Chapter V: The Worship of Sacred Utensils 489 (12)

Let us consider that this foreign dynasty must have brought a new population to the city on the Tiber, the chief strategic point of middle Italy,--a new element of plebs, whatever the old one may have been.[542] We have seen signs, even in the religious history of this age, that commerce and industry were increasing, and that their increase was due to a movement from without, rather than to the old patrician _gentes_. When the Etruscan dynasty fell and the old patrician influence was restored, the government must have been face to face with new difficulties, and among them the supply of corn for an increasing population in years of bad harvest. With a fresh source of supply from the south came the cult of the Greek corn-deities at the bidding of a Sibylline utterance; and henceforward that remedy was available for other troubles. But the patrician rulers of Rome were true, it would seem, as far as was possible, to the old ways, and for a long time they used this foreign remedy very sparingly. At what date the utterances were collected in "books" and deposited in the Capitoline temple we do not know, nor have we any certain knowledge of their original nature or form. Tradition said that the collection dated from the last king's reign, and that it was placed in the care of _duoviri sacris faciundis_, as we have seen, who in 367 B.C. gave way to _decemviri_, five of whom might be members of the plebs. I am myself inclined to conjecture that this comparatively late date may be the real date of the origin of a _permanent collection_ and a _permanent college of keepers_, and that the earlier _duoviri_ were only temporary religious officers, _sacris faciundis_, _i.e._ for the carrying out of the directions of Sibylline utterances specially sought for at Cumae. They would thus be of the same class as other special commissions appointed by the Senate for administrative purposes;[543] while the decemviri, though retaining the old title, were permanent religious officers appointed to collect and take charge of a new and important set of regulations for the benefit of the community, and one which concerned the plebs at least as much as the patricians.

But I must turn to the more important question how far, down to the war with Hannibal, when I shall take up the subject afresh, the Roman religion was affected for good or harm by these utterances and their keepers. They took effect in two ways: either by introducing new deities and settling them in new temples, or by ordering and organising new ceremonies such as Rome had never seen before.

The introduction of a new deity now and again was not of great account from the point of view of religion, except in so far as it encouraged the new ceremonies; the Romans had never taken much personal interest in their deities, and the arrival (outside the pomoerium in each case) of Hermes under the name of Mercurius, or Poseidon bearing the name of the old Roman water _numen_ Neptunus, or even of Asclepios with a Romanised name Aesculapius, would not be likely to affect greatly their ideas of the divine. These facts have rather a historical than a religious significance; Hermes Empolaios, for example, suggests trade with Greek cities, perhaps in grain,[544] and belongs therefore to the same class as Ceres, Liber, Libera, of whom I have already spoken. The arrival of Poseidon-Neptune may mean, as Dr. Carter has suggested, a kind of "marine insurance" for the vessels carrying the grain from Greek ports.[545] The settling of Aesculapius in the Tiber island in 293, as the result of a terrible pestilence, is interesting as being the first fact known to us in the history of medicine at Rome; the temple became a kind of hospital on the model of Epidaurus, where the god had been brought in the form of a snake by an embassy sent for the purpose, and the priests who served it were probably Greeks skilled in the healing art.[546] This last case is a curious example of new Roman religious experience, but it can hardly be said to have any deep significance in the religious history of Rome. Of the obliteration of the old _numen_ Neptunus by the Greek god who took his name we know nothing for good or ill; we are ignorant of the real meaning of the old _numen_, and cannot tell whether the loss of him was compensated by the usefulness of his name in Roman literature to represent the Greek god of the sea.

Let us turn to the much more important subject of the new ceremonies ordered by the Sibylline "books." The first authentic case of such innovation occurred in 399 B.C., during the long and troublesome siege of the dangerous neighbour city Veii; I call it authentic because all the best modern authorities so reckon it, though it occurred before the destruction of old records during the capture of the city by the Gauls. The circumstances were such as to fix themselves in the memory of the people, and in one way or another they found their way into the earliest annals, probably those of Fabius Pictor, composed during the Second Punic War.[547]

The previous winter, Livy tells us,[548] was one of extraordinary severity; the roads were blocked with snow, and navigation on the Tiber stopped by the ice. This miserable winter was followed too suddenly by a hot season, in which a plague broke out which consumed both man and beast, and continued so persistently that the Senate ordered the Sibylline books to be consulted. This persistence is the first point we should notice; "Cuius insanabili pernicie quando nec causa nec finis inveniebatur,"--so wrote Livy, evidently meaning to express an extremity of trouble which would not give way to ordinary religious remedies. We may compare his account of the next recorded consultation of the books (Livy vii. 2), when neither the old rites nor even the new ones were sufficient to secure the _pax deorum_ and abate another pestilence, and recourse was had to yet another remedy in the form of _ludi scenici_. The times were out of joint,--the peace of the gods was broken, and thus the community was no longer in right relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe. The result was a revival of _religio_, of the feeling of alarm and anxiety out of which the whole religious system had grown. The old deities might seem to be forsaking their functions, since the old rites had ceased to appeal to them. Mysterious and persistent pestilence is a great tamer of human courage; it is a new experience that man knows not how to meet, and in ancient life it was also a new _religious_ experience.

The remedy was as new as the pestilence, and almost as pernicious. During eight days Rome saw three pairs of deities reclining in the form of images on couches, before which were spread tables covered with food and drink. Whether in this first case they were taken out of the temples and exposed to view in certain places, _e.g._ the forum, is not clear; later on, in the days of _supplicationes_, of which more will be said presently, they were visited in procession. The three pairs were Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules, Mercurius and Neptunus; all of them Greek, or, as in the case of Diana, Mercurius, and Neptunus, Roman deities in their new Greek form. We cannot trace the special applicability of all of them to the trouble they were thus invoked to appease,--another point that suggests a complete revolution in the Roman ways of contemplating divine beings. These are not functional _numina_, but foreigners whose ways were only known to the manipulators of the Sibylline utterances. They seem like quack remedies, of which the action is unknown to the consumer.

New also, but better in its effect, was the publicity of these proceedings, and the part taken in them by the whole population, patrician and plebeian, men, women, and children. If we can trust Livy's further statements, every one left his door open and kept open house, inviting all to come in, whether known or unknown; all old quarrels were made up, and no new ones suffered to begin; prisoners were freed from their chains, and universal good-will prevailed. These eight days were in fact kept as holidays, and doubtless by the novelty of the whole scene the astute authorities hoped to inspire fresh hope and confidence, and to divert attention from the prevailing misery, just as our soldiers in India are induced to forget the presence of cholera in a station by constant games and amusements. That this was really one leading object of the whole show is not generally recognised by historians; but it seems fully explained by the fact I mentioned just now, that in the similar trouble of 349 B.C. recourse was had for the first time to _ludi scenici_ in order to amuse the people. In the history of the Hannibalic war we shall have plenty of opportunity of noting this kind of expedient. The Roman people, we must remember, were getting more and more to be inhabitants of a large city, and, as such, to seek for entertainment, like all citizens in all ages. The religious rites of the old calendar were perhaps by this time getting too familiar, losing their original meaning; whether they had ever been very entertaining to a city population may be doubted. Something more showy was needed; processions had always been to the taste of the Roman, and banquets, such as the epulum Iovis, which I have already noticed, often accompanied the processions.

Now, this love of show and novelty, of which we have abundant evidence later on as a Roman characteristic, taken together with the anxiety and alarm--the new _religio_--arising from the pestilence, will sufficiently explain the _lectisternia_, as these shows were called. We have here in fact the first appearance, constantly recurring in later Roman history, of a tendency to seek not only for novelty, but for a more emotional expression of religious feeling than was afforded by the old forms of sacrifice and prayer, conducted as they were by the priest on behalf of the community without its active participation. Those old forms might do for the old patrician community of farmers and warriors, but not so well for the new and ever-increasing population of artisans and other workmen, whether of Roman or foreign descent. It would seem, indeed, as if the sensitiveness of the human fibre of a primitive community increases with its increasing complexity, and with the greater variety of experience to which it is exposed; and in the case of Rome, as if the simple ancient methods of dealing with the divine inhabitants of the city were no longer adequate to the needs of a State which was steering its way to empire among so many difficulties and perils. It is not indeed certain that the new rites, or some points in them, may not have had their prototypes in old Italian usage, though the _lectisternia_, the actual display of gods in human form and in need of food like human beings, are almost certainly Greek in origin.[549] But so far as we can guess, the emotional element was wholly new. True, Livy tells us in two passages of his third book of occasions when men, women, and children flocked to all the shrines (_omnia delubra_) seeking for the _pax deorum_ at the invitation of the senate; but the early date, the great improbability of the senate taking any such step, and the absence of any mention of the priesthoods, makes it difficult to believe that these assertions are based on any genuine record. We must be content to mark the first _lectisternia_ in 399 as the earliest authentic example of the emotional tendency of the Roman plebs.[550]

If we can judge of this period of Roman religious history by the general tendency of the policy of the Roman government, we may see here a deliberate attempt to include the new population in worship of a kind that would calm its fears, engage its attention, and satisfy its emotion, while leaving uncontaminated the old ritual that had served the State so long. If this conclusion be a right one, then we must allow that the new ceremonial had its use. Dr. Frazer has lately told us in his eloquent and persuasive way, of how much value superstition has been in building up moral habits and the instinct of submission to civil order. His thesis might be illustrated adequately from the history of Rome alone. But from a purely religious point of view the story of the _lectisternia_ is a sad one. The old Roman invisible _numen_, working with force in a particular department of human life and its environment, was a far nobler mental conception, and far more likely to grow into a power for good, than the miserable images of Graeco-Roman full-blown gods and goddesses reclining on their couches and appearing to partake of dinner like a human citizen. Such ideas of the divine must have forced men's religious ideas clean away from the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and must have dragged down the Roman _numina_ with them in their corrupting degradation. According to our definition of it, religion was now in a fair way to disappear altogether; what was destined to take its place was not really religion at all. Nor did it in any way assist the growth of an individual conscience, as perhaps did some of the later religious forms introduced from without. It was of value for the moment to the State, in satisfying a population greatly disturbed by untoward events; and that was all.

