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The Origins
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The origin of Roman religion is to be found in the
traditional foundation story of Rome itself. The core of
Roman beliefs is derived from the common Greco-Ionic
paganism, said to have been imported by Æneas from
Troy. Vergil speaks of the bringing of the Trojan gods to
Italian soil in the beginning verses of his Æneid,
inferretque deos Latio. The Trojans, themselves
Ionians, descended from colonists from the Hellenic mainland
who had married with the local population and built the
cities of the Troad. Anchises, the father of Æneas,
was the son of Capys, a Phrygian, and Themiste, the sister
of Laomedon. Podarces, called Priam, was, therefore, the
cousin of Anchises, who became King off the Dardanians. Most
of Anatolia was dotted with cities founded by Greek
settlers. Ionia was for a long time the intellectual center
of Hellenic civilization. From the Iliad and other works we
know that the Trojans and Greeks worshipped the same gods.
The familiar Greek Pantheon of Olympians was accepted and
adored in Troy, and the Ionians went so far as to place an
Olympus and an Ida among the mountains of Asia Minor.
Italy, in like manner, was heavily colonized by the
Greeks, and was, in fact, called Magna Graeca, Greater
Greece (not in the sense of greater than Greece, but in that
of an outlying area of Greece, as the counties surrounding
New York City are termed the greater New York area). In
bringing the domestic gods of his house to Italy,
Æneas was carrying nothing religiously new to his new
homeland. The Sabines claimed to be a colony of Lacedaemons
(Spartans)3, and had certainly preceded
the Romans in Italy.
In addition to the Greek gods, called Consentes, the
generally accepted greater gods brought to Italy by
Æneas and the Grecian colonists from the Hellenic
mainland (Diomedes among them), there were native deities,
the Indigetes, among the aboriginal Italians, deified heroes
such as Faunus of the Latins or locally worshipped deities
of rivers or springs. In the three hundred years that
elapsed between the coming of Æneas and the founding
of Rome, these deities became accepted among the Romans, and
the whole character of Roman religion was altered by the
adoption of Etruscan concepts.
The Etruscans, considered to be among the oldest and most
highly cultured of the aboriginal Italians by both the Roman
and later historians, became the model for much of Roman
society as the city grew and expanded its territories into
those of the neighboring peoples. The basic governmental and
religious forms of the Etruscans were taken up, and
Etruscans became the regulators of Roman religion, acting as
advisors and holding the important positions of augurs. In
any religious
question4, the Etruscans were the
ultimate authority to whom the Romans turned for definitive
answers.
Fundamental to the Etruscan idea of deity was the notion
of manus, or power, the Force, if you will,
which they believed to underlie all of creation and which
manifested iteslf to humans as the gods. Manus
became concentrated in certain places and could be harnessed
to assist humans. Those who could discern the motions of
this power, who could tap into it, would be in touch with
the divine and would be favored in their lives. (This is a
principle in many philosophies and religions, especially in
the East. But consciousness of this power is not enough: one
must possess the wisdom to become a conduit for it.) The
Etruscans were a powerful people and had attained an high
level of civilization long before the Romans had grown
beyond their rustic culture, clear evidence of their
abilities both to understand the manus and to
use it wisely, and it was natural that the Romans should
have taken the Etruscans as their mentors. The pupils
eventually superseded their masters, as sometimes happens,
and the manus was transferred to the Romans.
At the time of the founding of Rome, given by the Romans
as occurring April 21, 753 B.C., the Roman religion was
probably approaching the form that it would bear through the
next 700 years, a Latin sect of Etruscan rites. The Latin
gods had become as important, or nearly so, as the primary
gods worshipped by the immigrant Trojans. Thus Bellus and
Bellona, the Latin god and goddess of war, were given almost
the same importance as Mars, and Mars himself was sometimes
openly identified as Bellus. Zeus, whom the Romans called
Juppiter or Jupiter, was anciently called by his root name
Dios, God, in Latium, and the Romans named his priest
Flamen
Dialis5. Dios had a female
counterpart, Diana, and the pair were likened to Zeus and
Juno.
The principal offices of the Roman religion were said to
have been established by two men, Romulus and his successor
Numa. The first King, Romulus himself, was the head of the
Roman church, which was only fitting, since he was divinely
descended in both his paternity and maternity, his father
being Mars and his mother Rhea Silvia, daughter of the Alban
King Numitor, the heir of Æneas, son of Venus.
