Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

Public rights—those of voting, of serving as a fully-equipped soldier in the legions, and probably of holding office as a delegate of the king—were possessed exclusively by the Patricians; and to these privileges we must add the right of holding the fullest communion with the gods (jus auspiciorum).

Auspicium, or the divination by birds, came eventually to be applied to any circumstance that might be interpreted as an expression of the will of the gods. The capacities of human beings with reference to these signs are partly a right of invoking, partly a power of interpreting them. Both the right and the power rest on the assumption that there is a medium of intercourse between the national gods and the citizens of the state,[127] and the peculiarities of the conception which the Romans formed of this divine patronage are shown by their views both of the nature of the revelation and of the qualifications requisite for the “medium.”

(i.) The revelation is not an answer to a question about future events, for true divination is not an attempt to pry into the hidden counsels of the gods; this profession of the Chaldaeans was never looked on with favour at Rome, and no science of the future was encouraged by the state. The Roman consultation of the gods is only employed as the test of the rightness of an already formed human resolution.[128] It tells men only whether they are to carry out a course of action already purposed; it may confirm them in it or warn them from it; and it is the duty of men to seek a sign either of encouragement or of warning. It is of the highest importance to remember this view of the guidance of the gods, for it is the chief sign of the way in which the Romans, in spite of their genuinely religious spirit (nay, as an outcome of it), subordinated the theocratic to the lay element. The chief effect of this subordination is the unfettered use of human reason; religion is employed as a test, rather than as a guide, of rightness of action. This is a thoroughly lay view of the function of religion in life, very unlike that of the Jewish prophet who questions God in detail, but only for interpretation of a law which is the product of His, not of the human will. The belief that the gods do not give instruction, but merely advice, gave an “inward freedom” to the Roman, which made him at times resent the divine interference, and we shall find many instances of his forcing an interpretation to suit his wishes. The omen that is not seen need not be attended to, and precautions are taken that it shall not be seen. In undertaking acts of state, the magistrates are bound to ask for signs; but all the efforts of human ingenuity are directed to secure that the signs shall be favourable.[129]

(ii.) It is plain that, on this theory of religious intervention, no priestly medium is required between the gods and their worshippers. Divination as the science of the future is an elaborate art, which cannot be possessed by the ordinary man. It requires the knowledge of ritual to compel the divine utterance; it assumes that the gods have special confidence in the select participators of an inner cultus, to whom they reveal what is hidden from the many; it requires the devotion of a lifetime, and often special rules of asceticism and purity, to interpret the hidden signs; it leads, in short, to the belief in oracular power, in the prophetic gift, in the claims of a priesthood specially set apart.[130] There was none of this at Rome. The right of invoking auspices is not a priestly gift; it is one that is possessed, in a higher degree by the magistrate, in a lower degree by all the full citizens of the primitive Roman community. It is true that there is a class of wise men, the augurs, whose chief function is the interpretation of signs, but their function is limited to interpretation; they have no more power than any private individual, and less power than the magistrate, of eliciting such a revelation. Yet, if the assistance of the augur was called in, and his interpretation given, this verdict was final. We are told that disobedience to it, at least by the magistrate in taking the public auspices, was in early times visited with a capital penalty;[131] a statement which probably means that the heads of the Roman religion, the pontiffs, reckoned such an impiety as one for which the gods would accept no expiation, and for which, therefore, the penalty of excommunication (sacer esto) was pronounced.

The right of taking the auspices is said to have been a gift peculiar to the Patricians; but the extent of this gift can be estimated only with reference to a fourfold division of the auspices, which, from its nature, must have been primitive and not a creation of the later disciplina of the augurs.

The auspices were divided into impetrativa (or impetrita) and oblativa.[132] The auspicia impetrativa were those which were sought and asked for, and such signs might be taken from observation of the sky or from the flight or sounds of birds. The oblativa were those which were forced on the attention, and which, since they were not sought, were generally regarded as an impediment to action, and, therefore, as unfavourable. They were gathered from a heterogeneous collection of signs of ill-omen (dirae). It is plain that the right to take or, as it is expressed, to have auspices (habere auspicia) can refer only to the first of these two categories; it was this right that was assumed to be peculiar to the Patricians; it was the members of the original clans alone, the primitive patres, who had the right of asking signs of the gods, and it was held that every important act of their lives, whether public or private, should be pervaded by this divine intercourse. It was believed that it was through auspices that the city had been raised, political development attained, and former victories won.[133] The existence of the patrician order is from this point of view a necessary condition of the existence of the state itself, for without it the right of eliciting the divine will would be wholly lost.[134] But no human power could prevent the Plebeians from following the religious scruples of their betters in giving heed to those warnings which were thrust upon their notice. The auspicia oblativa, whether the gods destined them for others besides the patrician body or not, must from the earliest times have been respected by the Plebeians, and have guided their political conduct when they became a corporation within the state.

The right of taking auspices was neither a priestly nor even a magisterial function, but was possessed by every Patrician. But the man in a private capacity could exercise it only in his private concerns; the auspices destined to guide public action are vested in the person of the patrician magistrate. Hence the distinction between auspicia publica and privata. There was a time when no important act of business or domestic life was undertaken without an appeal for divine guidance.[135] Marriage especially demanded the taking of the auspices; and even when the custom of such private divination had become wholly discarded, a survival of the custom is found in the presence of auspices, friends of the bridegroom who superintend the due performance of the rites.[136] The confarreatio was older than the traditional institution of the augural college, and it is not probable that official intervention was brought to bear on marriage, still less on such concerns as were more strictly private. Hence it is difficult to see how the Plebeians could have been prevented from taking the auspicia privata, although their use of them was probably scoffed at by their patrician rulers. On the one hand, we find that the incapacity of the Plebeians to share in the auspices was one of the arguments used against the permission of conubium between the orders;[137] on the other, that the auspex continues to be an integral part of a ceremony which was founded on plebeian marriage law.

It was different with the auspices taken on behalf of the state (auspicia publica). It is the Patricians alone who have these auspices, and only a magistrate belonging to the order can exercise the right of looking for them (spectio).[138] This remains not only a purely magisterial, but a purely patrician privilege, and the so-called plebeian magistrates of later times, great as their power was, had not the gift. It is quite true that, after the Plebs had forced its way into the consulship, this right could not be denied to the plebeian holders of the supreme office. But the admission was based on the legal fiction that the holder of an office once reserved to the patres was, for religious purposes, a patrician magistrate.[139]

The enjoyment of full political rights in ancient Rome was conditioned only by membership of a patrician gens; full citizenship here, as in most ancient states, being dependent on birth, and the membership of a purely private association satisfying all the demands that the state made as a condition of the attainment of its rights. But there were other forms of association of a definitely political character, amongst which the citizens were distributed, and as members of which they exercised active political rights or were subject to personal burdens. These were the three patrician tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, and the thirty curiae. With reference to the question whether these were primary and natural associations of an ethnic character or artificial creations made by a supreme authority after the founding of Rome, we have already seen[140] that the tribus are probably an ethnic survival artificially employed; in the case of the curiae, it must remain far less certain whether they were of spontaneous growth or purely artificial creations, or (what is perhaps more probable) in the main natural associations, artificially regulated in number and grouping to suit a political purpose.