No More Learning

In the religion of Rome there was hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of the city, the Penates ; the real character, moreover, even of these gods was manifest to every one.
The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them in its terminology, and to classify them systematically-—in the first instance, according to that division of persons and things which also formed the basis of private law—that it might thus be able in due fashion to invoke the god" ie'iividually or by classes, and to point
Italy.
can. xrr RELIGION
213
out (indzgitare) to the multitude the modes of appropriate invocation. Of such notions, the products of outward ab straction-of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable, sometimes ridiculous-Roman theology was in substance made up. Conceptions such as sowing (saétumus) and field-labour (0):), ground (tellus) and boundary-stone (terminus), were among the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities. Perhaps the most peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only one for whose worship there was devised an efligy peculiarly Italian, was the double-headed Ianus; and yet it was suggestive of the idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion, that at the commencement of every act the “spirit of opening” should first be invoked,
while it above all betokened the deep conviction that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should stand singly and apart. 1 Of all the worships of Rome that which perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits that presided in and over the household and the storechamber: these were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before whom it was, even in the time of
1 The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (ianus matutimu) were sacred to Ianus, and that he was always invoked before any other god and was even represented in the series of coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that he was the abstraction of opening and beginning. The double-head looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways. To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable, because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh, not the first; that month seems rather to have derived its name from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh. It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after Ianuarius came to be placed at its head.
simply
Spirits.
Cato the Elder, the first duty of the father of the household on returning home to perform his devotions. In the rank ing of the gods, however, these spirits of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the highest place ; it was—and it could not be otherwise with a religion which renounced all attempts to idealize-not the broadest and most general, but the simplest and most individual abstrac tion, in which the pious heart found most nourishment.
This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already explained. Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce-this was what the Roman desired from his gods; and it very well accords with this view, that the god of good faith (deusfidius), the goddess of chance and good luck (for: fartuna), and the god of traffic (mercurius), all originating out of their daily dealings, although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear very early as adored far and near by the Romans. Strict frugality and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart.
Respecting the world of spirits little can be said. The departed souls of mortal men, the “good” (Manes), con tinued to exist as shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (dii inferi), and received meat and drink from the survivors. But they dwelt in the depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above. The hero worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans, and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation of king Romulus into the god
214
RELIGION BOOK r
Quirinus.
Numa, the oldest and most venerable name in
can. xii RELIGION
215
Roman tradition, never received the honours of a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens.
The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore reference to Mars; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated for life, “the kindler of Mars” (flamen Martialis) as he was designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve “leapers ” (salz'i), a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song. We have already explained 106) how the amalgamation of the Hill-com munity with that of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication of the Roman Mars, and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars-the flame/z Quin'nali:—and second guild of dancers-the salii collim'.
To these were added other public worships (some of which probably had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either single priests were appointed—as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus, of the god of the harbour and the river-or the celebration of which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the people. Such 1 college was probably that of the twelve “field-brethren” (fratres arr/ales) who invoked the “creative goddess” (11:0 11z2:) in May to bless the growth of the seed although
very doubtful whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the empire. These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive :ultus of the Roman Sabines 5), and by the thirty “curial kindlers” (flamines curiales), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies. The “wolf festival” (lupercalia) already mentioned was celebrated for the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the “favourable god” (faunas), by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in the month of February-a genuine
(p. 5
it is
;
a
(p.
2I6 RELIGION sooK I
shepherds’ carnival, in which the “Wolves ” (lupem') jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin, and whipped with thongs those whom they met. In like manner the com munity may be conceived as represented and participating in the case of other gentile worships.
