It is usually said about these multitudinous petty deities that the Roman was very religious, and saw in every act and everything for which he had a name, something mysterious and supernatural. The Greek, it is said, sees things on his own level, and adds to them a god who is human; it is by the human spirit that he interprets them. The Roman, on the contrary, sees things as mysteries and fills them with gods who are not human. That is true; but the question to be asked about these Roman gods is, to what stage of religious development do they belong: do they prove a primitive or an advanced stage of religious thought? It has been observed that these names of gods are all epithets, or adjectives; and it has been supposed that there was originally a noun belonging to them, that they were all epithets of one great deity, or, as some are masculine and some feminine, of a great male and a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, it is supposed, but was still present to the mind of the Roman, and thus his regiments of divine names are not really designations of different persons, but titles of the same person, supposed to be present alike in all these numberless manifestations. But it is not easy to conceive how, if primitive Italy had reached the conception of the unity of deity, that deity became so remarkably subdivided, nor how his own proper name and character were lost. It is much more natural to suppose that the petty gods of Rome were all the deities the early Latins had, and were worshipped for their own sake. They represent the stage of thought called Animism (see [above]) when every part of nature is thought to have its spirit, and the number of invisible beings is liable to be multiplied indefinitely. While other Aryan races had passed beyond this stage when we first know them, and advanced to the belief in great gods ruling great provinces of nature, the Latins, whose mind was organising rather than productive, made this advance more slowly, and instead of making it organised the spiritual world of animism with a thoroughness nowhere else equalled.1 They had, therefore, no gods properly so called, but only a host of spirits. Even the beings they possessed, who afterwards became great gods, were at first no more than functional spirits. Janus, afterwards one of the chief deities of Rome, is originally the "spirit of opening"; an abstraction capable of great multiplication; a Janus could be invoked for each act of that kind. Vesta is the spirit of the hearth; each household had its Vesta, both in early and in later times. Juno is not one but many: as each man had his genius, a spiritual self accompanying or guarding him, so each woman had—not her genius, but her Juno. There were many Vestas, many Junos; and it is only later that the great goddess arises, who may be looked to from every quarter. Others of the great gods of later Rome have a similar early history. Mars was at first the spirit which made the corn grow; Diana was a tree-spirit, Jovis or Diovis himself, though his name connects him with the Greek Zeus and the Sanscrit Dyaus, and though he is afterwards, like these, the god of the sky, was originally in Latin a spirit of wine, and was worshipped, the Jovis of each village or each farm, at the wine-feast in April when the first cask was broached. Thus the gods of the Latins are not beings who have an independent existence and features of their own; they are limited each to the particular object or process from which he derives his character, and have no realm beyond it. And the same is true of the family and house-gods, whose worship formed perhaps the principal part of the working religion of the Roman. The Lares represent the departed ancestors of the family; they dwell near the spot in the house where they were buried, and still preside over the household as they did in life. They are worshipped daily with prayers and offerings of food and drink; the family adore in them not so much the dead individuals, though their masks hang on the wall, as the abstraction of its own family continuity. The Penates or spirits of the store-chamber are worshipped along with the Lares, they represent the continuity of the family fortune. A more general name for the departed is the Manes, the kind ones; they are thought of as living below the earth; it is not individuals who are worshipped at their festivals, but the dead in the abstract, the former upholders of the family or of the people.
1 See on this Mr. Jevons's preface to Plutarch's Romane Questions (Nutt, 1892); which deserves to be published in a more accessible form.
The character of Roman worship is determined by the nature of its objects. As each of the gods has his basis in a material object or action, there can be no need of any images of them; where the object or the act is, there is the god, his character is expressed in it and not to be expressed otherwise. Nor could such gods require any temples. And what need of priests for them, when every one who knew their names (a great deal depended on that) could place himself in contact with them as soon as he saw the object or took in hand the action behind which they stood? Nor can many stories be told about gods like these,—the Romans have no mythology. The beings they worship are not persons but abstractions. They have just enough character to be male or female, but they cannot move about or act independently of their natural basis; they cannot marry, nor breed scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive for identifying with such beings a great man who has died; where there are no true gods, there cannot be any demi-gods or heroes. Only a very limited power can possibly be put forth by such beings; all they can do is to give or to withhold prosperity, each in the narrow section of affairs he has to do with.
