Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
ROMAN
MYTHOLOGY
From a small Latin settlement on the Tiber
Rome grew to become a great civilisation
whose genius dominated most of the then
known world. She continued to exert a
considerable influence over Western thought
centuries artei to exist as
a living language. So far docs Rome per-
meate our thought that its legends, like those
ot Greece, have become part of our European
heritage. The names of Jupiter. Apollo,
Mars and Diana are known universally and
the stirring tales drawn from the rich store-
house of classical myth arc still avidly read.
A practical people, the Romans evolved a
practical religion which put heavy emphasis
on citizen virtues. The object of their reli-
gious rites was not to give undemanding
worship but to solicit divine aid in keeping
the affairs of man and state running smoothly.
Inevitably, Rome opened up to a great
influx of exotic religion and philosophy and
these are outlined fully and concisely. Epic-
ureanism, Stoicism, Mithraism, the cult of
and other creeds all struggled for ascen-
Isis
A.S.
MCMLXVIII
Copyright ©
1969 Stewart Perowne
Second impression 1973
ISBN 600 03347 3
All rights reserved <tcc. V-43
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONNOLLY BRANCH
Page
CONTENTS Introduction
Origins
1
13
Gods 15
Worship 26
Cato, 27 Iguvium Tablets, 29 Vesta and her Fire, 32
Lupercalia, 32 Flamen Dialis, 34
The Newcomers 48
Castor and Pollux, 48 The Etruscans, 49 Augurs, 53
Dei Consentes, 57 Apollo and the Sybil of Cumae, 58
New Religious Practices, 60 The Great Mother, 63
Epicureans and Stoics 70
Athenian Philosophy, 70 Epicurus, 71 Zeno, 72 Pa-
naetius, 74
Immortal Longings 76
Cicero, 76 Pythagoras, 78 Shades of the Under-
world, 82 Traditionalism in Religion, 82 Deifica-
tion, 83
Acknowledgments 138
Index i39
Astrological globe nj
Mosaic of nereidi with tea-monstei 10-117
DC nv<r god,
I iher rn lining I , 117
Revellers at an Etruscan feast 1 20
Panoramic view of the
Forum taken from the
north-west. Extreme left
is a glimpse of the Arch
of Septimius Severus
and behind it is the
brown-walled gable of
the Curia or Senate
House. In the left
foreground are the
columns of the Temple
of Saturn with in the
middle distance, centre
of picture, the Temple
of Antoninus and Faustina.
The little white building
to its right is the temple
of Vesta. On the extreme
right is the Temple of
Castor and Pollux. On
the horizon, centre of
picture, can be seen the
Colosseum and to its
right the Arch of Titus
at the head of the
Sacred Way.
The words Rome and religion are inseparable,
n
ORIGINS
Sarcophagus of an constituent elements we come to that which was tion of an Italian custom, we must examine his
Etruscan magnate from
Tarquinia. The language
in theend to prove the most potent of all, namely evidence very carefully before we can say he is
in which the inscription is
Greece. Not the mainland of Hellas, whose telling us anything aboutItalic ways at all.'
written has not yet been influence was not felt until later, but the Greek What was of Italic culture was a whole
there
deciphered. It is not
colonies in southern Italy, some of them hardly era, if not two, behind that of Greece. When the
surprising that the relief
depicts scenes of violence: a hundred miles from Rome, and so numerous Etruscans came to Italy, bringing with them the
though highly civilised that the region was called Magna Graecia, Great art of writing which they seem to have learned
the Etruscans were cruel
and aggressive. Greece. To this day there are more Doric temples from the Greeks, the Homeric poems were
standing in Magna Graecia and Sicily than in already a century old; and the Homeric poems,
Greece itself. The oldest of these colonies were be it remembered, recall and record many deeds,
founded in the eighth century B.C., but the many cities and many artefacts of far older times.
region's links with Greece go back to the thir- The civilisation of Crete had come to an end more
teenth. than half a millenium before, to be followed by
Only now do we come to the actual founding of that of Mycenae. The citadels of Mycenae and
Rome. At some time in the eighth century a Tiryns, the tombs and palaces at Pylos, the
primitive settlement appears on the Palatine, and jewellery, the gold vessels and ornaments and arms
with it Rome begins. But for the discussion of in the National Museums at Athens and Hera-
Roman religion we must keep in mind two kleion in Crete still astound the modern beholder.
facts. The first is that to identify the genuine All of this august glory was the birthright, the
Italic indigenous beliefs and practices we have to patrimony of the classical Greek culture which
remove an overlay of Etruscan and Greek in- was now coming to birth, at a time when the
fluence. 'If, to quote Rose again, 'we find for Romans, the future masters of Greece and the
instance a rite described by Pausanias as alive in world were still, technically, savages. Savagery
his day (i.e. in the second century a.d.) we may had therefore to survive for only a comparatively
be pretty sure that we are dealing with a Greek short time to leave an abiding mark on the relig-
practice of some sort ; but if we find, in Virgil or ion of the Roman republic and empire, and that
Ovid (both poets of the Augustan age) a descrip- is precisely what it did.
14
Romulus traditionally held to have founded
GODS
is
is of social evolut-
a valuable pointer to the stage
ion beyond which the first Romans had not yet
progressed.
What were their religious beliefs? From the
burials of the peoples described in the last chapter
— and be it remembered that we have nothing
else to go by — whether they were inhumed or
cremated, it is clear that they believed in the
survival of the dead, either corporally in another
world or as spirits to be placated in this one.
These were certainly held by Rome's
beliefs
founders; but what actual gods did they worship?
Roman gods were completely different from
those of Greece. The Greeks were polythcists.
Their gods were individuals, beings, just like
human beings; in fact some gods like Asklcpios,
15
no great difficulty and with much profit meditate
on the gifts of this god of light, the lord of all
brightness in thought and form; just as the pilgrim
to Assisi or Avila may be fortified by the recollec-
tion of Saint Francis or Saint Teresa. With Roman
gods no such exercise is Vulcan is the
possible.
god of fire. Fire is destructive and so Vulcan was
usually worshipped outside the city. His feast
was on the twenty-third of August, and the
celebrant threw into the flameslittle fish, which
16
On the left. Mars and
Rea daughter (or
Silvia,
descendant) of Aeneas,
and mother of Romulus
and Remus. On the
right, Diana and
Endymion. From a relief
in the Lateran (now
Vatican) Museo Profano.
17
come down. Later on Jupiter was worshipped
as Optimus Maximus, the Best and Greatest,
a designation which was to be carried over into
Christianity and appears on many a monumental
inscription, often abbreviated to D.O.M., Deo
Optimo Maximo. This cult was imported from
the Quirinal, at the same time as Juno and Min-
erva were similarly translated. There was an-
other temple of Jupiter, also ascribed to Romulus,
down in the Forum, where the arch of Titus
now stands. It was dedicated to Jupiter Stator,
or 'stayer', because it was here that in answer
to Romulus' prayer he had stayed the flight of
theRomans before the Sabines and had given
them the victory.
Before we trace the later development ofJupiter,
because as time went by, and especially after his
synthesis with Zeus, he became grander and gran-
der, it may be well to introduce his two consorts,
Juno and Minerva; and secondly to discover, if we
can, just what the first Jupiter was. Here we
must make a cardinal point in regard to Roman
religion: it was not static, it was not dogmatic,
it was not even doctrinal. In this it was wholly
18
ed to Athene and as such presided over all intel-
haps even before them, the stones being no doubt He symbolised the virtues
of justice, good faith
old flint knives or axe-heads. When the metal-
and honour. In addition,
users arrived they associated these venerable and Jupiter was a warrior-god
rather terrifying flints with the greatest deity whose aid was invoked
before any military
they knew, the god of light, Jupiter, who among undertaking and a portion
other functions was the punisher of perjurors. of the spoils of war was
always offered to him.
The annual games,
Mars and Quirinus When we turn to the second The ludi romani, were
of the 'high' triad, Mars, we find much the same celebrated in his honour.
Above: a fresco of Jupiter
state of affairs. The origins of Mars arc obscure
enthroned, from the house
because here again wc know him mostly as of the Vetii in Pompeii.
assimilated to Arcs, the Greek god of war. Below: a statue from the
Villa Albani showing
Mars was the Roman god of war but he also has the god with one of his
agrarian attributes. His festivals fell mostly with- thunderbolts in his
in the month which still bears his name. As the left hand.
[9
Juno the majestic queen
of heaven and wife of
Jupiter, from a statue in
the National Museum,
Naples.
GODS
Similarly with the last of the 'high' triad, The Other Gods So much for the 'high' gods of Left: a statue from the
Lateran Museum showing
Quirinus. He was a war-god, of Sabine origin, Rome and their consorts: in we find
every case
Mars in his role
and dwelt on the Quirinal, which was a Sabine the relics of savagery. The first Romans really of god of war.
settlement. It is today the official scat of the did 'bow down to wood and stone'. When we On the right, the famous
Ludovisi Mars, or Ares.
Italian government. Quirinus has almost no look a little deeper into their heaven, we are The god is shown gazing
history or mythology, apart from his identi- amazed at the proliferation o( gods, and at the into the distance with
an almost dreamy
fication with the deified Romulus; but certain They arc either lifeless
insubstantiality of them.
expression. The amorino
weapons known as the arms of Quirinus were things, or phantoms, little more than names. at his feet shows that
ritually anointed by a priest of the god of gates, There was an old gate down in the Forum which he is thinking of Venus,
or Aphrodite. The
Portunus. We do not know why, but the fact was never used for any practical purpose, because naturalism of the treatment
that they were anointed shows that they were it was on the line of no wall. It was called Janus. suggests Lysippus (fourth
century B.C.) as the original
regarded as being in some way alive, and as Janus was the god of gates, and gave his name to
artist.
possessing the vital quality which the Romans the first month of the year. But not only was he
called nutnen. The word means literally 'nod', the god of the gate, he was the gate itself: he
the idea being that if you were a god, you need and those stones were one, and from that gate he
not lift a finger: all you had to do was to nod, could preside over all the gates, all the doors of
and your will would be done. all the buildings in Rome.
Another such stone was Terminus, the boundary Janus, one of the oldest
of Roman gods. It was
god. Terminus marked the limit of a man's prop-
he who frustrated Tarpeia's
erty, and so made for harmony between neigh- plan to betray the city
not Discord be a more popular dedication; And, taken from the fresco by
*J
GODS
Opposite: Minerva was in the same way, were needed to uproot, take the god of rust or mildew. A special day was set
the goddess of the arts
away and burn a tree which had sown itself un- apart for him, the 25th April, when a dog, pre-
and handicrafts. In one
hand she is holding an wanted on a temple roof. These nutnina (which sumably a red, rust-coloured dog, was sacrificed 1
7 J Li
•9 a
1
V » ^
i
,<*%
Readers of the Bible are familiar with the evol-
26
its was the same as that of lust-
original purpose
ration, namely by encircling. No-one
to protect
really believes that the choirboys and wands of
Rogationtide in England are having any practical
effect on the crops. In Rome they did.
Suovetaurilia, a very
ancient form of Roman
sacrifice, which lasted
into imperial times. In
this relief now in the
Louvre (below), an
emperor is seen offering
it. The victims were a pig,
-/
A triton on an Etruscan
amphora in the Villa
Giulia, Rome. Tritons
were a lower race of
sea-gods.
28
-
WORSHIP
not to go gadding about visiting and gossiping down to our own town of Loreto
days. In the
with the neighbours; and she certainly must not Aprutino in on Whit Monday a
the Abruzzi,
attend divine worship: the head of the family fine white ox, the offering of one of the citizens,
will take care of that for one and all. But when it is led through the town to the accompaniment of
comes to Cato's own property, then religion is fireworks and music, with a small boy astride it.
to be used, simply because it may prove useful: Up to and including 1949, the ox entered the
'If the steading by lightning, an expiatory
is struck church, where it had been trained to kneel before
prayer must be A
sick ox is to be cured
said'. the image of the local patron, a rather faint-haloed
by administering the crushed head of a leak and saint called San Zopito. But, to quote the book
'both the ox and the one who administers must of the present mayor, Signor Michelc Vellante,
stand, and both must be fasting'. So we are quite 'From Whit Monday, 1949, notwithstanding the
prepared for his instructions in regard to lust- lively protests of the villagers, by the will of the
ration, the beating of the bound or ambarvalia abate Mgr Remo di Carlantonio, the ox of San
('round the fields') as it was called. Zopito has entered the church no more'. (The
First, his factor must prepare the suovctaurilia, abate was a courageous man: the last one who
that is, three victims, a swine, a ram and a bull tried to banish the ox, was taken ill and died in
— sus, ovis, taurus. Then: 'The following is the for- no time. That was in 1876.) The festival lasts
mula for preparing land: bidding the suovetaurilia three days, during which the ox visits the houses
to be led around, use the words "That with the and collects money, distributing in return its
good help of the gods success may crown our own offering to Stercutius, from the liberality
work, I bid you, Manius (an overseer), to take of which the harvest prospects are forecast. Finally
care to purify my farm, my land, my ground the ox and his conductors visit the house of a
with this suovetaurilia, in whatever part you local nobleman where they are made welcome
think it best for them to be driven or carried and feted.
around". Make a prayer with wine to Janus and
Jupiter, and say, "Father Mars, I pray and beseech Iguvium Tablets We must now refer to what
you to be gracious and merciful to me, my have been described by the Oxford Classical
house, and my household; to which intent I Dictionary as 'surpassing all other documents for
have bidden this suovetaurilia to be led about my the study of Italic religion', namely the famous
land, my ground, my farm, that you keep away, Iguvine Tablets. In the year 1440, at Gubbio, the
ward off and remove sickness, seen and unseen, ancient Iguvium Umbria, nine bronze tablets
in
barrenness and destruction, ruin and unseasonable came to light, engraved on both sides partly
influence; and that you allow my harvests, my in the Latin alphabet and partly in the Umbrian,
grain, my vineyards and my plantations to flour- the language itself being Umbrian. Two of the
ish and to come to good issue, preserve in tablets were taken to Venice and lost, but seven
health my shepherds and my flocks, and give still survive in Gubbio. The oldest was written
good health and strength to me, my house and in 400 B.C., the latest in 90 B.C. The text contains
my household. To this intent, to the intent of the proceedings and liturgy of a brotherhood of
purifying my farm, my land, my ground and priests, namely the directions for a lustration
of making an expiation, as I have said, be magn- of Iguvium, for an assembly of the populus of
ified (made esto) by the offering of these suckling Iguvium, the concluding sacrifice of the lustrum
victims. Father Mars, to the same intent be mag- on behalf of the Brotherhood, the optional
nified by these suckling victims". '
Cakes are sacrifice of a dog to an infernal deity called hontns,
to be offered; and if any of the victims fails to and directions for a sacrifice to Jupiter and to a
yield favourable omens another must be substit- medley of gods of the upper and lower worlds
uted for it. with outlandish names.
Now all this must seem to us to be very far In regard to the actual ritual, Rose points out
from what we know as religion, and so it is: it that there arc three of importance for
points
is simply contractual magic. The suovctaurilia the study of the links between religion and magic.
remained vogue right down to the days of
in First, no foreigners may attend the rite. No Tadin-
the empire; and there is a famous representation ate people, no Tuscan, no Narcan nor any folk,
of it, dating from the time of Trajan and originally Iapudic, shall be there. This ban imposed not is
probably part of the Rostra, in the Curia or to prevent strangers from learning what is going
senate-house in the Forum. Indeed, the ambarvalia on, but because a stranger would have a bad effect
has in essence lasted very much longer, right on the family magic. Shakespeare employs the
29
tM
• '. •
*»fc?-^
same device in The Phoenix and the Turtle to
'keep the obsequies so strict'.
ted ox'.
A on the sanctity
corollary to the insistence
of words spoken either aloud or inaudibly
ritual
Opposite: the Temple
was that no other sound should intrude, no words of Vesta in the Forum.
of ill-omen be heard. It was for that reason, This charmingly feminine
building was round
and to drown any discordant note, that grand because it imitated the
ceremonials such as triumphs were accompanied shape of the first primitive
with music and cymbals. Here again the petards huts of the Latins. The
arc only perpetuating a very ancient custom. The Vestal's house was
immediately to the
In this field of the rcligio-magic two other
right of it.
typically Roman manifestations may be noted.
