Of the individual arts reference has been made elsewhere to architecture: to the development of temple and city architecture under the Etruscans at Rome, where the high Italic podium and round hut-like temples were not entirely superseded; to the Greek style used for the temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera; and to the victory of the Hellenistic over the Tuscan style in the second century when Greek basilicas and temples began to adorn the city. The appearance of early Roman statues, the ars statuaria vetustissima mentioned by Pliny, may be judged from the Etruscan Apollo of Veii, which despite its Ionian inspiration and technique retains an Italic accentuation of force and violent effort. Besides gods whom the Etruscans anthropomorphized in statuary, men and women were modelled. The great merit of Roman portraiture under the Empire was not achieved in a day; indeed the origin of the portrait bust and the portrait statue goes back to the ‘canopic’ urns from Chiusi which were roughly shaped into human busts. The Etruscan sarcophagi of the early period and of the third and second centuries and the peculiar ash-chests of Volterra afford numerous examples of vivid portraiture. There are many Italic portrait heads of terracotta, limestone and bronze, which are ‘examples of naturalism untouched as yet by Greek idealism or by the Roman insistence upon detail’ (E. Strong, CAH, IX, 812). The famous bronze head of Brutus, the first consul, illustrates the Roman love of realism. The production of such works was stimulated by the custom, practised by the noble houses of preserving wax imagines of their ancestors in the halls of their houses. These portrait galleries must have greatly influenced the development of Roman portraiture, which was marked by a pitiless realism, far remote from the idealistic strivings of the Greeks to portray a type. The carvings, no less than the figures, on Etruscan sarcophagi and ash-chests influenced Roman work in relief which attempted to grapple with the third dimension; where the Greeks had used a background as a mere screen, the Etrusco-Italic reliefs used it to emphasize the corporeity of the figures. The fondness for human everyday subjects and the beginnings of the fresco-like ‘continuous’ style go back to the pre-Roman period of Italic art. The achievement of native Roman art, freed from specifically Etruscan and Greek influences, is seen in an alabaster urn of the third or second century, now in the British Museum, depicting in relief an equestrian procession, perhaps the parade of Roman Knights which commemorated the battle of Lake Regillus.
How far the excellence of Etruscan metal work was imitated at Rome is uncertain, but we know that the Ficorini cista was made there, and its engravings, though Greek in subject and manner, contain Latin details. Many of the Praenestine mirrors and cistae depict scenes from Greek mythology, but others show homelier or comic episodes of Latin life: a girl and youth playing draughts or the kitchen scene of the cista Tyszkiewicz. Among the minor arts a series of engraved gems shows distinct Italic workmanship, differing from the Etruscan and Graeco-Roman gems.10 The subjects are often religious and reproduce votive pictures set up in shrines or temples as thank-offerings.
The numerous references to painting in Plautus show that in his day this art was popular in Rome. Pliny records seeing paintings in the Latin temple at Ardea which he declared to be older than Rome itself, while only its friable plaster prevented the emperor Claudius from removing a painting from a temple at Lanuvium. The appearance of these early paintings may be guessed from surviving Etruscan paintings which it is often difficult to distinguish from the different Italic groups. Our earliest Roman example is the military fresco from the Esquiline (? third century); in draughtsmanship and arrangement it displays Hellenic influence, but its details are Italic.11 It is akin to the work of the Osco-Samnite school of Campania, which is illustrated by the splendid Samnite Knight from Capua (c. 300), the gaily-caparisoned cavaliers with plumed helmets and cloaks returning home from war from Paestum, or the two gladiators, fighting to the last gasp, from Capua. Painting became increasingly popular when in the third century generals set up in temples mural pictures of themselves as triumphator or of their military exploits. Portable pictures of victories were carried in triumphal processions and were also used as political propaganda by electioneering candidates. The poet Pacuvius was famed as a painter, while Demetrius of Alexandria, who came to Rome in the second century, started a vogue in maps and geographical pictures, which may have encouraged the growth of a school of landscape painters; the demand for such work, however, probably did not become extensive until the first century. Further, the claims of religion were answered by votive pictures from the humble, as well as by the self-advertising magnificence of the nobility. Naevius caustically refers to a certain Theodotus who painted with an ox’s tail figures of dancing Lares on altars of the Compitalia; recent excavations at Delos have revealed examples of such rough but vigorous little sketches of the Lares. The poster advertisement for gladiatorial shows, which Horace’s slaves admired, may have been used before the end of our period (Horace, Sat., ii, 7, 96). But it is difficult to determine whether all these efforts represent the influence of a distinctive Italic national school of painting or, as is perhaps more likely, merely reflect contemporary Hellenistic art.
