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

by W. Warde Fowler

[418] Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 195.

[419] The fact that words like reus and damnatus were applied respectively to persons who had made a vow and to those who had performed it, i.e. as being liable like a defendant, and then released from that position by a verdict or sentence (see Wissowa, R.K. p. 320), is of course significant of the idea of the transaction in the mind of the Roman, who, as Macrobius says (iii. 2. 6) se numinibus obligat, as an accused person is obligatus to the authorities of the State (Mommsen, Strafrecht, 189 foll.). It is the natural tendency of the Roman mind to give all transactions a legal sanction; but it does not thence follow that the original idea was really thought of as a contract, and we have only to reflect that the final act was a thank-offering to see the difference between the civil and the religious process.

[420] Livy v. 21.

[421] Macr. iii. 9, 6. He says that he found it in the fifth book of Res reconditae by one Sammonicus Serenus, and that the latter had himself found it "in cuiusdam Furii vetustissimo libro."

[422] On this subject see article "Devotio" in Pauly-Wissowa.

[423] Livy viii. 10, "licere consuli dictatori praetori...." Cp. Cic. de Nat. deorum, ii. 10, "at vero apud maiores tanta religionis vis fuit, ut quidam imperatores etiam se ipsos dis immortalibus capite velato certis verbis pro republica devoverent."

[424] See Münzer's article "Decii" in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl.; Soltau, Die Anfänge der röm. Geschichtschreibung, p. 48 foll.

[425] Livy viii. 9 foll.; Dio Cassius, fragment, xxxv. 6; Ennius, Ann. vi. 147, Baehrens. The latter fragment is the oldest reference to the event which we possess, and just sufficient to confirm Livy's account: "Divi hoc audite parumper, ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis certando prudens animum de corpore mitto."

[426] It is worth remarking that the sacrificial aspect struck St. Augustine. In Civ. Dei, v. 18, he writes: "Si se occidendos certis verbis quodam modo consecrantes Decii devoverunt, ut illis cadentibus et iram deorum sanguine suo placantibus Romanus liberaretur exercitus," and goes on to compare the Decii with Christian martyrs. I am indebted for this reference to Mayor's note on Cicero, de Nat. deor. ii. 3. 10.

[427] See above, p. 176; Wissowa, R.K. p. 352, note 1.