the religious with status, the conservativeness characteristic of religion generally, suffered very few changes during all these years, and left festivals a record of itself in the annually recurring Roman of the Many people. which grew year, festivals into an instinctive function of the centuries life of the when later common the calendar was engraved on stone, these revered old festivals were inscribed on these stone calendars in peculiarly large letters as distinguished from Thus from all the other items. the fragments of these stone calendars, which have been found, and which are themselves nineteen centuries old, we can read back another eight or ten centuries further. " calendar of Numa " we are By able the aid of this to assert the presence of certain deities in the Rome of this time, and the equally important absence of others. And from the character of the deities present and of the festivals themselves a correct and more or less de- tailed picture of the religious may be drawn. This condition of the time and calendar the list of Indigetes extracted from it form the foundation for all our study of the history of Roman religion. The so religious forms of a bound satisfactory impossible up with its knowledge of without some Unfortunately there is community social no the are always organisation one is knowledge of the field in that a practically Roman other. history THE RELIGION OF NUMA where theories are so abundant and in ii facts so rare as regard to the question of the early social organisaBut without coming into conflict with any of tion. the rival theories statements. at least the following main the community was fairly and homogeneous, there were no great extremes and no conspicuous foreign element, uniform social we may make In the so that each individual, had he stopped to analyse his social position, would have found himself an individual ; in four a relationship to himself as to his family to the group of families distinct relationships : ; which formed his clan i^gens) ; and to the finally We may go a step further on safe ground and assert that the least important of these relations state. was that to himself, and the most important that to his The family. unit of early Roman social was not the individual but the family, and most primitive ideas of life after death it family which The state families. is life in the is the has immortality, not the individual. not a union of individuals but of The very psychological idea of the in- dividual seems to have taken centuries to develop, and to have reached the empire. Of its real significance only under the four elements therefore we have established the pre-eminence of the family and the importance of the state as based on the family idea the individual may be disregarded in this early ; period, and there is left only the clan, which how- ever offers a difficult problem. The family and the • THE RELIGION OF NUMA 12 were destined to hold their own, merely exchanging places in the course of time, so that the the individual state came first and the family second state ; was to ever into grow importance, but increasing It is already dying when history begins. a pleasant theory and one that has a high degree of probability that there may have been a time the clan is when when out the clan was to the family what the state union a of allegiance from when history begins, and that various of of each clans, is the state arose immediate the family was gradually alienated clan and transferred to the state, so that its the clan gave up its life in order that the state, the child of its own creation, might live. If this be so, we can see why the social importance of the clan ceases so early in The Roman history. centre therefore of early religious life is the family, and the state as a macrqcosrn of the family and the father of each family is its chief priest, and ; the king as the father of the state As of the state. which he has case of a for is the chief priest the individual the only god " worship is his double," called in the his Gcnhcs and in that of a woman her for man Juno, her individualisation of the goddess Juno, quite a distinct deity, peculiar to herself But even here the family instinct shows itself, Genius and the Juno represent ,in the individual, they ised the procreative and though all that seem originally to is later the intellectual have symbol- power of the individual in rela- THE RELIGION OF NUMA and the number 13 The tion to the continuance of the family. family however, side by side worshipped a state, of deities. In the primitive hut, the model of which has come down to us in so many little burial urns of early time example those that have recently (for been dug up in Roman Forum), the wonderful cemetery under the with one door and no window, its there were several elements which needed propitiation the door itself as the keeper ; hearth, and the niche away of The door-god was the god-door Janus, the ianua the hearth was and wife whom was daughters, so The Penates). house. ; had It ; was a goddess, Vesta, it and the storage-niche, the penns, " keeping of the in the itself the care of the womenfolk, the in they served the evil, for the storage of food. Janus, " sacred door, its {Di gods was modelled state itself its store-closet the after down in the Forum, and the king himself, the father of the state, was his special priest burned, and ; it had its hearth, where own Vesta, tended by the vestal virgins, the daughters of the state and the sacred fire its ; it had store -niche with date but later the its household still its At Penates. a very early there was added to the worship idea of the general protector of the house, the Lar, which gave rise to the familiar expression origin of this Lar interesting, because " Lares and Penates." Familiaris^ it as he is The called, is shows the intimate connection THE RELIGION OF NUMA 14 between the farming life of the community and its The Lares were originally the group of religion. gods who looked after the various farms they were in the plural because they were worshipped where ; the boundary lines of several farms met, but though them were worshipped together, each farm one individual Lar. But the care of the several of had its farm included also the protection of the house on the farm, so that the Lar of the farm became also the Lar of the house, of course of houses on first and then of every house everywhere even when no farm was connected with it. farms, Aside from Vesta, the Genius, the Lar, and the possibly the most important element in Penates, family worship was the cult of the dead ancestors. This cujt is, of course, common to almost all religions, and its presence in Roman surprising, but the form in religion which curious and relatively rare. has a " as in so this to not far occurs there is Just as the living man man also double is originally not have been thought of at On the contrary the great leveller and the remover of as ceasing with the individual. death is individuality, so thought of at first the double of the dead " was not as an individual double but merely as forming a part of an indefinite " is double," the Genius, so the dead must have a double, but the Genius, who seems first it mass of spirits, the {Di Manes) as they were called because These they were feared as being anything but good. good gods THE RELIGION OF NUMA Di Manes had individual, therefore no specific relation to the and the individual human the only 15 to have preserved really ceased at death ; which the Di Manes seem relation was a connection with the living of the family to which they had originally members belonged. that the It is therefore very misleading to assert Romans had from the beginning a belief in immortality, when we instinctively think of the The thing that was immortality of the individual. It immortal was not the individual but the family. is thoroughly in keeping with the practical character of the Roman mind that they did not concern them- selves with the place in which these spirits of the dead were supposed to reside, but merely with the door through which they could and did return to earth. We until Greece have no accounts of the Lowqr World lent her mythology to Rome, and imagination never built anything like the Greek palace of Pluto./ But while they did not waste energy in furnishing the Lower World with the fittings of fancy, they did keep a careful guard over the door This door they called the inimdus, and of egress. represented it crudely by a trench or shallow pit, at On certain the bottom of which there lay a stone. days of the year the spirits this stone came back to was removed, and then earth again, where they were received and entertained by the living members There were a number of these days of their family. in the year, three of them scattered through the THE RELIGION OF NUMA i6 year August 24, October : 5, November days: February 13-21 and sets of The February was calm and 8 May and two ; 11, 13. 9, celebration, the so-called Parentalia, dignified least superstitious and and represented that all was fearful in the generally terrify- The Lemuria in May had ing worship of the dead. exactly the opposite character and belongs to the " expulsion of evil spirits," of which category of the Mr. Frazer in his Golden Bough has given so many instances. In facts this connection which beliefs. One it is almost stand fact is interesting to notice as corollaries to two these the religious necessity for the continuance of the family, in order that there might always be a living representative of the family to It was the perform the sacrifices to the ancestors. of head of the the not to duty family only perform these sacrifices himself as long as he lived but also The to provide a successor. usual method was by marriage and the rearing of a family, but, there was no male recurred to. in case child in the family, adoption Here it is was peculiarly significant that the sanction of the chief priest was necessary, and he never gave his consent in case the man to be adopted was the only representative of his family, so that his removal from that family into another would leave his original family without In cases of inheritance the was for the a male representative. lien on the income first maintenance of the traditional sacrifices THE RELIGION OF NUMA 17 some special arrangement had been made. These exceptional inheritances, without the deduction for sacrifices, were naturally desired above all others unless and the phrase " an inheritance without sacrifices ihereditas sine sacris) became by degrees the popular The 'expression for a godsend. connection in this is " that, other fact of interest inasmuch as ancestors were worshipped only en masse and not as individuals, that process could not take place in which is so familiar in many Roman religion other religions, namely that the great gods of the state should some of them have been originally ancestors whose greatness during life had produced a corresponding emphasis in their worship after death, so that ultimately they were promoted from the ranks of the deified dead into the select Olympus of individual god.s. a favourite theory of the time of There are the Euhemerus down religions in This has been making of a god from which it to Herbert Spencer. is true for certain of the major gods, but there are no traces of the process in Roman religion, and the reason is obvious in view of the peculiar character of ancestor worship in Rome. We have now seen the principal elements which went to make up the family religion and that part of the state religion which was an enlargement and an imitation of the family religion. But even in the most primitive times a Roman's life was not bounded by his own hut and the phenomenon of death. There C 1 THE RELIGION OF NUMA 8 was work and to be done life, a living to be gained, here, as everywhere, there were hosts of unseen in powers who must be propitiated. His religion was not only coincident with every phase of private life, it was also closely related to the specific occupations and interests of the people, and just as the interests community, its means of livelihood, were and stock-raising, so the gods were those of the crops and the herds. Some years ago the of the agriculture Professor late from the Mommsen succeeded stone calendars existing Roman religious festivals of the old in a extracting of the list year, and also in of festivals was complete in its present condition at a time before the city of Rome was surrounded by the wall which Servius Tullius proving that this built, and that kingdom, " the list it goes back to the old of what has been called the therefore time Religion of Numa." the festiv^als in detail, We but cannot go through all is it extremely interesting to notice that almost every one of them is connected with the life of the farmer and represents the action of propitiation towards some god or group of gods at every time in the Roman year which was at all critical for agricultural interests. It must not be forgotten also that absolutely complete, because official state festivals, those which fell it and not even upon the this list is not represents merely the all of them but only same day or days every year, so that they could be engraved in the stone to THE • RELIG-ION OF NUMA 19 form a perpetual calendar. All state festivals, of which there were several, which were appointed in each particular year according to the backward or forward estate of the harvest, were omitted from list, though they were celebrated at some time" and naturally the public calendars every year contained no reference to the many private and semi- the in ; private ceremonies of the year, with which the state had nothing official to do, festivals of the family and the clan, and even local festivals of various districts of the city. In this list of peaceful deities of the farm there is one god whose character has been very much misunderstood because of the company which he keeps ; the god this is Mars. It has become the fashion of late to consider him as a god of vegetation, and a many ingenious arguments have been brought But the forward to show his agricultural character. great more primitive a community is, the more intense is struggle for existence, and the more rife its its with its neighbours. Alongside of the ploughshare there must always have been the sword or its equivalent, and along with Flora and Ceres rivalries there battle. must always have been a god of That Mars was this god in early strife and as well as is shown above all things by the fact was always worshipped outside the city, as a god who must be kept at a distance. Naturally his cult was associated with the dominant interest of later times that he THE RELIGION OF NUMA 20 life, the crops, and he was worshipped in the beautiful ceremony of the purification of the fields, which Mr. Walter Pater has so exquisitely described at the opening of Marius as regarded the the Epicurean. of the protector But he was warder off of evil influences rather factor in the development of the crops. in the early days of the Roman and fields the than as a positive Then too militia, before the army had come into existence, the war season was only during the summer after the planting and regular before the harvest, so that the two festivals which marked the beginning and the end of that season were also readily associated with the state of the crops at that time. But the most interesting and curious thing about is not so much what it does contain this old religion as what as what we miss, we it does not. It is for not so more than Rome instinctively associate with under Here this old regime. whose names we do not find : much what we half the gods is find whom were not there a partial list of those Minerva, Diana, Venus, Fortuna, Hercules, Castor, Pollux, Apollo, Mercury, Dis, Proserpina, Aesculapius, the Magna Mater. And yet their absence is not surprising when we realise that almost all of the gods in this list represent phases of life with which Rome in this early period was She had no appreciable absolutely unacquainted. trade or commerce, no manufactures or particular handicrafts, and no political interests except the THE RELIGION OF NUMA 21 simple patriarchal government which sufficed for her Her gods of water were the gods of present needs. and springs Neptune was there, but he was not the ocean-god like the Greek Poseidon. Vulcan, the god of fire, who was afterwards associated with rivers ; Greek Hephaistos and became the patron of metal-working, was at this time merely the god of destructive and not of constructive fire. Even the the Juppiter who was destined to become almost identical with the name and fame of Rome great god was not yet a god of the and state but politics, merely the sky-god, especially the lightning god, " striker," Juppiter Feretrius, the shrine on the Capitoline where Capitoline temple of Juppiter Another curious to stand. age, which, is I Optimus Maximus was commented on, number of goddesses. male who seems parallel. is these pairs to stand Each of the merely the contrasted potentiality the male little great think, has never been the only one is without a a the later characteristic of this early the extraordinarily limited Vesta who had by herself others in a pair of is which much more famous, and the only ones in who ever obtained a pronounced indivi- duality did so because their cult was afterwards rein- forced by being associated with some extra-Roman cult. The best illustration of this last and say that is Juno. We seems highly probable that the worship of female deities was in the main may go further confined to the women it of the community, while the THE RELIGION OF NUMA 22 men worshipped the gods. This distinction extended even to the priesthoods where the wife of the priest of a god was the priestess of the corresponding Such a state of affairs is doubly interesting goddess. in view of the pre-eminence of female deities in the Greek world, which early been has shown by Miss Jane Harrison so strikingly her recent book, in Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. The most vital question which can be put to almost any religion is that in regard to its expan- power and its adaptability to new conditions. is bound to undergo changes, and a young sive Society social new if organism, New cells. interests are the growth is normal, is conditions coming to continually growing are to be continuous, and arising the front. new new In addition, material is if being constantly absorbed, and the simple homogeneous character of the old society is being entirely changed by the influx of foreign occurred in ancient Roman religion ment from elements. Rome, and it is This what was not capable of organic develop- within, that the curious things which our history has to record. strange external accretions which lend to is because ancient it interest to the story, while at the happened is these the chief It same time they conceal the original form so fully as to render the writing of a history of Roman religion extremely difficult. Yet it must not be supposed because Roman THE RELIGION OF NUMA religion was unable to adapt itself to the of society with stitution new con- contrasted classes, and its new commercial and to the 23 interests political which attracted the attention of the upper classes, that was absolutely devoid within limitations, of a certain For several centuries affect Rome, her alongside of the it developed is within its it own capability of development. after outside influences began to on developing The manner in which original religion kept new forms. thoroughly significant of the original national character of the We itself, Romans. have seen that from the very beginning the nature of the gods as powers rather than personalities tended to emphasise the value and importance of the name, which usually indicated the particular deity and was very In the only thing known about him. course of time as the original name of the deity began to be thought of entirely as a proper name without any meaning, rather than as a common function or speciality of each often the noun explaining the nature of the god to which it was attached, it became necessary to add to the original name some adjective which describe the god and do the by itself had would adequately work which the name originally done. And as the nature more complicated along with the increasing complications of daily life, new adjectives were added, each one expressing some of the various deities grew particular phase of the god's activity. Such an THE RELIGION OF NUMA 24 was called a cognomen, and was often of very great importance because it began to be felt that a god with one adjective, i.e. invoked for one purpose, was almost a different god from the same adjective god with a purpose. different adjective, i.e. Thus a knowledge of invoked for another these adjectives was almost as necessary as a knowledge of the name of The next step in the development was the god. These important one which followed very easily. adjectives began to be thought of as having a value and an existence in themselves, apart from the god The grammatical which they were attached. change which accompanied this psychological movement was the transfer of the adjective into an to abstract noun. Both adjectives and abstract nouns express quality, but the adjective is in a condition of dependence on a noun, while the abstract noun is independent and self-supporting. And thus, just as in certain of the lower organisms a group of cells breaks off and sets up an individual organism of its in old Roman religion some phase of a own, so god's activity, expressed in an adjective, broke off with the adjective from its original stock and set up for itself, turning its name from the dependent adjective form into the independent abstract noun. Thus Juppiter, worshipped as a god of good faith in the dealings of men with one another, the god by whom oaths were sworn under the open sky, was designated as "Juppiter, guarding-good-faith," RELIGION OF NUMA 25 tTHE There were however many other of Juppiter's work, and hence the adjective phases fidius became very important as the means of r Fidius. this distinguishing Eventually from activity the all others. broke off from Juppiter and formed it the abstract noun Fides, the goddess of good faith, where the sex of the deity as a goddess was entirely determined by the grammatical gender of abstract nouns as feminine. This strange enough but there is all the in step development even more is one more curious yet. This abstract goddess Fides did not stay long in the she began very soon to be purely abstract sphere ; made concrete again, as the Fides of this particular person or of that particular group and as this Fides or that, until she became almost as concrete as Juppiter himself had been, and hence we have a great many different Fides in seeming contradiction to the old no plural. grammatical rule that abstract nouns had Now all this development of religion throws light upon Roman mind and its and we see why it great lawyers and instinctive is that the very in the field the character of the methods of thought, Romans were very mediocre philosophers. Both law and philosophy require the ability for in both cases the essential qualities abstract thought of a thing must be separated from the thing itself ; But in the case of philosophic thought this abstracqualities, do not immediately seek rein- tion, these THE RELIGION OF NUMA 26. carnation. They continue abstractions and as do not immediately descend to earth again, whereas for law such a descent is absolutely necessary because jurisprudence is interested not so much in the abstraction by but rather in the abstract as itself, Hence a type of mind make the concrete presented in concrete cases. which found it equally easy to into the abstract made and then to turn the abstract so into a kind of concrete again, is par excellence the legal mind, and no better proof of the instinctive tendency to law-making on the part of the Romans can be found than in the fact that the same habits of mind which ment of make laws also governed the develop- their religion. Unfortunately however who could save old deities were merely the logical existing, merely breed. They were was not these abstract Roman religion. They outcome of the deities new offspring of the old did not represent any new interests, already but it merely the individualisation of certain phases of the old deities, phases which had always been present and were now at most merely emphasised by being worshipped separately. THE REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS Like a peak lofty above rising the mists which cover the tops of the lower-lying mountains, the figure of Servius Tullius towers above the semi-legendary We feel that we Tarquins on either side of him. have to do with a veritable character in history, and we find ourselves wondering what sort of a man he was personally with — a us only faintly the older with d'etre is kings, and comes to Tarquin, while the the marks of a wooden man, the younger Tarquin has all who was put up only whole raison that never occurs to us feeling Romulus and elder be thrown down, whose to to explain the transition from to the republic on the theory of a Eliminate the revolution, suppose the change to have been a gradual and a constitutional the kingdom revolution. one, and you may discard the proud Tarquin with- out losing anything but a lay-figure with its more or less gaudy trappings of later myths. But it is not so with Servius are very real maker into ; his and defy a legend. wall and his constitution all attempts to turn their Yet on the other hand we 27 REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 28 must be on our guard, much for which seems to attach to him ness of certain tract. is of the definiteness rather the definite- a certain stage in Rome's development, a well-bounded chronological and sociological It is dangerous to try to limit too strictly Servius's personal this part in development ; and though perhaps less fascinating, to use his name as a general term for the changes which Rome far safer, underwent from the time when foreign influences began to tell He republic. certain this is much upon her until the beginning of the forms a convenient title therefore for And yet even phases of Rome's growth. not strictly correct, for Servius stands not so for the coming into existence of certain facts, as for the recognition of the existence of these facts. The facts themselves were of slow growth, covering probably centuries, but the actions resulting from them, and the outward changes in society, came thick and fast and may well have taken place, all of them, within the limits of one man's life. The foundation fact upon which all these changes were based is the influence of the outside world on the Roman community. Until this time there had been to differentiate little Rome from any other of the hill-communities of Italy, of which there were scores in her immediate neighbourhood nor was she the ; only one to come into world. It upon her was the effect contact with the outside which that influence had as contrasted with her neighbours which REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS made When we the difiference. fluence affected her differently we ask find why 29 this in- no satisfactory — the answer, and are in the presence of a mystery world-old insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe or same one individual over others apparently of the Political history is wont to tell this class. " Rise chapter of Rome's story under the title of the of the Plebeians," but the presence of the Plebeians was only the outward symbol of an inward change. This change was the breaking up of the monotonous one-class its one of a — society of the primitive agricultural — interest, community with and the formation many-class 'society with manifold such as trade, handicraft, and politics. It variegated interests, was the awakening of Rome into a world-life out of her century-long undisturbed bucolic slumber. There were at this time two peoples in Italy, who by reason of their older culture were able to be Rome's teachers. One lay to the north of her, the mysterious Etruscans, whose culture fortunately for Rome had only a very moderate influence, because the Etruscan culture had already lost virility, possibly also because it was much of distinctly felt its to be foreign, and hence could effect no insidious entry, and probably because Rome was at this time too strong and young and the best from Etruria. the Greek colonies of Rome for the clean to take anything but The other lay to the south, Magna Graecia, separated from present by many miles of forest and REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 30 by Around her hostile tribes. own next inferior to of her, service, that of and came, in the kin, Latium were her in becoming rapidly do her at least this Latins, but enabled to absorbing the foreign influences which cases certain them, latinising Rome thus transmitting them to in and a more or less of Rome during assimilated condition. The three great facts in the life coming of Greek merchants and Greek trade from the south, the coming of Etruscan this period are and artisans from handicraft of beginnings the her the north, rivalry political and and the gradual prominence in the league of Latin cities around her. Each one of these movements is reflected in the two first this not is traveller, like his his mythical prototype Aeneas, carried Thus gods with him. private settled In regard to the surprising, for the ancient changes of the period. religious in Rome there were worshipped in the gods of gods was destined to make primitive polytheist tastes ; many matter, Rome, and all the peoples who within her walls, and the presence of these for, is its influence very catholic when one is Your religious already in possession gods, the addition of a few especially felt. his in when, as was more now is the of a minor case in these deities are the patrons of occupations interests hitherto entirely and hence not provided It was therefore in no for unknown in spirit his to the Roman, scheme of gods. of disloyalty to the REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS • 31 . already existing gods, and with no desire to introduce rival deities, that the new cults they became so important as to began to spread call for state until recogni- tion. Possibly the most interesting cases are those of the two gods who came from the south, Hercules and Castor, interesting because they were the forerunners of that great multitude of Greek gods who later came in proudly by special invitation, and even though they were they came into Rome, as were, incognito, and were so far from being known more interesting yet Greek as Greek could it as Greek, that, wards more when because, be, the same gods came directly, these in new-comers were afterfelt to be quite a different thing, and their worship was carried on in another part of the city away from the old-established cults. In the Greek world Herakles and Hermes were the especial patrons of travellers, and as travelling was never done for pleasure but always for business, they became the patrons of the travelling merchant. It was also natural that they should go with the settlers colony. away from the mother-city into the new Thus it was that they came from the mother-land into the colonies of Magna Graecia in and once being established there made their way slowly but inevitably northwards. The story of Hermes, under the name of Mercury, Southern Italy, belongs to a later chapter, but that of Herakles = REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 32 Hercules must be recounted here. It is only within the last few years that the scholarly world has been persuaded that there was no such thing as an original Italic at first sight it was very difficult to because there seemed to be so many appa- Hercules believe, ; rently very old But it Italic in legends centering Hercules. been shown, either that these legends has never existed and rest solely upon false interpretation of monuments, or that, though they did exist at an early date, they were introduced under Greek It was the trading merchant therefore influence. who brought Herakles northward. And as the god went, his name was softened into Hercules, and with the assimilation of the name to the tongue of the Italic people, there of his went hand nature to their he became thoroughly content. Rome as in Rome at first It hand an adaptation so italicised that both in by degrees form and probable that the cult came into is well as into the other cities of Latium, but it was confined obtained Greek cult proportions in fourteen miles to a few individuals, and On the no public recognition. contrary, for reasons that this in needs, we are at a loss to find, seems to have reached very large little town of Tibur (Tivoli), the north-east of Rome. There it other worship and