talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger spem voltu simulat, premit alto corde dolorem.

At the very moment, that is, when he expresses his belief in his destiny and the duty of making for Italy, he still has misgivings, though he dare not express them.

Heinze has remarked[888] that before this, at the sack of Troy, he had shown a want of self-control, and yielded to a mad passion of desperate fighting that is not to be found in the Aeneas of the last six books (ii. 314 foll.):

arma amens capio nec sat rationis in armis.

Furor and ira drive him headlong; we are reminded of the mad fury of Mezentius or Turnus.

Again, after the death of Priam Venus has to remind him of his duty to his father, wife, and son (ii. 594 foll.), reproaching him for his loss of sanity and self-control:

nate, quis indomitas tantus dolor excitat iras? quid furis, aut quonam nostri tibi cura recessit? non prius aspicies ubi fessum aetate parentem liqueris Anchisen, superet coniunxne Creusa Ascaniusque puer?[889]

During the wanderings narrated in the third book it is Anchises who leads, and who receives and interprets the divine warnings; he seems to be the guardian and guide of his son: to that son he is "omnis curae casusque levamen" (iii. 709), and he is "felix nati pietate" (iii. 480). He is, in fact, the typical Roman father, who, unlike Homer's Laertes, maintains his activity and authority to the end of his life, and to whom even the grown-up son, himself a father, owes reverence and obedience. As Boissier has pointed out,[890] the death of Anchises is postponed in the story as long as possible, and it is only after his death that Aeneas is exposed to a really dangerous temptation; it is immediately after this event that, as we saw, he loses heart at the first storm, and then, on landing in Africa, falls a victim for the moment to the queenly charms of Dido. We may notice that up to this point his pietas has been a limited one, hardly called upon for exercise beyond the bounds of family life and duty; when he is himself at the head, not only of the family, but, so to speak, of the State, it has to take a wider range, and to be put to a severe test.

To all that has at different times been written about Virgil's treatment of the Dido legend I must venture here to add another word. Heinze has shown[891] that no certain origin can be discovered for the form of the story as Virgil tells it; it may have been Naevius who first took Aeneas to Sicily, but we do not know whether he or any successor of his invented the essential point of Virgil's story,—the suicide of Dido as a consequence of her desertion by Aeneas.[892] In any case the question arises, why our poet should have deliberately abandoned the current and popular version, and exposed his hero to such imminent danger of deserting the path which Jupiter and the Fates had marked out for him,—of sacrificing his great mission to the passion of a magnificent woman, and to the prospect of illicit ease and unsanctioned dominion. Heinze is of opinion that Virgil's motive was here a purely artistic one; he wanted an opportunity to introduce the pathetic element into his epic. "There was no lack of models; the latest bloom of Greek poetry had been in nothing more inventive than in dealing with all the phenomena of the passion of love,—its agony, shame, and despair, and the self-immolation of its victims."[893] He enforces this view with great learning, and all he writes about it is of value; but I must confess that he has not convinced me that this was Virgil's chief motive. He seems to me to leave out of account two important considerations: first, that though the poet drew freely on every available source, Greek and Roman, for the enrichment of his subject and its treatment, yet the whole design and purpose of the Aeneid is Roman and not Greek, and the introduction of a love-story as such would have been foreign to that design, and also to the aims and hopes of Augustus and the best men of the age. Secondly, Heinze seems to forget, like so many others who have written about the Dido episode, that Virgil had before his very eyes facts sufficiently striking, a romance quite sufficiently appalling, to suggest the adoption of the form of the story as we have it in the fourth book. Twice in his own lifetime did a single formidable woman work a baleful spell upon the destinies of the Roman empire. In neither case did the spell take fatal effect; Julius escaped in time from the wiles and the splendour of Cleopatra; Antony failed indeed to escape, but brought himself and her to fortunate ruin. It is to me inexplicable, considering how all Virgil's poems abound with allusions to the events of his time, and with side-glances at the chief agents in them, that neither Heinze nor Norden should have even touched on the possibility that Cleopatra was in the poet's mind when he wrote the fourth book. It is perhaps difficult for one who puts the poem on the dissecting-board, and whose attention is continually absorbed in the investigation of minute points in the fibre of it, to bear in mind the extraordinary events of the poet's lifetime,—the civil war, the murder of Julius, the division of the Roman world, the distraction of Italy, the attempt of Antony, or rather, indeed, of his enslaver, to set up a rival Oriental dominion, and the rescue of Romanism and civilisation by Augustus. Had Lucretius himself lived in that generation, he could hardly have escaped the influence of these appalling facts. Whoever will turn to the late Prof. Nettleship's essay on the poetry of Virgil, appended to his Ancient Roman Lives of Virgil,[894] can hardly fail to be convinced that on the later poet's mind they had produced a profound impression, the effects of which are traceable throughout the whole mass of his work. His Roman readers, whose state and empire had been brought to the verge of ruin by the exaltation of individual passions and ambitions, would look for these constant allusions and understand them far better than we can.

I maintain, then, that the poet adopted his version of the story of Dido not simply as an affecting and pathetic episode, but (in keeping with his whole design) to emphasise the great lesson of the poem by showing that the growth and glory of the Roman dominion are due, under providence, to Roman virtus and pietas—that sense of duty to family, State, and gods, which rises, in spite of trial and danger, superior to the enticements of individual passion and selfish ease. Aeneas is sorely tried, but he escapes from Dido to perform the will of the gods; it is Jupiter, ruler of the Fates and the Roman destinies, who rescues him, and thus the divine care for Rome, an idea of which Augustus wished to make the most, is carefully preserved in the tale. If for us the character of Aeneas suffers by his desertion of Dido, that is simply because the poet, seized with intense pity for the injured queen, seems for once, like his own hero, to have forgotten his mission in the poem, and at the very moment when he means to show Aeneas performing the noblest act of self-sacrifice, renouncing his individual passion and listening to the stern call of duty, human nature gets the better of him, and what he meant to paint as a noble act has come out on his canvas as a mean one.

In Virgil's story, then, we have in contrast and conflict the opposing principles of duty and pleasure, of patriotism and selfishness, and the victory of the latter in the person of Aeneas by the help of the great god who was the guardian of the destinies of Rome, and of the goddess who was the mother of the hero and the reputed progenitor of the Julian family. When once this great trial is over, the way is clear for the accomplishment of Aeneas' mission, though he still has trials to face, and as yet is not fully equipped for meeting them.

Whoever, after reading the stormy scenes of the fourth book, will go straight on to the fifth, cannot but be struck with a change of tone which would have been doubly welcome to a man of that true Roman feeling which Virgil was counting on as well as inculcating throughout his work—doubly welcome, because he would find it not only in the incidents, but in the character of Aeneas. We here leave self and passion behind, and are introduced to scenes where the careful performance of religious and family duties seems to produce ease of mind and the tranquillity that comes of a soothed conscience. For the first time in the poem we meet with a characteristic of that best Roman life which was dear to the heart of Augustus, and with which we may be quite certain that the poet himself was entirely in sympathy. Strange, indeed, it is that this should be the case in a book so wholly based for its externals on Greek poetical traditions; but it is none the less true, and it is a striking example of Virgil's wonderful genius for transforming old things with new light and meaning.[895]

It is not only then, or even mainly, the traditional necessity of describing games in an epic poem, that is the raison d'etre of the fifth book; the object was rather, as I understand it, to gain the needful contrast to the stormy passion of the fourth, and a relief for the mind of the Roman reader before he approached the awful scenery and experiences of the sixth, while at the same time there could be indicated—and for a Roman reader more than indicated—the first beginning of a change in the character of the hero. All this is effected with wonderful skill by making Aeneas perform with detailed carefulness the Roman ritual of the Parentalia as it was known to the Romans of the Augustan age. The Parentalia, as I have said elsewhere,[896] were not days of terror or ill-omen, but rather days on which the performance of duty was the leading idea in men's minds; that duty was a pleasant and cheerful one, for the dead were still members of the family, and there was nothing to fear from them so long as the living performed their duties towards them under the due regulations of the ius divinum. The ritual indicates the idea of the yearly renewal of the rite of burial, with the propitiation of the departed which was necessary for the welfare of the family; and when the liturgical nine days were over, the living members met together in the Caristia, a kind of love feast of the family, at which all quarrels were to be forgotten, and from which all guilty members were excluded. In families of wealth and distinction in Virgil's time the days of mourning might be followed by games in honour of the departed. Thus a Roman would at once recognise the fact that Aeneas is here presented to us for the first time as a Roman father of a family, discharging the duties essential to the continuance and prosperity of that family with cheerfulness as well as with gravitas; and that his pietas here takes a definite, practical, and truly Roman form, though it is not as yet extended to its full connotation as the performance of duty towards the State and its gods.

All this is quite in keeping with the little touches of characterisation which we can also notice in this book. In the second line Aeneas pursues his way certus, even while he gazes at the flames of Dido's funeral pyre, not knowing what they meant. He presides at the games with the dignity of a Roman magistrate, and reproachingly consoles the beaten Dares with words which seem to reflect his late experience at Carthage (v. 465):

infelix, quae tanta animum dementia cepit? non vires alias conversaque numina sentis? cede deo.

