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sions of life. They must be repeated three times, at least, to insure success. Different animals were sacrificed to different gods, white cattle with gilded horns to Jupiter, a bull to Apollo, a horse to Mars. Sometimes the number of victims was enormous. On Caligula's accession, one hundred and sixty thousand victims were killed in the Roman Empire.

Lustrations were great acts of atonement or purification, and are often described by ancient writers. The city was lustrated by a grand procession of the four colleges of Augurs, Pontifices, Quindecemviri, and Septemviri. Lucan, in his Pharsalia, describes such a lustration.* Tacitus gives a like description, in his History, of the ceremonies attending the rebuilding the Capitol. On an auspicious day, beneath a serene sky, the ground chosen for the foundation was surrounded with ribbons and flowers. Soldiers, selected for their auspicious names, brought into the enclosure branches. from the trees sacred to the gods. The Vestal virgins, followed by a band of children, sprinkled the place with water drawn from three fountains and three rivers. prætor and the pontiff next sacrificed a swine, a sheep, and a bull, and besought Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva to favor the undertaking. The magistrates, priests, senators, and knights then drew the corner-stone to its place, throwing in ingots of gold and silver.

The

The Romans, ever anxious about the will of the gods, naturalized among themselves the Etruscan institution of the Haruspices. The prodigies observed were in the entrails of animals and the phenomena of nature. The parts of the entrails observed were the tongue, lungs, heart, liver, gall bladder, spleen, kidneys, and caul. If the head of the right lobe of the liver was absent, it was considered a very bad omen. If certain fissures existed, or were absent, it was a portent of the first importance. But the Romans were a very practical people, and not easily deterred from their purpose. So if one sacrifice failed they would try another and another, until the portents were favorable. But sceptical persons were naturally led to ask

Book I. 592.

+ IV. 593.

some puzzling questions, such as these, which Cicero puts in his work on Divination : How can a cleft in a liver be connected, by any natural law, with my acquisition of a property? If it is so connected, what would be the result, if some one else, who was about to lose his property, had examined the same victim? If you answer that the divine energy, which extends through the universe, directs each man in the choice of a victim, then how happens it that a man having first had an unfavorable omen, by trying again should get a good one? How happens it that a sacrifice to one deity gives a favorable sign, and that to another the opposite ? But these criticisms only arrived after the old Roman faith had begun to decline.

Funeral solemnities were held with great care and pomp, and festivals for the dead were regularly celebrated. The dead father or mother was accounted a god, and yet a certain terror of ancestral spectres was shown by a practice of driving them out of the house by lustrations. For it was uncertain whether the paternal Manes were good spirits, Lares, or evil spirits, and Lemures. Consequently in May there was the Lemuria, or feast for exorcising the evil spirits from houses and homes, conducted with great solemnity.

§ 4. The Decay of the Roman Religion.

"The more distinguished a Roman became," says Mommsen, "the less was he a free man. The omnipotence of law, the despotism of the rule, drove him into a narrow circle of thought and action, and his credit and influence depended on the sad austerity of his life. The whole duty of man, with the humblest and greatest of the Romans, was to keep his house in order, and be the obedient servant of the state." While each individual could be nothing more than a member of the community, a single link in the iron chain of Roman power; he, on the other hand, shared the glory and might of all-conquering Rome. Never was such esprit de corps developed, never such intense patriotism, never such absolute sub

* De Divinatione, II. 12, etc.