To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were gradually added. The most important of these worships had reference to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the construction of the great wall and stronghold. In it the highest and best Iovis of the Capitol—that the genius of the Roman people-was placed at” the head of all the Roman divinities, and his “ kindler thenceforth appointed, the flamen Din/is, formed in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad of high-priests. Contemporaneously began the callus of the new single city-hearth-Vesta-and the kindred :ultus of the Penates of the community 140). Six chaste virgins, daughters as were of the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service, and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always blazing as an example (p. 44) and an omen to the burgesses. This worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in Rome, and accordingly was the latest of all the heathen worships there to give way before the ban of Christianity. The Aventine, moreover, was assigned to
Diana as the representative of the Latin confederacy (p. 33), but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood was appointed for her; and the community gradually
became accustomed to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods specially destined for their service; in particular instances-such as those of the god dess of flowers (Flora) and of fruits (Pomona)—it appointed also special flamines, so that the number of these was at length fifteen. But among them they carefully distinguished
r
it it
is,
(p.
can. xn RELIGION
217
those three "great kindlers ” (flamine: maiores), who down to the latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses, just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal Salz'i always asserted
precedence over all the other colleges of priests. Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the community
were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges or regular ministers; and the expense of sacrifices, which was presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines (pp. 92, 196).
It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin, and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially similar in character. At any rate it can be shown that the Flamines, Salii, Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome, but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently of the Roman model.
Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods, so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities.
There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome. Those, however, who bad business with a god resorted to the god, and not to the priest. Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself directly to the divinity the community of course by the king as its mouthpiece, just as the curia by the curr'a and the equites by their colonels ; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal or to obscure this original and simple relation. But it was no easy matter to hold converse with a god. The god had his own way of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted with it; but one who did rightly under
Colleges of sacrel lore.
218 RELIGION aoox I
stand it knew not only how to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural, therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far more important influence on political development than the individual priests and priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of traditional rules regarding those more general Observances, the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge. These close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of skilled arts and sciences.
Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the augurs and that of the pontifices. l
1 The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and pontifices occur everywhere (mg. Cic. dc Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous inscriptions), as does likewise the pater palralus of the Fetiales in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but the other colleges do not. The former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and Luperci, as very ancient heirlooms of the Latin stock; whereas the Duoviri sacrirfaciundir, and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to, Rome. But in the case of the second college—the pontifices —the influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier-perhaps more than one-designation; or-a hypothesis which philologically has much in its favour-pans originally signified not " bridge," but “ way " generally, and fontifex therefore meant “ constructor of ways. "
The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in particular
religious
can. xii - RELIGION
219
The six “ bird-carriers ” (augures) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art
which was prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced
to a quasi-scientific system. The six “bridge-builders” (ponlg'fices) derived their name from their function, as sacred Pontificee. as it was politically important, of conducting the building
and demolition of the bridge over the Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the duty of managing the calendar of the state, of pro claiming to the people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place on the right day. As they had thus an especial supervision of all religious observances, it was to them in case of need—on occasion of marriage, testament, and adrogatio—that the preliminary question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in any respect offend against divine law ; and it was they who fixed and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which were known under the name of the “royal laws. ” Thus they acquired (although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of whatever was connected with it-and what was there that was not so connected? They themselves described the sum of their knowledge as “the science of things divine and human. ” In fact the rudiments of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical recording proceeded from this college. For all writing of history was associated with the
vary. The view that it was necessary for the number to be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Legs Agr. 35, 96) and Livy (x. does not say so, but only states that the number of Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had an odd number as its basis. According to Livy c. ) the number was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same
virtually alfirmed by Cicero (dc Rep. ii. 14) when he represents Romulus as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls. On the number of the pontifices comp. Staatrrec/rt, ii. 20.
is (l.
; 9,
ii.
6)
Fetiales.
s20 RELIGION - sooK 1
calendar and the book of annals; and, as from the organ ization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally preserved in the college of the pontifices, which alone was competent to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious law.
By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corpora tions of men versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college of the twenty state-heralds (feliales, of uncertain derivation), destined as a living repository to pre serve traditionally the remembrance of the treaties con cluded with neighbouring communities, to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or declare war. They had precisely the same position with reference to international, as the pontifices had with reference to re
ligious, law; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out the law, although not to administer it.
But in however high repute these colleges were, and important and comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never forgotten-least of all in the case of those which held the highest position—that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer. Thus the highest of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but might not even give advice to him unasked. It was the province of the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation of birds ; the “bird-seer ” simply stood beside him and interpreted to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven. In like manner the Fetiaiz's and the Pontifex could not interfere in matters of international or common law except when those con cerned therewith desired The Romans, notwithstanding
it.
can. an RELIGION 22!
all their zeal for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state and—excluded from all command— ought like any other burgess to render obedience to the humblest magistrate.
