The Religion of Ancient Rome | Page 6

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 formul?: '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 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