Chapter V: The Worship of Sacred Utensils 489 (10)

The first permanent difficulty of new settlers in Latium was to mark off their cultivated land from the forest or waste land beyond it, and so, as M. van Gennep would phrase it,[446] to make a margin of separation between the sacred and the profane, within which the sacred processes of domestic life and husbandry might go forward, undisturbed by dangers--human, spiritual, or what not--coming from the profane world without. The boundary was marked out in some material way, perhaps by stones (_cippi_) or posts, placed at intervals;[447] and thus "a fixed piece of ground is appropriated by a particular social group, so that if any stranger penetrated it he would be committing a sacrilege as complete as he would if he trespassed in a sacred grove or a temple." This boundary-line was made sacred itself by the passage round it (_lustratio_) at some fixed time of the year, usually in May, when crops were ripening and especially liable to be attacked by hostile influences, of a procession occupied with sacrifice and prayer. The two main features of the rite, as formulated by Cato in his treatise on agriculture, are--1, the procession of the victims, ox, sheep, and pig (_suovetaurilia_), the farmer's most valuable property; 2, the prayer to Mars pater, after libations to Janus and Jupiter, asking for his kindly protection of the whole _familia_ of the farm, together with the crops of all kinds and the cattle within the boundary-line.[448] We are not expressly told that this procession followed the boundary throughout, but the analogy of other lustrations forbids us to doubt it; and thus the rite served the practical purpose of keeping it clear in the memory,--a matter of the utmost importance, especially for the practical Roman. In Cato's formula the farmer's object is to ward off disease, calamity, dearth, and infertility; and it is Mars who is invoked, _i.e._ a great god who has long ago emerged from the crowd of impersonal spirits; but we may safely believe that the primitive farmer used other language, addressing the spirits of disease and dearth themselves; and we may guess, if we will, that again before that there was no invocation or sacrifice at all, but that the object was only to mark the boundary between land civilised and sacred and land uncivilised and profane.

As we have seen, the farms and homesteads of the early Latins were grouped together in associations called _pagi_; and we can hardly doubt that these were subjected to the same process of _lustratio_ as the farms themselves. We have no explicit account of a circumambulation in this case, but we have in the later poets several charming allusions to a _lustratio pagi_, and it is of a rite of this kind that Virgil must have been thinking when he wrote the beautiful passage in the first Georgic beginning "In primis venerare deos";[449] and the lines

terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges,
omnis quam chorus et socii comitentur ovantes, etc.,

clearly imply a procession with the object of keeping away harmful influences from the crops at a critical time. And when the city-state came into being we may be equally sure that its _ager_, so long at least as it was small enough to admit of such a processional ritual, was lustrated in the same way. In historical times this _ager_ had become too extensive, and there is no procession to be found among the duties of the Fratres Arvales as we know them when they were revived by Augustus; but we have not, of course, the whole of the "acta" of the Brethren, and even if we had, it would not be likely that we should find any trace of a practice which must have been dropped in course of time as the Roman territory increased. Let us go on to the beginnings of the city, where we shall find the same principle and practice applied in striking fashion.

As it was necessary to protect the homestead and its land by a sacred boundary, so the city had to be clearly marked off from all that was outside of it. Its walls were sacred, or, strictly speaking, a certain imaginary line outside of them called the _pomoerium_ was sacred. This is well shown in the traditional method of founding a city even in historical times, _e.g._ a _colonia_, as described by Varro, Servius, and Plutarch.[450] A white ox and a white cow were harnessed to a plough, of which the share must be made of bronze--a rule which shows at once the antiquity and the religious character of the rite, for iron, as we saw, was taboo in most religious ceremonies. A rectangular furrow was drawn where the walls of the city were to be; the earth was turned inwards to mark the future line of the wall, and the furrow represented the future _pomoerium_. When the plough came to the place where there was to be a gate, it was lifted over it, and the ploughing resumed beyond it. This probably meant, as Plutarch expressed it, that the walls (or rather the _pomoerium_), were sacred while the gates were profane; had the gates been holy, scruple would necessarily have been felt about the passage in and out of them of things profane. Thus the _pomoerium_ was a boundary line between the sacred and the profane, like that of the farm; but in historical times it acquired a more definite religious meaning, for within it there could only dwell those deities who belonged to the city and its inhabitants, _i.e._ the _di indigetes_, and who were recognised as its divine inhabitants.[451] And only within its limits could the _auspicia_ of the city be taken.