When the ships are burnt he does not give way to despair, as in the storm of the first book, but prays for help to the omnipotent Jupiter, in whose hand were the destinies of his descendants (v. 687 foll.). But he is not yet perfect in his sense of duty; he feels the blow severely, and for a moment wavers (v. 700 foll.):

... casu concussus acerbo nunc huc ingentis, nunc illuc pectore curas mutabat versans, Siculisne resideret arvis oblitus fatorum, Italasne capesseret oras.

It needs the cheering advice of old Nautes (quicquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est), and the appearance of the shade of Anchises, to confirm his wavering will with renewed sense of his mission. This appearance of his father, "omnis curae casusque levamen," with the summons to meet him in Hades, is, as Heinze has seen,[897] a turning-point in the fortunes and the character of Aeneas, and prepares us for the final ordeal and initiation which he undergoes in the following book.

I here use the word initiation because I have no doubt that Virgil had in his mind when writing it the Greek idea of initiation into mysteries preparatory to a new life. An actual initiation was, of course, out of the question; on the other hand a catabasis, a descent into Hades, was part of the epic inheritance he derived from Homer, and this, like the funeral games in the fifth book, he might use with an earnestness of purpose wanting in Homer, to work in with the great theme of his poem, not merely as an artistic effort. The purpose here was to make of Aeneas a new man, to regenerate him; to prepare him by mystic enlightenment for the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the accomplishment of his divine mission. We must not look too closely into the process; it is a strange melange of popular and philosophic ideas and scenery, made at once intelligible and magnificent by the wonderful resources of the poet; but we may be sure that it has the same general meaning as the visions of Dante long afterwards. As Mr. Tozer has said, Dante's conversion and ultimate salvation were the primary object of his journey through the three realms of the spiritual world.[898] In this sense it can be called an initiation, an ordeal, a sacrament.

So much has been written about this wonderful book that I do not need to dwell upon it here. I will content myself with pointing out very briefly a fact which struck me when I last read it. The ordeal of preparation is not complete till the very end of the book, when the shade of Anchises has shown his son all the great things to come, the due accomplishment of which depends on his sense of duty, his pietas. Up to that moment Aeneas is always thinking and speaking of the past, while in the last six books he is always looking ahead, absorbed in the work each hour placed before him, and in the prospect of the glory of Rome and Italy. The poet had contrived that his hero should himself narrate the story of the sack of Troy and his subsequent wanderings, and narrate them to the very person who would have made it impossible for him ever again to look forward on the path of duty. Surely this is significant of a moral as well as an artistic purpose; the passionate love of the queen urges her to keep his mind fixed on the past, to engage him in the story of events that concerned himself and not his mission (i. 748):

necnon et vario noctem sermone trahebat infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa, etc.

After the shade of Creusa had told him of his destiny, which she was not to share, the past was still in his mind, and he seems to have forgotten the warning; he calls himself an exile (iii. 10):

litora cum patriae lacrimans portusque relinquo et campos ubi Troia fuit. Feror exsul in altum—

I find an exception after the meeting with Andromache, when he thinks of the future for a moment, but even then half-heartedly as it seems to me, with a very distinct reluctance to face the dangers to come, and with a touching envy of those who could "stay at home at ease" (iii. 493 foll.). His want of faith in the future is again shown in Book v., in the passage quoted just now; and even in Book vi. he is at first purposely depicted as "slack," as having his attention caught by what is for the moment before him, or with the figures of old friends and enemies whom he meets, until the last awakening revelation of Anchises. Thus no sooner has he landed in Italy than he is attracted by the pictures in the temple of Apollo and incurs a rebuke from the priestess (vi. 37 foll.):

non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit; nunc grege de intacto septem mactare iuvencos praestiterit, etc.;

so also a little farther on she has to warn him again (50 foll.) at the entrance to the cave:

"cessas in vota precesque, Tros" ait "Aenea, cessas?"

It may be fancy in me to see even in his prayer which follows a leaning to think of Troy and his past troubles (56 foll.). But I cannot but believe that in this book he is meant to take a last farewell of all who have shared his past fortunes, have helped him or injured him; he meets Palinurus, Dido, Tydeus, Deiphobus, and the rest, and while meditating over these he has once more to be hurried by his guide (538):

sed comes admonuit breviterque adfata Sibylla est: nox ruit, Aenea, nos flendo ducimus horas.

When Anchises appears the whole tone changes, and his famous words seem to me to show conclusively that hesitation and want of fixed, undeviating purpose had been so far his son's chief failing (806):

et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis, aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra?

The father's vision and prophecy are of the future and the great deeds of men to come, and henceforward Aeneas makes no allusion to the past and the figures that peopled it, abandons talk and lamentations, "virtutem extendit factis." At the outset of Book vii. we feel the ship moving at once; three lines suffice for the fresh start; Circe is passed unheeded. "Maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo," says the poet in line 43; "maius opus moveo;" for the real subject of the poem is at last reached, and a heroic character by heroic deeds is to lay the foundation of the eternal dominion of Rome.

A very few words shall suffice about the Aeneas of the later books. Let us freely allow that he is not strongly characterised; that for us moderns the interest centres rather in Turnus, who is heroic as an individual, but not as a pioneer of civilisation divinely led; that there is no real heroine, for feminine passion would be here out of place and un-Roman, and the courtship of Lavinia is undertaken, so to speak, for political reasons. The role of Aeneas, as the agent of Jupiter in conquest and civilisation, would appeal to a Roman rather than to a modern, and it was reserved for the modern critic to complain of a lack of individual interest in him. So, too, it is in Jewish history; we feel with Esau more than with Jacob, and with David more than with Moses, who is none the less the grandest typical Israelite in the Old Testament. And, indeed, Virgil's theme here is less the development of a character or the portraiture of a hero than the idealisation of the people of the Italy which he loved so well, who needed only a divinely guided leader and civiliser to enter upon the glorious career that was in store for them.

I cannot escape the belief, as I read again through these books, that Virgil did intend to depict in Aeneas his ideal of that Roman character to which the leading writers of his day ascribed the greatness of their race. His pietas is now confirmed and enlarged, it has become a sense of duty to the will of the gods as well as to his father, his son, and his people, and this sense of duty never leaves him, either in his general course of action or in the detail of sacrifice and propitiation. His courage and steadfastness never fail him; he looks ever forward, confident in divine protection; the shield he carries is adorned—a wonderful stroke of poetic genius—with scenes of the future, and not of the past (viii. 729 foll.):

talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis, miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.

He is never in these books to be found wanting in swiftness and vigilance; when he cheers his comrades it is no longer in a half-hearted way, but as at the beginning of the eleventh book, with the utmost vigour and confidence, "Arma parate, animis et spe praesumite bellum" (xi. 18).

His humanitas again is here more obvious than in his earlier career, and it is plainly meant to be contrasted with the heroic savagery of Mezentius and Turnus. So keenly did the poet feel this development in his hero's character, that in his descriptions of the death of Lausus and the burial of Pallas—noble and beautiful youths whom he loved in imagination as he loved in reality all young things—his tenderness is so touching that even now we can hardly read them without tears. And not only is the hero heroic and humane, but he is a just man and keeps faith; when, in the twelfth book, the Rutulians break the treaty, and his own men have joined in the unjust combat (xii. 311):

at pius Aeneas dextram tendebat inermem nudato capite atque suos clamore vocabat: "quo ruitis? quove ista repens discordia surgit? o cohibete iras; ictum iam foedus et omnes compositae leges: mihi ius concurrere soli."

He claims for himself alone, under the guiding hand of providence, the right to deal with Turnus, the enemy of humanity and righteousness. And we may note that when it came to that last struggle, though conquering by divine aid, he was ready to spare the life of the conquered till he saw the spoils of the young Pallas upon him.

The character of Aeneas, then, though not painted in such strong light as we moderns might expect or desire, is intentionally developed into a heroic type in the course of the story—a type which every Roman would recognise as his own natural ideal. And this growth is the direct result of religious influence. It is partly the result of the hero's own natural pietas, innate within him from the first, as it was in the breast of every noble Roman; partly the result of a gradually enlarged recognition of the will of God, and partly of the strengthening and almost sacramental process of the journey to Hades, of the revelation there made of the mysteries of life and death, and of the great future which Jupiter and the Fates have reserved for the Roman people. In these three influences Virgil has summed up all the best religious factors of his day: the instinct of the Roman for religious observance, with all its natural effect on conduct; the elevating Stoic doctrine which brought man into immediate relation with the universal; and, lastly, the tendency to mysticism, Orphic or Pythagorean, which tells of a yearning in the soul of man to hope for a life beyond this, and to make of this life a meet preparation for that other.

Only one word more. We can hardly doubt the truth of the story that the poet died earnestly entreating that this greatest work of his life should perish with him, and this may aptly remind us that though I have been treating the Aeneid as a poem of religion and morals, yet, after all, Virgil was a poet rather than a preacher, and thought of his Aeneid, not as a sermon, but as a work of art. Had he thought of it as a sermon he could hardly have wished to deprive the Roman world of it. The true poet is never a preacher except in so far as he is a poet. If the Greeks thought of their poets as teachers, says the late Prof. Jebb, "this was simply a recognition of poetry as the highest influence, intellectual and spiritual, that they knew." "It was not merely a recreation of their leisure, but a power pervading and moulding their whole existence." Surely this is also true of Virgil, and of the best at least of his Roman readers. No one can read the sixth Aeneid, the greatest effort of his genius, without feeling that poetry was all in all to him; that learning, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it as poetry and poetry only.[899]

NOTES TO LECTURE XVIII

[869] Sellar, Virgil, p. 371.

