The Religion of Numa
J >> Jesse Benedict Carter >> The Religion of NumaAmong the more savage tribes and in the wilder mountain regions of both
Greece and Italy there was worshipped a goddess who had a different name
in each country, Artemis in Greece, Diana in Italy, but who was in
nature very much the same. This does not imply that it was the same
goddess originally or that the early Artemis of Greece had any influence
on the Diana of Italy. Their similarity was probably caused merely by
the similarity of the conditions from which they sprang, the similar
needs of the two peoples. She was a goddess of the woods, and of nature,
and especially of wild animals, a patroness of the hunt and the
huntsman, but also a goddess of all small animals, of all helpless
little ones, and a helper too of those that bore them, hence a goddess
of birth, and in the sphere of mankind a goddess of women and of
childbirth. Later in Greece Artemis was absorbed into the sea-cult of
Apollo on the island of Delos, where she became Apollo's sister, like
him the child of Latona; but naturally Diana experienced no similar
change until in Rome, centuries later, she was artificially identified
with Artemis. In the earliest times there were two places in Italy where
the cult of Diana was especially prominent, both, as we should expect,
in wooded mountainous regions: one on Mount Tifata (near Capua), the
modern St. Angelo in Formis; the other in Latium, in a grove near
Aricia. It is with this latter cult-centre that we have here to do. The
grove near Aricia became so famous that the goddess worshipped there was
known as "Diana of the Grove" (Diana Nemorensis), and the place where
she was worshipped was called the "Grove" (_nemus_), a name which is
still retained in the modern "Nemi." She was a goddess of the woods, of
the animal kingdom, of birth, and so of women; and almost all the
dedicatory inscriptions which have been found near her shrine were put
up by women. She was worshipped above all by the people of Aricia, and
she seems to have been the patron deity of the town. When it fell to
Aricia's lot to become the head of the league, her goddess Diana
promptly assumed an important position in the league, not because she
had by nature any political bearing whatsoever, but merely because she
was wedded to Aricia, and experienced all the vicissitudes of her
career. Thus there came into the league, alongside of the old Juppiter
Latiaris of the Alban Mount, the new Diana Nemorensis of Aricia, and
sacrifices to her formed a part of the solemn ritual of the united towns
of Latium. It does not take actually a great many years for a religious
custom to acquire sanctity, and before many generations had passed,
Diana was felt to be quite as original and essential a part of the
worship of the league as Juppiter himself. During these same centuries
Rome was growing in importance and influence in the league, until,
instead of being one of its insignificant towns, she was in a fair way
to become its president. Here her diplomacy stepped in to help her. The
league was of course essentially a political institution, but in a
primitive society political institutions are still in tutelage to
religious ones, and the direct road to strong political influence lies
through religious zeal. The way to leadership in the Latin league lay
through excessive devotion to Juppiter and Diana. It is therefore no
accidental coincidence that we find Rome in the period of Servius
building a temple to Juppiter Latiaris on the top of the Alban Mount,
and introducing the worship of Diana into Rome, building her a temple on
the Aventine, hence outside the _pomerium_. Yet it was not the
introduction of her worship as an ordinary state-cult, for then she
would have been taken inside the _pomerium_ with far greater right than
Hercules and Castor were. It was, on the contrary, the building of a
sanctuary of the league outside the _pomerium_, yet inside the civil
wall; not the adoption of Diana as a Roman goddess, but the close
association of the Diana of the Latin league with Rome. It was the
attempt to put Rome religiously as well as politically into the position
which Aricia held; and it was successful. Diana was still the
league-goddess; tradition has it that the league helped to build the
temple; and the dedication day of the temple, August 13, was the same as
that of the temple at Nemi. The Roman temple was outside the _pomerium_
therefore, not because she was a foreign goddess like Minerva, but
because as a league-goddess she must be outside, not inside, the sacred
wall of Rome.