Romulus (or Numa) created the Decemvirs, the Ten, who
were the primary college of pontiffs, in whose charge were
the Sibylline Books. Romulus was the chief augur, and his
crooked staff, the lituus, with which he described
the sacred space of the
templum
upon the earth, was afterwards kept in the Temple of Mars,
where it was discovered unharmed amid the ashes after the
destruction of the city by the Gauls.
Romulus founded the first temple in Rome, the Temple of
Jupiter Feretrius, Jupiter Hammerer, to which deity he
dedicated the opima spolia, the highest spoils, which he had
taken in single combat. The Temple could not have been less
imposing, for it consisted merely of a sacred oak on the
Capitoline, the dedicated trophy, and an imaginary plan
which Romulus had composed ex tempore on the spot. Such was
the simplicity of Roman religion at its beginnings, that the
mind of the king encompassed the entirety of its sacreed
buildings. It also emphasizes the point that the temple was
a concept more than a building, and it could be composed of
nothing more than the space that the worshipper had
described on the earth. (The actual temple structure was
built or expanded by Ancus Marcius, the fourth king, founder
of Ostia, and grandson of Numa .)
The last important addition to the primitive Roman
religion also was made through Romulus, who accepted into
the city the gods and the rites of the Sabines when Tatius
and his people were admitted into Roman citizenship. Even
after the death of Tatius, the Sabine influence remained in
the Roman religion. The only significant changes that were
to be made thereafter to the established religion came in
the reign of Romulus' successor, Numa Pompilius.
Numa, king by acclamation,
6
was recruited by the Romans from the Sabines. He was already esteemed as the most
pious7, and therefore wise, man in
Italy. Accepting of the kingship only reluctantly, he was
the first and foremost example of the philosopher-king. It
was said that Pythagoras was his acquaintance and that the
philosopher was made honorary citizen of Rome. Like
Pythagoras, Numa believed that fire was the primary
principle of the universe, that blood sacrifice was odious
to the deities, and that peace was the highest civic goal.
In furtherance of these beliefs, Numa consecrated the
Eternal Flame and established the
Vestals8, originally two in number, as
the keepers of the vigil beside it; abolished all blood
sacrifices, ordaining that only grains, fruits, and other
products of agriculture should be offered on the altars of
Rome; created a college of priests, called Fecials (or
Fetials), whose sole purpose was the mediation of all
disputes, and without whose permission war might not be
raised by the Romans. Also, upon the testimony of Julius
Proculus, a senator and friend of Romulus, Numa founded the
Quirinals, the priesthood of Quirinus, the name by which
Romulus wished to be called after his assumption into the
ranks of the
gods9.
In addition to the Quirinals and Fecials, Numa is
credited with the creation of the Salii, whose dance in full
martial accouterments was instituted to avert a plague that
had settled upon the city. (A bronze shield fell from heaven
into Numa's hands, and he was told by Egeria, his personal
tutelary deity, that it would deliver the city from the
pestilence. He ordered that it be replicated in eleven
copies so exact that the original and the copies could not
be distinguished, thereby confounding any prospective thief.
The smith Mamurius Veturius alone proved capable of the
replication, to the extent that not even the king himself
knew which was the original.) Numa directed that the field
on the Aventine in which he was wont to meet with Egeria was
to be held sacred, and that the spring that arose therefrom
was to be used by the Vestals for the purification of their
temple. The dance of the Salii, evidently a mime in which
the battle motions of an infantryman were combined with
features of close-order drill set to music, was performed
throughout the month of
March
thereafter, each performance being followed by sumptuous
banquet. Modern equivalents can be seen in the parade drills
of quasi-military clubs, although divested of their
religious meanings.
Numa further pronounced that the transcendent nature of
deity was such that it could not be represented or contained
by any image or shape, either human or bestial, and that
none of the temples should contain any statue or painting of
the gods. Plutarch relates that Roman religion was aniconic
from the first, and it must be assumed, therefore, that this
prohibition by Numa was not an innovation but a codification
of existing practice. (As Æneas was represented as
having saved the lares and penates of his household from the
sack of Troy, which were commonly small statues or
figures10, the statement in Plutarch
must be in reference to the public religion rather than the
private. The public aniconism persisted, according Plutarch,
through the one hundred seventieth year after the founding
of the city.)