We should naturally expect that this sacred boundary would have its holiness secured or revived by an annual _lustratio_ like that of the farm and _pagus_; and so no doubt it was. But the memory of this survives only in the word _amburbium_, which, on the analogy of _ambarvalia_, must mean a rite of this processional kind. Luckily we have definite knowledge of the real _lustratio_ of a city in those ritualistic inscriptions of Iguvium which I have more than once referred to.[452] It is the _lustratio_ of the _arx_, the citadel of Iguvium, which we may guess to have been the original _oppidum_ or germ of the historical city. The details are complex, and show clear traces of priestly organisation; but the main features stand out unmistakably. A procession goes round the _arx_ (_ocris Fisia_), with the _suovetaurilia_--ox, sheep, and pig--as in the Latin _lustratio_; at each gate it stops, while sacrifice and prayer are offered on behalf of the citadel, the city, and the whole people of Iguvium. There were three gates, and each of them is the scene of sacrifice and prayer, because they are the weak points in the wall, and they need to be strengthened by annual religious operations; such at least is the most obvious explanation. Whether the Fratres Attiedii would have been able to explain it thus we may doubt; neither in the sacrificial ritual nor in the prayers, as recorded in the inscription, do we find any clear trace of a distinction between the sacred and the profane, or of the idea of a hostile spiritual world outside the sacred boundary. So far as we can judge from the prayers, the object is really a religious one, to implore the deities of the city to preserve it and all within it. The language of these prayers hardly differs from that in which a Christian Church of to-day asks for a blessing on a community.[453]

So far I have been speaking of the permanent separation of land or city by a sacred boundary line from the profane world without. But human beings _en masse_ might be subjected to the same process--an army, for example, at the opening of the season of war; and so, too, might its appurtenances--horses, arms, and trumpets. In the account of the census and _lustrum_ in the Campus Martius given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who passed some years in Rome in the time of Augustus, we find the _suovetaurilia_ driven three times round the assembled host and sacrificed to Mars. This was doubtless the early form of the political census, which had a military meaning and origin. But we have a more exact and reliable account of a similar rite in the Iguvian documents, which contain instructions for the _lustratio_ of the people apparently before a campaign.[454] So far as we can gather from the Umbrian text, the male population was assembled in a particular spot in its military divisions, and round this host a procession went three times; at the end of each circuit there was sacrifice and prayer to Mars and two female associates of his power, the object of which, as we can read in the words of the prayer, was to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse its enemies, who were to be confounded and frightened and paralysed.

Here religion of a rude sort has been superimposed on the originally magical ceremonial. For the idea must have been that by drawing a "magic circle" around the host, which might have to march against enemies living far beyond the pale of the _ager Romanus_ (or Iguvinus), where hostile magical influences might be brought to bear against them, they were in some mysterious way marked off, rendered "holy," and so protected against the wiles of the enemy. A later and animistic age would think of them as needing protection against hostile spirits, of whose ways and freaks they were of course entirely ignorant. Of these primitive ideas about the danger of entering hostile territory and of leaving your own, Dr. Frazer has collected some examples in his _Golden Bough_ (i. 304 foll.), both from savage tribes and from Greek usage. A single parallel from the pen of a Roman historian, which Dr. Frazer has not mentioned, may suffice us here. Livy tells us that the method in Macedonia was to march the whole host in spring between the severed limbs of a dog:[455] the principle is here the same as in Italy, but the method differs slightly. In each case some mysterious influence is brought to bear on the whole army without exception; but in the one case a line is drawn round it, in the other it passes through the parts of an object which must have been supposed to be endowed with magical power.

And once more, in spring before the season of arms, all the belongings of the host were subjected to some process of the same kind. I have alluded to this in my lecture on the calendar, and need not now reproduce the evidence of the Equirria at the end of February and on March 14, or of the Quinquatrus on March 19, when the _lustratio_ took place of the shields (_ancilia_) of the Salii, the war-priests of Mars, and the Tubilustrium on March 23, which tells its own tale.[456] But I may recall the fact that the calendar supplies us also with evidence that on the return of the host to their own territory all these lustrations had to be repeated in order to rid men, horses, arms, and trumpets of such evil contagion as they might have contracted during their absence. It may be that one special object of lustration after the return of an army was to rid it, with all belonging to it, of the taint of bloodshed, just as the Jewish warriors and their captives were purified before re-entering the camp.[457] But in the Roman pontifical law this idea is hardly discernible, and the only trace I can find of it is a statement of Festus that the soldiers who followed the general's car in a triumph wore laurel wreaths "ut quasi purgati a caede humana intrarent urbem."[458] I may add here that the passage of a triumphing army through the Porta triumphalis, which was probably an isolated arch in the Campus Martius just outside the city wall,[459] most likely had as its original meaning the separation of the host from the profane world in which it had been moving; and the triumphal arches of later times, which were within the city, were thus developed architecturally from an origin which belongs to the region of magic.[460] To the same class of ideas, if I am not much mistaken, belongs the familiar Italian practice of compelling a surrendered army to pass under the yoke. As Livy explains this when he first mentions it, it was symbolical of subjection: "ut exprimatur confessio subactam domitamque esse gentem";[461] and this was no doubt the idea in the minds of the historical Romans. But it may well have been that it had its root in a process which was supposed to deprive the conquered enemy of all dangerous contagion--to separate them from their own land and people before they came into peaceful contact with their conquerors.

