Marius the Epicurean, vol 1 | Page 2

of
such gifts to men as fire, water, the earth, from labour on which they
live, really understood by him as gifts--a sense of religious
responsibility in the reception of them. It was a religion for the most
part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long burden of forms;
yet rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instance) the thought of
those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the almost
stifling sense of health and delight in him, and relieved it as gratitude to
the gods.
The day of the "little" or private Ambarvalia was come, to be
celebrated by a single family for the welfare of all belonging to it, as
the great college of the Arval Brothers officiated at Rome in the interest
of the whole state. At the appointed time all work ceases; the

instruments of labour lie untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers,
while masters and servants together go in solemn procession along the
dry paths of vineyard and cornfield, conducting the victims whose
blood is presently to be shed for the purification from all natural or
supernatural taint of the lands they have "gone about." The old Latin
words of the liturgy, to be said as the procession moved on its way,
though their precise meaning was long [7] since become unintelligible,
were recited from an ancient illuminated roll, kept in the painted chest
in the hall, together with the family records. Early on that day the girls
of the farm had been busy in the great portico, filling large baskets with
flowers plucked short from branches of apple and cherry, then in
spacious bloom, to strew before the quaint images of the gods--Ceres
and Bacchus and the yet more mysterious Dea Dia--as they passed
through the fields, carried in their little houses on the shoulders of
white-clad youths, who were understood to proceed to this office in
perfect temperance, as pure in soul and body as the air they breathed in
the firm weather of that early summer-time. The clean lustral water and
the full incense-box were carried after them. The altars were gay with
garlands of wool and the more sumptuous sort of blossom and green
herbs to be thrown into the sacrificial fire, fresh-gathered this morning
from a particular plot in the old garden, set apart for the purpose. Just
then the young leaves were almost as fragrant as flowers, and the scent
of the bean-fields mingled pleasantly with the cloud of incense. But for
the monotonous intonation of the liturgy by the priests, clad in their
strange, stiff, antique vestments, and bearing ears of green corn upon
their heads, secured by flowing bands of white, the procession moved
in absolute stillness, all persons, even the children, abstaining from [8]
speech after the utterance of the pontifical formula, Favete
linguis!--Silence! Propitious Silence!--lest any words save those proper
to the occasion should hinder the religious efficacy of the rite.
With the lad Marius, who, as the head of his house, took a leading part
in the ceremonies of the day, there was a devout effort to complete this
impressive outward silence by that inward tacitness of mind, esteemed
so important by religious Romans in the performance of these sacred
functions. To him the sustained stillness without seemed really but to
be waiting upon that interior, mental condition of preparation or

expectancy, for which he was just then intently striving. The persons
about him, certainly, had never been challenged by those prayers and
ceremonies to any ponderings on the divine nature: they conceived
them rather to be the appointed means of setting such troublesome
movements at rest. By them, "the religion of Numa," so staid, ideal and
comely, the object of so much jealous conservatism, though of direct
service as lending sanction to a sort of high scrupulosity, especially in
the chief points of domestic conduct, was mainly prized as being,
through its hereditary character, something like a personal
distinction--as contributing, among the other accessories of an ancient
house, to the production of that aristocratic atmosphere which separated
them from newly-made people. But [9] in the young Marius, the very
absence from those venerable usages of all definite history and
dogmatic interpretation, had already awakened much speculative
activity; and to-day, starting from the actual details of the divine
service, some very lively surmises, though scarcely distinct enough to
be thoughts, were moving backwards and forwards in his mind, as the
stirring wind had done all day among the trees, and were like the
passing of some mysterious influence over all the elements of his
nature and experience. One thing only distracted him--a certain pity at
the bottom of his heart, and almost on his lips, for the sacrificial
victims and their looks of terror, rising almost to disgust at the central
act of the sacrifice