The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man’s chmm enjoyment of earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate
degree on his fear of the wild forces of nature ; it consisted pre-eminently therefore in expressions of joy, in lays and
songs, in games and dances, and above all in banquets. In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural tribes whose
ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it was the usual roast for a feast. But all extravagance of expense as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid character of the Romans. Frugality in relation to the gods was one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship; and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained. In consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which grow out of unrestrained indulgence. At the very core of the Latin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle.
The profound and fearful idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the community were angry and
a2a RELIGION 3001: 1
nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devour: se); noxious chasms in the ground were closed, and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or upon the foe. The “ sacred spring ” was based on a similar view; all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified period were presented to the gods. If acts of this nature are to be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the essence of the Latin faith ; but we are bound to add that, far back as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose to die. Human sacrifices of a different description run counter to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later degeneracy and barbarism. They never gained admission among the Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary de liverance through means so revolting. Of belief in ghosts, fear of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, compara tively slight traces are to be found among the Romans. Oracles and prophecy never acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece, and never were
able to exercise a serious control over private or public life. But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims ; this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his tendency towards the palpable
and the real, and is no less distinctly apparent in the saint
can. xu RELIGION i
:33
worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy. The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain perform ances and payments; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident, it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of a man’s religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements -—the joniz'jices-could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence. The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had done so on his part. Man even dealt in speculation with his god ; a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain service to be rendered a certain equivalent return; and the Roman legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was not the least important of the reasons on account of which all priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns of man in Latium. Nay, as the Roman merchant was entitled, without injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the
teaching of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received instead of the object itself. They pre sented to the lord of the sky heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at these rather than at the heads of men. In payment of the offering annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes were annually thrown into the stream. 1 The ideas of
1 It is only an unrefiecting misconception that can discover in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.
224
RELIGION sooz r
divine mercy and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable a master by means of a sham satisfaction. The Roman fear of the gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the multi tude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively ; on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely different in any material respect from the trembling with which the Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such means the simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a cos mogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical views—the whole ideal development of the nation—and to expand in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of deity con tinued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art. As the god was not and could not be aught
else than the spiritualization of an earthly phenomenon,
can. xn RELIGION
225
this same earthly counterpart naturally formed his place of abode (templum) and his image; walls and efligies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to em barrass the spiritual conception. Accordingly the original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them; and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and had a little chapel (aedicula) built for him, such a figurative representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation. The Roman religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to with the exception, perhaps, of the double headed Ianus; and Varro even in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and efligies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.
The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain of its practical use. The practical gain which accrued to the Roman community from their religion was code of moral law gradually developed by the priests, and the ponhfias in particular, which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations at time when the state was still far from providing any direct police-guardian ship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach of moral obligations. To the regulations of the former class belonged the religious inculcation of due observance of holidays and of cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the rules of good husbandry—which we shall have occasion to notice more fully in the sequel~—as well as the worship of the hearth or of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary police (p. 21 3),
VOL.
15
l
a
a
a
a
it,
226 RELIGION loo: 1
and above all the practice of burning the bodies of the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period, far earlier than among the Greeks—a practice implying a rational conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive times and is even foreign to our selves at the present day. It must be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements. But the civilizing effect of this law was still more important. If a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in law ; if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common good faith; the burden of
the curse of the gods lay thenceforth on the head of the offender. Not that the person thus accursed (sacer) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence-an aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels between the orders. It was not the province of the individual burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into effect such a divine curse. Primarily the person thus accursed became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice ; and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked. But the banning was not confined to this; the king was in reality entitled and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were, as a victim offered up to the injured deity (supplzh'um), and thus to purify the community from
the crime of the individual. If the crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there was substituted a
can. x11 RELIGION
:27
ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial victim or of similar gifts. Thus the whole criminal law rested as to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation.
But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance of civil order and morality by such means as these. In this field Hellas had an unspeakable advan tage over Latium ; it owed to its religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all; the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all that was great in Hellenic-life and all in it that was the common heritage of the nation. And yet even here Latium had, as compared with Hellas, its own advantages. The Latin religion, reduced as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely intelligible to every one
and accessible in common to all; and therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens, while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest
had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear,
that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning disappears before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came subsequently to wither; but the Latins preserved their simplicity of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the Greeks. As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim so art and science are not merely the creations but also the destroyers of faith and, much as this process at once of development and of destruction swayed by necessity, by the same law of nature certain results have
thought,
is
;
it,
Foreign worships.