The first concerns spell-casting, the use of carmina. Vestal. A bronze from
near Capua, and now in
The Latin word carmen gives us our word 'charm'. the louvre. The figure
Originally it meant a song, and as such it was is holding a horn
symbolising the petttli
commonly used. Horace decribes his Odes as
or store, which was
carmina. Hut the word had a more sinister mean- renewed at the annual
ing. The earliest known Roman code of law, festival ol Vesta in June.
31
;
WORSHIP
Thank-offerings to the Twelve Tables of the mid-fifth century B.C., amid the coals of the hearth,
substance of a phallus
deities for cures of various
forbade the singing of carmiiia against anyone. had intercourse with a slave of Queen Tanaquil,
ailments affecting the
parts of the body That did not mean it was unlawful to sing rude wife of king Tarquin, who was guarding the- fire
represented. The custom songs about people — on the contrary, that practice and thus became the father of king Servius
prevails today in Roman The core of the legend is an acknowl-
Catholic and Orthodox
was encouraged in the case of great folk such Tullius.
countries of the as triumphing generals in order to turn aside edgment of the divine potency of fire.
Mediterranean. the envy of vindictive spirits. What was made The king's hearth (as the foregoing story il-
illegal was the casting of spells. Virgil used the lustrates) would naturally be rather more im-
word in the same sense. It was by means of car- portant than anyone else's; and so his daughters
mina that Circe changed the companions of Ulyss- would be regarded as more important hearth-
es into swine: Dido knew a priestess who used wardens than anyone else's. When the kings were
carmina to cure love-pains. Charms could also abolished, Vesta stayed on; and since there were
be used, Virgil tells us, to increase the abundance no king's daughters to serve her, the college of
of a man's crop at the expense of his neighbour Vestals came into being. First two, then four, and
and this, too, was proscribed by the Twelve in historic times six maidens served in the temple
Tables. of Vesta which was close to the Regia or king's
house in the Forum. Their own house was next
Vesta and her Fire Finally we come to a part of door. The foundations of all three, and a charm-
the Roman cult remain of great
which was to ing restoration of part of the temple, are visible to
importance throughout the history of Rome, this day. The temple is round, because it imitates
namely, the worship of Vesta and the custody the shape of the first huts of the
primitive
of her undying fire by the Vestal Virgins. Why Latins. The Vestals wereof good family,
girls
is it that they play so prominent a part in Roman and might start their service at the age of seven.
life? They were treated with the greatest respect, After thirty years they might retire, and even
they were allotted special seats in the theatre, marry, though not many of them did. The Vestals
their house was used as the repository for wills. were under the direction of the Pontifex Maximus
If their chastity was violated, they were to die a himself. The great antiquity of the cult is shown
horrible death by being buried alive an ordeal,— by the fact that the sacred animal of Vesta was
really, because Vesta could always intervene to the ass, the Mediterranean animal par excellence,
save the innocent. The reason for their importance and not the horse, which is Indo-European. The
seems to be the following. As will already have feast of Vesta was held in mid-June, when the
appeared, Roman primitive religion was a family temple had its annual clean, the water used being
affair, with the head of the family in charge; then, as throughout the year, drawn not from
and its manifestations were all connected with the public mains, but from a sacred spring. The
the welfare of family and farm. It was concerned asses were garlanded with flowers, and given a
and material benefits, without
solely with personal holiday.
any but the most rudimentary moral or ethical Strictly speaking the sacred hearth was not a
overtones. Now the seat of the family is the home, temple, not having been consecrated by the
and the focus of the home is the hearth. (The augurs. If the fire went out, the Vestals, after
Latin word focus means hearth.) The tending of being whipped by the Pontifex Maximus, must
the hearth has always been relegated to younger rekindle it by rubbing a lucky board with a borer
unmarried daughters, of whom Cinderella is the until fire resulted - another proof of the antiquity
best known example, because paterfamilias was of the foundation.
busy out of doors, and materfamilias in the kitchen Thus we of the Roman
find at the very centre
or at the loom. So the numen of the hearth
was liturgy one of its most honoured goddesses vener-
naturally regarded as feminine. Vesta was extrem- ated in a manner which takes us straight back to
ely venerable, and belonged to the 'inner the primitive hut and its magic.
circle' of the twelve gods of whom we shall be
speaking later. Near the hearth there would be Lupercalia The of primitive ceremonies is
list
a cupboard, called a peuus, in which provisions long. One more may be mentioned, because it is
were stored. The spirits attendant on it were familiar to English-speaking readers from its hav-
called Penates, the Lares being phantoms respon- ing been incorporated, with great dramatic effect,
sible for the house as a whole. The Lares were by Shakespeare in his Julius Caesar, namely the
also in charge of cross-roads; and there was a Lupercalia. The ceremony was extremely com-
curious legend that one of them, assuming the plicated, and had evidently taken a long time to
J2
\
hett^cs**"
A relief in the they would give a flick, just for good measure, Athens, and is full of good things. The fifteenth
Archaeological Museum with the goat-flail to any woman they encoun- chapter of his tenth book is devoted to describing
at Palermo, showing five
of the six Vestals looking tered, thereby giving her a dose of this doubly the numerous rules and regulations which still
attentively at the goddess powerful male medicine. And so it came to be in his day surrounded the Flamen Dialis. 'It is
(not shown here). Note
believed that 'the barren, touched in this holy unlawful for the priest of Jupiter to ride upon
again the container and
the statuettes of bull chase, shake off their sterile curse'. a horse, or to look upon the army on parade
and sheep indicative of outside the city boundary; so that he is very
earth's gifts.
Flamen Dialis Not only the rituals but the priests rarely elected consul, because wars were entrusted
themselves were surrounded by the primitive, to consuls.' The horse tabu is interesting: it is a
in the form of tabus. Let most august
us take the parallel to Vesta's preference for the ass. 'Wars
of all (except for the Pontifex Maximus), the were entrusted' — but no longer, for in Gellius'
Flamen Dialis, or priest of Jupiter. It happens day it was the emperor who alone was permitted
that by good fortune wc still possess a delightful to take command of the army; yet the old
work called Attic Nights, written in the middle disqualification still lingered. The flamen might
of the second century A.D. by a certain Aulus not take an oath. He might not wear a ring, un-
Gellius. It recounts table-talk at the university of less it were perforated and without a gem. No fire
34
WORSHIP
!S
WORSHIP
Gable relief from a tomb might be taken from his house except for a sacred bed for three successive nights, and no-one else
showing the god
Summanus. He was
rite. If a fettered suppliant entered his house he may sleep in it. At the foot of his bed there must
distinguished from must be freed, the bonds being drawn up to the be a box of sacrificial cakes. He might not go out
Jupiter as the deity roof and thence lowered into the street (to prevent without his cap, though Gellius tells us that by
who sends nocturnal
thunder and is seen here
a second defilement of the door?). He had no his time, as a concession to human frailty, he was
holding several knot any part
in his headdress, or girdle or in allowed to take it off indoors. He must change
thunderbolts in his right
of his which must have been decidedly
dress, his underclothes indoors, because he must not
hand.
awkward. In his headdress he wore an olive-twig, appear naked in the open air, that is in the eye
Opposite: fresco of a as we can see in the Ara Pads sculptures. His of Jupiter. If his wife, known as the flaminica,
sacrifice being performed
barber must be a free man, using bronze shears dies he abdicates his office, and his marriage can
by women of the
as part
family rituals in the — no new-fangled iron for so holy a man — be dissolved only by death —
a rare condition in
House of Augustus on the and his shorn hair and his nail parings must be Rome, where divorce was so easy. He never
Palatine.
buried under a fruitful tree. He must not touch touches a dead body or enters a cemetery. The
or even name a shegoat, raw flesh, ivy or beans, priestess, says Gellius, was 'about the same', but
nor walk beneath a vine arbour. He must eat she had some extras of her own. She wore a dyed
only unleavened bread. 'For him every day is a robe, and when she made her rounds of the
holy day.' The feet of his bed must be smeared district chapels, she might not dress her hair o
lightly with clay, he must not sleep out of this even comb it, a terrible deprivation for a Rom
36
The corn supply of Rome
was made into an
imperial department by
Augustus, hence the title
Felicitas, a goddess of
good luck, was introduced
in the second century
B.C. by L. Licinius
Lucullus who dedicated
her temple in the
Velabrum. She soon
became prominent in
official cult and was
often referred to in public
ceremonies. This copper
coin dates from the reign
of Antoninus Pius (a.d.
138-161). The letters
S.C. denote that it was
struck 'Senatus
Consulto', the issue of
copper coins being left
J7
:
THE STATE CULT of the clan, which had gradually, as in the case
of Vesta, spread from the private realm to the
public, or, as in the more usual case of the Luper-
calia, from the purely magical to the political.
It will now be appropriate to discover, if possible,
3*
make January the first month, dedicated to Janus, Timetable of Festivals But however rickety The rape of Proserpine
who as we have seen was the god of entry ; but the calendar might be, it did introduce for the (or Persephone) by Pluto
is a which has
subject
the expulsion of the Etruscan dynasty put a stop first time a definite order into the religious
attracted poets and artists
to this, and the first of March remained the first practices of the Romans, not merely as heads or from Ovid onwards. This
day of the year until considerably later until 153 — members of families, but as Roman citizens. The fantastically
and theatrical
virtuoso
group in
B.C., in fact. February was dedicated not to Febris calendar of Numa can be dated roughly by the the Borghese Gallery in
goddess of fever, an important deity who had fact that it includes the cult of Quirinus on his Rome was done by Gian
Lorenzo Bernini in 1622,
two shrines in Rome, but to Februus who was own hill, the Quirinal, that is, before he had
when he was twenty-four.
in later days identified with Dis, the Latin Pluto. removed makes no mention
to the Capitol, but
February was the month during which the City of the Capitoline nor docs it make any
triad;
was purified by appeasing the dead with of- reference to Diana, the goddess who was brought
ferings and sacrifices, called februalia. Februus from Latium and installed on the Aventine before
is no more than the personification of this rite. the end of the kingly period.
This calendar was, like all early calendars, lunar. The calendar itself has two main functions. First,
March, May, Quintilis and October had 31 days it divides the days of the month into fasti (from
each, February 28, and the rest 29: total 355. and nefasti, that is, days on which bus-
fas, right)
Twelve moons do not add up to one solar year, inessmight be transacted and those on which it
and so to keep the calendar roughly in tune might not. Secondly it gives us the dates of no
with the solar year a month was inserted, or less than forty-five festivals. The calendar thus
intercalated, to use the technical term, from time shows the agenda, as it were, of a state still founded
to time, being placed between the 23rd and 24th on agriculture, but already developing into a
February. We now
come to the third stage in community which has legal and political business
the development of the Roman, and our own, to transact and wars to wage a perfect miniat- —
calendar. The intercalation was so sloppily done ure, that is, of the Roman republic which was to
that by the time of Julius Caesar (who as Pontifex be. It is in March and October that we find these
Maximus was responsible for the calendar) the traits most strongly marked. In the month of
official year had become three months ahead of Mars, for instance, up to the 23rd, the Salii, the
the solar. He therefore borrowed an improved 'leaping' priests of Mars, performed their dance,
calendar from Egypt in the year 46. This is called brandishing spears and clashing the holy shields
after him the Julian calendar, and is still in use called ancilia, of which the original was believed
by certain Eastern Churches. It was amended by to have fallen from heaven. The priests were clad
Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This Gregorian like ancient Latin warriors, and the object of the
calendar (which was in fact available to Julius dance, during which they invoked not only-
Caesar in the archives of Alexandria University Mars but also Saturn the god of sowing, was
had he but known it) is the one we now use. twofold, to expel all the evil spirits who had
To make matters more complicated, the days of contrived to enter the city during the winter, and
the month were not numbered serially, as they by their leaping, to stimulate growth through
now are. The month had three fixed lunar points: sympathetic magic, for both of which Frazer
kalends, the first day; ides, the full moon; and cites parallels from Africa and Europe.
nones midway between, so called because it was On the 19th the ancilia were lustrated, and on
the ninth day, counting inclusively from the full the 23rd the trumpets. On the 14th occurred the
moon. The day was called kalends, or call-
first second Equirria, which means that the horses of
ings, because on that day the pontifices, using an the army were being lustrated. Spears, shields,
antique formula, called out on the Capitol wheth- and horses — all the panoply of the host is put
er the nones would fall on the seventh or ninth into good order and spiritual repair during this
day of the month —
a variation imposed by the month of Mars. There had been a previous
variation in the length of the months. In effect, equirria on the 27th February, and that month
new moon, first quarter, and full
the days of the had also witnessed on the 24th the Regijugium,
moon were observed. The rest of the month, or flight of the king, about which we really
when the moon was waning, and therefore un- know nothing at all, except that, like the Equirria,
lucky, had no name at all: you simply reckoned it was regarded as a festival.
its days by numbering them backwards from the In October the fighting season is over and a
first clay of the next month. This clumsy and second process of purification must be undertaken.
involved system lasted right down to the end of On the 15th, the Ides, there took place a very
the Roman world. strange ritual, not mentioned in the calendar,
i9
The I'onte Rotto. In 179
B.C. the two censors
built a bridge with stone
foundations. In 142 the
then censors gave the
bridge stone arches, and
it thus became the first
wherein after a chariot race in the Campus agricultural magic. On the 19th occurred the
Martius the off horse of the winning team was Armilustrium, which is self-explanatory, and on
sacrificed to Mars, and its tail cut off and carried the same day the Salii, who had again been active
by a runner to the Regia, whereit was hung up in the earlier part of the month, laid up their
to drip blood onto the altar, while the head was shields to signify that the campaigning season
fought over by two rival parties, one drawn from was over.
the Via Sacra which ran and still runs through Thus, as Warde Fowler points out, the calendar
the Forum, and the other from the Subura, a shows both political and military development.
district on the north-cast side of the Forum. But its chief emphasis is on agriculture which
Neither in antiquity nor in our own day has was the basis of the life of the people. March, as
any meaning been found for this gruesome rite; we have seen, was devoted predominantly to
but as the blood was used by the Vestals for military preparations. April is more concerned
purifications and the horse is often held to per- with agriculture. On the 15th at the Fordicidia a
sonify the corn-spirit, Rose conjectures that here pregnant cow was sacrificed to Tcllus, the Earth-
again we may have a survival from primitive goddess, and the unborn calf burned, probably
40
THE STATE CULT
a lustration of cattle before they left their winter robbed of his prey; and he naturally puts in a
pastures for the wilder runs of the hills, com- claim for compensation... On this hypothesis,
parable to the lustration of an army before nothing could be more fitting than that the offer-
itleft for a campaign. It was held that Rome ing should be under the auspices of the pontiffs,
was founded on that day, and so the 21st April whose very name, signifying "bridge-makers",
was kept as the birthday of Rome. It still is. marked them out as the culprits responsible for
On the 23rd the Vinaha sought protection for the sacrilege, and therefore as the penitents bound
the vines, and on the 25th, when the ear was to atone for it.'
beginning to form, the evil Robigus was formally In func the chief task was, as already explained,
propitiated. the cleaning of the pa\\t< of Vesta, so as to be
I'
1
'O Tiber, Father Tiber, ready to receive the grain of the new crop. July leaveno trace in the calendar. But when the
to whom the Romans brought group of festivals so obscure that it
a autumn sowing was over, on the 17th December
pray.' Here he is, in the
Louvre with his oar, is profitless to examine them. Harvest festivals the Saturnalia was celebrated, Saturnus being
his horn of plenty, a rather proper begin in August: the Consualia on the connected with the root meaning 'sow', flanked
crushed-looking wolf
21st and the Opiconsiva on the 25th both have by a second consualia on the 15th and an Opalia
and twins to identify
him. The Romans liked affinities with the word condere, to lay together, on the 19th. The Saturnalia is (or are, the word
river statues: there is
and seem to relate to the storing of the new crop. is plural) familiar to us, because the term has
another Tiber, coupled
with a Nile, on the In between came the Volcanalia on the 23rd, passed into our own language, and for a reason
Campidoglio. In 165 to ward off rick-burning or accidental fires which which illustrates the way in which most of the
Bernini erected his famous
are most likely to occur in the hot dry weather other rites we have mentioned lost their original
fountain in the Piazza
Navona, with Nile, of late summer. force and meaning, without falling wholly into
Ganges, Danube and Plate Thereafter for the rest of the year there was desuetude. The majority relate to agriculture,
representing the then
nothing to do but plough and sow, operations the occupation and livelihood of a rural society;
known world.
which were not regarded as being liable to but what did they mean to an urban community
malignant influences, or at any rate to none which which had for generations lived on imported
Mother Earth could not deal with, and so they corn, until by the time of the late republic this
4.2
Left: Glaucus was a sea
god, whom Virgil
makes the father of the
Sybil of Cumae. He
designed the Ar%o and
fought alongside the
Argonauts.
