Mars.=--We have seen reason to believe that in the earlier stages of
Roman religion Mars was a _numen_ of vegetation, but though the
Ambarvalia was duly taken over into the state-cult and attained a very
high degree of importance, yet there can be no doubt that in the
state-religion Mars was pre-eminently associated with war. Iuppiter
might help at need in averting defeat and awarding victory, but it was
with Mars that the general conduct of war rested. His sacred animal is
the warlike wolf, his symbols the spears and the sacred shields
(_ancilia_), which during his own month (_Martius_)--the 1st of which
is his special festival--his priests (_Salii_) wearing the full
war-dress (_trabea_ and _tunica picta_) carry with sacred dance and
song round the city. His altar is in the Campus Martius, outside the
city-walls and therefore within the sphere of the _imperium militiae_,
and the other festivals associated with him are of a warlike character:
the races of the war-horse (Equirria) on March 14 and February 27, and
the great race on the Ides of October, when the winner was solemnly
slain: the lustration of the arms at the Quinquatrus on March 19 and
the Armilustrium of October 19--at the beginning and end of the
campaigning season: and the lustration of the war-trumpets on the 23rd
of March and the 23rd of May. But above all in honour of Mars is held
the great quinquennial _lustrum_ associated with the census, when the
people are drawn up in military array around his altar in the Campus
Martius and the solemn offering of the _suovetaurilia_ (is this a faint
relic of his agricultural character?) after being carried three times
round the gathered host, is offered on his altar in prayer for the
military future of the state. Hardly any god in the state-cult has his
character so clearly marked, and we may regard Mars as a deity who,
taking on new functions to suit the needs of the times, almost entirely
lost the traces of his original nature.
=Quirinus.=--Iuppiter and Mars then became the great state-deities of
the developed community and to them is added, as the contribution of
the Colline settlement, their own particular deity, Quirinus. He, like
them, has his own _flamen_; like Mars he has his _Salii_, and his
festival finds its place in the Calendars on February the 17th. But of
his ritual and character we know practically nothing: the ritual was
obscured because his festival coincided with the much more popular
festival of the _curiae_, the _stultorum feriae_: of his character, we
can only conjecture that he was to the Colline settlement what Mars was
to the Palatine, whereas later after the complete amalgamation he seems
to have been distinguished from Mars as representing 'armed peace'
rather than war--an idea which is borne out by the associations of the
closely allied word _Quirites_. Be that as it may, we have in Iuppiter,
Mars, and Quirinus the great state-triad of the synoecismus, who held
their own until at the beginning of the next epoch they were supplanted
by the new Etruscan triad of the Capitol, Iuppiter, Iuno and Minerva.
=2. Organisation.=--It might perhaps be thought that the organisation
of religion is a matter remote from its spirit, and is not therefore a
suitable subject for discussion, where the object is rather to bring
out underlying motives and ideas: but in dealing with the Roman
religion, where ceremonial and legal precision were so prominent, it
would be even misleading to omit some reference to the very
characteristic manner in which the state, taking over the rather
chaotic elements of the agricultural worship, organised them into
something like a consistent whole. Its most complete achievement in
this direction was without doubt the regulation of the religious year.
We have spoken many times of the Calendars (_Fasti_): it is necessary
now to obtain some clearer notion of what they were. In Rome itself and
various Italian towns have been found some thirty inscriptions, one
almost complete (Maffeiani), the others more or less fragmentary,
giving the tables of the months and marking precisely the character and
occurrences of every day in the year. We may take as a specimen the
latter half of the month of August from the Fasti Maffeiani.
