Part 1 (2/2)

In this connection it is interesting to notice two facts which stand almost as corollaries to these beliefs. One fact is the religious necessity for the continuance of the family, in order that there might always be a living representative of the family to perform the sacrifices to the ancestors. It was the duty of the head of the family not only to perform these sacrifices himself as long as he lived but also to provide a successor. The usual method was by marriage and the rearing of a family, but, in case there was no male child in the family, adoption was recurred to. Here it is 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 a male representative. In cases of inheritance the first lien on the income was for the maintenance of the traditional sacrifices unless some special arrangement had been made.

These exceptional inheritances, without the deduction for sacrifices, were naturally desired above all others and the phrase ”an inheritance without sacrifices” (_hereditas sine sacris_) became by degrees the popular expression for a G.o.dsend. The other fact of interest in this connection is that, inasmuch as ancestors were wors.h.i.+pped only _en ma.s.se_ and not as individuals, that process could not take place in Roman religion which is so familiar in many other religions, namely that the great G.o.ds of the state should some of them have been originally ancestors whose greatness during life had produced a corresponding emphasis in their wors.h.i.+p after death, so that ultimately they were promoted from the ranks of the deified dead into the select Olympus of individual G.o.ds. This has been a favourite theory of the making of a G.o.d from the time of Euhemerus down to Herbert Spencer. There are religions in which it is true for certain of the major G.o.ds, but there are no traces of the process in Roman religion, and the reason is obvious in view of the peculiar character of ancestor wors.h.i.+p in Rome.

We have now seen the princ.i.p.al 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 was work to be done in life, a living to be gained, and here, as everywhere, there were hosts of unseen 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 of the community, its means of livelihood, were agriculture and stock-raising, so the G.o.ds were those of the crops and the herds. Some years ago the late Professor Mommsen succeeded in extracting from the existing stone calendars a list of the religious festivals of the old Roman year, and also in proving that this list of festivals was complete in its present condition at a time before the city of Rome was surrounded by the wall which Servius Tullius built, and that it therefore goes back to the old kingdom, the time of what has been called the ”Religion of Numa.” We cannot go through all the festivals in detail, but it is 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 G.o.d or group of G.o.ds at every time in the Roman year which was at all critical for agricultural interests.

It must not be forgotten also that this list is not absolutely complete, because it represents merely the official state festivals, and not even all of them but only those which fell upon the same day or days every year, so that they could be engraved in the stone to 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 the list, though they were celebrated at some time in every year; and naturally the public calendars contained no reference to the many private and semi-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 G.o.d whose character has been very much misunderstood because of the company which he keeps; this is the G.o.d Mars. It has become the fas.h.i.+on of late to consider him as a G.o.d of vegetation, and a great many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to show his agricultural character.

But the more primitive a community is, the more intense is its struggle for existence, and the more rife its rivalries with its neighbours.

Alongside of the ploughshare there must always have been the sword or its equivalent, and along with Flora and Ceres there must always have been a G.o.d of strife and battle. That Mars was this G.o.d in early as well as later times is shown above all things by the fact that he was always wors.h.i.+pped outside the city, as a G.o.d who must be kept at a distance.

Naturally his cult was a.s.sociated with the dominant interest of life, the crops, and he was wors.h.i.+pped in the beautiful ceremony of the purification of the fields, which Mr. Walter Pater has so exquisitely described at the opening of _Marius the Epicurean_. But he was regarded as the protector of the fields and the warder off of evil influences rather than as a positive factor in the development of the crops. Then too in the early days of the Roman militia, before the regular army had come into existence, the war season was only during the summer after the planting and before the harvest, so that the two festivals which marked the beginning and the end of that season were also readily a.s.sociated with the state of the crops at that time.

But the most interesting and curious thing about this old religion is not so much what it does contain as what it does not. It is not so much what we find as what we miss, for more than half the G.o.ds whom we instinctively a.s.sociate with Rome were not there under this old regime.

Here is a partial list of those whose names we do not find: 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 G.o.ds in this list represent phases of life with which Rome in this early period was absolutely unacquainted. She had no appreciable trade or commerce, no manufactures or particular handicrafts, and no political interests except the simple patriarchal government which sufficed for her present needs. Her G.o.ds of water were the G.o.ds of rivers and springs; Neptune was there, but he was not the ocean-G.o.d like the Greek Poseidon. Vulcan, the G.o.d of fire, who was afterwards a.s.sociated with the Greek Hephaistos and became the patron of metal-working, was at this time merely the G.o.d of destructive and not of constructive fire. Even the great G.o.d Juppiter who was destined to become almost identical with the name and fame of Rome was not yet a G.o.d of the state and politics, but merely the sky-G.o.d, especially the lightning G.o.d, Juppiter Feretrius, the ”striker,” who had a little shrine on the Capitoline where later the great Capitoline temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus was to stand.

Another curious characteristic of this early age, which, I think, has never been commented on, is the extraordinarily limited number of G.o.ddesses. Vesta is the only one who seems to stand by herself without a male parallel. Each of the others is merely the contrasted potentiality in a pair of which the male is much more famous, and the only ones in these pairs who ever obtained a p.r.o.nounced individuality did so because their cult was afterwards reinforced by being a.s.sociated with some extra-Roman cult. The best ill.u.s.tration of this last is Juno. We may go further and say that it-seems highly probable that the wors.h.i.+p of female deities was in the main confined to the women of the community, while the men wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ds. This distinction extended even to the priesthoods where the wife of the priest of a G.o.d was the priestess of the corresponding G.o.ddess. Such a state of affairs is doubly interesting in view of the pre-eminence of female deities in the early Greek world, which has been so strikingly shown by Miss Jane Harrison in her recent book, _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 expansive power and its adaptability to new conditions.

Society is bound to undergo changes, and a young social organism, if normal, is continually growing new cells. New conditions are arising and new interests are coming to the front. In addition, if the growth is to be continuous, new material is being constantly absorbed, and the simple h.o.m.ogeneous character of the old society is being entirely changed by the influx of foreign elements. This is what occurred in ancient Rome, and it is because ancient Roman religion was not capable of organic development from within, that the curious things happened to it which our history has to record. It is these strange external accretions which lend the chief interest to the story, while at the 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 religion was unable to adapt itself to the new const.i.tution of society with its contrasted cla.s.ses, and to the new commercial and political interests which attracted the attention of the upper cla.s.ses, that it was absolutely devoid within itself, within its own limitations, of a certain capability of development. For several centuries after outside influences began to affect Rome, her original religion kept on developing alongside of the new forms. The manner in which it developed is thoroughly significant of the original national character of the Romans.

We have seen that from the very beginning the nature of the G.o.ds as powers rather than personalities tended to emphasise the value and importance of the name, which usually indicated the particular function or speciality of each deity and was very often the only thing known about him. In the 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 noun explaining the nature of the G.o.d to which it was attached, it became necessary to add to the original name some adjective which would adequately describe the G.o.d and do the work which the name by itself had originally done. And as the nature of the various deities grew more complicated along with the increasing complications of daily life, new adjectives were added, each one expressing some particular phase of the G.o.d's activity. Such an adjective was called a _cognomen_, and was often of very great importance because it began to be felt that a G.o.d with one adjective, _i.e._ invoked for one purpose, was almost a different G.o.d from the same G.o.d with a different adjective, _i.e._ invoked for another purpose. Thus a knowledge of these adjectives was almost as necessary as a knowledge of the name of the G.o.d. The next step in the development was one which followed very easily. These important adjectives began to be thought of as having a value and an existence in themselves, apart from the G.o.d to which they were attached. The grammatical change which accompanied this psychological movement was the transfer of the adjective into an 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 own, so in old Roman religion some phase of a G.o.d'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, wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d of good faith in the dealings of men with one another, the G.o.d by whom oaths were sworn under the open sky, was designated as ”Juppiter, guarding-good-faith,” Juppiter Fidius. There were however many other phases of Juppiter's work, and hence the adjective _fidius_ became very important as the means of distinguis.h.i.+ng this activity from all the others. Eventually it broke off from Juppiter and formed the abstract noun _Fides_, the G.o.ddess of good faith, where the s.e.x of the deity as a G.o.ddess was entirely determined by the grammatical gender of abstract nouns as feminine.

This is all strange enough but there is one more step in the development even more curious yet. This abstract G.o.ddess _Fides_ did not stay long in the purely abstract sphere; she began very soon to be 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 grammatical rule that abstract nouns had no plural. Now all this development in the field of religion throws light upon the character of the Roman mind and its instinctive methods of thought, and we see why it is that the Romans were very great lawyers and very mediocre philosophers. Both law and philosophy require the ability for abstract thought; in both cases the essential qualities of a thing must be separated from the thing itself.

But in the case of philosophic thought this abstraction, these qualities, do not immediately seek reincarnation. They continue as abstractions and 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 itself, but rather in the abstract as presented in concrete cases. Hence a type of mind which found it equally easy to make the concrete into the abstract and then to turn the abstract so made 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 make laws also governed the development of their religion.

Unfortunately however it was not these abstract deities who could save old Roman religion. They were merely the logical outcome of the deities already existing, merely new offspring of the old breed. They did not represent any new interests, but were 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 wors.h.i.+pped separately.

