CHAPTER IV, EARLY HISTORY OF ROME—THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY
After this sketch of the main features which we must expect to find in
Roman religion, we may attempt to look a little more in detail at its
various departments, but before doing so it is necessary to form some
notion of the situation and character of the Roman community: religion
is not a little determined by men's natural surroundings and
occupations. The subject is naturally one of considerable controversy,
but certain facts of great significance for our purpose may fairly be
taken as established. The earliest settlement which can be called
'Rome' was the community of the Palatine hill, which rises out of the
valleys more abruptly than any of the other hills and was the natural
place to be selected for fortification: the outline of the walls and
sacred enclosure running outside them (pomoerium) may still be
traced, marking the limits of 'square Rome' (Roma quadrata), as the
historians called it. The Palatine community no doubt pursued their
agricultural labours over the neighbouring valleys and hills, and
gradually began to extend their settlement till it included the
Esquiline and Caelian and other lesser heights which made up the
Septimontium—the next stage of Rome's development. Meanwhile a
kindred settlement had been established on the opposite hills of the
Quirinal and Viminal, and ultimately the two communities united,
enclosing within their boundaries the Capitol and their meeting-place
in the valley which separated them—the Forum. In this way was formed
the Rome of the Four Regions, which represents the utmost extent of
its development during the period which gave rise to the genuine Roman
religion. All these stages have left their mark on the customs of
religion. Roma quadrata comes to the fore in the Lupercalia: not
merely is the site of the ceremony a grotto on the Palatine
(Lupercal), but when the Luperci run their purificatory course
around the boundaries, it is the circuit of the Palatine hill which
marks its limits. Annually on the 11th of December the festival of the
Septimontium was celebrated, not by the whole people, but by the
montani, presumably the inhabitants of those parts of Rome which
were included in the second settlement. Finally, the addition of the
Quirinal settlement is marked by the inclusion among the great
state-gods of Quirinus, who must have been previously the local deity
of the Quirinal community.
But more important for us than the history of the early settlement is
its character. We have spoken of early Rome as an agricultural
community: it would be more exact and more helpful to describe it as a
community of agricultural households. The institutions of Rome, legal
as well as religious, all point to the household (familia) as the
original unit of organisation: the individual, as such, counted for
nothing, the community was but the aggregate of families. Domestic
worship then was not merely independent of the religion of the
community: it was prior to it, and is both its historical and logical
origin. Yet the life of the early Roman agriculturalist could not be
confined to the household: in the tilling of the fields and the care
of his cattle he meets his neighbour, and common interests suggest
common prayer and thanksgiving. Thus there sprung up the great series
of agricultural festivals which form the basis of the state-calendar,
but were in origin—as some of them still continued to be—the
independent acts of worship of groups of agricultural households.
Gradually, as the community grew on the lines we have just seen, there
grew with it a sense of an organised state, as something more than the
casual aggregation of households or clans (gentes). As the feeling
of union became stronger, so did the necessity for common worship of
the gods, and the state-cult came into being primarily as the
repetition on behalf of the community as a whole of the worship which
its members performed separately in their households or as
joint-worshippers in the fields. But the conception of a state must
carry with it at least two ideas over and beyond the common needs of
its members: there must be internal organisation to secure domestic
tranquillity, and—since there will be collision with other
states—external organisation for purposes of offence and defence.
Religion follows the new ideas, and in two of the older deities of the
fields develops the notions of justice and war. Organisation ensues,
and the general conceptions of state-deities and state-ritual are made
more definite and precise.
It will be at once natural and convenient that we should consider
these three departments of religion in the order that has just been
suggested—the worship of the household, the worship of the fields,
the worship of the state. But it must not be forgotten that both the
departments themselves and the evidence for them frequently overlap.
The domestic worship is not wholly distinguishable from that of the
fields, the state-cult is, as we have seen, very largely a replica of
the other two. The evidence for the domestic and agricultural cults is
in itself very scanty, and we shall frequently have to draw inferences
from their counterparts in the state. Above all, it is not to be
supposed that any hard and fast line between the three existed in the
Roman's mind; but for the purposes of analysis the distinction is
valuable and represents a historical reality.
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