lost so much of its foreign atmosphere that it became thoroughly In the course of time the Roman state latinised. dominated all acknowledged this Tivoli cult of Hercules and REORGAxXISATION OF SERVIUS 33 But the extraaccepted a branch of it as its own. ordinary thing about this acknowledgment is that the Romans felt it to be a Latin and not a foreign cult. They showed this intimate and friendly feel- ing by permitting an altar to Hercules to be erected But within the city proper, in the Forum Boarium. in order to understand the significance of this act a word of digression is necessary. Under the old Roman regime every act of life was performed under the supervision of the gods, and in No godly patronage was especially emphasised which affected the life of the communityact was of greater importance for the community this acts than the choice of a home, the location of a settleThus the founding of an ancient city was ment. accompanied by sacred rites, chief among which was the ploughing of a furrow around the space which was This furrow ultimately to be enclosed by the wall. formed a symbolic wall on very much the same circle. principle as that on which the witch draws her called the pomeriuin and was to the world of the gods what the city wall was to the world of men. It did not however always coincide with The furrow was the actual city wall, and the space sometimes less, it embraced was sometimes more, than that embraced and just as new walls covering city wall larger territory could be built for the city, so a new by the ; pomeriiim line could be drawn. for a spiritual barrier there As was becoming was nothing to mark D it REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 34 the except boundary line imaginary stones The passed. through which the which Servius wall, and which continued to be the outer wall of built Rome a period of eight or nine hundred years for was until the third Christian century, at the time of building coincident in the main with the line of the pomerium, with one very important exception namely that all the region of the Aventine, which its : was inside the embraced by pomerium line ^ and It into important part do so the in political wall, lay continued thus the in until the and city outside the other words outside the empire all until through the the reign of pomerium played an the religious world and it continued Originally the Claudius. to of Servian and was religious city. republic limits the line middle of the republic, during the Second Punic War, when its sanctity was destroyed and it lost its real religious significance, though it remained as a formal As institution. a divine served originally in the world of the gods the same purpose as the material wall much very of stone did in the world of men. Before the barrier it problem of foreign gods had begun to exist for the good old days when they knew only the gods of their own religion, the pomerium served to keep within the bounds of Rome all the beneficent Romans, in the kindly gods whose presence was not needed outside the fields, and it served fully as important a in purpose in keeping outside of Rome the gods who REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS were feared rather than loved, war-god Mars. introduced into When Rome 35 example the dread for gods began to be they might, of course, be foreign worshipped inside the pomerium by private individuals, but when the state acknowledged them it was more prudent that her worship should be outside the sacred wall. the foreign gods, Thus came it who were taken to pass that into the cult of the Roman state, were given temples in the Campus Martius or over on the Aventine, and the two or three cases where they were publicly worshipped form no inside the rule — suchpomerium an exception unthinkable worship real would in the strictly logical exception to this be, in fact, system of — but these gods were allowed quite Roman inside because they came to Rome from her kinsfolk, the Latins, and were not felt to be foreign. Hercules is one of the cases we have in this last category. Greek god, his long residence in Tibur (Tivoli) had made him, as it were, a naturalised citizen of Latium, and hence Rome Though felt it At originally, as seen, a no impropriety to take him inside h^v pomerium. his worship seems to have been carried on first by two clans, the Potitii during the republic, But though it was had come in as the and the Pinarii, state assumed the really the latinised but Greek Herakles who Hercules, the god had paid a certain price for his admission, for he stripped of all later, control. came the various attributes which he had had REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 36 Greece and retaining merely his function as patron of trade and travel. It was this practical side of his in which appealed nature alone found its in expression to at the great altar in the F"orum always remained Hercules-worship early date by no in the more or of which were a in it he too was called this by the same Romans through all relative Greek direct was recognised that this to the old Hercules, so new that There was nothing Romans, because they Hercules. to the a matter of course that there should be among their own gods They never understood the found a parallel Greek an Centuries later Herakles be- to the was akin in at immediate neighbourhood, Herakles it sense the centre of was reinforced less characterised and considered " This altar than three temples of Hercules channels, surprising It it ; the tenth less simplicity of ritual. came known " Boarium. certain Rome. in Romans the the offering of deity. for each true state doubtful whether they could have namely, that in almost all their other identifications of Roman and Greek deities, they were really doing violence to their own native gods of affairs ; understood is it it : by superimposing upon them the whom had attributes of a deity nothing in common, whereas, in identifying the new Herakles with their old Hercules, they were doing a perfectly legitimate with really For one who knows the true state of thincr. there they is something pathetically amusing in affairs the fact REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS showed more delicacy that they really in n making their old (really originally Greek) Hercules into the new Greek Herakles- Hercules, than they did in throwing together Neptune and Poseidon, Mars and As a matter of fact they Ares, Diana and Artemis. always reverenced the old cult of the great altar, and never allowed the more sensational phases of Greek worship to be practised there, and put off into another quarter the temples which were built to Hercules under the various new attributes which the These temples cult brought with it. were placed, as was proper, outside the poineriuni, in the southern part of the Campus Martius. new Greek But to return to the by the contagion of commerce, god of great power from a deity, of which, they already whom came felt simple Hercules and the state had now obtained Roman Servian regime, the a need, a success in the practical undertakings of Hence he had a strong hold on the Romans life. whose practical side The ment. the religious world, The and was undergoing a rapid develop- idea of trade was it now had received its other god, who came up from formal acceptance into whose formed one of the represented in divine sanction. Magna the earliest incidents in the Graecia state-cult breakdown of the old agricultural religion, was Castor, with his twin-brother Pollux, although brother Pollux was always an insignificant partner, so much so that the temple which was subsequently built to them both REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 38 was referred to the temple of either as " Castor " " alone or as the temple of the Castors." At various points in the old Greek world we meet with a pair of brothers, at first not designated by individual names but merely named as a pair. Even these pair-names do not agree, but they represent all of them the same idea. Later when individual names are substituted individual protection, Greece is for names and the also on sea-coast general the — they pair- name, They differ. sea-coast are — and these gods most of of are especially helpful as rescuers from the dangers of the sea, and they are very early and almost everywhere connected with horses. But in spite of their usefulness they are not very prominent, and it is doubtful whether also they would ever have become famous, except for one of those little accidents which make the fortunes It so happened that of gods as well as of men. horses began to be used in warfare more than for the mere drawing of chariots came into ; a primitive sort of produced by mounting With this heavy-armed foot-soldiers on horseback. " " = " Sons of cavalry the Twin-Brothers {Dios-kouroi cavalry being, Just Zeus"), especially Castor, became prominent. as the Greek merchants had taken Herakles with them when they set out to plant colonies in Southern Italy, so the heavy-mounted horsemen carried their god Castor with them wherever they went. The Italic tribes in their turn were quick to seize jpon REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS its it as an essential part Thus the Castor- moved cult steadily northward, carried, as on horseback. the little and with divine patron, Castor. this idea of cavalry, went 39 At last it were, reached Latium, and there it town of Tusculum, afterwards so famous as became in some unaccount- the residence of Cicero, way an important able Castor what Tibur latinised him, so that done Rome doubt that the Roman Tusculum, and that in for received did for i.e. him not its its little come from cult actually did as in every other step on as an There can be but as one of her kin. alien and Hercules, cult -centre, had introduction into march, it Rome, was connected This would with the reorganisation of the cavalry. imply that Tusculum was famous for its cavalry and that Rome took the idea of it from her statements for which we have unfortunately no seem to — other confirmation, though we have abundant proof of the cult at Tusculum and of Rome's close association with it. Castor was thus the patron of the " horsemen " and his great day was July 15, when the horsemen's parade took place. Possibly this had been the date of the festival at Tusculum, a day {equites) especially appropriate because it was the Ides of the month, and the Ides were sacred to Juppiter, whose sons Castor and Pollux [Dios-kouroi) were supposed to be. this It is extremely interesting in the light of knowledge of the true state of affairs to see how REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 40 later legend Pollux. It explained the coming of Castor and was an incident in the mythical war which was supposed to have taken place after the Tarquin had been driven out, and the republic last had been The started. adversaries of Rome, allied with Tarquin, notably Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, fought against the Romans the in Lake battle of The Romans won, Regillus on July 15, B.C. 499. and the first news of victory was brought to Rome by the miraculous appearance of Castor and Pollux who were seen watering their horses at the spring of Juturna. A in the temple on Forum this spot was then vowed and fifteen years later, B.C. 484, it was completed and dedicated. Tusculum, July 15, and the dedication of the temple in B.C. 484 are seemingly the only historical facts in this legend and long before B.C. 499 Castor was worshipped ; in especially on July Rome, 15. The site of his was without doubt the same locality the P'orum where his temple was subsequently original worship in built, for it is an almost invariable rule that the temples are built on the actual earliest site of, or close to, the old altar or shrine formal temple. received Like which preceded the Hercules therefore he was pomerium, and probably for a it was felt that he was a eod of Tusculum, and hence a god of Rome's kinsfolk. We have an additional confirmation of this feeline inside the similar reason, because in the way in which the later direct cult of Castor REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS was This treated. and healing the his emphasising 41 with connecting Castor of dreams, and function as a rescuer from the cult, interpretation dangers of the sea, would have been without meaning Romans who worshipped him merely for the old as a patron of horsemen and horsemanship. The new ideas seem to have had as their centre a later temple the in Circus Flaminius and Hercules thus and may again be paralleled, since they have, each of them, an old cult-centre inside the poniermm, Castor Hercules ideas, in later cult-centre, for the in more advanced each case in the Circus Flaminius. Although caused Forum Boarium, Castor the in Forum, and a the it was Greek influence which ultimately of Roman religion, and destruction although the cults of Hercules and of Castor are the first definite effects of this influence, it cannot be said that the destruction had because their in slow journey their any sense begun, northward, and in in long residence at Tibur and Tusculum rethe two cults had lost all that was spectively, The Roman pernicious. to be akin to itself, indeed akin to the in trade and its instinct, which did not go amiss new Rome with its ages of the world's history, whether instinct to grasp more felt them they were new interest increased interest in warfare, for the trader and the warrior have gone side or a ; civilised territory for by side in all be a primitive commercial purposes it endeavour to obtain an open port. REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 42 The beginnings been exhibited There is yet so the Greek influence case of have Hercules thus and of remains to inquire what Etruria did. no race about which we know so much and and Castor, of in it as about the Etruscans. little and always been still are a riddle, They have and our as knowledge of them increases we seem further than ever from a solution, and what we gain in positive knowledge is more than counterbalanced increased sense of our ignorance. by the Altogether aside from the problem of the origin of the Etruscans, and the race to which they belonged, is the other problem In a certain sense Etruria of their disappearance. steps out of history quite as mysteriously as she entered into it, nay even more mysteriously, for we are always willing to allow a certain percentage of mystery as the legitimate accompaniment of pre- but when in the light of more or less historic times a nation steps off the stage of the historic history, world's history, and leaves practically no heritage behind her, we have a right to be amazed. Of all the peoples in Italy Rome ought in the order of events to have been her successor, and yet when we contrast the influence of Etruria on Rome with the influence of the we see an Greek colonies of Southern Italy amazing difference. these Greek colonies on Rome The influence prepared the way of for the direct influence of the Greek motherland, so that one passed over into the other by imperceptible REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS gradations, but the influence of Etruria on 43 Rome not only led to nothing but was in itself of a most superficial sort. Etruria must have had some literature, yet we search the history of Roman literature in vain any traces of the influence of that literature on Rome, with the one exception of books on divinaWe know tion and the interpretation of lightning. for of her manners and customs to be able to too little tell exactly how much they may have Rome, and yet which Roman is it influenced worth noting that the things writers actually refer to Etruria, are of them most superficial a few of the insignia of political office a few of the trappings of one or two ritualistic acts a branch of divination, by the all : ; ; consultation of the entrails {Jiaruspicind), which was of secondary importance compared to augury and the most depraved form of Roman public sport, the ; The only fundamental gladiatorial games. tion of Rome which it the habit to is institu- ascribe to Etruria, the idea of the so-called teuiphim or division of the sky into regions as an axiom of augury, seems have been quite as much a general as a specifically Etruscan one. Even to influence architects was seem relatively to have slight, built and the Italic in art though earliest idea her her formal temples for Rome, they were soon succeeded in this We seek in vain for a comwork by the Greeks. plete and satisfactory explanation of this limitation of her influence, but certain thoughts suggest them- REORGANISATION OF SERYIUS 44 selves, which, as far as All that we know they go, are probably correct. of Etruria impresses us with the was an outward fact that hers civilisation unaccom- panied by an inward culture, that it was a formal rather than a spiritual growth, an artificial acquisition from without rather than a development from within outwards. brutality, was interested rather than of youth is its spiritual aspects. individual. effects in art Now present in nations just as though probably a nation an its strength went but for its sensual was strong but with It it It is is less the idealism in individuals, conscious of it than with the nation one of the of the instinct of self-preservation, and for a youthful nation to absorb the vices of an old decadent one would be self-destruction. Thus the youthful Rome rejected most of the Etruscan poison, and thus nature purified herself, and Etruria was buried in the pit of her own nastiness. There was however one town which acted as an interpreter between Rome and Etruria, and was the original cult-centre for a very great goddess, spread- ing her cult in both directions, into Rome and The town was Falerii and the goddess was Minerva, who in a certain sense entered Rome into Etruria. three times, once direct from finally, when Falerii to Rome, and of Etruria, and was captured by the Romans, again direct to Rome. are scarcely Falerii Rome by way once from Falerii to In the earliest period there any traces of the worship of Minerva in REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS Latium or Southern certain Italy, was not known that she 45 and we are absolutely Rome. in In the country north of Rome, however, the situation is different. There she is found quite frequently, in Etruria under the name of MENERVA especially or MENRVA. Yet she cannot have been an Etruscan name goddess, because the Etruscan. She Etruscan, nor Latin in where a To Latin, at Latium. is so least we can far find a place we the ancients As Such a appeared so thoroughly Etruscan it go out of their way to explain that it was was the only Latin town bank of the Tiber, and because of its a matter of fact it connection vital with the Etruscans, so vital that while it however Etruscan the country of the Faliscans. in on the right locality it was early brought into all Roman, nor as we know people is under strong shall be near the solution. Falerii, that they not. If and not Italic neither Latin influence, place itself is therefore is it never lost original Latin character, it lost enough of to exercise a very considerable direct influence of over its Etruria, influenced and to by her in be to turn. a We very large extent cannot of course positively prove that Minerva was originally worshipped only at Falerii, and that her cult spread entirely from this one point, but we have at least strong negative evidence, and so far as the general history of ancient nothing impossible in religion is concerned such a spread. there is Religious history REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 46 shows many parallels to this ; for example the classic case of the god Eros of Thespiae, in Boeotia, who would have lived and died merely a little insignificant local god, if it had not been for the Boeotian poet Hesiod who adopted Eros into his poetry and thus gave him a start in life by which he ultimately succeeded in going all over the Greek world, and then passing into Rome as Cupid and so into all ; later times. We are accustomed to think of Minerva as the name Latin for Athena, the daughter of Zeus, and unconsciously we clothe Minerva with all the glory of Athena and endow her with Athena's many-sidedIn reality the ness. little peasant goddess of Falerii nothing in common with Athena except the fact that both of them were interested in handicraft and the handicraftsman, but Athena had a had originally hundred other interests besides, while this seems to have filled When one thing the whole of Minerva's horizon. Minerva went on her travels into Etruria, a people who eventually learned from the representations of Greek art a very conshe came among amount of Greek mythology, and who, when they heard of Athena, saw her resemblance to siderable Minerva and began thus to associate the two. in this association Minerva was still even But pre- eminently the goddess of the artisan and the labouring man, she was the patroness of the works of man's hands rather than of the works of his mind. REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 47 and as such she was brought into Rome by Etruscan and Faliscan workmen. At first she was worshipped merely by these workmen in their own houses, but by degrees as the number of these workmen increased and as a knowledge of their handicraft spread to native Romans, Minerva became so prominent that the state was compelled to acknowledge her, and to accept her was a very But it acknowledgment from that of these gods had been received different Hercules or Castor inside the gods of the state. among ; the pomerium, but Minerva was given a None the temple outside, over on the Aventine. less her cult throve, and her power was soon shown Her great festival was both religiously and socially. on the of 19th March, a day which had been but the presence of Minerva's celebrations on that day soon caused the associations with Mars to be almost entirely forgotten. originally sacred to Mars, became the meeting-place of all Rome, it was at once their religious business headquarters. There they Socially her temple the artisans of centre and their met {collegia) and arranged continued to be as long as in their primitive guilds and thus their affairs, pagan Rome lasted. guilds of Minerva than in an is incident it The respect nowhere more shown to these clearly exhibited which happened in the time of the Second Punic War, several centuries after the introduction of the cult. Terrified by adverse portents the Roman Senate instructed the old poet REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 48 Livius Andronicus to write a Juno and sing The hymn it. hymn honour of in youths and maidens to was sung, and was such a great to train a chorus of success that the gratitude of the Senate took the form of granting permission to the poets of the city to have a guild of their own, and a meeting-place along with the older guilds in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine. This was the expression of literary appreciation was flattery decree made Roman ; state's first from her stand- indeed, for were not poets equal to butchers, bakers, and cloth-makers, and was not poetry acknowledged to be of some practical use and adjudged a legitimate point by it this occupation The ? history of the cult of Minerva is much more Like complicated than that of Hercules or Castor. them she was subjected to strong Greek influence, and, as we shall see later, not very long after her introduction Juppiter she and was taken into the company of thus forming the famous Juno, Also temples were built to her Capitoline triad. individually under various aspects of the worship of Athena with whom she gradually became identified, Aventine temple the original idea of Minerva, the working man's friend, continued Doubtless the society of practically unchanged. but in the old Servius's day, who witnessed the coming of Minerva, did not realise what this introduction meant, and how absolutely necessary it was for Rome's future develop- REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS ment that the be artisan class should 49 among her people, and that this class should be represented in the world of the gods. They knew little that in the temple on the Aventine was being brought to expression the trade-union idea, which was to pass over into mediaeval the masters, still and modern labour-union, with latter-day parody in the its spirit both workmen of guild under religious auspices, and to find a of hostility to employers, and its indifference, an organisation, to things religious. Trade and handicraft were thus added to the at least as Roman world, of above the earth, men on and the awakening of the political responding religious phenomenon this, we must clear the and of the gods earth, remains it way by us to consider for spirit ; and its but before cor- we do casting aside one ancient hypothesis connected with Servius's religious reforms, which is not correct, at least which the ancients meant The writing is in the way in it. of the earlier period of Rome's history sometimes complicated rather than helped by the statements of the generally well-meaning but often Their real misguided historians of later times. knowledge of the facts was in many cases no greater they lacked what modern histoa breadth of view and a knowledge than ours, while rians possess of the : phenomena of among many religious nations. many periods and The study of the social and history in movements under Servius presents us with E REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 50 an interesting illustration of this. It was customary to ascribe to Servius Tullius the introduction namely of the cult of Fortuna, and Plutarch takes occasion twice Moralia to describe the his in interest of Servius in this cult and to recount the extraordinary number of temples which he chance of goddess under to built her various the great attributes. The Romans of Plutarch's day thought of Fortuna very much the way in which their poets, especially in described her, as a great and powerful of chance, the personification of the element goddess of apparent caprice which seems to be present in Horace, It is very much our the running of the universe. way of thinking of her, and of course both our own concept and the later Roman concept go back to But Greece had not always had this idea Greece. goddess of luck. of the The older purer age of Greek thought was permeated with the idea of the absolute immutable character of the divine will, a belief which precluded the possibility of chance or The earliest Greek Tyche (Fortuna) was caprice. the daughter of Zeus who that his will through her is shown in fulfilled his will and ; was often a beneficent will the tendency to think of her as a goddess It was only the growth of scepticism, of plenty. the failure of faith to bear up under the apparently contradictory lessons of experience, which brought into being goddess of in the chance, Alexandrian age the capricious winged Tyche, the deity REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS poised on the It ball. was this 51 habit of thought which eventually gave the Romans that idea of Fortuna which has became our idea because it is Roman prevalent one in the the periods with which we are literature most and life in Now familiar. if Fortuna be thought of in this latter way, it is a very easy matter to connect her with Servius Tullius, for the legendary accounts of Servius's career picture him as a very child of " fortune," raised from lowest estate to the highest power, the boy who became king. delight to honour, if little the slave What goddess would he not the goddess of the happy chance which had made him what he was ? very pretty, but it is unfortunately quite impossible, because whatever the time may have been when Fortuna began to be worshipped in All this Rome, it is is certain that the idea of chance did not enter into the concept of her until long after Servius's Instead the early Fortuna was a goddess of day. plenty and of among mankind as a among the protectress a goddess of fertility and fecundity. fertility, women and the herds Her full as of childbirth, crops and name was probably Fors Fortuna, a name two old temples across the river from Rome proper, in Trastevere, where she was which survived in of the crops. country by the farmers in behalf Fortuna is thus merely the cult-name added to the old worshipped meaning, in the which goddess Fors to intensify her broke off from her and finally REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 52 became independent, expressing the same idea of a Later under Greek influence the goddess of plenty. concept of luck, especially good-luck, slowly displaced The possibility of such a transition the older idea. fertility to good-luck is shown us in the phrase arbor felix" which originally meant a fruitful tree from " and later a tree of good omen. As regards Fortuna and Servius therefore there is no inherent reason why they should have been connected, and whenever it was that Fortuna began to exist, be it before or after came Servius, she into the world as a goddess of plenty and did not turn into a goddess of luck centuries after her birth. It must not be supposed that Rome in this sixth century before Christ could take into herself traders and artisans, among her own without all these and become thus interested also citizens in these new employments, receiving a corresponding a larger political till Thus life. impulse toward there began that ever- increasing participation in the affairs of the Latin league, which world was her dominion. always belonged to insignificant first is this league, member. Alba Longa stood out she afterwards step toward acquiring a probable that Rome had but at first as a very Those were the days in which It lost, as leader, a leadership which but of which the recollection was retained because the Alban Mount behind Alba Longa remained the cult-centre, connected with the worship of the god of the league, the Juppiter of the REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS Latins when (Juppiter Latiaris), not only until the league ceased to exist, but even later Rome 53 B.C. 338 when kept up a sentimental celebration of the old In the course of time, for reasons which festival. we do not know. Alba Longa's power the mantle of her little town in still The coming most extraordinary Roman fell declined and upon a Aricia, existence not far from Albano. of Aricia to the presidency of the league a religious started supremacy religion. movement which in The the is checkered one of the of history ultimate result of this move- ment was the introduction of the goddess Diana into the state-cult of Rome, where she was subsequently identified with Apollo's sister Artemis. a long story, and to understand some distance Among the to make our it But this is we must go back beginning. more savage tribes and in the wilder mountain regions of both Greece and Italy there was worshipped a goddess who had a different name in each country, Artemis in Greece, Diana in Italy, but in nature very much the same. This does who was not imply that it was the same goddess orginally or that the early Artemis of Greece had any influence on the Diana of Italy. Their similarity was probably caused merely by the similarity of the conditions from which they sprang, the similar needs of the two She was a goddess of the woods, and of nature, and especially of wild animals, a patroness of peoples. the hunt and the huntsman, but also a goddess of all 54 REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS small animals, of all helpless little ones, and a helper too of those that bore them, hence a goddess of birth, and sphere of mankind a goddess of women Later in Greece Artemis was in the and of childbirth. absorbed into the sea-cult of Apollo on the island of Delos, where she became Apollo's sister, like him the child of similar Latona change ; but naturally Diana experienced no Rome, centuries later, she was until in identified with Artemis. artificially In the earliest times there were two places in Italy where the cult of Diana was especially prominent, both, as we should expect, in wooded mountainous regions : one on Mount Tifata (near Capua), the modern St. Angelo in Formis the other in Latium, in a grove near ; Aricia. It is with this have here to do. that we became so cult-centre latter The grove near Aricia famous that the goddess worshipped there was known " Diana of the Grove " (Diana Nemorensis), and as the place where she was worshipped was called the " Grove modern " " {iiemus), a name which is still retained in the She wds a goddess of the woods, of the animal kingdom, of birth, and so of women and almost all the dedicatory inscriptions which have Nemi." ; been found near her shrine were put up by women. She was worshipped above all by the people of Aricia, and she seems to have been the patron deity of