Closely connected with the _lectisternia_, and following close upon them in chronological order, were the processional ceremonies called _supplicationes_. The historical relation between the two is by no means clear; but if we conclude, as I am fairly sure we may, that the _lectisternia_ were shows of a joyful character, accompanied, as Livy describes the first one, with private entertainments, and meant to keep up the spirits of the plebeian population, and if we then turn to the early _supplicationes_, in which men, women, and children, _coronati_, and carrying laurel branches, went in procession to the temples, and there prostrated themselves after the Greek fashion, the women "crinibus passis aras verrentes," we shall be disposed to look on them as, in origin at least, distinct from each other.[551] We may conjecture that the appearance of the gods in human form at the doors of their temples suggested to the plebeian women a kind of emotional worship which was alien to the old Roman feeling, but familiar enough to those (and they must have been many) who knew the life of the Greek cities of Italy. It may be that they had tried it even in earlier times; but anyhow, in the fourth and third centuries B.C. advantage was taken of the _pulvinaria_ to use them as stopping-places in the procession of a _supplicatio_, and the phrase becomes a common one in the annals, "supplicatio ad omnia pulvinaria indicta." The _lectisternia_ were ordered five times in the fourth century;[552] by that time, it would seem likely, the _supplicationes_ had become an authorised institution, and had perhaps embodied the practice of _lectisternia_ in the way suggested above. We shall meet with them again when we come to the religious history of the war with Hannibal.

One word more before I leave this subject for the present. In all this innovation we must not forget to note the growth of individual feeling as distinguished from the old worship of civic grouping, in which the individual, as such, was of little or no account. I pointed out the first signs of this individualism when speaking of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, and we shall have reason to mark its rapid growth further. We are now, in fact, and must realise that we are, in a period in which, throughout the Graeco-Roman world, the need was beginning to be felt of some new rule of individualistic morality. The Roman population, now recruited from many sources, was but reflecting this need unconsciously when it insisted on new emotional rites and expiations. The Roman authorities were forced to satisfy the demand; but in doing so they made no real contribution to the history of Roman religious experience. It was impossible that they should do so; they represented the old civic form of religion, "bound up with the life of a society, and unable to contemplate the individual except as a member of it."[553] The new forms of worship, the _supplicatio_ and _lectisternium_, could not be, as the old forms had in some sense been, the consecration of civic and national life. They were to the Romans as the worship of Baal to the Jews of the time of the Kings; and, unlike that poisonous cult, they could never be rooted out.[554][555]

NOTES TO LECTURE XI

[510] This is the expression of Sallust, _Catil._ 12. 3.

[511] See my paper on the Latin history of the word
_religio_, in _Transactions of the Congress for the
History of Religions_, 1909, vol. ii. p. 172. W. Otto in
_Archiv_, 1909, p. 533 foll.

[512] Cic. _de Nat. Deorum_, ii. 8.

[513] Cic. _Harusp. resp._ 19.

[514] Livy xliv. 1. 11; Sallust, _l.c._; Gellius, _Noct.
Att._ ii. 28. 2.

[515] Polyb. vi. 56.

[516] Posidonius ap. Athenaeum vi. 274 A; Dion.
Hal. ii. 27. 3.

[517] Gell. ii. 28.

[518] Marquardt, iii. 126.

[519] Cato, _R.R._ 142.

[520] Calpurnius, _Eclogue_, v. 24. I have described a
similar scene in the Alps in _A Year with the Birds_,
ed. 2, p. 126.

[521] Petronius, _Sat._ 117: "His ita ordinatis, quod
bene feliciterque eveniret precati deos, viam
ingredimur." I owe this reference, as others in this
context, to Appel's treatise _de Romanorum
precationibus_, p. 56 foll.

[522] Varro, _R.R._ i. 1.

[523] _e.g._ Virg. _Aen._ v. 685 (Aeneas during the
burning of the fleet); _Aen._ xii. 776 (Turnus in
extremity). Cp. Tibull. iii. 5. 6 (in sickness).

[524] A good example is _Captivi_, 922: "Iovi disque ago
gratias merito magnas quom te redducem tuo patri
reddiderunt," etc.

[525] For gratitude to human beings see Valerius Maximus
v. 2. A good example of gratitude to a deity is in Gell.
_N.A._ iv. 18; but it is told of Scipio the elder, who
was eccentric for a Roman. When accused by a tribune of
peculation in Asia he said, "Non igitur simus adversum
deos ingrati et, censeo, relinquamus nebulonem hunc,
eamus hinc protinus Iovi Optimo Maximo gratulatum."
Public gratitude to the gods is frequent in later
_supplicationes_, _e.g._ Livy xxx. 17. 6.

