The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 16

[386] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, vol. ii.

p. 585 foll.; cp. 657. See also Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 195.

[387] See above, p. 9. _Religio_ in the sense of an obligation to perform certain ritualistic acts is in my view a secondary and later use of the word. See _Transactions of the Congress of Historical Religion for 1908_, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.

[388] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 26 foll.; _C.I.L._ vi. 2104, 32 foll.; Buecheler und Riese, _Carmina Lat._, epigr. pars ii., no. 1. All surviving Roman prayers are collected in Appel's _De Romanorum precationibus_, Giessen, 1909.

[389] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 10 foll.

[390] In _Anthropology and the Cla.s.sics_, p. 94.

[391] Cp. Tibullus ii. 1. 84, "vos celebrem cantate deum pecorique vocate, Voce palam pecori, clam sibi quisque vocet." This murmuring was certainly characteristic of Roman magic; see Jevons, p. 99, and especially the reference to a Lex Cornelia, which condemned those "qui susurris magicis homines occiderunt" (Justinian, _Inst._ iv. 18. 5).

[392] On the nature of this _tripodatio_ see Henzen, _op. cit._ p. 33. Buecheler, _Umbrica_, p. 69, gives the Umbrian verb a different meaning, though he translates it _tripodato_.

[393] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 13 and 52.

[394] Wissowa, _R.K._, 333, inclines to the belief that prayer had a legal binding force upon the deity; but he does not cite any text which confirms this view, and is arguing on general grounds. I gather from the language of Aust (_Religion der Romer_, p. 30) that he thinks there was a germ which might have developed into a more truly religious att.i.tude towards the G.o.ds, if it had not been killed by priestly routine and quasi-legal formulae. With this opinion I am strongly inclined to agree. Cp. the story of Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s audaciously altering and elevating the formula dictated by the priest in the censor's l.u.s.tratio (Val. Max. iv. 1. 10), to which I shall return in the proper place.

[395] Westphal, quoted by De Marchi, _La Religione, etc._, i. p. 133, note.

[396] See, _e.g._, ch. 141 _ad fin._ The prayer in the Acta of the Ludi Saeculares to the Moirae is an imitation of old prayers. See below, p. 442.

[397] _ib._ ch. 139.

[398] _ib._ ch. 141.

[399] Hubert et Mauss, _Melanges d'histoire des religions_, p. 74.

[400] So Cato, _R.R._ 141, "si minus in omnes litabit, sic verba concipito; Mars pater, quod tibi illuc porco neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo." (The word for the slaughter is here euphemistically omitted; De Marchi, p. 134.)

[401] Hubert et Mauss, _op. cit._ p. 55 foll.; Leviticus vi. I doubt whether the theory of the learned authors will hold good generally on this point.

[402] Marquardt, p. 185, a.s.serted the contrary, but cited no evidence except Serv. _Aen._ vi. 253, which does not prove the practice of the holocaust to be really Roman. Wissowa's exactness is well ill.u.s.trated in his detection of this error; see _R. K._ p. 352, note 6.

Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 135, leaves no doubt on the question possible.

[403] Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 131. See above, p.

35. Festus, p. 218.

[404] Gellius iv. 6. 7.

[405] _i.e._ l.u.s.tratio. That this was a form of piaculum is clear from the use of the word _pihaklu_ of the victim in the l.u.s.tratio of the arx of Iguvium, _e.g._ Buecheler, _Umbrica_, index, 5, v.

LECTURE IX

RITUAL--_continued_

In the last lecture we found that the magical element in the Roman ritual is exaggerated by recent writers. But it has also long been the practice to describe that ritual as a system of bargaining with the G.o.ds: as partaking of the nature of a legal contract. "The old Roman worship was businesslike and utilitarian. The G.o.ds were partners in a contract with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterised by the hard formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness required in pleadings before the praetor."[406] This is an excellent statement of a view very generally held, especially since Mommsen, whose training in Roman law made him apt to dwell on the legal aspects of Roman life, wrote the famous chapter in the first volume of his history. I now wish to examine this view briefly.

