Part 17 (1/2)

Rohde, _Psyche_, 1891.

L. Campbell's Gifford Lectures on _Religion in Greek Literature_, 1898.

E. Caird, _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, 1904.

Holwerda, in De la Saussaye, Third Edition.

Ramsay on ”Religion of Greece and Asia Minor” in Hastings' _Bible Dictionary_.

S. Reinach, in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. ii. p. 117, _sqq._

CHAPTER XVII THE RELIGION OF ROME

The Romans themselves at a certain period in their history identified their own G.o.ds with those of Greece, and borrowed largely both from Greek ritual and Greek mythology, so that they came to the conclusion that the Roman and the Greek religions were essentially the same. To the early Christian writers the religions of Greece and Rome form one system; and the world has retained the impression that there was one old pagan religion which a.s.sumed certain local differences in the two countries, but was substantially the same in both.

Roman Religion was different from Greek.--Now the fact is that while Greek religion conquered Rome, Italy had an older religion of its own, which was not annihilated by the more brilliant newcomer, but remained beside it and never entered into entire fusion with it. The Romans were not a thinking so much as an organising race; in politics they were far ahead of the rest of the world, but in thought and imagination they were children; and so it happened that they borrowed ideas and usages from neighbours on this side and on that, and organised the whole into a system they could use, the organism being their own, but only little of the contents.

We must therefore inquire, in the first place, as to the religion the Romans had before they came under the influence of Greek ideas. Their earliest religion is to be traced in the calendar of their sacred year, in the lists of G.o.ds preserved for us in the writings of the fathers, and in numberless usages and inst.i.tutions descended from early times.

The sacred year of early Rome is that of an agricultural community.

The festivals have to do with sowing and reaping and storing corn, with vintage, with flocks and herds, with wolves, with spirits of the woods, with boundaries, with fountains, with changes of the sun and of the moon. There are festivals of domestic life, of the household fire, and of the spirits of the storeroom, of the spirits of the departed, and of the household ghosts. There are also festivals connected with warlike matters, some connected with the river and the harbour at its mouth, and some having to do with the arts of a simple population. The calendar, taken by itself, would create the impression that the community using it began with agriculture and added to it afterwards various other activities; there is nothing in it to contradict the supposition that Roman religion had its beginnings in the fields and in the woods.

The earliest G.o.ds of Rome also agree with this. They are, however, a very peculiar set of G.o.ds. Leaving the great G.o.ds in the meantime, we notice two of the agricultural deities; there is a Saturnus, G.o.d of sowing, and a Terminus, G.o.d of boundaries. These are what are called functional deities, such as we met with in Greece, see chapter xvi.; they take their name from the act or province over which they preside. Saturnus means one who has to do with sowing; Terminus is a boundary pure and simple. The G.o.d then, in these examples, is not a great being who has come to have these functions placed under him as well as others. He and the particular function belong together; he owes all his deity to it. Now these are only examples; the same is found to be the case with all or nearly all the distinctively Roman G.o.ds; they are, broadly speaking, all functional beings. Each bears the name of an object or a process; and on the other hand there is no object and no act which has not its G.o.d. It is astounding to observe how far the principle of the division of labour is carried among these beings. Silva.n.u.s is the G.o.d of the wood, Lympha of the stream, each wood and each stream having its own Silva.n.u.s or Lympha. Seia has to do with the corn before it sprouts, Segetia with corn when shot up, Tutilina with corn stored in the granary, Nodotus has for his care the knots in the straw. There is a G.o.d Door, a G.o.ddess Hinge, a G.o.d Threshold. Each act in opening infancy has its G.o.d or G.o.ddess.

The child has Cunina when lying in the cradle, Statina when he stands, Edula when he eats, Locutius when he begins to speak, Adeona when he makes for his mother, Abeona when he leaves her; forty-three such G.o.ds of childhood have been counted. Pilumnus, G.o.d of the pestle, and Diverra, G.o.ddess of the broom, may close our small sample of the limitless crowd.