[870] Sainte-Beuve, Etude sur Virgile, p. 68.

[871] Horace, Epode 16, where, however, he is not quite so much in earnest as in Odes iii. 6. Sallust, prefaces to Jugurtha and Catiline: these do not ring quite true.

[872] Georg. iv. 511 foll.

[873] Georg. iii. 440 foll. The famous lines (498 foll.) about the horse smitten with pestilence will occur to every one.

[874] Aen. vi. 309.

[875] Op. cit. p. 231. He cites Georg. i. 107 and 187 foll.

[876] Sellar, Virgil, p. 232.

[877] Georg. iv. 221 foll.

[878] Georg. ii. 493.

[879] Prof. Hardie recently asked me an explanation of the double altar that we meet with more than once in Virgil in connection with funeral rites: e.g., Ecl. 5. 66; Aen. iii. 305; v. 77 foll. Servius tries to explain this, but clearly did not understand it. Of course I could offer no satisfactory solution. Yet we are both certain that there is a satisfactory one if we could only get at it.

[880] Much has been written about the part of the Fates in the Aeneid and their relation to Jupiter. See Heinze, Vergils epische Technik, p. 286 foll.; Glover, Studies in Virgil, 202 and 277 foll. I may be allowed to refer also to my Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 342 foll.

[881] Aen. i. 257 foll., vi. 756 foll., viii. 615 foll.

[882] Suggestions preliminary to a Study of the Aeneid, p. 36.

[883] It is not likely to strike us unless we read the whole Aeneid through, without distracting our minds with other reading, and this few of us do. I did it some ten years ago; before that the development of character had not dawned on me fully. I later on found it shortly but clearly set forth in Heinze's Vergils epische Technik, p. 266 foll.; and this caused me to read the poem through once more, with the result that I became confirmed in my view, and read a paper on the subject to the Oxford Philological Society, which I have in part embodied in this lecture.

[884] This is dwelt on in Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 124 foll.

[885] De Republica, vi. 15.

[886] It may be as well to note here that the actual representation of God in the Aeneid is its weakest point. It was an epic poem, and could not dispense with the Homeric machinery: hence Jupiter is practically the representative of the Stoic all-pervading deity, with the Fates behind him. But it is not unlikely that Virgil may thus have actually helped to make the way clear for a nobler monotheistic idea by damaging Jupiter in the course of this treatment; see Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 341 foll.

[887] On the Homeric Aeneas there are some good remarks in Boissier's Nouvelles Promenades archaeologiques (Horace et Virgile), p. 130 foll. Of all the Homeric heroes he seems to come nearest, though but slightly sketched, to the Roman ideal of heroism.

[888] Heinze, Vergils epische Technik, p. 17.

[889] I should be disposed to consider this passage as decisive of the point, but that it immediately follows upon the doubtful lines 567-588, in which Aeneas is tempted in his mad fury to slay Helen; and if those lines are not Virgil's, we have not sufficient explanation of the rebuke which Venus here administers to her son. On the other hand, if they were really Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods. Into this much-disputed question I must not go farther, except to note that while Heinze is absolutely confident that Virgil never wrote these lines, the editor of the new Oxford text of Virgil is equally certain that he did. My opinion is of no value on such a point; but I am disposed to agree with Mr. Hirtzel that "versus valde Vergilianos, ab optimis codicibus omissos, iniuria obleverunt Tucca et Varius." They are certainly in keeping with the picture of Aeneas' impotentia which is generally suggested in Book ii. If it should be argued that this impotentia, i.e. want of self-control, is only put into the mouth of Aeneas in order to heighten the effect of his stirring narrative, it will be well to remember the remonstrances of Venus, which make such a hypothesis impossible.

[890] Op. cit. p. 231.

[891] Vergils epische Technik, p. 113 foll.

[892] The original story was, that unable to escape from an enforced marriage with Iarbas, she killed herself to mark her unflinching faithfulness to her first husband Sicharbas. Servius quotes Varro as stating that it was not Dido, but Anna who committed suicide for love of Aeneas (on Aen. iv. 682); and as Varro died before the Aeneid was begun, this may be taken as proving that Virgil's version of the love-story was not his own invention. But it is quite possible that Servius here only means that Varro's version differed in this point from that which the poet soon afterwards adopted; it may be that the story in the poem is thus practically his own.

[893] Op. cit. p. 116.

[894] Ancient Lives of Vergil, Clarendon Press, 1879.

[895] The critics have, I think, been weaker in dealing with the fifth book than with any of the others. Prof. Tyrrell is too violent in his contempt for it to admit of quotation here. Heinze has some good and acute remarks on Virgil's motive in placing the book where it is, but seems to me to miss the real importance of it (op. cit. 140 foll.). Even Boissier, whose delightful account of the scenery of Eryx should be read by every one who would appreciate this book (op. cit. p. 232), goes so far as to say that it is the one book with which we feel we might easily dispense so far as the story is concerned.

[896] Roman Festivals, p. 307.

[897] Op. cit. p. 270.

[898] Commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia, pp. 615 foll. I am indebted for this reference to Stewart's Myths of Plato, p. 367.

[899] Nettleship remarked most truly that there is no better way of appreciating the heroic Aeneas of these last books than by studying carefully the early part of the eleventh.



LECTURE XIX

THE AUGUSTAN REVIVAL

It is a long descent from the inspiring idealism of Virgil to the cool, tactical attempt of Augustus to revive the outward forms of the old religion. It seems strange that two men so different in character and upbringing should have been working in the same years in the same direction, yet on planes so far apart. How far the two were directly connected in their work we cannot know for certain. It is said that the subject of the Aeneid was suggested to Virgil by Augustus, and it is quite possible that this may be true; but it by no means follows from this that the inspiration of the poem came from any other source but Virgil's own thought and feeling. We also know that Augustus from the first appreciated the Aeneid, and that he saved it for all time; but it is by no means clear that it inspired him in his efforts towards moral and religious regeneration. Perhaps the truth is that both were moved by the wave of mingled depression and hope that swept over Italy for some years after the death of Julius, and that each used his experience in his own way and according to his opportunities. They had at least this in common, that they utilised the past to encourage the present age, and that by filling old forms and names with new meaning they set men's minds upon thinking of the future.[900]

Yet the revival of the State religion by Augustus is at once the most remarkable event in the history of the Roman religion, and one almost unique in religious history. I have repeatedly spoken of that State religion as hypnotised or paralysed, meaning that the belief in the efficacy of the old cults had passed away among the educated classes, that the mongrel city populace had long been accustomed to scoff at the old deities, and that the outward practice of religion had been allowed to decay. To us, then, it may seem almost impossible that the practice, and to some extent also the belief, should be capable of resuscitation at the will of a single individual, even if that individual represented the best interests and the collective wisdom of the State. For it is impossible to deny that this resuscitation was real; that both pax deorum and ius divinum became once more terms of force and meaning. Beset as it was by at least three formidable enemies, which tended to destroy it even while they fed on it, like parasites in the animal or vegetable world feeding on their hosts,—the rationalising philosophy of syncretism, the worship of the Caesars, and the new Oriental cults,—the old religion continued to exist for at least three centuries in outward form, and to some extent in popular belief.

We must remember the tenacious conservatism of the Roman mind: the emotional stimulus of the age of depression and despair which preceded this revival: and the conscientious care with which the successors of Augustus, Tiberius in particular, carried out his religious policy.[901] Then as we become more familiar with the Corpus of inscriptions and the writings of the early Christian fathers, we begin to appreciate the fact that the natural and inherited religion of a people cannot altogether die, and that to describe this old Roman religion as dead is to use too strong a word. The votive inscriptions of the Empire show us overwhelming proof of surviving belief in the great deities of the olden time, and of the care taken of their temples. Antoninus Pius is honoured "ob insignem erga caerimonias publicas curam et religionem."[902] Marcus Aurelius himself did not hesitate in times of public distress to put in action the whole apparatus of the old religion.[903] Constantius in A.D. 329 was shown round the temples when he visited Rome for the first time, and in spite of his Christianity took a curious interest in them.[904] That the private worship, too, went on into the fourth century we know from the Theodosian code, where in the interest of Christianity the worship of Lares Penates and Genius is strictly forbidden.[905] Again, the constant ridicule with which the Christian writers speak of the minutiae of the heathen worship makes it quite plain that they knew it as actually existing, and not merely from books like those of Varro. They do not so much attack the Oriental religions of their time as the genuine old Roman cults; more especially is this the case with St. Augustine, from whose de Civitate Dei we have learnt so much about the latter. The very necessity under which the leaders of Christianity found themselves of suiting their own religious character, and in some ways even their own ceremonies, to the habits and prejudices of the pagans, tells the same story. But the question how far Latin Christianity was indebted to the religion of the Romans must be postponed to my last lecture; I have said enough to indicate in which direction we must go for evidence that the work of Augustus was not in vain, that it gave fresh stimulus to a plant that still had some life in it.

