The Religious Experience of the Roman People / From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus

by W. Warde Fowler

[790] Cic. de Legibus, i. 7. 22 foll.: "Est igitur, quoniam nihil est ratione melius, eaque in homine et in deo, prima homini cum deo rationis societas. Inter quos autem ratio, inter eosdem etiam recta ratio communis est," etc.

[791] Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 226 foll.

[792] Social Life at Rome, p. 117.

[793] Ib. p. 118 foll.

[794] I may take this opportunity of noting that a Roman might better understand this notion of his Reason as the voice of God within him, or conscience, from his own idea of his "other soul," or genius; see above, p. 75. But we do not know for certain that it was presented to him in this way by Panaetius, though Posidonius (ap. Galenum, 469) used the word δαἱμων in this sense, as did the later Stoics; see Mulder, de Conscientiae notione, p. 71. Seneca, Ep. 41. 2, uses the word spiritus: "Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet ... in unoquoque virorum bonorum, quis deus incertum est, habitat deus" (from Virg. Aen. viii. 352). Cp. Marcus Aurelius iii. 3. Seneca uses the word genius clearly in this sense in Ep. 110 foll. On the Stoic daemon consult Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 332 foll.; Oakesmith, Religion of Plutarch, ch. vi.

[795] See, e.g., Zeller, p. 268.

[796] This habit of illustrating by historical examples had an educational value of its own, but serves well to show how comparatively feeble was the appeal of Stoicism to the conscience. It may be seen well in Valerius Maximus, whose work, compiled of fact and fiction for educational purposes, is far indeed from being an inspiring one. See Social Life at Rome, p. 189.

[797] Arrian, Discourses, i. 3. 1-6 (Golden Sayings of Epictetus, No. 9).

[798] Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 190 foll. (Panaetius), and 244 foll. (Posidonius), Zeller 160 foll. This is the Fate or Providence on which the moral lesson of the Aeneid is based; see below, p. 409 foll. Aeneas is the servant of Destiny. If he had persisted in rebelling against it by remaining at Carthage with Dido, that would not have changed the inevitable course of things, but it would have ruined him.

[799] Gifford Lectures, ii. 96.