A. EID. [NP]. | C. VOLC. [NP].
B. F. | D. C.
C. C. | E. OPIC. [NP].
D. C. | F. C.
E. PORT. [NP]. | G. VOLT. [NP].
F. C. | H. [NP].
G. VIN. F.P. | A. F.
H. C. | B. F.
A. CONS. [NP]. | C. C.
B. EN. |
In the first column are given the nundinal letters of the days, showing
their position in the eight days' 'week' from one market day
(_nundinae_) to the next. In the second column are noted first the
great divisions of the month, Calends, Nones, and Ides, and then the
religious character of each individual day is indicated by certain
signs, whose explanations throw a good deal of light on Roman religions
notions. It will be seen that the letters of most frequent occurrence
are F, C, and N (or in our extract [NP]): these correspond to the broad
distinction between days profane and sacred. F (_fastus_) denotes a
day on which the business of the state may be performed, on which the
praetor may say (_fari_) the three words, _do_, _dico_, _addico_, which
summed up the decisions of the Roman law: C (_comitialis_) marks a day
on which the legislative assemblies (_comitia_) may be held: it is by
implication F as well. N (_nefastus_), on the other hand, denotes the
sacred day, consecrated to the worship of the gods, on which therefore
state-business may not be transacted: similarly the very mysterious and
much disputed sign [NP], whether it differs in precise signification
from N or not, certainly marks a day of sacred character. EN, which
occurs once in this extract (from _endotercisus_, the old Latin form of
_intercisus_) signifies a 'split' day (_dies fissus_), the beginning
and end of which were sacred, while the middle period was free for
business. In the second column also (in large letters in some of the
other Calendars) are named the _feriae publicae_, the great annual
state-festivals, fixed for one particular day (_feriae stativae_):
such, in this case, are the Portunalia, Vinalia, and Consualia.
These _fasti_ were exhibited in the Forum and on the walls of temples,
and the conscientious Roman could have no possible difficulty in
finding out when he might lawfully transact his business and what
festivals the state was observing: of the 355 days of the old Calendar
11 were _fissi_, 235 were _fasti_ (192 _comitiales_), and 109
_nefasti_. We may remark as curious features in the Calendar, denoting
rigid adherence to principle, that with one exception, the Poplifugia
of July 5, no festival ever occurs before the Nones, that with two
exceptions, the Regifugium of February 24 and the Equirria of the 14th
of March, no festival falls on an even day of the month, and that there
is a marked avoidance of successive feast-days: even the three days of
the Lemuria allow an interval of a day between each.
In the matter of ritual and observance, state-organisation--and its
absence--are alike significant. Of the general exactness of ritual and
its specific variations on different occasions a fair notion has
perhaps already been gathered; it may help to fill out that notion if
we can put together a sketch of the normal process of a sacrifice to
the gods. Before the sacrifice began the animal to be offered was
selected and tested: if it had any blemish or showed any reluctance, it
was rejected. If it were whole and willing, it was bound with fillets
(_infulae_) around its forehead, and long ribbons (_vittae_) depending
from them. It was then brought to the altar (_ara_) by the side of
which stood a portable brazier (_foculus_). The celebrant--magistrate
or priest--next approached dressed in the _toga_, girt about him in a
peculiar manner (_cinctus Gabinus_), and carried up at the back so as
to form a hood (_velato capite_): the herald proclaimed silence, and
the flute-player began to play his instrument. The first part of the
offering was then made by the pouring of wine and scattering of incense
on the brazier: it was followed by the ceremonial slaughter
(_immolatio_) of the animal. The celebrant sprinkled the victim with
wine and salted cake, and made a symbolic gesture with the knife. The
victim was then taken aside by the attendants (_victimarii_), and
actually slaughtered by them: from it they extracted the sacred parts
(_exta_), liver, heart, gall, lungs, and midriff, and after inspecting
them to see that they had no abnormality--but not in the earlier period
for purposes of augury--wrapped them in pieces of flesh (_augmenta_),
cooked them, and brought them back to the celebrant, who laid them as
an offering upon the altar, where they were burnt. The rest of the
flesh (_viscera_) was divided as a sacred meal between the celebrant
and his friends--or in a state-offering among the priests, and
probably the magistrate. We cannot refrain from remarking here the
extreme precision of ritual, the scrupulous care with which the human
side of the contract was fulfilled and the--almost legal--division of
the victim between gods and men. But though the ritual was so exact,
one must not be led away by modern analogies to suppose that there was
ever anything like a rigid constraint on the private citizen for the
observance of festivals. The state-festivals were in the strictest
sense offerings made to the gods by the representative magistrates or
priests, and if they were present, all was done that was required: the
whole people had been, by a legal fiction, present in their persons. No
doubt the private citizen would often attend in large numbers at the
celebrations, especially at the more popular festivals, but from some,
such as the Vestalia, he was actually excluded. On the other hand,
though it did not demand presence, the state did--at least
theoretically--demand the observance of the feast-day by private
individuals. The root-notion of _feriae_ was a day set apart for the
worship of the gods, and on it therefore the citizen ought to do 'no
manner of work.' The state observed this condition fully in the
closing of law-courts and the absence of legislative assemblies, and
in theory too the private citizen must refrain from any act which was
not concerned with the worship of the gods, or rendered absolutely
necessary, as, for instance, if 'his ox or his ass should fall into a
pit.' But it is characteristic of Rome that the state did not seek for
offence, but only punished it if accidentally seen: on a feast-day the
_rex sacrorum_ and the _flamines_ might not see work being done; they
therefore sent on a herald in advance to announce their presence, and
an actual conviction involved a money-fine. Perhaps more scrupulously
than the _feriae_ were observed the _dies religiosi_, days of
'abstinence,' on which certain acts, such as marriage, the beginning of
any new piece of work, or the offering of sacrifice to the gods, were
forbidden: such, in the oldest period, were the days on which the
_mundus_ was open, or the temple of Vesta received the matrons, the
days when the Salii carried the _ancilia_ in procession, and the
periods of the two festivals of the dead in February and May; but for
eluding their observance too devices were not unknown.
In the state-organisation of religion, then, we seem to see just the
same features from which we started: as a basis the legal conception
of the relation of god to man, as a result the extreme care and
precision in times and ceremonials, as a corollary in the state the
idea of legal representation and the consequent looseness of hold on
the action of the individual.
CHAPTER VIII
AUGURIES AND AUSPICES
So far we have been considering the regular relations of man and god,
seen in recurring or special offerings, in vows and in acts of
purification and lustration--all based on the contract-notion, all
endeavours on man's part to fulfil his bounden duty, that the gods may
be constrained in turn to theirs. But so strong was the feeling of
divine presence and influence in the Roman's mind, that he was not
content with doing his best by these regular means to secure the favour
of the gods, but wished before undertaking any business of importance
to be able to assure himself of their approval. His practical
common-sense evolved, as it were, a complete 'code'--in the flight and
song of birds, in the direction of the lightning-flash, in the conduct
of men and animals--by which he believed that the gods communicated to
him their intentions: sometimes these indications (_auspicia_) might be
vouchsafed by the gods unasked (_oblativa_), sometimes they would be
given in answer to request (_impetrativa_): but as to their meaning,
there could be no doubt, provided they were interpreted by one skilled
in the lore and tradition of augury. We may observe here, though our
evidence is much slighter, the same three stages which we have noticed
in the sacrificial worship, the homely domestic auspices, the auguries
of the agricultural life, and the organised system in the state.
In the household the use of auspices was in origin at any rate very
general indeed: 'Nothing,' Cicero tells us, 'of importance used to be
undertaken unless with the sanction of the auspices' (_auspicato_). The
right of interrogating the will of the gods, rested, as one might
expect, with the master of the house, assisted no doubt by the private
augur as the repository of lore and the interpreter of what the master
saw. But of the details of domestic augury we know but little. Cato in
one passage insists on the extreme importance of silence for the
purpose, and Festus suggests that this was secured by the master of the
house rising in the depths of the night to inspect the heavens. We have
seen already that the taking of the auspices played an important part
in the ceremonies of betrothal and marriage, and that the indications
of the divine will might be very varied we may gather from a story in
Cicero. An aunt wishing to take the auspices for her niece's betrothal,
conducted her into an open consecrated space (_sacellum_) and sat down
on the stool of augury (_sella_) with her niece standing at her side.
After a while the girl tired and asked her aunt to give her a little of
the stool: the aunt replied, 'My child, I give up my seat to you':
nothing further happened and this answer turned out in fact to be the
auspicious sign: the aunt died, the niece married the widower and so
became mistress of the house.
Of augury in agricultural life we have some indication in the annual
observance of the 'spring augury' (_augurium verniserum_) and the
midsummer ceremony of the _augurium canarium_, which seems to have been
a combination of the offering of a red dog (possibly to avert mildew)
and an augury for the success of the crops. To the rustic stratum
possibly belongs also the _augurium salutis populi_, though later it
was a yearly act celebrated whenever the Roman army was not at war and
so became connected with the shutting of the temple of Ianus.
The state greatly developed and organised the whole system of auguries
and auspices. The college of augurs ranked second only in importance to
the pontifical college, and their duties with regard to both augury and
auspice are sufficiently clear. Like the _pontifices_ in relation to
cult, they are the storehouse of all tradition, and to them appeal may
be made in all cases of doubt both public and private: they were
jealous of their secrets and in later times their mutual consciousness
of deception became proverbial. The right of augury--in origin simply
the inspection of the heavens--was theirs alone, and it was exercised
particularly on the annual occasions mentioned and at the installation
of priests, of which we get a typical instance in Livy's account of the
consecration of Numa.
