The differences in national development would of themselves require differences of treatment. Greek religion grew up in countless6 independent communities, which advanced in civilization at very different rates. Roman religion was developed within a single civic7 group, and was ultimately swamped by the institutions with which it came into contact. Again, it is much more necessary among the Romans than among the Greeks to distinguish clearly between periods. Roman political 41history passed through points of obvious crisis, and many institutions were plainly deflected8 at these points into quite new paths of development.
Real comprehension of Roman religion is a matter of recent growth. During the vogue9 of comparative mythology10, the Roman myths were principally discussed, and the patent fact that these were mere11 translations from the Greek seemed a complete summing up of Roman religion. It is only when the actual Roman calendar, as recorded on stone during the reign12 of Augustus, came to be studied that the real character of Roman religion began to be apprehended13.[35]
The results of this study have made it clear that during the highest development of the Roman state the official religious ritual was based upon pastoral and agricultural conditions that could scarcely be reached even in imagination. Propitiatory15 and dramatic rites16 carried out with painful precision, unintelligible17 formularies carefully repeated, ceremonial dances in which every posture18 was subject to exact regulation, all these things indicate an anxious solicitude19 for form that is ordinarily more characteristic of magic than of religion. Now, magic and religion have no very definite limits in anthropological20 discussions, but most of those who use the terms will probably agree that magic is coercive, and religion is not. We shall see at various points in Roman religion that a coercive idea was really present in the Romans’ relation with the gods, and that it followed in a measure from the way the gods were conceived.[36]
42The personality of the Greek gods was not so sharply individualized as the myths we happen to know would indicate, but the gods were persons. That is, during the act of prayer and sacrifice there was conjured21 up in the mind of the worshiper a definite anthropomorphic figure, who dealt with him somewhat as a flesh and blood man would do. But what was present in a Roman’s mind in very early times—those of the kingdom and the early republic—was probably not at all like this. The name of his deity22 was often an abstraction, and even when this was not verbally the case, the idea was an abstract one. And this abstraction had so little plastic form that he was scarcely certain of the being’s sex to which he addressed words of very real supplication23, and wholly uncertain what, if any, concrete manifestation24 the god might make of his presence.[37]
But it will be well to understand that this abstraction, which the Roman knew as Salus, or Fortuna, or Victoria, was not a philosophic25 achievement. It was not a Platonic26 “idea.” No one could doubt the fact that in times of danger safety was often attained27. The means of attainment28 seemed frequently due to chance; that is, to the working of unintelligible forces. It was to evoke29 these forces and set them in operation that the Roman ritual was addressed, and whether these forces acted of their own mere motion, or whether the formularies contained potent30 spells, which compelled their activity, was not really of moment. That was the nature of the “abstraction” which such words as Fides, Concordia, and the rest signified to Roman minds.
43In the early days a great deal of the religious practice was borrowed from the Etruscan neighbors, conquerors31 and subjects of Rome. The Etruscans, as far as anything can be said definitely about them, were especial adepts32 in all the arts by which the aid of deities, however conceived, could be secured. How much of actual religious teaching they gave the Romans, that is, how far they actually influenced and trained the emotions which the sense of being surrounded by powerful and unaccountable forces must excite, is not yet determinable. But they gave the Romans, or increased among them, the belief in the efficacy of formulas, whether of the spoken word or of action.
Although most of the Roman deities were abstractions in the sense just indicated, many others and very important ones bore personal names. These names could not help suggesting to intelligent men at all times that the god who bore one of them was himself a person, that his manifestations33 would be in human form, and that his mental make-up was like their own. Genetic34 relations between themselves and the gods so conceived were rapidly enough established. It is very likely, too, that some of these deities, perhaps Jupiter himself, were brought into Italy by kinsmen35 of those who brought Zeus into Greece, although the kinship must have been extremely remote. And when the gods are persons, stories about them are inevitable36, arising partly as folk-lore and partly from individual poetic37 imagining. There are accordingly traces of an indigenous38 Roman or Italic mythology, but that mythology was literally39 overwhelmed, 44in relatively40 early times, by the artistically41 more developed one of the Greeks, so that its very existence has been questioned.[38]
The openness of the Romans to foreign religious influences is an outcome of a conception, common enough, but more pronounced among the Romans than anywhere else. In most places the gods were believed to be locally limited in their sphere of action, and in most places this limitation was not due to unchangeable necessity but to the choice of residence on the part of the deity. Since it was a choice, it was subject to revocation42. The actual land, once endeared to god or man, had a powerful hold upon his affections, vastly more powerful than the corresponding feeling of to-day, but for either god or man changes might and did occur.
