The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 37

Horace has cleverly made Augustus himself the leading figure in this and the following stanza, and the listeners forget the Capitoline G.o.ds as they note the allusion to Venus, the ancestress of the Julii, the prestige of Augustus that has brought envoys to him from Scythia, Media, and India, and in the next stanza the public virtues, presented here as deities--Fides, Pax, Honos, Pudor, Virtus--on whose aid and wors.h.i.+p the new regime is based.[954]

At the sixteenth stanza the choirs again face about to the temple of Apollo, and with him and Diana again the next two stanzas have to do.

Only one remains, in which as an _exodos_ we may be sure the two choirs of boys and girls joined; it sums up the whole body of deities, but with Apollo and Diana as the special objects of the day's wors.h.i.+p:

haec Iovem sentire deosque cunctos spem bonam certamque domum reporto, doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae dicere laudes.

The performance on the Palatine was now over, and the procession streamed down the hill to join the Via Sacra near the Regia and the Vesta temple, and so to make its way up to the Capitol, where the performance was repeated.[955] Taking station at this n.o.ble point of view, he who will can again follow its movement with the hymn in his hand. The area in front of the Capitoline temple looked across to the Palatine, and the image of Sol and his _quadriga_ must have been in full view; thus the _exordium_ and the next stanza (alme Sol) would be sung looking in that direction. Equally well in view, if they turned to the right, would be the scene of the midnight sacrifices across the Campus Martius; and so on throughout the singing the changes of position would be easy and graceful, here as on the Palatine.

Here I prefer to make an end of the performance, following the text of the inscription, which tells us nothing of a return to the Palatine. It would be far more in keeping with Roman practice that the Capitol should be the scene of the conclusion of the processional ceremony, even on a day when Apollo was, with Augustus himself, the princ.i.p.al figure. From the musical point of view, too, a third performance is improbable, for the singers were young and tender.

And here, too, with this impressive scene, which can hardly fail to move the imagination of any one who has stood on Palatine and Capitol, I will close my account of the religious experience of the Romans. A few remarks only remain for me to make about its contribution, such as it was, to the Latin form of Christianity.

NOTES TO LECTURE XIX

[900] A summary of the relations between Virgil and Augustus may be found in Mr. Glover's _Studies in Virgil_, p. 144 foll.

[901] Tiberius added to his Augustan inheritance a curious and possibly morbid anxiety about religious matters and details of cult, of which examples may be found in Tac. _Ann._ iii. 58, vi. 12, among other pa.s.sages. Perhaps, however, the most interesting is that connected with the famous story of "the Great Pan is dead," told by Plutarch in the _de Defectu Oraculorum_, ch. xvii. The news of this strange story reached the ears of Tiberius, who at once set the learned men about him to inquire into it; and they came to the no less strange conclusion that "this was the Pan who was born of Hermes and Penelope." S. Reinach has recently offered an explanation of this story, which is at least better than previous ones, in _Cultes, mythes, et religions_, vol. iii. p. 1 foll.

[902] _C.I.L._ vi. 1001.

[903] Jul. Capitolinus, 13.

[904] Symmachus, _Rel._ 3.

[905] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 2. On this subject generally consult Dill's _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, bk. i. chs. i. and iv.

[906] This idea is exactly expressed by Horace in _Odes_ iii. 23, perhaps addressed to the _vilica_ of his own farm. Cp. Cato, _R.R._ 143, where the _vilica_ is to pray to the _Lar familiaris pro copia_. Horace mentions only the Kalends for this rite; Cato adds Nones and Ides. Cp. Tibull. i. 3. 34; i. 10. 15 foll.

[907] See above, Lectures iv. and v.

[908] _Greatness and Decline of Rome_ (E.T.), v. 93.

[909] See especially lines 45 foll. and 56 foll.

[910] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323, or Dessau, _Inscriptiones selectae_, vol. ii. part i. p. 284.

[911] For this reason the veiled figure in one of the fine sculptures on the Ara Pacis frieze, which used to be taken as Augustus Pont. Max., cannot be so identified (see Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen zur romischen Religion_, p. 90 foll.), for the date of the Ara Pacis is 13 B.C., the year before Lepidus died. The figure can be most conveniently seen by English students in Mrs. Strong's _Roman Sculpture_, plate xi. p. 46. It may be Agrippa acting as Pont. Max. for Lepidus.

[912] _Monumentum Ancyranum_, ed. Mommsen (Lat.), iv.

17.

[913] See above, p. 129.

[914] Livy iv. 20. 7.

[915] Valerius Maximus, _Epit._ 3, 4.

[916] Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 901 foll.

[917] See Marquardt, 326 foll.

[918] Dio Ca.s.sius, l. 4, 5.

[919] Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_, p. xxv. of the exordium.

[920] Henzen, p. 154.

[921] See above, p. 98.

[922] Henzen, pp. 24, 28.

[923] For the hymn, Henzen, p. 26; Dessau, _Inscr.

select._ ii. pt. i. p. 276. See also above, p. 186.

[924] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 487, note 5.

[925] Henzen, 142 foll.; Dessau, p. 279; see above, p.

162.

[926] Henzen, p. 105.

[927] _Ib._ p. 107.

[928] Tac. _Ann._ iii.

[939] Zosimus, ii. 5 and 6. The oracle and the extract from Zosimus are printed in Dr. Wickham's introduction to the _Carmen saeculare_, and in Diels, _Sibyllinische Blatter_, p. 131 foll.

[930] _C.I.L._ vi. 32,323. _Ephemeris epigraphica_, viii. 255 foll., contains the text and Mommsen's exposition. Dessau, _Inscr. selectae_, ii. pt. i. 282, does not give the whole doc.u.ment.

[931] Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 192 foll.; Ferrero, vol. v. 85 foll.

[932] The word was first explained by Mommsen, _Rom.

Chronologie_, ed. 2, p. 172.

[933] See, _e.g._, _Golden Bough_, ed. 2, vol. ii. p. 70 foll.

[934] The religious or mystical conception of time is the subject of an interesting discussion by Hubert et Mauss, _Melanges d'histoire et de religion_, p. 189 foll.; but the _saeculum_ does not seem to have attracted their attention.

[935] The actual words of Varro, from his work _de gente Populi Romani_, are quoted by St. Augustine, _de Civ.

Dei_, xxii. 28: "Genethliaci quidam scripserunt esse in renascendis hominibus quam appellant [Greek: palingenesian] Graeci; hac scripserunt confici in annis numero quadringentis quadraginta, ut idem corpus et eadem anima, quae fuerint coniuncta in homine aliquando, eadem rursus redeant in coniunctionem." The pa.s.sage well ill.u.s.trates the mystical tendency of which I was speaking in the last lecture.

[936] For attempts to explain the difficulty see Wissowa, _op. cit._ p. 204.

[937] The cakes offered to Eilithyia, and again to Apollo, are nine in number; see the inscription lines 117 and 143. The choirs of boys and girls were each twenty-seven.

[938] The _suffimenta_ are described by Zosimus, _l.c._ There is a coin of Domitian, who also celebrated _Ludi saeculares_, in which he appears seated and distributing the _suffimenta_, as the inscription shows.