If, then, the Augustan revival was not a mere sham, but had its measure of real success, how are we to account for this? I think the explanation is not really difficult, if we bring to bear upon the problem what we have learnt from the beginning about the religious experience of the Romans. Let us note that Augustus troubled himself little about the later political developments of religion, which we have lately been examining,—about pontifices, augurs, and Sibylline books; these institutions, which had been so much used in the republican period for political and party purposes, it was rather his interest to keep in the background. But in one way or another he must have grasped the fundamental idea of the old Roman worship, that the prosperity and the fertility of man, and of his flocks and herds and crops on the farm, and the prosperity and fertility of the citizen within the city itself, equally depended on the dutiful attention (pietas) paid to the divine beings who had taken up their abode in farm or city.[906] The best expression of this idea in words is pax deorum,—the right relation between man and the various manifestations of the Power,—and the machinery by which it was secured was the ius divinum.[907] We shall not be far wrong if we say that it was Augustus' aim to re-establish the pax by means of the ius; but if we wished to explain the matter to some one who has not been trained in these technical terms, it would be better to say that he appealed to a deeply-rooted idea in the popular mind,—the idea that unless the divine inhabitants were properly and continually propitiated, they would not do their part in supporting the human inhabitants in all their doings and interests. This popular conviction he deliberately determined to use as his chief political lever.

This has, I think, been insufficiently emphasised by historians, who contemplate the work of this shrewd statesman too entirely from the political point of view. I am sure that he had learnt from his predecessors in power that reform on political lines only was without any element of stability, and that he knew that it was far more important to touch a spring in the feeling of the people, than to occupy himself, like Sulla, in mending old machinery or inventing new. If he could but induce them to believe in him as the restorer of the pax deorum, he knew that his work was accomplished. And I believe that we have what is practically his own word for this conviction; not in his Res Gestae, the Monumentum Ancyranum, which is a record of facts and of deeds only, but in the famous hymn which Horace wrote at his instance and to give expression to his ideas, for use in the Secular Games of 17 B.C., to which I am coming presently. Ferrero has lately described that hymn as a magnificent poem,[908] an opinion which to me is incomprehensible. It is neat, and embodies the necessary ideas adequately, but it is far too flat to be the genuine offspring of such a poet as Horace. To me it reads as though Augustus had written it in prose and then ordered his poet to put it into metre; and assuredly it expresses exactly what we should have expected Augustus to wish to be sung by his youthful choirs. I shall refer to it again shortly to illustrate another point; all I need say now is that he who reads it carefully and thinks about it will find there the conviction of which I have been speaking, that prosperity and fertility, whether of man, beast, or crop, depend on the Roman's attitude toward his deities; religion, morality, fertility, and public concord are the points which the astute ruler wished to be emphasised.[909] That this hymn was a really important part of the ceremony is certain from the fact that it was given to the best living poet to write, and that his name is mentioned as its author in the inscription, discovered not many years ago, which commemorated the whole performance: "CARMEN COMPOSUIT Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS."[910]

If, then, I am right, this strange movement was not merely a revival of religious ceremonies, but an appeal through them to the conscience of the people. A revival of religious life it, of course, was not, for what we understand by that term had never existed at Rome; but it was an attempt to give expression, in a religious form and under State authorisation, to certain feelings and ideas not far removed in kind from those which in our own day we describe as our religious experience. Whether Augustus himself shared in these feelings and ideas it is, of course, impossible to conjecture. But as a man's religious convictions are largely the result of his own experience and of that of the society in which he lives, and as Augustus' own experience for the twenty years before he took this work in hand had been full of trial and temptation, I am disposed to guess that he was rather expressing a popular conviction which he shared himself than merely standing apart and administering a remedy. And this view seems to me to be on the whole confirmed by the tone and spirit of the great literary works of the age.

Augustus did not become pontifex maximus till the year 12 B.C., nineteen years after he had crushed Antony at Actium; he waited with scrupulous patience until the headship of the Roman religion became vacant by the death of Lepidus.[911] But this did not prevent him from pursuing his religious policy with great earnestness before that date, for he had long been a member of the pontifical college, as well as augur and quindecemvir. No sooner had he returned to Rome from Egypt than the work of temple restoration began, the outward and visible sign to all that the pax deorum was to be firmly re-established. The fact of the restoration he has told us in half a dozen words in his own Res Gestae:[912] "Duo et octaginta templa deum in urbe ex decreto senatus refeci," adding that not one was neglected that needed repair. Among them was that oldest and smallest temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol to which I referred in a former lecture;[913] and his personal interest in the work is attested by Livy, who says that he himself heard Augustus tell how he had found an inscription, relating to the second spolia opima dedicated there, when he went into the temple bent on the work of restoration.[914] It needs but a little historical imagination to appreciate the psychological importance of all this work. We have to think not only of the bystanders who watched, but of the very workmen themselves, rejoicing at once in new employment and in the revival of an old sense of religious duty. Little more than twenty years earlier, no workman could be found to lay a hand upon the newly-built temple of Isis, when the consul Aemilius Paulus gave orders for its destruction as a centre of superstitio;[915] now abundant work was provided which every man's conscience would approve. When I think of the Rome of that year 28, with all its fresh hope and confidence taking visible shape in this way, even Horace's famous lines seem cold to me (Od. ii. 6. 1):

delicta maiorum immeritus lues Romane, donec templa refeceris aedesque labentis deorum et foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

The restoration of the temple buildings implies also a revival of the old ritual, the cura et caerimonia. As to this we are very imperfectly informed,—we have no correspondence of this age, as of the last, and the details of life in the Augustan city are not preserved in abundance. But Ovid comes to the rescue here, as in secular matters, and on the whole the evidence in his Fasti suggests that the old sacrificing priesthoods, the Rex and the flamines, were set to their work again. He tells us, for example, how he himself, as he was returning to Rome from Nomentum,[916] had seen the flamen Quirinalis carrying out the exta of a dog and a sheep which had been sacrificed in the morning in the city, to be laid on the altar in the grove of Robigus. In spite of all its disabling restrictions, it was possible once more to fill the ancient priesthood of Jupiter; and of the Rex sacrorum and the other flamines we hear in the early Empire.[917] They were in the potestas of the pontifex maximus, and as after 12 B.C. that position was always held by the Princeps himself, it was not likely that they would be allowed to neglect their duties. Other ancient colleges were also revived or confirmed by the inclusion of the Emperor himself among their members (a fact which Augustus was careful to record in his own words), e.g. the Fetiales, of whom he had made use when declaring war with Antony and Cleopatra;[918] the Sodales Titienses, an institution of which we have lost the origin and meaning; the Salii, Luperci, and above all the Fratres Arvales, the brotherhood whose duty it had once been to lead a procession round the crops in May, and so to ensure the pax deorum for the most vital material of human subsistence. The corn-supply now came almost entirely from Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration of the old caerimonia must have appealed rather to the eye than the mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the work and history of the Fratres, and then go on to find further illustration of the curious mixture of old and new which the Roman religion was henceforward to be.

The fortunate survival of large fragments of the records of the Brotherhood, dating from shortly after the battle of Actium, show that it continued to work and to flourish down to the reign of Gordian (A.D. 241), and from other sources we know that it was still in existence in the fourth century.[919] These records have been found on the site of the sacred grove, at the fifth milestone on the via Campana between Rome and Ostia, which from the time of this revival onwards was the centre of the activity of the Fratres.

The brethren were twelve in number, with a magister at their head and a flamen to assist him; they were chosen from distinguished families by co-optation, the reigning Emperor being always a member.[920] Their duties fell into two divisions, which most aptly illustrate respectively the old and the new ingredients in the religious prescriptions of Augustus, as they were carried out by his successors. The first of these is the performance of the yearly rites in honour of the Dea Dia, the goddess or numen without a substantival name (a form perhaps of Ceres and Tellus), whose home was in the sacred grove, and who was the special object of this venerable cult. Secondly, the care of vows, prayers, and sacrifices for the Emperors and other members of the imperial house. I must say a few words about each of these divisions of duty.

The worship of the Dea Dia took place in May on three days, with an interval always of one day between the first and second, according to the old custom of the calendar.[921] On the first, preliminary rites were performed at Rome, in the house of the magister; on the second was the most important part of the whole ceremony, which took place at the sacred grove. These rites will give a good idea of the old Roman worship, and of the exactness with which Augustus sought to restore it. At dawn the magister sacrificed two porcae piaculares to the Dea, and then a vacca honoraria, after which he laid aside the toga praetexta or sacrificial vestment, and rested till noon, when all the brethren partook of a common meal, of which the porcae formed the chief part. Then resuming the praetexta, and crowned with wreaths of corn-ears, they proceeded to the altar in the grove, where they sacrificed the agna opima, which was the principal victim in the whole ceremonial.[922] Other rites followed, e.g. the passing round, from one to another of the brethren, fruits gathered and consecrated on the previous day, each brother receiving them in his left, i.e. lucky hand, and passing them on with his right; and the singing of the famous Arval hymn to Mars and the Lares to a rhythmic dance-tune. Then after another meal and chariot-racing in the neighbouring circus, they returned to Rome and finished the day with further feasting.[923] A cynical reader of these Acta might suggest that the appetites of the good brethren were made more of than their pietas; but the feasting may be just as much a part of the ancient practice as any of the other curiosities of ritual.

The utensils employed were of the primitive sun-baked clay (ollae), and seem to have been regarded with a veneration almost amounting to worship.[924] Long ago I had occasion to note how the old form of piacular sacrifice was used and recorded whenever iron was taken into the grove, or any damage done to the trees by lightning or other accident. Once, when a tiny fig-tree sprouted on the roof of the temple, piacula of all suitable kinds had to be offered to Mars, Dea Dia, Janus, Jupiter, Juno, Virgines divae, Famuli divi, Lares, Mater Larum, sive deus sive dea in cuius tutela hic lucus locusque est, Fons, Hora, Vesta Mater, Vesta deorum dearumque, Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda,—and sixteen divi of the imperial families![925] As the date of this extraordinary performance is A.D. 183, nothing can better show the extent to which the revival of elaborate ritual had been carried by Augustus, and the amazing tenacity with which it held its ground.