As Pontifex Maximus, Numa reformed the calendar, giving
it the arrangement that it would hold down until the Julian
regularization. The year of ten months and 360 days was
changed to one of 365 days, divided into twelve months.
January became the first month.
Such was Numa's success in his administration, that there
was peace throughout Italy for forty-three years
continuously, the doors of the Temple of Janus, which were
opened during times of war, being shut throughout his reign,
a span never after equaled. However, the permanence of his
law was
illusory.11
The religious reformation enacted by Numa, like that of
Akenaten in Egypt, was personal, and its rigor terminated
with his
death12. The next King, Tullius,
aptly surnamed Hostilius, disdaining the pacific policies of
his predecessor, proclaimed that the true heritage of
Romulus and the destiny of Rome was to be found in warfare,
and resumed the interrupted conquest of
Italy13. The doors of the Temple of
Janus remained open, with but one brief interval, until shut
by the hand of Augustus after the civil war with Antony.
Blood sacrifices also returned. The resumption of Rome's
bellicose and bloody ascent to empire marked the end of the
primitive phase of Roman religion, which became fixed and
continued without significant alteration through the ensuing
five centuries until the introduction of the Magna Mater
during the Punic Wars.
So stable had the Roman religion become, that not even
the ending of the kingship could disturb its structure. The
regulation of the religious practice remained in the
pontiffs, but the religious duties that once had been vested
in the King were devolved upon the magistrates. The consuls,
as the new chief officers of the Republic, discharged the
rituals that were necessary to the proper order of the
state14, and it was their obligation
to see that all of the religious ceremonies that had been
ordered were properly and promptly performed. All of the
Roman magistrates had certain religious duties and powers
ex officio, and all were considered inviolable in
their persons.
The growth of the Roman state into the East brought the
Romans into contact with the religious traditions of Asia
more directly than at any time since the emigration of the
Trojans. The result of this contact was one of reaction, as
the state repeatedly placed a ban upon all Eastern
superstitions and cults within the city. Astrology and the
Egyptian and Semitic religions were particularly singled out
for exclusion as being harmful to the public order. However,
when the Punic War protracted with such grievous losses, the
Romans opened the Sibylline prophecies to learn what might
be done to bring the war to a conclusion. One saying was
found applicable: "The mother is missing." This cryptic
message being uncommunicative, the Romans sent to the
Delphic Oracle to learn what it meant, and received the
reply that the Mother Goddess was absent and must be
transferred to Rome, where she would extend her protection
and the war would be ended favorably. The story of how this
was accomplished is told
elsewhere.
The rites of the Magna Mater were unsavory to the Romans,
who disliked the ecstatic self-mutilations of the
priesthood, the Galli, and there were restrictions placed
upon the public exhibitions that the rites required. It was
the last Eastern religion and the last Asiatic influence
allowed in Roman religion until the deification of Julius
Caesar after the pattern of Alexander the Great, which was
itself Asian.
The religion of the Republic remained constant until the
Pontificate of Julius Cæsar, who added five to the
number of the Decemvirs, creating the Quindecemvirs. (He
also increased the number of magistracies.) Changes then
followed rapidly, with deification of C. Julius Cæsar
himself by his grand-nephew Octavius, and the subsequent
deifications of Octavius and succeeding Emperors. Gaius and
Claudius relaxed and then abolished the restrictions that
had been placed upon the cult of the Magna Mater, and other
foreign religions were tolerated in Rome as the Empire
matured.15
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Roman Religion in
History
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It is impossible to know how much of the Roman legend of
foundation is historical. We do not know if there was a
person named Æneas, nor if the Romans were even Trojan
in origin. There existed in Antiquity an extensive cycle of
epics modeled upon the Iliad called collectively The
Returns, dealing with the exploits and ultimate fates of the
surviving heroes of the Trojan War, Æneas among them.
Unfortunately, except for the Iliad and
fragments or stories preserved in drama, such as the plays
dealing with Agamemnon, all of the other epics have been
lost. The story of Æneas must have existed, at least
in oral form, perhaps in epitome, when Vergil composed his
epic. Certainly, the tradition that Æneas had traveled
to Italy was older than the Romans, and the idea that he was
the founder of Lavinium seems to have been accepted as based
in fact, but his actual connection to Rome might be of Roman
invention. The connection was made through the person of
Romulus, and depended from the descent of Rome's founder
through the Kings of Alba from the Trojan colony of
Lavinium.