A last word before I leave this part of my subject. Though it is interesting to try to get at the root-idea of these processes of _lustratio_, we must remember that in the Rome of history they had lost not only such magical meaning as they ever had, but also much of the religious meaning which in course of time was superimposed upon it. The sacrifices and the prayers remained, but the latter were muttered and unheard by the people. And except in the country districts these ceremonies were more and more absorbed, as time went on, into the social, military, and political life of the community, as _e.g._ the lustration of the host became a political census; or they tended to disappear altogether, like the _ambarvalia_ and perhaps the _amburbium_. They grew up in the religious experience of the Romans, beginning with its very earliest and quasi-magical forms; but they came at last to represent that experience no longer, and when we meet with them in historical times it is impossible to ascribe to them any real influence on life and conduct. _Lustratio_ never in pagan Italy developed an ethical meaning as _catharsis_ did in Greece.[462] But meaningless as they were, the stately processions remained, and could be watched with pride by the patriotic Roman all through the period of the Empire, until the Roman Church adapted them to its own ritual and gave them, as we saw, a new meaning. As the cloud-shadows still move slowly over the hollows of the Apennines, so does the procession of the patron saint pass still through the streets of many an Italian city.[463]

NOTES TO LECTURE IX

[406] Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century of the
Western Empire_, p. 63.

[407] See Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral
Ideas_, ii. 615 foll.

[408] _C.I.L._ i. Nos. 43 foll.

[409] _C.I.L._ xiv. 2863. See _R.F._ p. 224, and
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 209.

[410] _Op. cit._ vol. i. p. 252; cp. 271.

[411] See Sir Alfred Lyall's _Asiatic Studies_, Series
I. ch. vi. No one would call the vow of Aeneas, in
_Aen._ vi. 69, a bargain with Apollo and the Sibyl.

[412] Marquardt, p. 266; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i.^2
594 foll. The ceremony is best described by Ovid, _Ex
Ponto_, iv. 9. 5 foll. He is addressing the consul of
the year from his place of exile:

at cum Tarpeias esses deductus in arces,
dum caderet iussu victima sacra tuo,
me quoque secreto grates sibi magnus agentem
audisset media qui sedet aede deus.
(II. 28 foll.)

[413] Valerius Maximus iv. 1. 10.

[414] A list of these is given in Aust, _De aedibus
sacris populi Romani_ (Marpurg, 1889). A valuable work,
which will be of service to us later on.

[415] Livy xxxvi. 2. 3.

[416] _Ib._ xxii. 10.

[417] _Ib._ sec. 6. The meaning is that if any one has
stolen an animal which was intended to be dedicated, no
blame attaches to the person so robbed; and that if a
man performs his dedication on a day of ill omen
unwittingly, it will hold good none the less.

[418] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 195.

[419] The fact that words like _reus_ and _damnatus_
were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow
and to those who had performed it, _i.e._ as being
liable like a defendant, and then released from that
position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, _R.K._
p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the
transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius
says (iii. 2. 6) _se numinibus obligat_, as an accused
person is _obligatus_ to the authorities of the State
(Mommsen, _Strafrecht_, 189 foll.). It is the natural
tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a
legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the
original idea was really thought of as a contract, and
we have only to reflect that the final act was a
thank-offering to see the difference between the civil
and the religious process.

[420] Livy v. 21.

[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the
fifth book of _Res reconditae_ by one Sammonicus
Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in
cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."

[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in
Pauly-Wissowa.

[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori
praetori...." Cp. Cic. _de Nat. deorum_, ii. 10, "at
vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam
imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite
velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."

[424] See Muenzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encycl._; Soltau, _Die Anfaenge der roem.
Geschichtschreibung_, p. 48 foll.

[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Cassius, fragment, xxxv.
6; Ennius, _Ann._ vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment
is the oldest reference to the event which we possess,
and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc
audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis
certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."

[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect
struck St. Augustine. In _Civ. Dei_, v. 18, he writes:
"Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes
Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum
sanguine suo placantibus Romanus liberaretur exercitus,"
and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs.
I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on
Cicero, _de Nat. deor._ ii. 3. 10.

[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 352, note 1.

[428] By Deubner in _Archiv_, 1905, p. 69 foll. This
touching of the chin seems to be an example of that
personal contact which makes a man or thing holy; see,
_e.g._, Westermarck, _op. cit._ i. 586. Decius makes
himself holy for the sacrifice (as victim) by touching
(as priest) the only part of his person which was
exposed. For the magic touch of the hand see O.
Weinrich, _Antike Heiligungswuender_, p. 63 foll., and
Macrobius iii. 2. 7, for the touching of the altar by a
sacrificing priest.

[429] See above, p. 180.

[430] This is Deubner's explanation, which he elaborates
at length by examples of the worship of the spear or
sword among various peoples.

[431] This is peculiar to the formula in Livy viii. 9.
Is it possible that it may have some reference to the
fact that the Romans were fighting their own kin, the
Latins?

[432] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 22 and 102: "hastatos
inhastatos completo timore tremore, fuga formidine, nive
nimbo, fragore furore, senio servitio," where, however,
the translator from the Umbrian is assisted by the Latin
formulae we are discussing.

[433] Macrobius iii. 9. 10, "exercitum quem ego me
sentio dicere fuga formidine terrore compleatis," etc.
This is of comparatively late origin, as it is addressed
to Dis pater, who only became a Roman deity in 249 B.C.
(Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 257). The interesting feature in
this _devotio_, used at the siege at Carthage, is that
it is not himself whom the commander devotes--the common
sense of the Romans had got beyond that--but the enemy
as substitutes for himself. "Eos vicarios pro me fide
magistratuque meo pro populo Romano exercitibus do
devoveo, ut me meamque fidem imperiumque legiones
exercitumque nostrum bene salvos siritis esse." Thus the
enemy is made the victim, and this is why the only gods
invoked are the Di Inferi, Dis pater, Veiovis, Manes,
while in the older formula it is the gods of Romans and
Latins. Pacuvius in a praetextata called _Decius_ wrote:
"Lue patrium hostili fusum sanguen sanguine" (Ribbeck,
p. 280). This is the language Ennius used before him of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia: "ut hostium eliciatur
sanguis sanguine," where, however, the word _eliciatur_
shows that it is magic. The curious thing in this last
passage is that the parallel passage in the Euripidean
_Iph. in Aul._ (1486) does not suggest magic. Is the
idea Italian? The curse (for such it really is) is to be
witnessed by Tellus and Iuppiter, and the celebrant
points down and up respectively in invoking them, as
also in the _devotio_ of Curtis in the Forum (Livy vii.
6), which was an abnormal _procuratio prodigii_.

[434] Cp. the language used by Livy of the second Decius
(x. 29): "prae se agere formidinem ac fugam ...
contacturum funebribus diris signa tela arma hostium."
For spells or curses of this kind see Westermarck i.
563: a curse is conveyable by speech, especially if
spoken by a magistrate or priest. "Among the Maoris the
anathema of the priest is regarded as a thunderbolt that
an enemy cannot escape." See also Robertson Smith,
_Semites_, p. 434, for the Jewish ban, by which impious
sinners, or enemies of the city and its God, were
devoted to destruction. He remarks that the Hebrew verb
to ban is sometimes rendered "consecrate": Micah iv. 13;
Deut. xiii. 16; and Joshua vi. 26 (Jericho), which
exactly answers to the consecratio of Carthage. For
curses conveyable by sacrifices, as in all the cases I
have mentioned, see Westermarck ii. 618 foll. 624, and
the same author's paper on conditional curses in
Morocco, in _Anthropological Essays_, addressed to E. B.
Tylor, p. 360.

[435] "Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and
confound their devices." I well remember hearing this
read in church throughout the Crimean war.

[436] "Pro republica Quiritium," in the formula quoted
above.

[437] Livy viii. 10 _ad fin._

[438] See above, note 28.

[439] See Marquardt, p. 276 and notes; Mommsen,
_Strafrecht_, 900 foll. The subject has generally been
treated from the legal point of view rather than the
religious; but from the religious point of view it has
generally been assumed that the sacrifice was to appease
the god. So no doubt it was; but I venture also to
conjecture that the victim was _vicarius_ for the
contamination of the community. On the subject generally
Westermarck's two chapters on human sacrifice and
blood-revenge (xix. and xx. in vol. i.) are extremely
well worth reading.

[440] _Aen._ i. 607 foll. Cp. _Aen._ iii. 429--

praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni
cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus,

where the slow movement and circuitous course of a
lustratio must have been in Virgil's mind. The movement
round an object for lustral purposes is seen in _Aen._
vi. 229, "idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda," where
Servius explains _circumtulit_ by _purgavit_. As early
as Livius Andronicus (second century B.C.) we find
"classem lustratur" of fishes swimming round a fleet
(Ribb. _Trag. Fragmenta_, p. 1).

[441] Marquardt, p. 324, for the _februa_ of the
Luperci, _R.F._ p. 320 foll., and the explanations there
given. More will be found alluded to in Van Gennep, _Les
Rites de passage_, p. 249. To my mind none are quite
convincing. The Romans believed that blows with these
_februa_ (strips of the victim's skin) made women
fertile; they were therefore clearly magical implements,
but beyond this we do not seem to get. (See also Deubner
in _Archiv_, 1910, p. 495 foll.)

[442] Varro, _L.L._ vi. 13, "Februum Sabini purgamentum,
et id in sacris nostris verbum." Cp. Varro, _ap.
Nonium_, p. 114; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 19 foll., where he
calls _februa piamina, purgamenta_, in the language of
the _ius divinum_.

[443] _L.L._ vi. 11.

[444] Servius, _ad Aen._ x. 32; xi. 842; cp. i. 136.

[445] See _R.F._ p. 127, for the same rite in the Church
of England (Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, p. 292).

[446] _Les Rites de passage_, ch. ii.

[447] For boundary marks in historical times see
_Gromatici auctores_, vol. ii. p. 250 foll. (Rudorff).

[448] If the cattle were in the woodland beyond the
settlement, as they would be in summer, they could not
be protected in this way: like an army going into the
country of _hostes_ (see above, p. 216) they were
treated in another way, which we may connect with the
ritual of the Parilia, as Dr. Frazer has beautifully
shown in his paper on St. George and the Parilia (_Revue
des etudes ethnographiques et sociologiques_, 1908, p. 1
foll.).

[449] _Georg._ i. 338 foll.

[450] Varro, _L.L._ v. 143; Servius, _Aen._ v. 755 (from
Cato); Plutarch, _Romulus_, xi.

[451] See above, p. 117.

[452] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 12 foll. and 42 foll.

[453] The deities of the city were invoked to preserve
the name, the magistrates, rites, men, cattle, land, and
crops: a list in which the name is the only item that
carries us back to pre-Christian times.

