The History of Rome, Book I - Theodor Mommsen
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But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance
of civil order and morality by such means as these. In this field
Hellas had an unspeakable advantage over Latium; it owed to its
religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also
its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all;
the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the
Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all
that was great in Hellenic life and all in it that was the common
heritage of the nation. And yet even here Latium had, as compared
with Hellas, its own advantages. The Latin religion, reduced
as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely
intelligible to every one and accessible in common to all; and
therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens,
while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest
thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing
and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like
every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the
infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to
the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent
spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared
with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning
disappears before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came
subsequently to wither; but the Latins preserved their simplicity
of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the
Greeks. As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim
it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the
destroyers of faith; and, much as this process at once of development
and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of
nature certain results have been reserved to the epoch of early
simplicity--results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours
to attain. The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes,
which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect
as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible
for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed
thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self-devotion, the
power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such
union. It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of
history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the
expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the
Greeks; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose,
so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest
organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth
that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with
their respective defects. The deepest and ultimate reason of the
diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that
Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth
come into contact with the East. No people on earth was great
enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic
or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history
has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of
Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil. But if for
this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not
less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it
is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from
both.
Foreign Worships
Such was the nature and such the influence of the Roman religion
in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly national development. Its
national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the
earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from
abroad; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on
individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state. An exchange
of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must
have been a matter of course; the transplantation to Rome of gods
and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable.
Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we
have already spoken.(14) Whether any conceptions of the gods were
borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful: for the Lases, the older
designation of the genii (from -lascivus-), and Minerva the goddess
of memory (-mens-, -menervare-), which it is customary to describe
as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological
grounds, indigenous to Latium. It is at any rate certain, and in
keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman intercourse that
the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention
in Rome than any other of foreign origin. The Greek oracles
furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction. The language
of the Roman gods was on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at
the most to the making their will known by the method of casting
lots, which appears in its origin Italian;(15) while from very ancient
times--although not apparently until the impulse was received from
the East--the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual
utterances of prophecy. The Romans made efforts, even at an early
period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of
the soothsaying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly
a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from
Campania. For the reading and interpretation of the fortune-telling
book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and
Pontifices, was instituted in early times, consisting of two men
of lore (-duoviri sacris faciundis-), who were furnished at the
expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek
language. To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in
cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid
some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or
with what rites it was to be performed. But Romans in search of
advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself.
Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already
mentioned,(16) it is attested partly by the reception of the word
-thesaurus- so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all
the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by
the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, -Aperta-, the "opener,"
an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of
which is betrayed by its very barbarism. The Greek Herakles was
naturalized in Italy as Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early
period and under a peculiar conception of his character, apparently
in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any
extraordinary increase of wealth; for which reason the general was
wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and
the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to
Hercules at the chief altar (-ara maxima-) in the cattle-market.
Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally,
which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and
confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin
god of good faith (-deus fidius-). The worship of Hercules was
from an early date among the most widely diffused; he was, to use
the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy,
and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the
cities and along the country roads. The gods also of the mariner,
Castor and Polydeukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traffic
Hermes--the Roman Mercurius--and the god of healing, Asklapios or
Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public
worship only began at a later period. The name of the festival
of the "good goddess" (-bona dea-) -damium-, corresponding to the
Greek --damion-- or --deimion--, may likewise reach back as far as
this epoch. It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that
the old -Liber pater- of the Romans was afterwards conceived as
"father deliverer" and identified with the wine-god of the Greeks,
the "releaser" (-Lyaeos-), and that the Roman god of the lower
regions was called the "dispenser of riches" (-Pluto- - -Dis pater-),
while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of
the initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman
Proserpina, that is, "germinatrix." Even the goddess of the
Romano-Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been
copied from the federal goddess of the lonians of Asia Minor, the
Ephesian Artemis; at least her carved image in the Roman temple
was formed after the Ephesian type.(17) It was in this way alone,
through the myths of Apollo, Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis,
which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic
religion exercised at this period a remote and indirect influence
on Italy. We clearly perceive from these facts that the introduction
of the Greek religion was especially due to commercial intercourse,
and that it was traders and mariners who primarily brought the
Greek gods to Italy.
These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but
of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism
of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may
perhaps be a specimen,(18) had virtually disappeared. In all its
leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the
people among whom we find it.
Religion of the Sabellians
The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the little we know
of it, rested upon quite the same fundamental views as the Latin
with local variations of colour and form. That it was different
from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding
of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine
rites;(19) but that very fact affords an instructive illustration
of the nature of the difference. Observation of the flight of
birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods;
but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs.
Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity
of comparing them. Both stocks in common regarded the gods as
abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature; they
differed in expression and ritual. It was natural that these
diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those
days; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic
distinction, if any really existed.
Religion of the Etruscans
But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have
reached us are marked by a different spirit. Their prevailing
characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing
the changes on numbers, soothsaying, and that solemn enthroning of
pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees.
We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness
and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable--indeed
it cannot well be doubted--that several of its features were only
imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that
the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the
Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to
us by tradition. But enough still remains to show that the mysticism
and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential
character of the Etruscan people.
With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic
contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and
the Italian; but it is clear that the most prominent among the
Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed
their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice
of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and
at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners. Instead of a tranquil world of
departed "good spirits" ruling peacefully in the realms beneath,
such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented
a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured
by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the
conductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man
with wings and a large hammer--a figure which afterwards served in
the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the
man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena. So fixed
was the association of torture with this condition of the shades,
that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain
mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of
the gods above. It is remarkable that, in order to people their
lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their
gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon,
which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.
But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation
of signs and portents. The Romans heard the voice of the gods
in nature; but their bird-seer understood only the signs in their
simplicity, and knew only in general whether the occurrence boded
good or ill. Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were
regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in
hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed
the comitia; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for
example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death
as speedily as possible. But beyond the Tiber matters were carried
much further. The profound Etruscan read off to the believer his
future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails
of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language
of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more
confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by
which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore
of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation
of prodigies--all of them, and the science of lightning especially,
devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the
mind in pursuit of absurdities. A dwarf called Tages with the
figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up
by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii--we might almost fancy that
practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present
in this figure a caricature of themselves--betrayed the secret of
this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died. His disciples
and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the
lightning; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by
its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether
the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event;
and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed,
or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed:
how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel
the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts
of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no
small desire of pocketing fees. How deeply repugnant this jugglery
was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when
people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome,
no attempt was made to naturalize it; during our present period
the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with
the Greek oracles.
The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the Roman, in
so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly
wanting among the Romans--a speculation veiled under religious
forms. Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods
(-Dii involuti-), consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that
world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was
it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time,
whose sections were the -saecula-. Respecting the intellectual
value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and
philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however
to have been from the very first characterized by a dull fatalism
and an insipid play upon number.
Notes for Book I Chapter XII
1. I. II. Religion
2. This was, to all appearance, the original nature of the
"morning-mother" or -Mater matuta-; in connection with which we may
recall the circumstance that, as the names Lucius and especially
-Manius- show, the morning hour was reckoned as lucky for birth.
-Mater matuta-probably became a goddess of sea and harbour only
at a later epoch under the influence of the myth of Leucothea; the
fact that the goddess was chiefly worshipped by women tells against
the view that she was originally a harbour-goddess.
3. From -Maurs-, which is the oldest form handed down by tradition,
there have been developed by different treatment of the -u -Mars-,
-Mavors-, -Mors-; the transition to -o (similar to -Paula-, -Pola-,
and the like) appears also in the double form Mar-Mor (comp.
-Ma-murius-) alongside of -Mar-Mor- and -Ma-Mers-.
4. The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (-ianus
matutinus-) were sacred to Ianus, and that he was always invoked
before any other god and was even represented in the series of
coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that
he was the abstraction of opening and beginning. The double-head
looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways.
To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable,
because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh,
not the first; that month seems rather to have derived its name
from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the
middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh.
