History of Religion Part 17

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.

Though they did not consult the G.o.ds about public undertakings until the magistrate or the general asked them to do so, they had power to stop proceedings of which they disapproved; and this at certain periods of Roman history they very frequently did. In Cicero's treatise on Divination a great deal of interesting matter may be found on this subject. Another sacred college of somewhat later date is that of the men, at first three in number, afterwards fifteen, who acted as expounders of the sacred Sibylline books, which King Tarquin purchased from the old woman or Sibyl, of c.u.mae.

Roman Religion Legal rather than Priestly.--While some of these priestly colleges exercised large powers, these powers were always regarded not as inherent but deputed. The sacred offices were not hereditary but elective; no course of training was necessary to qualify for them; men were chosen for them by the state as for any other public office, and those who became priests did not cease to be citizens but continued to sit in the Senate, and, as it might happen, to hold other offices at the same time. The growth of a priestly caste was thus effectively prevented; religion was precluded from having any free development of its own, and kept in the position of an instrument for the furtherance of ends of state. There is no great religion in which ritual is so much, doctrine and enthusiasm so little. All these priests and colleges exist for no end but to carry out with strict exact.i.tude the ritual usage which is deemed necessary to keep on good terms with the G.o.ds. They have no doctrine to teach, no fervour to communicate, they do not even tell any stories.

Punctiliousness and anxiety attend all their proceedings. To the Roman, Ihne says, "religion turns out to be the fear lest the G.o.ds should punish them for neglect; any unusual occurrence may be a sign that the G.o.ds are withdrawing their co-operation from the state, and this must be looked into, and the due expiations used if judged necessary." Ritual must always be carried out with the utmost precision; it is not the goodwill of the wors.h.i.+pper but his exact.i.tude that counts. He may even cheat the G.o.ds of their due if he is formally correct in his observance. For example, if the auspices (the signs derived from birds) were unfavourable, they could be repeated till a better result was obtained.

What we have described is the religion of Rome in its original form, before it accepted foreign modifications. Its G.o.ds are spirits of the woods and fields, of the market, of the foray, of the treaty, of all the aspects, in fact, which life had borne to the tribes of Central Italy, especially to the Latins and the Sabines who combined to form the state of Rome. These G.o.ds form no family and have no history, they do not, like the G.o.ds of Greece, lay hold of the imagination, nor, like those of Germany, of the affections. They are only dimly known; but they are powerful, and it is necessary to reckon with them; and the only relations which can be kept up with such beings are those of business and of law. It follows that this religion is one of constraint and not of inspiration. In this it agrees with the Roman character, which is much more inclined to order than to freedom, to law than to art. The word religion has here its origin; its primary meaning is restraint or check, since the chief feeling with which the Roman regarded his G.o.ds was that of anxiety. Not that the G.o.ds were bad; Vediovis, the bad counterpart of Jovis, is a vanis.h.i.+ng figure,--but they were ill-known, and might have cause to be angry. Wors.h.i.+p, therefore, the practical cultivation of the friends.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, swallows up here the other elements of religion as a whole. Religion does not free the forces of human nature to realise themselves in spontaneous activity, but enchains them to the punctilious service of a nonhuman authority. Everything exciting is kept at a distance, and men are trained in obedience and scrupulousness and self-denial. They produce no beautiful works of art, and have hardly any stories to delight in; but they are reverent and conscientious; private feeling is sacrificed with an austere satisfaction to the public interest, and they accordingly build up a great power. Living in an atmosphere of magic, where unseen dangers lurk on every side, and there is virtue in words and forms correctly used to avert these dangers, the Roman develops to perfection one side of religion. To its inspirations and enthusiasms and hidden consolation he is a stranger; but he knows it better than others as a conservative and regulating force, which checks pa.s.sion, calls for wary and orderly conduct, and causes the individual to subordinate himself to the community.