[526] Gellius, _N.A._ xiv. 7. 9.

[527] Servius ad _Aen._ xi. 301 ("praefatus divos solio
rex infit ab alto").

[528] This was in a _contio_: "Cum Gracchus deos
inciperet precari." See above, Lecture VII. note 13.

[529] See _R.F._ p. 74 foll.; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 243.
For the relation of the pomoerium to the wall, see
above, p. 94.

[530] The process is amusingly explained by Carter in
_The Religion of Numa_, p. 72 foll.

[531] _R.F._ p. 75.

[532] See Aust, _De aedibus sacris P.R._, passim.

[533] Lately this has been denied by Pais, _Storia di
Roma_, i. 339.

[534] Pliny, _N.H._ 35, 154.

[535] I owe the information to my friend Prof. Percy
Gardner.

[536] See Carter, _op. cit._ p. 66; but I am not sure
that his reasons are conclusive.

[537] Diels, _Sibyllinische Blaetter_, p. 6 foll., and
cp. 79.

[538] It should be noted that the cult of Apollo in Rome
was older than the introduction of Sibylline influence;
so at least it is generally assumed. Wissowa, however
(_R.K._ p. 239), puts it as "gleichzeitig." The date of
the Apollinar in pratis Flaminiis, the oldest Apolline
fanum in Rome (outside pomoerium), is unknown; that of
the temple on the same site was 431 (Livy iv. 25 and
29). There is little doubt that the Apollo-cult spread
from Cumae northwards, and was by this time well
established in Italy. (The foundation of the temple of
431, consisting of opus quadratum, still in part
survives: Huelsen-Jordan, _Rom. Topographie_, iii. 535).

[539] Heracleitus, _fragm._ xii., ed. Bywater.

[540] _Phaedrus_, p. 244.

[541] So Korte in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._, _s.v._
"Etrusker."

[542] The present tendency is to take the plebs as
representing an older population of Latium before the
arrival of the patricians; see, _e.g._, Binder, _Die
Plebs_, p. 358 foll. But the plebs of later days is not
to be explained on one hypothesis only.

[543] _e.g._ in religious matters the _duoviri aedi
dedicandae_; Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, ii. 601 foll.

[544] Carter, _Religion of Numa_, p. 77 foll. It is
uncertain whether there was a Roman Mercurius of earlier
origin, or whether the name Mercurius (_i.e._ concerned
in trade) was a new invention to avoid using the Greek
name, as in the case of the trias Ceres, Liber, Libera.

[545] Carter, _op. cit._ 81. The connection of this
Poseidon-Neptunus and Hermes-Mercurius is confirmed by
the fact that the two were paired in the first
_lectisternium_, 399 B.C. Livy v. 13.

[546] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 254.

[547] See Diels, _Sib. Blaetter_, p. 12, note 1.

[548] Livy v. 13.

[549] I have discussed the possibility of the epulum
Iovis being an old Italian rite in _R.F._ p. 215 foll.
For the Greek origin of these shows see _Dict. of
Antiquities_, ed. 2, _s.v._ "lectisternia."

[550] Livy iii. 5. 14, and 7. 7.

[551] The plebeian tendencies of the time are suggested,
_e.g._, by the fact that immediately before the first
_lectisternium_ a plebeian was elected military tribune
(Livy v. 13). The fourth century is of course the period
of plebeian advance in all departments, and ends with
the opening of the priesthoods to the plebs by the lex
Ogulnia, and the publication of the Fasti. Plebeian too,
I suspect, was the keeping open house and promiscuous
hospitality which is recorded by Livy of the first
_lectisternia_; this was the practice of the plebs on
the Cerealia (April 19), and was perhaps an old custom
connected with the supply of corn and the temple of
Ceres (see above, p. 255). It was not imitated by the
patrician society, with its reserve and exclusiveness,
till the institution of the Megalesia in 204 B.C. See
Gellius xviii. 2. 11.

[552] The expression _crinibus demissis_ is found in a
lex regia (Festus, _s.v._ "pellices"); the harlot who
touches Juno's altar has to offer a lamb to Juno
"crinibus demissis." This is therefore Roman practice.

[553] For the _supplicationes_ see Wissowa, _R.K._ 357
foll.; Marq. 48 and 188; and the author's article in
_Dict. of Antiquities_. The passages already referred to
as doubtful evidence (Livy iii. 5. 14, 7. 7) describe
all the features of the _supplicatio_ as early as the
first half of the fifth century. A list of later
passages in Livy will be found in Marq. 49, note 4. On
the whole I doubt if much was made of these rites before
the third century and the Punic wars.

[554] Wissowa, _R.K._ 356, note 7.

[555] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 46.