[454] Buecheler, _Umbrica_, pp. 21 and 84 foll.

[455] Livy xl. 6 init.

[456] See above, p. 96.

[457] Numbers xxxi. 19.

[458] Festus, p. 117.

[459] See Huelsen-Jordan, _Roem. Topographie_, vol. iii.
p. 495; Von Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen_, p. 217 foll.

[460] Suggested by Van Gennep, _Les Rites de passage_,
p. 28.

[461] Livy iii. 28. 11.

[462] Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, p. 132 foll.

[463] The account of _lustratio_ given in this lecture
is adapted from the author's chapter on the same subject
in _Anthropology and the Classics_, Oxford University
Press, 1908.

LECTURE X

THE FIRST ARRIVAL OF NEW CULTS IN ROME

I said in my first lecture that the whole story of Roman religious experience falls into two parts: first, that of the formularisation of rules and methods for getting effectively into right relations with the Power manifesting itself in the universe; secondly, that of the gradual discovery of the inadequacy of these, and of the engrafting on the State religion of Rome of an ever-increasing number of foreign rites and deities. The first of these stories has been occupying us so far, and before I leave it for what will be practically an introduction to succeeding lectures, it will be as well for me to sum up the results at which we have already arrived.

I began with what I called the protoplasm of religion, the primitive ideas and practices which form the psychological basis of the whole growth. The feeling of awe and anxiety about that which is mysterious and unknown, the feeling which the Romans called _religio_, seems to have manifested itself in Italy, as elsewhere, in those various ways which I discussed in my second and third lectures, in the various forms of magic, negative and positive. We find unmistakable evidence of the existence of those strict rules of conduct called taboos, which fetter the mind and body of primitive man, which probably arise from an ineffective desire to put himself in right relations with forces he does not understand, and which have their value as a social discipline. Again, we find surviving in historical Rome numerous forms of active or positive magic, by which it was thought possible to compel or overcome those powers, so as to use them for your own benefit and against your enemies. But I was careful to point out that on the whole little of all this evidence of the early existence of magic at Rome is to be found in the public religion of the Roman State, and that the natural inference from this is that at one time or another there must have been a very powerful influence at work in cutting away these obsolete root-leaves of the plant that was to be, and in making of that plant a neat, well-defined growth.

I went on to deal with the first stage in the working of this influence, which we found reflected in the religion of the family as we know it in historical times. The family, settled on the land, with its homestead and its regular routine of agricultural process, developed a more effective desire to get into right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the universe. Anxiety is greatly lessened both in the house and on the land, because within those limits there is a "peace" (or covenant) between the divine and human inhabitants who have taken up their residence there. The supernatural powers, conceived now (whatever they may have been before) as spirits, are friendly if rightly propitiated, and much advance has been made in the methods of propitiation; magic and religion are still doubtless mixed up together in these, but the tendency seems to be to get gradually rid of the more inadequate and blundering methods. In fact, man's knowledge of the Divine has greatly advanced; spirits have some slight tendency to become deities, and magic is in part at least superseded by an orderly round of sacrifice and prayer, which is performed daily within the house, and within the boundary of the land at certain seasons of the year. This stage of settlement and routine was the first great revolution in the religious experience of the Romans, and supplied the basis of their national character.

The second revolution which we can clearly discern, and far the most important as a factor in Roman history, is that of the organisation of the religion of the city-state of Rome. Doubtless there were stages intermediate between the two, but they are entirely lost to us. We had to concentrate our attention on the city of the four regions--the first city we really know--and to examine the one document which has survived from it, the so-called calendar of Numa. In my fifth lecture I explained the nature of that calendar, and noted how it reflects the life of a people at once agricultural and military, and how it must presuppose the existence of a highly organised legal priesthood, or of some powerful genius for political as well as religious legislation. The tradition of a great priest-king is not wholly to be despised, for it expresses the feeling of the Romans that religious law and order were indispensable parts of their whole political and social life. During the rest of these lectures I have been trying to interrogate this religious calendar, with such help as could be gained from any other sources, on two points: (1) the conception, or, if we can venture to use the word, the knowledge, which the Romans of that early city-state had of the Divine; (2) the chief forms and methods of their worship. We saw that they did not think of the divine beings as existing in human form with human weaknesses, but as invisible and intangible functional powers, _numina_. Each had its special limited sphere of action; and some were now localised within the _pomoerium_, or just outside it within the _ager Romanus_, and worshipped under a particular name. I suggested that this very settlement had probably some influence in preparing them for assuming a more definite and personal character, should the chance be given them. In regard to the forms of cult with which they were propitiated, I found in the ritual of sacrifice and prayer a genuine advance towards a really religious attitude to the deity, the sacrifices being meant to increase his power to benefit the community, and the prayers to diminish such inclination as he might have to damage it; but that there are in these certain survivals of the age of magic, which are, however, only formal, and have lost their original significance. I found some curious examples of such survivals in the rite of _devotio_, and in vows generally a somewhat lower type of method in dealing with the supernatural. But, on the other hand, the forms of _lustratio_, at the bottom of which seems to lie the idea of getting rid of evil spirits and influences, present very beautiful examples of what we may really call religious ceremony.