No doubt it was suggested by the necessary familiarity of the Roman historian with _vota publica_, the vows so frequently made on behalf of the State by its magistrates, in terms supplied by the pontifices, and dictated by them to the magistrate undertaking the duty. Some few of these formulae have survived, and it may certainly be said of them that they are a.n.a.logous to legal formulae, and express the quasi-contractual nature of the process. Such legalised religious contracts seem to be peculiar to Rome; they are curiously characteristic of the Roman genius for formularisation, which in course of time had most important effects in the domain of civil law. But the vow as such is, of course, by no means peculiar to Rome; it is familiar in Greek history, and is found in an elementary form among savages at the present day.[407] But at Rome both in public and private life it is far more frequent and striking than elsewhere. This is a phenomenon that calls for careful study; and we must beware that we are not misled by quasi-legal developments into missing the real significance of it from the point of view of morality and religion.

The _vota privata_, which include vows and offerings made to deities by private individuals, had never been adequately examined till De Marchi wrote his book on the private religion of the Romans; nor could they have been so examined until the _Corpus Inscriptionum_ was fairly well advanced. There the material is extraordinarily abundant, but it is, of course, almost entirely of comparatively late date, and the great majority of votive inscriptions belong to the period of the Empire. Yet it is quite legitimate to argue from this to an origin of this form of worship in the earliest times, and we have enough early evidence to justify the inference. Among the oldest Latin inscriptions are some found on objects such as cups or vases, showing that the latter were votive offerings to a deity: thus we have _Saeturni poculum, Kerri poculum_, and other similar ones which will be found at the beginning of the first volume of the _Corpus_.[408] They give only the name of the deity as a rule, and do not tell us why the object was offered to him; but they must have been thank-offerings for some supposed blessing. In one case, not indeed at Rome, but not far away at Praeneste, we have proof of this; for a mother makes a dedication to Fortuna _nationu cratia_, which plainly expresses grat.i.tude for good luck in childbirth;[409] and this inscription is one of the oldest we possess.

Nor do they tell us whether there was a previous vow or promise of which the offering is the fulfilment. But in the majority of inscriptions of late date the familiar letters V.S.L.M. (_votum solvit lubens merito_) betray the nature of the transaction, and it is not unreasonable to guess that there was usually a previous undertaking of some kind, to be carried out if the deity were gracious.

But these private _vota_ were not, strictly speaking, legal transactions, supposed to bind both parties in a contract, as we shall see was to some extent the case with the _vota publica_. They could not have needed the aid of a pontifex, or a solemn _voti nuncupatio_, _i.e._ statement of the promise; they were rather, as De Marchi a.s.serts,[410]

spontaneous expressions of what we may call religious feeling; and it may be that he is right in maintaining that throughout Roman history they remained as expressions of the religious sense and of the better feeling of the lower cla.s.ses. The practice implies three conceptions: (1) of the deity as really powerful for good and evil; (2) of the gift, a work of supererogation, as likely to please him; (3) of the grateful act and feeling as good in themselves. Surely there must have been in this practice a germ of moral development; I am surprised that Dr.

Westermarck has not mentioned in his chapter on grat.i.tude the extraordinary abundance of Roman votive offerings and inscriptions.

Doubtless there lies at the root of it the idea of _Do ut des_, or rather of _Dabo ut des_; doubtless also it could be turned to evil purposes in the form of _devotio_, when promises were made to a deity on condition that he killed or injured an enemy; but in the ordinary and common example it is impossible to deny that the final act, the performance of the vow, must have been accompanied by a feeling of grat.i.tude. The merest recognition of a supposed blessing is of value in moral development.