Roman art owed much to Greece, but it was not purely imitative. It was eclectic and adapted to its own genius what others might offer. Greek architects were primarily concerned with religious buildings, but the Romans devoted as much attention to secular. In two branches the Roman spirit was pre-eminent: in portraiture and later in historical monuments. Thus it is possible to trace, though dimly, the strivings of a practical, but not altogether unimaginative people to assimilate the glories of Greek art: that the waves of Hellenism did not entirely overwhelm the impulses of the native spirit testifies to a rugged independence that developed realistic tendencies which an idealistic Greek might have despised.
XVIII
ROMAN RELIGION1
1. THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
During the centuries that separated the early beginnings of the peoples of Italy from the days of their supremacy in the Mediterranean their religious experience was naturally varied. From an animistic stage in which many traces of magic and taboo survived they passed to anthropomorphism and polytheism, and the state relieved the individual of many of his responsibilities to the unseen powers of the universe. There was no prolonged period of national suffering, such as the Jewish Captivity, to break down the barriers of formalism which state ritual erected around real religious feeling, but gradually foreign ideas and rites overlaid the old Roman religion and men sought refuge from scepticism or an empty formalism in the more emotional and mystic beliefs of Greece and the Orient or in the nobler teaching of the later Greek philosophers.
Roman religion was so free from the baser forms of magic and taboo that it is probable that these were deliberately excluded by the state. Yet some traces of earlier beliefs survived in historical times. Totemism, which belongs to a tribal form of society in which family life is unknown, was naturally absent from a people whose life centred around the family. Like the Jews, the Roman authorities tried to eradicate magic as a social factor, but they could not prevent individuals from practising it except under those forms which were harmful to the community. For instance, a spell which aimed at transferring the fertility of the lands of a neighbour to a man’s own fields was expressly forbidden in the Twelve Tables, which also banned anyone who ‘chanted an evil charm’ (‘Qui fruges excantassit, qui malum carmen incantasset’, Pliny, N.H., xxviii, 17). But individuals still continued to inscribe spells (carmina) and curses (dirae) on tablets (tabellae defixionum) for the undoing of their enemies, and Cato could advocate a process of sympathetic magic accompanied by a charm to cure a dislocated limb. Another form of harmless private magic was the survival of the use of amulets, particularly the bulla worn by children to avert such danger as the evil eye, and the little swinging figures (oscilla) which were hung up at certain festivals to protect the crops. It is improbable that these figures were substitutes for an original human sacrifice, a rite from which the Romans were mainly free. Magical practices also ma
naged to survive here and there in public ceremonies, as, for instance, two forms of sympathetic magic designed originally to procure rain: at the aquaelicium a stone (lapis manalis) was carried in procession to form the centre of a ‘rain-making’ rite, and on the Ides of May straw puppets were thrown into the Tiber by the Vestal Virgins from the Pons Sublicius. A magical method of increasing fertility survived in the ceremonial whipping during the Lupercalia, well known from Shakespearean allusion; and ‘telepathic’ magic is seen in the reputed power of the Vestal Virgins to stop a runaway slave from leaving Rome by a spell. A belief also in taboo, that a mysterious power in certain objects made them dangerous or unclean, survived at Rome in some aspects, together with the corresponding need for purification or disinfection. Though few traces are found of a blood taboo, many things were considered unclean or holy: new-born children, corpses, strangers, iron, certain places such as shrines or spots struck by lightning, and certain days, particularly thirty-six in the year (dies religiosi). The unlucky priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) was subjected to numerous taboos: amongst others he might not touch a goat, horse, dog, raw meat, a corpse, beans, ivy, wheat, or leavened bread: his nails and hair must not be cut with an iron knife, and he must have no knot on his person. But such primitive beliefs in taboo or magic were scarce in historical Rome.
Religion has been defined as ‘the effective desire to be in right relations with the Power manifesting itself in the universe’. This Power seemed to the early Romans to manifest itself in the form of impersonal ‘spirits’ (numina), which had local habitations, as springs, rivers, groves or trees.2 Some dwelt in stones which, however, had probably been worshipped as sacred objects in days before an indwelling spirit was conceived: for instance, boundary stones, the lapis silex in the shrine of Jupiter Feretrius, and the lapis manalis already mentioned. The numina gradually assumed functional as well as local aspects, and then received names in an adjectival form to denote their functions. Later the spirit approached more nearly to a definite personality and the priests drew up ‘forms of invocation’ (indigitamenta) assigning minor spirits to all the sub-divided activities of human life from Cunina, the spirit of the cradle, to Libitina, that of burial.
