The Religion of Ancient Rome Part 1

The Religion of Ancient Rome.

by Cyril Bailey.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--SOURCES AND SCOPE

The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome may perhaps be best ill.u.s.trated by a parallel from Roman archaeology.

The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told, must picture to himself a totally different orientation of the whole: the upper layer of remains, which he sees before him, is for his purpose in most cases not merely useless, but positively misleading.

In the same way, if we wish to form a picture of the genuine Roman religion, we cannot find it immediately in cla.s.sical literature; we must banish from our minds all that is due to the contact with the East and Egypt, and even with the other races of Italy, and we must imagine, so to speak, a totally different mental orientation before the great influx of Greek literature and Greek thought, which gave an entirely new turn to Roman ideas in general, and in particular revolutionised religion by the introduction of anthropomorphic notions and sensuous representations. But in this difficult search we are not left without indications to guide us. In the writings of the savants of the late Republic and of the Empire, and in the Augustan poets, bia.s.sed though they are in their interpretations by Greek tendencies, there is embodied a great wealth of ancient custom and ritual, which becomes significant when we have once got the clue to its meaning. More direct evidence is afforded by a large body of inscriptions and monuments, and above all by the surviving Calendars of the Roman festival year, which give us the true outline of the ceremonial observances of the early religion.

It is not within the scope of this sketch to enter, except by way of occasional ill.u.s.tration, into the process of interpretation by which the patient work of scholars has disentangled the form and spirit of the native religion from the ma.s.s of foreign accretions. I intend rather to a.s.sume the process, and deal, as far as it is possible in so controversial a subject, with results upon which authorities are generally agreed. Neither will any attempt be made to follow the development which the early religion underwent in later periods, when foreign elements were added and foreign ideas altered and remoulded the old tradition. We must confine ourselves to a single epoch, in which the native Roman spirit worked out unaided the ideas inherited from half-civilised ancestors, and formed that body of belief and ritual, which was always, at least officially, the kernel of Roman religion, and const.i.tuted what the Romans themselves--staunch believers in their own traditional history--loved to describe as the 'Religion of Numa.'

We must discover, as far as we can, how far its inherited notions ran parallel with those of other primitive religions, but more especially we must try to note what is characteristically Roman alike in custom and ritual and in the motives and spirit which prompted them.

CHAPTER II

THE 'ANTECEDENTS' OF ROMAN RELIGION

In every early religion there will of course be found, apart from external influence, traces of its own internal development, of stages by which it must have advanced from a ma.s.s of vague and primitive belief and custom to the organised wors.h.i.+p of a civilised community.

The religion of Rome is no exception to this rule; we can detect in its later practice evidences of primitive notions and habits which it had in common with other semi-barbarous peoples, and we shall see that the leading idea in its theology is but a characteristically Roman development of a marked feature in most early religions.

=1. Magic.=--Anthropology has taught us that in many primitive societies religion--a sense of man's dependence on a power higher than himself--is preceded by a stage of magic--a belief in man's own power to influence by occult means the action of the world around him. That the ancestors of the Roman community pa.s.sed through this stage seems clear, and in surviving religious practice we may discover evidence of such magic in various forms. There is, for instance, what anthropology describes as 'sympathetic magic'--the attempt to influence the powers of nature by an imitation of the process which it is desired that they should perform. Of this we have a characteristic example in the ceremony of the _aquaelicium_, designed to produce rain after a long drought. In cla.s.sical times the ceremony consisted in a procession headed by the pontifices, which bore the sacred rain-stone from its resting-place by the Porta Capena to the Capitol, where offerings were made to the sky-deity, Iuppiter, but[1] from the a.n.a.logy of other primitive cults and the sacred t.i.tle of the stone (_lapis ma.n.a.lis_), it is practically certain that the original ritual was the purely imitative process of pouring water over the stone. A similar rain-charm may possibly be seen in the curious ritual of the _argeorum sacra_, when puppets of straw were thrown into the Tiber--a symbolic wetting of the crops to which many parallels may be found among other primitive peoples. A sympathetic charm of a rather different character seems to survive in the ceremony of the _augurium canarium_, at which a red dog was sacrificed for the prosperity of the crop--a symbolic killing of the red mildew (_robigo_); and again the slaughter of pregnant cows at the _Fordicidia_ in the middle of April, before the sprouting of the corn, has a clearly sympathetic connection with the fertility of the earth. Another prominent survival--equally characteristic of primitive peoples--is the sacredness which attaches to the person of the priest-king, so that his every act or word may have a magic significance or effect. This is reflected generally in the Roman priesthood, but especially in the ceremonial surrounding the _flamen Dialis_, the priest of Iuppiter. He must appear always in festival garb, fire may never be taken from his hearth but for sacred purposes, no other person may ever sleep in his bed, the cuttings of his hair and nails must be preserved and buried beneath an _arbor felix_--no doubt a magic charm for fertility--he must not eat or even mention a goat or a bean, or other objects of an unlucky character.