LECTURE XII

THE PONTIFICES AND THE SECULARISATION OF RELIGION

In the last lecture we saw how the new experiences of the Roman people, during the period from the abolition of the kingship to the war with Hannibal, led to the introduction of foreign deities and showy ceremonies of a character quite strange to the old religion. But there was another process going on at the same time. The authorities of that old religion were full of vigour in this same period; it may even be said, that as far as we can trace their activity in the dim light of those early days, they made themselves almost supreme in the State. And the result was, in brief, that religion became more and more a matter of State administration, and thereby lost its chance of developing the conscience of the individual. It is indeed quite possible, as has recently been maintained,[556] that it stood actively in the way of such development. I have no doubt that there was a germ of conscience, of moral feeling, in the _religio_ of old days--the feeling of anxiety and doubt which originally suggested the _cura_ and _caerimonia_ of the State; but the efforts of the authorities in this period were spent in gradually destroying that germ. True, they did not interfere with the simple religion of the family, which had its value all through Roman history; but the attitude of the individual towards public worship will react on his attitude towards private worship, which may also have lost some part of its vitality in this period.

The religious authorities of which I speak are of course the two great colleges of pontifices and augurs. Of the latter, and of the system of divination of which they held the secrets, I will speak in the next lecture. Here we have to do with the pontifices and their work in this period, a thorny and somewhat technical subject, but a most important one for the history of Roman religious experience.

I have so far assumed that this college existed in the age of the kings, and assisted the Rex in the administration of the _ius divinum_. It is legitimate to do this, but as a matter of fact we do not know for certain what was the origin of the college itself, or of its mysterious name. In the period we have now reached we come, however, upon a striking fact, which is luckily easy to interpret; the king's house, the _Regia_, has become the office of the head of the college, the pontifex maximus, and also the meeting-place of the college for business.[557] Obviously this head, whether or no he existed during the kingly period, has stepped into the place of the Rex in the control of the _ius divinum_. Again, we know that in the third century B.C., when written history begins, the pontifices and their head had reached a very high level of power, as we shall presently see more in detail; the process of the growth of this power must therefore lie in the two preceding centuries, during which Rome was slowly attaining that paramount position in Italy in which we find her at the time of the Punic wars. Thirdly, we know that in that third century B.C. the college was laid open to plebeians as well as to members of the old patrician gentes, and that one of the most famous of all its many distinguished heads was not only not a patrician, but a Latin from Cameria, Ti. Coruncanius. Putting these three facts together we can divine in outline the history of the pontifices during these two centuries. With the instinct for order and organisation that never failed them, the Romans have constructed a _permanent_ power to take charge of their _ius divinum_, _i.e._ all their relations to the deities with whom they must maintain a _pax_; the circumstances of their career during two centuries have exalted this power to an extraordinary degree of influence, direct and indirect, internal and external; and, lastly, in a period which saw the gradual amalgamation into a unified whole of privileged and unprivileged, _patres_ and _plebs_, they have with wonderful wisdom thrown open to all citizens the administration of that _ius_ which was essential to the welfare of the united community. These are indisputable facts; and they are thoroughly characteristic of the practical wisdom of the Roman people in that early age.

In order to understand how the pontifices attained their great position, the one thing needful is to examine the nature of their work. This I propose to do next, and then to attempt to sum up the result of their activity on the Roman religious system.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the college in the early history of Roman law; and for us in particular that importance lies in the fact that they were the sole depositaries of the religious law in the period during which the civil law was being slowly disentangled from it. If we look at the so-called _leges regiae_, which are probably the oldest rules of law that have come down to us (though they may have been made into a collection as late as the very end of the Republic),[558] we see at once that they belong to the _ius divinum_; and there is little doubt that they were extracted from those books of the pontifices which I shall have to explain later on.[559] In other words, it is the maintenance of the _pax deorum_ that they are chiefly concerned with; the crime of the citizen is a violation of that _pax_, and the deity most concerned will punish the community unless some expiatory step is taken to re-establish the right relation between the human and divine inhabitants of the city. "Pellex aram Iunonis ne tangito; si tanget, Iunoni crinibus demissis agnum feminam caedito." "Si parentem puer verberit, ast olle plorassit, puer divis parentum sacer esto."[560] The harlot who touches the altar of Juno, the deity of married women, breaks the _pax_ with that deity, and she must offer a piacular sacrifice to renew it; the son who strikes a parent is made over as the property of the _divi parentum_, _i.e._ those of the whole community,[561] the peaceful relation with whom his act has imperilled. With such rules as these the civil magistrate of the republic can have had nothing to do; they belong to an older period of thought and of government, and survived in the books of the college which under the republic continued to administer the _ius divinum_; for these rules doubtless continued to exist side by side with the civil law as it gradually developed itself, and the necessary modes of expiation were known to the pontifices only. Roman society was indeed so deeply penetrated for many ages with the idea of _religio_--the dread of violating the _pax deorum_,--that the idea of law as a matter of the relation of man to man, as "the interference of the State in the passions and interests of humanity only," must have gained ground by very slow degrees. This primitive religious law then, _i.e._ the regulation of the proper steps to be taken to avoid a breach of the _pax deorum_, was entirely in the hands of the religious authorities, the Rex at first and then the pontifices, as the only experts who could know the secrets of the _ius divinum_; and from their decisions and prescriptions there could be no appeal, simply because there was no individual or body in the State to whom an appeal was conceivable. But after the rule of the Etruscan kings, with all its disturbing influences, and after the revolution which got rid of them, there must have been an age of new ideas and increased mental activity, and also of increasing social complexity, the signs of which in the way of trade and industry we have already found in certain facts of religious history. In the domain of law this meant new problems, new difficulties; and these were met in the middle of the fifth century B.C., if the received chronology is to be accepted,[562] by the publication of the XII. Tables.