Early religious practice was centred in the family, the economic unit of an agricultural people, and was associated with the house and fields, especially the boundaries. Every important part of the house had its own spirit. The spirit of fire, Vesta, dwelt in the hearth; each day during the chief meal part of a sacred salt cake was thrown into the fire from a small sacrificial dish. The store-cupboard (penus) had its guardian spirits, the Penates. The door was the seat of Janus, who when conceived in the image of man faced both ways. The door was particularly important, since evil spirits might enter the house through it: hence a dead man was carried out of the house by night feet first, so that he might not find his way back. The Genius of the head of the family was also worshipped: this conception was probably that of the procreative power of the family on which it depended for its continuance. The religion of the family was an attempt to maintain peace with these spirits; if the powers were duly propitiated there was nothing to fear from the divine members of the familia. Apart from ‘family prayers’ at the beginning of the day and the offering to Vesta, ritual centred around birth, marriage and death. At the birth of a child three men struck the threshold with an axe, pestle and broom, agricultural implements, to keep out the wilder spirits of whom the chief was later named Silvanus. Many ceremonies accompanied marriage; for instance, a bride from another family might offend the household spirits and be dangerous as a stranger; so at the critical moment of entry she smeared the door posts with wolf’s fat and oil and was carried over the threshold. It was necessary to perform certain rites exactly (iusta facere) to ensure that the dead did not ‘walk’. Although perhaps even in Palaeolithic times man was thought to survive death, and the Neolithic folk had fairly definite ideas of a future state, the dead had little or no individuality. The great throng of the dead were identified with the Di Manes, the Kindly Gods, who were perhaps originally chthonic deities. At the festival of the Lemuria in May the head of the household could get rid of ghosts by clashing brass vessels and by spitting out black beans from his mouth, saying nine times, ‘With these I redeem me and mine’; when the ghosts behind had gathered up the beans, he expelled them with the ninefold formula ‘Manes exite paterni’. In the later Parentalia the element of fear was diminished and graves were decorated by the living members of the family.
The religion of the family, though centred in the house, naturally extended to the fields. Boundary stones not only had to be set up with due ceremony, but were the object of an annual festival, the Terminalia, in which they were garlanded by the farmers whose lands adjoined. It was also necessary to beat the bounds in order to purify, protect and fertilize the fields. This was done at the Ambarvalia in May in a solemn procession which culminated in prayer and the sacrifice of a pig, sheep and bull (suovetaurilia). The spirits of the fields, Lares, were placated at the Compitalia at places where paths bounding farms met. This joyful ceremony was shared by the slaves, who had no part in the worship of the house; later they introduced the worship of the Lares into the house where it was adopted by the whole household.3 Other festivals were celebrated by the pagus as a whole at seed-time and harvest.
It was long before these vague, aniconic spirits were conceived in human form or as personal beings with human characteristics. This development was only finally achieved under foreign influence and through the establishment of state-cults of the various deities. But from the first some emerged above the rest. Apart from Janus and Vesta, Jupiter, the sky-god of the Indo-Europeans, transcended the limits of animism, as did Mars who was originally an agricultural deity as well as a war god and thus manifested two kinds of numen: indeed Mars was probably the chief deity of the primitive Romans. With them is linked Quirinus, perhaps the war god of the Quirinal settlement or the god who presided over the assembled citizens; later legend equated him with Romulus.4
2. THE RELIGION OF THE STATE
The religion of the family, though the expression of a group rather than of individuals, might have led to an advancement of man’s knowledge of the Divine, had not a development taken place which tended to deaden its reality. That feeling of awe and anxiety towards the unknown which the Romans called religio had led men to evolve certain rites by which they maintained the pax deorum, a peace or covenant with their divine neighbours. As the city grew, the state stepped in and undertook this responsibility on behalf of the community. Traditionally in the reign of Numa a calendar was drawn up to fix a routine of festivals and to divide the days of the year into those on which it was religiously permissible to transact civil business and those on which it was not (dies fasti et nefasti). It reflects the transition of a rural people to the political and military life of the city-state; but agricultural life is still its basis. But as the town dweller would gradually lose interest in the details of country festivals and as the calendar gradually got out of gear with the agricultural year, this fixed form of ritual, though saving the individual from anxiety, soon lost all religious meaning for the people of the city. Many survivals of magic, grossness and barbarism were doubtless excluded from the new state cult, which required permanent officials to perform its ceremonies and to take charge of the ius divinum. In the regal period the king was the state priest, the paterfamilias of the community; at the fall of the monarchy his ceremonial duties devolved chiefly upon the Pontifex Maximus and partly upon the Rex Sacrorum, who retained his title. Under the priest-king were the priesthoods. Of these the chief were the two great colleges of augurs and pontiffs. Whatever their origin, the pontiffs of the Republic took over the administration of the state cults and the legal aspect of religion, and their leader, the Pontifex Maximus, was installed in the king’s palace, the Regia. In addition there were individual priests, Flamines, attached to particular deities; the chief was the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter. And the
re were group-priests: the Fetiales, Luperci, Salii and the Vestal Virgins.
