The Religious Experience of the Roman People | Page 2

goodwill of my
old Oxford pupils never seem to fail me.
W. W. F.
Kingham, Oxon, 3rd March 1911.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY PAGE
Accounts of the Roman religion in recent standard works; a hard and
highly formalised system. Its interest lies partly in this fact. How did it
come to be so? This the main question of the first epoch of Roman
religious experience. Roman religion and Roman law compared.
Roman religion a technical subject. What we mean by religion. A
useful definition applied to the plan of Lectures I.-X.; including (1)
survivals of primitive or quasi-magical religion; (2) the religion of the
agricultural family; (3) that of the City-state, in its simplest form, and
in its first period of expansion. Difficulties of the subject; present
position of knowledge and criticism. Help obtainable from (1)
archaeology, (2) anthropology 1-23
LECTURE II
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: SURVIVALS
Survivals at Rome of previous eras of quasi-religious experience.
Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the means adopted of escaping
from it; both survived at Rome into an age of real religion. Examples:
impurity (or holiness) of new-born infants; of a corpse; of women in

certain worships; of strangers; of criminals. Almost complete absence
of blood-taboo. Iron. Strange taboos on the priest of Jupiter and his
wife. Holy or tabooed places; holy or tabooed days; the word religiosus
as applied to both of these 24-46

LECTURE III
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC
Magic; distinction between magic and religion. Religious authorities
seek to exclude magic, and did so at Rome. Few survivals of magic in
the State religion. The aquaelicium. Vestals and runaway slaves. The
magical whipping at the Lupercalia. The throwing of puppets from the
pons sublicius. Magical processes surviving in religious ritual with
their meaning lost. Private magic: excantatio in the XII. Tables; other
spells or carmina. Amulets: the bulla; oscilla 47-67
LECTURE IV
THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
Continuity of the religion of the Latin agricultural family. What the
family was; its relation to the gens. The familia as settled on the land,
an economic unit, embodied in a pagus. The house as the religious
centre of the familia; its holy places. Vesta, Penates, Genius, and the
spirit of the doorway. The Lar familiaris on the land. Festival of the
Lar belongs to the religion of the pagus: other festivals of the pagus.
Religio terminorum. Religion of the household: marriage, childbirth,
burial and cult of the dead 68-91
LECTURE V
THE CALENDAR OF NUMA
Beginnings of the City-state: the oppidum. The earliest historical Rome,
the city of the four regions; to this belongs the surviving religious
calendar. This calendar described; the basis of our knowledge of early

Roman religion. It expresses a life agricultural, political, and military.
Days of gods distinguished from days of man. Agricultural life the real
basis of the calendar; gradual effacement of it. Results of a fixed
routine in calendar; discipline, religious confidence. Exclusion from it
of the barbarous and grotesque. Decency and order under an organising
priestly authority 92-113
LECTURE VI
THE DIVINE OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
Sources of knowledge about Roman deities. What did the Romans
themselves know about them? No personal deity in the religion of the
family. Those of the City-state are numina, marking a transition from
animism to polytheism. Meaning of numen. Importance of names,
which are chiefly adjectival, marking functional activity. Tellus an
exception. Importance of priests in development of dei. The four great
Roman gods and their priests: Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus.
Characteristics of each of these in earliest Rome. Juno and the
difficulties she presents. Vesta 114-144
LECTURE VII
THE DEITIES OF THE EARLIEST RELIGION: GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS
No temples in the earliest Rome; meaning of fanum, ara, lucus,
sacellum. No images of gods in these places, until end of regal period.
Thus deities not conceived as persons. Though masculine and feminine
they were not married pairs; Dr. Frazer's opinion on this point.
Examination of his evidence derived from the libri sacerdotum;
meaning of Nerio Martis. Such combinations of names suggest forms
or manifestations of a deity's activity, not likely to grow into personal
deities without Greek help. Meaning of pater and mater applied to
deities; procreation not indicated by them. The deities of the
Indigitamenta; priestly inventions of a later age. Usener's theory of
Sondergötter criticised so far as it applies to Rome 145-168

LECTURE VIII
RITUAL OF THE IUS DIVINUM
Main object of ius divinum to keep up the pax deorum; meaning of pax
in this phrase. Means towards the maintenance of the pax: sacrifice and
prayer, fulfilment of vows, lustratio, divination. Meaning of sacrificium.
Little trace of sacramental sacrifice. Typical sacrifice of ius divinum:
both priest and victim must be acceptable to the deity; means taken to
secure this. Ritual of slaughter: examination and porrectio of entrails.