The second part of the activity of the brethren well illustrates the new element which Augustus adroitly insinuated into the old religious forms: but I shall not dwell upon it, for the worship of the Caesars in its developed form is not of either Roman or Italian origin, any more than the other kinds of cult which were now pressing in from the East; and it thus lies outside the range of my subject. The revival of this old priesthood, and doubtless of others, the Salii for example, was turned to account to mark the sacred character and political and social predominance of the imperial family. All events of importance in the life of the Emperor himself and his family were the occasion of vows, prayers, or thanksgivings on the part of the Fratres; births, marriages, successions to the throne, journeys and safe return, and the assumption of the consulship and other offices or priesthoods. These rites all took place at various temples or altars in Rome, or at the Ara Pacis, recently excavated, which Augustus had built in the Campus Martius. Here, by way of example of them, is a "votum susceptum pro salute novi principis," on his accession.[926]

"Imperatore M. Othone Caesare Augusto, L. Salvio Othone Titiano iterum consulibus, III kalendas Februarias magistro Imperatore M. Othone Caesare Augusto, promagistro L. Salvio Othone Titiano: collegi fratrum Arvalium nomine immolavit in Capitolio ob vota nuncupata pro salute imperatoris M. Othonis Caesaris Augusti in annum proximum in III nonas Ianuarias Iovi bovem marem, Iunoni vaccam: Minervae vaccam: Saluti publicae populi Romani vaccam: divo Augusto bovem marem, divae Augustae vaccam: divo Claudio bovem marem: in collegio adfuerunt, etc."

This record, which belongs to the year 69 and the accession of Otho, shows the divi, i.e. the deified emperors Augustus and Claudius, together with the deified Livia, associated with the trias of the Capitoline temple and the Salus publica in the sacrificial rites. But under the Flavian dynasty which followed this association was judiciously dropped.[927] It may serve for the moment to illustrate what was to come of this new element so subtly introduced into the old worship; how it led to practices which are utterly repulsive to us, and repulsive too to an honest man even in that day. The noble words of Tiberius, declining to have temples erected to him in Spain, have been preserved by Tacitus from the senatorial records:[928] "Ego me, patres conscripti, mortalem esse fateor"; and he added that his only claim to immortality lay in the due performance of duty. Tiberius, whatever else he may have been, was beyond doubt an honest man; and so too was Seneca, the author of the famous skit on the deification of Claudius. But the extravagances of Caesar-worship are not to be met with in Augustus' time; for him the new element may be defined, as in Rome (and in Italy too, so far as his own wish could limit it) nothing more than the encouragement of the belief in him, and loyalty to him as the restorer of the pax deorum. To this end he sought to magnify his own achievements as avenger of the crime of the murder of Julius, by which the pax had been grievously disturbed. I propose to finish this lecture by giving some account of the way in which he attained this object. Let us briefly examine the famous ritual of the Ludi saeculares, of which we have more detailed knowledge than of any other Roman rite of any period; it marks the zenith of his prosperity and religious activity, and belongs to the year 17 B.C., two years after the death of Virgil,—a date which may be said to divide the long power of Augustus into two nearly equal halves.

This famous celebration is an epoch in the history of the Roman religion, if not in the history of Rome herself. It stands on the very verge of an old and a new regime. It was the outward or ritualistic expression of the idea, already suggested by Virgil in the fourth Eclogue and the Aeneid, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government; old things are put away, new sap is to run in the half-withered trunk and branches of a noble tree. The experience of the past, as with Aeneas after the descent into Hades, is to lead to new effort and a new type of character, of which pietas in its broadest sense is the inspiring motive. Henceforward the Roman is to look ahead of him in hope and confidence, virtutem extendere factis. Augustus, the Aeneas of the actual State, was firmly established in a prestige which extended beyond Italy even to the far East; his faithful and capable coadjutor Agrippa was by his side to take his part in the ritual, and no cloud in that year 17 seemed to be visible on the horizon.

The Ludi saeculares are also unique in respect of the records we have of them. By wonderful good fortune we can construct an almost complete picture of what was done in that year on the last days of May and the first three of June. We have the text of the Sibylline oracle,—how manufactured we do not know, nor does it much matter,—which prescribed the ritual, preserved by Zosimus, a Greek historian of the fifth century A.D., together with his own account.[929] Thus the outline of the ritual has been known all along, together with many details; and to help it out we have also the perfect text of the hymn written by Horace for the occasion, and sung by two choirs of boys and girls respectively. But great was the delight of the learned world when, in September 1890, workmen employed on the Tiber embankment, close, as it turned out, to the spot where the nightly rites of the ludi took place, came upon a mediaeval wall partly made of ancient material, in which some marbles were found covered with inscriptions relating to this same celebration.[930] This treasure was badly mutilated, but the inscription was easily decipherable; it contains a letter from Augustus giving instructions, two decrees of the Senate, and a series of records of the Quindecemviri, who were of course in charge of a ritual which had been ordered by a Sibylline oracle. Some few points were at first puzzling, but have been cleared up since the discovery. Mommsen, of course, took the work in hand, and his exposition is still, and always will be, the starting-point for students. Wissowa has an excellent popular account of it, and recently, in the fifth volume of his Greatness and Decline of Rome, Ferrero has utilised it to give an animated account of the whole ceremony.[931]

The Ludi saeculares take their name from the word saeculum; and the old Italian idea of a saeculum seems to have been a period stretching from any given moment to the death of the oldest person born at that moment,—a hundred years being the natural period so conceived.[932] Thus a new saeculum might begin at any time, and might be endowed with special religious significance by certain solemn ceremonies; in this way the people might be persuaded that a new leaf, so to speak, had been turned over in their history: that all past evil, material or moral, had been put away and done with (saeculum condere), and a new period entered on of innocence and prosperity. There are faint traces of three early celebrations of this kind, beginning in 463 B.C., traditionally a disastrous year, and renewed in 363 and 263. But in 249, another year of distress and peril, a new saeculum was entered on with a new and a Greek ritual, ordered by a Sibylline oracle. A subterranean altar in a spot by the Tiber, near the present Ponte St. Angelo, and called Tarentum (possibly to mark the original home of the rite), was dedicated to Dis and Proserpina, Greek deities of the nether world; and here for three successive nights black victims were offered to them. The subterranean altar and the use of the word condere (to put away), might suggest that this rite may have had something in common with those well-known quasi-dramatic ones in which objects are buried or thrown into the water, to represent the cessation of one period of vegetation and the beginning of another.[933] Or we may look on it in the light of one of those rites de passage in which a transition is made from one state of things to another, without any definite religious idea being attached to it. There is no doubt some mystical element in the primitive idea of the beginning and ending of periods of time, which has not as yet been thoroughly investigated.[934]

Now it is easy to see how exactly a rite of this kind, with suitable modifications, would fit in with Augustus' purposes as we have explained them. Fortunately too Varro had in 42 B.C. published a book in which the mystic or Pythagorean doctrine was set forth of the palingenesis of All Souls after four saecula of 110 years each; the fourth Eclogue of Virgil may have been influenced by this, among other mystical ideas, as it was written only three years later; and in any case the doctrine was well known.[935] But Augustus had to wait a while, until peace and confidence were restored. Why eventually he chose the year 17 is quite uncertain; it does not exactly fit in with any calculation of four saecula of 110 years starting from any known date. But a saeculum, as we have seen, might begin at any moment; and in any case it was easy to manufacture a calculation, which was now duly accomplished by trusty persons, chief among them being the great lawyer, Ateius Capito, an ardent adherent of Augustus and his projects.[936] Probably too it was necessary to take advantage of the popular feeling of the moment, that a better time had come, and that it should be started on its way in some fitting outward form.

So an elaborate programme was drawn up, the main features of which I must now explain. On 26th May and the two following days (for the mystic numbers three, nine, and twenty-seven are noticeable throughout the ritual)[937] the means of purification (suffimenta)—torches, sulphur, bitumen[938]—were distributed by the priests to all free persons, whether citizens or not; for this once, all in Rome at the time, with the exception of slaves, were to give an imperial meaning to the ceremony by their share in it. Even bachelors, though forbidden to attend public shows under a recent law de maritandis ordinibus, were allowed to do so on this occasion. No doubt the idea was that the whole people were to be purified from all pollution of the past; it is what M. van Gennep calls a rite de separation, the first step in a rite de passage. The next three days all the people came to the Quindecemviri at certain stated places, and made offerings of fruges, the products of the earth, as we do at our harvest festivals; these were the firstfruits of the coming harvest.[939] It may be worth while to recall the facts that it was on these same days that the procession of the Ambarvalia used to go round the ripening crops, and that in the early days of June the symbolic penus of Vesta was being cleansed to receive the new grain.[940] That Augustus wished to emphasise the importance of Italian agriculture is beyond doubt, and is apparent also in the hymn of Horace, Fertilis frugum pecorisque Tellus spicea donet Cererem corona, etc.