=2. Wors.h.i.+p of Natural Objects.=--A very common feature in the early development of religious consciousness is the wors.h.i.+p of natural objects--in the first place of the objects themselves and no more, but later of a spirit indwelling in them. The distinction is no doubt in individual cases a difficult one to make, and we find that among the Romans the earlier wors.h.i.+p of the object tends to give way to the cult of the inhabiting spirit, but examples may be found which seem to belong to the earlier stage. We have, for instance, the sacred stone (_silex_) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the Capitol, and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony of treaty-making. The fetial, who on that occasion represented the Roman people, at the solemn moment of the oath-taking, struck the sacrificial pig with the _silex_, saying as he did so, 'Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger.' Here no doubt the underlying notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the G.o.d, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-t.i.tle specially used in this connection, _Iuppiter Lapis_. So again, in all probability, the _termini_ or boundary-stones between properties are in origin the objects--though later only the site--of a yearly ritual at the festival of the Terminalia on February the 23rd, and they are, as it were, summed up in 'the G.o.d Terminus,' the great sacred boundary-stone, which had its own shrine within the Capitoline temple, because, according to the legend, 'the G.o.d' refused to budge even to make room for Iuppiter. The same notion is most likely at the root of the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the hearth,' and Ia.n.u.s, 'the door,' though a more spiritual idea was soon a.s.sociated with them; we may notice too in this connection the wors.h.i.+p of springs, summed up in the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such as Volturnus, the cult-name of the Tiber.

=3. Wors.h.i.+p of Trees.=--But most conspicuous among the cults of natural objects, as in so many primitive religions, is the wors.h.i.+p of trees.

Here, though doubtless at first the tree was itself the object of veneration, surviving instances seem rather to belong to the later period when it was regarded as the abode of the spirit. We may recognise a case of this sort in the _ficus Ruminalis_, once the recipient of wors.h.i.+p, though later legend, which preferred to find an historical or mythical explanation of cults, looked upon it as sacred because it was the scene of the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the wolf. Another fig-tree with a similar history is the _caprificus_ of the Campus Martius, subsequently the site of the wors.h.i.+p of Iuno Caprotina. A more significant case is the sacred oak of Iuppiter Feretrius on the Capitol, on which the _spolia opima_ were hung after the triumph--probably in early times a dedication of the booty to the spirit inhabiting the tree. Outside Rome, showing the same ideas at work among neighbouring peoples, was the 'golden bough' in the grove of Diana at Aricia. Nor was it only special trees which were thus regarded as the home of a deity; the tree in general is sacred, and any one may chance to be inhabited by a spirit. The feeling of the country population on this point comes out clearly in the prayer which Cato recommends his farmer to use before making a clearing in a wood: 'Be thou G.o.d or G.o.ddess, to whom this grove is sacred, be it granted to us to make propitiatory sacrifice to thee with a pig for the clearing of this sacred spot'; here we have a clear instance of the tree regarded as the dwelling of the sacred power, and it is interesting to compare the many similar examples which[2] Dr. Frazer has collected from different parts of the world.