It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year
should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after
Ianuarius came to be placed at its head.
5. I. IV. Tities and Luceres
6. I. VI. Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities
7. I. VII. Servian Wall
8. I. III. Latium
9. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium
10. I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses, I. XI. Crimes
11. The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the
communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and Pontifices
occur everywhere (e. g. Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous
inscriptions), as does likewise the -pater patratus- of the Fetiales
in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but the other colleges do not. The
former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of
ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and Luperci, as very ancient
heirlooms of the Latin stock; whereas the Duoviri -sacris faciundis-,
and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes
and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to,
Rome. But in the case of the second college--the pontifices--the
influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name
into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier--perhaps
more than one--designation; or--a hypothesis which philologically
has much in its favour-- -pons- originally signified not "bridge,"
but "way" generally, and -pontifex- therefore meant "constructor
of ways."
The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in
particular vary. The view that it was necessary for the number to
be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96); and
Livy (x. 6) does not say so, but only states that the number of
Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had
an odd number as its basis. According to Livy (l. c.) the number
was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same is virtually
affirmed by Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14) when he represents Romulus
as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls. On the number
of the pontifices comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 20.
12. It is only an unreflecting misconception that can discover
in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.
13. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
14. I. XII. Priests
15. -Sors- from -serere-, to place in row. The -sortes- were
probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when
thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts
one in mind of the Runic characters.
16. I. X. Hellenes and Latins
17. I. VII. Servian Wall
18. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture
19. I. IV. Tities and Luceres
CHAPTER XIII
Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce
Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the
constitution and the external history of states, that the former
must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter.
We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which
we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and
particularly of Roman economics.
Agriculture
It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral
to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians
into the peninsula. Agriculture continued to be the main support
of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans
no less than of the Latins. There were no purely pastoral tribes
in Italy during historical times, although of course the various
races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less
extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation
of the soil. The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of
new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of
the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that
every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture. In the case of
Rome in particular--and it is only in its case that we can speak of
agrarian relations with any sort of certainty--the Servian reform
shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally
preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made
permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the
pith and marrow of the community. When in the course of time a
large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the
hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses
were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed
constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the
perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently,
by treating the members of the community without reference to their
political position once for all according to their freeholding,
and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders--a
step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed
by the concession of public rights. The whole policy of Roman war
and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of
the freehold system; as the freeholder alone was of value in the
state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold
members. The vanquished community was either compelled to
merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to
this extremity, it was required, not to pay a war-contribution or
a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, usually a third part, of
its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms.
Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans
did; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground
he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by
the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance. That which is
gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it
is not so with the conquests made by the plough; while the Romans
lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making peace ceded Roman
soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with
which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads. The strength
of man and of the state lies in their dominion over the soil; the
greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate
mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of
the body which thus acquired so firm a hold.
System of Joint Cultivation
We have already indicated(2) that in the earliest times the arable
land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each
clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce
among the several households belonging to it. There exists indeed
an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the
clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence
and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case
of co-proprietors.(3) Even the traditions of Roman law furnish
the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the
usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land
came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special
property.(4) Better evidence that such was the case is afforded
by the earliest designation of wealth as "cattle-stock" or
"slave-and-cattle-stock" (-pecunia-, -familia pecuniaque-), and of
the separate possessions of the children of the household and of
slaves as "small cattle" (-peculium-) also by the earliest form
of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the hand
(-mancipatio-), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable
articles;(5) and above all by the earliest measure of "land of one's
own" (-heredium-, from -herus-lord), consisting of two -jugera-
(about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to
garden-ground, and not to the hide.(6) When and how the distribution
of the arable land took place, can no longer be ascertained. This
much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was
based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute
for it, whereas the Servian constitution presupposes the distribution
of the land. It is evident from the same constitution that the
great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms,
which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of
the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of
the plough. The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not
been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already
been shown,(7) be estimated at less than twenty -jugera-(12 1/2
acres nearly).