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Various - "Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870"

R.W. Seton Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern, - "The War and Democracy"

Percy Keese Fitzhugh - "Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp"

Honore de Balzac - "Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct
conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them
in its terminology, and to classify them systematically--in the
first instance, according to that division of persons and things
which also formed the basis of private law--that it might thus be
able in due fashion to invoke the gods individually or by classes,
and to point out (-indigitare-) to the multitude the modes of
appropriate invocation. Of such notions, the products of outward
abstraction--of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable,
sometimes ridiculous--Roman theology was in substance made up.
Conceptions such as sowing (-saeturnus-) and field-labour (-ops-)
ground (-tellus-) and boundary-stone (-terminus-), were among
the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities. Perhaps the most
peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only
one for whose worship there was devised an effigy peculiarly Italian,
was the double-headed lanus; and yet it was simply suggestive of the
idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion,
that at the commencement of every act the "spirit of opening" should
first be invoked, while it above all betokened the deep conviction
that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as
it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should
stand singly and apart.(4) Of all the worships of Rome that which
perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits
that presided in and over the household and the storechamber: these
were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship
the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods
of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom
their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before
whom it was, even in the time of Cato the Elder, the first duty
of the father of the household on returning home to perform his
devotions. In the ranking of the gods, however, these spirits
of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the
highest place; it was--and it could not be otherwise with a religion
which renounced all attempts to idealize--not the broadest and
most general, but the simplest and most individual abstraction, in
which the pious heart found most nourishment.

This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was
accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly
enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already
explained. Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry
and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce--this
was what the Roman desired from his gods; and it very well accords
with this view, that the god of good faith (-deus fidius-), the
goddess of chance and good luck (-fors fortuna-), and the god of
traffic (-mercurius-), all originating out of their daily dealings,
although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear
very early as adored far and near by the Romans. Strict frugality
and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too
deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart.


Spirits


Respecting the world of spirits little can be said. The departed
souls of mortal men, the "good" (-manes-) continued to exist as
shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (-dii inferi-), and
received meat and drink from the survivors. But they dwelt in the
depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower
world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above.
The hero-worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans,
and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the
foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation
of king Romulus into the god Quirinus. Numa, the oldest and most
venerable name in Roman tradition, never received the honours of
a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens.


Priests


The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore reference to
Mars; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated
for life, "the kindler of Mars" (-flamen Martialis-) as he was
designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve "leapers"
(-salii-), a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance
in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song. We have already
explained(5) how the amalgamation of the Hill-community with that
of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication of the Roman Mars,
and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars--the
-flamen Quirinalis- --and a second guild of dancers--the -salii
collini-.

To these were added other public worships (some of which probably
had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either
single priests were appointed--as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus,
of the god of the harbour and the river--or the celebration of
which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the
people. Such a college was probably that of the twelve "field-brethren"
(-fratres arvales-) who invoked the "creative goddess" (-dea dia-) in
May to bless the growth of the seed; although it is very doubtful
whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration
which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the
empire. These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which
had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive -cultus- of the
Roman Sabines,(6) and by the thirty "curial kindlers" (-flamines
curiales-), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies. The
"wolf festival" (-lupercalia-) already mentioned was celebrated for
the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the "favourable
god" (-faunus-) by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were
associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in
the month of February--a genuine shepherds' carnival, in which the
"Wolves" (-luperci-) jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin,
and whipped with thongs those whom they met. In like manner the
community may be conceived as represented and participating in the
case of other gentile worships.

To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were
gradually added. The most important of these worships had reference
to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the
construction of the great wall and stronghold. In it the highest
and best lovis of the Capitol--that is, the genius of the Roman
people--was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and
his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed
in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad
of high-priests. Contemporaneously began the -cultus- of the new
single city-hearth--Vesta--and the kindred -cultus- of the Penates
of the community.(7) Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of
the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service,
and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always
blazing as an example(8) and an omen to the burgesses. This
worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in
Rome, and it accordingly was the latest of all the heathen worships
there to give way before the ban of Christianity. The Aventine,
moreover, was assigned to Diana as the representative of the Latin
confederacy,(9) but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood
was appointed for her; and the community gradually became accustomed
to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions
by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods
specially destined for their service; in particular instances--such
as those of the goddess of flowers (-Flora-) and of fruits (-Pomona-)--it
appointed also special -flamines-, so that the number of these was
at length fifteen. But among them they carefully distinguished
those three "great kindlers" (-flamines maiores-), who down to the
latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses,
just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal -Salii-
always asserted precedence over all the other colleges of priests.
Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the
community were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges
or regular ministers; and the expense of sacrifices, which was
presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation
of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines.(10)

It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin,
and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially
similar in character. At any rate it can be shown that the Flamines,
Salii, Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome,
but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges
appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently
of the Roman model.

Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods,
so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual
sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also
consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities.


Colleges of Sacred Lore


There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome. Those,
however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not
to the priest. Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself
directly to the divinity--the community of course by the king as its
mouthpiece, just as the -curia- by the -curio- and the -equites-by
their colonels; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal
or to obscure this original and simple relation. But it was no
easy matter to hold converse with a god. The god had his own way
of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted
with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how
to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even
in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural,
therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult
such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose
the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious
lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far
more important influence on political development than the individual
priests and priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but
erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods
were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled
colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of
traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances,
the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge
and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should
provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge. These
close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from
the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of
skilled arts and sciences.


