I have yet to say a few words in answer to the interesting question whether the religious system we have been examining had any appreciable influence on the character of the Roman people: whether it contributed to build up that virtus of the State and the individual which enabled them to subdue and govern the world, as the pietas of Aeneas in the poem armed him for the subjugation and civilization of the wild Italian tribes. The question may at first sight seem a superfluous one, since the religion of a people is rather the expression of its own genius for dealing with the perplexities of human life, than a vera causa in determining its character; yet it is worth asking, for it is unquestionable that the peculiar turn taken by a nation’s religious beliefs and practices does in course of time come to react upon its character and morals.
It has often been said of the Roman religion that it had nothing to do with righteousness, and was without ethical value. The admirable criticism of it given by Mommsen in the first volume of his History may originally have suggested this view; but if so, the copyists have exaggerated the opinion of the master in one particular point, failing to give due weight to the general tenor of his exposition. However this may be, we certainly are now always invited to conclude that this great people, which in its dealings with human beings discovered an extraordinary genius for expansion and adaptation, in its attitude to the supernatural remained cooped up within curiously narrow mental limits, drawing no real sustenance either from its primitive beliefs or its quaint and detailed practice. The current views of this kind have just lately been so well summed up in an admirable English work on the latest age of Roman society and thought, that I cannot do better than borrow a few sentences from it[[1510]]:—
‘The old Roman theology was a hard, narrow, unexpansive system of abstraction and personification, which strove to represent in its Pantheon the phenomena of nature, the relations of man in the State or in the clan, every act and feeling and incident in the life of the individual. Unlike the mythologies of Hellas and the East, it had no native principle of growth, or adaptation to altered needs of society and the individual imagination. It was also singularly wanting in awe and mystery. The religious spirit which it cultivated was formal, timid, and scrupulous.... The old Roman worship was businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a contract with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterized by the hard and literal formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness required in pleadings before the praetor. To allow devotional feeling to transgress the bounds prescribed by immemorial custom was “superstitio.”’
It is impossible to deny that there is much truth in all this; yet I may venture to express a doubt whether it contains the whole truth. The fact is that the subject needs a more historical treatment, and perhaps also something of the historical imagination, to do it full justice.
In the earliest periods of Roman civilization, those of the family and the beginnings of the State, the Roman attitude towards the supernatural was, if I am not mistaken, a real contributing cause towards the formation of virtus. It was not merely an attitude of business and bargaining. So far as we know it, the common form of address to the gods was not ‘send me what I want—sun, rain, victory, &c., and you shall then have these gifts’; but ‘I give you these sacrifices and expect you to do your part; in taking all this trouble to act correctly by you, I establish a right as against you.’ It is true that in one particular form of dealing with the gods, the vow, or solemn undertaking (votum), the transaction wears more the character of a definite bargain; if the god will do certain things, he shall then have his reward. So Cloanthus in Virgil addresses the gods of the sea[[1511]]—
Di, quibus imperium est pelagi, quorum aequora curro,
Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum
Constituam ante aras, voti reus, extaque salsos
Proiciam in fluctus et vina liquentia fundam.
But the votum was the exception, not the rule; it was a promise made by an individual at some critical moment, not the ordered and recurring ritual of the family or the State. It takes its peculiar form simply because the maker of the vow is not at the particular moment in a position to fulfil it. The normal attitude of the Roman in prayer and sacrifice was not this; it is much more exactly expressed in the formula of the farmer’s prayer already quoted in these pages: ‘Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee be willing and propitious to me, my household, and my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land.’ This is the usual and natural attitude of all peoples in sacrificing to their gods, and is far from being peculiar to Rome; but it was the nature of the Roman to express it in a more formal and definite way than others, and this led to an outward religion of formulae which has done much to obscure for us, as indeed for the Romans themselves, the real thought underlying them.