The process of forming colonies
has been described. It is entirely within reason and
possibility that Lavinium, having grown more populous, sent
out a "sacred spring"
or expelled some of its superfluous and unruly citizens to
found a colony in Alba Longa, and that, in time, the same
process was repeated by the Albans, whose expatriated
citizens then founded Rome. We have in the legend the
acknowledgment that many of the original Romulans were,
indeed, outcasts of other nations, runaway slaves, brigands,
malcontents, debtors, adventurers, soldiers-of-fortune, and
others who had no place in the settlements surrounding Rome.
The Romans themselves settled conquered cities with many of
their more troublesome citizens, in order to relieve the
city of the pressure arising from their demands for more
popular control of government.
In modern history, the Americas and Australia were both
colonized by adventurers, the dispossessed, the dissenters,
the rebellious, and the criminals of Europe. It is,
therefore, not improbable that a rebellious princeling or
pretender of Alban stock, forced into exile, founded a
colony into which he welcomed the rabble who had no future
elsewhere. We can neither prove nor disprove that these
events happened, but there is no inherent contradiction that
would automatically compel us to dismiss the legendary
framework of Roman history as fraudulent or fabulous.
The story does have some support in the various family
histories of the Roman gentility, most of whom could
reliably trace their blood lines back into the pre-history
of Rome, and who seemed to agree to a remarkable degree in
finding their origins in Alba Longa or in the ancient Sabine
cities.
Oral family traditions in pre-literate societies have
been shown to be unexpectedly accurate, and in societies in
which the preservation of family relics and the worship of
ancestors are as important as they were in Rome, we need not
be reluctant to place some reliance upon the clan memory as
an aid to history.
While it is undoubtedly true that authentic genealogy is
often tainted with wishful adoption in retrospect, so that
present pretensions are justified by prevarications about
the past, the point at which fancy has been let in to
augment fact is usually discernible by its seams and joints.
In some cases, the introduction of a legendary personage or
a divinity is a glaring stop sign for the genealogist, but,
in other cases, the putative and the acknowledged are often
of more difficult discernment. However, the numerous gentes
of Rome that could show lengthy pedigrees back into the eras
following or preceding the date of the founding must surely
indicate that there is some validity to the general story
and its chronology.
The greatest difficulty to the acceptance of many dates
and lineages grows from the general destruction of public
records during the sack of the city by the Gauls in the
360th year AUC (393 B.C.). The registers in which the
citizenry were enrolled were among the important documents
lost in the conflagration that leveled the entire city. As a
result, all events predating the fire come under some
suspicion. The loss of all civic documents relating to the
nativity and mortality of its citizens is a grievous one in
any modern town, and the situation must have been no less of
a bureaucratic mare's nest for the Romans. as it would be
today for the people of New York or London in a similar
event. The reconstruction of the public rolls doubtlessly
gave the opportunity to some families to find new roots
where old ones had been eradicated, and the accuracy of the
replacement registers was sometimes called into question,
even in Antiquity. But, while public records were lost, it
must be that many private records survived, either
fortuitously, or through the foresight of the families, some
of whom buried their treasures and papers, later excavating
them from the ruins, while others removed them during the
flight from the city, carrying them back when the Gauls had
been expelled. While it is prudent to view all dates and
family histories beyond 400 B.C. with caution, it would be
excessive to dismiss them simply on the basis of suspicion.
The earlier history of Rome (prior to the Republic) is
considerably more hazy, and the Romans did not have a linear
record of the time of the Kingdom. The erection of important
buildings or other public works, which generally can be used
as reliable historical markers, were frequently attributed
to different monarchs according the historian making the
attribution. Plutarch notes that the famous wooden bridge
which had been built entirely without metal fasteners of any
kind was said to have been built either by Numa or his
grandson Ancius. Part of the difficulty can be resolved by
the expedient of allowing that a particular monarch might
have vowed or begun the building while a later monarch
fulfilled or completed the work and earned the credit
through dedication. Still, we are left with a considerable
doubt about the genuineness of any statement regarding the
kings, and most of the stories attached to them can be
safely considered apocryphal unless attested to by actual
artifacts.
