The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics)

by Cicero

  MARCUS: Wish to imitate, perhaps. For no one is, or ever will be, able to imitate that. It is very easy to render the ideas; I would do that if I were not determined to be myself. But what challenge is there in presenting the same thoughts in an almost literal translation?

  QUINTUS: I do agree. I would rather you remained yourself, as you’ve just said. But now, if you will, please set out those laws about religion.

  18–22. Religious laws

  MARCUS: I’ll do the best I can; and although our discussion and its setting are private,* I shall present the laws in the voice of the laws.

  18

  QUINTUS: And what, may I ask, is that?

  MARCUS: There are certain legal phrases, Quintus, which, though not as old as those in the ancient Twelve Tables and Sacred Laws,* are yet somewhat older than the style of our present conversation so as to carry greater authority. I shall follow that manner, with its brevity, as best I can. The laws which I shall protnulgate will not be complete in detail (that would be an endless task), but will present the gist and sense of the provisions.

  QUINTUS: I’m sure that’s the only way to proceed. Let’s hear them, then.

  19

  MARCUS: They shall approach the gods in purity; they shall adopt a spirit of holiness; they shall set aside wealth. God himself will punish whoever does otherwise.

  No one shall have gods of his own, whether new or foreign, unless they have been officially brought in. In private they shall worship those gods whose worship has been handed down in its proper form by their forefathers.

  In the cities they shall have shrines; in the countryside they shall have groves and abodes for their tutelary gods.

  They shall preserve the rituals of their family and fathers.

  They shall worship as gods those who have always been considered divine and those whose services have secured them a place in heaven—Hercules, Liber,* Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirinus—and also those qualities on whose account human beings are allowed to ascend to heaven—Good Sense, Moral Excellence, Devotion, Good Faith. In their honour there shall be shrines, but none in honour of vices.

  They shall observe the established rites.

  On holidays they shall abstain from lawsuits, and they shall hold these holidays in the company of* their slaves when their tasks have been finished; and so that it may occur thus let it be arranged at recurrent intervals throughout the year. The priests shall offer in public certain crops and certain fruits—this according to fixed rites and on fixed days. Likewise they shall keep for other days an abundance of milk and young; and to ensure that this be not transgressed the priests shall lay down the procedure and the annual sequence for that sacrifice; and they shall decide which victims are appropriate and welcome to each divinity.

  20

  Different divinities shall have different priests; all together shall have pontiffs; individually they shall have flamines* And in the city the Vestal Virgins shall watch over the undying fire on the public hearth.

  Those who are unfamiliar with the methods and rituals for conducting these private and public ceremonies shall seek guidance from the public priests. Of these there shall be three kinds: one to preside over ceremonies and sacred rites, and another to interpret the strange utterances of prophets and seers which the Senate and people have accepted. In addition, the interpreters of Jupiter the Best and Greatest, that is, the public augurs, shall divine the future by means of signs and omens and maintain their art. And the priests shall pay attention to vineyards and patches of withies* and the safety of the people.* They shall give prior warning about omens to those who are engaged in the business of war or state, and those groups shall take heed of them. They shall foresee the anger of the gods and react appropriately. They shall take measures to neutralise flashes of lightning in fixed quarters of the sky,* and they shall keep the city and the countryside and their ancestral fields of observation mapped out and free of obstruction. And whatever an augur shall pronounce unjust, unholy, harmful, or ill-omened shall be null and void. And if anyone fails to obey, that shall be a capital offence.

  21

  The fetial priests* shall act as judges in the name of the people* concerning the ratification of treaties, peace, war, and truces; and they shall decide about questions of war.

  Prodigies and portents shall, if the senate so decrees, be referred to Etruscan soothsayers,* and Etruria shall instruct her leading men in that art. They shall sacrifice in expiation to whatever gods they think fit, and they shall also make atonement in response to flashes of lightning and to the striking of certain places.

  No nocturnal sacrifices shall be conducted by women except those which shall take place in due form on behalf of the people;* and they shall initiate no one into any mysteries, except those of Ceres* through the Greek rite, as custom allows.

  An act of sacrilege* which cannot be expiated shall be deemed to have been impiously committed; that which can be expiated* shall be expiated by the official priests.

  22

  At public games, where there is no chariot-racing and no athletic competitions, they shall make provision* for the people’s joy by singing, accompanied by strings and pipes, and they shall associate that pleasure with the honour of the gods.

  Of ancestral rites they shall observe the best.*

  Except for the slaves of the Idaean Mother* (and in their case only on specially appointed days) no one shall take up collections.

  Anyone who steals or makes away with a sacred object or an object lodged in a sacred place shall be deemed a parricide.*

  The divine punishment of perjury* is death, the human punishment disgrace.