=4. Wors.h.i.+p of Animals.=--Of the wors.h.i.+p of animals we have comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may perhaps detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the Lupercalia, where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may recognise it too in the a.s.sociation of particular animals with divinities, such as the sacred wolf and woodp.e.c.k.e.r of Mars, but on the whole we may doubt whether the wors.h.i.+p of animals ever played so prominent a part in Roman religion as the cult of other natural objects.

=5. Animism.=--Such are some of the survivals of very early stages of religious custom which still kept their place in the developed religion of Rome, but by far the most important element in it, which might indeed be described as its 'immediate antecedent,' is the state of religious feeling to which anthropologists have given the name of 'Animism.' As far as we can follow the development of early religions, this att.i.tude of mind seems to be the direct outcome of the failure of magic. Primitive man begins to see that neither he nor his magicians really possess that occult control over the forces of nature which was the supposed basis of magic: the charm fails, the spell does not produce the rain and when he looks for the cause, he can only argue that these things must be in the hands of some power higher than his own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by suitable offerings entice the indwelling spirit to leave it. His 'theology' in this stage is the knowledge of the various spirits and their dwellings, his ritual the due performance of sacrifice for purposes of propitiation and expiation. It was in this state of religious feeling that the ancestors of Rome must have lived before they founded their agricultural settlement on the Palatine: we must try now to see how far it had retained this character and what developments it had undergone when it had crystallised into the 'Religion of Numa.'

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, vol. i. pp. 81 ff.

[2] _Golden Bough_, vol. i. pp. 181-185.

CHAPTER III

MAIN FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF NUMA

=1. Theology.=--The characteristic appellation of a divine spirit in the oldest stratum of the Roman religion is not _deus_, a G.o.d, but rather _numen_, a power: he becomes _deus_ when he obtains a name, and so is on the way to acquiring a definite personality, but in origin he is simply the 'spirit' of the 'animistic' period, and retains something of the spirit's characteristics. Thus among the divinities of the household we shall see later that the Genius and even the Lar Familiaris, though they attained great dignity of conception, and were the centre of the family life, and to some extent of the family morality, never quite rose to the position of full-grown G.o.ds; while among the spirits of the field the wildness and impishness of character a.s.sociated with Faunus and his companion Inuus--almost the cobolds or hobgoblins of the flocks--reflects clearly the old 'animistic' belief in the natural evilness of the spirits and their hostility to men. The notion of the _numen_ is always vague and indefinite: even its s.e.x may be uncertain. 'Be thou G.o.d or G.o.ddess' is the form of address in the farmer's prayer already quoted from Cato: 'be it male or female' is the constant formula in liturgies and even dedicatory inscriptions of a much later period.

These spirits are, as we have seen, indwellers in the objects of nature and controllers of the phenomena of nature: but to the Roman they were more. Not merely did they inhabit places and things, but they presided over each phase of natural development, each state or action in the life of man. Varro, for instance, gives us a list of the deities concerned in the early life of the child, which, though it bears the marks of priestly elaboration, may yet be taken as typical of the feeling of the normal Roman family. There is Vatica.n.u.s, who opens the child's mouth to cry, Cunina, who guards his cradle, Edulia and Potina, who teach him to eat and drink, Statilinus, who helps him to stand up, Adeona and Abeona, who watch over his first footstep, and many others each with his special province of protection or a.s.sistance. The farmer similarly is in the hands of a whole host of divinities who a.s.sist him at each stage of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, reaping, and so forth. If the _numen_ then lacks personal individuality, he has a very distinct specialisation of function, and if man's appeal to the divinity is to be successful, he must be very careful to make it in the right quarter: it was a stock joke in Roman comedy to make a character 'ask for water from Liber, or wine from the nymphs.' Hence we find in the prayer formulae in Cato and elsewhere the most careful precautions to prevent the accidental omission of the deity concerned: usually the wors.h.i.+pper will go through the whole list of the G.o.ds who may be thought to have power in the special circ.u.mstances; sometimes he will conclude his prayer with the formula 'whosoever thou art,' or 'and any other name by which thou mayest desire to be called.' The _numen_ is thus vague in his conception but specialised in his function, and so later on, when certain deities have acquired definite names and become prominent above the rest, the wors.h.i.+pper in appealing to them will add a cult-t.i.tle, to indicate the special character in which he wishes the deity to hear: the woman in childbirth will appeal to Iuno Lucina, the general praying for victory to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to Iuppiter as the deus Fidius. As a still later development the cult-t.i.tle will, as it were, break off and set up for itself, usually in the form of an abstract personification: Iuppiter, in the two special capacities just noted, gives birth to Victoria and Fides.