The most important historical changes that occurred in
Roman religion were those that came late, the arrival of the
Magna Mater, the revival of the state religion and the
deification of the Cæsars under Augustus and the
Julio-Claudians, the acceptance of the Isis-Serapis cult,
and the importation or invention of Mithraism. While each of
these innovations was made with the purpose of enriching or
revivifying the state religion, all of them had the effect
of rendering the original religion less vital. Thus, while
the new gods enjoyed great popularity, and the state
benefited from the support of their worshippers, the
original intimate bonds between the religion, the
government, and history of the Romans were obscured or
dissolved. It was no longer possible to find links between
the ancient religion and the contemporary state, and the
continuity of the Roman state was one of its primary
features. The assurance that Rome contained and continued a
divinely warranted authority was essential in the formation
and growth of the Roman state, and the recession of the
sense of immediate contact with that source of strength must
weaken the confidence of the governed in their governors and
gradually lessened the religious and historical sanction
which that government had previously enjoyed. If the
government no longer had a definite manifesto which was
demonstrably Roman, it had no real claim to superiority to
those of rival states or to the internal rivals that were
continually evolving out of the vulgar dissatisfaction with
the increasing disparity between the rulers and the ruled.
Despite the earlier contests between the patricians and the
plebeians, all Romans had shared a sense of Romanitas, of
being Roman, of descent from Romulus and Æneas, a
sense that the religion of Æneas, the gods of Troy,
were still the gods of Rome. The replacement or displacement
of those gods by the foreign gods of the East must, if only
by insensible degrees, weaken that sense of permanence, or
presence of the past, which the old religion had furnished,
and, thereby, weaken the Roman state. That Rome was
worshipping gods not its own, even though transferred to it,
must shift the power away from Rome towards the source of
those gods.
It was symptomatic of the state of Roman religion, that
the Roman Emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius
were personally interested in the restoration of the
religion throughout the Empire, but particularly at home and
in those provinces to which Rome had special ties. Many
famous temples had fallen into ruins or disrepair,
indicating that the worship of the old gods had declined.
The visit of Apollonius of Tyana to Rome in the reign of
Nero, as given by Philostratus about 150 years after the
fact, shows to what degree the old religion had decayed.
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Organization
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Roman Religion in
Practice
There was a practical precedence to the established Roman
religion, rather than a formally constituted hierarchy,
although the effect was the same. Each of the deities
possessed its own priesthood of men or women, its own
proprietary rites, and its own places of worship, whether a
temple or a shrine. The priesthoods and temples were, for
the most part, self-governing, although each submitted to
higher religious authority, which was determined in various
ways. Priests were, with one exception, excused from the
military service. Only in the case of Gallic invasion were
the priests compelled to take up arms, so great was the fear
of the Gauls in the Romans.
Priesthoods were organized into Colleges. Colleges appear
to have been formulated to include priests of a certain
function, which, in pragmatic terms, was of a particular
deity, although some colleges were concerned with more
general matters. Besides the Decemvirs, Septemvirs, Fecials,
Augurs, Quirinales, there were the
Arval
Brothers , the Bidentals of Semo Sancus, the Galli of
the Phrygian Mother Cybele, the Salii of Mars, Vestals, the
priestesses of the Bona Dea, the priestesses of Juno, and
many others. One of the more important colleges of priests
was that of the Luperci, composed of two orders, the Fabii
and the Quintilii, who performed the rites of the
Lupercalia
(q.v., below). The most basic College was that of the
Curiones, composed of the ward chiefs or
bosses
16.
These were both political and religious officers at the
primary level of public organization. Each Curio was
responsible for the posting of notices of public services
and overseeing the local observances. Some moveable feasts,
such as that of the Sowing, the Sementiva, and the Feast of
the Ovens, were celebrated at the discretion of the Curio
Maximus, the head of the College. In the ordinary scheme of
things, there were two priests whose prestige placed them in
a superior position of authority over all of the religious
orders and events of the Romans, the Flamen Dialis and the
Pontifex Maximus.
The Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter, undoubtedly
gained his power from the fact that the Capitol was itself
the Temple of Jupiter, and that the Temple was used both for
governmental and religious functions. The Capitol was also
the heart of Rome, as well as its most defensible position,
its acropolis. The duties of the Flamen Dialis were very
numerous and essential, and there were minute and extensive
restrictions placed upon his person, concerning everything
that he wore or did or what might or might not be done in
his presence. As noted elsewhere, the wife of the Flamen
Dialis became the high priestess of Juno.
The Pontifex Maximus was, from the founding of the
Republic, the principal religious authority in the Roman
state. It was the duty of the Pontifiex to supervise and
advise on every aspect of ritual, both public and private.