Both Greeks and Romans held views somewhat of this kind, but the difference in political development compelled the Roman to face problems in the relations of the gods that were not presented to the Greeks. Greek wars were not wars of conquest. They resulted rather in the acknowledgment on the part of the vanquished43 of a general superiority. With barbarians44, again, the struggles were connected with colonizing45 activity, and, when they were successful, they resulted in the establishment of a new community, which generally continued the ancient shrines46 in all but their names. Roman wars, however, soon became of a different sort. The newly conquered territory was often annexed—attached to the city, and ruled from it. To secure the lands so obtained it was frequently found necessary to destroy the city of which they were once a 45part, and that involved the cessation of rites, which the gods would not be likely to view with composure. The Romans drew the strictly47 logical inference that the only solution lay in bringing the gods of the conquered city to Rome. The Roman legend knew of the solemn words with which the dictator Camillus began the sack of Veii: “Thou, Queen Juno, who now dwellest in Veii, I beseech48 thee, follow our victorious49 troops into the city that is now ours, and will soon be thine, where a temple worthy50 of thy majesty51 will receive thee.”[39] But besides this legendary52 incident, we have an actual formula quoted by Macrobius from the book of a certain Furius,[40] probably the contemporary of the younger Africanus. The formula, indubitably ancient and general, is given as Africanus himself may have recited it before the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.E., and it is so significant that we shall give it in full:
Whoever thou art, whether god or goddess, in whose ward53 the people and city of Carthage are, and thou above all, who hast accepted the wardship54 of this city and this people, I beseech, I implore55, I beg, that ye will desert the people and city of Carthage, that ye will abandon the site, the consecrated56 places and the city, that ye will depart from them, overwhelm that people and city with fear, dread57, and consternation58, and graciously come to Rome, to me and my people: that our site, our consecrated places, and our city be more acceptable and more pleasing in your sight, and that ye may become the lords of myself, the Roman people, and my soldiers. Deign59 to make known your will to us. If ye do so, I solemnly promise to erect60 temples in your honor and establish festal games.[41]
What might happen as an incident of warfare61 could be otherwise effected as well. We have very old evidence of the entry of Greek deities into the city of 46Rome. The Dioscuri came betimes; also Heracles and Apollo, both perhaps by way of Etruria. And in historical times we have the well-known official importation of the Great Mother and of Asclepius.[42]
These importations of Greek gods were at the time conscious receptions of foreign elements. The foreign god and his ritual were taken over intact. Greek modes of divine communion, notably62 the lectisternium, or sacrificial banquet,[43] and the games, were adopted and eagerly performed by Romans. When Rome reached a position of real primacy in the Mediterranean, the process of saturation63 with foreign elements was accelerated, but with it an opposition64 movement became apparent, which saw in them (what they really were) a source of danger for the ancient Roman institutions. The end of the second Punic war, approximately 200 B.C.E., shortly after a most striking instance of official importation of cults65, that of the Phrygian Cybele, particularly marks a period in this respect as in so many others. From that time on, the entry of foreign religions went on apace, but it was somewhat surreptitious, and was carried on in the train of economic, social, and political movements of far-reaching effect.
When the Jews came in contact with the Romans, this point had been long reached. As far, therefore, as the Jews were concerned, their religion shared whatever feeling of repulsion and distrust foreign religions excited among certain classes, and equally shared the very catholic veneration66 and dread that other classes brought to any system of worship.
47The former classes correspond roughly to those of educated men generally. Their intellectual outlook was wholly Greek, and all their thinking took on a Greek dress. But they received Greek ideas, not only through Homer and Sophocles, but also through Plato and Aristotle. Not popular Greek religion, but sophisticated religious philosophy, was brought to the intellectual leaders of Rome. One of the very first works of Greek thought to be brought to Roman attention was the theory of Euhemerus, a destructive analysis of the existing myths, not merely in the details usually circulated, but in respect to the fundamental basis of myth-making.[44] In these circumstances educated men adopted the various forms of theism, pantheism, or agnosticism developed by the Greek philosophical67 schools, and their interest in the ceremonial of their ancestral cult14 became a form of patriotism68, in which, however, it was not always possible to conceal69 the consciousness of the chasm70 between theory and practice.
The other part of the Roman population, which knew Greek myths chiefly from the stage, could not draw such distinctions. What was left of the old Italian peasantry perhaps continued the sympathetic and propitiatory rites that were the substance of the ancient Roman cult. But there cannot have been a great number of these. The mass of the later plebs, a mixed multitude in origin, could get little religious excitement out of the state ritual. What they desired was to be found in the Oriental cults, which from this time on invaded the city they were destined71 to conquer.
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1
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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propitiatory
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| adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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anthropological
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| adj.人类学的 | |
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conjured
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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22
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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24
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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28
attainment
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| n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣 | |
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evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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30
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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32
adepts
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| n.专家，能手( adept的名词复数 ) | |
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33
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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34
genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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35
kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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36
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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38
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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39
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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40
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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41
artistically
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| adv.艺术性地 | |
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42
revocation
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| n.废止，撤回 | |
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43
vanquished
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| v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 )；战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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44
barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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45
colonizing
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| v.开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的现在分词 ) | |
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46
shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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47
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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48
beseech
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| v.祈求，恳求 | |
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49
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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50
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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51
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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52
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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53
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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54
wardship
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| 监护，保护 | |
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55
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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56
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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57
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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58
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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59
deign
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| v. 屈尊, 惠允 ( 做某事) | |
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60
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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61
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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62
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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63
saturation
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| n.饱和(状态)；浸透 | |
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64
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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65
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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66
veneration
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| n.尊敬，崇拜 | |
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67
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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70
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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71
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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