the town. When it fell to Aricia's lot to become the head of the league, her goddess Diana promptly assumed an important position in the league, not REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 55 because she had by nature any political bearing whatsoever, but merely because she was wedded to Aricia, career. and experienced Thus there all came the vicissitudes of her into the league, alongside of the old Juppiter Latiaris of the Alban Mount, the new Diana Nemorensis of Aricia, and sacrifices to her formed a part of the solemn ritual of the united towns of Latium. It does not take actually a great many years for a religious custom to acquire sanctity, and before many generations had passed, Diana was felt to be quite as original and essential a part of the worship of the league as Juppiter himself these same centuries and influence one of way to its in Rome was growing in During importance the league, until, instead of being towns, she was in a fair insignificant become its president. Here her diplomacy The league was of course essentially a political institution, but in a primitive stepped in to help her. society political institutions are religious ones, and the influence lies through still in tutelage to direct road to strong political religious zeal. The way to leadership in the Latin league lay through excessive devotion to Juppiter and Diana. accidental coincidence that we find It is therefore Rome in no the period of Servius building a temple to Juppiter Latiaris on the top of the Alban Mount, and introducing the worship of Diana into Rome, building her a temple on the Aventine, hence outside the poniermin. Yet it was not the introduction of her worship as an REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 56 ordinary state-cult, for then she would have been taken inside the pomerium with far greater right than Hercules and Castor were. It was, on the contrary, the building of a sanctuary of the league outside the pomerium, yet inside the the adoption of Diana as a wall civil not ; Roman goddess, but the close association of the Diana of the Latin league with Rome. It was the attempt to put Rome as religiously well which Aricia held was the still the and it league-goddess helped league as politically ; to was the position tradition has ; the build into successful. temple Diana it that and the ; dedication day of the temple, August 13, was the same as that of the temple at Nemi. The Roman temple was outside the pomeriiun therefore, not because she was a foreign goddess like Minerva, but because as a league-goddess she must be outside, not inside, the sacred wall of Rome. Diana had been* introduced for a specific purpose game, not because Rome felt it is religious need of her hardly to be as part of a diplomatic any real ; expected therefore that her subsequent Rome would be of any great importance. career in Naturally when once the state had taken the responsibility of the cult upon pagan Rome at least act ; in itself, that cult was assured lasted, for the state as long as was always faithful, the mechanical performance of a ritual but popular interest could not be counted on, many of the things which Diana stood especially as REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 57 to women, were ably not likely that Diana would ever have been of importance in the religion of for, for example her relation It represented by Juno. is subsequent time, had it not been for another accident which served to keep alive the interest in Diana, just as the accident of Diana's connection with the Latin league had aroused that interest in the beginThis was the coming of Apollo and his sister ning. Artemis. Apollo came first, probably during the time of Servius, but Artemis seems to have come much later, not before B.C. 431. Her identification with Diana was inevitable, and from that time onward Diana begins a new life with myths of Artemis, but this all the attributes and new Artemis-Diana was quite as different a goddess from the old Aventine Diana as the new Athena-Minerva was from the old Aventine Minerva. The political interest of the Romans had been aroused, they had found their life-work, their career was opening before them, and must not it supposed that the reflex action of this spirit on the religious world new be political was confined to the two league temples, one to Juppiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount, miles away from Rome, and one to Diana outside the pomerimn over in the woods of the Aventine. This political building interest of was no artificial acquisition, but the inevit- able expression of an instinct. It must therefore find its representation inside the city, in connexion REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 58 with a deity the people. who was already deep in the hearts of This deity could be none other than the sky-father Juppiter, who had stood by them in the old days of their exclusively farming life, sending them sunshine and rain in due season. Up on the Capitoline striker," " he was the worshipped as Feretrius, most fearful attribute as the god of his in To him the lightning. the richest spoils of war opimd) were due, and to him the conqueror It was this gave thanks on his return from battle. {spolia Juppiter of the Capitoline who was chosen to be the divine representative of Rome's political ambition ; and her confidence her in success inevitable the future, and the in lay the omen cult-names, of the cognoniina, with which this Juppiter was henceforth and forever adorned, Juppiter Optimus Maximus. These adjectives are^ no mere idle ornament, no purely pleasant phraseology they express not merely the excellence of Rome's Juppiter but his absolute ; superiority to other Juppiters, including Juppiter all And Latiaris. so while Rome with one hand was temple for the league on the Alban Mount, merely as a member of the league, with the other hand she was building a temple in the heart building a of her city to a god to himself all other who was to bring into subjection gods who dared to challenge his supremacy, just as the city which paid him honour all other cities which refused to was to overcome acknowledge her. From henceforth Juppiter Optimus REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS Maximus Rome. represents It all was under were fought, it that Roman in banner that her battles his was to him most truly is 59 time to come that in all returning generals gave thanks. Tradition sets the completion of the Capitoline temple in the first year of the republic, but the idea and the actual beginning of the work belong to the later kingdom and hence the contemplation of and to our present period, forms a it fitting close to the And development which we have tried to sketch. now that this part of our work is over it may be well have to ask ourselves been necessity travelled so what we have main the explored, that may seen, for there many bypaths which we have road not be entirely distinct in of we have our mind. In the period which corresponds to the later king- dom, and roughly to the sixth century before Christ, " and which we have called " Servian for convenience, we have watched a primitive from the world's pastoral community, turning into a small city-state with political interests, the beginnings of trade and handicraft, and various rival social classes isolated life, ; and we have seen how along with the coming of these outside interests there came various new cults connected with them, most of them implying entirely new deities, and only one or two of them new sides of old deities. received its The body first blows ; of old Roman what Tacitus says of the downfall of the empire — " had religion {Hist. Then was i. 4) that REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS 6o secret of the empire disclosed, that — Roman true of is it was possible Rome " be appointed elsewhere than at for a ruler to in this religion period when it was discovered that the state might take into itself deities from outside Rome. And yet while the principle itself was fatal, the practice of had been without much harm. inevitable, it, so far, Rome's growth was was quite as inevitable that these new it interests should be represented in the world of the gods her old gods did not suffice, hence new ones were introduced. But the actual gods brought in thus far were harmless Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana ; ; Rome any never did in injury themselves, never injured her national morale, never lowered the tone of earnest sobriety which had been characteristic of the old regime. So Rome was good, and well had far it if she Olympus could now. have What shut the old it been for gate of the religion her had not Politics, trade, and art provided was now present. With these she was abunwere now represented. But that dantly supplied for all her future career. not to be, the gate was still open, and the was destructive influence of Greece host of new deities, was soon who were overwhelm the old Roman gods might forgive virtues, to the — but to sap to send in a destined not only to —which away in itself the old we Roman maintenance of which the atmosphere of these old gods was essential. The forerunner of REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS this influence was in himself innocent enough, 6i it coming and the subset him in distinct which sequent developments was Apollo, and it is to his opposition to Juppiter Optimus now turn. Maximus that we V THE COMING OF THE SIBYL The Rome of the first consuls was a very different Not only was from that of the earHer kings. the population larger but it was divided socially Rome The simple into different classes. class patriarchal one- community had been transformed into the complex structure of a society which had in it virtually all those elements and interests, except the more strictly intellectual make up what we The world sense. creased in call of population, the and which ones, society in had also gods there too go to modern the there in- was between the old present a slight social distinction gods {Indigetcs) and the new-comers {Novensides), though it distinction is was open felt. how The new gods to question strongly this thus far were not incommensurable with the old ones. They formed a tolerably harmonious circle, and there was the old not felt to be any need of new priesthoods them all. There priests were sufficient to look after ; were a few new names, and a few new temples or altars, but everything was in the old spirit, and there 62 was no THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 63 between the old and the new. None rivalry of the old gods was crowded into the background by the new-comers. This was on the face of it impossible as yet, because the new gods all represented new ideas which had not been provided for Even Diana, who afterwards of Juno, stood at somewhat the functions usurped present pre-eminently for the political idea pure and under the old scheme. This period simple, so far as Rome was concerned. of equipoise did not continue very long, but while it lasted it was beyond doubt the best and strongest period whole the in There was no violent history of Roman religion. religious enthusiasm, but then there was no corresponding depression offsetting It it. was the cold but conscientious formalism which was best adapted so long as to the Roman character, because held sway the excesses of superstition it were avoided. But element of superstition was already on in within a few years of the open- this the way, it ing of the influence celebrated came republic, its Punic War. and it exercised its insidious more and more powerfully ever until it wildest orgies in the time of the Second It is in this period of the first three centuries of the republic, roughly from B.C. 500 to 200, that this change was produced. Outwardly resembled a steady growth in religious feeling and B.C. it enthusiasm, and contemporaries. it It might well have seemed so to was a period of many new gods THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 64 and many new temples, but this harm. It was the principle behind It damage. true Roman and the was the religion last half what the first in was no itself it which did the essential contradiction to and Roman character what demanded ; of the republic paid the price for half had done, in a decline of faith which has scarcely been exceeded in the world's history. It of has been customary for writers on the history morals to attribute these changes to the Roman and of course in the coming of Greek influence main this is correct, but these writers have in general neglected to analyse this Greek influence more ; closely, in and different to distinguish the various aspects of periods, and to ask and why question influence this ticularly harmful should Romans. to the spoken of as the influence of Greek philosophy, but incorrect, entirely our for present we for all is so par- generally literature this period know literature did not begin to influence be It it answer the that Rome and is Greek until the time of the Punic wars, and yet the Greek influence of which we speak here began to exert its effects two hundred and The religion more nor It is cause real fifty of years before the Punic wars. unnatural stimulation of the during these three centuries is nothing less than the books of the Sibylline oracles. therefore a very definite which we have before us. and interesting problem It is to examine the THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 65 workings of these oracles and to explain had such an extraordinary society, that in effect why they on religion and three centuries they could entirely change both the form and the content of Roman religion, and under the guise of increasing its zeal, so sap its vitality that it required two almost hundred years of human experience and suffering before true religion was in some sense at least restored to its own place. Like the origin of almost movements in the Sibylline later age, for all the great religious the world's history, the beginnings of books are shrouded whom in A mystery. history had no secrets, with a cheap would-be omniscience told of the old who visited him at the original price the six that woman Tarquin and offered him nine books for a certain price, and when he refused to pay it, went away, burned three, and then returning offered his again refusing she and were left ; on' went away, burned three more finally offered at the same old price the three remained, which he accepted. Except as a sidelight on the character of the early Greek trader the story is worthless. It is doubtful even if the that presence of the Sibylline books in Rome goes back The first dateable use of beyond the republic. them was little fact the year B.C. 496, and there is one connected with them which makes it in probable that they did not come in until the republic had begun. This is the circumstance that in view F THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 66 of the great secrecy of the books is it unthinkable Rome that they should ever have been in without guardians, and yet the earliest guardians that we know of were a newly made priesthood con" two sisting originally of two men, the so-called especial men in of charge the sacrifices " {Ilviri sacris Now the form of this title is peculiar facmndis). is not a it proper name like the titles of all the other priesthoods. Instead it is built on the plan ; of the titles of the special committees appointed by the Senate for administrative purposes mark ; it bears every under the republic, rather than under the kingdom, at a time when the Senate had the supreme control. So much may therefore of having arisen be said regarding the time when they were intro- duced into came, this Rome as for the place from ; which they was without doubt the Greek colonies Italy, probably the oldest and most important of them, Cumae, so famous for its Sibyl. This was not the first association that Rome had of Southern had with Cumae, for in all probability the worship of Apollo had spread from there into Rome toward the close of the kingdom. were connected inspired the Sibyl, but in it is Apollo and the books Cumae, for it was Apollo who and the oracles were his commands, at almost certain that Apollo came to advance of the oracles. He came Rome there as a god of healing and was given a sacred place outside the pomeriuni in the Campus Martins, on the spot THE COMING OF THE SH^YL where later (B.C. 431) a temple was Artemis -Diana and built their 67 for him mother with his sister Latona. This was the only state temple that Apollo ever had, until Augustus built the famous one on It was in the wake of Apollo that the Palatine. the Sibylline books came. selves, they were kept so expect to As books them- for the we cannot secret that know much about them, but in rare cases where the seriousness of the exigency warranted it, the Senate permitted the actual publication of the oracle upon which its action was based, and of the oracles preserved to Greek which thus published one or two have been us. They were of course written in and were phrased in the ambiguous style obvious reasons was the most advantageous for style for oracles. certain They commanded specific deities, naturally all the worship of of them Greek, and the performance of certain more or less comWhen they were received in plicated ritual acts. Rome, they were placed Optimus Maximus on in the temple of Juppiter the Capitoline in the keeping " two of their guardians, the new priesthood of the men in charge of the sacrifices." This committee to ten in B.C. 367 when the the Patricians and the between great compromise was made, and the Plebeians were Plebeians of two was enlarged admitted into this one priesthood, with fifteen, five repre- Subsequently Sulla made the number which continued as the official number from sentatives. THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 68 that time so that on, the periods is referred to. however lay Senate saw The is priesthood ordinarily when one of called the Qtiindecemviri, even books When the hands of the Senate. in the older real control of the the the priests were ordered to consult fit, the books, but without this special command even their guardians dared not The approach them. to the Senate priests reported what they had found, and the Senate then decreed whatever actions the oracles commanded. The carrying out was again the of these charge of the Sibylline priests, who performed the ceremonies demanded and were for all time to come responsible for the maintenactions in ance of any new cults which might be introduced. When we see how carefully these oracles were guarded and how circumspectly their use was hedged about by senatorial control, and when we think how harm the use relatively little in Greece well seem as of this if of oracles had wrought the centuries of her history, in all the statements made in it may the beginning chapter about the havoc caused by these But the efforts of oracles were grossly exaggerated. the that Senate to safeguard these oracles only prove the realised parison certain the older and wiser men in the community how dangerous they were, and the com- with Greece essential leads to a consideration differences between the Roman temperament which made was meat for one into poison of Greek and that which for the other. THE COMING OF THE SH^^L 69 In the older purer age of Greece the gods were never far away from men, they lived almost side by there were to be sure many gods side with them ; of whom they were afraid desired to keep as far whom and from away as other gods of whom they constructing the records of history they did not work backwards from the of the present into an ever darkening past, but were a great to many In think. they possible, but there liked their light they began from the beginning in the full light of the gods from whom all things sprang, and mythology passed into history by imperceptible gradations. the beginning when all were completely in the hands of the gods Art they did about their immediate past. They knew more about things than began very early to make them familiar with the appearance of the gods, so that there was little that was mysterious about their religion, so little that the element of mystery had later to be almost artificially cultivated in the " mysteries." They gods rather than feared them, and they respected the felt that the gods would do them no harm unless they themselves first sinned against them or their own fellow-men, and the oracles of Delphi were no more terrifying to them than the coming of the word of God was to the prophets of Israel. They were accustomed to these messages, which were almost every-day affairs. It was all a part of that marvellous poise of nature which made the every-day mortal Greek almost as s THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 70 calm as the unperturbed imperturbable faces of gods as their great sculptors saw them. In their Rome element The superstitious all was very different. the Italian character, which amazes us so in much to-day when cultured and women in good society because of the evil twentieth century is eye, Sometimes thousand years. men persecute their fellows a heritage of many seems as it if were it the Italian birthright, the blight of Etruria which came spite of themselves. into their nature in required centuries to educate concept of individual personal Roman the gods. It into the He had by terror of unknown powers all about him, and by regarding religion as the science of propitiating the right power on the One could not know these powers, right occasion. begun his theological career one did not desire their masters and Their gods were at once but never their to. their servants, The early Roman knew no such thing companions. as an oracle, the only messages from the gods were the expressions prodigies and of their portents. wrath, They in did sending of indeed consult the the gods by watching the flight of birds or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, but it was merely to obtain a " yes or no " answer to a categorical question was pleasing to the gods. as to whether a certain act Otherwise all point where nor faith about them sight carried failed, them la}- m}'ster}', and at the since neither imagination an\- further, superstition THE COMING OF THE SHiYL stepped the in, more 71 and the more they thought of the gods terrified they became. Now to a people thus constituted a divine if you present book of infal- Hble oracles, you increase their terror in greater measure than the book itself can assuage it, and with the use of the book the simpler forms of their old belief will of this And no new grow " and less effective in the face which can work wonders. how you may hedge matter book about, less witchcraft," the use of the be used more and more as the will it is increasingly aroused. of the outward and the inward effects craving for magic The study of the Sibylline books is therefore the real history of The outreligion in the first half of the republic. ward seen effects are in the introduction of a series who were of Greek gods, in themselves in the main eminently respectable, and whose presence was no offence to good morals, and in we stop there we fail to understand why the religious interest of the Second Punic War should change so quickly to itself if the scepticism of the following century. effects The inward though they are hard to yet be discovered between the lines of however, see, may the chronicle, which, will explain all the undermining of we wonder not why the structure suddenly but how it managed to last so foundation, until collapsed so long. The history of the activity of the books begins peaceably enough. In the year B.C. 496 Rome was THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 72 bad way in a ; her crops had failed and the importa- from Latium was rendered very difficult because of the war with the Latins in which she was tion of grain In her distress she turned to the SibyHine engaged. books, and on the occasion of this their first use, the oracles ordered the introduction recorded into Rome of the cult of three Greek deities, Demeter, Dionysos, It was a most appropriate and characterand Kore. In the istic choice. first place the deities in question were worshipped at Cumae, the home of the books, whence Rome could, and probably did, borrow the cult ; and goddess of in second the grain, and place it was Demeter was the from Cumae that Rome was already beginning to obtain her imported Thus the coming of the Cumaean grain supply. Demeter into the religious world of Rome is but the Cumaean grain into The Greek goddess of just as Castor had come sacred parallel to the coming of the material world of grain came with Rome. the grain, with the Greek cavalry, with this essential distinction however that Demeter came b}- the incantation of the books and the enactment of the Senate, whereas Castor's It is coming was a slow and normal development. important to notice closely exactl\- what happened when these deities were introduced, partly because they form the first recorded instance, and hence may well have acted as a model for subsequent repetitions of the act, but also because we have a more definite knowledge of the phenomena in this THE COMING OF THE SIBYL case than in many In others. clear that the deities were felt the first ^i it place to be foreign : is not only was their temple built out the Aventine way, in the valley of the Circus Maximus, outside the — — poweriujH, but a much more significant fact their Greek names were dropped, and they were given Roman names instead, to make them seem less out of place. Then too these Roman names were not new names, translations of their Greek titles, but were the names of already existing Roman deities with whom they were easily identified, so that we see at once that their coming was no Roman Olympus of the ; real enrichment what, they stood for was represented there, and their coming was simply a reduplication, with the consequent result already that as these parvenus increased influence, they robbed of all in prominence and their vitality the sober Roman deities to whom they had attached themWhat were these original deities who were old selves. doomed to death in B.C. 496 ? name of the old Roman goddess fertility, about whom we know thus the of Demeter took Ceres, a goddess just enough to belonged to the old religion of Numa and that she was at heart quite a different person assert that she from Demeter. All the rest is lost, submerged under the new Demeter-Ceres with her temple built by Greek architects It is this and her April games. an extraordinary new Ceres who soon develops political importance because her temple is to the THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 74 Plebeians as a class what the temple of Minerva is It is there that to the unions of organised labour. they have their meeting-place, and the temple itself is always their treasury as contrasted with the Saturn The temple, the treasury of the state as a whole. very officers of the Plebeians, the famous Plebeian get aediles, temple name from their {aedes). This association with this political side of her activity the only real advantage, except the grain itself, the two form at connected with her importation is ; best poor economic compensation a increasing immoral effects ever the for games of of the public Ceres. But though Ceres is the most important of the three deities economically not forget esting, and we must politically, the other two, both of though one of them more whom for are inter- what she is not Along with Demeter came Dionysos and Demeter's daughter Kore the three were associated in the solemn mysteries of Eleusis, than for what she is. : but none of the beauty of these ideas went over into Demeter was merely the deified the Roman cult. and Dionysos was little else than the god of wine, while poor Kore fell out without any grain-traffic, particular content for a curious reason see in a whom Liber, The only moment. Dionysos could who had had be old that Roman identified we shall deity with was the god a rather interesting history, and who had done enough along the line of self-develop- THE COMING OF THE SIBYL ment to deserve to insignificance fertility under the prominence of his new Liber was at this time a flourishing god namesake. of 75 a better fate than to be crushed and, since the introduction of the grape into Italy, especially the patron of the fruit of the he had made his own career, and there was a time when he had no individuality of his own but vine, but was merely a cult-adjective of the great god Juppiter, Thus all fertility in every phase of life. out of the original Juppiter-Liber there had grown and now this Liber lost the independent god Liber the giver of ; his comes Finally the who this by identification Kore, Demeter's individuality Romans were hard with Dionysos. Here daughter. to find a goddess put to it represented any similar content, and after all was no light task because Kore has little meaning unless — she bride logical knowledge Romans is taken a process which Pluto's also as Persephone, required a mytho- and appreciation in which the of the early republic were totally lacking. But there was an old goddess Libera, a shadowy and paired with the masculine potentiality contrasted and they chose her and gave Kore her name. have a curious proof of how little the Romans knew of Kore- Libera, and of how purely mechanical Liber, We both the introduction of Kore and her identification with Libera were, in the fact that about two hundred and the fifty real years later, as we shall see, Persephone, Kore, was introduced into Rome as an THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 76 new altogether began to and existed there side by side a century before people Libera stood that Proserpina and realise same Greek goddess. for the was necessary to go into these It that deity, Libera for at least with we might understand as much details in order as possible of the process by which the gods of the Sibylline books were assimilated into the body of Roman religion. We see how in the main they were superfluous and therefore unnecessary and even undesirable because by their presence they which were robbed old Roman deities and how those elements their existence, least in accord with the old of them in Roman were most apt to develop, and how in general their adoption was a purely mechanical process, like spirit in witchcraft, where the form is all important because the meaning cannot be understood, and how any act was in because of all therefore the estate of these gods different totally Rome from what it had been in in Rome they were introduced, their practical Greece, stripped mjthology, worshipped only for their and compelled therefore to work bearings, for their living. The importation more to Rome physical needs addition of grain thus of grain than the ; it mere Cumae meant satisfaction of her much more than meant three deities to imported was from the her state-cult, for the carried from Cumae to Ostia by sea and so up the Tiber to Rome, and the THE COMING OF THE SIBYL tj whole matter therefore marks one of the important steps in Rome's interest in especially in ocean commerce generally but As commerce. yet she did not do the actual carrying herself, but she began to be interested in it, and the sea began to mean someThis increased interest thing to this inland town. in trade in general and this inceptive interest in " " those who go down to the sea in ships have both of them time ; left their two new reflexion in the religious deities life are introduced, both of of the them almost certainly by means of the Sibylline oracles, though some accidental blanks in our historical tradition The have deprived us of chronicle of the year details. B.C. 495 there was a dispute in that year as to dedicate the temple of Mercury. first appearance in our sources. This tells us that who should is Mercury's The circumstances vowing of the temple have been omitted through some oversight, but in spite of this the con- of the nexion of his introduction with the Sibylline books beyond all reasonable doubt, for the simple reason is that the guardians of the oracles always looked after Notwithstanding the subsequent time. suddenness of his appearance and the silence of the his cult in all chronicle, his story is quite clear and his past history easy to restore, at least in outline. The versatile Hermes, who as messenger of the gods plays a part in so many Greek myths, became in the course of time among other things associated THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 78 with travelling, as god of roads, and also with trade, partly because trading necessitates Hermes was partly because and travelling, also the protector of the Thus market-place in which the trading was done. he was called " Hermes Protector of the Merchant " {Empolaios) and in this capacity went into