[19.1] Indeed, there is no tradition among the Romans either of Caelus being castrated by his own sons or of Saturn destroying his own offspring to secure himself from their attempts or of Jupiter dethroning Saturn and confining his own father in the dungeon of Tartarus, or, indeed, of wars, wounds, or bonds of the gods, or of their servitude among men. [2] And no festival is observed among them as a day of mourning or by the wearing of black garments and the beating of breasts and the lamentations of women because of the disappearance of deities, such as the Greeks perform in commemorating the rape of Persephonê and the adventures of Dionysus and all the other things of like nature. And one will see among them, even though their manners are now corrupted, no ecstatic transports, no Corybantic frenzies, no begging under the colour of religion, no bacchanals or secret mysteries, no all-night vigils of men and women together in the temples, nor any other mummery of this kind; but alike in all their words and actions with respect to the gods a reverence is shown such as is seen among neither Greeks nor barbarians. [3] And, — the thing which I myself have marvelled at most, — notwithstanding the influx into Rome of innumerable nations which are under every necessity of worshipping their ancestral gods according to the customs of their respective countries, yet the city has never officially adopted any of those foreign practices, as has been the experience of many cities in the past; but, even though she has, in pursuance of oracles, introduced certain rites from abroad, she celebrates them in accordance with her own traditions, after banishing all fabulous clap-trap. The rites of the Idaean goddess are a case in point; [4] for the praetors perform sacrifices and celebrated games in her honour every year according to the Roman customs, but the priest and priestess of the goddess are Phrygians, and it is they who carry her image in procession through the city, begging alms in her name according to their custom, and wearing figures upon their breasts and striking their timbrels while their followers play tunes upon their flutes in honour of the Mother of the Gods. [5] But by a law and decree of the senate no native Roman walks in procession through the city arrayed in a parti-coloured robe, begging alms or escorted by flute-players, or worships the god with the Phrygian ceremonies. So cautious are they about admitting any foreign religious customs and so great is their aversion to all pompous display that is wanting in decorum.
[20.1] Let no one imagine, however, that I am not sensible that some of the Greek myths are useful to mankind, part of them explaining, as they do, the works of Nature by allegories, others being designed as a consolation for human misfortunes, some freeing the mind of its agitations and terrors and clearing away unsound opinions, and others invented for some other useful purpose. [2] But, though I am as well acquainted as anyone with these matters, nevertheless my attitude toward the myths is one of caution, and I am more inclined to accept the theology of the Romans, when I consider that the advantages from the Greek myths are slight and cannot be of profit to many, but only to those who have examined the end for which they are designed; and this philosophic attitude is shared by few. The great multitude, unacquainted with philosophy, are prone to take these stories about the gods in the worse sense and to fall into one of two errors: they either despise the gods as buffeted by many misfortunes, or else refrain from none of the most shameful and lawless deeds when they see them attributed to the gods.
[21.1] But let the consideration of these matters be left to those who have set aside the theoretical part of philosophy exclusively for their contemplation. To return to the government established by Romulus, I have thought the following things also worthy the notice of history. In the first place, he appointed a great number of persons to carry on the worship of the gods. At any rate, no one could name any other newly-founded city in which so many priests and ministers of the gods were appointed from the beginning. [2] For, apart from those who held family priesthoods, sixty were appointed in his reign to perform by tribes and curiae the public sacrifices on behalf of the commonwealth; I am merely repeating what Terentius Varro, the most learned man of his age, his written in his Antiquities. [3] In the next place, whereas others generally choose in a careless and inconsiderate manner those who are to preside over religious matters, some thinking fit to make public sale of this honour and others disposing of it by lot, he would not allow the priesthoods to be either purchased for money or assigned by lot, but made a law that each curia should choose two men over fifty years of age, of distinguished birth and exceptional merit, of competent fortune, and without any bodily defects; and he ordered that these should enjoy their honours, not for any fixed period, but for life, freed from military service by their age and from civil burdens by the law.
[22.1] And because some rites were to be performed by women, others by children whose fathers and mothers were living, to the end that these also might be administered in the best manner, he ordered that the wives of the priests should be associated with their husbands in the priesthood; and that in the case of any rites which men were forbidden by the law of the country to celebrate, their wives should perform them and their children should assist as their duties required; and that the priests who had no children should choose out of the other families of each curia the most beautiful boy and girl, the boy to assist in the rites till the age of manhood, and the girl so long as she remained unmarried. These arrangements also he borrowed, in my opinion, from the practices of the Greeks. [2] For all the duties that are performed in the Greek ceremonies by the maidens whom they call kanêphoroi and arrhêphoroi are performed by those whom the Romans call tutulatae, who wear on their heads the same kind of crowns with which the statues of the Ephesian Artemis are adorned among the Greeks. And all the functions which among the Tyrrhenians and still earlier among the Pelasgians were performed by those they called cadmili in the rites of the Curetes and in those of the Great Gods, were performed in the same manner by those attendants of the priests who are now called by the Romans camilli. [3] Furthermore, Romulus ordered one soothsayer out of each tribe to be present at the sacrifices. This soothsayer we call hieroskopos or “inspector of the vitals,” and the Romans, preserving something of the ancient name, aruspex. He also made a law that all the priests and ministers of the gods should be chosen by the curiae and that their election should be confirmed by those who interpret the will of the gods by the art of divination.