The aim of worship where such a set of beings is concerned, is to get hold of the spirit or god connected with the act one has in view, and so to deal with him as to avert his disfavour, which the Roman always apprehended, and gain his concurrence. The house-gods are beings possessing a stated cult, but outside the house-cult the worshipper has to face the question at each emergency which god he ought to address. He might choose the wrong one, which would make his act of worship vain. If he names the god correctly he will have a hold on him; in a case of uncertainty, therefore, he names a number of gods, in the hope that one of them will be the right one; or he invokes them all. "Whether thou be god or goddess" he will further say, if he is in doubt on that point, "or by whatever name thou desirest to be called." Each god has his proper style and title, and it is vain to approach him without these; lists of the various gods and of their correct styles were therefore drawn up in very early times to serve as guides to the subject. The Latin word "indigito," to point out, from "digitus," a finger, is the term used of addressing a god; the lists of deities with their proper appellations were called "indigitamenta"; and the gods named in them "Dii indigetes." The act of worship is grave and formal; it has to be done with precision and in strict accordance with the rules; silence is commanded; the sacrificer repeats the prayer proper for the occasion after some one who knows it by rote; the worshippers veil their heads. In this the Roman ritual is markedly different from the Greek. Mommsen says the Greek prayed bareheaded, because his prayer was contemplation, looking at and to the gods; and the Roman with head covered, because his prayer was an exercise of thought; and in this he sees a characteristic indication of the difference between the two religions. A more modern interpretation of the Roman practice is that it arose from the fear that the worshipper might see the god whom he has just summoned by name, which would be dangerous. If any mistake is made in worship, the act is vain and has to be done over again.
The Great Gods.—The foregoing is the logic of the system on which the Roman religion, as distinguished from the foreign elements afterwards added to it, was based; the religion, however, does not come into view historically till it has begun to rise above such a worship of abstractions or of petty spirits, towards a worship of gods. It was apparently by the growth of larger social organisms that the Latin tribes advanced to the worship of greater gods. While the family religions continued to the end, the tribe had, as in the case of other early peoples, a larger religion than the family, and a union of tribes produced a religion on a still greater scale. The history of early Rome consists of a succession of such fusions of tribes into a larger political whole. When history opens, "Rome is a fully-formed and united city"; but Rome is made up of several tribes, which maintain many separate institutions. The religion of after times bears witness to these successive unions. "Deus Fidius," the god of good faith, is the sacred impersonation of an alliance. Mars and Quirinus are precisely similar to each other, and each has a flamen, or blower of the sacrificial flame, and a staff of twelve salii or dancers. Mars is the Roman, Quirinus the Sabine deity; and we see that the two tribes had, before they were united, very similar worships, which were both kept up after the union. The feriae Latinae, or Latin festival, celebrated on Mons Albanus, is common to the Latin tribes and commemorates their union. Jovis rises into importance with the growth of city life; he comes to be called father Jovis, Jupiter; there are many Jupiters, but the Jupiter of the city of Rome is the greatest and best of all; he bears the title of Optimus Maximus. He rises above Mars, in earlier times the first Roman god, after whom the first month of the year was called, before the month of Janus and the month of Februus, the purifier, were added to it. Janus, the great state-god of opening, was the only one of whom there was a representation; Mars was represented symbolically by a spear, but Janus was figured as a man with two faces. Vesta, the hearth-goddess of the state, was of course a great deity with a very important worship.