:28 RELIGION loox r
been reserved to the epoch of early simplicity-results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours to attain. The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes, which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self devotion, the power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such union. It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the Greeks ; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose, so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with their respective defects. The deepest and ultimate reason of the diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth come into contact with the East. No people on earth was great enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Gerrnanic soil. But if for this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from both.
Such was the nature and such the influence of the Roman religion in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly national development. Its national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from abroad; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on
can. xii RELIGION
229
individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state. An exchange of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must have been a matter of course; the trans plantation to Rome of gods and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable. Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we have already spoken (p. 215). Whether any conceptions of the gods were borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful: for the Lases, the older designation of the genii (from lumbas), and Minerva the goddess of memory (mem', marten/are), which it is customary to describe as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological grounds, indigenous to Latium. It is at any rate certain, and in keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman inter course, that the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention in Rome than any other of foreign origin. The Greek oracles furnished the earliestioccasion of its introduction. The language of the Roman gods was on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at the most to the making their will known by the method of casting lots, which appears in its origin Italian ,1 while from very ancient times-although not apparently until the impulse was received from the East-the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual utterances of prophecy. The Romans made efforts, even at an early period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of the sooth saying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from Campania. For the reading and inter pretation of the fortune~telling book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and pontifices, was insti tuted in early times, consisting of two men of lore (duovirz'
l 801rs from serere, to place in row. The rorles were probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts one in mind of the Runic characters.
23o
RELIGION BOOK I
. raorisfaa'undz'r), who were furnished at the expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek language. To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or with what rites it was to be performed. But Romans in search of advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself. Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already mentioned 180),
attested partly by the reception of the word thesaurus so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, Aperta, the "opener,” an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of which betrayed by its very barbarism. The Greek Herakles was naturalized in Italy as Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early period and under peculiar conception of his character, apparently in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any extraordinary increase of wealth; for which reason the general was wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to Hercules at the chief altar (are maxima) in the cattle-market. Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally, which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin god of good faith (deas fidius). The worship of Hercules was from an early date among the most widely diffused; he was, to use the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy, and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the cities and along the country roads. The gods also of the mariner, Castor and Poly deukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traflie Hermes-the Roman Mercurius-and the god of healing,
a
is
it is
(p.
can. xn RELIGION
a3!
Asklapios or Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public worship only began at a later period. The name of the festival of the “good goddess” (60na dea) damium, corresponding to the Greek Sdpwv or 811mm’, may likewise reach back as far as this epoch. It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that the old Lz'éerpater of the Romans was afterwards con~ ceived as “father deliverer” and identified with the wine god of the Greeks, the “releaser” (Lyaeas), and that the Roman god of the lower regions was called the “dispenser of riches ” (Pluto-—Dis pater), while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of the‘ initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman Proserpina, that “germinatrix. ” Even the goddess of the Romano
Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been copied from the federal goddess of the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Ephesian Artemis; at least her carved image in the Roman temple was formed after the Ephesian type (p. 142). It was in this way alone, through the myths of Apollo,
Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis, which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic religion exercised at this period remote and indirect influence on Italy. We clearly perceive from these facts that the intro duction of the Greek religion was especially due to com mercial intercourse, and that was traders and mariners who primarily brought the Greek gods to Italy.
These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may perhaps be specimen (p. 22), had virtually disappeared. In all its leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the people among whom we find it.
The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the little we know of rested upon quite the same fundamental
Relish"! gm“
it,
a
a it
is,
Religion of the Etruscans.
views as the Latin with local variations of colour and form.
That it was different from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine rites (p. 55); but that very fact affords an instructive illustration of the nature of the difference. Observation of the flight of birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods; but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs. Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity of comparing them. Both stocks in common regarded the gods as abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature; they differed in expression and ritual. It was natural that these diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those days; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic dis tinction, if any really existed.
