Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul

by T. G. Tucker

[Illustration: FIG. 111.—ISIS WORSHIP. (Wall-Painting.)]

In the multiplicity of deities the ordinary people were prepared to accept as many more as you chose to offer them, especially if the worship attaching to them contained mystic or orgiastic ceremonies. By this date the populace had become exceedingly mixed, especially in the capital, and the cool hard-headed Roman stock had been largely replaced or leavened by foreign elements, especially from the East. The official worship of the state was formal and frigid; it offered nothing to the emotions or the hopes. Many among the people felt an instinct for something more sacramental, and especially attractive was any form of worship which promised a continued existence, and probably a happier existence, after death. Even the mere mysteriousness of a form of worship had its allurements. Hence a tendency to Judaism, still more to the Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris. The latter made many proselytes, particularly among the women, and contained ideas which are by no means ignoble but to our modern minds far more truly "religious" than anything to be found in the native Roman cults. To pass through purification, to practise asceticism, to feel that there was a life beyond the grave apportioned to your deserts, to go through an impressive form of worship held every day, and to have the emotions thus worked upon—all this supplied something to the moral nature which was lacking in the chill sacrifices and prayers to Jupiter and the other national divinities. In vain had the authorities, in their doubt as to the moral effects, tried on several occasions to suppress this foreign worship; it always revived, and it now held its established place both in the imperial city and in the provinces, particularly near the sea, for it was especially a sailors' religion. Rome, like Pompeii, had its temple of Isis and her daily celebrations. There was, however, no necessary conflict between this worship and the official religion. It was quite possible to accept Isis while accepting Jupiter. Nor, though this particular cult has required mention, must it be taken as belonging to more than a section of the Roman population. Most Romans would look upon it and other deviations with acquiescence, some with contempt, and perhaps some with a shake of the head, while themselves satisfied with an indifferent conformity to the more established customs of the state.

Setting aside the devotees of the mystic, the more ordinary point of view was that between Romans and the established gods of Rome there is an understanding. The gods will support Rome so long as Rome pays to them their dues of formal recognition. Their ritual must not be neglected by the authorities; it is not necessary for an individual member of the community to concern himself further in the matter. The state, through its appointed ministers, will make the necessary sacrifices and say the necessary words; the citizen need not put in an appearance or take any part. He will not do or say anything disrespectful towards the deities in question, and he will enjoy the festivals belonging to them. If remarkable portents and disasters occur, he will agree that there is something wrong in the behaviour of the state, and that there must be some public purification or other placation of the gods. If the state orders such a proceeding, he will perform whatever may be his share in it. So far he is loyal to the "religion of the state."

[Illustration: FIG. 112.—HOUSEHOLD SHRINE. (Pompeii.)]

In his private capacity he has his own wants, fears, and hopes. He therefore betakes himself to whatever divinity he considers most likely to help him; he makes his own prayers and vows an offering if his request is granted. Reduced to plain commercial language his ordinary attitude is—no success, no payment. A cardinal difference between the religion of the Romans and our own is to be seen in the nature of their prayers. They always ask for some definite advantage—prosperity, safety, health, or the like. They never pray for a clean heart or for some moral improvement. Of more importance than the man's moral condition will be his scrupulous observance of the right external practices. Unlike the Greek, he will cover his head when he prays. He will raise his hand to his lips before the statue, or, if he is appealing to the celestial deities, he will stretch his palms upwards above his head; if to the infernal powers, he will hold them downwards. These are the things that matter.

At home, if he belongs to the better type of representative citizen, our Roman has his household shrine and his household divinities, whom he never neglects. If he is very pious, he may pray to them every morning, or at least before every enterprise. In any case he will remember them with a small offering when he dines. There are the "gods of the stores"—his "penates"—certain deities whom he has selected as guardians of his belongings, and who have their little images by the hearth in the kitchen. There is the household "protector," or more commonly there are two, who may be painted under the form of lightly-stepping youths in a little niche or shrine above a small altar. To these he will offer fruits, flowers, incense, and cakes. And there is the "Genius" of the master of the house, who is also painted on the wall, or who may be represented by his own portrait bust or by the picture of a snake. That "Genius" means the power presiding over his vitality and health and wellbeing. If he is an artisan and belongs to a guild, he will pay special worship to the patron god or goddess of that guild—to Vesta, if he is a baker, to Minerva, if he is a fuller. Out of doors he will find a street shrine in the wall at a crossing, pertaining to the tutelary god of what may be called his "parish," and this he will not neglect. Like all other orthodox Romans he will not undertake any new enterprise—betrothal, marriage, journey, or important business—without ascertaining that the auspices are favourable.