Here we must mention a side of Roman religion which no doubt has its roots far back in prehistoric darkness, but which could scarcely be organised as we find it till the greater gods had risen to some degree of power. It was believed that the gods were constantly making signs to men, especially in occurrences which take place in the air, such as thunder and lightning, and the flight of birds, but also in many other ways. Some of the signs were simple, so that any one could tell if they were lucky or the reverse, but some were not to be interpreted except by men possessing a special knowledge of the subject. And such men might be asked by an individual or by the state when about to enter on any undertaking, to seek a sign from heaven concerning that business. This became with the Romans a great and important act, and those who had it in their hands exercised great power.
Sacred Persons.—The priest in the earliest times was, in the domestic religion, the paterfamilias, in that of the tribe, which was but an extended household, the head of the leading family, and in the city, which was constituted after the same model, the king. Religion was the principal part of the service of the state; the king as such had to offer sacrifice, to cause the gods to be consulted, to prosecute and judge and punish those who had violated the laws and came under the anger of the gods. But as the state grew larger, various offices were set up to relieve the king of part of these duties; when new worships were added to the old ones, the care of them was in some cases committed to a special person or college; and these priesthoods and sacred guilds of early Rome maintained their place in the constitution for many centuries, and carried on this part of the public service long after the words they spoke and the acts they did had become meaningless. Beginning with the sacred persons attached to special cults, we have, first, three flamens, one of Mars, one of Quirinus, and one of Jovis (fl. Martialis, Quirinalis, Dialis). Mars and Quirinus have their dancers, as we mentioned above. Other flamens of lower rank were afterwards instituted for the separate worships of the tribes. Very old are the "fratres arvales," field-brothers, who served the creative goddess (Dea Dia) in the country in the month of May, with a view to a good growing summer, dancing to her and addressing hymns to her which may be read now but cannot be understood, and were unintelligible to the Romans themselves. The Luperci (wolf-men) held a shepherd's festival in the month of February, sacrificing goats and dogs to some rustic deity, and running naked through the streets afterwards, striking those they met with thongs cut from the hides of the victims. The six vestal virgins are well known, who had charge of keeping up the fire of Vesta, the house-fire of the state. They devoted their whole lives to this office, and enjoyed great respect. These priesthoods and corporations, instituted to secure the continuance of special cults, are not of a nature to bring the whole of life under the influence of the priests and so to foster a priestly type of religion. Nor were those other religious offices of a nature to do so, which were not attached to special cults but served the more general purpose of assisting and advising the state in matters connected with religion. First among these comes the office of pontifex, a word which is variously interpreted, either as "bridge-maker,"—that being a very important and solemn proceeding,—or as leader in a religious procession. There were originally five pontifices, and the number was afterwards raised to fifteen. They exercised a great variety of functions, and had a general oversight of all religious matters, both public and domestic. They were experts in ritual and in canon law; they advised the state as to the proper sacrifices to be offered for the public, and, when consulted, would also direct the private individual. Funerals, marriages, and other domestic occurrences into which religious considerations entered, were under their charge; and on the occurrence of portents and omens it was their duty to indicate the steps to be taken in order to find out what the gods wished to signify. They had charge of the calendar, and had to fix what days were proper for carrying on the business of the courts (dies fasti), and they were the authorities on the forms of legal process. The chief pontiff is called the "judge and arbiter of things divine and human," and the college had manifestly a very strong position. The same is true of the augurs or experts in signs and omens. Though they did not consult the gods about public undertakings until the magistrate or the general asked them to do so, they had power to stop proceedings of which they disapproved; and this at certain periods of Roman history they very frequently did. In Cicero's treatise on Divination a great deal of interesting matter may be found on this subject. Another sacred college of somewhat later date is that of the men, at first three in number, afterwards fifteen, who acted as expounders of the sacred Sibylline books, which King Tarquin purchased from the old woman or Sibyl, of Cumae.