the colonies of Greece, including those of Southern Italy. Thus Hermes with travelled the Cumae and became known merchant grain to the from Romans. They however knew him merely as the god of trade, and their name for him is nothing but the translation into Latin of his Greek For a long time Mercurius it among cult-title : Evipolaios = Alcrcurius. was thought that there had existed a the original gods of Rome, but the traces of this old god are apparent rather than real and suggest one phase of that pastime of which the later Romans were so fond, that of writing history backwards and putting an about the gods Thus whom artificial halo of antiquitj- they borrowed from Greece. Mercury was received into the state-cult at about the time when the grain trade began, and was, as it were, the divine representative of the interest which the Roman state took in the whole trans- His temple was outside the pomeriuni on the Aventine side of the Circus Maximus. It was action. in this temple of the merchant god that the primitive of Commerce {collegmni nicrcatonivi) had Chamber its beginning, commercial, an association, whose partly members, the sacral, partly mercuriales, are THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 79 frequently met with in literature and also in inscriptions, one of which has been found as far away as the island of which he had god of In Delos. Romans Mercury the actual cult of the never regained the many-sidedness lost in coming to them merely as a In this capacity he appears on trade. sextans of the old the copper coinage, and under the empire he went into the provinces as the companion of Mars, since the merchant went side by side with soldier. On the contrary when in the third century before Christ Greek literature came to Rome, the simple idea of Mercury was reinforced by many ideas and he entered into Roman poetry with all the attributes and functions of Hermes but this new Greek ; this had little no great or no effect on the cult and there were rivals to the old temple near the Circus Maximus, no cult-centre with advanced Greek ideas, as we have seen spring up in the case of Hercules, Castor, Minerva, and Diana. We have already seen how the trade brought four new deities to rise of the grain Rome, but The grain there one more chapter to our story. itself and the trade itself had now obtained their divine is complements, but the sea had not yet received its due it too must have its parallel among the gods of Rome. And so it came to pass that again under ; the influence of the fateful books, though exactly how we cannot say, the Greek Poseidon came into Rome. The sea had always meant much when or THE COMING OF THE SIBYL So to the Greeks, "The troops sea and the joyful shout of Xenophon's " finds an echo all through the sea ! ! the centuries of Greek history before and after the But the multitude of islands and harbours Anabasis. Greece in them is marked contrast in to the dearth of where even to-day there is no good port of call on the west coast between Naples and and the latter would be useless, were Civitavecchia in Italy, — not for Trajan's mole. In Italy accordingly the sea-god Poseidon was worshipped only in the Greek it colonies, one at where however he had two famous Tarentum, later called cults, Colonia Neptunia, and at Paestum, whose old name was Poseidonia. The Romans had worshipped deities of water in one abundance, as water meant deities rivers, became an agricultural and drought, death life, people, ; for but their were those of the sweet waters of springs and But when the they knew no god of the sea. oracles brought Poseidon to Rome he was identified Roman water-god Neptune, whose cult We do not know henceforward included the sea. with an old w^here the shrine of the old sweet-water Neptune had been, but his old festival had occurred on July 23. The new Poseidon-Neptune was given a temple outside the poinerium in the the new was connected with that the dedication Campus Martius, but the old in so far at least day of the new temple was July day of the old Neptune festival. With the introduction of Neptune, the sea-god, 23, the THE COMING OF THE SIBYL the had accomph'shed, as state divine marine insurance ; it were, a 8i sort of the transport of the grain but it was now watched over by a Roman god was not to be expected that the cult of a sea; god would ever mean very much to the Romans. The maritime commerce of the Eternal City was very slow sequent Italy in developing, and proportions, engaged in it, not it because grew to sub- its Romans of foreigners who the but because those took to the sea by nature later became Romans. Nor did naval warfare fall to her lot until the First Punic War, and even then her victories were gained by the tactics of land fighting transferred to the decks own and the enemy's, fastened together by landing-bridges, and the glory of victory It was not was due not to Neptune but to Mars. of two ships, her until the civil wars at the close of the republic that and that Neptune received real naval battles occurred, his share of glory for the victory at 31, and over Sextus later Actium Pompeius, in in B.C. a temple by Agrippa in the Campus Martius, behind the beautiful columns of which the Roman Stock- erected Exchange transacts its business to-day. decade of the republic therefore, as we have seen, a group of Greek gods was introduced by the Sibylline oracles, no one of whom can be In the first said to have been really needed, no one of whom except the sea-element in Neptune represented any new and vital principles not already present in the c; THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 82 world, religious The not of if best that can be Numa, at least of Servius. of these gods is that two of them, notably Mercury and Neptune, exerted no positively detrimental influences on later generations. For the next two centuries our said one or chronicles are silent, so far as the actual introduction of new and it deities is by the aid of the books not until B.C. is concerned, 293 that the narrative of new But in other ways the oracles gods begins again. were not idle during these two hundred years. must rid ourselves of the idea that it We was necessary that their consultation should always result in the importation of some new Greek deity. might order the carrying out of some rite The oracles new religious regarding the deities already present, and these especially the public processions so feed the ever-growing superperformed, frequently stition of the populace. It is essential to a charm religious or rites, incantation that strange or foreign, without ; portents, when it it is should above contain all something things help from and when the gods when cattle their statues send prodigies and weep and sweat blood, speak, and meteors something strange and unusual fall from the sky, must be done to counteract these things. Among the foreign acts thus ordered the sacred procession occurs frequently. It started from the temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius and passed into the city through the Porta Carmentalis, went across the Forum and then outside THE COMING OF THE SIBYL the poniermni again the to 83 temple of Ceres, and then to the temple of Juno Regina on the Aventine. It was therefore a power from without which came into their city to purify them and away out to carry of the city again the impurities of which had it rid the community. It is also characteristic of such semi-magical things that they lose their effects after a few applications, and other things must be sought always more complicated more and strange. Thus from the beginning of the republic down through the Second Punic War we have a series of extraordinary measures, growing more and religious human frenzy sacrifices more complicated of the after years at the are performed until command begin again to be introduced, and century that we now turn. deities It is of In this the third century before Christ the books. this the in Cannae even that probable the it is to Romans had always what their names were under the old regime we do not know, worshipped certain powers of healing, but except that possibly they were connected with the At the close of the kingdom they gods of water. received, as we have seen, Apollo the divine healer, Apollo Medicus, and this was originally the only of his activity which he exercised at Rome. side At various seasons of plague during centuries of the republic they called on and on one such occasion (B.C. the him 431) they early for help, built him THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 84 But a temple. the course of time in men began to think lightly of the old family physician who had stood by the Romans during more than two centuries ; his methods were too conservative, they were felt A new god of Rome, the Greek god not to be thoroughly up to date. healing had in appeared whom myth called Apollo's son, though he had had no connection with Apollo. His great sanctuary was at Epidauros, and from Asklepios, originall)' there his cult spread over first he was known at private individuals, the Greek Tarentum tagious, and of the the worship of in Southern Metapontum It but ; of stories were eagerly heard. only who had brought him up from colonies or At the Greek world. all Rome is his probably Italy, his was con- cult miraculous cures no wonder then that the presence of a great pestilence in B.C. 293, the Sibylline books were consulted, " " it in when was found must Livy says, The war be brought to Rome from Epidauros." with Pyrrhus however was on, and nothing could be done that year except the setting apart of a in the books," as that Aesculapius solemn day of prayer and supplication to Aesculapius. It is interesting to observe how much the Romans have changed since the time exactly two centuries before (B.C. 493), when Ceres and her companions, the their first gods introduced by the books, received That was the acknowledgment of temple. gods well known at Rome, and even then they were II THE COMING OF THE SIBYL immediately gods identified with already existing now they ; 85 Roman actually send an expedition not only Rome but of god whom they outside of Italy itself to bring in the cult of a accept by his Greek name. 292) the expedition started In the following year (B.C. Epidauros to bring back the god, that is the was both his symbol and his visible presence. Such an importation of a sacred for sacred snake which snake from Epidauros is not unique in the case of Rome, but was the normal method of establishing a branch cult. this just established. the as to Snakes were kept at Epidauros for and many branches were thus purpose, It is an extremely interesting question medical value of the methods practical of healing practised at Epidauros and For a long time those best fitted its to branches. express a modern physicians who examined the matter, found nothing good in them, and their opinion seems to receive confirmation from some of technical opinion, the recently discovered at Epidauros, the most extraordinary tales of miraculous And yet many of these tales are not intended inscriptions which cures. tell as actual facts, but rather as pious legends, proclaimed for the edification of the devout, in order that their Before we condemn the might be quickened. whole affair, we must realise two facts one is that faith ; some of the most able minds of Greece, men who were otherwise by no means remarkable for their religious faith, believed implicitly in Epidauros and THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 86 went there to be cured ; and the other that the is the god was always supplemented by medicines, in which there may well have miraculous action of been some We about real value. are this told much too embassy rather than to Epidauros, for the of this third century different is Greek too little atmosphere from that of the was beginning to early republic. influence Rome, and those generations were being literature who were to be the pioneers in Roman literaThus Roman mythology was commencing born ture. along Greek lines and with Greek models, and one of the points where legend grew thickest and fastest coming of Aesculapius. The plain facts went to Epidauros, obtained the snake, brought it back safely to Rome, and established the sanctuary on the island in the Tiber, where a temple was built and dedicated is this in are evidentl)' that the committee Probably this was the first January I, B.C. 291. use to which the island had ever been put, and from this time dates the the city much ; first bridge connecting it with the other bridge, to the right bank, was later. The Romans had always considered the island a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Even in legend it was cursed, for it sprang from the wheat of the Tarquins. The)- had always desired to be cut off from it, and had always feared lest it might act as a means of approach for the enemy The {qw real facts of from the opposite bank. THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 87 Aesculapius's coming grew into a ronnantic account of how, to the great surprise and terror of the sailors, the snake went of and how own accord its into the Roman stayed aboard until they reached Antium, and then suddenly swam ashore and coiled itself up in a sacred palm tree in the enclosure of it ship ; the temple of Apollo there were in of ever despair and how, when they ; getting back again, it it returned peaceably to them at the end of three days, and all went well on the journey Ostia and up to the Tiber until they were passing the island, the snake went ashore to make its when permanent home there. It was a pretty formed the island fancy which into the a at likeness later date of a boat by building a prow and stem of travertine at either end, and it is a the traces of which may still be seen ; of the curious instance Rome S. in the modern Bartolommeo many city, stands survivals of ancient that on Aesculapius sanctuary, and so the far the site as Hospital of of the old we can tell, twenty-two centuries of suffering humanity have had the burden of their pain lightened there, in uninterrupted succession since that new year's day, above three hundred years before Christ, when the hospital of Aesculapius of Epidauros was formally opened. The coming of the god of healing in the opening may well be regarded as years of the third century THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 88 an omen of the great suffering which that century- Rome. It was a century of almost then first the Samnite war uninterrupted warfare the war with Pyrrhus and Rome's conquest of Southern Italy then after a breathing spell of about was to bring to : ; ; a decade the first war with Carthage, and Rome's then camin fighting at sea bitter apprenticeship ; and finally the war paigns in Cisalpine Gaul with Hannibal roughly filling the last two decades, the most fearful contest in all Rome's history, with ; her most terrible It is little in the to be in enemy wondered her own land of Italy. at therefore that this was religious depression, a time main a century of when the fear of the gods filled every man's heart and when every trifling apparent irregularity in the of nature course was exaggerated into a portent declaring the wrath of the gods and needing immediate and extraordinary moment just such a century of propitiation. as this in It some is in the middle of the 249) that the next recorded instance The first war with Carthage occurs. Rome had just suffered a terrible progress, (B.C. new gods was in off defeat the north-western point of Sicily, at Drepana, a defeat all the more hideous because it was supposed to have been caused by the impiety of the Consul Clodius, who, hearing that the sacred chickens would not " saying them all. let eat, perpetrated his grim jest by them drink then But to cap it all instead," the wall and drowning of Rome was THE COMING OF THE SIBYL Then struck by lightning. and the books were consulted. made 89 was necessary action They ordered that Dis and Proserpina, a black steer to Dis, and a black cow to Proserpina, three successive nights, out on the Campus Martius, sacrifice at should be to an altar which was called the Tarentuni^ and that ceremony should be repeated at the end of a the hundred years. Here the myth -makers of later times have been even more busily at work than they were in the case of Aesculapius. The Aesculapius story was fitted out by them merely with a few miraculous details, a few legendary ornaments, but the story of Dis and Proserpina was so covered with their fabrications that has only recently been freed it from them and seen in its true light, and certain phases were so absolutely perverted that there are number of very difficult points. To get a understanding of the situation we must begin a still clear quite a distance back. Taken as a whole, religious beliefs are most conservative things may grow as radical as in the world you ; among please, but his effect the general religious consciousness of his time tremely slight. the the individual is on ex- Occasionally the number of radical and certain classes of society individuals grows larger are affected by their views, but even, in the periods of religious development which we are apt to think of as most iconoclastic, society taken in the large, and on the average of all classes, is not much more THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 90 radical than in apparently a whole as religion section of it is more conservative than section from which change is And normal times. conservative, there the all while is one rest, a almost excluded, that In our discussion concerning the dead. the beliefs is of the religion of Numa we saw the very primitive character of Roman beliefs in this field, the firm retention of the old animistic idea of the dead, the tendency to class the dead together as a mass and to believe in a collective rather than an individual immortality, and above all the abhorrence dead and the disinclination to dwell on dition and the grave. to paint imaginary pictures of In view of these feelings we have that Roman gods it is of the their conlife beyond not strange great difficulty in finding any old of the dead, aside from the dead who all gods. These dead as gods {Di Manes) and possibly Mother Earth {Terra Mater) In Greece are the only rulers in the Lower World. are themselves contrary death was almost on the life, and though the conditions not unlike those in Rome, as in as natural as early times were Rohde in his PsycJw has so wonderfully described them, the Greek soon grew beyond this, and the world of the dead became almost as well known to him as the world of the There was a kingdom of the dead, and a These rulers were living. king and queen ruled over them. called by but the different names in different parts names which they had in of Greece, certain parts of II THE COMING OF THE SIBYL Hades the Peloponnesus, his Persephone The rest. 91 bride, the king of the dead and were destined to survive the cult of this royal pair travelled far and most notable development occurred in Attica, where Persephone became Kore the daughter wide, but its by Hades to become his bride, Hades himself under the sunny skies of Athens some of his terrors and became Pluto, the god of Demeter, stolen while lost of riches, especially the rich blessings of the earth. But all this was very foreign to Rome, and while the Greeks were thinking these thoughts, the Romans were going quietly along, content with their simple Di Manes. No better proof of this can be desired than the one accidentally given us in the introduction of Demeter and her daughter Kore into Rome as Ceres and Libera in B.C. 493, and the absolute word colourlessness and pointlessness of Libera, in a the entire lack of connexion in the con- religious Rome between Libera and Persephone. But in B.C. 249, almost two and a half centuries Rome had later, matters were on a different basis sciousness of ; been learning a great deal that was foreign to her old beliefs, and there was no longer anything impossible to her in the idea of individual rulers of the dead. Thus at the command of the books Pluto and Persephone were received into the state-cult, though the strangeness of the situation was acknowledged, at least in so far that they translated Pluto into the Latin Dis ; Persephone to be sure was left THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 92 more alone, or It is speaking was accommodated strictly to the Latin tongue by being changed of course impossible that the 249 were entirely ignorant of Pluto to Proserpina. Romans of B.C. and Persephone the Sibylline books bade them be brought in. Here again the traders from Southern Italy had been their teachers and the name Tarentuni of until ; the altar where the sacrifice was to be made may Tarentum as the source The Romans knew Tarentum only too possibly indicate the town of of the cult. well since the eventful war with Pyrrhus, which lay only a generation back in their history. And Romans adopted so the the Greek gods of the dead, and thus, at least theoretically, put their dead ancestors into subjection to the Greeks just as they at the the themselves, feet the descendants, of the Greeks in this enactment of Roman the life. Senate gave were sitting But though these gods and the citizenship, priests of the Sibylline books were in duty bound to perform the ritual of the cult, be it said to the credit of the Romans, the gods themselves never took a very deep hold of the religious life names, to be formulae deities, of the people sure, and stood crept side into in a general. few of Their the old by side with the older and Proserpina was made much of by the Roman but the real tests of devotion, poets dedicatory inscriptions, are almost entirely absent. Strangely ; enough the only thing which seems to THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 93 have caught their fancy was the weird ritual of the nightly sacrifice at the Tarentum, and especially its This idea of repetition after one hundred years. the hundred years Roman is rather than Greek, and whether it may not open have been added to the instructions in the oracle to it at is whole the give Thus to question least in were 249 Roman added matter an B.C. instituted the colour. Secular which were repeated with approximate accuracy in B.C. 146, and would doubtless have been again between B.C. 49 and 46, had not the Civil War completely filled men's minds and made Games, human to the dead, in sacrifices Meantime daily occurrence. backwards were in working and building out into fictitious hundred celebrations years On kingdom. apart, annalists own the past into hand we peculiar a series 249, one time of the B.C. preceding back the other Roman their fashion, of an almost battle, the the shall have occa- sion later to speak of the restoration of the and their reorganisation Under much like which is the test of individuals, often games by Augustus. adversity nations are very and a national weakness, entirely concealed in normal con- ditions, comes prominently and disastrously to the surface in the hour when strength is most needed. The war with Hannibal was Rome's history, dependence upon and the under just its Sibylline such a crisis in influence books Rome's was more THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 94 pronounced than sown during the ever. The destined seeds centuries earlier of superstition now burst into produce the fruit, the gathering of which was to be the bitter task of full blossom, to the closing centuries of the republic. The story of Punic War, regarded merely from the military standpoint, reads for Rome almost like a the Second nightmare, with its long succession of apparently easy victories turning one by one into defeats but when we add to this that other chronicle, of which ; equally fond, the long lists of portents and prodigies sent by the angered gods, and when we realise that to the masses of the people the wrath is Livy of the gods was more terrible and just as real as the hostility heart to of Hannibal, then reproach them for we have not the their religious frenzy. Seen by themselves, the jumping of a cow out of a second-story window, or the images of the gods tears, do not seem very serious matters, shedding but endow us with three hundred years of hereditar)' dread of these things, give us the instinctive interpretation of them as the turning away from us of the powers upon which we rely for help, nay their and our positive opposition to us and our hopes — condition in the presence of these be very phenomena would different. Thus almost every year between 201 had its B.C. 218 and share of religious ceremonial, and the Sibylline books, which had hitherto been, in theory THE COMING OF THE SIBYL at least, 95 merely an alternative method of religious procedure permitted to exist alongside of the older and more conservative forms, became now the order Like a Homeric picture of the day. quarrels of the in gods Olympus in run which the parallel to and Trojans on the plains of Troy, so every victory which Rome won over Hannibal on the field of battle was bought at the the of Greeks battles price of a victory of in the field of religion Greek gods over Roman gods and further, although Rome ; keeping Hannibal outside of her own walls, her gods did not succeed in defending the succeeded in pomerium against the Greek gods, and it is during this Second Punic War that this, the greatest safeguard of old Roman religion and customs, was broken down, and new gods the gained entire possession of the city, placing their temples on the From now on spots hitherto held most sacred. distinction ceases, all speak of a Roman and it is scarcely possible to in contrast to a Graeco-Roman important however to observe that this breakdown occurred because of excess of religious cult. zeal It is rather than and though we terioration all the Ceres through neglect and indifference, indeed notice a gradual de- may of the deities introduced by the books, way down from and miraculous Proserpina the busy working gods like Neptune to the more Mercury and Aesculapius, and the cult of Dis or with its possibilities of weird fantastic THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 96 worship, there have been however as yet only scanty But this was the traces of the orgiastic element. next and step, it was not long in The coming. with campaigns of the earlier years of the war Hannibal had passed, Cannae (B.C. 216) had been somewhat rapid where by Metaurus retrieved reinforcements the Hasdrubal, had been for (B.C. Hannibal, 207), led by to pieces, but the result cut was not what had been hoped for, and Hannibal had not left Italy, but entrenched in the mountains of the south he seemed to be preparing to pass the It was in this the year B.C. rest of his life there. 205 that the help of the books was again sought, peradventure they might show the way to drive if Hannibal that, upon the from of the out when land, he could Italy, if story is be conquered and driven the Great Mother of the gods should Rome be brought to the The reply came enemy should wage war country. a foreign-born from Phrygia. The rest of quaintly and withal so truthfully so by Livy (Bk. xxix.) that it will not be amiss to " The oracle discovered by the quote his words Decemviri affected the Senate the more on this told : — account because the ambassadors who had brought of Metaurus] to Delphi reported that when they were sacrificing to the Pythian Apollo the omens were all favourable, the and gifts that [vowed the at oracle greater victory was at the battle had hand giv^en response for the Roman that a people THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 97 than that one from whose spoils they were then And as a finishing touch to this bringing gifts. same hope they dwelt upon the prophetic opinion Publius Scipio regarding the end of the war, because he had asked for Africa as his province. of And so in prder that they might the more quickly obtain that victory which to itself promised them by the omens and oracles of fate, they began to consider what means there was of bringAs yet the Roman ing the goddess to Rome. people had no states in alliance with them Asia in however they remembered that formerly Aesculapius had been brought from Greece for the sake of the health of the people, though they had Minor no ; alliance with Greece. They realised too that a friendship had been Pergamon] he could . in . . begun with King Attalus [of and that Attalus would do what Roman people and so send ambassadors to him, .... behalf of the they decided to and they allotted them five ; ships-of-war that they might approach in a fitting countries favour. way to which Asia approaching offered they desired Now when they the to in order manner the interest in their the ambassadors were on their disembarked oracle asked at what Delphi, prospect and it them and the Roman people of accomplish- ing the things which they had been sent to do. It was that through King Attalus they would obtain what they sought, but that when is said that the reply H THE COMING OF THE SIBYL 98 Rome they should see Rome should be at hand they brought the goddess to to to man that the best it in Then they came receive her. to to Pergamon the king [Attalus], and he received them graciously and led them to Pessinus in Phrygia, and he gave them the sacred stone which, over to natives »the said, was the Mother of the gods, and bade them And Marcus Valerius Falto was carry it to Rome. sent ahead by the ambassadors and he announced that the goddess man in was coming, and that the best the state must be sought out to receive her with due ceremony." In the next year (B.C. 204) recounting new prodigies Livy continues Then too the matter of the Idaean Mother must after " : be attended Valerius, who had been one of the ambassadors announced that she would soon be sent ahead, had in Marcus aside from the fact that to, for — Italy, there was also a fresh message that she The Senate had to already at Tarracina. decide a very important matter, namely who was was the best man in the state, for every man in the state preferred a victory in such a contest as this to any commands the Senate or decided that of best the was all Publius matrons or which offices vote the the people might give him. was meet the goddess men the good Scipio. . ordered and ship, to carry her to to . . to in He go receive of They the state the then with to Ostia her from all to the land and to give her over to THE COMING OF THE SIBYL women the to carry. mouth of the After the ship came to the out in a small Tiber, Scipio, going had he as boat, 99 been received commanded, the goddess from the priests and carried her to land. And her the noblest women of the land . . received . and they carried the goddess in their arms, taking turn about while all Rome poured out to meet her, and incense-burners were placed before . . . the doors where she was carried by, and incense was burned in her honour. And thus praying that she might enter willingly and propitiously into the city, they carried her into the temple of Victory, which is on the Palatine, on the day before the Nones of April [April 4]. And this was a festal day and the people in great numbers gave gifts to the goddess, and a banquet for the gods was held, and games were performed which were called This extraordinary picture Megalesiar in the main part of it, historically correct. the enthusiasm of the is probably The most Roman striking populace, Thus was introduced summoned by means of the books, the one whose cult was destined to outlast that of all the others, and to do more harm and produce more demoralisation than all the other To understand why this was so, we cults together. is certainly not into Rome must go back The and we overdrawn. the last deity ever for a moment. influence of Greece on Rome was progressive, are able to indicate at least three distinct THE COMING OF THE SIBYL loo periods and phases of it, so far as religion is concerned first, the informal coming of a few Greek : gods who adapted themselves more or pletely the to Hercules and Apollo was Roman old and Castor indirectly character even com- less such ; are though the second Apollo, responsible for was the cause of the coming of the Sibylline books. The influence of these books period, because he produced the second period, with its characteristics of ever-growing superstition, and greater pomp in cult acts, but though the sobriety of the old days had changed into a restless activity, the new gods who came in and the new cult acts introduced were still of such a character that Romans could take But just as the part in the worship without shame. Apollo had produced the books, so now as the books brought in the Great Mother, and the third period had begun, the period staid their last bequest of orgiastic Oriental least certain among of Christianity. worship, We may Mother was, and why this be so different from the At which prevailed, classes, until