In a general way he has a notion that the gods are displeased at certain forms of crime, and that they approve of justice and the carrying out of compacts. The gods overlook the state, because the state engages them so to do, and therefore to break the laws of the state is to anger the gods of the state. But this is rather subtle for the common man, and there is generally no understood immediate relation between these gods and his moral conduct, unless he has sworn an oath by one or other of them. The purpose of calling a god to witness is to bring upon a perjurer the anger of the offended deity. But he entertains no such conception as the modern one of "sin" or of "remorse for sin." "Sin" is either a breach of the secular law or breach of a contract with a deity and "remorse" is but fear of or regret for the consequences.

His morality is determined by the laws of the state, family discipline, and social custom. For that reason his vices on the positive side will mostly be those of his appetites, and on the negative side a want of charity and compassion. He may be guiltless of lying and stealing, murder and violence; he may be honest and law-abiding; but there is nothing to make him temperate, continent, or gentle. His avowed code is "duty," and duty is defined by law and tradition.

If this is the religious condition of the common-place man or woman—a blend of superstition, formalism, and tolerance—it is by no means that of the educated thinker. Such persons were for the most part freethinkers. Many of them, finding no better guide to conduct, conform to the "religion" of the state without any real belief in its gods or attaching any importance to its ceremonies. They do not feel called upon to propagate any other views, and they probably think the current notions are at least as good for the ignorant as any others. If they are poets, like Horace or Lucan, they will dress up the mythology, mostly from Greek models, and write fluently about Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mercury, either attributing to them the recognised characters and legends, or varying them so as to make them more picturesque and interesting—perhaps even improving them—but all the time believing no more in the stories they are telling, or in the deities themselves, than Tennyson need have believed in King Arthur and Guinevere. The gods are good poetic material and are sure to afford popular, or at least inoffensive, reading. The poets doubtless do something to humanise and beautify the popular conception of a deity, but they seldom deliberately set out with any such purpose. If the educated are not poets, but public men of affairs, they may believe just as little, and yet regard the established cult of the gods as an excellent discipline for the vulgar and the best known means of upholding the national principle of "duty." If they are philosophers they may not, and the Epicureans in reality do not, believe in the gods at all—certainly not as they are generally conceived—and will openly discuss in speech and in writing the question of their existence or non-existence, and of their character and nature if they do exist. They will endeavour to substitute for the barren formalism of rites and ceremonies, or the inconsistent or incomplete traditional morality of duty, another set of principles as a sounder guide to life and conduct. Some are monotheists, some are simply in doubt. Says Nero's own tutor, Seneca, "Do you want to propitiate the gods? Then be good. The true worshipper of the gods is he who acts like them." "Better," remarks Plutarch, "not believe in a God at all than cringe before a god who is worse than the worst of men." In the actual worship of images none of them believe. One conspicuous writer of the time says: "To look for a form and shape to a god, I consider to be a mark of human feebleness of mind." Concerning the schools of thought and in particular the tenets of those Stoics and Epicureans whom St. Paul met at Athens, and whom he could meet in educated circles all over the Roman Empire, we shall have to speak in a following chapter, when summing up the intellectual and moral condition of the time. Meanwhile it should be understood that, though a profound or anything approaching a professional study of philosophy was discouraged among the true Romans—more than once the professional philosophers were banished from the capital—there were few cultivated persons who did not to some extent dabble in it, and even go so far as to profess an adherence to one school or another. None of these men believed in the "Roman religion" as administered by the state, although many of them were administering it themselves. The same man could one day freely discuss the gods in conversation or a treatise, and the next he might be clad in priestly garb and officially seeing that the rites of sacrifice were being religiously carried out in terms of the books, or that the auspices were being properly taken.

It does not, however, follow at all that because poet or public man cared nothing for the pantheon and all its mythology, he was therefore without his superstitions. He might still tremble at signs and portents, at comets, at dreams, and at the unpropitious behaviour of birds and beasts. He might believe in astrology and resort to its professors, called the "Chaldaeans." On the other hand he might laugh at such things. It was all a matter of temperament. It certainly was not every man who dared to act like one of the Roman admirals. When it was reported that the omens were unpropitious to an imminent battle because the sacred chickens "would not eat," he ordered them to be thrown into the sea so that at least they might drink. The freethinkers were in advance of their times. "Science" in the modern sense hardly existed, and until phenomena are explained it is hard to avoid a perplexity or astonishment which is equivalent to superstition.