The conception of the _numen_ being so formless and indefinite, it is not surprising that in the genuine Roman religion there should have been no anthropomorphic representations of the divinity at all. 'For 170 years,' Varro tells us, taking his date from the traditional foundation of the city in 754 B.C., 'the Romans wors.h.i.+pped their G.o.ds without images,' and he adds the characteristic comment, 'those who introduced representations among the nations, took away fear and brought in falsehood.' Symbols of a few deities were no doubt recognised: we have noticed already the _silex_ of Iuppiter and the boundary-stone of Terminus, which were probably at an earlier period themselves objects of wors.h.i.+p, and to these we may add the sacred spears of Mars, and the _sigilla_ of the State-Penates. But for the most part the _numina_ were without even such symbolic representation, nor till about the end of the regal period was any form of temple built for them to dwell in. The sacred fire of Vesta near the Forum was, it is true, from the earliest times enclosed in a building; this, however, was no temple, but merely an erection with the essentially practical purpose of preventing the extinction of the fire by rain. The first temple in the full sense of the word was according to tradition built by Servius Tullius to Diana on the Aventine: the tradition is significant, for Diana was not one of the _di indigetes_, the old deities of the 'Religion of Numa,' but was introduced from the neighbouring town of Aricia, and the attribution to Servius Tullius nearly always denotes an Etruscan[3] or at any rate a non-Roman origin.

There were, however, altars in special places to particular deities, built sometimes of stone, sometimes in a more homely manner of earth or sods. We hear for instance of the altar of Mars in the Campus Martius, of Quirinus on the Quirinal, of Saturnus at the foot of the Capitol, and notably of the curious underground altar of Consus on what was later the site of the Circus Maximus. But more characteristic than the erection of altars is the connection of deities with special localities. Naturally enough in the wors.h.i.+p of the household Vesta had her seat at the hearth, Ia.n.u.s at the door, and the 'G.o.ds of the storehouse' (_Penates_) at the cupboard by the hearth, but the same idea appears too in the state-cult. Hilltops, groves, and especially clearings in groves (_luci_) are the most usual sacred localities. Thus Quirinus has his own sacred hill, Iuppiter is wors.h.i.+pped on the Capitol, Vesta and Iuno Lucina have their sacred groves within the boundaries of the city, and Dea Dia, Robigus, and Furrina similar groves at the limits of Roman territory. The record of almost every Roman cult reveals the importance of locality in connection with the _di indigetes_, and the localities are usually such as would be naturally chosen by a pastoral and agricultural people.

Such were roughly the main outlines of the genuine Roman 'theology.'

It has no G.o.ds of human form with human relations to one another, interested in the life of men and capable of the deepest pa.s.sions of hatred and affection towards them, such as we meet, for instance, in the mythology of Greece, but only these impersonal individualities, if we may so call them, capable of no relation to one another, but able to bring good or ill to men, localised usually in their habitations, but requiring no artificial dwelling or elaborate adornment of their abode; becoming gradually more and more specialised in function, yet gaining thereby no more real protective care for their wors.h.i.+ppers--a cold and heartless hierarchy, ready to exact their due, but incapable of inspiring devotion or enthusiasm. Let us ask next how the Romans conceived of their own relations towards them.