But it is in the _vota publica_ that we undoubtedly find something in the nature of a bargain--covenant would be a more graceful word--with a deity in the name of the State. Even here, however, the impression is rather produced by the use of legal terms and the formularisation of the process, than by any a.s.sumed att.i.tude of contempt towards, or even of equality with, the deity concerned. There is no trace in early Roman religious history of any tendency to abuse or degrade the divine beings if they did not perform their part, such as is well known in China,[411]

or even, strange to say, occasionally met with in the southern Italy of to-day; the att.i.tude towards the deity in cult (though not invariably in the later Graeco-Roman literature) was ever respectful, as it was towards the magistrates of the State. The farthest the Romans ever went in condemning their G.o.ds was when misfortune persuaded them that they were become indifferent or useless; then they began to neglect them, and to turn to other G.o.ds, as we shall see in subsequent lectures.

The public _vota_ were of two kinds: the ordinary, or regularly recurring, and the extraordinary, which were occasioned by some particular event. Of the ordinary, the most familiar is that undertaken by the consul, and no doubt in some form by the Rex in the days of the kingship, for the benefit of the State on the first day of the official year. Accompanied by the Senate and a crowd of people, the consuls went up to the Capitoline temple, and performed the sacrifice which had been vowed by their predecessors of a year before; after which they undertook a new _votum_, "_pro reipublicae salute_."[412] We have not the formula of this vow, and cannot tell what resemblance it bore to a bargain; but the ceremony itself must have been most impressive, and calculated to remind all who were present of the greatness and goodwill of the supreme deity who watched over the interests of the State. So too at the _l.u.s.trum_ of the censors, which took place in the Campus Martius every five years, it is almost certain that the _votum_ of the predecessors in office was fulfilled by a sacrifice, and a new one undertaken. Here again we are without the formula, but that there was one we know from a very interesting pa.s.sage of Valerius Maximus. He tells us that Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, when as censor he was conducting this sacrifice, and the _scriba_ (on behalf of the pontifex?) was dictating to him the _solemne precationis carmen ex publicis tabulis_, in which the immortal G.o.ds were besought to make the prosperity of the Roman State "better and greater," had the audacity to interrupt him, saying that the condition of the State was sufficiently good and great: "itaque precor ut eas (res) perpetuo incolumes servent." This change, Valerius says, was accepted, and the formula altered accordingly in the _tabulae_.[413]

This story, which is probably genuine and is quite characteristic of Scipio, must convince an impartial mind that in this votive ceremony there was enough truth and dignity to suggest a real advance in religious thought, so far at least as the State was concerned.

The extraordinary _vota_ were innumerable. They were occasioned by dangers or misfortunes of various kinds, the magistrate undertaking to dedicate something to the G.o.d concerned if the State should have come safely through the peril. Many temples had their origin in this practice;[414] we meet also with _ludi_, special sacrifices, or a t.i.the of the booty taken in war. In two or three cases Livy has copied the formula from the _tabulae_ of the pontifices; thus before the war with Antiochus in 191 B.C., the consul recited the following words after the pontifex maximus: "Si duellum quod c.u.m Antiocho rege sumi populus iussit, id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit; tum tibi Iuppiter populus Roma.n.u.s ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet ... quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti, donaque data recte sunto."[415] This doc.u.ment dates from the days of the decay of the Roman religion, and is, of course, modernised by Livy; but it may give an idea of what is meant by writers who speak of an element of bargain or covenant in these _vota_. Still more elaborate, and probably more antique, is the famous formula of the vow of the _ver sacrum_ in the darkest hour of the war with Hannibal.[416] This very curious rite, which proves beyond question the devotion of the Italian stocks to the principle of the _votum_, consisted of a promise to dedicate to Mars or Jupiter all the valuable products of a single spring, including the male children born at that time; to this the Romans had recourse for the last time in 217 B.C., and Livy has fortunately preserved the words of the vow. These, with the exception of the dedication of the children, which is judiciously omitted, probably stand much as they had come down from a remote antiquity. The _votum_ is put in the form of a _rogatio_ to the people, without whose sanction it could not be put in force; are they willing to dedicate to Jupiter all the young of oxen, sheep, or pigs born in the spring five years after date, if the State shall have been preserved during those years from all its enemies? The curious feature of the doc.u.ment is, not that it binds the deity to any course of action, but that it secures the individual Roman against his anger in case of any chance slip in his part of the process, and the people against any evil consequences arising from such a slip or from misdoing on the part of an individual. "Si quis clepsit, ne populo scelus esto neve cui cleptum erit: si atro die faxit insciens, probe factum esto."[417] Of this formula a recent writer of great learning and ability has written thus: "The well-known liturgical archive containing Rome's address to Jupiter in the critical days of the Hannibalic war is a wary and cleverly drawn legal doc.u.ment, intended to bind the G.o.d as well as the State."[418] He is no exception to the rule that those who have not habitually occupied themselves with the Roman religion are liable to misinterpret its details. This is not an address to Jupiter, nor is there any sign in it that the G.o.d was considered as bound to perform his part as in a contract; the covenant is a one-sided one, the people undertaking an act of self-renunciation if the G.o.d be gracious to them, and thereby going far to a.s.sure themselves that he will so be gracious. And the legal cast of the language, which seems so apt to mislead the unwary,[419] is only to be found in the clauses which guarantee the people against the contingency of the whole vow being ruined by the inadvertence or the rascality of an individual; surely a very natural and inevitable _caveat_, where for once the whole people, and not only their priests or magistrates, were concerned in the transaction.

A curious form of the _votum_, which, however, I can only mention in pa.s.sing, is that addressed to the G.o.ds of a hostile city, with a view to induce them to desert their temples and take up their abode at Rome; this is the process called _evocatio_, which was successfully applied at the siege of Veii, when Juno Regina consented to betray her city.[420]

Macrobius, commenting on Virgil's lines (_Aen._ ii. 351),

excessere omnes adytis arisque relictis di quibus imperium hoc steterat,

has preserved the _carmen_ used at the siege of Carthage.[421] It is cast in the language of prayer: "Si deus si dea est cui populus civitasque Carthaginiensis est in tutela ... precor venerorque veniamque a vobis peto ut vos populum civitatemque Carthaginiensem deseratis,"

etc.; but it ends with a vow to build temples and establish _ludi_ in honour of these deities if they should comply with the pet.i.tion. It is worth noting here that it was, of course, impossible to make a bargain with strange or hostile G.o.ds, or in any way to force their hand; the promise is entirely one-sided; and I am inclined to think that in dealing with his own G.o.ds the mental att.i.tude of the Roman was much the same, though his faith in them was undoubtedly greater.

This is the proper place to mention another very curious rite, closely allied to the _votum_, but differing from it in one or two important points, which is almost peculiar to the Romans and most characteristic of them; I mean the _devotio_ of himself on the field of battle by a magistrate _c.u.m imperio_.[422] The famous example, familiar to us all, is that of Decius Mus at the battle of Vesuvius in the great Latin war[423] (340 B.C.): the same story is told of his son in a war with Gauls and Samnites, and of his grandson in the war with Pyrrhus.[424]

The historical difficulties of these accounts do not concern us now; by common consent of scholars the method and formula of the _devotio_ are authentic, and the rite must have had its origin in remote antiquity.

The story runs[425] that Decius, at whose preliminary sacrifice before the battle with the Latins the liver of the victim had been found imperfect, while that of his colleague was normal, perceived that his wing of the army was giving way. He therefore resolved to sacrifice himself by _devotio_, and called on the pontifex maximus, who was present, to dictate for him the correct formula. He was directed to put on the toga praetexta, to wear it with the cinctus Gabinus, to veil his head with it, to touch his chin with his hand under the folds of the robe, and to stand upon a spear. He then repeated after the pontifex the following formula: "Iane, Iuppiter, Mars pater, Quirine, Bellona, Lares, divi Novensiles, di Indigetes, divi quorum est potestas nostrorum hostiumque, diique Manes, vos precor, veneror, veniam peto feroque, uti populo Romano Quiritium vim victoriamque prosperetis, hostesque populi Romani Quiritium terrore formidine morteque adficiatis. Sicut verbis nuncupavi, ita pro re publica Quiritium, exercitu legionibus auxiliis populi Romani Quiritium, legiones auxiliaque hostium _mec.u.m_ deis Manibus Tellurique devoveo" (Livy ix. 9). He then mounted his horse and rode into the midst of the enemy to meet his death. The Latins were seized with panic and the Romans were victorious.