all different points in at the establishment well ask who one Greek this cult Great should rest. Asia Minor and in Crete a goddess was worshipped, originally without proper name, as the great source of all fertility, the mother of all things, even of the gods. Mount Dindymos Phrygia was one of the chief centres of the cult, and there the Great Mother was known also as in THE COMING OF THE SIBYL loi From these various centres the cult spread Cybele. over all the Greek world, but wherever it went, it always gave evidence of its birthplace by certain strange Oriental elements both in its myths and in its rites. Its devotees were a noisy orgiastic band, who filled the streets with their dances, and the air with their singing and the clashing of their symbols, to the accompaniment of the rattling of coin in the money box — for the collection of money from the bystanders was always a part of the performance. " This then was what the best man in the state and the Rome Roman matrons went grave to receive — a sacred forth from stone representing the goddess, and a band of noisy emasculated priests and this was what they opened their gates to, took up into their holy of holies, the Palatine the birthplace come of bearing " ; and hill, The Greeks had again and like the Trojans who Rome. gifts, broke down their walls and took the wooden horse up into their citadel, Romans, the reputed descendents of these Trojans, were carrying up to their most sacred hill another gift of Greece which was They put the image in the temple of Victoria on the Palatine until such time as its own temple was ready to receive it, and the to capture their city. goddess of Victory seemed to respond to its presence, for did not Hannibal leave Italy the very next year ? And who would be so impious as to suggest that to and not Cybele belonged the glory, and that Scipio THE COMING OF THE SIBYL I02 Roman army in Africa affected Hannibal more than a sacred stone on the Palatine ? a strong be doubted whether anything but exigency would ever have induced to accept such an utterly foreign cult and well may It such a Rome great ; when the nightmare of the war was awoke to the realisation that a very been committed. To their credit past, the Senate serious act had be that said it The they did what they could to minimise the evil. goddess had brought her own priests with her, the cult was in their hands, and there the law decreed it must stay, That and no Roman citizen could become a law was really enforced is shown by several cases where punishment, even transportapriest. this tion across the sea, was meted out to transgressors. Then too the worship must be in the main confined to the precincts of the temple on the Palatine, and only on certain days of the year were the priests allowed to perform in the streets of the city. It is significant of the strength of Roman law that these enactments held good and were not changed and a half for three until centuries, the reign of Antoninus Pius. In the introduction of Mother the Great the Sibylline books performed their last and most notable achievement. deities, Hereafter they introduced no and were consulted only occasionally, for political purposes, for example the followers of Sulla, and in B.C. in B.C. 56 in new chiefly 87 against connexion I THE COMING OF THE SIBYL with a scheme of purely political import. was done, and we have seen in what 103 Their work it consisted. For three hundred years they had been encouraging the growth of superstition. From their vantage ground of the temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus, the essence of all that was most patriotically Roman in Rome, they had been giving forth these infallible seemed so much superior to the simple oracles which " " answers with which the old Romans yes and no had been content in their dealings with the gods. In times of peril by pestilence and by battle they had given advice, and the pestilence had ceased and the battle had turned to victory. It seemed indeed Sibyl deserved the gratitude of Rome. alone could teach them what the books had the that Time It was only in the coming really given them. generations that it became evident that the abuse of faith, the substitution of incantation for devotion, was destructive of true religion. It is the effect of this substitution on the various classes of society under the new and centuries trying social conditions of the last two of the republic that forms the theme of our next chapter. THE DECLINE OF FAITH It is In the fashion of our art not we of that like a centuries in to think day no fourteenth the revival Greece. evil of experiencing another are Renaissance, and fifteenth Rome, but of ancient in a leading behind Rome to the classic and In itself it even the pre-classic models of Greece. movement is a healthful tendency, a needed corrective to the search for novelty which characterised But in the closing years of the nineteenth century. our admiration for the Greek spirit we ought not to sensational forget that after its Alexander that beauty, and aged very regret the of our fact that spirit rapidly. Rome, like seemed at lost much We may certain times of indeed persons to possess strong faculty for assimilating the worst of her surroundings, while occasionally curiously unresponand yet we ought in justice sive to the better things acquaintance, a ; to strive to realise the fact that not only spirit at its the historical is the Greek best an unteachable thing, but that at moment when Rome came under influence the Greek world that was very old and weary. 104 THE DECLINE OF FAITH It was Rome's misfortune and not her 105 fault that when she was old enough to go to school, Alexandrianism with its pedantic detail was the order of the day in mythology, and the timorous post-Socratic schools were the teachers of philosophy. Naturally if Rome had been another Greece she would have worked back from these later forms to the truer, purer spirit, not Greece, and no thoughtful man ever pretended that she was. In the third century before Christ Greece began actively to influence but Rome was Rome ; before that time Hellenic influence had been confined largely to the effects on religion produced by the Sibylline books, and to the effects on caused by the presence of Greek traders. But now Greek thought as embodied in the literature began to affect Roman thought, and to bring into society being a literature based on Greek models. centuries of Sibylline oracles had produced for Three Rome religious condition of the Second Punic War, when she did not think twice before the pathological down breaking the hitherto separated elements in her religious the barrier which had from the adopted and at the same time national religion, unhesitatingly reached out to Asia Minor for an Oriental cult, masquerading in Greek colours, and placed on the Palatine the Great Mother of Pessinus. From steadily at work which shaped the history of Roman two remaining centuries till the close religion in the this time on two influences were THE DECLINE OF FAITH io6 of the republic one, mythology, directly affecting the forms of the cult and the beliefs concerning the : individual gods ; the other, philosophy, attacking the whole foundation of religious belief in general. Greece gave her gods to Rome when she herself was weary of them, she gave her the tired gods, exhausted by centuries of handling, long ago dragged down from Olympus, and weary with serving as lay -figures for poets and artists, and being for ever rigged out in new mythological garments, or jaded with the laboratory experiments of philosophers who tried to interpret them in every conceivable fashion or else to do away with them wonder that it did not take the a century to come that the only one to the the Magna It is no end of these gods, to find among them who their religious desires all, entirely. Romans more than was the least could satisfy Greek of them Mater, and having found this to go more like unto her, in a forth to take to themselves word, to crave the sensational cults of the Orient. And the philosophy which Greece gave Rome was no better than the mythology. that human thought experienced It is not strange a reaction after a century which contained both Plato and Aristotle, but it is a pity that Rome should have learned her philosophy from a period of doubt and scepticism an age in which the lesser masters, who had known the greater ones, pupils' pupils. had gone, leaving nothing but THE DECLINE OF FAITH 107 The history of religion in Rome during the last two centuries of the republic is the story of the and reaction of these two tendencies action one toward the novel and sensational we which may call superstition, philosophy of doubt, which — in the the state. of religion ward the in the worship, other the we may call scepticism presence of the established religion of This much the two centuries have in common, but here first — these their centuries was able to hold resemblance ends. In the 200-100) the (B.C. state her own, at least in out- appearance, and to wage war against both In the other century (B.C. 100 to tendencies. Augustus) politics gained control of the state religion and so robbed her of her strength that she was crushed between the opposing forces of superstition and scepticism. It is to the story of the earlier of these two centuries, the second before Christ, that we now turn. With the close began for prosperity. exactly Rome of the Second distributed, semblance to and it some of our commercial prosperity, general Punic War there period of very great material This prosperity was, to be sure, not a bettering of increase not is in that it economic of the without modern its instances re- of was not so much a conditions as the wealth of a relatively very rapid small number, an increase gained at the expense of positive detriment to a large element in the popula- THE DECLINE OF FAITH io8 Thus it was that a century of which the first tion. seventy years provide an almost unparalleled spectacle of the increase of national territory, accompanied, according to the ancient methods of taxation, by a vast increase in national wealth, should close with the tragedies of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and the legacy of class hatred which produced the civil This growth in wealth and territory was not wars. without were vowed ; on the and the outward observer war provided the Thus to the of the vows. might well have seemed that was enjoying a time of it of the state Between the great prosperity. War spoils of the for the fulfilment the religion outvv^ard The of minor wars in means appearance of the was gained by a series territory the course of which many temples its effects state religion. Punic close of the 201) and the year of Tiberius Gracchus 133) we have accurate knowledge of the (B.C. dedication of no less than nineteen state temples, (B.C. and there were undoubtedly many others of which we have no record. Another apparently good sign is far the fact that the Sibylline books are silent, so as the introduction of new deities is concerned. Yet these surface indications are deceptive. the now that As the for line pomerium Sibylline had been broken down, and the temples of Greek gods might be placed anywhere in the city, it was a books, very simple matter for the state to bring Greek god that it pleased, and likening in him any to a THE DECLINE OF FAITH more or less similar Roman name, the where. to calling him by put up a temple to him any- was also true It 109 Roman god and that, as Roman theology was now based on the principle that every Roman god had his Greek parallel and vice versa, there were no gods at brought left, the in all in whose names would have occurred Sibylline who books, vowing of new temples, this could And now without them. as represented not be for at the best merely the habit formed during more devout days ; was moving by the momentum acquired during the Second Punic War, and the gods to whom these temples were erected were really Greek religion In a word, not only gods under Roman names. was the state religion becoming more and more of a form day by day, but the form was that of Greece and not of Rome. to trace this movement It is extremely interesting look behind the in detail, to outward appearance and see the remarkable changes that were really taking place. we look at the temples which were built in the years following the Second Punic War, we shall have no difficulty in finding examples of the introduction If of Greek gods under Roman names. war itself in the year B.C. vowed a temple battle near goddess, During the 207 a Roman general had to Juventas Siena. on the occasion of a Juventas was one of those abstract an old deities Roman which had been produced by the breaking off and becoming THE DECLINE OF FAITH no of a cult -title. She was intimately associated with Juppiter, and had a special shrine in independent the Capitoline and the assumption privileges of bolised was the divine away of childish things Juventas temple. representative of the putting of the young manhood. by the Romans responsibilities and This act was sym- in the beautiful ceremony of putting on the toga of manhood {toga virilis), when the lad was led by his father to the Capitoline temple to make sacrifices to Juppiter, and at the same time a contribution was made to the treasury But of Juventas. this was not the goddess in whose honour the temple vowed at Siena was built at the Circus Maximus and dedicated B.C. 191. This Juventas was nothing more or less than the Greek Hebe, the female counterpart of Ganymedes, cupbearer to the gods. Similarly in B.C. 179 temple was dedicated to Diana at the Circus Flaminius, but this was not the old goddess of Aricia, whose cult Rome had adopted for the sake as a of increasing her influence in the Latin league. It was the Greek Artemis, who at her first coming into Rome had been associated with Apollo in the temple built in B.C. 431, and was now given a temple of her own. Perhaps the strangest of all; is the temple which was erected to Mars in the Campus Martins that the of their in B.C. 138. It might well be supposed Romans would keep holy the race, the god to whom, under reputed father Juppiter, their THE DECLINE OF FAITH iii On the contary in B.C. 2 i 7, when they were carrying out a Greek ceremony of offering success was due. a banquet to a set of gods, arranged in pairs, they showed no hesitation in grouping together Mars and Venus to represent the Greek pair Ares and Aphrodite, thus doing violence to Mars by bringing him Venus which was into a relationship with Roman with whom tirely foreign to old him with Ares, Now name 138 a temple in B.C. is en- thought, and identifying he had nothing to do. built to Ares under the of Mars, close beside the venerable old altar of Mars, one of the oldest and most sacred of Roman shrines. But Greek gods with this passion for identifying Roman ones parallel for known deities way. The not did the confine itself were introduced into old Roman honour the ancient god, festival yearly celebrated, had Rome Faunus, of the as his finding a to gods of Greece greater and ; Fauna, who was better known as the whose in Liipercalia associate a " less same in the was goddess. " good goddess (Bona Dea). Eventually this new title Bona Dea crowded out the old title Fauna, so that it was almost Bona Dea was a goddess of forgotten. women, and the most characteristic feature of her worship was the exclusion of men from taking part entirely in it. Now there was a Greek goddess, called Damia, also a goddess of women, from whose cult also men were excluded, and her cult spread from THE DECLINE OF FAITH 112 Greece to especially Greek colonies of Southern the Tarentum, and so eventually to Italy, Rome. But by the time she arrived in Rome the connexion Fauna and Bona Dea had been entirely forgotten. of Damia was surely a Bona Dea, yes she was the Bona Dea, for was not the proof at hand in the fact that men were excluded from both cults } So a temple was built for her, probably shortly after the Second Punic War, and from the time no one ever thought of poor Fauna again, except scholars and poets, who amused in Faunus, as sister, lived themselves, as was their wont, by various genealogical relationships to putting her or wife, daughter, while and prospered under the stolen title Damia of the Bona Dea. We see from this on what a small resemblance such identifications were based, in this case merely on the presence of a similar minor injunction in the But we have here at least a laws of each cult. genuine cult which had arrived and was asking for admission, and in so far we are better off than in most instances, where nothing substantial was gained Two forces were now at work by the identification. assisting in namely marked art an this and fusion of literature. epoch several centuries she in Roman gods, capture of Syracuse Greek and The Rome's artistic career ; for had employed Greek architects and had also become acquainted with the artistic types of certain Greek gods, but now all at once a THE DECLINE OF FAITH 113 wealth of Greek sculpture was disclosed to her, and she could not rest content until all her gods were The adoption of represented in the fashion of man. the Greek type, in those cases where an identification had already been effected, was not difficult and was main successful, though there followed almost in the inevitably an enrichment of the Greek element in Roman god the because of the presence of some which brought its own myth But there were certain Roman gods for attribute in the statue, with it. whom Greek parallels could not be found, and in these awkward one, example when the Roman cases a compromise, usually rather an had to be effected, as for gods of the storeroom, the Di Penates, were represented by statues of the Greek Castor and Pollux. In such cases confusion was sure to follow, and subsequent antiquarians would be tempted to write treatises proving the original connexion of Castor or Pollux with the Penates, as gods of protection as misleading, in own way was fully and Roman scholars became fasci- Literature too in general, etc. its nated with the labyrinths of Alexandrian mythology, and straightway began rapidly as kings and to build possible, establishing all Roman myths lists sorts of genealogies, as of old Latin and weaving as many Greek mythological figures as possible into the legends of the foundation of Italic towns. It was the ceremonial of the cult however which most often offered the best means of identification, I. THE DECLINE OF FAITH 114 as we have seen above Bona Dea- the case of in Damia, where the exclusion of men from the rites In a similar way was the main point of similarity. the old Roman god of the harvest, Consus, was Greek ocean-god Poseidon because identified with the horse-races were a characteristic feature of the tivals of each women and parallel the and ; the old of childbirth was Roman as given fes- of goddess her Greek Greek goddess Leukothea, the helper of those in peril at sea, because in both cases slaves were forbidden to take part in the cult. of the capture of Rome by these and Greek ceremonials was not conthe mere addition of new ideas, and the But the effect Greek gods fined to transformation of certain old Roman This deities. would have been comparatively harmless, but there was inevitably another result the consequent neglect of all Roman deities for whom no Greek parallels : were and the forgetting of all the ideas which were crowded into the forthcoming, original Roman background by the novel and more Even the ideas. were treated in festivals the same brilliant of the old cavalier Greek Roman year manner. The only with those or them which ceremonies pleased them. frightened There were certain festivals, for example the Luperinterest calia, of the people continued the old ceremony of purification on February which a reverence was still felt; and others 15, for like the Parilia, the birthday of Rome, on April 21, THE DECLINE OF FAITH Anna Perenna or the festival on March 115 15, which involved open-air celebrations and picnics. These and others like them were always kept up, while many others were totally neglected. Naturally for the present the forms were continued by the state the festivals were celebrated at least by the priests and every temple received sacrifice on its ; ; birthday. The wheels of the state religion were still running, but the power behind them had stopped, and it was only momentum which kept them in motion. It is only when we realise these things that we can understand how it was possible that the most learned scholars at the close of the republic were so desperately ignorant concerning old Roman religion. In regard to many of the old Roman gods they know absolutely nothing, and try to disguise their behind a show of learning based on ignorance in regard to the rest etymological sleight-of-hand information is so tangled with Greek ideas ; their that it mass is often almost impossible to unravel the This and separate the old from the new. unravelling has been the tedious occupation of the half century in the study of Roman religion last ; and so patiently and successfully has it been accomplished that, although we would give almost anything for a few books of Varro's Divine Antiis it tolerably certain that the possession of these books would not change in the least the quities, fundamental concepts underlying the modern re- the decline OF FAITH it6 construction of ancient certain equally much more just so religion strongly, tradiction to though ; in is distinct con- of Varro's favourite theories. many an accomplishment of which History modestly proud, that modern scholars able to to a eliminate, it is emphasise what we already realise, modern reconstruction that this is Roman these books would that large may It well be have been degree, the personal equation and the myopic effects of his own time from the statements of the greatest scholar of Roman antiquity, and thus though handicapped by the possession of merely a small percentage of the facts which Varro knew, to arrive at a concept of the whole matter infinitely more correct than that which his books contained. During this second century before Christ, therefore, the state religion was apparently unchanged so far as the outward form The terminology was concerned. and the ceremonies were much the same as but the content was quite different : before, Greek gods and gods and Roman Greek ideas had displaced Roman ideas, and the official representatives of religion, the state priests, were carrying the whole burden of worship on interest their had been own in shoulders, because popular the main deflected and was These lines of rival working along other lines. interest were superstition and scepticism, phenomena which at first sight appear as distinct opposites, but which are on the contrary very closely akin, so that THE DECLINE OF FAITH 117 they usually occur together not only in the same age, but frequently even in the same individual. are purely relative terms, They superstition consists in its the essence of scepticism and the essence of surplus element, just as lies in its No deficiency. religion judged from the standpoint of the worshipper can properly be called a superstition, but if once we can establish the essential things any large addition Speaking with of superstition. we have no as religion relatively forms elements historical a then sympathy right therefore to designate early so — but in a religion, to those essential things savours superstition — it with in Roman be of course may other comparison religious once we have established the essential in that early religion, new and introduction of The as superstition. we may consider the entirely different elements old religion of Rome consisted exact and scrupulous fulfilment of a large number of minute ceremonials. The result of this in % the careful fulfilment around man did of ritual was him no harm but that that was the end of the whole matter. not command these powers to know ; the powers rather good, and Religion did or even permit special inquiries into it was not only not man's duty to it was his positive duty to the gods, Through the influence of Greece had now come into Rome an altogether new not to. try try there idea, nourished largely by the Sibylline books, and represented most fully in the Magna Mater, the idea THE DECLINE OF FAITH ii8 of the perpetual service of a god, a consecration to him, to the exclusion of all other things, and a life given over to the orgiastic performance of cult acts, which produced a state of ecstasy and consequently a communion with the deity. Along with this there went a belief in the possibility, by means of certain books and certain men, of obtaining from the gods a knowledge of the beliefs, religion, The which may these surplus the spirit of old Roman future. quite contrary to It is justly be called superstition. Sibylline books had aroused these feelings, a knowledge of the oracle at Delphi had increased them, the farther, but rites of Aesculapius had was not it until the them carried Magna Mater came they seem to have burst forth in any large But aside from the rapid growth of the degree. that Magna Mater cult itself we have in this second The first century two instances of this tendency. was connected with the god Dionysos-Liber, innocent enough at his first reception in B.C. 493, company of Demeter-Ceres and Kore- Libera. sure the state had introduced him merely as in the To be the god of wine, but the mystery element in Dionysos took firm hold on private worship, clubs or societies began to and the Bacchanalian spread over Italy. the course of about three centuries they had a formidable menace to the morals and physical security of the inhabitants of In become even the Rome. Their meetings instead of occurring three times a year THE DECLINE OF FAITH took place 119 times a month, and finally in B.C. 186 the famous Bacchanalian trial took place, of five which Livy (Bk. xxxix.) gives such a graphic account, and to which a copy of the inscription of the decree of the Senate, preserved to our day, gives such eloquent testimony, providing as penalties for does severe it subsequent offenders, and recognising on the other hand large liberty of conscience. The same love of mystery and longing for knowledge which produced the Bacchanalian clubs accorded a warm reception to astrology and made men listen with eagerness to those their fortunes or guide their lives We stars. knowledge who could do not know when the bearers of first arrived in tell by means of the Rome, but Cato, in this his Farm Almanac, in our earliest piece of prose literature, giving rules for the behaviour of the farm bailiff especially enjoins the intending landowner that his should not be given to the consultation bailiff of Chaldaean astrologers. Within half a century the problem of the Chaldaeans grew so serious that state interference was necessary, and in B.C. 139 the praetor Cn. Cornelius Hispalus issued an edict ordering the Chaldaeans to leave Rome and Italy within ten days. The same age which produced superstition brought the shape of a trouble also this this antidote growth of for it in philosophy, but the only philosophy not only cured sceptical was that the THE DECLINE OF FAITH I20 but superstition religious in underlying spirit so doing killed It it. the cast seven devils of superstition, but sure, the genuine be out, to when men returned to themselves again, they found their whole With the spiritual house swept and garnished. death of the direct pupils of Aristotle, the Greek mind had thought out all the problems of philosophy of which man at that time was able to conceive. The following generations of philosophers devoted themselves either to the elaboration of detail or to a renewed examination of the foundations of belief, with the that result their smaller minds came to smaller conclusions, and the end of their investigations one increased scepticism. w^as of the day showed many different more or less by accenting they defined names, but they pervaded ethics as ethics The slight variations many by a all agreed sceptical schools and bore in being spirit, and against metaphysics, though very differently according to their starting point. One reached of the earliest philosophical influences which Rome was however that of a pre-Socratic school, the school of Pythagoras. in itself, enough was in Southern cant that the This was natural as the headquarters of the school Italy, but it is curious and signifi- pronounced instance of its influence occurred shortly after the Second Punic War, and in connexion with a clever fraud which was perpetrated with a first view to influencing religion. In the year THE DECLINE OF FAITH B.C. 1 8 1 a certain ploughing his man field, reported that 121 when he was which lay on the other side of the Tiber, at the foot of the Janiculum, the plough had laid bare two stone sarcophagi, stoutly sealed lead, and bearing inscriptions in Greek and Latin according to which they purported to contain, one of them the body of King Numa, the other, his with When they were opened the one which ought to have contained the body was empty, in the other lay two rolls, each roll consisting of seven writings. books ; the one set of seven was written in Latin and treated of pontifical law, the other consisted of They were examined, found be heretical and subversive to true religion, and philosophical writings. to were accordingly burned connexion of Numa and but believed impossible the in in practically certain that this Comitium. Pythagoras, at this The historically time, makes it was a clever attempt to introduce the philosophy of Pythagoras into under the holy sanction of the name of Rome Numa. Fortunately the zeal of the city praetor frustrated the scheme. But the doctrines of philosophy, which thus failed to enter by the door of religion, found As the the door of literature wide open for them. irony of fate would have it, Cato, the stalwart enemy of Greek influence, had brought back from Sardinia with him the poet Ennius, and at about the time when the false books of Numa Comitium Ennius was giving were burning in the to the world a Latin THE DECLINE OF FAITH 122 translation of Euhemerus. lived the Sacred History of the Greek This Euhemerus, a Sicilian who had about a century before this time, earned his fame by writing a novel of adventure and to title travel, in which he described a taken the in Red Sea along which he had trip the coast of Arabia to the wonderful island of Panchaia, where he found a column with an inscription on history of Ouranos, Kronos, and telling the life it Zeus, who were thus shown to have been historical characters after- wards elevated into element cal in his deities. It was this theologi- book which made him famous. This theory of the historical origin of the gods is even to-day called Euhemerism, and has exerted a baleful influence over writers on mythology from its author's day down to our own. These then were the doctrines which Ennius presented to the Romans in their own tongue, and it is pathetic that his Sacred History formed the formal treatise on theology which Rome ever Born under such an evil star, it is possessed. to realise first small wonder that her theological speculations never reached great metaphysical heights. In these days question of it seemed philosophy to the Senate that the was beginning to be so might be considered as a public that it was therefore their and duty to try danger, that it to cope with it. Thc)' chose, of course, the typical Roman method of dealing with such matters, and serious THE DECLINE OF FAITH the philosophers first in were B.C. sent At it include to six 123 Rome. from was only the Epicureans who but in B.C. 161 the edict was 173 out, broadened However were expelled years in philosophers later, in B.C. general. came 155, there Rome an embassy of philosophers whose mission was avowedly political and not philosophical, and to who thus could not be excluded, while at the same time they took occasion to preach their philosophical doctrines. the best It was fortunate among all Rome that Stoicism, became thus the national was in many re- her most strongly and philosophy of Rome. spects quite for these philosophies, appealed to Stoicism as sceptical as the others, but it had great advantage that it laid a strong on ethics, and was in so far capable of at least this emphasis It might be well enough becoming a guide of life. for Greeks, whose aggressive work in the world had been done, to a theory of settle life down which to an age with excluded the idle old practically possibility of strong decisive action, but still her. to young, and most of her work was She might think take peculiar decadent her forms leaders Rome was still before and pretend of the more herself very old delight of Greek instinctively in many thought, turned to but in reality Stoicism, as affording a compromise between the mere thoughtless activity of youth, which acts