  The priests shall inflict the ultimate penalty on a person found guilty of incest.*

  Let not an impious man dare to placate the gods’ anger with gifts.

  Let them be scrupulous in fulfilling their vows; there shall be a penalty for breaking a promise.

  No one shall consecrate a field.* Let there be moderation* in dedicating gold, silver, and ivory.

  Private religious observances* shall be continued in perpetuity.

  The rights of the spirits of the dead shall be holy. Good men who have died shall be held to be gods. The money spent on them, and the mourning* over them, shall be kept small.

  23–69. Comments on the foregoing laws

  QUINTUS: How little time it has taken you, Marcus, to cover this large body of law! But as far as I can see, this set of religious regulations is not very different from the laws of Numa and the customs of our country.

  23

  MARCUS: Well, Africanus apparently established in the books on the Republic that of all forms of government our old Roman one was the best. So don’t you think we are bound to provide laws which are in keeping with the best constitution?

  QUINTUS: Why yes; I think we are.

  MARCUS: In that case you should expect laws which will maintain that superior type of government. And if I happen to propose some measures today which do not exist in our state and never have, they will nevertheless figure as a rule in our ancestors’ tradition, which at that time had the force of law.

  ATTICUS: Well then, would you please argue in support of your body of law, so that I may be able to say ‘as you propose’.*

  MARCUS: Really, Atticus? Are you not going to speak against it?

  ATTICUS: I shall certainly not vote against you on any major issue.

  MARCUS: On smaller matters,* if you wish, I shall let you off* agreeing with me!

  QUINTUS: Yes, I take the same view as Atticus.

  MARCUS: Mind now, this may take some time!

  ATTICUS: I hope it will. There’s nothing we’d rather be doing.

  MARCUS: The law bids us approach the gods ‘in purity’, that is, with a pure heart. That embraces everything. It does not dispense with the need for bodily purity, but one has to understand that since the heart is far superior to the body, and since care is generally taken to make the body clean when it approaches the gods, purity must be
much more scrupulously observed in the case of the heart. The body’s impurity is removed with a sprinkling of water or by the lapse of time, whereas impurity of heart cannot fade with time, nor can it be washed away by any river.

  As for ‘adopting a spirit of holiness’ and ‘setting aside wealth’, that means that goodness of character is pleasing to God, and that extravagance should be given no place. After all, we would like poverty to be on an equal footing with wealth even among men; so why should we make it impossible for poverty to approach the gods by making extravagance a feature of our ceremonies, especially as nothing is likely to be less pleasing to God himself than that the path to appeasing and worshipping him should not be open to all. Moreover, the fact that god himself, not some judge, is appointed to inflict punishment clearly reinforces religion by the fear of retribution.

  25

  That an individual’s ‘own gods, whether new or foreign’* should be worshipped causes confusion among religions and introduces rites which are unfamiliar to our priests. It is resolved that ‘those gods whose worship has been handed down by their fathers’ should be worshipped, provided that their fathers themselves have obeyed this command.

  26

  I hold that there should be ‘shrines in the cities’. I do not follow the Persian priests* on whose advice Xerxes is said to have burnt the temples of Greece on the grounds that they enclosed within their walls gods for whom every place should be open and free, and whose temple and home consisted of the entire world. The Greeks and our ancestors had a sounder idea. To promote piety towards the gods, they wished them to inhabit the same cities as we do. This belief fosters a religion which is advantageous to states, if that most learned man, Pythagoras, was right when he said* that piety and religion are uppermost in our minds when we are attending to divine observances. Thales, too, who was the wisest of the Seven Sages, said* that people should believe that everything they saw was full of gods; then everyone would be more pure in heart, just as people are when they are in the most sacred temples. For we have, according to common opinion,* a visual as well as a mental conception of the gods. That is also the point of having ‘groves in the countryside’.*

  Again, the worship of the Lares* handed down by our forefathers, established for master and slave alike within sight of the farm and villa, is not abandoned. ‘To preserve the rituals of their family and fathers’: that is, to retain the religion handed down, as it were, by the gods, since the further back one goes in time the nearer one gets to the gods.

