The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 27

Wissowa allows that we do not know where this Hebe can have come from, nor, I may add, why she should have come. That there was some special meaning in the combination Juventas, Hercules, Genius I feel sure, and I conjecture that it may be found in the urgent need of a supply of _iuvenes_. Hercules and Genius seem both to represent the male principle of life (_R.F._ 142 foll.).

Juventas speaks for herself, but we may remember that the _tirones_ sacrificed to her on the day of the Liberalia (17th March), and that Liber is almost certainly another form of Genius (_R.F._ 55).

[667] Livy xxii. 1.

[668] It is only from this pa.s.sage that we know of the oracle. See Bouche-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination_, iv.

146. That of Caere is mentioned in Livy xxi. 62. Both cities were mainly Etruscan.

[669] Livy xxvii. 37 betrays some knowledge of the infectious nature of prodigy-reporting: "Sub unius prodigii, ut fit, mentionem, alia quoque nuntiata."

[670] Pliny, _N.H._ x.x.xv. 115, where the verses are quoted as inscribed on the paintings in her temple at Ardea. Note that Juno is here called the wife of Jupiter by a Greek artist from Asia.

[671] For Juno as the woman's deity and guardian spirit, see above, p. 135. To refer this prominence of the G.o.ddess to her connection with Carthage and mythical enmity to the Romans, as we see it in the _Aeneid_, is premature; we must suppose that each Juno was still a local deity, and no general conception in the later Greek sense is as yet possible.

[672] For Feronia, see _R.F._ 252 foll.

[673] The _procurationes_ ordered were doubtless recorded in the _annales maximi_. The books of the decemviri, we must suppose, were burnt with the oracles in 38 B.C. (Diels, _Sib. Blatter_, p. 6 note).

[674] Wissowa, _R.K._ 170; Marq. 586 foll.

[675] Livy xxii. 9-10.

[676] See above, p. 204 foll.; Strabo, p. 250; Festus, p. 106.

[677] If it be asked why Jupiter is here without his t.i.tles Optimus Maximus, the answer is that just below, where _ludi magni_ are vowed to him, as all such _ludi_ were, he is also simply Jupiter.

[678] _R.K._ 356. In his view the new amalgam of twelve G.o.ds was known as _di Consentes_, an expression of Varro's which has been much discussed. See Muller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 83; _C.I.L._ vi. 102; Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, 190 foll. In _de Re Rust._ i. 1, Varro speaks of twelve _dei consentes, urbani_, whose gilded statues stood in the forum.

[679] Livy xxii. 57.

[680] See above, p. 207. Orosius' account of this is worth reading; he calls it "obligamentum hoc magic.u.m"

(iv. 13). He mentions a Gallic pair and a Greek woman, and dates it in 226 (227 according to Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 227). Cp. Plut. _Marcell._ 3. Livy's words, "iam ante hostiis humanis, minime Romano sacro, imbutum," agree with this. There must have been an outbreak of feeling and recourse to the Sibylline books in the stress of the Gallic war.

[681] _Sib. Blatter_, p. 86.

[682] Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 12 and 13. Plutarch, _l.c._, confirms him. Pliny, it may be noticed, is here writing of spells, etc., among which he cla.s.ses the _precatio_ of this rite.

[683] The first gladiatorial show was in 264 B.C. (Val.

Max. ii. 4. 7).

[684] The arguments are stated fully in his _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, 211 foll.

[685] The best account of these, or rather of the Argean itinerary, of which fragments are preserved in Varro, _L.L._ v. 45 foll., is still that of Jordan in his _Romische Topographie_, ii. 603 foll. The extracts seem to be from a record of directions for the pa.s.sage of a procession round the _sacella_ (or _sacraria_, Varro v.

48). Though quoting these, Varro has nothing to say of their origin, which would be strange indeed if they were of such comparatively late date.

[686] In Varro, _L.L._ vii. 44. There is no doubt that the line is from Ennius; it is also quoted as his in Festus, p. 355.

[687] Schanz, _Gesch. der rom. Literatur_, vol. i. ed.

3, p. 110.

[688] Some examples of subst.i.tution will be found in Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, i. 469. It is of course a well-known phenomenon, but is now generally rejected as an explanation of _oscilla_, _maniae_, etc. (see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 355, and Frazer, _G.B._ ii. 344). I know of no case of it on good evidence at Rome, unless it be one in the _devotio_, of an effigy for the soldier, ("ni moritur,"

Livy viii. 10).

[689] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 117, with references to Mannhardt; Frazer, _G.B._ ii. 256; Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, v. 181.

[690] Livy xxiii. 11. See also Diels, _Sib. Blatter_, pp. 11 and 92.

[691] Livy xxiv. 10.

[692] _Ib._ xxiv. 44.

[693] _Ib._ xxv. 1.

[694] _Ib._ xxv. 12. On the Marcian oracles and their metre, see Bouche-Leclercq, _Hist. de divination_, iv.

128 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ 463 note 2; Diels, _op. cit._ p. 7 foll.

[695] See above, Lect. xi. p. 262. For the Apolline games, _R.F._ p. 179 foll.

[696] Livy xxvi. 23.

[697] _Ib._ xxvii. 8.

[698] _Ib._ xxvii. 25; Plut. _Marcellus_, p. 28.

[699] _Ib._ xxvii. 23.

[700] _Ib._ xxvii. 37.

[701] The idea that this number was "chthonic" and a monopoly of the Sibylline utterances was started by Diels, _Sib. Blatter_, p. 42 foll., with imperfect anthropological knowledge, and has led Wissowa and others into wrong conclusions, _e.g._ as to the Argei.

See an article criticising Wissowa in _Cla.s.sical Rev._ 1902, p. 211. On the whole subject of the number three and its multiples, see Usener, "Dreizahl," in _Rheinisches Museum_ for 1903, and Goudy, _Trichotomy in Roman Law_ (Oxford, 1910), p. 5 foll.

[702] Livy xxvii. 51. For grat.i.tude among Romans, see above, p. 202. A gift of thanksgiving was sent to Delphi (Livy xxviii. 45).

[703] _Ib._ xxix. 10 foll. For other references see _R.F._ p. 69 foll.

[704] _Ib._ xxix. 10.

[705] Dion. Hal. ii. 19; _R.F._ p. 70.

LECTURE XV

AFTER THE HANNIBALIC WAR

The long and deadly struggle with Hannibal ended in 201 B.C., and no sooner was peace concluded than the Senate determined on war with Macedon. This decision is a critical moment in Roman history, for it initiated not only a long period of advance and the eventual supremacy of Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also an age of narrow aristocratic rule which remained unquestioned till revolution broke out with Tiberius Gracchus. But we cannot safely deny that it was a just decision. Hannibal was alive, and his late ally, Philip of Macedon, now in sinister coalition with Antiochus of Syria, might be capable of invading exhausted Italy. To have an enemy once more in the peninsula would probably be fatal to Rome and Italy, and one more effort was necessary in order to avert such a calamity; an effort that must be made at once, while Carthage lay prostrate.