Scius joins his legion as a private infantry soldier. He is in the "hobnailed" service. But if our young noble, Publius Silius Bassus, enters upon a military career, he will probably become one of the 120 Roman horsemen attached to the legion, and will be serving as a "knight" or "gentleman," with servants to relieve him of his rougher work. The cavalrymen among whom he serves do not ride upon a saddle with stirrups, but on a mere saddlecloth. On their left arm is a round shield or buckler; they carry a spear of extreme reach, wear a longer sword than the infantrymen, and on their back is a quiver containing three broad-pointed javelins, very similar to assegais, which serve them as missiles. If by good service they obtain medallions like the infantry, they will fasten them to the bridles and breast-straps of their horses, and altogether will make a fine and jingling show. Through the influence of his family, Publius will most likely be taken under the personal supervision of the general in command, will frequently mess with him, and will perhaps act as a kind of honorary aide-de-camp. After a sufficient initiation into military business, he will be appointed what may be called colonel of an infantry regiment of auxiliaries, then colonel of a regiment of the legion, and subsequently, if he is following the profession, colonel of a regiment of the auxiliary cavalry. He does not at any time pass through the rank of centurion, any more than the British officer passes through that of sergeant-major. The class distinction is at least as great in the case of the Romans.
When the young noble has completed this series of services—although the whole of it is not absolutely necessary, and it will be sufficient if he has been six months titular colonel of a regiment of the legion—he may perhaps return to Rome, and at the age of twenty-five may enter upon his first public position, and so become himself a senator. His duties may be connected with the Treasury at Rome itself, or more probably he will accompany a proconsul who is on his way to govern a province for a year—perhaps Andalusia, or Macedonia, or Bithynia. To his chief he stands for that year in a kind of filial relation. His main business will be to supervise the financial affairs, to act as paymaster, and to keep the accounts of the province, but he will also, when required, administer justice in place of the governor. In this capacity he learns the methods of provincial government in readiness for the time when he himself may be made a governor, whether by the senate or by the emperor. His next step upward will be to the post of aedile, one of the officials who control the streets, public buildings, markets, and police of Rome. By the age of thirty he may arrive at the second highest step on the official ladder, in a position which qualifies him to preside over a court of law. Or it may bring with it no greater function than that of presiding over "games" in the circus or amphitheatre, and of spending a liberal sum of money of his own upon making them both magnificent and novel. After this he may receive from the emperor the command of a brigade—the 12,000 men composed of a legion and its auxiliaries—perhaps at Cologne or Mainz, perhaps at Caerleon-on-Usk, perhaps near Antioch. In this position his movements are subject to the authority of the governor of the province, who is the "lieutenant" or "deputy" of His Highness in the larger capacity, while he himself is but a "lieutenant" of Caesar as commanding one of his legions.
He may now himself be appointed governor to a province, but hardly yet to those which are the "plums" of the empire. There is still one highest post for him to fill. This is the consulship. Under the republic the two consuls had been the highest executive officers of the state, and the year was dated by their names. Nominally they were still in the same position, and the sane emperors made a point of treating them with all outward respect. They took precedence of all but "His Highness the Head of the State." But whereas under the republic there had been but two consuls holding joint office for the year, under the emperors the post had become to such a degree complimentary, and there were so many nobles who desired the honour or to whom the emperor was minded to grant it, that it became the custom to hold the position only for two months, so that twelve persons in each year might boast of being ex-consuls or having "passed the consul's chair."
Publius Silius, we may suppose, passes up each step of the ladder, or what was called the "career of honours," and becomes senatorial governor of no less important a province than "Asia"—that nearer portion of Asia Minor which contained flourishing cities like Smyrna, Ephesus, and Rhodes. In that office, as in any other which he may hold, it behoves him to comport himself with caution and modesty. If he is a man of unusual influence or popularity he will do well to keep the fact concealed. There must be nothing in his demeanour or his speech to lay him open to a charge of becoming dangerous to the emperor. That emperor is Nero; and even stronger and saner emperors than Nero watched suspiciously the behaviour of aspiring men.