for the love of acting, and the jaded philosophy of the vanity of THE DECLINE OF FAITH 124 About all effort. the middle of the century {circa 150) there existed B.C. and intellectual in Rome a influence, a centre of culture little group men of peculiarly interesting, because they form practically the first instance of an intellectual coterie in the of Rome. history Scipio, the who had poet Their leader was the younger as his associates his friend Laelius, Lucilius, whose brilliant sub- writings, merged by the more brilliant satires of Horace, form one of the most deplorable losses in Roman literaand the Stoic philosopher Panaitios of Rhodes. Terence had also belonged to the circle, but he was now dead. Stoicism was the avowed philosophy ture, of these men, and their influence, especially that of Panaitios and Lucilius, did much to popularise their chosen philosophical creed. While Stoicism claimed superiority to religion and showed the impossibility of attaching any value to religious of religion knowledge, for the expediency, and it recognised the necessity common effected a people on grounds of reconciliation between of religion on the one hand, and the recognition of it on the other, by asserting that the religion of the state was justified not only by this denial expediency but much more by the fact that it was only the presentation of the truths of Stoicism in a form which was intelligible to the lower classes. Had this group of Scipio and his after all associates made an effort to emphasise these THE DECLINE OF FAITH 125 particular doctrines of Stoicism in relation to religion, the downfall of the state religion, which occurred in the following But for century, reasons, which might have been hindered. we shall see in a moment, could not have been prevented, and it doubtful whether the influence of any philosophical this downfall is when supported by such prominent men, could have perceptibly postponed the catas- system, even Meantime the only visible contribution of Stoicism to the problem of religion was the growth under her influence of the idea of a " double truth," trophe. one truth common for the intellectual classes people, reaching and one climax its in for the the phrase " It is expedient for the state to be deceived in matters of religion" [expedit igitur falli in religione civitatem). This was the attitude toward religion of the most intellectual men beginning of what was terrible period in Rome's the in in community many ways the at the most history. The last century before Christ (more exactly 133-B.C. 27) is the story of how Rome became an empire because she was no longer able to be a B.C. it is the history of the growth of one-man power because many-men power had become imThis growth was caused not only, nor at possible. republic first ; even chiefly, by the Rome's statesmen, but by the grasping character of increase of the rabble and the consequent unmanageable character of her population, except under the firm hand of a single THE DECLINE OF FAITH 126 master. And years of civil the reason war why empire was not because the was so slow in it took one hundred change the republic into the to dying that its spirit of the republic death struggles filled a century, but merely because the republic died too easily and the way to one-man power was so simple that there were too many candidates for the position, and hence the civil wars were bound to continue until the bitter lessons of experience to gain had taught men not only how the supreme control, which was but easy, how to which was m.uch These wars between them. civil keep more it and difficult. relatively exclude rivals, The ambitious leaders of this century did not have to create a Their task throne; that was ready to their hand. was only to put defences around it. Even these defences of for the it were not directly against the people, people had no desire to overthrow the throne, but merely against the rival candidates. Step by step from Tiberius Gracchus to Gains Gracchus, and on to Marius, to until Sulla, to became more from being a mere possession became nine points of the tenure perfect Pompey, to Julius Caesar, and more permanent ; momentary position, the law, and Octavian by adding an almost reverence to his person in the In the main the foreign it made religious title Augustus. wars of the second century before Christ gave place to the Civil War at home, but there was one exception to this, the war THE DECLINE OF FAITH 127 with Mithradates, king of Pontus, which on various occasions during the early part of the century took large bodies of Romans though to supplement in the to And Orient. as knowledge of the East, this the closing half of the century the field of the struggle was enlarged so that it too included the East and South-East. have already seen so many instances of the effects of political events civil We on the course of of no surprise struggles, the their it us religion that see to War religion. that is a matter of these In the struggle of so. home every possible weapon was employed, was soon discovered that the priests and the were excellent means of paraphernalia of religion political it both and the Oriental wars, left It would be much more they had not done if the rivals at and Civil marks on surprising Roman to The religion of the power and influence. became enslaved to politics. On the state therefore other hand the campaigns soldiers, and eventually on populace, acquainted with in the East their return made the the whole various Oriental deities, which helped to satisfy their craving for the sensaThus while the state tional and the superstitious. religion in debauched condition was losing influence, its the orgiastic element in worship was gaining power through these newly acquired Oriental cults. The story of the religion of the last century of the republic is accordingly the history of the control of state religion by politics and its consequent destruction, THE DECLINE OF FAITH 128 and the growth of superstition because of the coming of new Oriental worships and we may add to ; these two topics a third the pathetic attempts of : philosophy to breathe new life into the dead religion of the state. When comes it towers above insight of the human are writ large on this page history, the of religious Sulla the question to names characters whose all Dictator Lucius Cornelius To others. his political largely owing the harnessing of the state to the chariot of the politician, now and is religion hereafter ; leader of and it Roman was he who was the foremost armies and the man who, because to of his the Orient, peculiarly superstitious encouraged the worship of the strange In both these which were found there. character, deities was ably seconded by Pompey, half a On the other hand the futile directions he later. generation efforts of philosophy to improve the situation were by the chief priest inspired during the earlier period a contemporary of Sulla, and during and Caesar's time by Varro, the greatest Pompey's Scaevola, scholar that Rome Let us follow ever produced. the fortunes of the religion first of the state at the hands of the politicians. upper and influential classes of now thoroughly imbued Roman The society were with Stoic philosophy and " " double truth accordingly with the doctrine of the the real philosophical truth in the field of religion — THE DECLINE OF FAITH 129 which was their own pecuHar property and which showed them clearly that all the forms of religion were vain, statement and its doctrines at best a clumsy roundabout parables of a truth which " face to face and that lower " truth in they saw intended for ; masses the and dictated the by pressure of necessity, the concrete state religion in all its which must be preserved among the in the interest of the state and of details, lower classes The society. was thus a matter of state religion But once this idea expediency and of usefulness. of its usefulness was put into the foreground, it was natural asked it : the that Was might be Could ? If religion existed why should should question it it not be put to greater uses come ? in general for its political effects, not be used by the individual, like any other political apparatus, advancement ? The man to to have immediately be this state religion as useful after all as first in all its own for his whom this fullness individual idea seems was Sulla, and The he proceeded immediately to act upon it. control of religion could, of course, be obtained best through the priesthoods, and those priesthoods were naturally most worth gaining which possessed the greatest These right of interference were priesthoods : their traditional right to break declare legislative Pontiffs, with action their in first null general affairs the of state. Augurs, with up assemblies and to and void then the ; control of all vexed K THE DECLINE OF FAITH I30 questions concerning the intersection of divine and human law and lastly the XVviri, or the keepers ; of the Sibylline books, in charge also of the cults which the oracles had given birth. Accordingly he increased the numbers of these three priesthoods, and inasmuch as the old raising each to fifteen to ; right of the colleges of the priests to in their own from them fill vacancies bodies themselves had been taken away now 103, and such vacancies were in B.C. was an easy thing for him with his own men. positions The result of accentuating the political importance of these three colleges was that the whole filled by popular to the fill body of the political vote, it new state spirit, became actuated with a structure was re- religion and the modelled along the lines The immediate effect of whole of this new this valuation. was that the priests became entirely absorbed in politics. To be sure Sulla was not responsible for all of this, themselves because the tendency had been in this ever since the time of the Punic wars. old days of been Roman the main direction In the good religion the office of priest own had reward, and though the no a formed means priests by separate class, and the individual priest had many secular interests in its and occasionally some political ones, he was not In the time of supposed to hold political office. the Punic wars, however, the tide began to turn. The earliest recorded instance of a priest holding a THE DECLINE OF FAITH 131 high poHtical office is in the year B.C. 242 when the Flamen Martialis or special priest of Mars was but when the gentleman in question go to the war, he was forbidden by the Pontifex Maximus. In B.C. 200 the Flamen Dialis, chosen Consul ; started to or special priest was allowed of Juppiter, to be made aedile, but his brother had to be especially authorised to take the oath of office in his stead, since the priest of Juppiter, the god of himself not allowed to take an oath. oaths, was In the course the next century such cases became more common, and where the thing was not allowed, the priesthood became unpopular, and was some- of times left This entirely vacant. last was position which But the to the evil unfilled effects emptying of from of politics certain thing happened, Diale, a Flaminium for instance, in the case of the B.C. 87 till B.C. i i. were not confined priesthoods, which after were of no very great importance, except as their presence tended to sustain the morale of the Its effects were much more old religious ritual. all disastrous in the very important priesthoods which had now become exclusively essentially political interests political of the offices. The incumbents, fact that each man was elected by general vote of the people and without any combined with the the case special fitness for the position, as had been in the old days, tended to break down all the traditions of the college, and thus to destroy much THE DECLINE OF FAITH 132 knowledge which was being handed down There arose therefore an oral tradition. of the by largely ignorance of the ritual of the cult which was great proportion as the knowledge originally had been accurate and intricate. But even present all this was not the arranging of the yearly in just ; calendar, with to bring into was years, here the its complicated intercalation of days the harmony in still results of and the solar hands of the the lunar priests, and growing ignorance were their The calendar became terribly dismost appalling. and this again had its reaction on religion, ordered ; the calendar for month occasionally fell so out of gear with the natural seasons that it was impossible to celebrate some of the old Roman festivals, which had a distinct bearing Thus the state were those of who turned means of its own household, the priests, the reverent formalism of the old days into a mockery, a on certain seasons of the year. greatest enemies of the religion of the and made their priesthood merely political influence. Now into that the old Roman gods had been changed new-fangled Greek gods, and the old Roman priesthoods into modern political clubs, it is little wonder that the religion of the fathers ceased to But while history shows satisfy their descendents. that specific religious creeds have often proved mortal and subject to change and decay, the same history makes clear that the religious instinct is a THE DECLINE OF FAITH constant factor for suppose in humanity moment a that the Roman community had the because the religion first From it. satisfy of the not religious need of ceased to exist, simply state had ceased to when the Sibyl gave her on down to the time of Sulla, the day Rome oracles to ; 133 and we must the desire for the sensational and the extraordinary had been steadily growing. It had its idea that there was such a thing as a direct communion with the deity, and that the in religion birth the in were oracles an command from immediate him. was nourished by the sense of foreignness in the Greek ceremonies gradually introduced into the cult. It It fed on the more sensational aspects of certain of on the enthusiastic rites of gods brought in Bacchus, on the miracle-working of Aesculapius, on the Stygian mystery of Dis and Proserpina. the But : its fulfilment was to come from the East, that inexhaustible fountain of religious energy. Magna Mater first undiluted But the it Orientalism state in recognised itself had its own. In the This was the which came to Rome. received some unaccountable way it, and had to put upon this outlandish Eastern cult the stamp of Rome's that stamp which no nation ever nationality, managed successfully the was and permanently resisted ; and thus reception of the cult on the part of the state not only a disgraceful thing, tending to degrade true religion and spread the contagion of Orientalism, THE DECLINE OF FAITH 134 but made also it aroused whose appetite had been other deities, whose cult would those for eager have the great additional charm of being unlicensed by the state, and hence savouring of unlawfulness. Such a cult, length found, long half-consciously desired, was at when in B.C. 92 the Roman soldiery commanded by Sulla penetrated into the valley of Comana in Cappadocia. There was a whole community, a miniature state, devoted to the service of a goddess not unlike the Great Mother of Pessinus, but whose cult was more ecstatic, more orgiastic, than that Rome knew and the of the Magna Mater, The king was the her. at least The were priests and priestesses. citizens as chief priest, war with Mithradates brought the Roman army there again and also to another Comana in Pontus, where there was a branch of the Cappadocian cult. It was not the ignorant soldiery alone who were impressed by what they saw was fully as when Rome before the great and him, appeared to Thus her city much his crisis Sulla, career, his march on lay was the goddess of Comana who him in a dream and gave him courage. it cult entered its hearts of the people of Comana. The to his leader, his return to Italy storming of the Eternal City, by Sulla has seems in their ; and on affected, Rome, and parallel by his in the capture of the the capture of the companion, the goddess name of this goddess have been Ma, but the Greeks, who also original THE DECLINE OF FAITH knew had likened her to Enyo, their goddess of hence in these days of facile her, and warfare strife ; Romans' course was identification the became straightway Bellona, called Of goddess of war. their old all The this. same relation clear, and she by the name of the chapters of the history of such identifications none than 135 more curious is old Bellona had borne to that Fides, the goddess of Mars the good faith, had borne to Juppiter. She was the result of the deification of one of the qualities of Mars, separate the breaking off of an adjective and the turning of it into a noun but from now on, though the old ; still goddess her own own temple and name was also applied to this goddess who came in the train of existed and had her worship, the strange Oriental the debauched Roman the army on But though men might East. name of a worship her in private as the state, even admit her Fanatici, sacred in its among its old its return from the call this national new-comer by goddess and they pleased, the religion of sunken condition, refused to deities, and the priests, the with their wild dances, to the music of cymbals and trumpets, slashing themselves with their double axes until their arms streamed with blood, were not, at least as yet, the official representatives of the state, the companions of the reverend old Salii " Even the sanctuwith their dignified three-step." aries city, of the private cult must be kept outside the this law in B.C. 48 resulted and the violation of THE DECLINE OF FAITH 136 in the raiding Her chapels. and destruction of one of these private cult does not seem to have become a state affair until the beginning of the third century A.D.jwhen Caracalla.who had extended Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of the provinces, gave a similar citizenship to in Rome. It is all the foreign deities resident a curious coincidence that this action same year A.D. which the breakdown of the ponieriuvi for state cults had occurred B.C. For the present, however, of Caracalla's occurred just about the in that is to say in the first century B.C., the state re- tained her dignity, though the resultant unorthodox character of the cult increased its power and influence, than the An and made it more Magna Mater was. subversive to morals even more interesting instance, both of the popularit}^ of sensational foreign cults and of the struggle of the state religion against them, in the case of the spread of Isis Egyptian goddess found The worship into the Greek, and conse- quently also into the Roman world, began relatively In the third century Isis and her early. is Isis. companion Serapis were well established on the island of Delos and in the second century we find traces of ; their worship and Puteoli. Puteoli, the Campania, especially at Pompeii This last-named place, the seaport in modern Pozzuoli, outside of Naples, was probably the door through which Isis and her Puteoli was the chief port train came into Italy. THE DECLINE OF FAITH for Oriental ships, including Egypt, and commercial relations Delos. date it with Rome supplied with gods it 137 also had At this later somewhat the in same way that Cumae, in the same neighbourhood, had done centuries before. So far as the city of Rome concerned, an apparently trustworthy back to the time of itself is tradition traces the private cult Sulla and ; much later it certainly cannot have been introduced than this time, because had became so prominent and so in B.C. 58 it offensive to the authorities of the state that they destroyed an altar of Isis on the Capitoline. Apparently Isis was no exception to the general law of growth by persecution, because in the course of the next decade the state found three times, it i.e. necessary to in B.C. 53, 50, interfere and 48. no less than Finally the policy of suppression proved so ineffectual that it was decided to try the opposite extreme, and to see what could be done by state acknowledgment and state control, and so the Triumvirs, Octavian, Antony, and a Lepidus, in state decreed B.C. 43 decreed the building of But although they had the erection of a temple, they were too temple for Isis. much engaged in mediately, and until the their own affairs temple was to build it im- built Isis could not properly be considered among the state gods. As events turned out this temple was never built, for in the course of the next few years the trouble with Antony and Cleopatra began, and thus the gods THE DECLINE OF FAITH 138 Egypt became the gods of Rome's enemies, and so far as the state was concerned an acknowledgment of these gods was impossible. Instead Augustus of forbade even private chapels inside the povieriinn. The subsequent history of Isis does not directly concern us ; suffice vicissitudes she it to say that was admitted to the after various state cult by Caracalla along with all the other foreign deities. But it was not only Asia Minor and Egypt which gave their cults to Rome the deities of Syria came too. Prominent among them was Atargatis, whose ; cult seems to at Puteoli. have touched the Italian mainland first army of Crassus on which was destined to come In B.C. 54 the its to Eastern expedition, such a tragic end in the terrible defeat at Carrhae, visited and plundered the sanctuary of the goddess Thus she became known at Rome, where in Syria. " she was " called simply the {dca Syrian goddess Syria) and was worshipped in a way very similar to the Magna Mater and Bellona. Lastly when Pompey swept the Mediterranean of Cilician pirates, the sailors became ac- clean quainted with a Persian deity, Mithras, whose cult in Rome began during our period and subsequently crowded all the other orgiastic cults into insignifi- cance. We have now seen how the politicians were turn- ing the state religion into a tool for the accomplishment of their own selfish ends, and how the masses THE DECLINE OF FAITH 139 people were seeking satisfaction for their religious needs in sensational foreign worships, in- of the troduced from Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and Persia. We must now see whether any efforts were being made by any members of the community in behalf of the in old religion, existence and whether there traces any of the pure were old still Roman worship. The latter-day philosophies of Greece had dealt Roman a severe blow at intellectual classes by convincing the religion the in community that in the nature of things there could be no such knowledge as that upon which religion was based, and hence that religion man's was an Yet idle thing unworthy of a true could not take away the philosophy in the world from a Roman his sense of duty to the state. Now the state interest. all in its experience had found religion so necessary that she had built up a formal system of it and made it a part of herself As it was the duty of the state in citizen every part of her activity, it to support the was clearly his Hence there arose that crass contradiction, which existed in Rome duty to support the state religion. to a large degree as long as these particular systems of philosophy prevailed, between the duty which a man, as a thinking man, owed to himself, and the duty which he, as a good citizen, owed to the state. We have seen how during the second century before Christ no attempt was made to reconcile these two THE DECLINE OF FAITH I40 how they views and man, for existed side by side in such a example, as Ennius, who wrote certain embodying the most extraordinary sceptical doctrines, and certain patriotic poems in which the treatises whole apparatus of the Roman gods is prominently exhibited and most reverently treated. have We how also seen this " double truth " not could have disastrous results on the state religion of all efforts was made to The to the contrary. in first effort but spite which improve the situation was not so much an attempt at reconciliation as a frank statement of the difficulties of the case. The problem had advanced considerably toward solution when once it had been clearly stated. The man who had the courage to make the statement was Ouintus Mucius Scaevola, a famous lawyer as well as the head of the He was a Maximusj. and was admirably fitted for college of Pontiffs (Pontifex contemporary of Sulla, because he not only represented religion in Maximus, but could speak his task his position as Pontifex behalf of the state both theoretically as a lawyer, and practically because he had filled almost all the important political offices (consul, B.C. 95). also in The been treatise in lost what he which he made to us, but said from writer Augustine of God (iv. Ennius has 27). in we may his statements has obtain a a fair quotation b}^ the his wonderful book idea of Christian The City For Scaevola the double truth of grown into a triple truth, and there THE DECLINE OF FAITH no are than less three distinct religion of poets, of philosophers, The of religion the 141 religions by which he poets, the : and of statesmen. means mythological treatment of the gods, he demns as worthless because it tells a great the con- many things about the gods which are not true and which are entirely unworthy of them. The religion of philosophers he does not consider suitable to the because it contains many things which are state, superfluous, some which and are The injurious. be allowed to pass, but the injurious things, by which he evidently means the superfluous things may doctrines of Euhemeros, are a very serious matter, not because they are untrue but because the knowThe ledge of them is inexpedient for the masses. religion of the statesman can have no part in these things, even if they are true of the state must believe in belief in them, ; and a man many as a citizen things, or profess which the same man, as an indivi- Scaevola's dual and a philosopher, knows are false. honest well-intentioned effort to support the religion of " the masses state " in was naturally a fellow-citizens to undergo these Numa admiring Scaevola together. calling on his casuistical soon cared more for Bellona and the gods of The very failure. whose behalf Scaevola was Isis gymnastics than for all But we cannot help for his patriotism, though we may The state religion could not envy him his ethics. never be supported on the arguments of expediency ; THE DECLINE OF FAITH 142 every one granted its expediency, and still it fell worst enemies, the politicians, granted it most of ; its all, and they were the only ones who put the doctrine to any practical use. It was precisely this discovery of its expediency and caused its great practical value which the practical standpoint its From downfall. the problem was settled once and for matter of theory next generation, in remained it for the all, but as a the person of Varro, to provide a more satisfactory and to effect something of a compromise solution, between the truth of philosophy and the truth of religion. Marcus equipped Varro Terentius with the all came learning of to the his time work and possessed of a greater knowledge of facts than any other Roman of his or any other day. So far as the problem of religion was concerned, he embodied this learning in the sixteen books of Divine Anti- which he very appropriately dedicated to Caesar in his capacity as Pontifex Maximus. Julius If Ennius's Sacra His tor ia be left out of account, his quities, book was the which Rome accomplish three things history of religion Rome was ; on systematic theology In this work he desired to treatise first ever had. to : essential the state second, by an examination of Greek mythology to purify the immoral influences third, ; religion by a review of the first, show how state to religion show that from its the state so purified was fully in accord with Stoic THE DECLINE OF FAITH 143 " In three religions," regard to the therefore, he agreed with Scaevola in casting out philosophy. entirely the religion of the poets, and in accepting both the others, but he differed from Scaevola in that he denied the contradiction between them and asserted that they were not two truths but two forms of the same truth. We are not able to go into the details of his attempt, because unfortunately the books which he wrote in it have been and lost to us, we have again merely the quotation in Augustine's But we know that in general he City of God. tried to show that the formal doctrines of the state religion were merely a popular presentation of the and that the whole truths of the Stoic philosophy, system of Roman and the gods could be reduced A man might therefore hold fast to both religions as to a simpler creed Hence one. his belief as in the heroic effort, fame failure. politics lent The had to his religion killed it. and citizen in con- was concerned, but merely manner of in the supported as the learning of his day and his good an intelligent individual were not matter of form, Varro's and a more abstruse a man's belief as a so far as the truth trast and the conceptive earth, the procreative elements. in theory philosophical contrast between the sky to the great was the state It was a life was by all nevertheless of alone which could restore presentation. the influence that all words, it to was a ; power but that was political it, dead THE DECLINE OF FAITH 144 work of an emperor, Augustus, and not of a the scholar, Varro. While Varro, with the weapon of philosophy, was attempting to defend the religion of the state against its enemies, the poets and the philosophers, a armed with philosophy, was trying to Roman people against its worst enemy, It may not seem as though Lucretius superstition. poet, also defend the belonged among Roman the friends of old religion, though the De ReruJii Natura were exactly a religious poem, and yet his work was in so far and as helpful to old Roman religion that in it attacked the excesses of a latter-day superstition which had alienated the hearts of the people from their old beliefs. Superstition scepticism, and is with a parasite which lives on killing of the parasite the and it scepticism sometimes dies as well to question whether Lucretius's book was ; is open not of For considerable service in the cause of religion. it is the fashion at still lived Rome, though religion of the writers on the ethics of the close of the republic to emphasise almost entirely the scepticism of the day, dwelling on the attitude of a or Cicero a " little Caesar, and forgetting the infinite number of Rome in the country, people," especially outside of who still and who believed in the old religion of the fathers, still performed the old festivals of Numa, people who knew no more about Isis than they did Their presence is disclosed about Stoic philosophy. THE DECLINE OF FAITH 145 few republican inscriptions, but better yet the continuance of the rites of family worship to us in a in down into the latest days of Rome, rites which did not form a part of the restoration of Augustus, and which therefore, had they died now, would never have come to life again. It is by just so much remember these people, as they have been forgotten by history, if we ever expect to more our duty to obtain a picture of portions. Augustus turn. Roman They were built in the religion in its true pro- besides the people upon restoration, to which whom we now THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE Politics had caused Weakened by religion. the downfall of the state the attacks of a sceptical philosophy, driven from the hearts of the common people by the rival cults of the Orient, the state religion had finally lost all its influence by the abuse of it with the a as were deserted, political carpeting their grass Its tool. temples were its falling priesthoods into ruins mosaic pavements and the spiders weaving new altar cloths. To us it would have seemed im- with our modern ideas possible that this state religion could ever rise again ; and probably no other state religion that the world has ever seen could have been brought to life again, because no other state religion has ever been so absolutely a part of the state, unless the state itself were a theocracy ; and possibly no lesser genius than Augustus could have accomplished the task even under the slightly more favourable conditions which the state religion of Caesar would Rome have offered. the attempted one of the many questions which 146 \\'hether Julius restoration his death is left THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE unanswered. Certainly thoughtful men 147 of his da\' hoped that he would, and it was in this hope that Varro dedicated his Divine Antiquities to him and another contemporary, Granius Flaccus, his ; book O71 the Invocatioti of the Gods. But except one law which he caused to be enacted " con- for cerning the priesthoods," we have no knowledge either of his accomplishment or of his intentions, and the great task was left practically untouched for the master-hand of Augustus. we may understand