****:
43
Above and right: a
Roman kitchen, bakery
and cellar, with a simple
banquet. This type of
relief is typical of the
direct and down-to-earth
Romans. It is quite
un-Greek.
44
imported corn was actually given away? 'Bread ly Janus, Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, and one This charming relief
now in Munich shows .1
and circuses' had by then become the prerogative goddess, Vesta. Each of the four gods had a peaceful Italian rustic
of the mob, and farming was forgotten. But the personal priest: the Rex sacrorum, successor of the scene. Below arc the
Saturnalia was still celebrated and it survived — kings and as at Athens charged only with the sturdy kinc, such
be seen today drawing
as may
right up of paganism
to the end as a jolly — former kings' sacred functions, who lived at the the heavy farm-wagons.
winter festival. People had long forgotten that Regia, looked after Janus; and the other three Above, the happy farmer
is at case, with his
it had any connection at all with sowing; just had their own flamens. Of the host of lesser hunting-bitch beside him.
as thousands who celebrate Christmas as a holiday numina some of the more important have already and before him a little
(it inherited its festive garb from the Saturnalia) been mentioned. Nine of them had flamens of altar aflame in honour
o( Priapus, god of fertility
would no longer associate it with the birth of their own, Volcanus, Furrina, Portunus, Pales,
Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. Flora, Pomona, Carmenta and Falacer. Of these,
It his time therefore to say farewell to the Falacer is wholly unknown, Furrina and Vol-
agricultural origins of the Roman cult, bearing in turnus almost so. Of Carmenta all we know is
mind as we do so that it was tins farming cycle that her priestesses cast the fortunes of children
that gave Rome its first formal religion. We find, at their birth. It is Saint Augustine who tells us
in short, Koine had come to worship four
that this, so she must have survived until his day. No
superior gods, who from the ceremonies devoted new flamens were appointed until the introduc-
to them have come to acquire personalities, name- tion of Caesar-worship.
45
A Roman butcher's
shop, conducted in a
thoroughly Roman way.
The joints are displayed
in an orderly manner,
the scales are handy
for weighing them, and
the master is keeping
the tally in his ledger.
countryside.
46
To sum up we have now
: reached a stage where
community,
the religion of the primitive farming
directed to thepromotion of agriculture and its
protection from enemies seen and unseen, sur-
rounded by magic and hedged by tabus, has ad-
vanced sufficiently to be crystallised into calendars,
to be served by a regular priesthood, and to be
provided with the and sanctions of an
festivals
47
As has been explained Roman by
THE NEWCOMERS
earlier, religion,
the beginning of the Republic, had become crys-
tallised but not yet fossilised. That is to say, it
was now a highly organised state cult, in the hands
of special officers. The individual as such took
no part in the 'services': all that was left to him
were the primitive rites of home and farm. Pro-
gressively, with the development of an urban
civilisation, these rites became inadequate for the
spiritual needs of the ordinary citizen. Moreover,
through commerce, through warfare and through
travel in search of enlightenment the Roman
citizen became increasingly familiar with, and
attracted to, the religions and philosophies of other
nations. These 'other nations' may be classified in
four categories: the Italians, the Etruscans, the
Greeks and the peoples of the Orient.
48
The Twins, too, were associated with commerce, directly from Greek sources. It is significant again Below left: Juturna
The Etruscans Etruscan influences had for long two things: the building of templesand much, Below: next to the
been at work on Roman religion, and it was if not all, of of divination.
their rites so-called temple of Fortuna
Virilis is this graceful
through the Etruscans that the Romans received At first sight the building of temples seems a
building, wrongly styled
most of their first intimations of Greek religion harmless enough innovation, an improvement the temple of Vesta,
and philosophy. They therefore possess a double even on temporary altars of turf set up on some because its circular shape
recalls that in the Forum.
importance in the evolution of Rome's religious hallowed spot, either in the open or sheltered
It is of the Augustan
experience. by an open rustic roof. From the purely aesthetic age, or perhaps a little
point of view it was; but once a temple had been earlier. It stands near
Whether the first Etruscans were immigrants
the old port, for up to
from Asia, or were sprung from a mixture of built it was only natural that a representation of
the nineteenth century
Villanovan and neolithic stock, it is clear that the deity should be placed within it. Thus the the Tiber was a waterway,
Roman nuinina became personified. No longer and some think it may
they very early came within the ambit of Greek
have been dedicated to
ideas. Their tombs have yielded not only artefacts were they spirits they had become graven images.
:
Portumnus, but this is
that show Greek influence, but some of the most 'For more than 170 years', says Varro (first century a mere conjecture. The
Romans liked round
beautiful Greek vases in existence. Given their b.c.) quoted by Saint Augustine, 'the Romans
temples modelled on the
close contact with, and one-time dominance of, worshipped their gods without images (simulacra)' Greek llwlos. There is
Rome, would be easy for them to pass on
it that is from the foundation of the City until one at Tivoli from which
Soane copied his Tivoli
these Greek ideas to the community on the south the time of the first Etruscan king. The earliest
corner in the Bank of
bank of the Tiber. What is interesting to us is Roman temple to which we can assign even an England.
that the Romans were discerning enough to approximate date was the great temple on the
adopt only what they thought was useful. Etrus- Capitol. It is said to have been begun under the
can tomb paintings contain examples of what Tarquins and to have been dedicated in the
the Cambridge Ancient History, (Vol. viii, p. 449) first year of the Republic, that is in 509 B.C. It
authority, 're-appears in Roman literature or art... triad Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, and inside was
The fear of punishment after death, against which a statue of Jupiter. Thus the trend from animism
Lucretius wrote is a far more sober thing, derived to anthropomorphism, the making of gods in
V>
The Apollo of Veii, a
life-sized Etruscan
terracotta statue, c. 500 B.C.
It belongs to a group
representing Hercules'
theft of the holy hind of
thegod Apollo at Delphi
which decorated a temple
at Veii.
50
Left: theback of an The columns of the
Etruscan mirror depicting portico of the Temple
an augur examining of Castor and Pollux in
entrails. Because of the the Roman Forum. They
association between birds datefrom a.d. 6 and are
and foretelling the future made of the famous Paros
this augur wears wings. marble.
51
The western ambulatory
of the Temple of Apollo
at Pompeii, with a statue
of the god. Apollo was
the most attractive of
all Greek and Roman
Opposite: Neptune,
assimilatedto Poseidon.
The trident was the
weapon favoured by
ti nny-fishers, the most
important Mediterranean
fishery.The whip in his
right hand reminds us
that Poseidon was also
a controller of horses.
This statue now in the
Vatican came from Anzio.
52
THE NEWCOMERS
S3
•V*'* /V
£>£&>
raM*«MMi|M«
Opposite: Apollo wearing
a radiate crown drives
his four-horsed chariot
(or quadriga) through
the sky. This detail from
a mosaic pavement
portrays Apollo as the
sun-god following his
daily flight acrross the
heavens.
S3
Venus, a very ancient omen has no force for anyone who denies having
who was
Latin divinity
the protectress of
seen it — i.e. the augur could turn a blind eye on
vegetation and gardens, it, on the principle thatwhat the eye does not
was assimilated in the
see the heart will not grieve for, and (b) it is the
second century B.C. to
Aphrodite. The Gens report of the omen that counts, so that the augur
Julia, the family of Julius could always, if he chose to and were of the
Caesar, claimed to be
same political persuasion, give the magistrate the
descended not only from
Aeneas, but from Venus assurance he sought. It is obvious that this equiv-
as well. Right: this
ocal mumbo-jumbo, which remained in vogue
exquisite statue now in
the National Museum in throughout the days of the Republic, must have
Rome was found in 1913 been a corrupting influence on Roman religion:
at Cyrene in Libya. The
it encouraged superstition and was a perpetual
goddess has just risen
from the foam, and is temptation to manipulate religion for political
raising one arm to rinse ends.
her hair. Probably a copy
of a bronze original of
How cynically the upper class Roman regarded
somewhat earlier date it may be inferred from some instances cited
than Praxiteles. Above: by Livy. As early as the year 293, he tells us, in
in thesame museum,
Venus kneeling with the last struggle against the Samnites, one of the
Love in attendance. chicken-keepers, (pullarii) had reported to the
consul that the fowls had given a good omen in
their eating. The consul's nephew, 'a young man
$6
army'. Just to make sure, though, the chicken-
keeper was put in the forefront of the battle:
he was killed.
who assisted Jupiter in coming to important dec- wand, and wears a broad
hat and winged sandals.
isions, specially in the matter of launching thun- In this version in the
derbolts, rather like a modern Defence Council. UffiM, the wings have
been transferred to his
The Romans took over these gods, but they
head and the sandals
identified them with the twelve great gods of discarded.
<7
THE NEWCOMERS
Antrum of the Sibylline and was at the same time the seat of a Sybil, or
shrine at Cumae where prophetess of Apollo.
the faithful gathered to
obtain prophecies. These The original Sybil was a Trojan maiden of noble
were delivered in the birth — according to one story that is, for there
form of verse and very
were as so often a number to choose from. The
often were deliberately
ambiguous. Romans preferred the Trojan legend because, in
order to keep up with the Greeks, who went
Opposite: Roman
temple. This shrine, not
back to Homer beyond, they liked to main-
if not
far from the Ponte tain that they were descended from princely
erroneously
Rotto, is
Trojan refugees of whom the chief was Aeneas.
known as thatof Fortuna
Virilis. It is a rare example
The Sybils were endowed by Apollo with the
of Graeco-Italian gift of prophecy; and one of the most prominent
architecture of the
of them established herself at Erythrae, on the
Republican era, having
been built about ioo coastof Asia Minor near Chios. It was this very
B.C. It is typically Roman prophetess, so tradition held, who had migrated
(a) for being erected on
a podium and (b) for
to Cumae, where she died at a very great age
having the pillars of the in circumstances which are variously related.
colonnade engaged with
Some say that Apollo decreed that she might
the wall of the cella. In
a.d. 871 it became a live for as many years as she could hold grains
church, St Mary of of sand in her hand on condition that she never
Egypt, and was later
again saw Erythrae; but one day she received
used by the Armenian
community. a letter from home which the Erythraeans had
thoughtlessly sealed with the earth of Erythrae.
The Sybil died on the spot. Others hold that
Apollo offered her not only long life but per-
petual youth at the price of her virginity. She
refused, and as she aged became smaller and
smaller, until finally she was no bigger than a
grasshopper, and was hung up in a cage at Cumae.
the Hellenic pantheon. Thus it came about that 'What do you want?' the children would ask
we have the familiar, and sometimes confusing, her. 'I want to die' was the answer.
assimilation of Greek and Roman, as follows: The Sybil of Cumae was to become immortal
because it is she who in the sixth book of Virgil's
Male Female
epic introduces Aeneas to the underworld. But
— Zeus
Jupiter Juno —Hera
her influence on Roman destiny had started long
Neptune — Poseidon Minerva — Athena
was men who had
Mars — Ares Diana — Artemis before. It she, believed,
much haggling and
sold
Apollo — Apollo
to king Tarquin, after
Venus — Aphrodite — three times the pi ice of the
rej-
58
r
V
f.
in
1 W^\
^r^ V
Bt'tfS
Si St
1
t :
*.•
8 -%
A
i
i^ ^ 4
i - *
Srj
3* **
Diana, the Virgin
huntress, assimilated
with Artemis. This
famous statue, which is
mysteries, into which emperors would be proud Hercules and the Twins were worshipped
to be initiated, and of which Iacchos was the within the City, but the later newcomers were
torchbearer and procession-leader. housed outside the pomocrium, or official boundary,
The Sibyl of Cumae, whose grotto-chapel until the time of the Hannibalic war, thus preserv-
still echoes awesomely to those who visit it, ing the distinction between the di indigetes, nat-
having brought off this 'coup', as it may well be ive gods, and the di novensides, or newcomers, all
60
Kneehng Venus
in the Vatican Museum.
This type of statue
became highly popular
in the Hellenistic and
Roman epochs, because
the sculptor makes the
goddess use her hands
to draw attention to those
parts of her body which
she affects to hide.
eight days the images of three pairs of latinised The Hannibalic, or Second Punic, War of 218-
Greek gods were displayed reclining on couches, 201, 'the war of a man against a nation' as it
with tables of food and drink before them. This has been called, marks a turning-point in the
was a pleasant innovation: outdoor celebrations history of Roman religion. Amid the disasters
are always attractive. Later, yet another popular and tensions of warfare it seemed to the Roman
exercise was introduced, the supplicatio, when the people that the old jus divinum, the state liturgy,
citizens, women and children included, wearing had failed to maintain the pax dcorutn, the favour
wreaths and carrying branches of laurel, like of the gods manifested in peace. Some new, more
Greek suppliants, went the round of the temples, drastic medicine must be tried to ensure that
offering prayers or thanksgivings as occasion 'my will be done'. Once again the Sibylline
might require. The lectisterniiini and supplicatio books were and once again they
consulted,
could be combined: the object of both ceremonies suggested innovations Oil Greek lines. Already
was to allow the people some initiative in what in 349 the Books had ordained the institution of
had hitherto been the province of priests only. ludi sccnici, or pageants, as an antidote to a pest il-
61
THE NEWCOMERS
This fresco now in the ence. Now, in 217, after the crushing defeat at the first century A.D., the dreadful custom had
Vatican is of particular
Lake Trasimene, were added to
special 'games' continued down to his own day: he had witness-
interest. It shows a group
of children sacrificing the Roman ones. These exhibitions, in which ed it and records the prayer which was recited
to Diana. It underlines gladiators no doubt took part, were intended to over the victims.
the Roman love of
children. It also brings
divert the public mind. Gladiators perpetuated The public mind was also distracted by phen-
to mind the unique the typically barbarous Etruscan custom of kil- omena which to the very end of Roman history
group of miniature ling slaves on their master's grave. They were abound in a manner which we find it extremely
statues of little girls,
devotees of Artemis,
originally exhibited at funerals only, the idea difficult to grasp, namely prodigies. These might
recently recovered from being that instead of killing men like brutes, it range from a hail of pebbles, not uncommon in
Brauron, the celebrated
was more civilised to watch them kill each other a volcanic country, or a rain of blood, red sand
shrine of Artemis in Attica.
like men. Gladiators were first seen in Rome in brought by the scirocco from the deserts of
the year 264 B.C. Africa, to statues falling flat on their faces, from
An even more barbarous and horrible expiation, animals with two heads
to birds with no livers.
also no doubt of Etruscan origin, was resorted Anything whether ordinary or extraor-
in fact,
to, namely the burying alive in the Forum dinary, could be and habitually was regarded as
Boarium (where the gladiators had first been a prodigy, and as such a premonitory occurrence.
exhibited) of a Greek man and woman and a Sober writers like Plutarch, who was a philos-
Gallic man and woman. Livy is justly disgusted opher, or Ammianus, who was a soldier, regul-
by this, 'hardly Roman' he calls it; and yet as arly give us lists of prodigies, with the object
we know from the elder Pliny, a writer of of helping us to understand better the events
if 1
•
1 r *
3a
m
V
•r
1
' '
| •#
""
»
62
which followed. 'Now the prodigies which Roman gods were often
ians. In fact towards the end of the Roman emp- for the games. When
they went out, this was
ire an author actually compiled a Book of Prod- the sort of carriage in
igies, which is intended to be a handbook of which they travelled.