Some attempt was made to maintain the reality of the earlier practices which the state took over. For instance, the Compitalia or festival of the Lares was celebrated at cross-roads instead of where properties had adjoined. Other festivals were held outside the sacred boundary of the city, the pomerium, as the Terminalia at the sixth milestone of the Via Laurentina, and the beating of the bounds, Ambarvalia, at the fifth milestone on the Via Campana; this latter rite gave rise to a ceremony of Amburbium, by which the boundaries of the city were purified. But many of the old festivals lost all meaning for the town dwellers and became mere ritual for the priests. The domestic deities, however, were more easily adapted. Janus, the spirit of the house door, was worshipped at the doorway of the state at a gateway in the Forum, which was only closed in peacetime; he soon became the god of beginnings, and later gave his name to the first month of the year. Vesta became the hearth of the state on which the sacred fire must be kept alight; her round temple in the Forum reproduced the shape of the primitive huts of Latium, and near by dwelt her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins. Her worship illustrates the reality and continuity of Roman religious feeling; no statue was ever placed in her temple.
The object of Roman ritual was, as has been said, to maintain the pax deorum. The methods adopted were sacrifice, prayer, expiation, purification and vows. Sacrifice or the making of anything sacrum, the property of the deity, was designed partly to honour the deity and partly to expiate sin by means of offering and prayer; there appears little trace of sacramental sacrifice, whereby the worshipper enters into communion with the deity. The offering consisted of food, such as the salt meal given to Vesta. Blood offerings in early times appear confined to the ceremonies of lustration and piaculum, but in the state cult were used in sacrificium. The commonest victim was the pig, to which on important occasions the sheep and ox were added. It was essential that both the priest, who in the days before the state cult was the paterfamilias of the household, and the victim, should be acceptable. Minute details were laid down regarding the condition and behaviour of the victim; while it was being sacrificed pipers played lest any unlucky sound or word should mar the worship. The priests stood with veiled heads. After the slaughter, the victim’s internal organs were examined in case of any defect. The idea behind the sacrifice is shown by the common formula which occurs in the accompanying prayer: macte esto. The deity’s strength is to be increased (? cf. the root of magnus, magis), so that his glory and goodwill towards the worshippers may also be increased. This idea probably marks a stage between the earlier conception that the gods actually partook of the offering and the later view that the offering was merely an honorary gift. The prayers, as seen in the carmina of the Arval Brothers or those preserved by Cato, mark a transition between magic and religion; in their repetitions and in the emphasis on the exact wording, they retain the outward characteristics of spells which bind the deity. But the substance of the prayer is petition rather than compulsion or bargaining. The god may withhold the request, though, in fact, if he is invoked in the correct formulae, it would be thought unreasonable and contrary to his nature for him to do so. As an example the prayer of a Roman farmer in clearing a wood may be quoted: ‘Be thou god or goddess to whom the wood is sacred, as it is right to make expiation by the offering of a pig because of the clearing of this sacred wood, for this cause that all may be rightly done… I make pious prayer that thou wouldest be kind and gracious to me, my home, my household and my children; for which cause be thou enriched (macte esto) with the sacrifice of this pig for expiation’ (Cato, de agr. cult., 139). This prayer illustrates the expiatory type of sacrifice or piaculum which is atonement for an offence committed, and an act of compensation to the god, rather than a free-will offering like the ordinary sacrificium. Generally a blood offering was made. If any slip or omission occurred in the ritual of a sacrifice, it was necessary to renew the ceremony and to make a piaculum. Characteristically the practical Roman often insured against any slip by a prior piacular sacrifice which was to atone in anticipation. Thus when the Arval Brethren, who suffered from a taboo on iron, had to take an iron implement into their sacred grove, they offered a piaculum beforehand.
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