In order to get some idea of the work of the pontifices at this time, let us consider one or two of these difficulties and problems.

Within the family every act, every relation, was matter of religion; the _numina_ had to be considered in regard to it. The end and aim, then as throughout Roman history, was the maintenance of the _sacra_ of the family, without which it could not be conceived as existing--the due worship of its deities, and the religious care of its dead. Take marriage as an example: "the entry of a bride into the household--of one who as yet had no lot in the family life--meant some straining of the relation between the divine and human members,"[563] and the human part of the family must be assured that the divine part is willing to accept her before the step can be regarded as complete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to share in its _sacra_; and if _confarreatio_ was (as we may believe) the oldest form of patrician marriage,[564] the bride was subjected to a ceremony which was plainly of a sacramental character--the sacred cake of _far_ being partaken of by both bride and bridegroom in the presence of the highest religious authority of the State. In the simplest form of society there would be no call for further priestly interference in marriage; but in a society growing more numerous and complex, exceptions, abnormal conditions begin to show themselves, and new problems arise, which must be solved by new expedients, prescriptions, permissions, devices, or fictions. For these the religious authorities are solely responsible; for what is a matter of religious interest to the family is also matter of religious interest to the State, simply because the State is composed of families in the same sense as the human body is composed of cellular tissue. All this, we believe, was once the work of the Rex, perhaps with the college of pontifices to help him; when the kingship disappeared it became the work of that college solely, with the pontifex maximus as the chief authority.

So, too, in all other questions which concerned the maintenance of the family, and especially in regard to the devolution of property. I am here only illustrating the way in which the pontifical college acquired their paramount influence by having a quantity of new and difficult work forced upon them, and it is not part of my plan to explain the early history of adoptions and wills; but I may give a single concrete illustration for the benefit of those who are not versed in Roman law. It must constantly have happened, in that disturbed period which brought the kingship to an end, that by death or capture in war a family was left without male heirs. Daughters could not take their place, because the _sacra_ of a family could not be maintained by daughters, who would, in the natural order of things, be sooner or later married and so become members of other families. Hence the expedient was adopted of making a _filius familias_ of another family a member of your own; and this, like marriage, involved a straining of the relations between the human and divine members of your family, and was thus a matter for the religious authorities to contrive in such a manner as to preserve the _pax_ between them. The difficulty was overcome by the practical wisdom of the pontifical college, which held a solemn inquiry into the case before submitting it to the people in specially summoned assembly (_comitia calata_);[565] and thus the new _filius familias_ was enabled not only to renounce his own _sacra_ (_detestatio sacrorum_), but to pass into the guardianship of another set of _sacra_, without incurring the anger of the _numina_ concerned with the welfare of either.

Such difficult matters as these, and many more connected directly or indirectly with the devolution of property, such as the guardianship of women and of the incapable, the power to dispose of property otherwise than by the original rules of succession, the law of burial and the care of the dead,--all these, at the time of which I am speaking, must have been among the secrets of the pontifices; and we can also suspect, though without being sure of our facts, that the great increase of the importance of the _plebs_ under the Etruscan dynasty offered further opportunities for the growth alike of the work and influence of the college.[566] Above all, we must remember that this work was done in secret, that the mysteries of adjustment were unknown to the people when once they had passed out of the ken of family and gens, and that there could have been no appeal from the pontifices to any other body. Nay, more, we must also bear in mind that this body of religious experts was _self-electing_. Until the lex Domitia of 104 B.C. both pontifices and augurs filled up their own colleges with persons whom they believed qualified both by knowledge and disposition. Thus it would seem that there was every chance that in that early Rome, where neither in family nor State could anything be undertaken without some reference to the religious authority, where the _pax deorum_ was the one essential object of public and private life, a power might be developed apt one day not only to petrify religion and stultify its worshippers, but thereby also to cramp the energies of the community, acting as an obstacle to its development within its walls and without. Had Roman law remained entirely in the hands of this self-electing college, one of two things must have happened: either that college would have become purely secular in character, or the wonderful legal system that we still enjoy would never have had space to grow up. But this was not to be; with the publication of the XII. Tables a new era opens.