[23.1] After he had made these regulations concerning the ministers of the gods, he again, as I have stated, assigned the sacrifices in an appropriate manner to the various curiae, appointing for each of them gods and genii whom they were always to worship, and determined the expenditures for the sacrifices, which were to be paid to them out of the public treasury. [2] The members of each curia performed their appointed sacrifices together with their own priests, and on holy days they feasted together at their common table. For a banqueting-hall had been built for each curia, and in it there was consecrated, just as in the Greek prytanea, a common table for all the members of the curia. These banqueting-halls had the same name as the curiae themselves, and are called so to our day. [3] This institution, it seems to me, Romulus took over from the practice of the Lacedaemonians in the case of their phiditia, which were then the vogue. It would seem that Lycurgus, who had learned the institution from the Cretans, introduced it at Sparta to the great advantage of his country; for he thereby in time of peace directed the citizens’ lives toward frugality and temperance in their daily repasts, and in time of war inspired every man with a sense of shame and concern not to forsake his comrade with whom he had offered libations and sacrifices and shared in common rites. [4] And not alone for his wisdom in these matters does Romulus deserve praise, but also for the frugality of the sacrifices that he appointed for the honouring of the gods, the greatest part of which, if not all, remained to my day, being still performed in the ancient manner. [5] At any rate, I myself have seen in the sacred edifices repasts set before the gods upon ancient wooden tables, in baskets and small earthen plates, consisting of barley bread, cakes and spelt, with the first-offerings
of some fruits, and other things of like nature, simple, cheap, and devoid of all vulgar display. I have seen also the libation wines that had been mixed, not in silver and gold vessels, but in little earthen cups and jugs, and I have greatly admired these men for adhering to the customs of their ancestors and not degenerating from their ancient rites into a boastful magnificence. [6] There are, it is true, other institutions, worthy to be both remembered and related, which were established by Numa Pompilius, who ruled the city after Romulus, a man of consummate wisdom and of rare sagacity in interpreting the will of the gods, and of them I shall speak later; and yet others were added by Tullus Hostilius, the second king after Romulus, and by all the kings who followed him. But the seeds of them were sown and the foundations laid by Romulus, who established the principal rites of their religion.
[24.1] Romulus also seems to have been the author of that good discipline in other matters by the observance of which the Romans have kept their commonwealth flourishing for many generations; for he established many good and useful laws, the greater part of them unwritten, but some committed to writing. There is no need for me to mention most of them, but I will give a short account of those which I have admired most of all and which I have regarded as suitable to illustrate the character of the rest of this man’s legislation, showing how austere it was, how averse to vice, and how closely it resembled the life of the heroic age. [2] However, I will first observe that all who have established constitutions, barbarian as well as Greek, seem to me to have recognized correctly the general principle that every State, since it consists of many families, is most likely to enjoy tranquillity when the lives of the individual citizens are untroubled, and to have a very tempestuous time when the private affairs of the citizens are in a bad way, and that every prudent statesman, whether he be a lawgiver or a king, ought to introduce such laws as will make the citizens just and temperate in their lives. [3] Yet by what practices and by what laws this result may be accomplished they do not all seem to me to have understood equally well, but some of them seem to have gone widely and almost completely astray in the principal and fundamental parts of their legislation. [4] For example, in the matter of marriage and commerce with women, from which the lawgiver ought to begin (even as Nature has begun thence to form our lives), some, taking their example from the beasts, have allowed men to have intercourse with women freely and promiscuously, thinking thus to free their lives from the frenzies of love, of save them from murderous jealousy, and to deliver them from many other evils which come upon both private houses and whole States through women. [5] Others have banished this wanton and bestial intercourse from their States by joining a man to one woman; and yet for the preservation of the marriage ties and the chastity of women they have never attempted to make even the slightest regulation whatsoever, but have given up the idea as something impracticable. [6] Others have neither permitted sexual intercourse without marriage, like some barbarians, nor neglected the guarding of their women, like the Lacedaemonians, but have established many laws to keep them within bounds. And some have even appointed a magistrate to look after the good conduct of women; this provision, however, for their guarding was found insufficient and too weak to accomplish its purpose, being incapable of bringing the woman of unvirtuous nature to the necessity of a modest behaviour.