The auspices on the other hand--in origin 'signs from birds' (_avis_,
_spicere_)--were the province of the magistrate about to undertake some
definite action on behalf of the state whether at home or on the field
of battle. Here the augur's functions were merely preparatory and
advisory. It was his duty to prepare the _templum_, the spot from which
the auspices are to be taken--always a square space, with boundaries
unbroken except at the entrance, not surrounded by wall or necessarily
by line, but clearly indicated (_effatus_) by the augur, and marked off
(_liberatus_) from the surroundings: in the comitia and other places in
Rome there were permanent _templa_, but elsewhere they must be
specially made. The magistrate then enters the _templum_ and observes
the signs (_spectio_): if there is any doubt as to interpretation--and
seeing the immense complication of the traditions (_disciplina_), this
must often have been the case--the augur is referred to as interpreter.
The signs demanded (_impetrativa_) were originally always connected
with the appearance, song or flight of birds--higher or lower, from
left to right or right to left, etc. Later others were included, and
with the army in the field it became the regular practice to take the
auspices from the feeding of the sacred chickens (_pulli_): the best
sign being obtained if, in their eagerness to feed, they let fall some
of the grain from their beaks (_tripudium solistimum_)--a result not
difficult to secure by previous treatment and a careful selection of
the kind of grain supplied to them. But besides this deliberate 'asking
for signs,' public business might at any moment be interrupted if the
gods voluntarily sent an indication of disapproval (_oblativa_): the
augurs then had always to be at hand to advise the magistrates whether
notice should be taken of such signs, and, if so, what was their
signification, and they even seem to have had certain rights of
reporting themselves (_nuntiatio_) the occurrence of adverse ones. The
sign of most usual occurrence would be lightning--sometimes such an
unexpected event as the seizure of a member of the assembly with
epilepsy (_morbus comitialis_)--and we know to what lengths political
obstructionists went in later times in the observation of fictitious
signs, or even the prevention of business by the mere announcement of
their intention to see an unfavourable omen (_servare de caelo_). The
complications and ramifications of the augur's art are infinite, but
the main idea should by now be plain, and it must be remembered that
the kindred art of the soothsayer (_haruspex_), oracles, and the
interpretation of fate by the drawing of lots (_sortes_) are all later
foreign introductions: auspice and augury are the only genuine Roman
methods for interpreting the will of the gods.
Here then in household, fields, and state, we have a second type of
relation to the gods, running parallel to the ordinary practice of
sacrifice and prayer, distinct yet not fundamentally different. As it
is man's function to propitiate the higher spirits and prevent, if
possible, the wrecking of his plans by their opposition, so it is his
business, if he can, to find out their intentions before he engages on
any serious undertaking. As in the _ius sacrum_ his legal mind leads
him to assume that the deities accept the responsibility of the
contract, when his own part is fulfilled, so here, like a practical man
of business, he assumes their construction of a code of communication,
which he has learned to interpret. In its origin it is a notion common
to many primitive religions, but in its elaboration it is peculiarly
and distinctively Italian, and, as we know it, Roman.
CHAPTER IX
RELIGION AND MORALITY--CONCLUSION
It might be said that a religion--the expression of man's relation to
the unseen--has not necessarily any connection with morality--man's
action in himself and towards his neighbours: that an individual--or
even a nation--might perfectly fulfil the duties imposed by the 'powers
above,' without being influenced in conduct and character. Such a view
might seem to find an apt illustration in the religion of Rome: the
ceremonial _pietas_ towards the gods appears to have little to do with
the making of man or nation. But in the history of the world the test
of religions must be their effect on the character of those who
believed in them: religion is no doubt itself an outcome of character,
but it reacts upon it, and must either strengthen or weaken. We are not
therefore justified in dismissing the 'Religion of Numa' without
inquiry as to its relation to morality, for on our answer to that
question must largely depend our judgment as to its value.
We are of course in a peculiarly difficult position to grapple with
this problem through lack of contemporary evidence. The Rome we know,
in the epochs when we can fairly judge of character and morality, was
not the Rome in which the 'Religion of Numa' had grown up and remained
unquestioned: it had been overlaid with foreign cults and foreign
ideas, had been used by priests and magistrates as a political
instrument, and discounted among the educated through the influence of
philosophy. But we may remember in the first place that even then,
especially in the household and in the country, the old religion had
probably a much firmer hold than one might imagine from literary
evidence, in the second that national character is not the growth of a
day, so that we may safely refer permanent characteristics to the
period when the old religion held its own.