Augurs--Pontifices


Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in
general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the
augurs and that of the Pontifices.(11)

The six "bird-carriers" (-augures-) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was
prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific
system. The six "bridge-builders" (-Pontifices-) derived their
name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important,
of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the
Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery
of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the
duty of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the
people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and
of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place
on the right day. As they had thus an especial supervision of all
religious observances, it was to them in case of need--on occasion
of marriage, testament, and -adrogatio- --that the preliminary
question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in
any respect offend against divine law; and it was they who fixed
and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which
were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired
(although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition
of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of
whatever was connected with it--and what was there that was not so
connected? They themselves described the sum of their knowledge
as "the science of things divine and human." In fact the rudiments
of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical
recording proceeded from this college. For all writing of history
was associated with the calendar and the book of annals; and, as
from the organization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could
originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the
knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally
preserved in the college of the Pontifices, which alone was competent
to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious
law.


Fetiales


By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corporations of men
versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college
of the twenty state-heralds (-fetiales-, of uncertain derivation),
destined as a living repository to preserve traditionally the
remembrance of the treaties concluded with neighbouring communities,
to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of
treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or
declare war. They had precisely the same position with reference
to international, as the Pontifices had with reference to religious,
law; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out
the law, although not to administer it.

But in however high repute these colleges were, and important and
comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never
forgotten--least of all in the case of those which held the highest
position--that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled
advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to
explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer. Thus the highest
of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but
might not even give advice to him unasked. It was the province of
the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation
of birds; the "bird-seer" simply stood beside him and interpreted
to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven.
In like manner the Fetialis and the Pontifex could not interfere in
matters of international or common law except when those concerned
therewith desired it. The Romans, notwithstanding all their zeal
for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle
that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state
and--excluded from all command-- ought like any other burgess to
render obedience to the humblest magistrate.


Character of the -Cultus-


The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man's enjoyment of
earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate degree on his fear
of the wild forces of nature; it consisted pre-eminently therefore
in expressions of joy, in lays and songs, in games and dances, and
above all in banquets. In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural
tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter
of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a
pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it
was the usual roast for a feast. But all extravagance of expense
as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid
character of the Romans. Frugality in relation to the gods was
one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship;
and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity
by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained. In
consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which
grow out of unrestrained indulgence. At the very core of the Latin
religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to
bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the
world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the
gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal
condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to
the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief
who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to
Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and
the good spirits on the field of battle. The profound and fearful
idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the
community were angry and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely
guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself
up (-devovere se-); noxious chasms in the ground were closed,
and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave
burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or
upon the foe. The "sacred spring" was based on a similar view;
all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified
period were presented to the gods. If acts of this nature are to
be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the
essence of the Latin faith; but we are bound to add that, far back
as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life
was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted
before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose
to die. Human sacrifices of a different description run counter
to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they
occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later
degeneracy and barbarism. They never gained admission among the
Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair
induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary
deliverance through means so revolting. Of belief in ghosts, fear
of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, comparatively slight
traces are to be found among the Romans. Oracles and prophecy never
acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece,
and never were able to exercise a serious control over private or
public life. But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into
an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled
into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the
Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument
for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims;
this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his
tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly
apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy.
The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor;
each of them had a duly acquired right to certain performances and
payments; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number
of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance
of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident,
it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of
a man's religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled
in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements--the
-Pontifices- --could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence.
The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with
the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly
obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had
done so on his part. Man even dealt in speculation with his god;
a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god
and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain
service to be rendered a certain equivalent return; and the Roman
legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was
not the least important of the reasons on account of which all
priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns
of man in Latium. Nay, as the Roman merchant was entitled, without
injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely
in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the teaching
of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received
instead of the object itself. They presented to the lord of the sky
heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at
these rather than at the heads of men. In payment of the offering
annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes
were annually thrown into the stream.(12) The ideas of divine mercy
and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with
a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable
a master by means of a sham satisfaction. The Roman fear of the
gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the
multitude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence
of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the
foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively;
on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely
different in any material respect from the trembling with which the
Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful
creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to
stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the
Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human
flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became
the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that
universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics
of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all
religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such means the
simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a
cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle
of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion
was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical
views--the whole ideal development of the nation--and to expand
in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until
imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had
nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of
deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity
for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion
always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art As the
god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualizattion
of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterpart naturally
formed his place of abode (-templum-) and his image; walls and
effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to
embarrass the spiritual conception. Accordingly the original Roman
worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them;
and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium,
probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and
had a little chapel (-aedicula-) built for him, such a figurative
representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was
generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation. The Roman
religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the
exception, perhaps, of the double-headed Ianus; and Varro even
in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and
effigies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion
was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always
marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.

The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain
of its practical use. The practical gain which accrued to the Roman
community from their religion was a code of moral law gradually
developed by the priests, and the -Pontifices- in particular,
which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations
at a time when the state was still far from providing any direct
police-guardianship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought
to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach
of moral obligations. To the regulations of the former class
belonged the religious inculcation of a due observance of holidays
and of a cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the
rules of good husbandry--which we shall have occasion to notice
more fully in the sequel--as well as the worship of the heath or
of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary
police,(13) and above all the practice of burning the bodies of
the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period,
far earlier than among the Greeks--a practice implying a rational
conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive
times and is even foreign to ourselves at the present day. It must
be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the
Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements. But
the civilizing effect of this law was still more important. If
a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a
child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in-law;
if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest
or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or
the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common
good faith; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth
on the head of the offender. Not that the person thus accursed
(-sacer-) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its
nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence--an
aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels
between the orders. It was not the province of the individual
burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into
effect such a divine curse. Primarily the person thus accursed
became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice;
and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must
have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked. But the
banning was not confined to this; the king was in reality entitled
and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on
which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious
conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were,
as a victim offered up to the injured deity (-supplicium-), and thus
to purify the community from the crime of the individual. If the
crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there
was substituted a ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial
victim or of similar gifts. Thus the whole criminal law rested as
to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation.