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The Religious Experience of the Roman People The Religious Experience of the Roman People, from the Earliest Times to the Age of . The Gifford Lectures for 1909–10 delivered in Edinburgh University by W. Warde Fowler, M.A. Pp. xviii + 504. London Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1911. Price 12s. net.

Cyril Bailey

The Classical Review / Volume 25 / Issue 07 / November 1911, pp 223 - 226 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00047302, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00047302

How to cite this article: Cyril Bailey (1911). The Classical Review, 25, pp 223-226 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00047302

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 14 May 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 223 bizarre, meme dans un zeugma.' Is this anaphora and retain the superfluous anything but caprice ? There is no que. His remark hits Vergil, 1. c, hard; reason for pausing after missum until the also Propertius II. 3. 11 sq.' ut Maeotica end of the next line is reached and, if nix, minio si certet Hibero, | utque rosae there were, the same objection might be puro lacte natant folia'; not to say brought against 3. 10.37 'stant patroni, Tibullus himself II. 3. 51 ' ut mea fortiter | causam tuentes innocentis luxuria Nemesis fluat utque per urbem feminae.' And as for the ' concurrent I incedat' e.q. s. (ut final). marks ' of corruption, what complement I conclude with Ovid, Met. 8. 148 missum requires it is impossible to see. sqq. (of Scylla daughter of Minos) ' ilia The word means 'let go' or ' let fall/ metu puppim dimisit, et aura cadentem a complete sense in itself, and the I sustinuisse leuis, ne tangeret aequora, proper meaning of the word, as I will ,uisa est. | pluma fuit. plumis in auem suppose M. Havet knows. And what mutata uocatur | ciris.' ' Lire spuma ruit conceivable fault is there in the ' sonus (1904, p. 48). La deformation de spuma uadi' when the log fell into it ? a entraine le changement de ruit en In Tibullus 1. 6. 54 'labentur opes, ut un verbe banale.' This double change vulnere nostro [ sanguis ut hie uentis obliterates a most Ovidian touch; you diripiturque cinis ' M. Havet would read might have thought that it was a it, finding in the tradition two marks of breeze that prevented Scylla from fall- corruption. 1. Hie is bad, 'la cendre ing into the sea, but it was plumage. en question n'e'tant pas la.' How does Cf. Met. 2. 582 sq. ' reicere ex umeris he know ? The sanguis was, and the uestem molibar; at ilia | pluma erat.' cursing would be much more vivid if Plumis, it is true, is not satisfactory, the cinis was too. Verg. Eel. 8. 80 and plumas in auis (cf. Met. 2. 535) or ' limus ut hie durescit et haec ut cera uultus (Met. 1. 611, 7. 270, and for the liquescit.' 2. ' Que is superfluous, the ace. Met. 9. 82) in auem may be anaphora in ut sufficing to join the suggested. two comparisons.' It will be observed J. P. POSTGATE. that M. Havet proposes to remove the Liverpool.

THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE. The Religious Experience of the Roman people. Mr. Fowler's qualification for People, from the Earliest Times to the this task is in one respect obvious: no Age of Augustus. The Gifford Lectures English scholar (and very few elsewhere) for 1909-10 delivered in Edinburgh is better acquainted with the evidence, University by W. WARDE FOWLER, literary, epigraphical, and archaeological M.A. Pp. xviii + 504. London : on which the study must be based, or Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1911. with the mass of modern writing which Price 12s. net. has grown up around it. But he possesses also the rarer and higher THE publication of Mr. Warde Fowler's qualification of a genuine and pene- Gifford Lectures is an occasion of con- trating sympathy: for him the evidence siderable importance. Not only is this is not merely an antiquarian record of the first comprehensive study in English dead practices and formulae, but the of the development of Roman religion— living effort of a growing people to Dr. J. B. Carter's Religion of Numa understand the workings of the Power was a series of brilliant essays rather manifest in the world and to put them- than a connected history—but, what is selves in right relation to it. In other more important, it stands by itself as words, Mr. Fowler knows himself to be an attempt to get behind cult and studying a living religion and can put custom to the ideas and feelings which himself in the place of those to whom prompted them, and were in fact the it was real and vital. religious experience of the Roman But the adoption of this sympathetic 224 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW attitude involves in the case of Roman did in their stereotyped form approach religion more than ordinary difficulties ; to an almost commercial pattern, yet for its very possibility has become a even in them the notion of the human matter of controversy. The tendency conditional promise is much more of modern criticism has been to regard prominent than that of a divine obliga- the genuine religion of as tion. In other forms of prayer, such as a mass of stereotyped formalism, based that of the lustratio, the latter idea is on a cold and calculating attitude to- completely absent : the worshipper wards ' the powers,' and uninspired by makes his offering and presents his any really religious emotion. This con- prayer in the hope indeed of fulfilment, clusion is no doubt very largely due to but with no sense of an exercise of con- the nature of the extant evidence: straint over the Powers. Secondly, in though, as De Marchi has shown, a section of peculiar interest (pp. 185- something can be done by careful 191), Mr. Fowler shows that there was research to piece together details of the indeed an interacting relation between private cults, in which a much more worshipper and in the ritual of genuine spirit of religious feeling sur- sacrifice, but that the underlying notion vived, the mass of our evidence is con- is one of mutual help rather than mutual cerned with the organised state-cult, obligation. The key to the right under- whose very creation implied, as Mr. standing of Roman ritual is the very Fowler has shown, the shifting of the primitive notion, expressed in the re- burden of responsibility from the indi- current formula, made esto, that the vidual—or rather from the household— worshipper by his sacrifice communi- to state officials, and the consequent cates new strength to the deity, and decay of vital religious experience. prays that that strength may be used Almost more is it due to the chance for his benefit. The demonstration of that the earliest modern critics of this idea is in itself a great advance Roman religion—especially Mommsen in the sympathetic interpretation of —approached it from the legal point of Roman ritual: its acceptance might view, and concentrating their attention mark a real change in critical attitude. on the ius divinum and the ' contract- It represents in fact just what Mr. notion ' hardly paused to inquire what Fowler wishes to establish in the lay behind them. Against these diffi- narrower as well as the wider sense—a culties Mr. Fowler has had, in the new understanding of the word religio earlier part of his book, to contend con- (pp. 21, 37, etc.). tinuously, and though the ease of his Not less sane, but perhaps more subtly style and the saneness of his judgment sympathetic, is Mr. Fowler's treatment may often disguise the extent of this of more recent criticism of Roman struggle, no student of the subject can religion. This has been made chiefly read these lectures without perceiving from the point of view of anthropology: how much sifting of accepted opinions writers eager to find support for general and re-consideration of authoritative theories of primitive belief and custom judgments underlie the apparent facility have discovered in Roman ritual traces of his conclusions. Typical of his of ' taboo,' magic, the magician-king, work on these lines are the Lectures the dominating worship of the oak, and on Ritual (viii. and ix.). There the ac- so on. Mr. Fowler does not deny the cepted theory was the legal conception existence of such traces, fossilised here of the contrast: the worshipper with and there in rites and customs, but on scrupulous exactness presented the gods many points he checks the excessive with their due, and they in their zeal of these ' discoverers' (e.g. pp. 51, turn were under an obligation to make 141 n. 1), and above all he claims for a return in the shape of temporal bless- the Roman belief, even in its earliest ings and advantages. Mr. Fowler stage of the animistic worship of the meets this theory in two ways: he numina, the dignity of a true religion, shows, in the first place, that it was the recognition by man of superior largely based on the examination of the powers on whom he is himself depen- , and that although the vota publica dent, as opposed to a claim to constrain THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 225 • such powers by his own magic authority. the necessarily tentative exposition (xiii.) • To one recent theory Mr. Fowler now of the underlying intention of the art of I inclines, the idea that we have enshrined augury (shall we not ultimately have to in Roman cult traces of the superposi- work back to a period when the bird and tion of one form of religion on another, the lightning were not mere signals, but possibly that of the worship of a con- were themselves divine ?). The strange quering race on the lower beliefs of less revival of religio in the Hannibalic War, civilised aborigines. This notion, which with its resulting innovations, is admir- has been so prominent of late years in ably dealt with; there is a most pene- the study of Greek religion, may be trating chapter on Epicurism and destined to bear considerable fruit in Stoicism (xvi.), followed by two illumi- the explanation of Roman cults as well: nating lectures on Virgil and Augustus' Mr. Fowler has shown how it might be 'attempted revival, in which the contrast, used in his own most illuminating com- not always clearly enough realised, be- parison of the two attitudes towards tween the motives and intentions of the the dead attested in the Lemuria and poet and the statesman is effectively the Parentalia (pp. 393-395), and it is brought out. Finally, we have a sugges- foreshadowed again in Dr. Deubner's tive but perhaps inevitably disappointing theory of the Lupercalia (Appendix II. chapter on the contributions of the old pp. 478-480). In these earlier lectures Roman religion towards the building up the author has in this way done much of Christianity. Throughout the central to clear the ground for future study by idea of religious experience is kept in setting in their true proportion the view and treated in immediate relation anthropological contributions to the to the history of the people. interpretation of Roman religion, and It is not easy in a work whose main suggesting the lines on which we may theme carries so much conviction, when hope to arrive at an understanding of it is written, too, with the caution and what the multiform cult of the early accuracy which we have all learnt to Roman meant to the worshipper and expect from its author, to find much how far it was an influence in his life. material for adverse criticism except in In the second half of his lectures minutiae; but there are perhaps certain Mr. Fowler is on less controversial things one misses in these lectures to ground, but his work is none the less which attention may be called. Would important and interesting. As is in- it not, for instance, have been worth evitable from his main theory, he is while, in spite of the obscurity of the bound to begin tracing decay at a much subject and the scantiness of evidence, earlier period than that in which it has to have made some reference to the been seen by most previous critics: if worship of the gentes as a possible link the reality of the Roman religion lay in between the household and the state ? the simple worship of the agricultural De Marchi has shown that there is household, then the state-organisation, material enough for some general con- which the Roman regarded with pride clusions. Or, again, in the treatment of as the great religious work of the nation, the Vlth Aeneid (c. xviii. pp. 420 ff.), the was in itself the first step in degenera- whole purpose of the lectures would tion, for its formalities excluded true have been well served by an ampler religious experience. Mr. Fowler traces demonstration of the way in which Virgil the further process of decay due to the has harmonised so many of the ideas of introduction of the di , cults earlier religion and philosophy. In the without religious significance (p. 236), account of Epicurism, too (xvi.), Mr. and the materialisation of conceptions Fowler has hardly allowed enough for of the divine under the influence of the really religious conception of the Greek anthropomorphism (c. xi.). Of gods as the realised ideal of Epicurean special interest are the lectures on that morality: if modern critics are right difficult subject, the work of the pontifices in supposing that Lucretius intended (xii.),—though here one would have liked to conclude his poem with a fuller a rather more detailed treatment of the account of the gods, this would have vexed question of the —and been clear: but there is evidence enough

