Yet the revival of the State religion by Augustus is at once the most remarkable event in the history of the Roman religion, and one almost unique in religious history. I have repeatedly spoken of that State religion as hypnotised or paralysed, meaning that the belief in the efficacy of the old cults had passed away among the educated classes, that the mongrel city populace had long been accustomed to scoff at the old deities, and that the outward practice of religion had been allowed to decay. To us, then, it may seem almost impossible that the practice, and to some extent also the belief, should be capable of resuscitation at the will of a single individual, even if that individual represented the best interests and the collective wisdom of the State. For it is impossible to deny that this resuscitation was real; that both pax deorum and ius divinum became once more terms of force and meaning. Beset as it was by at least three formidable enemies, which tended to destroy it even while they fed on it, like parasites in the animal or vegetable world feeding on their hosts,—the rationalising philosophy of syncretism, the worship of the Caesars, and the new Oriental cults,—the old religion continued to exist for at least three centuries in outward form, and to some extent in popular belief.
We must remember the tenacious conservatism of the Roman mind: the emotional stimulus of the age of depression and despair which preceded this revival: and the conscientious care with which the successors of Augustus, Tiberius in particular, carried out his religious policy.[901] Then as we become more familiar with the Corpus of inscriptions and the writings of the early Christian fathers, we begin to appreciate the fact that the natural and inherited religion of a people cannot altogether die, and that to describe this old Roman religion as dead is to use too strong a word. The votive inscriptions of the Empire show us overwhelming proof of surviving belief in the great deities of the olden time, and of the care taken of their temples. Antoninus Pius is honoured "ob insignem erga caerimonias publicas curam et religionem."[902] Marcus Aurelius himself did not hesitate in times of public distress to put in action the whole apparatus of the old religion.[903] Constantius in A.D. 329 was shown round the temples when he visited Rome for the first time, and in spite of his Christianity took a curious interest in them.[904] That the private worship, too, went on into the fourth century we know from the Theodosian code, where in the interest of Christianity the worship of Lares Penates and Genius is strictly forbidden.[905] Again, the constant ridicule with which the Christian writers speak of the minutiae of the heathen worship makes it quite plain that they knew it as actually existing, and not merely from books like those of Varro. They do not so much attack the Oriental religions of their time as the genuine old Roman cults; more especially is this the case with St. Augustine, from whose de Civitate Dei we have learnt so much about the latter. The very necessity under which the leaders of Christianity found themselves of suiting their own religious character, and in some ways even their own ceremonies, to the habits and prejudices of the pagans, tells the same story. But the question how far Latin Christianity was indebted to the religion of the Romans must be postponed to my last lecture; I have said enough to indicate in which direction we must go for evidence that the work of Augustus was not in vain, that it gave fresh stimulus to a plant that still had some life in it.
If, then, the Augustan revival was not a mere sham, but had its measure of real success, how are we to account for this? I think the explanation is not really difficult, if we bring to bear upon the problem what we have learnt from the beginning about the religious experience of the Romans. Let us note that Augustus troubled himself little about the later political developments of religion, which we have lately been examining,—about pontifices, augurs, and Sibylline books; these institutions, which had been so much used in the republican period for political and party purposes, it was rather his interest to keep in the background. But in one way or another he must have grasped the fundamental idea of the old Roman worship, that the prosperity and the fertility of man, and of his flocks and herds and crops on the farm, and the prosperity and fertility of the citizen within the city itself, equally depended on the dutiful attention (pietas) paid to the divine beings who had taken up their abode in farm or city.[906] The best expression of this idea in words is pax deorum,—the right relation between man and the various manifestations of the Power,—and the machinery by which it was secured was the ius divinum.[907] We shall not be far wrong if we say that it was Augustus' aim to re-establish the pax by means of the ius; but if we wished to explain the matter to some one who has not been trained in these technical terms, it would be better to say that he appealed to a deeply-rooted idea in the popular mind,—the idea that unless the divine inhabitants were properly and continually propitiated, they would not do their part in supporting the human inhabitants in all their doings and interests. This popular conviction he deliberately determined to use as his chief political lever.
This has, I think, been insufficiently emphasised by historians, who contemplate the work of this shrewd statesman too entirely from the political point of view. I am sure that he had learnt from his predecessors in power that reform on political lines only was without any element of stability, and that he knew that it was far more important to touch a spring in the feeling of the people, than to occupy himself, like Sulla, in mending old machinery or inventing new. If he could but induce them to believe in him as the restorer of the pax deorum, he knew that his work was accomplished. And I believe that we have what is practically his own word for this conviction; not in his Res Gestae, the Monumentum Ancyranum, which is a record of facts and of deeds only, but in the famous hymn which Horace wrote at his instance and to give expression to his ideas, for use in the Secular Games of 17 B.C., to which I am coming presently. Ferrero has lately described that hymn as a magnificent poem,[908] an opinion which to me is incomprehensible. It is neat, and embodies the necessary ideas adequately, but it is far too flat to be the genuine offspring of such a poet as Horace. To me it reads as though Augustus had written it in prose and then ordered his poet to put it into metre; and assuredly it expresses exactly what we should have expected Augustus to wish to be sung by his youthful choirs. I shall refer to it again shortly to illustrate another point; all I need say now is that he who reads it carefully and thinks about it will find there the conviction of which I have been speaking, that prosperity and fertility, whether of man, beast, or crop, depend on the Roman's attitude toward his deities; religion, morality, fertility, and public concord are the points which the astute ruler wished to be emphasised.[909] That this hymn was a really important part of the ceremony is certain from the fact that it was given to the best living poet to write, and that his name is mentioned as its author in the inscription, discovered not many years ago, which commemorated the whole performance: "CARMEN COMPOSUIT Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS."[910]
If, then, I am right, this strange movement was not merely a revival of religious ceremonies, but an appeal through them to the conscience of the people. A revival of religious life it, of course, was not, for what we understand by that term had never existed at Rome; but it was an attempt to give expression, in a religious form and under State authorisation, to certain feelings and ideas not far removed in kind from those which in our own day we describe as our religious experience. Whether Augustus himself shared in these feelings and ideas it is, of course, impossible to conjecture. But as a man's religious convictions are largely the result of his own experience and of that of the society in which he lives, and as Augustus' own experience for the twenty years before he took this work in hand had been full of trial and temptation, I am disposed to guess that he was rather expressing a popular conviction which he shared himself than merely standing apart and administering a remedy. And this view seems to me to be on the whole confirmed by the tone and spirit of the great literary works of the age.