If we reject, as we conscientiously may, the latest attempts of criticism to post-date the drawing up of the Tables,[567] and in fact to destroy their historical value for us, what is their significance for our present purpose? It is simply that in the middle of the fifth century B.C. the pontifices lost a monopoly--ceased to be the sole depositaries of the rules of law affecting the _pax deorum_, and that new rules are being set down in writing, on the basis of old custom, which more especially affect the relations between the human citizens. For both the _ius divinum_ and the _ius civile_ are to be found in this collection, but the latter is beginning to assert its independence. I think we may say, without much hesitation, that this event, however doubtful its traditional details, did actually save Rome from either of the two consequences to which I alluded just now. The constitution developed itself on lay and not on ecclesiastical lines, leaving the pontifices other work to do, and Roman civil law was eventually able to free itself from the trammels of the _ius divinum_.

But for another century the college still found abundant legal work to do, for it was not likely that at Rome, the most conservative of all city-states, it could be quickly set aside, or that the old ideas of law could so speedily disappear. What then was this work?

When rules of civil law were written down, it was still necessary to deal with them in two ways which were open to the pontifices, and indeed at this early time to no one else. First, it was necessary to make their provisions effectual by prescribing in each case the proper method of procedure (_actio_). Now it is most important to grasp the fact that procedure in the _ius civile_ was originally of precisely the same nature as procedure in the _ius divinum_, and that precisely the same rigid exactness is indispensable in both. Action and formula in civil law belong to the same class of practices as sacrifice and prayer in religious law, and spring from the same mental soil. Thus, for example, the most familiar case of action and formula in civil law, the _sacramentum_, was, as the name proves, a piece of religious procedure, _i.e._ the deposition in a sacred spot of a sum of money which the suitor in the case would forfeit if he lost it, together with the utterance of a certain formula of words which must be correctly spoken. If we choose to go back so far, we may even see in this combination of formularised act and speech a survival of magical or quasi-magical belief;[568] but this is matter rather for the anthropologist than the historian of religion. The point for us at this moment is that these acts and formulae (_legis actiones_, as they are known in Roman law) could not suddenly or rapidly pass out of the hands of that body of skilled experts which had so long been in sole possession of them; the publication of old and new rules of law in the XII. Tables made no immediate difference in this respect. The consuls, the new civil executive, were still in no sense necessarily skilled in such matters, and were without the prestige of the former executive, the Rex; they were also doubtless busy with other work, especially in the field. Nothing could be more natural than that the pontifices should continue to provide the procedure for the now written law, just as they had formerly supplied it for the unwritten.[569]

So, too, with the _interpretation_ of the Tables; this was the second part of the work that still remained to them. Writing was in that age a mystery to the mass of the population, and doubtless the idea was still in their minds that there was something supernatural about it. Writing, in fact, as well as formularised action and speech, may have had the flavour of magic about it. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the interpretation of a legal document was in those days a much more serious, if a less arduous business, than it is now. Here again, then, it seems perfectly natural that there should be no rapid or violent change in the _personnel_ of those deemed capable of such interpretation; there was no other body of experts capable of the work; the pontifices remained _iuris-consulti_, _i.e._ interpreters and advisers, and in the course of two and a half centuries accumulated an amount of material that formed a basis for the first published system of Roman law, the _ius Aelianum_ or _tripartita_ of 200 B.C. It is most useful to remember, as proof of this, that one member of the college was selected every year for the special purpose of helping the people with advice in matters of civil law, both in regard to interpretation and the choice of _legis actiones_; so we are expressly told by Pomponius, who adds that this practice continued for about a hundred years after the publication of the Tables, _i.e._ till the election of the first praetor in 366.[570] After that date the _ius civile_ emerges more distinctly from the old body of law, which included also the _ius divinum_, and its interpretation was no longer a matter purely for religious experts. In 337 we hear of the first _plebeian_ praetor--truly a momentous event, showing that the old profound belief is dying out, which demanded a religious and patrician qualification for all legal work. And at the end of the fourth century comes the publication, not only of the _legis actiones_, but of the Fasti, _i.e._ even of that most vital part of the _ius divinum_, which distinguished the times and seasons belonging to the numina from those belonging to the human citizens.[571] One might well suppose that the power of the pontifices was on the wane, for they had lost another monopoly.