Changes introduced from without.--The Roman religion had, properly speaking, no development. What it might have become had it been left to unfold itself without interference from without, we can only guess; but it was early brought under the influence of more highly developed religions, and it proved to have so little power of resisting innovations that it speedily parted with much of its own native character. The Romans were not unconscious that their religion was an imperfect one; they never claimed, when they were conquering the world, that their religion was the only true one, or had any mission to prevail over others. They were tolerant from the first of the religions of other peoples. The G.o.ds of other peoples they always believed to be real beings, with whom it was well for them also to be on good terms. If everything in the world had its spirit, these G.o.ds also were the spirits of their own countries and nations; the very notion of deity which the Romans entertained prevented them from having any exclusive belief in their own G.o.ds or from denying the right of the G.o.ds of others.[2] When therefore they came in contact with foreign religions, they were not protected by any profound conviction of the truth of their own, and were exposed to the full force of the new ideas. The new religions came to them along with the culture of peoples much further advanced in art and in thought than they were themselves; at each such contact, therefore, they felt the foreigner to be superior to themselves in intellectual matters; and wherever this happens, the less highly gifted race is likely to change in its religion as well as in other things. We have to note the changes which were produced by such external influences.

[Footnote 2: Cf. Celsus in Origen, _Contra Celsum_, vii. 68.]

In the first place, Rome borrowed from Etruria. Etruscan religion was both more developed and more savage than that of Rome. Human sacrifice was an acknowledged feature of it; divination was carried to absurd lengths, one great branch of it consisting in the prediction of the future from the appearance of the entrails of slaughtered animals. Etruria had a h.e.l.l with regular torments for the departed; in Rome the belief in a future life was much less definite.

On the other hand, Etruria had deities who were something more than abstractions; there was a circle of twelve G.o.ds, who held meetings on high, and regulated the affairs of the world. Above them was a power, little defined, to which the G.o.ds were subject, a kind of fate. Greek influence, so notably apparent in Etruscan art, is present, too, we see, in Etruscan religion; it is through this somewhat dark pa.s.sage that Greek religious ideas first came to Rome. Under this influence various innovations took place at Rome. Before the end of the monarchy the Romans had begun to build houses for their G.o.ds, after being for 170 years, we are told, without any such arrangement. The Roman "templum" was not originally a building, but a s.p.a.ce marked off, according to the rules of augury, for the observation of signs.

A part of the sky was also marked off for such "observation" and "contemplation." On such a holy site, on the Capitoline hill, there was founded by the earlier Tarquin the temple of Jupiter which always continued to be the princ.i.p.al site of Roman religion. Its architecture was Tuscan; and it contained not only a cella or holy place for the image of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but also a cella for Juno and one for Minerva. The latter was both an Etruscan and a Roman deity, the G.o.ddess of memory. Art was thus enlisted in the service of the G.o.ds; the divine figures acquired a reality and distinctness quite wanting to the earlier divine abstractions; and a new notion of deity was presented to the Roman mind. Other temples followed, to Jupiter under other names than that which he had in the Capitol, and to other deities. That of Faith was a very early one. It was a rule in temple-building that the image in the cella faced the west, so that the wors.h.i.+pper, praying towards it, faced the east. Here also the Roman custom is a departure from the Greek; for in Greek temples it is the rule that the image faces the east, and the wors.h.i.+pper the west. The Roman orientation of sacred buildings has pa.s.sed into the practice of the Christian Church. From Etruria the Romans also derived a great addition to the rules of divination; but the more childish parts of Etruscan divination were regarded at Rome as superst.i.tious, though private persons might frequently resort to them.

Greek G.o.ds in Rome.--While Greek ideas thus came indirectly from the north, the south of the peninsula was becoming more and more Greek, and the G.o.ds and temples of h.e.l.las, established first at the sea-ports and colonies, gradually came to Rome. This movement is connected with the Sibylline books which were acquired by the last of the kings. These books were brought to Rome from the Greek town of c.u.mae; they were written in Greek, and contained oracles which were ascribed to an old Greek prophetess. They were consulted in grave emergencies of state through the officials who had charge of them, and what they generally prescribed was that a G.o.d should be sent for from Greece, and his wors.h.i.+p set up in Rome. Many foreign wors.h.i.+ps were thus imported. First came Apollo, disguised under the Latin name of Aperta, "opener," for the books contained many of his oracles; he was received and wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d of purification, since the state was in need of that process at the time, as well as of prophecy. In the year 496 B.C. came in the same way Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus, identified with the old Latin Ceres, Libera, and Liber; and, a century later, Heracles, identified with the Latin Hercules.