what Augustus how he managed to succeed in relation to In order that did and we must obtain some the state religion idea of the whole scheme of Augustus in relation to the state at large, of which his religious reorganisation was merely a written was but its One part. tions of the of the cleverest characterisa- Emperor Augustus which has ever been that by the relatively late secluded Professor position in Mommsen, the Latin preface to an edition of Augustus's great autobio- graphy, the Res Gestae, has prevented generally as Mommsen man who wore most is from being Augustus mask great man, though himself not great." This epigrammatic statement it it describes the "a of a known. not just, although it is is skilfully undoubtedly clever but the opinion concerning Augustus which we would expect a man to hold who, like Mommsen, had an almost unbounded admiration for Julius Caesar. There have been THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 148 through the pages of history even down scattered to our own day men of whom we say that they were not great men, though they did a great work. In certain cases doubtless from his we cases his work and we can separate justifiy the assertion, are deceived b}- the man but the man in other himself just as contemporaries were and as he wished them to be. For called it occasionally happens that a men and over to rule to man who is reorganise a dis- is able best to accomplish his end by a gentle diplomacy, a conciliatory manner, which is often misunderstood by those who surround him and who interpret gentleness of spirit as small- ordered government ness and of spirit self-restraint as weakness. It man who Augustus wore most skilfully the mask of an ordinary man The more though himself an extraordinary man. would be truer we study as a to describe the chaotic condition of Rome Second Triumvirate and the more not only the total disorganisation fully of under the we realise the forms of government but also the absolute demoralisation of the individual citizen, the more we appreciate the almost impossible task which was set for Augustus For one and which he successfully accomplished. hundred years (B.C. 133-31), from Tiberius Gracchus Actium, hardly a decade had passed which had not brought forth some terrible revolution for Rome. Even the great Caesar had failed, had not divined to of the aright the only treatment to which the disease THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 149 age would yield, for although the blows which actually killed Caesar may have been merely an accident in deed of irresponsible men, history, the his fall was no accident but was the inevitable logical outcome of But Augustus succeeded in form of government which enabled himself and his connexion to occupy the throne for his imperial policy. establishing a almost a hundred years, and even then though revolutions came, his constitution was the main bul- wark of government in succeeding centuries. would take us too far from our present subject It to in any completeness the question of how he succeeded, but a word or two may be said in general, and the rest will become clearer when we examine answer his reorganisation of religion. The secret of Augustus's success was the by which he throne and his own the strengthen tact and diplomacy infinite managed position on to it while apparently restoring the form of the republic It is open to and the manners of the old days. question whether he was actuated by a consideration of the good of the state, or by a regard for his own selfish ends, but it is beyond question that he gave to Rome the only form of government which could eradicate the habit of revolution, and thus saved the state. He succeeded because he did not under- estimate the difficulty of the task, and accordingly brought to emphasising bear on especiall)' it every the possible ps)-chologicaI influence, clement THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE ISO and being willing to arrive at his to go a long way around in order He was not content with a goal. mere temporary makeshift, which might carry him end of his own life he was laying foundaNowhere is this more clearly tions for the future. to the ; stated than in one of his edicts, where he says " May it fall my to and strong and to obtain the wished-for fruit of labours, that may that when I I die 1 : — to establish the state firm lot be called the author of may carry with that the foundations which I have me laid it the may my and hope abide." These abiding foundations must be laid deep in it was his grasp of the the national psychology, and psychological problem which explains his reorganisaA century of civil war had totally tion of religion. destroyed the spirit of unity and created an infinite of petty hatreds between man and man. had looked so long at their individual interests number Men that they had almost forgotten the existence of the But if the spirit of patriotism could be state. quickened into a new life, then men would think and forget themselves, and united in their love of this one universal object of devotion which might they would learn a lesson of union But the to their whole life. be extended gradually of the state must be presented not as it was wretchedness, lacerated b}^ civil struggle in state ; all its the sight of the present would serve onl\- to start the quarrel instead it must be the ideal state, a over again ; THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE state so that far away, so distant from seemed equally all they 151 the citizens, all near. If this state were to be something more than a mere abstraction, it could be clothed only in the reverential garments it must be the Rome of the good old of the past, Yet if they were not for ever to mourn a Golden Age " in the past and a paradise that was lost, there must also be a hope for the future, a days. " In a word the belief in paradise to be regained. the eternity of Rome must be instilled into men's hearts. Thus was the born, and instance it is of " idea of the eternal " city no mere coincidence that the this in phrase Tibullus, a poet of the literature Augustan vinced of the eternity of age. Rome men the past for inspiration in full first occurs Once in con- could look at confidence that the beauties which had been could be obtained again. But Augustus was more than a sentimental enand he saw that it was not enough for men to drop their swords at the epiphany of thusiast, " Roma and Aeterna," that their eyes would grow weary to earth would behold the swords looking These swords must be beaten again. into plough- the deserted farms of and pruning hooks Italy must be filled again, and the stability of the state must be increased by an enlargement of the shares ; agricultural community. But for the accomplish- ment of these reforms something was needed which was at once gentler and stronger A^i,. than legal THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 152 The enactments. make smooth must poet the was the poet who could best interest men in the past and thus Augustan poetry was encouraged and directed by the emperor, way of the law. It ; that by pointing out the might inspire than glorious the was age men the old. a or it new Rome more Practically directly Rome glories of old make to every poet of under the indirectly was influence of counsellor, Maecenas, who encouraged Virgil to Georgics, and these glowing pictures of write his farm life the did ruler. quite as It much to the emperor's carry out the later. And Virgil emperor's plans was not alone in writing of country life Tibullus, even more gentle than the gentle bard of Mantua, as the Aeneid ; was to telling the same story in another form. By this time the myths which Greece had given Rome or which Rome had made for herself on Greek models were absolutely a part of the national These too entered into Augustus's scheme. past. Thus another protege of Maecenas, the poet Progradually weaned from love poetry and filled instead with a hunger for the myths of Roman temples and of old Roman customs, so pertius, was that Cynthia slowly gives way to Tarpeia and Vertumnus, and the Rome of Augustus to the Rome of Romulus. Even the irrepressible Ovid tried in his and started exuberant fashion to in his assist in this work Fasti to write a history of the THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE Roman year. But above more important in its intowers the Aeneid of Virgil. All through religious all 153 of the festivals these, fluence, and infinitely the varied incidents of the twelve books there runs the scarlet thread of a great purpose, the glorification of Rome and of Augustus. From the sack of Troy, through the long wanderings and the fierce wars in Latium, down to the final conquest of the enemy, we see Aeneas led by the hand of the The gods whose will it was that Rome should be. lesson is very evident. The providence which guided us in the past still protects us we have no right to be discouraged, and our future is assured ; us under the same gods who brought our fathers out of the land of the Trojans, through the midst of the Greeks, But there is concealed in the Aeneid another to lesson, Its Augustus. much more hero, the directly useful immaculate pious Aeneas, is the direct ancestor of the Julian house to which Augustus belongs, and the founding of Rome shows toward the not city, only the good will of the gods but in no less degree their special The appointment and protection of the leader. descendants of the house of Aeneas are therefore the divinely appointed rulers of Rome. There can be no question but that this poetry had an effect influence was none the difficult was not necessary for less far to reaching because estimate and analyse. its It the psychological result that 154 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE men should actually believe in these myths much was gained if they allowed their thoughts to dwell on the ideas presented in them. It was the ; sedimentary formed thus deposit barren in the was to But while Augustus was wars. civil broad-minded enough to realise influence of literature, he did that which the soil of patriotism which had grown so fertilise the value of the not fail to recognise could not live by myths alone, that they men must be surrounded by visible cult acts and tangible temples of the gods in order that their faith might be aided by sight and their life filled with action. Literature was to encourage patriotism, and patriotism was the foundation state religion, enactment for the spiritual restoration but the prepare religious activity the was to state itself outward The take. of the must by legal form which the question of the sincerity of Augustus in these religious reforms is a If the essence of very difficult one to answer. consisted in acts and not in belief, in works religion and not man. in faith, Beyond Augustus was a devoutly religious we cannot go, for our judgment that is hampered not only by ignorance of the facts but by our inability to free ourselves from the modern standpoint that in the we do know. interpretation of There can be the few facts no question of the emperor's fitness for the task so far as priestly learning went, for he was from a very early age a member of three priesthoods : a pontiff, an augur, THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE and a of the guardian Sibylline 155 With books. modesty however he refrained from characteristic becoming Chief Pontiff until in B.C. 12 the death of Lepidus, the discarded member of the Second Triumvirate, left the position vacant. One who understands will Augustus have no the political difficulty in reforms of understanding of religion, for they were both undertaken with the same general underlying prinIn both cases inciples and along similar lines. his reorganisation and novelties were strenuously avoided, novations except of course those of a merely administrative character. In each case a successful effort was made to have it appear as if the old institutions of were being reinstated, whereas as a matter of fact the form alone was old with its age the republic artificially emphasised occasionally by an archaistic touch, while the content was quite nevv^ result in The each case was the strengthening real of the monarch)' and the emphasising of the divine right In our study of Augustus's of the Julian house. restoration of religion wc must not be content therefore with chronicling the old forms which were we must e.\amine in each case the new content which was put into them, even though re-established, but the evidence of that content consists oftentimes of a The fondness of Augustus for the mere tendency. is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in archaic one of his earliest religious acts : the formal declaration THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 156 of war against Antony and Cleopatra, in B.C. 32, by means of the Fetiales. The Fetiales were a very ancient priestly college which acted, under the of the direction international treaties and Senate, as all the representatives of was through them that all declarations of war had been made, law. It seems probable that this custom had fallen into desuetude after the Punic wars, and that acbut it cordingly the college had lapsed into insignificance, it had not died out altogether. But now as the first step in the rebuilding of the priesthoods if Octavian restored the college to its old rank and gained also the additional advantage that the people were impressed with the moral righteousness of their cause against Antony and Cleopatra, and also with the fact that it was a foreign, i.e. an international war, and not a civil one, in which they were about to engage. The effect of Octavian's restoration was a lasting one, for from this time on this priesthood was held in high honour during the whole of the empire, and the emperors themselves were members of it. was This a characteristic very It beginning to was primarily the human Augustus's activity. element to which he was appealing in his religious changes, and hence the priesthoods needed especial attention. Actium It was not long after the battle of that he restored another very ancient priest- hood, that of the Arval brothers. This was a very THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE men who priesthood consisting of twelve old i tooll part in the purification of the land, the Ambarvalia, so called because the ceremony consisted of a solemn But procession around the boundaries of the fields. as the Roman territory grew and such a ceremony in the old fashion became impossible and was carried out merely symbolically by sacrifices various boundary points, the Arval brothers lost their importance, so that sacrifices their place was even these in taken by the at all symbolic pontiffs. however recognised in this priesthood an effectual means of emphasising the agricultural side of Roman life, and of connecting the imperial Augustus family with the farming population. new worship was the sanctuary this grove at the and it is fifth milestone of the The in centre of the sacred Via Campana, there that the wonderful discoveries have " " been made of the inscriptions giving the minutes of the meetings of this curious corporation, begin- But the pastoral side of their ning with Augustus. worship was an insignificant matter, even in the age of Augustus, compared with their prayers and sup-^^ plications in behalf of the imperial house, so that the records of this supposedly agricultural priesthood form one of our best sources for the study of emperorworship. Three other priesthoods, the pontiffs, the augurs, and the guardians of the Sibylline books {XVviri) did not need actual restoration, for their ability 158 to THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANXE had kept them interfere in politics alive during the closing centuries of the republic, when political usefulness was the surest means of surviving in the But the fact that they had struggle for existence. been politically powerful made the control of them all the more necessary for an emperor who wished hands all the possibilities of political to have in his It was contrary to Augustus's policy openly to crush any of the institutions which had really been or, what was from his standpoint very influence. much the same bulwark of however these chief means of control thing, had been thought As republicanism. of one had priesthoods the bringing man. Hence a matter been of be a fact one of the republic for to into the Augustus the it was problem was easy to solve only necessary to honour these priesthoods by raising their dignity still higher and by making only men ; to appear of senatorial rank eligible, and then to take the them himself and to fill them with his own supporters. Thus the republic was apparently saved and the empire was really strengthened. chief position in his But the priesthood to which Augustus devoted most especial attention was the priesthood of Here he was guided not Vesta, the Vestal virgins. only by his desire to improve the condition of the priesthoods in general but also by his especial interest in the in cult of Vesta. Vesta will The be explained reasons for this interest in a moment when we THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE discuss the emperor's about said favourite cults word but a ; 159 on the priestesses of Vesta may be The Vestal virgins had been relatively effects its here. contaminated by politics, but the priesthood had suffered along with all the rest of the religion little of the state because of the general indifferentism religious things which characterised and neglect of the centuries closing families of the the state were not in The republic. as ready as in best the days to devote their daughters to the service, and thus the rank and consequently the influence earlier of the Vestals had to now some extent declined. But was immediately changed, the outward honour and the insignia of the Vestals were increased all this until they were allowed such privileges as not even When they went through the emperors possessed. street, they were attended by a lictor as the higher officers of the state were, and they were given But the most characterspecial seats at the theatre. the istic thing which Augustus did for them and that their cause the most was the emperor's which helped made to be repeated in public gossip, he had a grand-daughter of the proper age he would unhesitatingly make her a Vestal virgin. declaration, that if Toward the close of his a statement of his ship. been reign, a sort life Augustus prepared what he had accomplished during of compte rendu In a roundabout preserved to us of way almost and it his all naturally steward- of this has forms the i6o THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE source greatest of our knowledge of his activity. number of his religious reforms The spoils of war I have consecrated to After reciting a large he adds : — " Capitoline temple, in the temple of god Julius, in the temple of Apollo, in the temple of Vesta, in the temple of Mars the Avenger." the gods in the the These words give us a clue religious the more spirit, to the more especial of Augustus, a clue which is all needed because of his apparently catholic interests and his seemingly the forms of old and Roman general religion. interest in all No man who some cases entirely rebuilt eightytwo temples to various deities could be accused of undue partiality in emphasising certain phases of restored in religion to the total matter of fact exclusion of others. underneath But as a this general interest there present certain very specific interests, and passage in his own writing adds great strength to the other evidence as to what these gods were. were this Naturally in every list of pre-eminent deities Juppiter must be present, hence the mention of the Capitoline temple first as a matter of fact however Augustus's ; worship of Juppiter was much more a matter of His attitude was one form than of real interest. of graceful acceptance of the inevitable rather than of enthusiastic homage. Juppiter was not adapted it was almost impossible to connect Juppiter with a specific form of government other than the republic, much less with a particular to his purpose, because THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE the Julian house. family like royal come mean to republicanism. Capitoline in the republic in B.C. of republicanism about was too genuine to cealing features. imperial matters deities Julius, Apollo, 509 and the which it be used as a mask With had Juppiter The temple had ushered there was a halo i6i con- for four other stood very differently. The god Vesta, and Mars the Avenger were either already identical with the imperial family or could easily be connected with it. The central feature of the religion of the empire was a thing altogether unique and unknown From in the the worship of the emperors as gods. Augustus on this was the chief characteristic republic : of the state religion ; its beginnings must be sought therefore under his reign and he is largely accountable for it. According to our modern ideas it seems a very strange thing to worship a living man as a god it seems also strange to worship a dead ; man as a god, but analogy inherent instinct of the the we have there of worship of But we must at saints, least the and the race toward ancestor-wor- ship which unexpectedly crops intervals. the rid out in all of ourselves of us at modern ideas and try to appreciate the historical evolution of This evolution emperor -worship. and we can trace every step of clear is it, perfectly though we must remember that the various which we are compelled to take up one doing so cesses M in proafter 1 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 62 another in our explanation went on nature side in and exercised a sympathetic influence one the other, which we have to eHminate from upon by side, our but explanation make allowance for our in finished concept. We have seen that from the very beginning of religious Rome in life the idea was present that everything, each individual and each family, had its divine double, the individual in the shape of his Genius, the family in the shape of protecting spirits, In addition Vesta, the Penates, and later the Lar. to this, under the influence of the Greek myths which various families adopted, certain gods originally independent became especially associated with these families. the Each family was naturally worship worship of was its quite particular family or own as gods, but naturally its interested this in particular confined to the Now the first dependents. preliminary step toward emperor-worship was taken when the gods of the imperial family began to be worshipped by other families, then by all other But from the families, and officially by the state. of each the family had included gods very beginning also the deified ancestors, the Di Manes, at first thought of en masse and not as individuals, but toward the close of the republic they began to be individualised, worship was so that when the the next step dead ancestor therefore of Augustus, Julius, in emperor- a particular began to be wor- THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 163 shipped by the whole people and officially by the state. But also from the beginning there had been another element still in family worship, the cult paid Genius or divine double of the living master There followed then correspondingly of the house. to the as another step toward emperor-worship, the homage paid by the whole state to the Genius of the living These three steps the worship bj^ the emperor. : whole state of the gods of the emperor's family, its in three forms, the gods of the family in general, and the deified ancestor, and the Genius in particular of the living representative, were officially established came from by encouraged and all Augustus. Lastly there the Orient a habit of thought in distinct contradiction to Roman ideas whereby not the emperor but the \ery man himself was divine in life and in death, Augustus fought against this concept but had to yield to it Genius of the living and allow himself god in to be worshipped directly as a the Orient itself and in certain coast towns of Italy which were under strong Oriental influence, but he forbade it in Rome, and thus established a precedent which was followed by among the emperors who came all the better ones after him. This digression was necessary in order that we might appreciate the reasons for Augustus's preferin emphasising certain he did not foresee or plan ences cults. for Unquestionably an emperor-worship such as eventually grew up out of his arrangements ; 1 64 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE he was however deeply interested in the worship of the special deities of his The four gods therefore with that of Juppiter activity — in emphasising own family. whose names he couples the summary of his religious Apollo, Vesta, Mars the Avenger, and the — god Julius are all intimately connected with and if we add to this the worship of family ; own Genius, the Genius Augusti, real kernel of his religious restoration. we shall It his his have the remains what way these deities are connected with his family, and how he managed to emphasise their cult and at the same time to bring them into for us to see in close relationship to himself. From the time of his Apollo had stood first in a relation introduction into Rome of contrast to Juppiter. Apollo's oracles, the Sibylline books, had brought in a host of Greek gods whose presence tended inevitably to lessen the unique position and the unparalleled prestige of Juppiter Optimus Maximus, the great religion. representative of nationalism in Roman first this contrast was scarcely marked, At and the very oracles of Apollo which were destined undermine Juppiter's omnipotence were stored in The Juppiter's temple and under his protection. to was felt more strongly as the priesthood of the Sibylline books began to grow in influence alongside of the pontiffs, the priests of the Juppiter difference cults. when This opposition was emphasised in B.C. 367, the priesthood of the oracles was opened to THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANX'K the plebeians, while the pontiffs were At still 165 patricians. unquestionably the object of the patricians was to keep for themselves the more sacred and the first then more important college and to open the lesser But in the struggle of priesthood to the plebeians. the two orders those things which were opened to the plebeians grew in importance and entirely over- shadowed those which were so scrupulously hedged about, and the elements which strove to resist pro- gress were crushed beneath it; and just as the old assembly, the Comitia Curiata, which the patricians had kept for themselves, was later of no account com- pared with the Comitia Centuriata, which belonged to both orders, so the college of pontiffs lost signifi- cance while the keepers of the oracles gained steadily But it was not merely power and influence. because Apollo was the great leader of the Greek movement in Roman religion that Augustus chose in A far more important consideration honour him. guided him, for Apollo was especially attached to the Julian house in all its mythical and historical to fortunes. favour Actium of the in ; The first great public evidence of Apollo's Augustus's career was at the battle of but while this led to the first proclamation emperor's devotion Actium which made him to Apollo, it was not a worshipper of the god, but it was because he was a worshipper of Apollo from the beginning that Actium and all subsetiuent tokens of the god's favour were emphasised by him. THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE i66 However much or little the people of the day may have known about Apollo's previous relations to the Julian family, the legend of his assistance at Actium, and the immortalisation of that legend in the great The temple on the Palatine were proofs enough. moral effect of the Palatine temple cannot be overestimated, especially is when we realise one fact, which often neglected, that this temple gained infinitely in because significance attached the to we must not in forget of process it was on private ground, emperor's that transition own private house, for the Palatine was only into the resi- imperial dence, and though the house of Augustus, when he was the palace, during his lifetime it was it, The temple of Apollo merely his private residence. left was therefore in origin theoretically the private family rather than the seat of was the Apollo of the Julian house its Roman chapel of a a state cult. It who was being worshipped far there. more than a private worship, soon to be a cult centre in And for it distinct yet was it began very rivalry Juppiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline. oracles of the Sibyl, e\en though they were to The the words of Apollo, had never been preserved in the old temple of Apollo on the Flaminian meadow, but instead the}' had always been in the custody of But now these oracles, Juppiter on the Capitoline. after being carefully revised by deposited in the the emperor, were new Palatine temple, and by this THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 167 act the centre of all the Greek cults in Rome was transferred from Juppitcr to Apollo, from the Capitoline to the Palatine, and the rivalry between the two was publicly declared. The temple was dedicated in and 28 B.C. Augustus allowed its Roman people for more than a decade before he took the next step, a step influence to permeate the which was virtually to parallel Apollo and Artemis-Diana with Juppiter and Juno. his sister Among the Greek gods who came into Rome we saw the entrance in the middle of the third century before Christ of a of pair deities World, Dis and Proserpina, and in of the Lower connexion with the introduction the establishment of certain games called at " the secular " because they were to be repeated expiration of a century {saecuhini). The 249, one hundred years later with a slight delay they were celebrated again in B.C. 146, the next anniversary was omitted initial because celebration it fell in was in B.C. the midst of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, but now Augustus wished to There were chronological difficulties, celebrate them. but they did not prove insurmountable. was set in An oracle circulation, or one actually in circulation was made use of, wherein it was declared that a great cycle of four times one hundred and ten years had passed and that a new age was now beginning. The emperor, if not responsible for this oracle, was It was an essential part very willing to accept it. THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE i68 all things should become new, and new age should come a new spirit. This new saeculuvi must be ushered in by games of his plan that that with the which should be in once at and unlike those of like They were past centuries. to be celebrated at least part on the hallowed spot, the Tarentiivi in the Martins, they were to extend through three like the old games, but the three days were nights Campus to be added as and the well, deities worshipped in the night, while they were no longer the old gods of the Lower World, Dis and Proserpina, were at least mysterious deities of fate and fortune, while the gods of the day, Apollo and Artemis, Juppiter and Juno, were new as to the celebrations themselves were. games as the day But the equality of Apollo and Juppiter was expressed not merely the Diana. was It in Juppiter-Juno with Apollomore in evidence on the third of parallelisation still and greatest day of the of three times festival, when the procession nine youths and three times nine the song in honour of Apollo and maidens sang Diana, which Horace wrote and which has been us preserved to Saeculare, and among to which his writings, the Carmen in addition the recently found inscription giving an account of the games bears witness in the words carmen composnit Q. Horatius Flaccus {C.I.L. the procession started vi. from 32323). On this day the Apollo temple on the Palatine, and went over to the Juppiter temple THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANXE 169 on the Capitoline, and then back again to Apollo on the Palatine, thus indicating not only the equality of Apollo and Juppiter but even the superiority of A new age had indeed begun, an age which the new associations of the Palatine and the former. in the glamour of imperialism were to overcome the more democratic its incorrigibly associations of the Capitoline with republican which had hitherto ordinated the to in Juppiter. theory gods of at least Greek gods been sub- Rome old were now The not only equality but superiority. of to not cult be did sure, always specific Apollo, retain the exalted Augustus position to which granted had raised it, but even prominence, whereas the it