NO. CCXXI. VOL. XXV. 226 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW even without it. These however are 'married pairs' (pp. 154 ff). For such small blemishes, and on the other hand details as these, no less than for its main one might quote many incidental sug- attitude of sympathetic insight, Mr. gestions which throw light on dark Fowler's book is likely to remain for places, such, for instance, as the theory long not merely the most attractive of in his double character of account of the Roman religion for the airorpoiraio^ in peace and war (p. 134), general reader, but a storehouse of sug- or the explanation of the mysterious gestive material for the specialist and Moles Martis and Virites Quirini, etc., in the student. opposition to Dr. Frazer's theory of the CYRIL BAILEY.

INFLUENCE OF WEALTH IN IMPERIAL ROME. Davis (W. S.), The Influence of Wealth basis of the life of the period and the in Imperial Rome. New York: the effects of wealth on politics and society. Macmillan Co., 1910. 8"xs£". Pp. These are matters with which every xi + 340. Cloth, 8/6 net. serious student of Roman life must be to some extent familiar, and therefore PROFESSOR STEARNS DAVIS, who is the they cannot possibly be omitted in works author of historical novels, addresses devoted to Roman political and social himself in this book to hard matters of history. But there is no single English fact, and expounds the influence of work covering the same ground, and money and of the commercial spirit Professor Davis seeks to fill the gap. throughout the period of Roman great- We cannot say that his book is quite suc- ness, that period being denned as the cessful. The descriptions do not always last century of the Republic and the first produce a vivid impression, sometimes two centuries of the Empire. The author they are overdrawn, and we miss alto- does not claim that his essay is either gether the charm of style which makes exhaustive or original, but he has mar- Mr. Warde Fowler's similar book on the shalled a serried array of facts from Ciceronian age such pleasant reading. many sources and woven them, with no The volume is obviously addressed to little skill, into a continuous narrative, American readers, who may not share interspersed here and there with allus- our dislike for strange spellings and ions to American conditions. After a strange words, like epigramist (i.e. epi- description of the business panic of grammatist) or candidating. But will A.D. 33, designed to show how largely they approve of a style that permits sen- society was founded on a money basis tences like these: 'Such "simplicity" (but audaciously embellished by the was as reasonably demanded in a nation imagination of the historical novelist), that had conquered all the world, as to the following subjects are treated in try to-day to recall the times when .. .,' successive chapters: political corruption or ' Pliny found disagreeable the getting and high finance, especially under the from Ephesus up to his Bithynian pro- later Republic; commerce, trade, and vince'? And we would add an emphatic the accumulation of wealth ; the expen- protest against the use of such an utterly diture of wealth; slaves, freedmen, and meaningless phrase as ' the second cen- plebeians; private munificence and some tury A.D.,' which is, we regret to say, modern phases; marriage, divorce, and becoming common even in Oxford. childlessness; and, finally, some reasons The proof-sheets have been corrected for the fall of the Empire. The reader with deplorable negligence. Apart from will divine, what the author himself half such eyesores as ' man - ufacturing,' admits (pp. v and 288), that the ex- ' antiq-uity,' ' har-angued,' and divided position is somewhat discursive and numerals like 700,-000,000, the book ranges beyond the strict limits of the teems with misprints, such as Thermesus subject as defined by the title. What in Pisidia, Carnutum, Umbricia Jan- the book really deals with is the economic naria (for Januaria), twice in two sue-