THE REORGANISATION OF SERVIUS

Like a lofty peak rising above the mists which cover the tops of the lower-lying mountains, the figure of Servius Tullius towers above the semi-legendary Tarquins on either side of him. We feel that we have to do with a veritable character in history, and we find ourselves wondering what sort of a man he was personally--a feeling that never occurs to us with Romulus and the older kings, and comes to us only faintly with the elder Tarquin, while the younger Tarquin has all the marks of a wooden man, who was put up only to be thrown down, whose whole _raison d'etre_ is to explain the transition from the kingdom to the republic on the theory of a revolution. Eliminate the revolution, suppose the change to have been a gradual and a const.i.tutional one, and you may discard the proud Tarquin without losing anything but a lay-figure with its more or less gaudy trappings of later myths. But it is not so with Servius; his wall and his const.i.tution are very real and defy all attempts to turn their maker into a legend. Yet on the other hand we must be on our guard, for much of the definiteness which seems to attach to him is rather the definiteness of a certain stage in Rome's development, a certain well-bounded chronological and sociological tract. It is dangerous to try to limit too strictly Servius's personal part in this development; and far safer, though perhaps less fascinating, to use his name as a general term for the changes which Rome underwent from the time when foreign influences began to tell upon her until the beginning of the republic. He forms a convenient t.i.tle therefore for certain phases of Rome's growth. And yet even this is not strictly correct, for Servius stands not so much 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 little to differentiate 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 contact with the outside world. It was the effect which that influence had upon her as contrasted with her neighbours which made the difference. When we ask why this influence affected her differently we find no satisfactory answer, and are in the presence of a mystery--the world-old insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe or one individual over others apparently of the same cla.s.s. Political history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome's story under the t.i.tle of the ”Rise 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-cla.s.s society of the primitive community with its one--agricultural--interest, and the formation of a variegated many-cla.s.s society with manifold interests, such as trade, handicraft, and politics. It 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 much of its virility, possibly also because it was distinctly felt to be foreign, and hence could effect no insidious entry, and probably because Rome was at this time too strong and young and clean to take anything but the best from Etruria. The other lay to the south, the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, separated from Rome for the present by many miles of forest and by hostile tribes. Around her in Latium were her own next of kin, the Latins, becoming rapidly inferior to her, but enabled to do her at least this service, that of absorbing the foreign influences which came, and in certain cases latinising them, and thus transmitting them to Rome in a more or less a.s.similated condition.

The three great facts in the life of Rome during this period are the coming of Greek merchants and Greek trade from the south, the coming of Etruscan artisans and handicraft from the north, and the beginnings of her political rivalry and gradual prominence in the league of Latin cities around her. Each one of these movements is reflected in the religious changes of the period. In regard to the first two this is not surprising, for the ancient traveller, like his mythical prototype Aeneas, carried his G.o.ds with him. Thus there were wors.h.i.+pped in private in Rome the G.o.ds of all the peoples who settled within her walls, and the presence of these G.o.ds was destined to make its influence felt. Your primitive polytheist is very catholic in his religious tastes; for, when one is already in possession of many G.o.ds, the addition of a few more is a minor matter, especially when, as was now the case in Rome, these deities are the patrons of occupations and interests. .h.i.therto entirely unknown to the Roman, and hence not provided for in his scheme of G.o.ds.

It was therefore in no spirit of disloyalty to the already existing G.o.ds, and with no desire to introduce rival deities, that the new cults began to spread until they became so important as to call for state recognition.

Possibly the most interesting cases are those of the two G.o.ds who came from the south, Hercules and Castor, interesting because they were the forerunners of that great mult.i.tude of Greek G.o.ds who later came in proudly by special invitation, and even more interesting yet because, though they were Greek as Greek could be, they came into Rome, as it were, incognito, and were so far from being known as Greek, that, when the same G.o.ds came in afterwards more directly, these new-comers were felt to be quite a different thing, and their wors.h.i.+p 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 away from the mother-city into the new colony. Thus it was that they came from the mother-land into the colonies of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy, and once being established there made their way slowly but inevitably northwards. The story of Hermes, under the name of Mercury, belongs to a later chapter, but that of Herakles = 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 Hercules; at first sight it was very difficult to believe, because there seemed to be so many apparently very old Italic legends centering in Hercules. But it has been shown, either that these legends 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 influence. It was the trading merchant therefore who brought Herakles northward. And as the G.o.d went, his name was softened into Hercules, and with the a.s.similation of the name to the tongue of the Italic people, there went hand in hand an adaptation of his nature to their needs, so that by degrees he became thoroughly italicised both in form and content. It is probable that the cult came into Rome as well as into the other cities of Latium, but in Rome it was confined to a few individuals, and at first obtained no public recognition. On the contrary, for reasons that we are at a loss to find, this Greek cult seems to have reached very large proportions in the little town of Tibur (Tivoli), fourteen miles north-east of Rome. There it dominated all other wors.h.i.+p and lost so much of its foreign atmosphere that it became thoroughly latinised. In the course of time the Roman state acknowledged this Tivoli cult of Hercules and accepted a branch of it as its own. But the extraordinary 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 feeling by permitting an altar to Hercules to be erected within the city proper, in the Forum Boarium. But in order to understand the significance of this act a word of digression is necessary.

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