It may be admitted at once that the direct influence on morality was
very small indeed. There was no table of commandments backed by the
religious sanction: the sense of 'sin,' except through breach of
ritual, was practically unknown. It is true that in the very early
_leges regiae_ some notion of this kind is seen--a significant glimpse
of what the original relation may have been: it is there ordained that
the patron who betrayed his client, or the client who deceived his
patron, shall be condemned to Iuppiter; the parricide to the spirits of
his dead ancestors, the husband who sells his wife to the gods of the
underworld, the man who removes his neighbour's landmark to Terminus,
the stealer of corn to Ceres. All these persons shall be _sacri_: they
have offended against the gods and the gods will see to their
punishment. But these are old-world notions which soon passed into the
background and the state took over the punishment of such offenders in
the ordinary course of law. Nor again in the prayers of men to gods is
there a trace of a petition for moral blessings: the magistrate prays
for the success and prosperity of the state, the farmer for the
fertility of his crops and herds, even the private individual, who
suspends his votive-tablet in the temple, pays his due for health or
commercial success vouchsafed to himself or his relations. 'Men call
Iuppiter greatest and best,' says Cicero, 'because he makes us not just
or temperate or wise, but sound and healthy and rich and wealthy.'
Still less, until we come to the moralists of the Empire, is there any
sense of that immediate and personal relation of the individual to a
higher being, which is really in religion, far more than commandments
and ordinances, the mainspring and safeguard of morality: even the
conception of the Genius, the 'nearest' perhaps of all unseen powers,
had nothing of this feeling in it, and it may be significant that, just
because of his nearness to man, the Genius never quite attained to
god-head. As far as direct relation is concerned, religion and morality
were to the Roman two independent spheres with a very small point of
contact.
Nor even in its indirect influence does the formal observance of the
Roman worship seem likely at first sight to have done much for personal
or national morality. Based upon fear, stereotyped in the form of a
legal relationship, _religio_--'the bounden obligation'--made, no
doubt, for a kind of conscientiousness in its adherents, but a cold
conscientiousness, devoid of emotion and incapable of expanding itself
to include other spheres or prompt to a similar scrupulousness in other
relations. The rigid and constant distinction of sacred and profane
would incline the Roman to fulfil the routine of his religious duty
and then turn, almost with a sigh of relief, to the occupations of
normal life, carrying with him nothing more than the sense of a burden
laid aside and a pledge of external prosperity. Even the religious act
itself might be without moral significance: as we have seen, the
worshipper might be wholly ignorant of the character, even the name of
the deity he worshipped, and in any case the motive of his action was
naught, the act itself everything. Nor again had the Roman religion any
trace of that powerful incentive to morality, a doctrine of rewards and
punishments in a future life: the ideas as to the fate of the dead were
fluctuating and vague, and the Roman was in any case much more
interested in their influence on himself than in their possible
experiences after death.
The divorce then between religion and morality seems almost complete
and it is not strange that most modern writers speak of the Roman
religion as a tiresome ritual formalism, almost wholly lacking in
ethical value. And yet it did not present itself in this light to the
Romans themselves. Cicero, sceptic as he was, could speak of it as the
cause of Rome's greatness; Augustus, the practical politician, could
believe that its revival was an essential condition for the
renaissance of the Roman character. Have we, in our brief examination
of its characteristics, seen any features which may suggest the
solution of this apparent antagonism? Was there in this formalism a
life which escapes us, as we handle the dry bones of antiquarianism?