63
Above: a quarter of a April of the following year, the Great Mother,
century later
(1534-1541)
Michelangelo painted
or Cybelc as she was known, arrived in Rome, in
his Last Judgment on the the guise of a black aerolith, the hallowed stone
wall above the altar
having been kindly released by king Attalus I
in the chapter. He depicted
the scene that according of Pcrgamum, who had decided, rightly, that
to the Dies Irac the Sibyl so far as he was concerned, it was more prudent
had foretold.
to keep on the right sideof Rome than of Cybelc.
The Sibyl of Cumac, as The oracle of Delphi had supported the idea and
depicted by Michelangelo so had the great Scipio himself.
on the vault of the
Sistinc Chapel (1508-1512).
When the goddess arrived at Ostia, the port
The Sibyl had been of Rome, Scipio went on board to receive her,
adopted by Christianity, and she was then carried in the arms of Rome's
and the first verse of the
Dies Irac runs: 'Day of noblest matrons, proud of this visible proof of
wrath, that dreadful day: their connection with the land of Troy, to the
Heaven and Earth shall
Palatine where it was placed temple of
in the
burn away,
David and the Sybil say'. Victory. The day, the 4th April,was thenceforth
celebrated as a holiday, on which were performed
the Ludi Mcgalcnses, megale being the feminine
form of theGreek adjective meaning great.
Aristocratic families, again with their Trojan des-
cent in mind, formed guilds which were placed
under the patronage of the protectress of their
'motherland'. The next year, just as had been
forecast by the Books, Hannibal did leave Italy,
never to return.
64
THE NEWCOMERS
6j
How elegant a Dionysiac
celebration could be is
The Great Mother was the first eastern deity religions in origin. The populace might find in
to be introduced into Rome and the last to be eastern emotionalism the release and relief they
introduced by the Sibylline Books. With her came increasingly sought; but Greece was to give one
her partner Attis and his devotees. At the time few more gift to Rome. The assimilation of Roman
Romans, probably, knew about the orgiastic go- deities to their Greek counterparts led not only
ings-on conducted by self-castrated priests, which to the appropriation of Greek legend and myth,
constituted their joint cult; but they soon found so that the absence of Roman myth was largely
out, and a resolution of the Senate forbade any overcome, but it turned men's minds to Greek
Roman citizen to take part in them. Only twenty
years later the Senate had to proscribe the Baccha-
nalia, which had reached Rome through the
66
THE NEWCOMERS
Dionysos could be
serious, as shown in this
bronze head from
Herculaneum.
67
68
Dionysos. latinised as
Bacchus, is generally
represented as the ever-
young god of wine and
jollity, the Liberator,
who brought to the west
all the joys of the cast.
He found his way to Rome
shortly after the Great
Mother, by way of
prisoners of war from
Etruria or Magna Graecia.
The Senate proscribed
the Bacchanalia, but
Bacchus had come to
stay.This relief from
Herculaneum shows him
with his usual attributes,
the pine-cone tipped
thyrsus, and the panther,
on which he is sometimes
shown riding.
Opposite: bacchantes
worshipping their god in
the form of a bull. Vatican
Museum.
the Louvre.
69
The interpolation of a chapter on philosophy in
AND speaking,
reasons for
case.
arly
The
two different things. But there
making an exception in the
first is
one school of
Greek philosophy, particul-
that
did have a profound in-
it,
are two
present
70
imcnts, and in these two arts, specially astronomy, for spiritual diseases'. The state of affairs is per-
they made amazing progress. Democritus' theory fecty summed up by C. F. Angus writing in the
is of great importance, because it
nevertheless Cambridge Ancient History (VII, 231): 'Metaphys-
influenced Epicurus, and through him one of the ics sink into the background, and ethics, now
greatest poets of all time, Lucretius. individual, become of the first importance. Phil-
The purveyors of 'Mind' if they may so be osophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before
called are important for a different reason: it a few intrepid seekers after truth; it is rather an
was they who had the greatest impact on Athens ambulance following in the wake of the struggle
at the height of its power and glory in the age for existence and picking up the weak and
of Pericles. Indeed so taken was Pericles with wounded.'
the new philosophy of dominant Mind, and with In meeting this human, individual need, two
its exponents, specially his pet philosopher, schools above all others succeeded, the Epicureans
Anaxagoras of Miletus, that the Athenians nick- and the Stoics.
named him Mind, nous. This idea of Mind became
paramount in Athens. It influenced Plato and later Epicurus Epicurus was born in 341 B.C., of
philosophers including the Stoics. Athenian parentage, and lived in Samos with his
We learn from Acts that when Saint Paul father until the age of twenty-one when the
visited Athens in a.d. 59 was with the Epic-
it Athenian settlers in the island were expelled by
ureans and Stoics that he disputed. They had one of Alexander's generals. After fifteen years
established themselves as the chief schools long spent as a displaced person, a refugee, he came to
betore, and it was these two that were to in- Athens and established himself and his school in
fluence Rome. Let us now briefly examine their a garden on the outskirts of the city. Here he
doctrines. taught, in happy seclusion, for the rest of his
The conquests of Alexander mark one of the days, dying in 270. He had a genius for friendship,
indisputable turning-points of history. The whole and his pupils, who included slaves and women,
basis on which the polity and thought of Athens were devoted to him.
and of many another Greek society had been or- Epicurus' system was based on the atomic theory
ganised, namely the City State, had been abolished of Democritus, although Epicurus himself never
for ever and replaced by a multiracial society org- acknowledged his debt to his predecessor. This
anised in massive units which overstepped nation- theory maintained that all matter consists of
al boundaries. The political and ethical works of streams of atoms which flow in parallel channels,
Aristotle, who had been Alexander's tutor, were only that occasionally some atoms swerve, and
obsolete almost as soon as he had written them. so produce new combinations, including our
For Aristotle, as for Plato, it was axiomatic that universe. The doctrine of the Swerve is variously
the 'good life', that is happiness in its highest explained. Cicero suggests that Epicurus was
sense, was possible only to those who played an suddenly struck by the brilliant idea that unless
active part in the service of society which took — an atom did swerve now and then, nothing
the form of the little self-contained state, or polis. would be created at all —
the atoms would just
But that had now been swept away, just as in go on pouring through space without ever coll-
our own day the little, rounded society of parish iding or cohering. The orthodox explanation
or borough has been swept away by agglom- however seems to have been that the theory is
erations controlled by wholly different lines a direct deduction from experience: we know
of interest. And just as in our day men are per- that there is a universe and therefore the atoms
plexed and arc looking for new sanctions for must have collided to create it. As a corollary,
new modes of conduct, so in the post-Alexandrine we know that we have free will, and this too,
age men made the same quest. like everything else, must be the product of
It was philosophy which provided the answer. atoms. So the atoms swerve, and experience docs
No longer were philosophers interested in meta- not disprove this, because no-one can show that
physical abstractions, that is they were no longer they do not.
primarily intellectual innovators, they sought to Thus evolution is a purely natural, material
furnish ethical guidance. For Cicero, writing in process, with which gods have nothing to do.
the first century B.C. but reflecting the teaching Gods there may be, but they arc remote beings,
of the third, philosophy is the 'art or guide of utterly unconcerned with man. It follows that
life', 'the training or healing of the soul'. Plutarch any concept of hell, or of divine punishment is
in the next century called it 'the only medicine folly. There is no heaven, cither, beyond the
7i
EPICUREANS AND STOICS
grave. 'Therefore Death, the king of terrors, is browsing, to take his mind off his troubles. The
nothing to us, because as long as we exist Death book he had picked up happened to be Xeno-
is not present, and when death is come we are phon's Memoirs of Sokrates. Zeno was charmed
no more.' with them —
more: he decided then and there
Superstition — that is the great enemy. But there- to take up philosophy himself. 'Who is your
is a worse one, and this observation is of partic- leading philosopher nowadays?' he asked the
ular interest to twentieth-century students. In bookseller. 'Krates — gone by' was the
he's just
for a life of self-indulgence. It was all the more imperfect amounting to a sense of sin. In the
unfortunate therefore that Epicureanism should eyes of a Stoic there was nothing fortuitous about
have reached Rome
just when materialism and the universe: it was governed, and governed by
sensual excess were making such inroads among an immutable law which it was wicked to trans-
the young. The Romans when they took up gress. It was primarily this insistence on the rule
Epicurus' philosophy tended to degrade and per- of law that commended Stoicism to the disciplined
vert it, and so to give to the word 'epicure' the Roman mind. The wise man is he who can tell
sense we now attach to it. But two of Rome's evil from good and walk accordingly. For their
greatest poets were followers of this brave and physics the Stoics went back to Heracleitus, and
lovable man, one being the gentlest and most postulated fire as the ultimate reality. Fire is also
amiable of them all, Horace the other, Lucretius ; Reason or God. Zeno's originality showed itself
whose atomic epic 'On the Nature of Things' in identifying the intellectual logos or reason of
is the greatest poem of its kind in any language. the Socratics, that is to say the principle which
It helped to inspire Virgil, and is reflected in regulates human thinking and action, with the
many of our own poets, including Gray and material of Heracleitus. Thus, the reason
logos
Tennyson. Of no other Greek philosopher can which rules the cosmos is the same as the reason
this be said. which dwells in our hearts and rules our lives.
Therefore the Law of the Universe is also the
Zeno Far different was the origin and influence law of our own natures and we can only realise
of Epicurus' contemporary Zeno, founder of the ourselvesby conforming to the divine purpose,
Stoics. Zeno was not a Greek. He was the son whose service is perfect freedom. This idea is
of a Phoenician merchant of Kitium in Cyprus. wholly Semitic, and quite unGreck; to a Greek
He was very ugly, had a feeble consitution and man was the measure of all things, and aspiration
was rather dark, so that people called him 'the whether in thought or in art was alien to him.
Egyptian'. He
reached Athens in the year 314 B.C. This concept led to a cosmopolitan view of
as a shipwrecked pauper. His vessel had gone humanity, based on logic. Seneca the great Roman
down with all its cargo and Zeno was ruined. exponent of Stoicism in the first century a.d.,
He walked up from Pciraeus to Athens, where he would write: 'Each of us has two fatherlands,
dolefully entered a bookseller's shop and started one the country in which we happen to be born,
72
A marble statue of
Cupid and Psyche, from
the House of Cupid and
Psyche, Ostia.
73
EPICUREANS AND STOICS
the other an empire upon which the sun never Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus of
sets.' The Epicureans denied Providence: for the Macedon, he had been adopted into the family
Stoics was the Ruler of the world.
it of the Scipios, and so had won the friendship of
Curiouslyenough, as two modern English Polybius, a Greek diplomatist and historian who
scholars have noted, the best expositor of the was already a member of the distinguished house-
religious and metaphysical aspect of Stoicism is hold. Polybius treated the boy as his son, and
to be found in the Roman Catholic poet Alexander young Scipio (as he now was) regarded the genial
Pope —
or perhaps not so curiously: as already historian as his father. They were lifelong friends
noted much of Stoicism was carried over into and their social circle included the elite of Rome
Christianity, and Pope is here, in his Essay on during its hey-day.
Man, reflecting the fashionable Deism of the In this already philhellene family, who spoke
eighteenth century which had sprung from it. Greek, wrote Greek, and had so many personal
connections with Greece, it was natural that
'All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Panaetius should find a welcome, and that like
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; Polybius he should become a resident friend of
That changed through all, and yet in all the same, Scipio himself. 'From Panaetius, Scipio and his
Great in the earth, as in the etherial frame, friends would learn', in War de-Fowler's phrase,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 'a new and illuminating conception of man's
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, place in the universe, and of his relation to the
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Power manifested in it.' This was an unprecedent-
Spreads undivided, operates unspent, ed enlargement of Roman religious consciousness.
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, At the same time, Panaetius realised that the
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; pure Stoicism in which he had been brought up
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, must be modified for Roman consumption. For
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: one thing, whereas Zeno had taught at a time
To him no high, no low, no great, no small, when the Greek city state was disappearing, Rome
He fdls, he bounds, connects and equals all. still was a city state, and was rapidly becoming
Submit; in this or any other sphere, phasis must therefore be laid on the duties of
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear; the ordinary citizen, and the necessity of living
Safe in the natal, or the mortal hour. in accordance with nature.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee; Panaetius made the requisite concessions and
All chance, direction which thou canst not see; adjustments, and so his system found favour in
All discord, harmony not understood; Roman minds. Cicero in many of his philosoph-
All partial evil universal good: ical writings reproduces Panaetius' Romanised
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, Stoicism.
One truth is clear - Whatever is, is right.' This was a great victory for Greek thought.
Rome had not taken kindly to the first philoso-
Panaetius was Rome's good fortune that its
It phers she had met. In 173 B.C. two Epicurean phil-
first knowledge of Stoicism was conveyed to it osophers had been expelled from the city:
by an outstanding Greek. Panaetius was a per- eighteen years later certain eminent Athenian
suasive and upright man, and by birth a Rhodian, philosophers who had come to Rome on a
that is a citizen of a Greek state with which Rome, diplomatic mission, as soon as they started to
despite her increasing imperialism at the expense expound their ideas, were asked to leave. All the
of the Hellenes, had always been on good terms. more fortunate therefore the conjunction of
Panaetius was a convinced and eloquent Stoic, and Panaetius, Polybius and Scipio: at least a beacon
it not surprising that when he visited Rome,
is had been lit.
he should be drawn into the charmed and charm- Stoicism is a chilly creed; it could never console
ing circle of the Scipios. Publius Cornelius Scipio a Horace or inspire a Lucretius, but in the first
Aemilianus, who was born in 184, was a man of century a.d. it would be the guide of Seneca,
real elevation of mind. The son of the famous and in the second produce two of its most famous
74
EPICUREANS AND STOICS
7S
Despite its inherent limitations, philosophy was
Rome.
comprehension of the sublime
In this study, as in so
Roman religion,
much
we must
76
A mosaic of Neptune
Triumphant with his
consort, Amphitrite,
and surrounded by his
subjects. Louvre.
77
;
IMMORTAL LONGINGS
Statue of Priapus, god succeeding ages. Cicero has been lauded as the Numa about Pythagorean teaching. These came
of Generally
fertility.
greatest of Romans, he has been despised as the into the handsof a praetor who with the approval
shown as a misshapen
old man, he was adopted meanest of statesmen. Because he wrote so much, of the Senate publicly burnt the forged books.
as a god of gardens, where and so incomparably beautifully, and because we The war had brought Rome into contact with
his statue was often
possess even today so many of his letters, Cicero southern Italy, but we
hear no more of the
erected.This statue,
from the Musee de Sousse, is known to us more intimately than any other doctrine, so subversive of Rome's traditional rel-
Tunisia, shows him Roman. And that means that we know his faults igion, for a century, after which lapse of time
supporting kindly fruits
of the earth.
as well as his excellences. Unfortunately his two a number of Pythagorean documents began to
most glaring defects were two that Anglo- circulate, but with what effect we have no ink-
Saxons particularly dislike —
vanity and timidity, ling. The man who really made Pythagoreanism
both of which in Cicero reached pathological 'stick' in Rome was Posidonius, a traveller, phil-
proportions. But his virtues were outstanding. osopher and historian who dominated the intel-
Not only did he create Latin as we know it, lectual scene in Rome during the first half of the
rather as Dante was to create Italian, but his first century B.C. His writings, of which we
spiritual outlook was as lofty as that of any possess a few fragments only, 'lie at the back',
Roman of whom we have record. Before Rome in Warde Fowler's words, 'of nearlv all the serious
goes down under the oriental flood it is well to
follow Cicero to the heights. Cicero was an
eclectic. With Epicureanism he had no sympathy.
