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ROMAN PEOPLE
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
AGE OF AUGUSTUS
THE GIFFORD LECTURES FOR 1909-10
DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
BY
W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
FELLOW AND LATE SUB-RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD
HON. D.LITT. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMAN FESTIVALS OF THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC,' ETC.
"Sanctos ausus recludere fontes"

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1911

TO
PROFESSOR W.R. HARDIE

AND
MY MANY OTHER KIND FRIENDS AND FRIENDLY HEARERS
IN EDINBURGH

vii
PREFACE

Lord Gifford in founding his lectureship directed that the lectures should be public and popular,i.e. not
restricted to members of a University. Accordingly in lecturing I endeavoured to make myself intelligible to a
general audience by avoiding much technical discussion and controversial matter, and by keeping to the plan
of describing in outline the development and decay of the religion of the Roman City-state. And on the whole
I have thought it better to keep to this principle in publishing the lectures; they are printed for the most part
much as they were delivered, and without footnotes, but at the end of each lecture students of the subject will
find the notes referred to by the numbers in the text, containing such further information or discussion as has
seemed desirable. My model in this method has been the admirable lectures of Prof. Cumont on "les Religions
Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain."

ROMAN PEOPLE
1

I wish to make two remarks about the subject-matter of the lectures. First, the idea running through them is
that the primitive religious (or magico-religious) instinct, which was the germ of the religion of the historical
Romans, was gradually atrophied by over-elaboration of ritual, but showed itself again in strange forms from
the period of the Punic wars onwards. For this religious instinct I have used the Latin wordreligio, as I
haveviii 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 this
famous word, which has been much discussed since I formed my plan of lecturing. But I do not think that
those who differ from me on this point will find that my general argument is seriously affected one way or
another 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 that
the patrician religion of the early City-state, which became so highly formalised, so clean and austere, and
eventually 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 support
it. 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 less
startling 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 from
my 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 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.
x-xi
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTORY
page

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;

1-23
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Religious Experience of the Roman People, by W. Warde Fowler.
PREFACE
2
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 wordreligiosus as applied to
both of these

24-46
xii
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. Theaquaelicium. 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 orcarmina. Amulets: thebulla;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 the

religious centre of thefamilia; 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 thepagus: other festivals of thepagus. 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: theoppidum. 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 agricultural, 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
barbarous and grotesque. Decency and order under an organising priestly authority

92-113
xiii
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Religious Experience of the Roman People, by W. Warde Fowler.
INTRODUCTORY
3
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