The Religion of Ancient Rome | Page 7

family too
cult was always to some extent 'tinged with emotion,' and sanctified by
a belief which made it a more living and in the end a more permanent
reality than the religion of the state. But it is no doubt true that as the
community advanced, belief tended to sink into the background:
development took place in cult and not in theology, so that by the end
of the Republic, to take an example, though the festival of the
Furrinalia was duly observed every year on the 25th of July, the nature
or function of the goddess Furrina was, as we learn from Cicero, a pure
matter of conjecture, and Varro tells us that her name was known only
to a few persons. Nor was it mere lapse of time which tended to
obscure theology and exalt ceremonial: their relative position was the
immediate and natural outcome of the underlying idea of the relation of
god and man. Devotion, piety--in our sense of the term--and a feeling
of the divine presence could not be enjoined or even encouraged by the
strictly legal conception on which religion was based: the
'contract-notion' required not a 'right spirit' but right performance. And
so it comes about that in all the records we have left of the old religion
the salient feature which catches and retains our attention is exactness
of ritual. All must be performed not merely 'decently and in order,' but
with the most scrupulous care alike for every detail of the ceremonial
itself, and for the surrounding circumstances. The omission or
misplacement of a single word in the formulæ, the slightest sign of
resistance on the part of the victim, any disorder among the bystanders,

even the accidental squeak of a mouse, are sufficient to vitiate the
whole ritual and necessitate its repetition from the very beginning. One
of the main functions of the Roman priesthood was to preserve intact
the tradition of formulæ and ritual, and, when the magistrate offered
sacrifice for the state, the pontifex stood at his side and dictated
(praeire) the formulæ which he must use. Almost the oldest specimen
of Latin which we now possess is the song of the Salii, the priests of
Mars, handed on from generation to generation and repeated with
scrupulous care, even though the priests themselves, as Quintilian
assures us, had not the least notion what it meant. Nor was it merely the
words of ceremonial which were of vital importance: other details must
be attended to with equal exactness. Place, as we have seen, was an
essential feature even in the conception of deity, and it must have
required all the personal influence of Augustus and his entourage to
reconcile the people of Rome, with the ancient home of the goddess
still before their eyes, to the second shrine of Vesta within the limits of
his palace on the Palatine. The choice of the appropriate offering again
was a matter of the greatest moment and was dictated by a large
number of considerations. The sex of the victim must correspond to the
sex of the deity to whom it is offered, white beasts must be given to the
gods of the upper world, black victims to the deities below. Mars at his
October festival must have his horse, Iuno Caprotina her goat, and
Robigus his dog, while in the more rustic festivals such as the Parilia,
the offering would be the simpler gift of millet-cakes and bowls of milk:
in the case of the Bona Dea we have the curious provision that if wine
were used in the ceremonial, it must, as she was in origin a pastoral
deity, always be spoken of as 'milk.' The persons who might be present
in the various festivals were also rigidly determined: men were
excluded from the Matronalia on March 1, from the Vestalia on the 9th
of June, and from the night festival of the Bona Dea: the notorious
escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal raised by a breach of
this rule even at the period when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest
ebb. Slaves were specifically admitted to a share in certain festivals
such as the Saturnalia and the Compitalia (the festival of the Lares),
whereas at the Matralia (the festival of the matrons) a female slave was
brought in with the express purpose of being significantly driven away.

The general notion of the exactness of ritual will perhaps become
clearer when we come to examine some of the festivals in detail, but it
is of extreme importance for the understanding of the Roman religious
attitude, to think of it from the first as an essential part in the
expression of the relation of man to god.
=4. Directness of Relation--Functions of Priests.=--In contrast to all
this precision of