He had absolute power in religious matters, including the
management of the calendar. Disobedience to the directions
of the Pontifex Maximus was not only unheard of, it was
unthinkable. The Pontiff was responsible for keeping the
public registers, in which the citizens were enrolled and
which recorded the history of the Roman people. The Pontifex
Maximus was the guardian of the Vestals, standing in
relation of power to them as a father. It was his duty to
preserve them in their vows and to punish infractions. It
was the Pontifex Maximus who had the unhappy duty of
scourging the faithless Vestal and committing her to be
buried alive. Men of the highest character and deepest
learning were usually chosen by
vote
17
for this office. Julius Cæsar stood for
this office when he was debarred by law from being a
candidate for the consulate. He was so heavily in debt and
had so many and so powerful political enemies, that, on the
morning of the election, he remarked on going out that he
would either return as Pontiff or not at all. In fact, he
was elected over two more qualified candidates by such large
majorities among the tribes that he out-polled both of his
opponents in their own tribes. The position was afterwards
conferred on Octavius Cæsar Augustus and became a
prerogative of the Emperor.
In the hierarchy of the priests, only the Rex Sacrorum
(or Sacrificulis) stood above the Pontifex Maximus in
dignity. His office was created in room of that of the
departed kings, who since Romulus and Numa had performed
public sacrifices, but, with a few exceptions, his duties
seem to have been purely symbolic. He is said to have
furnished the religious articles for certain ceremonies and
to have officated at the
Regifugium,
but no real authority was attached the office.
The ultimate religious authority in all matters was the
Senate, which could arbitrate disputes between Colleges and
cults, and which finally assumed control of all temples in
Italy, later extending its governance to all temples in the
empire. The Senate could review the charters of temples, and
settle all claims made by temples to certain privileges. The
erection of temples was in its power. Deification of the
emperors was also within its power. (The power of the
Emperor in these matters was actually paramount, but the
Senate was the body that made the laws at his "suggestion".)
There were, in addition to the gods worshipped in the
city itself, certain shrines and temples in the rural areas
surrounding it that were closely associated in the Roman
religion. We have already mentioned the two most important,
the Grove of Diana at Nemi and the Temple of Soranus on
Soracte.
The Roman religion infused every aspect of life of the
citizen, from the table to the curule seat of the
magistrate. Every household, howsoever humble, had a niche
set aside for the shrine to the lares and penates, the
particular protectors of the family that lived beneath that
roof. Every family was able to call upon the spirits of
their dead ancestors (manes) for comfort, aid, or guidance
throughout their daily vicissitudes of fortune or
misfortune. Every meal was shared with the gods, and there
were elaborate rules
18
governing what might and might not lawfully be eaten from
the table and what portion must be reserved for the gods.
Every citizen was, in his own house, the priest of his
family, offering sacrifices and prayers on behalf of all and
directing the family in its worship. No decisive action
ought to be taken, either in private or public life, without
consultation with the gods through sacrifice and augury. The
magistrates began their terms with solemn rites and
sacrifice to call upon the gods for favor and the taking of
auspices to discover what
portended
19.
Every magistrate had religious duties, as noted, and the
giving of public shows (spectacles ) on the appropriate days
and for the appropriate deities was among those duties. The
taking of auspices was both a personal and a public
necessity, because the fortune or misfortune of the man
taking the auspices was transferred into the task that he
was about to undertake on the behalf of the people. If the
auspices were favorable, then the magistrate could take
credit for the successful outcome that had been assured. If
the auspices were unfavorable or, as sometimes happened,
ambiguous, then new sacrifices
28
and auguries were to be performed. It was not
uncommon to repeat a sacrifice twenty or thirty times,
either to correct some defect in the ritual, or to discern
the will of the gods. more clearly. There was, it can be
seen, a single thread of religion that stretched from the
poorest citizen through the whole fabric of Roman society
into the offices of the magistrates and beyond into the
grave and the realm of the dead, and a disturbance in any
part of the social fabric, however small, could have
repercussions throughout the whole republic. The events in
every household were tied directly to the health and safety
of the state. The neglect of any rite, even the most minor,
could bring disaster not only to the household in which the
omission had been allowed but upon the whole republic as
well. The magistrates were personally accountable for the
religious condition of the state and must make certain that
all public religious services were performed punctually and
according the ancient patterns. It was the duty of every
citizen to report to the magistrates any omen, dream, or
portent that might affect the welfare of the state, and it
was the duty of the magistrates to thoroughly investigate
each such matter and to determine what service must be done
in response.