never entirely lost its idea of the su- general premacy of the imperial cult was now established But this secular celebration for all time to come. interesting aside from of Augustus is of and for it the relation affords Apollo, Juppiter of the skilful combination of illustration old in the Augustan reorganisation. In another new and form the avowedly the old one, but in two respects In the first at least it introduces a new element. festival is place participation in the old festival, as in all the old festivals, had been confined to Roman citizens. Others might look on, but they could not take part, nor were they the recipients of any of the blessings But now every free member which were to follow. of the community, with wife and child, might join THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE lyo in the in thus the note was struck be the keynote of all that was best the changes introduced by the empire whose " to and highest most most " Mommsen to and celebration, which was puts it, beautiful was gradually perfectly, as task," Professor and the one which she to reconcile fulfilled and thus put an end to the contrast between the ruling and the subordinate communities, and thus to city Roman change the old law of city-citizenship into community of the state which embraced all the members of the empire." But even this w^as not a all ; under the guise of this restoration of an old republican institution a blow was struck at the very foundation of all republican institutions, namely the power of the Senate. It was />ar excellence Augustus's to whom festival, Senate had yet the had he little control arranged by him committed the or nothing to say or by those The details. about it and of such religious celebrations had hitherto formed an inalienable part of the Senate's power. Even magistrates in the do not procession itself the republican seem to have been officially was thus no longer the Senate inviting the magistrates and the citizens in good and regular present. It standing to perform a certain divine function, but it was the emperor invitmg all the members of the community, citizens and non-citizens alike, to join with him in worshipping the gods of the new state. A great part of Augustus's success was un- THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANXE I 7 I questionably due to a certain form of moral courage. For diplomacy and his desire to feel the pulse of the people he was never lacking in the courage of his own convictions. This can be seen nowhere all his better than in his attitude toward his adoptive father Caesar. From the very beginning when he Julius took upon himself, even at the cost of temporary impoverishment, the payment of Caesar's legacy, he was supremely true to the man whose successor he was, and this faithfulness is especially apparent in the field of religion. Here there are two cults, both Caesar, for which Augustus was largely responsible, that of the god Julius himself, relating to Julius and that of Mars the Avenger. In consideration of what Caesar had already done for the reorganisation of the state, and in view of what he was planning national calamit}', but to carry out, his death his influence might was a still be and preserved by elevating him into the For the accomplishment of this rank of the gods. it was necessary that the Senate should act, for in the rescued hands of the Senate alone lay the power to receive Thus the god Julius was created and the word divus received a new meaning. With that logic which was characteristic of Roman new gods religion Julius into the state. from the very beginning, the elevation of the ranks of the greater and more into individual gods went side by side with his exclusion from the ranks of the ordinary deified ancestors, so 1/2 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE that thereafter at the funeral processions of the Julian family his wax mask was absent from the processions of ancestors to which he no longer belonged, but in the parade of the circus he was present, drawn in a waggon among the greater gods. Nothing was left undone and per- to render his cult both conspicuous manent. A Antony after was appointed to look after it, and as the irony of fate would have it one of the first incumbents of this position was Marc B.C. 40. special priest (JIaineu) with reconciliation his Augustus in Then too a special festival day was given the religious holida}'s of the year. It him among was intended that this birthday, but as that day day should be July happened 1 3, his to be already de- voted to an important celebration in connexion with the games of Apollo, the day preceding it, July 12, was chosen. But more was needed than a priest and a holiday, there must be temple of the Divus Julius. a centre as well, a cult The site of this temple was already given in the associations connected with Caesar's death. There could be but one place for it, and that was in the Forum near the Regia where his body had been carried to be burned. temple was built and dedicated August An altar There the 18, B.C. 29. had been erected on the spot where Caesar's body had been burned, and the new temple was so placed that the altar was included occupying a niche the substructure. in in its boundaries, the centre of the front line of The temple had the usual history THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 173 of destruction and rebuilding in antiquity until in early Christian times it was used for secular purposes, and the eyesore of the pagan altar was removed by building a wall across the front, the diameter of the semicircular niche, and by roofing the altar over on a level with the existing platform. Thus the altar with and religious associations was and though the temple in its main outlines had long been excavated, the altar was its historical entirely lost sight of, not discovered until 1898, when the wall was broken Thus by the through and the whole thing laid bare. vote of the Senate, the appointment of a priest, the setting apart of a holy day in the year, and the building of a temple, the worship of the god Julius but it was the general irresistible was established ; tendency toward emperor -worship which kept it alive and made it the model for a tremendous sub- Augustus had accomplished sequent development. Men were looking on Caesar as a success The Di Manes of a after all and not as a failure. his desire. murdered emperor had been profitably exchanged the Divus Julius, and just as the gods had founded the old Rome of Romulus, so again it was a god who had laid the foundations of the empire for over which his successor was ruling. But Augustus was not content with this all very well for as an illustration men to look ; it was upon the god Caesar of justification after death, as an right the wrongs of example of how heaven could THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 1/4 earthly existence, but that was not sufficient the ; punishment of those who caused his earthly downfall must be emphasised, it must be shown that the gods were quite as much interested in punishing the sinner rewarding the righteous man who was sinned It was one thing to transfer one's ancestors against. as in to the was it gods, quite another take to thing measures to keep oneself from following in their footsteps, even though their last estate was theoretically Hence desirable. side Divus Julius went side with the cult of the Mars show that it of the beginning of the was no mere poetical title but a genuine cult-name born in an earnest moment of the cognomen was vowed by Augustus vengeance slayers temple, his for father," of Caesar, Brutus vowed building that at in in the the small round temple to This was dedicated for " in behalf war against and Cassius. Philippi in B.C. 42, : Mars under the great temple subsequently built to this Mars the Ultor, The circumstances Avenger. cult by that of This was so slow in meantime Augustus erected a Mars Ultor on the Capitoline. May 12, B.C. 20. In the years which followed Augustus proceeded with the difficult and extremely expensive task of purchasing property for his own Forum, and here was built and dedicated, August i, B.C. 2, the great temple of Mars Ultor. But aside from being a very present reminder of the vengeance which the gods had for those who in store killed a Caesar, it stood also for the Julian THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 175 house, for Mars was not alone in the temple but with him was Venus, the ancestral mother of the family of Julius and Augustus ; and thus was once more emphasised the connexion between the ancestors of the ruling house and the great ancestor Mars, from whom Romans were all sprung, A temple possessed of such strong associations with the imperial family became instantly a centre of their family worship, and in this respect produced another to the cult of Juppiter on the Capitoline. In connexion namely with the putting on of the toga rival virilis the members of the Mars Ultor the temple of imperial family went to instead of following the immemorial custom of ascending the Capitol to the More imof Juppiter Optimus Maximus. shrine portant yet the insignia of the triumph, which had always been in the keeping of the Capitoline Juppiter even before he was Optimus " was only the in the Maximus and while he were now preserved Striker," Feretrius, temple of Mars Ultor. With all the state worshipping Apollo, the god of the emperor's own family, on the Palatine, celebrating the divinity of his ancestor the god Julius in the Roman Forum, and acknowledging Mars avenger of all those who the as did the emperor harm, in own new Forum, it might have seemed far-seeing man that religion had been suffi- the emperor's to a less ciently pressed into the service of the royal family. But so it did not seem to Augustus. These cults were THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 176 all three of them essentially new, and new but the test cults may, become prominent they usually do, comes with time whether there is external to be sure, easily ; pressure sufficiently continuous to give permanency to this prominence. As a matter of fact not one of these three cults continued later to hold the rank in im- On the other portance which it had under Augustus. hand if one went low enough and looked sufficiently deep down certain elements in the religious life of the community could be found which continued These almost unchanged from century to century. were the simple elements which were involved in family worship, the sacrifices at the hearth of Vesta, and those to the Genius of the master of the house. Here simple beliefs and elementary cult acts had continued virtually unchanged from the very earliest down period need to the formal any present. restoration These on cults did the part not of the emperor, for they had not experienced the decline which the other cults had suffered, but by just so much more they would empire and his own his afford a firm foundation for rule if he could in some way In the connecting them v^'ith himself The case of Vesta this was comparatively easy. succeed in Pontifex virgins, Maximus was the guardian of the Vestal and thus on March 12, when Augustus was quite natural that Vesta and that the day 6, B.C. became Pontifex Maximus, there should be a festival to it should continue as a public holiday. The Pontifex THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 177 Maximus however was supposed to live in the Regia down in the Forunni, where Julius Caesar as Pontifex Maximus had actually lived. This Augustus did not desire to do, hence he gracefully gave up the Regia to the Vestal virgins and made his official residence in his own house on the Palatine, fulfilling the religious requirements by consecrating a part of that house. On a portion of the section thus consecrated a temple of Vesta was built and dedicated April 28, own " B.C. This was 12. strictly Vesta," the hearth of his own speaking his house, but the prominence of the temple of Vesta there had an effect similar to the prominence of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and the whole state began thus to worship at the hearth of the emperor, and in time the emperor was worshipped at each individual hearth. But the crowning touch of Augustus's religious this was the establishment policy was yet to come After of the worship of the Genius of the emperor. ; Actium and certain in the earlier years of his reign it is not have thought of that Augustus would putting himself, even in the spiritualised form of his Genius, before the people as an object of worship. But the tendency to emperor-worship which Oriental had brought with it was not without its influence effects effects on the emperor himself, and perhaps these all the stronger because of his valiant were struggle against worshipping the it. Then too the state was already gods of his family, even Vesta 178 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE He had Augusta, the goddess of his own hearth. in substance, even if not yet in name, the become father of his country. custom that the It had been an immemorial the household should members of In house. worship the Genius of the master of the custom still existed. every household in Rome that It was a very logical step, and one therefore which a could easily take, to carry out the analogy of the family and to allow the whole state to worship the Genius of the emperor, who was the head of the Roman The family of the state. all idea therefore was not at incongruous, nor was the way carried out, though the in which was it was so ingenious latter as to deserve special consideration. In the old days when Rome was a farming comover the fields munity, the guardianship of the gods was one of the most important elements in religious life. The gods were above boundary two roads lines, and thus it all the protectors of the came to pass that where and thus the corners of four farms came together the deities protecting these farms were cros.sed the Lares worshipped together as the Lares Compitales, of the compita or cross-roads. this worship was city streets, later Curiously enough extended to the crossing of and as was natural organised in the city than Regular associations, it it became more had been collegia, in highlj' the country. were formed to look after the details of the worship, headed by the magistri vicorum, who were however not public ofificials THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE but the merely elected heads of these colleges, the lower ranks of society. contagion of and The men mainly from civil political colleges as well as their higher up in strife more affected these aristocratic parallels, the social scale, and turned local political clubs. The 179 them into part played by these clubs in the civil struggles which occupied the last century of the republic was such that the Senate in B.C. 64 was compelled to dissolve them, though they were restored again six years later and existed until Caesar Rut now Augustus was destroyed them entirely. creating a new organisation for the city, dividing it into fourteen regions, each region containing a certain number of subdivisions of called vici. the cross-roads" afforded opportunity which he never him failed The old "colleges just the sort of to seize, that of to restore a neglected republican institution, seeming and at the same time of making it into a support of The colleges had antiquity in their the monarchy. favour, and their repeated suppression was clear proof They must be recognised and taken over by the state, their officials must be made into officials of the state, but, most important, their worship must be permeated with the imperial idea. This was where Augustus's skill showed itself. At every shrine of the cross-roads where of old the two Lares had of their power. been worshipped alone, a third image now took its This was the Genius Augusti, place between them. who thus formed henceforth an integral part of the THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE i8o Under worship of every part of the city. the presiding Genius Augusti the Lares themselves local began to be known as the Lares Augusti and the grew in popularity so that it began to extend cult all of Italy and even through the provinces of the empire, and wherever the Lares went, along with them went the worship of the Genius of the through emperor. Now we have that the question arises what seen irresistibly as to Augustus did, the measure There can be no question but that in obtaining the immediate object of his success. he was successful which he was seeking after. A formal religious life was unquestionably brought into being, and such strength as that life had was exerted in behalf of the This empire. is is in only part true of the city but it absolutely true of the provinces, where after all in bound to He. the long run the balance of power was In every case the religious reform, spread rapidly through the rest begun in the city, of Italy and out into There the negative elements, which For growth in Rome itself, were absent. the provinces. hindered its the provinces the empire was emperor was The religion far better politics which the republic had of all Augustus scepticism all. had politics of the last destroyed, had recreated the century of the recreated as political considerations could. which and even a bad gain, than none at it But the had made possible the in as far spirit of political THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE i8i abuse of religion could not be driven out by any A form might be further application of politics. created, both the paraphernalia of temples and the hierarchy of priests whose business it was to perform certain cult acts, but there the power of enactment ceased. In the went on for main the good or All these things. for that religious ill was life of the people entirely independent of alive and real in the simple domestic cult went on down into the empire, and those who were faithful were faithful still. The cults of the Orient, against all that he dared, majority of the which Augustus had done captured the minds of the vast people, and a Mithras or an Isis still meant infinitely more than a Mars or a Vesta, even if Mars were the avenger of a Caesar, and Vesta the Among goddess of the living emperor's own hearth. the more intellectual classes the folly of the one set of gods, the darlings of the common people, was felt as keenly as the folly of the others, those who had been worshipped by the men of former days. Philosophy, which had had its share in the break- down of faith, beginning in was now offering out of faith which it the days of the Punic wars, itself a substitute for the had taken away. It no longer con- tented itself with a destructive criticism which resulted in a negative view of life, but in Stoicism at least it strove to provide something sufficiently constructive to afford not only a rule of living but also an inspiration to live. 1 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE 82 With the death of Augustus the Roman history of old the last attempt to religion last was was in ; From now on it. what he for the main old though certain mixed with were His was the spiritual need of the people fill with the old forms and the old ideas offered chapter in the closed. new the ideas lifeless platitudes of philosophy and the orgiastic excesses of the Oriental cults divided the field between them, and it was with them rather than with the gods of Numa or even with the of deities the Sibylline That fought its battles. too is a fascinating study, but it is quite another story and with the death of Augustus our present And when we look back over the whole tale is told. books that of it Christianity the main outlines because of the details become perhaps even clearer into which we have been compelled to go. We see at the start the simple religion of an agri- cultural and still people inheriting from formalism which content. this religion that it is Toward strongly tinged with animism an animistic past a certain so great that developing through takes into it almost becomes a the close of the itself a certain kingdom we Italic see influences so number of elements which were absent from the older religion because they had no concomitants in daily life, but whose These elements presence is now rendered necessary. are especially the ideas of politics, trade, commerce, Then for a moment under and the liberal arts. THE AUGUSTAN RExNAISSAXCE 183 Servius an equilibrium seems to have been reached, and a reh"gion to have been brought into being which was simple enough for the old lovers of simplicity and varied enough to satisfy the new demands of the community. But this was not for long, for the conquest of Rome by Greece began then, three centuries before the physical conquest of Greece The hosts of Greek deities invaded by Rome. spiritual and captured Rome under the Sibylline books, and though at leadership first of the they had been kept outside the pomerium, even this iron barrier was melted in the heat of the Second Punic War, and the new Greek gods swarmed same time as a last the into the city proper. At heritage from the baleful books an Oriental goddess, the Magna Mater, was taken into the cult and into the hearts of the people, and the elements of decay were thus all present. These elements were threefold : the natural spiritual reaction resulting from the excesses of the period of War the fascination of the Orient, Rome in the cult of the Magna Mater the Second Punic exhibited to and the new the ; ; gift which Greece now made knowledge of her literature, to especially Rome, of her In the last two centuries of the republic philosophy. then these forces alone would have been sufficient to cause the downfall of religion, but they were aided by politics, which fastened itself upon the formalism of the state religion and sucked the little life-blood that was left. Rome's scholars and wise men could deplore 1 84 THE AUGUSTAN RENAISSANCE the result and point out the causes, but they could not cure the state of affairs. What politics had done, politics alone could undo, hence only the reforms of an autocrat could restore something of the outward structure of the old state religion. But beyond and the autocrat were alike powerless. Against philosophy and Oriental ecstasy they were of no avail. Hence the spirit had left the religion this politics which Augustus had restored even before the marble in its honour had fallen temples which he had built into decay. The age of formalism had passed, the demands of the individual could no longer be religious satisfied For good or for evil something by a mere ritual. more personal, more subjective, was needed. Men sought for it in various ways and with varying success, but except in the simple forms of family worship old Roman religion was dead. INDEX References to the more recent have been given religion on the subject of Roman literature connection with the appropriate topics in in this index. The following abbreviations Roman Fowler, have Festivals, been employed London, 1899; : — A". R.R. /•'. = = Warde Wissowa, P.W. = Roenier, Muenchen, 1902 Pauly-Wissowa, Encyclopaedie der Altertumsiuissenschaft, Stuttgart, Z^.i. := Roscher, Lexikon der Griechischen und Roemischeii 1894 Religion — and Cult us der ; Mythologie, Leipzig, 1884 — ; . Actium, 81, 165 Aeneid, as a political treatise, 153 Aesculapius, 84. Cp. R.R. 253 ff. R.F. 278 Thraemer, P.W. s.v. Anthropological of, 4. ; ; ; method, criticism 5 Antony and the Cp. R.R. 293 cult of Isis, 137. Cp. R.F. 180 Roman R.R. Q.y) Wernicke, P.W. s.v. R.R. Apollo and Augustus, 164. Cp. ed. Gardthausen, Augustus, 873, 961 i, R.R. 67; Apollo Medicus, 83. 2, p. 298. Agrippa, erects Temple of Neptune, Cp. R.F. 180; A". A'. 240 81 Richter, Cp. Beloch, Italischc Topographic der Aricia, 53. Stadt Rom. P.W. Platner, Bund, Huelsen, 242 187 s.v. Ancient Rome, 357 Alba Longa and the Latin League, Artemis, 53 ff. Cp. Wernicke. Asklepios Agricultural character of early religion, 18. Cp. R.F. 335 20 ff. JMommsen, C.I.L. Apollo, 66. 57, ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; 52. Cp. Beloch, Italisclie Bund, Huelsen, in P.W. s.v. 177 Altar of Caesar, 173. Cp. Huelsen, ; Forum Romanum, P.W. s.v. Arval Brotherhood, restored by Augustus, 156. Cp. A'. A*. 485 Henzen, Wissowa, P.W. s.v. ; ed. 2, p. 139 Acta Fratrum Arvalium, Berlin, Ancient Rome, 180 Animism, 5. 1874; C.I.L. vi. 2023 -21 19. Cp. Tylor, Primitive ii. Culture, 1-327 32338-32398 377 ff. ff. Golden Frazer, 170 Cp, Aesculapius Asklepios, 84. Bough, Anna Perenna, 115. Cp. R. F. 50-54 Atargatis, 138. Cp. A'. A*. 300 ff. R.R. 194 Wissowa, in P.W. s.v. Cumont, in P.W. s.v. Usener, Rheinisches Museum, xxx. Athena, contrasted with Minerva, 46 Attalus of Pergamon, 97 206 Meltzer, Lex. s.v. ; ; Platner, i. ; , i. ; ; ; ; ; 185 INDEX i86 Augustus 147-152 ; his character Bacchanalian and motives, scandal, 118, Comitia Curiata, 165 Commercial spirit in Rome, 107 Comparative philology, 2 Consus, 114. Cp. R.F. 206-209, 212-213, 267-268; R.R. 166 ff. 119. C.I.L. Cp. Livy, 39, 8 ff. X. 104 K.R. 58, 248 Bellona, 134. Cp. Aust, in ; 196, ; P.W. Aust, s.v. ; s.v. R.R. 289 ; P. Cp. K.F. W'issowa, iii. 105-106; K.K. 177 tf. W. s.v. Kern, in P.W. ; in P. 66 ff. Bona Dea-Damia, ; s.v.; Daniia ; of, 173 religious reforms of, 146, 147 Calendars, as sources for early Roman C.I.L. ; 10. religion, I, ed. 2 ; Cp. Momnisen, R.F. 336 R.R. ; disorder of, owing ignorance of priests, 132 ff. ; Die sowa, Augustus, Mommsen, viii. Cp. Wis- Saeculare, 168. 225 Saccular -feicr des Marburg, 1894 Ephem. Epigraph. ; ff. Carnientalis Porta, 82. Cp. Richter, Topographit der Sfadt Ram. 44 Plainer, Ancient Rome, 48 Castor, 37 ff. Cp. Helbig, Hermes, xl. 1905, loi ff. R.F. 2g6-2<)j R.R. 216 ff. Albert. Le Culte de Castor et Pollux eii Italie Ceres- Demeter, 72. Cp. R.F. 72; ; S. V. Di Indigetes, R.F. 192; 9. Cp. R.R. 15 Wissowa, De Romanorum ff.; dis NTar- indigetibus, to Cannae, 96 Carmen Damia, iii, 112. Cp. Ceres Dead, worship of, 14-15. Cp. R.R., 187 R.F. 300, 306 ff. Demeter, 72. Cp. Ceres Diana, 53 ff. Cp. R.F. 198 ff. R.R. 198 ff.; Wissowa, in P.W. ; Caesar, altar 15 source of Sibylline books, W. Cumae, burg, 1892 Di Manes, 14, 90. Cp. R.R. 192; R.F. 108; Peter, Lex. s.v. Di Xovensides, 9. Cp. R.R. 15 ff. Dionysos, 72. Cp. Liber Dios-kouroi, 38, 39. Cp. Castor Di Penates, 13, 113. Cp. R.R. 145 ff . ; De R.F. 337; Culto Privato, i. 55 ff . ; Marchi, Wissowa, in Le.v. s.v. Divus Julius, 171. Drepana, 88 Cp. R.R. 284 ff. ; ; 79, 105 in P.W. ; R.R. 242 ff. ; Wissowa, s.v. Chaldaeans, 119. Cp. K.R. Baumstark, in P.W'. s.v. Circus Flaminius, 41 Clodius, 88 ligion 161, 162, Boissier, 163. La re- romainc Cp. Mommsen, History (Engl, transl. ), 1T2-1T3; Teuffel, Rocm. Lit. Ennius, 121, 122. 58; Cognomina, 24. Cp. Carter, De deorum Romaiioruni cog?iomi)tiI'us, Leipzig, 1898 Collegia, 47. Cp. Waltzing, Les Corporations chez les Romains, Louvain, 1895-1900 Collegium mercatorum, 78 Colonia Xcptunia, 80 Comitia Centuriata. 165 Emperor -worship, Cp. R.R. 284; Roman 3, 100-104; Skutsch, in P.W. s.v. Epidauros, 84 Eros of Thespiae, 46. Cp. PrellerRobert, Griech. Myfli. 50T ff. Etruscans, problem of, 42 flf. Cp. Mommsen, History (Engl, transl.), 4, Euhemerism, 122. Roman 200 Euhemerus, 17. Cp. Rohde, Griech. Roman, 220 ff. INDEX Cp. C.I.L. xi. p. 464 ff. Deecke, Die Falisker, Strassburg, 1888. p. 89 ff. Falerii, 44. ; 187 fanus, 13. Cp. h'.F. 282 91 ff. Juno, 12. Cy>. ff. R.R. ; R.F. passim; R.R, Family as original social unit, 11 Fanatici, 135. Cp. R.R. 291 Fauna, in. Cp. Bona Dea Faunus, tii. Cp. K.F. 256-265; R.K. 172 ff. Female deities, absence of, in early Juppiter as symbol of republic, 160 Juppiter Feretrius, 21, 58. Cp. R.F. 229, 230; R.R. 103 Juppiter Fidius, 25. Cp. R.F. 138; Roman religion, 21 Fetiales, 156. Cp. K.F. 230, Juppiter R.K. 475 Fides, 25. 231; 113 ff- R.R. 120 95 ff. Latiaris, ; R.F. Cp. 55. R.R. 34 ff. Juppiter Optimus Ma.ximus, 21, ;8. ff. Cp. R.R. R.F. 237; 103 Flaccus, Granius, 147 Formalism in Roman Cp. R.F. 348 religion, 7. Fors Foriuna, 51. Cp. R.F. 161172; R.R. 206 ff. Fortuna, 50 ff. Cp. R.F. 161-172, 223-225; R.R. 206 ff. Forum Boarium, 33, 36 Frazer, Golden Bough, i6 no Cp. R.R. ff. Jus divinum, 8 Jus humanum, 8 Juventas, 109. Cp. R.R. 125 ff. Cp. Libera Kore, 72. Lar Familiaris, ff. Wissowa, ; Psyche, ed. 13. Cp. R.R, 149 in Lex. s.v. Rohde, 2, 38 ff. Latin League, ; 254 De ; Marchi, i. Genius, 12. Cp. R.R. 154 ff. Genius Augusti, 179. Cp. R.R. 72. 73- 179 Great Mother of the gods, 96. Cp. R.F. 69-70; R.R. 263 Greek influence in Rome, 99, 100, 104 Guilds in relation to Minerva, 47 : Haruspicina, 43. Hasdrubal, 96 to the Lemuria, 16. Cp. R.F. 106-110; De Marchi, 36, 37, 39; R.R. 189 Lepidus, 137 Liber, 74, 75. Cp. R.F. 54, 55: R.R. 126 ff., 243 ff. R.R. Libera, 75. Cp. R.F. 74 ; Study Cp. R.R. 469 ff. Hermes Empolaios, tj. Cp. PrellerRoberl, Griech. Myth, 414 Hesiod, 46 Horace, 168 Indo-Germanic 136. ler. Lex. religion, 3 Cp. R.R. 292 s.v. ff. Livius Andronicus, 48 Lucretius, 144 Ludi Saeculares, 93. 364 ff. ; Epigraph, Cp. Juventas Hebe-Juventas, no. Hercules, 32. Cp. R.R. 219 ff. Hereditas sine sacris, 17 Isis, ff. ; Alba Cp. ff. Longa 243 Hannibal, 93, 94 Harrison Prolegomena of Greek Religion, 22 52 Dre.\- viii. 225 R.R. Cp. Mommsen, in Ephem. ff. Cp. R.F. Lupercalia, in, 114. R.R. 172 ff. 298, 299, 310-321 ; Ma-Bellona, 134. Cp. Bellona Maecenas, 152 Mater. Cp. Great Mother Magna of the gods Marius the Epicurean, 20 Mars, 19. Cp. R.F. 34 129 ff. Mars-Ares, no, ni ft'- : A'. A'. INDEX i88 Mars Ultor, R.R. Cp. 174. Poseidonia-l^aestum, 80 70, 133 Megalesia, 99 P.W. s.v. R.R. 203 ; etc. Te.xtes (2 vols.), Mommsen, Cp. R.R. 64 unpopularity of, last century of republic, 131. Cp. Marquardt, Staatsverw. iii. ; in ff. Mithradates, 127 Mithras, 138. Cp. R.R. 307 Cumont, 35 Priesthood of Sibylline books, 66. Cp. Quindecemviri Priesthoods, political value of, 129. Potitii, Mercury, 77. Cp. R.F. 121, 186; R.H. 248 ff. Metaurus, 96 Minerva, 44 ff. Cp. Wissowa, in 64 ff. ff. Propertius, 152 Proserpina, 76. ; et monuments, Brussels, 1896 R.R. 255 18 ff. ; R.F. Cp. 212 ; Carter, in Le.v. s.v. Puteoli, De 15. Cp. R.F. 211 Marchi, i. 184 R.R. 188 absence in of, Mythology, Rome, 8. Cp. R.R. 20 ff. Mundus, ; 136 Pythagorianism, 120 ; Name, importance 6. of, Regillus, Cp. \. ; 121. Cp. Gesch. \. ff. 120, of, S. Roem. Schwegler, 564 of. 77 Octavian, 137 Octavius Mamilius, 40 Paestum — Poseidonia, R.F. 306-310 Parilia, R.R. 165 ; De Cp. 114. ff. ; Marchi, i, 199 79-85 R.F. ; ff. ; Cell. 15, II, I ; Sueton. Grammat. 25 Pinarii, Sibyl, 35 Plebeian aediles, 74. coming Herbert, Roman iv. 201 Cp. Neptune ff. Cp. Diels, 17. Cp. Prin- History (Engl, transl.), ff. ; Tarentum 33, 34, 35 Cp. R. R. History Sulla increases the priesthood of the his influence Sibylline books, 67 Pomerium, Poseidon, 79. 40. ciples of Sociology Stoicism, the official state philosophy of Rome, 123. Cp. Mommsen, Syria dea, 138. Staatsrcchf, 62 of, Cp. R.R. 245; ii. 471 Plutarch, Moralia, 50 Pollux, 37. Cp. Castor Mommsen, 1 Slbyllinische Blaetter, Berlin, 1890 Sibylline oracles, 64 ff. Spencer, Pater, Walter, 20 Persephone, 75. Cp. Proserpina Philosophers e.xpelled from Rome, Aiken, 122, 123. xii, 54717 Cp. Aul. of, Mommsen, Roman (Engl, transl. ), iv. 205 Scipio Aemilianus and his circle, 124 Secular games, 93, 167. Cp. Ludi Saeculares Servius Tullius, 27, 50 Sextus Pompeius, 81 80 Cp. R.R. 187 Parentalia, 16. 1883 Bartolommeo, 87 62; Ocean commerce, beginnings edition, Berlin, Aeterna, 151 Scaevola, theology R.R. 62 ; R.R. Cp. 40 Mommsen's Roma V. Numa, apocryphal books 68. Republic, character of the last century of, 125, 126 Res Gestae of Augustus, 147. Cp. Frazer, Golden Bough, 403 ff. Nemi, 54 Neptune, 80. Cp. R.F. 185-187 R.R. 250 ff; Wissowa, in Le.x. s. Quindecemviri, 461 ff. on religion, 128 Cp. R.R. 300 Tarentum-Colonia Neptunia, 80 in Campus Cp. Richter, 224 ff. Martius, ; 89. Plainer. 322 INDEX Tarquin and the old woman, 65 Tarracina, 98 43. Cp. R.N. 403 ff. Terra Mater, 90. Cp. R.F., 294296 U.K. 162 Tiber, island in, 86 Templum, ; Tibullus, 152 Tibur (Tivoli), 35 Tifata, 54 Tusciilum, 39, 40 Tyche, 50. Cp. 189 Varro, theology of, 142. Cp. R.R. 62 13. Cp. R.R. 141 ff.; Dc Marchi, Culto Private, i. 64 ff. R.F. 146 ff. Vesta and Augustus, 176, 177. Cp. Gardthausen, Augustus, 868 Vesta, : -Vestal Virgins, 158 Victoria, temple of, on Palatine, loi Virgil, Prcller- Robert, Vulcan, 152 21. R.R. 184 Griech. Myth. 50 Cp. R.F. ff THE END. Ptinted by K. & K. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 209-211; HANDBOOKS OF ARCHEOLOGY & ANTIQUITIES p:dited kv Professor 1'ercv Gardner, of Oxford, and Professor Liu.U. of the University Francis W. Kelsev, of the University of Michigan. Crown E.xtra GREEK SCULPTURE. M.A. Part By Srv. Ernest Prof. A. Gardner, Second Impression, with Appendix. los. II., 5s. Complete in one vol. Appendix the Coins is. separate, GREEK AND ROMAN COINS. 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