In the year 291, on the occurrence of a plague, Asclepios, in Latin Aesculapius, was brought from Epidauros; and when the crisis of the contest with Hannibal was at hand (204 B.C.) Cybele, the great mother of the G.o.ds, was fetched from Pessinus in Phrygia. The people of that town generously handed over to the Roman amba.s.sadors the field-stone which was their image of the G.o.ddess, and her journey to Rome had the desired effect, in the expulsion of Hannibal from Italy. The Venus of Mount Eryx in Sicily arrived in Rome about the same time; a G.o.ddess combining the characters of Aphrodite and Astarte, and quite different from the simple old Roman Venus, who was a G.o.ddess of Spring, and presided over gardens.

The process of which these are the outward landmarks went on during the whole period of the Republic, and resulted in the subst.i.tution of what may be called with Mommsen the Graeco-Roman, for the old Roman religion. The change was a very profound one. Not only were some new G.o.ds added to the old ones, not only did Greek art come to be employed in Roman temples, not only were new rites introduced, such as the _lectisternium_, in which couches were arranged, each with the image of a G.o.d and that of a G.o.ddess, and tables spread to regale the rec.u.mbent deities. The very notion of deity was changed; the Greek G.o.d, represented by an image in human form and moving freely in the upper world, was subst.i.tuted for the Latin G.o.d who was the unseen side of an act or process or quality, from which he had his name, and apart from which he was not. The following is a list of the princ.i.p.al Roman G.o.ds and of the Greek ones with whom they were identified:--Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), Neptunus (Poseidon), Minerva (Athene), Mars (Ares), Venus (Aphrodite), Diana (Artemis), Vulca.n.u.s (Hephaestus), Vesta (Hestia), Mercurius (Hermes), Ceres (Demeter). The identifications are by no means accurate; Jupiter and Vesta, as we have seen, are the only two Roman G.o.ds who are really identical with Greek G.o.ds, the other equations are founded on accidental resemblances, and are more arbitrary than real. The result of them was, however, that the Romans forgot to a large extent their own G.o.ds, and got Greek ones instead. With the divine figures they took over the mythology of Greece, and thus the G.o.ds came to be well known with all their weaknesses, instead of as before surrounded with mystery and awe. The wors.h.i.+p founded on the earlier conception of the deity, and kept up with unwavering regularity, was inapplicable to these new G.o.ds, and inevitably lost all its reality. This is not the only cause, but it is one of the chief causes which prepared for the fearful spectacle presented by Roman religion at the end of the Republic, when men of learning and distinction officiated as the heads of a religion in which they had no belief, and which they scoffed at in their writings.

Among the wors.h.i.+ps which came to Rome from the East there were several which are not of Greek, but of Oriental origin. The wors.h.i.+p of Cybele belongs to Asia Minor, though it had spread over Greece; that of Dionysus also came to Greece from Asia. The practice of both these cults was accompanied by excitement and self-abandonment on the part of the wors.h.i.+ppers; and they formed a great contrast to the staid and formal wors.h.i.+p of the Romans, the only admissible pa.s.sion in which was a calm pa.s.sion for correctness. The wors.h.i.+p of Cybele was carried on by eunuchs, it had noisy processions, and depended on begging for its support. When the Romans brought it to their city, they ordained that Roman citizens should not fill leading offices in it; but it flourished so strongly, among the numerous foreigners in the capital and among the poor, as to show that it met a great want there. The wors.h.i.+p of Bacchus had to be suppressed by the state; it was carried on at nocturnal meetings, which even citizens attended, and it led to all kinds of irregularities. As the subject of this chapter is not the religions of Rome, but the Roman religion, we do not here review the numerous foreign wors.h.i.+ps which were brought to the capital from every part of the Empire, and made Rome, towards the close of the Republic, the residence of the G.o.ds of every nation. The Romans as we saw were not led by any convictions of their own to deny the truth of foreign religions; and their policy as rulers also inclined them to tolerate all wors.h.i.+ps which did not offend against civil order. In the provinces it was the rule not to interfere with local religion; at Rome the authorities recognised not the imported religion itself, of which the state did not feel called to judge, but the a.s.sociation practising it, which received permission to do so.