Augustus did not become pontifex maximus till the year 12 B.C., nineteen years after he had crushed Antony at Actium; he waited with scrupulous patience until the headship of the Roman religion became vacant by the death of Lepidus.[911] But this did not prevent him from pursuing his religious policy with great earnestness before that date, for he had long been a member of the pontifical college, as well as augur and quindecemvir. No sooner had he returned to Rome from Egypt than the work of temple restoration began, the outward and visible sign to all that the pax deorum was to be firmly re-established. The fact of the restoration he has told us in half a dozen words in his own Res Gestae:[912] "Duo et octaginta templa deum in urbe ex decreto senatus refeci," adding that not one was neglected that needed repair. Among them was that oldest and smallest temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol to which I referred in a former lecture;[913] and his personal interest in the work is attested by Livy, who says that he himself heard Augustus tell how he had found an inscription, relating to the second spolia opima dedicated there, when he went into the temple bent on the work of restoration.[914] It needs but a little historical imagination to appreciate the psychological importance of all this work. We have to think not only of the bystanders who watched, but of the very workmen themselves, rejoicing at once in new employment and in the revival of an old sense of religious duty. Little more than twenty years earlier, no workman could be found to lay a hand upon the newly-built temple of Isis, when the consul Aemilius Paulus gave orders for its destruction as a centre of superstitio;[915] now abundant work was provided which every man's conscience would approve. When I think of the Rome of that year 28, with all its fresh hope and confidence taking visible shape in this way, even Horace's famous lines seem cold to me (Od. ii. 6. 1):
delicta maiorum immeritus lues Romane, donec templa refeceris aedesque labentis deorum et foeda nigro simulacra fumo.
The restoration of the temple buildings implies also a revival of the old ritual, the cura et caerimonia. As to this we are very imperfectly informed,—we have no correspondence of this age, as of the last, and the details of life in the Augustan city are not preserved in abundance. But Ovid comes to the rescue here, as in secular matters, and on the whole the evidence in his Fasti suggests that the old sacrificing priesthoods, the Rex and the flamines, were set to their work again. He tells us, for example, how he himself, as he was returning to Rome from Nomentum,[916] had seen the flamen Quirinalis carrying out the exta of a dog and a sheep which had been sacrificed in the morning in the city, to be laid on the altar in the grove of Robigus. In spite of all its disabling restrictions, it was possible once more to fill the ancient priesthood of Jupiter; and of the Rex sacrorum and the other flamines we hear in the early Empire.[917] They were in the potestas of the pontifex maximus, and as after 12 B.C. that position was always held by the Princeps himself, it was not likely that they would be allowed to neglect their duties. Other ancient colleges were also revived or confirmed by the inclusion of the Emperor himself among their members (a fact which Augustus was careful to record in his own words), e.g. the Fetiales, of whom he had made use when declaring war with Antony and Cleopatra;[918] the Sodales Titienses, an institution of which we have lost the origin and meaning; the Salii, Luperci, and above all the Fratres Arvales, the brotherhood whose duty it had once been to lead a procession round the crops in May, and so to ensure the pax deorum for the most vital material of human subsistence. The corn-supply now came almost entirely from Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration of the old caerimonia must have appealed rather to the eye than the mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the work and history of the Fratres, and then go on to find further illustration of the curious mixture of old and new which the Roman religion was henceforward to be.
The fortunate survival of large fragments of the records of the Brotherhood, dating from shortly after the battle of Actium, show that it continued to work and to flourish down to the reign of Gordian (A.D. 241), and from other sources we know that it was still in existence in the fourth century.[919] These records have been found on the site of the sacred grove, at the fifth milestone on the via Campana between Rome and Ostia, which from the time of this revival onwards was the centre of the activity of the Fratres.
The brethren were twelve in number, with a magister at their head and a flamen to assist him; they were chosen from distinguished families by co-optation, the reigning Emperor being always a member.[920] Their duties fell into two divisions, which most aptly illustrate respectively the old and the new ingredients in the religious prescriptions of Augustus, as they were carried out by his successors. The first of these is the performance of the yearly rites in honour of the Dea Dia, the goddess or numen without a substantival name (a form perhaps of Ceres and Tellus), whose home was in the sacred grove, and who was the special object of this venerable cult. Secondly, the care of vows, prayers, and sacrifices for the Emperors and other members of the imperial house. I must say a few words about each of these divisions of duty.