78
IMMORTAL LONGINGS
Roman literature of his own and indeed of the dangers too. knew,
(In fact, as all Cicero's readers
following age.' Panaetius, there can be little the younger Scipio was found dead
bed in his
doubt', had done something to leaven Stoicism one day in 129 B.C., the supposed year of the
with Platonic-Aristotelian psychology, the general Republic's setting. He was buried hugger-mugger
tendency of which was towards a dualism of Soul and the cause of death was never established.)
and Body. 'But', the elder Scipio goes on, 'be assured of
The pure Stoics admitted no distinction or this, Africanus, so that you may be the more
difference between heaven and earth, soul and eager to defend the commonwealth: all those who
body —
they were pantheists nor could they — have preserved, or aided or enlarged their father-
admit the idea of a transcendent God. Their land have a special place reserved for them in
passion for unity inhibited them. But once Pan- the heavens where they may enjoy an eternal
aetius had heralded a return to an older mode life — acvo sempiteruo — of happiness. For nothing
of thought, it was easy for a society which had of all that is done on earth is more pleasing to the
long ago abandoned burial for cremation and supreme God who rules the whole universe illi —
had given up any idea of the prolongation of priucipi dec qui omnem mundum regit - than the
human life beneath the earth to follow his lead. assemblies and gatherings of men associated in
Posidonius pursued this line of thought, and so 'at justice which are called states. Their rulers and
once gave to mysticism — or transcendentalism preservers come from that place and to that place
if we choose so to call it — its chance. For in such they return.' Scipio then asks his grandfather
a dualistic psychology it is the soul that gains whether his father Paulus and the others whom we
and the body that loses.' think of as dead are really alive. 'Surely', he
This was the faith which Cicero has illustrated replies, 'all those are alive who have escaped from
so beautifully and sensitively. His eulogy of the the bondage of the body as from a prison; but
Pythagoreans has already been quoted: it occurs that life of yours which men so call is really
in his Tusculau Disputations, written in 64 B.C., death.' Paulus then approaches. Scipio the younger
the year before he became Consul. Ten years is much overcome by his apparition, and asks
later Cicero started work on a Republic, in imit- why he should remain on earth: could he not
ation of Plato's, a topic he had long been contem- hasten to his father? No, replies his father, unless
plating. The book came out three years later and that God 'whose temple is everything that you
at once became popular. Cicero imagines that see has freed you from the prison of the body,
Scipio Africanus Minor, mentioned in the last you cannot gain entrance hither.' Bidding him
chapter, has assembled a company of friends, in love justice and duty he says: 'Such a life is the
the year 129 B.C., in the garden of his home, where road to the skies, to that gathering of those who
they discuss forms of government, man's place have completed their earthly lives and have been
in the state, and the duties of a statesman. As relieved of the body and who live in yonder place
Cicero explained to his brother he had set the you now see... and which you on earth, borrowing
discussion in a past age for fear of causing offence a Greek term, call the Galaxy.'
— he was living in dangerous days. The work The younger Scipio is enraptured by what he
owes much to Plato, to his Republic first and fore- sees in this high heaven to which he has been
most; and the idea of placing the scene in the borne, enraptured too by the music of the spheres.
last year of the chief speaker's life may have How small earth looks: even the Roman empire
come from the Phaedo, as also that of concluding (and he uses thus early the word imperium) seems
the book with a passage which concentrates on but a speck. His grandfather bids him, 'Strive
life after death. In much of the argument we can on, indeed, and be sure that it is not you who
trace the influence of Posidonius, and Cicero arc mortal, but only this body... the spirit is
makes Scipio say that he had often discussed the your true self, not that physical figure. Know
subject of the state with Panaetius in the presence then that you are a god, if a god is that which
of Polybius, whose ideas it also reflects. The most lives, remembers and foresees and which
feels,
famous part of the work is its conclusion. Scipio rules the body over which it is set just as the
relates that when he was serving in Africa as a supreme God above us moves the universe.
regimental officer in 149, at the beginning of the Finally he conjures his grandson to remember
Third Punic War, in which he was to win renown, that the great First Cause is a spirit; 'the only
he one night dreamed a dream, in which his force which moves itself, it surely has no begin-
famous grandfather appeared to him and after ning and is immortal'. 'He departed, and I awoke
foretelling his future career warns him of life's from sleep.' So ends Cicero's Republic.
79
Detail of a mosaic
pavement from Genazzano
which shows the god
Pan.Museo Nazionale,
Rome.
80
The beautiful
sister-goddesses known
asthe Three Graces.
They are Aglaia, who
represented splendour,
Thalia, abundance, and
Euphrosyne, jollity.
Here we have Cicero, one of the greatest toremove these malevolent ghosts from the City
Romans of his day, indeed of all time, clearly was carried out at night.
caught up in the current of mysticism which was
then in vogue. But, as Warde Fowler points out, Traditionalism in Religion The paterfamilias
even more significant for the purposes of the walked out of the house barefoot, washed his
present enquiry is Cicero's own behaviour in a hands in spring-water, and then turning his head
personal crisis. In the year 45 B.C. he lost his away, threw out into the night handfulls of beans,
only daughter Tullia, to whom he had been crying out: 'By these beans I redeem me and
wholly devoted. She was the light of his life, mine'. This he said nine times without looking
which was as unhappy domestically as it was round, while the Lemurs, it was said, gathered
troubled politically. In his utter sorrow he writes up the beans. After that the celebrant washed his
from one of his country retreats to his friend and hands once more, beat on a bronze vessel and
confidant Atticus in Rome on 3rd May 45 to say said: 'Shades of my ancestors begone'. He might
he wants not a mere tomb for Tullia, but a shrine. then look round, and, behold, they were gone.
He thought of her as being still living. 'I want it Cicero was probably not the only Roman of
to be a shrine —
fanum —
and that wish cannot be his day who regarded this sort of thing as a
rooted out of my heart. I am anxious to avoid any Hallowe'en charade but how very much further
;
likeness to a tomb, not so much on account of Cicero had gone towards a more sublime and
the penalty of the law, as in order to attain as spiritual view of human destiny! In official life
nearly as possible to an apotheosis [he uses the he was a strict upholder of traditional religion.
Greek word]. This I could do if I built it in the He wrote a sequel to his Republic called Laws, in
Villa itself, but, as I have often said, I dread the which he sets out the laws by which his ideal
change of owners. Wherever I construct it on state is to be governed. In the second book of
the land, I think that I could secure that posterity this work he deals with religion. No-one, he
should respect its sanctity. I should not like it enjoins, is to have private gods, either new gods
to be known by any other name than fanum — or alien gods unless recognised by the State. In
unreasonably you may say.' private men are to worship their ancestral gods.
In cities they are to have shrines, in the country,
Shades of the Underworld Cicero refers to the groves and homes for the Lares. The gods to be
project in several later letters. Clearly, he thinks worshipped are to be not only those which have
of his beloved child as being still living; he cannot always been regarded as dwellers in heaven, but
bear to think of her as having passed into the also those whose merits have admitted them to
chill,crepuscular company of the Manes, as the heaven: Hercules, Liber (that is, Bacchus or
Romans called the dead. Gradually, it is true, these Dionysus), Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirinus;
shades become more individual, until by Cicero's also good qualities such as Intellect, Virtue, Loyalty
time we begin to come upon those inscriptions, and Good Faith.
which were to become so common in later cen- Gods are to have their own priests, who are to
turies, to Dis Manibus, the gods of the underworld. see that all done decently and in order. The
is
The Manes were the object of a cult. Wine, honey, Vestal Virgins shall guard the sacred fire on the
milk and flowers were offered to them. Two public hearth. Those who are ignorant of the
festivals were devoted to them, the Rosaria or prescribed rites shall seek information of the
Violaria when the tombs were strewn with roses priests. Soothsayers, augurs and other such persons
or violets, and the Parentalia, which lasted from recognised by the State shall interpret omens and
the 1 was held
8th to the 21st February. Aeneas portents. The Senate may refer such phenomena
to have founded the Parentalia, in honour of his to Etruscan soothsayers. Women must not per-
old father Anchises. One year, it was said, the form sacrifices by night except those for the
ghosts invaded the City (no burials were allowed Bona Dea, from which men are excluded; and the
within the walls) and could only be induced to initiation into the Roman form of the Eleusinian
go home to their graves by the due performance mysteries is to be properly safeguarded. No-one
of the appropriate rites. When the dead were shall make collections on behalf of Cybele except
thought of in this guise, that is not as ancestors her own servants, and then they may do so only
quietly resting in their graves but as evil spirits on specified days.
on the rampage, they were called Lemures, and What a seeming contradiction is here, between
they were dealt with at the Lenmria, celebrated Cicero the transcendental mystic and Cicero the
on the 9th, nth and 13th May. The ceremony traditionalist. In Roman minds no such contradic-
82
IMMORTAL LONGINGS
tion need exist. To maintain the mos maiorum, the Deification In his own commentary on these The eagle, a favourite
motif in Roman
ancestral custom, was an act of piety. In a society laws contained in a later chapter of the same book, monumental stone work.
which lacked modern means of communication, Cicero touching the deification of heroes,
says,
the beliefs and attitudes of the ruling class had 'Now law which prescribes the worship
the
an influence which they would not exert today, of those of the human race who have been
except in tribal communities, where a tribesman deified —
consecratos —
such as Hercules and the
on being asked what his attitude is to an issue rest, makes it clear that while the souls of all
may answer in a voice of surprise, 'How can I men are immortal, those of good and brave men
say until I have asked my Chief?' For Cicero, are divine. It is a good thing also that Intellect,
therefore, as for Varro, pietas was a matter of Loyalty, Virtue and Good Faith should be deified
practice, not of belief. And during the disturbed by a stroke of the pen — manu — , and in Rome
years of the first century B.C. practice had fallen temples have been dedicated by the State to all
into sad disarray. As Cicero himself laments, these qualities, the purpose being that those who
auspices were cynically misused for political ends; possess them (and all good men do) should believe
prodigies, as Livy tells us, were not recorded or that the gods themselves are established in their
never announced; the calendar as we have seen own souls.'
fell into hopeless chaos, temples were allowed to This view of divinity is diametrically opposed
fall into ruin, even the great shrine of Jupiter to that of the Jews and the Christians. For the
on the Capitol which, burnt in 83, was not fully Jews, God is supreme, eternal, alone and incom-
restored for 21 years. The office of Flamen Dialis prehensibly elevated. He may communicate with
was not filled from Sulla's dictatorship, that is men, but he remains alone and one. For the
from some time between 81 and 79, until 11 B.C. Christians, this one God had been pleased to
— though in view of the antique taboos with become man, while still remaining God, and
which he was hedged that was perhaps not in that human guise to visit humanity. What could
surprising. Pietas, therefore, must be maintained be more different than a man becoming a god
and stimulated by every possible means. at the behest of man, and a God becoming man
That is the first point which emerges from a study of his own will; Nothing.
of Cicero's of the utmost import-
beliefs. It is That is why the struggle between the state
ance for the comprehension of the religious his- religion of Rome in which the godhead of the
tory of Rome during the next four centuries. ruler was progressively enhanced and the Christ-
Exactly the same arguments in favour of the up- ians to whom themere idea was blasphemy was
holding of traditional cults and rites would be to be so harsh and prolonged.
used by refined and intelligent pagans of the Before we come to deal with that struggle it
fourth century a.d. in their disputes, often by will be appropriate to return to the other Eastern
then quite amicable, with Christians. The second religions which were to precede its advent; and
point to be grasped is no less important and in so doing to salute Cicero once again as being
significant : it is the current conception of div- so far in advance of others of his day and gener-
inity. ation.
83
In one of the most famous sneers ever uttered
AND TIBER that every question had two sides, both bad. In
his day, it is true, the word 'oriental' had acquired
something of the pejorative sense that attaches
to the
is
word
essential
'Levantine' in our
to remember that
own
in Juvenal's
age; but
day
it
84
propagandists. Mithras, on the other hand, gath- Opposite: the cult of Isis,
nor trees. The land lives not from its own res-
ources, refreshed by the rain from heaven, but
is nurtured from without by a magical and life-
I
giving stream, whose very origins were unknown
until the nineteenth century. Nowhere is the con-
trast between life and death more vivid than in
Egypt, where it is possible quite literally to
stand with one foot in the desert and the other
in the sown. From a remote antiquity, from an
age far anterior to the first kings of Hellas or
Crete, the Egyptians had pondered the great
mystery of life and death, and had raised what
are still the grandest and most imposing funerary
monuments in the world. Persia, Geece and Rome
were all in their turn fascinated by Egypt. The
father of Greek history, Herodotus, in the fifth
century B.C. devoted a whole book of his great
work to Egypt. Alexander the Great founded there
his greatest creation, Alexandria; and his suc-
cessors, the Ptolemies, while preserving the an-
cient heritage of the Pharaohs, made of Alex-
andria one of the most active cultural centres
of the Greek world. After the defeat of Antony
and Cleopatra, Egypt became the appanage of
the Caesars, who embellished their own capital
with Egyptian obelisks, just London, Paris
as
and New York would one day be proud to do.
Egyptian deities were bound to find their way
to Rome. That they did so when they did and to
the extent they did is due to the sagacity of the
!j
Isiswas a purely
Egyptian deity, but she
made a wide appeal in
the Graeco-Roman
world. She was the wife
of Osiris, and the mother
of the sun-god Horus.
As the bereaved mother,
she became assimilated
to Demeter, and came to
represent for her votaries
the universal feminine.
This statue in the
Capitoline Museum
shows her holding the
sistrum associated with
her worship. It is still
used by Abyssinian
Christians.
86
first Ptolemy. He realised that many of the tradit-
*7
Opposite: the Anatolian
deity, Men, seen with a
thyrsis in his right hand
and a pine cone in the
His foot rests on the
left.
>>
t
A
/
1
ORONTES NILE AND TIBER
An Isiac procession. The ion was deliberately balanced from the outset disposed to welcome a cult in which they found
snake was sacred to Isis, and the Greeks own and their own myths with
so as to attract both the Egyptians their divinities
which is why Cleopatra,
who saw herself as the at A Greek hicrophant from Eleus-
the same time. something added which was more poignant,
incarnation of Isis, used is Timothcus collaborated with a liberal-
called more magnificent. It is a remarkable fact that
to procure death.
it
minded Egyptian priest from Memphis called among the multitude of deities honoured in the
The tonsure of the
priests of Isis prefigures Manctho to ensure that it made the widest provinces of the kingdom of the Ptolemies those
that of Christian monks. possible appeal.So well did they succeed that a of the entourage, or one might say the cycle,
The sistrum is again in
evidence.
Greek philosopher, Demetrius of Phalcron, cured of Osiris, his spouse Isis, their son Harpocratcs
of blindness by Scrapis, composed hymns in his and their faithful servant Anubis are the only
honour that were still being sung more than ones which were truly adopted by Hellenic pop-
three centuries later. An elaborate hymnology ulations. All the other spirits, celestial or infernal,
soon developed of which transcriptions on pap- which Egypt worshipped remained strangers in
yrus have come down to us. Greece.' The cult of Serapis was 'the most civilised
Thus, says Cumont, 'The Greeks ought to be of all the "barbarian" religions: it preserved
ORONTES NILE AND TIBER
enough of the exotic to tickle the curiosity of Antioch — even Athens, where he had a temple
the Greeks, but not enough to wound their at the foot of the Acropolis. A shrine was con-
delicate sense of moderation — and its success was secrated to him in Halicarnassus, Herodotus'
brilliant.' birth-place, in 307.
In those days as in later epochs the axiom cuius This new synthetic religion reached Rome by
regie cius rcligio — 'whose is the realm, his is the way of Sicily and Magna Graccia. A municipal
religion' —
prevailed; and so wherever king decree mentions a Serapeum at Puteoli (Pozzuoli),
Ptolemy was obeyed or honoured his gods would the port through which Paul of Tarsus would
be obeyed and honoured, too. The priests of Isis later introduce his gospel to Italy, in 105 B.C.
under the empire always mentioned the ruling About same date a temple of Isis was dedicated
the
sovereign first in their prayers, a custom they at Pompeii, of which the frescoes demonstrate
had inherited from their predecessors under the to this day the vigour of this Alexandrine culture.