=2. The Relation of G.o.ds and Men.=--The character of the Roman was essentially practical and his natural mental att.i.tude that of the lawyer. And so in his relation towards the divine beings whom he wors.h.i.+pped there was little of sentiment or affection: all must be regulated by clearly understood principles and carried out with formal exactness. Hence the _ius sacrum_, the body of rights and duties in the matter of religion, is regarded as a department of the _ius public.u.m_, the fundamental const.i.tution of the state, and it is significant, as Marquardt has observed, that it was Numa, a king and lawgiver, and not a prophet or a poet, who was looked upon as the founder of the Roman religion. Starting from the simple general feeling of a dependence on a higher power (_religio_), which is common to all religions, the Roman gives it his own characteristic colour when he conceives of that dependence as a.n.a.logous to a civil contract between man and G.o.d. Both sides are under obligation to fulfil their part: if a G.o.d answers a man's prayer, he must be repaid by a thank-offering: if the man has fulfilled 'his bounden duty and service,' the G.o.d must make his return: if he does not, either the cause lies in an unconscious failure on the human side to carry out the exact letter of the law, or else, if the G.o.d has really broken his contract, he has, as it were, put himself out of court and the man may seek aid elsewhere. In this notion we have the secret of Rome's readiness under stress of circ.u.mstances, when all appeals to the old G.o.ds have failed, to adopt foreign deities and cults in the hope of a greater measure of success.

The contract-notion may perhaps appear more clearly if we consider one or two of the normal religious acts of the Roman individual or state.

Take first of all the performance of the regular sacrifices or acts of wors.h.i.+p ordained by the state-calendar or the celebration of the household _sacra_. The _pietas_ of man consists in their due fulfilment, but he may through negligence omit them or make a mistake in the ritual to be employed. In that case the G.o.ds, as it were, have the upper hand in the contract and are not obliged to fulfil their share, but the man can set himself right again by the offering of a _piaculum_, which may take the form either of an additional sacrifice or a repet.i.tion of the original rite. So, for instance, when Cato is giving his farmer directions for the l.u.s.tration of his fields, he supplies him at the end with two significant formulae: 'if,' he says, 'you have failed in any respect with regard to all your offerings, use this formula: "Father Mars, if thou hast not found satisfaction in my former offering of pig, sheep, and ox (the most solemn combination in rustic sacrifices), then let this offering of pig and sheep and ox appease thee": but if you have made a mistake in one or two only of your offerings, then say, "Father Mars, because thou hast not found satisfaction in that pig (or whatever it may be), let this pig appease thee."' On the other hand, for intentional neglect, there was no remedy: the man was _impius_ and it rested with the G.o.ds to punish him as they liked (_deorum iniuriae dis curae_).

But apart from the regularly const.i.tuted ceremonies of religion, there might be special occasions on which new relations would be entered into between G.o.d and man. Sometimes the initiative would come from man: desiring to obtain from the G.o.ds some blessings on which he had set his heart, he would enter into a _votum_, a special contract by which he undertook to perform certain acts or make certain sacrifices, in case of the fulfilment of his desire. The whole proceeding is strictly legal: from the moment when he makes his vow the man is _voti reus_, in the same position, that is, as the defendant in a case whose decision is still pending; as soon as the G.o.ds have accomplished their side of the contract he is _voti d.a.m.natus_, condemned, as it were, to damages, having lost his suit; nor does he recover his independence until he has paid what he undertook: _votum reddidi lubens merito_ ('I have paid my vow gladly as it was due') is the characteristic wording of votive inscriptions. If the G.o.ds did not accomplish the wish, the man was of course free, and sometimes the contract would be carried so far that a time-limit for their action would be fixed by the maker of the vow: legal exactness can hardly go further.

Or again, the initiative might come from the G.o.ds. Some marked misfortune, an earthquake, lightning, a great famine, a portentous birth, or some such occurrence would be recognised as a _prodigium_, or sign of the G.o.d's displeasure. Somehow or other the contract must have been broken on the human side and it was the duty of the state to see to the restoration of the _pax deum_, the equilibrium of the normal relation of G.o.d and man. The right proceeding in such a case was a _l.u.s.tratio_, a solemn cleansing of the people--or the portion of the people involved in the G.o.d's displeasure--with the double object of removing the original reason of misfortune and averting future causes of the divine anger. The commercial notion is not perhaps quite so distinct here, but the underlying legal relations.h.i.+p is sufficiently marked.

If then the question be asked whether the relation between the Roman and his G.o.ds was friendly or unfriendly, the correct answer would probably be that it was neither. It was rather what Aristotle in speaking of human relations describes as 'a friends.h.i.+p for profit': it is entered into because both sides hope for some advantage--it is maintained as long as both sides fulfil their obligations.