It is usually said about these mult.i.tudinous petty deities that the Roman was very religious, and saw in every act and everything for which he had a name, something mysterious and supernatural. The Greek, it is said, sees things on his own level, and adds to them a G.o.d who is human; it is by the human spirit that he interprets them.

The Roman, on the contrary, sees things as mysteries and fills them with G.o.ds who are not human. That is true; but the question to be asked about these Roman G.o.ds is, to what stage of religious development do they belong: do they prove a primitive or an advanced stage of religious thought? It has been observed that these names of G.o.ds are all epithets, or adjectives; and it has been supposed that there was originally a noun belonging to them, that they were all epithets of one great deity, or, as some are masculine and some feminine, of a great male and a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, it is supposed, but was still present to the mind of the Roman, and thus his regiments of divine names are not really designations of different persons, but t.i.tles of the same person, supposed to be present alike in all these numberless manifestations.

But it is not easy to conceive how, if primitive Italy had reached the conception of the unity of deity, that deity became so remarkably subdivided, nor how his own proper name and character were lost. It is much more natural to suppose that the petty G.o.ds of Rome were all the deities the early Latins had, and were wors.h.i.+pped for their own sake. They represent the stage of thought called Animism (see chapter iii.) when every part of nature is thought to have its spirit, and the number of invisible beings is liable to be multiplied indefinitely. While other Aryan races had pa.s.sed beyond this stage when we first know them, and advanced to the belief in great G.o.ds ruling great provinces of nature, the Latins, whose mind was organising rather than productive, made this advance more slowly, and instead of making it organised the spiritual world of animism with a thoroughness nowhere else equalled.[1] They had, therefore, no G.o.ds properly so called, but only a host of spirits. Even the beings they possessed, who afterwards became great G.o.ds, were at first no more than functional spirits. Ja.n.u.s, afterwards one of the chief deities of Rome, is originally the ”spirit of opening”; an abstraction capable of great multiplication; a Ja.n.u.s could be invoked for each act of that kind. Vesta is the spirit of the hearth; each household had its Vesta, both in early and in later times. Juno is not one but many: as each man had his genius, a spiritual self accompanying or guarding him, so each woman had--not her genius, but her Juno. There were many Vestas, many Junos; and it is only later that the great G.o.ddess arises, who may be looked to from every quarter. Others of the great G.o.ds of later Rome have a similar early history. Mars was at first the spirit which made the corn grow; Diana was a tree-spirit, Jovis or Diovis himself, though his name connects him with the Greek Zeus and the Sanscrit Dyaus, and though he is afterwards, like these, the G.o.d of the sky, was originally in Latin a spirit of wine, and was wors.h.i.+pped, the Jovis of each village or each farm, at the wine-feast in April when the first cask was broached.

Thus the G.o.ds of the Latins are not beings who have an independent existence and features of their own; they are limited each to the particular object or process from which he derives his character, and have no realm beyond it. And the same is true of the family and house-G.o.ds, whose wors.h.i.+p formed perhaps the princ.i.p.al part of the working religion of the Roman. The Lares represent the departed ancestors of the family; they dwell near the spot in the house where they were buried, and still preside over the household as they did in life. They are wors.h.i.+pped daily with prayers and offerings of food and drink; the family adore in them not so much the dead individuals, though their masks hang on the wall, as the abstraction of its own family continuity. The Penates or spirits of the store-chamber are wors.h.i.+pped along with the Lares, they represent the continuity of the family fortune. A more general name for the departed is the Manes, the kind ones; they are thought of as living below the earth; it is not individuals who are wors.h.i.+pped at their festivals, but the dead in the abstract, the former upholders of the family or of the people.

[Footnote 1: See on this Mr. Jevons's preface to Plutarch's _Romane Questions_ (Nutt, 1892); which deserves to be published in a more accessible form.]

The character of Roman wors.h.i.+p is determined by the nature of its objects. As each of the G.o.ds has his basis in a material object or action, there can be no need of any images of them; where the object or the act is, there is the G.o.d, his character is expressed in it and not to be expressed otherwise. Nor could such G.o.ds require any temples. And what need of priests for them, when every one who knew their names (a great deal depended on that) could place himself in contact with them as soon as he saw the object or took in hand the action behind which they stood? Nor can many stories be told about G.o.ds like these,--the Romans have no mythology. The beings they wors.h.i.+p are not persons but abstractions. They have just enough character to be male or female, but they cannot move about or act independently of their natural basis; they cannot marry, nor breed scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive for identifying with such beings a great man who has died; where there are no true G.o.ds, there cannot be any demi-G.o.ds or heroes. Only a very limited power can possibly be put forth by such beings; all they can do is to give or to withhold prosperity, each in the narrow section of affairs he has to do with.

The aim of wors.h.i.+p where such a set of beings is concerned, is to get hold of the spirit or G.o.d connected with the act one has in view, and so to deal with him as to avert his disfavour, which the Roman always apprehended, and gain his concurrence. The house-G.o.ds are beings possessing a stated cult, but outside the house-cult the wors.h.i.+pper has to face the question at each emergency which G.o.d he ought to address. He might choose the wrong one, which would make his act of wors.h.i.+p vain. If he names the G.o.d correctly he will have a hold on him; in a case of uncertainty, therefore, he names a number of G.o.ds, in the hope that one of them will be the right one; or he invokes them all. ”Whether thou be G.o.d or G.o.ddess” he will further say, if he is in doubt on that point, ”or by whatever name thou desirest to be called.” Each G.o.d has his proper style and t.i.tle, and it is vain to approach him without these; lists of the various G.o.ds and of their correct styles were therefore drawn up in very early times to serve as guides to the subject. The Latin word ”indigito,” to point out, from ”digitus,” a finger, is the term used of addressing a G.o.d; the lists of deities with their proper appellations were called ”indigitamenta”; and the G.o.ds named in them ”Dii indigetes.” The act of wors.h.i.+p is grave and formal; it has to be done with precision and in strict accordance with the rules; silence is commanded; the sacrificer repeats the prayer proper for the occasion after some one who knows it by rote; the wors.h.i.+ppers veil their heads. In this the Roman ritual is markedly different from the Greek. Mommsen says the Greek prayed bareheaded, because his prayer was contemplation, looking at and to the G.o.ds; and the Roman with head covered, because his prayer was an exercise of thought; and in this he sees a characteristic indication of the difference between the two religions. A more modern interpretation of the Roman practice is that it arose from the fear that the wors.h.i.+pper might see the G.o.d whom he has just summoned by name, which would be dangerous. If any mistake is made in wors.h.i.+p, the act is vain and has to be done over again.

The Great G.o.ds.--The foregoing is the logic of the system on which the Roman religion, as distinguished from the foreign elements afterwards added to it, was based; the religion, however, does not come into view historically till it has begun to rise above such a wors.h.i.+p of abstractions or of petty spirits, towards a wors.h.i.+p of G.o.ds. It was apparently by the growth of larger social organisms that the Latin tribes advanced to the wors.h.i.+p of greater G.o.ds. While the family religions continued to the end, the tribe had, as in the case of other early peoples, a larger religion than the family, and a union of tribes produced a religion on a still greater scale. The history of early Rome consists of a succession of such fusions of tribes into a larger political whole. When history opens, ”Rome is a fully-formed and united city”; but Rome is made up of several tribes, which maintain many separate inst.i.tutions. The religion of after times bears witness to these successive unions. ”Deus Fidius,” the G.o.d of good faith, is the sacred impersonation of an alliance. Mars and Quirinus are precisely similar to each other, and each has a flamen, or blower of the sacrificial flame, and a staff of twelve salii or dancers. Mars is the Roman, Quirinus the Sabine deity; and we see that the two tribes had, before they were united, very similar wors.h.i.+ps, which were both kept up after the union. The feriae Latinae, or Latin festival, celebrated on Mons Alba.n.u.s, is common to the Latin tribes and commemorates their union. Jovis rises into importance with the growth of city life; he comes to be called father Jovis, Jupiter; there are many Jupiters, but the Jupiter of the city of Rome is the greatest and best of all; he bears the t.i.tle of Optimus Maximus. He rises above Mars, in earlier times the first Roman G.o.d, after whom the first month of the year was called, before the month of Ja.n.u.s and the month of Februus, the purifier, were added to it. Ja.n.u.s, the great state-G.o.d of opening, was the only one of whom there was a representation; Mars was represented symbolically by a spear, but Ja.n.u.s was figured as a man with two faces. Vesta, the hearth-G.o.ddess of the state, was of course a great deity with a very important wors.h.i.+p.

Here we must mention a side of Roman religion which no doubt has its roots far back in prehistoric darkness, but which could scarcely be organised as we find it till the greater G.o.ds had risen to some degree of power. It was believed that the G.o.ds were constantly making signs to men, especially in occurrences which take place in the air, such as thunder and lightning, and the flight of birds, but also in many other ways. Some of the signs were simple, so that any one could tell if they were lucky or the reverse, but some were not to be interpreted except by men possessing a special knowledge of the subject. And such men might be asked by an individual or by the state when about to enter on any undertaking, to seek a sign from heaven concerning that business. This became with the Romans a great and important act, and those who had it in their hands exercised great power.

Sacred Persons.--The priest in the earliest times was, in the domestic religion, the paterfamilias, in that of the tribe, which was but an extended household, the head of the leading family, and in the city, which was const.i.tuted after the same model, the king. Religion was the princ.i.p.al part of the service of the state; the king as such had to offer sacrifice, to cause the G.o.ds to be consulted, to prosecute and judge and punish those who had violated the laws and came under the anger of the G.o.ds. But as the state grew larger, various offices were set up to relieve the king of part of these duties; when new wors.h.i.+ps were added to the old ones, the care of them was in some cases committed to a special person or college; and these priesthoods and sacred guilds of early Rome maintained their place in the const.i.tution for many centuries, and carried on this part of the public service long after the words they spoke and the acts they did had become meaningless. Beginning with the sacred persons attached to special cults, we have, first, three flamens, one of Mars, one of Quirinus, and one of Jovis (fl. Martialis, Quirinalis, Dialis). Mars and Quirinus have their dancers, as we mentioned above. Other flamens of lower rank were afterwards inst.i.tuted for the separate wors.h.i.+ps of the tribes. Very old are the ”fratres arvales,” field-brothers, who served the creative G.o.ddess (Dea Dia) in the country in the month of May, with a view to a good growing summer, dancing to her and addressing hymns to her which may be read now but cannot be understood, and were unintelligible to the Romans themselves. The Luperci (wolf-men) held a shepherd's festival in the month of February, sacrificing goats and dogs to some rustic deity, and running naked through the streets afterwards, striking those they met with thongs cut from the hides of the victims. The six vestal virgins are well known, who had charge of keeping up the fire of Vesta, the house-fire of the state. They devoted their whole lives to this office, and enjoyed great respect. These priesthoods and corporations, inst.i.tuted to secure the continuance of special cults, are not of a nature to bring the whole of life under the influence of the priests and so to foster a priestly type of religion. Nor were those other religious offices of a nature to do so, which were not attached to special cults but served the more general purpose of a.s.sisting and advising the state in matters connected with religion.

First among these comes the office of pontifex, a word which is variously interpreted, either as ”bridge-maker,”--that being a very important and solemn proceeding,--or as leader in a religious procession. There were originally five pontifices, and the number was afterwards raised to fifteen. They exercised a great variety of functions, and had a general oversight of all religious matters, both public and domestic. They were experts in ritual and in canon law; they advised the state as to the proper sacrifices to be offered for the public, and, when consulted, would also direct the private individual. Funerals, marriages, and other domestic occurrences into which religious considerations entered, were under their charge; and on the occurrence of portents and omens it was their duty to indicate the steps to be taken in order to find out what the G.o.ds wished to signify. They had charge of the calendar, and had to fix what days were proper for carrying on the business of the courts (_dies fasti_), and they were the authorities on the forms of legal process.

The chief pontiff is called the ”judge and arbiter of things divine and human,” and the college had manifestly a very strong position.

The same is true of the _augurs_ or experts in signs and omens.