XII

AUGUSTUS AND VESTA

A passage of Ovid's Fasti, VI 249-252, which has not in my opinion yet received the attention it deserves, has caused me to examine more closely the relations between Augustus and the goddess Vesta. Before describing the Feast of Vesta on 9 June Ovid addresses the goddess with great veneration in these terms: Vesta, jave! Tibi nunc operata resolvimus ora, ad tua si nobis sacra venire licet. In prece totus eram: caelestia numina sensi, laetaque purpurea luce refulsit humus. That is: 'Vesta, be gracious. To you I open my lips now in prayer, if I am permitted to take part in your holy Feast. I was entirely absorbed in prayer. Then I felt the presence of a heavenly numen, the joyful earth shone back with empurpled light'.

Now, the question I ask myself is the following. Who would expect of a Roman in general, and a poet like Ovid in particular, such words as 'I was entirely absorbed in prayer'? Does not Bomer (Comm. Ov. Fasti (1957), 14) altogether agree with Wilamowitz (Glaube der Hellenen 2, 338) in his verdict on Ovid, 'Of religion there remains hardly a trace' ? Besides, is not this opinion shared by almost the whole world, whether, like Emile Ripert in his charming book Ovide, poete de l' amour, des dieux, et de l' exil, we are full of admiration for Ovid's poetry but describe the poet's religiosity in the words (p. ro6), 'La religion de la Beaute, voila celle, somme toute, qu'Ovide pratiquait', or like Rene Pichon,I

1 Hist. de la litt. lat., p. 425. Cf. Paul Brandt on Am., 3, 3, 23. I am happy, in return, to agree here with what was written recently by J. Carcopino in the essay he devoted to Ovid's exile in Rencontres de l'histoire et de la litterature romaines (1963), where we read: 'Two men cohabited in Ovid, the libertine and the philosopher, a sensualist and a mystic.' Although to my great regret I have not yet been able to become acquainted with this AUGUSTUS AND VESTA 2II highly critical of the Fasti and thinking that 'ils sont bien pres d'Hre la parodie du culte latin'? However, even when we do not stop at Ovid himself but turn our attention to the religious feelings of the Roman in general the passage I have quoted must in my opinion cause us astonish­ ment. It will be worth-while considering it carefully, with special attention to any light it may throw on the Roman practice of prayer. We observe first of all that there are other respects too in which Ovid's verses seem almost incredible. According to Kurt Latte (Rom. Religionsgesch., rg6o, 41), 'the feeling of blessedness or enthusiasm induced by the presence of the godhead was lacking in the Roman by contrast with the Greek'. As for me, however, I should hardly know where to find in Greek literature a more striking example of the blessedness induced by the divine presence than in 'caelestina numina sensi . . .' There is a complete literature of prayer among the Romans. But the tendency has been almost always to overlook the fact that our Latin authors are nearly all intellectuals under the in­ fluence of philosophy, so that it is dangerous to draw conclusions about the religious life of the Roman in general. Above all, the growing influence of Stoic teaching becomes more and more manifest. I shall not linger over this question.2 The generally accepted view is roughly as follows. 3 In the beginning a Roman's prayer was exclusively magical. It was offered to the deity as a sacrifice, not only stimulating the god to act, to come to man's help, but also to increase by the sacrifice the power of the god, mactare the god.' To achieve this verba certa are needed. Anyone straying from the text renders the prayer ineffectual. Only the priest knows these proper terms. book-! owe the quotation to the good offices of M. Heurgon-so that it is not possible for me to associate myself in anticipation with the great scholar's thesis, which goes much further than I do in this article and deals more with the religiosity of Augustus than with that of Ovid, there are certainly some points of contact. 1 It is unfortunate that the thesis of W. J. Richards, 'Gebed bij Seneca, die Stoisijn' Diss. Utrecht, Groningen, 1964), is accessible only to those who understand Afrikaans. 8 E.g. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People, 185ff. ' Pfister, R.E., 11, 2154ff.; Wagenvoort, Roman Dynamism (1947), p. 46.