The Religion of Numa
J >> Jesse Benedict Carter >> The Religion of NumaAmong the Greek gods who came into Rome we saw the entrance in the
middle of the third century before Christ of a pair of deities of the
Lower World, Dis and Proserpina, and in connexion with the introduction
the establishment of certain games called "secular" because they were to
be repeated at the expiration of a century (_saeculum_). The initial
celebration was in B.C. 249, one hundred years later with a slight delay
they were celebrated again in B.C. 146, the next anniversary was omitted
because it fell in the midst of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey,
but now Augustus wished to celebrate them. There were chronological
difficulties, but they did not prove insurmountable. An oracle was set
in circulation, or one actually in circulation was made use of, wherein
it was declared that a great cycle of four times one hundred and ten
years had passed and that a new age was now beginning. The emperor, if
not responsible for this oracle, was very willing to accept it. It was
an essential part of his plan that all things should become new, and
that with the new age should come a new spirit. This new _saeculum_ must
be ushered in by games which should be at once like and unlike those of
past centuries. They were to be celebrated at least in part on the
hallowed spot, the _Tarentum_ in the Campus Martius, they were to extend
through three nights like the old games, but the three days were to be
added as well, and the deities worshipped in the night, while they were
no longer the old gods of the Lower World, Dis and Proserpina, were at
least mysterious deities of fate and fortune, while the gods of the day,
Apollo and Artemis, Juppiter and Juno, were as new to the games as the
day celebrations themselves were. But the equality of Apollo and
Juppiter was expressed not merely in the parallelisation of
Juppiter-Juno with Apollo-Diana. It was still more in evidence on the
third and greatest day of the festival, when the procession of three
times nine youths and three times nine maidens sang the song in honour
of Apollo and Diana, which Horace wrote and which has been preserved to
us among his writings, the _Carmen Saeculare_, and to which in addition
the recently found inscription giving an account of the games bears
witness in the words _carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flaccus_ (_C.I.L._
vi. 32323). On this day the procession started from the Apollo temple on
the Palatine, and went over to the Juppiter temple on the Capitoline,
and then back again to Apollo on the Palatine, thus indicating not only
the equality of Apollo and Juppiter but even the superiority of the
former. A new age had indeed begun, an age in which the new associations
of the Palatine and the glamour of imperialism were to overcome the more
democratic associations of the Capitoline with its incorrigibly
republican Juppiter. Greek gods which had hitherto in theory at least
been subordinated to the gods of old Rome were now granted not only
equality but superiority. The specific cult of Apollo, to be sure, did
not always retain the exalted position to which Augustus had raised it,
but even it never entirely lost its prominence, whereas the general idea
of the supremacy of the imperial cult was now established for all time
to come. But this secular celebration of Augustus is interesting aside
from the relation of Juppiter and Apollo, for it affords another
illustration of the skilful combination of new and old in the Augustan
reorganisation. In form the festival is avowedly the old one, but in two
respects at least it introduces a new element. In the first place
participation in the old festival, as in all the old festivals, had been
confined to Roman citizens. Others might look on, but they could not
take part, nor were they the recipients of any of the blessings which
were to follow. But now every free member of the community, with wife
and child, might join in the celebration, and thus the note was struck
which was to be the keynote of all that was best in the changes
introduced by the empire whose "highest and most beautiful task," as
Professor Mommsen puts it, "and the one which she fulfilled most
perfectly, was gradually to reconcile and thus to put an end to the
contrast between the ruling city and the subordinate communities, and
thus to change the old Roman law of city-citizenship into a community of
the state which embraced all the members of the empire." But even this
was not all; under the guise of this restoration of an old republican
institution a blow was struck at the very foundation of all republican
institutions, namely the power of the Senate. It was _par excellence_
Augustus's festival, arranged by him or by those to whom he had
committed the details. The Senate had little or nothing to say about it
and yet the control of such religious celebrations had hitherto formed
an inalienable part of the Senate's power. Even in the procession itself
the republican magistrates do not seem to have been officially present.
It was thus no longer the Senate inviting the magistrates and the
citizens in good and regular standing to perform a certain divine
function, but it was the emperor inviting all the members of the
community, citizens and non-citizens alike, to join with him in
worshipping the gods of the new state.
A great part of Augustus's success was unquestionably due to a certain
form of moral courage. For all his diplomacy and his desire to feel the
pulse of the people he was never lacking in the courage of his own
convictions. This can be seen nowhere better than in his attitude toward
his adoptive father Julius Caesar. From the very beginning when he took
upon himself, even at the cost of temporary impoverishment, the payment
of Caesar's legacy, he was supremely true to the man whose successor he
was, and this faithfulness is especially apparent in the field of
religion. Here there are two cults, both relating to Julius Caesar, for
which Augustus was largely responsible, that of the god Julius himself,
and that of Mars the Avenger.
In consideration of what Caesar had already done for the reorganisation
of the state, and in view of what he was planning to carry out, his
death was a national calamity, but his influence might still be rescued
and preserved by elevating him into the rank of the gods. For the
accomplishment of this it was necessary that the Senate should act, for
in the hands of the Senate alone lay the power to receive new gods into
the state. Thus the god Julius was created and the word _divus_ received
a new meaning. With that logic which was characteristic of Roman
religion from the very beginning, the elevation of Julius into the ranks
of the greater and more individual gods went side by side with his
exclusion from the ranks of the ordinary deified ancestors, so that
thereafter at the funeral processions of the Julian family his wax mask
was absent from the processions of ancestors to which he no longer
belonged, but in the parade of the circus he was present, drawn in a
waggon among the greater gods. Nothing was left undone to render his
cult both conspicuous and permanent. A special priest (_flamen_) was
appointed to look after it, and as the irony of fate would have it one
of the first incumbents of this position was Marc Antony after his
reconciliation with Augustus in B.C. 40. Then too a special festival day
was given him among the religious holidays of the year. It was intended
that this day should be July 13, his birthday, but as that day happened
to be already devoted to an important celebration in connexion with the
games of Apollo, the day preceding it, July 12, was chosen. But more was
needed than a priest and a holiday, there must be a cult centre as well,
a temple of the Divus Julius. The site of this temple was already given
in the associations connected with Caesar's death. There could be but
one place for it, and that was in the Forum near the Regia where his
body had been carried to be burned. There the temple was built and
dedicated August 18, B.C. 29. An altar had been erected on the spot
where Caesar's body had been burned, and the new temple was so placed
that the altar was included in its boundaries, occupying a niche in the
centre of the front line of the substructure. The temple had the usual
history of destruction and rebuilding in antiquity until in early
Christian times it was used for secular purposes, and the eyesore of the
pagan altar was removed by building a wall across the front, the
diameter of the semicircular niche, and by roofing the altar over on a
level with the existing platform. Thus the altar with its historical and
religious associations was entirely lost sight of, and though the temple
in its main outlines had long been excavated, the altar was not
discovered until 1898, when the wall was broken through and the whole
thing laid bare. Thus by the vote of the Senate, the appointment of a
priest, the setting apart of a holy day in the year, and the building of
a temple, the worship of the god Julius was established; but it was the
general irresistible tendency toward emperor-worship which kept it alive
and made it the model for a tremendous subsequent development. Augustus
had accomplished his desire. Men were looking on Caesar as a success
after all and not as a failure. The _Di Manes_ of a murdered emperor had
been profitably exchanged for the Divus Julius, and just as the gods had
founded the old Rome of Romulus, so again it was a god who had laid the
foundations of the empire over which his successor was ruling.
But Augustus was not content with this; it was all very well for men to
look upon the god Caesar as an illustration of justification after
death, as an example of how heaven could right the wrongs of earthly
existence, but that was not sufficient; the punishment of those who
caused his earthly downfall must be emphasised, it must be shown that
the gods were quite as much interested in punishing the sinner as in
rewarding the righteous man who was sinned against. It was one thing to
transfer one's ancestors to the gods, it was quite another thing to take
measures to keep oneself from following in their footsteps, even though
their last estate was theoretically desirable. Hence side by side with
the cult of the Divus Julius went that of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger.