Ptolemies and would hand on to the Christians In Rome where it had arrived not later than the
and Muslims. Serapis reached Cyprus, Sicily, age of Sulla, the new religion was not universally
Antinous, the beautiful
Bythinian who was
Hadrian's favourite, met
his death by drowning
in the Nile. Hadrian had
him deified, thus
introducing into Roman
sculpture a live motif
such as ithad not
known forsome time —
that of a real and not
merely mythological
youth. Centuries later it
would emerge again in
Michelangelo's David.
92
ORONTES NILE AND TIBER
in Rome, but included in his Villa at Tibur emperors; but before we come to deal with it,
(Tivoli) a magnificent Scrapcum, of which the a word or two must be said about the Syrian
vestiges still delight and impress those who religionsof which the Roman satirist complains.
visit it. The of Syria never attained in the
religions
Until the very end of the pagan world the west the cohesion that those of Egypt, or Asia
worship of Sciapis held its ground. In part it Minor or Persia did. This is largely due to the
was the flexibility, or wc might say the vagueness, nature of the country itself. Syria is divided by
of its doctrine which made the cult so popular. high mountain ranges, which run north and south,
A sacred scribe who became one of Nero's into many unrelated districts. This has always
preceptors found, in the priestly traditions of his led not only to political disunity such as it still
country, echoes of Stoicism. When Plutarch fosters, but also to a remarkable diversity of
talks of Egyptian deities, he finds that they accord religions.Today there arc to be found in Syria
perfectly with his own eclectic views. A ncoplato- Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, Jews, Druses,
nist, Iamblichus, finds the same happy concur- Alaouitcs and adherents of the Roman Catholic,
rence. And not only to Greek goddesses was Isis Orthodox, Syrian, Assyrian, Maronitc, Armenian,
assimilated: she amalgamated just as easily with Creek Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian chur-
the Phoenician Astartc, the Syrian Atargatis or ches, tomention only a selection of the larger
the Iranian Anahit. She became, in fact, a pan- communions.
93
ORONTES NILE AND TIBER
The first Syrian goddess to reach Italy was Atar- still stand on the plain between Beirut and Dam-
gatis, (often confused with the Phoenician As- ascus. The dove and were both wor-
the fish
tarte) who had a temple at Bambyce
(Membidj) or shipped in Syria, the former being sacred to
Hierapolis, not far from the Euphrates.
Her Astarte, the latter, so familiar as an early Christian
worship, which seems to prefigure the antics of symbol, to Atargatis.
the dervishes who still gyrate in Damascus, was The most famous of all the Syrian deities was
in some respects degrading and orgiastic. An old Adonis, whose name is even today a synonym for
eunuch, of doubtful morals, would precede a a rather sloppy type of male beauty. His death
troupe of painted youths leading a donkey which was bewailed by Syrian matrons on the shores
bore a decorated image of the goddess. On reach- of the river by Byblos which still runs red with
ing a village or rich country-house, they would his blood; and he had his 'gardens' in Rome by
Syrians were intelligent, biddable and hardy. But by soldiers for the success of their arms.
theirvery numbers made them a danger. So, These divine migrations were admittedly made
thought the Romans, did the ideas they brought for the most part under the empire, but it is
with them; and not only the slaves but the ever convenient to consider them here. They culmin-
growing company of Syrian merchants. In the ated in the elevation of a fourteen-year-old boy,
year 139 B.C. a praetor ordered the expulsion from Elagabalus, who was a servitor of the Baal of
Rome of Jews and Chaldeans, that is of Syrian Emesa (Horns) to the imperial purple, and his
soothsayers, for it was they who had brought to introduction into Rome of another 'black stone'
Rome the so-called 'science' of astrology. Only as the supreme deity. Because Elagabalus was a
which devastated
five years later a slave revolt, foreigner, and because his religious ideas were in
Sicily,was organised and led by a slave from advance of his time, he met with hostile treatment
Apamea, a follower of the Syrian goddess who from Roman writers. He did in fact attempt to
said he had received his orders from on high. convert Rome to a monotheism based on Sol
The fact that these wretched beings, too poor to Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, which half a
build the simplest shrine, received religious con- century later Aurelian succeeded in bringing from
solation from wandering Galli, with whom they Palmyra. Since this monotheism was that in which
shared part of their modest savings, shows how the first Christian emperor, Constantine, was
numerous they had become. brought up it has an outstanding claim to notice
A horde of Syrian divinities emigrated all over in any study of Syria's contribution to Rome's
the empire, and like their Egyptian counterparts religious destiny.
they tended to become naturalised. At Puteoli One final contribution of Syria to the religion
we find Mclqart of Sidon as Hercules; Dusares, of Rome may be mentioned, namely the crucifix.
the god of south Arabia, and Allath, the principal During the first five centuries of the Christian era,
Arab goddess, both moved west via Syria, and Christians had a horror of representing their Sav-
Allath became identified with Athena. She even iour nailed to an instrument of torture. It was
reached Spain, in the company of Hadad of Baal- only in the sixth century that the Syrians introd-
bek-Heliopolis, the relics of whose huge temple uced the symbol in all its pathos.
94
A priest of Attis. This
cult originated in Asia
Minor and spread to
Rome where, under the
Empire, Attis was
established as a powerful
deity. This bas-relief is
from Ostia which, being
the sea port of Rome, was
naturally a meeting place
of many foreign cults.
95
Before we come to the end of the story, which
MOSES
is
itself.Both of
96
natural observatory of which its inhabitants made were attracted by the newcomers' religion. With- The more savage side
of Mithraism is illustrated
good use at a very early date. By plotting the out wishing to become Jews, to observe all the
by this horrific deity,
motions of the stars, they found that after a given injunctions and taboos of the Mosaic Law and so an ex volo of the year
period certain of them returned to the very same to become members of a separatist community, a.d. 190.
positions in the heavens. If they did this, argued they did nevertheless come to infuse Jewish ideas
the observers, they must be eternal. A fortiori, into their own cults. Syncretist sects sprang up, in
thePower which had made them, and had set which Jewish and pagan ideas became inter-
them in perpetual motion, must be even more mingled, as we know from magical texts which
eternal, if such an idea were conceivable. often present us with the Yahweh of the Jews
Thus was born the concept of eternity, and of alongside Egyptian or Greek deities. We even
its corollary, eternal life. It deeply influenced Jew- find Attis addressed by the epithet reserved for
ish thought. The conservative rabbinical school the Jewish God, 'most high'.
represented by the Sadducees 'which say there is It was in Asia Minor that this reciprocal ming-
no resurrection' would have none of it; but it ling was most noticeable, and that in connection
was eagerly promulgated by the so-called apoc- with a god very close to Attis and often con-
alyptic writers, who in their turn influenced the founded with him. His name was Sabazios. 'This
more liberal doctors. Of these apocalyptic writers ancient divinity of Thraco-Phrygian tribes', says
the best known is the author of the Book of Cumont, 'was by an audacious etymology, which
Daniel. To quote the late Dr Bevan in the CAH goes back to the Hellenistic epoch, identified with
(Vol. viii, p. 'The Jewish apocalypses...
512): Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts of the Bible.
differ from the older Hebrew prophecy in giving The kyrios Sabaoth of the Septuagint was regarded
a formal scheme of world history: a succession as the equivalent of the kyrios Sabazios of the
of epochs are distinguished in the fight between Barbarians.'
good and evil up to the final triumph of good Thus indirectly, no less than directly, Rome
and the coming of the kingdom of God. It is received the benediction of the God of Jacob.
likely that we may see here the influence of By the time of the Empire, we find an haute
Persian Zoroastrianism. The chief importance Juiverie established in Rome. Poppaea, Nero's
of this literature in the development of Hebraic empress, favoured the Jews, and it was through
religion is that it spread among the Jews a new a Jewish actor who was one of her favourites
belief in life after death for the individual.' In that the great Jewish historian Josephus obtained
the Book of Daniel, although there is no proc- the entree. It was a Jewish prince, Agrippa, grand-
lamation of a general resurrection, it is clear that son of Herod the Great, who was largely instr-
certain deserving souls will attain immortality, umental in securing the elevation of Claudius to
[rather as Cicero was 'Many of
later to assert] : the purple. Queen Berenice, Agrippa's daughter,
them that sleep in the of the earth shall
dust captivated the future emperor Titus. It was this
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to Jewry, so diverse and penetrating, that was to
shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be the matrix of the first Christian church in
be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firm- Rome, founded by two immigrant Jews, named
ament' — note the significant simile — 'and they Peter and Paul.
shall turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever
and ever.' (Daniel XII, 2&3.) The Persians But not only from Palestine was
This book was written in or about the year the religion of Rome to receive new vigour : Persia
166 B.C., just at a time when Jewish colonics were too was to make her contribution. The relations
being established in Asia Minor where JcwTy and between Persia and the west make one of the
Judaism were to exercise a profound influence. most arresting and one of the saddest studies in
The story of Asian Jewry, although of the greatest all ancient history. In our own day the Levant
interest, is outside the scope of this study: it will has become the scene of a struggle as sharp as it is
be enough to remark that among its sons was to barren between east and west. So it was in ant-
be the Roman citizen, Jewish scholar and Christian iquity. For a whole millennium the ruinous feud
apostle Saul of Tarsus. What concerns us here is went on. It is hard for us to gauge just what
the influence of that Jewry on religion as it happened because, although they excelled in every
affected Rome. art from architecture to jewelry, the ancient Per-
Judaism's earliest contact with Rome may have sians have left us no literature whatever. We are
been indirect, but none the less potent for that. forced, therefore, to take our facts from Greek
Many of those among whom the Jews had settled and Roman historians, helped out here and there
97
MOSES AND MITHRAS
98
MOSES AND MITHRAS
v helped in
he caught them,
the propagation of this faith, because
unlike Julius Caesar who
Pompcy
crucified pirates
settled them on
when
the
99
The Mithraeum beneath
the church of S. Clemente,
near the Colosseum.
The vault is so constructed
as to represent a cave. It
land, as far as possible from the tempting sea, shows king Antiochus I (first century B.C.) shaking
not only in Asia but in Greece and even in southern hands with Mithras, whose head is surrounded
An obscure Latin author commenting
Italy as well. with a nimbus and with solar rays, and who
on by an earlier poet says the cult of Mithras
a line wears the familiar Phrygian cap.
passed from the Persians to the Phrygians and The Mithraic cult with which the Romans
from the Phrygians to the Romans. Thus, both came in contact in the days of Pompey had
Plutarch and the scholiast give Asia Minor as the developed in Anatolia during the previous cen-
launching-pad, as it were, of Mithraism. Other tury: just how, we cannot be precise.
evidence supports them. One king Mithradates But this we know: when the Persians occupied
has been mentioned: the name frequently occurs Asia Minor, they found there, as Strabo assures
in the dynasties notonly of Pontus, but of Capp- us, a climate such as they were used to at home,
adocia, Armenia and Commagene, proof of the and a terrain admirably suited to the breeding of
devotion of these pretended Achaemenid dynasties horses. We have already seen how much the
to Mithras. A famous rock-relief in Commagene Persians respected horsemanship; and they had
ioo
MOSES AND MITHRAS
into Britain.
One of the two tasks in Goa in thewake of devout warriors. Magi, or 'It was this that set Mithraism quite apart from
facing Mithras in his 'fire-bearers', were to be found all over the Levant. the other cults, and inspired its dogmatic and
trial of strength with the
Sun-god was the capture
Prayers and hymns were chanted before the altar moral teaching, giving them a stiffening and a
of a wild bull, which on which glowed the sacred flame, milk and stability hitherto unknown in Roman paganism.
he later sacrificed. From
honey and oil were offered, with the same pre- It presented the universe under an aspect unknown
the creature's body
sprang many gifts useful cautions taken as in Persia lest the breath of the before and at the same time provided a new aim
to man. The depiction officiant should sully the holy fire. for existence.'
of the slaying of the bull
wasa common theme in
What was it that caused Mithraism to attract Right is Wrong is Wrong. Both are
Right and
Roman Mithraic temples. so many votaries throughout the Roman world? living spirits,and so both must be conciliated.
Its rites, celebrated in caves and crypts were not Ahura-Mazda is the spirit of light, Ahriman the
nearly as poignant or exciting as those of Cybele spirit of darkness. Ahura-Mazda, Mithras, the
surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac represent- excelled. It laid upon its adherents definite 'com-
ing the heavens, slaying a bull, the living em- mandments', though we do not know what they
bodiment of brute force at its strongest —
that were. Mithras exalted brotherhood as well. One
would not alone have sufficed to make Mithras class of his initiates was known as 'soldiers', just
supreme. What Persia brought to religion was a as Christians were exhorted by St Paul to be.
THE it
of the
might well be supposed
first century B.C.
perished as the Republic perished. In fact,
that in the latter days
Roman religion as such
it did
uircat-ncphcw and
adopted son and heir,
the creator of the
empire. This head
shows him as he liked
Roman
On
ETERNAL nothing of the
religion
that
all
it
sort.
was consolidated, and
the contrary, the state
in so robust a
lasted for four centuries longer, outlived
the foreign importations except Judaism and
form
to be regarded, calm,
far-seeing, firm and
benevolent; no king,
but the leader and guide
of his people.
in charming verse.
103
104
THE ETERNAL CITY
105
THE ETERNAL CITY
Opposite below: the of personifications symbolising to all passers-by place', was a brilliant general. It was he who
Ara Pacis, or Altar of Pax
the far-reaching and enduring effects of the enabled Octavian, or Augustus as he was soon
Peace, as it appears
today, reassembled Romana now solemnly established by Augustus' called, to create the peace which the poets praised.
opposite the mausoleum on an extensive tour of the
return [he had been Agrippa did not himself care for poets or their
of Augustus. It was
erected between 13 and 9
western provinces] — the warrior goddess Roma, works he even went so far as to criticise Virgil for
:
B.C. to celebrate the peace seated at peace, and Tellus, or more probably the plagiarism at a time when everyone else was laud-
established throughout motherland of Italy, rich in children and in all ing him. Maecenas, though not so great a man as
the Roman world after
the return of Augustus
the other gifts which peace bestows. On the west Agrippa, was the link between Augustus and the
from Spain and Gaul. two legendary scenes
side are —
Aeneas, Augustus' literary world, so that his name has become a
Itmarks the peak of making his sacrifice, that offered to synonym for enlightened patronage of the arts.
prototype,
Roman art, and is a
powerful exposition of Juno, of the famous white sow of the prodigy, He was descended from Etruscan kings, a knight
Roman religious ideas. the augury for the foundation of Lavinium, a who never cared to become a senator, and a
Opposite above: Ara
sacrifice for his homecoming to the promised land close friend of Virgil and Horace, as they were
Pacis, west side. Aeneas, of and the scene of the Lupercal, where in
Italy; of each other. This trio, Maecenas, Virgil and
Augustus' prototype, the presence of Mars and Faustulus, the (now Horace, were to have a deep and abiding in-
sacrificing to Juno the
white sow which was
vanished) she-wolf suckled Romulus and his fluence not only on the
literary patrimony of
the augury for his founding brother... The Ara Pacis appeals to us by its serene Rome but on theof its citizens. Both Virgil
life
of Lavinium, a
tranquillity, its unpretentious stateliness, its homely and Horace are incomparable poets. To this day
thanksgiving for his
homecoming to the intimacy, its gracious informality, its delight in they are celebrated in England by societies which
promised land of Italy. Nature, its purposeful unity, and not least by its exist simply in order to expound their works and
modest dimensions. It embodies the very best venerate their genius.