One important aspect of Roman Religion has often been
overlooked, and that is the central role filled by Rome
itself. Not only were the times and the manner of sacrifice
dictated by custom and law, but the Place as well. A
sacrifice or other rite could only be properly offered at
the place prescribed by the ordinals of the religion. It was
not enough that a sacrifice be made on the day required and
in the correct order if the location were neglected. In most
instances, this location was in Rome itself. It was
essential, for instance, that the sacrifices and the taking
of the auspices by the new magistrates be conducted at Rome.
They could not be taken legally elsewhere. When the
Consul-Elect Flaminius, who had once before been deprived of
his office and his triumph by the nullification of the
auspices under which he had been elected, left Rome and
assumed his office in the field, taking the auspices in the
camp, he was roundly condemned by the Senate. And it was
accepted as an article of faith that the destruction of
Flaminius and his army at Lake Trasimene by Hannibal was a
direct result, not of his rashness or poor generalship, but
of his disregard of the forms of the auspices. In the same
way, each deity of the Romans and each ceremony of those
deities required that the city itself perform a function in
the religion. It was, very literally, the Religion of Rome.
During the siege of the Capitol, when the Gauls occupied
the city, the date of an annual festival arrived. It was
necessary that a member of the Fabii conduct the service,
and it chanced that there was among the beseiged a young man
of the family, Caius Fabius Dursuo. It was further required,
however, that the sacrifice be performed on the Quirinal,
which, in common with the rest of the city, was in the
control of the Gauls. Caius Fabius, undaunted by this
inconvenience and trusting that the gods in whose service he
was engaged would protect him, girt up his toga in
ceremonial fashion and proceeded down from the Capitol
bearing the sacred vessels. He was permitted to pass
unmolested to the Quirinal, where he fulfilled his religious
duties, and then was permitted to return through the enemy
lines to the Capitol unchallenged, the Gauls being in awe of
this demonstration of piety. Such was the faith of the
Romans and the fidelity with which they discharged their
religious obligations, and such too was the importance of
place in their religion.
Of course, there were obsrvances that could only be made
outside the city, but it was because those places had been
designated long ago by the gods for the performance of their
rites that the Roman magistrates made the pilgrammage to
Alba for the Latin Festival or that the women of Rome made
the journey to Feronia to offer sacrifices. It was the place
in which those rituals must be made. There were instances
when, of an entire city captured in war, every building
would be razed, excepting one temple which would be left
standing, because it was essential to the worship of the
deity of that temple. Thus, when Rome had been destroyed by
the Gauls, it was absolutely necessary that Rome be rebuilt,
for the gods had chosen it in which to dwell and from which
to receive their sacrifices.
The people of Caere had reason to be glad of this piety
of the Romans, for the town had given asylum to the gods of
Rome and their priests during the Gallic occupation, making
possible the complete restoration of the gods to Rome, and
the people of Rome later formed a permanent treaty of
friendship and hospitality with the Caereans as a reward, a
treaty which excused the wavering allegiance of Caere during
the Second Punic War. (Apparently some temporary
accomodation could be made for the services in such a dire
emergency. The gods did not demand the impossible.)
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Augury
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The formal practice of augury was carried out chiefly by
the College of Augurs. In the late republic, this office was
largely an honorary one and required little of the holder
apart from some public ceremonials. By the time of
Æmilius Paulus, the title was bestowed upon some
person whom the public wished to honor in much the same way
that nowadays a town council will create a "day" in honor of
some local person of note. In earlier times, however, this
office was filled by persons who had been especially trained
and whose virtuous life theretofore had shown them to be
pious and trustworthy and attentive to the needs of the
state. Plutarch tells us that Paulus revived the office by
his conscientious attendance to the rule of the order.
It was the primary duty of the augurs to read aerial
omens and portents, either those observed in their own
persons or those reported to them by vigilant citizens.
Mainly, augurs
20
would watch the motions of birds to divine the will of
heaven. A special class of augur of Etruscan blood, the
haruspex,21 would read the entrails at
public or private sacrifices . Romulus had been the first
augur of Rome, as we noted above, indicating the great
importance originally given the functions of the office, and
the lituus or crook
22,
was both an emblem of office and the instrument of the
craft. (See the discussion of the
templum.)