Diana had been introduced for a specific purpose as part of a diplomatic
game, not because Rome felt any real religious need of her; it is hardly
to be expected therefore that her subsequent career in Rome would be of
any great importance. Naturally when once the state had taken the
responsibility of the cult upon itself, that cult was assured as long as
pagan Rome lasted, for the state was always faithful, at least in the
mechanical performance of a ritual act; but popular interest could not
be counted on, especially as many of the things which Diana stood for,
for example her relation to women, were ably represented by Juno. It is
not likely that Diana would ever have been of importance in the religion
of subsequent time, had it not been for another accident which served to
keep alive the interest in Diana, just as the accident of Diana's
connection with the Latin league had aroused that interest in the
beginning. This was the coming of Apollo and his sister Artemis. Apollo
came first, probably during the time of Servius, but Artemis seems to
have come much later, not before B.C. 431. Her identification with Diana
was inevitable, and from that time onward Diana begins a new life with
all the attributes and myths of Artemis, but this new Artemis-Diana was
quite as different a goddess from the old Aventine Diana as the new
Athena-Minerva was from the old Aventine Minerva.
The political interest of the Romans had been aroused, they had found
their life-work, their career was opening before them, and it must not
be supposed that the reflex action of this new political spirit on the
religious world was confined to the building of two league temples, one
to Juppiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount, miles away from Rome, and one
to Diana outside the _pomerium_ over in the woods of the Aventine. This
political interest was no artificial acquisition, but the inevitable
expression of an instinct. It must therefore find its representation
inside the city, in connexion with a deity who was already deep in the
hearts of the people. This deity could be none other than the sky-father
Juppiter, who had stood by them in the old days of their exclusively
farming life, sending them sunshine and rain in due season. Up on the
Capitoline he was worshipped as _Feretrius_, "the striker," in his most
fearful attribute as the god of the lightning. To him the richest spoils
of war (_spolia opima_) were due, and to him the conqueror gave thanks
on his return from battle. It was this Juppiter of the Capitoline who
was chosen to be the divine representative of Rome's political ambition;
and her confidence in the future, and the omen of her inevitable success
lay in the cult-names, the _cognomina_, with which this Juppiter was
henceforth and forever adorned, Juppiter Optimus Maximus. These
adjectives are no mere idle ornament, no purely pleasant phraseology;
they express not merely the excellence of Rome's Juppiter but his
absolute superiority to all other Juppiters, including Juppiter
Latiaris. And so while Rome with one hand was building a temple for the
league on the Alban Mount, merely as a member of the league, with the
other hand she was building a temple in the heart of her city to a god
who was to bring into subjection to himself all other gods who dared to
challenge his supremacy, just as the city which paid him honour was to
overcome all other cities which refused to acknowledge her. From
henceforth Juppiter Optimus Maximus represents all that is most truly
Roman in Rome. It was under his banner that her battles were fought, it
was to him in all time to come that returning generals gave thanks.
Tradition sets the completion of the Capitoline temple in the first year
of the republic, but the idea and the actual beginning of the work
belong to the later kingdom and hence to our present period, and the
contemplation of it forms a fitting close to the development which we
have tried to sketch. And now that this part of our work is over it may
be well to ask ourselves what we have seen, for there have been so many
bypaths which we have of necessity explored, that the main road we have
travelled may not be entirely distinct in our mind. In the period which
corresponds to the later kingdom, and roughly to the sixth century
before Christ, and which we have called "Servian" for convenience, we
have watched a primitive pastoral community, isolated from the world's
life, turning into a small city-state with political interests, the
beginnings of trade and handicraft, and various rival social classes;
and we have seen how along with the coming of these outside interests
there came various new cults connected with them, most of them implying
entirely new deities, and only one or two of them new sides of old
deities. The body of old Roman religion had received its first blows;
what Tacitus (_Hist._ i. 4) says of the downfall of the empire--"Then
was that secret of the empire disclosed, that it was possible for a
ruler to be appointed elsewhere than at Rome"--is true of Roman religion
in this period when it was discovered that the state might take into
itself deities from outside Rome. And yet while the principle itself was
fatal, the practice of it, so far, had been without much harm. Rome's
growth was inevitable, it was quite as inevitable that these new
interests should be represented in the world of the gods; her old gods
did not suffice, hence new ones were introduced. But the actual gods
brought in thus far were harmless; Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana
never did Rome any injury in themselves, never injured her national
_morale_, never lowered the tone of earnest sobriety which had been
characteristic of the old regime.