There was, then, in this highly-organised religion of the city-state, in some ways at least, a great advance. But in spite of this gain, it had serious drawbacks. Most prominent among these was the fact that it was the religion of the State as a whole, and not of the individual or the family. Religion, I think we may safely say, had placed a certain consecration upon the simple life of the family, which was, in fact, the life of the individual; for the essence of religion in all stages of civilisation lies in the feeling of the individual that his own life, his bodily and mental welfare, is dependent on the Divine as he and his regard it. But to what extent can it be said that religion so consecrated the life of the State as to enable each individual in his family group to feel that consecration more vividly? That would have constituted a real advance in religious development; that was the result, if I am not mistaken, of the religion of the Jewish State, which with all the force of a powerful hierarchical authority addressed its precepts to the mind and will of the individual. But at Rome, though the earliest traces and traditions of law show a certain consecration of morality, inasmuch as the criminal is made over as a kind of propitiatory sacrifice to the deity whom he has offended, yet in the ordinary course of life, so far as I can discern, the individual was left very much where he was, before the State arose, in his relation to the Divine.

In no other ancient State that we know of did the citizen so entirely resign the regulation of all his dealings with the State's gods to the constituted authorities set over him. His obligatory part in the religious ritual of the State was simply _nil_, and all his religious duty on days of religious importance was to abstain from civil business, to make no disturbance. Within the household he used his own simple ritual, the morning prayer, the libation to the household deities at meals; and it is exactly here that we see a _pietas_, a sense of duty consecrated by religion, which seems to have had a real ethical value, and reminds us of modern piety. But in all his relations with the gods _qua_ citizen, he resigned himself to the trained and trusted priesthoods, who knew the secrets of ritual and all that was comprised in the _ius divinum_; and by passive obedience to these authorities he gradually began to deaden the sense of _religio_ that was in him. And this tendency was increased by the mere fact of life in a city, which as time went on became more and more the rule; for, as I pointed out, the round of religious festivals no longer exactly expressed the needs and the work of that agricultural life in which it had its origin.

It would be an interesting inquiry, if the material for an answer were available, to try and discover how this gradual absorption of religion (or rather religious duties) by the State and its authorities affected the morality of the individual Roman. It has often been maintained of late that religion and morality have nothing in common; and even Dr. Westermarck,[464] who, unlike most anthropologists, treats the whole subject from a psychological point of view, seems inclined to come to this conclusion. For myself, I am rather disposed to agree with another eminent anthropologist,[465] that religion and morality are really elemental instincts of human nature, primarily undistinguishable from each other; and if that be so, then the over-elaboration of either the moral or religious law, or of the two combined, will tend to weaken the binding force of both. If, as at Rome, the citizen is made perfectly comfortable in his relations with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, owing to the complete mastery of the _ius divinum_ by the State and its officials, there will assuredly be a tendency to paralyse the elemental religious impulse, and with it, if I am not mistaken, the elemental sense of right and wrong. For in the life of a state with such a legalised religious system as this, so long at least as it thrives and escapes serious disaster, there will be few or none of those moments of peril and anxiety in which "man is brought face to face with the eternal realities of existence,"[466] and when he becomes awakened to a new sense of religion and duty. In the life of the family, the critical moments of birth, puberty, marriage, and death regularly recur, and keep up the instinct, because man is then brought face to face with these eternal facts; there is no need of extraordinary perils, such as tempests or pestilences, to keep the instinct alive. But in the life of the State as such there were no such continually recurring reminders; even the old agricultural perils were out of sight of the ordinary citizen. Thus the farthest we can go in ascribing a moral influence to the State religion is in giving it credit for helping to maintain that sense of law and order which served to keep the life of the family sound and wholesome. That it did to some extent perform this service I have already pointed out;[467] and it is a remarkable fact that the decay of the State religion was coincident, in the last two centuries B.C., with the decay of the family life and virtues. But on the whole, as we shall see, the _ius divinum_ had rather the effect of hypnotising the religious and moral instinct than of keeping it awake. It needed new perils for the State as a whole to re-create that feeling which is the root of the growth of conscience; and when the craving did at last come upon the Roman, which in times of doubt and peril has come upon individuals and communities in all ages, for support and comfort from the Unseen, it had to be satisfied by giving him new gods to worship in new ways--aliens with whom he had nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[468]

I wish to conclude this first part of my subject by giving some account of the first beginning of this introduction of new deities, _di novensiles_ as they were called,[469] into the old Roman religious world. Those, however, of whom I shall speak here were not introduced as the result of disaster or distress, but were simply the inevitable consequence of the growing importance of the city on the Tiber--of the beginnings of her commercial and political relations with her neighbours, and also of her own development in the arts of civilisation. The religious system with which I have so far been dealing was the exclusive property, we must remember, of those _gentes_, with the families composing them, which formed the original human material of the State, and were known as _patrician_. If we had no other reason for being sure of this, the fact that all State priesthoods were originally limited to patrician families would be sufficient to prove it;[470] even down to the latest times the _rex sacrorum_, the three _flamines maiores_, and the _Salii_ were necessarily of patrician birth--a fact which had much to do with their tendency to disappear in the last age of the Republic.