  27

  That the law enjoins the worship of deified human beings like Hercules and others indicates that, while the souls of all are immortal, those of the brave and good are divine.* It is right that ‘Good Sense,* Devotion,* Moral Excellence,* and Good Faith’* should be deified; and in Rome temples have long been publicly dedicated* to those qualities, so that those who possess them (and all good people do) should believe that actual gods have been set up within their souls. At Athens, after atoning for the crime against Cylon, on the advice of the Cretan Epimenides they built a shrine to Insult and Shamelessness.* That was a misguided act; for virtues, not vices, should be deified. The ancient altar to Fever* on the Palatine, and the other to Evil Fortune* on the Esquiline must be refused recognition, and all things of that kind are to be rejected. If we have to devise names, we should choose rather ones like Conquering Power and Protectress, and titles like Jove the Stopper* and the Invincible, and names of desirable things like Safety, Honour, Help, and Victory. Because the spirit is raised by the expectation of good things, Hope* was rightly deified by Calatinus. And let Today’s Fortune* be acknowledged as a deity, for it has influence over every day, or Fortune the Heedful,* that she may send help, or Chance Fortune* in cases where uncertain events are particularly indicated, or First-born Fortune* from giving birth.

  28

  Next, the system of holidays and festivals involves, in the case of free men, a respite from lawsuits and disputes; in the case of slaves, a rest from work and toil. The official who draws up the calendar must have regard to the completion of various agricultural tasks. As for the dates, careful account should be taken of intercalation* to ensure that the offerings of first fruits and young, as mentioned in the law, are maintained. That practice was wisely introduced by Numa, but has now lapsed owing to the negligence of later pontiffs. The rule laid down by the pontiffs and soothsayers should not be changed—I mean the rule governing which animals should be sacrificed to which god (which god should receive larger victims, which unweaned victims, which male, which female). The custom of having a number of priests for ‘all the gods together’ and separate priests for each facilitates the interpretation of the law and the discharge of religious duties. Since Vesta,* as she is called—a name derived from the Greek, which we retain almost in its Greek form without translating it— takes into her protective embrace, so to speak, the hearth of the city, six virgins should be in charge of her worship, so that a more efficient watch may be kept on the maintenance of the fire, and so that women may be aware that their sex is capable of practising strict chastity.

  29

  The next measure has to do not only with religion but also with the state of the country. It is to the effect that people cannot adequately attend to religion in the home without the guidance of the officials who are in charge of public ceremonies. The people’s continual need of the advice and authority of the aristocracy holds the state together.

  30

  The classification of priests* takes account of every legitimate kind of religion. Some are appointed to appease the gods by taking charge of regular religious rites; others to interpret the utterances of seers (though not of many, for that would be an endless business; also care must be taken that no one outside the priestly college should know the particular prophecies that have been officially recognized). The greatest and most prestigious power in the state is that of the augurs, combined, as it is, with political authority. I don’t say this because I’m an augur myself* but simply because one cannot think otherwise. If we consider their official rights, what is more impressive than the ability to dismiss assemblies and meetings called by magistrates (with or without imperium), or, when they have already taken place, to cancel their decisions? What is more momentous than the abortion of a process already begun, if one augur says ‘On another day’? What is more majestic than the right to decide that consuls should resign their office? What is more awesome than the power to grant or withhold the right to do political business with the people or plebs? Or than quashing laws illegally approved, as when the Titian Law* was annulled by the decree of the college, or when the Livian Laws* were cancelled on the recommendation of Philippus who was both consul and augur? Or than the fact that nothing done by any official at home or in the field can receive the approval of any body without their permission?

  31

  ATTICUS: Well now, I see and admit that such powers are con- 32 siderable. But in your college there is a serious disagreement* between Marcellus and Appius, both excellent augurs. (I know, because I came across their books.) One contends that auspices were invented to serve the practical purposes of the state; the other believes that your art can, as it were, predict the future. Tell me, what do you think about that question?

  MARCUS: What do I think? Well, I think that divination, which the Greeks call mantike, exists, and that the particular area which has to do with birds and other signs comes within the scope of our art. For if we grant that the gods exist, that the world is ruled by their will, that they also care for the welfare of mankind, and are able to show us signs of future events, I don’t see why I should deny the existence of divination. The assumptions I have made are 33 true; so the conclusion that I want follows from them, and is, indeed, necessary. Furthermore, our country, like every kingdom, every community, and every nation, is full of numerous instances in which many an augur’s prediction has come true, despite all the odds. The names of Polyidus, Melampus, Mopsus, Amphiaraus, Calchas, and Helenus cou
ld never have become so famous, nor would so many nations have retained their reputation to the present day (e.g. the Phrygians, Lycaonians, Cilicians, and especially the Pisidians), had not antiquity shown that such things were true. Nor would our own Romulus have founded the city by means of augury, nor would the name of Attus Navius have survived so long and so vigorously in people’s memory, had not all these men uttered many predictions which were surprisingly confirmed by events.

  Yet there is no doubt that the art and skill have now vanished as the result of age and neglect. So I do not agree* with the man who denies that this skill ever existed in our college, nor with the one who thinks it is still alive today. Among our ancestors it had, I think, a dual function, i.e. it occasionally played a role in times of national crisis, but most often it influenced practical decisions.