When the suffimenta had been distributed and the offerings made, all was ready for the putting away or burying of the old saeculum. On the night before 1st June Augustus himself, together with Agrippa, sacrificed to the Greek Moirae, the Parcae of Horace's hymn, perhaps in some sense the Fata of the Aeneid; on the second night to Eilithyia, the Greek deity of childbirth; and on the third to Mother Tellus. The form of prayer accompanying the sacrifice is preserved in the inscription; it is Latin in language and form, as dry and concise as any we examined in my lectures on ritual, and contains the macte esto which I was then at pains to explain. Augustus prayed for the safety and prosperity of the State in every way, and also for himself, his house, and his familia.[941] The scene on the bank of the Tiber, illuminated by torches, must have been most impressive.

These were the nightly ceremonies. But each day also had its ritual, in which the Roman deities of the heaven were the objects of worship, not, as by the Tiber bank, Greek deities of the earth and the nether world. On the first two days Augustus and Agrippa offered the proper victims to Jupiter and Juno respectively on the Capitol; Minerva is omitted, and probably the other two are reckoned in Greek fashion as a married pair. The form of prayer was the same as that used by night, with the necessary modifications. Thus the great Capitoline temple and its deities have a full share of attention, and they go too far who think that Augustus was so wanting in tact as to put them in the shade.[942] But on the third and last day the scene changes from the Capitol to the Palatine, the residence of Augustus, where he had built his great temple of Apollo; here for the first time in the ceremony Horace's hymn was sung. On all the days and nights there had been shows and amusements, and a hundred and ten chosen matrons had taken solemn part in the services.[943] But I must pass these over and turn in the last place to the question, as interesting as it is old and difficult, as to how and where Horace's hymn was sung, and how we are to understand it.

The instructions given to the poet by Augustus are obvious as we read the Carmen in the light of the ceremonial of which it was to mark the conclusion. He was to bring into it, as we have already seen, the ideas which were to be revived and made resonant, of religion, morality, and the fertility of man, beast, and crop; and they are all there. He was also to include all the deities who had been addressed in prayer both by day and night, by Tiber bank and on the Capitol, and to give the most prominent place to those who on this last day were worshipped on the Palatine; to Apollo, for whom Augustus had built a great temple close to his own house (in privato solo[944]), as his own specially protecting deity since Actium, and Diana, who as equivalent to Artemis, could not but be associated with Apollo. Thus the deities of the hymn are both Latin and Greek,[945] and this expresses the undoubted fact that the religion of the Romans was henceforward to be even in outward expression a cosmopolitan or Romano-Hellenic one, in keeping with the fact that all free men of every race might take part in this great festival. But it cannot fail to strike every careful reader that the great trias of the Capitol is hardly visible in the poem, though Jupiter and Juno had been the chief objects of worship on the two previous days. Jupiter is twice incidentally named, but in no connection with the Capitol;[946] and it is only when we read between the lines of the fourteenth stanza that we discover Jupiter and Juno as the recipients of the white oxen which had been sacrificed to them there. I have already said that we must not make too much of the neglect of Jupiter and Juno by Augustus; but it is plain that he directed Horace not to make them too prominent in this hymn, and I think it is quite possible that Horace a little overdid his obedience.

The result of all this is that the hymn, in spite of its neatness and adequacy, is wanting in spontaneity, and presents the casual reader with an apparently unmeaning jumble of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. The only way to clear it up is by taking it in immediate relation with what we know about the places in which it was sung. To me at last it has become clear enough in all its main points; and I will give here my own results, which do not altogether coincide with those of other recent inquirers.

Before the discovery of the great inscription we knew that this hymn was sung before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine; we now know that it was also sung on the Capitol,[947] thus uniting in one performance the old religion of republican Rome with the new imperial cult of Apollo. But this new fact has, in my opinion, led to misapprehensions both of the manner of singing and the order of subjects in the hymn. Mommsen thought that the first part was sung on the Palatine, the middle part on the Capitol, and the last again on the Palatine, and he is followed by Wissowa; and both seem to think it possible that there may have been singing too during the procession from the one hill to the other.[948] I think we need not trouble ourselves about the latter point, for the Via Sacra, by which the procession must have gone, was far too narrow and irregular to allow fifty-four singers, with the tibicines who must have been accompanying them, to walk and perform at the same time.[949] The inscription, too, says plainly that the hymn was sung on the Palatine and then on the Capitol, and by that plain statement of fact we had better abide.

Now let us note that these two stations on the two hills were the best possible positions for Augustus' purpose, not only because of their religious importance, but because they afforded the most spacious views of the city, now everywhere adorned with new or restored buildings. The temple of Apollo was built upon a large and lofty area at the north-east end of the Palatine.[950] Recent excavations have shown it to be some hundred yards broad by a hundred and fifty in length, and Ovid, in a passage of his Tristia[951] gives us an idea of its height:

inde tenore pari gradibus sublimia celsis ducor ad intonsi candida templa dei.

On this area the choirs of boys and girls took their station, facing the marble temple, on the fastigium of which was represented the Sun driving his four-horse chariot.[952] After singing, probably together, the first two stanzas or exordium of the hymn, they addressed this Sol:

alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui promis et celas, aliusque et idem nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius.

As they sang these last words, they would turn towards the city that lay behind them, and look over it to the Tiber and the scene of the nightly sacrifices of the Tarentum; and with the deities of these rites, who must of course be taken before those of day and light, as in the order of the festival, the next five stanzas are occupied:[953] Eilithyia, the Moirae (Parcae), and Tellus or Ceres. When that duty is over they turn once more to the temple, and the Greek deities of the Tarentum are mentioned no more. Three stanzas are devoted to Apollo and Diana (Luna), with a happy allusion to the Aeneid, and then once more the choirs turn, and this time they face the Capitol; the hymn is long, and these changes of movement would be at once a relief to the singers and a pleasant sight to the spectators. They address the deities of the Capitol in appropriate language:

di probos mores docili iuventae, di, senectuti placidae quietem, Romulae genti date remque prolemque et decus omne.

The allusion to Jupiter and Juno is thus veiled:

quaeque vos bobus veneratur albis clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis, impetret, bellante prior, iacentem lenis in hostem.

Horace has cleverly made Augustus himself the leading figure in this and the following stanza, and the listeners forget the Capitoline gods as they note the allusion to Venus, the ancestress of the Julii, the prestige of Augustus that has brought envoys to him from Scythia, Media, and India, and in the next stanza the public virtues, presented here as deities—Fides, Pax, Honos, Pudor, Virtus—on whose aid and worship the new regime is based.[954]

At the sixteenth stanza the choirs again face about to the temple of Apollo, and with him and Diana again the next two stanzas have to do. Only one remains, in which as an exodos we may be sure the two choirs of boys and girls joined; it sums up the whole body of deities, but with Apollo and Diana as the special objects of the day's worship:

haec Iovem sentire deosque cunctos spem bonam certamque domum reporto, doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae dicere laudes.

The performance on the Palatine was now over, and the procession streamed down the hill to join the Via Sacra near the Regia and the Vesta temple, and so to make its way up to the Capitol, where the performance was repeated.[955] Taking station at this noble point of view, he who will can again follow its movement with the hymn in his hand. The area in front of the Capitoline temple looked across to the Palatine, and the image of Sol and his quadriga must have been in full view; thus the exordium and the next stanza (alme Sol) would be sung looking in that direction. Equally well in view, if they turned to the right, would be the scene of the midnight sacrifices across the Campus Martius; and so on throughout the singing the changes of position would be easy and graceful, here as on the Palatine.

Here I prefer to make an end of the performance, following the text of the inscription, which tells us nothing of a return to the Palatine. It would be far more in keeping with Roman practice that the Capitol should be the scene of the conclusion of the processional ceremony, even on a day when Apollo was, with Augustus himself, the principal figure. From the musical point of view, too, a third performance is improbable, for the singers were young and tender.

And here, too, with this impressive scene, which can hardly fail to move the imagination of any one who has stood on Palatine and Capitol, I will close my account of the religious experience of the Romans. A few remarks only remain for me to make about its contribution, such as it was, to the Latin form of Christianity.

NOTES TO LECTURE XIX

[900] A summary of the relations between Virgil and Augustus may be found in Mr. Glover's Studies in Virgil, p. 144 foll.

[901] Tiberius added to his Augustan inheritance a curious and possibly morbid anxiety about religious matters and details of cult, of which examples may be found in Tac. Ann. iii. 58, vi. 12, among other passages. Perhaps, however, the most interesting is that connected with the famous story of "the Great Pan is dead," told by Plutarch in the de Defectu Oraculorum, ch. xvii. The news of this strange story reached the ears of Tiberius, who at once set the learned men about him to inquire into it; and they came to the no less strange conclusion that "this was the Pan who was born of Hermes and Penelope." S. Reinach has recently offered an explanation of this story, which is at least better than previous ones, in Cultes, mythes, et religions, vol. iii. p. 1 foll.

[902] C.I.L. vi. 1001.

[903] Jul. Capitolinus, 13.

[904] Symmachus, Rel. 3.

[905] Cod. Theod. xvi. 10. 2. On this subject generally consult Dill's Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, bk. i. chs. i. and iv.

[906] This idea is exactly expressed by Horace in Odes iii. 23, perhaps addressed to the vilica of his own farm. Cp. Cato, R.R. 143, where the vilica is to pray to the Lar familiaris pro copia. Horace mentions only the Kalends for this rite; Cato adds Nones and Ides. Cp. Tibull. i. 3. 34; i. 10. 15 foll.