But in the course of the period within which the Numan calendar was drawn up, this community of patrician burghers began to suffer certain changes. A population of "outsiders," as in so many Greek cities, had gained admittance to the site of Rome, though not into its political and religious organism.[471] So solid a city, in such an important position, was sure to attract such settlers, whether from the Latins dwelling about it, or from the Etruscans on the north, or the Greek cities along the coast southwards and in Sicily. The Latins were, of course, of the same stock as the Romans, and already in some loose political relation to them; and as each Latin city was open, like Rome, to Greek and Etruscan influences, we should probably see in Latium an indirect channel of communication between those peoples and Rome, to be reckoned in addition to the direct and obvious one. As Dr. J. B. Carter has well said,[472] "the Latins, becoming rapidly inferior to Rome, were enabled to do her at least this service, that of absorbing the foreign influences which came, and in certain cases of Latinising them, and thus transmitting them to Rome in a more or less assimilated condition." As Dr. Carter has been the first to explain the arrival of these new religious influences to English readers, I shall in what follows closely follow his footsteps. They indicate and also reflect a change from agricultural economy and habits to a society interested in trade and travel: I say interested, because we cannot be quite sure how far the old Romans engaged in such pursuits themselves, as well as admitting from outside those who did, with their worships. They indicate also the growth of an industrial population, organised in gilds, as in the Middle Ages; here beyond doubt the workers were mainly of native birth. Lastly, they indicate an advance in military efficiency and, as a result of this military progress, some change in the relation of Rome to her fellow-communities of Latium.

Perhaps the first of these new deities to arrive was the famous Hercules Victor or Invictus of the _ara maxima_ in the Forum Boarium, who continued for centuries to accept the tithes of the booty of generals and the profits of successful merchants. Virgil in the eighth _Aeneid_[473] makes Evander show his guest this altar and the celebration of its festival, and tell him the tale of Cacus and the oxen and the cave on the Aventine hard by; the poet, like every one else until the last few years, believed the cult to be primeval and Roman. But one of the many gains for the history of Roman religion which have recently been secured--even since the publication of my _Roman Festivals_--is the certainty that the Italian Hercules is really the Greek Heracles acclimatised in the sister peninsula, and that the cult of the _ara maxima_, though that altar was inside the sacred boundary of the _pomoerium_, was not native in Rome.[474] It seems, however, almost certain that it did not come direct from any part of Hellas, though its position, close to the Tiber and its landing-place, might naturally lead us to think so. It is almost impossible to believe that Heracles would have been allowed inside the _pomoerium_, had he been introduced by foreigners in the strict sense of the word. No doubt much has yet to be learnt about Hercules in Italy; but recent painstaking researches have made it possible for us to acquiesce in the belief that this Hercules of the _ara_ came from a Latin city,--from that Tibur which by tradition was of Greek origin--"Tibur Argeo positum colono,"--and which, like its neighbour Praeneste, was curiously receptive of foreign influence.[475] It is believed that the Greek traders from Campania and Magna Graecia made their way northwards through Latium, and thus eventually reached Rome with the deity whom they seem to have always carried with them. He was, in the words of Dr. Carter,[476] a deity of whom, by the contagion of commerce, the Romans already felt a great need, a god of great power from whom came success in the practical undertakings of life; and it was quite natural that his shrine should be in the busy cattle-market of the city, if we remember that the wealth of the early Romans, _pecunia_ as they called it, mainly consisted in sheep and oxen. As Heracles in various forms was to be met with all over the Mediterranean coasts, it would indeed be strange if he were not found in the growing city commanding the central water-way of Italy; and his appearance there may be said to have put Rome in touch with the Mediterranean business of that day. There he was destined to remain, with all the honour of an oldest cult, though other cults of the same god came in later, and were established quite close to him; and though never a State deity of much importance, he exercised a wholesome influence in matters of trade, as the god who sanctioned your oath, and who accepted the tithe of your gain which you had vowed at the outset of an enterprise.[477]

In the same period, though the traditional date of their temple is later, came the Twin Brethren, Castor and Pollux, and found their way, like Hercules, into the city within the _pomoerium_. The famous temple of Castor (before whom his brother gradually gave way) was at the end of the Forum under the Palatine, close to the fountain of Juturna, where the Twins watered their horses after the battle of Lake Regillus; and there the beautiful remains of the latest reconstruction of it still stand.[478] This position alone should make us feel confident that the cult did not come direct from Greek sources; and it had its origin, perhaps, in the period when Rome was in close relation with Latin cities, which themselves had been gradually absorbing the cults and products of the Greeks of Campania. There is a strong probability that it came from Tusculum, with which the legend of the Regillus battle is closely connected, and where the cult had beyond doubt taken strong root.[479] Like the Hercules of the _ara maxima_, the Twins were no doubt brought by the course of trade, which was continually pushing up from the south; for they too were favourites of the merchant adventurer, and throughout Hellas were the special protectors of the seafarer. Their connection with horses is well known, and not as yet satisfactorily explained in its Roman aspect; but Dr. J. B. Carter thinks that they first became prominent in Greece when the Homeric use of chariots was abandoned for a primitive kind of cavalry, and that "the Castor-cult moved steadily northward (from Magna Graecia), carried, as it were, on horseback," and that when it reached Rome it became connected with the reorganisation of the cavalry. This seems to be almost pure guess-work, and, attractive as it is, I fear we cannot put much faith in it.[480] The position in the Forum, and the well-known connection of both twins with oaths,[481] seem to me rather to suggest a more natural origin in trade. I would suggest that the equine character of the cult in Latium was secondary, and that the connection of the temple and cult with the Roman cavalry was a natural result, but not a primary feature, of its introduction. I should be inclined to look on it as coming in with the building of the temple, which was probably of later origin than the original introduction of the cult.