So far it was good, and well had it been for Rome if she could have shut
the gate of her Olympus now. What the old religion had not provided was
now present. Politics, trade, and art were now represented. With these
she was abundantly supplied for all her future career. But that was not
to be, the gate was still open, and the destructive influence of Greece
was soon to send in a host of new deities, who were destined not only to
overwhelm the old Roman gods--which in itself we might forgive--but to
sap away the old Roman virtues, to the maintenance of which the
atmosphere of these old gods was essential. The forerunner of this
influence was in himself innocent enough, it was Apollo, and it is to
his coming and the subsequent developments which set him in distinct
opposition to Juppiter Optimus Maximus that we now turn.
THE COMING OF THE SIBYL
The Rome of the first consuls was a very different Rome from that of the
earlier kings. Not only was the population larger but it was divided
socially into different classes. The simple patriarchal one-class
community had been transformed into the complex structure of a society
which had in it virtually all those elements and interests, except the
more strictly intellectual ones, which go to make up what we call
society in the modern sense. The world of the gods also had increased in
population, and there too there was present a slight social distinction
between the old gods (_Indigetes_) and the new-comers (_Novensides_),
though it is open to question how strongly this distinction was felt.
The new gods thus far were not incommensurable with the old ones. They
formed a tolerably harmonious circle, and there was not felt to be any
need of new priesthoods; the old priests were sufficient to look after
them all. There were a few new names, and a few new temples or altars,
but everything was in the old spirit, and there was no rivalry between
the old and the new. None of the old gods was crowded into the
background by the new-comers. This was on the face of it impossible as
yet, because the new gods all represented new ideas which had not been
provided for under the old scheme. Even Diana, who afterwards usurped
somewhat the functions of Juno, stood at present pre-eminently for the
political idea pure and simple, so far as Rome was concerned. This
period of equipoise did not continue very long, but while it lasted it
was beyond doubt the best and strongest period in the whole history of
Roman religion. There was no violent religious enthusiasm, but then
there was no corresponding depression offsetting it. It was the cold but
conscientious formalism which was best adapted to the Roman character,
because so long as it held sway the excesses of superstition were
avoided.
But this element of superstition was already on the way, it came in
within a few years of the opening of the republic, and it exercised its
insidious influence ever more and more powerfully until it celebrated
its wildest orgies in the time of the Second Punic War. It is in this
period of the first three centuries of the republic, roughly from B.C.
500 to B.C. 200, that this change was produced. Outwardly it resembled a
steady growth in religious feeling and enthusiasm, and it might well
have seemed so to contemporaries. It was a period of many new gods and
many new temples, but this in itself was no harm. It was the principle
behind it which did the damage. It was the essential contradiction to
what true Roman religion and Roman character demanded; and the last half
of the republic paid the price for what the first half had done, in a
decline of faith which has scarcely been exceeded in the world's
history.
It has been customary for writers on the history of Roman morals to
attribute these changes to the coming of Greek influence; and of course
in the main this is correct, but these writers have in general neglected
to analyse this Greek influence more closely, and to distinguish the
various aspects of it in different periods, and to ask and answer the
question why this influence should be so particularly harmful to the
Romans. It is generally spoken of as the influence of Greek literature
and philosophy, but for our present period this is entirely incorrect,
for we all know that Greek literature did not begin to influence Rome
until the time of the Punic wars, and yet the Greek influence of which
we speak here began to exert its effects two hundred and fifty years
before the Punic wars. The real cause of the unnatural stimulation of
religion during these three centuries is nothing more nor less than the
books of the Sibylline oracles. It is therefore a very definite and
interesting problem which we have before us. It is to examine the
workings of these oracles and to explain why they had such an
extraordinary effect on religion and society, that in three centuries
they could entirely change both the form and the content of Roman
religion, and under the guise of increasing its zeal, so sap its
vitality that it required almost two hundred years of human experience
and suffering before true religion was in some sense at least restored
to its own place.