The wors.h.i.+p was then protected by the state--it became a _religio licita_. Amid the meeting of all the G.o.ds and the clas.h.i.+ng of all the creeds which were thus brought about at Rome, the Roman religion itself maintained its place, not as a doctrine which any one believed, for the very priests and augurs laughed at the rites and ceremonies they carried on, but as a ritual which was bound up with the whole past history of Rome, and believed to be necessary for the welfare of the state as well as for the satisfaction of the common people. In the atmosphere of discussion and of far-reaching scepticism which then prevailed it was not to be expected that faith could again find any strong support in the historical religion of Rome. The Emperor Augustus made a serious attempt to reform and revive religion. He selected the domestic wors.h.i.+p of the Lares as the most living part of the old system, and ordained that the two Lares should be wors.h.i.+pped along with the genius of the Emperor, and that Rome should be divided into districts, each with its temple of this strange trinity; while in the provinces each district was to support a wors.h.i.+p of Rome and of the Emperor in addition to its existing cults. Temples were rebuilt at Rome, new ones were raised, sacred offices were filled which had been vacant, religious games were inst.i.tuted to carry the Roman mind back to the sacred past. Livy and Virgil treated the past from a religious point of view, showing the sacred mission of the Roman race, and exhibiting the valour and piety of the founders of the state. If the Roman religion could be revived these were the proper means to do it. But the religion of the future was not to be prepared in this way.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

The sections on religion in Mommsen's _History of Rome_.

Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_.

Wissowa, _Religion und Cultur der Romer_.

Holwerda, in De la Saussaye.

For the period of the Empire, Boissier's _La Religion Romaine_.

See also the work of c.u.mont, cited at the end of chapter x.

CHAPTER XVIII THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA

I. _The Vedic Religion_

No contrast could well be greater than that between the German religion and that of India. In the one case we have a people full of vigour, but not yet civilised; in the other a people of high organisation and culture, but deficient in vigour; the former religion is one of action, the latter one of speculation. From the original Aryan faith, to which that of the Teutons most closely approximates, Indian religion is removed by two great steps. First we have as a variety of Aryan faith the Indo-Iranian religion, that of the undivided ancestors of Persians and Indians alike, in the dim period antecedent to the Aryan settlement of India. Of this religion, the common mother of those of Persia and of India, we shall give some sketch after we have made acquaintance with the G.o.ds of India, at the beginning of our Persian chapter. Indian religion is a variety of Indo-Iranian, which is a variety of the Aryan type. Neither its genealogy nor its character ent.i.tles it to be taken as a typical example of the Aryan religions. In literary chronology it is the earliest of them, inasmuch as its books are the oldest sacred literature of Aryan faith; but in point of development it is not an early but an advanced product. The absorbing interest it offers to the student of our science is due to the fact that it presents in an unbroken sequence a growth of religious thought, which, beginning with simple conceptions and advancing to a great priestly ritual, can be seen to pa.s.s into mysticism and asceticism, and thence to the rejection of all G.o.ds and rites, and a system of salvation by individual good conduct. Nowhere else can the progress of religion through what we might call its seven ages of life be seen so clearly, nor the logical connection of these ages with each other be recognised so unmistakably. The present chapter deals with the infancy and l.u.s.ty youth of the religion as seen in Vedism; the later stages of Brahmanism and Buddhism will be spoken of in subsequent chapters.

The Rigveda.--The Vedic religion takes its name from the Rigveda, the oldest portion of Indian literature, and the earliest literary doc.u.ment of Aryan religion. Of four vedas or collections of hymns, the Rigveda is the oldest and most interesting. It contains a set of hymns which, with much more of their early religious literature, the Hindus ascribed to direct divine revelation, but which we know to have been written by men who claimed no special inspiration. Most of them date from the time when the Aryans, having made good their entry in India, but without by any means altogether subduing the former inhabitants, were dwelling in the Punjaub. The religion of the hymns is a strongly national one. The Aryans appeal to their G.o.ds to help them against the races, afterwards driven to the south and to the sea coasts, who differ from themselves in colour, in physiognomy, in language, in manners, and in religion. Nor are these conquerors by any means an uncultivated people; they had long been using metals; they built houses,--a number together in a village; they lived princ.i.p.ally by keeping cattle, but also by tillage, and by hunting.

They drank Sura, a kind of brandy, and Soma, a kind of strong ale, of which we shall hear more. They were, as a rule, monogamous, the wife occupying a high position in the household, and a.s.sisting her husband in offering the domestic sacrifice. At the head of each state was a king, as among the Greeks of Homer; he was not, however, an absolute monarch; his people met in council and controlled him. The king himself offered sacrifice for his tribe in his own house,--there were no temples,--but he was frequently a.s.sisted by a man or several men of special learning in such rites.