Some time after the calendar was drawn up, a deity was established on the Aventine, _i.e._ not within the _pomoerium_, whose arrival marks a development in the organisation of handicraft. We cannot indeed _prove_ that the settlement of Minerva on the Aventine took place so early, but we have strong grounds for the conclusion.[482] This temple was in historical times the religious centre of trade-gilds; and these gilds were by universal Roman tradition ascribed to Numa as founder, which simply means that they were among the oldest institutions of the City-state. As Minerva does not appear in the calendar, had no _flamen_, and therefore must have been altogether outside the original patrician religious system, the natural inference is that the temple was founded, like the shrines of Hercules and the Twin Brethren, towards the end of the period we are dealing with, and was from the first the centre of the gilds. Of those mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Numa (ch. 17), we know that the following gilds belonged to Minerva: _tibicines_, _fabri_ (carpenters?), _fullones_, _sutores_; and it is a reasonable guess that the others, _coriarii_, _fabri aerarii_, and _aurifices_, were also under her protection. These trades, as Waltzing remarks in his great work on Roman gilds,[483] are all in keeping with the rudimentary civilisation of primitive Rome; they are those which were first carried on outside of the family. Workers in iron are not among them; bronze is still the common metal.

Now of course we must not go so far as to assume that none of these trades existed before the cult of Minerva came to Rome; but from her close association with them all through Roman history, and from the fact that the Romans were originally an agricultural folk, as the calendar shows, with a simple economy and simple needs, it is legitimate to connect the arrival of the goddess with the growth of town life and the demand for articles once made in rude fashion chiefly on the farms, and with a period of improvement in manufacture, and the use of better materials and better methods. Whence, then, did these improvements come? This is only another way of asking the question, Whence did Minerva come?

By the common consent of investigators she came from the semi-Latin town of Falerii in southern Etruria, where these arts were practised by Etruscans, or those who had learnt of Etruscans.[484] Her name is Italian, not Etruscan;[485] she was an old Italian deity taken over by the invading Etruscans from the peoples whose land they occupied. But while in the hands of Etruscans she had adopted Greek characteristics, especially those of Athene, the patroness of arts and crafts. She soon, indeed, appeared with some of the character of Athene Polias, as we shall see at the end of this lecture; but her real importance, far down into the period of the Empire, was in the temple on the Aventine, and in connection with the crafts. The dedication day of the temple was March 19, which was known, as we learn on the best authority, also as _artificum dies_.[486]

There was another famous temple on the Aventine which by universal consent is attributed to the same period as that of Minerva. Diana does not appear in the calendar, and had no _flamen_; Roman tradition ascribed her arrival to Servius Tullius, and we shall not be far wrong if we place it at or towards the end of the age of the kingship. The temple was celebrated as containing an ancient statue of Diana, the oldest or almost the oldest representation of a deity in human form known at Rome, which was a copy of a rude image of Artemis at Massilia, of the type of the famous [Greek: xoanon] of the Ephesian Artemis.[487] It also contained a _lex templi_ in Greek characters, and a treaty or charter of a federation of Latin cities with Rome as their head, which was seen by Dionysius of Halicarnassus when in Rome in the time of Augustus.[488]

The explanation of the arrival of Diana is simple. The _dies natalis_ of the temple is the same as that of the famous shrine of the same goddess at Aricia--the Ides of August.[489] Aricia was at this time the centre of a league of cities including Tusculum and Tibur, with both of which, as we have just seen, Rome was closely connected at this time; a league which is generally supposed to have superseded that of Alba, marking some revolution in Latium consequent on the fall of Alba.[490] Diana was a wood-spirit, a tree-spirit, as Dr. Frazer has taught us, with some relation to the moon and to the life of women; of late she has become familiar to every one, not as she was known later, in the disguise of Artemis, but as the deity of that shrine--"pinguis et placabilis ara Dianae"--of which the priest was the Rex Nemorensis: he who "slew the slayer and shall himself be slain."[491] But in those days it was only the fact that she was the chief local deity of Aricia, the leading city of the new league, which brought her suddenly into notice. When the strategic position of Rome gave her in turn the lead in Latium, Diana passed on from Aricia to the Tiber, entered on a new life, and eventually took over the attributes of Artemis, with whom she had much in common. The Diana whom we know in Roman literature is really Artemis; but Diana of the Aventine, when she first arrived there, was the wood-spirit of Aricia, and her temple was an outward sign of Rome's new position in Latium: it was built by the chiefs of the Latin cities in conjunction with Rome, and is described by Varro as "commune Latinorum Dianae templum."[492] It was appropriately placed on the only Roman hill which was then still covered with wood, and was outside the _pomoerium_.