[25.1] But Romulus, without giving either to the husband an action against his wife for adultery or for leaving his home without cause, or to the wife an action against her husband on the ground of ill-usage or for leaving her without reason, and without making any laws for the returning or recovery of the dowry, or regulating anything of this nature, by a single law which effectually provides for all these things, as the results themselves have shown, led the women to behave themselves with modesty and great decorum. [2] The law was to this effect, that a woman joined to her husband by a holy marriage should share in all his possessions and sacred rites. The ancient Romans designated holy and lawful marriages by the term “farreate,” from the sharing of far, which we call zea; for this was the ancient and, for a long time, the ordinary food of all the Romans, and their country produces an abundance of excellent spelt. And as we Greeks regard barley as the most ancient grain, and for that reason begin our sacrifices with barley-corns which we call oulai, so the Romans, in the belief that spelt is both the most valuable and the most ancient of grains, in all burnt offerings begin the sacrifice with that. For this custom still remains, not having deteriorated into first-offerings of greater expense. [3] The participation of the wives with their husbands in this holiest and first food and their union with them founded on the sharing of all their fortunes took its name from this sharing of the spelt and forged the compelling bond of an indissoluble union, and there was nothing that could annul these marriages. [4] This law obliged both the married women, as having no other refuge, to conform themselves entirely to the temper of their husbands, and the husbands to rule their wives as necessary and inseparable possessions. [5] Accordingly, if a wife was virtuous and in all things obedient to her husband, she was mistress of the house to the same degree as her husband was master of it, and after the death of her husband she was heir to his property in the same manner as a daughter was to that of her father; that is, if he died without children and intestate, she was mistress of all that he left, and if he had children, she shared equally with them. But if she did any wrong, the injured party was her judge and determined the degree of her punishment. [6] Other offences, however, were judged by her relations together with her husband; among them was adultery, or where it was found she had drunk wine — a thing which the Greeks would look upon as the least of all faults. For Romulus permitted them to punish both these acts with death, as being the gravest offences women could be guilty of, since he looked upon adultery as the source of reckless folly, and drunkenness as the source of adultery. [7] And both these offences continued for a long time to be punished by the Romans with merciless severity. The wisdom of this law concerning wives is attested by the length of time it was in force; for it is agreed that during the space of five hundred and twenty years no marriage was ever dissolved at Rome. But it is said that in the one hundred and thirty-seventh Olympiad, in the consulship of Marcus Pomponius and Gaius Papirius, Spurius Carvilius, a man of distinction, was the first to divorce his wife, and that he was obliged by the censors to swear that he had married for the purpose of having children (his wife, it seems, was barren); yet because of his action, though it was based on necessity, he was ever afterwards hated by the people.
[26] These, then, are the excellent laws which Romulus enacted concerning women, by which he rendered them more observant of propriety in relation to their husbands. But those he established with respect to reverence and dutifulness of children toward their parents, to the end that they should honour and obey them in all things, both in their words and actions, were still more august and of greater dignity and vastly superior to our laws. [2] For those who established the Greek constitutions set a very short time for sons to be under the rule of their fathers, some till the expiration of the third year after they reached manhood, others as long as they continued unmarried, and some till their names were entered in the public registers, as I have learned from the laws of Solon, Pittacus and Charondas, men celebrated for their great wisdom. [3] The punishments, also, which they ordered for disobedience in children toward their parents were not grievous: for they permitted fathers to turn their sons out of doors and to disinherit them, but nothing further. But mild punishments are not sufficient to restrain the folly of youth and its stubborn ways or to give self-control to those who have been heedless of all that is honourable; and accordingly among the Greeks many unseemly deeds are committed by children against their parents. [4] But the lawgiver of the Romans gave virtually full power to the father over his son, even during his whole life, whether he thought proper to imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains and keep him at work in the fields, or to put him to death, and this even though the son were already
engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among the highest magistrates, and though he were celebrated for his zeal for the commonwealth. [5] Indeed, in virtue of this law men of distinction, while delivering speeches from the rostra hostile to the senate and pleasing to the people, have been dragged down from thence and carried away by their fathers to undergo such punishment as these thought fit; and while they were being led away through the Forum, none present, neither consul, tribune, nor the very populace, which was flattered by them and thought all power inferior to its own, could rescue them. [6] I forbear to mention how many brave men, urged by their valour and zeal to proof some noble deed that their fathers had not ordered, have been put to death by those very fathers, as is related of Manlius Torquatus and many others. But concerning them I shall speak in the proper place.
Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79) Page 14