Below: Ara Pacis, detail
showing a suovetaurilia. that Rome bestowed on Italy and it strikes that
perfect balance between land and city on which Horace Here we are concerned only with the
Augustus claimed to build his empire.' contributions to the religious revival which the
In this great enterprise, Augustus' two ministers, Augustan age was to witness at the bidding of
Agrippa and Maecenas, were his willing instrum- the emperor and his ministers and poets. Virgil
ents. Agrippa, whom Buchan characterised as 'the and Horace although linked by bonds of true
supreme example in history of a man of the first affection were utterly different in character. Both
order whom loyalty constrained to take the second claimed to be Epicureans; but whereas Virgil had
106
107
THE ETERNAL CITY
for six years been a pupilof Siro, a well-known dependence and to help repair the ravages of the
and highly respected teacher who conducted his civil wars that Augustus and Virgil with him did
'Garden' in Campania, Horace admits that he their utmost to restore the dignity of the farmer.
was no more than a 'sleek pig in Epicurus' herd'. On the night before the first of June Augustus
Nevertheless he played his part in the revival. and Agrippa sacrificed to the Fates, mentioned in
He felt it his duty to do so. After all, his friends Horace's hymn, on the second night to the Greek
Maecenas and Augustus —
and they were true deity of childbirth, Eilythia, and on the third to
and loyal friends —
had been very good to him Mother Rome's ruler prayed for the
Earth.
and had enabled him to lead a life of comfort prosperity of Rome, and also for himself and
and leisure on his beloved Sabine farm. Augustus his family. 'The scene on the bank of the Tiber,
had even wanted Horace to be his secretary and illuminated by torches, must have been most
was not offended when Horace declined the impressive.' Daylight, too, had its rites. On the
offer. No-one ever commended morals with more first two days Augustus and Agrippa offered the
elegance or less conviction than Horace. This he appropriate sacrifices to Jupiter and Juno on the
did in the so-called Roman odes of his third Capitol. On the third and last day the focus was
book. He sent forth beautifully phrased appeals transferred to the Palatine, where Augustus lived,
for the restoration of and return to the temples and where he had built his grand temple to Apollo.
(which Horace seldom entered), for the abatement And here was sung Horace's hymn. It is, like
of luxury (which Horace loved) and for the gen- many laureate effusions, formal and rather cold.
eral bracing of morals (which Horace preferred It extols Rome, invokes a company of gods and
unbraced). He did something else as well. As part goddesses, prays for young and old, lauds public
of his campaign of Renewal, Augustus decided and private virtues. It was sung by twenty-seven
in 17 B.C. to revive the Secular Games. Virgil (three times three times three) boys and the same
had died two years before, so it naturally fell number of maidens who had both parents liv-
to Horace as unofficial laureate to compose an ing. The company then left the Palatine, processed
ode for what was to be a grand national festival down the Sacred Way, through the Forum and
of unity. up to the Capitol on the other side, where the
The Ludi Saecalares take their name from the hymn was repeated. 'It is', says the Cambridge
word saeculum, which meant originally a period Ancient History 'in Roman way an
a peculiarly
stretching from any given moment to the death alliance of the throne and and such an all-
altar,
of the oldest person born at that moment, that iance means that the altar is not at the time in
is, roughly a century. A new saeculum could thus question a political creation devoid of signif-
begin at any time. Augustus decided that, in the icance.' The general impression must have been
year 1 7, a new leaf had been turned over in the like that of an Albert Hall youth rally singing
history of the City, and that the citizens must be 'Land of Hope and Glory'.
convinced of the fact by some impressive exer- The ode contained a graceful reference to the
cises. The programme for the festival was elab- Aeneid of Virgil.
orate, and by good fortune we know quite a lot
about it. On the 26th May and the two following Virgil When we turn from Horace to Virgil,
days materials for purification, torches, sulphur we turn from charm to genius, from the urbane
and bitumen, were distributed by the priests to to the spiritual. Virgil is quite unlike any other
all free inhabitants of Rome, whether citizens or Roman of whom we have record, unlike almost
j
not. Even bachelors, who had recently been any other poet. His position in world literature
banned from public entertainments, were to be is accurately described by Dryden in his famous
admitted. During the next three days, the people epigram:
came before the College of Fifteen, the Quindec-
Three poets in three distant ages born,
emviri, and offered firstfruits, as is done today
Greece, Italy and England did adorn.
at harvest festivals. was just at this time that
It
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
the Ambarvalia used to go round the ripening
The next in majesty, in both the last.
crops, and that the pants of Vesta was cleaned to
The force of nature could no further go,
receive the new grain. Augustus realised how
To make a third she joined the other two. \
when the citizens were supplied with free doles triad. Majesty: that is the theme of Virgil, and
of imported corn; indeed, it was to offset this it is a spiritual majesty. In considering Virgil's
108
Cameo, by Dioscoridcs,
of Augustus whose rule
marked the founding of
the Roman Empire.
British Museum.
line 1 1
tog
Ara Pacis, south side.
Flamens, Agrippa (veiled,
as all officiants habitually
were), Julia his wife,
daughter of Augustus,
Tiberius and Lucius
Caesar. These are all real
people, in their habits as
they were, including
the little child, who
would clearly rather
be elsewhere playing
with his hoop.
to recognise his mother with a smile: the Latin and what is mortal touches the mind.' We can Opposite: Bacchus, the
god of wine, clothed
can mean either that the mother is smiling or the transmute these banal syllables into sense and
appropriately in grapes,
child. Again, it is easier to understand that each is pathos only by using Virgil's own spiritual code. stands with Mount
smiling at the other. Sometimes the language is Tennyson in the ode which he wrote for the Vesuvius in the
background.
used for its own sake, to paint a picture in sound. nineteen-hundredth anniversary of Virgil's birth
'Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum' —'the setting perfectly expresses this essence-like quality of Virgil An astrological globe
stars counsel sleep'. Here the sound suggests the when he refers to 'all the charm of all the Muses, showing various figures
representing the
meaning, as it does of the souls in the underworld Often flowering in a lonely word'. constellations.
who stretch forth their hands through longing
for the other side: 'Tendebantque manus ripae The Aeneid Virgil's contemporaries at once un-
ulterior is amore'. But there are lines which cannot derstood how great he was. His Eclogues, specially
be translated at all. 'Sunt lacrimae rerum, mentem the Fourth, had established his reputation; his
et mortalia tangunt.' 'There are tears of things, Georgics increased it. His Aeneid was awaited
4*
S jT*-
less on the elevation of mind which Dryden
praises than on two poems, one early, the other
late, namely the Fourth Eclogue and the sixth
jmww&kM, book of
addressed
the
to
Aeneid.
a friend,
The Fourth Eclogue
Asinius
Virgil hails as the 'sole begetter' of his Eclogues,
Pollio, whom
is
own lifetime he had wherein he makes Aeneas' father foretell the birth Actium and the worldwide empire of Rome. The
become universally
of Octavia's son Marcellus, who had recently Tuscans, led by Turnus, oppose Aeneas. After
This fresco
regarded.
from Pompeii, which died, the stricken mother swooned —
though bitter struggles Aeneas is victorious. He marries
was destroyed in a.d. 79, fortunately she came to in time to give Virgil Lavinia, a local princess, and settles in Latium,
shows Aeneas, wounded
in his fight with Turnus,
a nice present. where he and his men will thereafter be known
being tended, while his Dante chose Virgil to be his guide in his not as Trojans but as Latins.
little son Ascanius cries.
journey through the afterworld. The reason for This story, with all its many adventures, told
Virgil's reputation in the Christian world rests in incomparable verse, at once became the Bible
114
;
Opposite: the River God of Rome. Romans of all classes knew it by heart. Let others bettermould the running Mass
Tiber reclining, with
two female attendants.
It glorified Rome, it showed how 'gravitas', Of metals,and inform the breathing Brass
Fresco from Pompeii 'pietas', 'dignitas' were the supreme virtues, how And soften into flesh a Marble Face:
in the Louvre. passionate love such as that of Aeneas for Dido, Plead better at the Bar; describe the Skies,
foreshadowed. At the end of the sixth book Virgil's achievement in the realm of religion is
Anchises utters his famous prophecy, which Dry- brilliantly summed up by Pierre Boyance in his
den renders as follows: La Religion de Virgile (Paris 1963):
i
— 1>. ...
Mr 117
THE ETERNAL CITY
Dido, queen of Carthage, 'Virgil expresses his time and his country. His It is above all the Fourth
faithful, interpreter...
abandoned by Aeneas,
time, by yoking the voluntary return to the trad- Eclogue, it above all the sixth book of the
is
whose ship is seen at the
top of this Pompeian itions of the past with the welcome given to all Aeneid, which was bound to give to Virgil in
fresco. In Roman eyes, that seemed best in the Greek message the beauty
: the eyes of posterity something of the inspired
Aeneas was only doing
of poetry, the truth of philosophy. His country, in prophet. It was these verses which Christianity
hisduty as a patriot,
because Carthage, the the fact that Rome had always been from its was bound to hold to because it found in them
hereditary foe, had so something of its own revelation. In them Virgil
earliest days very shut and very open. Very shut,
very recently been
reincarnated in another by its overweaning confidence in the superiority gives us the impression of rising above his time
oriental queen, Cleopatra. of its moral vigour and piety. Very open by a and his country... He alone knew how weld
to
certainty no less strong that the gods had given the history of Rome into that of the whole of
to others gifts which it was important to turn to humanity, in which the cosmos itself took a part.
advantage... It is impossible at one and the same In that is expressed the very depth of his soul, and
time to admire Virgil and to condemn Rome. For there souls are not deceived: he had the honour
posterity he is Rome's most fervent, but also most of guiding Dante to the threshold of Paradise.'
118
Christianity 'La venue meme du Christ ria rien
may have
AND
first
CAESAR astonishment.
Just
Rome we
when the Christian message
was of course intimately
cannot say. It
ii'j
CHRIST AND CAESAR
Revellers at an Etruscan barrack-rooms on distant frontiers with quotat- and persecution. There was of course no objection
feast from a fresco in the
from the Aeneid. Nor was Virgil to be the to it on what we should call religious grounds,
ions
Tomb of the Leopards
c. 480-470 B.C. only elevating influence on Roman thought. In because as we have seen the individual Roman's
the next century, the two Scnccas, father and religion was his own affair; but as we have noted
son, of Spanish origin, would introduce into also, the religion of the State was a political affair.
Roman life a new and lofty infusion of Stoicism. It was on political grounds, therefore, that
The contribution of the younger Seneca was to Christianity was opposed. True, from time to
endure for centuries, and to inspire not only the time other 'foreign gods' were 'banished', but
first English dramatists but the very plots and between, say, Mithras or Isis and Christ there
concepts of Racine himself. Yes, there was beyond were enormous differences. First, no-one had
cavil much in the claim made by the best Romans ever seen Mithras or Isis — or Serapis or any of
of the early empire that they really were better them. They had no corporal existence. Christ,
than their predecessors. And yet it took three on the other hand, had been seen by a very
centuries for the Christian faith to win acceptance large number of people in one of the most
and in the end to coalesce with what was best populous regions of the Roman world.
in the pagan world. For long the attitude of the State towards the
Christians was curiously undefined. By the end
Christianity and the State The reasons for the of the first century, Christianity had won adher-
State's opposition to the new religion are complex, ents not only in Rome but throughout the empire,
and its attitude to it oscillated between tolerance and in every rank of society. The idea that the
CHRIST AND CAESAR
intellect as well.
>23
124
CHRIST AND CAESAR
125
CHRIST AND CAESAR
Opposite: a statue of different from the Christian belief that the one of divinity were the same as their own. As we
the Emperor Augustus and only God had become Man. This lay at the have seen, they were not: and it is just this very
Caesar from the Vatican
Museum which reflects
root of the quarrel. To a Christian to call a man difference, it must once again be emphasised, that
the imperial dignity of divine was blasphemy. Yet this is precisely what caused the centuries-long rift between Christian
his rule.
the Romans tended to do more and more. Julius and pagan. They were simply not using the same
Vespasian, who with his Caesar had been deified after his death. Augustus, words in the same sense. Roman ideas of deity,
son Titus, subdued prudent as always, while calling himself Divi may it be once more repeated, were vague,
Judaea. Emperor from
- the son of a deity - was careful not to claim
Jilius undogmatic. Even Fortune, for instance, could be
a.d. 69 to 79. 'I think
I'm becoming a god', divinity himself. It would have outraged Roman regarded as a goddess. She was the firstborn of
he said sarcastically as sentiment to have hailed a living Roman as divine. Jupiter, she helped women in childbirth. Her cult-
death approached.
He nevertheless permitted the veneration of his statue was Fortuna Primigenia, 'the First Mother'.
Genius. In fact despite his politic scruples he was At Praeneste, (Palestrina) she had a splendid
hailed as divine, not only in the ardent east, but temple, which housed an oracle. She was pow-
even in Rome itself. Virgil sang of the peace erful, she was important, and yet how vague
which Augustus had created that it was the were Roman ideas about Fortune and her 'wheel'!
work of 'some god' —
dens nobis haec otia fecit. As with Fortune, so it was with the divinity
Horace, in a laureate ode has a picture of Augustus of the Caesars. Augustus' successor Tiberius,
lying at ease between two pagan gods sipping his always conscientiously following his predecessor's
nectar with purple lips — quos inter Augustus recum- precepts, deliberately rebutted attempts to regard
bens purpureo bibitore nectar, a phrase which shocked him as divine. 'I must confess I'm mortal' he said.
Victorian editors, who thought that Roman ideas Domitian claimed divinity, but the divinity of the
emperors was by no mean yet an accepted axiom.
On the death of Claudius, Seneca wrote a skit
called 'Pumpkinification' mocking the idea. Vesp-
asian, the successor of Nero, joked about it: 'I
think I'm becoming a god' he said as death
approached. Neverless, what had started as flattery
gradually hardened into faith. The late Mrs Eug-
enie Strong, our leading authority on Roman
sculpture, has argued most persuasively that the
custom of representing an emperor as the central
figure in a group on a temple, the very place
formerly held by gods in Greek sculpture, helped
to foster the idea that this central figure was in
fact divine. Which is rather like transferring a
statue from of Westminster Abbey to
a transept
a niche above the high altar. This is the process
which the cult of the emperor underwent. Caesar
was god, and unto him alone must be rendered
the things which belonged to both. No Christian
could do it.
126
127
128
CHRIST AND CAESAR
ward and visible form was the consuming of 'the Word, which was
the doctrine of the Logos, or Opposite: Marcus
Aurelius, the philosopher
body and blood of the Son of Man'; also that the familiar to bothGreek and Jewish philosophers
emperor (a.d. 161-180)
Christians addressed one another as brothers and and forms the grand exordium to the Gospel of is here shown sacrificing,
sisters. of conspiracy,
In addition to accusations St John. his head veiled in
accordance with Roman
malicious imputations of cannibalism and incest Justin was followed by others who like himself custom. The temple in
were soon in circulation. Many respectable people came from the eastern provinces. During the last the background gives an
excellent impression of
believed them including one of the tutors of two decades of the century Alexandria possessed a
what a Roman temple
Marcus Aurelius. spiritual beacon, a true Pharos of the soul, in looked like in its pristine
These three sources of hostility combined to Clement. To give some idea of his insight and splendour.
make the mere name of Christian an offence, outlook one quotation must suffice. It of great
is
The apotheosis of Sabina,
because it was known that the Christians were importance because it was just this veneration of wife of the emperor
extremely resolute. They could not and would conservatism which he assails which was to be Hadrian (a.d. i 17-138),
who watches her being
not compromise. Their 'obstinacy' was proverbial: sharpened into persecution in the following cen- borne aloft by a winged
Marcus Aurelius himself cites it. Finally there was tury.Clement is all for progress; but the Chris- victory.
the demeanour and behaviour of the Christians. tianswere not revolutionaries. Here is Clement's
Some pagans there were, and always would be, answer to the accusation, from his Protreptictts, or
who regulated their lives by the principles of Hortative (X, 89):
Zeno or Epicurus, who were as blameless as 'You say it is unreasonable to overthrow a way
Virgil; but the general tone of society was lewd of life that has been handed down from our fore-
and brutal to a degree which it is hard for us, fathers. In that case why do we not go on using
the heirs of so many Christian centuries, to
comprehend. Society resented, as society always
does, those who did not share its vices. It disliked
the Christians on principle.