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servience and sacrifice of the individual to the community. But as man is manifold and cannot be forever confined to a single form of life, a reaction against this narrow patriotism was to be expected in the interest of personal freedom, and it came very naturally from Greek influences. The Roman could not contemplate the exuberant development of Greek thought, art, literature, society, without bitterly feeling how confined was his own range, how meagre and empty his own life. Hence, very early, Roman society began to be Hellenized, but especially after the unification of Italy. To quote Mommsen once more: "The Greek civilization was grandly human and cosmopolitan; and Rome not only was stimulated by this influence, but was penetrated by it to its very centre." Even in politics there was a new school, whose fixed idea was the consolidation and propagandism of republicanism; but this Philhellenism showed itself especially in the realm of thought and faith. As the old faith died, more ceremonies were added; for as life goes out, forms come in. As the winter of unbelief lowers the stream of piety, the ice of ritualism accumulates along its banks. In addition to the three colleges of Pontiffs, Haruspices, and Quindecemviri, another of Epulones, whose business was to attend to the religious feasts, was instituted in A. U. 558 (B. c. 196). Contributions and tithes of all sorts were demanded from the people. Hercules, especially, as is more than once intimated in the plays of Plautus, became very rich by his tithes.* Religion became more and more a charm, on the exact performance of which the favor of the gods depended; so that ceremonies were sometimes performed thirty times before the essential accuracy was attained.

The gods were now changed, in the hands of Greek statuaries, into ornaments for a rich man's home. Greek

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* A Greek epigram, recently translated, alludes to the same fact :—
'Honey and milk are sacrifice to thee,
Kind Hermes, inexpensive deity.

But Hercules demands a lamb each day,
For keeping, so he says, the wolves away.
Imports it much, meek browsers of the sod,
Whether a wolf devour you, or a god?"

myths were imported and connected with the story of Roman deities, as Ennius made Saturn the son of Coelus, in imitation of the genealogy of Kronos. That form of rationalism called Euhemerism, which explains every god into a mythical king or hero, became popular. So, too, was the doctrine of Epicharmos, who considered the divinities as powers of nature symbolized. According to the usual course of events, superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. As the old faith died out, new forms of worship, like those of Cybele and Bacchus, came in. Stern conservatives like Cato opposed all these innovations and scepticisms, but ineffectually.

Gibbon says that "the admirable work of Cicero, 'De Naturâ Deorum,' is the best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss" (the moral and religious teachings of the philosophers). After, in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence. "I believe in the gods," says he, "on the authority and tradition of our ancestors; but if we reason, I shall reason against their existence." "Of course," he says, "I believe in divination, as I have always been taught to do. But who knows whence it comes? As to the voice of the Fauns, I never heard it; and I do not know what a Faun is. You say that the regular course of nature proves the existence of some ordering power. But what more regular than a tertian or quartan fever? The world subsists by the power of nature." Cotta goes on to criticise the Roman pantheon, ridiculing the idea of such gods as "Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy," etc. He shows that there are many gods of * Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. II.

the same name; several Jupiters, Vulcans, Apollos, and Venuses. He then denies providence, by showing that the wicked succeed and the good are unfortunate. Finally, all was left in doubt, and the dialogue ends with a tone of triumphant uncertainty. This was Cicero's contribution to theology; and Cicero was far more religious than most men of his period.

Many writers, and more recently Merivale,* have referred to the remarkable debate which took place in the Roman Senate, on the occasion of Catiline's conspiracy. Cæsar, at that time chief pontiff, the highest religious authority in the state, gave his opinion against putting the conspirators to death; for death, says he, " is the end of all suffering. After death there is neither pain nor pleasure (ultra neque curæ, neque gaudii locum)." Cato, the Stoic, remarked that Cæsar had spoken well concerning life and death. "I take it," says he, " that he regards as false what we are told about the sufferings of the wicked hereafter," but does not object to that statement. These speeches are reported by Sallust, and are confirmed by Cicero's fourth Catiline Oration. The remarkable fact is, not that such things were said, but that they were heard with total indifference. No one seemed to think it was of any consequence one way or the other. Suppose that when the question of the execution of Charles I. was before Parliament, it had been opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (had he been there) on the ground that after death all pain and pleasure ceased. The absurdity of the supposition shows the different position of the human mind at the two epochs.

In fact, an impassable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought. It was out of the question for an educated Roman, who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe in Janus and the Penates. All very well for the people," said they. "The people must be kept in order by these superstitions." But the secret could not be kept. Sincere men, like Lucretius, who saw all the evil

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* Conversion of the Roman Empire, Note A.

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+ Expedit civitates falli in religione," said Varro.

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