The Religious Experience of the Roman People, from the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus

The whole

to whose suggestions I am greatly indebted. has been read through by my old pupil Mr. Hugh Parr, now of Clifton College, to whom my best thanks are due for his timely discovery of many misprints and awkward expressions. The loyalty and goodwill of my old Oxford pupils never seem to fail me.

W. W. F.

KINGHAM, Oxon,

3rd March 1911.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTORY

Accounts of the Roman religion in recent standard works; a hard

and highly formalised system. Its interest lies partly in this

fact. How did it come to be so? This the main question of

the first epoch of Roman religious experience. Roman religion

and Roman law compared. Roman religion a technical subject.

What we mean by religion. A useful definition applied to the

plan of Lectures I.-X.; including (1) survivals of primitive or

quasi-magical religion; (2) the religion of the agricultural family;

(3) that of the City-state, in its simplest form, and in its first

period of expansion. Difficulties of the subject; present position

of knowledge and criticism. Help obtainable from (1) archae-

ology, (2) anthropology

PAGE

1-23

LECTURE II

ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: SURVIVALS

Survivals at Rome of previous eras of quasi-religious experience.

Totemism not discernible. Taboo, and the means adopted of

escaping from it; both survived at Rome into an age of real

religion. Examples: impurity (or holiness) of new-born infants;

of a corpse; of women in certain worships; of strangers; of

criminals. Almost complete absence of blood-taboo. Iron.

Strange taboos on the priest of Jupiter and his wife. Holy or

tabooed places; holy or tabooed days; the word religiosus as

applied to both of these

24-46

LECTURE III.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC

Magic; distinction between magic and religion. Religious authorities

seek to exclude magic, and did so at Rome. Few survivals of

magic in the State religion. The aquaelicium. Vestals and

runaway slaves. The magical whipping at the Lupercalia. The

throwing of puppets from the pons sublicius. Magical processes

surviving in religious ritual with their meaning lost. Private

magic: excantatio in the XII. Tables; other spells or carmina.

Amulets: the bulla; oscilla

PAGE

47-67

LECTURE IV

THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY

Continuity of the religion of the Latin agricultural family. What the

family was; its relation to the gens. The familia as settled on

the land, an economic unit, embodied in a pagus. The house as

the religious centre of the familia; its holy places. Vesta,

Penates, Genius, and the spirit of the doorway. The Lar

familiaris on the land. Festival of the Lar belongs to the

religion of the pagus: other festivals of the pagus. Religio

terminorum. Religion of the household: marriage, childbirth,

burial and cult of the dead

68-91

LECTURE V

THE CALENDAR OF NUMA

Beginnings of the City-state: the oppidum. The earliest historical
Rome, the city of the four regions; to this belongs the surviving
religious calendar. This calendar described; the basis of our
knowledge of early Roman religion. It expresses a life agricul-
tural, political, and military. Days of gods distinguished from
days of man. Agricultural life the real basis of the calendar;
gradual effacement of it. Results of a fixed routine in calendar;
discipline, religious confidence. Exclusion from it of the barbar-
ous and grotesque. Decency and order under an organising
priestly authority