Roman Religion Legal rather than Priestly.—While some of these priestly colleges exercised large powers, these powers were always regarded not as inherent but deputed. The sacred offices were not hereditary but elective; no course of training was necessary to qualify for them; men were chosen for them by the state as for any other public office, and those who became priests did not cease to be citizens but continued to sit in the Senate, and, as it might happen, to hold other offices at the same time. The growth of a priestly caste was thus effectively prevented; religion was precluded from having any free development of its own, and kept in the position of an instrument for the furtherance of ends of state. There is no great religion in which ritual is so much, doctrine and enthusiasm so little. All these priests and colleges exist for no end but to carry out with strict exactitude the ritual usage which is deemed necessary to keep on good terms with the gods. They have no doctrine to teach, no fervour to communicate, they do not even tell any stories. Punctiliousness and anxiety attend all their proceedings. To the Roman, Ihne says, "religion turns out to be the fear lest the gods should punish them for neglect; any unusual occurrence may be a sign that the gods are withdrawing their co-operation from the state, and this must be looked into, and the due expiations used if judged necessary." Ritual must always be carried out with the utmost precision; it is not the goodwill of the worshipper but his exactitude that counts. He may even cheat the gods of their due if he is formally correct in his observance. For example, if the auspices (the signs derived from birds) were unfavourable, they could be repeated till a better result was obtained.
What we have described is the religion of Rome in its original form, before it accepted foreign modifications. Its gods are spirits of the woods and fields, of the market, of the foray, of the treaty, of all the aspects, in fact, which life had borne to the tribes of Central Italy, especially to the Latins and the Sabines who combined to form the state of Rome. These gods form no family and have no history, they do not, like the gods of Greece, lay hold of the imagination, nor, like those of Germany, of the affections. They are only dimly known; but they are powerful, and it is necessary to reckon with them; and the only relations which can be kept up with such beings are those of business and of law. It follows that this religion is one of constraint and not of inspiration. In this it agrees with the Roman character, which is much more inclined to order than to freedom, to law than to art. The word religion has here its origin; its primary meaning is restraint or check, since the chief feeling with which the Roman regarded his gods was that of anxiety. Not that the gods were bad; Vediovis, the bad counterpart of Jovis, is a vanishing figure,—but they were ill-known, and might have cause to be angry. Worship, therefore, the practical cultivation of the friendship of the gods, swallows up here the other elements of religion as a whole. Religion does not free the forces of human nature to realise themselves in spontaneous activity, but enchains them to the punctilious service of a nonhuman authority. Everything exciting is kept at a distance, and men are trained in obedience and scrupulousness and self-denial. They produce no beautiful works of art, and have hardly any stories to delight in; but they are reverent and conscientious; private feeling is sacrificed with an austere satisfaction to the public interest, and they accordingly build up a great power. Living in an atmosphere of magic, where unseen dangers lurk on every side, and there is virtue in words and forms correctly used to avert these dangers, the Roman develops to perfection one side of religion. To its inspirations and enthusiasms and hidden consolation he is a stranger; but he knows it better than others as a conservative and regulating force, which checks passion, calls for wary and orderly conduct, and causes the individual to subordinate himself to the community.
Changes introduced from without.—The Roman religion had, properly speaking, no development. What it might have become had it been left to unfold itself without interference from without, we can only guess; but it was early brought under the influence of more highly developed religions, and it proved to have so little power of resisting innovations that it speedily parted with much of its own native character. The Romans were not unconscious that their religion was an imperfect one; they never claimed, when they were conquering the world, that their religion was the only true one, or had any mission to prevail over others. They were tolerant from the first of the religions of other peoples. The gods of other peoples they always believed to be real beings, with whom it was well for them also to be on good terms. If everything in the world had its spirit, these gods also were the spirits of their own countries and nations; the very notion of deity which the Romans entertained prevented them from having any exclusive belief in their own gods or from denying the right of the gods of others.2 When therefore they came in contact with foreign religions, they were not protected by any profound conviction of the truth of their own, and were exposed to the full force of the new ideas. The new religions came to them along with the culture of peoples much further advanced in art and in thought than they were themselves; at each such contact, therefore, they felt the foreigner to be superior to themselves in intellectual matters; and wherever this happens, the less highly gifted race is likely to change in its religion as well as in other things. We have to note the changes which were produced by such external influences.