The circumstances of the beginning of the cult show that it was no mere
poetical title but a genuine cult-name born in an earnest moment: for
the great temple subsequently built to Mars under this cognomen was
vowed by Augustus "in behalf of vengeance for his father," in the war
against the slayers of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius. This temple, vowed at
Philippi in B.C. 42, was so slow in building that in the meantime
Augustus erected a small round temple to Mars Ultor on the Capitoline.
This was dedicated May 12, B.C. 20. In the years which followed Augustus
proceeded with the difficult and extremely expensive task of purchasing
property for his own Forum, and here was built and dedicated, August 1,
B.C. 2, the great temple of Mars Ultor. But aside from being a very
present reminder of the vengeance which the gods had in store for those
who killed a Caesar, it stood also for the Julian house, for Mars was
not alone in the temple but with him was Venus, the ancestral mother of
the family of Julius and Augustus; and thus was once more emphasised the
connexion between the ancestors of the ruling house and the great
ancestor Mars, from whom all Romans were sprung.
A temple possessed of such strong associations with the imperial family
became instantly a centre of their family worship, and in this respect
produced another rival to the cult of Juppiter on the Capitoline. In
connexion namely with the putting on of the _toga virilis_ the members
of the imperial family went to the temple of Mars Ultor instead of
following the immemorial custom of ascending the Capitol to the shrine
of Juppiter Optimus Maximus. More important yet the insignia of the
triumph, which had always been in the keeping of the Capitoline Juppiter
even before he was Optimus Maximus and while he was only the "Striker,"
Feretrius, were now preserved in the temple of Mars Ultor.
With all the state worshipping Apollo, the god of the emperor's own
family, on the Palatine, celebrating the divinity of his ancestor the
god Julius in the Roman Forum, and acknowledging Mars as the avenger of
all those who did the emperor harm, in the emperor's own new Forum, it
might have seemed to a less far-seeing man that religion had been
sufficiently pressed into the service of the royal family. But so it did
not seem to Augustus. These cults were all three of them essentially
new, and new cults may, to be sure, easily become prominent; they
usually do, but the test comes with time whether there is external
pressure sufficiently continuous to give permanency to this prominence.
As a matter of fact not one of these three cults continued later to hold
the rank in importance which it had under Augustus. On the other hand if
one went low enough and looked sufficiently deep down certain elements
in the religious life of the community could be found which continued
almost unchanged from century to century. These were the simple elements
which were involved in family worship, the sacrifices at the hearth of
Vesta, and those to the Genius of the master of the house. Here simple
beliefs and elementary cult acts had continued virtually unchanged from
the very earliest period down to the present. These cults did not need
any formal restoration on the part of the emperor, for they had not
experienced the decline which the other cults had suffered, but by just
so much more they would afford a firm foundation for his empire and his
own rule if he could in some way succeed in connecting them with
himself. In the case of Vesta this was comparatively easy. The Pontifex
Maximus was the guardian of the Vestal virgins, and thus on March 6,
B.C. 12, when Augustus became Pontifex Maximus, it was quite natural
that there should be a festival to Vesta and that the day should
continue as a public holiday. The Pontifex Maximus however was supposed
to live in the Regia down in the Forum, where Julius Caesar as Pontifex
Maximus had actually lived. This Augustus did not desire to do, hence he
gracefully gave up the Regia to the Vestal virgins and made his official
residence in his own house on the Palatine, fulfilling the religious
requirements by consecrating a part of that house. On a portion of the
section thus consecrated a temple of Vesta was built and dedicated April
28, B.C. 12. This was strictly speaking his own "Vesta," the hearth of
his own house, but the prominence of the temple of Vesta there had an
effect similar to the prominence of the temple of Apollo on the
Palatine, and the whole state began thus to worship at the hearth of the
emperor, and in time the emperor was worshipped at each individual
hearth.
But the crowning touch of Augustus's religious policy was yet to come;
this was the establishment of the worship of the Genius of the emperor.
After Actium and in the earlier years of his reign it is certain that
Augustus would not have thought of putting himself, even in the
spiritualised form of his Genius, before the people as an object of
worship. But the tendency to emperor-worship which Oriental influence
had brought with it was not without its effects on the emperor himself,
and perhaps these effects were all the stronger because of his valiant
struggle against it. Then too the state was already worshipping the gods
of his family, even Vesta Augusta, the goddess of his own hearth. He
had become in substance, even if not yet in name, the father of his
country. It had been an immemorial custom that the members of the
household should worship the Genius of the master of the house. In every
household in Rome that custom still existed. It was a very logical step,
and one therefore which a Roman could easily take, to carry out the
analogy of the family and to allow the whole state to worship the Genius
of the emperor, who was the head of the family of the state. The idea
therefore was not at all incongruous, nor was the way in which it was
carried out, though the latter was so ingenious as to deserve special
consideration.
In the old days when Rome was a farming community, the guardianship of
the gods over the fields was one of the most important elements in
religious life. The gods were above all the protectors of the boundary
lines, and thus it came to pass that where two roads crossed and thus
the corners of four farms came together the deities protecting these
farms were worshipped together as the Lares Compitales, the Lares of the
_compita_ or cross-roads. Curiously enough this worship was later
extended to the crossing of city streets, and as was natural it became
more highly organised in the city than it had been in the country.
Regular associations, _collegia_, were formed to look after the details
of the worship, headed by the _magistri vicorum_, who were however not
public officials but merely the elected heads of these colleges, men
mainly from the lower ranks of society. The contagion of civil and
political strife affected these colleges as well as their more
aristocratic parallels, higher up in the social scale, and turned them
into local political clubs. The part played by these clubs in the civil
struggles which occupied the last century of the republic was such that
the Senate in B.C. 64 was compelled to dissolve them, though they were
restored again six years later and existed until Caesar destroyed them
entirely. But now Augustus was creating a new organisation for the city,
dividing it into fourteen regions, each region containing a certain
number of subdivisions called _vici_. The old "colleges of the
cross-roads" afforded him just the sort of opportunity which he never
failed to seize, that of seeming to restore a neglected republican
institution, and at the same time of making it into a support of the
monarchy. The colleges had antiquity in their favour, and their repeated
suppression was clear proof of their power. They must be recognised and
taken over by the state, their officials must be made into officials of
the state, but, most important, their worship must be permeated with the
imperial idea. This was where Augustus's skill showed itself. At every
shrine of the cross-roads where of old the two Lares had been worshipped
alone, a third image now took its place between them. This was the
Genius Augusti, who thus formed henceforth an integral part of the
local worship of every part of the city. Under the presiding Genius
Augusti the Lares themselves began to be known as the Lares Augusti and
the cult grew in popularity so that it began to extend through all of
Italy and even through the provinces of the empire, and wherever the
Lares went, along with them went the worship of the Genius of the
emperor.
Now that we have seen what Augustus did, the question arises
irresistibly as to the measure of his success. There can be no question
but that he was successful in obtaining the immediate object which he
was seeking after. A formal religious life was unquestionably brought
into being, and such strength as that life had was exerted in behalf of
the empire. This is only in part true of the city but it is absolutely
true of the provinces, where after all in the long run the balance of
power was bound to lie. In every case the religious reform, begun in the
city, spread rapidly through the rest of Italy and out into the
provinces. There the negative elements, which hindered its growth in
Rome itself, were absent. For the provinces the empire was all gain, and
even a bad emperor was far better than none at all.
The politics of Augustus had recreated the religion which the politics
of the last century of the republic had destroyed, had recreated it in
as far as political considerations could. But the spirit of scepticism
which had made possible the political abuse of religion could not be
driven out by any further application of politics. A form might be
created, both the paraphernalia of temples and the hierarchy of priests
whose business it was to perform certain cult acts, but there the power
of enactment ceased. In the main the religious life of the people went
on for good or for ill entirely independent of these things. All that
was alive and real in the simple domestic cult went on down into the
empire, and those who were faithful were faithful still. The cults of
the Orient, against which Augustus had done all that he dared, still
captured the minds of the vast majority of the people, and a Mithras or
an Isis meant infinitely more than a Mars or a Vesta, even if Mars were
the avenger of a Caesar, and Vesta the goddess of the living emperor's
own hearth. Among the more intellectual classes the folly of the one set
of gods, the darlings of the common people, was felt as keenly as the
folly of the others, those who had been worshipped by the men of former
days. Philosophy, which had had its share in the breakdown of faith,
beginning in the days of the Punic wars, was now offering out of itself
a substitute for the faith which it had taken away. It no longer
contented itself with a destructive criticism which resulted in a
negative view of life, but in Stoicism at least it strove to provide
something sufficiently constructive to afford not only a rule of living
but also an inspiration to live.
With the death of Augustus the last chapter in the history of old Roman
religion was closed. His was the last attempt to fill the spiritual need
of the people with the old forms and the old ideas; for what he offered
was in the main old though certain new ideas were mixed with it. From
now on the lifeless platitudes of philosophy and the orgiastic excesses
of the Oriental cults divided the field between them, and it was with
them rather than with the gods of Numa or even with the deities of the
Sibylline books that Christianity fought its battles. That too is a
fascinating study, but it is quite another story and with the death of
Augustus our present tale is told. And when we look back over the whole
of it the main outlines become perhaps even clearer because of the
details into which we have been compelled to go.
We see at the start the simple religion of an agricultural people still
strongly tinged with animism and inheriting from an animistic past a
certain formalism which is so great that it almost becomes a content.
Toward the close of the kingdom we see this religion developing through
Italic influences so that it takes into itself a certain number of
elements which were absent from the older religion because they had no
concomitants in daily life, but whose presence is now rendered
necessary. These elements are especially the ideas of politics, trade,
commerce, and the liberal arts. Then for a moment under Servius an
equilibrium seems to have been reached, and a religion to have been
brought into being which was simple enough for the old lovers of
simplicity and varied enough to satisfy the new demands of the
community. But this was not for long, for the spiritual conquest of Rome
by Greece began then, three centuries before the physical conquest of
Greece by Rome. The hosts of Greek deities invaded and captured Rome
under the leadership of the Sibylline books, and though at first they
had been kept outside the _pomerium_, even this iron barrier was melted
in the heat of the Second Punic War, and the new Greek gods swarmed into
the city proper. At the same time as a last heritage from the baleful
books an Oriental goddess, the Magna Mater, was taken into the cult and
into the hearts of the people, and the elements of decay were thus all
present. These elements were threefold: the natural spiritual reaction
resulting from the excesses of the period of the Second Punic War; the
fascination of the Orient, exhibited to Rome in the cult of the Magna
Mater; and the new gift which Greece now made to Rome, the knowledge of
her literature, especially of her philosophy. In the last two centuries
of the republic then these forces alone would have been sufficient to
cause the downfall of religion, but they were aided by politics, which
fastened itself upon the formalism of the state religion and sucked the
little life-blood that was left. Rome's scholars and wise men could
deplore the result and point out the causes, but they could not cure
the state of affairs. What politics had done, politics alone could undo,
hence only the reforms of an autocrat could restore something of the
outward structure of the old state religion. But beyond this politics
and the autocrat were alike powerless. Against philosophy and Oriental
ecstasy they were of no avail. Hence the spirit had left the religion
which Augustus had restored even before the marble temples which he had
built in its honour had fallen into decay.
The age of formalism had passed, the religious demands of the individual
could no longer be satisfied by a mere ritual. For good or for evil
something more personal, more subjective, was needed. Men sought for it
in various ways and with varying success, but except in the simple forms
of family worship old Roman religion was dead.