Here the vow is made and fulfilled almost at the same moment,--_the fulfilment takes place before the G.o.ds have done their part_. Here too the offering made is the life of a human being which brings the act within the domain of sacrifice. Its sacrificial nature is obvious in all the details.[426] The dress is that of the sacrificing priest or magistrate;[427] Decius was therefore priest and victim at the same time, and the two characters seem to be combined in the symbolic touching of the chin, which has been rightly explained,[428] I think, as a.n.a.logous to the laying on of hands in the consecratio of the Rex, as we saw it in the case of Numa, and perhaps to the _immolatio_ of a victim by sprinkling the _mola salsa_ on its head; where the object of consecration is made holy by contact with holy things.[429] The standing on the spear is difficult to explain; it may have been a symbolic dedication to Mars, whose spear or spears, as we have seen, were kept in the Regia.[430]

The formula contains certain points of great interest. Firstly, it is not only the Roman G.o.ds of all sorts and conditions who are invoked, but those of the enemy also, or, in vague language, those who have power over both Romans and Latins.[431] Secondly, it begins with a prayer combined with a curse upon the enemy: in which respect it resembles the prayer at the _l.u.s.tratio populi_ at Iguvium[432] (which I shall mention again directly) and to a later type of _devotio_ used at the siege of Carthage and preserved by Macrobius.[433] Thirdly, in spite of this religious aspect of the formula, it ends with what can only be called a magical spell. By the act of self-sacrifice, which is the potent element in the spell, Decius exercises magical power over the legions of the enemy, and devotes them with himself to death,--to the Manes and Mother Earth.[434]

The story suggests to me that the rite had been at one time well known; the pontifex maximus was ready with the instructions and formula. It was a survival from an age of magic, but the priests have given it a religious turn, and the language of the first part is quite as much that of prayer as is the language of the collect to be said in time of war which still disfigures the Anglican prayer-book.[435] What is still more remarkable is that it has not only a religious but an ethical character.

The idea of service to the State is here seen at its highest point. The sacrifice is a vicarious one.[436] Livy significantly adds that a private soldier might be chosen by the commander to represent him, and that if this man were not killed by the enemy an image seven feet long must be buried in the earth and a piacular sacrifice offered.[437] Later on it would seem that instead of sacrificing himself, the consul might implore the G.o.ds to accept the hostile army or city as his subst.i.tutes: "eos _vicarios_ pro me fide magistratuque meo pro populi Romani exercitibus do devoveo, ut me exercitumque nostrum ... bene salvos siritis esse."[438] The idea here, and indeed in the _devotio_ of Decius, bears some a.n.a.logy to that which lies at the root of the old Roman practice, of making a criminal _sacer_ to the deity chiefly concerned in his crime; when this was done, any man might kill him, and he was practically a victim offered as _vicarius_ for the Roman people, who had been contaminated by his deed.[439]

But I must now pa.s.s on the last kind of ritual to be explained in these lectures, and far the most impressive of all, that of _l.u.s.tratio_, or the purification, as it is commonly called, of land, city, human beings, or even inanimate objects, by means of a solemn procession accompanied with sacrifice.

So important a part did these processional rites play in the public life of the Roman people,--so characteristic are they too of the old Roman habit of thought and action, that they have given a wonderful word to the Latin language. _l.u.s.trare_ has many meanings; but the one which is immediately derived from the rites I speak of, that of slow processional movement, is the most beautiful and impressive of them all. When Aeneas first sees Dido in all her stately beauty, he says:[440]

in freta dum fluvii current, _dum montibus umbrae l.u.s.trabunt convexa_, polus dum sidera pascet, semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt, quae me cunque vocant terrae.

"So long as the cloud-shadows move slowly over the hollows of the hills." Here in Scotland you must have all seen this procession of the shadows, as I have watched it when fishing in Wales; let us always a.s.sociate it with the magic of a poet of nature as well as with the religious processions of his people.