=3. Ceremonial.=--It has been said sometimes that the old Roman religion was one of cult and ritual without dogma or belief. As we have seen this is not in origin strictly true, and it would be fairer to say that belief was latent rather than non-existent: this we may see, for instance, from Cicero's dialogues on the subject of religion, where in discussion the fundamental sense of the dependence of man on the help of the G.o.ds comes clearly into view: in the domestic wors.h.i.+p of the family too cult was always to some extent 'tinged with emotion,' and sanctified by a belief which made it a more living and in the end a more permanent reality than the religion of the state. But it is no doubt true that as the community advanced, belief tended to sink into the background: development took place in cult and not in theology, so that by the end of the Republic, to take an example, though the festival of the Furrinalia was duly observed every year on the 25th of July, the nature or function of the G.o.ddess Furrina was, as we learn from Cicero, a pure matter of conjecture, and Varro tells us that her name was known only to a few persons. Nor was it mere lapse of time which tended to obscure theology and exalt ceremonial: their relative position was the immediate and natural outcome of the underlying idea of the relation of G.o.d and man. Devotion, piety--in our sense of the term--and a feeling of the divine presence could not be enjoined or even encouraged by the strictly legal conception on which religion was based: the 'contract-notion' required not a 'right spirit' but right performance. And so it comes about that in all the records we have left of the old religion the salient feature which catches and retains our attention is exactness of ritual. All must be performed not merely 'decently and in order,' but with the most scrupulous care alike for every detail of the ceremonial itself, and for the surrounding circ.u.mstances. The omission or misplacement of a single word in the formulae, the slightest sign of resistance on the part of the victim, any disorder among the bystanders, even the accidental squeak of a mouse, are sufficient to vitiate the whole ritual and necessitate its repet.i.tion from the very beginning. One of the main functions of the Roman priesthood was to preserve intact the tradition of formulae and ritual, and, when the magistrate offered sacrifice for the state, the _pontifex_ stood at his side and dictated (_praeire_) the formulae which he must use. Almost the oldest specimen of Latin which we now possess is the song of the Salii, the priests of Mars, handed on from generation to generation and repeated with scrupulous care, even though the priests themselves, as Quintilian a.s.sures us, had not the least notion what it meant. Nor was it merely the words of ceremonial which were of vital importance: other details must be attended to with equal exactness. Place, as we have seen, was an essential feature even in the conception of deity, and it must have required all the personal influence of Augustus and his entourage to reconcile the people of Rome, with the ancient home of the G.o.ddess still before their eyes, to the second shrine of Vesta within the limits of his palace on the Palatine. The choice of the appropriate offering again was a matter of the greatest moment and was dictated by a large number of considerations. The s.e.x of the victim must correspond to the s.e.x of the deity to whom it is offered, white beasts must be given to the G.o.ds of the upper world, black victims to the deities below. Mars at his October festival must have his horse, Iuno Caprotina her goat, and Robigus his dog, while in the more rustic festivals such as the Parilia, the offering would be the simpler gift of millet-cakes and bowls of milk: in the case of the Bona Dea we have the curious provision that if wine were used in the ceremonial, it must, as she was in origin a pastoral deity, always be spoken of as 'milk.' The persons who might be present in the various festivals were also rigidly determined: men were excluded from the Matronalia on March 1, from the Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of the Bona Dea: the notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal raised by a breach of this rule even at the period when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb. Slaves were specifically admitted to a share in certain festivals such as the Saturnalia and the Compitalia (the festival of the Lares), whereas at the Matralia (the festival of the matrons) a female slave was brought in with the express purpose of being significantly driven away.

The general notion of the exactness of ritual will perhaps become clearer when we come to examine some of the festivals in detail, but it is of extreme importance for the understanding of the Roman religious att.i.tude, to think of it from the first as an essential part in the expression of the relation of man to G.o.d.