But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have reached us are marked by a different spirit. Their prevailing characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing the changes on numbers, sooth saying, and that solemn enthroning of pure absurdity which
at all times finds its own circle of devotees. We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable —indeed it cannot well be doubted-that several of its features were only imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to us by tradition. But enough still remains to show that the mysticism and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential character of the Etruscan people.
With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and the Italian; but it is clear that
232
RELIGION 300K 1
cr-mr. xrr RELIGION
233
the most prominent among the Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners. Instead of a tranquil world of departed “good spirits” ruling peacefully in the realms beneath, such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the con ductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man with wings and a large hammer-a figure which after wards served in the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena. So fixed was the association of torture with this condition of the shades, that there was even provided a redemption from which after certain mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of the gods above. It remarkable that, in order to
their lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon, which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.
But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation of signs and portents. The Romans heard the voice of the gods in nature but their bird-seer under stood only the signs in their simplicity, and knew only in
whether the occurrence boded good or ill. Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were regarded by him as boding evil, and put stop to the business in hand, as when for example storm of thunder and lightning dispersed the comitia; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death as speedily as possible. But beyond the Tiber matters were carried much further. The
people
general
a
a
is
;
it,
RELIGION uoox r
Etruscan read off to the believer his future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language of the gods, the more startling the portent or
the more confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation of prodigies-all of them, and the science of lightning especially, devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the mind in pursuit of absurdities. A dwarf called Tages with the figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii—we might almost fancy that practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present in this figure a caricature of themselves —betrayed the secret of this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died. His disciples and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the lightning; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event; and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed, or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed: how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no small desire of pocketing fees. How deeply repugnant this jugglery was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome, no attempt was made to naturalize it ; during our present period the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with the Greek oracles.
The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the
234
profound
prodigy,
can. xn RELIGION
235
Roman, in so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly wanting among the Romans-a speculation veiled under religious forms. Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods (Dii inwluti), consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time, whose sections were the saecula. Respecting the intellectual value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however to have been from the very first character ized by a dull fatalism and an insipid play upon numbers
uncu
CHAPTER XIII AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND coMMsncl
AGRICULTURE and commerce are so intimately bound up with the constitution and the external history of states, that the former must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter. We shall here endeavour to supple ment the detached notices which we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and particularly of Roman economics.
It has been already observed (p. 24) that the transition from a pastoral to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians into the peninsula. Agriculture continued to be the main support of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans no less than of the Latins. There were no purely pastoral tribes in Italy during historical times, although of course the various races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation of the soil. The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture. In the case of Rome in particular -and it is only in its case that we can speak of agrarian relations with any sort of certainty-the Servian reform shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class
ljfi AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE 800! 1
cr-rAP. xrrr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
originally preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made permanently to maintain the collective body of
freeholders as the pith and marrow of the
When in the course of time a large portion of the landed
in Rome had passed into the hands of non burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently, by treating the members of the community without reference to their political position once for all according to their freeholding, and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders—a step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed by the concession of public rights. The whole policy of Roman war and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of the freehold system ; as the freeholder alone was of value in the state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold members. The vanquished com munity was either compelled to merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to this extremity, it was required, not to pay a war-contribution or a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, usually a third part, of its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms. Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans did; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance. That which is gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it is not so with the conquests made by the plough ; while the Romans lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making
property
community.
237
ceded Roman soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads. The strength of man and of
peace
System of ioint culti vatiou.
the state lies in their dominion over the soil ; the greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of the body which thus acquired so firm a hold.
We have already indicated (pp. 46, 85) that in the earliest times the arable land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce among the several house holds belonging to There exists indeed an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case of co-proprietors. 1 Even the tradi
tions of Roman law furnish the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the usufruct of the soil, and that was not till later that land came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special property. a Better evidence that such was the case afforded by the earliest designation of wealth as “ cattle-stock ” or “ slave-and-cattle stock” (petum'a, familia peouniaque), and of the separate possessions of the children of the household and of slaves as "small cattle” (peculium); also by the earliest form of acquiring property through laying hold of with the
The system which we meet with in the ease of the Germanic joint tillage, combining a partition of the land in property among the clansmen with its joint cultivation by the clan, can hardly ever have existed in Italy. Had each clansman been regarded in Italy, as among the Germans, in the light of proprietor of a particular spot in each portion of the collective domain that was marked oil‘ for tillage. the separate husbandry of later times would probably have set out from a minute subdivision of hides. But the very opposite was the case; the individual names of the Roman hides (fundus Carnelianur) show clearly that the Roman proprietor owned from the beginning possession not broken up but united.