In the first place there may be a danger that we underrate the value
of formalism itself. It spells routine, but routine is not without
value in the strengthening of character. The private citizen, who
conscientiously day by day had carried out the worship of his household
gods and month by month observed the sacred abstinence from work on the
days of festival, was certainly not less fitted to take his place as a
member of a strenuous and well-organised community, or to serve
obediently and quietly in the army on campaign. Even the magistrate in
the execution of his religious duties must have acquired an exactness
and method, which would not be valueless in the conduct of public
business. And when we pass to the origin of this formalism--the legal
relation--the connection with the Roman character becomes at once more
obvious. The 'lawgivers of the world,' who developed constitution and
code to a systematised whole such as antiquity had not dreamed of
before, imported, we may say if we like, their legal notions into the
sphere of religion: but we must not forget the other side of the
question. The permanence and success of this greater contract with
higher powers--the feeling that the gods did regard and reward exact
fulfilment of duty--cannot have been without re-action on the relations
of the life of the community: it was, as it were, a higher sanction to
the legal point of view: a pledge that the relations of citizen and
state too were rightly conceived. 'There is,' says Cicero, speaking of
the death of Clodius in the language of a later age, 'there is a divine
power which inspired that criminal to his own ruin: it was not by
chance that he expired before the shrine of the Bona Dea, whose rites
he had violated': the divine justice is the sanction of the human law.
Even in the fear, from which all ultimately sprang, there was a
training in self-repression and self-subordination, which in a more
civilised age must result in a valuable respect and obedience. The
descendants of those who had made religion out of an attempt to appease
the hostile _numina_, feeling themselves not indeed on more familiar
terms with their 'unknown gods,' but only perhaps a little more
confident of their own strength, were not likely to be wanting in a
disciplined sense of dependence and an appreciation of the value of
respect for authority, which alone can give stability to a
constitution. If fear with the Romans was not the beginning of
theological wisdom, it was yet an important contribution to the
character of a disciplined state.
But, as I have hinted in the course of this sketch more than once, the
answer to this problem, as well as the key to the general understanding
of the Roman religion, is to be found in the worship of the household.
If we knew more of it, we should see more clearly where religion and
morality joined hands, but we know enough to give us a clue. There not
only are the principal events of life, birth, adolescence, marriage,
attended by their religious sanction, but in the ordinary course of the
daily round the divine presence and the dependence of man are
continually emphasised. The gods are given their portion of the family
meal, the sanctified dead are recalled to take their share of the
family blessings. The result was not merely an approach--collectively,
not individually--to that sense of the nearness of the unseen, which
has so great an effect on the actions of the living, but a very strong
bond of family union which lay at the root of the life of the state.
It would be difficult to find a clearer expression of the notion than
in the fact that the same word _pietas_, which expresses the due
fulfilment of man's duty to god, is also the ideal of the relations of
the members of a household: filial piety was, in fact, but another
aspect of that rightness of relation, which reveals itself in the
worship of the gods. No doubt that, in the city-life of later periods,
this ideal broke down on both sides: household worship was neglected
and family life became less dutiful. But it was still, especially in
the country, the true backbone of Roman society, and no one can read
the opening odes of Horace's third book without feeling the strength of
Augustus' appeal to it.
And if we translate this, as we have learned to do, into terms of the
state, we can get some idea of what the Romans meant by their debt to
their religion. As the household was bound together by the tie of
common worship, as in the intermediate stage the clan, severed
politically and socially, yet felt itself reunited in the gentile
rites, so too the state was welded into a whole by the regularly
recurring annual festivals and the assurance of the divine sanction on
its undertakings. It might be that in the course of time these rites
lost their meaning and the community no longer by personal presence
expressed its service to the gods, but the cult stood there still, as
the type of Rome's union to the higher powers and a guarantee of their
assistance against all foes: the religion of Rome was, as it has been
said, the sanctification of patriotism--the Roman citizen's highest
moral ideal. It has been remarked, perhaps with partial truth, that the
religion of the _Æneid_--in many ways a summary of Roman thought and
feeling--is the belief in the _fata Romae_ and their fulfilment. The
very impersonality of this conception makes it a good picture of what
religion was in the Roman state. It was not, as with the Jews, a strong
conviction of the rightness of their own belief and a certainty that
their divine protectors must triumph over those of other nations, but a
feeling of the constant presence of some spirits, who, 'if haply they
might find them,' would, on the payment of their due, bear their part
in the great progress of right and justice and empire on which Rome
must march to her victory. It was the duty of the citizen, with this
conception of his city before his eyes, to see to it that the state's
part in the contract was fulfilled. From his ancestors had been
inherited the tradition, which told him the when, where, and how, and
in the preservation of that tradition and its due performance consisted
at once Rome's duty and her glory. 'If we wish,' says Cicero, 'to
compare ourselves with other nations, we may be found in other respects
equal or even inferior; in religion, that is in the worship of the
gods, we are far superior.' The religion of Rome may not have advanced
the theology or the ethics of the world, but it made and held together a nation. |
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