=4. Directness of Relation--Functions of Priests.=--In contrast to all this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the Roman religion--the immediateness of relation between the G.o.d and his wors.h.i.+ppers. Not only may the individual at any time approach the altar of the G.o.d with his prayer or thank-offering, but in every community of persons its religious representative is its natural head. In the family the head of the household (_pater familias_) is also the priest and he is responsible for conducting the religious wors.h.i.+p of the whole house, free and slave alike: to his wife and daughters he leaves the ceremonial connected with the hearth (_Vesta_) and the deities of the store-cupboard (_Penates_), and to his bailiff the sacrifice to the powers who protect his fields (_Lares_), but the other acts of wors.h.i.+p at home and in the fields he conducts himself, and his sons act as his acolytes. Once a year he meets with his neighbours at the boundaries of their properties and celebrates the common wors.h.i.+p over the boundary-stones. So in[4] the larger outgrowth of the family, the _gens_, which consisted of all persons with the same surname (_nomen_, not _cognomen_), the gentile _sacra_ are in the hands of the more wealthy members who are regarded as its heads; we have the curious instance of Clodius even after his adoption into another family, providing for the wors.h.i.+p of the _gens Clodia_ in his own house, and we may remember Virgil's picture of the founders of the _gentes_ of the Pot.i.tii and the Pinarii performing the sacrifice to Hercules at the _ara maxima_, which was the traditional privilege of their houses.

When societies (_sodalitates_) are formed for religious purposes they elect their own _magistri_ to be their religious representatives, as we see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he--like the _pater familias_--leaves the wors.h.i.+p of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,'

the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is inst.i.tuted, a special official, the _rex sacrorum_, inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the Vestals pa.s.ses to his representative in the matter of religious law, the _pontifex maximus_, whose official residence is always the _regia_, Numa's palace. The state is but the enlarged household and the head of the state is its religious representative.

If then the approach to the G.o.ds is so direct, where, it may be asked, in the organisation of Roman religion is there room for the priest? Two points about the Roman priesthood are of paramount importance. In the first place, they are not a caste apart: though there were restrictions as to the holding of secular magistracies in combination with the priesthood--always observed strictly in the case of the _rex sacrorum_ and with few exceptions in the case of the greater _flamines_--yet the _pontifices_ might always take their part in public life, and no kind of barrier existed between them and the rest of the community: Iulius Caesar himself was _pontifex maximus_. In the second place they are not regarded as representatives of the G.o.ds or as mediators between G.o.d and man, but simply as administrative officials appointed for the performance of the acts of state-wors.h.i.+p, just as the magistrates were for its civil and military government. In origin they were chosen to a.s.sist the king in the multifarious duties of the state-cult--the _flamines_ were to act as special priests of particular deities, the most prominent among them being the three great priests of Iuppiter (_flamen Dialis_), Mars, and Quirinus; the _pontifices_ were sometimes delegates of the king on special occasions, but more particularly formed his religious _consilium_, a consulting body, to give him advice as to ritual and act as the repositories of tradition. In later times the _flamines_ still retain their original character, the _pontifices_ and especially the _pontifex maximus_ are responsible for the whole organisation of the state-religion and are the guardians and interpreters of religious lore. In the state-cult then the priests play a very important part, but their relation to the wors.h.i.+p of the individual was very small indeed. They had a general superintendence over private wors.h.i.+p and their leave would be required for the introduction of any new domestic cult; in cases too where the private person was in doubt as to ritual or the legitimacy of any religious practice, he could appeal to the _pontifices_ for decision. Otherwise the priest could never intervene in the wors.h.i.+p of the family, except in the case of the most solemn form of marriage (_confarreatio_), which, as it conferred on the children the right to hold certain of the priesthoods, was regarded itself as a ceremony of the state-religion.

In his private wors.h.i.+p then the individual had immediate access to the deity, and it was no doubt this absence of priestly mediation and the consequent sense of personal responsibility, no less than its emotional significance, which caused the greater reality and permanence of the domestic wors.h.i.+p as compared with the organised and official cults of the state.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Etruscan builders were according to tradition employed on the earliest Roman temples.

[4] This is all open to doubt, but see De Marchi, _Il Culto Privato_, vol. ii.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY HISTORY OF ROME--THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY