The Religion of Ancient Rome | Page 6

to adopt foreign deities and cults in the hope of a
greater measure of success.
The contract-notion may perhaps appear more clearly if we consider
one or two of the normal religious acts of the Roman individual or state.
Take first of all the performance of the regular sacrifices or acts of
worship ordained by the state-calendar or the celebration of the
household sacra. The pietas of man consists in their due fulfilment, but
he may through negligence omit them or make a mistake in the ritual to
be employed. In that case the gods, as it were, have the upper hand in
the contract and are not obliged to fulfil their share, but the man can set
himself right again by the offering of a piaculum, which may take the
form either of an additional sacrifice or a repetition of the original rite.
So, for instance, when Cato is giving his farmer directions for the
lustration of his fields, he supplies him at the end with two significant
formulæ: 'if,' he says, 'you have failed in any respect with regard to all
your offerings, use this formula: "Father Mars, if thou hast not found
satisfaction in my former offering of pig, sheep, and ox (the most
solemn combination in rustic sacrifices), then let this offering of pig
and sheep and ox appease thee": but if you have made a mistake in one
or two only of your offerings, then say, "Father Mars, because thou hast

not found satisfaction in that pig (or whatever it may be), let this pig
appease thee."' On the other hand, for intentional neglect, there was no
remedy: the man was impius and it rested with the gods to punish him
as they liked (deorum iniuriae dis curae).
But apart from the regularly constituted ceremonies of religion, there
might be special occasions on which new relations would be entered
into between god and man. Sometimes the initiative would come from
man: desiring to obtain from the gods some blessings on which he had
set his heart, he would enter into a votum, a special contract by which
he undertook to perform certain acts or make certain sacrifices, in case
of the fulfilment of his desire. The whole proceeding is strictly legal:
from the moment when he makes his vow the man is voti reus, in the
same position, that is, as the defendant in a case whose decision is still
pending; as soon as the gods have accomplished their side of the
contract he is voti damnatus, condemned, as it were, to damages,
having lost his suit; nor does he recover his independence until he has
paid what he undertook: votum reddidi lubens merito ('I have paid my
vow gladly as it was due') is the characteristic wording of votive
inscriptions. If the gods did not accomplish the wish, the man was of
course free, and sometimes the contract would be carried so far that a
time-limit for their action would be fixed by the maker of the vow:
legal exactness can hardly go further.
Or again, the initiative might come from the gods. Some marked
misfortune, an earthquake, lightning, a great famine, a portentous birth,
or some such occurrence would be recognised as a prodigium, or sign
of the god's displeasure. Somehow or other the contract must have been
broken on the human side and it was the duty of the state to see to the
restoration of the pax deum, the equilibrium of the normal relation of
god and man. The right proceeding in such a case was a lustratio, a
solemn cleansing of the people--or the portion of the people involved in
the god's displeasure--with the double object of removing the original
reason of misfortune and averting future causes of the divine anger.
The commercial notion is not perhaps quite so distinct here, but the
underlying legal relationship is sufficiently marked.

If then the question be asked whether the relation between the Roman
and his gods was friendly or unfriendly, the correct answer would
probably be that it was neither. It was rather what Aristotle in speaking
of human relations describes as 'a friendship for profit': it is entered into
because both sides hope for some advantage--it is maintained as long as
both sides fulfil their obligations.
=3. Ceremonial.=--It has been said sometimes that the old Roman
religion was one of cult and ritual without dogma or belief. As we have
seen this is not in origin strictly true, and it would be fairer to say that
belief was latent rather than non-existent: this we may see, for instance,
from Cicero's dialogues on the subject of religion, where in discussion
the fundamental sense of the dependence of man on the help of the
gods comes clearly into view: in the domestic worship of the