CHAPTER XIX
ROMAN RELIGION—STATE AND INDIVIDUAL
To undertake to set forth with any definiteness the "religious ideas of a Roman" of A.D. 64 would be an extremely difficult task. Those ideas would differ with the individual, being determined or varied by a number of considerations and influences—by locality, education, and temperament. Silius would not hold the views of Scius and probably not those of Marcia. We may speak of the "State religion" of Rome, as distinct from various other religions tolerated and practised in different parts of the empire, but it is scarcely possible to define the contents of that "State religion." There were certain special priests and priestly bodies who saw to it that certain rites and ceremonies should be perfortied scrupulously in a prescribed manner and on prescribed dates; but these were officers of the state, whose knowledge and functions were confined to the ritual observances with which they had to deal. They were not persons trained in a system of theology, nor were they preachers of a code of doctrines or morals; they had no "cure of souls," and belonged to no church; they had no credo and no Bible or corresponding authority to which to refer. Though most well-informed persons could have told the names of the prominent deities in the calendar—such as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Ceres—perhaps scarcely any one but an encyclopaedist or antiquarian could have named one-half of the total. It is not merely that the deities on the list were so numerous. There were other reasons for ignorance or vagueness. In the first place, the line between the operations of one deity and those of another was often too fine to draw, and deities originally more or less distinct came to be confused or identified. Secondly, it was often hard, if not impossible, to make up one's mind whether a so-called deity—such as Virtue, Peace, or Health—was supposed to have a real existence, or whether it was simply the personification of an abstract quality. Thirdly, many of the ancient divinities had fallen out of fashion, and to a large extent out of memory, while many new ones—Isis and Serapis for example—had come, or were coming, into vogue.
The state possessed its old-established calendar of days sacred to a number of deities, and its code of ritual to be performed in their honour. There were ancient prescriptions as to what certain priests should wear, what they should do or avoid in their priestly character, what victims—ox, sheep, or pig—they should sacrifice, what instruments they should use for the purpose, and in what formula of words they should pray in particular connections. There was a standing commission, with the Pontifex Maximus—at this date that excellent religious authority, the emperor Nero—at its head, to safeguard the state religion, to see that its requirements were carried out, and that no one ventured to commit an outrage towards it. But the state could not have told you with any precision that you must believe in just so many deities and no others; it could not have told you precisely what notions to entertain concerning those deities whom it did officially recognise; it dictated no theological doctrines; neither did it dictate any moral doctrines beyond those which you would find in the secular law. It reserved the right to prevent the introduction of foreign or new divinities if it found sufficient cause; but so long as the temples, the rites and ceremonies, the cardinal moral axioms of the Roman "religion," and the basic principles of Roman society were respected, the state practised no sort of inquisition into your beliefs or non-beliefs, and in no way interfered with your particular selection of favourite deities.
Polytheism in an advanced community is always tolerant, because it is necessarily always indefinite. What it does not readily endure is an organised attack upon the entire system, whether openly avowed or manifestly implied. Even undisguised unbelief in any deity at all it is often willing to tolerate, so long as the unbelief is rather a matter of dialectics than anything else, and makes no attempt at a crusade. When a state so disposed is found to interfere with a novel religion, it will generally be easy to perceive that the jealousy is not on behalf of the deities nor of a creed, but on behalf of the community in its political, economic, or social aspect. This, however, is perhaps to anticipate. Let us endeavour to realise as best we can the religious situation among the Roman or romanized portion of the population.
Though we are not here directly concerned with the steps by which the Roman religion had come to be what it was, we can scarcely hope to understand the position without some comprehension of that development. The Romans were a conservative people, and many of the peculiarities of their worship were due to the retention of old forms which had lost such spirit as they once possessed.