[907] See above, Lectures iv. and v.

[908] Greatness and Decline of Rome (E.T.), v. 93.

[909] See especially lines 45 foll. and 56 foll.

[910] C.I.L. vi. 32,323, or Dessau, Inscriptiones selectae, vol. ii. part i. p. 284.

[911] For this reason the veiled figure in one of the fine sculptures on the Ara Pacis frieze, which used to be taken as Augustus Pont. Max., cannot be so identified (see Domaszewski, Abhandlungen zur roemischen Religion, p. 90 foll.), for the date of the Ara Pacis is 13 B.C., the year before Lepidus died. The figure can be most conveniently seen by English students in Mrs. Strong's Roman Sculpture, plate xi. p. 46. It may be Agrippa acting as Pont. Max. for Lepidus.

[912] Monumentum Ancyranum, ed. Mommsen (Lat.), iv. 17.

[913] See above, p. 129.

[914] Livy iv. 20. 7.

[915] Valerius Maximus, Epit. 3, 4.

[916] Ovid, Fasti, iv. 901 foll.

[917] See Marquardt, 326 foll.

[918] Dio Cassius, l. 4, 5.

[919] Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, p. xxv. of the exordium.

[920] Henzen, p. 154.

[921] See above, p. 98.

[922] Henzen, pp. 24, 28.

[923] For the hymn, Henzen, p. 26; Dessau, Inscr. select. ii. pt. i. p. 276. See also above, p. 186.

[924] Wissowa, R.K. p. 487, note 5.

[925] Henzen, 142 foll.; Dessau, p. 279; see above, p. 162.

[926] Henzen, p. 105.

[927] Ib. p. 107.

[928] Tac. Ann. iii.

[939] Zosimus, ii. 5 and 6. The oracle and the extract from Zosimus are printed in Dr. Wickham's introduction to the Carmen saeculare, and in Diels, Sibyllinische Blaetter, p. 131 foll.

[930] C.I.L. vi. 32,323. Ephemeris epigraphica, viii. 255 foll., contains the text and Mommsen's exposition. Dessau, Inscr. selectae, ii. pt. i. 282, does not give the whole document.

[931] Wissowa, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 192 foll.; Ferrero, vol. v. 85 foll.

[932] The word was first explained by Mommsen, Roem. Chronologie, ed. 2, p. 172.

[933] See, e.g., Golden Bough, ed. 2, vol. ii. p. 70 foll.

[934] The religious or mystical conception of time is the subject of an interesting discussion by Hubert et Mauss, Melanges d'histoire et de religion, p. 189 foll.; but the saeculum does not seem to have attracted their attention.

[935] The actual words of Varro, from his work de gente Populi Romani, are quoted by St. Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xxii. 28: "Genethliaci quidam scripserunt esse in renascendis hominibus quam appellant [Greek: palingenesian] Graeci; hac scripserunt confici in annis numero quadringentis quadraginta, ut idem corpus et eadem anima, quae fuerint coniuncta in homine aliquando, eadem rursus redeant in coniunctionem." The passage well illustrates the mystical tendency of which I was speaking in the last lecture.

[936] For attempts to explain the difficulty see Wissowa, op. cit. p. 204.

[937] The cakes offered to Eilithyia, and again to Apollo, are nine in number; see the inscription lines 117 and 143. The choirs of boys and girls were each twenty-seven.

[938] The suffimenta are described by Zosimus, l.c. There is a coin of Domitian, who also celebrated Ludi saeculares, in which he appears seated and distributing the suffimenta, as the inscription shows.

[939] So Zosimus, who says they consisted of wheat, barley, and beans.

[940] R.F. p. 148 foll.

[941] See the inscription, line 92 foll. Ferrero assumes that these words were to be taken as representing the families of all worshippers present, who would repeat the words "mihi domo familiae." But this is arbitrary; the prayer follows the old form as we have it, e.g., in Cato, R.R. (see above, p. 182), and as Cato or any landowner would represent the rest of the human beings on the estate, so did Augustus represent the whole community.

[942] So J. B. Carter, Religion of Numa, p. 160.

[943] The matrons, equal in number to the years of the saeculum, first appear on 2nd June in the worship of Juno.

[944] Mon. Ancyr. (Lat.), iv. 21.

[945] Zosimus, l.c., says that "hymns" were sung in Greek as well as Latin; but this is not borne out by any other authority.

[946] Line 31 (et Iovis aurae), where Jupiter simply stands for the heaven and its influence on the earth; and line 73 (haec Iovem sentire, etc.), where he is introduced in the most general way as head of all deities.

[947] Line 147 of the inscription: "Sacrificioque perfecto puer[i X] XVII quibus denuntiatum erat patrimi et matrimi et puellae totidem carmen cecinerunt: eodemque modo in Capitolio. Carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flaccus."

[948] Eph. epigr. viii. 256. Wissowa, Gesamm. Abhandl. p. 206, note, who refers to Vahlen and Christ as differing from Mommsen, in papers which I have not seen. Wissowa says that the threefold division of the hymn "springt in die Augen"; but this has never been my experience.

[949] Apart from the awkwardness for singers of the descent from the Palatine and the steep ascent to the Capitol, we may remember that they would have to pass under the fornix Fabianus, which was not much more than nine feet broad (Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations, p. 217).

[950] See Huelsen-Jordan, Topographie, iii. 72 and note. See also map at the end of the volume, No. 1 of the series. There is, however, some doubt as to whether the site was not on the side of the Palatine looking towards the Tiber over the Circus maximus. See my paper in the Classical Quarterly, 1910, p. 145 foll. If so, my explanation of the performance of the hymn seems rather to be confirmed than weakened.

[951] Ovid, Tristia, iii. 1. 59 foll.

[952] Propertius, iii. 28 (31): "In quo Solis erat supra fastigia currus." No one seems to have noticed the connection between this and Horace's allusion to Sol, which is otherwise not easy to explain.

[953] I will not enter on the insoluble question as to what stanzas or parts of stanzas were sung by the boys and girls respectively. That the hymn was so sung in double chorus is intrinsically probable, and stated in the oracle, lines 20, 21. Some of the schemes which have been propounded are given in Wickham's Horace. I imagine that the stanzas may have been sung alternately except in the case of the first two and the last, but the ninth looks as though it might have been divided between the two choirs. Ferrero has a scheme of his own, p. 91 foll.; and if he had taken a little more pains might have worked out the whole problem satisfactorily.

[954] Of these quasi-deities Fides is the oldest, and was associated with Jupiter on the Capitol; Wissowa, R.K. 103 foll. Thus we may find a callida iunctura between the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth stanzas, for Fides and Pax would fit in well with the responsa petunt of the fourteenth. Whether Pax was recognised as a deity at this time is not quite certain; but a few years later, in 9 B.C., an altar of Pax Augusta was dedicated. The Ara Pacis was begun in 13 B.C. See Axtell, Deification of Abstract Ideas (Chicago, 1907), p. 37, who may also be consulted for the other deities here mentioned. See also above, p. 285. In Tibull. i. 10. 45 foll., Pax seems to be on the verge of deification, but not to have attained it except in the poet's fancy.

[955] The route may be followed in the map of the Via Sacra in Lanciani's Ruins and Excavations, and in his chapter entitled, "A Walk through the Sacra Via," or more shortly in my Social Life in the Age of Cicero, p. 18 foll.

Note.—The whole question of the singing of the Carmen saeculare in its relation to the two principal sites and to the topography of the festival generally, is fully discussed by the author in Classical Review for 1910, p. 145 foll.



LECTURE XX

CONCLUSION

"A time of spiritual awakening, of a calling to higher destinies, came upon the world, the civilised world which lay around the Mediterranean Sea, at the beginning of our era. The calling was concentrated in the life and death of the Founder of Christianity."[956] The writer of these words goes on to point out that the beginning of our era was "a time of general stirring in all the higher fields of human activity," and that all such stirring, all that brings higher ideals before the minds of men of action, of imagination, or of reflection, if not itself religion, is in some sense religious, and in that age must be taken into account as having some bearing on the origin of Christianity, the greatest of all religious movements. And inasmuch as the new spirit of the age seems to have put new life into the old religious systems, with the help of philosophy and poetry, as well as of a purer and more effective conception of Man's relation to the Power manifesting itself in the universe, he finds it useful and legitimate to show how the ideas and characteristics of the leading types of religion in the civilised world of which he speaks were absorbed or "baptized" into the spirit of Christianity. In other words, we may ask what was the contribution of each of these religious types to the formation of the Christian type of religion; for however new was the inspiration which was the essential living germ of our religion, yet that germ was of necessity planted in soil full of other religious ingredients, which found their way into the sap of the plant as it grew towards maturity.

I have all along wished to bring our subject, the religious experience of the Roman people, into touch with Christianity, whether by marking points of contact, or of contrast, or both. In the last few lectures I have laid stress on certain points likely to be useful to us in this last stage of our studies, and these will, I hope, furnish us with some amount of material. But I confess that I have approached this subject with great hesitation. What I shall have to say will be tentative and suggestive only; but I hope that the account that I have given in these lectures of Roman religious experience may be of use in helping a better qualified student to carry on the work more adequately.

