• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
ROMAN PEOPLE
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THEAGE OF AUGUSTUS
THE GIFFORD LECTURES FOR 1909-10DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITYBY
W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
FELLOW AND LATE SUB-RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORDHON. D.LITT. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTERAUTHOR OF 'THE ROMAN FESTIVALS OF THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC,' ETC.
"Sanctos ausus recludere fontes"MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1911TO
PROFESSOR W.R. HARDIE
ANDMY MANY OTHER KIND FRIENDS AND FRIENDLY HEARERSIN EDINBURGH
vii
PREFACE
Lord Gifford in founding his lectureship directed that the lectures should be public and popular,
i.e.
notrestricted to members of a University. Accordingly in lecturing I endeavoured to make myself intelligible to ageneral audience by avoiding much technical discussion and controversial matter, and by keeping to the planof describing in outline the development and decay of the religion of the Roman City-state. And on the wholeI have thought it better to keep to this principle in publishing the lectures; they are printed for the most partmuch as they were delivered, and without footnotes, but at the end of each lecture students of the subject willfind the notes referred to by the numbers in the text, containing such further information or discussion as hasseemed desirable. My model in this method has been the admirable lectures of Prof. Cumont on "les ReligionsOrientales dans le Paganisme Romain."ROMAN PEOPLE1
 
I wish to make two remarks about the subject-matter of the lectures. First, the idea running through them isthat the primitive religious (or magico-religious) instinct, which was the germ of the religion of the historicalRomans, was gradually atrophied by over-elaboration of ritual, but showed itself again in strange forms fromthe period of the Punic wars onwards. For this religious instinct I have used the Latin word
religio
, as Ihaveviii explained in the
Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions
, vol. ii.p. 169 foll. I am, however, well aware that some scholars take a different view of the original meaning of thisfamous word, which has been much discussed since I formed my plan of lecturing. But I do not think thatthose who differ from me on this point will find that my general argument is seriously affected one way oranother by my use of the word.Secondly, while I have been at work on the lectures, the idea seems to have been slowly gaining ground thatthe patrician religion of the early City-state, which became so highly formalised, so clean and austere, andeventually so political, was really the religion of an invading race, like that of the Achaeans in Greece,engrafted on the religion of a primitive and less civilised population. I have not definitely adopted this idea;but I am inclined to think that a good deal of what I have said in the earlier lectures may be found to supportit. Once only, in Lecture XVII., I have used it myself to support a hypothesis there advanced.I have retained the familiar English spelling of certain divine names,
e.g.
Jupiter (instead of Iuppiter), as lessstartling to British readers.I wish to express my very deep obligations to the works of Prof. Wissowa and Dr. J. G. Frazer, and also to Mr.R. R. Marett, who gave me useful personal help in my second and third lectures. From Prof. Wissowa and Dr.Frazer I have had the misfortune to differ on one or two points; but "difference of opinion is the salt of life,"as a great scholar said to me not long ago. In reading the proofs I have had much kind and valuable help frommy Oxford friends Mr. Cyril Bailey and Mr. A. S. L. Farquharson, who have read certain parts of the work,andix to whose suggestions I am greatly indebted. The whole 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 manymisprints 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
.
x-xi
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
pageAccounts of the Roman religion in recent standard works; a hard and highly formalised system. Itsinterest 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 technicalsubject. 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;1-23The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Religious Experience of the Roman People, by W. Warde Fowler.PREFACE2
 
present position of knowledge and criticism. Help obtainable from (1) archaeology, (2) anthropology . ..
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 toboth of these24-46xii
LECTURE III
ON THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION: MAGIC
Magic; distinction between magic and religion. Religious authorities seek to exclude magic, and did soat 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
. Magicalprocesses surviving in religious ritual with their meaning lost. Private magic:
excantatio
in the XII.Tables; other spells or
carmina
. Amulets: the
bulla
;
oscilla
47-67
LECTURE IV
THE RELIGION OF THE FAMILY
Continuity of the religion of the Latin agricultural family. What the family was; its relation to the
gens
. The
familia
as settled on the land, an economic unit, embodied in a
pagus
. The house as thereligious 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 festivalsof the
pagus
.
Religio terminorum.
Religion of the household: marriage, childbirth, burial and cult of the dead68-91
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 knowledgeof early Roman religion. It expresses a life agricultural, political, and military. Days of godsdistinguished 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 thebarbarous and grotesque. Decency and order under an organising priestly authority92-113xiiiThe Project Gutenberg eBook of The Religious Experience of the Roman People, by W. Warde Fowler.INTRODUCTORY3
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...