But the leaven was at work. More and more
souls sought and found in the Christian faith that
which they found nowhere else support and —
solace. In the second century the Church was
strong enough to start commending itself in
literary form. The New Testament was the
Christians' own guide; but they felt that a
I-')
our first food, milk, to which, as you will
130
forth" from heaven, purer than the sun and sweet- 'We on behalf of the emperors invoke the eternal A det.iil from the so-called
er than the life of earth. That light is life eternal, God, the true God, the living God, whom the 'Nozzc Aldobrandinc'
showing women taking
and whatsoever things share in it, live. But night emperors prefer to have propitious to them p.irt in wedding rites.
shrinks back from the light, and setting through beyond all other gods. They know who has This fresco is in the
fear, gives place to the day of the Lord... He it Vatican Museum, Rome.
given them the empire, they know as men who
was who changed the setting into a rising, changed has given them life; they feel that he is God alone, Opposite: Fortuna.
crucified death into life. He snatched man out of in whose power and no other's they are, second Fortune, rather than Fors,
(chance) was in fashion
the jaws of destruction. He raised him into the to whom they stand, after whom they come m classical Rome. She
sky, transplanting corruption to the soil of incor- first, gods and above all gods... Look-
before all was identified witli the
ruption, and transforming earth to heaven.' ing up to heaven the Christians with hands — Greek Tychc. She is
represented with a horn
Here indeed was a new clarion, a trumpet outspread because innocent, with head bare bec- of plenty, and a rudder,
challenge to conformity. No pagan had written ause we do not blush, yes and without anyone as in this statue from the
with such jubilant confidence for many a long, port of Ostia, because it
to dictate the form of words because we pray ik Fortune who 'steers'
bleak, year. from the heart — we are continually making men's lives. ler most
I
Clement was followed by others as eloquent. intercession for the emperors. We beseech for important temple was
One of the most famous was a fiery Carthaginian them a long life, a secure rule, a safe home,
.it Praeneste. It contained
in oracle whose hierophant
called Tertullian, who was born in the former brave armies, a faithful senate, an honest people, replied through mysterious
Punic capital about the year 160. Here is an a quiet world — and everything for which a man letters
M>rr (
known as the
praentstinae
excerpt from his famous Apology, in which he •ind .1 ( ai 11 1 .111 pray.'
<
refutes the charge of the Christians' disloyalty: Gould loyalty be more beautifully consecrated
131
A Christian catacomb,
S. Panfilo. Catacombs
were places of burial.
The corpses were generally
left in the niches until
they had decomposed,
when the bones would
be removed to a central
repository, to make
way for new tenants. As
this picture clearly
shows catacombs were
not,and could not be
'secret meeting-places'.
The first Christiansmet
in houses, which were
often later transformed
into churches. Rome still
132
Other eloquent and persuasive apologists were
1
133
134
THE ETERNAL CITY
Constantius had a son called Constantinc. His dislodged at the insistence of St Ambrose in 391. Opposite: a fresco from
Pompeii shows the master
father died at York and the troops hailed
in 306, Roman society was still led by cultivated pagans
of a household with his
Constantine as emperor. He was a remarkable — or orthodox conservatives as they regarded Genii. A genius was, in
man, of a truly spiritual cast. He had been brought themselves. Only in the year 392 did the emperor Roman mythology, an
indwelling spirit, which
up as a worshipper of the 'unconquercd sun'; but Theodosius issue the edict which put an end to might inhabit not only
as the result of what he deemed to be a divine paganism, that is to toleration and religious human beings but places,
revelation he was converted to the Christian faith. freedom. such as springs and groves,
and societies or cities. The
In 313 the so-called 'Edict of Milan' freed the In our own day, both have been restored. We birth of the Genii is
Christian religion, which thereafter became the can contemplate the whole long pilgrimage which simultaneous with that
of their host, and it is
established religion of the empire. has led mankind from the Tiber to the Lake of
their function to protect
But paganism lived on. The pontifical college Geneva, thence to the Thames, and now back to him or it. Even gods
still met, the Vestal virgins watched over their the Tiber. Caesar made a pact with Christ: were endowed with Genii,
to which sacrifice might
undying fire, the feast of the Great Mother was Caesar is forgotten, so, by many, is Christ, but
be made.
still celebrated. The statue of Victory which so long as men turn to the spirit when the body
Augustus had placed in the Senate-house, evicted falters and fails, it is to Rome with all its history,
by Constantine's successor, restored by Julian, all its mythology, all its reality that they will
again evicted and again restored, was only finally be drawn.
135
136
Romc, the Eternal City,
situated on the banks
of the Tiber and
surrounded by protective
hills. By the time she had
Z2.3a/ilArttriwi-
2,Al3otisI>a/atinuj
^c&njctujltcacity z^TMzrtV/itrij
uTfcrtnntcVtri/iJ Aj£<i/iOf/Seuen
>
/a,TJor£umni zSPalrfuau/hL
1 ^ yifi/a SitJanJ
Lfs/rcusJJorruiiaJU
*rcuj {rcn iuuu.
137
The acknowledge und Geschichte: 90-91. Otto
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS publishers gratefully
the following sources for permission to
reproduce the illustrations indicated:
Giraudon: 42-43, 43 (top, left and right).
Ara Guler: 98-99. Hachette: 114. Paul
Fein: 101.
Bailey, C., Phases in the Religion of Ancient Rome, Oxford University Press, 1932.
Cambridge Ancient History, vol. viii, ch. xiv vol. x, ch. xv vol. xii, chs. xii, xiii, xiv,
xv, xix.
Cary, M., etc. (ed.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford, 1949.
Cumont, F., After Life in Roman Paganism, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1959.
Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1956.
Fowler, W. Warde, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, Macmillan, 1940.
Roman Ideas of Deity, Macmillan, 19 14.
Grant, Frederick C., Ancient Roman Religion, Liberal Arts Press, 1957.
Grant, M., Myths of the Greeks and Romans, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1962; Mentor
Books, New English Library, 1965. The Roman World, Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
i960.
Harris, Eve and John, The Oriental Cults in Roman Britain, Brill (Leiden), 1965.
Perowne, S., Caesars and Saints, Hodder & Stoughton, 1962. The End of the Roman
World, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.
Smith, W. (ed.), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols.,
London, 1876.
Taylor, L. R., The Divinity of the Roman Emperors, Middletown, 1931. (Philological
monographs pub. by American Philosophical Association, No. 1).
Warner, Rex, Men and Gods, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1952.
New Catholic Encyclopedia, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York and London,
1967.
138
Achaemenids 98 house of 36
INDEX Achilles 17
Acron, King of the Sabines 17
time of 94
Aulus Gellius 34
Acropolis 91, 98 Aurclian 94
Acts of the Apostles 71 Aurelius, Marcus 75, 129
Adonis 94 Avcntine Hill 58
Aemilius Paulus 41, 74
Aeneas 16, 17, 56, 58, 82, 106, in, 118 Baal 43
Aeneid 108, 11 3-1 18 Baal of Emesa 94
Aesculapius 60, 82 see also Asklepios Bacchanalia 66, 69
Ager Romanus 41 Bacchus 67, 69, 82, 113
Aglata 81 Bede 38
Agrippa, Prince 97, 106, 108, no, 119, Belvedere Apollo 18
125 Berenice, Queen 97
AJiriman 102 Bryaxis 87
Ahura-Mazda 102
Alexander the Great 12, 71, 84, 85, Cacus 17
99. 125 Caesars 85, 125, 126, 131, 133, 135
Allath 94 see also Julius Caesar and Augustus
Alkibiades 98 Calendar, Roman 38-39
Ambarvalia 29, 33, 108 Gregorian 39
Ammianus 62 Julian 39
Ammon, shrine of 125 of Numa 39
Amphitrite 77 Camillus 105
Anaxagoras of Miletus 71 Campus Martius 40
Anchises 82, 114, 116 Capitoline Hill 15, 17, 23, 49, 108
Ancilia 39 Capitoline Jupiter, temple of 58
Annona Augusta 37 Capitol, Roman 16, 18, 39, 83, 108
An no iis
ti 92 Carmenta 45
Antiochus I g8, 100 Castor 48-49
Antonines 37 temple of 11, 51, 82
Antoninus Pius 57, 129 Cato 27-29, 105
Antoninus, Temple of 11 Catullus 103
Antony, Mark 85, 105, 116 Censors 40
Anubis 86, 90 Centaurs 17, 67
Aphrodite 21, 56, 58, 60 Cerealia 41
Apollo 15, 17, 50, 55, 58-60 Ceres 47, 58
temple of 52, 108 temple of 58
Apollo of Veii 50 Cestio, Ponte 40
Ara Pads 36, 44, 105, 106, no Chiron 17
Ares 19, 21, 58 Cicero 19, 48, 71, 74, 76-79, 82, 83,
Argei 41 97, 105
Argo 43 Circe 32
Argonauts 43 Claudius, Emperor 97, 119, 125, 126
Aristides 129 Claudius Pulcher 57
Aristotle 71 Clement 129, 131, 133
Armilustrium 40 Cleopatra 85, go, 105, 116, 118
Artaxcrxes 99 Cloaca Maxima 24
Artemis 58, 60, 62 Cloacina 24
Arval Brethren 41 Colosseum n, too
Ascanius 114 Concord, Temple of 2.)
Augustus 12, );. ?K, 48, 103-iod, 10K, Dei Cotuentes 57-58
too, no, 114, 126, 133, 135 Delphi, Or. nil- of 64
U9
Demeter 47, 58, 86, 87 Gellius, Aulus 34, 36 Juturna 49
Demetrius 90 Gladiators 62 Juvenal, 84 87
Democritus 70, 71 Glaucus 43
Deus Optimus Maximus 18 Golden Age 43 Krates 72
Diana 17, 39, 58, 60, 62 Graces, Three 81
Dido, Queen of Carthage 32, 114, Great Mother (Roman) 63-67, 69, 135 Lacus Juturnae 48
116, 118 of Asia Minor 102 Lares 32, 82
Di indigetes 47, 60 see also Cybele; Earth Mother Latins 15, 48
Di novensides 60 Gregorian calender 39 Lavinia 114
Diocletian 99, 133 Laws (Cicero) 82
Dionysos (Liber Pater) 47, 33, 67, 69, Hadad 94 Lectisternium 60-61, 63
87 Hadrian 92, 123, 129 Leocares 18
Dioskouroi 48 Halicarnassus 91 Libera 53, 58
Dis 39 Hannibal 64 57, 63, Liber Pater 53, 82
Divination 53-57 Hannibalic war (Second Punic war) temple of 58
Domitian 126 60, 61, 78 Dionysos
see also
Harpocrates 90 Ligurians 13
Earth-goddess 40 Hearth-goddess 60 Livy 56, 57, 62, 82
Earth Mother 42, 108, no Heavenly Twins 48, 60 Lucretius 49, 71, 74, 103
see also Great Mother Helena 133 Lucullus, L. Licinius 37
Eilythia 108 Hephaistos 16, 18, Ludi scenici 61
58
Elagabalus 94 Hera 18, 58, 87 Ludovisi Mars 21
Eleusinian mysteries 82 Heracleitus 70, 72, 78 Lupercalia 32-34, 38
Eleusis 58, 90 Herakles 15, 48
Endymion 17 Hercules 17, 48, 50, 60, 82, 83, 91, 98 Maecenas 106, 108
Epictetus 75 see also Herakles Maia 38
Epicureans 71, 74 Hermes 57, 58, 60 Manes 79, 82
Epicurus 71-72, 129 Herodotus 85, 87, 91 Manethos 90
Equirria 39 Herod the Great 97, 121 Marathon 98
Eros 60 Hestia 58, 60 Marcellus 57, 105, 114
Erythrae 58 Homer 58, 70, 108 Marcus Aurelius 75, 129
Esquilline Hill 19 Horace 31, 72, 74, 106-108, 126 Mark Antony 116
85, 105,
Etruscans 13, 14, 15, 48, 49-53, 57 Horatius 41 Mars 16, 17, 19-21, 29, 39, 40, 45,
Euphrates, 94 Horus 86, 87 58, 106
Euphrotyne 81 Maximus, Valerius 119
Eusebius 121 Iacchos 58, 60 Memoirs of Sokrates (Xenophon) 72
Evander 114 Ides 39-40 Men (Anatolian deity) 88
Ignatius 123 Mercury 57, 58
Falacer 45 Iguvians 29-31 Messiah, Hebrew 114
Fasti 38 Iguvium Tablets 29-32 Minerva 16, 18, 24, 48, 49, 58
Faustina, Temple of 11 Indus, river 98 Minerva Medica 19
Faustulus 106 Io 87 Mithradates Eupator 98, 100
Febris 24, 39 Isis 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 102, 120 Mithras 85, 98, 99-102, 120
Februus 39 Moon-goddess 18
Felicitas 37 Janiculan Hill 78 Mother-Earth 42, 108, 110
Fertility-god 45, 33 Janus 21, 23, 29, 39, 45 see also Great Mother
Fever, goddess of 39 Jason 17
Fides Publica 63 Josephus 97 Neolithic era 13
Fire-god 16 Judaea 126 Neptune 32, 58, 77
Flaccus, Quintus Horatius 103 Julian 135 Neptune Triumphant 77
Flamen Dialis 34-38, 83 Julian calender 39 Nereids 116
Flaminius 57 Julius Caesar 38, 39, 36, 99, 105, 110, Nero 97, 119, 121, 123, 126
Flora 43, 45, 47 122, 126 Numa, calendar of 39
Floralis 43 Junius 57 Numa, King of Rome 18, 23, 38, 43,
Fordicidia 40 Juno 16, 18, 20, 38, 65,78
49, 58, 106, 108
Fortuna Virilis 58, 131 Juno Moneta 18, 23
temple of 49 Jupiter 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 29, 34, 36, Octavia 105, 114
Fortune 126, 131 45. 49. 57. 58, 94, 108, 126 Octavian 105, 106 see also Augustus
Forum (Rome) 11, 15, 18, 19, 21, 23, shrine of 83 Odes (Horace) 31
24, 29, 32, 35, 40, 48, 49, 31, 108 Jupiter Elicius 17 Olympus 60
Forum Boarium 62 Jupiter Feretrius 17, 19 Opalia 42
Francis, Saint 16 Jupiter Grabovius 31 Opiconsiva 42
Furrina 45 Jupiter Lapis 19 Optimus Maximus, Deus 18
Jupiter Sabazios, cult of 119 Origen 133
Gaius, Emperor 119 Jupiter Stator 18 Oracle of Delphi 64
Gates, god of 21 Justinian 101 Orontes 84
Gauls 18, 23 Justin of Neapolis 129 Orpheus, cult of 78
140
Osiris 86, 87, 90 Rape of the Sabine women 15 Tarquins 32, 48, 49, 58
Osiris-Apis 87 Rea 17 Tellus 40, 106
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 14, 38, Regia 19, 32, 40, 45 Ten Commandments 96
47, 53. 103 Regifugium 39 Teresa, Saint 16
Lake 48
Regillus, Terminus 23
Palatine Hill 15, 23, 41, 108 Remus 17, 53 Terramara 13
Pales 41, 45 Republic (Cicero) 78, 82 Tertiana 24
Palestine 129 Rex sacrorum 45 Tertullian 131
Palilia see Parilia Robigus 24, 41 Thalia 81
Pan 80 Roma, goddess 105, 106 Themistokles 98
Panaetius 74-75, 79 Rome, founding of 14-15, 41 Theodosius 135
Parilia 41 Romulus 15, 17, 18, 21, 23, 53, 106 Third Punic War 79
Parthenias (Virgil) ill Rostra 29 Tiber, river 15, 24, 41, 42, 49, 84, 108,
Paul, Saint 12, 71, 75, 91, 97, 119 Rotto, Ponte 40, 41, 58 116, 135
Paulus 79, 121 Tiberius 110, 123, 126
Pausanias 14 Sabazios 97 Tibullus, Albius 103
Penates 32 Sabina 129 Timotheus 90
Perikles 71 Sabines 18, 23 Titus 37, 97, 126
Persephone 58 Sacred Way (Via Sacra) 11, 40, 108 arch of 1 1 18 ,
.41
^'
v^
S Vv
Walter Bird
]sr.\ u Mm n:;.;i7 3
w
Printed in (Ik- United Mates
;
.Or*'* ,<
9 2
v
31?
,<v