The importance of the augurs was firmly established,
however, by the acts of one augur in particular, Attius
Navius, in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus. When the king
wished to create a new tribe in order to add new cavalry and
to name the units after himself, he was impeded by the augur
Navius, who declared that the auspicies would not permit the
king to do as he wished. Tarquinius was indignant, and,
desiring to show that the whole art of augury was worthless,
challenged Navius. "Tell me," the king said, "can you
discover by your science whether the thought that I have in
my mind can be accomplished?" When Navius unhesitatingly
affirmed that it could, he was ordered to prove it. Navius
then performed the sacrifice and returned to the king with
the answer. "What you are thinking can be accomplished,"
Navius told him. "Very well, " said Tarquinius, "I command
you to cut a whetstone in two with a razor." Navius did not
flinch, but ordered that his razor and whetstone be brought
to him and promptly did exactly what the king had demanded.
The razor and whetstone were said to have been preserved in
a recess under the steps of the Curia Hostilis where the
deed had been performed. The king was prevented from
carrying out his design, and augury was vindicated.
In practical terms, each man could act as his own augur
and read the omens. Civil magistrates frequently held minor
priestships in addition to their offices. Generals in the
field carried with them the sacred chickens, by which the
outcome of battle might be divined.
There was a technical difference between omens, portents,
and prodigies, which are treated as synonymous in English.
Omens were the signs read during taking of the auspices.
These were interpretations according to set formulae.
Portents were supernatural phenonema, such as dreams,
visions, hauntings, etc., which were taken to indicate some
urgent message of immediate and dire impact. Prodigies were
natural events, a lightning strike, an unusal birth, a tree
growing in the cornice of a building, an exeptional harvest,
the appearance of a comet, etc. which was believed to
predict some change in affairs, either for the better or the
worse. Omens were prognostications for immediate action.
Portents extended farther into the future, but were of
limited duration. Prodigies were long-range forecasts,
sometimes reaching as far as thirty years into the future.
Prodigies that were sufficiently disturbing, such as rains
of stones or fluxes of blood from fountains, were referred
to the decemvirs in charge of the Sibylline Books, who
sought therein for instructions on how to make expiation.
Prodigies, because they were perceived to indicate that an
affronted deity were raising a grievance, almost always
demanded some form of atonement, either by prayer vigils,
sacrifices of full-grown victims, or the holding of games.
It is interesting that, as noted above by Pliny, the
augurs admitted that omens could be disregarded. The effect
of an omen seems to have been depended largely upon the
character of the man to whom it was presented. Thus,
generals could and did go into battle when the omens were
considered against them and still earned their
triumphs
23.
On the other hand, there were also notorious cases in which
generals who had gone into battle after receiving contrary
auspices suffered crushing defeats. The Germans and the
Gauls were, on the whole, much more attentive to auspices
when planning and conducting a campaign, and they would
steadfastly refuse to offer battle, even in advantageous
circumstances, when their soothsayers found unfavorable
portents. The Germans placed particular confidence in
certain women of their nation who enjoyed the highest
respect and influence when pronouncing prophecies.
In the main, the Romans usually tried to find an
alternative interpretation or to force an issue by using the
predictions of the omens to their
favor
24.
Thus, when Æmilius Paulus was on the point of
launching an attack upon the Macedonian army, he refrained,
because he had been informed that the augurs had found that
the battle would be decided in favor of the defender.
Therefore, he had to find a means of provoking Perseus to
attack 25, a
difficult proposition, since the Macedonian king, having
assembled his army to challenge the Romans, he was reluctant
to actually put the matter to a test.
The Romans had a truly fatalistic view of life, and,
therefore, the promise that Rome was destined for domination
and eternal glory was a comfort in times of trial. This
fatalism was also expressed in the belief that Fortune would
do nothing, either ill or well, without some compensatory
act in balance. Thus, great good fortune was celebrated with
reserve, for it was always present to the minds of the
celebrants that some great ill must be soon endured as if in
payment for the success. Furius Camillus, when he had taken
the city of Veii, was quick to beg the gods that whatever
ill might need to be suffered to atone for this great boon,
that it might fall upon him alone, and but lightly, rather
than upon the Roman state
26
itself . And Æmilius Paulus, after his
defeat of the Macedonians, at every stage of his return
feared that some great catastrophe must overtake the army or
Rome as fatal recompense, only to find that his two young
sons were required of him by Fortune, one before and the
other after his triumph.
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