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قراءة كتاب The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
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The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
theme of the Aeneid; Rome's mission in the world, and the pietas needed to carry it out. Development of the character of Aeneas; his pietas imperfect in the first six books, perfected in the last six, resulting in a balance between the ideas of the Individual and the State. Illustration of this from the poem. Importance of Book vi., which describes the ordeal destined to perfect the pietas of the hero. The sense of Duty never afterwards deserts him; his pietas enlarged in a religious sense
LECTURE XIX
THE AUGUSTAN REVIVAL
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Connection of Augustus and Virgil. Augustus aims at re-establishing the national pietas, and securing the pax deorum by means of the ius divinum. How this formed part of his political plans. Temple restoration and its practical result. Revival of the ancient ritual; illustrated from the records of the Arval Brethren. The new element in it; Caesar-worship; but Augustus was content with the honour of re-establishing the pax deorum. Celebration of this in the Ludi saeculares, 17 B.C. Our detailed knowledge of this festival; meaning of saeculum; description of the ludi, and illustration of their meaning from the Carmen saeculare of Horace. Discussion of the performance of this hymn by the choirs of boys and girls |
428-451 |
LECTURE XX
CONCLUSION
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Religious ingredients in Roman soil likely to be utilised by Christianity. The Stoic ingredient; revelation of the Universal, and ennobling of Individual. The contribution of Mysticism; preparation for Christian eschatology. The contribution of Virgil; sympathy and sense of Duty. The contribution of Roman religion proper: (1) sane and orderly character of ritual, (2) practical character of Latin Christianity visible in early Christian writings, (3) a religious vocabulary, e.g. religio, pietas, sanctus, sacramentum. But all this is but a slight contribution; essential difference between Christianity and all that preceded it in Italy; illustration from the language of St. Paul |
452-472 |
APPENDIX
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I. |
On the Use of Huts or Booths in Religious Ritual |
473 |
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II. |
Prof. Deubner's Theory of the Lupercalia |
478 |
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III. |
The Pairs of Deities in Gellius |
481 |
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IV. |
The Early Usage of the Words Ius and Fas |
486 |
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V. |
The Worship of Sacred Utensils |
489 |
| INDEX | 491 |
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
I was invited to prepare these lectures, on Lord Gifford's foundation, as one who has made a special study of the religious ideas and practice of the Roman people. So far as I know, the subject has not been touched upon as yet by any Gifford lecturer. We are in these days interested in every form of religion, from the most rudimentary to the most highly developed; from the ideas of the aborigines of Australia, which have now become the common property of anthropologists, to the ethical and spiritual religions of civilised man. Yet it is remarkable how few students of the history of religion, apart from one or two specialists, have been able to find anything instructive in the religion of the Romans—of the Romans, I mean, as distinguished from that vast collection of races and nationalities which eventually came to be called by the name of Rome. At the Congress for the History of Religions held at Oxford in 1908, out of scores of papers read and offered, not more than one or two even touched on the early religious ideas of the most practical and powerful people that the world has ever known.
This is due, in part at least, to the fact that just when Roman history begins to be of absorbing interest, and fairly well substantiated by evidence, the Roman religion, as religion, has already begun to lose its vitality, its purity, its efficacy. It has become overlaid with foreign rites and ideas, and it has also become a religious monopoly of the State; of which the essential characteristic, as Mommsen has well put it, and as we shall see later on, was "the conscious retention of the principles of the popular belief, which were recognised as irrational, for reasons of outward convenience."1 It was not unlike the religion of the Jews in the period immediately before the Captivity, and it was never to profit by the refining and chastening influence of such lengthy suffering. In this later condition it has not been attractive to students of religious history; and to penetrate farther back into the real religious ideas of the genuine Roman people is a task very far from easy, of which indeed the difficulties only seem to increase as we become more familiar with it.
It must be remarked, too, that as a consequence of this unattractiveness, the accounts given in standard works of the general features of this religion are rather chilling and repellent. More than fifty years ago, in the