And indeed in one sense this was so. It must have been so, for as the range of the State's activity increased, the sphere of religious influence became relatively less. Marriage, for example, though it still needed a religious ceremony in common opinion, ceased to need it in the eye of the law--a change which is familiar to us in our own age. The pontifex was no longer indispensable to the suitor at law, nor to the citizen who wished to know on what day he might proceed with his suit. The college undoubtedly ceased to be the powerful secretly-acting body in whose hands was the entire _religio_ of the citizen, _i.e._ the decision of all points on which he might feel the old anxious nervousness about the good-will of the gods. But now we mark a change which gave the old institution new life and new work. At the end of this fourth century (300 B.C.) it was thrown open to plebeians by the lex Ogulnia; and, as I have already mentioned, within a few years we come upon a plebeian pontifex maximus, who was not even a Roman by birth, yet one of the most famous in the whole series of the holders of that great office. Most probably, too, the numbers of the members have already been increased from five to nine, of whom five must be plebeian. These members begin to be found holding also civil magistracies, and the pontifex maximus was often a consul of the year. It is quite plain then that this priestly office is becoming more and more secularised; it expands with the new order of things instead of shrinking into itself. It leaves religion, in the proper sense of the word, far behind. The sacrificing priests, the flamines, etc., who were the humbler members in a technical sense of the same college, go on with their proper and strictly religious work under the supervision of the pontifex maximus,[572] but they steadily become of less importance as the greater members become secularised in their functions and their ambitions. And these greater members, instead of becoming stranded on a barren shore of antique religion, boldly venture into a new sphere of human life, and add definite secular work to their old religious functions.

The events of the latter part of the fourth century B.C., culminating in the publication of the Fasti and the _legis actiones_, probably meant much more for the Romans than we can divine by the uncertain light of historical imagination. It is the age of expansion, internal and external; the old patrician exclusive rule was gone beyond recall; the plebeians had forced their way into every department of government, including at last even the great religious _collegia_; the old Latin league had been broken up, and the Latin cities organised in various new relations to Rome, each one being connected with the suzerain city by a separate treaty, sealed with religious sanctions. After the Samnite wars and the struggle with Pyrrhus, further organisation was necessary, and there arose by degrees a loose system of union which we are accustomed to call the Italian confederation. The adaptation of all these new conditions to the existing order of things at Rome was the work of the senate and magistrates so far as it concerned human beings only; but so far as it affected the relations of the divine inhabitants of the various communities it must have been the work of the pontifices. That work is indeed almost entirely hidden from us, for Livy's books of this period are lost, and Livy is the only historian who has preserved for us in any substance the religious side of Rome's public life. But what we have learnt in the course of these lectures will have made it plain that no political changes could take place without involving religious adaptation, and also that the only body qualified to undertake such adaptation was the pontifical college.

We may thus be quite certain, that though they had lost their old monopoly of religious knowledge, the pontifices found plenty of fresh work to do in this period. It is my belief that they now became more active than they ever had been. From this time, for example, we may almost certainly date their literary or quasi-literary activity; I mean the practice of recording the leading events of each year, which may have had its origin a century earlier, with the eclipse of the sun in or about 404 B.C.[573] I should guess that after the admission of the plebeians to the college in 300 B.C., the new members put fresh life and vigour into the old work, and developed it in various directions. It is in this period that I am inclined to attribute to the college that zeal for compiling and perhaps inventing religious formulae of all kinds, which took shape in the _libri_ or _commentarii pontificum_, and embodied that strange manual of the methods of addressing deities, which we know as _Indigitamenta_. And again, in the skilled work of the admission of new deities and the dedication of their temples, occasioned by the new organisation and condition of Italy, and lastly, in the supervision of the proper methods of expiating _prodigia_, which (though the habit is doubtless an old one) began henceforward to be reported to the Senate from all parts of the ager Romanus and even beyond, their meetings in the Regia must have been fully occupied. Our loss is great indeed in the total want of detail about the life and character of the great plebeian pontifex maximus of the first half of the third century B.C., that Titus Coruncanius whom I have already mentioned as being a Latin by birth; for Cicero declares that the _commentarii_ of the college showed him as a man of the greatest ability,[574] whose reputation remained for ages as one who was ready with wise counsel in matters both public and private. Coupling him with two other memorable holders of the office, he says that "et in senatu et apud populum et in causis amicorum et domi et militiae consilium suum fidemque praestabant."[575] This passage should be remembered as a valuable illustration of the way in which the college and its head were becoming more and more occupied with secular business; it is worth noting, too, that this great man was himself consul in the year 280, and took a useful part in the first campaign against Pyrrhus.[576] Yet Cicero makes it plain that he looked on him also as a great figure in religious matters--nay, even as a man whom the gods loved.[577]

I will finish this lecture by illustrating briefly this renewed and extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in this third century B.C. Most of it is connected more or less directly with the State religion, yet with a tendency to become more and more secular and perfunctory; the word _cura_ would express it better than _caerimonia_, and _caerimonia_ better than _religio_. The care of the calendar, for example (a technical matter which lies outside my province in these lectures), was originally of religious importance, because the oldest religious festivals marked operations of husbandry, and these, when fixed in the calendar, must occur at the right seasons.[578] It was the duty of the pontifices so to adjust the necessary intercalations as to effect this object--a duty to which they were, as it turned out, quite unequal. But continued city life broke the connection between the festivals and the agricultural work to which they originally corresponded, and what was once a _cura_ of religious import became a secular matter of which the value was not appreciated. So too with another duty, for which both the Romans and ourselves have more reason to be grateful to them--the recording of the leading events of national history.