Like the origin of almost all the great religious movements in the
world's history, the beginnings of the Sibylline books are shrouded in
mystery. A later age, for whom history had no secrets, with a cheap
would-be omniscience told of the old woman who visited Tarquin and
offered him nine books for a certain price, and when he refused to pay
it, went away, burned three, and then returning offered him at the
original price the six that were left; on his again refusing she went
away, burned three more and finally offered at the same old price the
three that remained, which he accepted. Except as a sidelight on the
character of the early Greek trader the story is worthless. It is
doubtful even if the presence of the Sibylline books in Rome goes back
beyond the republic. The first dateable use of them was in the year B.C.
496, and there is one little fact connected with them which makes it
probable that they did not come in until the republic had begun. This is
the circumstance that in view of the great secrecy of the books it is
unthinkable that they should ever have been in Rome without especial
guardians, and yet the earliest guardians that we know of were a newly
made priesthood consisting originally of two men, the so-called "two men
in charge of the sacrifices" (_IIviri sacris faciundis_). Now the form
of this title is peculiar; it is not a proper name like the titles of
all the other priesthoods. Instead it is built on the plan of the titles
of the special committees appointed by the Senate for administrative
purposes; it bears every mark therefore of having arisen under the
republic, rather than under the kingdom, at a time when the Senate had
the supreme control. So much may be said regarding the time when they
were introduced into Rome; as for the place from which they came, this
was without doubt the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, probably the
oldest and most important of them, Cumae, so famous for its Sibyl. This
was not the first association that Rome had had with Cumae, for in all
probability the worship of Apollo had spread from there into Rome toward
the close of the kingdom. Apollo and the books were connected at Cumae,
for it was Apollo who inspired the Sibyl, and the oracles were his
commands, but it is almost certain that Apollo came to Rome in advance
of the oracles. He came there as a god of healing and was given a sacred
place outside the _pomerium_ in the Campus Martius, on the spot where
later (B.C. 431) a temple was built for him with his sister
Artemis-Diana and their mother Latona. This was the only state temple
that Apollo ever had, until Augustus built the famous one on the
Palatine. It was in the wake of Apollo that the Sibylline books came. As
for the books themselves, they were kept so secret that we cannot expect
to know much about them, but in rare cases where the seriousness of the
exigency warranted it, the Senate permitted the actual publication of
the oracle upon which its action was based, and of the oracles thus
published one or two have been preserved to us. They were of course
written in Greek and were phrased in the ambiguous style which for
obvious reasons was the most advantageous style for oracles. They
commanded the worship of certain specific deities, naturally all of them
Greek, and the performance of certain more or less complicated ritual
acts. When they were received in Rome, they were placed in the temple of
Juppiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline in the keeping of their
guardians, the new priesthood of the "two men in charge of the
sacrifices." This committee of two was enlarged to ten in B.C. 367 when
the great compromise between the Patricians and the Plebeians was made,
and the Plebeians were admitted into this one priesthood, with five
representatives. Subsequently Sulla made the number fifteen, which
continued as the official number from that time on, so that the
priesthood is ordinarily called the _Quindecemviri_, even when one of
the older periods is referred to. The real control of the books however
lay in the hands of the Senate. When the Senate saw fit, the priests
were ordered to consult the books, but without this special command even
their guardians dared not approach them. The priests reported to the
Senate what they had found, and the Senate then decreed whatever actions
the oracles commanded. The carrying out of these actions was again in
the charge of the Sibylline priests, who performed the ceremonies
demanded and were for all time to come responsible for the maintenance
of any new cults which might be introduced.
When we see how carefully these oracles were guarded and how
circumspectly their use was hedged about by senatorial control, and when
we think how relatively little harm the use of oracles had wrought in
Greece in all the centuries of her history, it may well seem as if the
statements made in the beginning of this chapter about the havoc caused
by these oracles were grossly exaggerated. But the efforts of the Senate
to safeguard these oracles only prove that the older and wiser men in
the community realised how dangerous they were, and the comparison with
Greece leads to a consideration of certain essential differences between
the Greek and the Roman temperament which made that which was meat for
one into poison for the other.