Let us glance back for a moment at the results of the last four lectures, in which I have been dealing with Roman religious experience after the paralysis or hypnotism of the old religion of the State. We saw, in the first place, that the educated part of Roman society had been brought to the very threshold of a new and more elevating type of religion, by Greek philosophy transplanted to Roman soil, and chiefly by Stoicism. True, one great Epicurean genius had had his share in this process, by denouncing the weakness and wickedness of the Roman society, and the futility of all the religious forms and fancies with which they still dallied; but Lucretius had nothing to offer in the place of these forms and fancies—nothing, that is, which could grip the conscience and act as a real force upon conduct. The Roman was in a religious sense destitute, both of a real sense of duty to his fellow-men of all grades, and in regard to God; and for this destitution Lucretius' remedy, the accurate knowledge of a philosophical theory of the universe, was wholly inadequate. The first real appeal to the conscience of the Roman came from Stoicism, the reasonable and less austere type of Stoicism which Panaetius preached to the Scipionic circle. From this the Roman learnt that as a part of the divine universe Man himself is divine: that as endowed with a portion of that Reason which itself is God, he has a sacred duty to perform in using it. Thus, as the Universal was revealed, so the Individual was ennobled; and the only thing wanting to make of this a real religion was a bond that might unite the two more effectually in conduct as well as in thought. Though a later development of Stoicism did indeed all but achieve this union, that of the later Republic failed to do so, because it inherited the old Stoic neglect of the emotional side of man's nature, and could take little advantage from a strong current of mystical feeling that was running side by side with it. The Stoic ingredient in the soil which was being prepared for Christianity was rich and valuable, but in this one respect it was poor. It was intellectually beautiful, but it stirred as yet no "enthusiasm of humanity."[957]

Another ingredient in the soil was that imaginative transcendentalism which we discussed under the name of Mysticism, in which the soul becomes of greater interest than the body, and a strange yearning possesses the mind to speculate on the nature of the soul, its existence before this life, and its lot in another world. These imaginative yearnings were not native to the Roman, who had never had any very definite idea of a future life, nor had ever troubled himself about a previous one; they filtered through the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy into that type of later Stoicism which attracted him. They were hardly treated in Roman society with real religious earnestness, except perhaps in some few moments of sorrow and emotion such as I dwelt on in the experience of Cicero. But the mere fact that they were in the air at Rome is of importance for us. They stimulated the imaginative faculty in religious thought; they kept alive in the minds at least of some men the questions why we are here, what we are, and what becomes of us after death. They prepared the Roman mind for Christian eschatology; and this, though never so important in the Latin Church as in the Greek, was yet an important part of the teaching of the early Church. St. Paul exactly expresses the yearning thus dimly foreshadowed in the mystical movement of which I am speaking: "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. v. 4). It was essential that the Roman should be able to understand words like these, and to associate them with a religion which, though in its most vital points one mainly affecting this life, was also, like those of Isis and Mithras, strongly tinged with mysticism. "All religions of that time," it has lately been said, "were religions of hope. Stress was laid on the future: the present time was but for preparation. So in the mysterious cults of Hellenism, whose highest aim is to offer guarantees for other worldly happiness; so too in Judaism, whose legacy has but the aim of furnishing the happy life in the kingdom of the future. But Christianity is a religion of faith, the gospel not only giving guarantees for the future life, but bringing confidence, peace, joy, salvation, forgiveness, righteousness—whatever man's heart yearns after."[958]

Yet another ingredient was that kindly, charitable, sympathetic outlook on the world which we found in the poems of Virgil, and which is associated throughout them with the idea of duty and honourable service. The husbandman toiling cheerfully and doing his simple acts of worship, among the patient animals that he loves, and the scenes of natural beauty that inspire him with pure and tender thoughts; and then again in the Aeneid the warrior kept true to his goal by a sense of duty stimulated by supernatural influence: both these sides of the Virgilian spirit show well how the soil is being prepared for another and a richer crop. Love and Duty are the essentials of Christian ethics; they are both to be found in this poet, and through him made their way into the ideas of the better Romans of the next generation, and so into the philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. "To minds touched with the same sense of life's problems which pervades the poetry of Virgil, the ideas that came from Galilee brought the rest and peace which they could not find elsewhere."[959] The early Christian writers loved the "vates Gentilium," and St. Augustine in particular is for ever quoting him; but I should be going beyond the limits of my subject if I were to follow his gentle influence farther down the stream of time.

In my last lecture we discussed the revival of the old religious forms by Augustus, and the consummation of this work of his in the splendid ritual of the Ludi saeculares. Can it be said that such an astute and worldly policy as this had any value in the way of preparation for Christianity? Only, I think, in one way; it renewed the idea of the connection between religion and the State, and of the religious duties of the individual citizen towards the State. It preserved the outward features of the old State religion, such as the calendar, the ritual, and the terminology or vocabulary, and handed these down to a time when they could be of service to a Latin Christian church.[960] Had the old forms been allowed to go utterly to rack and ruin, as they had been already doing for the last two centuries, the Roman State would have been as such without religion, or the worship of the Caesars would have become disastrously powerful and prominent, or maybe the State would have adopted the religion of Isis or Mithras or some other Oriental cult and belief, before Christianity could lay a firm grasp on it. I think it might be shown that the continuity of the old religion in its connection with the State was really of value in keeping these growths from occupying too much ground: of value in checking too rapid a growth of individualism:[961] of value too in cherishing certain really precious religious characteristics, orderliness and decency in ritual, for example, which, as we have seen, were very early developed in the Roman religious system, and which owed their continued vitality to the overwhelming influence of the Roman State over all her citizens and their ideas. Thus when at last, after a period of anxious conflict between rival religions, the State proclaimed itself Christian, and henceforward for good or ill extended its protection to the Church, its religious tradition was still one of decency and order, still free from almost all that the old Roman State knew and dreaded as superstitio. There was, in fact, a legacy, not indeed a spiritual one, but yet one of some small value, left by the old Roman religion to the Latin Church: and this I will turn for a few minutes to examine.

As an example of the orderly, sane, and decent character which the Church inherited from the Roman religion, I might recall what I said in Lecture IX. about lustratio, that slow and orderly processional movement in which the old Romans delighted, and which is familiar still to all travellers in Italy.[962] Another is the tender and reverential care for the resting-places of departed relatives. I am not sure that Prof. Gardner is right in asserting that the prayers for the dead of the Catholic Church took the place of the worship of the dead in the Roman family;[963] for it is not easy to say how far it is true that the dead were ever really worshipped at Rome, and the idea of prayer for the dead, if it can be traced to Roman sources at all, may be rather due to those tendencies which we discussed under Mysticism, than to anything inherent in the old Roman attitude to the departed. None the less there is in the sacra privata of the Parentalia, and especially of the Caristia which concluded it—a kind of love-feast of all members of the family, where all quarrels and differences were to be laid aside,[964]—something that suggests the Christian attitude towards the dead, and in some dim way too the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. And we may also notice how closely in regard to externals the great events of family life,—those critical moments when the aid of the numina was most needed—the first days of infancy, the eras of puberty and of marriage, passed on in their sober and orderly ritual into the baptism, confirmation, and sacramental wedding of the Christian Church. In such ways the private religion of the Roman family had doubtless a real continuity in the new era, though the line of connection is difficult to trace. This, and many other examples of survival, the worship of local saints which took the place of that of local deities, the use of holy water and of incense as symbolic elements in worship, and the general resemblance of the arrangement of festivals in the Calendars, Roman and Christian, might be interesting matter for a complete course of lectures, but must be omitted here.

Another point of interest, which might also be widely expanded, is the influence of the Roman religious spirit, as distinct from the outward form, on Christian thought and literature in the Western half of the Empire. The subtle transcendentalism of the Greek fathers was foreign to Latin Christianity; the characteristics of Roman life as reflected in Roman worship are plainly visible in the Latin fathers. From Minucius Felix onwards, the Christians who wrote in Latin, so far from being imaginative and dreamy, are one and all matter-of-fact; historical, abounding in illustration of life and conduct; ethical rather than speculative; legal in their cast of thought rather than philosophical; rhetorical in their manner of expression rather than fervent or poetical. They were well versed in the great literature of Rome, but most of them, and especially the African school (which carried Roman tendencies to an extreme), knew comparatively little of Greek. St. Augustine, for example, could not bring himself to work at Greek with ardour, nor could he explain why this was so.[965] Of Augustine, as the type of the literature of Latin Christianity, Bishop Westcott wrote with something of an exaggerated criticism, lamenting that he had not the Greek which had so large a place in the Bishop's own training. "He looked" (more particularly in the de Civitate Dei) "at everything from the side of law and not of freedom: from the side of God, as an irresponsible sovereign, and not of man, as a loving servant. In spite of his admiration for Plato, he was driven by a passion for system" (how this reminds us of the old Roman religious lawyers!) "to fix, to externalise, to freeze every idea into a rigid shape. In spite of his genius he could not shake off the influence of a legal and rhetorical training, which controversy called into active exercise."[966] The lecture from which I am quoting is an interesting one, on the work and character of Origen, the great Alexandrian of the third century A.D., with whom Augustine is contrasted, as in an earlier age we might contrast Seneca with Philo; the Latin writers rhetorical, practical, realistic; the Greek authors idealistic and fervent, apt to see deep moral significance in all human life. And this is really the manner and mental attitude of all the famous Latin fathers: of Lactantius, the clear, precise Ciceronian, whose every page shows the perennial value of the Latin tongue; of Tertullian, the subtle and acute rhetorician, more gifted with imagination than his fellows; of Arnobius, another Roman African, the reputed teacher of Lactantius.