Cicero (dc Rep. ii. 9, 14, comp. Plutarch, Rm. 15) states: an (in the time of Romulus) era! res in pzzore cl lomrrml prmzrrzbnibm, ex qua pecuniori at 10mphf“ uocabanlur-(Numa) primum agror, quas bella Romulur ceferar, divirit viritim ciuibur. In like manner Dionysius represents Romulus as dividing the land into thirty curial districts, and Numa as establishing boundary-stones and introducing the festival of the Terminnlia 7. ii. 74; and thence Plutarch, Nanna, r6).
238
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK 1
(i.
,
it
Q.
’1
T
a
is
it
it.
um. xnr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
hand (mana'jmtio), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable articles (p. 195) ; and above all by the earliest measure of “land of one’s own” (heredium, from berm lord), consisting of two jugera (about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to garden-ground, and not to the hide. 1 When and how the distribution of the arable
1 Since this assertion still continues to be disputed, we shall let the numbers speak for themselvs. The Roman writers on agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on an average five modii of wheat as suflicient to sow ajugemm, and the produce as fivefold. The produce of a heredium accordingly (even when, without taking into view the space occupied by the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as entirely arable land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or deducting the seed forty, modii. For an adult hard-working slave Cato 56) reckons fifty-one modii of wheat as the annual consump tion. These data enable any one to answer for himself the question whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the produce of a heredium. The attempted proof to the contrary based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and that the assumption of a. fivefold return one too low for this earlier epoch both assumptions are probably correct, but for both there a limit. Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs, vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially to be taken into account for the older period; but the older Roman pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always notoriously grain. We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness of the earlier cultivation obtain a. very considerable increase, especially of the gross produce-and beyond doubt the farmers of this period drew larger produce from their lands than the great landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained (p. 44); but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates, because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital. The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be the utmost limit, and yet far from suflicing. In no case can the enormous deficit, which left even according to those estimates between the produce of the beredium and the requirements of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation. In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural economics, according to which among a population chiefly subsisting on vegetables the produce of a piece of land of an acre and a quarter proves sufficient on an average for the subsistence of family.
It indeed asserted that instances occur even in historical times of colonies founded with allotments of two jugera; but the only instance of
the kind (Liv. iv. 47) that of the colony of Labici in the year 336-an 418. instance, which will certainly not be reckoned (by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the class of traditions that are trust worthy in their historical details, and which beset by other very serious
:39
is
is
is
is
is
a
it
it is
a
;
is
is
(c.
240
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK 1
land took place, can no longer be ascertained. This much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute for whereas the Servian constitution pre. supposes the distribution of the land. It evident from the same constitution that the great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms, which provided work and subsistence for family and admitted of the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of the plough. The ordinary extent of such Roman full hide has not been ascertained with precision, but can
scarcely, as has already been shown 122), be estimated at less than twenty jugera acres nearly).
Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals. The usual grain was spelt (far);1 but
difiiculties (see book ch. 5, note). no doubt true that in the non colonial assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (adrzlgnata'o m'riiana) sometimes only a few jugera were granted (as Lg. Liv. viii. II,
In these cases however was the intention not to create new farms with the allotments, but rather, as rule, to add to the existing farms new parcels from the conquered lands (comp. C. L. p. 88). At any rate. any supposition better than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as were in miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman house hold. The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than their historiographers; they themselves conceived that they could not subsist even on allotments of seven jugera or produce of one hundred and forty modii.
Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two jugera of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro (dc 19. 19. 44. reckons the seed requisite for the jugerum at five modii of wheat but ten modii of spelt, and estimates the produce as corresponding to this, whence
inferred that the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, not double, at least considerably higher than that of wheat. But the converse more correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped simply to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H. N. xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the fruit by threshing. For the same reason spelt at the present day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks. According to Wiirtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average produce of the Wflrtemberg Morgen reckoned in the case of wheat (with sowing of to schefiel) at . rc/ufil of the medium weight of 275 lbs. (=825 lbs. ) in the case of spelt (with sowing of to sc/zefel) at last . rrlzqfil of the medium
Culture of grain.
2! ).
i 1%
ii.
it,
7
a
i.
it
3 is1it
is a
a
is
;i 1}
a
is
is a
2% It
is is
I)
if
i.
it a
(r
a
is I.
clumxm AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
different kinds of pulse, roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated.
That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the Culture oi first time into Italy by Greek settlers (p. 24), is shown by the mm‘ the list of the festivals of the Roman community which
reaches back to a time preceding the Greeks, and which
presents three wine~festivals to be celebrated in honour of
“father Jovis,” not in honour of the wine-god of more
recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the
“ father deliverer. ” The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as levying a wine-tax
from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various versions of
the widely-spread Italian story which afi'irms that the Celts
were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their
coming to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the grape and of wine, are indications of the
pride of the Latins in their glorious vine, the envy of all
their neighbours. A careful system of vine-husbandry was
early and generally inculcated by the Latin priests. In
Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme priest
of the community, the flamen of Jupiter, had granted
for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new
weight of 150 lbs. (=1o5o lbs. ), which are reduced by shelling to about
Thus spelt compared with wheat yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps triple the crop, but-by specific weight-before the shelling not much above, after shelling (as " kernel”) less than, the half. It was not by mistake, as has been asserted, but because it was fitting in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was based on wheat; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt. it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than rises. Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed to fewer risks than wheat; but the latter yields on the whole, especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the mailer of wheat stands at I1 g‘ulden 3 krsz, the malter of spelt at 4 g‘ulden 3o krz. ), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was undeniably a progress.
VOL. I 16
permission
4 rcbefiél.
241
Culture of the olive.
wine, until the priest had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks. The early prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes ; just as, to introduce the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the Offering of grain undried.
The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and. certainly was first brought to Italy by the Greeks. 1 The olive is said to have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean towards the close of the second century of the city; and this view accords with the fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy in the Roman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the vine. The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans is shown by the vine and the olive-tree which were planted in the middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake.
The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was probably a native of Italy. The legend of the origin of Rome wove its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which stood near to and in the Roman Forum!
It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed generally the labours of husbandry: it is not probable that slaves or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of the ordinary farm. The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow; horses, asses, and
1 Oleum and oli'ua are derived from Qatar, {Mum and amurca (oil
lees) from djtépyn.
‘ But there is no proper authority for the statement that the fig-tree
The fig.
Manage ment of the farm.
242
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK 1
‘94. which stood in front of the temple of Saturn was cut down in the year 260 (Plin. H. 1V. xv. 18, 77); the date CCLX. is wanting in all good manuscripts, and has been interpolated, probably with reference to Liv. 2:.
ii.
CHAP- xrrr AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
mules served as beasts of burden. The rearing of cattle for the sake of meat or of milk did not exist at all as a distinct branch of husbandry, or was prosecuted only to a very limited extent, at least on the land which remained the property of the clan; but, in addition to the smaller cattle which were driven out together to the common pasture, swine and poultry, particularly geese, were kept at the farm-yard. As a general rule, there was no end of ploughing and re-ploughing: a field was reckoned im perfectly tilled, in which the furrows were not drawn so close that harrowing could be dispensed with, but the management was more earnest than intelligent, and no improvement took place in the defective plough or in the imperfect processes of reaping and of threshing. This result is probably attributable rather to the scanty develop ment of rational mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers to use and wont; for mere kindly attach ment to the system of tillage transmitted with the patri monial soil was far from influencing the practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows, may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently developed-Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion of the theory of agriculture. Welcome rest followed diligent and judicious labour; and here too religion asserted her right to soothe the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and for freer human movement and intercourse. Every eighth day (nonae), and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went to town to buy and sell and transact his
other business. But rest from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion of the winter sowing (firz'ae sementivae): during these set times the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer
243
244
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK 1
only, but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.
Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was cultivated in the earliest times. The next heirs had no protection against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he were a lunatic 194). Women moreover were in substance divested of their personal right of disposal, and, they married, member of the same clan was ordinarily assigned
as husband, in order to retain the estate within the clan. The law sought to check the overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the creditor, partly, in the case of simple loan, by the rigour of the proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy; the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its object but very imperfectly. No restric tion was imposed law on the free divisibility of property.
Desirable as might be that co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage, even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving such partner ship open at any time to any partner; was good that brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do so was foreign to the liberal spirit of Roman law. The Servian constitution moreover shows that even in the regal period of Rome there were not
wanting cottagers and garden-proprietors, with whom the mattock
took the place of the plough. was left to custom and the sound sense of the population to prevent excessive subdivision of the soil; and that their confidence in this respect was not misplaced and the landed estates ordinarily remained entire, proved by the universal Roman custom
of designating them by permanent individual names.
The
is
it
by
It
it
a
a
a
(p.
if
can. run AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
community exercised only an indirect influence in the matter by the sending forth of colonies, which regularly led to the establishment of a. number of new full hides, and frequently doubtless also to the suppression of a number of cottage holdings, the small landholders being sent forth as colonists.
It is far more diflicult to perceive how matters stood with landed property on a larger scale. The fact that such larger properties existed to no inconsiderable extent, cannot be doubted from the early development of the equites, and may be easily explained partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself could not but call into existence a class of larger landowners in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of the persons belonging to the several clans and participating in the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile capital to Rome. But farming on a large scale in the proper sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed during this period. On the contrary, to this period we must refer the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable to farm in person, or even his whole estate, into little parcels among his de pendents to be cultivated by them, as is the general practice in Italy at the present day. The recipient might be the house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his position was that which subsequently went by the name of “occupancy on sufferance ” (prmzrium). The recipient retained his occupancy during the pleasure of the granter, and had no legal means of protecting himself in possession against him; on the contrary, the granter could eject him at any time when he pleased. The relation did not
245
Landed proprie tOl‘S.
246
AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE BOOK 1
necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor ; but such a payment beyond doubt frequently took place and may, as a rule, have consisted in the delivery of a portion of the produce. The relation in this case approximated to the lease of subsequent times, but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of a fixed term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character on either side and the legal protection of the claim for rent depending entirely on the lessor’s right of ejection. It is plain that it was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom consecrated by religion ; and this was not wanting. The institution of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond doubt rested fundamentally on this assigna tion of the profits of the soil. Nor was the introduction of such an assignation dependent on the abolition of the system of common tillage ; for, just as after this abolition the indi
vidual, so previous to it the clan might grant to depend ents a joint use of its lands; and beyond doubt with this very state of things was connected the fact that the Roman clientship was not personal, but that from the outset the client along with his clan entrusted himself for protection and fealty to the patron and his clan. This earliest form of Roman landholding serves to explain how there sprang from the great landlords in Rome a landed, and not an urban, nobility. As the pernicious institution of middlemen re mained foreign to the Romans, the Roman landlord found himself not much less chained to his land than was the tenant and the farmer; he inspected and took part in every thing himself, and the wealthy Roman esteemed it his highest praise to be reckoned a good landlord. His house was in the country; in the city he had only a lodging for the purpose of attending to his business there, and perhaps
of breathing the purer air that prevailed there during the
CHAP- XIII AGRICULTURE, TRADE, AND COMMERCE
hot season. Above all, however, these arrangements fur nished a moral basis for the relation between the upper class and the common people, and so materially lessened its dangers. The free tenants-on-sufferance, sprung from families of decayed farmers, dependents, and freedmen, formed the great bulk of the proletariate (p. r 13), and were not much more dependent on the landlord than the petty leaseholder inevitably is with reference to the great pro prietor. The slaves tilling the fields for a master were beyond doubt far less numerous than the free tenants. In all cases where an immigrant nation has not at once reduced to slavery a population en masse, slaves seem to have existed at first only to a very limited amount, and consequently free labourers seem to have played a very different part in the state from that in which they subse quently appear. In Greece “day-labourers” (051:9) in various instances during the earlier period occupy the place of the slaves of a later age, and in some communities, among the Locrians for instance, there was no slavery down to historical times. Even the slave, moreover, was ordinarily of Italian descent; the Volscian, Sabine, or Etruscan war-captive must have stood in a different re lation towards his master from the Syrian and the Celt of later times.