In the older purer age of Greece the gods were never far away from men,
they lived almost side by side with them; there were to be sure many
gods of whom they were afraid and from whom they desired to keep as far
away as possible, but there were a great many other gods of whom they
liked to think. In constructing the records of their history they did
not work backwards from the light of the present into an ever darkening
past, but they began from the beginning in the full light of the gods
from whom all things sprang, and mythology passed into history by
imperceptible gradations. They knew more about the beginning when all
things were completely in the hands of the gods than they did about
their immediate past. Art began very early to make them familiar with
the appearance of the gods, so that there was little that was mysterious
about their religion, so little that the element of mystery had later to
be almost artificially cultivated in the "mysteries." They respected the
gods rather than feared them, and they felt that the gods would do them
no harm unless they themselves first sinned against them or their own
fellow-men, and the oracles of Delphi were no more terrifying to them
than the coming of the word of God was to the prophets of Israel. They
were accustomed to these messages, which were almost every-day affairs.
It was all a part of that marvellous poise of nature which made the
every-day mortal Greek almost as calm as the unperturbed imperturbable
faces of their gods as their great sculptors saw them.
In Rome all was very different. The superstitious element in the Italian
character, which amazes us so much to-day when cultured twentieth
century men and women in good society persecute their fellows because of
the evil eye, is a heritage of many thousand years. Sometimes it seems
as if it were the Italian birthright, the blight of Etruria which came
into their nature in spite of themselves. It required centuries to
educate the Roman into the concept of personal individual gods. He had
begun his theological career by terror of unknown powers all about him,
and by regarding religion as the science of propitiating the right power
on the right occasion. One could not know these powers, one did not
desire to. Their gods were at once their masters and their servants, but
never their companions. The early Roman knew no such thing as an oracle,
the only messages from the gods were the expressions of their wrath, in
the sending of prodigies and portents. They did indeed consult the gods
by watching the flight of birds or studying the entrails of the
sacrifice, but it was merely to obtain a "yes or no" answer to a
categorical question as to whether a certain act was pleasing to the
gods. Otherwise all about them lay mystery, and at the point where sight
failed, since neither imagination nor faith carried them any further,
superstition stepped in, and the more they thought of the gods the more
terrified they became. Now if you present to a people thus constituted a
divine book of infallible oracles, you increase their terror in greater
measure than the book itself can assuage it, and with the use of the
book the simpler forms of their old belief will grow less and less
effective in the face of this new "witchcraft," which can work wonders.
And no matter how you may hedge the use of the book about, it will be
used more and more as the craving for magic is increasingly aroused.
The study of the outward and the inward effects of the Sibylline books
is therefore the real history of religion in the first half of the
republic. The outward effects are seen in the introduction of a series
of Greek gods, who were in themselves in the main eminently respectable,
and whose presence was in itself no offence to good morals, and if we
stop there we fail to understand why the religious interest of the
Second Punic War should change so quickly to the scepticism of the
following century. The inward effects however, which, though they are
hard to see, may yet be discovered between the lines of the chronicle,
will explain all the undermining of foundation, until we wonder not why
the structure collapsed so suddenly but how it managed to last so long.
The history of the activity of the books begins peaceably enough. In the
year B.C. 496 Rome was in a bad way; her crops had failed and the
importation of grain from Latium was rendered very difficult because of
the war with the Latins in which she was engaged. In her distress she
turned to the Sibylline books, and on the occasion of this their first
recorded use, the oracles ordered the introduction into Rome of the cult
of three Greek deities, Demeter, Dionysos, and Kore. It was a most
appropriate and characteristic choice. In the first place the deities in
question were worshipped at Cumae, the home of the books, whence Rome
could, and probably did, borrow the cult; and in the second place
Demeter was the goddess of grain, and it was from Cumae that Rome was
already beginning to obtain her imported grain supply. Thus the coming
of the Cumaean Demeter into the religious world of Rome is but the
sacred parallel to the coming of Cumaean grain into the material world
of Rome. The Greek goddess of grain came with the grain, just as Castor
had come with the Greek cavalry, with this essential distinction however
that Demeter came by the incantation of the books and the enactment of
the Senate, whereas Castor's coming was a slow and normal development.